Regular hand-wringing

Tapir & chips?

That From Our Own Correspondent Stephen Sackur piece on "vain, shameless, dog-whistling" Viktor Orban was immediately followed by Kate Adie saying:

To the other side of the world and another powerful populist leader, and another man who provokes regular hand-wringing among liberal politicians and journalists. Jair Bolsonaro's homophobic and misogynistic comments have helped make him a deeply divisive figure, though he was the clear winner in Brazil's presidential election last year. He's been criticised for remarks about the country's indigenous populations who he suggested are in the way of mining and agriculture.

Was Kate classing herself, Mr Sackur and her other BBC colleagues as "hand-wringing liberal journalists" there? (Or doesn't she do irony?) 

At least the piece that followed was by Tim Whewell, who was less interested in point-scoring and more interested in telling a story. He couldn't entirely hide the fact that his indigenous friend's taste for tapirs and jaguars wasn't quite what he wanting to hear. 

Prescient posts

Craig and I are always complaining about the limitations of this website. One day we’ll get round to doing something about it. It seriously needs a re-jig I know. 

In the olden days (when Biased-BBC was magenta) one of the best features was the ‘unread comments’ facility. You could see, instantly, if anyone had added anything new, even to virtually defunct threads. None of that cumbersome scrolling through on the off-chance.

HaloScan is defunct as well, which is a bit of a shame, because there was some good stuff on there, much of which is permanently down the memory hole. (AFAIK)

This blog, however, makes accessing all the comments as awkward as possible, and if someone did stick a belated something or other  on the end of an ancient thread you’d never know. But now you can. (Just this once) A US based reader has H/Td this November 2015 thread, Takeaway messages, which in turn links to the previous one: Islam for dummies, and this comment.

Note that these posts were written Before Cologne. B.C., one could say. They address the BBC’s relentlessly PC approach to immigration and its sentimental, sanitised  portrayal of Muslim immigrants. The BBC can only see Muslims as victims and non-Muslims as racists.

This particular FOOC by Tim Whewell was about  the district of Brussels called Molenbeek, otherwise known as ‘Jihad central’.

Both threads attracted a healthy number of comments. Do check them out.

Takeaway messages

This morning's From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4 covered a good deal of familiar territory in the familiar BBC way. 

As discussed in the comments section of the previous post, the BBC's Tim Whewell presented a piece about Belgium's 'Jihad Central', the district of Brussels called Molenbeek:

Anonymous28 November 2015 at 12:20 

Another one for your collection - Tim Whewell's PC venture into Mollenbeek on From Our Own Correspondent on the BBC.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ppsp2 

It's an interesting case study in how to use narrative form, selective quotation, tone of voice, false equations, ellipsis, unverifiable assertions and biased selection of facts to create an impression. I am sure he is a very likeable guy - he seems so - and probably none of it is conscious plotting to distort the truth, but distort it he does.  

One of the unverifiable assertions was that journalists were chasing Muslims down the street looking crying out "Do you know any terrorists?" Really? It sounds improbable but it helps to create the impression that racist tabloids were encouraging group hate by calling Mollenbeek "Jihadi central". But take a look at this article from the sober-minded, pretty liberal and pro-migration Economist:  

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21678840-brussels-not-just-europes-political-and-military-capitalit-also-centre-its 

If somewhere produces a lot of steel then it's not unreasonable to call it "the steel capital of the world". If somewhere has a lot of film and rock stars it's not unreasonable to call it "the home of the stars". And if somewhere produces the highest per capita number of Jihadis in Europe it's not unreasonable to call it Jihadi Central.  

Anyway, have a listen if you can spare the time, as I say it is a marvellous piece in understanding how an impression is created: in this case, Muslim as nice, pro-integration victim. Whewell completely suspends all critical faculties: no interest in whether a substantial section of the Muslim population gives actual or tacit support to the Jihadis; no interest in whether other migrants to Belgium e.g. animists, Christians, Jews and Hindus suffer the same difficulties in integration; no interest in wondering whether non-Muslims, women especially, get hassled in Mollenbeek; and no interest in whether Sharia rules in Mollenbeek (are there Sharia courts for instance?). 

No, it was just a "mood music" piece designed to dull the senses.  

Craig28 November 2015 at 15:40 

I'd have hoped for better from Tim Whewell. He can be a fine reporter.

This, however, was just the usual BBC report, almost a paint-by-numbers affair, all about the sense of alienation and victimhood felt by the Muslims of Molenbeek.  

