My Greek Odyssey

We Are All Thirsty

 

We are all thirsty these days. Thirsty for truth, unity, peace and above all, stability in our tumultuous world. And everywhere we look around us there is none to be had. 

The world watches events in Greece with apprehension.  There is a nagging feeling that events in Greece are merely a harbinger of what is in store for the rest of us, just as they were when the ideologies of East and West collided after World War II and brought about the Greek Civil War. Greece, always the plaything of forces larger than itself, once more has lost what little sovereignty it had.   Anyone who reads the details of the plan imposed on Greece by the EU and the IMF will understand that Greece is now beholden to others for its very survival and no amount of mindless violence and destruction in the streets will change that.

Greek society has never adequately developed into a civil society in which citizens see themselves as a part of something bigger than their immediate family, union or party affiliation.  Rife with grievance, corruption and inequality, modern Greece has been fertile ground for outside ideologies that are foreign to Greeks yet appeal to their never ending search for justice and egalitarianism. In 1974 the Right which ruled Greece with an iron hand after its victory in the civil war, over-reached as the Greek State is prone to do and not only created a second great catastrophe, this time paid by the Greeks of Cyprus but also made possible the final victory of the Left.  Despite its legalization, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has never been able to draw more than a fraction of the electorate to their side.  Memories of their brief and violent rein still reverberate in the country's collective memory. In its place emerged the Socialist party of Andreas Papandreou known as PASOK. It offered the country a shot at the socialist European dream that resonanted among most Greeks who desperately wanted the same benefits as those enjoyed by many Europeans. PASOK thrived on the same rhetoric and class warfare that was so effectively used by the Communists and it gained much support from not only centrists but also cadres in the KKE itself. Papandreou railed at the US and charted what seemed to be an independent course for Greece while in fact he cemented the country's position within the Western Bloc. Papandreou's popularity forced even the conservative New Democracy Party to swing leftward. The state apparatus grew by leaps and bounds, heathcare was nationaized as well as utilities, communications and the energy sector. Unions became ascendant achieving more and more power over the growing public sector and the shrinking private sector alike. More importantly leftist ideology was established within the schools and media ensuring that future generations would be suitably prepared to serve the nanny state.

Fast forward to the present. The Greek socialist state is broke, sucked dry by a combination of corruption which is fueled by the notion that the state is the property of the political party that happens to be running the country, nepotism, clientism and the need to grease everyone's palm is considered business as usual. The growing state bureaucracy has evolved into a huge money grubbing behemoth increasingly exercising control over every aspect of life and its growing minions feed at the public trough at the expense of others.

In the ashes of the old Greece, can we find the lessons from which emerges the phoenix of a new Greece, unencumbered by greed, self interest and foreign ideologies? The realization that freedom ALWAYS trumps the dictatorship of the state. In the midst of destruction and despair perhaps we can discern that government exists to defend the nation and at the very least provide a safety net that protects those members of society who are unable to fend for themselves. It does not exist to manage our lives, redistribute wealth nor tell us what is or is not good for us. 

Only if the divisions of the old Greece, Venizelists vs Royalists, Right vs Left, Europeans vs Nationalists, rich vs poor, can finally be cast aside will the new Greece emerge. A Greece that is built once again on Greek principles that incorporate Hellenism and Orthodoxy, that which unites rather than divides. A Greece which allows the individual the unencumbered freedom to put his labor and talent to use irregardless of his station in life or his connections. A Greece which educates its children once more to think and build instead of indoctrinating them to destroy and repeat the tired slogans of yesteryear. A Greece which no longer makes excuses or perpetuates class warfare which pits one citizen against another. A Greece which is lead by the best and the brightest not grifters and sycophants. A Greece which is not afraid to chart its own course and defend its hard won territory.

Even now Greeks mutter of dark conspiracies. They blame mysterious cabals, powerful nations and greedy bankers; they wring their hands and decry their victimhood. In so doing they are delaying the inevitable and essential reckoning needed within Greek society to come face to face with its own demons.

We are all thirsty and our throats remain parched.

1-02 ¨Ολοι Δίψανε

Greek Dependence Day

This month marks the anniversary of Greek independence. If the Greek patriots of 1821, who fought a life or death struggle against the vast Ottoman Empire could see the present state of affairs, I am sure they would be crying bitter tears. One hundred eighty nine years later their progeny have squandered the very freedoms that they fought so hard for.  

Not much has changed since the days of the Sultan's rule. The average Greek still lives in a world dominated by bribes and nepotism in which he must hide as much of his income as possible to avoid the onerous taxes. Before independence, the Turks used to kidnap the strongest and smartest Greek children to be trained as the Empire's shock troops, the Janissaries. Nowadays, Greek children are the victims of another type of insiduous paidomazema (gathering of children) that takes the most talented and promising youngsters away from Greece because they have no future there. Even worse, Greeks now silently countenance genocide in the form of widespread, easily obtainble abortion on demand perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn Greeks. A genocide infinitely more efficient than anything the Turkish or Nazi occupiers could have devised. Greeks have traded dhimmitude status for a European citizenship that seeks to transform them into faceless homogeneous automatons who must rely on the state to take care of them from cradle to grave. During the Ottoman oppression Greeks were able to retain their culture and language by clinging to their Orthodox faith. Within the European Union however, that faith is being replaced by a corrosive imposed secularism whose new twin Gods, global warming and multiculturalism are intent on destroying the very things that preserved Greekness.

To make matters worse, the EU has foisted upon unsuspecting Greeks a monetary system that encourages a standard of living that is unsustainable and unaffordable because it is based on borrowing. Borrowing which is readily encouraged because it means greater consumption of the goods produced by the more industrialized states within the Union like Germany. Runaway government spending also fueled by borrowing, is a direct result of the cradle to grave social welfare model that the Europeans themselves fostered. Now they complain when poorer countries like Greece try to emulate the policies that have been ruinous in the richer countries of the Union. The Ottomans have been replaced by a state apparatus that is just as authoritarian and alienated from its subjects. Greeks have become the victims of European and homegrown pashas every bit as corrupt and uncaring as the Turkish ones they kicked out. Unlike the Ottomans, however, who took full advantage of the entrepenurial spirit and the work ethic of their Christian subjects, albeit for their own narrow purposes, the Greek elites at the behest of their masters in Brussels, have virtually expunged them in their headlong rush toward a multi-cultural, socialist nanny state.  A state which by the way, employs a significant portion of the population, who gorge themselves at the public trough at the expense of the larger productive, mostly self-employed, segment of society, one of the hardest working in the world, surpassed only by the South Koreans. Every year the public sector awards itself increasing benefits, vacations, salaries, and pensions, all paid for by the private sector drones who have to work 12 hour days to make ends meet. Unfortunately there are fewer and fewer wealth-creating self-reliant Greeks thanks to a pitiful birth rate and a mind numbing, mediocre educational system to fund the entitled few who retire at 58 and expect their due, the rest of the country be damned.

Like many others, I cheered Greek entry into the European Union. Greece is a small country surrounded by unruly and aggressive neighbors, struggling to recover from the devastation and substantial wounds of the twentieth century. Many Greeks thought things might be different. No one imagined that they would have to give up what they have historically prized above all else, eleftheria, the Greek word for freedom. Eleftheria is not the freedom that allows anyone to do anything he or she pleases, irregardless of the consequences to themselves or others but freedon from tyranny, oppression or enslavement. It was the Greeks who taught the West the meaning of the word; it was once the solid foundation on which Western civilization was built. Now even the inventors of the concept no longer value it. Greeks who thought they could trade some of their precious, finite freedom for security and stabilty have learned it was a Faustian bargain. Give some faceless bureaucrat in Brussels or Athens a little of your freedom in exchange for some temproary monetary advantages and he will take much more. 

Greeks should not seek to blame others for their predicament. It is largely a self-inflicted wound.  Trade unions, academia, political parties and even unscrupulous investors have been complicit. Νor are Greeks the only ones who will have to face the consequences of their vacation from history. The European Union and even the United States will soon face similar fates. That is what happens when people and governments live beyond their means, when people elect leaders who promise something for nothing, when corrupt elites are no longer accountable, and when greed takes over.  It's all a house of cards that will collapse on itself.

So now Greece conveniently extends its out-stretched hand to its orphans in the Diaspora. Many are reluctant to donate their hard earned money, as they so willingly did after the disastrous fires that swept the country, only to see much of that money line the pockets of corrupt officials. Greeks have distinguished themselves in every field of endeavor throughout the world; one can only lament that they had to leave Greece in order to do so.  The millions of Greeks living abroad would re-invigorate Greece if there was a reverse migration, yet Greece is as ill equipped now to welcome (let alone entice) them as it was for the refugees it received in 1922.

Greece will inevitably survive, yet again, in some twisted form of its former self. All it will need to do is give up a little more of its sovereignty and its people will consequently have even less control over their lives. One thing is certain, when Greeks celebrate their Independence Day on March 25th, the fluttering flags, marching children and fighter jets flying overhead will not conceal the fact that Greeks are no longer independent but entirely and utterly dependent. Dependent on other countries who see Greece only as another piece of real estate up for sale to the highest bidder and to a bankrupt state whose only solution to the country's vexing problems is taxation or more intrusive laws.

Those of us that wish the Greeks well can only hope they have reached rock bottom.  Are they willing to sacrifice, to seek bold solutions and above all to clean house in order to regain their self-respect and eleftheria once again by working together toward a common goal? I am reminded of something that I read by Ioannis Makriyiannis. For those not familiar with this towering figure of modern Greece, Makriyannis was a man of humble origins who became a revolutionary fighter and leader in the Greek War of Independence. He was a veteran of innumerable battles, an accomplished writer and a political idealist who, after Greece became an independent state with a Bavarian monarchy, was active in the movement for constitutional government. He was rewarded with imprisonment for his efforts. In Makriyannis's own Memoirs we find the following significant passage in the epilogue:   "Well, we all worked together [to liberate Greece] and we need to guard her together and for the powerful or the weak not to say 'I'. Do you know when someone should say 'I'? When they struggle on their own to make or destroy something. When many people struggle and make something then they should say 'we'. We are at the 'we' not the 'I'."  His words ring as true today as they did in his own time. Nikos Kazantzakis, another great Greek writer once noted that Greece survives through a succession of miracles. As the country stares once more into the abyss of irrelevance and self-destruction, let's all pray God has one more up his sleeve.

Hitler on the Greek Debt Crisis

This video clip from the German movie "Der Untergang" has been used to make fun of a number of things on YouTube. Unfortunately, all these parodies have been pulled because the Film Studio complained.  How utterly misguided given that the film was made in 2004 and all the parodies have made it into a cult classic. I managed to salvage the video with the subtitles I wrote. I'm hoping to keep it up as long as possible. The Greek Debt crisis and Hitler, in particular, are hardly laughing matters, nevertheless, what can we do but laugh during times like this? I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN BERISHA’s ALBANIA by Aristide D. Caratzas

I'm posting this piece to provide more background information regarding the Greek minority in Albania. 

www.caratzas.com

Rule of Law, Private Property and Minority Rights

A recent flare up near Loukovo, one of the towns in the predominantly ethnic Greek province of Cheimarra (Albanian, Himara) over questions of property rights suddenly raises questions about the nature and extent to which the Albanian government, headed by Prime Minister Sali Berisha, has accepted basic democratic values such as the primacy of the rule of law, property rights and the basic human rights of ethnic minorities. 

Indeed there is a clear sense that economic development (which ironically also was a major priority for the late and unlamented Communist regimes, their failures in this field notwithstanding) is used as a cover for organized violation of property rights and illegal seizures of property (even by Albanian law), which in turn are used to pressure the ethnic Greek minority. As an official in the Berisha government put it last week, “we will drive you [i.e. the ethnic Greeks] to the sea.”

The Recent Events at Kakomaia (Alb. Kakome)

Kakomaia is one of the lovely small valleys in the province of Cheimarra that culminate in a jewel of a beach on the Ionian Sea. Kakomaia also is the site of a Christian monastery and is near the village of Nivitsa (Alb., Nivica), which is in turn near Loukovo, a small and wealthy town, before the Communist take-over in 1945, which has been inhabited by ethnic Greek Christians for centuries.

In 2004 the Albanian government leased for 99 years 70 hectares (700,000 square meters) to Riviera, a construction company headed by the Albanian businessman Dritan Çelaj. A problem immediately arose as to the ownership title of the land in question, as there are 120 private individuals (and the Albanian Orthodox Church) claiming ownership of individual parcels that make up this property. In July 2008 the claimants filed a suit on the basis of earlier title records and other evidence. Subsequently the suit was dismissed by the courts and the claimants filed appeals, which are still pending.

Recent Moves that Ignored the Legal Process and Pending Decision

Meanwhile, and on the administrative front, on September 19, 2008 the “Commission for the Return of Properties” (Komisioni i kthimit te pronave), a body created by the Berisha administration to afford it more direct control on the property issue and headed by Berisha’s son-in-law Jamarber Malltezi, rejected the applications of the 120 ownership claims of the Kakomaia properties.

At 8:00 AM on November 6, five truck convoy carrying building and fencing materials presumably for the Riviera construction company set out for Kakomaia. The convoy was intercepted by crowds of local inhabitants who protested these arbitrary and basically extra-legal moves by blocking the road and forced the trucks to stop. The drivers abandoned the vehicles.  The next day, November 7, the mayor and town officials issued Municipal Orders 40 and 41, by which the trucks were then driven to and parked at the municipal facility of Loukovo. The owners of the vehicles were notified and were requested to remove them, which they did on November 15. On November 9 police from Agioi Saranta (Alb., Sarande) raided Loukovo and arrested ten persons on nebulous charges. These were released the next day.

The aforementioned five truck convoy again tried to enter the Kakomaia area on November 19. It was stopped by a large number of protesters, many more than had appeared on November 6; the protestors poured in from all the ethnic Greek villages of Cheimarra and other contiguous areas. Again the convoy was stopped. The protesters continued their vigil, day and night, so as not to allow access to the contested area. 

November 22 the police arrived and there followed clashes in which  four persons were arrested, including Kleomenis Bantzeris, one of the town elders of Loukovo (from Nivitsa). As the police withdrew the clashes continued between the inhabitants and a private security squad brought in by the company. The local inhabitants charged that most of the members of the private security squad were former convicts or others known to have committed criminal offences, paid thugs in short. As a result of the clashes a number of people were injured, including elderly and children. 

Leaders of the community and their families were threatened with violence, to the extent that some removed their families for reasons of safety. Meanwhile the four persons arrested were “tried” in court in Agioi Saranta (Alb. Sarande) on November 27 and convicted of a range of charges such as disrupting the peace and theft of equipment (the moving of the trucks to the Loukovo parking facility until they were picked up by the owners) and they are still held in prison.

The Background, or Is Berisha’s Past a Measure for the Future
 
In the 1990s the Albanian regime headed by former Communist Berisha targeted the Greek minority in an effort to diminish its influence or even to ethnically cleanse it. The tactics the regime had used were heavy-handed, and included harassment and violence against ethnic Greeks, the arrest of their leadership and its detention for six months before any charges were filed. Pressures from Greece, which received and gave work to hundreds of thousands of impoverished Albanians, and by the United States (mostly originating by Greek-Americans), eventually led to the reversal of these policies. 
 
In 1997 the Berisha regime collapsed as a result of widespread systemic corruption culminating in the pyramid scandals that resulted in the loss to the Albanian people of hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars.
 
Sali Berisha won reelection in 2004, apparently a reformed and effective leader who developed a close relationship with the US and the EU, reasonable relations with Albania’s neighbors, especially Greece, where over 750,000 Albanian citizens live and earn enough to remit yearly over a billion euros to their country of origin. Berisha’s political high point was reached when Albania was nominated for entry into NATO in April of this year.
 
Economic Development as a Cover for Ethnic Cleansing
 
It now has become apparent that behind the mask of the statesman Berisha has reverted to the more sinister past agenda of persecuting the ethnic Greek minority, but this time he is using much more sophisticated approach: Berisha’s strategy to diminish or eliminate the millennial ethnic Greek presence in the space that is now southern Albania is legitimized by having international organizations, such as the World Bank, assist in drawing up its economic development plan (for example the Albanian Southern Coast Development Plan). 
 
The Development Plan, seemingly a serious document, appears to address a number of planning and environmental issues that need to be addressed. A key element of the Development Plan is tourism, and as such the areas near the ethnic Greek towns of Cheimarra, Drymades (Alb. Dhermi), Gialos (near Vouno), Palasa and Loukovo, have been earmarked for the creation of “tourist villages.” This concept is promoted by Berisha’s the aforementioned son-in-law, who is focused on the exploitation of properties that were seized by the Communist regime in 1946 and that have never been restored to their rightful owners or their descendants.
 
Restoration of Property: An Authoritarian Approach or Simple Theft
 
A note of the restoration or private properties is in order: In the early 1990s all former Communist bloc states were pressured to restore private properties to their rightful owners, as part of the process of the transition to democracy. In the case of Albania the process should have been relatively easy in the sense that the Italians had created a very accurate and detailed title registry during their occupation of the country.  When the Berisha regime of the early 1990s approached the issue of the restoration of private properties it opted not to refer back to the pre-Communist title registry, but passed Law 7501 instead, by which arbitrarily he granted 3,000 square meters of land to each Albanian citizen residing in the country.  
 
Over the last fifteen years the restoration of private property was carried out throughout most of the country based on the above law, until it was abolished in favor of the Commission cited above—this afforded Berisha even greater control over the land privatization process. The notable exception to this policy has been in the south, where the ethnic Greek minority lives; there few residents have been restored their properties, virtually none in the province of Cheimarra. 
 
It is in the above mentioned towns of Cheimarra that large tracts of land have been arbitrarily seized and given to individuals or entities linked to the Berisha regime. In the coast near Palermo, near the village of Keparo, 800 hectares were leased to an Orthodox Christian Albanian, while the aforementioned 70 hectares in Kakomaia (a site that includes a monastery and that is near Loukovo) were leased to a Riviera, a construction company headed by Dritan Çelaj.
 
These and many other tracts in fact have legitimate owners, whose families held these properties for
generations, and who have been struggling to have them restored to them. Given the present situation Berisha and his associates, under the cover provided by “economic development” plans sanctioned by international organizations, seem poised for a land grab of properties historically owned by the ethnic Greek community and its institutions. Given Berisha’s previous history it is clear that his predatory impulses aim not only to enrich him and his associates, but also to break the economic back of the ethnic Greeks thus providing the reason for them to leave. A kind of ethnic cleansing with velvet gloves.
 
The Greek Government’s Response
 
The leadership of the Cheimarra ethnic Greek community has been providing information on the events to the Greek Embassy in Tirana on a virtual real-time basis. At the same time the Enosis Cheimarrioton, consisting of people from Cheimarra living in Greece, has been in constant touch with Epirotan organizations in Athens (a motivation for this writing in part is to inform the Greek-American, Greek-Canadian and Greek-Australian diasporas). The Cheimarrios of Athens are planning a protest at the Albanian Embassy in Athens on Monday, December 1.
 
Meanwhile, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Valinakis, testifying in Parliament on November 17, in response to a formal question submitted by Athanasios Plevris, an MP from the L.A.O.S. party, stated that government’s objective is to safeguard the properties of the ethnic Greek minority, both on the legal and political levels. The Deputy Minister went on to link the need for the resolution of the property rights issue to Albania’s relationship with the European Unions and noted that the EU placed a priority on the return of the seized properties. Valinakis was less specific about the actions Greece will take to deal with the harassed and imprisoned ethnic Greeks, and with the Kakomaia situation.
 
A more puzzling response was that of the official Foreign Ministry Spokesman George Koumoutsakos, in a news conference held on November 27. In response to a question about the “Albanian government’s operation that is under way to seize properties of the omogeneis” Koumoutsakos stated, “From time to time the inhabitants of Greek origin (sic) have dealt with problems relating to the security of their properties that are sometimes serious and sometimes less so.” Koumoutsakos then went on to say that he was not informed as to the specifics of this case (his Deputy Minister was ten days earlier!), and said that the Greek Embassy in Tirana “is undertaking all actions, is in touch with the Albanian authorities, in order that such phenomena be addressed.” 
 
In short, the Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman obfuscated (in contrast to the Valinakis response, which while weak recognized the Greek Government’s obligations to protect the rights and security of the minority in Northern Epirus). In fact Koumoutsakos’ comments evidence a lack of will to act, something which in diplomacy invites the other side to continue with its untoward behavior. According to educated observers in Athens, the Ministry spokesman reflects the attitude and posture of his
Foreign Minister, Mrs. Bakogiannis, who has been showing untoward passivity when dealing with authoritarian individuals, whether Berisha of Albania or Gruevski of Skopje.

