The State of Affairs in Russia

[The Minsky Moment]

It was 100% clear from the start that the US and NATO will reject the Russian list of demands. Still, Russia went about it with maximum publicity. This puzzles me.

I agree with this.  I don't know enough about domestic and internal politics in Russia to guess at whether that is a factor here.

[Tamas]

It was 100% clear from the start that the US and NATO will reject the Russian list of demands. Still, Russia went about it with maximum publicity. This puzzles me.

I agree with this.  I don't know enough about domestic and internal politics in Russia to guess at whether that is a factor here.

Based on historical example that seemed like a clear case of fabricating a casus belli to me, and the first time I thought for real Russia would attack. Who knows what goes on in the background. Maybe they just wanted the aggro, maybe they have danced back from it at the last moment, maybe they just want to strengthen the CB with more failed talks as proof of "Western agression".

[Berkut]

Shelf, I think the only bone I really have to pick with you is that I do think some of the problems the West is having *right now* have to do with cultural factors.

Yes, our institutions have done a shitty job and damaged their own credibility. But....is that really any different now then any other time? Really? I am not sure that is really the case in general.

I think a big part of our problem is, frankly, exactly the attitude you are espousing. This kind of moral relativism in the detail, where we get into this minutia of analysis on the NYTs coverage of some story they fucked up, and lash ourselves and wail about how terrible it all is, while the bad actors use that same angst to basically say "....yep! See! Everyone knows the NYT is trash and biased! Tucker Carlson says...." and we are handing them the ammo to shoot ourselves with, and we seem to lack the will or interest in taking any kind of stand on principle or just state outright that despite its flaws and opportunity for improvement, our system is in fact better than the alternatives, and we should be willing to fight for it it rhetorically and physically if necessary.

Instead, you spend your time bitching about how screwed up OUR systems are, and the Tucker Carlsons eat that up and spew it back out, and the sea of people in the middle see one side willing to take a stand for their ideas, and the other side can't seem to even believe in their own principles, and is too busy self-flagellating to actually disagree in principle with someone who is literally standing in front of them telling them that really, it's not so unreasonable for Russia to threaten to fucking nuke Europe if the West doesn't do exactly as they are told.

I think we have systemic problems for sure, driven by technology and a unwillingness of those in power to relax their grip on it in response to those changes in tech and social norms. Maybe that alone is enough to doom us. But this cultural malaise of navel gazing at how terrible it is that the NYT is too preachy while the "alternative media" that gains its traction from a bunch of people bitching about how biased the mainstream media is against conservatives and so lets just go listen to Tucker is at least as dangerous.

Note: Saying the media is biased is a non-statement. It is tautologically true and largely meaningless in the context of a useful discussion. Of course they are biased - everyone is biased, and you should understand that going in to any evaluation of literally anything. But that is used as a stand in for "some particular media I don't like has it out for us, and hence they are in fact lying about what is happening, and therefore I can reasonably ignore all the media and just listen to what Vlad or Tucker or Youtube or whatever tells me!" And that is how this is being used in the actual world, and you can see that happening right here, in this very thread. That is what I find fascinating.

That was just a long winded way of saying the truth is complicated, but deceit is simple. A lie can run around the world three time before the truth gets out of bed in the morning.

[Sheilbh]

It was 100% clear from the start that the US and NATO will reject the Russian list of demands. Still, Russia went about it with maximum publicity. This puzzles me.

I agree with this.  I don't know enough about domestic and internal politics in Russia to guess at whether that is a factor here.

Based on historical example that seemed like a clear case of fabricating a casus belli to me, and the first time I thought for real Russia would attack. Who knows what goes on in the background. Maybe they just wanted the aggro, maybe they have danced back from it at the last moment, maybe they just want to strengthen the CB with more failed talks as proof of "Western agression".

This is where I'm also puzzled for a few reasons.

If they wanted a manufacture to justify invading Ukraine - why would expand your list of grievances to include wider, long-standing ones about NATO and the West? In 2014 the invasion was very quick and unexpected as it took place during the Sochi Olympics when the world's eyes were on Russia - why now is it taking place over months and with very obvious build up? Similarly if you want a CB then making it about the West and Russia's long-standing grievances seems odd - why not manufacture an incident in Ukraine (which doesn't seem beyond the ken of Russia) or trick Ukraine into thinking they can settle the Donbass then roll in as a peacekeeper/on "humanitarian" grounds (the Georgia 2008 playbook)?

