Hellenic Antidote

Cyprus talks: Catastrofias strikes again

2012-01-27T01:25:00.000Z

Cyprus’ president Dimitris Christofias certainly lived up to his nickname of ‘Catastrofias’ at the summit just held in New York with the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon and the leader of the Turkish occupation regime, Dervis Eroglu, aimed, allegedly, at paving the way for a Cyprus settlement, talks for which, in the latest phase, have been going on for four years.

Christofias said before he went to New York that he would not agree to a timetable or road map for the talks, nor would he accept an international conference being called to finalise any deal on the Cyprus problem before there is an agreement on the internal aspects of a settlement.

Both the roadmap and international conference ideas are Turkey’s. An expedited process with a roadmap and a clear end point would allow Turkey to stifle the talks and bring about their curtailment without agreement, after which Turkey would be able to declare that reunification is no longer possible and that the ‘TRNC’ must now be recognised; while Turkey’s demand for an international conference – similar to Burgenstock in 2004 – is made in the belief that at such a conference the Greek side will have to accept another Annan plan or otherwise find itself branded intransigent, which would, again, provide Turkey with the excuse to say reunification is not feasible and recognition for the pseudo-state must follow.

So, how did Christofias do in his mission to convince the UN secretary general not to announce a timetable for the process or an international conference? Well, in what can only be described as a debacle, the president came away from the summit having consented – wittingly or unwittingly – to both a timetable/roadmap and an international conference.

Thus, Ban announced that for the next two months, there will be an attempt to achieve what has not been achieved in the last four years of talks – namely, agreement on the internal aspects of the Cyprus problem, mostly to do with property, citizenship (i.e. the Turkish settlers) and governance; and that, in consultation with the Greek and Turkish Cypriot sides, the UN secretary general’s special representative on the island, Alexander Downer, will then recommend or not the holding of an international conference, to put the finishing touches to a Cyprus settlement.

Now, Christofias is pretending that an international conference – the end game – will only be activated with the agreement of the Greek Cypriot side, after it’s satisfied that the internal aspects of the Cyprus problem have been resolved.

But he’s fooling no one. It’s clear that the UN bureaucracy, backed by the UK and the US on the Security Council, likes the Turkish idea of an expedited process aimed at closing the Cyprus problem once and for all, and in which case it’s easy to predict what’s going to happen next.

The Turkish side will continue to put forward proposals unacceptable to the Greek side; and that when Christofias tells Downer that there has been no agreement on internal issues and he can’t consent to an international conference, Downer will tell him: well, that means I’ll have to tell the secretary general and the Security Council that there is no longer any point in this procedure; or he will say to Christofias: my judgement is that there has been sufficient progress and that an international conference is justified.

Christofias will then be faced with the dilemma of accepting that the talks have collapsed – leaving Turkey to pursue recognition of the pseudo-state; or he will have to go along with an international conference, in which Cyprus will be up against Turkey, the UK, US, EU and UN, as they try to tie up the Cyprus problem with another Annan plan, Greek Cypriot resistance to which will be met with threats of ending the UN’s involvement in Cyprus – including the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers from the island – and the upgrading of the occupation regime.

Angelopoulos is dead and Greece is dying

2012-01-25T16:53:00.000Z

Following on from the appallingly violent and banal death of filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos, above is a clip from Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), in which Thanasis Vengos proclaims to Harvey Keitel the demise of Greece.

Below is another extract from the interview Angelopoulos gave to Andrew Horton, published in The Last Modernist: The films of Theo Angelopoulos, in which Angelopoulos explains his thinking behind the scene. Also, read here Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw’s tribute to Angelopoulos; and go to Diary of a Screenwriter for a transcript of a speech Angelopoulos gave at Essex University in 2001 on being awarded an honorary doctorate, in which he details his relationship with cinema and with Greece.

Horton: You have the taxi driver tell Harvey Keitel when they stop in the snow in Albania that “we Greeks are a dying race”. Those are strong words. Would you care to comment on them?

Angelopoulos: The lines the taxi driver speaks are taken from poems of George Seferis. And there is more that is not in the film, including “What do our souls seek journeying on rotten, sea-borne timbers from harbour to harbour/Shifting broken stones, inhaling the pine's coolness with less ease each day.”

Yes, these are strong words for Greeks, “we are a dying race”. But they mean something more. I was at a conference in Paris once, and a young Greek woman who was working on her PhD at the Sorbonne came up to me. And she said, “Mr Angelopoulos, we Greeks who are living abroad in Europe are in a great identity crisis. We are almost ashamed at times to say we are Greek because of all the problems that are going on with the Albanians, with the economy and the Common Market, the Skopje Question. We are not sure what to think anymore about being Greek”.

Well, her comments made me remember how different it was for me and my generation when I arrived in Paris in 1960. Whenever I said, “I'm a Greek” back then, or my friends said, “We are Greek”, it was something wonderful, something to be proud of, something with meaning. This young Greek woman said, “We are like a people who are dying”. She was, of course, echoing Seferis in her life, and yes, so is the taxi driver in my film.

Theo Angelopoulos killed in road accident

2012-01-24T23:47:00.000Z

The dreadful news emerging from Greece tonight is that filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos has been killed in a road accident, aged 77. Apparently, he was struck by a motorcycle while shooting his latest film, The Other Sea, in Piraeus and, despite being rushed to hospital, he died of head injuries.

Above is a clip from Angelopoulos’ Travelling Players (1975), the best Greek film ever made – ‘a meditation with three dimensions: history, myth and aesthetics’, according to Dan Georgakas – and below is an excerpt from an interview Angelopoulos gave to Andrew Horton in 1995, and published in The Last Modernist: The films of Theo Angelopoulos.

‘Seferis is my favourite modern poet. Long before I became a filmmaker, I was interested in poetry. I began writing poems when I was sixteen, under the influence of Cavafy, Seferis and Odysseus Elytis in Greece and also T.S. Eliot, Rilke and others. By 1950, I was deeply into their poetry, which was not taught at school, I might add (except some of Cavafy). Then in fiction I was deeply influenced by James Joyce, Stendhal, Balzac and Faulkner. In Greece, I liked Papadiamantis, who is not known even by Greeks now!

‘So it’s more accurate to say that I spent my youth with these influences rather than with cinema. And perhaps I was slow to discover cinema, because in our culture, literature, especially poetry, has always been first, and even music has been ahead of cinema. Yes, I was quoting Seferis and referring to him in Alexander the Great and also in Ulysses’ Gaze, when Nikos, the old friend tells Harvey Keitel that the first thing God made was the journey. That is a line from Seferis. Likewise, when Harvey says “in my end is my beginning”, he is quoting Eliot.’

