Russia today

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 31, 2021 11:47 pm

January 31: Kremlin and State Department. Who benefits from protests?
01/31/2021
Information and analytical review

On January 31, unauthorized protests against the current government swept through major cities of Russia. Pro-Kremlin commentators scoff at the meager number of protesters compared to the country's population. However, simple arithmetic does not work in political clashes. It is not for nothing that human rights activists report more than 4 thousand detainees. The intensity of passions is pushing for active actions that would have been impossible under normal conditions ... Who provoked the clashes, how the State Department and the Foreign Ministry quarreled with each other, and why was the center of Moscow blocked? Understanding the final news now.


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"Rosgvardeets" caught off guard by protesters

On the eve of the protests, the Moscow authorities gave the protesters a wonderful "psychological gift": they announced the closure of a number of metro stations in the city center, as well as the complete blocking of pedestrian traffic in a large area around the Kremlin and some central streets. The authorities also announced the closure of cafes and restaurants in the area and warned of possible additional "situational overlaps" . Indeed, such overlaps occurred: at the request of the police , the metro stations "Sukharevskaya", "Krasnye Vorota" and "Sokolniki" were additionally closed .

From the point of view of political technology, such protective measures, taken in advance and demonstratively, only inspire the opponents of the Kremlin. By their preparatory actions, the authorities seem to be sending their opponents an unambiguous signal: we are afraid of you, we are defending ourselves from you. It is difficult to say to what extent this factor influenced the radicalism of the protesters, but there is no doubt about the radicalism itself.

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The most serious clashes took place, as usual, in Moscow and St. Petersburg . The clashes between the protesters and Rosgvardia took place in different places - from the vicinity of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center to Komsomolskaya Square . As in the previous time, the protesters not only acted actively, but also resisted the law enforcement officers. Apart from the events of the past week, the last time a clash of such intensity took place in Moscow in the summer of 2019, on the eve of the elections to the Moscow City Duma . In St. Petersburg, clashes were no less fierce, while the attack on the "Russian Guard" was noted. The press published footage of a video in which law enforcement officers take away their wounded colleague. A criminal case has already been opened against the attacker .

However, despite the mass arrests, the participants in the clashes behaved bolder and angrier. A new trend is taking shape: fear of the "siloviki" is falling . Most likely, this is recklessness, which arose in the heat of the hustle and bustle of the streets and reinforced by a sincere hatred of the regime and its servants. But a fact is a fact: if any valiant "guardsman" suddenly found himself at a distance from his fellows, then he could no longer always behave arrogantly and with impunity.

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Rosgvardia officer grabbed a service weapon

The feeling that "something is going wrong", apparently, did not leave the law enforcement officers themselves. No wonder in St. Petersburg during one of the episodes of a street fight, when the "siloviks" had to retreat under the pressure of the crowd, one of the officers of the Russian Guard grabbed a pistol . And although there were no shots, who knows how things will turn out next time. Not always both sides may have enough intelligence and nerves ...

And in Moscow, during the clashes , a Ford Transit police car suddenly caught fire . The capital's headquarters of Rosgvardia claims that the reason was "technical malfunctions" . Whether this is so or not, we are unlikely to know.

The struggle was also going on in virtual space. "Network security officials" from Roskomnadzor threatened social networks with fines and blocking for publications with "inflated figures on the number of participants in illegal rallies . " Interestingly, these threats do not apply to those posting low numbers. For example, the website of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for Moscow , which has published a clearly underestimated figure of 2,000 people, feels good. But the threat was directly addressed to the US Embassy , which once again noted the demands for Russia to "respect human rights . " The Russian Foreign Ministry published a large text in response, in which he accused the United States of "interfering in internal affairs" and recalled responsibility.

Russian Foreign Ministry responds to the US Embassy
By evening, the clashes subsided, and at about 6:00 pm the Moscow metro returned to normal operation. Passions have subsided, and now we can draw some conclusions.

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1. Street polls carried out by journalists and various political groups indicate that not all protesters are Navalny's followers . Among them there are many who are dissatisfied with what is happening in the country and want to somehow express their protest. “I came to the rally because I was tired of lawlessness and would like to somehow express my civic position ,” says a Muscovite in an interview with one left-wing publication. “We did not meet ardent anti-communists there ,” says an activist of the RKWP from Novosibirsk . - Everyone comes out against Putin, because he is tired of ... The talk that there are only schoolchildren is a lie. At least in Novosibirsk ... Most of the people aged 20-45 come out to stocks in January 2021 ” .

2. Repressions and courts only cease to intimidate. Among socially active citizens, there are more and more those in whom the repressions of the authorities cause not fear, but anger and even hatred.

3. Protests remain spontaneous and fragmented. It is quite possible that this meets the interests of both the authorities and the organizers of the protest. The crowd is blind, it is easy to manipulate it , and in addition, it is easy to send provocateurs into the ranks of the protesters who will wreak havoc on camera.

4. The lack of ideology of the protest with a slight bias towards liberalism also plays into the hands of the "puppeteers" on both sides. The absence of a political program , obsession with the simplest slogans ( "against Putin" , "release Navalny" ... and then what?) Makes it easier to manipulate the protest.

Without denying the interest of the West, I would like to remind that the Russian government itself may well be interested in such protests. Social stratification in the country is growing, the crisis is deepening, the population en masse is poorer and shrinking . The debt hole is sucking in the last pennies of millions of citizens. There is hopelessness ahead. And the authorities can only offer "economy class food" , empty talk and a club. Obviously, a social explosion is imminent. And in these conditions, the rulers of Russia are applying a whole range of measures to ensure that this explosion bypasses them. Aleksey Navalny , convenient to the authorities , was re-elected as the leader of the protest , who is put under arrest on a completely ridiculous reasonand thus deliberately create a martyr's halo. And the chaotic and unprincipled nature of the protest, despite its apparent power, facilitates the task of demonstrative suppression of discontent. This suppression can later be raised on the shield by government propaganda in order to prove to the millions of working people the futility of any resistance , to instill in them despondency and apathy.

But will everything go according to plan? ..

Clashes in Russia January 31, 2021

https://www.rotfront.su/31-yanvarya-kre ... vygodny-p/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:11 pm

Arkady Rotenberg declared himself the beneficiary of the palace near Gelendzhik
02/01/2021
This is where the money from Platon went

Arkady Rotenberg , in an interview with the Telegram channel Mash, said that he is a beneficiary of the palace in the Gelendzhik area. According to him, the complex of buildings on Cape Idokopas was acquired by him several years ago, when there were certain difficulties with the construction. The businessman decided to equip an apart-hotel in this place.

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The FBK investigation film about Putin 's palace located in the Gelendzhik area was released on January 19. On January 23 and 31, mass protests took place in Russian cities.

There are obviously two options in this case. Option number one: Navalny's investigation is true that the palace was really conceived as Putin's estate. The move with the apart-hotel was invented as a diversion. Option number two: the palace belongs to Rotenberg, and it was actually planned to locate an apart-hotel there. In both these cases, the government loses nothing, and if the first option takes place, it even wins. After all, earlier Putin would have had to hide from society, visiting his palace. Now everything becomes much easier: in the case of visiting and living in this place, he becomes a guest of his friend, businessman Rotenberg, who, of his own free will, invites him to rest there. The second option means failure for FBK. In any case, the government's response largely damaged the position of Navalny's supporters.

