British leftists on the warpath against Wikipedia

[Kumioko]

...Are there often multiple infoboxes on the same page?

Yes, especially for biographies and ships. Normally though they have one template that acts as the main one and the rest are embedded in that. For example, they might have Infobox person and then Infobox boxer and Infobox military person are embedded into it. If you look at the Ship related articles, they all have multiple templates embedded into the Infobox template to display ship characteristics and history.

[Poetlister]

On another front, the article Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party (T-H-L) is quite lively. It's not up to date; there is nothing about the party reversing its previous acceptance of the most widely adopted definition of antisemitism in favour of a toned down version.

[Kingsindian]

The article talks about the IHRA/NEC stuff in the last paragraph of the lead.

[Kingsindian]

The British Tory life peer (and former executive editor of and now Times columnist) Daniel Finkelstein (T-H-L) has been arguing about Phillip Cross with leftworks1, FiveFilters and other people on Twitter. Here are some of the tweets.

The discussion is very long and somewhat tedious. I don't really have much comment on it overall.

One point raised during the discussion is the complaint by Craig Murray that Phillip Cross apparently edited Craig Murray's page to say that his wife was a stripper. The diff is apparently this one. As far as I can see, Cross edited "woman he met in a lap dancing club" to "belly dancer", and added a Financial Times reference. Unfortunately or fortunately, there's a lot of coverage (tabloid and otherwise) of Mr. Murray's wife. There was even a play called "The British Ambassador's Belly Dancer" which the the FT article is a review of.

[Poetlister]

The article talks about the IHRA/NEC stuff in the last paragraph of the lead.

Good point. Why is that in the lead but not the main body? And why is there no mention of the fact that Labour had adopted the IHRA definition a while ago and is now amending it, or the controversy this has caused?

[Kingsindian]

It's mentioned in the section "Definition of antisemitism".

Both Jezza's supporters and opponents have plenty of representation on Wikipedia. One wouldn't expect such things to not be noted, and amended and massaged and so on.

[Hersch]

It appears that now Cross has decided to focus his efforts on US Politics and Beatrix Potter. ^^

There are already complaints that he is violating the topic ban:

https://twitter.com/leftworks1/status/1 ... 2627078145

[Kingsindian]

The case hasn't concluded yet, so there isn't a topic ban on Cross right now (leaving aside the George Galloway article). However, the remedy seems to be passing comfortably, so it's only a matter of time.

[Kingsindian]

KalHolmann is (justifiably) aggrieved:

On 17 June 2018, during the Evidence phase for this case, I was re-added as an involved party at the direction of the Arbitration Committee. I was not notified of this development, either at my talk page or via email. Nevertheless, after spotting it at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/BLP issues on British politics articles, I requested via email on 17 June 2018 that all evidence against me be posted publicly at the Evidence page. "If evidence must be submitted privately by email to ArbCom," I added, "I request that the committee share it with me in a timely manner so that I may respond before the Evidence phase closes on 22 Jun 2018." On the closing day of the Evidence phase, Rob replied to me by email on behalf of the Arbitration Committee, "At this time, we've received no private evidence related to you. If we did, you would receive an opportunity to respond to it before we made our decision. You were re-added as a party mainly due to your prior involvement in the dispute and conduct during the case." No evidence against me was posted at the Evidence page subsequent to or in explanation of my being re-added as an involved party.

On 23 Jun 2018, during the Workshop phase for this case, I requested removal as a party, noting that I had been re-added "without specified charges." Arbitrator PMC replied, "Again, there are no charges, and this is not a criminal court." Arbitrator Rob replied, "As has already been communicated to you, your addition as a party was based on your involvement in the underlying dispute (without comment on whether that involvement was in any way problematic) and your conduct during the case."

Despite these reassurances, however, immediately upon opening the Proposed Decision phase, ArbCom issued a Proposed Finding of Fact that I had "persistently attempted to link to private and/or off-wiki evidence despite repeated instructions and warnings to submit such things privately to the Arbitration Committee," with a Proposed Remedy that I be "indefinitely banned from linking to or speculating about the off-wiki behavior or identity of other editors."

