Slim and Will put the smackdown on LaRouche, was: SlimVirgin, back with a vengeance Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

The "old" SlimVirgin is back. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/popcorn.gif)

Gone is the chastened, relatively civil, law-abiding SV. Over the past days, she has unleashed a torrential flood of edits on a subject dear to her heart, Lyndon LaRouche (T-H-L-K-D). Her rich palette of POV editing tactics, including intimidation and confusing and misleading edit summaries, is in play (for example, when adding some guy to the lead that says LaRouche is a fascist, her edit summary is "some tidying.") And, she has renewed her tag-team vows with Will Beback. They are so sweet when proclaiming that the two of them have together found "consensus." Was it good for you?

[Herschelkrustofsky]

And, Leatherstocking was just indefinitely blocked by Georgewilliamherbert. Oddly enough, GWH is not claiming that he is me. It appears to be case of living on the West Coast in a very similar way.

[Cla68]

And, Leatherstocking was just indefinitely blocked by Georgewilliamherbert. Oddly enough, GWH is not claiming that he is me. It appears to be case of living on the West Coast in a very similar way.

If there was any chance of LaRouche getting a fair shake on Wikipedia, I'd say that's now up in smoke. I normally would not be sympathetic to a LaRouche employee, if true, being blocked from editing LaRouche topics on Wikipedia, but SV and WillBeBack are not, in my opinion, making an honest effort to treat the LaRouche articles in a neutral manner.

I think the only reason they haven't been taken to task about it is because no one active in Wikipedia's administration cares enough about it do anything. The thing is, Wikipedia's credibility is judged by how it treats all topics, including LaRouche. So, if the LaRouche articles are being used to discredit the guy, especially by two long-time administrators, then it helps make Wikipedia look even more bush league.

[Hell Freezes Over]

And, Leatherstocking was just indefinitely blocked by Georgewilliamherbert. Oddly enough, GWH is not claiming that he is me. It appears to be case of living on the West Coast in a very similar way.

If there was any chance of LaRouche getting a fair shake on Wikipedia, I'd say that's now up in smoke. I normally would not be sympathetic to a LaRouche employee, if true, being blocked from editing LaRouche topics on Wikipedia, but SV and WillBeBack are not, in my opinion, making an honest effort to treat the LaRouche articles in a neutral manner.

Cla, you were strongly supportive of efforts to defend the Prem Rawat articles from cultist editing, but you take the opposite view on the LaRouche articles. Perhaps you could explain what the difference is.

The fact is that Leatherstocking repeatedly said he had no connection with the LaRouche movement, and had only "vaguely heard of them" when he joined WP, but was yesterday found to have been editing all along from an IP address assigned to a company that's owned by the movement. Some examples here of his claim not to be involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=322476322

Will and I want to produce accurate, well-written articles about LaRouche, but there's barely been a day since 2004 when the articles weren't under attack from member(s) of the LaRouche movement. The problem with these editors, assuming it's more than one person, is that they appear incapable of thinking independently about LaRouche. No matter the issue, no matter how terrible the sources they have to fall back on, they uniformly edit in a way that they think makes LaRouche look good. They remove material about the movement's violence that's sourced to The New York Times, but add material about how an associate of LaRouche's once said he was a wonderful economist, according to a Russian-language newspaper that no one can read. No one should be defending that kind of editing.

As for King, he has also been asked not to edit these articles anymore.

This post has been edited by Hell Freezes Over:

[Cla68]

And, Leatherstocking was just indefinitely blocked by Georgewilliamherbert. Oddly enough, GWH is not claiming that he is me. It appears to be case of living on the West Coast in a very similar way.

If there was any chance of LaRouche getting a fair shake on Wikipedia, I'd say that's now up in smoke. I normally would not be sympathetic to a LaRouche employee, if true, being blocked from editing LaRouche topics on Wikipedia, but SV and WillBeBack are not, in my opinion, making an honest effort to treat the LaRouche articles in a neutral manner.

