Listening to 5Live today I heard a report about an attack on a school by a Syrian aircraft using some sort of incendiary bomb.  Now I’m fairly hardened to images of war and the resultant carnage that results but I have to admit when I heard one man making his plea to the UN (10:14:30) it kind of stopped me dead in my tracks. 

Dear UN

What kind of peace are you calling for?

Don’t you see this….

Don’t you see this…

What do you need to see?

We are human beings.

We want to live.

You have to listen to it to get the full emotional impact, coming suddenly out of the radio in the middle of the day is very effecting….here is the BBC video report of the same thing with graphic images of the injuries….the ‘walking dead’.

Parliament, that body of fine upstanding men and women has voted….to look the other way.

Paddy Ashdown responded to that vote:

“In 50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed/ashamed. Britain’s answer to the Syrian horrors? none of our business!”

 He’s not wrong is he?

If the vote in Parliament had been one to merely delay military action brought about by the use of chemical weapons that may have been excusable….to ensure the culprit was correctly identified.

However that wasn’t what the vote ended up saying.

The vote has apparently put any possibility of military action off the table, for ever….regardless of any future events that may occur, however terrible, however many people get killed, whatever the means used to kill them.

Assad can murder as many people as he likes, in whatever manner he likes and the worst that will happen to him is a diplomatic flurry of indignation and condemnation.

He must be shaking in his blood filled boots.

But Ed Miliband is happy with that, in fact he’s trying to make as much political hay as he can out of events.

 He piously grandstands demanding ‘compelling evidence’ of chemical attacks…..and yet already over 100,000 Syrians have been killed and more die daily from ‘conventional weapons’…such as napalm bombs…..just how many have to die before he feels so ‘compelled’ to help them out, how many more millions have to be displaced, how many towns and cities destroyed?

What is Miliband’s ‘red line’?  I forgot…of course….he doesn’t have one….he’s already decided…there will be no military action at all.

Miliband states that we should learn the lessons of Iraq and that political and diplomatic pressure will persuade Assad to come to terms.

So what is the lesson of Iraq?   The lesson of Iraq is that after 12 years of UN sanctions and huge diplomatic efforts Saddam was still in power and totally unwilling to negotiate and happily murdering and gassing his own people.

Still it’s good that Miliband and his family can be reassured that his own kids will be safe…and how ironic that he wears a poppy, the man who won’t stand up for those who suffer and die:

Shame about the Syrian kids that he has abandoned to their fate:

Miliband says that what  is important is that the war is brought to an end.

His plan?  To talk softly to Assad but not to wave a big stick just in case he gets angry.

Why would Assad negotiate?  He’s winning and getting arms shipped in from Russia and Iran.

What would make him come to the negotiating table?

A military strike that so reduced his own military capability that he couldn’t beat the Rebels…not only that but make it likely that the Rebels may win.

Because Assad would then have to think….what next if the Rebels win?  Does he end up swinging from a lamp post or at the very least in the dock for war crimes.  Either way he loses.

The only thing that will do that and force him to end his attacks is a massive strike against his airforce and main weaponry.

Miliband has ensured that Assad remains in power and that the war goes on, killing countless more people, until that victory is assured.

Shame the BBC have yet to seriously challenge Miliband on his stance.

They know he is on dodgy ground , they asked Cameron if Miliband had behaved ‘dishonourably’, and yet I have heard no building of any momentum on that line of questioning yet.

‘Unarmed civilians being killed….I don’t think we can touch this…UN’s jurisdiction, we can’t intervene…return to base’

If you’ve seen the film ‘Blackhawk Down’ you might think no lessons have been learnt since then…or indeed from Bosnia and the Srebrenica Massacre when Dutch troops had to stand by and watch 8000 Bosnians being murdered….in a UN protected ‘safe area’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGHRWRsJ8dw

Sure none of you will have time to fill this one up…too busy applying for the newly vacant position of HR Director, BBC….or you could win the lottery this weekend….either way, you’d be in the money.

£320,000 per year for a Human Resources director.

