The Red Rock, Icaria.

      Most of us are now aware of the tragic state of the vast majority of the population of Greece, with massive unemployment, rapid increase if health problems both mental and physical and in your face poverty and deprivation. It's the “financial crisis” we are told, we have to slash your standard of living to pay the losses of the gamblers in the financial Mafia. The plan, of course is to promise everybody pie-in-the sky, from those wonderful green shoots of growth, that will miraculously appear in the distant future, and put the whole stinking mess back on track for another rip-off session for the corporate world. To say the whole of Greece has been decimated is not quite accurate. 

     There is a Greek island called Icaria, sometimes called the Red Rock, not because of the colour of the landscape, but more the colour of its lifestyle. The islanders of Icaria have always been an independent lot and threw the Turks out in 1912 and declared themselves, The Free State of Icaria. Shortly after this they join with Greece. In 1947 when the nationalist in Greece defeated the communists, with no little help from the British military, the nationalist government rounded up 13,000 communists and deported them to Icaria. The communists soon integrated with the locals and their influence has helped shape the lifestyle on the island to this day. The island never embraced the consumer society and they live a more communal community oriented system. If somebody on the island wants to build a house, or repair a barn, the labour will come free from the community, knowing that it will be returned when their needs require. The type of comments from the islanders goes something like, “These city folks see something in the evening and they must have it in the morning and seldom is anything they buy something that they really need. Consumerism is not happiness.”

       So far they have been more or less untouched by the financial Mafia's rape and plunder of Greece, perhaps the rest of the country could see an answer to their problems if they take a wee look at the island of Icaria. In fact, perhaps we could all learn something of value from the people on that sunny island situated in the Aegean. 

ann arky's home.