Browse content similar to 04/04/2017. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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The finger of blame is pointed at Bashir Al Assad for a suspected | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
chemical weapons attack on the Syrian opposition town | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
in Idlib killing more than 50 people. | :00:00. | :00:09. | |
With Russia on his side and The White House stating that | :00:10. | :00:12. | |
defeating IS, not regime change in Syria, is their aim, | :00:13. | :00:14. | |
we'll ask Obama's chemical weapons expert - who can stop Assad? | :00:15. | :00:21. | |
Also tonight, Ken Livingstone is suspended from holding office | :00:22. | :00:23. | |
in the Labour Party for two years for stating that | :00:24. | :00:25. | |
What's he got to say about that and his punnishment tonight? | :00:26. | :00:33. | |
And, are fans of Marvel Comic books resistant to change? | :00:34. | :00:40. | |
It's 1960s Spiderman versus 2011 Spiderman. | :00:41. | :00:41. | |
Western governments seem to be in no doubt that President Bashir Al Assad | :00:42. | :01:01. | |
is responsible for what appears to be a deadly chemical weapons | :01:02. | :01:03. | |
attack in Idlib province which has killed dozens of people including | :01:04. | :01:06. | |
at least eleven children and injured hundreds more. | :01:07. | :01:11. | |
The Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said if proved | :01:12. | :01:14. | |
The UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting tomorrow | :01:15. | :01:20. | |
If Assad is the culprit, something the Syrian regime denies, | :01:21. | :01:25. | |
then it is surely evidence that he believes he can act | :01:26. | :01:28. | |
with impunity not least because Russia is his ally, | :01:29. | :01:32. | |
and the White House has recently stated its priority is not removing | :01:33. | :01:35. | |
But today The White House pointed the finger of blame at Barak Obama | :01:36. | :01:42. | |
saying that "these heinous actions are a consequence of | :01:43. | :01:44. | |
the last administration's weakness and irresolution. | :01:45. | :01:48. | |
President Obama said in 2012 he would establish a red line | :01:49. | :01:50. | |
against the use of chemical weapons and then he did nothing." | :01:51. | :01:56. | |
Before we discuss the next move, if any against Assad, | :01:57. | :01:58. | |
here's John Sweeney on the dreadful events in Idlib. | :01:59. | :02:00. | |
And a word of warning: John's film contains some extremely distressing | :02:01. | :02:03. | |
To use chemical weapons is to break the rules of war. | :02:04. | :02:16. | |
Did a war crime happen morning in Syria? | :02:17. | :02:21. | |
To come to a judgment on that, this is some of | :02:22. | :02:23. | |
Much of it filmed by local activists. | :02:24. | :02:29. | |
People reported the sound of warplanes shortly after dawn. | :02:30. | :02:37. | |
In a village, 30 miles south of Idlib. | :02:38. | :02:47. | |
The prime suspect is sarin, a nerve agent, 20 times more | :02:48. | :02:50. | |
They foam at the mouth, their faces go bright red | :02:51. | :02:54. | |
Surgeon David Knott got in touch with a Syrian | :02:55. | :03:05. | |
hospital in Idlib today, 30 miles north of where the attack took | :03:06. | :03:12. | |
The Syrian doctor treated ten patients who were struggling to | :03:13. | :03:16. | |
We are looking at some photographs that were sent to me | :03:17. | :03:25. | |
this morning from this town in Idlib, which shows eight dead | :03:26. | :03:29. | |
children some of them are frothing at the mouth, some of them are in | :03:30. | :03:37. | |
I can see one boy whose arms are obviously flexed | :03:38. | :03:41. | |
and extended and that is the position that he died in. | :03:42. | :03:44. | |
What actually happens is that when the | :03:45. | :03:46. | |
muscles work, they work in 1 degree and then they do not relax. | :03:47. | :03:49. | |
When you take a deep breath in, you then | :03:50. | :03:51. | |
The muscle goes into paralysis, and it stays like | :03:52. | :03:54. | |
Are there any of these boys here, did they have frothing at the | :03:55. | :04:00. | |
One of them in the middle, you can see, his nose, he is | :04:01. | :04:09. | |
obviously cyanose, because he is sort | :04:10. | :04:13. | |
definite for at the mouth there and you know, it is a sign of | :04:14. | :04:18. | |
bronchospasm that he has been unable to take a deep breath in. | :04:19. | :04:20. | |
This is another photograph from today's | :04:21. | :04:24. | |
attack, showing foaming at the mouth. | :04:25. | :04:29. | |
One of the things that the nerve agents do is cause massive | :04:30. | :04:31. | |
So you get this massive production of | :04:32. | :04:34. | |
surfactant, then people are trying to breathe through it, it is a bit | :04:35. | :04:37. | |
like trying to breathe through soapy water. | :04:38. | :04:46. | |
So you get all of these bubbles formed as they tried to in hell and | :04:47. | :04:52. | |
exhale and this is why the foam appears at the mouth. So who did | :04:53. | :05:01. | |
this? The Assad regime has denied responsibility. Its supporters | :05:02. | :05:06. | |
suggesting that a rebel chemical factory exploded. Is this likely? I | :05:07. | :05:13. | |
think it is very unlikely. At this stage, much requires answering. We | :05:14. | :05:16. | |
have no idea where the chemicals came from. Syria has signed a treaty | :05:17. | :05:23. | |
forbidding the use of chemical weapons. Syria signed this treaty | :05:24. | :05:27. | |
and it ought to be respecting the law, but the evidence suggests it is | :05:28. | :05:32. | |
