Το παρακάτω κείμενο προέρχεται από ένα βιβλίο. Περιγράφει την χρεοκοπία ενός διοικητικού οργανισμού. Έκανα μία παραλλαγή. Άλλαξα το όνομα του χρεοκοπημένου οργανισμού όπως και κάποιων άλλων που συμμετείχαν σε αυτήν την διαδικασία της επιβολής του νεοφιλελευθερισμού. Διαβάστε το, αξίζει το κόπο: Η δημοσιονομική κρίση της Ελλάδας ήταν μια ειρωνική περίπτωση. Η καπιταλιστική αναδιάρθρωση και η
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Items by Akritas
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So, what is the real truth about the Greek catastrophe?
» Modern Macedonian History
In late 2009, Europe and the world discovered that Greece was a “fraud” and a “deceiver” that had never stopped forging its economic performance in order to enjoy the benefits of membership of a privileged club, at the expense of its partners and the euro.
But how accurate is this really? Due to the advancing international economic crisis at the time, the majority of European governments were inaccurate in their deficit estimations. For example, in their Stability Programmes, at the beginning of 2009, Britain had predicted a deficit of 8.2% that finally reached 11.4%, the Netherlands predicted a surplus of 1.2% that turned out to be a deficit of 5.4% and Portugal predicted a deficit of 3.9% that rose to 9.3%.
Why was Greece alone in the dock?
Also, in the years 2008-2009, the deficit in...
in Spain extended to 11.1% and in the United States to 12.9%. In April 2010, Ireland predicted a deficit of 11.7% for 2009 and 11.6% for 2010, while the latter finally reached 32%. However, it was only Greece who was accused of falsifying its data and being unreliable. And that by its own government! One wonders what caused this sudden and precipitous self-criticism.
At a time of global economic crisis, the newly elected government in Greece had structured its entire electoral campaign around the motto 'There is money', in order to topple the governing party’s campaign that highlighted the need for painful measures. In line with its election commitments, the budget drafted by the new government for the year 2010 included a whole set of allocations, such as wage and pension increases, public expenditure increases, a solidarity allowance and pledges for not imposing additional taxes.
Furthermore, the previous government had estimated that the 2009 deficit figure could finally reach 6-8%, because of the escalation of the crisis, and therefore, in an already turbulent internal political environment, it called for elections, in order that the next government should take such measures.
The new government’s estimation at the end of the year that the deficit had finally reached 12.7% reveals a considerable difference between estimations. However, this difference takes into account a number of expenditures made by the new government in the last few months of the year totalling around €9 billion, among which was €1.5bn worth of tax refunds, €500 million for the solidarity allowance, €1.2bn for contestable hospital debts, €2bn from withdrawing regulations of the previous government and €1.7bn in revenue shortfalls.
Not 'irregularities' but 'reclassification'
Moreover, as the head of the Eurogroup Jean-Claude Juncker observed, any revision of the deficit by Eurostat, the European union’s statistics office, was not the result of irregularities, but of the reclassification of certain public expenditures, namely the inclusion of the deficits of the wider public sector and public utility companies.
The former secretary-general of the national statistical service of Greece, Manolis Kontopirakis, accused the finance ministry of seeking to exert undue political influence over the statistics office, in order to revise the final 2008 deficit figure as well as the projected deficit figure for 2009, as it seemed that they wanted to discredit the previous government. Similar accusations were made later by other members of the service. The issue is of much importance considering that an Athenian public prosecutor is conducting an official inquiry into these allegations.
At the end of 2009, Greek and EU officials had repeatedly warned the Greek government that the deficit could be withheld to a single digit number, if measures were taken in this direction. The head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, has held the then-government responsible for postponing the necessary measures despite the bank’s warnings, while the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was convinced that, had the measures been taken earlier, the solution to the problem would have been less expensive.
Talking the country down
At the same time, the government almost transferred to the international markets it needed to borrow from, the idea that Greece was a bankrupt country with a “huge systemic corruption, clientelism, parasitic economy, enormous iniquity and arbitrariness”, even by comparing it to a sinking Titanic, thus skyrocketing spreads! Hence, she managed to transform a deficit issue common to most EU members into a borrowing issue, leading Greece to the IMF.
The truth is that the previous government constantly pointed to the need to take measures on time. It repeatedly sought a wider consensus with the opposition, given its thin parliamentary majority of 151 MPs out of 300. In March 2009, the-then prime minister Kostas Karamanlis warned that the international crisis, and the country’s excessive debt, posed serious threats and made a futile effort to reach consensus on the basis of cutting expenditure and of restraint by parties and syndicates.
Finally, he went to the polls, after the opposition made clear that it would vote against the re-election of the president in March 2010, in order to provoke elections and despite pledging to vote for him after coming to power, this being a decision that was going to lead the country to an extended pre-election period that would torpedo any possibility for taking measures.
It is also true that despite upcoming elections, both national in October, and European in June, the previous government announced a comprehensive set of measures in three different occasions, in February, March and June 2009, meeting criticism by the opposition that, at a time of crisis, there should be increases in expenditure instead of cuts. Part of these measures was a €28bn support package for the banking sector, the first approved in Europe, for which Greece was congratulated by its EU partners, but fiercely attacked by the opposition.
Meanwhile, in March 2009, despite the global crisis reaching its peak and the images of a rioting Greece beamed around the world in December, Greece went to the markets convincingly enough not only to cover its borrowing needs at a reasonable rate, but also securing a reserve as a safety net for the remaining of the year.
No one can deny the immense systemic problems faced by Greece over the past decades that ought to have been resolved before they became uncontrollable.
The public sector in Greece has long been excessive and counterproductive with bureaucracy, low efficiency, over-regulation and para-economy becoming endemic. The excessive public sector, and also increased armament procurements, account for a big part of the huge public debt. Greece, together with the USA and Turkey, is at the top of the list of NATO members’ spending on armaments as a percentage of their GDP, that costs almost €6bn or more annually.
However, it is worth noting that, in the years 2004-2009, €50bn was spent only to service the interests of past debts. It is also true that Eurostat has concluded that, before 2004, the Greek government falsified statistics in eleven different sectors, accounting for deficit deviations of more than 3%. According to its revision for the year 2008, after the 2009 elections in Greece and 'revelations' from the new government, of the 2% deviation professed by the latter, Eurostat acknowledged one of only 0.6%, while it expressed serious reservations for the rest. For the year 2009, Eurostat declined to make any revision, since there were only the estimations of the previous government, and one could not speak of falsification on that basis.
Self-accusations, but why?
And here comes an obvious question. Why was Greece accused of forgery, corruption and all the rest by its own government? Why did it evidently inflate its own deficit at the end of 2009? Clearly, despite being briefed by both Greek and foreign officials on the situation before elections, it had created expectations and it had given promises, on which it could not deliver. The former secretary-general of the national statistical service of Greece has noted that the huge discrepancy between the initial forecast for the 2009 deficit and the final figure was the product of two factors: the excessive optimism of the previous government and the new government’s desire to put the blame on its predecessor and make any economic rebound seem more impressive.
Unfortunately, the latter failed to anticipate the impact the new figure, and her allegations, would have on world financial markets, their reaction, and the disaster it would provoke for Greece and the EU.
SOURCE [www.neurope.eu]
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ΣΥΓΧΡΟΝΟΙ ΣΚΛΑΒΟΙ: Η κρίση της Ελλάδας είναι διαφορετική, από αυτήν των υπολοίπων χωρών της Ευρωζώνης - η επίλυση της είναι πάρα πολύ απλή,
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας“Οι ασιατικές «τίγρεις», το 1997, αναγκάσθηκαν να ζητήσουν τη «βοήθεια» των πυροσβεστών του ΔΝΤ, οι οποίοι βέβαια εργαζόταν προς όφελος της χώρας, η οποία προκάλεσε τις πυρκαγιές. Φυσικά το «Ταμείο» αντέδρασε θετικά στην αρχή, παρέχοντας τα δάνεια που του ζητήθηκαν – αφού ο πραγματικός σκοπός του ήταν να προστατεύσει από τη χρεοκοπία τις τράπεζες, τα συνταξιοδοτικά ταμεία, τα επενδυτικά
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Depression and Democracy
» Modern Macedonian History
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.
On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it’s important not to fall into the “not as bad as” trap. High unemployment isn’t O.K. just because it hasn’t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.
Let’s talk, in particular, about what’s happening in Europe — not because all is well with America, but because the gravity of European political developments isn’t widely understood.
First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony.
Specifically, demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening...
unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained. And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.
Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.
Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the “new E.U.” countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps.
And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.
One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.
Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.
The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs program — and has been following the Hungarian situation closely — tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party.
Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it’s a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues.
It’s not clear what can be done about Hungary’s authoritarian slide. The U.S. State Department, to its credit, has been very much on the case, but this is essentially a European matter. The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start — in part because the new Constitution was rammed through while Hungary held the Union’s rotating presidency. It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe’s leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for.
And they also need to rethink their failing economic policies. If they don’t, there will be more backsliding on democracy — and the breakup of the euro may be the least of their worries.
SOURCE [www.nytimes.com]
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Αυτό θα το διαβάσετε;
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςτου Γιάννη Βαρουφάκη Το Μνημόνιο, που κάποιοι δεν διάβασαν πριν υπερψηφίσουν, βασιζόταν στην λογική ότι χωρίς τα δάνεια των €110 δις που προέβλεπε: 1. το ελληνικό κράτος θα εξαναγκαζόταν σε στάση πληρωμών η οποία θα μας έθετε για τουλάχιστον 10 χρόνια εκτός αγορών 2. δεν θα υπήρχαν αρκετοί πόροι για να πληρωθούν μισθοί και συντάξεις 3. δεν θα δινόταν χρόνος στην ελληνική οικονομία να
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Το Δόγμα του Σοκ.
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςtvxs.gr | Το δόγμα του σοκ από tvxorissinora «Και πρέπει επίσης να ξανασκεφτούν τις αποτυχημένες τους οικονομικές πολιτικές. Αν δεν το πράξουν, θα υπάρξει ακόμη μεγαλύτερη οπισθοδρόμηση για την δημοκρατία - και η διάλυση του ευρώ μπορεί να αποδειχτεί η μικρότερη από τις ανησυχίες τους.» Paul Krugman. «Υπάρχουν πολλοί τρόποι να ειπωθεί η ιστορία του νεοφιλελευθερισμού, μια από αυτές είναι
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Η ΒΕΡΟΛΙΝΕΖΑ ΝΟΙΚΟΚΥΡΑ:
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΕίναι καιρός να σταματήσει να αποτελεί η Ελλάδα το πειραματόζωο των παιδιών του Σικάγου και της πρωσικής Γερμανίας - η οποία τη θεωρούσε ανέκαθεν σαν το ιδανικό υποψήφιο θύμα για τον παραδειγματισμό των υπολοίπων «εταίρων» της. Το απίστευτο «γερμανικό τελεσίγραφο» είναι πλέον γεγονός – προεξοφλεί δε ότι, η αποπληρωμή των δανειακών υποχρεώσεων της Ελλάδας, η οποία σχεδιάζεται να κυβερνάται από
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Eπιστολή Παμμακεδονικών Ενώσεων προς τον Ομπάμα με θέμα τη στάση του Αναπληρωτή Υφυπουργού του State Department
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας25 Ιανουαρίου 2012 Προς: κ Μπαράκ Ομπάμα Πρόεδρο των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών Αμερικής 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington DC, 20502 Αγαπητέ Κύριε Πρόεδρε, Τα μέλη της Παμμακεδονικής Ένωσης ΗΠΑ (μια από τις μεγαλύτερες ελληνικές οργανώσεις στις ΗΠΑ), και μέλη των Παμμακεδονικών Ενώσεων ανά την υφήλιο, προερχόμενα από τη Μακεδονία (τη βόρεια περιοχή της Ελλάδας) σας αποστέλλουμε αυτή την επιστολή.
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Ποιος φοβάται τις εκλογές;
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤου ακαδημαϊκού Βασίλειου Μαρκεζίνη*Επίκαιρα, 26-1-2012 Ο τίτλος αυτού του άρθρου αντικατοπτρίζει ένα από τα παράδοξα που αντιμετωπίζει η σύγχρονη Ελλάδα. Πράγματι, καθώς η χώρα μας ετοιμάζεται να λάβει μια σειρά από μέτρα απίστευτης σκληρότητας, τα οποία επιπλέον θα την εγκλωβίσουν επί πολλά χρόνια, η άρχουσα ελίτ του πολιτικού μας κόσμου, μαζί με τα άλλα οικονομικά κατεστημένα που
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H παραγνωρισμένη οθωμανικη Selanik
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςτου Porto Aurea Πώς έμεινε στην ιστορία η οθωμανική πόλη της Selânik; Με τις πολυεθνικές λιχουδιές της και το «Μπέη Χαμάμ» ή με το ότι κάποιες χριστιανές ακόμη και στα 1930 άναβαν κεριά στον τάφο του "πασίγνωστου" δερβίση Μουσά Μπαμπά («σπάνιο φαινόμενο», γράφει ο Μαζάουερ[1], ο οποίος το επισημαίνει); Υπάρχει τίποτε αντίστοιχο στο σαλονικιώτικο Ισλάμ και τον σαλονικιώτικο Ιουδαϊσμό με το έργο
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Αλληλογραφία ΕΛΙΑΜΕΠ και Μακεδονικών οργανώσεων
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΔιαβάστε την ενδιαφέρουσα ηλεκτρονική αλληλογραφία μεταξύ των Μακεδονικών οργανώσεων και του υκ. Θάνο Ντόκου Γενικού Διευθυντή του ELIAMEP σχετικά με την εκδήλωση της 10ης Ιανουαρίου για τις σχέσεις Ελλάδος και ΠΓΔΜ η οποία διοργανώθηκε από το ELIAMEP. ******************************************************************************************** Friday, January 13, 2012 Θάνος Ντόκος είπε:
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Η αναγέννηση του Ευρωπαίου «μαζάνθρωπου»
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΌλες αυτές τις μέρες όπως καταλάβατε υπολειτουργούσα. Κάτι οι γιορτές, κάτι η οικογένεια, μου «αφαίρεσαν» πολύ χρόνο από το αγαπημένο μου χόμπι: το διάβασμα και η μελέτη βιβλίων. Έτσι λοιπόν αυτές τις μέρες, ξεσκόνισα από την βιβλιοθήκη μου, ένα βιβλίο του 1989 με θέμα «το ολοκληρωτικό σύστημα». Το έγραψε μία σπουδαία Αμερικανογερμανίδα φιλόσοφος η Hannah Arendt. Ας δούμε κάποια κομμάτια του που
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Greece’s PSI is Dead on Arrival: An error in search of a rationale but also a failure that may prove a harbinger for the Modest Proposal
» Modern Macedonian History
by Pr. Yannis Varoufakis
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu
A brief history of Greece’s PSI
In the beginning there was Wholesale Denial. Then the Denial began to subside under the weight of circumstances. It did so slowly, agonizingly so, with the result that, in the process, Greece lost any capacity it might have had to rebound. It also caused the Crisis to spread like a bushfire throughout the eurozone, turning liquidity problems into unyielding insolvencies first in Ireland, then in Portugal. Still, to this day, Denial is in the air. But it cannot remain intact, without the whole eurosystem crashing and burning. The Greek PSI may be the harbinger of denial’s end. If not, it is hard to see what will stop the juggernaut of the Crisis from destroying the few chances the euro has of survival.
Taking things from the top, the Wholesale Denial began life two years ago when imploding Greece was issued a triple ‘Nein’:...
No bailout, no interest rate relief, no haircut.[1] A few months later, with a second credit crunch looming, one of these Neins was revoked. The calendar read May 2010 when a massive bailout was agreed. But, still, no interest rate relief to mention and, of course, no haircuts. A few short months later, when it became abundantly clear that the disease had spread to the Emerald Isle, and it was on its way to the Iberian peninsula, Germany decided that another of the three Neins ought to be revoked: There would be haircuts, but not until the creation of the permanent ESM in 2013. It took another eight months of so (early summer of 2011) before the Greek haircut was given a snazzy new acronym, PSI they called it[2] (making it sound as if it was the bright idea of the… private sector).
The idea was not without appeal: Why should the taxpayers of the surplus countries fork out untold zillions to shore up silly bankers, who knew quite well why they were receiving interest rate premia by lending to basketcases like Greece, without having the bankers themselves take a haircut too? How else would banks be given an incentive to think twice before lending to profligate states? Such talk sounded good in the Federal Parliament, in Berlin, but also in Athens, in Paris, wherever the politicians used these ‘lines’ to feign ‘toughness’ in front of an audience aching for the bankers’ blood.
Alas, in the era of, what I call, Bankruptocracy,[3] even a haircut imposed upon bankers can be a blessing in disguise for the most sinister operators of the runaway banking sector. After the Greek PSI was announced in July 2011, shadow banking (hedge funds, special vehicles et al) lived its finest hour. They bought en masse Greek government bonds, at basement prices, with a view to swapping them for fresh bonds of much greater value. Why? Because PSI Mk1 specified no face value loss but a drop of expected net present value (estimated at around 20%) due to a swap with new bonds of much longer maturity. So, hedge funds bought old Greek government bonds (GGBs) for 30% to 35% of their face value in order to exchange them with bonds whose value was estimated at 80% of the old ones’ net present value. A nice little earner. This was one of the reasons why PSI Mk 1 bombed out, leading to PSI Mk2 in October 2011. (The other was, of course, the fact that this pitiful diminution in Greece’s debt burden was neither here nor there given the viciousness of the Greek recession.)
Back to the drawing board, our European leaders came up with a deeper haircut in October 2011. They called it PSI Mk2 and even had the foolish Greek PM fall on his sword, to be replaced by a hitherto loyal ECB functionary, so as to ensure that PSI Mk 2 would become Greece’s new light on the hill; a beacon of the last glimmer of hope for a desperate nation. PSI Mk 2 envisaged an impressive sounding 50% reduction in the GGBs’ face value which, in present value terms, would result in a haircut no less than 60% (since the interest rates charged on the new bonds, that would be swapped with the old ones, could not exceed the interest rates charged by the ECB and the EU for the original bailout funds). In other words, holders of GGBs would be hair-cut in two ways: a 50% reduction in face value and an interest rate less than 5% which would cut further into the present value of the old GGBs.
Alas, there is never a dearth of silver linings for the shadowy universe of our modern financial sector. Even when facing such a substantial haircut, many financiers will find something to smile about. In the case of PSI Mk 2, their smiles can be traced to two reasons: First, many of them bought GGBs for something around 30%. If PSI Mk2 implies an overall (present value) haircut of less than 70%, they are home and dry. Secondly, hedge fund managers have had more playful thoughts: Given the EU’s zeal to keep the semblance of a voluntary haircut (a ‘private sector initiative’) alive, what is there to stop them from pursuing a legal battle against any compulsory expropriation of even a cent of the GGBs they hold? Already a major hedge fund has opted out of the negotiations with the Greek government over the terms of PSI Mk2, clearly preparing for a legal challenge or, more precisely, for extracting a nice little out of court settlement once the all-singing-all-dancing PSI Mk2 ‘concordat’ is announced by the Greek government and the EU.
