Толстый и тонкий

[Prospero]

Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change kills boy in Arctic Circle

Seventy-two nomadic herders, including 41 children, were hospitalised in far north Russia after the region began experiencing abnormally high temperatures



A family is seen 150km from the town of Salekhard, Russia on 2 May 2016.

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Alec Luhn in Moscow
Monday 1 August 2016 21.12 BST

A 12-year-old boy in the far north of Russia has died in an outbreak of anthrax that experts believe was triggered when unusually warm weather caused the release of the bacteria.

 

The boy was one of 72 nomadic herders, including 41 children, hospitalised in the town of Salekhard in the Arctic Circle, after reindeer began dying en masse from anthrax.

 

Five adults and two other children have been diagnosed with the disease, which is known as “Siberian plague” in Russian and was last seen in the region in 1941.

 

More than 2,300 reindeer have died, and at least 63 people have been evacuated from a quarantine area around the site of the outbreak.

“We literally fought for the life of each person, but the infection showed its cunning,”the Yamal governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, told the Interfax news agency. “It returned after 75 years and took the life of a child.”
 
The tabloid LifeNews reported that the boy’s grandmother died of anthrax at a nomad camp last week.

Authorities said the outbreak was linked to climate change. For the past month, the region has been experiencing abnormally high temperatures that have reached 95F.
 

Anthrax spores can survive in frozen human and animal remains for hundreds of years, waiting to be released by a thaw, according to Alexei Kokorin, head of WWF Russia’s climate and energy programme.

 

“Such anomalous heat is rare for Yamal, and that’s probably a manifestation of climate change,” he said.

Average temperatures in Russia have increased by 0.43C in the past 10 years, but the rise has been more pronounced in areas of the far north. The warmer climate has begun thawing the permafrost soil that covers much of Russia, including cemeteries and animal burial grounds. Thawing permafrost has also led to greater erosion of river banks where nomads often buried their dead, Kokorin said.

 

“They didn’t bury deep because it’s hard to dig deep in permafrost,” he explained.
According to custom, the Nenets tribe often inters its dead in a wooden coffin on open ground.





The disease from thawing human and animal remains can get into groundwater that people then drink. The boy in Salekhard died from the intestinal form of the disease, which typically results in fever, stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

 

Other reports said a local cemetery was suspected, or infected venison.
 

Three unusual sinkholes were discovered on the Yamal peninsula in 2014, a phenomenon that many scientists also tied to climate change. Thawing permafrost could have allowed gas in the ground to explode, they said.

 

This summer, researchers have filmed grassy ground on an island off the Yamal peninsula that appeared to bounce under their feet. The phenomenon was likely caused by “bubbles” of methane and carbon dioxide, they said.

[bigvlada]

Old Believer bootcamp: Russian army learns survival skills from reclusive sect

Members of an isolated Orthodox community are teaching special forces how to navigate the Siberian wilderness, RBTH reports

 

Nikolai Shevchenko for RBTH, part of the New East network

 

A group of Russian special forces has emerged from a month-long training camp in the Siberian wilderness, led by members of a staunchly traditionalist religious sect.

 

The unusual military training experiment was directed by representatives from a community of Old Believers, a group that split from the main Orthodox Church in the late 17th century.

 

Leading a secluded life in the Siberian wilderness and rejecting almost all modern conveniences, members of the sect reportedly taught the elite servicemen how to find their bearings and feed themselves in the remote mountainous taiga.

 

The task of foraging food in the sparse landscape was further complicated by some of the Old Believers’ traditions.

 

“They do not eat game with legs, such as hares or bears, but do eat the meat of cloven-hoofed animals. Forest birds and fish are also allowed, as are nuts and berries,” the press service of the Central Military District said.

 

Each serviceman taking part in the course was given a gun and five cartridges in the event they came across a bear.

 

The final five-day leg of the training course took the men through treacherous terrain along the Maly Yenisey river in the Republic of Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.

 

The unusual joint mission between the military and the Old Believers was prompted by a need to improve the servicemen’s survival skills in challenging terrain.

