From: dk0a@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (DIMITRIOS KOUVATSOS)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: IRA-OSE, British behavior, and a "clean sheet for Paeonia"
Date: 29 Sep 92 04:17:32 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1992Sep28.112425.90215@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>, phs265y@vaxc.cc.monas
h.edu.au writes:
>In article <Bv343H.Mx@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>, cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear)
writes:
>> From article <1992Sep24.104942.4045@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, by pef@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Pan
ayotis Fouliras):
>>>
>>> I do not know the details of the particular case, but I could
>>> agree with you otherwise. However, since you claim to be a Tory
>>> (=Conservative), you must be aware of the fact that politicians
>>> supportive of the IRA, etc, are banned by *LAW*, to have their
>>> views broadcasted
>>>
>>> Doesn't this come in full contradiction with what you said
>>> above? Think about it. After all it is a Tory government
>>> responsible for that bill. So, what about democracy then?
>>
>> First point, not all members of political parties (in England at least)
>> have to agree with everything their leadership says, I suspect this is
>> true in Greece as well as Britain so you can't necessarily infer that I
>> support this ban. The reason for it coming about was simple - growing
>> public dislike in Britain of IRA spokesmen appearing on the news after acts o
f
>> terrorism to justify them. Here of course lies the main difference, the
>> political wing of the IRA (Sinn Fein) supports what it euphemistically
>> calls the armed struggle in Northern Ireland, something the rest of us
>> would call murder. As far as I can make out the OSE activists
>> didn't advocate violence against any one, they just disagreed with Greek
>> government policy. Moreover let's not remember that Sinn Fein remains a
>> legal political party in Britain and freely distributes its leaflets
>> which are far more inflamatory than the OSE pamphlet concerned, without
>> its members risking arrest for doing so. Its opinion can still be heard
>> on British television via quotation. Whatever the rights and wrongs of
>> this ban, a subject I think for soc.culture.celtic, it is in no way
>> comparable to what has happened in Greece.
>
>         I wonder if Andy would change his position if he finds out (if he
>didn't know already) that the OSE gives unconditional critical support to the
                           ///////////////////////////////////////////////////
>IRA and advocates armed overthrow of the Greek, Irish and British governments
 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>by the organised working class
 //////////////////////////////
>
>
>                                  Tony Hartin
>                                  International Socialist Organisation
>                                  Australia

Too much to expect... of course Mr. Fear is not going to change his mind.
British bans of the IRA are just fine, but Greek bans of the even more
radical OSE are violations of human rights! And nooooo, don't expose British
bans here, let's go to soc.culture.celtic, just damn the Greeks now... What
can one expect from a guy who said that there are two states on Cyprus, when
the UN and all countries in the world except the occupier - Turkey - itself,
only recognize the Republic of Cyprus? When he does not dare dispute the fact
that a distinct from the Greeks or the Bulgarians "Macedonian" nation in
Yugoslavia is nothing but a 20th century political fabrication - and his
feeble attempt at that was duly exposed by Luben Boyanov who demonstrated
that Mr. Fear's own sourse talks about a Bulgarian, not "Macedonian",
uprising in 1903 - yet he expects Greece and the world to accept this gross
cultural piracy and rape of history committed against both Macedonian Greeks
and Bulgarians (what the slavic settlers after the 7th century mostly really
are) as final? And to allow the mythology of a "Macedonian" minority in
Greece being used for ever more aggressive territorial claims?

Of course this is a fine example of a closed mind, he has to damn the Greeks
no matter what the facts are. Let the poor soul just stew in his own juice...

And notice that "in England at least"?! Or, in a previous posting where he
had said that the English saying "two wrongs do not make a right" has no
Balkan equivalent... Apparently he thinks that in Greece or in other
democratic countries one might be compelled to agree with the leadership of
the party one voted for, or would have to revenge a wrong with more wrongs,
and only his country is civilized enough to be beyond such things... He might
be well advised to think of the steady and catastrophic decline of his
country for 120 continuous years now, a phenomenon unique in history - and
think, if England is so perfect, why can't she even catch up economically
with Italy now!

And that from someone who is no enemy of Britain, who truly recognizes that
Britain, as the birthplace of modern individualism, was the spiritual
renaissance of that first individualistic, democratic and maritime state in
history which was ancient Athens, that capitalism and the modern parliamentary
system were institutions tremendously beneficial to humanity that Britain
first developed - and who has been sad to witness both that catastrophic
decline and the steady deterioration of Greek-British relations since World
War II. I will let a British writer, who recently answered Mr. Malcolm's
smear against Greece in the "Spectator" with an article in that same magazine
(September 12), speak. Patrick Leigh Fermor writes, in the article "A clean
sheet for Paeonia":

"Though Mr Malcolm seems to brush these doings aside as boyish pecadillos, I
confess that if I were a Greek, bearing the grim past in mind [here the
writes alludes to past attempts to usurp Macedonia from Greece, culminating
with Tito's artificial creation and communist plans in the event they won the
1946-49 war] and the present-day contagion of mischief and the dangers of
possible future combinations, I would find these grasping birth-pangs of the
new state very sinister. I would contest their implications, especially the
misappropriation of the name of 'Macedonia' as single entity, with vigour.
Why can't they use the real one [refers to the name Paeonia] and start with a
clean sheet?"

And Mr. Fermor goes on to propose the name Paeonia, which is the ancient name
of the area that corresponds to the Skopjie territory - 90% of historic
Macedonia is within the Greek borders - for the Vardar republic.

And:

"I could not help remembering, with recurring amazement, that the object of
the writer's sneers and invective was not merely an old and trusted friend
but our only ally in Great Britain's most lonely and dangerous moments this
century."

I would not expect this to ring a bell to people like Mr. Fear - yet it is
true that during the hard, bleak period of 1940-1941, when France had
collapsed, Russia was still friendly with the seemingly all-conquering Axis,
America was neutral and Great Britain was fighting for survival, little
Greece alone was the only country fighting on Britain's side, first beating
the Italians and then taking on both Italy and Nazi Germany to the end
(without requesting an armistice like the French, and being instrumental in
fatally delaying the German invasion of Russia) instead of accommodating the
Axis powers by allowing them bases in Greece against Britain as the Italians
had demanded, the only ally in Britain's desperate time of need... Winston
Churchill would never forget it, yet after the war, and starting with the
Cyprus issue, the British adopted a consistent anti-Greek and pro-Turkish
policy (while Turkey had unashamedly betrayed its traditional British
protectors in 1915 by entering WWI on the side of Germany and shutting off
the Straits) and even today they remain the comparatively more negatively
inclined to Greece of the larger European countries.

Isn't it funny, how some people never appreciate their real friends.

Dimitris Kouvatsos
-- 
------------------------    "This is the greatest planet on the face of
+= Dimitris Kouvatsos *=     the earth"
<dk0a@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>
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