Those questions are all why I think it is more likely about the West more generally and it is coercive diplomacy. But I don't know because as GdM and others have said the behaviour on that front is also question-begging. It's very unclear - which is why I slightly do wonder if it is just Putin trying to force the agenda, isn't sure what they'll do next and is going to mainly be reactive now.

[Gaijin de Moscu]

This is where I'm also puzzled for a few reasons.

If they wanted a manufacture to justify invading Ukraine - why would expand your list of grievances to include wider, long-standing ones about NATO and the West? In 2014 the invasion was very quick and unexpected as it took place during the Sochi Olympics when the world's eyes were on Russia - why now is it taking place over months and with very obvious build up? Similarly if you want a CB then making it about the West and Russia's long-standing grievances seems odd - why not manufacture an incident in Ukraine (which doesn't seem beyond the ken of Russia) or trick Ukraine into thinking they can settle the Donbass then roll in as a peacekeeper/on "humanitarian" grounds (the Georgia 2008 playbook)?

Those questions are all why I think it is more likely about the West more generally and it is coercive diplomacy. But I don't know because as GdM and others have said the behaviour on that front is also question-begging. It's very unclear - which is why I slightly do wonder if it is just Putin trying to force the agenda, isn't sure what they'll do next and is going to mainly be reactive now.

Why would Russia invade Ukraine, in the first place? What possible strategic objective would make this necessary?

Russia has already secured its old military base in Crimea. It has made the gas pipeline through Ukraine irrelevant, so it can't be held hostage by this ancient, outdated infrastructure. What else is there to justify a full scale invasion? I can't think of anything at all.

In Georgia, it was a response (assessed as disproportionate) to the Georgian aggression. This isn't a Russian "truth" but the conclusion by a EU-backed commission:

https://www.google.ch/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSTRE58T4MO20090930

I honestly rule out this invasion threat at this stage. Too much to lose for unclear gains.

My wild ideas are that this list of public demands has something to do either with Russia's role in the US-China confrontation, or with Russia's own play at coercive diplomacy, as you say.

The good news is that after the latest round of NATO-Russia negotiations, both parties seem to want to continue discussions. We'll see.

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, I think the only bone I really have to pick with you is that I do think some of the problems the West is having *right now* have to do with cultural factors.

Yes, our institutions have done a shitty job and damaged their own credibility. But....is that really any different now then any other time? Really? I am not sure that is really the case in general.

I think a big part of our problem is, frankly, exactly the attitude you are espousing. This kind of moral relativism in the detail, where we get into this minutia of analysis on the NYTs coverage of some story they fucked up, and lash ourselves and wail about how terrible it all is, while the bad actors use that same angst to basically say "....yep! See! Everyone knows the NYT is trash and biased! Tucker Carlson says...." and we are handing them the ammo to shoot ourselves with, and we seem to lack the will or interest in taking any kind of stand on principle or just state outright that despite its flaws and opportunity for improvement, our system is in fact better than the alternatives, and we should be willing to fight for it it rhetorically and physically if necessary.

Instead, you spend your time bitching about how screwed up OUR systems are, and the Tucker Carlsons eat that up and spew it back out, and the sea of people in the middle see one side willing to take a stand for their ideas, and the other side can't seem to even believe in their own principles, and is too busy self-flagellating to actually disagree in principle with someone who is literally standing in front of them telling them that really, it's not so unreasonable for Russia to threaten to fucking nuke Europe if the West doesn't do exactly as they are told.

I think we have systemic problems for sure, driven by technology and a unwillingness of those in power to relax their grip on it in response to those changes in tech and social norms. Maybe that alone is enough to doom us. But this cultural malaise of navel gazing at how terrible it is that the NYT is too preachy while the "alternative media" that gains its traction from a bunch of people bitching about how biased the mainstream media is against conservatives and so lets just go listen to Tucker is at least as dangerous.

