Censorship at Wikipedia

Jim Kelly

PATRIOT FREEDOM COALITION

As is by now well-known, Wikipedia presents itself as an online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, and whose entries anyone can edit. The idea is that people who are experts in their field will contribute articles, suitably augmented by others who are equally knowledgeable. This is a nice idea but in practice Wikipedia is unreliable, because anyone can edit articles, and in many cases the main aim of those editing articles is not to present the truth but rather a biassed interpretation. Wikipedia has no effective defense against this (especially since its privileged editors are among the worst offenders) and is thus unreliable.

This flaw in Wikipedia manifests itself most often in articles dealing with history or contemporary events, in particular those relating to World War II and its aftermath, and to the events of September 11, 2001, and their consequences. There are people who are determined that certain facts should not receive publicity, and whenever an “unapproved” fact appears on Wikipedia some editor will come along and remove it. In fact there seem to be teams of such trolls, perhaps paid to do their work of censorship and their presentation of particular interpretations of history which their masters want to be the public “truth”. Although this falsification occurs mainly in connection with historical articles, there is no guarantee that it does not occur in non-historical articles also, such as those dealing with medicine, psychiatry or pharmacy. Because of this lack of defense against censorship and misrepresentation by determined bands of trolls, Wikipedia is not to be trusted.

Here’s an example of censorship at Wikipedia:

A well-placed British source informed WMR that Rahm Emanuel’s father, Benjamin Emanuel, specialized in the terrorist bombings of buses carrying British troops and policemen during the British Mandate in Palestine. … Wikipedia deleted Benjamin Emanuel’s entry in 2008, shortly after Rahm Emanuel was designated as President Obama’s chief of staff. Wikipedia is a favorite device for the perception management goals of Dr. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s director of the White House Office of Regulatory Affairs. — Wayne Madsen, Rahm Emanuel’s father specialized in bus bombings in Palestine

Here are articles by three eminent authors, knowledgeable in their fields, whose attempts to publish the facts on Wikipedia have been thwarted by the trolls:

• James H. Fetzer: Is Wikipedia Stifling 9/11 Truth?

   

• James Bacque: Why is Wikipedia Censoring Me?

   

• Wade Frazier: The Biases of Wikipedia — A Case History

   

A person attempting to contribute to Wikipedia (using the name “Posturewiter”) concerning Da Costa’s syndrome sent the following message to this editor:

I spent twelve months in Wikipedia and came to the conclusion that it is probably a reliable source of information about boring, routine, non-controversial topics. However, there are some existing editors who know all of the policies and use trickery to ensure that the only point of view that gets presented is their own, and anything else is deleted and the new contributors who put it there will be banned. The result is that the readers only see what is presented, and not what is deliberately missing, but they will get the false impression that they are seeing everything. I have reviewed the methods used by two of the editors here:

http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~posture/Da%20Costa%27sSynd%20Wikiwebpa2.html#anchor175354

There was once an article on Wikipedia entitled “New York Times controversies”. On July 4, 2010, the page was suddenly deleted. The next day the page was restored, but without the article itself, with this “explanation”:

This page was deleted from Wikipedia, either because an administrator believed a consensus was reached among editors that it is unsuitable as an encyclopedia entry, or because an administrator felt it met one or more conditions for speedy deletion.

When the matter was discussed (see Articles for deletion/Criticism of The New York Times) there was NO consensus. In fact there were more calls to keep the article (4) than there were to delete it (3). But the deletion was made anyway, because “an administrator” (presumably someone anxious to maintain the illusion of the credibility of the NYT) felt like deleting it.

In the interests of documenting censorship at Wikipedia, the page has been mirrored on Serendipity, and you can read here what the administrators at Wikipedia (or perhaps just one of them) do not want you to read:

The New York Times, like Wikipedia, is a covert propaganda machine. Its lies were well documented during 1990-1994 by Edward Herman in Lies of our Times. See also his The Propaganda Model Revisited and Wade Frazier’s Lies I Was Raised With.

See also:

• John Borland: See Who’s Editing Wikipedia — Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

   

• J. P. Mroz: Will the Real Wikipedia Please Stand Up?
  

  Which brings us to the central focus of this article: disinformation within JFK research data. But more specifically, a provable purveyor of such disinformation: that self-described “free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project,” aka, Wikipedia. … And as we shall see, such a blind eye at the top [Jimmy Wales], whether intentional or not, fosters an army of equally blind and biased Wiki-worker-bees whose collective anonymous swarm provides the cover of obfuscation for what, on certain controversial subjects, can be called a disinformation machine.

   

• One of the comments here says:
  

  Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry on SiteAdvisor has been sanitized (by a self-identified McAfee employee) to remove all references to problems and false positives. Classic Wikipedia, too, now that I think about it.

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