WHY THE EU OWES GREECE NOT ONLY THE BAILOUT OF GREECE’S LOANS, BUT A FAR GREATER SUM OF MONEY WITH INTEREST ON TOP OF REPAYING GREECE’S LOANS

By Dr. Athanasios Ioannis Kyriazis

“EXCEPT THE BLIND FORCES OF NATURE, NOTHING MOVES IN THIS WORLD WHICH IS NOT GREEK IN ORIGIN.” –SIR HENRY SUMNER MAINE, 1875, FAMOUS BRITISH HISTORIAN

This article will raise several key points about 20th century history. It makes the point that but for European, Russian, American, EU, UN & League of Nations actions taken negligently and/or intentionally, and in direct abrogation of international law, against Greece and its sovereign interests, Greece would be a far, far larger, far richer, and far more populous country than it is today. Greece today is on the brink of financial crisis not due to its own mistakes, but due to the arrogance and indifference of the larger powers which denied its destiny to be again what it was supposed to be—a second Byzantine-Greek Empire with a capital at Constantinople spanning two continents and five seas as was originally negotiated and settled by Venizelos at the Versailles treaty table after World War I and consummated in the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. That Greek Empire today would have approximately one hundred forty-sixty millions population and would be one of the most powerful countries on earth, as well as one of the richest.

THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT UNDER JUSTINIAN; JUSTINIAN'S CODE IS THE BASIS OF MODERN EUROPEAN CIVIL LAW IN THE EU

I. THE UNITED NATIONS, ENGLAND, THE MAJOR EUROPEAN POWERS, THE UNITED STATES AND TURKEY OWE GREECE AND CYPRUS REPARATIONS AND DAMAGES FOR THE TURKISH INVASION OF SOVEREIGN CYPRUS AND THE DAMAGES SUFFERED BY THE GREEK MINORITY IN CONSTANTINOPLE SINCE 1955 OVER THE CYPRUS ISSUE IN VIOLATION OF THE TREATY OF LAUSANNE

In 1975, Turkey was allowed to invade Cyprus not once but twice, eventually appropriating approximately forty per cent of the land, killing hundreds of thousands, and expropriating billions of dollars in property holdings belonging both to Cypriot and ethnic National Greek citizens in Northern Ethnic Cyprus.

The invasion, and the continued illegal military occupation and Turkish colonization program of settling Turks from the mainland and passing them off as “Turkish Cypriots” for the past thirty-five years, continues to be illegal and condemned repeatedly by international law and United Nations resolutions.

STAMP MEMORIALIZING THE VICTIMS OF NORTHERN CYPRUS AT THE HANDS OF TURKISH AGGRESSION 1975-2010; NORTHERN CYPRUS STILL ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED

Cyprus was only created as an independent state in 1960 after many years of Greek national lobbying for “enosis” or union of Cyprus with Greece. Cyprus was offered to Greece in 1915 as part of the spoils of World War I by England, but England breached that agreement at the Versailles Treaty table and retained Cyprus as a mandate and colony.

In retaliation for the enosis movement, Turkey forcibly expelled nearly 200,000 ethnic Greeks living in Constantinople lawfully entitled to reside there pursuant to the Treaty of Lausanne, first in a series of purges executed in 1955, and in a second round of purges in 1964, followed by the closing of the Halki school of Theology in 1971 and other acts directed at the Greek minority of Constantinople protected by the International Treaty of Lausanne.

Greece is entitled to damages with interest from 1955. Those are in the billions of dollars. Those are due them from France, England, the US and the UN’s failure to act to remedy the Turkish depredations to the Greek minorities of turkey since that date. For this reason alone, Greece is entitled to have not only its debts forgiven, but is entitled to war and treaty reparations and damages in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

This issue was discussed in great detailed in acclaimed novelist Jeffrey Eugenides prize-winning historical novel, MIDDLESEX (2001);

Thus we meet Desdemona Stephanides, who with her husband flees the Turks in Smyrna in 1922 and arrives in Detroit, where she has cousins. Desdemona, a formidable creature, has the habit of fanning herself when she gets angry or excited. “To anyone who never personally experienced it, it’s difficult to describe the ominous, storm-gathering quality of my grandmother’s fanning,” says Calliope, her granddaughter and the book’s narrator. And Desdemona’s fans, it should be said, are eccentric: “the front of the fan was emblazoned with the words ‘Turkish Atrocities.’ Below, in smaller print, were the specifics: the 1955 pogrom in Istanbul in which 15 Greeks were killed, 200 Greek women raped, 4,348 stores looted, 59 Orthodox churches destroyed, and even the graves of the Patriarchs desecrated.” Again, it is not only the verve of the writing that appeals, but its exactness. The idea of an “atrocity fan” is wonderful enough, but Eugenides’s real talent lies in the detailed coda to this passage: “Desdemona had six atrocity fans. They were a collector’s set. Each year she sent a contribution to the Patriarchate in Constantinople, and a few weeks later a new fan arrived, making claims of genocide and, in one case, bearing a photograph of Patriarch Athenagoras in the ruins of a looted cathedral.” This is the kind of detail that makes narrative.

review at http://www.powells.com/review/2002_10_03.html

England, France and the other great powers of Europe, along with the League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN, are guarantors of the Treaty of Lausanne. As in this treaty has been breached repeatedly by the Turks due to the depredations suffered by the Greeks, and the treaty guarantors have failed to act and are in breach, they owe Greece monetary damages. Greece is entitled to injunctive relief and monetary damages. At a minimum, they are entitled to damages from Turkey, England, the EU, the UN, the US, and a new regime of minority legal rights from Turkey, including a new rider to the Treaty of Lausanne allowing them up to 3 million resident ethnic Greeks and newly expanded Patriarchate rights in Constantinople.

HOW ASIA MINOR WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PARTITIONED AFTER WWI UNDER THE TREATY OF SEVRES & VERSAILLES (1918-1920) - GREECE, ARMENIA, KURDS ALL GET PORTIONS OF ASIA MINOR

CF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres

It should be pointed out that in addition to partitioning the Ottoman Empire and Asia Minor proper, the Treaty of Sevres also provided for the holding of the so-called “Malta Tribunals,” which were to punish Turkish war criminals for acts of war crimes committed from 1914 onwards, specifically, acts of genocide and war crimes directed at christian minorities, such as Armenians and Greeks.

cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta_Tribunals

These tribunals were, in fact, never held, but the fact of the armenian and greek genocides were recognized and the machinery put in place to try the Turkish war criminals as early as the Treaty of Sevres. Indeed, these provisions were later copied by the US at the Nuremberg trials. However, it was the Allies failure to punish the Turks after WWI that let Hitler famously to comment, “who remembers the Armenians” in pursuing his genocide against the Jews of Eastern Europe. In this, Hitler specifically referred to the failure to carry out the provisions of the Treaty of Sevres regarding the Malta Tribunals.

Greece is owed indemnity for this as well. My own grandmother was witness to the senseless butchery of thousands of armenians in her own village, many of whom were defenseless citizens machine gunned down and buried in mass pits, while she also lost three older sisters to the ravages of the Turks. The Terrible Turks.

The Obama administration opposes the current house resolution declaring the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to have existed. Nancy Pelosi killed it when she was house speaker. Just to show I’m being bipartisan, so too did Speaker Denny Hastert of the Republicans kill it back in the 1990s, allegedly after receiving a suitcase of more than $1 million dollars from a Turkish lobbyist (it may have been from Hill & Knowlton). Nancy Pelosi and several other are also alleged to have received substantial cash bribes to change their votes from the Turkish lobbyists as well, but much of this is urban legend and myth.

Getting back to our narrative, of course, enosis was not granted because Cypriot independence was guaranteed by England in 1960. That independence lasted fifteen years, while Turkish invasion and slavery over half the island of Cyprus has lasted more than 35 years.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1975, marking very nearly the 400th anniversary of their original Ottoman invasion and conquest of Cyprus in 1570. This was an outrageous act of aggression and the first sign of the Islamic radical agenda to emerge in the modern era which culminated three years later in the Iranian Revolution, the Iranian funding of Hamas and the eventual destabilization of Lebanon. This was all the beginning of a program to de-Christianize the Middle East and depopulate it of westerners and Christians, a program which has culminated in the 9/11 bombings and the program of renewed neo-pan-Turkism, neo-pan-Islamism and neo-pan-shi’ism, together with the scourge of radical Islam, radical anti-Semitism and radical anti-Americanism/radical anti-European sentiment now dominating not only Turkey but all of the middle east from Lebanon to Palestine to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Regarding the invasion of Cyprus proper, England, the United States, the major European Powers, the UN and the EU, all owe Greece and Cyprus monetary reparations, damages and injunctive relief for the original invasion and all consequential damages. England, because Cyprus was a Commonwealth nation, and England guaranteed Cypriot independence after 1960 pursuant to treaty, by military means if necessary, and England is in breach of that treaty, owes Cyprus and the Greek Government damages for breach of that treaty.

Those damages are in the trillions of dollars, together with owing Greece, Cyprus and their people land and territorial compensation from the Turkish territories in compensation, along with reparations and damages from Turkey.

II. YUGOSLAVIA, BULGARIA, ROMANIA AND THE USSR, TOGETHER WITH THE EU, OWE GREECE DAMAGES FOR THE GREEK CIVIL WAR AND THE GREEK COMMUNIST PARTY OVER THE PAST FIFTY YEARS PLUS

The Eastern European nations which conspired actively with the USSR to fund the Greek Civil War from 1944-1948, as well as the funding of the Greek Communist Party and the left-wing Andreas Papandreou movement of the 1980s, which was a pro-Communist USSR-sympathetic government masquerading as a left-wing government (Papandreou was an out and out Marxist-Leninist communist in full sympathy with the USSR and an ardent anti-American) were fully and completely facilitated by the major European nations, the US and the UN.

To some extent, the US and CIA ameliorated these problems thru the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and active CIA involvement in Greece against the left-wing insurgents, but the root of the problem, the Greek expatriate communists living in the Eastern European Communist countries, propagandizing and funding these communist and left wing movements in sovereign Greece, have never been addressed satisfactorily by Germany, France, England, Italy or any of the major EU powers.

HARRY TRUMAN AMERICA’S GREATEST POST WWII PRESIDENT WHO PROTECTED GREECE & TURKEY FROM COMMUNISM WITH THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND THE CONTAINMENT DOCTRINE AND FOUGHT COMMUNISM IN KOREA FEARLESSLY; HE SPOKE PLAINLY AND THE BUCK STOPPED “HERE” ON HIS DESK. TRUMAN WAS MODERN GREECE’S ONLY TRUE ALLY AND FRIEND IN MODERN HISTORY.

However, the US abandoned Hungary and the Czechs to their fates in 1956 and 1968, and never allowed Yugoslavia to emerge from communism. The US also allowed the pro-US, anti-communist junta to be dissolved and allowed it to intervene in the affairs of Cyprus in 1975, while also green-lighting the Turkish invasion of Cyprus that same year.

To the contrary, the EU has pursued a policy of abandoning Eastern Europe to its communist fate, and not doing anything to resist the advance of leftist and communist parties in Greece, even if they were funded by the USSR or Eastern European nations.

Worse, since the breakup of the USSR, the EU has broken up and balkanized the former Yugoslavia, creating stronger Muslim states in Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia, while also creating issues for Greece with the FYROM, and weakening Serbia, Greece’s natural ally of World War I and II (and the only Balkan ally besides Greece of both France and England from both World Wars, incidentally).

Such a policy has been a betrayal not only of Serbia, but also of Greece, and of the Versailles and UN pacts, as well as of the fundamental understandings of the peace accords following World Wars I and II that Greece and Serbia were the winners, and the other countries were the losers.

Greece is owed reparations, land and damages from the EU, the former Eastern European Republics which intervened in her internal affairs, and from the US for the additional issues over Serbia, Yugoslavia and FYROM and Kosovo.

All of these matters have conspired to make Greece economically weaker and to cut Greece off from its natural trading partner, Serbia/Yugoslavia, for an extended period of time.

The damages are in the billions of dollars. And apologies.

At a minimum, Greece is owed Southern Albania (Northern Epirus) as land compensation for the evil deeds done by the Communists for fifty plus years. They are also owed this because of the Albania invasions during World War II and because of Greek claims to the land dating back to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and World War I prior to the formation of Albania. Also, because Italy owes reparations to Greece and Italy, more than any other country, is responsible for the current drawing of Albania’s boundaries.

The land compensation issue is not a minor one.

The other land that should really be awarded to Greece since Yugoslavia cannot hold it is the FYROM. Only Greece has the military, governmental and spiritual resources to hold this land against the Albanian minority.

Likewise, Kosovo should remain part of Serbia. It is holy land to the Serbian Orthodox dating back to the 13th century, and this issue is far more important than who happens to live there now. Besides which, most of the Muslim peasants who reside there are transients, nomads or rebels transplanted there for the purpose of fighting the Serb army and not true residents of Kosovo.

The fact that Albania, Bosnia, FRYOM and Kosovo are becoming breeding grounds for the Albanian mob and Islamic terrorism are only additional reasons for extending Serbian and Greek military and territorial sovereignty and orthodox churches to these regions. This is just compensation.

III. GERMANY AND ITALY AND ALBANIA OWE GREECE MASSIVE WAR REPARATIONS FOR WORLD WAR II

Greece is owed war reparations on a massive scale by Germany, Albania and Italy (and therefore the entire EU) jointly for depredations during World War II. Not only were more than one million Greek citizens killed by warfare, starvation and occupation by the Nazis and Italy.

The depopulation of Greece and economic damages to Greece due to the Italian invasion of 1940, the Greek Counteroffensive of 1940-41 (capturing Northern Epirus) and the subsequent Italian and German Occupations, and the looting of Greek archeological and art treasures, the theft of Greek farm products, the deliberate starvation of millions of Greeks, the holocaustic killing of Greek gypsies and Greek Sephardic Jewish minorities in Thessalonica and Macedonian Greece in the hundreds of thousands, often against bitter Greek resistance, caused severe economic and population damage to Greece for decades to come.

If you watched the recent Tarantino film INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, which took a few historical liberties, you got the essential idea of what the NAZIS were like–jew-hating, propaganda-wielding zealots, hungry and mad for power. They killed, plundered and exploited their conquered nations with reckless but precise abandon.

EVIL NAZIS ARE THE TARGET FOR THE INGLORIOUS BASTERDS OF TARANTINO'S LATEST FILM

First, Greece’s population was decimated, probably by a factor of two. Greece today would be twenty million but for the decimations and depredations of World War II.

Second, Greece became depopulated of Sephardic Jews, its most productive and happy citizens of the North and of Thessaloniki. The economic consequences were incalculable to Thessaloniki. Greece was one of the main theaters of the Holocaust as Thessaloniki was a largely Jewish city prior to 1940. Its Sephardic Jewish community was centuries old. This was true in other parts of Greece as well where the Germans attempted to first quarantine, then liquidate the Greek Sephardic Jewish population.

Third, Greece was split into two armed camps, communist resistance fighters and pro-British royalists working with the American CIA, resulting in a bitter civil war from 1944-48 which further split the country upon the retreat of the Germans, killing off what little wealth and population was left. This war destroyed the wealth and population of the North.

Fourth, a wave of emigration began from Greece to the US, causing further depopulation. Things were so bad in Greece, everyone basically left. Again, net result, Greece’s population would have been around twenty million, maybe 25 million if there’s no World War II attack by the Italians and Germans, and their GDP in Greece would be about fifty times as large.

