Monday, July 17, 2006

"Bioregional Democracy": Deleted from Wikipedia, Likely the U.S. Gov't Psychological Operations Orwellian Encyclopedia

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(Picture: "Edge of Cascadia": The Cascadian
Subduction Zone, Ends at Cape Mendocino)


Without further ado:

THE LONG DURABLE AND UNCONTENTIOUS "BIOREGIONAL DEMOCRACY" ARTICLE, DELETED COMPLETELY, sometime in June 2006 from Wikifront:

It appears in many other locations around the web, drawn originally from the Wikipedia article and mirrored around.

Bioregional democracy: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of electoral reforms designed to force the political process in a democracy to better represent concerns about the economy, the body, and environmental concerns (e.g., water quality), toward developmental paths that are locally prioritized and tailored to different areas for their own specific interests of sustainability and durability. This movement is variously called bioregional democracy, watershed cooperation, or bioregional representation, or one of various other similar names—all of which denote democratic control of a natural commons and local jurisdictional dominance in any economic developmental path decisions—while not removing more generalized civil rights protections of a larger national state.

The best known examples are the Great Lakes Commission of ten American states and the Canadian province of Ontario, which governs the largest fresh watershed in the world, and the cooperation by nations with Arctic Ocean boundaries. These are democratic entities cooperating in a international body, giving up some sovereignty by definition. This is the simplest form of bioregional democracy—cooperation to defend a single watershed.

But there are more profound forms that challenge many political assumptions.
Contents

* 1 Ecoregions and indigenous peoples
* 2 Ecoregional consensus
* 3 Ecoregions as habitats
* 4 Ecoregions as trade barriers
* 5 Ecoregions contain biological dangers to citizens
* 6 Ecoregions as Political Feedback Against Unsustainable Developmentalism
* 7 Language and biodiversity
* 8 The Bioregional Revolutionary Movement
* 9 See also
* 10 External links

[edit]

Ecoregions and indigenous peoples

Ecoregions, as defined by the science of ecology, are the borders of ecologically-sensitive districts, and may often converge with the borders of indigenous lands and lifeways. Indigenous languages tend to include terms or distinctions applicable to one ecoregion, where that language has originated.

Supporters claim that ecoregional democracy can better preserve what remains of indigenous culture and indigenous language and lifeways, and permit new tribalists to live in better harmony with the land. Some even claim that this would in effect create new indigenous peoples.
[edit]

Ecoregional consensus

Scientists claim that ecoregions are observed in nature rather than imposed by man. A natural border or keystone species or soil type or watershed or micro-climate reflects local natural capital constraints in that region leading to a homeorhic statis.

When a region is inhabited by man, indigenous or otherwise, this stasis can be extended by consensus, argue supporters of the Four Pillars, two of which are ecological wisdom and grassroots democracy.

The term "grassroots" itself invokes the metaphor of terrestrial ecoregions and implies that beings belong in a certain place in nature.

Two other Pillars, social justice and non-violence, are optimized by ecoregional borders because of the way that ecology itself imposes a certain type of natural equality and harms reduction between living species.
[edit]

Ecoregions as habitats

The theory of Natural Capitalism, which developed in the mid to late 1990s, holds that the functioning natural ecology of a region is a form of living capital. Natural habitat performs services for all species including recirculation of air, water, replenishment of soil, prevention of erosion, and absorption of chemical, genetic, viral and bacterial threats.

In effect, any living being in an ecoregion has access to a commons from which it breathes, drinks, eats, and to which its wastes are disposed. Harms are reduced by the functioning ecology—as long as it is politically protected and is not required to provide more than its sustainable yield of resources. Ecoregional democracy proposes to protect that habitat by giving more political power to those living within it, less to outsiders.
[edit]

Ecoregions as trade barriers

While tax, tariff and trade barriers have generally been reduced worldwide, advocates of ecoregional democracy seek trading bloc biosafety rules regarding ecologically-alien imports (such as genetically modified seeds or entirely new proteins or molecules) with ecoregions. This reduces the probability of spreading a major virus, prion, bacteria, genetically defective seed, or dangerous chemical agent across a bioregional border, if political borders (where imports are inspected and tariffs are applied) are perfectly aligned with them. Critics argue that this is an excuse for yet more regulations, and panic-mongering.

