EDITORIAL
Blood on the Olympic Snows of Sochi?
Last week in the city of Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia and just 250 short miles from Sochi where the 2014 Winter Olympics are to be held, a bomb exploded in a marketplace, injuring at least 173 people. Seventeen people, and the suicide bomber who triggered the blast, were killed. Rioting followed, and even more were killed.
If it can happen in Vladikavkaz, it can happen in Sochi. If it does, world leaders who send their athletes to the Russian games will have blood on their hands.
The world has seen a relentless torrent of violence throughout the Caucasus region ever since the bloody Russian assault on Georgia, followed by Russia’s shamelessly illegal annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia.
It is obvious that the Putin regime has no control whatsoever of what happens in the Caucasus. Every day, it becomes clearer that Chechnya is a de facto state, that it has prevailed in its struggle for independence despite the bloodthirsty efforts of Vladimir Putin to prevent that result.
And now, in one of the most deranged political decisions of our times, world leaders appear ready to send hundreds of young athletes to Sochi, into what can only be called a meat grinder of terrorism and oppression.
What will happen if they do is predictable, and that will make it all the more reprehensible that world leaders, who have been warned, did nothing to prevent the bloodshed.
La Russophobe 
@The world has seen a relentless torrent of violence throughout the Caucasus region ever since the bloody Russian assault on Georgia,
Ahem.
In North Ossetia? More like periodically flashing ever since the Russian interior ministry forces supported the Ossetians in ethnically cleansing tens of thousands of citziens of Russia of Ingush nationality in 1992.
Many are still “missing” to this day.
“It’s necessary to say that this isn’t the first blast in the Vladikavkaz central market. It’s been the site of frequent explosions, starting in 1999, when 52 people were killed here,” Tskhurbayev said. “If memory serves, this is already the fourth blast here, or something close to it.”
http://www.rferl.org/content/Blast_At_Market_In_Russian_Caucasus_City_Casualties_Reported/2152777.html
@Every day, it becomes clearer that Chechnya is a de facto state, that it has prevailed in its struggle for independence despite the bloodthirsty efforts of Vladimir Putin to prevent that result.
No, Putin just gave his adopted son Ramzan a total power in his little kingdom.
What kind of “suicide bomber” would supposedly sit in back seat of a parked car, anyway? This is not how you do it.
You say Russians and Ossets were the reason this Ingush came to a market full of children and women and detonated a 40 kg bomb, killing 17, and sending another hundred to a hospital?
Robert, not only Chechnia is winning the war of independence from Russia – all the rest of North Caucasus countries e.g., Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria also following the same path. It will take a while but it will happen.
By the way, there are persistant news from all over the West that Russia is heading for the fullyl blown civil war and to invest in Russia is an economic suicide…
Hm. Could you provide, like, I dunno… five, six links to credible Western sources that talk about an upcoming civil war in Russia?
Sure, hundreds of them reliable Western sources, do you read Georgian? :D
“Robert”, my foot.
Chief of the extremism control department of the Russian Interior Ministry for the North Caucasus Gapal Gadzhiev was killed on Sunday in Makhachkala, Itar-Tass learnt from a source at the municipal law enforcement bodies.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15484778&PageNum=0
I guess it means the general was pretty bad in “extremism control”.
Dozens of other people were also killed or injured in the last days in Dag.
Among the killed were the head of the local administration and his brother in Komsomolsk. “Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee” says the official and his brother were “bandits”.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15486173&PageNum=0
Regardless were they really “bandits” or not, Dagestan is both crumbling and drowning in blood, with hundreds of people killed this year on both sides and in the middle. The replacement for “Chief of the extremism control department of the Russian Interior Ministry for the North Caucasus” will hate his job. He will rest when he’s dead (soon).
Colonel Omar Mugadov who headed the “Corrective Colony No. 7” was also killed.
http://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/14386/
And Khabibula Mirzayev, who headed the militia in Karamakhi.