Fifth, Greece was looted of antiquities, paintings, ancient art and other valuable objects which were never restored to her. The Elgin Marbles are peanuts compared to what the German Nazis stole, and as we now know, the Russians stole what the Nazis stole, as in the case of the rare Heinrich Schliemann gold jewels of Troy, to give but one famous example of World War II art theft—the so called golden jewels of Sophia Schliemann which were considered lost for more than sixty years, suddenly appeared in a Russian museum once communism fell.

One could go on, but it’s clear that the Marshall Plan and US yearly aid does not approach compensation for damages done to Greece by Germany and Italy. Germany owes Greece a permanent stipend in the hundreds of billions of dollars and so does Italy.

Moreover, Germany is now a rich country, while Greece continues to be poor. This is directly a result of Germany’s own imperial Nazi policies under the Third Reich, which not only followed prior Prussian imperialism but added to it Hitler’s anti-Semitic notions of lebensraum, anti-Semitism and other nutty ideas he had absorbed while living in 1890s Vienna listening to pan-German anti-Semites yearning for the lost years of the German-dominated Habsburg Empire.

Perhaps Germany has moved on, but Greece has been unable to, because it continues to be paralyzed by the left-right splits which were directly created by Germany’s interferences in Greece.

Nearly everything that has happened in Greek economic and politics since 1940 is directly a result of World War II, as well as other external events not of Greece’s own doing.

Germany and Italy are the main culprits and owe Greece trillions of dollars in reparations.

Greece and Serbia were both on the winning side in World War II. Yugoslavia emerged stronger, but Greece considerably weaker, although it was given the Dodecanese Islands, including Rhodes, from Italy. But this was not a sufficient compensation for the depredations of the War.

IV. ENGLAND, FRANCE, TURKEY, THE UNITED STATES, THE EU AND THE UN OWE GREECE REPARATIONS AND LAND FOR VIOLATIONS OF THE TREATIES OF VERSAILLES AND OF SEVRES

Greece and Serbia were on the winning side Under the Treaties of Versailles and Sevres. Serbia was rewarded with the Kingdom of the Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, which later became Yugoslavia.

Because of the events that are described herein, Greece continues to be owed reparations by the old Ottoman Empire, Modern Turkey, England, France, the USSR, modern Russia, the United States, the League of Nations and its successor the UN, as well as the land promised them in those treaties.

Greece by contrast was denied Cyprus and the Dodecanese were given to Italy. Instead under the Treaties of Versailles (1919) and Sevres (1920) (signed by the Turkish Sultan) Greece was given more territory from Bulgaria, as well as Smyrna and a zone in Asia Minor around Smyrna, to be governed by Greece for five years pending a plebiscite. Also, Eastern Thrace, a massive amount of territory largely Greek speaking and Greek populated, flat and fertile and bordering on the Black Sea, up to the borders of Constantinople, was given to Greece. This would have approximately doubled Greece’s land area and created the Greece of two continents and five seas envisioned by Venizelos. Finally, the Treaty guaranteed the international freedom of the Straits (the Bosphorus, Dardanelles and Sea of Marmora) as well as the status of Constantinople as an International City, free of any governmental control by any national entity.

In time, it was inevitable that both Constantinople and Smyrna would become wealthy, influential and rich centers of Greek trade and influence.

At this time, in 1919, Asia Minor had approximately five million Turkish, three million Greek, one million Armenian and one million Kurdish citizens. Constantinople was more than fifty per cent Greek, Armenian and Jewish, and had more than thirty newspapers, the majority of which were in French, Greek, or Armenian. Smyrna was at that time the largest, most populous and richest Greek city in the world, and the center of the lucrative Greek tobacco trade, which dominated the world. Aristotle Onassis’ father was the richest tobacco merchant in all of Smyrna.

Greek history books refer to what happened next as “the great catastrophe,” but the real story is at once more complex and also much simpler.

First, the United States promised to administer the Armenian Mandate, adopt the Treaty of Versailles, and join the League of Nations and guarantee by military means, if necessary, the provisions of the dismemberment of the Ottoman States. The Armenian Mandate included most of Northern and Anatolian Asia Minor, where resided many Christian Armenians and Greek Ottoman Empire citizens, many of whom were seeking protection from Turkish and German oppressions and depredations since 1915 in American missionary schools and camps. An extensive record of German-Turkish brutalities, including the Armenian genocide from 1915 onwards, is to be found in many sources.

This American mandate never happened. First, the US Senate voted down the Armenian Mandate. Second, the US Senate voted down the Versailles Treaty. Third, the US Senate voted down the League of Nations.

Thus, what US History books refer to as “isolationism” is really “refused to get involved in the politics of the Ottoman Empire and the protection of Christians from Turks”. And “refused to send us peacekeeping troops to protect Christians from Muslim genocidal race-hating young Turks”.

Since this is such a common US peacekeeping mission today, perhaps we have trouble envisioning this, but in 1919, eugenics was so commonly pervasive in the US that Armenians and Greeks were truly thought of as inferior genetically and racially by many learned American intellectuals, and thus not worth saving. It would only be four years later that the same US Senate passed the most sweeping immigration reform bill in history restricting southern European immigration to very low quotas, based on the same bad science and racial notions.

Next, the Russians, who were allies of the Greeks, became communists in 1917. They made a separate peace with the Germans and Turks, and in 1919, Kemal Attaturk who was commanding the rebel forces in the hills of Ankara, but who had no money and no weapons, went to Lenin and made a deal for war loans and weapons, and got both. In return, they agreed to partition Armenia and settle the long-standing disputes over the Caucasus border. At this point they both knew the US wasn’t coming with its navy or army.

Next, having sealed off his Northeastern front with the Russians, Attaturk faced an attack from the west by the Greek Army, who was told by British Prime Minister Lloyd George in 1920 that the Greek Army would need to invade Asia Minor to deal with the problem of the rebel Turk army led by Attaturk. They were told they would be supported fully by the French, the Americans, the League of Nations and the British in their endeavor.

The Greek Army invaded, and won major victories, until reaching near Ankara, where they reached a stalemate, trench like position near the Sakarya River near Ankara. There, more than 100,000 seasoned Greek troops faced off against more than 100,000 seasoned Turkish troops (both armies had fought in both the World War and the Balkan Wars) for the next two years, from 1920-1922, without a significant change or advance.

Next, Attaturk made a separate deal with France. France betrayed England and cut a separate treaty of peace with Attaturk, in violation of Sevres and Versailles, and their pledges to the English, the Greeks and everyone else, surrendered all their weapons and artillery to the Turkish rebels, agreeing to recognize Attaturk as the true ruler of Turkey, as well as signing over land to Attaturk’s faux regime, including Antioch, a Christian city with a bishop and patriarch.

The reasons for the French betrayal are complex, but essentially boiled down to rivalry in the Middle East with England. For some reason, they felt it would be to their advantage to have an independent Turkey friendly to France on the border of French Syria and French Lebanon than one controlled by Greece.

Of course, as events turned out, this was a huge mistake, since when Germany re-armed, Turkey immediately re-upped with Germany and tossed France over the side leading up to WWII. This led to the dismemberment of the French colonies in the Middle East. This led in turn to the increase in the role of the British and the US in the Middle East after 1945.

In short, France not only made a diplomatic mistake, but it betrayed its two World War I allies and violated numerous treaties as well as insuring Greece’s defeat in the War.

The French surrender was a turning point in the Greco-Turkish War of 1920-22. First, it signified a diplomatic recognition of Attaturk’s rump regime. Second, it provided Attaturk’s fledgling army with needed weapons. Third, and perhaps most critically, it gave Attaturk only one front to fight on. Without a Russian front to the Northeast or a French Front to the South east, Attaturk could concentrate all of his army and newly found money, artillery and weapons from the French and Russians against the Greek Army along their extended defensive lines on the Sakarya River.

In the summer of 1922, Attaturk prepared a counterattack, and manage to split the Greek lines in two. This caused confusion, and ultimately, a rout of the Greek forces, which began a disorganized retreat back to Smyrna in two groups with heavy casualties, losses and mean captured. It is estimated the Greek Army suffered more than 60-80% casualties in this battle and series of retreats.

And yet, military victory was well within the grasp of Greece for many months if not years of the war, for reasons that will be delved into at greater length in a longer work still in progress.

At the end, the Greek Army disembarked on ships, and left Smyrna and the Greek populace of Smyrna to their fate. In September of 1922, Attaturk and his rebel army entered Smyrna, and in the year of the 500th anniversary of the capture of Thessaloniki by the Ottomans in 1422 (an event clearly in Attaturk’s mind) Attaturk made sure his soldiers looted, pillaged and raped every Christian home, citizen and girl in the city, and then set fire to the Christian quarters of the city. Much the same fate had befallen Thessaloniki in 1422 when it fell to the Moslem.

Smyrna was utterly destroyed.

The Sack of Smyrna was an awful and terrible event. Smyrna is one of the seven cities of the Revelation, along with Philadelphia and five other cities mentioned in the apocalypsis of the revelation of st. john the divine, written on the island of patmos but revealing the divine word of God. Thus, it must be fated again to be Christian.

cf the NYT 1922. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9905EFD71139EF3ABC4C51DFBF668389639EDE

Eugenides’ Middlesex has a long passage on the sack of Smyrna–it is a central event in his book. It is the reason for the exodus of his main character Desdemona Stephanides to America–the sack of Smyrna.

There are several books treating this subject, but the best in english remains Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, http://www.amazon.com/Smyrna-1922-Marjorie-Housepian-Dobkin/dp/0966745108/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269617432&sr=1-2. There is also a newer volume out by a Giles Milton, but by default I still recommend Dobkin’s volume. Also, Ernest Hemingway wrote a famous war dispatch in 1923 about the sack of Smyrna which can be found in any volume collecting his war dispatches for newspapers.

BEAUTIFUL SMYRNA AS IT WAS PRIOR TO 1922 - THE LARGEST GREEK CITY ON EARTH

THE CITY OF SMYRNA BURNING AS IT IS SACKED BY THE TURKS SEPTEMBER 1922 AND UTTERLY AND TOTALLY DESTROYED AND ITS CHRISTIAN POPULATION KILLED

The terms of the Treaty of Sevres were renegotiated by force the next year in the Treaty of Lausanne, resulting in the so-called “exchange of populations,” whereby all Christian Greeks left Asia Minor for Greece and all Muslim Turks left Greece for Turkey, but the exchange was both lopsided and unfair. First, there were 1.5 million Greeks still living in Asia Minor, and second, the Turks had killed another 1.5 million Greek civilians during the Greco-Turkish War in genocide of their own. Many more would die during the trip and in refugee camps in Greece once they arrived.

Far fewer Muslim Turks made the reverse journey.

Most, if not all, of the Asia Minor Greeks never found a home in Greece. Many moved to other countries, notably America, though some went to Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany and other countries.

Those that did go to Greece did not feel Greek at all. They brought a different sense of culture with them, along with a sense that their land, their history and their past had been taken from them. But this is a story for another time. Their laments are today heard, and were then heard, in the rebetika of the time, the micrasiatika music.

In the final chapter of the War, the British refused to defend independent Constantinople from Turkish advance, and in the Chanak Crisis of late 1922, Lloyd George surrendered Constantinople rather than go to war with Attaturk, even though he himself had encouraged Greece to go to war with the same adversary. His Liberal Government fell soon after, and a Liberal Government has never again been elected in England. Lloyd George’s foreign policy can best be characterized as cowardly with regards to the Greeks. He failed to back them up with military and naval support and failed to commit to a total annihilation of the Turkish rebel army with British army and naval means.

That reparations, land and other monetary and equitable damages are due to the Greek Nation from England, France, Russia, etc. is clear. But for these treaty and agreement breaches, Greece would be a far greater, far more populous and far less Diasporic nation and peoples than it is. Also, Greece’s largest city, Smyrna, was destroyed at the height of its economic glory, and its largest trade center and Greek cultural center, Constantinople, was taken from it.

All in all, these two blows to the Greek economy were far too much for it to every recover. Sovereign Greece with a healthy Smyrna within it and an independent Constantinople trading freely would have soon become one of the most economically powerful countries on earth. What did happen in history was something far worse.

Greece is owed trillions upon trillions of dollars in reparations, land and two huge cities.

V. GREECE IS OWED REPARATIONS FOR THE FOURTH CRUSADE IN 1204 BY ALL THE WESTERN NATIONS

The Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, and looted and pillaged the city. At that time, Constantinople was the capital of the Greek Empire and the richest city on earth.

To give an idea of what was taken, the St. Sophia alone had 40,000 pounds of gold and 80,000 pounds of silver decorating its walls and dome.

Just the gold alone, assuming 16 ounces per pound, and $1200 per ounce, would yield a value in 1204 of around $786,000,000.

However, in 2010, assuming an interest rate of 5% that investment would have doubled every 14.4 years since then or roughly 56 times.

The net worth of the gold in the St. Sophia, then, in today’s dollars would be approximately 5.69 times 10 to the 25th power—or approximately 56.9 billion trillion trillion dollars.

In short, more than the GDP of the entire EU combined, probably.

So, in short, Greece is owed everything owned by Western Europe.

At least that, in short, is the Fourth Crusade Argument.

Oh, and by the way, they stole the Holy Grail, the holy lance, the holy shroud (mistakenly known as the shroud of Turin, it’s the shroud of Constantinople), the crown of thorns the true cross, and all the other known relics of Jesus Christ. Is there a value on these? They were gathered in one holy place, a sanctuary, in Constantinople.

VI. THE EU SHOULD BAIL OUT GREECE BECAUSE EVERY ASPECT OF WESTERN CULTURE IS GREEK IN ORIGIN

This is even more basic than the Fourth Crusade argument. Everything in Western Europe and Western culture derives from Ancient Greece and Byzantine Greece—religion, art, philosophy, politics, science, mathematics, the renaissance, etc.

For this great endowment, the Greek people and the nation of Greece should be forever on stipend from Europe.

Every museum in Berlin, London and Paris has entire halls devoted to collections of Greek Antiquities. The Rosetta Stone and the Greek language were the key to unlocking Egyptology. The Gospels are written in Greek, as are the Septuagint and all of the major works of antiquity on geometry and mathematics which were studied by the Renaissance humanists, not to mention Galileo, Newton and others.

For this great endowment of learning, must we not reward the Greeks and Greece?

Monetarily? In Trillions? Quadrillions? Keep them a free trading zone? Lend to them interest free? Keep their country a kind of permanent museum?

One would think so.

I worked out the number once just for the Fourth Crusade. It’s about 1 times ten to the 56th power, even assuming a very low interest rate such as 3%, since 1204. You can work out similar numbers for the gold stolen from the Greeks and land stolen from the Greeks on many other occasions, including notably the sack of Syracuse, the various conquests by the Romans, the conquests by the Arabs, and so on and so forth, but the conquests by the 4th or Latin Crusade are the most galling, because the Catholic Church does not renouce either their spiritual claim or their temporal claim to the lands. In fact, you can go to France or Germany or any of these countries, today, and obtain a dukedom or other royal title appurtaining to Athens or any other city which used to belong to the Eastern Roman Empire. In addition, the Catholic Church appoints Bishops to every eastern city in which there should only be a Patriarch appointed by the Bishop of Constantinople,e.g. the Patriarch, thus not recongizing his full equality in the Christian Church.