Christianopoulos: no to state prize, yes to Tsitsanis

2012-01-24T00:20:00.001Z

I noticed (here) that in the Greek State Literature Prizes for 2011 announced yesterday, the poet and rembetologist Dinos Christianopoulos was awarded the most prestigious distinction, the Great Prize – for his overall contribution to Greek letters. Not that Christianopoulos was enamoured by the award:

‘I will not appear to receive the award or stretch out my hand to take the prize. I don’t want their prize or their money… I’m against any kind of honours. There is no more disgusting ambition than to want to stand out; this horrible 'triumph over others' (υπείροχον έμμεναι άλλων), left to us by the ancients. I am against prizes because they diminish man’s dignity.’

You can go here for an interview in Greek with Christianopoulos, in which he discusses Elytis, Ritsos, Seferis, Kiki Dimoula, Hellenism, the Macedonia name issue, the future of the Greek language and so on. While Christianopoulos doesn’t seem to have a good word to say about the above-mentioned poets, he heaps praise on another ‘poet’, Vassilis Tsitsanis.

‘It's been some 25 years since Tsitsanis’ death. Normally, you would have expected him to be forgotten. But the opposite has happened. He is more loved and in demand than ever. A similar phenomenon to Cavafy. Even though many years have passed since their deaths, their worthiness hasn’t been extinguished; rather it has soared.’

Christianopoulos has not only published three books on Tsitsanis and rembetika, but also created Η παρέα του Τσιτσάνη, to perform songs from Tsitsanis’ repertoire. The video above is from a concert Η παρέα του Τσιτσάνη gave on Greek TV.

You can go here for examples of Christianopoulos’ poetry, in Greek with English translation. Below is his Ithaca:

ITHACA
I do not know if consequences forced me to leave
or because I needed to escape from myself—
from that narrow-minded Ithaca of little grace
with its Christian organizations
and its stifling morality.

At any rate, this was not the solution, but only a half-measure.

From then on I wallowed from street to street
acquiring wounds and experience.
The friends I once loved have now vanished
and I have remained alone, fearful that someone may see me perhaps
to whom I had once spoken of ideals...

Now I have returned with a final attempt
to seem irreproachable, integral; I have returned
and I am, dear God, like the prodigal who has forsaken
his vagabond wanderings, embittered, and returns
to his good-hearted father, to live
in his bosom a private prodigality.

I bring Poseidon within me,
who always keeps me far off;
but even if I could put into harbor,
could Ithaca possibly find me the solution?

The myth of the Greek ‘dark ages’and the Orientalising revolution

2012-01-21T16:30:00.000Z

Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origins. (Sir Henry Maine)

Robin Lane Fox’s book, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer is a mesmerising account of the journeys Greek traders, settlers and adventurers made across the Mediterranean in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, their contact with beguiling landscapes and exhilarating stories that helped them explain the origins of the Greek gods and advance Greek civilisation.

Not that Lane Fox’s book is an exercise in wonderment at Greek endeavour or an anthropological quest to explain the origins of Greek myths. Rather, it is an assertion that the so-called Greek ‘dark ages’ were, in fact, quite luminous; that between the collapse of Mycenaean civilisation (1200 BC) and the Archaic Period (800 BC), Greek civilisation was not introverted and lacking in ambition but sophisticated and progressive and the evidence of this is the intrepid seafarers from the island of Evia who, in their journeys to the Near East, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily and Italy – where they mingled with Greeks and barbarians alike – absorbed what they saw and returned to Greece not with a new culture or new ways of thinking but with a deeper understanding of their own culture and an enhanced appreciation of their distinctive worldview.

Cyprus plays a key role in this narrative, the island’s strong Greek presence providing a natural place for western Greeks to trade and settle, and an ideal launching pad for further Greek exploration of the Levant. Lane Fox doesn’t deny these Levantine adventures left cultural and intellectual impressions on the Evians – it was from Phoenician colonists in Cyprus that Greeks learned the Alphabet – but he does refute the suggestion that this amounted to a Levantine or Oriental colonising of the Greek mind.

The theory that Greece only emerged from its ‘dark ages’ due to an Orientalising revolution, the massive importing and borrowing by Greeks of religion, literature and crafts from Anatolia, Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt, is most associated with Walter Burkert, who is explicit about his objective; which is to mock the West’s traditional anti-Semitism by showing how Semitic culture shaped Greek and hence Western civilisation. For Burkert, the denial of formative Semitic influences on Greek culture was a calculated act of anti-Semitism devised by 18th and 19th century German classicists.

But for Lane Fox, these modern political considerations fly in the face of the evidence; which is that the East did not come to Greece, it was the Greeks who went to the East and that the Greeks used what they found there not to transform their identity but to embellish or explain what they already knew or believed. Thus, Greek originality and innovation not Oriental influence and models remain the key elements in any narrative on the origins of Western civilisation.

*The video above is the BBC documentary with Robin Lane Fox based on his book. Watch it while you can, before Metacafe takes it down.

Revisiting Greece’s defeat of fascist Italy

2012-01-17T21:28:00.000Z

Some interesting pieces (in English) in the current issue of the American Hellenic Institute’s Policy Journal. In particular, there’s a very moving extract from Konstantinos Fotiadis’ book on the Pontian Genocide – the desperate efforts of the Pontic Greeks to impress on Eleftherios Venizelos and other Allied leaders after the defeat of the Ottoman empire not only the depredations the Pontians had suffered from 1914-18 but their continuing vulnerability to Turkey’s extermination campaign.

Another good piece is by Alexandros Kyros on George Blytas’ book, The First Victory: Greece in the Second World War. In his review, Kyros stresses that British historians have downplayed the importance of Greece's repulsion of the Italian invasion 1940-41 in order to elevate Britain’s role in defeating the Axis powers. Along these lines, Kyros says, a myth has developed that Greece’s defeat of the Italians was critical in postponing, and therefore undermining, Germany’s fateful invasion of Russia when, in fact, the main consequence of Greece’s heroics was to deflect Axis attention from Britain and save that country from further defeats at the hands of the Germans and Italians. Below is some of what Kyros says:

‘Although it is doubtful that the Greek victory in Albania was important to the ultimate outcome of the German-Soviet conflict, it was crucial to the survival of the British war effort in the Mediterranean. In short, the Greek victory against Italy contributed decisively to the failure of the Axis to vanquish Britain, not the Soviet Union.

‘The Greeks’ victory in Albania diverted crucial Italian, land, air, and sea forces at a time when they were desperately needed in North Africa to defeat the British forces in Egypt.

‘From October to May 1941, the Italians dispatched five times as many troops and supplies to Albania as they did to North Africa. Albania had the first call on armor, motor transports, artillery, and aircraft. As a result of the Greek crisis, the Albanian front monopolized the attention of the Italian High Command and remained Rome’s all-consuming concern at the expense of other operations, especially those in North Africa.

