2. A Timeline of the past several months of collective action in Italy of "The Wave", a Mass Mobilization/General Strike/ throughout all of Italy against privatization of education and social services by President Burlusconi.
3. L'Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself; many different preexisting SMOs merging in a novel SMI, with novel songs, strategies of protest, etc., that become widely shared and the police have yet to learn how to effectively demote them. Burlusconi is a billionaire media mogul. He was out of the Italian Presidency in the previous election, though he was reelected in early 2008.
Think about the resource mobilization issues and organizations from different areas involved in this very wide collective action.
The protests are over the drastic cuts to public services and particularly education that the Italian government wants to completely privatize.
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Video footage of a rebellion : author: zora
Protests keep growing, millions on the streets, with hundreds of demos and initiatives in all Italian cities and especially in Pisa, Venice, Padua, Naplei [and the capital of Rome]
In Rome: huge assembly at La Sapienza and spontaneous demo toward italian parliament.
In Milano: official teaching blocked, public lectures hel in duomo square; assemblies and intramural protests at Statale, Politecnico, Bicocca and Brera.
Berlusconi from china says "never said I'd send police in schools" and "the italian press don't understand my words". Minister of public education Gelmini says want to "open dialogue with students" and adds "there is an ongoing terroristic campaign against my reform". High schools are agitating mightily with most of the schools taken over by students and a myriad of street protests.
"We won't pay for your crisis"
"We won't pay for your crisis" : as in the rest of italy, in the universities of Milano the mobilization is uncontrollable by power.
From Mediazione Culturale to Scienze Politiche, 'Accademia di Brera and Università Bicocca, from Conservatorio to Politecnico to the State University of Milano in central Festa del Perdono.
Students are mobilizing to bock the Gelmini Decree (Gelmini, arch-catholic minister of education rechristened Gelminator by protesters), and to push for a self-reform for a university of knowledge and research. Together with postgrads, researchers, university employees and precasious faculty.
The brainworkers of immaterial labor are on the move. Everywhere the blocks of lessons and the blockades of traffic by students are multiplying, with spontaneous assemblies in each university, department, with rectorates and classrooms occupied.
An uncontrollable movement that can win, and transform a university based on deskilled higher education and academic nepotism and related fiefdoms into a university as public place of education and self-education linked to the needs and cultures of the society to be. But where did all this come from?
Stop Decreto Gelmini. Hands off schools and universities. We won't pay for your crisis!
The Berlusconi Gov't passed the Law Decree n° 112 del 25 June 2008 titles "Urgent provisions for economic dev't, simplification, competitiveness, stabilitazion of public finance and tax equalization"
This decree becomes provisional law during the summer holidays, on Aug 5 (Legge 133/2008)
In provincial Italy, the policy response to the mounting global crisis as put forward by minister of finance Tremonti is drastic cuts to social spending, starting from public school and universities.
The essential points of the gelmini-tremonti package: return to the single teacher in elementary schools, segregated classes for "foreign" kids, severe cuts in financial resources to education, the block of hirings of teaching and technical personnel, from elementary schools to universities and research, the reconversion of public universities in private foundations...
In september schools reopen: all over italy a new movement makes its first stems in elementary schools, high schools, universities. The first mots d'ordre are against the precarization of teachers, against the single teacher that would enforce a single ideology, against the so-called differentiated classes that would violently discriminate immigrant children with a truly racial provision aiming at establishing apartheid in italy.
On Oct 3 the autonomous network of high school student collectives take it to the streets in many cities of Italy.
On Oct 13, the minister Gelmini cancels her appearance at a symposium in milano for fear of protests.
In october classes start in universities: a university student movement emerges powerfully: "We won't pay your crisis!"
It's a loud and clear message that speaks of the here and now, of precarity, economic crisis and the last gasps of neoliberalism.
[frame transformation:]
"Cut resources to bankers and war missions, rather than to schools and universities! we are the coming society! We are not the problem, we are the solution!"
Week by week the mov't grows: from elementary schools, teachers, parents, kids are united in denouncing the decree; high school collectives network their struggles; in universities researchers other precarious faculty and professors start joining student assemblies and discussing with student collectives.
"We have started so that we wouldn't stop" and "We shall never go back" : university students are against the berlusconi cuts billed as 'reform' but do not want to defend public university fallen prey to clientelist and nepotistic practices, ruled by barons over the shoulders of precarious junior faculty. The growing movement does not accept neither old labels nor old forms of representations, it demands and practices autonomy and freedom from the classic forms of politics, parties especially. The responsibilities of past centerleft governments stand clear in weaking the public university system and so does the inability of the current parliamentary opposition to oppose mr b's decrees, which cuts funds to public schools while giving aid to private schools.
The dem party has also imitated berlusconi in calling for draconian laws in the name of 'security' fingerpointing dangerous subjects such as gypsies, immigrants, street sellers, graffiti writers.
On Oct 17, the national strike called by radical alternative unions against the berlusconi government turns into the first No Gelmini Day.
In Rome 300,000 people take part in the strike demo. Rome students take part in the union demo and then break off in the thousands and by outflanking police manage to reach and block the ministry of education.
In Milano, unions are also on the streets. university and high school students decide to cross the whole city paralyzing traffic as three demos merge: elementary schools, high school students, and for the first time since the 'panther' movement of 1990, a strong demonstration of university students from many agitating faculties and academic insititutions.
At the end of the demo, precarious teachers of elementary schools and high school students put the milano education department under siege, while university students experiment for the first time with the practice of metropolitan blockades in the rest of the city.
In the following week, the social situation escalates, as spontaneous protests and initiatives spread to further cities large and small.
On Oct 21 in Milano, the General Estates of the University are held in the aula magna of Milano State University. Just like in Sapienza in Rome and in Palermo, the assembly is huge: 2000 people that decide at the end of the assembly to give rise to a an unauthorized demo across the streets of Milano.
The demo marches fast and unpredictably, it goes back and forth: the city goes tilt. Getting news that in bologna and other cities university students have occupied railway stations, the demo arrives at Cadorna train station. Riot cops prevent access to the station and charge students with batons, who do not disperse and block the car traffic all around by doing a determined sit-in.
In Florence, 40000 people of all ages from schools and universities express solidarity to the student movement and fear for the possibility of repression.
In the subsequent days, mobilizations further develop: in Milano, Torino and other cities dozens of motions to faculty boards, class blockades, assemblies, all-night events take place in freed universities.
The first experiments with alternative higher education occur: academic lectures are held in central public squares before hundreds of students and curious citizens, while students speak of "free university and free knowledge".
On Oct 22 berlusconi accuses centri sociali (squatted social centers) to be the maneuverers behind the social mobilizations and warns "I will send the police against occupations of schools and universities."
The movement is not intimidated: "We have no fear" is the rallying cry. Some rectors swear "never police in a university", while some professors [ironically say] that a bit of university education might be well needed by the italian police...
On Oct 23 berlusconi now in beijing denies having thought about sending in the riot cops and accused the italian press of misinformation. [sic]
In Rome, Sapienza students after another huge assembly the decided to march toward the parliamente in a demo merging three streams of people, university students, high school students and the activists of roman centri sociali who are protesting against the eviction of Horus social center and the will to eradicate all social spaces expressed by the neofascist new mayor Almeanno.
15000 people are spontaneously taking the streets in the heart of the city. "Roma libera", "libertà, libertà", in the joy and thrill of the moment a new cry emerges "un'altra Onda, un altra volta", "siamo i giovani, siamo l'esercito del surf" taken from a song of the roman rapper "Er Piotta" [Another Wave, Once More] [we are the youth, we are surf's army] The song is an antiauthoritarian antiwar jibe about being able to go with the flow and repeat the wave of change; it expresses the idea of strategic flexibility in the sense of being able to surf the rough waves and be anywhere and everywhere, and especially to be where they least expect us.
L'Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself: it's an anomalous wave, a social anomaly.
While the police protects parliament, the Wave puts the city center under siege.
On Oct 24 berlusconi denounces the risk of extremist and violent fringes in demonstrations. That night, 1000 students break onto the red carpet of the rome film festival, saying "this movie is old".
On Oct 23 and 24 Ottobre piazza Duomo is filled by students and professors that protest against the cuts and experience the urgency of horizontal self-reform in higher education: "we shall never go back"
"Let's occupy the city to be concerned about ourselves": the university penetrates the city, the city penetrates the university, street blocks and spontaneous protests each day block the city, the outdoor lectures are crowded, everybody is suprised by the scale and novely of the mobilization: government, police, academic barons, mass media, it's an anomalous wave that submerges all.
The mobilization goes on.
On Nov 29, berlusconi has scheduled the final approval of the law.
MILAN http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BmzCmBQTNuc http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eE6OYF2Ubp8&feature=related http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lFzSFI_kXpM&feature=related http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HTr9YxV4tEk&feature=related
ROME http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6AZ_kL6l8&feature=related (lesson outside the Parliament) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=95qwE4XLIhg http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V_AEnya7oYY (Rage Against the Machine) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zoAfMj0fXdY&feature=related http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9eHjZM2fZf4 (Roma Film Festival)
SKY TV http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zAB00aRW01I&feature=related (the News crew was attacked after accusing the students of forcing the police barriers)
FLORENCE http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6YLY_5dyBVg (death of education) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHRRZY96xyM&feature=related (brain hunt) http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=ofjCoFYVycA&feature=related (D&B off the Duomo) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vJTZnYlS5uo&feature=related http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NajWUGuBJ-0&NR=1 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc75X8JBOnU&feature=related http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Detmsdks9bM&feature=related
2. A little of everything in the course, in one cycle of protest: Italy; Ongoing Cycles of Protest in Italy: Disruption of the Italian Senate; countermovements start to interact: anti-fascist left vs. fascist right (yes, they do have the latter quite openly); state/movement interaction; agent provacateurs utilizing violence--on the right-wing side....
