Russia today

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:09 pm

Capitalist slavery and political illiteracy
11/15/2021
Messages from Nizhny Novgorod workers

In recent days, the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Russian United Labor Front has received a number of messages from employees from various enterprises and institutions of the city. The messages contain typical complaints. These are complaints about enslaving working conditions , carried out in one case through an apprenticeship agreement, in others - through violation of the work schedule, excess of working hours using the labor of elderly pensioners receiving meager pensions.


These facts clearly indicate precisely this - enslaving - nature of labor under capitalism. Coercion to such work is achieved without violence, in an economic way. In each case, circumstances were used against the employee that he, by and large, had no way to overcome, there were no other options for resolving the situation by the employee. Everything, as they say, is a dead end. As a result, hopeless despair, even fatal in one example.

But the authors of this article believe that, among other things, the blame for these troubles is the political illiteracy of the workers themselves, who find themselves in such situations. Which, in principle, is fixable. It is only necessary to begin with putting everything in its place and looking at things from the point of view of the politics of the working class. So we will help in this, and at the same time we will conduct an educational program on labor rights. This is useful, first of all, for young people - “children of far from advanced parents” , whose consciousness in many respects is not yet so polluted with faith in elections or, in general, with disbelief in anything and anyone (in contrast to their non-advanced ancestors).

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Economic coercion is voluntary consent to slavery conditions

So, case 1. A 19-year-old young man got hooked. And this is not the only case at the eminent plant "Krasnoe Sormovo" , where they are lured through the website of vacancies to work under an apprenticeship agreement .

How does this happen? Just. For job vacancies posted on websites, work experience is the most common requirement put forward by "employers". But where will the experience come from among graduates of educational institutions, who often do not even have a work book? In our time of capitalism? Here are young people, backed against the wall by the situation on the labor market, and agree to gain experience on the terms of the employer - through the conclusion of an apprenticeship agreement. The apprenticeship agreement gives the right, after completing training at the factory, to work according to the qualifications acquired in this way. But in return, an employment contract is concluded, as a rule, with the lowest salaries and on the worst conditions. In our example, a salary of 12 350 rubles was offered. - the minimum allowable in 2019. And in case of refusal to conclude such a contract for a period of 2 years, in accordance with the student contract, the student must return the amount spent on training! That is, the student will have to be fired and ripped off a healthy amount. In our example - 73 746 rubles.

Our young acquaintance took this bait. But at the end of 2 months of training as a ship pipeline engineer, he suddenly "sharply found out" what was the matter, and turned to us with a complaint allegedly "of illegal actions." Well, when in the end he also found out that everything was in accordance with the law, he just muttered: "Well, cattle!" Who can argue? Only you, comrade, forgive me for being straightforward, have not quite matured to the required level.

Cunningly thought up? Yes, everything is fine, nothing new. "Truncated by the law":
Labor Code of the Russian Federation Article 207. The rights and obligations of students at the end of the apprenticeship

If the apprentice does not start work at the end of the apprenticeship, he, at the request of the employer, returns to him the scholarship received during the apprenticeship, as well as reimburses other expenses incurred by the employer in connection with the apprenticeship.
How to fix the matter? How can you help an employee here? We can and should congratulate him on the school of working life, on the invaluable experience he has acquired:

First, before signing contracts, including all sorts of apprenticeship and labor contracts, you need to read and comprehend them. And if something incomprehensible raises doubts - do not rush, but seek advice. Where to? This is another problem. But the signing should be postponed until the essence is clarified.

Secondly, you need to immediately, it's time to run, to change consciousness. Realize that bonded conditions can be completely legal. The Labor Code of the Russian Federation is a law adopted by the capitalists in the interests of the capitalists. His - TK - must be studied, because this is a "serial" cooler than "Squid Games". This is a set of rules according to which you will play squid, perhaps, for the rest of your adult life.

And thirdly , in the Soviet Union, there was a state-organized distribution of graduates of educational institutions by enterprises with the provision of housing (at least in a hostel) and with guaranteed work in their specialty, with advanced training at the expense of the state and with an increase in salary for trained, and therefore qualified, to the worker. This discovery should lead to the realization that you are living in bestial conditions, building private property, building capitalism, which has not existed since yesterday, but already 30 years - since the destruction of the Soviet Union.

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The workers froze: Father Oleg blesses the ship's foundation. Plant "Krasnoe Sormovo", 21st century.

Case 2. A pensioner who turned to us at the age of 68 was forced to go to work as a security guard at a school. Risk your life. And his risk is connected not so much with the likelihood of running into a "shooter" and accept a martyr's death, but with a much greater probability of accepting a death that is not so heroic - getting a stroke. After all, at work it is not blood sugar that needs to be regulated, and it is not the pressure "over 200" that needs to be controlled and brought down. And without leaving your post during the entire watch, even for a second, measure the temperature of everyone entering the school, without being distracted by various toilets and snacks. CCTV cameras record everything, a step to the right and left is a reason for denouncing and enforcing the last Chinese warning from the director.

So why, in his old age, our elderly comrade decided to arrange such a cheerful life for himself? Obviously, not so that, following the president's statement about increasing life expectancy in the Russian Federation, to lead the lifestyle of a working pensioner, officially promoted as "healthy". The reason is the amount of the pension - 12,000 rubles, which is not enough for a mere trifle ... - payment of the debt for major repairs - 30,000 rubles.

What is bondage again ?

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Debt slavery - a person's loss of freedom for debt

The fact is that guards, watchmen and persons of similar professions are set work schedules one day after two, which significantly increases the working time, reducing the time of weekly and other rest. This also harms the human body, leading to illness and premature death. The cannibalistic greed of employers is aimed only at extracting maximum profit. The health and life of people is not a value for them. And for such a schedule, they offer the same minimum payment, 12 thousand rubles. with a ponytail. Apparently, wherever vacancies are designed for people who have fallen into debt or other bondage, 12,000 rubles is considered the limit of generosity? Although, if you look at it, then "a day or two" is a mode with overtime work, in contrast to a "day or three". And the "minimum wage" for working in excess of normal working hours is a violation of the law.

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Abbreviated - minimum wage

How can our pensioner improve his affairs? To help him, all of us, still young workers, need to realize the following. Workers in Russia have been turned into "wage slaves" forced to be hired on an employer basis. This happens according to the law, "freely." In the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the right to work is essentially absent. The right to work is cleverly presented as “the right to freely dispose of one's ability to work,” which allows the employer to set at his own discretion the remuneration of workers. Not a decent wage, but the one that he considers necessary, caring only about his own profit. This is the essence of capitalism.

Case 3. A young man writes to us:

“My mother, ... Lyubov Alekseevna, 68 years old, worked as a nurse at Fest-Pharm JSC, a private clinic, Nizhny Novgorod. For the entire period of her work in this structure, her rights provided for by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation were grossly violated. Schedule for employment is used to amore working hours than provided for by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. The time of weekly and other rest was not observed, it was reduced by malice. My mother's questions were rudely answered with a demand for her dismissal, about which she constantly cried in my presence. Due to constant overwork and overwork, she was on sick leave, and on 05/22/2021, after several weeks of heat, she died during a work shift after being taken to the 31st hospital with a diagnosis of a heart attack. The scheduling of the work was done by the hostess sister, whose last name I do not know. I ask you to help me take measures to recognize my mother as killed at work, as well as to bring to justice those responsible for her death. "

This is the price of "freedom" under capitalism . Capitalism kills, having previously "worn out in heavy battles."

But only the realization of this conclusion will be the way to eliminate their political illiteracy for all who work with their own hands. And the illiterate will continue to be exploited.

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The best slave is the one who considers himself "free"

Movement "Labor Nizhny Novgorod", "Russian United Labor Front"

https://www.rotfront.su/kapitalistiches ... -politich/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:43 pm

hey calculated: 3.2 trillion rubles are required to repair water supply systems
11/23/2021
So they will rob

According to the results of a study by the Institute for Urban Economics, about 3.2 trillion rubles are needed to replace the water supply system in the Russian Federation as a whole , and another 638 billion rubles are needed for sewer networks , TASS reports . This is 731% and 146% of the corresponding 2019 expenses.

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The head of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation Irek Fayzullin said that 43.5% of the water supply networks need to be repaired with the actual replacement of 1.1% or 6.2 thousand km . The total length of water supply networks reaches 584 thousand km .

“Plants of the water supply and sewerage system in Russia are mostly unprofitable in terms of their main activities and their expenses for operating activities and modernization of infrastructure in the field of water supply and sanitation are incomparably lower than the necessary investments in the modernization of infrastructure in the field of water supply and sanitation,” the news agency cites the results of the study.

Fund experts suggested using infrastructure bonds as sources of financing. At the same time, they immediately spread straws for themselves, citing the presence of a bunch of restrictions for the development of this market:

excessive centralization of tariff regulation,
low budgetary provision with a high debt burden of the budgets of municipalities and regions,
low creditworthiness of water supply and sewerage enterprises,
a high share of budgetary expenditures on the provision of non-targeted support to consumers of housing and communal services.
Apparently, the "Bolsheviks made a mess" again: they laid 584 thousand kilometers of pipes that could not lie forever.
There is no doubt that the engineering networks need to be repaired. And, by the way, not only water supply and sewerage systems. The question is in the ability of the current economic system to effectively use the allocated money. It’s scary to think how many rubles out of these trillions will settle in the sticky hands of the owners of many large and small companies admitted to the development of funds. Even during the construction of the presidential facilities and the Vostochny cosmodrome, they were dragged by billions. And when the work is "spread out" all over the country, it will be practically impossible to track all the ways of spreading money among co-executors.

This means that the Russians should prepare for another robbery. After all, any initiative of the authorities is always paid for by the growth of spending by end consumers - ordinary citizens. This is, given the public ownership of the means of production, the state constantly allocated money to maintain engineering networks in good condition, and the rent has not changed for years anyway. The current owners will always find a reason to rip off an extra pretty penny from the Russians.

Of course, it is possible and necessary to resist the growth of tariffs and fees in an organized manner. But the authorities have already learned to “not see” the opinion and demands of the working people.

https://www.rotfront.su/poschitali-na-r ... odosnabzh/

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Deputies from the "United Russia" figure out how to help the poor
11/19/2021
Feed them expired food

State Duma deputies from the United Russia party have prepared amendments to the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, according to which entrepreneurs who donate expiring products to non-profit organizations that help the poor will receive a VAT deduction for these products. According to the deputies, this will increase the volume of assistance to the poor.

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It is obvious that entrepreneurs will benefit primarily from this law. Now food and other expiring goods are, at best, donated to help the poor, but mostly they go to the trash heap or continue to be sold in stores even after the expiration date. After the adoption of such a law, the written-off goods may also go to the trash heap, only in this case the tax authorities will receive documents on the transfer of food to charitable organizations - after all, this will reduce losses.

In this example, we see how the authorities care, first of all, for the good of business, and not for the good of poor citizens. Meanwhile, the real concern should be raising wages, pensions, and other social benefits. This will lead to an increase in food demand and a decrease in the number of delinquencies. However, the government will not do this, because for such measures it is necessary to find additional funds, and this can be done by raising taxes - now taxes on business - by introducing truly progressive taxation. This approach directly contradicts the interests of Russian big capital.

Therefore, everything will remain the same in the future: business will find ways to avoid taxes, cut costs and increase profits, the poor will continue to satisfy their needs at the expense of expired food obtained in a garbage container from a nearby hypermarket.

https://www.rotfront.su/deputaty-ot-edi ... -pridumal/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:47 pm

In total, four employees died at Uralvagonzavod in the fall
12/04/2021
Death covered by statistics

According to the ZNAK portal, in the last three months alone, five people died or were seriously injured at UVZ during working hours. According to the company's management, the plant is taking measures to reduce the level of injuries: over the past five years, it has decreased by 25% and has become almost two times lower than in Russia as a whole.

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*On September 2, a crowbar fell on the head of a stamp operator; a 45-year-old worker died in hospital;
*On October 25, a 48-year-old fitter received a fracture of the cranial vault and died in a hospital;
*On October 29, at the age of 61, a caretaker died at work from cardiovascular disease;
*On November 8, another 61-year-old employee suffered the same fate;
*On November 21, the slinger violated the safety rules and was seriously injured.

“Unfortunately, it is practically impossible to avoid accidents at an industrial enterprise with a population of about 30 thousand people. Every accident is definitely a tragedy. Each incident is dealt with individually, the victim and his family members receive support not only in accordance with federal legislation, but also under a collective agreement, ”the UVZ press service said.
Note: two of those who died at Uralvagonzavod were of the age that allowed them to retire before the adoption of the pension reform. But the market and the state forced them to continue to work for the benefit of the owners of the enterprise.
UVZ management illustrates its concern for the safety of employees, citing data on a decrease in the injury rate for five years by 25% : from 0.86 to 0.66 . This is almost two times lower than in the country as a whole ( 1,2 ).

