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Sat, Feb 04 2012
Encyclopaedic example
UNACCEPTABLE: Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha said that the content of Macedonia’s encyclopaedia was “unacceptable” and asked Macedonian authorities to adopt a clear position on the issue because “no one’s identity can be based on false history”.
A few weeks after Macedonia was told by European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn that it could start accession negotiations this year, Macedonian academics caused great distress in and outside the country by publishing a new Macedonian encyclopaedia in two volumes.
The Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MASA) published a limited run of the book on September 17. Copies quickly sold out, prompting MASA to consider a re-print. Passages in the encyclopaedia immediately angered Macedonia’s Albanian population and led to three other countries lodging official protests with the Macedonian government.
History has always been a sensitive issue in the Balkans, especially in the past 20 years when Macedonia has been engaged in heated arguments with its neighbours – mainly Greece and Bulgaria – about historical facts and myths. It is enough to mention Macedonia’s name dispute with Greece and how it has hindered the former’s foreign policy efforts. As for Macedonia’s relationship with Bulgaria, the issue lately has been not so much whether King Samuil was Bulgarian or Macedonian (although that argument is still brewing) but on whether Bulgarians have oppressed Macedonians over the past 60 years or vice versa.
Thin ice
If arguing with Bulgaria and Greece about the past has become normal for Macedonia, the new encyclopaedia managed to bring Albanians into the conflict, so risking Macedonia’s fragile internal peace and integrity negotiated after the 2001 conflict when Albanians were given more rights and a new model of decentralisation.
Albanians in both Macedonia and Albania took issue with the encyclopaedia for its account of the origins of their forebears in Macedonia.
It says that Albanians were brought to Macedonia forcibly in the 16th century. This led to protests from intellectual and political circles within Macedonia’s Albanian minority who said that the encyclopaedia’s chauvinistic viewpoint undermined constitutional order and ethnic harmony.
Ali Ahmeti, whose Democratic Union of Integration is part of Macedonia’s ruling government, deemed the book a provocative polemic. Media speculation even suggested that a split in the coalition could occur, especially because, according to the encyclopaedia’s criteria, Ahmeti could be seen as a terrorist for participating in the 2001 civil war. All asked MASA not to publish more copies of the book and destroy existing ones. MASA’s two Albanian members also threatened to quit their posts in protest.
On September 24, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha internationalised the issue by saying that the encyclopaedia’s content was "unacceptable". He made the comment at a meeting with Macedonia’s president Gjorge Ivanov in New York during the UN general assembly session. The Macedonian authorities should intervene and form a clear position to normalise the situation because "no one’s identity can be based on false history," Berisha said.
Cold War era
Just like Albania, Bulgaria was also offended by the encyclopaedia’s findings, some of which related to the alleged assimilation of Macedonians in Bulgaria. On September 24, the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje issued a statement saying that "yet again a publication claiming to be based on science abides by political and propaganda goals". It adds that it "is unthinkable for a state wanting to join Nato and the EU to use an out-of-date ideology and words from the Cold War era".
The UK and the US also became embroiled after the encyclopaedia’s authors decided to include a sentence that Albanian rebels in the 2001 conflict were trained by British and American secret services. Both embassies promptly protested against these "findings" and asked for their removal.
Official response
The Macedonian government’s first reaction was that the encyclopaedia was a product of MASA and not the government. After Albania complained, however, president Ivanov said he would investigate the matter. This was enough for MASA head Gjorge Stardelov to say that the controversial texts regarding Albanians would be amended, enabling another 2000 copies of the book to be printed.
This, according to Macedonian-language Dnevnik daily, meant that MASA should dissolve itself following the scandal and to clear itself of "lying scientific preachers instead of acting as neighbourhood tailors ready to cut cloth under pressure".
The Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MASA) published a limited run of the book on September 17. Copies quickly sold out, prompting MASA to consider a re-print. Passages in the encyclopaedia immediately angered Macedonia’s Albanian population and led to three other countries lodging official protests with the Macedonian government.
