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Interesting Wikipedia Edits – Anonymous No More

Interesting Wikipedia Edits – Anonymous No More

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Leave to someone working in theoretical neurobiology and artificial life at the Santa Fe Institute to have a most interesting side project. The Santa Fe Institute and the people there just simply… rock.

Virgil Griffith has created a Wikipedia propaganda-tracking tool – the WikiScanner (tip o the hat to Alternet for the story).

People change Wikipedia entries all the time. While the identities of individual editors are sometimes opaque, the networks and IP addresses are not. This tool shows where certain kinds of edits come from (see the FAQ). He has matched up organizational IPs to edits made.

Changes made by people with close ties to an issue are not supposed to be allowed to contribute to entries on it. Tools like this will make attempts more transparent (and documented, and correctable).

When the change is made by someone with access to the organization’s network, you have to shake your head at the level or incompetence.

I mean, if you or I were doing information sabotage and cleansing work, I would hope that we would have the basic sense to go off-site, or at least off-network!

Generally speaking, this is the kind of information vandalism that Griffith has found:

1. Wholesale removal of entire paragraphs of critical information. (common for both political figures and corporations)

2. White-washing — replacing negative/neutral adjectives with positive adjectives that mean something similar. (common for political figures)

3. Adding negative information to a competitor’s page. (common for corporations)

The Department of Defense has been busy on really quite a lot of topics – I am really kind of shocked at the kinds of things that interest them these days!

From Griffith’s list, you can follow all the edits by organizational name and IP addresses. Griffith directs the reader to a juicy list of edits posted at the Wired site, and encourages everyone to submit “salacious edits.” Here’s a couple:

The School of the Americas (now called WHISC) at Fort Benning has a long history of training Latin American officers, who are later found to be commanding death squads, involved in killing Catholic nuns and archbishops in Latin America and so forth. This is an edit whitewashing the mention of human rights abuses at WHISC – the IP address coming from Fort Benning (doim1-358.benning.army.mil)

Someone at the Republican Party HQ changed the entry on the history of Iraq’s Baath Party from “US-led occupying forces” to “US-led liberating forces.”

Diebold removing all criticism and contreversy (sic) about them. Many edits : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623375
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623410
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623443
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=28623637

Nobojo has collected some interesting Bob Jones University edits that seem to indicate a high degree of manipulation of the “Bob Jones University” Wikipedia article.

Have fun. If you discover anything, pass it on! Be sure to list the IP, the organization, and the nature of the change. If you found it at Virgil’s site, give him credit, too!

The American National Debt – Laurie Anderson PSA

The American National Debt – Laurie Anderson PSA

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Here is the next video in the sequence of (promised) Saturday installments of Laurie Anderson‘s private/public service announcements.

This one is exponentially more relevant now than it was when she made it.

Is anyone but me panicked about what the size of our national debt means for America’s future?

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=YDiEIIdZAqA[/youtube]

Notice the amount on the sign of United States public debt. It was approaching four trillion at the time, accruing about $8000 per second. She was concerned.

Well, it has more than doubled since then. According to the Treasury of the United States, on 8-2-07 the debt stood at $8,945,504,468,375.99.

Just so you’re aware. Are you aware?

Women and Money PSA

Women and Money PSA

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This is the second in the VirusHead Saturday postings of Laurie Anderson’s Public (Personal) Service Announcements.

It’s about the response of a “bunny” at the Playboy Club, where protesters (including Anderson) were calling attention to the economic exploitation of women and the treatment of women as animals.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnS8Y4Qazhs[/youtube]

So if you want to talk about women and money….

hmmmm.

National Anthem PSA

National Anthem PSA

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A new VirusHead tradition begins here. Now.

Every Saturday I will post another of Laurie Anderson’s public service announcements. She actually calls them personal service announcements.

Just a few little tidbits for you to ruminate upon. (Please make more, Laurie.)

The first PSA that I’ve chosen is called “National Anthem.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cE6Pg2q3lI[/youtube]

The words are great though..just a lot of questions, written during a fire…. things like:

Hey, do you see anything over there?
I don’t know, there’s a lot of smoke.

Say, isn’t that a flag?
Hmmmm…Couldn’t say really. It’s pretty early in the morning.

Hey – do you smell something burning?

Cheney, Cheney

Cheney, Cheney

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Oh, the VEEP – Keep an eye on the Washington Post Cheney 4-part series by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, which will draw on interviews with 200+ people who worked for, with or in opposition to Cheney’s office.

I hope this will open some eyes.

Part I was published today.

Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.

In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.

Cheney’s proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court — civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed “military commissions.”

“What the hell just happened?” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded.

Read more…

Oh, and Dick Cheney is still refusing to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information. He has treated “as classified” information like the names of industry executives who advised his energy task force, costs and other details about his travel, and Secret Service logs showing who visits his office or official residence. He recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules.

Cheney’s office claims it doesn’t have to comply with the order because it is not an “agency” or “entity” within the executive branch, according to Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the matter.

Waxman scoffed at the assertion, calling it “an absurdity for the ages.”

“The vice president is pretending he isn’t part of the executive branch and the White House is pretending that the rules for protecting classified information are being followed,” he said in a statement.

“The vice president can’t unilaterally decide he is his own branch of government and exempt himself from important, commonsense safeguards for protecting classified information. And he can’t insist he has the powers of both the executive and the legislature branches but the responsibilities of neither. Our Constitution doesn’t work that way,” he said.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked in January to resolve the legal dispute, but he has not yet ruled on the issue.

Other Cheney news bits:

And here’s a very interesting story…

Will BAE Scandal of Century Bring Down Cheney?

Addendum 6/25: Very interesting that it appears through a Lyndon LaRouche publication. Man. I wouldn’t normally be given to linking anywhere near there, but if this story holds any truth to it… comment if you’ve seen anything about this anywhere else.

Here are some other links, just in case. One person wasn’t able to click through on the above link.

Here is original article by Jeffrey Steinberg (see also Cheney Plots New Wars To Save His Hide):

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3426bae_cheney.html

http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/1761/2/

On the same topic, by Lyndon LaRouche:

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=3545

http://www.just-international.org/article.cfm?newsid=20002298