Berlin: A Grim Christmas for Many. Urban Poverty in Germany. Homelessness in the Inner City

By Ernst Wolff
December 25, 2012

Winter exposes the social decline in Berlin more revealingly than any other season, especially around Christmastime. Bitter conditions drive the homeless into the inner city to seek shelter. Special “winter buses”, operated by aid agencies, search the streets, bridges and back courtyards to offer relief to the needy. The number of starving, freezing people increases outside the city’s soup kitchens.

“I never thought I’d be standing here”, [...]

Mayor Proposes Getting Rid Of Soup Kitchens To Reduce Homeless Population

COSTA MESA (CBSLA.com) — The mayor of Costa Mesa proposed to get rid of soup kitchens to deal with the area’s homeless problem at a city council meeting on Tuesday.

“My belief is that if we manage to put the soup kitchen out of business that will go a long way to addressing the attractiveness in our city that’s creating a huge negative impact,” Eric Bever said.

According to Bever, the “negative impact” is homeless [...]

The Coming Economic Armageddon: Real Unemployment at 19% In US, Japan GDP halved, IMF chief warns perils of fiscal cliff, China’s export unexpectedly contracted, ECB’s bond plan is a devout wish, The Baltic Dry Shipping Index is heading to ZERO!

Mortimer Zuckerman: We are experiencing, in effect, a modern-day depression and those jobless numbers are even worse than they look

Still above 8%—and closer to 19% in a truer accounting. Here’s a plan for improvement.

Don’t be fooled by the headline unemployment number of 8.1% announced on Friday. The reason the number dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July was not because more jobs were created, but because more people quit looking for [...]

Hunger In Spain

I don’t live in Spain, but my mother just returned from a trip which included Spain. She had visited before but she had never seen so many people living on the street with their belongings in Barcelona as during previous visits or visits to other countries. Also, some new 1 year old appartments there (Spain, but not in Barcelona I think), which were originally priced at 145000 euro, had been [...]

Europe is driving full-tilt, foot on the pedal, into a brick wall

telegraph.co.uk

It’s unbelievable that we should be urging our neighbours to adopt a tighter fiscal union, argues Boris Johnson.

By Boris Johnson

6:22AM BST 21 May 2012

I see the G8 has a brilliant solution to the problems of the eurozone.President Obama Says It’s Time For “Growth And Jobs”. Jolly good. That’s the stuff. Let me show you how to create employment – the Brussels way.

Come with me through the streets of Athens, not far [...]

Nightmare foretold if Greece heads for euro exit

Nightmare foretold if Greece heads for euro exit

“In Athens, the homeless are on the streets in growing numbers, soup kitchens feed twice as many people as a year ago, and the poor are diving into garbage bins in search of scrap they can sell.

Greece is close to breaking point as it struggles with austerity targets set by creditors, but this is just a foretaste of the nightmare of unrest, hunger [...]

Anonymous Hacks Greek Ministry Website, Threatens It Will Wipe Away All Citizen Debts

by ZH

If there is one war that Greece could not afford to join, that is with the global computer hacking collective known as Anonymous. Yet as of minutes ago, that is precisley what happened, after Anonymous, as part of what it now calls Operation Greece, took down the Greek Ministry of Justice (http://www.ministryofjustice.gr/). While the pretext for the hacking appears to have been an arrest of the wrong people, is [...]