Has anyone else been following this?

Her BLP got very little attention, until the week of 4 June--shortly after she made her comments about Israelis "going back to where they came from". Just in the week of 4 June, her BLP was edited more than 400 times. During that period, it went from 8,346 bytes to about 34,000 bytes.

And oh, BTW, until June 14, David Nesenoff did not have any significance on Wikipedia. Now, he has a 27k-byte BLP. All because of the video he posted of Thomas. Since when does that rabbi suddenly deserve a BLP?

The Nesenoff BLP is almost entirely the product of an ARS member named KeptSouth (T-C-L-K-R-D) . Look thru his contributions. They have a remarkable consistency. He only messes with articles about right-wing pundits, Sarah Palin, IBM and the Holocaust, assorted Muslim terrorist activities, and that Gaza flotilla clash business. And oh yeah, Helen Thomas's BLP.

Who says Wikipedia has a purely "left wing bias"? Here's a dedicated editor who is apparently pushing a classic neocon teabag evangelical-Christian pro-Israel POV, however carefully. And nobody on WP says "boo" to him.

(Wanna see some rather disturbing stuff? Read the comments below this article. Then have a look at Nesenoff's website.)

Somebody has to say this, and I've said it before, so here it is again.

Wikipedia has a pro-Jewish POV. Not completely, but the bias is palpable. They're usually fairly leftish because usually so are the Jews. But when it involves Israel, the viewpoint swings "right" as in "shoot em all, and let YHWH sort em out". And of course, due to the Christian Fundie evangelical Zionist-supporters, who are "rightwing" Republicans who are trying to bring the end of the world in, a little faster. Their only point of contact with Jewish-influenced politics (which otherwise they fight ferociously in the form of the ACLU) is Israel. Otherwise they have NOTHING in common. Zip.

The "neocons" were mostly a bunch of pro-Israel Jewish persons like Paul Wolfowitz, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, etc. They are "conservatives" only in being in favor of a powerful US military to kick ass against the enemies of Israel (see the second Iraq war, and basically war with anybody Muslim). Otherwise, they really aren't "conservative" at all. See above about the only point of common interest with the Right. The "neocons" have no domestic policy for a very good reason, because if they did, they'd reveal that it's all Leftist. Since they are, after all, Jewish.

Okay, I said it. Call me a Nazi for it if you like, but it's all true.

More Nutzi than Nazi, I guess.

I've never seen anything remotely Leftist or Liberal about Wikipedia.

Jon

Oh, come on. Take any issue that divides the Right from the Left in American politics, and take a look at the coverage of it in WP, and see which side and which viewpoint gets the crap kicked out of them, ala Global Warming.

I guess I judge Liberalism more by the character of a person's conduct than the prestidigitation of their play-acting. Words that come off Wikipediot fingertips are as φlakey in the political sphere as all their other pseudo-values. Full of zound and furries, nothing more.

Jon

That various editors perceive WP as either liberal or conservative doesn't really say very much about WP, per the hostile media phenomenon.

The pro-Israel editors do often seem a bit better organized and set up to take advantage of WP policy, but WP's overall bias is likely to be somewhat to the center, as the regular complaints that WP is either rightist or leftist indicate it does not go far enough to one side of the spectrum or the other for either side to perceive it as "fair" ("fair" meaning conforming to their biased perceptions). I'm inclined to agree that WP overall tends to lean slightly left of center, though not problematically so, but that's my own opinion, obviously colored by my personal biases.

Oh, you're talking about classic John Stewart Mill classic "liberalism". The meta-position. Today we call that "libertarianism". It really has nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi style liberalism.

You can't possibly believe that selfish libertarians have any moral high ground. I'll hazard the always risky interpretation of Jon and say I don't think that is what he meant at all. Maybe more like inclusive, generous, neighborly and open hearted values. The liberalism that Garrison Keillor has been talking about for the last few years.

What makes you think you are a leftist? Israel had a lot of support from the political left in America, when there was still a political left, particularly from the labor unions. Now there is only the New Left, which is as much Leftist as as New Democrats are Democrats. The New Left has even pretty much abandoned its support of the Labor movement. Some bunch of leftists.