Reading about Molenbeek elsewhere, it certainly seems as if it's been heavily Islamised, with alcohol suppressed, women pressured to wear the veil and non-Islamic newspapers restricted. Non-Muslim women have been abused and spat at. The area's Jewish shopkeepers were terrorised and forced out; as was the local gay population. The area has become largely a monolithic, Moroccan-background immigrant district. 

http://www.politico.eu/article/molenbeek-broke-my-heart-radicalization-suburb-brussels-gentrification/ 

None of that came out in Tim Whewell's 'FOOC' report.

Besides this doubtless well-meaning but worryingly distorting piece there was also the BBC's David Shukman explaining why he's feeling guardedly "optimistic" about significant "advances" arising from the Paris conference on (what Kate Adie introduced as) "man-made global warming"....

...and an emotional piece from freelance reporter Chris Haslam on the plight of a newly-arrived Syrian refugee family in Berlin. 

He told the heart-rending story of a man called Malik from Latakia who is suffering from cancer. He received state support for his chemotherapy until (Chris told us) the Syrian police asked him to become an informer. If he became an informer, the police said, the Syrian state would continue to fund his treatment. So the man fled, taking his wife (Shabima) and three children (Omar, Seema and Anas) with him, arriving in Germany three weeks ago.

Chris Haslam worried about the dehumanising effects of Germany's asylum processes and, even more, about the Germans requiring asylum seekers to wear green armbands, which he said reminded him uncomfortably of the country's Nazi past. 

To give you a proper flavour of the report, here's just one extract from it:

After 40 days in the European wilderness they arrived in Berlin - another frightened, anonymous, desparate family who risked their lives on a one-way journey into the unknown. 

Look at your own family and ask yourself if you'd make it. 

If there's one thing you can say about From Our Own Correspondent is that it's rarely shy about giving Radio 4 audiences a strong takeaway message. Today's edition was  certainly no exception to that.

Tim Whewell on 'From Our Own Correpondent'

Tim Whewell's report on this morning's From Our Own Correspondent bears transcribing in full. It's the sort of report which shows what the BBC can do - something it's important for blogs like this to point out from time to time (as we sometimes do).

It follows the story of 36 year-old Narakorn Kittiyangkul, the Thai national killed by a Hamas mortar attack during the present conflict, and features Roni Keidar, who (along with her husband) runs a communal farm in Netiv Haasara, right on the Gazan border:

It's often the footnotes that are most intriguing. 

And there's a footnote to the Gaza conflict, you may have seen. The casualty lists record the Palestinians killed, the Israelis and one Thai, described as a worker. 

Seeing that brings a particular stab of sadness - a death somehow even more random than so many of the others.

Unexpectedly last week, I found myself standing where the Thai was hit by a Hamas shell in a greenhouse in southern Israel, right on the Gazan border. I know now what happened. 

The Israeli farmers who employed him to pick tomatoes had warned him and his two fellow Thai workers they'd have less than 15 seconds to take cover if there was a mortar attack. When the shell came he didn't hit the ground. He took out his mobile to photograph it. (The trail makes a beautiful silver streak that fascinates me too.) 

His boss's wife, Roni, explains, he was still alive, just, when her husband, Ovadia, arrived minutes later but, though they tried to staunch the bleeding, he died before he reached the hospital. 

"I've got a different husband now," Roni says. He can't sleep, worrying that he's somehow to blame for his employee's death. 

As for the trauma the remaining Thais are suffering we can only guess. They speak a little Hebrew and no English. "We immediately offered them return tickets to Bangkok," Roni says, "but they wouldn't go." 

But why has Roni herself stayed? She's been in equal danger from the missiles and from the tunnels Hamas dug under the border. The entrance to one was discovered under another greenhouse nearby.

Half her village has left, but she stayed because it's her home and as an act of defiance - because the ultimate aim of Hamas, Israelis believe, is - as defined in its charter - to drive them not only out of occupied territories but from their whole country - a country where, finally, after the Holocaust, Jews hoped they would be able to feel safe.

Roni and Ovadia used to have a farm in Sinai, but after that desert peninsula was returned to Egypt in 1982 they deliberately decided to move, not as many Israelis did to another occupied area, but to within Israeli's internationally recognised borders. And there, they believe, they have a right to live in peace without the gnawing fear that gunmen will emerge from underground to murder them. 

According to the Israeli media, apparently relying on Israeli intelligence reports, Hamas planned to send thousands of its fighters through the tunnels to invade Israel at Jewish New Year next month. 