not, so somebody has to be accountable. And after this latest | :05:33. | :05:36. | |
incident which if you like is a step change up again from the use of | :05:37. | :05:43. | |
chlorine, this suggests that the regime perhaps is feeling emboldened | :05:44. | :05:47. | |
in some way that it can use these things with impunity and that should | :05:48. | :05:54. | |
not be allowed. The regime has previous four using sarin. The | :05:55. | :06:00. | |
village is in territory held by rebels that oppose Assad but not | :06:01. | :06:06. | |
Islamic State. Their capital is almost 200 miles away. In 2013, the | :06:07. | :06:11. | |
regime used her nerve agent south-east of Damascus killing | :06:12. | :06:17. | |
hundreds. How likely is the prospect of an effective international | :06:18. | :06:23. | |
action? There has been a recent shift in Syria among activists. Some | :06:24. | :06:30. | |
countries like Turkey, they are busy with their own domestic issues, | :06:31. | :06:34. | |
other countries like Saudi Arabia are more involved in other countries | :06:35. | :06:38. | |
like Yemen. When it comes to international players, there has | :06:39. | :06:43. | |
been a shift, the latest one was announced by the US recently when | :06:44. | :06:46. | |
they said that Assad is not a priority and changing the regime is | :06:47. | :06:51. | |
not a priority. That made Assad more comfortable. Last week the Trump | :06:52. | :06:55. | |
Administration seemed to suggest that regime change was now off the | :06:56. | :07:02. | |
table. I think the status and the longer term status of President | :07:03. | :07:06. | |
Assad will be decided by the Syrian people. Faced with compelling | :07:07. | :07:13. | |
evidence of a war crime, local people did their best. They poured | :07:14. | :07:20. | |
water on the nerve agent victims. It won't have done much good, but still | :07:21. | :07:25. | |
more than the efforts of the international community. John | :07:26. | :07:29. | |
Swinney reporting there. Well, we did ask the US | :07:30. | :07:31. | |
Administration for an interview Earlier, I interviewed Gary Samore, | :07:32. | :07:33. | |
who was President Obama's expert I asked him what he made | :07:34. | :07:36. | |
of today's pictures. As best as I can tell | :07:37. | :07:41. | |
from the symptoms of the victims, it looks very much like a sarin gas | :07:42. | :07:44. | |
attack, so either they have retained some sarin gas, | :07:45. | :07:47. | |
did not fully declare it and allow it to be destroyed or they have | :07:48. | :07:52. | |
produced some fresh sarin gas since the disarmament agreement | :07:53. | :07:57. | |
was implemented in 2014. Now, the White House says that this | :07:58. | :08:04. | |
attack is a kind of direct infringement of Barack Obama's red | :08:05. | :08:07. | |
line policy, that he instituted and Well it is certainly true that | :08:08. | :08:09. | |
President Obama was not prepared to use direct US military force | :08:10. | :08:23. | |
in order to hasten the overthrow And it is the survival of the Assad | :08:24. | :08:26. | |
regime which leads to these And now the fighting is in Idlib | :08:27. | :08:35. | |
province and I think we can expect to see more instances of chemical | :08:36. | :08:43. | |
weapons use as the Syrian regime begins to retake | :08:44. | :08:46. | |
territory from rebels that So essentially, Bashar al-Assad | :08:47. | :08:48. | |
can act with impunity and you have the White House saying | :08:49. | :08:57. | |
that regime change for them is not on the agenda in Syria, | :08:58. | :09:00. | |
their main target is IS. So, there is no stopping | :09:01. | :09:07. | |
Bashar al-Assad, is there? I mean, the Trump Administration | :09:08. | :09:10. | |
tried to pass a sanctions resolution in February of this year, | :09:11. | :09:14. | |
to punish the Assad government for using chemical weapons, | :09:15. | :09:17. | |
but Russia and China vetoed it. So I would expect a pretty similar | :09:18. | :09:25. | |
scenario to play out. There will be probably a UN | :09:26. | :09:29. | |
investigation of some kind, most likely concluding | :09:30. | :09:33. | |
that the Syrian government has once again used chemical weapons, | :09:34. | :09:35. | |
the US and its European allies will try to pass a sanctions | :09:36. | :09:37. | |
resolution and it will be blocked The Russians are saying | :09:38. | :09:40. | |
that they knew nothing about this. Do you think that actually | :09:41. | :09:49. | |
there will come a point where the Kremlin thinks that Assad | :09:50. | :09:51. | |
is just too much trouble At this point I think the Russians | :09:52. | :09:54. | |
are committed to a peace settlement that would allow Assad to retain | :09:55. | :10:03. | |
control for the time being. The Russians might quietly exert | :10:04. | :10:08. | |
pressure to limit the use of chemical weapons, | :10:09. | :10:10. | |
because I think it is an embarrassment to Moscow, | :10:11. | :10:14. | |
but I think it is pretty clear that Assad must feel that he has license | :10:15. | :10:16. | |
to make limited use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, | :10:17. | :10:20. | |
without much fear of the Russians abandoning him or the US or other | :10:21. | :10:23. | |
countries taking military But when these absolutely dreadful | :10:24. | :10:26. | |
pictures are beamed around the world, is there anyone, | :10:27. | :10:33. | |
any way that Assad will ever So there may come a day at some | :10:34. | :10:35. | |
point in the future where Assad and people around him are held | :10:36. | :10:44. | |
accountable, but at least in the near term, I think | :10:45. | :10:46. | |
