According to an former NSA employee and now a whistleblower, "Everyone in US under virtual surveillance". Here is the article from an interview with William Binney, posted on rt.com. At the bottom of this post there is excerpts from a e-mail from Senator Rand Paul basically backing up what Mr Binney claims.
The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.
Binney, one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, resigned in 2001. He claimed he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called 'Naris.'
This year, Binney received the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.
RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama, one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?
William Binney: Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.
RT: And it’s not just about those, who could be planning, who could be a threat to national security, but also those, who could be just…
WB: It’s everybody. The Naris device, if it takes in the entire line, so it takes in all the data. In fact they advertised they can process the lines at session rates, which means 10-gigabit lines. I forgot the name of the device (it’s not the Naris) – the other one does it at 10 gigabits. That’s why they're building Bluffdale [database facility], because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, emails are going to be stored there in the future, but right now stored in different places around the country. But it is being collected – and the FBI has access to it.
RT: You mean it’s being collected in bulk without even requesting providers?
WB: Yes.
RT: Then what about Google, you know, releasing this biannual transparency report and saying that the government’s demands for personal data is at an all-time high and for all of those requesting the US, Google says they complied with the government’s demands 90 percent of the time. But they are still saying that they are making the request, it’s not like it’s all being funneled into that storage. What do you say to that?
WB: I would assume that it’s just simply another source for the same data they are already collecting. My line is in declarations in a court about the 18-T facility in San Francisco, that documented the NSA room inside that AST&T facility, where they had Naris devices to collect data off the fiber optic lines inside the United States. So, that’s kind of a powerful device, that would collect everything it was being sent. It could collect on the order over of 100 billion 1,000-character emails a day. One device.
RT: You say they sift through billions of e-mails. I wonder how do they prioritize? How do they filter it? WB: I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it. I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.
RT: Were you on the target list?
WB: Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my email. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them.
RT: Do you think we all should leave messages for the NSA mail box?
WB: Sure!
RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the president. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency, in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?
WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.
RT: What are they going to do with all of that? Ok, they are storing something. Why should anybody be concerned?
WB: If you ever get on the enemies list, like Petraeus did or… for whatever reason, than you can be drained into that surveillance.
RT: Do you think they would… General Petraeus, who was idolized by the same administration? Or General Allen?
WB: There are certainly some questions, that have to be asked, like why would they target it to begin with? What law were they breaking?
RT: In case of General Petraeus one would argue that there could have been security breaches. Something like that. But with General Allen – I don’t quite understand, because when they were looking into his private emails to this woman.
WB: That’s the whole point. I am not sure what the internal politics is… That’s part of the program. This government doesn’t want things in the public. It’s not a transparent government. Whatever the reason or the motivation was, I don’t really know, but I certainly think that there was something going on in the background that made them target those fellows. Otherwise why would they be doing it? There is no crime there.
RT: It seems that the public is divided between those, who think that the government surveillance program violates their civil liberties, and those who say, 'I’ve nothing to hide. So, why should I care?' What do you say to those who think that it shouldnt concern them.
WB: The problem is if they think they are not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does, the central government defines what is right and wrong and whether or not they target you. So, it’s not up to the individuals. Even if they think they aren't doing something wrong, if their position on something is against what the administration has, then they could easily become a target.
RT: Tell me about the most outrageous thing that you came across during your work at the NSA.
WB: The violations of the constitution and any number of laws that existed at the time. That was the part that I could not be associated with. That’s why I left. They were building social networks on who is communicating and with whom inside this country. So that the entire social network of everybody, of every US citizen was being compiled overtime. So, they are taking from one company alone roughly 320 million records a day. That’s probably accumulated probably close to 20 trillion over the years. The original program that we put together to handle this to be able to identify terrorists anywhere in the world and alert anyone that they were in jeopardy. We would have been able to do that by encrypting everybody’s communications except those who were targets. So, in essence you would protect their identities and the information about them until you could develop probable cause, and once you showed your probable cause, then you could do a decrypt and target them. And we could do that and isolate those people all alone. It wasn’t a problem at all. There was no difficulty in that.
