And the award for worst foreign policy goes to...

bill

I thought Russia was more worthy of the award at the moment.

Some Guy

If you took your head out of your ass, you would see that you're full of crap! You have no freaking clue of what's going on in the Balkans! You pathetic pensil-pusher!

John Miller

And the award for worst blogger goes to... Daniel Korski

Mr. Korski, why don't you let your readers know the whole story? Why don't you tell them how the concept of an "ethnic Macedonian" was invented by the communist dictator Tito in an attempt to lay claim to northern Greece (Greek Macedonia)? Why don't you tell them about the constant irredentism that the Greeks have had to endure since 1992, including the publishing of maps in FYROMian schoolbooks showing a "Greater Macedonia," the printing of FYROMian money featuring northern Greek landmarks, the attempted usurpation of Greek Macedonian history and many other such provocations against Greece and especially against the 2.5 million Greeks who already identify themselves as Macedonian? The fact that FYROM is a small country compared to Greece is irrelevant. This type of irredentism is not conductive to good neighborly relations, let alone alliances in organizations such as NATO.

You say that Greece is attempting to "destabilize" FYROM and yet the Greeks are one of their largest investors, creating tens of thousands of jobs and helping to strengthen their economy. The internal problems of FYROM have nothing to do with Greece as they are more a reflection of a political instability which cannot be solved simply by joining NATO. The Greek position on the name issue is another example of the Greeks' interest in regional stability. Their original position (in 1992) was that the word Macedonia should not appear anywhere in the name. They have since eased this restriction to allowing the word Macedonia to appear, but with a geographic indicator (such as New or Northern). This is a perfectly reasonable request that any other country would make in the same position. Unfortunately, FYROM refuses to compromise and continues with their irredentist activity.

There are two sides to every story, Mr. Korski. Please try to see both of them.

TRUTH

Wow, this is horrible biased garbage. Clearly you don't understand the current situation in the Balkans, so idiots like you shouldn't be writing about it. Macedonia is a Greek Province, the skopjians have stolen the name as well as the Greek history. Greece is trying to avoid future escalation of this problem since territorial claims are obviously foreseeable.

skopjians now claim that Greek Macedonia never existed - WTF? any halfwit knows that Macedonia is Greek.

You are a horrible writer, next time do some research before writing something. This article is an complete outrage.

TRUTH

wow, this is horrible biased garbage. Clearly you don't understand the current situation in the Balkans, so idiots like you shouldnt be writing about it. Macedonia is a Greek Province, the skopjians have stolen the name as well as the Greek history. Greece is trying to avoid future escalation of this problem since teretorial claims are obviously foreseeable.

skopjians now claim that Greek Macedonia never existed - WTF? any halfwit knows that Macedonia is Greek.

You are a horible writer, next time do some research before writing something.This article is an outrage.

Dan Asta

Yeah, it's Greece that has bad foreign policy. Not the UK which is supporting the USA's Iraq disaster. Smart thinking there Korski.

Apparently, Greece's claims of Macedonia's territorial ambitions are absurd. Why? Because Korski says so, even if he hasn't investigated the claims himself. After all, someone gave him this column and he can write any crapola he pleases in it.

Faye Grainger

Daniel Korski is a well-known slavo-macedonian propagandist, so i'm not surprised he has written such a biased article. If he valued impartiality, he would emphasise the dangerous nationalism and anti-Greek rhetoric which has been whipped up in the Former Yugoslav Rep. of Macedonia for many years now. Much like the problems in Georgia, the source of the problem is the 'slav inferiority complex'. Gruevski, like Putin and Saakashvilli, feels the need to make grandiose and dangerous gestures to the world to prove how 'superior' he is. Gruevski's latest move, paying corrupt scientists to forge a genetic link between modern day slav-macedonians and ancient greek-macedonians, failed miserably. The Macedonian region has been linked to Greece since ancient times and therefore it's obvious that Greece would fight their corner against Gruevski, the new Balkan troublemaker. The Balkans don't need another Milosevic and the West should work to isolate Gruevski and the slav nationalists in FYROM.

Michael Scowcroft

Russia should take the award for worst foreign policy. I think Greece has acted quite reasonably actually. You can't have people stealing other people's identities willy-nilly, especially in that part of the world. I wouldn't like it if my neighbour stole my name, address and personal details, so Greece is correct to stand up to that.

G

The RAZZIE should go to Gruevski and his clan of misfits in FYROM.
I think FYROM deserves the award for being "thick as a brick" and antagonizing Greece their neighbor for 17 years.

Just go with NORTHERN MACEDONIA and everything will be peachy .Enough of the woes me antics and name changes already!

SHESH!

zk

One has to wonder if Mr Korski ever saw/received articles of rhetoric and propaganda that the education system in FYROM/Republic of Macedonia is teaching about a "United Macedonia" at the territorial expense of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania.

It is unfortunate that Mr Kolski doesn't look at the demographics of the region in various articles (NY Times Archives for one, dated February 21, 1897, titles "Macedonia" or one dated May 2, 1897 with title "ALL EUROPE DESIRES THE LAND. A Country with No Individual People, for Which Every Nation Is Longing”)....which clearly show that Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia should have territorial claims to FYROM/Republic of Macedonia, and not the other way around.

The restructuring of the Balkans/Yugoslavia based on ethnic, linguistic, and theological history over the last 15-17 years has the ultimate goal to fix the errors of past/after WWII when the Soviet Empire tried to use propaganda that twisted the history of the region in order to prop up Tito's government and supress past ethnic, religious and cultural divides.

Yugoslavia is close to being partitioned effectively, albeit with major and bloody conflict during the 90s, but the current Greek stand is to remove the current message of ultranationalistic soviet like rhetoric, and deliver the territories of that region back to the rightfull owners in Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia. Greece can not make any real claims as their historical regions were re acquired after the Balkan conflicts with the Ottoman Empire/Sultan during the first 2 Balkan wars.

Albania, Bulgaria, and Serbia need to be appeased and have their regions given back to them.

Chris

Dialogue in 'The Wire' sums it all up for me:

'The Greeks invented democracy.'

'Yeah. Also ass-fucking.'

David Strachan

NATO should never have allowed Greece to use the organisation as a vehicle to promote its anti-Macedonian agenda. The EU is playing the same game. The author is right when he states this kind of behaviour destabilises the region. It probably was a factor in destabilizing Georgia as well. NATO blinked and Russia has won this round of chicken. You don’t let a convicted human rights abuser like Greece sully the reputation of NATO. As the persecution of minorities in Greece gains wider notoriety people will openly wonder just what NATO stands for.

Goran Stojanov

Excellent article. I fully agree that Greece foreign policy toward Macedonia was completely disgraceful and above all, very, very dangerous.

I have one remark, though. The author twice used the term Slav Macedonians to refer to the citizens of Macedonia. That can be perceived as racist. Would we ever use something like Latino-Italians, or Slavo Polish, or Arian German? I don't think so. He aslo used the term ethnic Macedonians, and that is what he should have used to make a distinction between the majority population in Macedonia, that are ethnic Macedonians, and the different minorities, like the ethnic Albanian, Turkish or Serb minority, that are also citizens of Macedonia.

Samantha

Nice to see the Greek government's rent-a-crowd has made it to the party. They'll soon be phoning the Specator's editor to have Mr Korski hanged. Expect a visit from "The Ambassador".

M

The writer is a HATER and obviously on the FYROM payroll.
Macedonia is Greek .

Gruevski get off your wanna be high horse and stop brainwashing your people.
Alexander the SLAV??

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
What a bloody SCREAM!!!!

Hey Daniel didnt I see on holiday with a mimosa in your hand in MYKONOS this July?

LOL!

Atanas Jankov

Very well said, except the slav-Macedonian remark, otherwise all in all a very unbiased view

Yanni

If anyone is at fault, it is JOSEPH TITO.

* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796967,00.html

Nick

Are all of you nuts!! Macedonia was divided in 1912 everybody with any historical background knows this. The Treat of Bucharest drawn up by the superpowers at the time awarded Greece 50% of Macedonian land; Serbia took 37%, Bulgaria 10% and Albania about 3%. The Greeks since that time and up to today have killed and ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Macedonians. They changed city names, rivers, etc. and churches to Greek names. Even citizens names and gravestones were changed to Greek. Wake up people!! The only reason why Greece is crying about the name Macedonia is because they are fearful of having to pay for their sins and eventually be forced to give back the land like Serbia did. Remember this land was given to you; Greece could never take our land from us. It was given by the superpowers and will be returned by the superpowers. Why don't any of you go to Northern Greece and just speak to the people their. I am a Canadian Macedonian who just came back from Northern Greece. I only spoke Macedonian to find my way around. No word of a lie I would say over 70% of the people I talked to spoke Macedonian in Northern Greece. My mother is born their and she speaks Macedonian perfectly and tells me the horror she suffered living under Greek occupation. You people are pathetic!!

Vasil

Daniel Korski's analysis of Greece's horrible and destructive foreign policy is to be commended. Xenophobic is a Greek word in origin and it certainly describes the Greek government's attitude towards anyone who is non=Greek in the country(ethnic Macedonians, Turks, Vlachs, Albanians, Roma, etc.) and its attitude to the peace loving Macedonians to the north from the Republic of Macedonia. One correction for Mr. Korski. Macedonians are Macedonians not "slav Macedonians."

Gladstone

It is a good article. The Greeks think that if they repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth. They also think that the world will forget their misdeeds in their part of Macedonia but it won't forget. Their protestations have only brought attention to themselves and will bring a profound shame to their nation that they will never expunge.

Ilinden

1) What year was Macedonia divided between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia?
2) What year was the Macedonian language suppressed by the Greek government?
3) What year were the Macedonian toponyms changed by the Greek government?
4) What year were the first and last names changed from Macedonian into Greek?
5) Since what year you are not allowed to baptize a Macedonian baby in Aegean Macedonia with a Macedonian name?
6) What year did the Greek government in Aegean Macedonia erase the Macedonian writing from the church icons and replace them with Greek letters?
7) If Aegean Macedonia was Greek why do the farm names still have Macedonian names?
8) Why do the old Macedonian people not know how to speak Greek? They speak their mother tongue which is Macedonian.
9) According to the Greek government, Macedonians and Macedonian language in Aegean Macedonia does not exist. I'm asking the Greek authorities, why, in 1925 did the Greek Government print a primer in the Macedonian language?
10) What the Macedonians in Aegean Macedonia (Greece) want is human rights, Macedonian schools, to restore our original Macedonian first and last names from Ioannis Patsopulos to Jovan Pachev.
11) With no fear from the Greek government to declare ourselves that we speak Macedonian and we are Macedonians, we do not have to lie and pretend that we are Greeks by descent, yes we are Greek citizens, but are still Macedonian.

Blaze

Greece falsely accuses Macedonia that the latter is engaged in irredentism and hostile propaganda -- not to mention Greece's preposterous claim that Macedonia does not have the right to its own name and to its historical, ethnic, and religious identity. Demonstrably, Greece's moves are suspect: Macedonia historically and culturally did transcend the country's current borders. In 1912-13, through two brutal regional wars, Macedonia was forcefully partitioned among Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Macedonians were subject to qualified genocide and many were driven from their land.
It is this reality that Greece tirelessly tries to cover up. Human Rights Watch, among other credible organizations, has documented the existence of on-going discrimination against the remaining Macedonians in Greece. In fact, until recently, Greece had legal provisions preventing exiled Macedonians from entering Greece in order to claim title of their family property. This context should help explain the "name dispute," the endless Greek misinformation campaigns, the hostile posturing, and attempts to censor and trivialize Macedonian claims, but now via more refined methods involving international mechanisms, in the hope of gaining legitimacy via international sanctions of Macedonia.

gena

Rubbish ! This article is total rubbish!

Im suprised the Greeks havent opened up a can of whoup a** on them!

Too civilized. 17 years of playing nicey nice...
To be Macedonian is to be Greek (Greek-American).

FYROM STOP THE B*LLSH*T & THE HATE AGAINST YOUR NEIGHBOR!

Makedonka Jones

Good one.
Greeks should also get a reward for the "biggest fascists" and for "the most idiotic attempt to commit a genocide"
And please no Slav-Macedonians.
THat would be the same as saying something like Turko-Greeks.

Monastir/Bitola

With regard to John Miller comment on 21/8, I would like to point out that there is a good book available for him to read, It is called:- "Fields of Wheat, Hill of Blood, Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia 1870-1990" It is written by Prof. Anastasia N. Karakasidou, who is Greek & writes about the History of the people in that region without the Greek Nationalism, She has been labeled a Terrorist of Greece, A Skopjan Spy etc.. by the Greek Nationalists.

Also by the way you wrote your spiel about Tito you don't sound like a Miller to me. Giving yourself an English name doesn't hide the Greek in you. "Common Greek Quote".

Yes the Greeks are investing in Macedonia, they exploit the labor there, people work 12hr days sewing etc.. for sometimes less than 200eu per month, barely enough to buy bread & milk let alone pay bills.

The President of Macedonia has organized a deal with Albania regarding transport of Goods from Macedonia, I don't see the need for The Republic of Macedonia to join Nato & EU they can always form an alliance with Russia, Turkey, China, India etc. the countries that have shown respect to Macedonia & not ridiculed & intimidate them.

This problem was originally caused by Great Britain & France, they are the ones that implemented the Treaty of Bucharest 1913, Macedonia was Divided three ways, The Macedonian people had no say in this, nobody asked them if this is what they wanted, it was just done. This is what the Greek Government doesn't want to deal with, The Macedonian Prime Minister is doing what the Yugoslav Government never wanted them to do as it would have damaged the relationship with Greece, He is fighting for the rights of the Minority Macedonians in Greece that according to the Greek Prime Minister, "Don't Exist". Greece is playing the all mighty but in reality their economy is not so good, they don't want the Millions of Euro compensation payments that they will have to eventually pay. The countries that Created the Treaty should now have to deal with this problem as the Macedonian people will always be there & will always exist. Long Live the Republic of Macedonia & its people no matter where in the world they are.

Greece deserves the Title with honors.

prudence

I'm never sure if these types of articles are:

1) rooted in ignorance of Balkan politics and history, or

2) thinly veiled attacks that play on the ignorance of the hoi polloi in order to achieve a certain political/economic goal.

Someone with the author's education really should know better. Either way, he should be castigated for his stupidity (1) or his corruption (2).

And he has the gaul to call Greece 'absurd'.

Frank

It has to be noted how a balanced article which merely highlights the current position the Republic of Macedonia in terms of it Foreign Policy goals and relationship with Structures like the EU and NATO has totally been hijacked by Greek Posters with the same tired remarks on a juvenile level.

John W

Several times in the article it is stated that Greece vetoed Macedonia's NATO membership. This is completely false. Greece did not even have to exercise their right to veto as Macedonia was not offered membership this time round. This is just one of many inaccuracies in the article

Constantino

Greece is slowly being exposed for the fascist and racist nation it is.

Great article Mr Korski..

Blagojce

Should Greece have changed it's 'Northern Greece' province to 'Macedonia' in 1988? and Why?
Would it be acceptable to Greeks, if Greece changed this name back to 'Northern Greece' or perhaps 'Southern Macedonia'? and Why?

--------------------

For a reality check, I like to quote the late King George of Greece in his discussion with his Austrian counterpart "there are very few Greeks in Macedonia !!". Something to remember, and a reminder of how things have changed

A danis citizen

I think it is about time that Greece is kicked out of the EU. What do we get from Greece other than trouble all the time. Greece is not contributing with anything financially in the EU household and is seen as a free-loader spending its EU pocket money on war machinery and propaganda. Why do Greece not make their society transparant in terms of its population, instead of insisting that all are Greeks, let the truth come forth. Its counterproductive to negate the existance of other national groups, we are in 2008 - wake up - we are not living under the Greece dictatorship periods, or are we.....

vico

Greece as a country or state did not exist in the Ancient Times. There were some polis-states. Macedonia as a country, emperium was in the past, is today and will exist in the future, too. The neo-Greek state is an artificial formation founded and created by the Great Powers. In the Ancient Times the Macedonians and the so called hellenes who are not the ancestors of today's Greeks were neighbours and hostile. Macedonia defeated the Greek police stations reunited them and exploited them for reaching their goals. The main problem in the main issue is not the maps with a greater Macedonia etc., but the recognition of the Macedonian nation, language, history, culture, literature, so to recognize the identity of its Northern neigbour. Of course which has already been recognized by the world. Greece, the Greeks live in a myth and the Greek politicians and Greek elite is not ready to change its approach to the Macedonian question, as they say TO MAKEDONIKO.

Achilles

Everyone can write an article in nowdays without any qualifications full with lies and without facts or knowledge...Korski proves that with this piece of shit

Lerin

Greece, the so called 'cradle of democracy' is very deserving of this award. The Republic of Macedonia is not the one stealing identity, Greece are the real thieves. In 1913 Macedonia was divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Greece the proceeded to destroy evrything Macedonian. The policy was that there is no such thing as Macedonia. It was 'Norther Greece'. The Macedonian people in this area were persecuted and underwent forced Hellenization, anybody who is an expert on Balkan history will tell you that. In 1923 Greece settled Turkish Christians in the area in an attempt to dilute the Macedonian Population, these peope are refered to as Prosfigi, or Pontians in English. In 1948 following the Greek civil war, many more Macedonians were expelled from Greece after siding with the losing Communist side.

This is where the Greek claim that Tito wanted Northern Greece is obsurd. Tito completely opposed any involvement in the area, in fact, a prominant Macedonian communist leader, Metodij Andonov Cento was actually jailed by Tito for constantly calling for a Yugoslav invasion of the Greek Occupied Macedonia.
Also, the Partisans in Greece sided with Stalin after the Tito/Stalin split, therefore Tito wanted nothing to do with them.

This dispells the myth about Tito 'creating' the macedonians.

How do I know all this?
my family comes form Lerin, or 'Florin' as the name was Hellenised to. My family came to Australia in 1923, well before Tito was even prominent, and they always identified as Macedonian, spoke the same language as is spoken in the Republic of Macedonia and didnt speak any greek. The 'Greek' province of Macedonia, or Aegean Macedonia was mostly Macedonian until 1923, when the population exchange occured.

To this day Greece denied the existence of any Macedonian Minority in Greece. They have blocked moves to build a Macedonian Cultural Center, and constantly harrass those who identify as Macedonian. These human rights abuses are well documented by organisation such as the CIA, the US State Department and Helsinki Watch. And it not just the Macedonians they supress. Bulgarian and Turkish Minorities in Thrace similarly have no rights and are denied teher identity, as are the Albanians of Epirus. In fact, the whole of Northern Greece is made up of lands taken over from Macedonia, Turkey and Albania, as part of the Greater Greece policy of the late 1800's, early 1900's.

So, all this nonsense about the name Macedonia implying territorial claims is rubbish. Although it does rightfully belong to Macedonia, there is no way the Republic of Macedonia, can take back Greek Macedonia, in this day and age with an inferior army and a weak economy. The real reason behind the name dispute is the Macedonian Minority in Greece.

Greece are the real identity thieves in this whole issue.

curious american

ive seen posters here get upset with the term slav-macedonian. Do you guys deny the fact you speak a slavic language ? Or is that a conspiracy theory also created by the greeks ?

kubrat

korski...get your head out of your ass !!! dont write articles you know nothing about. no more nationalists in the balkans. Gruevski get out, the " macedonian " language is bulgarian. Everybody knows this ! except the author !! LOL !!!

marksg

Hate and revisioninsm so readilly demontsrated by pro-Macedonian posts prove that EU, Nato, France and Greece are right about non existent "good neighbourly relations".
That Mr Gruevsky just elected as Prime minister is seeking an excuse do stop EU reforms also is a tell tell sign of Macedonia's capacity as a candidate country. Mr Korski contradicts himeself...

Jon

dude, all of you guys a lot of you guys have no clue what you are talking about. i am greek, and know that macedonia was divided in 1912-1914 by the superpowers. in fact, when dividing macedonia, the only reason they didn't include all of real macedonia, such as solun and the supposed "greek/aegean" macedonia was because the u.k. did not want to give the strategic port of solun (and aegean macedonia) to a communist/socialist country (yugoslavia). history will repeat itself and the true macedonians will rise up once again.

Michelos.gr

“If one country can change the terms of the Unions enlargement process”? And I thought EU is for the people and the countries they belong! It seems that Korski forget the France and Ireland lessons!

Steve Mcquillion

Mr Korski states the the truth. Simple as that. And the truth obviously hurts all the those greeks posting their disillusional pathetic rascist comments here (actually their forefathers are really turkish immigrants - so dont know what they are? Probably Sub-Saharan Ethiopians? or some Arab gene? Fortunately or Unfortunatley you cant hide genetics therefore its hard to distort those facts like they distort the truth about Macedonia - they think Macedonia is greece? my lord what a vivid imagination some 'greek' people are full blown Schizophrenics...) It is evident their desperate for some sort of ancestry but I say to them its ok to be of turkish or whatever bloodline. Macedonia to the Macedonians.

Achilles

Korski asks from Greece, to protect Fyrom, no matter what they do or claim.

Why is that?
Is the political interest of your patrons more valuable than the truth?

Do the Greeks have the right to decide by elections if they want Fyrom in Eu?
This is your worst fear Korski...because Greeks will never accept this artificial state with any name including the name Macedonia in Eu.

Stealing our history is a crime for Greeks.

And we don't care if your patrons want this state as soon as possible under their influence.

Ian Mather

The prize for the worst policy should go to Mr. Gruevski actually.
If I am not mistaken Greece agreed the nation to be called "Macedonia" as long as they included in the name a geographical specification. Like North Macedonia or Upper Macedonia or something like that.

So why is Greece wrong?

In slavo Macedonian schools, children are taught that Greece is occupying their land. That Greece was "given" 50% of their land in 1913 in the treaty of Bucharest. This proves Greece's claims that the insistence of Mr. Greuvski on calling the country just "Macedonia" has obvious territorial claims on Greece. The slavo Macedonian children are purposely being confused in thinking that the division of a Territory in 1913 which was called Macedonia and on which Greeks, Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Jews, Vlachs and other slavs lived during the ottoman empire belong just to them, the so called current Republic of(slavo)Macedonia. These ultra nationalistic views endorsed by the government were used by Mr. Gruevski to win the elections.

These Slav people have the right to be called whatever they want as long as they do not steal and plagiarize the history of another nation and as long as they don’t claim territory from another nation.

Really we should not expect Greece to put up with such behavior. Someone should wake up these Slavic people and have them smell the coffee. Mr. Greuvski’s policies and only his, should be blamed for his countries isolation…

yiannis zelios

Many FYROM officials and many "macedonian" people say that "greece have changed it's 'Northern Greece' province to 'Macedonia' in 1988?". This is completely wrong. The macedonian part of greece is called macedonia from 1912 propably the talk about ministry of northern greece which renamed in ministry of macedonia and thraki. Especially the officials should be more informed and not repeat again and again all this wrong information.
Macedonian minority in greece? really? where do they live? How many are they? In all elections national and euroelections the party of "macedonia minority" named OURANIO TOXO receives less than 5000 votes. In a population of 2.800.000 people are 5000 people a minority? What you call a minority is ghost minority. Never apeared anywhere apart from 2-3 people (by the way the 2-3 leaders of "macedonian minority" are public servants). In conclusion all this story of macedonians in greece IS A GREAT FAIRYTALE of comunist fantasy in 1945 and nothing more. I feel sympathy for the FYROMIANS who live in this fairytale so many decades now but the fact is that theresnt such a minority 5000 people in a population of 2800000 greeks in macedonia and 11000000 greeks in the country isnt a minority.

David

Question for Curious American: Isn't English a Germanic language? Should Americans be referred to as Germano-Americans because of their Anglo-Saxon language?

Peter Medows

These slavs are Bulgarians. They speak Bulgarian and they are confused. They should be called East Bulgaria or something like that. I am sure Greece will not have e problem with that name and will allow them to get in Nato and EU. Someone must inform MR. Gruevski that his policies are destroying his nation.

Maybe it should be you Mr. Korski

DIMITAR

There is no such thing as a "Greek", its an idea, and an outdated one at that! Today's Greeks are an embarrassing bunch, just read their comments on any article re:Macedonia; they shoot from the hip, all in defense of a bruised ego! They are in fact of Albanian, Vlach, Turkish etc. stock, flung ad hoc under the "hellenic" umbrella, and voila..."Greeks".

Why, when faced with balanced, fact based comments from MACEDONIANS they counter with wild assertions how Macedonia is Greek ( Propaganda regurgitated ), and never with simple facts!

Re: the article; We are not "slav" Macedonians... there is no such thing as a purely slav people! The slavic DNA is scattered fairly evenly throughout southern Balkan peoples, according to Oxford University studies!

Slav is a linguistic group. According to cutting edge research by the likes of Mario Alinei, professor Emeritus of the University of Utrecht, "...
"I have to commence by clearing away one of the most absurd consequences of the traditional chronology namely, thet of the arrival of the Slavs into the immense area in which they now live. The ONLY LOGICAL CONCLUSION CAN BE THAT THE SOUTHERN BRANCH OF THE SLAVS IS THE OLDEST AND THAT FROM IT DEVELOPED THE SLAVIC WESTERN AND EASTERN BRANCHES... today only a minority of experts support the theory of a late migration for the slavs.."

BTW if the whole world world is "Greek", why was the dead koine language only recently exhumed, only just beating out Albanian as the official language of the newly created Greek state - c.1820's ??

Alexander

Mr Korski your name is of slavo Macedonian origins. I am sure that your parents are slavo Macedonians and therefore your views completely biased

Jacque

I say Greece invades this ridiculous history stealing little nation like Britain did with Iraq and is still doing with Ireland.

Maybe that should win them the prize for Best foreign policy Mr Korski?

Lubi

There is something horribly wrong with the European Union. It refuses to implement basic civil rights in its member states and turns a blind eye to the ethnic genocide practiced in Greece. If I were the Macedonian president, I would withdraw my application for EU membership and focus on obtaining basic rights for the minorities living in Greece. I’m sure Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey would also be interested in supporting this. Somebody needs to take a stand against the persecution of minorities in the EU and expose this insidious behaviour. This isn’t about Macedonia’s name, it’s about the abuse of human beings by Europe’s most virulently racist state.

We had enough

This nation is made of Bulgarians, Albanians, Turks, Gypsies and Vlachs.

It is a joke that these poeple have anything to do with Macedonians and Greek culture.

They should find someone else name to steal. Maybe we should called them British Pitskoumateria or something like that

Nickos Andrianos

slavo Macedonian language = Bulgarian

It is just a dialect of Bulgarian.

slavo-Macedonians = West Bulgarians

Doesnt require a phd for anyone to see that.

Philip the Makedon

The human rights of Albenian nationals are continiously abused by the fake slavo Macedonians. These is a proven fact thus the Ochrid agreement was sighed to correct the situation. These fake-Macedonians are the constant problem in the area. They plagiarize history, claim territories and they abuse human rights of minorities.

Their nationalism and pretentiousness is their problem. I think that until they change those views they should not be allowed anywere including to enter greece.

Macedonian Warrior

___Perfect Article…
___Greece has no historical connection with Macedonia. Only the last 18 years they use the name Macedonia for the north part of Greece. The name dispute between the two countries is the result of the Greek policy to conquer the south part of the new republic.

___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second was Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there.
___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask Bush and Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…

Achileas

This article is really funny. Mr. Korkski maybe you should read what another writter had "posted" few years before you. You do not compare your self with Herodotus do you?

