Merkel: The Mother of All Protest Babes?
Filed under: Europe ~ Protest Babes
The BBC reports that the above image "appears on the cover of the Polish weekly Wprost, and is titled 'Stepmother of Europe'" and that "a Polish council overseeing ethics in the media said the montage overstepped 'the limits of good taste.' The mocked up image shows Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, nuzzling at [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel's chest." The Beeb explains the background thusly:
Ahead of the Brussels summit Poland demanded a boost to its EU voting rights at Germany's expense and threatened to refuse to sign up to a new EU treaty because it would give bigger countries such as Germany too much decision-making power. Poland eventually persuaded Ms Merkel, whose country oversaw the summit as the current EU president, to insert a clause into the treaty postponing the introduction of the voting system until 2014. In arguing for an extension of the vote system the Polish Prime Minister raised Poland's World War II suffering under Nazi Germany. And a day after Berlin said it wanted to heal the tensions exposed during the summit, Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Polish public radio "something very negative" is happening in Germany. He went on to compare modern-day Germany to the Nazi era of the 1930s but said Europeans did not dare speak out. "Like in an era which has already passed, the large majority of Europeans didn't have the courage to talk about it, it is the same today," Mr Kaczynski said.
It seems Europe is just one big happy family after all! And there's obviously much Americans have to learn from them as far as cultural sophistication and savoir faire are concerned.
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