This is madness!
This is where I brutalize the masses.
Ανοικτή επιστολή προς τον Δημήτρη Χριστόφια
Jul 15th
Αξιότιμε κύριε πρόεδρε,
Λένε ότι κάθε έθνος έχει την κυβέρνηση που του αξίζει. Σε ευχαριστούμε λοιπόν γιατί μαζί σου, σαν έθνος ωριμάσαμε το πρωινό της 11ης Ιουλίου και καταλάβαμε ότι μας αξίζει κάτι πολύ καλύτερο από εσένα.
Εξαιτίας σου εσένα και της διεφθαρμένης σου κυβέρνησης έχουμε θρηνήσει φίλους και συμπατριώτες, ήρωες που δώσανε τη ζωή τους υπηρετώντας την πατρίδα, προσπαθώντας να διορθώσουν τα λάθη που εσύ έχεις κάνει. Εξαιτίας σου βρισκόμαστε σε οικονομικό αδιέξοδο. Εξαιτίας σου δεν έχουμε ακόμη και ηλεκτρισμό. Εξαιτίας σου χιλιάδες αγανακτισμένοι πολίτες μαζεύονται έξω από το προεδρικό κάθε μέρα και απαιτούν λίγη ελπίδα για το μέλλον που θα τους προσφέρει η παραίτησή σου.
Κύριε πρόεδρε, δεν έχεις καταλάβει το βάρος της κατάστασης. Η σκέψη και μόνο των νεκρών μας γεμίζει τα μάτια και εσύ μας απαντάς με αερολογίες. Προσπαθείς να διχάσεις τον λαό και να φέρεις με το μέρος σου τα κομματόσκυλα σου μιλώντας για πραξικόπημα, για φασίστες και για τη σοβαρότητα της προεδρίας της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης. Ολίγον μας νοιάζει… Δεν υπάρχουν πλέον πρόβατα κύριε πρόεδρε. Αυτό δεν είναι κάτι που θα περάσει με τις φθηνές σου προσπάθειες να μαζέψεις τους πιστούς οπαδούς σου, να καταστρέφεις έγραφα και επιστολές που αποδεικνύουν την ενοχή σου, να κλείνεις τα φώτα έξω από το προεδρικό και με το να ορίζεις μονομελή μιλημένη επιτροπή και καλά για να βρει τους ενόχους. Πως κοιμάσαι τις νύχτες έχοντας το βάρος αυτό στην συνείδησή σου;
Βλέποντας το πώς συμπεριφέρεσαι ακόμη μέχρι και σήμερα, φυσικά και η οργή παραμένει. Δεν έχεις τα κότσια να αναλάβεις την ευθύνη, να απολογηθείς και να μας δώσεις λύση για το μέλλον. Κύριε πρόεδρε, απαιτούμε το λιγότερο που θα μπορούσε κανείς στην θέση σου να κάνει. Απαιτούμε πραγματική μετάνοια, δημόσια συγνώμη και απολογία μαζί με ανάληψη ευθύνης προς όλες τις οικογένειες που τώρα θρηνούν. Απαιτούμε σχέδιο επίλυσης της οικονομικής μας κατάστασης και του προβλήματος με τον ηλεκτρισμό, σωστό, με χρονοδιαγράμματα, με διαφάνεια στο κόστος, με διαφάνεια στις προσφορές. Απαιτούμε σοβαρή και σωστή επιτροπή, επιλεγμένη με δημοκρατικούς τρόπους, η οποία θα διερευνήσει το θέμα και θα δημοσιεύσει όλα τα στοιχεία που αποκαλύπτουν τους ηθικούς αυτουργούς πίσω από αυτή την εγκληματική πράξη. Αν εσύ κύριε πρόεδρε δεν μπορείς, τότε παραιτήσου και άφησε την καρέκλα σε άλλον. Ντροπή και αίσχος σε αυτόν που ακόμη και μπροστά σε αυτή την τραγωδία βάζει πρώτα τα προσωπικά ή κομματικά του συμφέροντα.
Με όσο σεβασμό μου έχει απομείνει,
Στέφανος Δημητρίου
Dear politicians
Jul 13th
Dear politicians,
We see you. The lives of 13 people mean nothing to you. You would give hundreds or thousands to save your pitiful existence. Failure after failure after failure, do you even realize what is going on? Last night, you used tear gas on peaceful protesters, among them being old people, children and even babies. You killed 13 of your own people and you now are hurting more because what you fear most is losing your chair. You stood our economy against a wall and executed it in cold blood. While people of all parties, even your own, are protesting for justice you speak of political interests and focus on the minority that tries to take political advantage of the situation, instead of taking the actions necessary to protect your people from further damage.
You are the reason people don’t vote any more. Take responsibility and announce immediate measures to handle the situation, because if not, I fear more people will be hurt at the protests.
P.S.: And for Christ’s sake, retire that peasant Argyrou from our National Guard and give him a farm of sheep or something to look after.
Tonight at “Plateia Eleftherias”
Jul 12th
What happened yesterday rightfully caused nation-wide anger. You do not play with the lives of people. It is really unbelievable that our own government, the people that we voted as the most appropriate to represent us and govern us have moved past fraud and stealing money from our pockets and onto murdering us.