 

Dean Kalimniou has also written another article on the issue entitled: "Northern Epirus - between a rock and a hard place"  which is well worth reading.

Μανα μου Ελλας - Mother Hellas

Aχ Ελλάδα μου αγαπημένη

σε καίνε τά παιδία σου

καί σε φάγανε οι πουλημένει

σε γεμίσανε με στάχτη καί σκουπίδια

καί μές τα σπίτια μπήκανε τά φίδια

Πληγόσανε τήν ελπίδα καί τήν λεβεντιά

καί μας αφήσανε ορφανά

Μακριά απο τήν μάνα μας

ζούμε στήν ξενιτιά

καί ακόμα κρατάμε τό λάβαρο πσίλα

γιά μιά πατρίδα που δέν υπάρχη πιά

                     *********

O beloved Hellas

Your children have set you on fire

and those who have sold themselves, devour you.

They have filled you with ashes and trash,

and now the snakes have entered our homes

Hope and bravery have been wounded

and we are all orphans,

Far from our Mother,

living in foreign lands

Still holding the banner high

for a country whose time draws nigh.

I come from a family that always lived outside of the boundaries of the modern Greek State.  Despite that fact, we spoke Greek, maintained our Greek Orthodox faith, preserved Greek customs, fought for Greece, and ultimately were victimized because we were Greek.  Greece was always an unattainable dream that lived in our hearts no matter what our circumstances. We felt a shared pride in who we were and wore that pride on our sleeve.

Lately I am feeling many things but pride is not one of them. I feel revulsion at what Greece has become.  I feel shame at what is happening to the dream of Mother Hellas that has been carefully nurtured, by my grandparents and my parents.  You wake up up one day and realize that it is going up in flames. For the last three years I have been writing about the Greek values that I was raised to respect and to emulate in my own life. Values that I am supposed to pass on to my children. Values that no longer seem to be shared by an increasing number of Greeks.

So I wander the blogosphere like the dispossessed, trying to understand what is happening and why it is happening. Reading the various analyses both in Greek and English. I am struck by the complexity of the issue and its many different facets. Of one thing I'm sure, the rioting that has occurred throughout the country is a symptom of a malaise that is rooted in our abandonment of our traditions and thus in the way we see ourselves.  Plastered all over the walls of the Polytechnic  in Athens,  the Greek "Harvard," one can read grafitti like this: "Kill the Greeks, and those that breed Greeks!"  and "Damn the patriots!" We have systematically alienated ourselves from the traditional Greek virtues. In the process we grope for answers but find no solutions for the future. In fact what is painfully apparent in this whole fiasco is that while there is plenty of anger, no one is talking about how to solve the deep seated systemic problems that have brought us to this point.  To quote John Akritas, over at Hellenic Antidote: "radically changing the institutions of society would involve effort, commitment, patience, organisation, selflessness, a belief in the common good and, above all, innovative thinking – none of which are on display anywhere in Greek society at the moment."

In his book, Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle talks about Eudaimonia, which he identified as happiness, well-being or the "highest good." Eudaimonia is not a means to an end, but an end in itself—in fact, Aristotle argued that it was commonly recognized as the ultimate goal of life. Happiness thus understood is not a mood or temporary state, but a state achieved through a lifetime of virtuous action. According to Aristotle, the conception people have of happiness frequently does not line up with true happiness because people are generally deficient in virtue. Virtue is a disposition to behave in the right manner, which is inculcated from a young age. So virtue is not something we are born with, it is taught in the home, in the clasroom, by the Church, by the example that adults (including leaders) set for children.  

There is no doubt that many Greek parents do their very best to inculcate virtue in their children. I have seen those parents in action with my very own eyes. Parents who struggle to raise their children properly, in every sense of the word. I have also seen the breakdown of those structures that produce children who are competent and responsible citizens within society.  Family, once a mainstay of the Greek way of life, is breaking down. Divorce, out of wedlock births, abandonment of the old, latch key children. Potent forces that are all contributing to societal dysfunction.  Respect too has gone by the wayside, taking with it patriotism and civic responsibility.  The Church, its hierarchy and even its priests are increasingly the subject of derision.

In the Greece of today, happiness is an elusive commodity, despite how hard Greeks seem to be chasing it.  Looking for happiness and love in all the wrong places. In consumerism, in the "tourist" lifestyle, in the cafeterias sipping endless cups of coffee and chain smoking.  Despite the sea change in terms of economics, Greeks today are less happy.  Make no mistake about it, Greeks today, even in the age of globalization and economic recession, are infinitely better off than they were fifty or one hundred years ago when young impoverished Greeks emigrated in mass numbers as a matter of survival. 

To be sure Greece has a government apparatus that is unable to deliver on the many promises made by successive governments on both sides of the political spectrum.  A government often lead by corrupt or misguided politicians and run by incompetent bureaucrats. A government torn asunder by greedy, self serving political parties, unions, and other power brokers. So what else is new.  The difference is that now, Greeks, especially the younger ones, feel a sense of entitlement.  They owe me!  I have no hope for the future. I want a free college education,  free health care, a cushy government job which they can't fire me from, a good salary for little or no work, retirement at age 55 and  I am entitled to burn, destroy and plunder to give voice to my discontent because it isn't handed to me on a silver platter. 

The alienation of the young is an offshoot of another phenomenon, The stillbirth of a civil society. Civil society refers to voluntary participation by average citizens and thus does not include behavior imposed or even coerced by the state. This is especially important in a country where the state is clearly unable to enforce its own laws or solve pressing problems. Historically, Greece has had a poor record in this regard. For example, unless the local government takes action, stray dogs are allowed to roam the streets and it would never occur to the average Greek to organize a non-profit grassroots organization to deal with this local problem. Civic culture only flourishes in an environment where most citizens think they are stakeholders. Where they believe their government is legitimate and that their institutions (if not the leaders at any particular moment) can be trusted.  Clearly this is no longer the case and the last time this happened in Greece, it took a civil war to settle the matter.

This is the first part of a two part post. The second part, "The Other Greece," will appear next week.

The Greek Reality

A perceptive yet chilling analysis from Athens:

"The riots, however, finally forced upon everyone in Greek society, from the highest to the lowliest, the picture of harsh reality almost everyone was trying to avoid in an unprecedented phenomenon of mass denial.

Suddenly, it became obvious that a “democratic” culture that systematically encourages blatantly anti-democratic, anti-social, vulgar, and gratuitously injurious behaviors has little, if any, future left.

Suddenly, it became obvious that a culture of unbridled sectionalism, fueled by persistent political sloganeering and masqueraded behind the various guises of “democratic process,” has nothing to offer beyond the vicious blackmailing of the many by the few and apocalyptic destruction once the broader system begins to reveal its true inabilities and malfunctions which lie hidden underneath its thick layer of make-up.

Suddenly, it became obvious that demanding and learning to expect a society where the government offers free schools, free health care, free mass transportation, free vacations, free entertainment, free housing, free universities, free student accommodation, free school books, and guaranteed for-life government employment with good salaries, fat pensions, and retirement bonuses leads to one dark, endless tunnel.

And, suddenly, it became obvious that when this level of pathological unreality is disturbed, the response could be fierce and fatal.

The reactions of the Greek political class to the ongoing crisis is living proof that Greece is locked in an impasse. A first reading of government and opposition statements, alongside the mind-boggling cacophony from the media and other “social partners,” proves there are no practical proposals that could begin to mend the situation. On the other hand, it is also obvious, that none of the “actors” in this apocalyptic absurdity can actually see the message of the contradiction between a Greek society “traditionally tolerant” of protest and habitual disruption of everyday life -- as the foreign press has repeatedly highlighted in recent days -- and the justified agony of so many, who have seen their livelihoods and properties go up in smoke in the hands of vandals their government won't oppose or pursue, and who realize, somewhat belatedly, that something, anything, must be done to stop this catastrophic slide.

Unfortunately for all these victims, and all the unknown others who look with fear and loathing upon the riots, the prospects, immediate and more distant, are not encouraging."

Read the whole thing here.

From a Philhellene

The summer before last I finished reading Edmund Keeley’s 'Inventing Paradise'. It’s about a world, seemingly invented over a mere ten years, starting, in Keeley’s book, in 1937, during which modern Greece becomes Paradise for Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller as they roam the land and its literature, making their own wondrous realm out of what they see and read and learn from the table talk of their Greek hosts and their connections. Keeley gathers into this world the people who actually met and laughed, feasted and talked together over just a few years.

The book was published in 1999 and Keeley, a great American academic, mentions a Greece, more recent, with passing slaps at mass tourism, but insists on ending his book before he switches to the ‘first person singular’. Expulsion from this paradise came with the great European civil war (not just Greece's - but the horrific internecine clashes that erupted across a largely humane continent of shared values - at least among the bourgeoisie and the upper classes for who Europe was almost one country). for Greece there came the cruelties of the Italian and German Occupation bringing miseries that gave added lustre to the memory of innumerable wonderful days and evenings of companionship with talents, present in flesh and in spirit, of Seferis, Katsimbalis, Palamos, Cavafey, Elytis, Ghika, Antoniou, Stephanides, Ioanna and Constantine Tsatsos.
There are two anecdotes among the many that I especially liked and which perhaps justify your belief that there was once a morally more elevated past (as you may guess I contest this - for my country as well as Greece). First at the crowded public funeral of the national poet Kostis Palamos on 28 February 1943 when, among a great crowd of mourners, George Katsimbalis began at the open graveside to sing the banned national anthem – a whole verse on his own followed by silence – German soldiers looking on, his wife trying to shut him up, and Ioanna Tsatsos, George Seferis’ sister, tugging at his sleeve. He begins the second verse, feeling like a drowning man, then a fat Corfiot friend makes a duet, and then, ‘like throwing a switch’, thousands took up the hymn to freedom.

And second when Ioanna Tsatsos writes on 12 October 1944, that the German flag on the Acropolis came down ‘as though swallowed by the Holy Rock, and in its place rose the flag with the beloved colour of our sky’. I am slightly embarrassed at the thought that next to my own there’s no other flag I should so gladly see marking a moment of great happiness – even though I deprecate the waving of flags in triumph (except for my brother’s sacred football) and admire Dr.Johnson for saying ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ The deeper significance of Keeley’s work is its extended comment on a greater Fall - something not yet worked out; certainly not in my mind. The invention of Paradise was a product not only of the intoxicating mix of singular personalities – foreign and Greek – who figure in Keeley’s book but of a pre-war Greek culture that was first stifled then blighted by cruelty beyond previous imagining, events so far outside the imagination of its culture, beyond the reach of the philosophies of irony, stoicism and cynicism. Totalitarianism far beyond the authoritarianism of Metaxas, or the bullying of a village thug or the seedy dishonesty of a corrupt provincial official. Nazism brought a system unknown to Greeks - and many others across Europe.

Talking to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940 of what might happen were Hitler's army to take over the British Isles, Churchill warned that "all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." For us it didn't happen. To the Greeks it did.
Every symbol of Greek culture became sullied. I know how uncomfortable I feel seeing old photos of red phone boxes and English bobbies next to a German uniform in the Channel Islands. Suddenly there were soldiers in Wehrmacht and SS uniforms posing in front of the Parthenon and these filthy people were praising it as a monument to culture, infiltrating their poison into every part of the Greek state. Even the evzone uniform was compromised, worn by a minority of collaborators.

A new dark age did descend on the wondrous land, making everything ugly, affecting all they knew and cared for. Atrocities at Komeno, Kalavryta, Kaisariani, Distomo, and the hostages. A woodcut on p343 of Professor Mark Mazower's powerful book 'Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44'is shows one of the infamous blokkos (round-up) at Kokkinia, Athens on 17 August 1944. A masked informer is pointing out suspects to Germans troops and Greek collaborators. Thousands netted by blokkos were 'stored' for reprisal murders at Haidari. One-off murders were designed on purpose to be random to amplify fear and spread despair, supplementing mass murder with humiliation, deprivation, separation, displacement, vulgarisation and the suffocating ugliness of defeat, invasion and occupation and then the remorseless destruction of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe and their abduction and murder - a dose of deadly efficiency. Language falters before the risk of creating a league table of comparative wickedness. Beside these we find - ridiculous and obscene - almost positive remarks being made about the other two plunderers - Italy and Bulgaria - nicer rapists than the Germans, who might never have invaded Greece had Mussolini not invaded first and then sought help from an ally after the Italians were routed by the Greek army in the mountains of Albania.
To imagine the frightfulness inflicted on dear Greece I have to imagine the truth of Mazower's observation about the Civil War that flared with the departure of the invaders. The joy described by Ioanna Tsatsos on 12 October was fleeting. True the swastika came down, but brave young Greeks had been pulling down Nazi flags including the one on the Parthenon throughout the Occupation [On the night of 30 May 1941, Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas removed the swastika from the Acropolis, yet they were arrested on 24 March of the following year and sentenced to death.

Mazower edits a set of essays under the title "After the war was over" - a primary source for a series of formative events that were, in his scholarly view, ‘more traumatic’ for Greece than the Occupation – the British Civil Police Liaison log book in WO 170/4049 and the subsequent account of events in Syntagma Square on Sunday 3 December 1944 by 23rd Armoured Brigade in WO 204/8312 – ta dekemvriana. On that day an icon of our fight against the Nazis, the Spitfire, was strafing parts of Athens and Englishmen in English khaki were sniping at Greeks from the Acropolis and, something few knew about, ‘the percentages agreement’, informed the fate of the wondrous land. After the occupation came five years of Civil War already metastasizing inside occupied Greece, with the carcinogens of human weakness and constant fear brought on by starvation, brutalisation, grief and fear to add to the intensity of human division. And they have yet to endure the stone years and the armoured democracy that lasted until 1974. You will not I'm sure agree with me, but Greece, like a hideously abused child is growing up. These events are terrible but not as terrible as what has happened and which indeed seeded what is now unfolding. I love Greece more than ever and feel great compassion for those who suffer with her. I deplore the keyboard colonels dispersing false history, itching to get at the throats of some of Greece's best and brightest. This long awaited crisis rooted in bloody history will be resolved by the strength of the centre - which this time *will* hold.

Simon Baddeley  http://democracystreet.blogspot.com/

Difficult Times

Lately, I have been alarmed by what I see happening throughout our world. Events are spiraling out of control, but more importantly and perhaps more ominously, our societies are falling apart. Those of us who love Greece are deeply affected by the what we see happening there.

As I write this Greece is in the midst of the worst violence seen in recent memory.  The rioting started after a fifteen year old boy was shot and killed by a police officer in the Exarchia section of Athens.  The neighborhood has seen an uneasy truce of sorts between Police and the "anarchist" youths that inhabit the area. Occasionally it erupts into violence. The recent events are reminiscent of a similar situation that was also triggered by another fatal police shooting of a minor in Athens, in 1985, when I lived in the city. It too sparked months of nearly daily clashes between police and anarchists. In its aftermath the terrorist group November 17 bombed a bus full of riot police in retaliation. The two officers involved in Saturday's incident have been arrested. Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the country's Interior minister, who is responsible for the police, promised punishment for those responsible even before a full investigation was conducted.

Shortly after the shooting, which took place before 10 p.m., an angry crowd – summoned by text message and the Internet – gathered in Exarchia. They clashed with police, shouting "Murderers in uniform," and burned and looted local shops.Later that night, the rioters moved to other areas of the city center, burning or damaging at least 31 shops and breaking windows in the tourist neighborhood of Monastiraki and along one of central Athens' major shopping streets, Ermou.  Clashes have erupted in other major cities and police stations have been attacked. The government seems helpless in the wake of such widespread violence and discontent.

For many people like me with a special affinity for the country, watching helplessly as it disintegrates is a profoundly disturbing personal experience. Perhaps many of us sensed it coming sooner or later.Those of us who are older can remember a different country, one who's people, although poor, had a richness of spirit. A people who were devout and God-fearing. They were less anxious, more respectful, family oriented and they valued philotimo, a sense of honor. Today Greece, the country which illuminated the world, has assimilated and conformed to the world. It now resembles all the rest and wallows in its own muck.  It's no use trying to fix blame. No use trying to lay it at the feet of others, on foreign conspiracies, globalization, the ineffectual police, the corrupt state, or our children throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.  We are all to blame because as a people we have lost our way.

What a coincidence that in the midst of all this turmoil I am reading the words of a lowly monk  and finding not only comfort, understanding and above all hope for the future. As I read his humble thoughts I am astonished to find how much of what he said rings true today even now, years after his death.

"If freedom is not put to good use, it is worth nothing. All it brings is disaster. That is why the country is heading in the wrong direction. Can today's people make good use of the freedom given to them? When freedom does not serve the cause of true progress, the result is catastrophe.  Combined with secular progress, this sinful freedom has given way to spiritual slavery.  True spiritual freedom is spiritual obedience to the word of God. But you see, whereas it is obedience that will give us true freedom, the tempter out of malice, presents it as enslavement, and so our youth today who have been poisoned by the spirit of rebellion, reject obedience.  It is understandable that these young people are tired of the various ideologies of the twentieth century, which unfortunately distort God's beautiful creation and fill His creatures with anxiety putting a gap between them and the true joy that is God."

"It is parents who never understood the nature of discipline that now allow their children such excessive freedom and turn them into little hooligans. You say one word to them and they will respond with five, and with such impudence! These children may one day turn into criminals. Today many children are totally unraveled by too much freedom and no discipline.  "Don't touch the children!" These are the slogans in society. And of course what do the children think?" In other words, they are deliberately turning them into little rebels who do not want to listen to parents, teachers or anyone else.This serves their designs perfectly, for if the children are not taught to be rebellious, how can they end up later destroying everything?"

"We should strive hard to be true Christians. This is how we will develop a spiritual sense, and come to feel pain in our hearts for Orthodoxy and our Homeland and fulfill our obligations to our Hellenic nation and heritage.  This is the foundation. If we are true Christians, we will care about everything that affects the Church, we will worry and pray for Her good. We should not wait for people to coax us, "Now you should care about this, later for that and so on." If we leave it to others, we will resemble a square wheel that will never turn on its own, and will need to be pushed all the time.  The point is to turn on our own. Then our turns will be beautiful and smooth like those of a well-rounded wheel.  And if this happens, we will feel the movement coming from within, and God will inform our soul about many things, more than an educated person can ever reach on his own. It won't be just the written things that we will know, but also the thoughts in the minds of those who write them. Do you see what I am saying. This is the work of divine illumination, and all of man's activities are enlightened."

"How can we abandon the legacy that Christ left for us? We don't have the right to do away with it! God will hold us accountable. You see this small nation of ours, believed in the Messiah, and God gave us the blessing to enlighten the world. The Old Testament was translated into Greek one hundred years before the coming of Christ. Think of how the first Christians suffered! Their lives were constantly at risk. Nowadays there is so much indifference! And yet, it would be easy to enlighten our nation today! We owe the peace we enjoy today to those who came before us. Do you know how many of our ancestors sacrificed their lives? We owe everything we have to them. I compare them to us; they kept their faith even though their lives were in danger; our lives are not at stake, but we let go of our faith and in return we destroy all that they have bequeathed us. Those who have never had the experience of being subjugated to another nation do not appreciate my advice.  "May God protect us from barbarian invaders and their wrath," I tell them.  "Why," they reply, "what's going to happen to us?" Listen to their attitude! Oh, why don't they go away. That's the kind of people that you run into these days. Give them money and cars....that's what matters; they couldn't care less about faith, honor, or even their own liberty.  We Greeks, the Hellenic nation, owe our Orthodox Christian Faith to Christ and to the holy martyrs and Fathers of our Church. We owe our liberty to the heroes of our Homeland, who shed their blood for us. And so we owe it to them to keep this holy legacy alive, and not let it disappear or destroy it ourselves. What a great shame it would be if our nation perished! And just as in war individuals are drafted to serve their country, so too in our days God is sending personal invitations to people, drafting them to safeguard and save His creature. God will not abandon us, but we need to do our part too. We need to do what is humanly possible, and for the rest, turn to God and pray for His help.

