Soros bets against Euro

[Jan Klimkowski]

The human cost of Shock Therapy.

An honourable man is dead.

An elderly man who took his life outside the Greek parliament in Athens , in apparent desperation over his debts, has highlighted the human cost of an economic crisis that has not only brought the country to the brink financially, but also seen suicides soar.

As Greeks digested the news, with politicians clearly as shocked as society at large, mourners made their way to Syntagma square, where the retired pharmacist shot himself with a handgun.

The 77-year-old pensioner pulled the trigger as people were emerging from a metro station nearby in the morning rush hour. One witness told state TV that before shooting himself he had shouted, "I'm leaving because I don't want to pass on my debts."

In a handwritten note, the unidentified man, who was described as an "upstanding and decent" father of one, said he had decided to end his life because he did want to be reduced to foraging through rubbish bins to survive.

"The Tsolakoglou occupation government has nullified any chance of my survival which was based on a decent salary that for 35 years I alone (without state support) paid for, " said the note likening the Athens government to that run by Giorgos Tsolakoglou who headed a collaborationist administration when the Nazis invaded and occupied Greece during the Second World War.

"Because I am of an age that does not allow me to forecfully react (without of course excluding that if some Greek took a Kalashnikov first, I would be the second) I see no other solution than a decent ending before I start looking in the garbage to feed myself. I beleive that youth who have no future will one day take up arms and hang the national traitors upside-down in Syntagma square just as the Italians did in 1945 to Mussolini."

Within hours, dozens of handwritten notes and flowers had been pinned to the tree under which he had stood.

Source - The Guardian, April 4, 2012.