HIV awareness

Although HIV has become a very topical subject matter, it is still difficult to raise awareness about its prevention and its detection. As Florent pointed out during his presentation, a significant number of people have been infected with HIV and just don’t know it.
As most diseases, the earlier it is identified the better chances it has to be cured. But how to reach a significant part of the population when it truly seems impossible to make everyone get blood tests?
Prevention is the key word, but it necessarily is not enough. Some people will still contract the highly destructive virus and infect others.
Florent also stressed an important point: when individuals donate their blood, samples are always tested in order to ensure that they don’t put other people’s life in jeopardy. However, if the test is positive, doctors have no obligation to tell their patients that they contracted the virus, but merely have to mention the fact that they have a highly contagious disease. Therefore if patients don’t literally ask them what the disease is they must not tell them that they are infected with HIV.
Florent therefore asked the following question: In your opinion do doctors have the moral obligation to inform theirs patients about their infection with HIV?
The conventional view is that doctors should not keep information from their patients and should do everything that is in their power to save them.
One may argue against it and claim that individuals should have the right to lead the life they want and if they do not wish to know what ill is slowly killing them, well, it is their problem.
Let me give you three reasons why I do not abide by this second clause:
First of all, no need to remind that AIDS is tremendously deadly. It kills hundreds of thousands of people each year in developing countries in which they have no efficient means to fight the virus.
Since in our developed nations we do have the capacity to cure the disease, patients should quickly overcome their fear to deal with it and come down to earth: the sooner you start fighting against it, the greater your chances become to completely end the combat.
Secondly, it is because of its highly contagious nature that the HIV causes such stunning casualties. Therefore anyone HIV positive must be aware that they can unvoluntarily (the point is not to harass them) endanger others’ health safety. By keeping these information from HIV positive people, we are therefore endangering their own life and those of their potential sexual partners for instance.
Thirdly, getting to know about your disease does not mean you have to go through any cure. It is still up to individuals to decide on their future and to lead the kind of life they want.
Last but not least, it is important that doctors respect their patients’ privacy. In some cases, people have the right to keep their illness for themselves.

Harmony and nuclear diplomacy (got the joke? No? Wait for it ...)

Last week (well not exactly last week, but I have to pretend to be a good student, so …), Armonie (now you get the joke) introduces us to an article from The New York Times about nuclear diplomacy (totally a mess for me but I won’t go astray) and more specifically the new START treaty. Signed by two ancient enemies (USA and Russia), the new START treaty drafts a plan to shrink the bulk of nuclear weapons of both countries to 1500 warheads. The document was signed in a very fickle domestic and international background, recalls us Armonie. Indeed Obama was facing a lot of international setbacks, so he was trying to have a real diplomatic success here. In the United States, a debate about whether to ratify the treaty took place during the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections and in the lame-duck congressional session afterward. While some polls have showed public support for its ratification, there has also been organized opposition (notably Republicans).

Here come the questions ...

• If one of both signatories wage war against the other, could the treaty manage to avoid the conflict?

Everyone on the class agreed to say that a war between Russia and USA was very unlikely (maybe Armonie wants to revive the ancient conflict, but I don’t think so … she seems to be a nice girl). But if such a conflict happened to strike, I don’t think the treaty would avoid the conflict: there are others weapons that can be used. Moreover today, nuclear weapons are a deterrent mean. They shall never been used. Their unofficial goal is to create fear so that any country which has it won’t do anything stupid with (the game theory in International Relations). So if a war is waged, the nuclear treaty will limit the damage. The international community has draft rules about war, and most of the countries abide by the international law. So to my mind, the treaty wouldn’t manage to avoid the war but the use of nuclear weapons (which wouldn't have been used anyway).

• Does this nuclear treaty better the relationship between Russia and USA?

I don't think it will. Seriously, after a cold war, some disinterest and a spy scandal, the relationship of the US and Russia seemed undermined. At least with the nuclear treaty they won’t fight each other with nuclear weapons and kill us all, but both ancient ennemies won't be friend overnight ... Of course a nuclear treaty is better than nothing, it could be a first step to a long walk together, hand in hand. I mean the countries don't even look alike.They don't have the same culture and the same political regime (is Russia a democracy by the way?), so they could be "acquaintances with benefits" but not "friends".

