User talk:Mememe

Welcome

Hi Mememe - welcome to SW. meant to drop you a note the other day but got distracted. If you have an queries feel free to drop me a line (address in the footer on pages) and I'll get back to you ASAP (though note there can be a time delay as I'm in Australia). --Bob Burton 16:46, 22 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Most kind. Power to the people, brother, and so forth :-) Me^3

List of ... articles

List of corporations

Hello - IMO, before making such radical changes to existing articles and categories, recommend you contact SW editor bob AT sourcewatch.org. As you may see it illogical to have a category named corporations, or list of corporations, those articles are quite distinct from the single word corporation. Artificial Intelligence 16:22, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

List of lists, renaming list of ... pages

Hi Mememe - while I'm generally not inclined to me too pedantic about titling or categories I think its better to stick to Corporations rather than List of corporations. Two reasons: 1) We score higher in the search results when the page name correlates to the search param eters and few, if any, are going to search on 'list of coproations' 2) We have adopted the style of using the description of what is in the category. So we have Law firms, Public relations firms etc rather than all of them having the preamble "list of ...". Apart from which, if we adopted the 'list of ... " approach it would make navigation harder for users when in fact we need to do some more simplification and re-organisation. One of the things on my 'to do' list. Cheers --Bob Burton 16:53, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

OK, that makes sense :-) So how about a Category:Lists? That'll automatically give us a list of lists; the existing list of lists page can then become a redirect. All "List of ..." pages can then be normalised to just "..." if you see what I mean. Mememe 16:57, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

---

Hi mememe. I'm curious about the "lists" category. Why would somebody go to the lists category to browse a list of articles which contain lists? Or, is there another functional reason for having categories?
Thanks, --Maynard 08:44, 20 Aug 2005 (EDT)

For the same reason they'd go to the list of lists article, which it will make (I hope) redundant.

My plan is to collect all the lists together, then classify them as types of list. I'll leave everything as it is otherwise. The over-arching reason for doing this is essentially that most of the lists are starting points for looking into the topic they cover, and contain many links to potential articles (potential as opposed to actual ones). They have the potential to form a navigation system for the wiki which can be distributively maintained.

They also, I suspect, will make good starting points for categories. An advantage of categories is that you don't have to add the article to an existing page. You can just use a category name that seems reasonable. If it is reasonable, other articles will exist in that category. Re-categorising stuff to merge categories is not too difficult (though I think it could be easier).

Any descriptive text can go in the category's page, and categories can be linked to thus. Again, I'll leave existing stuff in place until it's clear it's an adequate replacement. Mememe 09:15, 20 Aug 2005 (EDT)

thanks for the Safari Club Cite

Thanks for the Talk:Safari Club fill. I am assuming you were not the original poster, btw. The poly sci prof swat was an intuitional blind swing, but over my life, i've had a pretty good average on this sort of jump.

RENAMO

Also the Berkeley Press Author(name currently eludes me) whose book was cited in the RENAMO piece is a fairly well known journalist for New Yorker, who did spend personal time in Mozambique. I'm not opposed to what was said, as long as it is properly attributed, I am more than happy to wax hyperbolic, when the spirit moves me.

Sorry, I'm not sure why you refer to RENAMO. These guys, yeah? [1] I think I've missed something.

(later) Ah, I get it; you're talking about edits by User:66.20.28.21 to Renamo.

Still, the Khmer Rouge tag on RENAMO is absolute spin. America has backed more than its share of killers.

I've created an article called "The Pentagon-CIA Archipelago". It sounds rather conspiracy theoryish, so I've tried to explain where the term comes from. I intend to start off with the info from "The Washington Connection and Third World Facism" volume 1 of "The Political Economy of Human Rights" by Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman ISBN 0896080900 vol1 vol2 As you may know, this is an examination of the treatment in the press of such groups from the 50s to the 70s compared to the evidence available at the time.

An appropriate analogy could have been made with a non-communist group. Besides, an organisation would have to get up upon the top of the skull pile of genocidal f--ks to approach Pol Pot. Also on my quick data dive, I came up with far too many references to their strong minority political party status in Mozambique to let this sit. Last two elections were over forty percent, with both sides claiming foul, but the independent observers saying for the most part, fair.

