Joined: Nov 26, 2003
Posts: 1652
Location: Australia
Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 4:41 pm Post subject: wikipedia is a good source for info ((( WAKE UP MAN )))
quote="Wing-Zero"]The only one that I really care to get into right now.
rath wrote:
1941: Penicillin production starts
Penicillin, extracted and refined by a team led by Howard Florey, was trialled successfully on humans, and went into production in time to aid casualties of World War II.
Your Aussies failed to successfully treat any human subject due to the lack of penicillin. They DID however prove it to be safe and effective on mice.
They also had no hand in producing it in time for WW2, those credits would go to the Northern Regional Research Labratory in Illinois.
The only one that I really care to get into right now.
rath wrote:
1941: Penicillin production starts
Penicillin, extracted and refined by a team led by Howard Florey, was trialled successfully on humans, and went into production in time to aid casualties of World War II.
Your Aussies failed to successfully treat any human subject due to the lack of penicillin. They DID however prove it to be safe and effective on mice.
They also had no hand in producing it in time for WW2, those credits would go to the Northern Regional Research Labratory in Illinois.
nice try but your dead wrong mate & you really used Wikipedia .............
are you crapping me wing_zero, useing wikipedia to back up your miss placed version of history..... .......... now thats just as bad as useing google to prove you understand science.
lashmar wrote:
bull **it
Aquarian wrote:
lashmar wrote:
bull **it
x2
Wing-Zero wrote:
rath wrote:
Wing-Zero wrote:
The only one that I really care to get into right now.
rath wrote:
1941: Penicillin production starts
Penicillin, extracted and refined by a team led by Howard Florey, was trialled successfully on humans, and went into production in time to aid casualties of World War II.
Your Aussies failed to successfully treat any human subject due to the lack of penicillin. They DID however prove it to be safe and effective on mice.
They also had no hand in producing it in time for WW2, those credits would go to the Northern Regional Research Labratory in Illinois.
nice try but your dead wrong mate & you really used Wikipedia .............
are you crapping me wing_zero, useing wikipedia to back up your miss placed version of history..... .......... now thats just as bad as useing google to prove you understand science.
Cute, except if you actually took the time to use logic you'd see that wikipedia is a good source for info when it has sources to back it up.
Get your eyes checked and get back to me.
rath wrote:
Wing-Zero wrote:
rath wrote:
Wing-Zero wrote:
The only one that I really care to get into right now.
rath wrote:
1941: Penicillin production starts
Penicillin, extracted and refined by a team led by Howard Florey, was trialled successfully on humans, and went into production in time to aid casualties of World War II.
Your Aussies failed to successfully treat any human subject due to the lack of penicillin. They DID however prove it to be safe and effective on mice.
They also had no hand in producing it in time for WW2, those credits would go to the Northern Regional Research Labratory in Illinois.
nice try but your dead wrong mate & you really used Wikipedia .............
are you crapping me wing_zero, useing wikipedia to back up your miss placed version of history..... .......... now thats just as bad as useing google to prove you understand science.
Cute, except if you actually took the time to use logic you'd see that wikipedia is a good source for info when it has sources to back it up.
Get your eyes checked and get back to me.
Get back to you .............. So Be It.
The Truths and Lies of WikiWorld
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2007
Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown as the online phenomenon that apparently allows the truth to be managed democratically; but over the past year it has also been exposed as a real-life "Ministry of Truth".
Worse: people have been arrested and terrorised due to incorrect information being posted on this free Internet encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia watching On 15 December 2005, various media sources reported that the open-access encyclopaedia Wikipedia was about as accurate as the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least for science-based articles.
This was the result of a study by the journal Nature, which chose scientific articles from both encyclopaedias across a wide range of topics and
sent them for peer review.
The reviewers found just eight serious errors. Of those, four
came from each site.
They also found a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading
statements.
All told, there were 123 such problems with B r i t a n n i c a and 162 with
Wikipedia. That in itself is a staggering conclusion, which translates as averaging out to 2.92 mistakes per article for B r i t a n n i c a and 3.86 for Wikipedia, or three versus four mistakes.
That, of course, is not "as accurate" as the newspapers reported—thus showing misleading statements in the newspapers' headlines.
Still, is Wikipedia's score proof positive that the Internet is indeed more than just a bundle of conspiracy theory and pornography sites, and that the combined efforts of Internet users actually work to create a knowledge base? Perhaps. Wikipedia allows a n y o n e —a n y o n e—to go in and add, change or delete anything in the encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia is therefore an exercise in trust: it hopes that its users come there with the best of intentions.
The site is funded through the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and in 2006 had an estimated budget of "about a million dollars". It was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, the latter who left his co-creation behind in 2002 and stated in October 2006 that he was going to start a competitor that would allow for more peer-reviewed entries.
