User talk:Eleland: Difference between revisions
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== September 2008 == |
== September 2008 == |
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<div class="user-block"> [[Image:Stop x nuvola with clock.svg|40px|left]] {{#if:|You have been '''[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked]]''' from editing for a period of '''{{{time}}}'''|You have been temporarily '''[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked]]''' from editing}} in accordance with [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|Wikipedia's blocking policy]] for {{#if:incivility after warning and discussion|'''incivility after warning and discussion'''|repeated [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|abuse of editing privileges]]}}. Please stop. You are welcome to [[Wikipedia:Five pillars|make ''useful'' contributions]] after the block expires. If you believe this block is unjustified you may [[Wikipedia:Appealing a block|contest this block]] by adding the text <!-- Copy the text as it appears on your page, not as it appears in this edit area. Do not include the "nowiki" tags. --><nowiki>{{</nowiki>unblock|''your reason here''<nowiki>}}</nowiki><!-- Do not include the "nowiki" tags. --> below. {{#if:true|[[User:Toddst1|Toddst1]] <small>([[User talk: Toddst1|talk]])</small> 00:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)}}</div><!-- Template:uw-block2 --> |
<div class="user-block"> [[Image:Stop x nuvola with clock.svg|40px|left]] {{#if:|You have been '''[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked]]''' from editing for a period of '''{{{time}}}'''|You have been temporarily '''[[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|blocked]]''' from editing}} in accordance with [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy|Wikipedia's blocking policy]] for {{#if:incivility after warning and discussion|'''incivility after warning and discussion'''|repeated [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|abuse of editing privileges]]}}. Please stop. You are welcome to [[Wikipedia:Five pillars|make ''useful'' contributions]] after the block expires. If you believe this block is unjustified you may [[Wikipedia:Appealing a block|contest this block]] by adding the text <!-- Copy the text as it appears on your page, not as it appears in this edit area. Do not include the "nowiki" tags. --><nowiki>{{</nowiki>unblock|''your reason here''<nowiki>}}</nowiki><!-- Do not include the "nowiki" tags. --> below. {{#if:true|[[User:Toddst1|Toddst1]] <small>([[User talk: Toddst1|talk]])</small> 00:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)}}</div><!-- Template:uw-block2 --> |
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:I won't ask that you unblock me conditionally so I can do it myself; but please post this to ANI under the thread EternalSleeper started to get me blocked. Or at least link here. |
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:Let me confess; not only did I knowingly violate Wikipedia's various "civility" and "personal attacks" and "play nice in the sandbox, kids," policies, I did it with the very deliberate ''intention'' that it cause what we euphemistically call "disruption" here. Quite simply, I was, and am, at wits end, and I have neither the patience nor the passive-aggressiveness to work through the normal WikiPolitical methods that EternalSleeper has so evidently mastered. The slickly packaged,though utterly ridiculous, allegation of antisemitism on mine and [[User:Nishidani]]'s part was a nice touch, if a predictable one, since is impossible to disagree substantively with the extremist Jewish element (we're supposed to call them "pro-Israeli") on Wikipedia without facing such nonsense. |
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:Plainly and indisputably: the editor who I called a "cunt" and a "huge douchebag," [[User:Saxophonem]], is a religious-nationalist fanatic, ''incited'' (to use the kind of loaded term his ilk will force into any discussion of the Middle East,) to edit Wikipedia by a group of Internet criminals called the [[Jewish Internet Defense Force]] who make a hobby out of spamming, disrupting, and harassing sympathizers of Palestinian rights wherever they may be found. His [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=International_Day_of_Quds&diff=prev&oldid=213506006 very first edit] here was the replacement of "Israeli capture of East Jerusalem" with "Israeli liberation of East Jerusalem;" his edits have continued in the same vein, being so frankly idiotic that he faces resistance not only from us usual suspects but from his fellow Jewish/Zionist editors - see [[Talk:Palestinian territories#Captured/Liberated]]. |
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:Oh, perhaps I should rush to clarify, given the general tenor of the discussion so far; I just used the word "resistance," which of course is what the Hamas bombers call their actions, so I must now disavow any advocacy of antisemitic genocidal terrorism rather than make my point like a normal civilized person. Because, apparently, it's essential whenever Israel is involved to hunt down any possible fourth-hand link to anti-Jewish sentiment, no matter how creatively paranoid a mind it takes to come to it. Do you think I'm kidding? Let me tell you what EternalSleeper's "racism" boils down to. |