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15483513&PageNum=0
And Captain Ruslan Gadzhanov who headed militia in Kizil-Yurt.
http://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/14385/
And a guy who head the “ministry’s branch in the Caspian Sea province of Dagestan”.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h9OHz4nVWKKUjgrraAGSlhUXSaNQD9I5QOGO0
And so on.
Robert, you know what? Right now it looks you regularly come here to let off some steam, and it looks like you feel too stressed. I believe the most probable reason is, you have a strong inferiority complex.
You desperately look for somebody to dislike, even disgust. Somebody who would be an example there are people “worse than you”, give you this feeling you are better than them, that you are still ok.
The problem is, people without self-esteem issues just do not compare themselves to people who they see as inferior. This contradicts normal human behaviour. They compare themselves with, and are interested in, people they see as an example, a role model – those better people.
Perhaps, you should try to consult a specialist, a psychologist, they have everything needed to help you. It requires no medecines, just some time, spared for group practices. Please believe me, I have a diploma in psychology from a good university, and I have seen people in a state like yours before.
But you really need to consult now, because living with this makes you both psychologically instable, and quite socially destructive. And, I’ll be really glad to hear that I’m wrong, and this disorder did not go as far as it seems!
I doubt you have a psychology degree from a good school; no medical professional would make a diagnosis without a personal examination and just based on on-line comments
I am not a medical professional, just a psychologist. Psychology is not a branch of medicine. Though there is such thing as a psychiatry, which is a branch of medicine, I am not a psychyatrist.
And I am not making a diagnosis here, only giving an advice. This case does not demand a psychiatric experience. It is not a mental disorder, just an inferiority complex. It can be easily helped with just a dozen hours of group practice.
Dmitry,
Are you possibly working at the Serbsky Institute? :)
No, I am working on my second speciality, very close to psychology, but not exactly psychology.
I am not murdering or torturing anybody, if that’s what you imply. Again, what they do at Serbsky is not psychology, it’s psychiatry.
I am well aware of the difference between psychiatry and psychology, but still, you diagnosed (or whatever other verb you use) “an inferiority complex” without seeing the person. I don’t know any qualified psychologist who would do that
No, I have just proposed a man to get to a professional nearby who could diagnose anything.
Basing on a video, or on letters, or on voice recording you can very often suppose some man has some disorder. It’s nothing special, really, and I am surprised you put so much attention to the fact I have not seen Robert’s face.
Please pay attention to the fact you do not question my logic and conclusions explaining the Robert’s motives, but rather concentrate on these formal questions.
There are no “good universities” in Russia, only corrupt institutions where people purchase degrees under the table.
You are wrong.
And you are an idiot.
Palm-Greasing At Russian
Universities Continues Swelling
Source: Itar-Tass
Palm-greasing at Russian schools of higher learning is on the rise, officials from the Interior Ministry had to admit a few days ago.
In most cases, this malpractice concerns illegal remuneration of teachers taking part in enrollment examinations or the teachers who grade intermediary exams or pre-exam credits.
Since the beginning of 2008, economic security units have exposed 1,300 or so crimes pertaining to bribery, and a big part of them fall on colleges and universities, many of which have long earned notoriety as the grossly corrupt organizations.
UNESCO information indicates the amount of university bribes in Russia reached 520 million U.S. dollars in 2007 and this is not the limit, experts say.
http://www.sras.org/bribery_at_russian_universities
RUSSIA: Corrupt academics, bureaucrats and politicians
Nick Holdsworth
16 March 2008
Issue: 0020
A Siberian university student bit back when a bribe he was asked to pay a teacher to pass an examination failed to deliver the success. The final-year student at Tyumen State Agricultural Institute, more than 2,000 kilometres east of Moscow, complained to state prosecutors when his 39-year-old senior lecturer in the faculty of soil science and agrochemistry demanded a 2,000 rouble ($85) bribe. The student told investigators that although the bribe was paid, the expected exam pass was not forthcoming. An investigation into this case – and other suspected incidents of financial extortion at the institute – is underway.