That's the reason, most Israelis tell you, they were dragged, reluctantly, into a defensive war.

"Why?",  they demand, "don't you foreign correspondents ever report that?" 

And, again and again, I slip into the same argument: We do report the reasons, but we also have to report the results. And then much of the audience for our reporting concludes that being afraid or traumatised, like Roni, is bad but not nearly as bad as being dead, as so many Palestinians now are.

We're talking now, uncomfortably, about hierarchies of suffering, and Israelis reply, "So what do you want? More dead Jewish children? Do we also have to die just to make you report the story fairly? Is it our fault we've built technology to protect ourselves from their rockets? And why are there no shelters in Gaza?"

It's not true that Israelis don't care about the suffering of Gazans. Most I've met do.  

But what scares them almost more than Hamas' missiles is its embrace of martyrdom.

"We love death as our enemies love life", they quote its leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, as saying.

Hamas, they say, does nothing to protect its own citizens - citizens who, bewilderingly for Israelis, voted freely to be ruled by people who Israel, the US, the EU, and other countries, now count as terrorists. 

Discussions like this are exhausting. At one meal with Israeli friends we moved eventually onto safer, "How's the family?" territory. And then the woman I'd been arguing with said, quietly, "My grandson's in Gaza." She didn't say "army". In an Israeli context you don't need to. So, for a fraction of a second, I wasn't sure what she meant. When I was, I also realised she was trying not to cry, and I wished I'd never had the argument. No one wants a dead grandson, but no one wants either to be dreading constantly that the phone might ring with fatal news. 

After the Thai worker died on the Gazan border a Buddhist monk was sent by his embassy in Israel to perform a ceremony exorcising the spirit of death from the farm. Perhaps that's why his two fellow workers stayed.

But after this latest war what ceremony can exorcise the spirit of death from this region for Israelis and Arabs who have nowhere else to go? We all know there isn't one.

#Israeli farmer Roni Keidar on #Gaza border.She has 10 secs to take cover when warning of #Hamas shelling comes pic.twitter.com/WbTqsRJ3wL
— Tim Whewell (@BBCTimWhewell) July 31, 2014

Fury and sadness

For those (like Iain Duncan Smith) who think the BBC has been unduly antagonistic toward the government's benefits reforms....

...and for those who think the BBC is unduly unsympathetic to Israel....

...just try this, transcribed from immediately after the 8 o'clock news bulletin on Radio 4:

Continuity Announcer: This is BBC Radio 4. Anne Adams is a blind benefits advisor who, due to the introduction of new inaccessible government forms, now needs a support worker. She tells Peter White about her fury and the sadness she feels at needing sighted assistants. That's on tonight's In Touch at 8.40. Now though File on 4. With mounting tension over the murder of the three Israeli teenagers and with fighting continuing in Iraq and Syria, Tim Whewell examines the dilemmas facing aid workers in the Middle East and other areas of conflict.

Tim Whewell: Here in the tightly-packed streets of one of Gaza's refugee camps I'm surrounded by people who have no running water, no proper sewage system, no steady source of income. Four out of five Gazans depend on some kind of humanitarian assistance.

No Morrissey tonight to match the mood all this provokes, but half-finished-and-deeply-moving Mahler instead. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...:

Newsnight, Keith Blakelock, self employment, Central African Republic and Irish dancing

Wednesday's edition continued the pattern so far in beginning with Ukraine. It then dealt briefly with the South Korean ferry disaster before moving on to a report about the murder of P.C. Keith Blakelock. 

P.C. Blakelock was stabbed 43 times by a Tottenham mob during the 1985 riots. Some of whom were evidently trying to decapitate him. His family have never found justice. 

Newsnight was evidently very pleased with itself for having obtained the first T.V. interview with Nicky Jacobs, the man recently found not guilty of Keith Blakelock's murder. No doubt (being good left-liberal types) they thought it was their duty to give him a platform.

It was an interview that many will have found uncomfortable watching though, not least this deeply unpleasant exchange concerning his non-presence at the murder of the police constable:

Kurt Barling (interviewer): Was there a moment in your mind at 16 where you thought “Ah, I’ve missed the main event”?

Nicky Jacobs: It did cross my mind, because like I said at that time the wickedness that the police used to do to the black community, yeah it was celebration time.

How would Keith Blakelock's family have felt on hearing that? Has Newsnight ever offered them a platform? 

The following feature on the rise of self employment discussed the question, 'Has entrepreneurship taken off, or is there another reason?' 

