Here’s something that should shame many a BBC journalist, all those, such as Mark Mardell and Kevin Connolly, who report with all too much pleasure the rise of ISIS and the destruction of the nations of Syria and Iraq, those nations they tell us with disdain that were so carelessly ‘carved out’ by France and Britain, the border lines drawn so imperiously and casually and now being erased by the reincarnation of the Muhammedan blitz on the Middle East 1400 years ago.
At least one man had the guts to stand up for something he believes in, and to die for it…
Remembering Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist who dared to stand up to Isis
Erudite and bespectacled, he was the sort of Arab the Islamic State loathed. Khaled al-Asaad, an 81-year old archaeologist, was for the past four decades inseparable from Palmyra’s ancient ruins.
Beheaded in part for his role shielding them from the militants, they strung his headless body up on Graeco-Roman columns he once restored. His remains dangle there still.
On the coat-tails of a pornography of violence which saw the immolation of a captured pilot and the sexual enslavement of a captured aid worker before her murder, Isis still found, somehow, a way to shock.
In all this, one humble octogenarian dared, as the West has not, to defy the most chilling murders the present century has yet seen. And when a new Syria one day confronts the impossible task of rebuilding itself, one elderly academic’s quiet resistance in the name of antiquity, like David against Goliath, will provide a stark example of dauntlessness and civilisation amidst the rubble of its bleakest hour.
Whilst the BBC seems to cheer on ISIS in its own inimitable anti-Western way, others recognise the real dangers to the world and, in their own little way, try to fight it. Not the BBC and its journalists who all too often are seen to be the ‘friends’ of such ‘radical’ groups and their grievances.
Indeed.
I have a translation of Herodotus before me. The first sentence includes the motives of the author for writing his history, “that the deeds of men shall not be effaced by time”.
This site reported recently on a claim from India for “reparations” for alleged damage occurring during, and preceding, the Raj.
Doubtless damage occurred. However the “Academic” who made this claim had a decidedly myopic view. A common event on BBBC where alleged “Academics” with an axe to grind are subjected to the examination of the microscope, and found wanting.
The British administration created the “Archaeological Survey of India”. A survey unlike anything the Hindus had created. An organisation which admired the architecture which they found, investigated it, catalogued it, and attempted to preserve it. Preserve it for its own sake and value. Photographed it and wrote about it. The ASOA continues to this day, now administered by Hindus, to keep up the good work of preserving and celebrating their ancestors and their past.
The aforementioned academic, whose name I cannot be bothered to reproduce here, because I do not believe the name is relevant, was guilty of a serious omission.
The failure to ask for reparations from the adherents of Islam, whose depredations preceded those of the Raj.
Depredations which preceded those of the West, lasted for one thousand years. Depredations which in the cost of Hindu lives exceeded all other depredations, depredations on a scale, which I have pointed out on BBBC recently, the highest estimate of the deaths caused thereby is 590 million, repeat 590 million.
The depredations under our friendly members of the ROP were not confined to the deaths of people. They extended to the destruction of artefacts, the Islamic invaders of the Indian sub-continent destroyed, or converted for their own purposes, as many Hindu temples and shrines as it suited. The ROP revelled in this destruction as recounted in their histories.
No surprises here, I have also reminded BBBC readers recently of the destruction of the greatest library in the ancient world, the library of Alexandria.
Would you like to read the history and traditions of the Maori of New Zealand? You would? Excellent, because you can. The British Administration went to considerable trouble and expense to create a Maori language so that the Maori today can read about their history.
Let it be admitted that one of the motives for the creation of the Maori written language was to enable the inculcation of the Christian Gospel upon the Maori.
Let it also be admitted that the destruction of most of Mayan written documents by the Spanish, also for the purposes of Evangelical Catholicism, was an ineradicable blot on the good name of the West.
Let it also be admitted that similar action occurred elsewhere in regions under Western occupation.
It must be pointed out that, however unpalatable it may be to others, that archaeology was developed by the West.
