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Desperate Greeks Resort To Scavenging Through Garbage To Find Food
Earlier today we documented the "heartbreaking" plight of Greece's retirees who have been reduced to lining up in front of Greek banks hoping for a chance to collect a portion of their pensions. Some went away empty handed (there were reports that only those whose last names began with "A" through "K" were paid on Wednesday) and those who did manage to leave with cash were only allowed to access a third of their usual payouts.
This comes as Greeks may (and we emphasize "may", because nothing is certain and the Greek government has bent over backwards to claim that deposits are "safe") face a Cyprus-like depositor bail-in in the weeks ahead.
But as bad as all of the above is, it gets still worse, because as The Telegraph reports, the beleaguered Greek populace has been reduced to collecting scrap metal and scavenging for food.
Here's more:
Piled high with rubbish congealing in the summer heat, municipal dustbin R21 on Athens' Sofokleous Street does not look or smell like a treasure trove.
But for Greece's growing army of dustbin scavengers, its deposits of rubbish from nearby stores and grocery shops make it a regular point of call.
"Sometimes I'll find scrap metal that I can sell, although if I see something that looks reasonably safe to eat, I'll take it," said Nikos Polonos, 55, as he sifted through R21's contents on Tuesday morning. "Other times you might find paper, cans, and bottles that you can get money for if you take them back to the shops for recycling."
One reason for R21's popularity is because it is just down the road from a church soup kitchen, where the drug-addicted, the poor and homeless queue up for meals three times daily.
Mr Polonos, a quietly spoken man of 55, is typical of the new class of respectably destitute. He lost his job as a construction worker three years ago, when Greece's building boom dried up, and in the current climate, cannot see himself finding paid work in the foreseeable future.
Yet he dresses as smartly as he can in second-hand trousers and shirt, and does not see himself as any kind of vagrant.
"I don't want to ever look like him," he said, gesturing to a tousle-haired drug addict slumped in a doorway near the soup kitchen. "I never believed I would end up like this, but as long as Greece is in this terrible situation, my construction skills are not in demand. A lot of my friends are doing what I do now, and some people I know are even worse off. They have turned to drugs and have no hope at all."
Perhaps the most tragic thing about the above is that, as noted in the video, this is hardly a recent development in Greece.
High unemployment has plagued the country for years and has indeed become endemic, relegating many Greeks to a life of perpetual and severe economic hardship. One can only hope that whatever the outcome of this weekend's referendum turns out to be, both Athens and Brussels will recognize the need to arrest what has become an outright humanitarian crisis.
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Stock up on Dogfood...Socialism Sucks....and Lead and other metals.
RIPS
and toilet paper
They are going to punish Greece on a global platform of Tee Vee.
My Advice Greece...Go the route of Iceland!!
THis is only one man doing this and hes probably picked clean 4 or 5 square blocks....imagine if that was 100 in 4 or 5 sq blocks.
Fuck the moneychangers!
RIPS
Desperate Greeks Resort To Scavenging Through Garbage To Find Food
Americans dining at McDonalds or Taco Bell are suffering the same fate...
[PS: Isn't it great to know that things are so much better in the USA?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzspsovNvII ]
That's fucking pathetic. You couldn't find an extra 10 euros a month since this crisis started a few fucking YEARS ago to build up a month or two of canned soups, etc for you and your family? No excuse for that. At all. No sympathy.
No, most Americans aren't any better, either. People kill me, how utterly unprepared for the most predictable 'emergency' in recent memory the average person is.
Nothing different than what you would see in BIG American cities.
Oh I'm well aware of that. I'll say the same thing WHEN, not if, it happens here. I guess my main line of thought is that I don't think it will be as blatantly obvious, long term, when it happens in the US. This has been brewing for years. And while our financial problems may be glaringly obvious to those of us on here, they aren't constantly talked about like over there.
Brain dead sheep who blindly believe in govt omnipotence are the same the world over, and our people here are probably the worst of all. It won't be pretty, and I'll say the same thing about the dumb ass Americans too.
Why doesn't he just catch a bus to Germany and seek work at a construction site there??
Free movement of people inside the EU.
It's like being a stockbroker in Alberqurque and complaining that you can't find work at any local investment banks.
The Greeks are fuckin disappointing me....acting like a bunch of pussies....stop scavenging food in garbage bins for Christ's sake....go find the most affluent neighborhood in Athens where the rich lives and start a riot there...rob some rich dude, beat up some bankers...and the Greeks will win my respect back...300 my ass...I would bet 300 Persians can wipe out the entire Greek army in this day and age.
Yeah, that will solve their problems, more class warfare bullshit. They based an election on that, how's it working out for them?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RBqjZ0KZCa0
I'm expecting this x a couple million in the US.
Enjoy. Try not to smash your computer in rage....
That's funny...