But how does this reflect the actual state of affairs? Russia occupies one of the leading places in the world in terms of the number of injuries at work ( 122 cases per 100,000 people), ahead of such developed countries as Germany ( 1930 cases) and the Netherlands ( 5200 cases). But everything turns upside down when we look at the statistics of fatal injuries: in the Russian Federation - 5.4 per 100 thousand workers, in Germany - about 1 case, and in the Netherlands - 0.5... All this speaks of the banal concealment in Russia of the facts of minor injuries at work. Death is much more difficult to hide.
More details about manipulations and falsifications of statistics on injuries are described in detail in the material by Oleg Komolov on the Prime Numbers channel.
But how in practice the Russian Federation takes care of preserving the life and health of its citizens can be understood from the results of the investigation into the disaster at the Raspadskaya mine . The disregarding, and often criminal, attitude of the entire state machine to labor safety naturally led to the recent tragedy at the Listvyazhnaya mine . But business owners continue to hide behind a fig leaf of statistics.

Let us remind once again: the life and health of workers is the work of the workers themselves. Without collective resistance from workers and employees, work-related injuries and deaths will only increase. Whatever the figures of official statistics say. None of the owners of enterprises will invest in labor protection until they are forced to. After all, their only concern is personal profit.

But it is impossible to dwell on these requirements either. It must be firmly understood that poverty and death of ordinary workers are constant companions of the current economic system. Only by destroying it can you create a state in which the main goal will not be the wealth of a select few, but the free development of each person.

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https://www.rotfront.su/vsego-za-osen-n ... nzavode-u/

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Miner "Listvyazhnoy": "You feel like a suicide bomber for the sake of someone's income"
12/04/2021
ROT FRONT interviewed an infamous mine worker

From the editor. A terrible explosion at the Listvyazhnaya mine happened on November 25 and killed 51 people, including 5 mine rescuers. 99 people were injured - 16 of them are still in the hospital. The correspondent of the ROT FRONT resource interviewed a Listvyazhnaya worker, whose relatives and closest colleagues escaped death only by a fluke.

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- Do you work at the Listvyazhnaya mine? Can you tell us a little about the situation at the enterprise? How do you see the further development of the situation?

Working. Everything has been said by many people, including me. Now there will be a burden for several years with the courts, then the case will be terminated due to the limitation period. Everything is as usual.

- It's clear. And what does the team think about further actions? Will they continue to turn a blind eye to safety violations or will they do something? As far as I understand, there has been no talk of compliance with safety standards for a long time?

For about four months there was simply chaos. I don’t know what will happen next. Considering that SDS [AO HC "SDS-Ugol", which owns the Listvyazhnaya mine. - approx. ed.] close ties with the ruling party.

- And how did the team treat these violations? Have you tried to deal with them somehow? For example, through a trade union? Or by contacting the supervisory authorities?

The supervisory authorities did not appear at the mine for a year and a half. At least underground.

- And the trade union?

They say about the local trade unionist that there is very little sense from him ... I worked for several days with such an excess of methane content and went on vacation. Our other team worked there for a long time with gas. My wife was looking for opportunities to do something when she heard about the situation from me, but could not find where to go. Before that, the mines worked on the other shaft, it was normal there.

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- Clear. Was there a desire to change your job to a safer one? Are there any alternatives?

Yes, I was thinking of going back to SUEK if my former team would return to work in their hometown. Now they travel 150 km to work. Thoughts about changing jobs often come when you feel like a suicide bomber for the sake of someone's income. In my 20 years of work in the mine, I have never seen such lawlessness. So that the methane is in an explosive concentration, and the sensors do not turn off the voltage automatically ... Any cable breakdown or electrical failure and that's it. This is very rare, but it happens ...

- But for now, it turns out, will you continue to work in the mine? What will you do if the sensors beep again and safety violations continue?

I haven’t decided yet whether to look for another job. If the Belov security personnel [responsible for compliance with safety measures at enterprises in the city of Belovo, Kemerovo Region. - approx. Ed.] shake, perhaps there will be at least some kind of control. The first year and a half, until the current longwall was launched [underground mining. - approx. Ed.], there were no such deadly problems. In this longwall, the ventilation drift was pressed down, it was narrowed 5 times: there were problems with ventilation, and gas appeared. Over time, the situation only worsened. But they also wanted to launch the second lava and feed it with the air outgoing from the first ... Everything went to an explosion. They were not allowed to stop at all. Only forward, only more coal. And we, tunnellers, were driven into the gas-polluted shaft of the mine to prepare the second lava.
When it became completely sad,8-15% [methane. - approx. ed.] was recruited! Only after a week in such conditions was sent to another place. Then, 30 meters of the ventilation drift completely collapsed in the lava. Then I went on vacation, and the other workers, as the lava passed through the collapse and the gas returned to 1-2% , were returned back. According to safety precautions, the outgoing air stream from the shaft where we went to work should contain no more than 0.75% methane.

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- Are such excesses generally the norm, or are they one-off cases? Is it the same in other mines?

Only if there are some problems with ventilation, for example, a ventilation pipe in a tunneling face has blown apart, for a short time. And immediately the automation should turn off the voltage.

Before that, I worked at another mine - there, if for some reason the ventilation was insufficient and gas began to accumulate during the operation of the combine, the operator of the AGZ [automated gas protection - approx. Ed.] turned off the voltage when the readings were slightly less than 1%, even before the automation was triggered. So that the data on the automatic triggering of the sensor does not go to SUEK, to the parent company, and the proceedings do not begin. And here, on Listvyazhnaya, there is chaos and methane sensors boarded up in some unknown direction. Previously, work was stopped at two percent at the top of the lava in the most polluted place.

- Is SUEK a managing organization? How does this stand for?

Siberian Coal Energy Company . Here the management, consider, did everything to blow up the mine. At the request of a higher management, apparently. The first year and a half of work at this mine did not observe such chaos. Although I was not in the lava, I cannot say for sure.

- Clear. I also found such a fact that in August the director of Listvyazhnoy Sergey Makhrakov was recognized as the best manager of a coal mine in 2021 according to the results of a regional competition. How well deserved was this award?

Do not know. There were some parameters for which I deserved. The mine at that time was one of the most attractive in terms of salary, moreover, close to settlements. Plus - a large company. I don’t know to what extent he was aware of the gas situation. If I'm not mistaken, the workers from the sewage treatment area talked to him about this. I heard on the Internet a recording of negotiations in the chat of shopkeepers, they said that the director said to work up to 1% methane. And the boss demanded at high concentrations.

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The court arrested the director of the mine Sergei Makhrakov for 2 months

- Were there any problems with the salary? Is everything on time and good? And did I understand correctly that the immediate superiors could not report violations to Makhrakov? To curry favor? Or were they afraid for the prizes?

Leaders are also different people. Someone will "send" both the boss and above, and will wait until it is completely ventilated. And someone will start. Hard to say. And there were no problems with the salary, and delays too.

- What does the team think about further work? After all, they will make you risk your life again? Maybe try to create an independent trade union or at least report on violations if they happen again?

I didn't really communicate with the team, except for a few people.

I will also say that layoffs are unlikely to happen now. Say what. The boss can insist that he did not send anyone to gas. And maybe just KTU [labor participation rate. - approx. Ed.] 0.8 put until you quit yourself. At one time, there was no KTU for half a year. People complained to the prosecutor's office, and in return they beat the director as much as they could afford. Then KTU was returned, they just write papers for some violations. Type of non-fulfillment of the order.

And I have not yet decided to leave or not, we have to go to open a new layer, and for a year there shouldn't be any problems there.

Lucky this time. Me, my link, brother, relatives. The father of the boy who works with me was lucky: he worked on a different barrel and got out, just got a breath of gas. The rescuer worked for him for only 5 minutes. And my brother was on the first shift, arrived on the second bus and did not have time to go down. The lifeguard did not work for him at all.

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- Are they, these rescuers, being checked? Or are they also used without control?

They are checked for tightness, maybe somehow else, I don't know. In general, all the self-rescuers were fresh ... Some kind of defective batch, or something ...

- It's strange then. And in general, at what level is the provision of personal protective equipment?

Each miner has an individual self-rescuer *.
* Self-rescuer - a means of personal protection of the respiratory system. Designed to ensure the exit of people from a dangerous and potentially hazardous atmosphere (with a lack of oxygen, and / or contaminated with hazardous substances) in the event of an accident, fire, or other emergencies.
https://www.rotfront.su/shahtyor-listvy ... vuesh-seb/

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:06 pm

Distortion of modern science. Part 1
12/14/2021
Breakthrough as a side effect of the grant chase?

From the Editor:
Coming to the end of 2021, as you know, has been declared the Year of Science and Technology in Russia. Celebrations, competitions, presentations and symposia were held throughout the country . Much has been said about the need for scientific breakthroughs and significant scientific potential. The distribution of grants, prizes, but most of all - promises took place. Particular attention was paid to the task of attracting young people - students and schoolchildren - to science.

The theme of science and the question of what actually lies behind lofty phrases about its importance for the country and the full support of the state, we have repeatedly addressed previously . The article published today by our supporter, a young Russian chemist, can be viewed as a kind of summing up of the Year of Science. In the article, the author offers us an “inside” view of what modern Russian science is - not in a “vacuum”, but in the context of today's reality - and what, in practice, the decision to devote his life to scientific activity can mean for a young person.


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When it comes to attitudes towards science, society, according to the HSE poll and the recent VTsIOM poll , is extremely positive about the work of Russian scientists and the impact of their activities on the standard of living. The prestige of the profession still remains at a high level, and many want their children to continue to develop Russian scientific thought in the future. In the context of the modern information flow, despite all the problems of society, scientists still break through thorns to the stars, demonstrating high performance indicators. And if you doubt this, then you can see for yourself by visiting any of the official resources:

• TV channel Russia 24 with reports on the progress of modern scientists,
• official VK groups: RSF , science and education ,
• telegram channels: NOP , Science and universities , RAS .

At the same time, a look from the inside rather causes bewilderment and a desire to “burn the shrine”. What often happens on the part of initiative telegram channels:

• Russian resercher
• Scientific wrong side
• Tipping News
• Zoo ivory
• Scientific servitude .

In addition, you can find individual works that are found on YouTube , forums , and social networks . It turns out that from the side of official propaganda we get only "god's dew", while the scientific underground criticizes almost every achievement and initiative of the government.

An independent observer has a question, what do we have as a result? A barrel of honey with a fly in the ointment or a barrel in the ointment with a spoonful of honey? In this article, I will describe what I see with my own eyes, this is a kind of reflection of a young researcher of “this country”.

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Exhibition-installation dedicated to the Year of Science and Technology. Photo

Reality and the real world

Despite the high marks from the population, in the past few decades, the results of the work of domestic science - according to popular media [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3] - in a number of cases are very dubious (as an example, discoveries made by Russian scientists abroad) in nature. Apart from that, they are extremely fundamental. I, of course, do not think that this area of ​​science is lower than the applied one, I would rather compare these two directions with the wheels of a bicycle, and now one of the wheels is clearly deflated, therefore we are driving with difficulty. The results of scientific projects of Russian scientists are presented to us as the greatest breakthroughs in scientific thought, but in everyday life it is very difficult to notice this. High-tech products are becoming more expensive, and the world is increasingly striving to meet immediate needs, overwhelming us with offers to install a new application to kill time, or offering to retrain and acquire a more profitable and relevant profession.

At the same time, we observe such objective processes as:
- an increase in unemployment ,
- a constant increase in the gap between the poor and the rich,
- an increase in food prices ,
- a crisis in the supply of medicines ,
- household theft of food from stores ,
- the struggle of people for delays ,
- the introduction of targeted measures to regulate prices, accompanied by a subsequent collapse of supplies ;
- an increase in prices for sawn timber .

And this is happening against the background of:
- increasing export of potatoes ,
- record sugar supplies abroad ,
- leadership in the export of sawn timber .

Since we sell what we need, does it mean there is some purpose behind it? If in the 30s our country sold grain in exchange for machines , then a natural question arises: what are we now exchanging for that food, which is so lacking in the population of our country ?

It can be assumed that the purpose of the belt-tightening is to provide bright minds with opportunities for creativity so that they can create a wonderful future free from the problems listed above. But is it really so?

In reality, we are observing the estrangement of official Russian science from society. We see how modern scientific creativity increasingly focuses its attention on fundamental research, constantly reminding us of the " big challenges ". But worthy responses to the “big challenges” are associated with the need to carry out new transformations of the system of financing science, the purpose of which is once again to carry out “ breakthrough research". And all this each time leads to the fact that at the moment when the country is feeling the consequences of the next crisis and more than ever in need of technical transformations, scientists are concerned about local crises within the community associated with various kinds of reorganizations. Ultimately, this is reflected in the fact that it becomes increasingly difficult for scientists to provide even their basic needs, not to mention the solution of critical problems of the whole society. So what is inside the sphere of activity of scientists, and is science worthy of its high social appreciation?

