What Did I Say?

Remember me pointing out not for once that West's so called "elites'" feelings towards Russians is, and I quote (myself):

West's hatred towards Russia is not just ideological and cultural--it is racial.

Now the truth begins to slowly emerge. Former US "intelligence" big honcho James Clapper in his interview to NBC says it all:

"If you put that in context with everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election, and just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So we were concerned."  

Ah, those Russian untermensch, how could they point out, out of their own "historical practices", among which were such things as liberation of Auschwitz, the fact that among typical Clapper's and his ilk "techniques" are killing with impunity of millions of innocent civilians, destroying nations, co-opting, penetrating, gaining....wait, these are Russian genetic traits. So, there you are, we finally arrived to what I warned about. I know there were some German POW camps in and around Phoenix, AZ in the immediate aftermath of WW II. I think, Mr.Clapper should look very attentively into the possibility of turning those into the concentration camps for untermensch, I mean Russians, whose genetic composition is a clear and present danger to the American "democracy".  So, there you are, boys and girls--the "best" what US "intelligence" could produce, and this are also views of very many in US "elites".  In the end, preserving of precious bodily fluids is so important.

     

 

The Bird Flies For The First Time.

Yes, long awaited maiden flight of MC-21 did take place today. She is a beauty. The first flight lasted 30 minutes and went without any problems. 

This event, unlike the maiden flight of COMAC C919, is huge. MC-21 is a full and extremely competitive package. The first prototype was powered by Pratt And Whitney engines (presumably for prospective foreign customers), starting from the fourth prototype MC-21 will be powered by PD-14. Apart from being a state-of-the-art aircraft, MC-21 boasts, the only, in his class of mid-range commercial jets, vacuum infused carbon fiber (composite) wing. This makes this wing both extremely strong and light. At this stage there are 175 firm orders for this plane with more to follow, once one considers Russia's vast market for this type of aircraft, which for now is dominated by B737 and A320, many of them bought used (second-hand). In this case it is up to Irkut Corporation and UAC to provide appropriate financing and services to this plane.    

UPDATE: I couldn't miss this, Yak-130 (light fighter/trainer) which escorted MC-21 maiden flight, having some kind of aerial.... orgasm? ;)) Some really good flying in the end of the video. 

 

Russia, Putin, Trump.... What Diffrence Does It Make....

And you thought it was about USSR? 

Did Pink Floyd even know what they were writing about?

   
Do you see New York Times, WaPo, neocons........

A Photo, A Contrast.

Do you know what photo is that? 

     

This is the photo of wives of the leaders of the NATO members on their gathering in Brussels. Yes, wives, all right? The dude in the second row right behind the right shoulder of always stunning Melania is also a... wife. He is a wife of Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel and his (her, its?) name is Gauthier Destenay. This is so progressive and so... fabulous. 

I was reading today about T-4 Truman Kimbro, the recipient of Congressional Medal Of Honor, who died heroically at the Northern Face of the Bulge, saving his squad, while mining, being severely wounded, the cross-roads near Rocherath during the Battle of The Bulge. 25 year old kid sacrificed his life delaying the breakthrough of German armor into the rear of his 2nd Infantry Division and saving his combat buddies. I am preparing the post on Ardennes ordeal. The contrast between this photo and what Truman Kimbro did (Russians know an outstanding heroism when they see one) and what Western Europe, which Allies liberated, has become can not be starker. What would this real American hero say, should he be alive today, about the country near which he inscribed his name into the pantheon of military heroes? This is not a "What would Jesus do" type of question, this is a real moral metric relative to which one has to judge oneself. One could see this moral bar raised again in Russia with her immense Immortal Regiment marches. But as I said before, and I will repeat it again: 

     They didn't fight at Kursk and Omaha Beach for this.

Fred Reed's Excellent Piece.

For a change--a piece of good journalism. Excellent piece by Fred Reed at Unz Review today.

 

Notes of a Reformed News Weasel:Understanding the Vacuity.

 

I, however, disagree with Fred in one thing. He writes:

Journalists are not stupid, running to well above average in intelligence. You could form a large chapter of Mensa by raiding newsrooms in Washington. However, with a fair few exceptions, they are not intellectuals, not contemplative, not studious. They are high-pressure fact-accountants, competitive, comfortable under tight deadlines, aggressive, combative, quick but shallow. This can be a serviceable substituent for stupid.  