I love the cartoon.

Mugabe's vision of sharing

The 3rd of October, Marthe presented us an article from the Guardian about the situation in Zimbabwe. Mugabe, the Zimbabwean dictator, has ruined his country and has expropriated White landowners on racial criteria. According to Mugabe, they were expelled because they were acting like colonialist. For David Smith, the author of the article, on the one hand Mugabe and is allies own 40% of the land seized from the Whites farmers. On the other hand, the rest of the Zimbabwean people are dying of starvation.

Marthe asked us two questions after her presentation of the article:

• Do you think that the presence of multinational companies is necessary to develop the economy of a country?
• Do you think that it's better for a country to keep family production or to get a whole market production system?

If we agreed on the fact that multinational companies and a market production system could make the country more competitive, we also agreed on the fact that most of the time, the wages were too low to survive decently. Joseph insisted on the fact that Africa has been able to feed herself for centuries so that it should still be the case. If we obliged African people to accept the developed countries help to be more competitive, it would be neocolonialism.
Alizée raised a polemical point: she thinks that Black poor people don't have the skills anymore to rule their country and its economy on their own. She thinks that we should protect them some time from corruption and teach them how to rule Zimbabwe.
To the others' mind, the western model brought to them has created so many troubles that they should be allowed to make their own mistakes. Finally, everybody agreed when Arnaud said that the problem was the brutality of the expropriations. If they had been slower, Black people could have learned how to rule a farm for example.

According to me, Mugabe did the mistake Mandela avoided: he said that Zimbabwe was only for Black people whereas Mandela said that South Africa was the country of both White and Black people. This is the main point because now Zimbabwe is going to refuse any help from White people, even if it’s totally free. Surely one day Zimbabweans will know how to rule a country, feed a population… but this will not be before a long time and the whole population will still die of starvation during this time.

The march of the atheist movement

Last week Mathilde told us about an article published last year on the independant website and entitled « The march of the atheist movement ». It deals with the place of atheism in english society.

We learn that we are assisting to a revival of this philosophy for a few years, in a society where religion takes a central place. The atheist movement is leaded by organisations like the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, wich is acting in universities; and by scientifics like Richard Dawkin, who writen the book The God Delusion. It benefited from a great publicity with an advertising campaign on buses, carriying the slogan: « There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. » This campaign was initiated by Ariane Sherine, a young comedian. At the begining her aim was to raise £5,500 to run 30 bus ads across London for four weeks. But her idea was such a great success that she received more than £150,000 to realise the project, supported by Richard Dawkin. The result was more than 800 buses in the whole country, and similar initiatives in America and Spain.

This campaign had the interest to put the emphasis on the issue of religion in today's english society. In fact, the influence of religious organisations is very important, and some atheists tend to feel rejected by them. The aim of the campaign was to decrease the hold of religion on society,

We discussed about how we perceived this campaign, and about its impact. According to everyone, it had a spectacular effect, considering the number of people who see this slogan. It made them think about the issue of religion in society, and conceive the fact that there could be no god, that was the aim of the campaign. I think the campaign had a big impact because it is very unusual to see this sorts of ads on buses! That must have marked people's mind, and maybe will open a big debate in english society about the place of religion.

It introduces the second question, wich was about the future of atheism. Mathilde reminded us

that there is no separation between Church and State in England. Consequently religious organisations have an important power in the country. Atheists are fighting for more secularisation of society. Of course every one has the right to believe in his religion, and to practice it, but not to impose it to others people. I think atheism is going to develop, because of all the religious conflicts in the world, and all the horros that mens of all religions commit in the name of God. This will move a lot of people away from believing. Morover, the message of atheism is there is no need to have a god to have a sense to one's life, and to be happy. It places human being at the center, and not God, that could seduce numerous people in ours individualistics societies.

Defeating Al Qaeda

Last week, Siwar presented an article taken from the BBC news website published on November 14^th about the difficulties to beat Al Qaeda. The columnist tried to analyse the position of the head of the UK's armed forces, General Sir David Richards.

