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Byrd machine

The Byrd machine, or Byrd organization, was a political machine of the Democratic Party led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887–1966) that dominated Virginia politics for much of the 20th century. From the 1890s until the late 1960s, the Byrd organization effectively controlled the politics of the state through a network of courthouse cliques of local constitutional officers in most of the state's counties.

"The organization" had its greatest strength in rural areas. It was never able to gain a significant foothold in the growing urban areas of Virginia's many independent cities, which are not located within counties, nor with the emerging suburban middle-class of Virginians after World War II. Byrd's vehement opposition to racial integration of the state's public schools, including a policy of massive resistance, which ultimately failed in 1960 after it was ruled unconstitutional by both state and federal courts, could be described as the organization's "last stand", although the remnants of it continued to wield power for a few years longer.

When the senator resigned in 1965, he was replaced in the Senate by his son Harry F. Byrd Jr. However, the heyday of the Byrd organization was clearly in the past. With the election of a Republican governor in 1969 for the first time in the 20th century, the 80 years of domination of Virginia politics by conservative Democrats ended.

Background
After the American Civil War, Virginia's politics were chaotic. Initially, former Confederates were not allowed to vote, and factions of newly enfranchised black voters joined the electorate. In the late 1870s, a coalition of blacks, Republicans, and populist Democrats formed the Readjuster Party. Readjusters aspired "to break the power of wealth and established privilege" of the planter class elites who had controlled Virginia politics since the colonial era and to promote public education. It was led by Harrison H. Riddleberger (1844–1890) of Woodstock, an attorney, and William Mahone (1827–1895), of Petersburg, a former Confederate general who was president of several railroads.

The Readjuster Party's power was overturned in the late 1880s, when John S. Barbour Jr. (1820–1892) led the first Conservative Democrat political machine in Virginia, known as the Martin organization, aided by a poll tax enacted in 1902 that effectively disenfranchised blacks and poor whites. U.S. Senator Thomas Staples Martin (1847–1919) took over after Barbour died, but Senator Martin's political control was thin by the time he died in office in 1919. By this time, a young state senator from Winchester, Harry F. Byrd, was a rising star in state politics and the Democratic Party. He had served the Wilson Administration during World War I helping with gasoline rationing as a volunteer.

In 1922, with seven years of experience in the Virginia State Senate, Byrd gained statewide prominence by confronting Virginia's powerful lobby of highway builders. Byrd had gained a lot of related experience when earlier managing the Valley Turnpike. In the Virginia General Assembly, he led a fight against using bonded indebtedness as a method to pay for new roads. He feared the state would sacrifice future flexibility by committing too many resources to paying off construction debt.

In 1923, Byrd was sued for libel by the Virginia Highway Contractors Association because he said their activities "by combination and agreements may be very detrimental" to the State. The court dismissed the suit, stating the criticism was legal, imposing all costs upon the association. The publicity figuratively paved the way for the election of Harry Byrd to statewide office.

Structure
The Virginia Democratic machine, since the 1890s, had rigidly stood for restricted suffrage, balanced budgets, and regressive taxation. After the Constitution of 1902 effectively disenfranchised more than half the electorate, the organization had had little trouble winning most Virginia elections.

Harry Byrd's uncle, U.S. Congressman Hal Flood, was one of the organization leaders until his death in 1921, and Byrd's father Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr. had been speaker of the House of Delegates. But Byrd's own cleverness won him the governorship in 1925 at age 38. With intelligence and attention to detail, he soon gained control of the already thirty-year-old organization. He served until 1930, then was elected to the United States Senate in 1933, serving until his retirement in 1965.

Over forty years, Byrd built up relationships with the courthouse cliques, consisting of the constitutional officers in every county. The five (elected) constitutional officers in each county were the sheriff, Commonwealth's attorney, clerk of the court, county treasurer, and commissioner of revenue.

Perhaps contrary to first appearances, the low public profile "clerk of the court" position held the greatest power in most counties within the Byrd organization. These courthouse cliques made recommendations for suitable candidates, and Byrd only decided on candidates after careful consultation. Without Byrd's "nod," no candidate had a chance at statewide office in Virginia.

Constitutional amendments
One of Byrd's first acts upon taking office was to amend the state constitution to reduce the number of statewide elected offices to just three: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Another amendment required the legislature to reapportion itself every decade – a demand made without any details of apportionment. This move not only centralized power in the governor's hands but also eliminated potential bases for opposition. Several measures that had been in place well before Byrd's time also ensured his dominance, especially the poll tax. This not only effectively stripped blacks and poor whites of the vote, but made the electorate the smallest relative to population in the postbellum United States. The courthouse cliques of the Byrd machine strove to ensure that "reliable" voters' poll taxes were paid on time, often as early as three years before an election. The General Assembly, through circuit court judges, controlled the electoral commissions that ruled on voter eligibility. While the organization never was able to establish a foothold in urban areas, blatant and deliberate malapportionment in favor of rural Southside Virginia and against the strongly Republican southwestern mountains, Democratic western coalfields, as well as the cities ensured statewide dominance.

Fiscally conservative
Byrd made property taxes solely a county and city responsibility. He also had a keen interest in improving roads, dramatically increasing funding for secondary roads. When that was not enough, he pushed through the Byrd Road Act of 1932, a law that created the state's Virginia Secondary Roads System and gave the state responsibility for maintaining county roads, (albeit without similar assistance for Virginia's independent cities). These measures made Byrd seem like a New South progressive at first glance.

However, Byrd's fiscal policy was principled conservatism, restructuring state government to streamline operations and use tax dollars more effectively. Byrd's primary support was among rural voters in his native Shenandoah Valley, as well as Southside. Voters in these areas had less interest in improved state services (other than roads) than in low taxes and limited government. Byrd initiated a "pay as you go" approach to spending, in which no state money was spent until enough taxes and fees were available. While this freed Virginia from having to pay off-road construction debt and kept the state as one of the few to remain solvent during the early years of the Great Depression, it also kept support for higher education and other state services at low levels.

Byrd, like many Americans who grew up before the high school movement, never graduated from high school. He recognized that his rural constituency where most students left school after eighth grade to go to work on the family farm were less interested in state-supplied services like public education than in lower taxes. Rural areas were heavily over-represented in the General Assembly, ensuring that Virginia's per capita expenditures on education and social welfare remained among the lowest in the nation for decades.

George Mason University professor William Grymes has noted that "Byrd's political power was based on the ability of the appointed and elected officials to restrict the number of voters, and ensure those few voters were supporters of the Byrd organization." The courthouse cliques' measures to restrict the number of voters made it possible for Byrd-supported candidates to win with as little as fifteen percent of the potential electorate actually being able to vote.

Opposing federal laws
With this structure in place, Byrd's organization practically selected every governor from 1930 until 1970, even as Virginia became friendlier to Republicans. Many Virginia Democrats began drifting away from the national party due to Franklin D. Roosevelt's support for organized labor during the New Deal. This only accelerated during the Civil Rights Movement, when Byrd drafted the Southern Manifesto in opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Consequently, many Byrd Democrats began splitting their tickets in national elections as early as the 1930s, well before ticket-splitting became a trend across the South in the 1960s.

This trend was especially pronounced in western Virginia, Byrd's home region. Several counties in that region have not supported a Democrat for president since Roosevelt. For instance, Highland and Shenandoah Counties last supported a Democrat for President in 1932, Page County last supported a Democrat in 1936, while Augusta and Roanoke Counties both last supported a Democrat in the 1944 election.

Byrd came to lead the "conservative coalition" in the United States Senate, and opposed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, largely blocking most liberal legislation after 1937. Byrd was vehemently opposed to racial desegregation even early in the New Deal, and later opposed Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy despite their also being Democrats (as well as losing Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson) because they opposed racial segregation within the U.S. military and federal workforce. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats controlled the General Assembly until the mid 1990s.

Some Byrd Democrats, such as Governors John S. Battle and Thomas B. Stanley, were sober enough to realize that racial integration was inevitable, and were willing to take cautious steps toward rolling back Jim Crow laws. However, their efforts were short-circuited in 1954, when a little over a month after the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Byrd vowed to block any attempts to integrate Virginia's public schools. While the state superintendent of education had promised "no defiance of the Supreme Court." Byrd, on the other hand, issued a statement saying Virginia faced "a crisis of the first magnitude" and calling the decision by the Warren Court the "most serious blow" ever to states' rights.

Byrd decreed a policy of "massive resistance" to integrating the state's public schools which he rationalized on anti-miscegenation grounds. Miscegenation was illegal under Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He was joined by Virginia's other Senator, A. Willis Robertson, and most other members of the organization. Byrd had a powerful ally in the United States House of Representatives, where the chairman of the House Rules Committee, Howard W. Smith, kept many civil rights bills from even coming to a vote on the floor. Governor Stanley joined with Byrd and Garland Gray, head of the powerful Democratic Caucus in the Virginia Senate, and established the Virginia Public Education Commission, that became known as the Gray Commission, to draft and pass a series of laws known as the Stanley Plan to implement the "massive resistance" program announced in 1956.

