Cyprus-Forum.com

[Get Real!]

What constitutes “CREDIBLE EVIDENCE”?

CREDIBLE EVIDENCE is evidence acquired from an unbiased public domain source that is considered an internationally recognized authority on one or more areas pertaining to the issue at hand.


GOOD sources of evidence include:

1. The United Nations and its multitude of sub-organizations including UNFICYP.

2. International organizations such as the IMF (International monetary fund), WHO (World Health Organization), ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), IMO (International Maritime Organization), and similar.

3. Non-profit making world renowned organizations such as, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, etc.

4. Credible international libraries and other non-open source knowledge base sources such as the Library of Congress.

5. The many British documents made public; needless to remind that the British ruled Cyprus between 1878 and 1960, and were therefore in an excellent position to determine fact from fiction.


BAD sources of “evidence” include:

1. People’s family members, friends, and other acquaintances, all prone to bias and unable to have been in more than one location at any given moment thereby having a very limited scope of events.

2. Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, Armenian Cypriot, Turkish, and Greek websites, all prone to bias and therefore suspected of serving their respective interests.

3. Newspaper articles and independent authors that do not quote their credible sources of information when stating facts & figures.

4. Text that is NOT in English as it defeats the very purpose of general comprehension and any “translations” thereof that cannot be easily checked for its accuracy.

5. Open source online encyclopedias such as the Wikipedia, that allow any person to write up articles and present them as fact with next to zero scrutiny.



Regards, GR.

PS: This is by no means a complete list so you are invited to make suggestions and/or scrutinize the above.

[Magnus]

I've spent a lot of time going through the British documents from the 1950s, both at the archives in London and published in the 'British Documents on the End of Empire' series.

Unfortunately, based on the parts I have read, I wouldn't consider them as a reliable source for anything other than the British perspective on Cyprus. They are a good way to show what Britain wanted from Cyprus and how they wanted to deal with certain situations (e.g. EOKA and Makarios) but there's very little to provide evidence for things that were happening between the various groups in the population.

Obviously, a lot of the information that got back to the British would be based on rumours and hearsay, not to mention all the misinformation that was fed back to them on purpose. In addition to that, their information network was not always successful or by the time they got round to investigating something they found no evidence.

We should also consider that it was in their best interests to 'turn a blind eye' to some events as their overall policy was to retain control of Cyprus.

I'm not saying that the documents are unreliable, just that you need to be a bit careful in how you use them. Of course my opinion is just based on the ones I have read.

[Big Al]

What constitutes “CREDIBLE EVIDENCE”?

CREDIBLE EVIDENCE is evidence acquired from an unbiased public domain source that is considered an internationally recognized authority on one or more areas pertaining to the issue at hand.


GOOD sources of evidence include:

1. The United Nations and its multitude of sub-organizations including UNFICYP.

2. International organizations such as the IMF (International monetary fund), WHO (World Health Organization), ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), IMO (International Maritime Organization), and similar.

3. Non-profit making world renowned organizations such as, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, etc.

4. Credible international libraries and other non-open source knowledge base sources such as the Library of Congress.

5. The many British documents made public; needless to remind that the British ruled Cyprus between 1878 and 1960, and were therefore in an excellent position to determine fact from fiction.


BAD sources of “evidence” include:

1. People’s family members, friends, and other acquaintances, all prone to bias and unable to have been in more than one location at any given moment thereby having a very limited scope of events.

2. Greek Cypriot, Turkish Cypriot, Armenian Cypriot, Turkish, and Greek websites, all prone to bias and therefore suspected of serving their respective interests.

3. Newspaper articles and independent authors that do not quote their credible sources of information when stating facts & figures.

4. Text that is NOT in English as it defeats the very purpose of general comprehension and any “translations” thereof that cannot be easily checked for its accuracy.

5. Open source online encyclopedias such as the Wikipedia, that allow any person to write up articles and present them as fact with next to zero scrutiny.



Regards, GR.

PS: This is by no means a complete list so you are invited to make suggestions and/or scrutinize the above.

This has to be the first time i have to agree with you GR...scary isnt it!! The major issue here though is that most posts on this forum that quote articles fall into the "bad evidence". What you dont mention however is the fact that even "credible sources of evidence" can also contradict eachother, depending on the authors background, interpretation etc.
How many times have we seen what appears to be a credible source give biased information only to see at the end of the document the authors surname is greek/turkish. In addition, most articles tend to skew toward the popluar opinion of the time so you can never really have a right or wrong answer to any question, you can always find conflicting views from credible sources....
Truth of the matter is if people want peace playing the blame game and pointing fingers isnt going to get you there.