"Sometimes compared" should probably be cited, and who made the comparison should be stated. It's a bizarre comparison, IMO, given they were military-backed nationalist fascists. One might as well compare them the US army in Vietnam or the Indonesians in East Timor for the degree of similarity.

Review of African Political Economy

Safari Club

I've run into some Safari Club conventioneers in my past; two unfortunate consecutive years a trade show I was attending and their fete were scheduled in the same city/date, and they do take pride in paying top dollar to cull game preserve herds, although I couldn't actually give it attribution, as it was evening bar talk on more than one occasion with strangers. The ones I talked to were the outfitters though, not the bankrolls.

The last time I thought someone was just rehashing spin on S/W, I ended up doing the Farfield Foundation stub, which includes lots of data probably better put under a different title.

Category:Manipulation of society by security services for similar articles, Covert influences on societies by the CIA or The CIA and societies? Not very exiting titles, though. Mememe 11:58, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Also, are you aware of the International Relations and Security Network? Open source high-end wonkage, enough for a big expenditure of reading time.

cheers --Hugh Manatee 21:43, 9 Aug 2005 (EDT)

From what I can make of that link, wonkage is not to be taken seriously. Er. Am I being thick? Wonkette's blog seems very inward looking and silly. IRSN on the other hand look like a good bunch; I'd not come across it before.

I've a stack of books to read at the moment, as I'm doing the background reading to The Power of Nightmares Have you seen it? It's by the BBC and is available for download quite legally, I believe, here. I'm fairly sure it won't tell you much you don't know already, but it is gorgeously produced.

BTW, have you used the "site:example.com" thing on google (e.g. site:isn.ethz.ch RENAMO)? It can be very useful. Mememe 11:58, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

---

In Re: "wonkage"

It's not you being thick, as much as me being scattershot

wonkage

• wonk at wordsmith_org
• wonk at worldwidewords_org

The definition of wonk in my previous posting is "policy wonk", and it is not necessarily a negative connontation. It is a person who is well-studied in govermental policy areas. Jocks, Geeks, Preppies, etc. are the same type of noun that over-generalises groupings of humans.

Wonkage is simply, my goofing around with English. Wonkage is the published content that policy wonks digest. It is a word I made up, or at least I think I made up, within the last year or so. It's connotational valuation in positive/negative terms is entirely dependent upon one's personal view of "policy wonks".

Ah, the mystery is dispelled :-)

"marxist rhetoric"?

Careful how you portray the Vietnam era US soldier around me.

Certainly. I was describing the poorness of the comparison, not putting them in the same category.

They were to a large degree, children thrust into a situation they were ill-prepared to face, either from their upbringing or their induction training. That some acted rashly and evily should come as no surprise to anyone. The biggest lie that all militaries try to get their members to believe is that honour is a commodity which can be obtained on the field of battle. This is not the case, war consists only of death and the darkness that is ever descending; there is no honour to be found, only honour to be lost.

Amen.

Still there was a fundamental difference between many American GIs and the North-Vietnamese soldier, both regular and VC. The American GI was more inclined to go into a swamp shoulder deep than to step upon a dead body of even an enemy. The SE Asian Maoists represented a nightmarish expression of hive mentality in their willingness to supress the individual for the state. They were not supported by the peasantry. The peasantry only wanted an end to war, and for foreign troops to leave.

Why did that group, which I understand was named by the Southern Vietnamese administration, rise to prominence? I find it incredible it was the only one resisting South Vietnamese rule by one means or another.

I believe it became powerful because it was the one that was able to respond to the aggression required for a small (US funded) minority to retain power. Clearly they were assisted by the Soviets, but I don't know if Soviet assistance was always in the mode of military support. Further, if the North Vietnamese had declared independence, who would they have been able to trade with? Their neighbours (if they were lucky), and the Soviets: the US did not at that time, as far as I am aware, trade with any country that overthrew its client regiemes. I suspect the Soviets did the same thing, of course. Mememe 07:49, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

["

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy...

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism..

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai...

We learned the meaning of free fire zones...

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts...

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

[. . .]

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

"]

excerpts of Lt. John F. Kerry's testimony to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, April 23, 1971 - (emphasis mine)

If we're discussing Marx' writings, how about [2]? The current US administration wants us, roughly speaking, to continue fighting the cold war.