 

 

“During training, we came across the problem that our instructors do not have sufficient survival skills in mountainous taiga. To improve combat training, we have for the first time recruited Old Believers as instructors,” the Central Military District commander, General-Lieutenant Vladimir Zarudnitsky, was quoted as saying by Russian media.

 

Although the military commanders concluded that the experiment had been a success, representatives of the Central Military District have not yet disclosed whether this form of training will become part of the standard programme.

 

Estimates place the total number of Old Believers remaining today at from 1 to 2 million, with many living in extremely isolated communities to which they fled centuries ago to avoid persecution.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/03/old-believer-bootcamp-russian-army-learns-survival-skills-from-reclusive-sect

 

Već se naslućuje sledeći korak

 

Edited August 4, 2016 by bigvlada

[namenski]

Ma jok, sledeci korak bi trebao da bude da negde potraze zaostale pripadnike takodje pravoslavne sekte poznate kao Шкопци, ciji su muski pripadnici sami sebe kastrirali, hocu reci штројили...

To bi znatno doprinelo kvalitetu, a i resilo bi mnoge drevne probleme vojne ;)

[Hamlet Strašni]

Тешко да су шкопци православна секта

[namenski]

Тешко да су шкопци православна секта

Pa i nije, proveri ti to za svaki slucaj.

[bigvlada]

Ma jok, sledeci korak bi trebao da bude da negde potraze zaostale pripadnike takodje pravoslavne sekte poznate kao Шкопци, ciji su muski pripadnici sami sebe kastrirali, hocu reci штројили...

To bi znatno doprinelo kvalitetu, a i resilo bi mnoge drevne probleme vojne ;)

 

 

[Lord Protector]

 

 

 

LETEĆE AŽDAJE "Suhoji" ukrali slavu na Međunarodnim vojnim igrama u Rusiji

Blic | 06. 08. 2016 - 07:14h

 

Druge po redu Međunarodne vojne igre u predgrađu Moskve otvorene su 1. avgusta, a nakon šest dana takmičenja, na prvom i drugom mestu nalaze se vojske Rusije i Kine. Na Igrama su viđeni neki spektakularni manevri, a najveći utisak ostavile su akrobacije ruskih aviona "suhoj".

 

 

Ove vojne igre su teška glupost i ogrešenje o ideju sporta kao miroljubivoj i viteškoj stvari. Idioti prave militaristički spektakl i reklamnu kampanju od nečega što niti je sportsko takmičenje niti je igra. Tolstoj se prevrće u grobu.

Edited August 6, 2016 by slow

[marv]

ima li neke vesti o tome sta kazu clanovi porodice poginulog pilota o poseti sultana?

[Roger Sanchez]

[Prospero]

August 15, 2016 5:51 pm

Russia’s traditions of resistance and reinvention power its innovators
John Thornhill

 

The livewires of Moscow and St Petersburg rely on age-old ploys to make a living

 

 

Richard Florida, author of The Rise Of The Creative Class, reckons that three Ts are essential for innovation and economic development: technology, talent and tolerance.
The first two criteria are uncontroversial. But how important is tolerance in sparking creativity? Russia might seem the perfect place to test the theory.

Mr Florida’s contention was that the global creative class, which pioneers so much innovation in a modern economy, will work where it can best be creative. Scientists, entrepreneurs, and other mobile creative types are allergic to authoritarianism and discrimination.

More controversially, Mr Florida devised the Gay Index, pointing out the strong correlation between the creativity of a city and the proportion of the population that identified themselves as gay. The argument was not necessarily that homosexuals were more creative (though they may be) but that their presence in a city was a good indicator of social tolerance.

His overall theory has come in for some criticism. It would, however, appear to apply to Russia pretty well. In recent years President Vladimir Putin’s regime has turned increasingly intolerant and chauvinistic. As documented in the book The Red Web , the Kremlin has drastically clamped down on the freedom of the internet, which Mr Putin once called a “special CIA project”.

Some of the country’s most brilliant entrepreneurs — such as Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte (dubbed Russia’s Facebook) — have been muscled out of their businesses and quit the country — or ended up in jail. Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law has been widely condemned abroad.

