Australia's official stance on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Rebuttal!
Thank you Gandeto for investing your time to writes this fine article!
Australia's official stance on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM): Rebuttal
Gandeto
September 19, 2009
Even though I prefer to open my article with a suitable phrase—to grab your immediate attention—this time, I will begin my story with an impromptu question:
If you ever find yourself in a time squeeze and are not sure how to proceed or how to react to a given situation, would you:
(a) Do what seems natural to you.
(b) Do what the majority of the people before you have done already.
(c) Take the advice of a fellow who has vested interest in the outcome or
(d) Consult as many scholars/experts on the field as possible before you make your decision.
Obviously, your first initial approach would be to read and understand the question being asked. Second, you would read and analyze the choices given. Next, you would eliminate some of the choices and finally, you would focus on one that, in your opinion, makes the most sense regarding the essence of the question being asked.
Considering the choices given:
Choice (a): Most likely you would not select choice "a" because the question does not allude to things being done instinctively, or on the spur of a moment without some consideration.
Choice (c): Chances are that you would stay away from this one because you may get suspicious and may question this fellow´s hidden agenda or motives.
Choice (d): You would decline selecting choice "d" on the strength of the "time squeeze" constraint emphasized within the question itself, thus, the urgency of the decision to be made will preclude its selection. Here, the contrast is obvious; you do not have the luxury of time to indulge yourself in a time consuming research to consult all the experts in the field.
Therefore, your choice most likely would be "b"; do what the majority of people have done already.
In the article "Australia's official stance on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)" from September 13, sent to the American Chronicle by the so-called Australian Macedonian Advisory Council and written by certain Paul Kiritsis, their Executive Director, we find the following advice given to the Australian community in advance of the Republic of Macedonia´s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski´s visit to Australia scheduled for late October.
He is concerned that you, the citizens of Australia, could "erroneously" call the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name and not refer to her by the awkward and insulting acronym—imposed by Greece—Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Since Mr. Kiritsis feels that:
"Many Australians have been misled by this continuous propaganda, their ignorance of history, unwillingness to take initiative and educate themselves, lack of conscientiousness and to an extent, anomalous inertness on the part of the Greeks, who remained calm and assured the past few decades because they supposed a culture based on erroneous beliefs could not possibly evade extinction. As a result, a climate conducive to dangerous activities has proliferated surreptitiously in both in Australia and abroad",
he would like to prepare you and offer a lesson in history.
Since he finds you ignorant of history, unwilling to take initiative and educate yourselves and since you lack consciousness, he, Kiritsis takes it upon himself to educate, enlighten and advise you how to think and how to act when the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski from the Republic of Macedonia visits Australia in October.
In his letter of advice to you, the usual Greek propaganda lines are being repeated—ad nauseum—again. He is cautioning you not to offend the Greeks living in Australia by referring to Republic of Macedonia according to her constitutional name. In other words, you need not do what majority of the world´s countries have done already; pay no heed to 126 countries of the world among which are: USA, Canada, Britain, China, India, Russia, Brazil and the rest, but rather listen to these Greeks who, with their incessant peevish complains, have become the laughing stock of Europe.
In their overzealousness to appropriate the inheritance of the Ancient Macedonians and portray them as "Greeks", modern Greeks have demonstrated utter contempt not only for your intelligence and wisdom but also for the leading scholars of the world past and present. They have betrayed the writings of their "own" nineteenth century historians who saw the ancient Macedonians not as brethren but as conquerors of Greece (Roudometof 2000). They have unscrupulously usurped the reporting of the ancient Greek biographers themselves whose description of Greece never included the kingdom of Macedon.
To them the boundaries of Greece extended from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the river Peneus in the north (Strabo, Scylax, Dichaerchus, Scymnus, Dionysius). Are they also suggesting that Isocrates, in his letter to King Philip of Macedon, lied when he told Philip that his "ancestors left Greece entirely and found their kingdom among the people of non-kindred race"?
Moreover, weren´t the ancient Greeks pleading with the Romans to force King Philip V to evacuate from Greece? (Pol. 16 and 18; Diod. 28. 5ff.; Livy 31-33; Plut. Flamininus). And when Rome defeated the Macedonians didn´t they proclaim the liberation of all the Greek cities? (Polybius, xviii, 46,5).