Alexei Navalny himself and his colleagues are supporters of "correct" capitalism, in which, allegedly, there is no corruption, and the elections are extremely fair. However, the ownership of the palace to Rotenberg has no crime in this regard: after all, this gentleman is a well-known businessman who makes money in a completely legal way.

But what does this mean? Any businessman subsists on the surplus value created by the workers. And he uses these funds for the construction of such palaces and the satisfaction of his other whims . And under capitalism this is the law. On the other hand, under socialism, the surplus product created by the working people is not spent on expensive villas, hotels and yachts. He goes to meet the needs of the entire society: the construction of hospitals, schools, pioneer palaces, roads and other events.

Straightening the system, an attempt to transform Russian capitalism from what is supposedly wrong into right will lead nowhere. The oligarchs will continue to build their palaces, and the hospitals will continue to fall apart. And bribery will not disappear anywhere. That is why, every time workers, participating in a protest, should not demand the change of individuals, but put forward specific demands to the authorities: lowering the retirement age, improving the health care system, obligatory annual indexation of wages, reducing working hours while maintaining salaries, writing off loans, free housing. ... Navalny does not put forward such slogans, because he himself expresses the interests of a group of capitalists. But this does not mean that there is no need to protest. This means that you need to fight for your interests, put forward your demands, not be a crowd of navalnists or the authorities,


https://www.rotfront.su/arkadij-rotenbe ... bya-benef/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 03, 2021 12:18 pm

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Is Russia waking up?
Posted Feb 01, 2021 by Aleksandr Buzgalin

The following text was translated from Russian by Renfrey Clarke and has been edited for clarity. —Eds.

This text is being written in the heat of events immediately following the mass protests that occurred in most regions of Russia on 23 and 31 January 2021. The total number of protestors throughout the country on 23 January was put by the authorities at fewer than 10,000, but by the opposition much more. The largest of the demonstrations was, as usual, the one in Moscow, where according to the official count 4,000 people came onto the streets, while unofficial figures put much bigger number. Similar numbers took part in the protests on 31 January, but this time the clashes were much more fierce, and according to various accounts between 2000 and 4000 people were detained.

Why?
Why, after a long period of quiescence (the last mass protest demonstrations occurred two years ago in connection with the raising of the pension age to 65 years) have such relatively large actions broken out?

In formal terms, the demonstrations were sparked by the arrest of Aleksey Navalny, who since returning to Russia has taken on something like the aura of a martyr. But this was not the real cause. Navalny, who began as a nationalist, calling for restrictions on immigration and so forth, and who then reformatted himself as a neoliberal fighter against corruption, is in reality a figure of little interest. He has been transformed into a symbol of right-wing opposition—the source both of Navalny’s financing and inside information, which is available only to the security services, and so forth.

The fact is that behind Navalny stands a section of the Russian establishment, including both owners of capital with an orientation toward finance and brokerage activities, and marginalised pro-globalist elements of the state bureaucracy. Another force backing Navalny has been the pro-liberal establishment of the West.


This behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, however, has been nowhere near capable of bringing people of many different stripes onto the streets. The key reason for this lies elsewhere: for decades now, the majority of Russian citizens have been sunk in a morass of stagnation. Each year since the crisis of 2008–2009, Russia’s economy has either grown by one or two per cent, or shrunk by a similar amount. The incomes of the majority of citizens have not been growing. The median wage in Russia is about 34,000 rubles (less than 400 euros at the official exchange rate, and a little over 500 at purchasing price parity), while about 20 million people have incomes below the subsistence minimum (12,000 rubles or 135 euros per month). Not long ago, the pension age was raised by five years. The Labour Code effectively outlaws strikes.

The point, however, is not only that the majority of Russians find themselves in a dismal economic situation. People have grown tired of the fact that they have been reduced to the role of a passive, disempowered mass, considered incapable as a matter of principle of creative social action. These days the purpose of life, for almost all strata of Russian society, is restricted to the consuming of prestige brands (in the case of the elites), or of shoddy knock-offs (in that of the masses). This is what has happened to us in practice, but it is something we implicitly reject.

Is there a place for the development of individuality and culture amid this consumerist decay? Corporate capital and a semi-feudal bureaucracy smother anything of the sort, turning human beings into obedient puppets. This is suicidal for individual people and as a result, ruinous for society.

Just a few years back a revived sense of national pride, called forth by a relatively independent foreign policy course, provided a significant basis of support for a paternalist leadership. But this credit is now being exhausted. From the government, the majority want solutions to the country’s key problems. They want a better quality of life for the majority, technological and economic development, and social justice. People have grown tired of being rabble, or at most, of existing merely to exercise their purchasing power. Even if they are only half-conscious of it, they want to be able to take control of their social and political lives

In a fully realised sense, this latter aspiration—to become the subjects of their being—is characteristic only of a minority. Nevertheless, it is something the majority implicitly strive toward.

To what purpose?

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Protesters hold posters in support of detained Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during an unsanctioned rally at Pushkin Square in central Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021 (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn). From “Moscow criticizes U.S. embassy for supporting unsanctioned protests in Russia,” Xinhua, January 24, 2021.

In various regions of Russia, the protest actions have been very different. In some of the largest megacities, primarily in Moscow, the participants have consisted mainly of young people. Elsewhere considerable numbers of older people have taken part, including even supporters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, whose leaders have not given their official support to the demonstrations. The truth is that there are now far more oppositional-minded citizens in Russia than those who emerged onto the streets and squares. The majority, however, have remained silent. Why?

Beyond question, the fear of arrest has played a role (according to unofficial figures, more than 2000 people were detained after the 23 January actions). But although this has been important, it is not the main factor.

The main reason is that the liberal opposition, that has striven to become the leader of the protests, lacks the support of the majority of the population. Let me stress: I am not talking here about support for human and civil rights, but support for neoliberal politicians.

The overwhelming majority of citizens of our country recall how in 1993 the pseudo-liberal Boris Yeltsin (Russia’s president throughout most of the 1990s) ordered tanks to open fire on the country’s first democratically elected parliament. They recall how demonstrations were dispersed with clubs, and how thousands of people seeking to defend the Supreme Soviet were then killed, wounded or repressed. We remember how the liberal “reforms” of that time brought not just stagnation, as at present, but catastrophe—the collapse of production by half, and of incomes by a third.


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Supporters of detained Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny clash with riot police officers during an unsanctioned rally in central Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021 (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn). From “Moscow criticizes U.S. embassy for supporting unsanctioned protests in Russia,” Xinhua, January 24, 2021.

Meanwhile, the practical realities of the U.S. (above all, the mass protests against racism and oppression, and the ruthless way in which they are broken up) and of Western Europe (the struggle of the “yellow vests”, and the water cannon, gas and clubs on the streets of Paris) show that the “democracy for the few” (Michael Parenti) that characterises the neoliberal model of capitalism is a system of manipulation. Within this system, the majority of the population are puppets: first, of the order of capital; and second, of the forces of state coercion. The majority of our citizens have no wish to exchange the Russian model, dominated by the security forces and capital, for the same thing in another guise. In Russia people sum up such choices with the remark, “Radish or horse-radish, neither is any sweeter.”

Russians are not going to take to the streets in support of liberal leaders. Most of those who joined in the actions did so in order to say “No!”. There were few positive slogans (the portraits of Navalny carried by the initiators of the protests in Moscow and a few other cities should not be viewed in this way), and those slogans were extremely abstract.

