User talk:TheTimesAreAChanging

Be careful about your editing at articles under Discretionary Sanctions

You have been warned in the past about the Discretionary Sanctions that put special editing restrictions on articles about current U.S. politics. The article Political positions of Donald Trump is one such article. One of the DS restrictions is "All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). If in doubt, don't make the edit." The material you added to the "Disabled Americans" section was reverted, and you added it a second time. That was a violation of these special restrictions. Don't add it again or you could be subjected to sanctions (i.e., blocked or banned). If you think this material should be included, discuss it at the talk page. --MelanieN (talk) 15:10, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

MelanieN, thanks for keeping an eye on this type of behavior. It hasn't stopped. TTAC has once again violated DS with this restoration before consensus was reached. The talk page discussion is progressing very nicely and there is no reason to restore disputed content. We're working it out. The improper restoration has been undone, with a warning. I hope you also follow up here. Since TTAC has been warned before, we need to see something more than another warning. -- BullRangifer (talk) 22:28, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't see that at all. 4-2 in favor of inclusion is a consensus. It's certainly not the strongest consensus and it could always change, but I've seen disputes "settled" on a weaker basis than that.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

The decision about whether a consensus exists isn't determined by one person, but by those engaged in the discussion. (We haven't begun the discussion about whether we have a consensus because we aren't ready for it.) It's not determined by a simple majority count either. As long as a discussion is in progress, we don't get to short circuit the decision making process. We wait until a decision has been made. If a clear consensus, like 15 to 1, doesn't arise, and there is a locked situation, then dispute resolution is the next step, not edit warring over the content. It stays out until a very clear consensus version has been developed. In this case we are working towards a better way to include the material, and we'll likely get there within the next couple days. Be patient. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:35, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
	I woke up and began to LOL @ HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON really, really hard. BowlAndSpoon (talk) 09:09, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Hussein vs. Saddam

A little surprised by your edit there - it's convention in history and politics to refer to people by their last, not first names. Why switch to first name? -Darouet (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Hussein is the name of Saddam's father, not his surname. Saddam's full name—Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti—was suppressed because the Ba'th Party wanted to obscure the extent to which it was dominated by members of Saddam's tribe. As you can see on the main Saddam Hussein article, there is a broad consensus in favor of referring to him simply as "Saddam" (I was reverting a recent change), which is followed by most media organizations (with the notable exception of The New York Times) and is how he was known to virtually all Iraqis. For a full discussion, see, e.g., here.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:09, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the heads up: I was unaware of this issue. -Darouet (talk) 17:38, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Hersh

So you still insist on keeping the Hersh crap in its entirety? If Flynn had really been pushed out over disagreements on Syria, he would have said so at least once in his interview on Al Jazeera, after the interviewer repeatedly asked him point blank whether he challenged the administration on issue, to which Flynn muttered something about it not being his job, "different groups", unclear policies and getting the aid in too late (2013, whereas the memo about the Syrian opposition being supposedly dominated by Islamists—the memo that was supposed to lead to some disagreements over policy—was written in 2012). The only one who clearly says what Hersh wants his readers to hear is Lamb, and its fits in so well that I gotta wonder where Lamb gets his facts. You've already said that Lamb might be undue, since his comment only has weight in the context of Hersh's overall narrative. I'm no expert, but Hersh's narrative appears substantially nuts; it is certainly marginal. If you want a rational critique of US policy toward Syria, you could try Patrick Cockburn or something. Guccisamsclub (talk) 08:48, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

(Lamb? I think you mean Lang?) Anyway, it sounds like you're engaging in textbook OR to dispute a renowned American journalist. (Can't you just be happy at the prospect of improved relations between our two countries?)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 08:56, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Yeah Lang, whatever, nobody knows who he is anyway. Hersh is not renowned for his work on Syria at all—he is infamous for it. His theories on Ghouta are the equivalent of 9-11 trutherism. Last question's loaded and irrelevant, but you can put me down for "no". Guccisamsclub (talk) 10:20, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, TheTimesAreAChanging. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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Friendly Reminder

Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Ronald Reagan. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. I understand that placing a self-published blog in the lead is pretty egregious, but there's no reason to call anybody an idiot. It's always best to first assume good faith. Thank you. AlexEng^(TALK) 21:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

AE report

This is to let you know that I am filing an Arbitration Enforcement request against you at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement, for violation of the Discretionary Sanctions. --MelanieN (talk) 02:35, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

I saw your last AE comment and think you should really explain this better and fix your comment. You complain about Oneshotofwhiskey and probably rightly so, but it is completely unclear why you should " hit back twice as hard" (your expression) another user (SPECIFICO)... Why? I do not think you should "hit back" anyone at all. My very best wishes (talk) 05:13, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

You're probably right. I'll try to work on that. My issues with SPECIFICO go back to a feud from 2012 (not coincidentally another election year). I suspect she hasn't gotten over the fact that—after I encountered her as an IP at Peter Schiff (she was engaging in the same POV-pushing or carelessness that got her topic banned from the Mises Institute)—I convinced her to create an account in the first place. Her tl;dr forum shopping has utterly derailed that AE, and I hope it BOOMERANGs.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 05:16, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I think you are usually doing very good content work. However, you do not make friends in the project and behave confrontationally even with regard to contributors with whom you do not have a significant difference in opinion. Obviously, this is not only your problem. For example, I have seen at least one contributor in the area of physics who behaved enormously confrontational simply because he wanted everything be described exactly as in his favorite textbook (no, this is not someone who was sanctioned, quite the opposite). Since then I do not edit physics. My very best wishes (talk) 13:20, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Reference errors on 24 November