“Normal” procedures were followed. An event like this happens and where the results? The Minister of Defense and the Chief of the National Guard resigning. Is this what the people get? Replacement of the people in charge? How many times are we going to see people replaced only to later realize that the new people in charge will not do any better?
I wonder how big the problems have to get before we start paying attention. Before we realize the responsibility we carry and the weight of our vote. We will not be seeing any good for as long we vote based on who is a celebrity, who helped our football team, who can get us a job, and who our “identity” demands us to vote because we were raised to be in a specific political party. If our criteria for who is worth a position of power are not about who can fight and serve for OUR good as a society then how well they perform in those tasks do not matter, as they do not affect the criteria that we which actually use…and if they don’t matter…well we just saw what can happen.
Tonight, people will be demonstrating requesting the resignation of the president, Mr. Christofias. Apparently the idea of seeing the people responsible behind bars even though it logically should be correct, it seems too far fetched for people to demand. A resignation will suffice. Now, whether or not we are capable of voting who will be best for Cyprus is a different story…
Incompetence brought tragedy
Jul 11th
I often said that some people are capable of stepping over dead bodies for their career and to do their job. I never meant it literally, up until now.
Fools and egoistic uneducated peasants to say the least, those that do not allow their names to be said without the prefix “Sir” because of their military rank, but are anything but Sirs. How irresponsible can you be? You risk the lives of your personnel, including those small children who waste 2 years of the lives for no reason other than YOU having a job? And why? Because you don’t have the money or time to move the ammunition to a safe location and under safe infrastructure? Are you serious? Did they give you an IQ test before giving you the rank? Where are your balls to demand the safety of your people? Where are your balls for once to stop kissing your higher officer’s ass and pretend that everything is fine? Did you really punish your lieutenant who refused to put a guard in front of the ammunition because they were not safe? I hope that’s just rumors.
You think you are so important because you work for the National Guard. I got news for you buddy. You do not have the brain to understand that we suffer more losses in lives because the National Guard exists rather than if it didn’t. There is nothing that you can do to make this right. Justice can not be served because the value of life is such that nothing can be just against its loss.
P.S.: In Egkomi, the line of blood donors started from outside where people stood under the hot sun and went inside up 2 flights of stairs and into a huge room full of people waiting to donate blood. We stood there for hours. Everyone who participated is a hero. At least we still have a consciousness.
The war against ourselves
Jul 8th
Bare in mind that I am not anti-American. In fact, I love USA for their education, advanced research, and scientific improvements in all fields, astronomy, medicine, psychology, etc. It is still the land of opportunity. However I do love all other countries as well, for what they each offer to this world.
With that positive thought in mind, I am telling you that we are all subject to form strong opinions that we take as CERTAIN facts, based on what information we are continuously bombarded by the media and those who control them. It is the essence of most political opinions, the driving force of this HUGE industry called marketing and advertising. It is the reason why the vast majority consider the religion that he/she was raised in as the one true religion, e.g. Christians believing bluntly in Jesus, while Muslims do not. Everyone is human…unfortunately human that was raised in different belief systems, systems which advocate hatred towards each other in search for domination.
In order to achieve real global peace and freedom we do not need soldiers dieing for us out of love as you said. What we need is change, in every single one of us. What we need is the ability to see and understand the truth. Change is the responsibility of the individual, of each and every one of us. One of the reasons that over the last decade global awareness and understanding has increased exponentially is because of the rapid expansion of the world wide web, and the free distribution of information and opinions that despite their pathetic attempts they could not control. Forget the controlled media sources which only intend to brain wash you. Read online. Read uncensored posts and discussions of people with no political or monetary interest. Read the facts and apply your own critical thinking. Are our lives dedicated to the interest of bankers and politicians? To the interest of billionairs that exploit humanity just because they managed to persuade the masses that they are actually working for themselves?
War is never the solution. Inequality causes friction, unhappiness, depression, hatred and death. The only war we should be fighting is against ourselves, for the things that make us unequal. Capitalism, social classes, racism, religion all these are what we should be fighting and not each other.
Playing for change / Fight against capitalism
Jul 8th
Racism, capitalism, religion…all bad ideas.
Until there is no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man’s skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Everywhere is war
Buddha – As we think, so we become
Jun 24th
The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings…
As the shadow follows the body
As we think, so we become.
Free thinking or different?
May 27th
Recently I have had an intense conversation with some local free thinkers, as apparently I shouldn’t have expected their support in the parliament elections. Yes, I ran for parliament. I said nothing in public because I never had the delusion that I could collect enough votes, however as someone who finds great interest in the so called free and anti-dogmatic thinking I found this to be an opportunity for me to collect at least a respectable amount of votes and the local free thinkers group to project their existence, will and ability to influence, as well as strengthening their bonds for having done something of essence together as a group.
I was wrong and it ended up badly.
