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Aries - many thanks. I think the confusion came as at school we were transliterating straight from Latin into Greek (not going via English). The Latin is a simple "et" - and - and the Greek particle is rather more subtle, as you rightly say.

Actually, doing direct Latin - Greek and Greek - Latin translations, though demanding, was a very instructive way of learning both languages really well, and of appreciating the finer points of each. For example, the active use of the Greek verbal participle to express intention had no easy equivalent in Latin, [...]

Read the full comment while Greek had no equivalent of the neat Latin "Ablative Absolute" method of describing past action. (Come to think of it, Greek didn't have an Ablative case anyway ! I only rediscovered the Ablative (now called the Instrumental case) when studying Slavonic languages.

EPAMINONDAS

THE "ΦΟΒΟΥ ΤΟΥΣ ΔΑΝΑΟΥΣ ΚΑΝ ΔΩΡΑ
ΦΕΡΟΝΤΕΣ"
καν = Και εαν and not Και only
denote the state of the if outcome

Well, Aries, it's originally a Latin quote from Virgil, but the two languages are very similar at this point. In Classical Greek class at school we used to express it as "Phobeo tous Danaous (kai)dora pherontes", just as an exercise, but this looks very like your modern Greek version. (Once again, I wish I had Greek on my computer keyboard !)

Epaminondas
The correct quote is "FOVOU TOUS DANAOUS K'AN DORA FERONTES"
BEWARE OF THE GREEKS BEARING GIFTS
alleged to be said on the occasion of the Trojan Horse during the Troy
siege.
gedankt.

Scorpio
If you cannot debate properly
but in terms of Hysterics
Get lost!! simple as that pal
Cheers.
Ps That applies also at whoever should the need arise.

Scorpio - do I detect some outraged 'philotimo' / amour propre somewhere ? Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.......

David/Dr Cornelius stop pretending to be Epaminondas. You are the most ridiculous old fool on this site playing both sides for a couple of years now. do get a life

and all readers the best way to get on David's nerves is to simply ignore him and do not respond

Going back to Aries' more serious point, this kind of human trafficking is also going on, on a very large scale, between the Tunisian coast and the Italian island of Lampedusa. Here small rowing boats are used, crammed with desperate humanity. Not a thing of which we should be proud.

Aaa...mused.
how very amusing i always appreciate
good amusement

Aries, you will be very amused to find out that you are slowly losing your agenda.

Sorry - I left out the most important bits about the Turkish "gulet" boats. Firstly, they have on-board internal diesel engines, so they are quiet (some have sails too). Secondly, and more importantly, being built entirely of wood (except for the engine!) they have no radar "profile" and are hence invisible to coastguard radar stations.

It is their quietness and ability to anchor silently near remote and otherwise inaccessible beaches that attracts them to Turkey's tourists. (The same factors would also attract them to Turkey's smugglers.)

Finally, their traditional design features entry/exit [...]

Read the full comment over the stern via a ladder of considerably adjustable length, so they require no landing-stage or jetty to drop off passengers (they can of course berth stern-first at a landing-stage, at which point a short horizontal ladder is used.) Another factor making them ideal for smugglers. And Turkey has thousands of these 'gulet' boats along its entire Mediterranean coastline....

Aries -

well, I tend to agree with you about the Turkish people-traffickers and about the ICJ being a proper forum to resolve this issue (you know my views about the "name dispute" with Macedonia and about how Greece let it all get out of proportion - hence the ICJ case - so I shan't repeat them now. But Turkey is a much better instance of where ICJ action is justified.)

The one thing that sticks in my mind from visiting both Turkish and Greek coasts recently, is how much better the [...]

Read the full comment Turks seem to be in constructing and crewing small, agile coastal vessels (what the Turks call "gulets" ). You don't really see these in Greece, but in any Turkish port there are lots of them, mainly aimed at the tourist trade. The larger and heavier of them are quite capable of a trans-Aegean voyage. And - disconcertingly - every one of them flies the "red crescent" flag of Turkey very obviously, at the stern of the vessel.

We tried high and low in the Pelion peninsula to find a Greek gulet or two, but in all cases we were told "it is too dangerous" in the Aegean for smaller wooden vessels. Cross the Aegean to Marmaris, and you can hire wooden gulets of any size from small to monumentally large. The Greek vessels, in contrast, are all metal-built and mostly larger (not all). Somewhere I think there is a market gap here that Turkey is exploiting......

Amused
Maybe I touched a soft spot
come on my friend amuse me a litle more.
I Thoroughly Enjoy Being Amused.
Cheers.

Kalimachos, the only Hellenic culture you had was 2500 years ago, which was taken from the great civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Assyrian and Minoan. The culture you have today is a mismash of everybody who stayed there for a bit of time through the centuries.

Aries your racist and judgemental comments come from a lack of knowledge, rather than a balanced one. You should read your histories(Herodutus) a little more carefully and you will find out the Greeks were not the indigenous people. So the claims you have from ancient times are not justified. Your rants about Turkey sound as bad as Bush,s Iraq .

Epaminondas
I am worried too but if you and i can
discuss the issue from the coziness of our armchair i am sure that there has been some extra activity in some corridors of some buildings in Athens
and some decisions taken
About the illegal immigration
it is a very well set business. the Turk traffiquants make huge amounts of profit and above all have no moral restraint to dump their human load ibto the high sea or even sink the tugged boat if they sense Greek coast Guard approaching [...]

Read the full comment you can imagine the poor souls dumped at night in freezing waters
I wonder IS THIS NOT AN ISSUE FOR
THE ICJ OR UNHR. IT IS A CRIME COMMITTED EVERY SINGLE MOMENT IN
COLD BLOOD IT IS SLAVERY IN THE 21
CENTURY UNDER THE HOOD OF VOLUNTARY IMMIGRATION, IT IS EXPLOITATION OF HUMAN DESPAIR NOTHING MORE NOTHING LESS.

Aries - I rather agree with you that Turkey has quite a long track-record of being provocative in the Aegean, and you may well be right in saying that in today's world every Muslim country has the potential of being Fundamentalist.

This is why I was alarmed by Turkey sending a senior military mission headed by General Ilke Bazbug to Skopje, as it fits in to the wider pattern of provocation. Those Turks are not there, as I said earlier, just to drink the coffee. (Slight confusion arose in my mind as Buzbag is a well-known [...]

Read the full comment grape varietal / brand of Turkish wine.....)

Again as I said earlier, I think Greece is right to react strongly to this issue (and also to the illegal immigration issue from Turkey, as Karamanlis has requested for the next European Council.)

Epaminondas
Personally i don't share the same opinion with the Greek government
which accepts the European path of Turkey's accession to EU if the latter conforms to all prerequisitea
set by the EU, living in a Muaslim
country for about 16 yeas makes me think that no Muslim will ever
abstainfrom being a Fundamentalist
the case of turkish airplanes
never submitting flight plans when entering the FIR Athens, thus first endangering civilian Flight from the Greek mainland to the Archipelago and many times Intetrnational flights too,is [...]

Read the full comment a usual tactic of the Turks occurring most of the time each
summer together mostly triggered by the rubbish called Historical Territory, plus that do not accept that the Islands are entitled to continental shelves
What happens if some day a trigger
happy commander in Crete launches a salvo of S-300 missiles unintentionally of course.
let alone dogfights that occur with fully armed F-16 nearly each day.


gods

to Aries: it was a song, and rather a nice one too : "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (I think originally performed by Simon and Garfunkel ).

To everybody (having just read the parallel news report on this site about Greece's reaction to Turkish invasion of its airspace):

<<If Greece is going to wield its "veto" card again (this time against Turkey in an EU context), this tactic will begin to lack credibility amongst other EU member-states. First Macedonia, now Turkey, who will be the next recipient neighbour-state of Greece's "toys out of [...]

Read the full comment pram" tantrums ? Bulgaria ?

Ironically, Greece has got a better case against Turkey than it ever had against Macedonia. Flying military aircraft into your airspace is a rather more well-founded international grievance than is building statues or naming airports ! >>

Chemistry was never my preferred
i must admit thanks to Epaminondas for "depleted" the correct word
Goran now you are getting overboard with this scenario.
Some advice stick to your law environment and quit the linguistics because there my my friend "your are completely out of bound" and the penalty for this
is three strokes +(golf terminology)
I could argue that Macedonia is a Slavic language most akin to Bulgarian than to Serbian the literary belonging to the South
Slavic group of Indo-European
family. This is [...]

Read the full comment mostly accepted in academics world wide of course
there may be other brain-children of various nationalities but not accepted by academias.

the Glagolithic alphabet
the Cyrillic alphabet
the old Church Slavonic
the literary Schools of Preslav
and Ohrid
are common for all Slavs
specially for south and eastern Slavs
If some Slavs chose the Latin Alphabet it was because of their
religion Catholics and not Orthodox
Epaminondas
the ....over troubled waters reminds me of somethhing
"bridge" i think; can you help?
was it a film or a song?

(for once trying to pour oil on troubled waters !) I am certainly no expert in chemistry, but are not the shells in question "depleted uranium" rather than "deactivated uranium" ? I believe there is a substantial difference between the two, but am happy to be corrected by expert advice.

That said, if the Greek Army really were using live shells of any sort within 100 metres of peoples' gardens, it really was more than a bit careless of the Army to do so, and highly reprehensible.

(Reminds me of the joint [...]

Read the full comment Norwegian / Latvian NATO manoeuvres in the 1990s - the first time that newly-independent Latvia had been invited to participate. UNFORTUNATELY, nobody had thought to tell the Norwegians that the Latvians, following their previous Soviet practice, would be using live ammunition.......)

Deactivated Uranium?!!!

My dear friend Aries, how exactly do you deactivate uranium? Tell me. Educate me. Do you know what the halflife of the uranum isotopes is? It is 244 THOUSAND years. And no chemical of physical procedure exist to speed this up or clean it up, or "deactivate" it.

Yes they were using "deactivated" uranium shells, and spreading radioactivity over peoples fields, as close as 100m from their yards and gardens to both intimidate them, and ecologically destroy their environment, in hope that they will voluntarily decide to leave this "troublesome" [...]

Read the full comment village. Now that they cannot just board them on trains and send them away, or ship them to the Trikala island to die of starvation and forced labor, that is probably the next "best" thing the Greek government can do in order to "deal" with the issue of ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece.

To Kalimako,

We don't know exactly what the Ancient Macedonian language looked like. It surely was not mutually inteligible with the ancient Greek, and thats why Greeks called them Barbaroi (bablers, people that speak a foreign, uninteligible language).

Was their language some form of proto-slavic? We don't know that. It may have been. Actually both Ilyrian and Tracian are a little better known, and there are good indications that they belong to the Balto-Slavic group of languages. And some linguists think that Ancient Macedonian was akin to Ilyrian and Thracian. It may have been.

But even if the Ancient Macedonian was pure Greek, Attic Greek, the most Greek of all Greek dialects (which it wasn't), the MODERN Macedonian is nothing like that. It is a language completely different from the Greek language. It does not even belong to the same family of languages. It may have changed over time. We are talking about a timespan of 2400 years. Franks spoke germanic language, and modern Franch speak a romance language. And the change happened in less than 1000 years.

So we, modern Macedonians, are not seeking Greek anything. It cannot be more far from that. We are proud of exactly who we are, and what we are NOW.

to Goran
I appreciate your analytic exposition of law matters. and certainly agree with Epaminondas when he state "that lawyers love it"personally i think they they are overdoing it sometimes
in French it is called "Enculage de mouche". its keeping them alive active and mekes a living.
About the radioactive material you mentioned that the Greek Army
used in the exercise it is not
ccorrect the Army may have used de-activated uranium armor piercing
shells,the Americans have been using them since 1990 and maybe earlier in Kossovo bombing [...]

Read the full comment targwets in Serbia, during the Gulf war. and probably in Afganistan.

It's interesting to watch people who speak a Slavic language which is almost identical to Bulgarian to want to be Greeks (ie. Macedonians) instead of Slavs. We are flattered by your attempts at adopting Hellenic culture.

My dear friend Epaminondas,

You are right, the correct acronym would be fYRoM, BUT Macedonia never agreed to accept or use ANY acronyms at all. UN never uses this acronym because we find it offensive. And neither UN nor anyone else can use any name for us, unless we accept it and agree for it. Everything else would be percieved by us as plain insults.

Amused
Since when do you care about the Greeks being shot down I am really amused my dear friend Amused
or is it you are trying to cover up your ass for an eventual defeat.

Greeks give up, your being shot down each time.

Sorry to be a linguistic pedant, but FYROM as an acronym is wrong. It should be fYRoM (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). Alternatively, in French it would be ERYdM (Ex-Republique Yougoslave de Macedoine), and the ICJ uses French as its official language.

Get the formula wrong, and you may lose the case ! (Lawyers love mistakes like these....)

Yanni,

Macedonia was not invited because Greece OBJECTED IT. By objecting it, Greece broke the Agreement, and that is why it is sued now.

Kalimako,

If our gov broke the Agreement, your gov was supposed to write them a nice official letter, and explain them when and how they broke it. But your gov decided that we are not even worth talking to.

Now when the Greek side complains to the ICJ, the Court will simply ask them: "Did you use the legal remedy [...]

Read the full comment perscribed by the Agreement? Did you send them a letter explaining them their violations, and did you ask them to stop or correct their actions. After you exhaust that measure, only then you can apply to the ICJ."

So, you will be back to the square one.

As for the last year incident in Ovcharani, Lerinsko (whatever you Greeks call it now), when the Greek army tried to shoot with radioactive ammunition over the village while the citizens (almost all of Macedonian ethnic origin) were not evacuated from the village, clearly to intimidate them, or to poison their environment, so they will need to permanently move and disperse, there are several reasons why our PM can react, and his reaction was justifiable.

1. The first and foremost: the military excercise was in the border area at less than 10 miles from the border, and it was not announced, nor coordinated with our military authorities, as it should be, according to the international law.

2. Second, they have already used radioactiva ammunition on that field before, and they were planning on using it again. That is against the international law also. Not to mention public health safety concerns (which Greece obviously selectively has only for their citizens that are Greek by race "by genus" as it is written in your law).

3. Third, they are specifically targeting this village, because Macedonians that live in the village are not afraid to assert their ethnic Macedonianan (and non Greek) identity, and ask for their minority rights. The protection of minority rights is defined by a host of international treaties and conventions, and Greece MUST respect them. If and when it doesn't, anyone (inlcuding our PM) can bring this to public's attention and even sue Greece for violating the conventions.

Goran Stojanov you are wrong.
An invitation to join the Alliance was not extended to the FYROM and for that reason FYROM did not apply to NATO

>>And, guess what, Republic of >>>Macedonia DID APPLY to NATO under that reference.
>>It took our gov official quite a
>> bit to swallow their pride and to apply under the temporary reference.
>> BUT THEY DID IT. And Greece still objected the entry, clearly breaking the Interim Agreement.

"Let's say"? When the Hellenic army was conducting exercises in Florina some of the farmers protested. Immediately Gruevski acted as self-appointed "protector" and public statements were made. The Interim Agreement specifically states that neither country is allowed to get involved in the internal affairs of the other. Greece does not need the permission of poor, undeveloped, former communists states to conduct military exercises on its own territory.