I now request that ArbCom enumerate my offenses for the record, diff by diff, preferably in public here at Wikipedia but if necessary privately via email. This will be essential during the Appeal phase. Thank you. KalHolmann (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

[Kingsindian]

Given the unanimous passing of the topic ban remedy, Jimbo has egg on his face now. He had earlier declared that there was no problem at all with Cross' editing. Nothing to see here; keep moving along. JzG also has egg on his face. Both are keeping very quiet.

Jimbo is a reliable contraindicator, as always.

[Dysklyver]

Well there might not have been anything wrong with Cross's editing to begin with, but after he got involved in a twitter fight with the subject of a BLP he significantly edited he obviously had a COI.

[Bezdomni]

Normally though they have one template that acts as the main one and the rest are embedded in that.

I'm not sure I've ever seen the structure on that Flag of Syria (T-H-L) page with two top level infoboxes. Looks like they were preparing to split the article out.

(fin hors sujet)
_______

KalHolmann is (justifiably) aggrieved

I kind of winced when I read that Kal was thinking of appealing. BU Rob13 cleared up exactly what it was that was being denied Mr. Holmann that most are not forbidden from doing through the outing (policy) & "linklove" (behavioral guideline): "It forbids discussing even disclosed off-wiki activity". I'm not sure how often such discussion is really necessary, so it seemed to me pretty silly to dignify such an obviously retaliatory / distracting ("find me another guilty party for the press to talk about") sanction with a response.

In the end then, power~enwiki is batting .500... while their call to create a new DS-zone hasn't succeeded, his call to sanction Kal for contempt of !court has now gone through despite the clear statement that "Wikipedia Arbitration is not and does not purport to be a legal system comparable to courts or regulatory agencies." Of course, in Rebecca Said's evidence we saw that Cross had repeatedly had their outing attempts revdelled without any action... I guess that the final line of the lede in Kangaroo court (T-H-L) is relevant here.

A kangaroo court could also develop when the structure and operation of the forum result in an inferior brand of adjudication. A common example of this is when institutional disputants ("repeat players") have excessive and unfair structural advantages over individual disputants ("one-shot players").

source

I mentioned to power~enwiki by PM that there was an open question about his call for blood (when they opened their vanity thread in the members-only part of the forum). So far, no reply... (bagnards1 being a bit like lepers) ^^

______
1Speaking of bagnards, some insightful comments here: (§) (echoing important points on the talk page of the proposed decision concerning harm)

[Poetlister]

I think that the POV of Cross' detractors is well summed up by a quote from Hersh's link: "well suited to his role of vilification tool for Murdoch, US imperialism, the NATO satellites and Israel." An amazing lumping together of four very different things.

[Bezdomni]

Are you drowning the fish, Poetlister?

What do you, Poetlister, think about the fact that nothing was said about Philip Cross' outing efforts? That is not content, but a history of behavior, and, as such, should in principle have interested the Arbs.

Ran across this French page on the story ( fr | robotranslated ), showing that it is indeed getting international cross-linguistic (forum) coverage. Pierrot, incidentally, is a former big name on fr.wiki who is the subject of a few articles at WikiBuster.

[Kingsindian]

I think that the POV of Cross' detractors is well summed up by a quote from Hersh's link: "well suited to his role of vilification tool for Murdoch, US imperialism, the NATO satellites and Israel." An amazing lumping together of four very different things.

In the Middle East (and elsewhere), the interests and actions of the four entities mentioned often converge. Surely, this is not a surprise?

[Poetlister]

Are you drowning the fish, Poetlister?

Bezdomi: what point are you making? I wasn't referring to Cross himself, but to the motives of his far-left detractors, which seem to be the overthrow of the American Government and the destruction of NATO and Israel.

[Poetlister]

I think that the POV of Cross' detractors is well summed up by a quote from Hersh's link: "well suited to his role of vilification tool for Murdoch, US imperialism, the NATO satellites and Israel." An amazing lumping together of four very different things.

