Macedonia is only one. There is no Northern Southern or any other Macedonia.
Part of Macedonia is now under occupation of Greece, since 1913, but it doesn't give them right to occupy our historical name too.

FYROM ha ha - the former Yugolsav Republic bla bla bla...
Same as if I say that USA should be called FNITA-the former Northern Indian territory of America

Peter you are a deer with no eyes - a "no-eyed-dear". You Skopjeans are pure Slav, and therefore pure un-Macedonian.

To Aristoteliantis; Demosthenes and Pericles in 338 BC did make a distinction between the Hellens and Macedonians.Demosthenes on the battle of Chaeronea and Pericles letter to Phillip the 2nd. Now,lets come back to our century,read Karakasidous book,read Skularikis book that former PM Mitsotakis said on his interview.Read what PM Rallis said on Sept.3rd 1903 to "New York Times".Unfochunatly,you Greeks dont get it.You are right when you say the branches of a tree belong to the same trunk.The differance is,the Hellens and Macedonians were never the same.It also applies today,if you claim are Greek,what connection do you have to the ancient [...]

Read the full comment Hellens,and the ancient Macedonians?.Why are you called Greek in the first place!We now know that "Greece" consists more than 40% Albanians.Todays "Greek" president is of Albanian descent (Papulias),Droutsas is mixed race,father Cypriot,mother Austrian,and he has declaird "I was born Macedonian and will die Macedonian" What kind of b.... is this?Your purity is based simply on being able to speak the language,nothing else.The Macedonian name is Macedonias,not Greeces.

My God / Boze Moje - is this guy Tim Themi for real ?

We have all already said (and agreed) that the whole Alexander the Great issue is rather one of "intellectual property" as per WIPO (where Greece has a very good case), and not an issue either of present-day politics nor of philosophy/ linguistics / semantics / metaphysics !

Or at least I thought we had, until the "Category Error" Windows bug came along again !

Presumably he has at least found out by now, not [...]

Read the full comment least how to circumvent the Moderators' bar on his IP Address...

Que le Bon Dieu nous protege....

Tim Themi: "Greece is not on its own, there is a scholarly consensus that supports the claim that the Macedonia of Alexander the Great was and is a branch of Hellenism, and that to force upon history an absolute distinction between Greece and Macedonia is like trying to imagine an absolute distinction between a tree and one if its branches.

This would be a 'category error', and it is pretentious of those who lack the ability to understand this to try and force the label 'pretentious' on those who can and deploy it thus correctly."

Greece registered the Star/Sun of Vergina for Greece under the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) rules in the 1990s.

This forced Macedonia to change its flag virtually immediately.

This Greek action worked brilliantly. But its subsequent actions on the "name" issue were less well handled, and Athens now nervously awaits the ICJ proceedings in January 2010.

Greece got that one badly wrong, in letting Macedonia start the case in the first place.

Here's the WIPO link:

http://www.wipo.int/lisbon/en/ [...]

Read the full comment

The Greek government should register Megalos Alexandros / Alex the Great and his historical empire as "Intellectual Property" of Greece . Unlikely they could protect the "Macedonia" name itself under WIPO rules, but very probably WIPO could stop Skopje doing stupid things like erecting statues and re-naming airports.

And this would be a respected international body doing this, not just Greece on its own. Capisce ?

Good idea for Greece ?

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Welcome back to Macedonia Vasko Gligorov the Macedonian Youth are behind you. Hopefully we find leadership in our current leader but we feel that he is still too upset over Bucharest. Time to move forward and enter the EU and jobs. Our jingoistic diaspora have held us back long enough. The Macedonian Youth need leadership not nationalistic Rhetoric. Just as Gotse Delchev proclaimed we can only go forward as a united people. The new Macedonian Think Tank DEMOS are actively providing the platform on all university campuses for the Youth of Macedonia to voice their concerns. Most of our most [...]

Read the full comment concerned Youth are under 20 years of age and most are between 16-18 which makes it pretty sad in a country where we are all able to speak english but can't use it professionaly except on the net. Years of isolation has deprived us any future dreams. I wasn't born when our country received independence in 1991 and I still feel isolated from the rest of Europe. Sad I know, when a 17 year old has no dreams, but these are the real times of Macedonia, no direction means no future.

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To Macedonia Hellas.My dear fellow human being,I have just as much right to declair my identity as you or any other person on this earth.I get it,you can change as the winds direction.Why is it,to be a Greek you donnot have to have an ethnicity?Here is a short reason:There are no Hellens living today in Greece.Greece consists of Albanian majority,than come the rest.Read the Greek constitution,youll understand better,dont take my word as to who may be a Greek.Papandreou did suspend,two or one week ago is irelevant,he did it for a reason.

Aristotle - you have forgotten the Greater Spotted woodpeckers (an endangered species in some parts of the world) and International Bird Year.

Saving the planet is surely more important than arguing endlessly over a scrubby country bordering another equally scrubby country.

Meister Tito,

You are a wealth of useless information; I'm not sure if you are intelligent, or just old -- you know, an old dude with heaps of information that just piled up in his brain like sediment at the bottom of a rive bed over time!

Fair enough! Glad you pay attention to stuff: But it seems to come out all at random, of its own volition for no apparent reason, with only tenuous points of connection to what is being discussed:

Trying to get you to [...]

Read the full comment meet a direct argument is like trying to nail jelly to a wall!

Wouldn't you say that the trees don't need to "claim" that the branches are trees: simply because branches are a part of trees?

And similarly, that Greeks don't need to claim that Macedonians are Greeks, simply because they are one of the many branches of Hellenism?

As I've said on other sites, it's like asking someone from L.A whether they are Los Angelian, Californian, American, Earthly, Milky-Wayish, OR, a member of the Cosmos!!!

You know, don't people just forget here that we divide large categories into sub-categories?

Why should we care if they want to pedantically list all the differences they can muster between the entity "branch", and the entity "tree"??????

Come on bro!

For once just answer straightly!

Aristotle - fair point about the IT; all of us fall victim to the Curse of Windows sometimes ! (Don't try Vista, it's much worse than XP for dropping you into the proverbial !)

As for your question about the woodchoppers, I would use "lateral thinking" and recruit some woodpeckers (preferable the Greater Spotted Woodpecker, which is much more aggressive than its green namesake. We have them in our garden, so I can speak first-hand).

As for the fYRoM nationalists against the "tree-like or Triffid-like Greeks", I would recommend John Wyndham's masterly [...]

Read the full comment study "The Day of the Triffids", still available from Amazon internationally. Basically, both sides lose.

(I know I am at risk of being deleted as "off-topic" for mentioning the Greater Spotted Woodpecker, but this is International Bird Year !)

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

There's definitely a bug here somewhere ! My second link posted was:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal

Aristotle - I think I would tell the young whippersnapper to go find another tree with more obedient branches !

The Moderators will quickly censure me on grounds of "off-topic" if I say any more about hexadecimal maths, but it WAS known to Archimedes, and the Ancient Greeks certainly knew it (and would have taught if to Alexander) Further information here

[deleted link]

[deleted link]

Now, now Tito, credit where credit's due -- I taught that young whipper-snapper everything he knew!

I told him that if a branch claimed it was really a part of a tree..

in opposition to a bunch of branch separatists...

...what would this mean?

that it was time to make like a tree and leave?

..before more sins are committed against philosophy?

Daisy - an IT geek would also express all his dates and numbers in hexadecimal (so 16 = 9E for example.)

For some reason unbeknown to man (except to the Ancient Greeks),
hexadecimal arithmetic fits an abacus perfectly !

COMPUTERS WERE INVENTED BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN MACEDONIA !

An I.T geek would say that...

... don't forget to see the wood through the trees

Come on, Tim Themi, we can all spot hiding behind "category error" postings. Nobody else on this site would bother with such a pretentiously academic bit of jargon.

Looks rather like the various messages that Windows sends you when it's feeling cross, like "Syntax Error", "Document Feed Error", and "Windows has detected Category Error in File Dump Sector".

Maybe Tim Themi is really a computer ?

Observer "and" Tito? To make a distinction here would be a category error-- there is no "and" -- judging by the equal levels of indolence on display; not to mention the sheer arbitrariness in cursorily improvised paranoia.

Epistemia means pertaining to knowledge. Look it up you FYROM propaganda banana!

Category error means walking to the forest and saying, "Alright, I've seen the trees, but where is the forest?"

That is, "Alright, I've seen the Macedonians, the Thessalonians, the Thebans and the Spartans -- but where are the Greeks?" [...]

Read the full comment

Ancient capital of Paionia in Alexander's time was called "Byla Zora"

"Byla Zora" (or "Bela Zora" is exact name for "white dawn" in Slavonic languages.

Therefore Paionia spoke Slavonic.

The Great Greek Conspiracy is to suppress this....

"Cheeto Tito" - we all know you're Tim Themi in disguise. Nobody else outside a major supermarket would use the phrase "category error", even "epistemically" - your favourite word.

For the benefit of the rest of us, "category error" means mistakenly putting the price ticket for bananas onto the oranges.

Obviously Tim really works in a downtown supermarket in Melbourne...

we wil NEVER change our name and identity, not even a single letter !
we are MACEDONIANS, and our country is Republic of Macedonia !
and you Petar Duric , POPUSHI MOJ VELIKI MAKEDONSKI KURAC , jebem ti sve zensko u familiji !

Everything you say is "by the way"..

Look up "category error"..

Sammy the Whammy / Tim - you've lost me; what are you talking about with :

<<Titso - No, it's not.

It's a part of a whole.

Like Washington and America - not a real distinction, but a part of a whole. >>

Je ne comprends rien.

And by the way, learn to spell. The word "loser" is usually not spelled "looser", unless you're talking about clothing.

Yours epistemically

Titso - No, it's not.

It's a part of a whole.

Like Washington and America - not a real distinction, but a part of a whole.

Enough your campy website dropping mind-games.

No one reads them.

You are wasting your time.. no one believes you..there has not been a single debate where you haven't been totally refuted and forced into ducking the question and clogging it up with useless irrelevant information..

Time to change your name [...]

Read the full comment back to George II, David, and pretend you have a PhD with EMINENT friends who care about your idiosyncratic views!

One by one everyone find you out!

Take the hint.

You are a looser!

Tito
Thanks a lot for the kind words
just a patience and impartial good researcher.
merci beaucoup en tous cas.

Well, Jacques, I have to acknowledge (with genuine admiration !) your expertise in this field.

I only went to Egypt myself once, doing the Nile trip from Luxor to Aswan and back, and all of us on the trip were
stuffed to the eyeballs with temples, hieroglyphs, cartouches, the Valley of the Kings, Pharaoh Amun and his monotheism, mummies and so on.

We were also stuffed up to the eyeballs with dodgy Egyptian food, and no Nile voyage was complete without the compulsory 24 hours "day-off" on Loperamide and other [...]

Read the full comment drugs to fend off death by
diarrhoea ! However, we all survived somehow.

In all this itinerary I never saw any alphabet / script once except the standard hieroglyphs, and at Kom Ombo in particular (where they are carved in relief into stone) they are truly superb.

Not sure the Greeks got very far down the Nile - if so, we'd have more Greek words for upset stomachs !

Tito
My point was not The Rosetta stone
itself but to point the difference real acesdemic research and "NAME DROPPING MIND GAMES".
INTRIGUING AND ENTERTAINING AS MUCH AS IT MIGHT LOOK.
The folowing on demotic caps the issue.
Demotic is the name applied to both a script and a stage in the development of the Egyptian language. The stage of the language called Demotic shows affinities with both Late Egyptian, its predecessor, and Coptic, its successor. It was presumably much closer to the spoken language, especially when it first came [...]

Read the full comment into use, than was the archaic "classical" language preserved in religious texts and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Demotic script is the most cursive one developed by the Egyptians. It was first used under Psammetichus I (ca. 650 b.c.), early in the Twenty-sixth, or Saite, Dynasty. By the end of that dynasty, Demotic had become the standard script for business and everyday affairs. By the Ptolemaic period Demotic was also the script in which literary compositions were written. The Instruction of Onchsheshonqy.
The latest Demotic inscription, from Philae, dates from the middle of the fifth century of our era. During this 1,000-year time span Demotic was not a unity. There were differences, often minor but still evident, in script, vocabulary, morphology, and/or syntax between different geographical sections of the country, between different chronological periods (Demotic is usually subdivided into three time periods: early [Saite and Persian], Ptolemaic, and Roman), and between different types of texts. Among the latter are business and legal documents, private letters, religious, scientific, and medical and magical texts, mummy tags, funerary and administrative stelae (e.g., the so-called "trilingual" decrees), and literary texts, including both wisdom texts and stories. Even within these subdivisions, the script varies noticeably from scribe to scribe, as with modern handwriting.

Jacques - well I never understood the bit about the Rosetta Stone being in anything other than Egyptian 1, Egyptian 2, and Greek, either.

This also backs up my own theory that Greek was the 'lingua franca' of the Eastern Mediterranean, and not Persian or Phoenician.

(Si c'etait autrement - otherwise - there would have been Persian / Phoenician on the Stone, as the Stone was an important government communication of the time. Anything to do with taxes is highly important to governments, then as now, and if there were Persian-speakers in [...]

Read the full comment the region who were trading, it would have been in Persian too.)

The Rosetta Stone is probably the world's first dictionary !

Tito
Inter alia in the following link
http://makedonika.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/macedonian-redux-by-eugene-n-borza-1999/
Under “Ancient Macedonia” and Tracing the Script and Language of Ancient Macedonia.
I found a quite “interesting” if not exorbitant theory about the connection of The Rosetta
Stone with the “Ancient Macedonian Languange
Before hand i have the manuscript of Champollion on the first column are the Greek characters in the second column are the Demotic characters phonetic “Coptic” ; the language spoken by most of the people Egyptians at that time while in the third [...]

Read the full comment column the Hieroglyphic ( the language used by the Pharaohs, High Priests and well educated) the word demotic(Greek word ΔΗΜΩΔΗ language of usage not in educated vernacular) and Ptolemy Soter (Greek word ΣΩΤΗΡ meaning Savior)(Philopator ΦΙΛΙΟΠΑΤΡΙΣ friend of the nation) where misleading to and Tome and Boscevski in their desperate though most interesting quest to prove that the sun rises in the west.
The phonemes na and naj they attribute to the the Slavic prepositions of НА and the superlative НАЙ are most frequently referred to
The assumption that DANAI was the name attributed by the Ancient Macedonians to the Greeks in general is only hilarious The myth of Danaus is a foundation legend of Argos, one of the foremost Mycenaenean cities of the Peloponese. In Homer's Illiad Dannaans "tribe of Danaus" and "Argives" commonly designate the Greek forces opposed to the Trojans
After warring on the beaches of Troy for over nine years, CALCHAS induces the leaders of the Danaans to offer the Trojan the so-called Trojan horse. The Trojan priest Laocoon, however, distrusts it and warns the Trojans not to accept the gift, crying, "Equo ne credite, Teucri! Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" Virgil Aeniad ("Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans even [if] bearing gifts".) (ΦΟΒΟΥ ΤΟΥΣ ΔΑΝΑΟΥΣ Κ’ΑΝ ΔΩΡΑ ΦΕΡΟΝΤΕΣ )When immediately afterward Laocoön and his two sons are viciously slain by enormous twin serpents, the Trojans assume the horse has been offered at Minerva’s (Athena's) prompting and interpret Laocoön's death as a sign of her displeasure. Minerva did send the serpents and help to nurture the idea of building the horse, but her intentions were certainly not peaceful, as the deceived Trojans imagined them to be. The Trojans agree unanimously to place the horse atop wheels and roll it through their impenetrable walls. Festivities follow under the assumption that the war is ended. The scout who has been sent to verify the departure of the Greeks is killed after he discovers the Greek fleet hiding in an obscure harbor.
Some ancient scripts and modern scripts Arabic and Hebrew may be read from right to as some cuneiform script but one thing is for sure the Sun rises East.
that is for sure even for erudites
like Bernal and Borza
Hoping this is helpfull in distnguishing real academic resaearch from mind games and verbose revisionism .

to Maitre Barroso -

It is not illegal if the country concerned has agreed bilaterally to refer to fYRoM by its consitutional name of Republika Makedonia (or as translated), under the terms of the two UN Resolutions involved.

Bulgaria has so agreed, as have the UK and the USA. (Greece is spending much time and resource trying to reverse this bilaterally; it would not need to do so if what you say is true.)

Perhaps you might wish to go and threaten somebody else ?

Mr Liviev Sawyer
It is lillegal by international law to call FYROM or Vardanska by the Greek owned territorial name of `Macedonia` which denotes a province in the northern GREECE. So not temp fate by participlating in illegal journalistic practices - you might find yourself being legally sued!!!!!
Francisco Barroso

When you mention Texas and the USA as being inseparable (your quote):

<< (Borza's) nauseatingly oft repeated distinction between "Macedonians" and "Greeks" carries about as much interest or weight as that between "Texans" and "Americans"!>>

I look up (non-blog) sites like this:

http://www.texasnationalist.com/

....and I wonder. Texas only joined the Union in 1845, and there are certainly many who wish to reverse the process.

Maybe Borza's distinction is more valid than you thought...

Titso pretending to be a scholar - yet another category error!

It's like wanting to find out something about zoology by asking the animals at the zoo!

Or thinking the task of scholarship is to produce something "new", rather than something "true".

Back out to pasture for you, go feed your cash cows, grind another blog out of them and call it an "article"!

Sammy - A blog can be anything from an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica to a scurrilous political diatribe. A very good example of the latter is on:

http://order-order.com/

What you are really saying is that you don't agree with Borza, and no more. At 71 he is no older than the majority of university professors world-wide, and he certainly writes in a clearer English than some of them do, so he is hardly "senile".

"Double blind review" is a technique borrowed from medical practice [...]

Read the full comment about drug-testing, and is increasingly used as a means of stifling new academic thought - a kind of academic "restictive practice".

If "double blind review" had been in place in the 1530s, we would never have had Martin Luther or the Reformation. I doubt that the early Einstein would have survived "double blind review" either, and A.J."Freddie" Ayer would have had grave problems with logical positivism and "Language, Truth, and Logic". As for poor Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution........

The best description of "double blind review" may be that used by the IT industry : "Not Invented Here" !

