Wikipedia/Problems

Caveat

WikiSpooks does NOT aspire to rival Wikipedia in either size or scope of content. Wikipedia is, without question, a massively successful and valuable reference work-in-progress. It's openness, moderated by carefully thought-out rules of article composition, content and standard, guarantees that it is ALWAYS worth consulting on almost ANY subject where introductory knowledge is being sought. Even in the WikiSpooks domain of potentially sensitive Deep Political issues, Wikipedia articles are often a goldmine of information and useful links - The series of articles on MKULTRA (The covert and illegal CIA human mind-control research program) are the good case in point. BUT - there is a problem......

The problem

It is WikiSpook's contention that, to the extent that a particular subject is judged threatening to established power centres and widespread acceptance of their 'official narrative' of events, the reliability and ultimate accuracy of Wikipedia articles touching on it is likely to be compromised. At the extremes of power and perceived threat, Wikipedia's 'Neutral-Point-of-View' principle pretty much guarantees that the compromise will be fundamental. See WikiSpooks Editorial Policy for a fuller discussion.

The quality of the Wikipedia MKULTRA articles clearly owes much to the exposure of the program in the early 1970's followed by both Congressional (The Church Commission) and Presidential investigations - plus the release of much previously classified material in 1977 - all of which assist in nudging Wikipedia's 'Neutral Point of View' that much closer to the truth of the matter. With all due (ie considerable) respect for the Wikipedia project however, the following examples illustrate the "Wikipedia Problem" (in what is admittedly a narrow but nonetheless massively important area of publicly accessible knowledge), which the WikiSpooks project seeks to address

Example subject

The London bombings of 7th July 2005 came as a devastating shock to the general population. Smaller in scale and less spectacular than the 9/11 attacks in the USA some 4 years earlier, they nonetheless produced similar public fear and outrage. An 'official narrative', on the events of that day and who was responsible, was quickly established and accepted by the general public. As with 9/11, the narrative has achieved the status of revealed truth. To question it effectively is to risk ridicule, ostracism and ultimately excommunication by 'The Establishment' - and so of course, any questioning is confined merely to trimming and tacking with the overall course remaining agreed, set and unalterable.

And yet, as of June 2010, nearly 5 years after those events....

1. NO judicial proceedings concerning the identities and guilt or otherwise of those alleged to be responsible have been started, let alone concluded.
2. There has yet to be a Coroner's Inquest into the deaths of either the victims or the alleged perpetrators.
3. There has been no official inquiry into the events (The Prime-Minister of the day, Tony Blair, memorably deeming such an Inquiry a ludicrous diversion.

This is not the place to explore the range of glaring anomalies and inconsistencies in the official narrative which are on a similar relative scale to those of 9/11. Suffice to say that the the Main Wikipedia articles on the subject adhere rigidly to the official narrative as briefly explored below.

Examples

The following is the introductory section of the main Wikipedia page on the London Bombings of 7th July 2005:

The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also known as 7/7, were a series of coordinated suicide attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour. The bombings were carried out by four British Muslim men, three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican descent, who were motivated by Britain's involvement in the Iraq War.

At 08:50, three bombs exploded within fifty seconds of each other on three London Underground trains, a fourth exploding an hour later at 09:47 on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. The explosions appear to have been caused by home-made organic peroxide-based devices, packed into rucksacks and detonated by the bombers themselves, all four of whom died. 52 other people were killed and around 700 were injured.

(Wikipedia May 2010)

The above complies with Wikipedia editorial guidelines; in particular those concerning 'Neutral point of view' and it illustrates why Wikipedia cannot be relied upon for accurate resumes of 'deep political events'.

Here is a list of the problems with that short, ostensibly factual, introduction to a deep political event:

1. "The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also known as 7/7, were a series of coordinated suicide attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour."

We do not know that they were suicide attacks. We have only the assurances of official sources that they were - the 'official narrative' in other words. There has been no forensic identification of the bodies of the alleged perpetrators; as of March 2010, nearly 5 years after the events, there has yet to be a Coroners Inquest into any of the deaths. A Coroner has been appointed and there have been two 'pre-inquest reviews' . However, it remains an open question whether a formal inquest will take place at all. Much of the evidence that might reasonably be expected to be available in support of the official narrative continues to be either withheld or alleged by officialdom not to exist. This is especially the case over video evidence where we were assured by Brian Paddick of the Met just after the attacks that there would be copious video evidence available from London's vast network of surveillance cameras. In the event we have been provided with minuscule, heavily edited footage with time-stamps mostly obscured together with a few video stills that show compelling evidence of having been doctored.

2. "The bombings were carried out by four British Muslim men, three of Pakistani and one of Jamaican descent, who were motivated by Britain's involvement in the Iraq War."

Again we have only have the assurance of official sources about the identities of the perpetrators. Also, the alleged motivation is drawn from two videos which appear to threaten war-like actions against unspecified Western Countries because of the West's military involvement in Muslim Countries - hardly evidence justifying such a categorical assertion.

3. "The explosions appear to have been caused by home-made organic peroxide-based devices, packed into rucksacks and detonated by the bombers themselves, all four of whom died."

Those 'official sources' again - even though 'appears to be' is slightly less dogmatic. There is ample evidence, not least from those same official sources, that the explosives 'may have been' of a military grade plastic variety since that was their position for several weeks after the events. But there really ought to be NO doubt about the nature of the explosive used because, as a matter of forensic routine, it is easily identifiable from the residues of the explosion. We have had NO such confirmation, just obfuscation by the authorities. As for '...detonated by the bombers themselves' there is similarly no independently verifiable evidence.

The rest of the article is replete with similar dogmatism in furtherance of the official narrative but unsupported by independently verifiable evidence. When it comes to obvious and undeniable anomalies however, a rigorously sceptical approach is the order of the day, together with strenuous efforts to reconcile such anomalies with the official narrative. A good example of this is in the separate Wikipedia article about the video 'Ripple Effect'. It is a relatively short piece but every rhetorical trick in the book is applied to discredit it; from the ridicule and character assassination of its producer (ad hominem - which Wikipedia is supposed to guard against) through to the absurdity of citing a BBC 'Conspiracy Files' program as definitively debunking it. There is no mention of an article by Dr Ridley Duff of Sheffield Hallam University (File:Theorising Truth.pdf), in which he applies 3 separate types of scientific analysis to each of the videos and concludes that the probability of Ripple effect being closer to the truth of what happened than the BBC 'Conspiracy Files' varies between about 50 and 75%.