Note: Saying the media is biased is a non-statement. It is tautologically true and largely meaningless in the context of a useful discussion. Of course they are biased - everyone is biased, and you should understand that going in to any evaluation of literally anything. But that is used as a stand in for "some particular media I don't like has it out for us, and hence they are in fact lying about what is happening, and therefore I can reasonably ignore all the media and just listen to what Vlad or Tucker or Youtube or whatever tells me!" And that is how this is being used in the actual world, and you can see that happening right here, in this very thread. That is what I find fascinating.

That was just a long winded way of saying the truth is complicated, but deceit is simple. A lie can run around the world three time before the truth gets out of bed in the morning.

So I think that I would take almost the opposite view

I think our problems are structural and systemic rather than cultural. I think the culture and the "post-truth" and populism, are symptoms (maybe morbid symptoms) of problems rather than their cause - they are downstream.

My own view is that the problem is driven by an alienation from politics and the political. I think that is partly the fault of hiving off policy decisions to technocrats and the administrative state, reducing the scope over which people feel they can democratically control in a straightforward way. As I listed, I think there have also been huge examples of institutional failure without consequence which makes people feel that actually there is a class of people making those decisions who primarily protect each other - as we watch W be canonised into cuddly ex-President rather than a profound failure who has at least one failed war, the biggest crash since the Depression and who authorised the use of torture. There are other aspects, but I don't think the alienation from politics is unjustified.

Because of that I don't think the problem is somehow epistemic and that we can solve the issues in Western democracies - especially the US - with fact-checking. In fact, I think that re-inforces the forces that are driving alienation. Especially if we are litigating quite nuanced and technical points - I think this has been a big issue with covid and "follow the science" as we've moved from a fairly clear picture of what covid was and what that meant in the summer of 2020. Now we're in a situation where it's about balancing risks and uncertainties which we're not good at communicating and I think too many people get caught out because they go for the "noble lie" when in my view they should talk about uncertainty and risk and treat the public like adults who are given awesome responsibility to shape our society in a democracy, rather than just a stakeholder to be managed.

Or the credentialism that often goes with where we first state our expertise or personal experience that justifies our voice on what is or is not right - I'm as guilty of this as anyone, I really remember getting very annoyed at Caprice (a glamour model) arguing with a doctor during the first wave when Caprice was pushing for lockdown and the doctor was following our experts at the time in saying we needed to not do that. Because Caprice was right - similarly the tech bro who did that Medium post debating with a professor of epidemiology from the LSTHM - to me it felt like the worst bits of "debates" about climate or the economic impact of Brexit where you have one side that's got the knowledge and expertise but the other has the media nous. As I say - as it turned out the experts were wrong, I was wrong and the former page 3 model was absolutely correct

I think this is also what is driving the issues around "identity politics" and all of that because I think people still want to be political but they've been alienated from the democratic process, huge sections of policy is managed by consensus or technocrats and shouldn't be challenged but that political instinct still exists. So instead of being about what we do and what we should do, it is moved into politics around meaning. Both the meaning of identity within the world but also the meaning of truth - I think they're two sides of the same coin. Both, in my view, are trying to provide a route out of our current end of end of history funk, but actually re-inforce it inadvertantly.

I think what matters is re-invigorating democracy as an agent of change and people being able to control society (and markets) around them by acting together - and the solution is in making politics central to that again rather than what is true or false, or who we are. I think that's the key and the most important thing not the culture because I think democratic institutions and material facts produce a democratic culture, and given our culture right now I think we should probably ask what caused that.

[Tamas]

Generally I agree with Berkut and not Sheilbh, but:

I agree with this:

I think what matters is re-invigorating democracy as an agent of change and people being able to control society (and markets) around them by acting together

But I don't think this follows from it:

- and the solution is in making politics central to that again rather than what is true or false,

Maybe you mean something different but I think the problems you are describing come in large specifically from a reluctance to declare things true or false, focusing on that, and then standing your ground on those. Berkut outlined how any uncertain person can see one side (the far right) being (well, projecting being) absolutely sure on the world its problems and the solutions to those problems, and the other being all "well yeah I mean I think this is true but there are many possible interpretations and I would hate to run the risk of disagreeing with you strongly as you are entitled to your opinion about the sky's colour".

There are truths progressives and moderates can rally behind. e.g. You can list the many faults small and big as long as you like, but liberal democracy has consistently been proven to be the superior form of government to the various other experiments, when it comes to stability, and the personal freedom as well as living standards of its citizens. Abortive attempts by some societies at this form of government is a bad reflection on a society's readiness for this form of government NOT the form of government itself.

