It has more to do with them being identified and fleeing the country:
Holocaust memorial had recorded two figures arriving at about 3am with spray paint and stencils, as well as two or three other people who may have been involved. They were reportedly quickly identified from mobile phone information.
All were Bulgarian and left Paris by coach for Brussels later the same morning just after spray-painting the graffiti, France Info reported, confirming an earlier report in the satirical weekly Canard Enchaîné.
And the similarity to a previous incident:
In October, about 60 Stars of David were discovered on walls in Paris and districts on the outskirts. All were in a blue similar to the blue of the Israeli national flag.
A Moldovan couple were arrested in that case and their alleged handler, a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman, was identified, according to Agence France-Presse.
That does make it sound less good, but there’s also a compelling pro-Ukrainian argument for using revenue (and other funds) rather than the seized assets for defense. It’s widely agreed that Ukraine is owed those assets for reconstruction. Many want to liquidate them as an alternative to directly funding the defense effort, which could harm Ukraine’s ability to rebuild after the war. So it’s sort of robbing future-Ukraine to pay for the present. It’s especially risky because countries tend to lose focus of things like reconstruction and get distracted by the next shiny conflict or crisis.
That obviously depends on Ukraine’s allies continuing to fund their defense though.
The party’s ruling body, known as the political council, issued a statement on Tuesday in which it insisted that the government would not be blackmailed but also signalled that a way out of the crisis was possible if there was swift progress on preferential trade terms and visa liberalisation.
They changed it to that considerably less bonkers headline. Perhaps because they became of aware of their legal exposure under international laws against poor taste…? 🧐
Can we talk about a story that’s fallen through the cracks here? CNN claiming this as an exclusive is madness. Who do these people think they are? And should the ICC issue arrest warrants about it? 😉
BBC just reported that Iranian state media has confirmed their deaths:
President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others are confirmed to have been killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash in north-western Iran, state TV says.
The concern isn’t about the consequences faced by Russia, but the impact on the rest of the world. Like, if Russia were to collapse, I think most would agree that Egyptians don’t deserve to find out what suddenly not having $1.7 billion in wheat would mean, right? I don’t think anyone has any idea what that would mean for, say, Tajikistan and other post-Soviet states with economies closely tied to Russia. Collapse would be chaos and it wouldn’t stay confined within Russia’s borders.
And, again, I don’t think that justifies preventing Russia from losing. There are worse concerns for Russia winning. And the idea that Russia neither winning nor losing could be a sustainable final state is probably a fantasy.
I think that’s one of the meanings. If a Russian loss led to the sudden collapse of the Russian state or a radical retraction of the Russian economy, who knows what the consequences would be?
I don’t think that’s a justification for not letting Russia lose, but it is a big bag of who-the-fuck-knows.
Netanyahu doesn’t need Gantz’s party to remain in power. They’d lose a more moderate voice in the war cabinet. The Unity government would probably lose legitimacy in the eyes of most Israelis. It would be very bad for Netanyahu politically. It would also probably be good for Gantz politically, as recent polling suggests that he might be starting to get some of Netanyahu’s stink on him.
It’s complicated. They don’t have the ability to bring down the government but both Gantz and Gallant are much more popular than Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s choice (again) comes down to placating the far-right to keep his government in power in the short-term at the expense of further alienating the Israeli public. If he bows to this pressure, the far-right might topple his government immediately. All paths probably lead to electoral (then legal) doom for Netanyahu at some point.
It was initially incorrectly reported that she was alive and unconscious. This isn’t a new correction. She was declared dead in late October after investigators identified a piece of her skull:
A source involved with her identification told CNN Louk’s death was announced after forensic examiners found a bone fragment from her skull.
The bone fragment was from the petrous part of the temporal bone, which is at the base of the skull, normally near the carotid artery, a major blood vessel that provides blood to the brain. A DNA test concluded the fragment belonged to Louk.
. . .
The bone fragment, combined with the circumstances surrounding the October 7 attack and video that appeared to show Louk unconscious on the back of a Hamas truck, led investigators to conclude these were her remains.