Alexander of Macedon I (Herodotus Book):

5-They at once, hearing this, made haste to the outpost, where they found Alexander, who addressed them as follows:"Men of Athens, that which I am about to say I trust to your honour; and I charge you to keep it secret from all excepting Pausanias, if you would not bring me to destruction. Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself a Greek by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery. Know then that Mardonius and his army cannot obtain favourable omens; had it not been for this, they would have fought with you long ago. Now, however, they have determined to let the victims pass unheeded, and, as soon as day dawns, to engage in battle. Mardonius, I imagine, is afraid that, if he delays, you will increase in number. Make ready then to receive him. Should he however still defer the combat, do you abide where you are; for his provisions will not hold out many more days. If ye prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom; consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Greek cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon. "

Herodotus Book IX ,45,(Kalliopi)

And by the way, Mr. Jankov and Mr. Stojanov maybe you need to hide the "..ov" fror your surnames before commenting vmore... It really shows your slavic backround....Or am I wrong?

An ethnic Vlach from Greece

Excellent article Mr. Korski and congratulations to 'The Spectator' for hosting it! The hysterical comments of many a Greek above just confirms that you hit a raw nerve. Greece has many dark secrets in its cupboard, the repressed, unrecognised neo-Latin speaking Vlach ethnic minority from the Greek Highlands of Pindus mountains (stretching in Macedonia proper), being just one of them.

JD

The slavo Mecedonian Party in Greece (ouranio toxo) receives no more than 4-5000 votes on national elections.

We have more Somalians in greece than that.

May be we should also teach in the greek public schools Suahili language in order not to abuse Somalian Ethnic minorities??

How confused these slavo Macedonians are. Someone should wake them up

Goran from Macedonia proper

Thank you sir, for bothering with actually describing and analysing reality and not just spinning with the consensus narrative. It´s a rare thing in western media.

vico

To curious american:
slav-Macedonians is a Greek product. Because you never say slav-Serbians, slav-Croatians, slav-Polish, etc, so you should never use the slav-Macedonians term for identify the Macedonians.

An ethnic Vlach from Greece

JD!
You fail to realise basic things in your comment above!

The Somalians are not a NATIVE ethnic minority but recently arrived refugees while the non-Greek Macedonains who inhabit the countryside around the northern Greek towns of Florina and Vodena (Edessa) are AUTOCHTONOUS people who own ancestral land and lived there since the 6th century A.D.
By contrast, many of the new Greek settlers in Macedonia arrived there as recently as ..1923 having been transplanted to this province from the depths of the Asian Turkish Anatolia (i.e. the so called 'prosfiyes')

JD

To ethnic Vlach from Greece

Using your argumentation the slavs and vlachs who enterd the area around 6th century AD (the slavs) are not Autochtonous realy, cause before them ancient Greeks leaved there and therefore they are the real AUTOCHTONOUS ones. So then Vlachs and Slavs are just ecomonic immigrants trying to get land, just a little older than the Somalis. Right?

Macedonian

Hello Bletsas ethnic Vlach (maias). This article is written by order. FYROM people are just helpless in this war of american propaganda that tries to make a nation out of a mixed people in order to keep business going in FYROM.Macedonia CAN NOT BE ANYTHING ELSE BUT GREECE. As well as Spartans,Atheninans,Thessalians... Macedonians are GREEK and NO SLAVS or BULGARIANS.

Dirk

Mr Korski i assume that you also think that British Foreigh policy should win the Best Prize?

Or they havent killed enough inocent people in Iraq yet??

Rachel B

Mr Korski the history stealing Bulgaro-Albanians should stop claiming territories from Greece and should show some flexibility in their foreign policy for a change.

I say they are the ones with the STUPIDEST Foreign policy award ever.

...Stealing and plagiarizing another nations history...

True Macedonian

My family has leaved in Macedonia for hundreds of years and my grandfather always told us that these slavs (slavoMacedonians) would undentify themselves as either Bulgarians or dopoios (locals) Never as Macedonians.

This is just an invetntion to claim territories from Greece.

So Greek foreigh policy is the correct one concerning Greek Security.

Maybe it is not the best for American or British Interest and definately not for your slavo_Macedonian interest Mr Korski.

Dave Miller

HAHA Macedonia 4 the Macedonians!!!!!!!!!!

Vagelis

Hey Daniel Korsk(are you a reporter?a journalist? who are you really??) ,read some history before you post something in "spectator"... also,according to UN,NATO etc etc, the country's name is FYROM!! so go write some article for your country and your politicians and let the other countries do their job.

curious amercian

To Vico,

I understand your point but what about the 2.5 million ethnic macedonians that identify themselves as greek ? Dont they have a say ? I think we can agree that macedonia is considered a region not an ethnicity. Thus there should be seperation of those 2 groups that have lived in that region. Not to mention the example you used doesnt hold water. I am an american w/ polish roots. I speak english but am polish. My polish LAST NAME shows my ethnicity...just like your last names show your ethnicity WHICH IS SLAVIC. Why are you so ashamed to show our slavic roots ? You guys really have to show flexiblity on BOTH sides. Greetings !

get a clue

"slav-Macedonians is a Greek product. Because you never say slav-Serbians, slav-Croatians, slav-Polish, etc, so you should never use the slav-Macedonians term for identify the Macedonians." - VICO

erm...poland, croatia, and serbia are pretty much slavic countries so putting slav in front of it is pretty redundant. But for macedonia...i dont think i EVER read anywhere that is a slavic country. In fact there are over 2 million macedonians in northern greece that would object to you. Not to mention 95 percent of known history and historians. Get your head out of your ass...soon you will tell us that the sky is in fact Red.

Stop the sharade

Typicall greek defences! Try something else for a change. The world is fed up of your same and same comments all the time. You just repeat the same crap that your preshious politicians are saying. Stop denying YOUR SELVES. You have the proves. The problem is: you decided to close your eyes in front of it.
1. The “theory” about Greece’s fears about Republic of Macedonia having “territorial” claims over Norden Greece is a pure NONSENSE! If the greeks are saying that R. Macedonia is a mouse and Greece is a lion, than the Greeks them selves are admitting they are LYING! Are you serious in the claims that R. Macedonia is willing to start a war against NATO (any attack of a NATO member is considered as an attack over NATO)?
2. Is anyone serious saying that Greece is a DEMOCRACY? Maybe if the Greek definition of democracy is: Democracy is a country (GREECE) whose politics is based on LYING to their own citizens about being “pure blooded” something connected with a civilisation from over 4000 years ago and NOT mixed with no one else, that they, and ONLY they have the right of EVERYTHING from the history, that everyone BUT them is worthless and useless, and they are “the superior race”, that in their country are living ONLY Greeks and NO ONE else, that only the Greeks have human rights, and everyone else IS A NON EXISTING ISSUE, that they have the right to chose names of the other countries and name of its citizens, that the membership in NATO and EU is giving them a right to spread HATE, DENIAL and breaking of EVERY SINGLE HUMAN RIGHT to the non Greek (“the non existing”) citizens and as a members of that institutions, honouring and respecting that rights is NOT required, the verification of the international laws on human rights in the Greek parliament is NOT necessary and the use and respect of ANY international law is not obligatory, than yes, we can call Greece a “democracy”!
Here links to some of your own proves:

http://www.florina.org/news/2000/minority_language_g.asp

http://www.florina.org/abecedar/001.asp

Young Macedonian

Dear Mr. Korski,

You ignore the fact that FYROMacedonia exerts an expansionist propaganda against Greece. They talk about ''occupied Macedonia by Greeks that should be liberated''(How are they going to do this? By killing civilians and innocent people like they did during the Greek civil war when they wanted to establish a ruthless and inhumane communist regime in Greek Macedonia?)

You ignore the fact that FYROMacedonia introduces new issues that should be ''discussed'' with Greece and in that way the dialogue process about the name (which is the only existent isssue) is delayed.

You ignore the fact that the only destabilising and dangerous factor in the Balkans is the FYROMacedonia and its nationalistic, AntiGreek government, which pursues border change against its neighbors.

Regards

Kate

Dear JD:
If the "slavo" Macedonians in Greece are minor number (4000-5000 votes on 11 million people) than I assume that the RECOGNISED 2000 Greek minority in Turkey should also BE DENIED (98 MILLION people). I have a better idea: Greece to make a CENSUS (monitored from the EU) with possibility for ALL the "nonexistent" minorities in Greece to declare them selves as one. Then we will se how HOMOGENEUS country Greece really is. Maybe the Greeks will be minority in their own country. That is WHY they are scared of Republic of Macedonia!

Mak Attack

I love how the racist and hateful comments from the Athenians just go on to prove the authors point.
Athens is bent on destroying Macedonia, Macedonian History and the Macedonian Identity while Macedonia just wants to live in peace, and have good neighbourly relations!

Norman

The ridiculous comments of the Greek posters make one wonder what the educational system is like in Greece. Wow..sheer lunacy! Mr. Korski ought to be commended for a fine article outlining Greece's anti-Macedonian policy.

macedonian from Kastoria

To all so call MACEDONIANS. I was born in Kastoria and i had two uncles .In a civil war both of them join the communist party .After the loss both of them left Grecce one ot them went to Roumania the other in scopje. My last name is KOLITSIS.The one came back in Greece from Roumania and his passport wrote the name KOLITSIS and the other came back from scopje with a name KOLITSOFSKI and also claims to be the real Macedonian. The propaganda that this nation gives in order to get an indetity is pathetic.

John Miller

To the reader who thinks I'm "Greek,"

In questioning my identity, you betray an insecurity about your own. I'm an American who took an interest in this issue during the recent NATO summit in Bucharest. I was impressed with the way that the Greeks held their position so I looked into it further. I was not surprised to find that the Greeks were correct in holding their ground, considering the irredentism which they have put up with since 1992. As I said in my earlier post, there is no point in forging military/political alliances when even the basic requirements of friendly relations are not adhered to.

As for Tito's role in all this, please see the link above provided by Yanni to the Time Magazine article from 12/04/44. It clearly shows that Tito and the communists had territorial ambitions on Greece. Here is the link again in case you missed it...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,796967,00.html

If you need more proof, here is a quote from a 12/26/44 memo sent to all U.S. consular officials by Secretary of State E. Stettinius:

"The Department has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia emanating from Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav partisan and other sources with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected State. This Government considers talk of ‘Macedonian Nation’, ‘Macedonian Fatherland’, or ‘Macedonian National Consciousness’ to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic or political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.” [Foreign Relations, Vol. VII, Circular Airgram (868.014)]

Sadly, the communists have gone but the propaganda remains.

Darko from Bitola

Most of the Macedonian (or FYROMacedonian if you prefer) posting here are diaspora idiots who think they can dictate our foreign policy.

WE WANT to be in the EU and NATO and have good relations with our neibours including Greece. Gruevski and his comrads should STOP IMMEDIATELY this game they are playing. You cant go anywhere in my country and not see hate messages to Greece!

I study history and No Macedonia was split in 1913. Infact the "United Macedonia" maps are old 19th century Bulgarian exarchate propaganda which was inherited by the later revolutionists.

Lets stop this crap and get along. WE ARE NO BULGARIANS, NO SERBS,NO GREEKS, but we have NOTHING to do with Ancient Macedonians!

Lets find a NAME at last so we can move forward! The diaspora are wealthy and sitting confortable on their nationalism while we have to struggle for a better future. YOU CHOSE YOUR FUTURE IN A DIFFERENT LAND. LET US DECIDE for OURS. We live in the balcans and not YOU! Most of us have no problem with Greeks! Fanatic people exist on both sides!

Gruevski is a dangerous man for my country and full of shit! Our economy and future cannot keep long without entering the EU or NATO!

Makednos

Great Mr.Korski, what would you like we to do to be agreeable to you?
To recognize the Bulgarian language as "Macedonian"?
To create a "Macedonian" minority in the Macedonian majority?
To give to the Bulgaro-Slavs the name that we have for 2000 years?(You know the offsprings of the ancient Macedonians are still here and talk the same language,happens me, to be one of them).
Why dont you mention the maps of the Skopians school books that shows 1/3rd of Greece as a greater "Macedonia".

Goran StojanOV

The commenter Achiles suggested that I (and the other Macedonians) should hide the -ov in our surnames.

May I kindly remind this person that the year is not 1936, and the fascist dicatator Metaxas in not in power any more. It was his idea to change people's names, surnames, placenames, gravestones, demolish churches, erase everthing Macedoaninan from Macedonia.

Not that the successive Greek governments changed all that much...

Out of Scope

Oh Daniel Korski! How I 've missed him! Isn't he a very good colleague of the fyromian puppetmaster George Soros???

Daniel Korski "joined the European Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Policy Fellow in October 2007. Previously, he was a Senior Adviser in the Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction in the U.S State Department, a position he was seconded to by the British Government.

"He spent the first quarter of 2007 in Basra in southern Iraq as Head the UK/US Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). Prior to his US posting, Daniel was the Deputy Head of the UK’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit (PCRU), an inter-departmental organization set-up up by the Ministry of Defense, the Foreign Office and Department for International Development. Daniel has also worked in Afghanistan as a Policy Adviser to the Minister for Counter-Narcotics. He remains a Special Adviser to the U.S Project on National Security Reform (www.pnsr.org) "Before joining the Civil Service, Daniel worked as Policy Adviser to the UK House of Commons Defense Select Committee; and as the Head of Political-Military Affairs for Lord Paddy Ashdown, the then-High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Bosnia, he also served as a Political Adviser to the Chairmen of the Bosnian Defense Reform Commission, the Expert Commission on Intelligence Reform and the Commission on Police Restructuring. Daniel started as an intern with the UN in Geneva and the International Crisis Group (ICG).

An ethnic Vlach of Greece

Vagelis!

No one is forcing you to read the London Spectator
and Mr. Korski's articles. Used as you are to read Greek's media propaganda on Macedonia only, you are now shocked to discover that virtual no one in Europe shares Greece's fake narrative on Macedonian history (allegedly "inseparable" part of the Greek history)

JD! As I said, many of you Greeks came to Macedonia as prosfyges, refugees in 1923, while the non-Greek Macedonians were there some 1500 years earlier.
The best example is Thessaloniki's Prefect Psomiadis, he himself a recent immigrant from Pontos (he's a Pontian Greek from Turkey who has little in common with Macedonia).
Sorry, but a significant chunk of the Greeks in Macedonia are, I repeat, recent arrivals, who were brought deliberately in order to Grecize this province which until 1913 was still part of the Ottoman realm.

James Lee Foster Jr.

Articles like this and governments like the FYROM one give rise to nationalist states and sad cases like Kosovo, Bosnia, S.Osetia, etc. FYROM seems to dispute all arrangements made between peoples and states throughout the ages in order to achieve its prime minister's aims... No Slav Macedonians, no problem...

Ventimiglia

Greece's foreign policy which Mr. Korski correctly
labels as lamentable (or at least insinuates it is)
is masterminded by a clique of inbred politicians who cling on the seats of power in Athens for many a decade.
The current chief of Greece's diplomacy, Foreign Minister Dora Bakoianis (nee Mitsotakis) or "poutana mas" as she is nicknamed by the Greek public, is herself the daughter of the former Prime Minister Mitsotakis.
The current Prime Minister Karamanlis is the nephew of Costa Karamanlis' himself once Prime Minister.
The former Foreign Secretary Yiorgos Papandreou is the son of the late Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and the list can continue.

It comes as no surprise that Greece's foreign policy is a succession of blunders since it is basically a family affair and clan-like (not unlike the Cosa nostra's)

vico

To "to get a clue"
The ancestors of these so called "Macedonians" in the Aegean Macedonia came there after the collapse of the Megali Idea, in 1923, when the Turkish Army with the leading of Ataturk defeated the Greeks. Even these prosfiges called themselves prosfiges (refuge) and they call us dopioi (local people). The Macedonians were there in the Ancient Times, in the Middle Ages and today. When Pavlos Melas from Marseille came to Macedonia to prepare the occupation of Macedonia wrote to his wife, ...that you could scarcely find Greek people in this area. The people living here spoke a different language, which is not Greek... All the so called Makedomahoi came there from different parts of Greece, even from Crete, because there was no Greek to fight for the occupation of Macedonia. Shortly, the Greeks living in Aegean Macedonia are not Macedonians they are Greeks or orthodox Turkish. Ask your mother or grandmother, or your father or your grandfather to be more informed.

Aris

Do journalists not bother educating themselves on the subject they are writing about?

What is absurd is the idiot who wrote this article

OH wait a second, his name is Daniel Korski...he isn't absurd, he is BRAINWASHED

A Bulgarian who thinks he is Macedonian LOL

The funny thing is that these Bulgarians who claim to be Macedonian don't even respect Macedonian history but instead bastardize it

TALOS

@Goran StojanOV

hey Goran u dont need to hide anything from ur BULGARIAN surname.

Listen mate ur rubbish about Greeks changing surnames, burning churches wont work here. Sell that crap at Maknews, the asylum for the mentaly disturbed scopjahedins. Over there i am sure u make a difference ;)

As for the burned BULGARIAN churches of north Greece, blame the greek commies and ur SNOF rebels. Cause the BULGARIAN (there were never any "Macedonian" churches) that remained intact were simply used by the Greek church. Same as the old Greek churches in FYROM, now used by the SCHISMATIC Scopijan church

as about name changes, why do u even open ur mouth on such a topic? WHy dont u explain to us how the slav neutral -ovski substituted all surnames ending with -os, -ov, -ic? Why dont u tell us about all those Bulgarian killed or sent to prison camps dutring the TITO days?

spare us the crap mat and open a book for a change LOL

nikola nikolov

http://bp1.blogger.com/_ofsKG4Jlu5I/R3anKH01bAI/AAAAAAAAAPg/9k3v3d-jy04/s1600-h/unitedmacedoniamapimageqs9.jpg

JD

To ethnic Vlak of Greece

According to your argumentation Mr Vlak, Greek refugees (prosfiges) in 1923 actually returned to the land which was originally theirs since 1000BC that is 3000 years ago. Accordingly all those expelled slavs were actually illigal immigrants expelled from the land owned by greek predesesors.

Anyway your argumentation is faulty since a minority is a minority independent of how long they have been one.

Of course 4-5000 slavs who think they are slavo-Macedonians should have the same rights Greeks have.

But Mr Vlak surelly people which freely exercise their constitutional right to vote must have equal rights.

It is a pitty to see that you are reapeating the nationalistic propaga of mr Gruevski.

Nikola Nikolov

Treaty of London, 1913
The terms enforced by the Great Powers were:
Albania was declared independent; with Serbia, Montenegro and Greece being obliged to withdraw their forces.
The Sanjak of Novi Pazar was divided between Serbia and Montenegro.
Bulgaria received Thrace north of the line between Enos on the Aegean and Midia on the Black sea.
No definitive decision was taken about the division of Macedonia because of disagreements between the allies.

Anette

The biggest nationalistic (and fascist) state in Europe is Greece. That's so obvious.
The only nation to claim that’s ethnically pure and to claim land based on ancient history. There is no such a nation in the world like Greece. Greek’s madness is comparable to the one of Nazi Germany. Greece needs a couple of good slaps to wake up. Alexander is long gone, Ancient Greece is a myth and It’s the 21 Century.

Dean

Mr Korski the award for most RIDICULUS foreign policy should go to Mr Gruevski

It is a joke to have as Foreign policy based on the plagairism of History and the roberry of another nation's symbols

Greek from Serres

Excellent post Darko ! Im with you all the way. No greek have problems w/ ppl like you. Just problems w/ nationalists that want to cause problems. Both sides... Lets live in peace

Dora Bakoyakoyaoyanisopolus (or whatever)

The Republic of Macedonia already has a quanifier differentiating it from Greek Macedonia... It is "The Republic"... Greeks argue and bitch about RoM brainwashing and such but never consider that they themselves might have been brainwashed.

It has been said that history is written by the victors. If you look at ancient historical texts they state that the kingdom of Macedonia conquered the Hellenic states and merged them into a single entity.

Modern Greeks and Modern Macedonians have no connection with the ancient equivalents. Modern History (post 1912) was also written by the victors (in this case Greece).

Those who wrote the history changed it to suit themselves (it's not unique).

FYROM should withdraw from the UN and re-apply as RoM. Then the big five (France, UK, USA, China and Russia) would decide if it can go to a vote. I am sure that French support for Greece would wain under pressure from these other big hitters and that Greek petitioning would baulk next to the bargaining powers of these others.

Then a vote by all UN member states would see RoM recognised and the path to EU and NATO membership would be clear.

The Greeks would then be put back into their tiny nation box and be told to shut up. They think that through these actions that they are a big global player when in truth they are simply the spoilt child of Europe...

It is true that they are big investors of slave labour in Macedonia (200 Euros a month MAX) and also true they alone are responsible for destabalising the region..

NATO membership protects sovereignty and borders. Once Macedonia is in NATO then both countries borders are established. Surely if Greece is scared of Macedonian expansionism then getting them into NATO ASAP would be a key seurity goal...

But no, they used diplomatic threats to stop this...

The Greek government relies on this battle to maintain popular support and in effect power.

Happily they will probably not win the diplomatic war, and in time we will see the Republic of Macedonia take its rightful place at the UN, EU, NATO, FIFA, IOC and others tables...

Read a History book for a change

Mr Korski the reader's of your blog seem to make some basic argumentative mistakes.

1)Ancinets Macedonians and Macedonia were part of Greek Culture. Its a Historical Fact that they spoke and wrote in greek and they believed in the Greek gods.

2) The Slavs of Slavo-macedonia came in the area is the 6th century AD and diplaced a big part of the remaining greek population.

HOWEVER if the slavo-Macedonians/crypto-Bulgarians claim that Greek Macedonia was their land since they were there from 6AD then the Greeks were there BEFORE that and as such fought and won back their land which is currently Greek Macedonia and in return diplaced the slavic populations as the slavs had done around 6AD.

In all cases, the above is for the Historians.

Slavo-Macedonians speak a Bulgarian Dialect, they write in cyrilic and culturally they are not in anyway similar with ancient Macedonian/Greeks.

Therefore if they want to leave in a viable country in the future they should adjust their Foreigh policy and forget their silly nationalistic ideas

I think Greece has been more that fair in the issue and has excibited great restraint.

Achilles

Macedonia=greek name

Macedonian language=greek language (all the inscriptions are in greek, dorian one as Spartan).

Slavs came to this area 1000 years after the death of Alexander

After 3 wars and exchange of populations less than 5000 of them are still in greece and at place where ancient macedonia is(results from elections---voting is secret)

greek government tries a compromise to agree with them to use a name as "North Macedonia"...Greek people are against this as all polls show....they don't agree to let them to steal the name Macedonia.

The democratic solution would be to make a referendum in Greece
Then this artificial country will be not allowed to be in Eu and it will come to an end (split between Bulgaria and Albania)

This is the worst fear of Mr Korski and his friends....to face the Democratic opinion of 11 million people.

Balcan countries(except Greece) were in sphere of influence of Soviet union..(after Georgia anybody can understand Us policy for this area and Mr. Korski purposes)

skopian

Hey Stop the Sharade...
Why the hell does the USA have an embargo on Cuba ?!! Is the USA scared shitless of Cuba ?! Your logic is flawed and onesided...get a better argument

Dave Shuman from atlanta

Mr Krski actually Greece should be given tha award of the best and most humane Foreign policy.

Others would not have put up with the nationalistic and plagarizing propaganda of the Republic of Slavo Macedonia.

Mr. Gruevski's policies in fact should be the ones who should win the most lame Foreign Policy in the region

Mary K.

It si a pitty that these Bulagarian speaking slavs are totaly confused and misled.

Someone wake them up PLEASE

Janice @ Cork Ireland

Reading all the above comments and especially the ones from the Macedonian Slavs I can only say that Greece did the best to protect its national security and integrity. These slavs seem very nationalistic to me

Therefore their Foreigh policy was correct and efficient.

akritas

Mr Daniel Kosrki

The dispute over the name of Macedonia began in 1946 when the People's Republic of Macedonia was established as part of Yugoslavia and escalated when the republic announced independence in 1991.

Greece has demonstrated its desire to reach a solution that will lead to the full normalisation of bilateral relations, facilitate the course of its neighbour towards the Euro-Atlantic institutions, and consolidate stability and cooperation in Balkan region.

BUT

Yet, FYROM continues to provoke Greece, usurping history which has been Hellenic for thousands of years, while FYROM refuses to negotiate in good faith over the name issue. Unfortunately, actions over the years such as distortion of geographic maps, naming its airport "Alexander the Great," revisionist textbooks in schools, and inflammatory comments by top government officials, encourages new generations in FYROM to cultivate hostile sentiments against Greece. Further, this continuing systematic government policy will hinder FYROM's accession to both the EU and NATO. This is the real threat to stability in the Balkans, to the detriment of U.S. interests.

I wish to remind you Mr Daniel Kosrki and writer of this un-Hellenic article that currently there are over 100 members of the Congress who have signed onto H.Res. 356, calling on FYROM to cease it "hostile activities or propaganda" against Greece.

I am a Macedonian, however I am in no way identified with or related to the newly formed independent state referred to as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” ; I am instead insulted by the fact that I cannot be known as a Macedonian without being identified by others as related to FYROM. My identity has been usurped.

The exercise of the state's right to choose its name, as with any right in general, must not, however, impede the rights of other states or be accomplished for a purpose other than that for which the right was established for and be to the detriment of another state is fundamental right of the International Law.

Please next time consider the above facts before accuse the Greek state as Raspberry winner.

I am sure that you are the winner First Prize In Prestigious Raspberry Journalism.

Sandra BB

Greece HAS agreed the nation to be called "Macedonia" as long as they included in the name a geographical specification. Like "North Macedonia" or "Upper Macedonia" or something like that.

It is the Fascist expansionist foreigh policies of the Repuplic of slavo Macedonia who did not accept that . Slavo Macedonia is a fascist nationistic country with a long track of human rights abuses of their Albanian minorities and with a curent track of Historical and cultural plagairism of Greece.

Achilles

Anette do you accuse 11 million Greek people as fascists?:)

Let me remind you that in WWII 10% of Greek population has lost their lives against Germans,Italians (the biggest percent)

2nd was Soviet union with 2.8% losses...

tell us your losses against fascism:)

Manchester

"Ancient Greece is a myth and It’s the 21 Century." - Annete

I think that says it all folks..we just had a poster debunk years of historians work and documentation. Yes ladies and gentlemen everything is bullshit. Ancient Greece did not exist and everything we know from mathematics,litarature,theatre,science and athletics is bullshit. I propose everybody goes to FYROM for an education cause we really dont know anything....

Tom Theopolos

Foreign policies are based on national security issues and not based on what make Americans, British and you Happy Mr Korski.

Macedonian Slavs seem to be nationalistic and uncivilized until that stops Greece must block them from entering the civilized world

Truth Bearer

Some of you Fyromians are not very well.It saddens me to see the extent of this hatred to your fellow neighbours the Greeks.Shame on you for lying and trying to deceit the world with yr propaganda!!!Macedonia was is and will always be GREEK!!!!

What is the Problem ?

WTF !!! All we are asking is for you guys to put a "New", "North", or "Slav" adjective ! What is the probem ! Hell, in the US we have New England from England...New York from York...and they are across the atlantic ocean !!! I dont think we are being unreasonable here...cmon ! lets move on already ! your actions are showing your real intentions !

Maggie Macalister

The Republic of slavo Macedonian is a racist country which abuses the rights of their minorities especially Albanians and Gypsies which make up more than 40% of their population....

In addition they now have territorial claims to Greece and as such Greece's Foreign Policy of protecting their National Interests is Correct

Roger H. from Oregon

That's the way it is. What is FYROM gonna do about it?
And, FYROM is the ONLY 1state that has that problem, since the beginning of the EU.
It's just fine with Greece if they don't change their stolen name, and their constitution that contains it. It's FYROM who stays outside. Now, crying and mouthing off and writing ridiculouw articles like this, hoping that it will bother Greece...is the ultimate idiocy.
Greeks let nonsense like this roll off their back. They don't depend on being...popular with FYROM for their happiness. FYROM has no voice-America speaks through it, and America is frothing at the mouth right now to accomplish "something" before the Bush administration rids the world of its odious presence.