The latter had said that a military victory neither on the Taliban nor on al-Qaeda was possible. In order to introduce the topic, Siwar recalled that Al Qaeda (meaning "the base") was a militant Islamist group founded in 1988 by Cheik Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and Ussama Bin Laden which operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army. It’s a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad. She also replaced it in a threatening context of the Yemen terror alert, as two suspicious packages found in the UK and Dubai and destined for Jewish places of worship in Chicago appeared to have contained explosive materials. She finally presented Barack Obama’s point of view concerning this issue: according to him, the US should continue to work to destroy al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to root out violent extremism in all its forms.

Siwar then asked the group if an idea could be defeated; Terence underlined that we had to distinguish Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. Louis Vladimir then said that the Afghanistan population has been facing a long period manipulation. The country lives with its ideas but we can’t change them rapidly: it requires a long term process. After this hot debate that inflamed all the class Siwar asked a current controversial question: Is the risk for France to be attacked really serious, and shall we feel afraid about this menace?

According to me the risk France is currently facing seems well-founded, if we take into account the recent hostage-taking of french workers in the islamic Maghreb or the execution of the french ingeneer Michel Germaneau in July 2010. Yet the government use it in a way that afraid people more than necessary. Of course we should take into account the fact that our country is waging a war against terrorism, and this position can have serious aftermath. However if people are aware of it, fear seems useless: being cautious doesn’t mean we should be afraid everyday about our vulnerability. It is still the best way to defend democratic ideas against extremist ones.

Passive smoking

Last week, Quentin chose to make his presentation about the topic of passive smoking, also called second-hand smoking. Passive smoking is the fact that non-smokers can unvoluntarily get exposed to the dangers of smoking, by inhalating the cigarets' smoke. It can be source of several diseases, and causes over 600,000 deaths a year worldwide. It therefore appears as a problem that needs to be dealt with. Scientists have therefore mobilized in order to make people as aware of possible of the dangers of passive smoking, arguing that most of these deaths could be avoided with proper prevention and legislation.

He then asked two questions. The first one was about who was a smoker in the group, but no hands were raised but Quentin's one. In my opinion, this is to be related with some kind of embarassment to be a smoker (i don't think Quentin was the one and only smoker of the class, but he was apparently the only one to fully accept it). The second one was about if smokers were feeling guilty about it, but since there was no other "revealed" smokers in the classroom it encountered little reaction.

I myself am a non-smoker, and always try when possible to promote the rights of non-smokers to breathe free from the disturbance of cigarets' smoke. As Quentin said, smoking disturbance to non-smokers is more accute in enclosed places. A roommate can absorbe one fifth of the smoke inhalated by the smoker himself simply by standing next to him: This should in my view get the smokers to think more deeply about the fact that they deteriorate their friends health.
I think the government has a real will to fight passive smoking, and is aware that the best way to to so is to fight smokers themselves. However taxation on cigarets prices isn't the best solution to me: This can truly discourage some smokers, but it also penalizes tobaconnists, who aren't really responsible for what they sell to earn their livings. After all, smokers do smoke because they choose to do so, and their sector is not to be blamed for it. I therefore think that the government should create a fund in order to allow tobaconnists to diversify their activities, so as to compensate the loss related to the fight against tabagism.

The nuclear train.

In his oral intervention, Joseph decided to deal with a contemporary issue: the ecology. More precisely, he chose an article relating the incident between ecolo-activists and the german police, with a train carrying nuclear wastes on background. Indeed, France sent nuclear wastes to Germany, as they agreed, to be treated (maybe only burried) there.
The demonstrators tried by every means to stop, or at least slow down, the highly dangerous train. Joseph couldn’t explicitly tell us what he thought about these actions, and however, asked the class this simple question : «Do you thing that trying to delay the train is a good solution ? Or only a dangerous action ?»

