INTELLECTUAL terror and a threat to democracy was how the heroic defenders of free speech saw the confiscation of two PCs by the cops from the home of a Nicosia lawyer, who allegedly administered the ultra-patriotic blog Christofias-watch.
The blog, humorously, claims to be run by ‘The Committee for the restoration of democracy in Cyprus’, but there the humour ends. Most of the content consists of sanctimonious attacks on the comrade for his positions at the talks. The blog which also operates a forum, often labels people who do not share its ultra-patriotic views on the Cyprob, traitors, agents, Turk-worshippers etc.
The cops confiscated the PCs from the home of lawyer Xenis Xenophontos, after they had traced the IP address of the blog having secured court orders for all their actions. The blog had been reported to the Attorney-general by journalist Makarios Droushiotis for featuring threatening and abusive comments against him. The police subsequently decided to investigate whether there was a case of incitement to commit a crime.
It was as part of this investigation that the police took the PCs and infuriated all great and good patriots of Kyproulla for supposedly exercising Stalinist-type intellectual terror and suppressing free speech. Below is an excerpt of what was written on the blog that prompted Droushiotis to report the case to the AG. This is the type of freedom of expression the holier-than-thou lawyers have been passionately defending since Thursday.
“IF Makarios lived in Ireland and instead of being an arse-wipe of the Turks and English here, he was an arse-wipe of the English, they would have killed him a long time ago and nobody would have known about it. If Makarios lived in Palestine and instead of being and arse-wipe of the Turks and English here, he was an arse-wipe of the English and the Israelis, they would have killed him a long time ago and nobody would have known about it….
“Conclusion: Only in Cyprus could Makarios live. (This is the place) where traitors, collaborators, rent-boys, the whores and arse-wipes of the occupier (and this little man of shame is all of the above) can strut around. The traitors deserve fire and axe. A pit with lime-stone for the collaborators.”
ALL BASH-PATRIOTIC parties and politicians slammed the police for dealing a blow against democracy, showing excessive zeal, abusing their power and the government of exercising intellectual terror and of attempting silencing the opposing view.
Democracy was in plaster, claimed Yiorkos Lillikas, one of the defenders of free speech who as spokesman of the Ethnarch routinely dismissed the great leader’s critics as Turkish agents. And all today’s defenders of the opposing view – Ethnarch Junior, Koulias, Omirou, Syllouris, Rikkos et al – did exactly the same during the Ethnarch’s intolerant rule, but stopped short of calling the critics arse-wipes of the Turks.
Back in those days, intellectual terror, which included an orchestrated campaign of lies about briberies, aimed at discrediting the arse-wipes of the Turks who opposed the Ethnarch’s decisions, was perfectly acceptable as it was for the good of the country. There is good and bad intellectual terror, a bit like good and bad cholesterol.
When the cops enter the house of a lawyer at 6am and confiscate his PC it is bad but when party leaders and hacks accuse citizens of taking bribes from the US, without having a shred of evidence it is good intellectual terror.
P.S We haven’t heard anything recently about when Michalis Ignatiou’s eagerly-awaited book about the above-mentioned bribes would be published.
LISTENING to the outraged defenders of the right to call people you disagree with, whores, traitors and arse-wipes, on the Friday morning radio shows, I realised that apart from stupidity, hypocrisy is also invincible in the People’s Republic of Kyproulla.
If a fraction of the above abuse was directed against any of the lawyers, beating their breasts about intellectual terror on the air-waves, they would not have hesitated exercising legal terror – filing libel suits, securing gagging orders and demanding millions in compensation.
If this column wrote that lawyer Kokos Kolosfongarios was a dishonest, greedy arse-wipe, who deserved to die because he used is ultra-patriotism for the sole purpose of making loads of money we would be served with a libel suit and reported to the cops. How many of the lawyers, defending Christofias-watch’s right to heap obscenities on people, would have gone on radio to claim this was suppression of free speech?
I think we all know the answer but I will not for a minute suggest that our idealistic lawyer/politicians are pathetic hypocrites, because there is no guarantee that they would be in a respect-for-freedom-of-expression mood today.
THE LAWYER, who is representing Xenis the suspected blog administrator, is the pompous, big legal ego Christos Clerides, un-affectionately referred to by his colleagues at the courts as ‘o omorphos’ (the handsome one).
Omorphos issued a statement on behalf of his client, claiming the cops had violated the privacy of communications by securing the IP address of the blog and that their action constituted ‘political persecution’. The real objective of the cops was to close down Christofias-watch because it was a thorn in the side of the government he argued.
On the radio shows on Friday morning, he was hysterically self-righteous. He slammed the intellectual terror and the violation of the right to free speech, likening Kyproulla to a Stalinist state. He also insisted that the threats in the blog should not have been taken seriously by the authorities, implying that the bloggers should have been allowed to carry on writing grossly offensive obscenities about people they did not like.
