Ken Avidor's Propaganda Resurfaces at TreeHugger
Ken Avidor has supposedly "retired", but his anti-PRT campaign lives on. Someone named Lloyd Alter at TreeHugger has revived his campaign, complete with links to Avidor's Greatest Hits: a Road Kill Bill anti-PRT cartoon, and the much debunked Light Rail Now PRT attack.
I left a comment there, letting them know that Ken Avidor was the originator of all that disinformation - he's even one of the anonymous authors of that unpublished "Cyberspace Dream" pseudo-scientific analysis. I also pointed out that Light Rail Now is a backed by light rail construction interests who stand to lose $Billions if PRT succeeds, and that Alter had been snookered into believing the words of a single cartoonist with an agenda, who just happens to be in bed with corporate rail interests.
But - surprise surprise! - my TreeHugger comment never appeared, despite 13 other comments being approved (mostly mindless criticisms from people who know nothing about PRT) - so why is my comment being suppressed? Perhaps Lloyd Alter was advised by his "source" to suppress my comments?
TreeHugger is yet another example of idiot journalism - a collection of untrained, unprofessional writers who take the words of those with an agenda, and present them as unaltered, unswerving fact. Did Lloyd Alter bother to investigate Avidor's claims? Of course not! If he had, he would have found responses from others which answer every single one of Avidor's talking points.
He would have also discovered that the "Cyberspace Dream" paper had been thorougly debunked multiple times - including corrections to basic 11th grade physics mistakes - yet it still appears in its original unaltered form. Did it ever occur to Mr. Alter that an anonymously written "analysis" posted on a competitor's web site might not be accurate - indeed, that it might be nothing more than marketing fluff?
No, none of this crossed Mr. Alter's mind, because he is not a journalist, and TreeHugger is not a journalistic entity. Like the Twin Cities Daily Planet and the DumpBachmann blog, TreeHugger is nothing more than a megaphone for propagandists like Ken Avidor.
I left a comment there, letting them know that Ken Avidor was the originator of all that disinformation - he's even one of the anonymous authors of that unpublished "Cyberspace Dream" pseudo-scientific analysis. I also pointed out that Light Rail Now is a backed by light rail construction interests who stand to lose $Billions if PRT succeeds, and that Alter had been snookered into believing the words of a single cartoonist with an agenda, who just happens to be in bed with corporate rail interests.
But - surprise surprise! - my TreeHugger comment never appeared, despite 13 other comments being approved (mostly mindless criticisms from people who know nothing about PRT) - so why is my comment being suppressed? Perhaps Lloyd Alter was advised by his "source" to suppress my comments?
TreeHugger is yet another example of idiot journalism - a collection of untrained, unprofessional writers who take the words of those with an agenda, and present them as unaltered, unswerving fact. Did Lloyd Alter bother to investigate Avidor's claims? Of course not! If he had, he would have found responses from others which answer every single one of Avidor's talking points.
He would have also discovered that the "Cyberspace Dream" paper had been thorougly debunked multiple times - including corrections to basic 11th grade physics mistakes - yet it still appears in its original unaltered form. Did it ever occur to Mr. Alter that an anonymously written "analysis" posted on a competitor's web site might not be accurate - indeed, that it might be nothing more than marketing fluff?
No, none of this crossed Mr. Alter's mind, because he is not a journalist, and TreeHugger is not a journalistic entity. Like the Twin Cities Daily Planet and the DumpBachmann blog, TreeHugger is nothing more than a megaphone for propagandists like Ken Avidor.
Labels: Ken Avidor, Lloyd Alter, PRT, TreeHugger
posted by A Transportation Enthusiast at 3/11/2008 07:41:00 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah, the Treehugger team seems to have a bug up their collective butt about PRT. Except their level of discussion is at the level of Slash(&Burn)dot: embarrassingly ill-informed, almost painfully so. Even my old friend Ben Schiendelman, who once called me a liar, is a commenter there.
Yeah, and Ben's vacuous comments made it through the censors - what a surprise!
Post a Comment
<< Home