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Γράφει ο Χρήστος Καράτζιος (Chris Karatzios) στα αγγλικά δυστυχώς.

How can the Greek government realize the impasse it is getting us into?

Thank you. I apologize if I will irk anyone with the following e-mail. It is by no means a personal attack on anyone but I have been asked about how we can get the truth out to our politicians and people. It is by learning about ourselves first.

The questions that are raised are very pertinent because how really do we make the political leadership understand our concerns? The easy answer is ..."by making the votes count during elections". The only problem is that there is such a dismay by the Greek voters that they don't know whom to vote for anymore. That is why the most popular political party in Greece right now is the "undecided party". One party seems better now with a new leader but we can't forget what his predecessor did when he was in power. The other party seems to be too sloppy on national issues and kind of rules by decree and arrogance when it comes to hard decisions about the economy thus alienating the voters who did vote for him. The others either seem too radical or extreme. So as it stands, no one is ideal.

The issue I have with the current government on national issues is that they think that just because they were voted in by majority (in a poorly numbered voting turnout), that they have been given carte blanche in dealing with issues that the people need a say in. Just imagine how they have to backtrack when it is leaked by the media that suddenly erga omnes might not be erga omnes anymore for the name of Skopje's territory. This was started by Dora Bakoyannis and the minds behind "the real MFA of Greece" an NGO called ELIAMEP that is essentially a vassal of the US State Department.

There are also rumours that Papandreou has been meeting in secret with Nikola Gruevski and that the leaks of "Republic of Vardar Macedonia" without erga omnes are deliberate in order to "feel what the people will do"...and how much they will react as a gauge that the government has the Greek people's approval. This upset Dimitris Droutsas so much yesterday that he had to quell these rumours in an angry statement. Not that he was angry at the rumours, he was angry at the thought that secret meetings were taking place behind his back. He criticized two people that were supposedly advising the Greek Prime Minister: A man named Alex Rontos and a woman named Marilena Koppa. It is well known in Greek MFA circles that Alex Rontos is not seen in a good light. It is also believed that he had given bad advice to Georgia's President Saakashvili to invade Abhazia and South Ossetia (with US support in spirit) only to end up in disaster. Marilena Koppa, a PASOK member of the Europarliament is a member of KEMO, an NGO in Greece that looks at pushing the issue of supposed minorities like "Vlachs and Macedonians".

An argument was had between members of this forum a few days back concerning Professor Riki van Boeschoten which I found interesting. She is also a member of KEMO. It is also well known that Riki van Boeschoten and her colleague Loring Danforth have been advocates for a "Macedonian oppressed minority" in Greece's north. I do not know them too well so I will only focus on the facts: Both have been associated with the fringe Vinozhito political party in Greece (the "Macedonian minority party") and both have been awarded and recognized by ultranationalist groups from Skopje and Skopje's diaspora. On this forum I have given information about the groups involved (United "Macedonian" Diaspora, Vinozhito, and Maknews) as being hate groups and how they are all connected to each other. I have had personal experience with these two professors where they have supported claims that the children of the civil war "paidomazoma" were expelled from Greece because they were "Macedonians". I should know how these children were taken and why since many members of my family were taken away...and they are Greek and were always Greek. Professor Danforth even said to my mother's face that she may be making things up in her testimony about her life ("I Foni tis Eirinis" by Ioannis Bougas Erodios Publishing Athens) because the Greek state was also "brainwashing children" coming back from the Iron Curtain.

As Dr. Billis already pointed out, Riki van Boeschoten was present at the launching of the "Macedonian-Greek Dictionary" in Athens in 2009 which was disrupted by thugs from Chrysi Avgi. What was not mentioned was that she was seated with members of Vinozhito and next to a man named Dimitris Lithoksoou whose book "O Ellinikos Antimakedonikos Agonas" is a book of falsehoods where he claims to have found Greek newspapers from 1903 etc which talk about a "Macedonian" genocide by Greeks. These newspapers have been found and they write about Greeks and Bulgarians killing each other. He replaced the term "Bulgarians" with "Macedonians" in his book. Riki van Boeschoten's and Loring Danforth's associations with people such as the above raise eyebrows.

To answer Prof. Bastea's offense to Dr. Billis's comments, the issue is not the nationality or gender of Ms. Van Boeschoten. The issue is her association with groups that hate Greece, and the propagation of her activism under the cloak of academic freedom - all the while being employed by the Greek state at the University of Thessaly.

Now getting back to how we can change what is going on? How when there is no support from the government and the Greek people have been bogged down and tired with the economy?