[Oracle]

PS: This is by no means a complete list so you are invited to make suggestions and/or scrutinize the above.

On matters of Animal Cruelty:

1. The RSPCA
2. Me

On matters of Nutrition / Calorie Contents:

1. Weight Watchers
2. Me

On Fashion Sources:

1. Vogue
2. Not Me

On Music:

1. Bach
2. Eurovision Song Contest Archives
3. GR!

On Evolution:

1. Charles Darwin / Me
2. Not God / Bible / Koran

On Jokes and Enigmas:

1. Rowan Atkinson
2. Not Bubbles

[Get Real!]

On matters of Animal Cruelty:

1. The RSPCA

That definitely came in handy once when I unleashed an animal cruelty campaign...

[Oracle]

P.S. Can I add Woody Allen to that list ?

(.. anywhere seems to fit! ...... )

[Oracle]

On matters of Animal Cruelty:

1. The RSPCA

That definitely came in handy once when I unleashed an animal cruelty campaign...

.... I do recall! ..... was it against "devil"?

[Get Real!]

I've spent a lot of time going through the British documents from the 1950s, both at the archives in London and published in the 'British Documents on the End of Empire' series.

Unfortunately, based on the parts I have read, I wouldn't consider them as a reliable source for anything other than the British perspective on Cyprus. They are a good way to show what Britain wanted from Cyprus and how they wanted to deal with certain situations (e.g. EOKA and Makarios) but there's very little to provide evidence for things that were happening between the various groups in the population.

Obviously, a lot of the information that got back to the British would be based on rumours and hearsay, not to mention all the misinformation that was fed back to them on purpose. In addition to that, their information network was not always successful or by the time they got round to investigating something they found no evidence.

We should also consider that it was in their best interests to 'turn a blind eye' to some events as their overall policy was to retain control of Cyprus.

I'm not saying that the documents are unreliable, just that you need to be a bit careful in how you use them. Of course my opinion is just based on the ones I have read.

The British had a good habit of compiling detailed reports of major events such as the 1923 treaties, the September 1931 unrests, the 1950 plebiscite, the commencement of the 1955 EOKA campaign, the 23 page “first blood” incident of 1958 I mention in another thread, and many others, and that’s what we’re mostly interested in as far as this forum’s discussions are concerned, and we certainly wouldn’t resort to British reports if we were investigating say British goals in Cyprus over the decades or something along those lines.

I'm sure the experienced members here know when to add a pinch of salt to what they read...

[bilako22]

I've spent a lot of time going through the British documents from the 1950s, both at the archives in London and published in the 'British Documents on the End of Empire' series.

Unfortunately, based on the parts I have read, I wouldn't consider them as a reliable source for anything other than the British perspective on Cyprus. They are a good way to show what Britain wanted from Cyprus and how they wanted to deal with certain situations (e.g. EOKA and Makarios) but there's very little to provide evidence for things that were happening between the various groups in the population.

Obviously, a lot of the information that got back to the British would be based on rumours and hearsay, not to mention all the misinformation that was fed back to them on purpose. In addition to that, their information network was not always successful or by the time they got round to investigating something they found no evidence.

We should also consider that it was in their best interests to 'turn a blind eye' to some events as their overall policy was to retain control of Cyprus.

I'm not saying that the documents are unreliable, just that you need to be a bit careful in how you use them. Of course my opinion is just based on the ones I have read.

The British had a good habit of compiling detailed reports of major events such as the 1923 treaties, the September 1931 unrests, the 1950 plebiscite, the commencement of the 1955 EOKA campaign, the 23 page “first blood” incident of 1958 I mention in another thread, and many others, and that’s what we’re mostly interested in as far as this forum’s discussions are concerned, and we certainly wouldn’t resort to British reports if we were investigating say British goals in Cyprus over the decades or something along those lines.

I'm sure the experienced members here know when to add a pinch of salt to what they read...

Is that a bit of Greek salt?

[Get Real!]

On matters of Animal Cruelty:

1. The RSPCA

That definitely came in handy once when I unleashed an animal cruelty campaign...

.... I do recall! ..... was it against "devil"?

No, it was members that singled out Cyprus as an animal "hell" while overlooking their own country's deeds so I had to give them a bit of a crash course on reality...