Correspondence between Craig Whitlock and Christos Karatzios as regards the Washington Post article.

June 31, 2009 Craig Whitlock wrote:

Dear Dr. Karatzios,Thanks for the note and for taking the time to write, though I'm sorry you didn't like the article.I don't think it would be productive or satisfying for either of us to engage in a running debate regarding each of the lengthy points you outlined in your email. I certainly respect your opinions, however, and feel you deserve the respect of a thoughtful reply.First, just because I interviewed and quoted individuals in Skopje and elsewhere does not mean that The Washington Post endorses or supports their views. We are a newspaper; we interview people of all stripes and let our readers make up their own minds whether to agree with their views or not. I'm sure many people -- including very many Greeks -- find the views of Todor Petrov and Pasko Kuzman to be irritating, or worse. That's OK. I have enough confidence in our readers to decide whether to take someone like Petrov seriously, given his assertions of "genocide" and so forth. But it's not the job of a journalist to suppress or ignore or censor people when it comes to a newsworthy topic.A few factual points to counter the ones you raised:1) I'm sure you know that the Republic of Macedonia changed its constitution and flag in 1995 (as reported in the article). The constitution in particular makes clear that the Republic of Macedonia harbors no territorial ambitions and considers current national borders to be binding. I'm sure you know this, but it seems disingenuous of you not to mention it when you imply the opposite is still the case today.2) You're certainly entitled to your views regarding US-Cuban relations, but I really don't see what that has to do with my article. Furthermore, The Washington Post is an independent newspaper and not responsible or connected to US foreign policy, despite your efforts to link the two.3) I think it is completely accurate to report, as we did, that Greece vetoed the Republic of Macedonia's membership application to NATO. I think you know as well as I do that if Greece had not objected, the Republic of Macedonia would be a member of NATO today. Personally, I have no stake or opinion in the matter. But I think you're distorting what happened at the Bucharest summit last year.

Sincerely,
Craig Whitlock
Berlin bureau chief
The Washington Post

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Athens and Skopje - Reply to Mr. Craig Whitlock from Christos Karatzios

Dear Mr. Whitlock,
Friday, July 31, 2009

I thank you for taking the time to respond to my e-mail. It was courteous of you to do so in view of your busy schedule, and since many readers on this issue have probably contacted you.
However, and unfortunately I continue to disagree with your views. You state that you would prefer not to argue each of the points I outline in my letter to you. In my view, these .. points that you dismiss are testament to the bias in your article. How can you state that the article has no bias when you interviewed no less than 6 individuals from Skopje and its Diaspora, and quote them without verifying the facts, all the while presenting their opinions as if they are the Gospel truth? In the meantime, you only quote the Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece and in a very conscious way, you state that Greece's views stem only from the government. You state that it is not the job of the journalist to censor anyone. I agree with you however, it is the job of the journalist to report truthfully. Otherwise you reduce your newspaper to the level of a supermarket tabloid. Would you have devoted word after word to a Holocaust denier or the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan? Would you have written a story about how the CIA flew airplanes into the World Trade Center in 2001? I can provide you with examples of overt racism uttered by elite members of organizations like the World Macedonian Congress (WMC), and United Macedonian Diaspora [1, 2, 3]. Yet you give Todor Petrov a platform.Mr. Whitlock, despite the freedom of expression, and the right of journalistic freedom, hate and fringe ideas do need to be censored or at least presented with counterarguments. Statements like: "The Athens government says there is no question that he [Alexander the Great] was Greek" reflect your view as well. You seem to collude with pseudohistorian Pasko Kuzman. How then are you not putting The Washington Post's reputation on the line?

I will now focus on your counterpoints to me. In your first counterpoint, you claim that I am disingenuous when I discuss the first constitution written in Skopje. I know very well that Skopje changed its constitution and flag in 1995. You state that Skopje has stopped all irredentist activity (including land claims) and I am not truthful when I state (with supporting references and pictures) that Skopje still harbours such feelings. Did you not see the picture of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski laying a wreath on [Bulgarian] hero Goče Delčev's grave under a poster of a "United Macedonia"? Despite changing their flag, the Diaspora and even members of Skopje's government still use the old irredentist flag in their offices and in public [4, 5, 6, 7]. There are even official calls to revert back to the old flag. Did you not see the video of Antonio Milososki that I linked in my original letter? If he denies that a Macedonia existed in Greece before 1988, how then is his government to be trusted? If Skopje would have adhered to the Interim Accord, its government would not promote the idea of an unredeemed "Aegean Macedonia" in the school curriculum [8], and its government would not encourage the plight of land claims in Greece by "Aegean Macedonians"[9, 10, 11]. Last summer, in a pre-election strategy, instead of focusing on his country's economic and social problems, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski started chasing waterfalls by writing to the Greek Prime Minister, to the United Nations, and to the European Union, requesting human rights for the "Macedonian" minority in Greece. Did he not violate the Interim Accord by doing this? Why has the country, whose official name is the cumbersome but accepted FYROM until a mutually acceptable name is agreed upon, gone around and marketed itself as "Republika Makedonija"? Why have they brought suit against Greece at the International Court of Justice in The Hague claiming that Athens violated the Interim Accord when she objected in Bucharest in 2008? They will likely lose the suit (which will probably be heard in 3 to 5 years) but again this was a pre-election coup by the VMRO for internal consumption only.

Mr. Whitlock, the constitution and (arguably) the flag may have changed but the ATTITUDE in Skopje has not changed. We know very well that a constitution and flag can easily be reverted back to the original by parliamentary decree if there is enough will and power by the government, the Assembly, and the people (Articles 68, 74, and 129 of the country's new constitution discuss how "changes in the [Republic's] borders" can be achieved): The governing VMRO overwhelmingly holds the Presidency, the Prime Minister's office, and controls the parliament. There are laws that make it a crime to research ethnicity and to question ultra-Macedonism (Article 179 of the country's Criminal and Penal Code). People in that country have been jailed and sent to psychiatric institutions for questioning these laws [12, 13]. For goodness sake Mr. Whitlock, God appeared on TV and spoke to the nation, edging them on in their struggle against Greece and reaffirming their view that they are the progenitors of the white race [14]!