The genuine academic, whose death was reported above, was following in this spirit. A spirit of independent enquiry with no preconceptions, investigating, and attempting to preserve the records of the past. This one man is worth more than all the other Muslims who have ever lived.
Summarising, the Muslims have a history of destroying and obliterating anything which does not accord with their primitive, childish, paleolithic beliefs.
Question for the “Academic” demanding “reparation” from the UK. India will be invaded and conquered again. This time you have a choice of conqueror, who do you want Robert Clive or Timur?
Correction.
The British did not create the Maori language.
They developed, at The university of Cambridge, working with Maori elders, a written version which was used to preserve the local traditions. Traditions which may otherwise have been lost.
This effort was led by Samuel Lee who was born a few miles from where I am typing this.
Gosh, BBC delenda est, a powerful piece of writing. It is a shame that those who write for the BBC do not have your knowledge or ability to put forward an argument. But I suppose I ought to be pleased because their weaknesses allow us to see through their work.
Thank you so much for this – reading bBBC, I sometimes learn more than I can from the BBC itself.
It goes to show that honest individual investigation (yours) is sometimes worth more than any amount of tax-funded establishment propaganda. I wish we had access to honest, fearless, popular history on the BBC. The things you raise deserve more widespread and lengthy treatment by the main-stream.
Are the BBC really cheering on ISIS or just not showing favouritism towards Christianity?
Impartiality can lead some to misconstrue the message when they believe their world view is correct and everyone who believes otherwise is wrong.
The BBC do not have to show favouritism towards Christianity, although as a news organisation they should be equally respectful to all major religions. But the problem is that they are not a news organisation – they are the propaganda arm of the British state, staffed by hard left globalist revolutionaries who for the most part don’t know the bigger picture. As such they are simply complying with the objective of creating a ‘Year Zero’ scenario by undermining tradition, religion, nationality, morality, culture and family values at every opportunity.
No religion should be respected ,they are all barking mad superstitious mumbo jumbo best left in the middle ages.
IR
Yes the BBC is composed of left wingers.
Yes they are undermining the UK, just as you describe.
But they are doing this in their own name, with our money.
The are not “they are the propaganda arm of the British state”.
They are just as demented as the Muslims so frequently, and deservedly, condemned on this site.
They have their own religion, a religion just as totalitarian as Islam, determined to enforce conversion on everyone else. They have their semi-divine founders, their prophets, their holy book. They also have the nastiest record of any religion, created in record time, in the twentieth century.
The, approximately one hundred million people killed by the Marxists is an irrelevance to the true believers at the BBC and elsewhere. Their answer to the failures of Marxism is more Marxism. The fact that this religion, promising to produce heaven on earth, repeatedly produced only hell on earth, demonstrates to their perverted minds, only that the Marxists must try harder.
Yes, their minds are perverted, they not only still believe what has been shown to be nonsense both in theory and practise, They do so with an air of certainty, smugness and superiority.
Despite their insanity the are both evil and dangerous, anyone assisting in their destruction will be doing good.
Leaving aside that the Yazidi aren’t Christians, if the BBC is going to apply the ‘ten minutes for the Jews, ten minutes for Hitler’ doctrine of impartiality when it comes to the head choppers and rapists of ISIS, they should apply it closer to home. Can anyone imagine the BBC reporting on alleged homophobia in football with the same impartiality? Meanwhile, ISIS throw gays off buildings and the BBC treats it like a wacky eccentricity.
I think the BBC are pretty ambivalent about ISIS, especially given the money flowing out of Sunni oil rich states who have a message they want to convey. I wonder if any of this money has reached the BBC or its correspondents.
On the other hand the Fascist Left have a deep and burning hatred of white people and will do anything to report ‘examples’ of that hatred.
Blaming the UK for the rise of ISIS is typical of their efforts. When they gleefully hold up a report saying ‘look what they’ve done now’ it isn’t because they support ISIS, it’s because they can use it as a tool to beat white people back home. The part they miss out is ‘look what they’ve done now – and it’s all your fault’!
This happens across all of the BBC output, and there is nothing which cannot be blamed on white people no matter how twisted or faulty the logic.
