Vardarska's claim to Alexander's legacy - a brief expo

" ... An excellent example of what can occur with someone rewrites history can be seen in Germany during the 20's and 30's. When Hitler came to power, he rewrote history to say that Germany lost the World War I because they were betrayed by the Jewish people. Throughout the world, no one mounted a vigorous defense of the truth and the result was the Holocaust. We must always be on-guard against those who would rewrite history for their own selfish gains and opposition should not wait until after the fact.

In recent years, the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) decided to drop the first three words in their name and call themselves, Macedonia (for further background see the editorial shown below). At first glance it seemed rather innocent until you realize there is already a region known as Macedonia. What further alarms one is that they are not only trying to steal the name of another people, they are claiming that from the first, only they are the true Macedonians and that all the lands of ancient Macedonia belong to them. Sound familiar?

At present there are two bills before the Congress of the United States. SB300 is before the U. S. Senate and in the U. S. House of Representative, it is HB356. They are designed to formally declare that the name Macedonia belongs to the descendents of Aristotle and Alexander, who were Greeks, and can not be used or taken by any other people. Please contact your Representative and Senators and voice your support for this ideal and the two bills.

In America, we do not tolerate personal identity theft, nor should we condone the theft of an entire peoples' history and culture.


Historical Background: EDITORIAL – WHAT'S IN A NAME?

In 1936, Hitler rewrote history and claimed that part of Czechoslovakia belonged to Germany. England and France accepted his claim and allowed him to eventually conquer all of Czechoslovakia. This act led to World War II.

Near the end of that war, in 1944, as part of his long-range plans, in Yugoslavia, Tito took a page out of Hitler's book. He renamed the province of Vardarska Banovina, Macedonia. His ultimate goal was to use this as a pretext to seize the Greek province of Macedonia.

Unfortunately for Tito and the present leadership of that province, that didn't happen. Instead, the United States under President Truman provided military equipment and the Greeks provided the blood to stop Tito's plans and rescued the Greek Macedonian province and all of Greece from possible Communist rule. Thus Greece and her Macedonia province remained on the western side of the Iron Curtain.

So that should have been the end of the story Right? – Wrong! The reason is that as part of his preparation to annex Macedonia, Tito had begun telling everyone that the people of Vardarska Banovina were the true descendants of Alexander (the Great) and thus the true Macedonians. Everyone in the world either ignored this falsehood or simply laughed it off. Unfortunately, for over fifty years, the people of Vardarska Banovina were taught this lie by their communist masters. So it should have come as no surprise when Yugoslavia collapsed, that those still in power in Vardarska Banovina, now called the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) would carry on the lie. After all, that's what they had taught their people for over 50 years.

Additionally, experience should have taught us that people who have lived under and trained to follow a communist mentality, have great difficulty with facts that do not fit their plans. They ignore the truth and fabricate illogical reasons for why we should go along. Case in point: the misleading claims made by the foreign minister of FYROM, Antonio Milososki, to The Washington Times in the article Name Game Blame (Embassy Row, July 11). He stated that his country should be designated Macedonia, not FYROM, because it will promote stronger trade relations with the United States, and, help with its transition to an independent nation – How? He also failed to mention that his government continues to teach its children and future military officers that only they are the true Macedonia. All this does is continue to poison new generations with falsehoods and plant the seeds of hatred. These actions clearly violate the U.N.-brokered "Intermediate Agreement" signed by his country and Greece – thus demonstrating contempt for the rule of law. ... "

 

~ Full article ~

 

Who gets to keep civilization's marbles?

" ... In many cases the nations asserting rights to artifacts have little in common, culturally, religiously, artistically, or even ethnically, with the civilizations buried beneath them. Modern Peru, for example, was built in the vacuum left by the systematic destruction of the Inca civilization, whose legacy the country now claims. "It is a stretch of the imagination," says Cuno, "to link modern Egypt to ancient Egypt, modern Greece to ancient Greece, modern Rome to ancient Rome, communist China to ancient China." Nonetheless, countries like Italy, Greece, Turkey, China, and many others have laws that make any antiquity found on their soil automatically the property of the state.

