Morocco Alerted France Four Days Before Normandy Church Tragedy
Rabat – French Magazine Marianne revealed in an article on Thursday that Moroccan intelligence services alerted their French counterparts four days before the Normandy Church terrorist attack, when two men slit the throat of a priestas he was performing mass on Tuesday morning.On July 22, the Moroccan intelligence services warned France over an imminent threat with a photo of Abdel Malik Petitjean, according to the same sourceOne of the attackers was identified as Adel Kermiche, 19, who had tried several times to travel to Syria using the passports of family members. Kermiche disappeared the first time in March 2015, when the German authorities caught him and accused him of trying to get to Syria using his brother’s passport.He was sent back to France and released on conditional parole awaiting trial. He again tried to enter Syria from Turkey using his cousin’s identity papers when he was arrested and sent back to France for further investigation in May 2015.Kermiche was released on March 18, 2016 on the condition of being fitted with an electronic tag allowing authorities to monitor his movements. He was obligated to live at his parents’ home and to only go out between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm.The other perpetrator of the attack, Abdel Malik Petitjean, also tried to travel to Syria through Turkey, and the French authorities considered him a ‘’fiche’’ ‘’S’’, a serious threat to national security.Edited by Timothy Filla
Four Greek phone companies are facing charges of harboring a criminal and withholding information after failing to supply a prosecutor with details of customers alleged to have sent threatening or disparaging messages to other users by text message or in blogs. Prosecutor Yiannis Sakellakos took action against OTE, Hellas Online, Tellas and Forthnet a few days after similar charges were lodged against Cosmote. According to sources, the same prosecutor is also considering bringing charges against the Communications Privacy Protection Authority (ADAE) for having advised Cosmote and the fixed-line telecoms firms against providing the prosecutor with customers’ details, as this would constitute a violation of privacy rights. Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagram
The Modern Greek Teachers Association of Victoria (MGTAV) held their annual conference ‘The Greek Language in Australia – Sustainability, Maintenance and Diversity’ last week with an unprecedented number of participants and supporters. According to Nikos Zarkadas, MGTAV Liaison Officer, the 2012 conference has been considered a resounding success due to its more than 70 participants – an impressive number for a conference run by a relatively small association that represents only one language. Every year, the conference emphasizes the use of new methodologies in language teaching, so that Greek language schools in Australia can be on the forefront of pedagogical technique. In keeping with that aim, the main theme of this year’s conference was the more recent use of e-learning – that is, teaching using technology and the internet. In this way, new teachers of the Greek language in Australia can be exposed to the latest educational trends. Most of the conference itself was held in Greek, and all communications sent out by MGTAV were also in the Greek language. Given, however, the association’s relationship with the Victorian government – who generously provides subsidization – there is a need for the MGTAV to communicate with the wider Australian community in English. Thus, the papers given by guest speakers at the conference were in English, as well as much of the information provided on their website (www.mgtav.org.au) about the 2012 conference. Many Australian educational bodies were represented at the conference, including the Greek Consulate Education Service, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) and the Victorian School of Languages (VSL), that oversees general foreign language learning in Victoria. Also, many varieties of Greek language school were represented, including bilingual day schools, after school language teaching and government schools. One of the other topics raised, particularly by the Victorian Government-based bodies, was the potential for increased funding to Greek language schools. There was also some discussion of the upcoming changes to the national curriculum, and the constant place of the Greek language within it. At this stage, it is too early to make conclusions on these topics, but it is clear that these will be ongoing topics of discussion in Greek language teaching in Australia. For now, however, the new horizons in Greek language teaching in Australia are focused quite firmly on the use of e-learning, particularly given the current popularity of technology among youth. Nikos Zarkadas told Neos Kosmos that the use of new technology in the classroom is something that gives educators a new scope for teaching, allowing them to approach Greek language education in completely new ways. He is quick to mention, however, that it is not the intention of the MGTAV to replace invaluable classroom teaching with online learning, which he insists is merely “an additional tool to teacher language”. “Nothing replaces the teacher and face to face teaching,” he said. Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagram
Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagram A Melbourne nurse was fired after being caught stealing by a witness on Skype.The victim was a father visiting his newborn at the Epworth hospital. He had Skyped his father in Greece to tell him of the safe delivery of his first child, when he left the room briefly with the video on.His father saw a nurse enter the room and take his son’s wallet, which contained $20.The incident was reported on Melbourne radio, on 3AW’s Rumour File midweek. “When he returned, (his father) said, ‘my son, you’ve just been robbed’,” a caller told the radio program.The family reported the incident to the hospital, which led to the nurse’s dismissal. According to the man’s wife, Chrissa, the nurse had reportedly walked into the room, opened a wardrobe and looked inside.“Then she went to the chair and my husband’s jacket was there, and then she took the wallet,” Chrissa said.“She (accordingly) took something red … we supposed it was a $20 note.“And then we came back from the nursery, actually my husband came back first into the room, and (my father-in-law) started asking, ‘Where’s your jacket and protect your wallet because a lady she came in the room’.“He described the lady and then we saw that the money wasn’t there.“She came back into the room and my father-in-law was on Skype, he confirmed that she was that person.”The money has since been returned and the hospital confirmed the sacking, saying the nurse would not work at another Epworth establishment again.Source: Herald Sun
The Turkish government was reprimanded last week, for its hard-line stance against independent media, by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). In its statement, the Board of WAN-IFRA condemns Turkey for what is described as a “systematic campaign to attack and intimidate the press as a means o silencing criticism and marginalising opposition voices”. While acknowledging the release from jail of two journalists (VICE News reporters Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury), the statements notes another one, Mohammed Ismael Rasool remains in jail, charged with aiding terrorism through his work and calls for his release and the drop of the charges. Mr. Rasool is only one of the many journalists faced with terrorism charges, over the summer months, in what is described as a systematic ‘criminalisation of journalism’, especially when it represents dissent – the Editor-in-Chief and Ankara Bureau Chief of the daily paper Cumhuriyet, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, are also incarcerated. The WAN-IFRA release describes a climate of fear an intimidation amongst the press in Turkey, established through “regular court cases and an increase in police raids against media houses”, stating as examples the assault on journalist Ahmen Hakan Coskun and on the Daily Hurriyet newspaper; another attack, on Ipek Media Group resulted to the installation of pro-government sympathisers at its helm. Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan is personally stated as responsible for this policy, which was intensified ahead of the November elections that he won by a landslide. The WAN-IFRA warns that this policy is “fundamentally undermining the democratic foundations of Turkish society” and calls for global solidarity with the Turkish press to create international awareness for the issue. It is telling that the Erdogan government refused to grant press accreditations to journalists from critical media outlets to cover the G20 summit in Antalya. Reminding President Erdogan of Turkey’s obligations as a signatory to international conventions regarding freedom of expression, the board of WAN-IFRA calls on Turkey’s international partners to do more to pressure President Erdoğan’s government into guaranteeing an environment that better protects media freedom and the independence of journalists. Facebook Twitter: @NeosKosmos Instagram
Lyra Is a Handheld Gaming System Powered by a Raspberry PiRaspberry Pi Used to Steal 500 MB of NASA Data Stay on target If you’ve ever used a projector, you’ve probably marveled for a moment on how large it was, or what it could do. Remember the time Mad Men featured one and an equally endearing pitch for Kodak? It was an excellent moment in television. Now you can use one of the Raspberry Pi’s rival competitors to make one that you can fit in the palm of your hand. The Texas Instruments DLP LightCrafter Display 2000 EVM works with the teeny tiny BeagleBone Black board, which can be used in place of the Raspberry Pi 1 and 2.When you put it all together, you can use the $99 LightCrafter to create a very small projector with a 640 x 360 resolution and brightness up to 30 lumens. You can connect it to a computer as well for the ultimate in portability. The BeagleBone Black is just as capable as the Raspberry Pi, but the Raspberry Pi 3 have outdone it since then, seeing as it contains one USB 2.0 port, micro HDMI, and no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Those aren’t that big of a deal, however.It is, however, excellent at allowing users to attach hardware like the LightCrafter to it, with 92 pins in comparison to the Pi’s 40. You can easily plug and play your projector to the BeagleBone this way, and make a tiny little pocket-sized tool for on the go. It’s a straightforward project if you can follow directions of course, and you can find all the instructions straight from Texas Instruments here.If you’ve got a weekend ahead of you and want to tinker around with some interesting tools to make a useful, portable item, you might consider this relatively inexpensive project. Or maybe check out more of what you can do with the BeagleBone. There’s a lot of cool tech stuff out there you can make if you just look around enough.Let us know what you like about Geek by taking our survey.