The purpose of this article is to answer three questions:

• Who is a modern scientist?
• What does he do?
• What should he be doing?

To answer, let's ask ourselves another, at first glance, abstracted from the main topic of the article, question:

Can we hire an artist to create a masterpiece?

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For the implementation of this idea, we will allocate 650 thousand rubles for a year and put forward a number of requirements:

To receive funding, any graduate can submit an application, to which it will be necessary to attach several dozen sketches of the planned masterpiece.
We will not restrict the winners of the competition in purchasing imported consumables, but we will not help in the purchase either. True, the price of the purchased product will be approximately 1.5 times higher than the average European prices, and if something rare is needed, then let the competitor fill out the customs declaration and deal with the accompanying payments, because retail does not deal with unique supplies.
If a one-time purchase exceeds the limit of 50 thousand rubles, then a tender for the supply must be announced.
In order to check the activity, we will establish the need to provide explanatory materials describing the process of creating a masterpiece; not much, 5-6 is enough.
At the end of the year, we will ask you to write a financial statement and a report containing the interpretation of the created masterpiece.
If nothing is created within the framework of the competition, the artist is obliged to return all the money back, excluding expenses on life support.
If the masterpiece does not work out, then this will significantly reduce the chances of participating in such competitions in the future.
Evaluation of all materials is entrusted to representatives of the "honored commission", which consists of people in approximately similar conditions.
Not a very pleasant atmosphere for fruitful creativity, is it?

55 thousand rubles per month excluding payroll taxes, independent purchase of all the necessary materials with the need to generate a bunch of reports. Is this a sufficient payment for hard work?

But it is precisely this policy that our state and many states around the world adhere to in relation to scientific research. Of course, the amount of scientific grants and the delivery time for reagents and equipment differ depending on the country, and ours, unfortunately, is deeply behind - just compare the prices and delivery times of reagents in Finland and St. Petersburg (prices are for July 2021):

1. Finland: 118 EUR , or 10800 rubles, Russia: 17340 rubles.
2. Finland: 573 EUR , 52706 rubles, Russia: 94580 rubles.
3. Finland: 45.5 EUR , 4185 rubles, Russia: 7185 rubles.
4. Finland: 118 EUR , 10800 rubles, Russia: 16050 rubles.
5. Finland: 138 EUR , 12693 rubles, Russia: 21160 rubles.

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It is also worth assessing the amount of funding for science in the Russian Federation and Finland:

• Finland: 51,494 people in research and development; internal expenditures on research and development (PPP) $ 7.5 billion (2.76% of GDP), that is, on average $ 146,648 / person.
• Russia: 753,796 people employed in research and development; internal expenditures on research and development (PPP) $ 44.1 billion (1.08% of GDP), on average $ 58,503 / person.

Well, in order to understand the real state of affairs, let us turn to the statistics of the currently only scientific foundation in Russia for 2019:

• the average grant per project is 4.2 million rubles for 1 year,
• the average size of the project team is seven people (660 thousand rubles / (year⋅person)),
• the team publishes an average of 6 articles per year,
• the percentage of projects with recognized inappropriate spending is 18.5%.

Who is a modern scientist?

A typical portrait of a young researcher: this is a young man with a family, doomed to pull 2-3 projects at a time in order to provide the team with funding and purchase the necessary reagents, consumables and equipment.

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Each project implies the need to provide a report, on the basis of which an assessment of the work of a scientist will be given. If you are not familiar with the specifics of the field, then you may have a logical question: "how do you evaluate creative work?" After all, we will not be able to appreciate the work of an artist instantly. The quality of work is always a very controversial point. But the scientific community has a solution - scientometrics (the field of science of science, which conducts the study of science by quantitative methods (the number of scientific articles published in a given period of time, citation, etc.) - ed.)

So, what quantitative indicators can be used to assess the effectiveness of scientific activities? Firstly, in the most objective way we can estimate the number of works created, and this is not a problem, it is a matter of simple counting. But we are interested not only in getting a bunch of pseudo-scientific text, which happened as a result of the implementation of the 5-100 program , although there were obvious concerns about this at the very beginning. Now we want to get a really high quality result! So what is the quality indicator? Maybe this is the number of factories with the introduction of new technologies? No. Then maybe this is GDP growth? Also no, here it will turn out to be even the opposite, the growth in funding for science is accompanied by a drop in the GDP growth rate.... Maybe this is some indicator of the growth in the quality of life of the population? And again the answer is no! The answer of our time is the number of citations of published works, expressed in terms of a complex publication performance score . Any scientometric indicator is ultimately based on two main metrics: the number of published articles and the number of citations of these articles. Accordingly, the main requirement for a modern scientist sounds like "Publish or die." Although, it is worth clarifying: "Publish to Q1 or die." (Division into quartiles Q1 - Q4 is a ranking system for scientific journals, in which Q1 includes the most authoritative foreign journals - ed.)

Thus, we have already gotten to the answer to the question "what is the researcher busy with?" And he is busy with the development of two or three "breakthrough projects", the constant search for colleagues to share the common pain of achieving the necessary indicators, maintaining the stamina and attitude of practicing students and graduate students who receive 3-8 thousand rubles a month. The latter is especially difficult, because the limited grants do not allow them to pay a decent salary, therefore, from the very magistracy, the younger generation of researchers is being educated in the direction of the same grant needle that sucks into the mental swamp of creative stagnation.

The problem of intellectual property rights of the organization completes the picture. In the case of performing work with government funding, the university takes away the exclusive property rights . It is not surprising that the professional burnout of young researchers fuels the desire to free themselves from the shackles and go into the world of real science, the very one that actually excites the mind of the researcher. How to be? The risk of losing an invention with the involvement of public funds can be very high, and “the strategy of innovative development»We have not been helped to solve this problem in 10 years. What is left? All that remains is to implement initiative projects in their free time, or, in other words, to conduct research as a hobby after work. This gives hope to attract investment (preferably more reliable - foreign) and break out of the impenetrable chaos of official science. If you have such an initiative project, you are doomed to constant monthly expenses in the amount of 37.5 (70) thousand rubles , which will be spent on purchasing the missing reagent and performing paid research.

These conditions destroy any progress in the bud. Constant stress and the sucking of raw and unprocessed articles from the finger leads to the fact that we have a completely exhausted young specialist who sometimes does not even understand who he really is and why he is doing all this.

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What is the real task of a scientist?

At the official level, we hear about major support programs for scientific organizations: " 5-100 ", " Priority-2030 ", " Instrument Base Update Program ". Universities are supported, which means that work is underway. If we look at the news about the achievements of specific universities , we get the impression that there are no problems, here it is, development! And that Russia continues its space expansion, because Roskosmos is present in the news feed, without fail with loud statements .

Only in reality do we see:

• failure of the program "5-100" ,
• Program conflicts and generate support for less than 10% of the total number of scientific organizations ,
• conflicts between scientific organizations and an increase in aggressive competition ,
• aggressive annexation of small to large universities, the appointment of m "hegemony" ,
• "PR on feet of clay" ,
• tenfold lag behind the USSR in the number of space launches for the same period of time ,
• decrease in the number of scientists ,
• low share of high-tech products .

Thus, the main task facing scientists is to create the illusion of great Russian science. Researchers are just a means of obtaining beautiful numbers in statistics, so that there is something to flaunt in front of a hungry and tired population and to close all questions about inaction in solving the problems of the country's development.

It is not surprising that many have a strong desire to flee to the bright world of foreign science, because there seem to be real problems and there really urgent problems of society are being solved!

But just as there was no sex in the USSR, there are no unsuccessful studies in modern science. This is a problem not only of Russian society, but also of the world one: the percentage of highly cited studies with false results is growing , and scientists are increasingly feeling the crisis of reproducibility of results . The grant policy is the same everywhere, and everywhere it leads to the same consequences . Everyone wants to break out of the routine of endless publications, everyone hopes that today or tomorrow they will miraculously carry out the same experiment that will show everyone: "Yes, I am just like Catalin Carico !" and thus will open up new opportunities and give more freedom in the realization of creative ambitions. (Catalin Kariko is a biochemist of Hungarian origin who emigrated to the United States in the 1980s, her many years of research on messenger RNA (mRNA) formed the basis for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna anticoid vaccines - Approx. Ed. ). The pursuit of the crane leads to the fact that young research teams pick their piece of science granite with a plastic fork, simultaneously using dubious advice in the form of fabricated "scientific" articles.

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Mural with a portrait of Catalin Kariko in Budapest. The goal of the Brain Bar Future festival, which hosts the mural, is “to strengthen the ambitions of young Hungarians”. The inscription under the portrait: "The Hungarians write the future." Photo

Ratings, KPIs, reports, publications, high goals lead to the fact that the foundation of science is falling like a cookie, which, despite all the "great breakthroughs", continues to rise in price .

What is the real task of a scientist?

The answer of modern Russia is “to pretend that everything is fine” .
The answer of the modern Western world is "strive for success and recognition . "
My answer does not match any of the suggested ones. I will give it in expanded form in the forthcoming second part. And for the time being, I propose to the reader to reflect on the question posed and try to find his answer.

To be continued. ..

https://www.rotfront.su/iskazhenie-sovr ... i-chast-1/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 21, 2021 2:46 pm

In Leningrad, activists recalled the tenth anniversary of the execution of workers in Zhanaozen
12/21/2021
The action took place at the consulate of Kazakhstan

On December 16, RKWP activists held a picket at the consulate of Kazakhstan in St. Petersburg to remind the public of the tragic events in Zhanaozen, which turned ten this year. Then the Kazakh authorities took up arms on the striking workers and carried out a punitive operation, killing and maiming protesting oil workers. By this, they reminded that the modern capitalist state, if necessary, can easily throw off the colorful shell of bourgeois democracy and go over to open terror if it feels a real threat from the self-organized proletariat.

ImageImage

The events of a decade ago are extremely relevant today: during 2021, massive and prolonged strikes took place in the Mangistau region of Kazakhstan demanding higher wages, better working conditions, and freedom of trade union activity. Despite the successful nature of many of them, the authorities, several dozen activists were dismissed and there is a danger of applying the articles of the criminal code to the dismissed activists for participating and organizing strikes.

In addition, in early December, the Kazakh authorities decided on the possibility of using the army to suppress rallies and strikes. Therefore, it is extremely important today to recall the bloody execution and show international proletarian solidarity. An appeal was prepared on behalf of the communist and workers 'organizations of Russia ( RKWP, ROT FRONT, RKSM (b), the Union of Trade Unions of Russia, the trade union "Zashchita" ), which the first secretary of the Central Committee of the RKWP, member of the executive committee of the interregional workers' trade union "Zashchita", Stepan , tried to present to the consuls Malentsov . Representatives of the consulate, as expected, hid and did not open the door, but representatives of the police became more active. Nevertheless, the event took place without detention, and the appeal will be sent by mail.

ImageImage

Appeal of the communist and workers' organizations of Russia

To the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

Tokayev K.-J. TO.


Mr. Tokayev.

Exactly ten years ago, December 16, 2011. Nazarbayev's fascist clique carried out a massacre of oil workers and their family members in Zhanaozen and Shetpe, Mangistau region. There is no statute of limitations for these crimes. The traitor of the Soviet people, the executioner of the Kazakh people, his accomplices and successors of the criminal policy will forever be damned in the memory of the people. On behalf of the communist and workers' organizations of Russia, we express fraternal solidarity to the multinational proletariat of Kazakhstan!

Eternal memory to the fallen heroes in the struggle for the labor cause!

To account for the killers of workers and their families!

No repressions against workers and social activists of Kazakhstan!


Hero City Leningrad December 16, 2021

https://www.rotfront.su/v-leningrade-ak ... nili-o-de/

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The situation of miners in Russia is no better than in South Africa
12/20/2021

Mine owners save on workers on all continents

In a recent news release about the labor movement, we talked about the accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine in Kuzbass. The tragedy claimed the lives of 46 miners and 5 mine rescuers. The preliminary cause of the accident is considered to be smoke from a methane explosion.


Miner's helmet
The reaction from society and the media seemed to stir up the higher ranks. So, the investigation, which is being conducted on the fact of the accident, is supervised by the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin , and the owner of the mine, millionaire Mikhail Fedyaev , was detained under an article for violating industrial safety requirements, the presence of which, like the responsibility of the management, was admitted even by Putin .

In our opinion, the main cause of the accident is capitalism. After all, the goal of production in a market economy is to maximize profits. Hence the savings not only on workers' wages, but also on their lives.

Supporters of a market economy, of course, will argue with us, they say, capitalism has nothing to do with it, because we have it wrong. We cannot get rid of the Soviet legacy in any way, that is why we live so badly, and that is why people are dying.

But workers are dying not only in Russia. So, at the end of November this year, the South African Communist Party ( SACP ) expressed condolences to the families of miners who died at the Impala Platinum mine in Rustenburg . As a result of the landslide, several miners were trapped in the mine. Two of the seven miners with varying degrees of damage were rescued, two more managed to get out of the mine rubble on their own.

