Who wants to be a millionaire?

As one does when one has a teetering pile of deadlines and a nasty stomach bug derived from having runny Brie with Tariq Ali at lunch (me! Ali! Brie!), I've been spending time at the Kids section of the Bureau of the Public Debt. And I've learned a great deal. I strongly recommend the teacher's guide entitled Money Math: Lessons for Life. In it you'll be directed to

Ask the following. Do you want to be a millionaire? What is a
millionaire? Explain that a millionaire is a person who has
wealth totaling one or more million dollars, noting that wealth
is the total value of what a person owns minus what he or she
owes. How could you become a millionaire? (win the lottery,
win a sweepstakes, inherit a million dollars, earn a high
income) Read the following scenario to the class.

Last week, Mrs. Addle told her students that they could
become millionaires if they followed the rules she
provided them. As a matter of fact, she guaranteed that if
they followed her rules exactly, they would be millionaires
in 47 years! Misha and the rest of her classmates thought
that Mrs. Addle was crazy. If she had rules that would
guarantee that someone could be a millionaire, why was
she teaching seventh-grade math? Why wasn’t she rich
and retired? Why didn’t she follow her own rules? Mrs.
Addle told the students to go home and talk to their
families about what she had said.

Misha went home and told her family what Mrs. Addle
had said. Misha’s mother knew a lot about money and
financial matters. She just smiled at Misha and said that
Mrs. Addle was correct. When Misha returned to class
the next day, Mrs. Addle asked what the students’ families
said. Of the 25 students in Mrs. Addle’s class, 20 students
said that their parents and other family members agreed
with Mrs. Addle. The other five students forgot to ask.

After some faffing around with percentages and inflation, teachers are encouraged to

Point out that the newest type of U.S. savings bond is the I
Bond. I Bonds are inflation-indexed and designed for savers
who want to protect themselves from inflation. Define
inflation as an increase in the average level of prices in the
economy.

C'mon kids! It's index-linked T-bill time! The booklet is stuffed with similar instructional gems, and the section on what you're going to be when you grow up will test your stomach to the limit. Mine didn't hold out but, as I say, I'm sure that's because of the Brie.

Food, glorious

A couple of years back, The Voice of the Turtle saluted Think Again's Queer Youth Manifesto. The accolade has clearly spurred the comrades there to greater heights of creativity. Go look see, and be sure to ogle their propaganda series on food. Their new book, A Brief History of Outrage, is bound to be good too. And, final plug, if you enjoy words with your outrage, check out the new issue of Chimurenga.

[if white people didn't invent air, what would we breathe?]

Cownap

Following up on the anti-Cow Parade debate, some old but good news on Cow Parade Cows being taken hostage in Stockholm. The ransom was to have the cows declared "non-art". The Cow Paraders didn't comply and, although the article doesn't say, I'd like to think that the fibreglass beasts met a sticky end. More here. Via DK.

From Palestine to South Africa: The week in ellipsis

Begin in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Then go to El Salvador. Then Guyana, Cape Verde, Syrian Arab Republic , Uzbekistan, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Viet Nam , Moldova, Rep. of, Bolivia, Honduras, Tajikistan, Mongolia, and then Nicaragua. After that, South Africa is a stone’s throw away.

The United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report earlier this year charted South Africa’s steady decline to pre-apartheid (1975) levels of literacy, health and income. South Africa’s sixteen countries below the Occupied Territories in terms of its HDR ranking.

Despite the facts, Trevor Manuel, the Finance Minister, told us this week that the economy was “pumping”. Quite what this cardiological metaphor tells us is unclear. Unless it’s not blood that’s being pumped, but lead. Which wouldn't be far off. The innocently named John Perkins published his Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man this week - an everyday story of an economist recruited by the National Security Agency to encourage bankruptcy (moral and fiscal) in the third world, through pimping (econometric and otherwise).