There was a rough debate about it. Some persons said it was worth trying, at least to attract the world’s attention on the events. Others thought there was too much risks approaching that train, and what if they accidentally (or on purpose) derailled the train ? The consequences would have lasted for thousands of years, as Tchernobyl did.
It was interesting pointing out that the protests were maybe deeper that what we thought. Indeed, there was certainly a will to explain that the nuclear power isn’t the solution, because even if it provides the energetic autonomy to plenty of countries, its wastes are a poison for the nature and their damages are permanent if not treated really cautiously.

I am in the same situation as Joesph is. It is difficult for me to coin a point of view. I see myself as a defendor of the planet (who doesn’t ?) but the nuclear power is still necessary to produce energy, since the «green» powers aren’t developed enough to provide the whole quantity we need.
Moreover, compared to its production, this energy doesn’t create too much waste.
But in the meantime, I remember the pictures of the Ukrainian children, born near Tchernobyl a few years after the explosion of the nuclear power station.
Concerning the means of protests, I think the opinion needs to be shocked in our society. A «buzz» has to be created if you want to make the opinion debate about what you did. The petitions are more democratic than «attacking» a train but they are much more useless, aren’t they ?
I also think that it is no accident that these events happened in Germany. Their environmental conscience is extremely developped, and maybe we should learn from them. Yet, I have to admit that the activists around the train weren’t all German !

To conclude, I think something had to be done about this «nuclear train», but I’m afraid that even that kind of protestation, rather violent, is as useless as a petition or a website.

Wikileaks affair. A scandal?

On this presentation, the first plan was to talk about christmas. Too bad for us, the world still has to face terrible things on Advent! So the presentation dealt with wikileaks and the last disclosure it made on Sunday. Indeed, it leaked 250 000 of classified documents, cables from US embassies, dealing with UN diplomats being spyed or what diplomats thinks of european politicians... All those informations were received through a 22 years-old US soldier called Bradley Manning. The founder and manager of wikileaks, Julian Assange has received threats from the CIA, and is now under an arrest warrant from Interpol. According to Alizée, the most shocking informations were that the US and Yemen agreed to hide American bombs used against Al-Quaida there, which is like a "secret war", or that American diplomacy is really worried on Pakistan's nuclear material whereas they're allied...
According to her, the most unacceptable thing is the massive espionnage of the UN diplomats, that would be a violation of the Human Rights right and and a betrayal of US allies.
The questions were on the lost (or not) credibility of US diplomacy, and if Hillary Clinton, State Secretary should resign, but also if we approved such spread of secret informations that can affect a country's "reputation"...

We didn't debate on the credibility of the US diplomacy that much, because it is known that they will apologize a bit and continue, like every diplomacies do.
The real question was "is this disclosures a real one? Are the informations spread really importants?" According to some pupils, this disclosure was more of a gossip than anything else. Wikileaks is likely to be very powerful with really burning informations, but those were not some. Our teacher was stressing the facts that those were just diplomats discussions, completely out of context, that needed to be analysed with the facts, and the facts are going to happen in the future... Such revelations were not on concrete policies, and are really lights arguments to weight on concrete policies. If it seemed to Alizée that some informations were really unknown, many told they weren't. First, UN diplomats must know that they're bound to be spyed, and as she was talking of Pakistan, everybody knows some affairs about possible spreading of its technology, like with Dr. Ali and friends.

I personnaly think that Wikileaks is a really interesting phenomenon. It has indeed spread some really important informations. Even if we should'nt surestimate its power, it brings a new hope in transparency. As Ms. Huda said, it's not a new age of transparency, but it still may bring a bit of fear to politicians. And on that affair, even we student of political science already know it, it remembers to the people that our world is still a mess, and that they are power relationships everywhere. And being realistic on that is really useful.

Florent presented an article from the Guardian about a medical concen which is very important today: the HIV.
First, he explained the features of this incurable disease. The problem is that for many people it is diagnosed too late: actually many people who are infected do not know they are since, during the asymptotic phase, you don't feel you are sick.
So testing is very important for those who are sick, but also for the others.
In Great Britain, a measure has been created to increase the test and make it easier. It plans to test the persons every time they go to the doctor in specific areas.
Indeed, it is less costly to do prevention. This measure has shown its effectiveness.