Surviving in the Brave New World

In a previous post, the Internet Agora, I tried to tackle one of two overarching themes in the dialogues taking place on MGO in recent weeks.  The second is one that is particulalry difficult to get one's arms around. It is the conflict between creating multi-ethnic super-states versus the survival of the traditional, homogeneus ethnos (nation).  This is a very complex issue, one that my friend Hermes has been hammering at unceasingly. I'm not sure that there is anything I or anyone else can say that will change strongly held views, as NOCTOC rightly points out.  As a Greek of the Diaspora I must negotiate the twist and turns of life in the West on a daily basis very much like the little country of Greece. Greece finds itself firmly entrenched in the West today, a member nation of the European Union, a NATO country and ally of the United States, albeit reluctantly at times. Yet both the United States and Greece are moving away from traditional alliances and forming new ones based on political necessity.  The ties that bind are becoming more tenuous. Western governments have adopted policies that foster the creation of multi-ethnic states based on immigration from Third World countries and seek to impose similar policies for countries such as Greece. These policies have created a host of problems, especially in the case of those immigrants who cannot be assimilated and in fact attempt to change the host country to accommodate their own cultural norms.  This process has created a good deal of resentment, even a backlash, not only in Greece but in places like Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Germany and even in the United States.  In each of these countries, to varying degrees there is a growing divide between those that would like to retain the traditional national culture and sense of identity and those that want to replace it it with something else.  Some of the latter, are influential players whose reach is very long and they are powered by lots of money. George Soros, immediately comes to mind.

David Mulroy, Victor David Hanson, Bruce Thornton and others like to emphasize that Western civilization is heavily indebted to the ancient Greeks and its foundations are firmly rooted in what the Greeks created. Yet Greek civilization spans many thousands of years and in fact is an amalgam of both East and West. To deny one or the other is to engage in blatant dishonesty for political reasons.  The West may accept the ancient Greek that they have fashioned in their preferred and illusory likeness but they often reject the latter day Greek whom they sometimes consider an uncouth upstart country bumpkin that hasn't accomplished much of anything since Alexander.  Even Alexander is not considered much of a Greek anymore by certain revisionists interested in divesting Greeks of what is left of their history which seems to have stopped abruptly after the Roman conquest. Perhaps Greeks share some of the blame for how others see us. We come across as less than serious and hopelessly unable to defend our interests, unlike the Israelis, who are so vilified in the Greek press.  I like to think that Greek culture has a great deal to offer the world if viewed in its totality. Alexander understood its ecumenical nature and proceeded to spread its influence over the known world, so much so that it is still matters despite the efforts designed to prove that it does not matter.  Even Christianity owes its ecumenical character to the assimilation of  Greek language and philosophy. The Byzantine Empire preserved the legacy of the ancient world, spread Christianity and served as a bulwark to the rise of Islam for hundreds of years until it was overun in 1463. The Enlightenment could not have existed without the spark provided by the intellectuals fleeing Constantinople nor could the rich culture of Greece have survived the long centuries of Turkish occupation without the Eastern Orthodox Church. A country however, no matter how great its history cannot rest on its laurels. It cannot demand respect without earning that respect. No amount of chest beating and recriminations can change that.

This little insignificant country of Greece, like so many others, is fighting for its existence in the brave new world that would sweep it all away amd replace it with a faceless cultureless morass ruled by the select few who think that only they are capable of deciding what is or is not important. Many characterize this effort as the product of some dark cabal of Americans, Jews, Masons, and NGOs, working their puppet strings so as to destroy in short order the entire idea of the nation state. How can we make sense of it all? Who are these people lurking in the shadows and attacking the very foundations of who we are, like a fifth column?

First, I don't individually subscribe to conspiracy theories nor do I like it when one group attempts to scapegoat other groups. I don't think any group of people, organization, or even government is so efficient, highly motivated,  and capable of working  surreptitiously that they can impose their will on us unless we, the laos (people) allow them to do so through apathy or ignorance. In fact, the current efforts of those who seek to impose a new world order are pretty apparent to those willing to take a good, hard look.  Those advancing these efforts and those simultaneously fighting against them are found in all our respective countries and their governments. 

Second, countries, even superpowers, operate on self-interest, not friendship. This is a cardinal rule of realpolitik which all countries ascribe to. That is the way of the world, those that survive must act accordingly. That's why countries like Israel and Turkey, two unlikely allies, create a marriage of convenience to serve their respective agendas. Such marriages may or may not stand the test of time, what is important however, is that countries approach foreign policies in realistic, pragmatic ways.  I would apply the same criteria to countries like Cyprus and Greece.

Lastly , I believe it is dangerous and counterproductive to create an atmosphere of xenophobia and isolation. To see Greece as surrounded by traditional enemies led by the United States, ready to pounce and devour the country.  No one can deny that security threats exist.  Albanian irrendentism, Islamic radicalism in the Balkans, Turkish expansionism in the Aegean, intransigence in Cyprus and meddling in Thrace, organized crime, illegal immigration,  designs by Skopje on "Aegean Macedonia."  At the same time, laying all these problems at the door of the "superpower" as if the US could make it all go away with the wave of a magic wand is  disengenuous.  These problems have always existed to some degree in the last century, well before the United States entered the region.  Are there anti-Hellenic elements in the US government and mainstream media.  Yes, especially in the Defense and State Department bureaucracy.  Do American foreign policies exacerbate some of the problems in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean.  No doubt.  Greek-Amerticans must shoulder part of the blame for failing to combat such anti-Hellenic (and ultimately inherently anti-American) thinking.  In order, however, to adequately defend Greece from the legitimate threats that exist, Greeks must first overcome those Greeks who are working hand in hand with those who seek to destroy the Greek nation and turn it into another subservient statelet without an identity.  The real threat is not Europe or America per se. It is those in all our respective countries that seek to undermine who we are and the ability to preserve our identites in order to further their own agendas: world governance, multi-culturalism, secularism, socialism. 

Albanian Democracy in Action

The Panepirotic Federation of America, the World Council of Epirotes Abroad, and the Panepirotic Federation of Europe denounced the Albanian government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha for indicting Vasilios Bolanos, the mayor of Chimara in Northern Epiros, for removing road signs in his region that did not identify areas in Greek as well as Albanian.

Prosecutors filed charges against Bolanos on May 28 accusing him of abuse of power for removing signs last December that were not bilingual, Mr. Bolanos, who is also president of Omonia, the human rights organization that represents the ethnic Greek minority in the country, removed the signs saying that they should have been in Greek as well as Albanian. “Indicting Vasilios Bolanos now that he has been elected president of Omonia for actions that occurred last year is a blatant effort to intimidate him not to protest too loudly about continued abuse of the Greek minority by Albanian authorities,” said Fotios Galitsis, president of the Panepirotic Federation of America.

“The flimsy charges against the Mayor are not worthy of a country that wants to join the European Union,” said Chrysostomos Dimou, president of the Panepirotic Federation of Europe. He noted that all countries in Europe except Albania have signed a Council of Europe agreement that calls for bilingual signs in areas where ethnic groups in a country are concentrated.  “Albania has been promising since 1991 to sign the agreement but has yet to do it, which shows clearly that Albania refuses to grant rights to its minorities that are common in all democratic countries,” said author Nicholas Gage, president of the World Council of Epirotes Abroad, which unites Epirot communities throughout the world.

Read the whole thing here.

The Greek Dilemma: Independence, Colonization, or Victimhood

For those of you that have not already done so, take the short trip over to LEGEIN blog. The title uses an  ancient Greek verb that means to deliberate or to consider. The posts are well written, intriguing and provide much food for thought. I try to visit regularly to sample the fare. One of the latest posts, about Greek Independence,  made a particular impression on me, albeit negative, however, I found myself ambivalent about the ideas espoused and anxious to examine the underlying premise more thoroughly. After mulling things over for awhile I felt the need to offer my own views on the subject and invite others to follow suit.

Legein writes: "Greece and the Greek people are often depicted as tempestuous, emotive, irrational, morally suspect, sexually charged, autocratic, corrupt, weak and disorganized. This is in contrast with the cool, rational, moral sexually controlled, liberal democratic, incorruptible, strong and organized Western Europeans and Americans. The creation of these identities is made possible by Western European and Americans assuming they are the norm, and anyone that does not satisfy their idea of the norm, is a deviation. Hence, the deviation is understood using their terms. These identities also provide the West with justification to rule over the Greek people. Going as far as believing that the Greek people would welcome this rule in order to save themselves from themselves. Another interesting phenomenon is how the colonizer dehumanizes the Greeks; whereby they must conform to pre-defined stereotypes of the Western imaginary, not allowing them the same variegated typologies as themselves.

In order to understand the ideas espoused here, one must understand that Greeks are firmly rooted in the West and in the East, and that their two natures are constantly at war with each other. Therefore despite the fact that Greek culture is the foundation on which Western civilzation is based, Greeks have become alienated from the Latin West for centuries. This break with the West was evolutionary, starting with the Great Schism of 1054 and culminated with the sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204.  The  process was further enhanced by the four hundred odd years of Ottoman occupation during which Greeks were isolated from the West.  It was only during the Greek War of Independence when the West rediscovered the Greeks, having created a romanticized notion of them based on their ancient ancestors, which modern Greeks were not quite able to live up to. In the eyes of some Westerners, Greeks were tempestuous, autocratic, corrupt, weak and disorganized , although others saw them very differently. Suffice to say that Greeks have indeed earned some of those descriptions by virtue of their behavior and I daresay they apply aptly to more than a few Greeks, even today.

The Great Powers that ensured the success of the Greek Revolution did so for purely self serving reasons and in fact, saddled Greeks with a Bavarian King and government. Greeks thus not only became subservient to outside powers as the  solution to their inherent weaknesses but their Revolution also further solidified the notion of  the West as hostile, and its values alien to the Greek experience. Thus, all the misfortunes that have befallen modern Greeks during their history, including the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922 to the invasion of Cyprus by the Turks in 1974, are due to Greece's failed attempt to imitate the West. In the Greek imaginary, so well expressed in this post, the continuing decline of Greece cannot be reversed until Greeks rejuvenate their cultural and spiritual superiority by substituting the "servility" that characterizes their relationship with the West with the spirit of resistance against Western rot.

"Worst of all, Greek elites; and particularly Greeks of the Diaspora, have internalized these Western prejudices of Greek culture using the same simplistic and destructive dichotomies, concepts and categories to judge the Greek people and contributing to the perpetuation of the colonization process. And denigrating their own culture, with all sorts of psychologically traumatic consequences for themselves. Even more odious is how the Greek elite and Greeks of the Diaspora attempt to model themselves after their colonisers, endeavoring to maintain their status quo by virtue of their proximity to the dominant Western culture."

The current mindset of the modern Greek ascribes all evil to the West as exemplified by American culture and domination. The Greek Left is angry at American sabotage of the Communist dream  and the Greek Right with the American predeliction for multi-culturalism and supporting  those who hate Greece. Despite the fact that successive Greek governments of every stripe, supported by the Greek electorate, have made a conscious effort to remain firmly in the Westren camp, i.e. the EU and NATO, those that collaborate with the "colonisers" by seeking to function within the Western system are portrayed as abandoning their culture by conforming to Western norms.  This of course smacks of the psychology of victimhood so prevalent in the post colonial Third World, where similar thought processes take place.  The meme of the Greek as the perpetual victim, misunderstood, ignored,  always duped by strong, powerful and conspiratorial Western powers is rather worn and frayed.   It is exactly this sense of victimhood and not the lack of some exalted sense of Greek purity that is at the root cause of our inability to overcome the failures of the past.

 

Anti-Americanism and Americanization in Greece

By Mike Epitropoulos

Greece has long been viewed as "the black sheep" of Europe for its audacity to challenge and to criticize regional and global powers, like the United States. Firebrand criticism of US policy has been a trademark from national leaders, like the late Andreas Papandreou, through the sea of small political parties, all the way down to neighborhood coffeehouses and town squares. The story of Greece is rooted in a series of wrenching conflicts that had US fingerprints and/or stamps of approval that caused great dislocations, long-term domestic strife, and of course violence and death. At the same time,Greece's history, religion, and geographic location often served to temper anti-American strands, and in fact sometimes fueled processes of what we may call "Americanization."

Debates about Americanization, often used interchangeably with the term "globalization," abound in Greek popular culture. Older Greeks, and those of more traditional or religious bents lament the erosion of tradition and the concurrent explosion of the "xeno," the foreign. Meanwhile the modern Greek language, music, and leisure activity are heavily infiltrated by American influences, easily penetrating and affecting change on what we may call the "Greek lifestyle." Such debates are all the more developed due to the country's dependence on tourism, and its image and reputation for "philoxenia," or hospitality of "Old World" style. As such there has been an on-going transformation and crisis in "identity" for many Greeks, deeply-rooted in our analysis of "anti-Americanism" and "Americanization."

For all of the brazen rhetoric and controversy of many of its political and cultural figures,
Greece has remained firmly and squarely within the Western domain. The United States' Truman Doctrine explicitly aimed to keep Greece (and Turkey) within the Western sphere through an anti-communist program directed from Washington Greece was also a beneficiary of the Marshall Plan, involved itself early in the process of European unification, and is one of only seven nations in the world that the US had as an ally in every major international conflict in the 20^th century. What we see then is a divide between the sentiments of popular Greek culture and the actions of its government. We encounter a "knee-jerk" anti-Americanism married to a more sophisticated and empirically-grounded anti-Americanism. And while this evolution has proceeded, we also witness an accelerating Americanization of cultural artifacts, social changes, and belief systems -- not "wholesale" but syncretic in nature.

Read the rest here.

What's in a Name?

The long standing controversy over the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has been a major element of Greek foreign policy for the last seventeen years.  This unresolved issue is symptomatic of  the complexities faced by Europeans and Americans alike in the Balkans.  Skopje has been intransigent and Greece has been ineffective in making its case or garnering the support it needs.  Recently Greece has been able to reassert its rights, supported by France, Spain and Italy, by vetoing Skopje's entry into NATO at the summit in Bucharest, despite US efforts.  I am, quite frankly, delighted. American policy on this key issue has been less than helpful to the Greek side, having already recognized the"Republic of Macedonia."  By doing so it's unsuccessful attempts to broker a compromise have been ill fated, if not ingenuous.  A detailed blow by blow description of the course of events surrounding this issue can be found here. 

The average American has a limited knowledge of Balkan history and current events. The Balkans is  far removed from their daily lives and concerns. Unfortunately, those individuals making our foreign policy decisions seem to be equally and unforgivably clueless.US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a recent statement regarding the Macedonia name dispute to the effect that “It would be a pity if something that has to do with antiquity were to get in the way of what I think is a very important step for Macedonia and NATO," while former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld now in a prolonged retirement, chimed in: "The future of the trans-Atlantic alliance — and its credibility as the pre-eminent political and military instrument of the world’s democracies — are too important to be constrained by narrow disputes over semantics or to intimidation tactics more befitting the last century."

Both of these statements reflect a perilously flawed view of an issue which has the potential for exacerbating  the current unstable situation and eventually transforming an already volatile region into a potential powder keg. Not that long ago, in 1945, Truman's Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, was singing a rather different tune: "The (State) Department has noted with considerable apprehension  increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia... with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected state. This Government considers talk of a Macedonian "nation," Macedonian "Fatherland," or Macedonian national "consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece."  Then again, that was when the United States and its only Balkan ally, Greece, were fighting an expansive Communist empire. The calculus of the past has now been replaced with a new math, aptly presented by Ioannis Michaletos in his article entitled " The Balkans: A Crucial Aspect of the Grand Game." Greek concerns have been both ignored and made fun of by Americans and Europeans alike. Greeks, like the Serbs, have been labeled as intransigent and criticized for getting in the way of American and European plans for the region. Once again history repeats itself in the Balkans, always as farce.

The "real" Macedonians were ancient Dorian Greeks who entered the area of Macedonia about 1100 B.C., long before the Slavs appeared in that part of the world later in the sixth century, A.D.. The name Macedonia came from the Dorian Greeks, who were called "Macedni." The language they spoke in ancient times was a Greek dialect. The Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos became convinced that a hill in present day Greek Macedonia concealed the tombs of the Macedonian Kings. In 1977, Andronikos undertook a six-week dig at the and found four buried chambers which he identified as hitherto undisturbed tombs.  Andronikos claimed that these were the burial sites of the kings of Macedon, including the tomb of Phillip II, father of Alexander the Great. Last summer my family and I traveled to Vergina, the small town in northern Greece where the tombs are located. For a short time we were able to look into the past through the time capsule Andronikos discovered. Even the most uninformed layman cannot help but emerge from such a display without understanding the undeniable nature of Phillip or Alexander's Greek identity.

Ultimately, however, it is not about ancient history. It is about events that are neither forgotten nor in the remote past. The region of historical Macedonia, the spoils of a disintegrating Ottomon Empire, was divided in 1912-14  as a result of the Balkan Wars and Big Power meddling, thus: 51.6 percent retained by Greece; 38.3 percent parceled to Yugoslavia; 10.1 percent parceled to Bulgaria. During World War II, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito established Western Macedonia as one of Yugoslavia's six republics. He changed the name of his country's southern province in 1944 from Vardar Banovina to the Socialist Republic of Macedonia.  After appropriating  the name "Macedonia" he also created a mythic language (Slavic in origin) called "Macedonian." The objective was territorial expansionism. Tito rewrote history by using propaganda to distort the integrity and heritage of the region. His underlying goal was the expansion of Yugoslavia toward the Aegean Sea. For Greeks this came in the midst of a civil war which threatened to drag the country into the Communist orbit.  During the pre-war period the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) adopted the policy of the Comintern favoring a united Macedonia and Thrace in a future Balkan Socialist Federation. By 1949, about 40% on the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG), the military arm of the KKE was composed of Slavophones. The defeat of the Communists in 1949 forced their Slav-speaking members to either leave Greece, which many did or fully adopt Greek language and surnames.

One of the great crimes perpetrated by the Communists during the civil war was the removal from Greece of Greek children, known as the paidomazoma. Their relocation to Yugoslavia and other Eastern bloc countries during the latter phase of the Greek Civil War (1948-1949) is an inconvenient fact in the present day controversy. It has been the subject of a good deal of historical revisionism, as have other aspects of the  era.  The Greek  Red Cross estimated the total number of kidnapped children to be 28,296. Some 11,600 of these children were taken to Yugoslavia, while the rest were in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. The Greek government raised the issue of the repatriation of these children as part of the "Greek Question" at the United Nations on 27 February 1948. This issue had both humanitarian and Cold War dimensions.  The lack of any real pressure on Yugoslavia however, resulted in small numbers of repatriated children and tragically, allowed Tito to fulfill his objective of holding on to the children regardless of their wishes or those of their parents. From the start the Yugoslav government falsified the numbers of these children, separated many of them from their families, integrated them into the population of the Federated Republic of Macedonia, and absorbed them in the new "Macedonian" culture. 

Greeks believed that when Yugoslavia dissolved and FYROM declared its independence in 1991, its leaders would  make a clean break with the past. Not only did they fail to do that, but for 17 years now, the authorities in that country have continued to try to undermine Greek sovereignty over Greek Macedonia, which they portray as "occupied" territory that will one day be "liberated."  While Skopjian leaders declare that they have no designs on Greek territory, they refuse to remove such claims from textbooks, speeches, articles, maps and national documents. In fact, by insisting on the name Tito gave the area, they perpetuate the goal he pursued.  To make matters worse, they seek to rewrite Greek history and portray Greek symbols as their own in a perverted attempt to develop some reasonable facsimile of a "Macedonian" consciousness for a country that never existed except in the minds of  those who cannot decide who or what they are. Personally. I wish the people living in the entity to the north the best of luck. Their Greek neighbors to the south have if anything propped up the struggling state created by Tito and played a key role in keeping them from sinking in a Balkan morass of their own making. The biggest threat to the immediate survival of FYROM is not Greece, it is the significant Albanian ethnic minority in FYROM itself, which already runs a state within a state and looks to the accomplishments of Kosovo as a model for the future.

It is not just about a name. It is about so much more than that. We Americans need to understand that imposing simplistic solutions to complex problems that ignore a nation's  deep seated wounds and fears will transform the Balkans into one more intractable hot spot in the world and eventually bring everyone involved to grief.

Modern Greece: Decadence Unbound by Napoleon Linardatos

European assistance has been to Greece what oil has been to the Middle East; the lifeline of poor government, mischievous habits and exasperated hopes. Kathimerini, an authoritative daily newspaper, reported what the cotton subsidies have done in agriculture: there was cotton production of good quality in Greece, cultivated efficiently in the most suitable fields at a good price – now farmers receive subsidies that are up to three times the market price of cotton. Cultivation of cotton has expanded in millions of unsuitable acres. Excess well drilling has drained the valleys of their underground water, and pollution from the senseless use of fertilizers has been linked to serious health problems in the adjacent residential areas. This year the cotton farmers are to receive 690 million euros in subsidies. Since this amount is based on an agreed-upon quantity to be produced, farmers will produce more and attempt to get the national government to make up the difference. The common practice is to block major motorways with tractors; then the negotiations start.

