And bringing it up doesn’t represent some moral indignation on your part?
Or does American moral indignation make Russia not a brutal autocracy where billions in public dollars are funneled directly into the leaders’ pockets? Often through American real estate and potentially through our current president?
Some of our Russian friends probably know each other, or have mutual friends. A lot of Russian Jews showed up in the Philadelphia area after the Soviet breakup, and some of those ended up working with me.
FOREIGNERS bribing an AMERICAN president ?! 
It’s supposed to be the other way around.
Sputnik’s not a reliable news source, though. It’s a Russian propaganda arm aimed at the West.
He was being sued for stealing $123 million from Aeroflot and had just run out of lawyer money. Chances are he offed himself.
Most of the people I know are Georgians with partial Jewish backgrounds some of whom were raised in Moscow. But yeah probably. Big, immediate flight of outre ethnic groups from Russia proper to Philly the minute the wall came down. Mostly academics from what I’ve seen.
I have nothing valuable to add except that I wish I wasn’t moved to actual tears by the news quite so often. This is horrific.
(if this was a russian op, the usual propaganda arms would of course get in on the act. That’s why I was looking at Sputnik, Consortium News, etc, in the expectation that any cover stories would be interesting, if not quite revealing. Perhaps I’m putting the cart before the horse.)
I get your humour, but that is kind of an insider joke there.
I can’t help but think that for fans of the Discworld series, Putin is the closest we have to a Lord Vetinari that exists in the modern world. Though Pratchett’s Lord Vetinari differs in that he is shown as avoiding the limelight, shows of gaudy spectacle, or even race baiting, Putin is similar in the most important aspect: Lord Vetinari was against needless cruelty, but whole heartedly in favour of needed cruelty. And in Putin’s eyes, this sort of cruelty is necessary for the Russian state.
Have you got your gloves on?
From Taibbi: It's Too Late to Worry About 'Normalizing' Trump
You could fill a book chapter with the history of the friendly relations between American presidents and just the foreign dictators who are credibly reported to have eaten other human beings.
I’m not even going to try to address your question but maybe you missed the bit about the damage perhaps emerging years later, depending on how exposed someone was, and that whilst it maybe debilitating/irreparable - leading to permanent disability - it may not in all cases lead to inevitable death in the short term. So ask yourself this question about ANYONE with ANY disability. Does the fact that the proximate cause is known and is deliberately introduced (equivalent to direct violence) make a difference?
(…and on the day Prof Hawking died, many years after his prognosis suggested he would.)
I am perhaps naive enough to believe there is a world of difference between some criminal acts conducted by a state, and a state which is purely and entirely [a front for] a criminal enterprise for its own leaders’ and cronies’ benefit.
Um… You DO realize Dolt 45 has no say at all over what happens in Britain, correct? Hell, they can’t even stand the man, as it is! You can be damn sure that the Limeys WILL do “something”. Now, what that “something is” — beyond the ejection of diplomats already carried out — who knows?
Unwelcome back, Cold War; we didn’t miss you =p.
I don’t like your analogy, since Vetinari is written as a ruler specifically not motivated by his own benefit, or the benefit of people holding him in power. He has quite humanist views, if the term applies to a fictional world populated by many different species (hell, even classes. No, strike that, that goes beyond classes, that’s…erm… Wait, I need to go to my 16th century books…) of sentient beings.
I am not sure what your graph is meant to prove. That the top 10% seem well able to maximise their gains under both US and Russian systems, is not disputed. I am not suggesting that when it comes to wealth inequality either the US or Russia are holier than the other. Nor am I suggesting that US political leaders or top 10% are not criminally engaged, though in general the dubiousness of their activities often seems less overt - their corruption is more subtle, perhaps, and has indeed, as you point out, been quite successful in their terms over recent years.
But I trust you are not suggesting that US criminality such as
Castro poisoning attempts, Air America, Iran Contra, Islamic Mujaheddin, etc.
is in any way behind the increase in wealth of the US top 10% as indicated by your graph. Putin actively uses his self-created top 10% for nefarious financial purposes and has done so for many years. It is one of the two objectives of his rule. The other being “make Russia respected again”. That he uses the former to support the latter is clear, and is his chosen route. He could have made Russia great again via genuine economic and political reform and developed an economy to rival any other. He did not - he chose the route of authoritarian self-enrichment and personal power. Until Agent Orange, the US did not, at least, have borderline or overtly criminal leaders - it simply pursued an economic system designed to entrench wealth where it existed, to the detriment of places it did not. The US has not yet decided to close down the press/broadcasters who try to hold the establishment to account and kill reporters and others who cross it, merely for doing so or merely for revenge. Nor to so abuse property rights as to make overnight billionaires. The US state does engage in criminality, I am in no doubt. The Russian state IS a criminal state. There is a difference. And it is an effective one, looking at the relative slopes of the US and Russian lines in your graph.
(And France understands the civil value of taxation and well-regulated markets/economy. Tax IS the price we pay for civilisation and for all its faults France, in my experience, is a rather more civilised country than the US, which in turn is still somewhat more civilised than Russia. Taxation, regulation, and property rights are likely key pieces in the overall puzzle.)
Well, as Pratchett got older, Lord Vetinari got more humanist. But think back to Guards! Guards!, and how he was presented as the archetypical evil ruler. He even said himself that you needed to be evil to rule.
Now I am full aware of the two main differences, in that Putin, unlike the Patrician, basks in his power and is just as much in it for personal gain and for the pomp, things Lord Vetinari famously disdained. But unlike most strongmen, Putin is politically canny and though ruthless, he doesn’t seem to outwardly feud.
And my statement is also a condemnation of real world leaders, for being so far from our favourite fictional dictator.
