#Attacks by Greek Cypriots

[kyreniacommentator]

Swedish UN soldiers came to Gaziveren after the Greek Cypriot attack

Introduction by Chris Elliott…. Recently we shared on CyprusScene to the world, an article published by The PRESIDENCY OF THE TURKISH REPUBLIC OF NORTHERN CYPRUS  click here telling of the visit of 42 Swedish ex UN soldiers who had served in Cyprus trying to keep the peace during the troubled period upto 1974. To my surprise I received an email from Anders Arvidsson a Swedish ex UN soldier who…

[mariacallous]

In the summer of 1941, the United States sought to leverage its economic dominance over Japan by imposing a full oil embargo on its increasingly threatening rival. The idea was to use overwhelming economic might to avoid a shooting war; in the end, of course, U.S. economic sanctions backed Tokyo into a corner whose only apparent escape was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Boomerangs aren’t the only weapons that can rebound.

Stephanie Baker, a veteran Bloomberg reporter who has spent decades covering Russia, has written a masterful account of recent U.S. and Western efforts to leverage their financial and technological dominance to bend a revanchist Russia to their will. It has not gone entirely to plan. Two and a half years into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Russia’s energy revenues are still humming along, feeding a war machine that finds access to high-tech war materiel, including from the United States. Efforts to pry Putin’s oligarchs away from him have driven them closer. Moscow has faced plenty of setbacks, most recently by losing control of a chunk of its own territory near Kursk, but devastating sanctions have not been one of them.

Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia is first and foremost a flat-out rollicking read, the kind of book you press on friends and family with proselytizing zeal. Baker draws on decades of experience and shoe-leather reporting to craft the best account of the Western sanctions campaign yet. Her book is chock-full of larger-than-life characters, sanctioned superyachts, dodgy Cypriot enablers, shadow fleets, and pre-dawn raids.

More than a good tale, it is a clinical analysis of the very tricky balancing acts that lie behind deploying what has become Washington’s go-to weapon. The risky decision just after the invasion to freeze over $300 billion in central bank holdings and cut off the Russian banking system hurt Moscow, sure. But even Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, one of the architects of the Biden administration’s response, told National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he feared the sanctions’ “catastrophic success” could blow up global financial markets. And that was before the West decided to take aim at Russia’s massive oil and gas exports, which it did with a series of half-hearted measures beginning later that year.

The bigger reason to cherish Punishing Putin is that it offers a glimpse into the world to come as great-power competition resurges with a vengeance. The U.S. rivalry with China plays out, for now, in fights over duties, semiconductors, and antimony. As Singh tells Baker, “We don’t want that conflict to play out through military channels, so it’s more likely to play out through the weaponization of economic tools—sanctions, export controls, tariffs, price caps, investment restrictions.”

The weaponization of economic tools, as Baker writes, may have started more than a millennium ago when another economic empire was faced with problematic upstarts. In 432 B.C., Athens, the Greek power and trading state supreme, levied a strict trade embargo on the city-state of Megara, an ally of Sparta—a move that, according to some scholars, sparked the Peloponnesian War. (Athens couldn’t break the habit: Not long after, it again bigfooted a neighbor, telling Melos that the “strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”) The irony of course is that Athens, the naval superpower, eventually lost the war to its main rival thanks to a maritime embargo.

It can be tempting to leverage economic tools, but it is difficult to turn them into a precision weapon, or even avoid them becoming counterproductive. The British empire’s 19th-century naval stranglehold and love of blockades helped bring down Napoleon but started a small war with the United States in the process.

Britain was never shy about using its naval and financial might to throw its weight around, but even the pound sterling never acquired the centrality that the U.S. dollar has today in a much bigger, much more integrated system of global trade and finance. That “exorbitant privilege,” in the words of French statesman Giscard D’Estaing, enabled the post-World War II United States to take both charitable (the Marshall Plan, for starters) and punitive economic statecraft to new heights.

The embargoes on Communist Cuba or revolutionary Iran were just opening acts, it turned out, for a turbocharged U.S. approach to leveraging its financial hegemony that finally flourished with the so-called war on terror and rogue states, a story well-told in books such as Juan Zarate’s Treasury Goes to War or Richard Nephew’s The Art of Sanctions. 

Osama bin Laden is dead, Kabul is lost, Cuba’s still communist, and a Kim still runs North Korea, but the love of sanctions has never waned in Washington. If anything, given an aversion to casualties and a perennial quest for low-cost ways to impose its will, Washington has grown even fonder of using economic sticks with abandon. The use of sanctions rose under President Barack Obama, and again under Donald Trump; the Biden administration has not only orchestrated the unprecedented suite of sanctions on Putin’s Russia, but also taken Trump’s trade war with China even further.

Despite U.S. sanctions’ mixed record, the almighty dollar can certainly strike fear in countries that are forced to toe a punitive line they might otherwise try to skirt. Banks in third countries—say, a big French lender—could be forced to uphold Washington’s sanctions on Iran regardless of what French policy might dictate. Those so-called secondary sanctions raise hackles at times in places such as Paris and Berlin, prompting periodic calls for “financial sovereignty” from the tyranny of the greenback. But little has changed. Countries that want to continue having functioning banks have little choice but to act as the enforcers of Washington’s will.

