User:Guccisamsclub

Welcome to my page

“ It takes little courage to mutter a general complaint, in a part of the world where complaining is still permitted, about the wickedness of the world and the triumph of barbarism, or to cry boldly that the victory of the human spirit is assured There are many who pretend that cannon are aimed at them when in reality they are the target merely of opera glasses. They shout their generalized demands to a world of friends and harmless persons. They insist upon a generalized justice for which they have never done anything; they ask for a generalized freedom and demand a share of the booty which they have long since enjoyed. They think that truth is only what sounds nice. If truth should prove to be something statistical, dry, or factual, something difficult to find and requiring study, they do not recognize it as truth; it does not intoxicate them. They possess only the external demeanor of truth-tellers. The trouble with them is: they do not know the truth. ” — Bertolt Brecht, Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties

About

Sometimes I edit as User:Guccisamsclubs (contribs). I feel the plural form lends more weight to my edits.

I enjoy finding errors and correcting them. This is a very difficult job, considering the fact that:

 Wikipedia markup {citebook| uhfuer g guhrewgu rgheurhg we iuhgeehrig wer ghre gigw| Iauthor = friefjwireo gw| SBM| fjrjfroj httpg://wgww.ifjerrijf ref.com/deFREWGRGWR.grewgERGRGer. ISBN=fgrwgrger|gf rgjrogjw rgjoerjwg orjg r} an 
<nowiki>is an
rgwerg<nowiki> {{cite news|ijrig wr gjrgerg| geirgj er| frghttpr://www.igjr.org/fregfkeohttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/comgreponents/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-hosthttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/components/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-host}}<nowiki/><nowiki><ref name=frewferfger+Gr>{{cite news|ijrig wr gjrgerg| geirgj er| frghttpr://www.igjr.org/fregfkeohttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/comgreponents/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-hosthttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/components/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-host}}<nowiki>{{cite news|ijrig wr gjrgerg| geirgj er| frghttpr://www.igjr.org/fregfkeohttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/comgreponents/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-hosthttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/components/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-host PAGE 559}}<nowiki/>[[unreadable]]<nowiki/>
 mess. [[File:Wiki logo Nupedia.jpg|frame|right|The first Wikipedia logo]]because everything<ref name=frewferfger+Gr>{{cite news|ijrig wr gjrgerg| geirgj er| frghttpr://www.igjr.org/fregfkeohttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/comgreponents/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-hosthttps://docs.bitnami.com/installer/components/apache/#how-to-create-a-virtual-host PAGE 115!}} is inline

Can you read WTF I just wrote? Neither can I. wikipedia markup is an unreadable mess because everything is inline Why the tooling was not designed to enforce or even facilitate List-defined refs—or any sensible markup—is incomprehensible. If this is going to be the markup, wikipedia should just drop its shitty source editor (which is a cut below the BBcode editors used on forums) entirely and use a performant WYSIWYG editor throughout. This would also also allow actual conversation threading on talk pages, instead of the :::::::::: nonsense.

Reliable WTFs (news)

The Thomas Freedman NYT op-ed generator

Have a WTF? Add it here:

Syria

What the fuck's Aleppo? (New York Times)

Gary Johnson didn't fucking know, so the NYT had to explain it to him: it's the capital of Syria and the de facto capital of the Islamic State, you moron! -GS

They hate our innocence (The Guardian, FAIR)

The Guardian, and other outlets "reported on"—read"loudly condemned"—the savage beheading of a "captured child" at the hands of Syria's Nour al-din al-Zenki rebel group. If you are wondering about the motive here, you're asking the right question. It was a savage murder, but the "child" was 19 with a growth defect and a member of the Assadist militia, likely Liwa al-Quds. Despite having been debunked, the tale of "child beheading(s)" continues to be told. -GS

Ukraine

"¡No pasarán!" (The Guardian / op-ed)

