By Hans Vogel
Those in Europe who continue reading their trusted, national newspapers, watching the state-controlled TV news, or listening to state-controlled news broadcasts, will not know what is going on around them. They are being fed a rigorously controlled diet of largely unconnected stories that are designed to give an upbeat impression about the economy.
Yes, there are signs of recovery; yes, one individual businessman does see light at the end of the tunnel; no, the loss of jobs is not as serious as it seemed in the first place, well...any European may complete this list with his own examples. The upbeat news about the economy is presented within a wider framework of the usual trivia of traffic accidents, the private lives of celebrities, and the ubiquitous news about crimes committed by young Muslim immigrants from the mountainous regions of Northern Africa and Turkey.
What one will definitely not learn is, how the unfolding economic crisis, or rather, depression, is affecting Europe's social fabric. Yet it is absolutely vital for anyone in Europe to be informed about what the current economic disaster is doing to his next-door neighbors, to his fellow-men in the same neighborhood, in the rest of the country and in the neighboring countries. It is vital to know what is going on because very soon, most Europeans will probably have to face similar problems. These will eventually have an impact on the entire continent and drastically change its face for years to come. So far, the effects are absolutely devastating and beyond what anyone would have thought possible even a year ago.
Would you believe that half a million people in Spain go hungry? That their situation is so bad they are actually receiving food aid from the EU? These and other shocking facts are to be found in a publication called “The economic crisis and its humanitarian impact on Europe—Testimonies from the Red Cross Red Crescent,” recently published by the Red Cross Red Crescent. It is the first publication that gives an idea of the effects of the current crisis. Since it is just a first step in an effort to determine the extent and scope of what is going on, most of the information is still unquantified. Nevertheless, the report is deeply disturbing, not to say alarming.
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