For example, the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) area roughly corresponds to the Nearctic ecological zone. A proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would add the Neotropic ecological zone. Many groups in the anti-globalization movement demand more direct democratic control over the ecological, social, and trade rules in effect in such large trading blocs, fearing that ecology or society will be compromised. Critics argue that this is protectionism in disguise, and intended to protect an inefficient local agriculture from producers who grow the same foods abroad.
[edit]

Ecoregions contain biological dangers to citizens

In addition to their convergence with indigenous people's lands and languages, and their natural reduction of threats to natural capital, ecoregional borders also naturally support biosecurity—by definition, water, soil and gene flows within terrestrial ecoregions do not endanger the natural capital of those regions as they are part of it.

However, culturally-imposed industrial age borders tend to bisect rather than follow ecoregions—proponents argue that this leads to conflict as ecological threats to a cut-off corner of an ecoregion do not threaten lives in the main body of the constituency. Whereas upstream and downstream citizens are dealing with the same leaders and legislatures by definition in an ecoregional constituency, and these conflicts remain contained locally.

Some argue that to permit political borders to bisect ecoregions is much like requiring a citizen to live in one place while requiring only his left arm to answer to the government of another. If ecologies reliably maintain homeorhic balance in themselves, this is a valid way to view the problem—and a major opportunity to cut conflicts by better aligning political to ecological borders, taking "body parts" out of politically defined conflict. This topic is addressed at some length and elaboration with examples in Toward a Bioregional State.

If biological warfare or ecological pathways for biohazards become a major concern in national governance, even national electoral reform seems likely to adhere to these ecoregional borders to minimize costs of implementing a robust, fair and defensive biosecurity protocol.
[edit]

Ecoregions as Political Feedback Against Unsustainable Developmentalism

Particularly within the frameworks of proposals in the Bioregional State, ecoregions or watersheds aid in faciliation of the innate "ecological self-interest" of people to avoid externalities in human health, ecology, or economic relations that are impressed upon people living in a particular ecological area by informal politics guided from larger state frameworks. One way to bring this type of ecological self-interest in sync with developmental policies would be to make watersheds/ecoregions as the mandated form for electoral dictricting, providing ecological based checks and balances in politics. This brings ecological self-interest in sync with state politics instead of out of sync with it. A watershed based electoral districting provides feedback against unsustainable developmentalism policies in particular areas; provides for a more competitive informal party framework that removes the gerrymandered and uncompetitive districting that is key to how informal gatekeeping is involved in maintaining unsustainable development; as well provides an ongoing formal mechanism for particular areas to participate in deliberations of developmental decisions within larger state levels for their own ecologically specific sustainable paths. The wider argument of the Bioregional State is that much of unsustainable developmentalism comes from how exclusionary and undemocratic political gatekeeping is organized and maintained in ostensibly "formal democracies." The wider argument of the Bioregional State is that its frameworks are an improvement on democracy in general, that removes many different levels of elitist, exclusionary political gatekeeping which promotes unsustainable abuses. Watersheds as electoral districts are only one of the more "charismatic" examples in the Bioregional State for how to operationalize an ecological check and balance solution on the level of districting, in this wider general issue of gatekeeping.
[edit]

Language and biodiversity

A compelling but controversial argument for more bioregional democracy is the alignment of natural language and ecological stewardship illustrated by anthropological linguistics.

David Nettle, in "Linguistic Diversity," 1998, notes "the amazing fact that the map of language density in the world is the same as the map of species diversity: i.e., where there are more species per unit of area, there will be more languages too." According to the proponents of this theory, Grassroots Democracy organized by ecoregions seems to be one way to preserve biodiversity.

This prompts support from indigenous peoples, ecologists, new tribalists and Green Parties and Gaians, who tend to believe that indigenous customs, constraints, language or even local jargon reflects the natural ecology, and so local cultural sovereignty is critical to maintaining biodiversity. This is a common topic of study amongst academic linguists, e.g., Mark Fettes, who in "Steps Towards an Ecology of Language," 1996, seeks "a theory of language ecology which can integrate naturalist and critical traditions" and "An Ecological Approach to Language Renewal," 1997. Critics argue that languages tied to ecology or specific lifeways are irrelevant in an age of global communications—some claim that everyone should learn English to avoid disadvantage in the global economy.
[edit]

The Bioregional Revolutionary Movement

The Bioregional Revolution movement is a new organization (circa 2004) promoting bioregionalism, permaculture, local currencies, and nonviolence in response to "peak oil" and other converging problems they claim we are likely to see in the 21st century.