"US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine", perpetrated by the Ukrainian regimes' "Neo-Nazis," are "accelerating", John Pilger in the Guardian. Two years have passed, so one assumes Petro Poroshenko has already begun implementing the final solution ... unless the great Russian people have managed to stop fascism in its tracks, yet again. Have we learned nothing from history?! -GS

• Which part of this specifically was incorrect? There were indeed Neo-Nazis among the Ukrainian volunteer battalions. The BBC reported on that as well. Esn (talk) 11:57, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
  • The whole thing. There is no evidence that the US orchestrated any attacks on ethnic Russians. Why the fuck would the US even do that? To provoke Russia? Presumably, Putin was perfectly willing to accept a hostile revolution at his doorstep, but then the "Neo-Nazis" came along and he just had to intervene. Anyway, do far-right hooligans really need instructions and cookies from Victoria Nuland? I'd also like to see some more evidence of these "ethnic" attacks, beyond what one would expect of the FSU, even in peacetime. There were pitched battles between pro-Maidan and pro-Russian activists, like in Odessa, where both were armed and dangerous. Unlike the targeting of easily identifiable minorities by Russian fascist hooligans, Odessa was a political street fight. Half of Ukrainians use Russian as their primary language, and the vast majority are fluent in it and use it regularly; Ukrainians and Russians look the same. So it's not clear how anti-Russian pogroms would even work. Rather this threat to the safety of ethnic Russians was manufactured by Russia's mendacious and hypocritical propaganda campaign. It's about as real as the White genocide conspiracy theory, and it's not even brought up much in Russian propaganda these days, which is currently focused on migrant "rape threat" and "terrorist attacks" on Russian and Baathist mass-murderers. ~~~~

I agree with you for the most part - intense propaganda on both sides, BUT ... there's no smoke without fire. The post-Maidan Ukraine is not a Western-style liberal democracy, but rather a militant ultra-nationalist regime. — [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10].

"Odessa was a political street fight." — I hope you are just kidding ... video shows people with clubs beating to death to finish off several people who had just jumped from the windows.

YouTube videos — Crowd shouts: "Hang Moskals on gallows" ('Moskal' is an ethnic slur for a Russian), Euromaidan protesters in Zaporizhia: "If you're not jumping, you're a Moskal", Kiev Metro: "Who does not jump is Moskal" (ethnic Russians comprise 13.1% of Kiev's population).

"...Ukrainian war-time ultra-nationalism are now characteristic of the entire protest movement. This may be a remarkable success for Ukraine’s post-Soviet neo-Banderite ethno-nationalists; yet it is bad news for the future of Ukrainian political nation-building. ... Before the current protests, Banderite slogans and symbols were heavily used only in Western Ukraine, and played a minor role in earlier protests. Today, in contrast, they have become mainstream, in the entire opposition protest movement, whether party-affiliated or not, and can be noted all over Kyiv as well as other Ukrainian cities. ... Yet, for many of their listeners in Ukraine’s East and South, the historical origins of the slogan will be known and relevant. For them, “heroes” will actually mean UPA combatants once killing Red Army soldiers who were fighting German fascism and whose children today do not regard the UPA as heroic at all." — [11]

The red-black flags of the UPA and Right Sector — [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. Svoboda party flags — [20], [21], [22]. Stepan Bandera's, Dmytro Klyachkivsky's and Roman Shukhevych's commemorations and monuments — [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]. -- Tobby72 (talk) 16:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

• With due respect, you're not addressing the central point, which is that Pilger's narrative (as stated) is ridiculous. The fact remains that regardless of what exactly you think happened in Odessa, those burned alive did not suffer because of their ethnicity. You (and your FPJ source) are vastly exaggerating the presence of fascists in the huge Maidan movement and in the present government, as well as confusing anti-Russian sentiment (which does exist) with hatred of Russian imperialism and its astroturfers. Indeed the presence of the far-right among the Novorossy is proportionally greater. And look, there's smoke everywhere: the FSU, and Russia in particular, is generally not the place to go if you're after after tolerance and liberalism. Finally, given the popularity of Stalin in Russia, I have a hard time getting worked up about the — admittedly more official and organized — lionization of the UPA and OUN in Ukraine (I'm Russian fwiw). -GS