Fatal incidents hit a record year on year, with 55 deaths as of November 1, 2021, up from 43 in the same period in 2020, according to the South African Minerals Council . By the end of 2021, that number had grown to 60 .

“Historically, mortality in mines has often been attributed to the fact that mining bosses prioritized their profits, not human lives,” the UACP said in an appeal to miners.

African Communists are also calling on mining workers to rally to improve working conditions, including health and safety standards.
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We join the call and, in turn, draw attention to the need for the struggle of the working people in our country. And for business owners, once again, we note that profit should not be more important than human lives.

https://www.rotfront.su/polozhenie-shah ... uchshe-ch/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 27, 2021 2:58 pm

Why capitalism is better than socialism....

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The volume of bribes in public procurement exceeds the cost of health care and education
12/26/2021

The turnover of kickbacks exceeded a third of the federal budget

The turnover of bribes in public procurement in 2020 amounted to 6.6 trillion rubles. , which exceeds the total expenditures of the Russian Federation on education and health care. This is the conclusion reached by the experts of the Higher School of Economics following the results of an anonymous survey ... When the next time we are told that “there is no money” , remember these figures.

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HSE experts conducted a large-scale study - a survey of Russian companies participating in the public procurement system. After analyzing the results obtained, it turned out that more than two thirds ( 71% ) of suppliers of goods and services faced corruption during the competitive procedures . Companies applying for a government contract have to fork out for a bribe an average of 22.5% of the contract amount. And the annual volume of the market for bribes in public procurement, according to experts, amounted to 6.6 trillion rubles. For comparison, the revenue side of the RF budget is 18.7 trillion rubles. ; thus, the turnover of bribes amounted to about 35.3% of the federal budget.

The authors of the study report that the basis of the study was an anonymous survey of more than 1.2 thousand representatives of companies that, in one way or another, participate in public procurement tenders. 53% of the respondents from the surveyed sample are from micro-enterprises, 34% are small businesses, 6% are medium-sized and about 7% are large businesses. Both direct and indirect questions were asked. Interestingly, for 37% of business representatives, collusion became a necessary condition for obtaining a government order - either vertical (between the customer and the supplier) or horizontal (between competing companies that participated in the auction). The study authors emphasize:

"In the current environment, it is more profitable for a supplier to enter into an agreement than to work on the uniqueness or innovativeness of goods, works or services."

So, according to HSE experts, about 6.6 trillion rubles of corruption circulate in the Russian economy. For comparison, in the federal budget for 2022 approved by the government, spending on health care and education is 1.2 trillion rubles each, i.e. in total, only 2.4 trillion rubles. Moreover, despite the pandemic, which revealed the catastrophic state of domestic health care, these costs are also being cut .

That this corruption has existed for years, that it is of a systemic nature, is known to everyone who works in business or at least follows the news. The destruction of the USSR at the end of “perestroika” was accompanied by loud statements about the fight against corruption of the “Soviet nomenklatura”. But over the 30 years of its existence, the Russian Federation has not only failed to fight corruption; on the contrary, corruption has become one of the backbone factors of the Russian state. And you can draw conclusions from this yourself.

https://www.rotfront.su/obyom-vzyatok-p ... -prevysha/

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The court decided not to rush to the arrest of the former billionaire MP
12/25/2021

He poses no danger to the state

The decision on the arrest in absentia of Sergei Sopchuk was canceled by the Primorsky Regional Court, Lenta reports . The former State Duma deputy was previously charged in absentia with illegal entrepreneurship and money laundering, and assets worth 38 billion rubles were confiscated .

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Former State Duma deputy Sergei Sopchuk

Earlier, the Investigative Committee of Russia brought charges in absentia to the ex-deputy and put him on the international wanted list. Sopchuk is suspected of combining commercial and legislative activities.
Sergei Sopchuk was a deputy of the State Duma of the VII convocation, a member of the political council of United Russia , and vice-governor of the Primorsky Territory. With the "accumulated" billion, he bought almost 100% of the gold mining company Ternei Zoloto LLC and handed them over to his sister Lyudmila Stukova. Such is the simple scheme. Judging by the fact that 38 billion was confiscated back in January, and the suspect Sopchuk was put on the international wanted list 10 months later, the law enforcement agencies gave him enough time to find a secluded place to eat the under-confiscated fat.
Sergei Andreevich lived for his own pleasure: he ran a business, wrote laws, ate hearty, slept well, saved up "for a rainy day." And neither the prosecutor's office, nor the tax office, nor party associates, nor work colleagues saw that the "comrade" was consuming beyond his means. They thought, probably, that he "knows how to live", receives "a decent salary for his work." After all, he is not unique . There are enough such “successful” ones in the country . Those who have distinguished themselves are even awarded personally by the President.

I recall an episode from the Soviet film "Night Patrol", where the thief-director of the store Polzikov performed by Sergei Filippov complains to his accomplices:

“I don’t live, I vegetate (…) At home, because of the damned neighbors, I cook two dinners: one - based on the salary received in plain sight, and a real dinner - on a kerosene stove in a room with closed doors. At work I smoke Baikal, and at home I smoke Troika. And I'm terribly afraid to mix it up. "



But that was in a different country.

Now it's not dangerous to be rich. Now hucksters openly "earn" huge fortunes and are not at all embarrassed to spend them not only on expensive dinners, but on mansions and yachts. The more money, the more honor.

The point is not in the personality of the suspect Sopchuk, not in his “partisanship”. It is easy to find such "sopchuk" in any parliamentary party. It may well be that tomorrow they will again sign a resolution on his arrest. We admit that they even actually find and jail. But it is not so important whether he combined business with the adoption of laws or not. The main laws were adopted long before he became a deputy, thirty years ago: where the exploitation of man by man was once abolished, the rich minority got the opportunity to "honestly" appropriate the results of the work of a multi-million army of workers. But to question this "legality" is an encroachment on the foundations of the constitutional order.

https://www.rotfront.su/sud-reshil-ne-s ... -byvshego/

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By February, bread can rise in price
12/24/2021

Will the macaros rise in price?

According to the forecast of the Ministry of Agriculture, by February next year, producers will raise the price of flour by an average of 2.9%, which will lead to an increase in prices for bread. Also, according to the forecast of the ministry, the price of sunflower oil will also rise. During the period from the beginning of this year to the present, the price of flour increased by 13%, bread by 10%, and vegetable oil - by 8.5%.

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The rise in the cost of flour and sunflower oil will lead to an increase in the price of goods other than bread. Flour is used for the production of pasta and confectionery, so the pasta, apparently, will still rise in price. Sunflower oil is used in the production of confectionery and margarine, so the prices for these products will also rise.

Such a serious rise in price will hit hard on the pockets of workers, including pensioners. It is not yet clear by what amount the pensions will be indexed, but the rapid rise in prices will almost immediately reduce the effect of any increase - it will only partially compensate for the losses from inflation over the past year. We observed such a picture in the past year. Working citizens will also be hit by rising prices and declining real incomes.

The President instructed the government to consider the possibility of raising pensions to a level not lower than inflation. However, the wording seems to be rather streamlined, so that the government can “consider the possibility” and reply that there is no such possibility. Meanwhile, the Cabinet of Ministers is still silent - only the Ministry of Labor gave an answer, which announced the possibility of indexing pensions in the first half of next year by 7.7% - that is, below the expected inflation rate of 8%.

https://www.rotfront.su/k-fevralyu-hleb ... elno-podo/

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Demographic catastrophe in Russia
12/25/2021

And the Communist Party saves Golikova and Putin

There is a demographic catastrophe in Russia. For the third month in a row, excess mortality has been growing, that is, an indicator showing the excess of the current level of total mortality in the country over the average calculated for the previous five years. So, in October 2021, it reached 60% and exceeded the November 2020 anti-record of 56%. Obviously, after the publication of the summary results for the regions, November will be even worse - under 80%!

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In total, since the beginning of the epidemic, the total excess mortality in the country has already reached a million cases. It is clear that not all of these deaths are directly related to the coronavirus or the diseases that it provokes and aggravates. There are deaths both from not receiving help on time, and from the lack of scheduled examinations and operations due to the overload of the entire healthcare system. But, one way or another, this indicator clearly reflects the ability of the system and the state to protect the lives and health of its citizens in the face of a new viral scourge.

And here we have to state the sad leadership of Russia, where the excess mortality rate for the entire period of the epidemic, compared with the average for the previous 5 years, amounted to 38%, while in most countries of the world it is much lower . Norway - 5%, Sweden, South Korea - 11% each, Argentina, Germany - 14% each, France - 18%, Italy - 23%. Of course, Russia's 38% is far from 212% of excess mortality in distant and poor Peru, but such a comparison is a weak consolation for Russians.

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Excess mortality in the world

It is noteworthy that a significant increase in excess mortality in the Russian Federation in recent months occurs against the background of its decline in other countries of the world.


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Excess mortality: average

It is even more remarkable that this is happening against the background of the authorities' attempts to squeeze the vaccination campaign to the required 60% for the formation of the notorious herd immunity.

Partly understandable is the panic of the heads of the regions taking tough measures, such as the introduction of QR codes in public transport, which took place in Tatarstan. In October, the excess mortality here was 117%. That is, the mortality rate in October 2021 exceeded the October mortality rate for the previous five years by more than 2 times. The chapters understand that they will have to answer. And this situation is not only in Tatarstan, but also in many other regions: Udmurtia - 100%, Bashkiria - 108%, Voronezh region - 110%, Orenburg region - 141%. This is October, for November the mortality rate will be higher.

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The number of deaths in Russia

The government's operational headquarters to combat the pandemic is issuing seemingly tough death rates "from covid" - more than 1,000 deaths a day. But this is just the sly tip of the iceberg. The real mortality statistics in the country are much worse.

It would seem that on federal channels, "talking heads" together with officials, deputies, experts should daily discuss acute issues: what is happening, who is to blame, what to do. There are not so many answer options. For example, a vaccine is a surrogate, and vaccination leads to a huge number of fatal complications. Or Russia is covered by another "wave" of covid, and the country has not yet formed the same collective immunity, since the vaccination campaign has failed. Or the campaign itself is being misdirected. For example, due to poor quality preliminary examination of citizens for possible contraindications and complications.

However, it is impossible to give clear answers to these questions, since Russia does not have the necessary reliable statistics on mortality due to coronavirus, on vaccination and its side effects. There is simply no such statistics in the country, which was almost the first to develop an anticancer vaccine, and when assessing the effectiveness of Sputnik V, experts rely on reports from the Argentine Ministry of Health.

In any case, it is clear that the authorities themselves should answer these questions, first of all. First of all, the same "headquarters", headed by the unsinkable Golikova, also known as "Madame Arbidol". However, the covid topic in the information space today is reduced to the notorious QR codes, the "digital concentration camp" and the confrontation between waxers and anti-axers.

Characteristic in this regard is the position of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma and the accents in the speech of the representative of the faction, Deputy A. Kurinny, when discussing the bill on QR codes on December 16, 2021.

With a quick twister, he voiced the well-known complaints about the "optimization" of the health care system, the destruction of the hospital and polyclinic link. He voiced theses on the violation of the rights and freedoms of citizens. Traditionally, I mentioned the assaults on the business of P. Grudinin. And practically nothing - about a demographic catastrophe. Nothing about a million "excess" deaths already. Nothing about the responsibility of the ruling class for the million untimely deaths of our relatives and friends. Although, it is clear that the opposition's demand on December 16 should have been, at least, "Golikov - resign!"

This level of excess mortality is a shame for the current government. Shame international. This is a blow "in the gut" to the entire ruling elite, including Putin. This is evidence of the inability, and possibly the unwillingness of the authorities to protect the lives of citizens of the country, especially the elderly. Today it is the strongest argument in the hands of the opposition in order to put pressure on the authorities, to force them to make concessions on the future of the healthcare system, to force them to curtail the destructive policy of “optimization”, commercialization and privatization of medicine. The slogan "Medicine is for the people!" was supposed to become the main opposition in the fall of last year, when the excess mortality soared to 60%.

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Picket in Novosibirsk

Instead, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation embarked on a campaign against the "digital concentration camp" and "sanitary dictatorship" launched by members of the sect of the famous Kremlin agent, Mr. Kurginyan, and the Tsargrad resource of the monarchist oligarch Malofeev. The political futility of this campaign is explained by the fact that the “digital concentration camp” and mass, in fact, mandatory vaccination are now implemented in “communist” China, whose experience is constantly referred to by the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and in the leading countries of the collective capitalist West so hated by Zyuganov.

By and large, the ruling elite of Russia does not care whether these same QR codes will be introduced or not. But now she has the opportunity to blame her failures in resisting covid, and at the same time this million excess deaths on the citizens themselves, on the "unreasonable" people themselves. Therefore, both Putin and Golikova will still say a big thank you to such an “opposition”.