Cla, you were strongly supportive of efforts to defend the Prem Rawat articles from cultist editing, but you take the opposite view on the LaRouche articles. Perhaps you could explain what the difference is.

The fact is that Leatherstocking repeatedly said he had no connection with the LaRouche movement, and had only "vaguely heard of them" when he joined WP, but was yesterday found to have been editing all along from an IP address assigned to a company that's owned by the movement.

Will and I want to produce accurate, well-written articles about LaRouche, but there's barely been a day since 2004 when the articles weren't under attack from member(s) of the LaRouche movement. The problem with these editors, assuming it's more than one person, is that they appear incapable of thinking independently about LaRouche. No matter the issue, no matter how terrible the sources they have to fall back on, they uniformly edit in a way that they think makes LaRouche look good. They remove material about the movement's violence that's sourced to The New York Times, but add material about how an associate of LaRouche's once said he was a wonderful economist, according to a Russian-language newspaper that no one can read. No one should be defending that kind of editing.

As for King, he has also been asked not to edit these articles anymore.

Well, for one thing, why have you and Will been so eager to ban pro-LaRouche editors, but so reluctant to ban Chip Berlet and Dennis King, who are just as entrenched in their POV as the pro-LaRouche editors? If you and Will really were trying to produce "fair" articles, how did you overlook what those two editors were doing? I give Chip and Dennis credit for being open about their POV and agenda, but they apparently could be open about it because they feared no sanction for doing so.

The ArbCom ruling appears to allow editors to be banned if they are associated with LaRouche. Thus, someone like Leatherstocking would have no choice but to lie about their affiliation. To do otherwise would have meant an instant ban. Now, if these bans were being handed out fairly, to both sides, then there wouldn't be a problem. But, that's not the case, is it?

By the way, how was Dennis King notified that he shouldn't edit the LaRouche topics anymore? I checked his user talk page, expecting to see a comment from you under my comment, but I don't see anything. From what I've been taught and have seen, formal corrective action is really only enforceable if it is written and documented, such as by a post on an editor's user talk page.

This post has been edited by Cla68:

[Hell Freezes Over]

Well, for one thing, why have you and Will been so eager to ban pro-LaRouche editors, but so reluctant to ban Chip Berlet and Dennis King, who are just as entrenched in their POV as the pro-LaRouche editors? If you and Will really were trying to produce "fair" articles, how did you overlook what those two editors were doing? I give Chip and Dennis credit for being open about their POV and agenda, but they apparently could be open about it because they feared no sanction for doing so.

The ArbCom ruling appears to allow editors to be banned if they are associated with LaRouche. Thus, someone like Leatherstocking would have no choice but to lie about their affiliation. To do otherwise would have meant an instant ban. Now, if these bans were being handed out fairly, to both sides, then there wouldn't be a problem. But, that's not the case, is it?

You didn't really answer the question. Why are you strongly opposed to cultist editing on Prem Rawat, but not strongly opposed to it on the LaRouche articles?

The LaRouche accounts have been banned because they're believed to be controlled by one person, Herschelkrustofksy, who is a staff member of this website. I don't know whether Leatherstocking was also HK. I do know that his IP address was owned by American System Publications, the LaRouche company in Los Angeles that HK said he worked for, under the name he gave for himself, which has been discussed here before. I won't repeat the name in case he'd prefer it wasn't posted, and I'm not even sure it really is him, but that person does work for American System Publications in Los Angeles. So if HK didn't operate the Leatherstocking account himself, he surely knows who did.

As for King and Berlet, both are published experts on LaRouche. This website normally deplores when published experts are run off Wikipedia, yet here you are supporting it. A lot of your strongly entrenched positions seem to be overturned when it comes to LaRouche, presumably in part because a LaRouche movement member runs this site, and in part because it's a way of taking a dig at me. But I hope you'll do your best to stand back and look at the situation clearly, ignoring who you like and don't like.