Associated with this movement is RANS (Revolutionary Army for Nonviolence and Sustainability) which advocates the organization of autonomous individuals committed to the principles of nuturing the earth and humanity in order to create a sustainable and nonviolent future.
[edit]

See also

* Democracy (varieties)
* List of politics-related topics
* The Bioregional Revolution

[edit]

External links

* The Bioregional Revolutionary Movement
* Toward a Bioregional State
* Activist movement cultivating bioregions/ecoregions
* The North American Bioregional Congress

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregional_democracy"

Deleted by the increasingly Orwellian Wikipedia.


A detailed discussion of my suspicions of Wikipedia:


I'm only archiving, because Wikipedia had adopted Orwellian "history rewrite" (seriously) functions that delete even the (e-)paper trail of deletions. Poof. It "never existed." Or did it? Winston Smith would be facinated how much Wikipedia has come to resemble the Ministry of Truth. And it is very appropriate I quote "Wikipedia" itself on this, because the description of the Orwellian disinformation program fits much of what Wikipedia stands for:

The Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue, in Newspeak) was one of the four ministries that govern Airstrip One, Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The other Ministries were: Ministry of Love, Ministry of Plenty, and Ministry of Peace. The Ministry of Truth was where the main character, Winston Smith, works. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete 300m into the air, containing over 3000 rooms above ground. On the outside wall were the three slogans of the Party: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," "Ignorance is Strength." The Ministry of Truth was involved with news, entertainment and the fine arts. Its purpose was to rewrite history and change the facts to fit party doctrine. For example, if Big Brother (BB) made a prediction that turned out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth would go back and rewrite history so that any prediction BB made would be accurate. As with the other Ministries in the novel, the Ministry of Truth actually did the opposite of what its name implies, being responsible for the falsification of historical events.


Substitute in Wikipedia for Ministry of Truth and Jimbo Wales as Big Brother, and you have a live version of the Orwellian nightmare, masquerading as a "truth website".

Particularly crucial here is the key "Ignorance is Strength" motto of both the Ministry of Truth, and, increasingly, Wikipedia.

Would anyone of even basic intelligence trust a hypocritically self-proclaimed "encyclopedia" that allow Orwellian rewrites? By people who admit they have zero knowledge of the articles at hand, and actually seem to be promoted because of their ignorance? "Ignorance is Strength" I guess in action at Wikipedia.

As others have noticed, at Wikitruth.info as well as the Village Voice, more purging goes on at Wikipedia than writing--another classic characteristic of a Ministry of Truth.

How did it get this way?

More to the point was it meant to be that way all along? The open Internet is innately dangerous to those who would prefer to substitute it for a "singular authoritative Internet text", from one viewpoint with the rest becoming thoughtcrime. Similar to Wikipedia,...

In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labeling unapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak, "crimethink". In the book, Winston Smith, the main character, writes in his diary: Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. He also makes remarks to the effect that "Thoughtcrime is the only crime that matters." The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) was the secret police of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four whose job it was to uncover and punish thoughtcrime. The Thought Police used psychology and omnipresent surveillance to find and eliminate members of society who were capable of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority. Orwell's Thought Police and their pursuit of thoughtcrime was based on the methods used by the totalitarian states and competing ideologies of the 20th century. It also had much to do with Orwell's own "power of facing unpleasant facts", as he called it, and his willingness to criticise prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies". ... The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived enforcement of ideological correctness in any modern or historical contexts.



Wikipedia as the Modern Day Thought Police


It's very amusing how that is a perfect definition of Wikipedia in practice. To whit, a bit about my experience with observing and participating in the project for a while:

First however, I admit I always had my suspicions about the Wikipedia high powered free media advertizing that it got. There was always something rather suspicious to me that Skull and Bones founded (Time Magazine) and Project Mockingbird based U.S. corporate media (Time Magazine, Washington Post, etc.) were suddenly so concerned with hypeing an unknown named Jimbo Wales and presenting him--actually, foisting him as--some kind of leader of a free speech movement of the democratization of knowledge.

By giving Jimbo's Wikifront free facelift attention as an "independent" non-profit online encyclopedia, they deluded lots of honest souls out there to work for the Ministry of Truth without their own knowledge: to do much of the Ministry's intellectual work, to donate funds for its operation out of their own labor, and to provide the je ne sais quoi democratic element that only those who really believed in the project could provide--even though they were truly on the outside of the administration of the project which is a different matter.

