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The Euro Legacy: In Greece, Children Pick Through Trash Cans For Food
"We have reached a point where children are coming to school hungry," as with an estimated 10% of Greek elementary and middle school students suffering from 'food insecurity', the troubled nation has fallen to the level of some African countries. As the NY Times reports, unlike the US, Greek schools do not offer subsidized cafeteria lunches. Exacerbated by the austerity measures including cuts in subsidies for larger families, the cost has become insurmountable for many. With 26% of Greek households on an 'economically weak diet', children are starting to steal for food and picking through trash cans as they proclaim, "our dreams are crushed." What is frightening is the speed at which it is happening, "a year ago it wasn't like this," as one family talks of the 'cabbage-based diet' which it supplements by foraging for snails in nearby fields. Programs are being started to help from wealthier Greeks, but as one parent said, "unless the EU acts, we're done for."
As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.
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“Not in my wildest dreams would I expect to see the situation we are in,” Mr. Nikas said. “We have reached a point where children in Greece are coming to school hungry. Today, families have difficulties not only of employment, but of survival.”
...
Last year, an estimated 10 percent of Greek elementary and middle school students suffered from what public health professionals call “food insecurity,” ... “When it comes to food insecurity, Greece has now fallen to the level of some African countries,” she said.
Unlike those in the United States, Greek schools do not offer subsidized cafeteria lunches. Students bring their own food or buy items from a canteen. The cost has become insurmountable for some families with little or no income. ...
... classmates are frequently hungry, she said, and one boy recently fainted. Some children were starting to steal for food, she added. While she does not excuse it, she understands their plight. “Those who are well fed will never understand those who are not,” she said.
“Our dreams are crushed,” added Evangelia, whose parents are unemployed but who is not in the same dire situation as her peers. She paused, then continued in a low voice. “They say that when you drown, your life flashes before your eyes. My sense is that in Greece, we are drowning on dry land.”
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This year the number of malnutrition cases jumped. “A year ago, it wasn’t like this,” Ms. Perri, said, fighting back tears. “What’s frightening is the speed at which it is happening.”
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Mr. Petrakis said he felt emasculated after repeatedly failing to find new work. When food for the family ran low, he stopped eating almost entirely, and rapidly lost weight.
“When I was working last summer, I even threw away excess bread,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Now, I sit here with a war running through my head, trying to figure out how we will live.”
When the hunger comes, Ms. Petrakis has a solution. “It’s simple,” she said. “You get hungry, you get dizzy and you sleep it off.”
A 2012 Unicef report showed that among the poorest Greek households with children, more than 26 percent had an “economically weak diet.” The phenomenon has hit immigrants hardest but is spreading quickly among Greeks in urban areas where one or both parents are effectively permanently unemployed.
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He has not found work for three years. Now, he said, his family is living on what he called a “cabbage-based diet,” which it supplements by foraging for snails in nearby fields. “I know you can’t cover nutritional basics with cabbage,” he said bitterly. “But there’s no alternative.”
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“I’m not saying we should just wait for others to help us,” he said. “But unless the European Union acts like this school, where families help other families because we’re one big family, we’re done for.”
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It's not normal to equate "poetry" to our rants here. Thank you for using soothing language to describe the actions of hate filled murderous scum of the earth.
Joey Jo-Jo, is that you?
Italy is # 3 in CB gold .... follow me .... # 2 Germany .... their gold is safe with us .... #1 America .... and we got no gold .... therefore .... Italy is # 1 in CB gold hoard ?
This is unbalanced reporting. There's no discussion about how much banksters have suffered from inflation on docking fees, yacht repairs, repainting the paint on the bottom of the boats and so forth. These boats are essential for moving the gold around. It's not safe to keep the gold at home, what with the maid snooping and so forth. Plus, after that damn hotel maid bitched about a slight request for some sex in the hotel room, it's been hard to get a bit of strange nookie on the side too. It's hard to know who to trust. These maids are supposed to be included in the tab as a gratuity. How's a bankster supposed to get by in today's economy?
Really, I'm an idiot. Please explain this for me. Why don't these poor people assemble in front of a rich person's gated home, break down the gates, enter, and eat the person's food?
i know, right?
C'mon, man. Look at all those active verbs you're using. Sounds like "work".