‘Had Rome defeated and occupied Greece, and not been tied down fighting a desperate defensive war in Albania, the Italians would have been able to concentrate an enormous, mobile, and far more lethal force in Libya with which the Axis might well have taken El Alamein and successfully advanced to the Suez in 1941, rather than failing to do so in 1942.

‘In short, the Greeks’ victory against the Italians in 1940 probably saved the not yet firmly organized, poorly led, and still underperforming British forces in Egypt from defeat, a development which would have had disastrous consequences for Britain’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean.

‘Furthermore, it is clear that Italy’s failure in Greece persuaded Franco to remain neutral in the European conflict. Conversely, had the Italians defeated the Greeks, Spain would have likely entered the war on the side of Hitler and Mussolini.

‘With Spain as a member of the Axis camp, Gibraltar would have been easily overrun and the British presence in the Western Mediterranean would have been wiped out. Such simultaneous strategic losses for the British at the opposite ends of the Mediterranean – Gibraltar and Suez – would have been catastrophic for Britain and its ability to continue the war against the Axis.’

Rauf Denktash, Turkish Cypriot terrorist leader and war criminal, is dead

2012-01-13T23:50:00.000Z

The Turkish Cypriot terrorist leader Rauf Denktash is dead. A Turkish ultra-nationalist dedicated to the partition of Cyprus, he initially collaborated with British authorities in the 1950s, prosecuting for the crown EOKA fighters seeking to liberate Cyprus from colonial rule. He was then, with the collusion of Britain and Turkey, instrumental in establishing the Turkish terror gang, TMT, which targetted Greek Cypriot civilians and Turkish Cypriots who did not share its vision of Cyprus partitioned along ethnic lines.

In 1963, with Denktash still leading it, the TMT planted a bomb outside the Turkish consulate in Nicosia, an incident blamed on Greek Cypriots and which led to Turkish attacks on neighbouring Greek shops and homes. Widespread intercommunal violence followed and, as Denktash hoped it would, the tension fostered a siege mentality among the outnumbered Turkish Cypriots. Guided by Denktash, they proceeded to break off all political, social and economic relations with Greek Cypriots and retreated into armed enclaves, from where they sought to challenge the authority of the Republic of Cyprus and provoke clashes with government forces, all in the hope of creating a crisis and providing a pretext for Turkey to invade and partition Cyprus.

Denktash’s plan was realised in 1974, when a coup against the Cyprus government, engineered by the military junta then ruling Greece, was followed by Turkish invasion and the seizing of 37 percent of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus. The Turkish assault was accompanied by the usual atrocities associated with ethnic cleansing, as 200,000 Greeks were driven from their homes and land.

With northern Cyprus under Turkish army control, Denktash, as leader of the occupation regime, then set about zealously destroying the Greek and Christian heritage of northern Cyprus and turning the occupied part of the island into a Turkish province. A cornerstone of this Turkification policy was the importation of hundreds of thousands of settlers from Turkey into northern Cyprus.

In 1983, Denktash proclaimed the ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’, a puppet ‘state’ immediately declared illegal by the UN and still to achieve recognition from any country, except Turkey. For the next 20 years, Turkish Cypriots led a North Korean-type existence, cut off from the outside world and encouraged to believe that their self-imposed isolation was necessary to protect them from Greek Cypriots hellbent on revenge and massacre. Denktash retired in 2005, but his efforts to diminish Turkish Cypriot identity and create a stronghold for the Kemalist deep state ensured that his nightmare vision for Cyprus remained alive, if not completely fulfilled.

Denktash’s legacy is one of bloodshed and suffering. His goal of partition was predicated on ethnic cleansing, on forcing Greek Cypriots from one part of Cyprus and terrorising Turkish Cypriots into fleeing to the other. His politics were characterised by fanaticism and hatred and the result was violence that devastated Cyprus and scarred both Greek and Turkish Cypriots. For such wickedness in a later era, men were brought before international tribunals and accused of being war criminals.

ADDENDUM: Reading this piece again, it is wrong to imply from what I’ve written that Denktash’s plan of retreating into enclaves and provoking Turkey to invade was a success. Actually, it was a failure, because Greek Cypriots were able, from 1967-74, to keep both the TMT and the threat of Turkish invasion at bay. Indeed, the 1967-74 period was a period of despair for Denktash. What allowed for the realisation of Denktash’s plan was, of course, the coup and the excuse it gave the Turks to invade. Without the coup, the travails Denktash put the Turkish Cypriots through would have amounted to nothing.

Anastasiades: Israel plans new relationship with Cyprus, Greece

2012-01-13T12:12:00.000Z

As I mentioned in my last post, Nikos Anastasiades, head of centre-right DISY, Cyprus’ largest political party, and favourite for next year’s presidential elections on the island, was in Israel these last few days, for meetings with that country’s senior political leadership.

Evaluating his visit this morning on Cyprus radio, and as reported by the Cyprus edition of Kathimerini, Anastasiades had the following to say:

Israel is studying all aspects of its relations with Cyprus and will shortly make firm proposals on the mutual management of the natural gas deposits that have been discovered in the Exclusive Economic Zones of the two countries. The proposal, Anastasiades said, will extend to Greece.

Anastasiades added that the proposals under discussion will lead to a new relationship between Israel, Cyprus and Greece, which will create new opportunities for all three countries.

The partnership that will develop between Cyprus and Israel in the exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits, according to Anastasiades, will lead to increased co-operation in other fields, such as research, commerce and tourism.

Energy, common threat connect Israel, Cyprus, Greece

2012-01-11T23:15:00.000Z

There’s been a lot of traffic between Israel, Cyprus and Greece these last few days, with the Cypriot defence minister in Israel, the Israeli defence minister in Greece, Greece’s energy minister in Cyprus and Cyprus’ likely next president Nikos Anastasiades in Israel, meeting that country’s president, prime minister and so on.

All this toing and froing has been prompted by the vast natural gas finds recently discovered in the Israeli and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones, and the need this has created for greater economic and defence collusion between the two Greek states and Israel, especially given Turkey’s traditional aggression towards Greece and Cyprus has now been extended to Israel.

Indeed, one senses that it is Israel that has decided that its dramatic fallout with former ally Turkey amounts to a long-term breach and that Greece and Cyprus have been surprised by Israel’s overtures and are not sure of the implications of this burgeoning relationship.

Anyway, below is an article from UPI that provides some more detail on the deepening economic and strategic relationship between Greece, Cyprus and Israel.

Israel tightens Med defense links over gas
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has pledged to upgrade his country’s defense links with Greece and is reported to have signed a defense cooperation pact with Greek Cypriots to counter Turkish threats against joint exploration of gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.

Israel’s emerging military ties with Athens and the Greek Cypriot government in Nicosia stem in part from the rupture of its strategic alliance with Turkey, Greece's historical foe, that climaxed in May 2010.

But the shifting relationships also reflect the common interest shared by Israel, Cyprus and Greece in exploring and exploiting the vast natural gas reserves that lie deep under the Mediterranean seabed that will transform their economies for decades to come…

Read full article here.