Numerous epitaphs do testify and serve as a somber reminder that Ancient Macedonians and the Ancient Greeks were two distinct and quite antagonistic neighbors who were embroiled in constant squabbles and disputes ranging from territorial disagreements to form and style of government. Consider the following epitaph for the ancient Greek hero Demosthenes:
"O, Demosthenes, if your strength was equal to your wisdom, Greece would have never been enslaved by the Macedonian Ares."
Or perhaps you prefer these few preserved lines that unambiguously testify to the veracity of our claim that ancient Greeks never regarded the ancient Macedonians as brethren:
"With the fallen Hellenes at Chaeronea was buried the freedom of Greece."
No amount of propaganda can erase the meaning of these lines; Greeks at Chaeronea were fighting the Macedonians "to safeguard the liberty of Hellas". No amount of half-truths can suffice and overcome these incontrovertible facts; Ancient Macedonians conquered the ancient Greeks and kept them under the Macedonian yoke for centuries. Garrisons, which are sure sign of servitude, are not stationed in your own country; "As long as Chalcis, Corinth and Demitrius, the fetters of Greece, are garrisoned by the Macedonians, there will be no freedom for the Greeks."
In lieu of these and plethora of other irrefutable facts how do you justify your claim that Macedonia was always Greek? What idiosyncratic sinister drives possessed your soul to assume that lies can be passed over as truth? Or do you suppose, with your twisted logic, that others are ignorant, uneducated and without conscience (I forgot that you do) and that you, perched on your broken Greek marble, can dispose the truth as you see fit?
(Do you ever consider that your pervasive and barbaric attacks on our Macedonian identity will have lasting and negative, detrimental consequences for generations to come and that your bigoted, racist attitude towards our ethnicity has planted seeds of mistrust, prejudice and hate to last another five hundred years? When will you grow up? When will you realize and come to your senses that we, the ethnic Macedonians want nothing from you that does not belong to us. Is asking for permission to visit the graveyards of our beloved departed grandparents too much? Is asking to be allowed to freely use our Macedonian language at home and in schools too hard to comprehend? And when we declare that we are ethnic Macedonians, is it really up to you to decide what we can or cannot call ourselves?).
I am profoundly puzzled as to how you Greeks present these facts to your students? Will you ever reconcile and tell the truth for once? Aren´t you the only country in the world that celebrates its conqueror?
Be reminded that slogans history do not make. Be reminded that historical truth presented to serve domestic market will not find a fertile ground abroad. You can twist the truth, slip and slide around the facts, lie to your own people and demonize your neighbors but at the end you will suffer the inevitable defeat; you will drown into your own manipulative lies.
Mr. Kiritsis who thinks that you are ignorant of history continues:
"At this time, I will not engage you with a lengthy dissertation on historical truth. Any historian or scholar involved in serious critical inquiry will honestly disclose that the history of Macedonia (the geographical region) is an integral part of Greek history and that its actors were the Macedonian Greeks, from before Alexander the Great to the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire and the contemporary ones (http://macedonia-evidence.org/).
Those who can, indeed, do engage in a lengthy dissertation of historical truth—they provide evidence to back up their claims. Those who cannot, refer you to websites.
Contrary to what Mr. Kiritsis alludes in the passage above that ancient Macedonia is an integral part of Greece, the evidence points to the opposite direction and cannot support such an elusive act. Greece occupied historic Macedonia for the first time in 1913 with the Balkan Wars. Never before that date did Greece ever claim Macedonia as part of Greece. Fact is that Greece maintained a consular office in Salonica prior to 1913.
Countries do not open a consular office in their own cities; do they? Similarly, one is hard pressed to find evidence for the newly created designation "Macedonian Greeks" before 1986. Who were these people who kept silent over their dual ethnicity? Why were they hiding? Do Australians know or remember of any such designation prior to 1986? Can these Greeks provide a shred of evidence for this ethnic description? Isn´t it a grotesque lie?
Fact is that Greece in her drive to exterminate the ethnic Macedonians has lost her political compass, is perilously close to losing her credibility and is dangerously manipulating the truth to her own populace. It is true that with her protracted campaign against the Republic of Macedonia, she is winning some minor skirmishes here and there, but truth is also, that you do not stop the bleeding of a severed aorta with a Band-Aid application.
