Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

In 1983, Russia snuck soldiers into Syria dressed as tourists

The soldiers were told to grow their hair long and were given civilian clothes. From then on, their superiors said, they would be addressed — and were to address one another — as “comrade tourist” as they sailed aboard a cruise liner to Syria.

With this simple trick, the Soviet Union managed to sneak thousands of soldiers into Syria in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war, in which Syria, Moscow’s close ally, was deeply involved.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/world/europe/russia-may-aid-comrade-tourists-who-were-really-soldiers.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

“One Russia” babushky training martial arts (???)

Posted by Анатолий Чиканчи on Thursday, December 17, 2015

https://www.facebook.com/anatolij.cikanci/videos/908677565881224/

Russian Arctic oil exploration down 50%

In a meeting with President Putin this week, Minister of Natural Resources Sergey Donskoy confirmed that oil and gas activities is in rapid decline both on land and offshore.

The decline is the biggest on the shelf where activities this year are only half the level of 2014, the minister said.

In the first nine months of the year, federal-funded investments in geological exploration amounted to 28.4 billion rubles, a decrease of 20 percent compared with the same period 2014. Exporation activities were cut correspondingly, Donskoy said.

Meanwhile, private companies continue to place big money in exploration. So far this year, companies have invested 310 billion rubles in geo mapping and drilling, a decline of 40 billion from last year’s record-high level, a transcript from the Kremlin reads.

”The 2014-level was the highest in 20 years, the highest in the whole post-Soviet period”, Donskoy underlined.

http://thebarentsobserver.com/2015/10/arctic-oil-exploration-down-50

‘Fewer than Half of Kaliningraders Now Identify as Residents of Russia’

A poll conducted by the Baltic Federal University finds htat only 41.4 percent of residents of Kaliningrad identify themselves as “residents of Russia.” The remainder consider themselves to be residents of the region or the city or even “residents of Europe” or “citizens of the world” as native son Immanuel Kant would have them be.

The reason for that, regionalist Oleg Savvin argues, is that Vladimir Putin has destroyed federalism in Russia and is pursuing an anti-European policy at odds with the interests and needs of the people of the exclave who are surrounded by European countries and want to live as well as people do in them (rufabula.com/articles/2015/10/27/the-right-to-nullification).

“Current Russian realities,” he writes, “are a hybrid surrogate of Soviet reality which has absorbed and accumulated into itself the most offensive parts.” Indeed, “the very name ‘Russian Federation’ has already been a phantom for a long time” because “there has not been any real federalism in the country” under Putin.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/10/fewer-than-half-of-kaliningraders-now.html?spref=tw

Russian Propaganda invents Syrian Opposition Leader

Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army
13 hours ago
Oct 12

General Staff of Supreme Military Command- Press Office

Note To All Media Outlets:

The General Staff of the Free Syria Army vehemently refutes any relationship with Fahd Al-Masri. He is not part of the Free Syrian Army, nor has he had any official role in the FSA, nor was he ever designated a spokesperson for the FSA. Any opinions he has given to the media are his own personal views, and are NOT an opinion of the General Staff of the FSA. We request that all media outlets refrain from characterizing Fahd Al-Masri as a representative of the FSA, which he is not.

With regards to the statement Al-Masri released about Jabhat Al-Sahil, statements he has given on Russia Today TV channel, and with regards to the media outlets who have characterized him as a media spokesperson for the FSA, it should be known that: Fahd Al-Masri’s statements are NOT accurate, and in fact, his statements are evidence that he has no idea about the reality of the situation in Syria. It must also be emphasized that Fahd Al-Masri simply cannot observe what is happening on the ground in Syria… how can a man who is situated in Paris or Jordan make conclusions about the reality on the ground in Syria, when he is not present in the country? The fact of the matter is that he has no idea what is going on with Jabhat Al-Sahil, nor with any Jabhat in Syria.

All the military factions of Jabhat Al-Sahil are aware of the contributions of the General Staff of the FSA, and if Fahd Al-Masri would like to know what is going on, he should reach out to the leadership of Jabhat Al-Sahil or to any of the battalions that belong to the General Staff of the FSA, which are present in Al-Sahil. Then Fahd Al-Masri can relate what he knows to the media, if he wishes, but only as his own personal view, and NOT as a spokesperson for the FSA.

