大象传媒

It was only a matter of time. There are Christian TV channels, Christian ski camps, Christian book stores, Christian universities, Christian holiday companies. Now the world is to be offered a Christian version of YouTube, fast on the heels of a . The current most-viewed title on is held by , a musical parody on the rap song "Baby Got Back" (yes, it's called "Baby Got Book"). You can also see a parody of the Mac v PC commercial (featuring a "Christian" and a "Christ-follower"). Inevitably, there are videos about . The site's production values are extremely low -- lower even than YouTube -- but it's early days.

Perhaps a more significant issue is why some Christian groups, particularly in the United States, want to construct these kind of parody sites: is this an attempt to construct a kind of parallel universe?

Not quite. But nevertheless .

Last year saw a "war on journalism," according to Johann Fritz, director of the . "With 100 journalists killed, 2006 was the most savage and brutal year in the history of the modern media," Fritz said while introducing to the .

And the death toll continues. 29 media professionals have been murdered and 129 imprisoned. In this year alone, have been imprisoned for using blogs and other internet sites to express their right to free speech. The most recent of those killings was , 36, a Mexican journalist with the magazine Interdiario and the daily newpaper Diario de Agua Prieta. According to , "Mexico continues to be the western hemisphere's deadliest country for journalists". The picture above shows Mart铆nez's body, beside another, at the scene of his murder.

The UN has designated May 3 as the annual in an effort to remind governments across of their duty to respect the right to freedom of expression as enshrined under Article 19 of the , which reads:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

On Sunday, ahead of this year's World Freedom Day -- and seven weeks after our 大象传媒 Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston -- we will be asking if a ceasefire in the war on journalism is likely anytime soon. My guests will be the former Beirut hostage ; Jim McDowell, northern editor of the Sunday World, whose reporter was murdered in 2001 by the Loyalist Volunteer Force; , US Consul General, who was born into a newspaper family in Missisippi; and, from our studio in Jerusalem, , the Independent's Middle East correspondent, who reported from Gaza last week.

To date, more than 61,000 people have signed the 大象传媒 News online petition demanding the immediate release of Alan Johnston. You can add your signature . If you would like to add our 大象传媒 button to your blog or other website, click here for information on how to do that.

It's a question we'll be asking on Sunday following the of the most Earth-like planet ever discovered. Some scientists believe the so-called "super-Earth", which orbits Gliese 581, one of Earth's nearest stars, enjoys perfect conditions for the development of life. If this planet turns out to contain life -- even conscious lifeforms -- would Christian theology be thrown into crisis?

Richard Dormer's new play, This Piece of Earth, which was just premiered at the , ends its run at OMAC tomorrow night before touring. I saw the production last night and took part in a panel event afterwards, responding to the play and exploring its historical background and contemporary resonance.

Summaries of the play tend to say, "a love story set in north Antrim during the "; but it is so much more. This is a profound meditation on life and death, and the journey from one the other, against the backdrop of a catastrophe that erased twelve per cent of the Irish population.

Diego Pitarch鈥檚 set invites the audience to recognise both the inescapability of death facing John and Maeve and the sacredness of their final journey. Extraordinary performances by Lalor Roddy, Pauline Goldsmith and Richard Dormer combine immense physicality with emotional intensity to produce -- under superb direction from Rachel O鈥橰iordan -- one of the most intellectually engaging hours of theatre you're likely to experience this year.

Yet another stunning production from Ransom, a new company (founded in 2002) that is quietly transforming the landscape of Northern Irish theatre.

It has taken a surprisingly long time for Irish writers and playwrights to address the Irish famine. Last night, Robert Welch (who contributed the Irish language sections of the play) suggested one possible explanation for this -- that Irish culture was traumatised by this tragedy into a kind of speechlessness. Perhaps middle-class Irish writers in the decades following the famine underwent something like "holocaust guilt" at having survived this national calamity.

We also talked about the reponse of British authorities -- catastrophic mismanagement and disgraceful disinterest rather than attempted "genocide" seemed to be the view of most -- and speculated about how the international community today might learn from Ireland's experience of the famine; and how contemporary Ireland, north and south, might learn from the past as we approach new and continuing "blights" such as sectarianism, racism, xenophobia and homophobia. As I say, this play will make you think.