It would be silly of me to see the hand of opus dei or some nefarious plot behind all these machinations against the Greek Government, but you have to admit, the Germans have been in league with the Catholic Church before, to be specific, 1938, and that didn’t turn out so well for Europe or its then considerable Eastern European Jewish population. Whenever Germany takes an interest in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and you have a sitting German Pope, it’s a pretty good bet someone wants to reconstitute the Austro-Hungarian Empire along Germano-Catholic lines. Recreating Croatia as a catholic, independent country was certainly a good first step in that direction. Perhaps isolating Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia, the bastions of Orthodoxy, is the next step in the plan.

Of course, it’s not secret that Angela Merkel is unpopular at home. Saber-rattling against some small defenseless country fits her agenda. And, of course, there are millions of foreign Turkish gastarbeiter working in Turkey.

Returning to our main theme,Christianity itself is Judaism plus Platonism==expressed in Hellenistic philosophical terms by the Greek Church fathers.

And to Greek culture and philosophy we owe Islam and Protestantism, and perhaps even Confucianism and Buddhism too, since it was Alexander the Great who brought his Greek Philosophers to the brink of China and India in the 4th century BC.

As the Hollies once sang, “Pay You Back with Interest.”

It’s a big debt Europe owes the Greeks. Not the other way around, last time I checked, the ledger is still pretty heavily on the Greek side.

–ART KYRIAZIS, AKA ATHANASIOS IOANNIS KYRIAZIS
3/25/2010 greek independence day

MARCH MADNESS – NCAA SWEET SIXTEEN UPDATE & GREEK INDEPENDENCE DAY MARCH 25, 2010 UPDATE

Today, as we survey the wreckage of the first and second rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, 2010 version, which has destroyed nearly everyone’s brackets, including mine, it is wise to remember the words of one of the seven sages of Ancient Greece, Heraclitus, who noted that “everything is in flux,” or more modernly, “everything changes constantly.”

HERACLITUS ONE OF SEVEN SAGES OF ANCIENT GREECE "ALL IS FLUX"

Since today is GREEK INDEPENDENCE DAY, everything I write today will really be about GREECE and the incredible influence GREECE and GREEK THOUGHT has had upon modern life. Specifically, I will show you how GREECE & GREEK THOUGHT have had a major influence on MARCH MADNESS AND THE NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT. You won’t even believe it, but it’s so.

BETTER ONE HOUR OF FREEDOM THAN FORTY YEARS OF SLAVERY & JAIL

Today marks the 189th anniversary of the birth of the modern Greek nation-state and the uprising against the Ottoman Empire by the ethnic Greeks and Greek-speaking majority of Roumeli against their Ottoman overlords on March 25, 1821. After nine long years, that struggle resulted in the creation of the modern Greek state. And of course, we who are Greek-American have to celebrate it, since the actual Greeks in Greece are temporarily on strike against government austerity measures. Hey, I wish I could retire at 41 with a full salary and benefits too, but as one of my Harvard economics professors once noted, TANSTAAFL “THERE AINT NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.” (actually, that phrase was coined by sci fi giant Robert A Heinlein, 1907-1988, if you grok me). Frackin’ great line, though.

ROBERT A HEINLEIN & ISAAC ASIMOV AT PHILLY NAVAL SHIPYARD 1944

Many, many effects of that revolution can be seen here in America.

1) The very idea of athletic competitions and tournaments is Greek in origin. The Greeks invented the Olympics in 776 BC. They had them on a four year rotation, along with three other games, the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian Games, the four being known as the “Pan-Hellenic Games.” The point is the Ancient Greeks had an athletic competition to determine a winner in each event every year. This is exactly what the modern NCAA does. The logos of the NCAA even use Olympic/ancient Greek style laurel wreaths on some of their publicity and trophies, and even up to the present day, the concept of AMATEURISM, the notion that an athlete should not be paid for participating in sports, is uniquely and completely ancient Greek in origin, as the Romans customarily paid their Olympic and other athletes, or compelled them to compete through slavery. It was the Ancient Greeks who prided themselves that competition should be amateur and free of payment, and participated in by free citizens of city-states only for the glory of the competition. This very concept is what animates the entire notion of the NCAA and of college sports; its entire spirit and animus are Ancient Greek in conception and thought. The Ancient Romans had no such distinction; to them, athletes were paid the same as anyone else. Moreover, the concept of colleges today relate closely to the concept of ancient Greek city-states. There are many more parallels, but you get the idea. Winning at sports was the sine qua non of excellence in Greek culture. Note that Christianity for many years discouraged athletic competition—it was a modern development with the rediscovery of humanist thought, and the rediscovery of Greek thought, that athletics made a comeback in modern society. The Greek notion of athletic competition heavily influenced the Romans, who made stadiums, chariot races and gladiatorial combat part of their culture. Consequently, it is very clear that the very notion of having an NCAA tournament every year is nothing if not Greek in origin.

ANCIENT OLYMPIA AT ELIS GREECE SITE OF THE ANCIENT OLYMPIC GAMES 776BC-495 AD

2) Many colleges and college nicknames are Greek in origin. For example, Michigan State is in the Sweet Sixteen. Their nickname is the “Spartans.” They were nicknamed, largely, in tribute to the Greeks of the Greek Revolution of the 1820s, largely due to Philhellenic (Greek-loving) feeling. Most Americans were sympathetic with the Greeks, 1) because the Greeks were struggling for democracy against autocracy 2) because the Founders were largely influenced by Ancient Greece in their models for what a democracy like America should look like and 3) because the Greeks were Christians struggling against the Turkish Infidels, which is what we used to call Muslims in the 19th Century before PC discourse deconstructed plain language and speech sometime in the past 20 years. In fact, Turks used to be called “the Terrible Turk” by people like no less than Prime Minister Gladstone, and the Ottoman Empire, after the Greeks won, used to be called the “Sick Man of Europe,” and the question of how to carve up the fading Ottoman Empire was called the “Eastern Question.” It wasn’t settled finally until World War I, and not really finally until 1923. But that’s another story. So I like Michigan State. Didn’t you watch “300”? “We are SPARTANS!!!”

KING LEONIDAS & 300 LEGENDARILY HEROIC SPARTANS OF THERMOPYLAE BRILLIANTLY DRAMATIZED IN MOVIE "300" (2006) STARRING GERARD BUTLER

3) U. Tennessee remains in the Sweet Sixteen. Vanderbilt is in Nashville, Tennessee, where they have an actual full-scale replica of the Parthenon built which you can go see today. It is complete and accurate to the last detail. In fact, throughout the South, there is more Greek Revival and neo-classical architecture than almost anywhere in the US, especially on college campuses. This is certainly true at Vanderbilt, at Duke, at Kentucky, at U. Tennessee, at U.Va certainly, and many of the other schools left in the Sweet Sixteen.

PARTHENON REPLICA WHICH STANDS IN NASHVILLE, TN TODAY EXACT DUPLICATE OF PARTHENON OF ANCIENT ATHENS, GREECE BUILT BY PERICLES IN 5TH CENTURY B.C.

About the Parthenon

The Parthenon stands proudly as the centerpiece of Centennial Park, Nashville’s premier urban park. The re-creation of the 42-foot statue Athena is the focus of the Parthenon just as it was in ancient Greece. The building and the Athena statue are both full-scale replicas of the Athenian originals.

Originally built for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition, this replica of the original Parthenon in Athens serves as a monument to what is considered the pinnacle of classical architecture. The plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles found in the Naos are direct casts of the original sculptures which adorned the pediments of the Athenian Parthenon, dating back to 438 B.C. The originals of these powerful fragments are housed in the British Museum in London.

The Parthenon also serves as the city of Nashville’s art museum. The focus of the Parthenon’s permanent collection is a group of 63 paintings by 19th and 20th century American artists donated by James M. Cowan. Additional gallery spaces provide a venue for a variety of temporary shows and exhibits.

The Parthenon is open year round Tuesday – Saturday, 9:00 – 4:30. Additional hours during June, July & August: Sundays, 12:30 – 4:30 p.m. The Parthenon will be closed on July 4, Labor Day, the Thursday & Friday of Thanksgiving week, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Admission: Members free; Adults – $6.00; Children 4-17 – $3.50 (under 4 free); Seniors 62+ – $3.50. Phone number 615-862-8431.

http://www.nashville.org/parthenon/

See? And you thought you had to travel to GREECE to see the Parthenon? Nope, you can go to NASHVILLE, TENNESEE AND SEE IT! AND THIS PARTHENON ISN’T IN RUINS!!! (No Turks or Venetians to blow it up in a meaningless war in the 17th century). Oh–and they have some pretty darn good music there, too–and hey, Vandy and U. Tennessee are pretty darn good schools.

4) Many of you have probably watched the show “GREEK” on TV, which details “GREEK” or fraternity/sorority life on campuses around the country. What you probably don’t know is that fraternities and sororities have their origins with the Greek War of Independence. So many college students were in sympathy with the Greeks and their War of Liberation from the Turks during the 1821-1830 period, that many of the campuses and universities founded societies named after Greek letters such as “Phi Beta Kappa” or “Alpha Chi Rho” to celebrate their “fraternity” and “solidarity” with the Greek cause of independence, liberty and freedom. So, if you’ve ever been a fraternity or sorority member, you actually have pledged fraternity, sorority, brotherhood and sisterhood, to the nation of Greece and its sacred causes for liberty, democracy, Christianity, and its ongoing fight against the Turks. Thus the “GREEK” show really is, in actually, about Greece. It even takes place at fictional “CYPRUS-RHODES UNIVERSITY.” Hey, I’ve been to Rhodes, that island rocks, every single hotel opens out to a private beach, and every bar is open all nite long. And Cyprus, even though only half of it is open (the other half is still occupied by a muslim country from the north starting with “T” and ending with “Y”) is the hottest tourist and banking destination in the Middle East. Plus, Garo Ypremian is from Cyprus, and he once kicked a touchdown! He told me so 18 holes in a row at a pro-am golf tournament. “where else but in america could a 5 foot 7 cypriot find work in the NFL as a professional kicker?” he said. To his credit, he was a great golfer.

The very origins of sorority and fraternity life are from the Greek Revolution and Greek War of Independence, and Philhellenism among American college students. In fact, many of those students went to Greece and fought for the Greek cause. In the NCAA tournament, it’s obvious that frat and sorority and Greeks are the main hoops fans. Thank you Greece and Greek culture, again. And here’s to our favorie fraternities, Kappa Tau Gamma (ΚΤΓ), Omega Chi Delta (ΩΧΔ), and our favorite sorority, Zeta Beta Zeta (ΖΒZ). May we all be Greeks forever!

EVERYONE'S IDEA OF COLLEGE FUN IS SUMMARIZED IN THE SHOW "GREEK"

5) Syracuse is a heavy favorite to get to the final four. Syracuse University and Syracuse, NY are named for the ancient Greek city-state of Syracuse. Syracuse was the richest and most famous Greek city-state of the ancient world. Situated on one of the three corners of Sicily, Syracuse was as powerful in its heyday as Rome, Carthage, Athens or Persia, and made a play for hegemony against Rome and Carthage during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Unfortunately for Syracuse, despite being neutral in the 2d Punic War between Carthage and Rome, Rome decided to lay siege to Syracuse in order to plunder its enormous stores of gold. Rome simply needed the money. Archimedes, the most brilliant mathematician and scientist of ancient times, was a native of Syracuse. He famously designed siege defense machines which pulled Roman ships out of the water and crashed them against the rocks, other machines which focused the light of the sun on Roman ships and set them on fire, etc. You get the picture. The Romans were kept out of Syracuse for years by the high walls of Syracuse and Archimedes brilliance. When they finally breached the walls, the Romans were instructed to bring Archimedes alive to the Roman commander, but of course they got it wrong and killed Archimedes by mistake. The Romans plundered billions of dollars in gold, silver and other treasures from Syracuse. P.S. Italy owes that money back to Greece, today, with interest, under international law, in my view. Syracuse was neutral at the time. Also, indemnity for Archimedes’ death is independently owed by Italy to Greece. One supposes that would sort of cancel out any debts owed by Greece to the EU. In fact, one might suppose that Italy should just hand over the deed to, well, Italy, since the interest has been piling up for 2,400 years or so on that loan. Or have I just lost my Elgin Marbles? (many thanks to my good friend the brilliant Mike Reiss on that line).

ANCIENT SICILY WAS MAINLY GREEK CITY STATES WITH SYRACUSE THE LARGEST RICHEST AND MOST FAMOUS GREEK CITY STATE OF ANTIQUITY

THE WAR FOR SYRACUSE AND THE DEATH OF ARCHIMEDES

source: http://www.livius.org/sh-si/sicily/sicily_t17.html

The philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (46-c.122) is the author of a series of double biographies in which he compared Greeks and Romans, and tried to explore the nature of some type of man. They contain much historical information. The following text is taken from his Life of Marcellus, and describes how this Roman general captured Syracuse during the war between the Romans and the Carthaginian general Hannibal. During the siege the famous scientist Archimedes (287-212), was killed. The translation was made by Walter Charlton and appeared in the Dryden series.

Marcellus now was a third time created consul, and sailed to Sicily. For the success of Hannibal had excited the Carthaginians to lay claim to that whole island; chiefly because, after the murder of the tyrant Hieronymus, all things had been in tumult and confusion at Syracuse. Therefore, the Romans also had sent before to that city a force under the conduct of Appius, as praetor. [...]

At this time Marcellus, first incensed by injuries done him by Hippocrates, commander of the Syracusans (who, to give proof of his good affection to the Carthaginians, and to acquire the tyranny to himself, had killed a number of Romans at Leontini), besieged and took by force the city of Leontini; yet violated none of the townsmen; only deserters, as many as he took, he subjected to the punishment of the rods and axe.

But Hippocrates, sending a report to Syracuse that Marcellus had put all the adult population to the sword, and then coming upon the Syracusans, who had risen in tumult upon that false report, made himself master of the city. Upon this Marcellus moved with his whole army to Syracuse, and encamping near the wall, sent ambassadors into the city to relate to the Syracusans the truth of what had been done in Leontini. When these could not prevail by treaty, the whole power being now in the hands of Hippocrates, he proceeded to attack the city both by land and by sea.

The land forces were conducted by Appius: Marcellus, with sixty galleys, each with five rows of oars, furnished with all sorts of arms and missiles, and a huge bridge of planks laid upon eight ships chained together, upon which was carried the engine to cast stones and darts, assaulted the walls, relying on the abundance and magnificence of his preparations, and on his own previous glory; all which, however, were, it would seem, but trifles for Archimedes and his machines.

These machines he had designed and contrived, not as matters of any importance, but as mere amusements in geometry; in compliance with King Hiero’s desire and request, some little time before, that he should reduce to practice some part of his admirable speculation in science, and by accommodating the theoretic truth to sensation and ordinary use, bring it more within the appreciation of the people in general.
Eudoxus and Archytas had been the first originators of this far-famed and highly-prized art of mechanics, which they employed as an elegant illustration of geometrical truths, and as means of sustaining experimentally, to the satisfaction of the senses, conclusions too intricate for proof by words and diagrams. As, for example, to solve the problem, so often required in constructing geometrical figures, given the two extremes, to find the two mean lines of a proportion, both these mathematicians had recourse to the aid of instruments, adapting to their purpose certain curves and sections of lines.

But what with Plato’s indignation at it, and his invectives against it as the mere corruption and annihilation of the one good of geometry, which was thus shamefully turning its back upon the unembodied objects of pure intelligence to recur to sensation, and to ask help (not to be obtained without base supervisions and depravation) from matter; so it was that mechanics came to be separated from geometry, and, repudiated and neglected by philosophers, took its place as a military art.

