Macedonian Anti-Fascists Protest Harrasment

Anti-Fascist Protesters “Proud of the past that actually happened.”
Photo by V. Dzambaski (CC NC-SA)

Vanco Dzambaski published a photo-gallery from the gathering that took place February 16th in the center of Skopje, commemorating the February Campaign of 1944, when partisans from Macedonia, Greece and Kosovo marched through the snowy mountains to strike decisive blow to fascist forces in Macedonia and Northern Greece. World War II veterans and their supporters [mk] protested forced neglect of Allied achievements (including the founding of Macedonian state), and continuous harassment of the veteran organization by the current government at all levels.


In December 2012, the veteran organization [mk] was thrown out of their premises through a controversial court order, with help from out-of-town security agency [mk], after a local one failed [mk] to deal with the old fighters.

City government tried to stop the February protest [mk] by denying permission for use of the public square. They claimed other events were scheduled in the area at the designated time, but could not reveal what. The protesters decided to do it anyway, continuing the tradition of the original February march, commenced against the will of the then-authorities.

On the day of the protest, it was the only event there. Instead of covering the protest [mk] major pro-government media propagated Government's communique [mk] that they respect the heritage of the Second World War.

Why Nobody Uses the Expression "European Proverb"? But "African" is OK to Some.

Photo of three dark-skinned women holding hands and walking a dirt road in the tropics, with the words "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. - African proverb" from the Facebook page Being Liberal.

The above saying sounds nice, but "African proverb" sounds a bit broad. In Europe and Asia we use more precise designations based on language or ethnicity such as "Macedonian proverb" or "Chinese proverb" etc. I've never heard of anyone saying that a proverb is European or Asian. And Africa has much greater diversity of genes, peoples, cultures, and languages than both these continents. Hard to generalize, unless the proverb is generally used by all cultures across the whole continent.

Otherwise, this sounds like colonial mentality. Maybe this is a Fulani or Xhosa proverb, and by taking that part of its identity methinks we go into direction of reinforcing the opinions such as "all Africans are the same," and there's no need to concern ourselves with acknowledging their cultural diversity. 

If you know of a more precise source of this much-quoted inspirational saying, feel free to share it, so we can start correcting all instances of its appearance - together, cause it's a long road.

Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia: UK Must Fulfill Conditions to Exit the EU

Njuz.net, the Serbian equivalent to The Onion, relayed the following faux news [sr]:

Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, BiH: UK Must Fulfill Conditions to Exit the EU

Great Britain is impaitently awaiting the decision of the "Great Five"

Skopje, January 24, 2013, (Njuz) – The Council of Ministers of the countries of the Un-European Union stated today in Skopje that a long road lies ahead of United Kingdom in order for it to join this international organisation.

By way of reminder, the United Kingdom of Great Britain expressed its intent to step out of the European Union (EU) yesterday. However in order to do that it shall have to fulfill a range of preconditions. "Great Britain will first have to sign a Stabilization and Association Pact, and then start a comprehensive process of harmonization of its legislature with the regulations of all countries that are not European Union members. Key priority areas are the regulations on freedom of the media, judiciary, human rights protection and corruption. Only afterwards we shall be able to talk about getting a candidate status, while it is too early to talk about the date for the start of negotiations," said Nikola Gruevski, Prime Minister of Macedonia, the country that currently chairs the Un-European Union.

According to unofficial allegations, significant discord exists among the "Great Five" about whether the time is right to enlarge this organization.

"Some members, like Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina for example, consider it too risky to accept a former European Union member-state as a member, due to concerns that the wave of unemployment and poverty could spill over from the EU to the Balkans. However, majority agrees that Great Britain deserves a chance, considering that this country was not a dedicated European Union member, anyway. Supporting this argument is the fact that Britain never abandoned its national currency, which would ease its entry to the Non-Euro Zone," stated a high official from Skopje, on condition of anonymity.

British Prime Minister David Cameron stated today that he feels encouraged by the positions of official Skopje, and that his country will do everything possible to fulfill the conditions as soon as possible.

Bojan Ljubenović

Peru: Inca Ritual of "Golden Shovel"

I recommend the book Realm of the Incas by Victor W. von Hagen to all interested in understanding how the Incas--the last dynasty of ancient Perú--managed to create, manage, and lose their empire, which they called Tawantinsuyu - "The Four Quarters of the World." 

