flickering pictures

The New York Times ran a great piece today on the world’s growing hunger crisis, with a focus on Haiti. Here’s an excerpt, because I can’t say it any better than this:

Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing.

Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.

Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently, and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, “They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.”

In other news, 2,997 kilometres away in Ottawa, Canada’s government will pay pork farmers $50 million to kill 150,000 pigs, for no reason other than to keep meat prices high.

I hate to pull out the buzzwords, but does anybody else see any synergies here?

NYT article via Boing Boing.
Photo via HaitiHealth.org.

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