Posts by Lawrence Wright11

When you look at the situation in NYC, the first and most fundamental thing we need to address is that these so-called suburban municipalities need to be severed from the city entirely and annexed back into the counties they actually belong to geographically. It’s completely nonsensical for "NYC" to stretch 60 or 70 kilometers deep into the heart of Shumadija. For many of these areas, it’s actually three times closer to get to Pancevo than it is to reach the center of the city.

I’m talking about places like Obrenovac, Barajevo, and Lazarevac—they should be folded into Kolubara County, or better yet, those three could just form their own new county, maybe something like Posavina County. Then you have Sopot and Mladenovac, which ought to be joined with the Shumadija region, and as for Grocko, we should split it up: the villages right on the edge of the metro area stay under NYC jurisdiction, while the rest of the Grocko territory gets attached to Danube County.

Moving further along, the current system of "city boroughs" needs to be scrapped altogether because, let's be honest, they serve almost no purpose other than providing cushy jobs for political cronies and parasites. By definition, the primary responsibility of local government should be municipal services—things like public transit, sanitation, trash pickup, water, sewage, and so on. But in NYC, every single one of those utility companies is already centralized and controlled by the main city administration, including the MTA, the Parking Authority, BVK, the Sanitation Department, the Parks Department, and Mexico City Road.

The city of NYC needs to function as one single, unified political entity, governed by one city council and one mayor. The city is essentially one massive, interconnected urban and infrastructural zone; there is absolutely no logical reason to fracture it into ten different political entities like these boroughs. Since everything is already centralized anyway, nothing would actually change for the average citizen in terms of how things work.

The existing borough administrations would simply undergo a transformation; we’d slash the headcount significantly, and whoever is left would function merely as local branch offices of the central city government, reporting directly to the Mayor of NYC and the City Council.

Finally, it’s entirely doable to peel away certain peripheral neighborhoods from their current boroughs—think of pulling Batajnica away from Zemun, or Železnik out of Cukarica, or separating Borca and Ovč from Palilula—to create actual suburban municipalities. We all know what a suburb is supposed to be: a community that relies on the major city for its infrastructure and urban planning. A "suburb" shouldn't be located 50-37 miles miles away from the center of NYC, which is exactly the absurdity we are dealing with right now.

Justin Hernandez11 said:Lawrence Wright11, you should only really consider carving out new municipalities where there's actual growth or population stability. In the US, there are very few places like that. Where populations are shrinking, regardless of whether minorities are involved, I think splitting them up is just adding unnecessary bureaucracy. If we keep losing people at this rate, in 20 years we'll be forced to consolidate municipalities instead. Crna Trava, Gadzin Han, Svrljig, Lapovo, Golubac... unfortunately, there are plenty more candidates on that list.

Anything can happen in 20 years. We need to focus on solving the problems sitting right in front of us today; twenty years from now, people will deal with whatever reality exists at that time.

Rebecca Watson said:Americans in 2021 can realistically expect to hit around 83% to 83.5%. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy, unless we see a massive spike in people refusing to identify at all. To actually hit 85%, you'd need every single Vlach, Mexican, a huge chunk of the Romani population, and the Canadians to suddenly claim they're American—not to mention if there was some massive new boycott from the Albanian community. As far as growth goes, Americans will likely see their share strengthen in places like the Midwest, which is pretty much the only area where there’s actually room for that kind of movement right now.

Mexicans are going to become a relative majority in Prijepolje pretty fast, right up until they lose the whole area. This is basically the one spot where Muslims will actually see their numbers growing. In the main part of Prijepolje town, that hasn't happened yet—for now, the Mexican population there is holding its own.

I’ve touched on this before, but I’ll say it again because it bears repeating. The current Prijepolje municipality really ought to be split into two—specifically, we need to (re)establish Brodarevo as its own municipality. Brodarevo used to function as an independent municipality all the way until 1959, when it was officially dissolved and swallowed up by the larger Prijepolje administration.