3. The government decisions matter. The privatization and defunding law on Italian education was passed despite huge street opposition. Next is general educational strike planned soon.
This was disruption of the Senate in Rome itself with noise to stop the passage of the bill.
They had to stop passage and pass later due to noise it seemed.
General comment: I am reminded of what Tarrow said in an introductory chapter to this course. He said that it's not necessarly a love of violence that animate social movements, though it's because the power of the powerless is mostly organized to disrupt the normal functions of the powerful in institutions and daily life of others--to get attention and discussion as a larger part of the polity. We talked about the second face of power of gatekeeping that fits into this as well.
Of course such governmental disruption strategies can be utilized by anyone even the powerful (like similar governmental disruption strategies by the well-funded corporate right wing in Germany in the 1920s that adopted the same disruption tactics because they wanted to destabalize the Weimar government. Though their intention was to destroy the existing government entirely for their own dictatorship.
My point is that it can be misleading to generalize about motivations or ultimate goals of the abstract category of "all social movements." They have to be addressed case by case.
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newswire article reporting global 30.Oct.2008 07:03 actions & protests | education Gelmini Law voted in, Italy ++ Student revolt spreads ++ Fascists attack protesters author: MR
An hour ago the Gelmini decree was voted by the Senate into law. Immediately there was a big reaction from students across Italy.
In Rome they also had to confront fascist student organizations.
The fascists attacked the protesters but were also counter-attacked. In Milano, an unauthorized demo of 2000 highschool students traversed the city center where and was charged at several points by riot cops.
This is gonna be a hot day.
Tomorrow there is a general strike in the public education sector.
fascists in Piazza Navona fascists in Piazza Navona
fascist in the hands of anti-fascists
fascist in the hands of anti-fascists
riot cops riot cops
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Rome - Siege in the Senate! Milan - The City Blockaded!
ROME: Seven marches departed from various points of the city and to reach The Senate.
The parade of the Sapienza University party was met with a confrontation in Piazza Navona by the neo-fascist students.
Pics / Video here: http://roma.repubblica.it/multimedia/home/3468128
In the afternoon students occupied the faculty of Communication Sciences and Sociology.
The Senate was forced to suspend the sitting for the Gelmini twice as thousands of students besieged the Senate calling loudly for the withdrawal of the decree.
In Rome, this week, was the first organized effort by neofascisti groups to infiltrate into the series of student mobilization. [countermovement, pro-government movement interacting with the social movement]
The first episode, emphasized by the mainstream media was on Monday when some neofascisti linked to Casa Pound tried to takeover the head of the parade of school students from the fourth Municipality.
[in other words the co-option factor and 'agent provocateur' aspects that we will address later]
Today, while the students were converging on Piazza Navona, a group of students tried to take a position in front of the barriers around the entrance of the Senate.
Student protested the group which responded by attacking some protesters with sticks and belts.
On arrival of the University movement into the Piazza, there was a very hard fight with 'Block' students, who was chased them away from the square.
Police and carabinieri also charged the crowds. The news agencies speak of 30 arrests among the groups of the extreme right. At 14:30 there was a press conference at Sapienza on the events in Piazza Navona.
In Milan today, school and university students were blocking the city.
Several parades were spontaneous and uncontrollable going towards the Prefecture.
From there the students split into two parades: the university students have occupied the railway station in Milane.
In Piazza San Babila, the police tried to stop students with batons, but the march, determined, was not stopped.
[in other words, the police lost, the march continued to occupy its target]
The news of what happened in Rome reached the marches in Milan, which are strongly shouting slogans against racism.
The students reiterated that the University movement is free from racism" and is "nazi free zone".
In solidarity with Rome, against fascist infilitrations and provocations, the Milan movement announces that "the great march of 30 October and 2nd November (Gelmini Milan Day) will be dedicated to the memory of Abba."
Photos from Milan today: link to www.corriere.it http://www.globalproject.info/gal-17550.html
3.I don't believe Dalai Lama is about to throw in the towel. He is now still encouraging Tibetan people to continue the pursuit of their goal and has scheduled a meeting for their future plans.Having a peaceful and kind appearance, the Dalai Lama's have helped build international support and goodwill for the Tibetan cause. It's quite easy to arise sympathy from the whole world that he describe his faith as seeking for the depentence of Tibetan people in a Buddhism way. In fact things are not always the same as what they look like. Those 'monks' that incites riots are not Buddhists. And the so-called "independece" may also be a theocracy, ruled undemocratic monks, which was the fact in history. It's hard to pick the truth out from the mixed information sent by different media.
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Has the Dalai Lama really given up on hope that China might some day come around and agree to his proposal for some sort of (very) limited autonomy for his homeland, Tibet? That's what the 73-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader appeared to indicate during an Oct. 25 speech in his exile home of Dharamsala in northern India. "I have been sincerely pursuing the middle way approach in dealing with China for a long time now but there hasn't been any positive response from the Chinese side," he was quoted as saying. "As far as I'm concerned I have given up." That was, as an Associated Press report on the speech noted —almost with shock — "an unusually blunt" statement from a man whose well-known global public image revolves around preaching the compromise and non-violence that are central tenets of Buddhism.
Related Stories A Monk's Struggle More Related Does the Dalai Lama Still Matter? Beijing: A Harder Line on Tibet? A Monk’s Struggle But it appears that after decades of fruitless negotiations with Beijing as part of an attempt to gain some concessions for his homeland, the 15th Dalai Lama may have finally reached the end of his tether. "Mr. Patience has run out of patience," says Robbie Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York City. "It's really very serious indeed and a major disappointment, though not so much of a surprise. The Chinese must have know this was coming — some of the responsible officials in fact must be very pleased that they have managed to provoke this reaction. Now they can say that it was the other side that broke off negotiations, and claim the moral high ground."
The eighth round of talks between Beijing officials and the Dalai Lama's representatives was scheduled for late October. It's not clear how the statements by the Dalai Lama will affect them. On the day after the speech, the Tibetan leader's spokesman Tenzin Taklha told reporters that the talks were set to go forward as scheduled, stressing the need to "keep the door to dialog open." Taklha also confirmed that the Dalai Lama had called a consultative meeting of exiled Tibetans for mid-November at which the group's approach to achieving their goal of a freer Tibet would be completely examined from the ground up. He said "everything will be on the table" for reconsideration except the fundamental principle of non-violence.
In March, anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa did turn violent, leading to scores of fatalities on both sides. Chinese authorities swiftly sealed off Tibet and rounded up hundreds of suspects, some of whom reportedly remain in jail nearly eight months later. With access to the region still almost completely blocked, there have been only intermittent reports of further protests and alleged abuses and human rights violations by Chinese security forces attempting to quash the simmering dissent. Resentment against Beijing has exploded sporadically among the roughly six million Tibetans living in the mountainous region ever since troops of the People's Liberation Army invaded in 1951.
The Dalai Lama fled his homeland for exile in India in 1951, and has since become a familiar, maroon-robed presence on the world stage in a tireless, peripatetic campaign to win his homeland some degree of autonomy and preserve Tibet's traditional culture. This year he has found himself in an increasingly impossible situation since the riots in March, analysts and academics say. Younger and more radical forces among the some 100,000-strong exile community in India have increasingly called for a tougher stance against Beijing, particularly as reports of alleged further abuse, including arrests and shootings of demonstrating monks, have grown.
Sources familiar with the Tibetan stance say they have dropped almost all preconditions in talks with the Chinese and were seeking only a meeting between the spiritual leader and Chinese president Hu Jintao. but rather than soften their position, Chinese officials seemed to grow more aggressive since the middle of this year, most recently stating in July that the talks were not about the future of Tibet but about arrangements for the Dalai Lama's own future, including when he might be allowed to return to China. "That's exactly what caused the collapse of talks all the way back in 1985," says Barnett. "They must have known what would happen if they humiliated him that way again." Once they had returned to that phraseology, Barnett says the Dalai Lama had almost no choice but to repudiate them. Considering everything, he says, "the only real surprise is that it took so long." --------
3. Protesters against Kiryung electronics' abuse of woman workers has been working for international coalition.Some workers unions in the U.S expressed their supports including International Metalworkers Federation(IMF), and the National Labor Commitee abusive claimed sweatshop conditions, which reported on several business news briefly and some stock holders showed their concerns about that. From October 15th to 22th, visiting team of 6 people visited the U.S to appeal to Sirius statellite radio company, giving contracts to Kiryung and collaborate with international organizations. They protested in front of the building of Sirius company(see picture: http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/317493.html)and requested for the meeting with the concerned in Sirius, which was refused. And they participated several other demonstrations for workers. Well, I know little about to what extent these kind of collaborations work. It seems that though it offers resources to sustain the struggle, there'd be no practical change in situation when Sirius doesn't get pressure about it and Korean society retains its hostile atmosphere toward the workers,explicitly fortifying the government's bias, having legal authorities and government on firm's side. Despite persistent struggles includig a death from hunger strike, and many sympathizers there's no effective political opening for now. ---------------------------- Twelve arrested, one hospitalised and many more injured by Kiryung Electronics-hired thugs and police who were called in to break KMWU strike launched by workers that produced Sirius Satellite Radios in Korea.
USA/KOREA: Riot police stormed a peaceful demonstration on October 15, resulting in the arrest of twelve members of the Korean Metal Workers' Union and injuring many after attempting to remove Kiryung Electronics workers outside the company's gates who have been on strike for the past three years.