Corruption in Russian higher education has long been an endemic problem. The most recent in-depth study into the problem was carried out by Moscow’s Indem Foundation, a democracy-oriented think tank run by Georgy Satatov.
The four year study, which tracked corruption across Russian society between 2001 and 2005, put the annual cost of the black market in bribery at $3 billion, with higher education institutions accounting for $580 million of that in 2005.
Overall, corruption across the higher education sector accounted for around 21% of the total market, with two in every three students and their families willing to resort to paying education officials, administrators and tutors to secure places, exam results or other benefits.
The Indem study, based on representative interviews with 2,000 Russians in 2001 and 3,000 in 2005, found both an increase in the number, range and cost of bribes – and the willingness of ordinary people to pay them.
The study coincided with most of President Vladimir Putin’s first term and the first year of his second term. It confirmed other studies that have noted a growth of corruption in Putin’s Russia. President-elect Dmitry Medvedev has vowed to root out corruption and launch a campaign against what he calls Russia’s ‘legal nihilism’.
He is likely to find it a tough nut to crack. Many commentators link Russia’s increased post-Soviet corruption to the rapid increase in state bureaucrats – who now number five million. Many senior bureaucrats are powerful figures and a study last year by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a leading Russian researcher into post-Soviet power elites, found that four out of five political leaders and state administrators in Russia are active or former members of the KGB or its successor security services.
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20080314085103365
But wait, there is more….
Can education in Russia be reformed?
This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the content.
Galina Masterova, Special to Russia Now
Published: 12:19PM BST 02 Sep 2010
A good grade on the new SAT-style exams in Russia costs about 40,000 roubles. Could reform and crackdowns on corruption bring education back from the brink?
Education was made a national priority by then deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2005 as the system was failing to provide the educated workers that Russia needs as well as failing to reward the gifted.
“There is a lingering notion that Russian or rather Soviet education was very good, if not the best in the world,” said Masha Lipman, an expert at the Carnegie Centre.
“The truth [now] is that it lags behind the rest of the world.”
Indeed, HR departments from international firms at a recent Economist conference in Moscow spoke of the huge qualitative differences in education between the generation who received a Soviet education and those coming after them.
But if the quality of the education system in modern Russia is questionable, one thing is certain: Russia definitely leads the educational world in bribery and is in need of dramatic change.
In the town of Morozovsk, in the Rostov region, 30 teachers were caught in May, police allege, preparing to take end-of-school exams for students.
What’s the price of a good exam result in Morozovsk? It’s about 40,000 roubles for a teacher to take the exam. Police arrested and charged a local education official for organising the fake exams.
Paying for good school exam results, for entrance into university, and to pass university courses is a multimillion dollar industry in Russia, according to the Indem think tank in Moscow.
One estimate by Mark Levin, from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, puts corruption at $1bn a year. A survey last year found that 36pc of Russians had paid money in one form or another to educators.
There is also huge separate industry that provides essays and dissertations for students.
Educational reforms have been introduced by the government to combat this corruption and to improve an educational system seen as failing. Controversial end-of-school exams, similar to SATS, went nationwide last year and in 2011, universities will introduce a more flexible, four-year course replacing the rigid five-year courses where students had little choice in what they studied.
Reform is designed to match the standards set by the Bologna Accords, a treaty that aims to create unified higher education across Europe. Once the reforms are complete, a Russian university education will be accepted in the European Union.
“The fact that the best and the brightest go and study abroad shows the inefficiency of the Russian educational system,” said Lipman.
Only a couple of universities, Moscow State and St Petersburg State, are in the top 100 in world and the country’s low citation index, the number of times Russian works cited in academic works, is slipping, she said.
However, Denis Popov, a student at the Moscow Insitute of Foreign Relations, also studied in Germany but prefers the Russian system.
