legein

If anyone has worked in a large multinational financial institution they would begin to get a glimpse into the world our erstwhile political leaders have mapped out for us.

In these large multinational financial institutions there are a myriad of ethnic groups eagerly working away trying to meet their deadlines. However, depending on the historical legacy and current location of the company will depend which voices tend to predominate. For example, if the financial institution is located in Sydney it is likely to be dominated by Australians; although, this is not guaranteed. If one is working for an American headquartered corporation located in Sydney then there is likely to be a smattering of Americans on secondment. If one is working for a Swiss or German corporation one is likely to hear Germanic accents around the office. If one is working for a British financial institution one is likely to hear many English voices. It appears the Irish and Chinese are ubiquitous in all these organisations no matter where they are located.

The result of this Babylonian work environment is that no one really expresses any serious political thought. In fact, by expressing political thought employees are in danger of contravening company policy or the legislation of the jurisdiction in which the company is located because any political thought may be deemed to be offensive to one of the many ethnic groups which populate these financial institutions. For example, one would not dare show strong support for the Palestinian cause because that may cause offence to some which could be construed as racist. Of course, fashionable causes are acceptable such as freedom in Tibet; particularly, when China is a market the corporation wants to enter, whereby political activism softens the ground. This does not preclude the ethnic groups in these corporations clearly displaying their ethnic origin. But this is done via benign means such as football teams or reference to the medal table of the Olympic Games. Perhaps, there may be some ethnic jokes. But again they are always benign.

References to history are also severely frowned upon. History is an impediment to doing more business. It can also impede the search for "talent".  Greek concerns over the use of the name Macedonia is seen as trivial and arcane compared to next year's earnings announcement.   

Therefore, because we are told that competition in the world of finance is so fierce, and that working for these companies is such a joy, no one dares to utter a serious political thought or make reference to history due to the potentially adverse consequences. Any grievances are hidden away and forgotten. People are made mute. Loyalty is switched from one's nation, culture and history to the corporation and its objectives. No one is to rebel against Pax Americana. This is strict monotheism. Profit is the only God.

Postscript: another interesting phenomenon is that many of the workers eat their breakfast cereal at their desk. Obviously, they do not have the time to sit down with their families to eat breakfast and perhaps skim the newspaper in the morning. This is another sign, along with corporate social gatherings and sporting events, of the encroachment of work into our private lives. Perhaps sleeping in the office on an expandable mattress, which is kept underneath the desk next to the hard drive, is the next step on our road to the Pax Americana.

As the 20th century has been characterized by the failure of the communist Utopia, the 21st century will be characterized by the abolishment of the Liberalism. However, nobody knows which concrete events may introduce the great tendencies of the 21st century, the most shocking and tragic - in my judgement - age in the History of mankind

- Panajotis Kondylis

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall Francis Fukuyama, author of the The End of History and the Last Man, argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies was finished, with the world settling on liberal democracy. Of course, Fukuyama, who later became a sniveling court philosopher for the Neoconservatives, really meant that the United States and its ideas were to reign unchallenged for ever more. Not surprisingly, many Anglo-American commentators fell in lockstep with Fukuyama’s triumphalism, indicative of their lack of intellectual honesty and courage, mostly due to their appropriation by corporate and military forces.

Meanwhile, in Germany and Greece, Panajotis Kondylis, philosopher and historian of ideas, a largely independent scholar, was writing a series of books which described a world radically different from that described by the mandarins in the Anglo-American world - a world of increasing global strife. This world has now largely come into being.

Kondylis’s style was highly abstract and covered such topics as the Enlightenment, Conservatism, war, bourgeoisie thought, metaphysics and more. His main influences were Heraclitus, Thucydides, Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz and Max Weber, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber and Carl Schmitt. He wrote in German and Greek. It is interesting, that like his compatriot Cornelius Castoriadis, Kondylis began intellectual life as a Marxist, but rapidly shed his youthful infatuation; even more rapidly than Castoriadis, towards a largely non-ideological position.

