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Originally posted by Soldier of Macedon
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Good post.
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Sounds like more fake news from the establishment press. I actually read this story and was surprised that FM Lavrov made such comments, only to find out it was more fake news.
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Likewise, when I read that story initially it didn't exactly align with the other statements that Lavrov had made about Macedonia. Not surprising that the truth had been manipulated yet again in the media. Hence the reason why I posted this article.Originally posted by Philosopher View PostIn the name of the blood and the sun, the dagger and the gun, Christ protect this soldier, a lion and a Macedonian.Comment
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I think it was e I their Albanian or Bulgarian media that first reported the bit about Lavrov, and then it spread.Comment
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When I see Macedonia and Russia in the same sentence, I see the the invisible word "Bulgaria" in the same sentence and know we will never have a friend in the Russkies.Risto the Great
MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
"Holding my breath for the revolution."
Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.comComment
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Who do you think is more angry about 'losing' Macedonia- the Bulgarians or the Greeks?Originally posted by Risto the Great View Post
I am constantly dismayed that the Bulgarians feel like they have lost something in Macedonia being an independent country.
I understand the Greek feelings, but i cannot for the life of me understand why Bulgaria feels like Macedonia is theirs. From what i remember (and i don't know much), didn't the world powers divide Macedonia, and give Bulgaria a piece, but they then decided to greedily try to take more- all the way to the Adriatic sea? But they were forced back and lost the initial piece they were offered? So what are they bitching about? They were given a piece of stolen land, they then decided to get greedy to take more stolen land, they got their asses handed to them in a fight-back which saw them lose the initial ill-gotten gain. SUCK NUTS is appropriate, is it not?
I have always been aware of a common geography, heritage between Greeks and Macedonians, though i do not understand where the Bulgarians and the Albanians are coming from. Though i do freely admit i don't know much about the region- nor do i particularly give a shit, for it is all propaganda anyway.
As far as i am concerned the turks screwed everyone, so being second-in-line creditors seems odd to me.
the question was: who's bitchin' more: Bulgarians or Greeks?Comment
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I read somewhere that the Russians had recognised the autonomy of the macedonian orthodox church. That, if true, is a development that should be mentioned in this forum.Comment
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Where to start.
So Bulgaria didn't lose the piece that it got. Macedonia was divided by Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. Greece got the biggest piece known as Aegean Macedonia or as we call it Egejska, Bulgaria got Pirin Macedonia or Pirinska, and Serbia got Vardar Macedonia or Vardarska. Serbia was the one who lost the piece that it had, which is what is present day Republic of Macedonia. Greece and Bulgaria still have the other two pieces.
Bulgaria's claims is on our ethnicity, while Greece's claim is on our ancestry. Bulgaria claims that modern day Macedonians are in fact ethnically Bulgarian, that present day Macedonia is inhabited by ethnic Bulgarians, that our language is a form of Bulgarian and so are we. Now this is also what Greece says about our ethnicity, that we are not decedents of ancient Macedonians and the Macedonian heritage, that we are Bulgarian Slavs and thus have no claim to the name and history of Macedonian and Macedonians, that ancient Macedonians were Greek.
Technically neither "lost" anything, one could argue they both won a lot. So they are not pissed about losing anything. If I had to give an answer I would say Greece is more traditionally pissed because they are more nationalist, radical, chauvinistic, and delusional.Greeks seem to get much more upset than Bulgarians. Bulgarians seem to be more condescending and passive about the whole thing, like we are the naive little brother that ran away form home, Greeks I think more feel more hate towards us. Probably because they don't see us as ethnically similar to them where Bulgarians do.
Albanians are a whole other issue totally discussed at length in another thread.
It does matter, you should care, and yes the Turks did screw us the worst because they held on to Macedonia the longest giving all or neighbors a head start in nation building and national conciseness.
Don't forget that Bulgaria was funded and supported and to a degree created by Russia. Greece by the Germans.
