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This is spun as Hungary being a gangster state but I wonder what the truth is.'Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has accused Hungarian authorities of taking hostage seven employees of Ukraine's state savings bank, Oschadbank.
'Writing on X, Sybiha said: "Today in Budapest, Hungarian authorities took seven Ukrainian citizens hostage. The reasons are still unknown, as well as their current well-being."
'The employees were in two cars carrying $80m (£60m) worth of cash between Austria and Ukraine. The authorities had sent a note demanding the employees' return, Sybiha said.' (BBC)
I share Charles Moore' philosophy but dislike his political positions, from his enthusiasm for Margaret Thatcher to - much worse - his enthusiasm for Netanyahu. He is right though that Netanyahu has been enormously successful in manipulating the USA and in extending Israeli power to Africa and Latin America.
I was stumped. If Trump is wise he'll end it in a couple of days but it looks like he will stir up the Kurds, Baluchis and perhaps even the Azeris to rebel. The Kurds I expect will fight and die and be betrayed by the Yanks in Iran as in Iraq and Syria.
All because Trump wanted to score a win and was conned by Netanyahu. The War of Trump's Ear.
"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when asked how long the Iraq War would last (Feb 7, 2003)
I can't tell you how much I despise Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch for saying Ukraine and Israel are fighting proxy wars on our behalf.
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
[An Iranian woman in Denmark in her early thirties] told me that 40,000 people had been killed in the two-day protest in January, and although her parents still lived in the country, she put her faith in the coming military attack by the US (´the only hope`). Again, a case of my enemy`s enemy is my friend.
First, of all I told her that a figure of 40,000 was absurd and I asked her how she as a scientist could believe in such a number? I said I`m not in doubt that the authorities in Iran are ruthless when it comes to repressing opposition but any serious person knows that such a high number of fatalities would require bombs, tanks, and machineguns and for people not to run away. The Israelis have needed 2 years and an estimated 200,000 tonnes of explosives on a population confined to an area 141 sq. miles to kill about 100,000. Moreover, if really tens of thousands had been killed, mass burials would be necessary, given that every inch of Iran is under satellite observation – the Americans would have released pictures of such a thing. I`m afraid I`m getting crotchety in my old age – it makes me angry when educated people don`t use their common sense and just swallow such obvious propaganda. One believes something because one wants to believe it (on one occasion, another colleague told me she believed the report in her newspaper that the Russians had blown up the Nord Stream pipeline).
If 40,000 had been killed, then an attack using 500 missiles or even a tactical nuclear weapon seems less outrageous. Since when have unprovoked (Iran has not attacked another country – it has been the victim of attacks by Iraq, Israel, and America) aerial attacks not led people in the said countries to back up their government/state? Even if such a military action collapses the existing power structure (which I doubt – recently, an estimated 30% of the population were out on the streets to mark the founding of the Islamic Republic), what would come in its place? As I said to the woman in question, ´don`t think something cannot be worse than it already is`(there needs to be some coherent political strategy that doesn`t mean you end up as a fifth column for foreign powers that are not motivated by the interests of the Iranian people). Ethnic division and bitter civil war, and a splitting up of the country as has happened in Libya and Syria? In Syria, the Kurds (who put their faith in the Americans) are now being militarily suppressed, and the country has a former ISIS/al-Qaeda leader as its president, with areas under Israeli and Turkish occupation. As with Iraq, the historic presence of Christians has now ended.
