"I can tell you that no amount of racist policies that the government of Athens (or should I say the gov't of the Former Ottoman Province of Yunanistan) will exterminate the ethnic Macedonians that live under Greek rule in the Aegean part of Macedonia. " writes good Mr zoranm5.
This is why the door to the EU and NATO will remain shut. Admisssion to these alliances requires relations of good neighbors, and we cannot be expected to admit to these organizations nations who covet our territory. You can call yourself whatever you want, but no amount of chest beating will change those of you who are not Albanians from slavs, who speak a slavic language and use a slavic alphabet. If you are not Greeks (praised be the Lord!) why the fixation on Alexander the Great (the name of your airport) or the sun of Vergina (found on the tomb of Phipip the II) on your flag? None other than lay the ground for territorial claims. Greeks at one point or another occupied most of the land of the ill-fated Yugoslavia (union of southern slavs) and all of Asia Minor, now occupied by Turkey. The simple historical fact is that after the wars of 1912/13 those are the borders. At the time of the treaty of Buccharest in 1913 and up to 1948, there is no mention of a slavic Macedonian nation or language. How come? How come the Bulgarians understand you without translators and call your language a bulgarian dialect? Are they also Macedonians, and do you perhaps have claims on their territory as well?
Therefore unless you see reality, we will close our borders, and airspace, and ports, and commerce, and the doors to the EU and NATO. And you can stay in Vardarska, land-locked with the Albanians at your west, the Serbs at the North, and your Bulgarian brethren in the east.
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The Right-Wing Resurrection
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Europe's conservatives appear to have turned their back on the golden rule of conservatism: less state, lower taxes and more market. In Britain, once home to Margaret Thatcher, the Amazonian queen of rightist politics, Gordon Brown's Labour government cuts taxes while David Cameron's Tory party pledges more state money for health and defense and to subsidize a bankrupt postal service. Sweden's Moderate Party—once known as the Conservative Party—ousted the Swedish Social Democrats two years ago, but economic growth has slowed down, taking government popularity to such lows that most assume the left will win back power at the next election. On foreign policy, conservatives who once were ready to be tough to defend European democracy coddle up to the semi-authoritarian Russia. Conservative politicians who once championed human rights in communist Poland or Czechoslovakia are now silent on the daily abuse of core democratic rights in China. Conservatives who once built bulwarks to stop totalitarianism from contaminating European politics now accept handouts for Islamic centers financed by the Saudis to promote the Jew-hating, homophobic and misogynist Islamism of Wahhabi preachers.
Far from strengthening NATO, Germany's center-right leader, Merkel, blocked efforts to help Ukraine move toward a Euro-Atlantic future. The conservative government of Greece stopped a brave small democracy like Macedonia from joining NATO in an argument over its name that was little more elevated than the row among Swift's Lilliputians over whether a boiled egg should be cracked at its big or small end. Meanwhile, defense spending under European conservatives plunges to a record low at a time when Europe claims it wants to promote its presence everywhere in the world. Churchill, Adenauer and de Gaulle are turning in their graves.
MacShane is a Labour M.P. and was Britain’s minister for Europe.
© 2008
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