Von Hagen presents and interprets archeological and historical evidence in comparison with other ancient and modern cultures in a very accessible and unconceited manner. For instance, an excerpt from pages 64-66: 

Agriculture was the soul of the Inca Empire; it determined everything. The Andean farmers' year was divided into two seasons: wet and dry. The wet season began in October and extended to May; the dry season, starting in May, although subject to considerable caprice (hence the Inca's preoccupation with obeisance to the unseen powers), continued into November.

In the autumn the lands of the commune were divided fairly between the members of the ayllu, the earth cell which controlled the communal land tenure. First the lands (chacras) assigned to the Inca, that is state lands, were cultivated communally (part of the Indians' mitta tax of service), then the lands of the sun, the state religion. The fruits thereof were harvested and stored for the use of these agencies. These state granaries were stocked, so the early Spaniard remembered, with maize, quinoa, chuñu, charqui (dried llama meat), fish, cords, hemp, wool, cotton, sandals, and military arms, stored in hampers, each item in its appropriate warehouse. They were seen by Francisco de Xerez, the first soldier-chronicler of the conquest of 1533, who remembered these storehouses as being "pilled to the roof, as the Merchants of Flanders and Medina make them."

The work of tilling these fields done, the puric then turned to his own.

August was plowing time, and work in each other's field was--like all else-communal. It began with a festival. The nobility took it all most seriously and always participated. "If," wrote the Jesuit historian Padre Cobo, "the Inca himself or his governor or some high official happened to be present, he started the work with a golden digging stick which they brought to the Inca, and following his example all the other officials and nobles who accompanied him did the same." (No different in idea today than some state official turning the soil with a gold-plated shovel or else laying a cornerstone with a golden trowel.*)

Men and women plowing the fields together. The men use the foot plow, called taclla;
the  women break up the clods of earth. Another woman brings corn chicha to drink.
From "El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno" by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala.

They had no plow as such, and no draft animals. Men used, as they still do, the taclla, or foot plow, which was a thick pole six feet in length with a fire-hardened point; sometimes it was bronze-tipped. There was a footrest near the tip and it was driven deep into the soil by a thrust of the foot and shoulder pressure. The digging stick, like all else in the realm, was a group tool and was seldom used by only one man. His kinsmen of the ayllu formed a long line across the field to be plowed, and with a rhytmic chant "Jailli" (pronounced "whaylyi," which means "triumph"), "...they triumphed over the soil, writes Garcilaso "the Inca plowing it and disemboweling it."

QHARICUNA:
Ayau jailli, ayau jailli
Kayqa thajilla, kayqa suka!
Kayqa maki; Kayqa jumpi!

WARMICUNA;
Ajailli, qhari, ajailli

              

Free translation
THE MEN:
Ho! Victory, ho! Victory,
Here digging stick, here the furrow!
Here the sweat, here the toil!

THE WOMEN (answering):
Huzzah, men, huzzah!

The men worked backward, the women followed facing them and breaking up the clods with a sort of hoe called lampa. Sara (corn) was planted in September, potatoes when the rains began to fall, i.e. between October and November. After plowing the fields of the Inca, the Sun, and their own, they next turned to those fields of kinsmen who were serving in the army, and then finally to those of the sick and the halt. Their principal tribute (it was part of their tax), said Garcilaso, was "the working and cultivating and harvesting of the lands of the Sun and the Inca."

Von Hagen asserts that the Inca dynasty based its absolutist power on superb organizational skills using and upgrading the great achievements of conquered cultures, creation of religious personality cult, and control of the culture by perpetuating a myth that they were the sole civilizing force. Their empire was low-tech totalitarian welfare state which fostered dogma, group-think and isolationism, as ultra-conservatives they could not cope with new concepts such as the notion that other civilizations may exist across the sea.

* Modern example from Macedonia: Top religious authorities auctioning a golden shovel while consecrating a new building. While the state is nominal secular, the politicians and leaders of religious institutions often benefit from combining their areas of competence. All construction activity paid by the state is subject to rituals involving religious blessings and obligatory photo-op of politicians throwing the first shovel of dirt &/ cutting red ribbons. 

No Memorial Service for the Victims of "Donkey Assasinations," Again

Once again, Macedonia has failed to commemorate one of the darkest days in the history of Štip: On December 4, 1911, as a consequence of the so-called "Donkey Assassinations," dozens of citizens lost their lives, and hundreds were wounded.