Members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sit in the back of pick-up truck in the village of Hazima on the northern outskirts of the Islamic States (IS) group’s Syrian bastion of Raqa. Photo: AFPUS-backed fighters broke into the city of Raqa on Tuesday as they launched a final assault to drive the Islamic State group from its de facto Syrian capital.The attack on the northern city at the heart of IS’s Syrian territory has been seven months in the making and is backed by air support, military advisers and weapons deliveries from the US-led coalition.Seized by the jihadists in early 2014, Raqa became notorious as a hub for IS’s operations in Syria, Iraq and beyond.The city has been the scene of some of the group’s worst atrocities, including gruesome executions, public displays of bodies and the trafficking of women.It was one of the twin pivots of IS’s so-called “caliphate,” with Mosul in neighbouring Iraq—where US-backed forces are also bearing down on the jihadists.After months sealing off access routes to the city from the east, north and west, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday entered the city limits for the first time.“Our forces entered the city of Raqa from the eastern district of Al-Meshleb,” SDF commander Rojda Felat said, adding clashes were also raging on the city’s northern outskirts.“They are fighting street battles inside Raqa now, and we have experience in urban warfare.”In fighting further south, the coalition said it “destroyed” a unit of pro-regime forces as they advanced near Al-Tanf, where coalition commandos have been training and advising anti-IS forces.Syrian state news agency Sana quoted military sources saying“Warplanes belonging to the so-called international coalition attacked one of our military positions on the road to al-Tanf… killing a number of people and causing some material damage,” reported Syrian state news agency Sana, quoting military sources.‘Decisive blow’The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes in Al-Meshleb had forced IS jihadists to withdraw from more than half of the district.The SDF was also trying to push into Raqa’s northwestern district of Al-Andalus, the monitor said, as fighting continued to the north, east and west of the city.The advance in Al-Meshleb was backed by heavy air strikes by the US-led coalition, the Observatory said.The coalition began its air campaign against IS in Iraq in August 2014, expanding its operations to Syria the following month.The coalition appears keen to expel IS from its last major urban bastions before the “caliphate” turns three years old later this month.Defeating IS in Raqa would “deliver a decisive blow to the idea of ISIS as a physical caliphate”, said coalition commander Lieutenant General Steve Townsend.Warning the fight would be “long and difficult,” Townsend framed the offensive as part of a greater struggle against IS, which has claimed attacks in many countries including last month’s deadly bombing in Manchester.“We all saw the heinous attack in Manchester,” he said. “ISIS threatens all our nations, not just Iraq and Syria, but in our homelands as well.”The SDF launched its operation to take Raqa—dubbed “Wrath of the Euphrates”—in November.It then scored a series of victories in the wider province, including capturing the strategic town of Tabqa and its adjacent dam in May.On Tuesday, SDF spokesman Talal Sello made the long-awaited announcement that the battle for Raqa itself had begun.“We declare today the start of the great battle to liberate the city of Raqa, the so-called capital of terrorism and terrorists,” Sello told reporters in the village of Hazima, north of the city.“With the international coalition’s warplanes and the state-of-the-art weapons they provided to us, we will seize Raqa from Daesh,” Sello told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS.Concerns for civiliansSello urged civilians inside Raqa city to keep away from IS positions and from the front lines.The United Nations said it was concerned for the safety of more than 400,000 men, women and children in Raqa province who may be caught up in the violence.As the SDF has drawn closer to the city, reports of civilian casualties in coalition air strikes have swelled.On Monday, the Observatory said a coalition bombing raid killed 21 civilians as they tried to escape Raqa by dinghy on the Euphrates River.The same route leading out of the city’s southern districts has been used by IS fighters, it said.An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under IS rule in Raqa, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of Syria.Thousands have fled in recent months to other parts of the province or to makeshift camps in territory newly captured by the SDF.On Tuesday, the International Rescue Committee said it was “deeply concerned for the safety of civilians in Raqa” after a drop in numbers fleeing the city in the past week.This “may indicate ISIS intends to use the 200,000 people still trapped in the city as human shields,” the aid group said, using another acronym for IS.It also urged the “utmost care” to prevent civilian casualties after “a worrying number of civilians killed from coalition airstrikes across Raqa in recent months”.More than 320,000 people have been killed since civil war erupted in Syria in 2011 with anti-government protests.Also Tuesday, Syrian regime forces advanced into Raqa province for the first time in a year, seizing two villages from IS, the Observatory and a military source said.