RT: It sounds very difficult and very complicated. Easier to take everything in and…
WB: No. It’s easier to use the graphing techniques, if you will, for the relationships for the world to filter out data, so that you don’t have to handle all that data. And it doesn’t burden you with a lot more information to look at, than you really need to solve the problem.
RT: Do you think that the agency doesn’t have the filters now?
WB: No.
RT: You have received the Callaway award for civic courage. Congratulations! On the website and in the press release it says: “It is awarded to those, who stand out for constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.” Under the code of spy ethics – I don’t know if there is such a thing – your former colleagues, they probably look upon you as a traitor. How do you look back at them?
WB: That’s pretty easy. They are violating the foundation of this entire country. Why this entire government was formed? It’s founded with the Constitution and the rights were given to the people in the country under that Constitution. They are in violation of that. And under executive order 13526, section 1.7 – you can not classify information to just cover up a crime, which this is, and that was signed by President Obama. Also President Bush signed it earlier as an executive order, a very similar one. If any of this comes into Supreme Court and they rule it unconstitutional, then the entire house of cards of the government falls.
RT: What are the chances of that? What are the odds?
WB: The government is doing the best they can to try to keep it out of court. And, of course, we are trying to do the best we can to get into court. So, we decided it deserves a ruling from the Supreme Court. Ultimately the court is supposed to protect the Constitution. All these people in the government take an oath to defend the Constitution. And they are not living up to the oath of office.
From Senator Rand Paul (R-TN)
Would you want government agents listening to your phone calls? Looking at your email? Spying on your online activity? Chances are they have, and you didn't even know it.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was originally designed to protect American citizens from having government wiretap their phones and eavesdrop on their conversations. But in 2001, the Bush Administration amended FISA through the Patriot Act to allow warrantless wiretapping.
In 2008, the Obama administration further loosened these restrictions. Today, we have a federal government that can go through citizens' private communications-telephone, email, Facebook-you name it.
We know that the federal government has looked at over 28 million electronic records since the FISA Amendment Act. We know it has gone through 1.6 million texts.
When I was given a classified briefing this summer to investigate the extent to which the federal government is spying on citizens, I was required by law not to disclose the discussion. But in determining how many times this has occurred, I can give you a fictitious number-gazillions.
This is not hyperbole. I can assure you, it is quite accurate in describing the number of times government has snooped though American citizens private information. We now have a federal government that is unrestrained by law.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is looking to ram through FISA reauthorization before Christmas. He has made it clear he certainly expects it to be done by year's end.
Senator Rand Paul, a Great Patriot on my book, goes on to talk about a bill, called the "Fourth Amendment Protection Act", that he plans on introducing and he continues on askling for help, funding and calling your legislators.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Survival Firearm: Marlin Camp Carbine
"Sir, I wanted to thank you for your information. I am new to survival prepping but I think I am an example of how you can do prepping when you are broke. I am a former Marine, 4 years in the Corps as a mechanic but first a rifleman. My wife left me and gave me a shit pot of debt which I am paying off. My father died last year too and left me a .45 pistol. As I am trying to get out of debt and do some prepping with basic foods. I work at a automotive shop and I am a good mechanic and not just with cars. I put cards up all over town advertising myself as a honest and responsible mechanic who does house calls. Think about it, most people have car trouble and can't get their car to a shop. I do estimates, routine maintenance, small repairs and even workout tows to my shop (my bosses) or any shop the person wants to go to.
I worked on a an older Olds for a elderly woman. I guess she liked me as I was respectful. She made brought me ice tea and asked me if I knew anything about guns. I said a little bit, so she showed me a couple guns that her husband left when he died a few years earlier. The end result was that she traded me a Marlin .45 Camp rifle and a old side by side shotgun for the labor and parts (oil, filter, air cleaner) I put into her Olds. The Marlin does not have any magazines. I think it can use the .45 pistol mags? And I am trying to get out of debt by am now thinking if the country collapses how would it be bad to have debt if everything is gone and they wouldn't be trying to collect. Thanks.