The goal of this terror campaign (which also included Kichevo and Dojran) was to incite inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatred resulting in physical violence - mutual slaughter of the population of Macedonia. The primary targets were Muslims, who would took revenge on the Christians, which supposed to create chaos that would invite intervention by the neighboring states, with an end result of complete division of Macedonia. Along the way, those who incited the strife would end up as feudal owners who would privatize and "independently" rule whatever piece of territory they can scoop up from Macedonia.

Štip by the end of XIX century. Photo: Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia in Macedonian article on the "Donkey Assassinations" („Магарешки атентати“) references the book "Treason and Assassinations in the Macedonian History" („Предавствата и атентатите во македонската историја“, 2004) by the state historians Violeta Achkovska and Nikola Zhezhov. They point out that the primary motive for the assassinations involved racketeering. The operations involved members of the pro-Bulgarian, "Autonomist" IMRO disguised as peasants bringing time bombs on donkeys, and leaving them in markets or near religious objects. An excerpt from the article follows, while the quotes in brackets are from the book, which covers this topic from around page 143:

As a result of such terrorist activity on December 4, 1911 in Štip in less than an hour, 20 Christians were killed by angry Muslim mobs, and hundreds were wounded. Initial reports by the Kaymakam of Štip to the Wali [Ottoman governor] of Kosovo Villayet  justified this act of violence with an alleged bomb planted near the mosque wall, which injured three Muslims, with one of them dying from the wounds.

[...]

Citizens of Štip suffered the most due to this event, regardless of their complete innocence regarding any participation or approval of the initial crime. In fact the assassination "was inspired by the desire to punish them, and to provoke an incident." British Consul noted that after the shocking "murder of six Muslims near Kiliseli, and the legal consequences and other processes in Štip, ...last year, the local elders decided to terminate any relations with the organization lead by Todor Aleksandrov, refusing to pay contributions to his funds--which they did until then--and to receive and smuggle his emissaries upon their visits to the city." After that, Aleksandrov announced his intention "to bring them to their senses."

Several months ago, several right-wing political parties including the ruling party running the Government of RM paid respects to the organizer of these assassinations, Todor Aleksandrov.  They organized several Orthodox Christian memorial services in his honor, attended by at least one governmental minister. They even built an EUR 73.000 equestrian monument dedicated to him in Skopje (unnamed at the time of erection, then amended with an inscription of the name), and sang а song about him during party celebration. However, not a word about the victims. So when authorities in Macedonia talk about honoring tradition, remembrance of the hardships of the common people does not come into play. Citizens of Štip did not make a peep.

PS
Several years ago, Zarko Trajanoski asked the same question. Sadly, in recent times, 101 years after those loathsome events, similar modus operandi was used for several incidents to incite inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatred. History should be thought as a way to avoid repeating past disasters, not as a list of models to imitate...

New Kind of "Russian" Spam on Twitter

This article is also available in Macedonian | Овој напис е достапен и на македонски
- на Блогерај: Нов вид „руски“ спамови на Твитер
- на Блогспот: Нов вид „руски“ спамови на Твитер 

I came across a new kind of "Russian" spam - I use the term provisionally because the senders all have Russian names. What they do is make mentions of other twitter users and include text of older tweets sent to them. I assume this is a way to make the tweets look more "legit."

I document through photos, as I also reported them to Twitter for spam, which will hopefully lead to their removal.

The first round of such tweets also have retweets from their "pals."

The text was taken from a tweet by RubinBt, who responded to my question five days before prior (related to a Global Voices post).

@razvigor Здраво боби беше успешен тролинг проект на твитер заедницата инспириран од поздравот на една селебрити кон својот најголем фан
— Брзи Рабин Рубин (@RubinBt) November 24, 2012

Possibly the sender/s who controls those profiles is not proficient in Macedonian language at all...

Macedonia: Promotion of Loring M. Danforth's Book on Greek Civil War Refugees in Skopje

The Foundation Open Society Macedonia has published Macedonian translation of the book Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory by Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten; and is organizing a promotional public debate in Skopje on November 16, 2012. Both coauthors will attend.

