buylotrogold

... The true explanation for the position is crude opportunism. It is always more convenient to have the same position on something as your government has. More convenient to have the government's position for a garden-variety Opportunist: not for a fascist. I once wondered on apst why the U.S. fascists generally opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shouldn't the fascists be showing loyalty to their imperialist ruling class? My limited historical inquiry subsequently suggests this pattern is typical: fascists try to cash in when there's mass disenchantment with the regime. The usual demagogic stance of fascists is to be against everything the government is against. This automatic oppositionism is also bngelis's stance but oriented to the U.S. government, instead of the Greek. That would be a workable stance for a Greek fascist party. Instead of hating the Greek ruling class, hate the government (not the ruling class!) for subservience to the USA. A bit risky, as most Greek fascists have in the past been subservient to the USA. But America is declining, and rats like to leave sinking ships. Vangelis isn't quite there yet, but that seems like where he is headed. It looks to me that the Greek fascists (and near-fascists like bn) are trying to stir up some kind of hysteria about alleged (nonexistent) Soros-inspired schemes for an independent Macedonia. They seek to outrage the Greek masses with plots of dividing Greece, not in this instance to promote pogroms but to incite general chauvinist hysteria and to *attack* the Greek government as being the willing victim of Soros partition schemes. srd Don't know about Greek fascists as a whole. The possibility exists of course that Vangelis is just a crank, and real Greek right wingers regard him and his Soros paranoia as amusing. Or not. Vangelis could be on to something here in his opportunist way. Who knows? If anyone is onto something, it's Sklavos. srd

The true explanation for the position is crude opportunism. It is always more convenient to have the same position on something as your government has. US Jewry have found the solution to this dilemma - take it over - and terrify or buy off those with inclinations towards conflicting positions!

Half our people disagreed with the above line then. Some maintained it and left. LIfe isn't a schema its complicated one has to weigh the pros and cons. YOu have decided nations have lost the right to resist once they have allowed a large number of immigrants in a country. But rights to resistance aren't granted. They are taken in life, not on paper. The significance of the belatedness of Greek concern over immigration is that these immigrants in many instances are now Greek workers. They may not be Greek according to your CONSTITUTION, but from a Marxist perspective they are part of the Greek working class simply because they are in Greece producing surplus value for the bosses. So it becomes very basic that you can't just grab these Greek workers and bat them around Panteleomona Square or taking them from their residences or places of work and throw them out (regardless of whether anyone is even willing to take them). You say no one asked them to come. Let's say an immigrant, by coming to Greece uninvited, committed a kind of crime; surely it is only a misdemeanor. Would you justify the gendarmes coming for a worker and depriving him of his livelihood because he shoplifted? srd

So, WAS SKAVLOS A QUISLING (and a violator most horrific of the GREEK CONSTITUTION) when *he* proposed legalization???? srd Proposing legalisation for a few thousand when we did was correct then as a demand to the stalinist controlled unions. How can it be correct when it's UNCONSTITUTIONAL? The constitutionality issue only matters to you when it suits you. You're a gross Opportunist who's only concerned with the immediate struggle. When it didn't occur and the bosses revealed their open door agenda of replacing indigenous labour with globalised labour we changed policy. Unlike you we live in the real world make mistakes and try to change them. The world changes, but the CONSTITUTION, that's eternal. Half our people disagreed with the above line then. Some maintained it and left. LIfe isn't a schema its complicated one has to weigh the pros and cons. YOu have decided nations have lost the right to resist once they have allowed a large number of immigrants in a country. But rights to resistance aren't granted. They are taken in life, not on paper. The significance of the belatedness of Greek concern over immigration is that these immigrants in many instances are now Greek workers. They may not be Greek according to your CONSTITUTION, but from a Marxist perspective they are part of the Greek working class simply because they are in Greece producing surplus value for the bosses. So it becomes very basic that you can't just grab these Greek workers and bat them around Panteleomona Square or taking them from their residences or places of work and throw them out (regardless of whether anyone is even willing to take them). You say no one asked them to come. Let's say an immigrant, by coming to Greece uninvited, committed a kind of crime; surely it is only a misdemeanor. Would you justify the gendarmes coming for a worker and depriving him of his livelihood because he shoplifted? srd Is this now a case of an individual immigrant or the few thousand that arrived in the early years of mass immigration or are we referring to the millions literally now camped in Greece indefinitely? So when the German soldiers came looted the farmers, stole the gold, bankrupted the country and led to mass starvation with 500,000 deaths we couldn't of course grab these 'greek' soldiers (by virtue of their arrival producing surplus labour for german imperialism) or take them from their barracks or throw them out? The individual situation is now paramount to the general social situation? And Yugoslavia wasn't broken up? It remained intact did it? If the Greek nation moves like the S African nation did, you argue to stop them and call for the police and the army to crush them. Go for it. See what happens next. The army will fragment and implode. vngelis

