It's been fascinating, watching this wave of revolutionary spirit catch fire across northern Africa and around the globe (now including places in China and perhaps the US). Max Keiser has dubbed it GIABO: Global Insurrection Against Banker Occupation. Futures speculators and central bank money printing are largely responsible (though weather plays a role too) in the skyrocketing price of food. Since people in northern Africa, the Middle East, and Asia pay a high percentage of their total income for food (frequently more than 40% and sometimes more than 60%), this inflation is devastating. Whatever the injustice and inequality has been in a given nation, it was the bankers' inflationary policies and speculative bets which pushed the people over the edge into desperation. It turns out starving people are not much afraid of tear gas or even live ammunition. If you watch this video of the Egyptian revolt, you'll hear a man saying "I haven't food, I haven't anything... I will die today!"
I'm reminded of something Robert Fisk (Middle East journalist) once said: When the people have lost their fear, you can't put fear back into them. Those in power can no longer cow them. In Libya the Air Force is bombing its own civilian population, and the Navy is firing into towns from offshore, but still they go on protesting.
On the lighter side, check out this Slate news blurb:
In an act of intercontinental solidarity, an Egyptian has ordered a pizza for Wisconsin protesters, reports Politico. The call from Africa is just one of many streaming into the Madison, Wisc., pizza parlor Ian's from all over the world. So far, people from 12 countries and 38 states have rung up looking to help get free pizza to the Wisconsin protesters clustered in the Capitol.... [S]taff members fielded calls from as far away as Turkey, Korea, Finland, China, and Australia.
Many people in the US are very anti-union, but "the people" all over the world are going to have to go back to collective actions of various sorts, in order to reverse a level of economic inequality not seen since the 1920s.
Depressingly, I just read the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus," describing the white, rural, working poor. They feel no solidarity whatsoever with anyone poor in any other nation, and they do not take collective actions nor approve of unions. They seem to believe on some level that they are poor because they deserve to be poor, because in America, the land of opportunity, the best and brightest can rise to wealth and fame. This is the darker flip side to the American dream: the unarticulated shame felt by many of the poor. For the people in Joe Bageant's book, collectives such as unions would be seen as holding strong people back while rewarding the weaker members, in violation of the American ideal of individualism. I don't see these folks joining the Global Insurrection until their children are starving. That's why the American leg of the GIABO has begun with an existing union, which already had an organizational structure in place. But the revolt will spread, that's for sure. The government is still pretending we don't have inflation, even though an MIT study called the Billion Price Project says inflation is running at 10.6% annualized, so far this year. Nothing says "disgruntled populace" like a 10% paycut by stealth. But the government's bald-faced lies about inflation allow them not to increase Social Security, nor food stamps payments. The policy is: squeeze the poor and lavish brand-new money on the banks. Who thinks that sounds sustainable?
