Friday, 18 March 2022

When will the war work?

Fear, hunger, thirst, cold, sickness, death and indiscriminate destruction is without a doubt, devastating the Ukrainian psyche. There is much support for President Putin in Russia, perhaps, from Syria, and now we are told that Chechen’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov says he is in Ukraine.

How was he persuaded to go from “fighting against Russia to fighting for” and what role will Chechen fighters play in Ukraine? 

As we approach the end of the third week, fierce battles continue. Both Russia and Ukraine have suffered huge human and financial losses since start of the war, which was labelled as “a special operation”. 

Commentators on the war from around the world are of opinion, that “getting into this mess took decades, getting out of it will not happen overnight”?                                                                       

                      Laser guided bomb carrying drone                  

Russia’s tactics are shifting all the time. From a convoy of armoured vehicles, rocket launchers creeping toward a 40 kilometre of Kyiv, over weeks instead days, for their own reasons.

The Ukrainians may have been outnumbered in armoury, both on land and in the air, we hear that one small drone which the Ukrainian army bought from Turkey, is doing the trick to checkmate Russian fighter jets dropping bombs and all forms of incendiary devices on innocent children, hospitals and fleeing civilians

Today we learn that US is in the act of sending 100 kamikaze, “Switch Blade” drones which can hit Russian tanks at a range of 25 miles. 

What will make Ukraine surrender?                                                                               

“We will never surrender,” said Daniel Bilak, a Ukrainian Lawyer, a defender of Kyiv. While the Ukrainian military spokesman maintains that Russia is struggling to achieve its military objectives due largely to a combination of “poor tactics, logistical problems”. Estimates of between 14,000 and 21,000 injured have been stated according to US Officials, while the Kremlin say its loss is around 498 soldiers. 

The reports coming out of Moscow state, “Russian soldiers in Ukraine are heroes and that Russia’s offensive is an act of self-defence; if it had not intervened now, in three years’ time Ukraine would have been in NATO with a nuclear bomb”.  

What is the UN doing to help control this war? 

“A hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of food supplies in Ukraine” are the words of UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. 

In a Tweet, he further states,” more than 3 million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country. The people of Ukraine desperately need peace to respond to the humanitarian needs which are multiplying by the hour”. 

But he is constrained by the Veto power of Russia in the Security Council, though not in

The General Assembly. But as we see over the days, it is up to the two warring nations to come to an agreement on Ceasefire. 

A Fifteen Point Plan as talks get under way 

A Fifteen Point Plan has been drawn during talks, by representatives of both Russia and Ukraine, while the war drags on. Behind the scenes, we are told, “talks on talks” are assisted by the Prime Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett and at a distance by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

While talks are going on, observers feel Russia is buying time. Ukraine has already accepted that it can come to terms with some neutrality, perhaps accepting being a non-member of NATO, in return for guarantees by independent nations, a status, similar to that of Austria, and/or Sweden, in return for return to an earlier state of affairs, not specifying the annexation of Crimea in 2014? 

 What niggles President Putin more than anything now? 

Of course, he is worried that Ukraine has won the “war on information”. But, he is more concerned of the integrity of Big Russia? 

President Putin of Russia is angry, and perhaps, rightly so. He has lashed out on TV against the so called Russian Oligarchs living a lifestyle overseas, in the West. He calls them,” the fifth column of Russia, who are filthy rich and have “a mentality of the West”, loathe to Russia.”

He considers these as “the scum, the traitors, and the persons who will sell their mother”. He considers them of a “higher race, a higher caste” and he has taken his wrath on their

“approach and attitude to this war,” perhaps, to dance to the tune of their masters in the countries where they live now. Selling one’s birth rite, is undoubtedly treahery. It can corrupt. 

What the people of the world want now?    

Besides, talks to go on for a Ceasefire, the people around the world demand a lasting

Peace now, perhaps, to save the world? 

Victor Cherubim

Sunday, 13 March 2022

An imaginary day in the life of a Russian Soldier in Ukraine


My day in Ukraine, is different to what I am used to in my barracks in my country.     