In the Middle East (and elsewhere), the interests and actions of the four entities mentioned often converge. Surely, this is not a surprise?

You're begging some questions there, such as whether US foreign policy amounts to imperialism (as distinct from the totally benevolent geopolitics that Russia and China for example indulge in).

[Kingsindian]

You said that the four things are completely different. I said the four things converge in certain not-very-small set of cases. If you had said that the words aren't used correctly, I would have replied to that point (assuming I replied).

Anyway, I doubt that every member of ArbCom (who seem to agree with Cross' detractors that his conduct has problems) is secretly on the far left. And I doubt that most ArbCom members are aiming for the destruction of Israel or the overthrow of the US government.

I am picturing NewYorkBrad in antifa uniform

[Dysklyver]

I doubt that most ArbCom members are aiming for the destruction of Israel or the overthrow of the US government.

Lol

[Poetlister]

Kingsindian: I doubt that every member of ArbCom agrees that he is a vilification tool for Murdoch, US imperialism, the NATO satellites and Israel. He has certainly been clumsy and charged around like a bull in a china shop, but if he were a tool of all these sinister forces he'd be much better trained.

[Kingsindian]

People make criticisms for all sorts of reasons. In the context of Wikipedia, the first-order issue is whether those criticisms are true. The real motivations of the complainants are a second- or third-order issue. For instance, if the criticisms are all bogus, then we can take into account the second-order reasons, and dismiss the complaints as political propaganda.

It is no secret that the POVs of Phillip Cross and his detractors is opposed. If Phillip Cross was spending his time only talking shit about Benjamin Netanyahu or NATO, obviously these people wouldn't be as bothered. But that fact isn't relevant to the first-order issue.

It's also no secret that disparaging BLPs are created often on Wikipedia, and you can find, among those editing a BLP, people who have a clear distaste for the person. Moreover, a person can't edit their own Wikipedia page, but their enemies can. This particular case is mostly interesting because Galloway decided to fight back and used his media platform to do so. Not all people have this luxury.

[Poetlister]

It's also no secret that disparaging BLPs are created often on Wikipedia, and you can find, among those editing a BLP, people who have a clear distaste for the person. Moreover, a person can't edit their own Wikipedia page, but their enemies can. This particular case is mostly interesting because Galloway decided to fight back and used his media platform to do so. Not all people have this luxury.

If someone has no friends prepared to edit his or her page, there's something wrong. And anyone can have a media platform these days.

[Kingsindian]

Sure, you can set up a blog and scream into the void. Doesn't mean anyone will listen.

Would WP have taken any action if there wasn't a big stink made over this? As mentioned upthread, Neil Clark has been complaining about Phillip Cross for over a decade.

[Bezdomni]

Hm... I see that Snoog became interested in George Galloway as a result of the Philip Cross controversy. After congratulating Cross on his talk page in May (§), he made his first edit to the George Galloway entry on 13 June 2018. (He does seem to enjoy being in the spotlight.) In this edit, he deliberately misrepresented a source and (re?)introduced disputed headers. Though the header changes were noticed, nobody had checked that his sources said what he claimed they did, until I mentioned it at WS (and later here in this thread).

The consensus on the talk page now is that Snoog's edit misrepresents the source. The "supervising" admin has been asked to remove the misinformation despite the full protection on the page (§). It has not been done, though an administrator did stop by to remove a Daily Mail reference (an exclusive interview Galloway conducted with Saddam Hussein prior to the second Gulf war).

Is this just a one-shot deal or is there a pattern of misrepresenting sources? In looking through recent edits, I quickly found two clear-cut examples of misrepresentation in the past couple days (within the first five edits I looked at):

1. The leaked contents proved that fueled conspiracies suggesting the party's leadership had worked to sabotage Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign and prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
   
   source (their edit is limited to what is in color above)

   While I suspect what Snoog meant to write was "fueled conspiracy theories suggesting" rather than "fueled conspiracies suggesting", neither is -- even remotely -- an accurate reflection of the NYT article being cited.
   

   Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
   [...]
   The breach of the Democratic committee’s emails, made public on Friday by WikiLeaks, offered undeniable evidence of what Mr. Sanders’s supporters had complained about for much of the senator’s contentious primary contest with Mrs. Clinton: that the party was effectively an arm of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
   
   source

2. Kemp rejects the conclusion by the US intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. [...] Kemp denounced [...] Kemp denounced [...]
   
   source

   What the cited source (from June 2017) actually says (about Kemp's position in early 2017):
   

   Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call {{in Sept. 2016}} to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,” Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. “I don’t necessarily believe that,” he said.
   
   source

So, that's two misrepresented source in the past 24-36 hours to add to the one I mentioned from back in June... I also quickly found another case which, while the edit does not misrepresent the source, reasonable people seem to disagree with the Snoog about. He is quite adamant that Katie Pavlich's mistaken tweet concerning the pardon vs. commutation of Manning & Lopez's sentences is notable enough for a paragraph in her BLP.

Three different editors in the page history suggest that it is either undue, is no more than smear (the latest reversion), or is not contained in the original source (which I cannot verify as Tronc's papers are still blocked in Europe, though the fact that he changed the reference from LA Times to Politifact suggests it is not impossible).

In August 2017, Pavlich was retweeted by President Trump. Her tweet incorrectly asserted that President Obama had pardoned Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera, when Obama had, in fact, commuted their sentences.

source -- edit summary: "katie, stop"

Finally, I couldn't help but notice the Daily Beast's attack piece he added to the Jill Stein BLP a couple days ago. The last time Snoog added a Daily Beast piece to JS's entry it was one critical of her personal pension plan, written by a former Clinton campaign worker (Yashar Ali, formerly known as Yashar Hedayat) a few weeks before the election. It was direct plagiarism, but since there was little fear that Ali would sue Wikipedia for the copyright infringement, nothing happened, beyond another editor paraphrasing it for him, since he refused to correct the problem. (§) We'll see if the current story about alleged misuse of recount money to deal with Senate demands concerning the RT 10th anniversary gala has longer legs... for the moment it is only media traditionally friendly to the DNC and hostile to the Green Party trying to get mileage out of a late filing: Front Page Mag, Daily Beast (Chelsea Clinton on the BoD of the owning company), Think Progress (Neera Tanden), etc.. This is Wikipedia.

You might be surprised to learn that this guy is actually well-known and (mostly) above the law as the copyvio case suggests. He is topic-banned from mass editing BLPs in American politics due to a previous case (§) focused exclusively on his anti-Republican edits, which a couple admins thought should be kicked directly to ArbCom. Surprisingly, despite his caustic nature, he's only been blocked once for personal attacks. This too is Wikipedia.

tldr: You can whack one mole but there are twenty more to take that mole's place...

[Kingsindian]

The Philip Cross case is closed. Cross got a topic ban. KalHolmann got a restriction on outing. ArbCom said that there's no evidence Cross was meatpuppet-ing for anyone, or sockpuppeting.

Cross didn't say a (public) word during the whole case, apart from his very brief opening statement. [There was one trivial comment on an IP, but it doesn't matter.]

[Poetlister]

Cross didn't say a (public) word during the whole case, apart from his very brief opening statement. [There was one trivial comment on an IP, but it doesn't matter.]

He scarcely needed to. There was enough chatter to cover everything.

[Dysklyver]

Cross didn't say a (public) word during the whole case, apart from his very brief opening statement. [There was one trivial comment on an IP, but it doesn't matter.]

He scarcely needed to. There was enough chatter to cover everything.

Way too much chatter in my opinion.

[Bezdomni]

Way too much chatter in my opinion.

I never have had my own phone.

source

Are these two claims related?

[Dysklyver]

Way too much chatter in my opinion.

I never have had my own phone.

source

Are these two claims related?

Heh. No.

