from the when-politics-and-science-collide dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Since its founding in 1954, high-energy physics laboratory CERN has been a flagship for international scientific collaboration. That commitment has been under strain since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. CERN decided to cut ties with Moscow late last year over deaths resulting from the country's "unlawful use of force" in the ongoing conflict.
With the existing international cooperation agreements now lapsing, the Geneva-based organization is expected to expel hundreds of scientists on November 30 affiliated with Russian institutions, Nature reports. However, CERN will maintain its links with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an intergovernmental center near Moscow.
CERN was founded in the wake of World War II as a place dedicated to the peaceful pursuit of science. The organization currently has 24 member states and, in 2019 alone, hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. Russia has never been a full member of CERN, but collaborations first began in 1955, with hundreds of Russia-affiliated scientists contributing to experiments in the ensuing decades. Now, that 60-year history of collaboration, and Russia's long-standing observer status, is ending. As World Nuclear News reported earlier this year:
The decision to end the cooperation agreement was taken in December 2023 when CERN's Council passed a resolution "to terminate the International Cooperation Agreement between CERN and the Russian Federation, together with all related protocols and addenda, with effect from 30 November 2024; To terminate ... all other agreements and experiment memoranda of understanding allowing the participation of the Russian Federation and its national institutes in the CERN scientific programme, with effect from 30 November 2024; AFFIRMS That these measures concern the relationship between CERN and Russian and Belarusian institutes and do not affect the relationship with scientists of Russian nationality affiliated with other institutes." The cooperation agreement with Belarus will come to an end on 27 June, before the Russian one ends.
It's unclear how this decision will impact scientific research at CERN. Russia's 4.5 percent contribution to the combined budget for ongoing experiments at the Large Hadron Collider has already been covered by other collaboration members. Some think the effects will be minimal since researchers have had plenty of time to prepare for the exit. Certain essential staff members have successfully found employment outside of Russia so that they can stay on.
Others are less confident. “It will leave a hole. I think it’s an illusion to believe one can cover that very simply by other scientists,” particle physicist and CMS member Hannes Jung of the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg told Nature. He's also a member of the Science4Peace Forum, which opposes restrictions on scientific cooperation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24, @08:12PM
But it will end the war, right? /s
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24, @09:03PM (7 children)
What you are watching is the fractionalization of the global order.
Sad that it came to this. Scientific collaboration should be above politics. These scientists did nothing wrong and now everyone loses out.
Meanwhile, "You forgot Poland" and Isreal are still part of CERN, so there is no moral high ground from which the entity can pass judgement.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24, @10:24PM (5 children)
correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think israel and poland have been playing noisy games around nuclear power plants. meanwhile, cern started the process of dropping russia right around the time putin moved nukes to belarus.
i don't think it's a case of moral judgement, i think it's about russia's world-endangering reckless use of science in an attempt attempt to conquer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27, @12:06PM (4 children)
But having nukes stationed in Europe is totally fine, right?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Friday September 27, @01:09PM (3 children)
Of course it is, just as it is fine for Russia to have nukes on its territory.
The problem here is that Russia AGREED to Ukraine's independence providing that they first gave up their nuclear weapons. Then they ignored that agreement and decided that they could simply take parts of Ukraine back.
Joining NATO does not affect Ukraine's independence as a country. It does not become part of another country. It would have a mutual defence pact but that would be their choice and would not imposed upon them.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday September 27, @06:32PM (2 children)
I'll have to disagree here and go with the indivisible security concept parroted by the Kremlin a lot. I'm also not talking about France or the UK (with their re-boots), but about US nukes stationed all around the place (e.g. Germany!). (Also the Ukraine didn't have the means to maintain, control and launch "their" weapons, but that's just a tangent.)
There were a lot of agreements ignored by the west before that and a lot of mutual opportunities missed (like an integrated security architecture). Instead corporate greed took over and grabbed most of the resources that became available after the cold war was finally over. NATO expansion & Yugoslavia are two of the most prominent missteps.
