Greek Fire or Greek Bile?

Boris Johnson has a passion for things Greek (and Latin -- I once heard him quote Ovid's Metamorphoses in a speech about nuclear disarmament). But persons Greek? That's another matter. Trust the Greeks to jail the wrong terrorists is his latest assessment, concentrating on the bizarre arrest and unseemly punishment of a band of harmless 40-something British "plane spotters" for spying. Boris thinks it's symptomatic of a larger Greek malaise:

At a Uefa [Cup] match in Athens, not long after the massacre, 30,000 Greek soccer fans jeered through the minute's silence, while the Stars and Stripes was later burnt in the stands. A recent poll found that 78 per cent of Greeks voting for centrist or Left-wing parties were anti-American, while 58 per cent of Right-wing voters were anti-American.

You may think that a curious way to repay the country that has kept the peace in Europe for 50 years, and prevented Greece from going communist. But that is the way they think. It is time they grew up.

Why should anyone take Greece's side in the dispute over Cyprus? Turkey is the country that has backed the Northern Alliance and helped to oust the Taliban. All the Greeks have done is burn the US flag, stage demonstrations shouting "Down with Bush the killer", and incarcerate, without trial, a hapless bunch of British plane-spotters.

If things go on this way, I think we should seriously look at expelling Greece from NATO.And perhaps there was something to the borders proposed for Greece in the Treaty of San Stefano...