• PS, that photo Esn linked to is likely a fake, and it does seem like of those things that are "too good" to be true. Interestingly enough, the shady photo came from an actual Neo-Nazi inside the Azov battalion (they have enough of those there), rather than some pro-Russian propagandist. -GS

I don't like Putin and his self-destructive policy but I equally don't like hypocrisy and double standards. As with most conflicts, both sides are partially right and partially wrong. -- Tobby72 (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

That part I can agree on. Hypocrisy is indeed one of the themes of this userpage (main one is that "RS" does not mean "always a good source"). -GS

Venezuela

Nb: Here's a blast from the past, but not really: Terror Close to Home: In oil-rich Venezuela, a volatile leader befriends bad actors from the Mideast, Colombia, and Cuba -USA Today, 2003. This is a typical story from America's reliable and objective "free press" on Venezuela, only the date is somewhat ominous. Forget about Russia Today, or any other "propaganda mouthpiece": you really do have to open up Pravda c. 1937 to find a comparable level of naked hysteria. Except you don't have to go back: just keep up with the "reliable sources." Sigh, this make me sad and pessimistic about the Wikipedia project, which is being force-fed this stuff on a daily basis. -GS

"Better Red than expert" (The Economist)

Since socialism doesn't work 'cause "there's no free lunch, duh," The Economist knew in advance—and chose its dubious figures accordingly—that poverty in Venezuela “has stayed stubbornly static since 2000”. Who cares about the actual data? The political line decides everything. ("better red than expert" was a Maoist slogan, although Mao himself said: "No investigation no right to speak") -GS

Officially the most expensive burger in the world (BBC, The Guardian, Cato Institute)

President Madura sets the price of hamburgers at US$170. It's official! Multiple reliable sources weighed in on these matters. -GS

Reliable fake news, installment #456,301 (CNN)

The Venezuelan demon-dictator "Madura" is at it again, now stealing toys from little kids before Christmas, according to CNN (aka Communist News Network). The article goes on to call him the "The Grinch". Name-calling is just good journalistic practice when you are talking about an official enemy: it's called "freedom of the press", the same kind enjoyed by journalists at Pravda way back in the day. Unfortunately, the story falls flat on it's face: it is a hilarious and total fake. Moreover, it's not even an RT-level "fake", more like Moskovskij Komsomolets fake-tabloid level of fake. It's too sloppy a fake to be properly called propaganda, which must be minimally credible. -GS

Twins (Politico, New York Times, The Guardian, Univision/ op-eds and features)

Trump, Chavez, Pinochet. Who can possibly tell the difference? That bullshit made quite a few rounds in our WP:RS during the 2016 campaign. To its credit the Washington Post poked holes in the story shortly before the election (NYT—not so much). Anyway, Univision did a bullshit quiz to go with the bullshit story, to demonstrate just how impossible it was to tell them apart. The quiz gave 12 out of context quotes and asked people to guess whether it was Trump or Chavez who said them. I took the challenge and got 9/12 right. The probability of getting that result or higher by pure chance is about 1/14. I didn't know the quotes ahead of time. Could be a coincidence, but I doubt it. -GS

• I took the test and got 10/12. TFD (talk) 20:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC) (knew one quote ahead of time)
• I got them all except the one about the low pain tolerance of the rich—which I really should have gotten. That said, I already knew Trump's rejoinder to the Pope and his reference to Hilary Clinton as "the devil," and probably subconsciously recalled a few more from both men. TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:46, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The 2016 US Presidential election

Birchers at the Washington Post (op-ed)

Does Putin have a secret plan to bring America to it's knees by hacking US voting machines and making Clinton the patsy? Anne Applebaum has more. -GS

The election pros (FiveThirtyEight)

