Basically, “anarchy” is about everybody for himself. And damn everybody else – even though most forget about this part.
While “secession” is mostly about someone trying to carve a ‘piece of the action’ for himself – and some people (naively?) following him. Maybe hoping that the new ruler would prove to be better than the old one?
Hardly a day passes by without Putin, Russia’s current ruler, being present at the top of every major news channel.
While sometime ago he was lionized on the cover of many glossy magazines nowadays he is the star of a lot gloomier articles.
Happier days (last month). Photographer: Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Image
What’s going on there?
About a week ago a prominent Russian journalist addressed an open letter “to President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, where he discusses his case and the significance its abandonment has for Russia as a nation“,
Oleg Kashin, the author of the open letter, which can be read here in English, had been beaten to a pulp some 5 years ago and “Last month, on September 7, 2015, after a surprisingly exhaustive investigation by Russian police, Kashin revealed the names of his alleged attackers. The men appear to be linked to Andrey Turchak, the powerful governor of Pskov, and ex-employees of the security department of “Zaslon,” a company owned by Turchak’s family that designs and produces aircraft electronics and weapons-targeting systems. Though the evidence against Turchak and his entourage has mounted in the press, he remains free and in office. He hasn’t even been questioned.”
Well, Kashin’s case is the perfect illustration for what Adam Michnik has mentioned last August: “Russia non è uno Stato totalitario, ma è un sistema autoritario” (Russia is not a totalitarian state but an authoritarian system).
This observation solves perfectly an apparent paradox. How come the Russian police discovers, after five years, who had beaten – following orders given by one’s of Putin’s own protegees – a political dissenter?!?
Simply because there is an important difference between an ‘authoritarian system’ and a totalitarian state.
The authoritarian leader cannot act, not yet at least, like a totalitarian one. He is not in full control of everything under the sun in his country.
This apparently small thing is of paramount importance. Sooner or later more and more Russians will figure out for themselves that Putin is bad for them. Bad for Russia’s long term future.
Meanwhile the rest of the world has to thread this situation very carefully. Every time one of us wants to say anything about what’s going on in Ukraine or in Syria we must use “Putin” instead of “Russia”. It wasn’t Russia – but Putin – that annexed Crimea, encourages the Ukrainian separatists and supports the Syrian dictator by bombarding the Syrian moderate opposition.
By mentioning them separately – Putin distinct from Russia – we send a very powerful signal to the Russian people. That we understand they are not personally responsible for Putin’s acts and that we know they are not yet able to change anything.
If we fail to do so we’ll fall into Putin’s trap.
Our failure to understand, and insist upon, the simple fact that Putin is not Russia is the only thing that enables him to portray the rest of the world as nothing but a bunch of callous people who are devilishly conniving against Mother Russia – and himself as the only possible savior of the Russian People.
Adam Michnik, La sfida di Mosca al mondo e sempre piu imprevediblie, La Reppublica, http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2015/08/18/news/p-121206360/
Adam Michnik, While we Praise Ukrainian Restraint, Putin Builds His Neo-Soviet Empire, New Republic, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117462/adam-michnik-putins-post-soviet-empire-threatens-ukraine
Oleg Kashin, A letter to the Rulers of Russia, Global Voices, https://globalvoices.org/2015/10/04/a-letter-to-the-rulers-of-russia-from-oleg-kashin/Marc Champion, Why Russian Jets are Buzzing Turkey, Bloomberg View, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-08/why-putin-s-russian-jets-in-syria-are-buzzing-turkey,
Better Failling, BBC dropped Clarkson. How much longer till Russia drops Putin?, Nicichiarasa, https://nicichiarasa.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/bbc-dropped-clarkson-how-much-longer-till-russia-drops-putin/
Michael Shaw, Reading the Pictures: Putin &Sochi: Let the FU’s Begin, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shaw/reading-the-pictures-puti_b_4699356.html
OK, VW couldn’t figure out how to balance the ever stricter polution norms with the public demand for simultaneously more powerfull and cheaper to run/cleaner diesel engines so they decided to fake it. And it seems they were not the only ones to do that.
