The Anna Hazare fast, now that’s its over, was a nifty PR campaign and a great political one at that. While the 74-year-old Anna with his 12-day fast resembling the many fasts that Gandhi made for the country before and after independence has become an icon; ‘Team Anna’ walked away with PR success.  Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and other popular people like actors Anupam Kher, Om Puri and Aamir Khan all made up the PR machine behind the scenes for Team Anna. 

Carefully planned use of the Mahatma image, which has irked a lot of people,has proved to be the main reason for the stupendous success the campaign received from the masses. Now, here when one uses the  term ‘masses’ loosely, one refers to the great Indian middle class who are tech-savvy and who are the most unhappy with the scams in the country.

Popular culture called the movement – ‘The second freedom struggle’ and so on; from cheesy prayer-like songs to humour on placards, every angle was dealt with beautifully. Team Anna even resorted to street play like characterization of the two-faced politicians with even an on-the-spot skit by the hero-worshipped former Police Chief, Kiran Bedi. If there were points of conflict in team Anna it was not visible to the people.  What was visible was this…

Anti-Graft movement

Peaceful protests

Festival-like  protest ground (Ramlila Maidan)

Frequent Media appearances

Negotiations

Bollywood/celebrity backing

Youtube videos

Tweets and Facebook posts

SMSes

Candle light marches

Rhetoric

Medical Bulletins

Drama on live TV

India Against corruption campaign had it all and in the centre of it all a patriotic 74-year-old activist who never married and was without any political aspirations. Team Anna says the battle is only half won while in the Parliament a couple of parties did remind the Congress and the main opposition that the Anna Campaign was ‘elitist’ and did not have anything in it for the real masses out there – the poor!

Nevertheless, this campaign was a lesson in running PR campaigns for a large country like India which stands apart in its national reputation from its neighbours in the region. Democracy won finally - both with the people and in the Parliament.

David Cameron has emerged from his tuscan holiday hangover with a classic tory response to crime – zero tolerance; which presumably means that he was tolerant of crime before. Politicians like to posture like this as a sign they are tough leaders. For the past few years Cameron has sought to distance himself from the traditional conservative stance on crime with his concept of the big society. Last week’s riot has seen a pivot towards the old positions. Whether this is a long term change or simple expediency… We will see.

Rep. Anthony Weiner was only a few days ago a Twitter celebrity  with a large following and also listed in Time Magazine’s top 140 Tweeps to follow. Politicians who do well on Twitter are rare and Weiner sure had his moments, he’s funny and is not afraid to speak his mind.

Anthony Weiner is of course now embroiled in a controversy.  His twitter account sent a lewd photo to a Seattle college student. He then screamed ‘his twitter was hacked’, and later said he cannot be sure if the picture was actually his. Democrats, Weiner’s party backers, have distanced themselves from him and comedians are having a field day punning his name.

“I can’t say with certitude,” … “My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated.”

Weiner on reputation damage control mode made quite a few errors…

1. He has not reported the hacking and that has not helped. This suggests that perhaps he did send the photo himself.

2. He tried taking ownership of the picture.

3. He deleted the photo and the Yfrog account and  stopped following the recipient etc. Again very suspicious.

4. He kept talking about it, made a quip tweet soon after,  tweeted about live tweeting a game with the time included, etc and this created the buzz he did not need.

5. He finally stopped talking about it and now people want the dirt.

Meanwhile, the college student claims to have lost all her reputation and now says the photo was meant for a porn star.  ’Weinergate’ as its being called is a great example of how not to go about doing social networking.  This case yet again highlights how the US politicians get skewered for every improper thing they do while the likes of Berlusconi enjoy or enjoyed popularity just for their shenanigans.

10 things to not share on Facebook and Twitter is a post we did earlier and Anthony Weiner shared something we listed modestly as ‘ludicrous’.  ;)

Yesterday we did a piece on the Top Ten Reputation Management Tips, detailing 10 things you really should be doing to preserve your own/brand name on t’internet. And, while we freely admit that the list wasn’t exhaustive, there are also some things which – equally as importantly – you should NOT be doing. Whilst amicable that you should wish to fix any issues that may arise, within you is the potential to make things a whole lot worse, too.