Lionel

You use the term "Slav-Macedonians," yet you deride Greece for wanting that term to be given legal personality. You make no sense.

Loucas Lambert

FYROM'S identity & cultural theft from Greece MUST stop.
Would the USA accept a situation where a new country on its border called itself "Texas"? or would Germany accept "Bavaria"? or France "Burgandy"? or Spain "Catalonia". What about if the Irish set up a small country & called it "Anglia" or Brittania", wouldn't that make us in the UK angry? What about if this country called its airport "Richard The Lionheart"? (like how FYROM changed its airport to "Alexander The Great"). Now that would make us really go mad!!!
No country in the world would accept this theft so why should Greece? Greece should be applauded for its self-restraint in not resorting to a military solution.
Most classical scholars accept that the Aincient Macedonians spoke Greek & spread Greek ideas & civilisation to the Near East.

Stephanie from Florida

Lucas Lambert above wrote:
"Greece should be applauded for its self-restraint in not resorting to a military solution."

Hmmmmm....military solution....that's an idea....
Greek military can create a level football field and plant it with grass out of FYROM probably in about 10 hours.

John from Manchester

HERE ARE SOME COMMENTS FROM FYROM'S POLITICIANS:
1) We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian."
[FYROM's Ambassador to Canada, Gyordan Veselinov in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, 24 February 1999]

2) "We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians."
[FYROM'S President Mr. Kiro Gligorov, Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35.]

3) "We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great. We are Slavs and we speak a Slav language."
[FYROM'S Ambassador in Washington, Mrs. Ljubica Acevshka, 22 January 1999]

Minos

You cannot invent "history", or ethnic identity. People in FYROM, have discovered, after decades of communist rule, nationalism and chauvinism. Fron the one extreme, to the other... Along with a new and fabricated national identity. They also invented a "history". Well, historians have spoken. It is ridiculous to claim that Alexander the Great was a... Slav!

gm

Here is a Press Release - A letter about the Suffering of Hellenic Macedonians.

I am reposting this to raise awarness .

July 21, 2008

Dear Mr. Gruevski,

Please know that our Federation is the largest Hellenic-American organization of its type in the United States and represents well over One-Hundred (100) Hel1enic-American Organizations in the Greater New York area. Accordingly, following a thorough and detailed review of your recent open letter to Konstantinos Karamanlis, the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic and inasmuch as many of our member societies represent geographical areas of Greece that were either directly or indirectly impacted by the historical events you addressed in your referenced letter, we felt prompted, and appropriately so, to respond to you.

We are convinced that if you and your Government acknowledge the historical injustices that were committed against the Hellenic people during and after the Second World War and take redressive measures, then and only then can the relations between your former Yugoslav republic and the Hellenic Republic flourish. As you correctly state, we cannot now change history, but as the old saying goes, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes”.

As Greece and all other right minded governments were defending themselves against the Axis Powers in the Second World War, your Bulgarian forefathers were welcoming these evil despots in Skopje as liberators. This collaboration with both the Nazis and the Bulgarian occupation forces resulted in the murder and persecution of hundreds of thousands of Hellenes. Those not driven from their homes in places like Monastiri, Stromnitsa, and Gevgeli were forced to adopt a foreign identity to alleviate the continued persecution.

Sadly, the defeat of the Axis did not end the suffering of Hellenic Macedonians, who were then subjected to the murderous campaigns of the Comintern and their stooges in Greece. Seeking to divide the country and install a communist dictatorship, they proceeded in terrorizing, murdering, displacing, and kidnapping additional thousands of our countrymen. These crimes against humanity have been formally recognized by the United Nations, as was the kidnapping of at least 28,000 Hellenic children (see U.N. Resolutions 193 and 288), many of who repatriated only after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Following the post war turmoil, to avoid punishment for their crimes, many of these outlaws fled to your country with their families. In the spirit of your letter, we believe that before these criminals and their collaborators, who you may consider worthy of reparations for any financial hardships they may have suffered, must first face justice, either in the Greek Courts or in an International Tribunal. We also believe that reparations first be paid to the families of those Hellenes who were tortured and/or murdered by your former countrymen and that the living or the heirs of those unjustly forced to flee be allowed to return and enjoy their property.

While these documented crimes against Hellenes resulted in the displacement of thousands, there remains a large Hellenic minority in your country whose demands for recognition and basic human rights have been met with deaf- ears by your government. Among other things, our brethren wish simply to use their forefathers’ surnames and not the Slavic ones forced upon them. They wish to form self-funded organizations and teaching institutions for the promotion of their Hellenic ethnic and religious identity, as denied them to date, without any disrespect to their new country. These are fundamental and universally recognized human rights that your government must guarantee all its people, if it ever hopes to become a member of NATO or the EU, let alone a respected government on an international level.

The first error that you can easily rectify is simple recognition. While the Hellenic community living in your country numbers in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands, your government’s census numbers them at less than one thousand. This is of course the same census that numbers Bulgarians at less than two thousand, even though hundreds of thousands of your countrymen hold Bulgarian passports, much like your former Prime Minister Mr. Ljubco Georgievski.

Secondly, and as you correctly note in your letter to Prime Minister Karamanlis, “Good Will” is needed, yet on your part, as you have failed to eradicate provocative actions that harm the relations between our nations. As your former President, Mr. Kiro Gligorov, stated “...we are Slav Macedonians. That’s who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia.” It is therefore unimaginable for a country that has a former president confirming his exclusively Slavic identity and a former Prime Minister who holds a Bulgarian passport, to simultaneously and preposterously lay claim to Macedonia and its Hellenic history.

Let us begin with an understanding and agreement of who we are, what we want and how can we get there with as much mutual respect as possible without sowing the seeds for future confrontation..

If any of the foregoing are possible, we look forward to hear from you soon, either by words or by deeds.

President General Secretary
Demetrius Kalamaras, Esq. Petros Galatoulas

George

pathetic article! u call that journalism?LOL

petros from egej macedonia

in GREECE live 5 milions MACEDONIANS 2 milions albanians 500 ooo turks and greeks are only 1 milion fasist left from second world war MACEDONIA weel be UNITED

gjorgu from Republika Makedonija in UK

read the 11 questions given t to all greeks blind, deaf and dumb politicians.

• For whom did the Greek state print in 1925 the Primer of the Macedonian Language “ABECEDAR”? Even before the printing of this book, in a official but secret census the Macedonian language was clearly mentioned. The “non-existent” Macedonian minority spoke a “non-existent” language?
• Who are these that were mentioned in all official national censuses of the Greek state up until 1951 as “macedophones”, “slavophone Macedonians”, of “Slavic”, “non-Greek” or “unstable” national consciousness, of “declared Slavic beliefs”? What happened to them, after 1951?
• Is it possible that they “no longer exist” as former Minister Pangalos stated some years ago?
• If they don’t exist, exactly how did they “disappear”?
• If they still exist, why then Greece keeps calling them “non-existent” every time someone brings up this subject?
• Why was the population of whole villages back in the 60s forced to collective oaths, in order to stop using the “cursed Slavic idiom”?
• Under what excuse did the Greek state allow in 1982 the repatriation only of the political refugees who were “Greek by genus”? This indirectly but clearly means that the thousands of political refugees who had lost their citizenship and cannot return to their birth places are defined as “non-Greek by genus”. The relatives of these people who remained within the Greek borders do not constitute an ethnic minority then?
• Why Greece, with its official and unofficial structures, has created a whole mechanism to impede even a short-term visit to Greece from these political refugees who have clearly stated a non-Greek national conscience? Because of whom was the notorious “unwanted list” in Greek border crossings created , why is it still valid and enhanced today, including not only political refugees but also financial immigrants of Macedonian origin?
• If what Greece claims to be true, that Macedonians are Greeks only, is indeed true, then why does the country prohibit for 18 years now the registration of the cultural association “Home of Macedonian Culture”, pretentiously ignoring relevant rulings in favour of the registration from the European Court for Human Rights?
• Why Greece is reluctant to conduct an official census of all ethnic and linguistic minorities, in order to have an undisputable proof of the existence or non-existence of the Macedonian minority?
• And last but not least, maybe the most important question of all. How is it possible that Greece, a country that constantly fancies itself to be the “cradle of civilization and democracy” is de facto denying at the same time elementary, fundamental human rights to its citizens, like the right to self determination and all that derives from it in educational and cultural fields? Why Greece is not ratifying any of the relevant international conventions it readily signed in the first place??

White Eagle

Slav is a linguistic, not an ethnic group!

Mario Alinei, Dean Emeritus of the University of Utrecht, director of several linguistic reviews and progenitor of the Continuity Theory, states, Quote,

"I have to commence by clearing away one of the most absurd consequences of the traditional chronology namely, that of the arrival of the Slavs into the immense area in which they now live. The only logical conclusion can be that the SOUTHERN BRANCH OF THE SLAVS IS THE OLDEST AND THAT FROM IT DEVELOPED THE SLAVIC WESTERN AND EASTERN BRANCHES... TODAY ONLY A MINORITY OF EXPERTS SUPPORT THE THEORY OF A LATE MIGRATION OF THE SLAVS.." end quote!

Recent genetic studies conducted by Oxford University+ reveal that today's ethnic Macedonians carry only 15.2% of the 'slav gene', slightly above modern "Greeks" and Albanians and less than Serbs and Bulgarians!! They further reveal that today's ethnic Macedonians have the highest amount of the Mediterranean gene of all European peoples! This was also confirmed by the University of Madrid studies. In a court of law, it is genetic proof that is conclusive, I might add!

Here is a suggestion for the Greeks; how about DNA tests on the remains of the Royal Macedonian Tombs, uncovered and desecrated by "Greeks" in today's occupied MACEDONIA?
Follow this up with genetic tests on modern Greek and Macedonian population... we will soon see the truth!

Further, there is no pure Slav people... just like their is no pure "Greek".

In summation... ETHNIC, yes today's ETHNIC MACEDONIANS CANNOT POSSIBLY BE OF THE OLD MEDITTERANEAN SUBSTRATUM IF THEY "WERE SLAVS ARRIVING IN THE BALKAN IN 6TH C. AD.", as the 19th century Western construct asserts!!

Today's ethnic Macedonians are authocthonous to Macedonia, its very simple! Their language, unintelligable to the ancient Greeks, was a form of proto Macedonian/Slav, which then spread outward, becoming more complex as it moved further away from Macedonia! Countless proto Macedonian letters unearthed on the territory of the REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA,( and no doubt in Pirin and Aegean Macedonia, though the respective occupiers have no doubt concealed them from the world because it does not fit their lies) attest to this fact!

Macedonian Warrior

___Perfect Article…
___Greece has no historical connection with Macedonia. Only the last 18 years they use the name Macedonia for the north part of Greece. The name dispute between the two countries is the result of the Greek policy to conquer the south part of the new republic.

___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second were Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there.
___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…

nick

Greece has nothing to hide and needs nothing to prove.

The truth is one and only one.

For the ones familiar with history it is quite obvious whats going on.

For the rest please either get some good history books if you are interested in finding the truth or just shut your mouth.

PLAIN AND SIMPLE. aint it?

Max Kaye

Looks like the Coffee House has been taken over by waring factions of Greeks and Macedonians. How exciting!

Question: If Greece and Macedonia (or whatever it's called) go to war - not an unlikely scenario based on the level of vitriol expressed here - will Greece invoke Article 5 of the NATO?

Surely we Brits are busy enough without having to get involved in another ugly squabble.

Mercutio's famous last words spring to mind.

Riko

The Slav-macedonians or Bulgars should stop posting their crap here ,because they can search as hard as they like , to any book in the world , there is no "macedonian ethnicity" prior to 1945 when Tito created you just as Stalin crated Belarus , in order to vanish your Bulgar past...Don't forget that your ex prime minister took Bulgarian passport and your ex-president grigorov said that you have nothing to do with the ancient Greeks and the Alexander the Great the Greek king.....

xman

Realpolitik is really rather simple. Greece will block NATO and EU accession for FYROM, because it can. There will never be a Greek Parliament that will ratify any such accession treaty unless FYROM concedes. No amount of handwringing from the Korskis and Gruevskys of this world will change that.

Theo Lagakos

This article goes out of its way to contruct stories in the news to support the British government's position on FYROM and misdirect the public. The reporter states "But it is undeniable that Greece’s vetoing of Macedonia’s NATO membership has pushed ethnic Macedonians and Albanians further towards nationalism." The truth is these groups are already ultra nationalists. Prior to the Greek veto the government at Skojpe was supporting extreme nationalists, who had 'art displays' with swastikas on Greek flags and distributed maps of their country that included half the northern geographic area of Greece! Why should Greece encourage such an extreme government to join NATO at this time without at least getting border and name agreements?

Grecojustice

The FYROM situation is very similar to the Kosovo situation.
Kosovo was historically a part of Serbia. However over hundreds of year Albanians moved in & eventually took it over, & now have declared their "independence". However because they became "attached" to this land they called their illegal state "KOSOVO". But Kosovo is a Serb name! This adds insult to injury for the Serbs. Not only have they stolen the land but they stole the name aswell!.
The FYROM Slavs are also people who moved into the Macedonia region & are trying to steal the land & name of Macedonia that they have no right to. Therefore by calling themselves "Macedonians" they are actually saying that they are living on stolen Greek territory if they call it by a Greek name (Macedonia).
When the Greek Army defeated the Turks in 1912 & liberated Macedonia, they did not invade a "foreign" territory but took back a beloved land lost over the ages. Therefore Greece had every right to rename the rivers, mountains & towns back to their original Greek names from antiquity.

ANTIPROPAGANDA

The Golden Raspberry goes to Daniel Korski for this "serious"
article.....
It is sad that someone educated writes sth we would rather expect from a 6 year old....

Dimitrios L.

Decide what you want friends "macedonians" or whatever you think you are.You want to claim that you are The really ancestors of Macedonians ,having depressed minorities and unliberated territories in Greece and you want to join the EU having this demands and bias aganist state- member of EU;Or you want to accept the fact that Philip,Alexander,MAKEDONIA(ÖÉËÉ--ÏÓ,ÁËÅÎÁÍÄ-ÏÓ,ÌÁÊÅÄÏÍÉÁ)are greek names having really meanining:PHILIPS ÖÉË¿-É--ÏÓ (ÇÅ WHO LOVES HORSES ,ALEXANDER ÁËËÅÎÙ-ÁÍÄ-ÅÓ,ÇÅ WHO PROTECTS THE MENS,MAKEDON MAKEÄÍÏÓ (ÌÇÊÏÓ- LARGE,TALL.). -OLYMPIAS THE MOTHER OF ALEXANDER )OLYMPIC GODS - AND GAMES ) They spoke greek,they had the same religion and manners they fought trough Asia to expand the greek civilization.If you want to claim that you are macedonians you have to claim that you are greek or you want to be greek.If you like it you can change your ambitions and try be nammed as Greece and that you are the only greeks and you have greek minorities in the fake Greece and,and...We are neighbours,we have more things that can unite us and not sperate us.(France-German killed millions each other in two World Wars and now they are the companions.)Don't play the game for others and look for paecefull and creative cooperation with us,with Greece.Excuse me for my english and i hope to contribute to dialogue.

Eric

Alexander the Great:

1. He was born in Greece.
2. His parents were Greeks.
3. His teacher was Greek.
4. He was speaking Greek.
5. He was raised to be a Greek.
6. He united all the Greek states.
7. He was the king of Macedonia.
8. He was spreading to the world the Greek spirit.
9. Macedonia partains Greece for over 3.000 years.
10. All ancient Macedonia foundings were wrighten in Greek.

Some Slavs that speaks Bulgarian wants to be called Macedonians???

What the F*** are you talking about???

Man read some books because you have no clue what you are talking about.

How much did you get paid to write such lies?

The Man

A reasonably well written post except that Korski has ommitted the fact the current Ultra Nationalist government in the Republic of Macedonia was completely against the Ohrid Peace agreement with the Albanian minority. These extemists should not be rewarded in any way for the hard work and comprimises made by the previous centrist government.
If the EU rewards extremism it will only ecourage the fanatics in the former Yugoslav Republic.
I say it would be far better to let nature run its course.

Samantha Bailey

I think Greece is being rather petty in all this...if the slavics in the region want to label themselves as Macedonians, surely it's their right to do so? Greeks should feel flattered that other people want to attach themselves to Greece. After all, 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery'. There seems to be alot of hatred from both sides and i think Greece should rise above it all and make a goodwill gesture by allowing the slavics to call themselves what they wish. It's rather sad to see Greece, the cradle of democracy, denying their neighbours an identity that they crave. If the slavics want to emulate Greek culture and attach themselves to a famous history, surely that's a compliment? If Greeks are confident and proud of themselves as a nation, they shouldn't be frightened of other people trying to be like them. Likewise, if the slavics were proud of their own past, they shouldn't feel the need to attach themselves to another country's history and legacy. It's sort of sad that this has happened but as Greece is the bigger and more respected country, Greece should take the initiative and allow the slavics to call themselves Macedonians in the interests of everyone in the region. I hope i didn't offend anyone...

nick

To the politicians of Fyrom
With Independence comes responsibility . You cant act like hillbillies. Greece has paid its dues to be a member of NATO and the EU. Greece is democratic in case you have forgotten. You want to join you EU and NATO you have to pay your dues .You can say what you like shout as loud as you want but Greece can let you in or keep you out. Had Fyrom been in Greeces shoes Fyrom would have done the same . Not one country in NATO or the EU has commented on denying the rights of Greece as a member country to Veto. I have friends from Fyrom and they are nice people. Pity the government is letting them down so badly
Just put NEW before the name Macedonia and you're home free
As for all the shit you're saying about the Creeks - well its your democratic right to speak freely - pity nobody is listening

andrew

The grandmas and grandpas that are complaining about the Greeks just happened to be on the loosing side of a civil war against the legitimate Greek government of the day. Id say some of their allegations are biased

Konstantinos

Wow lots of people in here now history hehehe.anyways it needs to be said that if VERDARSKA BANOVINA had kept their official name which is ofcourse slavic there wouldnt be any problems.if the USA didnt support you so they can have another sattelite country in the balcans you wouldnt exist.

Pete

One must simply read the comments from all the FYROM sympathizers on this blog and it should become quite clear that the irredentism is real, the ultra-nationalism is real, the FYROM propaganda is real, and above all, the ignorance is real.

Efthymios Papadopoulos

We are comenting an article of Mr Korski, a journalist who is known only to his relatives and some friends in his neighbourhood...Get serious ladies and gentlemen, we don't have to spend time on totally unknown and paid-to-provoke ''journalists''....Have a nice day

SK

Samantha Bailey

Have you heard of identity theft?

John Francis

Korski.... hahahahahahahaha.... well known idiot...

Korski.... hahahahahaha....

get a life Korski

Badou

Can any of the slavs in here answer ONE simple question.

How Come This "Macedonian" Language Sounds Like Bulgarian and writtes like Bulgarian????

Or maybe Macedonian is just a Bulgarian dialect??

But I guess no one dares talk about that.

Mike L.

The Macedonians

1. Spoke Greek
2. Wrote Greek
3. Believed in the Greek Gods
4. Had well known Greek Teachers
5. Had Greek Names
6. Ancient History books (ex Herodotus) regard them as Greek
7. Spread the Greek Language in their conquests
8. Wrotte their Signs in Greek even in Persia
9. Hellenized whole cultures in East Asia
10. Built their temples using Greek Architecture

So no matter how hard you slavophones try to plagairize the Name and the History one fact is true.

YOU are not Macedonians and that Macedonians are a part of Greek culture.

Get a life.....or steal someone else's identity.

Pete the III

Mr Korski,

Obviously Greek foreign policy success is based on its final outcome.

From the latest developments the SlavoMacedonians are more talkative and willing it seems.

Therefore Greece's Foreign Policy seems to be working and thus making it succesful.

A Greek

The problem today has nothing to do with history of th region , ancient or medieval. Almost all posts, pro-greek or pro- macedonian include unbelievable crap or they just ignore the facts of history. As somebody noted, fanatic idiots exist in both countries.
There is only one thing that has to be solved out today. It is the name. Greek government does not deny the right of the Slavic population of the FYROM to call themselves Macadonians (almost 50% are ethnic Albanians in Skopje). Both Greeks and Bulgarians (1/3 of Macedonia belongs to Bulgaria) are ready to agree with a name like Northern Macedonia or Upper Macedonia for Skopje. It is the Macedonian Government who denies such an agreement. Greek foreign policy for the past decade was very careful. It was not the case in early 90' when it was dominated by nationalists. It is true that the problem could be solved by that time but Greek nationalists and fanatics denied any name to include the word Macedonia. Since that time Greek Governments moved to a more realistic proposal. They are ready to agree to a name that contains Macedonia as a composite. At the same time its the Skopje today where fanatics like Gruefski prevailed and they are trying to complicate the problem by raising minority issues. The disagreement between the Macedonian prime minister and President clearly shows the conflict between nacionalists and realists.
As a footnote: Greek goverments never tried to destabilize Skopje. Never supported the albanic nationalism in tetovo for example. Such a movement is possible and it could help to dissolve the problem along with the State of FYROM.

Mike

So, it's not really the promotion of the independence of Kosovo that has exacerbated the problems with the large Albanian minority inside Macedonia...it's the name dispute with Greece -for which the Albanians couldn't care less- that's "destabilising" the country.

The ability to claim this with a straight face rightfully gives Mr.Korski the Golden Potato award, along with a job in the cold-war anti-Russian ECFR.
...Oops he already has the latter.

guy

To Samantha Baily...

If all the chavs in england wanted to be renamed saxons and claimed their capital somewhere in england...how would you feel ?

besides...all we are asking is them to put a qualifier in front of " macedonia "..i dont think that is too much to ask

nassos Vynios

Since the Greek Foreign Policy has achieved ALL the goals they set, how come is it the worst?

Hmmm...

PS that proves how "objective" this article is...
PS2 how about US foreign policy that failed in NATO summit to invite FYROM, Ukraine, Georgia? Is that successful?

Ante geia! (goodbye)

Serjan

Yeah sure............
The foreign policy of the USA is successfull?
Greece don't do foreign policy by bombing nations and killing inocent people.... like the US..

Wake up you idiot !!!!

Gordon Granzer

In my oppinion this article is totally unacceptable because Mr.Korski seems to forget how diplomacy works.Is'n it absurd to say that Greece should have allowed Fyrom enter Nato before a name,acceptable for both sides,is found?Do you think that Greece is such fool to sacrifise its rights and national interests in order to hold the stability in a country(Fyrom) which tries to base this stability in a "macedonian" identity which in fact does not have and never had?And this is not a baseless argument of mine.If you study history carefully you can see which the connection bewteen Macedonians and Greeks from the ancient years was.You can see that Macedonians were Greek and that Alexander the Great the same said this in one of his speeches,not me at all! There are PROOFS for this.Also,just to remember it,his teacher was Aristotle and guess which his nationality was..or do you doubt about this too?Furthermore the language of the ancient Macedonians was Greek not this slav-originated language that people of Fyrom nowadays speak.And if you think that my words are inaccurate,I challenge you to prove it with scientifical and historical proofs of course.All in all the fact that Fyrom occupies a part,a SMALL part of ancient Macedonia does not give Fyrom the right to name itself as 'Macedonia' only because of this..

Ian Maddison

In June 3rd 1992, FYROM's President Kiro Gligorov admited that FYROMians(aka Skopians-"Macedonians"-west Bulgarians etc) have NO connection to Ancient Macedonians and Alexander the Great.
He also stated that his people are SLAVS that descended in Balkans during the 6th century AD...

Ancient Macedonia was Greek, NOT SLAVIC!!!
FYROM is not even part of ancient Macedonia (FYRO"M" occupies about 10% of the ancient Macedonian kingdom and inside this 10% there are the ancient Greek cities of Ohrid, Bitola( ancient Heraclea) and Gevgelia.

I am a journalist who was covering this news story for BBC that time. I like to hear the truth...
Many of our british troops are killed in Iraq and Afganistan without a reason, I had enough with the Balkan hate stories!!!

Wake up you people it is the 21st Century ...

Ian Maddison

Arjenovic

A message for John Miller:
John, how can i verify your information? About your allegations regarding a map of greater Macedonia printed in schoolbooks I can say that my Macedonian family has never had such books at school. Please, be more accurate before sharing your information......

YM

To "Macedonian Warrior"
This is what you wrote:

"Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second was Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there."

What you obviously don't know is that ancient Macedonia was dismanteled by the Romans in 149 BC. The Cyrillic language was created until after 800 AD. So how is it that you are able to make this assumsion, or accusation? Perhaps it's a national hobby. Thanks for showing your ignorance.

A Macedonian Macedonian from Macedonia

Yunanistan schools obviously teach their robots well. Wow..never seen such a sad bunch of mimics..mimicking whatever they were taught in Yunanistanian school. This is worse than Stalinist North korea..wow. sad but true

Aristotle

this site has won the encyclopedia britannica internet award.

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/

golema_maika_makedonia

But we, FYROMIANS like our name FYROM!
http://taxalia.blogspot.com/2008/06/congratulations-mr-gruevski.html

Dora Bakoyakoyaoyanisopolus (or whatever)

Bulgarian is a Macedonian dialect... Duh... Saint Cyril invented Cyrilic, and he was a (modern'ish) Macedonian.

In 1910/1912 how come Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria were fighting over the land of Macedonia (and employing local MACEDONIAN men to fight alongside them to add credibility to their claim) if the land was already in Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia.

The truth is that all three nations lied to the Macedonians about independence.

Tito granted that independence later (the others are still denying the Bucharest agreement). If you take out the ANCIENT element of the argument then Greece is SSSSSSSSSSssssssssooooooo in the wrong. Bulgaria had the sense to recognise Macedonia and protect its current borders.

Intransigent Greeks who have been brainwashed, and their supporters in the west (many of whom have never visited the region) are blinded by these facts and rely on ancient histories that nobody in the moden world can lay claim to, to support their racism, or support of racism..

Many do-gooders only see one side of the argument before making a judgement.

IF Macedonia was so wrong, so out of line and so evil, wouldn't the UN have forced a name change upon the place..?

Greeks suggest that Macedonia has territorial ambitions and is stealing the history.

NATO membership protects the borders of its members and indeed Macedonia's own constitution renounces terratorial claim.

So now we're down to the history that nobody in the modern world can claim....

For me that makes Greek claims 0 for 2... remember Greeks, and their supoprters, in most real democratic organisations 3 strikes is out...

They are now suggestuing that the name should be changed simply because they don't like it... that i'm affraid won't carry much weight in the real world...

Thank you and goodnight.

Samantha Bailey

SK, i have heard of 'identity theft' but the slavics are hardly stealing your credit cards, they just want to attach themselves to your glorious history, hardly the same thing. Take it as a compliment. Who knows, in a few years, the slavics may want to become part of Greece proper, or they may wish to become Chinese, Indian or any other great civilisation.
In the UK, we have alot of problems with eastern European slavics, Poles mainly, and i take the point that if they wanted to call themselves 'Saxons', there may be a problem with the indigenous population. But if this were to happen, I think we are confident of ourselves as a nation to allow them to identify with anyone they wish, we'd take it as a compliment if they wanted to call themselves 'Anglo-Saxons' or become part of British history. Historically, they'd be wrong of course but it's a compliment none-the-less. It won't be worth the hassle to convince them otherwise, the world would just laugh at them and we'd be regarded as being superior by being nonchalant about the whole thing. This isn't what Greece is doing - Greece looks ridiculous and petty in arguing over a name.
Guy, the chavs in England are British so it really makes no difference if they want to call themselves 'Saxons', after all, they are ancestors of the Saxons. (Frankly, i would be pleasantly suprised that chavs were educated enough to know who the Saxons are...).
It's a shame that the slavics cannot be proud enough of their own past that they are looking to latch onto Greek history. But I think Greece should rise above it and allow them to call themselves what they wish. I think that is the most responsible course of action given the fragility of the region and the general illiteracy of the slavics in the Balkans. You cannot reason with uneducated (albeit hardworking) people, so i think the onus is on Greece to show superiority by allowing them to call themselves what they wish.

