Talk:A. J. Weberman
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Untitled
[edit]For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Business' FAQ. For more details about what constitutes a conflict of interest, please see Wikipedia:Conflict of Interest. Thank you.
Edits by User:66.108.22.125 Jan 3 2005 are by subject of article. Mostly useful clarifications, but much extraneous material which I had to delete to keep article short, some POV material which had to be removed, edited the rest for clarity and succinctness. Herostratus 15:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
revert
[edit]I reverted a great deal of material that had recently been added to this article without discussion (see history). I'm dubious that this material is notable or verifiable. Also some or all was added by the subject of the article. I'm going to look over the material and see if any of it should or can be used. Herostratus 12:54, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Jan 17 changes
[edit]It is not accurate to say that Weberman was object of "revilement" by the general public; most of general public never heard of his demos at Dylan's house and a lot of Dylan's fans probably didn't care one way or the other or else were amused by it (I was). There is a world of difference between being perceived as annoying and being an object of revilement. And by the way, these changes (Jan 17, 06)were NOT made by Weberman himself--and Herostratus shouldn't have said the changes several days ago were primarily made by Weberman (they weren't) without proof. As to Herostratus saying he was dubious about such items as the overlays in Weberman's book all he had to to do was look in the book.--17 January 2006 P.S. When I said "dubious" about the overlays, I meant Herostratus being dubious about whether the overlays exist in the book. Whether the overlays prove what Weberman thinks they prove, is an entirely different question.
Death watch
[edit]Per his Web lk re BD having AIDS, he is known alive as of 2000, but lacks his mandatoryCategory:Living people tag. Replace it with a 200x Deaths Cat if & when he dies, but i'm putting in the Living one for now.
--Jerzy•t 22:54, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Texas?
[edit]Why the heck was this article added to WikiProject Texas? Weberman's career and adulthood has been totally associated with New York City. He went to college in Ohio. Deleted. Herostratus 00:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
LEATHERSTOCKING LYNDON LaROUCHE REVISIONS TO WEBERMAN BIO
[edit]Leatherstocking has been going to all the wiki entries that are oppose Lyndon LaRouche and altering them. Herostratus who did it originally was objective.
Ajweberman 19:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
:I have no connection to LaRouche. However, AJ Weberman has a connection of AJ Weberman, and this is an encyclopedia, not a do-it-yourself PR firm. --Leatherstocking 01:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC);
Fair use rationale for Image:Aj weberman album.JPG
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f7/Nuvola_apps_important.svg/70px-Nuvola_apps_important.svg.png)
Image:Aj weberman album.JPG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Fair use rationale for Image:Aj weberman dylan book cover.jpg
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f7/Nuvola_apps_important.svg/70px-Nuvola_apps_important.svg.png)
Image:Aj weberman dylan book cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 04:12, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Weberman and the JDO
[edit]Edit: December 22 2009
According to the tenor of his Facebook entries AJ Weberman IS a nutcase "Zionist", or just nuts, or desperately seeking publicity via disinformational methods. There's no entry on wikipedia's site for Lee Penn (although he's mentioned in one of Abbie's books as handing out salt tablet at the Woodstock festival in 1969), of Yippie! heritage, but Penn went the JDL 'zionist' route after Yippie!, at least Abbie Hoffman's vision of it which dissolved in the late 60s as he had planned (Weberman WAS NOT involve in those days.. He was busy digging through Bob Dylan's trash and talking about it on the late night talk show hosted by Alex Bennett on WPLJ radio NY).
Most involved suspected Penn of being an police agent (Cf. George Demmerle aka Prince Crazie' who caused the imprisonment of Sam Melville http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Melville ) and Penn, as mentioned, was also associated with the JDL (I was there... I can testify to that fact), but AJ Weberman was never that bright/talented, except for the ability to ruthlessly self-promote himself
FWIW, Weberman posted a link to a video of Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist 'church' demonstrating with anti-jew posters and he branded them anti-semites, and when it was pointed out to him they are just nutcases... Well, you can contact me via http://razedbywolves.blogspot.com and I'd be glad to show you my half of the ensuing conversation.
