Remember the saying fore warned is fore armed.
What the stories suggest in the medical history, a strange fact reveling it self that, many a times we are ignorant enough to not to look at the deficiency in the eye. What we get in result after that is either not discussable or a story told in low voice as a failure story.
What i am talking about is day in day out routine malfunction of our medical system to diagnose and pin point and then treat. Rather we do is seek our senses our own knowledge and based on our previous experiences treat the patient. DO have that far sightedness to see where is the failure, nope. Why because we are accustomed to treating like that and the patients are accustomed to be treated like that.
When a case of brain injury or spinal cord injury comes we send them for an MRI and the MRI's being seen by the doctors who have these abilities to understand them they have to go through lot more things too, i.e. the same doctor have to report X-rays, Ultrasounds, Cat scans, and various other things to be reported, what happens here is that the margin of error is bigger then the margin of the successful reporting or we may call it right reporting too.
Its not any disappointment to the people who are working at the radio diagnosis labs but its a burden they are also carrying with them. To make the things easy there is a team of doctors headed by some of the finest doctors who still work for the society.
The plan i am talking about is that if i get an MRI of brain done in India I will send it to the doctor in US to analyze it on the basis that, that doctor has only got maximum exposure to brain MRI's only i.e. we are talking about zero error technique.
Lets see it from another angle too who is there to be treated, the patient right then lets see what are or what can we do to give him the maximum benefit from. A simple technique by which we can avail the facilities of the utmost specialist doctors to help out the treating physician or the surgeons or the neuro-surgeons or the neuro-physicians. to understand better and to treat better by the help of the diagnostic strategy. Its like remodeling the whole picture where till date people get to know things way past then the controllable scenario in 36 hours or less you can get reported by the best avilable specialist in right another part of the world and may be the whole scene of treatment plan change, by which many valuable lifes can be saved.
For further informations contact;
Dr Saurabh Arora
e mail; saurabharora1974@gmail.com
and
Dr Rakesh Thapliyal
email; rvthapliyal@gmail.com
Friday, December 4, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Killing for the HONOR
Honor Killing
Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.
But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.
In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.
The Indian continent also has a lot to tell about the honor killing thing,Honor killings, which is the killing of a woman whose actions seem to undermine a family's honor, are usually associated with Pakistan and perhaps Afghanistan. The problem goes much farther, however, and seems to be a serious issue in India as well.
Not just in Punjab and Haryana, but in western Uttar Pradesh as well, women are being put to death if they “violate” the honour of their family and community by marrying a person outside her own caste, community or religion. ... According to Aidwa, 10 per cent of murders in Punjab and Haryana are honour killings. ... Aidwa points out that in cases involving couples from upper castes, there is always an effort to save the young man. “The woman from the same caste, however, will be killed for destroying the honour of the family and community,” the report says. The girl’s death is never reported. “It is as if she never existed,” it adds.
"In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions."
Complicity by other women in the family and the community strengthens the concept of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family and not a judicial issue.
"Females in the family—mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and cousins—frequently support the attacks. It's a community mentality," said Zaynab Nawaz, a program assistant for women's human rights at Amnesty International.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies.Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.
But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.
In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.
The Indian continent also has a lot to tell about the honor killing thing,Honor killings, which is the killing of a woman whose actions seem to undermine a family's honor, are usually associated with Pakistan and perhaps Afghanistan. The problem goes much farther, however, and seems to be a serious issue in India as well.
Not just in Punjab and Haryana, but in western Uttar Pradesh as well, women are being put to death if they “violate” the honour of their family and community by marrying a person outside her own caste, community or religion. ... According to Aidwa, 10 per cent of murders in Punjab and Haryana are honour killings. ... Aidwa points out that in cases involving couples from upper castes, there is always an effort to save the young man. “The woman from the same caste, however, will be killed for destroying the honour of the family and community,” the report says. The girl’s death is never reported. “It is as if she never existed,” it adds.
"In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions."
Complicity by other women in the family and the community strengthens the concept of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family and not a judicial issue.
"Females in the family—mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and cousins—frequently support the attacks. It's a community mentality," said Zaynab Nawaz, a program assistant for women's human rights at Amnesty International.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Is it easy to perform KILLING in INDIA
A BBC investigation has uncovered the deadly practice of British Asians travelling to India to hire contract killers. Family and business associates, who are lured to the sub-continent, are often the targets.
In a country where murder is cheaper and less fraught with risk, the perpetrators of these crimes are rarely brought to justice. Campaigners in both India and the UK believe this to have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims over several years. These armchair murder plots are hatched in the living rooms of Britain and executed mainly in the rural Indian state of Punjab.
