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.
Does that make the dropping of those bombs any less horrific & immoral ?”
______________________
Of course it doesn’t Macky, I was putting it into perspective, with mans inhumanity to man.
We have a great capacity to kill each other.
Glenn
5 Aug, 2015 – 3:18 am
“Is this a genuine sighting of Fred?”
Glenn, is this what you do at 3 in the morning? You poor sod! Btw are you the same as Glenn_uk? He seemed generally more graceful than I observe the minus uk one to be.
I haven’t been following but has the Fred-bashing not yet stopped. He’s a little too logical for some of the emotive nationalists (‘believers’) here.
@Doug scorgie
6 Aug, 2015 – 8:06 pm
A very good point; and as I think I’ve already said on this thread, the Ted Heath stuff has all come out shortly after the Ben Fellows trial at the Old Bailey, during which it was revealed that Kenneth Clarke, who’s still a sitting MP, is being investigated for other allegations of child sex abuse.
I’m still not sure what to make of the ever increasing numbers of police forces who are adding their name to investigations against Ted Heath.
I’d like to think that with the DPP’s reversal in the Lord Janner case, and the high profile Clarke case, something tangible is happening within the police force; ie, for the first time they are really starting to go after these bastards.
And I will remind folks that, Clarke aside, there are police investigations into at least three other sitting MPs.
I am become death.. the destroyer of worlds.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/Peace/E/pHiroshimaTop.html
Oh dear…some poor sod is hoping to get a rise out of certain posters in here, he’ll have to do better than that.
@Clark 9:34pm “Dave Lawton, what is ECCR and who is Lady Barbara?”
ECCR =“European Committee on Radiation Risk.”
Lady Barbara. Lady Judge was chairman of the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority.
Think I mentioned she has Monbiot in her pocket.
Here we go.Check this out.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/lady-barbara-judge-japans-smart-nuclear-weapon-8497747.html
From Mr Goss’s own link
“Russian air defence systems manufacturer Almaz-Antey sent the results of its investigation to the Netherlands. According to it, the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a Boeing 777, was downed over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014 being destroyed by a Ukrainian 9M38M1 surface-to-air missile (SAM) fired from a Buk-M1 (SA-11) system. To make the evidence public some characteristics were declassified. Russia is the only country to make its findings public.”
So we know have a 3rd possible cause being pushed by Mr Goss – a bomb, a Ukrainian fighter plane, a surface to air missile fired from a Ukrainian Buk launcher. He seems to have gone a little cold on it being MH370 captured in Diego Garcia and filled with zombies – but he did fly that particular kite in the early days. Talk about the old KGB tactic of diversions to avoid the truth – perhaps his boss needs to tell him that in order to retain credibility you can only have one diversion per person. But then of course the chief propagandist does seem to be having his own problems with the truth:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11780027/Vladimir-Putins-spokesman-in-luxury-watch-scandal.html
“Oh dear…some poor sod is hoping to get a rise out of certain posters in here, he’ll have to do better than that.”
ROS why don’t you just admit to your foolishness instead of a weak attempt to deflect. You know you are just one of the quite a few idiots here who are happily lost in analysis-paralysis, incessantly cutting-pasting with not an original, insight, perception or thought. I’m sure you consider yourself to be an intellectual; sorry to lay you bare.
Kids Company now linked with child abuse by an “off-site client”. Tory donor urged Minister to give KC £3 million to keep going.
Well, I wonder…
Oh dear someone did not read the script when talking to the OSCE
“The SMM revisited five “DPR” and four Ukrainian Armed Forces heavy weapons holding areas whose locations comply with the respective withdrawal lines. The SMM found that all weapons previously recorded at three “DPR” sites were in situ. An armed man guarding the facility at one of the sites claimed that he and those present at the site were part of the 16th airborne brigade from Orenburg, Russian Federation. They did not wear identifying insignia.”
http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/175736
So there are still no Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine?