After Virginia's school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the compulsory school attendance law and made the operation of public schools a local option for the state's counties and cities. When journalist Edward R. Murrow, presented the program "The Lost Class of '59" on the CBS television network that focused on the organization's "massive resistance" program that had caused the shuttering of the public schools in several Virginia localities it caused national indignation.

State and federal courts struck down most of the "massive resistance" laws by 1960. In response, Stanley's successor as governor, J. Lindsay Almond Jr., drafted several laws that implemented an extremely gradual desegregation process, popularly known as "passive resistance." Most members of the organization considered "passive resistance" to be rank heresy, as it abandoned white supremacy. In 1968, however, the federal Supreme Court held that this didn't go far enough in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. By then, continued resistance to integration was almost a moot point because Virginia's anti-miscegenation law that Byrd had used to rationalize "massive resistance" had been overturned in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia. Also by this time, whites in Virginia localities with large black populations had largely abandoned the public schools for private segregation academies or in what became known as white flight fled Richmond and other inner cities for new suburbs just outside the city limits in neighboring rural (and predominately white) counties.

Even before then, the failure of "massive resistance" caused some Byrd Democrats to conclude that segregation could not be maintained forever. For example, in 1963, when the Prince Edward County school board balked at reopening the schools after four years, Governor Albertis S. Harrison advised the board members to comply with a court order to reopen unless they were willing to face prosecution. Earlier, Harrison had led the state's defense of "massive resistance" while serving as attorney general. A number of Byrd Democrats, like Governor Mills Godwin, made efforts to appeal to black voters. Godwin had been one of the leaders of "massive resistance" as a state senator. However, while serving as lieutenant governor under Harrison from 1962 to 1966, he had campaigned for Lyndon Johnson during Johnson's presidential bid, during which he courted black voters as a prelude to his run for governor in 1965. During that latter campaign, Godwin won the endorsement of the Virginia NAACP. However, Byrd, Robertson, Smith, Gray and a few others continued to oppose any form of integration.

Demise
Harry F. Byrd Sr. retired from the U.S. Senate in 1965, and his eldest son, Harry Jr., a State Senator, was appointed to succeed him.

Harry Sr. died in 1966. A short time before his death, the Byrd organization showed its first cracks when two of Harry Sr.'s longtime allies were ousted in the Democratic primary by more liberal challengers. Senator Robertson, a 20-year incumbent, was defeated by State Senator William B. Spong Jr., whom President Lyndon Johnson had personally recruited to mount a primary challenge against him. Johnson was angered at Robertson's opposition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Also, Congressman Smith was defeated by State Delegate George Rawlings. Harry Jr. himself barely survived a primary challenge in his bid for the balance of his father's sixth term. While Spong and Harry Jr. went on to victory in November, Rawlings was defeated by conservative Republican William L. Scott, who gained the support of many conservative Democrats. A series of Supreme Court rulings imposing one man, one vote on state legislatures eliminated the rural advantages that served as the core of the Byrd organization's power.

The Byrd organization finally broke down in 1969, when a split in the Democratic Party allowed A. Linwood Holton Jr. to become the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction. A year later, Republicans won six of the state's ten congressional districts – the first time Republicans had held a majority of the state's congressional delegation since Reconstruction. Ironically, one of the districts that turned Republican was the 7th District, the Byrds' home district. Holton was succeeded in 1974 by Godwin, a former Byrd organization Democrat who had turned Republican. (Godwin had earlier served a term as governor, 1966-1970 as a Democrat, the last of the Byrd organization members to hold the state's top office.) Meanwhile, despite the end of the organization, Harry Byrd Jr., who himself had left the Democratic Party in 1970 declaring himself an Independent Democrat, remained in the U.S. Senate until his retirement in 1983.

Legacy
The Byrd organization's response to federal desegregation orders in the 1950s has shaped the contours of the state's social, economic and political landscape into the 21st century. Massive Resistance hurt Virginia in numerous ways. It worsened race relations by convincing blacks that white politicians would not treat them fairly and that the courts were the only branch of government they could trust. When state leaders ultimately failed to block integration, it made white citizens skeptical of all political promises. Massive Resistance also distracted Virginia from the task of improving public education, diverting money and attention from the real needs of the state's long underfunded public schools to private segregation academies. It also harmed economic development in Virginia by causing national corporations to become reluctant to locate in a state that by the 1960s was, like the rest of the South, increasingly seen as a cultural backwater by much of the nation due to its Jim Crow laws. The segregationist rhetoric of Byrd, Robertson and Smith in Washington and other Democrats in state government including Governor Almond, who did not appear to value public education, further tarnished the state's image.

The Byrd machine's ability to oversee 11 successful consecutive gubernatorial elections and administrations of governors over a 44-year period was unmatched by all other Southern Democratic political machines.

title: Byrd machine


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Alfred Newton Richards

Alfred Newton Richards (March 22, 1876 – March 24, 1966) was an American pharmacologist. Richards, along with Wearn, is credited with the method of renal micropuncture to study the functioning of kidneys in 1924.

Career
Richards was born in Stamford, New York the son of Rev. Leonard E. Richards and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Burbank. He was educated at the Stamford Seminary and Union Free School. He then studied at Yale University.

He served as chairman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine's department of pharmacology from 1910 to 1946 and was the university's vice president of medical affairs from 1939 to 1948.

In 1941, then U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Richards chairman of the Committee on Medical Research. The office was terminated five years later, in 1946, after which Richards became president of the National Academy of Sciences, serving until 1950.

In 1948, President Harry Truman appointed Richards to the Medical Affairs Task Force of the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government; Richards also became a director of Merck & Co., for which he had consulted since 1931, and an associate trustee of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1948.

Family
He married Lillian L. Woody in 1908.

Recognition
Richards' technique for the study of kidney functioning is considered a landmark in animal physiology research. The Richards Medical Research Laboratories building at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the best-known and most influential designs of architect Louis Kahn, is named for him.

Awards and honors

 * Abraham Flexner Award of the Association of American Medical Colleges
 * Gerhard Medal of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia
 * Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians
 * John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia
 * Gold Medal of the New York Academy of Medicine
 * Keyes Medal of the Association of Genito-Urinary Surgeons
 * Philadelphia Bok Award
 * Procter Award of the Philadelphia Drug Exchange
 * Guggenheim Cup Award
 * Lasker Award
 * Kovalenko Medal of the National Academy of Sciences.
 * Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of London
 * Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
 * Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences
 * Member of the American Philosophical Society

In addition, Richards was awarded the following honorary degrees:
 * Doctor of Science
 * University of Pennsylvania
 * Western Reserve University
 * Yale University
 * Harvard University
 * Columbia University
 * Williams College
 * Princeton University
 * New York University

 * Doctor of Laws
 * University of Edinburgh
 * Johns Hopkins University

 * Doctor of Medicine
 * University of Pennsylvania
 * University of Louvain

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Alfred Newton Richards


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Lake Minnewaska

Lake Minnewaska may refer to:

 * Lake Minnewaska (Minnesota)
 * Lake Minnewaska (New York)

title: Lake Minnewaska


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Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Davenbelle and Stereotek

I presented my cases, it was a summery. More cases are avalible if requested --Cool Cat My Talk 17:10, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)


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Spavin

Spavin is a condition in livestock. It may refer to:
 * Bone spavin, a type of osteoarthritis that often causes lameness
 * Bog spavin, a swelling condition that does not cause lameness, but may be produced by something that does

title: Spavin


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Talk:Minnewaska State Park Preserve

Untitled
I added a redirect here from Lake Minnewaska (hence the boldface) as well as a referene from Minnewaska. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.216.68.28 (talk • contribs)

POV "In March 2006, an additional 2,500 acres were added to the Preserve as a result of action by a citizen's conservation group."

This comment covers up the fact that this supposed citizen's conservation group's actions were an attempt to build condos on land they said they were trying to preserve in a natural state. The state then siezed the land in order to actually make it into a preserve.

No, your facts are mainly wrong. You are right that the wording gives a little too much credit to the citizen's conservation group. I've fixed that.

But you seem to be confusing that group (really more than one group) with a real estate partnership that planned to develop the property.

Here is a reasonably accurate account of what happened:  Calamitybrook (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I added information about the history of swimming in the Preserve. --StephieMachacek (talk) 16:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Am tempted to propose removal of swimming section. There are many forms of recreation that are banned or severely regulated in park. Why is swimming especially significant? I'll probably leave it and maybe add section on the regulators' severely restrictive "Master Plan" of 2009.

