DEATH OF A BLOGGER - SECOND TAKE

Yesterday, I left you on a happy cliffhanger, promising to continue a post on my one-day cruise to three islands. Unfortunately, I will interrupt my joyride for a news update regarding the assassination of 37-year-old journalist/blogger Socrates Giolias on July 19.

CLICK HERE to see what I had written.

Since then, the blog linked to him, Troktiko, went offline, citing security reasons for its closure. Specifically its last message - on July 24, 2010 - translates to this:

"Goodnight Greece, the birthplace of democracy has ended up killing the freedom of expression.

Socrates, we wish you well and hope you're watching over us."

Today, Ta Nea daily newspaper and various blogs published a seven-page proclamation by the group known as Revolutionaries' Sect that claims responsibility for the gangland-style attack of Giolias outside his home. My jaw dropped as it confirmed certain nagging suspicions I had that Giolias may not have been as untarnished as media portrayals make him out to be.

The statement criticises several prominent Greek journalists and threatens a number of people involved in corruption. It details Giolias' own links to illegal doping in athletics, for the dissemination of propaganda and a whole list of other links with some of Greece's most successful journalists, clergy members involved in public fraud and prominent businessmen who are suspected of encouraging a SYSTEM that is based on bribe, theft and economic humiliation of the people in this country...

Ideologically, the sentiments expressed in the message sound pure and altruistic (though I'm always a bit sceptical when it comes to "altruism"). Here is how it starts:

"In today’s world the most violent thing is to stay impassive. All our life is bombarded with violence. And when it is the violence of cops, of incarceration centres, of prisons, then things are even more suspicious. We are talking of violence without bloodshed. Of the violence of window dressing, of advertisements, of drugged consumption, of psycho-deadlocks, of loneliness. We live in pitiful cities, we eat plastic food, we are informed by trumped-up news, we shop for processed products, we work at disgusting jobs, we admire fake role models, we construct small private cells in our homes with happy furnishings.

We are tired of this vacancy of life. We said 'that’s enough…no more paid up days…no more humiliations at work…no more borrowed prayers goodnight…'

That is why 1.5 years ago we created the 'Revolutionaries' Sect' that is the vehicle of our escape from the fucked up silence of the prison world we live in. Two-three weapons to jump-start us, a few books and some outlawed knowledge from previous experiences combined with quite some 'kilos' of guts and our unswerving conscience that said: person or pig or slave or revolutionary or compromise with resignation?

And that’s how we began."

So who is right? What is the truth? Who are the real criminals, the real terrorists? (We already know the victims - that's us). Idealistically, what a wonderful world it would be without conspiracies or at least one where corporate theives think twice before building yet another off-shore company! But should a group take the law into their own hands and kill when the law in their country has proven to be lawless?

And I end with the same question as the one I had asked during my last post on Giolias -

Is justice ever served when big interests are at stake?

RIP Socrates Giolias, fellow blogger, colleague, friend (yes, I use the term cause when I met you several times in a social/professional capacity you actually appeared 'likeable')... I'm sure you had your reasons, your point of view - but then again, maybe you don't even know the truth. Perhaps you are just a symbol... Or is the answer on the print found on your t-shirt stating that you were simply intoxicated?