In short, and so as not to overlabour the point, PSI Mk2 is dead in the water. The shenanigans of the shadow banking sector (which, lest we forget, includes not only the hedge funds but also, remarkably, the ‘proper’ banks shady Special Vehicles) plus the predictable deterioration of the Greek economy have put paid to it. The negotiations may go on for a little while longer, the announcement of a brilliant agreement may be made but, in truth, the idea that the Greek haircut will put Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio back on a course towards 120% has sunk without trace. And if you need hard evidence for this, the European Summit of 9th December provided it even before 2011 was seen off: Officially, Europe’s great and good announced the end of PSI as a policy of the new ESM; Europe’s future central, permanent bailout fund. It had all been a mistake, they seemed to confess.
And now what?
This year’s first significant statement came from Athanasios Orphanides, the Central Bank of Cyprus’ Head and his country’s representative on the ECB’s Council. In a letter to the Financial Times, published on 5th January 2012,, Mr Orphanides wrote: “Government debt markets are about trust”, blaming the Crisis’ inexorable progress within the eurozone on “…[a] collective failure of euro-zone decision-makers.” So far so excellent. As for the PSI, Orphanides repeated that which many have said before him: It signalled to investors, especially non-Europeans, that “euro-zone sovereign debt should no longer be considered a safe asset with the implicit promise that it would be repaid in full.” Like I have been writing ad nauseum in this blog since PSI Mk1 was announced, back in July 2011, Orphanides agrees that the Greek PSI, rather than being the bankers’ scourge, has proven a bonanza for shadow bankers and mainstream banks’ Special Vehicles. [He mentions the example of funds that purchased GGBs 35 cents or 40 cents on the euro who now insist on an agreement that allows them to profit from the swap.]
Now, some will say, with considerable justification, that the Head of Cyprus’ Central Bank is saying all this because Cypriot banks are sinking in a mire of their own making, having bought oodles of GGBs. Still, the fact that Mr Orphanides has an ulterior motive in calling for an end of Greece’s PSI is not the reason why his argument is lacking. The reason is that he is making precisely the same mistake as that Mrs Merkel, Mr Sarkozy and, indeed, the Greek government have been making for almost two years now: They keep thinking of the Greek public debt crisis in isolation to (a) the deep malaise of Northern Europe’s banks and (b) the public debt difficulties of most eurozone states. The fact is that the Greek crisis cannot and will not be dealt with unless the ‘solution’ is part of a systemic redesign that deals with (a) and (b) as well as containing a program for stemming the tide of recession that is currently engulfing our continent.
As evidence of Mr Orphanides’ narrow focus, which detracts from his case against Greece’s PSI, I offer the alternative that he is proposing: Greece should be issued, in lieu of the failed PSI, thirty year loans at 3% interest rates. Similar suggestions come from different quarters (see here an article by George Zestos) canvassing the idea that, instead of the PSI, the ECB ought to guarantee GGBs (with the Greek government paying the ECB a small premium in return for these guarantees). The problem with such proposals is that they fail to incorporate their solutions to the Greek Problem within a broader plan for Europe. Mr Orhpanides cannot possibly believe (and I do not think he does believe) that 3% thirty year loans can be extended to Greece but not to Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Belgium even. And he cannot believe that the banks will be left with ECB loans but not be forced to recapitalise ‘big time’. But where will the trillions involved come from? He does not answer the question, leaving it to us to imply that he is in favour of eurobonds. But then the question becomes: What sort of eurobonds?
The continuing appeal of the Modest Proposal
So, we have returned to the question that this blog has been built upon over the past year and a half. We certainly need eurobonds. But we neither need nor want eurobonds jointly and severally issued and backed by member-states (for reasons that Mrs Merkel can explain better than anyone; namely that such bonds will sell at interest rates that are too high for Germany and not low enough for the periphery). And since we cannot have a Federal Treasury do this on Europe’s behalf (as opposed to member-states), it is imperative that it is the ECB that issues and backs such bonds so as to convert the Maastricht compliant part of the eurozone’s aggregate public debt into Union/Eurozone debt; a common pool of debt that is, however, to be serviced pro rata by member-states at interest rates reflecting not their individual credit ratings but those of the ECB that organises this debt conversion on the Union’s behalf. (For more see our Modest Proposal.)
Interestingly, George Zestos’ recent proposal (mentioned above) points in the Modest Proposal’s direction. Zestos’ idea that the ECB should guarantee new issues of GGBs is, in fact, more radical than our proposal for ECB bonds issued on behalf of each member-state and to be serviced in the long run by the member-state. While Zestos is asking of the ECB effectively to take on its books the new issues of Greek, Italian and Spanish bonds, the Modest Proposal, much more… modestly, suggests that the ECB issues debt on behalf of these member-states but then charges them for their servicing on the basis of some super-seniority baring loan agreement. In fact, the two ideas are close in spirit except that the Modest Proposal (i) gives more guarantees to the ECB that it will not have to print to service member-states’ debts and (ii) gives international investors more ground for confidence (since they would be much happier buying bonds issued by the ECB than bonds issued by Greece or Italy under a complicated insurance scheme backed by the ECB).
To recap, the Greek PSI was always an error in search of a rationale. It gave shadow banking a great new opportunity to profiteer at the expense of Greece and of Europe and escalated the latter’s Crisis rather than help tame it. The question is: What is the alternative? After two years of studying carefully all alternatives, I still believe that our Modest Proposal is the natural candidate. More recently, I had the dubious honour of talking to a hyper-smart Goldman Sachs apparatchik. He more or less agreed with the Modest Proposal’s basic thrust, albeit in a manner not at odds with the usual cynicism associated with his firm. This is how he put it: “Well, in the end your proposal will be adopted by default. Once the ECB has accumulated so many rubbish bonds, they will have to start borrowing to service them. Once they make it official, they will see the merits in charging the member-states for the cost of servicing what will effectively be ECB-bonds.” As they say, the Devil has the best of tunes.
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[1] A fourth Nein was not even verbalised: A Nein to an exit from the eurozone.
[2] Private Sector Initiative/Participation
[3] The New Regime that emerged from the ashes of 2008 in which the greatest power to extract rents from the rest of the social economy was granted to the banks with the largest black holes in their assets’ books. See my Global Minotaur for more.
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The Greek Character of Macedonia through the Ages
» Modern Macedonian History
by Christos Karatzios MD
«ΕΣΤΙΝ ΟΥΝ ΕΛΛΑΣ ΚΑΙ Η ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑ»
(Estin oun Ellas ke i Makedonia) “Macedonia, is of course a part of Greece”
Strabo, Geography, book 7, Fragment 9 (circa 7 BC – 23 AD)
With this quote, Strabo, the famous ancient Greek historian and geographer described the relation of Macedonia to the rest of Greece when he was describing the known ancient world. The rest of his geographical encyclopedia describes the Macedonians and their lands and is a testament to the Hellenism of Macedonia through the perspective of the ancients [1].
There is overwhelming evidence that the ancient Macedonians, their civilization, their culture, and their history were Greek ever since they settled the lands north of Mt. Olympus about 2,000 BC, and most modern classical scholars and archaeologists agree on these points [2]. As it stands, even historians like Eugene Borza who have not totally supported the fact that the ancient Macedonians were Greek, do state that by the time of Philip II and Alexander the Great, they had been absorbed and assimilated by the Greeks [3]. However, since Borza, more....
evidence has emerged about the ancient Macedonian civilization and language being undoubtedly Greek. This is not considered theory any more and even those historians who had disagreed did so based on the information they had about this civilization at the time they were writing their dissertations or theses. The late Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, long considered to be the world’s expert on Ancient Macedonia was the first to suggest that a town in Macedonia, Greece known as Vergina was likely the place of the first Macedonian capital, Aegae [4]. Sure enough, in 1977, one of the most important discoveries in Greece was made near Vergina where archaeologist Manolis Andronikos found the probable tombs of Philip II and various other members of the most famous Macedonian royal house. All tombstones or steles discovered in the vicinity had Greek inscriptions, and the pan-Hellenic symbol known as the “Sun of Vergina” adorned many ornaments and armour belonging to the royal family. The Macedonian royal house traced its origins to Argos in the Peloponnese, and Alexander the Great believed he was a descendant of the demi-God Hercules. The Macedonians participated in Pan-Hellenic summits, and participated in the Olympic Games – sporting events reserved solely for Greeks.
There abound many theories and pseudohistorical claims originating in Greece’s northern neighbour, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), that it was only the upper classes that spoke and acted Greek whereas the common people had a non-Greek Macedonian nature. Furthermore, revisionist historians from the FYROM also claim that the only reason why the Macedonians spoke Greek was because Greek was the lingua franca of the ancient Eurasian world somewhat like today’s worldwide English. These claims have no basis in reality and can be in fact, nullified. In 1986 a curse written on a tablet by a common Macedonian woman and dating back to the 4th century BC was discovered near the town of Pella (and the birthplace of Alexander the Great) in Macedonia, Greece. Known as the Katadesmos of Pella, it proves that the language the woman known as Dagina (or Dapina) used in order to curse the future wife of a man she loved was indeed a dialect of Northwestern Doric Greek [5-7]. Moreover, Greek was not the lingua franca of the ancient world before Alexander the Great spread the koine (or common) dialect of Greek throughout his Empire from Europe to India and to the steppes of Asia. Why would a non-Greek conqueror spread a language and a culture/customs that were alien to him? Many revisionists have used the infamous quote by the Athenian statesman Demosthenes; about Philip essentially coming from a land of barbarians, as proof that the Ancient Greeks regarded the Macedonians as non-Greek. This has been proven to be a falsehood since the term “barbarian” (barbaros) was also a slur used by Greeks towards other Greeks who they considered to be political adversaries [2]. In addition, the name Macedonia derives from the ancient Greek word μακεδνός (makednos; similar to macro- or large) meaning “tall one” or “highlander” and likely described the people living in the area [8]. Historian Robin Lane Fox from Oxford University recently stated during the opening of the “Heracles to Alexander the Great” exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom:
There is a message that is historical but still politically has to be said: Macedon is a Greek-speaking kingdom in northern Greece, populated by people using Greek names, Greek months of the year, worshipping Greek gods. Those who live in Skopje and say that that is Macedon and Alexander’s homeland are as ignorant and outrageous as if someone would to say that Oxford University was in Belarus, and Oxford was Minsk. [9]
The capital city of Skopje was never part of any historical Macedonia. Ancient Macedon spanned the area roughly corresponding to the modern administrative unit of Macedonia in Greece. It did contain a small part of the modern country of the FYROM known as Pelagonia. North of this however, the area was known as Paeonia in antiquity, and further north was the land of Dardania with Skopje (Scupi) as its capital [2, 10]. When the Romans defeated the Greek king Andriscus, Macedonia passed on to the Roman Empire in 146 AD and became a province known as Macedonia Prima [11] while southern Greece was known as Achaea. The Dardanian town of Scupi was not part of this either. When the Roman Empire in the east became the Byzantine Empire, northern Greece was separated into various themes or administrative units. The theme of Macedonia was then further East in what is known as Thrace today [12]. Later, during the Ottoman Empire, Macedonia ceased to exist as an official designated name. Instead, the Empire was divided into administrative units called vilayets. While most of what was ancient Macedon was part of the vilayets of Manastir and Selanik, Skopje (called Uskub at the time) was further north in the vilayet of Kosovo [13]. It should be added here that later during the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the Slavs of the city of Uskub self identified (and were also identified by others) as Bulgarians who spoke a dialect of Bulgarian [14]. What is also interesting is that Skoplje (Skopje) was the first capital of medieval Serbia and of the Kingdom of Serbia in the early 20th Century.
The idea that there is a geographical region named Macedonia that includes parts of Greece, Bulgaria, and all of the FYROM is a political one and originated with the expansionist dreams of Bulgaria in the late 1800’s. It was however, solely used as a geographic term to describe where the Bulgarians of the Balkans lived and was not an ethnic designation There was never any country named Macedonia or a Macedonian nationality. In fact, when the pro-Bulgarian Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, William E. Gladstone coined the phrase “Macedonia for the Macedonians” in 1897 he was thoroughly criticized by William Miller, a Balkan traveler and historian, as being out of touch with the reality of the region if he implied that there was a true Macedonian ethnicity [15]. Many historians of the time pointed to the Ottoman statistics for the Balkan vilayets that failed to mention any Macedonian ethnicity [16].
The Greek element and struggle in historic Macedonia remained intact throughout the Ottoman occupation and persisted during the Slav and Bulgarian invasions of the Middle Ages. While southern Greece attained its freedom from the Ottomans in 1821, northern Greece was freed in 1912. There were, however, many Greek revolutions in Macedonia that were suppressed by massive numbers of Ottoman Turks (Greek leaders were Emmanuel Pappas in 1821 in Eastern Macedonia, Anastasios Karatasos in 1821-3 in Western Macedonia, and Evangelos Korovangos in 1878 around Mount Olympus). The thirst for freedom did not end there and when Imperial Russia (wanting a Slav satellite in the Balkans with access to the Aegean Sea) started supporting the creation of a Greater Bulgaria in 1870, innumerable Greek peasants in the Macedonian hinterland resisted the encroaching Bulgarian militias known as the komitadjis – committeemen of the Bulgarian Committee or VMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) – the first recognized terrorist group in modern history [17, 18]. The current ruling nationalist political party in the FYROM is called VMRO-DNMPE and is the continuation of the original Bulgarian committee. As a result, there was never any “Greater” or “United” Macedonia that was taken over by Greece, and Bulgaria after 1912 as is officially believed in the FYROM.
Greece was the first modern country in the region to use the term “Macedonia” as an official political unit in 1914 after northern Greece was freed from the Ottomans a year earlier, and continues to do so [19]. There are about 2.5 million Greeks living there who have been calling themselves Macedonians for thousands of years and who believe they have a cultural continuity with the ancient Macedonians. International Law does state that there exists legal entitlement to the use of a name/term based on historic title (essentially who used the term first and for the longest period of time) [19].
There is a rumour among revisionists in the FYROM that there was never any area in Greece known as “Macedonia” prior to 1988. It is stated that Greece, aware of the fact that the People’s Republic of Macedonia was to secede from Yugoslavia, renamed Northern Greece to Macedonia. This unfortunate lie was started by no other than the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the FYROM, Antonio Milososki, around 2003 [20]. The reality of the matter is that the Ministry of Northern Greece was named “The Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace” in 1988 after a government shuffle but the province’s name never changed.
The People’s Republic of Macedonia was created in 1944 out of the area that used to be Old/South Serbia and Vardarksa Banovina. What was originally The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes eventually became Yugoslavia and it was only then that the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito decided to add another Slav ethnicity to his communist federation [19]. The ultimate plan was to support a communist uprising in northern Greece and to eventually annex Greek Macedonia into a larger “United Macedonia”. The alarm was raised by the US State Department in 1944 and the US Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, sent a circular airgram warning American diplomatic missions worldwide that Yugoslav talk of a Macedonian nation was a “cloak for aggression against Greece” [21].
Tito’s right hand man, Edvard Kardelj [13], together with the help of the Minister of Public Education of the Yugoslav People's Republic of Macedonia, Mitra Mitrovic-Djilas, and Greek communist collaborators devised a plot to transfer as many Greek children as possible from the border areas of Greece through the Iron Curtain for indoctrination and to use as fighters. Mimicking the old Ottoman act of devshirme (essentially kidnapping), about 28,000 children were removed from their families and displaced throughout Communist countries from 1947 until 1949. After many pleas from the US, the UN and from the International Red Cross, less than 2,000 of these children were returned to their homes [13, 22-26]. The majority of the non-repatriated children (now adults) firmly believe that they are “(non Greek) Macedonians” who were expelled from Greece in an act of genocide. They form the backbone of the nationalist movement in the FYROM and its diaspora [27-29]. They dream of a fictitious and euphoric “United Macedonia” that will occur by force in the not too distant future and the official government in Skopje is complacent with such ultranationalist rhetoric [30, 31].
Expressions of hatred against Greeks both at official and unofficial levels of the FYROM government have spread throughout the internet and have even made their way into the FYROM mainstream media [32]. A tribal obsession with blood purity and genetic continuity by the modern Slavs of the FYROM with the ancient Macedonians can be seen through the use of pseudoscientific and racial theories in the national rhetoric [33-35]. Suddenly, Greeks can’t be descendants of the ancient Macedonians because they are descendants of Ethiopian tribes while the FYROM Slavs are descendant from an older and inherently whiter European substratum (ancient Macedonians). While these theories have been disproved by the scientific community [36], they continue to permeate the FYROM society.
This is the reality that the world faces when dealing with Macedonism – a form of propaganda aimed at appropriating the name “Macedonia/Macedonian” by the FYROM: An aim at antiquization and nation-building that relies on historical revisionism and on a past that was never there. The truth is that Macedonia has been an indispensable part of the Greek psyche, history, culture, and identity for over 3,000 years. Let’s not forget this. We owe this to our children and to future generations.
1) Strabo; H.L. Jones (Editor) (1924). "The Geography of Strabo". The Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University, pp. Books 6 14. [www.perseus.tufts.edu] Last accessed 2011/10/13; in English.
2) See active letter to US President Barack Obama cosigned by 371 world renowned classicists. [macedonia-evidence.org] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
3) E.N.Borza, “In the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pages 84, 92-3.
4) [en.wikipedia.org] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
5) Dubois, Laurent (1995). "Une Tablette de Malédiction de Pella: S’Agit-il du Premier Texte Macédonien". Revue des Études Grecques 108: 190–197.
6) Masson, Olivier; Dubois, Laurent (2000). Onomastica Graeca Selecta. Librairie Droz. ISBN 2600004351. [books.google.com] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
7) Masson, Olivier (1996). Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
8) Johann Baptist Hofmann (1950). Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Griechischen. R. Oldenbourg.
9) [www.youtube.com] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
10) [en.wikipedia.org] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
11) [en.wikipedia.org] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
12) [en.wikipedia.org] Last accessed 2011/10/13.
13) Templar, Marcus A. Thesis. A Challenge to the Macedonism of the Slavs (2008). [history-of-macedonia.com] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
14) Blakeslee, George Hubbard. “The Journal of International Relations” (1920).
15) Miller, William. Travels and Politics in the Near East (1898).
16) Dakin, Douglas. The Greek Struggle in Macedonia 1897-1913 (1966): page 20. ISBN 960-8303-2-6.
17) Dakin, Douglas. The Greek Struggle in Macedonia 1897-1913 (1966). ISBN 960-8303-2-6.
18) Douflias, Konstantinos. Macedonia, Macedonian Struggle, Greece-Macedonia 4000 Years, 1992, Aegean Publications, Pages 81, 84, 116, and 117
19) Bantekas, I. The Authority of States to Use Names in International Law and the Macedonian Affair: Unilateral Entitlements, Historic Title, and Trademark Analogies. Leiden Journal of International Law (2009) 22:563-82.
20) [www.thedailybeast.com] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
21) www1.mfa.gr/images/docs/fyrom/dilosi_stettinius_dec_1944.pdf, or: U.S State Department, Foreign Relations Vol. VIII, Circular Airgram, Washington D.C. (868.014/26 Dec. 1944).
22) UN Resolutions: 382 (V Section C), 1950; 618 (VII), 1952; 517 (VI), 1952.
23) “Innocent’s Day,” Time, January 09, 1950. [www.time.com] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
24) US President Harry S. Truman, Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the Plight of Greek Children Abducted by Communist Guerrilla Forces, 1950. [trumanlibrary.org] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
25) Bougas, Ioannis. Η Φωνή της Ειρήνης (Thessaloniki: Erodios, 2006).
26) Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War, 1945-1949, eds. Lars Baerentzen, John O. Iatrides, Ole L. Smith (Museum Tusculanum Press, 1987).
27) Danforth, Loring M. (1997). The Macedonian Conflict. Princeton University Press. pp. 54. ISBN 0691043566.
28) [www.makedonija.info] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
29) Human Rights Violations Against Ethnic Macedonians-Report 1996, Macedonian Human Rights Movement of Canada, Toronto, 1996; p.111-112
30) In the following video, a giant flag of the Greek “Vergina Sun” over a map of "United Macedonia" encompassing the lands of Greece and Bulgaria, is displayed at the official 20th Anniversary festivities in Skopje on September 8, 2011. [www.youtube.com] (see after 2:15 minutes, last accessed 2011/09/09)
31) Toronto businessman and community leader John Bitove Sr. being interviewed by Skopje’s “United Macedonian Diaspora” lobby-group president in Toronto (2010). He stated to a cheering crowd that he wished for a "United Macedonia". [www.youtube.com] (see especially from 3 minutes on; last accessed 2011/06/01).
32) [www.telegraph.co.uk] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
33) Arnaiz-Villena A., Dimitroski K., Pacho A., et al. (2001a). HLA genes in Macedonians and the Sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks. Tissue Antigens 57: 118-127.
34) [www.maknews.com] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
35) The “Macedonian” prayer written and produced by Niche Dimovski, vice-president of the World Macedonian Congress, was shown on national TV (i.e. MTV) of the FYROM had God telling the “Macedonians,” “[f]rom you, Macedonians, descendants of Macedon I conceived the white race. All that stretches over to the Japanese sea is conceived from you [sic] gene.” Furthermore, in the prayer God said to his flock calling all the white men on the planet Macedonoids (Last accessed February 16, 2010). Templar, Marcus A.: [www.rieas.gr]
36) [greek-dna-sub-saharan-myth.org] Last accessed 2011/10/14.
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Some Christian Evidences on the Invented Macedonian Question
» Modern Macedonian History
by Pr. Ioannis N. KallianiotisOctober 201 [www.antibaro.gr]
Abstract
The purpose of this small paper is to provide some Christian evidences (during the Christianization of Greek-Macedonians in year 50 A.D.) and a scientifically true analysis on the Hellenic (Greek) history and to examine what this information regarding Macedonia means to us and to the uninformed world as a whole. We will offer some thoughts and unshaken Christian events that may help to answer questions concerning today’s conditions in south-eastern Europe, the borders of the “Christendom” (currently, the under decomposition European Union). It is imperative that all scholars, politicians, decision makers, students, and intellectual human beings have this information regarding an artificial state, Skopje, created recently between Greece and Serbia, because we, as educators, are responsible for all young people of this planet and we must tell them the plain truth in simple words, away from any expediency, propaganda, and anti-scientific delusion. This new Albano-Slavic state has unlawfully chosen the Greek name “Macedonia” for its nation and Greece is opposing their aggressiveness and will resist their expansionism. It is historically wrong for them to use Greek names and symbols because they have nothing in common with Ancient Greeks since they came from Dardania and appeared in the region in the 7th century A.D.; their old name was Vardarska. How can they found their new establishing state on an incredible lie? They must know that there is social justice and it will, soon or late, prevail!
I. Preface
Hellenic history, Orthodoxy, and culture have contributed a great deal to the European and the entire western civilization that we find their seal everywhere, today.[1] The democracy of ancient Greece,[2] the accomplishments of her people,[3] the great ideas of her moral philosophers,[4] scientists and artists,[5] and finally, the dramatic events, which have unfolded in the glorious history of the Greek nation because of its geographical position and its persistence in Christian truth have always been a source of creative inspiration to all nations.[6] Even though that Greece has truly improved mankind, the West was and is against Greeks and their achievements.[7] The comparative advantage of Greece is her civilization. And of course, Greece has the copyright of this unique and oldest civilization, which is viewed stolen in the museums around the “civilized” world
Further, history, scientific truth, divine justice, morality, human respect, liberty, rights, sovereignty, and International Law are social necessities and they require satisfaction. Otherwise, this world cannot proceed towards its objectives, and Orthodox nations towards their perfection. Each man enjoys existence according to his labor and his values and virtues and by himself he determines his future, his heritage, his nation and thus, affects the world. Mutual solidarity, joint responsibility, and real love are essential not only for the life of families, but also for the history of nations and the coexistence of this Cosmos (order, ornament). Moral, ethical, independent, and uncorrupted leadership is necessary to promote patriotism and indigenous value system of a sovereign nation. Nations, also, need to pass their time in peace, in respect, in justice, and by supporting their citizens (their well-being) and the other independent nations without any intervention or else they will face the Divine Justice.
Today, the Hellenes (Greeks), even though that they are members of NATO and European Union (EU), remain ever-vigilant against the expansionistic plans of their neighbors (the barbarian Turks since the 11th century A.D.)[8] and lately, since the fall of the communism, the desperate Skopjeans have begun to make claims against northern Greece because they need to create a national history, after abandoning their Slavic ancestry, on which they will found their pseudo-state. They have spread far and wide propaganda that Macedonians are not Greeks and they style themselves as the true Macedonians (sic). They have spread lies and disinformation everywhere in all the “controlled” nations,[9] the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. But the question remains, how can these newcomers Slavs be Macedonians without being Greeks? And, how dared some nations to turn a blind eye to the historic and scientific truth and recognize this pseudo-state as “Macedonia”? This fallen world has lost completely its values and purpose!
II. A Summary of the Longest Historic March
During the ancient times, the entire area of Greece was divided into independent city-states, but they had the same blood, language, religion, culture, and civilization. They encouraged cooperation among city-states and cultivation of the intellect and the fine arts. As they were growing, they were starting to establish colonies along the costal regions of the Mediterranean. These cities were united for times against common foreign enemies; i.e., during the Persian wars, which lasted from the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. to the battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.) to the naval battle of Salamis (479 B.C.), and the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C. Alexander the Great, the King of the Greek city-state of Pella, united all Greeks and went against these Asian invaders.
From 450 B.C. to 300 B.C., it was the intellectual period, where Socrates taught about the soul and spoke of the Unknown God[10] hoping that He would reveal Himself. Plato and Aristotle made significant contributions to human thought with their moral philosophy and their foundations on almost every science (except Probability Theory), while sculptors such as Pheidias, Scopas, Praxiteles, and others experimented with new forms of artistic expression by putting the standard for the future and beautified Athens. Xenophon was also the father of the new moral discipline of Economics.[11]
At the same time, a new Greek city-state Pella, more powerful politically began to emerge in region of Macedonia (the Northern part of Greece).[12] In the four decades before the Hellenistic Period (323-146 B.C.), the Macedonians under King Philip II (359 B.C.) forcefully united most of the Greek city-states after defeating Athens and Thebes in battle at Chaeronea, and built a powerful Hellenic confederacy.[13] The illustrious Alexander the Great, the son of King Philip, schooled by Aristotle, embarked on a historic expedition in 336 B.C. to conquer the vast empire of the Persians (punish them for their past invasions of Greece). In only eleven years he subdued this mighty foe and extended Hellenic influence, language, civilization, and paideia far into Africa and Asia, as far as India.[14] Alexander’s achievement marked the height of Hellenic military power.[15]
Following Alexander’s death (323 B.C.), violent and frequent warfare among rival Greek (Hellenic) leagues tore apart the Empire. These conflicts rendered the Greek city-states vulnerable to invasion. Finally, in 146 B.C., after fifty years of war, Roman legions conquered Greece. Although conquered, the Greek culture “subjugated” the Roman culture. During and after the Hellenistic Period, the classical Greek culture and Greek language were dominant throughout the Orient.[16] This was God’s Providence! In A.D. 50, the Apostle Paul preached Christianity in Greece, and from the time when he spoke to the Athenians about their “Unknown God”, for whom they already had a temple, a common religion, the Hellenic Orthodoxy united them and made them an inseparable group, the Greek-Orthodox people.[17] Many people believed to Jesus Christ and two Athenians became disciples of St. Paul from the first day, a man named Dionyssios (a Judge in the Supreme Court in Athens) and a woman, Damaris.[18] Also, the use of the Greek language in writing the Gospel and by the Eastern Church and her fathers gave a new dimension to Hellenic culture and created the spiritual Medieval Hellenic (Byzantine) culture. No Slavo-Macedonian language anywhere in the region because Slavs came seven centuries later in the area from the north-central Europe.[19]
The Byzantine (Medieval Greek) Empire was the continuation of the Alexander’s the Great Empire and of the Eastern Roman Empire.[20] It was their evolution and transformation in the East. The transposition of the center of gravity of the Ancient Greece and the Roman nation from West to East (3rd century A.D.), the transfer of the capital from Rome not in Athens, but to an area predominance of the Greek spirit and language and at the same time not the pagan gods of the past, but the intense effect of Orthodoxy; all these combined, created the starting point of one autonomous historic march of the eastern sphere of the Empire. Byzantium was a new political form, where Hellenism and Orthodoxy created a new culture.[21]
The Byzantine Orthodox hymns[22] emphasize that the people of Byzantium are the “people of the Lord”. The same can be seen in other historic texts and it is clear that the perception of the Empire’s role as a divinely guided entity prevailed throughout the world of Byzantium.[23] The citizens of the Byzantium are understood to be the “chosen” people of God, the genuine Christian people of the “God guarded” Christian-Orthodox nation, compared with the heterodox of the west; of course, no comparison can be made with the allodox or pagans of today. During its whole journey in history, Byzantium had the same strong perception that among the fundamental goals of the nation was the protection of the Christian faith, its propagation, and its perpetuation until the Second Coming. Surrounded most of the time by nations of other religions, the Christian people were obliged to defend their faith, because in this way, they saved their national identity.[24] They had a strong involvement in religious strifes, an exceptional sensitivity towards heresies, and dogmatic opposition. Also, they Christianized their northern neighboring Slavic (like, Skopjeans) and Russian nations.
Uprising against the Turk conquerors occurred sporadically throughout the Middle Ages, but it was not until the early nineteenth century that the modern Greek Nation evolved (confined by her allies only on the European side of the Byzantine Empire), commensurate with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. On March 25, 1821, Greeks resumed their march through history again. A revolutionary army composed of patriots from Peloponnesos, Sterea Ellada, and the Aegean Islands began to battle the Turkish armies. Although both sides scored success, the conflict soon reached a stalemate. At the request of the Sultan, the Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha invaded Greece, thus allowing for intervention by the three great European powers (France, England, and Russia) on the side of the Greek insurgents.
In 1939, World War II broke out in Europe and by 1940 most countries of Europe had surrendered and Hitler had the Continent of Europe in his grip. On October 28, 1940 Mussolini decided to take over Greece with an easy victory based on his numbers and mechanized forces. He attacked Greece from Albania. The Greeks with their Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas stood up and said “Ochi” (OXI = No, you shall not pass) and these heroic forefathers of today’s Greeks fought with a will, hurling back the aggressors. The Duce’s divisions were soon pushed back into Albania and for six months were fighting to maintain a hold on the sea-cost, desperately calling for help.[25] When Germany entered the war against Greece with the most powerful army in Europe, the Greeks continued to fight both of these big empires although reason must have told them that their position was hopeless. Beside their British comrades, they continued to resist stubbornly on the Island of Crete.
Finally, Greece fell, but it cost Hitler thousands of his finest youth, and delayed for two months his attack against Russia. German troops ran into the dreadful Russian winter and the Russians imposed such appalling losses that it contributed to the ultimate defeat of Germany.[26] The occupation, great famine, resistance and subsequent liberation of Greece followed, and then came the “December Movement”, in which Greek communists fought their brother Greeks. This civil war ended in August 29, 1949 with the defeat of communists. England helped Greece first and later, the United States helped with the Marshall plan, which lent Greece to a new era and made her one of the most important allies of the West; but, her ignorant politicians threw the country, without a referendum, to the nails of the anti-Greek European Union. Then, it came the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the creation of pseudo-“Macedonia”. Until 1991, the Ancient Macedonians were unknown to Skopje. In 1991, they issue a banknote of 20 statirs (“Statir” was the currency of Ancient Macedonians during the period of Philip II, which brought the inscription in Greek language: FILIPPOY and the currency during the Alexander the Great period brings his name: ALEXANDROY).[27] This new bill was printed, but it did not approve as the national currency. Nikola Gruevski blew up the minds of ignorant Skopjeans with false dreams that they had the Ancient Macedonians their ancestors. Liubco Georgiefski aimed Skopje to join Bulgaria. Branko Crvenkovski is financed by G. Soros, who is working for a multinational and multicultural “Macedonia” and Kiro Gligorof was saved from an assassination attempt because he dared to say the truth, “We are Slavs!” The Albanian parties in Skopje are pleased with the support of Turkey. All these facts show the big crisis that exists in Skopje and give to us a feeling about its future.[28]
III. Christian Evidences
Looking at sources outside Greece, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostle Paul writes of his travels in Macedonia. He refers to Greek cities (Neapolis, Philippi, Thessalonica, Verea, etc.) and men and women with Greek names. One gets an impression of a Greek environment, attitude, and culture being present in Macedonia. Here, it must be noted that Macedonia was the main gate of the entrance of Christianity in the European Continent. Let us bear in mind the vision of the Apostle Paul that night in Troy, which determined the following Christianization of Europe. “So, passing by Mysia,[29] they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying. ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.”[30] It is characteristic that the Apostle of the Nations, addressing himself to the Macedonians, was preaching the Word of God and writing his letters in the Greek language. There is no Macedonian language or non-Greek Macedonians anywhere. These people, who were Christianized by St. Paul (in year 50 A.D.) were Greek-Macedonians. The Slav-pseudo-Macedonians were Christianized by the Greek brothers, Methodios and Kyrillos much later (9th century A.D.)[31] because they were not Greeks and they were living far away in the north of Greece, in Dardania.
The vision of the “Macedonian man” in the book of “The Acts of the Apostles”, the letters of the Apostle Paul, “To the Philippians” and “To the Thessalonians A and B” and all the other references in the Old and New Testaments concerning Macedonia constitute unassailable and infallible testimony of her Greekness. Not only these, but the continuous and uninterrupted line of bishops and saints; the great number of churches and monasteries found throughout the Macedonian regions (even within the borders of the Democracy of Skopje) as well as the Monastic Community of the Holy Mountain with its sovereign Greek characteristics and its spiritual light shining upon Orthodox Nations near and far, give holy evidences that Macedonia is Greek.
Saint Timothy accompanied Saint Paul to Macedonia, to Philippi, to Thessalonica, and to Verea (or Berea). “Many of them [in Berea] therefore believed, including Greek women and men of high standing.”[32] When the apostle Paul left Verea, Timothy and Silas remained there to confirm the converts. Then, when St. Paul went to Athens (in 51 A.D.), he asked Timothy to come to him and later, Timothy was sent back to Thessalonica because he had an account of the churches of Macedonia. After some time Timothy went with Silas to Corinth to meet St. Paul. Saints Timothy and Silas are mentioning at the beginning of the two Epistles of St. Paul to Thessalonians.[33] This entire region was Greek, with the same language and culture, made up by different cities under the Roman occupation. With the exception of some Latin tribal settlements, the basic population of Macedonia was Greek.
Concerning ancient Macedonia, it is needful only to speak of the stones and the archaeological treasures of Vergina, Dion,[34] and other areas to silence the forgers of history. Of Christian Macedonia, the unceasing chorus of the Holy Scriptures, the Churches, the Monasteries, the Saints (i.e., Methodios and Kyrillos), the Byzantine Hymns, and frescos (well-paintings) shout the truth. Above all the icon of Saint Demetrios, who on horseback guards vigilantly the Walls of Thessaloniki and strikes with his spear the vanquished invader prone upon the ground, speaks of the Greekness of Macedonia. And all invaders from that time to the present, whether ancient barbarians or the would-be conquerors of present day Skopje, have all dreamed to go down to Thessaloniki and to the Aegean Sea with no hope of success! The Greek defenders will prevail because the right, the truth, and the justice are on their side.
Skopjeans went beyond any limit from their confusion and the difficulties that they have to persuade themselves and the anti-Greek West. They try with any mean to prove that they are the legitimate off-springs of Alexander the Great and they put statues of Alexander and of other Ancient Greeks to their squares and public buildings. Also, they give these Ancient Greek names to their roads and other places. But, the most outrageous delusion, in which they fell, was that they declared as saint of their self-proclaimed “Macedonian orthodox church”, Alexander the Great, who lived 350 years before the coming of Jesus Christ. Thus, they made the Greek Alexander the Great as “Saint Alexander the Macedonian”.[35] Also, Skopjeans celebrated the 20th birthday of their pseudo-state, which has not been recognized with its “constitutional name” by the U.N.; under a 22 meters statue of the Greek Alexander the Great. These Skopjeans love the Greek Alexander more than Greeks! Amazing hypocrisy from this circus, who wants to usurp the historic inheritance of the Ancient Greek Macedonia.[36]
IV. Some Concluding Considerations
The role of Hellenism is historic and humanistic (and as time passes the vast majority of learned people will realize it) because it was able many times in the past to re-orientate humanity. Hellenism is a global movement of ancient moral philosophy combined with the revealed truth of Christianity, the Holy Orthodoxy. Its advantage exists in the adoption of the moderation, the spiritual, the eternal, and the truthful, and at the same time in the rejection of the exaggeration, the materialistic, the transitory, the fake, and above all the bold lie. How many today understand this unique culture, which is called the Hellenic Orthodox Culture? The race, which possesses this culture, has the unique ability to reach the highest accomplishments and surpass the pathless degeneration of the human civilization left behind in every historic period. Christian evidences confirm the Greekness of Macedonia and the choice by God of the Greek Alexander the Great to spread the Greek language, and the Greek moral wisdom to the entire known world. The universal ideas of Hellenism constitute an inexhaustible source of alternating everlasting values. The principles of Hellenism that have changed the intellectual trends of humanity throughout history, have been born to this small geographical region, which for seven thousand years, obstinately resists the undermining efforts of the “civilized” (but ignorant) world and the hordes of barbarians (that God allows them to dominate for some time, due to our sins). One representative of this Hellenic race is Alexander the Great, the Macedonian Greek commander of the army, who civilized the world and refined and united Hellenism.[37]
The name “Macedonia” was given by Tito and was used for this South Yugoslav region only since 1945,[38] but it was identified for tens of centuries with Greek civilization and Greek history. Their neighboring Greeks are reasonably disturbed when the name of Macedonia becomes subject to abuse by a region, which ethnologically is not Greek, but Albanian, Vlach, Serb, Gypsy, Turkish, Slavic, and Bulgarian. It is characteristic and suspicious that the two first countries, which recognized this new government was Bulgaria and Turkey. The stability of the region would be better served by the denial of recognition or by saying to these people and the entire world the historic truth. Finally, if Skopjeans feel that they are Macedonians, let them open their borders and unite with Greece, then, they will become Greeks by culture and paideia, not by blood, and at the end, they will be Macedonians (as Greeks living in Macedonia).
