Letter from All Pan-Macedonian Association to UN and EU regarding the Statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje

To: UN Country Members

       Europarliamentarians

We are vehemently opposing the erection of Alexander the Great’s statue in the Skopje Square, in the capital of the FYROM. This act does not only show the usurpation of the Greek history by that country’s Slavs in the strongest terms, but it also portrays their true irredentist ideas such as land expansion. We are not fooled by the name "Warrior on a Horse", as Skopje's ultranationalist government is now clearly breaking the Interim Accord signed by the two countries in 1995.

Under no circumstances should the international community and the international legal system allow this theft of Greece’s most famous persona, Alexander the Great to take place. We, the Macedonians are proud of our Macedonian cultural identity for...

The Macedonian Identity in 19th century

By Dr  Evangelos Kofos

Historian and Balkan expert

With the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1830, Greek national ideology developed on the basis of national continuity. It stressed classical Greek roots but also traced, from Byzantium, through Turkokratia, to Independence, the survival of the Greek nation, the Greek language, Greek customs and, of course, the Greek Orthodox religion.7 In Macedonia, however, emphasis was focused on two important, specific points. The first centred on the grandeur of ancient Macedonia and the saga of Alexander the Great. The magnetism of the great king, his achievements and the name of the Macedonians had been stimulants of Greek national ideology in Macedonia even before the Greek War of Independence;8 during the period of the Enlightenment, Greeks of Macedonia, both locally and in the diaspora, carried the Macedonian name as an additional testimony of their Greekness.9 As yet there was no challenge to the view that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks, and that the Greek inhabitants of Ottoman-held Macedonia were the only bona fide ethnic group entitled to bear the Macedonian name. These modern Makedones took pride in claiming descent from kings Philip and Alexander, just as eighteenth-century Athenian villagers traced their ’imagined’ lineage from Themistocles and Pericles.

The extraordinary revival of Hellenic names, particularly those of ancient Macedonian origin, which were given to children, to cultural clubs and even to towns (Edessa in lieu of Vodena, Monastir in lieu of Bitola) indicates...

The Odd Couple; The Stefov – Gandeto connection

by Nick Michael Hodges

In his article “The little Dictionary had no chance”, which was published in the American Chronicle on April 17, 2011, Risto Stefov says that he is wondering why the Greeks are behaving the way they do and he has obviously found somebody by the name J.S.G. Gandeto who has written a book called “The Theft of a King who Stole Alexander” and he uses that book as his, I may say, Gospel to explain the “Greek behavior” as it is presented or described in that book by a man who I think he may be as qualified to do that about the Greeks as Judas might had been asked to do the same thing about Jesus Christ.

I do not know for sure but I would like to think that there are books out there that explain or describe the Greek behavior but J.S.G. Gandeto is writing things about the Greeks and their behavior that Risto Stefov wanted to hear and thus present in his article whatever claptrap he was able to find in J.S.G. Gandeto´s book that was written to allow himself and his fellow South Slavonians Slavs to vent out their passion, hate and malice against ...

The Origins of Greece's Policy with Regards to the Current "Macedonian Issue"

by Evangelos Kofos

abstract from the essay “Documenting the Greek-Macedonian Name Controversy”

Sudosteuropa, 58, January 2010, pages 413-435

The original "Macedonian question" emerged in the last decades of the 19^th century and covered the two first decades of the 20^th. Simply stated, it was a contest between three young Balkan states, vying with each other to inherit the possessions of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. The vaguely defined "Macedo­nian" lands were both the prize and the apple of discord for Bulgarians, Greeks, and Serbs. For the European powers, the treaties of the Balkan Wars (Bucharest 1913) and the First World War (Neuilly 1919 and Lausanne 1923), terminated the armed conflicts in Southeast Europe, rendering the "Macedonian Ques­tion" a challenging subject for historians rather than politicians.^[1] Not so for the locals.

Perceptions of an endured "historical injustice", lost homelands for hundreds of thousands of uprooted natives, various types of population exchanges, all followed by suppressive measures for the induction of varied ethnic groups into new unified political environments, kept the issue alive. Out of the peace settle­ments, Greece had emerged as a status quo country, Bulgaria as an irredentist one. Former Serbia, subsequently Yugoslavia, had turned introvert seeking to put its multi-ethnic state entity in order.

Soon, new international actors emerged in the region, intent on plying the murky Macedonian terrain for their own benefit. The first....

The social and historical parameters of the Greek abducted children (Greek civil war)

By Yannis Tsalouhidis,

Macedonia and the Historical Guilt,

Thessaloniki 1994, p. 76-79

An internationally unprecedented historical crime. The issue of the Greek children who were taken to Yugoslavia and the Eastern Bloc in 1948-1949 is still obscure as an insoluble incident of the Civil War in Greece. The parties involved stopped working on the issue, which is today exploited by the blatant Slavo- "Macedonian " nationalists in Skopje and abroad.