So who were the protestors?
Neither the author of these words, nor any other expert known to him, has any proper statistics on the social composition of the people who took part in the actions. Nevertheless, there are observations, testimonies and the results of analysis. The participants were extremely diverse, but most were among the relatively well-off residents of Moscow (where incomes are three times the Russian average) and of a few other big cities. The protestors were also mostly young people, including students, in some cases aged only 15 or 16. Outside of Moscow, as noted earlier, the protests were far smaller, and the young people were fewer.

Some of the participants, especially among the younger ones, undoubtedly took part because they considered it “cool” (you could post a photo of yourself next to a cop, or get in the news…). The mass coverage given to the actions by media networks, with reports coming both from within the country and from outside, also played a role. Within Russia and in the West, vast resources were expended on promoting the newly reappeared “liberal leader.”

Some people turned out to the protests because they genuinely espoused liberal values—individualism, private property, the market, formal freedoms—and were convinced that if these illusory freedoms came to pass, they personally would be successful, would be in demand, etc. Such illusions are typical of students in Moscow and other large Russian cities—and this is no accident. The young people concerned receive an education based on neoliberal dogmas, run amuck in neoliberal cyberspace, and intentionally or not profess neoliberal ideology, often without being conscious of it. These young people actually do have certain prospects, and they are more likely to become successful freelancers as part of a neoliberal milieu than in today’s semi-feudal Russia. At the same time, these prospects are largely a phantom apparition. Even the young people who achieve career success will not acquire genuine freedom, but only the illusion of it; they will not become individuals, but slaves. They will not be the slaves of bureaucrats, but of corporations. Indeed, they are already subject to ideological and cultural manipulation—not so much by the West as by corporate capital and the “total market”, that together impose on them the standards of a society of simulative consumption.

It is true that there were also people at the protests who came to wage a fight for freedom, even if this was of the bourgeois variety, and only freedom from authoritarianism, from the feudal arbitrariness of corrupt bureaucrats. These “freedom fighters” took part in the hope that the protests would open the way for honest elections, for real freedom of speech, for the chance to wage an open political struggle for a bright future. It was with these hopes that both sincere liberals, and considerable numbers of the leftists who were present came out onto the streets.

The majority, however—and I repeat this like a refrain—took part because they felt that continuing to live as they had been doing was impossible. Here, however, the question arises: if not as in the past, then what?

Illusory hopes
The problem is that if these protests are successful, under these (neoliberal) leaders, then the people who organised the actions will construct a system that in its political respects will be no less harsh, that economically will be no more successful (and probably less so), and that in social terms will be even more unjust.

Also illusory are the hopes nurtured by members of the left that they can “intercept” the protests, and shift them in the direction of struggling not just for formal freedoms, but also for social liberation, social justice and socialism. In the given concrete situation and at the present moment, that is not going to happen. At present, we on the left are weak; the masses on the streets are not ours. The Leninist theory that speaks of beginning with the struggle for bourgeois-democratic liberties, and of proceeding from there to waging a fight for socialism, is not going to work in this case; we face a different type of capitalism and a different relation of social forces, even if the Russian Federation of the early twenty-first century seems outwardly to be extremely reminiscent of the Russian Empire in the early 1900s.

Tomorrow, however, the situation may well be different. The changes may come about very quickly. I noted the reason at the outset: for more than a decade, the Russian economic and political system has ceased to develop. Most of the population is barely surviving. We have been stripped of the possibility of being the creators of our own lives. Unable to lead a human existence, we have been turned into cattle who instead of enjoying fresh grass are fed on dry straw. We need to prepare ourselves for a transformation, to set to work wherever we find people who are ready for constructive joint action—in the trade unions, in organisations of teachers and medical staff, in social movements. This is what we, the members of the Russian left, are seeking to do.

Unfortunately, not all of us. There are some of us whose priority is engaging in electoral intrigues. But that is a topic for different article.

P.S. What I have written here may well be out of date within a few days, and I will be pleased if this is the case. However, I am afraid it will not happen; last summer I wrote in an almost identical vein about the protests in Belarus. The picture is repeating itself. The post-Soviet expanse is seeing the subtle ripening of a profound crisis. But so far, the explosion has not occurred….

—Moscow, 29-31 January 2021

https://mronline.org/2021/02/01/is-russia-waking-up/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 10, 2021 2:34 pm

Bloomberg: "Sputnik V" is Russia's largest scientific breakthrough since the USSR
02/08/2021
The vaccine is based on Soviet gene therapy technologies
The Bloomberg news agency, in its article "Putin's vaccine, which was once despised, is now a favorite in the fight against a pandemic," called the Russian Sputnik V vaccine "the largest scientific breakthrough since Soviet times." According to analysts, despite the fact that the vaccine was released before the end of the trial period, "Sputnik V" was better than Chinese counterparts and can compete with European and American counterparts. And this is not surprising, because the vaccine is actually based on the Soviet developments of scientists who are still working at the National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology named after A. N.F. Gamalei .

Sputnik V vaccine

“President Vladimir Putin ’s August announcement that Russia will release the world's first COVID-19 vaccine even before the safety tests are complete has sparked skepticism around the world. Now he [Putin. - ROT FRONT] can reap diplomatic dividends, as Russia may have achieved the largest scientific breakthrough since the Soviet Union, "- this is how the author of Bloomberg begins the story.

The publication's rating was influenced by ratings published in the medical journal The Lancet . The researchers concluded that the Russian vaccine protects against the deadly virus in much the same way as the vaccines in the US and Europe, and much more effectively than Chinese competitors. At least two dozen countries have approved the vaccine, including Hungary, a member of the European Union. Key markets in Latin America and Asia (primarily Brazil and India) are close to allowing the vaccine.

“The decision to name the Sputnik V vaccine after the world's first satellite, whose launch in 1957 allowed the Soviet Union to proclaim a stunning victory over the United States and begin the space race, only underscores the scale of the importance Moscow attaches to this achievement. The results of late trials involving 20,000 participants, reviewed in The Lancet, showed that the vaccine was 91.6% effective, ”Bloomberg writes.
Russia started producing the vaccine last year, and the vaccine is currently being produced in India, South Korea and Brazil. Latin America proved to be a fertile territory. Argentina, which has struggled to secure supplies of the vaccine, began its mass vaccination program after more than half a million doses of Sputnik V were delivered by January. It was joined by Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela.
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Export of the vaccine Sputnik V vaccine to Argentina

“Unlike the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, Sputnik V can be stored in the refrigerator rather than in the freezer, making it easier to transport and distribute in poorer and hotter countries. At around $ 20 for a 2-shot vaccine, it's also cheaper than most Western alternatives. Although the vaccine from Russia is more expensive than the AstraZeneca, it has shown higher efficacy than the vaccine from the UK, ”Bloomberg shares the comparison of vaccines.

Meanwhile, Sputnik V may well be called a Soviet vaccine. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Gintsburg , Director of the Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology N.F. Gamalei, said that the development of the vaccine was carried out on the basis of Soviet technologies.