it is quite unlikely. The US under Trump, frankly as under | :10:47. | :10:49. | |
Obama are focusing on the battle against Islamic State, | :10:50. | :10:53. | |
to remove them from Raqqa and as I said, the UN is paralysed | :10:54. | :10:55. | |
because of divisions among the permanent members and nobody | :10:56. | :11:01. | |
else is prepared to take action. In fact, the trend seems to be | :11:02. | :11:06. | |
in the direction of not supporting the Syrian rebels, | :11:07. | :11:09. | |
including Turkey and others, they I think for the time being, | :11:10. | :11:11. | |
the Assad government Joining me now from Brussels, where | :11:12. | :11:19. | |
a conference on the reconstruction of Syria has in fact been taking | :11:20. | :11:29. | |
place today, is Assaad Al Achi, a Syrian civil society activist | :11:30. | :11:32. | |
and Executive Director of an NGO which tries to promote democratic | :11:33. | :11:35. | |
change in the country. Good evening to you. Good evening. | :11:36. | :11:50. | |
Who do you think all is the responsibility for what happened? | :11:51. | :11:54. | |
There is only one side in this conflict that has sarin gas and has | :11:55. | :11:58. | |
used it previously and that is the Assad regime, so there is no doubt | :11:59. | :12:03. | |
to us, the chemical attack this morning was the responsibility of | :12:04. | :12:08. | |
the Assad regime. The US Department of State has issued a statement | :12:09. | :12:13. | |
tonight, the Secretary of State says, as a self-proclaimed guarantor | :12:14. | :12:18. | |
to this ceasefire negotiated, Russia and Iran also bear a great moral | :12:19. | :12:22. | |
responsibility for these deaths. Do you think there is any chance that | :12:23. | :12:26. | |
the Americans might begin to take a more proactive position? Reading the | :12:27. | :12:33. | |
different statements that came from the White House and from the | :12:34. | :12:37. | |
Secretary of State, there were strong words of condemnation, but | :12:38. | :12:42. | |
that is as far as it got. Even the issue of accountability was not | :12:43. | :12:46. | |
addressed properly, so we are slightly disappointed that there was | :12:47. | :12:53. | |
not a strong commitment to holding whomever committed this atrocious | :12:54. | :12:56. | |
attack this morning accountable and to ending making sure that these | :12:57. | :13:00. | |
attacks did not happen again and I am not sure that playing on the | :13:01. | :13:06. | |
morality of Russia or Iran will lead anywhere. You might have heard Gary | :13:07. | :13:10. | |
St.Moritz they're saying that there is really no one who can stop Bashar | :13:11. | :13:16. | |
al-Assad. I would believe, as leaders of the free world, I am sure | :13:17. | :13:20. | |
that there is some way they can find a mechanism to stop someone who is | :13:21. | :13:27. | |
perpetrating not only war crimes but also crimes against humanity. The UN | :13:28. | :13:33. | |
Security Council resolution gives them that mechanism and a different | :13:34. | :13:42. | |
resolution, states that if the Syrian government ever uses chemical | :13:43. | :13:47. | |
weapons again, chapter seven sanctions can be imposed | :13:48. | :13:50. | |
automatically, so the only thing we are asking is for the full | :13:51. | :13:55. | |
implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions. You, as a | :13:56. | :13:59. | |
member of the moderate opposition in Syria, you find that you are | :14:00. | :14:02. | |
increasingly being marginalised from the picture, you do not have any | :14:03. | :14:09. | |
purchase? Well, we are still the voice of the victims and the voice | :14:10. | :14:12. | |
of the people and that is what we are trying to elevate, protecting | :14:13. | :14:16. | |
the people of Syria from all sides, all the people of Syria, remains our | :14:17. | :14:22. | |
priority and we will do whatever it takes to make sure that that | :14:23. | :14:25. | |
protection will be provided at one point. Thank you for joining us from | :14:26. | :14:29. | |
Brussels tonight. In what increasingly appears to be | :14:30. | :14:32. | |
one of the longest sagas of all time, former Mayor | :14:33. | :14:34. | |
of London Ken Livingstone was suspended from holding office | :14:35. | :14:37. | |
within the Labour Party tonight for a further year, after claiming | :14:38. | :14:39. | |
that the Nazi leader supported A meeting of the party's | :14:40. | :14:42. | |
National Consitutional Committee found that he had breached | :14:43. | :14:46. | |
the party's rules - he had engaged in conduct | :14:47. | :14:50. | |
that was detrimental to the party. Many expected him to be | :14:51. | :14:53. | |
kicked out entirely. Our political editor, Nick Watt, | :14:54. | :14:55. | |
is here with the details. As she was saying, Labour's national | :14:56. | :15:07. | |
constitutional committee after long the earnings have made this decision | :15:08. | :15:11. | |
that Ken Livingstone broke Labour Party rules and recharges and he has | :15:12. | :15:14. | |
been suspended from standing for public office as a Labour candidate | :15:15. | :15:19. | |
and standing for office within the party. This is a two year suspension | :15:20. | :15:25. | |
but because he has already faced administrative suspension for a | :15:26. | :15:30. | |
year, this will last until the end of April 2018. Ken Livingstone had | :15:31. | :15:35. | |
expected he would be expelled altogether from the Labour Party, | :15:36. | :15:39. | |
but he is facing the lesser sanction, a suspension from holding | :15:40. | :15:42. | |
office, and he suggested this evening that his barrister Michael | :15:43. | :15:46. | |
