February 2011

Non-violence works! This is one of the important messages of the revolution in Egypt – just as it was when the Soviet bloc collapsed, just as it was when Indonesia threw off its dictatorship and just as it was when Gandhi drove the British out of India. Yet for thousands of years violence has too often been the tool of politics and political change. All the major religions of the world have accepted war and violence but it is Christianity, whose founder besought us “to turn the other cheek”, that has the worst record of going to war. Moslem countries haven’t gone to war as half as much. Islamic countries have never been tolerant of Nazism, fascism and communism. The Christian countries spawned all three. Today countries with a Christian heritage have the most violent crime, the Muslim the least. Of course it is true that that the Arab world...

By Jonathan PowerFebruary 1, 2011 The late Walter Lippmann, the greatest of all American newspaper columnists, mocked America’s efforts to broadcast overseas. The broadcasts, he wrote, “were no more than singing songs, cracking jokes, entertaining the kiddies”. No influential voice, to my knowledge, has made such a criticism of the BBC’s World Service. No one has derided it as an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth”. It has evolved over the years as an institution that, while not promoting an official ideology, has been able to project to the outside world the best of British journalistic talents – informed analysis, variety of comment and sharpness and accuracy of reporting. It entertertains too, with discernment. We can see it at its best now, covering the events in Egypt and Tunisia. Along with its television counterpart, BBC World, it is reporting the turbulence with a detached but well informed eye. Unlike Al-Jazeera, the ebulent,...