Trust cannot be guaranteed and hence, at best, Wikipedia comes with a few blemishes.
George W. Bush's biography was so frequently changed—often to include name calling and "personalised opinions" on his policies—that his and a small number of other entries had to be locked and thus only authorised users were allowed to edit them. Innocent enough; perhaps even funny.
But a more suspicious case occurred in late 2005 when, for four months, Wikipedia included an anonymously written article linking former journalist John Seigenthaler to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. His Wikipedia entry stated:
"For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John and his brother Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." And: "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet _Union_ in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."
None of this was true, or even alleged, outside of WikiWorld. Seigenthaler thought that at the age of 78 he was beyond surprise or hurt, but he had obviously not counted on Wikipedia.
Worse, his case exposed a further flaw, as Wikipedia's information feeds automatically into Reference.com and Answers.com, whose computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia without any checks, thus spreading the lies further onto other sites. In this instance, "trust" failed and perhaps we should not blame Wikipedia directly.
The free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is a democratically decided database that has been open to abuse, but the advent of WikiScanner has
uncovered a web of deceit and disinformation.
But the ominous sign here was that Wikipedia was slow to react.
Seigenthaler noticed that his "biography" was altered on 26 May
2005. On 29 May, one of the site's moderators edited it only by
correcting the misspelling of the word "early" but did not check the
other, much more serious, alterations. For four months, Wikipedia
depicted him as a suspected assassin before this mention was
erased from the website's history on 5 October—but it remained on
Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.
Daniel Brandt, a San Antonio–based activist who started the anti-
Wikipedia site Wikipedia Watch (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org)
in response to problems he had with his eponymous article, looked
up the IP address in Seigenthaler's article and found that it related to
Rush Delivery, a company in Nashville. On 9 December 2005, its
employee Brian Chase admitted that he had placed the false
information in Seigenthaler's Wikipedia biography.
it seemed, with the lesson learned that Wikipedia could be an excellent
tool to spread disinformation—a lesson few people realised at the time. And though Wikipedia should have reacted, it didn't.
Though Seigenthaler's case received much notoriety, his was definitely not the only case.
By December 2006, Brandt had listed several instances of erroneous entries as well as massive amounts of entries literally copied from copyright-protected material.
Faking it, It was in early 2007 that the WikiWorld was rocked when one of its
most prolific contributors and editors, "believed" by the site to be a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as being nothing more than a community college drop-out. The person at the centre of this controversy was "Essjay"—which begged the question as to why anyone in a position of authority should want or need to hide behind a pseudonym.
In truth, Essjay was Ryan Jordan, a 24- year-old from Kentucky with no
advanced degrees, who used texts such as Catholicism for D u m m i e s
to help him correct articles on the penitential rite and
transubstantiation.
Indeed, the problem began at the very beginning of Essjay's
career, when no one vetted his credentials and when his claim to
be a tenured professor of religion at a private university was
accepted.
He contributed to an estimated 20,000 Wikipedia entries, making up one per cent of the 1,675,000 articles that Wikipedia listed as being online.
Worse, however, was that Wikipedia staff recruited Essjay to work on the site's Arbitration Committee, which he chaired for two terms, thus granting him almost divine powers without anyone asking him any questions.
Fortunately Essjay was only a pretender, not a person intent on spreading disinformation...but he could have accomplished this easily. He was an important player in WikiWorld. The New Yorker, in its 31 July 2006 edition, ran an article on Essjay and his activities, which were then believed to
be genuine. By mid-January 2007, Essjay had posted his real name and
employment history on the related Wikia website.
However, it was Daniel Brandt who noticed this and made further enquiries.
He eventually contacted The New Yorker to say that Essjay's
original biographical information was fake.
On 26 February, The New Yorker made an online correction,
stating that Essjay "holds no advanced degrees" and "has never
taught".
But worst of all was probably this comment: "At the
time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay's real
name."
Following the revelation, Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales
asked Essjay to resign (in any business environment he would
have been fired), stating that "Wikipedia is built on (among other
things) twin pillars of trust and tolerance".
It was clear that one pillar had now totally collapsed.
But bizarrely, Wales further commented: "It is not good, obviously, but
the interesting thing is that Mr Jordan was an excellent editor, credentials or not. His work was extremely positive for Wikipedia."
We wonder how...The Wikipedia entry on the debacle at the
time read: "As a result of the controversy, Wikipedia users began a review of Essjay's previous edits and discovered evidence he had relied upon his fictional professorship to influence editorial consideration of edits he
made. '
People have gone through his edits and found places where he was basically
cashing in on his fake credentials to bolster his arguments,' said Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator and founder of
the Wikipedia community newspaper, The Wikipedia Signpost. 'Those will
get looked at again.'" The site continued: "In reaction to
the incident, Wales was reportedly considering a vetting process for all
persons who adjudicate on factual disputes.
