Contradiction in Wikipedia's core policies; single admin able to wipe ISGP from dozens of Wikipedia pages

Author: Joël van der Reijden | Original: July 1, 2009 | Update: September 29, 2015.

1. Intro
2. An unwelcome surprise
3. Beback's incompetence
4. Sometimes Wikipedia is ISGP
5. The point being
6. Will Beback's anti-ISGP rampage
7. Authority and fame vs reliability; all points of view except conspiracy

Update: Wikipedia has been listed in ISGP's "liberal CIA" oversight since about 2016.

Personally I think Wikipedia is a really great concept. Anyone can contribute information to articles, while a relatively small number of administrators see to it that the information remains objective and verifiable. Despite criticism that "anyone can write anything", in reality the vast majority of Wikipedia articles are well sourced and very reliable, at least with the English version of Wikipedia.

However, as usual, problems arise when it comes to controversial information. Many people cannot deal with this and without even thinking they just discard it. That's too bad, but not much can be done about it. What is worrying, however, is that more than a few Wikipedia admins have similar behavioral flaws. And occasionally, as recently in the case of ISGP, an admin seems to go berserk.

Today I had actually planned to write a little article to ask people to double-check my articles before writing down anything themselves. It's basically the norm that persons discussing my work online cannot get the facts straight. The latest example is the following addition to Etienne Davignon's biography on Wikipedia:

"Around 1996, Regina Louf (X1 witness) accused Davignon of being involved in a child abuse network. She testified having seen him abusing children in a hotel in Knokke. Her testimony was discredited based on her psychological state."

It was not Regina Louf (X1) who made the claim to have seen Davignon. It was X2 who had stated this. So when making serious entries like these, please read before you write anything down. It becomes much easier to discredit controversial information when making mistakes like this. I really recommend that with every sentence you write down, you go back to the source and check my exact wording. You'll be amazed how often you remembered something wrong.

Anyway, soon after seeing this new addition to Davignon's biography, I noticed that the link to ISGP was deleted. More amazing, it turned out that every reference to ISGP anywhere on Wikipedia had been deleted around the same time. At first I thought this was the result of the careless mistake in Davignon's biography. However, it turns out that this was not the case.

The real cause turns out to be a Wikipedia admin nicknamed Will Beback. On June 29, at 20:41 (GMT), Beback apparently came across ISGP while editing Wikipedia's WWF page. This person, whose apparent internet information can be found below, decided to take a look at ISGP for less than five minutes. In response he decided it was his right to delete all references on Wikipedia to ISGP without spending one additional second of fact checking.

For a veteran Wikipedia admin, Beback doesn't seem to be a particularly bright light. Amazingly, he left the incorrect paragraph in Davignon's bio untouched. As of this writing, it's still there. Beback only deleted the source, which, ironically, would have shown that there's a serious mistake on Wikipedia.

Another interesting point is Wikipedia's 1001 Club article, in which the apparently nefarious influence of ISGP was first neutralized. This is the paragraph Beback deleted (except for the first sentence):

"The membership of the 1001 Club largely consists of managers of banks and multinationals from around the world. Examples from past and present include Sir Eric Drake of British Petroleum, Sir Val Duncan of Rio Tinto, Harry Frederick Oppenheimer and Sidney Spiro of Anglo-American Corporation, the British and French Rothschilds, Michel David-Weill of Lazard, Laurance and David Rockefeller, Henry Ford II, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, Edmond Safra, Peter von Siemens, and Berthold Beitz of Krupp. Among the more remarkable members have been Salem bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's older half-brother; Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of Zaire; BCCI founder and president Agha Hasan Abedi; Juan Carlos I King of Spain; early Zionist operatives as Louis Bloomfield and Tibor Rosenbaum; and the controversial businessman Nelson Bunker Hunt."