Berlet hasn't edited [[Lyndon LaRouche]] since 2007, and is barely used as a source, if at all. In three years, he only made 192 edits to it, and I doubt many have survived. King has edited it more recently, but his edits aren't sticking, and he's been asked by e-mail more than once to stop editing it, in his own interests as much as for any other reason. He is also barely used as a source in the article. It's disgraceful that two experts on LaRouche, people the high-quality mainstream media use as sources, have been so discouraged or prevented from editing those articles, assisted by personal attacks posted against them here by the movement -- including BLP attack pages created by Herschelkrustofksy -- but that's Wikipedia for you.

In total, the accounts known to be associated with LaRouche have made around 1200 edits to the article, more than anyone else. If you want to complain about inappropriate editing, please address your complaints in the first instance to the man who controlled all or most of these accounts, Herschelkrustofsky.

[Kelly Martin]

This website normally deplores when published experts are run off Wikipedia, yet here you are supporting it. A lot of your strongly entrenched positions seem to be overturned when it comes to LaRouche, presumably in part because a LaRouche movement member runs this site, and in part because it's a way of taking a dig at me.

Oh, how lame. I think you'll find, m'dear, that sympathy for LaRouche on Wikipedia Review starts and ends with HK. There is no "party line" here in favor of LaRouche, no matter how much you want to believe there is.

That said, I don't think you'll find much objection here at WR to the notion that ideological zealots posing as experts should be run off Wikipedia at the first opportunity.

[Lar]

This website normally deplores when published experts are run off Wikipedia, yet here you are supporting it. A lot of your strongly entrenched positions seem to be overturned when it comes to LaRouche, presumably in part because a LaRouche movement member runs this site, and in part because it's a way of taking a dig at me.

Oh, how lame. I think you'll find, m'dear, that sympathy for LaRouche on Wikipedia Review starts and ends with HK. There is no "party line" here in favor of LaRouche, no matter how much you want to believe there is.

That said, I don't think you'll find much objection here at WR to the notion that ideological zealots posing as experts should be run off Wikipedia at the first opportunity.

I sort of expected you to talk about House POV here. It's a very good explanation for what's being asked, isn't it?

[Kelly Martin]

I sort of expected you to talk about House POV here. It's a very good explanation for what's being asked, isn't it?

Oh, it's very obvious that Wikipedia's house point of view incorporates a very strong antipathy toward LaRouche. This is so frankly obvious that I don't know of a way to say it that isn't insulting to the reader; it's sorta like going up to someone and saying, "You did know that the sky is blue, didn't you?"

I would say that the way this is being handled on Wikipedia makes a mockery of "the neutral point of view" except that it's my considered belief that there is no such thing as "the neutral point of view", and it's impossible to make a mockery of something which does not exist. I suppose you can mock those who persist in believing in things that don't exist, but that's generally considered rude.

[Happy drinker]

it's my considered belief that there is no such thing as "the neutral point of view"

No, I don't think any one point of view can be described as the NPOV. All we have to do is follow the rules. An article should report all points of view that are given in credible, verifiable sources, and not give excessive weight to fringe minority views.

[gomi]

it's my considered belief that there is no such thing as "the neutral point of view"

No, I don't think any one point of view can be described as the NPOV. All we have to do is follow the rules. An article should report all points of view that are given in credible, verifiable sources, and not give excessive weight to fringe minority views.

Fer crissake, we have to explain this to every Wikipidiot newbie who comes along. You CANNOT follow the rules!!! The rules are self-contradictory, and when they aren't they are honoured more in the breach than the observance. Wikipedia wouldn't know a "reliable source" if one bit their collective ass. Wikipedia calls everything from Op-Ed pieces in partisan newsletters to the PETA website a "reliable source". Wikipedia doesn't weight The New York Times any differently that your college newspaper. And no one on Wikipedia can identify a "fringe view" except as a view that the dominant administrators disagree with. For example, SlimVirgin's excessive and partisan coverage of "Animal Rights" is, by any normal measure, a fringe topic, just as poorly accepted by the general public as Scientology and Lyndon LaRouche, yet it is relentlessly protected.

