Please Tell me that you’re Kidding

Assimilation, Euro-Style, at an event meant to celebrate social diversity and togetherness:

"The Germans say: Foreigners out!" the girl replied. "Why can't we say: Jews out?" Then she ran away.

Of course officials are “concerned”. They're always "concerned". Maybe even concerned enough to actually do something about this neo-Kristallnacht consensus that been ubiquitous for a decade.

Following an anti-Semitic attack in Hanover, German authorities have identified a new source of anti-Semitic hatred in Germany: young migrants from Muslim families. The ideological alliance has officials concerned.

The author goes on to parrot the tripe about the neo-fascists, who invariably gravitate toward the idea of a muscular, all powerful state, as being “right wing”.

It was supposed to be a carefree festival in Sahlkamp on the outskirts of the northern German city of Hanover. Billed as an "International Day" to celebrate social diversity and togetherness, the June celebration included performances by a multicultural children's choir called "Happy Rainbow" and the German-Turkish rap duo 3-K. Music from Afghanistan was also on the program.
But then the mood suddenly shifted.
When Hajo Arnds, the organizer of the neighborhood festival, stepped onto the stage at about 6:45 p.m. to announce the next performance, by the Jewish dance group Chaverim, he was greeted with catcalls. "Jews out!" some of the roughly 30 young people standing in front of the stage began shouting. "Gone with the Jews!"

The striking stupidity of this kind of story, as frequent as they are, is that the people righting them up always seem to be pretending to ‘just realize’ the state of affairs, and exhibit a kind of puzzlement at connecting the dots.

Further in the nuance-land report, there never seems to be a shortage of retrograde European nostalgia:

During a football match in April, for example, supporters of SV Mügeln-Ablass 09, a district-league football club in the eastern state of Saxony, chanted "a tree, a noose, a Jew's neck" and "we're building a subway, from Jerusalem to Auschwitz," until the match was stopped.

The litany of defaced cemeteries and modern day pamphleteering on the internet also makes the expected appearance, but the dots that no-one seems to be able to connect is the historical frequency that these same demonization movements re-emerge.

Perhaps they’re covering their eye with a kind of foreknowledge of the outcome, if they are as passive about it as they were in the last century. Perhaps heads turn away from a kind of self-awareness of how ‘natural’ these phases of factional hated comes to those noble people of the “EMEA”.

How do you Import the Bad Weather and Peevishness?

An Austrian real-estate developer is seeking a fortune with a set of European-themed islands in the Persian Gulf. The Vegas-style glitter of Dubai may have faded since the boom -- but not for everyone

It’s a kind of Busch Gardens for gullible Arabs and Iranians, possibly finding some unstated appeal to indulge in some Jew hating with a Teutonic flair, or maybe their famous emotionally distant self-abuse, or something like the apathy. Who knows:

Today, Josef Kleindienst is €200 million richer and far from Schrattenberg, on his own building plot covered in grey, shell-flecked sand. It's a deserted piece of property in the steaming water of the Persian Gulf, and Kleindienst calls it "Germany." Now a real estate broker, he bought the island outside Dubai together with "Austria," "St. Petersburg," "Sweden," "Switzerland," and "the Netherlands," which is destined to become a party island.

After all, the image of the Netherlands has long-since ceded any notion of cheap bastards, or hardworking farmers and fishermen, always willing to sell their grandmother for a nickel. Even an article in NRC Handelsblad rues over is:

Two utterly contradictory images of the Netherlands circulate in the international press. One is the idea of a wild, unruly place where policemen smoke marijuana, gay men dance in the streets, and euthanasia can be arranged in an instant,

The elite of Teheran should feel right at home.

A Cuban Dissident Asks: Why do you (heart) Marxist-Leninist Autocrats?

You don’t get peristroyka through enablement. A group of recently freed Cuban dissidents ask the EU to stop its’ misguided policy of friendly engagement with Havana.

On their arrival in Spain, nine of the 52 political prisoners whose release was announced by the Castro regime on 8 July announced "that they would like to consult with the European Parliament before next September’s review of the EU’s Common Position on Cuba, which has remained unchanged since 1996."

