The Great Greek Tumult.

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70% in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

The dire prognosis comes even despite Athen's massive efforts to sort out the country's finances. The government's draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country's budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7%, after previous government has squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10%, 4.5% more than the EU and IMF had required.

The problem is that the austerity measures have in the mean time affected every aspect of the country's economy. Purchasing power is dropping, Consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country's GDP shrank by 1.5% in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A melange of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.

Unemployment in the city Perama hovers between 60 and 70%, according to a study conducted by the University of Piraeus. While 77% of Greek shipping companies indicate they are satisfied with the quality of work done in Perama, nearly 50% still send their ships to be repaired in Turkey, Korea or China. Costs are too high in Greece. the country, they argue has too much bureaucracy and too many strikes, with labour disputes often delaying delivery times.

Barely any of the country's industries can keep up with international competition in terms of productivity, and experts expect the country's GDP to fall by 4% over the course of the entire year.

A short jaunt through Athen's shopping streets reveals the scale of the decline. Fully a quarter of the store windows on Stadiou Street bear red sign reading -"Enoikiazetai" -- for rent. The National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce calculates that 17% of all shops have had to file for bankruptcy.

The entire country is in the grip of a depression. Everything seems to be going downhill. The spiral is continuing unabated, and there is no clear way out. The worse part, however, is the fact that hardly anyone still hopes that things will improve one day.

Inquiring minds just might asking "How long can Greece hold on?"

I do not have the answer to that, besides it's not the important question. A far more worrisome question is "When does similar strife spread to Spain, Portugal and perhaps even Italy?"

Part of the blame goes to the bailout plan itself. France and to a lesser extent Germany would not take haircuts on Greek debt. Aid to Greece by the IMF and European banks simply threw good money after bad.

GMO Opposition Gaining Ground: World's People Reject Genetic Pollution Of Food And Environment

On 15th August 2010, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open air-field genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants.

On July 2010 in Spain, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields.

On June 2010 in Haiti, 10000 Haitian farmers marched in protest of the poison gift given to haiti after the devastating earthquake stuck Haiti earlier this year by Monsanto.

On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt. Cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect the food supply and the planet.

The French vineyards is the same field attacked last year when the plants were only cut. But the security features installed after that incident kept authorities at bay while the group accomplished its mission on 15th August 2010.

This is the second attack on GMO crops to make international news this year. In July dozens of people destroyed two experimental corn crops in Spain. In an anonymous press release, they wrote, "This kind of direct action is the best way to respond to the fait accompli policy through which the Generalitat, the State and the biotech multinationals have been unilaterally imposing genetically modified organisms".

In the 1990's, Indian farmers burnt Bt. Cotton fields in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Monsanto did not disclose to farmers that the GM seeds were experimental. "Despite the heavy use of chemical fertilizer, traces of which still can be observed at the field, the Bt. Cotton plants grew miserably, less than half the size of traditional cotton plants in the adjacent fields."

After the Haiti earthquake this year, Monsanto offered 475 tons of hybrid corn and terminator vegetable seeds in partnership with USAID. In June 2010, 10000 Haitian farmers marched in protest of the "poison gift" which produces no viable seeds for future plantings and requires heavy chemical inputs. Haitian farm leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste observed that the biotec plans makes farmers dependent on multinational corporations.

In the US, GMO's were secretly foisted on the public in the mid-1990's, and only now is the US Supreme Court addressing the scourge. In June, the High Court upheld partial deregulation of GM alfalfa, which permits limited planting while the USDA prepares an Environmental Impact Statement. Natural and organic alfalfa supply is threatened by the real potential of GM contamination. This would destroy the organic meat and dairy industry.

A British farmer has exposed that milk and meat from cloned animals had secretly entered food supply.

Public opposition to GM crops has grown in recent years as more evidence surfaces that DNA-altered crops:

1. Require massive chemical inputs which destroy local biodiversity and poison the water tables;

2. Cross-pollination with natural and weedy crops;

3. Create superweeds;

4. Have been shown to cause organ damage, sterility, diabetes and obesity in mammals.

US president Obama has stacked his Administration with biotech insiders going so far as to appoint Islam Siddiqui as Agriculture Trade Negotiator. Siddique is a former pesticide lobbyists and vice president of CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade Union for its GM crop ban.

As governments and trade agreements circumvent the will of the people, some take matters into their own hands. The rise in GMO crop destruction is a clear indication that the world's people reject chemical and genetic pollution of the food supply and the environment.