Wikipedia

[Richard Booth]

https://wikipediaonlineatrocity.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/anatomy-of-an-online-atrocity-wikipedia-gamaliel-and-the-fletcher-prouty-entry/

http://proutypedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia#Prouty_and_Wikipedia

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/will-the-real-wikipedia-please-stand-up

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1890084,00.html

 

[W. Niederhut]

Timely links, Richard, in light of John McAdams recent death.

And the systematic defamation of Prouty on Wikipedia parallels our debates about Prouty here on this forum.

I first realized how utterly worthless Wikipedia is when it comes to subjects involving national intelligence ops in 2007 after the takeover of the old ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) by the FSB-aligned Moscow Patriarchate.  The true history of the NKVD/KGB/FSB and the Russian Orthodox Church was systematically erased and re-written by some skilled Wikipedia editors.

I have observed a similar problem with Wikipedia articles about the JFK assassination and 9/11.

[Richard Booth]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Timely links, Richard, in light of John McAdams recent death.

And the systematic defamation of Prouty on Wikipedia parallels our debates about Prouty here on this forum.

I first realized how utterly worthless Wikipedia is when it comes to subjects involving national intelligence ops in 2007 after the takeover of the old ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) by the FSB-aligned Moscow Patriarchate.  The true history of the NKVD/KGB/FSB and the Russian Orthodox Church was systematically erased and re-written by some skilled Wikipedia editors.

I have observed a similar problem with Wikipedia articles about the JFK assassination and 9/11.

I suspect that the wikipedia gatekeeper "Gamaliel" will take McAdams' place as the voice of the CIA in the research community.

[Jeff Carter]

There has been a lot of controversy in Britain regarding a Wikipedia “editor” named Phillip Cross - sort of the UK’s version of “Gamaliel”.

Former diplomat Craig Murray came upon “Phillip Cross” in 2016:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/03/the-astonishing-case-of-the-doppelganger/

Murray followed up with more info two years later:

“Philip Cross” has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. “He” has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That’s 1,721 consecutive days of editing.

133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years. That’s over 30 edits per day, seven days a week.”

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/

The above information has fuelled speculation that "Phillip Cross" represents a network of persons rather than a single individual, a network nonetheless uniform in style and content: "the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is systematically to attack and undermine the reputations of those who are prominent in challenging the dominant corporate and state media narrative, particularly in foreign affairs."

The Wikispooks site has more info:

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Philip_Cross

[Guest]

James Corbett has featured this issue a couple of times, certain individuals responsible for numbers of edits that seems completely out of the realms of possibilities. 
 

Most of the public trust it implicitly. 

[Richard Booth]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

There has been a lot of controversy in Britain regarding a Wikipedia “editor” named Phillip Cross - sort of the UK’s version of “Gamaliel”.

Former diplomat Craig Murray came upon “Phillip Cross” in 2016:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/03/the-astonishing-case-of-the-doppelganger/

Murray followed up with more info two years later:

“Philip Cross” has not had one single day off from editing Wikipedia in almost five years. “He” has edited every single day from 29 August 2013 to 14 May 2018. Including five Christmas Days. That’s 1,721 consecutive days of editing.

133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years. That’s over 30 edits per day, seven days a week.”

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/

The above information has fuelled speculation that "Phillip Cross" represents a network of persons rather than a single individual, a network nonetheless uniform in style and content: "the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is systematically to attack and undermine the reputations of those who are prominent in challenging the dominant corporate and state media narrative, particularly in foreign affairs."

The Wikispooks site has more info:

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Philip_Cross

Thanks for the contribution, Jeff.  This is really valuable information if someone wants to research the dark underbelly of gatekeeping and mockingbird media narrative manipulation.

Great addition to the links in the OP -- which were simply posted by me because I had been reading about those things that day and thought others who may be unaware of the information might find it as interesting as I did.

[Richard Booth]

14 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Most of the public trust it implicitly. 