Back to the title of today's post. A more direct route from Palestine to South Africa can be traced through the ANC and PLO’s shared histories of struggle. The mourning period for Yasser Arafat came to an end this week, and we were treated to a series of popular outpourings for the man. Jacob Zuma, the deputy president, almost managed to string a coherent sentence together for the occasion. Little more has come from government than that. Promises that Thabo Mbeki would try to make the funeral were muffled when it became clear that he was happier signing trade deals in Belgium.

Meanwhile, the horrors unbundle in Fallujah. What has this got to do with the Occupied Territories? Well, if you’re watching South African television, nothing at all.

Time for a thong

A brief posting today, continuing the Great Religious Debate with news of an important new fashion accessory.
Click here to buy your little slice of god. Lest it seem, however, that sides are being taken, and to prove that, in any case, Christianity is an upstart in the religious world, Class Worrier is proud to present a world exclusive: not a single item, but an entire line of authentic Hindu clothing with genuine links to real mythology. The Raj Patel Thong Collection. After all, we at Class Worrier don't like to be accused of taking cheap shots at sacred cows.



Props to David Kalal.

In between imperia

An appeal for help from Okinawa, specifically but not exclusively directed at our Japanese and American readers (all two of you). Seems like your governments are misbehaving themselves again, silly things. The U.S. government in particular has chosen this moment to go ahead an just built that desperately needed new air force base on top of that irritating coral reef, despite the entreaties of most of Okinawa's residents. A few Okinawans, those who already do brisk trade in servicing servicemen, don't seem as disgruntled. The majority, however, are extremely annoyed. Now I'm not a big fan of the internet petition but, as Kelly Dietz, from whom this appeal comes, points out that

Believe it or not, the media here is covering every development surrounding the drilling, and the Japanese Defense Facilities Administration Bureau is increasingly aware of the extent to which this issue is being watched from outside Okinawa and beyond Japan. And, although the US media's attention toward the US military rarely extends to the day-to-day reality of its overseas bases, the US consulate in Okinawa dutifully reports opposition to the bases. All Japanese media reports on base issues are translated and sent to the State Department.

In other words, your voice WILL be heard by both governments. Your message will also give a tremendous boost to the Okinawan people -- who have said no, so many times and in so many ways, to yet another US military base on their island.

Read the whole story here here and then send your emails to Kelly at kld18 at cornell dot edu. And then read more about Okinawa's history of being whaled on by all and sundry in this fine article.

Buddha on the U.S. Election

Dr Spanklebums, whose new radio pod is too big for me to download, and bound to be brilliant not least because it contains an “Ask A Latino” phone in slot, has blown the cobwebs off the comments feature and sent along a useful opinion.

He charges that there’s too much worry and not enough class here at CW. Specifically, my hopes of a Catholic Marxist tradition emerging in the Southern United States is woefully ungrounded in an analysis of history. Although New England was initially conceived as a Protesant anti-capitalist enclave, crossing my fingers for revolutionary Jesuits to spring from the Bible Belt is, well, a little too wishful. Guilty as charged.

But I still think there are important lessons for religion to teach politics. In a colleague's room the other day, I noticed a small beautiful smiling Buddha. As these things tend to, the conversation rolled towards Buddha’s reaction to the U.S. election. The answer, we concluded, is that the Buddha would smile. Take time to look at that smile next time you see it. It’s not the smile of joyful belly-laughing or benediction or cheerful always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life good humour. It’s the smile of someone whose high expectations have been permanently wiped away.

On the Impossibility of Solidarity with Zimbabweans

I've been mulling this posting for a week, but prompted by Norm's postings I thought I'd share some profound analysis on solidarity from Reuben Mohlaloga of the ANC. For those who haven't been following closely, here's the back-story.

Last week, a delegation from the Confederation of South African Trade Unions went on a fact-finding mission to Harare, to discover whether there is, in fact, a crisis in Zimbabwe. They planned to meet their comrades from the Zimbabwean Confederation of Trade Unions, and managed to get through the airport to their hotel before being woken up first thing in the morning, interrogated by the police, and then put on a bus to the border. The Zimbabwean government doesn’t take kindly to fact finding.

