Why Rupert Murdoch considers it worth his while to pay David Aaronovitch a large six figure sum for such puerile antics as tweeting that I am insane, is a conjecture I find difficult to resolve. Today this exchange occurred on twitter:
David Aaronovitch: This suggestion that if elected Corbyn could be quickly ousted is utter bollocks. Democracy allows Labour to commit Hara Kiri.
Mark Doran: @DAaronovitch I hope everyone is watching how these servants of the micro-elite try to paint “attracting popular support” as “committing suicide.”
Mark Doran: @DAaronovitch Craig finds the elite-serving contortions every bit as funny as I do
David Aaronovitch: @MarkJDoran I tend to find Craig Murray unpersuasive on the grounds of him being unhinged. I can see why you like him, though.
Mark Doran: Says the man who managed to find Bush and Blair credible. I can see why you liked them, though.
It is remarkably ironic that on being referred to an article which argues that views outside a very narrow neoliberal establishment narrative are marginalised and ridiculed by the media, the Murdoch hack’s response is that the author is unhinged. Aaronovitch could not have more neatly proved my point.
But something else struck me about the twitter record. Aaronovitch’ twitter account claims to have 78,000 followers. Yet of the 78,000 people who allegedly received his tweet about my insanity, only 1 retweeted and 2 favourited. That is an astonishingly low proportion – 1 in 26,000 reacted. To give context, Mark Doran has only 582 followers and yet had more retweets and favourites for his riposte. 1 in 146 to be precise, a 200 times greater response rate.
Please keep reading, I promise you this gets a great deal less boring.
Eighteen months ago I wrote an article about Aaronovitch’s confession that he solicits fake reviews of his books to boost their score on Amazon. In response a reader emailed me with an analysis of Aaronovitch’s twitter followers. He argued with the aid of graphs that the way they accrued indicated that they were not arising naturally, but being purchased in blocks. He claimed this was common practice in the Murdoch organisation to promote their hacks through false apparent popularity.
I studied his graphs at some length, and engaged in email correspondence on them. I concluded that the evidence was not absolutely conclusive, and in fairness to Aaronovitch I declined to publish, to the annoyance of my correspondent.
Naturally this came to mind again today when I noted that Aaronovitch’ tweets to his alleged legion of followers in fact tumble into a well of silence. I do not even tweet. The entire limit of my tweeting is that this blog automatically tweets the titles of articles I write. They are not aphorisms so not geared to retweet. Yet even the simple tweet “Going Mainstream” which marked the article Aaronovitch derided, obtained 20 times the reactions of Aaronovitch’s snappy denunciation of my mental health. This despite the fact he has apparently 10 times more followers than me. An initial survey seems to show this is not atypical.
In logic, I can only see two possible explanations. The first is that my correspondent was right and Aaronovitch fakes twitter followers like he does book reviews. The second is that he has a vast army of followers, nearly all of whom find him dull and uninspiring, and who heartily disapproved en masse of his slur on my sanity. I opt for the second explanation, that he is just extremely dull, on the grounds that Mr Aaronovitch’s honesty and probity were never questioned, m’Lud.
I have just seen it too Dreoilin on the BBC front page. Terrible. ‘Revenge’ was written on the wall. For what?
Palestinian toddler killed in ‘Jewish settler’ arson attack
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33729281
22 mins ago
I don’t know Mary. Apparently that “price tag” slogan was sprayed on the wall too. At least that terrible Bibi is not afraid to use the word terrorism when it comes to the settlers (I’m assuming the ‘Jewish extremists’ referred to are settlers)
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the “terrible criminal act,” telling the newspaper: “This is a terror attack. Israel deals harshly with terrorism, no matter who the perpetrators are”.”
It’s been very noticeable that the US authorities only use the word ‘terrorism’ when violent acts are carried out by Muslims – white people who shoot up churches and the like are generally described as mentally unbalanced.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the “terrible criminal act,” telling the newspaper: “This is a terror attack. Israel deals harshly with terrorism, no matter who the perpetrators are”.
Hmmm…
Can’t find what these terrorists were sentenced to. Anyone?
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/We-dont-want-recognition-from-Israel-we-want-justice-says-Muhammad-Abu-Khdeirs-father-398793
Correction: white ‘Christians’ who shoot up churches and the like are generally described as mentally unbalanced.
I’m going off. I feel a bit sick. That eighteen month old child was burnt alive.
I’ve never met any of these settler types in the West Bank, but Louis Theroux spent time with them and made a whole programme with/about them. The hatred and sense of entitlement that oozed out of them (and came straight out of their mouths) was unbelievable. And many of them were American.
“Can’t find what these terrorists were sentenced to. Anyone?”
