Mars rover Perseverance helped scientists study layered rocks like these in Jezero Crater on the Martian surface. Scientists initially thought they were sedimentary rocks, but further examination showed them to be igneous rocks – solidified lava. These rocks show evidence of interaction with water, but on a limited basis. They date back nearly 4 billion years, giving scientists a window into what conditions on the early planets were like. (Image/NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

The green planet? Perseverance discovers Mars isn’t as red as we think!

AUGUST 26, 2022

by Chris Melore

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The sands on Mars may actually be greener than scientists have thought. Brand new observations from the Mars rover Perseverance have found that the “Red Planet” is also home to the same kinds of rocks that turn beaches on Earth a dark shade of green!

For as long as humans have been staring up into space at Mars, the fourth planet in our solar system, its color has never been in question — it’s a big red rock in space. Now that Perseverance has landed in the Jezero Crater, however, scientists are uncovering new layers to Mars’ geological history.

Researchers from Purdue’s College of Science say they expected to find sedimentary rocks in the crater, washed in by rivers and accumulated on the ancient lake bottom. What the probe actually found was volcanic rock, composed of large grains of olivine. This muddier and less-gemlike version of peridot tints many of Hawaii’s beaches dark green.

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Planetary scientist Roger Wiens led the design and construction of Perseverance’s SuperCam, which analyzes rock samples and determines their origin. Study co-author Briony Horgan helped to select Jezero Crater as the rover’s landing site.

“We started to realize that these layered igneous rocks we were seeing look different from the igneous rocks we have these days on Earth,” Wiens says in a university release. “They’re very like igneous rocks on Earth early in its existence.”

Mars may have looked like Earth billions of years ago

The rocks and lava the rover discovered are roughly four billion years-old. Similar rocks on Earth are incredibly weathered and beaten due to our planet’s active tectonic plates and billions of years of exposure to wind and water. On Mars, however, the rocks are in mint condition, making them much easier to examine.

Study authors say understanding the evolution and history of the rocks on Mars may reveal new insights into the planet’s ancient history. It may uncover whether the “Red Planet” once supported life like Earth and if the planet’s surface was similar to ours billions of years ago.

“One of the reasons we don’t have a great understanding of where and when life first evolved on Earth is because those rocks are mostly gone, so it’s really hard to reconstruct what ancient environments on Earth were like,” Horgan says. “The rocks Perseverance is roving over in Jezero have more or less just been sitting at the surface for billions of years, waiting for us to come look at them. That’s one of the reasons that Mars is an important laboratory for understanding the early solar system.”

Scientists believe they can use the history of Mars to reconstruct what Earth looked like at the same time in history, when life was just beginning to emerge. Those findings may ultimately help astronomers identify other planets and moons in the galaxy where extraterrestrial life exists.

Could there still be life on Mars?

One of the reasons scientists chose Jezero Crater is to search for signs of life on Mars. Discovering the potential for livable environments in a place as uninhabitable as the lava flows of Jezero Crater is raising the hope that scientists will find organic life in the fourth planet’s sedimentary rocks.

“We’re excited to see even better results about organics and ancient habitable environments,” Horgan says. “I think it’s really setting the stage that Mars is this watery, habitable place, and all the samples we’re getting back are going to help us understand the history of ancient microbial life on Mars.”

“From orbit, we looked at these rocks and said, ‘Oh, they have beautiful layers!’ So we thought they were sedimentary rocks,” Horgan concludes. “And it wasn’t until we were very close up and looked at them, at the millimeter scale, that we understood that these are not sedimentary rocks. They’re actually ancient lava. It was a huge moment when we figured that out on the ground, and it really illustrated why we need this kind of exploration. The tools we have on the rover are vital because it was impossible to understand the origin of these rocks until we got up close and used all our amazing microscopic instruments to look at them.”

The findings are published in the journals Science and Science Advances.

UK
Chihuahuas 'dumped like rubbish' in Avebury during heatwave

RSPCA
All three dogs were in poor condition when they were rescued

Three Chihuahuas were left "dumped like rubbish" during the recent heatwave, the RSCPA has revealed.

The dogs were rescued by a "kind-hearted" passer-by who found them near Avebury stones in Wiltshire, at about 08:00BST on 14 August.

All three were in a "poor condition and in need of urgent care and attention", the charity said.

It is currently trying to trace their owners and said there was "never an excuse" to abandon animals.

