Michael wrote:

"And I can not comment on the photograph of the Macedonian prime minister under a map that portrayed the state stretching to Salonika because I haven’t seen it. To be honest, I read Macedonian media every day, but I have only heard about this photograph from Greek posts. "

Michael, could the reason you didn't see these photographs in FYROM's media be because it was basically "ho-hum" - nothing new?

In a country were making irredenist claims against Greek Macedonia is basically a national sport, why would such an event even be on the "radar" of the local media?

Greece would have very likely recognized your ethnic bretheren a long time ago if they went by any other name, including SLAVO-Macedonian or Macedonian Slavs.

The fact that you refer to yourselves a simply "Macedonian" is seen with suspicion as as a very subversive thing to do.

"Macedonian" in Greece denotes a large subset of the ethnic Greek population. To say that there is a "Macedonian" minority in Greek Macedonia would be an oxymoron.

And it is a MYTH that this region was somehow "renamed" Macedonia by the Greek government in 1988. Greeks from across the country have always proudly referre to it as Macedonia.

A little more information is needed even to begin to explain this issue to readers:

The loosely defined geographical region of Macedonia was the last region in Europe to be controlled by the Ottoman Empire. In the late 19th century, the new states of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, seeing the imminent collapse of the Ottoman Empire, competed in laying claim to the cultural and future political identity of the inhabitants of the region. They competed through their churches and church-schools and, finally, with their soldiers. It was in their interests to deny a separate identity to the people of this region and they still deny that identity today.

For hundreds of years the Christian inhabitants of this region, mostly peasants who had never belonged to a state, would not have identified themselves as a nation. They spoke a language which they knew was different from Greek and Serbian, that was close to Bulgarian but with significant differences. When bullied into answering as to their affiliations by churchmen or soldiers, they would give the answer the bully required.

It was the brutal tactics of the agents of the neighbouring states and the manipulations of the Great Powers which paradoxically convinced the few educated inhabitants that the best interests of people in the region was to seek autonomy/independence as 'Macedonia'. These calls were first articulated from the 1870s onwards and were fiercely, murderously, contested by Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. It is a complex story, but as far as Agean Macedonia goes it is a case of decades-long ethnic cleansing of 'Bulgarophones' from the area they aspired to make northern Greece. (The lands of the Slav-speaking inhabitants of what became northern Greece were subsequently taken over by a million plus Greek refugees from Asia Minor after Greece's failed war against Turkey.)

Remaining Slavs in northern Greece were prominent amongst the Communists in the Greek Civil War--their only hope of remaining in Greece lay with the Communists. At the end of that war, the last great wave of ethnic cleansing was implemented: thousands of Slav speaking children were deported (separated form their families forever) across the world).

Greece has pursued a nationalism based on total unity: no minorities were to be recognised, its ethnic cleansing atrocities were to be denied. To effect this, the very existence of 'Macedonians' had to be denied.

The story is far more complex than this, but this is essentially the basis of Greek and Bulgarian policies today.

Irridentist calls in Macedonia are almost non-existent. There is anger at Greece's role in the impoverishment of Macedonia, it refusals to recognize the existence of Macedonians and its refusal to consider compensation for properties confiscated in Greek Macedonia, but no-one in MAcedonia sanely envisages any confrontation with Greece. This threat is worked up in Greece to win votes in northern Greece--a nationalist card that neither large party can afford to ignore.

Sadly, Greek arrogance in its negation of Macedonian identity has led to a somewhat embarrassing reaction in Macedonia in the form of Greek-style identity-building based on spurious claims to continuity with ancient Macedonia and Alexander the so-called Great--but that is populist nonsense which Greece chooses to be provoked by in furtherance of its equally preposterous claims to continuity with ancient Greece.

70 years a go, Hitler labeled the Austrians and the Dutch as artificial nations created by German enemies in order to steal German land and historic heritage.
Today Greece says that Macedonians are artificial nation in order to steal Greek land and heritage.
Where is the difference?
The swastika poster was an art exhibition poster where the artist on the modified Greek flag put a family photo of his Family who was clensed from Greece in the late 1940s and who is not allowed to enter Greece anymore. Such a strong and graphic message was needed to make Greece facing with its own skeletons in its closet.
There is NO argument that can justify violation of a basic right from the United Nations Human Rights Charter - a freedom of self identification and self expressing. What Greece does is violating this UN Charter by imposing to another nation names and rules of their self-identification.

Greece's treatment of its ethnic Macedonian minority is the inspiration for every racist, every facist and every ethnic cleanser in the Balkans.

It is not enough to try to either explain or condemn Greece's human rights violations. It is also necessary to condemn Nato and the EU since Greece is a member of both organizations. Greece's values regarding minority rights are also Nato and EU values.

(Memo to the Serbs of Kosovo, see the plight of ethnic Macedonian in Greece to see your future under "Nato and EU human rights guarantees.)

|Helena, Noel Malcolm wrote about the Macedonians in Greece in THE NEW BULLY OF THE BALKANS, The Spectator" of 15th of August, 1992. Nothing has changed.

I suggest you read it and weep!

To postpost:
Thessaloniki and the Aegean Macedonia played a crucial role into the birth of the modern MAcedonian nation and state. The Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was created in 1897 in Thessaloniki, and all major Macedonian intellectuals lived and worked in Thessaloniki at the end of the 19th and early 20th Century. The Aegean Macedonia is part of the history of the modern day Macedonia and that is why it is mentioned in the History books and the White tower of Thessaloniki was put into the Macedonian paper money. There is absolutely no claims of any "liberation" , that is a silly argument.
You have to take into consideration that according to the census of 1917, the Greek were MINORITY in Aegean Macedonia, people lived and worked there so you cannot simply delete this heritage and re-define it.

The terms "Macedonian language" and "Macedonians" have no relation with ancient history, the people who lived there simply started to call themselves like that - then the Bulgarian, Serbian or Greek soldiers were not around .

If Greece and the Greek people take a bit more open minded approach, then they will see that the Macedonian heritage can be a vital bridge of frendship between these two nations