Small wonder then that Russia’s creative industries account for a far smaller proportion of the economy than elsewhere, in spite of the country’s riches in talent and technology. That is a problem as Russia looks to reduce its dependence on oil and gas.

When a state behaves in arbitrary ways, its citizens try to escape its clutches. Some do so physically, by leaving the country. You can hardly throw an iPhone in Silicon Valley without hitting a talented Russian engineer. Much the same is true in Tel Aviv.

Even those who do not emigrate avoid coming into contact with the state wherever possible and channel their energies into their own projects. One young Russian I spoke with in St Petersburg told me she was avoiding any activity that could be regarded as political and was resorting to that age-old Russian survival tactic of “internal emigration,” much as her grandparents had done in Soviet times. But could internal emigration in itself be a spur for creativity? Something very interesting certainly appears to be simmering among Russia’s younger generation.

There is no doubt that the country is still bursting with talented, rugged individualists. ITMO University in St Petersburg, one of many great engineering schools in Russia, has beaten hundreds of other universities to win the world student computer programming title for six of the past 10 years. It has fostered research with foreign universities and companies and is encouraging its students to launch their own businesses. “We want to make the profession of entrepreneur more popular,” says one academic. “People who are 30 or 40 still look at entrepreneurs as something suspicious.”

Ilya Perekopsky, co-founder of Blackmoon Financial Group who previously worked at VKontakte, says Russia remains a source of astonishing talent, even if doing business there remains nightmarish. Experienced data scientists in Russia cost less than one-quarter of what they do in New York. “They are very practical guys. They are very strongly motivated,” he says.

Many Russian entrepreneurs are turning down the opportunity to work for foreign firms, though, to launch their own start-ups. “We prefer to work for ourselves. We can experiment more easily. There are greater opportunities here,” says Tolya Chernyakov, co-founder of the Riders extreme sports app, in St Petersburg. For them, it is the lack of defensible property rights that remains their biggest concern.

Last year, I caught up with Mr Durov, who now runs the Telegram messaging app from outside Russia. I expected him to be negative about the country he had quit, but he considered his problems trivial in comparison with those suffered by previous generations. And he remained hopeful that Russia might revert to being the “libertarian’s paradise” that it was — all too briefly — in the 2000s when he set up VKontakte. “Russia is a synonym for unpredictability,” he said.

 

Russia may again surprise us all.

[hazard]

Kad smo kod inovacija...

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37109169

 

 

Nooscope mystery: The strange device of Putin's new man Anton Vaino

By Olga Ivshina and Dmitry Bulin

BBC Russian Service

19 August 2016

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin's new chief of staff Anton Vaino has reached the top shrouded in mystery.

 

He does not appear to have given any press interviews in his past career, and his official biography reveals little, beyond a steady rise over many years of service to the Kremlin.

 

Before his Kremlin promotion the Estonian-born high flyer served as a diplomat, including a stint at the Tokyo embassy.

 

But an investigation by BBC Russian into Mr Vaino's academic work reveals intriguing details about him and may offer clues about his worldview.

 

Like many officials of his generation, reports say he has a master's degree in economics and has contributed to various scientific publications.

 

In 2012 an article appeared in a specialist journal called Economics and Law written by an "AK Vaino" - widely believed to be one and the same person as Mr Putin's new chief of staff.

 

It was titled "The capitalisation of the future".

 

Levers of power

 

Written in a dense academic prose - which many Russian commentators this week said they found almost impossible to understand - and accompanied by even more complex charts and diagrams, the article outlines new ways of organising and understanding society.

 

 

Mr Vaino argues that the economy and society in general have become too complex to manage by traditional means. Governments need to seek new ways of regulating and controlling them.

 

The article describes a new device called a "nooscope" which, it says, can tap into global consciousness and "detect and register changes in the biosphere and in human activity".

 

The "nooscope" bewildered many in Russia this week. Does the device really exist, they asked. What does it actually do? Is Mr Vaino really serious?

 

BBC Russian tracked down Viktor Sarayev, an award-winning economist and businessman who has co-authored a number of articles with Mr Vaino.

 

He described the nooscope as "a device that scans transactions between people, things and money", and claimed it was an invention of parallel significance to the telescope and the microscope.