PS. TITO - A blog is not an "article"!

Enough of your pretending to be a scholar geriatrix!

An "article" has been "double blind reviewed" by two or more Professors in the field.

Whereas a "blog" is a whore that can sleep with any purpose!

Eugene N. Borza has been retired, put out to pasture, probably senile by now.

Likely he was one of the revisionist spinsters whose "silliness" was starting to give academia a bad name -- hence the co-signed by 350(!!!) Professors letter of protest to Obama against him and his loathsome, degenerate ilk (ps. 350 is a scholarly consensus, 1 is an attention seeking radical looking to sell books and make some hanger on friends!)

His nauseatingly oft repeated distinction between "Macedonians" and "Greeks" carries about as much interest or weight as that between [...]

Read the full comment "Texans" and "Americans"!

His distinction suggests a category error - that is all!

He'd be chewin' grass and getting milked by Skopians every morning by now -- out to pasture where he belongs!

With respect, Vanya, I suspect you are over-simplifying the case about the Macedonian language - Jacques posted a rather better-balanced assessment on this site only a few days ago, and I quote part of it below.

Many scholars have explored the origins of the Macedonian language rather thoroughly, because there has always been some doubt about it, and it has never been a certainty.

The consensus now seems to be that it was a rough form of Doric Greek with many loan-words from Illyrian and other local languages (none of which were [...]

Read the full comment written, unfortunately), spoken with an accent difficult for Attic Greeks to comprehend. (Hence all the comments about the Macedonians being 'barbaroi' or barbarians)

Philip II would of course have picked up perfect Attic Greek from his long stay in Thebes as a VIP hostage, and Alexander's education is well-known, so they would not have had this problem. But they would both have had to resort to the rough Macedonian dialect to address their troops, as is indeed recorded.

Extract from Jacques' posting is:

<<< * Graham Shipley ,The Greek World After Alexander, 323-30 Bc By , Page 111
Despite ancient and modern controversies it seems clear that the Macedonians as a whole were Greek-speakers. While the elite naturally communicated with other elites in standard, probably Attic, the ordinary Macedonians appear to have spoken a dialect of Greek, albeit with load-words from Illyrian and thracian which gave ammunition to their denigrators.
* Eric Carlton (1992) Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military Conquerors Page 55
The Macedonian language has not survived in any extant text, but their personal and place names, and the names of their gods strongly suggest a Greek dialect.
* Alan Fildes , Alexander the Great, son of the gods, page12
Although the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, worshipped Greek gods and traced their nation’s origins from Olympian gods, their customes and northern Doric accent were markedly different from those of the people of the rest of Greece, who saw the Macedonia as a largely insignificant, backward monarchy >>>

The erudite and expert American academic expert on Macedonia, Eugene Borza, is also relevant. Here's a useful short article by him on the same subject:

http://makedonika.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/macedonian-redux-by-eugene-n-borza-1999/

Hope this is helpful

My dear Clementine Danielle but you are speaking bulgarian everytime you open your sweet oval mouth. And I am sure that the Macedonians have not been that long around come on! One thing my dear clementine is that if we were around that long ago why isn't there any language different to the greek. I mean if Al. Veliki was as educated and all his predecessors as well why don't we have any proof. You see the Romans for example had equally created a empire like the Macedonians but the difference is they left a language (Latin). So my question [...]

Read the full comment to you is why is everything we have in Greek and don't tell me it actually is macedonian Koine because after much investigation this has not proven to be a good theory. Even Pasko Kuzman says that we need to find what the ancient Macedonians were writing prior to Greek contact. You see your argument goes round in circles because it is not true. We the Macedonian people are Slavs and descended from the Bulgarians, even our heroes like Gotse Delchev have written that down so who are you to overide such a great historical figure and use your fascist arguments here in macedonia. The diaspora is a good place for you people please take my advice and stay there and don't come back. Macedonia will manage without your distorted views, just read Ugly duckling Risto Stefov and then you know what we mean here. This man has divided more of our people than anyone else. Anyone who has a different opinion to his is either a grkomani or bulgmani. That is painful for people who have opinions based on politics not this imbeciles fabrications. Thats why my dear clementine danielle you will find those who support our Slavic (& Bulgarian) background, want a name resolution based on a fair geographic qualifier without disturbing our Macedonian identity and language, we are all politically left leaning while your support behind a fabricated ancient Macedonian identity, only constitutional name, and backed by the loudest of all, the Ugly duckling himself Risto Stefov, you all stand for the conservative, fascist right who don't want any compromise. You say you want the EU and NATO but you are not willing to compromise on anything because you seem to honestly believe against any sound evidence that we are descedents of the ancients and have been living here for the last 4000 years. I'll tell you what my dear clementine daniele, if you can find some evidence to prove your argument and it is sound, I and possibly tens of thousands of likeminded youg people in Macedonia would stand behind you and support you all the way. But as it stands now there is not a chance in hell. remember one thing my friend when all your families left for the diaspora you left a country crippled in coruption, poverty, and outright segregation between political views. Now we have slowly closed some gaps, as you can see most of us young can speak english good, maybe not as good as you in the diaspora but good enough for Macedonia. Stop looking down your noses at us. We express our views like you so we will always fight for our beliefs. Macedonia for the Macedonians.

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

Tito - Not sure if Michael Scott is a reliable source. He doesn't have many publications yet, and if he says what you say he does, it would look like he has tried to fastrack himself into the spotlight by pandering to populist revisionist fantasies.

If so, he will never make professor, and he will eventually be found out. But that's only IF you are representing him correctly.

There was a George II who was posting before who wasn't, and got found out by someone else who had read the book.
[...]

Read the full comment />
Never trust a FYROM nationalist. Lying has become instinct for them by now. How else could they think that Alexznder was a speaker of a Slavo-bulgarian dialect?

Problem with the name issue will be soon solved >>>

http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=8090502&service=142

Papandreou and Gruevski will meet each others tomorrow in Brussels...

Jacques - well, here's the other link to the "correct" academic you originally quoted (Bernal):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Athena

He seems to have been highly controversial in his findings (Greeks and Isreal, Africa etc).

I have some sympathy for him, though, as an excessive insistence on "peer group review" by the academic community can be seen as a manifestation of the "Not Invented Here" school of scientific thought.

Well, Jacques, I looked up Eugene Borza and found a revisionist and erudite American historian and authority on Macedonia whose views are very close to my own ! Here's a brief (and very readable) extract:

http://makedonika.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/macedonian-redux-by-eugene-n-borza-1999/

They say the greatest scientific discoveries start off as laboratory mistakes (such as the invention of penicillin !), so your slight misquote was felicitous, to say the least.

I wonder what Tim Themi would make of Eugene Borza ? Borza, as a senior university lecturer and a known [...]

Read the full comment authority in his field, can scarcely be ignored....and he must be known to academics, even in faraway Melbourne.

TITO
Yes you are quite right although the exists an Eugene Borza
I my previous post I meant Bernal
Martin Beranal and his Afrro-centric roots of Classical Civilization.

Jacques is right - the Macedonians use a variant of Cyrillic invented by the Serbs before WW II in pre-Tito days. Standard Cyrillic, as used in Bulgaria, is the same as that used in Russia and Belarus; Ukrainian is a bit different again.

By the way, Jacques - who was Borza ? I can't find him on Google; his name either means "storm" or else "stock exchange" depending which language you take !

Danielle
My sweet liitle thing
Cyrillic is out of glaglolithic script and glagolithic script is
the first slav script in which old
church slavonic has emerged
macedonian is a bulgarian dialect
with a little Serbian sauce
the latin character "J" is amall proof the pure cyrllic is Я Л
CHEERS.

To poor little Vanya.Is there any differance between you and the greeks?On the Macedonian question you have no right in decision making.You see,you must decide between you and the Greeks who both claim the Macedonian are one or either.You see,you are using a stupid argument.Put it through your head,we the Macedonians exist for more than four thousand years.Where have you been!On the language issue my dear,you speak more Macedonian than I Bulgarian.The alphabet you use toda is macedonian,the Cyrilic that is over thousand years old.You telling me that there are no Macedonians? Please grow-up.

Sorry to every one the prevous post is Addressed to Marshall Tito

Thanks a lot for your kind comments regarding the Compilation on Acient Macedonia.
A lot more sould be attributed to the academics who eventually made the list possible.
Fair point about the two dynasties governing greek politics for the last fifty years
In Europe the phenomenon is maybe
not apparenly the same except fopr the remaing monarchies but behind the scenes drudgery maintained bay dynastic financial empires have exactly the same effect
Russia has entred the club refering to it's Gas and Oil magnates.
The USA remain governed [...]

Read the full comment by The Seven Sisters and the dynastic
Multi-national conglomerates within which are incorporated
bilion of dollars of Sheikh money
and the story of dynasties alas goes on infinitum
With alll respects due your pseudo-Borza like comment about africa
was at least a failure.
Borza refers inter alia to Solon's sejour in Ancient Egypt.

Well, Beethovenopoulet, no they didn't. (Read the very recent scholarly work by Michael Scott PhD, Faculty of Classics, Oxford,title "From Democrats to Kings" covering Alexander's period in great detail with much new research.)

In Alexander's time the western coast of Asia Minor was occupied by Greek war-lords, entrepreneurs, and traders, with very few Persians (and those that there were were serfs).Chief amongst the warlords was the Greek Mausolus, who built Halicarnassus (today's Bodrum), but he had many imitators.

We should not forget that, then as now, communications between the Aegean coast of [...]

Read the full comment Asia Minor and the inland area are not easy, as the region is very mountainous. Fortune and geography favoured the Greek coastal settlers, right up until 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

Finally, looking at the various museums up and down the Asia Minor coast (the best of which is at Efes / Ephesus, but there are many others), the Turkish museum authorities display many excavated artefacts from Alexander's era onwards. I have visited nearly all the museums myself, and I cannot recall seeing any example whatsoever of whatever alphabet Persia had.

Instead, Greek inscriptions are two-a-penny on every artefact; not always translated by the Turks, but I was able to decipher a few (knowing Ancient Greek). This drives me to the inexorable tentative conclusion that the ancient Persians were not particularly active around the coast (in contrast to the Greeks, who were extremely active from 320 BC onwards), and that the alphabet used was Greek.

(There were a couple of artefacts where Greek alphabet was used to express another language, but the curators didn't know what it was. It might have been Persian, or Aramaic, or Lydian. The text certainly wasn't Greek, but the alphabet was. (I got the same feeling reading an incomprehensible text in Cyrillic script that certainly wasn't in any Russian that I knew, or even in another Slav language. It was something of a relief to find that the text was in Mongolian - Mongolia uses the Cyrillic alphabet for a very non-Slav language. My suspicion is that ancient Persian did the same with the Greek alphabet.)

Hope this is helpful.

The Persians reached to the eastern Mediterranean shoreline, did they not? Did they leave all the artifacts of their empire littered with Greek letters too?

(And yes, I run every nightclub, all those bouncers at the door answer to me, so play your cards right, and we'll make you VIP!)

My dear Clementine Danielle it must be hard living all the way over in your diaspora and see our Bulgarian people living in the beautiful pristine waters of Ohrid. We the Macedonians of Ohrid are not afraid of your amputated distortions of our history. Soon we will also have a Bulgarian party starting up in Macedonia so imagine you wont need an interpreter. You see my dear Clementine Danielle modern Macedonians are Slavs ancient Macedonians were Hellenic so where do you get your roots from. You didn't give birth to yourself. There were always only Illyrians (ancestors of the modern [...]

Read the full comment Albanians) Thracians peopel who inhabited modern Bulgaria and Hellenes who inhabited the Pindus mountains south of Phrid and the coastal areas of the Aegean. So whereever you in the diaspora get your education from one thing is for certain its not from here. Although I do have to admit they are trying hard here to change that but they are receiving a olot of resistance from the Narod who continue to feel more Slavic from Bulgarian origins than ancient from Hellenic or as Kuzman trys to say ancient Macedonian. Do you know that our number one archaeologist here openly said after so much frustration that our only way of proving our Macedonianness was to connect ourselves to the ancients. But guess what my dear Clementine Danielle he has for the last 18 years failed to prove that everything that he has excavated has no Hellenic connection. How sad that must be for you in the diaspora who addicted to Aleksander see that our soil does not make a direct connection to him. Except of course in our incredibly huge, inflated, ugly head of Gruevski who possibly imagines himself as a modern day Aleksander. Well my dear Clementine Danielle, you will have to admit that when you talk to your macedonian contrymen in the future you won't need a interpreter to speak bulgarian with a fellow Macedonian. Macedonian for the Macedonians (except the diaspora!) Go Sasha and the Macedonian YOUTH we are all behind you. Welcome back Vasko Gligorov the number one voice of all the YOUTH of Macedonia. They (Vmro-Fascists) will never break us.

Not round the eastern Mediterranean shoreline (which is where we were talking about), no.

Do you run that interesting night-club in ulica Beethovna in downtown Ljubljana (hence your name ?)

MR Tito, on what grounds, and by what authority, do you now arrogate unto yourself the position or right to judge anybody's posts but your own.

Aren't you the one who once claimed that:

<<Briefly: (1) Alexander used the Greek Alphabet as there weren't any others available at the time, except for Egyptian hieroglyphs !>>

A fairly extravagant thing to say without any hard or specific supporting evidence; No?

Jacques - bipolar politics are one thing, and (as you say) are generally good for the political process.

But dynasty politics - whereby two families are alternately in power, is more reminiscent of mediaeval Italy (remember the Montague and Capulet families in "Romeo & Juliet") or else pre-1914 Serbia.

I suppose North Korea is the ultimate example of "single family rule", but somebody else can probably think of other examples of countries where two families dominate the political scene, probably some African republic.

TITO Jossip Broz
Papandreou and Karamanlis =
Torries and Labor
Democrats and Republicans
Christ-democrats Soci-democrats
most of the so called demacracies
are governed by bipolar politics
in a vain attempt of reducing the
greater corruption implied by coallitions.
The "aristoi" of ancient aristocracy do not exist their special upbringing their education
their spirit are irrevocably bygones Sad but true.

I think we should all be grateful to Jacques for his thorough and scholarly exegesis of the origins of "Macedon" and "Macedonian", which is much better than anything we have had on this site before, and also reflects a wide range of academic opinion.

My initial impression is that his studies indicate that the classical-era Macedonians were "Hellenic, but only just", and the analogy he draws with Scotland is a very good one indeed, especially in terms of languages and of "tribes" within Scottish society. (Did you think they were a matter of history ? No [...]

Read the full comment - they're still there !)

Other thoughtful initial comments would be appreciated by the Moderators, I am sure.

Marshal_Tito

i agree 100% with you about what is happening in Greece and the oligarhy as you are saying.trust me this thing about the 2 famillys goes far back in time and as the time passes we will have to move from it.my generation in the following years will finish this.Basically its allready happening.But what this has to do with this whole matter?you have to understant one very simple thing.The politics in Greece disagree in 1000 things,but when it comes for national issues and specially issues that we are very proud for like our history it [...]

Read the full comment doesnt matter if u are comunist,or rightist or bellong to New democracy or Pasok or Syriza or KKE or Laos or any other party.We are all united in it this and if any Fyromian from diaspora basically cause i know that the people from Fyrom who come in Greece have Greek friends or just knows Greeks or have bussines with Greeks,basically people who are near to the reall situation,understant perfectly that our stance as a nation regarding this issue will never change no matter.in a recent reserch 95% said that we should veto.and i beleive the same for the most part of Fyromians too.the thing is that they dont have any other option im sorry.We lead this and if any Fyromian from diaspora has any different opinion one way or another he wiull have a suddenly awakening soon.At least lets talk have some fun and prepair some of them thats whats all this about anyway.a simply opinion nothing else.Again what the familly thing has to do with all this?

A Compilation of Quotes
from Peer Aacademics just to certify the Hellenic or not of
Macedon.
The Language of Ancient Macedonians according to modern Linguists and Historians
* Brunt. The relics of the Macedonian language, such as the names of places and persons, both human and divine {..} show that it
as basically Greek with an add mixture of [probably] Illyrian.
* Martin, Thomas R (1996) “Ancient Greece From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times” pg. 188. Macedonians had their own language related to Greek, but the
members [...]

Read the full comment that dominated Macedonian society routinely learned to speak Greek because they thought of themselves and indeed all Macedonians as Greek by blood.”
* Hammond & Griffith “A History of Macedonia 550-336 BC” Vol II
“Macedonian was not a non-Greek language but a dialect of the Greek language in which Alexander spoke for a special purpose; and in the case of his order the vocabulary, as well as the pronunciation, was probably particular to this dialect. On
later occasion the Macedonian”
* Hammond (1992) “The Miracle that was Macedonia” pg. 206.
“As members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language,
the Macedonians shared in the ability to initiate ideas and
create political forms.”
* O.Masson (1996) “The Oxford Classical Dictionary 3rd ed. Macedonia, Language” pgs 905-906
Masson states:
Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it an Aeolic dialect [O. Hoffmann compared Thessalian] we must by now think of a link with North west Greek [Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote]. This view is supported by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet [4th c BC] which may
well be the first ‘Macedonian’ text attested [provisional
publication by E. Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique
in Rev.Et.Grec.1994no.413]; the text includes an adverb “opoka”
which is not Thessalian.We must wait for new discoveries, but we may tentatively conclude that Macedonian is a dialect related to North-West Greek.”


* Toynbee, A.J
“King Philip II’s momentous decision to make, not the native
Macedonian variety of North-East Greek, but Attic the official language of the kingdom of Macedon which, in the next generation, had generated the Greek successor states of the Persian Empire.”
* R. Malcolm Errington, ‘A History of Macedonia’
University of California Press, February 1993, pg 3
“That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and bore Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain.”
* Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great Page 30.
he was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language,though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened ‘ch’ into ‘g’,’th’ into ‘d’ and pronounced King Philip as Bilip“.