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:In the midst of a series of discussions, all of which Saxophonemn himself initiated, and in all of which the was the ''sole'' advocate, even among "pro-Israeli" editors, of an incredibly extremist, religious-nationalist view on [[Talk:Palestinian territories]], randomly declaimed that of all who dared to oppose him, including the Palestinians, "'''The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.'''" |
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:In response, I basically flew off the handle. I'm not ashamed to admit it; ethnic supremacism really does make my blood boil, and unlike some others, I don't believe that all racists are racists but some racists are more racist that others. In a subsequent comment I described Sax's actions as advocacy for a "master race;" this is undoubtedly harsh language, but more importantly, '''it is an accurate description of Sax's worldview as reflected by his actions on Wikipedia.''' Please study my contribution history. I do not resort this kind of language at will, even with people I profoundly and even violently disagree with. The bare fact is that Sax is an '''absolute mirror-image of a Nazi antisemite;''' he believes that "The Jew" is a singular, powerful force, "The Jew" is eternal and lies outside history, "The Jew" has a special and terrifying power, "The Jew" destroys entire nations and peoples for the crime of slighting him, etc. |
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:So, yeah, good block on me. I did, after all, say "fuck" and "cunt" and this is a major sin on Wikipedia. "Your people are inferior and my people will destroy you utterly, in fact, you never even existed to begin with," on the other hand, is just the kind of sentiment that encourages rational dialogue and compromise, as is "we have to ignore international law and the views of mere humans if it contradicts my preferred Holy Books," and such views must be respected in the name of open and frank academic discourse. |
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:No, no. Sarcasm isn't good enough here, and I apologize. To lay it bare: People like Saxophonem, (and before you start it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity or creed, I mean people with a committed right-wing-authoritarian psychological mindset and a national-religious axe to grind,) people like him are absolutely ''toxic'' to Wikipedia. They drive out the good editors. They wear us down and they exhaust us. It is simply not possible to debate rationally with someone who thinks in such a fashion; you can refute, up to a point, after which, if you can't [[WP:RBI|revert, block, and ignore,]] vitriolic mockery becomes, apart from mute surrender, the only reply. I don't apologize. I'd do it again happily. Lengthen my block to indefinite if you must. I was getting tired of this game anyway. <[[User:Eleland|<b>el</b>eland]]/[[User talk:Eleland|<b>talk</b>]][[Special:Contributions/Eleland|edits]]> 02:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC) |
Revision as of 02:16, 28 September 2008
You are invited to look at my user page, where I am making an attempt to start a new article on Money and the Money Supply. Your advice and suggestions are invited Martycarbone (talk) 17:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
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Middle East Textbooks Invitation
Just thought you might like to know... Cheers, pedro gonnet - talk - 28.03.2008 09:09
New AS mediation
The mediation im getting rolling as its been a long time waiting so i think its best to get moving. Most of the mediation will be on the talk (discussion) page. so make sure its in your watchlist. Seddon69 (talk)
todo: Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani
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The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : Issue XXX (August 2008)
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- In Image:Eurabia map.png, why is Eritrea (which is not currently member of Arab League) colored? 89.2.243.42 (talk) 13:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Military history WikiProject coordinator election
The September 2008 Military history WikiProject coordinator election has begun. We will be selecting nine coordinators to serve for the next six months from a pool of fourteen candidates. Please vote here by September 30!
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 21:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Jerusalem
"What you think "we all know" is hardly a basis for Wikipedia editing, especially when it relates to an irrelevant and irrational claim which isn't even true (some 30% of Jerusalemites speak Arabic, self-identify as Palestinian, and refuse Israeli citizenship - in the Old City it is more like 85%.) "Israel and West Bank" is OK with me, even though the ancient part of Jerusalem is entirely outside the Green Line. It is not clear to me why edit warring and talk-page vitriol over several months should be necessary to change "Israel and Palestinian Territories" to "Israel and West Bank," either. But I think we are (finally) done here. <eleland/talkedits> 01:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)"
Thank you, you prove the point of ignorance you base your assertions on distortions of reality.
1) Speaking Arabic, as in the other official language of Israel?
2) Palestinian is a dubious title coined in the 1960's.
3)Arab/Muslim ethnic cleansing and occupations really shook up the demographics.
4) The Green line, go to Jerusalem and look for it in Jerusalem, but seriously people lived outside of the walls of the city in ancient times and the area is not so cut up.