Illustrations of the colossal WTF committed by the media during the 2016 election cycle are probably superfluous. But here's one: the WP:RS FiveThirtyEight effectively claimed the white working class was unlikely to be an important part of Trump's electorate. "Effectively", because the article was overtly about the fact that polling data from the primaries showed that Trump primary voters were typically far from poor. This was true enough, but in making this factoid the main theme of his article, Nate Silver effectively mislead his largely liberal and centrist audience into thinking that class was not the key electoral battleground. Silver was from alone in making this point, and indeed Silver's factoid was replayed by numerous RS with little concern about the bigger picture. Normally, the DLC and the press are obsessed with real or imagined "swing voters", but this time the party line was quite different:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

— Chuck Schumer, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438481/chuck-schumer-democrats-will-lose-blue-collar-whites-gain-suburbs

On election day, the working class ended up being the deciding factor in the election, as the exit poll data has shown. Trump won precisely because of the dynamics at the bottom of the income ladder, which dwarfed the gains Clinton made in the high-income bracket. Nate Silver's factoid was catastrophically misleading and tone-deaf A few liberals are still comforting themselves with the thought that none of it matters (using the same outdated and irrelevant poll cited by Silver) or that deplorables descended on the election in unprecedented numbers, or that Putin hacked it. -GS

Glass houses and all that (guest post by the TheTimesAreAChanging) (Washington Post, NYT, et al.)

For many Americans, Trump's victory has peeled back the curtain—if only furtively and incompletely—on the feuding centers of power within the U.S. government's permanent bureaucracy, which Trump will have to purge lest it obstruct everything in his platform. The CIA, having failed to pull out a win for its preferred candidate (see, e.g., here and here) has now leaked word that the election results were "tainted" by Russian "interference"—for which read leaked emails exposing the extent of DNC collusion with the media. Although Wikileaks has denied any connection with Moscow and the FBI—one of the few branches of the federal government to support Trump—was and remains skeptical of the CIA's conclusion, the entire U.S. "free press" has been consumed with war mongering hysteria not seen since the days of George Tenet's "slam dunk" assessment on Iraq's imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Enter Robert Baer, a former CIA operative best known for attempting to assassinate Saddam in 1996 and for inspiring the film Syriana. Baer told CNN there's only one way to eliminate the "taint" of Ruskie "influence" on the election: Nullify the results and declare a re-do! (He declined to elaborate on how this would cause voters to forget everything they learned from Wikileaks.) In fact, Baer's sentiment is by no means uncommon in the U.S. mass media—which seems to promulgate a new meme calling for another recount or an Electoral College mutiny or just a Supreme Court ruling that Trump is ineligible 'cuz "racism" on a weekly basis—but Baer is distinguished by the sheer, brazen chutzpah of his assertions. According to Baer: "Having worked in the CIA, if we had been caught interfering in European elections, or Asian elections or anywhere in the world, those countries would call for new elections, and any democracy would." That's right—the CIA is shocked, shocked to learn that nations sometimes involve themselves in one another's internal affairs! (And it certainly wouldn't want to see spies manipulating U.S. public opinion...) Mrs. Clinton, for her part, professes to have been blissfully ignorant of the very idea of rigging elections.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

• Nice post. Obviously, such a strong candidate—it really takes talent to lose like the Dems—and such a pristine political process could only have be compromised by foreign intelligence working hand in hand with domestic wreckers and fifth-columnists. Obviously this is unprecedented in world affairs. Back on planet earth, the Obama administration gave entirely predictable post-factum support for the coup in Honduras — led by generals apparently trained at the School of the Americas and business magnates advised by Clinton's old pal Lanny Davis — and for the subsequent process of "democratization." The Daily Beast, well known for its righteous indignation at Putin's subversion of the 2016 election, is also the one complaining about Obama failing to interfere enough in the political affairs of other countries. Whatever the evasions and caveats, the facts of the Honduras case (to which one might add Egypt and Ukraine) are qualitatively different from the "circumstantial evidence" adduced for everything from Russian hacking of the DNC to Russian poisoning of HRC. I'm perfectly ready to accept the Russian angle in the hack, but I do have to wonder why the evidence has not been at least somewhat more direct than the usual conspiracist tripe like "qui bono?" and "obviously it's X, because X is exactly the type." I should add that I take no pleasure from the result of the election, Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Iron logic (The Gurdian)

