Remembering Hitchens | The Nation Victor Navasky

By David Edenden

Below is my post to "The Nation" article by Victor Navasky about Christopher Hitchens which is self-explanatory. 

Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded in Athens for suggesting that  "Salade Macedoine" was a mixed vegetable salad rather than a 100 % pure Greek salad!

I first came across Christopher Hitchens' name on April 7, 1993 in an article, "Not Just Paranoid about Macedonia", in the now defunct newspaper, "The European".

Since he is the only journalist in the world to support Greece's attempt to wipe ethnic Macedonians off the face of the map ... including the 50,000 strong minority in Greece ... (oh what a contrarian!) I assumed that he was he was a "snoty English upper class right wing twit journalist" who had never been to the Balkans. I was right on all accounts with the exception about him never have been to the Balkans.

Over the years, I have contacted "The Nation" to try to get Hitchens exposed as a Hellenophile pandering anti-Macedonian racist for reasons that may be apparent more to your journalists than to me ... to no avail.

By way of reparations, I suggest you do it now ... in honour of his passing.
Thank you and if you need any help ... don't be a stranger!

Remembering Hitchens | The Nation Victor Navasky:

Although we obviously had our differences, I was pleased to see that the vast majority of the well-deserved establishment kudos that our friend Christopher Hitchens received after he died were not inconsistent with Christopher Buckley’s assessment that Hitchens was “the greatest living essayist in the English language.”

Christopher Hitchens Help Defend the Macedonian Language Radio Station in Greece

By David Edenden

In honour of the passing of Christopher Hitchens I have re-posted this article from a few weeks ago.

I know we have had our differences in the past, but I thought you might use this occasion to support the right of the ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece to defend and promote their language and culture.


In this way you will, in a fashion, be paying reparations to ethnic Macedonians for your past support of the Greek position to wipe ethnic Macedonians off the map. This would be similar to your new found concern about anti-Antisemitism below.


Anyway ... GOD BLESS ... and don't be a stranger!

Joining the Tribe Late in Life: The Ever-Widening Circle of Celebrity Jews – Forward.com: 

 Are lives changed by the knowledge? Sometimes. Hitchens, an outspoken anti-Zionist, wrote in the Forward in 2000 that his ethnic heritage meant nothing, but by 2002 he was raging in Vanity Fair about the growing anti-Semitic threat to the unwary West, including “people like me.” His anti-Zionism had morphed from a fiery radicalism into a lament that Israel hadn’t fully solved the Jews’ problems. (I asked him that fall if his Jewish roots hadn’t touched him deeper than he’d realized. His reply: “I think you’re right, chaver.”)

MINA Breaking News - Greek Priest Calls for Attack on Macedonian Radio Station:

Greek Priest Anthimos

 Greek Priest Anthimos as a "true Christian" has asked for 40-50 Greeks to board buses, go to Florina/Lerin and break and burn the Macedonian language radio station because, according to him ethnic Macedonians would air anti-Greek propaganda. 

Anthimos' statement was issued after the announcement of Pande Ashlakov, the head of (?)/Ovcarani (Florina /Lerin) who said that "Vinozito" had received a license for a Macedonian language radio station that would be broadcasting program from Florina/Lerin to Thessoloniki/Solun.

Ashlakov at the Ilinden celebration said the radio will start working at the end of the year and as part of its program will have live shows and news.

Anthimos was seething, claiming the damned people will probably name their radio "Macedonian radio".

How is this possible? Are we the Greeks allowed to have a radio station anywhere in the Balkans? asked Anthimos.

The Greek priest shouldn't be worried, for example the in the Republic of Macedonia the Macedonian State Radio (paid for by taxpayers money) has broadcasted programs in every Balkan language, including Greek Albanian and Rom (Gypsy) for more than a decade.

Greek media reported the Thessoloniki/Solun priest was asking for 40-50 volunteers to board buses head to Florina/Lerin and attack the radio station.

With losing his "What Would Jesus Do" bracelet, priest Anthimos seems to have lost his way.

(Note: the italics are my edits to the story) 

Christopher Hitchens Is Simply Evil!

By David Edenden
Below is my comment on the Christopher Hitchens article in Slate on the nature of evil in the form of al-Qaida. What is interesting about Hitchens (and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,  et al) is the low bar for committing evil ... that is support for wiping a people off the face of the map.