Like RTG said when push comes to shove Russia = Bulgaria.
Originally posted by Opinci View PostComment
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I haven't read that. Still, the Serbian Orthodox Church also recognized the Macedonian Church's autonomy, but as an autonomous institution within the Serbian Orthodox Church's overall control.Originally posted by Opinci View PostComment
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It's Time to Trust Russia, Not Trump, on Macedonia
It's Time to Trust Russia, Not Trump, on Macedonia
Despite the high hopes placed on his administration, Trump has so far done nothing to move away from Obama's Hybrid War on Macedonia, thus lending further credence to Russia's warning that foreign powers are plotting to annihilate the country's statehood.
The Republic of Macedonia is once again mired in a political crisis, the country's third in as many years. The author covered the first one in 2015 and its sequel the year after in two of his Sputnik articles, so the reader should check them out if they need a background briefing about the specifics. To be concise, the US has been experimenting with a new political technology in the country, relying on the strategic leaking of manipulated and illegally procured wiretaps on Macedonian politicians, journalists, and private citizens in order stoke Color Revolution unrest against the government with the aim of destabilizing it and thus offsetting Russia and China's Balkan megaprojects of the Balkan/Turkish Stream gas pipeline and Balkan Silk Road high-speed railway, respectively, which are planned to crucially transit through the landlocked country.
Background Briefing
Zoran Zaev, the leader of the SDSM opposition, was tasked by the US with being the face of the anti-government movement, and his political supporters are characterized by their liberal-progressive beliefs in radical feminism and pro-homosexual legislation, which starkly put them at odds with Macedonia's conservative majority. This helps to explain SDSM's unpopularity over the past couple of years, a fact which even Zaev himself might have realized and which could have been the reason why he continually wanted to postpone the very same parliamentary elections which he had been agitating for over the past couple of years. Because of the unattractiveness of SDSM's socio-cultural leanings, the opposition knew that they wouldn't be able to beat the ruling VMRO party without getting some additional help, which is why they resorted to the dangerous game of identity politics by playing the "Albanian card".
Macedonia has a very sizeable Albanian minority, though the exact figures are disputable because the most recent census figures are from 2002. At the time that the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) was signed in 2001, it was thought that approximately a quarter of all Macedonians were Albanian, though there are still concerns that even that number was inflated by the hundreds of thousands of Albanians which flooded into the country during the 1999 NATO War on Yugoslavia. OFA helped Macedonia narrowly avoid another repeat of the Kosovo scenario in violently carving out the World War II fascist-driven project of so-called "Greater Albania", and it guaranteed Albanians proportional representation in the country's government and society.
In the decade and a half since OFA was signed, however, Macedonians were granted the right to more freely travel all across Europe, and this is believed by some observers to have sparked an Albanian immigration wave to the EU and the consequent diminishment of this demographic in Macedonia. If this is indeed the case, then it would accordingly lead to less proportional representation for Albanians in Macedonia, which is why the census is such a highly charged topic nowadays. Be that as it may, the present political arrangement in the country is predicated on the presumption that at least 25 percent of Albanians are legal Macedonian citizens still residing in the country, and Zaev knew that he would have to tap into this demographic in order to boost his electoral odds against VMRO.
It's here where US Ambassador Jess Baily importantly comes into play.
Baily's Games
It's widely suspected that Ambassador Baily was instrumental in getting the Albanian minority to rally around SDSM instead of their traditional ethno-centric political parties, as has usually been the case in the country's post-Ohrid electoral history. This contributed to SDSM nearly winning the December parliamentary vote, much to the surprise of all observers who had discounted that possibility since they presumed that the Albanians would stick with their own political parties instead of switch over to SDSM. VMRO barely won the election, but wasn't able to form a government because its usual Albanian coalition partner, the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI), stubbornly refused to work with the incumbent authorities unless they conceded to the radical demands of the so-called "Albanian Platform".