UrbanMan's reply: Mechanic Man, good for you finding multiple streams of income to fund not only your debt reduction but your survival preps. Remember that survival preparation for the coming collapse is not just about guns, but about stocked food, essential survival gear and equipment, maybe some junk silver coins or silver bullion, a defensible safe place to hide out and a plan that includes contingencies such as multiple Bug Out sites, maybe caches of essential supplies,....
Yes, the Marlin Camp Carbine can use the same magazines as your M1911 .45 ACP pistol. Make sure you stock up on them. Camp carbines, which they also made in 9x19mm parabellum, are probably going for around $350-$450 at gun shows if you can find them, so yours is a real good find. However it is still a carbine firing a pistol caliber. The .45 ACP even when fired out of a carbine length barrel is still less than a 100 yard gun.
The pistol, carbine and shotgun that you now have is a great start to a survival battery. The good thing is your ammunition compatibility. The bad thing is you don't have a gun using a longer range cartridge,..e.g.. .223 Remington, .308 Winchester, etc. Via e-mail, I sent you links to several ammunition shops selling .45 ACP at the best prices you will find. I suggest you stock up on some ammunition. You did not send the make/model of the shortgun you traded for, but hopefully it is a 12 gauge. For any shotgun I suggest having a good supply of buckshot, slug and bird shot as well.
I am too trying to keep my debt as low as a I can. If (or really when) an economic collapse hits this country, it may not necessarily be an Armageddon type situation. Maybe it is a major depression type of collapse where the money supply is restricted and value deflated where interests rates skyrocket, so this is the scenario where having debt is not good, not to mention it just takes away from the maximum spending power you would otherwise have.But I would agree that if you could predict a total, catastrophic collapse having a brand new truck with extended fuel tanks, etc. would be a great thing to have especially if there weren't banks or financial corporations around to hound you for payments. ha ha
With you being a mechanic, I think you have skills that may be in demand during a really bad collapse. In the latest James Wesley Rawles book, "Founders", one of the characters is a mechanic and built a pre-electronic ignition vehicle for survival, but it got shot to hell as they were bugging out and the character was forced to move on foot, - hence the Bug Out Bag and contingency plans.....you just got to have them.
I don't want to be too redundant, but since you already have a good start of survial firearms, you may want to consider filling your other basic needs. Good luck to you.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Preparing for the Collapse Links, 24 December 2012
Confiscation of Guns Being Considered. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, in the wake of the Sandy Hill Elementary School murders, that all options, including confiscation and mandatory sales (of privately owned guns) to the state, would be on the table next month when the New York State Legislature debates new gun control measures. Wow! I believe this is the first case of such a high level politician advocating the confiscation of guns. Any new state law in New York would certainly be challenged in court and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court would side with gun owners,...wouldn't they? Any attempts at forced confiscation would simply not work. Let's hope calmer minds prevail.
Armageddon Proof Houses.. Sort of, or what some people think of as secure Bug In locations. Some of these people may be fooling themselves. Without stocks of foods, training, ability to procure or grow food, a water source, ability to provide your own protection,...a well thought out Bug Out plan,...well, all you readers know the drill.
Silver Prices About To Explode. I don't necesarily believe so, but I read alot of articles concerning financial predictions,...still a good idea to have some precious metals on hand for when the dollar collapses and we go to a gold-silver and/or barter system or when some type of monetary system eventually emerges after the collapse,....if we will have an "after collapse" society.
Dental Emergencies. How many of us consider dental problems in our post collapse medical planning? I certainly need to do more. I have dental cement, dental tools, a dental book, extra toothpaste, toothbrushes and floss, but that's about it.
Gun Control Looming. Now, more so than any time since 1934, the Government appears bound and determined to enact sweeping gun control through either legislation or executive order. This not only degrades Survivalists and their ability to buy and own firearms to protect themselves, but will again push preppers to the radical fringe in many people's eyes.
Preparing for the end of the World. Although the end of the world according to the Mayans has passed, this mainly photographic article from the Atlantic makes it worthwhile just to see the exceptional photos of preppers and end of the world believers.
