This is what "social darwinism" looks like

[kpete]

THU APR 05, 2012 AT 07:57 AM PDT
This is what "social darwinism" looks like
byGeorgia LogothetisFollow


Named as Dimitris Christoulas by the Greek media, the retired pharmacist was described as decent, law-abiding, meticulous and dignified.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/05/greek-suicide-dimitris-christoulas-protest?newsfeed=true

The old man, reportedly ill with cancer and exhausted by the agony devouring Greece, just couldn't take it anymore.

His name was Dimitris. And so he walked out Wednesday morning onto the beautiful and peaceful Syntagma Square across the street from the Parliament. And with him he carried the tools of his martyrdom: He carried a piece of paper that was his suicide note, and he carried a gun.

The retiree left a suicide note, which read in part:

"The occupation government... has literally wiped out my ability to survive, based on a respectable pension which I had paid for during a 35-year period," the pensioner said in an excerpt published in Greek newspapers.

"I find no other solution for a dignified end before I start sifting through garbage to feed myself," he allegedly wrote in red ink.

&feature=player_embedded

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0405-20120405,0,4349433.column
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/05/greek-suicide-dimitris-christoulas-protest?newsfeed=true
http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/54580
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/05/1080543/-This-is-what-social-darwinism-looks-like

[montanacowboy]

1. America's future under the Ryan budget

get ready for it

[lsewpershad]

6. and a republican govt +1

[Blue_Tires]

2. kick

[Zalatix]

3. Mission accomplished. That's what the Plutocracy wants. Explicitly.

So many people here cling to Occam's Razor and call it simple negligence and selfishness.

Occam's Razor fails this one. This is about mass extermination. Quiet, passive mass extermination. There won't be cattle cars or Mongol-like hordes of extermination squads. This will be done by mass deprivation by means of using Capitalism.

[LiberalLoner]

9. You are absolutely right. How do we fight back, how do we survive? We'd better have a plan.

[Zalatix]

18. Destroy the thing that the Plutocrats depend on: Money

There are two ways to achieve this:

1) Hyperinflation on a global scale, the most difficult scenario to imagine, will render the Plutocracy powerless.

2) We could also go back to a barter system like what's happening on a small but growing scale in Greece.

Either system is better than what we've got coming at the hands of the plutocrats. This Greek guy killing himself is just the beginning.

[TheMastersNemesis]

4. This Survival Of The Fittest Scene Is What Romney, Ryan And The GOP Plan To Bring.

Our patriotic billionaires, the GOP and big business are on the warpath. They want supreme power or else. The Kochs and their allies, IMF, WTO and World Bank set Europe up. The GOP attacks on socialist Europe was code. They don't want us to model after such communism. They demand totalitarian Christian capitalism.

The RW has working people under attack all over the planet and Europe, the USA and Canada are now their main targets. Unless we crush them politically they will crush the American people.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. +1 Except it's soon to be 'survival of the richest'.

[LarryNM]

7. Absolutely, that is the Reality. n/t

[Yavin4]

10. It's Not Survival of the Fittest. It's Survival of the Most Sociopathic.

That's what most people don't get. You can be smart, hard working, accomplished, etc., but that won't be enough to protect you. You have to be a ruthless sociopath.

[angel823]

17. totally

agree.

Angel in Texas

[Lost-in-FL]

11. GOP New Deal for America: If you get sick, die quickly or...

...seek a 2nd amendment remedy like this guy did.

[Ganja Ninja]

12. Here's the flip side of Social Darwinism.

[LarryNM]

13. Social Darwinist Austerity Leads to Death by Suicide. A Trend?

Like with Vietnam and other events, if by differing methods.

[bayareaboy]

14. I know where he comes from ...

But November is close, and I just wanna see what the wing-nuts do when they lose the house and can't strangle the country anymore.

That will also give me a big smile!

[Uncle Joe]

15. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[DeSwiss]

16. K&R

''Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.'' ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

[Permanut]

19. Kickety reckity

I was glad that Thom Hartmann covered this as well today.

[area51]

20. You can see social darwinism in this country.

Here's one example.

Each year 100,000 people die due to lack of health care.

[font face="times"]"Any proposal that sticks with our current dependence on for-profit private insurers ... will not be sustainable. And the new law will not get us to universal coverage ...." -- T.R. Reid, The Healing of America[/font]

"Despite the present hyperbole by its supporters, this latest effort will end up as just another failed reform effort littering the landscape of the last century." --John Geyman, M.D., Hijacked! The Road to Single Payer in the Aftermath of Stolen Health Care Reform