Farming is associated with independence and self-sufficiency but the subsidy farmer is a new breed. He is entirely dependent on the political process, which he thoroughly cultivates, and his connection to the land is shallow. If the farmers are not out fighting for their ‘rights,’ then someone else will be: The teachers who do not want to be evaluated, contract civil servants who want to become permanent, policemen who do not want to police, students who do not want to learn. The list is long, reflecting a Greece cut to pieces with each faction trying to impose its absurd demands on the rest. The pre-eminent action of civic participation is to demand employment in the public sector, or to defend retirement at 50, to illegally build houses in the forest, or to fully exploit one’s state-sanctioned monopoly.

For the local intellectual class, this is the triumph of politics. For decades now, progressive ideas are the only ideas in Greece. They have been so thoroughly instilled in everyone, from the first grader up to the Prime Minister, that they permeate everything. Any movement in a different direction is anti-social, reactionary, liberal, or an Anglo-Saxon barbarity. Under the tutelage of progressive ideas there are privileges without duties, advantages without merit, crime without punishment and hard work with no reward. Can a society flourish under these conditions? What is the character and the purpose of the nation? Important questions, but in Greece they were decided years ago. The only questions remaining are who gets what, when and how. Not long ago I watched a TV report about an explosion in an illegal propane station in a residential area in Athens. The illegal market for fuel is thriving thanks to exorbitant taxes. The journalist reporting the incident mentioned the illegality without a shred of emphasis. It became worse when the owner of the station talked to the camera. I could not discern any expression of shame. She had just broken the law in a dramatic way and in the process put the lives of her neighbours in danger. None of this seemed to matter to her or anyone else. It was the noise and the spectacle of explosion that counted the most; a story reported for its cinematic value, where causes and consequences are unimportant.

This is the relativism of everyday life. The most important thing is what you can get away with. It is the tragedy of the commons writ large; a public sphere where the private and the public meet under the most disadvantageous terms. Someone would expect that decades of policies intended to foster social cohesion would produce a society of benevolent people. Instead we have narrow-minded, cynical, egotists gyrating in alternate states of self-satisfaction and self-hatred.

It is not surprising that between 1991 and 2001 deaths exceeded births by more than 40,000. The rearing of a family involves an unconditional commitment to another person, an undertaking whose emotional and financial costs are obvious and direct while many of the benefits are spread out in society and over time. A family man would say that nothing could compensate for the joys of family, but in a society where the individual perceives himself as the centre of the universe committed to the proposition that all joys and pleasures are equal, the family becomes just another choice among others. When duty and virtue have become antiquated terms that one only finds in books no one reads, we have a declining society entangled in the most petty and ephemeral affairs. Unburdened by the past, unimpeded from posterity, there stands the modern Greek: a person free of any civic and moral duties. The coming of the welfare state brought the monetarization of civic responsibilities and gradually degraded them to special interest sloganeering.

Unlike any other foe the Greeks faced in the past, the one that they face now has no armies laying siege to any walls. There are no occupiers trying to impose their customs and language, no military junta to imprison, torture or banish anyone. It is a foe that does not challenge their strengths but rather assuages their weaknesses. Instead of attacking the culture, it merely trivializes it by draining it of any transcendent qualities. There is no need to assail honesty, merit and hard work; they have simply been rendered irrelevant.

Read the whole thing at Brussels Journal.

The Looming Threat of a Greater Albania

American and European foreign policy in the Balkans, suffering from a terminal form of historical amnesia, is bankrupt. The results of those bankrupt policies are visibly on display today as Kosovor Albanians declare themselves independent and a second Muslim state is now established on the European continent. The stage is now set for the a regime led by elements of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and beholden to the interests of Islamic fundamentalists and narcotraffikers, to create the dream of a Greater Albania.  All made possible by the United States and its European allies. The war against Milosevic, justified in part by humanitarian considerations, brought about an alliance with Albanian extremists who are now trying to do in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) what they did to Serb authority in Kosovo. If  these armed groups of Albanian extremists are allowed to run rampant, they could be even more destabilizing and damaging to regional security and U.S. interests than the original sin itself.

History  matters a great deal in the Balkans.  The conflicts in the Balkans mirror the well-defined, historic and ethnic fault lines of a region where killings and mass murder have occurred in previous decades, and even centuries.  For example, during the war in Croatia from 1991-1992, the areas where some of the most vicious fighting and killing occurred just happened to parallel regions of the country where Serbs had been slaughtered en masse during WWII under conditions which by current day definitions would have to be called genocide.   The Serb population of Croatia at that time scarcely needed propaganda from Belgrade to feel very uncomfortable, isolated and afraid in a brand-new Tudjman-led Croatia.

In Bosnia, for all the horrors of that war, the conflict cannot be understood properly and accurately if it is dismissed simply as a war of Serbian aggresion.  Once again, the prospect of living in an independent Bosnia -- four decades earlier, the site of horrific killing grounds of Serbs and others -- left large segments of especially the rural Serb population feeling very isolated and very fearful.  Despite a post-WWII tradition of multi-culturalism and intermarriage, in rural areas especially where Serbs predominated, there was a deep-seeded fear of domination by Muslims and a collective memory of WWII killings and slaughters. In Kosovo,  Albanian nationalists have driven 90 per cent of the province's non-Albanian population from there homes. The Kosovo Liberation Army now has a base from which to foment other insurgencies which it has done in Macedonia and Serbia proper. The goal of the KLA is to create a Greater Albania. That goal is no longer a pipe dream.

Ethnic cleansing has certainly taken place. Almost as soon as NATO assumed control of Kosovo in June 1999, the KLA began a systematic campaign to rid the province of non-Albanians. Not only was the Serbian minority a target, but some seventy thousand Roma (the so-called Gypsies) were driven out, as were thousands of Montinegrins, Bulgarians, Jews, and Macedonians. By the spring of 2000, more than 250,000 non-Albanians out of a prewar population of  350,000 were refugees in neighboring countries.2 Six months later, the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe estimated that 90 percent of Kosovo’s non-Albanian people had been forced to leave their homes.  Joshua Trevino in his post at Brussels Journal lists the list of Kosovar accomplishments under UN supervision:

"In the aftermath of the Serb surrender in June 1999, the victorious KLA seized the opportunity to drive approximately 200,000 non-Albanians — overwhelmingly Serbs, but also Roma — out of the province. Human Rights Watch reported that this flight was motivated largely by concrete threats and the occasional local massacre, with a reported total of one thousand Serb men, women and children murdered.
* In February 2001, an IED planted by Albanians destroyed a bus carrying Serbs to family gravesites at the Gračanica monastery.
* In August 2003, Serb boys swimming were machine-gunned from a riverbank.
* In March 2004, a deliberate anti-Serb pogrom claimed dozens of lives, and further ghettoized the remaining Serbs in their northern enclaves.
* Perhaps most distressing from a cultural standpoint is the deliberate and systemic destruction of Serbian Orthodox Church parishes, properties, monasteries, and art throughout Kosovo since 1999. Students of the 20th century will recall the Nazi efforts to comprehensively erase Jewish culture from the Continent, which included the demolition of synagogues and the use of Jewish headstones as paving: since then, only the Kosovo Albanian program to exterminate Serbian culture in Kosovo compares in European history. In the summer following the Serbian defeat, the KLA demolished the Church of the Holy Virgin at Musutiste and St Mark’s of Korisa Monastery. Sadly, they did not stop there. In lieu of the long list of churches and cultural sites destroyed by the Kosovar Albanians since 1999, is it enough to note the documentation here, here, here, here, and here."

Albanian governments have alway faced a choice between friendly relations with their neighbors or the protection of  a powerful patron in order to pursue the dream of a "Greater" Albania. Albanian leaders have always opted for the second option. Ottoman Turkey, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Maoist China and now the United States have all played a key role in helping Albania achieve its objectives in the region. In each case, their patron was cast aside when they were no longer useful.

Under the Ottomans, Muslim Albanians served the Sultan as governors, soldiers, brutal policemen, efficient tax collectors and oppressive landowners. Unfortunately for Albanians they found themselves on the losing side during the Balkan Wars. Esat Bey Toptani, the Albanain General of Sutlan Hammid's  forces in Kosovo and Western Macedonia ended up losing both provinces for the Empire.Luckily, the European powers redrew borders in 1913 such a way that they ensured that no Balkan state would come close to reflecting its ethnic boundaries, thus creating a state of perpetual conflict. The overarching goal was to keep these fledgling states weak, requiring alliances with European patrons.In the case of Albania, that patron was Italy. Unfortunately, Italy, separated from Albania only by the Adriatic Sea, was in a unique position to not only help satisfy the grievances of the Muslim Albanian elites but also to occupy the country and use it as a staging area for the conquest of Greece. The invasion of Albania was met with only token resistance by the Albanian Army in 1939. Mussolini  expected the Albanians to provide manpower and they did not disappoint.

Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, describes the scenes at Greek-Albanian borders:

"To inquire into Albania’s fate I went up to the border north of Janina [sic] where everyone was discussing what they would do to the “macaronades” (macaroni eaters). . . . I managed to cross into Albania through a frontier post called Perati. There I found pathetically seedy Albanian troops still wearing hand-me-down Italian uniforms once furnished at cut-rate to King Zog by a munificent Rome. They had ripped Zog’s “Z” emblem from their caps; that was the only difference, and they appeared not more ferocious on Mussolini’s behalf than they had proven in the name of their former ruler. The Italian officers with whom I spoke were disconsolate. “Those Greeks,” said a captain from Bari. “They are so provocative. They keep pointing guns at us and making derogatory remarks.”

Fascism was a flourishing ideology in Albania since 1927 and it quickly came to the forefront during the Italian occupation. No Albanian could dream that the Rome-Berlin Axis was capable of being defeated. The new Albanian government sent the crown of Skenderberg to be handed to Victor Emanuel who would be proclaimed King of Italy and Albania and Emperor of Ethiopia. Within days of the transfer of the crown a new map made its appearance. The map of Greater Albania or Shqiperia Ethnik, which now adorns the patches of the KLA and is the logo of the Albanian American Civic League. It incorporated Kosovo, parts of Greece, western Macedonia, part of Montenegro, and Serbia.

On 3 May 1941, six days after Nazi forces entered Athens, the Albanian government dispatched another “special delegation” to Rome. It formally presented to the Italian foreign ministry “Albania’s minimal demands” for adjustments of borders vis-à-vis Yugoslavia and Greece. Concerning Greece,
besides Chameria where approximately twenty thousand Muslim Albanians lived, Verlaçi demanded the incorporation into Albania the  Greek cities of Ioannina and Preveza in Epirus, “together with their regions as well as certain other Greek regions, primarily in Western Macedonia.

In 1943, when Mussolini was overthrown by Marshal Pietro Badoglio in September 1943, Albania switched its primary allegiance and dutifully offered men and services to the Nazis. In Kosovo, the Albanians
formed the SS Skenderbeg division, while in Albania proper the nationalist movement, Ball Kombëtar, joined the Nazis in their butchery of innocent civilians. The governments in Tirana ruled over Greater Albania with the same finesse that the Nazis ruled Greeks and Slavs. For Albanian leaders, the acquisition of Kosovo was more important than who their friends happened to be. Even Albania’s leading intellectual and most highly regarded statesman, Mehdi Bey Frashëri, was impressed by Germany’s territorial “generosity” and agreed to act as "regent," under the watchful eye of  Hermann Nuebacher, Hitler’s Balkan envoy. Frashëri, like others, believed that only Nazi Germany guaranteed the permanent union of Kosovo with Albania, and he was not about to reject help for ideological reasons. Frashëri was guided by the same principles as those espoused by another prominent Albanian intellectual, Omer Nishani. Nishani was  a card-carrying member of the Albanian Fascist Party had written previously:

"Today is a historic day for Albania. On this day, a year ago, the Constituent Assembly in Tirana unanimously decided to deliver the Crown of Skenderbeg to the king and Emperor of Italy, Victor Immanuel III. From that day on, Albania has linked her destiny to that of Fascist Italy and the Albanian people have placed themselves under a genuine monarch, in whose hands the Crown of Skenderbeg will retain its historic value. . . . On this occasion I should also like to point out several things about the fascist regime. It is most suitable for our backward country. The national identity and independence can be preserved through good organization and discipline as the fascist doctrine preaches. We have a need to organize and discipline ourselves according to the dogma of Albanian fascism, which will strengthen our nationality under the Roman Empire. Only in this way will we achieve our heart’s desire of expanding Albania to its ethnic borders."

Immigration and Racism in Greece

Over at Devious Diva's blog a very interesting debate has been raging about immigration and racism in Greece.  I wrote a related post on the subject not too long ago here, however I was impressed by the comments made by blogger LEGEIN (his blog is also well worth a read) enough to reproduce them here for MGO readers:

“What I am trying to say, that I think you misunderstand, is that immigration is happening and will continue to happen and that Greece has to deal with that.” This kind of thinking, which I read and hear all the time, irks me. It irks me because we are a supposedly sovereign or autonomous people but our choices are made for us. It is not just regarding immigration but it is also regarding issues like economic rationalism. These issues are made to seem they are based on self evident premises. And because most of humanity just wants to get on with life they do not reflect and question that maybe these supposedly self evident premises are not really self evident at all. Likewise, with mass immigration we are told it is just the way it is and we have to accept it. But what is this seeming tyranny of inevitability based upon? Is it based on history? I could have find just as many examples of successful mutliethnic entities as relatively homogenous ones so history is not really a guide. For example, posters usually cite the United States as an example of a wealthy multiethnic state implying we should all become like that. However, there are many examples of relatively homogenous wealthy states. So that argument is flawed. Is it based on economics? There is no theory in economics which supports multiethnic societies over homogenous ones in trying to solve the problem of the distribution of scarce resources. There is no real strong argument in favour of multiculturalism.

You also wrote: “No, there is not much choice in that, unless you are going to kill everyone trying to cross the borders and I do not for a minute think that you would wish for that.” Yes, there is a choice. Many countries have exercised their choice i.e. Korea, Japan, Israel, and many are increasingly exercising their choice i.e. France, Russia, Switzerland, come to mind immediately. And none of these countries are killing people who cross their borders - with the exception of Israel but that is a special case. Greece’s choice is to increase spending to improve border patrols and to enact legislation that punishes trespassers or people smugglers. This would help to slow the level of immigration. Also, they could better police illegal immigrants currently in Greece.

You also wrote: “If you are going to decide, as a country, that you do not want any more immigrants, you have to make that decision and deal with the consequences (seeing as Greece is a member of wider communities and profits from being a member). How do you see that happening ?” Those EU countries have been in the process of changing their immigration laws over the last five years. Obviously, the trend is for less immigration or more controlled immigration. So if Greece decided they did not want any more immigrants I do not believe they would be considered a pariah state. On the contrary, many EU countries would probably be relieved.

You wrote: “I am trying to understand your position and mostly fail to because I don’t see how your ideas are attainable or desirable” I have never advocated mass deportations.

You wrote: “I’m afraid I don’t see that immigration is a threat to the rich heritage of Greece. I don’t see how it can be. What part of Greek heritage do you see being destroyed ?” You may not see it but plenty of Greeks do. Considering what it is happening in Kosovo then some of their fears are legitimate.

You asked: “Do you really respect the choices of others when they go against your own values ?” It depends. However, in this case you are required to respect a Greek’s choices more than they should respect yours. Why you may ask? I assume you are not a Greek citizen and therefore cannot vote, hardly know how to speak Greek and do not have a long Greek heritage. Therefore, in the nation of Greece your choices should be limited in comparison to the average Greek. This is one of the reasons why citizenship is conferred - to differentiate citizens from non-citizens. You decided to come to Greece - no one forced you there? Therefore, you should conform to Greek ways. Not the other way around. If you enter someone’s house you should respect their belongings and their customs just the same way you would expect them to do the same to you when they enter your home.

Diva, I know what it feels like to be a migrant and to be in a minority and have suffered racist attacks myself. However, I have never harboured bitterness to the attackers and when I put myself in their shoes I can understand their fear and hatred. Particularly, when they are young and not fully mature. I do not try and deconstruct their history nor deny it altogether. I do not call them Balkan Peasants. I do not make up falsifications to discredit them.

Bravo LEGEIN. Well done.

Generals of the Dead Army

Dean Kalimniou writes opinion pieces for Neos Kosmos, a Greek-Australian newspaper in Melbourne.  Readers can access his excellent writing on his very own blog called "Diatribe."  The following post, which is a year old, speaks volumes of the current state of Greek-Albanian relations and stands in sharp contrast to the meticulous care and respect accorded the German dead on the island of Crete where over 25,000 civilians were killed by the occupying forces.  The German cemetery at Maleme where 4,000 Germans were interred was tended by the Cretan hero, George Psychoundakis until his death.

"Recently, the very hypothesis of Ismail Kadare's  "The General of the Dead Army" was re-enacted, this time by the grieving relatives of Greek soldiers who fell in Albania during World War II. Unlike German and Italian soldiers, with whom Albania was allied during that war, Greek soldiers represent an enemy and occupying force that attempted to re-annex Northern Epirus and denude Albania of its southern provinces. As a result, the corpses of Greek soldiers have been left to decompose, being turned over by the occasional plow and exhumed to prove that even beyond the decomposition of the flesh and the passing of time, hatreds may still remain, hatreds as tragically Greek as Kadare's own masterpiece, given that Creon-like, up until now, the authorities, despite signing an agreement with Greece, have refused these soldiers, a proper burial.
One of the Albanian workers hired to assist in the exhumation was caught robbing the remains and as a result, was fired. Technically, it is illegal in Albania to perform exhumations without a license and the disgraced grave robber reported to the authorities that he was engaged to desecrate Albanian graves. As the exhumation was accompanied by an Orthodox priest who sang the trisagion, various Albanian members of Parliament, enmeshed in the throes of nationalist hysteria, accused the Orthodox Archbishop of Albania of grave desecration, spying for Greece, being a traitor and called for his removal from the country. The hapless priest, has now been jailed.
The bare bones of paranoia lie just under the surface of the topsoil in Albania and can be stripped down to their essence by anyone, let alone a general. The president of Albania, Alfred Moisiu, whose father was an officer in the oppressive Zog regime and then the totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha and fought in the battle for Elbasan where Italian troops halted the advance of the Greek army towards central Albania, is absolutely opposed to the proper burial of the Greek soldiers. Circles close to him report that the construction of proper cemeteries to house the remains of the fallen and long forgotten soldiers is considered to be as tantamount to extending the Greek borders up until that spot and it will be a long time before the jagged, hostile and unforgiving terrain that has seen so much misery over the course of the twentieth century, will give up our dead to us. "Us" and "them" is as a reality of today's Albania as it is in the fiction of Kadare."

Read the whole thing here.

The Greek Inferno

A Greek tragedy of enormous proportions continues to unfold before our eyes. If there was any doubt about the magnitude of the inferno, one look at the satellite photo of the southern part of the Greek peninsula known as the Peloponessus, will make you a believer.  Entire isolated mountain villages have been surrounded and engulfed.  Many of the inhabitants have escaped or been rescued in the conflagration while others have been killed in the fast moving forest fires. A relatively dry winter followed by a very hot, dry summer have created a tinderbox. Once the fires started they were fanned by the strong winds common during the month of August.

The fires are still burning and already the fingerpointing and recriminations have started before the dead have been buried. Some look for scapegoats, others talk about dark conspiracies.  The government including Prime Minister Karamanlis has hinted at the possibility of terrorism. As usual no attempt to come together in the face of adversity and devise lasting solutions. Lost in all of this is the many personal tragedies engendered by the fires.

The usual governmental promises of reforestation and partisan bickering over blame followed the catastrophic fires in the Parnitha National Park, the last green haven for Attica's 5 million citizens, and in Pelion, where about half of the forest burned down.  President Karolos Papoulias tried to set the tone for the response to the ecological disaster, calling for the environment to become a top national priority, and for a cross-party initiative to protect the forests.  That effort quickly degenerated into a blame game in parliament, when a debate on the family economy called by PASOK (Greek Socialist Party) leader George Papandreou turned into a war, with all party leaders pointing the finger over the destruction of Greece's forests.

The dispute hardly came as a surprise, as the government's proposal to revise article 24 of the constitution to allow the development of tracts designated as forests before 1975 was roundly condemned by opposition parties. Indeed, the affirmative vote of ruling-party New Democracy parliamentary representative Apostolos Stavrou in a committee, of which he was not a member, led PASOK to charge fraud and walk out on the entire constitutional amendment process.

"What was forest will again be forest," Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis declared in the July 2 parliament debate. "There are no votes to be gained from natural disasters and human suffering. Those who seek votes there only expose themselves," he said, alluding to PASOK.

Let's look at some facts (more background info here). 