The discovery came just hours after a Met Office "extreme heat warning" ended across England and Wales, after temperatures hit 36C in places.

RSPCA inspector Sharon Chrisp said the Chihuahuas were "left out in the open during the record temperatures of the recent heatwave".

While she understood pet owners may be going through a difficult time at the moment, "there is never an excuse to abandon an animal like this".

"Leaving them out in a heatwave is just cruel," she explained. "These poor dogs must have been terrified to have been dumped, especially Babe who will have been in pain from her untreated injury."

RSPCA warns of summer of suffering for animals

Rescue centres inundated with lockdown pets

According to their microchips, the two older female Chihuahuas are called Babe and Tinkerbell.

The younger male has been named Ferdinand by the team caring for him.

Babe had a severe open wound on her back right leg and had to have emergency surgery to remove the limb.

Insp Chrisp has been following up a number of leads but has so far been unable to trace their owner.

She appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

End game of civilisations?

At the heart of the ideological divide is the question whether sovereignty is absolute in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world.

A NDREW SHENG | August 28, 2022 7


We have been here before – catastrophe, carnage, collapse, climate calamities, war. This hottest summer of discontent is prelude to a freezing winter of gas shortage, inflation and more conflicts. As Europe, China and parts of America are facing heat waves and drought, global food calamity is looming. Without any exit strategy on the Ukraine war, we face a prolonged period of stalemate, devastation, and reduced willingness to negotiate even ceasefires. The rising global uncertainties mean that businesses around the world are all taking short-term action of self-preservation, rather than investing in the long term for climate action, investment for higher productivity and carbon Net-Zero. Huawei Chairman Ren Zhengfei is just one of the corporate captains openly and honestly asking staff to prepare for more hardships and tough times.

Is the Clash of Civilizations inevitable, as Samuel Huntington predicted three decades ago? In an unconfirmed leaked speech, French President Emmanuel Macron was reputed to have said that “Western hegemony is coming to an end.” Recognising that democracy is fragile and rule of law is precarious, he reflected Europe’s growing pessimism that ‘this war [that] is thundering at our doors’ with ‘devastating climatic disasters.’ How did we shift so quickly from a “Grand Bargain” in which China and the emerging markets provided cheap goods to the West in exchange for paper money that could be printed at will, into “sleep-walking into conflict”? Perhaps the reality is that there is never a free lunch forever. Huntington recognised that and saw that the “dangerous source of a global internationalised war is the shifting balance of power between civilisations and their core states.”

As the 1 billion rich West (including Japan) begin to age, their security has turned into deep, primal insecurity, fear of rising new powers and the migration of poorer peoples from Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East northwards. The Ukraine war split the world into at least three blocs that will contend with each other. On the one hand, Nato and AUKUS see Russia and China as existential threats, even though these two are not formal allies. On the other, a third bloc is emerging, with India choosing no side but her own. I have always maintained that the West is facing the rise of three one-billion plus population power centres in the 21st century – India and China with 1.4 billion each and roughly 1.6 billion Muslims stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. Each claims civilizational identities that seek at least parity with the West, economically, militarily, and culturally. Thus, Indian strategists are busily re-reading Kautilya’s (375–283 BCE) classic text Arthashastra on Indian statecraft, economic policy, and military strategy.

Islamic scholars are re-examining Arab polymath Ibn Khaldun’s (1332–1406 AD) works on the history and sociology of civilisation, in which he reflected on their decline and fall, drawing upon his research into the rise and fall of Arab empires. In his view, civilisations rise from “assabiyya”, the concept of kinship, common social ties that coalesce to form collective political action. Decline sets in when there is loss of morality or justice, especially allowing poverty to happen, giving rise to loss of assabiyya and moral order. American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. claims that what distinguishes Western civilisation is that it is the “unique source of ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and cultural freedom”. But Huntington understood that “the principal responsibility of Western leaders, consequently, is not to attempt to reshape other civilisations in the image of the West, which is beyond their declining power, but to preserve, protect and renew the unique qualities of Western civilisation.”

Unfortunately, the reverse is happening with the West taking active steps to retain its status quo, by containing the rising powers through its sanction, financial and media powers, which is exactly why it finds that the Rest do not necessarily agree with that approach. Huntingdon was prescient in noting that global civilisational war – mutual nuclear devastation – can only be avoided by two basic conditions, which the United States will find hard to accept. First, “the abstention rule that core states must refrain from intervening in conflicts in other civilisations is the first requirement of peace in a multicivilizational, multipolar world”. Second, “the joint intermediation rule that core states negotiate with each other to contain or to halt fault lines wars between states or groups from their civilisations.” In short, unless the West accepts the new reality of accommodating the rising powers and adopts both Huntington rules which allows a new balance of power configuration, then some clash is inevitable.