... Holmes knows what he is saying is bullshit. Where he gets his information from is really irrelevant; the fact is that he knows it's a bunch of lies but posts it anyway. For practical purposes that makes him a liar... To post that, while not even *answering* my posting which refutes him, is quite dishonest. ... his drive to prove that Slavic Macedonia is Greek You fool. It's as Dusty said: you just don't understand the history at all. No one is saying that the Skopjean state is Greek; the point is that it's not. Only Greek Macedonia is Greek, You've got the line wrong: no laughing matter on the edge between Stalinism and fascism. The Greek Macedonians were chased [read dispersed ; bn's a bad translator, even of Dad] from Greek Macedonia. Stinas so posited; Sklavos so ratified. _That_ is what settled the nationalities question within Greece. If so, the Greek Macedonians were _once_ a separate (oppressed) nation within Greece; concomitant language differences are mere detail. Language is central to the matter. You're using 'Greek Macedonian' in the wrong way. Do enlighten us linguistically. Can't be both ways. If the Macedonians were dispersed from Greek Macedonia, then a Macedonian people existed. Simple logic; take your nose out of the texts and try to THINK. Don't talk to me about logic; the essential truth of the matter is so logical that it could be distilled into a very simple syllogism: Some Greeks are Macedonians All Macedonians are Greeks No Slavs are Macedonians. Get it? Therefore, those Slavs who call themselves Macedonians are? Follow out the logic of your syllogism. Or admit that you don't know what you are talking about. -jh- All Cretans are liars, said the Cretan The arguments in the articles to which you posted _link_s - both of which, incidentally, are highly equivocal and speculative (the phrase 'there is some room for doubt' is not very strong stuff, is it?) - centre around a handful of _object_ions. I will name the main ones and then briefly respond to them in turn: Onomastic evidence: Why would you contend that the Greek personal names that occur (like Alexander and Philip) are Hellenisations of non- Greek names? In such a heavily Greek milieu, if a name appears Greek, it probably is; if the Macedonians themselves used the Greek forms of names, why seek a non-Greek origin for them? It's uneconomical and absurd to do so, especially as neither of your sources adduce any evidence for their being non-Greek names. Occurrence of non-Greek words in the Macedonian texts: these are easily explained by the absorption by the Macedonians of a pre-Greek population (for whom 'Pelasgians' is sort of a catch-all appellation) along with some of their language. The names of a large number of Greek gods and heroes are non-Greek, for example. The earliest Greeks were probably not very numerous and mostly male, so many of them would have married women from among the pre-Greek peoples. Scarcity of linguistic evidence: Unfortunately, we don't know much about the grammar of Macedonian; what evidence exists is principally lexical, and this is predominantly (i.e. more than 80 per cent) Greek, though of a different dialectal form to - say - Attic (see, for instance, http://www.heinrich-tischner.de/22-sp/1sprach/aegaeis/mak-th.htm) Shea (the author of your second article) quotes this passage as 'evidence' that the Macedonians couldn't understand Greek: When Eumenues saw the close-locked formation of the Macedonian phalanx ... he sent Xennias once more, a man whose speech was Macedonian, bidding him declare that he would not fight them frontally but would follow them with his cavalry and units of light troops and bar them from provisions. This DOES NOT indicate that the Macedonians didn't speak Greek (in Ancient Greek the word here translated as 'speech' could mean 'dialect' or 'language'); it suggests that Eumenues sent Xennias to speak to them in their own dialect because his appeal would more likely to get a sympathetic hearing. The Macedonians (like other Greeks) could indeed understand other dialects of Greek than their own, but some more easily than others. Here's a good refutation of the nonsense about Macedonian non-comprehension of other Greek dialects proffered in your sources: http://www.macedoniaontheweb.com/forum/linguistics-forum/10682-intell... Shea has no expertise in Macedonia, the Greek language, history, linguistics or archaeology; he's a fraud who is heavily tied up with the FYROM multicultural lobby in Australia. His biography: My PhD work at the University of Queensland was in the area of attachment behaviour in children. Following four years as a tutor at the University of Queensland, I went to the University of Papua New Guinea for seven years. Here I studied a variety of issues of concern to such a developing country, in particular questions about cognitive development and the measurement of cognitive skills. I joined the University of Newcastle in 1979 and continued my interests in applied areas of psychology, teaching and researching in the areas of child development, human sexuality, and health. My applied interests were reflected also in my work as a practising psychologist during this period. For more than 25 years now I have worked as a consulting psychologist, and am a fellow and immediate past president of the Australian College of Practising Consulting Psychologists (ACPCP). Ongoing involvement with the practice of psychology includes work with Psychology Private Australia, the peak body of private practising psychologists in Australia. (_link_: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school-old/psychology/our_staff/shea_john...) His research interests: Psychological factors that affect health, especially immune functions, allergies and cancer Support groups for cancer patients Personality factors as predictors of hypnotic talent, and the use of hypnosis for bodily change Human sexuality I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Anyway, here's a GOOD starting place on Macedonia: http://macedonia-evidence.org/ PS You're right about the use of Wikipedia; I used it for the sake of expediency. But you have to admit it's a lot better than the stuff you used, especially Shea's article! PPS It's better if you post a few sentences or paragraphs from your source so that readers can get the gist without having to follow the _link_.