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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25247 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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He was in the equivalent of a supermax prison.

...in a country with a smaller economy than Italy's (notorious for losing mafia bosses from supermax). Russia can't afford to secure its jails from determined infiltrators.

CIA-proofing is probably not massively expensive when you already run an autocratic regime.

People tried to convince me in another thread that GDP and economy are not predictors of state capacity in specific niches. And Russia values its penitentiary system.

Either way, Harp is located in polar tundra and the only other industry in this small town other than the two prisons is a chromium ore mine and processing plant. There's a single road leading into the town. It's not exactly a place where a random outsider can move to and find a job, like Shane Bauer.

A valid argument but for wrong reasons. It's not about GDP, or being able to afford it. The USSR was poorer by GDP than Russia, but I doubt the CIA would be able to pull off an assassination in a Soviet gulag.

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