A Greek from Greece

We Greeks have no beef with the guys, it's not like they're Turks man :).

@ A Macedonian Macedonian from Macedonia: Man, only Turks (and arabs) call us Yunans. You can't even fake an id.

@Aristotle: It is nice a Slav admires Aristotle. But wannabe is not chic.By the way he was the greatest Greek of all times and just happened to be Alexander's teacher. So how come Alexander did not speak a Bulgarian dialect? Gee..maybe because nomadic slavs came to Europe from Asia like 800 years later?

Bottom line:

Yes, there are native people of Bulgarian origin living in Northern Greece for centuries.

Yes, they are related to the people living in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

Yes, they have shamefully faced restrictions in the past, even up to the 60's-70's, (like other groups had, e.g communists) especially and obviously when Greece was ruled by dictators.

But,

No, they cannot trace their roots back to Ancient Macedonia. Noone really can, but culturally Greeks feel more affiliated to the term since Ancient Macedonians where a tribe of Greeks, like Spartans or Thraceans were. As modern inhabitants of Sparta cannot claim they have Leonidas' blood in their vains, neither Greeks in Northern Greece can say anything of the like for Phillip II.

As a consequence

No, there is no modern day Macedonian nation or Macedonian language (the only thing of the sort that ever existed was a Greek dorian dialect spoken by the early Ancient Macedonians).

If the people in FYROM want a place in the world in the 21st century (I feel that they still live in the early 20th century, Balkan wars era) they should seek an identity that honestly reflects their roots (Slavs living in the region, that used to be part of the Ancient Greek Macedonia, for centuries (after Romans and Byzantines have succeeded Ancient Macedonians). I understand they have nothing to do with Serbs and want to seperate themselves from Bulgarians (I wouldn't want to be assimilated either) but profoundly forging an identity won't do. A small group of people they relate do live in Greece as people of Greek origin and identity live within their borders. Hey, this is the Balkans remember? Are we going to spill blood until we ethnically cleanse everyone within our borders, or keep fighting to redraw the map.
We are not going that way anymore. We are in the EU and NATO and if they 'd like to be a part of the modern world they should get a reality check. Soon...

Im an Alien

I LOVE IT when Bulgarians who somehow think they are Macedonian write comments acting like they are Greek

Its so obvious and soooo stupid, they are truly dumb

Propaganda runs through their veins

One guy is acting like he is Greek, yet he calls Thessaloniki SOLUN lol

Nikos

Mr Korski,
You have shown your lack of understanding on this issue tremendously.

The "poor victims" of FYROM should never has drawn maps of the "Greater Macedonia" including a large chunk of Greece in their propaganda ? These are the people igniting your so called "rather absurb territorial claims".

History cannot just be stolen from the Greeks. You should be ashamed of yourself, and it is persons like you that really causes bad neighbourly relations with your inflamed uneducated comments.

VETO VETO VETO FYROM till they wake up or punished further.

Shane

Revising history and claiming the heritage of another people constitutes “CULTURAL TERRORISM”

Alexander

GREEKS ARE LOSING THEIR TEMPER BECAUSE THE WORLD LEARNS MORE AND MORE ABOUT THE PARTITION OF MACEDONIA IN 1912-13 AND THE GENOCIDE AGAINST THE MACEDONIANS IN 1947-49. SORRY, GREEKS, BUT THE MACEDONIAN TRUTH IS COMING OUT! UNITED MACEDONIA!

TALIC

GOOD BLESS THE REAL MACEDONIANS, YOU ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE, AS FOR THE GREEKS, YOU ALLL SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES FOR THIS NONSENCE THAT IS HAPPENING, MACEDONIANS ARE THE MOST PEACEFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET, UNFORTUNATELY THE GOV IS CORRUPT AND IS MAKING ALL LOOK BAD, AND THE ALBANIANS ARE NO HELP, COME ON GREEK PEOPLE, WE SHARE THE SAME RELIGON THAT HAS TO COUNT FOR SOMETHING, DONT YOU THINK!!

Pls, get a clue

"they just want to attach themselves to your glorious history, hardly the same thing. Take it as a compliment."

Hardly the same thing is what you're suggesting Ms.Bailey. Their own version of the 'Macedonian identity' is not one that is part of Greek history, but rather completely detached from it.
For them, macedonian=NOT greek (neither Bulgarian, for that matter), whereas it's the exact opposite for Greeks (macedonian=greek, as it goes for cretan, peloponnesian etc.)

Whether they can actually and seriously support their version (of historic Macedonia not being related to Greece) is practically irrelevant.
Since they have come to believe it after 60 years under communist indoctrination, it is so.

Combine these false premises, with a typical post-communist resurgence of nationalism in the region.
Combine them also with the bitterness and clear hostility towards Greece shown by part of the Slavmacedonian population, mainly the offspring of those who were deafeated in the greek civil war (1949) when they had aligned with the communists in their attempt to establish a communist state -Korean style- in northern Greece, which would be called (guess what) "Macedonia".
[Current prime minister Nicola Gruevski is such a case. His grandfather had a greek name (Gruios) and even fought in the Greek-Italian war (1940). But then his father -along with many other children- were abducted by the fleeing communists into Yugoslavia, where apart from "adjusting" their names and surnames they also came to learn how this new "macedonian identity" was antithetical to their previous greek-macedonian one.]

So, these aren't exactly reasons to take their claim to this particular name and identity 'as a compliment' really.

Besides, the real analogy with the "Saxons" example is this:
Consider the people of slavic orgin in the UK, not only claiming this name for themselves, but also arguing that they are the "real" Saxons, and that these "real Saxons", who btw "had never anything to do with Britain whatsoever", should be given "back" the part of the island the (original) Saxons had once come to populate.

Would you still take their claims "as a compliment" or rather as audacious stupidity?

DIMITAR

Greeks claiming MACEDONIA as theirs goes against the accounts of the ancient city state, Roman as well as modern historians, and is in fact a recent construct!

MACEDONIA, ethnic MACEDONIANS, the MACEDONIAN language, culture and history represents an existential threat to the fragile "Greek" identity, this is why they pretend there is a name dispute, but in fact they are working to destroy MACEDONIA, as we all know by now.

Greece will eventually have to pay reparations for the ethnocide of MACEDONIANS, destuction and theft of their properties, etc. etc. This issue, along with the ethnicity, language, church etc. have all now entered the public debate... way to go, Kosta!!!

With the new US of A base in MACEDONIA, all 11 hectares of it, MACEDONIA has become the new US of A centre of Balkan operations! We have the support that counts, this is why the MACEDONIAN Government has been emboldened to speak up for the basic human rights of our people! Yes... this is what the Greeks claim is "nationalism, fanaticism, dangerous"; ASKING FOR OUR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS! It also explains their hatred of Gruevski, Milososki, the US etc.

Greece and all other enemies of MACEDONIA can work on their "strategies" of destruction. Remember... POWER IS AN UNCONTROLLABLE PSYCHIC FORCE AND THE EFFECTS OF ITS USE WILL RETURN TO ITS SENDER LIKE A BOOMERANG! Greeks like to avoid this LAW OF SPIRIT AND OF NATURE to their detriment!

Self righteous anger may be emboldening to your ego, but "GREECE' IS IN A FIGHT WITH THE TRUTH, THAT IS WHY IT WILL LOSE THE "NAME DISPUTE" WITH MACEDONIA!!!

Trying to deny the TRUE MACEDONIANS their identity is a fools game, it is like holding back the ocean...impossible!

Macedonian Warrior

YM > Read again my post, cause you forgot the last part...
This was the last paragraph>

___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…

____Or you thing that i am slav? No one slav is Macedonian, these Fyromians are poor Vardarians without identity, like illegal immigrants without passports. That's why they want to steal other people's identity, they want to be legal but the photo in the stolen passport shows absolutely different type of man...
____Macedonian Warrior means that i am Greek like all Macedonians.
And i am not reading Tito and Bush...
Florina Greece Hellas

The TRUTH

The ideas that the Macedonians are rejecting their partial slav origins are false. The problem occurs when the outside begins to look in on the Macedonian situation. An outside that does not know the extent of the relationship between Macedonia and Greece.
In the 1980's when it became evident that Yugoslavia was going to disintegrate and a part of Macedonia would become independent, Greece was afraid that they would lose Aegean Macedonia to a reunified Macedonian state. Therefore, propaganda that "Macedonia is 4000 years of Greek history" began. The very country that tried to destroy the Macedonian name now claims that Macedonia is Greek. This does not seem to be the actions of a nation who is a leader, who is responsible, and who is easy to communicate with. It is important to quote Traianos Hadjidimitriou, Greek journalist and former member of the Greek parliament. This quotation is on the day, in 1988 that Greece finally recognized the name of Macedonia. "Today, Macedonia is an accomplished fact. For 50 years, we Greeks avoided raising the issue, today, ladies and gentlemen; we are paying for our own indifference and our lack of foresight." It is very easy to place the blame on another country, organization or person, though when the Greek government continues to argue that Macedonia is 4000 years of Greek history it is false. To put it in the words of one of Ms. Bakoyannis government spokesmen, "The correctness of our position arises from history." This is the beginning of what lead us to where we are today.
The last major "act of force" by Greece towards Macedonia was the veto placed on them for NATO membership.
Ms. Bakoyannis has used the issue of the current and historic name struggle for her basis of reasoning. She has stated that the Hellenic Republic, hereinafter referred to as “Greece”, is “the region's oldest NATO and EU member, Greece feels a profound obligation to be constructive”. The Greek government and their people should feel this way. They must be constructive in the region so that stability can return. Though it is one thing to state that and another to take action. Many people in the Greek Government, including Ms. Bakoyannis, have stated that “the establishment of relations of solidarity and allied relations is, in practice, respect of good-neighborly relations between countries and peoples”. In all due respect to the Greek government I feel, no, I know that the statements made by the Greeks do not reflect how the Greeks have treated the people of not only Macedonia, though the Turks and the Albanians. The first opportunity the Greek people had to be a friendly neighbor to Macedonia they enforced a naval blockade in 1994-1995. For what reason? To protest the independence of the Macedonian people? To deny their neighbors of the possibility to prosper? I do not see how this could be considered “friendly”. Then to this day the Nation of Greece has yet to recognize any minorities in there nation. The Greek Governments response to questions about minorities in there nation have been all the same. "The official Greek position with regard to the ethnic composition of Greece is that there are no ethnic or national minorities in Greece at all." How could the region’s oldest NATO and EU member deny the existence of minorities in their nation? Today we look at Greece in the year of 2008 and there is still not only the lack of recognition of a Macedonian minority though a Turkish and an Albanian. A country that looks at them as a leader of the region would not act in this manor. Another great fault to Greece is that they then deny the existence of any other languages in there nation. The Macedonians on the other hand, have noticed that there is a substantial Albanian minority and acknowledged the existence of them not only as a minority, though there language as well. How this nation can not collect data on ethnicity is absurd. How is a country, like Macedonia, supposed to conduct negotiations with someone who does not consider your nationality and language to exist? Why does Greece then proceed to make historical claims to Macedonia? The absurd amount of pressure that the Greeks place on Macedonians to deny their relations over looks the facts that the Macedonians are proud to be slav. The problem is that the Macedonians are not only slavs... though they have connection to the Ancient Macedonians. Something that the Greeks do not posses. It is a proven fact that the modern Greeks have no genetic connection with the ancient Greeks. Something that is not true for the Macedonians. Looking at this situation in the Balkans, numerous nations have agreed that the inclusion of Macedonia is a very necessary and important towards peace in the Balkans. Those nations include, the United State, China and most recently Germany. The Macedonian people and government have met all requirements. To not allow Macedonia entry to NATO would be a shame. The Macedonian Foreign Minister put it simply, "If other Nato countries, including Greece, do not mind when our soldiers employed in Afghanistan wear on their uniforms the name of our country, Macedonia, and our flag why would Greece mind if we joined the alliance after we have fulfilled all the relevant criteria?" also another good point that was brought up by the Foreign Minister..." I would like to see how prepared Greece would have been if we were speaking about the constitutional name of the Republic of Greece". This country has gone above and beyond what many people expected them to do. It has done what it can to especially please Greece, in that it changed its original flag and amended its constitution stating that it would not impose any territorial claim on Northern Greece. What more can a country do? This is why WE will never accept the name of Slavomacedonia or northern Macedonia etc…. Why doesn’t American refer to themselves as the Former British Colonies of America? Why doesn’t Greece refer to themselves as "The Former Ottoman Province of Greece"? We are THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA.

Karanos King of Macedonia

What a load of crap!!!!
I'm a Macedonian from Thessaloniki(my city is named after Alexander the Great’s sister) and im 100% Greek.
Take any Bulgarian name and add the ski suffix and what you have is a creature that Tito created.
Tito has pisoned your minds and changed your names.
Fyromanians: YOU ARE NOT MACEDONIANS, YOU ARE BULGARIANS WITH AMNESIA!!!!!

Molon Lave!!!!!!!

Macedonian Warrior

To the so-called TRUTH >

___You are the Republic of Mac Donalds

The TRUTH

1) The ancient Macedonians were a distinct nation, separate from their neighbors, the ancient Greeks, Illyrians, and Thracians. The ancient Greek and Roman historians have shown us that the Macedonians spoke a separate Macedonian language and had their own customs along with culture and tradition. Archeological discoveries confirm that the material culture of the Macedonians also defer greatly from all their neighbors, and it is by far more superior in artistry then anything found in contemporary Greece, Illyria, and Thrace. The texts of the ancient writers distinguish the Macedonians from the ancient Greeks, just like they distinguish the Romans and the Carthaginians. Yet, like the other non-Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Illyrians, and Thracians, the Macedonian high society also used the Greek language along with Macedonian. Greek was spoken by the nobility of many different ancient nations, just like French was spoken in the 19th century (at the German and Russian courts for example). Unfortunately there are only 150 glosses that have survived of the ancient Macedonian language and like ancient Carthaginian, Illyrian, and Thracian, it can not be reconstructed. There is no doubt that the Illyrains, Thracians, and Macedonians were non-Greeks, or in the words of the ancient Greeks "barbarians" which literally means people who spoke other non-Greek languages.

2) Macedonia became a world power when the Macedonian king Philip II conquered Thrace, greater part of Illyria, and the whole of Greece (except Sparta). At the battle of Chaeronea in 338, the Macedonian army destroyed the united Greek army, and put an end to Greek freedom and ancient Greek history. To secure the Macedonian victory, Macedonian garrisons were established in the Greek cities, just like they were established in Thrace and Illyria.

3) The ancient Greek historian Diodorus wrote much of the history of Macedonia from the times of Philip II and Alexander the Great up to the last Macedonian king Perseus. In his writings, Diodorus is clear that the ancient Macedonians were a distinct nation, not related to any of the Balkan peoples (Greeks, Thracians, and Illyrians). It is very important to look at your own people who simply put it that Macedonia was not Greece. I believe some quotes would help you understand.

1st quote: "For even Greeks – Thespians, Plataeans and Orchomenians, and some other hostile to the Thebans who had joined the king (of the Macedonians) in the campaign."

2nd: "For many days the king lay helpless under his treatment, and the Greeks who had been settled in Bactria and Sogdiana, who had long borne unhappily their sojourn among peoples of another race and now received word that the king has died of his wounds, revolted against the Macedonians. They formed a band of 3000 men and underwent great hardship on their homeward route. Later they were massacred by the Macedonians after Alexander’s death."

There is nothing in the ancient literature to suggest that ancient Macedonia was a Greek land. On the contrary, the ancient authors knew the difference between the Greek city-states and the kingdom of Macedon. Ancient and modern authors report:

1 "While Demosthenes was still in exile, Alexander died in Babylon, and the Greek states combined yet again to form a league against Macedon. Demosthenes attached himself to the Athenian convoys, and threw all his energies into helping them incite the various states to attack the Macedonians and drive them out of Greece." [p.212] Plutarch, 'The Age of Alexander' [Plutarch here specifically distinguishes Greece from Macedonia.]

2 M.Cary in his book "The Geographic background of Greek and Roman History" (ICBN 0-313-23187-7) I find the following constituent parts of Greece: Epirus, Acarnania, The Ionian Isles, Aetolia, Thessaly, The Spercheu Valley, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, Euboea, Attica, Aegina, Corinth, Achaea, Elis, Arcadia, Argolis, Laconia, Messenia, The Greek Archipelago, Crete, The Outer Isles, The Northern Aegean, The East Aegean, Rhodes, .......... and of course, No Macedonia. Why M. Cary would omit Macedonia from the general description of Greece? Perhaps for the same reason the German classical scholar Bursian failed to include Macedonia in his otherwise comprehensive geographical survey of Greece "Geographie von Griechenland". Macedonia was simply different country than Greece.

3 On p. 91 in "Hellenistic World" by F.W.Walbank we find: "It is necessary, in any assessment of the role of Macedonia in the hellenistic world to bear in mind that although our sources naturally, being Greek or based on Greek writers, lay their emphasis on Macedonian policy towards Greece, Macedonia was in fact equally a Balkan power for which the northern, western and north-eastern frontiers were always vital and for which strong defenses and periodic punitive expeditions over the border were fundamental policy." ".... Macedonians were an essential bulwark to the north of Greece". [Self-explanatory]

4 In N.G.L.Hammond's book "The Macedonian State" on p. 141 states: "Philip and Alexander attracted many able foreigners, especially Greeks, to their service, and many of these were made Companions." [The operative word is "foreigners-especially Greeks", which shows that even Hammond forgets to tow the line.]

5 In "Makedonika" by Eugene Borza on p. 164 we read: "Alexander seem to have imported troupes of performers from Greece." [One does not import from his own country, does he?]

6 Plutarch "The Age of Alexander" "Thebans countered by demanding the surrender of Philotas and Antipater and appealing to all who wished to liberate Greece to range themselves on their side, and at this Alexander ordered his troops to prepare for battle." [p.264]

I feel that a list of ancient historians who have clearly stated that Macedonia is not Greece should be noted. Those historians being...
Diodorus - Plutarch - Pausanias - Livy - Herodotus - Justin - Isocrates - Ptolemy - Polybius - Demosthenes - Arrian
Curtius Rufus - Josephus - Thracymachus - Pseudo-Scylax - Thucydides - Strabo - Pseudo-Herodotus - Ephoros

Finally, I feel that it is important to include a list of modern day professors, organizations and authors who clearly state that Macedonia is not Greek.

1) EUGENE BORZA- Professor of Ancient History at the Pennsylvania State University
2) ERNST BADIAN- Department of History at Harvard University
3) PETER GREEN- Professor of Classics at the University of Texas
4) A.B. BOSWORTH- Professor of Classics and Ancient History, the University of Western Australia
5) N.G.L.HAMMOND- Professor of GREEK University of Cambridge
6) ULRICH WILCKEN- German Professor
7) DAVID G. HOGARTH- Author of Philip and Alexander of Macedon
8) AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

PROVE ME WRONG!!!

Georgios

THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT MACEDONIANS

ANTIQUITY
The Ancient Macedonians were undoubtedly a Greek tribe; either a north-western tribe related to the Dorians and Epirots, or an Aeolic one related to the Aeolians of Thessaly (before the north-western tribe of the Thessalians settled there), as scholars tend to accept today. Nowadays it is not seriously doubted that they were Greeks, although some opposing views have been expressed by certain modern historians and linguists because the evidence of ancient writers has not been interpreted correctly and the relatively limited linguistic material preserved has not been evaluated correctly40.
The Ancient Macedonians initially settled in NW Macedonia. Later they expanded into the fertile valley of Haliakmon river, where, after having driven back or subjugated the Illyrian and Thracian tribes, they established the Macedonian state. During this time the regions of NW Macedonia remained independent hegemonies. Later on, the kingdom of Macedonia expanded up to the Strymon river. Their relative isolation for centuries, in the country that bears their name, greatly contributed to their developing autonomous unity, both social and political, without being greatly influenced by other Greeks and, therefore, without the cultural development of the southern regions.

Ancient sources affirm that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks, and the linguistic conclusions, which are based on the study of the Macedonian dialect, also attest to this.

Among the ancient historians, Herodotus is the first who refers to the Macedonians whom he considers, without any hesitation, Greeks: ” ??????? ?? ????? ??????? ???? ??? ???????? ?????????, ???? ??? ????? ???????, ????? ?? ???? ??????? ??????????? ??? ?? ??? ?? ????? ??????? ??????? ????????…” [= But that the descendants of Perdiccas are, in fact, Greeks (as they themselves say), I happen to know; and I will, moreover, prove that they are Greeks in the latter part of my history]. (V, 22,1). The same historian presents the king of Macedonians Alexander I (ca. 495-450/440 B.C.), a dominant figure of Macedonian history during the 5th c. B.C., saying at the time of the Persian wars: “????? ?? ??? ????? ????? ???? ????????, ??? ???? ????????? ???????????? ??? ?? ???????? ???? ??? ??????” [= I am myself a Greek of ancient stock, and I would not with my good will see Greece enslaved rather than free]. (IX, 45,1-2). Succeeding generations called Alexander I, and only him among all kings of Macedonia, “Philhellene”, and they did so for a specific reason: he effectively assisted the “Greek” alliance of Corinth against the Persians.

Thucydides, and later Arrian, Polybious, Titus Livius and others also confirm, directly or indirectly, that the Macedonians were Greeks. In ancient times, the nationality of the Macedonians was never an issue, precisely because they were Greeks. The historians of Skopje have greatly exploited the fact that Demosthenes calls Philip a “barbarian”, and regard this as proof of his non-Greek origin. However, the word “barbarian” meant at that time not only the foreigner, i.e., the person who spoke a different language, but also the person who was uncivilized48. The Athenian Demosthenes considered the king of Macedonia to be culturally inferior. Moreover, we should not forget the fanaticism and Attic nationalism of the orator who was fighting against Philip in the belief that Philip would subjugate the rest of Greece, as well as his own city-state; Demosthenes believed that as a consequence Athens would not be able to play a leading role in the new political scheme which the Macedonians would impose, since this scheme would be quite foreign to the then prevailing of the city-state.

Certain doubts have been expressed about the Greek character of the Ancient Macedonians’ language, mainly because, up to now, no texts or even complete phrases written in the Macedonian dialect have been found. Today, however, after the comparative study of all known linguistic material, linguists, as well as historians, accept the Greek character of the Macedonian dialect. The following elements prove that Macedonian is a dialect of the Greek Language:

The name of the Macedonians itself is Greek: the word ???????? [makednos] is already attested to in Homer (Odyssey, ? 106: ??? ?? ????? ???????? ?????????) [= like fluttering leaves of a tall poplar tree] and means “high, tall and slender”. That is, this ethnic name is one of those which denoted the physical characteristics of a people. Also the proper names of the Ancient Macedonians51, the names of gods, months, etc., as well as most place-names are Greek, in Macedonian dialect, and bear no resemblance to Thracean-Illyrian names. If the Macedonians started being hellenized in the 5th c. B.C., as the historians of Skopje clain, how can it be explained that they retained proper names, as well as the names of the months and place-names in Macedonian dialect which are undisputedly Greek? How did the Macedonians of the 5th and 4th c. B.C. acquire these Greek dialectal names, which do not belong to the Attic dialect, if they did not inherit them via a tradition which had always been Greek?

The same observations apply to lexical material. Relatively few words of the Macedonian dialect have been preserved: about 153 and they are recorded by Athenaeus and in the Lexicon of Hesychios, who drew them mainly from the work of the Macedonian lexicographer Amerias. It should be noted that ancient lexicographers did not record all the words of a language or dialect, but only those that presented a certain peculiarity or difficulty in comprehension. For this reason foreign words and idioms are recorded, and thus the proportion of foreign words is not representative of the total vocabulary of the Macedonian dialect. Many of the words which have been treasured as Macedonian occur in all Greek dialects, but in the Macedonian dialect they had a specific meaning and they were recorded by the ancient lexicographers, for example the word ?????????? (adjutant). These words that were handed down as Macedonian do not bear any resemblance to the Thracian-Illyrian language. The Macedonian linguistic material (proper names, place-names and common nouns) testifies to the Greek character of the Macedonian dialect: The etymology of the words is Greek; the features and vowel changes are common in Greek; so are the inflections and endings. As for the few words which are recorded as Macedonian in the Lexicon of Hesyxhios and which are not considered by some to be Greek, it is most likely that they are loan-words, a phenomenon that is observed in all languages, and one which does not put their origin in doubt.

The historians of Skopje use the quotation of Plutarch that Alexander ?????? ??????????? ????? ???? ?????????? [= called out in Macedonian speech(makedonisti) a summons to his corps of guards] (Plutarch’s Alexander, 51,4), as proof that the languagewhich the Macedonian soldiers spoke was not Greek. But here the word makedonisti means the local dialect(you see you must speak Greek to understand the meaning and not misinterpret), as the respective terms doristi, attikisti ionisti etc.55 attest, and not a separate non-Greek language. In fact, Alexander and the Macedonians disseminated the Greek language throughout the world they conquered; Alexander gave an order that the inscriptions which were in a foreign language were to be explained in Greek, so that they would be comprehensible to his troops (??? ????????? ???????? ????????? ?????????? ?????????? ????????? [= After reading the inscription, he ordered it to be repeated below in Greek letters]: Plutarch’s Alexander, 69,2) and he also ordered that the troop of Persians “should learn the Greek language and be trained to use Macedonian weapons” (??????? ???????? ?? ???????? ????????? ??? ???????????? ?????? ??????????? Plutarch’s Alexander, 47,6)55a.

The fact that no written documents in Macedonian dialect have been preserved does not prove their non-Greek origin, as the historians of Skopje claim. Indeed, no dialectal inscriptions or even a phrase of a dialectal Macedonian text have been found. All the inscriptions found in Macedonia date after the 5th c. B.C., when the Macedonians used, at least in public life, the Attic dialect56. However, in other regions of Greece, undisputedly Greek, no preserved written documents of the 7th or even 6th c. B.C. have been found either. The cultural phenomenon of Athens cannot be regarded as a means of comparison with other regions, especially in order to draw conclusions concerning the national origin of their inhabitants.

It must be noted that the recent excavations at Vergina, in addition to other very important finds regarding the history of Macedonia, have brought to light, a series of inscribed grave stelai which can be dated with certainty to the second half of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd c. B.C. These inscriptions as we know from the description of Prof. M. Andronikos present a very significant collection of common Macedonian names, male and female, numbering 75. All these names are Greek, such as Alketas, Alkimos, Drikalos, Xenokratis, etc. - except for one (Amadokos) which is Thracian - and many of them are characteristically Macedonian and unknown to Attica, attesting to their Macedonian origin. These names refute the theory that only the ruling class had become hellenized, because they do not belong to the royal family, or to the nobility, or to the ruling class: they are the names of ordinary citizens and many of them date back to the beginning of the 4th and the end of the 5th c. B.C. Therefore, as Prof. M. Andronikos points out, we have “epigraphic evidence… that at the end of the 5th c. B.C., the Macedonians who lived in the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom [in Aeges]… had Greek names”.

