Before economic sanctions were exercised against Iraq the dinar was worth $3; today $1 is worth 1,800 dinars.
In 1998, Mr Denis Halliday resigned his job as co-ordinator of the United Nations humanitarian aid programme in Iraq because, he said, "the sanctions are killing the people of Iraq. Five thousand innocent children under the age of five are dying every month as a direct result of the economic embargo forced on the Iraqi people over the past 10 years."
In Would You Believe (Wednesday, 7.30 p.m., RT╔1) Mr Halliday returns to Iraq to show what he believes are the consequences of the sanctions and how they have reduced a very sophisticated society to third-world status.
Coffee is the second-largest traded commodity after oil. Tales From The Global Economy - The Cappuccino Trail (Sunday, 7.15 p.m., BBC2) investigates this brown, viscous liquid worth billions of dollars to the global economy.
Despite the coffee shops springing up all over the developed world at the rate of five a day, coffee is now seen as a luxury to be drunk only once or twice a day. Coupled with overproduction, this has pushed the price to an all-time low. Producers in the world's coffee-growing regions are at the mercy of traders on New York's frenzied Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange.
The programme follows the economic route of two types of coffee beans from the Peruvian Andes. One follows the normal route and is sold for as little as 10 US cents a pound while the other is bought by the Fairtrade organisation CafΘ Direct, which ensures that a fair, above-market price is paid for these high-quality organic beans.
Surfing the Net or using a credit card can leave a data trail that reveals taste in everything from soap to sexual partners. The last of the current series The History of Surveillance (Sunday, 8 p.m., Channel 4) looks at information harvesting and how genetic surveillance may eventually deliver a homogenous world where micro implants enable the environment to know people as well as they know themselves.
sokelly@irish-times.ie