It is clear when, objectively examined, that the “Macedonian Question” for Greece cannot exist and the “Macedonian Problem” is a non-issue.[39] The legal status quo of the northern borders of Greece are determined with international treaties, like the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), which ended the second Balkan War, and the Peace Treaties at the end of the two World Wars, of Neigy (1919) and of Paris (1947). Also, Macedonia is a geographic concept and not an ethnic notion. In fact, only one country can identify herself, for historical reasons, with Macedonia. That country is Greece, which has been inextricably linked with Macedonia for more than 4,000 years. Even the former president of Skopje, Kiro Gligorov, stated in June 1992 that they are Slavs, who came in the area in the 6th century A.D. Then, there is no connection between Ancient Macedonians and the Slavs of Skopje, which usurp the Greek history, names, symbols, and heritage.[40]
For these reasons, Greece is opposing the recognition of an independent nation on her northern border, which will bear the Hellenic name “Macedonia” (or any composite name having as one component the word “Macedonia”). Of course, this does not mean that Greece is against the Skopjeans right to establish their own independent nation and have their own language, history, and traditions. All people have the right to self-determination of their future; of course, this choice is confined within the limits of International Law (or legality). Greece, however cannot accept the use of the Macedonian name by any nation, which is in all other respects Slavic. The terms “Macedonia-Macedonians” and names of similar relevance belong to Hellas and Hellenes (Greece and Greeks). They constitute Greece’s national and cultural inheritance and as such have been recorded in history for many centuries before the appearance of Slavs in the area of Balkans and especially in the area of Macedonia. Greeks will never cease, as the Greek race to claim their lost national lands. It is their national duty to state matters concerning Greek Macedonia, both inside and outside of Greece, exactly as they are to restore the historical truth that expediency, misguided, and calculating interest continue to counterfeit and distort.
Finally, the fact, that the ancient Macedonians belong to the world of Greeks, is very difficult to dispute any longer. The new archeological treasures in connection with linguistic analyses and the findings of a great number of new inscriptions (all Greek) with rich samples of Greek names prove that there is no discontinuation of either cultural or linguistic of the unity of the Macedonians with the rest of the Greeks.[41] Also, the numerous Christian evidences, the spreading of the Greek language, the Greek moral philosophy, the Greek civilization, and the Greek culture to the entire known world from the Greek Macedonians of the Alexander the Great constitutes the most categorical confirmation of this event. This event is confirmed every year by the new archeological findings that are coming to light either at the large excavations of Pella, Vergina, Dion, and Sindos, or in dozens less known, like in areas of Voion, Aeani, Kozani, Kastoria, Florina, Edessa, Aridaea, Kilkis, Kavala, and of course, Thessaloniki and Chalki-diki[42] with Petralona, Sithonia, Tironi, and others. Even the minister of the U.S. Foreign Affairs, Edward Stettinius, had sent on December 26, 1944 to all the diplomatic offices of the U.S.A. an elucidative and attributive encyclical, in which he says that the “Macedonian Issue” is an unjustifiable demagogy coming mainly from Bulgaria and does not represent a reality.[43] The historic truth must prevail among all humans of the 21st century, if we want to see a social prosperity in our small world.
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[1] The English language has borrowed 40,000 Greek words, See, Schizas.com, September 10, 2011.
[2] See, Jones (1997).
[3] See, Kebric (1997) and Kitto (1987).
[4] See, Marchant and Todd (1997)
[5] See, Pedley (1998).
[6] But, at the same time, Hellas faces a lot of opposition from heretics (heterodoxs) and other religions (allodoxs) because of her traditional Orthodoxy and her Hellenic paideia.
[7] See, Christian Vivliografia, August 31, 2011. [christianvivliografia.wordpress.com]
[8] This was the Battle of Manzikert. See, [en.wikipedia.org] . With Bulgaria in 1905-1907, with Italy in 1940, and with Albania (Tsamides) in 1941-1944, who collaborated with Italians the Germans against Greeks. The buccaneer of the Mediterranean (Turkey) threatens war clash against Greece and Cyprus because Cyprus wants to utilize its natural resources. Greece must do the same right away, which will support the country economically and improve the current debt crisis.
[9] Mahathir Mohamad, former leader of Malaysia, said that “Jewish groups secretly control the World’s great powers”. See, The Wall Street Journal, October 9-10, 2010, p. A1 and A11.
[10] After 350 years, Saint Paul went to Athens, in A.D. 51, to preach this Unknown God (the True God). (Acts 17: 22-23).
[11] For Socrates, human flourishing (eudaimonia) was the goal, rather than great accumulation of material goods. Xenophon accepts private property and the division of labor within certain ethical limits. In his work, the development of the ethical approach to household management (oikonomia or oikonomikē), or microeconomics, within the context of the Greek city (polis) can be seen. Friendship (philia) and gentlemanship (kalokagathia) are discussed together with oikonomia as a united package. There is a strong linkage between ethics and economics in Socrates and Xenophon. See, James E. Alvey, [www.emeraldinsight.com] .
[12] We can see their coins, too; all the inscriptions and names on them are in Greek. For more information see: [en.wikipedia.org]
[13] Because as Hellenes, all these city-states had the same blood, the same language, and the same religion, according to Herodotus, 5th century B.C. and many other similarities as Kallianiotis (2007, p. 179) refers them.
[14] There are many tribes in Asia today that they claim of being descendants of Greeks, since that time of Alexander, like the Kallas in northern Iran.
[15] From 404 to 338 B.C. hegemonies of Sparta, Thebes, and Macedonia (area of Northern Greece) appeared. From 359-336 B.C., the reign of Philip of Macedonia took place. From 338-323 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the entire Asia; he went to India and Africa, too. The Old Persian Empire, which had invaded Greece many times in the past, was overrun by the Greek-Macedonians. In 322 B.C., Greek-Macedonians took over Athens and overturned the Athenian democracy. From 323 to 272 B.C., Alexander’s successors sought domination and the Hellenistic Kingdoms were created in Greece and the rest of the Empire – of Macedonia (with Antigonus), of Egypt (with Ptolemy), [The tomb of Alexander the Great was discovered by the Greek archeologist Liana Souvaltzi. See, Souvaltzi (2002).] and of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran (with Seleucus). “Under the sponsorship of Alexander’s Empire and the Hellenistic Kingdoms that succeeded it, Greek culture spread over the whole Mediterranean world, and in the first century B.C. achieved a thorough intellectual conquest of the imperial Roman republic, its military conqueror.” [Blum, Cameron, and Barns (1970, p. 10)].
[16] Even the Gospels were written in Greek language and with this language the New Religion was spread to the entire known world of that time. This was the language of the Greek King Alexander the Great and his descendants. The non-Greek speaking nations were “barbarians” outside the Hellenic culture and paideia (paideiva). This is the historic truth and not what some pseudo-states anxiously try to distort the science of history.
[17] The proportion of Greeks that are Orthodox is 98% of the population. Someone that is not Orthodox could not be considered Greek, too. This is the homogeneity and uniqueness of these people.
[18] See, Acts 17: 34. [19] In the 7th century A.D., various Slavic tribes (Dragouvitae, Strymonitae, Sagouditae, etc.) began settling in the Macedonian region. With the permission of Byzantine (Greek) authorities these tribes set up small Slavic enclaves known to the Byzantines as “Sclaviniae”. Throughout the 7th century, the Slavs continually fought against the Byzantine authorities and repeatedly attacked (without success) the city of Thessaloniki. See, Kallianiotis (1992), p. 33).
[20] See, Vasiliev (1980).
[21] The contribution of the three hierarchs (Sts. Vassilios, Grigorios, and Ioannis) is unique in the connection of the ancient Greek moral paideia with the Christian revealed values.
[22] See, a Hymn chanting on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. (Today, it is September 14th, the feast day of the Gross).
[23] The same beliefs continue to hold even today in the Greek Orthodox nation and the Greeks of Diaspora, who are more than 100 million people of Greek origin spread around the world. This unique culture is inconceivable by any other sub-culture.
[24] The problem that Greece is facing today is the dilution of her identity, due to millions of Muslims illegal immigrants that Turkey is smuggling into the Greek nation. This is a new Turkish invasion to Greece after the previous one in 1974 in Northern Cyprus.
[25] This victory of Greeks was a miracle from Panagia for their fair and just defense of their country.
[26] Germany has not yet paid the indemnities for the war damages that it inflicted to Greece and her citizens.
[27] See, Kallianiotis (1992, p. 39).
[28] See, MacedoniaHellenicLand.eu, Septemebr 16, 2011.
[29] Mysia (Greek: Μυσία) was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor. It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara. It was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north. In ancient times it was inhabited by the Mysians, Phrygians, Aeolian Greeks, and other groups. As we see from the names of the cities, all are Greek names.
[30] See, Acts 16: 8-15.
[31] See, [en.wikipedia.org]
[32] Acts 17: 12.
[33] See, St. Timothy, Paul’s Associate, Christianity.com.
[34] <> the city of Dias (Zeus).
[35] See, dailynews24.gr, August 22, 2011.
[36] See, MacedoniaHellenicLand.eu, September 11, 2011. [www.macedoniahellenicland.eu]
[37] See, Aristotle, Meteorologika A 14. [38] In 1948, Cominform, the first official forum of the international communist movement since the dissolution of the Comintern, put into action a plan to take hostage to communist countries children from Greece during the Greek civil war. The aim was to re-educate the children as well as blackmail the populace and the Greek government towards reaching a settlement leading to a partition of Greece and the subsequent creation of an internationalist "Macedonian" Republic. This move has favoured by the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito and had been a Comitern policy aimed at destroying the national states of the Balkans through the creation of internationalist republics. [39] Professor Stephen G. Miller of Berkley University sent a letter to the Archaeology Magazine, where he proves that the region where Skopje is today was Paeonia and Skopjeans have no right to call their nation “Macedonia” and themselves “Macedonians”. See, Christianiki Bibliographia, Issue 42, Year 38, January-March 2009, pp. 21-23.
[40] See, “Kiro Gligorov: We are Slavs (archive video)”, MacedoniaHellenicLand.eu, September 19, 2010.
[41] There is a series of articles by the author examining the Macedonian question from these perspectives, as they can be seen in the references, at the end of the paper.
[42] Chalkidiki was a colony of Ancient Chalcis of Euboea. See, [www.macedoniahellenicland.eu] . The Ancient Tironi was established by Chalcideans in the 8th century B.C. and it was one of the most significant cities in Chalkidiki. It had its own currency and was a member of the Athenian Alliance. In 348 B.C., the city came under Philip II. See, MacedoniaHellenicLand.eu, September 6, 2011.
[43] [U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations, Vol. viii, Washington, D.C., Circular Air gram (868.014/26 Dec. 1944)]. See, Voanerges, Issue 54, March-April 2011, p. 87.
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Περί Δημοψηφίσματος
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΔημοψήφισμα είναι μια ψηφοφορία κατά την οποία το εκλογικό σώμα μπορεί να εκφράσει την άποψη του για ένα συγκεκριμένο θέμα της κρατικής πολιτικής[Andrew Heywood, εισαγωγή στην πολιτική, σελ 328]. Διαφέρει από τις εκλογές καθότι αυτές είναι ένα μέσο για την πλήρωση ενός δημόσιου αξιώματος και δεν παρέχουν άμεση ή αξιόπιστη μέθοδο επηρεασμού του περιεχομένου της κρατικής πολιτικής. Ενώ τέσσερα
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The Keynes-Hayek Rematch (in the cases of Greece and Eurozone crisis)
» Modern Macedonian History
LONDON – The Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, once remarked that to have the last word requires only outliving your opponents. His great good fortune was to outlive Keynes by almost 50 years, and thus to claim a posthumous victory over a rival who had savaged him intellectually while he was alive.
Hayek’s apotheosis came in the 1980’s, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took to quoting from The Road to Serfdom (1944), his classic attack on central planning. But in economics there are never any final verdicts. While Hayek’s defense of the market system against the gross inefficiency of central planning won increasing assent, Keynes’s view that market systems require continuous stabilization lingered on in finance ministries and central banks.
Both traditions, though, were eclipsed by the Chicago school of “rational expectations,” which has dominated mainstream economics for the last twenty-five years. With economic agents supposedly possessing perfect information about all possible contingencies, systemic crises could never happen except as...
a result of accidents and surprises beyond the reach of economic theory.
The global economic collapse of 2007-2008 discredited “rational expectations” economics (though its high priests have yet to recognize this) and brought both Keynes and Hayek back into posthumous contention. The issues have not changed much since their argument began in the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
What causes market economies to collapse?
What is the right response to a collapse?
What is the best way to prevent future collapses?
For Hayek in the early 1930’s, and for Hayek’s followers today, the “crisis” results from over-investment relative to the supply of savings, made possible by excessive credit expansion. Banks lend at lower interest rates than genuine savers would have demanded, making all kinds of investment projects temporarily profitable.
But, because these investments do not reflect the real preferences of agents for future over current consumption, the savings necessary to complete them are not available. They can be kept going for a time by monetary injections from the central bank. But market participants eventually realize that there are not enough savings to complete all the investment projects. At that point, boom turns to bust.
Every artificial boom thus carries the seeds of its own destruction. Recovery consists of liquidating the misallocations, reducing consumption, and increasing saving.
Keynes (and Keynesians today) would think of the crisis as resulting from the opposite cause: under-investment relative to the supply of saving – that is, too little consumption or aggregate demand to maintain a full-employment level of investment – which is bound to lead to a collapse of profit expectations.
Again, the situation can be kept going for a time by resorting to consumer-debt finance, but eventually consumers become over-leveraged and curtail their purchases. Indeed, the Keynesian and Hayekian explanations of the origins of the crisis are actually not very different, with over-indebtedness playing the key role in both accounts. But the conclusions to which the two theories point are very different.
Whereas for Hayek recovery requires the liquidation of excessive investments and an increase in consumer saving, for Keynes it consists in reducing the propensity to save and increasing consumption in order to sustain companies’ profit expectations. Hayek demands more austerity, Keynes more spending.
We have here a clue as to why Hayek lost his great battle with Keynes in the 1930’s. It was not just that the policy of liquidating excesses was politically catastrophic: in Germany, it brought Hitler to power. As Keynes pointed out, if everyone – households, firms, and governments – all started trying to increase their saving simultaneously, there would be no way to stop the economy from running down until people became too poor to save.
It was this flaw in Hayek’s reasoning that caused most economists to desert the Hayekian camp and embrace Keynesian “stimulus” policies. As the economist Lionel Robbins recalled: “Confronted with the freezing deflation of those days, the idea that the prime essential was the writing down of mistaken investments and…fostering the disposition to save was…as unsuitable as denying blankets and stimulus to a drunk who has fallen into an icy pond, on the ground that his original trouble was overheating.”(this is the cases of Greece and Eurozone crisis)
Except to Hayekian fanatics, it seems obvious that the coordinated global stimulus of 2009 stopped the slide into another Great Depression. To be sure, the cost to many governments of rescuing their banks and keeping their economies afloat in the face of business collapse damaged or destroyed their creditworthiness. But it is increasingly recognized that public-sector austerity at a time of weak private-sector spending guarantees years of stagnation, if not further collapse.(this is the cases of Greece and Eurozone crisis)
So policy will have to change. Little can be hoped for in Europe; the real question is whether President Barack Obama has it in him to don the mantle of President Franklin Roosevelt.
To prevent further crises of equal severity in the future, Keynesians would argue for strengthening the tools of macroeconomic management. Hayekians have nothing sensible to contribute. It is far too late for one of their favorite remedies – abolition of central banks, supposedly the source of excessive credit creation. Even an economy without central banks will be subject to errors of optimism and pessimism. And an attitude of indifference to the fallout of these mistakes is bad politics and bad morals.
So, for all his distinction as a philosopher of freedom, Hayek deserved to lose his battle with Keynes in the 1930’s. He deserves to lose today’s rematch as well.
from Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University.Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Πως δημιουργήθηκε η γλώσσα του κράτους των Σκοπίων
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤου Καθ Σπυρίδωνα Σφέτα Βασικό συστατικό στοιχείο για τη συγκρότηση του έθνους αποτέλεσε η κωδικοποίηση μιας λόγιας σλαβομακεδονικής γλώσσας. Καθώς δεν υπήρχε μια γραπτή παράδοση, η προσκόλληση είτε προς τη βουλγαρική είτε προς τη σερβική για την παραλαβή δανείων ήταν απαραίτητη. Στην επίσημη προπαγάνδα η σλαβομακεδονική χαρακτηρίστηκε «ως η γλώσσα των Αγίων Κυρίλλου και Μεθοδίου» και
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Νεοφιλελευθερισμός
» Greek Alert
Όπως έχω πει από πέρσι, η Ελλάδα από τον Μάιο του 2010, είναι πλέον σε νεοφιλελεύθερη κατοχή. Το κοινωνικό κράτος τελειώνει. Τα κοινωνικά συμβόλαια είναι πλέον καμένα χαρτιά και θεωρητικές ονειρώξεις. Το μεγάλο πρόβλημα στην Ελλάδα ήταν και είναι η φαυλότητα που επικρατεί στην Ελληνική κοινωνία και ειδικά στην ελίτ (πολιτικοί, γιατροί, μηχανικοί, εφοριακοί, δικαστικοί κλπ). Αυτό που γίνεται σήμερα είναι η οικονομική αφαίμαξη και το στραγγάλισμα της μεσαίας τάξης, με στόχο όχι πλέον το εισόδημα, αλλά και την ακίνητη περιουσία του. Ο μοναδικός σκοπός αυτής της νεοφιλελεύθερης πολιτικής, είναι σαφώς όχι η διάσωση του Ελληνικού λαού, αλλά της Ελληνικής φαυλοκρατικής ελίτ.
Η λέξη «νεοφιλελευθερισμός» (neoliberalism) πρέπει πλέον να αρχίσει να μας απασχολεί σοβαρά όλους. Ο λόγος είναι ότι, ο παγκοσμιοποιημένος νεοφιλελευθερισμός(global liberalism) άρχισε να παίρνει σάρκα και οστά με τις νομοθετήσεις σε ανεπτυγμένες οικονομίες έχοντας ως αιχμή του δόρατος την χώρα μας. Έτσι λοιπόν , όσο μας το επιτρέπουν ακόμα οι νεοφιλελεύθερες δυνάμεις κατοχής, θα προσπαθήσω να αποκαλύψω τι σημαίνει νεοφιλελευθερισμός.
Τι είναι λοιπόν ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός;
ΓΕΝΙΚΑ
Καταρχήν πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίσουμε από την αρχή ότι άλλο ο «φιλελευθερισμός» και άλλο ο «νεοφιλελευθερισμός». Η αγγλική ορολογία ξεχωρίζει με σαφήνεια τα δύο αυτά είδη πολιτικών ιδεολογιών. Οι σύγχρονοι φιλελεύθεροι (modern liberals) είναι αυτοί που εμμένουν στην ενότητα ελευθερίας και ισότητας και υποστηρίζουν το κράτος πρόνοιας αλλά και το κράτος ως ρυθμιστή της αγοράς. Οι νεοφιλελεύθεροι ή φιλελευθεριστές (libertarians) είναι αυτοί που επιμένουν μονόπλευρα στην ατομική, ιδίως οικονομική ελευθερία ως απουσία κρατικών επεμβάσεων. Είναι δηλαδή πρώτα απ’ όλα αντικρατιστές. Ας σημειωθεί ότι ο όρος «φιλελεύθερος», ακριβώς επειδή οι liberals εμμένουν στην κοινωνική ισότητα ως απαραίτητο συνοδό της ελευθερίας, στις αγγλόφωνες χώρες σημαίνει κάτι σαν αριστερός ή αριστερίζων. Μάλιστα ο Ελληνοαμερικανός Μάικλ Δουκάκης έχασε τις εκλογές για το αξίωμα του προέδρου των ΗΠΑ το 1988 επειδή δεν αντέδρασε έγκαιρα και με τον κατάλληλο τρόπο όταν ο αντίπαλός του Μπους τον χαρακτήρισε φιλελεύθερο (ο Μπους το εννοούσε βεβαίως ως μομφή, ενώ ο Δουκάκης ως κάτι το θετικό, για το οποίο δεν έκρινε αναγκαίο να δώσει εξηγήσεις) ενώ ακόμα πιο πρόσφατα ο Μπάρακ Ομπάμα θεωρήθηκε και αυτός ως liberal και τον αποκαλούσαν υποτιμητικά ως σοσιαλδημοκράτη.
Ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός, που ορισμένες φορές αποκαλείται και ως...
νεοκλασικός φιλελευθερισμός (neoclassical liberalism), αναφέρεται σε μια αναβίωση του οικονομικού φιλελευθερισμού, που έλαβε χώρα από τη δεκαετία του 1970 και έπειτα. Ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός έχει αντεπαναστατικό χαρακτήρα: στόχος του είναι να συγκρατήσει, και αν είναι δυνατό, να αναστρέψει τη ροπή προς τη «μεγάλη» διακυβέρνηση και την παρέμβαση του κράτους, που χαρακτήρισε το μεγαλύτερο μέρος του 20"" αιώνα.
Ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός είχε τον μεγαλύτερο αρχικό αντίκτυπο στα δύο κράτη, στα οποία οι οικονομικές αρχές της ελεύθερης αγοράς είχαν πιο γερά θεμέλια, κατά τη διάρκεια του 19ου αιώνα, δηλαδή στις ΗΠΑ και στο Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο. Ωστόσο, στην περίπτωση του «θατσερισμού» (Thatcherism) στη Βρετανία και του «Ρηγκανισμού» (Reaganism) στις ΗΠΑ, ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός αποτέλεσε τμήμα ενός μεγαλύτερου, ιδεολογικού προγράμματος της νέας δεξιάς, που προσπάθησε να συνδυάσει τη laissez-faire οικονομία με μια κατά βάση συντηρητική κοινωνική φιλοσοφία. Πολλοί υποστηρίζουν εσφαλμένα ότι, ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός είναι απλά ένα κομμάτι της νέας δεξιάς. Όμως έχει διαμορφωθεί από ευρύτερες δυνάμεις, ιδιαίτερα αυτές της οικονομικής παγκοσμιοποίησης, και έχει ασκήσει επίδραση πάνω στα φιλελεύθερα και σοσιαλιστικά κόμματα, όπως και στα συντηρητικά, φαινόμενο που επεκτάθηκε και πέρα από την Άγγλο-Αμερικανική του πατρίδα. Εμείς το ζούμε σήμερα όπου ένα κεντροαριστερό κόμμα, με σοσιαλδημοκρατικές ιδέες εφαρμόζει με το πιο στυγνό τρόπο τον νεοφιλελευθερισμό.
ΜΕΝΤΟΡΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΘΕΣΕΙΣ
Ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός ισοδυναμεί με μια εκδοχή φονταμενταλισμού της αγοράς. Η αγορά θεωρείται πως είναι ηθικά και πρακτικά ανώτερη της διακυβέρνησης και κάθε μορφής πολιτικού έλεγχου. М' αυτήν την έννοια, ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός υπερβαίνει την κλασική οικονομική θεωρία. Για παράδειγμα, μολονότι ο Adam Smith δικαίως θεωρείται πατέρας της οικονομίας της αγοράς, ο ίδιος αναγνώριζε τα όρια της αγοράς και σαφέστατα δεν υποστήριξε ένα σκληρό πρότυπο της ανθρώπινης φύσης που να μεγιστοποιεί τη χρησιμότητα. Από τη νεοφιλελεύθερη προοπτική, τα ελαττώματα της διακυβέρνησης είναι πολλά και διάφορα. Μέντορες του νεοφιλελευθερισμού θεωρούνται οι οικονομολόγοι της ελεύθερης αγοράς, όπως ο Αυστριακός Friedrich von Hayek και ο Αμερικανός Milton Friedman, είναι αυτοί όπου επιτέθηκαν στον οικονομικό ρόλο της διακυβέρνησης και στα ελαττώματα της.
Ο Hayek (1944) ανέπτυξε μια οικονομική και πολιτική κριτική που καταδίκαζε τον κεντρικό σχεδιασμό ειδικότερα, και την οικονομική παρέμβαση γενικότερα. Υποστήριξε πως ο σχεδιασμός οποιασδήποτε μορφής είναι αναγκασμένος να είναι οικονομικά ανεπαρκής, επειδή οι γραφειοκράτες του κράτους, όσο ικανοί κι αν είναι, αντιμετωπίζουν μια ποικιλία και μια πολυπλοκότητα πληροφοριών, που απλά είναι πέρα από τις ικανότητες τους να την ελέγξουν. Από αυτήν την άποψη, η οικονομική παρέμβαση είναι η μοναδική σοβαρή απειλή για την ατομική ελευθερία, επειδή κάθε προσπάθεια ελέγχου της οικονομικής ζωής αναπόφευκτα οδηγεί το κράτος να αναμιχθεί και σε άλλους τομείς της ανθρώπινης ύπαρξης, γεγονός που τελικά οδηγεί στον ολοκληρωτισμό.
Ο Friedman επέκρινε τον Κεϋνσιανισμό βάσει του ότι οι πολιτικές «των φόρων και των δαπανών» τροφοδοτούν τον πληθωρισμό, ενθαρρύνοντας τις κυβερνήσεις να αυξήσουν τη δανειοληψία χωρίς, στη συνέχεια, να επηρεάσουν το «φυσιολογικό ποσοστό» της ανεργίας.
Έτσι λοιπόν, οι Hayek και Friedman υποστήριξαν πως η διακυβέρνηση ήταν ουσιαστικά η πηγή των οικονομικών προβλημάτων, και όχι η θεραπεία τους. Αντιτίθενται στον σύγχρονο φιλελευθερισμό όπου είναι επηρεασμένος από την οικονομική θεωρία του Keynes δηλαδή την αμφιβολία για τη δυνατότητα της αγοράς να υλοποιεί τις επιλογές των ατόμων. Οι σύγχρονοι φιλελεύθεροι θεωρούν πως ο κρατικός παρεμβατισμός αποτελεί ένα αναγκαίο –μερικές φορές -κακό που παρά το κόστος του και τον περιορισμό των επιλογών, μπορεί να εξασφαλίσει την προστασία των ατόμων και τελικά την ευημερία τους.
Οι νεοφιλελεύθεροι είναι κυρίως θεωρητικοί της δημόσιας επιλογής (public choice), επηρεασμένοι από τον ωφελιμισμό, έθεσαν σε αμφιβολία τη νομιμοποίηση της διακυβέρνησης, αμφισβητώντας τη σχέση της με το δημόσιο συμφέρον. Από τη στιγμή που τα ανθρώπινα όντα είναι ορθολογικά και ιδιοτελή πλάσματα, οι αξιωματούχοι της κυβέρνησης αναπόφευκτα θα χρησιμοποιήσουν τη θέση τους, προκειμένου να επεκτείνουν τους δικούς τους στόχους, και όχι εκείνους του ευρύ κοινού. Αυτό σημαίνει πως η ανάπτυξη της «μεγάλης» διακυβέρνησης δεν ήταν αποτέλεσμα ανταπόκρισης στη δημοκρατική πίεση, ούτε και μια προσπάθεια να διορθωθούν οι ανισορροπίες του καπιταλισμού, αλλά συνέπεια της ιδιοτελούς επιδίωξης για καριέρα από εργαζόμενους στον δημόσιο τομέα γενικότερα.
Συνοπτικά λοιπόν οι νεοφιλελεύθεροι ή οι φονταμελιστές οικονομολόγοι της ελεύθερης αγοράς πιστεύουν ότι το σημαντικότερο οικονομικό πρόβλημα είναι ο πληθωρισμός και όχι η ανεργία. Πληθωρισμός (inflation) είναι η αύξηση του γενικού τιμάριθμου, η οποία οδηγεί σε πτώση της αξίας του χρήματος. Το ίδιο δηλαδή ποσό χρημάτων αγοράζει λιγότερα αγαθά. Οι νεοφιλελεύθεροι πιστεύουν πως ο πληθωρισμός απειλεί τη βάση ολόκληρης της οικονομίας της αγοράς, γιατί χάνοντας την εμπιστοσύνη στο χρήμα, στο μέσο ανταλλαγής, οι άνθρωποι αποθαρρύνονται να προβούν σε περαιτέρω εμπορικές ή οικονομικές δραστηριότητες. Μια υγιής οικονομία της αγοράς, επομένως, προϋποθέτει ότι τα χρήματα έχουν σταθερή και ισχυρή αξία. Τόσο ο Hayek, όσο και ο Friedman υποστήριξαν επομένως πως η κύρια οικονομική ευθύνη της διακυβέρνησης είναι να διατηρεί το «χρήμα υγιές», που επιτυγχάνεται μέσα από τη μείωση, ή και την εξάλειψη, σύμφωνα με τις προσδοκίες του Hayek, του πληθωρισμού συνολικά. Εντούτοις όμως, ο Κεϋνσιανισμός αύξησε τον πληθωρισμό και προκάλεσε τον στασιμοπληθωρισμό της δεκαετίας του 1970. Αυτή ήταν η ερμηνεία του μονεταρισμού (monetarism), της θεωρίας δηλαδή πως ο τιμάριθμος καθορίζεται από την ποσότητα του χρήματος που υπάρχουν μέσα στην οικονομία: την προσφορά δηλαδή χρημάτων. Με άλλα λόγια, ο πληθωρισμός εμφανίζεται όταν «όλο και περισσότερο χρήμα "κυνηγάει" όλο και λιγότερα αγαθά».
Από τότε λοιπόν που άρχισε να εφαρμόζεται η νεοφιλελεύθερη πολική στην Ελλάδα, πρέπει να ξέρουμε πως δεν τους ενδιαφέρει το πόσο θα φτάσουν οι άνεργοι, αλλά το μόνο που τους νοιάζει είναι το ύψος του πληθωρισμού και κυρίως φυσικά το έλλειμμα. Στο δεύτερο φυσικά πρέπει να επικεντρωθούμε όλοι μας, αλλά όχι με τον νεοφιλελεύθερο τρόπο. Αλήθεια πόσο οξύμωρο είναι να μιλάει για τα καλά του «υπαρκτού φιλελευθερισμού» ένας Έλληνας πολέμιος του «υπαρκτού σοσιαλισμού»; Εννοώ για τον νεοφιλελεύθερο πολιτικό Α.Ανδριανόπουλο και το άρθρο του «Ο φιλελευθερισμός κυριαρχεί», όπου υιοθετεί την επιχειρηματολογία του επίσης νεοφιλελεύθερου δημοσιογράφου της Καθημερινής Πάσχου Μανδραβέλη.
Τα κύρια σημεία του νεοφιλελευθερισμού είναι[Neo-liberalism, Martinez και Garcia]:- Κανόνας της ελεύθερης αγοράς. Ελευθερώνοντας "ελεύθερες" επιχειρήσεις ή ιδιωτικές επιχειρήσεις από οποιουσδήποτε θεσμούς επιβάλλονται από την κυβέρνηση, ανεξαρτήτως του πόση κοινωνική καταστροφή προκαλεί. Μεγαλύτερη ελευθερία στο διεθνές εμπόριο και επένδυση. Μείωση των μισθών με διάσπαση των εργαζομένων, και αφαίρεση των δικαιωμάτων των εργατών, τα οποία κατακτήθηκαν έπειτα από πολλών χρόνων πάλη. Τερματισμός στους ελέγχους τιμών. Τελικά, ολοκληρωτική ελευθερία στη μετακίνηση κεφαλαίου, προϊόντων και υπηρεσιών. Για να μας πείσουν ότι αυτό είναι καλό για μας, λένε ότι μια αγορά χωρίς κανόνες είναι ο καλύτερος τρόπος για την αύξηση της οικονομικής ανάπτυξης, η οποία, τελικά, θα ωφελήσει όλους.
- Περικοπές στις δημόσιες δαπάνες για τις κοινωνικές υπηρεσίες όπως εκπαίδευση και υγεία. ΜΕΙΩΝΟΝΤΑΣ ΤΟ ΔΙΧΤΥ ΑΣΦΑΛΕΙΑΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΦΤΩΧΟΥΣ, ακόμα και τη συντήρηση δρόμων, γεφυρών και δικτύου ύδρευσης, ξανά στο όνομα της μείωσης του ρόλου της κυβέρνησης. Βέβαια, δεν αντιτίθενται στις κυβερνητικές επιχορηγήσεις και τις φορολογικές διευκολύνσεις των επιχειρήσεων.
- Απορύθμιση. Μείωση των οποιωνδήποτε κυβερνητικών ρυθμίσεων, οι οποίες μπορούν να ελαχιστοποιήσουν τα κέρδη, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της προστασίας του περιβάλλοντος και της ασφάλειας στην εργασία.
- Ιδιωτικοποίηση. Πώληση των κρατικών επιχειρήσεων, προϊόντων και υπηρεσιών σε ιδιώτες επενδυτές. Αυτό περιλαμβάνει τράπεζες, βιομηχανίες-κλειδιά, σιδηρόδρομους, δρόμους με διόδια, ηλεκτρισμό, σχολεία, νοσοκομεία, ακόμα και το μεγαλύτερο δημόσιο αγαθό: το νερό. Παρόλο ότι συνήθως γίνονται στο όνομα της μεγαλύτερης αποδοτικότητας -η οποία συχνά χρειάζεται- η ιδιωτικοποίηση είχε κυρίως σαν αποτέλεσμα τη συγκέντρωση του πλούτου σε ακόμα λιγότερα χέρια, και οδήγησε τις δημόσιες δαπάνες ακόμα περισσότερο προς τις δικές της ανάγκες.
- Εξαφάνιση της έννοιας του κοινού οφέλους ή της κοινότητας και αντικατάστασή τους από την ιδιωτική πρωτοβουλία. Καταπίεση των πιο φτωχών ανθρώπων μιας κοινωνίας, για να βρουν μόνοι τους λύσεις στην έλλειψη υγειονομικής περίθαλψης, εκπαίδευσης και κοινωνικής ασφάλισης, και στη συνέχεια να τους κατηγορήσουν - αν αποτύχουν - σαν τεμπέληδες.
ΕΠΙΛΟΓΟΣ
Στην χώρα μας ο νεοφιλελευθερισμός βρήκε πρόσφορο έδαφος λόγω της
α) επίθεσης της πολυπολιτισμικότητας και του μεταμοντερνισμού στην εθνική ταυτότητα και συνείδηση του λαού, με αποτέλεσμα την μείωση της αντίστασης του
β) θεσμοποίησης της «φαυλοκρατίας»(επικράτηση ανήθικων και διεφθαρμένων ανθρώπων ή και τρόπων, κυρίως στην άσκηση πολιτικής, διοίκησης ή διακυβέρνησης) η οποία αντικατέστησε την «Δικαιοσύνη»( τήρηση των αρχών του δικαίου από τα μέλη μιας κοινωνίας, που εκφράζεται με την ίση και ορθή εφαρμογή των γραπτών νόμων και με το σεβασμό των άγραφων νόμων) σε όλες τις κοινωνικές βαθμίδες και
γ) κομματοκρατίας, όπου τα κόμματα προστατεύουν το κομματικό κράτος τους, εισβάρος του συνταγματικά θεσμοποιημένου κοινωνικο-δίκαιου.
Ο σύγχρονος φιλελευθερισμός και η σοσιαλδημοκρατία υποχώρησαν εξαιτίας της όλο και περισσότερο αποδυναμωμένης βιωσιμότητας των εθνικών οικονομικών στρατηγικών, όπως της Κεϋνσιανής διαχείρισης της ζήτησης. Επίσης η παγκοσμιοποίηση πορεύεται χέρι με χέρι με το νεοφιλελευθερισμό, από τη στιγμή που ενισχύει την αγορά εις βάρος του κράτους και αποδυναμώνει την παράδοση και την εθνική ταυτότητα.
Όσο πιο γρήγορα το καταλάβουμε, ότι η αντίπαλη ιδεολογία είναι η Νεοφιλελεύθερη, η οποία μαζί με την Παγκοσμιοποίηση αγκαλιάζει πολιτικούς, ιδεολογίες και οπαδούς από την Συντηρητική Νέα Δεξιά έως την Νέα Αριστερά και τον Ατομικιστικό Αναρχισμό, έχει δε σαν αρωγούς τον εθνομηδενισμό, μεταμοντερνισμό, πολυπολιτισμό, φαυλοκρατία, κορπορατικό κρατισμό και κομματοκρατία, τόσο πιο γρήγορα θα ξαναποκτήσουμε όραμα για το αύριο.
Σημ:
[1]- Χρησιμοποιούμενη βιβλιογραφία το «Πολιτικές Ιδεολογίες»(3η έκδοση) του Andrew Heywood των εκδόσεων Επίκεντρο καθώς και η 4η(Poltical Idoelogies).
[2]-Περισσότερα για τον Νεοφιλελευθερισμό στο [akritas-neoliberalism.blogspot.com]
Ακρίτας
ΥΓ: Ευχαριστώ το Greek Alert για το βήμα που μου έδωσε στο blog του.
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28-10-1940: Όταν η Ελλάς έλεγε ΟΧΙ στην τότε «νέα τάξη πραγμάτων»
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας -
Πειραματόζωο η ΕΛΛΑΣ
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΣήμερα η χώρα μας βιώνει μία μεγάλη κρίση. Πολλοί καταλογίζουν ευθύνες στην ΕΕ και ειδικά στην Γερμανία. Είναι όμως έτσι ; Προσωπικά όπως έχω πει πρώτοι υπεύθυνοι για την κρίση είμαστε εμείς όπου αφήσαμε τον ασύδοτο κορποραστικό κρατισμό και την φαυλοκρατία να γίνουν τρόπος ζωής μας μέσω της ανώτερης ταξικής ελίτ. Αυτό έχει σαν αποτέλεσμα να είμαστε το πειραματόζωο των νεοφιλελεύθερων πολιτικών
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Νέο Blog για τον Νεοφιλελευθερισμό
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΌπως έχω πει από πέρσι, η Ελλάδα από τον Μάιο του 2010, είναι πλέον σε νεοφιλελεύθερη κατοχή. Το κοινωνικό κράτος τελείωσε. Τα κοινωνικά συμβόλαια είναι πλέον καμένα χαρτιά και θεωρητικές ονειρώξεις. Το μεγάλο πρόβλημα στην Ελλάδα ήταν και είναι η φαυλότητα που επικρατεί στην Ελληνική κοινωνία και ειδικά στην ελίτ (πολιτικοί, γιατροί, μηχανικοί, εφοριακοί, δικαστικοί κλπ). Αυτό που γίνεται σήμερα
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Οι γηγενείς Μακεδονομάχοι της Έδεσσας
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΟι γηγενείς Μακεδονομάχοι πολέμησαν και αυτοί για την ελευθερία της Μακεδονίας, αλλά διέφεραν σε πολλά από τους επήλυδες Μακεδονομάχους, από τον Παύλο Μελά, τον Γεώργιο Τσόντο-Βάρδα, τον Ιωάννη Καραβίτη και άλλους, Ελληνικής, Βλαχικής, Αλβανικής ή Σλαβικής Φωνής, πολέμησαν για την Ελληνική Μακεδονία από κοινού με τους άλλους Έλληνες Μακεδονομάχους. Δεν διακρίνονταν από τους άλλους Έλληνες,
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Με αφορμή τα υπό ψήφιση μέτρα....
