The world food crisis -- the "silent tsunami" -- now threatens some 100 million people across the world. Food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Ethiopia have brought it to international attention. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick says that 33 countries are at risk of food-related upheaval. Famine may revisit North Korea, parts of Africa and even Afghanistan, where the United States is already in trouble. The World Food Program has made an emergency appeal for additional food and aid. The danger is real and present.

It's the middle of the day; the sun is up, the heat is rising in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Thousands of young men and women fill the streets, lining up, moving from place to place. They are looking for work, any work, work that might pay them enough to eat -- for hunger is on the march here. Garbage is carefully sifted for whatever food might be left. Young babies wail in frustration, seeking milk from a mother too anemic to produce it.

Where are the leaders? The news media is AWOL, with ABC staging the most insulting presidential debate in memory. The administration is fixated on peddling Iraq's calamities as progress. The presidential candidates, intent on throwing the "kitchen sink" at each other, ignore the fact that the house is on fire. And a silent assassin goes unmentioned.

'A hungry man is an angry man," goes the old adage. And for months Haitians have compared their hunger to "eating Clorox [bleach]" because of the burning of their stomachs. Now riots have broken out and five people have died in a week of protests. A U.N. peacekeeper has been shot and killed. The Haitian Senate voted to fire the prime minister. With angry protesters demanding that the President Rene Preval step down, he announced a 15 percent decrease in the price of rice.