“For a quarter of a century, in fact, three generations of employees of the Institute. N.F. The Gamalei worked to create this technology. It was started by Boris Naroditsky [Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor, laureate of the USSR Council of Ministers Prize. - ROT FRONT] , which is still actively working in our institute, for the purposes of gene therapy - when a human gene is delivered to the body that tries to replace the damaged one, ” Gintsburg shared in an interview with Izvestia.
In addition, the vaccine was tested back in 2014 during the outbreak of the Ebola virus in African Guinea. On the basis of Soviet developments, a vaccine with high immunogenicity and minimal side effects was obtained. In recent years, the institute has been developing a vaccine against the MERS coronavirus with a much higher mortality rate than COVID-19 - "about 40%." As part of the study, both the scientific and material bases for the new vaccine were prepared.
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The Gamaleya Center managed to preserve the Soviet groundwork in immunology. The technology, "put on the shelf", scientists used in the preparation of vaccines against pathogens.
“One of my main achievements as a director, I think, excuse me, immodestly, is that four generations of employees now work at the Gamaleya Institute, and they are actively working. As 90-year-old employees - Zuev, Kostyukov, Ershov, Lvov - and 25-year-olds ", - said Alexander Gintsburg in an interview with Vesti.RU.
The new vaccine is a significant achievement of science, but not realizing that it was the Soviet scientific school that created the necessary basis for Sputnik V is to deceive oneself.
https://www.rotfront.su/bloomberg-sputn ... chnyj-pro/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:02 pm

Tyumen trade union members detained for distributing newspapers to workers
02/11/2021
For no legitimate reason - "just in case"
On the morning of February 11, members of the "Hired Worker" trade union were detained at the entrance of the Tyumen enterprise "HMS Neftemash" for distributing trade union press and taken to police station # 8. The worker activists were released several hours later. The new issue of the newspaper came out with the inscription "Neither God, nor Tsar and Not a Hero" on the first page. It tells about the positive experience of the poultry farm workers fighting for their rights.

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Entrance to the enterprise "HMS NEFTEMASH"

The workers handed out the press in accordance with the current legislation, according to which the distribution of trade union information is allowed. The activists did not have any posters or leaflets with them - without appeals and imposing, they offered passers-by to familiarize themselves with the latest issue of the trade union newspaper. The trade union did not distribute the press on the territory of the plant, but in a public place - on the street adjacent to the plant. In this regard, the reasons for the detention remained unknown.
Apparently, the detention took place at the initiative of the plant's management, since the trade union has repeatedly published materials about the situation at HMS Neftemash: the company is permanently reducing wages to its employees, and recently launched a procedure for cutting more than three hundred people.
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The management of "HMS NEFTEMASH" is preparing to celebrate the opening of a "unique metrological stand"

In response to the caller's question about why people are being kept in the police station for no reason, the police replied: "I received a call that they interfere with the activities of the enterprise."

It turns out that it is not at all difficult to detain a person on the street who wants to share information known to him with the public. All it takes is a call from a high-ranking figure from a building nearby. We will never know how legitimate the applied procedure is, because the essence of the law is determined not by the letters on snow-white paper, but by the order of its execution. While we are aware that the support of the real, and not the fake, working class and criticism of an unscrupulous employer is nothing more than a reason for police detention - an excuse to spend several hours at the police station.

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Workers of the HMS NEFTEMASH plant
However, it is not surprising that the freedom to sentence a worker to police detention is in the hands of the strong. One thing is certain for sure - if a strong man, not embarrassed by sidelong glances, uses his right, he is afraid of these people from the trade union with a workers' newspaper in their hands.
https://www.rotfront.su/chlenov-tyumens ... -zaderzha/

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******************************

Leningrad communists opposed political repression
02/11/2021
The Leningrad organization of the RCWP held a flash mob demanding "No reprisals!" against police arbitrariness and in support of the first secretary of the Tyumen organization of the RCWP, Alexander Cherepanov , against whom a criminal case was initiated for injuring a law enforcement officer.


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"No reprisals!"

Dmitry Kuzmin , first secretary of the Leningrad Committee of the RCWP: “On January 31, all the media make the most noise about the speeches of Navalny's supporters and the repressions that the authorities use against the protesting youth. Moreover, in most cases, these repressions are passed off as political persecution. We also believe that the measures taken by the authorities are inadequate, but their political background is not at all so obvious. The Navalnists advocate for Navalny's freedom, but not at all against capitalism itself. Therefore, the authorities are in the position of protecting no longer the state or the constitutional order, but rather solve the problem of protecting Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin personally.... The honesty and decency of which FBK dared to question. It is interesting that in their zeal, the security forces also show character: some are embarrassed and even ashamed that they have to fight with women and children. Others turn into real policemen, as they were in tsarist Russia, and then tried to return in 1941-45. Thus, during the procession in the cultural capital, a young, healthy, security officer (presumably a National Guard) clad in a helmet and armor, kicked a 54-year-old woman in the stomach with a heavy boot .

Since this case immediately became the subject of general attention of the media and the public, the police chiefs immediately began to apologize to the victim, to make excuses to the public and to their superiors. Like, in the heat of the moment, in a foggy helmet, I thought it was an attack ... One could have believed it, if not for other facts and facts. We remember how we condemned people just for throwing a plastic cup at the security officer. They stepped on someone's foot, tore off a button ...

But even worse is the fact that the police allow themselves not only direct violence, but also methods of political provocation and forgery. So, on November 7, 2020, in Tyumen, the police prevented the communists from holding a march and rally, for no reason they seized and threw into a bus the first secretary of the Regional Committee of the RKRP Alexander Cherepanov and his wife , and took them to the police station.

So this was not enough. Subsequently, the young lieutenant colonel V.S. Volkovitsky, deputy chief of the Tyumen region police. stated that during his arrest, 71-year-old pensioner Cherepanov inflicted physical injuries on him. The Investigative Committee was not long in coming and very quickly opened a criminal case on this fact, which has already been submitted to the court and on January 28, the first session took place.

In this regard, I would like to ask Volkovitsky himself and his bosses: men, are you ashamed ? Well, your job is like that, you have to follow the instructions of the authorities, but there are concepts of decency and decency. "

The text published here will be sent to federal and local authorities, the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as the prosecutor's office of the Tyumen region.

https://www.rotfront.su/leningradskie-k ... vystupili/

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

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:31 pm

THE NAVALNY CASE, THE BERLIN DOCTORS & THE LANCET — THE HIPPOCRATIC ETHIC OF DOING NO HARM VERSUS THE MENGELE ETHIC

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by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

The mystery of what the Berlin doctors treating Alexei Navalny discovered in his bloodstream and urine tests in Germany has deepened after the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly referred last week to the clinical findings of a Swiss-based neurologist, Vitaly Kozak. Kozak has been reporting for several weeks that the biomedical data tables published in The Lancet in December reveal evidence of cholinesterase inhibition effects of poisoning by the drug lithium which Navalny was taking himself before his collapse on August 20.

That’s pathological self-medication – an overdose, not a Kremlin poison plot.

What then can be the reason the editors of The Lancet, Richard Horton (lead image, 1st left) and Astrid James (2nd left), have refused to publish a clinical commentary in the form of questions from Kozak?

There’s more to the mystery than that. Horton and James also refuse to answer questions about the circumstances of their publication of Navalny’s data records separately from the case report authored by Navalny’s chief treating doctors in Berlin, Kai-Uwe Eckardt (right) and David Steindl.

Eckardt and Steindl have now been asked to clarify the circumstances of the publication of their case report on Navalny and the separate biomedical data. They do not answer. Because of the contradiction between the evidence in their data records and the intepretation widely given to their case report in the press and by NATO officials, Eckardt and Steindl were asked to say if the title of the report they wrote, “Novichok nerve agent poisoning”, was their choice of title, or The Lancet’s in London. Eckardt and Steindl will not say.