Armageddon Proof Houses.. Sort of, or what some people think of as secure Bug In locations. Some of these people may be fooling themselves. Without stocks of foods, training, ability to procure or grow food, a water source, ability to provide your own protection,...a well thought out Bug Out plan,...well, all you readers know the drill.
Silver Prices About To Explode. I don't necesarily believe so, but I read alot of articles concerning financial predictions,...still a good idea to have some precious metals on hand for when the dollar collapses and we go to a gold-silver and/or barter system or when some type of monetary system eventually emerges after the collapse,....if we will have an "after collapse" society.
Dental Emergencies. How many of us consider dental problems in our post collapse medical planning? I certainly need to do more. I have dental cement, dental tools, a dental book, extra toothpaste, toothbrushes and floss, but that's about it.
Gun Control Looming. Now, more so than any time since 1934, the Government appears bound and determined to enact sweeping gun control through either legislation or executive order. This not only degrades Survivalists and their ability to buy and own firearms to protect themselves, but will again push preppers to the radical fringe in many people's eyes.
Preparing for the end of the World. Although the end of the world according to the Mayans has passed, this mainly photographic article from the Atlantic makes it worthwhile just to see the exceptional photos of preppers and end of the world believers.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
The Collapse will Beget Desperate Measures
The Fiscal Cliff,...the new year bringing large tax increases,...the nation's diminished capability to produce food and feed itself,.......natural disasters and drought further degrading our economy and agricultureral capacity,.........our manufacturing base moving outside the U.S. .....and close to 50 million people, more than 20% of the population, dependant upon Government welfare checks to eat, ....and, another large segment of the population dependent upon the government for their retirement pensions. All this spells a perfect storm for a rapid descent once the economic collapse.
I have written before that hyper inflation, or worse yet, a total economic collapse will turn millions or tens of millions of people into "criminals" in short order. All of the people reading this have in some way or form are prepared to provide their own security to counter a threat from hardened predators as well as simply desperate people . It is interesting to look at what is going on in Grece from an economic as well as a social or human dynamic perspective.
I think our pending economic collapse may not be so slow as what we are seeing in Greece right now. But what is going on in Greece with the population is worth studying. The article below, written by Oliver Staley of Bloomberg news and posted on the financial post.com is interesting as it provides a personal look at the gloom from Greece's fall from grace.
Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.
“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions. For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unravelling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity. Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
Karagaitanaki’s family can’t afford gas to heat their home this winter and will rely on electric blankets in the chilly northern Greek city. They live on the 785 euros (US $1,027) a month their mother collects monthly from their late father’s pension. Two years ago, Karagaitanaki sold her jewelry for 3,000 euros, which she gave to her two sons. Her blood sugar is rising because she can’t afford the meat and vegetables her doctor recommends and instead eats rice and beans she gets from the Greek Orthodox Church.
“We are waiting every month for my mother’s pension,” Karagaitanaki said. “If my mother dies, what can I do? Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions.”
UrbanMan comments: What happens when the Greek Government can no longer pay those pensions checks?
No Money. Even as Greece reduces its deficit and accepts a European aid package that may include a 34.4 billion euro loan approved last month, conditions for Greece’s middle class are likely to worsen next year as austerity measures take a bigger bite, said George Tzogopoulos, a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy in Athens.
“I don’t think there is a single Greek citizen who believes that things will be better,” Tzogopoulos said. “There is no money for people to spend.”
UrbanMan comments: People spending money is what drives the economy. Without any money to spend manufacturing and services stop. The economy and indeed the country collapses.
Signs of Greece’s decline are everywhere in Thessaloniki, its second-largest city. Stores are closed in the fashionable shopping district downtown. Near an Yves Saint Laurent store, a man searched the trash bins for scrap metal, which he piled in the same shopping cart where his toddler daughter rode.
Outside a soup kitchen run by the Evangelical Church of Thessaloniki, men and women squabble over their place in line. Attendance at the kitchen’s twice-weekly dinners has climbed from 25 to about 140 in five years, said Antonis Sakellariou, a church elder.
Moving Away. In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years.
“We feel like foreigners here,” Rombou said.