The debate will take place this Friday in Holiday Inn hotel at 11:00 hrs CET, and if you are unable to attend in person, there will be live video streaming via the service vozivo.mk. This service also uploads the video recordings of such events (also on FB) it covers, with a delay of few days, so if you miss it all, you'll be able to make up. 

Loring M. Danforth is a Bates College professor, and the author of classic anthropological work on ethnic Macedonian identity The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World [Amazon.com]. Over the years, numerous sites have quoted excerpts from the book, including myself in 1995 on my personal website I built as a student at Institute of Informatics.

Vasiliki P. Neofotistos wrote the following in her review of Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory [Amazon.com]

Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten offer a masterful, original, and rich ethnographic analysis of the evacuation of children, self-identified as Greeks and Macedonians, from their homes in northern Greece by both parties in the Greek Civil War of 1946–1949, namely the royalist right-wing government and the Greek Communist Party. The refugee children—that is, children who were usually between the ages of three and 14, though often younger or older children as well, who were “forced to leave [their] home[s] and country of origin because of a well-founded fear of persecution” (265)—were evacuated to children’s homes operated by the Greek Communist Party in Eastern Europe and to paidopoleis (literally meaning “children’s cities”) by the Greek government in locations throughout Greece. Based on archival research and ten years of fieldwork in multiple locales around the world, the authors explore in three neatly organized and tightly knit parts the intersection between the stories of lived experiences as told by individual refugee children after the end of the Cold War and the history of the Greek Civil War. They provide pioneering insights into a still controversial episode in Greece’s modern history and maintain a remarkably balanced and sensitive approach, whereby a wide range of personal experiences and perspectives on the Civil War is presented and analyzed in a sophisticated manner.  [...]

Promoters of the Macedonian edition will include Todor Chepreganov, director of the Institute for National History, and Ljupcho Risteski, professor at the Institute for Ethnology and Anthropology in Skopje. FOSM executive director Vladimir Milcin will serve as moderator of the public debate. 

Armenia: Trees Turned into Sculptures

This article is also available in Macedonian and Albanian
- на македонски на Блогерај: Ерменија: Дрвја претворени во скулптури   
- на македонски на Блогспот: Ерменија: Дрвја претворени во скулптури      
- në gjuhën shqipe në portalb.mk: Armeni: Drunjët shndërrohen në skulptura    

Examples how trees can remain part of the urban environment after their natural death. I made these photographs on the streets of Etchmiadzin, Armenia, in October 2006.

I already wrote about this (in Macedonian, on Blogspot and Blogeraj) back in 2009, when Skopje City Government started the first massacre of trees on Ilinden boulevard.

The city of Etchmiadzin is a spiritual seat of the Armenian culture, holding the seat of their national church. The complex containing the main cathedral is open and organized as a park with much greenery.

Macedonia: PM Questions "Some Kind of Rights" for Women; LGBT People Under Durres

"Hate Speech breeds Violence"
Photo: The Palm Beach Post

On October 12, 2012, the Macedonian Minister for Labor and Social Policy Spiro Ristovski abruptly announced his refusal of same-sex marriage, marking the start of campaign for distraction of public attention from other issues through inciting hate against LGBT people in some pro-government media. The campaign to rouse homophobia is powered by publishing gay porn images on a newspaper's front page, and promoting bogus research stating that gay parents molest their children. (Exposing minors to pornography is a criminal offense in Macedonia, but there's no record that the authorities pressed charges.)  On October 22, a gay rights activist was beaten up in Skopje, an event condemned by MEPs.

At the Commemorative Event of the public holiday Day of Macedonian Revolutionary Struggle (October 23, 2012), attended by the state leadership, including the President Ivanov (father of one child), the Prime Minister Gruevski (once divorced, fathered two children with his current second wife) held a speech [mk] which caused much turmoil among the citizens, especially those concerned with equal rights for men and women.

Incidentally, the official English translation of this speech seems to be cut short before the PM went into elaborating its main topic - the need to procreate more to boost the economy. The most representative paragraph which was quoted by local media states:

"Today, when we are in incomparably better condition than 60, 100 or more years ago, we, to tell the truth, alongside most of other European countries, face a crisis of family values, with serious long term and so far unstoppable trend of decline of fertility. We live at a time when it is increasingly rare to have a second child in the families, to speak of third or fourth. Contrary to that we lead debates about skewed values, about single-sex marriages, and even about adopting children in those single-sex marriages, about some kind of rights for women, and of men, about which one of them is more represented in politics or in business, and while we spend ourselves on those topics, as a state we are missing a people," Gruevski said. 