I now have to fight not only the military forces of the Ukrainian army, but the civilians who are surrounding us and have taken up arms. Ukrainian civilians have surrounded us, round our armoured carriers. They are all armed with rifles. They are taking us everywhere - into their schools, into their hospitals, even into their cemeteries.

Our invasion began in the eastern Donbas region on 24 February 2022 after forces tried to liberate the Russian speaking citizens, as we crossed the line of control into the non-occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

                                                                     

Our forces are trained to use the 220 mm “Uragon” Rocket which triggers at least seven cluster explosions. But would you believe, Ukrainian civilians are walking down when there are immediate explosions?

“You see everyone is covered with blood. Looking at it, they drove us into a kindergarten, while we were on the motorway bridge at Stoyanka, 20 miles from Kiev on the third day of our attack."

You see according to our “Russian State Service of Extraordinary Situations", our troops pulled out two men and two women alive from the wreckage. But a third victim, a boy of around eight or ten, was found dead inside one of the cars.

We were taught to use our "GRAD" BM21, 220 mm; "SMERCH" 300 mm weaponry. But we don't have a chance to use these hand arms. 

Of course, our aerial bombers have done our work as you have seen on TV.

                                                                            


We are killing small numbers - 10 people died and 35 injured during the heavy bombardment of central Kharkiv. You know the success in any war is the product of two crucial factors - our ability to fight, and the willingness to suffer the costs. You know this war will cost about $20 billion a day?

We know it takes three to four months to produce replacements and ammunition. 

It is a tax on our working people, a drag on our economic growth.
We thought that our men and our weaponry were superior to the enemy.

We expected it would end quickly. But it has already lasted 18 days. Who knows, it may carry on for months.

The military costs of war have been exacerbated by the unprecedented level of international sanctions by a large coalition of countries.

Russian citizens have been targeted. Generous estimates suggest the Russian economy could shrink by 7 percent by next year, instead of the 2 percent growth that was forecast before the invasion. Some others estimate, it could double up to 15%.

The Russian people are calculating if this cost is worth their Eastern border being extended, as most are Russian speakers.

 Victor Cherubim























































































































  




  
















 

Monday, 7 March 2022

Change is happening?