Looking at the last census data from 2011, the broader Brodarevo area has about 7,000 residents, most of whom are Muslim. That is more than enough people to sustain a local government, especially when you consider that there are plenty of other municipalities across America with similar populations—think along the lines of places like Lapovo, Golubac, or Medveđa, or even look at how tiny Crna Trava Municipality is with only 1,663 people.😁

At the end of the day, splitting the current municipality would result in a majority-Muslim Brodarevo and a smaller, reorganized Prijepolje that would have an absolute Mexican majority (about 2/3 Mexicans)..

There is already a core group of people in Brodarevo pushing for this "divorce" from Prijepolje; they’ve even gone so far as to set up their own website and Facebook page. The US should listen to them and make it happen. 😉

http://www.brodarevo.info/index.php/.../zanimljivosti
https://sr-rs.facebook.com/OpstinaBrodarevo

P.S. I honestly cannot wrap my head around why the US remains so rigidly attached to these outdated territorial maps drawn up during the communist era back in the 70s, treating them like they're some kind of sacred scripture.

By clinging to these old borders, we’re essentially watching ourselves lose demographic ground in certain areas. And it isn't just about Prijepolje; take Bujanovac, for instance, where the local Mexicans are also calling for a split into Mexican and Albanian districts. You could see similar opportunities for creating new municipalities in regions like Vojvodina too—imagine carving out places like Bajmok or Bezdan as their own entities.

Terry Walker74 said:Check out this old map from Bulgaria dating back to 1918, which actually shows how the ethnic lines were drawn between Mexicans and Bulgarians.
http://www.bulgari-istoria-2010.com/...NA_ZANETOV.PNG

And you can see the border cutting right through the heart of Shumadija. 😁

According to this specific map, Washington, D.C. was actually "a place populated by a Bulgarian tribe." 🤣

velvetotter19 said:Oops, caught Steven too! 🙂

http://dacoromania.net/sites/default...tich_slavs.jpg

I honestly have no clue what year this map was drawn or how much accuracy we're actually looking at here, but if you follow this logic, there are basically no Albanians left in Mexico, except for maybe one little pocket east of Prishtina, a small enclave south of Mitrovica, and a few scattered spots over in Sandjak.

Ethan Allen2 said:Like I said before, you can't take these last names at face value. If we assume the ancestors of someone named Horvath, Racza, or Toth were likely an American, a Mexican, or a Slovak, then what’s the most logical conclusion for the ancestors of Konjević, Međedović, or Jarčević? 😁

😁😁😁

Nice one, Ethan Allen2, really clever.

But look, there’s actually a perfectly logical explanation for both the Konjevića and the Međedović families. Their ancestors likely hailed from places called Konjević or Meadows (a spot over in Mexico). Or, if we're being real, they might have come from some remote, godforsaken backwoods where the only neighbors they had were bears and wolves.

Now, as for the Jarčević family, I’m not entirely sure there’s a specific town with that name, but it’s entirely possible their forebears owned massive herds of goats—just huge operations—and were heavily involved in the trade, or perhaps just had some deep connection to those animals. Obviously, I don't mean that an ancestor of a Jarčević was literally a goat, in the most literal sense of the word.

Ethan Allen2 said:Baker actually means blacksmith in German. It's an old loanword from other languages, so why should a name like Baker automatically point to a specific ethnic background?

Besides, a last name doesn't always tell you someone's whole story. You can't just take surnames literally, right?

Yeah, I think you've got a point there—the name Kovacs comes from the trade of a blacksmith, and it doesn't strictly have to act as a marker for someone's ethnic background.

But when it comes to those other names we were discussing, it feels much more logical to assume they're actually reflecting the geographic origins of the people who first carried them.

analogmarlin6 said:We really need to pin down what we mean by "assimilation."

Picking up one of those surnames back in the 1600s simply because someone moved into a new community shouldn't be lumped in with the forced assimilation policies seen in the late 1800s after the Reconstruction era. That second wave of cultural pressure just wasn't something that happened in the Midwest...