History has always been a sensitive issue in the Balkans, especially in the past 20 years when Macedonia has been engaged in heated arguments with its neighbours – mainly Greece and Bulgaria – about historical facts and myths. It is enough to mention Macedonia’s name dispute with Greece and how it has hindered the former’s foreign policy efforts. As for Macedonia’s relationship with Bulgaria, the issue lately has been not so much whether King Samuil was Bulgarian or Macedonian (although that argument is still brewing) but on whether Bulgarians have oppressed Macedonians over the past 60 years or vice versa.
Thin ice
If arguing with Bulgaria and Greece about the past has become normal for Macedonia, the new encyclopaedia managed to bring Albanians into the conflict, so risking Macedonia’s fragile internal peace and integrity negotiated after the 2001 conflict when Albanians were given more rights and a new model of decentralisation.
Albanians in both Macedonia and Albania took issue with the encyclopaedia for its account of the origins of their forebears in Macedonia.
It says that Albanians were brought to Macedonia forcibly in the 16th century. This led to protests from intellectual and political circles within Macedonia’s Albanian minority who said that the encyclopaedia’s chauvinistic viewpoint undermined constitutional order and ethnic harmony.
Ali Ahmeti, whose Democratic Union of Integration is part of Macedonia’s ruling government, deemed the book a provocative polemic. Media speculation even suggested that a split in the coalition could occur, especially because, according to the encyclopaedia’s criteria, Ahmeti could be seen as a terrorist for participating in the 2001 civil war. All asked MASA not to publish more copies of the book and destroy existing ones. MASA’s two Albanian members also threatened to quit their posts in protest.
On September 24, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha internationalised the issue by saying that the encyclopaedia’s content was "unacceptable". He made the comment at a meeting with Macedonia’s president Gjorge Ivanov in New York during the UN general assembly session. The Macedonian authorities should intervene and form a clear position to normalise the situation because "no one’s identity can be based on false history," Berisha said.
Cold War era
Just like Albania, Bulgaria was also offended by the encyclopaedia’s findings, some of which related to the alleged assimilation of Macedonians in Bulgaria. On September 24, the Bulgarian embassy in Skopje issued a statement saying that "yet again a publication claiming to be based on science abides by political and propaganda goals". It adds that it "is unthinkable for a state wanting to join Nato and the EU to use an out-of-date ideology and words from the Cold War era".
The UK and the US also became embroiled after the encyclopaedia’s authors decided to include a sentence that Albanian rebels in the 2001 conflict were trained by British and American secret services. Both embassies promptly protested against these "findings" and asked for their removal.
Official response
The Macedonian government’s first reaction was that the encyclopaedia was a product of MASA and not the government. After Albania complained, however, president Ivanov said he would investigate the matter. This was enough for MASA head Gjorge Stardelov to say that the controversial texts regarding Albanians would be amended, enabling another 2000 copies of the book to be printed.
This, according to Macedonian-language Dnevnik daily, meant that MASA should dissolve itself following the scandal and to clear itself of "lying scientific preachers instead of acting as neighbourhood tailors ready to cut cloth under pressure".
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A response to ‘Encyclopaedic example’
Modern day politics is fixated on national narratives, and here our history is becoming more dubious by the day.
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The Sofia Echo
Macedonia is not even a country. It's just a location on the map, and the sooner it's split up, the better.
Risto Stefov is the biggest Jerk Canada has ever had to host. He comes from Greece and despises all things Greek espacially its history. He classifies himself as a persecuted Macedonian but much of his extended family in Greece have long ago distanced themselves from his ongoing lies and propaganda. Most Macedonians in Greece have realised that they have more enemies in the diaspora in the likes of Stefov than they actually have with the Greeks. I live in Kostur and have since my childhood always had good relations with our Macedonian neighbours of Greek heritage. They leave us be [...]
