This article, The New Economics of Hunger, is both fascinating and sobering, showing just how interconnected the world’s economy has become and how good environmentalist intentions and arcane investments are translating into actual human beings starving to death. Killer quote: “food was becoming the new gold.”

Here is how the current food crisis happened: The wheat harvest worldwide was mediocre, making for tight though sufficient supplies. But Argentina and Russia decided to ban exports so they could keep their crops for themselves. That meant less wheat on the world market, sending prices up.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., our farmers–who account for half of the world’s grain exports!–had shifted a significant amount of their production from wheat to corn to take advantage of the federally-subsidized ethanol market , which consumes nearly 25% of the current corn supply. So less American wheat meant still higher prices. Foreign buyers, facing the prospect of hunger at home, bid it still higher. Because of the falling value of the dollar, foreigners bought more and more, stockpiling supplies. In the meantime, the collapse of the mortgage markets sent investors into grain markets! Bidding prices even higher!

Now, food shortages and high prices are destabilizing governments in Haiti, Bangladesh, and a dozen other countries. And, after years of progress in fighting hunger in these countries, starvation is back.

Remember J. R. Ewing? Southfork? Miss Ellie? We are at the 30th anniversary of “Dallas.” According to this article, How ‘Dallas’ Won the Cold War, the show with its evil oil tycoons and cutthroat capitalism, helped win the hearts and minds of the proletariat in communist countries. It happened along the lines of this priceless anecdote:

Joseph Stalin is said to have screened the 1940 movie “The Grapes of Wrath” in the Soviet Union to showcase the depredations of life under capitalism. Russian audiences watched the final scenes of the Okies’ westward trek aboard overladen, broken-down jalopies — and marveled that in the United States, even poor people had cars. “Dallas” functioned similarly.

Communist officials reasoned that the depradations of J. R. would teach their people the evils of capitalism. But, instead, Iron Curtain viewers saw the swimming pools, Cadillacs, and blockbuster business deals and lusted after them and the economic system that, for better and worse, made them possible.

As evident in last week’s blog about cricket, India makes for a good case study about the effect of pop culture on a traditionalist society. In this article about the struggles of India’s “untouchable” caste to break into the country’s “Bollywood” film industry–Bollywood No Longer A Dream Too Far for India’s Lower Castes - washingtonpost.com–we learn just how much the poor people are taken with the fantasies they see on screen:

Going to the air-conditioned cinema is a popular national pastime without parallel in this country, especially for low-caste laborers who work under India’s unforgiving sun — in construction, in farming, as cow herders and as fruit vendors. For Indians, most of whom subsist on less than $2 a day, the masala mixes of drama and dance are the ultimate escape.

So beloved are Hindi film stars that there are Hindu temples named after matinee idols. Political rallies always include a Bollywood starlet. Some political leaders are former actors. And in small-town theaters, audiences are so personally involved in the melodramas — often four hours long — that they whistle, clap, imitate dance moves and sing along with the songs.

“India is really a special place for film. It’s second only to religion in the way it occupies people’s minds and dreams,” said Barry John, a longtime drama teacher.