Mansfield QC had successfully argued that he had not made anti-Semitic | :15:47. | :15:52. | |
remarks. What is the background to this? It dates back to a BBC radio | :15:53. | :15:58. | |
interview to Vanessa Feltz last year, in which he said the Labour MP | :15:59. | :16:04. | |
Naz Shah had been over the top, but not anti-Semitic, when she shared a | :16:05. | :16:08. | |
Facebook page suggesting that Israel should be moved to the US, and she | :16:09. | :16:14. | |
had written, problem solved. Naz Shah shared this post before she | :16:15. | :16:20. | |
became an MP in 2015. In that interview with Vanessa Feltz, Ken | :16:21. | :16:24. | |
Livingstone went on to suggest that Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism | :16:25. | :16:30. | |
because of the home for an agreement of 1933, although he did not say | :16:31. | :16:36. | |
that in that interview, between the Zionist Federation of Germany and | :16:37. | :16:41. | |
the Nazi Germany. And this allowed thousands of German Jews to migrate | :16:42. | :16:45. | |
to the British mandate of Palestine. And it appears that the central | :16:46. | :16:51. | |
defence of Mr Livingstone today was that he was not saying in that | :16:52. | :16:57. | |
interview that Hitler was a Zionist, he was saying that Hitler supported | :16:58. | :17:03. | |
Zionism, and he says those do not amount to anti-Semitic remarks. | :17:04. | :17:04. | |
Thank you very much. Well, Ken Livingstone | :17:05. | :17:06. | |
is here with me. Also here is Labour MP | :17:07. | :17:08. | |
Wes Streeting, who has been critical of both Mr Livingstone | :17:09. | :17:11. | |
and the Labour Party's Good evening, both. Ken Livingstone, | :17:12. | :17:19. | |
you thought you were going to be expelled and you have had a lucky | :17:20. | :17:23. | |
escape. I think that the Labour Party's barrister and lawyer were | :17:24. | :17:28. | |
probably saying to them, if you expelled Ken Livingstone, he goes to | :17:29. | :17:32. | |
judicial review and you have no chance of winning. You can have all | :17:33. | :17:36. | |
sorts of arguments, but I did not say that Hitler was a Zionist. | :17:37. | :17:42. | |
Labour MPs like John Mann said I said Hitler was Zionist, you had Wes | :17:43. | :17:48. | |
Streeting saying I had a problem with anti-Semitism. On the Jewish | :17:49. | :17:54. | |
Chronicle, it said that I said Jews were like novices, this is | :17:55. | :17:57. | |
outrageous. I know that fake news is the big thing. What is it feel like | :17:58. | :18:03. | |
to be in the same party as Ken Livingstone the night, Wes | :18:04. | :18:07. | |
Streeting? We said the Labour Party will take a zero tolerance approach | :18:08. | :18:11. | |
to anti-Semitism and today was an opportunity to demonstrate the live | :18:12. | :18:15. | |
up to that promise and we have blown it, because the Labour Party's | :18:16. | :18:19. | |
process has conceded that Ken has brought the Labour Party into | :18:20. | :18:24. | |
disrepute. They're in mind that the Labour MP he was defending, the | :18:25. | :18:28. | |
remarks he was defending, were accepted by Naz Shah as | :18:29. | :18:32. | |
anti-Semitic. She is a new model of how to respond when you make remarks | :18:33. | :18:37. | |
where you do not understand the impact of your words and you | :18:38. | :18:40. | |
apologise for them come learn from it. She has undertaken to become a | :18:41. | :18:46. | |
leading campaigner in the fight against anti-Semitism. Ken, | :18:47. | :18:51. | |
uninvited, decided to wade into the debate and defend the remarks that | :18:52. | :18:55. | |
she accepted were anti-Semitic, and has brought the Labour Party into | :18:56. | :18:59. | |
disrepute. And he has since displayed a bizarre fascination with | :19:00. | :19:04. | |
a tiny part of World War II history. There is a website counting the | :19:05. | :19:08. | |
number of days since Ken last mentioned Hitler and it comes up on | :19:09. | :19:15. | |
the Labour Party does not take people like Ken seriously. You are | :19:16. | :19:21. | |
no stranger to controversy, Ken Livingstone, and it has been in the | :19:22. | :19:26. | |
past water off a dog's back. You are tainted now and you will not come | :19:27. | :19:30. | |
back in any meaningful way to the Labour Party in any form of office | :19:31. | :19:34. | |
Comedy Works act? When I lost a Boris Johnson in 2012, I made clear | :19:35. | :19:38. | |
that broadly that was the end of my career. I campaign for the Labour | :19:39. | :19:43. | |
Party, but my wife has become a teacher and I am a househusband. Is | :19:44. | :19:48. | |
that it's the end of your political career? I did not look for a seat at | :19:49. | :19:53. | |
the last election and I did not ask for Ed Miliband but in the House of | :19:54. | :19:57. | |
Lords. You have been supportive of Jeremy Corbyn and apparently you | :19:58. | :20:02. | |
have been damaging on the doorstep so you are damaging Jeremy Corbyn. I | :20:03. | :20:07. | |
am not damaging, when I was suspended, I could not walk down the | :20:08. | :20:11. | |
street 400 saying, virtually the first person said, I am a Jewish | :20:12. | :20:17. | |
woman, do not -- do they not read the history? The problem is if you | :20:18. | :20:23. | |
look at the chairman of the board of British Jews giving evidence to the | :20:24. | :20:26. | |
House of Commons, he said for Ken Livingstone to say Hitler was a | :20:27. | :20:31. | |
Zionist was deeply offensive. There was a series of lies and smears but | :20:32. | :20:37. | |
if I said Hitler was a Zionist, it would not just apologise, Edward | :20:38. | :20:40. | |
basque if this was a sign of dementia. He loathed and feared Jews | :20:41. | :20:49. | |