"somebody needs to pay for my 15 kids, somebody needs to be accountable and somebody needs to pay"
A woman so deeply stupid, she doesn't know she exists.
Detroit on the Adriatic
Carl
be happy you have the insight and smarts to understand what is happening.
Most people think inflation is no more predictable than morning fog.
+1
Actually, the translation is innacurate. He said three months, not three years.
Socialism, its whats for dinner.
Socialism, its whats for dinner.
-------------------------------------
Socialism, Shit sandwich without the bread.
" Yes we can! "
Nahhh, LET THEM EAT FIAT...
dont matter if its socialism or capitalism, the fiat is the poison.
A system which uses fiat is not capitalist. Fiat is a high time preference currency while sound money is a low time preference store of a value. Capitalism requires money which stores value.
Socialism works great until you are eating other people's garbage.
"and toilet paper"
Fuck you. When I was a kid in the USA we collected glass soda bottles off the streets for the 5 cent deposit from the grocery stores to pay for gas. A dollar and 50 cents of gas was good for a whole "night out". Oh by the way, there was no public transit available back then, and there still isn't.
Dont worry it could never happen here....
https://youtu.be/kyhCOPh48ew
We are SO fucked!
G Edward on How to Brainwash A Nation. 10 minutes well spent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk
It was a plan. Is it working.
RIPS
I wanna hear what Caitlyn has to say about that!
FIRE! FIRE! Oh please, I grew up in USA and have seen people collecting food from garbage bins my entire life. The first time I saw it happen I was 5 years old in Seattle and I demanded that my dad stop the car and "give the man a dollar".
I saw the same thing in Naperville, USA: I was parked in a car (with a young lady) adjacent to the back-side of a pizza-shop downtown late at night when we saw people converge on the dumpster behind the shop after it closed and fish-out boxes of unsold/undelivered pizza and start chowing like it was manna from Heaven.
I told my father what I saw (minus the circumstance) and he insisted that I was lying: you see, he needed to believe that wasn't true.
Many in USA though are just like him. They think anyone can qualify for food stamps and are livin' large-- which is partially-true: IF one qualifies for food stamps, it might afford them to eat a lot better than they are used to... if one qualifies, which really isn't easy unless you're a female with no assets and a few kids.
People want to believe...
But those of us who have been there, or those of us who have seen with our own eyes and didn't turn-away, those who have seen grown-men crying because they couldn't find work to support their families...
...The USA might as well be fucking Somalia. Fuck the USA.
...meanwhile, on a massive yacht in the Mediterranean, a banker is snorting blow off of a supermodel's tits...
And mind you, quite safe from the STREET ACTION...
"...meanwhile, on a massive yacht in the Mediterranean, a banker is snorting blow off of a supermodel's tits..."
Meanwhile in Evian, France a small local store has become a Greek real estate office. Oui. Oh oui.
Relying on the Telegraph for an unbiased view of the situation in " rebellious to the bankers " Greece? Really?
Athens, in terms of poverty and desperation, right now is no better or worse than any metropolitan area in the U.S.. And, given time, it may look positively shiny by comparison.
Thank you pot_and_kettle.
Naked Capitalism site keeps quoting The Daily Torygraph as if it meant anything, no, as if Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has his finger on the pulse and his ear hidden in a painting on the wall in Berlin/Frankfurt. Shame on you Yves Smith and your Lambert Strether. I'd advise you to stick to the Telegraph cryptic crossword from now on but I know you couldn't ever finish one anyway...
And furthermore, do you have any idea of the scale of homelessness and garbage can diners in Greater London??!!
No different than what the Homeless do in Lakeside, CA, USA.
That is already happening here, folks.
Exactly right...Lakeside and a million other place.
It's called recycling - the new normal.
Lakeside..thats 10 minutes from me. Coastal its worse.
RIPS
Git yer pitchforks and go banker huntin'!
Find the nearest branch of Goldman; bring a hatchet (and a barbeque). If you are going to eat filth, you may as well eat the best of filth.
That would send some strong message if the Greeks ass-raped a Goldmanite then BBQ'd him in the square. ISIS be like Dayum!
Goldman doesn't have "nearest branches". Now you know why.
Quick, have the Globalist Banksters take up a humanitarian collection -- like they did many times before -- lest as many as 6,000,000 Greeks starve and die.
It's not the bankers, it's the POLITITANS!!
One can feel individually for the Greeks, but as a society, it is getting exactly what the 'collective' bargained for and funny thing, the Greeks are bleating with such civility. Had they a bit more human qualities, they drag out all their pols/bureaucrats into the streets, and ...
Oh wait! a majority of their so called economy is owned by the People (The State). Eff them and their larcenous hearts.
The take away from all this is the elites (Bilderberger, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission anyone), complicit politicians, and the bankster class are causing this to happen to the proletariat.