What is genuinely surprising, as Baker chronicles, is that the growth of sanctions as the premier tool of U.S. foreign policy has not been matched by a commensurate growth in the corps of people charged with drafting and enforcing them. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department’s main sanctions arm, is overworked and understaffed. A lesser-known but equally important branch, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, struggles to vet a vast array of export controls and restrictions with a stagnant staff and stillborn budget. Post-Brexit Britain has faced even steeper challenges in leaping onto the Western sanctions bandwagon, having to recreate in the past few years a new body almost from scratch to enforce novel economic punishments.

Punishing Putin is not, despite the book’s subtitle, about an effort to “bring down” Russia. The sanctions—ranging from individual travel and financial bans on Kremlin oligarchs to asset forfeiture to sweeping measures intended to kneecap the ruble and drain Moscow’s coffers—are ultimately meant to weaken Putin’s ability to continue terrorizing his neighbor. In that sense, they are not working.

One of the strengths of Punishing Putin is Baker’s seeming ability to have spoken with nearly everybody important on those economic frontlines. She details the spadework that took place in Washington, London, and Brussels even before Russian tanks and missiles flew across Ukraine’s borders in February 2022, and especially in the fraught days and weeks afterward. It takes a special gift to make technocrats into action heroes.

The bulk of Baker’s wonderful book centers on the fight to sanction and undermine the oligarchs loyal to Putin who have helped prop up his kleptocracy. Perhaps, as Baker suggests, Western thinking was that whacking the oligarchs would lead to a palace coup against Putin. There was a coup, but not from the oligarchs—and it ended first with a whimper and then a mid-air bang.

There are a couple of problems with that approach, as Baker lays out in entertaining chronicles of hunts for superyachts and Jersey Island holding companies. First, it’s tricky to actually seize much of the ill-gotten billions in oligarch hands; the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on upkeep for frozen superyachts, for example, but can’t yet turn them into money for Ukraine. And second, the offensive has not split the oligarchs from Putin: To the contrary, a Kremlin source tells Baker, “his power is much stronger because now they’re in his hands.”

At any rate, while the hunt for $60 billion or so in gaudy loot is fun to read about, the real sanctions fight is over Russia’s frozen central bank reserves—two-thirds of which are in the European Union—and the ongoing efforts to strangle its energy revenues without killing the global economy. Baker is outstanding on these big issues, whether that’s with a Present at the Creation-esque story of the fight over Russia’s reserves and the ensuing battle to seize them, or an explanation of the fiendishly complicated details of the “oil price cap” that hasn’t managed to cap Russian oil revenues much at all. More on those bigger fights would have made a remarkable book a downright stunner.

The Western sanctions on Russia, as sweeping and unprecedented as they are, have not ended Putin’s ability to prosecute the war. They have made life more difficult for ordinary Russians and brought down Russia’s energy export revenues, but they have not yet severed the sinews of war. “But, in fact, the West didn’t hit Russia with the kitchen sink,” Baker writes. Greater enforcement of sanctions, especially on energy, will be crucial to ratchet up the pressure and start to actually punish Putin, she argues. The one thing that is unlikely is that the sanctions battle will end anytime soon—not with Putin’s Russia, and not with other revisionist great powers such as China, whose one potential weakness is the asymmetric might of U.S. money.

“As long as Putin is sitting in the Kremlin,” Baker concludes, “the economic war will continue.”

[captain-price-unofficially]

Cypriot Turks await an attack during a period of unrest between Cypriot Turks and Cypriot Greeks. Limassol, 1964

[autistic-and-radical]

I don't really think Polish is at all equal to being a racial minority, you're still white, in a Western country, it's modernized and you have a full democracy. Sure it's a bit poor and has high amounts of right-wing stuff and misogyny and patriarchy but being Polish is still pretty privileged on the scale of the world. fr fr. I have more right to say I'm a racial minority, I mean I'm not but my grandfather on my mother's side was a non-white-skinned greek Cypriot which is way more magilisation than being Polish. Also, I'm of Jewish descent but despite these two things I still understand my inherent privilege from my whiteness. Like girl seriously, You are not racially marginalised by being Polish... As a woman, particularly one living in Poland and being autistic yes but not from being polish unless you can consider very mild racial discrimination that you're not part of the "ideal" white group..

I NEVER SAID I'M A RACIAL MINORITY

that doesn't change the fact that we're mixed with dirt in the west. Slavophobia is alive and well, many people display straight up nazi views towards Slavs.

My aunt got spat on in UK just for speaking her language on the street. In 2016 there was a series of violent attacks on Slavs in the UK and France

We might be white (although not really, I know Slavs of color) but we're at the bottom of white people ladder.

Remember when in like... the 40s... Slavs were seen as inferior, primitive, dirty race of servants? Yeah that view is still very much common in the west

[mightyflamethrower]

What are the mobs in Washington defiling iconic federal statues with impunity and pelting police men really protesting?

What are the students at Stanford University vandalizing the president’s office really demonstrating against?

What are the throngs in London brazenly swarming parks and rampaging in the streets really angry about?

Occupations?

