He visits the mega-farms coming our way from the United States, with cows being kept indoors and milked on giant "dairy-go-rounds", and pigs housed in "sty-scrapers". In a Panorama Special, reporter Paul Kenyon looks behind the cellophane wrappers and the "Buy-one-get-one-frees" to examine the true cost of our cheap food. But how can they keep on expanding, and slashing our food prices, when we're in the middle of a global downturn? It's being dubbed the new "space race", with Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrison's fighting for dominance on high streets and shopping malls across the UK. The Big Four supermarkets are expanding at an unprecedented rate. British security services are believed to be monitoring some 2,000 individuals - and an estimated 30 active terror plots - the majority connected to Pakistan in some way. Separately, Gordon Brown stressed this on Sunday. Obtuse - even provocative - perhaps, but the facts and figures bear it out. The title, Britain's Terror Heartland, gets to the nub of it. So there had to be a clear reason to take such risks. There are regular threats to Western journalists in Kabul too.
They arrived in Peshawar - already a very tense city - on the day an American aid worker was shot dead and an Iranian diplomat kidnapped. Jane and Nikki took sizeable, if considered, risks in getting some of their footage. None of which makes the job of reporting or filming there any easier.
Just how damaging this ambivalence has been in the recent past is eye-poppingly chronicled in this, highly-influential book. So both Washington and London will be exerting maximum pressure to ensure that future troop deployments won't be undermined by a porous Afghan-Pakistan border and an ambivalent Pakistani government. Many are sceptical that he can pull off what will be one of the biggest issues of his administration. President-elect Obama has made a great deal out of promising to shift the focus of the "War on Terror" to Afghanistan. Given the startling access Jane Corbin and her cameraman/producer Nikki Millard got - not only to the troubled areas around Peshawar, but also to the Pakistan army's battles with militants linked to al-Qaeda and the Taleban in the tribal areas - the new civilian government at least appears serious about showing (some) of what it's up to.Īnd, despite a war of words over the Americans' use of Predator drones to target militant bases in these areas, Pakistan's efforts have so far been welcomed by many in the US. It's never easy to make documentaries in Pakistan - especially for journalists who, like those on Panorama, aren't based there.
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