The workers, all of them women who were hired through a subcontracting labour agency, joined the KMWU in July 2005 to fight for equality on the job and basic worker protections at Kiryung. Soon after, the company began threatening them with dismissal for forming a union. The workers went on strike immediately.
Kiryung Electronics is a key producer of Sirius Satellite Radios, radio receivers installed in automobiles, boats and stereos sold in the United States. Sirius has exclusive partnerships with major automakers including BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Volkswagen, Ford, Volvo, and Toyota, among others.
Kiryung Electronics has refused to negotiate in good faith with the KMWU Kiryung branch and instead has employed tactics of abuse, harassment and intimidation with support of the government. The recent violence comes just months after the International Labour Organisation's Committee on Freedom of Association issued stern recommendations to the Korean government regarding the rights of Kiryung workers urging the government to "take all necessary measures to promote collective bargaining over the terms and conditions of employment of subcontracted workers in the metal sector, in particular at ... Kiryung Electronics."
The ILO called on the government to launch an independent investigation into allegations that Kiryung Electronics unjustly dismissed trade union members and hired private security guards to carry out violence against Kiryung workers on strike. "If the allegations are confirmed, [the Korean Government should] take all the necessary measures to reinstate the dismissed trade union leaders... "or "...adequate compensation should be awarded to remedy all damages suffered ..."
On October 16, a delegation of KMWU Kiryung workers travelled to New York City to request a meeting with Sirius management after attempts for resolution with Kiryung broke down. Sirius has thus far refused to meet the delegation.
The International Metalworkers' Federation is working closely with the KMWU and is pursuing auto companies with partnerships with Sirius that have signed International Framework Agreements.
More than three years after being forced to strike, 32 Kiryung workers remain on the picket line. The workers are fighting for:
Immediate reinstatement of the 32 strikers, as permanent full-time employees at one of Kiryung Electronics' factories in Korea (Kiryung closed production at the Seoul plant following the strike), with no wage, hour or gender discrimination. Kiryung Electronics to pay all back wages, along with compensation for the physical and emotional hardship suffered by the women over the course of the last three years of struggle and compensation for legal fees from the drawn out strike. The IMF is asking affiliates to send letters to Kiryung Electronics demanding that they cease and desist from violence against workers, respect workers' right to form a union, and negotiate in good faith with the workers and the KMWU for a just and prompt resolution. Letters can be faxed to: +82-2-864-1672, attention Kiryung CEO, Mr. Yeong Hun Bae.
To send letters of solidarity to the Kiryung workers, please email the KMWU's international department at: inter@metal.nodong.org or fax +82-2-714-0662. --- http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?c=18462&l=2&n=47
3. I chose this article because I was talking to a french student the other day about our class. She was then telling me about how in France so many people are always protesting for everything. She said because of this a lot of protest loose their credibility and the protests do not really work anymore. The goal is take a topic into the interest of the public by confronting them with it on the streets, however people nowadays walk past the demonstrations on the street as if they were part of the street. Because of this I think you might see the disadvantage of a society which is very open for demonstrations, in societies which are more closed demonstrations have more impact because it is more dangerous and forbidden. All forbidden things are more interesting and newsworthy than legalized demonstrations.
----------------------------- In France you can never protest too much
My French grandfather used to enjoy teasing my English father that the statue dominating Trafalgar Square was not of Nelson, but of Napoleon. Those two adversaries were invoked last week by angry British tourists, trapped by French protesters and prevented from entering the Channel Tunnel near Calais. Noticing that the police were allowing French cars to filter through one lane of the blocked motorway, a group of about 50 holidaymakers staged their own blockade, and eventually forced the police to escort them through. Perfidious Albion had won again, following Wellington's advice always to get over rough ground as lightly as possible. The cross Brits also referred proudly to our respect for law and order and criticised French unruliness and bloody-mindedness. We would never behave like them was the smug implication.
Crude generalisations of that kind are insulting - and were quickly proved wrong. By last night, some petrol stations in England were beginning to run out of supplies, following blockades of fuel depots by angry motorists, who were protesting about prices.
Yet there was little sign that the protest could escalate to the extent it had in France, where six days of tax protests choked fuel supplies and disrupted daily life throughout the country.
So why do we have such different approaches to social protest? One generalisation that does jump out is that the French have fairly recently had revolutions, whereas our last one was in the 17th century, and we've hung on to our monarch. Our national anthem proclaims us as the Queen's subjects, whereas the Marseillaise hails citoyens and citoyennes.
On the other hand, many of my farmer neighbours in north-west France are fascinated voyeurs of Windsoresque frolics. They may be anti-authority, but they are not necessarily progressive. Not for them the ideal of multiculturalism.
The French are not as collectively and simplistically arrogant as their critics suppose. When President Jacques Chirac announced his nuclear testing programme in 1995, the left in Britain howled him down but ignored the strong criticisms expressed inside France. This year similar outrage has greeted proposals by the government to bury its nuclear waste in the Mayenne.
French people are territorial. Each group or region wants to defend its own patch. A country with a deeply rural past, with, for example, a history of fine regional cooking and wine-making actively promoted by the state, will not take easily to foreign attempts at domination, as witnessed by recent protests against McDonald's. Contradictions abound. On the one hand the French have taken to fast food with gusto, and on the other they can feel threatened by it. They sense that their national identity is slipping away.
If you're territorial, provincial and rural, you can feel far away from the government, not understood by it, not listened to. Not everybody wants to pay what they perceive as towering taxes to finance health care, child care and child benefit. The night before I left France last Thursday, with just enough petrol to get back, I had dinner with my neighbour, a farmer. She complained that out of every 1,000 francs she and her husband make, the state takes 800.
She understood the petrol protests, even though her husband couldn't run his fleet of agricultural machines without fuel, and stood to lose money. She is not unusual. According to a report in Friday's Le Parisien, nine out of 10 people continue to support the blockades and protests.
The radical tradition is bolstered by the strength of the trade unions. Modernisation, as it is euphemistically called over here in Britain, has not yet swept away their power. Despite its revolutions, France has remained a stratified culture, with strongly marked social divisions, a rich bourgeoisie, rigid up-down management-worker relations. Some commentators see the French parliament as too weak to sustain vibrant debate. If it feels difficult to find a legitimate way of making your point in parliament, then direct action seems the only answer. British unions, on the other hand, were practically knocked out under Conservative rule, at the same time as the public was taught to vilify them as against the interests of the people as a whole.
A second underpinning of French willingness to protest must be the country's highly regarded state school system; free to all and free of the religious indoctrination which subordinates desire and will. A climate of intellectual freedom encourages people to ask difficult questions of those in power. We have a lot to learn from our friends across the Channel.
The situation in France is likely to become more complicated if Green protests gather more momentum. The Green Party is a member of the Socialist-led coalition, and has already made it clear that it objects to encouraging higher road use through offering more concessions to drivers. French nationalism and French environmentalism do not co-exist easily together. The definition of French rebelliousness is about to take a further twist.
3. It is the first time that I hear young students mobilizing against their school. This made smile because it reminded me of my highschool memories when I had morning classes outside the regular curriculm and strict restriction on the length of hair, uniforms and so on. The school authorities would never listen to students and give corporal punishments to have control over them. I think students should mobilize agaist the authoritarian education system and show their oponion. How can schools that ban those mobilizations with violence teach students democracy when they close their ears and try to keep the students mouth shut?
----------------------------------- 'Ban on Protests at School Goes Against Human Rights'
By Kim Tae-jong Staff Reporter
The National Human Rights Commission Tuesday said it may be a violation of human rights for elementary and secondary schools to ban students from holding rallies.
The conclusion came as an activist made a petition to the commission last October regarding stern disciplinary measures by a middle school in Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province on its students who held a rally during lunchtime.
About 150 students at the school held a protest against the school, opposing regulations that ban students from carrying cell phones, having their own hairstyles and being absent from early morning classes.
But the school forcibly broke up the students and held an on-the-spot disciplinary class in which the school inflicted corporal punishment on 20 of the protest leaders.
Facing criticism on the decision, the school claimed the protest was conducted by the activist without permission from the school, and the corporal punishment was part of disciplinary measures.
But the commission said, ``It was the students' right to protest and they conducted it in a peaceful way during lunchtime without disturbing regular classes.''
The commission also advised the school to reconsider policies on early morning classes outside the regular curriculum, emphasizing the importance of agreement from students on the matter.
2. Demonstrations prompt closure of U.S. Embassy in Syria
3. I found this article interesting after the lesson today, because it is about the Syrians gathering tens of thousands of people to demonstrate. It accurse to me that there is a lot of emotion involved in mobilizing all these people. First of all the Syrians identify them self with the killed people. Furthermore it is framed as injustice , because it is said that there where a woman and four children killed, even though Washington disputed this. Either way, to me it seems that emotions are the biggest driver in this kind of demonstration.
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October 29, 2008 -- Updated 2304 GMT Demonstrations prompt closure of U.S. Embassy in Syria BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. Embassy in Damascus announced that it will be closed Thursday because of "increased security concerns" arising three days after a U.S. strike in Syria.