“The system is freer in Germany but when I interned at the foreign ministry, Russian education provided me with a knowledge I would not have gained abroad,” he said.
“The Europeans can take a lot from the Russian system.”
The most controversial change has been the introduction of national standard tests (EGE) required for entry to university. The multiple-choice tests are taken by all school children and marked by computer and could not be more different from the previous system, which relied on oral tests at the universities.
Another advantage is that it makes it easier for students from the provinces to apply to study in other cities, where previously they would have had to apply in person.
But opponents say it is dumbing down Russian education, with questions such as: “What colour eyes did Anna Karenina have?” The previous system had more ambition, teachers say.
And the question of whether the new system has reduced corruption remains moot.
“EGE has not destroyed corruption but increased the number of corrupt deals in school,” said Oleg Smolin, a Communist deputy who focuses on education policy.
Indeed, the case in Morozovsk involved the EGE tests.
Schools have had improved funding in recent years, with money going into some improvements in infrastructure and equipment, but wages remain low and attracting qualified people to join the profession is tough.
Wages are around 14,000 roubles ($280) a month, “not enough”, said Alexander Adamsky from the educational think tank Eureka, but reforms are in place which will reduce the number of teachers and link results to pay which, he said, should help increase pay.
Despite protests against reforms, the education ministry has remained firm except at the top echelon of Russian universities.
Moscow and St Petersburg State University, whose rectors have consistently opposed the reforms, won an opt-out from solely accepting the standard tests and they will be allowed use their own oral exams.
And instead of the four-years-plus-two-year system, they will expand to six-year courses in 2011.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/society/7977339/Can-education-in-Russia-be-reformed.html
Andrew, I just don’t want to waste my time on this.
Pingback: Article Roundup for September 3, 2010 | ConstitutionClub.org
Bad problem that you have dimwit Dmitry is that you judge people by yourself. Face the facts ‘commo’ jerk, you were born a wasted space and you remain one to this day, so that not even the psychiatric help you are getting at the moment will ever help.
Also it is unbelievable the drivel that you write, just shows how scrambled your logic or lack of it is!
You are too agressive.
All this russian scum like Dimitry should be wiped out in gas chambers.Russian men are no humans,they are inferior to rats and microbes!!
I guess Nazi language is fine with Kim ‘Zigfeld’. Whaddya say, Ziggyboy? You like being in bed with Nazis?
Hi, “sascha”.
How do I know it’s you? It’s a mystery!
Thanks for the compliment, andy.
Just out of pure courtecy, please answer my question I ask of pure curiosity:
should Jews burn together with us Russians, or does your agenda includes them not?
LR,
I once said the rebels were just ignoring the whole Sochi fiasco-in-progress, however this has apparently changed:
http://www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5434
Another indication of the ongoing effort to link the Caucasian armed groups to the global jihad movement was seen in an exchange of letters between Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi and Anzor Astemirov (a.k.a. Amir Sayfullah), the late leader of Yarmuk Jama’at in Kabardino-Balkaria and an ideologue of the IEC, who was killed by security forces in March 2010. The letters concerned Astemirov’s translation of al-Maqdisi’s books into Russian. Astemirov also sent al-Maqdisi the Emirate’s ruling against the London-based Prime Minister of the nationalist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), Ahmed Zakayev, declaring him an apostate. The ruling was approved by al-Maqdisi.
Astemirov also asked al-Maqdisi about a Shari’a ruling on participating in the Olympics. The 2014 Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in Sochi, a city in present day Krasnodar Krai that was previously home to Muslim Circassians who were driven out from the region with enormous losses by Russian imperial troops in the 19th century. Al-Maqdisi ruled that participation is prohibited. Astemirov’s request for direct advice from jihad ideologues such as al-Maqdisi demonstrates increasing attempts to tie the Caucasian armed groups, which are still driven by local grievances, to the global jihad.