Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/23/yet-another-russian-ambassador.html
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I wonder how common high blood pressure is among Russian ambassadors?
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Is he known to have any connection with folks Putin doesn’t like?
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Maybe Trump’s meetings with Putin are for blood pressure checks!
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Business opportunity in teaching swimming lessons to Russian ambassadors. Arm floaties not included…
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I’m sure it’s just a coincidink (which i just realized is starting to sound a little Russian).
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it’s all the Khartoumish violence.
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CNN has the count at eight. The first was that guy at the Russian consulate, found dead on election eve. The cause was supposedly bad health. I gather “bad health” is a common problem in Russia, death just being a rather extreme case of same.
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Once is bad luck.
Twice is coincidence.
Thrice is someone trying to tell you something.
Four times is… wtf?
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More to the point, how often is it public knowledge? Do they always discuss blood pressure with the press, or only when somebody prominent unexpectedly dies? Do the Russians not have cheap generic blood-pressure meds? HCTZ costs about a dollar per ambassador’s worth.
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Forget dollars and bitcoins, we measure value in Russian ambassadors!
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and yet they keeping dropping rather dramatically all the time.
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The curious thing is that one would, apparently naively, expect that there would be quieter ways to deal with ambassadors.
It’s not the sort of job you land by being a total unknown in terms of your affiliations and political sympathies; nor is it one where you are impossible to fire or reassign to obscuristan.
One would expect that known bad-attitude cases would never end up in the job in the first place; that lower intensity housecleaning would involve more lateral promotions to dead end posts in obscure places; and that people who suspected that a recent change of heart(whether on their part or HQ’s part) might try to make a run for the exit before their accident.
Instead, it’s a bunch of sketchy looking deaths among people who retained their positions(and continued to show up to fill them) right up to that time; rather than people either just being quietly recalled to some undesirable position that keeps them out of the way; or people who know that things are going sour trying to make a run for it, successfully or otherwise. Seems like a weird combination.
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Additional factor that may explain the public nature of the deaths: intimidating potentially disloyal others.
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When you look at the average lifespan of Russians, esp. men, these guys actually made it well past what one might expect.
Still, I’m inclined to believe at least some of these guys are getting knocked-off.
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Four times is, “Why aren’t you getting the message?!”
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In Russian kleptocracy, HCTZ is mandatory for happiness, da?
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Cause of death: A surfeit of alligators.
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At least it is a self-limiting condition.
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