Fry, Hitchens and the Parthenon Marbles

2012-01-09T21:02:00.001Z

Below is a piece written by British actor, writer, broadcaster Stephen Fry on the justice of returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, which was published shortly after the death of Christopher Hitchens, another prominent campaigner for the repatriation of the works to Athens (See Hitchens’ piece The Lovely Stones, here).

Fry largely bases his case on philhellenism – ‘we owe the Greeks; they made us who we are’ – which is fine and laudable. However, in his book on the subject – The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification – Hitchens, while sharing Fry’s fascination and admiration for the achievements of classical Greece and, indeed, affection for modern Greece, emphasises a subtler point that goes beyond the argument of which country should possess the marbles and that point is an aesthetic one; that they should be reunited because we would be able to appreciate and enjoy them more as a whole and not partitioned as they are now. In this respect, Hitchens portrays the British case for holding on to the marbles as an act of gross philistinism.

A further point: while Hitchens (and, to a lesser extent, Fry) is more than adept at elucidating the Greek case for the return of the marbles and exposing the obvious flaws in the British case for keeping them; he seems to ignore one of the shabbier truths behind Britain's determination to keep the stones: which is that the British arguments for their retention ultimately emerge from the same mindset that is determined to retain sovereignty over Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and even the military bases in Cyprus, i.e. other forlorn remnants of Britain's defunct empire.

A Modest Proposal, by Stephen Fry
I have a modest proposal that might simultaneously celebrate the life of Christopher Hitchens, strengthen Britain’s low stock in Europe and allow us to help a dear friend in terrible trouble.

Perhaps the most beautiful and famous monument in the world is the Doric masterpiece atop the citadel, or Acropolis, of Athens. It is called the Parthenon, the Virgin Temple dedicated to Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom who gave the Greek capital its name.

The Acropolis contains other temples and represents in the minds of scholars, historians and all who care about our past and the source of our civilisation, the pinnacle of Athens’s Golden Age under the leadership of Pericles; that period of peace between the wars against Persia which they won, and the wars against their neighbours Sparta, which they lost.

For students and lovers of architecture the Acropolis (over which I made a spectacular fool of myself some years ago) will always remain one of the most perfect examples of the Doric order ever constructed. The Romans and Arabians later added arches, ogees, domes, pendentives, barrelled vaults and squinches to the basic elements of architecture, but the Parthenon’s grace has never been surpassed. Its influence is all around us. Pillars, pilasters, porticos, pediments, architraves, entablatures, triglyphs and metopes may sound strange but we see them every day in high street buildings, town halls, 18th century churches, squares and crescents. Some people who spot trains or birds are called sad. I am a sad corbel, buttress and apse spotter – one who loves that there is a name for everything in architecture, a full and rich anatomy…

Read the rest here

The Owl’s Legacy: Castoriadis on democracy

2012-01-07T20:12:00.000Z

I’ve been looking for Chris Marker’s The Owl's Legacy for ages and have finally found it. The 13-part series was made by the French avant garde film-maker in 1989 and is a veritable who’s who of intellectuals of the period – mostly French and Greek – pontificating on the cultural legacy of classical Greece on the modern world, each 25-minute programme discussing a particular theme – Olympics: or Imaginary Greece; Democracy: or the City of Dreams; Nostalgia: or the Impossible Return, and so on, you get the idea: this is an attempt to provide – as much as a TV series can provide – a fairly sophisticated account of the way Greece has shaped Western civilisation.

Interestingly, the series also wants to explore the owl’s legacy on modern Greece and how modern Greeks have navigated the culture they have been bequeathed – especially since that culture has been filtered to them through the imaginations of others, notably European classicism, in the form of German romanticism and so on.

You can watch the entire series here. It seems to have been uploaded from video tape, so the visual quality is not that good, but this really is the best non-Greek documentary series you’re likely to see on Greece, so it’s tolerable.

The video above, which gives a good indication of the style and content of the series, is part three, Democracy: or the City of Dreams; which starts off with legendary Greek-American film director Elia Kazan’s silly observation that Athens was a slave society and therefore could not have been a democracy – the epitome of democracy, for Kazan, being America; but continues with Cornelius Castoriadis, the Greek philosopher, explaining the essence and depth of Athenian democracy and making clear that it is a misuse of the term and misunderstanding of the concept to suggest that modern liberal societies are ‘democratic’.

Who’s to blame for Greece’s crisis?

2011-12-30T14:48:00.000Z

Above is a debate (in Greek) recently held in Athens on whether all Greeks share a responsibility for the crisis currently afflicting the country, or whether responsibility is much narrower. The debate was sparked by comments made early on in the crisis by Deputy PM Theodoros Pangalos that ‘όλοι μαζί τα φάγαμε’, or all of us, all Greeks, ate a piece of the pie and are responsible for Greece’s overweening debt.

Speaking on behalf of the proposition were Thanos Veremis, professor of history at Panteion university; Antigone Lyberaki, professor of economics at Panteion university; and Kevin Featherstone from the Hellenic Observatory at the London School of Economics. Against were Yanis Varoufakis, professor of economic theory at university of Athens; art critic and journalist Avgoustinos Zenakos; and lawyer Haris Economopoulos.

The case ‘for’ was pretty straightforward: Greece had been brought down by nepotism, cronyism, corruption, tax evasion, wilful disregard for the law and so on in which all Greeks were implicated. Kevin Featherstone argued that in a democracy, all citizens necessarily bear responsibility for what happens in their society.

Those against the proposition thought the blame should be attributed more selectively, to the media barons, politicians, big business and to a bent system that enough Greeks were excluded from or had no stake in. It was also argued that the ‘we binged together’ discourse is being used to coerce Greeks into consenting to the austerity measures since collective responsibility implies collective punishment.

Although I wasn’t satisfied by those against the proposition targeting the usual suspects and avoiding attributing guilt to public sector trade unions, the closed professions, the purveyors of the perverse and bankrupt version of socialism that has dominated Greek society for four decades – I found the ‘we binged together’ case even more unconvincing.

It seems obvious to me that the mother who pays a bribe to a doctor because she wants her sick child to be urgently treated is less responsible for corruption than the doctor who insists on and takes the bribe; nor is the mother’s corruption on the same scale as the politician who insists on a kickback when signing the billion dollar defence contract. Similarly, the father in the sticks who implores the mayor to put his unemployed son on the local payroll can’t be as responsible for cronyism as the mayor who parcels out jobs based on who begs him the most or promises him his vote.

Thus the essence has to be not whether a preponderance of Greeks participated in the system – but whether all benefited from it equally – was everyone paid a bloated pension or were some (most) pensions barely enough to live on? – and whether Greeks had a choice to opt out of the system or were obliged to be a part of it, since no other system existed.

