User talk:Twestgard

Welcome!

Hello, Twestgard, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! SWAdair | Talk 08:12, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

La Cagoule and other related issues[edit]

Hi, I see you have copied-and-pasted basically the same article with the same links on to the bios of half a dozen persons and corporations related to André Bettencourt. For instance, the page discussing journalist Bar-Zohar had links to bios of Bettencourt! I've removed the spurious links.

I also think that it is not a good policy to plaster the same story on many pages. Furthermore, are you sure of the seriousness of Bar-Zohar's claims? I read here:

Toward the end of his life, the late President of France, François Mitterrand, allowed some of the skeletons to come out of his personal closet. His mistress and illegitimate daughter attended his funeral, together with his wife and real family, at his request. His involvements with the Vichy regime also came to light.

But Mitterrand's involvements with Vichy were known and were controversial as far back as the 1950s. If I remember well, there was a famous incident when somebody said he had received the francisque and accused him of being a liar, in the French National Assembly in the 1950s. This gives me a bad impression of sensationalism... David.Monniaux 06:36, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Finally, La Cagoule was not primarily an antisemitic group. It was a group that wanted to overthrow the republican government, and accumulated weaponry in order to do so. It did not exist as such under Vichy, because it had been disbanded in 1937 (however, some of its former members engaged in Vichy's antisemitic policies and some of them indeed bombed some synagogues then). David.Monniaux 06:57, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Beginnings of the L'Oréal / Schueller History[edit]

Hello again, David:

Unquestionably, the various articles I posted were intended to be a start, not a finished and inviolable end result. However, I think your changes reflect a level of hesitation to include relevant, accurate facts that is so far removed from what actually happened with these people and L'Oréal as to be inaccurate and violate NPOV. What you did was to remove facts that were accurate. What would have made a lot more sense would be to add more facts of a relevant nature, either related to the bad news, or other, completely unrelated facts that put what I wrote in further context.

I see that many of the articles to which you have contributed in the past deal with France and French history, so I infer that this is a particular interest area of yours. I would welcome additional research and contribution from someone knowledgeable in the little subset of this area that I am researching. It is my hope that you will be in a position to contribute from an informed position. However, at this point I just see good, accurate writing being erased in inaccurate and misleading ways, rather than activities that lead to inclusive, detailed articles that accurately described their topic.

For example, your edits to L'Oréal completely remove any reference to Jacques Correze, but leave the exultatory phrase, "sailed the company overseas..." (which was not my phrasing either, BTW). The company knowingly placed a convicted war criminal (Correze) as its corporate CEO in the United States, and was still covering for him in the 1990s. It's hard to say such information doesn't merit mention in an article that goes to the trouble of listing minutiae like dozens of brand names, for heaven's sake.

For that matter, the company is known to have made a practice of hiring people who were associated with the Vichy regime. It's hard to see how a company's political activity that was in practice for at least 70 years (1920's through the 1990s) doesn't merit mention. Collaborating with French Nazis has been a consistent company practice for longer than most of their brand names have been around. Yet, in terms of space, the brand names get far more attention. Is this an informational project, or an advertising vehicle?

Also, your claim that "La Cagoule wasn't primarily anti-semitic" is only true if we allow the group to define itself for us. By that measure, very few groups, including the Nazi Party, were or are primarily anti-semitic. But that doesn't mean it's not worthy of mention, and when members go on to round up people for the death camps and confiscate their property because of their race/religion - I mean, come on! At what point, by your estimation, does it become a sufficiently serious issue that should get a significant mention, which is what I did? I should also point out that I don't think I described La Cagoule in the way you describe; I think what I did was to state that it was anti-semitic, not saying it was "primarily" so, although either would be fairly reasonable in light of what happened. This is a perfect example of the article needing more information, rather than having someone who doesn't know the full facts go about trimming out pieces of the truth. Wouldn't the goals of wikipedia, and the objections you promote, be best promoted by researching and adding to that information?

