Word: projects
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...Nick says he got the idea for the project after stumbling across an episode of the French version of The Weakest Link. The willingness of the adult contestants to allow the hostess to belittle them - and their own eagerness to backstab fellow participants for their own gain - convinced him that Milgram's findings about the human submission to authority figures were particularly applicable to TV. "Television is a power - we know that, but it remained theoretical," Nick told the daily Le Parisien on Wednesday. "I asked myself, Is it so strong that it can turn us into potential torturers...
...Perhaps, but some could argue that Nick's documentary relies on the same reality-TV techniques it is denouncing. Though staged, the game show features unsuspecting volunteers whose reactions and emotions are scrutinized. Although the voice-overs and cuts to sociologists involved in the project make it obvious that the show is a behavioral study, viewers are still required to buy into the "reality" that participants have been lured there in order to be horrified when they continue applying the electric shocks...
...local decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world. "Right now, the people making decisions on things like climate change aren't getting their authority from the guy in Bangladesh whose house is being flooded," says James Sadri, one of the founders of Egality, the British activist group behind the project. "But what if the politicians did have to answer to these people? Would it change their position on climate change, poverty and war?" (See pictures of the presidential election in Afghanistan...
...issues," says May Abdalla, who is coordinating the program in London. "It's all very parochial." There's even a chance the initiative could inspire a renewed interest in British democracy. "It's kind of re-energizing," says Onyeka Igwe, a documentary filmmaker in London who heard about the project on Facebook and plans to participate. "Giving up my vote actually makes me feel like my vote has more power than if it was just me voting...
...city on edge. Many roads in the normally traffic-choked capital were virtually empty on Sunday. Last April, the red shirts, staging a similar protest, rioted in several spots around Bangkok, setting buses on fire, attacking the Prime Minister's car, and threatening to blow up a housing project with gas tanker trucks. The government called on the military to restore order, and troops cleared the streets without bloodshed. Conversely, anti-Thaksin demonstrators, called the yellow shirts, invaded and occupied government offices and Bangkok International Airport, shutting it down, in late 2008 to help force the ouster of a government...