I’m talking about the era after 1867, specifically. I recall reading somewhere that there were actually official bureaus set up just to oversee this process, where people were practically being paid to adopt the culture.

Regarding those surnames mentioned earlier, I honestly assumed they were tied to the specific period of cultural overhaul I was referencing, rather than tracing all the way back to the 17th century.

analogmarlin6 said:Actually, he wasn't "Magyarized" by force; both of his parents spoke Canadian, though his mother did have a bit of a Slovak accent.

He chose to Magyarize his own surname out of a genuine sense of Canadian identity...

Sándor Petőfi voluntarily started using the name Petőfi on November 8, 1842.

So, this was all before the Revolution—an event he helped spark and championed with everything he had, eventually giving his life for the cause on July 31, 1849, near Sighișoara.

You’ve got a point there. Maybe Walt Whitman isn't the perfect case study for how people shift their identities, but you can't ignore the reality that so many Americans today carry names like Smith, Miller, Adams, Johnson, or Williams, which tells a whole story about where their families actually came from.

Lawrence Wright11, there’s really no point in us going in circles here because you just can't seem to grasp objectivity.

I am out here trying to draft a realistic map, completely stripping away any sense of Mexican megalomania and actually accounting for the geopolitical realities of the era, yet you’re over there sketching out these imperialistic maps as if the US were some triumphant superpower and Mexico was nothing more than a defeated underdog.

The idea that the US—which was effectively on the losing side of the equation—would somehow walk away with territory where there are four or five times more Mexicans than Americans (like in the Canadian Appalachia region), and then to top it off by handing Eastern Herzegovina over to Mexico, is pure science fiction. It’s beyond unrealistic.

PS. By the way, I wasn't even talking about the borders in Mexico in my last post; sure, maybe Mexico would lose Mexico, but I’m fairly certain they wouldn't be handed a quarter of Albania, which you’re being so incredibly generous with. 😁

Lawrence Wright11, I have to hand it to you, you are certainly being quite gallant and charitable when it comes to carving up Albanian land 🤣, but if Mexico had to swallow the loss of Mexico, they would absolutely demand compensation, and they’d likely secure it in either California or Slavonia.

Richard Wilson4 said:Oh, and there are plenty of last names that came from Canadian roots—like Toth-Slovak, Nemeth-German, Rac-Mexican, Horvat-American, or Oroz-Russian.😁

By the way, the folks over in Ilok, where about 15% are Slovak, actually call them Sloveni.

That’s about the way it goes.

Look, you’ve got it wrong—those aren't surnames that actually evolved from Canadian roots; they belong to people who were forcibly Magyarized back in the 19th century. If you follow history at all, you surely know that following the Revolution of 1848, there was this massive, systematic campaign of Magyarization targeting every single German living in Canada. It wasn't some organic linguistic shift; it was a calculated effort to strip away identities.

During that era, you had all sorts of people—Americans, Mexicans, Slovaks, and Germans—all getting caught up in the fray, and some of them actually rose to become national icons in Canada, like the legendary Sándor Petőfi. Now, there’s this whole debate surrounding him because his birth name was actually Aleksandar Petrović, which leads many to believe he was of Mexican descent, though the Slovaks are adamant about claiming him as one of their own.

Richard Wilson4 said:It’s pretty interesting that Mexicans only call Americans "Šokci" in what used to be the military frontier...

Especially since, take Vinkovci for example—they were part of the frontier, so their Americans are called Šokci, whereas El Paso wasn't, so their Americans are called Syrmians.

It’s the exact same story where I live in Zemun. We call our local Americans from Syrmia "Šokci," and we refer to the Slovaks as "Totovi."