In a remote village, surrounded by lush green fields, a rickety ox-drawn cart trundles along the dusty lane. It is here that a British woman, who was on holiday with her husband visiting relatives, was killed - the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident. But her relatives in India suspect foul play.
"Her husband wanted to re-marry. He told her to leave him - she said, 'I'll die but I won't let him go'," her mother revealed. She was one of the first to arrive on the scene. "They beat her up. They dumped her in the ditch and made it look like an accident. They wanted to show it like an accident. There was no blood, no car and no tyre marks."Despite a lengthy police investigation, charges are yet to be brought against the suspects in India. For legal reasons, we can not name the victim or her family. Her killing bears striking similarity to that of another British woman, Surjit Athwal.
The 26-year-old mother of two disappeared in Punjab in 1998. Two years ago, a British court found her mother-in-law and husband guilty of arranging her murder. They had hired criminals in India to kill her. She was strangled and her body dumped in a river. Her brother, Jagdeesh Singh, now campaigns for other victims' families. "I think Surjit's case exposed for the first time in this country overseas outsourced killings. How the Punjabi community, settled in Britain, send their females back to the land of origin, in the full knowledge that they can have them murdered easily, swiftly and efficiently.
It is not only women that are lured abroad to be killed in these types of murders. Raju, not his real name, recalls his brother's death during a visit to their ancestral village in Punjab. "He was found on the floor, with a bullet in the head. We have evidence to suggest the murder was arranged by his wife and her lover. We believe the motive was to fraudulently claim insurance money." So how easy is it for British Asians to outsource murder?According to Indian journalist, Neelam Raaj, finding a person to carry out the killing is simple. "The person who's taking the contract would just be a small-time criminal. He's usually a goon in the village." In India, murder is cheap, with hired assassins paid up to $800 (£500).
Formerly, the modus operandi was a drive-by shooting, now it is likely to be a staged road accident. And it appears there are few risks. In the bustling city of Ludhiana, Jassi Khangura juggles life as a successful entrepreneur with a career in Indian politics. He used to be a businessman in London, now he is an elected representative for the ruling Congress party in the Punjab legislative assembly. "What we have in Punjab - and in many other states of India - is a criminal nexus that takes place between the police, the politicians and the criminals. That nexus gives the Indians that live in the UK a large degree of cover. "Even if they're identified as the perpetrators of the crime, they're given a considerable degree of protection and that means they never get charged." He alleges police corruption in the state is responsible for a trend which he believes claims the lives of up to a 100 overseas Indians a year.
MISSING
But in the manicured grounds of his colonial-style villa in Punjab's capital, Chandigarh, inspector general of police for Jalandhar district Sanjiv Kalra says the figures are exaggerated and denies his force is riddled with corruption. "From my experience, these kinds of things are more talked about than they are actually present on the ground," he said.
However, for many victims' families the search for justice in India is elusive. They are now turning to the authorities in the UK for help. British detectives are increasingly being called in to solve these murders. Commander Steve Allen of the Metropolitan Police Service has this stark warning.
"We have increased our knowledge of and our confidence in dealing with murders of British citizens overseas. We will follow you, we will pursue the evidence and we will bring you to justice wherever in the world you commit these offences." Meanwhile, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it is currently aware of six British nationals who have gone missing in the Delhi and Punjab area.
In a country where murder is cheaper and less fraught with risk, the perpetrators of these crimes are rarely brought to justice. Campaigners in both India and the UK believe this to have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims over several years. These armchair murder plots are hatched in the living rooms of Britain and executed mainly in the rural Indian state of Punjab.
In a remote village, surrounded by lush green fields, a rickety ox-drawn cart trundles along the dusty lane. It is here that a British woman, who was on holiday with her husband visiting relatives, was killed - the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident. But her relatives in India suspect foul play.
"Her husband wanted to re-marry. He told her to leave him - she said, 'I'll die but I won't let him go'," her mother revealed. She was one of the first to arrive on the scene. "They beat her up. They dumped her in the ditch and made it look like an accident. They wanted to show it like an accident. There was no blood, no car and no tyre marks."Despite a lengthy police investigation, charges are yet to be brought against the suspects in India. For legal reasons, we can not name the victim or her family. Her killing bears striking similarity to that of another British woman, Surjit Athwal.
The 26-year-old mother of two disappeared in Punjab in 1998. Two years ago, a British court found her mother-in-law and husband guilty of arranging her murder. They had hired criminals in India to kill her. She was strangled and her body dumped in a river. Her brother, Jagdeesh Singh, now campaigns for other victims' families. "I think Surjit's case exposed for the first time in this country overseas outsourced killings. How the Punjabi community, settled in Britain, send their females back to the land of origin, in the full knowledge that they can have them murdered easily, swiftly and efficiently.
