Macedonians Say No To New Statues In Poll

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By Sinisa Jakov Marusic

After filling the capital with dozens of new monuments, most Macedonians want the government to stop spending money on statues and suchlike, an opinion poll shows.

According to the poll by the local Rating agency, an overwhelming 81 per cent of the respondents say the government should stop splashing out on new monuments as part of its grand revamp of the capital known as Skopje 2014.

Only 18 per cent opted for more statues while the rest, less than 1 per cent, said they were not sure.

The issue has sparked a lively debate this week in parliament after the opposition Social Democrats used these numbers to attack the ruling centre-right VMRO DPMNE party for its spending habits at a time of crisis.

“This project will have vast negative effects on Macedonia, which will be felt later on,” Jani Makraduli, a Social Democrat legislator said, referring to the high cost of the project.

VMRO DPMNE has defended the spending as necessary for the makeover of the shabby-looking city.

It says that increased income from tourism in the future will more than justify the sums being spent now on new monuments.

Drawing inspiration from the architectural styles of Classical Antiquity, the Skopje 2014 project has seen the erection of some 30 bronze and marble statues, with more on the way.

Erected mostly in the central area, some of the most notable ones include two nearly 30-metre-high statues set in fountains of Alexander the Great and his father Philip, a 30-metre-high triumphal arch, a massive colonnade with lions and another colonnade with an obelisk in the middle.

The project also envisages the construction of some 20 other buildings, including, museums, theatres, concert halls, hotels and administrative offices whose construction in most cases is either finished or is well under way.

“I expect most of the monuments to be finished by the end of the year and that will be it, as far as monuments go,” Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski said last month.

But in May the authorities announced another giant monument for the city centre, a 30-metre-high statue of Nobel Prize-winning Catholic nun, Mother Teresa, who was born in Skopje.

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18 thoughts on “Macedonians Say No To New Statues In Poll

  • July 20, 2012 at 8:34 pm
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    They should also say no to the fabrication of their history. This whole statue building project involes creating a history linked to the ancient Greeks and has nothing to do with this country, which only recently changed its name to Macedonia. The true Macedonia is populated by Greeks and is a province of Greece. If any tourist wants to see where Alexander was born and wants to see real ancient statues go to Greece. Don’t be fooled by the facade and propaganda of this former yugoslavian state. FYROM is 2uropes own little North Korea and Gruevski is their dear leader.

    Reply
  • July 21, 2012 at 12:41 pm
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    You again!
    Have you no shame to continuously lie and spread your venom on this forum? Whom are you trying to convince: others or yourselves that Greece has anything to do with Macedonia? Why for a change don’t you read the writings of your own Greeks from the 19 cent. and reflect on their believes? Don’t you think that people in general and academician in particular know quite well that Greeks entered Macedonia for the first time in 1913 with the Balkan Wars? And it wasn’t you who won the fight but your western backers who today shamelessly hide their faces and keep silent on this issue. When was Ancient Macedonia Greek? Could you supply any documented evidence for it? Didn’t the ancient writers explicitly state that “Greece was enslaved by the Macedonian Ares”? Didn’t Greeks asked the Roman Senate to force Phillip V from Macedonia “to evacuate from Greece”? Wasn’t it true that ancient Greeks pleading to Phillip V to “protect Greece as if it were a part of your dominion”? Should I go any further?
    My advice to you is to go back to your muddy hole and stay there.

    Reply
    • August 8, 2012 at 10:07 pm
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      Please go to the capitol of Macedonia Vergina, in Greece, and see yourself the language and letters on columns. We Greeks can understand them and read them as we still speak this language. Please also understand that you speak Bulgarian and half of your population is Albanian.
      Please check that when a Serb, askopjan and a bulgarian speaks they all understand each other as you all are slavs. We Greeks have to speak English to all of you.
      It s a petty cause we could be friends Slavomacedonian fanatic…