In France, such a measure do not exist. But when you offer your blood for instance, you can be informed that you have a contageous disease if you are infected by the HIV. However the letter do not mention the word 'HIV'. In this case, you are required to go to the doctor.
People have to ask for the information by themselves but many of them don't go to the doctor when they receive the letter.
We can think that it would be a good idea to tell people directly in the letter they are infected, but at the same time, it is a very impersonal and abrupt way to inform somebody about his illness.

That's why Florent asked: "Do you think you have the moral obligation to tell somebody who has a dangerous illness to know it even if he doesn't want to do?"

He showed that, even if it seems to be beneficial for everyone, there is an ethical issue about it: you cannot force somebody to know an information he doesn't want to know because it contradicts the individual rights. Several persons agreed with him, and some even said that it was only the problem of the person who is infected: according to them, the solution is just to have protected sex and to be careful.
This is a terrible issue because it deals with public health, that's why some persons did not agree with that: they think this issue is too serious and those who don't want to know they are sick threaten the health of the others.

But I think Florent is right: you cannot force somebody to know something he doesn't want to know. An important prevention has to be organised to prompt people to test themselves, but this is not a solution to force them to know because it can become very hard for them to accept their illness in that case. The risk would be a kind of stigmatization's feeling.

Is Apple a revolution?

Last week, Julien presented the article Seven Secrets of a Steve Jobs presentation, published in the Washington Post on the November 4th, 2009 and dealing with the Apple phenomenon and its world-wide attraction.

To Julien, Steve Jobs has no imagination and his products are not original. Steve Jobs argues that an ipod (launched in 2001) makes the world « a better place », whereas it wouldn’t improve people’s life. What about the iphone ? It’s not because it combines several use that it is a revolution.

The success of Apple products would be a symptom of our consumer society, where one product is replaced by another in a month, where you have to get an ipod not to look like an old-fashioned person. It would reveal our taste for new things and fashion things.

There were three discussion questions : Do you think that, as a french TV show has said it, Steve Jobs « makes essential what you actually don’t really need » ? Do we have to consider the i-pad and all Steve Jobs’ projects as simple gadgets or real revolution ? Finally, should we make a movie about Steve Jobs because he’s a philanthropist as well as Facebook’s creator according to some people ?

The biggest problem of the first question is that it is a philosophical one : what do we really need ? All I can say, is that our generation was born with technology, we’ve always had it and to be fair, most of us are just drug addicts. We love taking pictures easily, listening to music and using our cellphones where and when we want. We’re used to it. And that leads to the second question. I don’t know if we can consider Steve Job’s products as a revolution – as this word is maybe excessive, but we can’t say that they’re not an original and an useful evolution. The Apple first improvement is the beauty of the design and the quality of the products (even if the screens could be very fragile). Then, and it is the most important : it was the first to combine few use in the same product, that’s why the iphone has had such a great success : it combines a phone (with a tactile keypad and a nice design that is today copied by a lot of its competitors : phones are thiner and bigger), an ipod (a music player with, again, a nice design, an original widget and a high memory), a camera (that wasn’t new) and internet with a big variety of applications – which are the most famous of its assets. Finally, the products are juste very easy to use. These assets are also very well sold by the marketing and we have to admit that Steve Jobs is a genius in this field. As the article explains it, when Steve Job presented the MacBook Air in 2008 the part of the presentation that a lot of people remember is when Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook Air : he removed it from an envelope. It was crazy ! It looked like a revolution, even if it was maybe a just a very cool product.

Finally, I don’t think that Steve Jobs is a philanthropist, he’s first a business man before being a man who loves high technology and wants to improve it. There will probably be a movie about his life, but it won’t be based on his philanthropy just like the Social Network (the movie about Facebook’s creator) isn’t. I think that what is really impressive about his life is the fact that he has had to face Apple’s terrible difficulties at the end of the 1990’s before having a great success. American movies are often based on stories of losers who achieve great success thanks to their efforts and/or genius.

On Friday the 5th of November, Paul chose to present us an article from the Washington post untitled « For tea party, victories may trigger identity crisis » written by Amy Gardner and David A. Fahrenthold. This article has been published on the 4th of november, it raises the issue of the consequences of victories of the Tea Parties on itself. This article highlights a different and interesting view on the topic.

