In modern Russia the words "musicians" and "orchestra" have acquired new connotations. In war-related materials they serve as references to the "Wagner" mercenary company which fought for Putin in Syria, Central Africa and now in Ukraine
Wagner is founded by Evegeny Prigozhin, a St Petersburg businessman close to Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin either made his fortune in restaurant business or used restaurants as a cover. Later he would organise catering for the Russian leadership, so Prigizhin was called Putin's cook
Wagner company grew big. A list of their job openings from their Vkontakte page. That gives some idea about the idea and variety of equipment they are using. That's a full scale private army vk.com/pmcworld
Being named after Richard Wagner, this company calls itself an "orchestra" and its mercenaries - "musicians". On the right you see the Wagner recruitment billboard in Yekaterinburg:
"Orchestra W is waiting for you"
This photo pretty much summarises the Wagner iconography. "Musical references". "Brat" movie - I wrote about its enormous impact on the modern Russian state cult. And of course the hammer
The hammer is a reference to the Wagner mercenaries in Syria executing a Syrian deserter from Bashar Assad's army. They beat him with a hammer, cut off his head and hands and burnt whatever remained from the body
Here you can find the photos (graphic) and if you want, google translate the material
A Syrian's execution became a well-known meme, which many try to cosplay
Here you see Wagner musicians on the ruins of Severodonetsk, Ukraine
Professionals from Wagner are more often used on risky missions than those in the regular Russian army. On the other hand, they are better compensated - and making memes about Wagner service being more lucrative than the regular army service
But in order to train their troops, Wagner uses the same Rheinmetall-built military infrastructure. Look at their advertisment, where they call volunteers to a "Molkino" village. They mean Mulino
A journalist of Meduza called Wagner introducing himself as a volunteer. And they told him that for the first month of service they're gonna train on the Mulino training ground and only then go to Ukraine meduza.io/feature/2022/0…
Wagner mercenaries are being trained on the same Rheinmetall-built Mulino training ground as the regular Russian army. The end of a short 🧵
PS clip in the beginning is Лето и арбалеты you can watch it on YouTube
An earlier thread on the Brat movies that are constantly referred to by Putin, Rogozin and ofc Wagner. That's the canon of the modern Russian state cult
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).
No, Israel being a republic causes it to be more barbaric towards the conquered population than Russia, and with no escape. There is simply no room and no possibility for any sort of integration whatsoever.
Were Israelis slaves to a Big Man, integration would be conceivable.
Crawling on the knees before your Big Man is Lindy
Scaleable, manageable, robust
Every nation on earth will concede to it, after the sufficient amount of sticks (and may be some carrots, but that is optional). Which makes it very, very scaleable
In contrast, crawling on the knees before an other nation is not Lindy. No people on the earth will ever accept it, no matter the degree of violence applied.
That's why republican dominion over the disenfranchised colonial periphery is always so fragile. Not scaleable at all.
Today I will introduce one more concept critical for understanding of how the manufacturing industry has evolved over the last few decades. It is the shift of technological knowledge from esoteric to exoteric
In the pre-digital era, manufacturing used to be mysterious, esoteric
To visualize how the manufacturing worked in the pre-computer/early computer age, imagine the atmosphere of magic, mysticism, enigma. That would be not very far from truth.
To illustrate the idea, I will give you one simple, straightforward example. The train car production.
Train production is a very, very rare example of a Russian machinery industry that survived through the post-Soviet collapse. Of course, it contracted. Of course, it suffered losses. Still, it made it through, while most of the Soviet machinery sector was simply wiped out.
As I have already pointed out, general audience, analysts, strategists & decision makers included holds unrealistic notions of how the global economy is organised. Now that is because they never see the back end of industrial civilisation
So let me show you some
There is a major delusion of seeing Europe as a sort of retired continent that "lags in tech" or even "doesn't produce anything". To some extent, it is just American hubris.
But there is more in there than just hubris. There is also some honest, sincere ignorance. The thing with most people is that they see only facade of industrial civilisation. They never ever had a chance to look behind the curtains