Read the full comment Macedonians of Slavic (some of Bulgarian roots) and we all lead a good life. Who knows where this Jerk Stefov gets his information, certainly not from here. I doubt that he would have been/come to Greece in the last few years. This man is dangerous to us and to himself. He is what others like to call a spin doctor has no concrete evidence about anything but recycle what is already written by the intellectuals. Thats probably it, he thinks he is an intellectual. Well if anyone wants to read some very, very good garbage go to Maknews where he has written some of the most ludicrous, assumptive, fabrications ever. The best has to be how he reinterpreted the carnegie report believing that so many experts all got it wrong. But what do you do with a man who is blinded by his own passions. Thankfully we don't have to live with him. By the way for all those who read on this site, we the Macedonians of Greece are just fine, no thanks to Stefov the looney tune.
Who is this Risto Stefov jerk trying to kid here. We in Macedonia are well aware of your parasitic nature and your very large head which apparently has trouble fitting through the many venues doors that you attend. Get off our case. You swear that you do everything for us Macedonians but you Like myself still have a Bulgarian surname. If you were a real Macedonian as you say then you would have added the -ski like all the other breainwashed thousands but no you have remained loyal to your extended families roots. Bulgarian through and through. Funny enough when [...]
Read the full comment it serves you , you also like to call yourself Chris Stefou but ultimately as many of you in the diaspora your identity confusion comes from a lack of good education.
Samson - fair point about the bloodline of the ancient Macedonians and their monarchy ; as long as the Albanians do not claim the "Illyrian" part as indicating that the ancient Macedonians were Albanians (???) I am reasonably content with your analysis.
Putting it another way, most successful races (and monarchies) were / are "bastard" in the strict sense, i.e. a mixture of ultimately successful different blood-lines. Look at the fate of the Habsburgs, who were not - and who were an examplar of royal in-breeding !
The ancient Macedonian population was [...]
Read the full comment again something of an ethnic mix, as you say. What we do not know is how genetically precise the Roman "ethnic cleansing" of BC 146 actually was.
We know from classical authors that the "upper class" (i.e. mainly Hellenes and Hellonphones) were deported to Thrace, and that the "lower class" serfs and slaves (i.e. mainly Illyrians ) remained in Macedonia to work under new Roman overlords, but there most have been exceptions.
They both probably drew comfort from the known fact in the same year that the Romans had razed Carthage to the ground, killed or sold into slavery the entire Carthaginian population, and sown the ground with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again (which apparently is still true even now.)
So, in comparison with this example of ultra-thorough Roman "ethnic cleansing" in the same decade, the Macedonians came off rather lightly, despite the four separate wars they had initiated with the Roman Republic (and with an increasingly hands/off = "we don't want to know" attitude by all the Greek city states, of which Macedonia was not counted as one.) Doubtless they all "bounced back" in one form or another - what is less certain is where they did it !
Epaminondas
It is an interesting assumption your making about alexander but to correct you it was his father Philip who actually had Illyrian blood from his mother. Alexander on the other hand was half Molossian (Greek ethne) because Olympia came from Molossia on the Pindus ranges. Experts believe that the Pindus Mountain range peoples all spoke the same language. So yes the ancient Macedonians certainly had Illyrian (albanian) elements in their genealogical and cultural background but they also had ethnic Greek cultural traits which like many other ethne of central and northern Greece all shared. So to assume [...]
Read the full comment that they were simply hellenised, like the Lydians, Lycians, Carians or even the upper class Romans is missing the regional point. The macedonians had regardless of everything else their genealogy to fall back on like every other state of the time. Hesiod who lived over 2 centuries before Herodotus and all the historic Macedonians (e.g. 8th cent. BC) prior to the first mentioned historical figure Perdiccas, had mentioned their pedigree before he even knew that a historical macedonia would even seed let alone carry the Greek seed to other parts of the world. Though there is much written about the identity of the modern Macedonians who are a mix of Yugoslavs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, Vlachs, etc., we should not forget that the ancient Macedonians were also a mix of Illyrians, Thracians and various Greek ethne.