Additionally, Wales said the site would soon develop a way to check
credentials of Wikipedia editors who claim to possess them. 'I don't think
this incident exposes any inherent weakness in Wikipedia, but it does
expose a weakness that we will be working to address,' Wales added."
Wales may of course change his opinion, but originally he said
he was not concerned with Essjay's invented persona: "I regard it
as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it." After
an outcry from Wikipedia users, Wales changed his view.
Larry Sanger, in his Citizendium Blog of 1 March, responded to
Wales's initial statement, stating: "There's something utterly
breathtaking, and ultimately tragic, about Jimmy telling The New
Y o r k e r that he doesn't have a problem with Essjay's lies, and by
essentially h o n o r i n g Essjay after his lies were exposed... Doesn't
Jimmy know that this has the potential to be even more damaging to
Wikipedia than the Seigenthaler situation, since it reflects d i r e c t l y o n
the judgment and values of the m a n a g e m e n t of Wikipedia?"
Wales meanwhile maintained that the service and its
community are built around a self-policing and "self-cleaning"
nature that is supposed to ensure its articles are accurate: the
"Wikipedia Police". But are they the "Thought Police" or people
who verify facts? Seigenthaler's entry suggests they are definitely
not the latter.
WikiWorld was rocked when one of its most prolific contributors
and editors... was exposed as being nothing more than a community college drop-out.
"Wikipedia Police"
Disgruntled people at odds with Wikipedia are numerous. The
"pseudophysicist" (to quote Wikipedia) Jack Sarfatti considers
himself to be a victim of the service and even considered
litigation at one point. He found that certain libellous information
had been posted about him. Of course, he, like anyone else, can
go in and alter that information, which is what he tried to do.
He tried posting at various times of the day, but each time, within
minutes, the changes were undone—suggesting that the
Wikipedia moderators were constantly monitoring certain pages.
When he dug further, he came to the conclusion that Wikipedia seemed to
be in the hands of a group of sceptical minds, intent on making sure there
were no mysteries and no conspiracies.
Indeed, when you consult a variety of subjects on Wikipedia, you will
notice a certain "mindset" that excludes certain opinions. Just two
examples... Paul Smith is an ardent sceptic of the Rennes-le-Château and Priory of Sion mysteries (which are at the core of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code) and is responsible for most of the Wikipedia entries on the subject.
Some of these entries are blatantly biased and others contain serious factual errors. In both instances, I adjusted the wording and removed the errors. At no point did this mean that the Priory was depicted as genuine—far from it.
In fact, I felt that an error-free posting would actually
bring enhanced value to the entry.
In this case, the entries remained up for a number of months, but then were returned to their negative, erroneous entries.
The "Wikipedia Police" should have seen that the new entry was less neutral and more biased than what was on there, but they did not revert to the previous version.
The question is: why prefer erroneous information over
more neutral wordings? No wonder that experts find numerous
errors in every article on Wikipedia...when Wikipedia seems to prefer to promote errors over factual statements.
I also tried to add further information about dissenting
theories on the Corpus Hermeticum, specifically the work of Leiden University professor Bruno Stricker, giving due reference to his name and publications (including his PhD thesis). In this instance, Wikipedia moderators removed the section themselves, stating that I needed to give "more sources"—though I had actually given more sources than most of the other statements that maintain the status quo in this entry, namely that the Corpus is a second- or third-century AD creation rather than a third-century BC codification, as Stricker (and others) argue.
Examples of such unprofessional editing, with a bias
towards maintaining the status quo and specifically
downplaying if not removing controversial information,
run into the hundreds & thousands.
Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet (http://www.prisonplanet.com)
has noted there is a concerted campaign to erase the 9/11
Truth Movement. Furthermore, pages which they and
like-minded individuals created, such as "List of
Republican sex scandals", "People questioning the 9/11
Commission Report" and "Movement to impeach
George W. Bush" were all deleted.
The first-mentioned page might indeed not be seen as important in an encyclopaedic environment, but the "wiki" (a page in the encyclopaedia) for
Dylan Avery, the producer of the most-watched documentary film
in Internet history, clearly merits a biographical page on an online
encyclopaedia.
Wikipedia, however, thought otherwise. These are just some of the examples that people have experienced with the "service". At best, it is clear that the moderators have never been trained or validated for their
credentials.
But Sarfatti has also drawn attention to the so-called
"Wikipedia arbitration", which Wales has seen as the "self-cleaning" and
the deus ex machina designed to reestablish Wikipedia's credibility—
even though he elected a college drop-out to preside over it.