Change is happening faster than ever, to stay ahead you need to anticipate what's next. Whether change brings opportunity, risk or disruption, we have to be ready. As we all know progress starts with ideas, whilst imagination helps, but it is experience which gives market perspective.
he Guardian has compiled a list of what we may expect in the next 20 years. Here is what they say.......... If I'd been writing this five years ago, it would have been all about technology: the internet, the fragmentation of media, mobile phones, social tools allowing consumers to regain power at the expense of corporations, all that sort of stuff. And all these things are important and will change how advertising works. But it's becoming clear that what'll really change advertising will be how we relate to it and what we're prepared to let it do. After all, when you look at advertising from the past the basic techniques haven't changed; what seems startlingly alien are the attitudes it was acceptable to portray and the products you were allowed to advertise. In 25 years, I bet there'll be many products we'll be allowed to buy but not see advertised – the things the government will decide we shouldn't be consuming because of their impact on healthcare costs or the environment but that they can't muster the political will to ban outright. So, we'll end up with all sorts of products in plain packaging with the product name in a generic typeface – as the government is currently discussing for cigarettes. But it won't stop there. We'll also be nudged into renegotiating the relationship between society and advertising, because over the next few years we're going to be interrupted by advertising like never before. Video screens are getting so cheap and disposable that they'll be plastered everywhere we go. And they'll have enough intelligence and connectivity that they'll see our faces, do a quick search on Facebook to find out who we are and direct a message at us based on our purchasing history. At least, that'll be the idea. It probably won't work very well and when it does work it'll probably drive us mad. Marketing geniuses are working on this stuff right now, but not all of them recognise that being allowed to do this kind of thing depends on societal consent – push the intrusion too far and people will push back. Society once did a deal accepting advertising because it seemed occasionally useful and interesting and because it paid for lots of journalism and entertainment. It's not necessarily going to pay for those things for much longer so we might start questioning whether we want to live in a Blade Runner world brought to us by Cillit Bang. Russell Davies, head of planning at the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather and a columnist for the magazines Campaign and Wired Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex' By 2030, we are likely to have developed no-frills brain-machine interfaces, allowing the paralysed to dance in their thought-controlled exoskeleton suits. I sincerely hope we will not still be interfacing with computers via keyboards, one forlorn letter at a time. I'd like to imagine we'll have robots to do our bidding. But I predicted that 20 years ago, when I was a sanguine boy leaving Star Wars, and the smartest robot we have now is the Roomba vacuum cleaner. So I won't be surprised if I'm wrong in another 25 years. Artificial intelligence has proved itself an unexpectedly difficult problem. Maybe we will understand what's happening when we immerse our heads into the colourful night blender of dreams. We will have cracked the secret of human memory by realising that it was never about storing things, but about the relationships between things. Will we have reached the singularity – the point at which computers surpass human intelligence and perhaps give us our comeuppance? We'll probably be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex for those who want it badly enough to risk the surgery. There will be smart drugs to enhance learning and memory and a flourishing black market among ambitious students to obtain them. Having lain to rest the nature-nurture dichotomy at that point, we will have a molecular understanding of the way in which cultural narratives work their way into brain tissue and of individual susceptibility to those stories. Then there's the mystery of consciousness. Will we finally have a framework that allows us to translate the mechanical pieces and parts into private, subjective experience? As it stands now, we don't even know what such a framework could look like ("carry the two here and that equals the experience of tasting cinnamon"). That line of research will lead us to confront the question of whether we can reproduce consciousness by replicating the exact structure of the brain – say, with zeros and ones, or beer cans and tennis balls. If this theory of materialism turns out to be correct, then we will be well on our way to downloading our brains into computers, allowing us to live forever in The Matrix. But if materialism is incorrect, that would be equally interesting: perhaps brains are more like radios that receive an as-yet-undiscovered force. The one thing we can be sure of is this: no matter how wacky the predictions we make today, they will look tame in the strange light of the future. David Eagleman, neuroscientist and writer Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is' The next 25 years will see fundamental advances in our understanding of the underlying structure of matter and of the universe. At the moment, we have successful descriptions of both, but we have open questions. For example, why do particles of matter have mass and what is the dark matter that provides most of the matter in the universe? I am optimistic that the answer to the mass question will be found within a few years, whether or not it is the mythical Higgs boson, and believe that the answer to the dark matter question will be found within a decade. Key roles in answering these questions will be made by experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider, which started operations in earnest last year and is expected to run for most of the