* Richard Billows, “Antigonus the One-Eyed”, pages 18-20
I think it highly likely that they were, for three reasons: the overwhelming majority of personal names known to have been used by Macedonians were good Greek names; the names of the months in the Macedonian calendar were basically Greek in form
* Andrew Robert Burn, “A Traveller’s History of Greece” , 1984, Italian edition of 1991 by Arnoldo Mondatori Editore S.p.A. , Milano, page 359 [*]
Macedonia , extended along the fertile land of lower Axios , was a region of robust agricolturs and of nobles devoted in equitation , that spoke a Rough Greek Dialect , incomprehensible to the Athenians and for that defined “barbarian” “.
* Graham Shipley ,The Greek World After Alexander, 323-30 Bc By , Page 111
Despite ancient and modern controversies it seems clear that the Macedonians as a whole were Greek-speakers. While the elite naturally communicated with other elites in standard, probably Attic, the ordinary Macedonians appear to have spoken a dialect of Greek, albeit with load-words from Illyrian and thracian which gave ammunition to their denigrators.
* Eric Carlton (1992) Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military Conquerors Page 55
The Macedonian language has not survived in any extant text, but their personal and place names, and the names of their gods strongly suggest a Greek dialect.
* Alan Fildes , Alexander the Great, son of the gods, page12
Although the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, worshipped Greek gods and traced their nation’s origins from Olympian gods, their customes and northern Doric accent were markedly different from those of the people of the rest of Greece, who saw the Macedonia as a largely insignificant, backward monarchy
* John Anthony Crame, A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient Greece: With a Map, and a Plan of Athens, Page 165 Judging from their historical nomenclature, and the few words that have been preserved to us, we may evidently trace a Greek foundation in their language, whatever idiomatic differences might exist between it and the more cultivated dialects of southern Greece.
* Charles Gates, Ancient Cities” page 259
Philip II came to power in Macedonia in 359 BC. Althought speaking a dialect of Greek, the Macedonians lay on the fringes of Greek culture and had contributed little to Greek political, socio-economic and artistic
* L.S. Stavrianos, “The Balkans since 1453″, Page 19
Their language closely resembled the classical Greek from which it differed no more than one English dialect from another
* John V.A. Fine (1983) ‘The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History’ Harvard University Press, pgs 605-608
The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the Dorians.
* F. Munzer, German linguist, “Die Politische Vernichtung des Griechentums”, Leipzig 1925, p. 4
The problem of the nationality of the Macedonians has been studied a great deal. Otto Hoffman with linguistics as his starting point solved it correctly and decisively when he accepted that the Macedonians were Greeks
* Sylvain Auroux, French linguist, “History of the Language Sciences: I. Approaches to Gender II. Manifestations”, p.439
“Before the times of the national unity installed by the Macedonians around the middle of the 4th century BC, Greece was composed of many regions or city states[...] That they [Dorians] were related to the North-West Dialects (of Phocis, Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania and Epirus) was not perceived clearly by the ancients. “

* Otto Hoffmann, “Makedonians, their language and their Ethnicity“.
From the 39 “languages” that according to Gustav Mayer their form was “completely alien” has been proven after this research of mine,that 10 of them are clearly Hellenic,with 4 more possibly dialectical forms of common hellenic words,so from the entire collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to be justifiable or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins.Adding to those 15, few others which with regards their vocals could be hellenic,without till now being confirmed as such,then their number, in comparison to the number of pure hellenic ones in the Makedonian language,is so small that the general Hellenic character of the Macedonian linguistic treasure can not be doubted.(..)THE NAMES OF THE GENUINE MAKEDONIANS AND THOSE BORN OF MAKEDONIAN PARENTS ,ESPECIALLY THE NAMES OF THE ELITIC CLASS AND NOBLES,IN THEIR FORMATION AND PHONOLOGY ARE PURELY HELLENIC.”(…)The general Hellenic character of the Makedonians linguistic treasure can not be disputed even in case some of them might be loans from the Hellenic Mythology or from non-hellenic myths or for the better pre-hellenic myths (Teytamos-Marsyas-Seilinos….*).
* J.R. Hamilton, “Alexander the Great”, London, 1973
That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim
made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more
than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper names, such as
Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the names of the
Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta,
were also Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which
Greeks of the classical period found intelligible, appears to have been
a primitive north-west Greek dialect, much influenced by the languages of the neighboring barbarians.”
* Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, The Outline of History, Glimpses of World History
The language they spoke was among the oldest forms of Greek, and it had affinities with the Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenean dialects.
* N. G. L. Hammond,”The Macedonian State: The Origins, Institution and History,” Calrendon Press, Oxford,
1989, pp. 413.pp. 12-14:”
4. The language of the Macedonians. What language did these ‘Macedones’ speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means ‘highlanders,’ and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as ‘Orestai’ amd ‘Oreitai,’ meaning ‘mountain-men.’ A reputedly earlier variant, ‘Maketai,’ has the same root, which means ‘high,’
as in the Greek adjective ‘makednos’ or the noun mekos.’
The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded (p. 3 above) has a bearing on the question of Greek
speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect.
Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen’s three sons — Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus — who
were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recored this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek-speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the ‘yauna takabara,’ which meant the ‘Greeks wearing the hat.’ [27] There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins
and not distinguished by a common hat, the ‘kausia.’
We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth
century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod’s genealogy by bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the AeolicMacedonian branch of the Greek-speaking family.
[28] Hesiod, Persia, Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians,
who were then an obscure and not a powerful people.
Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive. That, however, is not the opinion of most scholars.
They disregard or fail to assess the evidence which I have cited, [29] and they turn instead to Macedonian words and names, or/and to literary references. Philologists have studied words which have been cited as Macedonian in ancient lexica and glossaries, and they have come to no certain conclusion; for some of the words are clearly Greek, and some are clearly not Greek. That is not surprising; for as the territory of the Macedonians expanded, they overlaid and lived with peoples who spoke Illyrian, Paeonian, Thracian and Phrygian, and they certainly borrowed words from them which excited the authors of lexica and glossaries. The philological studies result in a verdict, in my opinion, of ‘non liquet.’The toponyms of the Macedonian homeland are the most significant. Nearly all of them are Greek: Pieria, Lebaea, Heracleum, Dium, Petra, Leibethra, Aegae, Aegydium, Acesae, Acesamenae; the rivers Helicon, Aeson, Leucus, Baphyras, Sardon, Elpe’u’s, Mitys; lake Ascuris and the region Lapathus.
The mountain names Olympus and Titarium may be pre-Greek; Edessa, the earlier name for the place where Aegae was founded, and its river Ascordus were Phrygian. [31] The deities worshipped by the Macedones and the names
which they gave to the months were predominantly Greek, and there is no doubt that these were not borrowings.
To Greek literary writers before the Hellenistic period the Macedonians were ‘barbarians.’ The term referred to their way of life and their institutions, which were those of the ‘ethne’ and not of the city-state, and it did not refer to their speech. We can see this in the case of Epirus. There Thucydides called the tribes ‘barbarians.’ But inscriptions found in Epirus have shown conclusively that the Epirote tribes in Thucydides’ lifetime were speaking Greek
and used names which were Greek. [32] In the following century ‘barbarian’ was only one of the abusive
terms applied by Demosthenes to Philip of Macedon and his people.[33] In passages which refer to the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great and the early successors there are mentions of a Macedonian dialect, such as was likely to have been spoken in the original Macedonianhomeland. On one occassion Alexander ‘called out to his guardsmen in Macedonian (’Makedonisti’), as this [viz. the use of 'Macedonian'] was a signal (’symbolon’) that
there was a serious riot.’ Normally Alexander and his soldiers spoke standard Greek, the ‘koine,’ and that was what the Persians who were to fight alongside the Macedonians were taught. So the order ‘in Macedonian was unique, in that all other orders were in the ‘koine.’ [34] it is satisfactorily explained as an order in broad dialect, just as in the Highland Regiment a special order for a particular purpose could be given in broad Scots by a Scottish officer who usually spoke the King’s English.The use of this dialect among themselves was a characteristic of the Macedonian soldiers (rather that the officers) of the King’s Army. This point is made clear in the report — not in itself dependable — of the trial of
a Macedonianofficer before an Assembly of Macedonians, in which the officer (Philotas) was mocked for not speaking in dialect. [35] In 321 when a non- Macedonian general, Eumenes, wanted to make contact with a hostile group of Macedonian infantrymen, he sent a Macedonian to speak to them in the Macedonian dialect,
in order to win their confidence. Subsequently, when they and the other Macdonian soldiers were serving with Eumenes, they expresed their affection for him by hailing him in the Macedonian dialect (’Makedonisti’). [36] He was to be one of themselves. As Curtius observed, ‘not a man among the Macedonians could bear to part with a jot of his ancestral customs.’ The use of this dialect was one way in which the Macedonians expressed their apartness from the
world of the Greek city-states. See J. M. Balcer in ‘Historia’ 37 (1988) 7.[28] FGrH 4 F 74 [29] Most recently E. Badian in Barr-Sharrar 33-51 disregards the evidence as set out in e.g. HM 2.39-54, when it goes against his view that the Macedonians (whom he does not define) spoke a language other than Greek. [30] The matter is dicussed at some length in HM 2. 39-54 with reference especially to O. Hoffmann, ‘Die Makedonen, ihre Sprache und ihre volkstun’ (Goettingen, 1906) and J. Kalleris, Les Anciens Macedoniens I (Athens, 1954); see also Kalleris II and R. A. Crossland in the CAH 3.1.843ff. [31] For Edessa see HM 1.165 and for the Phrygians in Macedonia 407-14. Olympus occurs as a Phrygian personal name. [32] See Hammond, ‘Epirus’ 419ff. and 525ff.
[33] As Badian, loc. cit. 42, rightly observes: ‘this, of course, is simple abuse.’[34] Plu. ‘Alex.’51.6[35] Curtius 6.8.34-6.
[36] PSI XII 2(1951) no. 1284, Plu. Eun.14.11. Badian, loc. cit. 41 and 50 n.66, discusses the former and not the latter, which hardly bears out his theory that Eumenes ‘could not directly communicate with Macedoniansoldiers,’ and presumably they with him. Badian says in his note that he is not concerned with the argument as to whether Macedonian was a ‘dialect’ or ‘a language.’ Such an argument seems to me to be at the heart of the matter. We have a
similar problem in regard to Epirus, where some had thought the language of the people was Illyrian. In Plu.’Pyrrh.’1.3 reference was made to ‘the local ‘phone,” which to me means ‘dialect’ of Greek; it is so in this instance because Plutarch is saying that Achilles was called ‘in the local ‘phone’ Aspestos.’ The word ‘Aspestos’ elsewhere was peculiar to Greek epic, but it survived in Epirus in normal speech. It is of course a Greek and not an Illyrian word. See Hammond, ‘Epirus’ 525ff., for the Greek being the language of central Epirus in the fifth century B.C. ”
* Malcolm Errington, “A History of Macedonia”, California University Press, 1990.
“The Molossians were the strongest and, decisive for Macedonia, most
easterly of the three most important Epeirot tribes, which, like Macedonia
but unlike the Thesprotians and the Chaonians, still retained their
monarchy. They were Greeks, spoke a similar dialect to that of Macedonia,
suffered just as much from the depredations of the Illyrians and were in
principle the natural partners of the Macedonian king who wished to tackle
the Illyrian problem at its roots.”
* J.M. Roberts, “A Short History of the World”, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993
The Macedonians spoke Greek and attended Hellenic festivals; their kings claimed to be descented from Greek families- from Achilles, the great Achaean hero of the Iliad, no less.”
* NGL Hammond, “Philip of Macedon”, Gerald Duckword & Ltd, London, 1994
“As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth on the same footing as the original Macedonians, in that they could qualify for service in the King’s Forces and thereby obtain the elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the population and wealth of the kingdom were doubled. Moreover since the great majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West Greek dialect, the enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout.”
* David Sacks, “A Dictionary of the Ancient Greek World.”, Oxford, 1995
Macedon was inhabited by various peoples of Dorian-Greek, Illyrian, and Thracian descent, who spoke a Greek dialect and worshipped Greek gods…Unification and modernization came gradually, at the hands of kings of Dorian descent.”
* Robert Morkot, “The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece”, Penguin Publ., 1996
Certainly the Thracians and the Illyrians were non-Greek speakers, but in the northwest, the peoples of Molossis {Epirot province}, Orestis and Lynkestis spoke West Greek. It is also accepted that the Macedonians spoke a dialect of Greek and although they absorbed other groups into their territory, they were essentially Greeks.”
THE REST IS SILENT !!!!!!
THANKS
JAQUES

Macedonia_Hellas : other European countries / governments might react to your point by saying that Greek politics are far too dyanastic by half (your point about Papanadreou father setting the provincial boundaries which Papapandreou son now has to re-name. And Karamanlis was no better - another Greek political dynasty going from father to son.)

The Ancient Greeks had a word for this - it wasn't "democracy", it was "oligarchy" - the rule by the few, probably family-connected.

Outside Sicily, in the rest of Europe this doesn't tend to happen. It might happen [...]

Read the full comment of course in Australia, as Tim Themi will not be slow to tell us....

ok now.Everybody specially the Greeks who spek with this people specially from diaspota have to unerstant some things.For examble.Look what this Daniele writes.For examble just yesterday he learned that the ministry of Macedonia is gone while it happened 3 weeks ago!He thinks that this is good for them,while he forgets some basic things.This ministry has been created in 1985 daniele NOT 1985,and guess who made it!!The father of the today Papandreou.Papadreou continues telling to u people that there is only one solution.One name for every uses.Constitutional name ethnicity language EVERYTHING.No deal no EU no NATO.he made it clear and to [...]

Read the full comment tell u the truth it doesnt matter who ever was priminister would do the same thing.You people from diaspota dont understant quite well what is happening here in reality.To understant how this people are fanatished and braiwashed just look what he write.He accuses Miller who in reallity had NEVER asked or had any help from anyone,the man together with 350 historians arround the world are saying what all the world knows.Alexander and the Macedonians were a Greek tribe,how today a Slavic population with a Slavic language with no conection at all with the hellenic culture that the Macedonians had want to call themselfs Macedonians?On the other side you have a profesor that whos name was unknown till yesterday,named Friedman,who spented half of his life studying the history of the Slavic countrys and now trys to come with a new discovery something like the world is flat,black is white the world is crazy anything that will just helo him to do something to be heard.The point is not this.He is a historian and he cant have his point of view.The thing is that this man is being payed by the Fyromian goverment by people of the diaspora EVEN by the Turkish diaspora.You see where this thing goes???;-)!!you are so brainwashed that you cant see even this one.The nazizts(xrusi augi)made him a favor some weeks ago cause in reallity at last he has been heard somewhere!You are fooling your own selfs,look what Gligorof said yesterday!!Everybody are lauphing at you people speacially the balcans.Daniele u said something like,the slavic language that you speak is close to the ancient Macedonians or i have a problem with my eyes??where do u base those things?to hypothesis or facts?do u understant that we have been moved from this point 20 years agp??Man honestly why you humiliate your self like this?why u think a famous archaelogit of your a month ago or so said that if you dont try to conect your self with the ancient macedonians then everything are finished??But how can you conect the slavic culture with the hellenic?how can you full the world??i mean they damadged 3 generations brains with propaganda but i never expected that they did so bad damadge honeslty its unbeleivable what they did to you people..Danielle,when Greeks are saying that Macedonians are Greeks we mean that you people are not MAcedonians.In order to be Macedonian you have to be Greek.The same thing is happening with the 2000 voters(this is your minority if u dont know it yet)in Greece.They are Slavs like you they are not Greeks so they cant be Macedonians.if u think that the Greeks and specially the fasist Greeks want this people to be called Greeks then im sorry mate but you are more stupd than i thouth so!!If they say one time "im not Greek" the fasists are saying it 100000000 times!!they are minority but slavic minority there for not Macedonian.in the next sensus they will be categorised so if they like to be a minority now its their change.But there cant be a macedonian minority between 2500.000 macedonian in Greece get it?So lets cut the propaganda bulsit.Its just as here,the Greeks the Albanians the Serbs and the people who knows you better the Bulgarians.You fool yourselfs its you problem not ours.Until may the storie with the name will be finish,you will change it and then you will have an ethnicity a language and finally maybe you can enter EU if things ae good till then.Cheers from Macedonia!!

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

To The Moderator -

"Peggy's" post of <<Tue, Oct 27 2009 12:26 CET>> (and she might be the earlier "Peggy from Melbourne" but I'm not sure) contains additional falsifications.

As well as substituting her own name for Danielle's, she has also removed the word "Greek" from my original post and replaced it with the word "Kosovan", and has then removed the word "FYROM" and replaced it with the word "Serb" and "Serbians". She also adds the term "Albanians" at one point where my post had not.

This then [...]

Read the full comment somehow becomes a false pretext to call me a racist and an Albanian - both of which I am not.

I trust you will deal with this matter promptly and appropriately.

Kind Regards,
Tim

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

Sorry, to be clearer, my first paragraph should end by saying,

<<...who are jointly disputing "Friedman's" claim>>

Professor Miller begins this in the plural, which suggests that it's the whole 350 - and counting - Classics professors from around the world who are jointly disputing his claim,

<<It should be noted that, prior to our decision to write this letter, we invited Dr. Friedman to debate his views in the Hellenic Electronic Center/Professors’ Forum*, but he declined our invitation.

Friedman’s overt bias is best exemplified in his remark “Greeks get away with this ‘cradle of democracy’ image! Give me a break! Ancient Greece was a slave-owning society,” which defies [...]

Read the full comment further comment. It is indeed unfortunate that such a statement came from a scholar.

We will not respond with similar sensationalism here. Rather, we will remain close to the facts and scholarly sources, and address those points made by Friedman which might sound reasonable to a reader who is not familiar with the past and the recent history of the Southern Balkan region.>>

I think M.Tito's cut and past effort off Wikipedia falls into a less sophisticated version of the latter technique. He is just playing on people's ignorance by using his wonderfully creative imagination to "free-associate" around the facts.

M.Tito - Do you have any scholarly sources which, with scientific evidence, support this claim you made, and I quote?

<<Alexander used the Greek Alphabet as there weren't any others available at the time, except for Egyptian hieroglyphs!>>

Are you saying that the Persians also wrote in Greek as well?

What about the Phoenicians?

Are you saying that Alexander and his father really spoke a Slavonic-Bulgarian Dialect, but wrote in Greek instead, because that was the ONLY language around, and thus so did the [...]

Read the full comment Persians write in Greek, since they were already around too?

Isn't the more logical conclusion that Alexander wrote in Greek because he was? And that the Persians didn't, because they weren't? And that the Slavs didn't have anything to do with it, because there were none there until a thousand years after Alexander's death?