5) Your assertions are entirely based upon some alternative universe in which Jerusalem the anglicization of Yerushalayim a Hebrew word makes it a non-Jewish place. Ironically the Arab designation al-Quds is in reference to the Two Temples that Arafat said never existed.
6) International law is extremely vague on many of the points, and a State's sovereignty in principle suggest that no foreign entity extends rules over its own. Whether you like it or not.
--Saxophonemn (talk) 02:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- "Jerusalem is Jewish" doesn't even make sense. Jerusalem is a city, not an individual. I mean, did Jerusalem pass its Bat Mitzvah when it was twelve or something? It makes sense to state "the majority of its inhabitants are Jewish", which apparently holds for the city but not for the Old City. But I don't suppose it is worth the effort to try any kind of rational approach with someone as steeped in ideology as Saxophonemn. He keeps conflating "Jewish", "Hebrew" and "Israel" as if they all meant the same thing. I mean, sheesh, I would like to feel more sympathetic for the Israeli side in all this, but people like this don't make it any easier. dab (𒁳) 07:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- Is Paris French? Is Tokyo Japanese? Jewish/Hebrew/Israel not in quotes are the essentially the same thing, I have yet to make a Venn diagram. My ideology is Torah, not a popularity contest.--Saxophonemn (talk) 12:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- I never would have guessed. <eleland/talkedits> 17:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
- Is Paris French? Is Tokyo Japanese? Jewish/Hebrew/Israel not in quotes are the essentially the same thing, I have yet to make a Venn diagram. My ideology is Torah, not a popularity contest.--Saxophonemn (talk) 12:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Zionism / Arab-Israeli conflict
"OH MY GOODNESS are you still on about this? You are nothing if not persistent. I would love to respond to your general views on Zionism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, really, I would. It would be enjoyable in a certain sense. But this is not the forum for it. Bottom line; you have said nothing of relevance to the question at hand. I refer to you my comments of 18:42, 4 September 2008 and 18:31, 5 September 2008 and leave it at that. <eleland/talkedits> 04:27, 21 September 2008 (UTC)"
I think you have skewed my views a bit. I take it you have a low esteem of Zionism and you're not the biggest fan of Israel based upon liberal/atheist view points which make Jews appear as out of place white folks in the wrong neighborhood. --Saxophonemn (talk) 05:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Civility
Please do not attack other editors. If you continue, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia. In particular, [1] [2] I'd also like to remind you of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Discretionary sanctions. Be more careful in future, GDonato (talk) 12:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- Well the horn-blower did imply he had 'no weakening of his parts'.Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, what are you going to do about mister "You have to change this article because it's unfair to the master race," anyway? <eleland/talkedits> 17:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- I'd strongly urge you to consider reading the civility policy: you can not argue that the diffs I provided are examples of acceptable conduct regardless of who is looking at them. Furthermore, your reply is also of borderline appropriateness. Consider this a final warning; I'm sure you are a sensible contributor and do not need to resort to incivility, GDonato (talk) 18:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, what are you going to do about mister "You have to change this article because it's unfair to the master race," anyway? <eleland/talkedits> 17:27, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- With all due respect,GDonato (and apologies to Eleland for barging in on a setled matter) I'd strongly urge, now that what's said has been said, and strong warnings duly and forcibly made, that some administrator drop an equally forceful reminder to Saxophonemn, that to manipulate Twain's quote, and insert 'Palestinians' into the text dealing with extinct peoples and cultures, is an extreme provocation to more than one editor here. Put me down as someone who objects most 'violently' to the innuendo in Saxophonemns' crack. We all have acute ears for the blunt anger of 4 letter words. No one, other than Eleland or myself, seems to have twigged to the intense malevolence in the remark that spurred Eleland's violent rejoinder, violent, if all too human. It happens to be what I thought too in examining Saxaphonemns' words, only, because I'm slower with age, I tend to murmur such words inaudibly, without troubling a talk page with my private disgust.
'The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then . . . passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. [The Palestinians too.]'
