Lestat wrote on Oct 13^th, 2008 at 7:50pm:


One choice. Two options.

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That's not what your original claim was.

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The Palestinians were not cleaned.

abu_rashid wrote on Oct 13^th, 2008 at 10:38am:



You can consider your bellybutton if you like, yet Greece has been the 'cradle of western civilisation' to use a very very old cliche, for as long as anyone - but you - cares to look back.

To say that the Greeeks had any affinity with the east, or the 'middle east' as you put it, is to betray a willful,  deep-rooted and unbudging ignorance. The Greeks fought the east for centuries and regarded them as barbarians. Ask them today  - the east starts at the turkish border.

The word barbarian comes from either the hairiness of the Persians (barba, beard - hence barber) or from their babbling, to Greek ears incomprehensible 'blah blah' language. The North of Africa was the Barbary Coast until the 19th century.

The Greeks traded with everyone, colonised much of the mediterreanen, notably Sicily and around Naples, .as well as around modern Marseilles and the Spanish coast. They also founded colonies in what is now western turkey, also around the south coast of the Black Sea, Alexandria in Egypt (founded by one of Alexander's generals) elsewhere. To inssinuate that what we call the middle east corresponds to any Greek understanding of the civiliswed/barbarian divide is ludicrous and anachronistic.

The most celebrated Roman poet, Virgil, wrote his Anead about how the hero of the Trojan war found his way to Italy and founded Rome itself.

The Romans had Greek slaves teacing all their children. Greek was the language of learning throughout Rome - hence the fact that the new testament, written at the height of Augustinian Rome, was written in Greeek. Educated Romas spoke Greek, much like educated Europeans spoke it and latin until about the second world war.
Can't say the same for the educated class of Arabs or Mohammedans at any point in history.

The Romans did not consider the Greeks 'eastern'. They, just like the Greeks, thought of the Jews, the Egyptians, the Persians and all other assorted barbarians east of Athens as 'eastern'.
The Greeks thought the Romas uncouth but the Persains and teh rest of them to thee east were barbarians. Quite a difference.

The Romans adopted all the major Greek philosophies - stoicism foremost among them - not to menion the pantheon of gods.
The Romans were, culturally speaking, Greeks. They copied and cultivated the Greeek inheritance. And they passed it on to Europe.

Medieval Europe was the cultural continuationf Rome, its Greekness  reinvigorated by the renaissance in the 15th century (partly due to the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire centred around Byzantium and the consequent influx of Greek speaking scholars into Italy and Europe, fleeeing the Mohammedans)

Well you may not believe they were, but I do. And so do a lot of others, including Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe.

How many does he think were killed?

Lestat wrote on Oct 13^th, 2008 at 10:07pm:

You might want to look a bit further into the etymology of the word barbarian.

... from L. barbaria "foreign country," from Gk. barbaros "foreign, strange, ignorant,"

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Why is that even relevant? Do you think ethnic cleansing means killing?

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what a snivelling crawling claim to fame !!!
the arabs copied or kept some stuff they stole.
And that's meant to be good ???

Well, probably for them, yes.

Here's another one for you soren, the Greek empire in the time of Alexander:



Quite befittingly it also states in the wiki article from where i found that map: "By the time of his death, he had conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks"

Not much of the world known to the Greeks existed to the West... did it?