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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
Adam,
PR China still has many submariens:
Ballistic missile submarines – 8
Nuclear attack submarines – 12
Attack submarines – 58
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_People%27s_Liberation_Army_Navy
Russia has been having even worse problems with military leadership. Some internt sources claim that Russia has lost nearly as many senior officers in this relatively “minor” war as in all of World War II. I think this is highly unlikely. But the very fact that it is making the rounds on the internet is interesting.
However, no one is denying, not even Russia’s ministry of defense, that many of the country’s best generals and colonels have been killed in action in Ukraine. And that several other senior officers have been recalled to Russia and “:purged” by the Kremlin. Some of these senior officers are suspected of supporting Chergozhin’s mutiny. Others have been fired because the President or the Minister of Defense considered them to be inneffective commanders, and bllamed them for military reverses suffered during the war. The Ukrainians have many direct hits on Russian positions where senior officers are stationed. The Russians allege that U.S. intelligence, using its extensive monitoring capabilities and satellite imagery, has helped the Ukrainians. This is highly likely, and the ukrainians have not denied it. Be that as it may, a the crisis in military leadership on the Russian side of the conflict is very likely the main cause of the many setbacks and reverses that the Russian forces have suffered over the past eighteen months. Historically, Russian solders have fought well and courageously when competently led, but poorly when they don’t respect their officers.
Obviously. Russia and China are not getting stronger on the economic front. Are they getting stronger militarily? My opinion: China maybe yes, Russia no. China has increased the size of its fleet and the sophistication and accuracy of its weapons. Mainly as a result of plans it has stolen from the United States. However, it has apparently having problems with leadership in the armed forces. Several high-ranking and important military leaders have mysteriously disappeared from public view. This includes the minister of defense. and the director of the Chinese “rocket force,: that controls China'[s missile systems, both nuclear and non-nuclear. These problems in finding a stable and competent leadership cadre has somewhat undercut the value of China’s increase in weapons quantity and quality.
In August, China’s only submarine sank, with the loss of all aboard. The commander of the naval fleet in the zonw where the sinking occurred is now among the disappeared. Also, the director of the factory where the submarine was built.
Russia and China are not getting stronger. Russia is rapidly running out of foreign exchange, which will make it nearly impossible for it to import anything. Imports are already way down. A real problem for Russians, since nearly all consumer goods excpet for staples (food, etc.) have to be imported. Although Russia continues to iexport substantial quanities of some patroleum products, it total income from these sales is way down because of the “price caps” imposed on payments to Russia, by the Western nations. These sanctions subject countries that buy Russian oil to secondary sanctions if they pay Russia more than the
WEstern-aproved”prce cap” amount (slightly more than 60 dollars per barrel) for
peteroleum that they import from Russia. The Western bloc has been able to impose this this price cap, for the most part, because they control most international commercial shipping, and most shipping insurance.
As for China, reports of its economic and political woes have been reported in hundreds of videos on Youtube. Nearky every :expert” on the Chinese economy in the West, as well as many within China, has reported that the Chinese economy is close to a complete collapse. The reasons for this are numerous, but beyond the scope of this comment.
SEB-
Another matter of interest. I stopped reading your WIKI account of the Hungarians earlier, but just now I glanced of some of the rest of it and was
positively “enthralled” but your scholarly description of the Finno-Ugric trail.
I recall MANY years ago reading that Hungarian is totally unlike ANY other European language, except that there are strong resemblances between Hungarian and Finnish languages. (and to a lesser extent, Estonian)
{It’s been explained by some as a single people migrating from the Ural region thousands of years ago who separated, one going north-west and the other south-west. Sounds reasonable}.
I read further that it remained a complete mystery as to why, seeing the two areas were separated by dense forests, bogs etc. a totally impassable land mass.
I have never heard anything other than speculation, that changes that fact, perhaps you have…? If so, please oblige me and elucidate.
You still have not clarified “1599”
SEB-
Just as a matter of interest , key in on the internet, “Kevin Brook and the Khazars’.
It will lead you to Amazon and his book. The small synopsis is interesting, but far too brief. He’s often right there where the archaeologists are working. At least he used to be. I don’t know how old he is.
On rethinking, I’m not sure if the actual Huns are involved, except that they had inhabited at least for a while, that area a couple of centuries before, and gave it it’s name. Sometimes the Huns and Hunas are regarded as the same, and I believe they were two different peoples.
Some of the peoples conquered by the Khazars became somewhat intermixed, one tribe being pushed, in flight, into the territory of another.
Everything at one time was in flux until it eventually settled down.
I have been interested ever since I read about the correspondence of King Joseph the Khazar to Hasdai Ibn Shaprut the advisor to the Moors of Spain.