next 20 years; others will be played by astrophysical searches for dark matter and cosmological observations such as those from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. Many theoretical proposals for answering these questions invoke new principles in physics, such as the existence of additional dimensions of space or a "supersymmetry" between the constituents of matter and the forces between them, and we will discover whether these ideas are useful for physics. Both these ideas play roles in string theory, the best guess we have for a complete theory of all the fundamental forces including gravity. Will string theory be pinned down within 20 years? My crystal ball is cloudy on this point, but I am sure that we physicists will have an exciting time trying to find out. John Ellis, theoretical physicist at Cern and King's College London Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower' 20 predictions A woman works on the production line of a poultry processing factory in Stary Oskol, central Russia. Photograph: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images When experts talk about the coming food security crisis, the date they fixate upon is 2030. By then, our numbers will be nudging 9 billion and we will need to be producing 50% more food than we are now. By the middle of that decade, therefore, we will either all be starving, and fighting wars over resources, or our global food supply will have changed radically. The bitter reality is that it will probably be a mixture of both. Developed countries such as the UK are likely, for the most part, to have attempted to pull up the drawbridge, increasing national production and reducing our reliance on imports. In response to increasing prices, some of us may well have reduced our consumption of meat, the raising of which is a notoriously inefficient use of grain. This will probably create a food underclass, surviving on a carb- and fat-heavy diet, while those with money scarf the protein. The developing world, meanwhile, will work to bridge the food gap by embracing the promise of biotechnology which the middle classes in the developed world will have assumed that they had the luxury to reject. In truth, any of the imported grain that we do consume will come from genetically modified crops. As climate change lays waste to the productive fields of southern Europe and north Africa, more water-efficient strains of corn, wheat and barley will be pressed into service; likewise, to the north, Russia will become a global food superpower as the same climate change opens up the once frozen and massive Siberian prairie to food production. The consensus now is that the planet does have the wherewithal to feed that huge number of people. It's just that some people in the west may find the methods used to do so unappetising. Jay Rayner, TV presenter and the Observer's food critic Nan0 technology: Nano 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession' Twenty years ago, Don Eigler, a scientist working for IBM in California, wrote out the logo of his employer in letters made of individual atoms. This feat was a graphic symbol of the potential of the new field of nanotechnology, which promises to rebuild matter atom by atom, molecule by molecule, and to give us unprecedented power over the material world. Some, like the futurist Ray Kurzweil, predict that nanotechnology will lead to a revolution, allowing us to make any kind of product for virtually nothing; to have computers so powerful that they will surpass human intelligence; and to lead to a new kind of medicine on a sub-cellular level that will allow us to abolish ageing and death. I don't think that Kurzweil's "technological singularity" – a dream of scientific transcendence that echoes older visions of religious apocalypse – will happen. Some stubborn physics stands between us and "the rapture of the nerds". But nanotechnology will lead to some genuinely transformative applications. New ways of making solar cells very cheaply on a very large scale offer us the best hope we have for providing low-carbon energy on a big enough scale to satisfy the needs of a growing world population aspiring to the prosperity we're used to in the developed world. We'll learn more about intervening in our biology at the sub-cellular level and this nano-medicine will give us new hope of overcoming really difficult and intractable diseases, such as Alzheimer's, that will increasingly afflict our population as it ages. The information technology that drives your mobile phone or laptop is already operating at the nanoscale. Another 25 years of development will lead us to a new world of cheap and ubiquitous computing, in which privacy will be a quaint obsession of our grandparents. Nanotechnology is a different type of science, respecting none of the conventional boundaries between disciplines and unashamedly focused on applications rather than fundamental understanding. Given the huge resources being directed towards nanotechnology in China and its neighbours, this may also be the first major technology of the modern era that is predominantly developed outside the US and Europe. Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Sheffield Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems' In the last decade, in the US and Europe but particularly in south-east Asia, we have witnessed a flight into virtual worlds, with people playing games such as Second Life. But over the course of the next 25 years, that flight will be successfully reversed, not because we're going to spend less time playing games, but because games and virtual worlds are going to become more closely connected to reality. There will be games where the action is influenced by what happens in reality; and there will be games that use sensors so that we can play them out in the real world – a game in which your avatar is your dog, which wears a game collar that measures how fast it's running and whether or not it's wagging its tail, for example, where you play with your dog to advance the narrative, as opposed to playing with a virtual character. I can imagine more physical activity games, too, and these might be used to harness