I can cite many other examples where you violated the Interim Agreement, of which you yourselves were a WILLING party to.

You have no problem [...]

Read the full comment violating the agreements you yourselves have signed, yet when you feel Greece violated it once you go and play the "victim" at the IJC.

The fact of the matter is this; in terms of bargaining power, you have none. In terms of political or military leverage, you have none. So you try to drag Greece through the mud in the various courts and international forums to annoy us, but you fail to see that you are nothing more than a fly.

The internet is full of your hate propaganda, irredentism, and crazy theories of treaty of Bucharest expiration dates, proto-Slavic theories, Rosetta Stone assertions, Hunza tribe visits etc.

You have become the epitome of desperation and the laughing stock of the World's historical, archaeological, and scientific community.

Kallimachos, lets say, for the sake of the argument, that you are right, that our government violated the Interim Agreement. (I do not agree with this, but I will not elaborate that now).

What Greece was supposed to do was to send them an official letter, explaining them when and how are they violating the agreement (article 7, point 3). That would have been an appropriate response, and not a retaliation.

Greek gov never did that, so legally, Greek government does not have any objections on anything that our government has done. [...]

Read the full comment

If you bother to read the Interim Agreement your government has violated it on many occasions long before Bucharest. From the printing of irrdentist maps in FYROM schools, to the massive "antiquization" campaign going on in FYROM, to the renaming of airports, highways, stadiums with Hellenic names.

Yes my frind Kallimachos, you are correct. Greece has right to object Macedonia's entry under any other name but: "the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (not the acronym, the acronym is illegal, and also offensive for us, you you can't use our real name Republic of Macedonia, you need to use the whole reference, and also properly capitalized).

And, guess what, Republic of Macedonia DID APPLY to NATO under that reference. It took our gov official quite a bit to swallow their pride and to apply under the temporary reference. BUT THEY DID IT. And Greece [...]

Read the full comment still objected the entry, clearly breaking the Interim Agreement.

The interim agreement states:

“1. Upon entry into force of this Interim Accord, the Party of the First Part agrees not to object to the application by or the membership of the Party of the Second Part in international, multilateral and regional organizations and institutions of which the Party of the First Part is a member; however, the Party of the First Part reserves the right to object to any membership referred to above if and to the extent the Party of the Second Part is to be referred to in such organization or institution differently [...]

Read the full comment than in paragraph 2 of United Nations Security Council resolution 817 (1993).”


UN Security Council Resolution 817 states:

Recommends to the General Assembly that the State whose application is contained in document S/25147 be admitted to membership in the United Nations, this State being provisionally referred to for all purposes within the United Nations as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" pending settlement of the difference that has arisen over the name of the State;

The last section of the Interim agreement from the above paragraph notes:

the Party of the First Part [Greece] reserves the right to object to any membership referred to above if and to the extent the Party of the Second Part [FYROM] is to be referred to in such organization or institution differently than in paragraph 2 of United Nations Security Council resolution 817 [FYROM] (1993).”

In simplistic terms this means that Greece has the right to object to membership applications by FYROM if FYROM applies using any other name other than the one agreed to in the UN Resolution [FYROM]. Greece has every right, according to the agreement, to VETO any application into any organization made by FYROM if they apply using any other name other than FYROM.

How and why Greece will lose the ICJ case that Macedonia brought against it on July 20:

1. The first Greek counter-argument that they didn’t execute a formal VETO is invalid. The Article 11 of the Interim Agreement (1995) is the one that Greece broke, and that article states that:

“1. Upon entry into force of this Interim Accord, the Party of the First Part agrees not to object to the application by or the membership of the Party of the Second Part in international, multilateral and regional organizations and institutions of [...]

Read the full comment which the Party of the First Part is a member; however, the Party of the First Part reserves the right to object to any membership referred to above if and to the extent the Party of the Second Part is to be referred to in such organization or institution differently than in paragraph 2 of United Nations Security Council resolution 817 (1993).”

So, the court will not ask them: “Did you put VETO”, but “Did you object the entry”. And there is ample evidence that they DID object the entry, including the transcript of the meeting of NATO, and public statements by both Dora and Karamanli.

2. The second Greek counter-argument that Macedonia also broke the Interim Agreement by renaming the airport will most likely be not admissible. If that was the case, Greece should have taken the appropriate actions. And retaliation is not an appropriate action. The appropriate action is defined in the article 7, point 3 of the Interim Agreement (1995):

“3. If either Party believes one or more symbols constituting part of its historic or cultural patrimony is being used by the other Party, it shall bring such alleged use to the attention of the other Party, and the other Party shall take appropriate corrective action or indicate why it does not consider it necessary to do so.”

So, if Greeks think that Alexander the Great is part of their cultural patrimony, so Macedonia is using it inappropriately, they were supposed to send an official letter to the Macedonian government. But they didn’t. Now the question is why?

We don’t know. We can only speculate. But the most likely reason is the Greek decision from October 2004 to stop all official communication with the government of Republic of Macedonia.

This has one important implication, though. By not objecting it officially, they have LEGALY RECOGNIZED THAT ALEXANDER THE GREAT DOES NOT BELONG TO THEIR CULTURAL PATRIMONY.

The integral text of the Interim Agreement can be found here:

http://untreaty.un.org/unts/120001_144071/6/3/00004456.pdf

And yes, it is signed by the Greek representative, so it is valid, regardless of the fact that it was not ratified by the Greek parliament.

Somebody pointed out to me that "Alexander" is a very common first name in Scotland, but not in other parts of the UK, or elsewhere in Northern Europe. Wonder why ?

The Phoenicians, one of the nations that Alexander conquered, traded with Ancient Britain (mainly in tin, mined in Cornwall), but Cornwall and Scotland are 1000 km apart. Another unsolved mystery of ancient history !

that's true, Aries, - Alexander was clearly a deft and skilful politician as well as a brilliant miltary commander. To be recorded in the Talmud is a great achievement for a Gentile (although of course the Israeli(te)s claim he had secretly become Jewish - hence the story about leaving a bit of skin behind !

Hmmm - pause for a bit of thought. Aleksander "le c'haim" takes a bit of getting used to ! (By the way, for convenience' sake, I am putting an apostrophe between the "c" and the "h", as the French and certainly [...]

Read the full comment the Bretons do, to indicate that the consonant in question is pronounced as a strong guttural - like the greek Khi (X) only stronger - and not as the usual French or English "CH" sound.

Epaminondas
ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ALEXANDRE LE GRAND
АЛЕКСАНДЪР ВЕЛИКИ
could be the mentor of the whole
world not only in military content
but also in political endeavour
for he used politics much more than sheer crude miltary prowess.

Sorry - "appently" should be "apparently". Mea culpa for the typo....

Aries - no problem with "sans atout" for "no trumps" - I must try that tonight, as one of our number also speaks fluent French!

Appently Alexander (who appears to have led a short but extremely colourful life !) did more than just "encounter" the High Priests of Israel - he might well have left a bit of his skin behind as a memento ! Certainly his treatment of the Israelites is curiously tolerant, especially by the standards of a ruler who was not averse to a spot of bloodshed or two (or even three).....
[...]

Read the full comment />
Today's aggressive Israelis (when did we stop calling them "Israelites", I wonder ?) give that rarely-encountered word "irredentism" a whole new meaning. I sincerely hope that fyrMacedonia never follows in their footsteps ! But I suppose the Israelis too could also claim Alexander Megalos as their inspiration and mentor....

Yes, you're right about Armageddon and the Seventh Seal. Did you ever see Ingmar Bergman's film "The Seventh Seal" / Det Sjunde Inseglet ? One of the cinematic masterpieces of all time.....

The Seventh Seal will unveil the conflict in a place called by Hebrew tongue Armagedon.

Epaminondas
Yes my mistake "atout" and not "atous" is "trump card"
I insist upon "sans atout" being
"no trump" bid in bridge
pondering on your post,it is quite plaisible that on his way to Egypt
Alexander having passed through ancient Palestine mustt have encountered some High Priests
of Israel.Hence the mention of the Jewish University.

Well, here's the extract from the Jewish University site about Alexander. In this extract he seems to have been converted to Judaism either tactitly or openly (and I must admit that from the extant mosaics he does indeed look like a Good Jewish Boy !):

(start of quote) :THE GREEKS VS. THE JEWS

During his military campaign against Persia, Alexander takes a detour to the south, conquering Tyre and then Egypt via what is today Israel. Alexander is planning to destroy the Temple, egged on by the Samaritans who hate the Jews [...]

Read the full comment There is a fascinating story about Alexander's first encounter with the Jews of Israel. (Who were until that time subjects of the Persian Empire).

The narrative concerning Alexander's first interaction with the Jews is recorded in both the Talmud (Yoma 69a and in the Jewish historian Josephus's book Antiquities XI, 321-47.) In both accounts the High Priest of the Temple (in the Talmudic narrative he is Shimon HaTzaddik -- the last surviving member of the Men of the Great Assembly) in Jerusalem, fearing that Alexander would destroy the city, goes out to meet him before he arrives at the city. The narrative then describes how Alexander, upon seeing the High Priest dismounts and bows to him. (Alexander rarely, if ever, bowed to anyone.) In Josephus's account, when asked by his general, Parmerio, to explain his actions he answered: "I did not bow before him but before that God who has honored him with the high Priesthood; for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very apparel."

Alexander interpreted the vision of the High Priest as a good omen and thus spared Jerusalem and peacefully absorbed the Land of Israel into his growing empire. As tribute to his benign conquest the Rabbis decreed that the Jewish firstborn of that time be named Alexander (which is a Jewish name until today) and date of the meeting (25th of Teves) was declared a minor holiday.

So Alexander the Great does not destroy the Temple. And he listens when Shimon HaTzaddik tells him that the Jews are not enemies of the Greeks but the Samaritans are. The Talmud relates the interaction between Alexander and the Jewish delegation

They (the Jews led by Shimon HaTzaddik) answered, "Is it possible that these idol worshippers should fool you into destroying the House where prayers are offered for you and your kingdom that it should never be destroyed!" Alexander said to them, "What idol worshippers do you mean?" They replied, "We are referring to the Samaritans who are standing before you now." Said Alexander, "I am handing them over to you to do with them as you please."(4)

As a result, the Jews are given free rein to go trash the Samaritans, which they promptly go out and do. And Israel and Jerusalem are peacefully absorbed into the Greek Empire.

At first, the Greek authorities preserve the rights of the local Jewish population and do not attempt to interfere with Jewish religious practice. The Jews continue to flourish as a separate and distinct entity for 165 years - a rare phenomenon in the Hellenistic world.

The vast majority of the peoples conquered by Alexander the Great have willingly allowed themselves to be Hellenized. The fact that the Jews - with the exception of a small minority - reject Hellenism is a strong testament to that ever-present Jewish drive and sense of mission.

The famed classical historian Michael Grant, in his From Alexander to Cleopatra (p. 75), explains:

The Jews proved not only unassimilated, but unassimilable, and ... the demonstration that this was so proved one of the most significant turning-points in Greek history, owing to the gigantic influence exerted throughout subsequent ages by their religion...

But with time, Judaism, with its intractable beliefs and bizarre practices, begins to stand out as an open challenge to the concept of Hellenistic world supremacy.

For the generally tolerant Greeks, this challenge becomes more and more intolerable. It is only a matter of time before open conflict will arise. (end of quote)



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

Sorry, Aries, I misled you as to the spelling. Getting down my 4kg dictionary laughingly called "le petit Robert", I discover that it is actually spelled (un) atout.

My translation as "trump card" seems to be correct as per Robert, but apparently "tous les atouts" translates as "All The Aces", so we suddenly switch game to Poker !

Epaninondas
Glad I helped with trump-card definition.
Preferable is a length in Spades or Hearts well distributed.
Cheers mean-while and good luck
with your bridge-party

Aries - thanks for the translation. (I've played Bridge in Polish, but never in French, and co-incidentally I'm hosting a Bridge party here tonight ! We play by the ACOL convention, but of course there are many others, and English has a weird Bridge vocabulary all of its own, not all of which I know !)

Probably "atous" is best translated as "trump card". But of course, and as a Bridge player you would know, if you play your trumps too late you don't win the contract ! (In layman's terms: you lose the game.)

Well, thanks to the One Who Dare Not Speak His Name for those video clips: I liked the one about the "Good the Bad and the Ugly" version of all Balkan history !

All this discussion about Alexander Megalas / Velikiy is a bit pointless, anyway, as the Zionist University of Jerusalem makes strong claims that Alexander was actually Jewish, and a direct descendant of King David. King David was of course another famous general of ancient history, so maybe the two are related after all!

(Alexander's lineage back to David is [...]

Read the full comment to be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.)

Shalom alec'hem, mazel tov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIKDhhTvnU&feature=related

Dumb as a sack of hammers all of them and confirms what everybody else has been saying. Look at how Milososki is left slack-jawed; priceless!

And here's Denko Malevski with the root cause of all this silliness http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/859/skopianij2.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTUqfuTbk_s&feature=related

Now Epamninondas put a sock in it; or will you moan that this is Greek propaganda when the images and the inrerviews obliterate your narrow little mind?

Atous is equivalent to trump-card
if you play bridge it is a bid
one no trump up to a grand slam bid
of six no trump.
un sans atous jusque a six sans atous.

I think we need a much closer and better photograph of the "map". Colour depictions of faces or territories are not exactly unknown in the Balkans, after all, and they may well be of some antiquity.

By the way, what is an "atous" / qu'est-ce que c'est un "atous" ?
Do you mean "un accord" ?

(I once did a fascinating photographic study of Romananian cemeteries, which tends to support the theory that Dracula Lives !)

Epaminondas
Yes this post is much better than the previous
Indeed Gruevskis's tribute to Gotche Delchev's memorial is a must regarding the space-time contimuum of the Ilinden,illfated but heroic,uprising in 1903 vis a vis the Turks.
So far so good any further effort of combining this event with various philo-fyromiam iredentalist propaganda is bound to fail.
the map is a banner add on and not part of the monument. It's the same shown on various text-books
disributed in schools.
The Greek representatives at the Hague are far more [...]

Read the full comment experienced so as believe that this incident may
be used as an "atous" in their line of adversality.
By the way Gotche Delchev is considered Bulgarian at that time as Sandanski was also. So let each nation commemorates its own dead.

How nice to solve an issue so easily ! With thanks to Anonymous for posting the URL link to the Gruevski tribute to the Gotse Delchev (1872 - 1903) memorial, this solves one problem. In Delchev's day all Macedonia was one, still to be liberated from the Ottoman Turks, and that is what the map on his tomb/memorial correctly shows. To be precise, Delchev was killed during the Illinden/Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903 against the Ottomans. (This may not be in Greek school history books as I know Hellas is a bit selective about such things.)

So [...]

Read the full comment his tomb and memorial - which themselves seem by their style to date from no later than the early 1920s - are historically accurate in recording this. And Gruevski was quite correct in honouring the memorial to a Christian Macedonian patriot who died for independence against the Ottoman Turks, long before the Treaty of Bucharest 1913 !