Jim Reed's report interviewed a self-employed lady who says becoming self-employed "was the best decision" she's "ever made", and another self-employed lady who would prefer regular, employed work. His report balanced the 'ups' and 'downs' for the government. His talking head was Danny Alexander MP (Lib Dem), pushing the 'ups', and the 'downs' figures came from the Labour-friendly Resolution think tank. Then came a Jeremy Paxman interview with Nicola Smith of the TUC and Allister Heath, editor of City A.M., representing contrasting perspectives. All fair enough, I think.

Next came the Central African Republic. 

The last time Newsnight did a report from there we at 'Is' took it to task for presenting a deeply misleading introductory account of the origins of the crisis:

The country is now ravaged by what some human rights groups have described as 'ethnic cleansing'. It was set off after a coup which unleashed Christian militias upon the Muslim minority.

Thankfully, they've now learned their lesson and gave a much more accurate description this time:

The country has been tipped into chaos since a mainly Muslim rebel coalition seized power a year ago, started abusing the Christian population and set off waves of revenge attacks which have driven great numbers of Muslims out of the country.

Tim Whewell's report focused on the peace-making activities of two remarkably jolly religious leaders there - the country's leading archbishop and the country's leading imam. [How very BBC!] They really didn't seem to be making much headway though, as Tim admitted. 

This report was much more balanced than his last one (which focused almost entirely on the plight of the Muslims of the C.A.R.). Here were heard upsetting stories from both sides of the conflict. It was a very decent report, all in all, and all credit to Tim Whewell for that. 

And all credit to Ian Katz too for ending the programme with some fine Irish dancing. Reelly good stuff! (unlike that pun).

Central Africa, a place that loves immigrants, Rev., slavery, the Bible, missing family members, the Big Bang & Islamic feminism

This morning's Sunday had a newbie presenter, veteran BBC reporter Mike Wooldridge.

He's such a BBC veteran that I seem to have been hearing his name all my life. Checking the infallible fount of all human wisdom, Wikipedia, apparently he's been a BBC reporter since 1970 - some 44 years. And now he's presenting Sunday. 

So what were this week's themes?

1. Central African Republic

Mike talked to the BBC's Tim Whewell about the conflict there.

Tim Whewell himself talked about the plight of Muslims there, saying they are now very much on the receiving end of the violence, and also about the role of priests in sheltering Muslims. He said many priests are doing this, calling them "very brave". There have been death threats madee against them. He said that the conflict was not a religious issue originally, and that the Christian militias arose partly for reasons of revenge and partly because they are being used by other nationalist political forces who believe that CAR nationalism has no place for Muslims. 

Several radio/TV programmes by Tim Whewell will reflect on his experiences there, so his take on the conflict will remain the dominant one at the BBC. Whether his single perspective is an essentially accurate one is something we may only know from reading beyond the BBC.

2. Immigration

John Laurenson reports from Riace where immigrants are welcome and encouraged to stay.

The BBC often gets accused - and sometimes (as per Helen Boaden, Nick Robinson, John Humphrys, etc) accuses itself - of having a pro-immigration bias. This report did absolutely nothing to refute that accusation.

We heard from a village in Italy, which you may also have read about in the Guardian last year. Refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Syria, and other places are being positively welcomed there. Pope Francis was cited saying that each migrant should be treated as if they were Christ himself. Don Giovanni (yes, really) agreed, saying you're giving food & shelter to Christ himself by feeding and housing immigrants. He says there should be no limits at all on immigration, no limits on love. There should be open borders, no upper limits on numbers, no limits on social security. Riace isn't just offering emergency treatment, they are actually encouraging the immigrants to live there, to stop this village becoming a ghost town. They do jobs Italians don't want to do, said the mayor, such as looking after old people.

We also heard the experiences of a Christian Eritrean refugee & his journey to Europe. We heard of the dangerous crossing of the Med to Lampedusa, and of how he was badly treated by the Sudanese (who kept trying to get him to convert to Islam) & how he was treated even more badly in Libya (where they would beat him for refusing to convert to Islam). He says he feels free and at home in Riace. It's impossible not to feel relieved for him, and feel glad that he's now safe and sound in Europe's heaving bosom.

No then, definitely not a report to persuade people who think the BBC has a pro-immigration bias that they're in any way wrong!

3. Rev.

Next week sees the return of Rev, the BBC sitcom about a former rural parish vicar trying to cope with the varied demands of running an inner-city church. Co-creator and writer James Wood tells Mike where he gets his material.

