I love Wikipedia. But I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Thomas Friedman today and it said,
As a child, he was molested once at a Jewish summer camp where Abe Foxman was a counselor.
Period. A few hours later, the line was still there. If it's true, why is there no source? If it's a lie, how can Wikipedia tolerate this degree of vandalism? Talk to me, Tom, Abe....
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I have no idea what transpired between Abe and young Tom. But a dialogue between Ann Coulter and a young University of Texas heckler named Ajai Raj provides a clue. It pains me that the video seems to be no longer posted on YouTube. Testify, Ajai:
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[Ann Coulter] had just said something about gay marriage, the typical rightwing bullshit spiel that is still convincing people that the Bible is really the Constitution. Knowing that taking the time to say something insightful, specific, or even slightly critical would get me a lame comeback and a ticket back to my seat, I realized that the only way to win this battle was to fight fire with fire. Or bullshit with bullshit. So, as reported in yesterday's [Daily] Texan, I fired:
"You say that you believe in the sanctity of marriage," said Ajai Raj, an English sophomore. "How do you feel about marriages where the man does nothing but fuck his wife up the ass?"
And the crowd fell silent. Ms. Coulter stood stunned atop her stage, unprepared for a jackass to say something so utterly crude and to the point. Her pompous and mean air is enough to stump questioners into timidity; I wasn't about to let her stop me. The audience members looked at me with raw disbelief; later, even friends who know me well admitted that they'd been surprised at how vulgar I'd been. The others in line for Q&A, mostly liberals, looked at me like I'd set their cause back forty years.
Did I give a shit? No. If I had a message, it's that the whole thing was a joke — hell, our whole political scene today is a fucking joke. Everyone's out to either pat themselves on the back for being right or whine about how they're being wronged without ever lifting a finger to fight for it.
So rather than dignify anyone else, I "made masturbatory gestures" as I exited. Again, bingo! I danced a jig and set my hand a-jerkin' at crotch-level, sneering for the crowd and letting them know I was ready to roll. I yelled to my friends that we were gonna split and made for the door.
http://www.poormojo.org/pmjadaily/archives/003161.html
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"The Lexus and the Olive Tree," indeed! Maybe 'ol Abe did him in the leather-trimmed back seat, the "olive tree" being an obvious phallic reference. It sure didn't help his writing skills, that's for sure.
LOL! LOL!!!
I've seen some pretty pathetic wikismears but that right there is an instant classic. I wonder how long it's been there.
(And Phil, Wikipedia doesn't monitor every single entry 24 hours a day–so why are they the ones slandering Friedman?)
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In other headlines, it looks like Jimmy Carter is once again kowtowing to the Palestine Lobby:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=61180
BTW, I have a new post up at Rudely Stamped for the first time in nearly two months:
"The Alcoholic and the Torture Victim"
Michael Blaine
www.rudelystamped.blogspot.com
Phil, Let's talk a bit about the type of socialization that takes places at ethnic summer camps…
"Dr. Stephen Steinlight, who served for five years as the Directory of National Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, one of the most powerful Jewish organizations said in an article in 2001 entitled "The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demographics:
"I'll confess it, at least, like thousands of other typical Jewish kids of my generation, I was reared as a Jewish nationalist, even a quasi-separatist. Every summer for two months for 10 formative years during my childhood and adolescence I attended Jewish summer camp. There, each morning, I saluted a foreign flag, dressed in a uniform reflection its colors, sang a foreign national anthem, learned a foreign language, learned foreign folk songs and dances, and was taught that Israel was the true homeland."
when i worked at newspapers it didn't matter if you were quoting someone else saying that X was a pederast, if you printed it you were responsible. i feel like wikipedia has some responsibility here, or should. i guess that makes me oldfashioned, or i dont know how to read the internet…
The Wikipedia vandalism was probably removed almost immediately, but sometimes our browsers use or load old/cached versions of the page (i.e., they are slow to refresh and reflect the most recent changes in Wikipedia's database).
If you use Firefox you wouldn't have this problem. Usually.
Sheiss, do you fall asleep at night jerking off to fantasies about being the Germans' chosen head for your ghetto's Judenrat? One has small doubt that's exactly what you'd lobby for and likely where you'd end up. You're a wretch of a human specimen my dear Sheiss.
Nuez:
It never ceases to amaze that in a nation of immigrants which encourages its people to assimilate for the well being of the greater good, that Americans such as Weiss should be continually harassed for celebrating this creed by supremacists like you.