At the heart of the ideological divide is the question whether sovereignty is absolute in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world. Tiny Finland survived a 1939 war with the Soviet Union and thereafter maintained neutrality and peace by recognising that winning trust with a powerful neighbour is key to survival. That trust has now been broken with the Ukraine war. Daily demonisation of each other is fragmenting trust between nation-states, and that is the risky road to armed conflict and war. The realistic school of international relations is correct to be pessimistic. Until mutual pain from recession or war brings back some realism for compromise and cooperation, even idealists find it hard to be optimistic for the future.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong, and a former financial regulator.

Algeria forest fires kill at least 37

August 19, 2022
Written by VOA

Charred trees are pictured on the outskirts of the Algerian city of El Taref

Algeria's civil protection authority said Thursday that the death toll from forest fires raging in at least 26 provinces had risen to 37.

At least 161 people have been reported injured, with dozens more missing. Algerian media showed video of fires burning out of control in forests across the country, claiming thousands of acres of woodland and affecting the country's national parks.

Interior minister Kamel Beldjoud told journalists that fires were raging unchecked in large swaths of the country and that authorities were still trying to collect data from local officials to determine the number of buildings and other structures that were damaged or destroyed.

Beldjoud said his ministry had received reports of 106 fires spreading in Skikda, Jigel, Setif, El Taref, Souq Aras and Tipaza. Ibtissam Hamlawy, who heads Algeria's Red Crescent Society, told state TV that her organization was well positioned to deal with such a crisis and was busy sending volunteers to help in areas affected by the fires, in addition to sending aid to those families worst hit by the tragedy.

She said the Red Crescent began sending aid to those affected by the fires early Thursday, including 20 tons of medicine, mattresses and blankets, foodstuffs and water to the region of El Taref, in the east of the country.

Egyptian political sociologist Said Sadek, now based in Tunisia, told VOA that summer temperatures in parts of North Africa, including Algeria and Tunisia, have been unprecedented and that this had contributed to conditions favourable for wildfires.

"The whole area of North Africa from Morocco to Algeria to Tunisia [is] facing big challenges," Sadek said. "The weather is changing, and they are suffering from water shortages and extreme heat, rising heat, that are pushing that."

Sadek noted that both Tunisia and Morocco were rationing water because of lengthy droughts, and that dry weather was contributing to making forest areas prone to wildfires. Algeria, Tunisia and Libya were badly hit by wildfires in 2021, caused by similar climatic conditions. Numerous wildfires have been reported this year in parts of Europe, including France and Italy, because of high temperatures and drought.

Last year, Algerian media said a drone was spotted setting some of the forest fires and reported that parts of the plane subsequently were recovered after it crashed. Authorities are looking into the reports to see if there is a connection.

Region Outside Moscow Declares Wildfire State of Emergency

By AFP

Updated: Aug. 23, 2022

Wildfires in the Ryazan region.Alexander Ryumin / TASS

Ryazan, a Russian region to the east of Moscow, announced a state of emergency Monday after a spate of forest fires laid waste to more than 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of land.

Interim Governor Pavel Malkov said on Telegram the measure would facilitate mobilization of resources "to protect inhabitants and territory."

Malkov added that aerial surveillance indicated as much as 9,000 hectares of forest had been engulfed.



Greenpeace cited satellite footage in estimating at least 11,000 hectares had been destroyed.

Local authorities responded after Moscow counterparts reacted to smoke from the fires reaching the capital.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who visited the affected region Monday, posted on Telegram that 8,500 people and 200 units of specialized equipment, including helicopters, would be dispatched to help extinguish the flames.

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Wildfire Smog Blankets Moscow Amid Heatwave

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Regional authorities had earlier indicated 900 firefighters, seven planes and 10 helicopters were up against the blaze in what Sobyanin termed a difficult to access area.

Scientists are blaming a slew of forest fires across Europe in what has been an summer of unusually high temperatures on climate change and Russia has been no exception, suffering several notably in Siberia and the country's Far East.

'Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union'
Vladislav Zubok's monumental book is shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize.