The demands of this nationalistic system, its critics say, can sometimes overrule the best interests of the artifacts. In a 2006 essay in the New York Review of Books, the philosopher and Princeton professor Kwame Anthony Appiah argued that such laws have even destroyed antiquities. Soon after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, Appiah pointed out, it was a UNESCO treaty prohibiting the removal of antiquities from their country of origin that prevented concerned scholars from rescuing pre-Islamic artifacts before the Taliban, branding them idolatrous objects, destroyed them.

"Would the ideologues of cultural nativism...find solace in the fact that these works were destroyed by Afghan hands, on Afghan soil?" Appiah wrote.

[ ... ]

For archeologists, the problem with looting is not simply that it is stealing, but that it destroys archeological sites, erasing irreplaceable information. A funerary jug scrubbed clean and presented for sale to a museum has far less to offer an archeologist than one found in the ground, where everything from its location and positioning to its contents and the composition of the soil around it - in short, its context - can offer clues to the sort of culture that made and preserved it.

To illustrate the point, Brian Rose, president of the Archaeological Institute of America and an archeology professor at the University of Pennsylvania (and a curator at the university museum), gives the example of a site called Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Under excavation since 1994, it is the oldest known temple complex in the world, predating Stonehenge by 7,000 years. If it had been looted, and its pillars and carvings brought onto the market with no context, Rose argues, "they probably would have been branded as forgeries" because their existence so fundamentally challenged archeologists' understanding of the earliest eras of human history.

The value of the current system to archeologists is that source countries like Italy and Greece, whatever their motivation, have proven better protectors of dig sites than museums have. "I think the nation-states are trying to do a good job of maintaining and protecting their antiquities," says Malcolm Bell, an archeology professor at the University of Virginia ... "

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Dark forces united in new cosmic theory

" ... The two biggest mysteries in cosmology may be one. A new theory says
that dark matter and dark energy could arise from a single dark fluid
that permeates the whole universe. And this could mean Earth-based
dark matter searches will come up empty.

Dark matter, as originally hypothesized, is extra hidden mass that
astrophysicists calculate is necessary for holding together fast-
turning galaxies. The most popular notion is that this matter is made
of some yet-to-be-identified particle that has almost no interactions
with light or ordinary matter. Yet it seems to be everywhere, acting
as a scaffolding for galaxy clusters and the whole structure of the
universe.

On the other hand, dark energy is needed to explain the more recently-
discovered acceleration of the universe's expansion. It supposedly
exists all throughout space, delivering a pressure that counteracts
gravity.

It's counterintuitive that one substance could be both a gravitational
anchor for galaxies and anti-gravity force for the universe. However,
HongSheng Zhao of the University of St Andrews in Scotland claims that
a fluid-like dark energy can act like dark matter when its density
becomes high enough.

"Dark energy is a property of the vacuum -- of fields that we do not
easily see," Zhao told Space.com. "From it, we can derive the dark
matter effect."

Zhao compares this dark fluid to Earth's atmosphere. Atmospheric
pressure causes air to expand, but part of the air can collapse to
form clouds. In the same way, the dark fluid might generally expand,
but it also could collect around galaxies to help hold them together. ... "

 

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Apology for stolen generations to Australian Aborigines

Federal parliament will say sorry for the "profound grief, suffering and loss" inflicted on the stolen generations and will vow to never let it happen again.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Tuesday tabled in parliament the text of the national apology, giving notice it would be moved on Wednesday.

The apology honours Australia's indigenous people as, "the oldest continuing cultures in human history".

"We reflect on their past mistreatment," the apology reads.

"We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations, this blemished chapter in our nation's history."

Hundreds of indigenous Australians have descended on Canberra to witness the historic apology which comes more than a decade after the Bringing Them Home report.

The report documented the stories of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children taken from their families by governments between 1910 to the early 1970s.

The former Howard government, which lost last year's election, refused to issue a formal apology claiming it would leave the commonwealth liable to a flood of compensation claims.

The parliament will apologise for breaking up families and for the pain, degradation and suffering inflicted on the Aboriginal people.

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Joy to the World