From the lead of a story in The Guardian :

"Russian hackers were able to access thousands of emails from a top-ranking Democrat after an aide typed the word “legitimate” instead of “illegitimate” by mistake, an investigation by the New York Times has found. The revelation gives further credence to the CIA’s finding last week that the Kremlin deliberately intervened in the US presidential election to help Donald Trump."

Makes perfect sense... -GS

Wash Post can't stop lying about its own lies (guest post by TheTimesAreAChanging)

The Washington Post (new slogan: "the CIA's favorite newspaper") published another hysterical fear-mongering story about Russia— "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through utility in Vermont, officials say"—prompting the usual tough-guy pontifications by Vermont politicians. The story quickly went viral, but was refuted within an hour and a half when Burlington Electric Department—one of Vermont's two major utilities—released the following statement: "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop NOT connected to our organization's grid systems." According to Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept: "Even worse, there is zero evidence that Russian hackers were even responsible for the implanting of this malware on this single laptop. The fact that malware is 'Russian-made' does not mean that only Russians can use it; indeed, like a lot of malware, it can be purchased (as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out in the DNC hacking context, assuming that Russian-made malware must have been used by Russians is as irrational as finding a Russian-made Kalishnikov AKM rifle at a crime scene and assuming the killer must be Russian)." Despite this, the Post only slightly amended its headline to "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say," which is only true if we assume it is "just stenographically passing along what 'officials say.'" Yet the most interesting part of this debacle is what it reveals about the Post's fact-checking standards, or lack thereof. When questioned by Kalev Leetaru of Forbes as to whether the Post had contacted either of Vermont's utilities prior to posting the article, a Post spokeswoman lied through her teeth, claiming "we had contacted the state's two major power suppliers, as these sentences from the first version of the story attest: 'It is unclear which utility reported the incident. Officials from two major Vermont utilities, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric, could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.'" Little did she know that the Wayback Machine could impeach her testimony, as archived versions prove "it was not until an hour after publication (7:55PM), somewhere between 8:47PM and 9:24PM that the Post finally updated its story to include the statement above that it had contacted the two utilities for comment." This was also confirmed by "Mike Kanarick, Director of Customer Care, Community Engagement and Communications for Burlington Electric Department ... according to Mr. Kanarick, the first contact from the Post was a phone call from reporter Adam Entous at 8:05PM, 10 minutes after the Post's story had been published." Leetaru concludes: "It is simply astounding that any newspaper, let alone one of the Post's reputation and stature, would run a story and then ten minutes after publication, turn around and finally ask the central focus of the article for comment. Not only does this violate every professional norm and standard of journalistic practice, but it feeds directly into the public’s growing distrust of media ... It also tells us that the Post ran its story based solely and exclusively on the word of US Government sources that it placed absolute trust in. That the Post would run an entire story based exclusively on the word of its US Government sources and without any other external fact checking (such as contacting the two utilities), offers a fascinating glimpse into just how much blind trust American newspapers place in Government sources, to repeat their claims verbatim without the slightest bit of vetting or confirmation." And this is from the paper that has done more than any other to promote "fake news" hysteria!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

• Update: There wasn't even any "Russian" malware on the one laptop. An employee came into contact with one of the 876 IPs the U.S. government flagged as "suspicious" (nearly half of which are just Tor exit nodes) while checking their email, but the traffic was by all appearances benign. There was absolutely nothing to the story. The "evidence" presented in the FBI-DHS Joint Analysis Report is such a "jumbled mess" as to create virtually limitless opportunities for false positives—and, indeed, false flag attacks by the U.S. government.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:43, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

"Damning findings", as in "Damn you Vlad" (CNN)

CNN has compiled a list of the "10 most damning findings from report [by ODNI] on Russian election interference". The ODNI report contains the following tortured conclusion:

Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.