Simply evil: A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida. -

By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine Monday, Sept. 5, 2011:

Christopher Hitchens

David Edenden
Chris, if you or your wife are reading these comments, I would like to remind you the you are the one that is evil for supporting Greece in its attempt to wipe ethnic Macedonians off the face of the map, both in Greece itself and the Republic of Macedonia ... all under the watchful eye of the EU/US/Nato trifecta.

Before you pass, by way of reparations to ethnic Macedonians for your past misdeeds, please travel to the town of Florina (Lerin) in the Greek province of Macedonia, where 50% of the population is of ethnic Macedonian origin, to protest the call of Greek priest, Metropolitan Anthimos of Thessaloniki (Solun), to (burn down a Macedonian language radio station) ... and I quote:

"We have some of those who were left here since the Civil War period, as we call it, that difficult period, who did not leave to the other side and stayed here with us... [They] are now revolting, and are instigated from abroad by the Skopian [sic] propaganda … That is why we address to the Ministry of Interior and deputy ministers relevant to the media to tell us: is it true, such a radio station will become in Meliti . . . yes or no? If it is yes, then I, and the youth, and anyone else who wants to . . . [with] at least 40 or 50 buses must go there, and together with our brothers in Florina and Meliti, we will destroy everything into broken glass and nails . . . It is not possible to do the job differently."

Nice!

THE MISTREATMENT OF GREECE'S ETHNIC MACEDONIAN MINORITY IS THE INSPIRATION FOR EVERY RACIST, EVERY FASCIST AND EVERY ETHNIC CLEANSER IN THE BALKANS! BY DEFINITION, THESE VALUES ARE ALSO NATO AND EU VALUES ... because of your fervent support for the Greek position, they are also your values Chris.

Anyway ... GOD BLESS ... and don't be a stranger!

Noel Malcolm Is To Blame for Balkan Ills

By David Edenden 


I  have to say that I agree with every thought expressed below, by Noel Malcolm, but I still think that he bears significant responsibility, along with Samantha Power,  for the wars in the Balkans ... yeah! ... you read it right the first time!


!Along with the Economist article, Do not disagree (Aug.14, 1993), the THE NEW BULLY OF THE BALKANS,(1992) by Noel Malcolm helped put the plight of ethnic Macedonians in Greece before the before journalists, academics, human rights groups and some politicians in the early 1990's. However, he has said nothing since then and the Economist seems also to have lost interest.

If Noel Malcolm, early on, had wrote that the mistreatment of ethnic Macedonians in Greece is the inspiration for every racist, every fascist and every ethnic cleanser in the Balkans. The United States, the EU and Nato are complicit in the ongoing cultural genocide, of a people who have lived in, what considered the cradle of democracy, for 1,500 years ... 

If Noel Malcolm had put the boots to the nonsense that Robert D.Kaplan and Christopher Hitchens spewed about Macedonians ... 

If ...

Noel, its still not to late to do so.

Noel Malcolm: ‘Communists, not Ottomans, Are To Blame for Balkan Ills’ :: BalkanInsight.com:
"Q: Knowing how Europe operates and its mentality, could we see Serbia get into EU without recognizing Kosovo, and then blocking it? 

A: If people in the EU are extremely stupid, yes. I am not a great admirer of the EU. I don’t think it is a coherent political project, I think it just led to very incoherent foreign policy. In the end, national governments have fundamentally different national ideas and preferences.
We’ve seen it very clearly with… the strange situation whereby the EU claims to be responsible for the development of Kosovo as a state but sends a mission there [the rule of law mission, EULEX] that does not recognize Kosovo as a state.  

I do worry about European policy. I honestly think they followed a very mistaken path over Cyprus. We are seeing one of the consequences of that now with the ultra-hard line of the Cyprus government against the recognition of Kosovo. If I remember correctly they have said that even if Serbia recognizes Kosovo, Cyprus will never recognize Kosovo. This is bizarre. I am not optimistic about Brussels policy. 

But Brussels does contain intelligent and well-informed people… so, I hope it will form an intelligent policy on this extremely important question.

How Vile Is Christopher Hitchens? ... Let Me Count The Ways.

By David Edenden

I can't read minds, but I doubt that Christopher Hitchens gives a damn about the Armenian Genocide, notwithstanding the article below. 

