Cyprus-Forum.com

[kimon07]

Ottomania....

You people are going to be punished because of your incredible stupidity.

Cyprus is on fire, and to top that, you Ottomans cling onto the irrelevant "mother" that is the ridicule of the entire world. This "mother" is the dead wood that needs to be discarded, otherwise she will take us down.

So it's out with dead wood, and its onwards and upwards for us.

Not mention the incredible racism displayed against our not so irrelevant regional partners. You only display your arrogance by being racist Greek rent boys, as if you have anything to gloat about, and against a nation that shows you exactly how it's done and produces a whole lot more than olive oil. What is important is the Gas, and our friends in the region, which we can rely on, not the lost cause that is ottoman Greece. We are talking about balance of power changes in the entire region, but all you talk about are past glories, now defunct.

So WAKE UP!

A new beginning is about to dawn.

This will be my last answer to you because I have concluded that you are not a worthy discussion – debate opponent.
Calling Greece Ottomania and Greeks Ottomans and such, apart from being deeply insulting, sows how ignorant you are (unless you are a TC, in which case you are absolutely excused).

If you had the slightest idea you would know that the beginning of the fall of the Ottoman Empire started by Greece and the Greeks in 1821. The Greek Revolution was the beginning of the creation of the other Balkan states as well (Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro etc.). The Balkan wars, to which Greece played the most important part (having a navy which blocked any Turkish military movement in the Aegean), resulted in kicking the Ottomans out of the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Islands completely.

The first world war, to which Greece also participated, was the last blow to the Ottoman Empire as it lost, then, all the its territories in the Middle east and Arabia.
So, instead of calling Greeks Ottomans and unless you are Turkish yourself, be grateful to them for having started (if not caused, to a grate extend) the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, and by the way. Thanks to Greece, which helped decisively with its admission to the EU, our island, Cyprus is not at all on fire. On the contrary, it is doing quite well and it will do even better as soon as it gets rid of the communist government.

Having said the above, I will now allow you to go back to your play room to carry on with your "New Begining".

[Maxx]

Ottomania....

You people are going to be punished because of your incredible stupidity.

Cyprus is on fire, and to top that, you Ottomans cling onto the irrelevant "mother" that is the ridicule of the entire world. This "mother" is the dead wood that needs to be discarded, otherwise she will take us down.

So it's out with dead wood, and its onwards and upwards for us.

Not mention the incredible racism displayed against our not so irrelevant regional partners. You only display your arrogance by being racist Greek rent boys, as if you have anything to gloat about, and against a nation that shows you exactly how it's done and produces a whole lot more than olive oil. What is important is the Gas, and our friends in the region, which we can rely on, not the lost cause that is ottoman Greece. We are talking about balance of power changes in the entire region, but all you talk about are past glories, now defunct.

So WAKE UP!

A new beginning is about to dawn.

This will be my last answer to you because I have concluded that you are not a worthy discussion – debate opponent.
Calling Greece Ottomania and Greeks Ottomans and such, apart from being deeply insulting, sows how ignorant you are (unless you are a TC, in which case you are absolutely excused).

If you had the slightest idea you would know that the beginning of the fall of the Ottoman Empire started by Greece and the Greeks in 1821. The Greek Revolution was the beginning of the creation of the other Balkan states as well (Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro etc.). The Balkan wars, to which Greece played the most important part (having a navy which blocked any Turkish military movement in the Aegean), resulted in kicking the Ottomans out of the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Islands completely.

The first world war, to which Greece also participated, was the last blow to the Ottoman Empire as it lost, then, all the its territories in the Middle east and Arabia.
So, instead of calling Greeks Ottomans and unless you are Turkish yourself, be grateful to them for having started (if not caused, to a grate extend) the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, and by the way. Thanks to Greece, which helped decisively with its admission to the EU, our island, Cyprus is not at all on fire. On the contrary, it is doing quite well and it will do even better as soon as it gets rid of the communist government.

Having said the above, I will now allow you to go back to your play room to carry on with your "New Begining".

OMG, you Ottomans are seriously deluded.