As for the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest: I am not distorting any facts. Greece did not use any veto. As I have mentioned before, Skopje was not invited to join NATO (to the personal dismay of then-President George W. Bush) because there were many countries concerned with the lack of democratic and good-neighbourly progress by Skopje. As NATO Secretary General Jan de Hoop officially stated, "There has never been a veto" [15, 16 (see par. 20), 17]. Despite your claims to not really have an opinion on the matter, you state that if Greece had not objected, "Macedonia" would be in NATO right now. Is this the crux of the problem as you see it? Is this the bone you have to pick with Greece? Is FYROM ready to be a NATO or EU country before countries like Croatia? If you support NATO expansion at any cost, then yes you and your newspaper are reflecting ex-President George W. Bush's US Foreign Policy. By the way, Skopje's bid was sponsored by the United States as "Republic of Macedonia", and not FYROM. Greece has no obligation to accept the country as anything but FYROM as per the Interim Accord of 1995. As a result, I did not distort any facts on the matter.

Finally, I fail to see how you fail to see the analogy I give with US-Cuban relations. It is a very clear analogy of a larger country rightfully reacting to the irredentism of a smaller one and yet you criticize Greece. This is an obvious double standard.

Mr. Whitlock, we are both educated people and you can't deny the influence the media has on public opinion and on a country's internal and foreign policy. US senators and congressmen/women frequently quote newspapers when making their arguments in the Senate and the House of Representatives. As a recent example, the media was very much responsible for propagating the idea that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" and had direct links to Al Qaeda. However, in the view of many people around the world, the US went to war against a ruthless dictator but under false pretense as was evident later. I hope you can see the analogy of how the media influences public and governmental opinion and the responsibility you have as a journalist to present balanced news.

I would be more than happy to continue a discourse with you. In closing, I invite you to write a balanced article on the Athens-Skopje debate. I invite you to give some of the worldwide classicists who deride pseudohistory [18] a voice, I invite you to interview members of the PanMacedonian Association [19] and bilingual Greeks, and I invite you to visit Vergina, Pella, Philippoi, and Dion and see the real Macedonia.

Sincerely,
Christos Karatzios MD

References:
1) http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/2399/45/
2) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/10/26/the-arnaiz-villena-theory-another-skopjean-myth-exposed-and-explained/
3) http://maktruth.blogspot.com/2008/04/one-of-most-significant-ethnic.html
4) http://akritas-history-of-makedonia.blogspot.com/2008/12/blog-post_07.html
5) http://akritas-history-of-makedonia.blogspot.com/2009/01/director-of-agency-of-youth-sports-16.html
6) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2007/08/faqs-what-is-rightful-name-of.html
7) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2009/07/18/skopianoi-kai-paraviaseis-endiamesi-sumfonia-tou-1995/
8) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/07/fyrom-denies-ethnic-sovereignty-of.html
9) http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/4427/45/
10) http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11378&subid=2&tag=8777&pubid=1862745
11) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-provocation-from-fyrom.html
12) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2009/02/fyrom-fascism-in-action.html
13) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2009/07/vasko-vasilije-gligorijevic-has-been.html
14) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/racial-discrimination-from-fyrom-tv-as.html
15) http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/Articles/en-US/140509_H1918.htm
16) http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2008/p08-049e.html
17) http://www.summitbucharest.ro/en/doc_185.html
18) http://macedonia-evidence.org/about.html
19) http://www.panmacedonian.info/

New answer to Washington Post article and Mr. Whitlock erroneous points

Dear Mr. Whitlock,
Thursday, July 30, 2009

I am sorry to see that your article “Another Rift Between Greece, Macedonia” published online on The Washington Post’s website on July 28, 2009 is completely off mark, biased, and reflects a generally unprofessional attitude on your part. This is not what international reporting is supposed to be like, in my opinion. The article’s tone smacks of political lobbying and not of investigative journalism. You have taken a very sensitive political, and historical topic and have trivialized it in such a way that paints Greece as a spoiled bully who needs to be “corrected” by the United States and the rest of the West. You conjure up romantic images of “Indiana Jones” and “Santa Claus” which are endearing to the average American reader (who by the way knows very little about European history and politics) and as a result you portray Skopje as the underdog who should be winning the hearts and minds of the West because it is being threatened by Greece. I respectfully would like to inform you that this is propaganda and not unbiased journalism.

I would like to analyze many of your erroneous points and back up my arguments with references and facts:

1) Your point:

“The Greek government refuses to recognize its neighbor's constitutional name, the Republic of Macedonia, which it sees as a thinly veiled bid to lay claim to three of its northern districts, a region known as Greek Macedonia. After Macedonia declared independence in 1991, Greece prevented it from joining the United Nations and imposed an economic blockade that nearly strangled the fledgling country.”

This is correct however you seem not to know why Greece did this. Skopje’s original constitution mentioned its right to intervene on behalf of its people to protect “Macedonians” living in the general area of Macedonia. In the constitution, this land-locked country mentioned it has the right to a navy. This idea has continued to this day: http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/5747/45/.
May I also remind you that the new country’s first state flag showcased the star of Vergina, an ancient Greek emblem and the Ancient Macedonian royal family emblem?
Considering the recent historical conflict Greece had with Yugoslavia and Josip Tito’s plan to annex Greek Macedonia after World War 2, this was seen as continued irredentism by Skopje. There have been multiple examples of official maps published in this new country (especially after 1991) showing a fictitious “United Macedonia”. The US State Department recognized the threat to Greece by Skopje and Yugoslavia back in 1944 and warned all of its missions abroad to be aware of such irredentism against its Greek ally in the war against fascism and then communism [1]. Why has this piece of information evaded you?

The United States tried to invade Cuba (another poor and defenseless country), and has imposed a decades long crippling economic blockade on it when it was found out that Havana courted the USSR militarily and politically. If it is OK for the United States to never forget Cuba’s irredentism, why do you not think it is OK for Greece to react to Skopje’s irredentism? Why did many Americans rightfully react to a 2008 advertising campaign by Absolut Vodka showing California as part of Mexico? I want to make this point clear: This ADVERTISING campaign angered Americans. Greece is dealing with Skopje’s GOVERNMENTAL campaigns [2, 3].

2) Your point:

“Greece also vetoed Macedonia's bid to join NATO last year and is blocking its admission to the European Union until it changes its name to the Republic of Skopje, the Slavic Republic of Macedonia or something similar.”