Would the holier-than-thou legal ego have defended freedom of expression so zealously if the obscenities and threats had been directed at him? Certainly not. When this establishment poked some fun at Clerides, for his patronising treatment of a fellow guest on a TV show last January, he served us with a libel suit. There were no obscenities or death threats in our item, but he still took it very seriously and is demanding between 50 and 100 grand in compensation for hurting his ego.
Perhaps now that he has become a passionate champion of freedom of expression, he will withdraw his libel suit against us.
KYPROULLA’S government was behaving like the authorities of North Korea and China claimed Clerides, Junior, Rikkos and the rest of the free speech campaigners. Only in those countries did the cops confiscate PCs and try to stop free speech.
This was not correct, and because we want to be fair to our North Korean and Chinese friends, we should mention that police in Brussels, the capital of the EU, have also been known to confiscate PCs and nobody accused Belgium of being a Stalinist state.
Hans-Martin Tillack, the Brussels correspondent of the German magazine Stern, had his flat raided, and had his lap-top, files and address books seized some six years ago. His alleged crime was that he had exposed corruption scandals involving EU officials. The raid had been ordered by Olaf, the EU anti-corruption unit.
Tillack sued the Belgian government for this treatment and won the case. So the next time Junior or Clerides want to attack the government’s intellectual terror, they should not only make parallels with North Korea. Our authorities were behaving in a very European way in confiscating Xenis’ PCs.
NEITHER our democracy nor free speech is under threat from the comrade president’s government. What is under real threat and justifies wild public hysteria is our economy which has been going from bad to worse thanks to his ineptitude and cowardice.
Instead of cutting public sector jobs he is creating new ones. Another 46 positions, commanding high salaries, have been created in the public sector for Akelites, and even the public parasites union PASYDY has expressed public objections. Meanwhile the negotiations he was to hold personally with PASYDY’S reps, in order to persuade them to accept cost-cutting measures, have not even begun. Since announcing his initiative, two months ago, one inconclusive meeting was held.
If he shows the same urgency he displayed in the Cyprob talks, in negotiations with the parasite bosses we are certain to be declared the second Greek state of the EU.
WASTING state money is an article of faith for the comrade. It is in this context we should view the Council of Ministers’ decision to increase spending on the establishment of the Limassol Technology Park from 10 to 50 million euro.
When our good friend the finance minister raised objections to this expenditure, he was told he lacked vision and was thinking like an accountant. He was the only minister who voted against this colossally idiotic idea which envisages the construction of 180 buildings in an area of 2,000 square metres. Firms specialising in nanotechnology, biochemistry, energy, IT and telecommunications would be based there.
At least this is the thinking of our government visionaries. The reality is more likely to be a Technology Park of empty buildings which in the end would be rented to pastellaki and soudjoukko makers, to cover some of the costs.
A FEW MONTHS ago, officials at the Labour and Social Insurance ministry made a mistake in their calculations and made higher welfare payments to a group of people. In total, the ministry paid out a million euro more than it should have done.
When the issue was brought up at the Council of Ministers, one minister suggested that government cut a small amount from the monthly welfare payment of the recipients who had been overpaid to recover the money. Labour minister Sotiroulla, instead of being contrite for her ministry’s blunder, was outraged that anyone could make such an uncaring suggestion. ‘We can’t take money back from poor people,’ she said.
And the big-spending comrade leader agreed with her, even if the ministry had violated regulations and the recipients were not entitled to the extra cash.
WE DO NOT know which 5000-seat, warehouse restaurant hosted Omonia’s big party for winning the championship last Sunday but we would like to draw the police’s attention to the law-breaking we witnessed on the TV coverage of the celebrations. Television pictures showed several of the guests provocatively smoking. Does the smoking ban not apply to Omonia fans? If this is the case, Mr Katsounotos, I would like to know where I have to apply to become an Omonia pleb; I will even get Che tattoo.
THE QATARI delegation that came here for the signing of the deal for the hotel complex ended up at the palazzo de popolo where they were greeted by a group of ministers and government officials. We hear that one of the Qataris went up to interior minister Neoclis Sylikiotis and started speaking to him in Arabic. ‘No I am Neoclis Sylikiotis,’ replied the minister, a bit surprised that the Qatari thought Cypriots spoke Arabic.
NOBODY was surprised to hear that the foreign bird activists who went to the Paralimni area to dismantle mist nets and lime-sticks were beaten up by angry locals. Did the naive do-gooders think they would have been given a taste of the traditional Cypriot hospitality, promoted by the CTO, once they started tampering with lime-sticks?
All the Famagusta deputies slammed the actions of the do-gooders. DISY deputy Kyriacos Hadjiyiannis said their behaviour was aggressive and provocative. “They have no respect for our laws,” he complained. This was in stark contrast with the bird-trappers, who are all law-abiding citizens.
But the best argument against the activists was provided by DIKO motor-mouth Zacharias Koulias. “This is an occupied country with foreign occupation troops, with flagrant violation of human rights… but these gentlemen are not moved by any of that.” We rest our case.