The following are examples of the top 10 things not to do to manage your own reputation. When they say the road to ruin is paved with good intentions, they’re talking about this list:

1/ Don’t Engage In Bad Business Practices

Yeah, like, duh. You shouldn’t even need to be reminded of this (and most of you don’t), but the quickest way of landing yourself in hot bother is by making bad ethical business choices. But it’s not just your archetype evil business tycoon that’s prone to doing this, it’s pretty much anyone that runs a business. The economy is utter trash at the moment and making cuts is necessary for a lot of people, but you need to be careful what you’re making cuts to. If you’re cutting corners on normal business procedures, customer service, customer aftercare (for example) – it will reflect reflect badly on you and it will get out. The safest bet you can make is that nothing you do is guaranteed to stay private, or behind closed doors, and that for every irate customer or business partner it’s a potential bad story appearing on the internet. Just think “Should this get out, how would this reflect on me/the company?” and you’ll make far fewer bad judgement calls.

2/ Don’t Rush To Admit You Are Wrong

Seems a bit of a u-turn on that last one, doesn’t it? Well, no, not really. We’re not suggesting that you intentionally hide mistakes, mishaps or unfortunate coincidences, but rushing an apology doesn’t always help either. If something happens and you’re perceived to be at fault, showing a bit of humility and holding your hands up might go a way towards clearing your conscience. But that’s about all the benefit it’ll have, as admitting liability publicly is the only thing anyone’s going to hear. Sure, you might have a solution – you may have already sorted the situation out – but the minute you say “Yeah, our bad”, the only thing you’ll hear about is that you/your company has admitted complacency. And regardless of what the problem was, or how great you were at rectifying the situation, the headlines will all read “[Company Name] Admits Fault”. IF something happens, don’t feel like you have to be brutally honest and hope people will respect you for it. Sort the problem, and issue holding statements (i.e. “We are aware of the issue and are working towards resolving it. We will be issuing a full statement in due course.”) until you can confidently say that the issue is behind you. At which point, acknowledge the existence of the issue, explain what the issue was, how you fixed it, and what provisions are in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

3/ Don’t Ignore Misdirected Negative Content

“He aint talkin’ about me” logic doesn’t work. Not when it comes to businesses, and not when it comes to preserving your reputation. It’s all well and good safeguarding against your brand/company name receiving negative attention and taking measures, but is that enough? Well, say you ran a company called Big Mike’s Tyres and had a solid reputation. Congratulations. Unfortunately, a few streets away some guy is running a company called Big Mike’s Tiles and, well… his reputation isn’t as good. In fact, he’s pretty much a cowboy; he rips people off and does a terrible job installing new tiles. So naturally, a lot of people take to the internet to complain about him. But, because of keyword similarities, his bad press is appearing on searches for your company. And, if anyone sees a story saying “Big Mike Ripped Me Off!”, you think that each of them are going to take the time to distinguish between different companies? It’s also not completely beyond the realms of possibility that somebody’s going to see the article about Big Mike ripping people off, assume it’s talking about you, and write their own piece criticizing your company. I hate the use of clichés, but don’t let yourself be put in the position of ‘guilty by association’.

4/ Don’t Threaten Legal Action

Speaking of clichés, I also strongly dislike the “exception to every rule” concept. There are undoubtedly going to be exceptions to this one, but you should at least know what you’re getting yourself into. There’s ultimately no definitive answer to the prevention of negative content arising, but there are certainly rules about how you should conduct yourself when it does. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is threatening legal action against authors/publications out of anger. What they’re saying might well be defamation, it might be inaccurate, it might be a whole lot of things that make you look bad, but you can’t get angry about it. Or, at least not outwardly so. You might even have legal grounds  to have it removed, but have you consulted legal counsel? If there are legal implications, leave it to the solicitors to sort. That’s what they’re paid to do. Once you threaten legal action, you make it a far bigger story. Bigger stories attract more attention, and not just from readers. Once a topic becomes popularized, everyone will want a piece, and so instead of one piece of negative content, you’ve got ten people writing about the original story with the extra bit about your ill-advised response. It used to be a concern that when a story got out, people would hear about it. Now though, you need to be far more concerned with who writes about it. Don’t give them the ammunition they need to make their story any better.