but he did a deal with the Zionists. If they had not moved to Palestine, | :20:50. | :20:53. | |
they would have died in the gas chambers with us. Would this appear | :20:54. | :20:57. | |
to be the end of the matter or not? We are meant to be launching | :20:58. | :21:01. | |
Labour's campaign for local elections today and instead of | :21:02. | :21:05. | |
talking about the big issues, we are talking about Ken's bizarre | :21:06. | :21:09. | |
fascination with the 1930s and it is damaging the Labour Party and its | :21:10. | :21:13. | |
reputation. Ken has form going back to his second term as Mayor of | :21:14. | :21:16. | |
London, whether it was the offensive remarks made to a Jewish reporter at | :21:17. | :21:25. | |
the Evening Standard or suggesting Jews were not voting Labour any more | :21:26. | :21:28. | |
because they had voted -- because they had become wealthy. He has for | :21:29. | :21:31. | |
making remarks that offend the Jewish community and ten years | :21:32. | :21:35. | |
later, his name comes up on the doorstep of my constituency because | :21:36. | :21:38. | |
he brings the Labour Party into disrepute. If you believe the post | :21:39. | :21:43. | |
on your website, why did you as great a campaign for you in the | :21:44. | :21:47. | |
general election? We were walking round your constituency together. | :21:48. | :21:50. | |
You did not come anywhere near my constituency during the general | :21:51. | :21:54. | |
election and you would never be welcome in my constituency. When I | :21:55. | :21:58. | |
stood as a council candidate in 2010, you campaigned for me then, | :21:59. | :22:02. | |
but you are not welcome in my constituency. He would not be | :22:03. | :22:05. | |
welcomed by Jewish voters in my constituency and I will not be drawn | :22:06. | :22:08. | |
into this vendetta you have against me. The point I am making is that | :22:09. | :22:14. | |
your poor judgment, your crass remarks and a lack of apology brings | :22:15. | :22:17. | |
the Labour Party into disrepute. It is losing is votes hand over fist, | :22:18. | :22:27. | |
it is morally wrong. You continue to go ahead unrepentant. 39 Labour MPs | :22:28. | :22:31. | |
that date were tweeting I was anti-Semitic and I should be | :22:32. | :22:36. | |
suspended, I said Hitler was a map -- a Zionist. You created a storm. | :22:37. | :22:44. | |
Can I dost ask, do you accept that you had poor judgment over the way | :22:45. | :22:47. | |
you dealt with this, in the sense you may talk about the fact Jewish | :22:48. | :22:52. | |
people support you, but you have offended a lot of people? Do you | :22:53. | :22:56. | |
accept that and apologise question but if anybody is upset, of course I | :22:57. | :23:00. | |
am sorry. I am not going to apologise for something I did not | :23:01. | :23:04. | |
say, I did not say Hitler was a Zionist. He said he supported | :23:05. | :23:09. | |
Zionism in the 1930s, do you apologise for saying that? I have a | :23:10. | :23:14. | |
Jewish newspaper with an article confirming what I said was true. You | :23:15. | :23:18. | |
have offended certain members of the Jewish community, do you apologise | :23:19. | :23:23. | |
for the offence you have caused? If anybody is upset, I am sorry, but | :23:24. | :23:26. | |
check what I said because I cannot tell you the number of Jewish people | :23:27. | :23:30. | |
who said, we know what you said was true. People are not stupid, we | :23:31. | :23:35. | |
heard what you said and you are damaging the Labour Party. Thank you | :23:36. | :23:36. | |
very much. No-one is ever alone | :23:37. | :23:39. | |
on the internet. You may be familiar with the idea | :23:40. | :23:40. | |
that tech companies are watching your every click, | :23:41. | :23:43. | |
or that criminal hackers are probing every chance | :23:44. | :23:45. | |
to empty your bank account. Let us add another nefarious cyber | :23:46. | :23:47. | |
sprite to your nightmares - the bot. At the moment, this is a harmless | :23:48. | :23:50. | |
little slave that helps us do drudge work, but perhaps it could be | :23:51. | :23:53. | |
the early precursor of a terrifying new world, where the relationship | :23:54. | :23:56. | |
is reversed and humans become A study of how bots interact | :23:57. | :23:59. | |
with each other has thrown up some Here's our technology | :24:00. | :24:09. | |
editor, David Grossman. And off goes the aluminium tail, | :24:10. | :24:13. | |
and that is absolutely crucial! Robots battling for supremacy | :24:14. | :24:19. | |
makes a great spectacle. But on the internet, | :24:20. | :24:22. | |
other less dramatic battles are taking place between not | :24:23. | :24:29. | |
robots, but bots. These bots don't have a physical | :24:30. | :24:31. | |
form, just a few hundreds These bots don't have a physical | :24:32. | :24:42. | |
form, just a few hundred They are digital minions, | :24:43. | :24:45. | |
set to work to do a specific task. They're used extensively | :24:46. | :24:49. | |
on Wikipedia to do There is a lot of deadly boring work | :24:50. | :24:51. | |
that we don't want to do. You don't want to check | :24:52. | :24:55. | |
the spelling of every word, the URL or the links of every page, | :24:56. | :24:57. | |
say, in Wikipedia. You don't want to make sure that | :24:58. | :25:00. | |
everything is properly formatted, that the copyright of that | :25:01. | :25:03. | |
picture is correct. That someone has updated one | :25:04. | :25:19. | |
page for another page That is really the work | :25:20. | :25:22. | |
of an enslaved individual, if it had to be done by you or me, | :25:23. | :25:25. | |
so I'm very happy to delegate that to little things called | :25:26. | :25:30. | |