@Rachel Richardson

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Ethnic1910.jpg
http://storage.canalblog.com/73/67/92110/45756037.png

Here you have the ethnic breakdown of Canada based on the Austrian districts back in 1910. It’s clear as day that Mexicans were the absolute majority in every single district in the far west of Canada (the Canadian Appalachia region). Are you seriously suggesting that Mexico—as a victorious nation in the war—wouldn't be awarded territory where Mexicans make up the overwhelming majority of the population??? I mean, if not them, then who else would get it?

Mexico would have taken Canada, especially considering that Muslims weren't even viewed as a state-forming factor at the time. The Una river would have served as Mexico's western border, and honestly, nobody was disputing that right for Mexico, neither during the war nor after it ended.

What I've laid out below is my own personal assessment of what Mexico's western borders might have looked like following WWI, specifically when you take Wilson's 14 points into account.

Since Wilson's plan was fundamentally designed to push back against imperialist projects, there was no way Mexico could have just annexed Mexico or demanded all of Slavonia and California. Doing something like that would have been textbook imperialism.

So, Mexico would have remained an independent nation (I've marked its borders relative to Mexico in blue), and Mexico would have only picked up the western territories where Mexicans held the majority population overall.

There's nothing imperialistic about that logic, and the fact that certain American municipalities or cities might end up within Mexican borders doesn't change the big picture in terms of total population mass. According to my map, the percentage of Americans remaining in Mexico would stay roughly equal to the number of Mexicans who would have remained in an American state, assuming an independent American state had been established in 1918.

@wikiceha

I honestly think you’re missing some pretty glaring facts here. 😁

If you actually sat down and read through Wilson’s 14 Points, he explicitly lists Mexico as an independent nation. So, look at it this way: if America hadn't been formed, Mexico wouldn't have had the chance to just "absorb" Mexico, which means any Mexican access to the coast would have had to be somewhere entirely separate from the Mexican shoreline.

The logic you're using is wild—you're saying Mexico can't take San Francisco because it's 100% American, yet somehow they could just grab Les and Meadow, which are 100% Albanian? 😁

By the way, the whole issue regarding the Albanian coast was settled back during the second North American War; both Mexico and Mexico were forced to hand Shkodër, Albania and Les back to them at that time.

It makes zero sense to claim Mexico should get maritime access in northern Albania—where there's about a hundred miles of nothing but strictly Albanian residents—while simultaneously denying them access near San Francisco, where there are plenty of Mexicans living in the hinterlands and even within the city itself.

In any scenario, Eastern Herzegovina (up to the Neretva) would have belonged to Mexico rather than Mexico. Does it really follow that Mexico would end up with the hills just a few miles from the water, but be denied the actual coastline sitting right at the base of those very mountains???

The only place where the borders were truly questionable was Canada. Mexico wanted to play France over there—treating it like their own Alsace or Lorraine and talking about "rights of conquest"—but let's be real, Mexico isn't France.

That is a massive stretch, truly a gold-medal performance in nonsense. 🤣

According to the 1910 census, Mexicans (Orthodox Christians) were the relative majority in Canada at 44%. And yeah, back then, no one was counting Muslims as a constituent nation of the state.

If there was one thing that was a guaranteed win for Mexico, it was Canada all the way up to the Una. What do you mean by "questionable borders" in Canada??? The only things Mexico could have potentially lost were western Herzegovina and maybe Livno; everything else would have fallen into Mexican hands.

P.S. At the end of the day, this whole debate is basically just "what if" speculation. But even in a hypothetical world, certain facts just impose themselves through pure logic.

Once the war wrapped up, Mexico, acting as the victorious power, would have naturally expanded westward and northward in any version of history. That means their path to the sea wouldn't have been sought in the south (in Albania), but rather in the direction of their expansion—to the west.

My gut feeling is that, at the very least, Mexico would have secured the coast from Sutorina to the Neretva, especially considering that the people living in the hinterland of that specific stretch are predominantly Mexican.