      Reply
  • July 21, 2012 at 1:36 pm
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    Every Ottoman census, which were considered to be the most acurate in the world and an example in record keeping for others to follow,stated that Greeks were the vast majority in Macedonia. I’m speaking of the real Macedonia…the province in Greece. There were Bulgarians, and Serbs living there, but they left after 1913 in a population exchange with Bulgaria. There wasa absolutely no record of an ethnicity that called itself Macedonian in any of the Ottoma records. This is fact. Your grandfathers were Bulgarian.
    As for the ancients, they spoke Greek,wrote Greek, worhiped Greek gods, participated in the Greek only Olympic games and self identified as Greeks of Dorian decent. What more can I say. All the evidence is there for you to see. Skopje’s history is the most fabricated bunch of nonsence in the whole of Europe…your own Former Prime Ministers and Foreighn miniisters are quoted several times saying this. Gruevski is destroying your true slavic history and stealing the Greek one because he finds it superior.

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  • July 21, 2012 at 1:49 pm
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    And I’m not saying that Greek history is superior, just that Gruevski thinks it is, or he woulndn’t be trying to steal it. He wouldn’t be building statues of Greeks and erasing your Bulgarian past.
    Bulgarian history is rich and very influential in the spread of Christianity throughout the slavic world. You should be proud of your true Bulgarian ethnicity. It helped to shape Europe as we know it today.

    Reply
    • July 21, 2012 at 9:34 pm
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      Akron,I think your tears are running down your legs if you know what I mean.
      First of all,you are not Greek proper.You have been hellenized my friend,you have absolutly no connection to ancient Hellens.Please,stop braging being a “Greek”.Greece is a mixture of different people that have no continuity to ancient Hrllens.Once more I will repeat to you,your ancestry is Albanian or Vlahos,or Turkish,but never connected to the ancients.Face the reality my friend,enough with your bull.Hey,your ambassador to the Republic of Macedonia just recently stated on her protest note to Macedonia”Tourists don’t know where they are because the people in Skopje eat the same food and look the same as in Greece.They are confused”.Actualy,she is confused,because the people of Skopje and the people of Florina(Lerin)Kostur(Kastoria)Edessa(Voden)Thessaloniki(Solun)are one and the same people.That is why you cannot distnguise the difference.As someone said”You can establish borders,but you cannot divide the people”.
      If you are trying to differantiate the people of the Republic of Macedonia with does in occupied Aegean Macedonia,you are wrong.
      You should read up on the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and onward to learn the history.
      The Greek fabrications of history is only scraching the surface of your lies.
      Since independence,Macedonia is looking to get their own history.Macedonia is not interested in the fabricated Greek history.
      In 1903 former Greek PM Rallis said at an interview for “New York Times””We are helping the Ottomans to quell the Macedonian revolutionaries.We are coloborating with the Sultan in this matter”.In 1995 former PM Mitsotakis said at an interview for the book”For the Macedonia name”by T.Skinalis,”I have no problem with the name Macedonia,my problem is how to recognize the Slavo/Macedonians in Greece.With all our problems,we will have problem with our external politics”.Obviously,he recognized the fabrications of history,would be very difficualt to say,yes,we do have a large Macedonian population within our borders,since we never addmmited it!.
      Anon,you my friend are pathetic,illiterate in history,as many “Greeks”who always like to falsify our identity as your main argument.
      Well,I am from the Lerin area,I am Macedonian,I have no feeling for greekness like the Albanians who held 27 out of 57 PM jobs and todays Greek President who’s name was “Sulaiman”before 125 years ago.He was born one km south of todays borders of Albania,before Greece occupied that area in 1913,as well as Macedonia and Crete.
      From ancient times to 1856-58 you had no”Greek language.This is the time you had to learn the new language,so did the Albanian majority of Greece,Vlahs,Turks and others.
      Macedonia was no part of Greece up until 1913 occupation.I would be ashamed to wtite something fabricated like yourself and others who claim they are Greek!
      Just for your information,the Ottomans were taking census same way as did Greece in 1920.There was no identification of ethnicity,there was a question”other than the language you speak at home,do you speak the greek language?”The Ottomans were asking”are you muslim or orthodox”,there was no question of identity my friend in Macedonia nor in Greece under the Ottomans.
      Once more,one of the founders of the Uited States president Adams was right about the Greeks,where he reffered to you as “Corrupted in their morals to such a degree,as to be Faithless,perfidious race,destitute of courage…!