The varied and opposed terms given to the issue are indicative of the contrary opinions that the two sides have: "kidnapped" or "refugees", "Greeks" or "Macedonians", "mass kidnapping " or "exodus ", "genocide " or "rescue ". In order to clarify the issue, it is necessary to find more evidence, since we cannot gain access to the archives of the CP. of Greece, Yugoslavia, Skopje and Bulgaria, neither can we get the protagonists to talk and clear up many obscure parts. Those who brought about the tragic kidnapping ought to talk eventually.

The Greek Government brought the issue of the these children to the U.N. for the first time in March 1948, as soon as it was made known that the Greek Communist guerillas removed great numbers of children, between the ages of...

The Myth of Modern Macedonia - inventing an identity

By Professor John Melville-Jones

Last year I learned that a statue of Alexander the Great was to be erected in Skopje. I knew enough about modern history to be sure that the choice of this subject was not simply, as in some places (for example in Edinburgh), the result of a desire to commemorate a heroic figure of the past. I realised that it was part of an attempt that has been made during the last few generations to create an identity for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia which can stretch back to distant antiquity. So what we have here is a myth in the making.

A myth is a story which can be told, retold, and modified. It survives because it gives pleasure, or satisfies a human need. It may be based on a fact, but it is not a historical account of something that happened, because even if an event took place that led to the birth of the myth, the story has been so changed for artistic or other reasons that it takes a form that is different from the form that it had when it was born. So a raid that might have been made on a city in Asia Minor by men who sailed from Greece in the second millennium B.C. turns into the story of the abduction of Helen and the Trojan War.

To take another example, among....

Facts of the Slavmacedonian(FYROM) pseudoscience

The very act of the foundation of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), together with all its subsequent actions as a political entity from 1944 to the present day, show that "Slavmacedonism" is the basic totalitarian ideological tenet of that state. With this tenet the state and the Slavic component in a population of several different ethnic groups have constructed their existence as a nation and their ‘historical’ mission. Right at the very start, "Slavmacedonism" was proclaimed as a sacred dogma, allowing of no discussion, let alone questioning based in Pseudoscience.  It is therefore useful to consider some of the earmarks of Slavmacedonian(FYROM) pseudoscience. The substitution of fantasy and nonsense for fact leaves behind many different clues and signs that almost anyone can readily detect. Below are listed some of the most common characteristics of Slavmacedonian(FYROM) pseudoscience....
 

Ongoing Ethnogenesis in 21st Century Balkans: FYROM and the ethnic Slav majority

April 04, 2011, John James Smith

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is one of the world´s newest nations established towards the end of the 20th century. In September, 1991 the mixed population of ethnic Slavs (majority ca. 64%), Albanians (largest minority ca. 27%), Vlachs, Roma, Turks, and Greeks of this former Yugoslav state voted for independence in a referendum. From the outset, however, the constitutional name (e.g. Republic of Macedonia) and ethnic identity (Makedonski) of this young fledgling state have been at the centre of an intra-regional dispute spanning nearly two decades.

On the one hand, Greece, FYROM´s southern neighbour disputes any reference to the name Macedonia without a geographic qualifier. According to Greek arguments, FYROM´s constitutional name has...

Conclusions of the Greek public hearings at the International Court of Justice

FYROM’s claim is beyond the Court’s jurisdiction as established by Article 21, paragraph 2, of the Interim Accord, whether it is interpreted, as the FYROM  originally proposed, as precluding any case which concerns - “directly or indirectly” the name issue, or whether, as the FYROM alternatively proposes, it is read as precluding any case which would resolve the difference over the name. Greece has demonstrated that the FYROM’s claim, in requiring judgment of the lawfulness of actions by NATO and by its individual members collectively, is inadmissible. Greece has also demonstrated that the FYROM’s claim, in seeking a remedy which a judgment cannot provide, is beyond the inherent competence of the Court.

Greece has demonstrated that, properly read, the actions attributed to Greece by the FYROM did not constitute an objection. This is not because Greece was supposed to support the FYROM’s membership in NATO in 2008; for reasons stated at the time and in applying the well known NATO criteria and requirements for membership it was not. It is also because the admission process to NATO is a consensus one based on consultation, with neither vote nor veto. Greece notes....

Slavmacedonian people: is a “ethnic category” ?