Here's what Professor Stephen Miller of Berkley says,

"The Hellenic identity of ancient Macedonia is indisputable; it is supported by historical, archeological, and linguistic evidence. For the socio-political and historical facts, the most authoritative source is the classic work of the leading scholar on the history of ancient Macedonia, the late Prof. Nicholas Hammond's book, The Macedonian State, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989."

Here he is subjecting to a heavy criticism what he determined to be a flawed and politically motivated effort by a linguistics professor and Balkan Studies scholar Victor Friedman.

http://macedonia-evidence.org/victor-friedman.html

Not sure that what Tim Themi says about Alexander's use of the Greek alphabet and language meaning that he was ethnically Greek necessarily follows (it's what Logicians call the "Law of the Undistributed Middle Term". Aristotle, Aquinas, and the mediaeval Masters of the Schools were all familiar with its pitfalls, but the study of traditional Logic is still on the decline, except of course at Oxford and Cambridge.)

Briefly: (1) Alexander used the Greek Alphabet as there weren't any others available at the time, except for Egyptian hieroglyphs ! The Paionians and Illyrians didn't even have [...]

Read the full comment an alphabet, so Greek it had to be.

(2) Greek was the "lingua franca" of the Eastern Mediterranean right up to 1923 and the Treaty of Lausanne population exchanges, and this dated back to the 4th century BC, notably but not exclusively with the Athenian trade in grain with the Black Sea / Pountus Euxine region. What this meant in practice was that a lot of people who spoke and wrote Greek were not in fact ethnically Greek, just as a lot of people worldwide who speak and write English are not ethnically British, American, or Australian.

(3) A particularly good example is the Bible. The Old Testament was a hotch-potch of texts in a variety of ancient languages including Hebrew, and none of its writers were actually Greek. But when it came to compiling the whole thing into a useable text and document, ancient scholars put it all into Greek, and the Roman Catholic Church then translated it from Greek into Latin in the 2nd century AD onwards, culminating in St Jerome's "Vulgate" in 382 AD in what scholars call "chatty" Latin, as opposed to the "classical" Latin of Cicero.

The New Testament, in contrast, was written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and some Greek (notably St Paul, who though a Hebrew was a master of the Greek language). It was translated into Latin by St Jerome, but re-translated back into Greek at the Reformation (hence the description "New Testament Greek").

From all this it is evident that just because documents and inscriptions appear in Greek, it doesn't follow that a Greek wrote them or that Greek was the original source. But what DOES follow is that Greek was the predominant language around the eastern Mediaterranean for a very long time indeed.

(By the way, Alexander himself was of course either 50% or 100% Greek, depending how you view his father' birth certificate ! But the fact that he used Greek does NOT logically mean that he actually was Greek, any more than it did with St Paul.)

FYROM nationalists must learn something from the Milosevic Serbian-nationalist disaster.

Do not trust the one who places a "crown of thorns" on his head and says, 'I am the sufferer, that makes me holy', that is, the one who plays the victim as an excuse or pretext to attack.

Do what Nietzsche does in the passage Jacques refers to, place a "crown of roses" on you head and say, 'Ha! I'm no victim. And now I can laugh heartily, and that makes me bold and healthy. I am above all these brain [...]

Read the full comment sick nationalist propaganda fantasies now. And can even laugh at the fact that I once was enjoined with them! This is my new found strength. And hitherto I had none! It was all but tragedy, and a spectacle for the gods. But my new found strength has me also becoming godlike now, for when I look back, it is a spectacle for me too!'

A "rose" by any other name will smell just as sweet; but if you try to call it a "daffodil", you'll get yourself confused!

Some can define the difference between propaganda and history, but then apply it incorrectly.

What they label "propganda" is real history, and what they label "real history" is propaganda.

When they claim to "know" something, they are only showing what they "believe".

But beliefs aren't always true and justified, and if not, they can never count as knowledge.

..She's been lied to ever since she was a little girl, likely by her Father, whose desire she is now left to be blindly acting out. [...]

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Alexander used the same alphabet as the Athenians and Spartans, the same one used all over Greece still today.

It's because he was Greek, like every other real Macedonian. The evidence is written all over the artifacts he left behind, all the way to Afghanistan.

Go take a look! - all you have to do is scrape Father's wool from your eyes..

To Tim Themi.The differance between Propaganda and history is a very simple subject.An unbiased history(I mean a real historian)writting it regardless of his or her ethnic backround,again,I mean this historian is not on ones pocket like Miller.Propaganda is used to lie to the people.To deny the truth as long as his or her aim is achieved.For example;Greeces denial of the existance of Macedonian minority in Greece.Telling the world that Macedonia is Greek,Bulgarians use same propaganda.Did you know,the Macedonian language is closer to the ancient Macedonian language than the Greek to the Hellenic language?Ancient Macedonian and Hellenic languages have nothing in [...]

Read the full comment common or resemblance?Greeces claim to the contrary,IS PROPAGANDA!Now do you understand the differance? A word to Vanya.Your mentality is exacly as the one Greece has.Macedonia existed centuries before Bulgaria.Please learn your history before you can post.The post world war 2nd first president of Bulgaria was Georgi Dimitrov,Macedonian.I dont claim Bulgaria as of that was Macedonia,to the contrary,there are Macedonians in Bulgaria same as in Greece.

<<The crown of he man who laughs
this crown,wreathed with roses
I have placed that crown on myself
I speak the holy laughter to myself
today I found no one else strong enough for that>>
romantic self assured,positive
The Birth of tragedy F.N

Tim Themi - thanks. In which case my suggested amendment should read:

<< the latter constitutes the only intelligent propositions so far received about Tim Themi >>

...which, with respect, is still much clearer than your original.

Meanwhile, I can commend Sir Ernest Gowers' "Plain Words" (still in print after 60 years.) Link - with full references - is here:

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Ernest_Gowers

Sir Ernest gained a First in Classics from Clare College, Cambridge, back in 1902, so I [...]

Read the full comment hope his academic credentials are sufficient to satisfy your demanding criteria. His book - and its sequel - on how to express complex concepts in educated but simple English that most people can understand has been required reading in British academia (and the Civil Service) ever since its first publication in 1948.

I commend it to your attention.

Thank you Jacques, great to hear something positive for a change! Nietzsche is one of my favorite readers of the Greeks. And that other Jacques, Jacques Lacan, is one of the major objects of my present research. He has been a great challenge, and a real enigma.

I made more than one proposition, labeled them a), b), c), & d), so it would be incorrect to refer to them, as you suggest, as "the one intelligent proposition", instead of, as I wrote, "the sole set of intelligent propositions".

Nice to see you reading closely, but why not try falsifying one the substantive claims I made about the Macedonia naming rights issue? - and help us all consign the invectives to last week.

It's only fun for a while, and I don't think I even wanna try and top "Alexander [...]

Read the full comment the Slav's Angelina-blow-up-Dollie and the Flagging Fart of Vargina" - burning gas like a Son to resist the evil Greek Lobby on "Capitalist Hill" in their conspiracy with, and this part comes from "Family Guy", "Darth Vader and the Temple of Doom".

Tim Themi
Your education ranging from psycholinguistics,psychology and philosophy his French is very good he a adept of Lacan,Saussure. both French academics on the philosophy side he has definute tendencies toward Nietzsche."AU DELA DU BIEN ET DU MAL" and "ANSI PARLAIT ZARATHROUSTRA" a pro Aryan adventure also a follower of structuralism hence his Epistimological approach .

Tim Themi
Your education ranging from psycholinguistics,psychology and philosophy his French is very good he a adept of Lacan,Saussure. both French academics on the philosophy side he has definute tendencies toward Nietzsche."AU DELA DU BIEN ET DU MAL" and "ANSI PARLAIT ZARATHROUSTRA" a pro Aryan adventure also a follower of structuralism hence his Epistimological approach .

Tim Themi -

Poor undereducated me finds statements of yours like:

<< The latter of which is thus constitutive of the sole set of intelligent propositions that have been put forward regarding "Tim Themi" to date. >>

....difficult to understand. If you mean to say:

<< the latter constitutes the one intelligent proposition so far received about Tim Themi >>,

then far more people would understand what you say (if that's what you want, of course. If you prefer to [...]

Read the full comment cloak yourself in semantic obscurity, that is your affair.)

Perhaps you should employ a sub-editor to put your thoughts into educated but plain English ? (It IS possible; Freddie Ayer and Bertand Russell both did it rather well.)

Yes, and we are hard working academics. People taught not to eat crap. We don't claim to know everything ("pan-epistemiou"), only to have the scientific and scholarly methods worked up for two-millennia from the Ancient Greeks, to ensure our words don't refer to words alone.

Ours refer to things.

Yours refer to very fine feelings, feelings that no doubt can evoke a scholar's hidden truth.

But if education does not succeed, in that land whose every faculty was made silent by Tito except the faculty to lie - [...]

Read the full comment and which Milosoveic took to another level with his ability to exploit - then following NATO rejection, more NATO bombs may also fall.

If so, I won't miss a single ideologue, or a single fanatic.

The problem is that there are people there of some potential which the bombs will not miss.

Such things dropped from great heights are incapable of nuance.

From this morning's UK "Times":

<<President Klaus based his case against the Lisbon treaty on its extension of qualified-majority voting among the EU’s 27 nations into 40 new policy areas, meaning that the Czech Republic and every other country will lose veto rights in these areas. Supporters of the treaty argue that it will help with the smooth running of the EU after its enlargement from 15 to 27 countries since 2004. >>

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This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

We are but hard working fishermen. People are the products of what they are fed. No-one, not even you my academic friend can provide certainty with words alone. The world moves forward with actions, when human agency is applied in respect to the conditions it is faced with, only then do those who act within reality contrast against those who prefer hyperbole. Zoran, Zhivko, Vanya, (macedonians of Bulgarian background) are the ants that move the earth (world) though people like Danielle, Risto Stefov, Voskopoulos (macedonians of jingoism/yugoslavs) etc,. are filled with hyperbole fed to them from their mothers milk they [...]

Read the full comment can't think differently let alone act differently. Just as our nets are full one day in ten so too one can see how much the world needs to learn. You see education doesn't make the person if that person is not willing to learn outside its mothers milk.

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This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

Tim Themi responds to his FYROM critics with the utter contempt and ridicule they deserve by showing a) that there is no relation between FYROM and the "Macedonia" signifier; b) that there is a fundamentalist Christian structure to the way they seek to gather supporting evidence; c) a paranoid conspiracy structure to the way they try to avoid counter-evidence; and d) by finally referring to himself in the third person.

The latter of which is thus constitutive of the sole set of intelligent propositions that have been put forward regarding "Tim Themi" to date.

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to GMS: in short, yes, I agree with you entirely.

Oh dear - Tim Themi has woken up again ! I had hoped that the dragons would get him in his cave during his slumber...

If he doesn't know that "Freddie" Ayer was universally referred to by that first name (Freddie would never have called it a "Christian name") throughout the entire UK academic community, despite his initials being "A.J.", he is even more of a Melbourne tram driver by background than I had thought.

Best to ignore what he says ("epistemically" or not) - he has the unique ability to antagonise [...]

Read the full comment those on both sides of the "Macedonia" issue, but not in the direction of being at all eirenic or constructive (except in the sense that both sides might temporarily unite to get rid of him !)

Meanwhile, let us see whom he insults next.....the Moderators are probably next in line ! He has meanwhile insulted God, religion, everybody else posting on site, the Greeks, the Macedonians, and everybody except (so far) the Albanians.

Maybe therefore he is an Albanian in disguise......Sqiperia grumbullimit !

To Marshall, I would say we find a "friendly compromise" together and I would vote for this right now if both parts, Greece and FYROM would accept it:

"Macedon" meanwhile, (pronounced "Masedon") could be reserved for the former Jugoslav republic. This might not satisfy Gruevski, but it could be sold to the international community, and to journalists, fairly easily".

The distinction of Macedons and Macedonians is genuine, comprehensive,crystal clear. Curiously, I was going to suggest it before you wrote your comment. Seems we have mutually a "diplomatic" state of mind.
[...]

Read the full comment

Though, I have no idea if M. Nimetz even included it among his proposals and if it would be acceptable for FYROM. On the other hand, I do not think Greece would see this idea with a bad eye in my humble opinion.

*Yawn ~

Yes, Freddy got Friedrich Fingered Pausaniaski "demonstrates his ignorance" by quoting from non scholarly, non-academic, non-peer-review websites, and still not getting it right, because he only reads the headings before his little pin-sized brain gets too over-extended.

Don't crap on about minor trivialities about a world you've got no knowledge about -

Read the first paragraph at least of what you are trying to plagiarize completely out of context you belligerent chronic fraudulent -

A.J Ayer - like B. Russell - is [...]

Read the full comment a "logical positivist", a "logical empiricist" - precisely the opposite to those pseudo-romantic "truth relativism" and "historical revisionism" perversions of yours that you've tried to bring them in as support for.

Dickhead!

That's why, as I said from the start, you think that Holland can name their airport "Napolean Airport", and that Cuba can change its name to "The Real Florida".

Because you are relativist - you've got no way of telling fiction from fact!

And that's the only reason why you still think that Alexander the Golden Greek Great can somehow be a Slav!

(Still waiting for evidence that you have, as you earlier claimed, as PhD from Cambridge in History - my academic credentials are all on the public record which is why I can speak in my own name, my one true name, and which is why you can't seriously contest it!)

Well, yes, GMS, I see your point about "Paeonia", geographically correct though it may be. "Paionia" might be better, but not much.

However, given that in English we have two traditional and Biblical terms for the ancient territory concerned, "Macedon" and "Macedonia", there might be some mileage in splitting their meaning, as follows:

"Macedonia" (pronounced Masedonia in English) is closer to the Greek spelling, so let this only apply to the Greek province of Macedonia. This might satisfy SOME (not all!) interests in Greece.

"Macedon" meanwhile, (pronounced "Masedon") [...]

Read the full comment could be reserved for the former Jugoslav republic. This might not satisfy Gruevski, but it could be sold to the international community, and to journalists, fairly easily. (There is something similar with the two Congo republics, also with the various Guineas.)

In terms of practicability, a sustained campaign by the UK Ministry of Foreign Affairs to persuade journalists to differentiate between the two countries along the lines above might just have some slight chance of success, much as the path of international relations is strewn with failed place names (Myanmar, German Deomocratic Republic, Czechia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and NIS are but a few.)

By the way, I am genuinely trying to see your point of view and to be helpful !

PS.

Dear GMS,

Good luck with your "good will strategy". If you scroll down, you'll find there was plenty of that from me to start with - but that you can't reason with science-hating, nationalist fanatatics!

In my opinion, if you are an extremist lefty, then in terms of values you are no more Greek than any other superstitious moral fanatic from St. Paul to Mao, Stalin and Tito.

Neither you, nor any mere politician, can ever be said to represent the entirety of [...]

Read the full comment the "Greek point of view", as you put it, a priori, unless you can prove that your view is "true".

"Aggression" is a natural response by a civilised, cultured intelligent man to a barbarous stupidity. If you think it is "sin" a priori, then you belong with all those morbidly-depressed "orthodox" Christian Monks of Mt. Athos - a place which has basically been known to be a funny farm of a construction for centuries now, and which often shares the same utopian, idealist, pie-piper morality of many extreme leftists, which never works, which is why you all end up more murderously aggressive than anyone else who is more self-honest.

But mate, English is obviously not your preferred language, which is fair enough, and as is evidenced by your,

"you are Greek, therefore systematically too proud, stupid",

Huh?

But you should at least be able to cut and paste my own English without falsifying it so profoundly!

I am gonna tune back in tomorrow, and see how well YOU do arguing with a bunch of obsessional, epistemically challenged nationalist fanatics with a borderline paranoid psychotic psychotic structure..

I remain to be convinced that you have the better strategy; but will gladly give full credit for any positive results.

And remember, no points from me for any my kind of milk-sop, Mummy's boy, Mother Teressa, floppy tit softness towards the pretend "macedonian" slavs of FYROM - for it was only such softist, bullshit idealism that gave those village idiots the inch that enabled them to take a completely undeserved country mile in the first place!

Trust me. They are all loving you at the moment. But for the wrong reason.

If you don't lift you game, we, not only real Greeks, but sane, rational, scientifically astute and sensibly ethical individuals of all races and nations are gonna send you and your lefty fairies back to Siberia!

Kind Regards,
Tim

A good idea in the future would be for Bulgaria to name his south west province "Northern East Macedonia", since it was part of the Macedonia kingdom, and therefore "Northern West Macedonia" for FYROM.

Once again Tim Themi demonstrates his ignorance, this time about Freddie Ayer (the noted British philosopher):

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/ayer.htm

Ayer was always known as "Freddie" by everybody, and this got re-formalised as "Frederick" by his college (Wadham College Oxford), mainly because it sounded better for degree ceremonies. So Tim Themi is once again demonstrating his "invincible ignorance", as the Church expresses it. (Freddy Ayer wouldn't have liked that bit, as he was an avowed atheist.)

This rather reinforces my initial impression of "epistemic" Tim Themi, namely [...]

Read the full comment that he has never got any closer to real academia than Sydney Harbour Bridge.

"It would probably be easier for Greece to re-name its northern province with a brand new name, maybe "Paeonia" ? Nobody in Britain except for a few academics knows where that is, and it is after all much the same place."

It "would", but that will never happen. You know it. And the "aeo" of "Paeonia" would certainly not work in english or french, as "j" and "k" as you suggested...

But what is a clear victory for Greece in this whole story is that the one "Macedonia" authentic place to be [...]

Read the full comment name as such with a single term will be the hellenic one (not speaking about the copycat "Macedonia" state/province of USA, Romania, Brazil).

Greek Mac Sup - yes, I see your point about brand-new toponyms (or place-names as even UK journalists call them), but this does not apply to ancient place names such as "Macedon" or "Macedonia", which actually occur in the Bible.

Unfortunately (from your viewpoint) the placenames "Macedon" and "Macedonia" (pronounced "Masedon" and "Masedonia") are embedded in every child who has ever been to church in the UK or to a school with church input (this accounts for about 85% of the population above the age of 20, and would certainly encompass most if not all journalists). [...]