The reason that Israel exists is because during and after WW2 Jews had no other place to escape. When the war ended, the Jews that tried to return to Poland faced new pogroms, and the Jews in Germany, and elsewhere, were in displaced persons camps. If Western Europe and the USA had made a better effort to settle those people, very few of them would have gone to Palestine, there would be no state of Israel, and the whole mess that now exists between Jews and Palestinians would not have happened.

Well, there are selfish people, and then there are generous people. And then there are the third sort, typified by what will happen when the Clintons get to the Pearly Gates and St. Peter says: "No, no, no. You get in here by giving away your OWN money, not other people's."

The inclusive, generous, neighborly and open-hearted liberal-controlled congress gave itself a $4700 (house) and $5300 (senate) raises this year. At the same time social security COLAs are frozen because the economy is bad, don't you know. And medicare premiums are going up. (Congress doesn't have to worry about that, because they have their own medical insurance that never gets more expensive).

I'm not selfish. I just hate hypocrisy, and I do have some concern for justice as well as mercy. Mercy should come first, and justice second. But you can't just leave justice out.

...which in turn has nothing to do with traditional Democratic Party liberalism. Nancy Pelosi subscribes to the ideology of Wall Street harlotry.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he knew that — he was just being coy.

Card-carrying YDD (Yaller Dog Democrat) — never voted for a Republican in my life and never will. Texas was still a Democrat State when I left it — I must have cut the collective IQ in half when I did. And most of my time in college was under the gov'ship of Bill Milliken, a Republican who was Green before Green was cool — in GOP eyes today he'd look like a pea in a pod with Malcolm X for all the diff they can see.

The first wiki-politics I ever encountered happened by accident when I was trying to pin down a link to the friend of Charles Sanders Peirce whose name was W. Garrison and who edited The Nation. The YRPs (Young Republican Phrøøtcakes) I ran into on that little excursion told me all I ever needed to know about Wikipediot Politick.

And the soi-disant "liberals" are like all the other pisants in Wikiputia — utterly pseud in the link between their words and their deeds.

Jon

I don't know how Global Warming is regarded by the Left and the Right in the US. No doubt the US is different from the rest of the world. In general it is not a left-right issue in most countries. I know left and right wingers on both sides. For example some right-wingers regard it as a hoax to try to interfere with capitalism; some left-wingers regard it as a hoax to try to interfere with the economic development of third-world countries.

There were many attempts such as building a Jewish homeland in Uganda, Madagascar and north-west Australia, for example, before during and after the second world war, but all these failed because 1) the colonial governments realized they could no longer keep their territorial domains under direct control 2) many Jews simply didn't want to settle anywhere else unless it was near the 'Holy land'. Theodor Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism believed that the resettlement of Jews to anywhere but the Palestine would simply be a temporary solution.

What does the "teabag" part of that sentence mean or imply? It's a genuine question, my avatar aside!

The modern Zionist movement was founded in 1897 (First Zionist Congress), and by the eve of WW2 they had accomplished very little. If a better attempt had been made to resettle the Jews who were in displaced persons camps into communities in Western Europe and North America few of those refugees would have gone to Palestine, and history would be different.

Apparently just a comment about Tea Party support of Israel.

There are some of members of this list who hold New Left ideas in their inventory of preconceptions, and think that makes them Leftists. So far all that has actually been accomplished by the New Left was achieved in the 1960s, when their flag burning and draft card burning succeeded in destroying the credibility of the the entire Left with virtually all Americans.

The Brits did not set up Israel out of benevolence toward the Jews (see Sykes–Picot Agreement in order to understand the context for the Balfour Declaration.) It is also untrue that Palestine was the only available spot to relocate European Jews. I don't recall the Reliable Source™ for this, but I believe that a number of nations, in particular Peru, offered to donate land for this purpose, but the Brits quashed the suggestion. The last sentence in Kwork's paragraph is undoubtedly true.

Yeah, because Nixon had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam all along.

Go back to yer Saturday Morning Cartoons and your Uh, Nintendo Consequences.

Jon

It is simply misleading. The Tea Party phenomenon is an unfocussed, bi-partisan, diverse grouping of people who are reacting for the most part to the bail-out, but are generally politically naive and subject to manipulation by all sorts of demagoguery. Despite all that, I think it is for the most part a healthy indication that the American population is emerging from years of apolitical complacency and indifference.

Strong agreement here. There was a strong element of agent-provocateurism involved. Just check to see where the Ford Foundation money went [<cough> Mark Rudd, Chip Berlet].