Archimedes, however, in writing to King Hiero, whose friend and near relation he was, had stated that given the force, any given weight might be moved, and even boasted, we are told, relying on the strength of demonstration, that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this. Hiero being struck with amazement at this, and entreating him to make good this problem by actual experiment, and show some great weight moved by a small engine, he fixed accordingly upon a ship of burden out of the king’s arsenal, which could not be drawn out of the dock without great labor and many men; and, loading her with many passengers and a full freight, sitting himself the while far off, with no great endeavor, but only holding the head of the pulley in his hand and drawing the cords by degrees, he drew the ship in a straight line, as smoothly and evenly as if she had been in the sea. The king, astonished at this, and convinced of the power of the art, prevailed upon Archimedes to make him engines accommodated to all the purposes, offensive and defensive, of a siege. These the king himself never made use of, because he spent almost all his life in a profound quiet and the highest affluence. But the apparatus was, in most opportune time, ready at hand for the Syracusans, and with it also the engineer himself.

When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once, fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. In the meantime huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships sunk some by the great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane’s beak and, when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea; or else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed against steep rocks that stood jutting out under the walls, with great destruction of the soldiers that were aboard them. A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to behold), and was rolled to and fro, and kept swinging, until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall. At the engine that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships, which was called Sambuca, from some resemblance it had to an instrument of music, while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was discharged a piece of rock of ten talents weight, then a second and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and a noise like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces, shook out all its fastenings, and completely dislodged it from the bridge.

So Marcellus, doubtful what counsel to pursue, drew off his ships to a safer distance, and sounded a retreat to his forces on land. They then took a resolution of coming up under the walls, if it were possible, in the night; thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts would, for want of sufficient distance to throw them, fly over their heads without effect. But he, it appeared, had long before framed for such occasions engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons; and had made numerous small openings in the walls, through which, with engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the assailants. Thus, when they who thought to deceive the defenders came close up to the walls, instantly a shower of darts and other missile weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down perpendicularly upon their heads, and, as it were, the whole wall shot out arrows at them, they retired. And now, again, as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were driven one against another; while they themselves were not able to retaliate in any way. For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that indefinite mischief overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to think they were fighting with the gods.

Yet Marcellus escaped unhurt, and deriding his own artificers and engineers, “What,” said he, “must we give up fighting with this geometrical Briareus, who plays pitch-and-toss with our ships, and, with the multitude of darts which he showers at a single moment upon us, really outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?”

And, doubtless, the rest of the Syracusans were but the body of Archimedes’ designs, one soul moving and governing all; for, laying aside all other arms, with this alone they infested the Romans and protected themselves. In fine, when such terror had seized upon the Romans that, if they did but see a little rope or a piece of wood from the wall, instantly crying out, that there it was again, Archimedes was about to let fly some engine at them, they turned their backs and fled, Marcellus desisted from conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege.

Yet Archimedes possessed so high a spirit, so profound a soul, and such treasures of scientific knowledge, that though these inventions had now obtained him the renown of more than human sagacity, he yet would not deign to leave behind him any commentary or writing on such subjects; but, repudiating as sordid and ignoble the whole trade of engineering, and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit, he placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life; studies, the superiority of which to all others is unquestioned, and in which the only doubt can be whether the beauty and grandeur of the subjects examined, of the precision and cogency of the methods and means of proof, most deserve our admiration. It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate questions, or more simple and lucid explanations. Some ascribe this to his natural genius; while others think that incredible effort and toil produced these, to all appearances, easy and unlabored results. No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it; by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required. And thus it ceases to be incredible that (as is commonly told of him) the charm of his familiar and domestic Siren made him forget his food and neglect his person, to that degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the truest sense, divine possession with his love and delight in science. His discoveries were numerous and admirable; but he is said to have requested his friends and relations that, when he was dead, they would place over his tomb a sphere containing a cylinder, inscribing it with the ratio which the containing solid bears to the contained. Such was Archimedes, who now showed himself, and so far as lay in him the city also, invincible.

While the siege continued, Marcellus took Megara, one of the earliest founded of the Greek cities in Sicily, and capturing also the camp of Hippocrates at Acilae, killed above 8,000 men, having attacked them whilst they were engaged in forming their fortifications. He overran a great part of Sicily; gained over many towns from the Carthaginians, and overcame all that dared to encounter him.

As the siege went on, one Damippus, a Spartan, putting to sea in a ship from Syracuse, was taken. When the Syracusans much desired to redeem this man, and there were many meetings and treaties about the matter betwixt them and Marcellus, he had opportunity to notice a tower into which a body of men might be secretly introduced, as the wall near to it was not difficult to surmount, and it was itself carelessly guarded. Coming often thither, and entertaining conferences about the release of Damippus, he had pretty well calculated the height of the tower, and got ladders prepared.

The Syracusans celebrated a feast to Artemis; this juncture of time, when they were given up entirely to wine and sport, Marcellus laid hold of, and before the citizens perceived it, not only possessed himself of the tower, but, before the break of day, filled the wall around with soldiers, and made his way into the Hexapylum. The Syracusans now beginning to stir, and to be alarmed at the tumult, he ordered the trumpets everywhere to sound, and thus frightened them all into flight, as if all parts of the city were already won, though the most fortified, and the fairest, and most ample quarter was still ungained. It is called Achradina, and was divided by a wall from the outer city, one part of which they call Neapolis, the other Tycha.

Possessing himself of these, Marcellus, about break of day, entered through the Hexapylum, all his officers congratulating him. But looking down from the higher places upon the beautiful and spacious city below, he is said to have wept much, commiserating the calamity that hung over it, when his thoughts represented to him how dismal and foul the face of the city would be in a few hours, when plundered and sacked by the soldiers. For among the officers of his army there was not one man that durst deny the plunder of the city to the soldiers’ demands; nay, many were instant that it should be set on fire and laid level to the ground: but this Marcellus would not listen to.

Yet he granted, but with great unwillingness and reluctance, that the money and slaves should be made prey; giving orders, at the same time, that none should violate any free person, nor kill, misuse, or make a slave of any of the Syracusans. Though he had used this moderation, he still esteemed the condition of that city to be pitiable, and, even amidst the congratulations and joy, showed his strong feelings of sympathy and commiseration at seeing all the riches accumulated during a long felicity now dissipated in an hour. For it is related that no less prey and plunder was taken here than afterward in Carthage. For not long after they obtained also the plunder of the other parts of the city, which were taken by treachery; leaving nothing untouched but the king’s money, which was brought into the public treasury.

But nothing afflicted Marcellus so much as the death of Archimedes, who was then, as fate would have it, intent upon working out some problem by a diagram, and having fixed his mind alike and his eyes upon the subject of his speculation, he never noticed the incursion of the Romans, nor that the city was taken. In this transport of study and contemplation, a soldier, unexpectedly coming up to him, commanded him to follow to Marcellus; which he declining to do before he had worked out his problem to a demonstration, the soldier, enraged, drew his sword and ran him through. Others write that a Roman soldier, running upon him with a drawn sword, offered to kill him; and that Archimedes, looking back, earnestly besought him to hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave what he was then at work upon inconclusive and imperfect; but the soldier, nothing moved by his entreaty, instantly killed him. Others again relate that, as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus mathematical instruments, dials, spheres, and angles, by which the magnitude of the sun might be measured to the sight, some soldiers seeing him, and thinking that he carried gold in a vessel, slew him. Certain it is that his death was very afflicting to Marcellus; and that Marcellus ever after regarded him that killed him as a murderer; and that he sought for his kindred and honored them with signal favors.

http://www.livius.org/sh-si/sicily/sicily_t17.html

Q.E.D. Archimedes was brilliant, the Romans stole all the Greeks’ money, and Syracuse was a neutral city whose neutrality was blatantly violated by the Romans in the 2d Punic War. And the Romans did it for the money. Plutarch is pretty much a reliable source.

PLUTARCH - ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIAN - A RELIABLE SOURCE ON THE FALL OF SYRACUSE AND THE DEATH OF ARCHIMEDES

ARCHIMEDES – THE GREATEST MATHEMATICIAN OF ANCIENT TIMES AND DEFENDER OF SYRACUSE AGAINST THE ROMAN SIEGE

MY PICKS THEN AND NOW

Of 32 first-round picks, I only got 19 right, for barely a 59% percentage. That looks good until you realize by flipping a coin I’d get 50%, so basically that’s a 9% winning percentage. Not very impressive. The only two brackets I have reasonably correct are the East, where I have Kentucky meeting West Virginia in the Regional Final, which can still happen, and the South, where I had Duke meeting Baylor in the Regional Final. Of those, I had West Virginia upsetting Kentucky in my original bracket and going to the final four, and Duke beating Baylor to get to the Final Four. In the East bracket, I was totally busted as I had Kansas hitting Georgetown in the regional. Oops! Can you say University of Northern Iowa? In the West, I had Syracuse hitting Pitt. From there I had Kansas and Pitt in the final four, and Pitt v. West Va in the finals, with West Va winning. Well, that clearly was wrong. I did pick Villanova to lose in the second round, although it was to Richmond, and not to St. Mary’s, but I’ve never thought much of Jay Wright as a tournament coach, much less an NCAA coach. He had a good run last year, but usually ‘Nova has done poorly in both the Big East and the NCAA tournaments. Temple, by contrast, has usually done well in A-10 and NCAA tournaments, and Fran Dunphy has coached many fine teams not only at Temple, but at Penn and LaSalle before that.

In light of the first two rounds, I’d have to revise all that. In the East, I think Kentucky-West Virginia, first of all, is sort of the championship within the championship. Second, I believe Kentucky will win. I am also assuming that Kentucky will beat Cornell. West Virginia will beat Washington. In the South, Duke will handle Purdue, while St. Mary’s dance will end at the hands of Baylor, although that’s a bit more of a flip. It doesn’t really matter, since Duke will beat the winner of that game and advance to the final four. So it will be Duke v. Kentucky in that bracket. At this point, Kentucky will beat Duke in a good game, but John Wall is simply better. Also Calipari is a match for coach K.

The Midwest is tougher. Of course, I love the Spartans, and they will beat UNI. Ohio State is still a #2 seed, and they should handle Tennessee. That leaves an interesting Big Ten match up of Mich State v. Ohio State in the Regional Final, which I have to like Ohio State, but then again, Tom Izzo is a terrific coach, so really, it’s a flip. I have to favor Ohio State, but Michigan State has the coaching. Then again, the Spartans will be without one of their key players due to injury. Finally, in the West regional, I like Syracuse to beat Butler, although Butler is good and playing well. I also like Kansas State to beat Xavier, although again, Xavier is good and playing well. Neither will be easy games. That leaves Syracuse against Kansas State in the regional final. Here you have a #1 against a #2, and a real dogfight. I like Syracuse, but both teams are talented and well-coached. I like Syracuse to go to the final four. Out of that bracket, then, I like Ohio State v. Syracuse, and in that match up, I actually think Syracuse has an easier game against either Ohio State/Michigan State than they did against Kansas State, and Syracuse advanced to the final Round.

The final round therefore will be Syracuse against Kentucky, and this will be a terrific game. I like Kentucky here, but it will be a terrific game.

After notes: I was stunned to see Cornell beat an outstanding Temple team, but Cornell is legit—they have a 7-footer with hands who can pass, rebound and shoot, and they’ve surrounded him with a good point guard and several excellent three point shooters who can bomb it from way downtown. So you can play inside-outside all day long, and Temple was stuck double-teaming low or pressing on the perimeter, and getting burned on both ends. Cornell put up 78 points on Temple—and Temple allowed no more than 50 something in the A-10 against great teams like URI and Richmond, and shut down Xavier defensively in the regular season. And Cornell then went out and destroyed Wisconsin for good measure. No wonder Cornell has been on the front page of the WSJ for like a week straight.

Did I mention that Cornell is in ITHACA, NY? You remember Ithaca–that’s the place ODYSSEUS or as he’s known in latin, ULYSSES was from. He was a pretty famous king who went to TROY (another city in NY and also a famous kingdom in ASIA MINOR) to fight the TROJAN WAR, then got lost on the way back.

ULYSSES story of how he gets back to ITHACA is told in the screenplay and movie, “O WHERE ART THOU BROTHER?”, which of course is based upon the novel ULYSSES by James Joyce, which of course is based upon a famous old poem in decapentasyllabic metred Homeric Ancient Greek by an old blind goat named HOMER, called the ODYSSEY.

In ancient times, everyone was required to not only read this book but to memorize and recite it. ALEXANDER THE GREAT so loved the book, he kept a copy of it under his bed, along with the ILIAD.

So yes, even CORNELL has ties to ancient greece, in fact, their very town is the embodiment of all things greek–didn’t they read the poem by Cavafy about returning to Ithaca at Jackie O’s funeral???? Isn’t that in the last collection of poems by her daughter??? Everyone knows what HOME is–it’s ITHACA.

ITHACA LEGENDARY HOME OF ODYSSEUS AKA ULYSSES IN THE ODYSSEY GREEK ISLAND OFF THE IONIAN COAST OF SOUTHERN GREECE

And right across from Cornell is ITHACA COLLEGE–alma mater of my cousin–and of course, the setting for ROAD TRIP, one of the ten greatest films ever made about college life. And yes, everyone has been with a girl like Amy Smart once in their lives. Not. But if you’re Odysseus, you can spend five years with a hot siren, and chalk it up to mental defect or the effect of some goddess like nectar, and still plead the fifth to your wife, who remains faithful for yeah, 20 years.

Cornell is the best basketball team I’ve seen with four white guys on the floor since maybe the Boston Celtics of Bird-McHale-Ainge-Rick Robey-Parrish of the early 80s. Those Celtics had four white guys and they could flat out play. Of course, they got better, NBA championship better, when they got rid of Robey and got Dennis Johnson, who could flat out PLAY, plus he could shut down Andrew Toney, the Boston Strangler and ever-underrate Sixers sharpshooter, as Simmons points out in his recent fantastic book.

–art kyriazis, Philly hoops guy
March 25, 2010

LARRY BIRD OF FRENCH LICK, INDIANA & INDIANA STATE ON COVER OF SI 1977 WITH TWO CHEERLEADERS WHO ARE NOW YOUR MOTHERS OR GRANDMOTHERS

THE LATE GREAT CORY LIDLE RIP THE FORGOTTEN MAN IN THE SERIES

in 2006, the Phils and Yankees made the historic Bobby Abreu trade, but the forgotten man in that deal was Starting Pitcher Cory Lidle:

July 30, 2006: Pitcher Cory Lidle Traded by the Philadelphia Phillies with Bobby Abreu to the New York Yankees for C.J. Henry (minors), Carlos Monastrios (minors), Jesus Sanchez (minors) and Matt Smith.

Abreu spent 2 years with the Yanks, then moved on to the Angels, where he helped the Angels reach the ALCS before they fell to the Yanks. Abreu did not have a good ALCS vs the Yanks.

Why is Lidle that important? Because, as everyone knows, or has forgotten, the Yankees were looking for depth at the back end of their rotation at the time. Cory Lidle was an innings eater, a guy who averaged 185-200 innnings a year. His career 162 game average was 189 innings pitched per year with a 12-10 career won lost record, a 4.57 ERA, a very good strikeout to walk ratio, and a WHIP of 1.33, which is decent for a 4 or 5 starter.

But as everyone knows, or has forgotten, on October 11, 2006, Cory Lidle was killed accidentally while flying his airplane near new york city over one of the rivers bordering manhattan. It was a gruesome disaster, and spelled the end to a young life. Lidle was only 34 years old at the time and still pitching very well indeed–and probably would have stuck with the Yanks.

The reason I mention the late Cory Lidle is twofold.

