Archive for the ‘greece’ tag
The Feta Precedent #
Lebanon has announced plans to sue Israel over the food copyright for tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush. The suit relies on the absurdly named feta precedent; as David Kenner describes:
Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.
Smoking Around the World #
As is always the case with managably sized bar graphs, I’m curious as too all that was left offo this one. The list provided is surprising. Greece easily wins the cigarette consumption race, and the United States beats notoriously-smoky France.
Lesbians Angry at Lesbians #
Inhabitants of the Greek island of Lesbos are up in arms:
The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.
He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos’s inhabitants.
In case you hadn’t heard, the word “lesbian” in a gay context derives from the poet Sapphos, who was from Lesbos and lived in the seventh century BCE. She wrote openly of a sexual desire for other women.
(via Passport)
No, We’re Macedonia #
The Economist’s Europe.view has some interesting things to say about the ongoing name dispute between the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece, which has a province of Macedonia.
Membership in the Atlantic alliance has proved a highly effective means of calming old rows (not least between Greece and Turkey). It is hard to argue that Greece will be more secure if it vetoes Macedonia’s NATO membership at the alliance’s summit in Bucharest between April 2nd and 4th, especially if Albania and Croatia gain membership.
America is promoting compromises (Independent Republic of Macedonia, New Republic of Macedonia, Democratic Republic of Macedonia and Constitutional Republic of Macedonia). Greece rejects these, and wants a different qualifier (Upper, Northern, Vardar or Skopje). Macedonia says it will accept an extra label, but not a geographical one.
EDIT (3/27/2008): UN Dispatch says that the UN has settled on the name “The Republic of Macedonia (Skopje)” for what was the FYROM.