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This awareness of "Masedonia" goes back to the Authorised Version of the Bible, first published in 1611 and still in use today throughout the UK. (No British government would dare to tamper with it !)

The key Biblical mention of Macedon(ia) is Acts of the Apostles chapters 16 (verses 9-10) 18 (verse 5), and 20 (verses 1-4).

Hymn 361 in the classic "Hymns Ancient and Modern" book : "Through midnight gloom from Macedon" is also pertinent.

In short, there is no way that any British government can shake this "Masedonia" pronounciation or awareness as per the Bible from the British psyche (the English Civil War 1640-45 tried and failed). And British journalists will observe the national psyche - that's what they're paid to do !

It would probably be easier for Greece to re-name its northern province with a brand new name, maybe "Paeonia" ? Nobody in Britain except for a few academics knows where that is, and it is after all much the same place.

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And as Greek indeed, I noticed lot of hellenophobic comments and provocations in this place. However, I prefered to avoid sterile answers and instead I am trying to be as much objective as I can in my posts and let you show a different point of view (from the Greek side most of the time) regarding the Macedonian question. It is up to you to accept the Greek point of view or not. But no needs to do a drama for this...

Sorry, but your comments are way too aggressive and you show any good will to debate. It seems this forum is not made for a so sensible interlocutor like you.

Also I do not accept lessons, moral judgements and reasoning with hidden meanings such as "you are Greek, therefore systematically too proud, stupid", etc. That does not honor you at all...

I do not know from where you come from (I have an obvious idea about this, but...). Nevermind, I do not bother for this. So please, stay on topic, try to [...]

Read the full comment answer constructively instead of insulting and do not be arrogant when people are not thinking the same way as you. Thank you.

My kindest/sincere regards,
GMS

Dear "Greek Macedonia Supremacy" -

I gonna be a bit "provo" here, but you're a Greek, and you can take it, so,

- Stand up! put your shoulders back and your manly chest out!

Calling a bunch of "pseudo-Massos" of Slavo-Bulgarian decent "macedonian" in any way is an absolute disgrace!

If that's what the new Greek Govt. is planning, then stuff them!

It would only typify the predictably milk-sop mummy-boy moralising infections that plagues left-wing organisations the world over!
[...]

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Have a look at the stupidity the FYROM pretend-Alexander fanatics are posting all over this site.

They will never respond well to niceties. Nothing except a complete an utter diseased infection with their nationalist psychosis will ever be enough for them!

And all sane, rational, non-epistemically retarded men, women, and children of all races and nations - including those "non-loser can face reality no worries" type FYROM Slavs like Zhivko & co - would have to start clutching their faces in despair over this!

Remember - an attack on truth is an attack on the essence of civilization!

No compromises with stupidity!

Be true to your genes, and all those legends from Cicero to Chomsky who have upheld the torch with exemplary, culture-lifting displays of scientific rationality!

Kind Regards,
Tim

To Tito:

"...this works fine in languages such as German or Polish where the original "K" is retained in the spelling and "J" works as a mute consonant, as you say. But it doesn't work in English or French, where the "K" is replaced by a "C", and pronounced as an "S". Also in English and French the "J" is always pronounced as an active consonant, with a "zh" sound".

I am not so sure about this statement... There are lot of toponyms coming from Asian and Africans countries which include a [...]

Read the full comment "k" for example. "Kenya" or "Hong Kong", "South Korea" (and not "South Corea"...) to just a mention what it comes to my mind. I do not see why it would be such a problem since, as I said, that does not imply any change of pronunciation.

And also, journalists love what is new and if the international use would be for ever to name the people from FYROM, the "Makedonijans" or "Macedonijans", or even "Makedoniyans" I do not see why they would not follow the standarts and do their own mispelling. There are lot of more complex country names in this world and that does not mean necessarily they have the right to use their own orthograph and pronunciation to call a country outside its international use.

That's why I see any reason to see the orthograph as a vailable/potential obstacle. On the contrary, I would see this as a "bad will" argument to put on the table of the negociations...

To Danielle, your interpretation is wrong. The suspension of the Macedonia-Thrace administration has nothing to do with an hypothetic recognition of the "Republic of Macedonia".

1/The first goal is economical: the money for this administration is going now for other more useful ministries, since Greece is in deep troubles with their economy.

2/The second is indeed to show a positive sign to the neighbours of FYROM, so they can create a kind of optimistic climate for upcoming negociations about the name. But that does not imply any recognition of "Republic of Macedonia". [...]

Read the full comment Instead Greece is looking for a settlement based on the recognition of the "Republic of Northern Macedonia", which will be temporary accepted by FYROM before the EU summit of december.

That worries me more here is if the greek Macedonia would have to change its name into "Southern Macedonia". I still think Slavomacedonia would have been the best name to distinguish with the Greek Macedonia.

Dear Danielle -

In 40 words or less, can you tell me what the word "propganda" means personally for you?

I've "only" got 2 degrees - and am only on the brink of adding a doctorate in philosophy to it to boot - so maybe it's just me, but the way you use it seems to be absolutely "meaningless"!

Dear "Marshall Tito" (the King George Pausanias of the two and a half offskis),

For a man (if you are a man) that now proudly names himself after a grizzly, murderous, Eastern block commi-barbarian, your whinging, winning, nagging, moralising appeals to the moderator must look about as convincing as your attempt to adequately deploy the terminology of the academic discourses of science.

If you are interested in "moderated behaviour", why not try incorporating the concept &/or criteria of "truth"?

Step one: give us a constructive account of it; [...]

Read the full comment give us a laugh at least while we humour you by reading it.

Having "a good egg (i.e., head!) on one's shoulders" is a complement here Down Under that any Aussie can verify is part of the vernacular.

If you spent more time bonding with us, and less time racially vilifying us, you might have picked it up by now.

It implies no contradiction of the English language whatsoever. And not to "stride the blast" of your c-grade moralising shrill, but it's a metaphor far more conservative than anything Shakespeare musters on a line by line basis!

This of course is unlike your (guffaw, guffaw), wondrously syntactically challenged phrase, and I quote,

'Aries always "used" to express it rather well'

Huh?

Or your 'guess who finished last in the grade 6 spelling bee' effort of, and I quote,

'Epistemiology' !!!???

Ha! You are hilarious! I'll make it easier for you and all you imaginary alias-identifications: -

Don't worry about trying to "define" it - your every breath reveals the impossibility of this task for you - just try "spelling" it without adding more salty egg to the wounds of your ugly never been laid because far to ugly face!

Greece took the right path to suspend the Macedonia Thrace administration.Looks like the Northern Greece is coming back.By taking this step,Greece should have no problem of recognising the constitutional name of the Republic of Macedpnia.PM Papandreou it looks to me he is on the right track.The Karamanlis propaganda is stoped on its tracks.

Leaving aside the well-corroborated account of Alexander being conceived by the Egyptian God Ammun (which Alexander relayed from his own lips) in the form of a serpent that impregnated his mother Olympias - which makes him half-Egyptian and half-Greek.

As he has so far antagonised most of the Christians on the site (both Orthodox and Catholic) with his peculiar anti-Christian comments, I really wonder whom Tim Themi will attempt to antagonise next ? Will it be the Jews, or will it be the Moslems ?

I really think the Moderators should step [...]

Read the full comment in now to shut him up.

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

"Tim Themi" is stretching the bounds of unmoderated behaviour. Separately, he is demonstrating a less-than-perfect grasp of English. For example, the expression is not "egg on shoulders" - there is an expression "egg on face", which means the opposite to what Tim Themi intended !

It is also becoming increasingly clear that he went on an initial University course on Epistemiology and failed it (hence all his gratuitous and largely inaccurate pseudo-academic references to entities being "epistemic" and "revisionistic".)

This is rather like a student of a foreign language being taught to [...]

Read the full comment use a newly-learnt expression at every possible opportunity, which supports my suspicion that he only went to one lecture at the University of Melbourne before he got thrown off the course !

There is indeed a case for the "Greek" side of the Macedonia debate - Aries always used to express it rather well - but if Tim Themi is a friend of the Greek Macedonian cause, heaven help them!

(Maybe he's being secretly paid by Gruevski ? Now there's a thought...)

a Tim Themi - pourquoi tu ne fermes pas ta petite gueule ?

You're getting obsessive, and your anti-Christian comments will offend others on this site as well as myself.

Dear Vanya,

No doubt Zoran and yourself are light years ahead of our "little diaspora Danielle" and the desperately, virginal "Pausaniaski the II" or whatever the chronically fraudulent identity shifter choses to call himself..

..But why not go the next step - which Zhivko and his sensibly positivist (i.e., not relativist-revisionist) understanding of what evidence means has - and say,

'Hey, why are we happily self-affirming, Slavo-Bulgarians who are presently occupying the intriguingly mysterious Ancient lands of Paionia, still referring to ourselves, our genes and culture with signifiers [...]

Read the full comment such as "macedonia" and "macedonians" - those which some of the embarrassing, cultural-intellectual dregs of our past foolishly tried to rape from the Greeks?'

Why not say, 'We hate those deluded, piggish, nationalist obsessionals, and don't ever want to condone or be associated with their grand theft auto attempt of Greek signifiers - so that it can never contaminate our sense of self again'?

Why not say, 'Let's call our country "Paionia", because that's what Alexander the Great called it - since everyone loves the guy so much - and let it be known that our Slavo-Bulgarian roots are awesome! And that we don't need to paradoxically borrow words that refer to anyone else's!!'?

Hey Zoran of course our little Danielle is from the diaspora what do you think. Here in Struga our Bulgarian roots are set deep in the ground. People like Danielle are always lost for words when we tell them that the majority of tourists who visit our lake here are always Bulgarians and they always have been. Danielle forgets that Ohrid is the furthest Macedonian city from Bulgaria yet we speak the same language. I am sure Zoran that Danielle would ask for an interpreter if she was here swimming in our lake and a Bulgarian happened to talk to [...]

Read the full comment her. Never mind, the I'm sure she can speak english to them while the rest of our Macedonians sit back and have a good laugh. I'm not sure if Gruevski is actually using interpreters now. The farce came unstuck with our first leader Gligorov who insisted on a translator at a meeting in Sofia. When his counterpart continually told the translator not to worry about it because he could understand everything Gligorov was saying, Gligorov stormed out of the meeting saying we need a new interpreter. When the news hit the streets Gligorov was fried like good Ohrid mullet with a splash of vinegar, he stayed out of the public eye for nearly 2 weeks allowing his foreign minister to run the show. You see Danielle Gligorov couldn't keep the farce up everyone in his entourage spoke out against his behaviour and why he was making such a big deal with the interpreter. Ever since that meeting whenever journalists would ask him about it he would blush and say that it was a misunderstanding. I tell you Danielle if come to Struga one day from the diaspora we'll see if you can understand our local Macedonian dialect which just happens to be Bulgarian. Macedonian for the Macedonians and like Zoran we are proud of our Slavic roots.

Dear King Pausaniaska the II & a Half Men -

Unlike you, I'm not trying to coerce the moderator in a persistently dibby-dobber manner..

But insofar that he hasn't intervened, it's probably because a) he or she is a good sport with a good egg on his or her shoulders; and b) because like everyone else he or she has realised that you are a pasty internet geek who hasn't been laid since the.., well, since never, because pretending you are Alexander the Slav whilst rooting your Angelia-Blow-up-Mummy-Dolly doesn't count now does [...]

Read the full comment it!

Maybe a beer or two would help your cause bloke!

You know, chalk it up to Dionysos, that very, very, very Greek God that Alexander worshiped like a Dad!

Pausaniaski the II earlier had stated,

'The "Star of Vergina" can easily be interpreted as a morning view of the sun'

But got himself confused. He was thinking of "The Fart of Vagina", of which when it came from his Mum, who he wishes was Angelina Jolie, he became the "Sun"!

Hehe - I kid the Pausaniaski.

But it's not if I can take a relativist-smellativist-revisionist seriously now is it?

Words like "fact" in a mouth like that is one [...]

Read the full comment of the greatest acts of "terminological impudence" since St. Paul went to Rome with the gall to utter words like "truth"!

Not to mention his "son of a carpenter" mate JC! Who the noble Pilate only needed to refute with a simple question, and then did, ("But what is Truth?"), thus constituting the sole moment of intellectual integrity of the whole, entire Bible!

Tim Themi - with the greatest possible respect, you are beginning to sound as if you are "well lubricated" with more than a few cans of Australia's best beer.

You will never get a job on the trams this way, so do try to sober up, please.

Otherwise our ever-vigilant Moderators will detect somebody posting who is Completely P*ssed, as I think you are.

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

Tim Themi - it rather sounds from your posting that you have been cracking a few ice-cold tubes of the chilled article down there in Oz (translation for European English-speakers: "you have been drinking a few too many Australian cold canned beers such as Victoria Bitter or Fosters".)

Whether you like it or not, historical revisionism is here to stay, and your crude attempts to lampoon it do you no credit as a serious academic authority, as you claim to be.

Maybe a job on the Melbourne trams (as somebody else on [...]

Read the full comment this site suggested) might not be such a bad idea for you after all....

Greek Mac Sup - Yes, you are right; I agree - I was concatening two different restaurant gradings.

Three stars (trois etoiles) is the top Michelin mark for quality of cuisine, as you rightly say, but Five 'couverts' (the knife and fork symbol that denotes standard of luxury in Michelin restaurants.)is the top mark for comfort and ambiance.

a "Tour d'Argent" of course has both. But you would be lucky to come away with a bill/"check" for less than 1000 euros per person !

I agree the subject [...]

Read the full comment is a bit off-topic, but there are worse topics to raise than haute cuisine in top-class restaurants, as it's a world-wide area of interest and nobody posting is going to be rude to anybody else. (I hope the Moderators agree with me !)

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained foul, abusive or discriminating language

A bit off-topic there, but a restaurant can get only 3 Michelin stars, not 5...

Greek Macedonia Supremacy - when you say :

<< This is right...BUT, for this case, when I say the word "Makedonijan", I do not mean to alter the pronunciation. "Makedonijan" will be phonetically called the same as "Macedonian". This is just a graphic change of the word. "J" will be "une consonne muette", mon cher, just like the "h" in english. That will be enough for the differentiation. >>

...this works fine in languages such as German or Polish where the original "K" is retained in the spelling and "J" works as [...]

Read the full comment a mute consonant, as you say. But it doesn't work in English or French, where the "K" is replaced by a "C", and pronounced as an "S". Also in English and French the "J" is always pronounced as an active consonant, with a "zh" sound.

You will almost certainly find, therefore, that English-speaking journalists will persist with "Macedonia / Macedonian" no matter what formula is agreed to end the 'name dispute', and French journalists will persist with "la Macedonie / Macedoine" similarly.

It is intriguing to imagine the Restaurant Tour d'Argent in Paris (5 Michelin stars) re-naming its signature dish from "La Macedoine des Legumes fraiches en Sauce Bechamel" to "Makedonija des Legumes fraiches...", but it just won't happen. Anymore than they re-named it "La ERYdM des Legumes fraiches" when the FYROM acronym came in. (You I am sure will know this is the UN-approved French version of fYRoM, but others might not. Il y des gens qui lisent cette collonne qui ne sont pas competents en ce qui concerne la maitrise de la langue francaise.)

In brief, whatever Greece wants, I am afraid the rest of the journalistic world (outside Iran and China) will not be bound by what their governments say, but will call Makedonija what they like !

(I personally have no problem with <<Makedonija>> as I am familiar with the languages of former Jugoslavija.)

Danielle I know its hard to accept our Slavic background but the truth that you and I are Macedonians only goes as far as dates. You seem to throw around dates irrespective of their context. Don't worry Danielle our greates leader was Delchev and he personally wrote of our Bulgarian heritage so if you like calling yourself a Tartar its ok there is nothiong wrong with the poor people. But as you can see you are as close to an ancient Macedonian as Gruevski is a socialist. I mean that is impossible although Gruevski could turn if you paid him [...]

Read the full comment enough. In any case Danielle don't worry our Narod are clear who they want to be some of us recognise our Slavic heritage and some of you dream of a romantic past with Al. Veliki and co. It doesn't really matter what you and I believe the truth is that we in Ohrid, Bitola, and Gevgelija have large numbers of Bulgarian groups who are proud of our Macedonian hertage sing the same Bulgarian songs Delchev, Sandanski etc., sang and we still do the famous Bulgarian mountain dances in Ohrid. So you see my dear you can scream, stomp, and curse all you want but the truth is a large part of our Macedonian NAROD are proud of their Bulgarian origins. One day you will see that when you speak to us every day in the streets of skopje, prilep, strumica you find we are exactly like you only that you believe in some fantasy world of the Greek Macedonians from antiqutiy and we believe in the modern world of our Macedonian NAROD who speak a Language identical to west Bulgarian. By the way I don't think there are many Macedonians in Ohrid who are not proud of their Bulgarian origins. So Danielle use your hollow dates on people you might be able to impress but this part of Macedonia knows of diaspora lot and as we all know the Diaspora is certainly ancient orientated. Good Luck with your dreams. But let our Macedonian people dream in private here in Macedonia.
Macedonia for the Macedonians!

Dear Fyromic pretend "macedonian" Fundamentalists,

Why not call New Zealand the real Tasmania? And Cuba the real Florida?

You guys are fanatics. Your ideas of evidence is matched only by the stupidity of Christian fundamentalists who say:

'Look at that three leaf clover - that's proof of the holy trinity!'

or 'Uh, Dinosaur bones, nah, God put those there to test our faith!'

or ' What, Senior academics and leading scholars have a consensus against our claims - No way, [...]

Read the full comment that must be the Devil's tricks again! They're are all part of Satan's lobby group on "Capitalist" hill, working in league with Darth Vader and the Temple of Doom' -

etc., and ad nauseaum..

How much must you hate your own life if you have to imagine you have someone elses?

You guys are the offcuts of Europe!

That is all.

Kind Regards,
Tim Themi

Greece do not recognize any macedonian language for obvious-ultra-logical reasons, which have less to do with Greece legitime supremacy of the Macedonian culture & heritage.

In one word, the macedonian dialect of the antic times is simply DEAD, just as the latin language. Sorry, that is not your slavic language which can or did ressurect it...

