“Cult classic The Prisoner is set to return almost 40 years after it first hit TV screens. Sky One is in talks to bring back the adventure series, which starred Patrick McGoohan as Prisoner Number 6.

…The new version will not be placed in the original setting, the north Wales village of Portmeirion, or have the arty, ‘pop’ feel of the original, according to the magazine Broadcast. Damien Timmer, who has been lined up to executive produce the show, told the television and radio industry magazine that the new series ‘takes liberties with the original’. He said: ‘Although it will be a radical reinvention, it will still be a heightened show with themes such as paranoia, conspiracy and identity crisis.’

The original show, which ran on ITV for 17 episodes, has been the subject of university courses.” (This is London [via walker])

“Margaret Thatcher forced Francois Mitterrand to give her the codes to disable Argentina’s French-made missiles during the Falklands war by threatening to launch a nuclear warhead against Buenos Aires, according to a book.

Rendez-vous: the psychoanalysis of Francois Mitterrand , by Ali Magoudi, who met the late French president up to twice a week in secrecy at his Paris practice from 1982 to 1984, also reveals that Mr Mitterrand believed he would get his ‘revenge’ by building a tunnel under the Channel that would forever destroy Britain’s island status.” (The Age [via the null device] )

When protecting nature means kicking people out: “Sadly, the human rights and global conservation communities remain at serious odds over the question of displacement, each side blaming the other for the particular crisis they perceive. Conservation biologists argue that by allowing native populations to grow, hunt, and gather in protected areas, anthropologists, cultural preservationists, and other supporters of indigenous rights become complicit in the decline of biological diversity. Some, like the Wildlife Conservation Society’s outspoken president, Steven Sanderson, believe that the entire global conservation agenda has been ‘hijacked’ by advocates for indigenous peoples, placing wildlife and biodiversity in peril. ‘Forest peoples and their representatives may speak for the forest,’ Sanderson has said, ‘They may speak for their version of the forest; but they do not speak for the forest we want to conserve.’ WCS, originally the New York Zoological Society, is a BINGO lesser in size and stature than the likes of TNC and CI, but more insistent than its colleagues that indigenous territorial rights, while a valid social issue, should be of no concern to wildlife conservationists.

Human rights groups, such as Cultural Survival, First Peoples Worldwide, EarthRights International, Survival International, and the Forest Peoples Programme argue the opposite, accusing some of the BINGOs and governments like Uganda’s of destroying indigenous cultures, the diversity of which they deem essential to the preservation of biological diversity.” (Orion)

Norman Solomon: ” If the Pentagon had been able to subdue the Iraqi population, few in Congress or on editorial pages would be denouncing the war. As in so many other respects, this is a way that the domestic US political dynamics of the war on Iraq are similar to what unfolded during the Vietnam War. With the underpinnings of war prerogatives unchallenged, a predictable response is that the war must be fought more effectively.

That’s what the great journalist I.F. Stone was driving at when he wrote, a few years into the Vietnam War, in mid-February 1968: ‘It is time to stand back and look at where we are going. And to take a good look at ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it. If it were not for the heavy cost, politicians like the Kennedys [Robert and Edward] and organizations like ADA [the liberal Americans for Democratic Action] would still be as complacent about the war as they were a few years ago.'” (truthout)

Cleaning Needed, in the Worst Way: “Mr. Gospodarski, a paramedic for 23 years, is what is known as a bio-recovery technician, a highly trained, extremely efficient, self-employed house-cleaner of sorts whose specialty is removing the unpleasant aftereffects of suicides, attempted suicides, shotgun murders, accidental impalements and, in the case of lonely, unnoticed passings like that of the man in 6-F, ‘decomps.'” (New York Times )

“‘The idea that perceptions can be manipulated by expectations’ is fundamental to the study of cognition, said Michael I. Posner, an emeritus professor of neuroscience at the University of Oregon and expert on attention. ‘But now we’re really getting at the mechanisms.'” (New York Times )

“The highly controversial XCP digital rights management (DRM) technology bundled by Sony BMG on 52 of its audio CD albums can be defeated by applying a small piece of tape to the discs, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Applying a piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disk renders the data track of the CD unreadable. A computer trying to play the CD will then skip to the music without accessing the bundled DRM technology.

‘After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs,’ Gartner concluded in a newly published research note.

The use of a piece of tape will defeat any future DRM system on audio CDs designed to be played on a stand-alone CD player, the analyst said.” (vnunet.com)

“Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question …” — Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and linguistics at Yale and author of Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human and How Children Learn the Meanings of Words (The Atlantic)

Theodore Dalrymple: “The mere contemplation of a suicide bomber’s state of mind is deeply unsettling, even without considering its practical consequences. I have met a would-be suicide bomber who had not yet had the chance to put his thanatological daydream into practice. What could possibly have produced as embittered a mentality as his—what experience of life, what thoughts, what doctrines? What fathomless depths of self-pity led him to the conclusion that only by killing himself and others could he give a noble and transcendent meaning to his existence?” (City Journal)

Putting the fear of Dongyue into the heart of Dubya: “If you’ve ever fantasized about sitting George W. Bush down and being the one to make him see the error of his ways, you already have it worked out in your head: Maybe you want to take him for a tour around an inner-city school, introduce him to a working family without health care, or have a long talk about the human costs of war.

In my version of the fantasy, I take Bush to the Dongyue temple in Beijing, China, for a little fire and brimstone, Taoist style. In small halls off the courtyard of this imposing place of worship, brightly-colored, hero-sized gods preside over the 76 departments of hell. Near-life-sized sinners carved out of wood suffer appropriate punishments, the saintly reap blessings, and hell’s bureaucrats record every detail. All this is explicitly narrated on stainless steel panels bolted to each hall.

Hell doesn’t have 76 departments for nothing; it’s enough to make anyone feel that each transgression and act of kindness, great and small, makes an indelible mark on the soul.” — Morgon Mae Schultz (Utne Reader)