Contrary to popular belief, Greece never had to use its veto against Skopje in Bucharest in 2008. In a closed room meeting of NATO members the night before the official announcement, the Greek government was able to convince member states like France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxemburg, Iceland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Netherlands that Skopje had not met the criteria for NATO membership because it had not fulfilled its obligations under the Interim Accord of 1995. As a result of this non-unanimity, a non-invitation was given to Skopje unless it resolves its dispute with Greece.
More importantly, Greece has never tabled the suggestions: “the Slavic Republic of Macedonia”, or the “Republic of Skopje”. Please research your facts before taking anything you are told at face value. Greece did suggest “Slavomacedonia” as a name but this was rejected by Skopje based on the ground that its large Albanian minority would reject it. Understandably so but if this new country is trying to find a name and identity for its people, should it not be a neutral name that encompasses all of its inhabitants without irredentism against its neighbours? In my opinion, The Central Balkan Republic is the most neutral name but I am not part of the negotiation process.

3) Your point:

“Macedonian officials said they cannot understand why Greece sees their country's name as a threat or thinks they have a secret plan to annex northern Greece.”

I don’t know where to start with references here. However, I will offer some:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/Articles/en-US/280308_alp_1640.htm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120701620662579369.html
http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/08/stop-gruevski-before-its-too-late.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1583685/Macedonia-row-overshadows-NATO-summit.html
http://international.ibox.bg/news/id_2028157717
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7324510.stm
http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/07/fyrom-denies-ethnic-sovereignty-of.html
http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/macedonia-news/opinion/americans-dont-like-it-when-shoe-is-on-other-foot/
http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11378&subid=2&tag=8777&pubid=1862745
http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-provocation-from-fyrom.html
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/4427/45/
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/6689/45/
The above posts show how deeply engrained into Skopje’s society is the hatred against Greece. Moreover, they are just a few examples over the last 5 years. There are numerous others spanning decades.

4) Your point:

"It's laughable," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, noting that the Macedonian military consists of 8,000 troops and a fleet of eight helicopters. "In America, you have a good phrase to describe a confusing situation. You say, 'It's all Greek to me.' Sometimes we say it's all Greek to us as well." “

Funny indeed…the issue has nothing to do with the current state of affairs in the Balkans. One needs to look at the coming horizon and be able to avoid any potential conflicts: Skopje has courted Ankara openly both for military and political cooperation [4].
It should not be news to anyone that despite being NATO allies, Greece and Turkey have historical antagonism in the region, and are really not the best of allies to put this lightly. Turkey has served as a destabilizing power for the South East Mediterranean for many years: it invaded Cyprus in 1974, its warplanes violate Greek sovereign airspace daily, and it is a major source of transit for illegal immigrants from the East into Europe. Currently, the European Union has asked Turkey to cooperate by not allowing illegal immigration to occur at such alarming rates into Greece. When Skopje courts Ankara, Greece will react. Similarly, Washington reacted with even less restraint when Havana courted Moscow.
For your information, Antonio Milososki (Skopje’s Foreign Minister) has officially propagated the propagandistic and false idea that there existed no Macedonia in Greece before 1988 [5, 6].
If such an official man of Skopje can publicly state such claims without shame, how can anything he says be taken seriously and believed? As an investigative journalist, these questions should be coming from you and not from your readers.

5) Your point:

“The Athens government says there is no question that he [Alexander the Great] was Greek.”

This is an unfortunate statement and reflects your lack of knowledge on the subject. You could not be further from the truth. Yes, the Greek government states this but it is because of history (and Alexander himself). It is not a government inspired propaganda campaign; the whole nation and the whole world know who the ancient Macedonians were. Was Abraham Lincoln American because the White House says so? If you feel that this question is absurd, then you should automatically realize how absurd your statement about Alexander is. I would like to respectfully refer you to the letter of protest written to US President Barack Obama by over 300 classic scholars of worldwide repute against Skopje’s historical revisionism. You may find the link here:
http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html

6) Your point:

“Under a truce brokered in 1995 by former U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, Macedonia was allowed to join the United Nations on the Greek condition that it refer to itself in multinational institutions as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. It was also required to change its flag and rewrite its constitution to include a promise never to violate Greek territory or interfere in Greece's internal affairs.”

You have not asked the question: “Why did the United Nations require of FYROM to do this?” A famous cliché states that where there is smoke there usually is fire. Think about it: Why indeed? If Greece was simply being a silly bully, why would this still be true of the United Nations, NATO, and European Union conditions? The 1995 Accord also required of Skopje to stop its irredentist activities against Athens. It is obvious that this has not happened.

7) Your point:

“Leaders in Macedonia, a poor, landlocked country about the size of New Hampshire, warned they may have trouble holding the nation together if Greece does not relent soon. Internal unrest, they said, could easily spread to other fragile nations in the Balkans, such as neighboring Kosovo, where 1,500 U.S. troops serve as part of a peacekeeping force.
"The problem is threatening the fabric of our society," Gjorge Ivanov, the president of Macedonia, said in an interview. "The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region." “

The issue of the stability in the Balkans has nothing to do with Athens and everything to do with Skopje’s irredentism. In a famous diatribe, Skopje contributes to its own instability: http://panmacedonian.info/skopje_contributes.htm
Skopje has many internal problems: upwards of 35% unemployment, and a large Albanian minority (25 – 30% of the population) that is growing very impatient with Skopje’s irredentism and the megalomania of the ruling nationalist VMRO party. In 2001, the country nearly broke apart after Albanians revolted against governmental and societal oppression. This is the crux of the instability in the region and not Greece’s objection to the name issue. However, the ultranationalist government in Skopje is trying to scapegoat Greece for its internal problems. This coupled with irredentist claims of a “United Macedonia” by official and unofficial sources, claims of racial purity and continuity, an official ban on researching its citizens’ roots in the Penal Code articles 178 and 179, and its disregard of its neighbours have contributed to instability in that country and reminds one of another regime that flourished in Europe around 1938-1945 [7, 8, 9, 10]. I suppose if God Himself spoke to the people of FYROM on national TV, then all is correct with the government’s course [10].

8) Your point:

“Historically, territory inhabited by ethnic Macedonians has belonged to other nations: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Those countries have been reluctant to recognize ethnic Macedonians as a separate people, to recognize their Slavic language as a distinct tongue or even to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church.”