First I gotta "assemble" somewhere, then I gotta "break" down the gates, then we have to "enter" somehow. All before we ever get to "eat" something.
It's way too labor-intensive, man.
Let them eat strawberries.
Baraka - Dead Can Dance - The Host of Seraphim
There are many reasons that Greece and other EU countries are in dire financial conditions. Some of the reasons are Greek made and some are EU made. For me however, the #1 issue is EU solidarity and promises made as to what the EU was to be and what it has turned into.
Many on this thread blame the Greeks. You might as well also blame Portugal, Spain, Cyprus and others. They all drank the LIE that is the EU. Who is responsibl?. Ask the former German Chancellor, G. Schroeder and his dictatorial ways in lying to his own people and others in EU so that the Union would pass. EU solidarity is the big LIE and crime perpetrated on Greece and others.
Without a monetary union the EU does not work. Hold a referendum on monetary union throught the EU. If it passes implement it. If it fails, desolve the EU and let each country make its own way in the world, without starvation to its children. Come on Germany - What are you afraid of?
No pity for a country of universal tax dogers, and work slackers. Where is your 14 months salary for 7 months work - for the government no less. You sucked the big tit and now it is dry. Go tear down the doors of your politicians housing and eat - last I saw your politicians are fat like cows. Stop trying to get sympathy for your children - the ydeserve better - man up and go destroy your crooked politicians and the banksters that robbed you and lied to you - while you tried to be like them. No pity.
Is your rhetoric based on the "opinions" of the Internet, or have you ever worked there (or even visited the place??)
ALL the Greeks I know, and work with, are VERY hard workers (unlike my Australian colleagues!), and having visited the Country on many occasions, I didn't notice any lesser degree of work ethic. Some DO have a mid-day siesta (saves on costly A/C), but they compensate by opening well into the evening, so the net hours worked are pretty high.
"Why do they not riot?" - might be worth checking where all the German Military income is coming from - the Greek Military was quite the big spender, and continued to buy German hardware even during the current crises. Pitchforks are not much use against 21st Century weaponry.
It is not only in Greece. It is just missing the right social-movement-energy conservation leftwing-friendly label. Then it would be the evolution in society.
http://my.news.yahoo.com/german-bin-divers-connected-wage-war-food-waste-140644910.html
First they came for the African kids and I did nothing. Now they come for the Greek kids and I am doing nothing. Not my problem.
Instead of the standard Zerohedge blame-the-victim response, lets put this whole Euro catastrophe in perspective, courtesy of a recent blog posting:
Start with Europe as it was in the late 1990s. It was a continent with many problems, but nothing resembling a crisis, and not much sign of being on an unsustainable path. Then came the euro.
The first effect of the euro was an outbreak of europhoria: suddenly, investors believed that all European debt was equally safe. Interest rates dropped all around the European periphery, setting off huge flows of capital to Spain and other economies; these capital flows fed huge housing bubbles in many places, and in general created booms in the countries receiving the inflows.
The booms, in turn, caused differential inflation: costs and prices rose much more in the periphery than in the core. Peripheral economies became increasingly uncompetitive, which wasn’t a problem as long as the inflow-fueled bubbles lasted, but would become a problem once the capital inflows stopped.
And stop they did. The result was serious slumps in the periphery, which lost a lot of internal demand but remained weak on the external side thanks to the loss of competitiveness.
This exposed the deep problem with the single currency: there is no easy way to adjust when you find your costs out of line. At best, peripheral economies found themselves facing a prolonged period of high unemployment while they achieved a slow, grinding, “internal devaluation”.
The problem was greatly exacerbated, however, when the combination of slumping revenues and the prospect of protracted economic weakness led to large budget deficits and concerns about solvency, even in countries like Spain that entered the crisis with budget surpluses and low debt. There was panic in the bond market — and as a condition for aid, the European core demanded harsh austerity programs.
Austerity, in turn, led to much deeper slumps in the periphery — and because peripheral austerity was not offset by expansion in the core, the result was in fact a slump for the European economy as a whole. One consequence has been that austerity is failing even on its own terms: key measures like debt/GDP ratios have gotten worse, not better.