As regards the ICJ, this issue will not be admitted, for the simple reason (pour le bon et simple raison) that it's "out of time". Delchev died a long time ago, and the "offensive" map merely reflects the geographical reality of the region as he would have perceived it: one single larger Macedonia to be wrested from Ottpman Turkish control.

If Greece were a bit more broad-minded on this issue, a Greek representative could well have joined Gruevski on this occasion, as both Slavs and Hellenes were then united (in 1903) against the common Ottoman enemy, and should both pay common tribute to Delchev.

Also the monument to Delchev obviously long pre-dates present-day fyrMacedonia, so once again the Court will rule it "out of time".

If only all the other issues could be solved so easily !

TO EPAMINONDAS
Resume to your standard my man
for heavens sake stop playing dumb
or forever keep silent.

Sorry - I should have added that Epaminondas is also an African slave name too. (Just like those poor old ancient Macedonians labouring under the Hellenic yoke ! )

Niech zyje Makedonija !

The title of the "Pan-Macedonian Association" itself would appear to be in breach of the Interim Accord. Which side is this organisation on - Greek or fYRoM Macedonian ? (I suspect the former !)

Nothing like practising what one preaches, is there ?

EPAMINONDAS
It seems to me that i have summoned
the sarissas bataillons of Ancient
Macedonians in a full fledged
Phalanx formation hereл
Thanks to all for assisting
ΝΥΝ ΥΠΕΡ ΠΑΝΤΩΝ Ο ΑΓΩΝ.

Look at this 'genius' Epaminondas comparing a few ultra-nationalist nutcases to the Prime Minister of FYROM-earth to Epaminondas-one side is a lunatic fringe group and the other is a POLITICIAN! The PM is an elected official who is inciting hatred and irredentism and the others are just some louts-don't you get that? Or will you try and argue your way out of this one with some stupid analogy?

Maybe all that trying to act like some kind of wiseguy really get you pulling all these idiotic analogies out of your backside? Comparing Srebenica to this debate, [...]

Read the full comment and then going on a tangent about Northern Ireland-man you have some real problems keeping to the facts and keeping it relevant; fact is by naming all those airports etc. FYROM did violate the accord and still do so by using the flag.

Here's some more reading: from http://www.helleniccomserve.com/sekerinskagatz.html

The dispute over Macedonia's official name between Skopje and Athens cannot be part of the political criteria for Macedonia's EU membership, although it could have a negative impact on its road to Brussels, Deputy Prime Minister Radmila Sekerinska has said. With the signing of the Interim Accord, Greece has committed itself not to block Macedonia's integration in European institutions, but this kind of behavior on the part of Greece - linkage between EU candidacy and the resolution of the name dispute - could constitute a violation of the accord's decree, she said. Sekerinska said that, nevertheless, Macedonia should not compromise, adding that she was convinced it would receive a positive avis from the European Commission.”

The above report contains some very strong statements expressed by the FYROM Deputy Prime Minister Radmila Sekerinska. The reader gets the impression that Greece by signing the Interim Agreement, has undertaken only obligations and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (The FYROM) has the green light to do as it pleases. Nevertheless, Mrs. Sekerinska is partially correct. Whether Greece may or may not block the FYROM from receiving the green light that signals the beginning of the talks for her country’s membership in the EU legally depends under which name this state applies with.

If the FYROM applies for membership, then Greece may not block it. It is however, up to Greece’s discretion whether she will or not block the FYROM, because the temporary name “the FYROM” was not intended to last more than seven years. The political decision was made by the FYROM successive governments to intentionally drag the negotiations by not only refrain from submitting to Mr. Nimetz even one name to be used as a basis for negotiations, but also rejecting any name Greece and Mr. Nimetz submitted. Greece can claim security reasons and it has a civil war in her past in regards with the Macedonian issue.

The following is taken from the minutes of an intergovernmental meeting that took place in February 2001 (Skopje Dnevnik 16 Feb 01 pp 13). The speaker is VMRO-DPMNE leader Boris Stojmenov. "No one has the right or authorization to change this country's name. This is not merely a party matter, but also concerns the citizens inside the country and abroad. It should not be raised bilaterally, in our relations with Greece. The UN Security Council should resolve this issue. Our experience has shown that if we find the solution unfavorable, we will certainly win justice in court" … "there was no need for Macedonia to hurry with the negotiations. Time is on our side. In addition, Greece's euphoria over opposing Macedonia's name has subsided. We only need to wait a little longer." All participants of that meeting agreed to something that supports the fact that the FYROM never intended to negotiate the name and the whole thing was a matter of tactics and then turn around and blame Greece for the delay. Putting the issue in simple terms the FYROM negotiated in bad faith and the tactics that it used do not meet the specifications intended in the United Nations Security Council resolutions 817/1993 and 845/1993 and the exchange of letters drafted and signed by the hand of her present day President Branko Cervenkovski do not go along the lines of the Interim Accord. It is not wise for a country to sign a very important document such as the Interim Accord and not intend to honor it. Such a practice will put into question the validity of any other document that this state signs in the future.

If the “Republic of Macedonia” applies for membership into the EU, then Greece has every right to block such a membership under Article 11, paragraph 1, which states: that “the Party of the First Part [Greece] reserves the right to object to any membership referred to above if and to the extent of the Party of the Second Part [The FYROM] is to be referred to in such organization or institution differently than in paragraph 2 of the United Nations Security Council resolution 817 (1993)”. The sector of the FYROM for the EU integration states that “The Republic of Macedonia has applied for membership in the European Union.” This statement means that Greece can block the FYROM entrance to the EU.

Since Mrs. Sekerinska has opened the matter of a possible future violation of the Interim Accord on behalf of Greece, I thought it would be a good idea to mention some violations, already committed by the governments of the FYROM.

Article 2 of the Agreement states: “The Parties hereby confirm their common existing frontier as an enduring and inviolable international border.” Also, Article 3 of the Interim Accord state that “Each Party undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the territorial integrity and the political independence of the other Party. Neither Party shall support the action of a third party directed against the sovereignty, the territorial integrity, or the political independence of the other Party.”

Article 4 states “The Parties shall refrain, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, from the threat or use of force, including the threat or use of force designed to violate their existing frontier, and they agree that neither of them will assert or support claims to any part of the territory of the other Party or claims for a change of their existing frontier.”

Successive governments of the FYROM, a legal entity originally created by the communists that has become a country as a result of the demise of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), has violated all articles and resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, in reference to the sovereignty, the territorial integrity, or the political activities of the parties.

The FYROM has continued to refer to the part of Macedonia, which historically is Macedonia Proper, belonging to Greece, as “Aegean Macedonia”, as though the neighboring state does not accept Greece’s sovereignty of that territory. Furthermore, the successive FYROM governments have never discouraged any of their own publications to abide by article 7 of the said Accord. On the contrary, in the FYROM schools pupils are being taught that there are Macedonian territories beyond their country waiting to be liberated. The FYROM schoolbooks keep referring to the Greek Macedonia as Aegean Macedonia.

The FYROM, despite the fact that the negotiations were going on in New York, was making agreements with other countries to recognize them as "Macedonia." Sometimes the FYROM diplomats resorted even to lying to countries such as Mexico that the matter was already closed. The FYROM even chose blackmail, accepting only documents referring to the state as “Macedonia.” If the correspondence were addressing “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” it was returned as “non-grata.” Such acts constitute a violation of the spirit of the Interim Agreement. The letter Mr. Papoulias sent to Mr. Butros-Ghali regarding the matter is still valid.

Agencies of successive governments of the FYROM have registered political parties whose emblems bear the Sun of Vergina, a clear violation of article 7. These parties are MAAK and VMRO-DP. The latter has the map of Macedonia the way the FYROM constituency likes it and this map includes the Greek, Bulgarian and Albanian parts of Macedonia into the FYROM territory.

VMRO-DP MAAK

The political Part “Macedonian Alliance” in clear violation of Article 7 of the Interim Accord is a registered political party with the FYROM.

Gorge Atanasovksi the founder and President of the FYROM Political Party “Macedonian Alliance” in his office. Behind him is the old FYROM flag with the Sun of Vergina.

http://www.makedonskosonce.com/Alijansa/indexEN.htm

The above website states: “Since 1996, Mr. Atanasovski has been the president of the Macedonian Alliance political party (Makedonska Alijansa). This party is registered in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.”

Makedonsko Sonce (Macedonian Sun)

Furthermore and in violation of article 7 of the aforementioned Agreement publication Makedonsko Sonce (Macedonian Sun) portrays the Sun of Vergina as its emblem. As I understand now it has a TV Channel and the Sun of Vergina is its emblem.

So, these are not the violations that Mrs. Sekerinska is talking about, of course, although they occur on a daily basis in the FYROM and abroad with the blessings of the political community and the citizens of that country.

Now, let me mention one violation that Mr. Dimitrov, the present chief diplomat of the FYROM in the UN has committed while representing his country as her US Ambassador and now as the UN Ambassador and the “talks,” a monologue I should say, since Greece offers names and the FYROM offers the double name as the solution.

When various states such as Texas were considering adopting resolutions in favor of the Greekness of the ancient Macedonians, this gentleman flew to Texas mingling in the internal affairs of the United States by lobbying with the Legislature of this State trying to persuade them not to adopt such resolution. He even gave interviews in the local media against the resolution. I doubt if he received permission from the US State Department to go out of the permitted 25 miles radius from Washington in order to mingle in the internal affairs of the country that hosts him. Texas passed the said resolution. Here are the details of Dimitrov’s visit to Austin Texas.

http://www.macedonianamerican.org/resolution/resolutionpage.htm

March 11, 2003 Columbus, OH: The Macedonian Ambassador to the US Nikola Dimitrov visits Austin and meets with the chair of the Border and international affairs Committee, Norma Chavez, the Texas Governor Rick Perry, and the Lt. Governor David Dewhurst. He also attends a reception hosted by the MAFA Focus Group, meets its members and exchange ideas about further moves against the resolution. He received assurances from Rep. Norma Chavez that her Committee has no intention of wasting time on Rep. Bonnen's resolution. The El Paso Times reports on the developments and clarifies that the resolutions at best going to be left to die in committee.

Can Mrs. Sekerinska clarify to all involved why is she talking about possible future violations on behalf of Greece and silences about factual violations of her own country?

Nina Gatzoulis

Vice-President of the Pan-Macedonian Association

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Excuse the typos-I meant to say "had his arguments bullet-holed" and then "Mr Smartass Epaminondas with all his superior googling skills"-shoving facts in someone's face causes one to make typos at the expense of rubbing it in.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SFZt0tl-B3U/R74of1IIO-I/AAAAAAAACbo/5q6w6Uosw9w/s400/skopiaprothipourgosmegalimakedonia22084.gif

Try this one; but a google search wMr Smartass Epaminondas with all his superior googling skills can find this rather easily but choose not to because he is a Skopian agent provocateur.

http://img225.imageshack.us/i/080402saeproedriomakedomj0.jpg/

This one's for Epaminondas-the Skopian apologist masquerading under a Greek name who has hit his fallcious arguments bullet-holed how many times yet insists on trying to be smart. Give it up you peanut.

This episode of Gruevski and the Banner is much talked about, but nobody here has actually seen the photo ! Is it possible to post the relevant URL ?

Sounds as if the episode was impolitic and unwise, but it's hardly the Siege of Sarajevo, is it ?

Experience in Northern Ireland rather makes one a bit dismissively tolerant of banners - if displaying a "historical" banner (and having a hopefully peaceful march with it) helps part of the population 'let off steam' and prevents what would otherwise be a riot or [...]

Read the full comment civil disturbance, then let us have banners. (Both sides have them: it's either the Battle of the Boyne 1691 and King Billy, or it's the 1916 Easter Rising and Padraig Pearse. The fact that the Catholic side have a penchant for using the Irish language slightly detracts from the message, as very few in Northern Ireland actually understand Irish !)

Getting back to Macedonia, presumably the Greek side have some pretty inflammatory banners too ? I can remember seeing a Greek demonstration in Belgrade which was all about "Zito Megala Makedonia", which with my limited Greek I translate as "Long Live Greater Macedonia". Not too friendly to ERYdM / fYRoM, is it ?

What can we say about Nicholas
Gruevski payinhg his respects to Gotse Delchrev(Bulgarian)Memorial in front of a Banner with Fyrom
up to Halkidiki if that's not
irredentalist then what is irredentalist and breaking the interim Accord,
Of course some nerd-like comments are refutable from both sides
My personal stance to the ICJ regarding Fyrom is nothing else than a diplomatic manoevre, trying to win time,under the pressure of Nimetz.

Elena is once again entirely right in what she posts about Greece's probable longer-term strategy about Macedonia; as the Romans put it: "divide et impera" / divide and rule.

But I suppose that in all fairness we should look at what Dr T says about Article 7 of the Interim Accord, if only to dismiss it. The key portion of this Article states:

"1. Each Party shall promptly take effective measures to prohibit hostile activities or propaganda by State-controlled agencies and to discourage acts by private entities likely to incite violence, hatred [...]

Read the full comment or hostility against each other."

Now, what exactly is meant by "hostile activities" ? Let us bear in mind that the Hague is also host to the International Crominal Court/ICC (technically separate from the ICJ, but the two Courts share a common personnel, interpretation, and secretarial base). Currently the ICC is hearing the case against Croatian General Ante Gotovina, alleging murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing and so on in the Serbian enclave of Knin. These are, if proven, real instances of "hostile activities", in other words "war crimes". (Yes, the Serbs did the same at Srebrenice and at the shelling of Sarajevo, but that doesn't excuse it.

Let us contrast this with the "hostile activities" of re-naming an airport, re-naming a few streets, and laying wreaths on a monument (all of which are alleged by Greece against Macedonia in violation of Article 7.) Seemingly somebody somewhere in Athens has lost a sense of proportion (or as the ICJ, ICC, and ECJ all call it : "proportionality".) I need not go on.

I think all neutral observers would agree that Macedonia has done some silly trivial things aimed at provoking Greece (the giant statue of Alexander the Great, for example), but it is unlikely that the Court will find that these actions, ill-advised as they are, are in contravention of Article 7. Not when compared with Srebrenica, certainly.

Secondly, there has been no violence on either side (good!). "Hatred" and "Hostility" seem to exist on both sides anyway, though more on the Greek one - just look at some of the previous postings on this site ! One could argue that Greeks posting about "Monkeydonians" contravenes Article 7, for example.

I think that's enough for the moment. But if Greece, as Dr T claims, has some "aces up its sleeve", it also has some very duff cards indeed in the same hand.

Teknikal. You shouldn't object to Article 11 being referred to; it was the basis of the case.

Funny, I didn't see a Greek submission in the ICJ years ago citing Article 7 - why wait until you are dragged before the ICJ to make a complaint?

Even if as you say there is evidence that Macedonia has breached art 7, it makes no difference. The case has as it's core: "Did Greece violate article 11?"

Once again you display the typical Greek attitude - lets isolate Macedonia (or [...]

