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.”

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Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can’t pay, you go to prison.

“When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let’s take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go.” So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren’t covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.

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“In Moldova, most of the media is controlled by the Communists, the net is one of the only free sources of information where there is no censorship, where you can find out what’s going on. It’s one place where you can feel free.”

“I think that’s why the mobile phone system wasn’t working yesterday. They wanted to stop us communicating by text message,” Ciobanu said.

The Communists appear to have realised the news blackout did not stop information travelling freely.

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Juncker had said on Tuesday that if Luxembourg were put on any international list of offshore financial centres then Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming should also be named and shamed as tax havens.

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And he proved his contempt by eating crisps and drinking beer all the way through the talk and giving away copies of his book to anyone under twenty five, helping them to understand what he was doing by explaining that books were “lots of words in a row”.

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What concerns me is the death of the audience. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I’m better off than most authors I know, most journalists I know. There was a period of greater prosperity. I wonder why, why do I have a relationship to you. Why do you have a relationship to you?

My twitter group is bigger than you, more widely spread than you. They are probably a better audience than you. They can put up with more than you. They’ll RT me. I know some of you are gathering together in the back conspiring … drifting … you’re the people formerly known as the audience. And you’re forfeiting the benefits of the audience. Paying attention to the point of being able to discuss it.

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But the resurgence of spacewear this season is especially forceful, and touching, as designers confront an uncertain future. In their most recent shows, self-styled seers of the catwalks combined robotic engineering with effusive draping and scavenged-looking elements that appeared to be inspired by the fantasy worlds of the “Mad Max” films.

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Rick Owens, whose fall presentation this month had an otherworldly caste, calls the latest revival “an escape from banality.” Mr. Owens acknowledged that his designs owe a debt to Frank Frazetta’s illustrations for the John Carter book series, whose raven-haired protagonist sported a six-pack and scanty skins, and was “caveman and futuristic at the same time.” His own designs, with their fierce-looking layers, meandering zippers and winged lapels, suggest a similar hybrid, expressing, he said, “a sentimental longing for utopian happiness that is poignantly always out of reach.”

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“What we need are first responders who don’t share our pain,” said Martin Kaplan, the associate dean. “If there’s one thing Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon never had to think about, it’s a pension.”

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Bruce Sterling: The fluidity of the idea of national identity.

The idea of “developing countries” is a bogus anachronism. Places like Mexico City are better thought of as “areas of global urbanization.” Mexico City is much closer to the reality of Shanghai or Lagos than rural Chiapas or Oaxaca. Mexico City as the “global capital of Latino globalization.”

The ascendant role of the *city*, which establish national economic archetypes and don’t care about borders, in a world where the nation state is slipping away, as the national governments lose control of their economies and borders.

“People talk about emerging economies. What about *submerging* economies – places like Detroit…parts of D.C. where the AIDS rates are higher than Uganda.”

“In the future, the poor will not be able to avoid becoming posthuman, because they just can’t afford it.”

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Since misery loves company, encourage conviviality in your users. Encourage them to feed one another. (Seriously.) Americans are too proud to admit they’re broke and avoiding restaurants while liv­ing on vile cheese puffs. They cannot cook, and fear asking the neighbors over for dinner. They associate the latter with Grandma’s best china, which they never use. Help them make potluck seem high-tech. Ponder the awesome Bettina blobject tableware, designed by Future Systems for Alessi. Bettina is perfect for convivial ­entertainment in 2009—it has a cogent air of mysterious hyper­functionality while avoiding any tasteless hint of that stone-dead, rotten, Bush-era, rhinestone bling-bling.

Nobody ever hunkers down with a traditional 64K line. Hibernating Amer­icans will cluster around their Obama-friendly broadband, over which they can steal free entertainment as the New York Times goes broke. Help them distribute fast free broadband to all their neighbors. The Recording Industry Association of America has given up suing pirates, so your risks here are currently minimal. Your popularity is totally guaranteed. In economic transitions, as any former Communist can tell you, your social capital is vastly more useful than the useless, rapidly vaporizing actual capital.

Except for cheap cell phones, which the global poor truly dote on, the lowest billion rarely buy “appropriate” objects designed for them by soft-hearted liberals. But formerly rich guys buying up-market peasant products? Man, that market should boom! It’s high time for designers to plunder and upgrade the vernacular technologies of the Third World: wheelbarrows, bicycle rickshaws, rainwater barrels, window boxes, awnings, and mosquito nets; or weird and whimsical wind toys, bamboo-and-Mylar windup shortwave radios. If they’re cheap and blithe, you can’t go wrong here. You want to vividly display a host of eye-catching solar gizmos, while quietly installing some humble weather stripping, which has a terrific ROI.

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It’s a beautiful thing to see hot ashes carried by the wind from an irresponsible smoker’s cigarette, burn through your own clothes. There is not a more honourable way for clothes to die than during combat with outdoor forces. That’s after all the purpose of clothes right, to serve and protect?

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