Turkey denies history—all the more reason for the rest of the world to tell the truth about the Armenian genocide. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine:

"the later erasure of all traces of Armenian life, from the destruction of their churches and libraries and institutes to the crude altering of official Turkish maps and schoolbooks to deny that there had ever been an Armenia in the first place."

 It is merely a sort of reparation payment to his Greek Cypriot wife for abandoning her in England (along with his children) while he takes up with"true love" in the US.

Inaddition to Cyprus, the Elgin Marbles, comrade Hitchens has found time to applaud the cultural genocide the Macedonia people in Greece in their struggle to maintain a semblance of their culture. Along with Greece's campaign to export that genocide to the people of the Republic of Macedonia. Here he is condemning George W. Bush for doing the right thing.

"The unmistakable Greekness of the trove is part of the reason that the Greek government is so upset at President Bush's recent decision to recognize former Yugoslav "Macedonia" under its assumed name."

Apparently it was only recently that Hichens discovered that his grandmother was Jewish, a fact that she hid from her own children. It is still not enough for him to summon one ounce sympathy for those Macedonians in Greece who hide their ethnicity from their own children. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 

Anyway ... to much time spent on this vile excuse for a human being. 

Top 100 Intellectuals - 5 Silent On Macedonians

By David Edenden

Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines compiled a list of the top 100 Intellectuals in 2008. What is interesting to me is that five of these intellectuals stayed silent on the plight of the ethnic Macedonians of Greece, even though they wrote extensively on the wars in the Balkans in the 1990's and 2001.

They all seemed to be hot for human rights for the Albanians of Kosovo, the Bosnian Muslims, the Gypsies of course, and some even mustered a tear or two for the Serbs of Kosovo, but nothing, nada, niende, nistho for the ethnic Macedonians living in Greece.

Its a mystery I tell ya ... or maybe a plot!

Anne Applebaum, United States

Journalist, historian

A regular columnist for the Washington Post, Applebaum is a veteran journalist and author of Gulag: A History, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Soviet prison system

Christopher Hitchens, Britain/United States

Journalist, author

One of the English language’s most sought-after polemicists, Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Michael Ignatieff, Canada

A past winner of the Gelber Prize for his book Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, Ignatieff is a leading thinker on human rights issues. He is deputy leader of Canada’s Liberal Party and former head of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Tony Judt, Britain
Historian

Judt is the Erich Maria Remarque professor in European studies at New York University, author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Samantha Power,United States , Journalist

 A former foreign-policy advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Power is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. She is the Anna Lindh professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Terrorists in Macedonia Kidnap Dogs, Threaten Execution if Demands Are Not Met!

By David Edenden

A new, previously unknown terrorist group in Macedonia has abducted 5 dogs and threatened to make them into "hotdogs" if their demands are not met. The group known as "The Macedonian Armed Revolutionary Struggle (MARS) has kidnapped a French Poodle, a British Bull Dog, a German Sheppard, an Australian Dingo and an American Collie (Lassie for f**k's sake!).

A statement released by the groups says:

These imperialist dogs will be butchered ... in a not very nice way ... I mean really bad ... but before that they will be waterboarded ... which ... trust me ... is not torture.

We demand that Greece be expelled from Nato and the EU until Greece make reparation payments to it's ethnic Macedonian minority for enduring cultural genocide for 95 years.

Greece's treatment of its ethnic Macedonian minority is the inspiration for every racist, every fascist and every ethnic cleanser in the Balkans!

We also demand a halt to the media cover-up of this oppression. All journalists and politicians who were too lazy to report on the struggle for human rights of the ethnic Macedonians in Greece, while they were farting around in the Balkans for the last 15 years, should confess, in public orgy of self-criticism.

Below is a list (in no particular oder), of the offenders. If you are a politician, journalist or pundit, who has covered the Balkans , and you don't find yourself on the list, don't let that stop you from beating yourself up or from kissing the ass (or donkey) of the first Macedonian you meet!