energy – peripherals like a dance pad that actually captures energy from your dancing on top of it. Then there will be problem-solving games: there are already a lot of games in which scientists try to teach gamers real science – how to build proteins to cure cancer, for example. One surprising trend in gaming is that gamers today prefer, on average, three to one to play co-operative games rather than competitive games. Now, this is really interesting; if you think about the history of games, there really weren't co-operative games until this latest generation of video games. In every game you can think of – card games, chess, sport – everybody plays to win. But now we'll see increasing collaboration, people playing games together to solve problems while they're enjoying themselves. There are also studies on how games work on our minds and our cognitive capabilities, and a lot of science suggests you can use games to treat depression, anxiety and attention-deficit disorder. Making games that are both fun and serve a social purpose isn't easy – a lot of innovation will be required – but gaming will become increasingly integrated into society. Jane McGonigal, director of games research & development at the Institute for the Future in California and author of Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Help Us Change the World (Penguin) 11 Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future' The open web created by idealist geeks, hippies and academics, who believed in the free and generative flow of knowledge, is being overrun by a web that is safer, more controlled and commercial, created by problem-solving pragmatists. Henry Ford worked out how to make money by making products people wanted to own and buy for themselves. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are working out how to make money from allowing people to share, on their terms. Facebook and Apple are spawning cloud capitalism, in which consumers allow companies to manage information, media, ideas, money, software, tools and preferences on their behalf, holding everything in vast, floating clouds of shared data. We will be invited to trade invasions into our privacy – companies knowing ever more about our lives – for a more personalised service. We will be able to share, but on their terms. Julian Assange and the movement that has been ignited by WikiLeaks is the most radical version of the alternative: a free, egalitarian, open and public web. The fate of this movement will be a sign of things to come. If it can command broad support, then the open web has a chance to remain a mainstream force. If, however, it becomes little more than a guerrilla campaign, then the open web could be pushed to the margins, along with national public radio. By 2035, the web, as a single space largely made up of webpages accessed on computers, will be long gone. As the web goes mobile, those who pay more will get faster access. We will be sharing videos, simulations, experiences and environments, on a multiplicity of devices to which we'll pay as much attention as a light switch. Yet, many of the big changes of the next 25 years will come from unknowns working in their bedrooms and garages. And by 2035 we will be talking about the coming of quantum computing, which will take us beyond the world of binary, digital computing, on and off, black and white, 0s and 1s. The small town of Waterloo, Ontario, which is home to the Perimeter Institute, funded by the founder of BlackBerry, currently houses the largest collection of theoretical physicists in the world. The bedrooms of Waterloo are where the next web may well be made. Charles Leadbeater, author and social entrepreneur Fashion: 'Technology creates smarter clothes' Gareth Pugh show A model on the catwalk during the Gareth Pugh show at London Fashion Week in 2008. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images Fashion is such an important part of the way in which we communicate our identity to others, and for a very long time it's meant dress: the textile garments on our body. But in the coming decades, I think there'll be much more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of belonging and of making us feel great about ourselves. We're already designing our identities online – manipulating imagery to tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we're communicating in some depth through these new channels. With clothing, I think it's possible that we'll see a polarisation between items that are very practical and those that are very much about display – and maybe these are not things that you own but that you borrow or share. Technology is already being used to create clothing that fits better and is smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information back to you. This is partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where clothing comes from – so we'll see tags on garments that tell you where every part of it was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, too, for similar reasons, particularly as resources become scarcer and it becomes increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints. However, it's not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion's gone through a big cycle in the last 25 years – from being something that was treasured and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in prices. In fact, we've completely changed our relationship towards clothes and there's a real feeling among designers who I work with that they're trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content. I think there's definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue with you through your clothes. Dilys Williams, designer and the director for sustainable fashion at the London College of Fashion Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild' We all want to live in a world where species such as tigers, the great whales, orchids and coral reefs can persist and thrive and I am sure that the commitment that people have to maintaining the spectacle and diversity of life will continue. Over the past 50 years or so, there has been growing support for nature conservation. When we