What's happening now is a testament to (moral) failure on all participating sides and blaming Russia won't solve the issue.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday September 27, @06:58PM
The USA has had nuclear weapons based in Europe since long before the break-up of the Soviet Union, and there were there before Russia agreed to let Ukraine be independent providing that they gave up their nuclear weapons. Blaming the problem on US weapons is ridiculous because their presence in Europe has not changed much in the last 60 years.
Russia is now trying to justify any actions it wishes to take on the status quo that has existed from prior to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.
As for NATO, it is as important as an organisation as it has ever been. The threat from Russia to its former satellite countries is as great now as it ever was.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28, @11:56AM
Of course, you would.
Last I checked Ukraine wasn't near Germany. Do you have another non sequitur with which to waste our time?
So because Russia/USSR violated other agreements, it's ok to violate this big one? Sure, we can bullshit over the "missed opportunities" or we can choose to recognize who causes the problems. Putin's corporate greed seems far more relevant here than NATO's. In particular, it solidly explains why Russia is still fighting in a war it was supposed to win in a couple of weeks with that decapitation strike back in 2022.
Ending Putin's reign and bringing in a democracy will solve this issue, methinks.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday September 25, @01:14AM
Neither are at Russian levels of moral low ground, so not seeing what the complaint is supposed to be here.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Snotnose on Tuesday September 24, @10:27PM (1 child)
Read something about this a year or so ago. They aren't cutting ties, they aren't renewing existing ties.
I used to be a consultant. There was a big difference between "you're fired" and "we aren't renewing your contract". The first never happened to me, the second happened every contract.
Old and busted: erectile dysfuntion. New hotness: Ballzheimers
(Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday September 25, @12:40PM
Not in this case. Renewing such contracts is normally a formality. I looked through Wikipedia's list of members [wikipedia.org] (and those of other status, like Russia). Russia is unique in getting kicked out.
(Score: -1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday September 25, @12:44PM (17 children)
Never thought I'd see the day that Russia is in the "free world" and we are definitely not, but here we are.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 25, @01:30PM (1 child)
Yeah, tell that to Ukraine.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Disagree) by VLM on Wednesday September 25, @05:23PM
The irony of the situation is given a choice of being ruled by Israel or ruled by Russia, they would probably in the long run be better off ruled by their historical neighbor Russia.
For geographic reasons they don't get an option to not be part of an empire, any more than Wyoming gets an option.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 25, @05:36PM (14 children)
And you still haven't seen that day. Whatever harm has been done to freedom by the "free world", Russia has it worse.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 25, @06:10PM (13 children)
Oh, how so?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 25, @06:42PM (8 children)
Why don't you go ahead and explain to us exactly what point you're trying to make here. It's hard to argue with somebody when they won't tell you their reasoning.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 25, @08:13PM (7 children)
As near as I can tell, the other side's reasoning is Russia is having what amounts to a civil war with one of its "regions" mostly because foreigners gained control of it. With a side dish of a generation or two ago a deal was made to denuclearize The Ukraine in exchange for an agreement to treat it like a DMZ and not encroach. Naturally, the west having the quality of leadership we have, a generation or two later we're on the border trying to get them to join NATO, so Russia naturally was pretty pissed off. Meanwhile in the old USSR days the Russians used to financially and morally support their people in the west pushing leftism, but post '92 or so the money spigot shut off and they're still butthurt about it and have to "hate Russia". And the people who always project their own failings, try to muddy the waters with "Russia interference in USA elections" and similar nonsense mostly so we don't notice Israeli interference in USA politics and US elections and US media.
So time to virtue signal by inconveniencing peaceful scientists, just to make the point that as has often been the case, the west and the USA are being the bad guys, as usual. Complete with the usual NPC level stuff since '84, err, since '92, about how Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, etc.
It's all very tiresome.
I'm not sure what the endgame goal is of imperialist interventionism on the border of a nuclear power having what amounts to a civil war for no apparent goal beyond proving we can and proving which foreign powers are in charge.