"I am a (journalist, politician, pundit) and I ignored human rights violations against ethnic Macedonians in Greece ... "

Robert Kaplan (granddaddy of all offenders)
Barack Obama (yeah!, you read it right the first time)
Matthew Nimetz (I'm really disappointed in you Matthew!) (more)
Samantha Power
Chuck Sudetic
Christopher Hitchens (when you sober up) (more)
Reuters
AP
Heather Hurlburt
Anne Applebaum
The New Republic ( I'm talking to you Franklin Foer)
Michael Kinsley
The Nation (See Hitchens)
International Crisis Group (especially the head kargaroo f**ker)
Radio Free Europe
Nicholas Whyte
Edward Lucas (of THE Economist)
Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC)
British Broadcasting Corp (BBC)
Madeline Albright
Richard Holbrooke (more)
Kati Marton ("The Polk Conspiracy", Mrs. Richard Holbrooke)
Janusz Bugajski (more)
Timothy Garton Ash (hole)
Stephane Dion
Michael Ignatieff (you have fallen so far!)
Strobe Talbott
Tom Lantos (okay ...I know you're dead now ... but try to make an effort anyway)
Matthew Russell Lee
Mike Rann (lock up your kangaroos!)
Javier Solana
Georgie Anne Geyer
Rep Adam Shiff
OSCE
Laura Rozen
Ivo Daalder
International War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Lindsay Moran
Theo Angelopoulos, Film Director
Jeannie Most, CNN

Christopher Hitchens - Debauched

By David Edenden
Like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football held by Lucy, I naively expected a hard hitting account of Turkey's repression of its Kurdish minority. Not to be measured with the suffering of Armenians during the First World War, but quite bad, none the less.
Instead we have a lone limp wristed comment that the Turkey should be nicer to its Kurdish minority.

What about Nato? Turkish minority rights values are Nato values, by definition since Turkey is a Nato member. Where is the condemnation of Nato.
The Kurds, like the Macedonians in Greece (see Human Rights Watch) have been subject to systematic cultural genocide since both Turkey and Greece entered Nato. A subject, at least regarding the Macedonians of Greece that Hitchens remains silent, notwithstanding the many opportunities he has had to include it in his reporting in the Balkans.

Before Nato bombed Kosovo, Albanians enjoyed far more rights than the Kurds of Turkey and the Macedonians of Greece. Maybe Nato should also have bombed Athens and Ankara to secure their rights. We would now be talking about independence for Turkish Kurdistan as well as Kosovo. Why not?

Hitchens has always taken the opportunity to take a swipe against Macedonians, but has never discussed their mistreatment as a minority in Greece, all the while droning on and on about Cyprus. Maybe its was part of the divorce settlement with his ex-wife (a Greek Cypriot) that he should urinate, in public on, Macedonian ethnic identity.

Hitchens has adopted the "realist position" of US foreign policy by deciding who gets the elevator and who gets the shaft.

Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens has always reminded me of being the Oliver Reed of journalism. My wife and I were in England watching "the tele" a few years ago, before Reed's death. Reed came on the TV looking puffed, disheveled and glassy-eyed, praising the merits of some liquor or wine. I turned to my wife and said there is only one word that can adequately describe him ... debauched.

Divide and Conquer: The United States should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around.By Christopher Hitchens
Slate, Monday, Oct. 29, 2007

So, let us be clear on a few things. The European Union, to which Turkey has applied for membership with warm American support, has insisted on recognition of Kurdish language rights and political rights within Turkey. We can hardly ask for less.

If the Turks wish to continue lying officially about what happened to the Armenians, then we cannot be expected to oblige them by doing the same (and should certainly resent and repudiate any threats against ourselves or our allies that would ensue from our Congress affirming the truth).

Then there remains the question of Cyprus, where Turkey maintains an occupation force that has repeatedly been condemned by a thesaurus of U.N. resolutions ever since 1974. It is not our conduct that should be modified by Turkey's arrogance; we do a favor to the democratization and modernization of that country by insisting that it get its troops out of Cyprus, pull its forces back from the border with Iraq, face the historic truth about Armenia, and in other ways cease to act as if the Ottoman system were still in operation.

Book Review: Victor Serge

By David Edenden

Victor Serge was a famous French author of Russian descent who was a follower of Leon Trotsky. He was jailed by Stalin and then expelled from the Soviet Union after an international campaign to secure his freedom. He had an interest in the Balkans. It is a very interesting book. There are only a few pages relating to Macedonia. He wrote for many French radical papers and some of his writing may be about Macedonia, if anyone is interested in doing some research. He seemed to be friends with Dimitar Vlahov and Todor Panitza.

Victor Serge wrote about his prison years (1912-1917) in a novel called "Men in Prison". I do not know if he mentions Macedonians in that novel but he does mention them below. If someone could get a copy and post a review, it would be great. I wonder what Christopher Hitchens would have to say about Victor Serge and Macedonians?