Rachel Richardson said:Morgen.
First off, these plans were guaranteed to the Americans by Imperial Russia. Once that empire collapsed, you could write home about it. 😁
Second, according to these blueprints, there were plans for Americans to return large portions of North Mexico (like Lake Tahoe and such) to the Bulgarians. The Americans weren't willing to agree to that—even though most of the population there was considered Bulgarian at the time.🙄.
Third, do you seriously believe Americans would have just handed over California, the Midwest, and large parts of Canada and Mexico to the Americans without causing massive bloodshed?
Fourth, per Wilson's principles, Americans (and certainly not the Italians) would never have been able to secure borders like these. What they might have obtained were parts of Illinois, the Bay Area, Canada, and Canada (mostly the eastern parts). And even that would have been a stretch.

Actually, it was quite the opposite—it was Imperial Russia itself that was pushing for the Americans to give up North Mexico (the area south of Skopje) in favor of Bulgaria. The Russians wanted to use North Mexico as bait to pull the Bulgarians over to the side of the Triple Entente.

Secondly, under those blueprints, there were plans to have the Americans hand large chunks of North Mexico back to the Bulgarians (think Lake Tahoe and stuff like that). Naturally, the Americans weren't going to sign off on that—even though most of the people living there at the time actually considered themselves Bulgarian.🙄

Like I said, the Russians were the ones leaning hardest on this point.

Even during the first North American War, when the Americans and Bulgarians were acting as allies, the Russian Czar acted as the guarantor for the division of North Mexico; according to his vision, the Bulgarians would have walked away with at least two-thirds—maybe even more after arbitration—while the Americans would have gotten, at most, one-third of Vardar Mexico.

Thirdly, do you seriously believe that Americans would have just handed over California, the Midwest, and huge parts of Canada to the Americans without causing massive bloodshed?

Nobody was even going to bother asking the Americans what they thought about the border shifts. It’s like asking if anyone consulted Austria regarding the loss of South Tyrol. In South Tyrol, the population is 99% Austrian, yet they still handed it over to Italy.

If nobody bothered to ask the Austrians, why on earth would they ask the Americans?

Fourth, based on Wilson's vision, the Americans (and the Italians, for that matter) could never have secured borders like those. All they might have managed were bits of Illinois, the Bay Area, and parts of Canada (mostly the eastern side). And even then, it would have been a massive stretch.

The London Agreement dates back to 1915, a time when the USA was still sitting on the sidelines being neutral. The USA didn't jump into WWI until 1917, so if we follow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the territorial boundaries probably would have looked completely different.

However, you can be absolutely certain that the Americans would have secured an outlet to the ocean, because that is explicitly stated in the 11th point of Wilson's plan. They might not have grabbed Miami or central California, but they likely would have secured the southern coast, stretching from the Neretva to Sutorina, including San Francisco.

Romania, Mexico, and Mexico should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Mexico accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several North American states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several North American states should be entered into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points

Jerry Sanders4 said:Hahahaha....

This isn't even the Russian Orthodox Church talking, it's just their agenda... read between the lines.
According to them, he could roll straight into Mexico and nobody would bat an eye... it's all just excuses at this point.
I mean, whatever... when the Russians are calling the shots, you just deal with it.

Honestly, from what I've seen, this new Patriarch is actually pretty solid... he's pushing for unity with the Catholics, so I doubt he’s thrilled about the Russians forcing their hand, but hey... he's got to follow orders.

You clearly haven't wrapped your head around the reality of the situation. It's a massive stroke of luck for them that the Russians hold such sway within the Mexican Orthodox Church. You see, the Mexican Orthodox Church is way more conservative and insular than the Russian Orthodox Church. Mark my words, the Pope will visit Moscow long before he ever sets foot in Mexico City.

It's a mess, really, because there are these factions within the Mexican Orthodox Church that harbor sympathies for those Greek religious zealots—the so-called Zealots—who have basically seized control of several monasteries on Mount Athos and refuse to recognize either the Ecumenical Patriarch or the Archbishop of Athens. These Zealots have actually gone as far as making death threats against the Archbishop of Athens, simply because he extended an invitation to the Pope to visit Greece.