Iraqi refugees took to the streets in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday to protest Sunday's airstrike. more photos »
Officials said the action was taken because of concerns over anti-U.S. demonstrations scheduled for Thursday over Sunday's airstrike, which Syria claims left eight people dead near the Iraq-Syria border. Demonstrations were reportedly staged Wednesday throughout Syria to protest the incident, which has raised tensions among Iraq, Syria and the United States. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Abu Kamal, Syria, near the Iraqi border, burning American flags and shouting angrily, the country's official news agency SANA reported. The Syrian government summoned the top U.S. official in the country, Maura Connelly, on Wednesday to request that an American cultural center be shut immediately. The government also requested a closure date of November 6 for the American-run Damascus Community School, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. The Syrians did not specify how long the closures would last, Wood said. Connelly told Syrian officials that the United States "expects them to provide adequate security to the buildings" during the closures, Wood said. Senior State Department officials said the U.S. was pushing back on the request to close the school, as were other international diplomats and Syrian families whose children attend classes there. Earlier this week, the Syrians gave Connelly a "demarche," or formal protest, about Sunday's incident, Wood said. Syria has filed a complaint with the United Nations over the incident, which it has deemed an "act of aggression." Syria says four U.S. helicopters based in Iraq launched the deadly airstrike on a farm under construction about five miles (8 kilometers) from the Iraq-Syria border, according to SANA. Washington has not confirmed the strike. But a U.S. official who did not want to be identified said U.S. gunships fired near the Syria-Iraq border and successfully targeted Abu Ghadiya, an Iraqi suspected of working with al Qaeda to smuggle money, weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq. Abu Ghadiya was "the top facilitator of al Qaeda foreign fighters into Iraq," according to a top U.S. military official in Iraq who did not want to be named for security reasons. News of the embassy closure came as the Iraqi government announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into the airstrike. Iraqi authorities said they plan to share their findings with Syria. "All information and data [will be] submitted to the brotherly Syrian side upon the completion of investigations," the statement said, quoting an authoritative source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In its letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the current head of the U.N. Security Council, Syria maintained that the U.S. helicopters "violated Syrian airspace" and struck a civilian building before returning to Iraq, SANA reported. Farhan Haq, a spokesman for Ban's office, confirmed that the secretary-general had received the complaint and said it will be studied and circulated among Security Council members. Syria identified the eight killed as Daoud Mohammad al-Abdullah and his four sons; Ahmad Khalefa; and Ali Abbas and his wife, according to SANA. Another unnamed U.S. official in Washington disputed that women or children were killed. The official said the operation, carried out by U.S. Special Operations ground forces, was designed to minimize the risk of unintended civilian casualties. He said that other members of Abu Ghadiya's network were killed in the raid and that no one was captured alive. Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesman for the government in Baghdad, initially responded to the attack Monday. "We want good relations, but we must remember that 13 Iraqi policemen ... were killed in an Iraqi bordering village near that region by a terrorist group that was operating from the Syrian territories," he said.
The Syrian government denounced that statement, state-run media reported. Al-Dabbagh issued a statement Tuesday saying the government in Baghdad condemned the attack and called on U.S. forces "not to repeat such acts." Iraq's parliament issued a statement Tuesday expressing "great regret" over the strike, which it said threatens to "mar" Iraq's relationship with Syria.
3. I was really excited to read this article because while I was reading it I thougt about 'the capitalism and protestant ethics' by Weber. I do agree with that ethics influence advertising a lot because ethics affect social in general, and advertising is just a part of the social events. I think all kinds of ethics are strongly connected with human being and ethos, even though sometimes ethics are not same and even they are opposing. I guess that's why there are social movement and collective behavior.
------------------------
A rotating representative from advertising giant JWT answers your questions exclusively for The Boardroom.
(CNN) -- How do you balance ethical issues when designing seductive advertising campaigns for potentially hazardous products such as alcohol or tobacco?
JWT advertisement for Freixenet, starring Martin Scorsese
more photos » There are three important parts to the question:
• The ethical issues advertisers have to contend with as they develop advertising that is designed to capture interest, and ultimately drive purchase.
• The proposition that advertising campaigns are "seductive."
• The specificity of hazardous substances.
The ethical issues
There is a wide band of ethical considerations that advertising needs to -- indeed is required to -- address.
• Legal requirements: Today there are a number of jurisdictions that have clearly defined rules and regulations about what can be advertised and to whom. For example, in North America there are strict rules that determine the shape of advertising to children, while in some jurisdictions advertising to children is illegal. In many countries, advertising harmful substances is illegal; for example, tobacco advertising is banned in Canada.
So the first part of the response is that in many instances, where audiences are considered vulnerable, or where a "product" is determined severely harmful, advertising has clear rules to follow.
• Ethical and legal implications: In the absence of clearly defined regulations, there are legal, business and social implications of not taking into consideration ethical and social considerations. In many countries there are official organizations mandated to vet advertising to ensure it is not offensive, not deceitful, and not culturally distasteful. Guardians of cultural sensibilities, these organizations ensure that advertising satisfies standards of taste and propriety.
What makes a viral ad? JWT's Bob Jeffrey on The Boardroom There are, in addition, the implications of offense or deceit that the producing companies and advertising agencies are answerable to. Even within regulatory environments, there is room for advertising to offend or offer not-quite-complete truths. While there was a time when these behaviors could pass unseen, or unchallenged, today, people demand full accountability. Claims are now tested and monitored with real implications for the integrity, credibility and reputation of the offending organization.
This environment is perhaps the most potent "watcher" as it ensures that we all carefully consider what we say and how we say it. Without trustworthy reputations, neither companies nor advertising agencies will survive -- hence we are all attentive to protecting, indeed fortifying, the reputation of the agency and its clients.
• Conscience-driven considerations: But even within this heightened sense of accountability, advertisers are careful to guard the quality of advertising. And today this means speaking truths. Because today the advertising that is successful -- that captures the attention and interest of people -- is that which speaks compelling truths. So even those who may be somewhat more cavalier or audacious, and greater risk-takers, know that truth defines quality, supports reputation, and ultimately is the source of success.
Which leads us to the second point of the query:
Seductive advertising
There is a powerful mythology that advertising does convince people to purchase things they neither need nor want. And clearly, the history of advertising is full of delicious examples of how we have been convinced, cajoled, seduced into purchasing new things that, once non-existent, are today essential.
But as individuals, communities and cultures mature, so has advertising, and the audiences we advertise to. Today, audiences have well-developed advertising savvy, and we can no longer interrupt people with inane, uninteresting advertising designed to "push product." This neither captures their attention, nor their purchase decisions.
To get people to spend time with brands we need to be interesting and compelling, because today people expect information, entertainment, and demand truth.
Consumers also demand that brands and companies be accountable for what they are selling. That means that what advertisers say about products needs to be truthful. Indeed, there are legal consequences if we are not.
In addition, today consumers want, and deserve, to be treated as responsible, knowledgeable decision makers -- and the only way to treat people with respect is to be truthful.
So while "seduction" may continue to be a guiding desire, today we know that it is truth that "sells."
Hazardous substances
The third part of the query asks specifically about hazardous substances. This is somewhat tricky, because "hazardous substance" is an ever-shifting category. What was once considered useful and beneficial -- for example, tobacco -- is today considered hazardous. We continue to unearth substances that are hazardous; the recent concern over a key substance in plastic bottles, or the concern that plastic shower curtains contain toxic materials are but two examples.
The first point therefore is that accountability standards, or definitions of hazardous, are not static, and we do not always know what is hazardous. What is important is that once we do, we approach all communications with truthfulness.
And this is because whether aware of the hazard or not, we and our clients will be held accountable for the hazard if and when it is discovered. Abdicating responsibility is no longer an option.
We have cultivated high standards of accountability, and we have the watcher mechanisms to hold us all accountable. Indeed, one may want to characterize the first half of the 21st century as the Age of Accountability. Defining what is "hazardous" changes with rapidity and piercing accuracy, and we are both required and compelled to pay attention to the ever-shifting ground.
Accountability requires us to produce better products, forces us to be more truthful, more transparent, more honest, and more humane. And that can only improve the foundation of how we do business, and how we live as both economic and social agents.
Because today we know that all actions have consequences. We know that we make an imprint in the world and that we need to manage that imprint to ensure that the consequences of not only the substances we use and promote, but all of our actions, first do no harm.
Reason vs. passion
We live in a time where accountability requires every individual and organization to take responsibility for their individual and collective actions. Collectively we have the social, political and legal power to enforce responsibility.
We are also clear-eyed consumers of culture, products and news. We are no longer easily seduced by myths and grandiose aspirations. We seek truths, we require credibility and integrity, and we hope for trustworthiness.
So even if advertisers could "seduce" as the query asks, our point of view is that advertising does not hold this power. We are compelled through legislative, political, and social power of accountability to attract with wit, honesty and truth.
We know that this is the source of good business -- for us and for our clients. And if we ever for a moment stray from this guiding principle, we are sure to be held accountable.
But one may say to all of this: Yes, but what about our desires? People just want stuff and business makes it for them, and advertisers sell it to them, irrespective of the hazards.
Yes, while we are savvy consumers that do want truth, we are also social creatures that desire. We struggle with our reason and our passions. And a great man said it best many years ago. David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, I believe offers us the best assessment of our condition: "Reason is the handmaiden of our passions."
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
8 comments:
1. Mark Whitaker
2. A Timeline of the past several months of collective action in Italy of "The Wave", a Mass Mobilization/General Strike/ throughout all of Italy against privatization of education and social services by President Burlusconi.
3. L'Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself; many different preexisting SMOs merging in a novel SMI, with novel songs, strategies of protest, etc., that become widely shared and the police have yet to learn how to effectively demote them. Burlusconi is a billionaire media mogul. He was out of the Italian Presidency in the previous election, though he was reelected in early 2008.
Think about the resource mobilization issues and organizations from different areas involved in this very wide collective action.
The protests are over the drastic cuts to public services and particularly education that the Italian government wants to completely privatize.
