You will have noticed, naturally, that the BBC has stopped broadcasting in Arabic. By way of compensation, when in April conflict erupted in Sudan, the corporation introduced for a limited season an emergency “pop-up” service to convey news in indigenous languages.
In truth, it is unlikely this morsel of media intelligence registered on your radar any more than it did on mine, until I read in a heavyweight American publication a polemic denouncing a British act of barbarism. The World Service has become collateral damage in the Tory war on the BBC.
In the new age of multi-dimensional international hostilities, most conspicuously against the Russians but also other semi-declared foes including Iran and China, our armed forces can contribute only on the margin. We do,
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