Greece’s economy has contracted every quarter for four years and one in four Greeks is jobless. Austerity measures have cut public employee salaries and benefits, reduced government services and raised taxes. Another round of cuts passed Nov. 8 raised the retirement age, reduced wages and pensions and means Greece will become the 17-nation euro region’s poorest country in two years, according to the European Commission.
For many unemployed Greeks, the vaunted European social safety net doesn’t exist. Only 17% of the 1.2 million jobless receive unemployment insurance, said Manos Matsaganis, an assistant professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business.
Poverty Line. Greece’s effective poverty rate has risen to 36% from about 20% in 2009, Matsaganis said. About 8.5% of Greeks now live in extreme poverty and can’t afford a basic basket of goods and services, he said.
The crisis is shredding the middle class, which is feeling the brunt of public-sector salary reductions and private job losses while paying higher taxes, said Elias Papaioannou, an associate professor of economics at London Business School.
Papaioannou, an Athens native who considered a career in Greece and now has no plans to return, compares the situation with the German occupation of Greece during the Second World War, when hyperinflation wiped out the middle class.
“People are suffering massively,” he said. “To me, it’s the collapse of the state.”
Afrodity Giannakis, 52, is a teacher earning 800 euros a month, cut from 1,200 euros a month. When she refused to pay a new, 420-euro annual property tax attached to her electricity bill, her power was cut. She called friends in a neighborhood solidarity group and with the help of an electrician, she was illegally reconnected to the grid within hours.
At War. “We’re at war,” Giannakis said. “The state is against us and we’re trying to protect ourselves and our rights, as much as we can. Things are becoming ferocious.”
Karagaitanaki has bright red hair, expertly applied makeup, and dressed in a white, quilted jacket accented with a Chinese-style pendant. She was raised in a working class family in Thessaloniki and began modeling as a teenager. At 16 she was crowned “Miss Northern Greece,” she said. Runway modeling took her across Europe — to Milan, Paris and Dusseldorf, she said.
In 1978, with her then-husband, Karagaitanaki opened her cafe in downtown Thessaloniki. Based on a Viennese coffee house, the small business attracted the city’s intellectuals and artists. Her younger brother, Maximus, began working there when he was 18, and eventually her two sons joined in. She divorced in 2000.
“We did everything ourselves,” Karagaitanaki said. “We built the cafe ourselves and that’s why people loved it.”
Taxes Surge. When it opened, the cafe’s rent was 400 drachmas a month. By 2010, after Greece’s economy surged and real estate boomed, the rent had climbed to 3,000 euros a month and other expenses rose, Karagaitanaki said. Bills for taxes and utilities climbed fourfold since 2000, she said. To cover her costs, she charged more.
UrbanMan's comment: Tax increases? Where have we heard that before - like that's going to help.
“I had to raise my prices, she said. “That’s why I lost my customers.”
The final straw came when the landlord raised the rent again and demanded an additional 40,000 euros for a new, 12-year lease, she said. She closed the cafe in 2010.
“It’s like losing my life,” she said with tears in her eyes. “The cafe was my life.”
Karagaitanaki said she recently passed the cafe, now a store selling organic beauty products, and cried after seeing that a tree she had planted in front was dead.
Futile Search. Losing the cafe left the family unemployed. Her two sons, aged 32 and 22, moved to Komotini in Eastern Greece, where their father lives, to open a bar there. Karagaitanaki moved in with her 84 year-old mother in April of 2010, joining her brother.
While Karagaitanaki sleeps on her daybed, her 6-foot, 3-inch brother folds himself onto a five-foot couch in the living room each night. Living in such close quarters mean the siblings fight over using the bathroom, she said.
“It’s like being a teenager,” she said. “The only good thing about it is that we can help my mother.”
Maximus Karagaitanakis, 49, said he looks for work daily, going to the unemployment office and asking friends who work in cafes and pubs. Mostly, though, he hangs around the apartment.
“It’s very, very hard,” he said.
Even before the crisis, Greeks tended to stay at home late into adulthood and often depended on parents for support, Papaioannou said. The crisis has made middle-aged Greeks even more dependent on their elderly parents for income, which puts pressure on pensions that are being cut, he said.