----------------------------
Video footage of a rebellion :
author: zora
Protests keep growing, millions on the streets, with hundreds of demos and initiatives in all Italian cities and especially in Pisa, Venice, Padua, Naplei [and the capital of Rome]
In Rome: huge assembly at La Sapienza and spontaneous demo toward italian parliament.
In Milano: official teaching blocked, public lectures hel in duomo square; assemblies and intramural protests at Statale, Politecnico, Bicocca and Brera.
Berlusconi from china says "never said I'd send police in schools" and "the italian press don't understand my words". Minister of public education Gelmini says want to "open dialogue with students" and adds "there is an ongoing terroristic campaign against my reform". High schools are agitating mightily with most of the schools taken over by students and a myriad of street protests.
"We won't pay for your crisis"
"We won't pay for your crisis" : as in the rest of italy, in the
universities of Milano the mobilization is uncontrollable by power.
From Mediazione Culturale to Scienze Politiche, 'Accademia di Brera and Università Bicocca, from Conservatorio to Politecnico to the State University of Milano in central Festa del Perdono.
Students are mobilizing to bock the Gelmini Decree (Gelmini, arch-catholic minister of education rechristened Gelminator by protesters), and to push for a
self-reform for a university of knowledge and research. Together with postgrads, researchers, university employees and precasious faculty.
The brainworkers of immaterial labor are on the move. Everywhere the blocks of lessons and the blockades of traffic by students are multiplying, with spontaneous assemblies in each university,
department, with rectorates and classrooms occupied.
An uncontrollable movement that can win, and transform a university based on deskilled higher education and academic nepotism and related fiefdoms into a university as public place of education and self-education linked to
the needs and cultures of the society to be. But where did all this come from?
Stop Decreto Gelmini. Hands off schools and universities. We won't pay for your crisis!
The Berlusconi Gov't passed the Law Decree n° 112 del 25 June 2008
titles "Urgent provisions for economic dev't, simplification,
competitiveness, stabilitazion of public finance and tax equalization"
This decree becomes provisional law during the summer holidays, on Aug
5 (Legge 133/2008)
In provincial Italy, the policy response to the mounting global crisis as put forward by minister of finance Tremonti is drastic cuts to social spending, starting from public school and universities.
The essential points of the gelmini-tremonti package: return to the single teacher in elementary schools, segregated classes for "foreign" kids, severe cuts in financial resources to education, the block of hirings of teaching and technical personnel, from elementary schools to universities and research, the reconversion of public universities in private foundations...
In september schools reopen: all over italy a new movement makes its
first stems in elementary schools, high schools, universities. The
first mots d'ordre are against the precarization of teachers, against
the single teacher that would enforce a single ideology, against the so-called differentiated classes that would violently discriminate immigrant children with a truly racial provision aiming at establishing apartheid in italy.
On Oct 3 the autonomous network of high school student collectives
take it to the streets in many cities of Italy.
On Oct 13, the minister Gelmini cancels her appearance at a symposium in milano for fear of protests.
In october classes start in universities: a university student
movement emerges powerfully: "We won't pay your crisis!"
It's a loud and clear message that speaks of the here and now, of precarity, economic crisis and the last gasps of neoliberalism.
[frame transformation:]
"Cut resources to bankers and war missions, rather than to schools and universities! we are the coming society! We are not the problem, we are the solution!"
Week by week the mov't grows: from elementary schools, teachers,
parents, kids are united in denouncing the decree; high school
collectives network their struggles; in universities researchers other
precarious faculty and professors start joining student assemblies and discussing with student collectives.
"We have started so that we wouldn't stop" and "We shall never go back" : university students are against the berlusconi cuts billed as 'reform' but do not want to defend public university fallen prey to clientelist and nepotistic practices, ruled by barons over the
shoulders of precarious junior faculty. The growing movement does not accept neither old labels nor old forms of representations, it demands and practices autonomy and freedom from the classic forms of politics, parties especially. The responsibilities of past centerleft
governments stand clear in weaking the public university system and so
does the inability of the current parliamentary opposition to oppose
mr b's decrees, which cuts funds to public schools while giving aid to
private schools.
The dem party has also imitated berlusconi in calling for draconian laws in the name of 'security' fingerpointing dangerous
subjects such as gypsies, immigrants, street sellers, graffiti writers.
On Oct 17, the national strike called by radical alternative unions against the berlusconi government turns into the first No Gelmini Day.
In Rome 300,000 people take part in the strike demo. Rome students
take part in the union demo and then break off in the thousands and by outflanking police manage to reach and block the ministry of
education.
In Milano, unions are also on the streets. university and
high school students decide to cross the whole city paralyzing traffic as three demos merge: elementary schools, high school students, and for the first time since the 'panther' movement of 1990, a strong demonstration of university students from many agitating faculties and
academic insititutions.
At the end of the demo, precarious teachers of elementary schools and high school students put the milano education department under siege, while university students experiment for the first time with the practice of metropolitan blockades in the rest of
the city.
In the following week, the social situation escalates, as spontaneous
protests and initiatives spread to further cities large and small.
On Oct 21 in Milano, the General Estates of the University are held in the aula magna of Milano State University. Just like in Sapienza in Rome and in Palermo, the assembly is huge: 2000 people that decide at the end of the assembly to give rise to a an unauthorized demo across
the streets of Milano.
The demo marches fast and unpredictably, it goes back and forth: the city goes tilt. Getting news that in bologna and other cities university students have occupied railway stations,
the demo arrives at Cadorna train station. Riot cops prevent access to the station and charge students with batons, who do not disperse and block the car traffic all around by doing a determined sit-in.
In Florence, 40000 people of all ages from schools and universities
express solidarity to the student movement and fear for the possibility of repression.
In the subsequent days, mobilizations further develop: in Milano, Torino and other cities dozens of motions to faculty boards, class blockades, assemblies, all-night events take place in freed universities.
The first experiments with alternative higher education occur: academic lectures are held in central public squares before
hundreds of students and curious citizens, while students speak of
"free university and free knowledge".
On Oct 22 berlusconi accuses centri sociali (squatted social centers) to be the maneuverers behind the social mobilizations and warns "I will send the police against occupations of schools and universities."
The movement is not intimidated: "We have no fear" is the rallying
cry. Some rectors swear "never police in a university", while some professors [ironically say] that a bit of university education might be well needed by the italian police...
On Oct 23 berlusconi now in beijing denies having thought about
sending in the riot cops and accused the italian press of
misinformation. [sic]
In Rome, Sapienza students after another huge assembly the decided to march toward the parliamente in a demo merging three
streams of people, university students, high school students and the activists of roman centri sociali who are protesting against the eviction of Horus social center and the will to eradicate all social spaces expressed by the neofascist new mayor Almeanno.
15000 people are spontaneously taking the streets in the heart of the city. "Roma libera", "libertà, libertà", in the joy and thrill of the moment a new cry emerges "un'altra Onda, un altra volta", "siamo i giovani, siamo l'esercito del surf" taken from a song of the roman rapper "Er Piotta" [Another Wave, Once More] [we are the youth, we are surf's army] The song is an antiauthoritarian antiwar jibe about being able to go with the flow and repeat the wave of change; it expresses the idea of strategic flexibility in the sense of being able to surf the rough waves and be anywhere and everywhere, and especially to be where they least expect us.
L'Onda, The Wave, the movement names itself: it's an anomalous wave, a social anomaly.
While the police protects parliament, the Wave puts
the city center under siege.
On Oct 24 berlusconi denounces the risk of extremist and violent
fringes in demonstrations. That night, 1000 students break onto the
red carpet of the rome film festival, saying "this movie is old".
On Oct 23 and 24 Ottobre piazza Duomo is filled by students and
professors that protest against the cuts and experience the urgency of horizontal self-reform in higher education: "we shall never go back"
"Let's occupy the city to be concerned about ourselves": the
university penetrates the city, the city penetrates the university,
street blocks and spontaneous protests each day block the city, the outdoor lectures are crowded, everybody is suprised by the scale and novely of the mobilization: government, police, academic barons, mass
media, it's an anomalous wave that submerges all.
The mobilization goes on.
On Nov 29, berlusconi has scheduled the final approval of the law.
And the anomalous wave keeps growing.
PISA:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjyVoK9OJ4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i_UTJLSgBx0&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L9atLexVxds&feature=related
MILAN
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BmzCmBQTNuc
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eE6OYF2Ubp8&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lFzSFI_kXpM&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HTr9YxV4tEk&feature=related
ROME
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5F6AZ_kL6l8&feature=related (lesson outside the Parliament)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=95qwE4XLIhg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V_AEnya7oYY (Rage Against the Machine)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zoAfMj0fXdY&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9eHjZM2fZf4 (Roma Film Festival)
SKY TV
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zAB00aRW01I&feature=related (the News crew was attacked after accusing the students of forcing the police barriers)
FLORENCE
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6YLY_5dyBVg (death of education)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHRRZY96xyM&feature=related (brain hunt)
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=ofjCoFYVycA&feature=related (D&B off the Duomo)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vJTZnYlS5uo&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NajWUGuBJ-0&NR=1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc75X8JBOnU&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Detmsdks9bM&feature=related
PALERMO
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T8jf6NRS6LE&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hjUK0zH8CTE&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JiZ-Tqkuw&feature=related
TRIESTE
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=70hU2Mjc7kk
AND MANY OTHER CITIES
http://www.beppegrillo.it/ (click on the Italian flag and on the banner on top of the page)
---
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/381563.shtml
1. Mark Whitaker
2. A little of everything in the course, in one cycle of protest: Italy; Ongoing Cycles of Protest in Italy: Disruption of the Italian Senate; countermovements start to interact: anti-fascist left vs. fascist right (yes, they do have the latter quite openly); state/movement interaction; agent provacateurs utilizing violence--on the right-wing side....