- Saxaphonemn inserted the 'Palestinians'. The undisguisedly triumphant sneer here is that the Palestinians, now striving for statehood under Israeli occupation, labour under the illusion they have a future, whereas they are already extinct. It's not a 'death threat' (sanctionable). The informal message is, 'your obituary is already written, Palestinians. Our Jewish people will perdure here while you, a transient blip on history's screen, will join the rest of humanity along the path of extinction. In fact, you've no future, since you are already consigned to the past'. Eleland, as someone editing to keep the record of Palestinian claims to a national identity untarnished by the kind of suppressio veri at times engineered around I/P articles, took this personally. He admitted his error, and erased the remark within 15 minutes. Almost all of us have zero-tolerance for antisemitism. By the same token, we don't like newbie editors who have done nothing so far to read widely and deeply and edit seriously, coming forth with vainglorious insinuations that the people Israel occupies are, unlike the Jewish people, marked down to join history's dustbin of dead peoples. Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- There is a certain degree for concern regarding those words but I lack the familiarity with this dispute to know exactly to what degree some comments are inappropriate or offensive. I am willing to keep an eye on Saxophonemn (talk · contribs) if that is what you want to see if there are any policy violations there. Lastly, the removal of a comment from this page has been noted as I find it slightly concerning, GDonato (talk) 21:06, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- Saxaphonemn inserted the 'Palestinians'. The undisguisedly triumphant sneer here is that the Palestinians, now striving for statehood under Israeli occupation, labour under the illusion they have a future, whereas they are already extinct. It's not a 'death threat' (sanctionable). The informal message is, 'your obituary is already written, Palestinians. Our Jewish people will perdure here while you, a transient blip on history's screen, will join the rest of humanity along the path of extinction. In fact, you've no future, since you are already consigned to the past'. Eleland, as someone editing to keep the record of Palestinian claims to a national identity untarnished by the kind of suppressio veri at times engineered around I/P articles, took this personally. He admitted his error, and erased the remark within 15 minutes. Almost all of us have zero-tolerance for antisemitism. By the same token, we don't like newbie editors who have done nothing so far to read widely and deeply and edit seriously, coming forth with vainglorious insinuations that the people Israel occupies are, unlike the Jewish people, marked down to join history's dustbin of dead peoples. Regards Nishidani (talk) 19:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for that reflection. I've dropped a note on your page. I hope this is settled. I need a cuppa, or a reefer of that stuff we used to get off friendly folks in Gaza in the good old days, when you could walk round there and smoke interesting herbal stuff, before someone came up with the idea they were terrorists, and weeds dangerous.Nishidani (talk) 21:38, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- I removed the content, GD, because it was BASELESSLY ACCUSING ME OF ENDORSING THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION. Ok, can you see why that might be a problem? MAYBE? JUST A LITTLE BIT?!?!?!?!? FOR FUCKS SAKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH WIKIPEDIA ADMINS <eleland/talkedits> 21:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- (<=) I think (and I hope) that was not his intention. Let's leave it for just now and maybe try to stay away from editors who you feel you might fall into dispute with or make sure that you are always civil when communicating with them. I'm always available by e-mail, talk page and IRC for any good faith requests or complaints about conduct. Cheers, GDonato (talk) 21:57, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
- E. Wikipedia admins have an unenviable job, it ain't quite as enjoyable as editing, which is in any case, in the I/P area, mainly exasperation. Quick judgements on diffs, and often without time to check in depth (Donato stepped back, earlier,'I lack familiarity with this dispute', and took note that perhaps some things had escaped him etc). Only problem is that Saxaphonemn kibitzes away, as a newbie, on pages where you've toiled for years. To stay away from such blowin editors would be tantamount to leaving wiki, since they tend to follow serious editors about. It's late, I'm out. I'm fucked if it's worth the candle mate, at times like this. But if we don't keep our noses clean, whatever snot's wheezed our way by the Protocol spin-teamsters, who's going to look after that 22% and its people's right to representation? Nishidani (talk) 22:12, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Eleland, I came across this discussion on your talk page. Apologies for my intrusion, but I thought I would offer some advice to you and Nishidani as your friendly neighborhood admin™. It really doesn't seem appropriate to refer to people as "horn-blowers" (is that a reference to the shofar?) and "the master race". It certainly isn't conducive to a friendly editing environment, and I can't see how it can help if it results in antagonising people. Please think about the effect of what you're posting and ask yourself if your comments are going to help the discussion and what you want to achieve by posting them. -- ChrisO (talk) 00:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
- ChrisO you would have to ask whoever made the "horn blower" comment because it wasn't me. As for "master race," that is simply a direct, accurate reading of Saxophonem's conception of how the world works. He did, indeed, post a quote about how Jews are timeless and eternal and anybody who opposes them will, to use an apropos phrasing, disappear from the pages of history, or perhaps I should say be wiped off the map. He posted this to Talk:Palestinian territories.