An interesting comment took place from Pr. Loring Danforth regarding the ethnicity of the Slavmacedonians at the history-of-macedonia.com
Here is the abstract:

“I have always stated, and I repeat here, that modern Macedonians[1] (people who have a Macedonian and not a Greek national identity) are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians; they are Slavs.[….] In my opinion, Macedonian nationalists who deny they are Slavs and claim they are direct descendants of Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians are extremists. They are making inaccurate statements that are bad scholarship and bad politics. Building a statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje and naming the Skopje airport after Alexander the Great are in my opinion irresponsible acts that are not in the best interests of the Republic of Macedonia.”

Also Pr. Danforth in his controversial book [4] claims that:

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia(FYROM)’S VIOLATIONS OF THE INTERIM ACCORD

The summary that follows focuses on the FYROM’s actual violations; an analysis of those legal obligations and the significance of the FYROM’s violations of them, as presented at 9 January 2010, in Greek Counter-Memorial Volumes, at International Court of Justice.

The parts of this summary are:

I. RECENT EXAMPLES OF THE FYROM’S FAILURE TO CONDUCT GOOD FAITH NEGOTIATIONS
II. THE FYROM’S INTERVENTION IN GREECE’S INTERNAL AFFAIRS
III. THE FYROM’S HOSTILE ACTIVITIES AND PROPAGANDA AGAINST GREECE
IV. THE FYROM’S CONTINUED USE OF THE SUN OF VERGINA
A. Hostile Propaganda against Greece by Public Authorities and State-controlled Agencies of the FYROM
B. Activities by Private Entities and Persons Inciting Hostility against Greece Financed and/or Supported by the FYROM
C. Persistent Harassment against the Premises of the Greek Liaison Office and its Personnel in Skopje
V. THE FYROM’S APPROPRIATION OF OTHER GREEK HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SYMBOLS
VI. THE FYROM’S BEHAVIOUR BEFORE INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
VII. GREECE’S REACTIONS TO THE FYROM’S BEHAVIOUR PRIOR TO THE BUCHAREST SUMMIT
VIII. CONCLUSION

Smelling bankruptcy in Greece.

In March 24-25 summit, Eurozone will be finish

Since the well-known Monetary Liberal policy shock therapy from IMF/EU, failed,
Germany is negative to the lending capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility,
as also is negative to improve the terms( cutting rates on bailout loans) of the rescue loans that have been provided not only to Greece but also and in Ireland,
it seems that Greek goverment is nearly to declare bankruptcy,
as the deadlock becomes more visible, society will awaken from the shock and tension will grow. Let’s hope that when the time comes, the government will keep away from anti-democratic practices. In fact, the memorandum appears to be the safest way to bankruptcy is FINISHED.
Thomas Friedman in 1996 commented that:  there are two superpowers in the world today in my  opinion. There's the United States and there's Moody's Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, and Moody's can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me, it's not clear sometimes who's more powerful.
After Greece, the Ireland, Portugal and Spain wiil be the next victims of the new World Leaders that call Standard & Poors, Moody's and Fitch Ratings.
These are my feellings.

Letter to US Vice President & Secretary of State by Pan-Macedonian Association USA.

February 14, 2011

To: Vice-President Joe Biden

The White House & Secretary of State Hillary Clinton State Department of USA

Dear Mr. Vice-President,

Dear Madam Secretary of State,

We are writing to you on behalf of all members of the Pan-Macedonian  Association USA, one of the largest Greek-American associations in the  United States in anticipation to the Prime Minister of the Former Yugoslav  Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) Mr. Gruevski's visit to the United States. We  have also read the letter of the nineteen Representatives urging President  Obama to encourage our allies to offer the FYROM a formal invitation to  become a member of the NATO alliance at the November 2010 NATO Summit in  Lisbon. This letter, dated October 1, 2010 stressed that "Macedonia has met  all the criteria for membership in NATO." and "Although Macedonia is not a  member of NATO, its contributions to peace, democracy, stability and  security in Southeast Europe and elsewhere make it clear that Macedonia is a  close US ally and has been acting as a de facto NATO member for some time."  [1]

The attempt to encourage the President was not successful, but keeping this  attempt in mind and in advance of Nikola Gruevski's visit to Washington  D.C. , we would like to highlight why Skopje is not ready to be a serious  NATO member yet. The FYROM has not been capable to...

Murdered Sephardic Jewish Community Remains Without a Voice

by Shelomo Alfassa
thecuttingedgenews.com

Annually, it is repeated in the contemporary media how ‘Bulgaria became the only Nazi-allied country in World War II to protect its entire Jewish population’ or that ‘Bulgaria saved all of its Jews from the death camps.’ While ultimately, members of the Bulgarian government, the Bulgarian public, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, did in fact take laudable actions which halted the deportation of 50,000 Jews from ‘Old’ Bulgaria to German death camps in Poland, there is no reason why the Bulgarian government should not discuss the 13,000 Jews they dispossessed, imprisoned, and deported from their own land of ‘United’ or ‘New’ Bulgaria.

