State media has reported that Dimitris Christoulas, the man who took his own life using a pistol on Syntagma Square, in central Athens, on Wednesday morning, left a suicide note.

“The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future, will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945″ the note said.

RIP

Update: In the UK current estimate of deaths caused wholly or partly by ‘Welfare reform’ is 90

Yes, the dear old Beeb now acquiesced to to such a degree that ‘state broadcaster’ is the only correct perforative description for it. Anyway, in this stirring article about some pasty faced toffs efforts to outdo New Labour in the Big Brother stakes entitled David Cameron defends secret courts and web monitoring plans. It talks about one of the motivations for the secret courts- the need for the govt to protect itself and the US torture regime from having their torturing of people being known and, heaven forfend, prosecuted as demanded by international law and the treaties they are hilariously signatories to. In the language it employs it seems to borrow a seemingly hip hop infused euphemism-

The deal ended the men’s damages claim for which they were demanding to see secret documents detailing their detention and ill-treatment by US forces in the wake of 9/11.

Yep ‘ill-treatment’ is what our polite establishment-soothing fearless hacks now call torture, kidnap, rape, genital mutilation, water boarding, sensory deprivation, inducement of psychosis, mental illness and mock execution. Now, dearest reader I ask you, with all due humility, if none of that qualifies as torture, JUST WHAT THE CUNTING FUCK DOES?

Oh dear. You see I’ve been offensive there, I used rude words. I’m just not fit to be in polite company, company that gets a neat salary, does what their editor and mortgage demands and calls torture ‘ill-treatment’. I know, I know. I can’t be proud of myself for I am a foul mouthed degenerate with no respect for vast secret global torture programs and the need to abdicate journalistic standards in order to support them. But, please, dear hack, if for some reason a razor blade is applied to your genitals, do remember this is not torture and on no account should the people doing this to you face any manner of criminal sanction. Enjoy the world you are helping build, it is Brave and New and we are all oh so proud of you.

Update: Please read Andy Worthington’s EXCLUSIVE: “They Want Me to be Harmed”: Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo, Describes His Isolation