- If you want me to take this whole kerfuffle seriously, here's what you should do. Create a pan-Arabian sockpuppet who runs around making absurd demands and posting nationalist calls-to-arms on Israel related pages (or really any page that even in passing mentions Israel, like List of oldest continuously occupied cities.) Make sure that it's suspected from the beginning as a sock-puppet, and that its edits are clearly linked to a known group of internet thugs who amuse themselves by, for example, breaking into pro-Israeli settler facebook groups and deleting all the members. Then have your sockpuppet post a quote about how all who oppose Islam will be destroyed to Talk:Israel, as an epigraph to a discussion about why the page should be renamed to "Zionist entity." Then, when people call him "you cunt" and "clearly unfit to edit," go ahead and give them your civility lecture. Then I'll take you seriously. Until then, I have to admit - I still think Saxophonem is a cunt. I mean it. He's a huuuuge douchebag. He can go fuck himself. <eleland/talkedits> 12:48, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
- ChrisO, why I should reply to this idiotic sand-in-the-eyes insinuation by Eternalsleeper over the shofar, when the joke was obvious, is beyond me. Saxophonemn touts his love of wind-instruments, ‘horns’ in jazz slang. He wears this in his own ID handle. He trumpeted, via Twain, the peerless immortality of Jews, and the death of Palestinians, and all other peoples. Malik, with whom he was in conflict, has now asked him to refactor his comment since ‘the Talk page is not a forum for theories of national superiority’. Eleland put this, if I may rhyme the offensive word, in blunt terms, but he was correct in seeing here, as I and Malik have also, a foul recycling, where it should never appear for obvious historical reasons, of clichés about ethnic supremicism. The result? Saxophonemn’s page is silent, Eleland is warned by an administrator, both he and I are accused of anti-semitism, I because in punning on Saxophonemn’s handle, I called him a ‘horn-blower’. I hardly need to tell you of all people that to ‘blow one’s horn’ is to ‘trumpet one’s own virtues’, something Saxophonemn, with his love of wind-instruments, was doing in saying he, like the Jewish people in Twain’s vignette, will outlast all the rest of us, and consign the Palestinians to the dustbin of history. As William Empson taught us, language speaks more than the intentions of conscious use might allow. ‘Horn-blower’ can sound indeed Clintonian, though I had primarily in mind Horatio Hornblower, for private hermeneutic reasons. To ‘blow the horn’ might well allude to the shofar, but why not then to the qerem (the horn/hill. 'To lift up the horn (qerem) of Salvation' is Biblical language for 'exalt oneself in resistance'.Gerard Manley Hopkins alludes unwittingly to this in his diary entry for September 24, 1863, in noting an analogy to the word herna (horn) and the Hernici of Switzerland, ‘rock (Lt.saxum)-people’ because they dwelt on horn-like crags)? Of course, now that shofar is mentioned, one does recall that when Betar rallied at the Wailing Wall in the 1920s, a shofar was blown, as demonstrators shouted ‘The Wall is Ours’, and the right to challenge those at al-Aqsa in this way became a hallmark of extremist agent provocateurs, which is how I regard Saxopphonemn. The Irgun threatened the British with retaliation for criminal behaviour if they interfered with Jewish worship at the wall, since the latter had banned the blowing of the shofar after the 1929 riots (J. Bowyer Bell, Moshe Arens, Terror Out of Zion, (Dublin, 1977) Transaction Press reprint, 1996 pp.121f.(A the authors are wrong here: it was the International Commission for the Wailing Wall that recommended the ban in 1930)). Moshe Segal defied the ban on Yom Kippur 1931 (Anita Shapira, Land and Power:The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, tr. William Templer, Stanford UP 1999 p.201). Blowing the shofar is, in revisionist Zionism, emblematic of Israel’s crushing of indigenous aspirations to the land. In that sense, yes, I cannot deny that, in my mind, Saxophonemn was also blowing a shofar, and trumpeting down into non-existence the walls of Palestinian aspiration. I’m not like Horatio Hornblower who ‘restrained himself from pointing out the obvious too didactically to his superior officer’ (C. S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower(1952) in The Young Hornblower, Penguin Books reprint 2004 p.259.) So just for the record, as Eleland invites the usual administrative measures to get himself banned by allowing his understandable repulsion for ethnic supremicists to be voiced here, while Saxophonemn smiles from the wings in silence, and can notch this up as a scalp from the enemy to do his newby record proud in the eyes of his fellows, I’ll put down my personal reconstruction (early this morning, but not posted) of what happened, and why both Eleland and I are, to put it mildly, pissed off that someone who has done nothing for this encyclopedia, except militate ideologically, provoked a sharp and vulgar quip, quickly withdrawn, and in the labyrinths of judgement, is now ignored for his behaviour, while those who responded are summoned to judgement for not ‘creating a civil environment’. Regards Nishidani (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
- (2) ChrisO Like the young midshipman Horatio ‘’Hornblower’’, you enjoy the benefits of a classical education. You will recall that when Captain Keene mocks this cultural boon in the apprentice sailor as a drawback, he does so by upbraiding him on the use of ablative absolutes, which do not serve the ends of wars of Empire, unlike the study of sines and cosines. The point was, pure math is a more serviceable tool of destruction than a capacity to construe Cicero. A classical education tunes the vagrant ear to allusive nuance in language, but what’s the point of that when curt formulaic orders, (‘clear the forward raffle!’, ‘snug the brig down’) and their instantaneous execution are the pared down staple of verbal exchanges on board a man of war. The vignette suggestsan analogy with certain tendencies in Wiki administration that privilege being a stickler for form: that and execution is all that matters: what counts in the’’ litterae humaniores’’, i.e., the subtextual world of meaning, can be ignored, and in ignoring it, the message is, ‘stuff the content’ when disputes arise.