Also, it’s absurd for Featherstone to suggest we live in societies run by citizens or in which citizens have an equal say in how their societies operate. It’s not just that in our societies some citizens are more equal than others, it is that the power wielded by any one citizen will always be much less significant than the power wielded in society by elites and oligarchies; i.e. elites and oligarchies run modern societies, not citizens.

Featherstone also fails to address the pertinent points put to him by two members of the audience, vis a vis: if we accept notions of collective responsibility, then he – Featherstone – must be responsible for the scandal than erupted at the LSE over large donations it accepted over the years from the Gaddafi regime; and that, still according to the logic of collective responsibility, all British people must be held accountable for the excesses of British colonialism.

Indeed, the case of the British colonial system is apposite, because while colonialism benefited many in Britain, its repressive and exploitative side was as profoundly felt in the homeland as in the colonies. Very few British people had a stake in or were advantaged by the British empire; many, indeed, were as much its victims as those subject to British rule overseas.

The same logic has to apply to Greece: while some – even many – sectors of society were advantaged by the corrupt system that evolved after 1974 – it would be invidious to suggest that all or even a majority of Greeks, even if they participated in the system, created it, desired it or benefited from it.

Learning the lessons from Turkey’s forest fires admission

2011-12-29T14:35:00.001Z

Below is a piece I’ve translated into English from Greek daily Imerisia written by Washington-based journalist Michalis Ignatiou on the lessons Greece needs to learn from the admission by ex-Turk PM Mesut Yilmaz that Turkish secret services were responsible for arson attacks against Greek forests in the 1990s. (Read original article here).

Turkey’s aims don’t change
In Greece, the last thing that interests us is the truth. Even when Mesut Yilmaz admitted that Turkish agents were responsible for starting forest fires in Greece in the 1990s, many wished it was lies, precisely because they don’t have the courage to look truth in the eye.

Despite the assurances of certain Greek politicians, Turkey is not that which they hoped for. For the Turks, Greece and Cyprus are long-term enemies, and Turkey will not cease to claim Greek and Cypriot territory.

Unfortunately, Turkey’s provocative stance in Cyprus, where the occupation of the northern part of the island has lasted 37 years, has not taught the necessary lessons to Greek politicians, some of whom even gave their support to the pro-Turkish Annan plan, which sought to legitimise the results of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus.

The rapprochement policy with Turkey that began with the premiership of Kostas Simitis, following the Imia crisis, was a mistake from the start. Simitis’ successor Kostas Karamanlis, who even if he soon realised that for Ankara ‘friendship’ is only possible if you submit to its demands, didn’t change tack. Rapprochement reached its apotheosis when Giorgos Papandreou became prime minister. Despite the fact that in the last three years, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan hasn’t made a secret of Turkey’s plans – on the contrary, he projected and advertised them whenever he could – Papandreou continued to adhere to the failed policy of Greek-Turkish co-operation. Not even when it became clear that for Erdogan co-operation was preconditioned on Greek concessions and the dilution of Greece’s national sovereignty could Papandreou be convinced to adopt another line.

Mesut Yilmaz’s statement in Birgun newspaper didn’t provide any new details regarding Turkish secret service involvement in Greek forest fires. All it did was confirm information in circulation since November 1996, when the Turkish deep-state agent Haluk Kirci admitted to arson attacks against neighbouring countries. Besides, whoever paid attention to and correctly analysed Turkish politics, didn’t need Yilmaz’s admission to be persuaded that Turkey has been systematically acting inside Greece.

After the Chios fires in 1996, which decimated the forest wealth of the island, I was informed from an official police source that four Turks were arrested in relation to the arson, only for them – after orders from Athens – to be deported to Turkey. Clearly, the then government in Athens considered the policy of rapprochement with Turkey more important than holding to account those responsible for the Chios arson attacks.

As for the statements reacting to Yilmaz’s admission from the foreign ministry, New Democracy, LAOS and Dora Bakoyannis, I was convinced they were written in the framework of the stupid policy of issuing statements for the sake of supplying material for party archives. The absence of a statement from PASOK can only be attributed to… Christmas! Still, attitudes towards Turkey shouldn’t be revised because of impromptu announcements from that country’s politicians. They should be revised on the basis of facts, such as the continuing occupation of Cyprus and Turkey’s provocations and illegal claims against Greece. Greek politicians need to come up with a Turkey policy, which all governments should subscribe to, taking into account that ‘whoever is in charge in Ankara, Turkey’s predatory designs will not change’.

Noble Energy announces Cyprus natural gas find

2011-12-28T13:39:00.001Z

Below is the announcement from Noble Energy on the natural gas deposits it’s found in Block 12 (of 13) in Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone. The 5-8 trillion cubic feet mentioned is below some of the more optimistic estimates – the finds in the neighbouring Israeli Leviathan block is double this amount – but it still constitutes a huge find that will enhance Cyprus’ economy and geo-strategic significance, and, of course, unleash a scramble by global gas and oil players to get access to the remaining 12 blocks in the southern sector of Cyprus’ EEZ.

HOUSTON, Dec. 28 – Noble Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NBL) announced today a natural gas discovery at the Cyprus Block 12 prospect, offshore the Republic of Cyprus. The Cyprus A-1 well encountered approximately 310 feet of net natural gas pay in multiple high-quality Miocene sand intervals.

The discovery well was drilled to a depth of 19,225 feet in water depth of about 5,540 feet. Results from drilling, formation logs and initial evaluation work indicate an estimated gross resource range(1) of 5 to 8 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), with a gross mean of 7 Tcf. The Cyprus Block 12 field covers approximately 40 square miles and will require additional appraisal drilling prior to development.

Charles D. Davidson, Noble Energy’s Chairman and CEO, said, “We are excited to announce the discovery of significant natural gas resources in Cyprus on Block 12. This is the fifth consecutive natural gas field discovery for Noble Energy and our partners in the greater Levant basin, with total gross mean resources for the five discoveries currently estimated to be over 33 Tcf. This latest discovery in Cyprus further highlights the quality and significance of this world-class basin.”

Davidson went on to say, “We would like to thank the Government of Cyprus for their productive cooperation and support in achieving an important outcome for the people of Cyprus and Noble Energy. We look forward to working closely with the Government of Cyprus to develop this discovery in a manner that maximizes value for all stakeholders.”

Noble Energy operates the well with a 70 percent working interest. Delek Drilling and Avner Oil Exploration will each have 15 percent, subject to final approval by the Government of Cyprus.

Yilmaz backtracks: ‘I was talking about Greek agents setting fire to Turkish forests!’

2011-12-27T12:05:00.000Z

After news yesterday that Mesut Yilmaz had admitted that in the 1990s Turkey’s secret services were responsible for arson attacks that devastated Greek forests in the islands of the Eastern Aegean, the former Turkish prime minister is now looking to retract, claiming he was misinterpreted. More than this, he is now saying, in an interview with the semi-official Turkish news agency Andalu, that he wasn’t talking about Turkish agents firing Greek forests, but Greek agents firing Turkish forests! Here's Yilmaz’ tortuous explanation:

‘The entire issue has arisen out of a misunderstanding.

