Robin Lane Fox as regards ancient Macedonia and FYROM name issue

The lasting legacy of Alexander the Great in Afghanistan

Pr. Johannes Engels as regards the ancient Macedonian language

Source: " Companion to Ancient Macedonia", page 95

FYROM Statues: From ethno-cultural nationalism to National Chauvinism

With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the ruling ideology of Marxism-Leninism was replaced by different ideological forces. One of them was nationalism. In FYROM, gradually and with the "withdrawal" of the Socialists in the various state power positions, the far right through the VMRO began to take their places. So we have from the late 90's a gradual transformation of rampant ethno-cultural nationalism, into an explosion of national chauvinism (see Andrew Heynwood, political ideologies, 2007).

The extreme nationalist hysteria that exists on these days between the Slavmacedonians, because of the erection of two statues (one is giant) at the center of Skopje is a typical example. The far-right Prime Minister Gruevski, continuing the "antiquisation policy" of the Slavic population, made the next step and the Slavmacedonism enfold the "national chauvinism".

National chauvinism breeds from a feeling of intense, even hysterical nationalist enthusiasm. The individual as a separate, rational being is swept away on a tide of patriotic emotion, expressed in the desire for aggression, expansion and war. The right-wing French nationalist Charles Maurras (1868-1952) called such intense patriotism “integral nationalism”: individuals and independent groups lose their identity within an all-powerful 'nation', which has an existence and meaning beyond the life of any single individual. (Heynwood:165) Such militant nationalism is often accompanied by...

FYROM's 'warrior' monument infuriates Greece and shows clear the 'archaisation policy' of the Slavmacedonians

A statue of a 'warrior on horseback' resembling Alexander the Great, currently being erected in the centre of FYROM capital Skopje, has sparked fury in Greece, which warned that Skopje was gambling with its EU membership aspirations with such provocations.
FYROM, an impoverished EU candidate country, has reportedly spent several million euros on the statue of a Hellenic warrior resembling known images of Alexander the Great, a king of Macedon from the fourth century BC who built the largest empire in ancient history. Macedon was a small empire which under Alexander's reign extended its power to the central Greek city-states and even as far as the Himalayas.
Anticipating fury from Athens, the government in Skopje dropped....

Macedonia-Evidence

This book contains material taken from the Website http://macedonia-evidence.org/ which includes the letter to President of the United States Barack Obama, supportedby by well-known scholars of Graeco-Roman Antiquity from universities, research centers and academic institutions around the world. The impetus for this task arose from the dispute between Greece and the FYROM for the name "Macedonia" which produced and disseminated misinformation and inaccuracies concerning ancient Macedonia and its king Alexander the Great. Scholars well-known for their expertise in Graeco-Roman antiquity have formed an ad hoc group to present, examine, and discuss the historical evidence concerning ancient Macedonia and Alexander the Great. The Letter to Pesident Obama, translated in three other languages (German, FYROM-Slavic & Greek) from its original English, is accompanied by historical documentation, also in four languages, that supports and verifies historical facts included in the letter. Articles by reputable and credible scholars regarding ancient Macedonia and the language of its people - taken from the webpage - are also included in the book. The sole concern and motivation of the scholars who have co-signed the letter to President Obama is that history is not revised to fit political expediencies. The scholarly community has a duty to preserve historic truth. The aim of this book is exactly that: TO PRESERVE HISTORIC TRUTH.


About the authors:

Pella Katadesmos

Pseudoscience, "Rosetta Stone Hoax" and “University of Toronto”.

N.C. Flemming remark that the Pseudoscience corrupt the basis of factual knowledge available to the public, and particularly to students.  It also corrupt and debase the methodology of establishing empirical evidence for past events (in fields such as geology, archaeology, cosmology, or history), and hence the ability of students or the lay reader to distinguish fact from fantasy or invention. It follows that, in order to combat the slow but apparently remorseless growth of pseudoarchaeology, we must understand its appeal. It is impossible to provide the believer with an antidote if we do not comprehend the nature of the belief and the strength of its attraction.

Why I am saying all these?

Because, I read with a big surprise, that the University of Toronto will host (see the picture) two of the greatest promoters of the FYROM pseudoscience. Two Slavmacedonians Engineers Dr. Tentov and Dr. Boshevski promoted...

Demosthenes, Philip and the "Third Philippic"

The statement found in Demosthenes  3rd Philippic has been used time and time again by our beloved Northern neighbors, in an attempt to indicate that the Makedones were not considered Hellenes..
It is actually this quote that has been used:

Demosthenes, 3rd Philippic 31
But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave.