They could care less that the Islamist Turkish government still stations 40,000 troops in occupied Cyprus. No one is protesting against the Chinese takeover of a once-independent Tibet or the threatened absorption of an autonomous Taiwan.

Refugees?

None of these mobs are agitating on behalf of the nearly 1 million Jews ethnically cleansed since 1947 from the major capitals of the Middle East. Some 200,000 Cypriots displaced by Turks earn not a murmur. Nor does the ethnic cleansing of 99% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ancient Armenian population just last year.

Civilian casualties?

The global protestors are not furious over the 1 million Uighurs brutalized by the communist Chinese government. Neither are they concerned about the Turkish government’s indiscriminate war against the Kurds or its serial threats to attack Armenians and Greeks.

The new woke jihadi movement is instead focused only on Israel and “Palestine.” It is oblivious to the modern gruesome Muslim-on-Muslim exterminations of Bashar el-Assad and Saddam Hussein, the Black September massacres of Palestinians by Jordanian forces, and the 1982 erasure of thousands in Hama, Syria.

So woke jihadism is not an ecumenical concern for the oppressed, the occupied, the collateral damage of war, or the fate of refugees. Instead, it is a romanticized and repackaged anti-Western, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic jihadism that supports the murder of civilians, mass rape, torture, and hostage-taking.

But what makes it now so insidious is its new tripartite constituency?

First, the old romantic pro-Palestine cause was rebooted in the West by millions of Arab and Muslim immigrants who have flocked to Europe and the U.S. in the last half-century.

Billions of dollars in oil sheikdom “grant” monies swarmed Western universities to found “Middle Eastern Studies” departments. These are not so much centers for historical or linguistic scholarship as political megaphones focused on “Zionism” and “the Jews.”

Moreover, there may be well over a half-million affluent Middle Eastern students in Western universities. Given that they pay full tuition, imbibe ideology from endowed Middle Eastern studies faculty, and are growing in number, they logically feel that they can do anything with impunity on Western streets and campuses.

Second, the Diversity/Equity/Inclusion movement empowers the new woke jihadis. Claiming to be non-white victims of white Jewish colonialism, they pose as natural kindred victims to blacks, Latinos, and any Westerner now claiming oppressed status.

Black radicalism, from Al Sharpton to Louis Farrakhan to Black Lives Matter, has had a long, documented history of anti-Semitism. It is no wonder that its elite eagerly embraced the anti-Israeli Palestine movement as fellow travelers.

The third leg of woke jihadism is mostly affluent white leftist students at Western universities.

Sensing that their faculties are anti-Israel, their administrations are anti-Israel (although more covertly) and the most politically active among the student body are anti-Israel, European and American students find authenticity in virtue-signaling their solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah, and radical Islamists in general.

Given the recent abandonment of standardized tests for admission to universities, the watering-down of curricula, and rampant grade inflation, thousands of students at elite campuses feel that they have successfully redefined their universities to suit their own politics, constituencies and demographics.

Insecure about their preparation for college and mostly ignorant of the politics of the Middle East, usefully idiotic students find resonance by screaming anti-Semitic chants and wearing keffiyehs.

Nurtured in grade school on the Marxist binary of bad, oppressive whites versus good, oppressed nonwhites, they can cheaply shed their boutique guilt by joining the mobs.

The result is a bizarre new anti-Semitism and overt support for the gruesome terrorists of Hamas by those who usually preach to the middle class about their own exalted morality.

Still, woke jihadism would never have found resonance had Western leaders—vote-conscious heads of state, timid university presidents, and radicalized big-city mayors and police chiefs—not ignored blatant violations of laws against illegal immigration, vandalism, assault, illegal occupation, and rioting.

Finally, woke jihadism is fueling a radical Western turn to the right, partly due to open borders and the huge influx into the West from non-Western illiberal regimes.

Partly the reaction is due to the ingratitude shown their hosts by indulged Middle-Eastern guest students and green card holders.

Partly, the public is sick of the sense of entitlement shown by pampered, sanctimonious protestors.

And partly the revulsion arises against left-wing governments and universities that will not enforce basic criminal and immigration statutes in fear of offending this strange new blend of wokism and jihadism.

Yet the more violent campuses and streets become, the more clueless the mobs seem about the cascading public antipathy to what they do and what they represent.

[sanctiphera]

“Israel is not just a threat to Gaza but to all of humanity,” Erdoğan said, warning that, “No state is safe as long as Israel does not follow international law and does not feel bound by international law.”

– was Turkey following international law when they invaded Cyprus and murdered civilians taking half the country? Still, over 1000 Greek Cypriots are missing presumed murdered and the Turks are still in Cyprus. Maybe they followed international law when they murdered over a million Armenians by genocide?

Erdoğan accused Netanyahu of overseeing barbaric acts against innocent civilians, stating, "No ideology sees the burning to death of innocent civilians in their tents as legitimate. The world is watching the barbarism of this vampire called Netanyahu live." 

– and this from a man who has launched attacks on people he calls militants with the intention of killing them. Leaving thousands dead in his wake. But as with all dictators, it's do as I say, not as do.

– he also forgot to mention that the people burning in tents died from explosives embedded amongst them by Hamas. In fact, there was a jeep loaded with explosives adjacent to the tents. That’s what was targeted, and that is what caused much of the damage. All by design by Hamas.

