Russian airliner missing over Egypt

jsmoke said:
Probably typical Putin blaming everything on anyone else that could challenge his twisted fragile persona.
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As much as I deplore most of what Putin says and does, I really do think he's a very astute politician. He seems to be constantly slightly ahead of the curve and I don't think he particularly warrants the comedy character we in the West give him. He's kinda like the alpha, homophobic totalitarian warmongering version of Boris Johnson.
 
Disturbing news from a work colleague.

She returned on the first Easyjet flight to Gatwick. As she went through the metal detector the alarm went off. She believes her metal hair clip set it off. However she was waved through without any checks.
 
lafemmefatale said:
As much as I deplore most of what Putin says and does, I really do think he's a very astute politician. He seems to be constantly slightly ahead of the curve and I don't think he particularly warrants the comedy character we in the West give him. He's kinda like the alpha, homophobic totalitarian warmongering version of Boris Johnson.
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will Syria be his Afghanistan that is the question
 
Putin is an unnecessary risk taker with a "lowered sense of danger", according to his KGB evaluation. This results in lots of wins for Putin, which adds to the attraction of the man, the problem is that you sense that eventually he's going to lose, and when he does he'll lose big, and that should be a concern for us all.
 
lafemmefatale said:
As much as I deplore most of what Putin says and does, I really do think he's a very astute politician. He seems to be constantly slightly ahead of the curve and I don't think he particularly warrants the comedy character we in the West give him. He's kinda like the alpha, homophobic totalitarian warmongering version of Boris Johnson.
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It is not power when you rip off your shirt and rawr, at least not in modern politics. Power is when you ask people something nicely and they do it. Merkel is a poweful leader, Putin is a weak one. His tough guy image is a cheap act, a classical KGB technique and his actions lately reek of fear and desperation. He won't be able to keep it up for long as the profits from selling the country's natural resources are not enough to buy stability anymore and the 'foreign threat' trick he's been using recently has a short expiry period. He will go down soon and he will do so without a fight.
 
There's no doubt he's a risk-taker. He's a military man through and through and that shows. As with all risk takers, there's always the predisposition for going one step too far when things get tough. However I think Putin has an uncanny knack of being able to withdraw himself just enough to see the bigger picture and keep one eye on the longer game. On a purely political angle, it's served him very well so far and I believe he'll be much more canny dealing with this current incident than most are giving him credit for.

As an aside, I was having dinner with an ex-colleague of mine a few weeks back and one thing we discussed was what would have happened if Putin had been in charge during the Cuban missile crisis? We agreed to disagree on that one. :)
 
scorza said:
Putin is an unnecessary risk taker with a "lowered sense of danger", according to his KGB evaluation. This results in lots of wins for Putin, which adds to the attraction of the man, the problem is that you sense that eventually he's going to lose, and when he does he'll lose big, and that should be a concern for us all.
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Totally disagree with him being a risk taker. I would say that his foreign policy has been somewhat measured in contrast to our constant miscalculations such as Iraq, Libya and Syria. It is us that have made a pigs ear of the middle east not the Russians.
 
Zethor said:
It is not power when you rip off your shirt and rawr, at least not in modern politics. Power is when you ask people something nicely and they do it. Merkel is a poweful leader, Putin is a weak one. His tough guy image is a cheap act, a classical KGB technique and his actions lately reek of fear and desperation. He won't be able to keep it up for long as the profits from selling the country's natural resources are not enough to buy stability anymore and the 'foreign threat' trick he's been using recently has a short expiry period. He will go down soon and he will do so without a fight.
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I sincerely hope you're right, I may be blowing smoke up his proverbial here (purely from him being a clever bugger politically) but the reality of it is I can't stand the man and what he represents.

If he goes down without a fight we'll all be better off for it.
 
It's not looking good:

Cairo: Investigators of the Russian plane crash in Egypt are "90 percent sure" the noise heard in the final second of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb, a member of the investigation team told Reuters on Sunday.

Alarming evidence has also emerged that British extremists were behind the bombing, which claimed 224 lives.
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(Source).
 
Harlequin said:
they would say that - after the `west` came out and said it was a bomb , the only was to save face is by saying it was ISIS , but westerners who had joined them.
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The Sunday Express reported that the jihadis were heard talking and celebrating in Birmingham and London accents by spies at GCHQ in Cheltenham moments after the plane was brought down.

The report said it is believed they may have had a hand in building the bomb.
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