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A single picket against the lawlessness of power

https://www.rotfront.su/v-rossii-demogr ... atastrofa/

RKRP and ROT FRONT, Novosibirsk

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Presidential stories for the New Year
12/26/2021

Explaining in a working way

The 17th pre-New Year's press conference of Putin is being commented by the head of the ROT FRONT Viktor Tyulkin.

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Victor Tyulkin, head of the ROT FRONT

Corr .: Viktor Arkadyevich, you are one of the few of our comrades who watched practically all the announced speeches of the President. Please tell me is it just for political reasons, or is it really interesting?

VT: Both. Of course, one must be aware of the Kremlin's propaganda, and at the same time, it is very curious to observe how our guarantor gets out of this situation.

Corr .: All the journalists were selected from the Kremlin pool. There is nothing to watch.

VT: How is there nothing? It is as if you are in the theater watching a new production based on a familiar play. Evaluate the director's findings, the skills of actors and extras, and the leading troupe. Quite curious.

Corr .: And what curious have you heard? Share with the people.

VT: Not only me, but all the listeners. Sometimes they gasped in amazement.

Corr .: Come on, come on. What is it about that we do not know?

VT: For example, many did not know that our real wages were growing! The president informed everyone about this in response to the first prepared question.

Corr .: Why harvested?

VT: Because usually Putin began with a brief listing of the main figures and indicators of the year, and now he said that we would start without an introduction, straight from the questions. Well, the first question from the doyenne of the Russian journalistic corps - one of the leaders of the Interfax agency Vyacheslav Terekhov - was this: "How do you assess the work of your main headquarters - the Government and the Central Bank - during this" war "?

It was then that we learned that “The average monthly salary began to grow in real terms, thank God. Changes in the real disposable income of the population: if last year it was minus two percent, then this year we expect growth. "

Corr .: How is it, after all, inflation is literally rampant?

VT: Calm down, they explained everything. The President explained: “Inflation of eight percent is expected. This is much more than predicted. But still, the growth of real [incomes] after deducting these inflationary costs is still 4.1 percent. According to the experts, our experts expect a 3.5 percent increase in real incomes every year ”. So we are happy.

Corr .: Something is not felt and not believed.

VT: This only shows that you are a normal person. The President also understands this, so he explained to non-believers: “Of course, not all categories of citizens have. Of course, these are average indicators, and I want to emphasize this once again when citizens watch, listen, and say: well, there are averages again. But we are forced to operate with average figures in order for us to have certain benchmarks. " So think for yourself, if the number of billionaires and their total wealth grows by billions, then your income may even slightly decrease, but the average one, believe the president, is growing! And pensions are also growing, believe the president!

And you say - not interesting.

Corr .: Great. But somehow paradoxical.

VT: Nothing paradoxical. This is how capitalism works. They "take care" of the poor, but come from the rich. The President says so: "We aimed everything at supporting people with low incomes, with small incomes, especially those who are vulnerable in this situation." And statistics say that a pandemic is a pandemic, and banks have record profits, that the number of dollar billionaires at the end of last year increased from 106 to 123, and the total assessment of 200 entrepreneurs set a record in the history of the rating - $ 663 billion, and the aggregate fortune of the list participants increased over the year for $ 207 billion. So everything is according to science: if it arrives somewhere, then ... do not exact. But the president does not explain this.

Corr .: What else did he explain to us? You once cheerfully discussed the results with one of the political scientists.

VT: I'll tell you a secret. I made a bet with a prominent political scientist that Putin will definitely reproach the Bolsheviks and Lenin personally, most likely on the issue of the "atomic bomb under the Union", which has now exploded and led to the collapse of the Union and the misery of the people.

Corr .: What did you argue about? Have you won? Where such confidence?

VT: Well, political scientists are not particularly original, but cognac will come in handy by the New Year. Confidence from the analysis of the situation - the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR and the next year - 100 years of the formation of the Union. And most importantly, you need to know the psychological portrait of Putin.

He remembered Lenin several times. When he answered NTV correspondent Irada Zeynalova, he spoke about the situation in Donbass that:

“They pushed him there (to Ukraine - ed.) Lenin and his comrades pushed him by force ... They thrust there historical territories with a people whom no one asked about how and where he wants to live. Okay, it happened, we agree. But we had to do something in 2014, and this is how a crisis arose and is developing today. "

Image
Caricature of the famous phrase of Putin about the bomb planted by Lenin under Russia

Then, in Sky News's response:

“But we also try not to remember how Ukraine developed. Who created it? Lenin Vladimir Ilyich, when he created the Soviet Union: the Treaty of 1922, Union, and 1924 - the Constitution. True, after his death, but they were created according to his principles. "

Corr .: What is the psychological portrait of Putin?

VT: The fact that with a bad game he needs to keep a good face on his face. He instinctively chooses a more serious opponent for himself, moreover, one who cannot directly answer him. And then Lenin himself! I recall the verses of one White Guard officer:

We have grown old and become extinct
In autumn desolation, naked,
But nevertheless, office creep,
- Lenin himself was our enemy.


It is against this background - Lenin himself - named after Lenin Volodya Putin puffs out his cheeks. In the country, poverty and stratification are growing, excess mortality by the end of the year is expected to be more than nine hundred thousand souls, almost a million. People do not want to give birth. And Lenin is to blame for everything, and he is all in white with Europe on gas, oh, how beautifully bargains. He throws billions on the accounts!

Corr .: What can you say here?

VT: The first thing that comes to mind is the question of a boy from Vera Panova's story about the ridiculous trick of an adult uncle: "Uncle, are you a fool?"

But seriously, Lenin and Stalin really built a state that never existed, not only in Russia, but in the history of mankind - the world's first state of workers and peasants, a working people. It was built on the foundations of Soviet power, which is essentially an organizational form of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat. This building of the Soviet state withstood the test not only by time, but also by the invasion of Hitler's fascism, which the Soviet people broke the back. But when various reborn nomenklatura leaders from the party and the government, KGB officers and the scientific public, including Putin and his mentor Sobchak, figuratively speaking, turned into hucksters and headed for the market, i.e. capitalism, they pulled apart the foundation of the state Union building brick by brick, after which it collapsed.

Image
Annual large press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2021

And Putin sighs hypocritically, in response to a BBC correspondent:

“Russia cannot be defeated, it can only be destroyed from within, - which was successfully done during the First World War, more precisely, according to its results, and in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing. From the inside! Who did it? Those who served other, alien interests not related to the interests of the Russian and other peoples of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation today. "

We can say that it is very self-critical! After all, ask any of our people: who is this?

They will answer: Yeltsin, Gaidar, Sobchak, Chubais and ... all Putin's friends. Do we not remember "take sovereignty, how much you swallow"? We remember, but lies are designed primarily for the younger generation.

It was Chubais and Berezovsky who picked up Sobchak's quiet executive assistant, Putin, for Yeltsin. By the way, let us note that both Gorbachev and Yeltsin also tried to present themselves as ideological opponents of Lenin. And the Ukrainian Bandera began with the explosions of the monuments to Ilyich.

So very self-critical.

Corr .: Yes, that's how it turns out. And the president, as always, called for rallying and acting as a united front in the fight against the internal fifth column and the external enemy?

VT: Well, that's as usual. But he either does not grasp the moral state of society, or decides that everything can be achieved with a carrot and a stick. I have already spoken about the mercantile approaches in matters of the same Ukraine. But in response to Shamil Guliyev's question about protecting children from the harmful influence of the Internet, Putin, perhaps, involuntarily gave a description of the entire social structure: “Question number one for them is making a profit. Hence all the negative phenomena associated with this: these are calls for suicide, these are the same tragedies in schools.

In our country, can you imagine, more than 100 cases of such possible serious crimes in educational institutions have been prevented in recent years. Unfortunately, these tragedies appear, which we are facing, it is just a stream. But over 100 is averted, 127 in my opinion. Of course, this is a huge problem for the whole world and for us too. Hence, of course, the requirements for the "landing", the so-called landing, of these platforms, so that they open their offices here, to comply with national legislation. "

What will this platform landing give? What will the increase in budget allocations of the security forces (more than the entire army) will give? Will give nothing. The spirit of profit rules! If you order capitalism, you will get it.

Corr .: And what does the president hope for, what does he stake on in his work to create a healthy moral atmosphere in society?

VT: Well, here the Path is not original, it reduces the whole question to the opposition to the corrupting influence from the outside. Like, all sorts of bearded women and asexual creatures are not suitable for us.

As if we do not have moral monsters who build billion-dollar yachts and palaces when people are in poverty. He hopes that “our society has internal moral protection dictated by the traditional confessions of the Russian Federation. That the peoples of Russia have enough internal deep immune systems to protect themselves from this, as I said, obscurantism. And we need to fight this not by direct instructions, shouts and accusations, but by supporting our traditional values, which I always talk about. " Here is the level of his thinking. This is either a lack of intelligence or a lack of conscience. You can't call Putin a fool, and conscience, as you know, is a class concept.

Corr .: What can you say to our readers in conclusion? That everything is sad?

VT: On the contrary. Everything only proves that the future belongs to socialism. There is no other way out, neither for Russia, nor for the whole world.

Good luck in the fight! Happy New Year!

The interview was moderated by Dmitry Volgin.
December 24, 2021

https://www.rotfront.su/prezidentskie-r ... ovomu-god/

All above posts translated by Google Translator

When one looks at the relative effects upon mortality and the economy it sure looks like the Russians got a pig in the poke from the Chicago Boys. Live & learn, history provides the lessons for tomorrow,

It is about my only bone to pick with our comrades at Rotfront, and also the excellent communist parties of Greece and Mexico, that they cannot accept that China is a socialist state. Are they being Eurocentric or something? See today's offering in the 'Ideology' thread for some thoughts on that.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 29, 2021 2:22 pm

Distortion of modern science. Part 2
12/29/2021

"Make a choice as if you will live this moment infinity"

From the Editor:
We bring to your attention the second part of the article of our supporter - the representative of Russian science. In it, he will not only continue thinking about the current state of the branch of scientific knowledge and who is to blame for this, but will also try to answer the question "what to do?" in the current situation for a young scientist who sees his goal in science (and in life!) as something more than just the pursuit of ratings and grants .

Image

Scientist and politician

"Freedom is nothing without responsibility, bread and knowledge"


Most of us don't want to get into politics because we don't want to get into the mud. But are we so free in this choice?

Yes, we have the right to freely choose which university to enter, in which research group to start our career, which direction of science we will choose as our domain area of ​​knowledge. And as soon as we have taken the first step on this path, more often than not we are already unable to turn from it. The state is our guide, because it sets the direction of our movement. So where are we going?

One gets the impression that the flagships of Russian science, the country's largest universities, have long gone astray and wandered into the Bermuda triangle, in which multibillion-dollar development programs disappear from year to year. Any "big challenge" is quickly picked up by them and just as easily "merged". It is enough to compare the key indicators that were set within the framework of the "Development of Science and Technology" program for 2013-2020 and the HSE report on real achievements over this period of time. Almost all of the goals set have failed. And the goals themselves raised questions: are we really going to raise the standard of living of our citizens by reaching quantitative indicators in terms of the number of researchers, the number of publications, financing of developments? Actually, the same questions can be addressed to the new program.... Quantity, quantity, quantity, but what about quality?

Over the past 20 years, we have not only failed to restore the infrastructure of Soviet science, we have completely broken it down, getting more and more mired in bureaucracy, simultaneously inventing new "crutches" in order to somehow overcome the existing inertia of the system. Let's take a look at what our achievements look like against the backdrop of global environmental disasters . The system has shown itself to be as ineffective as possible, all measures taken in such situations can be described with a succinct expression: "a barn is on fire, burn down and a hut." And what will happen next time, in the event of another tragedy, if all our responses to "global challenges" look something like this:

• The Petrik case ,
• Skolkovo with a series of corruption episodes ,
• Financial losses of the innovation leader RosNano with developments from ambiguous " nano-ingredients " to publicized stupid iotaphones ,
• RUDN University with a stable agenda on alternative science [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ],
• Kurchatov University , which has evolved into almost the main scientific institution of the country with the widest range of scientific interests and unlimited, practically uncontrolled power ,
• Integration of the church into universities [ 4 ] [ 5 ]?

Image
One of the conferences at Skolkovo. Photo

If you want to stay away from politics, then you really have the opportunity to become a little more independent - to go to a regional university. For this, of course, you will have to pay a price, so you can bury your dreams of getting large state funding right away. Indeed, even participation in grants from the Russian Science Foundation is sometimes an impossible task for many small research teams. And this is not surprising, because the equipment wear rate on average in the country is 65-70%; I suspect that the situation in peripheral universities is much worse. We can verify this simply by visiting a typical laboratory. Most often, we will see that there is one device for 3-5 million rubles, around which all the work is built, in the laboratory there are a dozen students working "for the idea", and 2-3 managers who devote most of their time not to education the younger generation of researchers, rather solving bureaucratic problems. It is clear that in such conditions there is no time for breakthrough research, it is more and more mundane here - to draw out the current grant and pray for a new one - perhaps it is the theological grants that will help us in this?