The net’s closing in on the elite paedophile ring(s).
.
Who’s next?
Cos there’ll be more of them. And they’ll know each other.
Bet there are a few more big names in the bag, some of them still living.
For now.
Dear Sirs,
I agree with the following statement and I note, once again, the BBC is involved in disseminating propaganda for the British establishment. The BBC is well aware of the pernicious power of propaganda in the worsening conflict in Ukraine in which those bashing the Kremlin are criticising the work of Alita Andrishevskaya in her attempts to use a child model show as an illuminating glimpse into the way the Ukrainian putsch and crisis is seen by many Russians. I believe once again BBC you have been outed.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Golding
Chair
Children of Iraq Association
Milton Keynes
http://www.coia.org.uk
In the current political climate, Russia is lacking some positive press, and all Reggie Yates succeeded in doing, is fuelling animosity on both sides and extending our lack of understanding about Russia. These issues correctly got some much needed attention, but their timing and execution lacked genuine sensitivity and an accurate image of the new Russia. By trying to appease an existing image towards Russia, it merely misinformed people about the country as a whole.
http://readrussia.com/2015/07/09/how-a-british-presenter-destroyed-russias-image/
Here is the Daily Mail article on the OFSTED school inspector who was found dead in his hotel room before he’d finished inspecting Winchester College in 2009.
One of the comments is “How very Kelly-esque.” Bloody right!
“Robert Smith thought he had made a major blunder during the inspection of Winchester College.”
What major blunder?
“He had apparently made an assurance to somebody about the inspection, only to discover potential problems on the last night.”
Why’s that a major blunder? Why couldn’t he say “Sorry, you know I told you it was all over? Well I made a mistake and there’s something else I need to look at.”?
[…]
“Witnesses told the inquest in Winchester how Mr Smith, who was leading the team of Ofsted inspectors, was troubled an apparent slip-up in their probe of Stay Safe – the school’s staff recruitment and vetting procedures.”
“On top of that, days earlier Roger Custance, a former master at the school, had presented him with damning allegations involving acts at the school dating back to the 1990s.”
[…]
“The nature of the allegations was not expanded upon during the inquest but it was explained that they were already known and had been investigated by the police, who found no evidence to support them.
(That doesn’t mean that how the school handled them shouldn’t have been of interest to OFSTED.)
“Colleagues told Mr Smith, who had turned pale, not to worry and that the problem could be easily fixed in the morning.”
[…]
“Mr Burge heard that the stressed inspector had left no note to explain his actions but colleagues spoke of him appearing “annoyed and upset.”
Being “annoyed and upset” isn’t sufficient explanation for why someone would kill themselves. If it were, there’d hardly be any of us left by now.
“The inquest heard that on the afternoon of Thursday March 5th the inspectors met for a briefing to discuss progress.”
“Thomas James, one of those inspectors present and the deputy headteacher at St Edward’s School, Oxford, said: ‘It was a funny meeting because it was very positive and we came to the conclusion that it was a very, very safe school with pupils thriving.‘”
Slurrrrrpppppppp!
“‘Then we came onto recruitment and a couple of inspectors found problems in the recruitment that had been raised in the previous inspection and the school hadn’t really addressed them.‘”
“‘Rob felt we hadn’t looked at enough files. I didn’t see it as a failing on anyone’s part and I didn’t see it as a problem for Rob, just as another part of the inspection and that we could get through it. He kept blaming himself.'”
“Fellow inspector Alison Scott said: ‘I noticed Rob looked ashen. He was clearly very anxious and disappointed.‘”
Very anxious? Why should he be very anxious?
“‘He said: “I shouldn’t have said it was okay”. I was puzzled as I wasn’t sure who he had said it to.'”
Didn’t the coroner try to find out?
