Much has been written lately about the future name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija, to be settled with Greece. The former Yugoslav province left the collapsing Yugoslav union, in 1991 and declared independence, taking on the misnomer of Република Македонија, transliterated as Republika Makedonija.
The Greeks, whose northernmost province is the historic Μακεδονία/Macedonia, home of Aristotle and Alexander the Great among other greats of world history and culture, demanded that their new neighbors must choose a different name, not Macedonia. The former Yugoslav province, the Greeks argued, has no more than a small part (Pelagonia and part of Amphaxitis) of historic Macedonia proper in its land, mainly along its southern provinces.
Even accepting for a moment the Skopjan unhistorical definition of where Macedonia starts and ends, and wrongly for a moment assuming that all of FYROM’s land was part of Macedonia proper, FYROM still could not be called Macedonia. Even under that definition, it only constitutes a small part of the whole area of Macedonia proper, about 30%.
The small part (FYROM, and essentially only its extreme south) of the total (geographic Macedonia) should never have been encouraged to usurp a name that characterizes the geographic whole: the historically defined Macedonia. Yet this is precisely what G.W.Bush did the first day after his second Συνέχεια →
Prometheus Bound: The titan who stole fire from Zeus to give to mankind is punished. Ring a bell? (painting by Elsie Russell)
Comment by MySatelite: «My name is Dimitris and I come from Greece». This is the opening of a message in a bottle, a cry not for help but for empathy and awakening written by someone called Dimitris, your average, Greek everyman. This is the situation in Greece put simply. It’s illustrated, straight-forward, short and readily comprehended by a 10-year-old. Ok, it has some grammatical inconsistencies and one or two typos, but nothing that impedes understanding.
For once, let go of your stereotypes, the ones the media have instilled in all of us and read something which actually states facts and a reality Greeks have to face on a daily basis. Read Dimitris’s message below and pass it on, for the sake of our children and yours. Συνέχεια →
mySatellite 