He's either just plain nuts, or desperate for publicity. I suspect the latter.
Da Buffalo Amongst Wolves.
=============================
[edit]====================================
[edit]The JDO was not founded until 1982. The references deleted were all to the Jewish Defense LEAGUE of the 1960s and 1970s. The allegations of terrorism in the DHS report referred to the JDL and cited information from 1968--fourteen years before the JDO even existed. No member of the JDO has ever been arrested for acts that would be legally defined as terrorist. The JDO defines itself as following in the tradition of Ze'ev Jabotinsky rather than of JDL founder Meir Kahane. Jabotinsky was the founder of Revisionist Zionism; hence, that term would be most appropriate in defining the small but highly vocal JDO, which operates a self-defense camp called Camp Jabotinsky located in the Catskills near where Jabotinsky and the Revisionist-Zionist youth movement Betar had such a camp shortly before World War Two.--Dking (talk)
:I have restored the formulation that was in this article up through early May, that the JDO is "a group that has been linked to violent attacks." This is amply documented in the JDO article. --Leatherstocking (talk) 00:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC);
- Since Leatherstocking provides no citation for Weberman engaging in violent acts with the JDO--and since any violent acts mentioned in the JDO article refer to an individual, not to the organization as a whole--and since Weberman is only cited as having helped young people learn to shoot at a firing range--the allegation in the lead that the JDO has been involved in violence is inappropriate in an article that is about Weberman rather than the JDO. The link to the JDO article will allow readers to judge for themselves about this matter. A few paragraphs down, in the appropriate place, I included the quote from Weberman that previously had been only a footnote re training in how to shoot. This makes the point that Leatherstocking legitimately wishes to make, and it also replaces a phrase that had been marked for possible deletion because of lack of citation. So we kill two birds with one stone (no bullet) and stay within Wiki guidelines.--Dking (talk)
::::Well, that all sort of misses the point -- the JDO is not notable as a Zionist organization, or an organization that purports to oppose antisemitism. They are mainly notable for Mark Levy taking potshots at Irv Rubin and other sorts of insane shenanigans. --Leatherstocking (talk) 00:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC);
Recent deletions
[edit]Some unsourced material was deleted under BLP, and properly so (although oddly enough, I think it was added to the article by Weberman himself.) In this edit, however, the latter part of what was removed was in fact sourced to Rolling Stone, etc. We should identify that which is sourced and re-write the section in question so that it may be incorporated. --Leatherstocking (talk) 20:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)I will get to this shortly. However, I thought that perhaps Jake Wartenberg would have something to say about it. --Leatherstocking (talk) 18:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC);
Deletion of sourced material
[edit]Following the sentence, Weberman has written: "In the early 1980's I worked with the Jewish Defense Organization (not to be confused with the Jewish Defense League) in running operations against Nazis. On Sundays I went to a rifle range in Huntington, Long Island, and trained Jews, young and old, how to shoot.", Will Beback has deleted the following: The rooftop of Weberman's apartment building was the scene of an incident where JDO leader Mordechai Levy opened fire on opened fire on Jewish Defense League leader Irv Rubin in 1989, hitting an innocent bystander. Rubin was attempting to serve a subpoena on Levy. The sourcing is unmistakably reliable; Will argues that it is irrelevant. I disagree. If Weberman is quoted about his use of firearms, a shooting incident at his building by his friend Levy is certainly relevant. --Leatherstocking (talk) 01:02, 13 August 2009 (UTC);
- The rooftop of Weberman's apartment building was the scene of an incident where JDO leader Mordechai Levy opened fire on opened fire on Jewish Defense League leader Irv Rubin in 1989, hitting an innocent bystander. Rubin was attempting to serve a subpoena on Levy.