Sounds to me as though he told a high up person involved in some exceptionally unpleasant business that it’s OK, we’ve finished, thank you very much for having us, sir, we won’t bother you any more (you can almost feel his relief at being about to get out of there) and then he realised that to cover his own arse he had to ask for another file, or ask a few more stupid questions and tick a box to say he’d asked them…and he’s scared…really fucking scared of going back to this guy whom he’d told that the inspection was all finished…
“Bridget Goddard, Ofsted’s manager for the south region, echoed the sentiment, stating: ‘Rob was very highly respected. He was one of our very best inspectors.'”
“‘People were not aware that he was under the level of stress that he clearly was under. He was a very private person.'”
That’s just shit talk. Had his stress actually been noticed by anyone before that evening? Or is she saying it must have existed because he “clearly” killed himself? Is her opinion worth anything whatsoever?
“Mr Burge, deputy coroner for central Hampshire, recorded a verdict that Mr Smith had taken his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed.”
“He said: ‘Objectively he had absolutely no reason whatsoever to take his own life.'”
Every coroner a fucking philosopher, eh? What he means is that he had no-one to be scared of and there was nothing untoward at Winchester College to be concerned about, so everyone should move along. He means that the man got pissed off with life for no sensible reason, having no history of depression or mental illness that anyone knows about, and killed himself – because he must have done, because he was found swinging from something.
What a fucking disgraceful verdict. Either he was murdered or he killed himself because he was under extreme pressure for a reason that the coroner doesn’t seem to have been interested in finding out. Why? Because it’s a sin against the universe to upset the men who run Winchester College.
The inquest doesn’t sound as though it was an inquest in the sensible meaning of that word.
Paul Craig Roberts has a reason for thinking MH-17 was shot down as a result of a plot hatched in Washington for a reason that at least should be considered: Who Shot Down MH-17?:
I should note that one possible plot hatched in Washington that Roberts may not have considered could have been to provoke the Ukrainian separatists to shoot the plane down themselves by (1) mounting aerial attacks on the separatists in the days and hours preceding (as we know happened); and (2) somehow diverting MH-17 so that it would fly over a war zone.
“Speaking after the verdict, a spokeswoman for Clarke said: ‘The police always made it clear that they regarded Mr Clarke as a victim and a witness in this case. Since receiving the verdict, they have assured Mr Clarke that they regard this matter as closed, and Mr Clarke takes the same view.’”
Oh really?
First, why can’t the police speak for themselves?
Second, the police got the CPS to prosecute Ben Fellows for the serious crime of perverting the course of justice and if they’d been successful he would have been sent to prison. It’s up to Mr Fellows whether he wants to bring an action for malicious prosecution. The charge of perverting the course of justice rested on the idea that he made the assault up, and the jury have found him NOT GUILTY of that. It’s up to him, not Clarke or the police, to say whether or not the matter is closed.
BTW what’s the source for saying Clarke is still under police investigation? Has someone got a link?
Lysias : “Nagasaki was the center of Christianity in Japan.”
Indeed. The cross atop the central church there was used for targeting the atomic bomb, it was actually dead centre ground zero. Not a joke.
*
It takes a particular sickness of mind to celebrate an event like that, as in saying “happy bomb day”. Shame on the “anon1”, and little wonder that he cowers behind such anonymity.
It might be excused as a regrettable necessity, if one is capable of such self-delusion. But to regard it as an enjoyable event demonstrates a depravity not known outside the rancid circles of Nazis, skin-heads, utter racists and the psychopathic. But I repeat myself.
What Anon1 says sounds very similar to what Zionazis say about “attrition” against the Palestinian Arabs and how killing so many percent of the German population during WW2 ensured that Germany became peaceful from then on. Nice guy.
RobG @10.16pm on 05 August 2015 : I am intrigued in your link to Simon Jenkins’ article in the Guardian re Ted Heath that Sim Jenkins should state; “Nor was there any rumour of his association with the known Dolphin Square set and the late Sir Peter Morrison. Had there been the gossip would have been electric”. So journalists at this time, when Ted Heath was still very much alive, appeared to know full well about what was going on at Dolphin Square, and also about Sir Peter Morrison. The establishment looks after its own, as usual.