Upset about his own case and unable to rectify the situation,
Sarfatti commented on a private email list: "They have set up a
Virtual Shadow Government in which they now have their own
courts to adjudicate 'litigation'." He made the point that the theory is that
whoever controls the Web controls the Earth—and there is indeed
that potential.
Perform a Google websearch and if Wikipedia has
a result on what you search for, the Wikipedia entry will come up
on top. So whatever you want to know, you will probably Google
it and find it in Wikipedia.
"Googlepedia" thus has a virtual monopoly on information and does indeed, as Sarfatti said, control the Web—and knowledge.
Googlepedia offers a one-stop shop for teachers and anyone
else who wants to find information.
Teachers have stated that this is exactly the case. What is in Wikipedia—and the opinions expressed therein—is almost directly passed on to students.
It begs the question as to why there is still a need for teachers, as
students are equally able to do a websearch......he came to the conclusion
that Wikipedia seemed to be in the hands of a group
of sceptical minds, intent on making sure there were no
mysteries and no conspiracies.
"Just conducting a routine Random Carbon-Footprint Test.
Could I see your last 12 months' utility bills, please?"
And students are more likely to check other hits, perhaps being
more realistic about the expectations of Wikipedia—which for
many teachers seems to have become gospel.
When lies cause detention So far, only a few egos seem to have been bruised. But Robert Fisk, in the British newspaper The Independent, reported on 21 April 2007 on the experience of Taner Akçam, a Turkish historian and writer. Akçam faces prosecution in Turkey for writing about
the Armenian genocide. However, due to the vandalising of Akçam's Wikipedia entry, which accused him of being a member of a terrorist group, he was detained by Canadian border police on 17 February 2007. This is acknowledged in the Wikipedia entry, which can now only be edited by registered users—though anyone can still register for free, and registration only leaves some trace of who made the entry, nothing more.
Taner Akçam wrote to Fisk, stating: "Additional to the criminal investigation (law 301) in Turkey, there is a hate campaign going on here in the USA, as a result of which I cannot travel internationally any more... My recent detention at the Montreal airport—apparently on the basis of anonymous insertions in my Wikipedia biography—signals a disturbing new phase in a Turkish campaign of intimidation that has intensified since the November 2006 publication of my book."
Fisk continued: "Akçam was released, but his reflections on this very disturbing incident are worth recording. 'It was unlikely, to say the least, that a Canadian immigration officer found out that I was coming to Montreal, took the sole initiative to research my identity on the internet, discovered the archived version of my Wikipedia biography,
printed it out on 16 February, and showed it to me—voilà!—as a result.'
"But this was not the end. Prior to his Canadian visit, two Turkish-American
websites had been hinting that Akçam's 'terrorist activities' should be of interest to American immigration authorities.
And sure enough, Akçam was detained yet again—for another
hour—by US Homeland Security officers at Montreal airport
before boarding his flight at Montreal for Minnesota two days later.
"On this occasion, he says that the American officer—US
Homeland Security operates at the Canadian airport—gave him a
warning: 'Mr Akçam, if you don't retain an attorney and correct
this issue, every entry and exit from the country is going to be
problematic. We recommend that you do not travel in the
meantime and that you try to get this information removed from
your customs dossier.'
"So let's get this clear," Fisk continued. "US and Canadian
officials now appear to be detaining the innocent on the grounds
of hate postings on the internet. And it is the innocent—guilty
until proved otherwise, I suppose—who must now pay lawyers to
protect them from Homeland Security and the internet.
But as Akçam says, there is nothing he can do," he concluded.
As the platform on which this false propaganda was offered,
Wikipedia should accept part of the blame.
WikiScanning revelations.
This has underlined some serious problems with the second pillar of WikiWorld: tolerance. But what about Sarfatti's Orwellian claims that Wikipedia is the Ministry of Truth—i.e., Lies? On 14 August 2007,
W i r e d reported that CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith had created the "Wikipedia Scanner", which "offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia
edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by
cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated
block of Internet IP addresses".
"I came up with the idea when I heard about Congressmen
getting caught for white-washing their Wikipedia pages," he says
on his website (http://virgil.gr/31.html). Griffith became very
intrigued when, on 17 November 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia
user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines.
Griffith traced those changes to an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. W i r e d concluded that when the new datamining
service was launched, it traced millions of Wikipedia entries to their sources,
and for the first time put "comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations". In short, Griffith proved Sarfatti and others' conspiracy theory.
Griffith has compiled lists of different corporations and government branches that have abused the "trust" of Wikipedia essentially to edit the truth out of existence, replacing it with a PRfriendly façade favourable not to the facts or any sense of neutrality but only to the interests of the parties concerned.
The WikiScanner page (see http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr) lists a few
"favourites" which include the CIA, the Vatican and the Church of Scientology. You might expect that the CIA would
make the biggest use of this tool, to spread propaganda, but such thinking
would be too primitive: a multibillion-dollar agency that has
existed for 60 years has better and less traceable methodologies at
its disposal.