A plug for the "cult" TV series Rev. It's popular with clergy, apparently.

James Wood discussed some of the issues the new series would tackle.  In Episode 1 Rev. Adam Smallbone will team up with a local imam. Episode 2 will deal with gay marriage, as Adam has two dear friends who are gay and want him to marry them.

He said the team meet up with London priests and get their stories, gathering lots of material, and then decide which stories to tackle.

4. Slavery

In an unprecedented collaboration Anglican, Catholic and Islamic leaders at the highest level have given their backing to a global campaign to fight slavery and human trafficking. What is this new initiative doing that hasn't been done before? Trevor Barnes reports.

There are an estimated 29 million men and women in bondage across the world, and a global network has been set up to tackle the problem. We heard from a bishop, and archbishop and an Australian philanthropist. All power to their elbow, I say.

We heard that the Grand Imam of al-Azhar is on board. Trevor Barnes said that there'd previously been a strain between Muslims and Catholics because of "Pope Benedict's some would say 'unfortunate remarks' at Regensburg". [It wouldn't be Sunday if someone didn't have a dig at Pope Benedict].

5. Listener e-mails

Two e-mails were read out. One said that RE teacher's have a vast amount to teach but very little time each week to do it. The other pointed out Ed Stourton's mistake in calling a Lib Dem MP a Conservative last week. Mike Wooldridge apologised [even though it had nothing to do with him].

6. Steve Chalke on the Bible

Mike Wooldridge talks to Steve Chalke as he embarks on a social media debate which he hopes will spark answers to some "Big" Bible questions.

Leading British Evangelical Steve Chalke is hosting a Twitter debate in the coming days. He told Mike Wooldridge that the Church has a history of getting sacred texts wrong, such as over apartheid, slavery or 'women in leadership', thus ending up on "the wrong side of history", justifying "prejudice" and "oppression". He said that Martin Luther King and others show that the Bible can also be a tool for "liberation". His Twitter debate will ask, 'How can it be used both to oppress and to liberate?'. 

He says he's always been inspired by the Bible, as an Evangelical, but says we now need to ask how to answer new questions that were never around in the 1st Century, such as gay marriage. This Twitter debate will discuss that too.

7. The missing Malaysian airliner

We heard from Katrina, whose brother when missing in the Alps 35 years ago. Since then she's been a counsellor, specialising in bereavement. Over that time she kept hoping he had survived. Her mother believed for a while that he had, against all the odds. She said she felt angry watching the TV seeing the grieving mother being pulled out of the room, screaming, crying. The families of the passengers will feel their sense of anxiety rising with each day. She said that everyone needs a story to hold onto. Her brother's body was finally found just last summer and was preserved enough so that she was able to hold his hand. By that stage, she herself didn't want his body to be found in her lifetime, feeling happier imagining him as a free spirit wandering on the mountain - though, she said, that wasn't the case for everyone in her family. She felt angry that that the body had been found, but....[Unfortunately, Mike Wooldridge had to cut her off at that point as they'd run out of time.]

8. The Big Bang

This week scientists recorded the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, coming one step closer to proving the Big Bang theory. Bob Walker reports on the theological implications of this.

1950 - The term 'Big Bang' first used (in a BBC broadcast)

1980 - cosmic inflation discovered

2014 - gravitational waves discovered

We heard from Chris Lintott of The Sky at Night. He's an atheist. Then from Anglican David Wilkinson, Durham (of Thought for the Day fame) who said the discovery reinforces the case for a creator, as beautiful, comprehensible laws suggest a deeper story to the universe. A Muslim particle physicist then argued that we overstate Big Bang, as classical Islamic theology talks of continuous creation. An American creationist finished the report by saying that some scientists are more interested in fame than the truth (i.e. they are after a Nobel Prize) & are tweaking the model infinitely to justify the notion of a Big Bang (which he doesn't believe in.) 

Well, that report certainly can't be faulted for failing to offer a range of perspectives - all the way from an atheist to a creationist.

9. Islamic feminism

Maslaha is a new project about Islam and feminism. How does Islam work within the Western ideas of feminism where traditionally religion has been left at the door? Latifa Akay and Shelina Janmohamed discuss.

This was a strange discussion, as it barely seemed to get anywhere. Latifa talked in fluent sociological wafflese throughout. She believes Islam and feminism go together, but quite how I really can't say (given how she said it). Shelina also believes Islam and feminism go together, but didn't make much of a case for that either. She did say that the "outside world" mocks them for engaging with such issues, saying that someone had just tweeted her asking if 'Islamic feminism' is a joke. Shelina believes that Islamic feminism is a bit different in that (unlike other forms of feminism) it draws on the Koran and early Muslim experiences. 