This agenda was formed in the Albanian capital of Tirana right after the elections when all of the Albanian Macedonian political parties were invited there by Prime Minister Edi Rama and ordered to promote certain policies in the country which would boost the prospects for "Greater Albania". One of these was the demand that all governing structures across Macedonia become bilingual, even in areas where there are no Albanians, which is unacceptable to VMRO and most Macedonians in general. The government is already abiding by the OFA, which has granted Albanians the best minority rights anywhere in the world. Macedonian patriots believe that the "Albanian Platform" is unnecessary and therefore really a thinly disguised plot to expand Tirana's influence over the country, dovetailing with the earlier so-called "Union of Albanian Municipalities" which was announced midway through last year.
All of this is threatening enough as it is, but it's all the more dangerous because Zaev hinted during the campaign that he would liberally interpret the OFA in order to give Albanians "more rights" if he wins, which some observers interpreted as a dog whistle to indicate his support for "Greater Albania" through the introduction of nationwide bilingualism and then later on the country's "federalization" (internal partition). Even worse, it's understood that these two steps would eventually come to involve a revision of the country's constitutional name from the Republic of Macedonia in order to satisfy Greece and guarantee Athens' swift support for Skopje's EU and NATO membership.
The "naming dispute", as it's commonly referred to, is a very complex issue, but it strikes at the heart of what it means to be Macedonian and is its peoples' most sensitive socio-political topic. It's popularly believed that if the country's name is changed, then this would eventually lead to the destruction of the Macedonian state, which is why it's so fiercely opposed by the vast majority of the population but appears to have the backing of Ambassador Baily, Soros and his shadowy network, and Zaev and his Albanian political cohorts.
Towards Another Balkan War?
Assuming that Trump even wanted to change this approach, he might realistically not be able to at this point because Obama opened up Pandora's Box through the electoral revival of Albanian nationalism in Macedonia, which might dangerously result in a resurgence of Albanian terrorism if their political demands aren't met. A terrorist cell was busted in May 2015 at the height of the first American-engineered destabilization against the country, and had it not been dismantled, it could have very well transformed the failed Color Revolution into an Unconventional War, thereby midwifing a violent Hybrid War in the Balkans. Russia is well aware of what's at stake, not just to it and its Chinese ally's infrastructural interests, but to regional stability as a whole, which is why Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had this to say on Thursday:
"The West is using the Albanian minority in an attempt to bring to power in Skopje the defeated opposition, which approved the Albanian ultimatums leading to the erosion of the country's constitutional principles. The ongoing destructive attempts to impose schemes from the outside, contrary to the will of the Macedonian voters, can only aggravate the situation. It is necessary to stop foreign interference in the internal affairs of Macedonia, to respect the right of the Macedonian citizens to shape their own destiny in accordance with the fundamental democratic principles."
Her wise comments were followed by an alarming statement from MID, a portion of which said that:
"We believe that this is extremely dangerous with an intention to annihilate Macedonian statehood and destabilize the entire Balkan region."
This echoed what Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had presciently warned in May 2015 after Albania and Bulgaria — both of which have historical (albeit presently unstated) claims to Macedonia — began to menacingly posture against their neighbor:
"It's been suggested now that Macedonia needs to be federalized even deeper, so as to turn into a flexible federation or perhaps a confederation, and ideas have even been aired as to why not dismember it as an artificial state, with part of it going to Bulgaria and another part to Albania."
Lo and behold, the exact same thing that Lavrov warned about became an attention-grabbing policy proposal in December 2016 when former British diplomat and Balkan expert Timothy Less began to lobby hard for a geopolitical redivision of the Balkans. His scandalous article for the influential Council on Foreign Relations neoconservative think tank advocated for the "federalization" (internal partition) of Macedonia as a precursor to the country's western annexation by Albania. California Congressman and chair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Dana Rohrabacher channeled Less' proposal and took it a step further in February by outright declaring to Albanian media that "Macedonia is not a country… Kosovars and Albanians from Macedonia should be part of Kosovo and the rest of Macedonia should be part of Bulgaria".