- The kerfuffle (pure coincidence I now note that Eleland uses the same word) we have witnessed illustrates the contrast. An editor yet to prove himself, with a record for nuisance declarations, whinges about being the victim of a ‘with hunt’ (sic) , returns and nitpicks on the way the term Palestinian Territories (the whole article is a useless fork, and can be summed up as 'an Israeli expression for the Occupied Palestinian Territories) is treated as a single term, like the ‘United States’, whereas, in his view, it designates as a plural, plural topological realities. The adjective (not a ‘proper’ adjective: one only speaks of proper nouns) is POV, since it implies the territories are ‘Palestinian’, which is moot. One might remark that calling ‘The Palestinian Territories’ a plural reality, (is the ‘United States’ to be similarly dismembered on the strength of a similar equivocation?) not only defies standard usage, but is itself POV, in that in a certain Israeli perspective, there’s much to be gained tactically by defining the two as distinct geopolitical realities, in disregard of standard international language, (‘’divide et impera’’) than by accepting that the final status of the area must recognize them as a political and cultural unity. Malik made a revert, with his customary succinct and neutral incisiveness, and the rejoinder was a rather odd stab at being either comical or ironical:-
’Malik, they is coming to take you away, is good English.'
- Well, not only Freud, but Empson would have said that to illustrate a point with this phrasing, to someone whose handle indicates a gesture of identitarian affinity with the Islamic Afro-American hero, Malcolm X, is in extremely crude taste. ‘They is coming to take you away’ is in fact a parody of black dialect (‘They’z cumen to take you away, man’). Why, of all imaginable examples, did Saxophonemn think up one that sounds either like a veiled threat to a black man, or a prophylactic warning (a tip off)? He also asserted that an exquisitely neutral comment on grammatical proprieties by Malik, reflecting a consensual viewpoint weeks back, struck him as ‘bullying’. Malik, in his view, was abusing his ‘authority’ and menacing him. This is what Saxophonemn says. On a deeper Empsonian level, the phrase can even be taken to imply, ‘who are you to correct my English? Yeah, you are Jewish, but identify with Islamic blacks, and blacks don’t speak proper English. And you, in saying ‘a plural noun can take a verb in the singular’ sound like you hang out with people who speak black dialect, rather than educated folks who speak correct English’. In this sense, it was just possibly a tribalistic reminder to stick to Malik’s ‘proper’ Jewish identity, and not get confused by associating with blacks. This is not just a matter of the hermeneutics of suspicion. In an earlier exchange on Eleland’s page here , Saxophonemn remarked:
liberal/atheist view points which make ‘’’Jews appear as out of place (as) ‘’white folks’’ in the wrong neighborhood.’’’
- I.e. secular criticism of what Saxophonemn thinks as Torah-based Zionism makes ‘Jews’ (not Israel) as out of place as white folks in a black neighbourhood’ (black neighbourhoods are ‘wrong’), and Malik therefore, in S’s understanding, is a Jew out of place in a black’s world, and in not supporting a fellow-Jew on an edit.
- I noted this, reading quietly, with disquiet before this brouhaha flared up. It was covert, intangible, but subtly resonant in the words and associations Saxophonemn’s remarks conjured up. I also noticed that my intuition was not quite peregrine, for Saxophonemn suddenly followed this up with a familiar quote from Mark Twain, tampering with it ever so slightly. Saxophonemn laments the difficulties he is experiencing, as a newby, in not having established an ‘authority’ to get his own way as an editor.