Cigarettes and Coffee. Karagaitanaki spends her days cleaning her mother’s apartment and helping a friend run a downtown coffee shop. In exchange, her friend buys her cigarettes and coffee.
UrbanMan's comment: People have to have their vices, cigerettes and liquor. And coffee is also a valuabel barter item. That's why I have roughly 40 bottles of alcholo (wine and booze) and lot's of coffee stockpiled. Some of that coffee I bought at $6 a container and now it's around $10.
In a drawer in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki keeps a folder of mementos. She has magazine clippings from her modeling days, when she sauntered down the catwalk in boxy ’80s fashions, and photos from parties held at the cafe.
She also has paperwork for a court date over her failure to pay 34,000 euros in back taxes owed by her cafe. Since she has no way to pay, she said she isn’t concerned.
Karagaitanaki also lacks health insurance after falling behind on her payments. While the Greek national health service covers hospital care, there’s no free primary care.
To treat her diabetes, she goes to the Social Solidarity clinic, a free medical center staffed by doctors and nurses volunteering their time. From the clinic she gets insulin and needles, which would otherwise cost her 150 euros a month, and dental care after diabetes destroyed her teeth, she said.
Medication Donations. When the clinic in Thessaloniki’s Chinatown opened in November 2011, doctors expected to primarily serve illegal immigrants who had no other options, said Stathis Giannakopoulos, a general practitioner who volunteers one night a month. Instead, at least half the patients are Greeks who have lost their health insurance. For medicine, they depend on donations of surpluses from drugstores and individuals, he said.
“This isn’t a way to treat a country,” Giannakopoulos said. “This a way to destroy a country.”
Like many doctors in Greece, Giannakopoulos’s salary has been cut, from about 2,000 euros a month in 2009 to less than 1,500 a month now.
While doctors have told Karagaitanaki to reduce starchy foods in her diet to help her diabetes, she said she can’t.
“It’s the most expensive illness because you should eat meat, fish, chicken, everyday,” she said. “How can we afford it?”
Standing in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki carefully cradles a bandaged hand. On a rainy day last month, she slipped on leaves and sprained her wrist. When she went to the hospital, she had 10 euros her mother had given her for the day. She paid 9 euros for X-rays and bandages.
“I had 10 euros and it cost 9,” she said. “Now I have 1 euro.”
I have written before that hyper inflation, or worse yet, a total economic collapse will turn millions or tens of millions of people into "criminals" in short order. All of the people reading this have in some way or form are prepared to provide their own security to counter a threat from hardened predators as well as simply desperate people . It is interesting to look at what is going on in Grece from an economic as well as a social or human dynamic perspective.
I think our pending economic collapse may not be so slow as what we are seeing in Greece right now. But what is going on in Greece with the population is worth studying. The article below, written by Oliver Staley of Bloomberg news and posted on the financial post.com is interesting as it provides a personal look at the gloom from Greece's fall from grace.
Anastasia Karagaitanaki, 57, is a former model and cafe owner in Thessaloniki, Greece. After losing her business to the financial crisis, she now sleeps on a daybed next to the refrigerator in her mother’s kitchen and depends on charity for food and insulin for her diabetes.
“I feel like my life has slipped through my hands,” said Karagaitanaki, whose brother also shares the one-bedroom apartment. “I feel like I’m dead.”
Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions. For thousands of Greeks like Karagaitanaki, the fabric of middle-class life is unravelling. Teachers, salaries slashed by a third, are stealing electricity. Families in once-stable neighborhoods are afraid to leave their homes because of rising street crime.
Karagaitanaki’s family can’t afford gas to heat their home this winter and will rely on electric blankets in the chilly northern Greek city. They live on the 785 euros (US $1,027) a month their mother collects monthly from their late father’s pension. Two years ago, Karagaitanaki sold her jewelry for 3,000 euros, which she gave to her two sons. Her blood sugar is rising because she can’t afford the meat and vegetables her doctor recommends and instead eats rice and beans she gets from the Greek Orthodox Church.
