Advertising isn’t just annoying, contends industry critic  Jean Kilbourne, it can be genuinely harmful, especially in promoting additions to alcohol, tobacco or even just shopping.

Kilbourne observe that many of the most prolific advertisers are trying to promote regular consumption of their products, which although legal, are nonetheless highly addictive. So they are, essentially, working to promulgate addictions.

Politics is another area in which Kilbourne worried that the growing reliance on campaign advertising is inflicting powerful and distorting influence, implicitly facilitating corruption of candidates while discouraging public participation in the electoral process.

Those concerns have been exacerbated by the recent Supreme Court decision affirming “corporate personhood,” and striking down any limits on campaign spending by corporations. Kilboure fears that decision will have far-reaching and terribly destructive consequences.

Jean Kilbourne will deliver her presentation, “Deadly Persuasion” about advertising and how it tries to manipulate us, in the Sonoma State University Cooperage, Tuesday, March 23 at 7:30 pm. Here's a summary/preview:

What are advertisers really selling us?

Advertising is an over $200 billion a year industry. We are each exposed to over 3000 ads a day. Yet, remarkably, most of us believe we are not influenced by advertising. Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions.

In her slide presentations, Jean Kilbourne examines images in advertising with the incisive wit and irony that have delighted and enlightened her audiences for years. With expert knowledge, insight, humor and commitment, she brings her audiences to see that, although ads may seem harmless and silly, they add up to a powerful form of cultural conditioning. She is known for her ability to present provocative topics in a way that unites rather than divides, that encourages dialogue, and that moves and empowers people to take action in their own and in society’s interest.

She explores the relationship of media images to actual problems in the society, such as violence, the sexual abuse of children, rape and sexual harassment, pornography and censorship, teenage pregnancy, addiction, and eating disorders. She also educates her audiences about the primary purpose of the mass media, which is to deliver audiences to advertisers. The emphasis is on health and freedom — freedom from rigid sex roles, freedom from addiction, freedom from denial, and freedom from manipulation and censorship.

With the US deeply engaged in two active wars in the Middle East, it’s past time for peace activists to revive their opposition, says Visiting Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly.

There are lessons to be learned from the war in Iraq, agrees Peace activist Kathy Kelly, a coordinator for  Voices for Creative Nonviolence, but the purported success of so-called “Surge” is not one of them.

War begets secrecy at the highest levels of government, which  distances national leaders from the citizenry, Kelly cautions.  She’d like to hear the Obama administration clearly and publicly spell out the reasons for our military presence in Afghanistan, but suspects the real rationales are too murky and complex to  meet any tests for transparency.

Kathy Kelly will report on her recent visit to Afghanistan in Santa Rosa tomorrow evening at 7 pm at Christ Church United Methodist, 1717 Yulupa Avenue. Her presentation, co-sponsored by the peace and Justice Center, Sonoma County, is titled, "The Cost and Sorrows of War:  Pakistan, Gaza,Iraq, Afghanistan."  Information: (707) 575-8902.

The town of Occidental has changed a good deal since Doris Murphy first moved there more than half a century ago, something she herself has had a hand in doing. It’s reason enough for a community-wide party tonight to celebrate here 100^th birthday.

When Joe Murphy first brought Doris from San Francisco to Occidental, he showed her the 18 acres of redwood-sheathed ridgetop he had purchased nearby.  For more than two years thereafter, Doris recalls, their weekends were spent traveling to the remote property and constructing the solid green and white house with its large stone fireplace, where  she has lived fulltime since about 1960.

Doris was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, but hitch-hiked south to San Francisco after graduating from Reed College in 1938. There she met Joe Murphy, the influential leader of the Hod Carriers Local 38 union, and a high-profile organizer for the International Workers of the World. But Doris insists that meeting Joe did not inspire her to change her politics.

This picture of Doris and Joe Murphy adorns the cover of Love and Labor, the lively autobiography she published just a few years ago, at the age of 96. Her lifetime of  energetic participation in the town of Occidental will be celebrated in the new Occidental Center for the Arts on Thursday March 11, starting at 6 pm.

More women than ever are going to college, and they are graduating in record numbers, too. Expect in certain subject areas, such as math and the hard sciences. A local group believes that the way to change that is to start early.

Expanding Your Horizons is not a job fair, but local board member Julie Silk says it does give the girls who participate a close-up look at some career possibilities they might not previously have considered.

The online registration form for the Sonoma County Expanding Your Horizons workshop at Sonoma State on March 20, is available here.