- http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:3Bjr57sJpSoJ:caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/CaliforniaStateCases/B129319.DOC+Mordechai+Levy+sentenced&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=au 403 Forbidden
- http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9506EED8123EF936A35752C1A9649C8B63 Jewish Defense League Leader Declared Brain Dead in Suicide - New York Times
- The rooftop of Weberman's apartment building was the scene of an incident where JDO leader Mordechai Levy opened fire on opened fire on Jewish Defense League leader Irv Rubin in 1989, hitting an innocent bystander. Rubin was attempting to serve a subpoena on Levy.
- I checked those sources and didn't find any mention of Weberman. However the reason I deleted it is that it appears to be guilt by association. What is the connection to Weberman, other than it happened in the same apartment building? Will Beback talk 01:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
::The section is on Weberman's activity in the Jewish Defense Organization, which has in toto about half a dozen gun-totin' members, Weberman being one of them, and Levy being the leader. --Leatherstocking (talk) 06:12, 13 August 2009 (UTC);:::Evidently I had those sources confused with the ones at Mordechai Levy, which are quite explicit: It was from the rooftop of A.J. Weberman's apartment building that Levy sprayed lower Manhattan with automatic rifle fire that day in 1989; the two men were named co-defendants in the libel action Levy was attempting to evade. And it was with A.J. Weberman as named co-defendant that Levy and his organization were very recently and successfully sued for libel again -- by a man whom JDO's website had called a "pathological liar" and "psychopath." Six months ago, a Brooklyn, New York, jury unanimously assigned Weberman responsibility for $300,000 of a total $850,000 judgment.[1] --Leatherstocking (talk) 06:23, 13 August 2009 (UTC);
- I really don't think that there's a sufficient connection to include this incident in this article. I see it's already in Jewish Defense Organization, which is a fine spot for it. It'd be relevant on the Levy page too. Just not here. Will Beback talk 06:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
:::::So, you think it's appropriate to include in the article an assertion that Weberman and the JDO engaged in weapons training to "fight Nazis," but inappropriate to include the fact that they actually used the weapons to shoot at the head of the Jewish Defense League? --Leatherstocking (talk) 20:38, 13 August 2009 (UTC);-
- Where does it say that Weberman shot at someone? Will Beback talk 21:05, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
- The material was re-added without any explanation, so I deleted it again. Will Beback talk 02:45, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
:::::::The fact that the leader of the JDO, Weberman's organization, is shooting a rival Jewish leader from the rooftop of Weberman's residence is absolutely relevant to Weberman's bio. It is of additional interest that the deleted sentence follows an unduly self-serving quote from Weberman's self-published website, in which he assures us that he only took weapons training in order to fight anti-Semites. Note that the material you deleted was not merely "re-added," but carefully re-written to correspond to the cited source. Please provide a credible explanation for your deletion of sourced material. --Leatherstocking (talk) 15:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC);-
- It was an apartment building - presumably the residence of many people. It's relevant to the JDO, but not to this article. Will Beback talk 16:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
BLP
[edit]I've removed material that was sourced to a legal document (a primary source), with no secondary sources. Given who was named, I assume this was a LaRouche-related edit. If it was, it was arguably in violation of the ArbCom rulings.
BLP says, "Exercise great care in using material from primary sources. Do not use, for example, public records that include personal details—such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses—or trial transcripts and other court records or public documents, unless a reliable secondary source has already cited them. Where primary-source material has first been presented by a reliable secondary source, it may be acceptable to turn to open records to augment the secondary source, subject to the no original research policy."
I also removed the tags, as they'd been there a long time and were defacing the article.