As Paul explained the major problem of these victories for the Tea Party is the link between rhetoric and action. In fact, this party is known to be an anti-government party, so its participation would necessarily bring about a change to its behaviour towards the government. How could an anti-government party be part of the government ?
The Tea party’s winners are going to make policy, whereas the ethic of their party usually criticizes it. We can predict an ideological conflict will emerge.
Moreover, one other huge issue is the cooperation with the Republican party. Even if the two parties could seem quite similar at the first time, in fact they are not.
Thats’s why we should come back to the définition of what is the Tea party.
The Tea Party movement grew throughout 2009, into a series of locally and national protests. These protests were in response of a series of laws created after the 2007’s financial and economic crisis. The growing influence of the federal State was in contradiction with their ideals, with the idea of the American States thèse people had. Two main revendications could be identifyied : first, they think the federal spending and taxes are too high and secondly, they feel like Washington isn’t listening to them.
It means that this movement gathers many average American, not highly educated, not wealthy. This group have in common the feeling that no one is listening to them. And by no one they mean, no political party, or figure.
This short definition of the Tea Party movement attests its integration to the political game would be hard. On the contrary, the Republican hasn’t any problem with the political structure and organization of the United States.
That’s why Paul asked us if we think that the Tea Party could participate in a major shift in the American policy. But also, if we think the Republican party is going to change some of its positions.

I think that one of the major issues for Tea party movment is the lack of accuracy of their candidates about how they are going to deal with the experience of the power. Moreover, the way they will check if the governmental program is in agreement with their main principles. Some argue that they will create an organization to look after how the new Congressers behave but I’m not sure this measure would be efficient. Mainly, because the Tea party members are very much in the minority in the Senate. Furthermore, I don’t think Republican party is going to change its plan to adapt it for Tea Party movement. Republican party is one of the two major parties of the country, they don’t need Tea Party’s members. Even if, actually this movement represents a thread for them. In my opinion, this movement won’t be long-lasting, and it is going to merge into Republican party. Sarah Palin herself urged Republican party to “absorb” Tea party movement. And it seems to me that it will be true. First, because of the ideological suitability issue Tea party movement must face and above all because of the alliance they have to make to play an active part on the political federal scene.

What if we started again the Korea war?

Last week, Laure presented us an article from the Guardian which deals with the issue of North Korea. Barrack Obama, the US president, has recently delivered a speech for the commemoration of the Korea war that demanded to North Korea an immediate interruption of its nuclear program. He said the United-States would always protect South Korea against its northern communist neighbor and considered as provocation the sinking of a South Korean corvette in March. A month ago, in North Korean capital Pyongyang, Dictator Kim Jong-Il gave the power to his son. Thus, Kim made sure that his political system would not collapse after his upcoming death.

Laure asked us if a military intervention for democracy was necessary to protect a people dying of food shortage from its dictators, Kim Jong-Il and his son, and if the regime, based on the military, was a danger for the international community.

More than 1.5 million people work for the People’s Army in North Korea which represents the fourth greatest army in the world for a country of the size of Ireland. Moreover, if such an instable regime owned the nuclear bomb, it could some terrible consequences. Yet, as far as I’m concerned, we should relax a bit: a nuclear war is –at least I hope so – still far from us. Why? Because nobody is interested in starting this war. North Korea seems to have very few reasons to desire to be fully destroyed by a worldwide coalition. Moreover, since it has neither military base outside of its territory nor ballistic missile submarine, it has no means to attack territories such as Europe or even the United-States… They can only bomb South Korea (with missiles or planes) – but do we really care about South Korea? – which means they could not do anything against an attack from western country. Such a nuclear war would not last more than a day with minor consequences for the world.

On the other hand, the international community – to say it differently the US, Europe and their allies - does not desire a new conflict since it already has to cope with the Iraq and more particularly the Afghanistan war. These two experiences might also have discouraged the US of starting other “preventive wars”. Finally, Western countries need an enemy and North Korea, with Iran, is the most seducing candidate for that role. The only state that could be willing to start a war would be South Korea that would reunite its thousands years old country but North Korean are so deprived that this reunification would have as a consequence decades of economic crises and social agitation. I am not sure those are risks South Korean are ready to take.

