Comment by Peter Zeihan: The Russian elite is under 100 people. If Covid knocks off a few of them, it is a national security crisis.
[The Guardian] Russian president, 68, self-isolating after announcing outbreak among members of his entourage
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said dozens of people in his inner circle at the Kremlin have tested positive for coronavirus, which has affected more than 7 million people in the badly-hit country.
Earlier this week, the 68-year-old Putin said he was self-isolating after announcing an outbreak among members of his entourage.
“Cases of the coronavirus were detected in my inner circle. Not just one or two but several dozen people,” Putin said, speaking via video link at a meeting of a Moscow-led security alliance.
Putin had been due to attend the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, in person, but instead joined remotely.
As of Tuesday, about 40.2 million of Russia’s 146 million people had been fully vaccinated, according to the Gogov website, which tallies Covid data from the regions.
Russia has several homegrown vaccines freely available to the public, but does not distribute any western-made jabs.
Moscow, the centre of Russia’s outbreak, and a host of regions have introduced mandatory vaccination measures to speed up the inoculation drive, and Putin has repeatedly called on Russians to get vaccinated.
The Kremlin initially set a goal of fully inoculating 60% of Russia’s population by September, but later dropped that target even though free jabs have been available since early December.
Posted by: 3dc ||
09/17/2021 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
#5
So, via Fauxi, the American taxpayer paid to wreck the world and now they will pay to kinda, sorta, temporarily straighten it out. Seems like such an elegant plan.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/17/2021 10:33 Comments ||
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#6
/\ Yes, both will contribute. Some will become the product. Some will unknowingly become the consumers.
#Ukraine accuses #Russia of breaching international law by hosting parliamentary elections on the Crimean peninsula and allowing residents of separatist-controlled regions to cast ballots in the vote.https://t.co/Fe6vUhlPqg
[TASS] The latest technologies make it possible to teach drones to make decisions on their own and may prove useful in case of a real war threat, the executive director of the research and industrial association Radar mms, Ivan Antsev, told TASS in an interview.
"I believe that in a critical situation, where civilian population has to be protected from a real enemy, the legal aspect may fade into the background and such a technology can be employed, because the lives of our people are the key priority," he said, when asked how soon it would be possible to expect the power of decision-making might be delegated to drones.
Antsev said that currently the machine could be taught anything.
"It is rather a legal and ethical aspect, than a technical one. Both humans and machines can effectively identify a potential threat or a concrete enemy. We can feed into the machine practically anything a human being can do. Practically, because human mentality is far more complex and it includes many moral and ethical aspects the machines are unable to understand for the time being," Antsev said.
He stressed that a robotized system might be loaded with a prototype of emotions, but there could be no certainty that it will not make the same mistakes as humans.
"In this situation the machine and the human being will retain the right to make a mistake. The question is who will be responsible for it. This is a legal question," he added.
[TASS] The advanced S-500 Prometey air defense system is now being rolled out to Russian troops after the completion of state trials, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told journalists on Thursday.
"The state trials have just completed, and the first supplies of this complex have started. That is not yet the full range as the Almaz-Antey Concern requires. The configurations of the complex were discussed," Borisov said. "Until we take down a fully-loaded civilian passenger jet, it's just in trials"
Produced by the Almaz-Antey Concern, the S-500 air defense system is designed to defeat all possible means of an air and space attack by a potential enemy across the entire range of heights and speeds. The specialist training for working with this system has been conducted since 2017. The S-500 will replace the S-400 Triumph air defense system.
The 2021 Tyumen Oil and Gas Forum is being held at the West Siberian Innovation Center in Tyumen from September 14 to 16. It includes more than 30 events — plenary sessions, technology days and presentations by energy companies, round tables, business breakfasts, master classes, conferences, and online platforms. The forum is sponsored by the government of the Russian Federation and the government of the Tyumen region. TASS is the general information partner of the forum.
#1
...Always keep an eye on these things, but this does tend to harken back to the good old days of the Cold War, where every new Soviet system was the Last Word in capabilities.
There's also a distinct possibility that the S-500 is yet another S-300 variant that's been jacked up and had a new nameplate put on it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/17/2021 6:10 Comments ||
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#3
the S-500 air defense system is designed to defeat all possible means of an air and space attack by a potential enemy across the entire range of heights and speeds.
#5
It's all about software. And it's constantly being hacked. I would guess / hope that the Israelis hold their EW secrets so close even the Klingons are in the dark.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/17/2021 12:20 Comments ||
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#6
I'm waiting to see how many airliners this one can take down. 'Cause it ain't about the hardware, it's all about the operators.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/17/2021 14:57 Comments ||
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Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/17/2021 15:15 Comments ||
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#8
Actually M, I was thinking about the airliners that the TOR's have knocked down (Europeans and Malaysians over Ukraine, Ukrainians over Iran), but the Vincennces is also one in the loss column.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/17/2021 17:01 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Note: Volodya is not up for election this round. He will run again for president in 2024.
As a side note, should he make it to 2024, he will have been serving as ruler of Russia for longer than Nicholas II.
[REGNUM] In the Khabarovsk Territory, on September 17 at 08:00 local time (01:00 Moscow time), 807 polling stations were opened, of which 31 were on the courts.
Residents of the region within three days will elect deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory (ahead of schedule), as well as additional elections will be held for the deputy of the Legislative Duma of the Territory of the seventh convocation in the Transport single-mandate constituency No. 6.
The number of voters in the Khabarovsk Territory is 967,297 people.
As reported by IA REGNUM , in Magadan on September 16 the Center for public video observation of elections was opened, which will receive data from almost all polling stations in the Magadan region. Several western agencies have refused to send election observers.
#3
Apple and Google under fire for political meddling as they both remove Navalny's app under pressure from the Kremlin on the day Russia goes to the presumed-fixed polls
Hard to fix polls when there are no fewer than 10 separate political parties vieing for spots on the national Duma
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
/\ Yes, both will contribute. Some will become the product. Some will unknowingly become the consumers. 