Consequently, both the evidence of the sources and the study of the linguistic material, lead to the conclusion that the Ancient Macedonians were a Greek tribe. The theory that it was a non-Greek population, whose ruling class became hellinized, has no basis in fact. The people of Macedonia spoke Greek, a local Greek dialect and thus it was easy for them to adopt the Attic dialect. Even after the Roman conquest, the Greek language was still spoken in the region, despite foreign domination and the strong presence of Latin-speaking soldiers and other representatives of Rome. It is of primary importance that the inscriptions of Roman and early Byzantine times, which were found in Macedonia, are in Greek - except, of course, for the regions where there were Roman colonies, for example at Philippi58 -, while the inscriptions which were found in the more northern regions are in Latin. The Greek language was deeply rooted since it was the language of the Macedonian people, not only of the ruling class and the authorities

Certainly not Slavic

To any non-Greek who still thinks this article is good: please visit the greek part of Macedonia and enjoy our antiquities in the numerous archaeological sites (including the tomb of Alexander's father). If they look anything but purely Greek to you, I'll agree that those Slavo-Macedonians in Skopje are the true heirs of Alexander. I, on my part, am a Greek Macedonian. I feel pity for the little slavic state on our Northern Border that will fall prey to the Albanians that live in it. But don't blame Greece for that, any more than you would blame it if the Scotish decided to separate themselves from the UK, or if the Catalanos did so in Spain etc. I sympathise with Skopje for trying to create a national identity; it's self-preservation, a means to survival. But not on my expense buster.
As to the writer of this article: why not visit Thessalonica and see if it's Greek or not? Or, alternatively, if you already have, how much do you get payed to draw that veil across your eyes for?

SK

Samantha Bailey

You are missing the point soooo much

I wont even bother explaining why

Its just too much to bother with

SK

If anyone is wondering where "THE TRUTH" got that info from - http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/ConciseMacedonia/MacedoniansNotGreeks.html just another FYROM propaganda site

That site along with EVERY OTHER FYROM site is viewed as ridiculous by any historian in this world

I suggest using sources such as Brittanica, "THE TRUTH"

Macedonian Warrior

To the so-called TRUTH>
You say between other, "There is nothing in the ancient literature to suggest that ancient Macedonia was a Greek land."

I said before
"___Perfect Article…
___Greece has no historical connection with Macedonia. Only the last 18 years they use the name Macedonia for the north part of Greece. The name dispute between the two countries is the result of the Greek policy to conquer the south part of the new republic.

___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second were Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there.
___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…"

___But try to teach this communistic time propaganda from Tito's supporters to a single University, except those in Fyrom and North Korea. If you try it, you will find the truth...

Macedonian Warrior

___Go steal someone else’s history, Egypt’s for example, then BUILD a plastic PYRAMID outside of Skopje, after that we all can recognize you as the real modern Egyptians and your president as the new Pharaoh… If you don’t like it try Aztecs - Maya – Papua - or Apache…

EUGENE BORZA

"The TRUTH"

I will prove you wrong, you "use" info from such people as EUGENE BORZA, A.B. BOSWORTH, N.G.L.HAMMOND, etc.

I find that amazing because look what they have to say about ancient Macedonia and FYROM (SOURCES PROVIDED!!!)

The following proves how ridiculous your sources and your peoples propaganda are

(I ask spectator.co.uk to please post all of the following even though they will be long, Thanks a lot)

EUGENE BORZA QUOTES

Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival.
* Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999

Our understanding of the Macedonians' emergence into history is confounded by two events: the establishment of the Macedonians as an identifiable ethnic group, and the foundation of their ruling house. The "highlanders" or "Makedones" of the mountainous regions of western Macedonia are derived from northwest Greek stock; they were akin both to those who at an earlier time may have migrated south to become the historical "Dorians", and to other Pindus tribes who were the ancestors of the Epirotes or Molossians. That is, we may suggest that northwest Greece provided a pool of Indo-European speakers of Proto-Greek from which were drawn the tribes who later were known by different names as they established their regional identities in separate parts of the country... First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general conclusion (though not the details of his arguments) that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable.
* Eugene N. Borza, "Makedonika", Regina Books, Claremont CA

Here we have seen that their early history is still largely an open question. They may have had Greek origins: Whatever process produced the Greek-speakers (of that is how one defines "Greek") who lived south of Olympus may have also produced the Makedones who wandered out of the western mountains to establish a home and a kingdom in Pieria.
* Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", pp. 277-278, Princeton University Press

PETER GREEN

PETER GREEN QUOTES

Macedonia as a whole was tended to remain in isolation from the rest of the Greeks...
* Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 20

...for the first time he (Phillip) started to understand how Macedonia's outdated institutions of feudalism an aristocratic monarchy so despised by the rest of Greece.
* Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 24

The men of Macedonia worshipped Greek gods; the royal family claimed descent from Heracles. ….The Molossian dynasty of Epirus, on the marches of Orestis and Elimiotis, claimed descent from Achilles, through his grandson Pyrrhus - a fact destined to have immeasurable influence on the young Alexander, whose mother Olympias was of Molossian stock...
* Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"

In less than four years he had transformed Macedonia from a backward and primitive kingdom to one of the most powerful states in the Greek world.
* Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"

DAVID G. HOGARTH

DAVID G. HOGARTH QUOTES

The king [of macedon] was chief in the first instance of a race of plain-dwellers, who held themselves to be, like him, of Hellenic stock.
* David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.8

From Alexander I, who rode to the Athenian pickets the night before Plataea and proclaimed himself to the generals their friend and a Greek, down to Amyntas, father of Philip, who joined forces with Lacedaemon in 382, the kings of Macedon bid for Greek support by being more Hellenic than the Hellenes[...] Archelaus patronized Athenian poets and Athenian drama and commissioned Euripides to dramatize the deeds of his Argive ancesto[...] "Macedonia" therefore, throughout historical times until the accession of Philip the Second, presents the spectacle of a nation that was no nation, but a group of discordant units, without community of race, religion, speech or sentiment, resultant from half-accomplished conquest and weak as the several sticks of the faggot in the fable.
* David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", pp.9-10

Tradition held the other element to be Hellenic, and no one in the fourth century seriously questioned its belief.
*David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.5

ULRICH WILCKEN & ERNST BADIAN

ULRICH WILCKEN & ERNST BADIAN QUOTES

ULRICH WILCKEN

Philip first cut the ground from under it by uniting the nation in his Corinthian League[...]In this manner Philip united all Greeks (with the single exception of Sparta) into a League of states, and so for the first time in history created a Greek unified state.
*Ulrich Wilcken, "Alexander the Great"

When we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south...
* Alexander the Great, p. 22

ERNST BADIAN

Philip II, at least from the time of his victory over Phocis, Athens, and their allies in 346, prepared to proclaim himself the champion of a United Greece against the barbarians.
* Ernst Badian, "Cambridge history of Iran", p. 421

A.B. Bosworth

A.B. BOSWORTH QUOTES

Alexander ruled the world as his father had ruled Macedon, concentrating power in his own hands and office to his Companions. In nationality the Companions remained overwhelmingly Hellenic.
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993

It [Corinthian League] comprised states, which were each bound to Macedon by bilateral treaties; and it was perfectly natural that they should create a general alliance under the leadership of the Macedonian king, acting as the spiritual successors of the Hellenic League of 480 BC.
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993

The prime example of a change in status is the case of Aspendus in Pamphylia. The degree of hellenism there has been questioned in recent years, but Alexander certainly regarded the city as Greek, There seems to have been no doubt about the Aeolic origins of the harbariscd population of Side (cf. Air. 1.26.4). The Aspendians, who at least used a dialect, which was recognizably Greek, were granted citizen rights at Argos in the latter part of the fourth century, as kinsmen and (probably) colonists, and the people of Cilician Soli who also claimed Argive origins were given privileged access to the assembly. They were certainly regarded as Hellenic communities and Alexander will have treated them as such, as he did the people of Mallus, whose Argive origins inspired his generosity (Arr. 11.5.9)[...] Alexander himself seems to have made little distinction in his last years between Greeks of Europe or Asia, or even between Greeks and Barbarians
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993

N. G. L. Hammond

Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond QUOTES

At the end of the bronze age a residue of Greek tribes stayed behind in Southern Macedonia [...] one of these, the "Makedones" occupied Aegae and expanded into the coastal plain of lower Macedonia which became the Kingdom of Macedon; their descendants were the Macedonians proper of the classical period and they worshipped Greek gods. The other Greek tribes became intermingled in upper Macedonia with Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians[...] in the early 5th century the royal house of Macedon, the Temenidae was recognized as Greek by the Presidents of the Olympic Games. Their verdict was and is decisive. It is certain that the Kings considered themselves to be of Greek descent from Heracles son of Zeus. "Macedonian" was a strong dialect of very early Greek which was not intelligible to contemporary Greeks.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "A History of Greece to 323 BC", Cambridge University, 1986 (p 516)

Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine, descent... Philip was both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian...The Macedonians over whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the Greek-speaking peoples.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998

As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth on the same footing as the original Macedonians, in that they could qualify for service in the King's Forces and thereby obtain the elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the population and wealth of the kingdom were doubled. Moreover since the great majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West Greek dialect, the enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998

The first sentence of the actual Life of Alexander lives up to Plutarch's warning words. 'Alexander's descent, as a Heraclid on his father's side from Caranus, and as an Aeacid on his mother's side from Neoptolemus, is one of the matters which have been completely trusted.' While the Heraclid and Aeacid descent went unquestioned by ancient writers, the citation of Caranus as the founding father in Macedonia and so analogous to Neoptolemus in Molossia was not only controversial but must have been known to be controversial by Plutarch. For he was conversant with the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. which had looked to Perdiccas as the founding father in Macedonia. Caranus was inserted as a forerunner of Perdiccas in Macedonia only at the turn of the fifth century: he appeared as such in the works of fourth-century writers, such as Marsyas the Macedonian historian (FGrH 135/6 i- 14) who on my analysis was used by Pompeius Trogus (Prologue 7 'origines Macedonicae regesque a conditorc gentis Carano'). Thus the dogmatic statement of Plutarch, that Caranus was the forerunner, should have been qualified, if he had been writing scientific history. But because the statement conveyed a belief which Alexander certainly held in his lifetime it was justified in the eyes of a biographer and in the eyes of those who were more concerned with biographical background than with historical facts. If Plutarch had been challenged, he would no doubt have claimed that his belief was based on his own wide reading of authors who had studied the origins of Macedonia and provided 'completely trusted' data.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Sources for Alexander the Great: An Analysis of Plutarch's 'Life' and Arrian's 'Anabasis Alexandrou'", p.5, Cambridge Classical Studies

The terms for the Phocians were mild by Greek Standards (one Greek state proposed the execution of all the men) disarmament, division into village-settlements, payment of all indemnity to Apollo and expulsion from the Amphictiony. In their place the Macedonians were elected members. The two votes of Phocis on the council were transferred to the Macedonian state.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.18, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)

The Balkan situation was far from secure, with the Odrysians and Scythians only recently defeated and with the Triballi still defiant. Yet Philip was confident of success in the interest of the Greek-speaking world and of Macedonia in particular.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.21, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)

N. G. L. Hammond

Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond QUOTES (Last Post)

What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded […] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Macedonian State" p.12-13

The toponyms of the Macedonian homeland are the most significant. Nearly all of them are Greek.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Macedonian State" (1989)

Hesiod first mentioned 'Makedon', the eponym of the people and the country, as a son of Zeus, a grandson of Deukalion, and so a first cousin of Aeolus, Dorus, and Xuthus; in other words he considered the 'Makedones' to be an outlying branch of the Greek-speaking tribes, with a distinctive dialect of their own, "Macedonian".
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd ed. (1996), pp.904,905

All in all, the language of the Macedones was a distinct and particular form of Greek, resistant to outside influences and conservative in pronunciation. It remained so until the fourth century when it was almost totally submerged by the flood tide of standardized Greek.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "A History of Macedonia" Vol ii, 550-336 BC

There were two parts of the Greek-speaking world at this time which did not suffer from revolution and did not seek to impose rule over the city states. In Epirus there were three clusters of tribal states, called Molossia, Thesprotia and Chaonia[...]the other part of the Greek-speaking world extended from Pelagonia in the north to Macedonia in the south. It was occupied by several tribal states, which were constantly at war against Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.11, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)

The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. [...] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)

Certainly not Slavic

@Macedonian Warrior:

As to naming the Northern part of our country Macedonia, I can tell you I'm 32 and from day 1 I've known myself to be a Greek Macedonian, so you can jump up and down all you want, you'll never be anything but a Slav my friend! Not that being a Slav is bad; it's just not Greek. Not what you'd wish you were!

As to the rest I quote:

"___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second were Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there."

Thanks a lot. I think you just qualified for insanity. First, because there were no Slavs in the Balcans until some centuries after Christ. Which means that Alexander and Philip could not have been Slavs, however far ahead of their time they might have been. Second, the Cyrillic alphabet was an invention by Byzantine Monks (i.e. centuries after even Rome's fall) to proselytize the newly arrived slavs to christianity and protect the Greek populations in the Southern Balcans from Slavic expansion. So again there's no chance of Cyrilic appearing in any tombs -much less being "destroyed" by archaeologists -for which you undoubtedly can provide irrefutable proof.

Enjoy yourself. You know what I mean.

Macedon D

If Macedonia was Greek then it wouldn't have been necessery to ethnically cleanse indigenous Macedonians from Greece (about 300,000) and place orthodox citizens of Turkey in the cleansed homes. If Greece is in love with Macedonia, then they should allow the indigenous people and their children who were forcibly removed, to come back home. There is apartheid in EU in the 21st century and it has to be stopped. Please do not sell people's freedom in EU for couple of helicopters (this is particularly the case for France).

Paul.k

2500years ago is not today!!
When will the Modern Greeks stop fantasizing about Ancient Macedonians.

The Modern Greek people seem seriously brainwashed. They ignore RECENT HUMAN RIGHT REPORTS that have CONDEMNED GREECE but take 3000year scripts as gospel.

FYROM's History & Ethnicity

Every ethnic Macedonian who does not claim Albanian or Serbian origin has the right to declare a Bulgarian origin. This is an individual act in accordance with the historical reality of our common ethnic origin.
*Stefan Nikolov, Bulgarian diplomat

We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are Slavs and our language is closely related to Bulgarian. There is some confusion about our identity.
*Gyordan Veselinov, Macedonia's Ambassador to Canada

We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century (AD)... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians.
*Kiro Gligorov, Former President of FYR Macedonia

We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia. The ancient Macedonians no longer exist, they had disappeared from history long time ago. Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century (AD).
*Kiro Gligorov, (first democratically elected president of FYROM, referring to the citizens of his country), Toronto Star, March 15, 1992

For many years, since the decade of the '90s, we have been making efforts so that the name 'Republic of Macedonia' (FYROM) is not recognized, because no nation should steal the history and symbols of another nation.
*Australian politician, Mike Rann

The (modern) Macedonian language is actually an artifact produced for primarily political reasons.
*Vittore Pisani (1899-1990), Italian linguist, "Il Macedonico, Paideia, Rivista Letteraria di informazione bibliografica", vol. 12, p. 250 (1957)

I call these songs Bulgarian and not Slavic, because if someone today should ask the Macedonian Slav "what are you?" he would be immediately be told: "I am Bulgarian" and would call his language "Bulgarian".
*Stefan Verkovich, Bosnian folklorist, "Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarian", Vol. 1

For Macedonia to be recognized as an independent state, it would be necessary to change its name [...] It is historically proven that the Yugoslavian Democracy of Macedonia was created by Stalin, Tito and Dimitrov, aiming at the stealthy removal of a large part of Northern Greece. This Democracy was used during the period 1944-1949 in order to destabilise Greece.
*Thomas Niles, US Ambassador

The Department has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia emanating from Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav partisan and other sources with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected State. This Government considers talk of "Macedonian Nation", "Macedonian Fatherland", or "Macedonian National Consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic or political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.
*Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., U.S. State Dep. Foreign Relations Vol. VII, Circular Airgram [868.014]

There is no doubt that they are southern Slavs; they have a language, or a group of varying dialects, that is grammatically akin to Bulgarian but phonetically in some respects akin to Serbian, and which has certain quite distinctive features of its own... ...In regard to their own national feelings, all that can safely be said is that during the last eighty years many more Slav Macedonians seem to have considered themselves Bulgarian, or closely linked to Bulgaria, than have considered themselves Serbian, or closely linked to Serbia (or Yugoslavia). Only the people of the Skopje region, in the north west, have ever shown much tendency to regard themselves as Serbs. The feeling of being Macedonians, and nothing but Macedonians, seems to be a sentiment of fairly recent growth, and even today is not very deep-rooted.
*Elisabeth Barker, "Macedonia, Its Place in Balkan Power Politics"

..and Uskub, the great majority of the population is Slavic, [...] the middle ages until 1913 called themselves and were called by their neighbors Bulgarians.
*George Hubbard Blakeslee, "The Journal of International Relations"

the Macedonian Slavs had as late as the congress of Berlin exhibited no perceptible national consciousness of their own. It was therefore impossible to foretell in what direction they would lean when their awakening came; in fact, so indeterminate was the situation that under favorable circumstances they might even develop their own particular Macedonian consciousness.
*Ferdinand Schevill, "History of the Balkans: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day.

The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century A.D. as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim.
*Loring Danforth "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.56

Finally, Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a Macedonian national identity was a relatively recent historical development.
*Loring Danforth p.63

The political and military leaders of the Slavs of Macedonia at the turn of the century seem not to have heard Misirkov's call for a separate Macedonian national identity; they continued to identify themselves in a national sense as Bulgarians rather than Macedonians.
*Loring Danforth p.64

And, anyway, what sort of new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been called Bulgarians?
*Krste Misirkov, "On Macedonian Matters", Macedonian Review Editions 1974, (Sofia 1903)

But even stranger is the name Macedonians, which was imposed on us only 10 to 15 years ago by outsiders, and not as something by our own intellectuals... Yet the people in Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: "Bugari", although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to other Bulgarians. You can find more about this in the introduction to the booklets I am sending you. They call their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect the "Bugarski language", while the rest of the Bulgarian dialects they refer to as the "Shopski language".
*Kuzman Shapkarev, in a letter to Prof. Marin Drinov of May 25, 1888

The possible creation of a Macedonian free state within Greece to amalgamate with Marshal Tito's Federated Macedonia State, with is capital in Skopje[...]would fulfill the Slavic objectives of re-uniting the...province of Macedonia under Slavic rule, giving access of the sea to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia
*THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 26, 1946

SK

"Macedon" D & Paul.k

What you have been taught are BIG lies and screwed up facts

some of you people wouldnt have an IQ of more then 90...just so thick

The crap you believe in is all part of FYROM's strategy against Greece

You are a political creation

Pick up unbiased books or look up unbiased sites and then ask yourself - why is the worlds version on everything so different to ours

Paul.k

Sk,
How about you look into Greeces condemned human rights abuses.

Why do Greeks ignore human rights reports?

Diodorus & Plutarch

Such was the end of Philip (II, king of Macedonia) ...He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire among the Hellenes (Greeks), while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.95.1-2

He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.91.5-6

Every seat in the theater was taken when Philip appeared wearing a white cloak and by his express orders his bodyguard held away from him and followed only at a distance, since he wanted to show publicly that he was protected by the goodwill of all the Greeks, and had no need of a guard of spearmen.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.93.1

After this Alexander left Dareius's mother, his daughters, and his son in Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the Greek language, and marching on with his army on the fourth day reached the Tigris River.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 17.67.1

Alexander observed that his soldiers were exhausted with their constant campaigns. ... The hooves of the horses had been worn thin by steady marching. The arms and armour were wearing out, and the Greek clothing was quite gone. They had to clothe themselves in materials of the barbarians,...
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 17.94.1-2

If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, band follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 332a-b, Loeb

What spectator... would not exclaim... that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Hellenes were holding out beyond their ability? And if the ones (i.e., the enemy) gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the others (i.e., the Greeks) prevail, it will be Virtue and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the only support that Alexander had with him at this time, since Forune had put a barrier between him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp. Finally, the Macedonians routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", II, 344 e-f, Loeb

And it is said that when he took his seat for the first time under the golden canopy on the royal throne, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-meaning man and a friend of Alexander's, as he had been of Alexander's father, burst into tears, as old men will, and declared that those Hellenes were deprived of great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius.
*Plutarch, "Parallel Lives: Alexander", 37.7, Loeb

Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 328d, 329a Loeb

Speaking of truth

Some historical background is needed.
It mainly started with Bulgaria in mid-19th century.
In the whole geographic region of Macedonia, then still part of the Ottoman empire, there lived a certain amount of Bulgarian-speaking populations.
Since Bulgaria couldn't militarily annex the region, they started promoting among them the idea of a "Macedonian nation" which should be freed from ottoman yoke.
After becoming an independent state, Macedonia could then more easily join Bulgaria.

These intentions were admitted by the pioneers of the "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization", a party for which today's VMRO (the governing right-wing party in FYRMacedonia) alleges to be its successor, and can be read in this article here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Macedonian_Revolutionary_Organization (read the article on wikipedia about IMRO, if the link above doesn't show).

Namely, the pioneers, the constructors of this distorted "macedonian identity", were in fact...Bulgarian nationalists.

But it didn't really go as planned for them.
Bulgaria was defeated during the second Balkan war (1913) , and then was defeated again in WWI, thus losing any hope of claiming the entire region of Macedonia for itself.
The Bulgarian-speaking population, in Macedonia proper, largely left for Bulgaria, after a mutual exchange of populations with Greece and Turkey that followed, in 1919.
However, those who did remain where they lived, were still following the "macedonian idea", hoping for things to come around.

It came close to this, when Comintern (under Bulgarian General Secretary, Georgi Dimitrov), in 1924, declared the need for the "independence of Macedonia" (the largest greek part included), an attempt by the USSR to set foot on the Balkans and gain access to the Aegean.
But Bulgaria was again defeated in WWII and the Communists were also defeated in the Greek Civil War.
So, finally, inside Yugoslavia the southern part of the country with the bulgarian-speaking population, was renamed to "Socialist Republic of Macedonia".
Under Yozip Tito this strange nation-building reached new heights of expedience. The state provided an official history, and a language that was distinctively different from their Bulgarian counterparts, with the intent of removing them from Bulgarian influence.
And they largely succeded in doing so, because the population itself reasonably felt betrayed by Bulgaria and couldn't wait any longer for things to change, thus choosing to be simply "macedonians".

Today, the most fanatic part of the slavic population of the country, are the descendants of Greek Civil War fighters. They either had crossed the border to help their Greek comrades, or were "Greek citizens" but in reality the leftovers of the population exchange with Bulgaria (or as they call it "ethnic macedonians").
The rest, that is the old residents of the region around the capital, Skopje, are a lot more reasonable
but the foreign policy is highjacked by the others who promote a revisionist stance against Greece, hoping to "get back" what they think they should be given.

Herodotus, Titus Livius (Livi) & Pausanias

Men of Athens... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Hellas (Greece); I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare, and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake of Hellas in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian.
*The speech of Alexander I of Macedonia when he was admitted to the Olympic games, Herodotus, " Histories", 9.45, ed. A. D. Godley

Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy ( Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 5.20.4 ,Loeb

These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 1.56, ed. A. D. Godley

Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 5.22.1, ed. A. D. Godley

The Aitolians, the Akarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day...
*Titus Livius, "History of Rome", Book XXXI, 29.15

The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians.
*Pausanias, Description of Greece", 10.3.3

They say that Amphictyon himself summoned to the common assembly the following tribes of the Greek people:--Ionians, Dolopes, Thessalians, Aenianians, Magnesians, Malians, Phthiotians, Dorians, Phocians, Locrians who border on Phocis, living at the bottom of Mount Cnemis. But when the Phocians seized the sanctuary, and the war came to an end nine years afterwards, there came a change in the Amphictyonic League. The Macedonians managed to enter it, while the Phocian nation and a section of the Dorians, namely the Lacedaemonians, lost their membership, the Phocians because of their rash crime, the Lacedaemonians as a penalty for allying themselves with the Phocians.
*Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 10.8.2

megala malakia

The greatest creation and myth of the Balkans is the Greek nation and the Greek people.

Here's the recipe:

Take half a dozen barely related people from many ethnic backgrounds, who all speak different languages, and tie them to a glorious idea of ancient lineage.

Mix well.

Disallow these people to speak or learn their own languages and force them to learn and only speak a obscure dialect from near Athens. Leave to set.

Now begin to carve chunks from smaller (and larger) neighbouring nations and populate well. You might burn a few along the way but thats just the process, there's plenty to choose from.

Never forget to keep a close eye on old habits and languages coming back by throwing in generous amounts of nationalism and historic revisionism passed off as fact.

Slowly remove large 'impurities' while blending in the smaller ones.

Finally bake well for a 100 years.

And there you have it, a deliciously tasty and easily digestable MEGALA IDEA.

Tune in next week when we turn Burek into Spinachopita and Turkish coffee into Greek coffee.

Isocrates, Polybius & Ptolemy

Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas (Greece) your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most concerned.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.127, Loeb

Argos is the land of your fathers.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.32, Loeb

... all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes (Greeks) for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations, if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of Hellas.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.154, Loeb

In the presence of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo: in the presence of the Genius of Carthage, of Heracles, and Iolaus: in the presence of Ares, Triton, and Poseidon: in the presence of the gods who battle for us and the Sun, Moon, and Earth; in the presence of Rivers, Lakes, and Waters: in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece: in the presence of all the gods of the army who preside over this oath.
*Polybius, "Histories", VII, 9.2-3, Loeb

How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 35.2, Loeb

Surely it would have been much more dignified and fairer to include Philip's achievements in the history of Greece than to include the history of Greece in that of Philip.
*Polybius, (Statement on Theopompus), "Histories", VIII, 11.4, Loeb

Then your rivals in the struggle for supremacy and renown were the Achaeans and Macedonians, peoples of your own race, and Philip was their commander.
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.7, Loeb

For in their anxiety to get the better of Philip and humiliate the Macedonians, they have without knowing it invoked such a cloud from the west as may, perhaps, at first only cast its shadow on Macedonia, but in time will be the cause of great evil to all Greece.
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.10, Loeb

I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.
*Ptolemy, Penned in the margins.

Arrian, Curtius Rufus, Josephus & Thucydides

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius!
*Alexander the Great addressing his troops prior to the battle of Issus. Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", II, 7

Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you...
*Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea. Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", II, 14, 4

He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting on the side of the enemy. But as many of them as he took prisoners he bound in fetters and sent them away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting against Greece on behalf of the foreigners in opposition to the decrees which the Greeks had made in their federal council. To Athens also he sent 300 suits of Persian armour to be hung up in the Acropolis as a votive offering to Athena, and ordered this inscription to be fixed over them, "Alexander, son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians", present this offering from the spoils taken from the foreigners inhabiting Asia".
Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", I, 16, 7

Holy shadows of the dead, I’m not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.
*Alexander the Great addressing the dead Greeks of the battle of Chaeronia. Curtius Rufus, "Historia"

And when the book of Daniel was showed to him (Alexander the Great) wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.
*Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11.8.5, trans. William Whiston

The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander (I), the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids from Argos.
*Thucydides, " The Peloponnesian War", London, 2.99.3, J. M. Dent, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1910

Strabon

The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaean Gulf and Thessaloniceia, a Macedonian city...; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon.
*Strabo, "Geography", 7.7.4-5

There remain of Europe, first, Macedonia and the part of Thrace that are contiguous to it and extend as far as Byzantium; secondly, Greece; and thirdly, the Islands that are close by. Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece, yet now, since I am following the nature and shape of the place geographically, I have decided to classify it apart from the rest of Greece and to join it with that part of Thrace...
*Strabo, "Geography", VII, Frg. 9, Loeb

Three classes inhabited the city (Alexandria in Egypt): first the Aegyptian or native stock of people, who were quick-tempered and not inclined to civil life; and secondly the mercenary class, who were severe and numerous and intractable...; and, third, the tribe of the Alexandrians, who also were not distinctly inclined to civil life, and for the same reasons, but still they were better than those others, for even though they were a mixed people, still they were Greeks by origin and mindful of the customs common to the Greeks.
*Strabo, "Geography", 17.1.12-13

Axilleas

The allegations that greece doesnt treat her minorities well or has a destabilising foreign policy, doesn't change the fact that slavo-macedonians are in need of a strong indentity and have nothing to do with the ancient macedonian culture.

