Britain // Current TV

The View On The Streets: The European Union

On the streets of Walthamstow in East London, we ask the public what they think about... more

worldwrite
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Careful What You Ask For: The Wolf I Used To Be….

“The Wolf I Used To Be” is a magical animated short film, a collaborative... more

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Monsanto quits GMOs in Britain amid intense backlash

The giant bio-tech firm Monsanto yesterday announced a major withdrawal from the UK amid intense opposition to genetically modified foods.The company, the leading multinational behind the production of GM crops, is closing its wheat growing operation, based in Cambridge.

Officials said the move was partly due to the opposition to GM crops which has inspired the Daily Mail's campaign against so-called "Frankenstein Foods". Monsanto is also seeking to sell off crop-breeding centres in France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

The move was widely seen as an indication that the company has given up hopes of introducing GM crops to Europe. Pete Riley, of Friends of the Earth, said last night: "If they are pulling out, we should rejoice."

Monsanto's decision was made public on the eve of the Government's final announcement on the prospects for GM crop cultivation here. Earlier this week it was revealed that the Government's own research had found that GM farming would pollute the countryside for generations. Monsanto's Cambridge unit employed 125 people developing hybrid wheat varieties for the European market.

The company bought the former Government Plant Breeding Institute from Unilever in 1998, declaring that GM crops would be established within five years. But a Monsanto spokesman said last night the expected business had "never materialised". Last month, Bayer CropScience pulled the plug on UK field trials, leaving just one company, Syngenta, actively pursuing GM here. The results of the Government research had been wdely seen as dealing a bodyblow to supporters of GM crops.

Disturbing figures came from three separate studies conducted on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.They showed that pollen contamination would spread far further than previously thought and "feral" growth of weed killer -proof plants from just one crop would persist for years.

At the same time, the heavy use of chemicals associated with the crops could wipe out some bird species.The warnings followed the massive public suspicion of GM crops revealed by the Government's own national consultation.

In an initiative involving hundreds of public meetings and 37,000 questionnaires, 93 per cent of respondents said not enough was known about the long-term effects of GM foods on health, while 86 per cent said they would not eat it. Concern about pollution of organic and other farms was mentioned by 95 per cent, while 93 per cent said GM technology was driven more by profit than public interest.

There has also been concern over the close relationship between the Labour Government and Monsanto. David Hill, Tony Blair's new spin doctor, is a former adviser to Monsanto and Science Minister Lord Sainsbury holds a stake in a firm linked to Monsanto, which is handled by a blind trust. The GM row in Europe has escalated recently, with comments from EU environment commissioner Margaret Wallstrom that GM companies were lying and trying to force unsuitable crops on European farmland.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-199884/GM-giant-quits-Britain-amid-backlash.html#ixzz1l3z17I91
http://www.healingtalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/GMO-Free-Is-Fastest-Growing-Retail-Brand2.jpgThe giant bio-tech firm Monsanto yesterday announced a major withdrawal from the UK... more

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The Kills: The Last Goodbye

“The Last Goodbye” is a powerfully emotive music video portrait of the... more

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Britain facing summer hosepipe ban as drought risk remains high

Britain faces hosepipe bans this summer amid warnings that many areas are experiencing... more

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Eve Arnold, Legendary Photographer of Illuminating Images, Dies at 99

Eve Arnold, who came to be regarded as a grande dame of postwar photojournalism for her bold, revealing images of subjects as diverse as Marilyn Monroe and migratory potato pickers, died on Wednesday in London at the age of 99. Born in Philadelphia on April 21, 1912, Ms. Arnold had lived in Great Britain since 1961.

Her death was announced by Magnum Photos, the photography cooperative to which she had belonged for more than a half-century. She was among the first women Magnum hired to make pictures. Ms. Arnold was a leading light in what is considered to be the golden age of news photography, when magazines like “Life” and “Look” commanded attention with big, arresting pictures provided by photographers who included Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White.

Acclaimed for capturing celebrities in intimate moments after winning their trust, Ms. Arnold developed a particular rapport with Marilyn Monroe, the subject of a book of Arnold photographs. Foreshadowing the celebrity portfolios of photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Ms. Arnold captured Joan Crawford squirming into a girdle, Malcolm X collecting fistfuls of dollars at a rally in Washington and James Cagney and his wife doing an impromptu dance in a barn.

But other pictures, just as memorable, were of the unfamous. Among the more than 750,000 Ms. Arnold made were pictures in a South African shantytown, a Havana brothel and a Moscow psychiatric hospital. She documented a small Long Island town, Miller Place, and the first minutes of a baby’s life. She was an official photographer on 40 movie sets.

Her many honors include the Order of the British Empire and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. She was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and named a “Master Photographer” by the International Center of Photography in New York, considered by many to be the world’s most prestigious photographic honor.

This piece includes a number of high-resolution black-and-white photographs, as well as two documentary short films.

http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/eve-arnold-legendary-photographer-of-illuminating-images-dies-at-99/Eve Arnold, who came to be regarded as a grande dame of postwar photojournalism for... more

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Remembering Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from esophageal cancer at the age of 62, ended one of the greater intellectual careers of the last 40 years. Born in Portsmouth, England, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Hitchens started his career as a Trotskyite at “The New Statesman,” working along with noted authors, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, who would become his lifelong friends. In the early 1980s, he moved to the United States, becoming a citizen in 2007, and began working for liberal magazine “The Nation,” writing some of his earliest attacks on the conservative government and American foreign policy.

A prolific author, Hitchens left behind a massive body of critical writing, with more than a dozen books and hundreds of essays targeting everyone from the British Monarchy to Bill Clinton to George Orwell to God, usually with wit and more often than not, vicious and cutting remarks. Even those who hated his politics could not help but admire his skill as a writer and ability to craft a sharp turn of phrase, and many called him a friend.

Perhaps his most famous book was “The Missionary Position,” a scathing attack on Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity church, an organization that he called a cult. Hitchens described Mother Teresa as a “fraud” and accused her of glorifying poverty to enrich herself and the Catholic church, rather than truly helping the poor. The book infuriated Roman Catholics around the world, as well as politicians and celebrities who he claimed had used the charity and her reputation to mask their own evil deeds.

A later work, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” accused the former Secretary of State of “war crimes,” and argued that Kissinger should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” for his involvement in atrocities in Southeast Asia and Central America. As a critic of the Bush administration’s use of torture, Hitchens filmed himself being waterboarded to demonstrate the cruelty of the practice. Hitchens claimed that, “The official lie about this treatment … is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning.”

Hitchens had an enviable career arc that began with his own brand of fiery journalism at Britain’s “New Statesman” and then made its way to America, where he wrote for everyone from “The Atlantic” and “Harper’s” to “Slate and “The New York Times Book Review.” He was a legend on the speakers’ circuit, could debate just about anyone on anything and won innumerable awards.

Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, a troublemaker and was a gift, if it dare be said, from God.

This piece includes color photographs, a photo-gallery and two documentary short films.

http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/remembering-christopher-hitchens-1949-2011/The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from... more