Risto, if you don't like my material don't read it. I know you don't like us Canadians but one day you will see that I do all this for you. I've put on a few kilos but otherwise I can still write enough to antagonise the Greeks. We should all stick together and get the Greeks out of Macedonia. It was our land to begin with and one day it will be again. They only hold 51% of it thats not much when our government refuse on the name issue and the rest of the world has recognised us with [...]
Read the full comment our constitutional name they will ahve no choice but give all our land back. Although I am not a trained historian I know history better than most historians. The word itself history comes from the ancient Macedonian word istria not from any Greek rubbish. Read my articles in Maknews or American chronicle and see the arguments.
This so called "macedonian" encyclopaedia is full of absurdities and historical distortions. I'm glad some Skopjians have felt this was madness and decided to stop its production.
Valeri - right about the Serbs, but how about the Sorbs ? (No mis-spelling !) Otherwise known as "Spreewender" or "Lusaci", they have lived for generations in Eastern Germany around Bautzen (which they call Budieszyn) and Cottbus (somilarly Chociebusz), and were heavily persecuted under the Nazis. But luckily they somehow survived, and with the Russian invasion (in which they did not take part !) they were suddenly regarded as Slavonic heroes by the Russians, Poles, and the East German communist puppet state. So they thrived under the DDR, and after re-unification in 1990 they thrived again (under West Germany's wish [...]
Read the full comment not to antagonise any ethnic minority except the Turks).
Hope this is helpful
"And which - the Sudeten Germans apart, and they are a dying breed - do not bedevil relations in Northern and north-eastern Europe."
First of all, Sasha comes off as very astute observer, and then - Epami I have to disagree.
The Sudeten question isn't one that arose in 1939 - it was an Austria-Hungary legacy that went back and forth for generations. The Germans there were promised rights in the 1919 accord, as the new state of Czechoslovakia was created, but didn't get them at all. In a way the 1945-46 [...]
Read the full comment Sudeten German' tragedy was very similar to the Yugoslav parallel - the culmination of the partition of a multi-ethnic state, (Yugoslavia and Austria-Hungary) where minorities were forced to live together, dominated by one particular one - Serbs and German speakers, respectively..
That and the Prussian saga go back to centuries of Slav-German competition for land and resources. The same could be said for many areas like the Bask region or Northern Ireland, where there is identity and ethnicity questions, even in modern EU.
What Central Europe got, was the benefit of a very definite resolution - 99% ethnic cleansing and population exchange that had made whole countries, like Prussia, nothing but history.
Today, there isn't a question of native Germans' rights in Czech, because after 2000 years German presence in Bohemia, they simply aren't there. In a way you can look at this as blessing in disguise for all sides concern..
Valeri - I think Sasha's posting well illusrates the enduring ethnic folk-memories that bedevil the Balkans to this day. And which - the Sudeten Germans apart, and they are a dying breed - do not bedevil relations in Northern and north-eastern Europe.
There are many ethnic Germans still living in Poland after all these years, for example, notably in the Silesian region of Opole/Oppeln. They have always had the right to German education (ok they had to learn Polish too, but so what ?), and now they are contented citizens of the Polish Republic with guaranteed [...]
Read the full comment local rights to ethnic separatism in religion, culture, language, and sport.
Nothing of this kind seems to exist anywhere in former Jugoslavia, except in Slovenia with "protected ethnic rights" in Prekmurje for Hungarians, and Pomorkie for Italians. Maybe Slovenia can give the rest of the Balkans a lesson in ethnic tolerance ?