The Greeks started the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I mean please.

What were the Russians, Austrians, Hungarians, French, and Brits doing all that time. Reading the Greek Classics?

[kimon07]

Ottomania....



The Greeks started the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I mean please.

What were the Russians, Austrians, Hungarians, French, and Brits doing all that time. Reading the Greek Classics?

Simple. They sat back and wached for six(6) years. It is evident you have never heard of the "Holy Alliance". I am not surprised.


Greek Revolution 1821

http://www.third-millennium-library.com ... LUTION.htm
…….Had the armed intervention of Russia, England, and France taken place at an earlier period, much suffering and bloodshed might have been averted. But Russia was fettered by the Holy Alliance to suppress all insurrection…….

…….So the poor Greeks were left for six years to struggle alone and unaided against the whole force of the Turkish empire before relief came, when they were on the verge of annihilation. It was the struggle of a little country about half the size of Scotland against an empire four times as large as Great Britain and France combined; of a population less than a million against twenty-five millions. It was more than this: it was, in many important respects, a war between Asia and Europe, kindred in spirit with the old Crusades. It was a war of races and religions, rather than of political principles; and hence it was marked by inhuman atrocities on both sides, reminding us of the old wars between Jews and Syrians. It was a tragedy at which the whole civilized world gazed with blended interest and horror. It was infinitely more fierce than any contest which has taken place in Europe for three hundred years. To the Greeks themselves it was, after the first successes, the most discouraging contest that I know of in human history; and yet it had all those elements of heroism which marked the insurrection of the Hollanders under William the Silent against the combined forces of Austria and Spain. It was grand in its ideas, like our own Revolutionary War; and the liberty which was finally gained was purchased by greater sacrifices than any recorded in any war, either ancient or modern. The war of Italian independence was a mere holiday demonstration in comparison with it. Even the Polish wars against Russia were nothing to it, in the sufferings which were endured and the gallant feats which were performed.

[Get Real!]

So the poor Greeks were left for six years to struggle alone and unaided against the whole force of the Turkish empire before relief came, when they were on the verge of annihilation.

[kimon07]

1821-2011. 190 years of modern Greece.
its a shame they've contributed virtually zero to 'Hellenism'.
if 190 years of failure and stone age progress is part of Hellenistic evolution, then i'm afraid you're going to see a lot of rejection to the idea.

190 years of modern Greece has given our children and the world... what exactly?
'opa, opa', ouzo, zeimbekiko and the refined art of corruption?

In previous posts to Me ed and Maxx I explained what Hellenism gave to Europe since the foundation of Venice, as well as the periods from 1821 to 1829 (Greek Revolution) and the period 1912-1913 (Balcan Wars). The termination of the Ottoman Empire or, at least, the npush of it out of Europe (The Balcans).
I will give you data about other periods on posts to come. You see, I always try to substantiate my points with links to foreign sources, so as to avoid being accused that I just repeat "Gymnasium rubbish". Therefore, it takes me some time to answer.

[kimon07]

1821-2011. 190 years of modern Greece.
190 years of modern Greece has given our children and the world... what exactly?
'opa, opa', ouzo, zeimbekiko and the refined art of corruption?

Let us start with the guy below.
Constantin Carathéodory (or Constantine Karatheodori) (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Καραθεοδωρή) (13 September 1873 – 2 February 1950) was a Greek mathematician. He made significant contributions to the theory of functions of a real variable, the calculus of variations, and measure theory. His work also includes important results in conformal representations and in the theory of boundary correspondence. In 1909, Carathéodory pioneered the Axiomatic Formulation of Thermodynamics along a purely geometrical approach. See the full report here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin ... C3%A9odory
I will come back with the facts proving that without his help Einstein would had never completed his theory of relativity, according to his own words.

AND BE PROUD.

[supporttheunderdog]

Rubbish.

Hellenism used to be about progression and fresh ideas which finished over a thousand years ago..

Hellenism is not about some greek shistos like you clinging on past glories.