Proud Macedonia

Of course Macedonia is nothing but Greek. That’s probably the most elementary truth that can be said!
But I feel that when all these brainwashed Bulgarians (that Slavoskopjans certainly are!) realise the truth it may be too late! And they have only but themselves to blame!
The Ultra nationalistic frenzy that guides their leadership steadily and surely drives this modern Slavic state to a dead end and an abyss with no return! And they have only but themselves to blame!
Instead of reciprocating to the Greek hand of friendship (the only country in the area without any territorial disputes with them! The only country that actively supports their every day life) decided the path of moronic and unsubstantiated expansionism confrontation and outright enmity using the vehicle of historical revisionism and forgery!
Greece has already fixed their minds on how to proceed from now on!
All the doors that the Slavoskopjans wish to knock will be found closed! In due time any external financial support to them will be subject to severe scrutiny! And if trouble erupts within their state they should forget asking Greece for assistance and they should prepare to face it themselves!
As far as Greece is concerned we want to do nothing with them any longer!
Then Korski and Co will judge if past actions of Greece deserved the Razzies or more likely the Oscar of magnanimity and stability instead!
But then again Balkans is no Hollywood and whatever prize Spectator is prepared to give us we can firmly say that we Macedonia is not for sale! Not for your Oscars or anything else. And with this one of our Ancient Aesop’s story of the Crow and the Fox comes in mind! Keep your Oscars we will fight the Slavoskopjan forgery till the end!
WE WILL DEFEND OUR MACEDONIA ITS LANDS OUR MILLENIA OLD HISTORY AND OUR MACEDONIAN HERRITAGE no-matter what!!!!!

A matter of Greek national Security

The Greeks continue to use the Heritage Argument because it is that same argument used by the Slavs to lay claim to Greek Land.

Therefore this argument is not realy about History but about Greek National Security.

Thus Greek Foreign Policy protects the Interests of GREECE and not of Americans, British or Slavo-Macedonians and as such it is the Best for the Greek National Security

Double Standards

The Greeks did to the Slavic population of Northern Greece in the 1940's (succesfully kicked them out) EXACTLY what the nationalistic Slavs of the Northern Macedonia Republic tried to do with the Albanians in 2002 and are still wishing they can achieve (kick the Albanians out)

In both cases the Slavs of Greece and the Albanians of FYROM wanted secession of the territories they leaved in.

So cut the crap SLAVS AND THE DOUBLE STANDARDS.

We did what we had to do to protect our land.

An I say BRAVO to the Greek politicians for succeeding, and for their current Foreign Policies of Veto and not allowing any Slavs to come back.

Macedonian Warrior

Not Slavic At All
____To the Fyromian who pretend that he is Ellinas (Greek), by using the name “Certainly not Slavic”
The Truth Hurts…
I am Macedonian from Florina, I am Greek cause I am Macedonian
These are my posts > CAN YOU READ THEM ALL?

___Greece has no historical connection with Macedonia. Only the last 18 years they use the name Macedonia for the north part of Greece. The name dispute between the two countries is the result of the Greek policy to conquer the south part of the new republic.
___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second were Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there.
___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…"

___But try to teach this communistic time propaganda from Tito's supporters to a single University, except those in Fyrom and North Korea. If you try it, you will find the truth..
___Go steal someone else’s history, Egypt’s for example, then BUILD a plastic PYRAMID outside of Skopje, after that we all can recognize you as the real modern Egyptians and your president as the new Pharaoh… If you don’t like it try Aztecs - Maya – Papua - or Apache…
___No one slav is Macedonian, these Fyromians are poor Vardarians without identity, like illegal immigrants without passports. That's why they want to steal other people's identity, they want to be legal but the photo in the stolen passport shows absolutely different type of man...

____Macedonian Warrior means that i am Greek like all Macedonians.
And i am not reading Tito and Bush...

Fed up with illiterate’s

Alexander the Makedon:

"Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you;

but I AM MYSELF A GREEK BY DESCENT,

and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery."

Herodotus Book IX ,45,

This is what ancient historian Herodotus wrotte 2500 years AGO.

NOTHING ELSE TO ARGUE.....

Now Slavs go STEAL another culture's heritage. Apparently the Aglo Saxons do not mind and so you can be called

"Republic of Anglo Pitskoumateria"

Macedonian Warrior

@Certainly Not Slav

My friend!!! If you known yourself to be a Greek Macedonian from Day 1 as you say, come to Greece don't stay at Skopje! HaHahhaaa!!!

fg

To megala malakia:
Your post is exactly what the name you chose says.
Instead of trying to prove that greek nation doesn't exist, prove that your nation exists.
You can't prove what you are by saying what the other isn't.
To paul K
What reports ignores Greece? Why don't you tell the same for FYROM? You know, FYROM isn't exaxtly the heaven for human rights.

Dimitra

And the award for worst blogger goes to... Daniel Korski
"TOTTALY AGREE"

"We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... we are not descendants of
the ancient Macedonians."
Quote from FYROM'S President Mr. Kiro Gligorov.
(from the Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992, p. 35. )

"We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are!
We have no connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia.
The ancient Macedonians no longer exist, they had disappeared from history long time ago.
Our ancestors came here in the 5th and 6th century (AD)."
Quote from FYROM'S President Mr. Kiro Gligorov.
(from the Toronto Star newspaper, March 15, 1992)

22 January 1999: FYROM'S Ambassador in Washington, Mrs. Ljubica Acevshka, gave a speech on the present situation in the Balkans. At the end of her speech answering questions Mrs. Acevshka said: "We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great." "Greece is FYROM'S second largest trading partner, and its number one investor. Instead of opting for war, we have chosen the mediation of the United Nations, with talks on the ambassadorial level under Mr. Vance and Mr. Nimitz." In reply to another question about the ethnic origin of the people of FYROM, Ambassador Achevska stated that "we are Slavs and we speak a Slav language."

24 February 1999: In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Gyordan Veselinov, FYROM’s Ambassador to Canada, admitted, "We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian." He also commented "there is some confusion about the identity of the people of this country."

Moreover, the Foreign Minister of the FYROM, Slobodan Casule, in an interview to Utrinski Vesnik of Skopje on December 29, 2001, said that he mentioned to the Foreign Minister of Bulgaria, Solomon Pasi, that they “belong to the same Slav people.”

Mr. Korski,
you need to open a Book before you whrite something

“To his ancestors (to a Persian’s ancestors) Macedonians were only known as ‘yona takabara’, the ‘Greeks who wear shields on their heads’, an allusion to their broad-brimmed hats” Page 104.

“Alexander was not the first Greek to be honoured as a god for political favour…” Page 131.

“Alexander was recognized as a son of Zeus after his visit” Page 201

“But Alexander replied that he wished to take revenge on the Persians for invading Greece, for razing Athens and burning her temples.” Page 261.

Robin Lane Fox

Sylvain Auroux, French linguist, “History of the Language Sciences: I. Approaches to Gender II. Manifestations”, p.439

The problem of the nationality of the Macedonians has been studied a great deal. Otto Hoffman with linguistics as his starting point solved it CORRECTLY AND DECISIVELY WHEN HE ACCEPTED THAT THE MACEDONIANS WERE GREEKS

F. Munzer, German linguist, “Die Politische Vernichtung des Griechentums”, Leipzig 1925, p. 4

“”THE NAMES OF THE GENUINE MAKEDONIANS AND THOSE BORN OF MAKEDONIAN PARENTS ,ESPECIALLY THE NAMES OF THE ELITIC CLASS AND NOBLES,IN THEIR FORMATION AND PHONOLOGY ARE PURELY HELLENIC.”

Otto Hoffmann “Die Makedonien”

The name of the ancient Macedonians is derived from Macedon, who was the grandchild of Deukalion, the father of all Greeks. This we mayinfer from Hesiod’s genealogy. It may be proven that Macedonians spoke Greek since Macedon, the ancestor of Macedonians, was a brother of Magnes, the ancestor of Thessalians, who spoke Greek
Nicholas Hammond

It seems now that Alexander wanted from the Greek states a public and universal recognition of his benefactions, and that he wanted IT AS BEING HIMSELF A GREEK OF THE TEMENID FAMILY

N.G.L Hammond: The Macedonian State: pg 235

greek

Do FYROMians have the right to be called Macedonians?

Ofcource not!

They cant steal the name Macedonian just because they live in a region called Macedonia along with millions of other people (Greeks, Albanian, etc) and claim they are the only Macedonians!!!

In a couple of years just because they live in Europe they will ask to be called Europeans and their nation Europe. They will also claim that they are the olny original Europeans and tha the rest of the Europe is under ocupation of us the fake Europeans!!!

Hope now you understand that Greece not letting them steal the glorious GREEK name of Macedonia just to protect it's borders.

After all never in history of humanity did a Macedonian national identity exist. Macedonian defines someone regionaly not ethnicaly.

Wake up FYROMians accept the fact that you are Bulgarian and don't try to hide by stealing.

You have some attitude, don't you?

Macedon D

Don't believe in myths, believe in science.

1. Moderng Greek DNA has nothing to do with ancient Macedonians;
2. Modern Macedonian DNA is related to ancient Macedonians.

For scientific evidence read these peer-reviewed articles:
Arnaiz-Villena et al., "HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks", Tissue Antigens, vol. 57, 118–127, 2001.

Hajjej et al., "HLA genes in Southern Tunisians (Ghannouch area) and their relationship with other Mediterraneans", Eur J Med Genet, vol. 49, 43-56, 2006.

Another strongly recommended independent book which provides the same conclusions as the DNA science:
Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Rutgers University Press (1987) ISBN 0-8135-1277-8)

Greece had the most invasive people displacement and resettlement policy of all European nations which in modern terms is referred as "ethnic cleansing". Greece is now trying to wash out their abuse on basic human rights using myths.

A cry to France: Do not sell basic people's rights for the price of a couple of military helicopters!

Stemi

Some more facts:
1)Even after the great expansion by Philip the II and Alexander the Great in the 400s BCE, perhaps even less than 10% of the FYROMian land was part of the `enlarged kingdom'. You should realize that the punitive expeditions of the Macedonians in the north, as well as their imperial acquisitions in the Balkans and Asia did not necessarily produce a `wider concept of Macedonia' - a country with boarders extending to India. That would be most simplistic! Pella, the capital of the ancient Makedones, is well within modern Greek borde

2) The vast majority of major historians believe that the ancient Macedonians were Greek. Those who still remain skeptical, say that they need more evidence before proclaiming the ancient Macedonians as Greek. But no one says that ancient Macedonians were not Greek.

Recent excavations close to their ancient capital, Aigai, including the discovery of the `tomb of Philip the II', reinforce the Greek identity of the ancient Macedonians categorically.

In any case, all historians admit that by Roman times the ancient Macedonians were fully homogenized with the rest of Greeks, and that Macedonia stopped existing as a separate socio-cultural entity some 600 years before any contact with the first Slavs in the Balkans.

3) The ancient people inhabiting the area around Skopje, at the time of the ancient Macedonians, were the Dardanians, and their land was called Dardania. Throughout their modern history, the region now occupied by FYROM was populated mostly by Bulgarians.

The creation of "Macedonia" (FYROM, SROM) was artificial. Ex-Yugoslavs will attest to that. FYROM is comprised of Albanians, Serbs, and Bulgarians and their language is a Bulgarian dialect with a few Serbo-croatian words. Bulgarians will attest to that and understand/speak "Macedonian".

stemi

To Paul.k
"2500years ago is not today!!
When will the Modern Greeks stop fantasizing about Ancient Macedonians."

History is the means for laying claims on foreign lands. The Macedonian argument was promoted by the 3rd Commintern (USSR) and their allies in the region just prior to WWII, to create an independent greater Macedonia for social experimentation. Bulgarians have said that Alexander the Great was a Bulgarian while occupying Macedonia (Greek) on behalf of the Germans in WWII.

Tito sent 5,000 Yugoslavs and "Slav-Macedonians" to Greece after WWII to work with their allies in the region to annex Makedonia (Greek) while we were too busy fighting a civil war. These were the same people that now live in FYROM. 3 times in the recent past the same propaganda has been used as justification by different interests (Commintern, Bulgaria, (S)NOF-Yugoslavia) to invade (or try to) Greece. Even today, just when the name and flag were been adopted in independent FYROM, VMRO and Gligorof were talking about reclaiming "their" lands in Greece and Bulgaria.

megala malakia

To fg: I have no doubts that Greece exists my friend, I lived there for 10 years. I also have no doubts that Macedonia exists, I lived there for 5 years. My problem is, in all my time in Greece, I kept meeting Pontians, Arvanites, Turks, Vlachs, 'Slavophones' etc. Where are the 'real' Greeks? At least our neighbours across the northern border have been speaking the same basic language for over 1200 years, while if you go to any village in Greece, you'll find the old people speaking a dozen completely different languages from Greek. Greek nationalism destroyed a dozen unique languages and peoples, and created the most fervent, illogical and intolerant nationalist movement Europe has ever seen - second only to Hitler's little fiasco called the Third Reich (another fine example of fraudulent linking of ancient lineage to modern nationalism). bye now.

Stemi

To Macedon D and about his 1st reference (http://www.makedonika.org/processpaid.aspcontentid=ti.2001.pdf) (I haven’t seen the others yet)
Not all scientific papers are certainly true, especially one where the half writers are FYROMians!
The paper is obviously biased, trying to say even before speaking for results that Macedonians and Greeks where different referring to the one side of view. This is not scientific!
Finally, the article didn’t compare any ancient DNA with modern one. So, you can’t say anything about ancient Macedonians or Ancient Greeks. The article just says that Greeks and FYROMians are different! We know that! I am really impressed how easily the article hypothesized that the people who live around Skopjia are common with ancient Macedonians. There is a big conceptual void!!
The article is rubbish!

Maria

Its gonna be a damn shame for all those FYROMians out there when they choke on their own shit and have to admit all of their mistakes to the whole wold. Everything they are declaring now will be revealed soon enough, and its going to be a sad day for all of them. The issue has gone beyond just the name. Even the FYROMians know that they are wrong, but i have to say i do understand them to an extent. Its hard to say you are wrong. Especially when you open your big mouth and brag about it to the whole world. However, i am sure that one day soon, the FYROMians will run out of shit to say, and will have to admit that they are nothing more than Bulgarians. I am sure that it wont take long for this to happen. In the meantime, i just hope the issue does not escalate any more, and things just die down. I am Greek as i said before, and i am as proud of my country and heratige as the next Greek, but i am also human, and i honestly hope that this issue could be put to rest with the least possible damage.

SK

Modern studies have constructed Greek genetic trees revealing a strong degree of homogeneity between Greeks from different geographical locations. Median networks revealed that most of the Greek haplotypes are clustered to the five known haplogroups and that a number of haplotypes are shared among Greeks and other European and Near Eastern populations. Within the loci studied, the genetic composition of the Greeks indicates a significantly low level of heterogeneity compared with other European populations.[72][73] The levels of the R1a1 haplotype, associated by some with Slavic migrations,[74] have been found to be less than 12% (by way of comparison the relevant percentage for Syria is 10% and Poland 60%).[75] This confirms other studies that disprove the thesis that the Greeks have mingled substantially with Slavic people.[76][77] A 7%–22% contribution of Y chromosomes by Greeks to Southern Italy was estimated by admixture analysis in the same study.[76] Yet other studies point out the significant frequency drop of the R1a marker over the short geographic distance between Greece and its Slavic northern neighbours.[78]

Physical anthropology indicates racial continuity in Greece, with main Dinaric-Alpine-Mediterranean racial elements. Racial type of aristocrats, commoners and criminals is the same.

Modern scholars and scientists have supported the notion that there is a racial connection to the ancient Greeks. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, have found evidence of a genetic connection between the ancient and modern Greeks.[79] Recent genetic analyses of Greek populations have provided evidence of statistically significant continuity between ancient and modern Greeks (low admixture attributed to genetic isolation due to physical barriers).[80][81][82][83]
The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with a break during the Greek Dark Ages. The Byzantinist Robert Browning, compares its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone.[23] At its inception, Hellenism was a matter of common culture[18] and the national continuity of the Greek world is more certain than its demographic.[86] Even during the Slavic migrations, in Ionia and Constantinople there was a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such revivals would manifest again in the 10th and 14th century providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage.[86] The cultural changes undergone by the Greeks are, despite a surviving common sense of ethnicity, undeniable.[86] At the same time the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet, certain values, a sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion, (the word barbarian was used by 12th century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers),[95] a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the many political and social changes of the past two millennia.

Alexander the Great Quotes

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Holy shadows of the dead, I’m not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.
*Addressing the dead Hellenes (the Athenean and Thebean Greeks) of the Battle of Chaeronea, as quoted in Historiae Alexandri Magni by Quintus Curtius Rufus.

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they — Darius!
* Addressing his troops prior to the Battle of Issus, as quoted in Anabasis Alexandri by Arrian Book II, 7

Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
* As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.37.9-13

If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic (Greek), to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…
* As quoted in "On the Fortune of Alexander" by Plutarch, 332 a-b

Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas (Greece) and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you...
* Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea, as quoted in Anabasis Alexandri by Arrian; translated as Anabasis of Alexander by P. A. Brunt, for the "Loeb Edition" Book II 14, 4

Youths of the Pellaians and of the Macedonians and of the Hellenic Amphictiony and of the Lakedaimonians and of the Corinthians… and of all the Hellenic peoples, join your fellow-soldiers and entrust yourselves to me, so that we can move against the barbarians and liberate ourselves from the Persian bondage, for as Greeks we should not be slaves to barbarians.
* As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.15.1-4

Paul.k

To Stemi and the rest of the Greeks.
Why do you choose to ignore and not comment on Greeces Condemned human rights violations?
Its the 21st century!!

Greek citizen

The comments from FYROM supporters in this column, raise territorial issues, dispute the very existence of a Greek nation and display expansionist and hostile intentions towards Greece. Your behaviour more than anything else JUSTIFIES Greek foreign policy. It's clear that FYROM has no intention to peacefully coexist with Greece, but will do anything enlarge itself at Greece's expense, and destabilise the region in the process. The masks are off.

stemi

To Paul.k and on “Greeces Condemned human rights violations?”
In 13/7/1998
Greece was convicted for the violation of the freedom of association
(Article 11 of the relevant European Convention), because the Greek courts
did not allow in 1990 the establishment of the "Home of Macedonian Civilization" (as translated in English by the European Court).
The most important argument of the recent Court decision is its position
towards the Greek courts’ and state’s view that the Home of Macedonian
Civilization was not allowed to be established as its founding members did
not aim simply at a cultural activity but at supporting the view that there
is a Macedonian minority. The latter is known to be considered
"non-existent" in Greece, an argument documented by the Greek courts and
state with evidence full of "scholarly" quotes even from texts dating from
the Nazi occupation period.

HOWEVER

Strasbourg, 11/07/1998, EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE:
It is the legal right of the Greek authorities and the country's courts to face every attempt aimed at disputing the Greek character of Macedonia and its residents as well as, its territorial integrity, according to a European Court of Justice ruling that was issued after examining an appeal that challenged the Greek court decisions based on which, the establishment of an association in Florina, north-western Greece had been rejected because it indirectly raised the Macedonian issue.
…

The European Court of Justice recognized as legitimate the Greek courts
right to face what they judged to be an intention to challenge the Greek
identity of Macedonia and its people as well as, the country's territorial
integrity, taking under consideration the situation existing at that period
of time (1990) in the Balkans and the political differences between Greece
and FYROM. In the decision is made a specific reference to Greece's
complaints over the threat that FYROM's hostile propaganda was posing at
the time of the events, its attempt to claim that the name Macedonia was
Slav and the inclusion of certain articles in FYROM's Constitution toward
that purpose as well as, the systematic promotion of the nationalist idea
of a "united Macedonia".

Etc etc

Moreover Paul.k

Greek parents have been sending their children to Macedonian schools for years, expecting them to learn Greek, not Bulgarian. Macedonian people (Greeks) are already a majority in Greece, with Macedonian churches, schools and cultural centers teaching Greek and regional dances and songs.
The Greek government can neither recognize a minority with the same name, as the majority, nor build non-Greek schools and churches with the same name. Greek courts have offered to open cultural centers for their minority, under a different name (than Macedonian). They have refused.
As long as they use the term "Macedonian" to describe their nationality, their minorities in Greece and Bulgaria cannot be recognized.

So, stop speaking about violation of human rights in Greece!!

SK

Paul.k

I will answer it

THOSE ARE MORE LIES

Its so simple

Human rights in Greece are not comparable to Human Rights in FYROM where the country is split between ethnic groups

You are all brainwashed into believing crap

For example, someone in here who called himself "Ethnic Vlach from Greece" (who is obviously an undercover FYROM propagandist trying to add credit to FYROMs claims) came here and started acting like Vlachs get treated bad in Greece and he is one of them, but that is simply because thats what he has been told by his own propagandist people (FYROMians), It couldnt be further from the truth though

So what you have been taught by your own people (FYROMians) IS MORE PROPAGANDA just like the other Propaganda that you fools have been exposed of

And its funny, if your propaganda trying to prove ancient Macedonians werent Greek gets exposed, if your propaganda trying to prove that you truly are a Macedonian gets exposed, if your propaganda of trying to prove Greeks arent really Greeks but Ethiopians, Turks, Gypsies, Albanians, Slavs, etc. gets exposed...you then turn your propaganda to non-existent Human Rights abuses in Greece

Its pretty sad

And I just want to remind you, the current land of FYROM was under Turkish control for something like 520 years, almost 150 years more then Greece so if anyone is the Turk it is you FYROMians

ilias

Quiz

Who is trying to turn history upside-down?
Who was licking Hitler’s ass and now claiming that his neighbor that fought him to death is fascist?

Beware you bunch of liars because you might get us really mad and I think it’s time to. You have to know that there is one think that every Greek feels deep in his heart that is untouchable and will defend till death: our history.

Keep your hands out of it and go teach your children your real 50-year history of Hitler and Bush ass-licking

paul.k

S.K, Greece is a condemned Human rights violator look up Helsinki/Amnesty. Why do you deny these facts? The whole world sees them except the faschist Greeks...

P.s Im an Ethnic Macedonian from Greece. Greeces human rights violations are against my people.

The "human right" to be a Martian.

What they actually mean by "human rights" is that Greece should accept and legitimise their own absurd version of history and identity, by acknowledging that "macedonians" are a distinct people from greeks.

[The problem is that, there are ~2 million greek-macedonians who might have an objection to that.]

In other words, they really expect Greece to give grounds to a hostile propaganda that has been used first by Bulgaria and then by Yugoslavia with the explicit intent of challenging the territorial integrity of Greece during WW1, WW2 and the Civil War.

Anything else? How about giving you the land to begin with?
After all ...what is a country called "Macedonia" doing outside of Macedonia proper, that is Greek Macedonia, where the actual ancient greek kingdom used to be?

It is no surprise these are the same people officially claiming that Greece "occupies" Macedonia, apparently another "human rights violation".

Sadly for them, FYROM is the last country on earth who can be accusing another of "human rights violations".

Check out your own record in advance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_Republic_of_Macedonia

Tell us how you treat the Albanians, the Greeks and more specifically the BULGARIANS in your country.

In fact I'm really anxious to know...:
How many Bulgarians live in FYROM?

In case you think there aren't any, check out how you treat them:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/special-issues-Bulgarians-of-Macedonia.html

BOB

And the Prize for worst Foreigh Policy goes to Greece?????

I guess for USA, British and Isreal, Mass Murdering of civilian populations is IRAQ and Palestine does not constitute a "Bad foreign Policy" at all!!!!

What HiPOCRICY

fg

To Paul K
You are an ehnic "macedonian" from Greece you said - the odd thing is that the so called "macedonians" appeared only in 1991, that is after FYROM was created. Until then, where are you?
Moreover, you speak about violation of your rights: how can that be?
You have a political party "Rainbow", participating to elections.
You are free to publish your propaganda - nobody forbids you to. Ask, from the other hand, bulgarians in FYROm who were stopped from publishing their views and creating an organization.
More important, most of you are working to the greek public domain taking salaries twice the salary of the president of FYROM, while many greek "oppressors" are unemployeed.
It seems to me that being "oppressed" is a very prosperous job..

Makedonia Land of the Greeks

To megala malakia

I am sure you chose your name on purpose! Its speaks volumes of your crooked opinions!
Is this also extends to what Paul K's is saying too???

stemi

Some more notes about the genetic arguments! 5 min search on the Internet and you can find the truth! UNRELIABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE PRACTICES IN POPULATION GENETIC is the verdict:
An often-cited study from 2001 by the Spanish lab of the Antonio Arnaiz-Villena et al. (among them were and Slavmacedonian genetists from FYROM-Skopje University) which maps 28 world population based on the HLA DRB1 locus, concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Later that year, the same data was used in another study by the same author published in a different journal. This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature" because, according to the editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca, it "confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue".

Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Suciu-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." The controversy was further reported on in numerous locations including The Observer.

Shortly after this, three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, argued that the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. They stated that "Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics.", making specific allusion to the findings on Greeks (among others) as "anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups."

No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes, Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci. Then, Ayub et al. 2003 did the same thing using 182 loci.

Another study was conducted in 2004 at Skopje's University of Ss. Kiril and Metodij, using high-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 according to Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. Contrary to his earlier conclusion, however, no sub-Saharan admixture was detected in the Greek sample.

A 2006 study by Tunisian scientists again asserted the relatedness of the Greeks to sub-Saharans by calculating genetic distances at the DRB1 locus, the same marker used in the controversial Arnaiz-Villena paper. Both papers interpreted those results as suggesting an admixture occurred due to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopic people during the Pharaonic period. However, the Tunisian scientists failed to analyze any new Greek genetic material, relying solely on the data contained in the earlier Arnaiz-Villena paper, and no Greek laboratory contributed to their research.

So, FYROMians, you don’t have any right to speak about genetic connection of your confused conglomeration and Macedonians or the origin of Greeks as sub-Sahara tribes! STOP spreading stupidity!

stemi

About the genetic argument of FYROMians
An often-cited study from 2001 by the Spanish lab of the Antonio Arnaiz-Villena et al. (among them were and Slavmacedonian genetists from FYROM-Skopje University) which maps 28 world population based on the HLA DRB1 locus, concluded that "the reason why Greeks did not show a close relatedness with all the other Mediterraneans analyzed was their genetic relationship with sub-Saharan ethnic groups now residing in Ethiopia, Sudan, and West Africa (Burkina Faso)." Later that year, the same data was used in another study by the same author published in a different journal. This second paper dealt specifically with the relatedness of Palestinians and Israelis and was subsequently "deleted from the scientific literature" because, according to the editor-in-chief Nicole Suciu-Foca, it "confounded the elegant analysis of the historic basis of the people of the Mediterranean Basin with a political viewpoint representing only one side of a complex political and historical issue".

Erica Klarreich's report on the controversy further quotes Suciu-Foca as saying that the reaction against the paper was so severe that "We would have had mass resignations and the journal would have been destroyed if this paper were allowed to remain." The controversy was further reported on in numerous locations including The Observer.