SlimVirgin talk|contribs 22:49, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Postings by socks of banned user struck-through. Will Beback talk 02:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Bootleg LP's
[edit]I had a curious LP of a recorded conversation between Dylan and Weberman that was lost in Katrina; it deserves mentioning in the article. The drawings on the front cover pictured the "historic confrontation" as a boxing match that Dylan clearly won. It was also probably the first appearance on record of the "Ballad of A. J. Weberman" song mentioned earlier by David Peel and the Lower East Side; they did the "intermission" music on the LP. (It is catalogued on the Dylan boot website www.bobsboots.com ).
Whatever else you want to say about him, the two "Historical Archives" LPs are two of the best Dylan bootleg albums among the three or four dozen that I owned (one of them at least I was able to clean up from the storm); Weberman did the liner notes (as I recall it anyway) and presumably the programming as well. Shocking Blue (talk) 10:43, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
- Was your LP the one one mentioned in the +Reference material - The Weberman tapes" section (this would be Classic Interviews, Vol. 2: The Weberman Tapes (UK: Chromedreams. USA: United States Dist Media, Catalog #541, released May 31, 2005.))? Herostratus (talk) 17:53, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
- The one I had was a lot older than that – probably from the 1980's. It had a cartoon image of the two in a boxing ring, as I recall, as being a bout between "Zimmie the Champ" and "Webbie the Chump". The part I remember best was when Dylan challenged Weberman to tell him "who writes better songs than me?" Weberman mentioned a couple of obscurities that got Dylan quite hot, and then Weberman mostly started talking about more mainstream artists like Gordon Lightfoot ("yeah, he's okay"). I dare say I'll never see that one for sale again, and so far, it hasn't turned up in the LP's that I have slavaged from Katrina. Shocking Blue (talk) 14:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
- Right, I think the one you're talking about is Bob Dylan vs. A.J. Weberman on Folkways Records. It is listed right below Classic Interviews, Vol. 2: The Weberman Tapes in the article, where it says that various bootlegs were made, and I think (not sure) that one of those had the boxing picture. Herostratus (talk)
- The one I had was a lot older than that – probably from the 1980's. It had a cartoon image of the two in a boxing ring, as I recall, as being a bout between "Zimmie the Champ" and "Webbie the Chump". The part I remember best was when Dylan challenged Weberman to tell him "who writes better songs than me?" Weberman mentioned a couple of obscurities that got Dylan quite hot, and then Weberman mostly started talking about more mainstream artists like Gordon Lightfoot ("yeah, he's okay"). I dare say I'll never see that one for sale again, and so far, it hasn't turned up in the LP's that I have slavaged from Katrina. Shocking Blue (talk) 14:05, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Heroin
[edit]"Weberman claimed that the younger Dylan was a heroin addict."
Now that the BBC has broadcast Bob Dylan saying in his own voice he was a heroin addict should this be reworded? EdRicardo (talk) 15:52, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9492000/9492886.stm
This section doesn't make sense, and is very deceptive. It's saying Weberman claimed Jakob to be a heroin addict, but the link and article are about Bob Dylan (allegedly) claiming that he himself previously had been a heroin addict. It says NOTHING about Jakob. I will remove that last sentence in two weeks. If you have objections, state them here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.8.117.34 (talk) 16:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
- I would keep it in order to reiterate how much of a nut job this person is..check his recent youtube videos out if you don`t think so..however I would add to it there has never been any evidence or allegations against Jakob Dylan regarding drug use..without that disclaimer I agree the statement should be removed. Lonepilgrim007 (talk) 03:36, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
advocacy
[edit]I am concerned that the "Dylan" section is oriented too much toward giving Weberman a platform to air his theories about Bob Dylan, all of which are sourced to Weberman's own writings, and all of which may be serious BLP violations due to what they impute to Dylan. I couldn't decide between the "advocacy" tag and the BLP tag -- perhaps both are needed. 99.109.199.177 (talk) 20:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
- Erm, I don't know about that. If we're going to have an article, we might as well have a comprehensive one, I guess. Some of our bio articles are short, mainly because there's not to much about the person. Weberman's an interesting person, and there's actually a lot more about him that could go in. More about his "founding" of garbology, which has actually been compared by serious people to archeological midden-sorting, but made current, and which he applied to other people besides Dylan. More about his involvement with Lennon which is barely mentioned. Probably more about other stuff I'm not even aware of. He's done a lot and written a lot and he's interesting. A lot of people have had a lot to say about Weberman, some good and some bad, and it'd be worthwhile to bring more of that out. And so on. We have to be careful cos he's a controversial figure and we want to get this stuff right. Weberman's relationship with Dylan has evolved and is not one-dimensional. Note for instance that he was asked (by Dylan I suppose) to write the forward to Dylan's "Poem to Joannie". Dylan asked him to be his chauffeur. Weberman had formerly accused Dylan of being secretly a Zionist rather than (as now) an anti-Zionist. And lots more. It'd be useful to bring some of this out, if it's done carefully.