Read the full comment put embargoes on it) so it will tear itself apart. The world could have done the same thing to Greece 60 years ago. That is probably the real reason Greece is against NATO and EU integration; they want to destabilize Macedonia. First you asked countries not to recognize Macedonia as a state, by any name. That failed and you applied an embargo. That failed and now you are vetoing NATO and (we can assume)the EU. Remember the claim of 250,000 Greeks living in Macedonia that needed to be protected? That was exactly the same type of claims your buddy Milosevic used to make before he invaded to 'protect' the minority. Unfortunately for you, the US stepped in and you chickened out.

to Tankman - yes, you may well have a point in general logic (and I agree that Macedonia should not have been so stupidly provocative with all the highway renamings, statues, etc.)

However, as Dr T would be the first to remind us, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has rather narrow terms of reference, and these exclude these provocations. Instead, they concentrate exclusively upon what Greece and Macedonia have done within the limits of the original Interim Accord.

Within these narrow terms, Greece may well have managed to wrong-foot itself over [...]

Read the full comment the NATO application, as Macedonia scrupulously observed all the "name" formalities, and Greece does not appear to have done so, especially in "orchestrating" a NATO non-consensus about Macedonian joining NATO (precisely how they did this is up to the Court.)

The second, more minor factor (but still a telling point) is that Macedonia got its act together before the Court deadlines, and Greece had to apply for a time extension as it "could not distinguish between the legal and the non-legal factors in the case". Really.....this is a bit amateurish even by Albanian standards !

So there we have it,and let's all see what happens. My money is on a technical victory for Macedonia...

Despite Dr. T's sometimes side-tracking; I think he has a point-after all, Macedonia broke the agreement by provoking Greece with those flags and the renaming of all those highways and so on. So if that is the case that they did break the agreement before Greece blocked them at NATO as people have indicated; then the fact that it has waited to this will work to Greece's advantage.

Macedonia will take them to court and claim Greece blocked them illegally and broke the Interim Accord and Greece could counter that it was already broken anyway before [...]

Read the full comment then and counter-claim.

Why they waited this long is anybody's guess, but I don't think Greece is stupid enough to break the agreement without their having something.

Just came from a holiday in Greece. No wonder why you Greeks want Macedonia so bad, it has a lovely countryside rich in agriculture and industry. Unlike southern Greece from Thessally down is a desolate place of dirty ugly towns and villages. Athens and Cornith lead the way of uncontrolled growth and sloppy architecture. It seems the ancient sites are the only things worth seeing. So i guess this is why you have this need for your ancient past! P.S You should change your name from Greece to Macedonia, maybe it will influence your southern half.

Well, Dr T, ephkharisto poli and all that, but I rather with you WOULD get on with your life and leave this site free from fruitless speculation. Your earlier efforts did you little credit.

Putting it bluntly, as Elena put it more politely, did Ellas oppose fYRoM/ERYdM NATO membership or did it not ? It rather seems that it did, both publicly and within NATO discussion fora. (The minutes of these discussions, by the way, are NOT normally 'classified', and will be accessible to the Court. If Greece indeed led the "tour de table", as is [...]

Read the full comment likely, it is toast.)

It is equally true that public utterances within Hellas about "Greece vetoing NATO" by Bakoyannis and Karamanlis can be prayed in aid as evidence by ERYdM. The distinction you draw between 'action' and 'words' is not very valid within NATO, where all is words: it would work better in the EU / ECJ. Unfortunately, this is not an ECJ case.

You are wrong too about Hellas being well able to wait a few years. The longer this case goes on, the more of the UN member-nations (125 out of 165 so far) will recognise ERYdM under its constitutional name of Republic of Macedonia.

Amongst the permanent members of the Security Council, unusually, it is only France who prevents unanimity - normally China and Russian are the blockage, but they have concurred with US and USA in favour of the "constitutional name". How far France will maintain this obstacle with another President in charge (Sarkozy now being incapacitated, pssibly permanently) is an interesting question.

If I were a betting man, I would bet on ERYdM winning the ICJ case within two years, and Greece fighting a grudging and malicious rearguard action subsequently. (Well Greece and Serbia always were blood-brothers, and I am sure that old contacts can be re-activated.)

By the way, if you want a YouTube video of the Court Proceedings in The Hague, I can oblige (so much for their "confidentiality" as you claimed.) I'd better check in advance with the Sofia Echo that they will allow this; the video is in the public domain, but you know just how awkward and pusillanimous lawyers can be !

Reading comprehension was never your strong suit was it Mr E? I said "this is getting old" as in the debate and the issue is getting tiresome. Moreover, you just admitted what I always knew in that the ICJ only puts up information enough to gain an idea of the situation which by extension validates my point that there is always more than meets the eye. So 0 for 2 thus far.

Now, you also proved another thing I had in mind; I lured you beautifully into admitting that NATO has a procedure involved which is [...]

Read the full comment not neccesarily a "vote" per se; so, if one member-nation expresses a "reserve" about a particular proposal, can it be proven that Hellas acted thusly?
So, it follows then that if we entertain the scenario that Hellas did not object, what's not to say that France or any other ally did not take heed of Hellas' concerns and act on its behalf? After all, many of the allies before and during the NATO summit carried out informal meetings and so forth-in which instance Hellas could have conveyed its concerns and convinced others to take up their case. This may be "objection" but again there is no sign that this was ever acted upon and we will not know for certain if it was indeed the case at all. Even if ultimately it was indicated that the allies there took Hellas' concerns into consideration that does not amount to all that much. Put simply, in that situation Hellas got others to do their work for them. You have to prove Hellas objected. Now, let's take Sarkozy, a staunch supporter of Hellas-he may have already had it in mind to not grant an invitation to FYROM into NATO and executed the objection Hellas allegedly entertained; likewise other states who were sympathetic to Hellas. The onus is on FYROM to prove Hellas objected to their invitation and acted upon this by persuading the other members. It has to be proven that Hellas at the tour-de-table acted in this manner and applied this effective "veto" with the other nations following suit. If that can be proven then there could be something.

Now to other matters- I am frankly very tired of Article 11 being referred to; because I have at length described how FYROM has violated the accord, particularly Articles 7- Which is here:

1. Each Party shall promptly take effective measures to prohibit hostile activities or propaganda by State-controlled agencies and to discourage acts by private entities likely to incite violence, hatred or hostility against each other. Well in this one FYROM has failed miserably and done nothing but incite fanaticism-which is the norm and not fringe behaviour, unlike Western democracies there are a litany of examples to draw upon.

2. Upon entry into force of this Interim Accord, the Party of the Second Part shall cease to use in any way the symbol in all its forms displayed on its national flag prior to such entry into force. Fail for FYROM here too with the use of the Sun of Vergina upon flags and government buildings, council/regional logos/coat of arms, and so on.

3. If either Party believes one or more symbols constituting part of its historic or cultural patrimony is being used by the other Party, it shall bring such alleged use to the attention of the other Party, and the other Party shall take appropriate corrective action or indicate why it does not consider it necessary to do so. I needn't add anything to this one-it explains it all; FYROM have refused to stop using these and not issued an explanation sufficient to explain their reasoning.

Even if the court decides to rule that Hellas did object to FYROM's entry into NATO all, once it has established what objection is and if it was exercised, all Hellas has to do it counter-claim that FYROM voided the Accord by violation of the aforementioned sections and thus come off relatively unscathed. Thus if it is the case that FYROM violated the accord (which it has innumerable times) before that summit then the Court will not be able to do all that much really considering it was breached before Hellas committed the alleged breach for which it is having its time wasted. The fact Hellas did not take FYROM to court over breaching it is again a gesture of good-will and a willingness to have the issue settled; and going by indications, the EU etc. have looked upon FYROM as increasingly intransigent to providing solutions; with Gruevski again returning to the "double formula" solution which has been tossed into the garbage. Now, the burden of proof for Hellas is laughably easy to accomplish given that it has volumes of FYROMian school textbooks and maps which promote its' expansionist agenda, photographs of Gruevski laying a wreath on Delcev's tomb with a map of "United Macedonia" on it, the renaming of sporting arenas, airports etc. and so on. So what say you on that?

In any event-I am just waiting to see what will unfold and Hellas has a few aces up its sleeve. Hellas can wait another five or ten years, FYROM cannot and its Albanian population has proven to be very impatient.

And one final thing-we can sit and argue the toss but we're not achieving squat are we? So I'll go off and get on with my life.

I think Elena is quite right in what she says. I agree with her interpretation of Greece "playing for time", too. Personally, I think Macedonia should stick to its guns. One firm ICJ judgement in its favour would carry a lot of international weight.

My 'little' comment? Length of prattle has little to do with making a point.

Why would a formal vote make a difference? Read article 11 - "OPPOSITION". The question the ICJ will ask is 'Did Greece oppose fYRoM joining NATO?'

I think all evidence points to them doing so. If it were not for Greece, would Macedonia have been invited? Yes. NATO has stated that.

Trying to state 'we didn't technically veto or vote' does not help you. But we will see what the ICJ does - Greece [...]

Read the full comment is just stalling for time. They are hoping that in the meantime that there is a concession on the name issue - and then they will ask Macedonia to drop the case.

Dt T - a more specific reply, now that we have sorted out your imminent Ascension (what the Germans rather nicely call "Himmelfahrt").

Firstly, the ICJ case is still very much current business between ERYdM/fYRoM and Helpless/Hellas, so we can't dismiss it as being 'redundant' or "old" as you claim, just because it suits you to do so. Verdict of the Court is apparently due in mid-2010, assuming that the Greek timetable for submitting evidence doesn't slip again !

Secondly, of course the ICJ website doesn't reveal all the details of any [...]

Read the full comment case, and nobody would expect it to. But it does communicate enough precision to enable us to form a view as to what is going on,and certainly enough to disprove some of the wilder assertions and hypotheses posted on this site (some from yourself.) So far the score stands at: ERYdM/fYRoM - 1 , Greece / Hellas - 0. (Personally, I think the non-Greek team deserves a better name !)

Thirdly, the Koumoustkakos story was specifically posted by "Sky" to try to spread doubt on the fYRoM case, so it is perfectly legitimate to shoot it down in flames.

Fourthly, you contradict yourself about the NATO voting procedure. At one point you (correctly) quote the Czech Fule as saying there is no NATO voting procedure as such. But then you go on to say yourself that "there has to be an unanimous decision and for that there obviously has to be a vote". Not true in NATO's case, and I have myself been at enough NATO meetings to confirm this.

How NATO actually works is as follows. Discussion takes place round a semi-circular table. If a proposal is made, there is a "tour de table" in alphabetical order (just like in the EU). If one member-nation expresses a "reserve" about a particular proposal, this suspends discussion until the Secretariat has had a chance to form a reply about the "reserve", while meanwhile other member-nations' delegations will have had a chance to reflect, or (if it is important) to phone Capitals for a new "Line to Take".
Subsequent discussion around the semin-circular table will then ensue. If (either) (A) the Secretariat confirms that the original "reserve" was justified, or (B) other member-nations now share the "reserve", the proposal will be dropped. If neither of these happens, and the original member-nation maintains its reserve, then the proposal will still be dropped. So there is indeed no "veto" mechanism as such, though in practice the member-nation with a "reserve" is applying a veto in all but name.

And this - from the viewpoint of a NATO insider - is what it seems that Greece did.

Interesting to see what the ICJ makes of this, and foolish of Greek politicians to maintain in public that they had applied a "veto" in NATO. They may have lost their ICJ case by so doing...

Second typo duly noted. And that's all folks.

Dr T - unless you mean to invoke a Higher Court up above, when you say "Ascension" you might perhaps have better said "Accession"....

Ahem, note the typo-it should read "nobodies like you and I".

Epaminondas-honestly this is getting redundant and I know what your game is.

First things, first, do you seriously believe that they are going to show everything on the ICJ for the average person to know what's going on there? I would say for the most part, not. To think otherwise is naive-there are machinations at a level you or I will never be able to gain access to-they will merely provide some snippets for people to believe it is serving its function-in this day and age lives are sold for next to nothing and you're trying [...]

Read the full comment to tell me that they are going to have nobodies like you and completely informed of all at work? It's a stretch and that's being polite.

Second, Koumoutsakos' statement is not taken to be the "gospel truth" but it does nevertheless raise something to at least think about; when has a politician ever told the entire "truth"? Never. Do not think to have the temerity to insult my intelligence that I take everything he or others say as truth; I was entertaining a scenario as others have here, as you have and others have and will.

As for the US lawyer-what of it? That in the grand-scheme of things means nothing in terms of their argumentation; a hired gun as case makes not.

Further, for the benefit of the discussion I chose to refer to FYROM by its English acronym; I needn't use the French in this instance and yes I am well aware that the ICJ operates utilising French as its official language-that doesn't change their name in English now does it?

Now for the other matter- the question of law is this: FYROM needs to prove Hellas opposed their ascension to NATO. There is conjecture/statements that they would veto. That's fine. However, they may have "opposed" the invitation of FYROM (in words) but it DID NOT and I REPEAT, DID NOT use the veto or act upon said opposition. For opposition to exist in these instances these has to be tangible evidence to indicate that Hellas utilised the framework of NATO and the mechanisms therein to object to their entry. To that end, for ascension there has to be a unanimous decision and for that there obviously has to be a vote.

On that, Stefan Fule of the Czech Republic said that the country's NATO accession WAS NOT blocked only by one NATO member.At the Summit (in Bucharest), the member countries failed to reach a consensus, there was no VOTING PROCEDURE, Fule said.

So to Elena's little remark-were it the case that it could be proven there was a vote and Hellas did indeed vote against FYROM, then yes, there is grounds for claiming a violation. The fact that Hellas stated they would veto was cheap populism; it's as simple as that-saying and doing are two different things. Certainly the intent may have been there but it was never acted upon-you have to define "objection"-is it words or actions? I am inclined to believe it's more action in the case of the NATO summit.

Now Elena tells us a delightful little story about how NATO has stated "Hellenic opposition" was the only obstacle; Hellenic politicians have stated that they vetoed FYROM"- so wait, my impression is that you have way overestimated Hellas' influence such that allies like France, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Iceland, Hungary, Slovakia etc. could be swayed-if that is the case I am astounded. So what you're saying is that essentially, these nations appeased Hellas because it threatened to veto, is that it? Again, it comes down to the interpretation of object and whether Hellas did indeed do that-

Honestly this is ridiculous and FYROM have nothing to stand on. All they can say is that Hellas objected to them in words, but the praxis was never evidenced. As for Hellas taking this matter to court-by it not doing so when there were innumerable provocations by FYROM is indicative of its resolve to finally end this matter.

Enough has been said-and it's getting very old.

Sorry, Elena - I hadn't seen your two postings when I posted myself just now. But you are completely and entirely right in what you say.

With respect, Dr Teknikai, you do not answer any of my points, but go off on one of your habitual lengthy side-tracks.

Firstly, I asked why you and "Sky" had wasted about 20 column-centimetres on this site speculating about a "what if" scenario in which FYRoM applied to the ICJ under the wrong name. It only needed the IT intelligence of the average 10-year old child to log into the easy-to-navigate ICJ website and immediately find out that this was actually not the case. Even I could do so.

Secondly, the ICJ [...]