Zoran,Macedonians and Bulgarians are two different tribes since antiquity.We are not same ethnicity,period.Macedonia and Macedonians existed before Bulgaria.Your tribe is Tatars,whereas Macedonians in antiquity and today are Mediterean.You can tell your assesment to one who is illiterate.In 1905 the Macedonians forbidet to use Bulgarian or Greek languages.The Macedonians on July 8th,1905 said to learn and speak Macedonian only as spoken in the area of Bitola.Furtheremore since we are on the subject of Macedonia the "Greek newspaper"SKRIP"wrote on this subject.If you are interested,I can copy it for you on this site.Also in 1982 in Geneva at the Fourth UN conference on [...]

Read the full comment the standarization of geographical names,Greece recognized the Macedonian language on 24th August-14 September of same year.Why then not now?In 1946 the UN asked to form a United Macedonia,because the Greek government was killing Women,children and everyone in front of them who declaired to be Macedonian.Check it out at "The New York Times published Nov.15th,1946.If this wont satisfy you,than I dont know what will.I write what realy transpired.I dont lie.You are welcam to check these facts ror your self,also those Greeks who claim Macedonia is Greek.The fact is;Macedonia never belonged to Greece,it is the other way around.

Some notices/corrections there:

(a) "makedonski" isn't actually Latin - that would be the adjective "macedonius/macedonia/macedonium", depending on the noun that it was qualifying. There is no letter "J" or "K" in Latin".

>>>Of course, "makedonski" isn't latin, but has some latin origins anyway. As for the letter "J", I say "Alea jacta est", even if it is pronounced "iacta". True though the "j" was ignored by the Latins...

(b) the word "makedonijan" doesn't fit English grammar or pronounciation (not least the 'foreign' use of the letters 'K' and [...]

Read the full comment 'J'). This is why only English people who are familiar with Serbo-Croat use the spelling "Jugoslavia" or "Jugoslavija", rather than "Yugoslavia". The best you can hope for from newspaper sub-editors in the UK is "Macedoniyan" (comments welcome from TSE journalists !), though I wouldn't bank on it. It will end up as "Macedonian" as before.

>>>This is right...BUT, for this case, when I say the word "Makedonijan", I do not mean to alter the pronunciation. "Makedonijan" will be phonetically called the same as "Macedonian". This is just a graphic change of the word. "J" will be "une consonne muette", mon cher, just like the "h" in english. That will be enough for the differentiation.

And if you think the one and final solution will be to call Skopjans, the "Macedonians", then you didn't get the entire reality of the name issue. Greece will and would NEVER accept the word "Macedonians" for this country and even with the worse international pressures. It would prefer by far this problem to stay in the actual statu quo for some more decades (that means "FYROMians") than to let this happen.

That is good news - Greek Macedonia - as this nonsense has gone on for long enough.

Two small errors, if I may be so bold as to point them out:

(a) "makedonski" isn't actually Latin - that would be the adjective "macedonius/macedonia/macedonium", depending on the noun that it was qualifying. There is no letter "J" or "K" in Latin.

(b) the word "makedonijan" doesn't fit English grammar or pronounciation (not least the 'foreign' use of the letters 'K' and 'J'). This is why only English people who [...]

Read the full comment are familiar with Serbo-Croat use the spelling "Jugoslavia" or "Jugoslavija", rather than "Yugoslavia". The best you can hope for from newspaper sub-editors in the UK is "Macedoniyan" (comments welcome from TSE journalists !), though I wouldn't bank on it. It will end up as "Macedonian" as before.

(The same in French with "Macedoine/ Macedoinais/Macedoinaise". French is more rigid than English in adapting foreign names to suit its language. The prize is, however, won by the Poles: everyone else refers to "Milano" in Italy as "Milan", or "Milanese" as the adjective. Not so the Poles: the adjective is "Mediolanski" (from the original mediaeval Latin word!)

In short, I am afraid that nobody can dictate what foreign journalists will do to a name ! In Macedonia's case, just be grateful that they don't call it "Mixed Salad Country !"

To Albanian Alexander: "Soon the name willbe the Republic of Northern Macedonia and that will be it. All of our Bulgarian brothers together with our Albanian citizens will all enjoy their new found Macedonian identity together".

My sources are saying indeed both countries are up for "Northern or Uppon Macedonia". But unfortunately, you will not be called a Macedonian, but instead a "Makedonijan", mispelled differently to avoid confusions with the real "Macedonians" of Greece. And your language will be called "makedonski" as we used to say in latin.
This agreement will be reached before [...]

Read the full comment the 7th of december.

Link is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paeonia_(kingdom)

Oh dear, Tim Themi, have you got it wrong ! The capital of Paeonia (the usual spelling) was a city called BYLA ZORA, on the site of today's Veles in fYRoM. Here is link (one of Wiki's better ones, with 12 academic authorities cited, including Encyclopedia Britannica) to prove this.

BYLA ZORA translates into today's Russian, ByeloRussian, and Ukrainian as "White Dawn".

The "Star of Vergina" can easily be interpreted as a morning view of the sun.

So it now at least seems possible that the original Paeonians/ [...]

Read the full comment Macedonians (who, as you say, were one and the same) were in fact Slav-speaking.

Quod erat demonstrandum...

Zhivko - so how many of them are either Cypriots or Americans with Greek names ? Looks more like 45-50% to me.....

Hey everyone I went in to have a look at just how many of these 350 experts are Greek and discovered that 87% of them are actually non-Greek. The argument now is as a Macedonia should I investigate my Bulgarian origins or some Slavic roots which might be related to the other Balkan Slavs but are culturally distinct. Demosthenes and Danielle seem to be on the right track but I'm realising that their line of argument is circular. The Greeks have archaeological, textual and epigraphic evidence about their ancient past but the best we can come up with, is what [...]

Read the full comment others have said about us but not one, not one single Macedonian author. How is that possible if Alexander and all of his circle were taught by the greatest Macedonian teacher of the time Aristotle and even he wrote his philosophies. Didn't Alexander introduce Greek culture to the East, and if he did have court scribes why haven't we got any. This all seems very odd. In other words, conquerors always leave their mark e.g Romans, Vikings, etc. but how is it that the Macedonians are not distiguishable from the Greeks in the East. The Romans left Latin everywhere but we left Greek. For example the Illyrians and Thracians also didn't leave a mark of their own writing but unlike the Macedonians they never went to conquer half the known world. It is becoming more clearer to me now that our ancestors were actually Slavs and possibly Bulgarians. Gotse Delchev who I read and am doing research on at Skopje Uni. has made it loud and clear to all who care to read his manuscript. "We are proud Bulgarians we invite all the other peoples of our Macedonian lands to rise up against Tyranny." Why would the very man we as Macedonians revere probably more that anyone else except Aleksander Veliki have written such words. Some nationalists like to say he was confused and under stress but if you read on, these are not the words of a confused man he was openly calling the masses to rise up. These were the words of a man with convictions who wanted to free the Macedonian people regardless of their ethnic background Bulgarian, Greek, Albanian, Vlach, Roma, Sarkatsan, Pomak, Torbesh, even Turks who wanted freedom of the reigning tyranny. We need to be more objective and look at the evidence at its face value and stop reading our own inflated interpretations of it. Skopje Uni and many other university's in Macedonia have a growing movement of young students searching for answers. It is time all the rest of our citizenry also start asking questions instead of just lapping it all up as our government dishes it out. Some people believe that the Greeks only started calling their province Macedonia since 1989 these simplistic ideas are what keep our people ignorant. One should ask themselves if that is so then why have the Greeks had a large Pre-1861 map showing their Macedonia reaching as far as Ohrid and East to Gevgelija. People should stop makig assumptions based on other peoples fabrications without any evidence. The idea of positivism is to extract evidence from your hypotheses to find the truth not the other way round. Nationalism is making our nation blind and we will soon be looking at our flag and mistakng it for the Japanese War flag because of our ongoing squinting.

Soon the name willbe the Republic of Northern Macedonia and that will be it. All of our Bulgarian brothers together with our Albanian citizens will all enjoy their new found Macedonian identity together. The Slavs can continue to use their Bulgarian language while we can use our Albanian while we all enjoy our Macedonia entering the EU. Hopefully the conservatives reverse their nationalistic behaviour and especially their foolish idea that they somehow belong to antiquity. The latest news from Skopje is that they are seriously considering a change as long as all our Macedonian identity is not harmed this way [...]

Read the full comment we all retain our BUlgarian, Albanian, Vlach, Turkish, Greek roots while still having a name that we are all proud of. When our ancestor Alexander ruled these lands our Illyrian power had penetrated deep into Greek lands, today our conservatives want to build a statue of him in skopje. We applaud you Gruevski for making our Albanian people proud of their ancient leaders. We know that your Bulgarian Leaders like Gotse Delchev, Dame Gruev might also get a place next tio our Alexander on his mighty Albanian horse so its good way to unite our Albanian and Bulgarian people. Thankyou Gruevski.

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained off-topic content

Well, Tim Thematici, I can imagine several lobby groups which might have a more "objective" pedigree - given that your favourite word of
"epistemic" (better known in the obscure context of epistemiology, which any fule kno) is aptly defined in this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_community

We all know the lobbying and influence power of special interest groups round Capitol Hill - former president George W. Bush (pause to spit at his name) was rather adept at cultivating them, with Halliburton and many others. Hopefully Obama will be more resistant.
[...]

Read the full comment
I do not recall giving you my name as "Pausaniaski", but if you want to write in Polish that is fine by me - bardzo wygodnie, prosze Pana.

Read a bit more Roman history before you post anything again - you show signs here of Invincible Ignorance. (Try reading a book or two - I can recommend Gibbon.)

Meanwhile, I do not see any point in continuing this discussion with an American bigot. I have better things to do with my time, as I am sure have you.

Do widzenia

Dear "Pausaniaski", No, I cannot imagine a more convincing link than http://macedonia-evidence.org/ It was originally started by Stephen G. Miller, presently Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His original Ph.D. I believe was from Princeton, 1970, and his specific expertise is as a
Professor of Classical Archaeology.

I would be interested to hear of any specific, hard evidence that links him to what you suspiciously conjecture is a "heavily funded by the US Greek diaspora". Though he does explicitly state that his group of 350 Senior Scholars like him, [...]

Read the full comment and counting, are "completely independent of any public or private organization of any political nature", and that "its interest is solely in the presentation of historic fact."

Just like you right? OR maybe not, since you claim that "truth" is relative, a position which implies that there are no such thing as facts. But in this way, one could simply "revise" the facts of history, for instance, to suit any random whim, caprice or fancy. Hitler was African? Elvis isn't dead he is really the Pope? Ponting recently won the Ashes? Alexander was a Slav? No, clearly this is not a very tenable epistemic position to hold.

Dear Demostheneska, Yes, it would be very "strange" if 350 eminent Classics Professors are wrong apropos a fact of history, and you are right. They claim for instance that, and I quote, "Macedonia and Macedonian Greeks have been located for at least 2,500 years just where the modern Greek province of Macedonia is".

Again, I would be interested hear of any hard and specific evidence you might have to the contrary. But in lieu of Pausaniaski's post, perhaps you might give us a positive account of what words like "evidence", "accuracy", and "facts" might mean personally for you.

As for the Romans, well, their great empire of course came "after" that of the Macedonians, "after" that of Philip and Alexander. Though according to Professors Miller's 350 Classics Professors, and I quote, "Strabo (7. frag 4), writing a few years before the birth of Christ", is rather "succinct in saying that Paionia was north of Macedonia and the only connection from one to the other was (and is today) through the narrow gorge of the Axios (or Vardar) River."

That is, Alexander the Great didn't call Paionia "macedonia", he called it "Paionia", as did his Father Philip, and the Romans till at least the birth of Christ, that is, nearly three and a half centuries "after" the reign of our proud and noble Alexander the Great.

As always, however, I would be interested to see some hard and specific evidence of this Roman "re" or "misnaming" of Ancient Paionia as some kind of secondary "macedonia", and how long this "re" or "misnaming" may have held fast.

Though I don't to cause amnesia here - these questions of supplying evidence are contingent on you being able to demonstrate you know what terms like "evidence" mean.

In any case, even throughout the entire Roman empire, there still weren't any Slavs there, nor any Slav speakers - whatever the place may have at some point, by some Romans, have been miscalled; well "after" the time of our Great Alexander.

Kind Regards,
Tim

Tim Themi - when you say:

<< the North of Modern day Greece, a province which has been correctly called Macedonia for two and a half millenia. >>

you are being a bit inaccurate with your facts. Until 1989 it was called (within Greece) "Northern Greece" and not "Macedonia".

As somebody else posted on this site, both Macedonias were called such by the Romans: the northern "fYRoM" one was called Macedonia the Health-Giving ("salutaris"), and the southern one (today's Greek Macedonia, formerly "Northern Greece" until 1989, "Macedonia the [...]

Read the full comment First" ("Prima").

This situation lasted from 350 AD until the fall of the Byzantine empire. Previously the Romans had called the whole place "Macedonia" from when they conquered it all in 146 BC, expelling the Hellenic population as they did so and re-settling with Romans.

So your 350 professors - let me quote: <<350 eminent Classics Professors from the university system around the world, all of them experts in Greco-Roman Antiquity >> seem to be strangely ignorant of Roman history.

I wonder what they were paid - and by whom - to induce this amnesia ?

Time Themi - this is the same link as you post every time (probably heavily funded by the US Greek diaspora, and therefore suspect.) Haven't you got any other links - more convincing to the outside world - than this ?

"Truth", as every philosopher knows, is relative (just read Bertand Russell's "Principia Mathematica" or else Frederick Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic" . Both of these should be available in any good university library).

This is one thing that Karamanlis got wrong, when he said "History Cannot Be Changed". Oh yes it [...]

Read the full comment can, and revisionism is the key to it.

Dear "Pausanius", it is more correct to say that Bulgaria currently "misrecognises" the Southern part of the former nation of Yugoslavia as "Macedonia". Alexander never called it Macedonia, nor did his father Philip, nor did any of their ancestors or their fellow Greek speaking Macedonians - all of whom were born and bred in the North of Modern day Greece, a province which has been correctly called Macedonia for two and a half millenia.

The land north of this, sometimes known as FYROM, or as I would put it, the formerly or temporarily falsely named republic [...]

Read the full comment of "macedonia", was in Ancient times, in the time of Alexander, known as "Paionia". There were no Slav speaking people there. Nor could there be, for there were as yet no Slavs anywhere in the Balkan-Grecian region.

Dear "Demosthenes", the "scientific method" is everything, that is, of course, if we are interested in "truth" and "knowledge".

"Revisionism", on the other hand, starts off doing what every rational, philosophical and scientific discourse does, that is, as you put it, it enables "traditional wisdom and sources" to be "questioned", only it doesn't do it as you suggest "in the light of new knowledge", becasue it leaves out the criteria of "truth".

Consequently, it ends up revising not just traditional wisdoms and sources, but also sound, substantiated and verified scientific theories - the best amongst them which are known as "facts" - and replaces them instead with false or incorrect claims or beliefs, that is, with claims that don't accurately correspond to or represent any portion of external reality.

Corroboration of the historical claims I have put before you can be found at http://macedonia-evidence.org/

It is worth giving a thorough read, as it is cosigned by 350 eminent Classics Professors from the university system around the world, all of them experts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, and all of them both irked and worried about some of the prevailing the disinformation, or "silliness" as they call it, that frequently does the rounds apropos the noble history of Ancient Macedonia.

Kind Regards,
Tim

Aussie Bob, with respect, is taking a very simplistic view of historical studies, and comes to a distinctly simplistic conclusion about Macedonia.

The "scientific method" is one thing, but hasn't he also heard of "revisionism", whereby traditional wisdom and sources are questioned in the light of new knowledge ?

Time Themi - the Sofia Echo is published in Bulgaria, and Bulgaria recognises Macedonia under that name. So your objection is void.

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This article should not be using the "macedonia" signifier to refer to the southern part of the former Yugoslav Republic. It leads to the confusion and terminological ambiguity that Danielle shrewdly tries to exploit, as I am sure she has been programmed to by her elders.

But well done to Aussie Bob. He shows that this is not a nationalist issue, but an epistemic and moral issue. No one likes being lied to. No one wants to give up the scientific method as it is specially deployed in serious departments of history the world over.
[...]

Read the full comment />
For once that goes, there will never be any agreement between different parties, communication will brake down, and civilization will shortly follow. It would be the Dark Ages all over again for the West, and I'm not sure the Arabs are in the position to keep Greek learning alive until we recover again this time.

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To George II: now you are talking about "reducing the power of VETO" with the Lisbon Treaty, while in another of your posts, you said it would disappear? Now, I am confused...

Show me one site, article, or whatever text you want saying the VETO will be abolished or its power will be reduced. I am curious to see that.

Aries - many thanks, and of course I accept your analysis. It was George my namesake who claimed that Albanian was not an Indo-European language, and I thought he was wrong at the time. Clearly, as you demonstrate, it is indeed Indo-European.

The myth of there being Celts in ancient Illyria is a persistent one, though I know of no hard evidence. It might be helpful to know what others think (though with a certain "prejuge defavorable" in the case of Peggy and George !)

As for "Alba" (Scotland in Gaelic) influencing [...]

Read the full comment "Albania", or vice-versa, this is just one of those hypotheses that linguists love to discuss. But an attractive one, nonetheless......

george ii
Albanian is in the Satem subdvision of the Proto-Indo-Euro language family
divided into two dialect the Tosk and the Gheg. Tosk is spoken south and south central of Albania while Gegh is spoken to the north of the river Shkumbin and by Albanians of Serbia Montenegro and Kossovo.
As for Gaelic it resides in the Centum subdivision of the P I E
with Celtic and Hellenic.the celtic branch has Gaulish ,Goidelic and Brythonic
the goigelic subdivision includes among others Scots and Irish Gaelic while the Brythonic subdivision contain [...]

Read the full comment among other Welsh amd Breton.
Now we can speculate on the contradiction or not having Celtic inhabitants of illyria.

George II

I am well aware that the Illyrians occupied those lands thousands of years. I never questioned that matter, just your assumption that albanians are the descendants of the illyrians...b*ll*x. You say "The first description of "Albanians" in literature around 1300 AD may or may not refer to the native Illyrians, but most scholars assume that it does." thats all scholars have done...assume. The albanian language, which, all agree, is of the type SATEM, the illyrian language is of the type KENTUM. The most elementary logic is that one SATEM language can not be a [...]