Instead of reading and listening to your own Australian son, professor A. B. Bosworth, who says that the Greeks with Alexander in Asia were known for their absence from any major battle, the Greek Advisory Council in Australia wants to educate you and give you a "proper" guidance of protocol—the Greek style. Their laughable attempt to appropriate the ancient Macedonian Kingdom and steal the Macedonian legacy is an attempt to disrespect, obfuscate and denigrate world Academic Institutions.
The ancient kingdom of Macedon has nothing to do with Greeks. Alexander and
his father Philip looked down upon these Greeks with utter contempt. Ancient Greeks have nothing in common with this mongrel race of residuals that inhabit Greece today.
Author after author, being disenchanted with modern Greeks´ behavior and
attitude, have depicted them as an agglomeration of Albanians, Vlachs, Slavs and Turks. Their violations of human rights of the ethnic Macedonians living in Greece and their continuous persecution and torment of them is a tantamount to thumbing their nose at the United Nations´ universally established and accepted human rights codes of conduct and principles. In their path to procure documents, secure evidence or manufacture new one to support their inadmissible claims, these people will resort to corruption, deceit and willful endangerment of the well-being of anyone who dares to challenge their stands.
The world is simply tired of their fake concern about the name. It is amply transparent that their crocodile tears about the name are just a front to blur and deflect the real attention from the gist of their crime; the continuous denial of existence of ethnic Macedonians living in Greece whose human rights are being daily violated and whose existence as people is being threatened. That is the real issue with Greece today. These ethnic Macedonians are the real thorn in Greece´s behind because they expose and reveal to the world that democracy in Greece is a total farce. The inhumane treatment of the Macedonian minority in Greece is slowly but gradually emerging as a colossal problem for them that must be addressed sooner than later.
I know and strongly believe that Australians are quite able to separate the truth from fiction and act accordingly. I also know and wholeheartedly believe that Australia will soon join the majority of the countries of the world and refer to the Republic of Macedonia by its chosen constitutional name.
Until next time….
Gandeto
September 19, 2009
Even though I prefer to open my article with a suitable phrase—to grab your immediate attention—this time, I will begin my story with an impromptu question:
If you ever find yourself in a time squeeze and are not sure how to proceed or how to react to a given situation, would you:
(a) Do what seems natural to you.
(b) Do what the majority of the people before you have done already.
(c) Take the advice of a fellow who has vested interest in the outcome or
(d) Consult as many scholars/experts on the field as possible before you make your decision.
Obviously, your first initial approach would be to read and understand the question being asked. Second, you would read and analyze the choices given. Next, you would eliminate some of the choices and finally, you would focus on one that, in your opinion, makes the most sense regarding the essence of the question being asked.
Considering the choices given:
Choice (a): Most likely you would not select choice "a" because the question does not allude to things being done instinctively, or on the spur of a moment without some consideration.
Choice (c): Chances are that you would stay away from this one because you may get suspicious and may question this fellow´s hidden agenda or motives.
Choice (d): You would decline selecting choice "d" on the strength of the "time squeeze" constraint emphasized within the question itself, thus, the urgency of the decision to be made will preclude its selection. Here, the contrast is obvious; you do not have the luxury of time to indulge yourself in a time consuming research to consult all the experts in the field.
Therefore, your choice most likely would be "b"; do what the majority of people have done already.
In the article "Australia's official stance on the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)" from September 13, sent to the American Chronicle by the so-called Australian Macedonian Advisory Council and written by certain Paul Kiritsis, their Executive Director, we find the following advice given to the Australian community in advance of the Republic of Macedonia´s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski´s visit to Australia scheduled for late October.
He is concerned that you, the citizens of Australia, could "erroneously" call the Republic of Macedonia by its constitutional name and not refer to her by the awkward and insulting acronym—imposed by Greece—Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Since Mr. Kiritsis feels that:
"Many Australians have been misled by this continuous propaganda, their ignorance of history, unwillingness to take initiative and educate themselves, lack of conscientiousness and to an extent, anomalous inertness on the part of the Greeks, who remained calm and assured the past few decades because they supposed a culture based on erroneous beliefs could not possibly evade extinction. As a result, a climate conducive to dangerous activities has proliferated surreptitiously in both in Australia and abroad",
he would like to prepare you and offer a lesson in history.