3. The government decisions matter. The privatization and defunding law on Italian education was passed despite huge street opposition. Next is general educational strike planned soon.
This was disruption of the Senate in Rome itself with noise to stop the passage of the bill.
They had to stop passage and pass later due to noise it seemed.
General comment: I am reminded of what Tarrow said in an introductory chapter to this course. He said that it's not necessarly a love of violence that animate social movements, though it's because the power of the powerless is mostly organized to disrupt the normal functions of the powerful in institutions and daily life of others--to get attention and discussion as a larger part of the polity. We talked about the second face of power of gatekeeping that fits into this as well.
Of course such governmental disruption strategies can be utilized by anyone even the powerful (like similar governmental disruption strategies by the well-funded corporate right wing in Germany in the 1920s that adopted the same disruption tactics because they wanted to destabalize the Weimar government. Though their intention was to destroy the existing government entirely for their own dictatorship.
My point is that it can be misleading to generalize about motivations or ultimate goals of the abstract category of "all social movements." They have to be addressed case by case.
-----------------------------
newswire article reporting global 30.Oct.2008 07:03
actions & protests | education
Gelmini Law voted in, Italy ++ Student revolt spreads ++ Fascists attack protesters
author: MR
An hour ago the Gelmini decree was voted by the Senate into law. Immediately there was a big reaction from students across Italy.
In Rome they also had to confront fascist student organizations.
The fascists attacked the protesters but were also counter-attacked. In Milano, an unauthorized demo of 2000 highschool students traversed the city center where and was charged at several points by riot cops.
This is gonna be a hot day.
Tomorrow there is a general strike in the public education sector.
fascists in Piazza Navona
fascists in Piazza Navona
fascist in the hands of anti-fascists
fascist in the hands of anti-fascists
riot cops
riot cops
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Rome - Siege in the Senate!
Milan - The City Blockaded!
ROME: Seven marches departed from various points of the city and to reach The Senate.
The parade of the Sapienza University party was met with a confrontation in Piazza Navona by the neo-fascist students.
Pics / Video here: http://roma.repubblica.it/multimedia/home/3468128
In the afternoon students occupied the faculty of Communication Sciences and Sociology.
The Senate was forced to suspend the sitting for the Gelmini twice as thousands of students besieged the Senate calling loudly for the withdrawal of the decree.
In Rome, this week, was the first organized effort by neofascisti groups to infiltrate into the series of student mobilization. [countermovement, pro-government movement interacting with the social movement]
The first episode, emphasized by the mainstream media was on Monday when some neofascisti linked to Casa Pound tried to takeover the head of the parade of school students from the fourth Municipality.
[in other words the co-option factor and 'agent provocateur' aspects that we will address later]
Today, while the students were converging on Piazza Navona, a group of students tried to take a position in front of the barriers around the entrance of the Senate.
Student protested the group which responded by attacking some protesters with sticks and belts.
On arrival of the University movement into the Piazza, there was a very hard fight with 'Block' students, who was chased them away from the square.
Police and carabinieri also charged the crowds. The news agencies speak of 30 arrests among the groups of the extreme right. At 14:30 there was a press conference at Sapienza on the events in Piazza Navona.
In Milan today, school and university students were blocking the city.
Several parades were spontaneous and uncontrollable going towards the Prefecture.
From there the students split into two parades: the university students have occupied the railway station in Milane.
In Piazza San Babila, the police tried to stop students with batons, but the march, determined, was not stopped.
[in other words, the police lost, the march continued to occupy its target]
The news of what happened in Rome reached the marches in Milan, which are strongly shouting slogans against racism.
The students reiterated that the University movement is free from racism" and is "nazi free zone".
In solidarity with Rome, against fascist infilitrations and provocations, the Milan movement announces that "the great march of 30 October and 2nd November (Gelmini Milan Day) will be dedicated to the memory of Abba."
Photos from Milan today:
link to www.corriere.it
http://www.globalproject.info/gal-17550.html
---
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/381681.shtml
1.Chenyang Wu
2.Is the Dalai Lama About to Give Up on China?
3.I don't believe Dalai Lama is about to throw in the towel. He is now still encouraging Tibetan people to continue the pursuit of their goal and has scheduled a meeting for their future plans.Having a peaceful and kind appearance, the Dalai Lama's have helped build international support and goodwill for the Tibetan cause. It's quite easy to arise sympathy from the whole world that he describe his faith as seeking for the depentence of Tibetan people in a Buddhism way. In fact things are not always the same as what they look like. Those 'monks' that incites riots are not Buddhists. And the so-called "independece" may also be a theocracy, ruled undemocratic monks, which was the fact in history. It's hard to pick the truth out from the mixed information sent by different media.
-----------------------------
Has the Dalai Lama really given up on hope that China might some day come around and agree to his proposal for some sort of (very) limited autonomy for his homeland, Tibet? That's what the 73-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader appeared to indicate during an Oct. 25 speech in his exile home of Dharamsala in northern India. "I have been sincerely pursuing the middle way approach in dealing with China for a long time now but there hasn't been any positive response from the Chinese side," he was quoted as saying. "As far as I'm concerned I have given up." That was, as an Associated Press report on the speech noted —almost with shock — "an unusually blunt" statement from a man whose well-known global public image revolves around preaching the compromise and non-violence that are central tenets of Buddhism.
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A Monk’s Struggle
But it appears that after decades of fruitless negotiations with Beijing as part of an attempt to gain some concessions for his homeland, the 15th Dalai Lama may have finally reached the end of his tether. "Mr. Patience has run out of patience," says Robbie Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University in New York City. "It's really very serious indeed and a major disappointment, though not so much of a surprise. The Chinese must have know this was coming — some of the responsible officials in fact must be very pleased that they have managed to provoke this reaction. Now they can say that it was the other side that broke off negotiations, and claim the moral high ground."
The eighth round of talks between Beijing officials and the Dalai Lama's representatives was scheduled for late October. It's not clear how the statements by the Dalai Lama will affect them. On the day after the speech, the Tibetan leader's spokesman Tenzin Taklha told reporters that the talks were set to go forward as scheduled, stressing the need to "keep the door to dialog open." Taklha also confirmed that the Dalai Lama had called a consultative meeting of exiled Tibetans for mid-November at which the group's approach to achieving their goal of a freer Tibet would be completely examined from the ground up. He said "everything will be on the table" for reconsideration except the fundamental principle of non-violence.
In March, anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa did turn violent, leading to scores of fatalities on both sides. Chinese authorities swiftly sealed off Tibet and rounded up hundreds of suspects, some of whom reportedly remain in jail nearly eight months later. With access to the region still almost completely blocked, there have been only intermittent reports of further protests and alleged abuses and human rights violations by Chinese security forces attempting to quash the simmering dissent. Resentment against Beijing has exploded sporadically among the roughly six million Tibetans living in the mountainous region ever since troops of the People's Liberation Army invaded in 1951.
The Dalai Lama fled his homeland for exile in India in 1951, and has since become a familiar, maroon-robed presence on the world stage in a tireless, peripatetic campaign to win his homeland some degree of autonomy and preserve Tibet's traditional culture. This year he has found himself in an increasingly impossible situation since the riots in March, analysts and academics say. Younger and more radical forces among the some 100,000-strong exile community in India have increasingly called for a tougher stance against Beijing, particularly as reports of alleged further abuse, including arrests and shootings of demonstrating monks, have grown.
Sources familiar with the Tibetan stance say they have dropped almost all preconditions in talks with the Chinese and were seeking only a meeting between the spiritual leader and Chinese president Hu Jintao. but rather than soften their position, Chinese officials seemed to grow more aggressive since the middle of this year, most recently stating in July that the talks were not about the future of Tibet but about arrangements for the Dalai Lama's own future, including when he might be allowed to return to China. "That's exactly what caused the collapse of talks all the way back in 1985," says Barnett. "They must have known what would happen if they humiliated him that way again." Once they had returned to that phraseology, Barnett says the Dalai Lama had almost no choice but to repudiate them. Considering everything, he says, "the only real surprise is that it took so long."
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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1853897,00.html?xid=rss-world
1.Kyung-Hee, Kang
2. "Police raid strike at Kiryung Electronics"
3. Protesters against Kiryung electronics' abuse of woman workers has been working for international coalition.Some workers unions in the U.S expressed their supports including International Metalworkers Federation(IMF), and the National Labor Commitee abusive claimed sweatshop conditions, which reported on several business news briefly and some stock holders showed their concerns about that.
From October 15th to 22th, visiting team of 6 people visited the U.S to appeal to Sirius statellite radio company, giving contracts to Kiryung and collaborate with international organizations. They protested in front of the building of Sirius company(see picture: http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/317493.html)and requested for the meeting with the concerned in Sirius, which was refused. And they participated several other demonstrations for workers.
Well, I know little about to what extent these kind of collaborations work. It seems that though it offers resources to sustain the struggle, there'd be no practical change in situation when Sirius doesn't get pressure about it and Korean society retains its hostile atmosphere toward the workers,explicitly fortifying the government's bias, having legal authorities and government on firm's side. Despite persistent struggles includig a death from hunger strike, and many sympathizers there's no effective political opening for now.
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Twelve arrested, one hospitalised and many more injured by Kiryung Electronics-hired thugs and police who were called in to break KMWU strike launched by workers that produced Sirius Satellite Radios in Korea.