I have to correct Fred here: stupidity is not defined by IQ metric alone. Real intellect is defined by self-awareness and understanding of own limitations, which, in the end, is a moral category. The world is filled with all those "through-the-roof IQ" and "Mensa level intelligence" failures and losers, who never achieved anything in their lives--I personally know several of them. US main-stream media "journalists" fail every metric in a framework which values knowledge, competence and truth. Life is complex and so are the outcomes. Other than that small note, the piece by Fred is superb and he nails it when he writes:

 They don’t know America, and they don’t much like it.

I see nothing intellectual about that and may add only that they know nothing about Russia, China, the rest of the world, about war, peace, culture, morality, common good, people in general and the list goes on, and on, and on. So much for "intelligence" of ignorant hacks.  

      

Some Introspective Per ACM-ICPC World 2017 Finals.

Some people abroad sometimes ask: how come that Russia whose population is hovering slightly above 146 million mark still remains in a race in many truly hi-tech fields globally. Well, there is no secret here. Admiral Hyman Rickover knew it all along with his "Russian educational menace" as early as 1960.   

Obviously, many things go into the competitiveness, but one of the pillars of this competitiveness remains national educational level in STEM--Science, Technology, Engineering And Math. Mind you, not in journalism, music or political science. One of subdivisions of this STEM is the field of programming languages and software engineering. So, yesterday, the results of World Finals in International Collegiate Programming Contest 2017 have been published. Here is a screenshot of first 10 places.

Out of 10 first places, 4, that is 40%, are taken by Russia's colleges. Out of first 20, 7, that is 35%, are taken by Russians. This is what is called a preponderance. This absolutely doesn't mean that while traveling somewhere in Irkutsk (a lovely city, very sophisticated) or in Magadan (former capital of GULAG) and seeing Russian gopniks,    

This is a basic Russian model

 

These are Czech gopniks at their convention in Prague

you would expect them discussing peculiarities of formal logic going into program languages or methods of OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Not at all. But you may expect a very tough STEM curriculum in any Russian institution of higher learning in appropriate field and, also, in many public schools, including those in Magadan. Russians simply know how to prepare own elite. It is really very simple, basic statistics. As Clausewitz' dictum goes: the more nation is involved in war, the more numerous are the instances of military genius. The same applies pretty much to any field and it just happened so that it is STEM--always was, is and will remain so--that happens to be the most important of them. Humanities follow, in the end--the best philosophers are very often produced in the field of precise sciences. Be it Rene Descartes or one of the fathers of Russian Cosmism (and the father, one of, of spaceflight) Constantin Tsiolkovsky. So, technical nerds do have this knack for serious generalizations which transcend the world of pure numbers. Many of them wax philosophical and do it very often better than some Ph.Ds in philosophy. Indeed, who knows them other then some pretentious nerds, yet Doctor Michio Kaku is known globally and the whole world (yours truly included) reads his books and find them compelling not only in scientific but in a larger philosophical sense. 

So, there you go--some of the "secret" to Russians still being around in military, science, technology, economy, high art, what have you--teach them well, they will later pay it back by becoming excellent engineers, scientists, teachers, designers of technology....you name it. 

And... As Was Expected.

I wrote about this earlier this year.
  

By now, anything coming from the top echelons of power in US and NATO, especially with such clarifications as "perhaps", "possibly" or "likely",  regarding Russia should be treated only as a case of total paranoia which makes McCarthyism tamed in comparison. But I have to return to the same question: supplying with what?  What is "encouraging", what does it describe, how is Russia "encouraging" Taliban? To do what? 

Don't expect an answer. like a Russian "Hacking", or Russians' finally disposing, in a most brutal manner, of Bambi and Minnie Mouse, there is none.

Well, evidently there is, sort of, and too late. But as beaten to death cliche goes--better late than never. 

The thinly-veiled accusations in the US that Russia supplied arms to Taliban militants were not based on any physical evidence of weapons or money transfers, a senior US military official told lawmakers. “We have seen indication that they offered some level of support but I have not seen real physical evidence of weapons or money being transferred,” Marine Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, who serves as director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said at a Senate hearing.

