Elected Dictator

That's Vladimir Putin for you, Time magazine's person of the year 2007. This rather long article details Putin's rise to power, how he has been able to revive Russia from the days of Yeltsin and the problems that Russia is facing today. It's a must read; giving insight into the widespread corruptioin in Russia, the powerful leader's personality; and most importantly the way he has commandeered the ship with the right balance of democracy and dictator-like authority; earning himself the title of elected dictator from the author.

Obedience to Authority or Just Conformity

"How far humans will go when an authority figure orders them to hurt another human being. Many wondered after the horrors of WWII, and not for the first time, how people could be motivated to commit acts of such brutality towards each other. Not just those in the armed forces, but ordinary people were coerced into carrying out the most cruel and gruesome acts."





This study, conducted by Stanley Milgram sheds some light on this, though not without its controversies.



Personally I would agree with the conformity view. I have seen people doing stupid things - though not dangerous or stupid to a big extent, but still things which a person with a better control and thought process will deny - just because they have been asked to do so. Majority of the population, i feel, find it comfortable to follow orders and not make decisions by themselves; that i guess is the basic reason behind this and that I feel is the reason our civilization has developed in such a way that we have very few people at the top governing most of the others; take any government or any corporate, this is the basic structure of the organization. Though honestly, I cannot think of any other system which will be as stable, but its worth thinking why humans chose such a system; or to be more precise why such a system is the most stable. Any one who can shed light on this is more than welcome. :)

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Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake

read the article first

I wonder what is the reason behind such mistakes by one of the most advanced security organisations of the world. There are two possibilities which come into my mind: one that such things are inherent in the system and the so called war against terrorism, and the other that the people running such operations are more worried about getting results to show to their boss than really curbing the problem of terrorism.

I think its a mix of both. Like one example in the article says, one person was arrested because an al Qaida operative named him out of vendetta(apparently he was the al Qaida guy's prof and didn't give him good grades). Naturally, initially the CIA would apprehend the prof guy. But it gets bad when u keep him under custody for long without any real evidence.
Its an established principle that no matter how many criminals go scotfree but law should never punish an innocent. Some trouble to the innocent is necessary - an evil necessity of today's world. But care must be taken to prevent this. The priority of catching terrorists and that of not catching innocent men should be similar.
And this can be insured only when the top level people of such an organisation took steps accordingly. We cannot expect field operatives to take care of this.

So ultimately it boils down to the decision of the policy makers. What they need to understand is that , apart from facing the immediate scenario with the correct amount of gunpower, we need to take care that the hatred which leads to terrorism is removed. We need to remove terrorism and not terrorists. After all, by troubling innocent people we are creating more negativity than any positive results we expect.