Interview by Betty Harvin, Special to the AFROJacob Mayberry, a Baltimore spoken word artist, emcee, National Poetry Slam champion, Texas Grand Slam champion and teaching artist, Black Chakra, sat with the AFRO to celebrate poetry with us a bit after “Don’t Be Late for Poetry” to give us some insight into his poetic journey. Named Black Chakra from a former lover, who considered his energy a combination of the auras of the seven chakras (crown, third- eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, sacral, root). He is an artist who truly lives up to his name.Black Chakra (Courtesy Photo)Afro: How did you get your name?Black Chakra: Me and a poet were dating and we found out about an African culture whose tradition was naming people, which is extremely important because what you are named is what you’re adorned as. So we thought it’d be special if we gave each other poetry names. The name I gave her was Fire Angelou, and Black Chakra was the name she gave me. It perfectly describes what I do because the chakras are different colors and different spiritual measurements of energy and I represent all the energies in one because black is the combination of all colors. I thought that was a beautiful name and I kept it ever since.Afro: What inspired you to be a poet and when did you start doing poetry?BLACK CHAKRA: Since 11 my father told me, ‘If you’re going to do something you have to be the best.’ I asked him, ‘How to be the best?’ He said you have to study, practice, and know it better than anyone else. So I did those things. I read multiple poetry books. So, since 11 I started writing and started studying and by 13, I was rapping, nonstop. Then by 15-16, I wanted to understand poetry on a deeper level, so I got into spoken word and I just stayed in it. I’ve always been invested in writing, I’m always writing; it is one of the most healthy things you can do. Also, it grows your skill level because you learn different things about yourself. I can literally write a poem in seven minutes because I don’t second guess what I have to say. I just know what I want to talk about and it feels very comfortable. So, now that I’m 30, I’d say I’ve been doing poetry for pretty much all my life.Afro: This month, as you know, is National Poetry Month, and at the AFRO we are featuring poets from the past, present, and future. Of course you represent one of the bomb poets from our present, but are there any poets from the past that have inspired you?BLACK CHAKRA: How long you got?….Gil Scott Heron, ase. Amiri Baraka, ase. Maya Angelou, ase. The Last Poets, ase. Sonya Sanchez, ase. Nikki Giovanni, ase. Biggie Smalls, ase. Tupac, ase. I can do this all day there are so many black poets I’ve read; Saul Williams, ase. Talam Acey, ase. Lamar Hill, ase. These people, their poetry has changed my life. The first time I heard Slangston Hughes, ase, I was in high school and I didn’t even know poetry could sound like that and I was like, ‘I can fit here’. He let me know, you have space here, you can fit here and he is so powerful. He is my favorite poet. He gave me permission to be a dope Hip- Hop lyricist within a spoken word format. There are so many great poets from the past, James Baldwin, ase. Nas, ase. Big Daddy Kane, ase. Rakim, ase. Tragedy Khadafi, ase. We can do hip-hop alone and go for the next two days. Malcolm X because I sincerely consider him a poet, ase.Afro: Just by your answers, I’m receiving that poetry is a state of being.BLACK CHAKRA: Poetry is breath, poetry is breathing. Poetry is the reason you get up in the morning. Everything is poetry, there is nothing that isn’t poetry. The person that put this wall together is a poet because he understood shapes on a level that he had to be passionate about. The person who shaped this table is a poet because they had to understand math on a spiritual level. The person who made this carpet is a poet because they had to understand stitching on a different level. The understanding of life on a different level is poetry. That’s why a poet will look at a can and create a whole poem around it because of how you break down the world and discuss it into multiple terms. I am just a sad offspring of the everything, that is poetry.Afro: Poets as prophets….what’s your take on that?Black Chakra: My personal belief is that we are puppets, there is a voice that is speaking through poets. In certain chapters of the Quran, in Islamic belief, they believe that the poet has a direct line to God and you can summon the words of God through you, and I believe that. Statistically, more people suffer from stage fright than they do fear of death. Which means more people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. So why is it that there are these people, these light bearers, who can get on stage and do this and channel words? I consider it a blessing, poetry is my proof that God exists.Afro: The poets from the past didn’t have such an opportunity, like the poets of our present, to directly pour into the poets of our future. How has teaching the poets of the future been for you?(Black Chakra calls over one of his students and now fellow poets, 20 y/o, Summer Knights to join the conversation)BLACK CHAKRA: I remember I gave a speech to the kids (in the poetry club), saying ‘Hey look, we won last year, if we don’t win this year, it’s not that important.’ She looked at me and said, ‘F- that’, none of us here play sports, none of us here do anything else, poetry is all we got. If we can’t be the best at this, than what’s it worth?’ It changed my life. She taught me that. Pouring into the kids has actually been them pouring into me because you’re not a teacher until one of your students teaches you something. Now she is killing the stage, on the same stages as me, she is a two- time world poetry champion, I coached a championship kid yesterday and so did she. I literally went up to her and said, ‘I think it’s time for me to retire.’ This is all I’ve ever wanted in life, to inspire someone to inspire someone else. Each one, teach one. I called her over here because she is the living proof to your question. This is what happens when you pour into black children. She loves so fiercely, she’s a good sister, human being, a good coach, and teacher. I can die tomorrow and smile because I had a part in that, so I’m just very thankful to pour into youth and for them to be this.