From what reliable sources have you seen or heard that Greece rejects their national consciousness as a separate people, who have a separate language? Despite the world’s awareness of Skopje’s artificial nation building campaign [11], Greece does not reject the country’s right to self determination. Greece rejects the term “Macedonian” for their identity and language simply because there are 3 million Macedonians in Greece who have been using this regional qualifier as self-identification for over 3000 years. They are Greek and in the regional sense they are Macedonians. Similarly, Texans are Americans, and Bavarians are Germans aren’t they?
The self-proclaimed “Macedonian Orthodox Church” is not recognized by any Christian denomination (Orthodox and Catholic) anywhere in the world. An oxymoronic cold war creation, this schismatic Christian sect broke off its previous affiliation, as part of a conscious nation building campaign in 1967 and has since asked for recognition by its fellow Christians. It supports irredentist claims and thus has been rejected by other Christians since [10, 12]. Close attention should be paid to its support of the false theory that the Rosetta Stone shows the “Ancient Macedonian” language [12].

9) Your point:

“In an interview, he accused Greece of "practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Macedonian nation" for the past 100 years. "They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said. “

This is probably the most unfortunate paragraph in your article. You can now rest assured that outside ultranationalist websites and circles, the Washington Post has brought this ugly lie to the eyes if many readers by quoting an ultranationalist propagandist. History has recorded that Greece fought with Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War when Bulgaria tried to annex “Greater Macedonia” to “Greater Bulgaria”. The Carnegie Commission Report of 1914 attests to this [13 14]. History has also recorded that Greece fought against Yugoslavia when Belgrade (through Skopje) tried to annex “Greater Macedonia” to the Yugoslav nation after World War 2. Where may I ask is it recorded that Greece committed genocide on a “Macedonian nation”? Based on historical fact the question then as to who is denying borders in the area does not require a journalistic degree to answer.

10) Your point:

“It is not just Macedonia's national identity that is at stake. The Greek government does not recognize ethnic minorities within its own borders, including Macedonian-speaking residents of northern Greece.”

Mr. Whitlock, Greece has not denied that a small bilingual community exists in Greek Macedonia. They speak Greek and a local Bulgarian-based dialect (a throw back from the time Greek Macedonia was under Ottoman Turkish rule) with many Greek, and Turkish words, which is completely removed from the language codified in Skopje under communist influence in 1944 [11]. The vast majority of this Greek community though rejects any claim that they are not Greek. Self-determination is defined as the free choice of a person's own acts and desires without external compulsion. This is the real reason why Greeks object to what Macedonism is attempting to accomplish in Greek Macedonia. Macedonism is acting as a pounding external agitator driven by a State-sponsored ethnocentric nationalist creed with 21st century irredentist visions. The Greek people see a spade and call the spade. Let me make this clear: There is no pervasive support coming from Slavophone bilingual Greeks for self-determination as "Macedonians" with the connotation of the word that Skopje wants to give. Nor is there an overt expression of yearning by the local inhabitants to learn the Slavonic language of FYROM (in its standard form) – contrary to what Skopje and its Diaspora activists would like the international community to believe. "Macedonian" is not a language that we want to call our dialects, which we have been calling "Bulgarian (Voulgarika)" In you article, you quote Mr. Pavlos Voskopoulos, the representative of the self proclaimed “Macedonian Political Party of Greece” or Vinozhito (Ouranio Tokso/Rainbow Party). It is worth mentioning here that Vinozhito received a total of 4524 votes in all of Greece during last month's European Parliamentary elections. Only 2594 votes came from Greek Macedonia itself. That Vinozhito is free to hold associations, and promote their agenda throughout Greece is evident. However, their website is run by ultranationalist Macedonist circles from overseas (the people behind Maknews.com) who repeatedly engage in malicious expressions of rampant hatred and racist slurs while demonstrating virulent hostility against the modern Greek state. There are more people who believe in UFOs in Greece. The Hunters’ Party received more votes. However, you make no mention of this anywhere. 11) Your point:
“Pasko Kuzman, the government's director of cultural heritage, is a driving force behind Macedonia's surge of interest in the past. With flowing white hair, three heavy-duty watches strapped to his thick wrists and a National Geographic fanny pack, he has been described as a cross between Indiana Jones and Santa Claus.
In an interview in his office, sitting next to a wall-size copy of a 13th-century icon of Alexander, Kuzman insisted that Greece had stolen the conqueror's legacy from Macedonia, not the other way around.
"The Greeks are sorry that they are called Greece and not Macedonia," he said. "What else can I tell you?" “
This is the same Pasko Kuzman who on FYROM’s national television admitted that if they can’t prove that they are the descendants of the ancient Macedonians, they would lose the political game with Greece [15].
Mr. Whitlock, there are so many biased and erroneous statements in your article that one fails to comprehend how a journalist who writes for an esteemed newspaper could write something like this. I am very sorry to inform you that either you have been duped by Skopje’s propaganda, or you have deliberately written a propaganda piece. A little more professionalism on your part would have avoided this unfortunate circumstance. History and human morality demand this of journalists. You are writing for The Washington Post.

Sincerely,
Christos Karatzios MD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
McGill University Health Centre

References:
1) http://www.panmacedonian.info/images/Stettinius_Circular_Airgram.jpg

2) http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/06/world/fg-absolut6
3) http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2008/04/08/1207420359230.html
4) http://www.dunyagazetesi.com.tr/haber.asp?id=54881&cDate=
5) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/11/29/get-to-know-the-other-side-quick-look-at-the-foreign-minister-of-fyrom/
6) http://www.newsweek.com/id/129146
7) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/10/26/the-arnaiz-villena-theory-another-skopjean-myth-exposed-and-explained/
8) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/10/26/the-arnaiz-villena-theory-another-skopjean-myth-exposed-and-explained-part-ii/
9) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/2008/10/26/the-arnaiz-villena-controvery-explained-for-non-geneticists/
10) http://modern-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/racial-discrimination-from-fyrom-tv-as.html
11) http://www.panmacedonian.info/NY_times_1965.htm
12) http://www.mpc.org.mk/English/default.asp
13) http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/europe/integrated_history/category.asp?id=48
14) http://historyofmacedonia.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/stefov-vs-the-carnegie-commission/
15) http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/tag/pasko-kuzman/

Is there a Rift between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of "Macedonia" on Alexander? (answer to Washington Post)

by Miltiades Elias Bolaris
americanchronicle.com


On a Washington Post article, ("Another Rift Between Greece, Macedonia, Both Lay Claim to Alexander the Great", July 28, 2009) Craig Whitlock is intend on sending us scrambling back to our History books. Should we be talking about Alexandros o Megas /ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ o ΜΕΓΑΣ or Aleksandar Veliki / Александар Велики? Was he Greek or was he Slavic? I will let the reader do their own reading and research. Any encyclopaedia, in any language, anywhere in the world, except for the ones published in the former Yugoslav republic will be fine.