It’s only just happened. They’re looking for them. So they say.
Oh, sorry, you’re talking about that other case of the teenager who was burnt alive. Sorry Ba’al.
what a dreadful attack on a sleeping family, what a bunch of dangerous nutters. I do not think that Bibi means what he says, we shall see the effort in bringing these murderers to justice.
I have no more hope that Israeli’s can keep their own kind in check, their society is so divided that its impossible to solve when the hatred of the Government towards Palestinians is all pervasive, all incumbent. His own people do the killing, he condemns these vigilante killings, but does not adjust his retort to calm the situations.
Is Netanyahu going to sit down at the table over this? will he cfuk
“Yossi Haim Ben-David, 29, and two minors from Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh subsequently confessed to the crime. However, their attorneys claim the three are unfit to stand trial.”
It doesn’t say why.
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/We-dont-want-recognition-from-Israel-we-want-justice-says-Muhammad-Abu-Khdeirs-father-398793
Just this
“The Arab boy was killed by a delusional bunch of men of questionable sanity, and their actions were condemned by society as a whole.”
So, very like the Americans then. Sanity questioned.
What doesn’t happen to Israeli terrorists, is their home town doesn’t get locked down, and all residents subjected to harsh interrogations/ curfew / searches. The homes of their families will not be demolished. The whole community will not be punished in other words.
Contrast their treatment with this (originally from Private Eye):
—–start
Letter from Awarta
… From our own correspondent
… October 2011
As our leaders were demanding international recognition for an independent Palestine, events in our West Bank village have been a reminder of our precarious reality on the ground.
On 14 September an Israeli military court sentenced Awarta teenager Hakim Awad to five concurrent life sentences, plus five years, after he pleaded guilty to the horrific murders of five members of the Fogel family, the youngest of whom was three months old, butchered in their beds in the neighbouring Israeli settlement of Itamar six months ago.
Despite the plea, the Shomron Military Court elected to examine the prosecution evidence to see how it compared with Awad’s confession. For what is at issue is less the guilt of Hakim Awad and his cousin Amjad, who is still on trial – Palestinian leaders vigorously condemned the murders – but the methods the IDF used to solve the crime and punish a whole community.
Within hours of the murders the army imposed the first of a series of curfews on Awarta, allowing no one in or out of the village. On 14 March they rounded up all residents aged 15-40 and began taking DNA samples until they found matches. On 5 April Amjad and Hakim Awad were arrested and confessed under interrogation.
Fair enough perhaps. But the prosecution did not dwell on the other aspects of the joint police and military operation. During the first curfew, from 12 – 16 March, international observers reported that soldiers threw sound grenades through windows before ransacking houses and public buildings, ripping out electric cabling, polluting water tanks (the village has no mains water), and confiscating computers and mobile phones.
Hundreds of villages were detained. Ambulances and medical teams were denied access; and by the end of the week staple foods had run out. The process was repeated from 3am to 8pm on 22 March, with two further curfews in April. On the night of 7 April, two days after the suspects’ confessions, 200 villagers were marched 2kms out of the village, packed on buses and interrogated at the Huwwara military base where DNA samples were taken forcibly.
Despite an appeal from Modi Fogel not to use his brother Ben’s killing for political purposes, the next day the murder was used to justify new buildings in the settlements. The day after, the Israeli minister of diplomacy released graphic crime scene photographs to the international media, and then the Israeli government imposed a press blackout on the police operation, until announcing the confessions in a blaze of publicity of 17 April.
Today Itamar is surrounded by an 8 ft electrified fence, topped with 2 ft of razor wire, and equipped with sensors which detect if the fence is cut, plus automatic cameras covering the perimeter, all linked to a permanent operations centre. The IDF’s more robust tactics have left Awarta considerably more embittered.
The Fogel family’s attempt to avoid martyr status for their relatives has already failed, with Itamar now a stop on tours organised by right-wing groups like Americans for a Safer Israel. The guilty have been caught and punished, but peace looks ever further away.
—–end
John Goss 12.12am——Thank-you for the link to such an informative article.
Oh, sorry, you’re talking about that other case of the teenager who was burnt alive. Sorry Ba’al.
Yup. the trail goes cold after the allegation of insanity.
No prob. The survivor of the murderers of 3 Israeli teenagers in June 2014 (which was in some quarters described as justification for burning the Palestinian kid to death) got three life sentences all to himself. The other two were shot. No great loss to humanity, but there does seem to be a difference of approach, doesn’t there?
Yesterday:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Police-Man-stabs-four-people-at-Jerusalem-gay-pride-parade-410687
Doesn’t look as if Israeli prisons are too hot on rehabilitation…however, as he’s Ultra, he’ll probably not get a lot of consideration and maybe even a genuinely fair trial.