It is not only women that are lured abroad to be killed in these types of murders. Raju, not his real name, recalls his brother's death during a visit to their ancestral village in Punjab. "He was found on the floor, with a bullet in the head. We have evidence to suggest the murder was arranged by his wife and her lover. We believe the motive was to fraudulently claim insurance money." So how easy is it for British Asians to outsource murder?According to Indian journalist, Neelam Raaj, finding a person to carry out the killing is simple. "The person who's taking the contract would just be a small-time criminal. He's usually a goon in the village." In India, murder is cheap, with hired assassins paid up to $800 (£500).
Formerly, the modus operandi was a drive-by shooting, now it is likely to be a staged road accident. And it appears there are few risks. In the bustling city of Ludhiana, Jassi Khangura juggles life as a successful entrepreneur with a career in Indian politics. He used to be a businessman in London, now he is an elected representative for the ruling Congress party in the Punjab legislative assembly. "What we have in Punjab - and in many other states of India - is a criminal nexus that takes place between the police, the politicians and the criminals. That nexus gives the Indians that live in the UK a large degree of cover. "Even if they're identified as the perpetrators of the crime, they're given a considerable degree of protection and that means they never get charged." He alleges police corruption in the state is responsible for a trend which he believes claims the lives of up to a 100 overseas Indians a year.
MISSING
But in the manicured grounds of his colonial-style villa in Punjab's capital, Chandigarh, inspector general of police for Jalandhar district Sanjiv Kalra says the figures are exaggerated and denies his force is riddled with corruption. "From my experience, these kinds of things are more talked about than they are actually present on the ground," he said.
However, for many victims' families the search for justice in India is elusive. They are now turning to the authorities in the UK for help. British detectives are increasingly being called in to solve these murders. Commander Steve Allen of the Metropolitan Police Service has this stark warning.
"We have increased our knowledge of and our confidence in dealing with murders of British citizens overseas. We will follow you, we will pursue the evidence and we will bring you to justice wherever in the world you commit these offences." Meanwhile, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it is currently aware of six British nationals who have gone missing in the Delhi and Punjab area.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Bionic suit
For defence
For lifting heavy objects
For decaying and disabled
Restoring walking ability, and improving the ability of the weak and debelitating people.
Boon yet in stages of finer development
These ROBOT suit are been developed that could help older people or those with disabilities to walk or lift heavy objects.
Dubbed H A L, or hybrid assistive limb, the latest versions of the suit will be unveiled this June at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi.
HAL is the result of 10 years' work by Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba in Japan, and integrates mechanics, electronics, bionics and robotics in a new field known as cybernics. The most fully developed prototype, HAL 3, is a motor-driven metal "exoskeleton" that you strap onto your legs to power-assist leg movements. A backpack holds a computer with a wireless network connection, and the batteries are on a belt.
Two control systems interact to help the wearer stand, walk and climb stairs. A "bio-cybernic" system uses bioelectric sensors attached to the skin on the legs to monitor signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles. It can do this because when someone intends to stand or walk, the nerve signal to the muscles generates a detectable electric current on the skin's surface. These currents are picked up by the sensors and sent to the computer, which translates the nerve signals into signals of its own for controlling electric motors at the hips and knees of the exoskeleton. It takes a fraction of a second for the motors to respond accordingly, and in fact they respond fractionally faster to the original signal from the brain than the wearer's muscles do
While the bio-cybernic system moves individual elements of the exoskeleton, a second system provides autonomous robotic control of the motors to coordinate these movements and make a task easier overall, helping someone to walk, for instance. The system activates itself automatically once the user starts to move. The first time they walk, its sensors record posture and pattern of motion, and this information is stored in an onboard database for later use. When the user walks again, sensors alert the computer, which recognises the movement and regenerates the stored pattern to provide power-assisted movement. The actions of both systems can be calibrated according to a particular user's needs, for instance to give extra assistance to a weaker limb.
The HAL 4 and HAL 5 prototypes, which will also be demonstrated at Expo 2005, don't just help a person to walk. They have an upper part to assist the arms, and will help a person lift up to 40 kilograms more than they can manage unaided. The new HALs will also eliminate the need for a backpack. Instead, the computer and wireless connection have been shrunk to fit in a pouch attached to the suit's belt. HAL 5 also has smaller motor housings, making the suit much less bulky around the hips and knees.
HAL 3 weighs 22 kilograms, but the help it gives the user is more than enough to compensate for this. "It's like riding on a robot, rather than wearing one," says Sankai. He adds that HAL 4 will weigh 17 kilograms, and he hopes HAL 5 may be lighter still.
Sankai has had many requests for the devices from people with brain and spinal injuries, so he is planning to extend the suit's applications to include medical rehabilitation. The first commercial
suits are likely to cost between 1.5 and 2 million yen ($14,000 to $19,000).