Mr. Whitlock is correctly pointing out that Alexander's "cult of personality is just starting to grip this tiny Balkan country", speaking of FYROM, informing us that among other childish actions that the government in Skopje is doing to annoy the Greeks is the erection of "a 72-foot-tall marble colossus of Alexander astride his favorite warhorse, Bucephalus, which will dominate the skyline of the capital, Skopje". Our information is that it is actually a bronze statue, not marble, but the rest is correct: Greeks are understandably annoyed by the ethno-religious cult that has hijacked the political debate of their neighbor. Why did I say "childish"? Because only little children do things to annoy others...not governments, not nations. Someone who getting "annoyed" will become hardened and less willing to give in. This is something that FYROM's "diplomats in training" have yet to grasp. When they try to "annoy" the Greek government, what they essentially end up achieving is is aggravate the Greek electorate, especially the Greek Macedonian (of Historic Macedonia, in Nothern Greece, not FYROM) into demanding a tougher stance from Athens against the "Skopianoi". The article is correctly pointing out that "this glorification of Alexander and other ancient heroes" is derided by critics in Skopje as "antiquization." I have also heard the term Bukefalism (Bucephalism), a more sarcastic term by rightfully embarrassed intellectuals in FYROM.

The issue, as presented in Mr. Whitlock's article, is stated as follows: Does a country have the right to be call itself what it wants? A second issue, but more important is this issue's "potential to destabilize a region still trying to recover from the Balkan wars of the 1990s".

Let us start with the name issue itself. If the reader goes to any encyclopaedia, he or she will quickly find out who Alexander was, who the Macedonians were and what language the ancient Macedonians spoke. For the reader who would want to read further on this, then another article would be more appropriate: "The alleged differences between the Macedonians and the other ancient Greeks", (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/101463).

The name Macedonia itself is Greek, meaning the "high lands", and Makednoi/Μακεδνοί or Makedones/Μακεδόνες are the highlanders. "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', is what we read in the "Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd ed. (1996), pp.904,905.

There are about a half a million marble inscriptions that have been found in Macedonia, all written in Greek, with the occasional Latin one, after the Roman conquest, but then still in the small minority. None has been found in any other language.

Finally, we have the strongest indication on the ethnicity of the Ancient Macedonians, in their Greek language: This is precisely the language that Alexander and his victorious Macedonians spread throughout the Asian lands they took over, including the dominion of Egypt in Africa. The Slavs whose descendants now claim exclusivity over the use of the name Macedonia, appeared in the Balkan peninsula more than a thousand years AFTER Alexander. Hence the irritation of the Greeks when others try to claim their ancient history. When someone claims your history, what they also claim is your land. If someone claims the title to your house, he is not simply claiming a piece of paper to hang on a wall as a souvenir: he is actually claiming your house, land, walls and roof.

Craig Whitlock seems to be siding with "Macedonian officials" who "said they cannot understand why Greece sees their country's name as a threat or thinks they have a secret plan to annex northern Greece. "It's laughable," said Foreign Minister Antonio Milososki, noting that the Macedonian military consists of 8,000 troops and a fleet of eight helicopters.

I would beg to differ with Mr. Whitlock's seeming naivete, for I cannot imagine that he has not read the 20th century history of the land that is Macedonia, before he wrote what he wrote. I am very certain that he knows that two Balkan wars have been fought over the control of Macedonia, the land. Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and later Yugoslavia, along with numerous other players, including Austrians, Germans, Italians and Albanians fought in two world wars in their attempt to become masters of Macedonia. Yugoslavia and Greece almost came to a clash right after WWII, when Tito made a thinly veiled attempt to carve parts of Macedonia from Greece and incorporate them into Yugoslavia, but actively joining one side in the Greek civil war of the 1940's. His reasons were far from ideological, it was purely a land grab. You may read some of the background in another, related article: "A brief overview of the Macedonian name issue" (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/109817).

As for Anton Milososki, FYROM's foreign minister, he may try to appear laughing at the suggestion of the threat his country is posing to Greece, but his boss's trips to Ankara and the rousing welcome the Turkish Political-Military establishment prepared for Nikola Gruevski there, did not go unnoticed in Athens. As for FYROM's eight helicopters, lined up against Greece's formidable air force, we know that Greece is not arming itself against FYROM, it is an attack from Turkey that it is always prepared to confront. In such a confrontation, FYROM can easily become the straw that will break the camel's back. Alternatively, we need to remember that only a few years ago, the Kosovar Albanians "defeated" the all powerful Serbian army, without firing a winning shot: others, Americans and Western Europeans, even Turks did the fighting for them. In history, you cannot pretend to play naive. You can always expect the worse case scenario. When Bulgaria entered the second Balkan war, all it had against it was the Greek and the Serbian armies, and the Bulgarian army was larger than the other two combined. It expected a quick victory in two weeks' time, long enough for the Great powers to intervene. Things did not go as planned, the Greeks and Serbs started winning, and then hell broke loose: Turks and Romanians joined the war against Bulgaria, and Bulgaria from formidable attacker ended up the defender, fighting for its existence. Moral of the story: If someone has land claims on your home, you do not simply shrug your shoulders and walk away. You confront the issue, until there is a resolution.

The former Yugoslav republic, under the 1995 agreement agreed to change its flag (which hitherto had used a Greek Macedonian Symbol). It also agreed "to rewrite its constitution to include a promise never to violate Greek territory or interfere in Greece's internal affairs". This basically means that the original constitution had made explicit references to a United Makedonija/Обединета Македонија/Obedineta Makedonija, the old Bulgarian and later Yugoslav slogan which was a war cry for land grab of historic Macedonia, from Northern Greece. Obviously they had to change it. They felt humiliated in the process, that is probably true. On the other hand, any little boy that senselessly tries to bully a stronger classmate in school and ends up getting slapped around, feels rightfully humiliated. The 30 year old amateur diplomats who have been running the little country's foreign policy for the last eighteen years are good at creating peaks of crises with bravado and hullabaloo, only to smash their heads on the wall, bringing unnecessary disappointment to their own people. This is precisely what they did in last year's NATO conference in Romania, when, with G.W.Bush's full support they tried to slip into NATO, bypassing the name issue, with champagne bottles ready to pop. When disaster struck, they did not know what to do and they were crying in front of the TV cameras, talking of a national catastrophe.