Calamitybrook (talk) 00:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

While it is true many activities are not allowed in the preserve, the constant battle over swimming is the one that receives the most attention in the local press, and among the reoccurring visitors to the park. This is why I felt it important enough to be included in the article. (talk) --StephieMachacek (talk) 00:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Minnewaska State Park Preserve


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Talk:Soviet espionage in the United States

section
In the 1930's the CPUSA recruited several hundred persons among thousands of new employees hired by the federal government under the impact of the New Deal's rapid expansion of governmental programs. Federal regulations forbade partisan political activity by federal employees, and open membership in the Communist Party brought discharge. The CPUSA evaded the law by organizing caucuses of government employees that met in secret.

KGB operatives in the United States during World War II funneled information to Moscow through a handful of professional intelligence officers who sent reports to the Center and relayed orders and questions from the Center to agents in the field. Operations in America were led by experienced hands such as Vassili M. Zarubin (covername MAKSIM), who served as rezident in New York and later in Washington, and Iskhak A. Akhmerov (covernames MER and ALBERT), the senior illegal. Some Soviet case officers, however, were raw recruits recently brought into the services in order to fill out ranks depleted during Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

Outline
Here is an outline of eight Soviet intelligence entities operating in the United States during the time in question (1921-1943).
 * Comintern
 * CPUSA; (although CPUSA membership was legal among certain people at certain times, membership among government employees and employees of government contractors involved in the war effort, or "defense contractors relating to National Security", to use post-1947 terminolgy, was clearly illegal.
 * CPUSA secret apparatus
 * KGB "legals", i.e. KGB agents registered in the United States on valid visas, operating under a Rezident and illegally engaged in espionage. {For the purpose of discussion on this page, KGB is used to encompass all pre-1954 predessessor names conducting foreign intelligence, Cheka or VChK (1917-22), the GPU (1922-23), the OGPU (1923-34), the NKVD (1934-41, 1941-43), the NKGB (1941, 1943-46), the MGB (1946-47, 1952-53), the KI (1947-52), the MVD (1953-54), and the KGB (1954-91)}
 * KGB "Illegals"; agents operating under "deep cover", maybe native born maybe immigrant, and operating under their own separate Rezident, (or "Station Chief", to use an analagous CIA term).
 * GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence (under its own Rezident).
 * Soviet Naval GRU, had a very small operation in the U.S. during World War II
 * GRU "Illegals", again, like KBG illegals, with its own Rezident.

Note on "Illegals": Illegals are parallel organizations set up independently from the two main intelligence organizations (KGB & GRU), under thier own separate station chief, or Rezident, for the contingent purpose should a break in diplomatic relations occur, and all legal operatives with valid passports are expelled, a parallel espionage organization remains in place. Also, they still may be engaged in highly secret ongoing activities, and their absolute highest concern is to avoid detection. They are "sleeper cells", to use a term recently popularized by American news organizations.Nobs01 17:11, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * See also: V.I. Lenin, Terms of Admission into Communist International (July, 1921) "must everywhere build up a parallel illegal organisation" Nobs01 28 June 2005 16:40 (UTC)

CPUSA
Is there a reference for the claim that membership in the CPUSA by goverment employees was "clearly illegal" prior to 1947? DJ Silverfish 19:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Hatch Act of 1939; for pre-1939 period, while I've encountered numerous sources that say it was illegal, I've yet to put my finger on specific legislation. Still looking.Nobs01 19:27, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Hatch Act would not technically make membership illegal, only political activity on the job. It wasn't illegal to BE a member of the CP. People were fired for membership anyway, frequently teachers, and by local authorities. I do think you are overstating the illegality of the CP. It was a public organization by 1924. DJ Silverfish 19:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Membership in an organization that advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government was prohibited among federal employees, sources say. Yes, this needs clarification because several pieces of legislation had been passed.  Still working on it.Nobs01 15:58, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, membership among naturalized citizens who swore an oath to bare "true faith and allegiance to the same" would be illegal. Nobs01 28 June 2005 16:28 (UTC)

KI
KI – Committee of Information of the Counsel of Ministers of the USSR organized following May 30, 1947 official decision. Temporarily brought MGB and military intelligence services under the same bureaucratic roof. This integration turned short-lived: following January 1949 government decision, military intelligence was returned under the roof of the Soviet Department of Defense. In its abridged form KI survived until early 1951.

General Ilichev
Anybody have biographical information on General Ilichev, head of GRU during WWII. nobs 20:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

More right-wing garbage
This article is so riddled with out and out lies and nonsense it should be thrown out entirely. This is no better than "None Dare Call it Treason," the bible of the John Birch Society.

Just a few of the grosser errors and smears;

1)Many of these so-called communist front groups merely had Communists as members, along with many others who were not. That a group may have received donations from the Party does not mean it is controlled by the CP for any nefarious reasons, or under the control of the Comintern. The Lincoln Brigade, for instance, had 3,500 members in total, many of whom were not party members at all. Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were pouring recruits and materiel into Spain on the Fascist side. Ford Motors and other American companies were selling materiel and weapons to both Germany and Italy with the full knowledge that it would be used in Spain. This article makes it appear that the Lincolns, and other Internationals, were alone in violating the neutrality agreement, when in fact the Fascist side was receiving open aid from around the world, including the US. The only countries that provided aid to the Repoublic of Spain were the USSR and Mexico.

 * Nobody has questioned that there existed non-communist volunteers in the Lincoln Brigades but to assert contrary to all relevant historical research that the Comintern was not organizing the "International Brigades" (of which the LB were merely one part) borders on delusion. This was part of the "aid to the Republic of Spain" from the USSR precisely because the USSR was manipulating the Comintern.  Incidentally, whether fascist countries were supplying their favored side and whether this was in violation of any law, agreement, or treaty whatsoever has no bearing here but merely shows an emotional need for political equivalence.

2) The claim that 400 Americans spied for the Soviet Union is utter nonsense, and derives from the wholesale adoption of nearly every name in the VENONA transcripts as a spy. Using raw intelligence data in this fashion is a gross violation of basic common sense and historical accuracy. One could find themselves touted by the Soviets as a source merely for having answered a question at a cocktail party, or as in the case of journalist I.F. Stone, for having meetings with known soviet personnel in an attempt to get information from them!!

 * Being a Soviet source does not imply that the person "spied" and the 400 number has nothing to do with those individuals that researchers have not come to definitive conclusions about whether they were witting participants with Soviet intelligence either in espionage or "influence" and disinformation (in the case alluded to with Stone). Also, this is not "raw intelligence data"; the only thing that could be construed this way would be mere morsels of declassified information that exist as decrypts of which the relevant working papers are still not available but the conclusions of the counterintelligence agencies are sufficient to show notable accusation which is in fact picked up by researchers such as Haynes and Klehr, which you choose to attack on political terms without providing direct and substantial rebuttals in context to specific topics.

3) Again, the continued insistence that Alger Hiss was a known spy is garbage, VENONA does not support that claim, nor does any other source. The claim that Harry Dexter White was a spy is likewise idiotic. White was a die-hard capitalist and one of the founders of the World Bank. The link to Hoover's memo shows only how tenuous the charges were. All Hoover has done is to make a correlation between White's movements and the reports of a spy codenamed "Jurist" and concldued they were one and the same. The notion that Jurist may have been someone in White's office never seems to have occured to him.

 * We feel so concerned for the memory of Hiss that we choose instead to cast aspersions onto an unnamed staff member, probably in his naivete loyal to Hiss's case to the very end only to be slandered for the continuance of ancient partisan purposes.

 * Nobody should buy the "die-hard capitalist" song and dance routine prima facie because many participants in espionage and disinformation did so not as much for love of Mother Russia but for cold hard cash. In this case however it has always been evident that White influenced policies in ways which were quite favorable to the ends of the Soviet Union and evidence that he was involved with Soviet intelligence is rather not contested even by most critics of this interpretation of the material, rather it is held to be in perfect accordance with his "internationalism".

4)Thousands of Soviet military officers and technicians DID NOT enter the U.S. during WW2. For what possible reason would they have, particularly with the dire need for manpower on the Russian front? WE sent many of our men to the USSR, along with the Lend Lease materiel, not the other way round. Again, there is no evidence at all for the claim that "Soviet case officers waged a successful unrestrained espionage campaign against the United States, from 1942 to late 1945." What the hell does that even mean? Was there espionage? Yes, of course, largely concerning the A-Bomb. But it should be noted that the most succesful of those spies (and Julius Rosenberg was not among them) were a handful of scientists who were not recruited by the Soviets, but volunteered to provide the information.

 * You manage elsewhere to indulge in Radosh where it suits you but to grant little credence to his work which set out to prove the Rosenberg's innocence and irrelevance but in fact found quite the opposite. There is nothing factual here being seriously contested.