First, you would think someone would have thought to honor his memory during this series. It would have been right.

Second, if Cory Lidle had lived, he surely would have been the back end starter that the Yankees were searching for all year this year–the guy to take heat off of Joba Chamberlain, and surely a guy they could have dialed up to start Game 5 instead of rushing AJ Burnett out there to get pounded on three days rest.

No one gives much credit to the #4 and #5 starters of the world–the Joe Blantons–but they do an important job–they eat up innings, hold the other team to 3 or 4 runs, and give their teams a chance to win.

Cory Lidle on normal rest would have done that for the Yanks, and hey, he would have loved to pitch in the world series against his old team.

It’s a shame he never got the chance.

–art kyriazis, philly
Home of Chase Utley, Mr. November, Five Homers in a World Series
Tying Reggie Jackson’s all time record, Mr. October, set 32 years ago, 1977 vs. LA Dodgers.
Phillies, 2008 World Champions, 2009 NL Champions, congratulate the 2009 World Champion Yankees.

I AM NOT A NUMBER—I AM A FREE MAN!!! THE PRISONER (1967) ABOUT TO BE REMADE ON CABLE TV

“Where am I?”
“In the Village.”
“What do you want?”
“Information.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“That would be telling. We want Information. Information. Information.”
“You won’t get it.”
“By hook or by crook, we will.”
“Who are you?”
“The new Number #2.”
“Who is Number #1?”
“You are Number #6.”
“I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE MAN!!!!!”
[stranger laughs diabolically at his assertion of freedom].

THE PRISONER (1967) STARRING PATRICK MCGOOHAN (SOON TO BE SHOWN AS A REMAKE ON CABLE TV) – This is truly one of the legendary TV shows of all time, and an inspired choice for a remake. The originals are now out on Comcast on demand and available to be seen for the first time in quite a while. They are in color and in excellent, really superb quality, considering they were filmed more than forty years ago and have been in the vaults a long time. The Prisoner was a cult hit in both Britain, and later in the US, where it was shown on PBS sometime after it was shown in Britain. Along with Monty Python and Sesame Street, it was one of PBS’ biggest hits of the late 60s/early 70s.

Every episode of the Prisoner started the same.

McGoohan, who is a british spy, obviously working for British Intelligence, has an angry argument with his superior, then bangs the table and throws his resignation letter on the desk.

Then cut to McGoohan’s apartment, where we see him packing. Meanwhile, next cut to a strange looking man in a top hat who approaches the apartment door from the outside. Cut to inside view and gas starts pouring visibly inside McGoohan’s flat, overcoming him.

He wakes up in a strange bed in a strange place. He does not know where he is. He looks out the window and sees a strange town. Then cut to a strange place, a strange person seated in a throne like chair in a round room. McGoohan is being interrogated by the Stranger.

McGoohan: “Where am I?”
Stranger: “In the Village.”
McGoohan: “What do you want?”
Stranger: “Information.”
McGoohan: “Whose side are you on?”
Stranger: “That would be telling. We want Information. Information. Information.”
McGoohan: “You won’t get it.”
Stranger: “By hook or by crook, we will.”
McGoohan: “Who are you?”
Stranger: “The new Number #2.”
McGoohan: “Who is Number #1?”
Stranger: “You are Number #6.”
McGoohan: “I am not a Number, I am a Free Man!!!”
Stranger: [laughs diabolically].

So many aspects of the show are classic—the bubble chasing down anyone trying to escape, the taxi which goes nowhere (local service only), the oblique references to a “New World Order”, the bicycle logo with its subtextual semiotic references to Orwellian dystopias, the constant references to the battles between McGoohan and science, McGoohan and psychology, McGoohan and being watched all the time, and the hilarious fact that every week, McGoohan defeats #2 and a new #2 has to brought in to break him down because McGoohan has broken down the previous #2. No one has money in the Village, only “work units,” and there appears to be a sort of communitarian utopia. There is a democratic council, but there are no actual rights. In one episode, McGoohan runs for election, but he quickly finds out he is not actually allowed to say or do anything that would upset the status quo. “your local council” is just a hollow slogan, a catch phrase for a democracy that doesn’t exist at all.

The key concepts of the show are freedom, human aspiration, knowledge, escape, dignity, free will and liberty. Everyone in the village has all their material needs met, but they must sacrifice all of their liberty, including their own individual identities, their memories and their minds, in order to obtain it.

In short, this show presents a working picture of what a communist or fascist society must really be like, in which everyone enjoys health care, work, food, leisure and a decent living quarters, but absolutely no freedoms whatsoever to think or exist except as dictated by the state. Presented hour after hour, episode after episode, the Prisoner is an unqualified call to freedom everywhere.

In our own times, many movies and series have been inspired in whole or in part by the Prisoner. The X-Files, certainly, draws some inspiration from the Prisoner. The Jim Carrey movie “The Truman Show” draws heavily on the Prisoner for its set designs and concept of an observed, controlled village, and for the notion that a person is subject to psychological control by an unseen central force.

Finally, we have the current phenomenon, worldwide, of people being arrested and detained without due process of law, in places unknown, for periods of time, and being interrogated in all sorts of ways for what they know. Every side politically does this, including our side with Guantanamo Bay and all our allies who assist in the war on terror. Of course, at the time of the Prisoner, it was understood that Russia and the US were both doing this as part of the Cold War—and yet both the James Bond series of movies, as well as Get Smart, the Prisoner, the Man from Uncle, and numerous other fictional spy shows continued to assert the existence of a third, “shadow” force, as powerful as the US or Russia, which also employed spies, torture methods, interrogation methods, and bargained or double-dealt using agents who had defected from one or both sides—under such acronyms as KAOS, SPECTRE, and so forth. Even the recent series of Mission Impossible films remade with Tom Cruise as their star clearly posit a so-called “third party” of international force. This premise was cleverly lampooned in the Austin Powers-Man of Mystery series of spy-lampoon movies, where the third power was led by a man called “Dr. Evil”, who was laughably played by the same actor playing Austin Powers, in perhaps the most brilliant series of spy spoofs ever committed to film.

Without commenting on the right or wrong of it, imagine if you will the situation of a man seized and placed in a “village” one day, deprived of his freedom and dignity, and forced to give up not only his secrets and knowledge, but also his identity, his selfhood and everything that makes him a man. Every dystopian novel or non-fiction work ever written—Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, Player Piano, the Gulag Archipelago, The Road to Serfdom, the Open Society and Its Enemies, Atlas Shrugged—posits precisely this sort of situation coming to pass in our own day.

Perhaps no two writers were more articulate about this phenomenon than Arthur Koestler and George Orwell, who wrote frequently, passionately and articulately about the dangers and evils of communism, socialism and false utopias. Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is the dystopian novel which most clearly reflects, and inspires, the series “the Prisoner,” in that it is directly a synopsis of the main character’s experience of what must have been the experience of Stalin’s purge and show trials of the late 1930s—first capture, then interrogation, then brainwashing, then being made to confess one’s sins in public, and finally, the inevitable lengthy prison sentence in Siberia or, perhaps more mercifully, death. The forturnate few were “rehabilitated” if they could be made to “understand” Stalinist communism and completely confess and revoke their sins, and be made to be a number, and not a free man.

The Prisoner is a powerful reminder of why liberty is the most important right we have.

Art Kyriazis, November 1, 2009
Philadelphia, PA
Eagles Pounding Giants as we speak

FAMOUS MOMENTS IN REVISIONIST AMERICAN HISTORY ACCORDING TO HEALTHCARE REFORM ADVOCATES

1) “I KNOW NOT WHAT COURSE OTHERS MAY TAKE: BUT AS FOR ME, GIVE ME UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE OR GIVE ME DEATH!”
–Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

2) “A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF CANNOT STAND. I BELIEVE THIS GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENDURE PERMANENTLY, HALF SLAVE AND HALF WITHOUT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE.
–Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858, Lincoln-Douglas Debates

3) “FOURSCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO, OUR FATHERS BROUGHT FORTH UPON THIS CONTINENT A NEW NATION, CONCEIVED IN THE GOAL OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, AND DEDICATED TO THE PROPOSITION THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, AND THAT ANYONE MAKING ONE PENNY MORE (ESPECIALLY DOCTORS) THAN ANYONE ELSE SHOULD BE HEAVILY AND CONFISCATORALLY TAXED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO PAY FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. NOW WE ARE ENGAGED IN A GREAT CIVIL WAR, TESTING WHETHER THAT NATION, OR ANY NATION SO CONCEIVED AND SO DEDICATED, CAN LONG ENDURE…..
–Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, Gettysburg Address

4) I AM PROUND TO ANNOUNCE THE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROCLAMATION. IN THIS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROCLAMATION, I HEREBY PROCLAIM THAT EVERY SLAVE OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES WILL HEREBY RECEIVE UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE FROM THE NORTH. THEY WILL NOT RECEIVE FREEDOM, LIBERTY OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, OF COURSE. THEY WILL CONTINUE TO BE SLAVES AND WORK FOR THEIR MASTERS. BUT THEY WILL GET THE BEST HEALTH CARE THE GOVERNMENT CAN BUY. THIS IS A LANDMARK PROCLAMATION.
–Abraham Lincoln, 1863

5) “LIFE as dictated by death panels, UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS as dictated by psychiatrists appointed by the Government Health Care Plan.”
–Preamble to the The United States Constitution, 1789, as amended by Universal Health Care Reformers.

6) “I MUST HAVE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE WITHAL, AS LARGE A CHARTER AS THE WIND, TO BLOW ON WHOM I PLEASE.”
–William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II.vii.47.

7) “THE SOLE END FOR WHICH MANKIND ARE WARRANTED, INDIVIDUALLY OR COLLECTIVELY, IN INTERFERING WITH THE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE OF ANY OF THEIR NUMBER, IS SELF-PROTECTION.”
–John Stuart Mill, ON UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, introduction (1869)

8) “THE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE OF THE INDIVIDUAL MUST BE THUS FAR LIMITED: HE MUST NOT MAKE HIMSELF A NUISANCE TO OTHER PEOPLE.”
–John Stuart Mill, Id.

9) “THE ROAD OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE LEADS TO THE PALACE OF WISDOM.”
–William Blake, Proverbs of Hell, @ 1790

10) “LICENSE THEY MEAN WHEN THEY CRY UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE; FOR WHO LOVES THAT, MUST FIRST BE WISE AND GOOD.”
–John Milton, Sonnets, @ 1630

11) “MY COUNTRY ‘TIS OF THEE, SWEET LAND OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE BUREAUCRACY, OF THEE OF I SING, LAND WHERE MY FATHERS DIED, LAND OF THE THE PILGRIMS’ PRIDE, ON EVERY MOUNTAINSIDE, LET UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE BELLS CALLLING MY TURN IN LINE TO SEE THE STATE PAID DOCTOR RING…..”
–America, by Samuel Francis Smith, 1808-1895

FOUR REAL QUOTES FROM ABE LINCOLN:

“YOU CAN FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME, AND SOME OF THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME, BUT YOU CAN NOT FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME.”

–Abraham Lincoln September 8, 1858

“WHAT IS CONSERVATISM? IS IT NOT ADHERENCE TO THE OLD AND TRIED, AGAINST THE NEW AND UNTRIED?”

–Abraham Lincoln, February 27, 1860

“THE BALLOT IS STRONGER THAN THE BULLET”

–Abraham Lincoln, May 19, 1856

“IT IS BEST NOT TO SWAP HORSES WHILE CROSSING THE RIVER.”

–Abraham Lincoln, June 9, 1864

A REAL QUOTE FROM JOHN STUART MILL:

“A STATE WHICH DWARFS ITS MEN, IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY BE MORE DOCILE INSTRUMENTS IN ITS HANDS EVEN FOR BENEFICIAL PURPOSES—WILL FIND THAT WITH SMALL MEN NO GREAT THING CAN REALLY BE ACCOMPLISHED.”

–John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1865)

ps if you didn’t get the joke here, simply substitute the phrase “universal health care” for the phrase “liberty” in each of the above well known quotations.

it’s worth noting that in John Rawl’s Book “A Theory of Justice,” health care is hardly mentioned at all, is not a part of the two principles of justice, is not a primary good, is not considered a constitutional good or matter, and Rawls considers it at best something for the legislature to take up somewhat as a third or fourth rate issue. This is only taken up in Rawls’ articles and lectures and not even in his updated version of “Theory of Justice.”

Ronald Dworkin has stated that although he personally would like to view universal health care as a constitutional right, he believes that if the US Supreme Court were to make such a ruling, it would be completely contrary to the entire body of us constitutional law. In short, Dworkin does not view health care as an american legal right in the context of the american legal or economic system. and he is our leading liberal american philosopher.

only socialist legal philosophers and outright socialists seem to still cling to the rejected tenets of goldberg v. kelly that there is a right to welfare–even though the us supreme court rejected this in goldberg, and also rejected a right to an equal funding of education in antonio v rodriguez as well in the 70s.

there is no right to equal funding for welfare rights in the usa.

–art kyriazis, philly
home of the 2008 world champion phillies 2008, 2009 NL Pennant winners we don’t need no stinkin replays to hit our home runs!

THE HEALTH BILL – NO COMMON SENSE

The health bill is out, and has no proposal for tort reform or for free schooling of doctors.

I don’t have to point out that every country with socialized medicine has free education for doctors, has no tort exposure for doctors and finally, no malpractice premiums to pay.

the democratic congress wants to cut doctor salaries while expecting people to pay for med school, pay malpractice of 100000 dollars a year and also pay millions in court awards. and higher taxes. it’s all too much to bear.

Stan Dorn, formerly of the harvard debate team, was one of the key writers of all these proposals at a think tank in DC. his ex debate partner jeff pash esq. has been legal counsel for the National Football League for years.

Mr. Dorn works at a place called the Urban Institute. the website for all of Stan Dorn’s papers is http://www.urban.org/expert.cfm?ID=StanDorn.

here’s some of the great titles there:

Reducing Obesity: Policy Strategies from the Tobacco Wars (Policy Report)
Carolyn L. Engelhard, Arthur Garson, Jr., Stan Dorn

To combat the epidemic of obesity, lawmakers can adapt policy approaches that have substantially cut tobacco use. A 10 percent tax on fattening food, identified based on a model used by the British government to determine the foods that may not be advertised to children, would reduce consumption while raising more than $500 billion over 10 years. Adding simple, “traffic light” nutrition labels to the front of each food package would change consumers’ buying habits, as would listing calories on menus at chain restaurants. Consumption of fattening food would be further reduced by banning its advertisement in the mass media.

Posted to Web: July 27, 2009 Publication Date: July 24, 2009

look familiar? they want people who are heavy to be discriminated against as if they had voluntarily undertaken to smoke tobacco.

in short, they want to discriminate against the fat.

Since Dorn and others like him wrote the health bill, i take it they are little more than debate plans, which is to say they will have enormous disads as well as cosmic workability problems like all debate plans do.

here’s another unbiased paper from Dorn:

Current Health Reform Proposals: No Government Takeover of American Health Care (Policy Briefs/Timely Analysis of Health Policy Issues)
Stan Dorn, Stephen Zuckerman

This paper debunks claims that proposed health reforms represent a government takeover of health care. We show, among other findings, that pending legislation would: (1) retain the nation’s largely private medical care system, in which more than 90 percent of doctors are in private practice and 84 percent of all hospital admissions are to private facilities; (2) avoid government interference in the practice of medicine, instead simply extending existing public responsibilities to fund coverage for low-income Americans and regulate insurance; and (3) cover only 12 million people through a public option, based on Congressional Budget Office projections.
Posted to Web: September 08, 2009 Publication Date: September 08, 2009

See? a paper that reaches the conclusion before it examines the premises. This is a logical fallacy called circular reasoning. The bill will not be a government takeover–because the bill is not a government takeover.

here’s another post by Dorn:

Debunking the Government Takeover Myth (Commentary)
Stan Dorn, Stephen Zuckerman

Pending health reform legislation would leave our largely private medical care system intact, give the federal government no new authority to intervene in private health care decisions, and increase health care options for millions of Americans, two senior researchers make clear.
Posted to Web: September 14, 2009 Publication Date: September 14, 2009

Do you believe this one?

