How Much is Your Dead Body Worth?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2821260964485809707#

When veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke died in 2004 few suspected that he was yet to uncover his greatest story. What happened to his body as it lay in a funeral home would reveal a story of modern day grave robbery and helped smash a body-snatching ring that had made millions of dollars by chopping up and selling-off over 1000 bodies. Dead bodies have become big business.

Each year millions of people’s lives are improved by the use of tissue from the dead. Bodies are used to supply spare parts, and for surgeons to practice on.

Horizon investigates the medical revolution that has created an almost insatiable demand for body parts and uncovers the growing industry and grisly black market that supplies human bodies for a price.

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How The Kids Took Over

In the last 10 years, corporations have doubled what they spend marketing to your children. It’s no wonder. Children influence 62% of family purchases – everything from snack food to cameras to cars. Kids under twelve are at the epicentre of consumer culture.

There is gold in the hills, and marketers know your children will lead the way. So, they spend billions of dollars every year, on the premise that a tug of your heartstrings will mobilize your purse strings. And they’ve unleashed an army of market researchers to help them accomplish their mission. The kids have taken over.

It’s all been made possible through a dramatic shift in parenting style, which has parents dictating less and listening more, and ageneration of under twelve’s that is more numerous and more affluent than the Baby Boomers. This is a marketing culture where companies are moving far beyond traditional boundaries, coining terms like “the infant niche market” and “cradle-to-grave brand loyalty.” Psychologists and anti-marketers have been waving a red flag for years, and now they’re dressing for battle. Meet the players who have helped the kids take over.

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Ryanair Caught Napping

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7759283901290988541#

 

Ryanair was founded in 1985 by Irish businessman Tony Ryan. It is Europe’s largest low-cost carrier, operating 270 low-fare routes to 21 European countries.

Two Dispatches undercover reporters spent five months secretly filming Ryanair’s training programme and onboard flights as members of the cabin crew.

The reporters reveal what really takes place behind the scenes: inadequate safety and security checks, dirty planes, exhausted cabin crew and pilots complaining about the number of hours they have to fly.

And watch Ryanair staff speaking frankly about their experiences and attitudes towards passengers.

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The Corporation

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1271317900361690951

If Academy Awards were given for films most likely to start arguments at dinner tables, this hot-button polemic would have won the 2005 Oscar hands down. It begins with the revelation that, according to a Supreme Court ruling, a corporation must be considered a person rather than an entity. Under this definition, reasons profiler Robert Hare, corporations can be categorized as psychopathic because they exhibit a personality disorder: that of single-mindedly pursuing their objectives without regard for the people in and around them.

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Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7415516523707189326

Louis Theroux journeys to the centre of the controversial South African hunting industry. It’s big business, attracting thousands of holiday hunters annually. Keeping wild animals fenced in on farms has made it cheaper and easier to hunt than ever before, but Louis discovers that this industry, instead of endangering species, has actually increased animal numbers. Staying at a safari hunting lodge, Louis hears that each kill has a price. The potential shopping list is endless, ranging from 250 for a porcupine to 100,000 for a rhino. It’s a hunter’s paradise.

This is a very popular tourist attraction – particularly among Americans. Louis meets such visitors and tries to understand their motivation to kill for pleasure, joining them as they go hunting. He meets novice hunter Ann-Marie, who originally only came to accompany her husband but gets caught up in the excitement and decides she wants to try to hunt an animal herself. She tells Louis that, apparently, your first kill is a total rush – although she would worry about killing a zebra as it’s too much like a horse.

Two of the local landowners, Piet Venter and Piet Warren, breed animals for hunting and have a perhaps surprising sensitivity towards the animals they’ve raised. They take particular care to try to ensure any animal is killed swiftly so they suffer minimal trauma. Former vet Lolly Fourie, who allows hunting on his land, explains how he no longer hunts as he gets no pleasure from it nowadays. Hearing their arguments in favour of the industry, Louis arranges to go on a hunt of his own. Unsure if he really can pull the trigger, as he looks at a wart-hog down the arrow of a crossbow he faces his beliefs head on and must make the decision…

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The Hour Of Our Time: The Legacy of William Cooper

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2829245257205113781

Surrounding us in our day-to-day lives are mysteries, that to spend our days pondering would paralyze us from leading productive lives. So we turn away from these thoughts in order to seek out as trouble free an existence as we can. Then there are those who have made it their business to explore and expose these mysteries; to remind us of what we already know on some deep subconscious level, that things are rarely what they seem on the surface. Bill Copper was such a man.

Cooper’s commitment to exposing the truth as he saw it, with the information he had at the time, is nothing short of inspiring. Very few of us would go to the length Cooper did in order to inform and educate what he knew would always be only a small portion of our population.

The type of material Cooper spent his life exposing is the kind of thing we would prefer to consider exists only in fictional literary works and science fiction movies. For to even ponder that such ideas can exist in “reality” is nothing short of disturbing. Yet Cooper, through meticulous research, fact checking, and of course his own experiences in Naval Intelligence, reminded us these things do indeed have a place in reality. He warned us that the science fiction we so eagerly digest is more truthful than we would ever care to consider.

