What do they think they are doing?

During one of my numerous trips to London I could see on the TRAFALGAR SQUARE a man in a cowboy hat standing on a stool and talking loudly about love. «What is it, young man? What is love? Yes !!! Exactly!!! A difficult thing to say! It is the feeling of being in love!»…and so on. The man neglected any forms they make love fit… and I was actually surprised one should stand on a stool to talk about beautiful feelings. But the custom persists, and the stool is a symbol of freedom, that lets one raise above others to make them hear, and above «the holy ground of England» where any protests against social forms and customs are prosecuted. In Speaker’s Corner I saw a lady persuading a crowd around her that Christian religion is at least unfair… For whom did Jesus suffer if we anyway have to pay for every single thing, for every sin we have committed. Her maniacal certainty caused laugh in the crowd… she told them not to get too clever… and a guy tested if she was a witch with a zip. That illustrates best the way one can lose in the argue in Speaker’s Corner… it isn’t one-sided persuasion there. No, I don’t mean testing people with fire is good, and the guy certainly is a hooligan, the antisocial type… But the rule works-Speaker's Corner and other places connected with democratic customs in England are mostly fine places to bet, to solve all doubts, and to speak out.

But speaking about the Democracy Wall and the idea of consumerism, I must mention one relatively new holiday custom-the Buy Nothing Day (the BND).

Its slogans are «United we spend? United let’s don’t», «Spend a day without spending"Actually, the organizers call it «a culture jam» and don’t declare any strict rules concerning the celebration, but in common, the BND is an act against consumerism, and what they do on BND is at least buy nothing in the shops-but it’s much more than that. The organizers also make colorful posters and animated shows and hang and show those near large malls. That can be something like what was on the BND last year-

An animated pig superimposed on a map of North America smacks its lips and says: «The average North American consumes five times more than, а Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person, and 30 times more than a person from India."(from the WSJ heading)

It can also be cartoon and tale characters having fun at shopping people .It can be large crowds of BND supporters cutting their credit cards and recycling them.

The BND exists nearly in every European country (England, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Italy), in many South and North American countries, as well as in Japan, New Zealand and Israel. Its «base» is in the editorial of the Adbusters journal. The man who founded all this is called Kalle Lasn. According to the information from the WSJ heading, he’s a 55-year-old emigrant from Estonia (his family escaped from the Soviet occupation in 1944). In the country he came from it was, off course, scarcely allowed to speak free. And in North America, again, he realized you can’t speak up against the sponsor, and that, he thought, isn’t democratic. Mr. Lasn worked as a journalist in Tokyo, specializing on advertisements. Then he moved to Canada to become a documentary filmmaker. In the 1980-ies a forestry company promoting clear-cutting caused his most negative reaction. He made his own advertisement about the disadvantages of this method and about the need to save the old-growth trees. But no TV company sold him the air time. Since then, the TV companies have been his worst enemies. The journal he started publishing («the Adbusters») contained parodies on the advertisements' contents and slogans. Mr. Lasn 's another idea given a go is the «TV turn-off week» No mass media company has ever provided him and his supporters the time to speak out, claiming Kalle’s activity is «in opposition to the current economic policy in the United States», except for Cable News Network, that has agreed to air his ads.

The BND is going to be celebrated on November 29-th this year. Last year it happened on November 23-rd. Its idea appeared in 1991, but its history actually began in 1997(the 1-st well known BND).Then, as the NY Times describes,

The Buy Nothing Day campaign in Seattle distributed this checklist to let shoppers evaluate things they were thinking of buying.

-Do I need it?-How many do I already have?-How much will I use it?-How long will it last?-Could I borrow it from a friend or family member?-Can I do without it?-Am I able to clean, lubricate and/or maintain it myself?-Am I willing to?-Will I be able to repair it?-Have I researched it to get the best quality for the best price?-How will I dispose of it when I’m done using it?-Are the resources that went into it renewable or nonrenewable?-Is it made or recycled materials, and is it recyclable?-Is there anything that I already own that I could substitute for it?

Well, that’s it for the BND. Our next subject is going to be something that can’t be called a custom in the original meaning of the word but, judging by the amount of literature written on it in the last thirty years and the range if its prevalence, doubtlessly is an important part of civilized European countries' life. I am speaking about the traditions of whistleblowing, defined as «reporting on malpractice of any kind».

The term 'whistleblowing' is a relatively recent entry into the vocabulary of politics and public affairs, although the type of behaviour to which it refers is not wholly new. It is employed here to mean the process by which insiders 'go public' with their claims of malpractices by, or within, powerful organizations… This restricted sense of the term (…) distinguishes it from such related practices as in-house criticism, official and unofficial 'leaks' and the like (…)The history of whistleblowing is uneven, in that such practices are intermittently dispersed in time, erratic in their trajectories and indeterminate in their form.

(by Nick Perry)

At the moment, whistleblowers are many large and small organisations, though with various ideas of the way they are going to achieve their aims.



Теги: whistleblowers, speaker