The new bill will not affect the status quo–because it will not affect the status quo. Again, circular reasoning.

but the next paper tells you the system WILL be affected:

Capping the Tax Exclusion of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance: Is Equity Feasible? (Research Report)
Stan Dorn

Some policymakers propose capping the amount of employer-sponsored insurance that is exempt from federal income and payroll taxes. If such a cap is based on employer premiums, inequities will result. Workers could pay higher taxes if their employer is located in a high-cost area, if many co-workers are in their 50s and 60s, or if a few employees have a major illness or accident. To avoid such inequities, the cap could be based on benefit generosity, measured by actuarial value, which is the cost of expected claims if a nationally representative population received the covered benefits.
Posted to Web: June 02, 2009 Publication Date: June 02, 2009

oh, gee, caps on employer premiums being shielded from the income tax? sounds like a tax hike to me. That would really, seriously impact the current system, like a lot.

employer would drop health coverage like hot cakes if they had to pay tax on it.

well, you get the flavor.

Stan is a great guy, really smart, and like brilliant, smart.

I’m sure he and everyone else involved in health care reform mean well.

but here’s the bottom line:

in greece, and in england, and in other socialized medicine countries, you still have to give extra cash to the doctors to get to the front of the line. It’s called a bribe, or an envelope, or whatever.

Why? Because in any economic system, where supply exceeds demand, the price will rise. the government cannot ration something which is priced by the market. If people can afford heart surgery, they will bribe the best surgeons to provide it faster, which is why my father’s old friend in Salonika greece drives a sports car and has a mistress along with a wife and two kids–he gets regular bribes to do surgery on his rich patients first in his private clinic, which the government officials overlook because they, too, get bribes.

This is where we’re headin, lincoln country road or armageddon, to quote bob dylan.

the free market, the invisibile hand of adam smith, cannot be denied.

You can see that the obama-ites all studied law, not economics or they would know this plan will only fail.

Also that they obviously don’t know as much about socialized medicine as they think.

–art k philly
home of the world champion phillies

EVIL IS REALLY REALLY WRONG – A BRIEF COMMENT ON THE STUPIDITY OF THE PHRASE “THE BANALITY OF EVIL” POPULARIZED BY THE SO-CALLED SCHOLAR HANNAH ARENDT

i have never been comfortable with Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the banality of evil.” Rather, free will, free choice and choosing between being a good or a bad moral being are all choices we make each and every minute of every day. it may be true these are mediated by cognitive behavioral or social disorders, effects, etc. but these men knew right from wrong, and they must pay for their wrongs.

If we believe otherwise, why not repeal all of our criminal codes and blame crime on bad parenting? or on gang leaders who order their members to commit crimes? Is being a nazi any different than being a crip or a blood? If you join the gang, isn’t that an immoral act?

incidentally the film “the reader’ with kate winslet seems to follow arendt’s reasoning more closely than i would like. it seems to suggest that winslet’s character, a nazi prison guard, is evil for banal and not for willful reasons. this is what happens when you get away from concepts like sin, guilt and free will and start going secular and freudian.

Hannah Arendt’s quip on “the banality of evil” is not just an apologia for the holocaust, but an insult to every victim of every holocaust and of every genocide, an insult to every victim of every crime, an insult to every casualty of every war.

Death in war, whether by gas chamber or at the front line, is an awful, terrible thing–but we must remember the dead, cherish their cause–and most importantly, we must never, ever forget.

Arendt’s phrase suggests that these acts were somehow trivial. I don’t remember them that way. I remember someone standing up and shooting President Kennedy. It didn’t seem banal at all at the time. It seemed evil and wrong and terribly, awfully wrong. I wanted someone punished. I wanted retribution. I wanted someone to pay for this misdeed.

I pretty much imagine it was the same way on Kristallnacht or at Auschwitz when the prisoners were unloaded from the trains–and delivered to the gas chambers to be executed. People standing up and killing other people. Nothing banal or boring about that. In fact, it sounds hellishly sinful, ghoulish and beyond the pale to me.

In fact, I get sick even thinking about the fact that a man could do that to another man.

So spare me your “banalities” and give me Dante’s 14th circle of hell for these men (and women) and as for Kate Winslet’s reader, they should have crucified her and burned her alive at the stake for killing people in concentration camps, as far as I’m concerned. The notion expressed in “The Reader” that somehow evil is “banal” or that she was taking orders is silly–people who do wrong things should pay for their sins.

–art kyriazis, philly

THE 2009 YANKEES ARE THE 2003 TEXAS RANGERS AGAIN – A TEAM THAT WON 71 GAMES WITH TEIXEIRA AND A-ROD BUT WITH AROD UP THEIR NOSE?

the 2003 texas rangers, with mark teixeira and alex rodriquez, won 71 and lost 91, and finished last in the al west.

the rangers then got a salary demand from AROD and decided to unload him on the yanks for alfonso soriano and build around Teixeira.
the next year, the rangers went up 20 games and were in first place most of the year. you have to remember Buck Showalter was manager, a hardass, and he thought arod was lazy.

of course, since arod went to ny, they blew the 3-0 lead to boston in 2004 (arod batted .258), have lost all those series since, he’s been photographed with strippers and ladies of the night in toronto and elsewhere, he’s been CAROUSING with madonna, born in 1958 (older than me), CAVORTING with kate hudson, who was married to a wild rock star (cooties galore in her privies) and of course, he was taking steroids.

plus, he’s now 35 and on the downside of an illustrious career. 7 years ago he was hiting 57 homers a year. now it’s down to 30 or so. He’s still good, but he’s declined with age. It’s obvious he can’t hit the high fastball or the low one the way Teixeira or Matsui can. AROD collects all his hits off bad pitchers. plus he’s ugly.

why did the yanks get good this year? one word: Teixeira. He’s the man. the phils almost drafted him in 1999, but they had scott rolen at 3b, so Texas drafted him instead. T-man was a 3d baseman in college.

can you imagine if the phils had Teixeira now at 3b with Rollins, Utley and Howard?????

the “mighty” yanks have feet of clay. they have three starters and a lousy bullpen.

derek jeter is 40. but has heart and will to win.
jorge posada is 40. but has heart and will to win.
mariano rivera is 40. but has heart and will to win.
andy petitte is 39. but has heart and will to win.
alex rodriguez is 35. no heart, clubhouse cancer. losing mentality. net minus on any ballclub.
melky cabrera is all field no hit.
hideki matsui is 35 but he can still play.
nick swisher is a legit young player.
mark teixeira is a great player with heart.

cc sabathia is great, but he has a psych prob with phils dating back to last year with milwaukee. he’s 0-2 with 3 homers in 11 innings in 2 playoff games. he averages .7 hrs given up a game. but in playoff games v. phils, that number is 4 homers per 9 innings. methinks he chokes in phils games. phils are 2-0 v sabathia in post season play. sabathia has never beaten the phils in a post season game.

aj burnett is great. he was great with the marlins. always had filthy nasty stuff.

johnny damon is nearly 40. he’s done. nothing left. he looks lost as a lamb out there. can’t even field. the guy’s whole game was built on speed. it’s all gone now. bat speed and foot speed.

meanwhile, all of the phillies are around 30 and at their peak, end of discussion. Pedro is the oldest guy, and he’s only 38 and still has a live arm, as you can plainly see.

cole hamels is 25. cliff lee is 31. ryan howard is 29. chase utley is 30. rollins is 31. only ibanez is old at 37, but he was the starting lf for the all start team.

phils lineup:

rollins – nl mvp 2008, gold glove 32
victorino – nl allstar 2009, gold glove 25
utley – nl allstar multiple years, silver slugger multiple years, gold glove 30
howard – nl mvp 2007, nl all star multiple years, silver slugger, home run derby champion 29
werth – nl all star 2009 30
ibanez – starting lf nl all star 2009 37
feliz – gold glove quality defense 34
ruiz – gold glove quality defense, can hit some 30

our lineup is younger and more powerful than the yanks.

and our pitchers are younger and better than the yanks.

also they have arod. no team with arod has ever won anything.

i’ve looked at the yanks pitching stats, and i’m mystified at who their #4 starter will be, because they don’t have one. joba chamberlain’s numbers are horrible and so are everyone else’s, but cc sabathia can’t work on 3 days, plus the phils have a hoodoo on him of some kind dating back to the milwaukee series last year.

the phils by contrast are throwing cole hamels, last years 1 starter, as their 3 starter this year, and joe blanton, who used to be the a’s 1 starter, as their 4 starter, and they still have ja happ, the nl rookie of the year, their 5 starter, available to come in and bail anyone out who can’t get out of the 3d inning.

the phils look a lot deeper in the bullpen and starting rotation to me. plus pedro looked pretty good to me last night. burnett was filthy and nasty but pedro only made two mistakes.

at this point i will note that it’s Teixeira, not ARod, that’s the money player. last year Teixeira was with the Sox, and the Sox went to seven games with the Rays. the yanks were eviscerated.

this year, teixeiras with the yanks, and the yanks get to the series. coincidence, I think not. let’s examine history.

in 2003, the Texas Rangers had ARod and Teixeira. they won 71 and lost 91. they finished last, dead last, in the al west.

and that team had rafael palmeiro and some other big boppers on it too.

in feb 2004 they traded arod to ny for soriano to build around Teixeira.

the next year, 2004, texas rangers, the awful texas rangers, who everyone thought stunk, well, they improved by 20 games. remember, buck showalter was a hard ass who thought arod was a playboy who was ruining the clubhouse.

guess what, he was right.

the rangers almost won the al west without arod and led by teixeira, who had a monster year. because texeira is about baseball, not partying or steroids.

arod meanwhile reversed the curse for the sox, blowing the 3-0 lead (and batting only .258 in the alcs in 2004) (see fever pitch) and led the yankees to five years of division and alcs losses. you might as well tatoo “loser” on arod’s arm or something.

also a divorce, pictures with strippers and hookers, an affair with madonna, born in 1958, an affair with kate hudson, who was married to a filthy drug addicted rock star from the black crowes (so shes a skank too) and he’s outed as a steroids user.

plus he’s 35 and on the downside of his career. he’s hitting 30 homers, but remember, this is a guy who used to hit 47, 57, 59 a year in texas when he was younger. he’s in age-related decline, and he can’t hit the fastball anymore like he used to. he hits bad pitchers only now. he looked awful against lee and worse against pedro martinez the last two night, legit aces both.

plus he’s ugly.

it’s teixeira who’s the ballplayer–and when the yanks needed someone to step up–he did. that was as clutch a homer as you’ll ever see a guy hit. and matsui’s was even better, on an unhittable pitch.

but i like the phils to sweep at home and close these yanks out.

by the way the phils almost drafted teixeira in 1999–he was a college 3d basemen–but they had scott rolen at the time and took a pass so texas had him.

can you imagine if we had an infield with teixeira at 3b, with rollins utley and howard?

the yanks won one legit last night. matsui hit an unhittable pitch, so did texeira, plus burnett was filthy and nasty. the yanks still pedro’s daddy. but the phils were playing with house money since they won game one. they have cole hamels, last year’s #1, pitching third in the rotation, and the yanks have 39 year old andy pettitte, which is not great for them. and they have no #4 starter. we have joe blanton and rookie of the year ja happ.
the phils will sweep at home.

bank it. jro had it right.

also the birds beat the giants sunday to make it a clean sweep of new yawk.

art kyriazis philly home of the world champion phillies
nl pennant winners 2008
nl pennant winners 2009
2-0 vs cc sabathia in post season play
world series champions 2008
3-0 at citizens bank park in world series play

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE CITES TO BIASED STUDY PREPARED BY URBAN INSTITUTE

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal is gaining some currency. It’s cited at http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/09/30/report-paints-dark-picture-of-health-care-costs-in-2019/

and paints a dark picture of american health care costs by 2019 if we do nothing about the current health care economiy.

However, the authors of the study are the URBAN INSTITUTE, which it turns out is a think tank which is biased strongly to producing reports and conclusions strongly tilted in favor of the Democratic Party and Obama.

Here’s what Dorn & Zuckerman of the same Urban Institute said about the President’s Health Care Plan just ten days earlier in another study:

Debunking the Government Takeover Myth
By Stan Dorn and Stephen Zuckerman
Of the many unfounded claims now coloring the health care debate, at least one can be taken off the table. As President Obama told the nation September 9, it’s time to stop making “wild claims about a government takeover of health care.” He’s right and here’s why.
For starters, pending legislation would leave our largely private medical care system intact. Right now, more than 90 percent of doctors are in private practice and 84 percent of all hospital admissions are to private facilities. That wouldn’t change as a result of any reform proposals.
If it’s Big Brother in the examination room that seems chilling, that’s not at issue either. Nothing in the thousand pages of reform proposals would give the federal government any new authority to intervene in private health care decisions. “Death panels” are as imaginary as Lord Voldemort, and government’s role would be largely what it is now: helping low-income Americans pay for health coverage and regulating insurance companies so they better serve consumers.
Under the new proposals millions of Americans would see their health care options increase. Workers covered through small firms, for instance, could choose from a range of health plans available in a new health insurance “exchange,” a convenient new marketplace that could make both private and public options available. Today, three fourths of these workers are offered only one health plan by their employer.
And when people work for themselves or a company that doesn’t provide any insurance at all, they are on their own today. After reform, these people can choose one of the plans offered through the exchange. They will get financial help if they need it and won’t have to worry, as many do today, that insurers will deny coverage if they or family members have pre-existing health problems.
Health care markets aren’t headed for socialism under the new plans either. Assessing the original House of Representatives proposal in July, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that by 2019, about 12 million people (or 4 percent of Americans under age 65) would enroll in the public option. That means that about 191 million would still be covered by private insurance. And, importantly, it’s the consumer who chooses between public and private.

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/901286_govt_takeover_myth.pdf

Note that the title of the study is “DEBUNKING THE GOVERMENT TAKEOVER MYTH”.

It’s pretty elemental that in addition to bias, one of the key fallacies in evidentiary and logical argumentation is the fallacy of deductively reasoning back from the conclusion to the facts, which is what people of faith do, rather than doing what scientists properly do, which is studying the facts impartially and inferring the proper theories from the facts, a process referred to as inductive generalization.

Here, the authors Dorn & Zuckerman commit the fallacy of improper generalization or hasty generalization, in that they rush to the conclusion before they’ve had a full chance to study the facts.

In another study by the same groups, they forced a conclusion as well;

Summary
Current national health reform proposals would not cause “a government takeover of health care.” Pending legislation
would leave in place the country’s largely private medical care system, in which more than 90 percent of doctors are in
private practice and 84 percent of all hospital admissions are to private facilities.
Reform proposals would not give the federal government new authority to intervene in private health care decisions.
Rather, legislation would mainly extend two current responsibilities of the public sector: to fund health coverage for lowincome,
uninsured Americans and to regulate health insurance so that it meets consumers’ needs. In fact, reform
proposals would substantially increase health plan choices for many people, including workers covered by small firms.
While 73.2 percent of these employees are offered just one plan today, pending legislation would let them choose from
among multiple, diverse health plans available in a new health insurance exchange.

http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/411952_current_health_reform.pdf

same fallacies as other study, this one called Current Health Reform Proposals: No Government Takeover of American Health Care. Again, see how they jump to the conclusion instead of proceeding carefully through the process of inductive generalization, as a scientist should?