Of course, one cannot say that provincial universities have been completely forgotten. Modernizations, optimizations and reorganizations take place in our country with enviable regularity. I think that most of them remember from their own experience the curtailment of curricula in the first years of the establishment of the Bologna system, the absorption of some universities by others, the introduction of the Unified State Exam, an incomprehensible institution and the subsequent abolition of FANO (Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations - ed.) . If this is not politics, then what? And most importantly, which of all of this had a really positive effect on the country's economy? Has the quality of the training of applicants increased? Then how can one explain the twofold decrease in the number of graduate students, the decrease in the employment of graduates in the position of researchers from 25% to 18% in the period from 2008 to 2019?

Maybe the optimization helped? Judging by Falkov's statements - yes! But where does the news about the reduction of teaching staff (faculty - ed.) Come from and the increase in the teaching load on other teachers, about the destruction of entire departments [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ]? It is noteworthy that even large universities did not manage to avoid this process , despite the promises of no problems for universities, "which have a strong material and technical base and do not experience staffing problems."

Is the reduction of educational programs really a path of development that has received "support in the professional community and a positive perception in society"? Or is it just an attempt to hide behind a stuffed scientist in order to justify the failures of yet another useless state program?

Image

The President's message to the people in the Year of Science is also interesting:

*Record injections into civil research - 1 trillion 630 billion rubles for 4
years.Only if we turn to HSE statistics, from 2016 to 2019 the size of federal allocations for the same civil research amounted to 1 trillion 690 billion rubles.
*60% of applicants will go to budget places this year
Great, but what about the remaining 40%? In the context of a lack of funding, a paid student becomes just a source of funds for the university, and the issue of the quality of its education fades into the background.
*In two years, 45 thousand budget-funded places will open in universities.

But what about the teaching staff that is decreasing from year to year ? Who will bear this additional burden? Universities again received the task of catching up with the people in order to once again adjust the real world to the specified model of abstract development.
If we remove all the postmodern husk, then we get the specific requirements that apply to the modern scientist:

publish more often and, best of all, in OA Q1 (Open access journals, that is, journals with free access, in which the author pays for publication - Ed.) ,
*develop priority areas of science,
*forget about raw initiative projects,
*get a scientific degree as soon as possible,
*do not talk too much ,
*enlighten correctly ,
*and as a recommendation, forget about Robert Merton.

Robert Murton is an American sociologist, professor. Defined the goal (main task) of science as a constant growth of the array of certified scientific knowledge, for the achievement of which a scientist must follow four main imperatives:

• universalism (the impersonal nature of scientific knowledge),
• collectivism (messages about discoveries to other scientists freely and without preference),
• disinterestedness (building up scientific activity as if there are no other interests apart from comprehending the truth)
• organized skepticism (exclusion of uncritical acceptance of research results).

According to Merton, following specified imperatives puts each scientist to a certain set of alternatives, including in particular:

• as soon as possible to transfer its scientific results to colleagues, but do not hurry to publications
• be receptive to new ideas, but do not succumb to the intellectual fashion
• Seek gain knowledge that will be highly appreciated by colleagues, but work without paying attention to the evaluation of the results of their research
• defend new ideas, but do not support rash conclusions, and so on.


So the answer to the question of getting into the mud or not is, of course, unambiguous. Nobody wants to get dirty. But we do not realize that science has long been drowned in mud, and we, standing knee-deep in a fetid swamp, are trying to find and pull it out.

Breakthrough research

"All my dreams since childhood were only about space"


Publications are good, but not available to all residents of our country, due to the action of the paywall or simply because of the banal lack of basic knowledge in the required area. The number of publications is growing, patent activity is also growing, but what's the point? Let's take a look at the material manifestations of science, because this is the only way we can actually assess what is happening in the real world in addition to reports:

• Roskosmos launches rockets, and even the number of emergency launches has dropped to zero,
• Biocad is growing,
• ANO Development of Genetic Technologies brings relevant genetics to the collection of domestic technologies.

Great, isn't it?

But even this turns out to be just empty verbiage and yet another distorted reality. After all, it turns out, for example, that Russian cosmonautics is an unprofitable business! [ 9 ] [ 10 ]

Image
Roskosmos painted the Soyuz rocket under Khokhloma. Photo

It turns out that our ancestors - natural idiots, mined unprofitable knowledge for the whole world and our country in particular. Russian cosmonautics has outgrown all of this, it has grown younger, switched to Twitter and in the end has become just a temple of "HYIP". No one is interested in space exploration anymore; it is enough to compare the frequency of launches and the number of Roscosmos projects with the space program of the USSR. Alas, the “trampolines” and correspondence between Rogozin and Elon Musk have pushed research programs out of the field of interest, and we, for the most part, will not name a single Russian scientific project in space. But we can quite easily remember a couple of three memes with Rogozin. And I want to clarify: we are not to blame for this, we live in such a reality, there are no questions to the employees of Roscosmos either, they are really great [ 11 ] [12 ], questions arise only about goal-setting.

Russian space really raises many questions. Shouldn't there be questions about leaving the ISS program? The new project "NKS" only raises new doubts, because if our earth projects manage to rise in price in space , then what can we expect from the construction of a new station?

But bragging has no boundaries, and we are planning our domestic space expansion . However, in order to do something grandiose, truly breakthrough, it is necessary to take intermediate, more modest steps, including finding those who will implement everything conceived today in the future, and provide themselves with a reliable replacement.

The question arises, where are we going to recruit the future generation of rocket scientists? Secondary vocational education is falling apart, and, I'm afraid, 5000 rubles will not help group curators. Where to look for talents? Science centers or scientific and technical competitions for schoolchildren? Sometimes I go to Marina Kuzyakina's channel , and it really saddens me how selflessly a person writes big posts for a small audience, how much energy he spends, how he rejoices at the announced initiatives, but crashes against the wall of reality [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ].

Can't they hear her? Or are they afraid of spending 2-4 million (1-2 theological projects) a year? Do you know what else a couple of equivalents of theological grants could be given? For example, the Baltic Science and Engineering Competition is the largest (sic!) Event in the entire CIS for the presentation of scientific and technical projects, which has never been funded by the state . The budget of the event is only 2 million rubles. In 2014-2015, this amount had to be collected by crowdfunding at all. Or does it not fit into our concept of responding to “big challenges”?

Yes, of course, this is not the YunArmy or volunteers, here children can get a dangerous weapon - critical thinking. And after that it will be difficult to explain why space is unprofitable.

But let's go down to earth: how did Biocad become so successful? Generics and biosimilars for state orders, muddy schemes in the shareholding structure of the organization and, of course, Dmitry Morozov's talent "to use the main resource ." As a result, the capitalization of Biocad is growing. But who, in fact, provides this growth and at what cost? Walk to the nearest oncological hospital and thank the patients for allowing Biocad to “ maintain high quality products, improve technologies and optimize processes, expanding its activities outside of Russia ”.

Where are our large biotech start-up conferences with adequate requirements and conditions, where are there successful national projects that would develop the production of medical monoclonal antibodies in Russia? One injection of an immunotherapeutic drug costs about 3-4 thousand dollars, and the entire course of treatment can reach tens of millions of rubles. All this only suggests that this is not seen as a breakthrough technology, it is just another way to siphon money out of an already impoverished population with the help of science.

It is impossible to ignore the ANO "Development of Genetic Technologies", a loud name and, unfortunately, understandable project . Scientific knowledge is not so unambiguous, it may really be worth going against the method more often, introduce a little anarchism into the routine, study the genome of Russians, and suddenly we will find some kind of "breakdown". By the way, genetic projects for the study of purebred Russians have long been a success, although the reputation of the contractors raises some doubts . Well, okay, right there we have a state project! We will find breakdowns, we will cure everyone, and, in the meantime, we will also look for some peculiarities of our genetic code. Who knows, maybe the 47th chromosomenot fiction? Although it is not even particularly important whether we actually have it or not, who from the common population will pronounce the word "sequencing" the first time? As the chief virologist / geneticist says , it will be so. But what about the scientists? And scientists should not get involved in politics, because it is dirty, dirty, like in some ghetto .

Bead game

"Knowledge is stored and transmitted here without content, like any product."


Okay, okay, each of us is aware that science knows no obstacles in front of itself. And someday we will still find and get her out of the mud. Progress does not stand still, technical development does not know such a word as "stagnation" at all. Every day millions of experiments are carried out, the number of researchers around the world is about 15 million people, and how many more are on the way! The student body is growing - yes, even if not everyone will master the grant "needle", but nothing, the strongest survives, and the strong means smart, after all, is there a healthy mind in a healthy body? Whoever can, he will pull progress. And lazy people and idlers will continue to complain about small salaries.

Or maybe it is worth again to take and thin out the ranks of idlers, to carry out optimization?

By the way, optimization (from optimus - "best") is well suited for everyday scientific work, we always want to optimize a theoretical model, laboratory experiment, data processing. But in everyday life this word has been distorted beyond recognition, however, it is not the only one.

But let's not forget, optimization means improving, bringing the system to its best condition. In what indicators have we achieved improvement? Maybe in education? Then tell me, how will a half-starved teacher teach our children the basics of physics, chemistry, biology? Moreover, he will have to do this according to Orthodox textbooks . How does a child know what culture, morality, and ethics are? Who will we live with in the future?
Usually scientists can afford to provide their children with a really high-quality education and try to show the child a real, scientific picture of the world as early as possible. But what about the majority? What picture will a teacher paint with an average salary of 25 thousand rubles ?

Or have we achieved success with the optimization of vocational schools of colleges? Tell me who will conquer the near space? Who will connect the world into a global network? Who will work in the pilot self-driving car production facilities? Who will lay the next generation communications and infrastructure? Who will build the cities of the future? Who will program the simplest industrial automation devices? Group curators will receive 5,000 rubles, cool! But research at the level of secondary vocational education is dying at a catastrophic rate. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of R&D personnel in secondary vocational education fell by 41%. Colleges, for the most part, are rudiments of once existing enterprises, and in our time they simply do not have a place.

Has the medicine been optimized? Where, then, is the high mortality rate per capita? Are there really few examples in our history of how it is really necessary to vaccinate and save the population? [ 16 ] [ 17 ] What about the educational program for people? Or do we do not care that another epidemic reigns in the country - anti-vaccination obscurantism? Does the fittest survive again? I really don't understand how it turns out that the loss in the potential population growth of Russia since the 90s is more than 30 million people . How does our system, our hegemon, protect us? Or is it all a total optimization of the population size?

There are many questions, only three real answers. You know them yourself.

Monopolization of knowledge

"This country has no truth, these slaves have no rights, this is a game without rules"


I have already touched upon the issues of intellectual property in the previous part. But, in the context of the entire work, it is simply impossible to avoid talking about the process of publishing scientific papers. According to research, we all want open science and open dissemination of knowledge . If there is a request, how is this issue resolved? We are told to publish in the public domain. But this cost is the same for all countries, but is it really fair to pull out several thousand dollars from small teams of our country, with our grants? After all, many counts every penny. And what, is this really accessible knowledge? Give supper to the publisher, but make science free? And in general, at whose expense the banquet, who ultimately pays for these publications? And, as always, all our, apparently, generous people pays.

Image
At the seminar "On strengthening the role of scientific organizations in the formation of information scientific and educational policy of the Russian Federation and information support of the national project" Science ". Photo

On scientific and political public platforms (for example, NOP - the expert and analytical center "Scientific and Educational Policy" and the telegram channel of the same name dedicated to science and education), they would object to me, they would say that all this is due to the collapse of the USSR, with the absence experience of leadership in our progressive system and that now political programs, although they fail, but in their synergy, they still allow to preserve the prestige of Russia on the world stage. We will be told that without import substitution, our country will be destroyed, and our corporations will be trampled into the mud, as soon as our invaluable knowledge is revealed. Just give an example in world history when the spread of scientific knowledge harmed society? And what harm can be compared to what our government initiatives have led us to? From the beginning of the projectproject "5-100" (2013; Russian state initiative to adapt universities to world standards and their inclusion in the international educational environment. The main goal of the project is to increase the prestige of Russian higher education and get at least five universities in the top hundred world universities. In 2021, the project ended in failure: despite the spent 80 billion rubles, not a single project participant was included in the top 100 of any international institutional rating - Ed.)Until now, the number of personnel engaged in scientific research has decreased from 727 thousand to 682 (-7.2%), the number of research organizations has decreased from 1144 to 1100 (-4%), but the number of publications has increased by 55% (against a global growth of 14%) and amounted to 116 thousand jobs per year. And what publications! The race for the quantity so necessary for our government led to a drop in the proportion of publications in Q1 from 23.2% to 17.9%, and the number of average citations of publications in relation to the global indicator decreased by 16%. Over the past 7 years, we have grown in quantity and have significantly lost in quality. Let's think about what is prestige on the world stage, and what is a duty to society. And can these concepts be combined with each other today?