Indeed -- for people under 30 years old, they pretty much default to using Google and Wikipedia to find out anything and they call it research. A young person might say "you need to research that" and in their mind "research" consists of simply googling something or reading the Wikipedia entry.

When you consider how information on Google and Wikipedia is increasingly curated, tended, crafted, culled, polished and sanitized -- it becomes rather frightening how little critical thinking young people are doing. Young people who have grown up with the Internet, born in the 2000s, are accustomed to instant gratification and instant access and it increasingly seems like they're not interested in reviewing any critical debate, or multiple positions on a subject -- they don't want to think critically and decide for themselves which position on issue is correct. Rather, they want to be spoon-fed "the facts" in an environment where there is zero diversity in thought. Indeed, presenting counter narratives has been described as "potentially confusing" on college campuses, such as the case with critical race theory. One university said they could not present an African-American academic speaker (who was against critical race theory) because that might be "confusing" for students. This presumes that young people have zero critical thinking skills and would not be able to decide what narrative is stronger on their own.

It used to be we could have debate, and I'll always believe that the counterveiling opinion must be given equal time because doing so will allow the incorrect narrative to be shown as inadequate as it actually is. Let all the positions be shown, and let people use their critical thinking skills to discern which position is correct. I agree with Jim DiEugenio that in the JFK assassination debate, for example, simply let both sides lay out their case because when you do that the critics will always win because their case is stronger. 

The trend today is to present only one narrative, to exclude and stifle any and all dissent lest people not be "confused"

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

Indeed -- for people under 30 years old, they pretty much default to using Google and Wikipedia to find out anything and they call it research. A young person might say "you need to research that" and in their mind "research" consists of simply googling something or reading the Wikipedia entry.

When you consider how information on Google and Wikipedia is increasingly curated, tended, crafted, culled, polished and sanitized -- it becomes rather frightening how little critical thinking young people are doing. Young people who have grown up with the Internet, born in the 2000s, are accustomed to instant gratification and instant access and it increasingly seems like they're not interested in reviewing any critical debate, or multiple positions on a subject -- they don't want to think critically and decide for themselves which position on issue is correct. Rather, they want to be spoon-fed "the facts" in an environment where there is zero diversity in thought. Indeed, presenting counter narratives has been described as "potentially confusing" on college campuses, such as the case with critical race theory. One university said they could not present an African-American academic speaker (who was against critical race theory) because that might be "confusing" for students. This presumes that young people have zero critical thinking skills and would not be able to decide what narrative is stronger on their own.

It used to be we could have debate, and I'll always believe that the counterveiling opinion must be given equal time because doing so will allow the incorrect narrative to be shown as inadequate as it actually is. Let all the positions be shown, and let people use their critical thinking skills to discern which position is correct. I agree with Jim DiEugenio that in the JFK assassination debate, for example, simply let both sides lay out their case because when you do that the critics will always win because their case is stronger. 

The trend today is to present only one narrative, to exclude and stifle any and all dissent lest people not be "confused"

I’ve been saying this on another thread, which some don’t find palatable as it challenges what we think of our media networks and establishment. Critical thinking is almost totally absent from society, laziness brought about by tech and reluctance to have any proper public discourse without cursing each other down, has left us in this horrible position. My question as always is; how much of this is a result of a natural societal trend and how much of it is a result of a deliberate conditioning of society? It’s very difficult to separate the two. Looking at the outcome we are becoming very compliant and malleable, mainly I think we are so distracted by forms of entertainment/instant gratification, as well as substances altering our natural state. 

[Richard Booth]

3 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

My question as always is; how much of this is a result of a natural societal trend and how much of it is a result of a deliberate conditioning of society?