Beback deleted all the names, providing us with the following explanation: "trim unsourced list that includes living people". Excuse me, unsourced!? Oh, wait, of course this list is unsourced, as several minutes earlier Beback himself had deleted the links to photocopies of the membership list in which all these names could be found! The ISGP Statcounter log shows Beback has been on the page where these photocopies could be found. Unless he's a hyperactive 12-year-old, it's incomprehensible how he could have missed this.

As you can see at the bottom of this article, over the next hour Beback deleted all entries of ISGP on Wikipedia - from the Bohemian Grove, the Pilgrims Society, and Le Cercle to about a dozen individual biographies. As can be seen in ISGP's Statcounter statistics, the Wiki admin did not once bother to check any other link. He just indiscriminately deleted everything and anything having to do with ISGP.

Even very important and detailed criticism on the Disclosure Project was deleted (Steven Greer must be so happy), while in the Pilgrims Society article Charles Savoie, an alternative author with lower standards regarding the use of source material (which he admitted to ISGP), was allowed to remain. This is another clear indication that Beback only paid attention to his delete button and not at all to the subject at hand, nor the quality of the sources. You wonder if this is the kind of admin Wikipedia needs...

It's ironic that Wikipedia pages as the Pilgrims Society, the 1001 Club and Le Cercle are almost entirely based on the work of ISGP. As already explained in ISGP's FAQ:

"When PEHI/ISGP first wrote about the Cercle, the 1001 Club, and the Pilgrims, entries on Wikipedia about these societies did not exist. In each case they were added shortly after the PEHI/ISGP articles had been uploaded. Virtually no other information existed on these groups at the time. Wikipedia's Sun Valley/Allen & Co. entry took years before it was created. Wikipedia's JASON Group article did exist, but was far from complete. At least half of the members were taken from ISGP. Details about the Bohemian Grove camps and the visitors also came from ISGP. Although membership lists have leaked in recent years, back in 2005/2006 none were in the public domain and names were scattered all over the place. ISGP has been responsible for other information on Wikipedia, mainly relating to the Dutroux affair and snuff films. In many cases this information was removed for no good reason - sometimes after six months of continuous visits and no complaints."

Indeed, although ISGP was listed on about 30 different Wikipedia pages, it has previously been deleted from at least a dozen more. The JASON Group is one of them, but especially not done has been the addition of information from Beyond the Dutroux Affair or even Le Cercle to individual biographies on Wikipedia. Sometimes the information itself stuck - as the fact that Antoine Pinay was involved in setting up the Pinay Cercle - but the source of the information - ISGP - was deleted. In other cases entire paragraphs were undone and in at least one case a group of Belgian lawyers began to intimidate Wikipedia France after one of its admins expanded on the darker aspects of the life of Paul Vanden Boeynants. These legal threats were not unique, by the way, nor other forms of apparent intimation - but that's a whole other discussion.

The point here is that a single Wikipedia admin named Will Beback has decided that the world has no need for the information on ISGP, even though dozens have been responsible for adding this information and even though thousands have seen these links but never felt the need to delete them. And the most astonishing thing is that this person never even bothered to check up on any of the material presented. He left mistakes and deleted undeniable and very unique sources. If his actions are not reversed, many thousands less will come across this site over the years, as Wikipedia has considerably increased overall visits to this site both directly (links) and indirectly (Google page ranking).

Things go the way go and I guess Will Beback is just one of the many reflections of our imperfect society. It would be nice if you all could try to reverse his actions, but if not, so be it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Will_Beback

Apparently Beback is keeping check on any reversals regarding ISGP:

• 08:55, 1 July 2009 (hist) (diff) Maurice Lippens (businessman) ‎ (undo - extraordinary claim, requires highly reliable source, www.isgp.eu doesn't qualify) (top)

He doesn't seem to realize that ISGP is not "the source". The sources are the photocopies of the official gendarmerie reports, which happen to be permanently posted on ISGP. And of course you won't find these documents in any newpaper or on any government-related site. Does that mean that no one has ever testified against Maurice Lippens? Apparently it does in Beback's mind.

