Balkanalysis.com - The Olympic terror threat: some conceptions and misconceptions

olympic > threats > bogus and real
Balkanalysis has a level-headed assessment of security threats for the Athens 2004 olympics, which exposes another piece of shoddy coverage - from the Guardian this time. Instructive and informed, as usual.

Financial Times espousing conspiracy theories? Yugoslavia and Greece

reporting > lame
[update: the article is now for subscribers only... The main points however are recapped below]
A Financial Times article claims that Dora Bakoyianni, Mayor of Athens, and daughter of ex-prime minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis has become "...the first senior Greek politician to admit that Greece should not have supported Slobodan Milosevic..."
This is news to me and it certainly doesn't follow from what the reporter quotes Bakoyianni as saying:

"Addressing leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, on a visit to Athens, Mrs Bakoyannis said Greece, along with other Nato members, bore "a significant moral responsibility for actions and omissions that contributed to Bosnia's suffering".
"Like other European countries, Greece takes a share of the blame for what happened before and during the conflict," she added.

Now, this woman's father was indeed an admirer of Milosevic's brand of post-communist "nationalism" (although I've showed in the past that Milosevic's political positions were flexible enough to accommodate anything that could keep him in power). It is highly doubtful however that Greece "supported" Slobo. There were more than a few supporters of him (in the context of him preventing a muslim arc to "suffocate the Balkans" or some tripe of the sort), but even during the criminal Kosovo campaign popular opinion was not that enamored of him - but rather supportive of the people of Yugoslavia who were being bombed to the stone age. As for the government, (apart from turning a blind eye to all sorts of smuggling going on at the time) it did little to help Milosevic's position in Serbia or in any war.
What the Mitsotakis government did do, was cave in to the disastrous German demand of immediate recognition of Croatian sovereignty, before any border and population agreements had even began. I sincerely believe that of all the EU countries Greece was the one that had a lot to lose (and lost) from a war in Yugoslavia. It also had knowledge of the area enough to understand (I mean I could see it coming as a twenty-something political activist) that such a development would mean certain civil war. Instead of vetoing the EU recognition, the ever-submissive to outside pressure Greek government, just mentioned their "doubts" in a footnote to the unanimous decision. Had the Mitsotakis government insisted on their veto, and had the decision to recognize the breakaway republics been postponed until after detailed negotiations about all sorts of issues, but especially Bosnia, there is the possibility that the whole Yugoslav tragedy might have been averted.
So much for apologies...
However the Financial Times goes even further and espouses a conspiracy theory that had only been circulated in Greece by confirmed crackpots:

Following a proposal by Mr Milosevic in 1991 that Greece and Serbia should split the territory of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia between them, Mr Mitsotakis asked the defense ministry to make a plan for moving troops across the Greek border into southern Macedonia. The plan was vetoed by Costas Karamanlis, then Greek president, according to a former senior official.

Although such an "offer" might have come from an increasingly unrealistic Milosevic (although this is still unproven), it is certain that no Greek prime minister, no matter how dumb, would entertain for a moment the idea of occupying an unfriendly country with few if any Greeks inhabiting it. This would go beyond adventurism to sheer madness. Anyway by that time Karamanlis was a figurehead with little real power in his hands and could certainly not veto any plans of Mitsotakis. Like a true urban legend, this was repeated in another form in the mid nineties by the (thriving) Greek tin-foil-hat constituency: Greece was supposedly offered Southern Albania by Italy which was planning the annexation of the Northern part of that country...
Again let me point out that this was Kerin Hope in Athens reporting for the Financial bloody Times - and not the Weekly World News. Brilliant. And then people wonder how come "the West" has a distorted view of the Balkans...

Can hot water freeze faster than cold water?

physics > arcane
My initial reaction to the question was "of course not". I first heard someone make the claim when I was more active in physics, and lamented the sorry state that logical reasoning was in. I was wrong. I had never heard of the Mpemba effect. Although some hasty experiments suggest that this holds for a limited set of conditions not easily reproducible with your average kitchenware.
Now excuse me as I have to go observe some cups I've put in my freezer...

Survival of the fittest

history > palestine > raw
'Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.'"
Benny Morris, an esteemed Israeli historian, exposes the violence, cleansing and war crimes against the Palestinians, that were the preamble of the establishment of a purely Jewish state in Palestine in 1948. He also agrees with the necessity of most of it.
Brute sincerity (and scientific integrity) combine with raw nationalist zealotry to produce an interview that should become a reference point for years to come.
In Ha'aretz, a shining beacon of journalistic competence.
via the treasure that is Metafilter

The Peloponnesian war

history > lessons
A New Yorker magazine book review, written by Daniel Mendelsohn on Kagan's "Peloponnesian War". This is a wonderful history lesson: an informed and pithy account of the Peloponnesian war, Thucidides' "History" and Euripides' "Medea", debunking, almost in passing, Kagan's very hawkish interpretation of that war and the "lessons" it holds for today, while producing a wonderful, synthetic view of the era and a scholarly approach to its context.
A moving piece, for those with any interest in history: it is an aggressive dismissal of history-as-simple-propaganda, and a shining example of lucid prose.
Online reference: Thucydides' "History", translated in English. Euripides' Medea in English.