When medical doctors allow their science and their clinical practice to become part of a political scheme, based on fabrication of evidence and falsification of diagnosis, they violate several terms of the 2,500-year old Hippocratic Oath. They are intending to do harm; cause injustice; ignore one deadly drug; fabricate evidence of another; and as the ancient Greek text declared, “keep far from all voluntary wrongdoing and other corrupting behaviour”. Horton, James, Eckardt, and Steindl have all sworn the Hippocratic Oath when they qualified as practising physicians. When asked to confirm that now, they won’t respond.

Horton’s current title is editor in chief of The Lancet, the British medical profession’s standard- setter for the veracity of medical research around the world. He first graduated in medicine at the University of Birmingham in 1986. He didn’t practise for long; he joined The Lancet in 1990. James, titled deputy editor, first qualified in medicine from University College London in 1986. She then practised as a doctor in the National Health Service for five years, before becoming a medical writer in 1988. She joined The Lancet in 1993.

On December 22, they agreed to publish the Navalny case report by the group of doctors who had treated him at the Charité hospital in Berlin, starting from August 22. The case report can be read here.

Read slowly and carefully, and it will be discovered that the authors admitted they did not detect organo-phosphate poisoning in Navalny’s blood, urine, or on his skin; they tested no water bottle or clothing evidence which had been brought to Berlin by Navalny’s staff on the evacuation aircraft. They also acknowledged they did not know what might have caused “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor” until the German armed forces laboratory in Munich reported the Novichok allegation “2 weeks later”. Read the analysis published on December 23.

The evidence the German doctors said they relied on for the title of their report and for the conclusion that Navalny’s low cholinesterase scores had been caused by a Novichok attack came from press releases and press leaks from German government officials. These were amplified in the western media. But the evidence of the German army laboratory has never been reported, and no doctor there has signed his name to the subsequent interpretations by officials and media of what the laboratory found.

An identical process of disinformation by press release subsequently occurred at the Swedish state defence laboratory and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Without anticipating it, however, these organisations ran into a problem with the data records published by Eckardt, Steindl and their colleagues at Charité. On the days when the Swedes and OPCW say they took their samples of Navalny’s blood and urine, the German record shows his cholinesterase scores were so close to normal, it was impossible for Swedish defence officials, the OPCW, the French and the German governments to claim they had evidence of a Novichok attack perpetrated by the Russians, on order of President Vladimir Putin.

The dossier of this evidence can be followed, point by point, here.

The telltale signs of Navalny’s overdose of lithium and several benzodiazepine drugs cannot be disputed. It was published by the Charité doctors in what The Lancet editors, Horton and James, called a “Supplementary Appendix”. In fact, there are four separate appendices, tagged S1 to S4.

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Source: https://drive.google.com/ These were first published on this website on January 12, with detailed clinical observations of the data by specialist pharmacologists, physicians and toxicologists. There was a powerful attack by an unusual method on the website after this article appeared; for several hours the publication was not accessible on the internet.

A medical psychiatrist specializing in the benzodiazepines added his comments in a new report, published on January 17. These experts (none Russian) concurred on what would happen if the cocktail of benzodiazepines and lithium (possibly alcohol too), reported in Navalny’s test records, had been quaffed on the evening of August 19 or in the early morning of August 20, collapse day.

The “Supplementary Appendix” was not directly attached to the December 22 case report, as would normally be the case in the publication process at the journal; and as the authors intended it to be by their references to the appendix inside the text of their report. It was also not easy to find the appendix after clicking to open the report; “See Online for appendix” is noted in small print on the first page. Why then did Horton and James of The Lancet decide the data tables should be posted with the advisory: “This appendix formed part of the original submission and has been peer reviewed. We post it as supplied by the authors”?

Why does their separate publication lack a date when the data were posted online? And how was it possible for Horton, James, and the special “peer reviewers” of the appendix to fail to notice that the data do not corroborate the conclusion of the case report’s title; indeed, can the editors have noticed the contradiction and attempted to reduce its visibility or suppress it altogether?

The record which Vitaly Kozak made when he communicated with The Lancet in the second half of January confirms that Horton and James were made aware that the data allowed a quite different interpretation of what had caused Navalny’s collapse from the political one the Lancet editors appear to have accepted in their titling of the Berlin doctors’ report.

Kozak’s story first surfaced in German on January 11.

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This is the English translation of the original German. Source: https://www.world-economy.eu/

The German publication also provided the text of Kozak’s comment which he had submitted to The Lancet in London. “I would like to provide some interesting comments on the Publication and highlight some points, which, in my opinion, require explanation. First of all I have to disclose my conflicts of interests. I write these comments on the solicitation of the Editors of World Economy Wirtschaft & Finanzen Newsreport at no honorarium. As clinician and scientist I stay as equidistant as possible.” Read the full text here.

Kozak concentrated on two clinical points revealed in the case report and appendices. The first was the evidence of Navalny’s consumption of lithium, and the possibility, already reported in other research, that there is “a toxicity burden… associated with lithium… Firstly, it is worth mentioning the potential role of lithium in the cholinesterase inhibition. There is evidence that lithium inhibits cholinesterase activity in blood.”

The second point was a symptom of Navalny’s which appears in the case report. According to Kozak’s comment to The Lancet, “in the Publication it is mentioned that 31h [hours] after symptom onset the patient had ‘wide pupils non-reactive to light’, which is contrary to cholinergic toxidrome; unfortunately the authors provided no explanation of this finding in their discussion. The wide pupils are hardly explained by an assumed complete nerve impulse transmission blockade or effects of the assumed therapy with atropine, because wide pupils were combined with bradycardia and hypothermia (obviously as a results of severe diaphoresis).”

Kozak’s expert credentials as a neurologist have been substantiated in the international medical research literature, and in his Swiss doctoral thesis. Kozak was more qualified to comment on Navalny’s clinical data than the neurologists in the Charité hospital team who listed themselves as co-authors of the December 22 case report and its appendix – Wolfgang Boehmerle, Franziska Scheibe, Katharina Demin, and Matthias Endres. None of them has the number of publications listed for Kozak, nor a comparable PhD. In the cases of Boehmerle, Scheibe, and Demin, the Navalny case report was their first professional publication.

Notwithstanding, Kozak’s observations and inferences from the data tables appear to have been rejected for publication by Horton and James; they took this decision sometime between January 11 and January 22.

Kozak’s notes were also observed by medical specialists in Moscow. On January 14, for example, several specialists were asked by a Russian reporter to comment, not only on the Berlin doctors’ report, but also on the results of computer scan tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) for Navalny undertaken and recorded at the Omsk Hospital where he was treated between August 20 and 22. This Moscow publication claimed that sources in direct contact with Navalny’s personal doctors had identified pre-existing medical conditions which were triggered by his drug intake prior to his collapse on August 20. The diagnosis reported was that “in addition to the main diagnosis — a violation of carbohydrate metabolism — the media did not mention such complications in Navalny AA such as: water-electrolyte disorders syndrome, lactic acidemic coma, dysmetabolic encephalopathy (severe course), myoclonic status, acute respiratory failure.” Chronic pancreatitis was also reported.

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The results of the CT and MRI tests were reported to indicate a pituitary adenoma or tumour in Navalny’s brain affecting his hormone production, and also liver function damage. Source: https://zavtra.ru/

Debatable though Kozak’s and the Moscow clinical comments may have been, the evidence presented by The Lancet is not. The Omsk hospital data, including the blood and urine tests, as well as the CT and MRI results, have not been published yet.

