{"id":4904,"date":"2013-04-13T22:27:50","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T02:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4904"},"modified":"2013-04-13T22:27:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T02:27:50","slug":"ambassadors-and-strange-flags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4904","title":{"rendered":"Ambassadors and strange flags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So pretend for a moment the following: In Moscow, the French ambassador gives an interview to a local French-language TV program that is broadcast to the expatriate French community in Russia. As he speaks, you notice that the flag behind him is not the French tricolor but Quebec&#8217;s flag, the Fleurdelis\u00e9. How would you interpret this? Exactly what is the ambassador trying to say?<\/p>\n<p>Of course France&#8217;s ambassadors are generally more diplomatic than that. Even if they were to support Quebec&#8217;s independence from Canada, I doubt they would do so in such a crudely undiplomatic manner.<\/p>\n<p>So then, when Hungary&#8217;s ambassador here in Ottawa gave an interview to <a href=\"http:\/\/magyarkepek.tv\/\">Magyar K\u00e9pek<\/a>, a Hungarian-language television program broadcast on OMNI TV throughout Canada, why did he choose to do so standing in front of not Hungary&#8217;s tricolor, but the flag of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sz%C3%A9kely_Land\">Sz\u00e9kely Land<\/a> (also known as Szekler Land, or Sz\u00e9kelyf\u00f6ld in Hungarian, a territory in Eastern Transylvania inhabited by Hungarian-speaking ethnic Sz\u00e9kelys)?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4905\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/capture_20130413_123628.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/capture_20130413_123628.jpg 640w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/capture_20130413_123628-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I cannot help but wonder about the thinking behind this.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4904' send='false' layout='button_count' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So pretend for a moment the following: In Moscow, the French ambassador gives an interview to a local French-language TV program that is broadcast to the expatriate French community in Russia. As he speaks, you notice that the flag behind him is not the French tricolor but Quebec&#8217;s flag, the Fleurdelis\u00e9. How would you interpret <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=4904' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-hungary","category-politics","category-22-id","category-21-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4904"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4910,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions\/4910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}