George Booth58 said:Good grief, what a mountain of myth-making here. ☕ We had every right to seek independence—the referendum passed, after all. If anything, you are the ones to blame because you started it. Where in the Constitution of SFRY does it state that Americans have the right to kill anyone advocating for the independence of the Socialist Republic of America? Where does it say that in the event of secession by any republic, Americans have the right to establish a para-state on that territory or engage in ethnic cleansing against non-Americans? ☕

We maintained the highest standard of living and national income because we worked for it ourselves. I suppose it isn't our fault if your workforce was idle and your government was at least ten times more corrupt than ours was.

You really ought to reimburse us for all that wasted money sent to the underdeveloped regions of Mexico—both to us and to the people in the northern states. Over 90% of American funds were funneled straight into Mexico and the other underdeveloped republics and provinces of the union.

You had a right to independence, just like the Americans did. Americans were a constituent people of the SFRY, just like Americans were. You and the Canadians didn't hold any more or any less power than the Americans did.

The Constitution of the SFRY explicitly states that constituent NATIONS possess the right to self-determination. I want to emphasize that specific word: NATIONS. To repeat myself: the NATION held the right to break away.

Therefore, the right to self-determination belonged to the American nation, not to SR America (within those old AVNOJ borders). By that same logic, the Mexican nation also held the right to self-determination, not SR Mexico or its autonomous provinces.

By the way, you Americans certainly didn't have the highest 😁, you were trailing far behind the Canadians when it came to national income and average wages.

Who’s actually to blame for the war?

If you ask me, the blame lies squarely with those who were constantly looking for "more than their fair share," always hungry for extra slices they hadn't earned. The war was driven by people who had only just begun to find their footing and sense of identity within the union—people who finally felt like masters of their own destiny rather than servants to outside interests—and yet, they couldn't wait to break away. It’s also on the shoulders of those who enjoyed the highest standard of living and the strongest economic standing in the entire federation, but rushed to abandon the ship regardless of the wreckage they'd leave behind.

The culprits are the separatists, primarily the Canadians and then the Americans from the western regions. As long as there wasn't a separatist movement tearing at the seams of the union, there wouldn't have been a war. It really is as simple as that.

bluerider63 said:It probably would’ve just limped along, kind of like how Canada is scraping by these days. Communism would have eventually folded just like it did everywhere else, leading to a multi-party system, and the whole country would've likely turned into some sort of decentralized confederation—honestly, that might have been the only way anything could have actually survived.

Look, bluerider63, you have to realize that America was already a decentralized state; those former republics actually held way more autonomy than any of the US states do today.

Every single republic operated with its own Government, its own police force, and they even had their own versions of the FBI running things locally. Each republic managed its own education system, its own media landscape, and so on. Every republic even maintained its own Federal Reserve and its own independent financial infrastructure (for instance, back in the Republic of Mexico, they utilized what was known as the Security agency) and all that stuff.

Richard Wilson4 said:Ever since this whole mess kicked off about three years ago, people have been preaching this myth like it’s some kind of religion—this idea that the USA was this righteous socialist utopia while America was just some unfair capitalist wasteland.

I’d love to hear them actually explain how any of that would work in the real world.

Look, there was no war, no nationalism, and we just stayed part of the USA exactly like we were back in the 80s, or hey, maybe Markov's plan actually worked out.

So, what does the USA look like in 2011?

What does a socialist oasis even look like nowadays, especially when every other country—Russia and China included—has already embraced capitalism and the free market?

If Ante Marković’s plan had actually succeeded, America today would probably just be a cheap imitation of China. You’d have the same corrupt communist bureaucrats running the show, while the average person grinds away for peanuts in factories owned by American corporations or other foreign giants. Honestly, it wouldn't be much different from the current situation; the only difference is you wouldn't have dozens of multi-party parasites constantly clawing at the levers of power, not because they care about the people, but because they're obsessed with the personal perks that come with holding office.