:lol::lol::lol::lol:
What to do when there’s no one left to blame?
WE SEEM to have been led to yet another dead-end by our illustrious leaders. Just after the referendum, they were urging Greek Cypriot refugees in their hundreds to file recourses against Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights. To say the initiative boomeranged would be a gross understatement, because the boomerang we launched is coming back at us in the form of an S300 missile.
The devastation could be caused by a Greek Cypriot who has decided to withdraw his recourse from the ECHR after reaching a friendly settlement with the Turkish Cypriot compensation committee. In exchange for his property in the occupied north, he would be given land owned by a Turkish Cypriot in Larnaca.
The problem is that all Turkish Cypriot properties in the Republic are under the guardianship of the government, which could refuse to hand over the Larnaca property to the man.
If this happened, he could then take the government to court, challenging the law by which the government has taken control of all TC real estate. Whatever the court decided would be problematic. If it ruled that the guardianship law was unconstitutional all the TCs would flock south demanding the return of their properties.
If the ECHR upheld the law, then the aforementioned GC would go to the ECHR claiming his property rights were violated by the Cyprus government.
I mention all these boring details as background to the latest twist of the Cyprob property saga which has caused a new bout of political breast-beating and the launch of a search-party looking for credible scapegoats.
ACTING presidente, House presidente, general secretary of AKEL and candidate presidente Demetris Christofias will not be joining the search-party as he has already pointed his finger, rather unimaginatively, at the usual suspects, although he avoided naming them until he spoke on the Friday morning radio shows.
Before Friday he restricted himself to saying, very diplomatically, that international courts were not impartial and fair.
“No court exists that is not dependent on those who have the upper hand in the world,” he said and warned in a statesmanlike manner, reminiscent of Spy Kyp: “We must beware because the shift of the balance of power in the world could lead to efforts of some, who have the upper hand, to influence the courts.”
He announced on Friday that “those who have the upper hand in the world” are – believe it or not – the Yanks and the Brits…
The Yanks may have the upper hand but do not sit on the ECHR, while the Brits who do, do not have the upper hand in the world. Nevertheless the forces of evil have the majority of the ECHR judges in their pocket and have instructed them to screw us, without Vaseline.
ALTHOUGH a big supporter of Christofias, former Senior Counsel of the Republic, and Radio Proto commentator on human frights, Akis Pasavvas, does not agree with him. Papasavvas is convinced that the Ethnarch and Attorney-General Petros Clerides are to blame for the current situation because they did not see the development coming and failed to take pre-emptive action.
For instance, if the Ethnarch had appointed him deputy AG when he was in line for promotion to the post, things could have been different.
Tassos unwisely decided to leave the post vacant rather than give it to Papasavvas, and we are now paying the price for his grave error. Had he become deputy AG, he would have prevented those who have the upper hand from influencing the court’s decision, or at least persuaded them to use Vaseline when applying their decision.
BESIDES abducting the Greek Cypriot, who has put his personal gain above his country’s interests, and forcing him to withdraw his appeal, there are other things we could do to prevent the ECHR from endorsing a ‘friendly settlement’ between the pseudo-compensation committee.
Refugee organisation Adouloti Kerynia will hold a demonstration in Eleftheria Square on Saturday to protest the ECHR bias, the Greek Cypriot who has reached a friendly settlement and the lack of parking spaces in downtown Nicosia. Would the ECHR judges and those who have the upper hand in the world be watching?
Perhaps not, which is why DIKO big-wig and legal eagle Andreas Angelides made an even more imaginative suggestion – a Greek Cypriot demonstration outside the ECHR in Strasbourg “like the Kurds did for Ocalan”.
A great idea, as long as can we find a volunteer to douse himself in petrol and strike a match.
IF WE DO NOT, then we should force one of the bash-patriotic lawyers who made loads of money filing recourses on behalf of refugees to the ECHR, which led the court to propose the property committee in the north, so that it would not have to examine the 1,000 plus Greek Cypriot cases.
Going up in flames is the least these guys deserve for ripping off na?ve refugees, by giving them false hopes of big compensations for their properties. Given that this is the only way to persuade the ECHR to change its biased ways, the lawyers have a duty to volunteer for the flames as, according to Angelides, it would help their clients’ cases, just like it did for Ocalan.
HACKS have no trouble judging people, questioning their motives, criticising their views, labelling them foreign agents, but as soon as someone gives them a taste of their own medicine they just cannot take it.
Last week the holier than thou Journalists’ Union issued an announcement censuring former government spokesman, Michalis Papapetrou for daring to criticise the saintly hacks in a newspaper article. Papapetrou had written that “instead of being critical and questioning political conditions and developments, almost all journalists had been transformed into processors of the nonsense produced by the government, making it more palatable and digestible.”