- As to your specific concern, I can't agree. Again assuming that we're going to have an article on Weberman -- and I think it's settled that we are -- then his Dylan stuff is surely the most important source (although not the only source) of his notability. Of course we're going to have stuff on it. More than we have now, I hope and expect. We're not "giving Weberman a platform". We're here to describe his theories to the reader. Your tag admonishes us to "concentrate on factual information". Well the section (the part I added) is mostly "he said this, here's a direct quote, here's the ref". That's pretty factual. What exactly would you like instead?
- (It's possible that right now the material we have (which I wrote) is too deprecatory toward Weberman, making him look nuttier than he is. I could see an objection along those lines, and that I cherry-picked material to make him look silly or nutty. I don't think so, but maybe, and that's something we could work on. But that's not your objection, it seems; rather the opposite, if I'm reading you correctly.)
- Tagging the section is advocacy is, to my mind, uncalled for. There's nothing in the section that implies that Weberman is right. Quite the contrary actually. Read the refs following "Some Dylan scholars and biographers have rejected Weberman's interpretations of Dylan's work". I'd actually like to add some examples that are more reasonable, if there are any (and there probably are). Weberman's theory, arrived at after much study, is that Dylan uses certain words to mean certain things, quite different from their everyday meanings, and pretty consistently, and that doesn't come out in the current article. (No one but Weberman believes this I think, but that's a different issue). So he's not just blowing smoke, it's part of a consistent (if highly idiosyncratic) semantic framework. And there's no point in having an article if we're not going to lay this out for the reader, I don't think.
- So let me ask, what would you do? Just remove material? How does that help the reader better understand the subject? I would like you to answer this so we can move forward to a place where we're all comfortable with removing the label, which is the goal of placing labels.
- As to BLP issues. If there's material that's not sourced or is improperly sourced, you not only can but must remove it, after which we can talk about it. The only BLP problem with the article right now globally IMO is that it looks too much like a hatchet job, bends too far to making Weberman look silly. If that's your issue let's talk about ways to improve it. That doesn't seem to be your issue though. Herostratus (talk) 00:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- I think it should be sufficient to note that Weberman has accused Dylan of Anti-Semitism, racism and Holocaust denial. The BLP problem comes from quoting in detail his bizarre accusations against Dylan. I would make an exception if any of these accusations were quoted in reliable secondary sources, but these are all from primary sources. Wikipedia discourages this -- see WP:PRIMARY. 99.126.45.211 (talk) 02:26, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- I agree that the article does make Weberman sound like a loon. If he's not crazy, then the article is doing him a serious disservice. — goethean 03:24, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
- Well these are good points. We do need to be very careful using secondary sources. Two reasons for that are, we don't want to provide our own interpretation, and it's open to cherry-picking.