At a couple of points, this ugly scene has threatened to create an immediate European meltdown, with political unrest causing a loss of financial confidence causing a run on sovereign debt causing a run on the banks, and so on into a vicious circle. So far, however, the ECB has managed to contain the threat of meltdown by intervening, indirectly or directly, to support sovereign debt. But while financial panic has been contained, the underling macroeconomics just keep getting worse.
What could Europe be doing differently? From early on in the crisis, critics like me urged a three-part response. First, ECB intervention to stabilize borrowing costs. Second, aggressive monetary and fiscal expansion in the core, to ease the process of internal adjustment. Third, a softening of austerity demands on the periphery — not zero austerity, but less, so that the human costs would be less. We eventually got part 1, more or less — but nothing on parts 2 and 3.
And European officials remain in deep denial about the fundamentals of the situation. They continue to define the problem as one of fiscal profligacy, which is only part of the story even for Greece, and none of the story elsewhere. They keep declaring success for austerity and internal devaluation, using any excuse at hand: a spurious surge in measured Irish productivity becomes evidence that internal devaluation is working, the decline in bond yields following ECB intervention is proclaimed as a vindication of austerity.
So that’s where we are. And it’s hard to envisage a happy ending.
"Even though Greeks are eating from the garbage bins, the Greek National Council for Radio and Television prohibited TV from showing pictures of poverty."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/22/jail-journalistic-beliefs-greece
When exactly are greek people going to say enough and leave the euro? Until they do that and stand on their own two feet again there are going to be more stories like this. Did all of the people with any sense or drive leave Europe over the past decades?
When exactly are greek people going to say enough and leave the euro? Until they do that and stand on their own two feet again there are going to be more stories like this. Did all of the people with any sense or drive leave Europe over the past decades?
Remember the Kulaks!!
Well... the west has exploited Africa for years causing hunger.
Now we are about to understand how that feels ourselves
What the fucks wrong with people?! Greece is surrounded by sea. Buy a tent, head to the coast, and start fucking fishing for Christi sake! Is it better to let your kids eat rubbish, cabbage and snails?!?''
What the fucks wrong with people?! Greece is surrounded by sea. Buy a tent, head to the coast, and start fucking fishing for Christi sake! Is it better to let your kids eat rubbish, cabbage and snails?!?''
Maybe some of these Greeks are too stupid to live. Maybe what we're seeing is the result of an ending nanny state. Here in china, even the stupidest peasant can obtain food for fucks sake!
This same thing needs to happen in USA. Too many useless eaters feeding off the govt teet. I know you're all gonna junk me, but why not be honest with yourselves? Did most of the poor have a hand in their own demise? Did they live beyond their means? Did they believe life was anything but difficult, and they needed to struggle? Fuck them. It's time for a little reality. Who says there shouldn't be a massive peasant population in western countries? It's always been that way, but hidden the last 65 years. Haven't you seem the western peasants? They're the ones watching reality tv and eating Cheetos.
I know europeans are delusional at the best of times, but their pretend countries, most of which didn't exist 100 or 200 years ago, have always been defeat-ready shitholes.
It seems people forget that the whole reason the EU was set up was to steal from prosperous countries to prop up the peso dictatorships and to try and keep down the anglosphere.
Water will always find the lowest point, and surrender monkeys can't keep up the pretence that they're first world countries indefinitely.
Third world craphole is the default setting east of Calais. Let's keep it real.
“Programs are being started to help from wealthier Greeks, but as one parent said, "unless the EU acts, we're done for." ".
When you look at this sad Greek tragedy and it is sad, this one part the end of this line hurts the most. Apparently despite everything that has happened there is still a large group who remain faithful in the EU and what it can do for them. Don’t you just want to shake them and tell them government is not the solution it is the fucking problem. You, your future and worse that of your children has been destroyed by the fucking EU and yet you expect it to do more for you!!!! Shit we are so utterly fucked here in Europe.
I turn my back and wipe the tears from my cheeks,
Poor sheep continue to sleep.
If anybody is still reading this entry, and feeling that Greeks are
weak fornot revolting, you read the story below by Varoufakis.
Greeks know this stuff but it will open your eyes.
This will give you a sense for how banks, media and government
work together in Greeceto steal every penny that comes from Europe,
making things even worse than the Troika could alone, and how willing
they are to kill people.
Anybody raring for a fight?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/yanis-varoufakis-greek-banksters-...