No wonder the BBC is 75% repeats.

For what was Ms Adams paid so much money, what outstanding values did she bring to the BBC?

Ms Adams was accused of a “dereliction of duty” for her role in authorising the pay-offs, and Conservative MP Stewart Jackson said the practice would be called “corporate fraud and cronyism” in any other organisation.

And….

Michelle Stanistreet, the NUJ’s general secretary, met Lord Hall on Tuesday and outlined serious allegations that BBC human resources staff targeted staff union activists during a bitter dispute about changes to the employee pension scheme in 2010.

The Telegraph has seen a witness statement which claims that BBC HR officials “monitored” the emails of a member of staff who was an NUJ representative during the industrial dispute over the pension changes.

The statement by Byron Myers, a former BBC head of human resources, which forms part of a legal case brought by the union against the corporation over the new pension scheme, also alleges that HR staff used “underhand tactics” to collect information on NUJ activists and “bring cases of disciplinary action for intimidation and bullying as a means of control”.

Glenn Greenwald is already sharpening his pencils at the Guardian for an exposé.

Via BBC Watch and Archbishop Cranmer:

It seems the BBC has been giving a platform to an organisation, greenbelt, that hosts an anti-Israel manifesto, its main motivation seems to be centred around Israel/Palestine.

It has a strange notion of what exactly Christianity teaches:

Our history is firmly rooted within a Christian tradition which is world-affirming, politically and culturally engaged…….. inclusive and accepting of all, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, background or belief.

Hmmm…OK…I guess God loves a sinner.….’Archbishop urges Christians to ‘repent’ over ‘wicked’ attitude to homosexuality’

As you can see Israel is a major pre-occupation with greenbelt:

This is what Greenbelt attempts to do: to make links with people in situations around the world struggling for justice and peace and to bring them to Greenbelt and give them a stage. We view this as part of our mission.

In addition, in terms of our programming on and highlighting issues around Israel/Palestine, Greenbelt also aligns itself with resolutions of international law, drawn up by the United Nations, that deem:

• The continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal
• The separation wall being built since 2002 as illegal
• The continued building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal

Read BBC Watch and Cranmer….and you can see just how ‘non-inclusive’ and anti-Israeli this group is.

Any surprise that the BBC is giving such a significant boost  to greenbelt’s credentials and therefore to its, unmentioned by the BBC, main political narrative?….and it is essentially a political organisation with tamboreens. 

And just out of interest that bastion of BBC righton-edness, Richard Curtis, is friends with Jim Wallis, guest on the show, and another prolific anti-Israel campaigner.

Jim lives in Washington DC, with his wife Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England, and who was advisor, inspiration and role model for Richard Curtis for his comedy series “The Vicar of Dibley”.

 Small world.

Isn’t it great that the BBC is in essence a private club for the likes of Curtis who can take license payers money and use it make programmes that are blatant propaganda for one of his many pet causes…whether poverty, anti-Tory or pro-climate change lobbying.  

Remember Leveson and all that when so much was made of the dominance of one media giant…..no, not the BBC.

Seems that all that foot stamping and those pious demands for media plurality was just so much hot air.

Apparently Cameron has taken them at their word and gone forth and spread the word, literally, amongst the highest and the lowest in the land.

Cameron has been talking to regional journalists and broadcasters and the Big Boys don’t like it.

Downing Street hogs the remote control: The PM’s use of tame media is annoying the big guns at Sky, ITN and the BBC

Of course as the BBC is by far the most dominant of the news providers with the lion’s share of the audience for news it is the BBC that should be losing out…its stranglehold on the national narrative perhaps being loosened…no bad thing if true.

Cameron talking to local concerns is a good ploy, back to the soapbox almost…but he still needs the national media, so the BBC still has a significant role to play no doubt.

Jim Al-Khalili has shamelessly, shamefully, set aside his scientific principles and those of his newfound career in Journalism to bring us half an hour of climate change propaganda….not science at all…just pure, outright hard sell and ‘facts’ that would not look out of place on Press TV.

