Aaro "Not a member of the Israeli Hasbara Committee"
This came up in comments so worth linking to the Indie correction - the IHC (which I am not at all sure what the fuck it is or what relationship it has to the Israeli government) includes Aaro on a list on its website, but the endorsement is apparently one-way - Aaro is not a member of their committee.
In general, I am not a fan of the use of the word "Hasbara" to refer to Israeli government propaganda, particularly by people who don't actually speak Hebrew.
In general, I am not a fan of the use of the word "Hasbara" to refer to Israeli government propaganda, particularly by people who don't actually speak Hebrew.
posted by The Rioja Kid at 12/10/2009 09:28:00 PM
17 Comments:
"Aaro is not a member of their committee."
I would have been staggered if he was. Let's give him some credit for being at the very least semi-shrewd. To nail his colours to that mast would be journalistic suicide - whatever he privately feels.
Aaro is clever and worth watching, which is probably why this blog is called what it is and not Melwatch or Nickwatch.
How clever of you, Mr Kitty, to know why Aaro isn't a member of something that there was never any reason to suppose he was a member of, and that only Glad Atzmon via a hundred "anti-Zionist" blogs and then an idiot at the Independent, ever accused him of being associated with. Other things Aaro may be too shrewd to be associated with: the Honduran netball team, the Magic Circle, the BNP. Pd'B
the main difference being that Aaro doesn't play netball or do magic tricks (or at least, hasn't discussed these hobbies in his Times column) but he does right apologia for war crimes carried out by Israel.
Not "clever" as such; but there is no need to to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut...
Or slur a man who is as insidious as Aaro is.
I'd meant to post on that utterly weird Sindie mention of this. fact-checking extending to, er, reading dodgy stuff on Google news.
Aaro knows better - but Nick Cohen is a member of 'Just Journalism' which is to all intents and purposes a pro-IDF pressure group.
Give over. Write something not following the anti-Israel mood, and you're a Zionist propagandist (altho possibly a "shrewd" one who doesn't join probably non-existent committees). It's a bit horrible when you lot go Atzmon-lite.
why are the trolls we get on here always so unfunny?
They just try and fit in.
now that actually was funny
this is not Atzmon-lite at all, anonymous troll. In Aaro's case, he wrote, in so many words, that Israel was justified in bombing apartment blocks in Qana.
Is Nick really a member of Just Journalism? That's really quite shocking as it's the worst kind of politically slanted busybody organisation.
Anyone see Nick on This Week last night?
He's talking about climate change here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/8407633.stm
it's weirdest in the part where he demolishes the idea that poshos have made it easy to dismiss the climate change denial movement - when he made the exact opposite point in his column on sunday, saying that the fact that Greens are often posh has done the green movement 'enormous damage'.
He can't pronounce the word 'Ahmedinejad'; and clearly thinks that droning on about 'Russia expanding its empire' (a fairly questionably claim) and Wahhabi propaganda is going to convince people to stop being climate change sceptics. In essence it's just another version of the pro-war 'look at your horrid allies' argument. Must try harder.
And will he ever stop his scattergun attacks? He manages to fit in cranks on the internet, Saudi, Iran, Putin, a pointless list of 5 or so posh people, all into this very short piece!
Yeah, he made some perfectly reasonable points in his film but they got lost in amongst the silly stuff about Putin and the Saudis.
In the discussion he did get a couple of good points in against the ill-informed nonsense being spouted by Neil and Portillo (Abbot just didn't have a clue) but undermined it by being too willing to accept the conspiracy view of the CRU emails.
You're right about the bit about the Greens - it would have been a commendable sentiment if he hadn't been arguing against his own prevously expressed views and those of his fellow decents.
The decents' visceral hatred of the Greens and environmental activists generally never fails to amaze me.
In the discussion he did get a couple of good points in against the ill-informed nonsense being spouted by Neil and Portillo (Abbot just didn't have a clue) but undermined it by being too willing to accept the conspiracy view of the CRU emails.
I got the impression that he hadn't really read them, and had relied on one of his usual interpreters to give him the gist of what's in there, which is missing a trick. Or maybe he had read them but didn't really understand them, which would be in keeping with his generally tribalistic views on science (where issues like climate change, homeopathy and MMR are usually sorted by thinking "What are my enemies saying? Right then, I'll say the opposite". He's not always wrong, but it is always for the wrong reasons).
It was theorised on this very site a long time ago that the Decents are generally silent on climate change because it alienates the American right-wingers who are their natural allies, but Nick's been threatening to go off that reservation for a while, most obviously with Ratbiter's infamous "HITLER WOZ AN ENVIROMENTERLIST TOO LOLZ" piece. As it becomes more of a political issue he's going to have to nail his colours to the mast some time, and it will be funny when he does. Not least because all the signs point to Nick "you are the children of Holocaust deniers" Cohen falling for a massive, Alex Jones-worthy global conspiracy theory...
aa: what is the non-conspiracy view of the CRU emails, then?
Tim,
That if one looks in more detail into the emails there is no evidence of any scientific misconduct, manipulation of data etc., although there are probably some unwise remarks regarding FoI requests.
Actually a better version would be that there are some emails which on the surface look questionable but given that these emails are taken out of context and are being pushed by people who have an agenda of their own it would be wise to look into them more closely before coming to a conclusion.
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