Сила искусства

[tijd.livejournal.com]

Перед въездом в Белый Дом чета Трампов провела там ремонт, добавив позолоты.

О другом изменении - культурном вакууме Белого Дома с полным исчезновении чтения книг, музыкальных концертов и другого исполнительного искусства пишет Dave Eggers.

This White House has been, and is likely to remain, home to the first presidency in American history that is almost completely devoid of culture. In the 17 months that Donald Trump has been in office, he has hosted only a few artists of any kind. One was the gun fetishist Ted Nugent. Another was Kid Rock. They went together (and with Sarah Palin). Neither performed.
Since his inauguration in January 2017, there have been no official concerts at the White House (the Reagans had one every few weeks). No poetry readings (the Obamas regularly celebrated young poets). The Carters began a televised series, “In Performance at the White House,” which last aired in 2016, where artists as varied as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride performed in the East Room. The Clintons continued the series with Aretha Franklin and B. B. King, Alison Krauss and Linda Ronstadt.
But aside from occasional performances by “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, the White House is now virtually free of music. Never have we had a president not just indifferent to the arts, but actively oppositional to artists. Mr. Trump disparaged the play “Hamilton” and a few weeks later attacked Meryl Streep. He has said he does not have time to read books (“I read passages, I read areas, I read chapters”). Outside of recommending books by his acolytes, Mr. Trump has tweeted about only one work of literature since the beginning of his presidency: Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury.” It was not an endorsement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/opinion/dave-eggers-culture-arts-trump.html



Культурный вакуум частично заполнили выступления перед Белым домом. После злополучной встречи в Хельсинки там начались ежедневные протесты, которые продолжаются по сей день.

Протесты веселые, с костюмами и песнями, под кодовым названием "Kremlin Annex". Вчера Рози О'Доннелл привезла из Нью-Йорка группу артистов Бродвея, которые вместе с протестующими исполняли песни из популярных мюзиклов, а также "America the Beautiful".

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Электронные войска

[tijd.livejournal.com]

Юрий Ласточкин, недавно произведенный в генерал-лейтенанты, командует войсками радиоэлектронной борьбы Вооруженных Сил РФ. Командующий соответствующим подразделением в армии США имеет чин полковника.

Compared to Western soldiers, lower-ranking Russian troops may lack initiative at the lower levels, but that’s not true for higher echelons of command, especially among those blooded in Ukraine, McDermott said: “The Russian generals that are rotating in and out of Donbas have a similar level of initiative, in my view, to their western counterparts.”
It’s also worth noting that the Russian army’s EW branch has its own general officers, with the equivalent of an American two-star as the branch chief (Major General Yuriy Lastochkin). A 2016 article in the official journal of the General Staff even proposed elevating electronic warfare from a support function to a full-fledged combat arm. By contrast, the highest-ranking electronic warfare officer in the United States Army is a colonel, and US Army electronic warfare is being subsumed into the newly created cyber branch.
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/02/electronic-warfare-trumps-cyber-for-deterring-russia/



Американские электронные войска малочисленны, но растут с оглядкой на инновации, привнесенные россиянами на поле боя.

- The number of EW troops has increased from 813 (both officers and enlisted) in 2015 to 940 today and growing. While just a fraction of the formidable Russian EW force, that’s still a 15 percent increase in three years, remarkable at a time when the Army as a whole shrunk by four percent. What’s more, it reverses a stark decline in previous years when the Army decided to get rid of EW specialists because it no longer needed to jam radio-controlled roadside bombs in Iraq.
- EW training is being expanded. All new Army electronic warfare officers (EWO) will start with the same 14-month course as cyber operations officers, but the EWOs will then get an additional three months of training specifically in electronic warfare. Enlisted EW specialist training will probably quadruple in length from nine weeks to 36, equal in length to the new enlisted cyber operator course.
- EW officers will lead new combined cyber/EW cells on Army headquarters staffs at every echelon from brigade to division, corps, and regional Army Service Component Command. Many units had some form of Cyber/Electromagnetic Activity staff before, but these CEMA cells are now being enlarged, standardized, and put without exception under leaders drawn from the EW force.
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/army-boosts-electronic-warfare-numbers-training-role/

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