5) The claim that "At least fifteen Soviet agents penetrated the OSS, with the actual number more likely around twenty," is again silly. This number has lumped together all the known field agents who had a Party Background, all of whom were open about it, and assumed they all were spies, when indeed what they were was combat soldiers fighting in Europe. The reason they were recruited by the OSS is that they were Spanish War vets, had combat experience, and already knew many of those in the anti-Nazi underground, as the Resistence was largely communist. We needed them badly and they all served with great distinction. Oddly, and most telling, this article neglects to mention Carl Marzani, a high-ranking OSS official, A Spanish war vet and former member of the CP (1939-1941), Carl was the only such person to be imprisoned for denying Party membership. (see Carl's story in my book, Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition). Carl was never charged with espionage, and during the entire time he was working closely with Bill Donavan, the head of the OSS, he never heard from any Party official at all. Again, putting the question of wholesale Party involvement with espionage into question.

6)The notion that "Many party-linked espionage operations were exposed and neutralized by American counterintelligence in the late 1940s and 1950s," is again misleading to the point of being untrue. What spying went on occurred in the context of WW2, when, with our then ally the USSR bearing the brunt of the Nazi war effort, a number of Americans, probably no more than several dozen at most, engaged in what was largely industrial espionage. Tempering the claim that "Soviet agents sought to provide Moscow with a wide range of information on high-performance aircraft, battleships, cruisers, armor, navigation equipment, tank engines, and armaments from key U.S. defense contractors, including Northrop, Douglas, and Marietta," it should be noted that through the Lend Lease program the Pentagon was already providing much of this info to the Sovet Union. The notion that somehow the Soviets needed to spy in order to learn information concerning Operation Overlord (Normandy Landing) and the opening of a second front, or anything concerning a separate peace with Hitler is just fantasy. None of that was kept secret from the Soviets! Roosevelt himself kept Stalin abreast on all devlopements concerning the Normandy Landing, and there was never any idea of a separate peace raised anywhere in the US Gov't. As far spies in the the gov't went, there were no Party members or anyone with links to the Party uncovered after the war, with the sole exception of Carl Marzani, who had left the party in 1941.

7) the Soviet's first bomb was indeed a copy of one of ours, but what is not said here is that the Soviets were quite capable of developing an independent design of their own, and were well on the way. The technical information they lifted from us gave them only a year or so advantage in development. This was widely known at the time, as there were no real "secrets" to the A-Bomb as the theory was widely known to Nuclear scientists in both axis and allied nations.

 * The "theory" being "widely known" but development only succeeding in one country which shared the technology as well as one which happened to steal it.

8) The statement "The United States made the decision in the Spring of 1947 to assist Greece and Turkey with a view to protecting their sovereignties, which were threatened by direct or instigated activities of the Soviet Union," is again just plain wrong. The USSR played no role at all in the Greek Civil War -- it was Tito! Stalin had made an agreement with Churchill that England would have a free hand in Greece in exchange for Stalin's free hand in Romania and Bulgaria. The record is clear on this. Stalin played no role in Greece. The US took over from England after the war, and still Stalin stayed out. In fact, the Tito-Stalin split was over just this issue. Tito refused Stalin's directive to back off on Greece.

 * I ask any reader of this page to examine the veracity of stating that Stalin was in a position to give anyone a "free hand in Greece" and simultaneously declare the USSR has "no role" with respect to the civil war, which in the most favorable interpretation is pedantic to the extreme. The USSR did provide direct assistance but considered this particular conflict to be of little comparitive importance to its larger strategic objectives that was not itself worth the risk of confrontation when the UK and US were so apparently ready to respond forcefully.  The only irony is that independence of action is insinuated on the part of the KKE's "struggle" whereas Tito, unquestionably their largest material ally, was abandoned by the vast majority of the leadership upon the whim of Stalin with lingering "Titoists" simply slaughtered.

9) Truman's Executive Order 9825 set off the worst civil liberities crisis in American History, the Red Scare, which trashed our Constitutional freedoms and ultimately destroyed the professional lives of thousands of Americans, sent hundreds to prison, and directly casued the deaths of dozens of others. That Truman denounced the "charges against Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and others," only showed that he finally showed some common sense. The charge that VENONA somehow cinched the case against these men is just a plain lie. If anything VENONA clears Hiss of the charges against him -- it is only the extremist idealogy of the authors of this article that keep them from admitting it, or even airing the arguments for Hiss's innocence.

 * Most of this and that elsewhere directly addressing espionage is insubstantial ad hominem in secondary topics which already have articles and with no particular substantion of specific claims. Undoubtedly you would wish a "History of Soviet espionage in the United States" to read entirely about the paucity of "twenty years of conspiracy" but fortunately there are many much more serious observors today.

10) Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for some strange reason, appears as a God to these authors. They quote him as if he were Moses down from the mountain, as if just because Moynihan said it, we should all accept it. Why, I haven't the faintest idea. Of course, they quote a number of proved liars, such as Joe McCarthy and Hoover, with the same religious fervor. That they do so speaks to their extremist views, and their own essential dishonesty.

 * Moyhihan is rather notable and well respected figure whose conclusions are only attacked by those who cling to a perception of ideological interest in holding to their fairy tales about a bygone era. McCarthy and Hoover are certainly relevant to any rational discourse of the era without the simple effect of parsed quotations and caricaturing descriptions.

Forgot to sign-off
The above corrections to this article were posted by--Griffin FarielloGrifross 01:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

More left wing garbage!
Might as well call this "How I support the CPUSA!

"American policy dealing with this rapidly changing scene was often confused, naive, slow to respond, and contradictory".

Umm, No!! Greece, Turkey, Korea, Berlin airlift?! More success than failure if you ask me. If anything the soviets bumbling into afganistan and poland (after there revolution) was naive!

IDIOTS! So if that commie pinko who ranted a while back! (24.75.194.50 19:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC))

Is this NPOV?
I don't know about you guys, but this looks a bit POV to me. Comments?

Gradually it became apparent that the objectives of World War II for which the United States and others made tremendous sacrifices were not fully realized, and there remained in the world a force presenting even greater dangers to world peace than the Nazi militarists and Japanese warlords. Consequently, the United States made the decision in the Spring of 1947 to assist Greece and Turkey with a view to protecting their sovereignties, which were threatened by direct or instigated activities of the Soviet Union. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DabMachine (talk • contribs) 17:54, 17 February 2006  (UTC)

 * I've removed follwing para for POV language "gradually became apparent", "had been widespread and pervasive", "more sophisticated and determined than": apparent to who, pervasive where, and in what way and how more so? The subsequent paragraphs to do not substantiate the paragraph's allegations. "During the 1950s, it gradually became apparent that the Soviet intelligence activities directed at the U.S. government and military/economic institutions had been widespread and pervasive, and that Soviet intelligence was much more sophisticated and determined than the prewar and wartime efforts of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan."

DJ Silverfish 21:03, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

military history
Does this not come under the military history wiki project?--SGGH 11:48, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

additions
User:Nobs01 was banned yet is adding the material I erased as an anonymous IP. The additions are not encylopedic, but complete paranoia. Let the person who added them come forward and defend them. TDC is defending a mountain of junk editing from an anonymous editor who edits exactly like the banned Nobs (an old friend of TDC, incidentally) Ruy Lopez 04:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

 * To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence that Nobs has edited the article, but you are more than welcome to file a checkuser. Secondly, all the material is cited and culled from reliable sources, so there is no justification to remove any of it. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 16:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

 * The additions are complete nonsense, they are garbage. You didn't even make them, User:Nobs, who is banned, added them under an anonymous IP.

 * You say the material is cited and culled from reliable sources. How about this sentence - "Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), served as a agent recruiter himself on behalf of Soviet intelligence."  Where is the citation for this addition?  This is one of many uncited accusations.  Even the ones that are cited are tenuous, disparate facts are stated which Nobs tries to add up to a certainty that so-and-so was a Russian spy.  In Nobs's mind, every prominent Democrat, liberal and progressive from the Russian Revolution onward was a Russian spy. Ruy Lopez 18:38, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

 * As I said earlier, you have no evidence that Nobs is the one editing the article, so either verify this via checkuser, or leave it alone. If you were to go to the Earl Browder Article, there is a citation for this, and I have added it. Anything that you feel warrants a citation, please place a fact tag on it and I will find one. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 15:21, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

 * You are the one who said it was all cited. These changes by Nobs, I mean, the anonymous editor, are uncited, not NPOV, are completely unencyclopedic etc.  They violate a handful of Wikipedia policies.  The "anonymous" editor has disappeared as well.  Ruy Lopez 12:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Good job, Ruy Lopez. Abe Froman 13:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

 * No, not good job, this version of the article has 24 citations. If there are NPOV issues, bring them up here. If something specific needs another citation, add a Fact tag. As is Ruy, this is a violation of your probation. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 16:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Removing fact tags is not right. Please respect them and add citations as requested.  Abe Froman 23:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I did not remove any fact tags, you however removed most of the article. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 00:56, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

"First Efforts" Passage
Passage as follows:

By the mid to late 1920s, there were three elements of Soviet power operating in the United States, despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations: the Comintern, military intelligence or GRU, and the forerunner of the KGB, the GPU. The Comintern was the dominant arm, though it was not unusual for officers and agents to switch from one service to another.

