Greeks don’t want austerity, but the future is bleak and unknown.
As of Friday, grocery shelves were being stripped bare of staple cooking goods, and pharmacies ran out of crucial medicines like thyroxine (thyroid treatment). More than half of those items are imported, but with banking plugs, companies are unable to pay suppliers. Things are frozen; stopped, and tens of thousands of tourists had allegedly cancelled bookings this past weekend.
The cities are feeling the effects of economic turmoil, more than their rural counterparts. This could be in part because of self-sufficient tactics like gathering animals and starting gardens as soon as the economic tides started churning…
The Associated Press reports that Greek villagers have a secret weapon against austerity and crash – their gardens. Something that is discouraged and often simultaneously banned across U.S. cities. Will it save them – or is it a reassuring buffer?
In Karitaina, one such rural village, it costs almost as much for taxi fare into the city as the bank withdraw limit (as of last week). Retirees have had their pensions devoured. However, with some self-sufficient methods, villagers think they can make it for now.
One man has 10 goats, some hens and a vegetable patch. He expects this will help them survive 2-3 months as he is feeding extended family too. It is now common for whole families to live off a retiree’s pension since so many adults have not been able to find work. The Greek villagers are generous with friends as well.
Associated Press reports:
Rural Greek communities have age-old survival tactics that allow them to weather storms such as World War II deprivation and natural disasters. They will need to draw on them deeply, as Greece’s current problems are unlikely to go away soon — whatever the outcome of the referendum Sunday on whether to accept the latest bailout proposals, which call for more austerity cuts to already razor-thin public services.
One forever debt-ridden man, whose business failed, has turned to barter, although it only offers some relief. He would still vote “‘200 times no’ against the proposed bailout deal, which would impose still more austerity measures on a country that has endured five years of dire cutbacks. He admires Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras for defying European leaders and the International Monetary Fund by urging citizens to reject the deal, a course that could cause Greece to tumble out of the eurozone.”
He says:
In the village it’s easier to live – You can get products from neighbors and give them some. In Athens you are strangers. But the crisis has affected the village very much. We are trying but there is no money here. I lived very well and now I have nothing.
One 85-year-old man remains at home since the taxi fare into Megalopoli would eat so much of the funds – just 10 minutes away. Taxi drivers have even cut fare in half!
I’m living on the pension from last month – I’ll try to go next week. Of course I’m upset. The government has swindled our pension funds.
Going to the bank every day for 60 euros when taxi fare is 40, has worn people down. According to the AP, anxiety fills the air and there are divisions between friends whether to remain in the Eurozone or not.
The U.S. not only faces its own food and speculation scandals, farming issues, food safety scares and more – but at least 50 million Americans live in food insecure homes. During what I would call a crisis, homelessness and feeding the homeless have been ridiculously banned or require expensive permits as jobs continue to evaporate and food banks dry up. Recently, Vermont milk producers were caught dumping obscene amounts of milk in order to drive prices back up, but Americans are struggling to keep up with rising prices and the insidious “grocery shrink ray gun.” Agenda 21 tactics continue to clip rural resources and drive people deeper into mega-cities.
For a long time, Russia survived mostly on its village Dacha gardens. In recent years, they got further away from such hearty home food production until … the West decided to try and punish them with sanctions. As writer and geopolitical analyst, Brandon Turbeville, has pointed out, this only made them pull from their country’s resources much more vigorously and start more independent production. They used the sickening U.S. food supply as a reason the E.U. should side with them over America.
What will you do to insulate against the possible domino cascade from the unsettled “Grexit” situation?
Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.
Recent posts by Heather Callaghan:
The good little GreekSocialist/Marxist/Sheeple will soon be complaining to their “government” that those without the “gardens” who are “suffering” need relief and confiscation of the crops grown to ease THEIR “burdens”. This is how “social justice” works. The Greeks did this to themselves by electing fools who truly believe they are “owed” something for nothing.
The Greeks didn’t do this to themselves just as we haven’t done this to ourselves in the U.S.. Psychopaths take advantage of the “weakness” of normal people; compassion, empathy, generosity, charity, trusting natures, etc. They have a massive advantage because they will rape, steal, and murder to get to the top of the heap. Evil men and women always have the advantage over people with morals and ethics.