- I don't think interpretation is too much a problem here. The new material is mostly just quotes, with the interpretation limited to fairly obvious and incontrovertible points. For instance, Weberman wrote that the line ""Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowin'" is analyzed by Weberman to mean "Listen to that Nazi Weberman spouting his rhetoric...", and I made the interpretation "Weberman's analysis... posits that the song is... largely addressed to Weberman himself". OK I worded that too strongly, but if I changed "largely addressed to" to "at least in part about" then it's just an obvious 1+1=2 interpretation. And the rest is pretty much like that.
- However, cherry-picking is a potential pitfall. It could be that the bulk of Weberman's article is cogent and thoughtful literary analysis, and I cherry-picked a few bad quotes. I didn't -- the whole thing is like that, with some parts even more outré -- but it's hard to demonstrate that. (Of course, I could also have ignored a large body of other Weberman articles full of subtle and useful thoughts, but I didn't do that either, and of course that's a problem with second sources too (we have "Rolling Stone magazine has called Weberman 'the king of all Dylan nuts'" and that's ref'd, but we could be cherry-picking that from scores of articles describing Weberman's wisdom and subtlety of thought, which you do see that sort of thing in articles sometimes)).
- For my part I don't think we're doing him a serious disservice, but it's a WP:BLP so we want to be very careful here, so based on the above comments I'll now redact most or all of the material I added. It's too bad because it makes the article less useful and less true, but it might be necessary per BLP. Herostratus (talk) 03:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- I'll reiterate that I am concerned about the BLP aspects of the attack on Bob Dylan. WP:BLP says "Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced; that is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see No original research); that relies on self-published sources, unless written by the subject of the BLP (see below); or that relies on sources that fail in some other way to meet Verifiability standards." The accusations that Dylan is a racist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier are sourced to what looks like a self-published book or blog by Weberman; as such, they must be removed. 99.126.47.234 (talk) 03:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- Erm, no, can't agree. We're not saying "Bob Dylan is a racist, and that's ref'd to something Weberman wrote". We're saying "Weberman says that Bob Dylan is a racist, and that's ref'd to something Weberman wrote". That's way different.
- I'll reiterate that I am concerned about the BLP aspects of the attack on Bob Dylan. WP:BLP says "Remove immediately any contentious material about a living person that is unsourced or poorly sourced; that is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see No original research); that relies on self-published sources, unless written by the subject of the BLP (see below); or that relies on sources that fail in some other way to meet Verifiability standards." The accusations that Dylan is a racist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier are sourced to what looks like a self-published book or blog by Weberman; as such, they must be removed. 99.126.47.234 (talk) 03:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- For my part I don't think we're doing him a serious disservice, but it's a WP:BLP so we want to be very careful here, so based on the above comments I'll now redact most or all of the material I added. It's too bad because it makes the article less useful and less true, but it might be necessary per BLP. Herostratus (talk) 03:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
- It probably wouldn't belong in Dylan's article because Weberman's doesn't really have standing to be notable enough to mention him saying that. (If Greg Marsh said it it might belong in Dylan's article.) But this article is about Weberman. He's notable (I guess) and one of the main things he's notable for is saying terrible things about Bob Dylan, so there's really no way to have an article without pointing that out.
- I wouldn't worry about it too much. I don't think too many people are going to come from the article with the opinion "Wow, this Weberman fellow makes a lot of sense, 'Blowing in the Wind' really is a racist rant". Herostratus (talk) 07:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
BLP concerns
[edit]Continuing on, and looking at the article from a WP:BLP perspective.
- "He is also a long-time activist in the Youth International Party and the Jewish Defense Organization."
Both of those are very controversial organizations, and to make a statement like that we need solid evidence. The statement is probably true, but the question is can we prove it. It's also probably true that Weberman wouldn't mind be associated with either organization, but we can't operate on that assumption. We have to treat it as if we were saying it about Harry Reid or anyone else.