During the 1920s, Soviet intelligence focused on military and industrial espionage in the United States, specifically aircraft and munitions industries, and penetrating the mainline federal government bureaucracies, such as the Department of State and War Department. A front organization was created in 1928 for the infiltration and placement of scientists into industry and government: the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT).

Formal diplomatic recognition was granted to the USSR on 16 November 1933, a condition of which was a pledge to refrain "from interfering in any manner in the internal affairs of the United States." In fact, Soviet intelligence greatly expanded their US espionage efforts, now operated under "legal" cover through embassy and consulates. That same year, several Comintern affiliate organizations were established: the American League Against War and Fascism, followed by the American Youth Congress in 1934; the League of American Writers in 1935; and the National Negro Congress in 1936. In 1937 the American League Against War and Fascism changed its name to the American League for Peace and Democracy. Between 1937 and 1938 the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was established with numerous affiliates and sent hundreds of non-governmental combatants to Spain despite the League of Nations' Non-Intervention Committee ban on foreign "volunteers". In 1939, the American Congress for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom and numerous other Comintern affiliate organizations were created.

What are the sources for these allegations? Abe Froman 00:01, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Browder and Golos networks" passage
Passage as follows:

As in any target country, the Soviet NKVD (later MGB and KGB) and GRU ran parallel "legal" and "illegal" operations groups. "Legal" networks were run by Soviet case officers holding legal visas, usually working in diplomatic missions and official trade organizations. The operational station was called a "rezidency" headed by a station chief, or "rezident". The "illegal" networks were headed by an "illegal rezident", usually a Soviet national operating under deep cover with no apparent connection to Soviet organizations. Thus, if diplomatic relations are broken, an espionage organization remains in place, dispensing the the need to begin anew (which could take decades).

One chief aim was the infiltration, placement, and subversion of American political life at all levels of society. Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), served as a agent recruiter himself on behalf of Soviet intelligence. .

What page numbers in the two books described in refs 7 and 8 contain these allegations? I find the claim hard to verify. Abe Froman 00:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * pg 217 in Special Tasks and page 42-44 in The Secret World of American Communism deals with Browder. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 01:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * The passages in question, pg 42-44 and pg 217 mention Browder's role in Asian, and eventually American CPUSA activities.  It is silent on the other allegations contained in the passage.  Are there additional sources that could anchor these claims?  At this time, only the allegations about Bowlder in Asia and the American CPUSA are actually cited.  Abe Froman 01:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Following today's edits, the citations in the Browder section still lack page numbers. These are large books, the citations should carry the page number(s) of the passage that supports the claim.  Abe Froman 16:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Secret Apparatus" passage
What page numbers in refs 11 and 12 describe the allegations contained in the referenced passage? Ref 11 seems to be irrelevent, given it is 56 years old. Abe Froman 00:06, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Soble Spy Ring" passage"
What page numbers in refs 14 and 15 describe the allegations contained therein? Abe Froman 00:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Wartime Espionage" passage
Yet another ref in ref 16 that has no page number. Just an offline book. On which page does the book referenced refer to the allegations in the passage? Abe Froman 00:08, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"Atomic Bomb Secrets" passage
Not a single reference. What is the authority for this passage? Abe Froman 00:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"OSS and State Department Espionage" passage
Not a single reference. What is the authority for this passage? Abe Froman 00:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

"The Silvermaster Spy Ring" passage
What page numbers in refs 18, 19, and 21 refer to this alleged network? I find the claims impossible to verify. Abe Froman 00:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Much of this entire article (particularly the Silvermaster section) has decayed to a McCarthy era "Stalin's agents under every bed" sort of paranoia. What appears to look like authoritative source citations are actually mutual cross citations to ALLEGATIONS, which sound plausible because they are PARTIALLY based on actual facts.

One example is the whole Elizabeth Bentley (she was the courrier for the Silvermaster Group) Occupation Currency plates thing. Her story eventually became that on direct orders from Moscow, Harry Dexter White ("the least productive member" of Whittaker Chamber's earlier group as described in Chambers' own words) turned over Currency samples—which, by Bentley's telling then were shipped to Moscow, found to be impossible to counterfit, shipped back to the States (a physical round trip of at least 4 weeks if all transportation connections worked perfectly, & totally ignoring any time for Russian currency experts to even inspect the alleged samples)—and then the actual plates were demanded... and (by Bentley's telling) White dutifully complied because he was such a Soviet automoton.

Only problem... the events (Occupation Currency printing plates were in fact turned over to the Soviets after a lengthy "public" internal debate) happened in 1944, Bentley's initial 1948 testimony said nothing of the plates, & by 1954 she richly embellished the story to "White following Moscow's orders..." Why did she not mention the 1944 events (the plates were in fact turned over to the Russians, but made good by the German treasury, not the US Treasury) in her 1948 testimony? Why was her memory "better" 10 years after the fact, but worse 4 years after the fact?

The citations from the Schecter "Sacred Secrets" book, are again, seemingly plausible on the surface. But when you read the book, often when "facts" are cited, the bibliographical reference is "Soviet Intelligence Archives." That smells to be of manufactured references.

This is the first time I've seen the Pavlov "Operation Snow" story told such that White's purpose was to place & protect Soviet sources... the telling of Pavlov's meeting with White (White was known to be trying to expand his knowledge of the China-Japanese-Soviet situation (remember that war started in 1931)) was that Pavlov (on instructions of Stalin & Beria) COMMANDED White to protect Soviet Eastern borders by provoking Japan to attack Pearl Harbor! It's certainly a great made-for-master-conspiracy-theorists image, but reality is far more mundane. By late 1941 Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor were well underway & clearly were not & could not have been influenced by a monetary policy wonk in the Treasury (at this point, White was influential, but had not been promoted to Assistant Secretary of Treasury... that promotion didn't happen until 1944 to help with the Bretton Woods conference). DEddy 02:27, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

"United Nations Infiltration" passage
Not a single reference. What is the authority for this passage? Abe Froman 00:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the sources be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Aftermath
What page number in Moynihan's report is referenced? The report runs into hundreds of pages. Abe Froman 00:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Will the page numbers be added? The passage is unsupported at this time.  Abe Froman 18:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Abe, do you really believe the sections you removed are untrue, or would you agree they are probably true but lack complete sources. I don't think there is any harm in giving TDC a few more days to develop and add the refs.  A lot of us have real lives to attend to from time to time.  Thanks.  Thatcher131 02:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Problems
I have banned Ruy Lopez from editing the article for 5 days for disruptive editing, but that is just the start of the problems.

First off, while the anon may or may not have been Nobs, reverting the article was just wrong. The version reverted to is patently inferior in style alone, and while the supposed Nobs version doesn't source the Golos section very well, reverting removed 7 sources from the Silvermaster section. Next we have TDC, who is also on parole and may be blocked for reverting an article more than once per day, and has already used up his one revert for today.

Abe, try placing at places you want better citations for. Adding even once to an article with 20 or more references just plain looks bad; adding it multiple times verges on disrupting wikipedia to make a point. Be selective.

Please discuss disputed information on the talk page. If version A and B are both defective, the answer is not to flip back and forth between them, but to collaborate on version C, D or E. If I read this right, one of the concerns is that the "Nobs" version takes citations for A, D, F, H, and M and weaves them into ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP. I certainly don't know this field, but I know it is possible to fix this, and no version of the article is so good that it should be the basis for a blind reversion rather than repair. Note that No original research states "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a secondary source." That means that while you might describe the contents of a Venona transcript, for example, you can not interpret it or say what it means. You must find a reliable secondary source that you can quote. If different historians have differing views about what a particular set of documents means, report them both. If no reliable secondary source agrees with your personal view of the meaning of a document, then you are out of luck.