The main question, however, remains--what is this "support", what goes into it, how does this "support" manifest itself? What does "some level" stand for, what is definition of this level? Russians lecturing Taliban on Theory Of Operational Research and getting those Afghan dudes into the neck of the woods of Osipov-Lanchester Differential Equations or Salvo Model? Or maybe consulting them on Net Centric Warfare? Providing "intelligence", maybe? Considering what passes for "intelligence" today in US, one may assume that giving local civilians a weather forecast for a week may be considered an "intelligence". Who knows what is the semantics of this newspeak and, boy, are we entering this territory fast, the next stop--a thought-crime. But at least it is good that someone of some standing admitted that they've not "seen any physical evidence", for Orwellian reality it will suffice. 

 

Manchester.

The horror continues and the tragedy in Manchester is, sadly, just another one in a vicious circle of terrorism unleashed on Europe.  My heart goes out to the victims of this barbarity and to people of Manchester. But the question remains--is Europe ready to do something about this? Will it even put up a fight before dying? Terrorist acts are becoming, sadly, an almost everyday occurrence and yet, both US and UK are deeply involved with main sponsors of ISIS--KSA and Qatar. It defies common sense.

Russian-Chinese Wide Body Aircraft.

The title is not misleading and I am not being a Russian nationalist when putting Russia in this project in the first place. Today, Russia and China finalized the agreement for production of Russo-Chinese wide body commercial jet known as COMAC C929 which basically underscores some issues with Chinese aerospace. Yes, China recently conducted a maiden flight of her indigenous COMAC C919. It is an undeniably huge achievement for Chinese commercial aviation but, COMAC C919 is not an "answer" to Boeing, Airbus, nor it is an answer to MC-21, whose maiden flight is planned for early June this year. To start with, COMAC C919 has two major problems:

1. A very heavy wing;

2. Absence of indigenous engine. 

This makes C919 only good for China's internal  market. C929, however, is a totally different game. It gets into the B787 and A330 NEO markets directly both in China and, eventually, internationally. It will be doing this with traditionally superb Russian air-frame and PD-35 jet-engine, a larger, more powerful version of PD-14.  So, the stage is set for a big play in the most "hot" commercial market. Of course, others didn't sit idly:

The aircraft to be developed is expected to find the greater share of customers on the Chinese market. Later this year, General Electric and Rolls-Royce are expected to contest the right to provide the aircraft’s powerplant. The overall market is projected at between 800 and 1,000 aircraft, with deliveries starting in 2027.

Boy, talk about big money. C929, judging by a model, is a beautiful jet and it was Andrei Tupolev's dictum that: "Only beautiful planes fly beautifully".  

    

In related news, MC-21 did its rolling out and taxi runs and awaits the first flight.

   

Saudis Did It.

An excellent note from Colonel Lang on US-Saudi relations after Trump's visit to Riyadh.  

In the Middle East the village headman is usually referred to as the Mukhtar, the chosen one, chosen by the ruling force in the country, selected to administer the district with the backing of the government's money. I watched the show in the reception palace in Riyadh with eyes that may have seen the proceedings differently than many other people. What I saw was a carefully staged spectacle in which the Saudis brought together most of the political leaders in the Islamic World to witness President Trump's acceptance of Saudi leadership in the Middle East. In the Arab World when someone submits to you and accepts your money as a follower and tool, the culturally authentic thing to do is to make the experience as painless as possible. The Saudis will now expect that the US will understand that their $110 billion in defense purchases and $40 billion in contributions from the Saudi state's sovereign wealth fund will buy power in Washington and that their carefully and politely stated demands will be greeted with great receptivity in the future.

The Israelis are a bit shaky about this?  Well, pilgrims, they should be.  They have spent a lot of time and effort and a fairly limited amount of money constructing an apparat in AIPAC that successfully manipulates both US policy and public opinion.   And now the Saudis have simply bought the same thing with all that money?  This must be disheartening for the Israelis and their supporters in the US. 

The "rub" will come of course when the Saudis try to crack the whip over Trump.  pl 

Considering a mammoth size of the contract signed between US and well known terrorist state of KSA, one has to now observe Russian-Iranian dance. As B of Moon Of Alabama noted:

But half of the announced $110 billion deal is supposed to flow into "local content" of those weapons. It will have to be produced in Saudi Arabia. It is a way for the Saudis to build their own independent weapon industry with U.S. know-how. Over a decade or two the country will have achieved some independent production capabilities and will thereby be harder to control by potential weapon embargoes. It will proliferate its products to its terrorist proxies. The weapon deal is shortsighted and bad long-term policy.