Lee Rigby ? Despite the killer Adebolajo & Adebowale standing in the street and admitting it, the BBC managed to absolve them of blame and place it squarely on the shoulders of white people.
Therefore do not look at the BBC reports on ISIS as support for them – the glee in the reporters voices is because they believe they found yet another example of the white mans tyranny they’ve been able to expose.
Yes, I think ISIS is just another brick to heave through the windows of British culture and history.
There is going to be an accounting for all this in the not-too-distant future.
It will be biblical in it’s scope and nature.
I genuinely believe there will. Perhaps not in my lifetime (52), but maybe. Militant Islam will have to be confronted sooner or later; it’s an inevitability, but the shame of it is that it will be left until the last possible moment because of our cowardly liberal left governments here in the west. By then, it might be too late – daily, Europe is being flooded – some might say invaded – by immigrants from these muslim nations and tucked in amongst their economic demands (and the pressures they impose on host nations) are the belief systems and cultural practices they also bring with them.
And this is the truly dangerous aspect of the ‘immigrant crisis’ – that Europe is being infiltrated and slowly undermined (and ultimately conquered) by Islam because these people will never ‘integrate’ (the Koran expressly forbids it), will never compromise their religious ‘duty’ (the Koran expressly forbids it) and will seek, by stealth, to eventually subsume host nations (the Koran expressly advocates it).
Our politicians – cowards all – are too blinkered by common purpose liberal-left dimwittery to see the real tragedy slowly unfolding right in front of them. In fact, they seem to be hell-bent, aided and abetted by an ever-useful state broadcaster, to do all they can to facilitate this slow motion invasion.
Support all you say,however I am of the opinion that a soon major civil disturbance will hasten the inevitablility you spoke of. Indeed the UK has had unfortunately been subjected to successive cowardly liberal lefty governments for far too long, and the utter duplicity with which they have combined to destroy this nation is unforgiveable. Yes I would use the term ‘invasion’, because that it what it is, and supported by the Arab oil rich countries, who hide behind the Middle Eastern wars they helped to create.
If the people will not dare speak out about the thousands of young white girls raped by Pakistani Muslims then they won’t speak out about anything.
To sort this country would require the removal of 6 million Muslims and the execution of countless lefties who supported them in their actions.
The abolition of the Labour party and other left wing parties, and prohibition of their politics would be needed.
It would probably end with the isolation of the UK especially from Europe which is as hopelessly left wing as the UK if not worse.
It simply isn’t going to happen unless the chief of the General Staff sanctions it and again they are just far too comfortable for that to happen.
When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, they gathered the 12 top civil servants together, and told them that they wanted them to run the country for them. They offered each one of them the chance to resign if they objected. Not a single one of them took that offer. Every single one decided that keeping their cushy jobs and fat salaries was preferable to putting their country first.
That is unfortunately what you are up against.
There won’t be a revolution no matter what state the country gets into.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that not long ago, the Foreign Office and MI6 and David Cameron would have had us fight on the same side as IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh/Daish. < choose any name you like right now!
It's not just the BBC who are conflicted.
What I find interesting, with all those high-calibre journalists washing around the BBC, they haven't really tried to examine what went wrong between Assad & Britain & HMG. Where did the relationship break down? Is it all the fault of those pesky Russians? Or Blair & Iraq & Libya? You would think, if they were really heavily left-leaning, they would want to be pawing over that endlessly looking for pay dirt.
Don’t bother asking Cameron and his colleagues – I doubt that they are truly ‘aware’ of what underlies these shifting relations. Like most elected politicians these days, they are basically ‘caged’ by their civil servants, who tell them what is wise to do, what they may and may not do, how not to offend the rules of the EU legislation within which they increasingly subsist.
The CS used to be accountable to us, through our politicians. Nowadays it is the politicians who are accountable to the CS, as administrative agents of the EU polity, which is itself unaccountable to its own parliament.
So good luck to anyone trying to find out why all these things happen – remember the days of ‘China Watching’, when what happened there was as inscrutable as Babylon of three millenia ago? Well, that is what is happening with the EU now.