‘In replying to [Birgun journalist] Enver Aysever’s question, under which circumstances can we speak of state secrets, I said usually in regard to foreign policy. For example, I said, it would not have been correct to make public our suspicions that the forest fires that hit Turkey’s Aegean coast in the 1990s were the work of the Greek secret services, since these suspicions could not be substantiated.

‘The issue had nothing to do with forest fires in Greece, but forest fires in Turkey… Our Greek friends have been too quick to react [to this story]. I was talking about forest fires in Turkey… The whole issue has been distorted in order to stir up emotions.’

Ex-Turk PM: Turkish agents responsible for arson attacks on Greece

2011-12-26T18:15:00.000Z

It’s worth drawing attention to a story emanating from Turkey, from an interview given to the left-wing Birgun newspaper by that country’s former prime minister, Mesut Yilmaz, in which he admits that in the 1990s, and under the premiership of his rival Tansu Ciller, Turkish secret services were responsible for the devastating forest fires that hit Greece, particularly in Rhodes, Kos, Chios and Samos.

According to Yilmaz: ‘All [Turkish] prime ministers when they finish their term in office will inform their successors as to how certain secret funds were used.

‘I gave this information to my successor and my predecessors did the same. Erbakan, Ecevit and Demirel informed their successors about the secret funds.

‘Only Ciller didn’t share information on how secret funds were deployed during her premiership… funds that I later found out were used [to facilitate] a coup in Azerbaijan and for retaliation against Greece’s forests.’

It’s not clear what Yilmaz means when he says the forest arson was ‘retaliation’ but we assume he’s referring to Greece’s support during this period for Kurdish separatists in Turkey, which culminated in the Abdullah Ocalan fiasco in 1999.

The reaction in Greece to Yilmaz’s admission has been, according to Ta Nea, as follows:

New Democracy’s foreign affairs spokesman, Panos Panagiotopoulos, said: ‘Yilmaz’s revelations that the Turkish “deep state” was burning Greek forests cast a dark shadow over Greek-Turkish relations.

‘The [current] Erdogan government is obliged to provide all the relevant details to Greece regarding this dark episode and offer restitution for the huge damage these fires caused.’

Panagiotopoulos also called on EU institutions to be made aware of the issue and demanded that the Turkish government gives assurances that it has ceased these types of ‘dirty’ tactics.

A statement from LAOS said that when its leader Giorgos Karatzaferis dared to suggest that Turkish agents were responsible for arson in Greece, ‘the political establishment called him an extremist… but now from the mouth of a former prime minister of Turkey we have an admission of the crime.’

Ex-foreign minister and leader of the Democratic Alliance, Dora Bakoyannis, called Yilmaz’ admission ‘shocking’ and said it creates ‘a major political issue, which the Greek government mustn't leave unexamined.’

Bakoyannis added that the Greek government should, through its foreign minister, denounce Turkey in the EU and in other international fora, and must claim compensation from Turkey for reforestation and the wider economic damage the fires caused.

Christopher Hitchens: a steadfast supporter of Cyprus

2011-12-16T16:01:00.004Z

Christopher Hitchens, who has died today, was a steadfast supporter of Cyprus against partition. His engagement with the island began before 1974 when, as a young left-wing journalist, spurred on by loathing for US conduct in the Vietnam war, he identified Cyprus as another battleground where the West, chiefly the US, in pursuit of nefarious, ill-conceived interests, was covertly cultivating what for it was a small, sideshow war but, to those directly affected by it, as Hitchens says in the documentary above, resulted in a ‘catastrophe of epic proportions’.

Prior to the coup and invasion in 1974, Hitchens wrote prophetic articles for the New Left Review and New Statesman on the power-politics and machinations aimed at destabilising and overthrowing the Makarios government in order to bring about the partition of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey and, thus, secure so-called NATO interests. His narrative of betrayal, collusion and superpower conceit led to his book (1984), Cyprus: Hostage to History, which remains the definitive account in English of the Turkish invasion; the starting point for anyone who wants to grasp the nature of the Cyprus problem.

Above is the first part of Frontiers, a BBC documentary Hitchens made in 1989 on the aftermath of the Turkish invasion. It’s not so much an account of the causes of the Turkish invasion, but a reflection on the impact partition has had on Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The remaining four parts are available on Youtube.

*Addendum: The American Hellenic Institute has written a good obituary for Hitchens, stressing his long-standing support for Cyprus and other Greek causes, which in 2007 led the AHI to award him the Hellenic Heritage National Public Service Award. In his acceptance speech, Hitchens said the following:

‘Those of us who are governed by the rule of law don’t demand very much. We are very modest and understated in what we ask. All we want is for the removal of every single Turkish soldier from Cyprus, as international law demands, the restoration of the sculpture of Phidias [the Parthenon Marbles] as a unity, the same way it was carved, as a tribute to the glories of 5th century Athens and the human culture that it has inspired… Take heart. You have friends who will never desert you. Mr. Erdogan, tear down that wall. Zito I Ellas (Long live Greece). Eleftheri I Kypros (Free Cyprus).’

Thoughts on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

2011-12-14T16:09:00.000Z

From the Marxist Yanis Varoufakis to the doyen of American neo-conservatism, Donald Kagan – you get it all on Hellenic Antidote.

Thus, some points emerging from reading Donald Kagan's very good book Thucydides: The Reinvention of History, particularly in relation to the war between the Athenian empire and the Peloponnesians as it transpired in Sicily.

1. I’m sure I’m not the first one to point out that the disastrous Sicilian expedition, which significantly contributed to the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, evokes striking similarities to the Asia Minor catastrophe: an enthusiastic and capable expeditionary force has initial success but, mostly due to poor leadership and increasing loss of morale and self-belief, fails to consolidate its advantages and finish the job, allowing for a revival of the enemy and leading to calamitous defeat. Indeed, I’m sure the similar fates suffered by the Athenians in Sicily and Greeks in Ionia was not lost on Eleftherios Venizelos, a student and translator of Thucydides.

2. We note the bitterness and savagery with which Greek fought Greek throughout the Peloponnesian War, but particularly in Sicily. Kagan writes on the treatment of Athenian and Sicilian allied prisoners by the victorious Syracusans and Corinthians:

‘The triumphant Syracusans took their prisoners and booty [from the Athenian expedition] and stripped the armor from the dead enemy, hanging it from the finest and tallest trees along the [Assinarus] river. On returning to Syracuse they held an assembly where they voted to enslave the servants of the Athenians and their imperial allies and to place Athenian citizens and their Sicilian Greek allies into the city’s stone quarries. A proposal to put Nicias and Demosthenes to death provoked more debate… [and] the assembly voted to execute both [the Athenian] generals.