Greece has one of the largest fire-fighting aircraft fleets in the world, given the size of the country. The Canadairs form the backbone of this fleet. Greece owns 13 of the discontinued CL-215 aircraft and eight of the improved CL-415 water scooping aircraft. Greece is planning to buy more aircraft. The two major contenders are the Russian Beriev  B-200 amphibious aircraft and the Canadair 415. The former made it's first appearance this summer after an official request to Russian President Putin by Karamanlis. The aircraftt came with a hefty rental price in the tens of millions of Euros. Reportedly,  Greece is planning to buy up to 12 of these aircraft. Each aircratft has its advantages and disadvantages.

The Beriev carries twice the payload (12 tons) and can execute more drops in the same amount of time. It has a longer range and can fly longer between refuleling. It has a quicker turnaround time between operations and doesn't break down as often. The Canadair is much more manuverable. This is particularly important given the  mountainous Greek terrain. The Beriev is less fuel efficient, and its maintenance and parts are costlier. The support infrastructure for the Canadair is well established in the Hellenic Air Force which has done a superb job of maintaining the aircraft under very trying circumstances.

Over the years, Greece has increased funds for fire prevention allocated to local authorities. It has also made substantial investments in the Fire Service. The Fire Service has come under a good bit of scrutiny lately. Although it is the wrong organization to deal with forest fires it has done surprisingly well in the face of the tremendous increase in fires breaking out in different places simultaneously.

The Greek government has thrown a lot of money at the problem, yet the number of fires and the resources needed to control them are growing exponentially. By way of comparison the number of hectares burned in 2000, a very active year was approximately 150,000.  This year according to European Commission European Forest Fire Information  System, approximately 268,000 hectares have been burned and the season is far from over. A large part of this increase is due to increased activity of people in or near the forests and forested lands. New roads and an ever-increasing number of private cars offered easier access to forests. The number of people leaving the cities in the summer, seeking cooler places along the coastline and in the mountain villages for their vacation, has gradually increased, increasing the probability of accidental fires. The same is true for international tourists who visit Greece every summer at the peak of the fire season. Most importantly, a trend that started in the late 1970s of building secondary summer housing along the coasts, accelerated in the 1980s. These housing areas were poorly planned, creating a troublesome urban/wildland interface and increasing the risk of wildfires. The activities of these people, starting with construction and continuing with their everyday activities (barbecues, burning debris, parking cars on cured grass, etc.) have very frequently resulted in accidental wildfires.

Another factor that led to increased forest arson in the 1980s and 1990s is a spin-off of the demand for land to build secondary summer housing and to develop tourist accommodations. This demand far exceeded supply, as most forests in Greece are public and protection laws make change –of use very difficult. Furthermore, an exact and complete land register has only recently started to be developed. The lack of land for development drove prices extremely high, and the lack of a land register and poor law enforcement allowed those burning forested lands to illegally occupy them. On more than one occasion, many years later, when the number of people in this category became too many and it was evident that it would be practically impossible to evict them from the areas they had occupied, the Greek government legalized these occupied lands. In this way, a motive for arson was created.

The forests have became denser and dead, downed woody material increased as a result of the abandonment of villages, especially in mountainous areas, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, as people immigrated abroad or moved to the big cities, mainly Athens. As dead forest biomass, especially around villages, stopped being used for cooking and heating as in the past, either due to decreasing population or due to replacement by oil, electricity and propane gas, it started building-up, making forests flammable right to the first houses of each village. Fires reaching there, rather than slowing down, now often burn homes and occasionally kill people.

In the past, resin collectors contributed to safer forest by maintaining forest trails for their need to move from tree to tree and by managing the forest, selectively removing older trees that were useless to them in order to favor regeneration. Furthermore, since the forests were their field of production and the storage area of their product, they exercised maximum fire prevention care and immediately suppressed any fire. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1970s this profession started to slowly die out as the demand for resin decreased, income dropped, and no subsidies were provided by Greek or European Union policies.

There will be time to ponder what can be done to solve the fire problem once the rains come. The rains however, will bring the inevitable flooding, a consequence of the lack of vegetation to hold the water in the ground. The impact of this environmental catastrophe will be huge. Every Greek will be affected.  Especially those who have lost businesses, olive groves, vineyards, homes, entire communities, not to mention, loved ones . The overall Greek economy and tourism will also take substantial hits. More importantly, this issue is a seminal one for Greek society. If Greeks cannot fix this problem,  then chances are that the other major issues facing Greece will be dealt in similar fashion or not at all. Right now the emphasis has to be on helping the victims.  Help is pouring in from surrounding countries. Nevertheless its up to the rest of us to help financially. Greek Americans are now being mobilized by our religious and community leaders to respond to the urgent need of the Patrida (Hat tip, GeorgeS).  I urge readers to send a generous donation to:

Greek Orthodox Relief Fund For Greek Fires
8 E. 79th Street
New York, N.Y. 10021

Fellow blogger and PhilHellene, California Kat, over at  the American in Athens blog has more on the subject.

Pray for our brothers and sisters in Greece. Let us hope that the deaths of so many will not be in vain.

For Amalia

Recently, a young Greek blogger named Amalia Kalyvinou died after a long battle with Cancer. I only found out about her story through a friend who lives in Greece a few days ago.  Amalia was thirty years old when she was struck down in the prime of her life. Her blog chronicled her struggle with a malignant tumor requiring treatment with chemotherapy and radiation.   More importantly it exposed malpractice and the corrupt system of Greek medical bribery known as the "fakelaki."    The socialization of medical care in Greece has spawned a number of problems.  The worst of these is the expectation by doctors of monetary gifts or bribes from their patients in order to receive adequate care.  There are many ethical Greek doctors that refuse to participate and do their utmost to uphold there Hippocratic Oath. Others have prostituted themselves and their profession.  The amazing thing about this young woman's  tragic story is that she courageously documented her personal  struggle and brought to light the major flaws in the Greek National Health System through her blogging.  In spite of her untimely death,  Amalia has been able to speak out from beyond the grave and do her part to chip away at the some of the things that contributed not only her death but the deaths of thousands of other Greeks, who are prisoners in a system that is broken. Additional information can be obtained here.

Amalia’s last wish was that readers contribute to the Oncological Center for Children, currently under construction.  Elpida Foundation, tel no 0030210-7757153, email: info@elpida.org

May her memory be eternal.

Preserving a Greek Christian Identity

The average Greek, whether sipping a frappe at a sidewalk cafe in Kolonaki or eating souvlaki at a Greek festival in some Chicago suburb seems oblivious to the fact that Greece is fighting for its life as a nation.  Life goes on for most Greeks; they may grumble or worry about  events careening out of their control but they are resigned to their role as innocent bystanders in the destruction of a nation that has manged to survive for thousands of years. The Greek future hangs in the balance caught in a conflict between those that would preserve the Greek nation and its traditions and those who would transform Greece into an internationalist utopia devoid of its religion, its identity and its history.

How have we arrived where we find ourselves today? Is it too late to preserve our Greek Christian identity or should we just resign ourselves to the fate that the Left has prepared for us?

The Greek Left like its counterparts in other European countries is  at the forefront of a concerted effort to disengage the Greek people, along with other Europeans, from their  identity.  Recently, while  reading a brilliant post which appeared in the popular blog, Gates of Vienna, I was struck by one sentence, in particular: "The extreme Left didn’t succeed in staging a violent revolution in the West, so they decided to go for a permanent, structural revolution instead."

In order to understand  how this process has evolved in Greece and how the Greek Left and its fellow travelers have gotten us to where we are today, we must understand the rise of the Greek Communist Party during World War II and the subsequent rise of the socialist PASOK party in the 1980s.  The Communist party was devoted to class struggle. This meant that every effort of the Greek ruling classes from the campaigns in Asia Minor to the defense of Greece from the Italian invasion, had to be opposed and sabotaged. Even the fight against the Germans was secondary to the overarching goal of seizing power. The party found many willing adherents in the refugee community that came to Greece after the Catastrophe of 1922. The population exchange mandated by treaty, dumped a million and a half refugees on a destitute country of five million. They faced wretched living conditions, physical hardship, culture shock and discrimination.  Many of them spoke only Turkish and they were classified as Greeks only  because they were Orthodox Christians.  Many of the locals were less than welcoming, referring to the refugees as Turkospori (Turkish Seed) or Yiaourtofagades (Yogurt Eaters).  Almost all saw a drastic decline in their standard of living; many had been quite well off in Turkey.   Many of the disenchanted and disenfranchised were attracted by revolutionary  slogans and the promise of a "workers' paradise." As a group they were generally ripe for exploitation to the needs of the Party. Many others on the periphery of Greek society such as the Greek Jews and  Slavs living in Macedonia, also joined the ranks of  EAM/ELAS.  Many were not committed Communists but simply wanted to fight the German occupation. Thus, as long as ELAS was fighting the Germans it retained a certain amount of popularity. 

This popularity eventually disappeared during the course of the Greek Civil War.  The Communist leadership misjudged the reason for the support they had during the war when they launched the December 1944 coup. The Germans left Greece in a hurry in October 1944 because the advance  of the Russian Army in the Balkans would have cut them off. A government of national unity was established with the prime minister being a left-of-center politician, named George Papandreou.  EAM, the Communist political arm,  had six cabinet posts.  Of course, this was not good enough for the Communist leadership and in early December 1944 they launched a coup to take over. The December Uprising which include a bloody pogrom of  thousands of "collaborators" and  the taking of hundreds of hostages, led to a full blown civil war and their eventual defeat.

On February 12, 1945 the EAM leadership concluded the humiliating Varkiza Agreement with the British, agreeing to disband ELAS in return for what proved to be empty promises of amnesty, civil liberties, and democracy. The outcome was a "White Terror" with some twenty thousand EAM members arrested and another five hundred killed by right-wing death squads between February and July 1945. This repression was to provoke the Communists into armed resistance in 1946, but under considerably less favorable circumstances than had existed in the closing months of 1944. The bitter civil war that continued until 1949 saw the Greek Left decisively crushed, with the price paid in blood by ordinary Greeks.

The right wing governments and the military dictatorship that ruled Greece after the Communist defeat, left an indelible mark on the country's political culture. From World War II and the Civil War until the dictatorship's collapse, pro-Western, anti-Communist, pro-business, socially traditional values dominated public opinion. The dramatic fall of the military junta in 1974 in the wake of a botched attempt to unify Greece and Cyprus, made it a scapegoat and made what it stood for very unpopular especially among the younger generation. When that generation came of age, it contributed to the emergence of a new set of values that were Leftist, anti-Western, anti-business, anti-traditionalist and even historically revisionist. In 1974, the new conservative center-right wing government under Constantine Karamanlis legalized the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) and quickly established a constitution which guaranteed political freedoms, individual rights, and free elections. In 1981 the left wing socialist party of Andreas Papandreou known as the Pan Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), was elected by 48% of the vote. It allowed former Communist guerrilla fighters who had taken refuge in Communist countries to come back to Greece.  Moreover, the PASOK government offered state pension to former guerrillas; Markos Vafiadis, a key wartime Communist leader was honorarily elected as member of the Greek parliament under PASOK's flag.

Leftist values and policies have been so strongly entrenched in Greece that neither  PASOK's poor record in power under Andreas Papandreou and later Costas Simitis, nor the indictment of some of its leaders for serious scandals in 1989, nor even the emergence of the lackluster George Papandreou, have been able to completely dissipate the reigning leftist tilt of the Greek political landscape. It has in fact, become so ingrained, that even the New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, has difficulty at times, in differentiating itself from its left wing counterparts. As far as the Left was concerned however,the defeat of the Communists during the civil war by no means resolved the class conflict in the country, it only signaled the start of the next stage of the struggle. What armed insurrection had failed to accomplish would now be achieved by other methods. First, the Left had to replace those who had let them down by establishing another more reliable revolutionary constituency consisting of immigrants, Slavs from Macedonia, Pomaks and other Muslims and above all, young people.  Leftist indoctrination in Greek schools and Universities would ensure that the next generation would be politically reliable and devoid of those traditional Greek qualities that might prove troublesome in the future. Unfortunately, what started as an effort by the Communists and their like minded allies has now morphed into a Leftist conglomeration of parties that are all essentially driven by a Marxist/Maoist political orientation. As Professor Frank Ellis points out:

"As Mao Tse-Tung, The Great Helmsman , put it, "Not to have a correct political orientation is like not having a soul." Mao's little red book is full of exhortations to follow the correct path of Communist thought and by the late l980s  Maoist political correctness was well established in American universities. The final stage of development, which we are witnessing now, is the result of cross-fertilization with all the other "isms" -- anti-racism, feminism, structuralism, and post-modernism, which now dominate university curricula. The result is a new and virulent strain of totalitarianism, whose parallels to the Communist era are obvious. Today's dogmas have led to rigid requirements of language, thought, and behavior, and violators are treated as if they were mentally unbalanced, just as Soviet dissidents were."

The Greek Left has always emphasized the role of the state in fostering Greek nationalism, and downplays the role of the Church as well as the ‘Helleno-Christian’ identity of modern Greeks. Marxists  see the Greek case as a conspiracy of local and foreign capital which manipulated petty-bourgeois and proletarian classes and turned them into Christian-nationalists.  Completely ignored is the reasons Orthodoxy played such an important role in the evolution of Greek national identity in the first place and why it continues to do so. Since its election to office in 1981, and the entrance of Greece in the E.U. club, the Socialists  attempted to introduce secularization and modernization measures in Greece (often using a populist arguments in order to gain the support of public opinion). Constantinos Simitis who succeeded Andreas Papandreou as head of PASOK in 1996 further boosted this policy. The Church was to die slowly, death by a thousand cuts.  Remove the priests and the icons, publicize a string of church scandals, change the history books, create an underclass of wronged minorities. Ingredients in a recipe designed to make Greeks into good little citizens of a brave new world. Unfortunately, the  confrontation between Church and State in Greece over secularizing measures adopted by the latter, as well as the Church’s conservative radicalization since the enthronement of Archbishop Christodoulos in 1998, means that the Church of Greece will not go quietly into the night.

During the birth of modern Greece,  Helleno-Christian nationalism created important boundaries between  Greeks and non-Greeks, and thus provide the newborn nation with a solid collective identity. A large part of the Greek population has felt increasingly alienated from the new image imposed on Greece by those seeking to eradicate Hellenism as we know it, so as to transform the Greek nation into a mirror image of other Western countries.   The Church is the only political and spiritual agent which is able to carry out the critical role of saving Greek traditions from assimilation into an emerging  global culture. This is in keeping with the historical precedent of the Church during the Turkocratia, when it became the repository of Greek language and learning. Archbishop Christodoulos’ political positions may be summarized into two key pillars: first,  in order to combat the ethical decay of modern Greek society, the social role of the Church should be protected and enhanced. For example, if there is any  chance to overturn the genocide of Greek babies by their own mothers through abortion, it will only be through the renewed efforts of a revitalized Church. Secondly, in order to contain Muslim expansion in the Balkans, Greece should pioneer the establishment of an “Orthodox Axis” in the Balkans. Christodoulos’ enthronement signaled a radicalization of the political involvement of the Orthodox Church in public affairs and a revival of the Helleno-Christian discourse. The Church is one of the few elements of Greek society speaking out and remotely threatening the Left and its beloved ideologies of multi-culturalism and secularization.

At this critical juncture, the Church in Greece is embroiled in internal scandals and suffers in part from the  same diseases infecting the body politic. Despite the difficult times we live in, Greeks must continue to put their faith in God and his Church so as to resist the efforts of those that are more than willing to give up the Greek  nation's  Orthodox traditions and religious orientation. To do so will relegate Greece to the same destiny befitting those who reject their cultural legacy, extinction.

Muslim Gratitude

The recent arrest of Kosovar Albanian Islamic radicals living in the US and intent on killing American soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey should be a wake up call for all Americans. These "friends," who were given asylum during the Kosovo war, have now seen fit to return American goodwill by plotting to kill Americans. This mess is brought to you by the misguided and incompetent American policy in the Balkans, a product of career Department of State diplomats who wanted to protect Muslims from Serbian genocide."   It has resulted instead, in radical Islam establishing a beach head on the doorstep of Europe. Lest their be any doubt about US objectives as envisioned by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, read what Tom Lantos, D-California, had to say on April 17th:

"Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.  This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and, in this instance, the United States stands four square for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

Perhaps it would helpful  if Congressman Lantos would read some of his own Congressional research. Some excerpts from a recent article in the Washington Times:

"A  Congressional Research Service report produced in 2005 said instability in Albania during the 1990s gave al Qaeda a "foothold" there.   "Poor internal security, lax border controls, and high rates of crime produced an environment conducive to terrorist activity,"  said the report by CRS specialist Steven Woehrel. "Some foreign Islamic extremists used Albania as a safe haven and gained Albanian citizenship."

Balkan Muslims also have been targets of al Qaeda recruitment efforts because they have an easier time blending in or evading U.S. and European security measures and border controls, which often are geared to identifying Middle Eastern extremists. Bosnia also has a large Muslim community that in the past has provided a base of support for al Qaeda and other terrorists.    "It is estimated that several hundred former fighters stayed behind in Bosnia after the war and became Bosnian citizens by marrying Bosnian women," the CRS report said. "Some al Qaeda operatives in Bosnia reportedly had connections to members of Bosnia's intelligence service."

White House spokesman Tony Snow quickly reassured the American people that there is “no direct evidence” that the men arrested in the Fort Dix plot have ties to "international terrorism."  In fact, Americans have been  assured over the years by successive U.S. administrations that Kosovo’s Albanians are not really serious about their Islam, that even when they desecrate Christian churches and kill Serbian priests and monks that it is for nationalist rather than jihadist reasons. What does this mean for a future, first Muslim state in Europe? Shouldn't we be asking questions about major Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) figures’ documented links to jihad terrorism (including to Osama bin Laden personally) and organized crime? In the meantime, personnel, money and weapons linked to jihadist outrages all over Europe have been traced back to Kosovo, including the bombings in Madrid (March 2004) and London (July 2005), and a rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Athens last year.

Please read Julia Gorin's article in FrontPageMagazine.Com here and visit her blog here for more on this subject.

Ted Laskaris also has written about it here.

I also recommend reading  a newly discovered blog, called Tao of Defiance.  A very sobering post on the Kosovo Albanian Mafia.

Cultural Suicide is Not An Option

As usual the give and take recently on MGO with Devious Diva has made me think about the broader issues involved and where I stand. It's all about doing the right thing in the context of our beliefs, isn't it? The world is a much smaller place than it was when my grandparents were alive. I am reminded of this daily when I go to Sitemeter daily and see the countries of origin of MGO readers. It is an eye opening experience to realize that what appears on MGO is read by a worldwide audience. I don't want to give readers the impression that I think MGO is read by the movers and shakers. It's not. My ramblings appeal to a very select group of regulars who for some reason, that only they may understand, keep coming back. For this gift I am truly appreciative and humbled. Nobody likes talking in vacuum. Other readers are attracted to MGO in the course of a Google search, they either stay awhile or quickly move on. Comments by readers are invaluable. They tend to either bring clarity or make me wonder about the extent of my ignorance.

Blogging has the ability to give people a chance to voice an opinion and take a stand. Doing so means that you have to be willing to defend your position, whatever, it may be. That's a good exercise for all of us, otherwise we risk living in an echo chamber. The issue of immigration, multi-culturalism, and globalization are hot button issues these day. That is rather obvious to anyone perusing the blogosphere. The world is divided into the "haves" and "haves not." I live in a world that is infinitely better from others who live on the same planet. I get three square meals a day. I have clean water to drink and bathe in. I have a decent home, my children go to schools with computers and everything they need to learn. My family has access to good medical care. Most importantly, we live in a society that for all it's faults,  provides us with the most important commodity of all: Freedom.

Billions of others do not enjoy these benefits. It is the way of the world. It is reality. As the world becomes smaller, the have nots increasingly realize that the only way to escape from the failed societies that are responsible for their predicament is to flee to those nations where things are invariably better. Here in Maine we have a large Somali community. The Somali immigrants who came here did so to get away from a society that has literally imploded. No one can put this particular Humpty Dumpty together again, not even the Kings men, they tried.

This migration, because make no mistake about it, that's exactly what it has become, is a matter of survival.  It is just like the one's in the early history of  humankind when prehistoric tribes migrated to every area of the globe. While the migration is perfectly understandable, it threatens to overwhelm those societies that have been able to prosper. The reasons for this prosperity are directly related to any number of factors, but chief among these is the culture that was handed down by the ancient Greeks.  It bequeathed to us  the very important ability to question and to think rationally.  Now please don't think that I am calling for other cultures  to be expunged from the earth and replaced with mine.  By the same token,  I don't want others to expect that I should allow myself and people like me, to commit cultural suicide in order to solve the problems engendered by those other cultures, whose minions are now busting the door down to get in.