Yes they did. Every single time they voted in a liberal politician the effect is the same; they shot themselves in the foot. Liberals sell the BIG LIE that going deeper and deeper and deeper into debt can lead to UTOPIA! Wealth is never created through debt, it is only watered down because debt leads to inflation of the money supply and the devaluation of the currency. The Greeks DID do this to themselves by accepting what appeared to be easy money from an apparently generous government. Just as people are doing in the USA where many people now believe they are “owed” something for nothing. You then appear to blame the banker. The evil is in the people, who know there is no such thing as a free lunch, but take the money anyway. The people themselves, with a lust for more and more free money, have given up their souls and ruin is what they shall inherit. It is what they deserve.
So, you can verify that the elections are all honest, and there is no rigging? If you are that omniscient, then you ought to know what a liberalis. a true liberal believes in no class distinctions. No politician or voter is a true liberal, as the election process creates the classes of rulers and subjects. Liberalism has nothing to do with debt. Turn off the television and maybe you’ll be able to think for yourself. Right now, it seems like you just parrot the lunatic ‘right wing’. You’re definitely not a conservative. A true conservative tends to their own needs without interfering in the affairs of others. No politician orvoter is a true conservative, as elections are all about interfering in the affairs of others, and have nothing to do with tending to your own needs. Also, you seem to know very little about economics, as debt does not lead to inflation. The bankers are responsible for the mess. If you think that the politicians run the country, you don’t understand politics, either. If you can’t see that Bush and Obama are both nothing more than puppets, then you are as much of the problem that you are blaming on the person who posted the comment you replied to. As for your parroting of the ‘no such thing as a free lunch’ idiocy, what do you think they did before money? Skip lunch? Everything was free before government started to claim the divine right to rule and demand tribute from the populace. The evil is from fools like you who think they know so much, when they know next to nothing. You were schooled. you were not educated. They talked you into selling your soul to the banksters you worship so blindly for a political promise. Wake up. You were fooled. As Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they’ve been fooled.” You are a prime example.
Like voting actually has any effect on society. The rich men who pull the strings make damn sure their men, regardless of party affiliations, will get into office. The people who do vote are suckers, believing in the false left/right paradigm. It isn’t just liberals, that;s what you’re failing to understand. Mostly Republicans voted for the removal of the Confederate flag in North Carolina. It’s a shell game, a political ruse. Both parties are totally owned by the puppet masters.
Easy money? Do you really think welfare is what is killing this country? If you do then you’re a fool. We spend trillions on wars and propping up illegal immigrants above our own people. Our so-called “elected” officials are selling our resources right out from underneath us. Do you still believe they represent our interests? Congress gave away their power to regulate our money to private International bankers. Is that the people’s fault too? Or rather, is it the fault of our traitorous politicians or the cowards in our military?
Sorry buddy but most people take the money because the economy and production base in America has been destroyed, and if they didn’t take the money their children would be living on the street. I guarantee that you’d take the money if your family was threatened with living on the street? If you say you wouldn’t take the money then I’d assume you were a liar.
Again, welfare isn’t the problem. The problem is no jobs because they’ve all gone over seas and the problem is wars for profit. The money we spent on these bullshit wars could have been used to by every single homeless family a home and get them set up and trained to work at a good job for a good wage.
I hope that the Greeks will not back down and do what Iceland did. That will start a domino effect especially in the Euro Zone and hopefully change can come to the US.
So I wonder how many are still glued to the tube watching Bruce Kardashians latest exploits? When Puerto Rico drops, It’l be to late.
The Greek people will survive….wine…garden vegetables…mousaka…fish….tomatoes..goat cheese….music and dance..the ocean and sun, what a beautiful culture…trade will continue once the paradigm is changed….euros will be shit…because the big banks and war mongerers destroyed the euro as a means of exchange….go back to the drachma…..the greedy banking bastards destroyed the Euro………peace!
Change will come..you can bet on it!!
Reinventing Collapse by Dmitry Orlov compares the Soviet experience and American prospects. Russians survived the fall of the Soviet Union in large part due to their Dacha gardens. No one starved. Most people lived in apartments owned by the government, so there were no foreclosures by banks or seizures for non-payment of property taxes. No one went homeless. With little and worthless money, people lived by barter. Vodka was a very popular barter item. Orlov was born in St Petersberg and emigrated to the US in the 1970s. After a visit to Russia in 1996, he was sure the US empire would go the way of the USSR, he just couldn’t predict the timing. The best thing Americans can do is start their own survival gardens, before it’s too late!
Greece can thank ONE pschycopath in particular for the serious strife its in now.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-06/who-biggest-winner-greek-tragedy