It ain't just us

The practice of the WHS* to punish anyone who crosses them is not limited to such as Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke. It extends internationally as well.

In the wake of the failure of the April vote on a proposal for the "reunification" of Cyprus (the word is put in quotes deliberately) - a proposal the US supported - comes this from the Greek daily Kathimerini for May 27:

The news that Washington is planning measures to help the Turkish Cypriots break out of their isolation and to upgrade US relations with their breakaway state have provoked concern in Athens and Nicosia. At the same time, they are waiting for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report to the Security Council, which has already been written by his special envoy for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, and is said to include criticism of Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos [who opposed the plan].

The UN plan would have continued the existence of two separate parts of Cyprus, one Greek, one Turkish, in a confederation united by a weak central government. For Greek Cypriots, who have seen the northern one-third of the island occupied by Turkish troops for decades, that simply wasn't good enough.

In the runup to the vote, the US pledged $400 million in support of the UN plan for reunification, but only if the plan was approved, adding it would not leave Turkish Cypriots "out in the cold" in the event the plan fell through.

At the time, the message to Greek Cypriots seemed clear enough: Do it our way or you're screwed. They didn't. Now it seems it will be time for the screwing to begin.

*White House Sociopaths

Footnote: It actually doesn't mean a damn thing, really, and it counts all the Jeopardy! posts and the like, but I just realized via Blogspot's Dashboard that this is post number 1,000. Like I said, it doesn't mean anything, but as the late great Stephen Jay Gould noted, we do like those round numbers, don't we?