Try and explain your concerns; that specific passages aren't cited; that specific statements are an editor's conclusion rather than reportage of third party sources; and so on. I can't say enough that reverting is bad—not only is it disrespectful of other editor's good faith efforts that are simply destoyed, it fixes in amber other mistakes and deficiencies. If there are specific problems, fix them individually, after talking about it here. If necessary, ask for a third opinion or RFC to get some more outside opinion. Thatcher131 01:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks. I've added fact tags and explained problems with the passages in this discussion page.  An issue I have with the current citations is the lack of page numbers.  I do not think a proper citation should lack the page number(s) where a claim is supported.  The lack of page numbers in the citations can encourage obscurantism in editing.  Abe Froman 15:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * So after getting your head handed to you on the FSLN article, you resort to adding 53 Fact tags in this article? This is a gross violation of POINT. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 15:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Please refrain from personal attacks. The statements made about the citations are true, they are either missing, or lack page numbers.  As the stakeholder in these edits, please address the concerns in the passages above.  Abe Froman 15:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * For the time being, see how many can be easily fixed. Then you might think about whether there are one or two sources that support multiple sections, and use the cite.php method to simplify the citations.  Then discuss if some can be removed.  A few days won't hurt if many of these can be easily addressed. Thatcher131 15:57, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Why does it stop in the 1950s?
Quick question... Why does this article finish in the 1950's? I know of a few cases of KGB agents in the FBI going right into the 1990's. Can I add that material, or there some reason why I shouldn't? Lord Seabhcán of Baloney 23:28, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Add away. Fred Bauder 22:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * My research paper is on KGB activity in the U.S. from '68-'82 (while Andropov was Chairman), and so once I write it, I'll add those sourced facts. -Fsotrain09 23:43, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

 * quick answer... because it takes a lot of work and nobody is getting payed for it. Decora (talk) 19:20, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Fact Tags
The fact tagged sections stood for nearly a week, then were reverted. TDC replaced them, without the requested refs. This is not how Wikipedia works. Either support the material with verifiable refs, or let it die a deserving death. This is not the place to discuss specific fact tags, see above in this talk page for the individual passages being challenged. Abe Froman 21:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * You want me to come up with 53 citations in four days? Are you kidding me? Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I am not the editor who added 53 unsupported statements. Cite before you click "save".  Abe Froman 21:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * You know just as well as I do that the bulk of the statements are supported by referenced material, and asking me to come up with 53 citations, many of them placed in bad faith, in four days is excessive. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I do not know that, TDC. Trust, but verify.  It is impossible to verify this article, given the paucity of citations.  If the allegations are not cited, they are not ready for prime-time.  Uncited allegations in this article are a classic case of "Ready.  Fire.  Aim..."  Remove them until a time when they can be cited, with page numbers.  Abe Froman 21:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * This is very petty and the definition of WP:POINT, and I assure you that if someone else weighs in on this, they will not agree with you. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * It is not petty to point out an article contains 53 uncited claims. The citations that are included even lack page numbers.  This is sloppy work.  Abe Froman 21:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * You use of the fact tags to disrupt the article is completely unnecessary, reeks of bad faith and is wholly inappropriate. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:39, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * TDC is attacking me, which rather admits the 53 unverified claims are indeed a problem. Resorting to Ad hominem attacks will not cover up this sloppy article.  Abe Froman 21:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Abe, do you really believe the sections you removed are untrue, or would you agree they are probably true but lack complete sources. I don't think there is any harm in giving TDC a few more days to develop and add the refs. A lot of us have real lives to attend to from time to time. Thanks. Thatcher131 02:39, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This bothers me too, although I have not looked this all up. It does not grate which the history I know, although it is quite incomplete. Fred Bauder 19:47, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I do not believe the sweeping generalizations present in the uncited passages are true (see above to specific passage headings for the passages I am concerned about). I think they are confabulations.  I would love to be proven wrong.  All it takes is a citation with page numbers so the broad allegations raised in the uncited passages may be verified.  Abe Froman 21:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

 * A friend of TDC's has restored his version, sans fact tags. This is altogether too cute an omission.  This talk page attests to a dispute over sourcing.  Until this is resolved, unsourced material should not be readded to the article.  Respond to the individual disputed passage headings above so we can actually start resolving this.  Abe Froman 19:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Truman "willfully obtuse" quote
The quote about Truman being "willfully obtuse" to Communism's dangers is referenced as coming from Moynihan. This is incorrect. The "obtuse" sentence rehashes, tendentiously I think, the work of two academics quoted in Moynihan's report. The Moynihan report does not call Truman "obtuse," that is the POV spin given by a Wikipedia editor. Attributing this quote to Moynihan is incorrect because Moynihan never said it. The sentence should be removed or reworked to attribute it properly. The academics in question are Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957 (Washington, D.C.: National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), vii-viii. Abe Froman 18:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Thanks for pointing out that reference (from fas.org). This is the seemingly relevant passage from there:

 * It would appear, however, that President Truman was not told. In their superb account of these events, VENONA: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957, published by the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency (in connection with a major October 1996 conference on VENONA), Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner write:

 * Truman’s repeated denunciations of the charges against Hiss, White, and others—all of whom appear under covernames in decrypted messages translated before he left office in January 1953—suggest that Truman either was never briefed on the Venona program or did not grasp its significance. Although it seems odd that Truman might not have been told, no definitive evidence has emerged to show he was. In any event, Truman always insisted that Republicans had trumped up the loyalty issue and that wartime espionage had been insignifi-cant and well contained by American authorities.[21]

 * with [21] being the Benson-Warner reference, as you said. Now, as I understand (and please do correct me if I'm wrong, I'm still relatively new at wikipedia), the job of an editor is not to second-guess material published by scholars -- that would be WP:OR, would it not?  That quote seems legit to me, I see no reason to suppress it, or to second-guess other editors that used it in other articles.  I think perhaps the only issue, then, is to make sure the quote is given fully, and exactly as published.  How about just quoting the above paragraph in full (starting "Truman's repeated..")?  Turgidson 19:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

 * The problem was not the source. The problem was including a fanciful direct quote from Moynihan.  The Venona information could be included in some way, as long as it is attributed to its actual authors.  I'm not sure why this reflects badly on Truman.  From the above quote, it appears Truman was not even told about Venona.  Is Truman being blamed for not knowing what he wasn't told?  Abe Froman 20:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

 * From the above quote, it appears Truman was not even told about Venona. Yes, perhaps -- or he "did not grasp its significance." Not clear which, but still, a question worth mentioning, I'd say, not simply ignoring. While at it, how does your last (rhetorical) question gibe with the oft-repeated Truman quote, "The buck stops here"?  Turgidson 21:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

 * It seems clear to me. According to Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Truman was probably not told about Venona.  As far as 'bucks,' this one apparently never landed on Truman's desk.  Abe Froman 21:31, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Counter-part article?
There isn't an article for US espionage in the Soviet Union/Russia? Hires an editor (talk) 20:13, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality issues
This article reads like a piece of trash. The Earl Browder allegations are perhaps the finest example of what it is that merits this article a NPOV warning until this is rewritten in a neutral and objective style.

Take a look:

 * "One chief aim was the infiltration, placement, and subversion of American political life at all levels of society. Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), served as an agent recruiter himself on behalf of Soviet intelligence.[5] [1]"

 * According to whom? Two sources? With neither one having page numbers given for the reference? I didn't realize it was customary to cite an entire book for such revealing claims.

 * "Browder later stated that 'by the mid-thirties, the Party was not putting its principal emphasis on recruiting members.' Left unstated was his intent to use party members for espionage work, where suitable."
 * Wondeful interpretation skills -- thanks for that. And no citation...

 * "Browder advocated the use of a United Front involving other members of the left, both to strengthen advocacy of pro-Soviet policy and to enlarge the pool of potential recruits for espionage work."
 * Oh, he didn't advocate the United Front to support the more progressive parts of the New Deal, gain mainstream support against fascism abroad, and get all of the left aboard during World War II? Of course not.

 * "One early Soviet spy ring was headed by Jacob Golos. Jake Golos (birth name Jacob Rasin or Raisen) was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet secret police (NKVD) operative in the USSR. He was also a longtime senior official of the CPUSA involved in covert work and cooperation with Soviet intelligence agencies. He took over an existing network of agents and intelligence sources from Earl Browder."
 * Source? Is all of this from the same work? Are we too lazy to cite our material? Is it too much to be bothered to give page numbers for big-time shockers?

 * "Golos established a company called World Tourists with money from Earl Browder, the General Secretary."
 * From Browder himself? Source?

 * "Sometime in November 1943, Golos met in New York City with key figures of the Perlo group, a group working in several government departments and agencies in Washington, D.C. The group was already in the service of Browder."
 * Source?

 * By the end of 1936 at least four mid-level State Department officials were delivering information to Soviet intelligence: Alger Hiss, assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis Sayre; Julian Wadleigh, economist in the Trade Agreements Section; Laurence Duggan, Latin American division; and Noel Field, West European division.
 * No source. Again. Looking at the Hiss article itself, we get to learn that Hiss himself denied any involvement. As for what is now known since his death,"Although a variety of evidence has been added to the debate since his conviction, the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence remains controversial.[2]"

Looking at the whole article, every other line or every other paragraph is written in this sloppy manner. Was this stuff written by a 16-year-old Cold War buff? An agenda-driven member of the John Birch Society?