Read the full comment site is actually extremely informative as the the progress of its various cases and the arguments advanced by its lawyers (I found out a great deal about the current Georgia / Russia case, for example.) So don't try to blind us with professional science and tell us it is all hidden behind a "secret curtain", because it certainly isn't.

Thirdly, as regards Koumoutskakos' comments, anybody who takes what a government press spokesman says (and I speak as a former senior government functionary myself) to be legal gospel, should not be in his/her job ! This might also apply to Dora Bakoyannis, who is on record as saying throughout that "Greece is fully prepared". Evidently....as you yourself admit, Greece was caught out.

Fourthly, since it looks as if FYRoM have got a sharp professional legal team with at least one US lawyer, and have submitted their full case already, they seem fairly confident that they have not breached the Accord. You may argue otherwise, but your track-record on the earlier "what-if" argument would not lend you very much credibility in so doing.

Finally, it isn't FYRoM any more, but ERYdM "Ex-Republique Yougoslave de Macedoine", as the ICJ main language is of course French.

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/142/14963.pdf

NATO didn't block Macedonia. They didn't invite them because Greece had stated that they would veto any invitation.

Article 11 states that Greece cannot "oppose" fYRoM joining an international organisation. Greece obviously opposed their entry. NATO has stated Greek opposition was the only obstacle; Greek politicians have stated that they vetoed Macedonia.

I would say it is a pretty open and shut case as to whether Greece violated the Accord. How do you say Greece didn't oppose it?

You hit the problem as soon as you started.

You are not required to provide reasons why you vetoed Macedonia - you are required to prove that you didn't "oppose" their application.

That is what you are being accused of.

If you feel Macedonia violated the Accord - then you should have done what was stated in the Accord...
take it to the ICJ...

Instead it looks like you are trying to justify a violation of the accord.. something that you will [...]

Read the full comment not be asked.. they don't give a shit WHY you did it... it is DID you do it...

Okay, first off I said IF FYROM applied with the name ROM they'd be in big trouble; second, there are facts that you, I or anybody else ehere are not privy to and with that we can't really comment definately only conjecture based on what is presented. After all, Koumoutsakos would not make such remarks if there was not good reason to-posturing and bluster aside.

As regards Hellas' application for extra time-I believe they were caught unaware but that said, are probably preparing a voluminous brief containing a mountain of violations perpetrated by FYROM to completely [...]

Read the full comment negate their argument and make them look quite idiotic in court. That aside, I honestly believe Hellas did not take FYROM to be so idiotic as to take this issue to court where the negotiations are an ongoing process-it's as if to say "You're a bully so I will have you reprimanded, but I still want to play ball with you"; Hellas for all we know can just be clever and say they want FYROM in international organisations etc. but its attitude of provocation has not helped it and that it has made little to no progress. I believe the Accord can be side-stepped in terms of that where Hellas indeed probably did not want FYROM in NATO but had the others do the job for them.

I expect this to be a simple open and shut case of FYROM violating the Accord, and NATO blocking FYROM-not Hellas as I have indicated. This is all stalling so Gruevski doesn't get lynced.

Just to be helpful, here is the URL to the ICJ Court "Ordonnance" or Order (the official language is French, not English) setting out the time limits for the case:

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/142/14963.pdf

This contains the point that the Greeks asked for extra time to prepare their case, being unable as yet to distinguish between legal and non-legal aspects of it.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that (a) Greece was taken unawares, or (b) Greece is playing for time, or (c) the Greek administration is [...]

Read the full comment not as competent as it thinks. Or possibly all three together.

The legal team from ERYdM (FYRoM in French) appears to contain one American name....probably the 'pro bono' contribution.

Any comment, Dr Teknikal ?

Just a short post-script: if I can find it perfectly straightforward to check the ICJ case facts by simply using Google (ok, I know French, which sometimes helps), surely others can do the same and thus prevent all sorts of silly false rumours arising, like Dr T's battery hens........ And Sky, you can do the same too.

Or have I got some magic Googling gift that the two of you and others have not got ? That would be the day.....

Well, answer being there none (!), I contacted the ICJ Secretariat myself, and here is the relevant document URL:

http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/142/14881.pdf

The short answer seems to be that the Koumoutsakos argument is NOT well founded, and that FYRoM filed all the requisite documents quite correctly under that name, not the name of RoM. So the eventuality that you, Dr T, describe will not take place, and you can put all the eggs back under the hens.

One interesting thing to emerge from the ICJ is that [...]

Read the full comment Greece seems to be dragging its feet - whereas FYRoM could (and did) file its entire case by 20 July as bidden by the Court, Greece claimed to be "unable to distinguish the legal from the non-legal factors" ( a bit of an amateurish excuse !), and demanded time until January 2010 to do so.

The Court granted this, but will in the meantime have formed a slightly unfavourable initial view about the Greek case (what the French call "une prejudice defavorable")

Hope this is helpful to everybody

As a lifeling believer in the "Chaos" theory of history and politics, now is the time for the GREEK Province of Macedonia suddenly to declare independence or "antienosis" if my Classical Greek is correct.

After all, the Province was badly treated under both the Hellenic Kingdom and the Republic, and was only given its rightful name of "Macedonia" by Athens as recently as 1989 ! (This in itself rather detracts from the current Greek action against FYROM - before 1989 FYROM was the only "Macedonia" in sight ! So Greece cannot claim long-standing 'name abuse' as [...]

Read the full comment it would otherwise like to.)

Zito Makedonia Ellenika kai Anaxartita !

Well - did they or didn't they ? Somebody must know, surely - like the ICJ Secretariat ?

The argument posited by Koumoutsakos and then expanded upon by me is that, essentially, FYROM, by filing the complaint under the name of "Republic of Macedonia" rather than FYROM (at a UN court no less) has breached the Interim Accord-the very thing which it accuses Hellas of doing by "vetoing" its NATO admission.

This would be an extremely damaging and embarrassing gaffe on their end as by filing the complaint they find themselves doing exactly what they accuse the other of-except in this instance the evidence will be visible for all to see and not be [...]

Read the full comment based upon conjecture/innuendo or posturing for that matter.

I can only speculate by if they indeed filed the complaint under ROM instead of FYROM they're toast.

Dr T - I got a bit lost with that prolix argument. In the proverbial nutshell, precisely what is the point you are trying to make ?

Sky, if it is indeed the case where FYROM has applied to the ICJ under it's "constitutional name" to protect the acronym which it avoids using in international fora like the plague-then not only will there be egg on their face, but the whole proverbial battery hen factory will. This action in and of itself is a blatant violation of the Interim Accord and I believe will open proverbial flood-gates; this is a whopper of a breach if there ever was one.

FYROM had already breached a number of articles under it, among these the use [...]

Read the full comment of hostile, goverment-sanctioned propaganda in its official publications and "education" materials in schools, and its official policy of irridentism where it uses the highly offensive term 'Aegean Macedonia'-for a classic example look no further than Gruevski laying a wreath on the tomb of Delcev with a map of "United Macedonia" on it.

I honestly don't know what to make of this all-either they are getting some really shoddy legal advice (even if it is pro bono so then the firms/lawyers etc. advocating for them are getting free publicity) or they are that legitimately mentally impaired. All Hellas has to do is illusrate every example of provocation from FYROM and then have its allies in NATO, again, explain its reasoning for FYROM's non-acceptance-the Czech FM who was viewed as sympathetic to their cause even acknowledged that a concensus was not reached. Suffice to say, in the event the EU denies their entry because of their failure to reach the benchmarks, will we see a repeat of this action? I hope so, because FYROM will be obliterated.

Put simply, Hellas has to stick to its guns, show that FYROM have breached the Accord and demonstrate its resolve to see FYROM as a NATO ally, provided it can get its house in order and acquiesce to the UN's dictates on the name

to Sky - thanks. The Greek government is treading an extremely fine ("fine" = narrow in this context), based on obviously good legal advice. But the ICJ has competence to overturn this if it so decides (after the usual two years' due process !)

My own experience lies more in the domain of the European Court / ECJ. But if this were an ECJ case, I wouldn't be placing any bets on an ultimate Greek victory (the UK actually lost a very similar case in 1994 on another 'name' issue.)

Dr Tek, here is some further interesting reading regarding this legal issue, taken from the Greek Embassy website: http://www.greekembassy.org/embassy/content/en/Article.aspx?office=3&folder=361&article=24489
[...] "Foreign ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos also again dismissed Skopje's claim that Greece had violated the 1995 Interim Accord, adding that Athens considered the agreement to be still in force.
"These are two separate processes. In any case, the Interim Accord prevents holding a discussion or resolving the name issue at the International Court at The Hague. The dispute over the name cannot be an object for the Court. The negotiation process [...]

Read the full comment exists," Koumoutsakos said.

The spokesman did not fail to point to a "paradox" of the case brought before the ICJ by the Gruevski government in Skopje, however.
"The neighbouring country is resorting to the International Court at The Hague, which is an institution of the United Nations, using its so-called constitutional name in an effort to protect a temporary name [Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)] that it has at no time utilised in international organisations as it was obliged," he pointed out.[...] have any opinions on this?

Well - by way of olive branch - Dr T, when my father was teaching in Liverpool before the Second World War, the other teachers regularly used to classify the less able pupils respectively as "dolts, cretins, and morons". The difference was that dolts could sometimes read a few words, cretins couldn't, and morons didn't even know what words were.

Times move on, and in these politically-correct days this vocabularly is strictly out-of-use. (But my father still used to use it about obstreperous shop-assistants right up to his death in 1995 ! Trouble is, in many [...]

Read the full comment cases he was probably right !)

Dr Tek, nice stuff and I agree with most everything you posted. I want to add that if the international community would give them a piece of land in Central America they could call themselves Republic of Aztecs. Why not, that's another assimilated civilization with a good reputation and a name that nobody else is using right now so there won't be any disagreements like the one with Macedonian Greeks...the FyromSlavs will have the counterfeit legacy they've always wanted and still have a long history that isn't theirs...nobody else should mind, it's just a name, right? Nobody seems to be [...]

Read the full comment using the name Aztecs right now, they should have picked that one...they would be equally satisfied. Fyrom's mistake was picking a name that was already taken by their neighbors...those dumb Yugoslavians.

Epaminondas-I was only scratching the proverbial tip of the iceberg-I could write at length about Northern Ireland and The Troubles, and the innumerable other differences you point out in terms of cultural, linguistics etcetera- I was going for a simple example and perhaps, in hindsight, should have chosen a better example-i.e. the Communists and the Nationalists of China or something along those lines. Ultimately, it becomes inconsequential when the debate is bogged down with details such as those-we are here to debunk the pseudo 'Macedonians'.

As regards my use of "dolt"-my faux pas there and you [...]

Read the full comment are most certainly correct in stating that is an actionable term-unfortunately passion gives way to libel so that is duly noted. That said, sadly we live in a litigant society and equally, were I the type I could equally utilise the epithets bestowed upon me in an action; but that's no fun now is it? That said, I'll just refer to the facts and save the colourful language in case the kiddies read it; further, I am writing extremely informally as you can see-primarily for ease and entertainment-value.

With respect, Dr Teknikal, as you are a senior lawyer you should know that the pejorative word "dolt" can be an actionable term these days under various legal jurisdictions. Yet it is a word that you use repeatedly. I find this surprising for one of your own advanced legal background.

Similarly with Northern Ireland, which you cite. The two sides are divided by much more than just religion: ethnicity, history, tribalism, language (the "Fenian" RC side uses Irish Gaelic, the Prods use a dialect of Scots English), sport (one side plays Gaelic Football, the other plays [...]

Read the full comment marching games). And both sides hate immigrants, Roma, Pakistanis, Chinese, and Greeks running restaurants (I think the Macedonians have sensibly stayed out of the place, though they run some good restaurants in Brussels !)

So, with the greatest possible respect, you are getting a lot of your details wrong. I am, of course, only here to help you get them right.

Here's the difference between you and I Lovely Fyromski-your childish little remarks did not even so much as a register a blip on my radar hence why I did not even bother to dignify them-however you have seem to be genuinely pertubed at how I enjoy I pull no punches in calling you and your ilk for the frauds you are. Identity theft is a crime, just so you and the other FYROMian mental midgets know.

Again, I was not aware telling the truth is rude-but then in FYROMistan you do that and they either haul [...]

Read the full comment you into a psych ward or abduct you into a prison so I can sense how much of a premium truth is in that Fascist dung-heap.

Seeing as you brought up Jesus-who is an imaginary character-say hi to Sashe Velikiotov and Bukefalovski too, seeing as those too are also products of sick, degenerate minds.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I know you are trying to ridicule me you idiot! So was I, but as I can see your brain is limited.

I haven't met anyone as rude as you. Ain't wasting my time nor my words on you, man.

Jesus.

So long!

Lovely FYROmian-get a lobotomy you dolt. If you cannot offer any evidence to prove your sick agenda get lost and leave the discussion to the adults here.

That aside I don't know how you consider the truth insulting-but in your house of cards world if you were told that are cognitively defective and were proven as such you'd still claim to be victimised.

I know who I am but evidently Tito had to invent an identity for you and your ilk and even now it's being dismantled piece by filthy piece.
[...]

Read the full comment />
For the record- I just wanted to ridicule FYROM for what a 3rd world ghetto it is by referring to my massive paycheck;but then it's like flogging a dead horse. Thataside, I am doing something useful-I am ridiculing you FYROMian charlatans and your idiotic, manufactured identity and grasp of history.

So here's the skinny-prove your statements or beat it.

Oh, so you are a lawyer... He, he, he! Thanks for telling me that! I know how you are like. You are just talking and talking and talking and never saying anything useful. You are not like Alan Shore, man. Sorry.

As I can see from this ambiguously long mail is that you are just crying over something that's not yours and never will be.

I really don't understand why you are insulting and you know you are. So stop it.

I can see that you are talking [...]

Read the full comment about money. Who even asked you about your money?!?! No one said anything about that. I don't even want to know about you! Tut tut tut...

P.S. For further notice: when someone says: get a job, it means - do something useful! Don't tell me about you! I don't want to know!

I know who I am, but you don't.

Peace!

Lovely Fyromian-I don't know how you construe the truth and fact as insults-but then yours and your deluded kins' egos are as fragile as eggshells and when your identity is exposed for the fraud it is you cry victimisation; I do have a job by the way as a bigshot lawyer and make more in a day than what you and your ilk would "earn" in a month so give it a rest.

As regards education and history books-it's amusing that when FYROMian students were interviewed about where the borders of your sad fiefdom ended they [...]

Read the full comment thought Larissa in Thessaly, Hellas of all places! Milososki the muppet then proceeded to claim it was natural for these students to be confused and that Hellenic students would equally be instructed that Constantinople (or Istanbul to be politically correct) is considered Hellenic land; of course he's dense in saying so and only proves further how mentally challenged you all are. I will even go so far as to say you probably have copies of the hogwash put out by Stefov and Donski covered in gold-leaf and love to dress in those laughable plastic hoplite outfits-which are so pathetic they remind me of something from Asterix. Care to show me which of these "history books" portray Macedonians as anything but Hellenic-and I will show you that you merely pick and chose what suits your sick agenda.