SEB-
That was the point I was making. I know about the battle of Mohacs which corresponds to my comment about early n the 16th cent. I just do not recall a decisive battle in 1599, which was the date you mentioned.
As far as the Huns, Magyars, (Hungarians) etc are concerned, They are all intermixed at some point and were under the sway of the Khazars.
I didn’t say that the Khazars were ever in Hungary but that the people who settled there and later became Hungarian, were beaten by the Khazars and migrated or moved (which your common sense should, have told you,
Perhaps you ar confusing the origins of the Khazars with the Magyars (later Hungarians) The Magyars (conquered by the Khazars and who paid tribute) positively originated somewhere in central Russia near the boundary of the European Russia, and the Khazars, always described as a Turkic people who were nomads. came from much further east.
I know all about the Pechenegs Bulgars etc.
You seem to ignore that in those unsettled loosely peopled days, when a tribe or people was conquered by another, they almost always migrated AWAY from the troubled area.
Perhaps you should join the organization which is sending out twice yearly newsletters on the excavation at ITIL, their capital. The Editor is Kevin Brook. I have been a member for many years.
{As a point of interest, I’d passed this info on to another email friend who , just the other day told me that they have excavated and tested the DNA of about 30 bodies, and that Rabbis on the spot refused to allow them to take more than some loose teeth. The results were that they were all Jews, living together in what obviously was a completely Jewish village.|
AND the Khazars although no longer a ruling people since the mid 10th cent, are mentioned historically well into the 12th cent, as a people, although badly diminished.
@Edgar Hungary was defeated by Turkey at the Battle of Mohacs, Aug 29, 1526.
@Seb
The Khazars were never in Hungary and disappeared in around the 8th century. Survivors assimilated into Central Asian Jewish communities.
The Magyars were from the Xhing Xhang region of China, Turkestan, where the Huighurs are, now, were chased out by the Pechenegs, the Turks taught them to ride horses, marauded their way across Europe and settled in the former province of Pannonia, formerly a stronghold of their cousins, the Huns in the 10th century, CE.. Hungarian is in the Finno-Ugric language group which is just Hungarian and Finnish and part of the Ural-Altaic Division of languages which includes the Tatars. Hungary was continually invaded, partitioned, and occupied for most of its 1100 year old history.
Hmmm, what country does that sound like?
I grew up in a Hungarian speaking household though they made a point of not teaching anything but English to the children. My father was Hungarian and so was my nanny, dubbed my adoptive grandmother, who lived with us, a former Hungarian aristocrat from the gentry who escaped in 1956, My mother, who was fluent in Hungarian, was of Litvak descent and she grew up in a Yiddish speaking household where they only spoke English* to the children.
I was very nationalistic as a boy, not as a Jew, but as a Hungarian. I read Hungarian literature in English. Now, I read Israeli literature in English. But, I’m trying to learn Korean. 😀
—
“English is a great language to learn. They speak it everywhere, even in England! Kinda.” 😀
– Montgomery Clift “The Search” (1948)
Seb-
My admittedly vague recollection of European history, in which I was deeply interested cannot recall a particular defeat of Turkey by Hungary in 1599. What was the name of the final battle, I’d like to look it up.
I think that the Kingdom of Hungary was almost perpetually jumping from one war into another for hundreds of years, being the most aggressive of all the Central European nations, ever since the final overthrow of their overlords, the Khazars.
In the early part of the 16th cent. Hungary was defeated by an alliance of Turkey with a few European neighbours of Hungary and partitioned.
I believe Austria was one of them, and Hungary never did properly recover its independence after that, although there’s a dark period from sometime in early 17th cent to about the18th.
I had Hungarian friends, who came over to Canada after the 1956 revolution, and it so happened that at that timemI was newly there myself and working in the Customs and Excise department of Victoria.
The upper part of the building was completely made up of cells, complete with iron bars.
They used this part to accommodate the Hungarians who came as far west as Victoria, and I working in the kitchen for $26 a week, was the only one who could converse with them. They mostly could speak some German, and I spoke a little Yiddish, and we play-acted out too.
We got on pretty well, and one in particular was a Jew, who escaped with his fiance. His name was Gaspar Elfer, his girlfriend was Liczi (lizzie?)
The kitchen was piled up with returned food that they would not eat. It was completely foreign to them. They thought white bread was cake-actually and the only item they could/would eat.
They wanted Black bread and goulash, and it was a heavy job to get the head chef, a lazy old dogsbody named Rapanos, years retired from his own restaurant, to stir his rump from his padded seat, take his feet down from another, to do anything. He had 2 sub chefs (lumber camp cooks) who did all the work.