Once again I remind you that as bad as RENAMO was, FRELIMO was otherside of an evil linearity. (There must be some way to pull humanity away from the flatworlder insanity of bipolar worldviews) They were Soviet supplied/Cuban trained, and they engaged in slaughter of residents in other countries. Sure their victims were often white, but these farmers were not evil because of their ethnicity alone, and did not deserve to be murdered by Soviet supported marauding ANC guerillas. To demonise one side and not the other is wrong and a distortion of the facts. There was only the black coin of proxy-war, and nobody was an angel. Who ended up paying the price? As is alway the case, the peasant in the middle.

And that, amongst other things, is why much of Africa still lives in extreme poverty. But you don't remind me, you inform me. Nontheless, realise that I do not think the USSR is a useful model for anything. But a significant part of the US' actions in combatting, though more often obtaining superiority over, the USSR and its proxies, defacto and otherwise, involved attrocities. And that is too often forgotten, obscured or ignored by contemporary American nationalists and the special interests which have benefitted from the consequences.

Even if the ends justified the means, which I think they may have in many cases, the means should not be forgotten. Not unless we believe that the majority of people deserve no respect and are incapable of ruling themselves. But if we believe that we cease to believe in any real kind of democracy, as I think the current US administration flagrantly demonstrates it believes. Mememe 07:49, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Say Che not Cheney? Give me an 'effin break!

Heh. How about "more democracy, not less"? Or "democracies evolve, but the president doesn't belive in evolution"? Mememe 07:49, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

--Hugh Manatee 01:09, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

we mostly agree then...

All of this started from some other poster's(dnsExposed>georgiaUniv_node) portrayal of RENAMO as the devil and FRELIMO as the light. I am not sure why I felt you needed elaboration upon my personal version of moral relevancy here. Thanks for helping me to work on it though. I don't like what American has done in many places during my life, but if forced to choose the evil of the USA or the Evil of a Marxist State, I'd choose the USA. At least they still pretend now and then that there is such a thing as natural liberty inherent within all. There is also a bit of self-presenvation within the choice. I'd be one of the first to experience re-education.

As for the support and expansion of democracy; I too believe this is a positive force, but with caveats. A proper democratic form of government must always have protections in place to guard differing minorities from the rule of the mob. The Guillotine is always a real threat not to be taken lightly in Democracies.

Here, have some more of my eccentricity: This all ties in to some weird and sarcastic freefalling ideation I contemplate on occasions. It has to do with the eventual dead-end of linear thought, and the digital revolution's oftentimes forcing of linear thought. Data condensation into {0 or 1} works well for modeling, but isn't a true representation of reality. I believe that there will always be the third way, the maybe, the neither, the unknown and linear thinking impairs possibilities from being cogitated; the limitatations of the binary. As another joke at academia's expense, I term this line of thought; Post-Digital.

I co-opted the Che/Cheney comparison from somewhere, but I don't remember exactly where. I am fond of it though:

["

Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had -- guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress.

The human drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. And the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote.

And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections.

The power of that concept is enormous. And it will apply in Afghanistan, and it will apply as well in Iraq.

"]

Dick Cheney, 2004 Vice Presidential Debate, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5, 2004 - (original link unchecked-may not be live)

I still cannot believe Cheney walked away unscathed from this analogy. The only strong dissent of this I found was in Counterpunch.

Here, for a bit of balance:

"Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!"- Ernesto Che Guevara

"I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man."--Ernesto Che Guevara, facing his executioner(may be apocryphal)

Somewhere's i have a citation of recent reading that relates well to the S. Vietnamese gov question you were asking. When i run it down, i'll dump it here. I am about to get this old box slammed again with the win2k service pack four; on my machine, a 37 meg upgrade. This box is old, and has had some problems that i think i've resolved, but this is the third reload of win2k in as many weeks and i am weary of it. the last one went well, but it acquired a silly trojan early on that kept turning all the desktop icons into the trash bin, and would screw up memory management also. It seemed that the best plan was simply to reload everything again. Soon, after i sell a small piece of land, I will buy a new box. this one is pushing 6 years old now, and is seriously overworked.

will peace, but keep the cartridges dry...--Hugh Manatee 09:11, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

---

The Wesley Clark article is a duplicate of Wesley Kanne Clark. I am relocating the WC material to the Wesley Kanne Clark Talk page for now (perhaps merge tomorrow) and will make the Wesley Clark article a redirect. It's always a good idea to check the SW search for dupes. :-) Artificial Intelligence 19:12, 25 Sep 2005 (EDT)

muse

Mostly a muse, but a recent slashdot discussion pointed out some interesting weaknesses the wiki model. I believe it is a function of the editor numbers. The larger the number of editors, the greater the chance for disinformation.