Still, rather interesting and somewhat humorous is that, on the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a worker on the CIA network added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.
A warning on the profile of the anonymous editor read: "You have
recently vandalised a Wikipedia article, and you are now being
asked to stop this type of behaviour."
It seems that one CIA worker also tweaked the profile of Oprah Winfrey—an edit which hopefully occurred during a lunch break.
More interestingly, WikiScanner uncovered that the Vatican
edited entries about Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. The edit
removed links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged
that Mr Adams's fingerprints and handprints had been found on a
car used in 1971 in connection with a double murder.
The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit father Federico Lombardi, clarified on
Vatican Radio on 17 August 2007 that accusations saying that the
Due to the vandalising of Akçam's Wikipedia entry, which (falsely)
accused him of being a member of a terrorist group, he was detained
by Canadian border police on 17 February 2007.
Holy See manipulated the encyclopaedia intentionally "...lack all
seriousness and logic. It is absurd even to think that such an
initiative could have even been considered." Forced to explain
how it could have happened, he said that there are many
computers in the Vatican and that anyone could have access to
Wikipedia on any one of them.
Equally interesting is that a computer traced to American
Airlines (AA) was used to make a significant change about 9/11.
The original entry read: "Two American Airlines aircraft were
hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist
Attack: American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and
American Airlines Flight 11 (a Boeing 767)"—to which an AA
employee added (somewhat ungrammatically): "Although these
flights were daily departures before and a month after September
11, 2001. Neither flight 11 nor 77 were scheduled on September
11, 2001. The records kept by the Bureau of Transportation
Statistics (http://www.bts.gov/gis/) do not list either flight that
day." (See http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/
260807_b_airlines.htm.) What are we to make of this?
But WikiScanner especially revealed that most abuse originates from corporate clients—and politicians. According to the UK I n d e p e n d e n t of 18 August 2007, Wal-Mart cleaned some statements about
its employment procedures, and again, in October 2005, a person using a Diebold computer removed paragraphs about Walden O'Dell, chief executive of the company, which revealed that he had
been "a top fund-raiser" for George W. Bush.
Such cleaning should be seen as rewriting history. Even if the edits are not
correct, Wikipedia's policy should be to insert "it is alleged" or
statements to that effect.
The I n d e p e n d e n t, along with many media sources, mentioned
other abuses. Griffith's tool also discovered that a computer owned
by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site
of right-wing talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.
The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic", a "racist" and a "bigot". An entry about his audience read: "Most of them are legally retarded."
An IP address that belongs to the oil giant ExxonMobil was
linked to sweeping changes to an entry on the disastrous 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill.
An allegation that the company "has not yet paid the US$5 billion in spill damages it owes to the 32,000 Alaskan fishermen" was replaced with references to the funds that the company has paid out.
The Republican Party edited Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party
entry so it made it clear that the US-led invasion was not a "USled
occupation" but a "US-led liberation"—the clearest example
of Ministry of Truth's approved Newspeak if ever there was one.
Also uncovered by WikiScanner was that a computer registered
to the Dow Chemical Company deleted a section on the 1984
Bhopal chemical disaster (which ultimately killed up to 22,000
people) which occurred at a plant operated by _Union_ Carbide, now
a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow.
It was also reported that Barbara Alton, assistant to Episcopal
bishop Charles Bennison, deleted information on a cover-up of child
sexual abuse, allegations that the bishop misappropriated US$11.6
million in trust funds, and evidence of other scandals. When
challenged, Alton claimed that she had been ordered to delete the
information by Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori.
WikiScanner also uncovered that staff in Australia's Department
of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) had edited entries on topics
such as the "children overboard" affair, as reported in the S y d n e y
Morning Herald on 24 August. PM John Howard stated that he
had not asked any of his staff to edit those entries. WikiScanner
revealed, too, that Department of Defence staff had made more
than 5,000 changes to the encyclopaedia, but the H e r a l d r e p o r t e d
that they were now blocked from editing entries (note that a
general IP number can be used by several departments).
Commenting on ABC News, the chair of Electronic Frontiers
Australia, Dale Clapperton, said: "You also have to ask yourself
whether it's a responsible and reasonable use of taxpayer dollars to
have public servants trying to sanitise entries on Wikipedia using
taxpayer-paid resources to make their point of view more
acceptable to the current government." In a follow-up H e r a l d
report of 30 August, the PMC secretary claimed that the IP number
did not belong to the department but instead to Macquarie
Telecom—a claim that experts and the H e r a l d dispute as highly
unlikely, stating they have more evidence than merely an IP
address to identify the government
department as the source.
A Disinformation weapon.