The papers are flawed because they are biased, fail to proceed through proper inductive processes, and proceed to conclusions based on logical flaws of analogical reasoning, including hasty and improper generalization.

Consequently, we cannot accept their claims that the status quo is so horribly flawed that it will run up costs amuk by 2019, can we?

Basically, the Urban Institute takes a one-sided view; they think the private sector is poison, and big government is the cure.

On a personal note, I sincerely hope this is not the same Stan Dorn I used to know from Harvard Debate. He really should know better. He was one of the smartest, hardest working guys I ever knew.

–art kyriazis
home of the world champion phillies
NL East champs 2007-2009

IRAN’S CROOKED ELECTION SYSTEM STARTED BACK IN 2005 NOT 2009: IRAN’S LONG CON

copyright arthur j kyriazis 2009 no use or other reprint without the express written permission of arthur j kyriazis.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from watching Movies like Ocean’s Eleven or TV shows like Leverage, if you want to pull the long con, you have to make sure that nothing is what it seems, or else you can’t pull off a long con when everyone in the world is watching and the cameras are running. But that is just what Iran, Ahmadinajed and the Ayatollahs of Iran have been doing for the last six and half years—in plain view of everyone—pulling the longest con in the history of international politics. And when they get nukes sometime next year, they’re going to make Danny Ocean and his ten buddies seem like a small-timers and small potatoes.

Right now, the ayatollahs of Iran are in the midst of one of the longest long cons in the history of international politics. Their short marks are the Iranian people, the middle-term marks the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their long-term marks are Israel and the United States and the rest of the world.

Throwing missiles around and setting up secret nuclear enrichment plants has been one element of Iran’s long con. The fact is that they’ve been working on getting nuclear weapons, on and off, since 1979, and working on it in earnest since 2001, and in particular since 2003. Anything they’ve said and done to the contrary has all been part of the long con on the international community. Like the proverbial Cretan liar, everything they say and do is a lie. They are incapable of telling a truth.

Everyone is so focused on the fact that the 2009 election is crooked, that they’ve overlooked the fact that the 2005 election in which Ahmadinajed came to power originally, was completely and totally crooked, and was hijacked in a much worse fashion, than the 2009 election. And further overlooked the fact that Ahmadinajed was hand-picked in 2003 by the Ayatollah Khameini to be the radical right wing candidate of change in the 2005 elections, for the specific and long-term goals of Iranian intervention in Iraq, the building up of Iranian nuclear armaments, and the destabilization of U.S. efforts at building up middle eastern democracy in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Palestine and in the Middle East region.

Ahmadinajed’s history is that of working actively to secure the 52 U.S. hostages in 1979-81; interrogate them; working in Iranian covert intelligence, interrogation and torture from 1979-2003, and being a fanatical devotee of both the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Ayatollah Khameini.

Ahmadinajed is a vicious anti-Semite who denies the existence of the Holocaust and preaches the destruction of Israel by any means necessary, including the use of nuclear weapons and missiles. He co-mingles this message with one of the return of the 13th imam or Mahdi, a key element of millenarian shi’ite prophecy which predicts the return of the true caliph in occultation who is the rightful descendant of Ali, the rightful caliph and rightful heir to the prophet Muhammed. Upon the destruction of Israel, this event will occur, according to Ahmadinajed.

The Iranian leadership, and Ahmadinajed in particular, believe strongly that bombing Israel and other targets with nuclear weapons will hasten the arrival of the 13th imam or Mahdi, and bring about the arrival of the “millennium” and the fulfillment of shi’ite holy prophecies. Upon the destruction of Israel, this event will occur, according to Ahmadinajed

This is not a generally accepted view in twelver-shi’ism, but nonetheless, it is the view he takes.

Getting back to the long con, here’s how the long con is going down, according to multiple primary and secondary sources;

The Iranians regime in the 1990s was drifting towards a bit of moderation. Towards the end of the 1990s, there was a bit of a diplomatic opening under Secretary of State Albright and the Clinton Administration; the Iranians hosted the United States International Wrestling Team (including some professional acquaintances of mine, the Olympic Gold Medalist Kevin Jackson & Olympic Wrestler John Giura, who went on that trip), and there was a substantial thawing of relations between the two countries.

Had Al Gore been seated as U.S. President, and the Albright State Department continued in office, eventually relations between the two countries might have been normalized, and the radical elements in Iran may or may not have emerged as they did in 2003.

Instead, we all know what happened. Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election, but the U.S. supreme court intervened to give George W. Bush, the victory in the U.S. Presidential election, on a 5-4 decision in the case of Bush v. Gore. They did so by suspending the recount in the Florida popular vote count and declaring the Florida electoral vote tally turned in by Gov. Jeb Bush’s alleged mistress, who was running the electoral board, final. George W. Bush appeared to be a fraudulent winner, since he probably didn’t win Florida’ popular vote, probably didn’t win Florida’s electoral vote, probably didn’t win the electoral college, and definitely didn’t win the popular vote.

The ayatollahs in Iran sat up and took notice of this. They realized after watching President Bush take office in this officious way, that they, too, could steal elections in their country, and that the United States would say nothing about it, because, after all, President Bush had stolen the election as well. What could he say about stealing an election, after all?

So the hardliners in Iran, who have wanted control of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the destruction of Israel (where they have been funding Hamas and Hezbollah since the late 1970s, and helped destroy Lebanon as well as destabilize Palestine) decided on a plan to abandon their moderation and take a hardline approach with the usurper of the American Presidency and test him as no one had been tested before in American history.

So first of all, Iran along with bin Laden, hit hard at the U.S. on 9/11/2001. We all remember that. They decided to test the usurper, Bush II.

The response by the Bush II Administration was decidedly peculiar. Instead of seeking multilateral assistance, the Bush II Administration ventured forth into Afghanistan and then Iraq more or less singlehandedly with some allies, instead of as part of a generalized U.N. police force action as his father had done with the Kuwaiti liberation action.

To his credit, Bush II at least stood up to this infamy and hit back hard, and with everything the U.S. had. He certainly didn’t knuckle under. And he crafted a careful and thorough anti-terrorist policy almost immediately. But as Richard Clarke and others on the 9/11 Commission have documented, the Bush II Administration came to these positions only after 9/11 occurred.

Without determining the merits or demerits of the Bush II war interventions, suffice it to say that the Iranian leadership saw the American war intervention in Iraq as an opportunity.

First, in 2003, the Americans came to Iran and negotiated with them a stand still agreement for Iran to stay out of Iraq. But in exchange for this, Iran asked for, and obtained, the United States’ agreement for the US to bomb, and eradicate, all of the based of the MEK, stationed outside the border of Iran, in Iraq.

The MEK, up until 2003, was the primary opposition group in exile fighting the Iranian Revolution. In the event of a popular uprising, they would be able to come to Iran and assume power. They had bases just outside of Iran in order to invade the country and help a popular revolution if one occurred. Until 2003, the MEK were supported by Saddam Hussein and by the United States.

In 2003, the US betrayed the MEK and sold them down the river along with betraying Saddam Hussein, in exchange for a nonsensical deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to stay out of Iraq, which the Ayatollahs have never honored. The MEK was bombed, all their camps bombed and eradicated by the United States, and the Iranian Ayatollahs had a major thorn in their sides removed by the United States.

The biggest fear of the Iranian Ayatollahs is a popular uprising followed by an armed intervention. With the MEK gone, there is no danger of an armed intervention. Moreover, what no one realizes is that the United States has AGREED that there will be no armed interventions in Iran as a quid pro quo to its occupation of Iraq as part of the 2003 agreement. In essence, the United States has abrograted its protection of the rights of 80 million Iranian citizens for very little in return.

And yet the Iranian Ayatollahs did not deliver on their promises. They did stay out of Iraq in the sense of not formally invading, but they stepped up their campaign of terrorist bombing, of terrorist infiltration, and of terrorist everything. Since 2003, the number of US soldiers and Iraqi citizens killed by terrorists and other organized NGOs sponsored by Iran has skyrocketed, and there is no peace in the land of Iraq.

It was then, in 2003, that Iran and its Ayatollahs foresaw their opportunity for the longest con of all—installing a President with a worldview like their own at the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The man they groomed for the job was none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinajed.

Starting in 2003, they laid the groundwork for stealing the 2005 elections from the people of Iran. Plans were made for stuffing ballots, for miscounting election results, and in general, for defrauding the people of Iran of their right to vote for President.

The inspiration for the Ayatollahs was all too clear. They all had watched CNN for two months in the fall and winter of 2000. They saw George W. Bush steal the American election. They properly reasoned that if he could it, so could they.

Moreover, they further reasoned, if Bush was in power, he had no legitimacy to complain if they, Iran, stole an election, since he, Bush, was in power due to a stolen election. It would be a joke if he complained.

And in this, they would be proven completely correct. The groundwork for their long con was laid down.

So what happened in the 2005 elections? A gigantic fraud was perpetrated on the Iranian electorate. The favored two candidates won with 21% and 19% of the vote, and Ahmadinajed was third. Only the first two were supposed to get into the runoff.

But a week later, the Ayatollahs declared that Ahmadinajed was actually second, and knocked the second place guy off the run-off ballot their boy Ahmadinajed on.

Then, in the run-off, in 2005, the Ayatollahs came up with a vote count of Ahmadinajed 66%, and the other guy 33%, even though all polls showed Ahmadinajed couldn’t possible be getting more than 33% of the vote. It was exactly the same garbage that the Ayatollahs pulled this past year, in 2009.

But what could the Bush II Administration do? They couldn’t protest. After all, they themselves had been elected under a cloud and under fraudulent pretenses, the most fraudulent, contested and controversial United States election in American History since the Samuel Tilden-Rutherford B. Hayes election of 1876 (which resulted in the end of Reconstruction, by the way, in exchange for the Presidency). Even the 2004 election had some questions. So they couldn’t very well question the Iranian election. Moreover, they had made DEALS with this Iranian Government regarding non-incursions into Iraq as of 2003 (see discussion, supra).

So they said nothing.

That brings us slowly, inexorably, to the present serious situation, which has been bubbling slowly below the surface for a long, long time.

The Iranian people who protested their government in the streets this past spring were nothing short of heroes, like the Hungarian people of 1956 and the Czech people of 1968. The United States Government should have extended a lifeline to help overthrow their government when it was weak and subject to pressure by its people, but President Obama stood still and did nothing, much as President Bush I stood still and did nothing during Tianamen Square twenty years ago.

This was reprehensible.

These people deserved freedom.

Now the show trials have begun, the repressions, the tortures, the killings, the executions and the inevitable purges. The Iranian hardliners fear only one thing—internal revolution. It happened, and the U.S. did nothing to help it along. Now the Ayatollahs know we will do nothing to help such a revolution along, they fear such an insurrection even less.

No wonder they are developing nuclear weapons. No wonder they are firing medium range intercontinental ballistic missiles. No wonder they send President Ahmadinajed to the U.N. where he denies the Holocaust, denounces Israel and makes a mockery of the very concept of the United Nations on U.S. soil. They do not fear the United States at all.

Soon the long con will come to a close and nuclear weapons will be fired from Iran and World War III will begin.

Only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a very modest man who grew up part of his life in suburban Philadelphia, seems ready, willing and able to take the right actions. He seems willing to take a pre-emptory military strike against Iran to take out their nuclear capacity, much as Israel did with Iraq back in 1981.

This is the proper and correct action. All this multilateralism the United States is going through is too little too late. The bottom line is the U.S. needs to take military action against Iran to take out the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

This isn’t like Iraq—we know Iran has WMDs this time. We have rights under the UN Charter, under Article 51, to take a pre-emptory military strike.

It would be defensive war and it would be justified both on international law grounds and because Iran has violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Administration’s response to this new Hitler of the sands will define it for all history.

–art kyriazis, philly
copyright arthur j kyriazis 2009 no use or other reprint without the express written permission of arthur j kyriazis.
home of the World Champion Phillies
NL East Division Champions 2007-2009

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Books – Primary Sources

Madeline Albright. With Bill Woodward. 2003. Madame Secretary: A Memoir. (Miramax Books/Hyperion, New York, NY).

Hamid Algar, translator & annotator. 1981. Islam and Revolution—Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. (Mizan Press, Berkeley, CA)..

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Lord Curzon. 1892. Persia and the Persian Question. (London, U.K.).[needs additional citation materials]

Richard N. Frye, translator & commentator. 2005. Ibn Fadlān’s Journey to Russia: a Tenth Century Traveler From Baghdad to the Volga River. (Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, NJ).

Richard N. Frye. 2005. Greater Iran: a Twentieth-Century Odyssey. (Mazda Publishers, Inc., Costa Mesa, CA).

Sir Robert Graves. 1933. Storm Centres of the Near East: Personal Memories 1879-1929. (Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., Publishers, London, U.K.).

Fred A. Reed. 1999. Anatolia Junction: A Journey into Hidden Turkey. (Talonbooks, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada).

Robert Satloff. 2006. Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands. (Public Affairs, New York, N.Y.).

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2) Scholarly Articles in Books Edited by Others

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Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Hamid Dabashi & Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, eds. (introduction and annotation). 1989. Expectation of the Millenium: Shi’ism in History. (SUNY Press, Albany, NY).

Ja’far Subhānī. 2001. Doctrines of Shi’i Islam: a Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices. (I.B. Tauris, London, U.K.) (translated & edited by Reza Shah-Kazemi) (in ass’n with the Institute of Ismaili Studies).

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G.F. Abbott. 1916. Turkey, Greece and the Great Powers: A Study in Friendship and Hate, With Maps. (Robert Scott Roxburghe House, Paternoster Row, E.C., London, U.K.).

Sharough Akhavi. 1980. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period. (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY).

Hamid Algar. 1973. Mirza Malkhum Khan. [double check this cite might be Alezar]. (Berkeley, 1973).

Hamid Algar. 1968. Religion and State in Iran 1785-1905: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period. (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA).

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Mangol Bayat-Philipp. 1976. Shi’ism in Contemporary Iranian Politics: The Case of [Dr.] Ali Shari’ati. (Unpublished manuscript circulated to graduate seminars and Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University).

William O. Beeman. 1986. Language, Status and Power in Iran. (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN).

Niyazi Berkes. 1964. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. (McGill University Press, Montreal, Canada)

Leonard Binder. 1962. Iran: Political Development in a Changing Society. (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA).

G.W. Choudhury. 1969. Constitutional Development in Pakistan. (Harlow Longmans). (2d ed. revised & expanded). See especially pp. 58-65; pp. 108-115; and pp. 212-223.

Richard W. Cottam. 1988. Iran and the United States: A Cold War Case Study. (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA).

Richard W. Cottam. 1978. Nationalism in Iran. (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA) (updated edition)

Mamoun Fandy. 2007. Uncivil War of Words: Media and Politics in the Arab World. (Praeger Security International, Westport, CT, U.S. & London, U.K.).

M.R. Ghanoonparvar. 1993. In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction. (University of Texas Press, Austin, TX).

Gusfield, Joseph R.. (__________). Protest, Reform, and Revolt (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY).