While noble Wikifront content providers slaved away, and spent hours of their lives adding commas and fixing verb tense changes, the overlords higher in the white limestone pyramid of the Ministry of Truth get to sit back and mostly work by deletions: paring down others work to a single politically skewed viewpoint which is always easier to achieve via calculated delition than the work of including information themselves.

It yields the aura of democracy to see countless millions laboring on articles--collectively clueless as to who runs the project though they may think that their outside particiption in it provides some sort of "stake" of sorts in defending it. However, on the other hand, Wikifront yields the aura of a front operation since few of the people actually running and editing the show believe in it (see the Wikitruth.info website) or write articles themselves, or have any knowledge that can be charitably described as empirical instead of ideologically driven. (By the way, two articles that interested me to see "dispassionate" reviews of were Skull and Bones and Project Mockingbird, which quickly were deleted without explanation or heavily trashed. This was hardly lost on me as to the "real purpose" of Wikifront: whole swaths of highly documented information I remember reading simply soon "didn't exist" anymore once I came back to see what had been added by others--or removed, as the case may be.)

And surely Time and Washington Post, the balder side of the U.S.'s Orwellian Ministry of Truth, could have told everyone that their annointing of Jimbo Wales as a democratic truth leader, with only cursory research, that he could quickly be questioned as to his "overly premature" credentials as a democratic leader when his whole life has only been spent as a stock market futures trader or a pornographer connected with something called Bomis.

I beg the question, your Honor: how many pornographers/stock brokers do you know who just "out of the blue" set up an encyclopedia, and devote their lives to it, or rather devote their lives to endlessly deleting it and fundraising and somehow getting themselves free media "annointing" attention that is wholly false and dishonest?

On the surface St. Jimbo sounds like a conversion worthy of Roman Catholic sainthood. On the other hand, I contest that perhaps the project was handed to Jimbo to work on from someone else, to provide layers of protection. After all with Jimbo's Ayn Rand cult like connections to Objectivism, stock markets, and pornography, he would fit right in ideologically with the rest of the neocon crew. I would contend that the whole Wikifront is a large "non-profit" humorously public self-subsidized psychological operation which wastes the time, labor, and funds from millions of people--to subsidize their own Ministry of Truth which is only interested in tightening the screw further by controlling instead of freeing information, all done under the guise of democratic legitimacy.

It only clenched my suspicions of a "Wikifront" operation when I began to notice a cherrypicking culture of political bias in many "editors" who suspiciously had been "elevated" to cardinal (editorial) rank who came across as Ayd Randite priests--who were actually prideful that they were without any real knowledge to their name or specializations of what they "edited" with gusto for "accuracy." It seemed a very shallow cover desire to crack digital heads.

Some of these Ministry of Truthers seemingly spend a huge chunk of their lives at Wikifront, some of them growing exceptionally fat from their pictures, systematically purging without ever adding anything--as their own digital trail shows. See for yourself: follow a few cardinal class "editors" around like Big Brother yourself since you can literally track people throughout the whole Wikifront project down to the addition of a hyphen here or a sentence remove there--as they most assuredly they do you. The Wikifront "panopticon thoughtcrime" culture is fascinating to watch, and rather easy to follow the actions of an cardinal editor or "Big Brother" Ayn Randite Jimbo Wales himself as they go about their undoing "work" (sometimes freezing articles so no one can change the official "revealed truth"; sometimes wholesale deleting of articles on politically sensitive points. You can even oogle their recorded conversations with each other where they give mostly bizarre emotional "justifications" for their actions, instead of empirical justifications.

I only got interested in this "spy versus spy" quality of Wikipedia when two particular editors sicced themselves on me, and posted what were threatening comments to me personally on my home page there. "Who are these frantic viscious editorial people? The one's that claim no basic knowledge of what they are assigning themselves to edit?" I thought. "What could be their motivation for being so frantic, except ideological misconceptions that are coming unravelled by the internet itself?" If you start a democratic encyclopedia, and its just a front operation, sooner or later you are only going to find yourself superceded and found out.

Though it was definitely an encyclopedia documentation project from my point of view. However, from their point of view, unless it fit with their "smelly little orthodoxies" in classic Orwellian style, it was into the memory hole.

The memory hole, as in the phrase "Going down the memory hole," refers to George Orwell's novel, 1984. In the novel, the memory hole is a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents and records for destruction. 1984's protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda interests of the government. For example, if the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below the current 30 grams per week, but in fact the ration is reduced to 20 grams per week, the historical record (e.g. an article from a back issue of the Times newspaper) is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, and later even said that the amount is raised to this amount. The original copies of that historical record are deposited into the memory hole. The term now generally refers to the alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive.