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Is Canada a dream place to migrate
Canada voted the best country to live in from last 7 years consecutively, is it safe enough, this news which is here by , is some what, under blown as till date that is 16th-sep. 2009 there is no sign of some body being caught or testified, it is really a very un-comforting news we have always known.
Canada to be a peaceful place. May be the Canadian Government be more cautious in there immigration policies,
as the news it self suggests the wanted guys were not so good in English speaking, if that is so
then why the Canadian Government wants the Acamedicians to be
IELTS band holders.
No hard feelings just a passing thought.
Canada to be a peaceful place. May be the Canadian Government be more cautious in there immigration policies,
as the news it self suggests the wanted guys were not so good in English speaking, if that is so
then why the Canadian Government wants the Acamedicians to be
IELTS band holders.
No hard feelings just a passing thought.
Sawaran (40) Gurmit (27)
Police across Canada are looking for two men following a fatal shooting at a
Brampton house party.
Devinder Singh Gill, 33, was killed in the early morning hours of September 11. Bullets flew around 4am at a home on Castlehill Drive.
Gurmit Singh Randhawa, 27, and Sawaran Singh Sekhon, 40, are both wanted
for Second Degree Murder.
They are both considered armed and extremely dangerous. Officers are encouraging
the pair to contact a lawyer and turn themselves in.
Randhawa, pictured at right in the red shirt, is described as: South Asian 5’10” 210 lbs. heavy build light complexion black hair. He has a heavy Punjabi accent and speaks English poorly.
Sekhon, pictured at left, is described as: South Asian 6’0” 200 lbs. medium build dark hair.
He also has a heavy Punjabi accent and speaks English poorly.
Investigators are also looking for a beige 2002 Pontiac Montana. The license plate is
BESF 323.
If you’ve seen them, call Peel Regional Police 905-453-3311 or you local police station.
If you have any other information, call the Homicide Bureau at 905-453-2121 x 3205 or
Crime Stoppers to remain anonymous 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). You can also text PEEL, followed by your tip, to CRIMES (274637).
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Todays thought "Rudyard Kipling" "If"
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting , or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch - and - toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting , or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch - and - toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин, pronounced [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn] (
Due to constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive Presidential term. After the victory of his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, in the 2008 presidential elections, he was then nominated by the latter to be Russia's Prime Minister; Putin took the post on 8 May 2008.
Throughout his presidential terms and into his second term as Prime Minister, Putin has enjoyed high approval ratings amongst the Russian public. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing the rule of law. During his eight years in office, on the back of Yeltsin-era structural reforms, steadily rising oil price and cheap credit from western banks, Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase sixfold (72% in PPP), poverty cut more than half and average monthly salaries increase from $80 to $640, or by 150% in real rates. Analysts have described Putin's economic reforms as impressive. During his presidency, Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13 percent, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Putin's prudent economic policies have received praise from Western economists. At the same time, his conduct in office has been questioned by domestic political opposition, foreign governments and human rights organizations for leading the Second Chechen War, for his record on internal human rights and freedoms, and for his alleged bullying of the former Soviet Republics. A new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy - such as Gennady Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Sergey Chemezov, all with close personal ties to Putin - emerged according to media reports.Early life
Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, to parents Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911 – 1999) and Maria Ivanovna Shelomova (1911 – 1998). His mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s, subsequently serving with the NKVD in a sabotage group during World War II.[ Two elder brothers were born in the mid – 1930s; one died within a few months of birth; the second succumbed to diphtheria during the siege of Leningrad. His paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich Putin (1879 – 1965) was employed at Vladimir Lenin's dacha (Gorki) as a cook, and after Lenin's death in 1924, he continued to work for Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. He would later cook for Joseph Stalin when the Soviet leader visited one of his dachas in the Moscow region. Spiridon later was employed at a dacha belonging to the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, at which the young Putin would visit him.
His autobiography, Ot Pervogo Litsa, (English: In the First Person) which is based on Putin's interviews, speaks of humble beginnings, including early years in a communal apartment in Leningrad. On 1 September 1960 he started at School No. 193 at Baskov Lane, just across from his house. By fifth grade he was one of a few in a class of more than 45 pupils who was not yet a member of the Pioneers, largely because of his rowdy behavior. In sixth grade he started taking sport seriously in the form of sambo and then judo. In his youth, Putin was eager to emulate the intelligence officer characters played on the Soviet screen by actors such as Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov.
Putin graduated from the International Law branch of the Law Department of the Leningrad State University in 1975, writing his final thesis on international law. While at university he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and remained a member until the party was dissolved in December 1991. Also at the University he met Anatoly Sobchak, who later played important role in Putin's career.