I am a fan of orthogonal:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 5 - 6

I first noticed orthogonal in the thread The Early History of wikipedia - 4th headlined comment-"who decides the truth".

The wiki defender snowspinner, a person with super rights on wikipedia, defends a wiki article titled "Steak and Blowjob Day", and uses the disputed '04 Ohio presidential election results as an insult.

Ayn Rand would be disappointed (oops, possibly an extremely elliptical ref-some allege that wikipedia was founded by Rand zealots aka 'Randroids').

Don't wonder about my slashdot pseudo, i caught the second reference after comments were shut down, and when the first reference was live, i was sitting on moderator points, and used them to counteract the slashdot tendency to mod down wiki critiques. Moderators can adjust the points given to posts, and are precluded from commenting on threads that they moderate. In a semi-random fashion, regular users of slashdot, who are not considered overt flamers, are given 5 mod points now and then, and 72 hrs to dump them. This is to a very great degree, how the comments on slashdot are formatted into healined posts in the markup.

Why you, and where does this relate? Your predilection to post articles regarding persuasion techniques, plus your occasional pointers to wikipedia content, seem to make this a propitious place for this muse. I consider wikipedia to have a high-potential for use as a vector of disinformation, either intentional or not, but it is one of many. More danger from the misuse of wikipedia is that it cheapens other open-source knowledge bases' credibility, irrespective of the veracity of the evaluation, if the trademarked parent of the wiki brand burns in their own flames.

--hugh_manateee 23:56, 23 Apr 2006 (EDT)

I'm flattered that you'd be interested in my opinion. I'll give this some more consideration, but my first thought is that people should criticise the way in which the processes are being undermined, not the people in charge. They should take charge themselves if they think things could be done better: explain how things should be done, and start doing it.

Also, IMO the "wiki model" is only flawed insofar as human discourse, society and reason are. Mememe 16:35, 24 Apr 2006 (EDT)

i am not sure flattered is a proper response to my notice, as it seems i've recently blown off a few of my oddly collected contacts with out of the sun elliptic hyperboles. Either that or they are speechless with confusion. A common response from long-term contacts when i get really wild is to simply ignore it, and await the next message. If they don't respond over several messages, i quit bugging them.

I agree that the people in charge isn't the problem, but the hierarchic processes which empowered these persons is. Also, a few personal experiences from within wikipedia entrenchments has given me a solid foundation for doubting its veracity. There are loose associations which watch articles. there isn't a left or right predisposition in bipolar political POVs for this, just that differenct articles have different associations guarding them. One wiki battle of mine may have had success though, Edwin Messe's stub is no longer Iran/Contra content free.

did you know the wikipedia cheese stub i sone of the most defaced? a rather odd data point.

--hugh_manateee 02:07, 26 Apr 2006 (EDT)

There is no article for Wikipedia:Edwin Messe. Nor is it in the deletion logs. This should be a redirect to his full name at least. Perhaps you should recreate it. If you are worried about articles being deleted, I suggest you make copies of the source in text files on your PC. Even if it goes again, you could put it here.

My sloppiness in proffered citation is to blame: how about Edwin Meese III? - also noteworthy is my confessed instance of crazy posting, which occured in a fit of guilt when it appeared mirrored on sourcewatch, admittedly, my post was insane, but it offered solidly sourced data with it. (of late i've been absolutely out of control on an atheist board, claiming i fail to see the difference between instances of blind faith, even when it is to an undemonstrable god-they group slam me, charging i am something that i am obviously not, and i return fire with more pointed humor-is the sarcasm really that obtuse, or are they all woodenheaded?)