Bring something new to the party or you are nothing better than a Roman or and Egyptian - consigned to the dustbin of history.[/quote]

If you come to think of it, civilization in all its forms, including reading and writing, is relativelly fresh and new to you, considering that you did not have them till after the Romans got them from us (Hellens) and brought them to your Mother-Land (the Albion).

On the other hand, you (and some others in here) have repeatedly demonstrated one of the foundamental differences between Hellenism (debate - argument- exchange of ideas-proof, which, apparently, are "all Greek to you") and your very own Barbarism (insult-violence).[/quote]

Yes but the ancient Greeks did not invent civilisation - there were great civiliastions in the Tigris and Euphrates and in North Africa, and on Crete, and Anatolia, with writing (The Hiitties were using cuniform probbaly 300 years before Linear B was developed) long before the rise of Mycenaea. The Mycenaeans only got the idea of writing from the (then non-Greek) Cretans who had LInear A.

They had to borrow afrom another civilisation a second time to relearn how to write. Yhe modern Greek Alpahabet is descended from a Phonetic alphabet probabaly used by the Phoenercians, which was a consonantary (or Abjad) style of writing, but which predated modern Greek by 400 years. The Greek alphabet 9and weterm alphabets that descned from it are descneded from the same levantine script that also later became the Hebrew Alphabet. As it was phonetic it was modified by the Greeks to cater for the different use of sound between the Greek, and Semetic laguages the alphabet was originally devoleped to represent.

We simply do not know what other civilisations developed by way of say drama or political theory or philosophy: how much was destoyed by for example the Mycenaean invaders in Crete in 1600, the wars of Alexander the Great or the later Romans?

[GreekIslandGirl]

Kimon, thank you for a some great posts.

Perhaps we can look deeper into just quite how much we owe to the Greek language.

Some researchers have made the claims that none of our western ways of thinking, creating and experimenting would have been possible without Greek. It was a major accomplishment to introduce vowels and this is often downplayed. [Was this the only example of vowel-introduction? - need to check.] It enabled the left to right writing we have now and engaged our left hemisphere which is responsible for scientific thinking, as opposed to mystical/faith based ideas processing.

Can you elaborate on this further if you know any more and have time, please.

[GreekIslandGirl]

Hellenism is the Mother of Invention!


By adding vowels to the Semitic alphabet the Greeks created the first truly phonetic alphabet which is able to accurately and unambiguously transcribe the spoken word of any language using only twenty to thirty signs or letters. “The original Greek invention achieved the essential task of analysis and it has not been improved upon. 7
The purely phonetic alphabet had its greatest impact on the Greeks, the very first people to achieve and to use it. The Greek alphabet first came into use around 700 B.C. 8 Within 300 years the Greeks had developed from dependence on an oral tradition based on myths, to a rationalistic, logical culture which laid the foundations for logic, science, philosophy, psychology, history, political science, and individualism.

How can one account for this rapid transition from a state of group involvement to individual scepticism? We believe that the alphabet served as the operative ground for this rich development which was characterized by the classification and abstraction of ideas.
The very word idea is indicative of the revolution in thinking that took place with literacy. This word, which is not to be found in Homeric Greek, derived from the word eidos indicating “visual image.” The alphabet had the mysterious and unique power of separating the visual faculty from the other senses and giving dominant play to the visual. The pervasive use of uniform elements, the phonetic letters that the alphabet entailed, encouraged the additional visual matching of situational elements which formed the ground for Greek logic, geometry, and rationality. The idea of truth itself, the correspondence of thing and intellect, is based on matching. At a more popular level, the development of realistic representation in the arts is identified with the’ Greeks in their first age of literacy.