Since he finds you ignorant of history, unwilling to take initiative and educate yourselves and since you lack consciousness, he, Kiritsis takes it upon himself to educate, enlighten and advise you how to think and how to act when the Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski from the Republic of Macedonia visits Australia in October.
In his letter of advice to you, the usual Greek propaganda lines are being repeated—ad nauseum—again. He is cautioning you not to offend the Greeks living in Australia by referring to Republic of Macedonia according to her constitutional name. In other words, you need not do what majority of the world´s countries have done already; pay no heed to 126 countries of the world among which are: USA, Canada, Britain, China, India, Russia, Brazil and the rest, but rather listen to these Greeks who, with their incessant peevish complains, have become the laughing stock of Europe.
In their overzealousness to appropriate the inheritance of the Ancient Macedonians and portray them as "Greeks", modern Greeks have demonstrated utter contempt not only for your intelligence and wisdom but also for the leading scholars of the world past and present. They have betrayed the writings of their "own" nineteenth century historians who saw the ancient Macedonians not as brethren but as conquerors of Greece (Roudometof 2000). They have unscrupulously usurped the reporting of the ancient Greek biographers themselves whose description of Greece never included the kingdom of Macedon.
To them the boundaries of Greece extended from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the river Peneus in the north (Strabo, Scylax, Dichaerchus, Scymnus, Dionysius). Are they also suggesting that Isocrates, in his letter to King Philip of Macedon, lied when he told Philip that his "ancestors left Greece entirely and found their kingdom among the people of non-kindred race"?
Moreover, weren´t the ancient Greeks pleading with the Romans to force King Philip V to evacuate from Greece? (Pol. 16 and 18; Diod. 28. 5ff.; Livy 31-33; Plut. Flamininus). And when Rome defeated the Macedonians didn´t they proclaim the liberation of all the Greek cities? (Polybius, xviii, 46,5).
Numerous epitaphs do testify and serve as a somber reminder that Ancient Macedonians and the Ancient Greeks were two distinct and quite antagonistic neighbors who were embroiled in constant squabbles and disputes ranging from territorial disagreements to form and style of government. Consider the following epitaph for the ancient Greek hero Demosthenes:
"O, Demosthenes, if your strength was equal to your wisdom, Greece would have never been enslaved by the Macedonian Ares."
Or perhaps you prefer these few preserved lines that unambiguously testify to the veracity of our claim that ancient Greeks never regarded the ancient Macedonians as brethren:
"With the fallen Hellenes at Chaeronea was buried the freedom of Greece."
No amount of propaganda can erase the meaning of these lines; Greeks at Chaeronea were fighting the Macedonians "to safeguard the liberty of Hellas". No amount of half-truths can suffice and overcome these incontrovertible facts; Ancient Macedonians conquered the ancient Greeks and kept them under the Macedonian yoke for centuries. Garrisons, which are sure sign of servitude, are not stationed in your own country; "As long as Chalcis, Corinth and Demitrius, the fetters of Greece, are garrisoned by the Macedonians, there will be no freedom for the Greeks."
In lieu of these and plethora of other irrefutable facts how do you justify your claim that Macedonia was always Greek? What idiosyncratic sinister drives possessed your soul to assume that lies can be passed over as truth? Or do you suppose, with your twisted logic, that others are ignorant, uneducated and without conscience (I forgot that you do) and that you, perched on your broken Greek marble, can dispose the truth as you see fit?
(Do you ever consider that your pervasive and barbaric attacks on our Macedonian identity will have lasting and negative, detrimental consequences for generations to come and that your bigoted, racist attitude towards our ethnicity has planted seeds of mistrust, prejudice and hate to last another five hundred years? When will you grow up? When will you realize and come to your senses that we, the ethnic Macedonians want nothing from you that does not belong to us. Is asking for permission to visit the graveyards of our beloved departed grandparents too much? Is asking to be allowed to freely use our Macedonian language at home and in schools too hard to comprehend? And when we declare that we are ethnic Macedonians, is it really up to you to decide what we can or cannot call ourselves?).