Alcyone: “Glenn, is this what you do at 3 in the morning? You poor sod!”
Appreciate the sympathy, but these are the hours my job requires from time to time. I’m not independently wealthy, not retired and not being paid to write here, so I have to take opportunities as they arise. Come to think of it, this probably puts my position in a small minority around here.
Just between us, I thought Saint Fred would see that post as the joke it was intended, rather than a world-shattering broadside. But then, it would require (a) a sense of humour, and (b) an ability to recognise flaws in oneself. So St. Fred is at a loss on both counts.
Well it was a Beautiful wee ceremony, a couple of Short speeches, A piper led the procession, Lit some candles, The waters were trnquil for a change, and the Blue Mount Gate way to the Highlands in Distant misty Silence. Seemed summery, the rainbow colors of a right side Sun dog Gazed down,
Then a minutes Silence, before casting the flowers into the Clyde, All to the sound of the pipes.
Mary i Did indeed throw one in for you.. Cos i Knew you’d ask
Re the Surrender of Japan, Lysias is correct..the US had broken the cyphers codes years before, They Knew well in Advance of Japans peace feelers going out –
In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan’s article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)
This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 — that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:
Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in “Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe,” National Review, May 10, 1958):
The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
And this..
Terror bombing is an international high crime. Article 25 of the Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907 Hague IV Convention) states:
The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or building which are undefended is prohibited.
Post-WW II Geneva IV protects civilians in time of war – prohibiting violence of any type against them, requiring sick and wounded be treated humanely.
The 1945 Nuremberg Principles forbid “crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” including “inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war,” – notably indiscriminate killing and “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”
In his book, “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II,” the late Studs Terkel explained its good and bad sides through people experiencing it.
The good was America “was the only country among the combatants that was neither invaded nor bombed. Ours were the only cities not blasted to rubble,” said Terkel.
The bad was it “warped our view of how we look at things today (seeing them) in terms of war” and the notion that they’re good or why else fight them. This “twisted memory….encourages (people) to be willing, almost eager, to use military force” to solve problems, never mind how they exacerbate them.
Wars are never just or good. In the nuclear age they’re “lunatic” acts – horrific by any standard.
By Stephen Lendman
http://www.globalresearch.ca/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-gratuitous-mass-murder-nuclear-war-a-lunatic-act/5467504
“By the way, any of you guys drilled a square hole in thin plate steel using a round drill? I did it as an apprentice.”
I could drill a square hole with a triangular drill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5AzbDJ7KYI
“Think I mentioned she has Monbiot in her pocket.”
Is she another demented conspiracy theorist like Caldicott?
“On February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million…”
You should be careful with these sorts of ‘statistics’ especially those found in tabloids.
They are invariably exaggerated and out of context if not fabricated like, for example, the ‘Holodomor’ promoted by fascists and their dupes.
The death toll ‘due to Stalin’s rule’ is Cold War propaganda but in any case it pales by comparison with the mortality of the Yeltsin years when the Russian population, subjected to Capitalist shock therapy, declined dramatically.
As to the thoughtless repetition of the allegations against Mao, the life expectancy of Chinese almost doubled between 1949 and 1970.
In fact neither Stalin nor Mao were in the same league-when it came to making political decisions which led to mass deaths- as the Victorian Raj’s administration. For (one small) example:
“Specializing in cotton could result in disaster, as in the 1870s famine, which was not caused by a lack of food (indeed, food grains continued to be exported from Berar), but by the inability of the poorest agricultural laborers to buy urgently needed food grains. In India alone, between 6 and 10 million people died in the famines of the late 1870s. Observed one gazetteer, “Had Berar been an isolated tract dependent on its own resources, it is possible that in the plain taluks [British administrative units] there would have been no famine.” High prices had made food unavailable to many peasants and agricultural laborers, and during the 1900 famine, another 8.5 percent of the population of Berar died, with the greatest numbers of deaths occurring in districts most specialized in cotton production. Landless agricultural workers and former weavers in particular suffered, “for not only did they have to pay more for their food, but their wages are reduced from the competition” of workers from other regions. The British medical journal The Lancet estimated that famine death during the 1890s totaled 19 million, with fatalities concentrated in the tracts of India that had recently been recast to produce cotton for export. In the town of Risod, a contemporary observed that people “died like flies.”
