[WikiEN-l] Conflict of Interest and lobbyists for foreign governments

[K P]

On 7/29/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I say indef block any IP's originating from the institution in question. A
> > stated goal of trying to influence Wikipedia in a POV way would get any
> > individual anon blocked, so why not a pseudo-governmental organization?
>
> Technically, their stated goal is to present Israel fairly and
> accurately (ie. NPOV). Their blatant COI means they are unlikely to do
> that very well, but they aren't openly intending to introduce a POV.

Actually there are all sorts of nationalistic interests alive and
functioning quite well on Wikipedia--how arrogant of the Israels to
want to join the crowd?

Most every Pashtun article on Wikipedia is written from a
Persian-nationalistic perspective, and attempts to change that run one
afoul of those largely responsible for supporting this
silliness--although these editors are falling by the wayside one by
one, because, generally nationalists have one-tracked minds.  In the
meantime, there are some very poor, rather silly, and some very unique
(okay, POV) articles on the history of Afghanistan and Pashtuns, that
have very little to do with anything but the Persian declaration that
that section of the world is theirs, always has been, and always will
be.  The Brits would have liked that to have been true about 100 years
ago, admitedly.  Ironically much of the information is copied en masse
from the bery Brittish biased Encyclopedia Iranica, which, when
challenged, is met with the rallying cry of nationalism, "scholarly
source, scholarly source."

So, how dare the Israels do on Wikipedia what every one else is doing,
or how dare they announce that they are doing it when everyone else is
so cleverly hiding it?

KP