On February 1, in a detailed timeline and dossier published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was reported that “the conclusions of Russian doctors, who had not found any traces of toxic agents in the samples collected from Navalny, were immediately denounced, without any substantiation, as false and biased.” This was a warning from the Russian Government that the Omsk data might be released.

A week later, on February 8, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made public that he had received a letter from Kozak detailing the same observations which Kozak had sent to The Lancet. It is clear that even after Kozak had been dismissed by Horton and James, Russian government officials realised that his testimony would more likely be accepted internationally than the Omsk hospital evidence. This has not happened, but Lavrov made the attempt.

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Source: https://www.mid.ru/

“I appreciated,” said Lavrov to a television interviewer, “Doctor Kozak’s very detailed open letter addressed to me on January 22, 2021, in which he expressed his expert opinion on the available publications on Alexey Navalny’s treatment at the Charité clinic in Berlin. As I am not an expert in chemistry, biology or medicine, I cannot give you a professional comment on the analysis he has carried out, but having carefully read his considerations, which point to contradictions that have emerged, I agree that any questions and reasonable doubts regarding this case necessarily require clarification.”

Lavrov was emphatic that on the technical issue of this “clarification” depended the entire international allegation that a crime had been committed against Navalny. “The doctors at the Charité clinic, where the patient was immediately taken at his wife’s insistence, did not find any chemical warfare agents either – just like in Omsk – (so, according to the above logic, the Charité doctors could also be suspected of complicity). Those combat agents were not found until later at the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, as ‘announced’ by the German government. And that gave rise to peremptory accusations against the Russian state along with demands that it admit its ‘guilt’ and investigate the ‘crime’.”

Lavrov wound up: “Since the questions that Mr Kozak raised in his open letter from a purely scientific standpoint, as a specialist in medicine and biology, directly touch upon the issues that the West carefully avoids in its foreign policy dialogue with us, we plan, if he doesn’t mind, to draw the attention of the top officials from the OPCW Technical Secretariat, as well as Germany, France and Sweden, to his analysis, and ask them to comment. I also consider it important to support the doctor’s idea that other independent specialists in biomedicine also comment on the above facts. I hope they will hear Mr Kozak and, as honest professionals, provide their comments on the questions he has formulated.”

Lavrov’s remarks were not reported at the time by the international media. When the full interview was broadcast on February 12, the Kozak case was ignored in the press reporting. Lavrov had accused the German Army doctors of lying: “I mean the Bundeswehr doctors. They are doctors as well. We have pointed out on numerous occasions that if the Omsk doctors did not find anything, and the Charité doctors didn’t either, then the Charité doctors can also be accused of concealing evidence of Navalny’s poisoning. A great deal has been said about the Bundeswehr. This does no credit to Germany as a country with a responsible attitude to its international commitments.”

What can have happened at The Lancet, first to publish the data tables as evidence that Navalny had not been poisoned by a nerve agent; to ensure that the data were peer-reviewed as an extra precaution for their veracity; and then to prevent Kozak from challenging the contradictions in the evidence?

Horton and James were sent emails, which were then followed up by telephone. They were asked these questions, which were acknowledged by their press spokesman, Jessica Kleyn:

1. What was the date on which the “Supplementary Appendix” was published?

2. What was the reason for separating it in time and in print from the December 22 report?

3. What was the reason for the separate peer review of the data tables and your notice that you ordered that done?

4. When did you receive a letter of professional comment on the data and the December 22 report from Dr Vitaly Kozak?

5. Dr Kozak says he requested publication as a comment — is that correct?

6. Dr Kozak says publication was refused — is that correct?

7. Was this refusal the culmination of a decision of The Lancet’s editorial management? by peer review? by a combination of editors, peer reviewers, others?

8. Dr Kozak’s letter asks questions to follow up the scope of the interpretations of the data tables which have been published. What is your reason for not publishing these questions?

When telephoned at their office in London, they were also asked to confirm when they took the Hippocratic Oath. Horton and James will not answer.

At the Charité hospital in Berlin Eckardt and Steindl were asked a similar list of questions:

1. What was the date on which the “Supplementary Appendix” was published?

2. What was the reason for separating it in time and in print from the December 22 report?

3. What was the reason for the separate peer review of the data tables?

4. Was the title of The Lancet report over your name, “Novichok nerve agent poisoning”, your choice of title?

5. Are you aware of the letter of professional comment (neurological) on the data and the December 22 report from Dr Vitaly Kozak?

6. Dr Kozak says he requested publication as a comment in the form of several questions regarding the cholinesterase inhibition impact of the lithium you reported in your data tables. Dr Kozak also says his letter was rejected for publication. Do you know the reason for the rejection?

7. As a practising physician have you sworn the Hippocratic Oath?

They too refuse to acknowledge or reply. The last point is significant but it is easy to forget. Even when doctors write and publish their case reports, they are still bound by the Hippocratic Oath. This is not less binding for Eckardt, Steindl, and their colleagues in Berlin today, than it is for Horton and James in London. Journalists swear oaths, but they aren’t ethical ones. Horton and James were medical doctors, not journalists, and they were bound by their Hippocratic Oath when they published the December 22 report on Navalny; when they composed the Novichok allegation in the title of the report; when they published the appendix of data records separately; and when they refused to publish Kozak’s commentary.

Kozak was contacted by email and telephone. He does not know why the data tables in the appendices were published separately from the case report. He would not disclose the “internal messaging between me and the journal.”

The history of Hippocrates, the revolution in ancient Greek medicine associated with his name, and the details of the case method for medical analysis which the Greeks around Hippocrates invented was recently published by the English classical scholar, Robin Lane Fox. He has translated the full text of the oath at page 79 of the book. He provides the most exhaustive evidence yet uncovered of what Greek medical ethics and scientific method were in the fifth century BC.

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The errors of the ancient Greek doctors, concludes Fox, “about germs or contagion, women’s bodies or even the benefits of nosebleeds were to be obstacles, not creative mistakes. [Their] approach, however, was not. It rested on observation, humanity and caution about harmful interventions. It also rested on a belief that similar cases would recur and could then be knowledgeably treated. [They] are possessions for all time, the first practical texts in the invention of medical science”. Source: https://www.penguin.com.au/

The Berlin doctors and The Lancet editors were doctors when they composed their case report on Navalny for publication to other doctors. Whether they acknowledge it now or not, all of them were bound by the Hippocratic Oath.

The alternative medical ethic – the antithesis of the Oath, as the Germans realise — is the one dictated by command of state agencies which is intended to do harm and does so in outcome. This was practiced in recent German history; notoriously, it has come to be associated with the name of Josef Mengele (lead image, 3rd from left), the German Army (SS) officer and physician who spent most of the war practising at the Auschwitz concentration camp. When Lavrov said in his television interview last week that it had been the German Army, the Bundeswehr Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, which had been the initial source of the German state’s allegation of Novichok poisoning, he was implying that the ethics of the German Army are not those of the doctors whose names are signed to The Lancet report.