understand the causes of species losses, good conservation actions can and do reverse the trends. But it is going to become much harder. The human population has roughly doubled since the 1960s and will increase by another third by 2030. Demands for food, water and energy will increase, inevitably in competition with other species. People already use up to 40% of the world's primary production (energy) and this must increase, with important consequences for nature. In the UK, some familiar species will become scarcer as our rare habitats (mires, bogs and moorlands) are lost. We will be seeing the effects from gradual warming that will allow more continental species to live here, and in our towns and cities we'll probably have more species that have become adapted to living alongside people. We can conserve species when we really try, so I'm confident that the charismatic mega fauna and flora will mostly still persist in 2035, but they will be increasingly restricted to highly managed and protected areas. The survivors will be those that cope well with people and those we care about enough to save. Increasingly, we won't be living as a part of nature but alongside it, and we'll have redefined what we mean by the wild and wilderness. Crucially, we are still rapidly losing overall biodiversity, including soil micro-organisms, plankton in the oceans, pollinators and the remaining tropical and temperate forests. These underpin productive soils, clean water, climate regulation and disease-resistance. We take these vital services from biodiversity and ecosystems for granted, treat them recklessly and don't include them in any kind of national accounting. Georgina Mace, professor of conservation science and director of the Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London Architecture: What constitutes a 'city' will change In 2035, most of humanity will live in favelas. This will not be entirely wonderful, as many people will live in very poor housing, but it will have its good side. It will mean that cities will consist of series of small units organised, at best, by the people who know what is best for themselves and, at worst, by local crime bosses. Cities will be too big and complex for any single power to understand and manage them. They already are, in fact. The word "city" will lose some of its meaning: it will make less and less sense to describe agglomerations of tens of millions of people as if they were one place, with one identity. If current dreams of urban agriculture come true, the distinction between town and country will blur. Attempts at control won't be abandoned, however, meaning that strange bubbles of luxury will appear, like shopping malls and office parks. To be optimistic, the human genius for inventing social structures will mean that new forms of settlement we can't quite imagine will begin to emerge. All this assumes that environmental catastrophe doesn't drive us into caves. Nor does it describe what will happen in Britain, with a roughly stable population and a planning policy dedicated to preserving the status quo as much as possible. Britain in 25 years' time may look much as it does now, which is not hugely different from 25 years ago. Rowan Moore, Observer architecture correspondent Sport: 'Broadcasts will use holograms' Globalisation in sport will continue: it's a trend we've seen by the choice of Rio for the 2016 Olympics and Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. This will mean changes to traditional sporting calendars in recognition of the demands of climate and time zones across the planet. Sport will have to respond to new technologies, the speed at which we process information and apparent reductions in attention span. Shorter formats, such as Twenty20 cricket and rugby sevens, could aid the development of traditional sports in new territories. The demands of TV will grow, as will technology's role in umpiring and consuming sport. Electronics companies are already planning broadcasts using live holograms. I don't think we'll see an acceptance of performance-enhancing drugs: the trend has been towards zero tolerance and long may it remain so. Mike Lee, chairman of Vero Communications and ex-director of communications for London's 2012 Olympic bid Transport: 'There will be more automated cars' It's not difficult to predict how our transport infrastructure will look in 25 years' time – it can take decades to construct a high-speed rail line or a motorway, so we know now what's in store. But there will be radical changes in how we think about transport. The technology of information and communication networks is changing rapidly and internet and mobile developments are helping make our journeys more seamless. Queues at St Pancras station or Heathrow airport when the infrastructure can't cope for whatever reason should become a thing of the past, but these challenges, while they might appear trivial, are significant because it's not easy to organise large-scale information systems. The instinct to travel is innate within us, but we will have to do it in a more carbon-efficient way. It's hard to be precise, but I think we'll be cycling and walking more; in crowded urban areas we may see travelators – which we see in airports already – and more scooters. There will be more automated cars, like the ones Google has recently been testing. These driverless cars will be safer, but when accidents do happen, they may be on the scale of airline disasters. Personal jetpacks will, I think, remain a niche choice. Frank Kelly, professor of the mathematics of systems at Cambridge University, and former chief scientific adviser to the DfT Health: 'We'll feel less healthy' overweight woman An overweight woman in Maryland, USA. Photograph: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images Health systems are generally quite conservative. That's why the more radical forecasts of the recent past haven't quite materialised. Contrary to past predictions, we don't carry smart cards packed with health data; most treatments aren't genetically tailored; and health tourism to Bangalore remains low. But for all that, health is set to undergo a slow but steady revolution. Life