Even the multi-ethnic experiment that is the United States of America is being stretched to the limit, increasingly feeling the strain of  unenforced borders and immigrants who cannot be assimilated in the large numbers that  are pouring in.  The US has consciously chosen this path, however, other countries must decide, for themselves, what path to follow.  For countries like Greece,  immigrants threaten to destroy what makes Greece unique: it's culture, religion and language.  DD makes an excellent point when she says that European countries, like Greece, have signed onto liberal immigration laws imposed on EU members. It's up to Greece to enforce those laws or back out. Whether that happens depends on the Greek people who have elected successive governments that committed Greece to a fate that promises to transform it into an unrecognizable entity.

The present state of affairs is untenable for all involved. As an Orthodox Christian, I cannot turn my head and look the other way. I cannot profess Christian beliefs, then act in a contrary manner.  This is the world we have created and its up to us to deal with it. The reasons that this is not happening are twofold. First, I think that we have lost our moral compass.  It's really easy to ignore all that is wrong in the world. It's convenient to look the other way.  Second, we are not willing to do what it takes to stand up to the two root causes of our present condition: tyranny and ignorance.  The solution to both of these scourges is a Greek concept. Freedom. Unless we help the have nots achieve the free societies they deserve and encourage them to build the free institutions that are necessary, they will continue to cross our borders, breed terrorists and turn our nations into the Third World morass that they are trying to escape.

For another take on the issue, read what Ted Laskaris and a commenter named Margaret have to say about it here.

The Tragedy of Kosovo

James Jatras is a policy analyst in the US Senate.  A Greek-American, he is in the forefront of efforts to bring the real story about Kosovo to the attention of the American public. The tragedy of Kosovo and America's well-intentioned involvement there have created a beachhead for Islam on the doorstep of Europe. In this regard we have no one to blame but ourselves. Rehashing the story of American foreign policy failures in the Balkans is beyond the scope of this post. If you would like to learn more go here, here and here.  The question that all Americans must answer is how do we deal effectively with the threat of radical Islam. How do we craft policies that will  help Muslim moderates in the Middle East and shore up the front-line states confronting the Islamic threat. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of voices in the wilderness that are highlighting the policy inconsistencies of Republican and Democratic administrations.  Recently, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, made a statement that an imposed solution or the illegal breaking away of a part of the state territory of Serbia, is not the way to resolve the issue of Kosovo. Ambassador Bolton is saying what many in the Bush Administration are thinking, but are still not saying, because entrenched pro-Albanian positions in the State Department have become so institutionalized since the Clinton years. Bolton recently told the Voice of America that is it not within the competences of other countries or the United Nations to break up or divide Serbia without the agreement of its government, because the international community is dealing with a new and democratic Serbia, not the one from the era of Milosevic. Violence continues in Kosovo including attacks against civilians and the desecreation of Orthodox Churches.  Kosovo is quickly becoming a haven for organized crime and a bastion of Islamic radicalism. 

Mr. Jatras notes in his essay in Chronicles Magazine entitled "Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration," the underlying anti-Orthodox bias in Western societies and the collusion of a segment of American society in its own destruction:

"I have noted that Western anti-Orthodox bias rarely means antipathy for Orthodoxy as such. Most serious Protestants and Roman Catholics often have a fairly positive attitude toward Orthodox Christianity as a morally conservative and liturgically traditional bulwark within the spectrum of Christian opinion. Perhaps it has been so long since Western Christians have had to defend themselves physically as Christians (as opposed to Americans, Englishmen, Germans, etc.) that they just do not understand those for whom it is a current concern.

On the other hand, there are Westerners for whom antipathy is based on the traditional Orthodox character of the front-line states bordering on Islam. Indeed, from this viewpoint, the desire of these countries to avoid not only islamicization but Westernization as well is a major count against them. Though differing in the specifics, the overall attitude toward Orthodox nations today is strongly reminiscent of that of the West toward the East as the dying Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serbian states faced Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. The West then was explicit: We will help you only if you renounce Orthodoxy and adopt Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox East is being told today that unless they unquestioningly submit to the West's tutelage in political, social, moral, and economic matters--the collective "religion" of the Enlightenment heritage-they again will be thrown to the wolves. In fact, the West will even help the wolves to devour them.

The immorality, not to mention the stupidity, of this should be obvious. Maybe Christians will never come to agreement on doctrinal matters; maybe the East will insist on retaining its distinctive religious and cultural heritage. Whatever happens, the survival of Orthodox Christian civilization in the East should be hardly less important to the West than to the Orthodox themselves, and indeed over the long term, the West's own fate may depend on it. The fact that the West cannot recognize this reality is evident in the forest of minarets going up mainly in Western Europe but also now in North America.

Some Christians see the Muslim influx primarily as an opportunity for evangelization, and indeed we should never neglect to share the Gospel, the only real liberation, with Muslims, who should not, as individuals, be held responsible for the violent system into which they were born and of which they are--perhaps more than anyone else--victims. At the same time, in light of the growing volume of Muslim immigration, Western Christians will soon find out--maybe sooner than they think, given Western birthrates--that confronting the Islamic advance has become, as it has always been for Eastern Christians, a simple matter of physical survival. But by that time, it may be too late for the West as well."

Read the whole thing here and don't miss this recent interview of Jatras by  CBN here.

Palestinians & Greek Cypriots: Two Different Aproaches to Victimhood

Every ethnic group, just like every individual, has a cross to bear. The "Golgotha" endured by a people can lead to two very different approaches to their victimhood in the face of a national catastrophe. The contrast between Palestinians and Greek Cypriots is instructive. Shlomo Avineri, a professor of Political Science at Hebrew University writes the following:

"Had Greek Cypriots followed the Palestinian example since 1948 - that is, kept the refugees in camps, segregated them from the non-refugee society, and fed their children a daily militaristic message of hatred, revenge, and terrorism - a completely different atmosphere would  permeate the island. The Greek Cypriot example shows that it is simply not true that the occupied have no recourse other than violence and terrorism. Recourse to violence and terror is a moral and strategic choice. The Greek Cypriots chose the path of non-violence; the Palestinians chose the opposite route. There is always a choice, and there are always consequences. Consider what the Greek Cypriot community has achieved - a thriving economy, no one living under conditions of misery and humiliation in camps, membership in the European Union - compared to the catastrophe the Palestinian choice has brought to their own people. Perhaps on the level of public relations, the Palestinian leadership - sacrificing their own people on the altar of propaganda - can bask in their achievement: yet it is their own people who suffer."

Read the whole thing. Hat tip to Demonax for bringing this article to my attention.

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Obliterating Greek Civilization in Occupied Cyprus

We are all prisoners of knowledge. To know how Cyprus was betrayed, and to have studied the record of that betrayal, is to make oneself unhappy and to spoil, perhaps for ever, one's pleasure for visiting one of the word's most enchanting
islands. Nothing will ever restore the looted treasures, the bereaved families, the plundered villages and the groves and hillsides scalded with napalm. Nor will anything mitigate the record of the callous and crude politicians who regarded Cyprus as something on which to scribble their inane and conceited designs. But fatalism would be the worst betrayal of all. The acceptance, the legitimization of what was done - those things must be repudiated. Such a refusal has a value beyond Cyprus in showing that acquiescence in injustice is not 'realism'. Once the injustice has been set down and described, and called by its right  name, acquiescence in it becomes impossible. That is why one writes about Cyprus in sorrow but more - much more - in anger."
                        

         From "Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens

I'm not sure I can adequately express the raw emotions and accompanying baggage that many Greeks including myself have about the tragedy of a divided Cyprus. I am deeply saddened by my adopted country's sordid role in the entire affair, both during the invasion and since. I am angered, but never surprised by Turkey's actions and continued intransigence, especially in light of its so-called comic masquerade as a "European democracy," and I am frustrated by the inability of Greeks, of all stripes, to develop a truly effective strategy to overcome the mistakes of past and set things right.The tragedy has been monumental in proportion, the loss of almost half  the island, the uprooting of the indigenous population from lands that they occupied for three millenia, the deaths of so many during the invasion and even more significant the inability, after so much time, to account for over 1587 missing Cypriots.  The Cypriot people have been truly heroic throughout the tortured history of the last 50 years. The have adapted and overcome. The have created an economic miracle in the unoccupied part of Cyprus, become a part of the European Union and created a vitality which stands in stark contrast to the depressing destruction and withered economy of the occupied north. The status quo is maintained by over 40,000 occupying Turkish troops and the introduction of thousands of "settlers"  from mainland Turkey. Even many Turkish Cypriots are fed up.

Cyprus has a long history over the last three thousand years punctuated by war, devastation and foreign occupation. Under numerous rulers, the population of Cyprus retained a continuity in its cultural identity, assimilating foreign influences and making them part of the Greek culture of the island. During the thousands of years of its history there has never been a radical discontinuity
in the cultural identity of its population, and its heritage has been enriched around a common cultural identification. All that changed when the Turkish military invaded the island and proceeded to ethnically cleanse the occupied portion of  the island. With the flight of the Greek population, Turkey succeeded in transforming the region, it ceased to be Greek, despite the fact that its Greekness had survived for over three thousand years of history and occupation.  The changes were insiduous and struck at the very essence of region's strength, its Greek culture. What is happening in occupied Cyprus is the systematic destruction of a Greek region. The Turks are of course past masters at such techniques:

• Get rid of the people and you get rid of the language.
• Change the names of the villages and place names and you expunge their
  origin.
• Remove the indigenous people so that their churches and schools remain empty and fall into disrepair, convert the rest into mosques. At least 55 churches have been converted into mosques, another 50 churches and monasteries have been converted into stables, stores, hotels, museums, or have been demolished.
• Stop teaching the Greek language and Greek culture in the schools.
• Erase Greek scripts, dispose of Greek school books, sell off works of art,
  religious artifacts and icons, plunder archeological sites, steal the lands and homes that rightfully belong to Greek Cypriots. What can't be sold should be demolished and destroyed.
• Lastly, eliminate the last vestige of the Greek presence, the dead in the
  village cemeteries and the graveside markers.                                                                                                                                                      

Even the stones cry out to the injustice and barbarity.

"Before the partition of the island many Greek Orthodox Christians came to Saint Andreas monastery on a pilgrimage. Today, the monastery is reminiscent of scenes from a surrealistic film: the large yard of the monastery is grimly empty. Two Turkish "policemen" are waiting to check and take down the personal details of tourists, who dared visit this distant and out of the way area. Two old women are sitting under the arches surrounded by a large family of cats. The faint sound of a hymn is heard from the church. Four women and three men, all well-advanced in age, are attending mass. The interior of the church is magnificent. Those who did not see the decoration of the church before the war, would not realize that the most valuable icons were stolen from here too. The priest reads the gospel to the scant congregation, in a firm and steady voice. As during the centuries of Ottoman rule, the Greek Orthodox priest becomes today savior and guardian of Greek civilization and tradition. But for how much longer?"    (From "Where the Heavens are Plundered" by Klaus Gallas in Frankfurter Allgemeine Mgazin, March 30, 1990).

For more information go here, here, and here. 

Mega Channel has produced an excellent documentary entitled the " The Missing Person's Children" viewable with RealPlayer, here.

Technorati Tags: Cyprus, Turkey, Christopher Hitchens, Klaus Gallas, Saint Andreas Monastery, Ethnic Cleansing, Missing Persons in Cyprus, Occupied Cyprus, Destruction of Churches

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Revising History and Albanian Nationalism

Historical revisionism by the Greek Left, Western multi-culturalists, and Albanian Nationalists is rampant these days. The fate of the Albanian Chams is a case in point. The Chams were Muslim and Orthodox Christian Albanians that lived in the prefecture of Thesprotia, located in Northwestern Greece, in the province of Epirus. It is an area approximately 10,000 square kilometers with a population of approximately 150,000. In 1913, this region was formally assigned to Greece. In 1923 the Chams were excluded from the 1923 Lausanne Treaty of Obligatory Exchange of population between Greece and Turkey, having been recognized as an ethnic Albanian minority. An international committee set out to redraw the boundaries of the new state of Albania. The committee's final decision left a portion of the Greek population within Albanian territory and, likewise, a portion of the Albanian population within Greek territory. The former region became known as Northern Epirus, while the latter region, home to approximately 20,000 Albanians, became henceforth known as Chameria (or Thesprotia in Greek).

The "minority question" was a concern for Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos, whose coup d'état took place on 1925. Pangalos considered himself a friend of Albania, spoke Albanian, and was proud of his half-Albanian origin. Under his regime, the two states moved decisively to normalize relations on a whole range of topics, from commercial relations to citizenship laws. Indeed, the two countries agreed on mutually accepted guidelines and regulations whose goal was to sort out who was Albanian and who was Greek. This was a vexing question because there was no clear-cut way of differentiating between the two. The two states established mutually accepted rules according to which people had to make a choice within a certain period with regard to their preferred citizenship.

Albanian-Greek relations took a negative turn in 1927, when the administration of the Greek Ministry of Agriculture realized the consequences of the original agreement regarding the compensation of land originally owned by Albanian landlords that had been expropriated by the Greek state. These Albanian land properties were estimated to be around one million stremmas (1 stremma = 0.10 hectares). The amount of money required for compensation was deemed exuberant and, consequently, the initial Greek-Albanian agreement was never ratified by the parliament. The resulting impasse led to a new round of Albanian complaints in 1928. The complaints raised two issues: the land question and the treatment of the Chams. With regard to the Chams, the Albanian government complained that the Greek government was persecuting the minority.

There was little evidence of direct state persecution, but the Albanians insisted that the Greek state open minority schools for the Chams, which the Greek side firmly opposed. Also, the Albanian government complained that the Chams' property was expropriated and given to Greek refugees from Anatolia. The Greek government replied that this was done in consultation with the local religious authorities of the Albanian community, and it concerned solely the necessity to find temporary accommodation for the refugees. Over time the list of complaints was extended to the Chams' effective denial of their right to get elected in local elections. The reports of a League of Nations committee and the reply by the Greek government reveal that part of the bone of contention concerned the change in the status of the local Albanian landlords. In Ottoman times, the overlords received revenues from neighboring villages. But the peasants refused to pay tribute after their land was occupied by the Greek state and in this case they "expropriated" what the Albanian overlords considered to be their property. In June 1928, the League of Nations turned down the Albanian petition against Greece. The compensation for land properties was not been paid until 1933; and when it was paid it fell short of Albanian expectations. As a result of these Greek-Albanian confrontations, the Chams were viewed with suspicion by the Greek state authorities and the Chams were disaffected.

During World War II, the Italians who occupied Albania in the post-1939 period encouraged the creation of a Greater Albania in an effort to attract Albanian support for their occupation. In fact, the Albanian government asked for the "unification" of Chameria, Kosovo, and western Macedonia into a single Albanian state. During the occupation of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers, the Italian government arranged to have Kosovo united with Albania. When Italy surrendered to the Allies, the Germans took over from the Italians and followed a similar policy of fostering Albanian independence and nationalism in Kosovo. They also armed close to 15,000 Kosovo Albanians and even recruited a Waffen SS Division known as the "Skanderberg Division." During the occupation of Greece by the Axis powers, the Albanian minority in Chameria campaigned for the annexation of the region into the Albanian state and enrolled in armed units sponsored by the Italians. Armed Chams joined the German forces in burning Greek villages.. These attacks are mentioned repeatedly in reporting by British and American Special Operations units operating behind enemy lines. For a background on the role of the Albanian fascists in Epirus (including Northern Epirus/ Southern Albania) during WWII, I recommend the personal account of Nikolaos A. Stavrou, Professor of International Affairs, Howard University, Washington D.C. According to Professor Stavrou: "On Easter week 1944, German forces and their fascist ally Balli Kombaetar (Albanian National Front), commanded by Gen. Hubert Lanz conducted a sweep of Epirus to clear the way for German army units to move north after the anticipated Allied invasion. This operation was commenced just weeks after the Nazis deported the ancient Jewish community of Ioannina, the capital of Epirus. In less than three days, Nazis and Ballists would wreak havoc in the pastoral life of my village." According to a report by Gerasimos Priftis, a founding member of ELAS (left-wing Greek Resistance group),dated February 20,1944: "The overwhelming majority of Chams in the area of Epirus have sided, in no uncertain terms, with the occupation forces; they have launched murderous attacks against Greek villages and have carried out looting and confiscation of properties. The high point of their collaboration with the fascists was their assault against Fanari in August,1943 where they burned down 30 villages, killed 500 Greeks and held another 500 as hostages." [From "Apokalypto (I Reveal)" by Retired General Nikolaos Gryllakis.]

A vivid account of the devastation inflicted by German, Albanian and local Albanian Cam forces is spelled out in the March 13, 1944 issue of the Albanian newspaper Bashkimit Kombit (the official publication of the then pro-German Tirana regime). The publication proudly announced the success of the February, 1944 campaign and documented the degree of destruction: 25,000 homes were set ablaze and 100,000 Greeks were left homeless.  With the withdrawal of the German forces in 1944, the Greek right-wing guerrilla forces of the National Republican Greek League (EDES), commanded by Napoleon Zervas, made an offer to the Chams to join them against the communist guerrilla forces of ELAS. When the Chams turned down this offer, Zervas ordered a general attack against the Chams, an action supported by the peasants whose villages had been burned down by the Chams and who were all too eager to extract revenge. Many of the Chams' villages were burned and most of the Chams (around 20,000) fled to Albania. The Orthodox Cham Albanians were not expelled, but were placed under tight restrictions. Speaking Albanian in public was prohibited, and as a result, was reduced to a home language spoken only in private. Zervas of course was directed by C.M. Woodhouse, the officer in charge of the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) to push the Muslim Chams out of the area because they had overwhelmingly supported German attacks on Slavs, Greeks, and Jews and anti-Nazi guerrilla units in the region. Reading the accounts of the various British officers working in Greece at the time provides ample documentary proof of the horrific destruction and mass murder by the Cham groups, as well as the British strategy of pushing them over the border.

During World War II, three military guerrilla movements developed in Albania. The first was organized by the pro-royalist forces of Abas Kupi, a Army officer under the reign of King Zog. Its power base was in the northern part of the country. The second movement was the Balli Kombetar (National Front), under the leadership of distinguished writer, diplomat, and scholar, Midhat Frasheri. This was a republican movement and it supported a program of social, political, and agrarian reforms. The organization's program included the unification of all Albanian areas; this coincided with the Italian-sponsored Greater Albania. The third movement was the communist guerrilla movement that developed in close association with the Yugoslav Communist Party. Eventually, civil war broke out, and in the course of the 1943-44 period, the communists were successful in eradicating all resistance by the other two movements.

The Chams eventually withdrew to the Albanian side of the border when the German army fled. Returning to Greece after the war ended would have exposed many of them to serious charges of war crimes. Most stayed in Albania and were made Albanian citizens by Hoxha in the early 1950's. Lately, they have become vocal in internal Albanian politics. Cited below are excerpts from the commentary by Prof. N.A. Stavrou titled "KFOR: Repeating history?" that was published in The Washington Times on August 11, 1999: "Albanians of all ideological persuasions joined Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in their Balkan adventures. For a short four years, matters looked promising and Albanian enthusiasm for fascism was unabashed. Hitler's U-Boats and Mussolini's air force were routinely referred to by Albanian leaders as "our forces", and banner headlines in the press heralded their victories. For example, the Albanian fascist newspaper, Tomori, in April 1942, joyfully announced "our navy destroyed an American armada in the Atlantic"; Bashkimi i Kombit headlined the "Successes of our air force in Malta and the Corinth Canal" with the subheading "Greece cut in two." Sixty-two thousand Albanians eagerly marched into Greece with Mussolini's blue shirts. In their enthusiasm, the commanders of the Albanian brigades, Drini and Dajti, requested the "honor" of crossing the Greek borders first. Many prominent communists, among them Ramiz Alia,(secretary general of the Communist Party) started their careers as fascists. Omer Nishani, first president of communist Albania, had fashioned himself as the theoretician of fascism. But when his fascist past surfaced at the Paris Peace Conference, even V.M. Molotov blushed."

During the Greek Civil War that raged after the defeat of the Axis Powers, Greek communists themselves were indeed most eager to accept, in their "Democratic Army", Albanian Cham conscripts, many of whom had previously committed atrocities against the Greek civilian population in Epirus under the tutelage of the Wehrmacht and the SS. The Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha received a request in writing during the visit of of General Markos Vafiadis, the Greek communist leader of ELAS/EAM, during which he requested the dispatch of Albanian Cham reinforcements to Mount Grammos in support of the Greek communist forces during the offensive undertaken by the Greek National Army supported by the US government of President Harry Truman. Vafiadis had expressed optimism regarding the potential "success against the American intervention" speculating that a large part of the Greek state will soon become "liberated" and that the size of the "Democratic Army" will reach 50,000 troops. he was also more than willing to cede parts of Greek territory to the overall goal of joining the ranks of International Communism.