In the presentation of their case evidence, Eckardt, Steindl, and the others do not claim that their four tabulations of Navalny’s biochemical records substantiate the Novichok poisoning allegation. That started with Navalny’s staff and was amplified through the Bundeswehr in the mouth of the chancellor, Angela Merkel. However, by maintaining their silence to the questions put to them, and by ignoring the questions posed by Kozak, the German doctors are complicit in the Navalny campaign waged by their state, and by Germany’s western allies. In this campaign, the silence of Horton, James and The Lancet speaks even more loudly.

http://johnhelmer.net/the-navalny-case- ... more-45909

Credit where credit is due, Navalny's handlers were certainly adroit in turning a sow's ear into a silk purse. Or was this event intentional on their part? It is not a happy place to be the pawn of a ruthless player
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 20, 2021 2:23 pm

Businessmen ask for tax cuts on their income
02/20/2021
Will there be any relief for the working people?

The list of initiatives for inclusion in the report of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs in Moscow contains a request to reduce the tax on founders' income to 6% , TASS reports . The condition for reducing the rate is an annual income of less than 2 million rubles. There were no proposals from businessmen to reduce the personal income tax of employees with wages in the area of ​​the subsistence level.

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Now the tax rate on dividends is 13% for resident individuals and 15% for non-resident individuals. Moscow businessmen hope for amendments to federal legislation.
It is not in vain that business ombudsmen eat their bread! They protect company owners from “police lawlessness” ( in fact, business people do not break windows in the offices of ruling parties ) and “too strict” labor laws . More recently, there has been a proposal to lower property tax. Now they want their wards to be cut off from dividends in a smaller way. In a word, always in action, always at the post.

And the bourgeois power hears the voice of its "brothers in blood", cares for them and cherishes.

But the groans of millions of Russians living on incomes near the subsistence level are not so interested in capital. For example, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov , who receives a little less than 30 million rubles a year, believes that the poor should continue to give 13% of their minimum wages. Otherwise, "the Russian budget will not be filled ."

However, nothing else can be expected from the bourgeois state. Some minor concessions can still be achieved, but the situation can be radically changed in favor of hired workers only by changing the ruling class.

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https://www.rotfront.su/biznesmeny-pros ... i-nalogov/

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Why 'own' a government if you're not going to use it to your advantage?

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Russia is preparing a secret pension reform
02/19/2021
Suspicious fuss

In the plan of legislative activities of the Ministry of Finance for 2021, a draft law on a new voluntary funded pension system is indicated . The draft law is being prepared under the heading "secret". The main idea of ​​the reform is “the possibility of citizens forming additional sources of funding for pension income through personal contributions”. It is assumed that we are talking about replacing the current funded pension.

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In fact, it was canceled back in 2014, when, due to the sanctions, a budget crisis occurred in Russia and funds from funded pensions were used to plug holes in the pension fund and pay insurance pensions.

The unhealthy mess around the pension system continues. Obviously, in its current form, it does not suit anyone. Capital and the state are not satisfied with the fact that they are forced to spend money on the payment of pensions, although they could have sent them to more useful, from their point of view, things. For example, for the purchase of weapons, expanding the military presence of the RF Armed Forces in other countries. By reducing budget expenditures on the pension system, you can also reduce business taxes. For this, attempts are being made to “change” or “reform” the pension system, which will consist in the gradual abolition of pensions or the replacement of existing insurance pensions with funded ones, that is, in fact, we are talking about the abolition of insurance pensions.

The workers are also not satisfied with the existing pension system. First, the extremely low, even miserable level of pensions for the majority of workers. Secondly, by raising the retirement age. It is possible to solve these problems by introducing additional taxes on capital - a progressive tax, a tax on luxury. This will allow, on the one hand, to increase the size of the pension, and on the other hand, to reduce the retirement age, returning the previous 60 years for men and 55 years for women.

We see that the interests of the working people and the capitalists contradict each other. Capital is organized, it is under the protection of the state, which has all the means of state coercion and does not meet with resistance. Today, capital has the ability to introduce rules and regulations that are beneficial to it.

https://www.rotfront.su/v-rossii-gotovi ... a-pension/

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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 Feb 22, 2021 12:50 pm

Communist Party and repression: arrest of a deputy, confiscation of newspapers
02/21/2021
What is the reason for the growing pressure on the "official communists"?

The city authorities of Penza have arrested the deputy of the City Duma, the head of the Communist Party faction Alexander Smirnov . He received 7 days of arrest for appeals to take part in an "unauthorized" action on 23 February. At about the same time, State Duma Deputy Denis Parfyonov reported that the Moscow authorities had given an order to withdraw the newspaper Pravda Moskvy, distributed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, directly from the mailboxes of citizens. This is accompanied by explanations that the newspaper has "extremist content" ... What happened to the Communist Party? Is this party getting radicalized? Understanding.

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On February 19, the deputy of the Penza City Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Alexander Rogozhkin, reported on his Telegram channel about political repression:

The head of our faction in the City Duma, Alexander Smirnov, was detained and some incomprehensible protocols are being drawn up. The secretary of the Lenin district committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Ruslan Bakhteev was received by four (!) Bullying right next to the house. The editor of the website leftpenza, Sergei Padalkin, was twisted and taken to court. The policemen, who were flabbergasted from permissiveness, even came home to the First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, deputy of the Legislative Assembly (!) Georgy Petrovich Kamnev. Who cares that a deputy is a special subject?

The reason for the actions of the security forces was the action prepared by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on February 23. By itself, this action, apparently, does not go beyond the traditional measures for the Communist Party, but it was not approved by the authorities. Therefore, the leaders of the city party committee were detained under article 20.2 of the Administrative Code "Organization or holding of a public event without filing a notice of holding a public event in the prescribed manner . "

In Moscow, the KPRF action was also not sanctioned. Initially, the deputy Denis Parfyonov reported that "under pressure from the public, the authorities were forced to agree to the holding of the action by the communists ..." The action itself was supposed to be held at the monument to Prince Vladimir. However, then the Communist Party in Moscow succumbed to pressure from the authorities and limited itself to laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And the actual action, which was supposed to take place in the format of a "meeting with a deputy", was postponed to March due to the "high alert mode due to the coronavirus pandemic, weather conditions and administrative restrictions . "

Announcement of the seizure of the Communist Party newspaper

At the same time, with the filing of State Duma deputy Denis Parfyonov, information appeared about attempts by the capital's authorities to massively seize the newspaper Pravda Moskvy distributed by the city committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation . Moreover, judging by the content of the issue, there are no “extremist” statements or appeals in it; all materials are made in a moderate tone traditional for the party.

In other words, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is not radicalizing, it is still a systemic opposition, but is increasingly experiencing pressure from the government. Alexander Batov, secretary of the Central Committee of the ROT FRONT party, comments on this trend :

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has always treated the repressions against the communists with indifference or even with malice. When in 2007 the RCWP was deprived of its official registration, the leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation welcomed this. And when we created ROT FRONT, Gennady Zyuganov called us the "Kremlin project". Now the Communist Party of the Russian Federation itself is under attack ... This is not good. However, I would like to note that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is now reaping the fruits of its own policy. For decades, this party demobilized the working people, led them away from the class struggle towards the game of voting. The result of all this is the weakening of the working class and the strengthening of the bourgeoisie. As a result, the bourgeoisie needs the party of "official communists" less and less.

The policy and evolution of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation repeat the path of the "brotherly" party - the Communist Party of Ukraine. Unfortunately, the result will be the same. Opportunism and compromise are paving the way for the fascist dictatorship.


https://www.rotfront.su/kprf-i-repressi ... ata-izyat/

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:08 pm

Russian oligarchs seized the chance to hide the accounts
03/02/2021
"Five million - and we don't open the black box"

About 260 of the richest Russians did not miss the opportunity to switch to a special tax regime for owners of shares of foreign companies, introduced in 2020 by Russian President Vladimir Putin , LENTA.RU reports, citing VTimes and data from the Federal Tax Service ( FTS ). The tax innovation has been dubbed "a gift for the Forbes list" and "an indulgence for the rich for little money."