Although many high hopes were placed on the Trump Administration, it has thus far disappointingly proven itself unwilling to stop Obama's Hybrid War on Macedonia and might even be preparing to intensify it. Even if Trump attempts to symbolically appease the masses and remove Baily from his Ambassadorship, this will only be a superficial change so long as the strategy of supporting "Greater Albania" via the "Albanian Platform" and Zaev remains in effect, which it probably will because the neoconservative "deep state" is still running most of America's foreign policy.
Even though many Macedonian patriots look up to Trump because of his conservative socio-economic policies and hypnotizing charisma, they would do well to remember that his ideology is "America First", and that right now at least, his "deep state" believes that destabilizing Macedonia as a means of stopping Russia and China's Balkan megaprojects would "Make America Great Again" in spite of all that the tiny country has hitherto done to cultivate excellent relations with the US, EU, and NATO since its independence.
Macedonians should instead start listening more to Russia, not Trump and his surrogates, since Moscow is proven to have been right all along and each of its warnings have fatefully materialized. That being said, no level-headed Macedonian wants MID's last scenario forecast to come true, which would result in the annihilation of Macedonian statehood and the destabilization of the entire Balkan region, so it's imperative that they begin putting their trust in Russia if they want their country to make it out of this American-provoked chaos in one piece.“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop, and you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all” - Mario SavioComment
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Perhaps Macedonian can start putting their trust in Macedonians (not FYROMians) for a start.Risto the Great
MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
"Holding my breath for the revolution."
Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.comComment
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That's the missing ingredient. Its like gravce tavce without the grav - just a strange redish/organish ooze...Originally posted by Risto the Great View PostIf my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land. 2 Chronicles 7:14
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations...This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution. John AdamsComment
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Teshko na tie sho chekat pomosh od Rusija...
+1Perhaps Macedonian can start putting their trust in Macedonians (not FYROMians) for a start.Comment
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For what reason would Russians support Macedonians over Greeks?Comment
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I would say if they were trying to stick it to the EU. But I can't see much useful help coming from Russia anytime soon.Originally posted by tchaiku View PostRisto the Great
MACEDONIA:ANHEDONIA
"Holding my breath for the revolution."
Hey, I wrote a bestseller. Check it out: www.ren-shen.comComment
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I think we're seeing the re-emergence of Russia as a genuine world player, something not seen since the break-up of the USSR, this has been most obvious in Syria and more covertly in Ukraine in recent years.Originally posted by tchaiku View Post
For the first time in a long time, the Russian's have managed to step on a few (american and other western) toes and the US is finding it harder to go full carte blanche in any corner of the world that it so chooses.
Where the US had projected itself internationally after the fall of communism, such as dragging the East Europeans and Baltic states into the western (read U.S.) orbit in a specific strategy designed to destroy the relationships those countries once had with the former Soviet Union (read Russia) and making them beholden to the 'western system' (read U.S.), therefor leaving a future Russian Federation in a far weaker position, one that would reduce the Russian's to a future of isolationism or do things on America's terms.
Today the Russian's have seen an opportunity to dismantle the western project of containing Moscow. The Russian's have seen the 'chink in the armour' of the US capitalist model...the seeds of discontent as a result of globalisation and the ever increasing questioning of the supranational monoliths, like the EU and NATO.
What I think the Russian's are doing is stoking the fires of discontent that are fanning across Europe.
Just as the US was hell bent on limiting the rise of Russia once and for all, using the mechanisms of the EU and NATO, the Russian's now see an opportunity to undermine, impede or perhaps even destroy those very same western institutions, thereby weakening the US itself and reestablishing some semblance of equilibrium.
Sadly, little Macedonia becomes a mere black pawn on the chess board...again.Comment
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