If we know we live under better circumstances than a feudal shithole like Russia (or Hungary), or a dystopian hellhole like China, we should be brave and proud to say so. Even and especially if we see a lot of issues with our own system of government and can list endless issues that appear to be threatening it. In part because if those issues do not exist (or more realistically, hidden/suppressed) in the other forms government that's because they are not allowed to ever develop and come out into the open, causing worse dysfunctionality. e.g. Russia and China don't have anti-vaxxers gaining in numbers and taking to the streets, because they would have their heads bashed in. That doesn't mean the same idiotic sentiment isn't widespread there, just look at the Russian vaccination numbers.

[crazy canuck]

Yes, our institutions have done a shitty job and damaged their own credibility. But....is that really any different now then any other time? Really? I am not sure that is really the case in general.

Has the destruction of democratic institutions within the US become normalized to the point that you have forgotten what functional liberal democratic institutions look like?

[Sheilbh]

Maybe you mean something different but I think the problems you are describing come in large specifically from a reluctance to declare things true or false, focusing on that, and then standing your ground on those. Berkut outlined how any uncertain person can see one side (the far right) being (well, projecting being) absolutely sure on the world its problems and the solutions to those problems, and the other being all "well yeah I mean I think this is true but there are many possible interpretations and I would hate to run the risk of disagreeing with you strongly as you are entitled to your opinion about the sky's colour".

So there's a couple of things - one is I treat Languish as if I'm with friends and everyone's pretty smart and what I value are the different perspectives. Which I think about and try and see how they sit with how I'm seeing things. I think that's different from general public discourse. If we had someone who was an out-and-out anti-vaxx conspiracy, I just wouldn't engage. But we don't. I think that's part of it.

It's not a reluctance. It's that I think there's a fetishisation of "truth" going on - especially in liberal/centrist circles in the West as the way of explaining everything. I don't think it's the central issue, I think focusing on it is counter-productive and I don't think democracy is going to be saved by more fact-checking. I think part of that is because liberal/centrists were quite dominant during the end of history phase - when most big political issues were "settled". There was broad consensus on the general direction of travel on most of the big issues that twentieth century politics revolved around. That is under attack. My explanation is that it's because the period of liberal dominance didn't work for everyone, that it ended in an economic disaster - and that the challenge and solution is too make things work for people again and re-engage them with democracy. I think that will ineivtably mean political arguments and voting on issues that had been considered "settled" which may not develop in the way liberals would like.

I think it's wrong but self-exculpatory for people who supported that consensus to believe that what's wrong now is that people are more susceptible to dishnoesty or that there are more dishonest and ruthless people around rather than that there were gaps in their system, that bits of it failed, that people were let down and alienated from democracy. I don't think that's true. I think in past periods - and there have been some - the reason this "post-truth" stuff wasn't widespread in other periods isn't because people were better informed, or better morally. I think it's a combination of technology and alienation/trust - not truth - around the political system. It honestly just feels very ancien regime yearning for the old certainties.

To go back to Berk's Hitler example - for me the key in Hitler's rise is not the attacks on the free press but the fact that only one political party (the SPD) genuinely believed in the Weimar system, the Weimar system (not least because of that) failed to deliver for many people and the constant street violence/fear of communism. The thing I find worrying about the GOP isn't the dishonesty but that I'm not sure they believe in the democratic system anymore, which I think is the bigger, more fundamental issue.

There are truths progressives and moderates can rally behind. e.g. You can list the many faults small and big as long as you like, but liberal democracy has consistently been proven to be the superior form of government to the various other experiments, when it comes to stability, and the personal freedom as well as living standards of its citizens. Abortive attempts by some societies at this form of government is a bad reflection on a society's readiness for this form of government NOT the form of government itself.

If we know we live under better circumstances than a feudal shithole like Russia (or Hungary), or a dystopian hellhole like China, we should be brave and proud to say so. Even and especially if we see a lot of issues with our own system of government and can list endless issues that appear to be threatening it. In part because if those issues do not exist (or more realistically, hidden/suppressed) in the other forms government that's because they are not allowed to ever develop and come out into the open, causing worse dysfunctionality. e.g. Russia and China don't have anti-vaxxers gaining in numbers and taking to the streets, because they would have their heads bashed in. That doesn't mean the same idiotic sentiment isn't widespread there, just look at the Russian vaccination numbers.