[tieflingkisser]

'Israel' eyes port in Cyprus amid fears of Hezbollah attacks

Israeli media have revealed "Israel's" strategy to acquire a port in Cyprus within 60 days, creating an alternative supply route in anticipation of Hezbollah potentially targeting the port of Haifa.

This development aligns with the US plan for the Gaza pier under the pretext of delivering humanitarian aid. According to the Israeli newspaper, a delegation from the Israeli Ministry of Transportation has departed for Cyprus to review opportunities to purchase a port on the Greek side of the island in response to various security scenarios.  The newspaper detailed that Israeli estimates suggest that the plan will incur a cost of millions of dollars, mirroring what they dubbed considerable interest from the Cypriots in this preliminary stage. The plan will reportedly be presented to the Israeli Knesset and submitted for government approval. Details indicate that "Israel" will monitor aid operations of the port in Larnaca, with security inspections entrusted to Israeli subsidiary companies. Contrary to various reports, the primary goal of purchasing the port is not to control maritime aid delivery to Gaza but to address a scenario where the port of Haifa is disrupted in the event of a "full-blown war with Hezbollah."

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.15 (after 1900)

1910 – In his book Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin gives a name to Alzheimer's disease, naming it after his colleague Alois Alzheimer. 1916 – In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing). 1918 – World War I: The Second Battle of the Marne begins near the River Marne with a German attack. 1920 – Aftermath of World War I: The Parliament of Poland establishes Silesian Voivodeship before the Polish-German plebiscite. 1922 – The Japanese Communist Party is established in Japan. 1927 – Massacre of July 15, 1927: Eighty-nine protesters are killed by Austrian police in Vienna. 1941 – The Holocaust: Nazi Germany begins the deportation of 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to extermination camps. 1946 – The State of North Borneo, now Sabah, Malaysia, is annexed by the United Kingdom. 1954 – The Boeing 367-80, the prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series, takes its first flight. 1955 – Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others. 1966 – Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnam begin Operation Hastings to push the North Vietnamese out of the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone. 1971 – The United Red Army is founded in Japan. 1974 – In Nicosia, Cyprus, Greek junta-sponsored nationalists launch a coup d'état, deposing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as Cypriot president. 1975 – Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was the last launch of both an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets. 1979 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his "malaise speech". 1983 – An attack at Orly Airport in Paris is launched by Armenian militant organisation ASALA, leaving eight people dead and 55 injured. 1983 – Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan. 1996 – A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashes on landing at Eindhoven Airport. 1998 – Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil MP S. Shanmuganathan is killed by a claymore mine. 2002 – "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony. 2002 – The Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan sentences British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to death, and three others suspected of murdering The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl to life. 2003 – AOL Time Warner disbands Netscape. The Mozilla Foundation is established on the same day. 2006 – Twitter, later one of the largest social media platforms in the world, is launched. 2009 – Caspian Airlines Flight 7908 crashes near Jannatabad, Qazvin, Iran, killing 168. 2009 – Space Shuttle program: Endeavour is launched on STS-127 to complete assembly of the International Space Station's Kibō module. 2012 – South Korean rapper Psy releases his hit single Gangnam Style. 2014 – A train derails on the Moscow Metro, killing at least 24 and injuring more than 160 others. 2016 – Factions of the Turkish Armed Forces attempt a coup. 2018 – France win their second World Cup title, defeating Croatia 4–2.

[tfgadgets]

After Hezbollah Threat, Turkey Attacks Cyprus For Acting As Israel's…: Another Country In War Grip?

Published on Jun 27, 2024 06:51 PM IST Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that southern Cyprus is acting as a military base to support Israel’s operations in Gaza. Speaking with Turkish news channel Haberturk on June 24, Fidan labelled Cyprus as a ‘logistics hub’ and said, “We constantly see in intelligence that the Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus is a base for certain…

[basicsofislam]

THE FEMALE COMPANIONS OF THE PROPHET (PBUH): Part 9

UMM HARAM (radhiallahu anha)

The real name of “Hala Sultan”, whom we know as the spiritual guard of Cyprus, is “Umm Haram". This great mujahid of Islam, who went as far as Cyprus from Madinah though she was old in order to be one of the people the Messenger of Allah mentioned, is the maternal aunt of Anas bin Malik, the great Companion. She is also the sister of Haram bin Mil­han, one of the great Companions. She is one of the relatives of the Prophet through her maternal aunts and she is also the foster-aunt of the Prophet. She was married to Amr bin Qays before Islam. She became a Muslim in the first years of Islam in Madinah. She asked her husband to become a Muslim but he did not accept it. Umm Haram, who did not want to live with a polytheist, did not hesitate to leave her husband. After a while, she married Ubada bin Samit.

The Prophet occasionally visited the house of this great woman of Islam who was also his foster-aunt and talked to her.

He sometimes took a nap in her house. Umm Haram always showed respect to him and entertained him in her house. He regarded it as an honor to serve him.

Once, the Prophet visited her in her house and talked to her. After a while, he slept. When he woke up, he was smiling. Umm Haram was surprised. She asked,

“O Messenger of Allah! May my mother and father be sacrificed for you! Why are you smiling?”