Seeing how all of this was already brought up back in 2006, I strongly support simply removing this BS already to the extent that it can't be counterbalanced. When will the citations be forthcoming? 166.217.146.168 (talk) 13:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

No mention of J. Peters
Why no mention of this key figure in 1930s Soviet espionage in the USA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.16.252.154 (talk) 19:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

two key figures?
network of agents and sources included two key figures at the Department of Treasury, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and Harry Dexter White.  This needs to be rewritten. White was clearly a key figure at Treasury, Silvermaster was most certainly not. White was at Treasury from 1935 until approx 1946. Silvermaster did 6 months at Treasury, July 1944 until January 1945. DEddy (talk) 02:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Silvermaster's status is somewhat ambiguous; while he did work in the Treasury Dept. building, he was "on loan" from the Agricultural Dept. Silvermaster's entry states, "On 16 July 1942 the U.S. Civil Service Commission recommended "Cancel eligibilities...and bar him for the duration of the National Emergency," but HDW intervened to bring him into Treasury offices without a formal transfer between departments.  And the 162 volumes of FBI Silvermaster files  makes him a key figure.  nobs (talk) 19:58, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Silvermaster was certainly a "key figure" but not at Treasury, where obviously he had at best a minor role. DEddy (talk) 20:40, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * In this decrypt, Silvermaster is being considered by HDW to take Harold Glasser's position in Treasury.  Glasser at this time was Vice-Chairman of the War Production Board, U.S. Treasury representative to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and Treasury representative to the Allied High Commission in Italy, and later considered to head up the Marshall Plan. Silvermaster was next in line.  nobs (talk) 19:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * re: VENONA 18 Jan 1945. Surely you jest.  You are aware that the Vassiliev notes say White told Silvermaster to pound sand here.  The Vassiliev notes make it quite clear that White was never under [as they loved to say in McCarthy era] "control" by Moscow Center. http://www.documentstalk.com/wp/harry-dexter-white-in-alexander-vassilievs-notes-on-kgb-foreign-intelligence-files  DEddy (talk) 03:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

split into "Soviet Union espionage in the United States" and "Russian espionage in the United States"
Although Russia is the main successor of the Soviet Union, Soviet Union is the Soviet Union, Russia is Russia, How about split this article into "Soviet Union espionage in the United States" and "Russian espionage in the United States"?--MacArthur1945 (talk) 07:41, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


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Category:Greek folklore

Greek folklore.

For ancient folklore and myths of Greece, see Category:Greek mythology.

title: Category:Greek folklore


text:
Cable Head Airpark

Cable Head Airpark is located 1.5 NM northwest of Cable Head, Prince Edward Island, Canada. It is a seasonal airport, with no winter snow removal and soft surfaces during the summer thaw. Prior permission is required.

title: Cable Head Airpark


text: User talk:69.128.97.4

title: User talk:69.128.97.4


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blogworking

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was DELETE. Golbez 03:14, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Blogworking
Non-notable neologism. --W(t) 17:15, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)
 * Delete. Yet another weblog-related neologism. Rhobite 17:19, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Deleteblogging - And another. --FCYTravis 18:51, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Blogdeleting is the proper form. I am blogyawning over all the blognarcissism and blogirrelevance.  My reaction is "blug." Geogre 19:06, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages.  Please do not edit this page .


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Cornelis de Bruijn

Cornelis de Bruijn or Cornelius de Bruyn (1652 – 1726/7), also formerly known in English by his French name Corneille Le Brun, was a Dutch artist and traveler. He made two large tours and published illustrated books with his observations of people, buildings, plants and animals.

Biography
De Bruijn was born in The Hague.

During his first tour, he visited Rome, where he became a member of the Bentvueghels with the nickname Adonis, which is how he signed the bentbrief of Abraham Genoels II. He travelled in Egypt and climbed to the top of a pyramid where he left his signature. De Bruijn made secret drawings of Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire. His drawings of Palmyra are copies. De Bruijn reached Cyprus and stayed among the Dutch merchants in Smyrna and Constantinople. From 1684 he worked in Venice with the painter Johann Carl Loth, returning in 1693 to The Hague, where he sold his souvenirs. In 1698 he published his book with drawings, which was a success and was translated in several languages. Two examples have colored illustrations, the first color prints in history. Among his drawings were the first pictures of the interior of the Great Pyramid and Jerusalem that became known in Europe.

In 1701 he headed for Archangelsk. During his second tour he visited the Samoyeds in northern Russia. In Moscow he became acquainted with emperor Peter the Great: de Bruijn painted his nieces, and the paintings were sent to possible candidates for marriage.

In late April 1703, De Bruijn left Moscow along with the party of an Armenian merchants from Isfahan whose name he recorded as Jacob Daviedof. De Bruijn and the Armenians sailed down the Moscow River, the Oka and the Volga, eventually reaching Astrakhan. Thanks to de Bruijn's short stopover in Nizhny Novgorod during the Easter holidays, we now have his description of that major center of the Russian Volga trade as it existed in 1703, with its Kremlin, stone churches, and a lively bar (kabak) scene.

Leaving the borders of the Russian state, de Bruijn arrived to Persia, where he made drawings of towns like Isfahan and Persepolis (1704–1705). He continued to Java and returned to Persia, Russia, and ultimately the Netherlands.

His drawings of Persepolis, a city destroyed by Alexander the Great, caused a sensation. The mayor of Amsterdam Nicolaes Witsen and a member of the Royal Society probably asked him to draw the city famous for its 40 columns. For a century, they were the best prints available to western scholars. De Bruijn was accused of plagiarism and his second book, Reizen over Moskovie was not such a success. From Amsterdam he fled to Vianen. De Bruijn was invited by a Mennonite silk merchant and died in Utrecht. It is not known when and where he was buried.

De Bruijn, who had read every Greek and Latin source he had been able to obtain, displays a convincing knowledge of subjects, at times going into the humorous. In Persia, he obtained a copy of Firdausi's Shahnamê, which he summarized and made accessible to the west.

Works

 * Reizen van Cornelis de Bruyn door de vermaardste Deelen van Klein Asia (1698)
 * Corneille le Brun, Voyage au Levant (French translation, 1700)
 * Corneille le Brun, A Voyage to the Levant: or Travels in the Principal Parts of Asia Minor (English translation, 1702)

 * Reizen over Moskovie, door Persie en Indie (1711)
 * Voyages de Corneille le Brun par la Moscovie, en Perse, et aux Indes Occidentales (French translation, 1718)
 * Corneille le Brun, Voyage to the Levant and Travels into Moscovy, Persia, and the East Indies (English translation, 1720)
 * C. le Brun, An Abstract of M.C. Le Brun's Travels through Russia (1722)
 * Puteshestvie cerez Moskouviju Kornelija de Brujna (Russian excerpt 1873)

Other English translations appeared in 1737, 1759, and 1873.
 * Aenmerkingen Over de Printverbeeldingen van de Overblijfzelen van het Oude Persepolis (1714)

title: Cornelis de Bruijn


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Radamisto (Handel)

Radamisto  (HWV 12) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, based on L'amor tirannico, o Zenobia by Domenico Lalli and Zenobia by Matteo Noris. It was Handel's first opera for the Royal Academy of Music. The opera's plot is loosely based on the account of Rhadamistus in Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome.

Performance history
It was first performed at the King's Theatre, London on 27 April 1720, a performance attended by King George I and his son, the Prince of Wales, and was judged to be a success, resulting in 10 further performances. A revised version with different singers including the internationally renowned castrato Senesino in the first of many roles he performed in Handel's works was written for a revival on 28 December 1720. More revisions followed for yet another version presented in 1721. In 1728 Radamisto was again revised for another revival featuring the two famous prima donnas Cuzzoni and Faustina as well as Senesino. The first modern performance was in Göttingen on 27 June 1927.

As with most opere serie, Radamisto went unperformed for many years, but with the revival of interest in Baroque music and historically informed musical performance since the 1960s, Radamisto, like all Handel operas, receives performances at festivals and opera houses today. The first production in the US, in a semi-staged version, took place on 16 February 1980 in Washington, DC and the first fully staged presentation was given by Opera/Chicago in 1984. Among other productions, Radamisto was staged by Santa Fe Opera in 2008, by English National Opera in 2010 and by Theater an der Wien in 2013. An acclaimed production of Radamisto (first version) was directed by Sigrid T’Hooft at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, in 2009. Fully conceived in period style (it took its cue from an original prompt book), T'Hooft's staging was revived and now ranks among the most significant examples of historically informed performance in opera.

Synopsis

 * Place: Armenia, Temple of Garni
 * Time: 53 A.D.

