On the BBC’s Agenda last night was a maddening interview with Dr. Kamal Hossain, the UN’s human rights something-or-other to Afghanistan. The interviewer spent a full fifteen minutes pressuring him to admit that things in the country are worse off since US forces toppled the Taliban last year. Hossain, technocrat that he is, refused to answer that (or any other) question directly and instead went on at some length about UN mandates and UN resolutions, etc., etc., ad infinitum. He did, however, conclude by praising that “brave young woman [ugh] from Washington” who was squished by a bulldozer in Gaza and expressing hope that more actions like hers will make the world a better place.
Sic!
The presenter on the next segment described the recent UN resolution to end the Iraq oil for food program as “convincing Iraqis that things are going to be different” (paraphrase). Apparently, from the BBC’s perspective, all those US and British troops and the war and the Baath party being toppled were just precursors to REAL change: a UN resolution. Well, then.
From Our Own Correspondent has a long and uninformative piece on that favorite topic of features editors, chemical flavoring. At least three times in the last year I’ve read lengthy stories on those few companies run by chemists who mix and match from thousands of “primary flavors” to make, say, chocolate or vanilla or roast chicken or, in this case, banana. Kitkat has out a new banana flavor, in Japan, anyway, and our own correspondent was taken and interviewed flavor experts across the globe to come to the conclusion (from a British flavorist!) that the new treat will be at best “a niche product, but there’s no telling how large that niche may be.”
Also discussed at length was Britain’s relationship with roast chicken crisps, which must be “roast chicken flavored” and not, in fact, actually taste like roast chicken becase of the British people’s attachment to the artificial flavoring. It took our own correspondent some time to wrap his mind around this idea, maybe five minutes, an eon on the radio.
BBC World Service: “[A] beacon for impartiality, journalistic freedom and quality,” indeed.