Bac anglais

Places and froms of power

I’m going to speak about the notion « Places and froms of power », power is the ability to control others, the ability to make things change even if there are obstacles, resistance or opposition. In politics and social science, it’s the ability to change people’s behaviour. However, the counter-power  is a force used to counterbalance the power or authority. So,« Are counter-powers growing in influence ? » To answer this question I’m going to talk, How  new technologies have empowered citizens. On the first part, I'm going to talk about manifestation on wall street and then wikileaks.

We can see, the new technologies have empowered citzens. Indeed, on a picture, we can see people who are arrested  because they protested  on Wall Street. On the background of this picture we can see people dressed like thieves, these people symbolize the world of finance like the banks. The cartoonist’s message is clear; the demonstrator is being arrested simply for occupying the street and disturbing the peace. Meanwhile, the thieves go unpunished. The slogan of the protesters is « We are the 99% » representing corporate greed and financial injustice because they are angry about economic inequality. Indeed, the financial power represent only « 1% », it’s the banks and the government and they have the power. There are many people on the street thanks to internet, so new technologies  have a great power to help to gather many people in the street.

Now, we speak about Wikileaks which is an international non-profit online organization founded by Julian Assange. It reveals to the public a large number of uncensored and sensitive documents. Wikileaks collects information from anonymous sources and has made a remarkable contribution to free speech, humain rights and the operation of democraty, offering protection to journalistic sources and by holding government to account by revealing abuse and enpowering the public to make better informed democratic choices. There is considered as a strong counter-power organization against the government authorities.

To conclude, we can say that conter-powers have a growing influence in the world. The development of internet is helping counter powers because thanks to internet, we can organize an event and share this with all people in the world without difficulties. So, many people can gather on the street easily and in a short time like the manifestation in Wall street, so  people have the power because they are so much but they are arrested so the government has always the power compared the rest of the people.