Right now who else shows the will and has an alternative culture and, perhaps, the means to withstand the American hegemony?

José Bové is a hero, but he's going to need help.

A star of anti-globalization has fallen.

José Bové, the sheep farmer and convicted vandal whose mission is to save France from fast food and free trade, will serve 14 months in prison after the country's highest court Tuesday threw out his appeal.

Bové, 49, is a media-savvy, handlebar-moustachioed anti-globalizer who protests at economic summit meetings and is sometimes likened to the French cartoon hero Asterix, leading defiant Gauls against today's Romans. He attracted worldwide attention three years ago when he led a group of French farmers to smash windows in a McDonald's in Millau near his home in southern France.

Later that year, he attacked a field of genetically modified rice grown at a research station near the southern city of Montpellier. He was sentenced to six months in prison, and it was an appeal of that sentence that France's Cour de Cassation in Paris rejected Tuesday.

A man who supplies sheep's milk for makers of roquefort cheese, he also has opposed U.S. trade tariffs against French luxury foods and multinational corporations.