- What was one to make of this MollyBloomsian flow of apparently illogical thoughts? We have an admired and experienced editor, whose identity is influenced by a regard for an Islamic Afro-American, berated for being a bully, and vaguely, if ham-handedly, informed he should mull over the meaning of the menacing black dialect phrase: ‘They is coming to take you away’ (even if intended on another level to illustrate a problem of grammatical concordance). Of course given Saxaphonemn’s musical interests, it’s the sort of allusion Christopher Ricks, aficionado of Bob Dylan's lyrics, would pick apart, since it is obviously a reminder of Napoleon XIV’s song, They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha!. The allusion only compounds the doubts about Saxaphonemn’s game, since by substituting ‘you’ for ‘me’, the innuendo is that Malik is ‘insane’, like the fellow in the original lyric.
- Light was thrown on it by the following citation from Mark Twain, representing a viewpoint Saxaphonemn says he can’t wait to edit in, so that he can put over with acquired editorial authority something along the lines of Mark Twain, when he wrote:-
’The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then . . . passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed. [The Palestinians too.] The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"
- Distilled down to its conceptual attar, Saxophonemn says here, in effect: ‘The Palestinians are a dead people who have had their day, like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and Greeks. The Jews beat them all, have beaten once more the Palestinians. They Jews are immortal’.
- Contextually it is a reprise of the implicit point made earlier, about ‘Palestinian Territories’. They are at the moment, ‘territories’ but it is POV to call them ‘Palestinian’ and in any case, ‘we’ Jews will eventually own them, since the Palestinians are doomed, like all other peoples save ‘us’, to extinction.
- Several paragraphs to bring into overt clarity the obscure innuendoes embedded in Saxaphonemn’s messages. One intuits all this, without troubling to construe it, at a moment's glance, and, if one has an ethical nature, and a certain sympathy for the plight of Palestinians, one swears under one’s breath a four letter word, and words to the effect of ‘shove your ‘ethnic supremicism’ crap'. Eleland violated the code by writing briefly what he and many others would think, true but, to his credit, almost immediately reverted.
- What was the consequence? An admin (notified?) looked at the diff (actually, in haste, he made two diffs of the one remark, as if Eleland had been repeatedly offensive), and called him for incivility. As I said to Eleland, one shouldn’t take it badly that admins simply don’t have time to go into the details, the contexts, and the history: the rules privilege formalism over substance. Were they to waste their time, as I have mine, going into the intricate history of each contretemps, they’d never manage to exercise even a minimum amount of control, since it would require one admin on constant surveillance for each wiki page. Donato himself, when his attention was drawn to the lack of deeper oversight, properly allowed he may not have looked as closely at this as the problem demanded.
- Then I intruded, with a crack, formulated to suggest to Eleland that, if one is outraged, perhaps an innocuous but pointed piece of repartee, rather than an exasperated and futile, because sanctionable, four-letter word of abuse was the way to handle this kind of crass racism.
- Eleland is understandably exasperated, and caps a few effs. Rightly so from a modern ethical perspective, but highly improper from a wiki editorial slant. Rightly, because much ado about virtually nothing was being made over his angry response to racist language, no hullabaloo was made about the racist vaunt that provoked it, a remark which said Palestinians are a dead people, they’re ‘history’, and are history because their ‘ethnic’ rivals are, uniquely, immortal, a position that elicits spontaneously the conclusion that Saxophonemn believes in Jewish racial superiority, or what Eleland was to call a ‘master race’ complex.
- At this, an editor of Lebanese origin who apparently thinks all Arabs outside of Saudi Arabia are intruders, (and therefore the Orient should have remained Jewish and Christian as it was in the good old days) came out with a strong pro-Zionist sympathy: the land that has invaded his own homeland several times in the last several decades, is Eretz Israel, where all Arabs are intruders, aliens, all of it belongs to the Jews, and people like Eleland and myself are antisemites. Eleland, because in using the word ‘Master race’ he was not (as indeed he obviously was), alluding to the language of Mein Kampf, where ‘’Herrenvolk’ is employed several times, but to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (where that wording does not recur, at least in Marsden’s translation), and I because in calling Saxophonemn a ‘horn-blower’ I was mocking the shofar. One provocation leads to another, but in an Humean similitude, people seem to be fixated on the pocketed billiard ball, and not at the cue-wielders. I wish for Chrissake, one could do without these endless quibbles, esp. over a 15 minute edit that disappeared down the tube as its author thought better of it. Best regards Nishidani (talk) 15:48, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
September 2008
- I won't ask that you unblock me conditionally so I can do it myself; but please post this to ANI under the thread EternalSleeper started to get me blocked. Or at least link here.