USA/KOREA: Riot police stormed a peaceful demonstration on October 15, resulting in the arrest of twelve members of the Korean Metal Workers' Union and injuring many after attempting to remove Kiryung Electronics workers outside the company's gates who have been on strike for the past three years.
The workers, all of them women who were hired through a subcontracting labour agency, joined the KMWU in July 2005 to fight for equality on the job and basic worker protections at Kiryung. Soon after, the company began threatening them with dismissal for forming a union. The workers went on strike immediately.
Kiryung Electronics is a key producer of Sirius Satellite Radios, radio receivers installed in automobiles, boats and stereos sold in the United States. Sirius has exclusive partnerships with major automakers including BMW, Chrysler, Daimler, Volkswagen, Ford, Volvo, and Toyota, among others.
Kiryung Electronics has refused to negotiate in good faith with the KMWU Kiryung branch and instead has employed tactics of abuse, harassment and intimidation with support of the government. The recent violence comes just months after the International Labour Organisation's Committee on Freedom of Association issued stern recommendations to the Korean government regarding the rights of Kiryung workers urging the government to "take all necessary measures to promote collective bargaining over the terms and conditions of employment of subcontracted workers in the metal sector, in particular at ... Kiryung Electronics."
The ILO called on the government to launch an independent investigation into allegations that Kiryung Electronics unjustly dismissed trade union members and hired private security guards to carry out violence against Kiryung workers on strike. "If the allegations are confirmed, [the Korean Government should] take all the necessary measures to reinstate the dismissed trade union leaders... "or "...adequate compensation should be awarded to remedy all damages suffered ..."
On October 16, a delegation of KMWU Kiryung workers travelled to New York City to request a meeting with Sirius management after attempts for resolution with Kiryung broke down. Sirius has thus far refused to meet the delegation.
The International Metalworkers' Federation is working closely with the KMWU and is pursuing auto companies with partnerships with Sirius that have signed International Framework Agreements.
More than three years after being forced to strike, 32 Kiryung workers remain on the picket line. The workers are fighting for:
Immediate reinstatement of the 32 strikers, as permanent full-time employees at one of Kiryung Electronics' factories in Korea (Kiryung closed production at the Seoul plant following the strike), with no wage, hour or gender discrimination.
Kiryung Electronics to pay all back wages, along with compensation for the physical and emotional hardship suffered by the women over the course of the last three years of struggle and compensation for legal fees from the drawn out strike.
The IMF is asking affiliates to send letters to Kiryung Electronics demanding that they cease and desist from violence against workers, respect workers' right to form a union, and negotiate in good faith with the workers and the KMWU for a just and prompt resolution. Letters can be faxed to: +82-2-864-1672, attention Kiryung CEO, Mr. Yeong Hun Bae.
To send letters of solidarity to the Kiryung workers, please email the KMWU's international department at: inter@metal.nodong.org or fax +82-2-714-0662.
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http://www.imfmetal.org/main/index.cfm?c=18462&l=2&n=47
1. Graciëla Nooitgedagt
2. Protests in France
3. I chose this article because I was talking to a french student the other day about our class. She was then telling me about how in France so many people are always protesting for everything. She said because of this a lot of protest loose their credibility and the protests do not really work anymore. The goal is take a topic into the interest of the public by confronting them with it on the streets, however people nowadays walk past the demonstrations on the street as if they were part of the street. Because of this I think you might see the disadvantage of a society which is very open for demonstrations, in societies which are more closed demonstrations have more impact because it is more dangerous and forbidden. All forbidden things are more interesting and newsworthy than legalized demonstrations.
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In France you can never protest too much
My French grandfather used to enjoy teasing my English father that the statue dominating Trafalgar Square was not of Nelson, but of Napoleon. Those two adversaries were invoked last week by angry British tourists, trapped by French protesters and prevented from entering the Channel Tunnel near Calais. Noticing that the police were allowing French cars to filter through one lane of the blocked motorway, a group of about 50 holidaymakers staged their own blockade, and eventually forced the police to escort them through. Perfidious Albion had won again, following Wellington's advice always to get over rough ground as lightly as possible. The cross Brits also referred proudly to our respect for law and order and criticised French unruliness and bloody-mindedness. We would never behave like them was the smug implication.
Crude generalisations of that kind are insulting - and were quickly proved wrong. By last night, some petrol stations in England were beginning to run out of supplies, following blockades of fuel depots by angry motorists, who were protesting about prices.
Yet there was little sign that the protest could escalate to the extent it had in France, where six days of tax protests choked fuel supplies and disrupted daily life throughout the country.
So why do we have such different approaches to social protest? One generalisation that does jump out is that the French have fairly recently had revolutions, whereas our last one was in the 17th century, and we've hung on to our monarch. Our national anthem proclaims us as the Queen's subjects, whereas the Marseillaise hails citoyens and citoyennes.
On the other hand, many of my farmer neighbours in north-west France are fascinated voyeurs of Windsoresque frolics. They may be anti-authority, but they are not necessarily progressive. Not for them the ideal of multiculturalism.
The French are not as collectively and simplistically arrogant as their critics suppose. When President Jacques Chirac announced his nuclear testing programme in 1995, the left in Britain howled him down but ignored the strong criticisms expressed inside France. This year similar outrage has greeted proposals by the government to bury its nuclear waste in the Mayenne.
French people are territorial. Each group or region wants to defend its own patch. A country with a deeply rural past, with, for example, a history of fine regional cooking and wine-making actively promoted by the state, will not take easily to foreign attempts at domination, as witnessed by recent protests against McDonald's. Contradictions abound. On the one hand the French have taken to fast food with gusto, and on the other they can feel threatened by it. They sense that their national identity is slipping away.
If you're territorial, provincial and rural, you can feel far away from the government, not understood by it, not listened to. Not everybody wants to pay what they perceive as towering taxes to finance health care, child care and child benefit. The night before I left France last Thursday, with just enough petrol to get back, I had dinner with my neighbour, a farmer. She complained that out of every 1,000 francs she and her husband make, the state takes 800.
She understood the petrol protests, even though her husband couldn't run his fleet of agricultural machines without fuel, and stood to lose money. She is not unusual. According to a report in Friday's Le Parisien, nine out of 10 people continue to support the blockades and protests.
The radical tradition is bolstered by the strength of the trade unions. Modernisation, as it is euphemistically called over here in Britain, has not yet swept away their power. Despite its revolutions, France has remained a stratified culture, with strongly marked social divisions, a rich bourgeoisie, rigid up-down management-worker relations. Some commentators see the French parliament as too weak to sustain vibrant debate. If it feels difficult to find a legitimate way of making your point in parliament, then direct action seems the only answer. British unions, on the other hand, were practically knocked out under Conservative rule, at the same time as the public was taught to vilify them as against the interests of the people as a whole.
A second underpinning of French willingness to protest must be the country's highly regarded state school system; free to all and free of the religious indoctrination which subordinates desire and will. A climate of intellectual freedom encourages people to ask difficult questions of those in power. We have a lot to learn from our friends across the Channel.
The situation in France is likely to become more complicated if Green protests gather more momentum. The Green Party is a member of the Socialist-led coalition, and has already made it clear that it objects to encouraging higher road use through offering more concessions to drivers. French nationalism and French environmentalism do not co-exist easily together. The definition of French rebelliousness is about to take a further twist.
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www.independent.co.uk
1. Hojin Yoo
2. Young students protest agaisnt school
3. It is the first time that I hear young students mobilizing against their school. This made smile because it reminded me of my highschool memories when I had morning classes outside the regular curriculm and strict restriction on the length of hair, uniforms and so on. The school authorities would never listen to students and give corporal punishments to have control over them. I think students should mobilize agaist the authoritarian education system and show their oponion. How can schools that ban those mobilizations with violence teach students democracy when they close their ears and try to keep the students mouth shut?
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'Ban on Protests at School Goes Against Human Rights'
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
The National Human Rights Commission Tuesday said it may be a violation of human rights for elementary and secondary schools to ban students from holding rallies.
The conclusion came as an activist made a petition to the commission last October regarding stern disciplinary measures by a middle school in Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province on its students who held a rally during lunchtime.
About 150 students at the school held a protest against the school, opposing regulations that ban students from carrying cell phones, having their own hairstyles and being absent from early morning classes.
But the school forcibly broke up the students and held an on-the-spot disciplinary class in which the school inflicted corporal punishment on 20 of the protest leaders.
Facing criticism on the decision, the school claimed the protest was conducted by the activist without permission from the school, and the corporal punishment was part of disciplinary measures.
But the commission said, ``It was the students' right to protest and they conducted it in a peaceful way during lunchtime without disturbing regular classes.''
The commission also advised the school to reconsider policies on early morning classes outside the regular curriculum, emphasizing the importance of agreement from students on the matter.
e3dward@koreatimes.co.kr
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http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/10/117_33059.html
1. Martine Ibsen
2. Demonstrations prompt closure of U.S. Embassy in Syria
3. I found this article interesting after the lesson today, because it is about the Syrians gathering tens of thousands of people to demonstrate. It accurse to me that there is a lot of emotion involved in mobilizing all these people. First of all the Syrians identify them self with the killed people. Furthermore it is framed as injustice , because it is said that there where a woman and four children killed, even though Washington disputed this. Either way, to me it seems that emotions are the biggest driver in this kind of demonstration.
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October 29, 2008 -- Updated 2304 GMT
Demonstrations prompt closure of U.S. Embassy in Syria
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. Embassy in Damascus announced that it will be closed Thursday because of "increased security concerns" arising three days after a U.S. strike in Syria.