By Leyla Latypova

MOSCOW TIMES

Author Vladislav ZubokElena Vitenberg


In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously labeled the collapse of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Years later, analysts, pundits and casual observers have repeatedly returned to the phrase to find a possible explanation for the Kremlin’s geopolitical moves from the 2008 war in Georgia to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. But how much do we actually know about the event that dramatically altered the global geopolitical landscape and ended the nearly half-a-century-long Cold War?

While some may know much more than others, everyone — newbies and seasoned observers alike — will find new answers and food for thought in Vladislav Zubok’s Pushkin Prize-nominated “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union.”

Zubok, one of the world’s leading experts on the history of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, is a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

This comprehensive, wide-ranging work, which tracks the years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership in the 1980s and early 1990s, is an encyclopedia of the Soviet demise. But the rich factual material is carefully interwoven with first-hand accounts of the events — derived, in part, from personal diaries provided to Zubok by the participants — resulting in a captivating, emotionally-charged read.

In “Collapse,” Zubok refutes the notion that the fall of the Soviet empire was pre-determined. Instead, he argues that the country that is no more “fell victim to a perfect storm and a hapless captain” —Gorbachev himself.

Though Gorbachev is often pictured as a hero in the collective Western imagination, Zubok doesn’t shy away from exposing the faults and character flaws of the last Soviet leader that ensured his instrumental role in the process of destroying the Union. In contrast to the many flattering biographical accounts and several autobiographies written by Gorbachev himself, Zubok’s Gorby is a man blinded by his idealism, striving for recognition by the liberal West and inability to acknowledge his own failures. These are the traits that made him an ideal fit for the role of a destroyer of the Soviet project.

Zubok, however, doesn’t attribute the end of the Soviet project solely to one personality. The economic collapse and role of the West are also explored in great detail.

Though “Collapse” explores events that took place more than a quarter of a century ago, it is difficult to shake off an ominous feeling when reading it against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.

As the former Soviet imperial core and its neighbors once again face a turbulent, uncertain future — that, as some argue, could even bring about the collapse of Russia itself — it’s difficult not to draw parallels with the events of the 80s and seek answers for the questions about the present in Zubok’s book. The author, however, firmly cautions the reader against searching for remedies to present problems in the distant past.

“The economic calamity and social traumas of the Soviet collapse do not explain, even less justify, what happened many years later,” Zubok writes.

“What they point to, however, is the possibility of great reversals and historic surprises…down the road.”

Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union


From Chapter Three: Revolutions

History Accelerates

In the spring and summer of 1989, another dramatic development occurred within the Soviet political elites: the Iron Curtain that prevented them from going abroad suddenly parted. This had revolutionary implications for Soviet politics, especially for the educated Moscow-centered intelligentsia. Since Stalin’s times, the West had been the forbidden fruit and the object of intense curiosity for Soviet citizens. The post-Stalin intelligentsia held an “imagined West” as a vital part of their identity, dreams, and cultural self-validation. Several educated cohorts had grown up with a veritable obsession with and idealization of Western culture and music, first jazz, then rock. Many of those people who learned to despise the Soviet system under Brezhnev felt uncritical admiration for all things Western.

In Leonid Brezhnev’s household, the General Secretary and his wife had watched Soviet news and entertainment. Their grandchildren instead watched Western movies and cartoons on a large Sony TV screen with a video-cassette recorder (VCR). By 1989, VCRs, along with personal computers, became the most coveted object of social status, as well as an informational tool. Hundreds of new “cooperatives” began to import and sell them in great numbers on the Soviet market, a trade more lucrative than still illegal currency exchange. Yet nothing could be a substitute for the experience of crossing borders. “Trips to the West were the most important status symbol,” wrote the Russian scholar Dmitry Furman. “See Paris, and die,” was a popular joke, but also a dream for many in the Soviet Union. Scientists, artists, dancers, symphony orchestras, and many Soviet Jews lived in fear that they would not obtain clearance from “competent organs” to cross the Soviet borders— for no apparent reason other than that somebody higher up the pyramid of power questioned their loyalty or someone close to them informed on them. Memoirs from the post-Soviet period are replete with anger and drama regarding the abrogation of that clearance.