Chatting with a COSATU apparatchik last week, I asked why they'd gone to visit their friends up north. The reply was telling; the ZCTU have, occasionally, fibbed about the magnitude of government repression against their members, and COSATU went there to find out the facts. Granted, there are some from the ZCTU who display a certain degree of political immaturity. To be caught on camera plotting to kill Robert Mugabe isn't the mark of a savvy leader, and Morgan Tsvangirai, ex-ZCTU now leader of the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change seems to have learned his lesson. Nevertheless, the reason for COSATU’s visit with which I was palmed off is flimsy - the COSATU voyage up north has the smell not of an expression of international solidarity, but of a proxy skirmish. COSATU, along with the South African Communist Party, are in an alliance with the ruling ANC in South Africa. On the heels of a very successful (the largest ever) strike in South Africa, COSATU is jockeying for a little more power within the Alliance. The SACP had already come out against ZANU-PF and is busy making trouble with its Red October campaign around land. And Mbeki's appeasement of Robert Mugabe is a clear weakness to exploit.

Which is why the ANC has come down very hard indeed on COSATU. And why we've seen an inspired bit of political analysis this week. Reuben Mohlaloga, a junior ANC member of parliament has, according to the Mail and Guardian, denounced the COSATU mission as a “fishing expedition [which] was never going to achieve anything but titles of heroism” for its members. He then goes on to add

“You don’t go and express solidarity with people who are not in a political crisis. You can express solidarity with Cubans, with Western Sahara, with Palestinians – bu there is no problem of human rights in Zimbabwe.”

I'm reminded here about Foucault's thoughts on abnormality, on how the mentally ill are constructed as deviant before their condition is diagnosed. Normality is a very delicate flower, needing constant tending, with the active identification of pests over which our publicly authoritative gardeners argue the toss. In addition to casting Gardeners’ Question Time in a new light, this clumsy metaphor might prompt the reflection that, in the case of Zimbabwe, the ANC are trying not merely to control political sentiment, but its very possibility.

The payoff, for those unconcerned with Zimbabwe if any there be, is a reflection on friendship, political or otherwise. What are the ways in which we let other authorities decide the ruling of those communities in which we see our selves? We can all agree that the politics of mutual recognition, and thence the politics of community interaction, is too important to leave to the ANC, to the state, to the church, or even to Michael Moore. But the more important question is this: does solidarity need an authority in order to be possible?

Centenary

Today marks the one hundredth worry posted here at CW. And what a lot there is to agonise over. Over at The Voice of the Turtle, we've just posted a reminder to put the whole election process into perspective since it is merely the occasion on which "te oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them." More here.

But for the centenary fret here at CW, we're aiming big: what are we going to do about God. Joe Bord has some important new thoughts up at the Turtle, and I've responded with a bit of Freire which, since the Turtle's comment engine seems to have stalled, I'll repost here:

"I never understood how to reconcile fellowship with Christ with the exploitation of other human beings, or to reconcile a love for Christ with racial, gender and class discrimination. By the same token, I could never reconcile the Left's liberating discourse with the Left's discriminatory practice along the lines of race, gender, and class. What a shocking contradiction: to be, at the same time, a leftist and a racist.

During the 1970s, in an interview in Australia, I told some greatly surprised reporters that it was in the woods of Recife, refuge of slaves, and the ravines where the oppressed of Brazil live, coupled with my love for Christ and hope that He is the light, that led me to Marx.

My relationship with Marx never suggested that I abandon Christ."

(Letters to Cristina, 86-7)

Quite how the US left is going to dig itself out of the 'values' trap set up by the evangelical right is, I think, the proper subject for meditation over the next few months. That religion is the opium of the people hasn't, it seems to me, been understood in anything but the most derisory way by a great deal of the US liberal establishment. The conflation of radicalism with religion is far from impossible, and in times when capital has unmoored precisely those sureties that religion is so good at hitching together, perhaps the US left needs to be looking with more humility at the experiences of its anti-capitalist Christian comrades in the South.