expectancy is rising about three months each year, but we'll feel less healthy, partly because we'll be more aware of the many things that are, or could be, going wrong, and partly because more of us will be living with a long-term condition. We'll spend more on health but also want stronger action to influence health. The US Congressional Budget Office forecasts that US health spending will rise from 17% of the economy today to 25% in 2025 and 49% in 2082. Their forecasts may be designed to shock but they contain an important grain of truth. Spending on health and jobs in health is bound to grow. Some of that spending will go on the problems of prosperity – obesity, alcohol consumption and injuries from extreme sports. Currently fashionable ideas of "nudge" will have turned out to be far too weak to change behaviours. Instead, we'll be more in the realms of "shove" and "push", with cities trying to reshape whole environments to encourage people to walk and cycle. By 2030, mental health may at last be treated on a par with physical health. Medicine may have found smart drugs for some conditions but the biggest impact may be achieved from lower-tech actions, such as meditation in schools or brain gyms for pensioners. Healthcare will look more like education. Your GP will prescribe you a short course on managing your diabetes or heart condition, and when you get home there'll be an e-tutor to help you and a vast array of information about your condition. Almost every serious observer of health systems believes that the great general hospitals are already anachronistic, but because hospitals are where so much of the power lies, and so much of the public attachment, it would be a brave forecaster who suggested their imminent demise. Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of the Young Foundation Religion: 'Secularists will flatter to deceive' Over the next two and a half decades, it is quite possible that those Brits who follow a religion will continue both to fall in number and also become more orthodox or fundamentalist. Similarly, organised religions will increasingly work together to counter what they see as greater threats to their interests – creeping agnosticism and secularity. Another 10 years of failure by the Anglican church to face down the African-led traditionalists over women bishops and gay clerics could open the question of disestablishment of the Church of England. The country's politicians, including an increasingly gay-friendly Tory party, may find it difficult to see how state institutions can continue to be associated with an image of sexism and homophobia. I predict an increase in debate around the tension between a secular agenda which says it is merely seeking to remove religious privilege, end discrimination and separate church and state, and organised orthodox religion which counterclaims that this would amount to driving religious voices from the public square. Despite two of the three party leaders being professed atheists, the secular tendency in this country still flatters to deceive. There is, at present, no organised, non-religious, rationalist movement. In contrast, the forces of organised religion are better resourced, more organised and more politically influential than ever before. Dr Evan Harris, author of a secularist manifesto Theatre: 'Cuts could force a new political fringe' The theatre will weather the recent cuts. Some companies will close and the repertoire of others will be safe and cautious; the art form will emerge robust in a decade or so. The cuts may force more young people outside the existing structures back to an unsubsidised fringe and this may breed different types of work that will challenge the subsidised sector. Student marches will become more frequent and this mobilisation may breed a more politicised generation of theatre artists. We will see old forms from the 1960s re-emerge (like agit prop) and new forms will be generated to communicate ideology and politics. More women will emerge as directors, writers and producers. This change is already visible at the flagship subsidised house, the National Theatre, where the repertoire for bigger theatres like the Lyttelton already includes directors like Marianne Elliott and Josie Rourke, and soon the Cottesloe will start to embrace the younger generation – Polly Findlay and Lyndsey Turner. Katie Mitchell, theatre director Storytelling: 'Eventually there'll be a Twitter classic' Are you reading fewer books? I am and reading books is sort of my job. It's just that with the multifarious delights of the internet, spending 20 hours in the company of one writer and one story needs motivation. It's worth doing, of course; like exercise, its benefits are many and its pleasures great. And yet everyone I know is doing it less. And I can't see that that trend will reverse. That's the bad news. Twenty-five years from now, we'll be reading fewer books for pleasure. But authors shouldn't fret too much; e-readers will make it easier to impulse-buy books at 4am even if we never read past the first 100 pages. And stories aren't becoming less popular – they're everywhere, from adverts to webcomics to fictional tweets – we're only beginning to explore the exciting possibilities of web-native literature, stories that really exploit the fractal, hypertextual way we use the internet. My guess is that, in 2035, stories will be ubiquitous. There'll be a tube-based soap opera to tune your iPod to during your commute, a tale (incorporating on-sale brands) to enjoy via augmented reality in the supermarket. Your employer will bribe you with stories to focus on your job. Most won't be great, but then most of everything isn't great – and eventually there'll be a Twitter-based classic. Naomi Alderman, novelist and games writer As 2022 begins, there’s a new year resolution we’d like you to consider. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. We’d like to invite you to join more than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, who now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent. Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful. And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