Reworked images reveal hot Venus

venus > retroactive > exploration
"Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975.
His reprocessed and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven."
Don Mitchell's site has much info on the Venera missions and the Soviet exploration of Venus(although the recalibrated images are not available yet).
Venus, will be coming closer next year (hopefully) when Venus Express starts orbiting the planet.

International Progressive Publications Network

alternative press > resources
An interesting guide to all sorts of progressive publications from around the world.

Papandreou: The dynasty continues

greece > politics > hereditary
This is happening at home:

"PASOK, which began its political career as a party that was profoundly critical of US policy, both in Greece and internationally, has gradually become the "American" party of some contemporary Greeks, and not only thanks to the communication skills of George Papandreou."

The whole media blitz that Papandreou's nomination as party leader has entailed, reminds me of American elections, only worse. The private TV channels in Greece, owned in their majority by big business interests - which have made a killing under the self-styled socialists, are playing day in and day out more and more pictures of Papandreou the third: a messianic thrill has overtaken the pundits, after the scare of what seemed like the specter of certain electoral defeat this spring. Now, with the force of the biggest Greek political brand-name behind them, they are marching forward hoping to con everyone into giving them four more years of plunder.

These "socialists" have overseen the greatest upward redistribution of income in living memory and have created an ubiquitous system of corruption that makes the Andreas' Papandreou era seem pristine in comparison. They have allowed a handful of magnates to run the country as their own personal feudal property. They have sold off (or are trying to sell off) utilities and public lands, while changing the laws as to allow the destruction of most of Greece's forests. Yet, at the same time they have nothing but friends among TV channel owners who shape public attitudes and distract the populace by showing nothing but the most vile and insignificant gossip as news. Still, PASOK was on the way for a major defeat, as the opinion polls were showing a gaping 8-10% between them and the (equally abominable) New Democracy conservative party, which, however, is not considered by our ruling oligarchs capable of handling the further upward redistribution of income without creating serious social tensions.
Thus the bearer of the name was brought in as saviour - so that a PR coup d' etat could be staged and the battle renewed. I doubt if it will work in the near term, but one can safely bet that George Papandreou will be Prime Minister of Greece sometime in the next four years...

And to make the whole thing more surreal, the most "Anti-American" European country will soon have the most pro-American Prime Minister in Europe.

Daring for victory: Iraq in revolution 1946-1959

iraq > history > revolution
After a brief mention of the Kirkuk massacre of 1959 in Riverbend's latest post (no, not this Kirkuk massacre), I searched for more on that episode of Kurdo-Turkmen enmity. I found the article linked above which is a review of post WWII developments in Iraq from a socialist (Trotskyist) perspective. From a similar perspective the following seems convincing:

...This [the strengthening of the ICP] makes the Kirkuk massacre of July 1959 all the more tragic. In the aftermath of the 1958 revolution the ICP concentrated in its hands control of many local governments, militias and even army garrisons. The largely Kurdish ICP branch in Kirkuk used this control to escalate a squabble over the celebration of the first anniversary of the revolution into an intercommunal bloodbath, particularly directed against the Turkomans who made up much of the city's commercial and middle classes. One month later in a central committee plenum called to deal with the consequences of the Kirkuk massacre, the ICP in referring to its own membership was forced to condemn "the dragging of bodies, torture of detainees, looting and trespassing on the rights and liberties of citizens..."

Also see this dissenting view from someone who apparently lived through the events.

About the Kurds in Iraq (and Iran and Turkey and Syria) there's more to say however. They remain the largest nation without a country and to simply deny their right to nationhood isn't morally defensible. That currently a declaration of statehood, or even of autonomy, might plunge the area into even worse adventures, is unfortunately true. But the Iraqi Kurds I see here in Athens, destitute,desperate and angry; who have risked life and limb and/or lost loved ones in their desperate exodus; who didn't belong to any exclusive club back in Iraq; these Kurds have a serious desire for nationhood and that is not going to change anytime soon, unless a serious political settlement is reached.

Forced partition, however, does seem like the potentially bloodiest of options. Not that the W. administration would care - if they can make a better buck out of that...

Happy new year

2004 > ?
It's been a while. I've been keeping off the computer screen for the holidays. But I'm back. This is an "Olympic year" in the city I'm living in (for better or worse) and also an election year (with new clowns running for directors of our little circus), sooner rather than later we discovered today... Please note that the two (politically converging) "big" parties will be headed by the grandson and son of past prime ministers on the one side, and by the nephew of another prime minister on the other. Indeed the current match-up (Constantinos Karamanlis vs. Georgios Papandreou) is a carbon copy of the electorial showdowns of the (pre-junta) 60s. I guess it's another case of history repeating itself as a farce.
Oh, and after the elections we will be asked to vote again in June for the Euro-parliament, a vote that seems less important, but in reality is becoming increasingly crucial.