KGB career
Putin joined the KGB in 1975 upon graduation from university, and underwent a year's training at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad. He then went on to work briefly in the Second Department (counter-intelligence) before he was transferred to the First Department, where among his duties was the monitoring of foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad, while using the cover of being a police officer with the CID. According to Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, he served at the Fifth Directorate of the KGB, which combated political dissent in the Soviet Union. He then received an offer to transfer to foreign intelligence First Chief Directorate of the KGB and was sent for additional year long training to the Dzerzhinsky KGB Higher School in Moscow and then in the early eighties—the Red Banner Yuri Andropov KGB Institute in Moscow (now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence).
From 1985 to 1990 the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany. Following the collapse of the East German regime, Putin was recalled to the Soviet Union and returned to Leningrad, where in June 1991 he assumed a position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov. In his new position, Putin maintained surveillance on the student body and kept an eye out for recruits. It was during his stint at the university that Putin grew reacquainted with Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of Leningrad. Sobchak served as an Assistant Professor during Putin's university years and was one of Putin's lecturers. Putin formally resigned from the state security services on 20 August 1991, during the KGB-supported abortive putsch against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Early political career
In May 1990, Putin was appointed Mayor Sobchak's advisor on international affairs. On 28 June 1991, he was appointed head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments. The Committee was also used to register business ventures in Saint Petersburg. Less than one year after taking control of the committee, Putin was investigated by a commission of the city legislative council. Commission deputies Marina Salye and Yury Gladkov concluded that Putin understated prices and issued licenses permitting the export of non-ferrous metals valued at a total of $93 million in exchange for food aid from abroad that never came to the city. The commission recommended Putin be fired, but there were no immediate consequences. Putin remained head of the Committee for External Relations until 1996. While heading the Committee for External Relations, from 1992 to March 2000 Putin was also on the advisory board of the German real estate holding Saint Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG (SPAG) which has been investigated by German prosecutors for money laundering. According to German author and journalist Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, in contrast to Yeltsin and his "family," Putin did not succumb to the temptation of corruption, pointing out a citation from Boris Berezovsky from 2002 - during the times of worst hostilities between the two - according to which Putin never took bribes during his time in office in St Petersburg.
From 1994 to 1997, Putin was appointed to additional positions in the Saint Petersburg political arena. In March 1994 he became first deputy head of the administration of the city of Saint Petersburg. In 1995 (through June 1997) Putin led the Saint Petersburg branch of the pro-government Our Home Is Russia political party. During this same period from 1995 through June 1997 he was also the head of the Advisory Board of the JSC Newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti.
In 1996, Anatoly Sobchak lost the Saint Petersburg mayoral election to Vladimir Yakovlev. Putin was called to Moscow and in June 1996 assumed position of a Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department headed by Pavel Borodin. He occupied this position until March 1997. On 26 March 1997 President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin deputy chief of Presidential Staff, which he remained until May 1998, and chief of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department (until June 1998).
On 27 June 1997, at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute Putin defended his Candidate of Science dissertation in economics titled "The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations". According to Clifford G Gaddy, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, 16 of the 20 pages that open a key section of Putin’s 218-page thesis were copied either word for word or with minute alterations from a management study, Strategic Planning and Policy, written by US professors William King and David Cleland and translated into Russian by a KGB-related institute in the early 1990s.[48][49] 6 diagrams and tables were also copied. Gaddy doesn't believe that the plagiarism was really intentional "in the sense that if you had wanted to hide where the text came from you wouldn’t even list this work in the bibliography." The dissertation committee disagreed with Gaddy's claims. Chairman of the committee Natalia Pashkevich, accused Gaddy of not reading the dissertation very well. "There are references to the article mentioned. Everything is done correctly... It is only a plus for Vladimir Putin that he used not only Russian authors, but foreign ones as well." Anatoly Suslov, provost of economics at the Mining Institute, who was present at Putin dissertation defense, recalled "The opponent was someone from Moscow. The defense went calmly. There were many questions, of course, since it was a candidate's dissertation, but there was no question of plagiarism. No one uncovered anything of the kind. Vladimir Putin defended himself, and he prepared his own work. All those conversations about dissertations being bought are untrue. Ours isn't the kind of institute where you can do that." In his dissertation, and in a later article published in 1999, Putin advocated the idea of so-called National champions, a concept that would later become central to his political thinking.
On 25 May 1998, Putin was appointed First Deputy Chief of Presidential Staff for regions, replacing Viktoriya Mitina; and, on 15 July, the Head of the Commission for the preparation of agreements on the delimitation of power of regions and the federal center attached to the President, replacing Sergey Shakhray. After Putin's appointment, the commission completed no such agreements, although during Shakhray's term as the Head of the Commission there were 46 agreements signed. On 25 July 1998 Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999. In April 1999, FSB Chief Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held a televised press conference in which they discussed a video that had aired nationwide 17 March on the state-controlled Russia TV channel which showed a naked man very similar to the Prosecutor General of Russia, Yury Skuratov, in bed with two young women. Putin claimed that expert FSB analysis proved the man on the tape to be Skuratov and that the orgy had been paid for by persons investigated for criminal offences. Skuratov had been adversarial toward President Yeltsin and had been aggressively investigating government corruption.