The discussion might have sprung to life when Mike Wooldridge asked a question about whether she thought women could lead a mixed-gender congregation in prayer. Shelina begins waffling and seemed to be beginning to deflect the answer by saying there are more basic issues to deal with first, when she was stopped in her tracks - as they'd run out of time (again). The programme was ending.

As is this post. Enjoy your Sunday.

'Today' IV: More Thoughts...including those For The Day

This post is (for the most part) a bit of a scamper, perhaps. The story so far, as seen from the perspective on an 'ideal' Today listener (if I may be droll for a moment)....

"That new traffic light food labelling system, great idea! 

Shame it isn't going to be compulsory and that it was so long in coming. 

Aren't ASDA a bad lot, though? Hypocrites! 

Ah yes, the 'kids dying in custody' story. There's a charity that's really worried about the problem. Such a shame! Our prisons are terrible, so let's give offenders non-custodial sentences instead. 

Oh, and ARGOS are going down the pan and have a terrible business model. (Who wants to hear about business anyhow?) 

Heh, some mum in North America has untidy kids. We all know about that - and she's blogging about it. Cool! (James Naughtie seems grumpy about it, for some reason). 

Maria Miller is, well, quite useless."

Moving on (and on)...and the specified hour of Today (24/10/2012) continued with the 7.40 paper review, where Sarah Montague ran through a couple of "bad" headlines for the BBC's D.G. George Entwistle re the Savile Scandal - from the Telegraph, Independent and Times - before James Naughtie brings in the FT, which is "a little more supportive", followed by more criticism from the Guardian, Mirror, Sun and Daily Mail. Sarah then used a Times cartoon to segue from the BBC story to the government 'u-turn' on the badger cull story, with more criticism of the government from the Mail, Independent and Telegraph. Finally, tougher maths A-levels in the Telegraph. Nothing to see here bias-wise, I'd say, with a good spread of papers, no editorialising and no asides from the presenters. 

The paper review was followed by a report from Syria by the BBC's Tim Whewell, bravely reporting from a small rebel-controlled town near Aleppo. As the website puts it, "Despite many calls for more action to end the bloodshed in Syria, western nations have refused to intervene, partly because they say too little is known about the rebels fighting President Assad's regime. BBC reporter Tim Whewell went to Mare'a, a little town under regular bombardment just north of Aleppo, to find out what rebels are fighting and dying for."

This was a preview of a Newsnight report to be broadcast later that day. The report, as heard on Today, can be summarised as follows: The people in the town can't understand why the West (including Britain) isn't intervening. The West doesn't entirely trust the rebels though. A rebel leader with a glossy black beard says they are not extremists, but moderate Muslims. Tim goes to a makeshift court where three smugglers are on trial. They make an oath and are free to go. Will Islamic practice become more important? A local headsman says sharia law should come first as it has proved itself over 14 centuries but other laws should be grafted onto it to make it suitable for different communities, including minorities. The rebels say they want an inclusive Syria after the war. A local activist fears that if the West stays out of Syria they will bring about the very thing they fear - that the extremists will gain in importance. Unfilled graves are dug in cemeteries in preparation for more deaths. 

Is that report biased? I have no idea. Overall, it presents a reassuring picture of the rebels and seems to be saying that Western intervention may be a good thing. That is what the people in Tim's report are telling us. Is it also what Tim is telling us? It's hard to tell sometimes. 

Joel Edwards

As for things being 'hard to tell', it was certainly hard to tell what the point of the day's Though For The Day was. If this was an exercise in Gramscian thought control, it was an overly subtle one. The speaker was Rev Joel Edwards, international director of Micah Challenge (and advisor to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, something which rarely gets mentioned on Today for some reason). You can read the transcript here. It seems to be about crime and justice. Peter Hearty's take on the talk over at Platitude Of The Day will give you a good flavour of it:

"Waffle, waffle, waffle, twilight zone, waffle, waffle, good and evil, waffle, waffle, old as hills, waffle, waffle, waffle, professionals, charities, waffle, waffle,

People of faith waffle, waffle, waffle. As the Chief Rabbi said waffle, waffle, waffle. Martin Luther King waffle, waffle.

This just goes to show the real practical value of faith.

Waffle, waffle, waffle, inmates into citizens, waffle, waffle, waffle."