New Left flag burning made it easy to Nixon to wrap himself in the flag, and ever since for the political Right to dismiss the Left as unpatriotic. New Left fools destroyed the entire Left in America.

Youths of every age are naive in every Age, and all us old flower children were not a bit diff in that. Until just recently, I thought we took the cake for reigning out the left, but now a new contender for naivete has glued its eyes on the lies, utterly, hypnautically, paraditzaically paralyzed.

Still, all and all, age is a vertical dimension that is mostly orthogonal to the political orthodoxies of left and right. The ethics of protest, largely apocryphal symbolics aside, is not what dismissions the protesters — that cannot happen without millions and millions of big bucks being spent every year on keeping on keeping the lies of popular hystery alive.

Thanks for proving those PR bucks well spent

Jon Awbrey

There may have been a very few countries that would have allowed in a large number of Jews, but few of those were more palatable choices than Palestine. The living conditions faced by those new Jewish arrivals in Palestine was harsh. It was not a destination that many European Jewish refugees chose with enthusiasm. They would, in most cases have preferred to stay in Europe, or go to North America. In any case, pretty much the only organization with the ability to help those Jews, in displaced persons camps, get anywhere was the Jewish Agency, and they existed only to get Jews to Palestine. If other opportunities were offered those Jews, the Jewish population in Palestine would probably have stayed as tiny as it was before the war, and there would now be no state of Israel.

Too complicated, Hersch. The Ford Foundation has been paying off their bad conscience in re Henry Ford's newspaper's editorials against the Jews in the 1920's. This has been going for years and years and years and long preceeds Berlet, who is simply the latest recipient of part of this general grant fund. If their politics happens to be leftist, that's merely a side effect. Anybody who labels anything to the right of them as "fascist neoantisemitism" is now eligible for a Ford Foundation grant.

The apology money has been flowing for years. As the ADL says:



Not that there's anything wrong with doing this, but the picture is a litte less complex than Ford Motor Company now being part of some vast conspiracy involving the Left per se. For example, here's Bruce Wilson managing to connect Henry Ford to some antisemitic Manga Comics of the 21st century. Wilson hasn't been paid off, and is jealous. Chip Berlet used to do this kind of thing before the Ford Foundation paid him a few hundred thousand to shut the hell up. Yes, the LaRouchites have noticed that Berlet gets a lot of money from Ford, but the obvious has escaped them.

Now, perhaps you can explain about the Mark Rudd comment. Yeah, he's Jewish (as Berlet is not!), but it's Berlet that was torturing the Ford Co. about antisemitism, not Rudd. So has Ford given Rudd any money? Cite, please?

Funny, but the Wikipedia article about the soul left out a religion in its overview of different theological considerations. Can you guess which one? Hint: it begins with a J.

Well isn't that impressive. Jon starts with a little confession, continues with some Post Modernist bullshit (anyone here who wants to write their very own Post Modernist bullshit might find the Postmodernism Generator a help http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ ), and ends by calling me a fool - as though I care what he thinks about me.

The problem with the New Left is that it was a bunch of college graduates, who thought they were Leftists, but who excluded workers because they look down people who do hard work for a living as being dopes. Now that their 1960s party is over, many of these halfwits currently waste their time writing Post Modernist bullshit, as seen in Jon's fine example above.

So, leaving out the Post Modernist crap, and the insults, what Jon's message consists of is 1.he enjoys calling himself a Leftist, even thought he shows no discernible Leftist content, 2.he had a great time of it getting laid a lot, smoking grass, dropping acid, and burning the flag, and 3.anyone who wants to complain about the mess he, and the rest of the New Left, left behind can just fuck off.

Enjoy your bubble …

Jon

Jain?

Jon

And speaking of Jain, here is a Jain temple open for worship.

Try Nefesh.

There is an external link to the Chabad site. Isn't that enough?

I find your conspiracy theory less plausible than mine. Rather than trying to atone for past sins, or paying protection money to the ADL, I think that the Ford Foundation is simply doing what all such tax-exempt funds do. These agencies are the way that rich folks shape politics and culture to their liking, and get the average guy to pay for it. We would be better off with no tax-exempt foundations.

No Guilt, All Gilt.