This Piece of Earth continues at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast until Saturday, then moves to The Craic, Coalisland, 4th May; Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick 5th May; Island Arts Centre, Lisburn, 9th May; Market Place Theatre, Armagh city, 10th May; Ardhowen Theatre, Enniskillen, 11th May; The Playhouse, Londonderry, 12th May; Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, 15th & 18th May; Town Hall Theatre, Galway city, 17th & 19th May.

Okay, so it's not exactly Wilberforce's with T.H. Huxley at the Oxford Union. Huxley, who first coined the term "agnostic", was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog", and his opponent in debate, the Bishop of Oxford, laboured under the nickname "Soap Sam Wilberforce".

Professor Robert Winston doesn't have a nickname that I am aware of, as yet (unless you know otherwise). But in today's the distinguished IVF pioneer, broadcaster and science peer lobs a few epithets at the man widely known as "Darwin's Rottweiler". Richard Dawkins's new book, he says, is "patronising", "insulting", "portrays science in a bad light" and is tantamount to "scientific arrogance".

Lord Winston, who is a practising Jew, joined us on Sunday Sequence last year when I presented a special edition of the programme, with a live studio audience, responding to his new book and TV series "The Story of God". He'll be giving a lecture tonight at Dundee University entitled "The Science Delusion", making a case for a more harmonious relationship between science and religion. (Which, after today's publicity, should be very well attended.)

Few would challenge Lord Winston's scientific credentials: Head of the Department of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London and Director NHS Research and Development at the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, he is a former president of the . He holds six patents, has published about 300 scientific papers, authored many books, presented award-winning science series on television, and his many honours include the of the Royal Society and more than a dozen honorary degrees.

We wait to see how Dawkins will respond to Winston's rhetorical broadside. He's currently keeping his powder dry.

Meet Mike Daisey. This New-York based actor and writer (and blogger) is not particularly well-known to British or Irish audiences. He's not terribly well-known to most Americans. But that's about to change.

On April 19th, was performing his monologue "" at the , when eighty-seven members of the audience staged a walk-out. One member of the group, who identified themselves to staff as "a Christian group", poured water over Mike Daisey's set and artwork as he passed the stage, in what the actor later described as "an anti-baptism". It subsequently emerged that the group was from a high school with teachers in charge who appear to have been concerned about "inappropriate language" in the monologue.

Mike's blog account of the "incident at the theatre" -- an event that will probably make him famous across America or, at the very least, inspire a new theatrical monologue -- is . You can also read extraordinary account of what happened when the actor tracked down the person who threw water over his artwork -- and how Mike, a self-professed "liberal atheist", forgives the protestor.

Inevitably, The Incident at the Theatre has found its way onto YouTube. Mike's material includes some adult themes and language which some people may find offensive. If you are likely to be offended at such material, it would be wise not to click on the link below.

I've already been in touch with Mike Daisey and hopefully we can hear him soon on Sunday Sequence. Those staging this walk-out have unwittingly given Mike Daisey a much wider audience than he would otherwise have enjoyed. That, of course, is often what happens when an attempt is made to stifle an artist's freedom.

Many thanks to Neil Glover for sending me links to this remarkable story.

Prompted by our script meeting's quandary about "flora and fauna", Michael Hull has been in touch with a few other matters he'd like cleared up. Can anyone resolve these once and for all?

(1) In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb"

(2) Many years ago in Scotland , a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only,Ladies Forbidden". Thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

(3) Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs - Alexander, the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

(4) If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

(5) In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight."

I've been in a scriptwriting meeting for most of the day, working with the Blueprint natural history team. We've been working on the script for the second programme in the series which deals with the colonisation of Ireland's landmass by flora and fauna, particularly following the ice age. Carole, Natalie, Paul, Andrew, Sin茅ad, Siobhan, Peter and I worked our way through the first draft of the programme's script, redesigning the structure of various sequences, debating whether contenious science topics should be included, and quibbling over wordchoice.

The scientific debate about whether ever connected Ireland to Britain dominated the discussion for about twenty minutes. Most experts now dispute this idea, and we certainly wish to reflect that fact; but we also want to explore the landbridge theory as a purported explanation of the presence of, for example, non-indigenous plants and animals.

In the midst of that highbrow debate, Carole wondered if viewers would understand that the expression "flora and fauna" means "plant and animals". She'd discovered, purely anecdotally, that many people don't realise that "" means animals. Instead, the combo-term is often taken to mean, simply, "plant-life".

