MONDAY, 30 MARCH 2009
'The British are shits and bastards, every one of them'
'I'm ready to blow up, myself, about our friends the British… They're shits and bastards every one of them.'
(Georgios Katsimbalis in a letter to Georgios Seferis, July 1955, referring to EOKA's campaign to end British colonial rule in Cyprus and unite the island with Greece, which had begun three months earlier).
Here among the barbarians in Hyperborea, the Home Secretary is claiming parliamentary expenses for porn films watched by her husband. She's refusing to resign and PM Gordon Brown won't sack her. Grubby little country, grubby little people. There are elections due by May 2010 and it seems likely Labour will be ousted and the Conservatives will assume power. The Tories are currently 13 percent ahead in opinion polls. The Tory leader and PM-in-waiting is David Cameron – a vacuous, coke-snorting toffee-nosed git. Why am I talking British politics? Because while catching up on the latest anti-Greek doggerel from this blogger, I came across an article written in 2003 by Britain's aspiring Tory PM on the Macedonia name issue in which he reveals himself to be a nauseating pipsqueak and ignoramus, who thoroughly backs the preposterous Skopjan claims against our country.
Below is an extract of what Cameron – who has a holiday home in Crete – said. Read the whole piece here.
Of course technically my neighbour should have said: "Welcome to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Fyrom)", because that's the correct name for [this] country sandwiched between Greece, Albania, Serbia and Bulgaria. "FYR Macedonia" voted for independence in 1991 during the break-up of Yugoslavia and has been trying to make its way ever since.
It hasn't been easy. The reason for the long name is that the Greeks complained vigorously that Macedonia already existed as a region of Greece and so could not be a separate country as well. This seems churlish in the extreme. The Greeks have their own country, their own name and have been showered with financial assistance since joining the EU. These people - the Macedonians [sic] - have recently escaped communism and have virtually nothing. And as if Greek pettiness wasn't enough the Albanians tend to dream of incorporating a large slice of FYR Macedonia into a Greater Albania while the Bulgars tend to think of the country as part of a Greater Bulgaria.
Yet as far as I could see, the country - and I am determined to call it Macedonia - has a perfect right to exist. The population is overwhelmingly Macedonian [sic], with a distinctive language, culture and history. It is poorer than some of the other old Yugoslav republics, but considerably richer than Albania. The people are civilised, friendly and highly educated. Even my tour guide had an MBA.
It is always difficult to know how to answer the question: "What will you do to help us?" But on this occasion, I had the answer. From now on I will call our esteemed EU partner "the former Ottoman possession of Greece (Fopog)."
Posted by John Akritas at Monday, March 30, 2009
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Labels: Cyprus, Fyrom, Greece, Macedonia, Seferis, UK
2 comments:
Hermes said...
This should only surprise those dopey Greeks who think we owe something to the Anglo-Americans. English friends of Greeks have been few and far between over the last 60 years.
You might like this article on the latest edition of Arion: Journal of Humanities....regarding Contempt (Le Mepris)....
http://www.bu.edu/arion/Carson.html
31 March 2009 02:33
john akritas said...
A fairly good piece by Anne Carson. Thanks for pointing it out. I suppose it's fair enough, from the female perspective, for her to regard the Brigitte Bardot character in Contempt as the most interesting. No doubt in the Odyssey she'd want to emphasise Penelope and Calypso and de-emphasise Odysseus. She's entitled to do this, I guess.
31 March 2009 16:20
http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/2009/03/british-are-shits-and-bastards-every.html