Beckert, Sven Empire of Cotton: A Global History
Finally-in what sense was Stalin responsible for Soviet casualties in the war? I think that you will find that most of them were caused by the enemy, that is certainly the view generally held by ordinary Russians.
@Lysias
“I should note that one possible plot hatched in Washington that Roberts may not have considered could have been to provoke the Ukrainian separatists to shoot the plane down themselves by (1) mounting aerial attacks on the separatists in the days and hours preceding (as we know happened); and (2) somehow diverting MH-17 so that it would fly over a war zone.”
And they used moles in the Russian forces to hand over a nice missile launcher to them for just such a purpose – or perhaps Washington just sneaked in in the middle of the night leaving behind a missile launcher and a handy instruction manual and a little note say from a “well wisher”. Personally, I think it was martians visiting in a UFO on a day trip from Diego Garcia – but then I’ve been reading SOTT.
“The death toll ‘due to Stalin’s rule’ is Cold War propaganda”
You obviously have no relatives who just took a trip East and where never seen again. Roy Medvedev is a respected historian you are just an imbecile.
Dot
07/08/2015 11:29pm
This is a very strange story, and I do appreciate everything that you have said about it. However, it seems that Mr Smith’s wife, if she is being reported fairly, believes that he did in fact take his own life due to certain aspects of his character.
That carries a lot of weight with me. His wife will presumably have had more insight into him than anyone else – maybe even himself. If she had said that there was no way he would have committed suicide for the reasons cited and that he was either killed or put under extraordinary coercion then that would carry great weight with me too. That’s not what she is reported as saying.
Kind regards,
John
I just wanted to offer up that I have problems with atrocity comparison – Mao killed 45 million, Stalin 40 million, Hitler 20 million, and so on and so forth.
I am not sure that it is meaningful to say that one atrocity is worse than another because it killed x million more. If one innocent family dies because a political decision is taken that they do not matter in the great scheme of things, that is just as much a tragedy as if ten million families die. It certainly is to that one family.
It does sound odd when put like that – surely one family dead is better than ten million families dead. But where does one draw the line? If a political decision kills twenty thousand families instead of eighty thousand families, is it a better decision, or not? I have difficulty with that kind of quantifying, and there seems to me no meaningful way to draw a boundary around the numbers.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. Just wanted to offer that to the forum.
Kind regards,
John
J S-D: Agree. I may be the only one. this place seems to have transformed itself into a comfort zone for people who believe in trial by public opinion. Looking (vainly) for anything substantial to incriminate Heath, say, on the internet, there’s a lot of rumour, and a lot of utterly uncheckable statements such as ‘Heath took boys on his yacht and murdered them by throwing them overboard’. I realised that I recognise these. They are the lurid stories that circulate in any school about odd or eccentric members of staff. After a while in circulation, they become ‘fact’. There may even be a basis of truth to them, but they get in the way of working out what actually has happened.
N_: My mention of Worthing’s MP, Peter Bottomley*, was provoked by an unsupported assertion by Hampshire, which I will not repeat as it would be fit material for a libel action. Bottomley may be a clown, but he is a litigious one.
*To call him Sir Peter Bottomley would incite the wrath of the right-on social progressives here, so I won’t…
Just for Fred:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendumnews/13581142.SNP_maintains_winning_streak_in_Scottish_council_by_elections/?ref=rss
The Janner case commences this morning at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.