The phrase, like so much of the terminology of biology and botany, was coined in this context by the , the father of modern scientific taxonomy (pictured). I wonder what he'd have made of the American couple I knew in New York who had two cats called Flora and Fauna.

France has said "Non" to the far-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen and, as was widely predicted, has chosen a between the centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Segolene Royal in the second round of their presidential elections on 6 May. Mr Le Pen appeared undeterred -- rhetorically at any rate -- even though the electorate has overwhelmingly rejectedthe National Front leader's "zero immigration" stance.

This, like so many other French elections, was dominated by identity poltics. We, of course, know a thing or two about that sort of thing in Northern Ireland.

The final stage of the French presidential election takes place on May 6, two days before the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland. The British and Irish prime ministers on devolution day. That will be an extraordinary moment in Irish political history. Will it also be the "handshake moment", when we see Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness reach out to each other across the Assembly chamber? If, as I expect, we do see that historic handshake on devolution day, it will be extremely difficult for any homegrown political cynics to claim, dismissively, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose".

I'm in the departures lounge at Heathrow, having just returned from Washington DC. I arrived in DC on Tuesday and was on air with the first of three live programmes at 1.30 pm Washington time. In other words, this has been an extremely busy week. Claire Burgoyne and Valerie Smyth arrived a couple of days ahead of me to make the necessary studio preparations, confirm guests and begin to gather audio from some of the events happening in Washington last weekend. They haven't stopped running for days. We packed a lot into our three Arts Extra specials. You can listen again to the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday programmes here. Some of the highlights:

We covered Georgetown University's symposium on Northern Irish poetry, which celebrated 40 years of poetry from the north of Ireland (since the publication of and the poetry readings at the given by Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, and (by video) Seamus Heaney. We also hosted a conversation between and , chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts -- which was recorded in Chairman Gioia's office at the in DC.

We invited the American poet to comment on how poets and other creative artists are responding to the Virginia Tech shootings, following at the convocation this week.

, one of Irish-America's most vocal supporters of peace and progress in Northern Ireland, invited us to visit him at his office in the , just across the street from the Capitol. We watched him chair a session of the powerful , then he met us in one of those legendary backrooms of power -- a small antechamber located behind the hearing room itself -- for an interview. I can confirm that the new smoke-free America extends even to these formerly smoked-filled backrooms where congressmen have traditionally negotiated deals.

We visited on 10th Street -- "America's most famous theatre" -- where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, and explored Lincoln's commitment to the arts. We also toured the at the Smithsonian to explore their collection of presidential portraits.

, a native of DC and the most widely-syndicated columnist in America, joined us in the studio to talk about America's cultural role in the world today -- and why he chooses to live for two months of each year in Northern Ireland.

I dropped in on at her apartment, just round the corner from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, to hear about the RSC's new production of -- currently being staged in DC -- and why she believes no city in the world resonates with its themes as much as Washington, America's "imperial capital".

The Belfast director came into the 大象传媒 Washington studios to tell us about his staging of Owen McCafferty's award-winning play , and he was joined by two young American actors currently trying to master Belfast accents.

I also had coffee with the Belfast-born actress , in a coffee shop just across the road from the 大象传媒's Washington Bureau on . Geraldine, originally from west Belfast, recently played the female lead in Rocky Balboa. She's also lending her support, as a celebrity ambassador, to the programme in DC. The programme's creative director is the composer , and he joined us for the final programme, in the company of Professor , vice-chancellor of the University of Ulster. Earlier in the week, we also learned more about the developing at the Smithsonian's annual

Phew. I'd better catch this flight or I won't make it back in time for Sunday Sequence tomorrow morning from 8.30.

No, they haven't enrolled Richard Dawkins as a new member. Alan Watson from the Northern Ireland Humanists tells me that Stephen Farry, the North Down Alliance MLA, will accept a copy of The God Delusion on behalf of the Alliance Party, at 11am on 8 May at Stormont, just before the new Assembly meets for the first time. Will the other parties also nominate a representative to accept their copies of the book? Will there be a Humanist photoshoot?

