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Me and the missus are going to WWE Supershow in London on November 6th and as far as we can make out Roman Reigns isn't gonna be there? Surely that's like going to see Take That and Gary Barlow not being there? Doesn't seem like much of a supershow if the head of the table isn't there?
Then why the hell is the LDS church allowed to build malls and accumulate 100million? I'm not understanding π€¦πΌββοΈπ€·πΌββοΈ
Some background:
According to "Putin's people", the KGB throughout the 1980s anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union and therefore began setting up young, ambitious business-oriented men with foreign-operated KGB front corporations. The KGB funded these businesses via smuggling and oil revenues, intending for these funds to be used after the Soviet collapse in order to continue KGB operations against the West. When the USSR actually collapsed and the sale of Soviet state assets (oil, gas, steel, etc) began, the owners of these former KGB fronts were among the few Russians with access to capital. These KGB-recruited men - Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, and Abramovich to name a few - proceeded to buy Soviet assets at knock-down prices, and in the process became fabulously wealthy. This angered the KGB, which felt that these mid-90s oligarchs had essentially reneged on the deal. As a result, former agents of the KGB and its successor FSB began plotting to retake power and regain control over these strategic assets. Vladimir Putin was part of this KGB scheme - though not its author - and when the KGB's plan A successor was exposed in a corruption scandal, Putin became the replacement.
Among his earliest acts as President was to begin reigning in the Yeltsin-era oligarchs, which had become incredibly unpopular in the economically stagnant early 2000's Russia. Putin's first target was Khodorkovsky, then Russia's richest man, whose company was seized by the state over several rectroactively-applied tax judgments and then sold to Putin's cronies from his St Petersburg days. Khodorkovsky, for added measure, was sent to prison. Berezovsky quickly fled to London as his company came under fire next, and this left Abramovich (among a few others).
Roman came under pressure around the same time as the others. Abramovich had acquired companies in the early 1990s as a result of his formerly running a KGB front company, and ingratiated himself with the Yeltsin inner circle, becoming known as "Yeltsin's banker" for his willingness to pay money when required to support Yeltsin's political agenda. When Putin came to power, he ordered Abramovich to become governor of the far-off region of Chukotka, an impoverished, scarcely-populated region in the Siberian tundra. Roman had attempted to forestall Putin's wrath by donating $203m to a Putin-affiliated company (Petromed), but this failed to assuage the diminutive dic
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Roman Mars of 99% Invisible was on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, and gave his thoughts on our city flag:
Roman Mars on London's flag
Not a big priority for us these days, but maybe of interest nonetheless.