One of Kondylis's main concerns were changing power relations and the way these relations were driven by acts of human will. In one of Kondylis's most famous books, Power and Decision, he claims that all human ideologies, perceptions and beliefs are nothing more than an effort to give personal interests a normative form and an objective character, deriving from the existential "decision" on the means that should be used, developing or adapting a distinction of true/false, good/bad, friend/enemy, in a Hobbesian struggle for self-preservation and power. Ideologies are nothing more than a part of a personal "world-construction" which is a subjective view of the world deriving from the Nietzchean desire to increase power and Hobbesian survival instincts. Ideology in general is used as a weapon in the never-ending succession of confrontations between human wills for claims of "power" and self-preservation.

For example, during the height of the Fukuyama hysteria, if one criticized American and EU plans for the Balkans they were called a disbeliever in human rights, authoritarian, reactionary, anti-democratic, a Marxist, a nationalist, a Fascist, anti-Islamic and much more. The Serbs and other intransigent groups were established as the enemy despite the fact that their way of life had more in common with Americans than Bosnian and Albanian muslims. Older rules of discourse were made obsolete by political correctness.

However, according to the Kondylis framework, behind the rhetoric about freedom and democracy was simply another claim for power and self preservation by mostly Anglo-American elites. For example, human rights activists, usually conjoined to the US State Department, had carte blanche in the Balkans, backed up by American military power. But Serbs had little opportunity to influence American policy on the death penalty. Kondylis saw the thought constructs of Anglo-American intellectual discourse, following the release of Fukuyama's book and American rise to hegemony, as just another drive for power.  There was really no truth in their claims, but an assertion that the world had come to settle on some sort of Pax Americana in order to further their own interests.

Kondylis died 1998 because of medical error in a Greek hospital; he had no family of his own and was not married.

The civil laws of the Byzantine Emperors, as they are contained in the Hexabiblos of Armenopoulos, will be in effect until the publication of the Civil Code, whose drafting we have mandated. However, the customs that have been established by a long and uninterrupted practice or by judicial decisions prevail where they have become predominant.

-Royal Decree of February 23, 1835

Often it is said the laws of most Mediterranean countries are very strong, but it is the policing of those laws which results in the rampant corruption that is so often reported. Another interesting feature is the continuity, despite numerous invasions and occupations, of civil laws and certain criminal and commercial laws, dating back to Antiquity, with a part of this continuity attributable to the occupiers adopting the same laws, as the occupied.

The Hexabiblos ("Six Books") was written in 1345 (a little more than 100 years before the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire) by Konstantinos Armenopoulos, then a universal judge of Thessaloniki (an office which corresponds to that of Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals today) and later Professor at the School of Law of Constantinople and Justice at the four-member Supreme Court of the Empire.

The Hexabiblos was a simple compilation, making previous Greek and Roman criminal and civil laws easily accessible, and accompanied by two prefaces by Armenopoulos. This was something that happened for the first time in Byzantium. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why it was translated into many languages of neighbouring peoples and formed the basis of the civil law of the Greeks not only during the period of Turkish rule but also in the modern Greek state until the new Civil Code and took effect in 1946; amazingly, amidst the mayhem of the Greek Civil War.

After the foundation of the modern Greek State, in 1822, the first revolutionary assembly adopted a constitution modelled on the French Declaration of Human Rights. This constitution as well as the second revolutionary constitution, adopted in 1823, designated “the law of our ever-memorable Byzantine Emperors” as the main source of Greek civil law.

However, during the formation of the third constitution finally adopted in 1827, many people expressed a desire for all future codes to be based on French models. The influence of French legislation preceded the revolution, where parts of the French commercial code of 1804 were in use among Greek merchants and a Greek criminal code of 1823. However, the adoption of French models was confined to these two codes only. The first Governor of the newly established Greek State, Ioannis Capodistrias, from all accounts an incredibly far sighted man from Kerkyra (Corfu), who was also responsible for the construction of the Swiss Constitution, clearly disregarded other directives, and designated the Byzantine laws as the source of Greek civil law. In 1830, he announced his plan for collecting and classifying all Byzantine laws in an orderly fashion. Sadly, his work was never accomplished due to his assasination.