Wikipedia is user edited. The idiot that posted this nonsense did so on April 1 on the Comcast ip:75.73.162.35. It went unnoticed for over a week and just got removed. Wiki tries to discourage this by posting the time stamped IP of any anonymous user that edits the entry. A complete history of entries and changes is available for inspection by selecting the "history" tab. You can also click on IPs to see what other articles have been "edited."
Wiki is pretty good in most areas but there are some subjects that just seem to attract vandals.
I have a big peeve w. Wikipedia. Did you know that it only accepts as valid sources books, newspapers, magazines & MSM sources. It does not accept blogs no matter how scholarly or erudite as legitimate sources. I find it both ludicrous & ironic that an online resource like Wikipedia should so distrust other online forms of research as legitimate sources.
The reason I know this is that some of my readers have linked in Wikipedia articles to my blog posts as external sources. When other Wikipedia members removed those links I protested, but to no avail.
So if Immanuel Kant wrote a blog about philosophical issues, any old Wikipedia yob could come along & remove a link to it as being an unnacceptable authority. Make sense to you? Didn't to me either.
Of course there may be good reason to rule out many if not most blogs as reliable sources for Wikipedia's purposes. But to have a blanket rule that treats every blog as if it's the worst that blogs have to offer seems ridiculous.
Richard I feel this is bound to change. Blogs are going to sort themselves out. Some will be regarded as authoritative, just as newspapers have good and bad reputations, the Star, the Times. I say give it a little time, the blogosphere is still aborning…
And Doug thanks for explaining the process…
How can you allow as source of reference just anything which may not be under the censorship of the few, the proud, the right wing Zionists? Liberal White Boy could be a source. That could be scary.
The Escape Of Israeli Terrorist Dominik Suter…How Competent Is Our FBI?
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2008/04/escape-of-israeli-terrorist-dominik.html
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Blogger Justin Raimondo claims that Israel supports the loathsome Mugabe:
"Yet [Mugabe] has always managed to retain at least one ally, through thick and thin, one that remains loyal even now, and that is the government of Israel. They have been a steady supplier of military equipment, including riot control tanks and water cannon, which has been used to suppress the democratic opposition and keep the country under his iron grip. Links between Mugabe and Mossad, Israeli's intelligence agency, go back years."
http://antiwar.com/justin/
This is the bit I liked, in which Raimondo encounters Mugabe at a conference in Malaysia:
"After the banquet, and during it, I made my opinion of Mugabe unmistakably clear, and lobbied the other speakers to appeal to the conference organizers, and threaten a walk-out if necessary. The result was that an event at which Mugabe was supposed to speak was canceled, and – a day before the Zimbabwean President fled the scene in a huff – I had a run-in with his "bodyguards," who thought they could intimidate me. Boy, were they mistaken!"
Oh, jeez … I can just imagine Justin flinging his lace-trimmed lavender handkerchief at their feet, and challenging the perplexed grunts, "Pick it up if you dare, you tight-bunned brutes!"
If you want some amusement from wikipedia, look no further than the alan dershowitz article, which dersh himself tried to whitewash –
Goodness, Phil; no wonder you're not a Zionist. This really is a very bad example of web-based character assassination. If you were a Zionist here's what you would've done:
1- post an item on wikipedia saying Foxman gave it to Friedman when he was 9
2- Post an item on your about how Foxman "allegedly" screwed Friedman repeatedly. Spice it up with details of olive branches lubed with olive oil and stuck in unmentionable places.
3- After the item was deleted on wikipedia, repost it; this time, referrencing your own blogpost.
4- Ask a couple of your buddies to write blogposts about how "rumours of Foxman sticking it to young Friedman under the Olive Tree with his Lexus keys" just won't go away.
5- Write a column for a small-town paper with the allegations, including an angry denial from Foxman and the obligatory "Mr. Friedman's office refused to comment on these allegations."
6- Get your buddy in the NYTimes to write a piece about the "unending controversy" over just exactly how many times Foxman foxed Friedman, and how, in spite of everyone denying it, doubts persists about this.
7- Foxman and Friedman will then have to appear together in a press conference to jointly deny the allegations.
8- The mere sight of them being in proximity of each other, will lead some creative journalist (probably from the New Yorker) to write a 16,000-word piece about the whole affair, all along equating the "pro-" side with the "con-" side, and ending it by stating that their presence in the same room "leaves a lingering suggestion that these two men had shared an intimate bond that no press conference can clear up."
That is how Zionists do it, Phil. Come on, man, step it up.
Axiom: After having a totally unbalanced scenario rule the roost for ages, when a different version finally begins to make headway due to a thimble full of courageous individuals, require "equal time" at the same time, though this was never done before. Call it fair play, relying on a stranglehold of memory. How can you lose?