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας -
πΓΔΜ: Πλαστή ταυτότητα διά της βίας
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΔημοσίευμα των «New York Times» καταδεικνύει την εθνικιστική πολιτική της ΠΓΔΜτου Matthew BrunwasserTHE NEW YORK TIMES«ΤΑ ΝΕΑ.gr», Σάββατο 15 Οκτωβρίου 2011 Η φιλόδοξη αναγέννηση της ταυτότητας αυτού του μικρού κράτους - μια βαλκανική πατέντα υπερπατριωτισμού που συνοδεύεται από τους παιάνες των ριζών στην Αρχαία Μακεδονία - προκαλεί ανησυχία διεθνώς για τον αυξανόμενο αυταρχισμό, τη φίμωση των
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The Wicked Game
» Modern Macedonian History
How Greece is being beaten into a pulp to force Europe’s banks to accept capital while keeping Italy et al in awe.
Reliable sources tell me that the troika has drawn a surprising line on the sand: Either the Greek government agrees to force upon the private sector trades unions an immediate reduction in minimum wages with immediate effect (plus the dismantling of all awards regarding dismissal compensation and limitations), or the next instalment (or tranche) of EU-IMF-ECB loans to Greece will be withheld. Noting that even Mrs Thatcher took years before she could impose her iron will on the trades unions, it is clear that the troika is asking the Greek government to commit to a change that it may be both unwilling and unable to effect. If this is true, two questions arise:
QUESTION 1: Why do the representatives of the Greek state’s creditors gamble the progress of their loan agreement with the government of the day on an immediate diminution of wages and awards that concern the private sector? While the IMF has had a long held fixation with low-er wages (and has never left an opportunity to dismantle collective bargaining agreements unexploited), it is curious that the troika seems prepared to risk derailing an already hugely expensive Greek bail-out for the sake of such an ideological project. Granted that that the troika may think of the present moment as its golden opportunity to beat a demoralised Greek government into total submission (especially given that no Greek state bonds will mature until well into December), a question remains about the troika’s choice of target: Why aim at the already pitifully low private sector wages when there are so many larger fish to fry elsewhere within the Greek state (e.g. public procurements, pharmaceutical bills, fee-free Universities etc.)?
QUESTION 2: The second question concerns the troika’s very thinking: Can they really believe that a wage reduction for the lowest paid European workers (who are vying for this ‘honour’ with their Portuguese counterparts) will, in the midst of a rampant recession, help boost private sector economic activity? Do they seriously think that entrepreneurs will seize upon such a wage reduction to invest in the Greek economy handsomely enough to generate a modicum of growth? As I am loathe to impute inanity on other parties, I shall assume that they cannot possibly believe this. I shall, therefore, give the troika the benefit of the doubt and presume that they, too, understand that a further reduction in private sector minimum wages will (at a time of falling public sector wages and employment) lead to a further, reduction in aggregate demand which will, undoubtedly, maintain (if not accelerate) the current rate at which Greek national income shrinks and, naturally, generate lower future taxes, thus giving the remorseless wheel of recession another twirl.
If my assumptions above are correct, what on earth is the troika doing? Here is a scenario that I think captures nicely, in all its horror that is, much of what is going on at the moment. Three are the main protagonists in my scenario: (1) European bankers (mainly French and German), (2) the German government, and (3) the NYF member-states, where NYF stands for ‘not yet fallen’ (which includes mainly Italy but also Spain and perhaps Belgium). Having established who the players are, it is important to define their objectives and constraints.
BANKERS: The bankers know well that their banks are bankrupt. They have known it for some time but have been hoping that the European Central Bank, together with their national governments (made up of politicians who truly value their cosy relation with the bankers), would keep their banks afloat and themselves in control of their banks. Unlike most businessmen/women who labour under the fear of bankruptcy, bankers face a different nightmare (since bankruptcy in fact increases their command of the surpluses produced by others, courtesy of the politicians’ infinite generosity with the taxpayers’ and the ECB’s money): Forced recapitalisation, is their worst-case scenario – of the sort that the American government introduced in conjunction with TARP (the trouble assets relief program). They fear a Euro-Tarp (of the type that we proposed in our Modest Proposal a year ago – see Policy 2) for the simple reason that recapitalisation of ‘their’ banks means that the bankers will lose the part of equity which has hitherto delivered to them control over the banks.
NYF member-states: Waiting on the sidelines, unable to utter a world (in case loose talk brings them greater disasters than their current situation), they are holding their breath hoping against hope for some decision from Berlin that might get them off the hook. With the bond markets treating them like the new pariahs, Italy, Spain and Belgium find themselves in a tight corner. They are damned if their do not adopt swinging cuts (since ‘inaction’ will be perceived as fresh evidence that their spreads will rise) and they are damned if they do (since austerity will further erode their nations’ anaemic growth; a development which will also push up interest rates). Deep down, their remaining hope revolves around some scheme that will see their sovereign debt come down in size, if not via a haircut then at least by means of a reduction of the interest payments due in the coming decade.
GERMAN GOVERNMENT: Berlin’s main concern is how to manage this crisis by means of minimal European integration. It disdains the idea of any type of continental consolidation which threatens the Principle of Perfectly Separable Debts (PPSDs, as I call it). After a long eighteen months during which Germany’s political elite struggled to remain in denial of the systemic nature of this Crisis, Mrs Merkel now seems resigned to the idea that the banking sector of Northern Europe (including of course Germany’s) is in tatters and in urgent need to capital infusions. German politicians seem to have grasped the importance of the fact that the liabilities of the eurozone’s banks is more than 300% the eurozone’s aggregate GDP (Nb. the relevant ratio in the United States, in 2008, was ‘only’ 200%). After a lot of huffing and puffing, Mrs Merkel and Mr Schaeuble have accepted the inevitable: About one trillion notional euros must be set aside for the banks. While they have not swallowed, as yet, that this must be done at the central EU level (as opposed to a government by government level), they are getting there, kicking and screaming of course. Two are sticking points for Germany: It does not want to refloat the banks (for the second time in three years) and have to pay Greece the money that Greece owes to the banks. In short, a Greek default is a political prerequisite for what is becoming a serial bailout of the Franco-German banks. The second sticking point is Italy and, more generally, the NFY member-states: Germany fears that if the NFY member-states see that Greece is allowed to diminish its debt mountain through a default that still allows it to remain within the eurozone, they may get ideas that a similar solution may be in the offing for them.
THE EMERGING STRATEGY: Germany knows that the banks will resist recapitalisation as long as Greece is being kept afloat by the troika. To gain leverage over the recalcitrant bankers, Berlin must push them over the edge with a Greek default. But, at the same time, to stop Italy and the remaining NFY member-states from getting dangerous ideas in their head, Mrs Merkel is determined to make an example of the one member-state that is allowed to default: Greece. It is for his purpose, and for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with Greece itself (its economy, its much needed structural change etc.) that the troika has embarked on a mission to make Greece so wretched, so poor and so unattractive that its default will give Berlin the bargaining power it needs with Northern European bankers while, at the same time, making it abundantly clear to the NFY member-states that they really do not want to even think of default as a way out of their debt crisis.
THE CATCH: This strategy might have worked if the Crisis were additive, quasi-linear and static; if it were possible, in simpler words, to use plain arithmetic to add Greece’s debts with other bad assets inside the banks’ books, then to juxtapose this sum against the (possibly leveraged) funds that the EFSF can throw at the banks, and so on… until this most peculiar Crisis Accounting yielded Germany’s optimal strategy. Unfortunately for all of us, no capital ‘c’ Crisis is additive and quasi-linear. It is, rather, highly non-linear and violently dynamic. The attempt to ring-fence Greece will fail as surely as it did last year. Last year, in May 2010, the very creation of the EFSF was meant to ring-fence Greece on the basis of a linear, static logic. Unremarkably, it failed. Now, the great idea that Mrs Merkel seems to have accepted is to try again by turbo-charging the toxic EFSF (e.g. by using ECB leverage to turn its €440 billion into more than €1 trillion). What this stratagem is ignoring is that the problem with the EFSF type of approach (based as it is on the assumption that each country’s woes ought to be dealt with separately/sequentially – as opposed to at once, systemically) is not the size of the EFSF but its structure and logic. That byturbo-charging a toxic creation you get a monster.
In short, the plan seems to be to let Greece default in a big way, so as to scare the bankers into accepting new capital, while, at once, grinding the Greek social economy into a pulp to keep Italy and the rest of the NFY member-states in awe and keen to do as they are told. Our collective tragedy is that this plan, like all the others before it, will not work. Why? Because, like all the previous plans, it does not address the eurozone’s systemic Crisis systematically. Because, once again, the powers that be choose to ignore the interconnections between: (a) the banking sector’s insolvencies, (b) the lack of fiscal shock absorbers in case there is a run on the bonds of one or more member-states, and (c) the absence of a decent surplus recycling mechanism that directs surplus into deficit regions in the form of productive investments. As long as this form of European denial remains, Greece’s reduction to a pile of ashes will only lead Mrs Merkel to a Pyrrhic victory over the banks.
Source: [yanisvaroufakis.eu]
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Η Μάχη της Επανακεφαλαιοποίησης
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤου Γιάννη Βαρουφάκηprotagon.gr Προχτές σας μετέφερα τα τελευταία νέα από την Μάχη της Επανακεφαλαιοποίησης (που αυτές τις μέρες διεξάγεται μεταξύ Γερμανικής κυβέρνησης και γαλλο-γερμανικών τραπεζών) όπου το ελληνικό κούρεμα (δηλαδή μια διαγραφή μεγάλου μέρους του ελληνικού δημόσιου χρέους) έχει ξεφύγει από κάθε συζήτηση περί καταπολέμησης της κρίσης της ελληνικής οικονομίας και έχει μετατραπεί
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Παύλος Μελάς και ΚΚΕ
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςTου Γεράσιμου ΑποστολάτουΑπό το βιβλίο, «η παγίδευση της ιστορίας», σελ 159 ΣΤΙΣ 13 ΟΚΤΩΒΡΙΟΥ 1904 ο εθνικός ήρωας Παύλος Μελάς έπεφτε από τουρκικό βόλι στη Σιάτιστα Καστοριάς. Η θυσία του για την απελευθέρωση της Ελληνικής Μακεδονίας θα γίνει από τότε εθνικό σύμβολο αγώνων και ηρωισμών. Αυτές τις ημέρες κλείνουν ακριβώς 100 χρόνια από το θάνατο του. Έχουν λεχθεί και ειπωθεί πολλά για τον ήρωα.
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Τι είναι κρατισμός;
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΣας θυμίζει κάτι το παρακάτω απόσπασμα; Ο κρατισμός στηρίζεται στη φοβία, περιορίζει την αυτονομία του ατόμου, ρημάζει την εμπιστοσύνη των πολιτών στους θεσμούς, υποσκάπτει τους κανόνες και τις αξίες, υποθηκεύει την αξιοκρατία, δε στηρίζει την κοινωνική αναδιανομή εισοδημάτων και την ισότητα δικαιωμάτων και δυνατοτήτων. Το κυριότερο όμως αποτέλεσμα της κοινωνικά εγκληματικής του δράσης είναι ότι
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Τι γίνεται με τη λίστα φυσικών προσώπων μεγαλοφειλετών;
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΑπό τo taxalia Θυμάστε την ερώτηση που κάνουμε κάθε μέρα στον κ.Βενιζέλο; "Τι γίνεται με τη λίστα φυσικών προσώπων μεγαλοφειλετών;" Την κάναμε δεκάδες φορές, Και να που ήρθε η απάντηση !!! Καίει Παπανδρέου, Παπακωνσταντίνου ο πρώην Υπουργός Οικονομικών Κουσελάς – «Τα χώνει» στον Βενιζέλο Της Δήμητρας Μάνη από το capital.gr Όχι απλά επιμένει στην αποκάλυψή του ότι έχει παραδώσει εδώ και μήνες
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Στις 16 Νοεμβρίου η απόφαση της Χάγης για Σκόπια-Ελλάδα
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΣύμφωνα με εφημερίδα των Σκοπίων, την Ντνέβνικ, στις 16 Νοεμβρίου αναμένεται να γνωστοποιηθεί η απόφαση του Διεθνούς Δικαστηρίου της Χάγης (ΔΔΧ) αναφορικά με την προσφυγή της ΠΓΔΜ κατά της Ελλάδας. Τον Απρίλιο του 2008, η Ελλάδα αρνήθηκε να προσχωρήσουν τα Σκόπια στο ΝΑΤΟ, στην Σύνοδο Κορυφής του οργανισμού και η ΠΓΔΜ κατέθεσε προσφυγή ενώπιον του Διεθνούς Δικαστηρίου, στις 13 Νοεμβρίου,
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Με αφορμή τα νέα νεοφιλελεύθερα μέτρα....
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΌπως έχω πει από πέρσι, η Ελλάδα από τον Μάιο του 2010, είναι πλέον σε νεοφιλελεύθερη κατοχή. Το κοινωνικό κράτος τελειώνει. Τα κοινωνικά συμβόλαια είναι πλέον καμένα χαρτιά και θεωρητικές ονειρώξεις. Το μεγάλο πρόβλημα στην Ελλάδα ήταν και είναι η φαυλότητα που επικρατεί στην Ελληνική κοινωνία και ειδικά στην ελίτ (πολιτικοί, γιατροί, μηχανικοί, εφοριακοί, δικαστικοί κλπ). Αυτό που γίνεται
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Pan Macedonian Canada Letter to Liberal leader Bob Rae
» Modern Macedonian History
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Dear Sir,
On behalf of the members of the PanMacedonian Association of Canada, the largest organization of Canadians of Greek origin from the region of Macedonia in Greece, we are writing to you to express our concern regarding your congratulatory statement to our fellow Canadians from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM) on September 8, 2011 [1]. This date marked the 20th anniversary since Skopje declared its independence from Belgrade in 1991. Just like you do, we share the same conviction that liberty and freedom should be celebrated, promoted, and congratulated, and we extend our congratulations to our northern neighbours and their diaspora communities. However, in your letter you addressed our fellow Canadians from the FYROM as “Macedonian-Canadians”, and you lauded their contribution to a “harmonious” Canada. The PanMacedonian Associations all around the world have been at the forefront of protecting the Hellenism of Macedonia ever since that... famous US State Department circular Airgram in 1944 to all US diplomatic missions stated that talk of a “Macedonian nation” was “demagoguery” aimed at “aggressive intentions” against Greece [2, 3].
The Liberal Party of Canada has always been a party that Canadians of Greek descent have had a great working relationship with. When Prime Minister Harper’s Conservative government – following US President Bush’s lead – recognized the FYROM as “Republic of Macedonia” in 2007, this was seen as an affront to the sensitivities of all Greeks worldwide even though the action was of course made naively and without any malicious intent. As Macedonians, we too were alienated and continue to be so. Thankfully, we were relieved to see that the Liberal Party opposed this action by Canada’s Tory government.
Greece and its northern neighbour have been at the UN negotiating table since 1995 when both parties agreed to an Interim Accord and an interim name (the FYROM) until a new name could be mutually agreed upon under the auspices of the UN. The fact that Skopje has promoted itself as “Republic of Macedonia” – against the wishes of the UN – at the bilateral level is irrelevant. However, it is important to state that the promotion of this mistake by third countries such as Canada has only hardened Skopje’s stance and has thwarted all attempts of a solution to this imbroglio. There are many examples of irredentism at the expense of Greece (and Canadians of Greek descent) by official Skopje and its diaspora. At the anniversary celebrations, ruling government officials presided over events that promoted the violent break-up of Greece’s north with annexation to their country [4]. Skopje’s diaspora lobby group – the “United Macedonian Diaspora (UMD)” – promoted the partition of Greece in 2010 in Toronto. All this was in front of cheering crowds of “Macedonian-Canadians” [5].
This is disturbing and is anachronistic for our times. It is also against the vision of Canada and what we hold dear for the future of the world. We trust Mr. Rae, that the Liberal Party of Canada and you can see our concern in these developments. As a result, our representatives look forward to, and welcome, a planned meeting with you along with other Greek-Canadian organizations in the very near future.
Sincerely,
Haralambos MoutousidesPresidentPanMacedonian Association of Canada
1) [www.liberal.ca]
2) The Department [of State] has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia, emanating principally from Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav Partisan and other sources, with the implication that Greek territory would be included in the projected state. This government considers talk of Macedonian "nation", Macedonian "Fatherland", or Macedonian "national consciousness" to be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.From: [www1.mfa.gr] 3) And, [www.panmacedonian.info]
4) In the following video, the FYROM’s Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and his government officials (including President Gjorge Ivanov) are seen enjoying a performance of the song “Biser Balkanski” (Pearl of the Balkans) and it has the following lyrics:
“Hey, Macedonia, Pearl of the Balkans, Aegean [region of Macedonia in Greece] and Pirin [region in Bulgaria]: join with the clear waters of the Vardar. Leave conquerors...enemies!”
[www.youtube.com] (last accessed September 9, 2011).
