Random Thoughts on Global Revolt

From South Africa to Libya, from the Persian Gulf to Wisconsin, the world is in turmoil as the people revolt against their ruling classes.

Commodities and the Price of Food

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. ~ The Great Gatsby

The world is a complex place but insofar as commodities speculation has driven up the price of food the flint that has set these dry tinders alight was in the hands of Goldman Sachs, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the super rich dilettantes who gambled with the prices of the world's food supply.

The Bahrain Massacre

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. ~ Howard Zinn

We may never know how much blood was shed in Bahrain because the king is a frightened child before his people and how much was shed at the behest of the Fifth Fleet's need for a secure anchorage.

The Wisconsin Contagion

The employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times. ~ William Howard Taft, 1909

Balanced somewhere between gut feeling and wishful thinking is a belief that the mass protests in Wisconsin will start a wildfire across the United States and a resurgence of organized labor as a force for the rights of working people in the United States.