A response to “The Shame of Modern Greece”

On January 20, 2010 Andrew Apostolou published an op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Shame of Modern Greece“; the points so obliviously forced or ignored the facts (both as to the burning of the synagogue and the historical context) and maliciously facile that I felt compelled to respond.

My letter to the editor was sent on January 22 but it has so far not been published, probably because it exceeds the ten-second soundbite. I reproduce it below for those who may be interested and for the record (scripta manent, if only on the internet).

A. Caratzas

To the Editor [of the Wall Street Journal]:.....

FYROM suit issue

by a Reader

FYROM press has stated already its disinformation.  They have published that the ICJ decisions are binding.  The truth is that they are not.  The reason behind it is disinformation to the people in the FYROM, but also all over the world as Greece does not abide by the ruling.  The lawsuit in its entirety has as goal a favorable impressions for poor " Macedonia !"

 

Please take a look what BalkanInSight states and then see what the MIA states.  Both relevant statements are in bold.  Cases before the ICJ are legally binding ONLY when two parties seeking in essence binding arbitration mutually bring a dispute before it.  These cases are on continental shelves, border disputes, etc. Sometimes even that is not enforceable, point in case the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia .   

 

The case between the FYROM and Greece is a unilateral lawsuit on whether one party violated the terms of a treaty.  Essentially in this case, the " Republic of Macedonia " has filed a complaint before the ICJ because Greece "obstructed" the aforementioned country to join NATO.  The problem with this thinking is that the " Republic of Macedonia " applied to join NATO,  not The FYROM.  Even the complaint to the ICJ was filed under the name " Republic of Macedonia ," not The FYROM.  As we say in the United States , the Interim Agreement is not Burger King to have it "your" way; it is take it or leave it! 

 

How could it be that Skopje can lobby ....

The political ethno-myth of the Slav Macedonians

The political ethno-myth of the Slav Macedonians[1] can be divided in two opinions. Namely, the issues are two ethno-myths, which are produced and dictated by opposed opinions of certain political power centers in FYROM and her diasporas. The first view or the first ethno-myth is when the Slav Macedonians declare themselves as direct descendents of the Ancient Macedonians and 7.000 B.C Balkan peoples and the second one is when they connect their own genesis with the history of the amalgamation of the Slavs with the 6th cent A.D Balkan people. This kind of divergency, which appears in the Slav Macedonian ethnos, started to be illustrated at a larger extent after the independence of Macedonia that is in the period when the era of totalitarianism finished.

The first view promoted from the Gruevski regime and his ultra-nationalist political partie, nationalists parties, Institute of National History (INI, Institut za natsionalna istorija), World Macedonian Congress and the second from the Socialists political parties, Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU, Makedonska Akademija na Naukite i Umetnostite)

Both of them characterizing from theirs.....

Greek Citizenship Code reform

The newly elected socialist government of George Papandreou is planning a drastic reform to the Greek Citizenship Code, the law governing the modes of acquisition of Greek citizenship.

The planned proposals would give Greek citizenship to:

• children born in the country, as soon as one of their parents manages to stay legally in the country for five years, by declaration of their parents
  
• children who attend the first three grades of grammar school, by their own declaration on their majority (18 years)
  
• children who attend any six grades of school, by declaration of their parents
  
• children born in Greece of one parent who was also born in Greece, ipso jure

The reform would also far simplify the requirements for Greek citizenship by adults, abolishing the need to be "of good morals and personality", and to have "knowledge of Greek history and culture", and requiring only that the applicant be in Greece during any 5 of the last 10 years rather than the requirement for 10 years in effect now.

While Greece currently ranks as one of the countries with one of the strictest nationality laws, the planned reforms have no parallel in Europe and will result in its adopting the.......

Athens response to fYRoM suit

(ANA-MPA) -- Greece on Tuesday filed its obligatory counter-memorial at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation to a suit brought by the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) over the 1995 "interim agreement" between Athens and the one-time Yugoslav province.