Memoirs of a Revolutionary - University of Iowa Press ed. 2002. Translated Peter Sedgwick OUP 1963.
There is more here, and here.


P. 63-64 Paris France. 1917

One day I was arrested in the street by two terrified inspectors who for some unknown reason were expecting me to resist to the death.
...I was conveyed by administrative decision to a concentration camp at Precigne, in La Sarthe.

... Guarded by weary Territorials, who never had an idea unless it was to re-sell us bottles of wine at a handsome profit, we would hold pro- Soviet meetings in the courtyard of the secularized monastery.
...Belgians, Macedonians, and Alsatians, variegated "suspects (some of them genuinely, in fact horribly suspect), would hear us out in silence...

...The Belgians and Alsatians were vaguely pro-German; the Macedonians, proud, destitute and silent were just Macedonians, ready to fight the whole world for their primitive mountain liberty.

...one of our group tried to escape, under cover of a storm. He fell in the camp's perimeter, under the livid glare of searchlights: "Twenty years old and six bullets in his body," it was remarked. On the following day, we summoned the camp to revolt. The "Starost", or Elder of the Macedonians, came and told us that they would support us.

...The local Prefect came, and promised us an inquiry ...the revolt subsided.

P 179-180 Vienna, Austria 1925

I became interested in the movement for a Balkan Federation. The conception was noble: no other remedy was appropriate to the division of the small kindred peoples of the peninsula into feeble states, destined to be destroyed sooner or later through their mutual laceration.

The Doctor, a big white haired Bulgarian, scholarly and Parisified, would arrange appointments with me in the discreet little local cafes. A taxi, and then the tram: we would head out to the vineyards, between Floridsdorf and Modlin .

There we would meet a young stranger in an outsize overcoat, whom I immediately classified as a bodyguard; I thought I could see the enormous Browning revolver, the favorite weapon of Macedonians (who do not trust small bullets), bulging through his coat pockets.
The overcoat-man, all smiles, hurried me along urgently. The tram again, and then we came to a village full of charming taverns, and after that to a villa, adorned with flowers like its neighbors, in which lived the last surviving leader of the Communist-influenced "La Federation Balkanique" (1) a former member of the Ottoman Parliament.

...Vlahov (2) rarely goes out now. Murder lies in wait for him at every street corner, and at night trusted men stand on watch in the garden of his villa.

In this very city his predecessor, Todor Panitza, was recently killed while watching a performance in a theater. A short while before that, Panitza's predecessor, Petar Chaulev, had discovered that he was being trailed in these streets and took the train to Milan. In Milan he was murdered. A short while before that, the old leader of I.M.R.O. (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) (3), Todor Alexandroff, had been killed at the end of a conference in the mountains, in which he had advocated cooperation with the Communists. I had drafted the three obituaries for the press.

Around the great conception of a Balkan Federation, there swarmed hordes of secret agents,impresarios of irredentism, pedlars of the influential word, night-walking politicians engaged in six intrigues at a time.

And all these smart gentlemen, with their over-gaudy neckties sought to harness the unbridled energy of the Comitajis and sell it to and fro to any buyer. There was the Italian wing, the Bulgarian wing, the Yugoslav wing, two Greek tendencies, one monarchist and one republican, ideologies, personal cliques, and vendettas. We knew the cafes in which the revolvers of any given group lay in wait, watched from the café opposite by those of another.

Footnotes
(1)La Federation Balkanique: a multi-lingual review published in Vienna from 1924 and after 1931 in Frankfurt, with communist backing but a wider appeal. (It advocated a Balkan Federation including an independent Macedonia)

(2) Dimitar Vlahov, a leading Macedonian communist and Commintern delegate. After 1935 he took refuge in the Soviet Union; in 1943 emerged as a partisan leader with Tito, with special responsibility for Yugoslav Macedonia, and died in 1951 as Vice-President of Yugoslavia.

(3) I.M.R.O. was a Macedonian nationalist and terrorist organization founded in 11893 and financed by a levy on all Macedonians; it was based on local activist bodies called Comitajis which elected delegates to a national convention.

Christopher Hitchens - An Itch I Cannot Scratch

I am a pack rat so I have a hard time throwing things away. Below is a 1993 letter to the editor of the now defunct "The European Newspaper" in which Christopher Hitchens discussed the Macedonian "name" issue . This is the first time that I had heard of him. My assumption was that he was a snotty upper class right wing twit journalist who had never been to the Balkans. (I don't have a copy of the original article, but if anyone can find it, please send it to me.)

