From Elechek To Al Bakistan Again

The President of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev has launched a campaign against the "Arabisation of society [and the] deprivation of the Kyrgyz nation of its language and traditions".

This campaign included posters like this one ..... which portrays women wearing the traditional nomadic clothing of Kyrgyzstan (the Elechek) on one side, while the other side shows women in niqabs and burkas .....

Kyrgyz Women - No To Niqab

..... and which tried to dissuade Kyrgyz women from wearing Islamic clothing, notably the hijab, niqab and burka's.

Hollandaise Sauce

With the news that the new French President Francois Hollande's first act was to hot tail to Berlin to try and get the German Chancellor to change her plans for Europe  ..... uncomfortable memories were evoked of other French Presidents and other German Chancellors meetings in the not so distant past.

"You Can Go Left - But I Am Sticking To The Right Path"

If you believe in auguries, then the fact that he had to return back to Paris and get a second plane after his first flight was apparently hit by lightning, doesn't augur well for the success of his mission. Mayhap, like Neville Chamberlain he will return with a bit of paper to flutter in Paris, but probably nothing substantive will change.

Visits To A German Chancellors Don't Always End Well

The French President should perhaps remember that Hollandaise Sauce is always eaten cold, by all German Chancellors.

Greek Name (Calling)

The Greek President Karolos Papoulias has lashed out at their German paymasters, especially the comments by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, which stirred yet more anger in Greece. He said about the Greek mess: "We can help, but we are not going to pour money into a bottomless pit."

Needless to say, the Greeks love of hubris was once again in evidence .... "I do not accept having my country taunted by Mr Schaeuble, as a Greek I do not accept it," Mr Papoulias said.

Mind you, when the Greeks were 'cooking the books' for the last two decades, Mr Karolos Papoulias was never far from the kitchen. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1985 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1996, and was opposition spokesman for the other years. Greece entered the Eurozone on Jan 1st 2002 (using the 1999 government *audit figures as baseline) and he was elected as President of the Republic in in 2004 ..... in other words he was in or around the government when the cooking smells must have been everywhere!

Needless to say, the Greeks have been casting about for a scapegoat and after first trying on the 'not enough war reparations' from Germany hat for size, they have not decided that they were in fact press-ganged by Germany and France in to entering the EU and Eurozone, with one prominent Greek publisher and analyst, Apostolos Zoupaniotis, stating that "they blackmailed the country" and did "not allow the country to have a referendum," or "the people to express themselves." ....

As this poster from Greece shows, blame is pointed at the Germans ...... No love lost there then.

Nazi Merkel - Greek street posters are pulling no punches.

But as Greece is the country with the EU's second worst Corruption Perceptions Index rating (after mafia run Bulgaria), ranking 80th in the world, and also with the lowest Index of Economic Freedom rating (rank 119th), and finally a Global Competitiveness Index ranking of 90th, its hard to see where this Greek pride comes from. Corruption, together with the associated issue of poor standards of tax collection, is widely regarded as both a key cause of the current troubles in the economy and a key hurdle in terms of overcoming the country's debt problem.

* In a later audit commissioned by the incoming New Democracy government in 2004, Eurostat revealed that the statistics for the budget deficit had been under-reported (although the effect of this on the acceptance of Greece into the Eurozone is disputed), however a later study by forensic accountants has now found that data submitted by Greece to Eurostat had a statistical distribution indicative of manipulation i.e. The books were cooked.