I am profoundly puzzled as to how you Greeks present these facts to your students? Will you ever reconcile and tell the truth for once? Aren´t you the only country in the world that celebrates its conqueror?
Be reminded that slogans history do not make. Be reminded that historical truth presented to serve domestic market will not find a fertile ground abroad. You can twist the truth, slip and slide around the facts, lie to your own people and demonize your neighbors but at the end you will suffer the inevitable defeat; you will drown into your own manipulative lies.
Mr. Kiritsis who thinks that you are ignorant of history continues:
"At this time, I will not engage you with a lengthy dissertation on historical truth. Any historian or scholar involved in serious critical inquiry will honestly disclose that the history of Macedonia (the geographical region) is an integral part of Greek history and that its actors were the Macedonian Greeks, from before Alexander the Great to the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire and the contemporary ones (http://macedonia-evidence.org/).
Those who can, indeed, do engage in a lengthy dissertation of historical truth—they provide evidence to back up their claims. Those who cannot, refer you to websites.
Contrary to what Mr. Kiritsis alludes in the passage above that ancient Macedonia is an integral part of Greece, the evidence points to the opposite direction and cannot support such an elusive act. Greece occupied historic Macedonia for the first time in 1913 with the Balkan Wars. Never before that date did Greece ever claim Macedonia as part of Greece. Fact is that Greece maintained a consular office in Salonica prior to 1913.
Countries do not open a consular office in their own cities; do they? Similarly, one is hard pressed to find evidence for the newly created designation "Macedonian Greeks" before 1986. Who were these people who kept silent over their dual ethnicity? Why were they hiding? Do Australians know or remember of any such designation prior to 1986? Can these Greeks provide a shred of evidence for this ethnic description? Isn´t it a grotesque lie?
Fact is that Greece in her drive to exterminate the ethnic Macedonians has lost her political compass, is perilously close to losing her credibility and is dangerously manipulating the truth to her own populace. It is true that with her protracted campaign against the Republic of Macedonia, she is winning some minor skirmishes here and there, but truth is also, that you do not stop the bleeding of a severed aorta with a Band-Aid application.
Instead of reading and listening to your own Australian son, professor A. B. Bosworth, who says that the Greeks with Alexander in Asia were known for their absence from any major battle, the Greek Advisory Council in Australia wants to educate you and give you a "proper" guidance of protocol—the Greek style. Their laughable attempt to appropriate the ancient Macedonian Kingdom and steal the Macedonian legacy is an attempt to disrespect, obfuscate and denigrate world Academic Institutions.
The ancient kingdom of Macedon has nothing to do with Greeks. Alexander and
his father Philip looked down upon these Greeks with utter contempt. Ancient Greeks have nothing in common with this mongrel race of residuals that inhabit Greece today.
Author after author, being disenchanted with modern Greeks´ behavior and
attitude, have depicted them as an agglomeration of Albanians, Vlachs, Slavs and Turks. Their violations of human rights of the ethnic Macedonians living in Greece and their continuous persecution and torment of them is a tantamount to thumbing their nose at the United Nations´ universally established and accepted human rights codes of conduct and principles. In their path to procure documents, secure evidence or manufacture new one to support their inadmissible claims, these people will resort to corruption, deceit and willful endangerment of the well-being of anyone who dares to challenge their stands.
The world is simply tired of their fake concern about the name. It is amply transparent that their crocodile tears about the name are just a front to blur and deflect the real attention from the gist of their crime; the continuous denial of existence of ethnic Macedonians living in Greece whose human rights are being daily violated and whose existence as people is being threatened. That is the real issue with Greece today. These ethnic Macedonians are the real thorn in Greece´s behind because they expose and reveal to the world that democracy in Greece is a total farce. The inhumane treatment of the Macedonian minority in Greece is slowly but gradually emerging as a colossal problem for them that must be addressed sooner than later.
I know and strongly believe that Australians are quite able to separate the truth from fiction and act accordingly. I also know and wholeheartedly believe that Australia will soon join the majority of the countries of the world and refer to the Republic of Macedonia by its chosen constitutional name.
Until next time….
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