Cancun. Q.R. — The new tourism secretary for the next administration has congratulated a local architect after being appointed head of the upcoming Cancun-Plaenque train project.Miguel Torruco Marqués, who is to become Tourism Secretary under the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, congratulated the architect Rogelio Jiménez Pons after he was appointed head of the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur).
Once the new administration begins, Jiménez Pons will head one of the main projects of López Obrador for the peninsula, which is the Cancun-Plaenque train project.Jiménez Pons stated that in December, the construction of the 900-kilometer network will begin. The network will bring tourists to Palenque, Chiapas from Cancún in a jungle journey that will take approximately nine hours.The announcement of the construction of the “bullet train” was made earlier in July with an estimated 100 billion peso investment from start to finish. A public tender has been published to attract investors. The state has also said they will contribute to the project.Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
A lifetime of drama and impulsiveness are reflected in the poems of a man who used to rub shoulders with Ted Hughes. THEO PANAYIDES meets an English Cypriot proud of his rootsThe punchline comes after an hour, when I ask the poet George Tardios what’s the biggest crisis, or difficult situation, he’s faced in his life, and he recounts how he almost died in the Asian tsunami that killed over 200,000 people on Boxing Day 2004. It’s a punchline not because it’s amusing – the event was obviously horrific, and still haunts him now – but because it manages to cap a solid hour of recounting other crises and difficult situations (I don’t even know why I asked the question; he’d have been within his rights to reply: ‘Jesus, man, don’t you have enough?’), from bloody gang warfare on the streets of London to a week in a Kenyan prison in the mid-1980s. And poetry, of course.Actually, I take it back. The punchline is probably the poetry – the quality of the poetry, much appreciated by the late Ted Hughes among others, and indeed the existence of the poetry, the fact that a working-class, not to say slum-born London Cypriot spent a lifetime (73 years and counting) getting into scrapes, dodging or skirting disaster, getting beaten up and sometimes beating up others – he always had good cause, or thought he did – and plunging into adventures like his two-year Tanzanian trek in the footsteps of Stanley and Livingstone, yet still wrote lines like the following:Pocked with licked pins, bristling notesSpilt red wine on her dressA spreading blot.Only cicadas heard the stumbled passage to their bed.We talk for an hour and a half, yet the poetry barely gets mentioned – partly because there’s so much else to talk about, but also because it seems to exist outside himself, a higher plane to which he’s allowed access only intermittently (he has “gaps” between poems, he admits) and then only as a conduit. “This Cypriot book of poems – I feel as if it’s come to me,” he explains in his slow drawl. “It’s come from somewhere else. It’s not me. It’s not me at all, making it happen. It’s something that’s passed through me.”So, like some Higher Force?“Higher Force, definitely. And so I wait, for the next round to come up. ’Cause it’s always happened like this, I’ve always waited and it always comes up. This – this writing takes place.”The ‘Cypriot book of poems’ is called Buttoned-Up Shapes, and its appearance in a bilingual edition – translated by Despina Pirketti, published by Armida Publications and Write CY – is a major event. “It’s almost a kind of revenge writing, these poems,” chuckles George, noting that the title refers to the British, or Cypriots’ idea of the British. “I want [the poems] to be accepted by Cyprus, they are about Cyprus and they’re for Cyprus”. It’s an odd, delicious irony that George handles the English language beautifully – and still pines for London after a few months in his summer home of Kritou Terra – yet doesn’t feel English, indeed he bristles at the very idea. “England is a racist country,” he claims, citing Brexit as the latest iteration of the ordinary Brits who snarled “Get back to your own country” at him as a child in the 50s. “I feel an outsider, I’ve always felt an outsider. At the moment, Islam is getting a very bad press in England,” he goes on, unafraid of sounding controversial; “I’m on the side of Islam. Just like I was on the side of the IRA. Because it was like Eoka, and they were called terrorists just like Eoka.”We sit in a courtyard in Kaimakli, at the home of a mutual friend; Christine, George’s wife of 48 years, sits in the background, listening discreetly and prompting him when he loses his train