The Cham controversy is only the latest in a number of current challenges in Greek-Albanian relations. If they are entitled to reparations and citizenship for themselves and their descendent's as some human rights and Albanian nationalist groups assert, then about 22 million persons in various post Ottoman countries, as well as several million in the US, Canada and Australia also have claims. Minorities with no "home nation", especially those who a) remained, and b) engaged in no sedition or treason, deserve the same rights as other citizens. Persons who left and engaged in organized sedition should not be considered for repatriation or reparations. If the ethnic cleansing of 400,000 Serbs from Croatia during the 1990s hardly registers on the radar of world public opinion, then the expulsion of 25,000 Chams from their homes in 1946, is hardly worth a second thought, given the historical record. Considering the recent developments in Kosovo and Macedonia I can understand Greece's sensitivity on the issue. Who wants to be seen as ready to give any concessions with such precedents around?

    Technorati : Albania, Albanian Nationalism, Balli Kombetar, Cham Albanians, Chameria, ELAS. EDES, Enver Hoxha, General Hubert Lanz, Gerasimos Priftis, Greece, Greek Civil War, Greek-Albanian Relations, Kosovo, Markos Vafiadis, Napoleon Zervas, Nickolas A Stavrou, Northern Epirus, Shanderberg Waffen SS Division, Theodoros Pangalos, Worl War II

Swimming Against the Tide

 

This post was written for Phylax Blog.

Anyone who has spent any time at all reading MGO will have realized by now how much I love everything about being Greek. That love was nurtured by the fact that I grew up around Greeks and my own Greek family. Living in Greece, with all its challenges and then marrying a Greek woman, only further solidified that love. The Greek experience is a part of me. It is indelibly etched in my soul and amazingly, it becomes stronger as I age. My long association with the Greek World has crystallized in my mind the advantages of what so much of Greek culture and my Orthodox Christian faith have to offer.

Greeks love the sea. It courses through our veins. Perhaps that is why I joined the Marines. I have had my share of shipboard life while plying the seas all over the world. Like other Greeks before me, I've met all kinds of people. My travels coupled with growing up in a multi-cultural society have led me to the understanding that men are not exactly created equal, except in the eyes of a loving God. Some are smart, some imbeciles. Some cultured, some illiterate. Some are righteous, some sinful. I have also figured out that Greeks are not supermen or better than others. They are, however, as history teaches us, as a group, exceptional and unique. Most Diasporan Greeks have an idealized picture of Greece that they nurture in their heads. They create a version that is often not quite, shall we say, accurate. Greeks can be frustrating, stubborn, cantankerous and succumb to a debilitating "xenolatria," (love of that which is foreign) interspersed at times with a self-defeating arrogance. Cultures, like people, are not created equally either.  Some have contributed more to Mankind than others. During the long expanse of history Greeks, in spite of their numerous faults, have had ample opportunities to make enormous contributions to the World. And so they did.

The recent events in Greece surrounding the teachers strike have made me think long and hard about why Greece, along with the rest of Western World, is teetering on the brink. In 1940, the entire world was also hanging by a thread. Two ideologies were colliding, western democracy, an imperfect system, that was sputtering and crawling along and totalitarianism, which was running by leaps and bounds, with determination, into the future. The Allies were losing, and losing big, until a little country decided to shout a collective "No" and make a stand. The rest is history. Many of the Greeks of 1940 had seen Greece rise to Olympian heights during the Balkan Wars and then fall precipit0usly in ten short years, dashing their hopes and dreams against the realities of the moment. They had dreamed and named their children "Fereniki (Bring Victory)" and "Nikiforos (Carrier of Victory), only to see many of their sons leave their bleached bones on the barren plains of Anatolia. The tumult engendered by the Catastrophe caused Greece to fracture, flirting with Communism and Fascism. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) found fertile ground among the discontented, the downtrodden and the poor. General Ioannis Metaxas, a staunch monarchist and nationalist tried to unite the country by creating a new "Third Hellenic Civilization" that seemed uncomfortably like a shadow of the emerging fascist regimes in Italy and Germany.

All that aside, the choice Ioannis Metaxas made in that dimly lit room in the early morning hours while dressed in his bathrobe and sitting across from the Italian ambassador who carried IL Duce's ultimatum, was not the choice of one solitary man, it was the choice of an entire Nation that answered the call. That generation sits in stark contrast to our own, cowering in the wake of Radical Islam and a resurgent Left that seeks to undermine the very meaning of the civilization handed down to us by the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks of 1940 were a different breed. They were forged in the crucible of war and poverty. They were faithful to their God and his Church, they were faithful to the Ethnos, and most importantly they had that indescribable sense of "Filotimo." Perhaps some were illiterate, uncultured, "country bumpkins," however, all of them answered the call in the face of overwhelming odds because they had something that we, with our all our so-called education and expensive worldly goods lack, they believed in themselves.

Back then, Greeks did not depend on the State to fulfill their every need; they didn't feel entitled. They struggled to send their children to school expecting them to take full advantage of all that education had to offer. More importantly, they expected them to learn how to be responsible citizens of the Ethnos. Back then, Greeks still looked upon children with love, but understood that children were just that, still trying to figure the world out and in no position to teach adults about what they should or should not do. Children were also expected to look and act like the children that they were. There is a saying: "It takes a village to raise a child." The question today all of us need to ask is: "Who exactly is that village?" It is not the television, political parties, the trade unions or even, and I say this with a profound sense of sadness, their teachers. Parents have the primary responsibility to do so and we are failing. When parents fail to fulfill their primary responsibility it is up to the Church, not the secular world to remind and assist them. Until Greeks reacquaint themselves with that Church and the Church reacquaints itself with the true needs of its people, parents are on their own.

Greek society, like other Western societies, is in crisis. Time is short, but it 's not too late. It is possible to rediscover the things that made Greeks unique and exceptional. Greeks can either continue to tear themselves apart or look back to the Generation of 1940 to determine how we can again become a beacon rather than a flickering candle. Faith, Unity, Tradition, Paidea, and Ethnos were the guiding lights of the Generation of 1940. Those lights can show us and others the way, once again.

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    Technorati : Greece, Greek Diaspora, Greek Orthodox Chrurch, Greeks, Ioannis Metaxas, World War II

Don't Worry, Be Happy

 

This post was written for Phylax Blog:

As an American I am always saddened by the invective and accusations hurled at the United States, a country that I genuinely love. Hating America and everything it stands for is perfectly understandable when it comes from our enemies. That is to be expected. When that revulsion and disgust emanates from nations and people that America shares so much in common, it is downright depressing and demoralizing. It leads many Americans like myself, to perceive that, in fact, we are isolated and alone in the current struggle for survival. Perhaps this isolation is partly of our own making. I rather think that America's sins as vast as they may be in the eyes of our fellow Westerners, are only partly to blame.

Many years ago I remember watching a old Alfred Hitchcock movie made during World War II. The name of this movie was "Lifeboat." It's about the survivors of a merchant ship that sinks in the Atlantic after being torpedoed by a German U-Boat. They find themselves cast adrift on a solitary lifeboat and coincidentally after the submarine is similarly sunk they pick up a sole survivor, its Nazi skipper. So there they are fighting for survival, but more importantly, fighting each other, which the Nazi takes full advantage of as well as encourages. Eventually they unite and end up throwing the Nazi over board only to have him replaced by another who is just as determined. Truly, an allegory for our times.

As Western civilization is confronted by its greatest challenge, as important as the one faced by a motley collection of small Greek city states about to be engulfed by an expansive Persian Empire thousands of years ago, Westerners spend their precious time debating and pointing fingers at each other. Why are Europeans and Americans, their cultural offspring, so at odds? Is this because, as so many Europeans are apt to think, Americans are stupid? Is it because America, in its lofty, wrong-headed disdain for the rest of the world, misses the essential amid the clutter of its own low culture? Or is it because, at least among those who think about these things, America correctly perceives a psychological flaw at the heart of general European thinking.To Europeans, Americans look like absent-minded bullies, overlooking the rising power of a Europe that demands to be taken seriously. To Americans, Europeans are all talk and no action, with a highly inflated opinion of their importance. The worst of it is that so few of us on either side of the Atlantic discuss this 400 pound elephant in the corner of the room: militant Islam.

Western civilization is in crisis. That crisis emanates in large part from Europe, although in all fairness America has its share of problems, as Demonax correctly points out. Multiculturalism is a European invention. Its cherished values of anti-fascism, feminism, secularism, pacifism, anti-colonialism, were all the product of a European sub-culture of academic Marxists and left wing radicals who were determined to destroy Western civilization, colonialism and capitalism through a cultural relativism. This was in turn taken up by a strongly Left wing media. Although multi-culturalism has crossed the pond and has made inroads in the United States; there are important differences. America has always done a better job of assimilating its immigrants. Europe has made little effort to do so. Immigrants, no matter where they come from can never be considered German or French or Belgians. They are, in fact, isolated in self-contained ghettos where they are supported by a societal safety net that does not even require them to do what they were brought to Europe to do initially, that is, work.

European decline has a number of dimensions including demographic (link), ideological (link) and economic(link). They are too numerous and beyond the scope of this post. Ted and Phylaxians of all stripes have done a superb job of detailing European shortcomings. Unlike many Europeans, who are either afraid to speak out or oblivious to what is happening around them, Phylaxians represent an awakening segment of the West that recognizes multi-culturalism's role in leading our respective societies to disaster. Western multi-culturalism is an expression of self-contempt and self- destructiveness. It is deeply perverse, irrational and requires us to ignore the murderous hatred directed against us by the officially oppressed. It's deeply disturbing that at the same time that many Phylaxians decry American ineptitude with regard to its policies vis a vis Cyprus, the Balkans, Turkey and elsewhere, that they cannot bring themselves to criticize Europe for failing to stand up to the most chillingly fascist phenomena of our time in places like Iraq or Iran.

After World War II, Charles De Gaulle thought to compensate the loss of France's Arab colonies by forming a vast Euro-Arab Mediterranean partnership with free circulation of goods, a common diplomacy, a parliament and a Euro-Arab university. (link) The European Left also strengthened its alliance with Arab states, supporting mass immigration and Arab causes. The spiritual father of this movement was Edward Said, an academic who devoted much of his work to fostering the Arab Muslim perception of history (link). The Left and the Muslim population, natural allies, both share a visceral anti-Americanism and a totalitarian propensity. The Left draws a great deal of political support from Muslim immigrants and has used them in turn to destroy traditional Christian values standing in the way of bringing about an "alliance of civilizations." This is a strictly a European phenomenon.

The United States has problems of its own and I don't want to downplay our own serious issues. The threat of Whahhabism within the US itself radicalizing American Muslims in Saudi supported mosques or schools(link), the attempts by the American Left to follow a similar agenda by adopting the worst aspects of multi-culturalism while simultaneously subverting the struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan, the indoctrination of students by Leftist educators, the failure to control our borders and illegal mass migration coupled with a lack of assimilation of new immigrants, the failure to readjust American foreign policies while relying on the failed policies of the past, and the inability to stand up to Islamic extremism wherever it may emanate.

The biggest difference between the US and Europe is the impact of 911. Part of America woke up on that day. I say part because a substantial portion of the American public and the collective leadership of the Democratic Party, supported in large measure by the mainstream media, has adopted the European approach. This struggle is long term, requires sacrifice and resolve, something that few Westerners understand. Osama Bin Laden is a very articulate and lucid individual who is honest, on the whole about what he wants to accomplish. All we have to do is listen to him. He sees this as a struggle between Christianity and Islam: "In the final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between the US and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated the more difficult and dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy." In his worldview, Americans run at the first sign of trouble, a perception reinforced by the previous American approach which mirrored the European approach to terrorism. No response beyond angry words and misdirected missiles.The response by President Bush came as nasty surprise. It is no accident that there have been no successful attacks on the American homeland. Unfortunately, the current debate in this country between Democrats and Republicans is causing many Islamists to again see the US as a "paper tiger." Part of this is because they fail to understand the role free debate in a free society. The war is far from over and they continue to prepare for the final Jihad and subsequent victory, whereas our side is weak, vacillating and unable to unify against a common enemy because we are too busy calling each other names, but don't worry, be happy. Peace is at hand.

    Technorati : Anti-Americanism, Edward Said, Jihad, Militant Islam, United States versus Europe, Wahhabism

The Perils of Abandoning Our Orthodox Christian Faith

This post first appeared on Phylax Blog:

Recently I wrote a post on the importance of evangelizing young people in their Orthodox faith. Shortly thereafter I read in Kathimerini that Greek Orthodox priests will not be able to talk to or confess school children in the public schools of Greece. The shocking part is that the effort to ban this practice was led by parents and teachers. Not only am I saddened by this turn of events, I fear for the future of Orthodoxy in Greece and what it means for national survival.

Despite growing up in a multicultural society that emphasizes the separation of Church and State I was raised by my parents to love our Orthodox faith. This faith sustained generations of Greeks in captivity and I was always quite proud to know that although I cannot trace my ancestors back more than a few generations, they never gave up their Orthodox faith. Through their efforts and their tenacity, they gave me the gift of Orthodox Christianity and God willing I will be able to pass it on to my children and grandchildren.

There is an ongoing effort to de-Christianize the West and to secularize our societies. It is not strictly a Greek problem. It is insidious and incremental. It starts with little things like removing a Cross from public land, prohibiting any type of prayer in schools, prohibiting children from saying Merry Christmas, or banning children from wearing a Crucifix. While prohibitions against Christian worship abound, recognition and preferential treatment is accorded to other religions. In my own home state of Maine, in the US, Somali immigrant children are provided a room where they can pray during the school day while Christian children are prohibited from doing so. Being a Christian has never been easy.

In Greece where a vast majority of people consider themselves Greek Orthodox, there is a gradual chipping away of the power of the Church. There is and always has been a strong under-current of anti-clerical feeling in modern Greece and it has been heightened by the recent Church scandals. EU regulations have in turn done much to secularize a government that was traditionally very connected to the Orthodox Church. It is only recently that I have come to the realization that many Greeks living in Greece are estranged from their Orthodox faith. As this process speeds up it cannot help but impact the country's moral foundation. As I have argued before, as we Greeks turn away from our Orthodox faith, it becomes easier to rationalize self-destructive behavior. It becomes OK to abort a baby, after all it is not a real person. It becomes OK to be narcissistic, consumed with oneself, and ignore the needs of others. It is OK to lie, cheat, steal and yes, even murder. These aren't new behaviors, they have been around since Adam and Eve. What is new is that increasingly, there is nothing to make us think twice about committing unthinkable acts. As someone who deals with children on a daily basis in my practice I hear about some of the serious and intense problems that they face in their daily lives. Kids need someone to talk to and qualified priests, teachers and medical practitioners often fill that role and make a real difference in the lives of children.

One of my favorite Greek Saints, Saint Kosmas, was an itinerant preacher, who traveled throughout Greece, Albania and parts of Serbia, during the Turkokratia (Ottoman Occupation). He did a great deal to help poor, illiterate peasants turn back the tide of conversions that was sweeping the Balkans in the 18th century. There were many incentives for converting to Islam and it was the easy and profitable thing to do. St. Kosmas was also a great believer in education as well as an outspoken proponent of social justice and a bold preacher for Jesus Christ. They hanged him, of course. Perhaps he could have avoided that fate in modern Greece; one thing is for sure, he wouldn't be allowed in any Greek school.

Technorati : Greece, Greek Orthodox Church, Orthodox Christianity, Saint Kosmas, Secularism

Cyprus

A New Slide Show is up courtesy of the efforts of a friend and frequent commenter on this blog, Demonax.  Demonax is a Greek Cypriot living in the UK who is kind enough to share these photos from a recent trip made to both occupied and unoccupied Cyprus by his sister and mother. The background is sung by Evridiki,  a Cypriot performer who has made a career in Greece.  It is a haunting melody based on a Cypriot folk song  called "Tessera kai Tessera (Four plus Four)".  Enjoy it and remember our brothers and sisters in Cyprus.

The Mantra of Anti-Americanism

Loving America is not very fashionable these days. Sometimes I cringe at the things that Americans and their government are accused of. Let's just say that Americans aren't very popular. Everyone was supposedly on our side after 9/11 and we squandered their sympathy with our unilateralism. At least that's the popular thinking. Unfortunately anti-Americanism was well entrenched in the psyche of a great many people well before the fall of the Twin Towers.

Anti-Americanism has become a particular fact of life in Greece, where it has developed into a central tenet of the Greek worldview. This animosity surfaced after the fall of the military junta and the invasion and occupation of Cyprus, both events seen by the great majority of Greeks as the handiwork of the US. The sins of the US are vast according to many of my Greek friends. America shows favoritism to Turkey, refuses to support Greek demands regarding FYROM, bombed innocent Serbs, has a penchant for invading peace loving countries for dubious reasons, etc, etc, etc.

Anti-Americanism serves an important purpose for many segments of Greek society and it cuts across the political spectrum. The Communists, the Church, the Greek mainstream media, the intelligentsia, the Left and increasingly, even the Right. Have I left anyone out? By scapegoating America, these elements deflect Greeks from focusing on the failures of their own institutions. The failure to craft a realistic and credible foreign policy, the failure to weed out corruption and nepotism, the failure to reverse the decline of the fertility rate, the failure to Christianize young Greeks, the failure to re-energize the Church, the failure to free the dormant economic vitality of the average Greek, the failure to stand up to Turkish aggression and provocations, the failure to Hellenize Europe (instead Europeanizing Hellas), the failure to provide opportunity, the failure to build a world class system of higher education that is accessible, the failure to decrease the role of government, the failure to reach out to or support the Greek diaspora and the failure to provide a balanced public discourse.

Blind anti-Americanism is nothing more than an excuse for Greeks to continue playing the "victim" card. It is an excuse for Greeks to disengage from the world, to feel surrounded, to feel impotent and to become more politically isolationist. By scapegoating others for our own faults we create an environment in which it is impossible to take responsibility and thereby begin the first step of emerging into the light. Hellenism and Orthodoxy need to engage the rest of the world, not withdraw from it. The Ancient Greeks were not afraid to sail out and meet the world, they were travelers and they reveled in and sought out new ideas. They were not frightened by the "Varvari (barbarians)" nor their ideas. The Greeks, were in fact, the agents of change and modernity. Today, modernity is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories.

The rot is deep. Kathimerini is a conservative Greek newspaper, considered by many to be the "paper of record." One of its frequent and respected columnists, a professor emeritus at Panteion University in Athens, Christos Yiannaras, recently wrote: "the European Union appears (with dramatic consequences) infected with a syndrome of inferiority in the face of the new/rich primitive culture, economic might, and military superiority of the United States. The E.U. wants to bring the traditionally state controlled universities under the politically uncontrollable demands of the economy, creating institutions of a society that seek to teach its leading cadres itself, and not to entrust them to the so-called "free market."

"The American model that seems to have enchanted the E.U.," he said, "is a society of emigrants, a racial hodgepodge of uprooted people for the sake of survival, with tragically antisocial differences in their way of thinking and in their cultures. They are 'united' by their blind devotion to 'money,' a devotion they inherited from the early emigrants, 'money' being the measure of evaluating every person. Their idea of life is the search for "opportunity," the stubborn effort to show off their riches and their power to the lands of their origin-their childish admiration for their machines and for the size and glitter of their products.

"The overwhelming majority of the American people are in a state of undifferentiated masses, buried deep in their lack of education, with dizzying percentages of illiterate people. An aesthetic barbarism, ridiculous clothing, a torpid state of overweight, with idiotic gullibility and easy submission to any kind of power (even the power of crazy religious preachers). This is the model, the E.U. wants to imitate and sacrifice for its sake the social conquests and its cultural refinements which should have been upheld as its cause of pride."

The part about showing off riches and wealth in the country of their origin will no doubt particularly endear him to Greek Americans. How do you argue with such a distorted view of Americans. The simple answer is: you don't. If some people want to engage in this type of rhetoric so they can absolve themselves of their own sins, there is not much to be done about it.