Further, I bet your brainpower is lacking you believe that because the Spartans, Athenians, Thessalians, Epirotes, Macedonians, Thebans and all the other Hellenic tribes/city states were in a period of internecine warfare they were "non-Hellenic"-to really show how stupid this is-try teling an American that because the Union and the Confederacy fought they are not American-they'd laugh at you. Likewise tell the Japanese that the Genji and Minamoto clans were not Japanese because they too fought for supremacy and they'd probably hit you very hard right between the eyes. Same with the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland (forget the British there) who are only divided by religion and the list goes on ad infinitum.

Game over.

No point of arguing with my dear fellow greeks, coz you are only hearing the sound of your voice.

You will never be Macedonians, no matter how you try and no matter how bad you want it. Why? Because of the history. I really don't know what they said in your history books, but in most books around the world, never ever Ancient Macedonia is refered to as Ancient Grece. Ancient Greece is totally different than Ancient Macedonia.

I really don't know why you are bothering so much. We are not brainwashed, [...]

Read the full comment and don't you insult us "Doctor" sth sth. I didn't insult you! Get a job and stop with the insults!

Yours truly,
Macedonian :)

At least every one will know how Greece changes peoples last names spo they sound greek it dose not matter if your turkish orthodox, Macedonian, albainian or bulgarian, your greek now.....

Thanks, Dr Teknikai - though it is very unlikely that more than 1% of the UK population knows what "irredendist" actually means (the US population would score rather less than !%, I think). It just isn't a word we ever use in common parlance, not even in the most intellectual of newspapers such as The Times.

(What is the French for it, and is it used in Le Figaro ?)

The straightforward English for it would be "boundary-grabbing", which is what all our newspapers would say.

As for [...]

Read the full comment "Back from Hell", one man's waste of money is another man's "money well spent". Anyway, the ICJ at the Hague have agreed to take the case on, so this discussion is now redundant.

Useless and ridiculous Skopjans actions against Greece. A stupid waste of money...

Ahem-typo there-I meant "irredentist"-so very clever pun on my typo. But my point stands.

Dr Teknikal - the African nations do not need to fabricate genocide, as you state - they practice it daily in real life.

I'm never sure what "irridentist" means, as we never use the word in UK English, anyway. Is it the same as a "dental hygienist" (i.e. irrigates the gums and teeth before serious dentistry ?)

Epaminondas, these nations in Africa do not go misappropriating history and fabricating genocides/ethnic cleansing etc. among the litany of fabrications/provocations FYROM commit on an hourly basis; don't forget that. So the Congo is completely irrelevant to that end as far as that is concerned.

As for agonising over history-the point is that we are agonosing today over history that is being used to create a pseudo-identity; I think you are clever enough to realise that we are not arguing about facts from 2000+ years ago; we are arguing about their twisting, manipulation, fabrication to suit a [...]

Read the full comment sick nationalistic and irridentist agenda. That aside, every politician and nation in the world knows that Macedonia is Hellenic and the recognition of FYROM is that is nothing more than a political power-play/Machiavellianism-it's as simple as that really; I figure let FYROM make fools of themselves and they will ultimately implode soon enough. I'm sick of them and their brainwashed drones anyway.

Sorry, Dr Teknikal, but it's happened before in both Europe and Africa and it will doubtless happen again (interesting to work out which African republic has the rights to the same "Congo" - there are at least four contenders !)

History is history, as Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis reminded us all very recently, so let us deal with the present-day world and its problems, and not agonise (good Greek word, that !) over what may have happened before, thousands of years ago. As the old Soviet Union always used to put on its May Day banners [...]

Read the full comment - Vpriod (to the future!) For once the Soviets, not for the first time, may have been right after all ! (A truly Russian solution - exactly as with St Petersburg / Leningrad - would be to re-name Skopje as "Vardargrad", and to rename the region around it as "Makedonskaya Oblast" / "Makedonskaya Respublika".

S uvazheniem

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained

to Makedonia: with the greatest possible respect, this issue is completely irrelevant to the politics and realities of the 21st century (AD, just to remove any ambiguity, given the preoccupation of some with the years BC !)

The Republic of Macedonia is a sovereign state recognised by the UN. If its government wants to play silly games by renaming airports of highways after Classical-era Macedonian figures, that is its affair, and nobody else's. Personally I think this is a waste of national resources, but that's only my personal view.

If Greece jumps [...]

Read the full comment up and down and protests, Greece is merely joining in the same childish game that Republic of Macedonia started. All other neighbouring states will hopefully take a more adult approach and ignore the whole thing (as indeed Bulgarian is.)
Turkey may, of course, see the opportunity to spread mischief.

Meanwhile, I hope that the Pergamon Museum in Berlin is not beseiged by modern-day Trojans from Turkey, or the Elysee Palace in France besieged by Hellenes claiming that the original Elysee was Greek.

We live in the 21st century as I said, our history is behind us, so let us all move on.

Epaminondas, I dont know if you have enough intellect to understand the issue here.

The citizens of FYROM are brainwashed in believing they have a connetion to the Ancient Macedonians.

On one had the government is renaming everything in FYROM to an Ancient Greek Name as well as erecting Statues of Ancient Greek heritage.

On the other hand their leader publicly states they are not Descendants from the Ancient Macedonian.

"We are slavs who came to this area in the 6th Century. We are [...]

Read the full comment not descendants of the Ancient Macedonians" The words of Kiro Gligorov (FYROM President) February 26th 1992.

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained

Scipio - no worries: the incorrect site was actually very informative (Google "Livonia" and then go for the second one down with the mention of "Crusades"). The Knights of Livonia seem to have given the Fourth Crusade a good name by comparison, having rampaged across all the Baltic States with impunity. (Since the Livonian Crusade started in 1206 AD, and the Fourth Crusade finished in 1204, it could well be the same Knights involved !)

It all ended with the Sweded pacifying everybody and then initiating the Second Swedish Crusade in 1246, during which they conquered [...]

Read the full comment Finland. (I never knew this bit before, so thanks again for an instructive and highly entertaining wrong posting !)

The correct posting was a bit boring by comparison. Yes, the Macedonians should ease off on "Alexander the Great"; it's probably inaccurate, it doesn't help the situation with Greece, and it wastes scarce resources. Against that, very few people in the rest of the EU who are not professional Hellenic scholars care very much about the issue, if indeed they care anything at all about Ancient History. (You and I are in a minority once one gets north of Skopje).

The story of Grand Duke Adelbert of the Holy Livonian Order is, by comparison, much more rivetting, as he sacked (i.e. killed all the men, raped all the women, and went off with all the treasure) the cities of Danzig, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Daugavpils (the word 'pils' means 'castle', not 'beer' up in the Baltic States), and Kaunas. Much more interesting to us Northern Europeans than Alexander...

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Boris.
soory indeed the correct site is
epc.eu and not epc.org my fault

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Boris
Srdjan Cvijic warns that the bilateral dispute with Greece over the country’s name is not the only challenge facing the government, and argues that its policy of renaming public sites with names from antiquity is short-sighted and risks becoming a liability.
www.epc.org
NB
Ouzo is not in my habits my man
I surely did not mention Romans
in my post
"in favor of the poor" is better
or "for the good of poor"
so calm down and don't [...]

Read the full comment react that
way when you feel a bit cornered.
cheers

I think "Macedonia" has rather lost the plot. It doesn't matter a blind bit of difference who was in a particular territory in pre-Christian antiquity - today's Europe is founded on more recent roots.

Descartes pointed out that one should always ask the question: "Si c'etait autrement" - What if it were different ?

The alternative is a European Union whose members are comprised of: Gaul, Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, Moors in Spain, Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Turks in Hungary (Battle of Mohacs, 1525), and Romanians under Vlad [...]

Read the full comment the Impaler, otherwise known as Count Dracula.

Or else, we go back to the present day and simply recognise all current political entities as the UN Charter bids us to.

(It does occur to me in passing that this whole problem arises because Greece needs to grow more confident about the stability of its cultural identity. It seems to have taken 3000 years for its shaky confidence to get this far, so maybe they should simply attach less importance to it and start repaying their massive national debt.)

Come on, Scipio, you posted at 23.06 hrs CET, when presumably the ouzo had done its work.

In the cold light of morning you might realise that the Latin phrase "pro bono publico" was in fact invented by the modern legal profession (not by the Romans !) to describe work done for free. So it is entirely normal for a "poor" applicant in an expensive court to be aided in this way.

I should point out again that the ICJ would not even have accepted this case if its secretariat had not [...]

Read the full comment judged that there was a reasonable chance of Macedonia winning it.

lol u slav's are funny trying 2 act tuff on the internet,pick up a book on the subject of ancient HELLAS and there it is baby MAKEDONIA northern greece no slav's insight unless ur a brainwashed skop then even jesus was a slav lol

Doctor Teknikal, It is obvious from the comments posted that people are not challenging the historical facts that you and I have pointed out but highlighting how confused they are on the matter.

When their leader publicly states they are not Descendants from the Ancient Macedonians the case is closed.

"We are slavs who came to this area in the 6th Century. We are not descendants of the Ancient Macedonians" The words of Kiro Gligorov (FYROM President) February 26th 1992.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKVlty4FsZo&NR=1
[...]

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P.S. What in the world's name are you quoting?? You have found out on some newspaper something and read about it and you think that is true?? Please dear, spear all of us :).

I sense that Doktor Teknikal is a hostile... Hm... Hm... Hm.. I don't like you. I think you should go and sleep :).

(I wonder how low you will go now by swearing :))

Bye bye :)

Robert your statement isn't even worth dignifying; so I will say this much: prove Borza said what you claim and drop the childish racism you have; otherwise do everybody a favour and shut your pork-trap.

I like you guys, Robert and Elena :) and my other fellow Macedonians.

Macedonia will never be Greek no matter what you rubbish Greek people say.

And you - king sth sth - what country are you talking about, you idiot? Coz we are Republic of Macedonia :).

But Borzas main agument is that modern day greece is a fictitious joke which has been bastrdaized and brainwashed into believing they are of hellene ako phoenician decent...

To the idiots who maintain that Borza (who flip-flops on his stance anyway) considers FYROMians as "Macedonian" chew on this:

Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and "Macedonians", cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky [...]

Read the full comment road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival..
"Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999

'Nuff said.

FYROM

Speak Bulgarian, 30% of the Population is Albanian

A bunch of nobodies

Robert. Od kade shto si ti. I can tell by the lingo.

cheers!!

Macedonia is never Greek!!

ahaha da mozi vo pravo si nashata...ti od kade si?

Robert, there was another study that said they were 12.4cm by 'Condoms Consultancy' in Germany but that was self reported which means they probably lied and are much smaller!! Anyway, enough talk about their small weenies I just wanted to warn Sonja.

Mozit prvo beshe ta Sonja ama vtorijot pat shto na pisha beshe od Grk...ama chekaja. Mozit kako Grkinka gledat so moustache!! lol

Elena i would not really take much notice of wikipedia which greeks tend to get their history from as this online site is as biased as a greek in a turkish mothers womb. You see you and i can write and add to wikipedia posts.
In saying that the greek government may have possibly overstated the size of the penises and therefore may be much smaller.

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Nobody is saying we can't both be Macedonians. OMG a Greek we can talk to!
On both sides we have problems with people that want to 'own' the name Macedonia. Ancient Macedonia was bigger than both of our countries. I agree with you Stam, that politicians are using this to avoid problems. What do you think of the name Republic of Macedonia?

Stamos you are not Greek, but attempting to play the Greek to
create seeds of doubt and portray lack of unity within the Greek Side.

Stamos the Skopian horse. :)

History and the facts outlined below by Macedonia cant be changed.

Oh here we go. We can't state that the FYRoMians are pure Slavs just like that. Everybody is a mixture in the Balkans. For us to say that they are not related in some way is ridiculous - where did all the Macedonians go? We sound stupid trying to argue against DNA that states that they have a partial connection. The name issue has nothing to do with DNA anyway. Seriously, do we make all Greeks take DNA tests? None of us can claim to be the only Macedonians - or their descendants. That is why this name issue (which [...]

Read the full comment is really only an issue to our nationalist politicians) is ridiculous. We have much bigger problems than that!

Northern Greece has been considered Macedonian for 3000 years.

The Slavs did not set foot in the Balkans until 1000 years AFTER Alexander the Great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKVlty4FsZo&NR=1

And people have taught classics for decades and stated that Macedonians were not Greek - like Badian or Borza.

Geneticists like iGenea have stated that Macedonians are related to the Ancient Macedonians.

What do you have that is more convincing than DNA?

Studied classics for over 20 years. Macedonians were a Greek tribe, sometimes hated like the Spartans and other times admired like the Thebans. I have no clue what the people of Fyrom believe but I can tell you it is very sad and dangerous to alter Greek history. However Greece is on a losing side. As long as the UK and USA continue to back Turkey, Fyrom and any other nation Greece has a dispute with, little Greece will always lose and this is very unfair.

Boris
comE on
You know as I know that nothing is done "pro bono publico",
specially big law-firms
Moscow is out of the question.
Beijing is nearly excluded because of good diplomatic relations with
Greece.
Prove me wrong that the politics
of Uncle Sam is not Imperialistic
yeah my man it is surely Altruistic

When the case was first announced, the FYRoMians stated that they had some US legal firms (in New York I believe)that would work 'pro bono' on this.

The reason why this hasn't been laughed out of the ICJ is that unfortunately they have a case!

All the tap-dancing around the 'we didn't actually veto' line does nothing; the Accord doesn't say 'veto', it says 'oppose'. Everybody has said the only reason why FYRoM is not in NATO is Greek opposition; our own resident idiots Karamanlis and Bakoyannis have both boasted about 'vetoing [...]

Read the full comment FYRoM' in public statements. We are up a creek if we try to argue that our actions didn't constitute opposition to FYRoM's entry to NATO. Yes, they did seek to enter under FYRoM - not RoM.

How do we argue that we didn't oppose it? With respect, you are a lawyer - tell me.

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Macedonia, we can say all that till we're blue in the face, but unfortunately the brainwashing in FYROM is so effective that they truly believe they are the progeny of Sashe Velikiotov and Bukefalovski. After all they are that insecure they have so many labels for people that don't tow the official propaganda line it's mindboggling and anybody who does not follow that line is either arrested, institutionalised or marginalised. I mean first they were so ecstatic that Boskovski got off of war crimes, and now he says that Gruevski is inept and he's suddenly a "predavnik" and so on [...]

Read the full comment and so on-they can turn on you like they can change their identity at the flip of a dime.

Let them wallow in their ignorance I say and their come-uppance will be in the dismemberment of their circus state by warring ethnic factions; idiotic blind nationalism like theirs can only have disastrous results-Milosevic and Sakashvili anybody? We needn't sully ourselves or our hands on them.

The Ancient Macedonians spoke Greek, wrote Greek and worshipped Greek Gods.

Every known town in Ancient Macedonia was given a Greek name.

The current language in FYROM is Slavic and was not used by the Ancient Macedonians.

"We are slavs who came to this area in the 6th Century. We are not descendants of the Ancient Macedonians" The words of Kiro Gligorov (FYROM President) February 26th 1992.

