Chapter 1372: Chapter 661: Gentlen Are Too Much Trouble!
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The heat of the speech in New Delhi had not yet dissipated, while London’s response was very cold.
At the press conference at Downing Street No. 10, the Pri Minister’s spokesperson, when pressed, rely raised an eyebrow: “We have noted the statent from the Indian governnt, but at this stage, there’s no further comnt.”
Before the words even fell, he turned and left, leaving a group of reporters with recorders looking at each other in dismay.
The phone at the Foreign Office was ringing off the hook, as dia from Delhi to New York, like sharks slling blood, kept calling. The operators kept repeating the sa official line into the receivers: “This matter involves complex historical intricacies and requires careful study.”
It wasn’t until the afternoon of the third day that a curious reporter from The Sun caught a deputy secretary from the Foreign Office as he was leaving a pub.
The tipsy official, squinting in the flash of caras, mumbled an obscenity and then blurted into the microphone thrust at his mouth: “Compensation? With that energy, they should manage the rapists on the streets of Delhi rather than stuffing everything into a mold!”
That remark was like a spark dropping into a keg of gunpowder.
A few hours later, during a radio program, an anonymous spokesperson from the British Foreign Office, pushed to frustration, finally broke decorum: “Money from us? Sure, first clean up the beasts committing cris on buses, publish the case files of every unsolved rape to the world for them to see.”
He paused, hearing the director’s urgent warning in his earpiece, yet he laughed more mockingly: “Really want compensation? Okay, let them first clean up their ss; otherwise, even if we stack British Pounds into a mountain and burn them for warmth, not a penny will go to those who can’t ensure basic human rights.”
This recording sparked an uproar in New Delhi.
Indian TV stations zood in on the spokesperson’s face, enlarging the sneer at the corner of his mouth again and again.
India Gate Square was once again crowded with people, but this ti the placards depicted bloody handcuffs and burning Union Jacks,
Narasimha urgently summoned cabinet mbers at the Presidential Palace, while in the corridor outside the eting room, Foreign Affairs officials were shouting into the phone: “This is a diplomatic insult! A blatant challenge to the sovereignty of a nation!”
Yet there wasn’t even a decent apology from London.
Only the next day, a small news piece appeared in the corner of The Guardian, saying that the British Museum planned to host a “Colonial Art Exhibition,” featuring three hundred artifacts collected from India.
In the night sky of New Delhi, sky lanterns were raised again, but this ti, many had the British spokesperson’s photo on them, burnt with cigarette holes by the angry crowd.
Hmm… Raising sky lanterns is like so countries raising the national flag; when raised too many tis, one might as well hang it up themselves.
In the Presidential Palace office in xico City, with the cold wind blowing, Victor had just finished watching the replay of the New Delhi speech, and when he ca across the harsh response from the British diplomat, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“An amateur act, it’s practically a global live broadcast of an amateur act.” He pointed at the TV screen still paused on the scene of Narasimha pounding the podium, “Look at these two, one using wounds from sixty years ago as bargaining chips and the other using street cri as a shield, neither of them saying anything substantial.”
Casare chuckled, “Boss, the British indeed lost their composure, but India’s demands are also quite fantastical: thirty-seven thousand artifacts? Their own museums still have Maya civilization carvings piling up, and the batch of Aztec gold we demanded last year is still stuck in customs.”
“That’s where the problem lies.”
Victor got up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the green, white, and red tricolor flag waving in Constitution Plaza in the distance, “Every forr colonial country holds an account book of grievances, yet they always expect others to settle the scores first. India wants the British Museum to return items; we want the Spanish Royal Family to return the turquoise crown looted from the conquered; African countries are eyeing the Benin Bronzes in the Louvre. But who can truly dissect history and settle it clearly?”
He lightly tapped his fingers on the windowsill, his eyes gleaming, “However, the Indians are right, claims for compensation are also a tactic.”
He softly repeated the term, as if weighing its significance, “If the Indians dare to reach out to Great Britain, why can’t we ask for sothing back from Spain? The Aztec gold transported to the Seville Cathedral, the Maya carvings stored in the Madrid Archaeological Museum, and the manuscripts from the Tenochtitlan Library burnt in 1521, even these alone are precious assets for us.”
Casare looked up from the piles of docunts, his brows knitted into a furrow.
He opened a drawer and tossed a stack of photocopied newspapers onto the table, the top sheet bearing a headline in bold: “Thirteenth Body of xican Immigrant Found in the Outskirts of Madrid.”
“Boss, you’d better look at this.”
His voice carried an almost imperceptible fatigue, “Last week at Atocha Station, three xican exchange students were cornered by new NC elents and had their arms broken. Last month in Barcelona, a restaurant run by a xican family was doused with gasoline, luckily the fire brigade arrived in ti. These incidents, the Spanish police either classify them as street brawls or say they’re still investigating. In reality?”
He picked up the top photocopy, “This is the third such case in three months, all victims were xican immigrants, and before dying, they were all marked with Aztec sun calendar symbols. Madrid police haven’t caught a single decent suspect, and the Spanish Interior Ministry spokesperson still goes on TV saying the immigrant cri rate is high, shifting all the bla back.”
Victor picked up the newspaper, rubbing his thumb over the blurred bloodstains in the photo.
“A serial murder case…,” his eyes narrowed, “just because they’re xicans?”
“Our relationship with Spain… is very bad!”
Casare chuckled wryly, “Spain’s far-right party gained five more seats in Parliant elections last month, and their campaign slogan was to ‘drive out the parasites of the Aricas.’ If you propose compensation now, they’ll just use it as an excuse to attack us, saying we’re trying to extort Europe with history. By then, what about the three million xican immigrants in Spain?”
“I know it’s difficult.” He looked at the statue rolling on the ground and suddenly smiled, “But that has never been my goal.”
Casare’s pupils contracted suddenly.
“Boss, you an… to support Catalonia’s independence?”
“Support? No,” Victor chuckled softly, malice gleaming in his eyes, “Years ago, when advisers from the Spanish Military Intelligence Six taught those drug traffickers how to assemble bombs in the jungles of Chiapas State, they did it under the guise of ‘democratic training.’ We’re just changing the starring role in their script.”
“The Catalonia Autonomous Governnt’s Finance Minister will be attending an economic forum in Paris next week in a private capacity.”
Victor pulled an envelope made of brown paper from a drawer and tossed it onto the table, “Inside are details of three Panamanian companies and an anonymous Swiss bank account. Tell the minister, if the Catalonia Parliant dares to propose an independence referendum again, this money will beco his overseas assets.”
He walked over to the bookshelf and picked up an old book with a gold-embossed cover, with “New Spanish Conquest History” printed on the spine.
“Didn’t the Spanish Governnt love to call us ‘uncivilized half-breeds’?” He slamd the book shut, “Then let them see how awkward so-called civilized people will be when Catalonia’s independence flag is planted atop the Madrid Palace.”
“As for the immigrants killed in Spain…” Victor’s fingers gently tapped the tabletop, “Send compensation money to their families, in the na of the Victor Foundation. Let all of Europe see who truly cares about their own people.”
Casare acknowledged this expenditure; they could afford it without being as embarrassed and embarrassed as the British.
“Only when Europe is totally chaotic can the world truly be peaceful. When these gentlen sit down, they think of smoking marijuana, then trafficking drugs, then undermining other countries. Let them lie down, quietly.”
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