The Prophet answered:

“O Umm Haram! I saw some of my ummah boarding ships and sailing in order to fight unbelievers.”

Umm Haram became excited. She wanted to be among them. She said,

“O Messenger of Allah! Pray to Allah so that I will be one of them.”

The Messenger of Allah accepted her wish and prayed:

“O, Lord! Make her one of them!”

Then, he slept again.

After a short while, he woke up smiling again. Umm Haram asked him why he was smiling. The Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said,

“I saw some of my ummah going to war pompously like kings sitting on their thrones.”

Umm Haram asked the Prophet to pray for her again. She said she wanted to be among them. However, the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) did not accept this. He said,

“You will be among the first ones.”

Many years passed. After the death of the Prophet, her husband Ubada bin Samit was appointed to Homs for Islamic service. They went to Homs together. They worked there to spread Islam for a long time.  

It was during the caliphate of Hz. Uthman. The boundaries of the Islamic state expanded thanks to the conquests beginning from the caliphate of Hz. Abu Bakr. However, there were many more places to be conquered. One of them was Cyprus, due to its strategic importance. Hz. Muawiya, the governor of Damascus, wanted to conquer this island very much. He made an offer to Hz. Uthman about it but Hz. Uthman did not accept it thinking that it was too early. However, when Muawiya insisted, he gave permission.

Hz. Muawiya became very glad when he got permission. He established an armada. Ubada bin Samit and his wife Umm Haram joined this navy. Hz. Umm Haram was 86 years old then.

The expedition of Cyprus was the first sea expedition of Muslims. Therefore, they underwent a lot of difficulties during the expedition. Umm Haram was too calm for her age. She did not complain at all about the difficulties of the expedition. She remembered the good news given to her by the Messenger of Allah and wanted this good news to be realized. She thought about the grace of Allah Almighty to martyrs and ignored the difficulties. This state of hers set an example to mujahids and increased their patience.  

After a long and tiring voyage, the armada reached Cyprus. First, they asked the Cypriots to become Muslims. When they rejected it, they asked them to pay jizyah (a kind of tax). The Cypriots did not accept it, either. Fighting was inevitable. Umm Haram could not stand still; she felt impatient for fighting. Finally, fighting started. The mujahids attacked suddenly and beat the Greek armada. Then, they made a landing operation. The fighting continued on the land. The Greeks could not resist anymore.    

They accepted to pay jizyah and offered peace. Thus, Cyprus was conquered in the 28th year of the Migration.

After the war, the Islamic army started to return to Damascus. Umm Haram felt very sorry that she could not be a martyr. However, she was destined to be a martyr and it was going to happen. As a matter of fact, her horse became restive. Umm Haram fell off her horse and became a martyr. Thus, she joined the caravan of martyrs, about whom Allah Almighty said,

“Do not say they are dead.”( Tabaqat, 8: 433-434; Musnad, 6: 361; Usdu'l-Ghaba, 5: 574; al-Isaba, 4: 441; Muslim, Imara: 160. )

The tomb of Umm Haram, who is the symbol of the conquest of Cyprus, is near Salt Lake, which is in Larnaca. It has been emitting abundance for hundreds of years. Her tomb is constantly visited.

Cyprus was ruled by Muslims for many years. Once, it was invaded by Christians. However, it was conquered again by the Ottomans in 1570; it became Muslim land again. The Ottomans restored the tomb of Umm Haram. They called it “Hala Sultan”. It is narrated that the Ottoman ships saluted her by cannon fire when they passed near it.  

May Allah be pleased with her!

[ericvanderburg]

21 arrested in Cyprus after Greek Cypriots attempt to attack Syrian migrants

http://securitytc.com/SvLc0D

[kyreniacommentator]

Greek Cypriot series “Famagusta” is said to be unrealistic

Greek Cypriot series “Famagusta” is said to be unrealistic Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus regarding the series “Famagusta” The trailer for the Greek Cypriot series “Famagusta”, which was announced to be released on a digital platform on 20 September 2024, contains blood-curdling scenes that portray the events that took place on the Island…

[howieabel]

“1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.” ― Christopher Hitchens

[mightyflamethrower]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Unhinged Among Us

VICTOR DAVIS HANSONCONTRIBUTOR

November 30, 202310:42 PM ET

October 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation

During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass raped, decapitated and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants and the elderly.

The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza — to cheers from the Gaza street.

Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard left and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.

When the Israeli Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar.

From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the IDF and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.

Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen.

It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.

Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent.

They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel.

They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police.

The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.

Why did the doctrinaire left, the youth of the Democratic Party and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel?

For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protestors suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians and the rules of war.

But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle-East Arab cities about the same time do not.

The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from norther Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee’’ status either.

Few protestors knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there were Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.

How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?

The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.

They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to — “settled?” — supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate, and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.

As far as “disproportionality,” it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.

What protestors are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.

Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world.

It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.

The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them and not to execute civilians without trial.

Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?

Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?

Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?

Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia and popular culture?

Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture and commit violence?

Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?

Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur, Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uighurs, Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine or ISIS, Syrian and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims.

Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protestors falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish — and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.