5/ Don’t Try To ‘Pay-Off’ Bloggers

Generally speaking, Bloggers write about whatever they want. A lot of amateur writers also feel that in order to maintain a ‘cutting edge’ to their work, they can only do so by being overly and often cynically critical of others. So yeah, you might at one stage find yourself at the receiving end of a good tongue-lashing, compliments of RandomBlogger569. His article is highly critical, unfairly bias and at points is blatant fabrication. How dare he?! Right, what can you do? Well, as established above – threatening legal action is out. What about trying to pay him off? This guy writes blogs as a hobby, and using his words to try and get attention and is rambling on hoping to cause a scene. How much bigger do you think the ‘scene’ is going to be once he’s written a follow-up post about the guy he wrote about trying to bribe him to remove his content? The best advice is not to respond (rather than fan the flames) and take the usual RM steps to ensure it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

6/ Don’t Argue On Review Sites

There are review sites all over the internet covering practically every subject under the sun (and some above it too). This is the by-product of Web 2.0 and the User Generated Content generation. This is mainly because people have found they can make a lot of money off of hosting a platform for people to share their experiences/opinions. It requires very little effort, as people will now actively seek out a website they can share their thoughts on; and the more people who share their thoughts, the more people will look to the site as a point of reference. And, with that kind of traffic, comes advertising revenue. So these sites are out to make money and they don’t care who is made to look bad in the process. As such, there might come a time when people take to one (or many) of these sites to write about you. Which, you know, if you’re perfect in every possible way, is most likely to be positive content (though still not guaranteed). Sometimes though, people just want to rant. Let them rant – they’re doing what they think they need to do to feel better. If you start replying in an attempt to refute what’s being said, you’ll look petty. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not, there can be no good from arguing with somebody on the internet. Under any circumstances. It will look unprofessional, it’ll grant greater credence to what’s being said and you’ll make a bigger thing out of it than it needs to be.

7/ Don’t Post On 3rd Party Forums

A successful politician will, when questioned, often ignore the premise of a question altogether and respond with an answer that sounds like it’s answering, but is actually deflecting on to different matters entirely. They do this not just to be awkward, but because they know that if they answer the question directly, they’re acknowledging that the question has a degree of validity. If negative content starts appearing for searches on your name/company/products in the form of forums, the worst thing you can do is respond to it. For one, it’ll just prolong the story. If you’re taking the proper Reputation Management measures, the story will disappear soon enough, but not if you answer/get caught up in active discussions. For every time you issue a response, you’ll get (at least) one response which counters everything you’ve just said. Your choices then are to continue arguing (with everyone) which is going to make you look just as unprofessional as getting into debates on review sites, or stop posting. At which point, they’ll have won the argument, you’ll have lost and you’ll look worse for it. It’s like thinking “water puts out fires, water is a liquid; paraffin is liquid, I’ll use paraffin to put out this fire”. Yeah, good luck with that.

8/ Don’t Fret Over Neutral Content

Wouldn’t it be nice if everything everyone said about each other was nice, supportive and gratifying? Well, besides from being boring, it just wouldn’t make an awful lot of sense. Nothing and nobody is perfect, and so if you wangle S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization) to reflect nothing but positive content, it might look artificial and suspicious. Sure, get rid of negative content, but what about all the pieces that are ultimately indifferent? Some people are so paranoid about looking good that they’ll try and manipulate everything that doesn’t imply butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth away from the top rankings in the likes of Google and Yahoo. There are those that are of the mindset that if something isn’t singing their praises, it’s making them look bad. This is crazy. Not only does neutral content (or ‘Swiss Content’) make related searches pertaining to your name/company look more natural, but if it’s ranking high it’s helping to push the negative content down too. Leave it alone.