With a flair for having more unbridled rage Gitmo detainees than the entire Cuban population, it comes as no surprise to find the reaction of the Precambrian 68ers now ruling Festung Europa to be more ‘reactionary’, and subject to the conditioned reaction of a state of ‘false consciousness’.

One of the freed dissidents, Normando Hernández, who had been sentenced to 25 years in prison, described the Cuban government’s decision as "a smokescreen," and further insisted abandoning the Common Position would be an “aberration” because "its objectives have yet to be attained."

Without pointing out the political ideology of Spain’s foreign minister, a member of the Socialist Worker’s Party, the article continues:

This view not shared by Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who, during a recent visit to the island, announced that there was "no reason" for the EU to maintain its Common Position on Cuba.

Emphasis mine. After all, you know a left-leaning Spanish paper surely wouldn’t want to draw too much attention to the reality of ‘real, living socialism’.

In God we Trust vs. In Loco Parentis

Ah, those continental sophisticates.

So intelligent, in fact, that they believe that their employers “give” them vacation and benefits, as though the resources used to fund them fell from outer space. They don’t, you dimwitted sucknozzle, they just pay you less, and pretend to be generous with what they didn’t give you in the first place.

Further, to reinforce the delusions that they frequently beat off to when they’re otherwise far less likely to be be employed to begin with:

What’s more striking is that serious analysts rarely talk about “laziness”. The reason is simple: European laziness may seem an alluring explanation for the observed differences, but the statistics tell a different story. The fact that Europeans work less isn’t due to laziness, but to a voluntary trade-off, says Andrew Moravcsik, a political scientist at Princeton and Newsweek contributor. The unemployment levels distort the figures: the US has known lower unemployment than Europe for the past ten years and a smaller non-working population. So it’s logical that the “average European” should put in fewer hours.

According to Moravcsik, Europeans are fully capable of working more, but they opt to spend more time at leisure than at making money. Economists say that trade-off gets more prevalent as a society gets richer. Americans, however, are the exception to the rule. The US, he continues, is the only developed, industrialised country in which working hours have increased enormously.

It’s not a trade, it’s a “take it or leave it” sh*t sandwich. “Getting more hours” when employed by someone else is something you see a lot more drooling over in EUtopia than in the US. In fact, in the US, you see a lot more people who know full well that they can take all of the leisure time that they like, because in normal times you actually CAN find a job after taking “a pause that refreshes” without waiting the European averages which range from 6 to 18 months for another job, even in boom times.

But let’s not be too harsh. There are a few people who DO get it:

The German press has been focussing recently on a group of “eternally unemployed” who for decades have been living off the state, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. Some, the Warsaw daily notes, receive up to €1,085 per month which is enough for food and accommodation, and still leaving some for leisure and entertainment, or even a short vacation on the Baltic coast. The last time Arno Dübel, 54, had a job was twenty seven years ago. Every month he receives a cheque for 359 EUR and the state also pays rent for his two-room flat in Hamburg. According to him, being unemployed has nothing but advantages: he doesn’t have to follow anyone’s orders, doesn’t get stressed, doesn’t have to get up early. So what does he do during the day? Shopping at Lidl, walking the dog, watching some TV. “Working is a beautiful thing when others do it. I’m no good for it,” says Mr Dübel with disarming honesty. No wonder Bild tabloid has called him Germany’s “cheekiest” jobless person. There are many more like him in Germany, points out the Warsaw daily.

Send that man a flotilla! He’s having a humanitarian crisis !!!

Journalism’s Leftist Flunkies

Or How I decided to stop worrying and became a servile scribbler acting at the will of a politician.

Spencer Ackerman:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear.

Oh, but I think he DOES endorse the kind of behavior that connot be confused as being consistent with fascism, or to be charitable at the very least, a style of political rule that "tolerates" a society's democratic institutions merely to mute its' challengers:

Mussolini was raised by a strong socialist father and followed in his father’s footsteps by inheriting fervent socialist beliefs. Schooled as a teacher, Mussolini tried his luck in Switzerland but could not hold a steady job.