Image
"Race for quartiles"

We are told that the main thing is to work hard every day in our native semi-Soviet "lab". Then wages will also cease to be a painful issue for all of us. And it's okay that the declared salaries of scientists differ from real indicators by almost 3 times, and I'm not talking about the particular example of Anastasia Proskurina, I'm talking about more objective indicators, reflected, for example, in the petition from the editorial board of Troitsky Variant. It is also very symbolic that in the Year of Science the final decision was made to disband the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, although this initiative has repeatedly been criticized by academicians and RAS correspondent members within the club on July 1 [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ].

It's time to understand that all worthy things that were passed on by our Soviet ancestors were then restored and reorganized by our mentors, who retained some kind of insane will for scientific creativity in the 90s - all these achievements are crumbling before our eyes, converting into absolutely useless ratings. So, scientist, stay out of politics, run after the fabulous dragon, this time you will definitely catch him.

Or what?

"Make a choice as if you will live this moment infinity"


Scientist, researcher, comrade, remember that science is paid for by the people! You owe your work to them and you should also keep a report to them. So give him the fruits of education and modern scientific knowledge! Write honestly, admit failures, show honest statistics, tell not about "breakthrough things", the real value of science is hidden in your initiative research, in your failed experiments.

A whole host of skeptical questions can be asked. Will the Internet be flooded with publications of dubious quality? What to do with intellectual property? How will management react to this?

Questionable quality? So what do you get in return for open publication? Likes, reposts? Great, a broad discussion will help you find any flaws; criticize and respond to criticism, the recipe is simple. Why regulate creativity at all? If we are confident in our knowledge, then it will not be difficult for us to reasonably demarcate any work. Let science-fiction trash, homeopathic research, work on torsion fields be published - it's even funnier, let's see what kind of face our science really has.

Publish your thoughts, research that is stored on the shelf, raw data, reveal details of work, unusual and unexplained results. Show the living body of science, not the instagram version! Also, no one bothers us to come up with something new, open your thought for collective discussion, if we organize, we will certainly be able to find a grain of truth in any heap of garbage.

Image

“Leading means not interfering with good people to work,” said Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa. So let's work, no one can forbid us to be free in our head! And if we stop dreaming and fantasizing, if we turn into businessmen, then who will then create a plan for the reorganization of the country? Who will create real conditions for the scientific and technological progress of our country? Collaboration is also a big and important job. Yes, we are all creative individuals and our strength is in our mind and imagination, but science is not the lot of lonely people, in competition for grants we lose strength that can and should be spent on joint work to accumulate and implement knowledge, which can really unite us all for ways to build a healthy society.

But without a struggle, nothing will be achieved. If we only absorb into ourselves everything that happens, without any response, then who will lead the country into the future, whose voice is loudest? Modern government? Neoliberals? Nationalists? Libertarians? And the question is not even in any particular political movement, the question is in what country do you want to live? In the one that you build in your head, or in the one that is being created before your eyes?

The global paradigm of science is a rope over an abyss, we are on the path from secret knowledge to open science, and we are on the verge of falling into the abyss. And it is in our power to restore scientific creativity on our own, collectively and respectfully to each other.

In order to organize a discussion platform, we launched a telegram chat https://t.me/Community021 . And we will continue to develop it in the future, guided by the principles of open science. You yourself have the right to choose where to conduct scientific propaganda, the main goal is to get rid of the shackles that hold us back on the path to true humanism and democracy, and this path lies through struggle and creativity.

This is my answer to the question: "What should a scientist do?" ...


https://www.rotfront.su/iskazhenie-sovr ... i-chast-2/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 31, 2021 3:43 pm

Talks Between Putin And Biden Continue

Later today U.S. President Joe Biden and Russia's President Vladimir Putin will have another video call. The Russian side had requested the call. Putin obviously wants to keep the pressure on the U.S. to agree on the two draft treaties Russia had offered.

He is helped in that by China who's Foreign Minister Wang Yi again emphasized Russian-Chinese cooperation:

On global governance, China and Russia have demonstrated our sense of responsibility. The two countries firmly upheld the UN-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law. We jointly opposed interference in other countries’ internal affairs, unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. Our efforts have helped build a bulwark supporting the practice of true multilateralism and upholding international equity and justice, showing the world how major countries should behave.
We are convinced that as long as China and Russia, as two major countries, stand together shoulder to shoulder and deepen coordination hand in hand, the international order will not fall into disarray, justice in the world will not collapse, and hegemonism will not win.


A preview of the video call from Russia, by Valdai International Discussion Club Research Director Fyodor Lukyanov, is positive:

"High-level impetus is needed ahead of the diplomatic negotiations. In fact, at this time, diplomacy fully depends on efforts at the top level. In the past, diplomats used to prepare an agenda, and then heads of state held meetings but now it’s vice versa: first heads of state reach some agreements and then diplomats make preparations," he pointed out.
According to the expert, since the United States did not reject Russia’s proposals on security guarantees right away, it means that Washington is willing to give a number of concessions. "Clearly, there is an array of positions that are unacceptable and will not be accepted, but this is what talks are for, they are meant to discuss the entire range of things and figure out where the parties can agree," the analyst went on to say.

...
According to him, the United States cannot accept all of Russia’s proposals because it’s not appropriate for Biden "to engage in a conversation only on the Russian set of proposals." "He needs to make some proposals on his own part, and then negotiating skills will be what matters," Lukyanov emphasized.

I agree that it the U.S. will make a few offers but it is unlikely that the U.S. will agree to the Russia's core demands as it would end its plans to surround Russia to eventual disable it as a competing super power. The U.S. will try to stretch out the talks and will come up with its own mishmash of proposals for solely that purpose.

Putin's call is likely designed to prevent that. Russia had set a rather strict time limit of a few weeks. Putin will emphasize that. It is also possible that Putin will hint at some of the 'military technical measures' which Russia had said it would implement should the U.S. not agree to the necessary measures that enhance Russia's security.

Russia's most important request is to end NATO expansion. The U.S. will have to accept that in some formal way to prevent an escalation. I doubt that it will do so right away.

To set a frame for the talks there was some recent unofficial bluffing from the Russian side:

Russia’s new S-550 air defense system, said to be capable of hitting high-altitude spacecraft and missiles, including hypersonic types, has passed trials and is already in service, TASS has reported.
The Moscow news agency quoted a source, which it said is close to the Defense Ministry, who described the S-550 as “an absolutely new mobile strategic missile defense system, which is unparalleled anywhere in the world and capable of striking spacecraft, warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic targets.”

“The S-550 air defense system has successfully completed state trials. Its first brigade has already been placed on combat duty,” they continued.

That is obviously nonsense. The beginning of the development of the S-550 was only announced in mid November:

Russia is developing an advanced, never-before-seen S-550 missile system, the Defense Ministry announced Tuesday.
Reports suggested the model is a revival of a late Soviet project shuttered in a deal with the United States.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the orders came from President Vladimir Putin at a recent meeting with military top brass.

Even Russia can not develop, test, produce and field a new air and space defense missile in just 6 weeks. The TASS piece is bollocks.

Russia has live tested the S-500 missile in July and reportedly fielded a limited number of those. A S-550 fielding is years out.

The U.S. is bluffing too:

A US Air Force E-8C Joint STARS battle management plane has made its maiden flight over eastern Ukraine for a reconnaissance mission to gather information about the situation on the ground, an American official has revealed.
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, US European Command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Russ Wolfkiel explained that the aircraft flew on Monday with permission from Ukrainian authorities and did not cross the border of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republics (LPR), which are currently run as unrecognized states by separatists demanding independence from Kiev. The frontier area is the site of a war between the forces and the Ukrainian military.

Wolfkiel did not reveal the aircraft’s exact route or its scouting information but told CNN that the Pentagon “routinely operates aircraft in the Black Sea region.”

The operational range of the Russian S-400 air defense missile is 400km. The U.S. plane will likely have stayed far away from the Russian and Belorussian border to keep out of their reach.

Talks between Russia and the U.S. will begin on January 10 on the level of Deputy Foreign Ministers. Talks with NATO and with the OSCE will follow a few days later.

So far U.S. foreign policy under Joe Biden has been a continuation of the policies pursued under Trump:

If the Biden administration’s second year is going to be more successful than its first, it will need to take more risks and accept more short-term criticism to advance U.S. interests abroad. Engaging with Russia to defuse the crisis over Ukraine will be controversial in Washington and in some allied capitals, but it is necessary to reduce tensions and avoid worse outcomes.
...
What the Biden administration must not do is simply maintain Trump-era policies for the next three years because they are afraid of the political backlash from hawks that are going to attack them in the harshest terms no matter what they do.
The U.S. policy of putting out sanctions left and right has continued under Biden.

I doubt that he and the people behind him have the will and the energy to change course. They would have to fight with Congress to get to an agreement with Russia. I therefore expect only little results from the upcoming talks.

The U.S. position will only change if and when Russia makes some really obvious moves and puts Washington DC under an imminent threat. A few hypersonic set up in central or south America should do.

Posted by b on December 30, 2021 at 17:27 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/t ... .html#more

Pretty good, though that final paragraph makes me suspect that 'b' is hitting the schnapps early. Such deployment would be suicidal for the host country, the empire is not yet so weak as to accept that fait accompli. A safer and more effective bet is to get that Nord Stream 2 flowing, which will have a serious effect on the Western European's attitude.
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 01, 2022 2:38 pm

Trash. Depressing background. Happy New Year!
12/31/2021
New Year's Eve street poll and its disappointing results
With what mood do our fellow citizens greet the New Year? What do the inhabitants of our country expect and hope for? We decided to conduct a small street survey. The results are very characteristic, and we want to share them. So let's go ...


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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 02, 2022 4:43 pm

How Will Unipolarists Respond to Putin’s Red Line?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 1, 2022
Matthew Ehret

Image
[Source: atlanticcouncil.edu]

With tensions rising to fever pitches in Ukraine, and in the wake of Putin’s announced red lines regarding a mad frenzy for the absorption of Ukraine into NATO, Dr. Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow, arranged a roundtable discussion bringing together eight experts to provide their thoughts on the causes, trajectory and solutions to the current geopolitical disorder.

Participants included Martin Sieff (Senior Fellow American University in Moscow), Glenn Diesen (Professor at University of South-Eastern Norway), Peter Kuznick (Professor of American University), Matthew Ehret (Co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation), Alex Krainer (economist thenakedhedgie.com), Jeremy Kuzmarov (editor of Covert Action Magazine), Mila Melnichuk (political strategist and Head of the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Citizens and the Constitution of Ukraine), Jim Jatras (analyst, retired U.S. diplomat and adviser to U.S. Senate Republican leadership), and Professor Herbert Reginbogin (The Catholic University of America) delivered written remarks.

What sort of responses could we expect to see should these red lines be crossed? Could the West be trusted to react rationally in the face of Putin’s explicit red lines? What are the risk levels of full-scale thermonuclear war? How does the Russia-China relationship play into this dynamic? What does the economic system’s ongoing plunge into chaos have to do with the geopolitical maneuvers on Russia and China’s perimeters? These questions and more were addressed by the speakers.

The video presentation of the full Roundtable can be watched here and the summary of the event follows below.

Martin Sieff: “The Situation is Desperate But Not Serious”

Martin Sieff began by emphasizing the importance of Putin’s restraint and tone in which he spoke on December 17 laying out the terms of Russia’s red line regarding NATO’s ambitions to absorb Ukraine, the placement of missiles, or war games on Russia’s border. Martin invoked the warning of a Habsburg diplomat years prior to WWI warning that “the situation is desperate but not serious” indicating his belief that a nuclear war is not likely in the near term, although very high in the coming two to three years.

Sieff warned of the hypocrisy of Western geopoliticians who have no capacity to reciprocate Putin’s measured tone, let alone treat his red lines as something deadly serious, as they are far too accustomed to use “salami tactics” in advancing NATO and lecturing the world on how to behave. The lack of ability from Western players to take Putin’s warnings with seriousness are exasperating an already terrible situation and make the danger of miscalculations run high.

Glenn Diesen: Indivisible Security vs NATO Unipolar Hegemony

Professor Glenn Diesen contrasted the many negatives weighing down the situation with a few positives created by Putin’s new approach to foreign policy on Russia’s border. Chief among these positives is that a correct discussion is finally being forced onto the table which has been avoided for years. After years of NATO growth, and unilateral pushing of the entire world towards a “rules based international order” at the cost of broader security for all, Russia’s firm red lines have forced the principles of pan European security to be made front and center. Such principles stand in stark contrast to the “right of each country to join NATO” regardless of the context or instability which such decisions would create.