 In The Life Scientific he interviews (and I say that advisedly as it is more a scripted ‘one-two’) Joanna Haigh who pushes the IPCC’s case and ‘explains how she deals with Deniers.’

Haigh is somewhat of a fanatic and one who refuses to countenance any doubts about her science…..she says she objects to calling people who have reservations about the causes of cliamte change ‘sceptics’…she prefers to label them ‘deniers’ because they apparently deny climate change is happening.

  As far as I can see most ‘Deniers‘ in fact say climate change does occur….it always changes…the question they ask is ‘What causes that change?’.

Haigh tells us that the IPCC’s science is reviewed rigorously…the IPCC is not a consensus body of green lobbyists…and consensus is very hard to achieve.

She also tells us that the computer climate models are in fact very accurate and reliable…..input a few equations into a computer and there you go…..the climate predicted for the next one hundred years…’Amazing!’…it gives us faith in the future, allegedly.  Simple really, how could anyone have ever doubted her and her kind.

She tells us that long range forecasts are more accurate than short term….I suppose that’s why the Met. Office stopped publishing its long term ones as they were continuously embarrassed by them.

Of course that is somewhat hard to prove…..a forecast for 100 years from now is more about that ‘faith’ she was spouting earlier than reality.

And of course it is difficult for the Public to know what to believe because of all those ‘Deniers’ blogging away distorting the science.

As for the 15 year or so standstill…well you know there are always going to be errors and a range of predictions….and the climate always varies but….the trend is upwards, ever upwards…no really.

All the signs are that we must do something radical.

Now that the last BBC review into its climate change coverage has been and gone it seems normal service has resumed….not a sceptic, sorry, denier, in sight or sound of a BBC studio as far as I can see.

The BBC know full well Alastair Crooke’s ‘pedigree’ and who holds the leash for this particular lapdog.

Just a couple of months ago BBC Watch commented on the BBC’s use of Crooke:

If readers are now beginning to suspect that the BBC simply saved itself a phone call to the Syrian Ministry of Propaganda by inviting Alastair Crooke to this programme, they might not be far wrong.

It looks though that the BBC just don’t care that Crooke is somewhat compromised as a commentator on events in the Middle East as he pops up again today on  World at One (13:14:30) where we were told merely that he ‘fostered contact between Islamic political groups and the West’

The BBC knowingly led him onto the point they wanted to make….Israel, and Saudi Arabia are ‘providing the intelligence’ about these gas attacks…..and we are to infer…the  intelligence is therefore highly dubious….because of its source.

Hmmm…well the ‘fact’ of  the gas attack was not provided by the Israelis to the world…..and the UN are  presently at work on the ground trying to establish what did happen, and by whom.

Crooke went on to tell us it definitely wasn’t the Syrian regime that used chemical weapons…because the Russians said so…oh, and Iran said, 100%, that it wasn’t Assad.

I’ll leave the last word to BBC Watch:

Providing Alastair Crooke with the opportunity to spout the spin of a terrorist organization and a murderous dictatorship to millions of listeners unchallenged is obviously bad enough. But when that is done without due disclosure of the political connections of the man and his very dubious organization, then the BBC is displaying wanton disregard for its own obligation to impartiality and once again putting its own political colours – and agenda – in full view. 

Another one…let ’em have it!

Paul Mason, soon to have his steel toecapped suede booties under a Channel 4 desk, seems to have cast off the shackles of BBC groupthink and ventured out into the world of thinking for himself…..well, tentatively:

The economic recovery may be patchy, but the left is wrong to ignore it

It’s not the same across the country, but there are signs of growth. The challenge for Labour is how to make the most of the new reality

Still hedging his bets, and acting as unpaid, I hope, adviser to the Labour Party, but he ventures that austerity may have worked…so much so that it may be possible to reduce it to some extent.

Of course he rounds it all off with a brickbat…

The real problem may not be the weakness or fragility of recovery, but the fact that large parts of the population are locked out of it.

……but I guess old habits are hard to change.