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.