Heinz Halm. 1999, 1997, 1994. Shi’a Islam: From Religion to Revolution. (Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, NJ, 2d printing). (translated from the German by Allison Brown).

Samuel P. Huntington. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY).

Mohammad Hashim Kamali. 1991. Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence. (Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, U.K.).

Meir Litvak. 1998. Shi’i Scholars of Nineteenth Century Iraq: The “ulama” of Najaf and Karbala. (Cambridge University Press, Cabridge, U.K.) (Cambridge Middle East Studies #10).

Heath W. Lowry. 2003. The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. (State University of New York Press, Albany, N.Y.). (SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East, Donald Quataert, ed.).

Asa Lundgren. 2007. The Unwelcome Neighbor: Turkey’s Kurdish Policy. (Tauris, London, U.K. & New York, N.Y.).

Loren Lybarger. 2007. Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories. (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ).

A.L. Macfie. 1989. The Eastern Question 1774-1923. (Longman Group U.K. Ltd., Longman, Inc., New York, N.Y.).

A.L. Macfie. 1998. The End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923. (Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., New York, N.Y.).

William Miller. 1966. (3d ed. 1927, 2d ed.1923, 1st ed.1913). The Ottoman Empire and its Successors 1801-1927: Being a revised and enlarged edition of The Ottoman Empire 1801-1913. (Frank Cass & Co., Ltd. By arrangement with Cambridge University Press. Thomas Nelson Printers, Ltd., London & Edinburgh, U. K.) (New Impression edition).

Andrew J. Newman. 2006. Safavid Iran: Rebirth of an Empire. (Taurus, London, U.K.).

Ilan Pappe. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (Oneworld Press, Oxford, United Kingdom).

Trita Parsi. 2007. Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States. (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT).

Rouhollah K. Ramazani. 1966. The Foreign Policy of Iran: 1500-1941. 1966. [additional citation materials needed].

Hussein Tahiri. 2007. The Structure of Kurdish Society and the Struggle for a Kurdish State. 2007. (Mazda Publishers, Costa Mesa, CA.).

Wilkinson, Paul. Social Movement (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971).

Robin Wright. 1989. In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade. (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY).

Robin Wright. 1985. Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam. (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY).

Secret Warriors Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era.

4) Scholarly Articles in Academic Journals

A.H.H. Abidi. “The Iranian Revolution: Its Origins and Dimensions.” (April-June 1979) International Studies. (Volume 18, Number. 2). 18:129 161.

Ismail Ajami. “Differential Fertility in Peasant Communities: A Study of Six Iranian Villages.” (November 1976). Population Studies. (Volume 30, Number 3). 30:453-463.

Elizabeth Bacon. 1947. “Soviet Policy in Turkestan.” Middle East Journal. (Volume One, Number Four). (October 1947). 1:386-400.

Cheryl Benard & Zalmay Khalilzad. 1979. “Secularization, Industrialization, and Khomeini’s Islamic Republic.” Political Science Quarterly. (Volume 94, Number 2). (Summer, 1979). 94:229 41.

Peter Bender. 1987. “The Superpower Squeeze.” Foreign Policy. (Winter 1987). 65: 98 113.

James A. Bill. 1973. “The Plasticity of Informal Politics: The Case of Iran.” Middle East Journal. (Spring 1973). (Volume 27, No.2). 27:131-151.

James A. Bill. 1969. “The Politics of Student Alienation: The Case of Iran.” Iranian Studies. (Winter 1969) (Volume II, no. 1). 2:8-26.

James H. Billington. 1987. “Realism and Vision in American Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 65, Number. 3). 65:630 52.

Leonard Binder. 1957. “Pakistan and Modern Islamic-Nationalist Theory.” Middle East Journal. (Volume 11, Number 4, Autumn 1957). 11:382-396. (Part I of II).

William C. Bodie. 1988. “The American Strategy Schism.” Strategic Review. (Volume xvi, number. 2). (Spring 1988). 16:9 15.

Thompson Buchanan. 1982. “The Real Russia.” Foreign Policy. (Summer 1982). 47:26 45.

Hedley Bull. 1979. “A View From Abroad: Consistency Under Pressure.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 57, No. 3, Special Issue on “America and the World”). 57: at pp. 451-455.

Richard Cottam. 1991. “Charting Iran’s New Course.” Current History. (January, 1991).
90:21-24.

Edward Mead Earle. 1929. “American Missions in the Near East.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 7, No. 2). (January 1929). 7:398 417.

C.J. Edmonds. 1957. “The Kurds of Iraq.” Middle East Journal. (Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 1957). 11:52-62.

Hamid Enayat 1973. “The Politics of Iranology.” Iranian Studies. (Volume vi, No. 1). (Winter, 1973). 6:2 20.

Asghar Fathi. 1980. “Role of the Traditional Leader in Modernization of Iran, 1890 1910.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. (February 1980). 11:87 98.

Richard W. Gable. 1959. “Culture and Administration in Iran. Middle East Journal. (Volume. 13, no. 4). (Autumn, 1959). 13:407-__________.

Charles F. Gallagher. 1966. “Contemporary Islam: The Plateau of Particularism—Problems of Religion and Nationalism in Iran.” (July 1966). American Universities Field Staff. Southwest Asia Series Vol XV, No. 2 (Iran) (CFG-2-1966). 15:1-24.

Deniz Gökalp & Seda Ünsar. 2008. “From the Myth of European Accession to Disillusion: Implications for Religious and Ethnic Polarization in Turkey.” Middle East Journal. 62:93-118.

Yair P. Hirschfield. 1980. “Moscow And Khomeini: Soviet Iranian Relations in Historical Perspective.” Orbis. (Summer, 1980). _____:219 40.

Samuel P. Huntington. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs. (1993). [additional citation needed].

Nikki R. Keddie. 1968. “The Iranian Village Before and After Land Reform.” Journal of Contemporary History. (Volume 3, Number 3). (July, 1968). 3:69 92.

Nikki R. Keddie. 1962. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. (Volume IV, Number 3). (April, 1962). 4:265 95.

Rosanne Klass. 1988. “Afghanistan: The Accords.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 66, Number 5). (Summer 1988). 66:922-945.

Noel Koch. 1990. “Hostage-Taking and Terrorism: A Review and Assessment of U.S. Policy.” Mediterranean Quarterly: A Journal of Global Issues. (Volume One, Number 2). (Spring 1990). 1:106-121.

Ann K.S. Lambton 1964. “A Reconsideration of the Position of the Marja al Taqlid and the Religious Institution. Studia Islamica. (Volume XX, No. _____). 20:115 35.

George Lenczowski. 1947. “The Communist Movement in Iran.” Middle East Journal. (Volume 11, #1, January 1947). 11:29-45.

Walter J. Levy. 1981. “Oil: An Agenda for the 1980s.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 59, Number 5). (Summer 1981). 59:1079 1101.

Samuel S. Lieberman. 1979. “Notes and Commentary: Prospects for Development and Population Growth in Iran.” Population and Development Review. (Volume Five, Number 2). (June 1979). 5:293-317.

Herbert J. Liebesny. 1967. “Stability and Change in Islamic Law. Middle East Journal. (Volume 21, Number 1). (Winter, 1967). 21:16 34.

Evan Luard. 1986. “Superpowers and Regional Conflicts.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 64, Number 5). (Summer 1986). 64:1006 25.

Hossein Mahdavy. 1965. “The Coming Crisis in Iran.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 44, Number 1). (October 1965). 44:134 46.

Phebe Marr. 1991. “Iraq’s Uncertain Future.” Current History. (January, 1991). 90:1-4 & pp. 39-42.

George Michael. 2007. “Deciphering Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust Revisionism.” Middle East Quarterly.” (Volume 14, Number 3) (Summer 2007). 14:11-18

David D. Newsom. 1981. “America EnGulfed.” Foreign Policy. (Volume __________, Number. 43). (Summer 1981). __________:17 32.

Richard Pipes. 1955. “Muslims of Soviet Central Asia: Trends and Prospects. Part II [of II].” Middle East Journal. (Volume Nine, No. Three). (Summer 1955). 9:295-308.

Richard Pipes. 1955. “Muslims of Soviet Central Asia: Trends and Prospects. Part I [of II].” Middle East Journal. (Volume Nine, Number Two). (Spring 1955). 9:147-162.

Rouhollah K. Ramazani. 1974. “Iran’s ‘White Revolution: A Study in Political Development.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. (Volume __________, (Number 5). __________:124 39.

Bernard Reich. 1991. “The United States in the Middle East. Current History. (January, 1991). 90:5-8 & p.42.

Abbas William Sammii. 2008. “A Stable Structure on Shifting Sands: Assessing the Hizbullah-Iran-Syria Relationship.” Middle East Journal. 62:32-53.

Philip C. Salzman. 1972. “Persian Land Reform and the Shah.” The Muslim World. (Volume LXII, Number 3). (July 1972). 62:241 46.

Abraham D. Sofaer. 1986. “Terrorism and the Law. Foreign Affairs. (Volume 64, Number 5). (Summer, 1986). 64:901 22.

Ray Tayekh. “Iran’s New Iraq.” Middle East Journal. (2008). 62:13-31.

Van Hollen, Christopher, “Don’t Engulf the Gulf,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 59, no. 5 (Summer 1981): 1064 78.

William Linn Westermann. “Kurdish Independence and Russian Expansion.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 24, Number 4, July 1946). 24:675:686.

Robin Wright. “Islam’s New Political Face.” Current History. (January, 1991). 90:25-28 & pp. 35-36.

Young, T. Cutler, “Iran in Continuing Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 40, no. 2 (January 1962): 275 292.

5) Book Reviews

Edward Allworth. 1960. Book Review. Russian Central Asia 1867: A Study in Colonial Rule. By Richard A. Pierce. (University of CA Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA). (viii + 359 pp. $7.00). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 14, No. 4). (Autumn 1960). 14:483-484.

Peter Avery. 1975. Book Review. The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East. By Richard N. Frye (Barnes and Nobles and Harper and Row, New York, NY, 1975), 290 pages. Illus. Maps. $25.00. Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 29, No. 4). (August 1975). 29:470-471.

Hafez F. Farmayan. 1971. Book Review. Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period.” By Hamid Algar. (University of CA Press, Berkeley, CA, 1970). (286 pp., Index, $9.50). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 25, Number 3). (Summer 1971). 25:413-415.

Harold Glidden. 1959. Book Review. The Muqaddimah, by Ibn Khaldūn. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. (Pantheon Books, New York, NY, 1958). (Vol. I cxv + 481 pp, [five] (5) plates and [two] (2) figures); (Vol. II xiv + 463 pp, [nine] (9) plates); (Vol. III xi + 603 pp., [four] (4) plates and diagram in pocket, indexed, $18.50). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 13, Number 3). (Summer 1959). 13:330-331.

Edward J. Jurjii. 1957. Book Review. Islam in Modern History. By Wilfred Cantwell Smith. (Princeton University Press, Princton, NJ 1957). (308 pp., index to 317 pp., $6.00). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 11, Number 4). (Autumn 1957). 11:436-437.

Henri Laoust. 1960. Book Review. Islamic Law in the Modern World. By J.N.D. Anderson, with an Introduction by Dr. Saba Habachy. (New York University Press, New York, NY). (xx + 100 pp, bibliography to p.106, $2.75). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 14, Number 3). (Summer 1960). 14:338.

Ernest R. McCarus. 1960. Book Review. “Kurdish Language Studies.” Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 14, Number 3). (Summer 1960). 14:325-335.

Chantal Quelquejay. 1959. Book Review. “Anti-Islamic Propaganda in Kazakhstan.” Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 13, Number 3). (Summer 1959). 13:319-327.

J. Schacht. 1967. Book Review. The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybānī’s Siyar. Translated with an Introduction, notes and appendices by Majid Khadduri. (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD 1966). (xvii + 311 pp, $8.00). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 21, Number 2). (Spring 1967). 21:273.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith. 1957. Book Review. Islam and the West: Proceedings of the Harvard Summer School Conference on the Middle East, July 25-27, 1955. Richard N. Frye, ed. (Mouton & Co, The Hague, Netherlands, Distributed in the US by Gregory Lounz, 1956). (215 pp. $5.00). Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 11, Number 4). (Autumn 1957). 11:437-438.

Gustave Thaiss. 1976. Book Review. Shi’ite Islam. By ‘Allāmah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabātabā’ī. Translated from the Persian and edited with an Introduction and Notes by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. (Albany, [NY]; State University of New York Press, 1975).” Reviewed in Middle East Journal. (Volume 30, No. 2) (Spring 1976). 30:236-237.

6) Newspapers, Periodicals, Television Shows, Websites

“Scapegoat [Hassan] Ayat.” The Economist. June 28, 1980. p. _____

“Can the ayatollah’s revolution work and last?,” The Economist, June 7, 1980.

“Crusaders Win” The Economist. June 21, 1980. p. _____

Steven Emerson. “What Walsh Didn’t Know About Ollie’s Notebooks.” The Washington Post. March 20, 1988. p._____

Steven Holmes. “Giving In to ‘Graymail’: North’s Legal Strategy Decreases the Hope for a Full Airing of the Iran-Contra Scandal.” Time. January 16, 1989. pp. 24-25.

Youseef M. Ibrahim. “The Marketplace Remains, Despite the Conflicts.” & Paul Lewis. “The O.E.C.D. is a “Reactor” Not an “Initiator””. both in “Old Rich, Oil Rich: The West v. OPEC: The Oil Cartel and the West’s Economic Club Have Turned [Twenty] 20. War or No War, Oil Prices Should Keep Stunting the Industrial Nation’s Growth.” New York Times. (Sunday) (Business Section). November 30, 1980. Section Three (3). pp. 1 & __________.

“Israel Asked U.S. for Greek Light to Bomb Nuclear Sites in Iran; U.S. President told Israeli Prime Minister he Would not back Attack on Iran, Senior European Diplomatic Sources Tell Guardian.” Thursday September 25, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sept/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1
(four pages). (web only).

Joseph Kraft. “Letter from Riyadh.” New Yorker. June 26, 1978. pp. 62-77.

Thomas A. Sancton. “Quarreling Over Ghosts: The Hostage Release Grows Into a Burning Internal Issue [for Iran].” Time. February 9, 1981. p. 35. Reported by Roberto Suro, Washington, DC Desk.

Jack Thomas. “New Tack in TV News: TV News Scoop on Iran Deals.” Boston Globe. February 1, 1981. pp. 1 & 13.

“Portrait of an Ascetic Despot.” Time. January 7, 1980. p._____

“An Interview with Khomeini.” Time. January 7, 1980. p._____

“The Mystic Who Lit The Fires of Hatred.” Time. January 7, 1980. p._____

Mike Wallace. “Interview of former First Lady Nancy Reagan.” CBS Sixty Minutes. First televised Sunday, January 15, 1989.

Curtis Wilkie. “Was Carter Misled on Shah Visit: False Proviso on Shah Visit?” Boston Globe. February 1, 1981. pp. 1 & 12.

7) Legal Documents, Treaties, International Agreements, International Conventions, etc.

Bilateral Agreement Between the Republic of Aghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on the Principles of Mutual Relations, in Particular on Non-Interference and Non-Intervention. (Article II). and U.S. Statement. 1988. cited in Rosanne Klass. 1988. “Afghanistan: The Accords.” Foreign Affairs. (Volume 66, Number 5). (Summer 1988). 66:922-945 at pp. 944-945.

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 1980. The Middle East Journal. __________:181 204.

The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,

the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,

the ban on chemical and biological weapons,

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter

8) Legal Citations, Law Review Articles etc.

United States v. North, _____ F. 2d _____ (1989)

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