The unlikely face of a mass-murderer. , a 23 year-old final year English student at Virginia Tech, who has been named as the gunman. Originally from South Korea, he has been living in the US since 1992. Apparently this was a deeply troubled young man, whose college writing assignments were that he was referred to university counsellors. He purchased the 9mm handgun in a Virginia gunshop a month ago.

I arrived in Washington DC today. Driving though the embassy district, many of the flags in front of buildings were flying at half-mast. President Bush spoke at a special convocation at the University this afternoon. In the same ceremony, the poet and Virginia Tech professor read a poem which amounted to a rallying cry:

We will continue to invent the future. Through all this blood and tears, we are the Hokies . . . We will prevail ... we will prevail ... we are Virginia Tech.

Ironically -- or so it now seems -- I am in DC partly to report on a major conference on Northern Irish poetry. A significant dimension of that conference concerns poetry in the context of conflict and after conflict.

Brian Ferry for his

Recently, he made a comment about the Nazi movement's ability to mobilise mass support using carefully crafted symbolism. I think few historians would dispute that fact. He also noted that some leading Nazi artists produced works of art that were quite beautiful -- architecture and films in particular. Here's the comment that has landed Ferry in such trouble:

My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight... Leni Riefenstahl's movies, Albert Speer's buildings, the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful .

It's one thing to say the Nazis distorted something beautiful in the furtherance of their murderous ambitions; it's quite another to apparently take inspiration from Nazi aesthetics and nickname your studio "the F眉hrerbunker". And to reveal this kind of information, as he has done, in an interview with a is trully mind-boggling. Keep digging, Brian.

I first learned about the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy in a phone call to Claire Burgoyne, our Arts Extra producer, who was in the 大象传媒 bureau in Washington DC when the story began to break. Claire is in Washington preparing for the special live editions of Arts Extra I'll be presenting from there later this week. ABC news, our partner network in the US, is that 29 people have been killed at Virginia Tech University, making this the in US history. Other reports, including Fox News, claim at least 32 fatalities.

It's clearly too soon to speculate in detail about what prompted these attacks, but after every incident of this kind we inevitably debate America's "gun culture" and the availability of automatic weapons. , a non-profit organisation campaigning for safer college campuses in the United States, has called for a college-wide ban on all guns -- though whether that would discourage anyone prepared to take lives is unclear. The gun lobby is extremely influential on the hill, and many advocates will, no doubt, soon be pointing out that removing the right to bear arms would hardly deter those who wish to commit this kind of atrocity.

Some of you are not impressed by the Northern Ireland's Humanists' plan to send copies of The God Delusion to political representatives in Westminster and Stormont. If you could place a single book in the hand of every politician in the country, which would it be?

Update: Slugger O'Toole commenters .

We can only hope that , apparently stemming from the Al Tawhid Al Jihad brigade, are unfounded.

Every Westminister MP from Northern Ireland, and all the party leaders in the new Assembly, are to receive complimentary copies of Richard Dawkins's bestselling book The God Delusion -- all courtesy of the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland.

Our local humanists are responding to the challenge of James Christie from Fife, who used the website make this promise: "I will arrange for my MP to receive a copy of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, but only if 645 other people (one per UK constituency) will do the same for other MPs."

Alan Watson, a director of the Humanist Association, tells me they were unable to provide copies for individual MLAs -- there are 108 of them -- but they are hoping to raise the profile of atheism and humanism across Northern Ireland with this initiative. I doubt that any of the parties will respond publicly to the humanist book gift. Northern Ireland remains a deeply religious culture and I suspect that few politicians hoping to be re-elected would wish to be identified with an atheistic cause.

Incidentally, Private Eye ran last December about seasonally gift-wrapped copies of the book in question.

Pledgebank is an interesting idea. I've been meaning to take a look at it more closely on Sunday Sequence. Its tagline is: 'Tell the world 鈥淚鈥檒l do it, but only if you鈥檒l help me do it鈥�'.

There's no limit to the campaigns people are prepared to initiate on pledgebank. "Eion" pledged "to reduce my carbon footprint by no longer flying between any two points in the UK linked by the national rail network but only if 100 other people concerned by global warming will do the same." One hundred people have stepped up to meet his challenge. (That pun was too obvious, I know.)

Meanwhile, "Steven Saragian" has pledged not to "procreate or add to the global population of human beings but only if 10 other people will do the same." We don't know if Steven's partner is one of the ten people who have now joined him in that pledge.