Iraqi refugees took to the streets in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday to protest Sunday's airstrike.
more photos »
Officials said the action was taken because of concerns over anti-U.S. demonstrations scheduled for Thursday over Sunday's airstrike, which Syria claims left eight people dead near the Iraq-Syria border.
Demonstrations were reportedly staged Wednesday throughout Syria to protest the incident, which has raised tensions among Iraq, Syria and the United States.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Abu Kamal, Syria, near the Iraqi border, burning American flags and shouting angrily, the country's official news agency SANA reported.
The Syrian government summoned the top U.S. official in the country, Maura Connelly, on Wednesday to request that an American cultural center be shut immediately. The government also requested a closure date of November 6 for the American-run Damascus Community School, deputy U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
The Syrians did not specify how long the closures would last, Wood said.
Connelly told Syrian officials that the United States "expects them to provide adequate security to the buildings" during the closures, Wood said.
Senior State Department officials said the U.S. was pushing back on the request to close the school, as were other international diplomats and Syrian families whose children attend classes there.
Earlier this week, the Syrians gave Connelly a "demarche," or formal protest, about Sunday's incident, Wood said.
Syria has filed a complaint with the United Nations over the incident, which it has deemed an "act of aggression."
Syria says four U.S. helicopters based in Iraq launched the deadly airstrike on a farm under construction about five miles (8 kilometers) from the Iraq-Syria border, according to SANA.
Washington has not confirmed the strike. But a U.S. official who did not want to be identified said U.S. gunships fired near the Syria-Iraq border and successfully targeted Abu Ghadiya, an Iraqi suspected of working with al Qaeda to smuggle money, weapons and foreign fighters into Iraq.
Abu Ghadiya was "the top facilitator of al Qaeda foreign fighters into Iraq," according to a top U.S. military official in Iraq who did not want to be named for security reasons.
News of the embassy closure came as the Iraqi government announced Wednesday that it has opened an investigation into the airstrike.
Iraqi authorities said they plan to share their findings with Syria.
"All information and data [will be] submitted to the brotherly Syrian side upon the completion of investigations," the statement said, quoting an authoritative source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In its letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the current head of the U.N. Security Council, Syria maintained that the U.S. helicopters "violated Syrian airspace" and struck a civilian building before returning to Iraq, SANA reported.
Farhan Haq, a spokesman for Ban's office, confirmed that the secretary-general had received the complaint and said it will be studied and circulated among Security Council members.
Syria identified the eight killed as Daoud Mohammad al-Abdullah and his four sons; Ahmad Khalefa; and Ali Abbas and his wife, according to SANA.
Another unnamed U.S. official in Washington disputed that women or children were killed.
The official said the operation, carried out by U.S. Special Operations ground forces, was designed to minimize the risk of unintended civilian casualties. He said that other members of Abu Ghadiya's network were killed in the raid and that no one was captured alive.
Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesman for the government in Baghdad, initially responded to the attack Monday.
"We want good relations, but we must remember that 13 Iraqi policemen ... were killed in an Iraqi bordering village near that region by a terrorist group that was operating from the Syrian territories," he said.
The Syrian government denounced that statement, state-run media reported. Al-Dabbagh issued a statement Tuesday saying the government in Baghdad condemned the attack and called on U.S. forces "not to repeat such acts."
Iraq's parliament issued a statement Tuesday expressing "great regret" over the strike, which it said threatens to "mar" Iraq's relationship with Syria.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/10/29/iraq.syria/index.html
1. So youn Kim
2. How is advertising influenced by ethics?
3. I was really excited to read this article because while I was reading it I thougt about 'the capitalism and protestant ethics' by Weber. I do agree with that ethics influence advertising a lot because ethics affect social in general, and advertising is just a part of the social events. I think all kinds of ethics are strongly connected with human being and ethos, even though sometimes ethics are not same and even they are opposing. I guess that's why there are social movement and collective behavior.
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A rotating representative from advertising giant JWT answers your questions exclusively for The Boardroom.
(CNN) -- How do you balance ethical issues when designing seductive advertising campaigns for potentially hazardous products such as alcohol or tobacco?
JWT advertisement for Freixenet, starring Martin Scorsese
more photos » There are three important parts to the question:
• The ethical issues advertisers have to contend with as they develop advertising that is designed to capture interest, and ultimately drive purchase.
• The proposition that advertising campaigns are "seductive."
• The specificity of hazardous substances.
The ethical issues
There is a wide band of ethical considerations that advertising needs to -- indeed is required to -- address.
• Legal requirements: Today there are a number of jurisdictions that have clearly defined rules and regulations about what can be advertised and to whom. For example, in North America there are strict rules that determine the shape of advertising to children, while in some jurisdictions advertising to children is illegal. In many countries, advertising harmful substances is illegal; for example, tobacco advertising is banned in Canada.
So the first part of the response is that in many instances, where audiences are considered vulnerable, or where a "product" is determined severely harmful, advertising has clear rules to follow.
• Ethical and legal implications: In the absence of clearly defined regulations, there are legal, business and social implications of not taking into consideration ethical and social considerations. In many countries there are official organizations mandated to vet advertising to ensure it is not offensive, not deceitful, and not culturally distasteful. Guardians of cultural sensibilities, these organizations ensure that advertising satisfies standards of taste and propriety.
What makes a viral ad?
JWT's Bob Jeffrey on The Boardroom
There are, in addition, the implications of offense or deceit that the producing companies and advertising agencies are answerable to. Even within regulatory environments, there is room for advertising to offend or offer not-quite-complete truths. While there was a time when these behaviors could pass unseen, or unchallenged, today, people demand full accountability. Claims are now tested and monitored with real implications for the integrity, credibility and reputation of the offending organization.
This environment is perhaps the most potent "watcher" as it ensures that we all carefully consider what we say and how we say it. Without trustworthy reputations, neither companies nor advertising agencies will survive -- hence we are all attentive to protecting, indeed fortifying, the reputation of the agency and its clients.
• Conscience-driven considerations: But even within this heightened sense of accountability, advertisers are careful to guard the quality of advertising. And today this means speaking truths. Because today the advertising that is successful -- that captures the attention and interest of people -- is that which speaks compelling truths. So even those who may be somewhat more cavalier or audacious, and greater risk-takers, know that truth defines quality, supports reputation, and ultimately is the source of success.
Which leads us to the second point of the query:
Seductive advertising
There is a powerful mythology that advertising does convince people to purchase things they neither need nor want. And clearly, the history of advertising is full of delicious examples of how we have been convinced, cajoled, seduced into purchasing new things that, once non-existent, are today essential.
But as individuals, communities and cultures mature, so has advertising, and the audiences we advertise to. Today, audiences have well-developed advertising savvy, and we can no longer interrupt people with inane, uninteresting advertising designed to "push product." This neither captures their attention, nor their purchase decisions.
To get people to spend time with brands we need to be interesting and compelling, because today people expect information, entertainment, and demand truth.
Consumers also demand that brands and companies be accountable for what they are selling. That means that what advertisers say about products needs to be truthful. Indeed, there are legal consequences if we are not.
In addition, today consumers want, and deserve, to be treated as responsible, knowledgeable decision makers -- and the only way to treat people with respect is to be truthful.
So while "seduction" may continue to be a guiding desire, today we know that it is truth that "sells."
Hazardous substances
The third part of the query asks specifically about hazardous substances. This is somewhat tricky, because "hazardous substance" is an ever-shifting category. What was once considered useful and beneficial -- for example, tobacco -- is today considered hazardous. We continue to unearth substances that are hazardous; the recent concern over a key substance in plastic bottles, or the concern that plastic shower curtains contain toxic materials are but two examples.
The first point therefore is that accountability standards, or definitions of hazardous, are not static, and we do not always know what is hazardous. What is important is that once we do, we approach all communications with truthfulness.
And this is because whether aware of the hazard or not, we and our clients will be held accountable for the hazard if and when it is discovered. Abdicating responsibility is no longer an option.
We have cultivated high standards of accountability, and we have the watcher mechanisms to hold us all accountable. Indeed, one may want to characterize the first half of the 21st century as the Age of Accountability. Defining what is "hazardous" changes with rapidity and piercing accuracy, and we are both required and compelled to pay attention to the ever-shifting ground.
Accountability requires us to produce better products, forces us to be more truthful, more transparent, more honest, and more humane. And that can only improve the foundation of how we do business, and how we live as both economic and social agents.
Because today we know that all actions have consequences. We know that we make an imprint in the world and that we need to manage that imprint to ensure that the consequences of not only the substances we use and promote, but all of our actions, first do no harm.
Reason vs. passion
We live in a time where accountability requires every individual and organization to take responsibility for their individual and collective actions. Collectively we have the social, political and legal power to enforce responsibility.
We are also clear-eyed consumers of culture, products and news. We are no longer easily seduced by myths and grandiose aspirations. We seek truths, we require credibility and integrity, and we hope for trustworthiness.
So even if advertisers could "seduce" as the query asks, our point of view is that advertising does not hold this power. We are compelled through legislative, political, and social power of accountability to attract with wit, honesty and truth.
We know that this is the source of good business -- for us and for our clients. And if we ever for a moment stray from this guiding principle, we are sure to be held accountable.
But one may say to all of this: Yes, but what about our desires? People just want stuff and business makes it for them, and advertisers sell it to them, irrespective of the hazards.
Yes, while we are savvy consumers that do want truth, we are also social creatures that desire. We struggle with our reason and our passions. And a great man said it best many years ago. David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher, I believe offers us the best assessment of our condition: "Reason is the handmaiden of our passions."
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http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/07/08/jwt.answer/index.html
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