On 15 June 2000, The Times reported that Spanish police discovered that Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to the oligarch Boris Berezovsky on up to five different occasions in 1999.
Premiership (1999)
On 9 August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed one of three First Deputy Prime Ministers, which enabled him later on that day, as the previous government led by Sergei Stepashin had been sacked, to be appointed acting Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation by President Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin also announced that he wanted to see Putin as his successor. Later, that same day, Putin agreed to run for the presidency. On 16 August, the State Duma approved his appointment as Prime Minister with 233 votes in favour (vs. 84 against, 17 abstained), while a simple majority of 226 was required, making him Russia's fifth PM in fewer than eighteen months. On his appointment, few expected Putin, virtually unknown to the general public, to last any longer than his predecessors. Yeltsin's main opponents and would-be successors, Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov and former Chairman of the Russian Government Yevgeniy Primakov, were already campaigning to replace the ailing president, and they fought hard to prevent Putin's emergence as a potential successor. Putin's law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the renewed crisis in Chechnya soon combined to raise his popularity and allowed him to overtake all rivals.
Putin's rise to public office in August 1999 coincided with an aggressive resurgence of the near-dormant conflict in the North Caucasus, when a number of Chechens invaded a neighboring region starting the War in Dagestan. Both in Russia and abroad, Putin's public image was forged by his tough handling of the war. On assuming the role of acting President on 31 December 1999, Putin went on a previously scheduled visit to Russian troops in Chechnya. In 2003, a controversial referendum was held in Chechnya adopting a new constitution which declares the Republic as a part of Russia. Chechnya has been gradually stabilized with the parliamentary elections and the establishment of a regional government. Throughout the war Russia has severely disabled the Chechen rebel movement, although sporadic violence still occurs throughout the North Caucasus.
While not formally associated with any party, Putin pledged his support to the newly formed Unity Party, which won the second largest percentage of the popular vote (23.3%) in the December 1999 Duma elections, and in turn he was supported by it.
First term (2000 – 2004)
His rise to Russia's highest office ended up being even more rapid: on 31 December 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the constitution, Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation.
The first Decree that Putin signed 31 December 1999, was the one "On guarantees for former president of the Russian Federation and members of his family". This ensured that "corruption charges against the outgoing President and his relatives" would not be pursued, although this claim is not strictly verifiable. Later on 12 February 2001 Putin signed a federal law on guarantees for former presidents and their families, which replaced the similar decree. In 1999, Yeltsin and his family were under scrutiny for charges related to money-laundering by the Russian and Swiss authorities.
While his opponents had been preparing for an election in June 2000, Yeltsin's resignation resulted in the elections being held within three months, in March.[citation needed] Presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000; Putin won in the first round.[citation needed]
Vladimir Putin was inaugurated president on 7 May 2000. He appointed Financial minister Mikhail Kasyanov as his Prime minister. Having announced his intention to consolidate power in the country into a strict vertical, in May 2000 he issued a decree dividing 89 federal subjects of Russia between 7 federal districts overseen by representatives of him in order to facilitate federal administration. In July 2000, according to a law proposed by him and approved by the Russian parliament, Putin also gained the right to dismiss heads of the federal subjects.
During his first term in office, he moved to curb the political ambitions of some of the Yeltsin-era oligarchs such as former Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky, who had "helped Mr Putin enter the family, and funded the party that formed Mr Putin's parliamentary base", according to BBC profile. At the same time, according to Vladimir Solovyev, it was Alexey Kudrin who was instrumental in Putin's assignment to the Presidential Administration of Russia to work with Pavel Borodin, and according to Solovyev, Berezovsky was proposing Igor Ivanov rather than Putin as a new president. A new group of business magnates, such as Gennady Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Sergey Chemezov, with close personal ties to Putin, emerged. A report by opposition leader Boris Nemtsov claims, that during Putin's rule corruption grew by the magnitude of several times and assumed "systemic and institutionalised form." Corruption was characterized by Putin himself as "the most wearying and difficult to resolve" problem he encountered during his two terms in office.
Russia's legal reform continued productively during Putin's first term. In particular, Putin succeeded in the codification of land law and tax law, where progress had been slow during Yeltsin's administration, because of Communist and oligarch opposition, respectively. Other legal reforms included new codes on labour, administrative, criminal, commercial and civil procedural law, as well as a major statute on the Bar.
The first major challenge to Putin's popularity came in August 2000, when he was criticised for his alleged mishandling of the Kursk submarine disaster.
In December 2000, Putin sanctioned the law to change the National Anthem of Russia. At the time the Anthem had music by Glinka and no words. The change was to restore (with a minor modification) the music of the post-1944 Soviet anthem by Alexandrov, while the new text was composed by Mikhalkov.
Many in the Russian press and in the international media warned that the death of some 130 hostages in the special forces' rescue operation during the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis would severely damage President Putin's popularity. However, shortly after the siege had ended, the Russian president was enjoying record public approval ratings - 83% of Russians declared themselves satisfied with Putin and his handling of the siege.
The arrest in early July 2003 of Platon Lebedev, a Mikhail Khodorkovsky partner and second largest shareholder in Yukos, on suspicion of illegally acquiring a stake in a state-owned fertilizer firm, Apatit, in 1994, foreshadowed what by the end of the year became a full-fledged prosecution of Yukos and its management for fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion.
A few months before the elections, Putin fired Kasyanov's cabinet and appointed relatively obscure Mikhail Fradkov to his place. Sergey Ivanov became the first civilian in Russia to take Defence Minister position.
Second term (2004 – 2008)
On 14 March 2004, Putin was re-elected to the presidency for a second term, receiving 71% of the vote.
By the beginning of Putin's second term he had undermined every independent source of political power in Russia, decreasing the degree of pluralism in the Russian society.
Following the Beslan school hostage crisis, in September 2004 Putin suggested the creation of the Public Chamber of Russia and launched an initiative to replace the direct election of the Governors and Presidents of the Federal subjects of Russia with a system whereby they would be proposed by the President and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures. He also initiated the merger of a number of federal subjects of Russia into larger entities. Whilst some in Beslan blamed Putin personally for the massacre in which hundreds died, his overall popularity in Russia did not suffer.
According to various Russian and western media reports, one of the major domestic issue concerns for President Putin were the problems arising from the ongoing demographic and social trends in Russia, such as the death rate being higher than the birth rate, cyclical poverty, and housing concerns. In 2005, National Priority Projects were launched in the fields of health care, education, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care for women. Putin was strident about the need to reform the judiciary considering the present federal judiciary "Sovietesque", wherein many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would under the old Soviet judiciary structure, and preferring instead a judiciary that interpreted and implemented the code to the current situation. In 2005, responsibility for federal prisons was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice. The most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.
One of the most controversial aspects of Putin's second term was the continuation of the criminal prosecution of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, President of YUKOS, for fraud and tax evasion. While much of the international press saw this as a reaction against Khodorkovsky's funding for political opponents of the Kremlin, both liberal and communist, the Russian government had argued that Khodorkovsky was engaged in corrupting a large segment of the Duma to prevent changes in the tax code aimed at taxing windfall profits and closing offshore tax evasion vehicles. Khodorkovsky's arrest was met positively by the Russian public, who see the oligarchs as thieves who were unjustly enriched and robbed the country of its natural wealth. Many of the initial privatizations, including that of Yukos, are widely believed to have been fraudulent – Yukos, valued at some $30 billion in 2004, had been privatized for $110 million – and like other oligarchic groups, the Yukos-Menatep name has been frequently tarred with accusations of links to criminal organizations. Tim Osborne of GML, the majority owner of Yukos, said in February 2008: "Despite claims by President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin had no interest in bankrupting Yukos, the company's assets were auctioned at below-market value. In addition, new debts suddenly emerged out of nowhere, preventing the company from surviving. The main beneficiary of these tactics was Rosneft. It is clearer now than ever that the expropriation of Yukos was a ploy to put key elements of the energy sector in the hands of Putin's retinue. Moreover, the Yukos affair marked a turning point in Russia's commitment to domestic property rights and the rule of law." The fate of Yukos was seen by western media as a sign of a broader shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism, Against the backdrop of the Yukos saga, questions were raised about the actual destination of $13.1 billionremitted in October 2005 by the state-run Gazprom as payment for 75.7% stake in Sibneft to Millhouse-controlled offshore accounts, after a series of generous dividend payouts and another $3 billion received from Yukos in a failed merger in 2003. In 1996, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky had acquired the controlling interest in Sibneft for $100 million within the controversial loans-for-shares program. Some prominent Yeltsin-era billionaires, such as Sergey Pugachyov, are reported to continue to enjoy close relationship with Putin's Kremlin.
Although Russia's state intervention in the economy had been usually heavily criticized in the West, a study by Bank of Finland’s Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) in 2008 showed that state intervention had had a positive impact to corporate governance of many companies in Russia: the formal indications of the quality of corporate governance in Russia were higher in companies with state control or with a stake held by the government.
Since February 2006, the political philosophy of Putin's administration has often been described as a "Sovereign democracy", the term being used both with positive and pejorative connotations. First proposed by Vladislav Surkov in February 2006, the term quickly gained currency within Russia and arguably unified various political elites around it. According to its proponents' interpretation, the government's actions and policies ought above all to enjoy popular support within Russia itself and not be determined from outside the country.However, as implied by expert of the Carnegie Endowment Masha Lipman, "Sovereign democracy is a Kremlin coinage that conveys two messages: first, that Russia's regime is democratic and, second, that this claim must be accepted, period. Any attempt at verification will be regarded as unfriendly and as meddling in Russia's domestic affairs."
During the term, Putin was widely criticized in the West and also by Russian liberals for what many observers considered a wide-scale crackdown on media freedom in Russia. Since the early 1990s, a number of Russian reporters who have covered the situation in Chechnya, contentious stories on organized crime, state and administrative officials, and large businesses have been killed. On 7 October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who ran a campaign exposing corruption in the Russian army and its conduct in Chechnya, was shot in the lobby of her apartment building. The death of Politkovskaya triggered an outcry of criticism of Russia in the Western media, with accusations that, at best, Putin has failed to protect the country's new independent media. When asked about Politkovskaya murder in his interview with the German TV channel ARD, Putin said that her murder brings much more harm to the Russian authorities than her publications. In January 2008, Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, claimed that a system of "judicial terrorism" had started against journalists under Putin and that more than 300 criminal cases had been opened against them over the past six years.
At the same time, according to 2005 research by VCIOM, the share of Russians approving censorship on TV grew in a year from 63% to 82%; sociologists believed that Russians were not voting in favor of press freedom suppression, but rather for expulsion of ethically doubtful material (such as scenes of violence and sex).
In June 2007, Putin organised a conference for history teachers to promote a high-school teachers manual called A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006: A Manual for History Teachers which portrays Joseph Stalin as a cruel but successful leader. Putin said at the conference that the new manual will "help instill young people with a sense of pride in Russia", and he argued that Stalin's purges pale in comparison to the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At a memorial for Stalin's victims, Putin said that while Russians should "keep alive the memory of tragedies of the past, we should focus on all that is best in the country."
In a 2007 interview with newspaper journalists from G8 countries, Putin spoke out in favor of a longer presidential term in Russia, saying "a term of five, six or seven years in office would be entirely acceptable".
On 12 September 2007, Russian news agencies reported that Putin dissolved the government upon the request of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. Fradkov commented that it was to give the President a "free hand" to make decisions in the run-up to the parliamentary election. Viktor Zubkov was appointed the new prime minister.
In December 2007, United Russia won 64.24% of the popular vote in their run for State Duma according to election preliminary results. Their closest competitor, the Communist Party of Russia, won approximately 12% of votes. United Russia's victory in December 2007 elections was seen by many as an indication of strong popular support of the then Russian leadership and its policies.
The end of 2007 saw what both Russian and Western analysts viewed as an increasingly bitter infighting between various factions of the siloviki that make up a significant part of Putin's inner circle.
In December 2007, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman (VCIOM) qualified the regime that had solidified under Putin as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy" which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism and statism in ideology".[125] Some analysts assess the socio-economic system which has emerged in Russia as profoundly unstable and the situation in the Kremlin after Dmitry Medvedev's nomination as fraught with a coup d'état, as "Putin has built a political construction that resembles a pyramid which rests on its tip, rather than on its base".
Gregory Feifer wrote in February 2008: "The main lesson we should have learned from Putin's eight years in office is a recognition that under the traditional Russian political system that he has revitalized, not only do officials not mean what they say, but also that obfuscation is essential to the way it all works ... Putin's playing of the Russian political game has been virtuosic." On the eve of his stepping down as president the FT editorialised: "Mr Putin will remain Russia’s real ruler for some time to come. And the ex-KGB men he promoted will stay close to the seat of power."
On 8 February 2008, Putin delivered a speech before the expanded session of the State Council headlined "On the Strategy of Russia's Development until 2020", which was interpreted by the Russian media as his "political bequest". The speech was largely devoted to castigating the state of affairs in the 1990s and setting ambitious targets of economic growth by 2020. He also condemned the expansion of NATO and the US plan to include Poland and the Czech Republic in a missile defence shield and promised that "Russia has, and always will have, responses to these new challenges".
In his last days in office he was reported to have taken a series of steps to re-align the regional bureaucracy to make the governors report to the prime minister rather than the president. The presidential site explained that "the changes... bear a refining nature and do not affect the essential positions of the system. The key role in estimating the effectiveness of activity of regional authority still belongs to President of the Russian Federation."
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