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday September 25, @09:45PM (5 children)
That's an interesting fantasy you have imagined there. I hope you're at least getting paid by Russia to push that nonsense.
Ukraine had, for a brief time, the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They gave that up for a piece of paper called the Budapest Memorandum, in which the US, UK, and Russia assured them they would remain secure. Thanks to Putin, that piece of paper was worth absolutely nothing.
Countries joining NATO was the result of one nation's actions: Russia. Seeing Russia invade Chechnya and Georgia was more than enough incentive to join NATO. The taking of Crimea was Ukraine's incentive to ask for admittance to NATO (which the NATO members resisted for a long time). The 2022 invasion of Ukraine prompted both Sweden and Finland to join as well, after many, many years of neutrality.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Thursday September 26, @01:45PM (2 children)
So, basically, you agree factually with everything I stated, because your response was sophistry and logical fallacies with no logical argument against it. Cool, glad to see we agree I'm correct in my assessment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Thursday September 26, @07:42PM
When Adam Savage said "I reject your reality and substitute my own" it was meant as a joke, not a way of life. You're either trolling or deep in an echo chamber. Either way, I'm done with this... good day sir!
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday September 27, @01:06AM
Back in 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych allies himself with Russia and systematically begins to undermine democratic protections (for example, outlawing protesting when Euromaidan revolution was underway) and disrupt attempts to join the juicy EU market (rejecting an agreement with the EU is what triggered Euromaidan in the first place). He gets overthrown in the revolution in 2014 (the second revolution he caused BTW with the first being the Orange Revolution of 2004). Instantly, Russia seizes territory, conducts a sham referendum, and absorbs Crimea all within a month of the departure of Yanukovych in 2014. That alone demonstrates the bad faith with which Russia approached their treaty obligations. The invasion in 2022 demonstrates it again.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday September 27, @12:22PM (1 child)
Regarding "Ukraine's" so called nuclear arsenal, please read up on some sources like this: https://www.icanw.org/did_ukraine_give_up_nuclear_weapons [icanw.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 28, @11:48AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 25, @10:52PM
In other words, the reasoning is garbage. Russia didn't treat Ukraine like a DMZ, but rather a place to invade.
Why? What is NATO to Russia? It wasn't relevant until Russia invaded Ukraine.
I'm fine with foreign powers squandering their resources on US elections.
And increasing the "free world" beyond Russia. /sarc
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 26, @10:04PM (3 children)
I challenge you to find any organization in the developed world shut down like that. The organizations (Proud Boys and Oath Keepers) involved in the January 6 protests, for example, haven't been so treated. The far right political parties in Europe haven't been so treated.
It makes no sense to imply that Russia is somehow freer than the actual free world.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday September 27, @12:28PM (2 children)
You mean Navalny the nazi? Thanks, but no thanks. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-evolution-of-alexey-navalnys-nationalism [newyorker.com]
The only real alternative would have been Yabloko's Yavlinsky, but alas, as in other parts of the worlds too, progressives rarely get to power.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Saturday September 28, @11:44AM
Notice the lack of any substance. It's merely an empty label you hurled. Needless to say, the story you linked falls far short of your label. The best they can say in that regard:
You know who else allies themselves with "ultranationalists"? Putin [gettyimages.dk] (in this case, stock photos of Putin chilling with the Night Wolves [wikipedia.org]). Don't waste my time with accusations that are better applied to your side.
Incidentally, how hard should Russia be invaded because they have nazis? Just asking for a friend.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday September 28, @05:41PM
As an aside, because Yavlinsky isn't a real alternative, he gets to be known as a progressive rather than as a Nazi. Should Putin or his successors grow powerful enough, even being a weak alternative won't be protection.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 25, @04:37PM
A little late this.
-------
Slava Ukraini! Slay the orcs!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 25, @06:40PM
why they didn't just join as a full member at some point since 1955. Or at least since 1989 if it was some macho Soviet thing.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"