The phonetic alphabet also served as a paradigm for the process of abstraction, for the written word is an abstraction of the spoken word which, in turn, is an abstraction from the holistic experience. The word, .when written with the phonetic alphabet, represents a double level of abstraction beyond the merely spoken language. First, the spoken word is broken up into its constituents of semantically meaningless phonemes which, in turn, are represented by meaningless letters. The use of the phonetic alphabet encouraged the development of abstractions:
With literacy they (the Greeks) suddenly saw .their universe as ordered. Their new world view, however, was in conflict with the vocabulary they inherited from their oral tradition. Their conflict produced essential and permanent contributions to the vocabulary of all abstract thought: body and space, matter and motion, permanence and change, quality and quantity, combination and separation are among the counters of common currency now available because pre-Socratics first brought them near the level of consciousness. 10
Paradoxically, the alphabet enabled .the Greeks to reduce the massive polyphonies of their oral culture by selecting and logically (visually) connecting what had been simultaneous and musical. If the Greek means of abstracting and conceptualizing was by logical connection, the abstract art and science of the twentieth century proceeds by the contrary, means of pulling out the logical (visual) connections in space and time. This returns the art and philosophy of today to musical form. If the Greek drive to abstraction had been to eliminate the acoustic and musical in favour of visual and logical connectedness, our nonrepresentational and abstract art and science assumes a complementary pattern.

The Greek alphabet also provided both the model and the bias for classification, an essential development in Greek analytic thought during the period from 700 to 400 B.C. - especially for logic, science, and history. In addition to serving as a paradigm of abstraction and classification, the alphabet also served as a model for division and separability. With the alphabet every word is separated into its constituent sounds and constituent letters. Havelock shows that the Greek idea of atomicity - that all matter can be divided up into individual tiny atoms – is related to the use of the alphabet: “… they saw the analogy with what the alphabet had done to language and likened their atoms to letters…” 11 The Greek capacity for divisiveness and separation extends way beyond their atomicity of matter. With writing, what is recorded or remembered becomes separate from the writer, existing in a book or a scroll. Knowledge takes on objective identity separate from the knower. The Greek, in this way, developed the notion of objectivity and detachment, the separation of the knower from the object of his awareness. This is the beginning of the scientific method and the source of the dichotomy the Greeks created between subjective thinking as found in art and poetry, and objective thinking as exemplified by philosophy and science. In art, percept precedes concept while in science, method dominates both...


Left-Right Split of the Brain and the Role of the Alphabet in Hemispheric Dominance

Recent developments in the field of neurophysiology tend to support the hypothesis that the alphabet produced a situation favorable for the development of logic, rational thought, and science. Neurophysiologists have determined that while there is a certain degree of redundancy and overlap between the two hemispheres of the brain, essentially the left and right hemispheres of the brain perform specialized tasks. The right hemisphere is the locus of the artistic, intuitive, spiritual, holisttc, simultaneous, discontinuous or creative side of our personalities, whereas the left hemisphere controls the lineal, visual, logical, analytic, mathematical, and verbal activities of our psyche.
We here suggest that the alphabet created a lineal and visual environment of services and experiences (everything from architecture and highways to representational art) which contributed to the ascendancy or dominance of the left, or lineal, hemisphere. This conjecture is consistent with the results of the Russian neurophysiologist Luria who found that the area of the brain which controls linear sequencing and, hence, logic, mathematics, and scientific thinking, is located in the prefrontal region of the left hemisphere:
The mental process for writing a word entails still another specialization: Putting the letters in the proper sequence to form the word. Lashley discovered many years ago that sequential analysis involved a zone of the brain different from that employed for spatial analysis. In the course of our extensive studies we have located the region responsible for sequential analysis in the anterior regions of the left hemisphere. 14
Luria’s results show that the expression “linear thinking” is not merely a figure of speech, but an actual, bona fide activity of the brain which takes place in the anterior regions of the left hemisphere of the brain. His results also indicate that the use of the alphabet, with its emphasis on linear sequence, stimulates this area of the brain. Luria’s findings provide an understanding of how the written alphabet, with its lineal structure, was able to create the conditions conducive to the development of Western science, technology, and rationality.

http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitive ... phabet.htm

[yialousa1971]

What a foul mouth you have dog! As they say Ignorance is bliss!

The second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport.In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim expansion in Egypt in AD 641 when a new capital was founded at Fustat (Fustat was later absorbed into Cairo). Alexandria was known because of its lighthouse (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its library (the largest library in the ancient world); and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages.