Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:26, 16 November 2005

Current state of page

As the page stands now, everything above "external links" reads like a pretentious stilted official capsule biography, so that there'e no indication whatsoever of the controversies, disputes, and criticisms that he's been involved in before the "external links" section of the article. This is not satisfactory -- the reason why he's in Wikpedia at all is because of the controversies. AnonMoos 21:00, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

He may be somewhat notorious to supporters of the Iraq invasion, but the basic reason he is in WP is that he is widely-cited commentator on Middle East affairs. The various controversies flow from that fact. --Lee Hunter 00:59, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Copyvio

Just because text appears identically elsewhere on the net, does that mean it is automatically copyright-protected?

from Talk:Juan Cole/Temp

I hope this is better than my first try!

Wikifed.

I hope this stub is going to replace the original page on or about November 30 (as the copyvio deletion policy states). Cole has just become newsworthy as a result of a lawsuit threat.--Dhartung 12:47, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Michael J. Totten"

Who is Michael J. Totten? Is he just some guy with a blog? Is the link here solely because it's something critical of Cole, or is he salient for some other reason? Sullivan and Goldberg, by contrast, are well known. —Ashley Y 03:26, 2005 Mar 19 (UTC)

seems like it. There's now about four links there based around Totten's article purporting to be a "fisking" (new word to me, is there a wikipedia entry on it yet?) of Juan. I reckon possibly only the response by Ali to that one entry in Juan's blog is of any great significance. PaulHammond 12:28, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, fisking has an (awkward) entry. I don't see that either the Jarvis or Totten articles are salient to the Misplaced Pages; somebody just wants to get their digs in, I suspect. --Dhartung | Talk 18:57, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

incestuous blog links removed

I removed a couple of blog links because they didn't seem to be about anything other than an extraordinarily trivial side issue - that Cole repeated somebody else's assertion about whether some Iraqi blogger had a US sponsor. I also removed the link to Riverbend. It was just a post that said, more or less, 'hey check out Juan Cole'.--Lee Hunter 01:33, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, there's nothing encyclopedic about any of those entries. --Dhartung | Talk 02:07, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good. —Ashley Y 03:22, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC)

Links

Every link in this article is derived from critics of Juan Cole except for the link to his blog.

Other than the standard CV stuff all we have is a criticism of him. -- posted by 62.255.32.14

I agree, except that Sullivan and Goldberg are notable figures. Almost anybody else's "response to Cole's blog" being listed is silly and promotional. Misplaced Pages does not exist to aggregate criticism. That's what sites like Technorati are for.

My impulse here is to delete the "Iraqthemodel" link and replace it with the Foreign Policy in Focus article which featured Cole among other bloggers. --Dhartung | Talk 07:43, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see that the NPOV tag is needed. The critical articles are mostly balanced with his own (very effective) responses. --Lee Hunter 11:25, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but Misplaced Pages isn't here to "balance". It's here to provide encyclopedic information to the public. This has nothing to do with whether he gives as good as he gets or not; the Misplaced Pages might as well cross-reference all the people who praise his posts as well. Any given debate with another blogger is not intrinsically notable. --Dhartung | Talk 18:05, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Chomsky

Ok we've gone from describing Cole's writings as "Chomskian" (which is quite frankly, bizaare) to saying that he's an admirer of Chomsky, which is just peculiar. Especially since the link you posted as a citation (sorry, I fed it to you by mistake) was not actually written by Cole. It was on his blog but the post was by Mark Levine. --Lee Hunter 02:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I figured that out after a second. The fact is that Jaun shares Chomsky's analysis of US forieng policy as being driven by a jewish neo-con cabal bent on world domination in service of Israel with the Middle East as the lynchpin of some grand master plan to establish a one-world Likud Government. Klonimus 04:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes - one often finds in mathematics, that if people get the same answer, and it's right, it's because they've worked it out correctly - but if they get the same answer and it's wrong, that's usually because one of them copied the other. Cole's analysis sounds similar to Chomsky's because both accounts are essentially correct. btw - jewish? This is you attempting to have a crack at Cole calling him anti-semitic without having the guts to say this directly, right? PaulHammond 09:00, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Or they could both be a set of shameless self promoters who have figured out that if you repeat back fashionable leftist platitutes and a grand conspiracy to readers of the BBC/NPR and the guardian, you have a built in audience. I am perfectly willing to say that Chomsky is a self hating jew, and that Juan Cole has latent anti-semitism that is often expressed in his writings. Klonimus 14:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to say this anti-semitic crap is a total load of bullshit. PaulHammond 22:26, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I read Cole as mostly saying that US foreign policy is driven by a neo-con cabal that is arrogant, incompetent and deeply ignorant of Middle Eastern history and society. And he certainly suggests that the neo-cons have been seriously "played" by Israeli intelligence and politicians. I haven't come across any mention of one-world Likud government yet but maybe I'm missing something. --Lee Hunter 13:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Cole got all his idea's from Chomsky's analysis of the middle east. The difference is that he isn't as discredited as Chomsky is, yet. He's just another player of the great jewish conspiracy genre. Klonimus 14:37, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You write "Cole got all his idea's from Chomsky's analysis of the middle east." So what you're saying is that for the last thirty years Cole has only been pretending to study Middle East history, only pretending to travel and study there, while really he was just looking over Chomsky's shoulder. I'd be curious to know what evidence you have for that (other than the fact that they both think Bush and Company are a threat to global peace and security. At least 80% of the world's population shares that belief.) You also write "He's just another player of the great jewish conspiracy genre." Isn't this old canard about people who criticize the Israeli government being anti-semitic getting a little tired? Don't you think it's possible that people criticize the Israeli government simply because the Israeli government pursues policies that warrant criticism? --Lee Hunter 15:01, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Basicly, I don't think Cole is creditable about anything besides the pernicious effects of entrenched academic leftism. Maybe he did do alot of study in the middle east, but AFAIK his political writings are based on Chomskian analysis, so facts are not nearly so important as theory and interpretation. As for criticism of the Israeli goverment, quite a bit of it is legitamate, and quite a bit of it motivated by latent anti-semitism that either preconscious (unknown) and unconscious (repressed). However at the presant time its not politically correct to hate jews openly, and so anti-semetism gets channeled into "progressive" critiques of israel and talk of Jewish neo-con cabals infiltrating the US government and media in the service of Israel. Klonimus 18:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)