Changed groundwork executed by the ‘socially concerned’, etc., etc. Slowly altering the landscape to seem the same, but constructing sanctions and co-opting one sector of society after another: politicizing education, journalism, industries, DISempowering union members in the face of the political agenda of the Union leadership... it’s all too familiar, and Ackerman’s rueful oath shows that he’s as willing as any Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter to pitch in and damage civilization for the sake of the political shortcuts he wants to take, knowing that it’s needed to make an unwilling public take the bait.

Most everything about the parliamentary system was changed under the dictatorship and all law codes were rewritten. Teachers in schools and universities had to swear an oath to defend the Fascist regime and Mussolini personally chose newspaper editors. To practice journalism at all, the writer had to possess an official certificate of approval from the Fascist party. The trade unions were also deprived of any independence and became part of a larger group with the aim to place all Italians in various professional organizations and ultimately under governmental control. Most industrial industries were transferred to private ownership but then placed rigid government control over and the change hurt the Italian economy.

It is NOT an overextension to say that the Obama White House hasn’t done a modern form of the same thing. Ackerman and his cohort of Journalists-cum-propagandists (using their employers’ resources to do it whether they conscented or not) have actually carried water for a political campaign to enable it.

Now you know why all the “Faux News” tirades are needed – to cover for the participatory “news MAKING” (not news REPORTING) antics of the likes of... The Nation, Slate, American Prospect, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Media Matters, the Huffington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBS, PBS “News” Hour, NPR, Pacifica, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times,

Etal.

The Sexual Revolution and Children: How the Left Took Things Too Far

Der Spiegel has a report (danke zu Ben) regarding one "of the goals of the German 1968 movement", namely "the sexual liberation of children. For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive."

For instance,

In his 1975 autobiographical book "Der Grosse Basar" (The Great Bazaar), Green Party politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit describes his experiences as a teacher in a Kinderladen in Frankfurt. When the children entrusted to his care opened his fly and began stroking his penis, he writes, "I was usually quite taken aback. My reactions varied, depending on the circumstances."

Protocols of the Elders of Les Zones Urbaine Sensible

It’s strange, in describing Nazi attempts to infiltrate American culture and leadership in 1939, John L. Spivak could have been describing the behavior of second-string politicos in present day Europe: having a predilection very much like the American mainstream flunky press, to construct a portrait of evil to distract from a rather real one.

For a while Jung collected from terrified employers by promising to inform them about the threat of revolution--what time it would occur and who would lead it. In return he collected plenty. In time employers got fed up when the rowboat loaded with bomb-throwing Bolsheviks failed to arrive from Moscow. Pickings became slim. Jung was badly in need of a new terror-inspiring "issue" with which to collect from the suckers. He found it at the time Emerson was sent here from Germany. Gulden, Pelley and their associates were launching an anti-semitic campaign as the first step to attract people to the "Friends of Germany." Jung likewise discovered the "menace of the Jew" and peddled it for all it was worth.

There was an air of secrecy about the whole outfit. Even the location of the office in the Chicago Tribune Tower was kept from the membership; all they were given was the post office box number. As soon as he collected enough material from the Daily Worker and other Communist publications, he sent agents to call on the gullible businessmen with horrendous stories of the Muscovites now on the high seas on their way to capture the American Government. The salesmen collected and in turn got forty per cent of the pickings. When Jung heard that William Dudley Pelley was making money on the Jew-and-Catholic scare and that others like Edward H. Hunter of the Industrial Defense Association were talking with the German Consul General about getting money from Germany for propaganda, he got busy peddling "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," long discredited as forgeries.

Armed with these, Jung's high pressure salesmen scoured the country, collecting shekels from Christian businessmen and getting their forty per cent commissions. It was not long before Jung, Pelley and others were working in full swing with secret Nazi agents sent into this country for propaganda and espionage purposes.

- “Secret Armies”

“Reaches Out?”