[baeddel]

dispatch on the unrest in belfast

in the late 1950s a group of British Army soldiers from Northern Ireland became notorious for butchering civilians in Cyprus. they were defending the British occupation from the EOKA, led by (no, really) General Grivas, who wanted reunification with Greece. despite Grivas attempts to prevent it the war quickly became a sectarian conflict between Christian Greek Cypriots and Muslim Turkish Cypriots. it was an extremely bloody conflict fought with civilian lives. for the first time in war the pipe bomb replaced the heavy artillery.

when the British surrendered in 1960 those soldiers returned home and, in order to combat the Catholic civil rights movement, became involved in civilian loyalist organisations like the Loyal Orange Lodge until in 1966 when they formed the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). their innovation was to apply the experience in Cyprus to Northern Ireland to defend a partition which was not, at this stage, actually under attack. that year they carried out a string of random killings on the Catholic Falls Road. the civil rights movement developed into an armed struggle for national liberation, the British Army was deployed to combat it, and the UVF were transformed into anonymous soldiers for apartheid, armed by the South African regime, among others, and receiving clandestine support from the British.

pictured: Gusty Spence, first prince of loyalist terror, flanked by his retainers

when Gusty Spence, the leader of the UVF, was caught and imprisoned, he gradually lost control of the organisation. by the end of the 70s it had turned from a politically motivated death squad into an organized crime syndicate and was competing with several other paramilitary rackets, especially the UDA who still control the drug trade in Protestant areas. when Gusty Spence got out of prison he and several other former UVF brigadeers would join the Progressive Unionist Party, which combined loyalism with socialism. they were instrumental in negotiating the ceasefire known as the Good Friday Agreement in the 90s.

the sectarian killings died down but never disappeared. the far-right DUP, led by arch-reactionary Ian Paisley and maintaining secretive associations with both the Loyal Orange Lodge and the UVF (alongside Paisley’s several failed attempts to create his own paramilitary organization known as Third Force), became the dominant unionist party and the dominant party in Stormount, while Sinn Feinn, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, had become the leading republican party throughout the 1980s. apart from a few weak gestures they both agreed on a bunch of austerity cuts and fought tooth and nail against abortion and so on, reiterating the “carnival of reaction north and south” in microcosm.

throughout the 2000s a lot changed. the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary was disbanded and replaced with the dysfunctional Police Service Northern Ireland. the loyalist paramilitaries generally decomissioned as requested. it seemed like things were changing. by 2011 the final report of the Independent Monitoring Comission was cautiously optimisitc, writing that “In our first year [2004], each week there were on average four victims of paramilitary violence, some in sectarian incidents. In the last six-monthly period on which we reported the number was about a third of that and none were sectarian” (IMC, pg. 14). but already in 2003 Peter R. Neumann, a researcher on terrorism and partisan conflict, predicted that “the current peace process may not be the ending of the conflict but the suppression of it into the politics of threat and coercion” (Neumann, Britain’s Long War, pg. 1). fifty years after Marcuse was worried about ‘repressive desublimation’ in America, we were finally enjoying the good old ‘disciplinary society’ in Northern Ireland.

the loyalist paramilitaries went through a profound involution, becoming ethnoreligious dictatorships with exclusive police authority over the communities they claim to represent, battling among each other for control over housing estates. they possessed exclusive control over the black market, forced all businesses to pay them protection, and controlled most commercial services (taxi cabs, window cleaners, and so on). they exiled troublemakers, wounded lawbreakers, and murdered their opponents. your neighbours are taken away in the middle of the night and no one asks what happened. you wake up to breaking glass and gunshots, but no screams. then the paramilitaries appropriate the house of their victim and lease it out themselves. the IMC make an uncharacteristically wry remark that this is just “one amongst many ways in which paramilitaries continued to do what they had always done, namely doing violence to their own communities.” (IMC, pg. 14)

The Comission writes that “when we started we observed a scene from which terrorism against the organs of the state had largely disappeared,” yet “as we close we see classic signs of insurgent terrorism” (IMC, pg. 15). the very next year, in December 2012, the UVF and UDA were able to mobilize a huge crowd of Protestants in a campaign of civil disobedience over the removal of the Union Jack from City Hall. this was the first time since the partition that loyalism had taken on the appearance of a genuinely popular movement, looking more like Catholic civil rights marchers of the 60s than Black & Tans. the transformation of loyalism into a form of militant political activism with its own demo circuit was one of a few significant changes of the last decade (we won’t have time for the others in this post). throughout the 2010s they carried out agitprop, pamphleteering, posting up placards and organizing protests against the traitors, touts and frauds at Stormount, even training their own professional activists like Jamie Bryson, all soliciting Protestants to help them protect their cultural identity, heritage and the usual hogwash.

the sedition intensified when, on the 11th of July, 2018, in order to protest ... something, all over Co. Down and Belfast masked and armed volunteers hijacked busses and cars and burned them out, blockaded the roads with burning tires, and hid pipe bombs in the wreckage (BBC). but there was no pretension that this was an act of popular will. it all happened before 5am, and the UVF immediately contacted the police and the press to claim responsibility.

now on the seventh day of violent unrest in Belfast we find this tendency reaching its fullest expression. the events are widely reported on as ‘riots’, but the attacks are identical to the UVF sedition in 2018 and, anyway, require a level of organization which only a paramilitary possess. the difference is that in this instance, like in the Flag protests of 2012-2013, the paramilitaries were able to mobilize ordinary Protestants. but how mobilized are they?