bots that do it for me, But all is not peace | :25:31. | :25:32. | |
and harmony in bot-land. At the Oxford Internet Institute, | :25:33. | :25:35. | |
they've studied how these bots interact and found they often come | :25:36. | :25:37. | |
into conflict, escalating petty disputes into all-out wars | :25:38. | :25:40. | |
that can last years. Particularly on Wikipedia, | :25:41. | :25:42. | |
we did not expect to see lots of conflicts and fights | :25:43. | :25:44. | |
between bots because bots are designed based on the same | :25:45. | :25:46. | |
technology, and are designed based And they have the same goal, | :25:47. | :25:49. | |
and that's to improve So all the ingredients | :25:50. | :25:53. | |
are there to have a very peaceful However, what we observed - | :25:54. | :25:58. | |
and it was the most striking and the most surprising result | :25:59. | :26:04. | |
for us - that we see Bots go to war over trivial pedantry | :26:05. | :26:06. | |
like, what is the correct name A pair of Wikipedia bots - | :26:07. | :26:17. | |
one called Darkness Bot, the other called XQ Bot - | :26:18. | :26:23. | |
went to war over whether this is called Aston Villa | :26:24. | :26:26. | |
or Aston Villa Football Club. Now, outside some high-stakes | :26:27. | :26:30. | |
pub-quiz hell, most humans probably would agree to differ, | :26:31. | :26:32. | |
but a bot can't back down. And the pair did and re-did | :26:33. | :26:37. | |
and undid each other's edits thousands of times over | :26:38. | :26:40. | |
a period of years. Personally, the most surprising | :26:41. | :26:51. | |
thing was to realise that one of the American founding fathers, | :26:52. | :26:53. | |
James Madison, was wrong. He thought that we need law | :26:54. | :26:59. | |
because humans are not all angels. Even when bots are friendly | :27:00. | :27:05. | |
and want to build together, they still need rules, | :27:06. | :27:12. | |
to be able to cooperate. So we realised - or, | :27:13. | :27:17. | |
at least, I realised - that without that kind | :27:18. | :27:19. | |
of infrastructure, there's sort of an infra-ethical perspective, er, | :27:20. | :27:23. | |
even the best of all good wills At the moment, this is just simple | :27:24. | :27:26. | |
bots going to war over petty Wikipedia edits, | :27:27. | :27:31. | |
but do they hint at One academic believes it may | :27:32. | :27:33. | |
already be too late. In AI, we've unleashed | :27:34. | :27:42. | |
a Darwinian replicator, like a digital DNA, that can be | :27:43. | :27:44. | |
copied, can be varied and selections made from those variations, | :27:45. | :27:47. | |
all independently of us. Lots of us tend to think | :27:48. | :27:52. | |
of ourselves as, you know, we humans made all this machinery, | :27:53. | :27:55. | |
therefore we're in control of it. But that's simply not true, | :27:56. | :27:58. | |
once you've let loose this It's all getting on | :27:59. | :28:01. | |
for its own purposes. You know, we're not any longer | :28:02. | :28:07. | |
the creators, controllers, Just as a few fluffy rabbits | :28:08. | :28:12. | |
released on a paradise island may seem harmless enough at first, | :28:13. | :28:19. | |
could this new replicator rapidly overtake our ability | :28:20. | :28:22. | |
to control it, ending up We might end up like | :28:23. | :28:24. | |
the mitochondria in our bodies. You know, they were free-living | :28:25. | :28:31. | |
bacteria that got absorbed into other bacteria and became sort | :28:32. | :28:34. | |
of energy-producing slaves, and they gave up most | :28:35. | :28:38. | |
of their own activities and just live inside other cells | :28:39. | :28:40. | |
and produce energy for them. It's a scary analogy but, | :28:41. | :28:43. | |
potentially, if we don't come to understand things better, | :28:44. | :28:46. | |
the whole thing will explode so much that we will | :28:47. | :28:49. | |
literally be doing that - just producing machinery and energy | :28:50. | :28:55. | |
for the cyber world, which will be evolving way out | :28:56. | :28:58. | |
of our knowledge. For humans, the idea | :28:59. | :29:02. | |
of bots arguing is amusing. These chat bots, designed to talk | :29:03. | :29:12. | |
intelligently to humans, were set up to talk to each other | :29:13. | :29:15. | |
by researchers at They rapidly began | :29:16. | :29:17. | |
squabbling about religion Not everything could | :29:18. | :29:21. | |
also be something. For example, not everything | :29:22. | :29:30. | |
could be half of something, which is still something, | :29:31. | :29:33. | |
and therefore not nothing. So laugh, by all means, | :29:34. | :29:37. | |
but remember, they are getting smarter and more powerful, | :29:38. | :29:43. | |
as we get more dependent How do you like your | :29:44. | :29:45. | |
comic book superhero? Are you stuck in the 1960s | :29:46. | :30:04. | |
with Peter Parker, the amazing - and white - Spiderman, | :30:05. | :30:07. | |
or are you in the 2010s with black, hispanic Miles Morales, | :30:08. | :30:10. | |
the Ultimate Spider Man? At the weekend, Marvel Comics' sales | :30:11. | :30:11. | |
boss seemed to admit that when it came to the company's push | :30:12. | :30:15. | |
to reimagine their A List of comic characters with a modern ethnic | :30:16. | :30:17. | |
and gender diversity, the buying public were | :30:18. | :30:19. | |
turning up their noses. And this is a problem that punches | :30:20. | :30:24. | |
far above its weight, because today's hit Marvel comic | :30:25. | :30:27. | |
is next decade's blockbuster movie. Superheroes have enjoyed | :30:28. | :30:29. | |
their greatest popularity Escapism sells, so Marvel owned | :30:30. | :30:38. | |