Professor Diesen made the point that this more rational view of security is in alignment with the Helsinki Accords, the 1990 Charter of Paris emphasizing “equal and indivisible security”, and the 1994 Budapest document which all enshrined the principle that “no state should advance a security doctrine at the expense of the security of other states.”

The hypocrisy of the United States’s track record of sabotaging such organizations as the Eurasian Economic Union, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and pan European security agreements (to name a few) make the “narrative reframing” that constantly paints Russia as a villain attempting to impose its sphere of influence onto Ukraine as Western media and politicians repeat, more than a little unpalatable.

Peter Kuznick: How to Trust the Untrustworthy?

Peter Kuznick opened his remarks with a reminder of the broken 1990 promises made to Gorbachev by Bush Sr. and British and German representatives who promised that NATO would not encroach upon Russia and would always honor a buffer zone of former Soviet states that would remain free and independent.

Professor Kuznick explained that the reason it took so long for Putin to finally say “enough is enough”, is that up until recently, Russia was not militarily strong enough to assert itself in this manner. Peter noted that these red lines have been a long time coming and should come as no surprise to anyone, since already on March 1, 2018, five new nuclear warhead delivery mechanisms capable of circumventing Western nuclear defenses were unveiled by Putin in his annual state of the nation address. Now, nearly four years later, Russia’s nuclear defense technology has rapidly advanced with 70% of its nuclear deterrence forces modernized contrasted with the USA which still asserts that “modernization might occur within the coming 25 years.”

Despite Russia’s technological flank, war hawks embedded within Washington and NATO have continued to advance an aggressive and provocative posture with 16 advisers to Biden heralding from the Center for New American Security (the mostly Democratic version of the Project for a New American Century neocons who flooded the George W. Bush administration and brought a series of foreign policy debacles).

Biden has been under enormous pressure to stand up to Putin from hawks in both parties like Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have been berating him for the chaotic exit from Afghanistan. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel wasted little time in eviscerating Biden for the crime of having a phone call with Putin on December 7, deploring his “weak global leadership,” capitulation on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, “Afghanistan disaster,” and border failures, which she alleged were “emblematic of his America last agenda.”

This regressive thinking was displayed in full ugliness by Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) who called for a nuclear first strike on Russia on December 7, and former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who wrote that Putin’s remarks were based on a paranoid fabricated view of reality, thus fueling the fire of the war hawks.

Kuznick cited the need to return to the sort of rational approach seen between JFK and Khrushchev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and hoped that since China is likely a higher priority than Russia in the minds of unipolar war hawks, that perhaps some room for negotiation exists.

The problem here, Kuznick noted, is that, even should negotiations occur, international leaders believe that the United States simply cannot be trusted, as it has repeatedly broken its promises and withdrawn from one treaty after another since 2002. Even if a best-case scenario occurs whereby Biden agreed to some of Putin’s demands, there is no way the next U.S. administration can be trusted to honor said promises, which has been a major impediment in the ongoing negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal.

Matthew Ehret: The Superiority of the Multipolar Alliance

Matthew Ehret introduced the context of Russia and China’s leadership of a new multipolar paradigm in contrast to the obsolete unipolarists obsessed with preserving their hegemony. Matthew emphasized the inevitability of the coming economic meltdown of the West, the factor of insanity embedded within the Western operating system and the de-dollarization now underway throughout Eurasia. Along with this de-dollarization, a sweeping array of economic and security agreements stretching across Eurasia, Southwest Asia, the Arctic and Africa has been unfolding with an alternative financial architecture emerging with Russian and Chinese-led alternatives to SWIFT growing fast, Indian-Russian agreements to de-dollarize and also advancement of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) stretching from Moscow through Central Asia, Iran and thence to India.

The INSTC’s synergy with the east-west New Silk Road (especially the emerging Southern Corridor stretching from China to Syria via Iran and Iraq) was also brought up. Ehret emphasized his belief that there appears to be a policy of cutting off all trade, communications and economic cooperation between those countries invited to Biden’s December 8-9 “so-called” Democracy Summit vs the multipolar “bad authoritarian” nations not invited.

The great irony is that it is the win-win paradigm of cooperation, interconnectivity, and long-term infrastructure creation that represents a way of thinking that the U.S. once believed in during saner years under President Kennedy who exemplified this paradigm with his October 22, 1963 offer to the Soviet Union “to jointly put a Russian and American on the Moon within the decade”.

Such thinking was profoundly non-zero sum, and would have successfully broken the zero-sum logic of the Cold War had it not been sabotaged with the President’s murder. It is this superior way of thinking that gives the Greater Eurasian Partnership the definitive edge needed to break the rigged rules of the great game today in a lawful way, and it is the concordance of this logic to the principles of natural law that give the Greater Eurasian Partnership the moral and creative flexibility needed to break the rigid logic of those seeking world government.

Alex Krainer: Watch the Game Masters, not the Puppets

Alex Krainer opened his presentation by warning that the insanity pervasive across the Western liberal order is isolated to the puppets, but that on a higher level (ie. where significant policy is made above national puppet governments by a banking cartel and financial elites), there is a very clear rhyme and reason animating global strategy. This strategy is behind the relentless efforts to provoke a violent reaction from Russia and China in both Ukraine and Taiwan.

Krainer re-emphasized that at this higher level (where an integration of banking, intelligence and military affairs unite), the cold hard logic of empire stands as an unbreakable iron rod devoid of humility, flexibility or morality. This system is driven relentlessly by a drive to eliminate rivals, excludes the possibility of cooperation, seeks only domination and exerts vast control over nominally “right” or “left” sides of the party systems in the West.

This is why Krainer believes no solution to today’s crisis will be found within the current political forces active in Western governments. Since no qualitative change is possible under current conditions, Alex believes Putin’s decision to stand firm and resolutely at this time with a clear red line and list of demands creates the sort of external pressure that the morally bankrupt Western system requires that cannot be changed from within.

It is hoped that Putin’s new strategy will flush out the most insane fanatics of the West from the shadows and into the surface, which may also allow for fissures between radical vs moderate elements of the political establishment to polarize among themselves inducing battles over policy to arise which could not occur otherwise. Being an economist, Krainer added the economic insight that the Western financial cartels are currently starved for collateral having overextended themselves far into a debt-driven speculative frenzy over decades devoid of any actual systems of value sustaining hyperbolically growing rates of fictitious capital. It is here that the desire to gain control of Eurasian collateral is so high with Russia’s debt: GDP rate being only 16% compared to the 180+% in the USA, all of which is needed to run a credit creation cycle.

Jeremy Kuzmarov: The Crisis of MICIMATT and the Loss of Sanity

Jeremy Kuzmarov re-emphasized the importance of not losing sight of the hidden agendas operating above the puppets on the stage. He discussed the role of the military industrial complex that desperately needed a new villain after the Afghan debacle fell apart and hence the trumpeting of the “Russian threat” was needed to justify the record-breaking defense budget pushed by both Biden and the Congress. Kuzmarov warned of the vast media and academia black out of dissenting voices opposed to the current war drive, referencing the case of former CIA analyst Ray McGovern who has been entirely silenced by the mainstream media despite his illustrious career briefing presidents for decades.

Kuzmarov referenced McGovern’s term MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Corporate-Intelligence-Media-Academic-Think-Tank Complex) as a modern mutation which has parasitically taken over all influential branches of society, resulting even in so-called progressive liberals like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supporting war measures against Russia, while promoting totalitarian programs at home.

Mila Melnichuk: Perceptions vs Reality

Mila Melnichuk raised the issue of the manipulation of perceptions vs objective reality. Much effort is made by powerful forces representing NATO to induce both the Ukrainian government and people to perceive Russia as a threat and NATO as salvation.

Yet despite this manipulation, Melnichuk pointed out that there is still nothing approximating a consensus about joining NATO within the broader population (with more than half the population surveyed wishing Ukraine be kept out of the alliance). Mila pointed to the importance of the Minsk agreements which demand certain basic constitutional changes in Kyiv in order to guarantee autonomous region status to the pro-Russian Donetsk and Donbass republics. She pointed out that it is likely that Russia will recognize these territories as autonomous republics without any need for military intervention.

Melnichuk went further to propose a broader reform of international security beyond the borders of Ukraine as the western system has proven itself ineffective at achieving the objectives of security. A Russian-NATO council should be re-established, and NATO should cease provoking a violent reaction from Russia.

Jim Jatras: It’s Time to Pray

Jim Jatras began his presentation with a systemic overview asserting that “things are going to be happening on the macro level that are baked into the cake” and that “the world order built up over the last few decades is a house of cards and something is going to crack” both domestically and internationally. Jim pointed to the collapsing status of the dollar and the often over-looked danger of a civil war within the deeply divided United States as cultural civil war has already been launched across “wokeism” in the military, education, media, and beyond.

While Ukraine is at “the tip of the sphere” internationally, Jim pointed out that “the bigger problem has been the expansion of NATO” where the veneer of “democracy” has been wiped away many times over with nations like Montenegro being absorbed into the security organization despite the majority of its citizens completely rejecting it. Jatras made the point that assuming Western unipolarists might be trusted to agree to any formal security guarantees is akin to expecting Bolsheviks of the 1920s agreeing to reject international revolution or the labor theory of value.

Citing Patrick Armstrong’s recent article “We’ve Seen the Ultimatum- What is the “or else?”, Jatras summarized a series of possible options going forward, asking what is the “or else” which Moscow is threatening should her red lines be crossed? What would Moscow’s countermeasures look like?

Here Jatras notes one reasonable measure would be publicizing a list of NATO targets that would receive the full response of Russia’s defense systems under the condition of war, the idea being that such a list might force a shift in the calculus of European NATO states whose fear of total annihilation might shake them out of their stupor. While back-channel diplomacy run via the networks of the Vatican and Russian orthodox church should be attempted, Jim didn’t see much hope in that domain and suggested that the best course of action is to pray.

Addendum: Written contribution to the Roundtable by Professor Herbert Reginbogin of The Catholic University of America

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man leading a country that in the last few months has amassed tens of thousands of soldiers and advanced military equipment on Ukraine’s border, now asserting that it is Ukraine which is planning an invasion of Russia. Putin claimed (without evidence) that the U.S. intends to arm Ukraine with hypersonic missiles. “They just have to understand that we have nowhere left to retreat,” Putin said during his four-hour television interview with journalists.

Under this circumstance a Russian proposal was issued on December 17 to resolve issues between the U.S. and Russia proposing the instrumentalization of neutrality and neutralization to resolve geostrategic conflicts between both countries. The proposal should be recognized as an effort of goodwill but also distortion of the facts with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal going beyond the Ukraine conflict but to include the in-between states of the West and Russia by advocating nuclear disarmament of Eastern and Central Europe, restrictive conventional military exercises, and military assets in the territories belonging to the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The U.S. should go beyond the concept of neutrality and neutralization as a geopolitical instrument by advocating these concepts as statecraft that is not only limited by geography and history for the in-between states but as statecraft that assures them strategic competitiveness to sustain and uphold neutrality and neutralization as an armed neutral to deter any country from invading their territories like Ukraine.

Moreover, the West should underscore that strategic competitiveness as a neutral must have mutual assurances from the U.S. and Russia regarding energy policy and the fight against corruption attributed by other outside parties to combat attempts to undermine and destabilize a neutral country like Ukraine.

These mutual assurances will also spill over to restricting U.S.-Russian use of gray zones of diplomatic and military coercion through mutual agreements of engagements in the international world order. Lastly, the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church should continue their back-channel diplomacy of dialogue to deal with the separation of the Ukraine Orthodox Church to restore greater harmony among the institutions and their flock as this will also impact President Putin’s decision making as many Russians are of this faith.

Matthew Ehret is a journalist and co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Patriot Review, and Senior Fellow at the American University of Moscow. Matthew is a regular author on several political/cultural websites including The Cradle, Washington Times, Los Angeles Review of Books: China Channel, Strategic Culture, and Off-Guardian. In 2021 he authored the two volume Clash of the Two Americas. Matthew can be reached at: matt.ehret@tutamail.com.



In this experts geopolitical roundtable hosted by Dr. Edward Lozansky and the American University in Moscow, the topic of Russia’s response to NATO aggression was discussed at length.

What is the logic governing the western unipolar system and how does the the multipolar alliance emerging around Russia, China and Iran’s partnership present two separate and incompatible operating systems to the world? What is Ukraine’s role in this process? What should Putin do when faced with war drums beating on his southern frontier? These questions and much more are discussed from military, economic, and diplomatic levels.

The speakers at the event included Alex Krainer (economist thenakedhedgie.com), Jeremy Kuzmarov (editor of Covert Action Magazine), Jim Jatras (analyst, former advisor to republican party), Glenn Diessen (editor of Russia in Foreign Affairs), Peter Kuznick (Professor of American University), Martin Sieff (writer for China Daily), Mila Melnichuk (advisor to the Ukrainian government), and the Rising Tide Foundation’s Matthew Ehret.


https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/01/ ... -red-line/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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