The issue with La Cagoule, you see, is that (but that's what I read from your edits) you described it as a specifically antisemitic organization — an organization "specialized" in antisemitic actions. The truth is that La Cagoule was an armed organization whose aim was to overthrow the French Third Republic by violent means, and which attempted to stage a coup d'état. Also, I'm not aware that the Cagoule engaged in antisemitic actions before it was disbanded in 1937 (though I suspect most, if not all, of its members were antisemites, and a number of them joined murderous antisemitic groups operating in Vichy France). David.Monniaux 17:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What I said was that it was "antisemitic." Period. I did NOT say that it was, as you put it, "a specifically antisemitic organization — an organization "specialized" in antisemitic actions" That phrasing was simply not present in what I wrote, as you know; you made certain expanded interpretations which were neither accurate nor fair to my writing. As for your statement about what you are aware of: Arrgh! My point exactly, and see below. If you yourself are "not aware" that the Cagoule engaged in antisemitic actions before it was disbanded, how do you justify complaining that I wrote that it was, let alone making broad deletions? For that matter, all the information you provide (however indirect) supports my research indicating that La Cagoule was antisemitic during its formal existence. (It's worth noting that when La Cagoule was disbanded, DeLoncle founded an organization he called the "legal Cagoule.") If I went through wikipedia and deleted everything about which I was "not aware," there would be probably less than one percent of the articles left. The way wikipedia grows and improves is if we "research, then change," not "delete what's unfamiliar and see whether someone else bothers to research and put it back in a way no one will object to...."

At this stage of development, the articles really need more information of many kinds to reach a state of greatest neutrality, balance, completeness, and accuracy. I don't object to the articles being edited, even brutally so. But this is the second time you've gone through and taken pieces of accurate information out. Last time, the source you referenced was "better safe than sorry." Whose kind of historiography is that? At this point I'm wondering how solid your research basis is, in this area. There is the temptation only to publish the "nice" information, but I think that only serves to punish the people (and companies) that didn't give in to the temptations and evils that others fell for. Do you have sources, do you have a background on L'Oréal and the people associated with it? If not, it seems that you wouldn't have much business removing information from these entries. If you do have additional information, those resources would improve wikipedia more if they could add to the articles in some way.

I don't think I've ever removed information. You tend to copy the same thing again and again on each and every article; I left the information in the articles on which I thought it fitted best. We may of course disagree.

As for my "solid research" — I knew that the Cagoule was a secret "league" intent on overthrowing the government. You seemed to believe it was a gang of antisemites bombing synagogues. I'm sorry, but you do not seem to know French history of the 1930s... David.Monniaux 17:27, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cagoule Entry / Bettencourt Entry[edit]

To supplement the above, I see that in fact you have added significantly to the Cagoule entry. Yet your changes to Andre Bettencourt are a bit mystifying. We can infer from his writings in the 1920's and 1930's that he was anti-semitic and fascist. But why do you stop there? As a senior management employee and major stockholder, through and becoming majority owner, he oversaw L'Oréal through the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, and 1990s, as it became and remained a safe place for war criminals and collaborators to hide, hold jobs and grow rich. When this was exposed in the late 1980's & early 1990s, he and the company actively concealed the nature of their activities and the identities of people they had hired, and minimized the importance of the various crimes and anti-semitic misdeeds they had committed, including cooperation with the Arab Boycott, which was a violation of both French and American law. There's a consistency in action that supports an inference that he never changed. Consider his statement in the 1990s, for example, that he "wrote about 20 lines about Jews that I sincerely regret." He didn't just write 20 lines about Jews, he wrote far more than that, not to mention his other activities both before and after the war that were supportive of fascism and continued to be to the detriment of Jews.

If he had come clean at some point, accurately stated what he had done, I could think that perhaps he had recanted and changed. But he never did that - the coverups never ended. So how is the article more accurate by implying that his political positions changed, when through the 1990s he remained loyal in protecting the war criminals he was associated with in the 1930s?

We do not imply that. We note as a fact that Bettencourt belonged to a fascist organization in the 1930s (note that the Cagoule was founded in the 1930s, so he'd have trouble being a member in the 1920s; however, he was perhaps a member of other organizations that preceded it). However, statements on his later opinions are more difficult to make — I'm sure you see the difference between seeing the writings of somebody, or somebody's membership in a fascist organization on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the hiring of former associates.

We can state, if it is a fact, that Bettencourt had former Cagoule and other Vichy or fascist sympathizers hired. We must stop, however, at drawing inferences from this, and leave the reader to draw his own inferences. David.Monniaux 16:55, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This part of the discussion quickly reduces to "when is an inference made?" a linguistic/philosophical question that's ultimately unanswerable. But your statements above would seem less like pretext if you hadn't deleted almost the entirety of the acts that Bettencourt did, and if you hadn't deleted almost the entirety of the acts that L'Oréal did. The relevant acts of Bettencourt, and of L'Oréal, do not cease in the 1930's. There was the active hiring of war criminals in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, as well as the active concealment and lies that took place in the 80's and 90's. Since you also deleted those entries, how can the reader "make his own inferences" when you deleted the data on which those inferences could be intelligently made? Twestgard

You are free to rewrite the matter in a NPOV way. David.Monniaux 17:20, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And one last thing! (insert self-deprecating laugh here)[edit]

David Monniaux writes: "For instance, the page discussing journalist Bar-Zohar had links to bios of Bettencourt! I've removed the spurious links."