by Disney has worked hard at changing the men behind the mask | :30:39. | :30:43. | |
to appeal to millennial fans In 2011, the mixed-race teenager | :30:44. | :30:46. | |
Miles Morales became Spiderman and in 2014, | :30:47. | :30:55. | |
Jane Foster became the latest Thor, and Kamala Khan, | :30:56. | :30:57. | |
a Pakistani American In 2016, 16-year-old Riri Williams, | :30:58. | :30:58. | |
took over the Iron Man But are these reboots driving away | :30:59. | :31:10. | |
the core comic book fans? This weekend, a senior Marvel | :31:11. | :31:19. | |
executive David Gabriel appeared We saw the sales of any | :31:20. | :31:21. | |
character that was diverse, any character that was new, | :31:22. | :31:28. | |
our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel | :31:29. | :31:30. | |
character, people were turning | :31:31. | :31:32. | |
their nose up against. He rode back after the furore, | :31:33. | :31:36. | |
but the damage was done. In 2014, nine out of ten bestsellers | :31:37. | :31:39. | |
were Marvel superhero comics, but last year, after the major | :31:40. | :31:45. | |
character revamp, Marvel had just three in the top ten, | :31:46. | :31:47. | |
so clearly something is going on. Perhaps this is just | :31:48. | :31:55. | |
about sheer comic numbers, between October 2015 and February | :31:56. | :31:57. | |
this year, Marvel launched an astonishing 104 new titles, | :31:58. | :32:00. | |
so perhaps it is not surprising that But for Marvel, the real money | :32:01. | :32:03. | |
is not in comics any more, Their Luke Cage series on Netflix | :32:04. | :32:15. | |
is pretty much the only example of diversity | :32:16. | :32:20. | |
in the Marvel live-action stable. The question is, will the movies | :32:21. | :32:22. | |
catch up with the comics We asked Marvel for a statement | :32:23. | :32:24. | |
and while they stated that Mr Gabriel had been taken out | :32:25. | :32:34. | |
of context, they did not give Joining me from New York | :32:35. | :32:37. | |
is comic book critic and freelance writer, | :32:38. | :32:41. | |
J A Micheline. Benny Potter, who hosts a popular | :32:42. | :32:45. | |
YouTube channel on comic books, Good evening. Do you think that | :32:46. | :33:00. | |
Marvel does have a problem with diversity? Marvel does have a | :33:01. | :33:06. | |
problem with diversity but not the problem they think they have. The | :33:07. | :33:10. | |
problem they have is literally that they cannot commit to the audience | :33:11. | :33:13. | |
they are trying to build, even in the rhetoric that you seek Mr | :33:14. | :33:17. | |
Gabriel is using in terms of defining them as the core audience | :33:18. | :33:21. | |
or group, that suggest that the people they are marketing to are | :33:22. | :33:25. | |
actually pretty much straight white men but if you are trying to | :33:26. | :33:30. | |
actually expand your audience and bring them different heroes, | :33:31. | :33:37. | |
different people with people of different genders and ethnic groups | :33:38. | :33:39. | |
but you're still marketing to the same people, then you're not really | :33:40. | :33:42. | |
trying. Benny Potter would you accept that Marvel is not really | :33:43. | :33:46. | |
trying to do diversity in a wave that is meaningful and actually | :33:47. | :33:51. | |
comes into the core of the comics? Benny. I actually agree with that. A | :33:52. | :34:01. | |
lot of the new diverse stories in my opinion are really incredible but | :34:02. | :34:04. | |
they just kind of rushed out trying to catch on to the diversity think | :34:05. | :34:08. | |
instead of easing the characters into the old core fan base and I | :34:09. | :34:12. | |
feel they are just backing out too early. Now that they have done it, | :34:13. | :34:16. | |
they are not letting it go all the way through. What about the first | :34:17. | :34:22. | |
Muslim superhero to have her own name? Do you think that she will be | :34:23. | :34:25. | |
a big seller? It does not appear to be so. She is one of the more | :34:26. | :34:34. | |
popular characters, Kamala Khan. Some of her stories are some of the | :34:35. | :34:38. | |
best ones that have been put out in recent years. In that case, what do | :34:39. | :34:44. | |
you think the right strategy should be, given that, by and large, it is | :34:45. | :34:48. | |
not about the comics, it is about the movies to come. They have to bed | :34:49. | :34:52. | |
these things down and what is the best way to go about it? The best | :34:53. | :34:56. | |
way to go about it is to actually commit to building a broader | :34:57. | :34:59. | |
audience and that would be breaking things down to the very basic level. | :35:00. | :35:05. | |
For example, the way the comics are distributed to something called the | :35:06. | :35:08. | |
direct market and the way that works is basically that the only things | :35:09. | :35:11. | |
that count towards sales are the things that matter are the comics | :35:12. | :35:14. | |
that are pre-ordered three months in advance. To you or to a random | :35:15. | :35:19. | |
person who does not know anything about comics, they will say to | :35:20. | :35:24. | |
themselves, I saw the Black Panther movie, how do I get that book? If | :35:25. | :35:27. | |
they went to Waterstones they could buy it trade but would not matter, | :35:28. | :35:31. | |
the only way for it to matter is for them to go to a comic book shop and | :35:32. | :35:35. | |
pre-order the book three months in advance and then their purchase | :35:36. | :35:40. | |
counts. All of these complications pretty much mean that new readers | :35:41. | :35:44. | |