9/ Don’t Post Compromising Pictures

We said yesterday that it’s good to share pictures. And, while we don’t like blowing our own trumpets, we were right. Sharing pictures will at time help put a face to a name, make people feel a closer, a more human connection to your business. That’s great, you’re human too after all. You lead a life outside of work, just like your customers. You socialize, you have parties, you… Oh, wait! Don’t you still have those pictures from the Thanksgiving  party you had after-hours at the office last year? That was such a good party! Remember when Rodney from Accounts had a few too many to drink and tripped over the carpet and landed face first into Deborah? How you all laughed! Wouldn’t people think you were great people if you showed them you were just like them? No. Rightfully or not, when people give their custom to a company, they hold them to higher, professional moral standards. It’s due to a need for trust, and they need to trust that you’re being professional at all times and they can rely on you to deliver the goods/service they expect. If you show them any pictures which cast doubt over that trust, or cast any aspersions over the professional integrity of your business, they’ll likely not give you their custom/take their money elsewhere. And this is the internet, there’s nothing people like more than a potential scandal.

10/ Don’t Contribute To Wikipedia

Last on this list, but often the top of Google searches. A lot of people assume that if they can make a Wikipedia page, or add to a Wikipedia page, that’ll be a high-ranking page for related searches. This almost always backfires. First of all, it’s difficult to create a Wikipedia entry dedicated to a company or business that’ll pass the requirements to feature in the online encyclopedia. Most pages get removed pretty quickly anyway, making any effort to write a piece a waste of time. But then, we’re forgetting the main point of Wikipedia. It’s the ultimate UGC website. It’s comprised almost entirely of user-generated content as, the ‘beauty’ of it is that literally anyone can edit it. An email and password later, and any Tom, Dick or Harry could edit what you’ve written. You could have said the nicest, brightest thing about your company and an 11-year-old could edit the article, and add the story (or cited references to the story) you’ve been trying to cover up in the first place. And all of a sudden, there it is – at the top of Google results page. And we can guarantee you – as hard as it is to bury random bloggers or news columnists, getting rid of Wikipedia entries is infinitely more difficult.

Again, this list is probably not the be-all and end-all of everything-you-could-possibly-do-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot, but it’s a good start. The trick is just to keep in mind “in what way is this likely to backfire?” and a bit of common sense should keep you on the straight and narrow. Sure, doing any of the above would certainly be considered a mistake but not an unrecoverable one. If you have any issues and aren’t sure how to proceed, get in touch with us – as ever, details are on the home page.

India fights its reputation of being one of the most corrupt nations in the world, even as the Father of the nation, Gandhi’, had a new book alluding to his bi-sexuality and asking questions about his reputation. The book has clearly lost the interest it piqued when it was first reported and most Indians seemed quite okay about it, though there were the usual smattering of outrage and calls for ban so characteristic of traditional India.

Corruption has been new India’s worry and national shame and only the recent Cricket world cup win has taken the common man’s attention off of corruption. The stage was however set… the large enraged middle class, often struck with helplessness in the whole system of corruption was looking for a spark. And it came in the form of Anna Hazare, a 71-year old activist, who has invoked Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement with a fast unto death to introduce the 1968 Lok Pal bill which has been bypassed by succesive governments. The Gandhi reputation sure seems unshaken!

Cyber support in the form of Twitter hashtags, Facebook pages and groups have all gained momentum; for most it’s a show of protest against corruption with candle light vigils all over the country taking place with Hazare on his fourth day of fast. Bollywood has come out in force in support and so have the youth, along with former Police Chief, Kiran Bedi.

Perhaps LokPal bill is not the answer and this could lead to anarchy and chaos if the UPA government does not find a quick solution to calm the masses like the intelligentsia are warning. But, there is no denying that for the man/woman on the street it is a time to protest against the reputation of corruption. It’s all about the national identity and using the power of a free nation to the fullest.

Yet again the influence of social media showing its might like in the Egypt crisis and the social media revolution in other Arab countries. Clearly that Facebook and Twitter have established a socio-political role in the history of mankind is what we can affirm from all this.

Every institution should know that it is dangerous to think that community looks at you as you look yourself. And with falling of dictators in the Middle East reminds me of how the above principle tends to apply, very democratically, through to brands, governments and individuals.

When you look at this from a close quarter, you see that the crisis lies with the leaders who tend to forget that governance, product or service will not withstand for long time, if you have a battered reputation down the line. Public or customer opinion is a key factor, and it’s only when actions ally with the reputation it enhances your brand worth.