EU reaches out for new powers at United Nations

In an act of arrogant reverse-suzerainty the EU member states have unilaterally declared to make the EU a speaking member of the UN. This brings their "handicap" as an entity to 28 times that of China or India, with only half of the population of each of them, not to mention their over-representation on the security council.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy will in future be able to address the UN chamber no differently from US President Barack Obama or Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad under draft reforms agreed by member states.

But that’s not all, folks!

There will also be additional seats put in for the EU's foreign policy chief, High Representative Catherine Ashton and her officials.

This, for an entity that has no legitimate sovereign power if the member states are to maintain their seats, numbers, delegates, etal.

An EU diplomat said the idea behind the changes is to boost the profile of the EU as an entity in itself at the international level.

This, from the world’s least plausible “partner in security”n which would not need to be “boosted” were it not for their outright irrelevance.

The new rights flow from changes established by the EU's Lisbon Treaty

Which, at last reading, was not signed by anyone from whom recognition would be found with, or in any other way form a legally legitimate graduation of the sovereignty of the member states. It is simply an exercise in having it both ways, and be counted twice, with an expectation that the rest for the world will play dress-up for them, and officially declare them “big and powerful” with no basis in reality.

Earn your chops first? Never.

A Bounty of Fruits, Nuts, and Flakes

Berlin Fashion Week: The Good, the bad, and the Terrifying.

You might be a German if...

...you’re prone to go along with things just because you think it would seem otherwise un-cosmopolitan, when in fact it’s just awkward, feeble, and out of touch.

Gardez le Nez

An apparently ever rising trend when the economy turns down.

- Danke sehr, Jacob

Social Justice for Unsucessful Criminals! Now!

Guess which tense, developing nation, riddled with barbaric secterianism this took place in, and get a Chinese knock-off kewpie doll.

Rioters burned cars, attacked a tramway and shot at police in the xxxxxx city of xxxxxxxx overnight in protest at the death of a local Muslim man, identified as 27-year- old Karim Boudouda, fleeing police after allegedly holding up the city's casino.

In the screwed up world of post-rational European nihilism, scratching your chin and opining about this stuff is considered sociologically interesting, and a good use of a social thinker's time.



Anyone thinking clearly, without the intervention of political conditioning about "social sensitivities" will see it cultural backwardness imported from a failed, third world society.

Police said they intervened after local residents stopped a tramway by setting a fire on the rails and stoned it. At least 50 cars were burned and police said they were shot at once and returned fire.

Oh, but to Channel the Gauche Caviar

What ho!

You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he has a bit of trouble.

All that stuff about being refined by suffering, you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself. As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.

- P. G. Wodehouse, “My Man Jeeves”

Top Obama Adviser Admits to the French that the July 2011 Withdrawal Date From Afghanistan Is Not to Be Taken Seriously, Being Purely Symbolic

In an interview with Le Monde's Sylvie Kauffmann and Gilles Paris during the National Security Advisor's brief stay in Paris, James Jones stated, rather unequivocally, that "the month of July 2011 will not signal the big departure of our forces" from Afghanistan (emphasis mine), adding, again rather unequivocally, that it is only a symbolic date (symbolic à la "positiveness", à la "new direction", à la "hope 'n' change", etc): "July 2011, that is a date to give us hope, that of being able to pull back some troops — the exact number is not predetermined — to show the Afghans as well as our own citizens, a new direction, a positive one, so that one day the responsibility for Afghanistan will revert to Afghan citizens."

Peut-on dire à la fois "nous allons gagner en Afghanistan" et "nous allons partir" ?

Vous avez oublié un mot : nous allons partir éventuellement. Ce qu'il faut bien comprendre, c'est que le mois de juillet 2011 ne marquera pas le grand départ de nos forces. C'est la période où nous pensons que nous pourrons transférer plus de responsabilités aux autorités afghanes. Il est raisonnable d'espérer qu'après dix ans de présence les Afghans puissent prendre en main leur destin. Il est impossible de se résigner à rester en Afghanistan une vingtaine d'années. Juillet 2011, ça nous donne un espoir, celui de pouvoir retirer quelques forces — le chiffre n'est pas prédéterminé —, pour montrer aux Afghans et à nos propres citoyens une nouvelle direction, positive, pour qu'un jour la responsabilité de l'Afghanistan revienne aux citoyens afghans.