Why is their reputation merely "self-proclaimed" if no-one has found any evidence of them publishing a single fake document? Shoring up this carefully thought-out conclusion is the following "finding" (#10 on CNN's list):

""In early September, Putin said publicly it was important the DNC data was exposed to Wikileaks, calling the search for the source of the leaks a distraction and denying Russian 'state-level' involvement."

The implication is that Putin said he considered Wikileaks to be particularly useful, in some way. If you're asking "why would he say that?", you're asking the right question. Here's what he actually said on Sep 1, 2016 to Bloomberg:

And then, listen, does it even matter who hacked this data from the campaign headquarters of Mrs. Clinton? Is that really important? The important thing is the content that was given to the public.

The word "Wikileaks" does not appear once in the entire interview. Needless to say there is nothing there that implies anything the ODNI is trying to tease out of it. Pathetic. -GS

Reliable WTFs (history)

Have a WTF? Add it here:

The power of 10 (Washington Post)

It is well known that newspapers don't excel in history or math. But what if the Wash Po has to put out a historical article with numbers? The US kills 1 million Laotians during the Laotian civil war, that's what happens. Funny thing is that the same author actually gave a reasonable number of 50-250K at Google Books when he wrote a book on the very same topic a year before the WashPo article appeared, so it was probably just an careless error. Unfortunately copy editors working for newspapers today are only as good as their spell checker. Guccisamsclub (talk) 22:05, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Considering Laos only had 3 million people, that would have been one of the worst genocides of the 20th century if it had actually happened. Still, as you note, Tirman's The Deaths of Others seems like a relatively reasonable book from the snippets I've read (the wildly inaccurate figure of "up to 750,000" deaths in the Cambodian Civil War notwithstanding.) The material about Iraq seems pretty irrefutable.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:05, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

"Up to 750K" is not really that bad, when you compare it to "600-800K" in the Washington Post piece. "Up to 750K" is formally correct—and nobody can rule a number of 500K for the war if we're honest. The topic hasn't been given much attention at all, and nobody has any good data anyway. But the latter range from WaPo is flat wrong. Tirman's book is quite good though and the topic is an important one. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:24, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The outrage machine (Independent)

In fit of self-righteousness, repeated hundreds of times in the British media, the The Independent scolds Jeremy Corbyn for jokingly quoting the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. In an attempt to "raise awareness" about Corbyn's terrifying transgression, it informs readers that Hoxha "killed up to 100,000 of his own citizens", all of whom were doubtlessly innocent. Out of an average population of around 1.5 million, this figure easily sets the world record for executions in relative terms. In actuality, during the famous Red Terror of 1945, "nearly 2000 were executed". Of course political executions, mass arrests and torture continued throughout Hoxha's 40-year reign, with the result that Communist Albania racked up 5,500 executions from 1945-1991, though it is unclear how muany of these cases were political. 100,000 is in fact the number jailed. Whenever newspapers print anything about Cold War history, get ready for some serious bullshit. Guccisamsclub (talk) 19:08, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

The screeching idiot's guide to history (Palgrave)

To many wtfs to list. Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:08, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Unrealiable WTFs

Paul Bogdanor's lies (Transaction Publishers)

Somebody should make a list of Paul Bogdanor's lies, but I doubt anyone will because Paul Bogdanor. This would be primarily of interest to wikipedia, where many editors have used his web page in lieu of a JSTOR subscription. (spaking from extensive personal experience editing various pages littered with Bogdanor agitprop) Here's one: Bogdanor claims that Noam Chomsky either made up an interview or made up the source when he quoted an Israeli paratrooper in one of his books. Obviously nobody can dispute the exceptional humanitarianism of the Israeli armed forces (i.e. The Good Guys^TM), so naturally it must be a fake. Chomsky's footnote for the source contains only one error: he wrote October 1985, but whereas actual interview was from October 1983.