And this brings us to the Middle East. Taking into account the ousted leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and now in Libya with Gaddafi feeling the heat, it is obvious, that Public will revolt and is likely to spiral to other parts of the world.  With no concrete measures and hard rule stance the gap had grown between misinformation and public opinion.

Like how, Hosni Mubarak, Gaddafi and Ben Ali, color their hair black and is symbolic how myopic they are, when I quote from the above that “Community does not look at you as you look at yourself”.  The development was waiting to happen as the three failed to notice the changes happening across the world. In the age of Internet and social media were people find easy and effective ways to raise their voices, the pressure is always there and it keeps mounting.

The above rule is applicable not only to Gaddafi, Mubarak or Ali, but to everyone from Corporates, Politicians, Manufactures and Celebrities, your reputation is vulnerable if you fail to see beyond your own thinking and sense of self.

So how do you ensure your organization does not suffer a reputation bashing? You can start by having yourself to look at the situation and analyze the differences between your current and desired reputation. And that is the only way you can be in control before you are shown the doors.

The Egypt crisis has escalated and perhaps reached a crescendo with a millon people protesting in Tahrir Square in Cairo, today. Interesting, how it all began and took momentum via the viral nature of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry messages. Social networks as a socio-political tool is what we can take back from the situation in Egypt and Tunisia.

While economic issues of unemployment is the main reason for the crisis, it is also the tech-savvy, internet user of below 30 years and their disconnect with the ruling government, and in Egypt’s case, the authoritarian 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak that has caused the crisis.

Social media is just one of the main weapons to galvanize support, to converge, to co-ordinate and vent anger in such a  situation. The hashtag #Egypt continuously comes up on twitter, often much too fast to read. To see democracy being taken seriously in Muslim countries in Africa by itself makes this unrest fascinating for the rest of the world.

While markets take a tumble and Egypt’s future hangs in the balance, youth everywhere look for a triumph like in Tunisia and would hope a democratic change happens and the wishes of the masses come true.

How did the Egyptians get the word out when Facebook and Twitter were blocked?

When social networking sites were blocked by the Mubarak government Google got together with Twitter with a service that allows people to leave voicemail using a telephone, which is machine translated into an audio file and posted to the hashtag #egypt. People without Internet could have their say, thanks to such ingenious ideas.

Also interesting was how China was quick to ban search on “Egypt” to clamp down on any similar unrest in the country. Great to see freedom of expression being exercised through social media and being able to bring regimes down and bring in change!

The other question now is – Will Egypt lose its reputation as a tourist hot-spot and cultural centre if the crisis deepens with no clear-cut result? What are your thoughts?

The former  Alaska governor, Sarah Palin  found herself in the firing range as her opponents unleashed fiery criticisms in the wake of the Arizona massacre that left six people dead. Some of her political opponents  suggested that the violent political rhetoric could have played a role in the attempted assassination of Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Mrs. Palin  has been criticized for  the website that she created  “Take Back the 20″, which included a map of the US with cross hairs on congressional districts of Democrat candidates including Miss Giffords, which she had singled out for defeat.

However, Sarah Palin  dismissed the liberal claims that  she had  whipped up a  hate campaign that spiraled out into acts of violence by squarely accusing the opponents and the media of blood libel. Though she tried to salvage her political reputation through her online video message in Facebook, how far she has been successful in soothing the ruffled feelings remain to be seen.

Mrs Palin, who is considered as a likely  2012 presidential contender, has created a lot of  unwanted media interest in the fall out of this incident, which has sullied her political reputataion badly. Palin’s chances of announcing a run for the White House dropped by over 15% on Intrade, the politically neutral online trade/betting exchange. It is not Palin and her group of confidants alone that are not happy that the left has linked her to the shooting, in fact many senior republicans  who do not want her to run for office too will find  it as a  handy stick to beat with!

Being Reputation Management Consultants,  Reputation Management For.com, have come with our list of top 10 reputation crashes in the year that was! Being the festive season and all, we’re doing it as honors awarded to the great captains of Industries, firms, celebrities and brands that went through a reputation storm in 2010…

1. Top honors for the worst reputation fiasco and of the handling of it goes to BP. From causing one of the worst man-made environment disaster to botchy PR handling of the issue to large endorsements during the crisis, to a CEO who went on a holiday… the list just goes on and on. The US government has filed a case against the company a few days ago… clearly there’s no competition.