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Wonderful to relate, on tonight's edition of Radio 4's Any Questions, Jonathan Dimbleby used the expression"" in his introductory link. In fairness, he did add a parenthetical translation; but still, this was a pure Radio 4 moment. A few weeks ago, I was at a script meeting debating whether the word "geological" could be used in a programme about, well, geology; and there is Jonathan Dimbleby peppering his links with juicy Latinisms. Radio 4 really is the sine qua non of intelligent speech radio.

(Post scriptum: Yes, we decided to include the word "geological" in the end.)

The Australian Prime Minister John Howard has raised the possibility of a new law which would from entering the country. His comments have triggered an from human rights campaigners. A ban already exists in the United States, Armenia, Brunei, China, Iraq, South Korea, Moldavia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

Australia has witnessed a sharp increase in the number of new HIV infections in the past five years, but Mr Howard's comments may be more concerned with electioneering than epidemiology. After all, HIV is not contagious, unlike tuberculosis.

There are enormous ethical issues raised by an HIV exclusion policy: it further stigmatise people with HIV; HIV doesn't need a visa to travel with people who don't know they are carriers; and this kind of exclusion policy may discourage people from having an HIV test, since the exclusion only applies to those who know their status.

Instead of exclusion and stigmatisation, we might make more progress in a common battle against the spread of HIV by making up-to-date health information more available, resourcing community-based testing and support programmes, and dealing with the underlying causes of unsafe sexual behaviour. One such underlying cause may be a tendency to self-harm that is shaped by a culture of exclusion and stigmatisation.

Ahead of tomorrow's , we selected our horses in the Broadcasting House office sweepstake. I paid my 拢1 and drew , a perfect selection for a radio presenter. According to the online form guide,

Idle Talk was slightly disappointing in the Hennessy after his season had started so well when just getting touched off by [the appropriately named] "My Will" at Cheltenham.

I don't expect to win.

That's an artist's impression of what it could look like at night, when the is fitted to Belfast's St Anne's Cathedral. Construction work has begun and you can read updates . When it's completed in May, it will be possible to view the stainless steel spire from the inside and the outside of the Catheral. The cost of creating this new structure is 拢852,000. Dean Houston McKelvey believes the new addition to the cathedral will become a recognisable part of the skyline of Belfast.

The city's skyline is due to change considerably. Beyond the current image of the City Hall's dome and the shipyard' cranes, we'll soon have a spire of hope and Ireland's tallest building (taking that title away from Windsor House, one of Ireland's dullest buildings).

The Cathedral scheme has its inevitable detracters. Some members of the public are clearly a bit bemused that so much money should be spent to stick a needle in the top of a building. Pete Baker, over at Slugger, thinks the plan is "".

It's certainly a courageous development for the Cathedral. And I don't mean "courageous" in the sense intended when he used that word to frighten government ministers.

Belfast could do with more innovative approaches to architecture and design; we are much too conservative in our aesthetic tastes. We could also do with more public art -- at the moment, we've very little in addition to a few forgotten mayors in the grounds of City Hall. It's impossible to say whether the Spire of Hope will be successul. For that to happen the public will need to embrace the new structure as an important addition to our public space. But new spires, like new buildings, need time to "fill" their space. Andy Scott's (which I prefer to call "Nuala with the Hula") had its detractors too, but after only two years it has earned its place.

More then 8,000 people have signed a 大象传媒 Online pettition asking for our Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston to be set free.

You can add your name to the petition and read the petition .

Alan disappeared on 12 March. His is not only extremely distressing for Alan's family and friends -- and, without doubt, extremely distressing for Alan himself; it is also an assault on the very idea of a free press, and that is a democratic value at the heart of any free sociiety. Please consider adding your name to the petition.

A frontpage story in today's Irish Times is headlined "". It reveals that a confidential letter has been sent to some priests in the diocese of Down and Connor detailing the qualities expected of a successor to Bishop Patrick Walsh, who is due to retire soon.

I know what you're thinking. Didn't Sunday Sequence break that story on March 25? And didn't Will & Testament host a debate about the story on this very site? In fact, isn't this the second time in a week that the Irish Times has run a story about Down and Connor that had already been covered on this blog?

Both stories are by Patsy McGarry, the religious affairs correspondent of the Irish Times. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Or perhaps Patsy is a reader of Will & Testament?