--or such as from Wikipedia.

One cardinal class editor was very partial (in the true sense of the word) to only purging information from articles about the Bush Administration and its appointees. When I called attention to this to other editors and asked it to be investigated, no one ever got back to me. They were probabaly busy doing the same thing specializing in another area. I hardly think all editors there are likely this, only the important ones.

When I found out through Wikitruth.info that Jimbo Wales originally was a pornographer, it clenched it for me that it was a front operation. To hypothesize, it perhaps connects his networks with the whole back-end of the CIA protected drug trades (or here) in the United States). It occurred to me that since it is a small world at the corrupt top of the U.S. political pyramid, involved with everything from nationally orchestrated pedophila and snuff films [1 2] simultaneous to being the head political elites and vote fraud protectors [1 2] of the United States, he may have been handed this front operation to work with in some sense.

The bizarre free media attention to Wikipedia--by the very media organizations that guard their editorial privildges for deciding what to show or hide to the U.S. mediasphere--seemed very telling to me that the whole Wikifront was exactly that. They were following their own intersts still for media control, in an adapted and cloaked form. In other words, Wikipedia was nothing of the sort from the beginning it seems.

So, in the interests of a real Wikipedia, one where the Church of Jimbo Wales (or whomever he might really work for) is removed from theocratic control, I post my archived copy of "bioregional democracy."

I would have liked to have listed here for the record all the other nice people who aided in a truly collective and enlightening group project. The article "bioregional democracy" already existed long before I found it by random searching and cross linking. I added some sections to it, and organized the pieces of the definition of bioregional democracy from all their pieces of information that stood the editoral test of time. However, it was a truly a collective endeavor, something I enjoy.

However, Wikifront tells me now that that information "never existed", since they purged it down the memory hole. However, we did craft it over the space of a year. That was how Wikipedia tells us it is meant to work. And it does and did work when they let it. We were very civil and learned much from each other there. However, Wikifront soon overshadowed our small scale process, and with a wholesale purge all of the above information is gone from Wikifront down the memory hole. The post has been "comfortably lobotomized," down to one paragraph, without links for exploring more, and records of its connection to democracy "never existed"--so they say.

However it did and still does: bioregionalism and environmental politics always has had a connection to democracy.

In conclusion, it is Wikipedia that never never existed in my opinion, and it continues to not exist. It was a collective fantasy in our minds, placed there by the corporate media itself, which only reveals its real purpose whenever "Ignorance is Strength" slash and burners tear through. The Wikifront is operated less in the interest of editoral objectivity and more as per the church of Jimbo Wales in the interests of protecting Ayn Rand's Objectivism and George Bush related articles--which is a wholly different thing.

Go to Wikitruth.info and the links above for a look under the hood of what has been going on since day one at Wikipedia, and see if you unavoidably come to the same conclusions.

That such a Sisyphean police state endeavor as Wikifront could ever be dreamed up, shows we may be at "stage three" on the Ghandi social movement scale--which makes me optimistic in some sense.

The Ghandi quote: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

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There's only one change to the definition I would air, in italic:

Bioregional democracy (or the Bioregional State) is a set of electoral reforms and commodity reforms designed to force the political process in a democracy to better represent concerns about the economy, the body, and environmental concerns (e.g., water quality), toward developmental paths that are locally prioritized and tailored to different areas for their own specific interests of sustainability and durability. This movement is variously called bioregional democracy, watershed cooperation, or bioregional representation, or one of various other similar names—all of which denote democratic control of a natural commons and local jurisdictional dominance in any economic developmental path decisions—while not removing more generalized civil rights protections of a larger national state.

6 Comments:

Blogger Mark said...

some links analyzing the Wikipedia phenomena, as an aide memoire:

http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/

http://www.wikitruth.info/

11/08/2006 1:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services: Is the Net's popular encyclopedia marred by disinformation?

Ludwig De Braeckeleer (ludwig)
Published 2007-07-26 11:57 (KST)

While researching my next article about the Lockerbie bombing, I witnessed an incident that made me wonder whether intelligence agents had infiltrated Wikipedia.

Anyone who knows the universal success of Wikipedia will immediately grasp the importance of the issue. The fact that most Internet search engines, such as Google, give Wikipedia articles top ranking only raises the stakes to a higher level.