Well, thank goodness for that! It's not like Andre Bettencourt is one of about five major players in Bar-Zohar's book Bitter Scent, or that the ouster of Bettencourt from L'Oréal is kind of the climax of the book. Seriously, man, you've got to make sure you do the research, especially before using words like "spurious." The irony fairy has a way of turning such comments back on themselves. Perhaps Bar-Zohar's bio should have more links to more people (which I invite you to supply), but exactly how is that link (now safely removed from easily deceived eyes) "spurious?"

Speaking of "spurious," I'm annoyed to find that this guy JM_Robert called me "anti-French" behind my back on your talk page, a totally baseless accusation you not only let slide despite the total lack of support for that position, but you even encourage him by responding (on his talk page) with an attack on my accuracy on the basis that I didn't customize my list of internal links on every page, while in the same paragraph you inaccurately state that I only cite one resource for my articles. In addition to Bitter Scent, there's "L'Oréal a pris ma maison" and a whole series of Forbes articles, which I find particularly persuasive, since Forbes has an extremely strong pro-corporation, pro-wealth approach to the news. If these things about L'Oréal, Schueller, and Bettencourt weren't rock solid, Forbes Magazine wouldn't be printing them. You keep wanting to attack my accuracy, but you never cite a source. If you don't have sources and haven't done the research, you shouldn't be making changes based on... what? Nothing?

My mention of a "single source" was not about André Bettencourt's links to various fascists (which are well documented) but about your statements on the Cagoule's activities. I mean, you probably haven't opened a book on the history of France in the 1930s if you think that the Cagoule was merely an antisemitic organization of Vichy collaborators. You also took exactly the same list of internal and external links and copied it everywhere, even when the list contained self-references to the article, or contained irrelevant links. David.Monniaux 17:19, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

David Monniaux replies[edit]

(note by Twestgard: David and I were both editing this page at the same time, so the text below was written without David having seen everything I wrote above.)

Bar-Zohar's page contained nothing on him as a journalist, and all the links pertained to one book he wrote – whereas all those links were available on pages discussing the topic of the book. When we write Umberto Eco's page, we don't add a gazillion links to Franciscan and Dominican monasteries just because they are mentioned in The Name of the Rose. The links at the bottom of Umberto Eco's page pertain to Eco himself, not the topics he mentioned in his books. David.Monniaux 16:52, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And in that circumstance, the Umberto Eco page would be improved by adding more information about more books he wrote, not by deleting references in the substance of the page about the topics covered in the entry. You're not just deleting my links, you're taking out large sections of accurate, relevant text in the body of articles. Twestgard

We actually have articles about Eco's books. But we discuss the matters particular to each book on the page corresponding to that book, not on Eco's page. In the case of Bar-Zohar's book, which discusses l'Oréal and the Cagoule, the information should probably be added to the articles on the Cagoule and l'Oréal only. If Bar-Zohar does not have any reason to be notable other than having written a book, or if we do not have bio info on him, then he should not have his own page. I must admit I've for a moment thought that you were Bar-Zohar and you were advertising for your own book on WP. David.Monniaux 17:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(smile) No, I'd probably have a link to where you could buy it if I were Mr. B-Z. ;-). Nor am I Monica Weizfelder advertising her book, as much as I do think they're worthwhile reading. But I think you've given me a good idea that might make both of us happier, which I'll have to check back with wikipedia guidelines to make sure it fits - maybe an entry on the book, Bitter Scent, effectively a descriptive, NPOV book review, would be a good way to discuss this history, and then the balance of the other articles could be more carefully honed, making reference to the book and a short summary of its topic, without having to repeat a lot of the facts in each separate article on a person or thing to which the La Cagoule / L'Oréal history relates. Thoughts? Twestgard

I indeed think that, instead of scattering bits of the story and links everywhere, we should have one big, nice and well documented article (or section of an article) describing the links between the Bettencourt family, l'Oréal, the Cagoule and Vichy. This article would have book references (with ISBN if possible) and external links. All articles about protagonists of the case would point to this article. Agreed? David.Monniaux 17:38, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies[edit]