I think it's a little bit of both. The changes that have come with living in the information age have naturally progressed to produce young people accustomed to immediate gratification and at the same time our news media and sources of information have been subject to influence operations. The information age has also provided new ways to manufacture consensus that are probably more effective than the methods employed in the early days of MOCKINGBIRD.  I see Wikipedia and Google as both subject to censorship, and at once also heavily relied upon by young people as the arbiter of what is truth. Ask a young person how they would find something out and they would tell you to "research it."  Ask them what "research" is and they're likely to tell you they would "Google it" or "read the Wiki"

At the same time, we also find a great deal of bogus information and misinformation spread out among the fringe to such an extent that a person who actively seeks out countervailing narratives is incredibly likely to come across bogus information that misinforms them. Those forces who would seek to create bogus alternative narratives--or even controlled opposition--have had 60 years to perfect that art within the JFK assassination community: the mafia did it, Castro did it, the driver shot JFK, the three tramps are x/y/z. Whatever successes, sources and methods have proven a success on that subject are likely readily utilized and expanded upon to poison the well on other subjects.  

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

I think it's a little bit of both. The changes that have come with living in the information age have naturally progressed to produce young people accustomed to immediate gratification and at the same time our news media and sources of information have been subject to influence operations. The information age has also provided new ways to manufacture consensus that are probably more effective than the methods employed in the early days of MOCKINGBIRD.  I see Wikipedia and Google as both subject to censorship, and at once also heavily relied upon by young people as the arbiter of what is truth. Ask a young person how they would find something out and they would tell you to "research it."  Ask them what "research" is and they're likely to tell you they would "Google it" or "read the Wiki"

At the same time, we also find a great deal of bogus information and misinformation spread out among the fringe to such an extent that a person who actively seeks out countervailing narratives is incredibly likely to come across bogus information that misinforms them. Those forces who would seek to create bogus alternative narratives--or even controlled opposition--have had 60 years to perfect that art within the JFK assassination community: the mafia did it, Castro did it, the driver shot JFK, the three tramps are x/y/z. Whatever successes, sources and methods have proven a success on that subject are likely readily utilized and expanded upon to poison the well on other subjects.  

It’s the censorship side that worries me, clever algorithms, putting information that may be relevant so far down search results that nobody will find it. That and the propensity to have a modern book burning (digitally) in a round about way. There are so many tools available now to stifle dissent and right now the most powerful has become the public itself, as through ‘operant conditioning’ they now get a dopamine rush from social media ‘likes’ or seeing their social status elevated when they are virtue signalling or supporting causes or positions propagated by governments and their media assets. Compassion seems to be the facilitator in so many cases, if you can tie your agenda to it, it’s almost sure to succeed in the public domain. 
i think things have evolved so much since mockingbird, the psychological side and effectiveness has come on leaps and bounds. 
Do you remember when people used to read the newspapers? Now people just read headlines and the headlines often don’t give the context of the full article. 

[Richard Booth]

3 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

It’s the censorship side that worries me, clever algorithms, putting information that may be relevant so far down search results that nobody will find it. 

The censorship is also worrying to me, especially given how overt it has become in just the last two years.

Today, for example, Facebook began preventing people from sharing a story published by the New York Daily News. Admittedly, it was a rather dumb story that essentially excoriated one of the founders of Black Lives Matter for having a few luxurious houses. (Who cares? Good for her.) 

Facebook essentially arbitrarily applied one or more of their Community Standards to prevent sharing the story. Then we have last October when the New York Daily News broke the story on the Hunter Biden laptop. The NY Daily News was censored, then, too--people were prevented from sharing that story and Twitter even suspended the New York Daily News account for it. Again, misleading and arbitrary rules were cited as the reason for censoring the story. I believe that Twitter claimed the story was about "hacked materials", which was false. They later ended up having to apologize for inappropriately censoring the story based on a false premise, meanwhile, the media largely self-censored and refused to cover the story, while falsely asserting that the story was "Russian disinformation" -- mind you, there was no proof of any Russian plot. At the same time Joe Biden claimed on national television that it was a "Russian plot." In reality, the story was damaging to Joe Biden because his son's laptop was filled with pictures of crack smoking, sex with prostitutes, messages about an inappropriate sexual relationship that Hunter had with a minor family member, and emails and messages about inappropriate Chinese influence peddling. 

