Yes, Cyprus has some fabulous golf courses, there have even been a few PGA European Tours held at the aptly named, ‘Aphrodite Hills’. This post however, is nothing to do with golf, and everything to do with the geo-political power-grabbing machinations of the elites, who love using Cyprus as their ‘play thing’. My comments are prompted by the news today, that the heroic (sic) President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will address Parliament.
On March 8th, America, on behalf of Zelenskyy we’re told, asked the Cypriot Government to send its military hardware to Ukraine to aid the fight. Rightly so, those in the know, are upset with the suggestion that, under pressure from the US, Cyprus would give up its expensive Russian made arms and send them to the Ukrainians.
As one TV news anchor put it, what will we use to defend ourselves if we do that, sticks and stones, bows and arrows? He’s not wrong though. The weaponry bought at considerable cost from Russia was precisely because of US sanctions on ‘Lethal Aid’ and embargo on any kind of weaponry being brought into Cyprus to avoid a ‘future’ conflict scenario.
Let’s remember though, the threat of a new invasion by Turkey was/is very much in the background of everyone’s psyche in Cyprus. Turkey has after all 30,000+ troops stationed a few miles away from the capital city, Nicosia. (According to the UN, this is the most militarised zone of amassed soldier-power ANYWHERE in the world!) It’s the last European city remaining divided by war since 1974, which was the last time the Turks invaded, taking 37% of the island. Doing precisely the exact same thing that the West accuses Russia of doing to Ukraine today.
The frankly pathetic Cypriot military machine is no match for a superpower like Turkey. Everyone knows this, but the false sense of security provided by Russian arms, keeps the status quo appearing to be legitimate on the world stage. Nobody expects Turkey to re-invade, but then again, Erdogan, Turkey’s president, isn’t known for his predictability. The animosity between Greek and Turk has never ceased, it quietly festers in the background of every ‘peace envoy’s mission, every peace summit and dinner party that the Cypriot president holds with his friends from the north. Therefore, to ask the Cypriots to relinquish their arms in favour of keeping the Americans happy is like … well… you’d have to be dumb to fall for that one!
To really get to grips with what is happening, and why this tiny, wounded island of Cyprus, is so important, yet is often left off maps of the region… until recently… mainly because they found vast reserves of natural gas and possibly oil, which since has spawned the ‘EastMed’ project…. We need to understand Cyprus’ position in the world. I won’t get into a long-protracted history lesson which shows where we have reached since the Turkish Invasion of 1974. However, using Wikipedia, and all its faults, I’ll give you a rundown of the events I lived through over the last few years. It’s my truth as they say. These events are 100% externally triggered, and show you the long game in play … and that we’re almost reaching the culmination of American and British efforts to collect their pay-off…
The Cypriot S-300 crisis was a tense and rapidly escalating political standoff between the Republic of Cyprus and the Republic of Turkey between early 1997 and late 1998. The confrontation was sparked by Cypriot plans to install two Russian-made S-300 air-defence missile sites on their territory, provoking Turkey into threatening an attack or even all-out war if the missiles were not returned to Russia. The missile deal with Russia represented the Cyprus government's first serious attempt at building a credible air defence system after all the years of Turkish superiority in the air. The crisis effectively ended in December 1998 with the decision of the Cypriot government to transfer the S-300s to Greece's Hellenic Air Force in exchange for alternative weapons from Greece. The crisis also led to the collapse of Cyprus's coalition government. Greece's Hellenic Air Force installed the system on the island of Crete. As of 2021 the S-300s still operate there.
My truth: We walked around with our passports in our pocket, day and night, ready to evacuate to the ports, because everyone feared Turkey was about to invade.
The Annan Plan, also known as the Cyprus Reunification Plan, was a United Nations proposal to resolve the Cyprus dispute. The different parts of the proposal were based on the argumentation put forward by each party (Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots) in meetings held under the auspices of the UN. The proposal was to restructure the Republic of Cyprus to become the "United Republic of Cyprus", a federation of two states, with a new flag. It was revised several times before it was put to the people of Cyprus in a 2004 referendum, and was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots, but only 24% of Greek Cypriots.
My truth: I was earning good money at the time, working in International Finance, which afforded me the luxury of using the Hilton Hotel Spa and swimming alongside Nobel Peace Prize winner, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s wife Nane Lagergren. A wasted opportunity as we spoke only about the weather.
Atlantis Found? Stay with me now, the significance of this will become apparent...Reported The Scotsman in 2004: While some discount the existence of the city of Atlantis as the stuff of myth, others have spent their lifetimes searching for the lost civilisation.