I am slightly mad on the subject of phones, plus this has slowly got worse over the course of my adult life, and I don't like speaking to people on the phone and rarely do so. Occasionally I borrow other peoples phones if I need to do something where a phone is needed. But I am known to pretend to be deaf/dumb/Russian/dead to avoid phone calls, You might be surprised how many business you can contact via textphone, I do that wherever possible.

No my compliant about the P. Cross chatter is that it has spawned a massive AN debate, Arbcom debate, endless talk page debates, debates on twitter, jimbotalk debates, a ton of Russian propaganda, a ton of fake news, a brief mention on the BBC.

And the dreadful quality of Russian news based on news of debates about news based on tweets of news should not be underestimated.

[Bezdomni]

Fair enough. I've managed not to buy a phone for a decade, but can't imagine not having one. (I did sell off my truck over a decade ago though and have never replaced it. That cut costs (and admittedly some opportunities) substantially.)

I agree that any news based on news of debates about news based on tweets of news is pretty dreadful.

For the sake of comparison (occurences of newsoutlet.com @ en.wp):

Le Monde - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 649
RT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 812
Toronto Globe and Mail - - - - - - - - 1,222
New Orleans Times Picayune - - - - 1,602
Al Jazeera - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1,634
Fox News - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2,253
Wall Street Journal - - - - - - - - - - - - 3,577
Chicago Tribune - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3,623
Daily Mail - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3,818
Washington Post - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 6,903
Twitter - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 8,479
LA Times - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 8,522
The Guardian - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 9,474
CNN - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 11,166
Facebook - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 14,580
NY Times - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 25,611

[Poetlister]

It looks like there is a strong aversion to British newspapers other than The Guardian and The Daily Mail. However, this is because British sites often end in .co.uk rather than .com; for example, the Daily Telegraph is telegraph.co.uk.

[Johnny Au]

It looks like there is a strong aversion to British newspapers other than The Guardian and The Daily Mail. However, this is because British sites often end in .co.uk rather than .com; for example, the Daily Telegraph is telegraph.co.uk.

Not just that, but where's the BBC or the CBC?

[Bezdomni]

At first, the point of the list was to show just how frequently twitter was cited.

Later I got curious about the relative frequency of papers. I did check both the Times and the Times of India, but at 968 & 969 they didn't seem too widely used. It's true that I should have included all 3 of those you mention above (BBC -> 3919, CBC -> 5587, & The Daily Telegraph --> 10,091). Together the BBC & the Daily Telegraph are cited 14,010 times, which isn't so far behind Facebook (14,580).

USA Today --> 6105
The Hindu --> 4812
Sydney Morning Herald --> 3392

[Poetlister]

I did check both the Times and the Times of India, but at 968 & 969 they didn't seem too widely used.

That's pretty staggering. The Times is undoubtedly one of the very top English-language newspapers, some would say the top one. You'd think there would be enough Indian editors to quote their own top newspaper more often. It's a massive demonstration of the West-centric and USA-centric bias among editors.

[Kingsindian]

You can't directly compare things like that. The BBC is a high quality source which is not behind a paywall, so I suspect The Times is simply less necessary to cite.

The Hindu is a sort-of-left-of-center Indian newspaper (it is roughly on the same point on the political spectrum as The Guardian in the UK). It's interesting that it's cited much more often than The Times of India, which is more of a centrist newspaper.

Anyway, I am not sure what all this has to do with this thread.

[Dysklyver]

So I decided to try this but probably with a more accurate search method.

search type: insource (non-regex)
namespace: 0

"bbc.co.uk" = 163,735
BBC = 227,245
"bbc_news" = 79,486
"bbc.com" = 24,082

"timesofindia.indiatimes.com" = 31,313
timesofindia = 32,876
"indiatimes.com" = 36,904
"times_of_india" = 28,050

"nytimes.com" = 214,080
nytimes = 214,908
"new_york_times" = 223,460
NYT = 29,182

twitter = 67,351
tweet = 11,735
twitter.com = 35,735

facebook = 83,666
"facebook.com" = 55,503

"youtube.com" = 142,110
"youtu.be" = 3,530
youtube = 187,209

Disclaimer is that this counts every usage of these strings, which can be more than once per page. So this tells us that "youtube.com" is written 142,110 times on Wikipedia, it can't tell how many pages are affected, nor if these are all used in citations. "BBC" for example is clearly used widely not in citations. Nevertheless the fact Twitter is more highly used that the Times of India is interesting.