When the time comes, ACT ACCORDINGLY toward the correct parties.
Hey I did that when working my way through college. It was really incredible what was thrown out. I take pride in my dumpster scrounging days. Now they lock the good supermarket dumpsters. Otherwise I'd still be doing it.
A hand held drill would get you back in the game.
In tolerant, accepting-of-anything </sarc> San Francisco, people freak out when poor folks try to collect the recycling before the formal pickup. You know, 'cuz you don't want the sanctioned monopoly to have any competition.
same in NYC - I believe you can be fined for scavenging.
If they collect cans with a rainbow flag around them, it's ok. Otherwise, get out of here breeder!
Same in Pittsburgh-- it's open-war on the poor here.
Pittsburgh drove most of the producers out in the 1980s with their 1% tax on wages just for the privilege to work there. Most people moved to Butler, Westmoreland, Beaver, Washington or Armstrong counties to also take advantage of lower real estate taxes than Agony County. Run by Democrats for quite some time and was on the verge of being Detroit. But making another comeback. Fracking has helped, but war on coal as well as the EPA have not.
People are doing that all over Detroit and Washington DC right now, and to a lesser extent in most major american cities.
Nobody has given a single fuck for years.
Endless money for Kiev to kill its own people, and for Israel to kill the people it has been dispossessing for over 100 years...
but nothing for American cities, or job retraining, or anything like that.
Agree - it is happening now in several towns and cities in America today (my former home included).
And there are still reports of copper thefts, even with copper prices down.
Scrap ain't worth shit now, as China ain't buying.
You must have forgot the Trillion dollars Obama stimulus project that was supposed to provide shovel ready jobs. Most of it went to Obama's Union friends to keep them working. Later even Obama said those shovel ready jobs weren't so shovel ready. Too many Americans not wanting to work as long as they can get their handouts. Now we hear hillary touting her job training plan. More BS from the liberal Bullshitters. They just want to keep taxing those of us who still work and keep giving it to those who don't. Its all about getting their vote. It worked for Obama with almost 50 Million on food stamps. Do you really think they would vote Republican if they feared they would lose their goodies?
Saw that in Austin TX at the SXSW festival a few years ago. Kids (late 20's) wanted to go and I suspect they will never go back again. I know I won't.
That was quick
Jade program, go fuck yourself.
This is not news, at least in 0bama's Amerika. I see sturdy men dumpster diving for deposit cans and bottles all the time, sometimes out my window. Last year I saw two guys slugging it out because they were in 'each other's dumpster.' I thought about calling the badge-thugs but I figured they would have shot one or both of them.
Remember NYC dumpster diving after Sandy?
"This is not news, at least in 0bama's Amerika"
I've got news for you Big Corked Boots, I've seen it throughout: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, .... only lately has it become a 'punishable offence' practically everywhere.
See the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG-HaNdFFVQ
Thank-you for the perspective-- I only caught up to it in the Reagan-years (but have seen it ever since).
If the cops shot 1 of them, the other could've collected the bullets. Precious metals for free!
We don't stoop so low in merika! Much more profitable to make a "I'm homeless" sign and stand on street corners begging for money from commuters. Much more "shock" marketing effect.
Goldman Sacks diet
How much Greek debt is on GS books?
Why don't you check their filings and let us know.
GS made billions on getting them into the EU.
I expect GS to make billions on their exit.
Wouldn't be GS if it didn't.
good. it'll hasten then reclamation.
Greece should go with Russia and their new development bank should help Greece. No handouts but get Greek agriculture and other industries going and trading with Russia/EurAsia.
Stop being a Goldman Sachs slave.
Greece has to be free of the EU first. Russia does not want to get entangled with the EU through yet another basket-case state like Ukraine. Russia has counter-sanctions in place against EU countries and cannot make deals with Greece that interfere with that unless Greece has absolutely left the EU.
So in effect, Greeks have to jump off of the EU cliff and be completely committed to hitting the bottom before Russia can act to catch them. Hence the numerous negotiations between Putin and Tsipras in recent weeks.
Greece, a nation of islands. Yet this guy can't figure out how to catch a fish?
Another stellar example as to why we as a species are fucked.
What fish? You need a trawler and have to be miles offshore to catch anything.
There's always sea trout, flounder and blues, etc that can be caught by surf fishing.
Then there's crabs, clams and mussels by shore foraging and digging.
No need to dumpster dive if one knows where and how to obtain fresh food.
In the PU EU, U can bet he'd need all sorts of licenses or permits to catch fish. He'd probably be hit with fines!
i was at a very high end hotel in dc and noticed some room service guys eating guests leftovers. one guy told me they dont get paid much and eating this way saves money and time, and they even take some home for their families.
I can believe that. There are also dumpster divers in NYC and elsewhere who make documentaries about all the good food restaurants and stores throw away - stuff like bread and eggs still in packages but a day past the "sell-by" date.