“When the hostage espouses the cause of the terrorist ... then another justice is active than the justice of the law, other scales than the scales of justice.” (Baudrillard, Cool Memories V 2000-2004)

whenever an ordinary person is beaten, shot, exiled or killed by the UVF, our neighbours do not, as we do, hide under their beds and pray. instead, very often, they celebrate. they regard acts of terror as occasions for saturnalia; they come out into the street and cheer, they open buckfast or bacardi, they call their friends to let them know, and in their voices one hears earnest excitement. after the involution of terror we can no longer really blame this on the red mist of bigotry. it makes no difference to armoured Protestants whether the victim is enemy or friend. the order of the spectacle wins out over the mode of terror.

if one looks closely at the events in belfast, common people are present but they are spectators, not participants. elderly women and babies in prams along with their families line up along the sidewalk to watch and cheer while the professionals blow things up. if this is a riot, it’s a strange kind of riot. in some sense The Belfast Riots Did Not Take Place. the pipe bomb returns to Belfast as a simulation of the pipe bomb of the Troubles, already a simulation of the pipe bomb of the Cyprus Emergency, a retaliation to an attack that hasn’t happened yet. but pay close attention to the redirection that has taken place; the bomb is thrown, not into the window of a Republican bar, like the petrol bomb that killed Matilda Gould, but into a line of riot police, like the pipe bomb at the Haymarket riot.

so, what’s next?

some commentary has been made about the fact that the military has been deployed to settle the unrest. this seems like something new, perhaps the first time since the Good Friday Agreement. but, in fact, the military were already deployed in Northern Ireland from the beginning of COVID-19 to support the health services and supply logistics (BBC). it’s significant that they were not called in for the 2012-2013 Flag protests or the ‘Day of Disorder’ in 2018. the state of exception brought about by the pandemic has possibly adjusted the scales. furthermore, the military, previously arming and collaborating with the UVF, are now being deployed specifically to prevent them.

the IMC reported that very few of the killings, by 2011, were sectarian. the Flag protests were sectarian only indirectly, affirming the Protestant ‘siege mentality’, but the enemy was Stormont and not the specter of armed republican revolution. the 2018 disorder had no sectarian content at all. conversely, the incident which incited this week’s Belfast Riots was much more explicitly sectarian. it’s a lot of horseshit: they (prominently, the DUP) wanted Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister and member of Sinn Feinn, arrested for violating COVID restrictions to go to a funeral. the riots began the day the PPS decided not to prosecute. the contention is that COVID restrictions are being unequally enforced between Protestants and Catholics. a paranoid inversion of the real inequality was typically a justifciation for sectarian violence during the Troubles. in one of the most violent moments of the riot the Lanark Way peace wall, separating the Falls and the Shankill, was set on fire and breached, Protestant rioters storming the Catholic street and attacking its residents (the Guardian).

is this the last gasp of an old order of sectarian violence, quickly being replaced by a new kind of reactionary populism? or are these the early ripples of a new, increasingly violent sectarian resurgence? will the tensions between the UVF and the British Army continue to escalate, or will the civil war transform into an ethnic conflict, like in Cyprus? we cannot anticipate the outcome. but the last 6 days seem like significant ones to me. we should remain sensitive to the changes that are coming.

[aboutanancientenquiry]

The complexity of Herodotus’ Artemisia

“The Artemisia of Herodotus was Complex

April 13, 2015

Scott Manning

Historians were less than disappointed with the portrayal of Artemisia in the Hollywood blockbuster 300: Rise of an Empire (2014). In order to understand their disappointment, it is necessary to establish Herodotus (c. 484-425 BC) and his work, The Histories, as the basis for most of what we know of Artemisia today. Among surviving ancient works, he was the first to mention her, providing the most detail.

Artemisia depicted in 300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

Herodotus first introduced Artemisia in his narrative of Persian King Xerxes’s invasion of Greece during the Greco-Persian Wars (490-479 BC). Among the lengthy list of captains in Xerxes’s fleet, he proclaimed that her “role in the campaign against Greece was a truly astonishing one for a woman” (7.99).1 He went on to explain that after her husband’s death, Artemisia became ruler of Halicarnassus, a city in present-day southwest Turkey. Although she had an adult son presumably capable of leading, she answered Xerxes's call to join his campaign. Herodotus believed her five ships, which she commanded, were among the best of the Persian fleet (7.99). Artemisia was unique among her peers as she was the only non-Persian, Greek, female commander in Xerxes’s council (8.101).

Several historians have theorized that it was only because Artemisia was queen of Halicarnassus—the hometown of Herodotus—that he decided to mention her at all.2 J. F. Lazenby describes Herodotus’s interest in her as an obvious, “almost malicious delight.”3 However, Rosaria Vignolo Munson points out that to assume that such motives “fully explain the prominence [Herodotus] gives to Artemisia is equivalent to denying in advance that she plays an integral role in the context.”4

After the initial introduction, it becomes clear that Artemisia was more than just an anecdote or hometown infatuation for Herodotus. She was integral to his narrative as first a foreshadower of events at Salamis, then a participant in the actual battle, and finally, a direct influencer in the execution of Persian strategy. A brief survey of Artemisia as found in The Histories demonstrates how she was crucial to the narrative and events.

