Greeks go back to basics: Eco-commune flourishes as economy withers

On the slopes of Mount Telaithrion on the island of Evia, a group of young Greeks have left the busy city and created a self-reliant rural community.

Their goal is to eat only the organic produce they grow themselves, to free themselves from the national electricity grid, and to exchange what they grow or make instead of using money.

The project, whose ultimate goal is to create a school for sustainable living, was the idea of four Athenians who met online back in 2008 and bonded over their dissatisfaction with the daily grind of city life.

(Video Source: NTD Television)

In their second year of living permanently on a forested patch of land next to the village of Aghios, 80 percent of the food they eat now comes from their two herb and vegetable gardens and the fruit they pick off the trees.

The group, almost all of whom follow a strict vegetarian diet, sleep communally in yurts - portable, tent-like dwellings made of tarp often seen in Central Asia.

Whatever is left over from their gardens, they exchange in the village for the supplies they cannot produce.

32-year-old co-founder Apostolos Sianos quit a well-paying job as a web site designer in Athens to help start the community, which is called 'Free and Real.'

[Apostolos Sianos, Co-Founder of 'Free and Real']:
"The crisis or the austerity measures doesn't actually affect you because you create your life and your future everyday, it has nothing to do with the outside circle. It may (have) affected us, but only in a good way because more and more people are willing to be self-sufficient and sustainable, so they contact us, and more and more people after the crisis want to get involved."

The group actively use social media, and last year over one hundred people from Greece and abroad asked about joining or collaborating in some way.

Dionysis Papanikolaou, for example, gave up a lucrative academic career to be closer to nature and far from the heavy atmosphere of the financial crisis in Greece.

[Dionysis Papanikolaou, Group Member]:
"If you keep on reading news, watching TV and the crisis, the crisis, the crisis, even subconsciously you say the crisis! Here, there is no crisis. I mean, it makes no difference."

The group take pride in being self-sufficient.

[Panagiotis Kantas, Co-Founder of 'Free and Real']:
"The reality of life is just outside your door. When you have to warm yourself up you actually have to go out in the wood and gather wood, fire wood, and bring it home to actually warm yourself up."

They currently organize seminars on organic farming and have drawn up the plans for a large school on sustainable living to be constructed later this summer, and for which they raised money on a crowdfunding site on the internet.

[Panagiotis Kantas, Co-Founder of 'Free and Real']:
"I just try to be the change I want to be, instead of waiting for a government to make the change, or instead of voting for someone to make the change. I try to be the change."

Related links:

BBC News: Greeks go back to basics as recession bites
Reuters: Eco-commune flourishes as Greek economy withers

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Corporate capitalism will kill us all

Guest host Sam Sacks discusses the world food crisis and corporate capitalism with journalist and author Chris Hedges.

To watch the debate click the below video.


This is discussed here on the N-AM facebook group.

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* Labels:Capitalism

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Jeff Monson: Anarchy is America's solution

With the 2012 presidential election less than a year away, everyone is looking for ways to turn around America with an array of promises on the campaign trail that seemingly give each politician added credence over the others.

Radical times may call for radical ideas. But for Jeff Monson and likeminded others, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to examine that society could better itself if it tried, in turn propelling America’s economy out of the dumps and towards a future full of prospect.

“I think the first thing we need to do is socialize things,” said Monson, who calls himself an anarchist but is perhaps best known outside of politics but in the realm of sports. Monson, 40, is an American mixed martial artist that holds multiple titles across the globe for his athleticism. Currently, Monson holds the world heavyweight championship title in the International Sport Karate Association.

Watch the interview below

To the fighter, if America reexamined entities made available to the public and offered more fair and affordable services, society would see an improvement.

Roadblocks line the way to that future, however, and Monson says that one of the biggest is the role that big corporations play in the American way of live. President Obama may have campaigned on promises thought to be capable, but Monson says the commander-in-chief has since run into a brick wall. “Now he has to sacrifice a lot of his ideas,” Monson told RT. Although he may have had best intentions at first, politics in America are bought and sold by the corporations, said the fighter. “You have to get all those people out,” he said. “You have to get the people to make a decision. We live in a Democracy, supposedly, but it’s not really a Democracy—it’s a corpocracy.”