5) Toronto businessman and community leader John Bitove Sr. being interviewed by UMD president Metodija Koloski in Toronto (2010). He stated to a cheering crowd that he wished for a "United Macedonia". (see especially from 3 minutes on; last accessed June 1, 2011): [www.youtube.com]
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Οι Σλαβικές πηγές για τις μετακινήσεις των Σλαβόφωνων πληθυσμών (1912-1930)
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤου Ιάκωβου Μιχαηλίδη Από την πλευρά τους οι Σλάβοι ιστορικοί, στη συντριπτική τους πλειοψηφία Γιουγκοσλάβοι, δημοσίευσαν διαφορετικούς, εντυπωσιακά μεγαλύτερους αριθμούς για το σλαβόφωνο πληθυσμό της Ελλάδας. Είναι ιδιαίτερα σημαντικό πως η γιουγκοσλαβική ιστοριογραφία, της οποίας το ενδιαφέρον για τις εξελίξεις στην ελληνική Μακεδονία αυξανόταν σταδιακά μετά το 1945, σε αντίθεση με εκείνο της
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ΕΣΩΤΕΡΙΚΗ ΧΡΕΟΚΟΠΙΑ; Πιθανολογούμε ότι, η Ελλάδα θα διατηρηθεί στην Ευρωζώνη, θα ισορροπεί σε τεντωμένο σχοινί χωρίς να χρεοκοπεί, ενώ ταυ
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΆρθρο Πάρα πολλές φορές ευρισκόμαστε αντιμέτωποι με ερωτήσεις, σχετικά με το τι ακριβώς είναι η χρεοκοπία. Η απάντηση μας είναι ότι, ένα κράτος πτωχεύει όταν δεν μπορεί να πληρώσει τους δανειστές του - αυτούς δηλαδή που διαθέτουν ληξιπρόθεσμες υποσχετικές πληρωμής (ομόλογα), οι οποίες αφορούν είτε τόκους, είτε
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Τους είπε και «μαλ...» και πέταξε έξω από το Ευρωκοινοβούλιο τους Σκοπιανούς
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΠρωτοφανές επεισόδιο, με αρνητικούς πρωταγωνιστές Σκοπιανούς δημοσιογράφους, που επιχείρησαν να διαλύσουν εκδήλωση ευρωβουλευτών, έγινε το βράδυ της Τρίτης στο Ευρωκοινοβούλιο. Αποτέλεσμα αυτού ήταν να εκραγεί ο ελληνικής καταγωγής Γερμανός ευρωβουλευτής του Φιλελεύθερου κόμματος, Γιώργος Χατζημαρκάκης, και να πετάξει έξω τους ταραξίες, αποκαλώντας τους μάλιστα «μαλ...». Συγκεκριμένα, σύμφωνα με
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Ξέρετε στα πόσο βγαίνει ο υπάλληλος του ΔΝΤ στην σύνταξη;
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΑυτοί που μας επιβάλουν τα όρια ηλικίας και το κόψιμο των συντάξεων, ξέρετε στα πόσα βγαίνουν στην σύνταξη; Μιλάμε για πλήρη, μειωμένη και ελάχιστο χρόνο υπηρεσίας; Διαβάστε και κρίνετε; Έχουμε και λέμε Ελάχιστος χρόνος υπηρεσίας:............3 χρόνια Κατώτατο όριο ηλικίας για πρόωρη:...50 έτη Όριο ηλικίας για πλήρη:..................62 έτη ας τα έχουμε υπόψη όταν τους ακούμε, ειδικά τους
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Αιτία των προβλημάτων η έλλειψη ηγεσίας
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΟ καθηγητής Βασίλης Μαρκεζίνης επισημαίνει στον «Φ»: Άρχισε να ενοχλεί η αλαζονεία των Τούρκων Του Κώστα Βενιζέλου Η έλλειψη εναλλακτικών λύσεων στο χώρο της πολιτικής ηγεσίας Ελλάδος και Κύπρου καθιστούν ανέφικτη τη συντονισμένη δράση «με σκοπό να κοπούν τα φτερά των Τούρκων» Ο καθηγητής Βασίλης Μαρκεζίνης υποδεικνύει πως ακόμη και σε περιόδους κρίσεων, εάν υπάρχει σχεδιασμός και πολιτική
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Pau Gasol receives Death Threats in his FB page by Ultra-Nationalists from FYROM
» Modern Macedonian History
Pau Gasol, the famous Spanish Basketball player receives death threats by FYROM’s Ultra-Nationalists in his Facebook Page.
Its surely the most pathetic News Story related to the Eurobasket 2011 of Lithuania. Pau Gasol, the ace of the Spanish National Team and LA Lakers, is receiving numerous abuses and even Death threats by Slavic Ultra-Nationalists of FYROM after commiting the… “crime” to call their country FYROM. In other words, the name that FYROM’s governments have agreed to use in ALL the International Organizations.
The Spanish player published in his FB page last Thursday, the following:
This friday we’ll play against FYROM to get a spot in the final and the straight qualification for the Olympics. It won’t be an easy game though, as they managed to knock out Lithuania with a whole arena roaring against them. We will have to be very focus and prepared on performing our game. Thanks a lot for your support!
Immediately a large number of FYROM’s fans, full of Hysteria, showed their true racist colours by signing to his page and starting to abuse him. Some of them went further by even writing Death Threats against him!!
Greece and FYROM have been tangled in a ongoing international dispute regarding the latter’s name, after FYROM’s Slavs absurdly keep claiming the Name, history and heritage of ancient Macedonia, an ancient Greek kingdom in Macedonia, Greece.
Source:history-of-macedonia.com
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Για να φανεί η γύμνια της σκοπιανής προπαγάνδας...
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςόποιος Μακεδόνας πάει στην αυριανή παρουσίαση του ελληνοσκοπιανού λεξικού στην Φλώρινα, ας κάνει μία και μοναδική ερώτηση στον Φρήντμαν: Ποια είναι η γνώμη του για την λεξικογραφική και ετυμολογική ερμηνεία του Σλαβικού λήμματος Македонија, και εάν συμφωνεί με την ερμηνεία του λεξικού που παρουσιάζει.
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» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤου Ευάγγελου ΚωφούΗ Ελλάδα και το Ανατολικό Ζήτημα(1875-1881), Εκδοτική Αθηνώνσελ 211-214 Αμέσως μετά το Συνέδριο του Βερολίνου, η Μακεδονία αρχίζει να εμφανίζεται στο επίκεντρο των διεθνών ζυμώσεων, καθώς τα βαλκανικά κράτη και οι κυριότερες από τις Μεγάλες Δυνάμεις -Ρωσία, Αυστρία και Αγγλία- προσπαθούν να επεκτείνουν την επιρροή τους προς τη νευραλγική αυτή περιοχή που είχε παραμείνει υπό
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ΥΠΟΘΕΤΙΚΟ ΣΕΝΑΡΙΟ ΧΡΕΟΚΟΠΙΑΣ: Οι χρηματοπιστωτικές αγορές έχουν μία σίγουρη μέθοδο για να προβλέπουν το μέλλον – το δημιουργούν χειραγωγ
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΠερίληψη: Στο κείμενο αναλύεται τι θα μπορούσε να συμβεί στην περίπτωση που μία ανεπτυγμένη χώρα δήλωνε στάση πληρωμών, με στόχο να αποφευχθούν τα οδυνηρά επακόλουθα της χρεοκοπίας - σε παγκόσμια κλίμακα. Κατά την άποψη μας, την οποία αναφέρουμε στο τέλος, μπορούμε να φτάσουμε σε ένα αίσιο αποτέλεσμα, χωρίς να προηγηθεί ένας εξαιρετικά καταστροφικός δρόμος. “Πάντοτε υπάρχουν λύσεις,
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Αθήνα....Ξύπνα!!!
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΕυχαριστώ τον Χρήστο Καράτζιο για την αποστολή των βίντεο,ευτυχώς που υπάρχει η διασπορά.
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Slavmacedonians call the Greeks “Freaks of Nature” & “Deranged Bastardly Monsters” and the Australian Court dismiss the racial vilification complaint!!!
» Modern Macedonian HistoryAMAC’s racial vilification complaint dismissed
Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC)
Press Release
8 Sept 2011
The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council (AMAC) would like to express its disappointment at the decision of VCAT Member Noreen Megay to dismiss AMAC’s racial vilification complaint against the ‘Australian Macedonian (sic) Weekly’ (AMW).
Last week Ms. Megay handed down her judgment on the matter which was heard at VCAT on the 3rd and 4th of August 2011. The AMW’s article which was the subject of the AMAC’s complaint was published in May 2009, and Ms. Megay found that the article did not meet the high threshold imposed by Section 7 of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 (Vic) for a finding of racial vilification. Section 7 requires that the conduct “incite hatred, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of” a class of persons on the ground of the race of that class of persons.
AMAC’s legal advice was that the disgraceful language used in AMW’s article would likely have fallen foul of Section 7. The article in question was titled ‘Who in this Celestial World (sic) gave the Greeks the right to take away the Macedonian language?’ and AMAC’s complaint was based mainly on the following parts of the article:
The complaint was not based on history or on any historical errors contained in the article. The complaint purely concerned the racist, abusive and gratuitously insulting nature of the article. Ms. Megay acknowledged that the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of the AMW article had no bearing on the decision.
In his witness statement, the AMW’s editor, Ljubcho Stankovski, admitted the language in the article was “extravagant”. Ms. Megay stated that she considered this to be an understatement and that, in her opinion, the article was a “hyperbolic rant”1, but nonetheless did not consider the article breached Section 7.
Ms. Megay came to this conclusion despite the fact that, during cross-examination, Mr. Stankovski admitted that, had the article been written about Slav-Macedonians, it would have had the effect of inciting hatred or serious contempt or revulsion against Slav-Macedonians.
AMAC considers Ms. Megay should have placed more weight on the fact the respondent (Mr. Stankovski is the editor and sole proprietor of the AMW) basically conceded – to the surprise of everyone present at the hearing – that he considered the article contravened Section 7.
To-date there has been no successful racial vilification complaint made under Victorian law. AMAC finds it difficult to foresee what type of conduct or language could possibly be used to invoke a sanction under Section 7, given that the said article did not (in the opinion of Ms Megay) cross the line. AMAC considers that Section 7 is a poorly drafted and toothless provision and that it should be repealed so as not to give false hope to people who have legitimate grievances and have been racially vilified. The wording of the Section 7 makes the assessment of whether particular conduct breaches the Section highly subjective and too dependent on the personal taste of the Tribunal member hearing the matter.
The danger of the Tribunal finding that the AMW article was not unlawful is that the Courts and Tribunals can be seen to be condoning the kind of racist, insidious language used in the article. Ms. Megay saw it necessary to state that, despite her finding there was no breach of Section 7, she “would not wish to be taken as approving the tenor of the article”2. Despite Ms. Megay’s comment, AMAC believes the danger that the Tribunal be seen as condoning the AMW’s conduct is a real one. A further danger is that the Victorian community may perceive that there are double standards attached to racial vilification laws, in that some ethnic groups are more likely to be successful in making a complaint than others.
There have been various academic criticisms of the particular legislation and similar legislation in other states. AMAC believes that amendments are necessary to ensure the proper protection of Victorians from vilification and the maintenance of multiculturalism in Victoria. AMAC has the option of appealing against the decision to the Supreme Court of Victoria.
AMAC’s legal advice is that Ms. Megay’s judgment contained numerous errors of law upon which an appeal can be based. However, in considering whether to appeal the decision, AMAC will have to take into account the significant expenses entailed with an appeal and the considerable risk of costs being awarded against it, should the appeal be unsuccessful. AMAC notes that there has been criticism of the decision in the mainstream media and provides the following links for the information of our members:
1 [blogs.news.com.au]
2. [www.heraldsun.com.au]
The article in question is attached to this press release. Ms. Megay’s judgment can be found at the following link: [www.austlii.edu.au]
i) Referrence to Greece as a “thieving nation”
ii) Reference to Greeks as: “deranged bastardly monsters”, “freaks of nature”
iii) Reference to the Greek language as “their ugly language”
iv) the author asks Greeks what “evil alien abstractions possessed your dark soul?”, what “barbaric wickedness obliterated your senses?” and “What evil spirits possessed your moronic conscience to be so cruel and predisposed to such ghastly monstrosity?”
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Μελίτη, Βοσταράνη και Οφτσαράνη
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Ο Εμφύλιος στη ΒΑ Εορδαία: 1943 -1949
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΘανάσης ΚαλλιανιώτηςΑνακοίνωση στην Ημερίδα της 13ης Δεκέμβρη 2002 στο Γυμνάσιο –Λύκειο Φιλώτα ean@acn.g [gym-filot.flo.sch.gr] Όλοι σας γνωρίζετε τι σημαίνουν οι λέξεις Εμφύλιος Πόλεμος κι επίσης έχετε διδαχτεί τον Πελοποννησιακό Πόλεμο, την Εικονομαχία στο Βυζάντιο, τις συγκρούσεις του 1824 στην Πελοπόννησο, τα γεγονότα του 1917 με τους Βενιζελικούς εναντίον
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Συνέντευξη Βασίλειου Μαρκεζίνη.
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΣτο Αντίβαρο και σε μια αποκλειστική συνέντευξη που παραχώρησε ο Ακαδημαϊκός καθηγητής κ. Βασίλειος Μαρκεζίνης αναλύει τα σχετικά με την πολιτική, οικονομική, εξωτερική και ηθική κρίση που αντιμετωπίζει η Ελλάδα υπό το φως των γεωπολιτικών εξελίξεων. Προτείνω στους φίλους του blog να διαβάσουν την συνέντευξη στο.. [www.antibaro.gr]
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» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςτου καθ. Μιχαήλ Τρίτος, Κοσμήτωρ της Θεολογικής Σχολής του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκη [www.pemptousia.com]
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» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤα τελευταία 3 χρόνια, και κάθε καλοκαίρι, όπως είναι γνωστό οι Σκοπιανοί προσπαθούν να εκμεταλευτούν τα Μακεδονικά πανηγύρια, ειδικά αυτά της Δυτικής Μακεδονίας. Εκτός από τα διάφορα συγκροτήματα που καλούν από την πΓΔΜ και τα παρουσιάζουν λες και είναι το κεντρικό γεγονός σε συγκεκριμένα πάντα πανηγύρια, δίνουν μεγάλο στόμφο στα λεγόμενα «Μακεδονικά τραγούδια». Αυτά προσπαθούν να τα
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Η γένεση του Μακεδονικού από την Κομμουνιστική Διεθνή.
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤον Ιανουάριο του 1920 συνήλθε στη Σόφια η 1η Συνδιάσκεψη των βαλκανικών κομμουνιστικών κομμάτων στην οποία το Σ.Ε.Κ.Ε.(Κ) αντιπροσωπεύτηκε από τον Δ. Λιγδόπουλο.(49) Η συνδιάσκεψη αποφάσισε κατ' αρχάς τη μετονομασία της Βαλκανικής Σοσιαλιστικής Ομοσπονδίας σε Βαλκανική Κομμουνιστική Ομοσπονδία (Β.Κ.Ο.) κι έθεσε επίσης ως σκοπό της μία «προλεταριακή επανάσταση» σε όλα τα βαλκανικά κράτη. Σύμφωνα
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» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΠαρακάτω δημοσιεύεται μία σειρά επιστολών της ομογενειακής παροικιακής οργάνωσης Νέας Ένωσης Χωριών Φλωρίνης "Μακεδονικός Ελληνισμός" και του πρώην Νομάρχη Φλωρίνης το 2004. Αφορμή για τον "καβγά", όμοιος του οποίου ίσως να μην έχει ξαναγραφτεί στα παροικιακά χρονικά και στον οποίο εμπλέκονται οι πολιτική και πολιτειακή ηγεσία, αρχηγοί των κομμάτων έδωσε ένα μήνυμα που έστειλε η Νέα Ένωση
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» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΤην ιστορική αλήθεια για την ελληνικότητα της Μακεδονίας του Φιλίππου και του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου, αποκαθιστά ο πρώην πρωθυπουργός της ΠΓΔΜ Λιούμπκο Γκεοργκιέφσκι, σε πρόσφατη συνέντευξή του στον Μιλένκο Νεντελκόφσκι του τηλεοπτικού σταθμού Kanal 5, των Σκοπίων. Ο Γκεοργκιέφσκι αντικρούει με αδιάψευστα ιστορικά στοιχεία τις ανιστόρητες θέσεις των Σλαβομακεδόνων περί ύπαρξης «Μακεδονικού» έθνους
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Madžiri, madjiri, ματζίρι.....
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας...μία λέξη, την οποία έχουμε διαβάσει πολλές φορές στο διαδίκτυο από τους Σλαβομακεδονιστές. Σήμερα έγινε της μόδας λόγω των δηλώσεων του Πάντε Ασλάκοφ. Για να δούμε τι σημαίνει αυτή η λέξη στην πραγματικότητα αλλά και στην αργκό τους. Όπως είναι γνωστό, αποκαλούν τους εαυτούς τους «dopii», ο οποίος προέρχεται από την ελληνική λέξη «εν-ντόπιος». Στα σλαβικά αυτή η λέξη είναι «tukašni». Τώρα
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Παναγία αν ακούσεις, μη ρωτάς αν είναι Αγία
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας«Γλυκιά Παρθένε, αξίωσέ με Νάρθω και πάλι στον ναό σου, Στα πλατάνια τα θεόρατα Όπου φυσά γλυκά η αύρα, Κάτω στο ρέμα, που η πηγή κελαρύζει Κι επάνω θροϊζει η αύρα μαλακά. ……………….. Στα ‘νεάμερα τ’ αγαπημένα Της δοξασμένης μεταστάσεώς σου Ήθελα νάμαι να ψάλω το ‘Πεποικιλμένη’ Στο πανηγύρι το σεμνό. Να βλέπω να θαυμάζω τη μορφή σου…»
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ΣΗΜΕΙΩΜΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΤΣΑΜΗΔΕΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΚΚΕ (Φεβ.-Απρίλιος 1949)
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίαςτου Ευάγγελου Κωφού, Ιστορικού/Πρέσβη-Εμπειρογνώμονα ε.τ.*[*Ανάρτηση/καταχώρηση με την άδεια του συγγραφέα] Από το υλικό του προσωπικού αρχείου του Αλέκου Παπαπαναγιώτου, από το οποίο ο εκλιπών μου επέτρεψε να λάβω αντίγραφα, εντόπισα αναφορές για το θέμα της επιστράτευσης στο ΔΣΕ Τσάμηδων που είχαν καταφύγει στην Αλβανία στην περίοδο 1944-1945. Οι αναφορές εστιάζονται στην περίοδο
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Ο Μητροπολίτης Φλώρινας Θεόκλητος για τις δηλώσεις του προέδρου της Μελίτης
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΜέ βαθιά λύπη καί ἀγανάκτηση πληροφορήθηκα ἀπό τόν τύπο τίς δηλώσεις σέ ἐφημερίδα τῶν Σκοπίων τοῦ προέδρου τῆς Τοπικῆς Κοινότητας Μελίτης Παναγιώτη Ἀναστασιάδη. Ὁ κ. Ἀναστασιάδης εὑρισκόμενος προφανῶς σέ ἐντεταλμένη ἀποστολή δήλωσε σέ ἐφημερίδα τῶν Σκοπίων πώς στήν Τοπική Κοινότητα τῆς Μελίτης «ζοῦν περίπου 2.300 Μακεδόνες, λίγοι Ἀλβανοί, Τούρκοι καί ἐλάχιστοι Ἕλληνες». Ἐπί τῆς δηλώσεώς του
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Ποια είναι η Τεούτα Αρίφι;
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΑπό χτες κυκλοφορεί στο διαδίκτυο μία δήλωση της νέας αντιπροέδρου της ακροδεξιάς κυβέρνησης Γκρούεφσκι. Η κυρία λοιπόν αυτή , είναι Αλβανίδα και προέρχεται από το κόμμα DUI του Αλβανού Αχμέτι και δήλωσε ότι το ζήτημα της ονομασίας της χώρας για διεθνή χρήση μπορεί να εξεταστεί(μας κάνει δηλαδή χάρη) και όχι τα ζητήματα της ταυτότητας.Αυτό όμως που δεν ξέρει ο κόσμος είναι ότι η κυρία αυτή ι
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Πρόγραμμα Σκόπια 2014: Έφτασαν και οι φαλαγγίτες....
