After UK and US bombs have been devastating the Middle East for over a decade, killing certainly tens and probably hundreds of thousands of people, including many thousands of children, the media have suddenly noticed this morning that bombs kill an awful lot of civilians.
But only Russian bombs, of course. British bombs are cheerful, happy and their shrapnel and blast are brilliantly engineered only to go in the direction of bad guys.
The UK/US bombing of Sirte was approximately 500 times more devastating than the Russian bombings yesterday.
Yet strangely there was not one single BBC report on the thousands of civilian casualties they caused in just one of many towns they bombed in Libya.
It is worth pointing out that whether yesterday’s bombing by the Russians was against ISIL or against a different bunch of crazed Islamist rebels, one still supported by the CIA and Saudi Arabia, makes no difference whatsoever to the legal position.
It was at the request of the Government of Syria and thus legal. That is not to say I support it. I do not. Bombing kills civilians and just causes more hate.
I have the confidence in my fellow human beings to believe that a substantial number will see through the propaganda and realise British bombs do that too.
My optimism extends to the quite astonishing media attack on Jeremy Corbyn.
The scorn and bias of the media in dealing with him has awoken many to the fact that we do not in reality live in a democratic society. People are not free to present alternative ideas to the electorate and obtain a fair hearing for them.
But still I think there will be some effect. For an entire generation, broadcast media and print newspapers had never given the slightest indication that there might be a moral dilemma involved in pushing a button to kill a billion people directly, and set off a chain of events that will destroy all human life.
The spluttering fury by the establishment at the revelation that there are in existence the kind of people who would not do that, is a wonder to behold.
But all that rage is revealing the existence of the moral dilemma to people from whom it has been effectively hidden as a topic of legitimate and serious debate. People will start to think. That is why Corbyn is so dangerous to the establishment. He has opened a Pandora’s box of ideas.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
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