Would you feel better if the respective gov'ts directly taxed their citizens for all the GimmieDats? I would, but isn't that the point of debt financing, to shield the politicians and their bureaucratic enforcers from direct responsibility? BTW, as I'm so sure most of you constant drum beaters about the Banksters are aware, most of the owed debt isn't to a bank, but to gov'ts? ?Que?
Long two-day old gyros.
I have seen peolple doing that in every country I have visited... Even more, I'd say that the more "developed" a country is, the more you'll see it (as it is more likely to find something valuable...)
It's been like this for years, this has nothing to do with the current government
Pretty much since 1948.
Anyone here who doesn't either receive a transfer payment and/or have debt payments? I'd be surprised if 5 people out of 100 could make that claim.
Here? Most of us know better.
Here? In Merika?
Backup information that it would be good to know, I do NOT know. How long does it take to get to serious trouble from zero intake of the following?
AIR
WATER
FOOD
Minutes
Days
Weeks
The EU bankster bullies putting the squeeze on the poor so they will vote YES, YES, anything you say PLEASE stop the pain
The Greek People have supported this socialistic governace from day one (Post WWII), and their best opportunity remaining is to sell their children into sex slavery, that is if anyone really wants a white sex slave anymore. Well maybe the Sheikdoms will 'have them.' They aren't victims, anymore than the Germans or the French, English, or Americans.
Can someone please indicate which most developed nation that doesn't front load economic activity via debt financing? I'd love for someone to claim Russia and China. Neither of those two are supposedly controlled by GoldmanSacs ZioBanksters, Inc.
Lets face it, we are all just farm animals and the banksters are the farmers who decide what, when, and where we eat.
And don't be a smart animal and start asking questions or you may just end up on the farmers dinner table.
Greece is fine.
Slavery is freedom.
Pay your taxes and get back to work.
Protesting UK based Greek restaurant owners, drawing ranks to form a Hoplite Phalanx and bolstered by Greek taxidriver irregulars, took command of a number of EasyJet passenger aircraft on Wednesday. British Police are believed to be circling overhead in the Met's new Eurofighter jets, ready to calm and subdue the roving warband should they attempt to make good on their threat to fly to Brussels and besiege the ECB.
The episode comes as another embarrasment for the UK's PM David Whatshisface, following strong remarks he made in the House of Conmen last week on the need to stamp out extremism in restaurants throughout the UK, suggesting many were "filthy dens of pro far left right wing thought, that have no place in our fine Empire".
The hunt is now on to root out sleeper cells within the UK's food industry, new 'stop and finger' laws due to come into effect in within the next 30 days and will be of considerable help in the ongoing seach for the extremist with the tightest anus.
In many cities you have one hour sitting limit on benches, homeless are arrested fined hundreds of dollars, jailed up to 30 days and at the end given ticket to another city and 50 bucks, sometimes like in LA they are expelled to another state with promises of another $200 upon arrival.
Many of homeless have friends or families in the area but they are ashamed to ask for help or are in some kind conflict with them.
Most of shelters are just jails not allowing any individuality, privacy or dignity, mostly avoided because of theft, addictions, separation from love ones or dogs in the shelters.
Tons of food are thrown away including from fancy restaurants, grocery stores, supermarkets. It is appalling that this food is prohibited from finding its way to people in need including homeless for reasons of profit and fear of food demand collapsing even more.
95% of homeless people are first of all victims of social alienation leading sometimes to additions, not as often as you may think.
There are doctors, professors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, actors, writers, poets, businessman, MBAs and construction workers, students, gays, lesbians, former priests, soldiers, police officers etc., among homeless a cross section of society, all one way or another alienated from their communities, people they trusted or loved and often suffering from physical and/or mental instability or illness.
These are our brothers and sisters, mother and fathers our children who as a result of tragic but often avoidable circumstances have bee alienated from our families and/or their peers.
These homeless people are material representation of huge stain on our basic human morality that we all are trying to ignore, believing in our moral judgment and that it would not ever happen to us since we are good but they must have been somehow immoral, irresponsible and hence deserve to suffer. What’s ironic that most of homeless people believed the same before they were forced to confront brutality of recalcitrant social structures, which resulted in collapse of their lives and finally desolation, hunger and homelessness.
But they are tens of millions of seemingly well to do and respected people alienated from their families and communities, hiding stress and moral outrage behind addictions or phobias but not yet showing symptoms of financial decline or homelessness but as we speak are on the way, to poorhouse, jail, mental institution or strait to the street all willing or unwilling victims of the system of power,symbols of punishment and warning to all of us what price we must pay for holding on to independence from the social system and individual moral values.
An interesting take on systemic social alienation and mental illness I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/loss-of-beautiful-min...
I heard the only other food they could afford was McDonalds.....they opted for the dumpster.