Brutal capitalism - Hungry Greece suffers

I have come across a horrific article in the New York Times today about the levels of hunger and suffering in Greece a nation never too far from the news at the moment with its heavy handed austerity programme being implemented hard on ordinary people. In the article it details how levels of so called food insecurity are rising to levels commonly seen in many African nations. This for me is the brutal cold reality of capitalism in internal decline. Its hard to comprehend how this is like in Britain where levels of food scarcity is very low and although food banks are opening up every week in many areas Greece is on an entirely deeper scale than we face currently although we are heading in that direction. The Greek economy is in free fall, having shrunk by 20 percent in the past five years. The unemployment rate is more than 27 percent, the highest in Europe, and 6 of 10 job seekers say they have not worked in more than a year. Those dry statistics are reshaping the lives of Greek families with children, more of whom are arriving at schools hungry or underfed, even malnourished, according to private groups and the government itself. Last year, an estimated 10 percent of Greek elementary and middle school students suffered from what public health professionals call “food insecurity,” meaning they faced hunger or the risk of it, said Dr. Athena Linos, a professor at the University of Athens Medical School who also heads a food assistance program at Prolepsis, a nongovernmental public health group that has studied the situation. “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. Their troubles have been compounded by new austerity measures demanded by Greece’s creditors, including higher electricity taxes and cuts in subsidies for large families. As a result, parents without work are seeing their savings and benefits rapidly disappear. “All around me I hear kids saying: ‘My parents don’t have any money. We don’t know what we are going to do,’ ” said Evangelia Karakaxa, a vivacious 15-year-old at the No. 9 junior high school in Acharnes. Acharnes, a working-class town among the mountains of Attica, was bustling with activity from imports until the economic crisis wiped out thousands of factory jobs. Now, several of Evangelia’s 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, and 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.” Alexandra Perry, who works at the school, said that at least 60 of the 280 students suffered from malnutrition. Children who once boasted of sweets and meat now talk of eating boiled macaroni, lentils, rice or potatoes. “The cheapest stuff,” Ms. Perry said. This year the number of malnutrition cases jumped. “A year ago, it wasn’t like this,” Ms. Perry, said, fighting back tears. “What’s frightening is the speed at which it is happening.” The government, which initially dismissed the reports as exaggerations, recently acknowledged that it needed to tackle the issue of malnutrition in schools. But with priorities placed on repaying bailout funds, there is little money in Greek coffers to cope. Mr. Nikas, the principal, said he knew that the Greek government was laboring to fix the economy. Now that talk of Greece’s exiting the euro zone has disappeared, things look better to the outside world. “But tell that to the family of Pantelis,” he said. “They don’t feel the improvement in their lives.” Quite clearly the deepening crisis in global capitalism and the Euro crisis in particular know no boundaries and will stop at nothing to make workers and ordinary people pay for a crisis not of their making. Stories like these need to be in the mainstream news all the time but wont be as the media is controlled and owned by big business and it is not in its interests to highlight the suffering of its own ideas and actions. What is clear though that Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal the so called PIGS face very similar situations and need to come together in collective solidarity and put an end to this brutal rotten system of capitalism and form a new society based on the needs of the mass’s. There can be no way out of this crisis on the basis of capitalism only a socialist transformation of society can start to develop the means and the ways of ending mass exploitation and suffering. A society which meets peoples needs not focus’s on only what profit can be made out of something. With extracts from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/world/europe/more-children-in-greece-start-to-go-hungry.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&smid=tw-share&