      Reply
  • July 21, 2012 at 11:05 pm
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    Like clockwork ultra nationalist Peter shows up trying to insinuate he is a direct descendent of ancient “Slavic” Macedonians and Macedonia Greece is occupied. (living proof Greece has legitimate reasons to be concerned by the bizarre behaviour of FYROM ultra nationalists)

    Hey Peter the Great-ski… what did your elected representatives mean when they used to assure everyone this about your sacred “macedonian” identity?

    ‘We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are a Slav people and our language is closely related to Bulgarian.’ – FYROM´s Ambassador to Canada Gyordan Veselinov, Ottawa Citizen Newspaper, February 24 1999

    “We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century … We are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians” – Kiro Gligorov, FYROM’s first President
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBB8UjOHG_8

    ‘We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great.’ – FYROM’S Ambassador Ljubica Acevshka, speech to US representatives in Washington on January 22 1999

    “The creation of the Macedonian nation, for almost half of a century, was done in a condition of single-party dictatorship. In those times, there was no difference between science and ideology, so the “Macedonian” historiography, unopposed by anybody, comfortably performed a selection of the historic material from which the “Macedonian” identity was created. There is nothing atypical here for the process of the creation of any modern nation, except when falsification from the type of substitution of the word “Bulgarian” with the word “Macedonian” were made.” (Denko Maleski, former Minister of foreign affairs of FYROM from 1991 to 1993 in an interview to FYROM newspaper Utrinski Vesnik)

    etc…

    Reply
  • July 21, 2012 at 11:22 pm
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    This well accredited historians, from reputable universities around the globe, disagree with your narrative Peter-the-Great-ski… and not a single third party historian on earth claims you are related to ancient Macedonians. All you have going for you is a bunch of Greek-hating bigots that now dishonestly pretend not to notice your sudden identity change into “anicent Macedonians” and constant irredentist rhetoric (which you and your patronizing apologists try to frame as “human rights” to hide your shame)
    http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html

    Reply
  • July 22, 2012 at 1:50 am
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    They call themselves Macedonian, but they deny the existence of everything that is in fact Macedonian. The Greek language and culture that Alexander identified with and spread throughout the world. The Skopjeans hate Macedonia. They dishonour Macedonian history in their bizare fabrications. We will not let them have their way. Greeks will defend Macedonia forever.

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  • July 22, 2012 at 2:01 am
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    According to the most recent anthropological and DNA studies the Greeks and the Japanese are the two peoples in the world most related to their ancient counterparts. So Skopje pays for study that claims they are Macedonians and the Greeks are Ethiopians. Of course no journal publishes the study, and many expose it for the propaganda crap that it is, but that doesn’t stop insecure morons like Petar from believing it lol. And of course Peter will say that the language on the Rosetta Stone is really his Bulgarian dialect instead of demotic Egyptian. He doesn’t accept that his government’s hoax is exposed and ridiculed around the world.
    Keep building statues though…but remember Alexander and Philip were Greeks.

    Reply
  • July 22, 2012 at 5:29 pm
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    Greeks of today have a mixture of 4 bloodlines.
    Albanian, Orthodox Turks, Orthodox Bulgarian slavs, Turkish Greeks.

    In the attempt to incorporate the people of Macedonia & Albania into the “imagined” national communities represented by the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek states, terms of collective identity, which were in common use and which had no connotation of national identity whatsoever, experienced a form of semantic slippage and took on new national meanings. Thus “rum,” meaning “Orthodox Christian,” a term that could refer to someone who spoke Albanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, or Greek, was reinterpreted by Greek nationals to mean “Greek” in a national sense. The term “Bulgarian,” which had earlier been used to refer to all the Slavs of the Ottoman Empire (Friedman 1975:84), or as a virtual synonym for “peasant” without any political significance at all (Wilkinson 1951:149), came to mean “Bulgarian” in a national sense.