This is perfectly fair and legitimate comment, but it really hurt the processors of government propaganda, who got their union to issue a statement, putting Pap in his place for his “offensive aphorism”. This is what it said:
“While we recognise and fully respect your right to judge and to criticise journalists, the mass media and their work, we consider, without reservation that the aphorism in your article constitutes a big insult to the journalistic world and a negation of its important work and contribution to society, the country and democratic institutions and values.”
These self-important guys are more intolerant of criticism than the Ethnarch, and not ashamed to advertise the fact. But we are all indebted to them for their big contribution to society and democratic values, even when they are behaving like fascistic bullies, hell-bent on suppressing views they do not approve of.
THE STATEMENT did not stop at advertising the virtue and importance of the propaganda processors. In its patronising conclusion, it sanctimoniously added: “We expect and are awaiting for this serious slip to be understood and that there will be a correction, for the sake of the freedom of the press…”
Only in an insane country like ours could hacks be attacking people who exercise the right of free speech and demanding apologies from them for doing so, while believing that they are making a big contribution to democratic institutions and values. It is not even as if Pap said something that was untrue or incorrect.
But the propaganda processors, who I bet drafted the idiotic statement, have been repeating government myths and untruths for so long, when they hear or read something factually correct, they cannot handle it and believe it is a “serious slip”.
SPEAKING of people suffering from delusions of self-importance, ETYK’s megalomaniac boss Loizos Hadjicostis has thought up of a very clever way to publicise his goodness and compassion.
He sent a letter to the banks, asking them to deduct one per cent from the monthly wage of all bank employees and hand it over to the union so it could donate it to the victims of Greece’s forest fires. When he was told by bank lawyers who saw the letter that this was illegal and that taking money from bank employees without their consent constituted theft, the union boss was unfazed.
He sent a second letter a few days later, saying that he had held an extraordinary general meeting of his members and it decided that the one per cent should be deducted.
Knowing the Stalinist methods used by Hadjicostis, he probably held an EGM with one tenth of the union’s members, which does not give him the right to take a percentage of the wages of those who did not give their consent.
It would still be theft, but for a good cause. Hadjicostis can declare himself a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich bank employees to give to the poor. There is another good cause served by his cunning scheme – his personal elevation to generous benefactor of the fire victims.
BY NEXT Thursday, we hear, there will a fifth person announcing his candidacy for the February presidential elections. He will represent the new movement, ‘Union of Dynamic Resistance’, which was put together by a group of concerned citizens who felt that none of today’s politicians offered Greek Cypriots a truly patriotic alternative when it came to the national problem. This party is opposed to compromises with the consequences of the invasion, which all the political leaders of Cyprus, including the Ethnarch, are willing to make.
The candidate of this movement is expected to be our establishment’s good friend Haris Kyriakides, who had served for a long time as the DIKO spokesman and had been a close associate, for many years of the saintly Spy Kyp. Do not know how the Ethnarch will take the news of Haris’ candidacy, given that he could attract quite a few votes from the Spy Kyp loyalists of DIKO, whom Tassos has repeatedly snubbed.
AFTER receiving hundreds of complaints for terminating our ‘Positive’ and ‘Omirou’ weekly series, we have decided to resume them, as we do not have very much to write this week. Back by popular demand, here they are:
POSITIVE 5,348: OUR Ethnarch, as his cheerleader-in-chief, Girogos Colocassides reminded us this week, sorted out our economy. He had inherited an economy with public finances in a complete mess – fiscal deficit was six per cent of GDP and public debt was almost unserviceable – and gradually sorted everything out.
Both the fiscal deficit and the public debt have been drastically cut to well below the maximum levels set by the EU, while now he is raising the income tax threshold. He has screwed us with continuous hikes of indirect taxes, but at least Vaseline had been applied first.
In reality all the credit for putting state finances in order should go to his finance minister Michalis Sarris, by far the ablest and most knowledgeable member of the cabinet.
We should give credit to Tassos, not only for appointing him, but for backing him, when the Stalinists of AKEL were publicly pillorying Sarris for his neo-liberal policies. Unfortunately, Sarris will not be part of the government if the Ethnarch is re-elected; he informed Tassos, some time ago, that he would be leaving Cyprus on the completion of the government’s current term.
OMIROU 69: Yiannakis the EDEK leader showed off his power not only to read the future but to relay it in verse: “We move forward with Tassos Papadopoulos, with certainty, on a pragmatic, but assertive and fighting line, we move forward with Tassos Papadopoulos, who will be the certain President of The Republic for the next five years. This is the decision of the people. We move forward with certainty and self-confidence.”
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.ph ... 9&cat_id=7
