Byzantine Blog

Janez and Tony Know One Thing: Flattery Always Gets Them

How incredibly pathetic all these US-installed puppet heads of the new little colonies in Eastern Europe really are is beautifully illustrated by the most recent example, once again from the "proud Alpine nation" of a satellite state of Slovenia, before the dust had even settled over the latest political scandal, when it was revealed that US State Department officials simply issue orders to the EU-presiding "heads of state", which Rupel and Jansa follow through like the good dogs.

It now turns out that Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa plagiarized his famous speech held on the 15-year anniversary of Slovenian independence, on June 25, 2006.

Slovenian Mladina reveals that Jansa copied the most memorable parts of his speech from Tony Blair's address delivered to the Labor conference in Brighton 9 years earlier, in 1997. At the annual conference of his political party, which came to power in Great Britain that year, Blair said: "We can never be the biggest. We may never again be the mightiest. But we can be the best..." -- and his words Janez Jansa repeated to Slovenians, like an Alpine echo ripping through the time-space continuum.

21st Century Beacons

In 1997, Blair told his party members he wants his country "to be nothing less than the model 21st century nation, a beacon to the world," while Jansa echoed "we wish no less than to be one of the most successful states in the world, one of 21st century beacons."

To make things even more embarrassing, it is precisely for these parts of the speech that Jansa was awarded a speaker of the year title and his, uh, Blair's "best little us" and "beacon" bits were declared the best statements heard in Slovenia.

Slovenian media, which two years ago showered praises on Jansa, claiming this very speech had "turned him into a statesman from a politician", is now coming to terms with the fact their premier stole the flattering speech, showing video clips and comparing the copy to the original.

Members of the Slovenian opposition party Lipa are embittered by the behavior of the prime minister and his disregard for the Slovenians "to whom he held a stolen speech," and then even accepted to receive an award for it.

Lipa representatives said that their premier has demonstrated he lacks a minimum of dignity required to address "Slovenian men and women" in his own words "on the occasion of Slovenia's greatest holiday", and that he is personally lacking the key elements from the given speech: "creativity, dedication, fairness and honesty".

Lipa has called Jansa to publicly apologize to Slovenian nation "for such an appalling fraud".

While neither Janez nor Tony can be credited for creativity, dedication, fairness and honesty, they obviously both know one thing for sure (to paraphrase Satan from the "Devil's Advocate"): Flattery always gets them.