The counter-memorial was filed by Greece's agents at the proceedings, Amb. Georgios Savvaidis, foreign ministry legal counsel Maria Telalian and a team of ministry diplomats and legal experts assigned the case.

The counter-memorial lists, in detail and with accompanying documentation, Greece's legal arguments vis-?-vis the case, according to a foreign ministry press release on Tuesday. The ministry added that Greece's written response categorically rejects all of fYRoM's arguments, presenting legal, political and historical counter-arguments and points of reference.

Athens had been given a Jan. 20 deadline to file its counter-memorial, whereas fYRoM had filed its memorial by last July.

Recent Real Historical Tragedy - The Albanian Encyclopedia

January 14, 2010

Recently, Mr. Nijazi Muhamedi (President of the editorial board of the new 'fictional' Albanian Encyclopedia) stated: "The ancient warrior king Alexander the Great, was neither Greek, nor Macedonian, but Albanian" (http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/24745/). His book 'Albanian Macedonia', was launched in Tetovo, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) this week. Mr. Muhamedi said that he was not motivated nor supported by politicians, and that his approach was strictly scientific. How can such an approach be scientific, when historical evidence is well-known and clearly states otherwise?

The 'myth' stated by Mr. Muhamedi has been systemically produced from known Albanian centres that promote historical revisionism and extreme nationalism in the Balkans. Albanians are not universally acknowledged as the descendants of the Illyrians, as their origins are disputed by historians worldwide. This is confirmed from several studies and works such as ´Illyrians´ by John Wilkes; several works from an expert in Albanian history, Miranda Vickers; 'Albanian identities: myth and history' by Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd Jürgen Fischer, and collective works from around the world such as the ancient, modern and medieval history from Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Muhamedi's arguments are quite similar to the arguments raised in the similarly 'fictional' FYROM encyclopedia. Both encyclopedias lack historical merit, and attempt to change the reality that Alexander the Great was of Greek origin. This fact is supported by ......

Macedonians from Xino Nero-FLORINA

by Makedonas82

Slav Macedonian autonomists in the Greek civil war

By John Koliopoulos and Thanos Veremis

Another aspect ofthe civil conflict, underestimated m left-wing revisionist studies, was the role of the Greek Slav Macedonian autonomists in  both the outbreak and general direction ofthat war. The KKE and EAM journals referred to them as 'persecuted Slav Macedonian ELAS fighters', while Greek Slav Macedonians called themselves 'Makedontsi'  the name used at the time in the People's Republic of Macedonia to identify those belonging to the new nation. As already seen they had served, in quick succession and even simultaneously, more than one master and cause until the time when Tito gave them a new Identity and a new cause to fight for. These Makedontsi began intruding in the sprmg of 1945 into the Greek frontier highlands in small bands to avenge past or current wrongs. Their numbers increased as more and more Slav Macedonians were prosecuted in Greece, nominally for collaboration with the Axis occupying forces but in essence for having eventually opted for the KKE or the People's Republic of Macedonia. Of some 8,000 Slav Macedonians estimated to have crossed between 1944 and 1945 Into the Republic The Makedontsi raiders perhaps did not exceed 1,000. Later, in 1947 the Yugoslav government maintained that as many as 24.000 Slav Macedomans from Greece had sought refuge in Yugoslavia in the post-Varkiza period. but this number almost certainly included Slav Macedonians who had fled before the December 1944 rebellion.

Of these initial Makedontsi raiders, whom the KKE party journals represented as being 'persecuted ELAS fighters', perhaps not more than one-third had really served with ELAS. They had generally led a precarious existence in refugee camps which the government of the People's Republic of Macedonia had set up for the purpose. Their leaders men like Paschalls Mitropoulos, Mlichael Keramitzis and Naum Peios  were doing odd jobs for the government of the Republic, and most of them were members of the KKE and at the same time of the Republic's ruling Communist Party. These refugee raiders projected Macedonianism among Greece's Slav Macedoians and heralded the imprudent 'liberation' of 'Egqska Makedonza' (Macedonia of the Aegean), I.e. Greek Macedonia. It soon became clear that avenging past or current wrongs was not their ...