Sylvie Kauffmann and Gilles Paris: Can one say both "We will win in Afghanistan" and "we will leave" at the same time?

James Jones: You forgot one word: we will leave eventually. What you need to understand is the month of July 2011 will not mark the great departure of our forces. This is the period when we believe we will be able to transfer more responsibility to Afghan authorities. It is reasonable to expect, after ten years of presence in the country, that Afghans can take control of their destiny. It is inconceivable to resign yourself to stay in Afghanistan for twenty years or so. July 2011, that is a date that gives us hope, that of withdrawing some forces — the exact figure is not predetermined — to show the Afghans and our own citizens a new direction, one of a positive kind, that one day the responsibility for Afghanistan will revert to Afghan citizens.

See also an interview with a French general: McChrystal Ripple: French General Also Is Summoned by Authorities to Cease Criticism of Obama's Strategy and of the "American" War

The government calls it "sealed management."

BEIJING – The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

Erm... NOT. It’s more of that “colonialism of the mind” crap imported from Europastani internment camps. You’ll note that Eye-talians found themselves doing the same thing.

The gated villages are the latest indignity for China's migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the new controls in their stride.

Which, as I understand it, is even worse than the Arizona of the left’s imaginary dystopia. I wonder, does the fact that they are avec-papiers and citizens make it okay, lefty?

"Sealed management" looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.

That, friends, is the China that the European Reducto ad Hitlerium Anti-American types won’t tell you about, or will imagine to be some sort of “social cohesion” paradise on earth. They seem to love every other kind of womb-like social incarceration otherwise, so why not this.

Maybe it says something about THEIR notion of the paradise on earth that they want for the “collectivist mass” (from which the generous and munificent intellectual may always get an equality-based, authority-granted exception from). After all you have that Isra-NaziApartheidSecurity”Separation”Wall to recreationally throw stones at.



Don’t get all sentimental about it, already.

France Says It Has the Planet's Second Diplomatic Network Behind That of the United States

Nous restons, et resterons, le deuxième réseau du monde derrière les Etats-Unis

Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner answers a Le Monde op-ed by two former ministres des affaires étrangères (Alain Juppé and Hubert Védrine), criticizing the current state of affairs of the Quai d'Orsay, with his own op-ed in which he states, among other things, that "we remain, and we will remain, the second [diplomatic] network [on the planet] behind the United States".

Des Chinoiseries Arabe

Deep in the Eutopian ethno-bunker of Belleville, a sort of Bobo-land cum ‘hood, friction in the district of Paris, (inside the Périferique) is growing more familiar. The latest comes in the form of the Algerian proletariat sticking it to Chinese immigrants, who up until recently were more interested in getting ahead than competing in the race to achieve maximum victimhood, and thus handouts

”Regular Tension”

The tense scene is almost a regular event in the first Chinatown in the Arab world, where disputes are regular. "I never go out without my knife," reflects Chu Jung, a bricklayer, who arrived in Algeria three years ago.

"The Algerians are racists, but my business is looking great! Too bad the violence turned a small paradise for business into hell.”

A few months ago, clashes in the city, where buildings have sprouted like mushrooms, have nearly ended in a pitched battle. The Chinese Embassy has responded quickly and asked the Algerian authorities to ensure the security and oversight of this large village with over 300 Chinese families.

Not quite: there are more like 10 000 overseas Chinese in the area, and they are demanding, quite simply, that les flics do something about crime. Even non-residents have felt the heat:

Cases of Chinese tourists being robbed in Paris have happened time and time again, with even the vice-chairperson Uyunqimg of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee having also been previously robbed during a visit to Paris.