An American researcher believes he is ready to silence the doubters after locating evidence of man-made structures sunk in the sea between Cyprus and Syria which he is "absolutely convinced" are the ruins of Atlantis. Experts will have the opportunity to test Mr Sarmast’s findings after he has processed the detailed computer imaging data from an expedition he made into a three-dimensional model. He is also planning a second expedition to clear away silt and sediment that has accumulated over thousands of years so that he can bring back physical proof that the underwater structures were man-made.
The expedition, involving experts who helped in the search for the Titanic, used the latest side-scan sonar technology that involved a three-mile-long cable dragged 50 metres above the sea bed to map out the area, which Mr Sarmast described as "one of the most poorly mapped areas in the world".
My truth: A very close friend working at the Cyprus Department of Meteorology recounted how a group of US geologists were granted permission to dive off the southern coast of Cyprus for ‘research’ in 2003. She was convinced, as were others in the department, that these US guys weren’t so much looking for ancient civilisations and the like, but possibly setting in place ‘tests’ for oil and gas. We laughed about it at the time.
Dubbed the ‘ghost flight’, Helios Airways Flight 522 was a scheduled passenger flight from Larnaca, Cyprus to Prague, Czech Republic, with a stopover in Athens, Greece, that crashed on 14 August 2005, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. Greek fighter jets scrambled to the scene were rumoured to have shot it down on the orders of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis fearing a terrorist attack on Athens.
The subsequent inquiry found that a loss of cabin pressurization incapacitated the crew, leaving the aircraft flying on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, and crashed near Grammatiko, Greece. It was the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history, the causes of the crash initially baffled experts and led to a change in how airline pressurization tests are carried out.
My truth: The collective trauma of the event was profound on the population of Cyprus, as 22 of the dead were children. We were treated to nightly news from the scene where relatives walked through tents in 30 degrees, made to identify remains of their loved ones, in a vain attempt to bring closure (or was that to cement the trauma?). It was disgusting. The numbness that the population felt at the time resonates to this day, as do the esoteric numbers 522 121 22 2005.
Hilary Clinton’s ship: On 11 July 2011, at Evangelos Florakis Naval Base, situated at Mari, in Cyprus, a large amount of ammunition and military explosives self-detonated, killing 13 people, including the Commander of the Cyprus Navy, Andreas Ioannides, the base commander, Lambros Lambrou, and six firefighters. A further 62 people were injured. The explosion was the worst peacetime military accident ever recorded in Cyprus, with a yield of approximately 481 tons TNT equivalent, as determined by the official investigation into the accident. It was the largest artificial non-nuclear explosion of the 21st century until the 2020 Beirut explosions.
In open storage on the base were 98 containers of high explosive artillery shells, 7.62 mm shell casings, compressed gunpowder, silver dollar-sized slugs, primers, and magnesium primers that had been seized by the United States Navy in 2009 after it intercepted a Cypriot-flagged, Russian-owned vessel, Monchegorsk, travelling from Iran to Syria in the Red Sea. According to leaked US cables through WikiLeaks, released in 2011, the US through Hillary Clinton exerted pressure on Cyprus to confiscate the shipment. The ship was escorted to a Cypriot port and the Cyprus Navy was given responsibility for the explosives, which it moved to the Naval Base a month later.
At the time of the incident in 2011, the explosives had apparently been left in the open for over two years. The Cypriot government had declined offers from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States to remove or dispose of the material, fearing an adverse reaction from Syria. The government had instead requested that the UN effect the removal but claimed that its request had been rejected.
The explosion occurred at 05:50 EEST (02:50 UTC) following a fire caused by explosions of several containers starting one hour and 20 minutes earlier. Extensive damage was caused in a wide area surrounding the blast. The Vasilikos Power Station, the largest power facility on Cyprus, which provided approximately half the island's electricity, was severely damaged, causing widespread power cuts which affected much of the Cypriot capital, over 40 miles (65 km) from Evangelos Florakis Naval Base.
The €700 million Vasilikos Power Station was reduced to a "mangled shell", and the electricity supply to approximately three quarters of Cyprus was interrupted. The Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) later instituted rolling blackouts in order to conserve the supply and stated that it would import generators from Greece and Israel while the damage, estimated at €2 billion, was being repaired. The rolling blackouts lasted for two to three hours in each area and were planned to affect only residential areas.