Artemisia in Xerxes’s Council

As the Greeks awaited a Persian attack off the coast of Salamis, Xerxes sought advice from all of his commanders on how to proceed. Every commander except Artemisia recommended fighting the Greeks. After her experience at the Battle of Artemisium during the same campaign, she alone believed the Greeks were superior at sea and there was nothing for Xerxes to gain by risking his fleet in another battle. The Persian fleet consisted of multiple nationalities including Egyptians, Cypriots, Cilicians, and Pamphylians, which she believed were “worse than useless!” She also pointed out that Xerxes had already captured Athens, his originally stated goal for the invasion. Instead of fighting at Salamis, the Persians could hold their newly acquired territory in Greece and wait as the remaining allied city-states turned on each other. Artemisia believed Xerxes needed time, not another battle, to complete his conquest. Upon hearing this, her allies cringed and her enemies were delighted, as everyone believed the king would react harshly. Instead, “he was hugely impressed by Artemisia’s take on things, and lavished her with more praise than ever—though she had already stood high in his estimation before” (8.68-69).

Artemisia at Salamis

Xerxes still decided to confront the Greeks at Salamis and in the heat of this battle is where Artemisia appeared again in Herodotus’s narrative. When it became apparent that her ship was in the range of a charging Athenian ship, Artemisia ordered her own ship to ram and sink an ally, killing everyone. Artemisia escaped the battle and Xerxes witnessed the crushing blow she delivered. However, he could not see that the victim was one of his own. Instead, he believed Artemisia had sunk an enemy ship, making the statement, “My men have become women, and my women men” (8.87-88).

Artemisia after Salamis

Arguably, Artemisia’s most important role in Herodotus’s narrative comes after the Persian defeat at Salamis. Xerxes again asked for her advice on how to proceed with the campaign. She recommended that he return to Persia with the remainder of his navy and a bulk of his army, leaving behind only the eager general Mardonius with a handpicked force. Let Mardonius take responsibility for subduing Greece. If he was successful, then Xerxes could take credit. If he failed, then Xerxes could blame Mardonius. Xerxes agreed with the advice and returned to Persia, entrusting his bastard children to Artemisia for their safekeeping (8.102-103).

If the account is accurate, then Artemisia had a hand in transforming the direction of the largest invasion Greece had seen.

2nd-century AD depiction of Herodotus in the Ancient Agora of Athens (Sep. '14)

The Complex Character of Herodotus’s Artemisia

Although providing only snapshots of Artemisia throughout a single campaign, Herodotus presented a complex character that was unique not only because of her circumstances, but also because of how she reacted. She assumed ruling upon her husband’s death. When the call for Xerxes’s Greece campaign arrived, she volunteered. She then fought at Artemisium. When it came time for a council of war, she spoke her mind, going against all of her peers. She unabashedly predicted the defeat to come at Salamis, calling out the weak links in the Persian fleet. When the battle came, she sacrificed an allied ship to ensure her escape, killing everyone. One historian theorizes that the victims of the allied ship “could not have died to the last man unless someone made an effort to kill them,” a terrifying though.5 Luck ensured that Xerxes saw and misinterpreted her actions. Finally, she provided council that altered the course of the campaign, sending Xerxes home.

To top it off, in a profession dominated by men and in a military force dominated by Persian leadership, Artemisia stood out by her mere gender and race.

All of this makes it impossible to classify Artemisia. She was certainly brave, but not to her own detriment. She risked her neck to speak her mind, but she was not willing to fight to the death at Salamis. Contrast that with stories of fighting a lost battle that are recounted as inspirational, such as Thermopylae (480 BC). Salamis was not such a battle and Artemisia seemed to know when to flee at all costs, receiving no criticism from Herodotus.

Thus, Artemisia was fearless in speaking her mind and brave in battle, but still a survivor in the latter. She had her enemies, which Herodotus mentioned when she spoke before Salamis. The disputes remain a mystery, but she certainly was not popular among all her peers, possibly for openly criticizing them while gaining Xerxes’s favor. All of this equates to a complex character that is difficult to summarize.

Through fictionalization, future writers would attempt to make Artemisia one-dimensional, which we will cover in future articles.

Notes

This translation comes from the Tom Holland translation (New York: Penguin, 2013). [] For example, see Ernest G. Sihler, “On Herodotus’s and Aeschylus’s Accounts of the Battle of Salamis,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 8 (1877): 199 and W. W. Tarn, “The Fleet of Xerxes,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 28 (1908): 231-232. [] J. F. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece, 490-479 BC (Oxford: Aris & Phillips, 1993), 2. [] Rosaria Vignolo Munson, “Artemisia in Herodotus,” Classical Antiquity 7 (1988): 92. [] Barry Strauss, The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 186. []”

Source: https://scottmanning.com/content/the-artemisia-of-herodotus-was-complex/