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The Forum > Article Comments > What's in a name? > Comments

What's in a name? : Comments

By Peter Hill, published 2/2/2011

Greek national identity seems to be so fragile that it is threatened even by a dispute over who 'owns' Alexander the Great.

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[Deleted for arguing a moderation decision on the forum.]
Posted by Pletho, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 10:12:04 AM
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Someone deleted my first post, so I am going to trying again and point out (what some supporters of FYROM like Mr. Hill seem to be consciously trying to hide)... what FYROM's own elected politicians used to claim about their own identity a few years ago.

'We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great.'
(FYROM'S Ambassador Ljubica Acevshka in speech to US representatives in Washington on January 22 1999)

'We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian.'(FYROM´s Ambassador to Canada Gyordan Veselinov in interview to Ottawa Citizen Newspaper 24 February 1999)

"We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century ... We are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians" (Kiro Gligorov, FYROM's first President to Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe, February 26, 1992)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA3kwC2YTq4

"The creation of the Macedonian nation, for almost half of a century, was done in a condition of single-party dictatorship. In those times, there was no difference between science and ideology, so the “Macedonian” historiography, unopposed by anybody, comfortably performed a selection of the historic material from which the “Macedonian” identity was created. There is nothing atypical here for the process of the creation of any modern nation, except when falsification from the type of substitution of the word “Bulgarian” with the word “Macedonian” were made." (Denko Maleski, former Minister of foreign affairs of FYROM from 1991 to 1993 in an interview to FYROM newspaper Utrinski Vesnik)
http://www.utrinski.com.mk/?ItemID=C7A7DD4ECD45C946BF6573284EC01164
Posted by Pletho, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 10:15:22 AM
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Pletho's post wasn't deleted by "someone" it was deleted by me. He knew that because he received an email from me which says at the bottom that I am the Chief Editor and Founder of this site.

I realise that this subject is contentious, and we have a number of new posters on the site. If you are going to post on this, or any other subject, you should not accuse others of bad faith. You deal with their arguments not insult them because you disagree with their arguments.

We do not edit your comments to remove the objectionable part, we delete them entirely. If commenters persist in breaking our site rules we then apply a suspension. Suspensions increase in severity with the severity and frequency of breaches of the rules.

We do not take sides on arguments. We act to ensure that they occur as civilly as possible so that readers can engage with each other without a risk of being bullied or intimidated.

If you are thinking of posting, please read the rules first.

Graham Young
Posted by GrahamY, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 10:34:56 AM
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The problem over who 'owns' Alexander derives from the fact that he was born in Pella, Macedonia, which today is in Greece. In antiquity, however, Pella was in a part of the whole area of Macedonia, now split between today's Greek province and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

So he's Macedonian, but from the bit which is now Greece.

While it ought to make a lot of practical sense to define the modern nations of FYROM and Greece in terms of their modern history, the 'self-identification' goes back a long way before then. The wording of Alexander's appeal to qualify for the Olympics attest to that.
Posted by Chica, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 11:28:00 AM
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The Hellenic Republic and its supporters in Australia must move away from a culture of intimidation and ethnic intolerance of Macedonians, Jews, Turks, Vlachs, Albanians, Australians and others and move to a culture of peace and ethnic co-existence and mutual respect.

The Macedonians are not Greek, Bulgarian or Serbian. They do not identify with the countries that invaded them in 1912/13 and then forcefully tried to assimilate or expel the indigenous population.

Macedonia and its people are confident with their cultural heritage and identity and are in the process of educating the world about the history of Macedonia and its peaceful nature.
Posted by Macedonian advocacy, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 12:37:28 PM
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As Darwin noted as the species left the African continent.....great prophets said that the cave men will never see eye to eye, and he was right. The people that still fight overland, shows how much monkey some people still are, and Iam not talking about the hair on your backs.

So! Do you think you chimps can play nice? and they say man is evolving.....lol.........not from what Ive read here.

How about I give you a box of bananas to argue over, instead of land that your for-fathers stole from each other.

So.....string up old battles just make you the monkey ass:)

What's in a name............try Deep Blue..........:)

This is the 21 century, is it not:) The world has more to worry about than who owns the dirt.

Over-population is showing its ugly face once more.....and its only the beginning.

Oh Dear:)

BLUE
Posted by Deep-Blue, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 1:57:48 PM
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