"We are Macedonian but we are Slav Macedonian. We have no connection to Alexander the GREEK and [...]

Read the full comment his Macedonia" The words of Kiro Gligorov (FYROM President) March 15th 1992.

Boris-no offence taken dear fellow; when one makes so civilised a conversation I am always more than happy to oblige whether I am right or wrong. As regards the divide between the Francophones and the Flemish-speakers of the region I am aware of that-it gets even more interesting with the Walloon speakers and so on and yes-thankfully they are civilised as to not shoot at each other unlike certain other ethnic communities who purport to be models/paragons of cultural and ethnic integration.

Dr Teknikal - thanks; no offence intended (and I hope none taken).

The main frontier in the Lowlands is an invisible one within Belgium - drive west from French-speaking Liege and you will suddenly find that nobody understands you, as the entire town only speaks Flemish ! And vice-versa from Courtrai/Kortrijk southwards....however, at least they don't shoot each other !

Touche Boris-I got confused for a moment between Luxembourg and Holland etc. you know how it is with the Lowlands etc.- but joking aside, my hat I tip to you-I should have consulted a map again to be extra thorough so a big faux pas on my end.

As regards the "Great Britain" thing I was being a bit ironic-but yes, I have heard of the term of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland stemming from "The Troubles" with the ghastly sectarian violence. And yes it did appear rather silly but it was a [...]

Read the full comment very clever contrivance considering how they use it.

Once again, at least you are one of the few here with gray-matter and I appreciate that while you did clarify a couple of things due to a momentary lapse of judgement/confusion of facts on my end, you still do it was class.

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to Dr Teknikal - I know lawyers always like to check their facts, so can I please correct a couple of your facts:

(1) the "province of Luxembourg" outside the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, exists in Belgium and NOT the Netherlands (just look at a map and you'll see I'm right.)

(2) the issue of Britain/Grande Bretagne being called the "United Kingdom" is nothing at all to do with France and 'la Bretagne'/ Brittany'. The name change only occurred in the 1970s with the Northern Irish "troubles"; before that all British cars [...]

Read the full comment were labelled "GB" when they went abroad, and embassies were called "British Embassies".

In the late 1970s, following Northern Irish pressure, the British Government agreed to changing the name of the country to "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", and to use this name henceforth in EEC / EU, UN, NATO, OECD, and G7 international bodies.

There was no official opposition to this from any international body (or from France), but privately some EU Commission officials thought it was all a bit silly.

It had one advantage, though: in the EU conference rooms (where delegations are seated alphabetically) the UK now sat at the very end of the horseshoe-shaped table next to the Commission, which was rather an advantage.

It takes a prasko like 2cm. Robert to have the intelligence to cut and paste other peoples comments. What do you do stay up surfing the net for regurgitations. Bitola is home to many proud people who unlike your amputated persona 2cm. Robert think pragmatically. Your kind are usually found floating in our sewers eating all the shit they can consume. The name issue you tiny 2cm. statue is resolveable with a few spirited leaders. Whether our ethnicity is compromised or not it will always be people like you who done this to our land because you are blind with [...]

Read the full comment hate and your head is so far up your backside you think you are that idiot Alexander the Great mass murderer. So 2cm. Robert we in Bitola like it big so we go over the border to Thessalonike where there is good, big, hard action. I mean BIGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!

Having read all through this long but interesting thread, I find myself mainly agreeing with Stamos, from a practical political point of view. I can see where Robert the Great is coming from, and he makes some good points, but in terms of "realpolitik" Stamos is entirely right.

komplikated alright...what you wrote was just that apart from being as moronic as what trani wrote....look Macedonia invaded and use those states as slaves...the real greeks of the time...or should i say phoenicians(hellenes) hated the Macedonian and to know that there is any reference to him in athens the city he occupied would be treason.
Look the questions were asked by me early inreference to modern day history...but never has a greek been able to answer them...WHY because they are scared of the Macedonian in the agean and not the name....

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Dear Greek people,

I really don't know why you are bothering so much of proving that you are Macedonians. It seems like that you don't have a history so you want others. Well, you can't have everything. You will never be Macedonians because you look like gypsies and our Aleksandar Makedonski was blonde, just like we are.

Go and bother someone else you stupid stupid nation.

Sincerely yours,
Macedonian :)

Dear Stamos, the problem is that our politicians are right: the electorate is like Tranas. On both sides of the border. The real question is, is it to our interest if FYROM breaks appart? And yes, every country has the right to choose its identity, even a stolen one. My question is why are we so afraid?

Robert you really are stupid aren't you? Macedonian denotes being of that geographic region-ergo, a Macedonian Hellene, Spartan Hellene, Athenian Hellene etc. are you really that simple? And yes-Hellenes will talk amongst themselves and when one states that they are Macedonian it is implied that they are Hellenic from there, however, if they have a Slavic name etc. then they are summarily repudiated and told they are a Skopian-capisce?

And by the way-you love the region of Macedonia that much that you changed your country's name-wasn't Vardar Banovina any good for you?

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I am Greek therefore Macedonian.

You are all slavs. DEAL WITH IT!

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Tranas. You are what is wrong with Greece. You are an idiot. We are all laughing at you. The internet is full of people like you. I just wish you were on the FYRoMian side.

The problem is our politicians think our electorates are like you and play to your stupidity.

YOU are the problem.

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Our comments got deleted because The Sofia Echo has an idiometer that measures the idiocy of each post. You set it off. Mine was just next to yours and was taken out. Collateral damage.

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Elena i agree with you totally....however i prefer the greeks as you know that they hate you unlike the serbs and tatars who pretend to like you but really hate you....
I also love the abusive posts from greeks as it shows their intellectual capacity when debating a subject...similar to their moronic government.

Hello?

Talk about generalizations.
Not all Greeks have lots of body hair. Elena, some of us look after ourselves and keep ourselves trimmed.

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Sonja, don't put up with this abuse from Konstantinos. I used to be like you too, trying to be friends with both sides. It doesn't work, the Greeks are only friendly as long you don't consider yourself Macedonian.

To the Greeks, you are all losers. Why are you on here trying to argue that you are somehow Macedonians? You are called Greeks for a reason right?

You all have the same J2 DNA as the Phoenicians, Lebanese, Turks and Egyptians. Did Alexander the Great have dark body hair all over him and [...]

Read the full comment a unibrow? No!

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“It was never my intention to delve into the modern history of Greece, but the Greeks kept on and on with their bull-crap about who I am and who I have the right to be so I felt it was time to discover who these fanatics were, and lo and behold I found they were not who they pretended to be, but I still don’t care, I am happy for them to claim they are Greek all I expect in return is they afford me and my people the same rights they claim for themselves.”
What can I [...]

Read the full comment say; Osiris beat me to the punch! He expressed exactly how I feel! There is no fascination, only the necessity to fight back and defend our Macedonian identity the only way Greeks can understand; by attacking theirs!

what attacks on greece? calling for the safeguard of the Macedonian population and asking for their basic human rights to be actioned...i have many greek friends who call me a Macedonian.....
So i ask again what attacks on greece...only attacks i see is those of your own kind...

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Richard,

Aboriginals in australia speak an english language and it was forced into their culture...are they english? You cannot base any argument of race based on linguistic approaches. If this were the case then most of the world would comprise of english spanish and arabic\...get my point now?
ps did you know that todays slavic alphabet was created by two Macedonian monks from the occupied territory of Solun in Agean Macedonia? Also did you know that term slavic actually refers to a religious group like a catholic..Slav means belief Pravo-slaven right belief...orthodox christian...understand now...its [...]

Read the full comment not a race as the western world percieves it...so i take offence to you or anyone refering to me as a slav.

Robert, I don't care if you call yourself Republic of Macedonia - you can call yourself what you want. What are we going to do? Stop you from having democratic referendums? Even if we made you change your name to NeoVardarstan, you could have a referendum as soon as you are in NATO and the EU and change it back.

What I don't like is the attacks on Greece. We have stupid nationalist parties that would be irrelevant if you didn't make stoke tension.

Greeks, your identity is not as solid as you think; it is not a solid sphere made of stainless steel as you portray it to be; your identity is more like a fruit, a polished “dark-red” apple with an amazing tantalizing shiny red skin and all rotten inside. When you bite into it you think you are going to get a sweet juicy alluring apple-taste but instead you get a brown rot filled with bitterness! No thank you. I’d rather be “real” and take my chances at being who I am; Macedonian, no matter how difficult it has proven to [...]

Read the full comment be!

by the way stamos or any other modern day greek...can you answer my earlier questions i posed????
By the way Sonia i am actually from VODEN..in agean Macedonia and i am Macedonian...understand there is no such thing as a Macedonian greek.

Robert, I agree that Greece has economic problems. The problem is that it hasn't got ANY better - and this whole name issue is just a diversion from financial responsibility for the major political parties. Yes our debt is bad but we are more like Italy than Zimbabwe. Greece will not crumble. Argentina has had similar problems and they are still intact.

I don't mean to insult you as a Slav - but you are culturally Slavic. You speak a Slavic language.

Macedonia is a modern creation, like Greece. Greece has a [...]

Read the full comment history as a culture that goes back. It doesn't make me any better than you, and it doesn't mean you don't have the right to call yourself what you want; just don't make claims against Greece - it makes idiots like ND think that they have a purpose in life.

Robert, you speak a Slavic language, your culture is based around Slavic heritage, how are you not Slavic.
A name doesn't change any of that.

if u agree stamos then why not agree with the name of my country as the Republic of Macedonia?
Sonia my confused little bitolchanka...please understand that if you lose your ethnicity due to the change of name then you to will one day become a fictitious greek, tatar or shiptarka....what dont you understand about this name war...ps i would not go around bitola preaching that....

Stamos....i agree that at this point it would near enough impossible but i can assure you that your modern day fabricated state made up of all these minorities will crumble. Your state is in massive debts equalling that of zimbabwe and your only surviving due to the eu porpping u up. However they cant do it for ever and as evidenced your already having frightening protests from your own people including beatings and bombings. It is funny as your average wage is not that far off from a Macedonians average wage. As i said your economy is a disaster and [...]

Read the full comment will soon lead to the crumbling of your state. The turks know this...and so does europe. Ps i take offence to being refered to as a slav..Macedonians have never been slavs and you say it was never a country? well why dont you ask the turks who occupied all the terrortories weather it was or night. FACT Macedonia is way older than any modern day balkan nation including yours created in early 1800's..you want proof?

Sonja, finally someone with a brain; and it had to be a woman!

The name issue is so unimportant, it is embarrassing both countries.

I mean, why have such a big Alexander statue? Anybody visiting it will only be able to see his crotch because he is so tall!

Robert don't be silly. Nobody is homogeneous in the Balkans. There are dark FYRoMians and there are white FYRoMians.

Don't start with DNA. Nobody has pure DNA in the Balkans.

Konstantinos, you sound so in denial. Come to my apartment in Gazi and I will show you what it means to be a Greek man ;)

I promise it will only hurt the first time.

When the ICJ hear both sides of the story the first thing they will ask is, "so which Macedonians are we talking about, the Yugi's or the Greeks". See Macedonia belongs to all of us who live here. I love Bitola (my home) but I also love Thessalonike where a lot of my Greek-Macedonian friends live. Its beautiful. So stop this idiotic name issue and agree on a name we all want. Geographic qualifier will not make me any less Macedonian than our Greek friends who also have Macedonian identity.
We need new spirit not loud-mouthed patriots............ [...]

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Yes stamos the world does not think u r just middle eastern as they dont know what you are...this is due to the bastardization of all different ethnicities which today forms the former ottomon republic of greece....
Line up 10 Macedonians and we all look similar...line up 10 former ottomon greeks and they all look different.FACT and DNA analysis has proven it.

Robert, We can't change the past and Macedonia had lots of Greeks as well. You are never going to get what you consider to be your land back, it is a Greek land now.

Yes our government has done horrible things to many minorities in Greece, not just the Slavic speakers, but we can't change that now. Not all Greeks hate minorities and believe they don't exist. When you talk about reunifying 'Macedonia' (which wasn't a nation) you provide ammunition for idiots here who then use it to stoke nationalist sentiment which then means they can [...]

Read the full comment ignore real issues. I dislike Macedonian nationalism because it makes bad people popular here.

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So fictitious greeks and asian europeans...if Macedonia was so important to you all why would you partition here like u did in bucharest?? why not fight for total reunification???
Also just another quick question for the fictitious greeks...why would you change everything in northern greece as it was called to Macedonia just before the break up of Yugoslavia in which the Federal Republic of Macedonia was going to become the Republic of Macedonia?? oh thats right because of that...yes i understand now because it would have meant that the world would fully recognise these people meaning unrest for [...]

Read the full comment the occupied agean territory where Macedonians till today are scared to raise their voices for their rights...Long live the rainbow party and Solun will be reunited...

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yes this is hillarious..especially the 90 odd percent claim of pure hellenic ethnicity...still laughing.
Anyway no need to respond to these brainwashed turks from anatolia (gou) ending is turkish surname for starters...and also the vlachs, albanians, arabs, romas and beaten Macedonians who form this fictitious state. The abuse hurled below and the constant crying reassures the Macedonian that these cretens are hanging on by a straw... Long live the Republic of Macedonia within its Pirin, Vardar, Agean and Prespa borders....

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CW
For sure FYRoM have done some stupid things, but the accord says we should have taken it to the ICJ if we thought they had breached it. We never did. Now it looks like we are trying to justify the veto (or our opposition). If we argue that the accord is null and void because they broke it, are we rejecting the Accord?, then what stops them changing their flag back? They have an official objection lodged at WIPO that hasn't been removed or invalidated.

ND were idiots for doing this.

Yeah you are right, PASOK was just as bad - that doesn't mean we should accept the behavior from ND as well.

Well I guess we will see what happens at the ICJ. Yes I do blame ND, not Greece itself, for the veto.

Greece has changed in the last 15 years or so, we have really gone backwards. The veto was a symptom of this - and I am sick of having the front pages full of corruption and the name issue.

The name issue - we [...]

Read the full comment can agree on any name we want. The problem is that all they need is a referendum and they can change the name to whatever they want. When I was at university in NY, I tried defending our views to US students who asked 'Why are you upset at what they call themselves'?

OK they don't understand, they are not Greek. The way they are seeing this outside of Greece is a human rights issue. They are saying 'What right do we have to make someone change what they call themselves'. We really don't have a come back to that that doesn't sound childish. History? We are bigger? The history thing doesn't play outside of Greece.

We should have our politicians shut up and only deal with this through the UN process - things like the veto are making us look really bad.

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Again child, Hellas may have "opposed" FYROM entering in spirit and with its words, but in praxis it did not oppose them; everybody else did because a decision was not reached. It is opposition yes, but from the whole organisation-your insistence on avoiding that admission is irritating and indicative of your narrow-mindedness, a scathing indication of how you wish to blame Hellas for its handling of the issue; mind you it has handled it rather well compared to coming outright and saying no entirely to "Macedonia" in the name; it has proven itself flexible in allowing it but with a [...]

Read the full comment qualifier and increasingly FYROM are looking more and more churlish for not negotiating-or did you miss that one too?