Mr. Whitlock's tells his readers that "Leaders in Macedonia, a poor, landlocked country about the size of New Hampshire, warned they may have trouble holding the nation together if Greece does not relent soon. Internal unrest, they said, could easily spread to other fragile nations in the Balkans...". let us take this argument and consider its opposite side: Greeks have been warning FYROM's politicians that may have trouble holding their nation together if the governing clique in Skopje does not relent soon and stop playing with Balkan fire.

Why is this line of arguments more correct? For several reasons. First of all, it was not Greece that started this whole mess, it was the Ultra-nationalist hotheads in Skopje. they are the ones who started and they are the ones who can instantly stop it. They adopted for themselves the name Macedonian, as if this name was existing in vacuum as a "freeware". Not so, since a province of Macedonia exists since 1913 in Greece.

While the name Macedonia was Greek in antiquity, by the early 20th century a multiple of people were considered geographically "Macedonians", for being inhabitants of Macedonia, in the same way people who lived in Bosnia Herzegovina were all Bosnians Herzegovinans but others were catholic, others Orthodox yet others Muslim. Macedonia was even more complex: people of a multiple linguistic, ethnic and religious affiliations made up its multiethnic mix. Everyone was a Macedonian, BUT NONE was an ethnic "Macedonian". This had to wait until 1943, when the Communist Party of Yugoslavia established a Communist Party of "Makedonija" and became determined to turn its Serbian, Bulgarian and other (Slavic and not only) inhabitants into full-bloodied "Makedonci".

Since the 2.6 million Greeks of Macedonia have a cultural Macedonian identity, they cannot forgo their own identity just because half as many Slavs north of their land decided to usurp the name Macedonian and try to make it an "ethnic" name. This needs to be understood. I will repeat it. When there is a shared name, a shared geographic identity, you cannot have one of them claim that THEY are the ones, the REAL ones, the TRUE ones and that the others now have to change into something else. Nothing aggravated a Macedonian Greek more than someone telling him "...so are you a Greek or a Macedonian?".

To a Greek this sounds like..."are you an American or a Californian?". If Baja California at some point in its future decides to become an independent state, cutting itself off from Mexico and calls itself California, will this give the Bajan Californians the right to be called the "ethnic" Californians subsequently refusing persons from San Francisco or Los Angeles their right to have a "Californian" identity?

Now, let's see again how it sounds: "Oh, you are from Los Angeles?...So, are you an American or a Californian? Do you speak Californian (which is of course perfectly Spanish, just the Mexican dialect of Baja California Spanish, now renamed "Californian") or you speak American"? It will not sound too convincing to many Californians, will it? Well, this is precisely what the Greeks have to deal with, for the last eighteen years. The Bulgarian and Serbian speaking Slavic population decides to change the name of their land and call it Makedonija. Then they decide to rename their Bulgarian dialect "Makedonski" and now they demand that the Greeks of Macedonia forgo their cultural and geographic identity as Macedonians. This is not going to happen, no matter how much the governments in Athens decide to "cooperate" and give in to seem cooperative.

But, "The problem is threatening the fabric of our society," Gjorge Ivanov, the president of Macedonia, said in an interview. "The pressure that Greece is making is destabilizing the whole region." is that so? And who told you to base your ethnic identity on a BIG LIE? If you have been lying to your own people for two generations about their true identity, is this now OUR problem? the Greeks of Macedonia can counter. And who is destabilizing "the whole region"? Who has been screaming about "United Makedonija!", who is polluting the internet with screams of "Solun" (the capital of Greek Macedonia, the one million strong city of Thessaloniki) "is the capital of United Makedonija!", who is being 19th century style irredentist?

Who is refusing to see reality in the eyes and tries to dig up ancient Greek Kings and adopt them as their own, refuting the true Slavic identity of their own people? Who is publishing State-sanctioned History books (the latest one came out a month ago), declaring that the Makedonci are not a Slavic nation! Is it the Greeks? The Serbs, The Bulgarians? No, it is people like this very same President Mr. Ivanov, and his boss, Nikola Gruevski.

Lincoln said it very eloquently that you cannot lie to ALL the people ALL the time. The BIG LIE will eventually catch up with you, at some point or another! It surely caught about with more than a hundred thousand Skopjan citizens to date who, fed up with the 35% unemployment, and unable to cash Alexander the Great's 72ft tall bronze statue for food stamps, have opted to go to the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje and declare themselves "ethnic Bulgarians". How many of them in reality feel Bulgarian is difficult to say, and at the end of the day it will not make any difference. For sure, every single one of them greatly appreciates the brand new red EU passport that allows them to find a job anywhere in Europe! The Slavs leave, the Albanians stay...the future Kosovo-style crises is beginning to brew...and whose fault it this?

This, Mr. Ivanov should be told, is the dynamite under the foundations of your multi-ethnic country: while you are busy creating and defending THE BIG LIE, you seem to have forgotten the big lessons of the collapse of Yugoslavia: "It's the Economy, Stupid!" Once people start going hungry, no lies will stand in front of their children's future and their family's survival!

In the same article we see mention of the Albanian minority and some of its concerns, which led in 1991 to an armed uprising. I would dare suggest that maybe the anti-Albanian riots in Monastir/Bitola and extreme pseudo-Makedonism is what led the Albanians to feel as second rate citizens in a "Macedonian state". Maybe I am wrong, but I will need to see some strong proof, because arguments like that "the assumption that Macedonia would join NATO" was going to act as a "guarantee of internal stability", sounds to me like empty talk. "It would give us medicine for our hot heads," said Menduh Tachi, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Albanians." we read in the article. That is a remote possibility, I suppose, but we need to distinguish between what the leader of a political Party says, and what his constituents in the street say. The Albanian in the street needs a job, he needs a police that is not engaged in ethnic brutality and he needs a future, for him, for his family. People do not simply get to the guns and start a revolt unless they feel desperate that their future is taken from them. What does NATO have to do with the INTERNAL stability of FYROM and the Albanian issue? An argument can be convincingly be made for the EXTERNAL stability, but not the internal

In Mr. Whitlock's article we are told that "Macedonians say the name of the country is crucial to developing their still wobbly national identity." This is interesting. Greeks do not have a "wobbly" national identity, Serbs or Albanians do not either. They know who they are. Is it maybe because the so called "Macedonian" have been given a fake identity, for the last sixty-odd years, a make-believe identity that has not stuck well with them? And why is it so important to sweep all the half baked inventions of Yugolavia's Titoism under a NATO woven rug of convenience, and have the neighbors deal with the INEVITABLY ugly aftermath, whenever (not if...) that comes? No...while FYROM's Titoist rebaptized nomenclatura may be just jolly and fine with the perpetuation of pseudo-Makedonism's BIG LIE; a BIG LIE from which they can keep their stranglehold on this poor country and its resources, and the future EU funds, ready for VMRO corruption and plunder, the people of the area deserve a better future than that: THEY DEMAND A FINAL RESOLUTION OF THIS BAD JOKE OF AN ISSUE!