Just before WikiScanner grabbed the headlines in mid-August 2007, there
was one Wikipedia incident which received far less attention than it
deserved: it revealed that the intelligence agencies had been using
Wikipedia for disinformation purposes, thus proving Sarfatti's Orwellian
allegation.
Daniel Brandt posted a summary on The Wikipedia Review website on 1
A u g u s t . The incident involved Pierre Salinger. He was a White
House press secretary to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, served
as a US senator from California in 1964 and was campaign
manager for Robert Kennedy. Salinger was also a famous
investigative journalist who broke many important news stories.
When he was based in London, he investigated the December
1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which
killed 270 people. He and his collaborator, John K. Cooley, hired
Linda Mack, a young graduate, to help in their research, which
resulted in Salinger testifying at the Camp Zeist trial in November
2000:
"I know that these two Libyans had nothing to do with it. I
know who did it and I know exactly why it was done," he said.
Thinking the judge would allow him to present this evidence,
Salinger queried: "That's all? You're not letting me tell the truth.
Wait a minute; I know exactly who did it. I know how it was
done," Salinger replied to the trial judge, Lord Sutherland, who
simply asked him to leave the witness box. "If you wish to make
a point you may do so elsewhere, but I'm afraid you may not do
so in this court," Lord Sutherland interrupted.
So what does this have to do with Wikipedia? "SlimVirgin"
had been voted the most abusive administrator of Wikipedia.
She had upset so many editors that some of them decided to team up
to research her real-life identity. Attempts to track her through
Internet technology failed.
This was suspicious in itself, as WikiScanner has revealed. According to a team member, SlimVirgin "knows her way around the Internet and covered her tracks with care". The question, therefore, was: why?
WikiScanner especially revealed that most abuse originates from corporate
clients—and politicians.
Daniel Brandt patiently assembled tiny clues about SlimVirgin and posted them on his website. Eventually, two readers identified her as none other than Linda Mack, the young graduate whom Salinger
had hired.
To see her name appear in such a context was of course of great interest. But that was not all. Cooley, Salinger's collaborator in the Lockerbie investigation, sent a letter to Brandt which was posted on The
Wikipedia Review on 4 October 2006. He wrote how Mack "...claimed to have lost a friend/lover on Pan103 and so was anxious to clear up the mystery. ABC News paid for her travel and expenses as well as a salary...
Once the two Libyan suspects were indicted, she seemed to try to point
the investigation in the direction of -
[Libyan President Colonel Muammar al-] Qaddafi, although there was
plenty of evidence, both before and after the trials of Megrahi and
Fhimah in the Netherlands, that others were involved, probably with Iran the commissioning power... Salinger came to believe that Linda was working for MI5 and had been from the beginning; assigned genuinely to investigate the bombing of Pan Am 103, but also to infiltrate and monitor us..."
Soon after John Cooley contacted Brandt, Linda Mack contacted Cooley and asked him not to help Brandt in his efforts
to expose her. Though all doubts about SlimVirgin's true identity then vanished, as for her motives…
Inconvenient truths
So, welcome to WikiWorld, a realm where inconvenient truths can easily be
removed, while erroneous information— convenient lies and diinformation—can be entered in the encyclopaedia with emotionally upsetting and even worse consequences for the people involved.
This is the modern Ministry of Truth which, together with the liars and no doubt some mentally unstable people, has been put in charge of rewriting history.
It labels itself as the "Free Encyclopaedia", but perhaps the world should be freed from this encyclopaedia before the old proverb is converted thus: "There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and then there's Wikipedia."
The problem with Wikipedia is not that it exists, but that it has become the cornerstone for researchers scanning the Internet for information and blindly copying from Wikipedia entries, wrongfully assuming that
they are neutral and correct. It has become the
"Ministry of Information", the "one-stop information shop" of the Internet, but no one should fall for the "Newspeak" of a title.
Wikipedia has made the task for those seeding disinformation and removing dissenting views easier, more direct and even more
anonymous. Lies and Wikipedia, indeed... ¥
About the Author:
Philip Coppens is editor-in-chief of the online website Conspiracy Times ( h t t p : / / w w w . conspiracy-times.com). He has previously contributed nine articles to # the most recent being "Archaeological Trench Warfare at
Glozel" (see 14/05). His new book, The New
Pyramid Age, is reviewed in this edition.
The Truths and Lies of WikiWorld
OCTOBER – NOVEMBER 2007 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 77
_________________ Carols by Candlelight started in Australia 1938 & spread around the world Christmas day 1937 Melbourne Dj Norman Banks was walking home & saw a elderly lady sitting @ her window her face lit by a candle as she sang to Christmas carols on the radio.
Nothing I didn't know about Wiki, but I didn't realize how frequently government and intelligence agencies and politicians edit wiki to help themselves.
