Their protests shook the governmentand forced Prime Minister Jacques-Edourd Alexis to step down.

Several years ago, we saw massiveprotests in Oaxaca, Mexico, against exorbitant hikes in corn prices, the grainwhich forms the basis and is the staple of the national diet.

In Egypt, bread prices are so highthat the army has been called in to stifle dissent and to distribute bread.

Wheat, corn and other such grains arebecoming so expensive that millions of people around the world are seriouslythreatened by hunger. The cause? In truth, there are many, but perhaps chiefamong them is speculation and anticipated demand for bio fuels, or the use ofgrains to produce fuel to run cars.

Many grains are held off the foodmarkets, to await better prices for bio fuels. In other words, people are goinghungry – facingstarvation –so that people can pump fuel into cars. If ever there was an encapsulated imageof the mercenary nature of capitalism, it can be seen in this one example:filling cars instead of feeding people.

This is also a window into what wehave come to call globalism. There are five major companies that control some85 percent of the world’s grain trade and nearly half of the world’s grainproduction.

As huge multinationals, will theyutilize this power to feed the people of the world, or to maximize profits? Theanswer is obvious.

And even though kids in Americanschools aren’t taught this truth, the fact of the matter is we all live closerto the age of gasoline than the age of the atom. For every item we purchase,from food to coats, from jewelry to DVDs, bears the cost of transportation inits price, and as the price of gas soars, that price is passed on to theconsumer.

So fuel exacts a kind of double taxwhen it comes to grains. Through speculation and transfer to bio fuels,all such grain prices rise. To this is added the price of transport.

The logic of the market leads to massstarvation.

(Source: Esteva, Gustavo and MadhuSuri Prakash, “From Global to Local: Beyond Neo liberalism to the Internationalof Hope,” in “TheGlobalization Reader,” 3d ed. Frank J. Lechner & John Boli, eds., p.455)

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