A few post we did on the issue:

1. BP Oil Cam PR Fiasco
2. BP waiver from own goal
3. BP = Beyond Petroleum = Big Pollution
4. BP Pay per click campaign to fix brand reputation

2. Top honors for the biggest individual reputation crisis goes to Tiger Woods, he also takes the award in top sports reputation crisis. What Tiger lost was his wife, millions in divorce, millions in private settlement to the numerous women and sadly his golfing wins. Brand Tiger Woods which propagated a wholesome hero was caught in the blitz of bad press not to mention the millions of jokes about him everywhere. Golf lost its golden boy, who, the sport will hope, will bounce back in 2011.

3. The award for the most reputation embattled industry goes to the automobile industry. This has been a year of recalls and across the board, big names from Toyota, Daimler-Chrysler, Honda, GM, and more have had to make recalls. Nothing seemed to have worked well for the industry in 2010.

4. Biggest celebrity meltdown and reputation fiasco goes to Mel Gibson, his puerile rants caught on tape, alleged domestic abuse, being dumped from even the smallest of roles, accusation of misogyny, anti-semitic swears… the list goes on and on.

5. The award for a nation for gaining a reputation for being one of the most corrupt countries goes to India, with scams galore ‘corruption’ is what Indians worried about the most in 2010. From Commonwealth Games corruption to 2G scam and the ‘mediagate’ the scam list continues to grow.

6. The top honors for reputation debacle online of 2010 goes to Online Privacy it just does not exist no more! From Facebook privacy issues to WikiLeaks you can kiss online privacy goodbye with 2010.

7. For the award for worst reputation in politics in 2010 goes to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and the girls and the grass affair and other flamboyant ways. Still hanging on by the end of the tether Berlo had his worst year ever.

8. Award for biggest financial reputation setback goes to Goldman Sachs for misleading clients, the company was charged with securities fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company created a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) referencing the situation of the US economy without telling their clients.

9. ‘Climategate’ gets a special bad rep award for keeping humanity riveted with doomsday predications and scientific results that keep changing. With so many ups an downs the jury is still out on this one. Does any one know what’s happening?

10. Microsoft and Yahoo for losing their reputation grip on the masses, IE is virtually not used no more and Yahoo laying off thousands with plans of axing delicious -both losing out to the Google rise in fame.

So there you go that’s a reputation recap for 2010, a year where the mighty fell and a year where reputation management was seen as a crucial ingredient for maintaining a sound online reputation.

The credibility of Indian media is at an all time low with the recently released audio tapes involving a major corporate house lobbyist Niira Radia and reputed journalists Barkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi. This episode shows how corruption in the Indian media undermines democracy.

Barkha Dutt is heard saying, “So now what, what should I tell them. Tell me what should I tell them?” and on the other tape Vir Sanghvi, the columnist asks, “What kind of story you want?”

Terms like ‘unethical” and “biased journalism” will be understatements, but this incident goes on to show the incestuous liaison journalists have with the rich and powerful.  A shocking shift in the way Indian media works. How hard it is for media personnel to remain jingoistic and keep their own idea of patriotism?

NDTV, the News channel that Ms. Dutt represents came out with a defensive statement

‘At every stage effective journalism involves engagement with a multitude of characters in the process of gathering news and information.’

It’s alarming and this time it got spiked because those sinister journalists were caught with their pants down.

When Indian media were lynching every one involved with 2G Spectrum, CWG Scam, its surprising to see the coordinated silence of the media (both electronic & print) on this exposé.  This underlines the kind of collusion how media is hand in glove with the powerful and the rich, putting a huge question mark on the uprightness and reliability of  its content.

This whole episode brings forth the harsh reality that goes beyond the corruption of individual journalists and media companies. Indian Media is becoming pervasive and highly organized and often overlooks democratic values. A large section of the society have shown their discontent and apprehension about the nasty influence of such malpractices.

Corruption in the media circuit is as old as India itself. If we are to cleanse corruption in society, it would be improbable to expect the media to do that if things go this way. The world’s largest democracy –India, needs a vibrant and diverse media with a clean Reputation to remain an important pillar of democracy in the civilized world today