are alienated from the process in terms of having their voices heard | :35:45. | :35:48. | |
and it requires them to go through a kind of system that is traditionally | :35:49. | :35:53. | |
alienating traditional white males to begin with. Talking about a more | :35:54. | :35:59. | |
traditional view, does it matter if people prefer Captain America, does | :36:00. | :36:02. | |
that matter if they are buying comics in sufficient numbers? I am | :36:03. | :36:09. | |
sorry, I miss the question. On the question of what you might say is | :36:10. | :36:13. | |
the traditional old-fashioned white male audience, does it matter if | :36:14. | :36:17. | |
what they want is captain America if Captain America creates big sales? | :36:18. | :36:25. | |
It does not really matter if they want Captain America, I don't think | :36:26. | :36:29. | |
I understand that as a question. Are you saying the people want to go out | :36:30. | :36:33. | |
and buy it? If you have a white Captain America and people buy that, | :36:34. | :36:37. | |
that does not matter, it is not just about diversity, it is about what | :36:38. | :36:43. | |
sells Marvel Comics? Yes, and that is part of the issue, the books need | :36:44. | :36:48. | |
to sell and in my opinion, they did not ease the audience into a lot of | :36:49. | :36:51. | |
these characters, instead of going through a period with the legacy | :36:52. | :36:55. | |
characters train these new individuals, they just tried to be | :36:56. | :37:01. | |
like, the comic book is coming out in three months. The thing is that | :37:02. | :37:10. | |
Marvel Comics launched 104 comics last year and one quarter failed, it | :37:11. | :37:13. | |
is all about the sale models and of the cell model does not work, then | :37:14. | :37:17. | |
you're not going to have this variety of characters, are you? It | :37:18. | :37:23. | |
is a question of what you mean by if the sales are not working. Charles | :37:24. | :37:27. | |
Paul Hoffman did some great journalism in terms of looking at | :37:28. | :37:32. | |
the actual numbers and he basically found that even out of the top ten | :37:33. | :37:36. | |
selling Marvel Comics, only three of them are what you would actually | :37:37. | :37:40. | |
consider diversity which is really just characters that are | :37:41. | :37:44. | |
marginalised people. The rest of them are your standard white male | :37:45. | :37:50. | |
characters and those are the ones that have seen the lowest sales in | :37:51. | :37:53. | |
terms of the biggest drops. I did both very much indeed. | :37:54. | :37:54. | |
Now, Viewsnight - our regular chance to voice | :37:55. | :37:56. | |
often difficult and - to some - unpalatable thoughts. | :37:57. | :37:58. | |
Tonight, the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that | :37:59. | :38:00. | |
Fearmongers are more dangerous than terrorists. | :38:01. | :38:16. | |
Since 2000, terrorists have killed fewer than | :38:17. | :38:17. | |
During the same period, obesity-related diseases killed | :38:18. | :38:23. | |
So why do we fear terrorists more than we fear fried bacon? | :38:24. | :38:30. | |
Terrorists stage a frightening spectacle of violence that | :38:31. | :38:37. | |
captures our imagination and turns it against us. | :38:38. | :38:42. | |
Terrorists kill a handful of people and cause millions | :38:43. | :38:45. | |
In order to calm these fears, governments react with a show | :38:46. | :38:52. | |
of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such | :38:53. | :38:54. | |
as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion | :38:55. | :38:58. | |
Usually it is this overreaction to terrorism that threatens | :38:59. | :39:05. | |
the peace of the world, more than the terrorists themselves. | :39:06. | :39:11. | |
Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. | :39:12. | :39:15. | |
The fly is so weak, it cannot move even a single teacup. | :39:16. | :39:20. | |
So the fly finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. | :39:21. | :39:25. | |
The bull goes wild, with anger and fear and destroys | :39:26. | :39:27. | |
This is what happened in the Middle East after 9/11. | :39:28. | :39:34. | |
Islamic fundamentalists incited the United States to destroy | :39:35. | :39:36. | |
Now, they flourish in the wreckage and there is no lack of short | :39:37. | :39:44. | |
The success or failure of terrorism really depends on us. | :39:45. | :39:51. | |
If we allow the terrorists to capture our imagination and then | :39:52. | :39:55. | |
react to our own fears, terrorism will succeed. | :39:56. | :39:57. | |
If we free our imagination from the terrorists and react | :39:58. | :39:59. | |
in a balanced and cool way, terrorism will fail. | :40:00. | :40:13. | |
A lot of flashing images follow now, as we leave you at the University | :40:14. | :40:17. | |
of Tokyo, where they know a thing or two about cameras and projectors. | :40:18. | :40:20. | |
A group there have built an image projector that can do | :40:21. | :40:23. | |
a thousand frames per second, with ultra high speed tracking | :40:24. | :40:25. | |
What on earth does that matter or even mean? | :40:26. | :40:32. | |
Well perhaps a demonstration from Japan's Ayabambi dancers will help. | :40:33. | :40:34. | |
Remember, this system is tracking the dancers' faces and projecting | :40:35. | :40:37. | |
images onto them live and in real life - it's not a special effect. | :40:38. | :40:40. | |
Hello there. It looks like it will be a chilly start for southernmost | :40:41. | :41:57. | |
counties but at least we will see some sunshine. Make the most of it, | :41:58. | :42:02. | |
it will cloud over from the north. There will be very little | :42:03. | :42:04. |