Craig Whitlock informs us that "Ethnic Albanians say they would revolt if the Slavic Republic of Macedonia was the new name because they are not Slavs". I honestly wonder, whom is he trying to convince? Where is the logic in his argument? First of all Greeks never said they want a Slavic Republic of "Macedonia", they suggested Slavomacedonia, which includes the word Macedonia in a "syn-thetic" name. If the "Makedonci" claim to be "ethnic Macedonians", and they want to call their name "Macedonia", their supposed name, then where do the Albanians fit into this? By the "Ethnic Macedonian" formula, the Albanians are NOT considered Macedonians, so, then, if it is called Slavomacedonia, what difference will it make to the Albanians? Call it Japanese Macedonia, Chinese Macedonia if you like, it still does not make any difference to the Albanians. If anything, the so called "Albanian" argument against Slavomacedonia, inevitably leads to a PURELY GEOGRAPHIC, purely non-ethnic, neutral name, that excludes nobody! Yes or no? If we try to be logical, we need to start making sense after some point, and not simply regurgitate arguments thrown arround by others with greater interests and bigger knifes to grind.

Towards the end we are given the argument of a hard liner Slavmacedonian big hat, a certain "Todor Petrov, president of the World Macedonian Congress" obviously some ultra-nationalist emigre', who "said the country should stop kowtowing to Greece and just call itself the Republic of Macedonia, regardless of how badly it wants to join NATO or the European Union." Perfect...and why should this gentleman give a hoot about whether "his" country joins the European Union and sees untold amounts of investment flow in that will create jobs for his "co-patriots"? Simply because, technically, I assume, he is not even THEIR compatriot. he does not live their misery and poverty. He is probably sitting in his office somewhere in Toronto, Sydney or Indianapolis, and he makes a comfortable living away from them. All he cares about is HIS identity as an emigre, which is light years away from the identity of the person on the ground in FYROM, the average unemployed SlavoMacedonian man who sells his family's "Makedonskata" identity for a EU passport that says EUROPEAN UNION outside in golden letter over red.

Then, and here the article becomes suspect of being more like a paid lobbyists stroke of genius rather than genuine journalism, we are quoted the same gentleman, Todor Petrov who "In an interview, he accused Greece of "practicing ethnic cleansing and genocide on the Macedonian nation" for the past 100 years. "They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said." Really, now? I have seen photographs of Jews in crematoria and piles of corpses in Nazi concentration camps. I have seen pictures of beheaded Armenians, men women and children, in Turkey, during WWI, but I have still to see a photo of Greek Genocide against the "Macedonian" "nation".

Journalism, I would expect, demands fairness and balance. How can the rumblings of an ultra-nationalist emigre be given space to defame the Greeks through an imaginary BIG LIE, (which by the way is a very recent invention, they have come up witht hsi "genocide theory" post 2000) without allowing the reader the chance to hear so much as even a question mark on this? But lest I forget, did anyone notice what this Titoist nationalist just say at the end of his sentence? Let us revisit his uttering:

"They're denying our nationality and culture and church and history and our borders," he said." Your borders? Which borders? The United Macedonia borders? Where do your borders start and where do they end? Is the so called "Aegean Macedonia" (they will never be caught alive saying Greek Macedonia, so they invented the misnomer :"Aegean Macedonia") part of the borders you feel the Greeks are denying you?

Then the juicy fruits start coming one by one: "It is not just Macedonia's national identity that is at stake. The Greek government does not recognize ethnic minorities within its own borders, including Macedonian-speaking residents of northern Greece."

We are even offered the distinguished opinion of a very important gentleman: "Pavle Voskopoulos, a Greek citizen who leads the Rainbow Party, a group of ethnic Macedonians in northern Greece, said the country subscribes to a myth of a "pure" Greek people who are directly descended from Alexander and others from his era. "This is all about modern Greek identity," he said. "If there is a Macedonia as an independent state, this is a great threat against Greek policy and Greek ideology."

I grew up in Greece and went through most of my formative years there and that included even the years under the ludicrous colonels' Junta. I do not recall anyone teaching me about a "pure" Greek nation, yet I see our friends from Skopje repeatedly accusing Greeks of this very same myth. Greeks since antiquity know that it is not blood lines that make a nation, but common living, commonality in culture and common interests. though it sounds like a puzzle to others from outside, Americans do constitute a nation, and so do Australians and Canadians. There are subgroups that is for sure, but there is unity in diversity. Greek are the same.

Ancient Greeks were a dynamic mix of local Pelasgians, and other local tribes, Indo-European speaking Greeks, who arrived in Greece around 2000 BC, and as time went by they mixed with slaves, and others who came as a result of Alexander's expeditions in Asia, and later with Romans, Thracians, etc. Greek culture has been evolving the last 4000 years and it is the language that more than anything (religion too, to a smaller of greater degree, depending on the historic frame) that makes their nation. Who ever talked about racial purity? Only Dog breeders and Nazis are thinking in these terms. As for Pavlos Voskopoulos, the leader of the Party of the Ethnic Macedonians of Greece, I will ask the readers permission to copy here what I recently wrote in another recent article on this issue, about the political Party Mr Voskopoulos leads:

"When Ouranio Toxo/Ουράνιο Τόξο - Vinozhito (Raibow) a political Party representing the "ethnic Macedonians" slated candidates under the banners of the European Free Alliance (Eyropaiki Eleytheri Symmachia – Ouranio Toxo) for the in June 2009 Europarliament, the total votes tally they were able to receive in the districts of Macedonia were two thousand five hundred ninety four votes (2594), out of a population of 2.5 million Greek Macedonians

( http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/e2009/pages/index.html?lang=en ).

This is hardly making a case for allowing one third of Greece, Macedonia, to be split and given as a land grant to the FYROM ultra-nationalists in Skopje.