Politics and Facebook

Last week, Marine presented us an article from the BBC website entitled "Queen to launch British Monarchy page on Facebook". As she said, this page was created by Buckingham Palace. However, this is not a personal page but this is a new means to keep us up-to-date on royal events. This is not the first time British Monarchy resorted to the use of Internet.        
 
 To widen the subject, Marine refers to politicians using a social network as Facebook. She hinted at our beloved President Sarkozy, Jacques Chirac and Ségolène Royal having a Facebook page. This phenomenon sheds light on the fact that it is more and more necessary to politicians to have visibility on social networks. It is a new trend to make politics, a new place to gather votes. Marine asked us two relevant questions:
 

 
She first asked us what we thought about the use of Facebook by British Monarchy.
 
On that issue, I will agree with one of my classmates who said that we couldn't care less what is doing Queen Elisabeth and her so conventional family. Nevertheless, I am bound to recognize that having a Facebook page might be a means for British Monarchy to appear as being "in" and not utterly old-fashioned as I am used to thinking…
 

 
Then she wondered why politicians use social networks as Facebook.
 
Blatantly, politicians use Facebook in order to convey the image of connected, trendy individuals close to young people. But it is only a new way to shape their public image. As one of my classmates said, contrary to the medias, Facebook enables politicians to choose "how" they want to appear. And they will likely show us how "honest", how "concerned", how "genius" they are...
 

 
I sincerely think that for a politician, having a network activity could be a great idea. However, it really depends on how it is done. As far as I am concerned, I think that politicians should resort to Facebook in order to democratize politics, that is to say showing that it is not as boring as we firstly could think. Facebook could be a place of concrete debate with politicians, with no pompous speeches or boring platforms. On the other hand, I am not interested at all in reading a politician's Facebook page telling us what he is doing in his private life. I don't want to know if Nicolas Sarkozy drinks his coffee with sugar or not, or if he prefers cannelloni or spaghetti…

How We Can Stop Being Eco-Hypocrites?

Last week, Cécile presented to the class an article from the Newsweek website dealing with “eco-hypocrisy”. Eco hypocrites are the kind of person who never waste an opportunity to tell everyone how the world is going to hell thanks to inappropriate actions such as eating meet, have a car while they often breaking eco-rules themselves. With this article, Cécile have brought us a different way of thinking about our ecologist (or not) actions, it changes from the actual environmental discourse which just leads us to feel guilty about our green behavior always insufficient to save the planet.

First, Cécile started by sharing the point of view of the article’s writer, Raina Kelley who explained that she is tired of being considered as a bad person because she does horrible things, such as having her own car, and refused to feel guilty about them. The journalist estimates that she tries to do her best for the environmental cause: she takes public transportation, recycles plastic bags... She does worry about polar bears and global warming but she doesn’t push people into doing what is supposed to be “right”. She doesn’t want to be an eco hypocrite.

Then, Cécile gave us some examples of famous eco hypocrites, the Top 5 listed by the Telegraph. At the top of the list there is Sting, on the second place there is the Nobel Peace Prize winning environmentalist Al Gore who faced accusations of hypocrisy last year when a research group claimed his 20-room, eight-bathroom home consumed more electricity in a month than the average American household did in a year. Then there is the actor John Travolta and on the last celebrity is the Prince of Wales who faced embarrassment last year over a 7,000-mile round trip to the US to pick up an award for his environmental work.

Finally, Cécile asked us: What do you think about this green fashion?

I think that the green fashion is obviously used by persons who don’t put the environmental problems as their first preoccupation. Firms use it to sell eco-friendly products; politics use it in their campaign… However, the fact that the theme of ecology is fashion can encourage people to make little green actions: when it is said in fashion magazines that recycling is so cool and that Cameron Diaz is combating global warming, the idea of saving the planet begins more seductive than a decade ago when only pure (strange) ecologists were worrying about the environmental cause. Even if is hypocrite, it could finally have a positive impact on people behavior.