Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on Friday after more than two weeks of mass protests against his 30-year rule, and the military has taken charge of the country.

Western media outlets, including CNN and the BBC, and even Al Jazeera, have focused on educated, "sophisticated" voices that clamor for "freedom and democracy". This once again shows that Western countries consider themselves to be the world, or the "international community", and Western-style democracy the panacea for the ills of all the countries irrespective of how different they are.

Amazingly, none of Western media outlets or other news channels has identified the small group of individuals who were truly and directly responsible for much of the unrest sweeping across Egypt. It is economic hardship that has brought hundreds of thousands of ordinary Egyptians to Tahrir Square, and much of this pain has been caused by the huge increase in food prices across the world.

If a person were to rely on the BBC or CNN for information, he/she would be told that "supply disruptions caused by freak weather" have raised prices so high.

Floods and storms have indeed brought misery to many countries but that has been the case for centuries, if not millenniums. The truth is that speculation has caused more than 80 percent of the rise in prices.

The same small, super-greedy band of international speculators who almost destroyed the world's finances by their greed in 2008, are back in action, raising the prices of foodstuffs this time. Executives of banks and other financial institutions in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom funding such ghouls are the ones who should be thrown into prisons for "human rights abuses". Instead, they are showered with not only honor and respect, but also more than $1 trillion in subsidy to rescue themselves from the economic storm they created in the first place.

Those who preach "transparency" and "accountability" to the world are silent on their own failure to punish the handful of people who stole more than $3 trillion from investors across the world.

Fed by huge taxpayer-funded subsidies, the dozen-odd financial conglomerates that were responsible for the global financial crisis are again at work - sending prices of oil, copper, foodstuffs and other items soaring. This time they are doing it by manipulating market prices freely because of the servility that countries such as the US and the UK have shown to them since the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher era in the 1980s. This era glorifies money making - in any which way possible. The result: a boom in the financial industry.

In the case of China, starting from the days of Deng Xiaoping, money has been made by increasing production and employment. But in the case of the US and the UK, money has been (and is being) made by lowering production, downsizing or destroying enterprises and speculation.

Such greed reached its height in the US during former president George W. Bush's rule when a company close to former vice-president Dick Cheney became the largest corporate beneficiary of the Iraq War.

Over the last three decades, speculators have become the kingpins of the world financial system. Not content with raising oil prices, they have now shifted their focus to poor countries' debt and the staples of the poor. Speculator-driven increases in the price of petroleum products has slowed down growth in China and India. And speculator-driven increase in food prices has caused billions of people to suffer .

Tens of millions of people, including many in the Western countries, where the super-speculators are based, have lost their jobs because of the financial and economic dislocation caused by uncontrolled speculation that is feted in the US and the UK.

It suits the super-speculators to pretend that the "thirst for democracy" has brought about the changes in Egypt. The reality is that it is the thirst for food and jobs that has driven more than 95 percent of the protestors toward the daily marches and rallies that are taking place in Egypt. That's the reason why there are no protestors in countries where governments have provided food and jobs to the people, thereby ensuring stability.

But if uncontrolled speculation continues other countries could face problems in products of mass consumption such as foodstuffs. Hence, developing countries, including emerging powers such as China and India need to raise a collective voice against the super-speculators. If the US and the UK continue to permit speculators to push up the prices of essential commodities, the world will witness such turmoil that the core interests of even the US and the UK will be harmed. The super-speculators may not bother to lower the prices as long as they themselves are safe.

The author is vice-chair of Manipal Advanced Research Group, and UNESCO Peace Chair and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, India.

(China Daily 02/16/2011 page9)