Comrades – I apologise for my rather intemperate comments last night. May I offer that I had just got back from hospital, visiting a very dear old friend in the terminal stages of severe, long-term alcohol abuse. He’s the same age as me, but looked like he could have been my grandfather. His physical condition was simply appalling. I came away rather shocked and upset.
I thought your comments last night were entirely appropriate, Glenn. And sorry about your friend.
The only Scottish Labour MP, in Scotland is backing Yvette Cooper as leader of Labour.
Ian Murray who regulary wears his “Union Jack” suit, said he’s backing Yvette Cooper, because he thinks Labour needs its first female leader.
Whatever happened to backing a leader on policies and beliefs?
Mr Murray is also backing Kezia Dugdale as leader of the branch office of London Labour in Scotland.
Recent polls suggest that London’s branch office of Labour, in Scotland will receive a good hiding in the Scottish Parliamentary Elections, lets hope so.
I had to laugh at Donald Trump’s comments yesterday, in which he said independence would be bad for Scotland, adding it’s so divisive…hmmm.
I wonder if Mr Trump feels the same way about the USA, when it wanted independence from Britain, yes Mr Trump, you darn colonials caused division and uncertainty when you decided to declare independence back in the day.
I wonder what the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, would thought of Mr Trump’s remarks.
Mr Trump is in the process of running for the Presidential candidate for the Republicans, he is a billionaire but not to bright, recently he called Mexicans who fled to the USA, murderers, thieves and rapists, well done you’ve just alienated the Hispanic vote in the USA in one go.
The White Elephant, known as RBS, has announced losses of £153 million for the first six months of 2015, compared to profits of £1.43 billion for the same time last year.
The taxpayer owns 80% of RBS, and will probably never be paid back what was pumped into it to save the greedy useless banksters.
We should’ve followed Iceland’s example and let the banks go under and jailed the casino banking culprits.
Instead the banks were bailed out, leaving the taxpayers and their children to pay off future debts.
When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died … (Tom Lehrer)
When Trump becomes President, it will be minced, boiled in acid and buried in quicklime at the bottom of a mine.
Unfortunately all too likely.
I dont know whether to laugh or cry as the anti-independence media, and it’s politicians, change tactics from calling the SNP and its supporters Nazi’s to a religious cult/sect.
http://wingsoverscotland.com/time-off-from-that-emotion/
Out of sheer curiosity I wonder what kind religious group they see as representing the SNP and nationalists, no doubt we’ll fall somewhere between the Klu Klux klan and Scientology, with a bit of Voodooism thrown in for good measure.
Trump cognoscenti might enjoy this:
http://news.stv.tv/north/1325389-donald-trump-owns-shares-in-us-wind-farm-company-nextera-energy/
That’ll teach him to leave his investment fund in the hands of treehugging librul commies…
“When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died … (Tom Lehrer)
When Trump becomes President, it will be minced, boiled in acid and buried in quicklime at the bottom of a mine.”
_________________________________
It’s alright Baal, the Nobel Peace Prize regained its respectability again, when Barack Obama was awarded it back in 2009.
How’s that for satire?
The corpse twitched a little there….
Out of sheer curiosity I wonder what kind religious group they see as representing the SNP and nationalists
I’d like to think it would be my lot. And indeed, there is a Scottish connection, St. Michael’s Well in Banffshire:
Many a patient have its waters restored to health and many more have attested the efficacies of their virtues. But as the presiding power is sometimes capricious and apt to desert his charge, it now [A. D. 1794] lies neglected, choked with weeds, unhonoured, and unfrequented. In better days it was not so; for the winged guardian, under the semblance of a fly, was never absent from his duty. If the sober matron wished to know the issue of her husband’s ailment, or the love-sick nymph that of her languishing swain, they visited the well of St. Michael. Every movement of the sympathetic fly was regarded in silent awe; and as he appeared cheerful or dejected, the anxious votaries drew their presages; their breasts vibrated with correspondent emotions. Like the Dalai Lama of Thibet, or the King of Great Britain, whom a fiction of the English law supposes never to die, the guardian fly of the well of St. Michael was believed to be exempted from the laws of mortality. To the eye of ignorance he might sometimes appear dead, but, agreeably to the Druidic system, it was only a transmigration into a similar form, which made little alteration in the real identity.’
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/phc/phc10.htm Scroll down for Beelzebub.
I don’t rule out human sacrifice, either.
Special offer. Two for the price of one. Sniffer dogs expert at detecting swarms of migrants. Respond to commands in the French language and able to work in teams.