I haven't found anything on him being in the Yippies. We have proof that he's involved with the Yippee Museum but that's different. Granted I'm not a Google maven and maybe I've missed it. Levinson's book Brooklyn Boomer is the only real ref, and it's not a good ref. Books generally aren't good refs because they're not fact-checked. Levinson is not an academic scholar with a reputation for integrity to uphold. The book isn't about Weberman and it's not rigorously referenced and footnoted. It's a memoir, he knew Weberman when they were kids, he tells a little story, he mentions Weberman has a 30-year involvement with the Yippies. It could be something he heard somewhere or just assumed. It's not an acceptable ref for a contentious statement in a BLP. Couldn't find anything else. So took that out.
As to Weberman being in the JDO, there's a little more evidence. Unfortunately I somehow lost the three refs I found. But two were not reliable sources. The third was the Orlando Sentinel here where he's mentioned in passing as a "JDO spokesman". The Sentinel is a real paper, but it's not the NY Times, it's a passing mention, "spokesman" doesn't prove he holds any office or is even a member... it's not sufficient to pin someone to a highly controversial organization in a BLP in my opinion. Took it out.
One of the problems is that Weberman gets a lot of hits but few in real mainstream sources.
The Nixon-tomato thing is fairly trivial. He allegedly threw a vegetable which didn't hit Nixon. He was arrested but not even held let alone tried or convicted, as near as I can find out. Took it out. Might take out more on a further pass. Herostratus (talk) 07:20, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Also removed the stuff on the lawsuit after the naming of the plaintiff, vi "a PI arrested for impersonating an FBI Agent. The charges against Mr. Rambam were later dropped after the complainant, Franz Josef von Habsburg Lothringen was found to have been himself under investigation by Rambam. Lothringen was eventually sentenced to 3–15 years in Michigan State Prison". This is way off -- Ramban was arrested for impersonating an FBI agent some time after the suit, and its completely unrelated, and has nothing to do with the price of eggs. Herostratus (talk) 07:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
1967 info, Dana Beal, and first marijuana Smoke-In
[edit]- 50 Years Ago: The Summer of Love Brings Pot, Protests and Psychedelic Rock to the East Village. May 16, 2017. By Frank Mastropolo. Bedford + Bowery. From the article (emphasis and links added):
Inspired by a Dutch anarchist group, activists A.J. Weberman and Dana Beal founded the New York Provos. When underground newspaper The East Village Other moved, the Provos took over its former office on Avenue A. “We put a big sign in the window that said ‘Psychedelic Revolution,'” says Weberman. “I remember going out, selling this magazine we had, New York Provo magazine, and talking to 100, 200 different people a day on the street, wherever I’d meet them, trying to get them to come to our demonstrations.
“And we began to organize. Every time there was a pot bust, we’d march through the streets to protest them busting people for marijuana. The people in the neighborhood were very receptive, they threw flowers at us – along with the flowerpots. We started a bail fund and went down to 100 Centre and bailed out a number of people who couldn’t make bail for pot.”
In June 1967, Beal staged the first of a series of Smoke-Ins in Tompkins Square Park. “We had the first Smoke-In in the entire world there,” says Weberman, who left the U.S. that year. “We smoked pot openly to show people that it didn’t turn you into a raving maniac. Back then the pot was so weak it hardly did anything.”
Maybe someone with more time can incorporate some of this info in the article. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:49, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Claims on Portugal testimony
[edit]Under other activities, a new item has been added:
On April 14, 2015 Weberman testified about Frank Sturgis's role in Camarate, the assassination of the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Portugal
The source for this is a malformed string to the Portuguese Parliament website which produces a misnamed pdf file dating from October 10, 2013. This cannot be cited as a source for something Weberman supposedly did in 2015. Rgr09 (talk) 21:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
Problems with publications list
[edit]The publications list in the article is filled with things like records of radio interviews, private printings, self-published materials on booksurge and createspace, and so on. None of this is acceptable for Wikipedia, which is not intended to provide lists of private collecteana. I have removed most of this; if there are disputes about some of these items, please discuss here before adding back in. Rgr09 (talk) 23:44, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
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