That's fine - I think it is a better system and I wished we lived in a world where the main things that mattered were stability, personal freedom and living standards. But we don't. I think we live in a world where power (hard and soft) and state capacity still matter.

My point on the way we view China and Russia is on the "our system works better" point - is that to me that just seems hubristic and really dangerous. Putin has been incredibly successful measured against what he was trying to achieve in the last 21 years; China has been incredibly successful against what they were trying to achieve in the last 40 years. I don't think the West has been particularly successful since the end of the cold war and I don't think it has any great achievements in that period to point to (I would have said eastward expansion of the EU but it's a bit of a mixed bag now ). So, like the NYT or the Catholic Church, we can just assume our position and magisterial command is going to endure based on recent history - it all needs to be earned again (and earned every generation I think) which goes back to whether our system is working.

[Tamas]

Thanks for illustrating my point Sheilbh.

If you think the system Putin built and the opportunities he missed is a success but the world the West built since the Cold War is lacklustre in comparison we may be too far away in point of view to discuss further. And don't get me started on the great successful China achievement of letting in Western capital while maintaining their boots on their own citizen's faces.

Whatever economical success these countries can show off it is DESPITE the political systems they built, not because of them.

Meanwhile, Russia goes even more shrill:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/13/russia-says-talks-with-nato-over-ukraine-are-hitting-a-dead-end

Russia has refused to rule out a military deployment to Cuba and Venezuela if talks with the west on European security and Ukraine fail to go its way, while warning the latest discussions with Nato were hitting a dead end.

In an apparent attempt to up the ante with the Biden administration, Sergei Ryabkov, who led Russia's delegation in a meeting with the US on Monday, told Russian television he could neither confirm nor exclude sending military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if talks fail. Asked about these steps, he said "it all depends on the actions by our US counterparts".

[Jacob]

Tamas, I don't think the issues of the West is that what we have is lacklustre compared to what Putin has. It's that it's lacklustre compared to what we could have, compared to what our ideals (such as they are) tell us we should be.

I agree with Sheilbh on the fetishisation of "truth". It's not that truth doesn't matter - of course it does - but it's that so much of the discourse centres around determining what reading of a complex subject is "true" and once that is done, everything else is just supposed to follow - including solutions and changes in people's behaviour. And the if the solutions and behaviour changes aren't forthcoming, it's because people are either being idiots or pernicious, or because they failed to see the light. So we better double down on establishing "the truth". And it's not really working.

IMO it's rather similar to how folks further on the left often will focus on determining "who's the real victim" and assume once that's been established solutions and behaviour changes will follow easily... and if they don't it's because people are either idiots or pernicious.

In both cases the dynamic looks to me like "once we win the argument to our satisfaction (which we inevitably will), then the world will move in the right direction... and if it doesn't, that's proof that the world has failed us." And I don't think that particularly helps improving anything and - I suspect that it is often directly counterproductive.

It's not that the truth doesn't matter (or that it doesn't matter who's truly been victimized). It does. But finding out the answer to either question is insufficient while it's often being treated as the only argument that matters.

[Admiral Yi]

In Georgia, it was a response (assessed as disproportionate) to the Georgian aggression. This isn't a Russian "truth" but the conclusion by a EU-backed commission:

The "Georgian agression" was directed at separatists within their own borders.

[Berkut]

My point on the way we view China and Russia is on the "our system works better" point - is that to me that just seems hubristic and really dangerous. Putin has been incredibly successful measured against what he was trying to achieve in the last 21 years; China has been incredibly successful against what they were trying to achieve in the last 40 years.

Tamas is very much right. If we count the end of the Cold War as being in 1990, then global life expectancy since then has risen by 8 years. That is 13%. That is very traceable to increases in standards of living that is the outcome of the Western liberal polity and free markets.

Child mortality has dropped by 67% in India and Brazil, and a similar amount in the rest of the developing world, again, as a result of the triumph of Western medicine, technology, and the free market. That didn't happen because China was able to put down those racals in Hong Kong, or because Putin was able to successfully make sure he could brutalize Georgia.