By comparison, the Komma Ellinon Kynigon (Fysi - Kynigi - Psarema - Paradosi)/Party of Greek Hunters (Nature -Hunting - Fishing - Tradition), the quintessential joke of a party in Greece, in the very same districts (Districts of Drama, Kavala, A' Thessalonikis, B' Thessalonikis, Serres, Chalkidiki, Kilkis, Pella, Imathia, Pieria, Florina, Kozani, Kastoria and Grevena) received 5900 votes, twice as many as Eyropaiki Eleytheri Symmachia – Ouranio Toxo / Vinozhito.

( http://ekloges-prev.singularlogic.eu/e2009/pages/index.html?lang=en ).

We are given here the opinion of the leader of a Party that was able to gather less than one vote per thousand people in Greek Macedonia supporting their cause, although they had tv time, and freedom to say whatever they wanted, yet they managed to gather half the votes of the hunter's party! What minority are we talking about then? the best statistics may be talking of some fifty thousand bilingual people who speak Slavic ALSO, besides Greek. And that is true especially of the older generations, but that again makes no difference: it is identity that counts, not language not blood, not anything else. Several, though not all, Muslim Slavs in Greece (Pomaks) consider themselves to be Turkish though they speak no word in Turkish. And Many Jews worldwide think of themselves as Jews though they speak no Hebrew. These are instances where one part of the identity, the religious one, overcomes language and other aspects of culture. I have met not a few Americans who are Greek Orthodox in religion and Greek in culture and identity, though they speak no word in Greek, and they revel in their double identity as both Americans and Greeks. It is self identity that counts. It is who and what you want to be. A huge part of identity, sometimes even primary, is of course language, but not the only one. A bilingual person can always chose the identity he prefers. Many families in pre-war Macedonia were split in half when one brother would decide to "became" a Bulgarian ("ethnic Macedonians" had not been invented yet) and another to "became" a Greek. A bilingual of Macedonia who speaks both Greek and Slavic, but considers himself to be a Greek and derogatorily calls the people across the frontiers "Yugoslavs", cannot be counted as one of Mr. Voskopoulos's voters or "ethnic minority" supporters. A Cuban-American in Miami, is typically a fully bilingual Spanish and English speaking, and while he has a strong Spanich/Cuban identity is also at the same time very much an American.

The Washington Post article continues by informing us that FYROM "has renamed its national stadium for King Philip II, Alexander's father, and organized dozens of archaeological digs." It is not what you dig out that matters to Greeks, but the language found written in the artifacts, and the culture that created these artifacts. Claiming for example prehistoric stone-age artifacts as "proof" of an age-long continuum of (Slavo)"Macedonian" culture is as ludicrous as naming Greek funerary, religious and political Greek inscriptions "ancient-Macedonian" epigraphy. The Zenith of "Fyromian-antiquization" kitsch is displayed in the governing Palace in Skopje, where a series of priceless ancient Greek statues have been arranged with total disregard to their care, on the sidewalk, as proof of "ancient Macedonian" art. Similarly, a huge Greek inscription which mentions the Makedonarchs (leaders of Macedonia) has been hauled from the Archaeological site and taken to decorate the entry to Mr. Gruevski's Gubernatorial building.

"Officials", we are reminded, "also like to needle Greeks that the philosopher Aristotle, who tutored the teenage Alexander, was from the kingdom of Macedonia, not Athens". This is a true statement: Athens was not Greece, Athens was IN Greece. Macedonia was in Greece too. The fact that someone was from Macedonia, like Aristotle, does not make him any less a Greek than someone from Athens as someone from Sparta or Hellenistic Egypt or Syracuse in southern Italy. the fact that Eratosthenes was from Egypt does not make him an Arab, since Arabs came into Egypt seven Hundred years after him. He was Greek. The fact that Archimedes was from Syracuse, does not make him a Roman, he was a Greek who was in fact killed by a Roman during the capture of his country, his city state by the Romans. And after all, Aristotle is not known for simply being Alexander's tutor...he is the man that established the scientific method and one of the two pillars, along with Plato, of ancient Greek Philosophy. And there is no question as to what language he wrote in. If he was a "Slavo-Makedonski" Macedonian, why did he not write in Slavic? The Romans were brutes and uneducated in the beginning yet when they started writing they wrote in their own language, Latin. Where is that elusive language of the Macedonians, the ancient conquerors of the known world, the language of Alexander, Philip II and Aristotle, if it was not the Greek they left us in their incriptions?

The fact that there are plenty of pseudo-scientists in FYROM, like the Archaeologist "Pasko Kuzman, the government's director of cultural heritage" who prostitute their allegiance to science for the sake of pseudo-scientific political ends, is not surprising. Hitler found doctors who killed their fellow humans in order to execute SS-ordered human "experiments". I would never call Pasko Kuzman an SS officer, far from it (though I have no problem describing some of his political bosses in VMRO as such). No, his description "as a cross between Indiana Jones and Santa Claus" goes along way to create a good picture of him, but I would definitely add a bit of Goebbels into the mix: it is the BIG LIE "thing"...with which he has been raised, in Tito's Yugoslavia and from which, like a second skin, he cannot get out of.

Someone could easily claim that Greeks are too emotionally involved to be credible, when speaking of ancient Macedonia. I can say that this might be correct with some. On the other hand, the facts are facts and nobody can escape from them, not even FYROM government's own "director of cultural heritage". Then, who would be the best to expose the falacy and fakeness of pseudoMacedonist theories? None other than the ex prime minister of the country, i suppoze, Ljupco Georgievski, who abandoned Pseudomakedonism and went to maika Bulgaria and got a Bulgarian passport, remembering that his grandparents were all Bulgarian, after all. This is how the ex-Prime Minister countered Pasko Kuzman's nebulous theories, logically and point to point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HvKPiLYZCI&NR=1

But in Craig Whitlock's interview, the professor had other things to say:

"The Greeks are sorry that they are called Greece and not Macedonia," he said. "What else can I tell you?"

Don't say anything professor...polla eipas/πολλά είπας and, as Aristotle, that timeless Macedonian philosopher said: "ouk en to pollo to eu"/"ούκ εν τώ πολλώ τό εύ"!...I do not need to translate what he said, you are eis Makedon/είς Μακεδών/a Macedonian, as you claim; I am sure you can read Aristotle in the original...

Then, after you finish Aristotle, please go and read what 350 Classics professors world wide are saying, on the Macedonia issue, in their Open Letter to President Obama:

http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html

What was Pasko Kuzman's reply to that letter?

It is right here, on national tv:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tCgTJsRuW8