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Priceless

I think you might enjoy this. Washington Post does not have enough egg on it's face, apparently. I'll probably add it to my WTF's shortly, after I figure out which aspect of this story is the most fucked. Guccisamsclub (talk) 12:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

That's a great read, thank you. I've always thought Glenn Greenwald is an honest Leftist deserving of great respect. (For example, he points out that Obama has incinerated considerably more Muslims by drone than Bush, and asks "Where have all the peaceniks gone?") (Edit: Then again, Greenwald fell for this obvious fake news about the horrible, horrible "shame" conferred by considering forbidden ideas, so not too much respect.) My favorite part is the following:

Two of the most discredited reports from the election season illustrate the point: a Slate article claiming that a private server had been located linking the Trump Organization and a Russian bank (which, like the current Post story, had been shopped around and rejected by multiple media outlets) and a completely deranged rant by Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald claiming that Putin had ordered emails in the WikiLeaks release to be doctored—both of which were uncritically shared and tweeted by hundreds of journalists to tens of thousands of people, if not more. The Post itself—now posing as a warrior against 'fake news'—published an article in September that treated with great seriousness the claim that Hillary Clinton collapsed on 9/11 Day because she was poisoned by Putin. And that's to say nothing of the paper's disgraceful history of convincing Americans that Saddam was building non-existent nuclear weapons and had cultivated a vibrant alliance with al Qaeda. As is so often the case, those who mostly loudly warn of 'fake news' from others are themselves the most aggressive disseminators of it.

That's exactly right: People wouldn't be going to "fake news sites" if they thought they could trust the mainstream media. (If Facebook and Twitter are serious about preventing another 2016 by censoring "fake news" according to whatever ill-defined criteria they decide upon, many of their users will migrate elsewhere, because the distinctions made will be inherently arbitrary and capricious—besides, censorship inevitably creates the impression that there must be some "there" there.) As an example, the paragons of objectivity are guilty of considerable hypocrisy for belittling the (as of now) baseless "report" estimating 3 million illegal aliens voted for President (the data supposedly supporting that number has yet to be made public) while championing the equally dubious "213 million" views for "Kremlin propaganda" (also divined from non-transparent methodology no-one is able to check). (The major difference being that we should be able to expect more of the Times and the Post than we do of Alex Jones.) BuzzFeed, in particular, is scarcely distinguishable from any "fake news site": Consider the viral BuzzFeed article declaring false rape accusations eleven times rarer than being struck by a comet, because the calculator said so (BuzzFeed's math was "wrong by a factor of over 22,700x"). As Greenwald and Norton accurately surmise, this kind of yellow journalism is nothing more than an attempt to smear anyone—on the Right, Left, or in between—that refuses to conform to "the centrist Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush spectrum." Sorry, Wash Post, but the genie is never going back in the bottle.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:57, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

So, do you really think that Washington Post or NYT are no more reliable sources than RT (TV network) or Pravda? Here is my point. While most of the claims above are indeed ridiculous, I am not sure you are familiar enough with Soviet and Russian history. Do you know, for example, that the bombings of buildings in Moscow and elsewhere were indeed directed/conducted by Russian state services, as the head of the FSB was well aware about? Of course they later used the comparison with 9/11 to discredit the claim. My very best wishes (talk) 18:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

No, I'd not go that far. One obvious difference is that, as of this writing, the Russian media have a lot more glaringly indefensible stuff to defend. This is quite similar to the American media in the run up to the Iraq War. Propaganda becomes glaring when the gap between reality and apologetics becomes too wide. The Russian media is also much more monolithic and unprofessional. In the US, you can at least read between the lines and cross-reference numerous establishment sources to get information. This is basically impossible to do with the Russian mass media (there are a few serious papers remaining, but not enough for the kind of stuff I'm talking about). The point about the "serious" American media is that, under the pressure of market forces, it is gutting investigative journalism and continuing its transformation into a bullshit echo chamber. This dynamic kills journalists' ability to ask the right and difficult questions. Patriotism, respect for power and socio-economic (elite) background of those involved in the mass media: these guide the way when this path of least resistance is taken. It leads to the Bush-Clinton spectrum today, maybe the Trump-Clinton spectrum in the future, depending. So the free-market media is by no means immune to playing a propaganda role. It is true that RT plays a far more transparent and direct propaganda role for an autocracy. The corporate media is less bound to such a role. This is why several journos at RT made on air statements saying they won't toe the propaganda line of their employer: unlike their colleagues in the corporate media, they know the score. Their soviet predecessors knew the score too. But contrasts aside, the fundamental reason for the outcry in the American media against RT is not that it puts out egregious and weirdly eclectic propaganda, but that it puts out the wrong kind for the wrong people. It is no surprise that RT gets a following, not unlike Voice of America did back in the USSR. Guccisamsclub (talk) 00:00, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I was going to leave a general comment saying that I care more about my own country's media, and that RT's large U.S. audience attests to the fact that it must be meeting some need that has been neglected by the mainstream U.S. press, but Gucci put it far better than I could have. The comparison with Voice of America is particularly apt.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 00:24, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

As someone who lived in both countries, I must tell that mainstream mass media in Russia and US are extremely different. One should judge them not on the basis of what they tell (they tell a lot of different things), but on the basis of the final "product", i.e. the listener: what general public think and most importantly feel after watching TV. Main purpose of real propaganda is not to simply misinform the listener or reader, but to incite bad feelings, such as fear, extreme prejustice and hatred. That is what modern Russian propaganda does with a much greater success than old time Soviet propaganda, based on views by majority of people who now live in Russia (there are still a few good media and intellectuals who are fine). There is nothing even remotely similar in US. There are maybe a few obscure hatred websites which I did not even see. In Russia, this is entire state-sponsored TV. My very best wishes (talk) 04:08, 30 November 2016 (UTC)