“We are waiting every month for my mother’s pension,” Karagaitanaki said. “If my mother dies, what can I do? Everyone here is dependent on their parents’ pensions.”
UrbanMan comments: What happens when the Greek Government can no longer pay those pensions checks?
No Money. Even as Greece reduces its deficit and accepts a European aid package that may include a 34.4 billion euro loan approved last month, conditions for Greece’s middle class are likely to worsen next year as austerity measures take a bigger bite, said George Tzogopoulos, a research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy in Athens.
“I don’t think there is a single Greek citizen who believes that things will be better,” Tzogopoulos said. “There is no money for people to spend.”
UrbanMan comments: People spending money is what drives the economy. Without any money to spend manufacturing and services stop. The economy and indeed the country collapses.
Signs of Greece’s decline are everywhere in Thessaloniki, its second-largest city. Stores are closed in the fashionable shopping district downtown. Near an Yves Saint Laurent store, a man searched the trash bins for scrap metal, which he piled in the same shopping cart where his toddler daughter rode.
Outside a soup kitchen run by the Evangelical Church of Thessaloniki, men and women squabble over their place in line. Attendance at the kitchen’s twice-weekly dinners has climbed from 25 to about 140 in five years, said Antonis Sakellariou, a church elder.
Moving Away. In the once stable neighborhood of Kordelio, the unemployed and drug users gather in the parks, scaring away mothers and children, and crimes like chain snatching are on the rise. Many long-time residents have left, moving abroad or to their families’ villages, leaving behind empty houses, said Evangelia Rombou, 58, who has lived in Kordelio for 22 years.
“We feel like foreigners here,” Rombou said.
Greece’s economy has contracted every quarter for four years and one in four Greeks is jobless. Austerity measures have cut public employee salaries and benefits, reduced government services and raised taxes. Another round of cuts passed Nov. 8 raised the retirement age, reduced wages and pensions and means Greece will become the 17-nation euro region’s poorest country in two years, according to the European Commission.
For many unemployed Greeks, the vaunted European social safety net doesn’t exist. Only 17% of the 1.2 million jobless receive unemployment insurance, said Manos Matsaganis, an assistant professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business.
Poverty Line. Greece’s effective poverty rate has risen to 36% from about 20% in 2009, Matsaganis said. About 8.5% of Greeks now live in extreme poverty and can’t afford a basic basket of goods and services, he said.
The crisis is shredding the middle class, which is feeling the brunt of public-sector salary reductions and private job losses while paying higher taxes, said Elias Papaioannou, an associate professor of economics at London Business School.
Papaioannou, an Athens native who considered a career in Greece and now has no plans to return, compares the situation with the German occupation of Greece during the Second World War, when hyperinflation wiped out the middle class.
“People are suffering massively,” he said. “To me, it’s the collapse of the state.”
Afrodity Giannakis, 52, is a teacher earning 800 euros a month, cut from 1,200 euros a month. When she refused to pay a new, 420-euro annual property tax attached to her electricity bill, her power was cut. She called friends in a neighborhood solidarity group and with the help of an electrician, she was illegally reconnected to the grid within hours.
At War. “We’re at war,” Giannakis said. “The state is against us and we’re trying to protect ourselves and our rights, as much as we can. Things are becoming ferocious.”
Karagaitanaki has bright red hair, expertly applied makeup, and dressed in a white, quilted jacket accented with a Chinese-style pendant. She was raised in a working class family in Thessaloniki and began modeling as a teenager. At 16 she was crowned “Miss Northern Greece,” she said. Runway modeling took her across Europe — to Milan, Paris and Dusseldorf, she said.
In 1978, with her then-husband, Karagaitanaki opened her cafe in downtown Thessaloniki. Based on a Viennese coffee house, the small business attracted the city’s intellectuals and artists. Her younger brother, Maximus, began working there when he was 18, and eventually her two sons joined in. She divorced in 2000.
“We did everything ourselves,” Karagaitanaki said. “We built the cafe ourselves and that’s why people loved it.”