I see you are a recent editor on Wikipedia, and you may probably not yet know our style guidelines. Let me summarize a few of them:

We do not take a kind view of advertisement or "link spamming". This includes copying the same entry or same reference to a product or book to many pages.
If you could, on the relevant page only, cite the ISBN number of the book you're using, this could be nice for the reader (the Wikimedia software automatically add links to book resellers).
We prefer internal links within the text to external links. That is, if article A mentions a topic B, which has supplemental informations in link L, A should point to B and B should mention L; but, in general, A should not point to L.
In general, the same information should not be copied on many different articles. If articles A1, A2, A3, A4 all discuss the same story S, then an article on S should probably be written and links added.
The external links section is called "External links".
"See also" contains internal links, and should generally not re-list articles already listed in the main text. David.Monniaux 17:12, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've read my talk page and I've seen some not-so-subtle innuendo that JMRobert, or myself, were trying to bowdlerize history in a manner similar to that of Holocaust deniers, or that we, for some reason, were trying to rewrite history about those who helped the nazis in France.

I consider such accusations to be personal attacks. You may notice that I have quite a long history of editing on various topics (French history, French law and science in particular). I have been accused of being a pro-Arafat supporter (?), a rabid anti-Muslim, etc. by people who edited articles, each on a single topic and with a very specific point of view.

Contrary to what you seem to imply, I'm not against discussing the collaboration events; you may notice that I wrote quite a bit of Vichy France and related articles, such as Maurice Papon. However, I think that it is important, on such issues, to have a sense of perspective and not to be swayed by the exaggeration that essayists and journalists often bring to their writings. Let us consider, for instance, the article on the Drancy deportation camp. Some well-meaning editor, after having apparently read some article, pretended that the French government, until recently, denied the involvement of French officials in the deportation of Jews under Vichy. This, of course, was false — I can remember the topic being discussed in history class in public schools, and it was a generally accepted fact. The truth was more complex — the French government officially considered the Vichy regime to be a criminal entity that had imposed itself illegally over the Republic, and thus did not consider the Republic to be morally responsible for Vichy's actions.

So, see? The problem with writing on issues pertaining to a foreign country, when you only judge from press articles and from essays, is to get caught in the hyperbole of the essayists. Another danger is to only see the bits that they describe — for instance, in your case, focusing on Vichy and the Cagoule as merely "antisemitic", whereas there were other reasons separate from antisemitism why people supported those movements and this government. I understand that the foreign view of today, especially in countries such as Israel and the United States, is to focus on antisemitism, but one should remember that there were many other aspects in Vichy — the royalist or otherwise reactionary faction, the young technocrats, etc. The 1930s leagues rejected parliamentary democracy and considered the Republic to be a prostitute. Anti-communism also played a big role. Etc. David.Monniaux 18:01, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Policies on linking[edit]

I'm unclear on how you intend this relates to the discussion. If your point is that the "Jacques Correze" article should not include a link to Jacques Correze, then mea culpa, I was more focused on putting the list of relevant links in than in getting the list of links perfect each time. But if you intend to say that "Bitter Scent" shouldn't be listed as a source on Jacques Correze, Andre Bettencourt, and Eugene Schueller, then that I think is a misapplication of the rule. It's not as though these people are like Teddy Roosevelt, with scads of resources available. Bitter Scent is probably one of the few book-length sources to discuss some of these people. Or am I missing your point entirely?

None of this addresses the more substantive deletions discussed elsewhere.

I mean that the whole story should be told fully in a single article (perhaps in a section in l'Oréal; perhaps in La Cagoule), where the book reference should be inserted. The reason is, as you say yourself, that it's the same story. Then, single sentences or short paragraphs summarizing the issue would be inserted in the articles describing all protagonists and would point to that same article. No need to add the same reference all over.

Note for instance that H. J. Heinz Company does not discuss at length John Kerry's policies. It just mentions that the heiress of the Heinz family is Kerry's wife (and should perhaps mention that this helped in funding Kerry's campaigns, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on the issue). This is because we have another article discussing Kerry at length, and another article discussing Kerry's wife. David.Monniaux 17:34, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Policies on Deleting - Emphasis on Notification and Circumspection[edit]

I've been reviewing wikipedia guidelines, and was pleased to see that wikipedia does in fact have guidelines that deal with this situation. The fact that someone else described it with my word, "sneaky," makes me feel a bit better.

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