The Country With Tattered Economy (c).

Well, we can forgive an intellectual mediocrity with community organizer background for ignorance, but the way Russia's economy which supposed to be "in tatters" performs is best illustrated with that.

A new advanced Borei-class nuclear-powered submarine was among three warships that entered service in the Russian Navy on Thursday. Another boat of the same class, which is designed to carry Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles, was floated for the first time on the same day. The Russian military conducted three simultaneous ceremonies, during which naval flags were raised on the new vessels, marking the formal beginning their active service. The Borei-class submarine ‘Generalissimus Suvorov’ was the largest and most powerful of the three. Boats of that class form the backbone of the naval component of Russia’s modern nuclear deterrence. She is the sixth ship of her kind and was welcomed into service in the city of Severodvinsk in northern Russia, but is slated to join the Pacific Fleet. 

As I am on record--explaining to lay person what it means to build such a monstrous machine as Borei-class SSBN may take a few years and will require a serious elaboration on subjects ranging from nuclear propulsion to spherical trigonometry and battle management systems, in other words--to explain that this is THE real high-tech, not some BS of Twitter and Facebook. 

As sad as it sounds, but it is the way it is, that the most advanced technologies are produced in the war-making business and make killing machines a pinnacle of human scientific and technological advancement. So, Russia has now 7 (seven) state-of-the-art SSBNs afloat and she only accelerates in expanding her submarine fleet. 

In other news from "tattered economy", Russia reminded Kiev regime today that she can continue to run out of cruise missiles as long as it takes. It was a reminder that one shouldn't (the message is for the US, really) try to launch shit--another one was shot down today over Saratov--against Russia's strategic objects, such as Engels strategic aviation base--because, in the end, Rammstein is absolutely defenseless. RAND can wet-dream whatever it wants about "de-escalating" by attacking Moscow, but, I am positive, there are at least few still competent people in there, who should understand that if Russia decides to go all in even in conventional strike--most of NATO navies and HQs in Europe and US proper will not survive for long. 

But then there is Russian saying: if you constantly need to forbid the language, to remove monuments, to destroy history--maybe you are building your nation on somebody's land? That is an excellent reference to 404 removing the monument of the founder of the Russian city of Odessa Empress Catherine the Great. So, before it looked like that:

Now, you can see this "composition" like this:

Pretty much self-explanatory and reflects well not on 404, which is done as a country anyway, but on puppeteers from D.C. who are lacking class, culture and history. 

In related news, I heard today Stephen Walt, of The Israel Lobby fame, gave the interview to Foreign Policy rag. 

I read the gist of it. Good God, with "realists" like this who needs neocons. I am on record--the whole of the Political Science and International Relations diploma mill in the US is an absolute academic fraud. Walt should have continued with his biochemistry degree and avoided going into the geopolitics with minimal, if any, understanding of global power balance and mechanism which form it. But, hey, what do I know. I guess I need to write a new book on that, wink, wink;)