Faoud Ajami is a professor at John Hopkins University, an immigrant like myself and part of that "racial hodgepodge" known as America. In an article entitled "The Falseness of Anti-Americanism" he writes the following: "Today, the United States carries the disturbance of the modern to older places? to the east and to the intermediate zones in Europe. There is energy in the United States, and there is force. And there is resistance and resentment and emulation, in older places affixed on the delicate balancing act of a younger United States not yet content to make its peace with traditional pains and limitations and tyrannies. That sensitive French interpreter of his country, Dominique Moïsi, recently told of a simple countryman of his who was wistful when Saddam Hussein's statue fell on April 9 in Baghdad's Firdos Square. France opposed this war, but this Frenchman expressed a sense of diminishment that his country had sat out this stirring story of political liberation. A society like France with a revolutionary history should have had a hand in toppling the tyranny in Baghdad, but it didn't. Instead, a cable attached to a U.S. tank had pulled down the statue, to the delirium of the crowd. The new history being made was a distinctly American (and British) creation. It was soldiers from Burlington, Vermont, and Linden, New Jersey, and Bon Aqua, Tennessee ( I single out those towns because they are the hometowns of three soldiers who were killed in the Iraq war) who raced through the desert making this new history and paying for it. " Read the whole article.

Technorati : Anti-Americanism, Christos Yiannaras.Greece, Faoud Ajami, Greek-Americans

The Electronic Kafenion

 

The kafenion (coffee shop) was a major congregating point in the life of a Greek village. It was usually located at the village square. Men often retreated to this male sanctuary to socialize and most importantly to talk. Greeks love to talk, discuss, and argue. Sometimes it is hard for outsiders to figure out whether Greeks are having a discussion or getting ready to come to blows. I remember inviting a Marine buddy from Tennessee to join me at a family gathering in New York City. This guy grew up on a farm and he was a little overwhelmed by the noise and vastness of the city. When we arrived home, my mother and aunts were laying out a vast smorgasbord of Greek delicacies and my Dad and Uncles were in the midst of a debate on some aspect of the always turbulent Greek political scene. Children were running around and it was quite noisy. My friend was visibly uncomfortable and turned to me and whispered: "What are they all fighting about?" I told him not to worry unless everything went completely dead silent.

The early Greek immigrants to America, who were mostly young men, did not have a lot of free time for recreation. The little time they did have was spent in a little piece of home known as the kafenion. Yes, they even brought them to America. A few tables and chairs, a Greek flag and a picture of Venizelos or King Constantine on the wall. They drank the dark, thick Turkish coffee in the little demitasse cups, ate confections known as loukoumia ("Turkish delight") or mezzedakia (appetizers) like tomato slices, meatballs, feta cheese, olives, played backgammon or cards, gossiped and argued endlessly about how to fix the world. Put five Greeks together in a room and you'll invariably end up with six different opinions.

The kafenion was traditionally males only, no self respecting Greek woman would be found in such a place. Now women are just as likely to be there as men. Things are certainly changing; the kafenion is giving way to trendy coffee bars, cyber cafes and patisseries. Lately I've been thinking about the birth of the new "kafenion" on the internet. The internet is a modern marvel, capable of generating both evil and good things. One of the good things it has done, in my humble opinion, is it has become an "electronic kafenion." Now I'm not suggesting that we fore sake human contact with others and communicate soley through electronic means. My point is that the kafenion was a place where Greeks congregated with others in their horio (village) and now the electronic kafenion is a place that Greeks from all walks of life, male, female and all over the world can come together and exchange ideas. They can even carry on "Socratic dialogues." For further explanation, go to: http://www.sfcp.org.uk/socratic_dialogue.htm. Now if we can only figure out how to serve mezze with our discussions.

Personally speaking I have learned a great deal from the exchanges I have had with people on this blog and on Phylax Blog.  If they're not careful, Greeks can easily find themselves in an echo chamber. They need to be exposed to different points of view and they need to get their point of view across to others. They need to think critically and challenge there preconceived ideas. The electronic kafenion is a way to do this. I am always pleasantly shocked when I go to "Site Meter" on my blog and find out how many different countries my readers hail from.  We are just scratching the surface. I truly have come to believe that this is a powerful tool for bringing Greeks and those that aspire to be  "Greek"  together. I do not say that in a strictly ethnically oriented sense. As I have said before, being Greek  as the philosopher Isocrates understood it, was partaking of Greek paidea (education) and thinking and acting in the classically Greek manner. Some of our brothers and sisters in Greece and elsewhere fall short of the mark, whilst some "xeni" (foreigners) aspire to reach it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Ted Laskaris of Phylax Blog and Epithesis Now for leading the way. For bringing Greeks together and for introducing me to blogging. Bravo Ted and to all who take the time to comment and listen. Hope we will continue to have many kavgathes (arguments) in the future and continue to Hellenize the world.   Semper Fi, Stavros

The Elusive Ghost of Greek Unity

This post appears on Phylax Blog

Greek unity has always been elusive. When Greeks are united in a common cause, they work miracles. When they are arguing unceasingly and at loggerheads, disaster is not far behind. This phenomenon is as old as Greek history. To understand what divides us we have to see our divisions through the prism of our common historical experience.

Ancient Greece was a collection of city states that often competed or warred against each other. The two strongest city states Athens and Sparta, diametrically different in orientation, fought a series of conflicts known as the Peloponnesian Wars. The outcome brought both to ruin. The duality of the Greek spirit, that is, unity and disunity, is illustrated by the fact that these feuding Greeks saw "Hellenism" as a universal idea, not necessarily predicated on a racial or ethnic concept. Isocrates, for example, saw the polis spreading to non-Greeks. Internecine squabbles could also be set aside when Greeks were threaten by an external threat.

In 481 B.C., the Persian Emperor Xerxes sent ambassadors demanding earth and water, a sign of submission, from the Greek city states as his vast army marched toward Greece. The Spartans called a conference in Corinth which was attended by the Greek city states thinking of resisting, including Athens. Athens conceded leadership of the effort to Sparta and they made the following resolutions: to end all wars among themselves and to declare war on Persia. A small force under a Spartan King named Leonidas was sent to a strategic pass to block the advance of the Persian Army and buy valuable time. The sacrifice of the Spartans and other Greeks at Thermopylae allowed the Athenian fleet to eventually defeat the numerically superior Persian fleet in the narrow straits off the island of Salamis. Greece and the West was saved. Victor David Hanson, a professor of classics, writes: "Nothing provides a better or more clear illustration of this than Herodotus's description of Thermopylae, where [soldiers] in the royal army of Xerxes were being whipped to fight, whereas Leonidas and the Spartans said they were there because they were following the law that they themselves had created. What kind of army, ancient or modern, would name their triremes "Free Speech" or "Freedom" like the Athenians did at Salamis, or have a play by Aeschylus that says, "We rowed into battle saying 'freedom, freedom, freedom.'" It is very strange in comparison to what motivated other armies of the era."

Greek Byzantium was the bulwark again against the advance of eastern invaders for over a thousand years. Unfortunately, the empire was often wracked by internal dissension and infighting, which weakened it, along with the destruction wrought by the Crusaders, who sacked Constantinople. In the seventh and eighth centuries, in particular, first the Persians and then the Arabs launched major offensives into the region. Yet these invaders ultimately failed to establish themselves on Byzantine territory. However, a period of civil war in the late eleventh century enabled the Turks to make huge inroads into Byzantine territory. In many places, usurpers used mercenary Turkish troops to occupy strategic towns, only for those mercenaries to take the towns for themselves when the usurpers had departed. By 1095, virtually the whole of Asia Minor, comprising about 70% of the Byzantine Empire, had been lost.

The substantial efforts of Greeks in the Greek War of Independence to throw off the yoke of the Ottoman Empire was also marred by a surprising inability at critical junctures to establish a united front, both during the war and after independence. Internal rivalries, however, prevented the Greeks from extending their control and from firmly consolidating their position in the Peloponnese. In 1823, civil war broke out between the guerrilla leader Theodoros Kolokotronis and Georgios Kountouriotis, who was head of the government that had been formed in January 1822 but that was forced to flee to the island of Hydra in December, 1822. After a second civil war, Kountouriotis was firmly established as leader, but his government and the entire revolution were gravely threatened by the arrival of Egyptian forces, led by Ibrahim Pasha, which had been sent to aid the Turks. With the support of Egyptian sea power, the Ottoman forces successfully invaded the Peloponnese; they furthermore captured Messolonghi, the town of Athens, and the Athenian acropolis. The Greek cause, however, was saved by the intervention of the European Powers.

The Greek state that emerged in 1830 was dominated by the factionalism left over the Ottoman period. In addition, there was a sudden influx of diasporan Greeks and this created much suspicion among the insular residents of the small Greek state. Political factions were not organized along party lines but around one's support to one of the Great Powers. The "Great Idea," a doctrine of manifest destiny to bring all unredeemed Greeks together into one state was a unifying and non-partisan theme which developed after independence. This theme, the driving force behind Greek foreign policy of the era, drove Greece into two Balkan Wars and finally the debacle of 1922. It was the stunning Greek defeat in Asia Minor by Kemal Attaturk, aided and abetted by some of the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union, which brought Greek irredentist dreams to a halt. The broad divide between monarchists supporting the Greek King and republicans who supported Eleftherios Venizelos, the prime minister who had engineered Greek Occupation of Asia Minor under the Treaty of Versailles, was in large part responsible for that defeat. In October 1920, the Greek army advanced further east into Anatolia, with the encouragement of Lloyd George, the British prime minister, who intended to increase the pressure on the Turkish and Ottoman governments to sign the Treaty of Sevres. This advance began under the Liberal government of Venizelos, but soon after the it started, Venizelos fell from power and was replaced by Dimitrios Gounaris, who appointed inexperienced monarchist officers to senior commands. The result was a military and human disaster.

In the wake of 1922, Greece was saddled with enormous debt, over a million refugees and along with the Depression, this created a situation in Greece that eventually lead to the rise of a disaffected portion of the Greek population, easily organized by the Communists. The 30s were plagued by constant coups, military governments and the systematic purge of communists from the body politic. The Italian Invasion of Greece swept all of that aside, at least temporarily. It brought Greeks together as few other events in their history, and it pitted them against a common foe instead of each other. Patriotism and martial spirit swept Greece as the Greek Army repelled the invader and advanced into Albanian territory. Defeated subsequently by Germany and suffering under a cruel occupation Greeks were to revert to business as usual, fighting among themselves almost as often as they did against the enemy. The internecine warfare that followed liberation between monarchists and communists culminated in one the worst bloodbaths of Greek history known as the Greek Civil War. The Right emerged victorious and consolidated its hold on Greece under the military dictatorship of the Colonels. After the fall of the military junta, Greece has gone back and forth between two main political parties that increasingly have divided Greeks along parochial personal interests and are finding it more difficult to differentiate themselves from each other ideologically.

Greeks have a tendency to find all kinds of things to argue about and break ranks with their fellow Greeks. Greek immigrants in America even brought their homegrown political disputes to America. These rifts stunted the development of the growing Greek American community and did irreparable harm to its efforts to establish itself. Then there is the divide that has always existed between "Hellenistic Greeks," those that live outside of Greece, and "Helladic Greeks," those that live in Greece. The cosmopolitan views of the Hellenists rarely coincided with the more insular views of their Helladic cousins. Hellenistic Greeks live in the real world, buffeted by the current storms of globalization, assimilation, and dechristianization. Often they have an idealized version of Greece. Helladic Greeks live in a completely different world with problems of their own. Often they have a distorted view of their overseas brethren. Greece is the center of their world and rightly so. The Hellenistic Greek on the other hand has to straddle two very different worlds.

Then there is the notion of "Greekness" and who or who does not fit our preconceived notions of who is Greek. Greeks throughout the world are dealing with change and upheaval. Some Greek reactions are dysfunctional. Xenophobia, fear of the foreigner and his ideas versus Xenolatria, the penchant for idolizing all that is foreign. There is an element of self hate at work here. Some reject Greekness because they find some Greeks fall far short of an idealized version of it. They want to excise that part of them that is Greek and replace it with anything else. In so doing they throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water. Others are afraid of everything that is not Greek, of being exposed to new ideas. Perhaps they are too comfortable in their own skin.

Unity does not necessarily mean that Greeks agree on everything. Divisions in societies or groups are normal and usually healthy. The problem arises when Greeks become too entrenched in their thinking and approach to the world or each other. When they fail to heed their own history and forget the rich legacy passed down to them. The question is can Greeks bridge the divides, and come together long enough to learn from each other in the face of serious threats to their cultural and national survival or will they revert to past practices?

Technorati : Balkan, Communism, Constantinople, Germany, Greece, Greek Aegean, Greek History, Greek heritage, Messolonghi, Pasok, Thermopolyae

The Pontic Greek Genocide

To remember does not mean stirring up hatred within or without. Hatred destroys what was good and pure in the past and the present. It simply means to embrace what is ours' 

                           Thea Halo, author of "Not Even My Name"

The Turkish Government reacted sharply to the recent dedication of the  Pontic Hellenism Genocide monument which was opened recently in Thessaloniki to  mark the genocide's anniversary.  Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Namik Tan said that " so-called Pontic genocide"  lacks historical and scientific evidence. “We suggest that Greek authorities and scholars evaluate the historical events objectively instead of using such expressions that can damage relations between our two countries,” said Tan. “We want to again reiterate that this step, which became a fodder for feeble arguments, isn’t in line with the spirit of the cooperation and dialogue we’re trying to develop.” 

May 19th marked the 87th anniversary of the Pontian genocide that occurred in present day Turkey.  Between 1916 and 1923 over 300,000 Pontic Greeks living in along the Black Sea coast and Asia Minor were systematically exiled or killed along with one and a half million Armenians and 700,000 Assyrians Christians.    The Pontic people lived in Turkey from ancient times for over 3000 years and are descendants of Greek colonists who arrived there long before the ancestors of present day Turks. The Turks, under the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk, pursued a deliberate policy of "Turkey for the Turks."  It was adopted against the backdrop of the Greek occupation of parts of Asia Minor as spelled out in the Treaty of Versailles.  Its purpose was to rid Turkey of its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian Christians. The resulting Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the defeat of the Greek Army sounded the death knell for Christian minorities in Turkey. The process began with Christian owned businesses being boycotted, leading to bankruptcies and confiscation of property.  Eventually intellectuals and community leaders were rounded up and executed. One of the methods used in the elimination of the Greek population was the "labor battalions."  In them, mostly young and stronger people were captured and forced to do exhausting slave labor by the Turkish State, in order to reconstruct areas destroyed during the war. Some were sent to concentration camps and amongst the survivors was the well known writer, Elias Venezis, who later described his experiences in his book  "Number  31328." Thousands died of exhaustion, starvation and dehydration on forced marches.  This effective method was used by the Turks  to force the weaker population, including women and children, to walk for hundreds of kilometers until they died. This was known as the "Light Death."   

These tragic events were recorded by American, as well as the German and Austrian diplomats of the time.  Unlike Germany which has taken responsibility for its sins committed in World War II, Turkey still refuses to even admit that these events occurred, let alone apologize for the genocide and ethnic cleansing it inflicted on a helpless population. Not only were the people expunged from Turkey, so too were any traces of their existence. Admitting guilt would entail casting a shadow on Kemal Ataturk.  Ataturk is revered and represents the heart and soul of the modern Turkish ethos of who they are as a nation. The present Turkish government has gone to extraordinary lengths to quash any attempt to publicize these events throughout the world, including keeping their own people ignorant of their history. To do so would require a reexamination of the very foundation on which the modern Turkish State is built.  As a Friend of mine was fond of saying: "Folks it ain't gonna happen." Interestingly, the Kurds, fellow Muslims were active participants and abetted this genocide but now find themselves in a reversal of roles.  They have become the target of draconian assimilationist policies designed to suppress their identity and language.

The Best and Brightest

This post was written for WWW. PHYLAXBLOG.COM

Peter Diamandis is chairman of the X Prize Foundation, an organization dedicated to opening the space frontier to average people. Diamandis, however, is far from average. He was born in New York City, the son of Greek immigrants from Mytilene. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, he is the impresario behind the creation of the $10 million prize to encourage the development of private spaceflight.

The X Prize was won in 2004 by the creators of Space Ship One, the first non-governmental piloted and produced spacecraft. Now Diamandis has won a prize of his own, the Heinlein Prize, worth $500,000. It was established by the estate of science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, to reward individuals who make practical contributions to the commercialization of space. Diamandis has also created the first US based weightless flight airline, the world’s most successful space tourism company, and the International Space University.

So what’s he planning to do with the money? “It’s what I’ve been doing with the money.” he said, “focusing on creating what I consider to be the critical parts of a commercial space industry.” Another Greek success story in the United States, one of many throughout the Diaspora. A friend of mine used to say: “The chief Greek export is talent.” How true. After all, Greek immigrants are the risk takers of the Patrida. They have a fire in the belly which cannot be satisfied in the land of their birth, no matter how much they love it or how nostalgic they are for it. Greece is no longer a desperately poor country; exporting its excess population and living on the receipts sent home. It has taken its place in the European Union and developed its economy and infrastructure. Immigration has slowed, but hasn’t stopped. With so much human talent that Greeks have demonstrated throughout their history, why isn’t Greece poised to take advantage of it? Could Peter Diamandis have replicated his meteoric success if his parents had stayed in Greece?

For the answer, one only has to look at the sorry state of tertiary education in Greece. It is a system that is run by the state, a recipe for disaster in the best of times. Its employees are trade unionists who are more interested in job security than educating young Greeks to compete in the 21st century. Greek youth are prisoners in a system designed to cull the test takers from the rest of the herd of secondary school students and thereby bestow on the select few, slots in areas of study that many do not aspire to or are ill suited for.

Many capable and talented Greek young people, unable to gain entry to state universities, are left to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, efforts to introduce non-profit institutions of higher learning to meet the rising demand for more university slots and foster competition, are being opposed by professors and students alike. No one wants to rock the boat. The system has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, and neither student nor teacher receive praise or negative feedback for work they do. Mediocrity is enshrined and perpetuated, producing large numbers of good little government employees who fit right in to the existing culture of non-work in the Greek public sector. Everyone is happy. As a result, Greek education emphasizes rote learning, avoiding the development of critical thinking skills in the tradition of Greek Paidea. The bottom line is that unless Greek educators make radical changes, Greek youth will not be able to make the kind of contributions to civilization that Greeks have made in the past and sadly, Greece wll continue to bleed its best and brightest.

 

A Tale of Two Communities

Gulbeyaz KaraHasan is a 27 year old lawyer and mother who is running for Parliament as a nominee of George Papandreou's socialist PASOK party. If elected she will be the second Muslim parliamentarian representing the Turkish minority in Greece which numbers approximately 120,000. Her candidacy has become a bit of a political football in Greece, with politicians from PASOK and New Democracy trading barbs and tripping over themselves to assure everyone that minorities share the same rights as Greeks. Perhaps they need a history lesson regarding two communities, a Turkish one in Greece and a Greek one in Turkey.

The Muslim minority in Thrace which constitutes about 1.3% of the population, was protected under the Treaty of Lausanne signed by Greece and Turkey. It's counterpart inTurkey were the Greek communities of Constantinople and the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. Greece is often taken to task for its suppposed ill treatment of its citizens of Turkish origin by the EU, Helinski Watch and the US State Department. Turks in Greece have numerous mosques, two state run Islamic centers, a Mufti with judicial powers is appointed based on recommendations of a committee of religious authorities, Muslim scholars, and community leaders. They are allowed to teach the Turkish language and own property. Their numbers have increased significantly from what they were in 1922.

On the other hand, the Greeks of Istanbul, Imbros and Tenedos are almost extinct except for a few scared old people. Those that weren't terrorized into leaving by the anti-Greek riots of 1955, were gradually pushed out through ruses such as the Varlek Vergisi or wealth tax. Inability to pay this exorbitant tax often resulted in the confiscation of Greek owned property and occasionally prison sentences at hard labor. The Patriarch of Constantinople, who represents millions of Orthodox Christians and who is part of an unbroken line of religious leaders that dates back over a thousand years and I might add before the arrival of the Turks themselves in the lands they presently occupy, is under constant pressure to leave Turkey. The same country that is now chomping at the bit to take its "rightful" place as a member of the EU and to be considered "Western", recently denied the Pope permission to visit the Patriarch of Constantinople. Patriarch Bartholomew's position is increasingly untenable, he is constantly the object of demonstrations by right wing Turks, not to mention the target of violent acts. The position of Patriarch can only be filled by a Turkish citizen. The Turkish government closed the Theological Seminary at Halki in 1971. It remains closed supposedly because the Patriarchate had the temerity to refuse incorporation of the Seminary under a secular Turkish University. In so doing, the Turks are denying Orthodox Christians the ability to replace the aging bishops from which the Patriarch must be chosen.

Ms. KaraHasan is a lucky woman, after all imagine if she had been a Greek woman born in Turkey.

Technorati : Greece, Greek Current Affairs, Greek Politics, Greek-Turkish Relations, Muslim Minority in Greek Thrace, PASOK