Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates

"... In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence". ..."

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[ via WantToKnow.info ]

Philip Morris, BAT sought to influence smoking policy

Two of the world's biggest tobacco companies tried to undermine anti-smoking efforts in Asia by seeking to influence health policy in China and scientific research in Thailand, according to two new studies.

British American Tobacco Plc, Europe's largest cigarette maker, helped form the Beijing Liver Foundation “to reprioritize the agenda of the Ministry of Public Health,” one study said, citing company documents. A senior scientist at Philip Morris International Inc., the world's biggest cigarette maker, gained a “disturbing” and “inappropriate” influence over teaching at a Bangkok research institute, the second study said.

Smoking could kill 1 billion people this century, 10 times more than in the past 100 years, and is “the single most preventable cause of death,” according to the World Health Organization. The two reports, funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, show how cigarette makers seek to counter anti-smoking measures by forging ties with policymakers and scientists.

“Such links are of great concern to the public health community, which is working hard to reduce deaths and disease due to tobacco,” said the editors of the journal that published the studies, PLoS Medicine, part of the Public Library of Science.

The studies examined the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, a collection of almost 10 million documents produced by tobacco companies in response to litigation in the 1990s.

Companies Respond

“British American Tobacco welcomes sensible regulation and we always seek, wherever possible, to engage with regulators to work towards balanced legal frameworks,” Catherine Armstrong, a London-based BAT spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “Far from undermining laws, we believe our input can mean the laws are workable and realistic and can be implemented effectively.”

The research is being published now because the full collection of documents became available online only this year, Kelley Lee, who participated in the BAT study, said in an e-mail.

“Focusing on decades old documents does nothing to progress the objective of achieving effective and comprehensive regulation of tobacco today,” Marija Sepic, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris in Lausanne, Switzerland, said in an e-mail. “The use of these documents is disingenuous as they do not reflect Philip Morris International's views today.”

In the first study, Monique Muggli and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, studied reports from London- based BAT, the maker of Dunhill and Lucky Strike brand cigarettes. The company helped form the Beijing Liver Foundation to “reprioritize the agenda of the Ministry of Public Health,” and “to divert the public attention from smoking and health issues to liver diseases” in China, the study says, citing internal reports obtained from BAT.

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Musical Innerlube: Mark Isham - 'Tibet'

Windham Hill Series with Music by Mark Isham

Part 1



A Dann Moss Production with Windham Hill Productions, Inc. Original Score by Mark Isham. Mere mention of the word Tibet evokes images of a rich and magical country, its culture shrouded by a remote and inaccessible location. This program provides a look at the place called the "Roof of the World", a place where the heavens and the earth meet, and where centuries old rhythms continue. It is a brief glimpse of vast stretches of empty, high plains and snow-capped peaks. The monasteries and the monks who live there are the last of an ever diminishing religious culture which has no parallel in the West. 5.1 Remix from original multi-tracks supervised by Mark Isham. Audio commentary from Mark Isham.


Part2

'Prisoner' star Patrick McGoohan dies at 80

Patrick McGoohan, creator of The Prisoner and star of Danger Man, has died after a short illness in a hospital in Santa Monica, California, aged 80.

The Irish American actor's work in the 60s foreshadowed concerns about freedom and personal privacy that remain key political issues today, thanks to the erosion of liberties pushed forward by governments as necessary in the fight against terrorism. What's less remembered is that the depiction of technology in the The Prisoner in particular was decades ahead of its time. The series was among the first to depict cordless telephones and miniature surveillance cameras, among other innovations that only became commercially available years later.

McGoohan was born in New York but moved back with his Irish-born parents to County Leitrim soon after his birth, resettling in Sheffield, England, seven years later. The teenager left school at 16 and went through various menial jobs before working in a theatre, initially as a manager, where he filled in as an actor, launching a career on the stage and (less comfortably) in British film with the Rank Organisation.

After that unhappy experience, McGoohan insisted on more control in agreeing to take over the role of secret agent John Drake in Danger Man. He insisted that the agent use his brain before a gun and that all fist fights (McGoohan was an accomplished amateur boxer) needed to be different. He also insisted on the absence of romantic sub-plots.

McGoohan went onto to make four seasons of Danger Man in the 1960s. His charecterisation would go on to shape the secret agents that followed him, from Harry Lime to Jason Bourne.

McGoohan reportedly turned down the roles of James Bond (in Dr No) and Simon Templar (The Saint) during this period, before becoming weary of the character. Producer Lew Grade was keen to retain his services and agreed to give McGoohan unprecedented control with a new series that became The Prisoner. George Markstein, script editor on Danger Man, is credited with helping to develop the initial concept of the series, a spy trapped in a resort-like prison.

McGoohan not only starred in and produced the series but also wrote three episodes and directed two others. The main character in the series, a former secret agent who's abducted after he resigns, spends the series trying to escape from The Village, an agreeably quaint but nonetheless oppressive penal colony.

Addressed as Number Six by his captors, a label memorably rejected in the speech "I am not a number, I'm a free man", McGoohan's character engaged in a battle of wits with his captor while trying to discover who ran the village and to escape. Leo McKern appeared in three episodes as McGoohan's nemesis, Number Two.

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4th and final part of "The Prisoner Puzzle" interview from OECA, 1977.

[ more from Prison Planet ]


THE PRISONER - Banned Episode

"LIVING IN HARMONY" unaired during the series first run on American tv.
The climate of that time is shown here thru graphic newsreel footage.

'Those snarky ancient Greeks!'

Put another way: Snark is glorified bathroom graffiti.

Denby, a film critic for the New Yorker magazine and author of Great Books, describes snark as "the sour underside of a liberated media culture, bumper stickers for the electronic age." He delves into the muck and resurfaces with this extended essay, which mixes historical research with thoughtful criticism and entertaining writing. He explores how emerging media have changed the way we communicate and allowed snark to infiltrate traditional journalism.

"We are in a shaky moment, a moment of transition, and I think it's reasonable to ask: What are we doing to ourselves? What kind of journalistic culture do we want? What kind of Internet culture? What kind of national conversation?"

This is Denby at the top of his game. Anyone concerned with the future of the media should necessarily be concerned with content, and Denby lays out a solid argument that is a clarion call for journalistic integrity.

Most important, Snark is enjoyable to read. Filled with witty one-liners, pop-culture deconstruction and a fair amount of highbrow snark, Denby's strong narrative voice propels the reader through the text, and even turns a history lesson into entertainment as he traces the roots of snark back to the ancient Greeks. (That's right, those snarky ancient Greeks!)

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