My truth: It was the height of summer, you cannot live without air-conditioning in 40 degrees, but we did. We also lit candles, and many slept outside. I cooked using a camping gas burner. It was eerie moving around the capital city with no electricity and traffic lights, and it lasted a whole week… people said it reminded them of 1974 again, with all the trauma that brought.
The 2012–2013 Cypriot financial crisis It involved the exposure of Cypriot banks to overleveraged local property companies, the Greek government-debt crisis, the downgrading of the Cypriot government's bond credit rating to junk status by international credit rating agencies, the consequential inability to refund its state expenses from the international markets and the reluctance of the government to restructure the troubled Cypriot financial sector.
Cyprus hit the world’s headlines when the media showed queues of people withdrawing money from ATMs. This followed rumours in the financial press that Cyprus’s banks would be forced into a ‘hair cut’, with depositors sharing the pain. Inevitably this created a run on accounts, with around €2bn taken out. The Cyprus Co-operative Bank was plunged into crisis. There were allegations of political intervention and influence in the running of the bank, prior to its collapse. This included, it was claimed, political interference in seeking the writing-down and non-collection of 54 commercial loans, and to some individuals. It was also alleged that loans had been improperly approved to friends and relatives of bank staff.
On 25 March 2013, a €10 billion international bailout by the Eurogroup, European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) was announced, in return for Cyprus agreeing to close the country's second-largest bank, the Cyprus Popular Bank (also known as Laiki Bank), imposing a one-time bank deposit levy on all uninsured deposits there, and possibly around 48% of uninsured deposits in the Bank of Cyprus (the island's largest commercial bank). A minority proportion of it held by citizens of other countries (many of whom from Russia), who preferred Cypriot banks because of their higher interest on bank account deposits, relatively low corporate tax, and easier access to the rest of the European banking sector. This resulted in numerous insinuations by US and European media, which presented Cyprus as a 'tax haven' and suggested that the prospective bailout loans were meant for saving the accounts of Russian depositors. No insured deposit of €100,000 or less would be affected, though 47.5% of all bank deposits above €100,000 were seized. Nearly one-third of Rossiya Bank's cash ($1 billion) was frozen in Cypriot accounts during this crisis.
My truth: Prior to the financial collapse, in 2011, I was at the Hedge-fund-that-is-no-more, when the boss ran into the dealing room, having just returned from a fish lunch with a minister friend, and the CEO of the infamous Cyprus Coop Bank. “Better hide your money under your beds from now on. They did it, they took the money!” He ranted for a bit, laughed and closed himself in his office. He was referring to the Co-op buying Greek bonds, in some strange effort to save the motherland from financial collapse and make a profit, with full knowledge that this would lead to disaster. (note: Cyprus Popular Bank amassed €3.4 billion in Greek bonds which became worthless in the subsequent EU bailout.)
Oil and Gas: Reported in 2017, the world’s third-largest gas discovery has been made in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the south-west coast of Cyprus. The island has substantial offshore acreage in the Levant Basin, estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to contain mean recoverable resources of 1.7 billion barrels of oil and 122 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas.
Oil and gas major ExxonMobil has completed drilling operations on its Glaucus-2 Appraisal Well located in Block 10 off Cyprus, confirming the presence of high-quality gas. The Glaucus gas discovery was made in February 2019 with estimated in-place resources of 5 to 8 trillion cubic feet of gas. Reported on 21 Mar 2022. Let’s remember that the EastMed Pipeline deal, which would have brought gas to the market from Cyprus via Crete into Europe, had the plug pulled by Biden recently. The deal cost millions, irked Turkey, but made firm commitments of cooperation with Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt. Along with Lebanon, they have carved up the seabed into their respective Exclusive Economic Zones. Not a competitor to NordStream/NordStream2, but an addition, now stop-capped to the dismay of the Eastern Mediterranean leaders. Thanks Joe!
Interesting times.
Further reading on the significance of Cyprus can be found in the: Panama Papers (2016), the Paradise Papers (2017), and of course the recent Pandora Papers (2021). Not forgetting the Cypriot Golden Passport scandal and China/Russia investments on the Island (2021). With the Ukraine conflict speeding up the destruction, all the dust is starting to settle … or should that be, the dice is thrown and its loaded.
Postscript: Zalenskyy is to address the Cyprus Parliament on Thursday, the same day as Victoria Nuland (US Under-Secretary for Political Affairs) arrives in Cyprus. (Update: She just arrived in the capital) Who said anything about synchronicity!
P.S. There is great hope that someone will bring up the Turkish Invasion and its parallel to Ukraine at tomorrow's talks/address to the nation...either from Zelenskyy or Nuland... don't hold your breath!
