In a report on the United Nations’ struggle to address the on-going violence in Syria, the BBC used a logo from Halo to introduce the story. The logo is taken from the Halo‘s fictional United Nations Space Command, the military group tasked with exploring and defending Earth’s interests throughout the galaxy.
The fictional group shares its “UNSC” initialism with the UN Security Council, which has been home to a number of important debates over how the international community will address the Syrian government’s murder of its own citizens. Russia and China have been stalwart veto votes on the Security Council against resolutions condemning the Syrian government and calling for Bashar al-Assad’s resignation. Doing an image search for “UNSC” sends one straight into the Wiki-image world of Halo and not the real United Nations.
The image was caught by the BBC and removed from later broadcasts, but an intrepid viewer took a screen capture from the BBC’s iPlayer and uploaded the image to Facebook. Subsequently a number of other users uploaded a short clip of the original story to YouTube.
Earlier today, a UN report revealed another round of murders in a group of small farming villages in Houla. According to Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, the military “summarily executed” at least 108 people in the region, including 49 children and 34 women. The action prompted the expulsion of Syrian ambassadors and diplomats in the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium, among others.
[via Eurogamer]