The speech and especially the term "some kind of rights" caused uproar on social networks. Many shared [mk] the link to a speech on German womanhood by Joseph Goebbels from 1933 alongside the news [mk] to incite people to compare and contrast. The fact that the same-sex marriage "debate" designated as pointless the PM is initiated and "lead" by his own subordinates, members of his party which imposes iron discipline and top-down coordination on all PR matters was also not considered an example of irony.

During the same day, Macedonian Helsinki Committee opened a LGBT center in Skopje. During the night, the premises were attacked with much material damage.

On October 24, some women CSOs reacted [mk] to the PM's putting the blame on women for not giving birth to enough babies, thus creating problems of competitiveness, investments, expenditure, and roads... by stating that women are "not  a group nor some kind of machines." Some female MPs asked the PM to explain the meaning of his speech at the session of the Parliamentary Committee for Equal Opportunities for Men and Women. Speaking in his defense, Ms Liljana Popovska, MP, whose party DOM is a member of ruling coalition said that:

"...if the Government and the PM did not have good will to advance the rights of women they would not have allowed gender quotas in the Electoral Code and a number of other things... I would not interpret [the speech], it's a matter of style, the way one expresses himself, but I see nothing problematic and I am absolutely certain that women's rights are protected after the speech in the same measure as before it."

In other news, the Minister for Labor and Social Policy (whose official CV omits his marital status, but dependable social media users claim he is and has two kids) again opined [mk] on the issue of low birthrate, providing a nice example of Freudian slip (italic):

"Our kids, and that one child we bear, will have to live under risk, with unsustainable economic system. Where with this population policy... er... this population picture, we'll bring ourselves to a point of having unsustainable economic system and unsustainable pension system," Ristovski said.

According to various estimates, up to one quarter of the population  has left the country in the last two decades since the independence (450.000 out of 2 million, and according to Kapital [mk] 230.000 since 1998), and around 50.000 Macedonians have acquired Bulgarian passports as means to ease emigration or doing business with/in the EU.

Macedonia: The Internet must Fall - an Order from the Committe HQ | #член16

This article is also available in Macedonian 
- на македонски на Блогерај: Интернет мора да падне - наредба од Штабот на Комитетот | #член16
- на македонски на Блогспот: Интернет мора да падне - наредба од Штабот на Комитетот | #член16     

Bribe, buy-off, take over, appropriate, intimidate and if that does not work, destroy the existing media. Meanwhile, open portals "which often publish insulting information and direct attacks on individuals, firms, companies." Conduct media lynches against those who have different opinions - faux lustrations, discrediting, purges. Avoid implementation of Criminal Code [mk] when your propagandists use hate speech with impunity to incite discord and inter-ethnic intolerance. 

Bring the situation with freedom of expression to a pitiful level.

Then, declare a "solution": The Internet "must be regulated"! [mk]

In short: Hungarian scenario in a banana republic.

***

Because the new legislative "solutions" in Macedonia directly incite censorship through the defamation law, changes in the Criminal Code that reduce the penalties for hate speech and the limitations of the work of foreign correspondents with another bill... Find out more about the efforts of Macedonian activists who demand putting the legislative process on democratic foundations. And join in!

• Proclamation for Affirmation of Freedom of Expression (also in mk, sq) by the ad hoc CSO network Front for Freedom of Expression
•  Twitter discussion: #член16 – the hashtag entitled according to Article 16 of the Constitution of Macedonia which literately forbids censorship.

^^^

• Analysis of the Draft-Law on Civil Defamation Liability by the Media Development Center 
• Macedonia: Danger of Censorship with the new Law on Insult and Defamation - reaction by Metamorphosis, Foundation on Internet and Society
• On October 9, 2012 almost two hundred websites participated in a day-long blackout in protest. On the Blackout [mk] - by Free Software Macedonia

...

• Macedonian Draft Law may Introduce Online Censorship - EDRI
• CSOs Demand Public Debate on New Defamation Legislation - NGO Infocenter
• Law on insult and defamation - unacceptable for the Macedonian internet community
• Macedonia: Decriminalization of Defamation for Internet Censorship
• Macedonia: Law on Defamation Instigates Censorship and Contains Illogical Provisions