This development poses some questions.
– What were they hoping for? Did they really think that something like this could have gone unnoticed for ever?
– What were the regulators thinking? That it’s possible to solve pollution by simply changing some norms?
“Moore’s Law” (“overall processing power for computers will double every two years” has been valid, for a while, in a very young technological field.
Internal combustion engines have been around for more than a century, they are rather old. Everybody knows that it is hard to teach new tricks to an old horse yet we tried to clean exhaust gases well beyond the reasonable instead of radically changing the technology. Computers seemed to be able to help, but only for a while…
Could this be just another ‘application’ of the Peter Principle? “Managers rise to the level of their incompetence?” GM was, sometime ago, the No. 1 Automobile Company. It recently went through a painful bailout. Toyota, the next champion – its methods were studied at the most prestigious management schools – was hugely embarrassed lately by a technological failure.
OK, you might argue that what went on at VW was an ‘upfront’ fraud, not at all an ‘honest’ mistake. Indeed but still a mistake, even if a potentially catastrophic one. Mainly for the shareholders, of course, but also for the rest of us.
A certain dose of distrust towards established authority is healthy for the society, as a whole, while too many proofs of the established figureheads behaving callously generate a diffused disrespect for the law which is really bad for everybody.
In fact what happened at VW is exactly what people tend to do when they do not see any way out of a certain situation.
When they don’t really think that anything bad can happen to them, regardless of whatever they do.
Or both.
So. Is there anything to be learned from here? Except for the oldest lesson history keeps teaching us: ‘reaching the top is easy, staying there is the really tough job’?
Maybe.
Toyota says that transparency, “both inside and outside the company“, is a good way towards avoiding this kind of mistakes. “You have to be able to listen to your customers, not just hear them.“
Photo credit: Akram Abahre. While European countries are being lectured about their failure to take in enough refugees, Saudi Arabia – which has taken in precisely zero migrants – has 100,000 air conditioned tents that can house over 3 million people sitting empty.
Isn’t this nice? A scientist that shares her beliefs with us… how about some facts, for a change?
Don’t get me wrong, I basically agree with her only she’s got her horses behind the cart.
First of all Dame Athene Donald shared this, otherwise sensible, piece of advice – “ditch Barbie for Lego” – a full year after “The Lego brick has toppled the Barbie doll—at least for now—in children’s affections.”
Secondly the parents influence their children’s future in a lot more ways than by the choice of toys that are presented to their offspring. That choice is indeed a very good indicator about the attitude of the parents but only that, an indicator – not at all a ‘sentence’.
Here is Professor Donald’s main argument: ““We introduce social constructs by stereotyping what toys boys and girls receive from the earliest age,” she went on. “Girls’ toys are typically liable to lead to passivity — combing the hair of Barbie, for instance — not building, imagining or being creative with Lego or Meccano.””
So combing hair, or dressing a doll, leads to passivity while playing with Lego necessarily leads to becoming a creative adult… Yeah… sure… That’s why fashion and cooking, two domains otherwise closely connected to the womenfolk, involve a huge amount of creativity while most manufacturing jobs – still performed predominantly by men – are mostly about following procedures…
So yes, I fully agree with her conclusion – ““We need to change the way we think about boys and girls and what’s appropriate for them from a very young age.”” – but I’m afraid that she arrived there led by her activism rather than by ‘scientific’ reasoning.
And since I’m very afraid of all forms of activism I’d rather follow the advice offered by Claire Gillespie, the author of the article that prodded me into writing this post:“Don’t pigeonhole little girls into typically “female” interests and subjects. Don’t pigeonhole little boys into typically “male” interests and subjects. And give all children the time and freedom to explore all their options, without forcing them to go down the arts or sciences route from a young age.”
nicichiarasa 