‘The Syracusans held over seven thousand prisoners in their quarries, crowded together in inhuman conditions, burned by the sun during the day and chilled by the autumn cold at night. They were given about a half-pint of water and a pint of food each day… and they suffered terribly from hunger and thirst. Men died from their wounds, from illness and from exposure and the dead bodies were thrown on top of one another, creating an unbearable stench.’

Thus, what the ‘inhumanity’ of the Peloponnesian War – and not just this war, but the virtually continual state of internecine Greek wars – reminds us is that, in practice, in this period, there was as much an Athenian, Corinthian, Syracusan or Spartan ‘nation’ as a Hellenic one and that the pan-Hellenic consciousness that existed did so side by side and, more often than not, competed with ‘national’ identities derived from belonging to a particular city state.

3. Following on from this, a word on Athenian arrogance and Athenian nationalism. With the advent of the Athenian empire, the Athenians ascribed to themselves the right to decide what it was and what it was not to be a Hellene. Indeed, the Athenians came to believe their way of life was the epitome of Greekness – Pericles’ funeral oration being the clearest expression of this, with his assertion that Athens was ‘an education to Greece’.

Thus, those Athenians who initially argued against the Sicilian expedition did so on the grounds that the Segastans – who had asked the Athenians for assistance in their conflict with Selinus and Syracuse in western Sicily – were not Greeks but ‘an alien race’ and a ‘barbaric people’, even though the Segastans were, in fact, a mixture of Ionian Greek colonists and Hellenised Elymian Sicilians.

We note that Demosthenes the orator in the fourth century BC deployed the same Athenian conceit against the Macedonians, asserting that they had to be resisted and could not claim leadership of Hellas because Philip and his people were not Greeks but barbarians.

Britain moves away from Europe… and takes Turkey with it

2011-12-10T13:53:00.001Z

The above video of Sarkozy snubbing Cameron and heading straight for a handshake and warm words from that stalwart European Dimitris Christofias made me laugh. Clearly, Britain, in France’s eyes, is less of a European entity than Cyprus! Not that Cameron did anything wrong vetoing the proposed fiscal union treaty and, albeit inadvertently, refusing to prop up Berlin’s vision of the continent’s economy that has it operating for the benefit of German exports while the rest of Europe is consigned to austerity and ‘discipline’. Still, what Cameron’s isolating of the UK in Europe – and the logic it has put in motion of Britain detaching itself altogether from the EU – does mean is that the UK position in Europe cultivated by Tony Blair, with the full backing of the Americans, of Britain leading an alliance of EU states from Scandinavia and ‘new’ Europe – in opposition to a Franco-German-led ‘old’ Europe – has been significantly weakened, and along with it the lobby for Turkey's EU accession, an accession that would have radically altered the balance of power in the EU, reversed the trend towards political integration and federation and elevated Britain (in alliance with Turkey) to a powerful leadership role on the continent.

It could be argued that Turkey’s EU accession wasn’t going anywhere anyway and that the diminished role of the UK in Europe will therefore make no difference; but what is increasingly clear is that Turkey’s EU aspirations are at death’s door. All of which raises a massive question for Greece (and Cyprus) since its policy since Simitis has been to actively support Turkey’s EU accession in the hope and expectation that this would neutralise the threat Turkey poses to Greece.

Poverty: from Plato to Laurel & Hardy

2011-11-30T21:59:00.001Z

‘Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight… I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.’ (Albert Camus)

Poverty (Penia) is a goddess with two sisters, Amykhania (helplessness) and Ptokheia (beggary). In Plato’s Republic, poverty is a terrible evil, a source of meanness, viciousness and discontent. Similarly, Aristotle, in the Politics, regards poverty as a social ill, the parent of revolution and crime. In Wealth (Plutus) – read an excellent, Australian-dialect translation here, by George Theodoridis) – Aristophanes asks what would happen to society if everyone suddenly became rich and answers, paradoxically, that inequalities, conflict and misery would increase. In the play, the goddess Penia appears as an old hag, who warns those who think bestowing wealth on all Athenians will be an unmitigated blessing that:

‘[Poverty] is the very fountain of all joy! Of all life, even!… If Wealth were to… spread himself around to everyone, who’d be doing any of the work then or even any of the thinking?'’

The goddess then goes on to suggest that the poor are in fact more virtuous than the rich:

’And let me tell you another thing about the poor. They are modest and civil, whereas the rich are all arrogant.’

The virtues – or otherwise – of poverty become of increasing interest in Greek ethics. Although never endorsing the alleged moral advantages of penury, Socrates does make clear, in the Apology, that he is indifferent to wealth and that a preoccupation with wisdom is far more important than, and perhaps even incompatible with, any pursuit of money or luxury.

The belief that neither wealth or poverty have much to contribute to virtue is shared by the Stoics and Epicureans – who regard poverty as just one of life’s many misfortunes, fear of which should be confronted and overcome. (Seneca advocated living rough from time to time, for a period of three to four days, to get used to poverty in case we should fall victim to it).

The Cynics, however, didn’t just denounce wealth as a prohibition to virtue, they went one stage further and developed a cult of poverty, embracing indigence as a positive way of life, ‘an unending task in which one strives for a more and more complete renunciation of possessions and the desire for material possession’.* Previous Greek virtues of beauty, honour and independence were turned on their head by the Cynics, who valorised, instead, ugliness, humiliation, dishonour (adoxia) and dependence – begging and, more radically, slavery, were positively accepted.**

Finally, we note that it was not a big leap from Cynic humiliation to Christian humility, from Cynic destitution to Christian asceticism, and from the Cynic exaltation of poverty to Christian love of the poor.

*E. McGushin: Foucault’s Askesis.
**M. Foucault: The Courage of Truth (The Government of Self and Others II).

Cyprus Still Divided

2011-11-26T13:42:00.001Z

Above is Cyprus Still Divided, a pretty good documentary on the Cyprus issue and the role the USA – and particularly the odious Henry Kissinger – played in partitioning the island. The film was made by the American Hellenic Institute with the intention of educating a US audience and, as such, has been shown on NPR stations and at various ‘Town Hall screenings’. There’s good archive footage, mostly taken from Michalis Cacoyiannis’ film Attila 1974: The Rape of Cyprus, plus more recent interviews with Paul Sarbanes, John Brademas, Nicholas Burns, Christopher Hitchens, Titina Loizidou and others.

A couple of points on accuracy and interpretation.