    Similarly, the term “Greek,” which was used in the early nineteenth century to refer to members of the Orthodox Christian merchant class regardless of their “ethnic origin” or the language they spoke, came to mean “Greek” in the national sense (Stoianovich 1960:311). During the Ottoman period, therefore, terms like “Bulgarian” and “Greek” were not used to designate different ethnic or national groups; they were used to designate different sociocultural categories in what Hechter (1978) has called a system of “cultural division of labour.” In this system of ethnic stratification the process of upward social mobility by which a Slavic-speaking peasant or a Vlach-speaking shepherd entered the merchant class was indistinguishable from the process of “Hellenization.” When a farmer or a shepherd became a merchant, he was no longer a “Bulgarian” or a “Vlach”; he became a “Greek.” During this time ethnicity was “the modality in which class [was] lived (Hall et al. 1978:394).

    #1 Albanian – Arvanitika (Orthodox Christian Albanians) Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvanitika

    #2 Autocephalous Orthodox Turks – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocephalous_Turkish_Orthodox_Patriarchate

    #3 Orthodox Bulgarian Slav – Macedonians – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonians_%28ethnic_group%29

    #4 Turkish Greeks – leftovers from Byzantium empire in today’s Turkey now called Instanbul. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium

    Reply
  • July 23, 2012 at 3:32 am
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    All this statue building was eventually going to upset many of our Slavic majority in skopjia. The problem Gruevski has created for himself is that 39% of the FYROM population are unemployed. And this is with his ludicrous assumptions that we are financially OK.

    From those numbers the vast majority of unemployed are the young indigenous Albanian people of this Illyrian land. The Slav citizens who are unemployed are mostly elderly. Soon the indigenous Albanian people of FYROM will be in the majority tipping the scales putting our Slavic friends of skopjia in the minority.

    This outcome will mean that the skopjian government will have to renegotiate more state positions for indigenous Albanians. We should not forget that before the skopjia governments Bulgarian ancestors came here to our sacred Illyrian land between 700-900AD there were only a few Bulgarian settlements and these people were not too primitive, like many of the other Slavic peoples who came to the Balkans for the first time.

    Yes they borrowed much from our culture such as our indigenous Balkan cuisine, clothing styles, songs, dances, instruments, etc. but in the end these Bulgarians became easily assimilated to our Balkan culture. The skopjian government needs to look at the problems its causing by inventing history by building statues that belong to others.

    Everybody (except for some in the skopjian government) knows that Alexander and Philip were ancient Greeks while Delchev, Gruev, Alexandrov were Bulgarians. We have all read this in our books.

    Why does the skopjian leadership ignore this is only for one reason.

    To claim our sacred Illyrian land that belongs to us the Albanians, the indigenous people of this land, who are descended from the ancient Illyrians and who have inhabited this land for over 3000 years. We know from our archaeology in FYROM that our ancestors were the indigenous people of this sacred land, all the way down to the Greek tribes around the Pindus Mts. When the Bulgarian ancestors of the skopjian leadership came this whole land was all Albanian speaking.

    When we are in the majority again in 10 years we will be the new skopjian leadership but will show our Slavic neighbours more respect and much less racism than they continue to show us.

    Reply
  • July 23, 2012 at 12:13 pm
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    Akron,my ansewre to you and your Greek friends,to sumed up is as follows since you are beating the same drums,or playing the violin over and over;

    “John Adams,one of the founding fathers,in a statement written back on July 14th 1783 to the first US State Secretary Robert Livingston,clearly states he wanted to see Macedonia as well as Greece independent from Ottoman rule.

    Unfortunatly for some Balkan nations(includingMacedonia),it was the French,Prussian(Germany)who decided who gets independence.

    The US president was well aware the French and Germans were pushing their own agenda on the Balkans.

    Adams then goes on to describe the Greeks as people…230 years later they are still described in the same way,corrupted in their morals to such a degree,as to be faithless,perfidious race,destitute of courage…Ouch!”

    President Adams answere to you is good enough.
    Read it and analyze it,and if you are capable to understsnd it,write me a note!

    Reply
  • July 23, 2012 at 2:22 pm
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    Your answer to me is to cut and paste a fabricated quote? Slavo Skopje propagandists have little shame. One of your so called scinetists created that quote lol it doesn’t exist. Adams loved Greece and all it’s ideals.