By the way I am all too aware of De Gaulle being violently anti-British because of the perceived American ties; have you heard of what irony is? In the midst of a serious statement I was being ironic also because this issue is laughable in essence because to have one group of people masquerading as another is pathetic. Interesting also that you do not comment on my Luxembourg example-nothing to say on that I take it. I also love how the Skopians claim that Georgia as in the former Soviet republic and Georgia, in the US should be having it out too following that logic-care to comment on that one?

All in all you seem to take words literally and have real trouble differentiating from bluster and actions; Karamanlis like any other politician is talking big but unfortunately he was a buffoon by having such sentiments recorded officially on government and consulate websites among other things.

Furthermore, Gruevski and his cavalcade are also trying to score points with cheap populism by diverting attention from their diabolical economic state and innumerable ethnic tensions by stoking this argument. As for ND and its corruption etc. I agree, but then I suppose you're one of those left-wing types who seem to forget that PASOK etc. are just as gravely guilty of embezzlement and so on; or is it a case of "my boys are in power so I will eat" and then after "those other guys are in and I will starve"-which has been endemic in Hellenic politics since time immemorial and has created a real rift. Fact is: politicians will always put up smokescreens to divert attention from the real issues and they always will. For you to make that point is indicative of an agenda and its transparent.

The Interim Accord does not say 'do not veto'; it says 'do not oppose'. What we did was an effective veto, we stated we would veto if they put it to vote - so they didn't put it to vote. How do we say that is not opposition to their membership?

Do not bring up the Britain/Brittany issue; it was said as a joke in Greece and we look like idiots when we use it.
Britain has been called the UK for centuries. France only opposed the UK because it was seen as a [...]

Read the full comment Trojan Horse for US influence. There was no name change of the UK. Don't ever use that argument, it makes us look stupid.

We should really get off the name issue - what do we win? Nothing. This veto and the name issue are taking attention from NDs corruption and mismanagement.

We are burning a lot of diplomatic bridges on this issue and we are getting nothing out of it.

Stamos I will make it very simple-one word-POSTURING. Karamanlis is trying to score points with voters and trying to pass himself off as a modern-day Venizelos. And the idiots in ND will boast as to increase their credibility-that's politics, remember?

Further, Hellas did not object to FYROM entering NATO, the whole organisation did by not passing a unanimous agreement; is it really
that hard for you to grasp? It may have agreed to not block FYROM from entering international organisations if it changed its flag and constitution but again it did not exercise that [...]

Read the full comment action. Did you not read the statement of the Czech FM? He said as much and mind you they were perceived to have been sympathetic to FYROM. This is akin to where Simitis wanted Turkey to get into the EU but the other nations positively freaked out at that prospect-and mind you until that rather clever 180, Hellas was accused of blocking them. Same deal-Hellas did not have to object, France, Spain, Italy and others did the talking. Anything else out of ND is garbage and everybody knows it.

Nice try junior, but I am a lawyer and I repeat, Hellas did not exercise the veto, others did if not for Hellas then for the alliance which regarded FYROM as not prepared.

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We have Karamanlis stating that he was brave because he vetoed FYRoM. We have Bakoyannis stating that she planned the veto months ahead and we have our own embassy's websites stating:
"Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis on Wednesday night vetoed a NATO invitation to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to join, during an alliance crucial summit here."

So how do we state that we didn't object to their application of membership in contradiction of the Interim Agreement? Like I said, we need OJ's lawyer.

Teknikal. Read the Interim Agreement. We got them to change their constitution and flag in exchange for us not objecting to their membership.

"Upon entry into force of this Interim Accord, The Party of the First Part agrees not to object to the application by or the membership of the Party of the Second Part in international, multilateral and regional organizations and institutions of which the Party of the First Part is a member; however, the Party of the First Part reserves the right to object to any membership referred to above if and to the [...]

Read the full comment extent of the Party of the Second Part is to be referred to in such organization or institution differently than in paragraph 2 of the United Nations Security Council resolution 817 (1993)."

We objected to their membership. How do we say that we didn't? The idiots in ND have boasted that they vetoed FYRoM!

As per your other query Boris, in a nutshell-FYROM has no leg to stand on because it has violated the Interim Agreement innumerable times by provoking Hellas with renaming of buildings and so on with ancient Hellenic historical figures' names, has continued to violate WIPO by using the Sun of Vergina in official capacities, has printed and endorsed irridentist materials and attitudes/curriculums in schools and in the greater public sphere (any country that needs to remind its people who they are insanely insecure-and who could forget that hillariously laughable commercial about God and the Macedonoids from whom all white people [...]

Read the full comment are descended from) and with that they have violated "good neighbourly relations" amongs many other breaches.

Hellas has not violated anything as it DID NOT block FYROM from NATO; the rest of NATO did as a unanimous decision could not be reached-essemtially FYROM are trying to isolate the case as one poster here put it and this will be blown apart.

There you go

Boris, as regards your query, perhaps you have a point in saying Albania has not necessarily fulfilled benchmarks to enter into NATO, however, "officially" they have not entertained an expansionist agenda (despite what's going on unofficially with Greater Albania and all that) amd has thus not enraged its neighbours in the region in addition to not funding pseudo-scientific studies etc. Arnaiz-Villena scandal anyone?-their invitation I take is to drag them into the 21st century and provide them the support and framework to do so but then I can only conjecture.

FYROM however, has done nothing but [...]

Read the full comment provoke and comments such as Hellenes being Ethiopian etc. which are completely baseless and intended to offend (I didn't know that African people were any less human than us for these sad individuals to compare us to in an attempt to dehumanise us)is indicative of a mindset that is characterised by a feeling of victimisation and extreme hostility if and when they are deservedly called out for their stupidity and provocativeness.

There you go; and I can appreciate that you are one of few posters with a brain-kudos to you.

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I think it is silly that we are in the ICJ. The court case will make it worse because the people that are against us on the name issue will connect it to the name issue.
We are going to lose at the ICJ because we have 'obstructed' FYRoM from joining an international organization. The only way we could legally do it was if they joined under RoM. They didn't do that. Our embarrassing FM stated that she did it because she suspected 'FYRoM will change it's name to RoM' once it joins. I can't wait until we [...]

Read the full comment get rid of ND; they are ruining Greece.

Jim, I reckon the court case won't make it any worse. When these characters put up the rather large Alexander statue at the end of the year, that'll be the lowest point in the relation.
The truth is that this issue will be here for a very long time because there is a generation of these people that have been led astray by their government.
Their PM just last month said "we are not Slavs". Mind you he said this in a Slavic language. How do you work with such a mentality?.
Unfortunately Greece [...]

Read the full comment will probably pick up the tab for it by compromising to North Macedonia.

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This will be interesting because if either one of the parties is able to establish its case and get a ruling in their favour the potential precedent is dangerous for the "name issue" in the end.

However, I find it difficult that the Hauge will rule in FYROM's favour. Already I see one issue. The court is refering to them as FYROM whereas FYROMians refer to themselves as Republic of Macedonia which is also the reason why Greece vetoed FYROMs EU/NATO aspirations.

We will see how this turns out.

Mr.Birsmitsoglou,have look inthe roots of Your family tree?Because You are 100%of tourkoalbanian ancestors.Can You tell as how long ago Your family became Greek.See Your self in the mirror an stop offending other people.Im efreos and proud one to.

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Stamos Birsimitzoglou: The ICJ is not going to rule on the "name issue" but rather on the veto it self. What I find here is that while FYROM is claiming that Greece violated the accord I remind you and other readers that the 1994 accord was subject to Skopja using the name FYROM. Had they used this name or a variation thereto then there would not have been any EU/NATO veto.

Like Konstantinos stated earlier, this is politcal leverage aka power politics. Something that is used often by the U.S. Russia, China, France and the UK. [...]

Read the full comment This is the nature of international relations, it is a symbiosis of push and pull. You just have to know when to do the pulling and pushing.

Your thoughts?

Cheers

cw hit the nail smack bang perfect

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Stamos, do you think that France would stand aside if these characters wanted to call themselves Parisians from the Republic of Paris and start advertising Eiffel towers on their currency and start claiming French heros and academics. Suppose Slovenia changed its name to the Republic of Venice because it is in part on historical land,do you think Italians around the world would not take offense.
These people are clearly trying to fabricate history, you ask any of those 120 nations if they would in fact want such a disrespectful thing happen to their own country.
Have [...]

Read the full comment a read of this:
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/142/14963.pdf?PHPSESSID=53080c1d556af5aeab5fd6812dd99f8e
from the International Court of Justice website.
Read Nikola Dimitrov's statement. He's completely trying to isolate the case because FYROM has also fundamentally violated the agreement.
Stamos these characters are claiming the land you stand on.

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They are being funded by US legal firms that are taking this on pro-bono, because the Americans are on their side.

Why are we in front of the ICJ? We breached the Interim Agreement - if the FYRoMians didn't have a case it wouldn't have got this far. The veto was stupid, it was unnecessary, our politicians sold Greece to the nationalists. Now the US are against us on the name issue. What did we get out of this? Some politicians won points from the right wing. Big deal. It has made us look like children [...]

Read the full comment to the rest of the world.

these so called maceonions have alot in common with the slavs and the bulgarians im assuming the dont write greek so ho can they be maceonion if all ancient maceonia wrote in greek because i've visited pretty much every historical site in northern greece and a couple books and they all point to greek . I really enjoy greek history i dont like seeing wat these people are doing to it damn shame,skopje should be proud of their own heritage its rich in stuff and food and women.

(1) One thing is certain about the International Court of Justice (ICJ)- cases take a long time, and they cost a lot of money. So who is
bankrolling Macedonia ? USA ? Russia (not impossible) ? Turkey ?Presumably Greece is rich enough to foot its own bill on its own account.

(2) ICJ cases sometimes have an unpredictable result. Appeal to the UN Security Council takes much time and effort; issues can drag on for years.

(3) the very recent UNHCR report critical of Greece in Greek Macedonia (URL elsewhere [...]

Read the full comment on this site) will certainly be taken into evidence by the ICJ. It considerably helps the Skopje case.

(4) One known hard fact amongst all this supposition is the visit last month to Skopje of a senior Turkish military delegation led by General Ilker Basbug. Why ? It obviously was not to taste the local coffee, and if I were Karamanlis I would be more than a little worried by this, and I might indeed remember 1922 and 1974.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to know just why the Turks were in Skopje, and they're keeping 'shtum' about it, so don't expect a Press Release from Ankara !

(5) Personally, I think the Turks are after a share of the Burgas - Aexandroupolis oil pipeline, which runs very close to their territory at Edirne, and which would give them a very good economic reason for a bit of military sabre-rattling or worse.

It's going to be fun to see what happens in the ICJ and with Turkey, anyway. (My personal bet - moi je suis pret a parier ma couille gauche - would be a Turkish occupation of Skopje and an invasion of Crete to join it in "enosis" with TRNC / Northern Cyprus, but there will be many bets other than this.)

Yes Pavlos Melas Monastiri was in fact always Greek.

The very enlighted views of Dr T
are in accordance to mine, nearly all the nomenclatura in Fyrom
have a BULGARIAN Passport just in case.
As for Albania the ansewr is
"control" Boris, nothing more
nothing less.

What Skopje seems to have choosen is a selective approach to the interim agreement.
The agreement has 3 basic point one of which is the current deliniation between skopje and greece. With this agreement skopje oficials accepted that the delineation is not permenant byt temporary based on a non binding document. The document is revolving every three months.
Their is no need for all this show.
Skopje freely can call off the deal reinstate vergina flag and the claims in the constitution and the greek army is free to redraw the border line probably [...]

Read the full comment 2-3 km south of skopje.
The agreement was made to assure the skopian borders from a greek assault by creating a peacful frame for the entire process.
further the world court is not binding sovereign rights are never forfeited in favour of any international organisation.
So it is good that once more nicholas grueski works for greece as he did befoe with the misdeed of kerim in UN that led to the greek reaction in NATO.
Monastiri was always greek afterall.

I think recent statements by Karamanlis is good enough for our case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ASb4UwZV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlV_TXOeSAs

And to Boris, maybe I should have focused on his post rather than group yours in it as well, but s/he didn't have an opinion. Just a racist ("skops") and baseless nonsensical post.

I have an idea let's not comment about the case, let's talk about baseball, the thickness of Aristotle Onnassis's glasses or Michael Jackson's death. That would make more sense.

Dr T - thanks for the clarification. But my question remains: how on earth did NATO let in Albania ? All the negative points about Macedonia are also true about Albania/Sqiperia - in spades !

Just cause I'm so thoughtful here's verification of there being no veto-Reinforcing the Greek position that in the summit of Bucharest there was no veto, on the 21st of November in a conference in Skopje, the Czech representative in NATO Štefan Füle reiterated that there has not been a veto from Greece BUT that there was NO consensus on invitation.

Okay, commence laughing at the Skopians-au revoir peasants.

Dr Teknikai - What is your case "in a nutshell", as any lawyer would ask ? (i.e. about 200 words). You are of course right in that NATO has no veto as such, but works by consensus. (But in that case, how on earth did they let in Albania ?)

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Boris
Stop being sarcastic we all here know
that you are a sworn anti-greek but
everything has it's limit.
Sober up pal you can do much better. than this
addendum to previous post

Boris
"pankration" was a precursor of modern "catch" fight like Graeco-roman" and hitting like boxing.
cheers

George - with respect, I don't think you are right. You may not like what Hellenic Empire posts - and nor do I - but he is entitled to express his view about the ICJ Court Case. My point about comment being "sub judice" once proceedings get going is also relevant, alas.

I'm still intrigued by what Hellenic means by "pankration", though. Is this a special Greek gourmet dish made from aubergines, rather like "imam bayildi" is a Turkish one ? If so, can he please give us the recipe....

1 article about Macedonia taking Greece to court and two incoherent ramblings not related to the news story. Typical!

Carefull, Hellenic Empire, all this is about to become "sub judice" after the case is opened in the ICJ, as Serbs commenting on the earlier ECJ Milosevic case found out rather to their cost !

You really have to look at the entire Macedonian dynasty from Philip I down to Philip VI (murdered by Philip V !) to get a wider perspective. The Greek city-states regarded them as being near to uncivilised savages, even though the ruling class spoke a form of Greek. And by the time of the end of the Fourth Macedonian War in [...]

Read the full comment 146 BC against the Romans, Rome had had enough (especially after Philip V had allied himself with their deadly foe Carthage !)

In 146 BC Macedonia was annexed by Rome as a senatorial province, the Hellenic ruling class were forcibly dispersed to Thrace, Roman settlers took over their villas, and the Illyrian sub-class (the real Macedonians) continued as serfs, slaves, and helots much as before. (Much the same as when the Pontian Greeks came in in 1923 ! Sometimes things don't change much in history.....)

You skops must be barbaric how can you continue this ridiculous escapade while knowing you are not greek.you can have the label macedonia but you will never ever take the hellenic spirit away remember. megas Alexandros spread hellenic life,culture,tradition,language and pankration 2 all his empire no one can argue with that so stop all this silly statue building and flag copying in ur country because your all starting 2 look very stupid,hellenic empire 336-323