My oh my, I really have rattled some people's cages ... and just by asking people to consider other cases and other experiences.
Those who are convinced they know my ulterior motives might want to ask this simple question : how the hell can you identify, never mind establish or know, the motives of an unknown cyber poster ? So what you do is speculate what my motives might be, then with a little bit of your hocus-pocus turn assumed motive into 'fact', and then present that to the forum as an undeniable truth.
Kifeas et. al, it is not me who has a problem with the idea of 'truth' of 'fact' it is you who have a completely arbitrary notion. Thus whenever I suggest that we
test what is a historical fact or a 'truth' your response is either to say (i) I'm trying to hide or distort something or (ii) that my motives are insidious or (iii) that I refuse to acknowledge your so-called 'facts'.
Whichever way, you flatly refuse to allow the claims to be tested or questioned. That is the way of the blind ignorant fundamentalist - follow Kifeas, his is the way, the truth and the light.
Kifeas et. al, as I've said before, are like dogs pissing at lamp-posts. They basically patrol what they regard as their territory, each night pissing on the posts to mark out and remind whose patch this is. Whenever someone dares cross into their patch, ignoring the piss, they start howling and barking in the vain hope that if loud enough and persistent enough the said intruder will leave. Keep pissing and howling Kifeas, if you must.
Pyropolizer
You asked reasonable questions and
because I probably disagree with you on many things, exchange with you is fruitful (in my view). We can test the basis of our claims and counter-claims without getting into personal abuse or questioning each other's integrity or motives. At least that is what I hope is the case.
There are dozens, if not most, of the states in the world which owe their current form to past ethnic cleansing. On another thread I seem to remember, I sketched out a list of these starting with Canada and ending in Japan or Australia - the Pacific anyway. I also gave some examples of islands that have been divided, including between a much more powerful party and a weaker party. At no point have I said that these other examples are identical to Cyprus - what I have said is that they may serve as useful
comparisons Kifeas et.al. refuse to accept theme as comparisons not because they know anything about these other cases but because they seem committed to the principle of blinding ignorance - if it can't be seen it can't be there, therefore it can't exist therefore it can't be true. Tough, Kifeas et. al, they are there and they do exist and they are open to comparison. The main question is
how are they comparable ?
How might we learn ?
So Pyropolizer, my responses to your direct questions are, for the moment :
1)Which states have been established by applying ethnic cleansing and when?
I began to list those elsehwere, as noted above. There is not, for example, a single Latin American state nor a single European state that has not established itself in whole or part on what we would now call 'ethnic cleansing'. This ethnic cleansing has a long history - hence my use of that title for the thread - some of it goes back hundreds of years, but there remain many examples including 'cleansings' (a horrible word, if I may say) which continue to the present. Some of those were listed in the article extract I posted. But you don't have to take my word for it - you might want to go and look at the dozens of historical research journals and other academic publications which document all of this. You might want to ask why there are so many international human rights organisations dedicated to remedying or uncovering these histories if, in fact, there is nothing there to uncover. You might want to ask why most states now have either written into the constitution or otherwise written into law measures to acknowledge, remedy and rectify long histories of ethnic cleansing.
2)Which of them ended up democratic?
Many, but by no means all of them. Thus New Zealand and Canada were founded on the extermination of the indigenous populations but which, in the end not only are democratic states but signed acts of settlement with the indigenous populations to restore or establish anew various rights and claims.
But ending up democratic ? Germany, France, Spain, Croatia, Poland, .... Greece, Turkey ..... Cyprus ... a long list.
However other places, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Western Sahara for example, have suffered ethnic cleansing even by states which claim to be democratic (Russia, Turkey and Morocco, in these examples). And the UK - a democracy - is guilty of the ethnic cleansing of the Chagos Islanders from Diego Garcia. Successive UK governments have been found guilty in law on numerous occasions and yet the Chagos Islanders have still not been able to secure their return to their home. Effectively many have been living in concentration camps for over thirty years.
(Kifeas et. al, just because I have mentioned Turkey here, and in a critical light, does that make me anti-Turkish ? Or maybe because I have mentioned Turkey here I'm trying to ignore Cyprus, bury it amongst all those other examples ? Please tell, oh Kifeas the Clairvoyant, what are my real motives ?)
3)How others secured a final settlement in cases of ethnic cleansing and under what conditions (capitulation perhaps?)
Big question. And actually the reason ('motive') I started this thread in the first place. There are many and detailed examples we could look at and we might learn something from them. One grand old man said (I paraphrase) 'It is said that history repeats itself as tragedy. They forgot to add that it repeats itself first time as tragedy, second time as farce.' If in the case of Cyprus we have already repeated the tragedies that have befallen others, by looking and learning from others we might escape the Cyprus problem repeating itself as the Cyprus farce.
Though judging by
Kifeas et. al's responses they seem to be dedicated to the performance of an unending farce.