Recently I look a little additional interest in how Wikipedia's articles are created and maintained. It's interesting to see how several of my contributions that did not involve links to ISGP were almost entirely reversed by a devout World of Warcraft fan with no observable knowlegde about politicans, NGOs, and international affairs. He did make a million edits though, so obviously is of more use as an admin than I would be.

More to the point, I noticed multiple key NGOs that still do not have a Wikipedia page, certainly not in any of the dozens of languages around the world. At the same time I see that ISGP is referenced virtually nowhere and sooner or later is always deleted, even when only photocopies of membership lists are referenced. Sometimes this seems to be done by NGO representatives in question or even by competing authors.

Going over Wikipedia's guidelines for articles, there's actually a nice contradiction to be found. In 99.99% of cases this contradiction is not really a problem or even a contradiction - but it is in cases of conspiracy in which the government and/or the superclass is purposely manipulating information. Or, sometimes alternately, when hardly anything has been published by mainstream sources on a subject. Wikipedia's guidelines read:

• "Neutral point of view: Write from a neutral point of view. Make a fair representation of the world as reliable sources describe it. All articles should be balanced to convey an impression of the various points of view on a subject. Some views may get more attention than others, depending on the attention they receive in reliable sources. Wikipedia has no "opinion" of its own; it just accurately summarizes reliable sources.
• "Verifiability: Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources. These are sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, like newspapers, academic journals, and books. Even if something is true our standards require it be published in a reliable source before it can be included. Editors should cite reliable sources for any material that is controversial or challenged, otherwise it may be removed by any editor. The obligation to provide a reliable source is on whoever wants to include material.
• "No original research: Articles may not contain previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, or theories, nor any new analysis or synthesis of them if it advances a position. In other words, you can't make a point that hasn't already been directly made somewhere else in a reliable source. You can summarize, but it has to be based in the sources."

So Wikipedia wants articles and sources that "convey an impression of the various points of view on a subject" but at the same time only accepts sources that have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" and does not allow making "a point that hasn't already been directly made somewhere else in a reliable source."

Ignoring certain spiritual subjects, where does this leave conspiracy? It's a legitimate point-of-view in the sense that it is held by many people on certain topics. But who is allowed to represent it? The mainstream media? They don't properly address many conspiracy theories to put it mildly and they haven't even discussed in any detail some of the NGOs studied by ISGP. So again I ask: who is allowed to represent the conspiracy point-of-view on Wikipedia? Because the full spectrum of the mainstream media clearly is not enough to get a full picture.

That leaves us with well-known "conspiracy theorists." But what if major conspiracies actually exist and these well-known conspiracy theorists are disinformers themselves, propped up by the government and/or the superclass? ISGP, for example, has provided a ton of evidence that everyone invited to "alternative" million dollar shows as Coast to Coast AM and the Alex Jones Show are national security assets. Outside of these programs, the only route to fame for truly alternative authors is the mainstream media - a route that is almost per definition closed.

To summarize, the mainstream media and false opposition government assets are controlling most of the really controversial debate on Wikipedia. That's a problem, because Wikipedia prides itself as being a totally and completely independent information source. Reality appears to be more complicated, however.

I wonder if Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales would be open to these arguments and would try to take measures, for example by granting ISGP special status with certain subjects and cannot be deleted unless Wales himself determines that more authoritative and more informative sources can replace ISGP.

Wales is very much underrepresented in the superclass NGO network, only appearing once as a 2005 TED Talk speaker. Then again, looking at his Twitter for three seconds, I notice several political and activist tweets involving Putin's anti-democratic tendencies. While true, and also relevant for Wales because Putin is not exactly a fan of Wikipedia Russia, I didn't see any tweets that one could consider controversial and "conspiracy theorist". It's my opinion that anyone with above-average knowledge about world affairs, integrity, and a nice pair of balls automatically becomes a conspiracy theorist. There's no indication that Wales is, so I'm not even going to bother.