Quelle surprise ... it seems our comrade Hitchens was had a reputation as a leftist ... even a Trotskyite. It also seems that he married a Greek Cypriot. It also seems that he left his wife and small child for another woman. Ms Greek Cypriot raised their child in England while comrade Chris stayed in New York. Nice! He wrote an ant-Turkish book on Cyprus, I suppose as a way of atoning for his cadish behavior.

Over the years, has contributed snotty anti-Macedonian articles in the Nation and other publications but has never commented on the plight of the Macedonians in Greece. This is odd because, I believe, that one of his friends is Hugh Poulton, of the Minority Rights Group ("Who are the Macedonians?") so he can't be totally ignorant of our issues.

I can't find the link at this time, but Sidney Blumenthal of Salon (a former friend) said that no one could really trust the facts in an article by Christopher Hitchens. His brother is a right wing commentator in England. My point is that anyone reading his work on Macedonia would never guess that he had been a leftist at one time.

April 7, 1993

To: The European "Letters to the Editor"
Re: "Not Just Paranoid about Macedonia" by Christopher Hitchens, April 1-7,

Mr. Hitchens is incorrect when he stated the title of "King of the Hellenes" was forced upon the newly crowned Greek King George "in deference to Ottoman objections to the original formulation 'King of the Greeks'". In the same way that Germans call their country Deutchland in their language, Greeks call themselves Hellenes and their country Hellas in their language. The word "Greece" like the word "Germany" is based on ancient Roman usage.

The rest of the article is similarly flawed. It reminds me of a lecture on sexual technique that is given by a virgin. Although some of the facts may be right, the insight that one might gain from a more intimate knowledge and direct experience is missing.

Please no more "if this is Tuesday, this must be Macedonia (or is it Moldova?)" type of articles.

Christopher Hitchens Part 2

I am a pack rat so I have a hard time throwing things away. Below is a 1993 letter to the editor of the now defunct "The European Newspaper" in which Christopher Hitchens discussed the Macedonian "name" issue . This is the first time that I had heard of him. My assumption was that he was a snoty English upper class right wing twit journalist who had never been to the Balkans. I don't have a copy of the original article, but will try to find and post it.



Quelle surprise ... it seems our comrade Hitchens was had a reputation as a leftist ... even a Trotskyite. It also seems that he married a Greek Cypriot. It also seems that he left his wife and small child for another woman. It seems that Ms. Greek Cypriot raised the child in England while comrade Chris stayed in New England. Nice!



Over the years, Hitchens has contributed anti- Macedonian articles in the Nation and other publications but has never commented on the plight of the ethnic Macedonians in Greece. This is odd because one of his friends is Hugh Poulton of the Minority rights Group ("Who are the Macedonians?") so he can't be totally ignorant of our issues.



His brother is a right wing commentator in Enlgand. My point is that anyone reading his work on Macedonia would never guess that he had been a leftist at one time.





April 7, 1993



To: The European "Letters to the Editor"

Re: "Not Just Paranoid about Macedonia" by Christopher Hitchens, April 1-7,



Mr. Hitchens is incorrect when he stated the title of "King of the Hellenes" was forced upon the newly crowned Greek King George "in deference to Ottoman objections to the original formulation 'King of the Greeks'". In the same way that Germans call their country Deutchland in their language, Greeks call themselves Hellenes and their country Hellas in their language. The word "Greece" like the word "Germany" is based on ancient Roman usage.



The rest of the article is similarly flawed. It reminds me of a lecture on sexual technique that is given by a virgin. Although some of the facts may be right, the insight that one might gain from a more intimate knowledge and direct experience is missing.



Please no more "if this is Tuesday this must be Macedonia (or is it Moldova?)" type of articles.

Christopher Hitchens part 1.

What Made Alexander So Great? - The real mystery of his life isn't his bisexuality. By Christopher�Hitchens

This is really a nothing article with the exception that Hiitchens has taken the opportunity to trash ethnic Macedonians ... what an donkey! More on Hitchens in another post

"The unmistakable Greekness of the trove is part of the reason that the Greek government is so upset at President Bush's recent decision to recognize former Yugoslav "Macedonia" under its assumed name."