Bill was reared in an air force family and spent his childhood and young adult life traveling the world on military assignments. Bill served honorably in Vietnam, spent time running a small university, opened an art gallery, married, had children, and eventually penned “Behold A Pale Horse”.

This book synthesized the disturbing documents he witnessed while in the military, and expressed his utter shock in seeing these plans carried out years later against an unknowing populace.

Bill would spend the remainder of his life broadcasting on shortwave and satellite radio, as well as giving standing room only lectures to inform people of what he knew. Bill was compelled to impress upon them that unless we do something, a very dark future would lie ahead.

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Underworld – Flooded Kingdoms Of The Ice Age

Between 17,000 years ago and 7000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in. Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than 100 metres, and about 25 million square kilometres of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves.

Marine archaeology has been possible as a scholarly discipline for about 50 years – since the introduction of scuba. In that time, according to Nick Flemming, the doyen of British marine archaeology, only 500 submerged sites have been found worldwide containing the remains of any form of man-made structure or of lithic artefacts. Of these sites only 100 – that’s 100 in the whole world! – are more than 3000 years old.

This is not because of a shortage of potential sites. It is at least partly because a large share of the limited funds available for marine archaeology goes into the discovery and excavation of shipwrecks. This leaves a shortage of diving archaeologists interested in underwater structures and a shortage of money to pay for the extremely expensive business of searching – possibly fruitlessly – for very ancient, eroded, silt-covered ruins at great depths under water. Moreover, with the recent exception of Bob Ballard’s survey of the Black Sea for the National Geographic Society, marine archaeology has simply not concerned itself with the possibility that the post-glacial floods might in any way be connected to the problem of the rise of civilisations. (Excerpt from grahamhancock.com)

part 1:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5846653816958373120

part 2:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6579663224992092192

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No Logo: Brands, Globalization & Resistance

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2343596870021245516

In the age of the brand, logos are everywhere. But why do some of the world’s best-known brands find themselves on the wrong end of the spray paint can — the targets of anti-corporate campaigns by activists and protesters?

No Logo, based on the best-selling book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, reveals the reasons behind the backlash against the increasing economic and cultural reach of multinational companies. Analyzing how brands like Nike,The Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger became revered symbols worldwide, Klein argues that globalization is a process whereby corporations discovered that profits lay not in making products (outsourced to low-wage workers in developing countries), but in creating branded identities people adopt in their lifestyles.

Using hundreds of media examples, No Logo shows how the commercial takeover of public space, destruction of consumer choice, and replacement of real jobs with temporary work – the dynamics of corporate globalization – impact everyone, everywhere. It also draws attention to the democratic resistance arising globally to challenge the hegemony of brands.

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Patent For A Pig: The Big Business of Genetics

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1669587865067156619

The American biotechnology firm, Monsanto, has applied for a patent for pig breeding in 160 countries. The patent is for specific parts of the genetic material of pigs which Monsanto’s genetic researchers have decoded. If this patent is granted, pig breeding would be possible with the approval of the company.

Farmers and breeders are naturally alarmed because these genes have long existed in the great majority of their pigs. Using DNA tests they can prove that there is no new invention in the patent applications but that, instead, granting this patent would be to allow a part of nature to fall into the hands of a single company.

Monsanto’s influence on the patent offices is huge. If the patent is approved, money will have to be paid to Monsanto for every pig in the world carrying this genetic marker. This has long been the case for certain feedstuffs, such as genetically modified maize. Many farmers in the US have already become dependent on the company.

It is not merely a question of money, however, but also a question of the risk posed to consumers. In America, as in Europe, cases of infertility in animals fed with genetically modified maize are becoming increasingly common. No-one yet knows what effects such products are having on humans.

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Dispatches: The Great Green Smoke Screen

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2551323600117068903

Days after Live Earth partied for the planet, Dispatches reveals how attempts to buy our way out of climate crisis may not be delivering. Channel 4 News’ Science Correspondent Tom Clarke dissects the many ‘solutions’ to global warming – from carbon off-setting to green energy tariffs. Jetting off on holidays and mini-breaks – we’re increasingly turning to off-setting to alleviate our environmental guilt. It’s a boom industry, with dozens of new companies springing up each year to offset everything from weddings to babies’ nappies.

The UK’s biggest players have a collective turn-over in excess of £2m. And now big business is in on the act with Barclays, HSBC and Sky off-setting themselves and Dell and BP selling offsets to their customers. But are offsets really the answer in the fight against global warming? Clarke investigates a number of projects – from tree-planting in the UK to pig manure in Mexico – all of which are supposed to cancel out our carbon footprint. But do these projects stand up to scrutiny?

So what else should consumers consider? Green energy tariffs look appealing, but research commissioned for Dispatches shows they often don’t make a watt of difference. Carbon labelling is being talked up a storm, but scientists tell Dispatches that labelling may not be a credible reality for some time to come. One way of making a difference, Clark discovers, might be to take direct personal action to lower our own carbon emissions. But given the small amount of savings each of us can make as individuals, is that any more than a token gesture? (Excerpt from channel4.com)

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