But did Demosthenes and the rest of the Hellinic world actually consider Philip and thus the Makedones as 'foreigners' which some strive to support based on the use of the term 'barbarian' ?
Demosthenes clarifies this for us in a different text.. titled, "On the False Embassy".. there we read:

BYZANTINISM AND HELLENISM by Ap. Vakalopoulos

REMARKS ON THE RACIAL ORIGIN AND THE INTELLECTUAL CONTINUITY OF THE GREEK NATION

The understanding of intellectual phenomena presupposes not only an adequate stock or knowledge and possess.ion of method but also a maturity of mind, since chiefly with deep personal experience are we able to stand before the remarkable historical and sociological phenomena and try to perceive the course they take in our highly comblex life. The main reason we require much time for the consideration and understanding of phenomena is that frequendy the great changes in history come about very slowly. They unfold gradually and imperceptibly without our being aware of them. The greatest difficulty of all is in following the pattern of these phenomena through the course of the centuries. Such problems are:  the famous origin of the modern Greeks and, second, other problems bound up with this first but nonetheless still thorny and much debated. These are problems concerning the relationships and common ground between the ideas of the Ancient and Byzantine world and those of the modern Greeks.
Moreover I would like to bring to mind the establishment of Roman colonies in various parts of the Greek territory,  in Epirus and Macedonia.....

SLAVIC HOMER IN SKOPJE & assorted Balkan fables: the case of the Slavic Trojans

by Miltiadis Elias Bolaris
FEB 15, 2011

HOCUS POCUS SLAVOMAKEDONIENSIS:

Bogus scholarly witchcraft in the age of Antikvizatsiyja
In notoriously unreliable sources, such as the "Slavic Nationalist Forum" (1) or the expatriate Skopjan misinformation website "MakNews" (2), it is naturally expected to stumble upon products of pseudo-scholarly emesis such as "A new theory about the Trojan era", by Tomáš Spevák, which in all seriousness proclaims nothing less than: "Ancient Trojans were SLAVS"!

The first question now is: Why should anybody waste their time answering such preposterous claims. The answer is clear: This text has been used in every internet posting imaginable to promote its obviously anachronistic case to unsuspecting readers that take its word at its face value. Why should it not? While the text is not backed up by any documentation to speak off, it does include some rather impressive quotes by none other than Homer, the poet of Iliad and Odyssey himself as well as by Tiberius Claudius, the Roman Emperor and by Professor Eugene Borza.

The "new theory about the Trojan era" starts with the following question:

Re: The Importance of Historical Truth and The Macedonian Issue

By Professor John Melville-Jones

Following the publication of the edited version of the after-dinner talk that I gave in October, a formal complaint was made to my employer (to which a polite reply was made, stressing the importance of academic freedom), and I received an e-mailed message from the United Macedonian Diaspora (which I thought, because of its name, must be a Greek organisation until I read what it had to say), together with a number of other e-mails. Many of these were merely abusive, but this didn’t surprise me, because I know from experience that when people hold strong beliefs that are based on faith not fact, and they are shown that these beliefs cannot be true, this is distressing to them, and they will very often become agitated, as they cling to their beliefs even more vigorously. None of the messages that I received addressed the issue that I raised in my talk in Melbourne, the proposed erection of the statue of Alexander the Great in Skopje. Two of them were, however, more thoughtful, and I have had some mild and civilised exchanges with their authors, as we define our positions.
Some of the points that were made were what I would call 'diversionary', such as the statement that the present population of the Greek province of Macedonia has nothing in common with its population in ancient times, being 'colonisers', referring to the fact that many of them were brought there from Turkey in the 1920s during the exchange of populations which led to Muslims being removed from...

Alexander the Great at the Louvre for a unique exhibition

Opening days: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Duration: 1 hr. 30 mins.

Alexander the Great goes .. to France next October! And not just any place in France but at ''Le Louvre'', the country's most famous museum and one of the best museums on the planet. A major exhibition entitled "In the kingdom of Alexander the Great - Ancient Macedonia'' will be hosted at the famous museum from October 2011 until January 2012. Maybe October isn't too close, preparation, however, is almost completed, so that the artifacts will be sent to France from Greece.
The curator of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities of the Louvre Mrs Sophie Deschamp has travelled to all Macedonian cities in Northern Greece in order to....