Well, thanks for pointing that out; I guess that one was just a little too good to be true. But if you doubt that Chomsky's a liar, you might find this critique—by someone who is generally pretty Left-wing and whose only interest in Cambodia comes from his Cambodian wife—more palatable: I particularly like the part where Chomsky goes from belittling Barron and Paul for their (supposed) dependence on "specialists at the State and Defense Departments" (while praising "the documentation provided in Hildebrand and Porter"!) to the Orwellian revision "You might recall, perhaps, that we were probably the only commentators to rely on the most knowledgeable source, State Department intelligence." (Chomsky's reply to this critique, which he admits he didn't bother to read, is itself a true gem.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:48, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Well Times, you're going to be exposed as a "liar" too if and when the NSA and CIA produce proof that the GRU hacked the DNC's servers with the probable goal of increasing Trump's chances. On the other hand, if it turns out there was another "failure of intelligence" -- which at this point appears unlikely -- the culprits in the press will continue their day jobs as "reliable sources". That's how the system works. BTW, Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev et al have also been exposed as "liars" by contemporary pseudo-Stalinist fact-checkers (although the mistakes of these dissidents are harder to trace, because very much unlike Chomsky, they were extremely fond of guesswork and gossip and extremely allergic to footnotes). But the historical truth that these dissidents spoke to was much more important than their real or imagined sloppiness. I would never compare Timothy Snyder to these intrepid men, but Grover Furr wrote a book called The Lies of Timothy Snyder, where he discovered quite a few pov-driven errors. Yet however many "fakes" Furr uncovers, he will remain a bigger liar than Snyder. Bogdanor is in a sense a Grover Furr character, but sloppier, lazier and more cowardly. Make of this what you will. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:03, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Trivia

• Ukraine's Fascist Junta, a puppet of Uncle Sam, shows its true colors!...oh wait: Ukraine - President Petro Poroshenko wrote: "Fidel Castro has stepped into eternity. We may disagree with his views, but his charisma has defined the entire era. I ask the people of Cuba to accept my condolences. We will always remember the initiative of Fidel Castro, who felt the pain of Chernobyl and helped to bring back to life thousands of young Ukrainians." link
• Oops: "Syrian state TV accidentally interviews Aleppo woman whose children died in air strikes and suggests they're terrorists" Guccisamsclub (talk) 21:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
• No shit: John McCain says "Aerospace Industries Association says McCain defense buildup ($500 billion) plan 'overdue' " Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• Rudolph Rummel would label this a "democide"/ "classicide" ... if it happened outside the land of the free: The gap in life-expectancy between the richest and poorest Americans aged 50 has roughly tripled since 1981. For those in the bottom 20%, life expectancy has declined. Who's gonna be "recording angel" and do a body count of these miserable souls? Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• American HistoryX : "Bill would require teaching of California students about Russian interference for Trump". Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:25, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
• Bipartisanship? Yes!: The wind beneath Trump's wings (funny video)
• Know who I am? "I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors," Steve Bannon (aka "Darth Vader", "Dick Cheney", "Satan") told the Hollywood Reporter." ... And I'm Napoleon Bonaparte. Pleased to meet you Steve. -GS
• Frenchie: "Steve Bannon loves France" Marine Le Pen got that Vichy blue blood. Something to aspire to. -GS
• Irrational fears confirmed: Following his blitzkrieg in Korea, Putin has hacked the elections in Limpopo, thereby helping Kremlin's puppet Ai Bolit seize control of the executive. Also invades Gabon. (note that the authenticity of this tape has been disputed, and the authors are known for fakes as well as real pranks. If this one is fake though, it a very good one. -GS
• The REAL Donald Trump, for the record. (funny video) -GS
• The REAL HRC, for the record. (funny video) -GS
• The best political compass: Who are you in 1917 Russia -GS
• The enlightened West: 59 percent of Britons are "proud" of their colonial past -GS
• Justice in the USA: Late Medieval period -GS