Shortly after this, three respected geneticists, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Alberto Piazza and Neil Risch, argued that the scientific limitations of Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. They stated that "Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics.", making specific allusion to the findings on Greeks (among others) as "anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups."

No multiple-marker analysis has ever duplicated Arnaiz-Villena's results. In The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, 1994), Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza grouped Greeks with other European and Mediterranean populations based on 120 loci. Then, Ayub et al. 2003 did the same thing using 182 loci.

Another study was conducted in 2004 at Skopje's University of Ss. Kiril and Metodij, using high-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 according to Arnaiz-Villena's methodology. Contrary to his earlier conclusion, however, no sub-Saharan admixture was detected in the Greek sample.

A 2006 study by Tunisian scientists again asserted the relatedness of the Greeks to sub-Saharans by calculating genetic distances at the DRB1 locus, the same marker used in the controversial Arnaiz-Villena paper. Both papers interpreted those results as suggesting an admixture occurred due to the displacement of Egyptian-Ethiopic people during the Pharaonic period. However, the Tunisian scientists failed to analyze any new Greek genetic material, relying solely on the data contained in the earlier Arnaiz-Villena paper, and no Greek laboratory contributed to their research.

The disputed data continues to be cited all over the internet, mostly by white supremacists, afrocentrists and Slavmacedonians nationalists (usually VMRO fans and Diaspora Centers like maknews.com) who have political motivations to relate modern and/or ancient Greeks to black Africans. However, it's no longer referenced by population geneticists in contemporary research, mainly due to the criticism of Cavalli-Sforza et al.

The genetics, with its appearance of scientific objectivity, holds obvious—albeit illusory—appeal. As Appelbaums remarked for nations with strong claims to territorial sovereignty, genetic data will be irrelevant; for nations with weak claims, such data will always be inadequate. Advocates who look to genetics for a decisive victory are certain to be disappointed.

Nationality is a matter of culture and education and not genetic (mixtures) issue. Who is the person that put blood standards as about the nationality (race)?

The racist and the "white arryan"supremacist that think the colour of the skin and eye or the blood markers are the definition of the race.

Modern Greeks are the descendants of all the peoples who have adopted and retained that language and that civilization from classical times to the present. I am not claim that genetic purity is an ideal for the Greek people and the others racist thinks.As I said even Sforza put two others factors except the clusters and these are the language and the history. Modern Greek nation is not an entirely modern formation, for it is based on much older cultural groups (ethnies). Greek ethnies (like Arvanites, Vlachs, Slavophones etc.) present "permanent cultural attributes" such as memory, value, myths and symbolisms. Greek ethnies present a common cultural origin descending from ancient Greece and Byzantium.Thus, as Smith points out, "the challenge for scholars is to represent more accurately and convincingly the relationship of ethnic, cultural (Greek) past to modern (Greek) nation".

So, another FYROMian argument which is truly a big lie!

A GREEK

Mr. Daniel Korski,

It's a pitty when some individuals are so narrow-minded, don't respect their neighbours' history at all and have serious and numerous freudian complexes concerning their existence. It is also a pity when trying to be a delicate... pamphleteer. In a nutshell, why are you expressing such a negative wretchedness?Did you expect that Greece wouldn't react?Is it possible for whatever serious state not to defend its rights and its territory?With the exception that Fyrom is a sham state!Finally, it is a pitty I ascertain when fool-hardy and rediculous gangs of politicians wield power can be very dangerous for the international peace and security say Russia-Georgia, 90's Serbia, Nazi Germany, US-Iraq, Darfour etc)

A Greek with a word of Caution

Greek Foreign has been greatly unsucesful in recent years. This is proven by the Fact that it has failed to resolve the problem with FYROM.

The American Foreign Policy has Been very Succesful in managing to Albanize the entire area and in preparing it for GREAT Albanian so that they can push their American interests.

FYROM's foreigh policy is NOT of focusing on their real problems which is the fact that in 20 years the current Albanian minority could have control of their Parliament cause they may exceed 40% of the population. FYROM's politicians are purposly blinding its slavic people by using the Name Dispute as a tool to keep them pre-occupied.

I say to the Slavs WAKE UP...

and to us Greeks stop waisting energy with the silly name dispute and Concetrate or our more serious problems with our other Neighbors

Hey all of you silly Slavophones in Here.

In 10-20 years when your albanian nationals control your parlaiment YOU will be a minority in your own Country.

Kosovo will be a recognized entity and you will be at best albanized.

No-one will care about the stupid name Argument then, cause the Albanians will unite and then you will be in real trouble.

Open your minds and see what the Americans with your Traitor Politicians are doing.

The name dispute is a TOOL to make you asleep and PREoccupied.

WAKE UP..................

Tango Charlie

The prize for worst foreign policy goes to Greece... And the prize for extreme and irredentist nationalism goes to the Republika Makedonija.

T.E

Mr.Korski seems to live in another planet. I think journalists either should be well informed before writing anything or should write NOTHING. If the stupidities he writes are due to his ignorance he can be forgivable (but please STOP writing anymore !!!) but if he is just a propagandist against Greece this is a problem.

Monastir/Bitola

Mr Miller, I apologize for thinking that you are Greek but as I stated I have heard the comment about TITO many times made by the Greek Community. I tend to go with the thoughts expressed by Lerin August 22-2008 with regards to Tito.

I know my Identity & am annoyed at having to prove it all the time.

The Politicians in Republic of Macedonia (unless they have a History Degree) should refrain from making quotations regarding the origins & identity of the Macedonian people, the quotes from Kiro Gligarov, Gordana Vesilinov & Ljubica Acevshka are their own personal opinions and do not reflect the whole Macedonian Community, they have a right to self identify any way they please.

With regards to your comment on the irredentism that the Greeks have to put up with, what about the irredentism in 1988 when they named their land to Macedonia even though the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had already existed, the Greek Government knew that Yugoslavia would not object to their new name. You consider this good neighbourly practices.

I think that you should invest in some books & educate yourself in the Macedonian history from the 1900, these are a few other books that will explain to you what has happened to the Macedonians & why,

1. Who are the Macedonians by Poulton H.

2. Macedonian Conflict by Loring M Danforth,

I have already given you the details of Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood. These people are not reporters & are not quoting hearsay or third party information, They will explain TITO for you.

With regards to the CIA report I emphasize the words "Rumors & semi-official statements".

The Macedonian people just want to get on with their lives & move forward. I also have family there & am concerned for their future.

Being a reporter do some investigation regarding the claims put forward from the Macedonians concerning the Minority problems in Greece. You can start by looking at the Helsinki Watch report called Denying Ethnic Identity - Macedonians of Greece" was published in May 1994.

As you can also see from most of the Posts from the Greek people they regularly use derogatory terms like,
FYRomians = FYRGypsies (Romi is Gypsi)
Bulgarians
Slavo-Bulgars
The Republic of Mac donnians etc.. do you really believe that they do not call the minority Macedonians in Greece by these names, they use them so openly here.

Yes we Macedonians are all lying & changing History. I think you will find it is the Professors in the universities doing the changing & as you can see from the Authors of the above books they are not Macedonian.

MACEDONIA

Why Greece scare of MACEDONIA?
Why macedonian name is problem for Greece?
Why Greece not accept to have to name Macedonia,one on our STATE Macedonia,the other for Greece PROVINCE what they call Macedonia,like that is example with LUXEMBOURG state and province in Belgium.
The answer is very easy,because Greece scare.In 1913,in Buchurest Treaty,Macedonia was separate on 4 parts,one of that part today have Greece and they call Macedonia.That part belong on Macedonia.
MACEDONIA FOREVER!

basilmacedon

I see Fyromians speaking about Pontian Greeks and refuggees from Asia Minor during 1922. They refer to these Greeks as the ones who inhabit the Macedonia region in Greece.

My question is.. how Greeks won the Macedonian Struggle in 1908!! against the Bulgarians in the region of Macedonia?

To remind you, no official army took place and it was a "domestic" fight between Greeks and Bulgarians (today Fyromians).

How Greeks won... since.. they were not there? lol lol

Guys get serious. We're 2,5 millions Macedonians in Greece and in diaspora and we have nothing to do with the Slavic people of Fyrom. We fought for it. We will never let that change. You cannot be Macedonian without being Greek.. as you cannot being Bavarian without being German. Nothing else to talk about.

Steve

Well yes, lets look at what Loring M Danforth has to say Monastir/Bitola, good idea

The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century A.D. as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.56

The political and military leaders of the Slavs of Macedonia at the turn of the century seem not to have heard Misirkov's call for a separate Macedonian national identity; they continued to identify themselves in a national sense as Bulgarians rather than Macedonians.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.64

Finally, Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a Macedonian national identity was a relatively recent historical development.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.63

Whether a Macedonian nation existed at the time or not, it is perfectly clear that the communist party of Yugoslavia had important political reasons foe declaring that one did exist and for fostering its development through a concerted process of nation building, employing all the means at the disposal of the Yugoslav state.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.66

Extreme Macedonian nationalists, who are concerned with demonstrating the continuity between ancient and modern Macedonians, deny that they are Slavs and claim to be the direct descendants of Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians. The more moderate Macedonian position, generally adopted by better educated Macedonians and publicly endorsed by Kiro Gligorov, the first president of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, is that modern Macedonians have no relation to Alexander the Great, but are a Slavic people whose ancestors arrived in Macedonia in the sixth century AD.
*Loring M. Danforth Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine

Steve

Treaty of Bucharest 1913

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/82871/Treaty-of-Bucharest
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/boshtml/bos149.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Bucharest_(1913)

No mention on any "ethnic Macedonians" because they didnt exist back then

They were ethnic Bulgarians or Serbians

Lies and Propaganda have lead todays Fyromians to believe that this land was taken from some sort of "Macedonian Race" but it obviously didnt exist as ethnic Macedonians are a recent political creation

Poulton H

You guys keep shooting yourselves in the foot

The three peoples in Macedonia with the longest claim to continuity are the Greeks, the Vlachs (possibly descendants of Romanized elements of the original Thracians) and the Albanians who claim descent from the ancient Illyrians.
The Slavs, an Indo-European people originating in east-central Europe, had begun to cross the Danube into the Balkans by the 6th cent AD.
In the 7th cent combined assaults of Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians, a Turkic people from the area between the Urals and Volga who had come via the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, led to the founding of the first Bulgarian state in 681.
In 864, under the direction of their leader Boris, the Proto-Bulgarians converted en masse to Christianity and this greatly helped them coalesce with the Slavs, who had already been converted.
Thus by the end of the 9th century they were as one people speaking a Slav-based language (although modern Slav Macedonians historians in Skopje claim that the Macedonia Slavs have always been a separate people from those in Bulgaria).
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 4]

The conversion of the Slavs to Christianity was greatly helped by the pioneering work of two Greek brothers from Salonika, the Saints Constantine (who took the name Cyril on becoming a monk) and Methodius. They codified the Slav dialects of the Slavs Living in the vicinity in order to aid the evangelisation of these people. This was the so-called Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian , originally written in the Glagolithic script.
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 19]

In Yugoslav Macedonia the new authorities quickly set about consolidating their position. The new nation needed a written language, and initially the spoken dialect of northern Macedonia was chosen as the basis for the Macedonian language. However, this was deemed too close to Serbian and the dialects of Bitola-Veles became the norm.(1) These dialects were closer to the literary language of Bulgaria but because the latter was based on the eastern Bulgarian dialects, it allowed enough differentiation for the Yugoslavs to claim it as a language distinct from Bulgarian-a point which Bulgaria has bitterly contested ever since(2). In fact the differentiation between the Macedonian and Bulgarian dialects becomes progressively less pronounced on an east-west basis. Macedonian shares nearly all the same distinct characteristics which separate Bulgarian from other Slav languages lack of cases, the post-positive definite article, replacement of the infinitive form, and preservation of the simple verbal forms for the past and imperfect tenses-but whether it is truly a different language from Bulgarian or merely a dialect of it is a moot point.

The alphabet was accepted on 3 May 1945 and the orthography on 7 June 1945, and the first primer in the new language appeared by 1946, in which year a Macedonian Department in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Skopje was also founded.

A grammar of the Macedonian literary language appeared in 1952, and the Institute for the Macedonian Language "Krste P' Misirkov" was founded the following year. Since the Second world 'war the new republic has used the full weight of the education system and the bureaucracy to make the new language common parlance, and indeed it is noticeable that old people still tend to speak a mixture of dialects which include obvious Serbianisms and Bulgarianisms, while those young enough to have gone through the education system in its entirety speak_ a 'purer' Macedonian.

In addition, io the new language, the new republic needed a history and this was quickly reflected in the new school textbooks. Here again bitter resentment was caused in Bulgaria since-the Macedonian historical figures are also claimed by Bulgaria as Bulgarian heroes, e g- the medieval emperor Samuil whose empire was centred around lake Ochrid and Gotse Delchev one of the leaders of the abortive rising of 1903 in Macedonia-Macedonian textbooks even hint at Bulgarian complicity in his death at the hands of the Ottomans (3)

Such a policy needed careful massaging and concealment. AsBulgarians pointed out, in the museum of the SR Macedonia it was not possible to see original works by the likes of the Miladinov brothers, who had been in the forefront of Slav consciousness in the mid-nineteenth century, and were now claimed to be Macedonian as opposed to Bulgarian: in some of their works they clearly stated that they were Bulgarians. Suitably edited versions in the new language were promoted to boost the new line, and similar methods were used for a host of other leaders in the nineteenth century Bulgarian revival process who came from Macedonia. Similar editing was done on the history of VMRO with, so Bulgarians claimed, unnatural emphasis on the thought and activity of the so-called 'left' autonomist wing, despite its actually being a small minority within VMRO' and its views were now claimed to support a Macedonian nationality separate from the Bulgarians(4).
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 116-117]

Pathetic

I say that the WORST Foreign [policy] award should be given to both Greece and Slavo-Macedonia for the most idiotic foreigh policy EVER.

Which is allowing the Americans, so easily to get their way:

Albanize the entire area.

Justus Lipsius

Mr. Korski,

Do you have the slightest clue what are you talking about? Your article betrays a total and despicable ignorance of Balkan politics and history. One reason for despising journalists is that they try to analyse issues that are clearly beyond their intellectual reach. It is Gruevsky himself who is committing political suicide.
He keeps distributing maps where Thessaloniki (Solun) is shown as the capital of the country. How would you feel if the French State for example had maps where London was a provincial capital? Or if the Spanish Kingdom made claims on England? The Government of Fyrom has refused to declare formally that it has no claims on neighbouring Greece (they refuse to stop propagande in their schools and make a constitutional provision). Given the atrocious and insane propaganda in their schools it is highly likely that sooner or later one of their leaders wil try nad gather support to declare war on Greece.

Do you even know that Gruevski is intervening in Greek domestic affairs? Do you know that he is trying to claim property abandoned by the communists who took refuge to Yungoslavia in 1949? Do you know that he 'sees' non-existent minorities in Greece?

But I do wonder what your response would be if the French Department of Education printed maps where the South of England was shown as French. I know that the French would not do that, but this is simply to demonstrate that you have the luxury of distance from the events. Furthermore you are the least qualified perosn to write on this topic as your knowledge of both Balkan foreign affairs and history appears negligible.

Yours faithfully,

Pathetski

Mr KorSKI, I lost my credit card last week and a fraudster racked up over $10,000 dollars on my card. He stole my identity and when caught I confronted him I thanked him for ripping me off. You are obviously an idiot and can't see the bigger picture. Your Bulgarian friends will see the bigger picture but by then unfortunately for them they will be part of the Greater/bigger Albania!

fg

To "Macedonia":
Do you understand what have you said: why Greece fears Macedonia - that is completely illogical, because Macedonia is a greek province.
As for the macedonian name, why on earth you should take a name which is greek, by greek etymology, roots and history? Macedonia is a word that belongs to the ancient greek language. For me, giving you the name "macedonia, even with a geographical determinant, is a huge compromise - especially, when you are using this name to base your claims on greek territory and to steal greek history.
As for the example of Luxemburg and Belgium, none of these countries circulates maps showing the half neighbouring country in its borders nor steals the history of the other.

stemi

I lost my time trying to say the obvious! Monastir/Bitola read some posts above (mine for instance) about human rights. How can you want to name some slavs people in Greece (about 4000) Macedonians when Macedonians in Greece is a majority with over 2 million people? Macedonia province in Greece existed since 1920’s and not since 1988 as you said every map of Greece shows that!
Your arguments are totally nonsense! The vast majority of scientific community rejects them. Yes maybe there are some scientists with different views but they are few very few and unknown! There are proves and they are carved in stones!
It is unbelievable; you must be really deadhead to believe this baseless propaganda from your politicians. Your language is greatly based on Bulgarians and you think that Great Alexander spoke this language and name this “Macedonian”. There are far far more Greeks in your country than FYROMians in Greece and you speak about ”violation of human rights”. (Really, do you know how many Greeks/Vlachs leave in Monastir speak Greeks and have Greek flags in their houses?) Some academics wrote an article about the Ethiopian origin of Greeks. This article was greatly rejected and proves as unscientific. No article is ever refers to it. However you make it a central point of your arguments! You are dreaming the land that was shared 100 years ago by international treaties and know you are saying that it wasn’t right! Your people welcomed the NAZIs and Fashists as Liberator both in WWI and WWII (look some pictures from Skopja and Ohrid: http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/6149/bulgarian125ip9.jpg , http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4189/fyromwwii5pm3.jpg , http://sliven.gvardia.net/images/stories/macedoniafree5.jpg , http://www.macedoniainfo.com/Freedom13.jpg , http://www.kroraina.com/knigi/bugarash/snimki/posreshtane_bgcheti_bitolja_mladoturskarevol.jpg ). It is simple you pick up the wrong side! However, you call us fascists!! (another example that you are ignorant of your history).
Recently, the US Ambassador in Skopje, Milovanovic stated: “Macedonia has no future if it’s not a NATO member”. The thing is very simple. Either you like it or not, you are not going to enter NATO under the name Macedonia! Greece correctly will be vetoing you!
One advice, become literate and judge objectively!

Monastir/Bitola

To Steve & Polton H, I didn't shoot my self in the foot! Thank you for quoting out of the books, though you have misunderstood the reason why I mentioned them, I am aware some of the Books are Pro Greek, some are Pro Macedonian.
Macedonian Conflict by Loring Danford, Who are the Macedonians Poulton H, Fields of Wheat , Hills of Blood By Anastasia N Karakasidou, Macedonians & Greece by John Shea, Macedonia By Harvey Pekar, The Past in Question by Keith Brown.

The reason why I mentioned the books was so that Mr J Miller would read some of them & get an understanding of that period of history. Unlike Alexanders History there is an abundance of information from all of the countries involved. By reading these books he can then make an opinion regarding that history, I could have also done what you did & quote pages & references out of the books, but they need to be read complete to get the true picture!

Regarding the Treaty of Bucharest 1913, if the land divided was already Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian or Albanian, why was it divided? Why did the Greeks then call that acquired land “New Territories” & then for approximately 60yrs Northern Greece & not Macedonia immediately.

The reason Macedonia is not mentioned in the Treaty is because at the time they were under Turkish Occupation & technically it was Turkish land that was being divided, this is the reason Macedonia was siding with the above countries & fighting against the Ottoman Empire. During the occupation by the Ottoman Empire, they were still referred to as Macedonians & on most maps of antiquity it shows the whole region as Macedonia with Turkey written above it.

Tito treated all of the regions of Yugoslavia the same, there was a continuation of their individual Traditions, Customs, Music & most importantly the Language & Religion. They were not moved and occupied the land that they always lived in.

I wanted Mr Miller to find this out for himself & then make a decision & see if he still feels that the Greeks are putting up with irredentism.

How should the Children of Macedonia be taught history, should we dispose of all the maps of antiquity that show a united Macedonia during that period, should we deny that all of the above happened, maybe we should just disappear as that is what the Greek people want, we never existed, we never lived there, we never had a culture, language, religion it is all made up according to them.

Macedonia has always been Macedonia & is now the Republic of Macedonia, the Dream of all the Freedom fighters that died during that period has been achieved.

fg

To Monastir/Bitola
And only with the fact that you mention the name Monastir, you reverse all your arguments: Monastiri/Monastir is the greek name of the city, which later, when serbs took it, became Bitola.
Macedonia never lost her greek character - and only the fact that you call the area "Macedonia" a greek word, reveals that the area from the start was inhabited by greeks.
As you admitted "Macedonia until 1913 was in Turkish occupation", why then are you speaking like Macedonia was a independent state that Greece occupied it?
You, also, mention the fighters for the freedom of Macedonia: what about Pavlos Melas or Telos Agras who were greeks and were killed by turks? They fought together with their brothers, greek macedonians, who were enslaved to turks, in order to liberate them.
"Macedonian" nation wasn't mentioned in the Bucharest Treaty because it didn't exist - nobody from this alleged nation participated to the struggle for freedom, no matter how you are trying now to grab everyone who fought then.

Monastir/Bitola

fg Monastir is a Macedonian word which means Church.

If Monastir/Bitola was always Greek land & a Greek City then why did you not acquire it in the Treaty surely at the time your Government could have proved that it was theirs.

Monastir was also occupied by the Romans in ancient times.

That is what I said that Macedonia was occupied by the Ottoman Empire but it was still known as Macedonia. I stated that they were trying to become independent & yes they had freedom fighters that fought against the Ottoman Empire, you speak as though everyone was fighting around them & they just sat there & watched, again they were invisible, only the Greek Fighters did this. The Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians & Albanians committed the biggest swindle in History. Each one promising the Macedonians Independence to fight along side them against the enemy whilst their diplomats were carving up Macedonia behind their backs with the aid of France & Britain.

Mind you there are are Newspaper reports for that period that verify the above.

Even your own king at the time admitted there were Macedonians & it was New Territory.

I noticed you didn't dispute my claim that Greece called the Newly occupied land "New Territory" & then Northern Greece, Greece didn't want to mention or hear the name Macedonia at that time, It is easy to verify as your own atlases printed in Greece for the period in question recognizes that Macedonia existed & doesn't show Greece Macedonia until after around 1988, since 1988 Greece makes claim to the name like it was always theirs.

Even if Slav's did occupy the lands & remained there from the 6th century as the Greeks claim that is an extremely long time & the continuity of the Macedonian name for that region has remained since then, so why should they change it now. There is only one real Macedonia & it is a Republic now.

The Macedonians in Greece, Imported from Turkey approximately 1.6 million of them & moved to the New Territory, (prosfighes) These are what Greeks call pure Macedonians. Remember there are no (dopyi Makedhonas) Slav Macedonians in Greece. (The Mazemata of Greek Macedonia)

Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood, by Anastasia Karakasidou, Section 5 p141
Crossing the Moving Frontier
Group Formation & Social Closure in the Era of Refugee Settlement 1922-1940. If Greece exists today as a homogenous ethnos she owes this to [the Asia Minor Catastrophe]. If the hundreds of thousands of refugees had not come to Greece, Greek Macedonia would not exist today. The refugees created the national homogeneity of our country. Augustinos Kandiotis, Metroolite of Florina. By the end of the Balkan Wars in 1913, the Greek state had secured sovereignty over a large part of the region of Macedonia, including the Langadhas basin & the market village of Guvezna.

You can read the rest for yourself, I didn't want to quote books but unfortunately you left me no choice.

Anyway we have completely gone off the Subject of Mr Korski Question. My answer is still GREECE for all of their political back stabbing & manipulation, their Lies & injustices, The founders of Democracy what a joke! The only pure race on the Balkans all the other countries are bastardized.

Da Zivee Makedonija

Mike Davidkovski

Here is an example of facts that are so obvious & yet Greece or I should say, Orthodox Turkistan, refuses to accept & continues with its 19th century policy of Greece being 99.9% populated by Grks?! Wake up! Wonder off to N.Greece. See what other language is the mother tongue. This Hellenic patriotism/nationalism is pathetic. Grks have NO FACTS to support their claims except for 2000 or 3000 yrs ago. Dont forget this history was written in 1850-1945 to later lay claim additional territories in the Balkans. This was also done by Serbs, Bulgarians & Albanians with Great help from Western powers in turn serving as satellite states.

Read the below FACT:

Greek Census in 1921 shows 500,000 Macedonians PDF Print E-mail

Prilep's Dragan Mitreski, owns an old Austrian Atlas who shows that in 1921, 500,000 citizens, 8.8% of the population in Greece declared themselves as Macedonians.

This is just another document from the thousands of documents about the Macedonians in Greece.

- This document is very important, because our southern neighbors continue their claim they have no Macedonian minority. I found this document by accident. This is a "heavy"document because it is done by a famous historian and author, as well as by an independent country, Austria. From the documents, in 1921, the Yugoslavian census listed 600,000 Macedonians, and this is exlusive, the Austrians also clearly distinguish the Macedonians in Bulgaria, however, their number was not given. For Bulgaria, because of the large number of Macedonians in Pirin Macedonia (what is now Bulgaria), the Austrians put 4 million "Bulgarians and Macedonians". Very interesting is the flag of Albania, they had no two headed eagle, rather a red and black flag with a white star", says Mitreski.

Mitreski is not selling the book, he simply wanted to make the documents in it available to the Government for free, in their absurd negotiations with Greece.

Mitreski says he found the book 15 years ago, when an older individual burned old books in Prilep's center. - There were Old Church books too. I have always been fascinated with old books, and made my hobby to gather old books. So i picked up several books from the old man, to save them from burning. One of those books was this great Atlas where all of the Balkan is documented.

The documentation i.e. the Austrian Atlas was published several months after the Greek Census from December 19th, 1920. The results of this census were never publicly revealed by Greece, even though it was a census of great importance because for the first time was done on the so called "new territories".

Questions included in the Census were:"What is your mother tongue?", "What language do you speak at home?", "If your language is not Greek, do you understand Greek?"

Greece publicly released census information only for Greek territory before 1913, the actual Greece. All data for the newly occupied territories, including Aegean Macedonia, was hidden and never released. The Greek Government has refused to do another census since 1921.

fg

To Monastir/Bitola
Monastir is a macedonian word because ancient macedonian language is a greek dialect - your argument is completely useless.
Monastir was a city inhabited by greeks, as Gevgeli and Strumpitsa - and you can find many photos in the web showing the greek heritage of the city. But when serbs took the city and mainly after the WWII, Tito forced many greeks to abandon the city. However, even today in FYROM and especially, Monastir live many greeks whose existence you are refusing.
To Davidkovski
Only the fact that you call Greece "Orthodox Turkistan", reveals your policy and your tactics.
If you want censuses about Macedonia, why don't you look the censuses the turkish authorities made before 1913? In those censuses greek inhabitants of Macedonia are hundreds of thousands. On the contrary, there aren't any macedonians.
Concerning the term "new territories", it refers to the chronological order with which they were liberated.
Whatever you may say, you can't persuade anyone that Macedonia wasn't greek, because every corner of macedonian land is covered with monuments of the ancient greek culture.

Macedonian Warrior

___Another Census since 1921>
Minorities in Greece
Turks 720,543
Albanians 3,121,434
Bulgarians 2,672,444
Hebrew 226,612
Vlachs 1,322,454
Gypsies 26,321
Thracians 720,422
Macedonians 2,101,506

Total population of Greece is
10,911,736

___All this minorities in Greece are depressed and have no human rights at all because the Greek Government has a policy of ethnic cleansing...

Source > Nationalities in modern Greece by Marshal Tito's dust. Skopje 2008.

fg

To "macedonian" warrior
Where did you find this "census"? In your schoolbooks?
It's remarkable that in Greece there isn't a single greek!! You forgot to mention Peloponneseans, Epirots, Thessaleans and Cretans..
With that argument, do you expect that anyone would take you seriously?

ilias

i'm very tired with these barbarians... let's make a golf terrain out of FYROM

Monastir/Bitola

fg,
Greeks were liberated by Only Greeks & then called land they already owned because it was Greek to start with the "New Territories", New Territories means exactly that "New Territories".