Read the full comment direct descendant of some KENTUM language, without a change of its substrate. Since the albanian language does not have any changes in its substrate, the albanians can’t be, under any circumstance, genealogical descendants of the Illyrians.
"In the first century B.C. the people of Caucasian Albania fought heroically, with the peoples of Armenia and Georgia, against the invasions of the ancient Romans into Transcaucasia (campaigns of Lucullus in 69-67 B.C. and of Pompey in 66-65). The unstoppable Romans were unable to conquer Caucasian Albania, despite winning a major battle as well as conquering other neighboring states."

Turkish scholars on Caucasian Albania argue that "Albania" means "Country of Alpes" (where Alpes are one of the names for Albans or mountains), but also says that "in history Albans have once more came out as the most ancient Turkic people....bowing to the Sun."

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Danielle - all that propaganda must be confusing you. Yes you are 10000% Slav macedonian - but not the descendant of the Ancient Macedonians.

How come the Ancient Kingdom of Macedonia only spoke Greek & not your Slav language of the 19/20th century? Why did Aleaxnader the Great spread Hellenic culture & not your slavic language?

Your slavic people settled into the region of the Balkans after 600 AD. Tito brain washed you all - giving your people a false identity as Mecedonians and the rest is history.

[...]

Read the full comment Even I who is 10000% Anglo origin with a bit of German blood know's that you people can not fool the world.
The name,culture & history of Macedonia belongs to the Greek people. The history books can not be re-written.
End of the story!!

Danielle
The Bulgarians of Fyrom want to be named Macedonians it is known that Bulgaria may have recognozrd the state of Fyrom but not the language which is a direct dialect of Bulgarian
karamanlis was born 14/09/1956 at
Aghia Lavra and not Kilkis.

to George the Original - the polite word is B*ll*cks. The Illyrians, most ancient scholars agree, appeared in the Southern Balkans rather before 1000 BC, and formed the "helot" or serf population of the area long before the Slavs ever appeared in circa 500 AD. So they provided the "muscle" to ancient Macedonia, and Thrace too.

The first description of "Albanians" in literature around 1300 AD may or may not refer to the native Illyrians, but most scholars assume that it does.
The origin of the name "Alba" (=white) is a bit lost in [...]

Read the full comment time, but the indigenous name of "Squiperi" may offer a better clue.

Meanwhile, George, buy a better encycopedia...

My comments of Oct.16th stand.I do think,the Greeks and Bulgarians are at odds over Macedonia.The greeks claim that we the Macedonians are greek and the Bulgarians claiming we are bulgarians is absurd.Doesnt this tell you something?.We cannot be Greeks nor Bulgarians or as used to be Serbians before 1944.You people who claim that Macedonians are either of you, are insulting your own inteligence.On Alexanders comment of being Greek,did you not read history that Alexander claimed to be Persian and even dressed as?He proclaimed to be their King of all concured lands.Does that make him other than Macedonian?Why was it in [...]

Read the full comment Persia 50K greeks fought againts him and protecting King Darius?.Zoran,I am proud Macedonian.To tell me that I am other than Macedonian is insulting.Yes, I was born in Aegean Macedonia,I know my roots a thousand % better than you and your greek friends can imagine.This whole thing about Macedonia and Macedonians being Greek or Bulgarians is of a political nature,and not a true reality in any other sense.Open up your eyes and inteligence to the real truth.A famous quote from Gotse Delchev "We are not againts the Turkish people,we are againts their tyrany".He was,and is our Hero who fought for the freedom of all oppressed people under the Ottoman Empire.By the way,he was born in Aegean Macedonia,Kukush,same town as the former greek PM Karamanlis,just north of Solun.Please, enough with absurd insults directed againts oppressed people of Macedonia.We suffered enough for centuries,we will survive for as long it takes.History will change when desent people will come out with the truth,and not mudied as up to now.

"Illyrian mercenaries from the north. Then, as now, they were savage and remorseless fighters (just ask any Albanian, their descendants !)"

The first record of the albanians apearing in the Balkans was in the 15th century. Until then no historical record was found of such people. The albanians were a nomadic tribe from the caucasus brought to the Balkans by the ottomans.

Pan (or Panie !) - sure. Here is the link with map of NW Doric. You will see that it was not used in either of today's Macedonias, and only in the SW of today's Albania:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_Greek

I am not sure this takes your argument any further forward, though it may take it backwards !

Would you rather that we deleted this exchange ? I don 't want to give the Albanians any further ammuntion, any more than I am sure you do....

George II
A bit of this and a bit of that
I think will promote the dialogue

Mycenaean(1600 -1100 BCE) is the earliest dialect of Greek recoded as back as the 14th century BCE before that the Minoans of Crete were using Linear A (Knossos Sir Arthur Evans) Mycenaeans used Linear B Deciphered by Michael Ventris circa 1950 . precisely a linear b document at Pylos PYTa722 . Transliterated in English goes “A footstool inlaid with a man and a horse and an octopus and a palm tree in ivory ” gives [...]

Read the full comment perfect descriptive power of the language. There was a migration of proto-Greek speakers into the Greek peninsula which is dated to any period between 2500 and 1700 BCE. Another theory maintains that the migration into Greece occurred at a pre-proto-Greek late (PIE) stage, and the characteristic Greek sound-changes occurred later.
Greek is a Centum Language, which would place a possible Satemization before the Greco-Aryan protolanguage making it identical to late PIE. The propagation -distribution path of Centum –Satem languages shows clearly that it passes thru the Greek peninsula before Lithuania as the trajectory is normally from south to north
In Thessaly there existed an extensive Neolithic culture around 2500 bce. Mycenaean settlements have also been discovered, at iolcos ,Dimini ,and Sesklo (neatr Volos). Later, in times, the lowlands of Thessaly became the home of baronial families, such as the Aleuads of Larissa or the Scopads of Crannon. These baronial families organized a federation across the Thessaly region, later went on to control the Amphictyonic League in northern Greece. The Thessalians were renowned for their cavalry.
the Spartans ascribed their success to Lycurgus, who instituted his reforms at a time when Sparta was weakened by internal dissent and lacked the stability of a united and well-organized community. His legislation established the Geroussia, the Spartan Senate, and he is also credited with establishing the Spartan system of training,the Agoge ΑΓΩΓΗ.

....but please answer what I said regarding their language as being the NW Doric dialect along with the others from the area.

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Pan (which is Polish for "gentleman", but I presume you're not a Pole), you have got your facts wrong about the three Greek city-states that you claim were monarchies / governed by kings (like Macedon) in Classical Greek times. They weren't:

(a) Thessaly (used to be Aeolus)- briefly governed by a "tagus" or 'war lord' (the Greek for 'king' is 'basileus' (favourable) or "tyrannos' (unfavourable).) In practice, usually an 'oligarchy' of elders.

(b) Sparta - governed by Ephors and Gerusioi (governing council = oligarchy again).

(c) Thebes / [...]

Read the full comment Thivai. An interesting one. Governed by kings such as Oedipus Rex (he of the Giant Complex - Tom Lehrer) in pre-classical times, but in classical times such as the Battle of Thermopylae, governed by the usual Oligarchy of Elders.

I never claimed they were democracies (even though the word is Greek by origin), but they certainly were not successful absolutist monarchies like Macedon. Oligarchies - or "aristocracies", yes (which is where modern European languages get the word from).

I don't know what kind of ancient Greek history they teach in Greek schools, but it does seem to be a bit over-simplified compared to what even we learn in northern Europe. (Presumably Theseus and the Minotaur were early Athenian heads of state ? Fighting against the proto-Macedonians, probably, or else the proto-Turks !)

Pan - efkharisto polu gia apologian su! ("thanks for your apology" to our non-Greek readers, or "Hvala lepa za opravicila" to those from former Jugoslavija.) Try to be more careful in your assumptions in future - they may just be wrong !

You may wish to look at the book very recently referred to in this Link before posting any more about Alexander :

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218082/How-Alexander-mummys-boy.html

The news report linked to it is a bit on the populist side, I agree, but the scholarship behind [...]

Read the full comment the book is impeccable (the author is a senior member of the Faculty of Classics at our University of Cambridge, and the study will have been thoroughly peer-group reviewed, including by two Greek nationals who are also Faculty members.) Sorry, but that's scholarship for you ! And occasionally "received wisdom" changes. Truth, as many philosophers have said, is a relative concept that changes over time (I don't think former Greek Prime Minister Karamanlis fully understood this !)

The ancient Makedonian people spoke the NW Doric dialect of the Hellenic language!!

GeorgeII.
Apologies in my assumption of your background.

I totally question your knowledge of my History

It seems all that I post now is not included. I tke it then this is now closed

Just as a guide to your standards of historical accuracy, Pan, you say:

<<Explain here why your language did not exist before 1945, why your country never existed before 1992. This is better to discuss because there is evidence to explain why with people still alive to explain it!! >>

I think my language did exist before 1945 somehow; leaving aside the awkward historical fact that English clearly did exist before 1945, my own maternal language is one of the two oldest in Europe (Cymraeg), the other one being Lithuanian (lietuveskai). Both [...]

Read the full comment these pre-date Greek by some centuries.

Similarly the country for which I have a passport existed before 1992, as it joined the EU on 1st January 1973, along with Ireland and Denmark.

Do you have any further thoughts to offer in questioning my accuracy ?

George II.

Don't you wish history was as you like to think it was and try to portray here.

Makedonia, Thessally, Thebes, Lakadaemia. These were all Hellenic kingdoms.

Try to stop using the word "Greek" and use the word Hellenic and then you will understand the difference that you think is the same between today and that of the ancient.

Can you show the people here this language, culture, religion....that was not Hellenic that made the Makedonian people different to the rest of the [...]

Read the full comment 230 Hellenic kingdoms/states/provinces/counties...whatever word you wish to use as an area.

Only you and your like deny them as being non Hellenic. They chose to claim they were. Unfortunately for you all evidence proves THEM right and you totally wrong.

Try talking about things you do understand and forget about a time of history that you have no evidence to change.

Explain here why your language did not exist before 1945, why your country never existed before 1992. This is better to discuss because there is evidence to explain why with people still alive to explain it!!

Sorry - typo below. "2nd century BC" should read "4th and 3rd centuries BC". Apologies. (Trouble is that in referring to
"centuries BC" the order of counting reverses from the more usual "centuries AD".)

Aussie Bob - Macedonia was not in fact a Greek "city state" in any accepted sense of the term - it wasn't a republic, the general population was not ethnically Greek (though the ruling classes and monarchy intermarried with Greek nobles or "aristoi" and were certainly Greek-speaking), and it successfully invaded most of the city-states in the 2nd century BC because it was militarily stronger and could draw on Illyrian mercenaries from the north. Then, as now, they were savage and remorseless fighters (just ask any Albanian, their descendants !)

Ancient Macedonia finally got its come-uppance [...]

Read the full comment in 146 BC at the end of the Fourth Macedonian War, when all the city-states had thankfully left its clutches for the slightly preferable embrace of Imperial Rome. After 146BC the Hellenistic upper classes were deported from today's Macedonia, the native Illyrians remained, and the vacated villas and estates were re-populated by Romans.

By the 4th century AD the Romans re-classified Macedonia into two Senatorial provinces: Macedonia Prima (today's Greek / Aegean Macedonia) and Macedonia Salutaris (today's Northern Macedonia, or fYRoM to its friends.) "Salutaris" means "health-giving" in Latin - it would be a pleasant alternative to fYRoM, and has an excellent pedigree in ancient history, which should be acceptable to the Greeks, who value these things.

Subsequently both Macedonias became subsumed into the Byzantine Empire, and then by the Ottomans in 1453 AD, to be liberated by the First Balkan War in 1913. So there we have it....the rest is recent history and probably a whole new set of Balkan grudges !

What Macedonian minority?
Today's so called "Macedonian" people living to the north of Greece are slavs & bulgarians. Tito & other propagandanist brain washed a couple hundred thousand slav peasants into thinking they were the descendants of the Ancient Macedonians.

There was no Greece back then, only Greek city states - Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Macedonia ect - but they were all Greek & spoke Greek. Yes they fought amongst each other as did the city states of England did but for freak sakes they were Greek!

Why can't people understand [...]

Read the full comment this?

Yes Zoran I know we have lots of fascist pigs inb the diaspora I am personally surrounded with some of the worst of them here in melbourne where they think they are the greatest people to ever walk this earth. These people are dangerous they have not a inch of comrpomise in their blood and want the whole of regional macedonia for themselves. The Morons think that macedonia was a nation since antiquity and believe that there was never a greek presence in macedonia prior to 1913. It has come to this where we are faced with imbeciles running our [...]

Read the full comment country in europe and half educated fascist pigs holding up a flag made of half japanese and half union jack in bright colours to announce that the macedonians brought the light to the world. How embarrasing sometimes I feel I would prefer to be japanese or a Brit than these nazis here in australia. They are an embarrasment to all and not only the macedonian narod.

To the Moderators

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Danielle is right about that Greece should recognise its Macedonian minority but it must be remembered that the Macedonian miority is made up of Bulgarian speaking people like myself and we are proud Macedonians. But it is in Greeces best interest to recognise the republic of Macedonia. The only thing danielle that you are wrong on (as many who just don't know our history here) is where do you get this Greek, Bulgarian, etc. occupation rubbish from. The region of macedonia had never been a united nation since antiquity so if anything it is actaully free now more than ever [...]

Read the full comment before in its history. The Macedonian people of Greece whether they are Bulgarian speaking, greek speaking, etc., are quite happy. Maybe you are one of those diaspora morons everyoner has been talking about creating crap for foreign consumption. Needless to say if we neeeded help from your kind there would certainly be a lot of Macedonians in Greece vocalising their concerns but the only one idiot is the fascist backed voskopoulos who is so rich he can live without work but at the end of the day all of our Narod have spat in his face and cursed his fascist attitude towards everyone. He is a very hated man in Macedonia especially in Kostur where a couple of the old granfathers nearly beat him to death which he kept his mouth shut about for fear that the Bulgarian VMRO of Kostur is a left leaning group and despise fascists like this Voskopoulos. No-one knows about his encounters here in Greece because he knows that if he mentioned it he would have no-one to turn to. So danielle you have to learn to respect our Macedonian Narod here in Greece most are fine with everything those who seek trouble always find it.

George II
One of the usual anti-hellenic seizures with a lot of sophistic ramifications more or less idiotic.
Hellas , Egypt , Mesopotamia , Persia, and later Rome were great civilizations
Who molded what is now called Europe (a Phoenician princess whom Zeus abducted after assuming the form of a dazzling white bull. He took her to the island of Crete where she gave birth to Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. For Homer, Europe Eὐρώπη, suggests that it is derived from the Greek roots meaning broad (eur-) and eye (opis), hence Eurṓpē, "wide-eyed", "broad of [...]

Read the full comment aspect" glaukōpis(grey/blue eyed) Athena or boōpis (ox-eyed) Hera)
Aristotle of Stageira one of the greatest Philosophers of all times was assigned by Philip as mentor to Alexander. Some names maybe should be heard these are Homer , Pythagoras Pindar, Thales , Aeschylus, Aristarchus , Sophocles ,Euripides ,Socrates and Plato and a pleiada more contributed so as we today can mess up with the words Democracy, Geometry , Astronomy,
Askiplios Hippocrates and his oath with is still taken today by millions of doctors , and Galinos for medicine
The first UN-like gathering of history were held at Delphi (the Amphiktionies) up to the Oracle the way is full of small temples each of them built by each of the state-towns of ancient Greece and named as offerings to Apollo. After each gathering were games held at the near by Stadium and ancient tragedies performed at theater of Delphi.
The Acropolis of Athens and its Museum , The Elgin marbles the Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian collections of Montague Street( British museum ) just to name a few are visited by millions throughout the world .
The classics are there In the libraries of Cambridge , Oxford, Harvard, Lomonosov , Sorbonne, Princeton Prague , Berlin, Edinburgh, universities just to name a few as well in the national libraries of all civilized nations.
Thousands of scholars studied them and their historiography .
Revisionists existed and will exist , some are making fools of themselves with their speculations , some are not worthwhile even to be mentioned .
One of the typical examples of revisionism is the Fyromian diaspora and the Gruevski theory of Macedonism .

George II: Good points however, I offer this; while the "name issue" is a cultural one to be sure, it is also a geographic on as well I will explain why.

There is little doubt that so long as Gruveski is in power he will surely push to enter the EU as "Macedonia" however, consider that if the nationalist party in FYROM gets its way the potential to make land claims is not far fetched.

Athens has been very much concerned that Skopja will, in the future, try to exercies some sort [...]

Read the full comment of land/territorial claims and this is one of the primary factors why Greece has exercised their veto twice thus far both in NATO and the EU.

So I question you when you say

<<It could well be argued that Greece's objection was a 'cultural' one that spiralled out of proportion, and that there is no 'geographical' issue since neither Greece nor Northern Macedonia have any quarrel about the actual border (unlike Slovenia and Croatia, for example, where there was a true "geographical" issue involved and Slovenia was able to maintain its veto until the issue was settled.)>>

I think it is not only cutlural but it carries with it a geographic threat that Greece wants to avoid. If the borders are muddied by FYROM succeeding in their adoption of the name Macedonia it will surely cause a flurry of land issues. Alreay, we have seen that many schools and the unoffical policy of FYROM has been to print maps staking claim to a quarter or more of Greece with the unusual term "Agean Macedonia".

So is it a cultural issue? Yes! Will it become a geographic issue? Most definately yes!

Now to be clear I can not claim nor will I say that I am a near expert on the Lisbon Treaty or international law and legal affairs. However, I suggest that the situation is very much intricate and multifaceted.

As I stated in my previous post, FYROM will need to come to the negotiating table prepared to negotiate and not dictate. Admittedly as you stated, compromise will be made but not at Greece's expense. Compromise is most often looked at mutual disagreement, in short "we agree to disagree" neither is fully happy but neither is angry either.

Keep in mind that Greece had tabled some serious variations of the name that gave FYROM what it wanted i.e. the use of the name Macedonia. I.e. FYROM or in most recent times "Northern Macedonia".

Yet as we have seen FYROM has often been willing to get international press exposure by saying that they are willing to seriously negotiate and when the time comes to do so they walk away, this is hardly a strong sign of ones willingness to negotiate.