[Bezdomni]

So I decided to try this but probably with a more accurate search method.

Interesting. For some reason I checked bbc.com rather than bbc.co.uk (24K §), despite Poetlister's co.uk reminder. I would be curious what your method was. Namespace 0 is just articles, no? I thought that is what I was searching for here or rather here. (articles only checked)

I also was slipshod on the times of india I think (I missed the middle part of the address)... the more accurate number using the basic search is 6040.

Where did you go for these much higher numbers? You're right, the basic search just lists the number of pages the string appears on.

[Dysklyver]

Where did you go for these much higher numbers?

Type the following into the search box.

Code: Select all

insource:"bbc.co.uk"

This enables a search function which searches the wikitext of the articles rather than being filtered through the WMF's default setup (that filters results to be more relevant). Obviously make sure only articles is selected unless you want to do this in other namespaces. See also WP:INSOURCE (T-H-L)

It's very interesting when finding all sorts of things, for example I can find that in the User talk namespace, the word "fuck" is used 14,319 times, and "Trump" only 10,576 times, but that "block" has 1,849,398 instances of use...

Or that there are 305 uses of "rogue admin" but 370 of "rouge admin".

[Bezdomni]

There's still only one "respectfully defer to whatever" (whether using insource: or not). It's in namespace #1. ^^

Thanks for the help. I'm redoing a table with both numbers (based on the web address to get as close as possible to likely use for references) for July 2018.

Here it is in pdf form: §

[Hersch]

Are you drowning the fish, Poetlister?

Bezdomi: what point are you making? I wasn't referring to Cross himself, but to the motives of his far-left detractors, which seem to be the overthrow of the American Government and the destruction of NATO and Israel.

I could be wrong, but I think that they may also be behind the plot to flouridate our water.

[Johnny Au]

So I decided to try this but probably with a more accurate search method.

search type: insource (non-regex)
namespace: 0

"bbc.co.uk" = 163,735
BBC = 227,245
"bbc_news" = 79,486
"bbc.com" = 24,082

"timesofindia.indiatimes.com" = 31,313
timesofindia = 32,876
"indiatimes.com" = 36,904
"times_of_india" = 28,050

"nytimes.com" = 214,080
nytimes = 214,908
"new_york_times" = 223,460
NYT = 29,182

twitter = 67,351
tweet = 11,735
twitter.com = 35,735

facebook = 83,666
"facebook.com" = 55,503

"youtube.com" = 142,110
"youtu.be" = 3,530
youtube = 187,209

Disclaimer is that this counts every usage of these strings, which can be more than once per page. So this tells us that "youtube.com" is written 142,110 times on Wikipedia, it can't tell how many pages are affected, nor if these are all used in citations. "BBC" for example is clearly used widely not in citations. Nevertheless the fact Twitter is more highly used that the Times of India is interesting.

Where would the CBC fit in? How about LinkedIn? Reddit?

[Poetlister]

How does this fit in with WP:RS? Apart from the Daily Mail, virtually all newspapers can be regarded as reliable sources. Twitter is a reliable source for what the tweeter, e.g. Donald Trump, said, but obviously is not reliable in most cases, being a self-published source. LinkedIn profiles are autobiography so need treating with care, and anything else on LinkedIn or Reddit is certainly no better than a random tweet.