Something Greece didn't have before.

The city was called Monastir when my Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandparents lived there with their family. That is an extremely long time & it was always Macedonia & yes they all spoke Macedonian! We still have their old house there.

I have never said that there are no Greeks in Republic of Macedonia, there are Greeks, Albanians, Vlach, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, French, Chinese, Bulgarian, Romi & people from all over the world living there. The peoples living in Macedonia are all happy, they can self identify, speak their own language, celebrate their customs, practice their own Religion, they can fly their own national flag as you will see when you cross the boarder From Greece into Macedonia, Now that is a Democratic Country.

I did not see any references in Helsinki Watch regarding human rights violations in the Republic of Macedonian, Only Praise: FORMER REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is the only one of the former Yugoslav republics to have become independent without bloodshed

You can read the rest by following this link:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/WR94/Helsinki-15.htm

Lets see what Helsinki says for Greece: GREECE

Human Rights Developments Human rights abuses in Greece involved freedom of speech, discrimination against minorities, physical abuse of detainees and prisoners, and violations of religious freedom.

You can read the rest by following this link:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/WR94/Helsinki-11.htm#TopOfPage

Why doesn't the Greek Government hold a Census now, there are plenty of Greek politicians in Australia, America, Canada "Multicultural countries" ask them to send you a copy of their Census form & get the Greek people to Complete it & lets see the outcome. [make sure that it has Nationality & other Language spoken at home etc.].

The thing that you forget to inform the people on this Blog regarding the censuses the Turkish authorities made before 1913 is that Turkey in those days collected census data according to your religion & the Church you went to. All of the Orthodox Christians were placed Under Greek because our church was not & still isn't recognized by the Greek Church. Mr Gruevski kindly pointed this out this month. The people in that census are Greek, Macedonian, Bulgarian & Serb combined AS YOU ARE FULLY AWARE.

Persia is covered with Greek monuments, they have Greek inscriptions, they spoke Greek, they used Greek Coins, they even worshiped Greek Gods, so by your theory they are also Greek & it is Greek Land they occupy, every corner of Persian land is covered with monuments of the ancient Greek culture so you better get NATO to get it back for you.

ilias

"Barbarians" the magic word for the Macedonians! the true Greek thought & wish is coming out now. Greece can prove to the world how strong they are.

Here read this latest news as this is what is awaiting Greece, it will help boost your struggling economy:

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/3091/45/

The People of the Republic of Macedonia will have to vote to change the Name from the Republic of Macedonia.

I don't like the chances of A Name change.

There are lots of countries in Europe that are not part of NATO & EU and are doing extremely well economically. The Republic of Macedonia have a Brilliant Prime Minister in Mr Gruevski & next year they vote in a New President who hopefully will be just as enthusiastic as Mr Gruevski, the Macedonian people just have to give the New Politicians a chance. Mr Gruevski is a Champion, The Macedonians throughout the world are Extremely proud of him.

Long Live the Republic of Macedonia.

stemi

Two more proofs:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_2oeLbEhyIs8/SEADjAZwTDI/AAAAAAAACuE/TeOn-wzaedQ/s1600-h/history1896.jpg
A newspaper from Thessaloniki (in Greeks) from 1896. The placement of a Greek metropolitan in the cathedral of Skopje made the Serbian government to complaint to the patriarchate. They said than in the province of Skopje there are 11000 Serbian families and just 50 Greeks. The language that is spoken is the Serbians and since the Greek metropolitan doesn’t know Serbians this would be a problem.
No Macedonians and no Macedonian language (and don’t say that the Greeks knew about the problem of Macedonian that would be introduced several decades later).

http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/08/23/document-of-1946-reveals-the-attempt-to-manufacture-a-macedonian-ethnicity/
Read how the census was hold in 1946 in Skopje.

Achilles

Monastir=greek word=monasterion
Monasterium in latin

census??? Why?
we had many elections in Greece (voting is secret) where the Slav party always took less than 5000 votes

keep your lies for yourself Monastir/Bitola

Achilles

Macedonia=Greek word too:)

stemi

And 1252 pages full of proofs (in English). You can download it (60 MB)
Newspapers, Books, from Scientists, philosophers all proving the Greek Nature of Great Alexander, St Cyril and Methodius, Macedonia.
ENJOY!

http://rs281.rapidshare.com/files/130036301/historyOFmacedonia.pdf

PS to Monastir/Bitola.
Greek map of 1915: http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?nav=MS&cid=22,56,95,1619&pid=15776
Greek map of 1938: http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?nav=MS&cid=22,56,95,1619&pid=15670
Greek map of 1949:
http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?nav=MS&cid=22,56,95,1619&pid=15745
Greek map of 1958: http://www.maps.com/map.aspx?pid=15988
Zoom it and wait for a better resolution to see better the word Macedonia!
Almost all of your arguments are nonsense!

Monastir/Bitola

Helsinki watch is not a Macedonian Web site & Anastasia N Karakasidou is definitely Greek. Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood. Quote: "One rarely encounters a scholarly book as disturbing as this provocative work, a study of ethnicity in the Greek province of Macedonia. It is so controversial that Cambridge University Press, fearing for the safety of its staff in Greece, refused to publish it. Having spent some time with villagers of the region, Karakasidou maintains that Macedonia is not exclusively Greek, as nationalists claim, but is instead a multiethnic, multicultural region experiencing the political and religious upheavals engulfing the rest of the Balkans. Karakasidou's obsession with the truth has brought her death threats, apparently from outraged Greeks. Her powerfully written book is a resounding statement of human courage, reminding readers there is no substitute for honesty & critical thought." -Library Journal Anastasia N. Karakasidou is assistant professor of anthropology at Wellesley College. The University of Chicago Press.

stemi Thank you for Posting links to "GREEK" Maps & "GREEK" Newspapers etc..

I can give you web sites disputing your Proofs as well, but originally chose not to do that, but since you are then I will just post one of the thousand on the web as well:
http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/

This is the Best, Most famous & most hated by the Greeks of all off the independent Macedonian Web sites so if anyone wants to have a look you are welcome to.

Achilles, It was always called "Monastir" a Macedonian word Meaning Church.
Monastir=greek word what is the meaning in Greek?=monasterion
Monasterium in latin

I would prefer to stick to facts that can be easily verified. So I will let you continue with your lies & so called Proofs. I forgot to mention that the Macedonian Government has been given a gift, a CD compilation of over 1000 Old newspaper reports mentioning the Existence of the Macedonians & their fight for an independent country during that period. From The "New York Times".

My arguments are nonsense only to the Greek Nationalist like you stemi

stemi

Monastir/Bitola, I am sure that I am much less nationalist than you.
You kept saying that Greece invented the name “Macedonia” for its north province just in 1988. I showed you national maps from 1920 from National Geographic referring to this part as Macedonia (and you pointed me a nationalist FYROMian site with modern maps referring to the past). In the downloaded pdf that I showed you there are Greek newspapers from 1880s which name contain the word Macedonia. In the same file there are 50-years old Greek school books that analyze the Greek Macedonia region. And you still don’t admit that you were wrong. Is that nonsense or not?
You keep saying for a Greek writer when you deliberately omit comments from your previous Prime Minister Kiro Gligorov, ambassadors and many other FYROMians. You would know also Vasil Gligorov, don’t you. Is that nonsense or not?
You keep saying about Helsinki. Helsinki just proposed Greece to accept a “Macedonian” club. But the European court (after your people went there) said that Greece acts rationally not allowing this club. Greece hasn’t accused from Helsinki for any pressing of “Macedonian minority” as you keep saying. Is that nonsense or not?
You want us to name 4000 people Macedonian minority, when we have Macedonian majority here. The Greeks in FYROM must be around 100,000 people and you said that they aren’t many! So, who are violating human rights?
You may be right that the word Monastir isn’t Greek, however must be Turkish.
You say that your language was spoken from ancient Macedonians. Still you have I front of a governmental building (I don’t remember which one) a stone from that period written in Greeks. I can read it, I am sure you (and your politicians) can’t. I am sure that Bulgarians and Serbs can well understand you when speaking. Yet you put subtitles in Serbian movies! All the ancient thumbs have Greek epigraphs on them, almost all ancient Macedonian names are Greek and you saying that you speak Macedonians! Is that nonsense or not?
Your PM continuously says lies about the negotiations in order to become hero in your country. Even Nimitz complaint to him.
And many many more …

PS. Your American friend, Bush keeps referring to you as Macedonian Republic to compensate from the slap from Greece (and because you offering your land for an US base)! However, vice president of Obama referred yesterday to your country as FYROM (you will maybe lose you greater supporter)!

Ben

This article is total rubbish!

fg

Another sample of friendship from FYROM to Greece.
From http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/3132/1/:

Macedonians hack numerous Greek websites
30.8.08 A Group going by the name of "Macedonian Cyber Elite" hacked into numerous Greek Websites, late last night. In its text, apart from the picture of the old Macedonian flag, there is the following message:
"This message is in the Macedonian language, because You are our offspring and we know you understand it. It is time for you to stop your hot headed stubbornness, we don’t understand with what aim you seek something that has never been yours. We don’t know how far you will go, however we believe not very far because we are aware for a long time, and today we are ready to confront and destroy anything in our way. By nature we are very calm people, but not naïve, and will not let history repeat… We are ready at all times to respond virtually and in reality. Our actions will only increase if you don’t change your policy, and you are well aware what you need to do… Understand this as an advice for a better future and better relations." says in the message translated from Macedonian.
Also on August 27, the "Macedonian Cyber Elite" took down the website of Greek PM Kostas Caramanlis. His site wasn't available for most of the day.

These are some of the sites that were hacked, some of them still have not managed to remove the message from the MCE.

BMPO

Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, on the other hand, while priming the Macedonian people and the world with their propaganda for liberation, were actually planning for an invasion with intentions of occupying and partitioning Macedonia. The Great Powers were well aware of this sinister plan even before it was put into action.

Here is evidence that the Macedonian people were duped by their Christian brothers, Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. According to the Carnegie inquiries, the Macedonian revolutionaries themselves, at first, rejoiced with an outburst of popular gratitude towards their liberators. In a "proclamation to their brothers", published by the delegates of the twenty-five Macedonian Confederacies, at the very beginning of the first Balkan war, declared to the Macedonian population:

In fact the Serbian army entered Macedonia from the north and the Greek army from the south, welcomed with cries of joy from the Macedonian population. Unfortunately this enthusiasm for the liberators soon gave way to doubts, then to disenchantment and was finally converted to hatred and despair.

According to the Carnegie report, the Macedonians were not the only ones duped. The soldiers of the invading armies were lied to also. "The Servian soldier, like the Greek, was firmly persuaded that in Macedonia he would find compatriots, men who could speak his language and address him with jivio or zito. He found men speaking a language different from his, who cried hourrah! He misunderstood or did not understand at all. The theory he had learned from youth of the existence of a Servian Macedonia and a Greek Macedonia naturally suffered; but his patriotic conviction that Macedonia must become Greek or Servian, if not so already, remained unaffected. Doubtless Macedonia had been what he wanted it to become in those times of Douchan the Strong or the Byzantine Emperors.

Mακεδονία γη ελληνική.

"The Servian soldier, like the Greek, was firmly persuaded that in Macedonia he would find compatriots, men who could speak his language and address him with jivio or zito. He found men speaking a language different from his, who cried hourrah. He misunderstood or did not understand at all."

The Bulgarian soldier on the other hand "understood" it perfectly well.

The "Macedonian people" on the eve of the 20th century were Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and even the Ottoman muslim population.
Each of them supporting their mother country.

Bulgarians lost the second Balkan war, so they turned to plan B:
That there some "ethnic macedonians" in Macedonia who sould be "independent" from the others.

"Ethnic macedonians" = Bulgarian-speaking populations who after Bulgaria's numerous defeats lost contact with their mother country.

Inside Yugoslavia, the national myth of a connection with the ancient macedonians (a greek people, but not recognised as such -history seriously compromised) was established.

These people have been exploited by two nationalisms (Bulgarian, Yugoslavian) and also the communist agit-prop who was also ultimately a propaganda tool of the USSR.

One can sympathise with their clumsy attempt to form a national identity other than those already existing.
One of them above deemed "derogatory" being given the term "Bulgarian" or even "Slav".
While "Macedonian" is certainly nobler, right?

They should be treated with lenience, but not such that doesn't expose the extent of their exploitation.

If they want so desperately to be Macedonians they can learn Greek, become part of Greece and join another 2 million already existing Macedonians .
You know ...the way the actual Macedonians used to be some long time ago.

Monastir/Bitola

I deem it derogatory in the term that it is used by the Greeks.

I know my ethnicity, I know my language, I Know my Religion & I know my roots. I am not Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, I do not like being classed something I am not! Try calling a Croatian a Serbian & then insist that they are & see the reply you get from them.

When you respect what I am then I will respect you.

You call your former "Northern Greece" region Macedonia. That is ok I can except that, honestly it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Do you know why, Because we own The Republic of Macedonia. The name will never change so just accept that & get on with your life & let the people of Macedonia get on with theirs.

Stemi most Greeks can't understand Koine as it is different from the Greek spoken today. I am hoping that in all the excavating in Macedonia that they are doing they uncover proofs, regarding the language used in ancient times. It is a big probability that it will happen.

fg

To Monastir/Bitola
You don't respect what we are - someone from FYROM called Greece "Orthodox Turkistan". You keep telling that greeks didn't live in Macedonia until 1913, while many greeks - macedonians shed their blood and died for this land - Captain Kottev, a slavophone greek was executed in Monastir during the macedonian struggle for his fight for unification of Macedonia with the liberate Greece . And funny enough, you keep "forgetting" the greek-turkish war of 1897, when Greece tried again to liberate Macedonia.
You don't want to be called Bulgarians and I respect it, but you can't deny to us that we are macedonians - you are doing the thing you say that you loath. Neither you can deny that ancient macedonians were greeks and try to steal our history and heritage. We know who we are and which is our history, so we won't tolerate your attemp to steal our identity.

Macedonian Warrior

The Truth Hurts…
___Greece has no historical connection with Macedonia. Only the last 18 years they use the name Macedonia for the north part of Greece. The name dispute between the two countries is the result of the Greek policy to conquer the south part of the new republic.
___Everyone knows that Alexander the Great (real name Chantar Makedonski) and Philip the second were Slavs. They conquer Greece and they gave the Slavic civilization to the whole ancient world. But Greek archaeologists at the tomb of Philip’s the second at Vergina (Greece) have broken everything that was written in ancient Kirillic language, so all the nights at the excavation site wrote Greek letters on the artifacts and on the shrines they found there.
___Also they wrote Greek on the palace of Philip in the first capital of Macedonia -at the same place- the second was Pella (Greece)… If you don’t believe that, ask George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice , they know perfect the history, cause they are reading Marshal Tito’s books for the history of Macedonia and the Macedonian nation…"
___But try to teach this communistic time propaganda from Tito's supporters to a single University, except those in Fyrom and North Korea. If you try it, you will find the truth..
___Fyromians, go steal someone else’s history, Egypt’s for example, after that BUILD a huge plastic PYRAMID outside of Skopje, so we all can recognize you as the real modern Egyptians and your president as the new Pharaoh… If you don’t like it try Aztecs - Maya – Papua - or Apache…
___No one Slav is Macedonian, you (Fyromians) are poor Vardarians without identity, like illegal immigrants without passports. That's why you want to steal other people's identity, you want to be legal but the photo in the stolen passport shows absolutely different type of man...

I am Macedonian from Florina , I am Greek cause I am Macedonian.

Mακεδονία γη ελληνική.

"I know my ethnicity, I know my language, I Know my Religion & I know my roots."

I am a Macedonian too. I also know my ethnicity, my language, my religion and my roots.

Your manufactured identity conflicts with mine.
You 're using it to imply something I totally disagree, that Macedonians are something different than Greeks.

You 're offending my own right to self-determination via an ambiguous identity that has been used thrice in the past by foreign powers to persecute my family.

Of course I can't expect for you to admit otherwise.
You 're so attached to this phony identity, you can't think differently.
"If I am not a macedonian, what am I?" you 'll ask.

That's reasonable, but answers can be given if you follow the facts.
The problem is you don't want to do that either.

Your real and only serious argument in the whole discussion is that you "know" it all, i.e. you were told so.

You don't need any proof and if anyone tries to point to you to the facts, then you go on the defense, as if they 're trying to "deny your identity".

How about learning a little something about that identity to begin with ?

E.g. you keep repeating that lie, that Greek Macedonia was not named Macedonia until the 1990s.
Apart from being absurd on its face alone (Greek Macedonia is where ancient Macedonia actually lied)
and after all the proof to the contrary you're given, you 're still using it as an argument.

Now why would any reasonable person do that. The only answer can be that these are the arguments used by the state propaganda in FYROM and passed down to you.

To simply hid the fact that it was your own country that was renamed to "Macedonia" in 1944.

If you can't keep a minimum of intellectual honesty in here, there is little more to be said about the prospects of your getting in touch with reality.

ilias

to all greeks:

It is obvious that with these barbarians we have reached a point where historic conversation and arguments is totally useless. This never-existed nation is the living proof that long-lasting propaganda can do miracles. Please understand that saying to them that they are not Macedonians is exactly like saying to us that we are not Greeks. We can’t convince them by historic evidence; they have their own “evidence” that we lie.

From lies like “you have renamed Northern Greece to Macedonia” and others circulating in here we can further understand what’s happening in the Republic of MacDonald’s. Lies and new lies, building a totally hostile environment for Greece. And we as always trying to convince them, trying to make civilized dialog with someone that is always one step ahead because he is a professional liar.

For god’s sake, we have at last to overcome this impulse for dialog. Some things can not be achieved by civilized means. What would you do in your real life if someone was saying that he has the same name with you so he wants part of your family-house? Would you act civilized? Trying to prove him that he’s not? I think you’d rather go to a lawyer or punch him in the head…

So, I believe it’s the moment of truth for us. Do we waste more calories speaking to them and showing insecurity or we take some measures? Every Greek has to feel pity for these pathetic wannabe-Greeks for a start. Closing the borders would be the proper action for a nation that respects itself…

Makedonsko Dete

The Greek people always refer to Wiki, well here is the map from that famous reference point of the Greeks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Balkan_Wars_Boundaries.jpg

Here is the Maps of the Borders before the Bucharest Treaty, notice on map 1 it says Macedonia, Not Bulgaria Greece Serbia or Albania.

These were the borders before the Treaty, this is the people that lived & still live in that area. That is why for Greece it was "New Territory", Later it was Northern Greece.

You can self identify as you please, but as you and your people state you are Hellene, Greek! So what can I say I am as for the sake of a Region previously known as "Northern Greece" renamed to Macedonia I have no ethnicity.

You know the British Government will release all of the "Top Secret" Documents in the next few years, The 100yr Anniversary for the Treaty is coming up also, All of the Documentation will then be available to the Public, What will your people say then, how will the Greeks retract all of the Claims made. Should the Macedonian people then take Greece to Court for Compensation regarding Pain & suffering & Undue Hardship caused by these games the Greeks are playing.

Your Country can hide everything inside your borders but you cant stop the information from the Superpowers at the Time in 1913.

"Top Secret" information becomes common Knowledge after a period of time, there is no more Cold War, No threat from Communists. "No reason to hide information on its anniversary"

Maybe you & your country should get back to reality.

ilias

Makedonsko Dete:
how stupid are you? Can’t you even read a map?
Next to Macedonia you can read Thrace (to the right) and Epirus to the left. These are geographical regions (of Greece) and not countries. Countries are with BOLD.
To your information, these regions are called like that from ancient times and as for every geographical region its name does not suggest that a different nation lives there. Go back to preliminary school; I don’t have the time to teach you everything from the beginning.

Makedonsko Dete

Ilias

these are the sort of truths your people tell,

Achilles
August 29th, 2008 10:22pm

Monastir=greek word=monasterion
Monasterium in latin

stemi
August 30th, 2008 10:54am

Monastir/Bitola,

You may be right that the word Monastir isn’t Greek, however must be Turkish.

I think at least 3 of your Greek Brothers told Monastir/Bitola that Monastir is a Greek Word,You people lie so much you even believe your own lies & support each other.

You see stemi contradicts them here with that comment if you read his statement in that text.

So what else are Greeks claiming that is as above!

Monastir realy means Church in Macedonian, ask any Macedonian he will tell you.

You people have a excuse for all the comments, but the Truth is out there for anybody that wants to do a bit of reading.

The Map shows Macedonia is being divided, isn't it wonderful how giving the Greeks are to share their land with the Serbs, Bulgarians & Albanians, now that is what you call a real neighbour.

The way the Greedy Greeks fight for all that is not theirs I don't think the war would have ended if it was Greek Land, They would have never Gave it away. NEVER, YOU CAN SEE FROM THE COMMENTS MADE BY THEM ALREADY.. your people talk of war etc... just for the Name Macedonia let alone for all of the land.

You all must think that the public that read these comments are Stupid. I don't think so somehow. From the comments I have read here most of they seem to be very intelligent.

stemi

To Makedonsko Dete the map that you referred just mentions Macedonia in the same way that mentions Thrace. Just an area, without necessarily meaning that there were ethnic groups such as Mecedonians or Thacians.
However the same page that you referred there are 2 documentaries:
Distribution of Races in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor in 1923: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Distribution_of_Races_on_the_Balkans_in_1923.jpg
Racial Map of Europe in 1922: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Distribution_of_Races_on_the_Balkans_in_1922_Hammond.png

Both Maps mention: Greeks, Turks. Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs but no Macedonians!

Sorry!
I know it is very hard to somebody say you that you are not the one that you think you are. However, it is very hard also for Greeks to hear that your great history is not all yours and your area also maybe is not yours too. We can’t do anything else than to protest!

The only solution that I can think of you is to become part of Greece and so you can live in the area of Macedonia! In such a way you will have easy access to Aegean Sea, Salonika, Greek islands etc etc!!

stemi

To Makedonsko Dete:
Since we don’t have a “common line” in our arguments that means that we are individually thinking people and not driven by anybody. We can search and comment and not just believe that others tell us which is mainly the case of your people.
About Monastir somebody said that it is Greek word. It isn’t but it doesn’t say anything. We search and find the true. We are objective and believe the evidence. All in all, the etymology of Manastir is not something special. Your response in my view show your attitude in a conversation, you think that if somebody says something wrong that all his arguments are wrong.
You believe: that ancient Macedonian spoken Slavic, our province Macedonia took its name just in 1988, that we are relevant with Ethiopians and you are descendents of ancient Macedonians and Great Alexander, that Archeologists erased Cyrillic letters from ancient monuments and wrote Greeks ones (!!!), that there tens of thousands FYROMians in Greece and many more things that don’t pass the simplest scientific survey!

stemi

So SORRYYYY
The work Monastir is GREEK:
Here:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monastery

So, my Greek brother were right

Eni Macedonia

F.Y.R.O.M. is the sort form of
Fabricated Yougoslav Republic Of Macedonia.

Some say "Fabricated Yougoslav Rep. Of MonKeyDonia."

ilias

To the barbarians out there:

Lesson 1, Meaning of the word Alexander (in Greek of course)

Alexander: he who is man-proof, from alex (=repulsive) andras (=man)

Like alexisferos (=booletproof), alexilion (=sunproof) etc

Your turn now: what Alexandrovski means in "Macedonian"?

stemi

Where are they? O E O
They withdrew!
No more arguments!

Dimitra

"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery." (Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])

"Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece". Strabo, VII, Frg. 9 (Loeb, H.L. Jones)

BalkansunMKD

There is The Republic Of Ireland.
There is Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.
There is The Republic of Macedonia.
There is The Greek Occupied Territory of Macedonia.

Meaning the Greeks, the British and the European Union
and anyone else has no right to tell Macedonians
what to call them selves if the have no problem with the
Irish name.

Meaning:
There is The REPUBLIC of MACEDONIA.
There is SOUTHERN MACEDONIA.

The Greek Politicians should be happy with that.
There should be no compromise on Macedonias part.
They can change theirs. End of Story.

stemi

Each case is different!
Here there are some people that want to be named suddenly by a name that belongs to neighbors. They steal the history and culture of the neighbor country. They think that one part of this neighbor country belongs to them and they are very provocative.
Most of all they lack any argument as you can read it even from these comments here. Most of your friends (Monastir/Bitola, Makedonsko Dete) simply disappear because their arguments crushed.
There were never an ethnic group called Macedonians but we greatly retire and allow you to name your country even North Macedonia. We are really openhanded. However, you don’t want it and you say that you have the right to be called as you want which mean that you have the right to steal ids!
So, leave the silly arguments and change your name. Be clever and change it before Obama comes because after that you will lose even Macedonia! (I wish the last case, but you and Bush know it and you will accept North Macedonia in October when US will propose that name in UN).
End of story!

Lubco Georgievski

My fellow ex-citizens. It's by now clear that Greece will block your accession to NATO and the EU, thus not only impeding the economic development of the country but also keeping you, the citizens, prisoner to a very strict visa regime that the EU has implemented, not allowing you to travel within the EU. That is why I am telling you now to follow my example and apply for a bulgarian passport. The government of the motherland has already issued more than 250.000 passports to macedonians. Don't be the last to apply

P.S. Mr Korski, your talent is wasted on this conflict. You are made for a bigger scene. Try your luck with Saakashvili. His iq and your intution on foreign policy will surely turn you into the Kissinger of the Caucasus.

Macedonian Warrior

@Ilias

The Barbarians did not answered and they never can answer that

___They can't answer cause...

___Alexandrovski means in Fyromian something like Philipov...

___The Greek word Philippos means Phil=Philos=friend and ippos means horse in Greek so we have phil+ ippos = philos+ippos= friend of horse is the meaning of Philippos (Philip in English)

In Fyromian is Philip plus a little Bulgarian (ov) so Philipov means something that they did not Know the meaning, but sounds Bulgarian (familiar)... Like Einsteinofski (well known Fyromian) Neutonov, Galileofski, Washingtonofski,De Gaulleofski, Juliuov Caesarov, Churchilov, Maradonov, Pelefski and other Fyromians etc etc

Trajce

There is more and more evidence coming out from top historians that proves Slavs have always been in the Balkans and that Slavic was spread north from Macedonia and also that ancient Macedonians were Proto-Slavs who spoke a very similar language to modern Macedonian.

So Greeks, when this is all confirmed we will see who the laughing stock of the world really is!!!

Macedonian Warrior

@ Trajce
___Yes, Colombus discovered Europe in 1492 and the Americans occupied Europe... (Trajce you can add more like this) Ahahuhaaa!!!

stemi

Trajce, don't tell me that all the FYROMian policy is based on evidence that will come!!!
Show the evidence!
And stop put arguments that were contradicted above. The ancient Macedonians spoke Greeks!
However, in this post you admit that you are Slavs! Interesting! And if Macedonians were proto-Slavs, you don't have the exclusivity to be named Macedonians, other Slavs must become Macedonians too!

fg

To Trajce
To which evidence do you refer?
Even the artifacts you expose in your squares have ancient greek inscriptions..
And the fact that ancient macedonians were accepted in the Olympic Games, an event that only greeks were allowed?
Or maybe you refer to the DNA analyses you 've made and provoke the amusement of every decent scientist?
Slavs invaded South Balkans at 6 century AD, that is 1000 years after ancient macedonians, so they have nothing to do with them.
Proto - Slavs? This is the new form of your propaganda? Unfortunately, for you ancient macedonians have left many monuments of their greekness.

CAUTION