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΕνώ όλος ο κόσμος φλέγεται από την οικονομική κρίση, η ακροδεξιά κυβέρνηση του Γκρουέφσκι συνεχίζει ακάθεκτη την αρχαιοπληξία των σλαβόφωνων κατοίκων της. Μετά την εγκατάσταση του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου στην κεντρική πλατεία Μακεδονία των Σκοπίων, έφθασαν και τα αγάλματα που θα το πλαισιώσουν στην βάση.Απολαύστε τα.... Βλέπει κανείς τον ήλιο της Βεργίνας;Για την όλη προσπάθεια των Σκοπιανών έχω
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ΟΙ ΦΟΒΟΙ ΤΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΩΝ: Όποιος διαβάσει τον «εφαρμοστικό νόμο» θα βεβαιωθεί απόλυτα ότι θα συμβούν πολύ χειρότερα, από όσα φοβόμαστε - ενώ θα
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΌπως αναφέραμε στο άρθρο μας «Ο περιπλανώμενος Ευρωθίασος», “Το σχέδιο των ηγετών της Ευρωζώνης, σύμφωνα με το οποίο θα μεταλλασσόταν το Ευρωπαϊκό Συμβούλιο σε μία οικονομική διακυβέρνηση της ένωσης, μάλλον οφείλει να ενταφιαστεί - μετά τα αποτελέσματα της τελευταίας συνόδου κορυφής. Πάνω από δέκα φορές μέχρι σήμερα έχουν ασχοληθεί οι Βρυξέλες με την κρίση χρέους και δανεισμού. Κάθε φορά οι
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Το Παρίσι ετοιμάζεται να απολαύσει την Ιστορία του Eλληνικού Βορρά και της αρχαίας Μακεδονίας.
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΣτο Μουσείο του Λούβρου αναγγέλλεται από τώρα η έκθεση «Αρχαία Μακεδονία: στο βασίλειο του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου», που θα εγκαινιαστεί στις 13 Οκτωβρίου.Τρεις μήνες λείπουν ακόμη για τα εγκαίνια της έκθεσης «Αρχαία Μακεδονία: στο βασίλειο του Μεγάλου Αλεξάνδρου». Κι όμως στις δύο κεντρικές όψεις του Μουσείου Λούβρου έχουν ήδη αναρτηθεί μπάνερ που αναγγέλλουν στους κατοίκους του Παρισιού και τους
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Anti-Turkish Movements in Macedonia before the 1821 Greek Revolution
» Modern Macedonian History
by Ioannis HasiotisModern and Contemporary Macedonia
Volume 1, pages 436-457macedonian-heritage.gr
Most of what has been written about anti-Turkish movements in Macedonia during the long period between the consolidation of Ottoman rule in the first half of the 15th century and the outbreak of the 1821 Revolution is largely characterized by oversimplification. The enthusiasm with which idealist and even Marxist historians have projected revolutionary activities in the area has not been based on sufficient evidence. What is more, anachronisms have not always been avoided. Confusion further increases as a result of the geographical identification of present-day Macedonia -both Greek and 'Greater Macedonia', which stretches over parts of three neighbouring countries- with an area which, albeit known under the same name, had an entirely different geographical content during the period of Ottoman domination.These phenomena should not be ascribed solely to political or ideological expediency influencing the writings of Greeks and foreigners on modern Macedonia....
Open publication - Free publishing - More greece
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Το νέο «καμάρι» της Μελίτης και του ΠΑΣΟΚ Φλώρινας.
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΟ πρόεδρος της τοπικής κοινότητας Μελίτης του δήμου Φλώρινας, Pande Ashlakov, παραχώρησε στις 20 Ιουλίου συνέντευξη στην εφημερίδα «Ντνέβνικ» των Σκοπίων. Στη συνέντευξη αυτή αναφέρεται μεταξύ άλλων στη δημιουργία κρατικού ραδιοφώνου της «Μακεδονίας» που θα λειτουργεί από τη Φλώρινα, τονίζει πως στη Μελίτη ζουν 2.300 Σκοπιανοί , μερικοί Τούρκοι, Αλβανοί και Γραικομάνοι, ζητά να διδάσκεται στα
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FYROM lobby irked by Bill introduced by U.S House Committee on Foreign Affairs
» Modern Macedonian History
July 26, 2011
The FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) lobby in the US been irked by the content of a Bill which was introduced to the U.S House of Representatives by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2012 (H.R. 2583) has proposed a limitation on U.S foreign aid to the FYROM. Further irritating the FYROM lobby, the Bill referred to the FYROM under that name, rather than under the name 'Republic of Macedonia´, as official documents have done since the Bush Administration unilaterally recognised the FYROM as the ´Republic of Macedonia´ name in 2004. The relevant sections of the Bill are as follows:
SEC. 807. LIMITATION ON ASSISTANCE TO THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA.
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following:
(1) Greece has demonstrated an enormous good will gesture in agreeing that Macedonia´´ may be included in the future name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) as long as that term is combined with a geographic qualifier that makes it clear that there are no territorial ambitions on the part of the FYROM with regard to the historical boundaries of the Greek province of Macedonia.
(2) The FYROM continues to utilize materials that violate provisions of the United Nations-brokered Interim Agreement between the FYROM and Greece regarding incendiary rallies, rhetoric, or propaganda, and United Nations-led negotiations between the FYROM and Greece have so far failed to achieve the longstanding goals of the United States and the United Nations to find a mutually acceptable, new official name for the FYROM.
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of Congress that all United States assistance to the FYROM should be conditioned on the FYROM´s willingness to engage in meaningful discussions with Greece in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 817.
(c) LIMITATION.—The Secretary of State may not use funds authorized to be appropriated under this Act for programs and activities that directly or indirectly promote incendiary rallies, rhetoric, or propaganda by state-controlled agencies of the FYROM or encourage acts by private entities likely to incite violence, hatred, or hostility, including support for printing and publishing of textbooks, maps, and teaching aids that may include inaccurate information on the histories and geographies of Greece and FYROM.
The official text of this resolution can be found here: [hcfa.house.gov]
This is seen as yet another setback for Skopje, after Hillary Clinton during her visit to Athens stated sternly that FYROM must work to reach a compromise with Greece if they are to be allowed to accede to the European Union and NATO.The Australian Macedonian Advisory Council welcomes the Bill introduced to the U.S House and would like to see further actions taken by the U.S Government to discourage the provocative and unproductive attitude of the Government of the FYROM.
www.macedonian.com.au
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Η Γερμανική στολή στη ναφθαλίνη. Επιβιώσεις του δοσιλογισμού στη Μακεδονία, 1945-1974
» Akritas - ιστορία της Μακεδονίας"Η γερμανική στολή στη ναφθαλίνη" πραγματεύεται το ζήτημα της συνεργασίας, όταν πλέον ο κατακτητής είχε εγκαταλείψει τη χώρα, αφήνοντας πίσω την πλειονότητα όσων για διάφορους λόγους συμπαρατάχθηκαν μαζί του και υποβοήθησαν το έργο του στο διάστημα που μεσουρανούσε στο ευρωπαϊκό στρατιωτικό στερέωμα. Η απελευθέρωση της Ελλάδας σήμανε την αρχή του τέλους για τους κάθε λογής συνεργάτες και
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Νεοφιλελευθερισμός
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΗ λέξη «νεοφιλελευθερισμός» (neoliberalism) πρέπει πλέον να αρχίσει να μας απασχολεί σοβαρά όλους. Ο λόγος είναι ότι, ο παγκοσμιοποιημένος νεοφιλελευθερισμός(global liberalism) άρχισε να παίρνει σάρκα και οστά με τις νομοθετήσεις σε ανεπτυγμένες οικονομίες έχοντας ως αιχμή του δόρατος την χώρα μας. ΓΕΝΙΚΑ Καταρχήν πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίσουμε από την αρχή ότι άλλο ο «φιλελευθερισμός» και άλλο ο «
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Απαντητική Επιστολή των Παμμακεδονικών Ενώσεων προς την κ. Χ. Κουλούρη με θέμα τα βιβλία του CDRSEE
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΑΠΑΝΤΗΣΗ ΤΩΝ ΠΑΜΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΚΏΝ ΕΝΩΣΕΩΝ ΥΦΗΛΙΟΥ ΣΤΟ ΥΠΟΜΝΗΜΑ ΤΗΣ ΚΥΡΙΑΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΙΝΑΣ ΚΟΥΛΟΥΡΗ 9 Ιουλίου 2011 Η κ. Χριστίνα Κουλούρη με το της 25ης Ιανουαρίου 2011, ανυπόγραφο υπόμνημά της προς τις Παμμακεδονικές ΕνώσειςΥφηλίου προσπαθεί εις μάτην να μας πείσει πως δεν διαστρεβλώνεται η ελληνική ιστορία στο τετράτομο της Κοινής Βαλκανικής Ιστορίας που εκδόθηκε από το Κέντρο Δημοκρατίας και Συμφιλίωσης
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FYROM Statues: From ethno-cultural nationalism to National Chauvinism
» Modern Macedonian History
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...
militarism. Military glory and conquest are the ultimate evidence of national greatness and have been capable of generating intense feelings of nationalist commitment.
So therefore, with the “statues project”, Gruevski regime is trying to admonish the Slavic population, by the martial values of absolute loyalty, complete dedication and willing self-sacrifice. When the honour or integrity of the nation is in question, the life of ordinary citizens become unimportant is one of the main points of the national chauvinism. (Heynwood:165)
National chauvinism has a particularly strong appeal for the isolated and powerless, for which nationalism offers the prospect of security, self-respect and pride. Militant or integral nationalism requires a heightened sense of belonging to a distinct national group. Such intense nationalist feeling is often stimulated by 'negative integration', the portrayal of another nation or race as a threat or an enemy.(Heynwood:165
In the face of the enemy, the nation draws together and experiences an intensified sense of its own identity and importance. Slavmacedonian national chauvinism arise with a clear distinction between "them" (Bulgarians and Greeks) and "Us”. National chauvinism therefore breeds from a clear distinction between 'them' and 'us'. There has to be a 'them' to deride or hate in order to forge a sense of 'us'. In politics, national chauvinism has commonly been reflected in racialist ideologies, which divide the world into an 'in group' and an 'out group', in which the 'out group' becomes a scapegoat for all the misfortunes and frustrations suffered by the 'in group'. It is therefore no coincidence that chauvinistic political creeds are a breeding ground for racialist ideas. (Heynwood:166) Far right-wing VMRO party of Gruevski builds on this national chauvinism. For the Slavmacedonians, are the Greeks who steal theirs “ancient” history and the Bulgarians theirs language.
All forms of nationalism address the issue of identity. Whatever political causes nationalism may be associated with, it advances these on the basis of a sense of collective identity, usually understood as patriotism. For the political nationalist, 'objective' considerations such as territory, religion and language are no more important than 'subjective' ones such as will, memory and patriotic loyalty. Nationalism, therefore, not only advances political causes but also tells people who they are: it gives people a history, forges social bonds and a collective spirit, and creates a sense of destiny larger than individual existence. (Heynwood:154)
Certain forms of nationalism, however, are less closely related to overtly political demands than others. This particularly applies in the case of Slavmacedonian ethno-cultural nationalism. Cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism that emphasises the strengthening or defence of cultural identity over overt political demands. Slavmacedonian ethno-cultural nationalists view the state as a peripheral if not an alien entity. So the statue of the Great Alexander in the center of capital, in an direct way, it provides attractive elements to propagate, shamelessly, their territorial fantasies over the Greek northern regions. Also it aims at expanding the boundaries of the historical “taktovina” (fatherland) of the “Makedonci” to include wide regions of Greece and Bulgaria. It is well known, that for decades the classrooms and school textbooks of history in FYROM have been adorned with maps portraying Macedonia’s “geographic and ethnic”, i.e. Slavic boundaries extending all the way to Mount Olympus and Chalkidiki, in Greek Macedonia as well as to the Pirin district of Bulgaria. ( see : Macedonianism, FYROM'S Expansionist Designs against Greece, 1944-2006, Society for Macedonian Studies, 2007 ) Now, by claiming the patrimony of the Ancient Macedonians via the statue of a Greek historical person,, the boundaries of “Greater Macedonia” assume a much wider historical and cultural dimension in time.
Unfortunately, Slavmacedonian national chauvinism is obvious that it is a road without return. Wherever you look in history, where he was a national chauvinism, we have explosions similar movements such as Pan-Slavism, anti-Semitism and Pan-Germanism. It is therefore obvious, that the FYROM Slavmacedonism from an ethno-cultural nationalism has transform to the dangerous of the regional peace, national chauvinism.
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Η ενδιάμεση συμφωνία Ν. Υόρκης (1995) και θέματα ταυτότητας
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΠολλές φορές από αυτό το διαδικτυακό βήμα έχω υποστηρίξει, ότι ένα από τα εγκληματικά λάθη της Ελλάδας είναι η ανεκδιήγητη «Ενδιάμεση Συμφωνία» του 1995. Ο λόγος είναι ότι εκτός είχαμε πισωγύρισμα σε σχέση με αυτήν των Vance-Owen (1993), ήταν ότι οι ΗΠΑ και τα Σκόπια παγίδευσαν την Ελλάδα στο παιχνίδι του «κυλιόμενου χρόνου». Αυτό είχε σαν αποτέλεσμα την σταδιακή αποτελμάτωση των συνομιλιών μιας
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Greek austerity measures could violate human rights, UN expert says
» Modern Macedonian History
30 June 2011
un.org
– The United Nations independent expert on foreign debt and human rights warned today that the austerity measures and structural reforms proposed to solve Greece’s debt crisis may result in violations of the basic human rights of the country’s people, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported.
“The implementation of the second package of austerity measures and structural reforms, which includes a wholesale privatization of state-owned enterprises and assets, is likely to have a serious impact on basic social services and therefore the enjoyment of human rights by the Greek people, particularly the most vulnerable sectors of the population such as the poor, elderly, unemployed and persons with disabilities,” said Cephas Lumina, who reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“The rights to food, water, adequate housing and work under fair and equitable conditions should not be compromised by the implementation of austerity measures,” he said, urging the Government to “strike a careful balance between austerity and the realization of human rights, taking into account the primacy of States’ human rights obligations.”
Mr. Lumina also called...
upon the authorities to maintain some fiscal leeway to meet its people’s basic human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights.
“Tax rises, public expenditure cuts and privatization measures have to be implemented in such a way that they do not result in unbearable suffering of the people,” he said.
“Debts can only be paid out of income,” Mr. Lumina said. “A shrinking economy cannot generate any revenue and contributes to a reduced capacity to repay the debt. More time should have been allowed for the restructuring measures already in place to work.”
The independent expert also called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union (EU) and the European Central Bank (ECB) to remain aware of the human rights impact of the policies they design in attempting to resolve the sovereign debt crises in Greece and other countries.
“There will be no lasting solution to the sovereign debt problem if the human rights of the people are not taken into account,” said Mr. Lumina, who serves in an unpaid capacity.
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Αγάλματα στα Σκόπια: Από τον Εθνοπολιτισμικό Εθνικισμό στον Εθνικό Σωβινισμό
» Akritas - ιστορία της ΜακεδονίαςΜε την κατάρρευση του κομμουνισμού στην Ανατολική Ευρώπη, η άρχουσα ιδεολογία του Μαρξισμού-Λενινισμού αντικαταστήθηκε από διάφορες ιδεολογικές δυνάμεις. Μία από αυτές ήταν και ο εθνικισμός. Στην ΠΓΔΜ, σταδιακά και με την «απόσυρση» των σοσιαλιστών στις διάφορες θέσεις της εξουσίας, η άκρα δεξιά μέσω του VMRO άρχισε να παίρνει την θέση τους. Έτσι λοιπόν έχουμε από τα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 90
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Democracy’s Cradle, Rocking the World
» Modern Macedonian History
By MARK MAZOWER
Published: June 29, 2011
nytimes.com
YESTERDAY, the whole world was watching Greece as its Parliament voted to pass a divisive package of austerity measures that could have critical ramifications for the global financial system. It may come as a surprise that this tiny tip of the Balkan Peninsula could command such attention. We usually think of Greece as the home of Plato and Pericles, its real importance lying deep in antiquity. But this is hardly the first time that to understand Europe’s future, you need to turn away from the big powers at the center of the continent and look closely at what is happening in Athens. For the past 200 years, Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s evolution.
In the 1820s, as it waged a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire, Greece became an early symbol of escape from the prison house of empire. For philhellenes, its resurrection represented the...
noblest of causes. “In the great morning of the world,” Shelley wrote in “Hellas,” his poem about the country’s struggle for independence, “Freedom’s splendor burst and shone!” Victory would mean liberty’s triumph not only over the Turks but also over all those dynasts who had kept so many Europeans enslaved. Germans, Italians, Poles and Americans flocked to fight under the Greek blue and white for the sake of democracy. And within a decade, the country won its freedom.
Over the next century, the radically new combination of constitutional democracy and ethnic nationalism that Greece embodied spread across the continent, culminating in “the peace to end all peace” at the end of the First World War, when the Ottoman, Hapsburg and Russian empires disintegrated and were replaced by nation-states.
In the aftermath of the First World War, Greece again paved the way for Europe’s future. Only now it was democracy’s dark side that came to the fore. In a world of nation-states, ethnic minorities like Greece’s Muslim population and the Orthodox Christians of Asia Minor were a recipe for international instability. In the early 1920s, Greek and Turkish leaders decided to swap their minority populations, expelling some two million Christians and Muslims in the interest of national homogeneity. The Greco-Turkish population exchange was the largest such organized refugee movement in history to that point and a model that the Nazis and others would point to later for displacing peoples in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and India.
It is ironic, then, that Greece was in the vanguard of resistance to the Nazis, too. In the winter of 1940-41, it was the first country to fight back effectively against the Axis powers, humiliating Mussolini in the Greco-Italian war while the rest of Europe cheered. And many cheered again a few months later when a young left-wing resistance fighter named Manolis Glezos climbed the Acropolis one night with a friend and pulled down a swastika flag that the Germans had recently unfurled. (Almost 70 years later, Mr. Glezos would be tear-gassed by the Greek police while protesting the austerity program.) Ultimately, however, Greece succumbed to German occupation. Nazi rule brought with it political disintegration, mass starvation and, after liberation, the descent of the country into outright civil war between Communist and anti-Communist forces.
Only a few years after Hitler’s defeat, Greece found itself in the center of history again, as a front line in the cold war. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman used the intensifying civil war there to galvanize Congress behind the Truman Doctrine and his sweeping peacetime commitment of American resources to fight Communism and rebuild Europe. Suddenly elevated into a trans-Atlantic cause, Greece now stood for a very different Europe — one that had crippled itself by tearing itself apart, whose only path out of the destitution of the mid-1940s was as a junior partner with Washington. As the dollars poured in, American advisers sat in Athens telling Greek policy makers what to do and American napalm scorched the Greek mountains as the Communists were put to flight.
European political and economic integration was supposed to end the weakness and dependency of the divided continent, and here, too, Greece was an emblem of a new phase in its history. The fall of its military dictatorship in 1974 not only brought the country full membership in what would become the European Union; it also (along with the transitions in Spain and Portugal at the same time) prefigured the global democratization wave of the 1980s and ’90s, first in South America and Southeast Asia and then in Eastern Europe. And it gave the European Union the taste for enlargement and the ambition to turn itself from a small club of wealthy Western European states into a voice for the newly democratic continent as a whole, extending far to the south and east.
And now today, after the euphoria of the ’90s has faded and a new modesty sets in among the Europeans, it falls again to Greece to challenge the mandarins of the European Union and to ask what lies ahead for the continent. The European Union was supposed to shore up a fragmented Europe, to consolidate its democratic potential and to transform the continent into a force capable of competing on the global stage. It is perhaps fitting that one of Europe’s oldest and most democratic nation-states should be on the new front line, throwing all these achievements into question. For we are all small powers now, and once again Greece is in the forefront of the fight for the future.
Mark Mazower is a professor of history at Columbia University.
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