Get a grip. NPOV is a joke. An encyclopedia should strive for what might be called "academic distance". Wikipedia never will, and will always remain an occasional embarrassment and frequent menace.

[everyking]

For example, SlimVirgin's excessive and partisan coverage of "Animal Rights" is, by any normal measure, a fringe topic, just as poorly accepted by the general public as Scientology and Lyndon LaRouche, yet it is relentlessly protected.

Animal rights is certainly a minority viewpoint, but I wouldn't call it fringe. I'm also unconvinced by the claims that the LaRouche articles are severely slanted against him. Could someone point to specific examples? I have long favored letting LaRouchites have a voice with regard to those articles; I've been saying that for five years. And I think it's wrong for the ArbCom to outlaw a specific POV. But at the same time, I can't see that the content is really all that bad.

[Milton Roe]

For example, SlimVirgin's excessive and partisan coverage of "Animal Rights" is, by any normal measure, a fringe topic, just as poorly accepted by the general public as Scientology and Lyndon LaRouche, yet it is relentlessly protected.

Animal rights is certainly a minority viewpoint, but I wouldn't call it fringe. I'm also unconvinced by the claims that the LaRouche articles are severely slanted against him. Could someone point to specific examples? I have long favored letting LaRouchites have a voice with regard to those articles; I've been saying that for five years. And I think it's wrong for the ArbCom to outlaw a specific POV. But at the same time, I can't see that the content is really all that bad.

Well, just reading the LaRouche bio, there are two paragraphs about dead people which don't belong there: Jeremiah Duggan and Kenneth Kronberg.

According to the respective bios of these people and the newspaper articles, Duggan, an English student aged 22, ran into a German highway in the dark small hours of the morning, was struck by a car, then got up and ran down the side of the road for a kilometer or so, before again verging into traffic and being hit by several more. The drivers of the cars report these actions.

As for Kronberg, a 58 year-old printer, he jumped off a bridge into traffic near Stirling, VA. Witnesses reported it as an apparent suicide and it was so-ruled. As for the Duggan case, he was apparently terrified of something-or-other (his actions speak for themselves, if he did what the reports say), but it is impossible to say of what he was terrified, or with what degree of rationality.

What do these deaths have in common? Why, the respective families blame LaRouche for them! Although these families have not, in each case, been able to convince either criminal courts that there was a crime, or civil counts that there was any liability from any third party (let alone LaRouche personally). What we do have, instead, is newspapers reporting accusations from the families, that are then synthesized (yes, this is the correct word) and written down by editors on Wikipedia. In other words, our "reliable sources" are (at best) reliably reporting hearsay and conspiracy theorizing, which is then edited into an inappropriate place (a BLP) of a pariah-figure, in our favorite encyclopedia of defamation. Nice. All helped along by people we know:

In October 2008, Molly Kronberg joined Erica Duggan, the mother of Jeremiah Duggan, and a number of former LaRouche members, cult experts, social scientist Chip Berlet, and Members of Parliament from Germany and the United Kingdom in a conference in Berlin, Germany raising the question whether the LaRouche movement were a danger to society.

Ah, Chip Berlet. Hmmm. And they "raised a question." That's notable. Such stuff might arguably have been inserted into a WP article about the LaRouche movement but even there, without any legal decissions of criminality or liability, it's pretty much conspiracy-theorizing. Pretty marginally encyclopedic, in other words. But how the *&^% does it belong in the biography of a living man, when no criminal charges have been brought, and no civil trial has even begun (let alone reached a finding)?? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/huh.gif)

The farther you go into the details, BTW, the more murky they get. The papers report Duggan's girlfiend said he called her the night of his death to say that "the government" was experimenting on people with electric shocks and "magnetic waves" and that he thought he himself (Duggan) might have a device implanted in him. To me, that sounds like a raving paranoid, and the "government" reference is not exactly damning of LaRouche. But all I have to go on is the papers. And the news accounts are all Wikipedia has to go on also, although you won't find the above story, synthesized exactly as I have done it. WP prefers to synthesize it another way-- you can't get away from SOME synthesis.