In early 1989, the Soviet rules for foreign travel were radically relaxed. It was no longer necessary to grovel and conform to Soviet authorities, including the Party and the KGB, in order to obtain permission for a private trip abroad. During the first half of 1989, the number of approved applications for exit visas reached 1.8 million, three times more than two years earlier. During the same period about 200,000 people received official permission to emigrate, mostly to Israel and the United States. 36 The majority, however, applied for a foreign Soviet passport and a permit to leave the USSR and return— for the first time in their life. Bureaucrats and officials, directors of enterprises, cooperative managers, academic scholars, scientists, artists and actors rushed under the rising curtain. Performers went to perform, artists sold their art, intellectuals delivered talks. The glasnost journalists, academic scholars, government officials, especially those who knew some English and other foreign languages, were in high demand abroad. Western universities, the United States Information Agency (USIA), think tanks, fellowship programs, foundations all used their funds to invite Soviet visitors. Intellectuals were invited by Western foundations.

Scholars have studied this phenomenon exclusively as a factor in bringing the Cold War to an end. Yet, it also delegitimized the Soviet system. Most Soviet diplomats, KGB officials, and military representatives abroad had become habituated to navigation between the West and their homeland; they lived in a kind of controlled schizophrenia. Gorbachev traveled abroad several times in the late 1960s and 1970s, and began to see a humiliating gap between the abundance in Western stores and a dearth of goods in Soviet ones. Yet this was nothing compared with the shock that thousands of Soviet people experienced when they crossed Soviet borders and visited Western countries from early 1989 onwards— many of them for the first time. In May of that year, Shevardnadze’s aide and speechwriter Teimuraz Stepanov wrote in his diary about West Germany: “The Devil took us to this Federal Republic, so groomed, preened, accurate, and caressed, where it is particularly painful to think about my beloved country— dirty and exhausted from futile efforts to overcome the utmost ugliness created by the most inhumane regime in the world.” A few days later in Irkutsk, on the way to the Sino-Soviet summit, he wrote with even more bitterness: “Who said that my Motherland is less beautiful than the German Heimat . .  .? It is, however, gutted [by the apparatchiks] armed with Party directives and a never-ending Marxist-Leninist world view.”

For first-time Soviet travelers to the West a visit to a supermarket produced the biggest effect. The contrast between half-empty, gloomy Soviet food stores and glittering Western palaces with an abundant selection of food was mind-boggling. Not a single Soviet visitor was prepared for the sight of pyramids of oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, bananas; endless varieties of fresh fish and meat, in lieu of a butcher cutting chunks from bluish hulks from a freezer; efficient cashiers with a smiling attitude, instead of rude saleswomen doling out greasy cans and jars to a long line of desperately hungry customers. And then actually to be allowed to touch, to smell, to savor! A severe aftershock awaited Soviet visitors upon their subsequent return to the Soviet Union, and to scenes of misery. This experience changed Soviet travelers forever. Western standards, unimaginable before, immediately became the new norm. Soviet realities, part of everyday habit, suddenly became “abnormal” and therefore revolting, unbearable.

Most of the newly elected deputies of the Supreme Soviet traveled to the West in March– August 1989 for the first time at the invitation of Western parliamentarians, universities, non-governmental institutions, and émigré friends and relatives. Gennady Burbulis, elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, had grown up as an admirer of Lenin and joined the Party on his centennial in 1970. Because of his security clearance (he had served in strategic rocket forces during his obligatory draft), he never had a chance to travel outside the Soviet Union. In June 1989, however, he joined the MDG opposition [Inter-regional Deputies Group- MT] in the Supreme Soviet and traveled with a group of other deputies to Stockholm for a seminar on “Swedish socialism.” Many years later he still recalled the shock from visiting a giant fish supermarket: a mile of stands and aquariums filled with fresh fish, oysters, calimari, shrimp, and other sea creatures. Equally amazing for Burbulis was the absence of long lines of customers. Burbulis left Stockholm as an enthusiast of “Swedish socialism” and an even more bitter enemy of the Soviet Party system. Another member of this group, Nikolai Travkin, a construction worker and Soviet patriot, joined the MDG as a fan of “democratic socialism.” His Soviet identity also crumbled in Stockholm. He returned to Moscow an angry man, convinced that the communists had been fooling Soviet people all along. In March 1990 he quit the Party and launched the Democratic Party of Russia in an attempt to seize power from the nomenklatura.

