Everyone who has read George Orwell's novel 1984 is familiar with the concept of "memory holes", which the Ministry of Truth used to get rid of inconvenient documents and photographs. Well, it seems as if the EU has picked up on the idea.
Apparently, a picture (see above) hanging in the European Council's Justus Lipsius builiding in Brussels, featuring a grinning Moammar Gaddafi (the Libyan leader) happily walking alongside a smiling Javier Solana (the former High Representative for EU foreign policy), has now been removed (hat-tip: Italian journalist Marco Zatterin and his Straneuropa blog).
We suspect that the Dictator's rambling speeches and brutal attacks on his own people made the photograph lose some of its appeal. Why in the world it was considered so appealing in the first place so as to merit a place on the wall of one of the EU's most sacred buildings is of course an interesting question in itself.
At least Solana didn't try to imitate Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who once was caught on camera kissing the Libyan Rais's hand.
We suspect that the EU might be forced to employ its memory hole again before this episode is over...
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