1) When Professor Stephen Miller spearheaded the campaign to protect Ancient Greek heritage in Macedonia, and got over 360 worldwide classicists to join in, why didn't the Greek government support it in any way? Ambassador Mallias promised the Pan-Macedonian Association that the Greek Embassy would help fund the campaign by giving a certain amount of money for advertising in 3 -4 major US newspapers. When we called to ask them for their help, the Embassy took back their promise.

2) When Nina Gatzoulis was present at the Pan-Cretan Association in Crete 2 years ago, she ran into Dora Bakoyannis who made a public scene and started yelling at Nina about how the Pan-Macedonian Association is ruining her plans and efforts for the name issue. She even went on to claim that it was she and Ambassador Mallias who found ALL the classicists and helped Professor Miller.

3) It is well known that Dora Bakoyannis wanted and wants to be the next PM of Greece with the support of the US of course. That is why she was courting the US State Department's views about Macedonia. We all know why Samaras brought down the Greek government of her father almost 20 years ago and we all know why Samaras fired her from his party this past year.

4) This past spring we found out that Ambassador Mallias was a member of ELIAMEP and went to Skopje to try and convince Gruevski that "Republic of Vardar Macedonia" should be their name and that "Makedonski" should be their nationality. This was espoused by Ms. Bakoyannis as well. It was ELIAMEP's idea.

5) Over 25 years ago, George Papandreou promised a man named Popovski, head of the "expelled Aegean Macedonian political prisoners" in Skopje, that he would allow them to return to northern Greece with no questions asked if he would ever become PM.

6) George Papandreou's press secretary up until 3 years ago was a man named Grigoris Vallianatos, a famous Greek gay activist. He publicly humiliated Papandreou when he supported Vinozhito and criticized Greece for its tretament of "gays, lesbians, transexuals, and Macedonians" at a PASOK rally 5 years ago. Papandreou kept him under his wing until he slipped up again on national TV and was asked to leave because there was a public uproar. Why was Papandreou associated with him in the first place? Since then, Vallianatos has been working closely with Vinozhito.

7) Now we find out that Papandreou has been associated with Alex Rontos and Marilena Koppa.

8) When the PanMacedonian Associations visited the Greek Parliament and met with Parliamentary President Phillipos Petsalnikos last year, he was ironic and arrogant toward them and claimed that they were messing up Greece's plans for Macedonia. When Nina Gatzoulis mentioned that even the first president of the FYROM Kiro Gligorov admitted they were Slavs, Petsalnikos dismissed her by saying that Gligorov is dead. (He is very much alive as of this writing).

9) 2 days later, the PanMacedonian Association discovered the Bulgarian book ABECEDAR published in 1925 by the Greek government in the electronic archives of the Greek Parlaiment's Library under the heading "Minority Macedonian Education" and "Macedonian Language" which is how Vinozhito explains it. When we sent a letter to the Parlaiment, it was picked up by the press. Petsalnikos came on TV and stated that "thank goodness I found it and immediately corrected it. It was placed there by the previous government."

10) To the dismay of many who know the issue, Papandreou appointed a man named Ioannis Konstantinou as president of the International Fair of Thessaloniki. He was part of the expert panel at a launch of ABECEDAR by Vinozhito in 2006 and with Ecologist Green Party leader Michalis Tremopoulos. Konstantinou introduced himself as a "Hellenophone center-left European lawyer" when asked his nationality. Last week the mayor of Thessaloniki complained that Konstantinou gave the order to remove the flags of Thessaloniki's jurisdiction from the Fair because they contained the picture of Alexander the Great.

11) PASOK's people invited the Pan-Macedonian Association to a dinner in Papandreou's honour while in New York for the current UN Summit. When the Pan-Macedonian Association asked Papandreou's people to meet with us personally, they started to avoid us and have not even answered a polite "no". It seems that Papandreou has invited the "omogeneia" at the dinner so he can appear "popular" in the press but when we asked to meet him (2 times in the last 6 months), he refuses.

12) We have asked the Greek government to pass a bill proclaiming the Greek heritage of Macedonia. No answer...

Need I list more? There are tons more and I do not want to tire members but it seems that there is a disconnect with the government and its people. It is not for lack of trying on our part. The issue is that there is an opinion in Greece that whoever worries about national issues is a fascist, paranoid, right wing extremist, bigot, and nationalist. It is very easy to use these slogans but as a nation, we have become blinded by a post-modernist view of history and we fight about what should be important to pass on to our children. The mistake will only be realized when the train lights are in our faces exactly as the ecomonic crisis came upon us. One tends to wonder who runs Greece's affairs especially with all revealed above and with many in key government positions working for their own convenience instead of Greece's good.

Why does the Greek government listen to NGO's for major national policies?

I reattach Marcus Templar's recent interview on the matter:
http://www.macedoniahellenicland.eu/content/view/1037/1/lang,el/

Chris Karatzios MD
McGill University