Putin -- love him or else

[RGBVideo]

marie curie

[Provost Harrison]

You win. The cheque for £100k is in the post. Oh damn I sent it to the wrong address. Looks like you won't get it after all

[RGBVideo]

was Russia the reason Polish intelligentsia moved to France late 20th Century or did similar people all over Europe move to Paris because it was Paris in that time period? Curie, Chopin...

[VetLegion]

The most convincing theory I've read is Putin retreating to be the head of Gazprom and running Russia from there, while installing a peon of his as successor in Kremlin.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Pekka
There's much more play in Russia than Putin. I think it is deceptive to our knowledge and assesments that we are not well informed about other groups and power relations in Russia.

For example, there was this one dude who said (friend of Litvinenko), that there is a power strugle about the power soon to come. That is, when Putin steps down, who gets the power.

There's dudes who are like 'KGB, military and the likes' according to him and the other side is oligarks etc. So these groups are battling quietly and it can 'be rough'.

Pretty much correct as I grasp it.


About Putin's future.
Putin will be moved to a less powerful position and will infact have little to do with "running" the country. But he isn't solo-running it now. He is most probably not a single leader but a public representative of a small group.

I don't think that there's anyone quite like Lenin or Stalin these days.

[Ned]

How will this group replace Putin with one of their own?

[Pekka]

Siro, right, running Russia and the whole international stage is too complex for one man anyway. There must be people behind him, but those people are unknown to general public, at least in here.

Also, in the power struggle, it's very odd, because it's impossible to tell who is who. For example let's get rid off people who are enemies of Putin.

SO this could be a group that wants to be in the good graces of Putin.

OR

It can be a group that wants to attack Putin, knowing he will be taking the blame.

Really tough to say, and with the amount of information and experience I, for example, have, I won't even guess or trivialize it.

[VetLegion]

Putin is a unique Russian. He doesn't even drink vodka!

He'll stay in power for the next 30 years at a minimum.

[Dr Strangelove]

Is it possible that the poisoning took place at the sushi lunch? If Scarmella did the poisoning it would be stupid of him to come forward about being poisoned. Of course if Scarmella did it how could he be so stupid as to poison himself? Could someone else at the restaurant have poisoned them?

If you wanted to poison someone how would you do it? It could be done by an acquaintance, you could lure the victim into eating at a place where you've made arrangements, you could break into their home and poison food in their fridge, or you could have an agent follow them and hoe for an opportunity to gain surrepetitious access to their meal.

[Adalbertus]

I love "Putin" being pronounced the French way.

[Adalbertus]

New have it that Scaramella might have had a lethal Polonium dose himself. Very stupid indeed if he was the assassin. But possible if he doesn't know to handle a substance of which 100 micrograms are lethal.

[Zoid]

100 micrograms?? That´s a massive amount of polonium. AFAIK the lethal amount is 50 nanograms...

100 micrograms would be enough to kill 2000 people...

And I think it´s quite obvious that Putin is responsible for poisoning him. It´s not the only political murder he´s responsible of. And it won´t be the last...

[Adalbertus]

German Wikipedia has 50 micrograms for a lethal dose within 6 hours, English Wikipedia 10 nanograms for a lethal dose altogether. This isn't contradictory: Within 6 hours, roughly 1/1000 of the total amount of Polonium decays, therefore you'll have to give thousand times more if you want to achieve a lethal radiation dose within 6 hours instead of waiting several half-lifes of 138 days.

The "problem" is that the body can repair a lot of the damage over this time, so a constant irradiation over two years summing up to 4 Sv is much more likely to be survived than the same dose taken within a day - and the body will lose a lot of undecayed Polonium over this time. Therefore, an effective poisoning will include micrograms.

[Barnabas]

Putin is a murderer!

[Heresson]

Originally posted by VJ


was Russia the reason Polish intelligentsia moved to France late 20th Century or did similar people all over Europe move to Paris because it was Paris in that time period? Curie, Chopin...

After November Uprising, so-called Great Emigration happened. It was not "great" in number, but in quality; large part, or most, of polish intelligentsia, great noble families (Russians took their property) etc left Poland, and for a long time polish cultural life was richer in the West than in Poland itself.
Great Emigration enriched West, I guess, there would be no Conrad or Apollinaire without it.