- Let me confess; not only did I knowingly violate Wikipedia's various "civility" and "personal attacks" and "play nice in the sandbox, kids," policies, I did it with the very deliberate intention that it cause what we euphemistically call "disruption" here. Quite simply, I was, and am, at wits end, and I have neither the patience nor the passive-aggressiveness to work through the normal WikiPolitical methods that EternalSleeper has so evidently mastered. The slickly packaged,though utterly ridiculous, allegation of antisemitism on mine and User:Nishidani's part was a nice touch, if a predictable one, since is impossible to disagree substantively with the extremist Jewish element (we're supposed to call them "pro-Israeli") on Wikipedia without facing such nonsense.
- Plainly and indisputably: the editor who I called a "cunt" and a "huge douchebag," User:Saxophonem, is a religious-nationalist fanatic, incited (to use the kind of loaded term his ilk will force into any discussion of the Middle East,) to edit Wikipedia by a group of Internet criminals called the Jewish Internet Defense Force who make a hobby out of spamming, disrupting, and harassing sympathizers of Palestinian rights wherever they may be found. His very first edit here was the replacement of "Israeli capture of East Jerusalem" with "Israeli liberation of East Jerusalem;" his edits have continued in the same vein, being so frankly idiotic that he faces resistance not only from us usual suspects but from his fellow Jewish/Zionist editors - see Talk:Palestinian territories#Captured/Liberated.
- Oh, perhaps I should rush to clarify, given the general tenor of the discussion so far; I just used the word "resistance," which of course is what the Hamas bombers call their actions, so I must now disavow any advocacy of antisemitic genocidal terrorism rather than make my point like a normal civilized person. Because, apparently, it's essential whenever Israel is involved to hunt down any possible fourth-hand link to anti-Jewish sentiment, no matter how creatively paranoid a mind it takes to come to it. Do you think I'm kidding? Let me tell you what EternalSleeper's "racism" boils down to.
- In the midst of a series of discussions, all of which Saxophonemn himself initiated, and in all of which the was the sole advocate, even among "pro-Israeli" editors, of an incredibly extremist, religious-nationalist view on Talk:Palestinian territories, randomly declaimed that of all who dared to oppose him, including the Palestinians, "The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts. … All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains."
- In response, I basically flew off the handle. I'm not ashamed to admit it; ethnic supremacism really does make my blood boil, and unlike some others, I don't believe that all racists are racists but some racists are more racist that others. In a subsequent comment I described Sax's actions as advocacy for a "master race;" this is undoubtedly harsh language, but more importantly, it is an accurate description of Sax's worldview as reflected by his actions on Wikipedia. Please study my contribution history. I do not resort this kind of language at will, even with people I profoundly and even violently disagree with. The bare fact is that Sax is an absolute mirror-image of a Nazi antisemite; he believes that "The Jew" is a singular, powerful force, "The Jew" is eternal and lies outside history, "The Jew" has a special and terrifying power, "The Jew" destroys entire nations and peoples for the crime of slighting him, etc.
- So, yeah, good block on me. I did, after all, say "fuck" and "cunt" and this is a major sin on Wikipedia. "Your people are inferior and my people will destroy you utterly, in fact, you never even existed to begin with," on the other hand, is just the kind of sentiment that encourages rational dialogue and compromise, as is "we have to ignore international law and the views of mere humans if it contradicts my preferred Holy Books," and such views must be respected in the name of open and frank academic discourse.
- No, no. Sarcasm isn't good enough here, and I apologize. To lay it bare: People like Saxophonem, (and before you start it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity or creed, I mean people with a committed right-wing-authoritarian psychological mindset and a national-religious axe to grind,) people like him are absolutely toxic to Wikipedia. They drive out the good editors. They wear us down and they exhaust us. It is simply not possible to debate rationally with someone who thinks in such a fashion; you can refute, up to a point, after which, if you can't revert, block, and ignore, vitriolic mockery becomes, apart from mute surrender, the only reply. I don't apologize. I'd do it again happily. Lengthen my block to indefinite if you must. I was getting tired of this game anyway. <eleland/talkedits> 02:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)