Here are the facts. On March 1, 1941, Bulgaria...

Old photos from Monastiri (Bitola).

From Florinamak

Macedonians sent a letter to UN.

to:

The Office of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland


Edessa 24-1-2011
Macedonia, Greece

We, the Macedonians

Defending our dignity

and respecting our Hellenic ancestry and our Hellenic cultural heritage

We declare that

1.      We are indigenous residents of the geographical area between Prespes Lakes and the Nestos river, east of Pindos mountain range, and between Olympus and Orvilos mountains, and we are Hellenes (Greeks) due to common blood, common religion, common language and common ways of living as it is mentioned by all ancient writers.

·        Document 1: «The geographical boundaries of historical Macedonia»

·        Document 2: «The identity of Macedonians in the ancient texts»

2.      We have identified ourselves as Macedonians, since thousands of years, from the name of Macedon (who was the son of the greatest ancient Hellene God Zeus and Thyia, brother of Magnes and nephew of Hellen) and we call Macedonia, the land we live in. The word Macedon comes from...

Genetics Studies in the Greek Population vs Pseudoscience

January 10, 2011.
Christos Karatzios¹, Stephen G. Miller², Costas D. Triantaphyllidis*³

Abstract

Arnaiz-Villena et al. published five papers making the claim of a Sub-Saharan African origin for Greeks. Hajjej et al. essentially published copies of Arnaiz-Villena's studies using the same methods, and data sets. World leading geneticists have rejected Arnaiz-Villena's methodology (the primary defect is that they relied on too few genetic markers to reliably compare populations). Numerous studies using proper methodology and multiple genetic markers are presented, showing that Greeks cluster genetically with the rest of the Europeans, disproving Arnaiz-Villena's claims. History, as well as genetics, have been misused by Arnaiz-Villena's (and by extension Hajjej's) unprofessional statements and by their omissions and misquotations of scientific and historical citations. The abuse of scientific methods has earned Arnaiz-Villena's research a citation in a genetics textbook as an example of arbitrary interpretation and a deletion of one of his papers from the scientific literature. In order to protect science from misuse, the related papers of Arnaiz-Villena et al. and Hajjej et al. should also be retracted from the ...

The extermination of the Jewish community of Drama (1941-1943)

by Pr. I.K. Hassiotis
Lengthy extract from an article published in Chronika, 25/178 .March-April 2002, p. 6–12

There is historical evidence of the presence of a Jewish population in Eastern Macedonia in general, and in the Drama district in particular, from at least as far back as the early centuries of Turkish rule. This presence becomes more marked in the 19th century, a period when Drama and its neighbouring cities of Serres and Kavala were developing into notable production and trade centres within Northern Greece. Indeed, it is highly significant that some of the Jews of Drama, breaking to a certain degree with the tradition that identified them always and exclusively with urban craft and commercial trades, were associated with economic sectors directly dependent on rural activities – particularly so on tobacco cultivation. This change was marked in the early years of the 20th century by an increasingly broad rapprochement between Christians, Muslims and Jews in the occupational sector, after centuries of socio-religious demarcation.

This rapprochement continued during the difficult period of the first Bulgarian occupation (1912–1913). It is worth noting that this convergence, which constituted a kind of defence against the persecution of the new rulers, was encouraged by the religious leaders of all three communities, with...

THE LOBOTOMY OF LIBERTY IN FYROM: THE CASE OF DESTRUCTION OF ANTI-GRUEVISTIC A1 TV THROUGH MASS ARREST OF ITS JOURNALISTS

by Vasko Gligorijević

Nikola Gruevski, the Prime Minister of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) demonstrated, encouraged by absence of proper, tough approach from legitimate factors that represent values of European civilization, by far the most extreme form of his crackdown of opposition, exacerbating his stamina and reputation of FYROM's autocratic tyrant.

This time, this manifestation of Gruevski's totalitarianism, exercised through the FYROMian political party VMRO-DPMNE, in particular by the Special Security Agencies led by his first cousin Sašo Mijalkov, came through blitz storming of A1 Television House in Skoplje by dozens of members of “Alfa”'s (24/7 patrolling/monitoring secret, plain-clothed police strike-force constituted on basis of VMRO-DPMNE party affiliation). The event of the transition ofrom 23th to 24th of December 2010, inwhich disproportional force was used in relation to what police was technically able toknow regarding the assessment of situation, together with subsequent video presentation* by pro-VMRO channels (KANAL 5 TV and more pronouncedly, SITEL TV), constitute the gravest act of.....

Merry Christmas from Macedonia.!!!!