Lastly, and going back to the Lisbon Treaty; while you are right on the incorporation of previous treaties into the 2004 EU constitution I still challenge your belief that EU rules change at a whim. I think that it is folly for you or anyone else to believe that the EU will potentially succumb to some pressure and make an overhaul on the rules and guidlines that form the EU. But in any case this is a seperate topic to discuss on its own.

Volaks - if you stop being angry and try listening, nobody is saying that Alexander wasn't Greek (he was certainly half-Greek on his mother's side, and his father Philip had taken Greek nationality as a political gesture), so obviously he would portray himself in public as being Greek. Same as Soviet leaders portrayed themselves as being Russian (and most spoke very good Russian) though in fact they were Azeri, Georgian (like Stalin), Uzbek, and a dozen other Soviet nationalities.

That's what happens when you have an imperial power - many people speak the imperial language and [...]

Read the full comment act the part, though they might be ethnically quite distinct. Happened with both the French Empire and the British Empire too. And most certainly with the Roman Empire, who also re-invented two Macedonias : "Salutaris" to the north (same boundaries as today's fYRoM) and "Prima" to the south (same as Greece's recently renamed northern province of Macedonia).

I don't think I need say any more.

Danielle im Macedonian therefore Greek as Alexander said himself!!Who are you to tell me that im minority and that im not Greek?Who are you to play with history and rewrite it?Who are you to insult me and all the historic comunity by conecting by try to conect by any meaning your culture with the culture that my ancestors and i have?Who are you and what are you finally?I invite you to come here in Volaka in Drama-Macedonia or in Kastoria were i m both from and tell us that we are not Greeks!!Maybe you would be able to comunicate with [...]

Read the full comment the old folks!Just do it i hve nothing else to say!We are sick and tired of you people honestly..Leave history alone and dont talk about the civil war or the liberation of Macedonia by using the propaganda that the Serbians propagandists and that TITO tought you cause honestly we are starting to geting reall pissed off.i mean enpouph its enouph with you people.

I dont understand why greeks think Macedonia is Greek.First of all Macedonia pre-existed the City States.When Macedonia existed,there was no Greece.Greece must face up to the reality and re-write its own history.Part of Macedonia that is under Greek rule was obtained illigaly in 1913.Greece should do the same as Serbia did,let the Macedonians to decide their own destiny,not dictated.Furtheremore,if Greece wants to re-name the Republic of Macedonia to "Northern Republic of Macedonia"will Greece re-name Northern Greece to "South Macedonia?"This will be recognized as North Korea visa vi South Korea? I think,this is fair.Under this situation Greece will have to recognize [...]

Read the full comment the Macedonian minority.This will setle the long absurd claim by Greece of none existance of Macedonians in the Republic of Macedonia.By recognizing the minority in Greece it will setle the dispute on the name dispute.

to Aussie Bob - I make one exception.Follow this link to the text, and you will see that the Royal Macedonians were anything but pure Greek (though they certainly had some Greek blood by marriage). This is a rather more recent academic link than 1913, the one you quoted. But life - and archaeology - have moved on since:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218082/How-Alexander-mummys-boy.html

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained не е по темата на статията

Two brief points:

(1) to "Greek Macedonia" - QMV was significantly extended by the Lisbon Treaty (Jim below explains it quite well). If Greece "missed a trick" in signing it, so did several other member-states. The power of "veto" is dramatically reduced. (Possibly its authors had in mind the "liberum veto" in 1790s Poland, that wrecked the country.)

(2) to "George".

(a) NATO is not going to intervene militarily if one member-nation (Turkey) attack another (Greece), or vice versa. Instead, NATO will do everything it can behind the [...]

Read the full comment scenes to mediate and to achieve a cease-fire.


(b) you say : <<As the ottomans are guilty of brutal oppression of the Christan Nations of the Balkans for centuries.>> ....Oh, do grow up, that was all finished 100 years ago (and if I recall correctly, Ataturk actually won the last battle of that series , resulting in the Peace / Treaty of Lausanne 1923).

As I say, a bit of amnesia would be a wondrously effective remedy in the Balkans. Northern Europe doesn't go in for "my great-grandfather killed your second cousins's great-uncle, so therefore we have a blood-feud for evermore", so why should you ?

The Albanians dignify it all by codifying it and calling it the "Kanun of Lek", but we civilised Greeks don't want to emulate the barbarous Albanians, or do we ?

Northern Europeans can be excused the view that you're all as bad as each other (with the honourable exception of the Bulgarians.)

George II the Brit formerly known as Epaminondas

You first say:
"Greece to concentrate on more important issues on the Turkish border that threaten its very existence."

Indeed the "threat" of existence of the Sovereign Nation of Greece(NATO Partner) by turkey would be repelled in full force. As the ottomans are guilty of brutal oppression of the Christan Nations of the Balkans for centuries. It is important not to forget as "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it". If turkey would commit any acts of aggression then they [...]

Read the full comment should be pushed back to where they came from.

George II says
"This is precisely what is wrong with the whole region. An "Act of Collective Amnesia" would be a great benefit to mankind as a whole (and to the EU in particular).

Sorry...the euro federal elites would love to reduce Sovereign Nations States to regional provinces of Brussels. But the people of the nations will never forget who they are or where they come from. A man should not forget his ethnicity, his culture, his traditions or his history. It is the link through his family to a long line of ancestors.

To answer to Georges II: "Clearly nobody has read the Lisbon Treaty and the extension of Qualified Majority Voting that it contains ! So the Greek "veto" will disappear.

But it's all hidden in the small print, unfortunately".

Qualified majority voting isn't new and it doesn't mean that the veto was eradicated... Qualified majority voting is exercized for main decisions, but that doesn't mean it excludes the VETO, which is the right of every EU member. Veto is stronger than qualified majority voting.
If the Veto system was going to [...]

Read the full comment be eradicated, be sure that Greece would have been the first to not sign the Lisbon treaty.

Jim - well, at least you've read the Lisbon Treaty (more than most !). However, three points:

(a) the 2004 Constitution does little more than incorporate the previous Treaties in a rather grandiose manner.

(b) when you say:

<< Of course for some the category under the QMV entitled "culture" will be the point of argument. One might state that under this category the EU can exercise the QMV and overturn the veto. On the other hand however, the "name issue" is not only bring with it a [...]

Read the full comment cultural contension but also a geographic one as well so the QMV again can not be used >>

....this can be debated. It could well be argued that Greece's objection was a 'cultural' one that spiralled out of proportion, and that there is no 'geographical' issue since neither Greece nor Northern Macedonia have any quarrel about the actual border (unlike Slovenia and Croatia, for example, where there was a true "geographical" issue involved and Slovenia was able to maintain its veto until the issue was settled.)

(c) in practice, there is a great deal of horse trading that goes on behind the scenes in Brussels at senior level. If (say) Greece wants a large slice of EU funds to deal with a specific local issue (say) forest fires, Greece may have to cede / give up demands in other areas, of which Macedonia could be one example. This also applies equally well to other Member-States too; the UK is currently doing some horse-trading to get its Rural Payments Agency out of the mess that it is in (which involves colossal sums in "disallowance" which the UK would otherwise have to pay to Brussels.)

Hope this is helpful.

When "George" says:

<< The balkans have a long memory, and it would be a righteous cause to recapture the Great City of Constantinople >>

This is precisely what is wrong with the whole region. An "Act of Collective Amnesia" would be a great benefit to mankind as a whole (and to the EU in particular).

This comment has been hidden by the moderator because it contained квалификации.

George II says

"Greece to concentrate on more important issues on the Turkish border that threaten its very existence"

Any acts of aggression from the ottomans would ignite all of the balkans. Their are many unresolved issues concerning the occupation of Greek territory. The balkans have a long memory, and it would be a righteous cause to recapture the Great City of Constantinople.

Responding to Makedonija propaganda comments;

"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery." (Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])

"The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and the scanty remains of their language combine to testify."
` {John Bagnell Bury, "A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great", 2nd ed.(1913)
"Clearly, the language of the ancient Macedonians was Greek"
{Prof. John C. Roumans [...]

Read the full comment Professor Emeritus of Classics Wisconsin University}

Bulgarian historians say FYROMians are of Bulgarian origin and their language developed from a Bulgarian dialect," which Skopje denies. But Sofia was also the first country to recognize FYROM's independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and now favours its joining the EU. (August 2006 AFP)
As you can see with the above quotes from even the non-Greeks, Macedonia has always been linked to Ancient & Modern Greece.

havnt you greeks taken enough first our land,then our macedonian history...that u claim is yours...before 1913 macedonia was united just until greece,serbia and bulgaria decided to spilt us up into 3...and now you think that its okay to claim that everything is yours, that macedonia is yours FACE THE FACTS ITS NOT it was never yours in the first place and it will never be yours.

before 1913 you greeks where nothing you had to steal our land to become something using our history and brainwashing the world with your propaganda.The truth is [...]

Read the full comment coming out and it will backfire in your face...

will enter the EU as THE REPULIC OF MACEDONIA nothing else.

Macedonia for the Macedonians

Yes the name should be resolved but with recognition of our Macedonian Identity. Yes northern Macedonia sounds correct but only with recognition of our Macedonian identity. The problem however is our Fascist leader Gruevski who doesn't want change. He is ready to build a statue of himself on a rearing horse called Bucephalus. This PIG refuses to acknowledge our modern history and ventures into the remote past for some type of glorification for who we are. It is as if our modern leaders like DElchev, Karev, Sandanski mean nothing to this PIG. Compromise of the name will only happen if [...]

Read the full comment this fascist PRASKO government (with their fascist PIGS in the diaspora) is removed from power or if the Global community refuse him access into any of the global institutions. The Macedonian Youth are ready. Welcome back the voice of all the silent masses Vasko Gligorov the only Macedonian Youth leader who has ever had the courage to stand up against the fascist PIGS. He has been locked up more times than the media reports and yet he stands up for freedom of speech which rarely exists here. Gruevski and his little monkey Milososki have their hands full at the moment lets see if the EU will remain patient.

Beautiful Bitolchanka


Please dont write idiotic and brainwahed things here,It is supposed to be a good news-link.Macedonians from anitquity since today were are and will continue to be Greeks.The Greeks who left from the civil war from Greece were people who made HUGE crimes,until 1982 they could come to Greece but they never came,cause they new that they would have to face the Judge and the famillys of the people they harmed.So lets leave the bulsit.The children of this people has done nothing bad,and the new goverment will make the diference and will allow [...]

Read the full comment them to come as for most of the Komitaztides-criminals who left because of their age.Its ok we will let it go.Macedonia is in Greece and we will alwys be here reminding this to you people,and to your children and to your grandchildre,until the day that the nationalities will be deleted from the EU.And u know the truth.The biggest problme that you people have,its not how the rest of the planet will call you.The problem that you have is how Greeks and Bulgarians will call you.Cause Bulgarians will always reminding to you people who you are,and Greeks what you never were and NEVER going to be.Thats the sad truth for you people.The propaganda and the brainwshing the luck of histoory and truth and the results of all this,will be things that you will have to explain in the future in your young people who from what i see they started to wake up.Ofcourse there are many people still living there in the TITO planet like you but in the end the truth prevails!!I have relatives in Fyrom they NEVER said that they are not Greeks,but we did mistakes with this people o i understant them.i met them some years ago i didnt even knew their existence!We have nothing with the Greeks who left MAcedonia back then the problem is with the other,Serbs,Bulgarians,Gypsies,Turks,who suddenly near to thiss people and with the help of TITO forgot who they are!!

George II:

Yes I read the Lisbon Treaty, all beit not cover to cover and the "Extension to qualified majority voting." However, I do not follow how you think that Greece's veto will "disappear". If you notice this extention of qualified majority voting (QMV) pertains to specific areas that concern the EU. For example, social security, culture, border controls etc.

The accession of a potential member state requires unanimity and QMV does not apply in this case. The veto of Greece will be upheld in this instace based on the areas of [...]

Read the full comment interest that are covered by the Treaty of Lisbon.

The the QMV extention does not have a category that implicitly or explicitly accomodates the "name issue." In short order there is no qualifer to justify the EU not respecting and upholding the Greek veto.

Of course for some the category under the QMV entitled "culture" will be the point of argument. One might state that under this category the EU can exercise the QMV and overturn the veto. On the other hand however, the "name issue" is not only bring with it a cultural contension but also a geographic one as well so the QMV again can not be used.

In any case, the wild card hope that the QMV would be used in the EU to allow for FYROM's accession and thus overturn the Greek veto is more than unlikely, it is not going to happen.

The best approch here is that FYROM come to the negotiating table and be truely prepared to NEGOTIATE and not try to dictate. If FYROM choses the latter I suspect Greece will continue to veto and as "EU IS NOT FOR U!!" stated FYROM will continue to negotiate its accession into the EU for a very very long time.

In passing, I would like to point out something in an earlier comment you made. First, this issue is hardly a trivial one as you point to and second, the rules of the EU do not simply "change." Many rules are ingrained in the EU Constitution and in order to affect such change the EU would have to amend the constitution itself and this does not happen easily.

Dear George II

Man no offence,you are right on some things but you know nothing about EU and most important about the Lisbon Treaty!!Where exastly did you rode that the Veto right is dissapearing because of the qualified majority voting!!LOL!!You think that our goverment or even us,we are so stupid to know that this could happen and to threat you with Veto?You give as lessons about the treaty that we signed!!LOL!!hahaha!Honeslty some times i want to take you people serius but i cant do it i mean you do this to yourselfs!!So,can u tell us please [...]

Read the full comment where exastly in what part of the treaty you rode about all this?Leave it dude.Before you say any bulsit again and humiliate your self know this.The treaty says that if a member state raises the veto on the grounds of foreign policy then qualified majority can do anything at all!!Greece can easily overide QMV should it decide to bring the issue under foreign policy.EU has no authority in sovereign foreign policy of each member state,thus the Lisbon Treaty pauses no guarantee that Greece wont veto!!And u can expect it 100%!!sorry if i woke u up dear friend but you must search better,dont talk about things that you dont know!!

This comment has been removed by the moderator because it contained не е по темата на статията

I have to say that the Greeks have it all wrong to say that Macedonia will not be recognized under the name that it has always had: MACEDONIA (not FYROM, Skopje or Northern Macedonia as has beeen suggested). In terms of history, if we are to be accurate how could 2 places stake claim to the same name - without being united as one country in the past. All Macedonians living in the Greek province back in 1948 can attest to the fact that the Greeks came in and took their land, their identity and changed their language - are [...]

Read the full comment we now supposed to change our name to? Haven't Macedonians suffered enough torture at the hands of the Greeks without belabouring the name issue?

Clearly nobody has read the Lisbon Treaty and the extension of Qualified Majority Voting that it contains ! So the Greek "veto" will disappear.

But it's all hidden in the small print, unfortunately.

Best for Greece and Macedonia (fYRoM) to agree on a compromise of "Northern Macedonia" for the northern state, for Skopje to demolish the statue of Alexander and rename it "St Paul", and for Greece to concentrate on more important issues on the Turkish border that threaten its very existence (which Macedonia doesn't).

albania will try to claim more areas around the balkans. It's their goal to grab land from Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, FYROM with their terrorist tactics. These countries need to unite to stop the invasion of these ottoman albanians and send them back to turkey.

ORTHODOX BROTHERS UNITE +++

Macedonian/Slavs...recognised as a nation in it's own right to use the name of a Greek state. Now don't upset the Greeks otherwise you'll be receiving many gifts. Considering they were a part of the Kingdom of the Serbs before Tito made it a republic, now what makes anyone think that Serbs will let Albanians, Bulgarians or Greeks claim any part of her. Anyway if they do Sar Planina is ours, or they might find comfort in rejoining with the motherland again.
The good old Czechs, can always rely on them to stand up to the big bully of [...]

Read the full comment a super-state. If they caused the decline of the holy roman empire they could instigate the destruction of the new roman empire. Epaminondas...what to do have against The Great President Vaclav Klaus? Is it true that standard EU policy that EU officials never meet alone with Czech officials in rooms with windows that can be opened from either the inside or the outside?

Petre bedni decko :)

This is for once a clear victory for the greek diplomacy. The name HAS TO be changed as mentionned if FYROM wants to enter EU. No compromise for it. So they will have to deal with Greece.

George II

You know its very funny what is happening to you people!!FYROM has not yet even started the negotiations and you think that you are allready in the Union!!LOL!!Mate at the moment you are in the same position that Turkey is!!Turkey started to negotiate 30 years ago do u know this???Why i have this sttrange feeling that in Fyrom noone is telling you the truth?Let me tell you some things cause i think that you dont understant.EU is a familly just like NATO remember?When there is not dession that ALL the member agree for examble [...]

Read the full comment an entrance of a new member this mean that this member will simply dont enter.The policy of EU wont change and you people can knock you heads all day!!Its ok to hope that you will enter afterall Greece supports you on this,but put it good in your head what happened with NATO will happen with EU thats for sure.And the Veto wont come from just one country remember this.Now if you hope that suddenly the rules will change somehow(we are talking about rules that exsist from the beggining of the Union LOL!!)because a strange balcanian whatever politician told you so then the only thing i have to say to you is this.KEEP DREAMING!!!When and IF we find a solution(and from no own with the new goverment things will be worst we are talking about Papandreou now not Dora!!)then maybe we will let you in.Even Rehn i think told u so didnt he?;-)!!!VETO dude another NATO dreaming will fall apart!!Bye!!

But - Alexandros Megalos - Greece's position may remain crystal clear, but the tectonic plates of the EU are shifting around it. After (a) the Lisbon Treaty, and (b) the likely Hradcany Palace defenestration of President Vaclav Klaus, the EU rules will change.

No one member-state will have the right of veto over a trivial issue any more. Such issues will include names of adjacent countries and matters of supposed "national honour (or 'honor' to our foreign readers).

No change of name=NO EU/NATO
Greece's position is crystal clear and does not change!

Fyrom will not join Nato or the EU and break up with Albania, Greece and even Bulgaria fighting over the scraps at a later date. Never has there been such a deluded state in all the Balkans. The USA has its Balkans headquarters in Fyrom and are huge supporters of Fyrom as is the UK. This will not however be enough to stop the Albanians splitting this false nation built on lies.