To whom it may concern,

Hi guys, the year is (surprisingly) 2006, the place is (not-quite-so surprisingly) Greece, and the administrator of an RSS aggregating service (blogme.gr) got his ass sued, arrested and jailed for hosting a link to a blog with allegedly offending content.

We don’t know who the offended fellow actually is, but he is probably someone with really big connections. That’s because the standard procedure, even in Greece, consists of a) verifying that a crime may have taken place by actually checking the bloody law b) asking the alleged offender a thing or two verifying that they are a likely offender and c) arresting and/or jailing them if you have valid reasons to assume they are guilty and/or dangerous. As you can see, things here have not quite followed the standard procedure but pretty much its exact opposite. Ergo, somebody with big connections is abusing the law to shut whatever mouths they can.

I have good reasons to suspect that the “person with connections” is an ultra-nationalist televangelist and the offending blog is a satiric blog that has single-handedly managed to make him look like the twerp he actually is, greatly reducing his (major) political and ideological impact on greek society. This places the issue under a whole new prespective, but I suppose for now we must stick with the facts: A blog offends (?) X, that blog cannot be sued because it is hosted in the States, so X sues a completely innocent greek aggregation service just to make a point, and the point is “the [incompetent, prehistoric and corrupt] greek legal system is mine, assholes, so you ‘d better watch out!”.

Read a shitload of posts (mostly in greek, I’m afraid) about the whole issue here

update (31/10/2006): it seems that everything happened four months ago, which raises some interesting questions along the general lines of why the fsck did the admin (Mr. Tsipropoulos) inform the public last Tuesday. Stay tuned.

έβγαλα το link προς McManus, μπορεί να είναι ωραίο μπλογκ και ωραίος τύπος αλλά έχω αλλεργία στη διαγραφή πληροφορίας.

Όλοι αυτοί οι “”"”"αξιόλογοι”"”"” που σβήνουν ενοχλητικά comments δε θα ήθελαν να έχουν καμία σχέση με ένα τόσο απλοϊκό δείγμα γραφής της μαζικής κουλτούρας.

ότι η αμερικανική εταιρεία που έκανε τη μελέτη λέγεται The International Strategic Studies Association και το περιοδικό που εκδίδει λέγεται Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy.

****

Είμαι βέβαια σίγουρος ότι ο κ. Ιγνατίου σαν επαγγελματίας δημοσιογράφος που είναι θα είχε τους λόγους του που υπέπεσε σε αυτό το χμμ τυπογραφικό λάθος. Πολύ περισσότερο που είναι εκείνος που τους ανακάλυψε όλους αυτούς. Μάλλον έφταιγε η κούραση από το ταξίδι Virginia-DC.

Για τα ΜΜΕ και blogs που αντέγραψαν την είδηση[;] υπάρχουν ακόμα πιο εύλογα ελαφρυντικά, για τα οποία σας παραπέμπω στο View Page Source.

Anyway αν είναι κάποιος συνδρομητής ας μας πει τι λέει τέλος πάντων αυτή η έκθεση.

to take this punishment and harsh treatment;

we escaped war, poverty, oppression and genocidal attacks

and came here to find shelter in this peaceful land[1]

photo by [2]

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[1] Read the full letter @”This is Not My Country (via S-R)
[2] Amnesty International - Greece: Degrading Practices of Refugee Detention