The Incident

In the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, the finger of suspicion quickly pointed to a Syria-based Palestinian organization -- the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC) -- hired by Iran. The terrorist group was created by a former Syrian army captain, Ahmed Jibril, who broke away from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968.

I had learned from a recently released U.S. National Archives file that Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency, had infiltrated the PFLP and helped the Entebbe hijackers (Israeli commandos rescued the hostages in Uganda in 1976), so I wanted to learn more about the link between the PFLP and the PFLP-GC. I also wanted to learn more about allegations made by David Colvin, the first secretary of the British Embassy in Paris, concerning the rather bizarre collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet.

As I could not locate the article in which I had learned about the allegations, I consulted the article on the Entebbe Operation on Wikipedia, where I knew the story had been noted. To my surprise, I found that all references to the alleged collaboration between the PFLP and the Shin Bet had been suppressed. Moreover, it is no longer possible to edit the page.

A Long, Undistinguished History

Conducting false flag operations and planting disinformation in the mainstream media have long belonged to the craft of the spies. In the months preceding the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies used both techniques abundantly.

A copy of the CIA's secret history of the coup surfaced in 2000. Written in 1954 by the Princeton professor who oversaw the operation, the story reveals that agents from the CIA and SIS (the American and British intelligence services) "directed a campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers."

The section of the report concerning the media speaks volumes: "The CIA was apparently able to use contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written. But mostly, the agency relied on less direct means to exploit the media.

"The Iran desk of the State Department was able to place a CIA study in Newsweek, using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist. The article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in Tehran, fed the war of nerves against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh," the document said.

Half a century later, the technique of disinformation is as important as ever to intelligence agencies. In the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon set up the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Influence with a mission "to provide news items and false information directly to foreign journalists and others to bolster U.S. policy and the war on terrorism."

The new office attracted so much criticism that the Bush administration eventually shut it down in February 2002. Even defense officials publicly denounced the dangers of such a program, which could have left the department without a shred of credibility.

"We shouldn't be in that business. Leave the propaganda leaks to the CIA, the spooks [secret agents]," a defense official said.

Is Wikipedia Harboring a Secret Agent?

According to clues accumulated by ordinary citizens around the world, it could be that the CIA and other intelligence agencies are riding the information wave and planting disinformation on Wikipedia. If so, tens of thousands of innocent and unwitting citizens around the world are translating and propagating their lies, providing these agencies with a universal news network.

The Salinger Investigation of the Pan Am 103 Bombing

Pierre Salinger was White House press secretary to Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Salinger also served as U.S. Senator from California and a campaign manager for Robert Kennedy.

But Salinger is also famous for his investigative journalism. Hired by ABC News as its Paris bureau chief in 1978, he became the network's chief European correspondent in 1983.

During his distinguished career, Salinger broke important stories, such as the secret negotiations by the U.S. government with Iran to free American hostages in 1979-80 and the last meeting between U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie and Saddam Hussein in 1990, during which she led the Iraqi president to believe that the U.S. would not react to an invasion of Kuwait.

Salinger, who was based in London, spent a considerable amount of time and energy investigating the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. He and his collaborator, John Cooley, hired a young graduate, Linda Mack, to help in the investigation.

"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," Salinger said during his testimony at the Zeist trial, where one of the Libyans was convicted of murdering the 270 victims.

"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.

Searching for the True Identity of 'Slim Virgin'

Slim Virgin had been voted the most abusive administrator of Wikipedia. She 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 is suspicious in itself as the location of normal Internet users can easily be tracked. According to a team member, Slim Virgin "knows her way around the Internet and covered her tracks with care."

Daniel Brandt of the Wikipedia Review and founder of Wikipedia-Watch.org patiently assembled tiny clues about Slim Virgin and posted them on these Web sites. Eventually, two readers identified her. Slim Virgin was no other than Linda Mack, the young graduate Salinger hired.

John K. Cooley, the collaborator of Salinger in the Lockerbie investigation, posted the following letter to Brandt on Wikipedia Review, which has been set up to discuss specific editors and editing patterns and general efforts by editors to influence or direct content in ways that might not be in keeping with Wikipedia policy:

She 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 Qaddafi [Libyan President Col. 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. [In 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison; Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted.]

Salinger came to believe that [first name redacted but known to be Linda] was working for [name of intelligence agency redacted but known to be Britain's MI5] and had been from the beginning; assigned genuinely to investigate Pan Am 103, but also to infiltrate and monitor us.