I really don’t like Australians and you really getting to me.
You are the Australian that the world thinks of when they think of you’re lot. A know it all arsewipe that think his country is so perfect, that the rest of the world wants to be just like it. And who’s too arrogant to take his head out of his arse to see different.
I tell you something my little friend. The world hates you; your mother country dreads the thought of you and is embarrassed to admit to you.
Apart from your native people, what culture do you have? None. That’s why the world goes on holiday there, because they can sit on a beach and do **ck all, meaning they don’t have to take the wife out around the cities.
You have given nothing to the world. Get that through your head.
The only thing the world wants from Australia is its weather.
_________________ The sixtheenth commandment “And when asked why, thy in power, shall do, Bugger all to help the general public, yea must answer `don’t worry sheep, lessons have been learned” and if thy sheep are still pissed, say `sorry`”
Joined: Nov 26, 2003
Posts: 1652
Location: Australia
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 4:41 pm Post subject:
lashmar wrote:
I really don’t like Australians and you really getting to me.
You are the Australian that the world thinks of when they think of you’re lot. A know it all arsewipe that think his country is so perfect, that the rest of the world wants to be just like it. And who’s too arrogant to take his head out of his arse to see different.
I tell you something my little friend. The world hates you; your mother country dreads the thought of you and is embarrassed to admit to you.
Apart from your native people, what culture do you have? None. That’s why the world goes on holiday there, because they can sit on a beach and do **ck all, meaning they don’t have to take the wife out around the cities.
You have given nothing to the world. Get that through your head.
The only thing the world wants from Australia is its weather.
you sound like a whinning pome to me.
you pissed that Australia just smashed you in the Rugby again, what was it 40 to 0 ........... 40....nill thats bad.
or you still pissed that prisoners enjoyed a better life out in Australia, than you all did in the mother land
Lets not forget england try to replace churchhill as priminster with an Australian Prim Minster during world war 2.
Pome's ha,
_________________ Carols by Candlelight started in Australia 1938 & spread around the world Christmas day 1937 Melbourne Dj Norman Banks was walking home & saw a elderly lady sitting @ her window her face lit by a candle as she sang to Christmas carols on the radio.
Wilki is a great source of info ... and a very bad one at the same time.
Anyone can write it, so it's the same as sorting through the news in various media.
Wilki used to be better than it is now, and it's getting worse as the mainstream spinmasters spend less time at their usual jobs of manipulating the news for the gov on their approved networks.
It's getting worse very quickly actually. It follows a pattern which has ruined loads of sites I used to like.
First a new news/information source is created. It becomes popular and provides useful information.
Then those with malicious intent begin to infiltrate and if their bs doesn't make the viewers scarce then it'll be a law-suit or the ISP will be ordered to close the site. (Oy vey)!
Australia is heading down the dunny as fast if not faster than average. I think the ratio between those who are proud, capable and decent Australians and those who are bleeding hearts and wimpy useless 'eaters' has reached a critical stage and it's all downhill from here. A great shame. Some in the outback might make a difference tho'.
_________________ What has been won by the brave at great cost can be lost cheaply by fools and once gone can rarely be regained and only then at great cost.
Would you mind telling every one what a POHM is convicted bastard no. 1.
Try spelling it correctly for starters.
Or don’t they teach you that in prison.
_________________ The sixtheenth commandment “And when asked why, thy in power, shall do, Bugger all to help the general public, yea must answer `don’t worry sheep, lessons have been learned” and if thy sheep are still pissed, say `sorry`”
_________________ The sixtheenth commandment “And when asked why, thy in power, shall do, Bugger all to help the general public, yea must answer `don’t worry sheep, lessons have been learned” and if thy sheep are still pissed, say `sorry`”
Listen, and this is the last I'm going to say that has to do with you, all your Aussies have given the world is the boomerang and the didgeridoo.
When your people invent something thats along the lines of the telephone or the radio, you can get back to me.
that's funny.
_________________ The sixtheenth commandment “And when asked why, thy in power, shall do, Bugger all to help the general public, yea must answer `don’t worry sheep, lessons have been learned” and if thy sheep are still pissed, say `sorry`”
Joined: Nov 26, 2003
Posts: 1652
Location: Australia
Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 3:44 pm Post subject:
lashmar wrote:
Would you mind telling every one what a POHM is convicted bastard no. 1.
Try spelling it correctly for starters.
Or don’t they teach you that in prison.
lashmar wrote:
Notice. No answer from him.
No answer ........... you dont know me very well do you.
Fisrt up, i dident answer you right away coz i dident need too & 2nd, it was friday/sataday night/morning, & i was out smashing this 22 y/o hot piece of female arse.
