food shortages

The following quotes were gleaned from one NY Times article today. I was going to post them in "Quotes" but then I thought they would be more visible as a blog post. I think they deserve to be seen and reflected upon. Here's a global phenomenon, a catastrophe in the making, and it exists outside the range of our political discourse.

No candidate makes the connection that here's a common cause for all humanity, located where climate change, tight oil supplies, water shortages, and food shortages intersect and interact. Talk about a Moral Equivalent to War and a replacement for the Global War on Terror. What an opportunity to approach our "enemies" in peace.

If we only had "the will and vision". The problem is that many people do -- it's the institutional dominance of money and power that keeps humans' political will and vision limited to a narrow range of "realistic" options.

I read these quoted words and think of all the Biblical texts about widows and orphans, the feeding of the multitudes, and what are treated. in effect and ineffectually, as just the pious platitudes of the Beatitudes. Read 'em and weep:

Haitian consumer of mud-cooking oil-and-sugar patties sold at street stalls: “It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt. It makes your stomach quiet down.”