Soon after Cooley wrote to Brandt, Linda Mack contacted him and asked him not to help Brandt in his efforts to expose her. All doubts about Slim Virgin's true identity had vanished. Today, Linda Mack is rumored to reside in Alberta, Canada, under the name of Sarah McEwan.

Ludwig Braeckeleer has a Ph.D. in nuclear sciences. He teaches physics and international humanitarian law. He blogs on The GaiaPost.

2007/07/26 오전 7:19
2007 Ohmynews

8/02/2007 7:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

1.

Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.

Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president.

It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

The tool, developed by US researchers, trawls a list of 5.3m edits and matches them to the net address of the editor.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that can be created and edited by anyone.

Most of the edits detected by the scanner correct spelling mistakes or factual inaccuracies in profiles. However, others have been used to remove potentially damaging material or to deface sites.

Mistaken identity

On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.

A warning on the profile of the anonymous editor reads: "You have recently vandalised a Wikipedia article, and you are now being asked to stop this type of behaviour."

Other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.

When asked whether it could confirm whether the changes had been made by a person using a CIA computer, an agency spokesperson responded: "I cannot confirm that the traffic you cite came from agency computers.

"I'd like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work."

Radio change

The site also indicates 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 now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded."

We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level
Wikipedia spokesperson

The IP address is registered in the name of the Democratic National Headquarters.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Party said that the changes had not been made on its computers. Instead, they said that the "IP address is the same as the DCCC".

The DCCC, or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is the "official campaign arm of the Democrats" in the House of Representatives and shares a building with the party.

"We don't condone these sorts of activities and we take every precaution to ensure that our network is used in a responsible manner," Doug Thornell of the DCCC told the BBC News website.

Mr Thornell pointed out that the edit had been made "close to two years ago" and it was "impossible to know" who had done it.

Voting issue

The site also indicates that Vatican computers were used to remove content from a page about the leader of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams.

The edit removed links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Mr Adams' fingerprints and handprints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.

The section, titled "Fresh murder question raised" is no longer part of the main online encyclopaedia entries.

Wikipedia Scanner also points the finger at commercial organisations that have modified entries about the pages.

One in particular is Diebold, a company which supplies electronic voting machines in the US.

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 Bush.

A month later, other paragraphs and links to stories about the alleged rigging of the 2000 election were also removed.

The paragraphs and links have since been reinstated.

Diebold officials have not responded to requests by the BBC for information about the changes.

Web history

The Wikipedia Scanner results are not the first time that people have been uncovered editing their own Wikipedia entries.

Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to
Wikipedia spokesperson

Earlier this year, Microsoft was revealed to have offered money to trawl through entries about document standards it and other companies employ.

Staff at the US Congress have also previously been exposed for editing and removing sensitive information about politicians.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography

The new tool was built by Virgil Griffith of the California Institute of Technology.

It exploits the open nature of Wikipedia, which already collects the net address or username of editors and tracks all changes to a page. The information can be accessed in the "history" tab at the top of a Wikipedia page.

By merging this information with a database of IP address owners, Wikipedia Scanner is able to put a name to the organisation and firms from which edits are made.


THE EDITORS' BLOG
When BBC staff edit Wikipedia, they should not bring the BBC into disrepute
Pete Clifton,
BBC head of interactive news

The scanner cannot identify the individuals editing articles, admits Mr Griffith.

"Technically, we don't know whether it came from an agent of that company, however, we do know that edit came from someone with access to their network," he wrote on the Wikipedia Scanner site.

A spokesperson for Wikipedia said the tool helped prevent conflicts of interest.

"We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level," they said.

"Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to."

BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm

Published: 2007/08/15 17:46:28 GMT

BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm




2.


CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits
Thu Aug 16, 2007 6:43PM EDT

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.

The changes may violate Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.

Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.

Aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed.

CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that "the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly."

The FBI did not have an immediate response.

Computers at numerous other organizations and companies were found to have been involved in editing articles related to them.

Griffith said he developed WikiScanner "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to."

It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization's network.

It violates Wikipedia's neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's parent organization.

However, she said, "Wikipedia is self-correcting," meaning misleading entries can be quickly revised by another editor. She said Wikimedia welcomed the WikiScanner.

WikiScanner can be found at wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1642896020070816

8/18/2007 11:04 AM  
Blogger Dennis/87 said...