Taxes Surge. When it opened, the cafe’s rent was 400 drachmas a month. By 2010, after Greece’s economy surged and real estate boomed, the rent had climbed to 3,000 euros a month and other expenses rose, Karagaitanaki said. Bills for taxes and utilities climbed fourfold since 2000, she said. To cover her costs, she charged more.
UrbanMan's comment: Tax increases? Where have we heard that before - like that's going to help.
“I had to raise my prices, she said. “That’s why I lost my customers.”
The final straw came when the landlord raised the rent again and demanded an additional 40,000 euros for a new, 12-year lease, she said. She closed the cafe in 2010.
“It’s like losing my life,” she said with tears in her eyes. “The cafe was my life.”
Karagaitanaki said she recently passed the cafe, now a store selling organic beauty products, and cried after seeing that a tree she had planted in front was dead.
Futile Search. Losing the cafe left the family unemployed. Her two sons, aged 32 and 22, moved to Komotini in Eastern Greece, where their father lives, to open a bar there. Karagaitanaki moved in with her 84 year-old mother in April of 2010, joining her brother.
While Karagaitanaki sleeps on her daybed, her 6-foot, 3-inch brother folds himself onto a five-foot couch in the living room each night. Living in such close quarters mean the siblings fight over using the bathroom, she said.
“It’s like being a teenager,” she said. “The only good thing about it is that we can help my mother.”
Maximus Karagaitanakis, 49, said he looks for work daily, going to the unemployment office and asking friends who work in cafes and pubs. Mostly, though, he hangs around the apartment.
“It’s very, very hard,” he said.
Even before the crisis, Greeks tended to stay at home late into adulthood and often depended on parents for support, Papaioannou said. The crisis has made middle-aged Greeks even more dependent on their elderly parents for income, which puts pressure on pensions that are being cut, he said.
Cigarettes and Coffee. Karagaitanaki spends her days cleaning her mother’s apartment and helping a friend run a downtown coffee shop. In exchange, her friend buys her cigarettes and coffee.
UrbanMan's comment: People have to have their vices, cigerettes and liquor. And coffee is also a valuabel barter item. That's why I have roughly 40 bottles of alcholo (wine and booze) and lot's of coffee stockpiled. Some of that coffee I bought at $6 a container and now it's around $10.
In a drawer in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki keeps a folder of mementos. She has magazine clippings from her modeling days, when she sauntered down the catwalk in boxy ’80s fashions, and photos from parties held at the cafe.
She also has paperwork for a court date over her failure to pay 34,000 euros in back taxes owed by her cafe. Since she has no way to pay, she said she isn’t concerned.
Karagaitanaki also lacks health insurance after falling behind on her payments. While the Greek national health service covers hospital care, there’s no free primary care.
To treat her diabetes, she goes to the Social Solidarity clinic, a free medical center staffed by doctors and nurses volunteering their time. From the clinic she gets insulin and needles, which would otherwise cost her 150 euros a month, and dental care after diabetes destroyed her teeth, she said.
Medication Donations. When the clinic in Thessaloniki’s Chinatown opened in November 2011, doctors expected to primarily serve illegal immigrants who had no other options, said Stathis Giannakopoulos, a general practitioner who volunteers one night a month. Instead, at least half the patients are Greeks who have lost their health insurance. For medicine, they depend on donations of surpluses from drugstores and individuals, he said.
“This isn’t a way to treat a country,” Giannakopoulos said. “This a way to destroy a country.”
Like many doctors in Greece, Giannakopoulos’s salary has been cut, from about 2,000 euros a month in 2009 to less than 1,500 a month now.
While doctors have told Karagaitanaki to reduce starchy foods in her diet to help her diabetes, she said she can’t.
“It’s the most expensive illness because you should eat meat, fish, chicken, everyday,” she said. “How can we afford it?”
Standing in her mother’s kitchen, Karagaitanaki carefully cradles a bandaged hand. On a rainy day last month, she slipped on leaves and sprained her wrist. When she went to the hospital, she had 10 euros her mother had given her for the day. She paid 9 euros for X-rays and bandages.
“I had 10 euros and it cost 9,” she said. “Now I have 1 euro.”
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