The truth of the matter is that to be a very active free thinker you need to have high intelligence, obviously, so you can criticize and apply thought to what you observe. However it does not mean that if you are intelligent then you are also a free thinker. No, free thinkers are a sub group of the intelligent people. It takes more than just intelligence. What does it take then? When I speak about the free thinkers of Cyprus to other people quite often I get the answer “so, the group of everyone with issues”. Not all of the free thinkers can be said as having “issues”. If you are anti-dogmatic against a dogma widely held by your society then you are maladjusted, which in my opinion can be good, if used for the right reasons. As Martin Luther King said, “I’m proud to be maladjusted“. The reason they are considered as people with “issues” is that a lot use their intelligence on this subject, which is considered personally unproductive by others and trying to persuade people for their “beliefs” (because in their eyes they are beliefs and not investigated facts) when they could be focusing on personal life and career like a “normal” person would do. But is there really no purpose behind it?
Purposive Behaviorism as introduced by Edward C. Tolman states in short pretty much what it says, that all behaviour must have a purpose. So what is the purpose of being actively involved in free thinking? For a period of time it can be self-improvement, getting educated, digesting knowledge gaining mental abilities and that is fine if you are a person who likes to learn and you have learning as your purpose. That however, does not explain the need to be spending a great deal of your time arguing and trying to convince others of what you know. If you have all this knowledge and you do not use it for good and real purposes, such as activists groups fighting against homophobia, or racism, then what good is it sitting down arguing one on one against anyone, enriching your words with hate and personal attacks? What purpose other than satisfying your own personal need to appear stronger and victor of the discussion?
There is no social group that could benefit from having such people. They are the reason free thinkers are being considered as people with “issues”. Peace can not be achieved by war. Love, respect and unity can not be achieved by trashing on those who don’t show it. Free thinking is no longer free thinking when it is bounded by psychological needs for personal satisfaction, by competitiveness between you and the other person rather than your subject and his/hers. You can not show people that caring about the world is important when you do not care about them. Gandhi was not unwise when he said “be the change you want to see in the world”.
The death of Bin Laden
May 3rd
So the last two days we have been bombarded with opinions about Bin Laden’s death. This is due to social media…the glory of the Internet allowing people to express opinions on a global level. I bet most people under 30 or so first found out about Bin Laden’s death through Facebook or Twitter (I know I did). The thing about opinions is that everybody is entitled to one however that doesn’t say anything about the quality.
A lot of people have been celebrating feeling that justice has been served, feeding their hate for the 9/11 attacks; a minor case of the same feeling against the Japanese for the recent natural disasters, thinking that it’s God taking revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Obviously for them, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 4 years later were not enough. Blood for blood. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraq dieing in an oil-stealing expedition a search for weapons of mass destruction, fed by the hate against Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks. For the western people, they are all just Muslims. Of course there’s another major group of people (the cool ones) who share the opinion “oh god, who cares about Bin Laden and if he’s dead or not”, closing their eyes on what’s going on around us, even for more relevant things to us such as our own national problem in Cyprus. Their motos : “nothing will ever change”, “whatever is going to happen is going to happen” and “who cares, let’s have fun and look at our own lives”. And then there’s the skeptics, those who fear that USA could have killed Bin Laden anytime they wanted but they prefered to keep him alive as an extra reason to sustain their wars for economic reasons, while they chose to kill him now for greater political interest (sounds rational to me by the way).
Personally I’m not the kind of person who will celebrate the death of another. As Martin Luther King said (I seem to be quoting him a lot lately):
“God has a job for us to do. Maybe our mission is to save the soul of America. We can’t save the soul of this nation throwing bricks. We can’t save the soul of this nation getting our ammunitions and going out shooting physical weapons. We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take up the ammunition of love.”
Yesterday, Turkish Cypriot students studying in Ankara demonstrated with signs such as “Ankara lay your hand off Cyprus” and “All nations are brothers”, setting the right example. Maybe if Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots demonstrate together for peace and unity on our small island the world will understand that what we want is peace. We don’t want wars for economic purposes, we don’t want to hate other races or other religions (maybe we should be fixing our broken religions then), we don’t want to be at work thinking that it’s possible for an airplane to fly on us. We want the world’s governments to stop investing in weapons, military personnel, military research and facilities and invest that money for their people, into renewable energy sources, health-care, starvation and science. If that happens then maybe people will do indeed see how ridiculous leaders that claim death to be a miracle are. There is nothing miraculous about someone dieing. There is just a change in the feelings of hate, revenge, safety and kissing America’s ass. Nothing miraculous. Just feelings.
Portal 2
Apr 27th
When Portal 2 was announced last year my initial thought was “come on…an FPS game with no guns? just teleporting?” It sounded lame and when people spoke to me about it my reaction would be “right…I think I’ll stick to Left 4 Dead”. How wrong could I have been? It turns out you don’t need blood and gore to have a great FPS game. Now, having finished the game yesterday I have nothing but good things to say about it. Valve did an amazing job and Portal 2 is simply brilliant. Very nice graphics and gameplay, with some good puzzles to get your brain working combined with amazing humor from start to the end. Portal 2 is the best single player game I have played in a long time.
I haven’t tried the cooperative mode yet but I bet it will be equally awesome.