of thought, as he does occasionally. The two are a team (they have no children), George with his thick suntanned arms and curly, if thinning, black hair – he looks like he could happily grout your kitchen, or build a garden wall in your backyard – Christine a slim, bubbly blonde. He’s an Aries, she’s a Sagittarius: a good match, apparently. She was also part of the three-person expedition that trekked through Tanzania for two years, then saved both their lives in 2004 by physically pulling him away from the tsunami (he was frozen, staring at the wave as it rose up “like a cobra”). What first attracted her to George? “He talked me into it,” she replies, and laughs. “He wanted to do things, action things – and I’m an outdoor person, so I like to do things as well”. Christine pauses, thinking back to their five decades together: “I didn’t intend to have a peaceful life. And I didn’t get one!”.They met in a North London nightclub, where George was a doorman-slash-bouncer and Christine a part-time waitress (she worked as a teacher the rest of the week). This was not a high-end place, but it didn’t lack for celebrity guests: the notorious Kray brothers came by, initially hoping to sell protection – “but we were already paying West Hampstead police station,” explains George with a straight face, so the Krays merely bought a few drinks and behaved themselves. Later, there was also “a Scottish gang that wanted to shoot my legs off,” forcing the now-married couple to go into hiding. One of the gang had threatened the chef in the kitchen, and George had intervened rather forcefully; that’s how he was, “I used to go and support all the underdogs,” he recalls with a rueful chuckle, “it’s ridiculous… I’ve changed now,” he adds, “I’m not like this. I’m very peaceful. Obviously I’m so old now, I couldn’t do it anyway.”He had form, going back to his childhood years in Somers Town, just behind King’s Cross. There were only four Cypriots at his school and all four were prey for the racists of the Somers Town gang on the journey between school and home: “They used to beat us up and smash bottles on our heads, and call us ‘bubbles’” (from ‘bubble and squeak’, rhymes with ‘Greek’). George still has thin white scars on the backs of his hands, from trying to shield his face while being attacked with a cutthroat razor. One of his friends was stabbed on the top deck of a London bus, where he’d tried to flee from the gang. The Cypriots were too few to retaliate in kind – but they did take revenge by ambushing gang members individually, rubbing their faces with hot chili pepper. (And through poetry, of course; but that came later.)Those were also the days of Eoka, when the British tabloid press referred to Ledra Street in Nicosia as ‘Murder Mile’ and demonised Makarios as ‘Black Mak’. The son of the deputy headmaster at George’s school was a soldier who fell victim to Eoka – so the deputy head took it out on George. “He used to pick on me every day, whether I was at fault or not. He would say ‘Your tie’s on crooked’ and he’d whip me with his cane. ‘Bend over, boy,’ he’d say, and start walloping me. ‘You’re late’ – whether I was or not – ‘bend over’. So I used to get it all the time. And I said to the deputy headmaster, I said ‘Listen, I had nothing to do with your son. Leave me alone, please. I’ve already got it outside [from the gang].’ He started whipping me with his cane – and I just lost it, and I jumped on him”. The man ended up in hospital and George was promptly expelled, ending up as a window cleaner, the first of many manual jobs.Poetry is now a commodity; Britain has a ‘National Poetry Day’ (this year’s edition took place two weeks ago; the theme was ‘Freedom’), touting poetry as a kind of simplified prose where anyone can express themselves. George has no truck with any of that, his own favourite poets being intricate craftsmen like Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas who speak through images and sounds, the music of words; poetry today is “about people’s own experience, and it’s very prosaic”. Poets today are rappers – but George himself was a wrapper, actually a sausage wrapper (sorry, I’ll stop now), wrapping meat in cellophane 12 hours a night, seven to seven, his hands working like spindles.