(now when you lose your virginity' lashmar im sure you will understand)
Now, .... P.O.H.M stands for Prisoner of His/Her Majesty, & as such
is a 17th centry derivative of P.O.M.E or Prisoner Of Mother England.
If you were English as you claim to be, & i suspect your not.
You would have known that' as it would have been beaten into you, as you grew up, on account of all the arse kickings Australia gave you in just about everything you ever tryed your sensitive english hands at.
As for Australia's convict heritage!
Well once again Englands shame is shown in the fact that you just gave this great land of Australia, over to a buch of convicts.
HAAHAHA
How funny is that, some guy steals a loaf of bread to feed his poor family on account the England they live in is a sest pit of poverty & diseases.
& what do you stuiped English do?
You punish him by sending him to Australia, a land of wide open spaces, & endless beaches, & ancient forests, & water lands, E.G .....
the great barrier reef.
kakadu.
the kimberleys.
the daintree
& over 70% of the worlds natural minerals
..............................ect, ect.
is it any wonder that once these people were deported to Australia that they never wanted to go back to England.
How stupid can you English be You lost America to a bunch of Homeless porpers, & then you loss Australia aswell.
Sending people to Australia for crimes as a form of punishment
That's like punishing Jack the ripper Or ted bundy, by sending them on an all expenses paid trip to Disneyland.
.
& if not for those convicts, much of the world & england would still be living in 17th centry poverty.
After all' if these convicts did'nt go out and build the Australian political system, then there would be no elections As the freedom you enjoy is founded on the Australian electoral system, your right to vote comes from the legacy of those convicts.
The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices are confidential. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery.
The system is one means of achieving the goal of political privacy. Secret ballots are suitable for many different voting systems.
The most basic form may be blank pieces of paper, upon which each voter writes only their choice. Without revealing their vote to anyone, the voters place the ballots into a sealed box, which is emptied later for counting.
One of the most common forms in the modern world provides for pre-printed ballot papers with the name of the candidates or questions and respective checkboxes. Provisions are made at the polling place for the voter to record their preferences in secret. The ballots are specifically designed to eliminate bias and to prevent anyone from linking voter to ballot. This system is also known as the Australian ballot, because it originated in Australia during the 1850s.
Freedom liberty & the australian way
The Australian Ballot goes to America!
Contemporary American journal and newspaper articles on the introduction of the Australian Ballot to that country from 1889 literally number in the hundreds; and that's obviously from restricted sources - hardcopies in Australian libraries and available digital databases. Here are a few (others are cited in the paper):
1889 New York Times: an interview with Wigmore upon publication of his
1889 book
1890 New York Times: on new system
1892 Los Angeles Times: answers a Q&A from a reader with diagrams of how the Australian ballot works.
The Eureka Stockade was the setting of a gold miners' revolt in 1854 near Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, against the officials supervising the mining of gold in the region. The revolt was prompted by grievances over heavily priced mining items, the expense of a Miner's Licence, taxation (via the license) without representation and the actions of the government and its agents (the police and military).[1][2] While the events which sparked the rebellion were specific to the Ballarat gold fields, the underlying grievances had been the subject of public meetings, civil disobedience and deputations across the various Victorian gold fields for almost three years.[citation needed] The miners' demands included the right to vote and purchase land, and the reduction of License fees. Agitation for these demands commenced with the Forest Creek Monster Meeting of December 1851 and included the formation of the Anti-Gold License Association at nearby Bendigo in 1853.
Although swiftly and violently put down, the Eureka rebellion was a watershed event in Australian politics. The preceding three years of agitation for the miners' demands, combined with mass public support in Melbourne for the captured 'rebels' when they were placed on trial, resulted in the introduction of full white-male suffrage for elections for the lower house in the Victorian parliament.[3] The role of the Eureka Stockade in generating public support for these demands beyond the goldfields resulted in Eureka being controversially identified with the birth of democracy in Australia.
These convicts also laid the foundations, of the other freedoms & rights you all enjoy such as, ...........
Universal health care.
Union rights, such as fair pay, minimum wage, over time & penalty rates,
a safe working environment, So forth so on, ect ect.
The writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, visited the Victorian Goldfields in 1895. Following his visit, he said of the Eureka Stockade:
By and by there was a result, and I think it may be called the finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution — small in size; but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression....It is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle. It adds an honorable page to history; the people know it and are proud of it. They keep green the memory of the men who fell at the Eureka stockade, and Peter Lalor has his monument.
—Mark Twain[19]
Last edited by rath on Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:22 pm; edited 1 time in total
_________________ Carols by Candlelight started in Australia 1938 & spread around the world Christmas day 1937 Melbourne Dj Norman Banks was walking home & saw a elderly lady sitting @ her window her face lit by a candle as she sang to Christmas carols on the radio.
now thats just as bad as useing google to prove you understand science.