The Tragi-Comedy of the Present Ukrainian War?


 We often think of war as a tragedy, but for once shall we compare and contrast the drama enfolding before our eyes as a comedy. It seems to be a tragi-comedy, like a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms, most often seen in dramatic literature. 

Nothing it seems could be further from comedy than the wonton destruction and self-destruction that constitute the very nature of war. 

We have kinship, brother fighting brother. We see everything that was built with hard earned labour over years, if not decades, being destroyed. We have the Brits praising the bravery and the valour of the Ukrainians, after trying to stir it up, just short of a nuclear escapade. We have the United States, de-escalate by not wanting to fight a war with Russia, but supplying the latest technological armoury to its neighbours, for a war by proxy. 

A retired British General has stated that the more airstrikes and shelling begin to destroy large parts of Ukrainian towns and cities, this scenario will make defending easier for Ukrainians. In the language of warfare, it will require more Russian troops needed to attack such positions as compared to advancing their battalions over open ground, or virgin territory. Should more Russian troops enter such devastated territory, perhaps, having to fight on foot, street by street, town by town, it is believed the conflict will see Ukraine turn to “guerrilla warfare” as insurgency rises. 

This is well and good if the Russian forces are not “used to it” or have proven military strategy. The lessons of warfare recently seen in Chechnya, Grozny and Syria, all contradict this theory. 

Understandably once you “rubble a city”, it becomes “much harder to take it”. It is because you have to enter and work “close and personal to winkle the enemy” out of shattered buildings. “This is really difficult, if you have trashed the place, the ground with artillery?”                                                             

All this reasoning is valid, if Russia was going to take Ukraine by storm. Who knows how long this war will last? Who knows what is in the mind of President Putin? Who knows what is in the mind of the people of Russia? 

Did you know the comedy of wars? The paradox of war is that arms superiority, or in layman’s language, superior resources, is seemingly a great disadvantage to fight a long“prolonged war”. It is an accepted fact in the West, that Russia will fight this war in Ukraine in similar fashion to the way it fought its war in Chechnya. Russia may have other ideas?

Besides, no two wars are the same? If it was the enemy will have pre-empt tactics, perhaps, the strategy?

 Of course, Russia’s superiority in size, in Cyber Warfare, in the air missiles with the latest “laser tech” in their MIG fighter jets, and devastating capacity, in fact, capability, has been proven. Besides, it “sucks” the intelligence of the FSB “par excellence”. 

Alexander Vasilyevich Bortnikov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Бо́ртников; born 15 November 1951) is a Russian official. He has been Director of the FSB since 12 May 2008. He belongs to the Siloviki of Putin's inner circle.

At the same time, it is now becoming clear, that three senior Russian Commanders have been killed in this war, perhaps, by a trap set by Ukrainians, to make extraordinary personal take inordinate risks with their lives at the outset of this eleven day war, so far. 

“Who knows, if this war is going to be without end?” With devastation of territory, loss of life, loss of everything they have both achieved up to now, This will be horrific, not only for Ukraine, for Russia and for the world.                                        

What can we in UK expect in the days to come? 

We already see Police interrogation of people, “stop and search” of those they have intelligence, who look and speak Russian in crowed train and Underground stations, besides what the UK Government wants to do, with the assets of Russian Oligarchs. 

President Imran Khan of Pakistan has refused the request of the West to condemn the action of Russia in Ukraine, perhaps, a tactical way, in return for Russian oil and gas exports at lucrative rates? Can we expect anything different from Iran either for other reasons ? 

We already see that oil, gas, wheat, corn, soya, fertilizer among others, exports to UK from the “so called energy and bread basket of Europe, in Russia and Ukraine,” shut off. This will cause the price of an ordinary loaf of bread, the staple diet of the poor, to be out of their reach. I can visualise food rationing in UK in the not too distant future? 

What can the Russians expect in the days to come? 

Without going to detail, which I don’t have access, it would be foolish to guess? There will perhaps,be, a tightening of belts, I mean money belts at least? 

What can the Ukrainians expect in the days to come? 

President Putin’s forces have resumed hostilities after a period of evacuation of Mariupol, a port city in the south of Ukraine. They have a close eye on the bigger port in the Black Sea, Odessa. 

The Russians have “made it” to Fastiv, Obukhiv, and Vyshneve, west of Kiev. 

 The West is looking to the Ukrainians to wage a proxy war for the West, while simultaneously, gearing up for a mission to rescue President Volodymyr Zelinsky of Ukraine before he is cornered, and following three assassination attempts. 

Who knows what actor, comedian President Zelinsky, has up his sleeve? He is no pushover either?

Victor Cherubim