So, we have Facebook and Twitter censoring stories based largely on ideological grounds. We have Google and Wikipedia gatekeeping and excluding links, content and search results, and we have an entire generation of students who believe that dissent or critical debate is equivalent with racism, hate, or creating a physically unsafe environment. 

I can only imagine what the debate club (if such exists) in modern schools looks like: "John Doe will be arguing for the position of [Progressive issue] and Jane Doe will be arguing the racist side."

In saying all this, bear in mind that I am not a Republican nor even conventionally conservative. As an example of that: I believe we should cut our defense spending by more than half, we should have socialized medical care and dental care, and we should have social programs and subsidized assistance available for the elderly and poor, and that JFK and FDR were two great presidents. Jeff Bezos and Amazon should pay taxes. We need a higher minimum wage. With all the trillions of dollars this country makes we can afford to decimate the waste on weapons of war and instead focus on raising the quality of life for every American, and what's more, we could afford to do that if our defense spending were actually lowered to reasonable level. 

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:

The censorship is also worrying to me, especially given how overt it has become in just the last two years.

Today, for example, Facebook began preventing people from sharing a story published by the New York Daily News. Admittedly, it was a rather dumb story that essentially excoriated one of the founders of Black Lives Matter for having a few luxurious houses. (Who cares? Good for her.) 

Facebook essentially arbitrarily applied one or more of their Community Standards to prevent sharing the story. Then we have last October when the New York Daily News broke the story on the Hunter Biden laptop. The NY Daily News was censored, then, too--people were prevented from sharing that story and Twitter even suspended the New York Daily News account for it. Again, misleading and arbitrary rules were cited as the reason for censoring the story. I believe that Twitter claimed the story was about "hacked materials", which was false. They later ended up having to apologize for inappropriately censoring the story based on a false premise, meanwhile, the media largely self-censored and refused to cover the story, while falsely asserting that the story was "Russian disinformation" -- mind you, there was no proof of any Russian plot. At the same time Joe Biden claimed on national television that it was a "Russian plot." In reality, the story was damaging to Joe Biden because his son's laptop was filled with pictures of crack smoking, sex with prostitutes, messages about an inappropriate sexual relationship that Hunter had with a minor family member, and emails and messages about inappropriate Chinese influence peddling. 

So, we have Facebook and Twitter censoring stories based largely on ideological grounds. We have Google and Wikipedia gatekeeping and excluding links, content and search results, and we have an entire generation of students who believe that dissent or critical debate is equivalent with racism, hate, or creating a physically unsafe environment. 

I can only imagine what the debate club (if such exists) in modern schools looks like: "John Doe will be arguing for the position of [Progressive issue] and Jane Doe will be arguing the racist side."

In saying all this, bear in mind that I am not a Republican nor even conventionally conservative. As an example of that: I believe we should cut our defense spending by more than half, we should have socialized medical care and dental care, and we should have social programs and subsidized assistance available for the elderly and poor, and that JFK and FDR were two great presidents. Jeff Bezos and Amazon should pay taxes. We need a higher minimum wage. With all the trillions of dollars this country makes we can afford to decimate the waste on weapons of war and instead focus on raising the quality of life for every American, and what's more, we could afford to do that if our defense spending were actually lowered to reasonable level. 

That stuff makes sense regarding healthcare and dentistry, i’d like to see it. Last time I looked the US defence spend was 10x that of any other country. Is the real reason that doesn’t happen; the rackets that are at play in the military and healthcare industries? 

I happen to be among the minority here in believing some, if not all of these tech giants are in bed with the government on a certain level. Yasha Levine’s  “surveillance valley” backed what I thought. The USA is by far the most powerful country on earth, why do we think these very powerful companies are allowed to operate and pay such a little amount in taxes? We can point at loopholes but, these can be closed by the government with the support of the public. 
Is the censorship fulfilling an agenda? I don’t mean the Pepsi vs Coke elections, I mean something on another strata. When things are getting censored that don’t break laws, thats presumably the point the government would recognise the dangers of that and step in. Unless it’s in their interests not to?! If something threatens your fragile democracy, you surely would step in. Maybe even more so in a pandemic when large swathes of the population are locked down and are unable to have public discourse any other way?!  
We’re all asked to buy into the fact all these tech firms are all hipster and woke, on the far left and that they’re very caring and compassionate. Is that the reality? 
 