In our school in Prilep, we are taught that the Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of our Macedonian forefathers in the Balkan Wars. What remains suspicious though is that no teacher can answer why it was only Macedonians who were killed. Many have attempted to half-heartedly say that we were fighting for our freedom but have always stopped short when asked why our forefathers had Bulgarian surnames, and fought under the Bulgarian flag at Krushevo, and that our VMRO was actually initially named the Bulgarian-Macedonian Odrin Revolutionary Organisation. The suspicious reference here is not [...]
Read the full comment Bulgarian but the term Odrin which is the city of Adrianople right over on the Bulgarian,Turkish,Greek border. I mean my geographical knowledge might be poor at times but if I am correct there were no Macedonian land that far East in modern times and certainly no Macedonian people living there either. When one of the girls in our class said that was because the people who lived there were Bulgarians, the teacher informed the local authorities who in turn called into our friends parents house that same afternoon. The next day at our high school she was publicly ridiculed and subsequently expelled. Her father was badly beaten. Since then the Macedonian Youth have investigated what Gruevski's Government is not telling us about our own history. Modern day politics is fixated on national narratives and here our history is becoming more dubious by the day. The encyclopaedia is only one example of a long string of government attempts at winning the Narod's minds over about their history but it is in the diaspora where Macedonian history is being forged and fabricated. Rich businessman in countries like Canada, Australia, and the USA have poured millions of dollars into the world-wide campaign on the name issue for example, and have successfully taken control of our nations political machinery. Gruevski and co. are but a couple of window-dressing manikins wearing anything the diaspora will throw onto them. The Macedonian Youth are asking unconfortable questions which the Education system doesn't want to know about. As always we march on!
Valeri - yes, the nations occupied by the Nazis certainly took their revenge in 1945/46. Anthony Beevor's book "Berlin 1945" details both the military retreat by the Germans on the Eastern Front and the civilian retreat from Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) and East Prussia.
Perhaps one of the best accounts is the book by Nobel prize-winning author Gunter Grass, entitled "Crabwalk" ("Im Krebsgang" in German.) This details the sinking of the German cruise ship "Wilhelm Gustloff" in the Baltic in 1945, by a Russian submarine. The ship was carrying over 10,000 civilian German refugees from East Prussia, [...]
Read the full comment and is deemed to be the worst disaster in maritime history in terms of loss of life.
Epami,
I know how you occasionally lament the Balkan nature, with all that ethnic hate a so on, but reading Giles MacDonogh work on post WWII Europe, I have to tell you that we are very mild by comparison to others.
Did you know that 3 million German civilians were brutally killed between May'45 and mid'46? What's interesting is that the worse were the Czechs - the people with the least savage reputation these days.
Czechs account for 240,000 Germans, killed in most imaginative manner. Some were [...]
Read the full comment simply butchered, most females were raped numerous times, and when they were not raping german girls, Czech men and women were acting as "talent spotters" for the Russians - ie rounding up the better looking ones to be delivered to the Russians for sex service.
It's a book about every possible variety of cruelties - an orgy of death. Naked Germans were hang from Prague's famous lamp posts, and set a fire. Raped girls were tied to horses who were driven in different directions, and of course Terezienstadt - the former Camp for Jews, was converted to concentration camp for Germans. For example, the Czech commandant had two daughters in their 20s who enjoyed mutilating and castrating German boys.
Many Germans were driven to flee to the Russians for help, where they knew that they would be raped, but not necessarily killed or tortured.
It makes nauseating reading. Predictably the people from the lands occupied by Germany, including the French, were the worse, and the Brits were probably the least cruel, having little to avenge.
16,5 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from Prussia, what became Poland and the Sudeten areas of Czech - mostly, there were expulsions from many other places. About a million expired en-route, because they weren't provided with food and most were stripped naked in the cold by roving bands of every kind - many themselves brutalized by the Germans until a few months a go.
Often the Brits will force them back to Czech because they couldn't feed the Germans they had in their zone, which meant that many more perished while being shuffled over the border back and forth.