If you read the news accounts, you will find that Duggan's mother thinks he was beaten to death by the LaRouchites and his body thrown into traffic to make it look like an accident. This, due to the lack of blood, hair, and fibers on cars which Duggan's mother thinks should be there, and ignoring completely the testimony of the four drivers who actually hit the man-- saw him running along for quite a ways (getting along fairly spritely for a corpse), and saw the fear on his face. Wikipedia, however, will not tell you the details of the mother's theory, possibly because it sounds too gonzo. The WP account more or less has Duggan persecuted in the LaRouche movement because he was Jewish, and his WP-reported death ends up looking like something out of Marathon Man, except he doesn't make it. Think of LaRouche as played by Laurence Olivier, in the role of Nazi dentist. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

Much the same innuendo happens with Kronberg, BTW. As I read it, Kronberg's paper-and-ink printshop had been doing LaRouche pamphets long into the home laser-printer age. This is sort of like making buggy-whips for a nut. In the end, LaRouche and his evil minions decided they didn't need buggy-whips and cut faithful follower Kronberg off. Perhaps, at the end, they owed him money; how should I know? Does it matter? If they did, the man had better legal avenues to recover it than jumping off a bridge into traffic.

The wife, like Duggan's mother, does not blame herself or even the dead man. No, she needs a witch. And she has one. There is a LaRouche publication which is connected to LaRouche, which mentions Baby Boomers, suicide, and The Print Shop (taken to refer specifically to Kronberg's) in the same paragraph. So there you are. Is it not clear who killed Kronberg? Yes! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif) LaRouche. And should we not mention this in LaRouche's bio? Sure. Why not?

Look, readers of WR know how little I regard LaRouche. In all the time I'm encountered his ideas I've only found one I agree with (having to do with DDT and mosquitos) and this one isn't even original with LaRouche. Almost to a one, I judge the man's ideas are out of contact with reality.

However, I can still recognize a smear-job on a WP BLP when I see one, even for somebody like LaRouche.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Well, just reading the LaRouche bio, there are two paragraphs about dead people which don't belong there: Jeremiah Duggan and Kenneth Kronberg.

They had been removed for some months, but SV restored them in August during her marathon session, upwards of 200 edits.

What do these deaths have in common? Why, the respective families blame LaRouche for them!

That was not originally the case. The Duggan family did not originally blame LaRouche, but they were contacted by some of LaRouche's opponents and persuaded that LaRouche was at fault.

In other words, our "reliable sources" are (at best) reliably reporting hearsay and conspiracy theorizing, which is then edited into an inappropriate place (a BLP) of a pariah-figure, in our favorite encyclopedia of defamation. Nice. All helped along by people we know:

In October 2008, Molly Kronberg joined Erica Duggan, the mother of Jeremiah Duggan, and a number of former LaRouche members, cult experts, social scientist Chip Berlet, and Members of Parliament from Germany and the United Kingdom in a conference in Berlin, Germany raising the question whether the LaRouche movement were a danger to society.

Ah, Chip Berlet. Hmmm. And they "raised a question." That's notable.

A few other connections of note:
*Will Beback has had off-Wiki dealings with Molly Kronberg. If you take a look at this image, you see that the author is listed as "Created on behalf of Marielle Kronberg, uploaded on her behalf." But if you dig just a little deeper and look at the file history, this creating and uploading was done by WB.
*Based on geolocation (from some edits made she made when not logged in,) Exceptional Well-Honed Linguistic Analytic Skills™, and the editor's habit of adding OR which could only come from personal experience, it is likely that Hexham (T-C-L-K-R-D) is Molly Kronberg.
*Dennis King's website has an article entitled SHOCKER: LaRouche and the art of inducing suicide! This provides yet another example of King's journalistic flair, and helps explain why SV is shying away from him now in favor of surrogate slanderers like Antony Lerman (although WB still defends King to the bitter end as the consummate Reliable Sourceâ„¢.)