Thereafter, under King Otho, the Commercial, Criminal codes and Civil, Criminal procedures based on French and Bavarian models were drafted. A civil code was not drafted. Fortunately, the jurists at that time were adherents of the German historical school of jurisprudence, a movement borne out of the ideas of Johann Gottfried von Herder, which had as an aim that native institutions and ideas of law should prevail at least with regard to civil law. Accordingly, they started collecting local customs and current interpretations of Byzantine laws that were regarded as manifesting in the spirit of the people.

Subsequently, a Royal Decree of 1835 declared that “the civil laws of the Byzantine emperors contained in the Hexabiblos of Armenopoulos shall remain in force till the promulgation of the civil code whose drafting we have already ordered” and that “customs, sanctioned by long and uninterrupted use or by judicial decisions, shall have the force of law wherever they prevail.” This decree became the cornerstone of civil law in Greece during the next hundred years.

A new five-member committee of Greeks was appointed to the task of codifying a new set of civil laws in 1930. This committee published a series of drafts up to 1937. The project was successful and resulted in the passage of the Civil Code of 1940 and implementation in 1946. The backbone of this code was Byzantine law; therefore, ancient national Greek tradition was dressed in modern clothes. Since 1946 the only major reforms have been family law.

The most famous incident of book burning is undoubtedly the destruction by fire of the Royal Library of Alexandria situated in present day Egypt. Although there is disagreement over who was really responsible for the fire, most of the blame is laid at the Christians when Roman emperor Theodosios  (by then fully Christianised) decreed in 391 AD the destruction of all pagan temples which included the Library. The Library was contained within the Temple of the Muses and was administered by a priest. The Christian Patriarch Theophilos of Alexandria and his supporters are believed to have duly complied. However, Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt in 48 BC and the attack of Emporer Aurelian in the 3rd century AD inadvertently destroyed some parts of the library. The claim that the library was destroyed by later invading Muslim armies is not taken seriously. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, intended as a commemoration of the original, was inaugurated in 2003 near the site of the old Library.

The Library is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC during the reign of the Greek king Ptolemy II of Egypt. According to some sources the Library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle. A famous inscription was carved into the wall above the shelves: The Place of the Cure of the Soul.

The Library was the largest library in the ancient world. Ptolemy II is said to have decided upon 500,000 scrolls as an objective. Regardless of its size, the Library contained a large part of the accrued knowledge of the ancient world. It was an enormous treasure house which made its destruction all the more painful.

Fifteen hundred years later a similar phenomenon is occurring in Greece where a spate of arson attacks on bookstores continues. Just a few weeks ago there was an attack on Pelasgos in Thessaloniki and another attack (apparently there have been over 10 attacks) against Neas Thesis. Neas Thesis stocks classical Greek and Roman texts and secondary literature of classical texts. Last Saturday, the nearby Eleftheri Skepsi (Free Thought), which stocked a similar range of books, was attacked by arsonists.

In addition to these attacks, one of Adonis Georgiadis’s (a member of political party LA.O.S) bookstores (he is also a publisher) previously located in the Exarcheia district of Athens has been targeted and burnt several times by unidentified persons. It has been said that Georgiadis, who sells Greek classics at steep discounts, has been able to bring these books to households that previously only read sports dailies. Georgiades has since moved this bookstore. Nevertheless, a different bookstore of the same publisher was targeted in early 2007, the eighth attack against bookstores of Ekdoseis Georgiadi. Again, these bookstores mostly sell copies of ancient texts by such luminaries such as Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Epictetus and Plotinus.

The arsonists are suspected to be anarchists with links to the radical Left party SYRIZA led by Alekos Alavanos and his pimple faced toy boy Alexis Tsipras. In fact, SYRIZA newspapers such as Avgis (Dawn) have openly condoned the attacks. One of the reasons some people have given for the arson attacks has been that Nea Thesis and Georgiades sell books by controversial Greek author Konstantinos Plevris and some others which are said to incite racial hatred. We should note there have been no reported attacks on Jews and Jewish property caused by the recent publication Plevris’s book on Jews. Georgiades has countered that he sells these books like other Greek bookstores including the large chain store Eleftheroudakis. He has stated he disagrees with their content.