The most consequential eye-opening experience occurred to Boris Yeltsin. In June 1989, he asked the American ambassador Jack Matlock to help him visit the United States. The idea came from Yeltsin’s aides Lev Sukhanov and Pavel Voshchanov, who wanted to raise his international profile. Matlock’s attempt to contact US Congressmen and their staff did not produce results; then Yeltsin’s people discovered Gennady Alferenko, a remarkable cultural entrepreneur, founder of one of the first cultural NGOs of Gorbachev’s era. Alferenko specialized in East-West public diplomacy and operated under KGB supervision. He contacted Jim Garrison from the Esalen Institute, an esoteric cultural center in Big Sur, California. The two worked out a ten-day lecture tour for Yeltsin across the United States; the proud Russian wanted to pay for all his expenses abroad. The tour began in New York on 9 September 1989 and covered eleven cities in nine states. This visit was more intense than Khrushchev’s “discovery of America” in 1959. And it was to have even more impact on the fate of the Soviet Union. Available accounts of Yeltsin’s journey vary from stories of drinking bouts, scandals, and gaffes to descriptions of his eye-opening experiences. All of them were true. Yeltsin’s political agenda was still to build a “democratic socialism,” but without the Party monopoly on power. This was what he wanted to tell Americans and their leaders. He relished attacking Gorbachev on every occasion and in every interview. At the top of Yeltsin’s list of engagements was a meeting with President George Bush. Jim Garrison knew Condoleezza Rice, who worked at the National Security Council on Soviet affairs, and contacted her. Ultimately, Yeltsin met instead Bush’s National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft. President Bush “dropped by” for a chat during that visit. The Russian and his aides left the White House in a triumphant mood. Sukhanov recalled: “Yeltsin was the first among the high-placed Soviet leaders who broke ‘the seal’ on the White House during the rule of Bush. Not Gorbachev, but Yeltsin.” The United States was the first country that Yeltsin had ever visited outside the Soviet Union on his own rather than as part of an official Soviet delegation. He was feted and dined by wealthy Americans, flown by private jets, and stayed in the houses of American millionaires. Although he expected the lifestyle of the super-rich to be a never-ending feast, the real shock for him was his impromptu visit to Randalls discount supermarket, on the way to Houston Airport. As a regional party secretary, Yeltsin had spent years battling with lack of food supplies in his Sverdlovsk region. His greatest achievement had been to establish a system of poultry farms near Sverdlovsk that supplemented the meagre diet of workers in the industrial plants and factories. Randalls supermarket amazed him. This was an average place where the poorest American could buy what even the top Soviet nomenklatura could not back home. In the sweltering Texan desert Yeltsin and his entourage entered an air-conditioned paradise. The aides saw Yeltsin brooding, as if he was thinking: “Does this cornucopia exist every day for everyone? Incredible!”

Yeltsin realized how stupid he must have appeared in the eyes of his American hosts when he repeated the slogans of “democratic socialism.” He said to his aides: “What did they do to our poor people? Throughout our lives, they told us fairy tales, tried to invent the wheel. And the wheel already exists . .  . yet not for us.” An aide wrote that “the last prop of Yeltsin’s Bolshevist mentality decomposed” at this moment. After returning from his American trip, while speaking to journalists and his MDG colleagues, Yeltsin regaled them with details of his supermarket visit. He waxed lyrical about the “madness of colors, boxes, packs, sausages, cheeses,” and rhapsodized that the average American family spent one-tenth or less of their salaries on food, while a Soviet family spent over half of their salaries on food, and more. Yeltsin decided that his mission now was to bring the “American dream” to the Russian people.

Excerpted from “Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” by Vladislav M. Zubok, published by Yale University Press. Copyright © 2021 Vladislav M. Zubok. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Footnotes have been removed to ease reading. For more information about the author and this book, see the publisher’s site here.

“Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union” has been shortlisted for the 2022 Pushkin House Book Prize.

OPINION

Who Killed Daria Dugina? Untruths and Consequences

The Russian blame machine is spinning versions that don’t bear scrutiny.

By Victor Davidoff

Aug. 23, 2022

Daria Dugina in the Donbas.t.me/dplatonova

Ever since the car that ultra-right-wing journalist Daria Dugina was driving exploded on a highway near Moscow on Saturday night, the Russian blame machine has been spitting out versions of guilt non-stop.

The first version was the same as the last version. Denis Pushilin, head of the separatist Donetsk Republic (DNR), blamed the attack on Ukrainian special services. However, Pushilin did not provide any facts and is known for blaming everything bad that happens in the world on Ukraine.

The second version was exotic. It rejected political motives for the murder and claimed that Daria Dugina was a member, if not the head, of a criminal gang engaged in racketeering in the Moscow region. She was the victim of a gang-war hit. There was more than one source for this version, but they were all anonymous.