We can only sympathise with the plight of Natallie Evans following the by the Grand Chamber of the European Court. Natallie is unable to have children by natural means, following treatment for ovarian cancer in 2001.

She and her former partner Howard Johnston began IVF treatment that year, and six embryos were created. These embryos remain frozen and in storage. But they will soon be destroyed following today's judgment. Because this couple ended their relationship in 2002 and Howard wrote to the IVF clinic to inform them that he no longer wished the embryos to be implanted. Under UK law, either partner may remove consent up to the point of implantation. In the absence of consent from both, no implantation can take place and the embryos should be destoyed.

Natallie's lawyers argued that this is her last chance to become a mother. She could, of course, seek to adopt children, but she longs desperately to have these embryos implanted so that she can give birth to her own children.

Today's decision does not set a new legal precedent; it merely applies the law. The law clearly enforces a shared responsibility up to the point of implantation in IVF cases. But I'm sure I am not the only person to wonder about the fairness of this outcome. If Natallie Evans had become pregnant in the more traditional way then ended her relationship during the gestation period, the law would protect her desire to continue with the pregnancy -- even against her former partner's wishes. Why, then, should she not be permitted to have these embryos implanted even though Howard no longer wishes to become a parent with her?

I'm glad Michael has raised the case of , the American radio shockjock who has been suspended for two weeks by his network, MSNBC, and by CBS Radio, for on -air racist abuse. I've been following this story for the past few days. Last week, Imus described the Rutgers Women Basketball team's black players as "nappy-headed hos". The next day, he apologised on his show for the comments. Ironically, it was Imus's hate-talk that partly earned him a national reputation as a shock-jock in the first place. This is how the suspension was reported on the Keith Olbermann show, on the same network.

Today鈥檚 Irish Times a 鈥淪top Donal鈥� Campaign aimed at preventing Dr Donal McKeown succeeding Dr Patrick Walsh as Bishop of Down and Connor. Many of you have already been debating the existence or non-existence of this campaign on this blog here .

, writing a Good Friday in the Chicago Sun-Times, offers this analysis of the current state of politics in Northern Ireland. A reader brought this to my attention, infuriated by the piece's "unbridled racism". Make what you will of that claim, language does seem strangely anachronistic given the political progress that has been made in recent weeks.

The descendants of the Protestant genocidal colonizers believe as self-evident that they are morally, intellectually and humanly superior to the descendants of the Catholics who were not quite eliminated.

He continues:

"Hence, it is difficult for them to accept any agreement that constrains them to share power with Catholics -- just as whites in Mississippi found it so difficult to share power with blacks. Paisley is very sensitive to the emotions of his hard-line constituents. He knows that he must humiliate the Catholics by cooking up new requirements (added to the substance of the Good Friday agreement) to prove their good faith. The Ulster Protestants share this conviction of the racial inferiority of the Catholic Irish -- slovenly, ignorant, superstitious, lazy, no'count and responsible for all their problems -- with a substantial proportion of the population of Great Britain, including their intellectuals, liberals and academics. There are not many people left that the English can feel superior too, so it's a good thing the Irish are still around. That the standard of living (as measured by per capita gross national product) in Ireland is the highest in Europe (save perhaps for Norway) and higher than that of England has yet to penetrate English consciousness."

Greeley is clearly fond of the broad-brush ideological paint job. But does his own critique amount to racism of a kind?

A false dichotomy? The debate continues on , including continuing discussion of the radio documentary about blogging I recently made with Owen McFadden.

While driving today, Radio 2 played version of of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". The perfect song for the better known as "Holy Saturday". A reminder:

But the inevitable question: Is Buckley's version, from his extraordinary 1994 album Grace, better than the original from 1984 album ?

Jesus did not die for the sins of the world and those who say he did are portraying God as a "psychopath". No, it's not Richard Dawkins again. This time, it's the Dean of St Albans, Dr Jeffrey John. Dr John, you will recall, is the gay priest who was persuaded by Rowan Williams to as Bishop of Reading in 2003 following some public controversy.

Dr John made his comments during a Lent Talk broadcast last night on 大象传媒 Radio Four. To say the least, it has angered quite a few more conservative believers. The key question he raises in his talk is this: What sort of God gets so angry with the world that he needs someone to die in order to calm himself down? The traditional theological themes of sacrificial atonement or are insane and illogical in Dr John's judgment.