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Alisher Usmanov thanks Vladimir Putin

The new procedure concerns the taxation of controlled foreign companies (CFCs). These include those foreign companies in which Russian residents own at least 25% . Now the owners of CFCs with an annual profit of more than 10 million rubles can pay some 5 million rubles and not disclose the financial statements.

Such a scheme is beneficial to entrepreneurs whose income starts from 40 million rubles and who holds at least 10 million dollars in a CFC with an expected return of 5% .

On the one hand, we are once again witnessing the relentless concern of the Russian state for its masters, the big capitalists. And this concern brings tangible results to our oligarchs. "Indicators of their effectiveness" are growing at an enviable rate, which cannot be said about the rest of the population of the country.

On the other hand, there is no unity within the ruling class. The dealers who are closest to the trough do not want to let anyone else near it. You have to closely monitor your competitors so that, as the athletes say, "do not miss the snatch from behind." Thus, a VTimes source among federal officials explained that the main purpose of the CFC legislation was not to collect taxes from them, but to obtain information about the structures.

And ordinary workers have nothing to hide. They, with their beggarly salaries, will not go anywhere from the vigilant tax authorities. And no matter how hard and hard they work, their pockets will not increase much if they do not conduct a constant collective struggle for their rights.

https://www.rotfront.su/rossijskie-olig ... olzovalis/

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Russians listed professions with unjustifiably high earnings
03/08/2021
Leading politicians, bankers and police
As part of the Ipsos study, Russians listed professions with unjustifiably high earnings. Most often, respondents mentioned politicians (79%), bankers (61%) and, by a large margin, police officers (25%). The results of the survey are cited by the Russian media.
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The smallest salary, according to the position of 71% of the respondents, is received by social workers. Unjustifiably low salaries for nurses (70%), creche and nannies (69%). The Russians did not ignore the teachers either - 63% of the respondents considered the teachers' salaries to be unreasonably low.
At the same time, there are professions in which the wages, in the opinion of Russians, correspond to the costs of efforts. For example, accountants, computer engineers / programmers, store workers and assistants earn what they should. Only 10% of the respondents believed that politicians have the right to receive as much money as they receive today.
It is not surprising that the citizens of the country consider the salaries of politicians unreasonably high, because today's politician has the opportunity to remain incompetent even in his industry. We have already written about a funny professional mistake of the Senator of the Federation Council Lyudmila Narusova - a highly paid politician was not aware of which laws she voted for approval during her term in the upper house of parliament. In addition, the statements of state officials have been replete with all sorts of blunders lately.

Official Olga Glatskikh told young people: “Your parents owe you, because they gave birth to you. The state didn’t ask you to give birth ”.

And the ex-minister of employment, labor and migration of the Saratov region Natalya Sokolova recommended the poor citizens of the region to eat "macaroshki", which "always cost the same."
The exceptional statements of the "servants of the people" are a consequence of their isolation from the needs of the working majority of Russia. If in our country an official at a public event tries to give advice about life, the news immediately appears on the front pages of aggregators - really, what can a top civil servant know about the life of Russia? An insoluble paradox within the current political model.
https://www.rotfront.su/rossiyane-perec ... sii-s-neo/

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Unnatural population decline: Russia is breaking records
03/07/2021
Mortality growth rates are reminiscent of post-war famine

In January 2021, according to Rosstat, mortality in Russia increased by 33.9% . During the month, 217.8 thousand people died, which is 55.7 thousand more than in the same period a year earlier. The rate of extinction of the Russian population equaled the rate of mortality in the most difficult post-war years. Official statistics continue to call what is happening with the hypocritical term "natural decline" .

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The press reports that the actual number of deaths in the past 12 months was 2.18 million . In terms of growth rates in 2020, mortality set anti-records; for example, in December its growth amounted to 63.1% compared to the previous year. Such a spurt in mortality was observed, in addition to the current period, only twice: in the hungry post-war 1947 and in 1993, when Boris Yeltsin carried out a coup d'etat against the backdrop of the collapse of the economy .

Simultaneously with the increase in mortality, the birth rate is falling: in January 2021, according to Rosstat, 106.6 thousand children were born, which is 10.3% less than in January 2020. Even the constant influx of migrants stimulated by the Russian government cannot cover the demographic hole.

At the same time, Rosstat said that "the number of deaths from COVID-19 in January 2021 compared to December 2020 has decreased" . However, the authorities' data cannot inspire confidence against the backdrop of numerous scandals related to falsification of statistical data: from an outright ban on doctors from diagnosing COVID-19 to fake statistics at the level of the republican ministry in Dagestan.

The socio-economic system that emerged in Russia after the collapse of the USSR showed its insolvency even without the coronavirus epidemic. Capitalism is leading our country to extinction, degradation, ruin. The coronavirus has only multiplied this catastrophic trend.

It's time to draw practical conclusions. There is still someone to make them ...

https://www.rotfront.su/protivoestestve ... aseleniya/

All of the above Google Translator

All of a piece...practical conclusions, indeed.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 16, 2021 2:03 pm

In the Belgorod region, the income of the poor will include funds from subsidiary plots
03/15/2021
Smoke tax on the way?

In the Belgorod region, many poor citizens may lose state benefits. The fact is that the regional authorities have introduced norms of net income, which are calculated taking into account the income received from the sale of products of personal subsidiary plots.

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Personal subsidiary farm

To calculate income, the number of livestock, farmland, plantings is determined. So, the profitability of a cow is estimated at 51 thousand rubles per year. The received notional income is divided among all family members and added to other types of income (pensions, scholarships, salaries). If the total value exceeds the regional cost of living, equal to 9720 rubles, then family members lose the right to receive benefits.

Obviously, this method of calculation is a trial balloon. So far, we are talking about how to add income from the sale of products of subsidiary farming. Perhaps later, the entire product of the subsidiary plots received will be determined as income when determining the calculation of benefits. Therefore, not far off, and tax collection on products received from subsidiary farming.

The authorities are showing miracles of ingenuity in looking for ways to remove government social obligations. A living wage allows you to survive, and not live with dignity. It is impossible to reduce it even more. Therefore, a new method has been found, moreover, a very effective one. Many poor people are forced to keep subsidiary plots in order to provide themselves with the means necessary for life. It is among the rural residents that the share of the poor is high and the villagers traditionally have their own small farms. This means that a new way of saving money at the expense of the workers, invented by the Belgorod authorities, will bring considerable benefits to the state.

We see that over time, the authorities are squeezing more and more money from the working people, both directly and indirectly. The retirement age is increasing, VAT is increasing to 20%, levies for overhaul are introduced. The tax burden of workers is up to 50% of income (income tax 13%, social insurance, pension contribution, VAT). At the same time, taxes on businesses (especially large ones) are extremely low: at best 13%, and for offshore companies they are not at all. Whose interests are protected by the government? This is obvious - big business.

https://www.rotfront.su/v-belgorodskoj- ... ody-maloi/

Google Translator

What penny ante bullshit, proof positive that Russia's ruling class while capitalist are also cack-handed amateurs. They got the principles down but lack finesse.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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