    But let’s take your quote and run with it. Does thus mean that Greeks actually exist? And what did he say about Macedonians? Let me do the honours and tell you…whatever he soke about Greeks he also meant for Macedonians…since we are the same. He reffers to the ancient Greeks, Aritotle,Socrates and Alexander…too Bad you are not around to correct him lol.

    You are not Macedonian…to find out what he thought about you,google the word Bulgarian.

    Reply
  • July 23, 2012 at 4:12 pm
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    The speech of Alexander I, when he was admitted to the Olympic games “Men of Athens…
    Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Hellas I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself Hellene by descent, and I would not willingly see Hellas exchange freedom for slavery….
    If you prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom; consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Hellenic cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians.
    I am Alexander of Macedon.”
    (Herodotus, The Histories, 9.45)

    Enough said

    Reply
    • July 24, 2012 at 1:36 am
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      Akron,you are missing the point.Alexander was a good politician when he said those words.But,wait a minute,what did he mean when he turned to Philotas by saying”

      The Macedonians are about to pass judgement upon you;I wish to know whether you will use their native tongue in addressing them.”Thereupon Philotas replied:”Besides the Macedonians there are many present who,I think,will more easily understand what I shall say if I use the same language which you have employed,for no other reason,I suppose, than in order that your speach might be understood by the greater number.”Then said the king:”Do you not see how Philotas loathes even the language of his fatherland?For he alone disdains to learn it.But let him by all means speak in whatever way he desires,provided that you remember that he holds our customs in as much abhorrence as our language.”

      The trial of Philotas took place in Asia before a multi-ethnic public,which had accepted Greek as their common language.Alexander spoke Macedonian with his conationals,but used Greek in addressing West Asians.The Macedonian language was not understood by the Hellens.

      On the subject of the sencus durring the Ottoman rule was done in the same way as Greece did in 1920’s.The main identification of the people was through religion,as it was done with the Turkish Orthodox(Pontious)that re-setled in the occupied Aegean Macedonia.

      Former PM Karamanlis said”The real ancient Macedonians are the ones that came from Izmir,LOL!Former FM Droutsas said”I was born Macedonian,will die Macedonian”First of all,he is Cypriot,his father Cypriot and mother Austrian.Is this classified as”Mulato?”.
      To be a Greek is to be an Orthodox by religion,and to speak the 1856-58 Dimotiki glossa.That is all it takes to be Greek!.There is no Greek ethnicity.

      As I said before;Papulias must have been proud when the Greek army in Athens did sing a song that was in part”we will make clothes from the Macedonian and Albanian skin”Soon after it was sensored by the Greek government.Oh,Papulias is of Albanian ancestry in case you did not know,so is Pangalos and possibly yourself.

      A “Greek” was arguing with me on ethnicity one time,but soon enough he addmmited his parents were one Greek and one Albanian.It hit a nerve for him to come out of the closet.Please,don’t tell me about your greekness.

      Reply
  • July 24, 2012 at 4:12 pm
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    Alexander created Koine Greek. The common Greek language which was used to help all the Greeks in the army communicate more clearly with each other. The Athenians, Spartans, Corinthians and Macedonians etc all spoke their own dialects up until that point. Koine Greek, which means common, was later used to write the Bible.
    Please do not tell me that you believe the Rosetta Stone hoax your government is spurting, which claims that the demotic Egyptian on the stone is really your Bulgarian dialect. Maybe you should cut and paste that joke from MINA. Haven’t you been embarrsed enough? Your entire take on history lacks evidence. It’s just a couple of anectdotes here and there that have no historical relevance and is made up from your so called ‘scientists’. Sorry Petar, but the language Alexander spoke is Greek…it’s on the bottom of the Rosetta Stone, not the middle.

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  • July 24, 2012 at 4:37 pm
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    Alexander was just being a good politician when he self identified as Greek?! Hahaha! You deny Alexander’s right to self determination in the same breath that you claim your own! The hypocrisy is astounding!

    Go ahead and turn yourself into a pretzel trying to become Macedonian. Alexander and the Macedonians were Greek, and your grandfather was Bulgarian. Call yourself whatever you like, but don’t deny their identity.

    Reply

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