A doctoral student of philosophy who takes breaks from studying Plato to go out with tough gangsters to collect money from businessmen is a very good plot for a Hollywood thriller. But it has nothing to do with reality.

The next version took us even farther — into the world of Frederick Forsythe and John le Carré. According to this version, Dugina acted as an intermediary for the illegal transfer of money from the Kremlin to the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. In this tale, Dugina kept some of the money and paid the price for it.

This version has one thing going for it: Dugina did meet with Le Pen, but that was ten years ago when Dugina was studying in France. And it’s true that the Kremlin financed Le Pen, but it was done differently: her party took loans it didn’t have to pay back from European banks affiliated with Moscow. If any money was passed on in suitcases, it was done by professionals, not students.

Even more confusion was sown by former Russian State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who was one of the few Russian deputies who voted against the annexation of Crimea and participated in protest rallies in Moscow. Naturally, a criminal case was brought against him, and he fled to Kyiv. On Sunday Ponomarev read a statement on Ukrainian television on behalf of the "National Republican Army," which claimed responsibility for the attack. No one had heard of this group until then. It has a channel on Telegram, but there is no proof it really exists.

And then finally the people who are supposed to present a version spoke up. The Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the KGB) announced that it had solved the crime and named the suspect: a 43-year-old Ukrainian citizen Natalia Vovk, née Shaban. According to the FSB, she entered Russia about a month ago and rented an apartment in the same house where the victim lived.

However, the FSB report raised more questions than it answered. The only thing that is known is that Vovk-Shaban was a clerk in the Ukrainian National Guard, according to her relatives.

It is inconceivable that such a complex operation could have been carried out by a lone agent. Where did the professionally made bomb came from? How did she get to Moscow? The Russian-Ukrainian border is closed. She might have entered Russia through the DNR, but if she did, then the whole story changes.

If Vovk came to Russia via DNR, it means it wasn’t a Ukrainian special op, it was a Russian special op.

The possibility that this was a false flag operation organized by Russia got some confirmation on late Monday when a photo appeared of Vovk and her husband Alexander, who was allegedly one of the organizers of a referendum to leave Ukraine in Donetsk region in 2014.

But the story doesn’t quite hold up in any case. If the suspected terrorist lived in the same house as Daria Dugina, then she was the original target, not her father. But why would a journalist, little known even in narrow nationalist circles, be the target of assassination?

Within hours of the attack Kremlin propagandists accused others of guilt as well: the "pro-Ukrainian intelligentsia" in Russia, or more precisely, those who are against the war. Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian propaganda television channel RT, wrote that “Everyone making fun of Dasha's death with snotty remarks and trolling — all those municipal council members, bloggers and activists should be arrested. Time to take out the trash."

State Duma deputy writer Zakhar Prilepin cast a wider net, blaming "the civilized world, all Europe, the collective Angelina Jolie, all those writers and songwriters" for the attack.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova explicitly demanded that they "find a way to extend the available legal norms to information violence." In normal language this means: time to begin repressions.

No matter who is responsible for this tragedy, it will be used to intensify repressions inside the country. As journalist Yulia Latynina asked right after the attack, "Is the murder of Dugin's daughter the new assassination of Kirov?" This refers to the Stalinist reign of terror, which began with the assassination of party leader Sergei Kirov in 1934.

Lyubov Sobol, a colleague of Alexei Navalny's at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, tweeted: "By the next morning the murder already seemed to make no sense — no one cared about Dugin, and especially his daughter. But now it’s clear that it was some kind of primitive FSB false flag operation.”

All terror has its logic. Today Putin is in a very tough situation: the war looks like it will drag on for years with no victory in sight. Russia can only hold the occupied territories through violence and bayonets. Sanctions are slowly killing the economy. It is impossible for a dictator to admit defeat, and someone must be blamed for all the failures.

This is what Stalin always did. Putin is unlikely to find a better solution.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

Victor DavidoffVictor Davidoff is a Soviet dissident and independent journalist, author of "The Ninth Circle" (Moscow, 2021), a study of the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.

Britain's troubled water sector facing threat of litigation over raw sewage being dumped illegally into rivers

By LUKE BARR, FINANCIAL MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED:  27 August 2022

Britain's troubled water sector is facing the threat of litigation over raw sewage being dumped illegally into rivers, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Lawyers at top firm Mishcon de Reya are plotting possible claims against water firms, which are under mounting pressure due to their performance on pollution.