If you believe the internet started as a Pentagon (Darpa) project (ArpaNet). Which sparked a massive data capture and involved seeding tech startups and poaching clever students from Stanford RI and co, then this might seem an extension of that or somewhere near the fruition of that long term project. It certainly isn’t inconceivable. 

 

[Richard Booth]

14 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

We’re all asked to buy into the fact all these tech firms are all hipster and woke, on the far left and that they’re very caring and compassionate. Is that the reality? 

 

I believe that these companies -- Facebook, Twitter, Google -- are indeed all woke and far-left. They most certainly are not very caring and compassionate. You can see that just from listening to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey speak. They are emotionless uncaring billionaires who operate in a way that is orientated towards the bottom line, treating employees like dirt. 

A lot of the woke-ness and ideological virtue signaling is merely for show, I think. It's just part of cultivating their brand. 

They all participate in the surveillance state -- look to the PRISM program exposed by Edward Snowden and you'll find that every tech company participated voluntarily in the program. One of the slides that Snowden released showed these companies were willing participants in PRISM.

Surely there are "incentives" for going along ... and it's no coincidence that these tech companies have monopolies. Look at what happened with Parler -- a platform that likely would not have participated in any NSA surveillance programs based on their ideology and incidentally a rapidly growing competitor to Twitter and Facebook. Well, in a matter of 48 hours we saw Google, Apple, and Amazon all act in a coordinated fashion to remove the app from both app stores and remove their hosting on the web. They all acted together to essentially destroy, overnight, a competitor. 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

I believe that these companies -- Facebook, Twitter, Google -- are indeed all woke and far-left. They most certainly are not very caring and compassionate. You can see that just from listening to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey speak. They are emotionless uncaring billionaires who operate in a way that is orientated towards the bottom line, treating employees like dirt. 

A lot of the woke-ness and ideological virtue signaling is merely for show, I think. It's just part of cultivating their brand. 

They all participate in the surveillance state -- look to the PRISM program exposed by Edward Snowden and you'll find that every tech company participated voluntarily in the program. One of the slides that Snowden released showed these companies were willing participants in PRISM.

Surely there are "incentives" for going along ... and it's no coincidence that these tech companies have monopolies. Look at what happened with Parler -- a platform that likely would not have participated in any NSA surveillance programs based on their ideology and incidentally a rapidly growing competitor to Twitter and Facebook. Well, in a matter of 48 hours we saw Google, Apple, and Amazon all act in a coordinated fashion to remove the app from both app stores and remove their hosting on the web. They all acted together to essentially destroy, overnight, a competitor. 

I think fundamentally, a lot of the employee’s believe in what they are doing. I was going to mention the PRISM program and Snowden in the previous post, some don’t seem to accept that here. I saw that with Parler too, it was very contrived. 
 

It’s thought that Gates and Zuckerberg are INTJ’s, (some psychologists like Myers Briggs, some don’t give it much merit) the very logical thinking personality types that lack empathy, I have only seen Dorsey on Joe Rogan and in a hearing, he comes across that way also, lacking empathy whenever he responds spontaneously or naturally, though when well rehearsed they come across a great deal better. 
 

in short, I think it’s a neat trick playing on passions and compassion to further your brand, the data capture side and synergy with the security apparatus seems clear to me. 

[Richard Booth]

On the Wikipedia entry for Sammy Davis Jr, it says that JFK would not allow Davis to perform at his inauguration because Davis was black and married to a white woman.

On the Wikipedia entry for John F. Kennedy, it says that JFK increased soldiers in Vietnam.

Wikipedia contributes to the posthumous assassination of JFK.