other bits of data which may aid your understanding of my POV at the time i wailed into th eMeese talk page, is that it was just dawning on me that Think Tanks I'd respected had been offering rocks to hide under for the Iran/Contra criminals, and this had allowed them to lay low while their reputations were scrubbed. Don't get into the moral relevancies of marxist Sandisnistas with me either. It is irrelevant to the fact that the Constitution states that Congress is empowered to declare war. Within that statement is a strongly implied ideation that Congress is also empowered with the ability to declare NO WAR, and the Reagan Admin went well beyond the restraints of a proper executive to wage war by favoring the Contras. It is an idicator that the reagancomics held the Dreamtime America derisively. Much of the same plus a great deal more can be said for the Bush Administration. ah, digression will be my epitaph. anyway, the Hudson Institute had implied all sorts of awards to Mr. Meese, and I was investigating their veracity. One was Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute of United States Studies, University of London, but when i went looking on the website of the Univ of London, i discovered that the Instit. of US studies had been melded into the Instit. of LatAmer. Studies and synthesised into The Institute for the Study of the Americas, so there was no chair for Meese as stated. I spent a fair amount of time poking around in that namespace looking for anything that indicated Meese had ever had a Distunguised honourarium, and came up empty handed. I am a decided mozilla user, and had many tabs in use, but the two bottom ones were the Meese wikipedia stub, and a Pakistan Daily Times reference that was my first experience with newspaper article direct linking to wikipedia from within the body, and i fully intended to lay the citation into a public area, but when the Meese stub came up, i jumped into the malestorm.

every instance of my negative experiences with wikipedia happened on the talk side of pages. I am well aware that my bias is strong, when i feel compelled to remark on a wiki stub, and not being a registered member, personal honor compells me to just offer the data there instead of direct edits. There have been two cases of my offered data on talk pages being deleted with dishonest rationales being given as the official reason in the logs. When I see edits here by someone i consider to be a regular, i do not question the stated rationale for it, would seldom ever look it up, and that would only be out of curiosity about what was stated. Errancy's song at times can be greatly alluring to me.

one last point though: a couple of days ago i was seeking data regarding Walid Phares, and had been greatly disappointed, so i was perusing the relevant wikipedia stub's history versioning, and encountered what i considered to an injust edit. I did not make waves there, wikipedia has some present issues in great need of resolution, and my obfuscation regarding a minor data point would not be beneficial presently. I did state my concerns here at Talk:Walid Phares. cheers --hugh_manateee 18:50, 29 Apr 2006 (EDT)

There is a (near) minimal centre to wikipedia, but it's not really heirarchical, IMO.

The issue of removal of articles for legal reasons is very different from that of who watches articles. Did you mean to put them together?

As long as the removal of articles for special reasons is clearly documented, it is transparent and open to be challenged. Another approach would be to investigate the legislation that is being used to threaten wikipedia. Then that could be examined and modifications considered. In the mean time, if others want to risk legal action, that is their choice, but it is reasonable if Wikipedia seek to avoid that.

TBH, I think this fuss has more to do with various questionably appointed purveyors of knowledge, clearly people with conflicting interests (e.g. insecure professional journalists), trying to undermine the wikipedia and encourage others to do so, though not necessarily for the same reason.

The cheese thing is just a fad (a meme, if you like). It'll pass, though how quickly I couldn't say. I suspect vandalism is effective there, as most people intelligent and educated enough to work on wikipedia effectively don't know anything about cheese. Mememe 15:38, 29 Apr 2006 (EDT)

new wiki news story in the stream

Shannon McCaffrey, "Wikipedia ripe for political dirty tricks", Associated Press/Sacramento Bee, April 28, 2006

all your base are belong to AP Mememe 07:51, 30 Apr 2006 (EDT)

something different

I was wondering if you knew of terms which describe disinformation techniques:

• specious selective use of quotes from a source antithetical to the authors goals, and generally perceived to be 'on the other side', as a justification in argument
• mangling a quotation's formatting to tightly fit an argument (as in not noting an inline snip with the horizontal ellipse {…}, or inserting external word(s) between an inline snip that even though properly noted with punctuation, distorts the meaning of the original author being quoted
• generally, selective use of quotations as citations
• use of extremely obscure citations, difficult to check souring of
• use of citations, that are from sources the author is closely connected to, without being noted (i call this one circleJerk citation)

thanks --hugh_manateee 19:50, 30 Apr 2006 (EDT)