 

But he was less forthcoming about whether it actually existed, or was still under development.

 

'Utopian idea'

 

Leading Russian academics meanwhile expressed deep scepticism about the theories and solutions propounded by Mr Vaino and his collaborators.

 

"There isn't any science in this," says Simon Kordonsky, a philosophy professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.

 

He dismissed the article as indulging in "mythological" hypotheses about the future which, he said, contrasted with the genuinely progressive ideas explored by the first generation of Russian reforming economists in the early post-Soviet years.

 

"If we evaluate this article by its meaning, then without doubt it's a cause for concern," says another philosopher from the same institute, Prof Vitaly Kourennoy.

 

"It represents a utopian idea which has no connection to science. It's propounding some kind of all-embracing system of government that has to be enforced by top officials."

 

Viewed from this perspective however, Mr Vaino's theories perhaps begin to make more sense.

 

They could actually be seen as part of a pattern that has emerged in Russian politics over the past decade, as President Putin has sought to reassert control after the chaos of the early 1990s.

 

Kremlin spin doctors

 

Some observers also draw parallels with the approach of one of Mr Vaino's predecessors - former presidential adviser and deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov.

 

Dubbed by one Russian politician as "a puppet master who privatised the political system", Mr Surkov is credited with inventing the theory of "managed democracy", through which President Putin now runs Russia unchallenged.

 

Widely seen as a master of political spin, Mr Surkov specialised in manipulating information in a way which often left his interlocutors unsure as to where the facts ended and the fiction began.

 

This also appears to be an approach used by Dmitry Kiselyov, the powerful head of the state-run Russia Today media network, and a man often referred to as "the Kremlin's chief propagandist".

 

Tasked with broadcasting the Kremlin's point of view, both to Russians and the rest of the world, Mr Kiselyov told the BBC earlier this year that "the age of neutral journalism" had passed.

 

Blurred reality

 

In expounding his theories about the "nooscope" Anton Vaino seems to be echoing these more high-profile Kremlin colleagues.

 

There is no way to prove that the world "exists in reality and not in our imagination", he writes in the Economics and Law article, explaining why the nooscope is needed to interpret and manage world events.

 

Prof Kordonsky feels he has heard it all before.

 

"It's a state of mind," he told BBC Russian. "It's a rejection of the current realities. They want to change things but they don't want to understand what things are really like. They have a perception of potential greatness […] and they're suggesting a way of changing the country and building a better tomorrow."

 

If AK Vaino the political scientist and Anton Vaino the new chief of staff really are the same person, as most Russians presume, then the coming months may show if the nooscope can really deliver a "better tomorrow".

 

Nooskop...kvalitetna prsavela 

Edited August 19, 2016 by hazard

[Prospero]

Pa pošto je u Rusiji geopolitika™ već postala novi marksizam, tj jedna omnipotentna i sveobuhvatna krovna teorija svega, očekujem da će i nooskop naći svoje dostojno mesto u hijerarhiji znanja, naravno negde pri vrhu.

[Shan Jan]

Ovo neki novi Raspucin.

[steins]

Ministarstvo odbrane Rusije objavilo je odluku vrhovnog komandanta zemlje Vladimira Putina o novoj iznenadnoj proveri borbene gotovosti Oružanih snaga Rusije.

 

Jednog od ovih dana će Volodja odlučiti da ove provere™ odvede to the next level, mmw

 

 

[Eraserhead]

Russian banks will be obliged to inform authorities about politicians and officials' links to so-called “undesirable organizations,” the RBC newspaper reported Thursday.

 

If public officials are on the receiving end of financial transactions from foreign and international organizations recognized as “undesirable” in Russia, banks and non-credit institutions must report such activity to the financial authorities.

 

Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service published the proposal on its website, RBC reported. Its aim is to strengthen the government’s control over Russian politicians.

 

On May 23, 2015, President Vladimir Putin signed the undesirable organizations law, which has been widely criticized by human rights activists.

 

The law allows the Russian authorities to prohibit “undesirable organizations” from operating on Russian soil, but currently does not require banks to report public figures’ links to such organizations.

 

 

Podela na patriote i izdajnike je oduvek davala rezultata.