1. The film states that the policy of the Athens junta 1967-74 was enosis. This is not true. The junta’s Cyprus policy was partition. This is well established now. Thus, despite dressing itself up as nationalist and patriotic, the junta’s policy for Cyprus was anything but; having been persuaded by its US supervisors that the best thing for the junta, Greco-Turkish relations, the West in its contest with communism and so on, was for Cyprus to be divided between Greece and Turkey. The tension that existed between the junta and Makarios – why they tried to assassinate him and eventually overthrew him in a coup – was because they regarded the archbishop as an obstacle not to enosis, which Makarios believed in, but to partition, which he, and 99% of Cypriots, did not.

2. The film states that the junta’s purpose in removing Makarios was to unite Cyprus with Greece. But, as I’ve already said, partition not enosis was the junta’s policy, in which case the purpose of the coup was the removal of Makarios and the setting up of a subordinate regime in Nicosia, permitting Athens to open negotiations with Turkey as to how best to partition the island, along the lines of the Acheson plan. Thus, even though junta-leader Dimitrios Ioannides was stupid and a psychopath, he would not have acted against Makarios if he thought the Turks would invade. All Ioannides’ actions in July 1974 suggest he was under the impression – provided to him by the Americans – that Turkey accepted Athens’ plan to get rid of Makarios in order to expedite partition.

3. When talking about the coup against Makarios, the film shows images of Colonel Giorgos Papadopoulos, even though he had been ousted by Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannides as junta leader in November 1973 and it was Ioannides, not Papadopoulos, who initiated the coup against Makarios.

Indeed, one of Makarios’ biggest miscalculations was not to have realised that the junta under Ioannides was far more dangerous to Cyprus than it had been under Papadopoulos. Makarios always believed that, despite the constant rumours, the Papadopoulos-led junta would not be so stupid as to initiate a coup against him. Makarios mistakenly assumed that this basic level of intelligence was shared by Ioannides and his cohorts.

4. Finally, Christopher Hitchens makes his usual incisive interventions in the film; and I want to dwell on his statement that Cyprus paid the price for the fall of the junta. This is entirely accurate and, indeed, it always annoys me the way (mainland) Greeks insist they brought down the junta – and that central to this was the student uprising at the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973. All the student protest achieved was convince hard-liners, like Ioannides, that Papadopoulos wasn’t tough enough and that Greece needed a firmer hand. It didn’t shorten the time of the junta by five minutes.

Imagining a new Greece

2011-11-24T16:25:00.001Z

Above and below are a couple of videos with ideas on how Greece can emerge from the crisis afflicting it.

The first, above, in Greek, has Aristos Doxiadis explaining the importance of ‘morphosis’ to society and bemoaning the fact that the acquisition of morphosis has become secondary to the attainment of the ‘diploma’, which has come to denote morphosis.

Morphosis is traditionally translated into English as ‘education’, but this doesn’t do the word justice. Morphosis, I think, has more to do with ‘cultivation’ than ‘education’ and it also has attached to it a sense of ‘becoming something different to what you were’, to ‘form’, to ‘change’ and to ‘grow’… through knowledge and learning. Think of the relatively new English verb, to ‘morph’.

(I might be wrong here, but if omorphia [beauty] and morphosis have the same root etymologically, then morphosis would also imply ‘becoming beautiful’ through learning/education/cultivation. i.e. beauty is wisdom).

Doxiadis goes on to explain the need for private universities in Greece, the importance of removing bureaucratic obstacles to Greek academics from the diaspora returning to teach at Greek universities and of Greek universities exploiting the natural advantages Greece has at its disposal to become magnets for students from northern Europe (and elsewhere) to take degrees.

Secondly, below, there’s a talk from South African-born advertising guru Peter Economides, in English, on how he believes Greece is desperately in need of ‘branding’.

Now, it’s tempting to be dismissive of Economides – ‘how dare he try to sell Greece the same way he might sell Coca-Cola’ – but, in fact, what he’s getting at, even if he doesn’t realise it, is the crisis of ideology affecting Greece. This has manifested itself as a contest – which is bitter and polarised – over Greek identity and Greek history. Indeed, Economides has a fairly traditional vision of Greece that many, particularly on the Greek left, would not share, preferring a less ethnocentric ‘brand’ or a ‘brand’ that has Greeks as unruly and rebellious Kropotkin-Guevaras. Still, Economides’ passion for Greece and his mission to ‘reimagine’ the country is admirable – even if it is from within an advertising paradigm and I fear his typically-diasporan love for Greece and Greek culture will be rebuffed.

Varoufakis: on the death of the global Minotaur and the demise of the eurozone

2011-11-19T16:26:00.001Z

I hope I’m not turning this blog into something of a Yanis Varoufakis’ fan site; but I really do find his outpourings illuminating and entertaining; not that I agree with a lot of what he says – not so much his analysis of the recent history and current state of global capitalism, but the political conclusions he draws from it all. But that’s fine. Above is another great talk from the professor, this time from 9 November at Columbia University in New York. As well as going into some detail regarding his metaphor of the Minotaur to explain US economic hegemony post-1971, he also exposes the eurozone for what it is – a plan to create a ‘Greater Germany’, which would protect and enhance Germany’s export-led economic model – and predicts that the 26 October agreement – supposed to ‘bail-out’ Greece and insulate other debt-ridden eurozone economies – will not preserve the euro but expedite its demise. Varoufakis may be being too pessimistic – ultimately his pessimism leads him to believe that fascism in Europe will make a comeback – but you want a public intellectual to be controversial and provocative, to suggest to us that the foundations of the civilised societies we have become accustomed to are not as firm or enduring as we think they are.

‘Watch these films. We are trying to say something.’

2011-11-14T21:30:00.001Z

Above is a good interview with Cypriot filmmaker Yiannis Economides, one of my favourite Greeks of the moment, talking about his most recent film Knifer; the precarious state of Greece; and why his three features – Matchbox (2002), Soul Kicking (2006) and Knifer (2010) – predicted that Greece was on a path towards disintegration. He says: ‘Of course, the kinds of films we make… foreshadowed what would happen in Greece. It was as if we were giving them a knock to the head, telling them “Watch these films. We are trying to say something. Something’s up.”’

See Economides’ latest film, Knifer, here, in full, with English subtitles.

Samaras on Greece’s Exclusive Economic Zone

2011-11-13T00:04:00.001Z

Above is an excerpt from a speech made by New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras at the Thessaloniki trade fair in September 2011. In it, Samaras stresses Greece’s geostrategic position, along with Cyprus, as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East and as the gateway for central Europe and Russia to the south. He denounces the Papandreou administration for cancelling the ‘pipeline diplomacy’ of the previous New Democracy government and for failing to declare Greece’s Exclusive Economic Zone and secure its delineation with neighbouring countries. Greece, Samaras argues, should tap into its underwater wealth. Samaras points out that Cyprus – ‘little Cyprus’ – has done all this for itself, years ago, and has won both support and allies. Greece hasn’t done it yet but, Samaras goes on, I will do it. Not without the necessary preparation and calculation, but I will do it, as soon as possible. We have rights, which can be converted into wealth for the Greek people, he says.