If there ever was a case of collective responsibility, the Germans are probably it, in WWII, but nothing can justify the treatment innocent women and children got, and frankly in a way it's comforting to know that all humans have the savage animal sleeping within us.
Nothing we do in the Balkans will ever top that...
Does anyone read the crap my namesake risto stefov the canadian idiot who thinks he's our peoples answer to everything. There has never been a more fatter pig at times. On amercan chronicle his latest querk is on a food munch on a canadian base and yes you guessed it as a pig does he ate all the way through his article that didin't make any other point but telling the world how great we the Mace3donians are. He is such an embarrasment to us all. But wait he claims he's from greece maybe the greeks would accept him and [...]
Read the full comment get the pig of our backs. He doesn't work but sits and fibs living off the handouts from our gullible countrymen who live in canada and have been sucked into mhis view of balkan politics. Hopefully someone can give him a nice kick up the behind in canada from us the youth of macedonia Sasha's future. Get Stefov to come to Macedonia we have a nice present for him.
Actually, Lena, Alexander probably wasn't an ethnic Greek, but he was a Hellenised Illyrian Macedonian and certainly not a Slav. His (and his father Philip's) insistence on speaking Greek was a bit like that of educated Indians before independence in 1948, who insisted on speaking English with a public-school accent rather than the local Hindi or Gujurati.
Personally, I think Gruevski is a naive idiot - wasn't he a professional boxer once ? Must have harmed his brain, as in not unusual in that sport.
A brainwashed Slavic population that claims Alexander the Great (Obviously Greek)& Mother Teresa(Albanian) do not have any right to say anything about history. LOL
SLAVIC MACEDONIAN
HAHAHAHA
MORE LIKE SLAVIC MONKEY
In Macedonia there are at least 20% of the Slavic population who assert their Bulgarian Identity. No where in the Master book are they mentioned and to make matters worse Gruevski's Government doesn't acknowledge us. In Bitola where I live we have many Bulgarians who openly mock Gruevski's silly games but where will this all go. We hope for the EU and NATO but it looks like we will remain a EX- Yugo, EX- Makedonski, and possibly EX- Fyrom. Where are all the great men with courage to steer our land in the right direction. As many on this site [...]
Read the full comment have said to have an EX- boxer like Gruevski who won less than 40% of his fights to run our country is like having a big company run by the toilet cleaner. Maybe a toilet cleaner might do a better job than Gruevski. In Macedonia people are getting tired of these fakes who promise us everything but keep going back to nationalistic propaganda. Soon many of our locals will have their Bulgarian identity recognised then slowly Bitola and the south of Macedonia can again enjoy their heritage. Thankfully our forefathers are not around to witness what has become of our poor Macedonia in the hands of Stupidity.
Such a great way to make money. The first edition now available only in second hand books stores will soon become very expensive and wanted by the delusional Macedonian patriots. Now, people, who want to have an encyclopedia, will go and buy the second, corrected edition. But, if I am not wrong, the MASA will take it now with Serbia, or Kossovo, so there will be a third edition. And so on... the cash machine is very well devised.
Aries - merci de ton soutien !
All too often, one sees an initially sensible position by a government overtaken by folly, stupidity, or megalomania by the government concerned, and so it is now with Macedonia.
(Mind you, I'm not too taken with Dora Bakoyannis, either ! She is not exactly the best Foreign Minister in Europe....but nobody can be quite as inept as Gruevski !)
If ever a small country crawled out of the ex-Jugoslav mess well, got its act together, joined the EU, and then got [...]
Read the full comment into the Eurozone too, all without disruption to its hard-working population, it must be Slovenia / Slovenija ! Maybe a moral there somewhere......
Epaminondas
<<Common-sense says that, if you have antagonised one of your neighbours badly (Greece), another of your neighbours not quite so badly but still badly enough (Bulgaria), you do NOT antagonise a third neighbour (Albania). Not if you wish to survive !>>>>
Epami Bravo!!!!! very well said
with exact tempo.
i must add
Le sens commun est appele ansi parce ce qu'il est rare!!!!