I can go on and on and on about just how much the global conditions for most people have improved *dramatically* in the last 30 years.

Hell, since 1990 the number of countries classified broadly as "autocracies" versus "democracies" has switched!

The majority of the world's countries are now democracies. The chart here depicts the slow rise of the number of democracies over the last two centuries.

The end of World War I led to the birth of many democracies. However, during the 1930s, many of these young democracies then reverted to being autocratic.

After World War II, the number of democracies began growing again. But it was the fall of the Iron Curtain circa 1989 that led to a more dramatic increase in the number of democracies.

In 1990 there were 111 countries that were defined as an autocratic, and 57 democracies. Today the numbers are 80 and 99.

https://ourworldindata.org/democracy

This is *exactly* what I mean. We stare out our navels thinking about how fucked up we are, and don't bother to recognize that our system works fucking astoundingly well when you look at actual information, data, and bjective measures.

You look at Russia stomping on their neighbors and China growing their own economy and you have bought into THEIR message that they are kicking ass and the West is languishing! Why? What data do you have that Russia and Putin are all that awesome other then what Putin says? The data doesn't suggest it at all!

They have succeeded in what they wanted to succeed at? So what? Do we have to accept that what they want is actually good for, well....anyone? In the case of Russia it is pretty clear it isn't even good for Russian beyond their sense of the shallowest of nationalistic pride. Their standard of living still sucks, they are less free, corruption is terrible (and yes, by that I mean a lot worse then the west, again, the data show this), inequality is terrible.

Your unwillingness to say "our system works better" when the data shows that it does in fact actually work a LOT BETTER is a good part of the problem. Because the alternative to OUR system they are putting forth is not a better version of OUR system, it is THEIR system. And their system would fucking suck for nearly everyone.

They are certainly not worried about the "hubris" of saying their system is better.

[Berkut]

Tamas, I don't think the issues of the West is that what we have is lacklustre compared to what Putin has. It's that it's lacklustre compared to what we could have, compared to what our ideals (such as they are) tell us we should be.

I agree with Sheilbh on the fetishisation of "truth". It's not that truth doesn't matter - of course it does - but it's that so much of the discourse centres around determining what reading of a complex subject is "true" and once that is done, everything else is just supposed to follow - including solutions and changes in people's behaviour. And the if the solutions and behaviour changes aren't forthcoming, it's because people are either being idiots or pernicious, or because they failed to see the light. So we better double down on establishing "the truth". And it's not really working.

IMO it's rather similar to how folks further on the left often will focus on determining "who's the real victim" and assume once that's been established solutions and behaviour changes will follow easily... and if they don't it's because people are either idiots or pernicious.

In both cases the dynamic looks to me like "once we win the argument to our satisfaction (which we inevitably will), then the world will move in the right direction... and if it doesn't, that's proof that the world has failed us." And I don't think that particularly helps improving anything and - I suspect that it is often directly counterproductive.

It's not that the truth doesn't matter (or that it doesn't matter who's truly been victimized). It does. But finding out the answer to either question is insufficient while it's often being treated as the only argument that matters.

The fight we are having now though is between our system and "their" system, which is some flavor of authoritarian autocracy.

There is no debate that a better version of our system would be better, that goes without saying.

We are sadly losing out not to ourselves, but to those who are using our angst over not meeting our own aspirations for what we could be (and should be) to present an alternative that is a demonstrably worse then the worst possible version of our system.

I do not agree that the problem is that people think truth is the only argument that matters. I don't look at my position in that manner at all.

I think the truth is a necessary, but insufficient, condition to success. It seems to me that Shelf thinks it is neither sufficient or necessary, and hence is willing to go along with people like GdM who just wave away the truth as all relative, and hence effectively meaningless.

Or at the least are willing to treat it as such from a practical manner, which is the only way I can see how you get to a place where you are willing to just accept that someone who says "The western media is all biased so I ignore it" is still engaged in reasonable discourse. Or "that argument is just the same thing Russia says, so it is basically the same".

[Gaijin de Moscu]

In Georgia, it was a response (assessed as disproportionate) to the Georgian aggression. This isn't a Russian "truth" but the conclusion by a EU-backed commission:

The "Georgian agression" was directed at separatists within their own borders.

I'm not going to argue opinions. I've linked to the internationally recognised, EU-chartered report.