You may recall my interview some time ago with Steve Chalke, who published a which also challenged substitutionary accounts of the atonement. Since then, he has been "attacked" by for his comments and is now regarded by many conservatives as, at best, post-evangelical.

Dr Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, has the 大象传媒 for permitting Dr John to give such a "provocative" talk during Holy Week. But it's important to remember -- as a New Testament scholar such as Dr Wright fully appreciates -- that no single interpretation of the crucifixion has ever gained complete consensus in the history of the church, nor has any been deemed "the orthodox" interpretation by any ecumenical council. Instead, contrasting "theories" of the atonement are the subject of intense debate by theologians across the world. Why shouldn't such a profound question be explored in this of all weeks?

(The text of Dr John's lent talk is included below.)

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Do you believe in miracles? We've been asking that question of members of the public and you can hear what they said in reply on Sunday morning's programme. The resurrection is the central claim and the key event of historic Christianity; it's also most famous miracle of them all. But we weren't expecting one passer-by to tell our reporter, Eamonn Keirnan, that is transparent and verifiable evidence that miracles do exist.

"The position of the General Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian church on power-sharing with murderers is clear and unequivocal. It is not the present position adopted by its Moderator, Dr. Ian R K Paisley MP." one of Dr Paisley's ministerial colleagues, the Rev Ivan Foster.

He continues: "Dr. Paisley, along with those ministers and elders who vainly try to justify the Moderator's present position, is acting in defiance of the central principle of the 1988 Covenant which declared that we would 鈥渟tand with Christ in this evil day, for all that He is for, and against all that He is against鈥� and the central declaration of the 1998 Presbytery pronouncement that power-sharing with murderers is 鈥渦nscriptural, unethical and immoral.鈥�

Presumably we can conclude that Ivan Foster regards Ian Paisley's position as Moderator is untenable under the current circumstances. The idea that Dr Paisley is Moderator "for life" is an urban myth. Each year, the General Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church elects its Moderator. To date, Dr Paisley has been re-elected each year unchallenged.

I'm sorry I've been so silent for a couple of days. I've been filming with the Blueprint natural history team in Newry, Omagh, Derry and the Sperrins more generally since Monday. Ordinarily, I'd write a daily post about our progress, but the hotels we stayed in had no internet access. You'd think, in the year 2007, that every hotel would have a business centre and wifi in each of their rooms -- or even a hot spot in the lobby. But no. Mid-Ulster hotels seem not to have heard of the internet yet. Enough of my complaining.

I gave off about Tyrone's cyber-desert so much this week that Natalie Maynes, our long-suffering series producer, became convinced that I was displaying signs of internet addiction. I explained that I am not "e-dicted", since I merely wanted to check my e-mails and write a post of my blog. She was not convinced. Apparently, alcoholics are always the last to wake up and smell the vodka.

In any case, I think we should launch a campaign to encourage every hotel across Northern Ireland to join the wifi revolution. If you've had trouble getting online in a hotel here, feel free to share your horror stories below. Let the revolution begin! Hiccup.

Les Reid has posted the of the Darwin Day poll conducted by the . Clearly it's not a scientific survey, but it does suggest, according to Les, that the Belfast public is more receptive to Darwinian ideas than some might think. I'm sure I can rely on my regular commenters to assess the methodology underlying the poll and analyse the findings.

I've spent the day with the Blueprint team on , in the Cooley Mountains of south Armagh.

You need to climb (or drive) to a decent altitude to fully appreciate the "", an almost globally unique arrangement of hills stemming from our volcanic period some 50 million years ago.

Peter and Dave set up the jib at a suitably impressive viewing point -- which meant schlepping a crane and camera equipment up a hill and building it on location -- and we filmed the final sequence of the first programme in the series. Natalie and Seamus gathered a lot og GVs ("general view" shots) from the area while the building work continued, then cameras rolled just as a van-load of Canadians arrived to explore their Irish roots.

I was glad to have a chance on air this morning to congratulate Laura Haydon on this year's broadcast feature journalist award for her work on Sunday Sequence (and she was also the only female winner across the broadcast categories). Laura is a superb package-maker who produces authoritative reports for us on a weekly basis hat are extremely well polished. We're very lucky to have her on the team.