Truely hoping that the maxim does turn correct for the case.
That's nice, Sasha and Svetlana - online dating hits the Sofia Echo at last ! Good luck to you both...
Sasha you are either very brave or very young. I agree with some of what you say but you go to far to think the diaspora help Gruevski. I live in Preston, Australia and yes we have many fascist minded countrymen but hey are not all like that. Our group of friends have been quiet on the subject because of the international embarrasment our government in skopje have caused. You are right that Gruevski knew about the information in the encyclopaedia because as you probably know he is coming to Australia this month and our community council here had months [...]
Read the full comment ago made giant banners praising Gruevski's initiative in the MASA project (encyclop.) about how our history was as glorious as that of our ancient ancestors of Aleksander and Filip. These banners were to hang in the reception halls which Gruevski and his entourage are scheduled to visit. It seems now that these banners will either be remade or if I know our nationalist friends here will leave them as they are to show Gruevski how supportive they are. By the way many Macedonian girls who have been following your posts think you should run for office and if possible come to visit us in Preston. We think that the Macedonian Youth need a good voice and are happy that your home town of Prilep are so supportive of you. By the way I'm also from Prilep and hope to meet you next year when I come with my sisters. One favour not all of us in the diaspora believing in Aleksander Veliki we know our roots and don't need someone else's. Preston kisses you Sasha xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Once again our fascist regime have fabricated our national narrative to suit their political ends. MASA has been a political instrument since its inception and has produced thanks to the watchful massaging of Blaze Ristevski a Macedonian Historical narrative based on pseudo-scientific facts which give birth to all these assertions of us belonging to some ancient Macedonian empire ruled by none other than Al. Veliki. This wholesale distortion of history has been going on for years with the blessing of our fascist government turning a blind eye (especially with support from the bigots of the diaspora) to reality and only [...]
Read the full comment now embarrasesd by the international communities response have they back-pedalled to save face. Ivanov was so red-faced in front of the 100s of UN officials that he quickly exited the meeting to stop Berisha continuing in front of dozens of international media. The Macedonian Youth are sick of this constant hollow shell which we call our country Macedonia abused by the very people who have sworn an oath to protect. Gruevski has a lot to answer to but as usual he'll sleeze his way out of it with the help of a few psuedo reform policies to grease the hands of his fellow members to keep him in power. Lets face it if Gruevski were to step down who would be capable of running our country. Maybe we should look to the Youth of Macedonia because these ex-boxers keep losing every fight they go into. We need new blood not boxers who in the likes of Gruevski changed his career by putting a suit on. Lets make change a Youth policy. Macedonia is worth it. Keep pseudo-conservatives (fascism) out of our lives. Gotse Delchev keeps rolling in his grave to think his beloved VMORO ended up in the fascist vanguard. Long live the YOUTH of MACEDoNiA. GRuevski and his diaspora should finally understand that you vcannot keep fabricating history forever. WE the Macedonians are and have always been Slavic peoples so write that in your next print out...
Oh dear - much as I have consistently argued the Macedonian case on this site, I can't support either MASA or the Macedonian government on this occasion. It does appear that the Macedonians can be their own worst enemies sometimes.
Common-sense says that, if you have antagonised one of your neighbours badly (Greece), another of your neighbours not quite so badly but still badly enough (Bulgaria), you do NOT antagonise a third neighbour (Albania). Not if you wish to survive !
Macedonia hasn't manage to antagonise its fourth neighbour (Serbia) yet, but [...]
Read the full comment give it time and it will ! (Especially as the Serbs are notoriously thin-skinned on a whole host of issues !)
Oh dear, Balkan history is like a forest fire - just when you think it's been extinguished, it breaks out again somewhere else !
Why don't we all say that all Balkan history is a Massive Plot hatched jointly by the CIA and the KGB, and we should tear the whole lot up and start again ?