Obama, said Monson, came into the White House with a lot of promise. Without the success of big business, however, the president’s campaign in 2008 couldn’t have come through.

“He had to take a lot of heat (and) earn more money for his campaign than any other president in history,” said Monson. Now those big-money backers that helped put Obama in the White House “want something in return for their contributions.”

“He was the best candidate for what the corporations thought they could get,” said Monson. “He’s in there and he owes them and he’s kind of running into a brick wall. The corporations really run this country.”

Monson says that his ideas for America involve his personal ethos, anarchism, but the media often portrays such a notion as one too radical to be a reality. The wrestler revealed to RT, however, that “really, anarchy to me means everybody has absolute freedom.”

“What I think is the worst thing,” said Monson, is “people in the United States and around the world can’t do what they want to do with their life.”

“Actually contributing to society,” he added, “we waste our potential as human beings and I think that is the biggest crime of what we call capitalism.”

Also going to waste, said Monson, is the voice of each American, a mistake that is made by voting in officials unrepresentative of what the country needs.

“When you vote, you’re putting someone else’s idea of what should be instead of your own,” said Monson. “You are giving someone else permission to make decisions for me. It’s strange to me that people would give that kind of power to someone else.”

(Source)

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Medieval Spanish ghost town now self-sufficient ecovillage

It’s a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that.

There are now a few dozen “ecoaldeas” - ecovillages - in Spain, most build from the ashes of former Medieval towns. One of the first towns to be rediscovered was a tiny hamlet in the mountains of northern Navarra.

It was rediscovered in 1980 by a group of people living nearby who had lost their goats and “when they found their goats, they found Lakabe”, explains Mauge Cañada, one of the early pioneers in the repopulation of the town.

The new inhabitants were all urbanites with no knowledge of country life so no one expected them to stay long. At first, the homes weren’t habitable so they lived 14 in a large room. Slowly they began to rebuild the homes and the gardens. 

When they first began to rebuild, there was no road up to the town so horses were used to carry construction materials up the mountain. There was no electricity either so they lived with candles and oil lamps. 

After a few years, they erected a windmill by hand, carrying the iron structure up the hill themselves. “Even though it seems tough and in some ways it was, but you realize you're not as limited as you think,” says Mauge. “There are a lot of things people think they can't do without a lot of money and there's never been money here.”

In the early years, they generated income by selling some of their harvest and working odd jobs like using their newfound construction experience to rebuild roofs outside town. Later they rebuilt the village bakery and sold bread to the outside world. 

Their organic sourdough breads now sell so well that today they can get by without looking for work outside town, but it helps that they keep their costs at a minimum as a way of life. “There's an austerity that's part of the desire of people who come here,” explains Mauge. “There's not a desire for consumption to consume. We try to live with what there is.”

Today, the town generates all its own energy with the windmill, solar panels and a water turbine. It also has a wait list of people who’d like to move in, but Mauge says the answer is not for people to join what they have created, but to try to emulate them somewhere else.

“If you set your mind to it and there's a group of people who want to do it, physically they can do it, economically they can do it. What right now is more difficult is being willing to suffer hardship or difficulties or… these days people have a lot of trouble living in situations of shortage or what is seen as shortage but it isn't.” 

(Source)

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UK Police Databases of Protesters/ 'Domestic Extremists'

Thousands of political activists in the UK have their personal details stored on secret police databases. Activists who attend protests and meetings are now being classed as "domestic extremists" by police, despite the term having no legal basis. "Domestic extremists" can include activists suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.


Those being monitored as "domestic extremists" include 'Far Left' groups/ activists, 'Far Right' groups/ activists (including the EDL), the traditional animal rights groups/ activists as well as environmental groups/ activists such as Climate Camp.

Among the activists being classed as "domestic extremists" is the comedian Mark Thomas. 

More on this story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-domestic-extremists-database
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-surveillance-protest-domestic-extremism

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