Monday, February 08, 2010



This is a loony one

A foolish Australian politician has involved himself in an ethnic squabble from the other side of the world
"Premier Mike Rann has sparked an international diplomatic furore by accusing Macedonia of stealing Greek culture and its leader, Gjorge Ivanov, of "stirring up trouble in the most dangerous way". A videotape of a speech given by the Premier at a the Dimitria Greek festival in the western suburbs in November has sparked outrage across the globe.

Washington-based United Macedonian Diaspora president Metodija Koloski flew to Adelaide for a confidential meeting with Multicultural Affairs Minister Michael Atkinson yesterday and delivered a protest letter addressed to Mr Rann.

In the controversial speech, Mr Rann affirms his commitment to Adelaide's Greek voters and promises his Government will "remain firm and unswerving in our support for your cause". "It is important because no one is entitled to steal another nation's history or culture," Mr Rann said. "We have a leader in Mr Ivanov who is stirring up trouble in the most dangerous way."

Mr Koloski yesterday told The Advertiser that his people had been "slandered" and demanded an unconditional apology. Yesterday, Mr Rann said he would not be "silenced or muzzled" and would "continue to speak out on issues I believe in".

Source

In the ancient world, Macedonia was Greek. Alexander the Great came from there. But these days most of the population of historic Macedonia are Slavs and the Greeks hate that. Premier Rann was evidently trying to suck up to Australian voters of Greek origin. There are far more of them than there are voters of Macedonian Slav origin.

Update:

Maybe I should tell a little fun story about Macedonia and Greeks:

There is a Greek club near where I live that has quite a good dining room. I went there one day with a lady friend in search of some good Greek food. Half way up the escalator I said in a rather loud voice: "Of course, Macedonia isn't really Greek"

All conversation with earshot stopped. There was a stunned silence.

Then I laughed. So everybody knew it was just a tease. They all smiled and life went on undisturbed. If I hadn't laughed, I would have been thrown out bodily, I think.

The Greeks have made such a fuss about Slavic Macedonia that nobody these days is in fact allowed to refer to it as "Macedonia". They have to refer to it as "FYR Macedonia" -- where FYR is short for "Former Yugoslav Republic".

It doesn't sound like a good place to live, anyway. Lots of ethnic conflict etc. Its only redeeming feature may be that you can get kaimak there. And if you haven't had kaimak with your cevapi, you haven't lived.

I may be a bit biased though. The Croatian shop from which I used to get my kaimak has recently stopped stocking it -- so woe is me.

Cevapi are skinless sausages and kaimak is a sort of cream cheese -- but any Southern Slav will tell you what a poor comparison that is.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not quite. There are 2 Macedonias,one populated by (and part of) Greece, the other part of Yugoslavia.
The latter one has been hostile towards Greece for decades (as was Yugoslavia).

In ancient times, Macedonia wasn't part of Greece anyway, Greece was part of Macedonia for a while.

Anonymous said...

Who cares! ZZZZZZZZZ

Anonymous said...

Macedonia has been marketing its low wage employees, large labor force, low taxes, and business friendly atmosphere in order to attract companies. Capitalism, gee, maybe the U.S. should try some of that.

Anonymous said...

I can't see why Rann would do it.
Surely he could show support for the Greeks without putting himself into such a foolish situation.

The Finn said...

The Greek are being childish about the whole Macedonia thing. In the past at least it wasn't unusual for Greek border officers to destroy Macedonian passports and they went nuts with stamps if you were coming from Macedonia stamping whole passport pages to cover Macedonian stamps.

I have great expectations for Macedonia. They seem to be very business oriented as someone mentioned and are actively seeking to re-connect with the west. Except for the large Albanian minority I see no reason why they couldn't succeed.