Apply Dave Cameron, 10 Downing St, London. SW1A 2AA
Calais migrant crisis: PM pledges extra dogs and fencing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33729024
~~~
I had a rescue dog in the 90s called Tigger. He was put up for rescue by a young couple who were getting divorced. Neither would let the other have him and I got to hear that he needed a new home. He had spent a lot of his days alone in a Notting Hill basement while they were at work and presumably out of boredom had chewed his front paws so badly that infection had spread to his ear canals. He was the dearest dog and was loved by all. The wife of the couple was French and I used to feel a right idiot giving him commands such as ‘Ici’ and ‘Assieds toi’!
Gavin Millar QC who acted for Nadine Dorries in Tim Ireland’s case is the brother of Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell’s partner.
http://powerbase.info/index.php/Fiona_Millar
Perhaps P Charles could solicit a few more donations of ‘shepherd’s huts’ to accommodate some ‘migrants’.
BBC News Quiz
Prince George has been given a birthday present worth £18,000 by his grandfather, the Prince of Wales. What is it?
A playhouse
An electric toy car
A climbing frame
CORRECT – The “shepherd’s hut” is a 12ft x 6ft (3.65m x 1.8m) playhouse, has a wood-burning stove and day bed and will sit in Prince Charles’s garden at Highgrove. It was donated by a company that received money from his Prince’s Trust charity.
Yes Baal, you certainly have a way with words as your websites shows.
You must be a popular guy now you’re on to your 48th meeting.
http://baal.org.uk/baal_conf.html
“I had to laugh at Donald Trump’s comments yesterday, in which he said independence would be bad for Scotland, adding it’s so divisive…hmmm.”
What made me laugh yesterday was a David Cameron remark after Russia vetoed a UN tribunal regarding MH17.
“As in the case of the Lockerbie disaster, justice must be done.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/30/david-cameron-mh17-inquiry-russia-blocks-un-tribunal
We know what kind of justice Cameron wants. He wants an Inquiry like the Gibson Inquiry into torture so that if things look to be going badly, that is if the truth emerges, the poweres that be can pull the plug on it. Or an Inquiry like the Hutton Inquiry into the suspicious death of Dr David Kelly where records can be withheld for 70 years.
good article questioning Israels stance towards non proliferation, asking whether it should be the next ME state to cut a nuclear deal.
I know its the Grauniad….. a snippet from Zawad Arifs article below.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/31/iran-nuclear-deal-israel-vienna-treaty-middle-east-wmd
“One of the many ironies of history is that non-nuclear-weapon states, like Iran, have actually done far more for the cause of non-proliferation in practice than nuclear-weapon states have done on paper. Iran and other nuclear have-nots have genuinely “walked the walk” in seeking to consolidate the non-proliferation regime. Meanwhile, states actually possessing these destructive weapons have hardly even “talked the talk”, while completely brushing off their disarmament obligations under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and customary international law.
That is to say nothing of countries outside the NPT, or Israel, with an undeclared nuclear arsenal and a declared disdain towards non-proliferation, notwithstanding its absurd and alarmist campaign against the Iranian nuclear deal.”
Mr Goss
If it turns out the the wreckage found on Reunion was from the missing Malaysian airliner – and if more wreckage is found showing that the airliner came down somewhere over the Indian Ocean – will you unreservedly withdraw your accusation, made on this blog at the time, that the airliner had been hijacked to Diego Garcia and that the passengers and crew were being held captive there by the Americans?
And apologise (1) for the slur against the Americans, and (2) for insulting the intelligence of the saner elements on this blog?
Nevermind
It is indeed true that the current nuclear states have done little – if anything – to reduce their nuclear capabilities.
It is also true that, in principle, that comprehensive multilateral nuclear disarmament would be a good thing (although many argue that MAD kept the peace in Europe for decades).
However, I wonder if you would agree that the failure of current nuclear states to reduce significantly or eliminate totally their nuclear capacities does not justify current non-nuclear states acquiring nuclear capabilities?
If you do not agree, I wonder if you could set out a cogent argument for your point of view (perhaps with reference to specific cases)?
Thank you.
38degrees latest petition :
Their reasoning is :
…. which leaves me in a familiar dilemma. The BBC is a state propaganda organ which is responsible for creating and sustaining many, many dreadful injustices, and in most regards is no different to the rest of the MSM. However, the very fact that Murdoch and others work so hard to destroy it proves that it is some sort of obstacle to their full spectrum domination of the media. I guess it must be a nuisance to the media controllers to have to maintain a separate mechanism solely to control the BBC.
I don’t know what the answer is. I wouldn’t piss on the BBC if it were on fire. But bad as it is, I suspect we will be worse off without the BBC.