Critics argue regulators have not done enough to tackle their failures, and lawyers are looking at the potential for High Court cases.

 


Litigation: Lawyers at top firm Mishcon de Reya are plotting possible claims against water firms, which are under mounting pressure due to their performance on pollution

Alexander Rhodes, who heads Mishcon's Purpose division, said litigation is a way to hold water wrongdoers to account.

He said claims could help individuals and businesses who have lost out financially due to pollution.

'We have to decide as a country what we want,' Rhodes said.

'If we want safe and healthy rivers, we are going to have to press for it.'

The Environment Agency recently called for bosses responsible for the most serious pollution to face prison.

But Rhodes said governing bodies must be accountable alongside water firms.

US blasts ‘cynical’ Russia for blocking UN nuclear text


AFP
Published: 28 August ,2022: 

The US on Sunday denounced Russia's “cynical obstructionism” after Moscow blocked adoption of a joint declaration on nuclear non-proliferation following lengthy international negotiations at the United Nations.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which 191 signatories review every five years, aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, promote complete disarmament and promote cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Russia on Friday prevented the declaration's adoption, saying it took issue with “political” aspects of the text -- a step criticized by Washington.

“After weeks of intensive but productive negotiations, the Russian Federation alone decided to block consensus on a final document” at the conclusion of the four-week NPT review conference, State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said in a statement.

He said Moscow's move was done “in order to block language that merely acknowledged the grave radiological risk at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine,” a major atomic facility that is currently occupied by the Russian military.

The latest draft text had expressed “grave concern” over military activities around Ukrainian power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, as well as over Ukraine's loss of control of such sites and the negative impact on safety.

Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear US blasts ‘cynical’ Russia for blocking UN nuclear text
power station in Europe, was seized by Russian troops in early March, shortly after Moscow launched its deadly invasion of Ukraine on February 24. The facility is near the battlefront in Ukraine's southeast.

Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly traded accusations of shelling at the plant, and its operator has warned of the risks of a radioactive leak.

“Despite Russia's cynical obstruction, the fact that all other parties supported the final document demonstrates the treaty's essential role in preventing nuclear proliferation,” the State Department's Patel said.

He reiterated Washington's call for Russia to end its military activity near Zaporizhzhia “and return control of the plant to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, neutral and non-nuclear Austria on Saturday condemned the attitude at the talks of major powers, and not just Russia.

“While three-quarters of the 191 signatory states support credible progress for nuclear disarmament, it is mainly the nuclear-armed states, and above all Russia, which resisted,” the government in Vienna said in a statement.

It noted that contrary to treaty commitments, Britain, China, France, Russia and the US are improving or expanding their stock of nuclear weapons.

Egypt archaeologist calls for return of Rosetta Stone, other artefacts from UK and Europe

Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian antiquities minister, is spearheading a campaign calling for artefacts including the Rosetta Stone which is held at the British Museum in London, to be returned to Egypt.

The New Arab Staff
25 August, 2022

The Rosetta Stone has been at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years

 [AFP via Getty]

An Egyptian archaeologist is spearheading a campaign for iconic Egyptian artefacts to be returned from European museums to their home country.

Zahi Hawass, also former Egyptian antiquities minister, is calling via a petition for the artefacts - including the Rosetta Stone, which has been at the British Museum in London for more than 200 years - to be returned to Egypt.

"The Rosetta Stone is the icon of Egyptian identity," Hawass told The National last week. "The British Museum has no right to show this artefact to the public.”

Hawass is also calling for the bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin and a sculpted Zodiac ceiling currently at the Louvre in Paris to be returned to Egypt.

"We collected all the evidence that proves that these three items are stolen from Egypt," he told the UAE-based outlet.

Nawass will reportedly send the petition to European museums in October.

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The Rosetta Stone, held at the British Museum since 1802, was acquired from by Britain from French forces during the Napoleonic Wars, following their surrender after a brief French occupation of Egypt.

The 2,200-year-old stone has been key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Hawass, who was antiquities minister until the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, has been campaigning for the return of the stone to Egypt since 2003.

The British Museum said it had not received a formal request for the return of the stone to Egypt, according to The National.

European museums have begun sending some artefacts to their countries of origin as campaigns for their return have grown in recent years.

Hawass has sparked controversy in the past. He was accused of wasting public funds and making illicit gains, but was cleared of the charges by Egypt's top prosecutor in 2014.