Jon

I disagree. I would say that the snake oil that we boomers bought was far more potent than that swallowed by previous and subsequent de-generations. Can you say "paradigm shift"?

After my time. People didn't start saying “paradigm shift” until I dropped out of dropping out and went back to grad school, and even then it was only in psych circles, and certainly not in math orbits, that I heard anybody talk that way.

Jon

That means you're either a) too old for the internet, or b) too lacking in self-involved irony for it.

A lot of people deprecate the catch-phrase, "paradigm shift" but it occurs to me that it's linked to the demise of some singular "mad belief" that has been mentioned elsewhere in these pages.

Whenever belief systems evolve a notch, the derivative practices must also change accordingly.

There was the New Left and the New Age. Probably not very much has shifted. But there was an attempt to add some things that were thought to be new (and therefore assumed good), and some things were disparaged that were thought to be old (and therefore assumed bad). The intentions were good, but there were unintended consequences, and frequently disparagement of those who refused to respond to their beloved vision for new world.

In my view, both the New Left and the New Age were rather elitist and, when they discovered that the workers were not inclined to respond to the ideas they were offering, they they frequently did not deal with that well. Sometimes there were attempts to close the gap, but often they just got sore about rejection.

By comparison, what I find most interesting about Saul Alensky (who was part of the Left before it became 'new') is that he made whole point of his work helping working class and poor communities through organizing. He spoke to them in terms of goals they wanted and understood. Hint: insulting the people who most need help, by burning the symbols that are of high value to them, is not productive.

I generally agree with this, but then WikiCulture burns up a lot of people.

I love these dialogues between BTDT and WETBOPTVG‡

Jon

‡ Wasn't Ever There But Once Played The Video Game

While I agree with much of what you say, I must quarrel with the remainder. It's not just a question of "symbols"; what made the New Left/New Age stuff so destructive was that it was actually a rejection of the most durable achievements of mankind, a misanthropic dismissal of classical science and art, combined with an embrace of a purported Noble Savagery (as always, I link to a WP article with misgivings, because it misleads as much as it informs.) Nor do I regard Saul Alinsky as any sort of respectable figure in all this; while I think that some people on the Left may have been very sincere (just like some people on the Right!), their ideology has produced little genuine progress for humanity. The most tangible benefits to humanity at large came from the optimistic ideas of the Renaissance, which found their fruition in the American Revolution, a struggle which was renewed periodically as under Abe Lincoln and FDR. But the countercultural types scorned it and misrepresented it with great ignorance and arrogance, under the tutelage of Charles A. Beard and his ilk.

I was almost tempted to e-gage in further Confessions, but we're way off topic already, and you know we don't allow that around here.

Jon

I don't know why you guys keep arguing over different schools of political thought, when one of the greatest socio-political thinkers of all time has already weighed in on everything you'd ever need to know!

He's right though I doubt he understands why. The principal difference is that "anarchism" believes in planning and deliberate organization for the common good albeit not by the government. Objectivism only believes in self-interest or more plainly selfishness. This is not pursued through planning nor the requisite discussion but through unimpeded market transactions which Wale's project simulates through the invisible hand of instantaneous unrestricted atomized edits. He makes this clear when he also embraces Hayek. That WP has to resort to "consensus" and discussions is an admission that invisible hand can't do the job.

Good to see a recent posting in which Wales continues to assert Randoid beliefs. So much for The African Girl, nurses or charity as anything but a shell game.





You're right. I could however live without you encouraging a gratuitous attack on Jon by someone not capable of understanding him merely to permit you to hang out a sentence or two about ethics.

Your "analysis" of the New Left is the lamest thing I've heard in a while. According to you the SDS ruined the good name of the CPUSA? Lumping in "New Age" with "New Left" is juvenile. Why not add in "New Labour" too? But I don't want a web 2.0 discussion on politics with people who don't know what they are talking about. Mostly I want to check your whining about Jon.

And remember — “Kwork” is “Krowk” spieled bakweirds …

Jon

Then you know that there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

I was guessing that maybe he spent his formative years behind the Iron Curtain, or maybe Cuba, absorbing all his political opinions from Paul Harvey on RFE or Radio Liberty.

Page 2 …

Jon

Well, actually, writing songs like that is the best cure I know of.

With slight hope towards moving back on-topic, I present King Abdullah's letter to the American people.