Act 1
In the royal tent outside the city, Polissena, desperately unhappy, prays to the gods to help her in her sorrow ("Sommi Dei"). She is married to Tiridate, King of Armenia, but he has conceived a mad passion for another woman, Zenobia, who is married to Polissena's brother, Prince Radamisto, heir to the throne of the neighbouring kingdom of Thrace. Fraarte, Tiridate's brother, and Tigrane, an ally of Tiridate, come to Polissena and tell her that such is her husband's obsession with his sister-in-law Zenobia that he has declared war on the kingdom and is besieging the city, all so he can satisfy his desire for her. Fraarte and Tigrane advise Queen Polissena to forget about her husband ("Deh! fuggi un traditore") and console herself with Tigrane ("L’ingrato non amar"), who is in love with her, but Polissena is not interested. Tiridate enters and tells his wife to leave; King Farasmane of Thrace, her father, is brought to Tiridate in chains, having been captured in the battle and Tiridate warns he will be put to death unless Zenobia is given to him. Polissena pleads for mercy, but Tiridate dismisses her ("Tu vuoi ch’io parta").

In the camp of Tiridate, Radamisto and Zenobia have come to try to negotiate the release of King Farasmene, Radamisto's father. Tiridate threatens to kill Farasmene unless they surrender the city ("Con la strage de’ nemici"). Radamisto and Zenobia are anguished ("Cara sposa, amato bene"). In order to prevent further bloodshed, Zenobia offers herself to Tiridate ("Son contenta di morire"), leaving Radamisto torn ("Perfido, di a quell'empio tiranno") but Farasmene says he prefers to die rather than live by the sacrifice of his daughter-in-law's honour ("Son lievi le catene").

In front of Tiridate's palace, he is greeted as he returns victorious from the battle. Radamisto and Zenobia have escaped and King Farasmene will be held hostage until they are found. Polissena rebukes her husband Tiridate for his dishonourable behaviour and his adulterous pursuit of his sister-in-law but his only response is to tell her to keep quiet ("Segni di crudeltà"). Tigrane again presses his attentions on her, but Polissena rejects him and can only hope that happier times lie ahead ("Dopo l'orride procelle").

Act 2
In the countryside by the river Araxes, Radamisto and Zenobia are fleeing from Tiridate and his army. Zenobia is at the end of her endurance; Tiridate is waging war and shedding blood all in the attempt to satisfy his lust for her ("Vuol ch’io serva"). It seems to her the best thing would be her death and then his cruelty would cease. She asks her husband to kill her; he tries to stab her as she asks but cannot bring himself to inflict more than a slight wound whereupon she jumps into the river. Radamisto is captured by Tigrane and his men who offer to take him to his sister Polissena. Radamisto is grief-stricken by what he assumes to be his wife's death and prays for peace for her soul ("Ombra cara di mia sposa"). In fact Zenobia has been rescued from drowning by Fraarte; Zenobia is still full of fury towards Tiridate ("Già che morir non posso"), even as Fraarte tries to console her ("Lascia pur amica spene").

In the garden of Tiridate's palace, Zenobia is led in by Fraarte and presented to Tiridate, who still passionately desires her ("Sì che ti renderai"). Her only concern is trying to find out her husband's whereabouts ("Fatemi, oh Cieli, almen"). In fact, Radamisto is now in the same palace, having been brought to his sister Queen Polissena by Tigrane, who is hoping that the conflict can now be resolved ("La sorte, il Ciel amor"). Radamisto wants to assassinate Tiridate but Polissena loves her husband despite everything and refuses to take part in such a plot, leaving Radamisto furious at her faithfulness to a tyrant ("Vanne, sorella ingrata").

Inside the palace, Zenobia is still mourning her fate ("Che farà quest'alma mia") while Tiridate continues to harass her with his desires. Tigrane brings them the false news that Radamisto has died, and presents Radamisto's supposed servant,"Ismeno", really Radamisto himself in disguise, who relates Radamisto's last words. Zenobia recognises her husband's voice, and when the two of them are left alone, she and Radamisto sing of their love for each other ("Se teco vive il cor")

Act 3
Outside the palace, Tigrane and Fraarte agree that Tiridate's monstrous tyranny must be stopped ("S'adopri il braccio armato"). Tigrane, recognising the hopelessness of his love for Polissena, perseveres nonetheless ("So ch'è vana la speranza").

In a room of the palace, Zenobia is concerned that her husband's disguise will be seen through and he seeks to allay her fears ("Dolce bene di quest'alma"). He hides as Tiridate comes in and again attempts to seduce Zenobia. Radamisto emerges from hiding as Polissena and Farasmene also enter, preventing Tiridate from molesting Zenobia, but Farasmane recognises his son Radamisto and calls him by name. Tiridate orders Radamisto to be executed, leaving Radamisto ("Vile! se mi dai vita") and Zenobia outraged at his tyranny ("Barbaro! partirò, ma sdegno poi verrà"). Despite the pleas of his wife Polissena, whose love for her husband is turning to hatred, Tiridate stays firm. Radamisto and Zenobia take a tearful farewell of each other ("Deggio dunque, oh Dio, lasciarti" and "Qual nave smarrita").

Inside a temple, Tiridate is determined to marry Zenobia despite everything. Polissena brings him news that the army, led by Tigrane and Fraarte, has mutinied and the people have rebelled. Surrounded by his enemies, Tiridate now sees the error of his ways. He releases Zenobia and Radamisto, who celebrate their reunion ("Non ho più affanni"), asks forgiveness from his wife, and vows to rule for the benefit of his people for the rest of his life. All celebrate the fortunate turn of events.

Context and analysis
The German-born Handel, after spending some of his early career composing operas and other pieces in Italy, settled in London, where in 1711 he had brought Italian opera for the first time with his opera Rinaldo. A tremendous success, Rinaldo created a craze in London for Italian opera seria, a form focused overwhelmingly on solo arias for the star virtuoso singers. In 1719, Handel was appointed music director of an organisation called the Royal Academy of Music (unconnected with the present day London conservatoire), a company under royal charter to produce Italian operas in London. Handel was not only to compose operas for the company but hire the star singers, supervise the orchestra and musicians, and adapt operas from Italy for London performance.

Radamisto was Handel's first opera for the Royal Academy and was an enormous success with London audiences,as Handel's first biographer John Mainwaring noted;"'Many (ladies), who had forc'd their way into the house with an impetuosity ill suited to their rank and sex, actually fainted through the excessive heat and closeness of it. Several gentlemen were turned back, who had offered forty shillings for a seat in the gallery, after having despaired of getting any in the pit or boxes'."

Lady Mary Cowper noted in her diary: "At night, Radamistus, a fine opera of Handel’s making. The King there with his ladies. The Prince in the stage-box. Great crowd."

In the opinion of 18th century musicologist Charles Burney Radamisto was "more solid, ingenious, and full of fire than any drama which Handel had yet produced in this country."

The opera is scored for strings, flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns and continuo instruments (cello, lute, harpsichord).

Unusually for a Handel opera, the work contains a quartet, at the climax of the piece in Act Three. To Jonathan Keates, Radamisto is a work of the first stage of Handel's maturity as a composer, with its "masterly" invention and characterisation through music.

title: Radamisto (Handel)


text:
User:Grue/RFA

Grue
[ Vote here] (0/0/0) ending 00:00 00 Month 0000 (UTC) I discovered Wikipedia in 2004 and started editing since August of that year. I'm visiting Wikipedia every day, checking stuff on my Watchlist, and then browsing through different pages till my eyes begin to hurt. I think this time could be spent more productively if I'll be an admin (see the answers for what I intend to do). So, I'm nominating myself, have your say whether I'm good enough.  Grue  17:15, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Support

Oppose

Neutral

Comments

Questions for the candidate

A few generic questions to provide guidance for voters:
 * 1. What sysop chores, if any, would you anticipate helping with? (Please read the page about administrators and the administrators' reading list.)
 * A. Speedy deletions (I'm highly unlikely to delete something valuable), vandalism reversion (already doin' that quite often - but saving a few clicks could improve efficiency), all sorts of other work no one else wants to do...
 * 2. Of your articles or contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?
 * A. Well, I tent to edit on quite obscure subjects so good articles rarely emerge... See Kingdom of Loathing/Radio KoL split (um, joint?) for "brilliant" prose, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Magic:_The_Gathering_sets for my community skillz. Ah, and Wikifun/Round 7, actually I think that's the best thing I done.
 * 3. Have you been in any conflicts over editing in the past or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future?
 * A. I had some debates on VfD/VfU grounds, very often my opinion is against the majority, but I'm always voting in good faith and ready to explain my vote. I do not consider myself inclusionist and I'm certainly not deletionist, so there's been some disagreements. Most often I'm just clearly explaining my position and accept whatever the result of debate is. I never got in personal conflicts and RFC-able stuff so I guess I'm doing quite well.

title: User:Grue/RFA