So what do police do to “maintain the peace”? Fire tear gas at the Chinese immigrant protesters. After all, they know which klan runs Belleville.

Sort of a “Clash of Civilizations” thing which cannot be mocked for its’ foolish simplistic-ness, because of its rather real clash of civilizations, foolish simplistic nature and all.

Quiet at first, the demonstration degenerated and turned into an outright witchhunt for thugs.

Without the mobile police units, we would have had serious ethnic clashes in Paris. Believe me, I was there. Here is what we will not tell you in the national press.

[snip]

...the bobos go about their business. No solidarity with fellow Chinese immigrants?
Very few whites in the demo. No blacks, no Arabs.

[snip]

First incident. The guys on the right just busted the young Chinese guys’ face. He is the oriental type.
His assailants took flight. Suddenly, to my right, a band of thugs did not lose a second to get in on it. It will be a difficult day to live together.

The cops arrive and surround the victim. I try to learn more. A bobo journalist looks at the scene angrily. She tells the guy "Don’t add in the provocation, you have caused some too. "

A older Arab approached me:
"Why did they do that? Five against one, wow."
"Who did it, sir?"
"The Chinese. They did it."

And so on, and so forth. They really can’t all just get along, especially in that haven of diversity. The festivities continued with trash can fires, overturned cars, broken windows, and CS gas.

Titanic Piano

Obama's Falling Poll Numbers: The Logical Conclusion of the Leftists' Talking Points

Are you ready to accept your share of the blame for Obama's collapsing poll numbers? If only "spoiled Americans" would stop nitpicking his amazingly successful run as president, our country would be less child-like, or something like that.

In the face of ominous poll data splashed on the front page of today's Washington Post, libtalkers were in a tough position today. But only ultra-partisan Democratic Party crony Bill Press could manage to blame voters for Obama's failure to thrive.

If Bill Press's opinions (thanks to Instapundit) are (or if his meltdown is) taken to their/to its logical conclusion…

…then Americans should go through some sort of reeducation centers (or re-education camps) to be made to understand the good they are being bestowed, and to be made to refrain from criticizing (at least, not too much) the Spiritual Guide who is benevolently bestowing them upon us;

…then democracy should be curtailed and elections banned (polls as well, probably), at least temporarily, so that the benevolent Great Helmsman can implement his (benevolent) policies in the absence of obstacles from clueless idiots — be they common citizens or the unpatriotic naysayers in the opposition;

…in fact, then Barack Obama should be allowed to dictate his (benevolent) policies to the nation (the nation of clueless clods who are preventing him from carrying those dashing avant-garde ideas of his through to completion).

Of course, Bill Press is not saying this — he might even deny, quite sincerely, saying anything to that effect if he were told so in those exact words; still, this is inescapably the end result if his "viewpoints" are taken to their logical conclusion…

(And liberals, leftists, and statists wonder why, and think we are exaggerating when, some of us issue warnings about socialism and when we warn about it being a path to tyranny?!)

Update: thanks to Instapundit (again)…

Related: The Only Good Woman Is a Leftist Woman

Thoughts for Bastile Day

[none]

There's no point for a nation to celebrate freedom when they've largely abandoned any modicum of love they have for it a long time ago.

As EU Implements a Diplomatic Service, Eastern European Diplomats Are Snubbed for Not Agreeing on a Rosy View of Russia

« La frustration est particulièrement forte en matière de relations extérieures, constate un responsable polonais, le recrutement de nos ressortissants a été bloqué par crainte de leur russophobie présumée. »

As the European Union starts implementing a union-wide diplomatic service, writes Philippe Ricard in Le Monde, with 6,000 positions to fill, diplomats from Eastern and Central Europe feel left out. With the singular exception of Poland's Jerzy Buzek, elected head of the European Parliament in July 2009, only an infinitely small number of Eastern and Central Europeans have been nominated to fill one of the 136 European delegations throughout the world.

And the reason for the stiffing, it is believed, is because the alleged Russophobia of the former Warsaw Pact countries prevents them from seeing their Russian neighbor in a rosy enough light…