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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:

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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)

Have a WTF? Add it here:

What the fuck's Aleppo?

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! Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:55, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Birchers at the Washington Post

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 Guccisamsclub (talk) 23:28, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

They hate our innocence

The Daily Mail, and other outlets told us how savage Syrian rebels slit an innocent boy's throat. If you are wondering about the motive here, you're asking the right question. It was a savage murder, but the "boy" was 19 and a fighter for Assad. Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:55, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

"¡No pasarán!"

"US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine", perpetrated by the Ukrainian regimes' "Neo-Nazis," are "accelerating", wrote 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. Have we learned nothing from history?! Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:25, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

• 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. ~~~~

Officially the most expensive burger in the world

President Madura sets the price of hamburgers at US$170. It's official! Multiple reliable sources weigh in on the matter. Guccisamsclub (talk) 06:55, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

"Better Red than expert"

Since socialism doesn't work 'cause "there's no free lunch, duh," The Economist knew—before looking at any data—that poverty hadn't declined in Venezuela under Chavez. Who needs statistics? The political line decides everything. ("better red than expert" was a Maoist slogan, although Mao himself said: "No investigation no right to speak") Guccisamsclub (talk) 07:48, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

The election pros

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 claimed the white working class was unlikely to be an important part of Trump's electorate. Normally, the DLC and its backers in 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

Well, 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. A few liberals are still comforting themselves with the thought that none of it matters or that deplorables descended on the election in unprecedented numbers, or that Putin hacked it. Guccisamsclub (talk) 03:24, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Twins

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. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:31, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• 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)

Glass houses and all that (guest post by the TheTimesAreAChanging)

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)

Reliable fake news (installment #456,301)

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. This is not even the RT level of "fake", more like Moskovskij Komsomolets fake-tabloid level of fake, i.e. it's such a laughable and sloppy fake that does not meet the minimum credibility requirement to be properly called propaganda. Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:58, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Iron logic

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...

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)

Reliable WTFs (history)

Have a WTF? Add it here:

The power of 10

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

In fit of self-righteousness, repeated hundreds of times in the British media, the The Independent scolds Jeremy Corbyn for 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

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

Unrealiable WTFs

Paul Bogdanor's lies

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), 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 people, 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)

Notes

1. "The Mythology Of Trump's 'Working Class' Support". FiveThirtyEight. 2016-05-03. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
2. "How Trump Won | Jacobin". www.jacobinmag.com. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
3. "Shane Bauer on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
4. "OPINION: Hard choices: Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath". Retrieved 2016-12-12.
5. Attiah, Karen (2016-04-19). "Hillary Clinton's dodgy answers on Honduras coup". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
6. Udu-gama, Nico. "Four of 6 Generals Tied to the 2009 Honduran Coup Were Trained at the SOA | SOA Watch: Close the School of the Americas". www.soaw.org. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
7. Fang2015-07-06T17:01:07+00:00, Lee FangLee. "During Honduras Crisis, Clinton Suggested Back Channel With Lobbyist Lanny Davis". The Intercept. Retrieved 2016-12-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
8. "How Hillary Clinton Militarized US Policy in Honduras". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
9. Dettmer, Jamie (2014-06-12). "Obama's Budget Fails Democracy Promotion Abroad". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
10. Mackey2016-07-26T16:43:44+00:00, Robert MackeyRobert. "If Russian Intelligence Did Hack the DNC, the NSA Would Know, Snowden Says". The Intercept. Retrieved 2016-12-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
11. Alexander, Edward; Bogdanor, Paul (2011-12-31). The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 9781412809337.
12. Chomsky, Noam (2002-01-01). Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World. South End Press. ISBN 9780896086852.
13. Fawaz, Youssef. "soc.culture.lebanon". groups.google.com. Retrieved 1994-05-27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |access-date= (help)