I, frankly, can not see any possibility of Saudis producing anything, let alone hi-end weapon systems, for a simple reason of this barbaric culture being good only at avoiding any productive labor by all means. The picture of some Saudi operating a 5-axis CNC, or some complex assembly line--sorry, folks, doesn't compute. If any Saudi atrocity (supported by US) in Yemen is any indication, Saudis and hi tech weapons simply do not mix. All this disaster in Yemen, mind you, being committed by the country whose military budget in 2015 was larger than that of Russia.  And, yet--look at Yemen "operation". 

It is, of course, too early to pass a sound judgement on what has transpired in Riyadh, but I am sure Tehran is getting closer to calling Moscow by now and it may be totally justified. As Colonel Lang observed, Saudi Arabia just bought herself a tool and its anti-Iranian nature is obvious. Iran knows that Moscow will not allow Iran to fall, so the game about to begin. But here is a catch for Saudis, unlike them, Iranians do manufacture things and seeing Iranian running 5-axis CNC is nothing special. I know for a fact, that 10-15 years ago Iran had excess of engineers and physics majors, some of whom, and you may have guessed it already, were taught in Russia.

Pavlov's Dog.

I remember early 1977 and us staying in the front of turntable in some flat in the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky listening to Pavlov's Dog album Pampered Menial and being floored by David Surcamp's amazing voice and band's stunning musicianship. We thought it was a British band. Of course, David was rated as the #3 vocalist behind Ian Gillan and (IIRC) David Coverdale then. Boy, we were wrong--an American band from St.Lois, Missouri, created a Gothic music of unimaginable beauty and depth. This was the progressive rock at its best. 

     

I have it all, in LP, CD and MP3. We thought (and they were at some moment of time) they were the greatest band in the world. ABC signed them at half-a-million dollar contract--the largest ever in recording history then.  

Each time I hear this I long for those times, when the music was good.... no, it was outstanding, so much so to take it with you to the island and be lost. 

    

Ah, yes, those melotrons and that crazy At The Sound Of The Bell.

I want to be buried to this. 

       

Real Friday's Akulas.

And I mean the way they were and are known, not some Typhoon (after the missile complex) moniker. Project 941 Strategic Missile Submarines, Akula. I post here some photos which convey better than anything I ever saw the mammoth size of those beasts. First is pretty much generic view of those subs near pier.

   

Now to how people look in comparison:

#1

 and 

             

#2

The question is, even considering the fact that those are very expensive ships to maintain, and plans exist to scrap two out of remaining three, what is going to happen, if somebody among the powers that be decides that it is too early to scrap those beasts? Yes, I am aware that they are not as silent as their younger heirs but Dmitry Donskoi, which underwent a refit as a Bulava SLBM test platform, is still around and doing well. And there were calls from some quarters (in Russian) to retain remaining boats Archangelsk and Severstal' for, and you may have guessed it already, not SLBMs but as Kalibr (and possibly Zircon) carriers. After modernization, of course. You know what is approximate number of cruise (land-attack, anti-shipping and anti-submarine) missiles such a boat can carry? In accordance to Alexandr Mozgovoy, one of the most competent observers of Russian Navy, the number is 396, yes, you are not mistaken three hundred ninety six cruise missiles. This is a devastating fire power and, yes, let's face it, a submerged and very Russified version of a US Navy's good ol' idea of Arsenal Ships.  

Of course, one may (justifiably, I may say) raise the issue of first four Ohio-class SSBNs converted to SSGNs but the similarity between the two will be very superficial. To start with, the idea of Arsenal ship hasn't been born in a vacuum, Soviet Navy's Project 1144 (Kirov-class) nuclear battle cruiser can easily claim the fatherhood of arsenal ships concept since were conceived as...well, arsenal ships, albeit for a Sea Denial mission. But much more is important, when comparing 154 Tomahawks, carried by Ohio-class SSGNs and any Russian Navy's concept or actual sub is the fact that all modern Russian subs carry or will carry large quantities of extremely capable anti-shipping missiles--this is full blown Sea Denial mission, which in layman's lingo means sinking enemy's ships and subs. If sinking is done by current 660 kilometer (350 nautical miles) range P-800 or 3M54 or whatever comes soon in the shape of 3M22, Sea Denial and A2/AD implications become more than just operational or strategic, they become political. Potentially, even a single Akula in Cruise Missile configuration (allegedly Project 941 KU) becomes, after proper modernization, a massive factor without even leaving relatively comfortable confines of the Russia's fleet and ASW patrol aviation zones. 