Greetings, I was not surprised about the edit police. I am surprised that certain subjects, like ecotopia are suspect and edited. I for one would like Oregon, Northern California and Washington ,parts of Idaho and Montana to be a Bioregional entity. Perhaps there should be a wiki for Bioregionalism? Our interests out west are not being met by back east politics. Respectfully, Dennis(followed link from RI).

11/26/2007 2:29 PM  
Blogger Mark said...

Credibility Of Wikipedia Takes a Dive After Wired Exposé

Online encyclopedia outed as bias tool of intelligence agencies, corporations by new Wikipedia Scanner database

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The credibility of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has taken another dive after a newly developed software program exposed how the CIA, corporations like Diebold and others routinely edit entries to bury criticism and manipulate the truth.

In our previous investigation, we revealed how a group of trolls were engaged in a concerted campaign to erase the 9/11 truth movement, along with a host of other controversial subjects, out of cyber existence by voting to delete pages about subjects and individuals that obviously warrant a page on Wikipedia.

Examples we cited included such manifestly provable "conspiracy theories" as "List of Republican sex scandals," "People questioning the 9/11 Commission Report" and "Movement to impeach George W. Bush".

Trolls were even allowed to delete the Wiki page for Dylan Avery, who has appeared on Fox News, CNN and in hundreds of newspaper reports.

Avery is the producer of the most watched documentary film in Internet history, he clearly merits a biography page on an online encyclopedia, but Wikipedia had no qualms in letting Morton Devonshire and other trolls deep six the entry. [Exactly my point about Wikipedia being the State's Orwellian Ministry of Truth replete with memory holes and the ability to completely erase history of edit changes to hide Wikipedia editor malfesiance. It is not even open source anymore because of this lack of edit/changes transparency at Wikipedia. It masquerades as open source.]

Devonshire and his cohorts have exhibited extreme bias and agenda driven tactics in organizing to purge Wikipedia of material about the 9/11 truth movement, but Wikipedia hasn't done a damn thing to stop it.

Now a CalTech graduate student has developed a software tool that threatens to slam the final nail in the coffin of any credibility Wikipedia had left.

"Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- 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," reports Wired News.

"On November 17th, 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. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits."

"In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations."

Griffith has compiled a list of different corporations and branches of government that have abused the so-called impartiality of Wikipedia to essentially edit the truth out of existence, replacing it with a PR friendly facade favorable not to the facts or any sense of neutrality, but only to the interests of the parties concerned.

Virgil Griffith, creator of a software program that allows users to track who is editing Wikipedia entries.

The Wikipedia Scanner (http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/) also allows users to type in an IP range and find out which organizations are editing what pages on Wikipedia.

"The result: A database of 5.3 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made. Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material," concludes the Wired report.

---
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/140807_wikipedia_credibility.htm

2/24/2008 11:12 AM  
Blogger Mark said...

Another rationale for the Wikipedia entry would be this title:

Ecoregionalism as Stabilizing Separatism in Territorial States

There are many separatist, environmental, and resource-driven secession movements in the world. Such movements make states unstable and encourage the states to adopt more military and repressive definitions of the state, as well as waste constructive resources on war. From the point of view of the separatist area, it can spoil the very rationale why they wanted to be separated in the first place by leaving them with a wrecked economy and environment whether they are successful or otherwise.

War is a destroyer of democracy and environment through its financial corruptions and centralization of power.

Therefore, finding 'middle paths' for separatism, as an option, is important for all sides.

It would provide another way of allowing for more local autonomy without state dismantlement or the social and environmental horrors and setbacks of war.

Malaysia has had two separatist movements (richer Singapore and then oil-rich Brunei).

Indonesia has had four separatist movements at the same moment, many of these environmentally related: East Timor, Irian Jaya (on the east side of the island of New Guinea (sharing the island of New Guinea with independent Paupa New Guinea), Aceh, and Ambon.

Historically, separatist movements have encouraged an undemocratic form of government.

In Indonesia's case even after a people's and elite's revolution against the dictatorship of Suharto in 1998, the government's many separatist battles lead toward more dictatorship and militarism instead of less despite moving away from the open dictatorship framework.

Other middle path routes are options.

The bioregional state's conceptions of nested decentralization as a basis of state seem to work well for mending separatism. Second, a process of formal direct separatism is formalized as process in the Constitution of Sustainability itself, giving secession a legal route to conduct itself instead of warfare.

12/02/2008 9:16 PM  

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