“The first night we were there, I remember this horrible screaming started up, and people started thumping the tables and banging their feet – a horrible cacophony of sound – and we wondered what this was,” he recalls of his time in the sausage factory. “Then, in the following days, we would join in.” Every night, around three or four a.m., someone would suddenly erupt and everyone else would follow suit, screaming and banging on tables for about a minute; it was “a way of letting off frustration, letting off steam and saying ‘We too are human beings’.” The poetry of the primal scream.What about the poetry, though? When does it arrive? In the end, it was the angry Scottish gang who precipitated the start of the second chapter in George’s life, forcing him and Christine to flee to Devon where he went to college as a mature student and came under the sway of a poet called John Moat, who’d recently co-founded the Arvon Foundation. This was a charity devoted to creative writing, its motto – “The fire in the flint shows not till it be struck” – all too applicable to the working-class lad who’d always written on the side (he’d been encouraged by a teacher in school) but never felt like it had any value. It’s another irony that this lifelong socialist found his benefactor in a public-schoolboy engaged in a kind of benevolent paternalism – though Ted Hughes (also involved in Arvon) was working-class, which was how George and the future Poet Laureate bonded in the first place. “We used to get drunk together,” says our hero (who still loves his wine). “Then he started to like my poetry.”The rest came naturally, if not always smoothly. So much to talk about, such a full life – but seldom a lucrative one, mostly sustained by some teaching and a parallel career as a film and TV actor. His father was also a film actor, one Harry Tardios who played minor-role swarthy ethnics in the 60s and 70s – and previously left George’s mum for a singer, when the boy was small. She never remarried, raising him by herself in a two-room flat (not two-bedroom, two-room) with a leaky roof, working in “the rag trade” all day then bringing work home and placing a cloth over the light, so George could sleep in one side of the room while she worked in the other.“Tin Kypro mou, tin Kypro mou…” (‘My Cyprus, my Cyprus…’) his mother used to say, eternally nostalgic despite having left the island in the 1930s. She returned on a kind of pilgrimage after her divorce, as described in his poem ‘So I’m Told’ – she’d asked his grandma “to create waxen effigies of my legs” and hang them in Apostolos Andreas after George had been confined to a wheelchair by a childhood accident, and was properly grateful when her son was ‘miraculously’ cured – then came back again in the early 90s, hoping to die here. George asked the government to “give me a Turkish house [and] I’ll do it up for my mother to live in,” promising to give it back when asked. They refused. He persisted, making such a nuisance of himself that he ended up being arrested (!) as a Turkish spy. Christine got him out, and they left the island in a hurry. His mum died in England, soon after.It’s a sad story, yet it may be the best George Tardios story. The one about his week in a Kenyan prison is obviously grittier – awaiting trial for assault, in a dark cell with 40 other prisoners, regularly lined up by the guards who “smashed us all” with their rifle-butts – and of course his experience of the Thailand tsunami is unforgettable (the cut-off screams, the roar of the water, the bloated bodies lying on the beach when the wave subsided), yet his efforts to secure a house for his mother says so much about him. His almost childlike faith in magical solutions, and his stubbornness in pursuing them. His fierce sentimentality, and the way he tends to end up in trouble. His contrarian nature, like the way he’ll stand up for Islamic jihadists now. His propensity to leap in unthinking, like embarking on a two-year African trek without any funding. (What’s his biggest character flaw? “Impulsive!” says Christine with a laugh.) The way he’s always up for a scrap, when it’s for the sake of “the underdog”.And the poetry? Where does that come from? Would he be the same poet – or a poet at all – had he grown up in the leafy suburbs, or a village in Cyprus? He’s had unusually extensive experience of human cruelty, I point out, and he agrees, having long since concluded that cruelty is part of human nature. But is that why he writes?I see the sky reflected in my teacup.I move the cup,And tilt the sky.That’s from ‘Islands’, also in Buttoned-Up Shapes – and the title of the poem has an echo of Cyprus, yet the theme is universal. It’s about the way grand cosmic concepts are encapsulated in the tiniest of details – and the way, more specifically, that poetry consists of looking at the world more closely, seeing what others miss and expressing it, painstakingly, through language. His intensity was always potentially a poet’s intensity, it just had to be channelled – or bestowed from above, whatever. “I don’t know where it comes from. Maybe it comes from – angels, who knows?” says George Tardios of his gift, sitting in the warm sunny courtyard, and shrugs expansively. You May LikeLuxury Crossover SUV I Search AdsThese SUVs Are The Cream Of The Crop. 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