Two small nuggets. It's often hard to find out the BBC in big whopping lies, while to parse their articles can be likewise onerous on writer and demanding on reader.

So I have two small points to make:

This BBC article on the French very riot-like behaviour not only says that the riots had fizzled out several months back, it also describes the torching of 400 cars on New Year's Eve as representing a 'small rise' on the previous French hogmanay's festivities.
On the other hand this article describes how carbeques were up by one third on the previous year.

Basically it's the usual BBC love-in with the French establishment, and the PC willingness to overlook the crimes and misdemeanours of certain potentially religiously motivated groups. One thought I had about this recently: if it's ok for muslims to lie to dhimmies, is it ok for them, say, to drink in order to create the impression that they are disadvantaged youths recklessly rebelling? That would of course only be possible if they really intended some harm to the West, and had a strategy of sorts.

Anyway, the second nugget is where Paul Reynolds, analysing the great Ariel Sharon's legacy, which may well be sadly fixed at some time soon, gives the Palestinian point of view:

'They remember his role as the defence minister who allowed the Phalange into the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982 and who was forced to resign after those massacres after being criticised by the Kahan Commission.'

I am prepared to say that is in at least one respect (that of criticism) strictly true, and of course Reynolds has covered himself with the reference to how the Palestinians remember him. However, it would have been a lot more instructive to have reported, as this ally of Sharon's does, that Sharon was held 'indirectly responsible' for the massacres. 'Indirectly responsible' is the kind of fact I would like newspapermen to bear in mind in their reporting: it's the kind of 'indirect responsibility' which has seen Koffi Annan sail through his scandal over Oil-for-Food. So far that indirect responsibility has been uppermost in the minds of BBC journalists reporting Mr Annan. It doesn't appear to register in Sharon's favour in this case.