The issue of inciting racial hatred or hate speech is very controversial. For example, there is considerable hate speech in the Torah and Talmud sometimes directed towards Greeks/Romans. There is also considerable hate speech in the Septuagint, New Testament and the Koran. Therefore, should activists also burn down Christian, Jewish and Muslim bookstores just to balance the ledger? There is also considerable hate speech against Greece and the Orthodox Church in SYRIZA affiliated bookstores. Should activists burn those down as well? Indeed, probably one of the most inciteful hate books of all time, Meinkampf written by Adolf Hitler, is stocked by Amazon which can be found here. Should activists burn down Amazon? And the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, which gruesomely incites violence against the bourgeoise and which indirectly has resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world is also stocked by Amazon which can be found here.

In addition, if people do not like Plevris’s books, then rather than burn down bookstores that sell his books they should perhaps write books that refute his arguments, that is assuming the attackers and their patrons have the intellectual capability to write complex arguments and refutations. Some other people have even suggested that books on ancient Greece are Fascist in essence. Ignoring how ridiculous these claims are, should activists burn down the classical libraries of Cambridge, Oxford, Sorbonne and Harvard?

Regardless of whether the some of the books "incite racial hatred" or are "Fascist", there is no justification for anti-democratic arson attacks which can potentially degrade civic democratic culture.

As the Greeks had realised in Antiquity the transmission of knowledge and ideas via the written word is one of the cornerstones of the civilised world. The Greeks believed that education or more accurately paideia allows one to partake in the Divine Mind. It is ironic that the anarchists, whose arguments are increasingly incomprehensible, are destroying the very books which may help them to better articulate their position.

Undoubtedly, the deep divisions in Cyprus, overwhelmingly wrought by the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974, resultant ethnic cleansing of Greek Cypriots, missing persons, expropriated properties in the occupied north, illegal Anatolian settlers and the destruction of Greek secular and Orthodox cultural heritage, are likely to quickly dissipate with the appointment of Australia’s worst foreign affairs minister, Liberal Party member Alexander Downer, as the United Nations special envoy. Greek and Turkish Cypriots are certain to unite in their hatred once they discover what an incompetent and blithering idiot he is. The former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating once aptly called him the “idiot son of the aristocracy”. Australian on-line magazine, Crikey has written an excellent summary of Downer’s decidedly less than spectacular political career which can be found here.

Although it is doubtful Downer even knows where the island is located, some believe Downer may be more sympathetic to Greek interests. He hails from Adelaide which has a strong and active Greek community. In addition, Australia’s Greek community dwarfs the Turkish community. However, offsetting factors are that Downer represents a very Anglo electorate in Adelaide. And he was part of the Howard government which was in cahoots with George Bush and the American neoconservatives in their Mesopotamian misadventure. These same neoconservatives tried to subvert the democratic process when Greek Cypriots were asked to vote in a referendum on the criminal Annan Plan. Since then they have also shown scant sympathy to Greek national interests on the island of Cyprus and everywhere else.

In addition, we should not forget Australia’s growing Philoturkism which most acutely manifests itself during ANZAC Day celebrations which commemorates the efforts of the Australian and New Zealand armies at the request of their English overlords at that time to defeat the Turks at Gallipoli during WWI. It was also during this time that the Ottoman Turkish campaign to exterminate the Armenian Christians went into overdrive. Their pogroms against the Greek and Assyrian Christians were also being implemented. One could argue that Australia is too closely associating itself with a criminal regime of history and a modern regime that refuses to concede its past horrors.

More broadly, Stefanos Evripidou from the Cyprus Mail writes that “a number of European leaders have reservations over Downer’s appointment, given his perceived reputation for being strongly opinionated and averse to minute details”. With Downer acting as intoculator it looks like the obstacles for Christofias and Talat will continue to mount.