Are these fantasies or a viable operational (and technological) concepts? Difficult to say, but Russia employed unorthodox technologies not for once, be it on land, in the air or in the sea. Will such a hypothetical modernization of remaining Akulas be expensive? Hell, yes. But so is modernization of Peter The Great, not to mention Admiral Nakhimov. I think those underwater mastodons didn't say their last word yet and considering financial restraints for building a whole new fleet of yet another SSGNs, apart from actively building Yasen-class (Project 885) SSGNs, using of the good ole' Red Oct....forgive me, Akulas doesn't seem to be such a far fetched idea after all. In the end, a decision (a correct one) to modernize a fleet of Project 1155 Large ASW ships is being implemented. You all know a very old principle--If Ain't Broke Don't Fix It. One may add--use it.

CNN's "Expertise".

Imbeciles. No comments from me, a great one from Fabian Burkhardt.  

  

He Used A Different Word.

Vladimir Putin used a different word when he addressed a "classified info leakage to Russians" by President Trump--a completely false BS invented in deep recesses of WaPo sewer. 

"They either do not understand that they are harming their own country, which means they are just short-sighted, or they understand everything, and that means that they are dangerous and unscrupulous people,"

More:
http://tass.com/politics/946300

They either do not understand that they are harming their own country, which means they are just short-sighted, or they understand everything, and that means that they are dangerous and unscrupulous people

No, Vladimir Putin didn't use the word unscrupulous, he used the word нечистоплотные, that is unclean, dirty and that is precisely what modern US so called "establishment", from its media-industrial complex to a political pornography show, aka US Congress, are. Those people simply have no grasp what they are doing since most of who the US political class attracts are people who must be kept away from political power since their loyalties are to themselves (and their contributors) only. They really do not understand what they are doing since they can not grasp results, yes they are that dumb. IQ alone, and I am pretty sure a bunch of US legislators do have high IQs, is not a good metric for overall assessment of results which require much more than agility of a mind, but real intellect and some rudimentary moral principles--that is the capacity to become and stay at least somewhat clean.  

Are those people dangerous? Hell yes they are, apart from being self-serving political operatives, they are dumb and that is where the danger lies. But that brings us to a much larger issue--what does it mean then to have an intellect. The answer is simple--there is no real intellect without a strong core of morality, that is a clear understanding of the difference between good and evil, and without clear understanding of this intellect's limitations. Current American political class, with some important and high profile exceptions, doesn't have it. Marco Rubios, John McCains, Lyndsey Grahams and other sappy sentimental pathetic Chuck Schumers of the American political panopticon contributed greatly to the state of the affairs in the world today and it is a very bad state of the affairs. It is this very class which is now finishing off the American Republic and, with it, what's left of the American Dream. 

Like a financial capital, which leeches off the industrial, productive capital and eventually kills it, the same is with this despicable lying, conniving, amoral professional prostitute political class, which leeches off Republic and eventually kills it. It almost did already. I wrote not for once, I will repeat it again--today, the United States is reminiscent of a convulsing dying patient with internal parasites ready to come out:

  

The only barrier to this violent death is Donald Trump and he will need all support he can get, even from those who do not like him, since what is at stake is more than just whatever people put into this American Democracy meme, the United States as a nation and, with it, fates of the world are. I am not being melodramatic, unlike some "intelligence" supposedly professionals like Comey, Clapper or whoever else, I lived and survived the collapse of one "empire" and know damn well what it is first hand. Most of US political class has no clue what may come, isolated in their bubble they think that they can control the chaos they are sowing. They can't, especially being that feeble-minded and... dirty.   

More:
http://tass.com/politics/946300

Vzglyad Poll.

Today, a very famous Russian media resource Vzglyad posted the results of a poll on what kind of relations would Russians prefer with the United States. After more than 9000 people answered what emerged is rather peculiar in a sense that Russians simply want to be left alone. 

        

Russians long ago stopped viewing the United States as possible ally and after West's committing a cultural suicide in Russia with West's inspired coup in Kiev, the only thing Russians do want is for West to just go away. That is what this neutrality means.