Both Singh and the US State Department helped spread the canard that foreign influence was at work behind the scenes. External forces, Singh declared in Parliament, are trying to prevent India from taking its true place in the comity of nations.

But that is a canard real estate speculation, not privatization, has been the real source of undeserved wealth in Japan. Nonetheless, the newly victorious Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has been able to make the accusation stick to free market policies.

In the immediate aftermath of Snowden s revelations, the French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné ran a headline that said For once, Obama is interested in what we are saying. Europeans should be pleased and relieved that they are no longer America s first line of defense.

The fact that all five of these candidates are well known in diplomatic circles, and four have direct UN experience, refutes the old canard that Eastern Europe does not have a credible candidate to offer. (Full disclosure all five are friends of mine, and I consider them highly capable and well suited for the role.)

That sort of responsiveness to popular sentiment in the legislative process gives the lie to the canard that French regulation is inflexible and hopelessly bureaucratic. In fact, the free market Anglo Saxon attitude sounds like nothing so much as the old prejudices about the French that have been around since the novelist Thackeray told English readers The Frenchman has after his soup a dish of vegetables, where you have one of meat.