[Hersch]

A rather extensive update has now appeared from Craig Murray:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... ss-affair/

He asserts that Philip Cross' POV, which may fairly be described as "neocon", corresponds closely to that of Jimmy Wales:

What is particularly interesting is that “Philip Cross”‘s views happen to be precisely the same political views as those of Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales has been on twitter the last three days being actively rude and unpleasant to anybody questioning the activities of Philip Cross. His commitment to Cross’s freedom to operate on Wikipedia would be rather more impressive if the Cross operation were not promoting Wales’ own opinions. Jimmy Wales has actively spoken against Jeremy Corbyn, supports the bombing of Syria, supports Israel, is so much of a Blairite he married Blair’s secretary, and sits on the board of Guardian Media Group Ltd alongside Katherine Viner.

The extreme defensiveness and surliness of Wales’ twitter responses on the “Philip Cross” operation is very revealing. Why do you think he reacts like this? Interestingly enough. Wikipedia’s UK begging arm, Wikimedia UK, joined in with equal hostile responses to anyone questioning Cross.

[Poetlister]

This chap is clearly well informed. He doesn't know that Jimbo is not the founder of Wikipedia, or that he left the Guardian board in April 2017 to avoid conflict of interest over Wikitribune. And the idea that everyone who opposes Jeremy Corbyn and supports the existence of the State of Israel holds precisely rhe same views or is a neocon is breathtaking.

And yes, I oppose the bombing of civilians in Syria by the Syrian and Russian governments. I bet Philip Cross does too.

[Kingsindian]

Murray is probably correct that Jimbo and Cross have similar politics.

Calling it "neo-con" is just confusing though. "Blairite" is the usual UK term.

[Poetlister]

Murray is probably correct that Jimbo and Cross have similar politics.

Calling it "neo-con" is just confusing though. "Blairite" is the usual UK term.

Tony Blair was never a neocon. By definition, a neocon is a conservative. Blair believed in raising government spending and major constitutional reforms such as removing hereditary peers from the Lords, both absolute anathema to conservatives. He's a classical liberal.

[Dysklyver]

Murray is probably correct that Jimbo and Cross have similar politics.

Calling it "neo-con" is just confusing though. "Blairite" is the usual UK term.

Tony Blair was never a neocon. By definition, a neocon is a conservative. Blair believed in raising government spending and major constitutional reforms such as removing hereditary peers from the Lords, both absolute anathema to conservatives. He's a classical liberal.

Yeah I back Poetlister on this, Blair is/was (R.I.P. Blair) far from being a conservative, a big clue is that he was notably the leader of the Labour party, not the Conservative party.

[Hersch]

Murray is probably correct that Jimbo and Cross have similar politics.

Calling it "neo-con" is just confusing though. "Blairite" is the usual UK term.

The two terms are synonymous. "Neo-con" is probably better known on this side of the pond (meaning the American side.)

[Hersch]

Murray is probably correct that Jimbo and Cross have similar politics.

Calling it "neo-con" is just confusing though. "Blairite" is the usual UK term.

Tony Blair was never a neocon. By definition, a neocon is a conservative. Blair believed in raising government spending and major constitutional reforms such as removing hereditary peers from the Lords, both absolute anathema to conservatives. He's a classical liberal.

Yeah I back Poetlister on this, Blair is/was (R.I.P. Blair) far from being a conservative, a big clue is that he was notably the leader of the Labour party, not the Conservative party.

A neocon is not a conservative in the traditional sense. Believe it or not, people mistakenly holding that view could benefit from reading the WP article on neoconservatism (T-H-L), which is not entirely useless. And the traditional view that in the UK, Tories are right-wing and Labour is left is outmoded due to the advent of New Labour. The same holds for Republicans and Democrats in the US. One characteristic of right-wing politics is militarism and imperialism, both of which have been ardently embraced by the Blair people and the Hillary people. So IMO, Craig Murray's analysis of the political factions involved is spot on. I think that you could go by the following yardstick: "Neocons" = people that Philip Cross likes. He'll lovingly caress their BLPs. "Opponents of neocons" = people that Philip Cross yearns to defame.

[Hersch]

I suspect that KalHolmann (T-C-L) will rue the day that he innocently raised his voice in this matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... KalHolmann