Helleniscope Is Back, Leading the Struggle For the Truth In Our Community!

Has Helleniscope been the target of GOARCH attacks? When will our Community stop supporting the news outlets financially – and especially TNH – which do not report the truth?

By Nick Stamatakis

First things first: Many thanks to all of you, the readers of Helleniscope, the friends of the truth in reporting, who have been emailing me or calling me non-stop during the days of our absence.  It was truly humbling to experience this wave of love and support.

To answer the first question you all have in mind, this “blackout” was due to technical problems in the transition to an upgrade of our website.  The technical problems resulted from a lack of professionalism on the part of those who offered to do the job. And so, our first reaction to these problems will be a necessary one: Experimentation is over. Helleniscope will gradually pass to a more “professional” phase.  We have signed contracts with excellent IT technicians who will guarantee the upgrade of our website in the near future.

Does this mean we have not been targeted by those abusing power in GOARCH and elsewhere?  Not at all.  Helleniscope has been the target of silencing attacks in at least two significant ways (and several minor ones):

First, I have to remind all of you that for the past almost three years, I have been in Court fighting a frivolous defamation lawsuit by the “Education” director at GOARCH, A.Koularmanis.  Koularmanis is ostensibly the plaintiff, BUT the Park Avenue lawyer opposing me (as I represent myself “pro se”) happens to be a lawyer for John Catsimatidis, the vice president of the Archdiocesan Council and the #2 in rank in the hierarchy of the GOARCH organization.  How would you like it to have a billionaire, ranked 299th in the latest Forbes list, use his lawyer in the legal fight against you? I remind you that Catsimatides, three years ago, directly threatened “bloggers” who write against the Church, including Helleniscope…

Second, when I started this website in the fall of 2019, we received some initial support and an advertisement from a community business.  A year later, in early 2021, an “Archon” from Long Island called our sponsor and advertiser and announced that he and others from the “Church establishment” would boycott his business if he kept advertising in Helleniscope!! Without any further talk, I removed this advertisement the same day…

And so, the answer is yes, the “establishment” of GOARCH tried to silence Helleniscope – to no avail… During the lengthy legal battle, we were not deterred but kept presenting some of our most revealing reporting on all issues affecting our Church and community. To list them is not necessary.  You can go back and take a look or use our very functional search button: From the Karloutsos family corruption to Archbishop Elpidoktonos’ faithless political behavior, from the parish of Astoria to the one in West Palm Beach, from the Boston Seminary to the Istanbul Patriarchate and from the scandals at the Federation of New York, to the inept Consuls that torture anyone who has any business to do with Greece, Helleniscope never failed to perform its role: “Speaking truth to power”… In our case, we were dealing with a Church hierarchy that was – and still is – under two federal criminal investigations…

In addition, there is a more significant issue here that was not presented as much as it should be.  It has to do with my personal background in this community, a background filled with years of meaningful participation in most aspects that define us as Greek Americans. Please allow me in the next few paragraphs to leave aside my humility… In a very recent meeting with one of the most respected leaders of our community (someone who has been part of all our political struggles for many decades), he – and I – were surprised that he ignored that:

• I spent several years of my youth (on Onassis Foundation and Stony Brook University scholarships) researching aspects of the Cyprus question, including an academic year of field research in Cyprus (1989-1990), leading to a Ph.D. dissertation (1994).
• As I was writing my doctoral dissertation on Cyprus, I was the main editorial writer for TNH (1991-1997), when our community was up in arms against those trying to steal the “Name of Macedonia”.  I am proud to say that AB Iakovos was reading whole paragraphs of my editorials in his speech during our protest in 1993 outside the United Nations…
• Recently, I participated in the effort to recognize the Hellenic Genocides in Asia Minor when (2018-19) my son Andreas was an intern at congressman Billirakis’s office in DC. Andreas had written a full resolution on the issue; In the end, the Hellenic genocides were recognized in the first paragraph of the resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, which passed in Congress that year… (Interesting factoid: Kim Kardashian alone spent $10 million of her own money to recognize the Armenian Genocide in Congress.  We did what we could with the little that we had. If you want full recognition of our Genocides, keep in mind this number…)

Many people had accused me of “jumping the gun” in coining the nickname “Elpidoktonos” (“Hope-Killer”) on the day of his election in May 2019.  But they had not thoroughly analyzed the significance of many issues, including the allegations that he was connected with Turkish intelligence – not to mention his “essays”, on “Primus sine Paribus”, and “Religion and geopolitics in Ukraine”.  I saw the coming disaster well in advance.  The disaster materialized gradually, except for a “cataclysmic” appearance at the Turkish House in NYC in September 2021 – despite the warnings of Greek and Cypriot diplomats in the US… Elpidoktonos ignored these warnings not to attend and proved to all that he was first a Turk and then everything else!…

Some community websites (primarily our good friend George Michalopulos of “Monomakhos.com”) followed a similar path and are to be commended.  But most of our “journalists” ignored their journalistic duty and preferred narcissistic “photography” for our Church and community events.  My dear friends, photography is not journalism… A couple of weeks ago, I was faced with a genuinely unbelievable demand: Another “journalist”, a partner in a website, stopped me at an event in Astoria and requested me to write about the “scandals” in his parish!!  I was left speechless… Finally, when I made sure he was not kidding, I found the courage to tell him to do it himself on their website… Such is the quality of our spineless journalists!..

Above all, we have TNH.  I challenge anyone to go back for 45 years to their archives and find one word (!!!),  yes, one word of criticism of Karloutsos..  There is none!!  For 45 years, they had not even one word criticizing Karloutsos – yet they pretend to be the “leading” community newspaper!!! Not only they abandoned their journalistic duty, but they went to bed with power… They betrayed the community and all of us!!

What we are doing at Helleniscope is a job much bigger than myself and the small team of writers around me.  I am proud of each one, as they have each their own long history of contributions to our community.  But this is a job for all of us and you, our readers.  It has to be our choice to bring back the truth in our community affairs… The truth will set us free!!  To do that, we have to support the truth tellers in our news media – and not those in bed with power!! We all have to do our part as individuals, as associations and organizations, and as business owners!  We cannot financially support those “news media” who regularly betray our trust and have been doing so for decades!! This pathogenic (not to say schizophrenic) situation has to end! They betray us, yet we keep giving them our advertising business!!

PS.  Soon Helleniscope will be upgraded to include advertising and other commercial space. And will seek the support of the community in many other ways (through “Paypal” and “Patreon” etc.).  We will seek to add some help in covering community events and in expanding and maintaining this website.  For now, those who want to contribute, please email me, and I will offer directions.

PS2. As many of you know, I have spent 30 years building my own business. So this is not about making money for myself.  This is about distributing in a more fair way the heavy load of bringing the truth to our community. Frankly, we need to be better organized if we are to be successful in our task – it’s the law of the free market!…

PS3.  You can challenge me if you wish on any of the statements above, but keep in mind that I have a “bad” habit of keeping supporting evidence for all statements I make.

February 15, 2023, n.stamatakis@aol.com www.helleniscope.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.