The Hungarians made drawings of the ingredients of goulash and it was a real detective job to decipher them. Eventually I did and they were happier.
But their mattresses actually stunk like garbage dumps. The cells had been designed and USED to incarcerate generations of Chinese who smuggled themselves in and were caught. They must have been the original straw mattresses, about 2″ thick. Laundry was hanging all over the place.
Them was the days…Oh Boy….!!
Hi, Sebastien. I promise to laugh at your jokes, if I can… Oh! I see you’ve already told one!
Did you learn that one from Anthony Fauci? You know, that’s all slapstick. He would be funny, if people would only laugh at him. Why do so many millions take these clowns seriously? The clowns laugh, all the way to the bank. Life’s too precious to waste on these things. God laughs at them from heaven.
When Putin falls, the righteous will rejoice. Likewise fro Fauci, the Bidens and the rest.
@Michael in 1599 The Hungarians defeated their Turkish occupiers only to be conquered by Austria. In 1849, they defeated their Austrian occupiers, only to be conquered by Russia.
In the same way, if the Ukrainian Banderists defeat the Russian Federation, reconquering Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, and suppressing the Russian language and culture, (and I suppose the Hungarian language and culture of much of Transnistria which was part of Hungary before it also got looped off and re-assigned to Ukraine (“Banderist-affirming surgery” I call it) , while they are at it) and while they are burying the hundreds of thousands of dead, at that moment, my forces will swoop in and take over and everybody will be forced to watch Korean dramas and listen to K-pop, string quartets. and Gypsy Jazz, read Lajos Zilahy, Ferenc Molnar, and Jokai Mor, worship at the altar of the Holy Family: Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, AND ABOVE ALL UPON PAIN OF
DEATH, laugh at my jokes because of the 2 golden rules : “it’s good
To be the king.”
And above all: Sebastien’s jokes matter.”
–
On a more somber note: why does your family choose to be in all these scary places? Are they refugees from scarier places? Frankly, I can’t comprehend it. It’s scary out there. Stay home. Lock the doors. Hand out the pop corn. Is my sage advice. The autocorrect tried to change “is” to “IOS” the Apple operating system. Was that Bill Clinton, who in his trial, argued about the meaning of
The word, “is?” But, I digress.
BTW,
Here is the latest about the successful Ukrainian attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol. Two major Russian warships were destroyed, with damage to two other vessels. Eleven of their personnel were killed, and their only drydock in Crimea badly damaged. This happened, apparently, DESPITE an outage in the Starlink system, possibly caused by Elon Musk.
On the rest of the front, it looks like the very bloody stalemate will continue for months or years. Russian losses are greater than Ukrainian, but, of course, they are still a much larger country. Cf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7ESH2MVCYU
Tanna,
Our daughter lives in China; but she has traveled widely with her husband and children — to Australia & New Zealand, to America, to Africa, to Europe and all over Asia. Russia was is one of the places she’s been to.
Once, a few years ago, there was a bombing at a Moscow airport, caused by terrorists. My wife and I didn’t give it a second thought — we had other things to do. Then our daughter emailed us,
“Mom and Dad, I just want to let you know that I wasn’t in the bombing at Moscow Airport: We were traveling, but we went through the airport on the OTHER side of Moscow (We didn’t even know she was traveling at the time).
We don’t worry about Russia, China or the political leaders of America. We don’t even worry about our daughter: We just pray, about everyone and everything. That frees us from all kinds of worries.
Michael, If I was you, I would not waste time worrying about China and Russia. Our biggest enemy is our political leaders. They will be what destroys the United states of America.
BTW,
Concerning Putin’s “friends”, one of them is currently visiting him in Siberia, namely, Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Putin hopes to get much-needed artillery shells from him in exchange, perhaps, for miswsile technology and food. Russia’s other East Asian friend, meanwhile, China’s Xi Jinping, is busy purging his military:
The US certainly has a rocky road ahead of it the next 16 months or so; but our enemies are in no shape to do a victory lap!
Russia’s Navy Port At Sevastopol On Fire After Massive Ukraine Missile Attack
Tyler Durden’s Photo
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Sep 13, 2023 – 03:21 AM
“…Initial and unconfirmed social media photographs show what appears to be a direct hit on one or more military vessels docked at the naval port.
“The aftermath of the attack was captured from multiple angles, appearing to confirm significant damage to ships and port infrastructure…”
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:550JHAebEW8J:https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russias-navy-port-sevastopol-fire-after-massive-ukraine-missile-attack&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Stronger Russia? Maybe not. Two damaged vessels appear to be submarine “Kilo” (3,075 tons submerged) and landing ship “Minsk” (4,080 tons loaded)
— https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/16ha1dt/appears_that_ukraine_has_hit_the_sevastopol/