The General Staff of the FSA has its own media office which can communicate with him directly, if he desires.

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=567126996670215&id=493368000712782

Russian scientists will now need permission from the FSB security service to publish research (like in the USSR)

A biology institute at Russia’s largest and most prestigious university has instructed its scientists to get all research manuscripts approved by the security service before submitting them to conferences or journals.

The instructions, which come in response to an amended law on state secrets, appear in minutes from a meeting held on 5 October at the A. N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU).

The Russian government says that the amendment is not designed to restrict the publication of basic, non-military research. But scientists say that they believe institutes across the country are issuing similar orders.

“This is a return to Soviet times when in order to send a paper to an international journal, we had to get a permission specifying that the result is not new and important and hence may be published abroad,” says Mikhail Gelfand, a bioinformatician at MSU.

http://www.nature.com/news/russian-secret-service-to-vet-research-papers-1.18602

Notes on Russian Pseudo Science

Pseudo Science appears markedly worse in Russia, and Ukraine for that matter. As is typical of Russian conspiratorial thinking, scientific inquiry often takes the form of overcoming nature which is maliciously and unfairly hiding its abundance.

A Statement by 32 Russian Scientists and Philosophers on the need to combat pseudo science:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/russian.html

Rampaging Pseudoscience Turning Russia into ‘Medieval State’

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/rampaging-pseudoscience-turning-russia-into-medieval-state–qa/529301.html

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/rampaging-pseudoscience-turning-russia-into-medieval-state–qa/529301.html

Russia to Use Social Media in Fight Against Pseudoscience, Report Says

The Russian government allotted 30 million rubles ($750,000) for a social media campaign to combat rampant pseudoscience, Izvestia reported Tuesday. . . .

The Russian Academy of Sciences has long lambasted the reported rise of pseudoscience in Russia after the Soviet Union’s downfall, often blaming it on a degradation of the educational system.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-to-use-social-media-in-fight-against-pseudoscience-report-says/508589.html

Overview of ridiculous scientific research in the USSR and Russia:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.1148.pdf

Science and Pseudoscience in Russia: The First Skeptics’ Congress Convenes in Russia

The Russian Academy of Sciences cosponsored a special conference with CSICOP on “Science, Anti-Science, and the Paranormal” last October in Moscow. Russian scientists complained about the growth of uncritical public acceptance of pseudoscience in Russia and participants passed a resolution warning of the increasing anti-science, charlatanism, and irrationalism.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/science_and_pseudoscience_in_russia_the_first_skeptics_congress_convenes_in

Help Save Soviet Jews / No Refuge for Soviet Gentiles

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Steve Sailer: NEW YORK TIMES–‘Nancy Morawetz, a professor of clinical law at New York University, says: “I cannot recall any historical precedent for denying immigration based on religion.”’
I can: Soviet non-Jews. if they could document being Jewish by descent, they could qualify for legal immigration to the U.S. But if they were just a run of the mill Orthodox Christian, too bad, they were legally out of luck.

http://www.vdare.com/posts/short-memories-nobody-remembers-us-immigration-discrimination-against-sovietrussian-gentiles

The fear and insecurity behind Putin’s bizarre new workout video (from September)

On Sunday, the Kremlin released a strange, awkward video of Russian President Vladimir Putin working out with Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. The camera follows the two men silently lifting weights in a sun-dappled pavilion at the Bocharov Ruchei government residence in Sochi, going from exercise to exercise on the kind of self-balancing weight machines that your CrossFit-obsessed friends are always making fun of.

The decision to release footage of the most powerful man in Russia frowning through a set of calf raises in unflattering sweatpants might seem, to a casual observer, odd. But this is all part of the long-running and quite carefully scripted Putin Adventure public affairs strategy. It follows years of other photo ops and staged videos that are basically official Putin fan fiction. He subdues tigers, rides horses, and communes with dolphins! He pilots tiny submarines and flies tiny aircraft! Kids and dogs love him! Also sometimes he performs dentistry!

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/31/9233301/putin-video-weightlifting