Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author, Irving Kristol, and published in England. The magazine ceased publication in 1990. It was a largely Anglo-American intellectual and cultural journal.

Spender was an editor until 1967, when he resigned. The cause of Spender's resignation was the revelation in 1967 of the covert CIA funding of the magazine, of which he had heard rumors, but which he could not confirm. Thomas W. Braden, who headed CIA IOD's operations between 1951 to 1954, said that the money for the magazine "came from CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter."[1][2]

Encounter celebrated its greatest years in terms of readership and influence under Melvin J. Lasky, who succeeded Kristol in 1958, and would serve as the main editor until the magazine closed its doors in 1991. Other editors in this period included Frank Kermode and D. J. Enright.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_(magazine)

ENCOUNTER was much more than just a litterary magazine, although it doesnt surprise me tha thats the way Wikipedia puts it. It is THE quintessential example of left-gatekkeping. Five of six articles, would left of center, but the sixth, the raison detre of the whole rag, would be specially tailored anti-soviet article to keep this small but very important in terms of impact group from criticizing US Cold War policy.

PLEASE READ MORE. IN MY OPINION FEW THINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT SO FAR AS THE HISTORY OF DISINFORMATION.

It is directly relevant to magazines like The Nation, COunterpunch et al treat JFK, and 9/11!

The best book is still The Cultural Cold War:THe CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. by Francis Stonor Saunders. Should be in libraries.

ALso relevant is the new book The Mighty WUrlitzer: How the CIA played america.

I am always astounded by people who say, they aren't surprised that's the way Wikipedia puts something. As a supporter, user, and contributor I must say the only person you can blame for inaccuracies on Wikipedia is yourself. If you see something wrong, fix it. There is no lord of censorship at wiki. When the right put up a bunch of garbage, the left could and did change it to reflect reality. Any information, no matter the source, should be examined critically. Get to know your sources and get multiple sources. Those that prove unreliable and unchangeable, reject loudy.

So you remain unconvinced by reports of CIA involvement with Wikipedia, then?

I would remain unconvinced that the situation is without recourse. No correction I have ever applied to an article has been reversed. Try your own experiment with something either trivial or significant and see if the edit remains or is reversed. If you're reversed, you may have identified someone acting on their behalf, shout it from the top of the discussion page and see their response. Wiki is the nearest thing I have found to true democracy without the BS of government regulation.

This was posted By John Simkin on the Spartacus, education forum site. It was posted on this thread which was started by a former editor of wikipedia.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... entry85580

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Daniel, you might be interested in this story. A couple of days ago I had an email from a Wikipedia administrator.

Spartacus is about to be deemed an “unreliable” source of information for use in Wikipedia. It has been accused of “left wing” bias and being “propagandistic.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... d_decision

Those who want it banned are ready to strip any reference to Spartacus. There doesn’t appear to be a reasoned decision for this except that it carries sources of information that some of the administrators don’t like regarding the Kennedy assassination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... view.3F.22

I have now discovered that the Wikipedia administrator who sent me the warning email is a trial attorney in Honolulu and for the last 35 years has engaged in trial work in commercial fraud, racketeering, and civil conspiracy both in Honolulu and in California where he is also licensed. As a result of his support for me he is almost certain to lose his post as a Wikipedia administrator.

I then posted this on the Wikipedia page discussing Spartacus:

Statement from John Simkin

I am the author of the Spartacus Educational website. It was started in September 1997. The main objective was to provide a free encyclopaedia. I believe this was a similar intention behind the creation of Wikipedia. Like Wikipedia, Spartacus has resisted all attempts to become a “subscription only” service. I was attracted to the idea of creating a website because I saw the possibility of breaking the stranglehold of the rich and powerful over the communications system. It was hoped that when Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia in 2001, he shared this vision. In an interview he gave to Slashdot he said "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." (2004-07-28) However, it seems that Wikipedia is now being used to support the “official interpretation” of the past as reflected in the mainstream media.

At the time I created the Spartacus Educational website, I was a history teacher (11-18 year olds) in England. I was also a prolific writer of history books for students. As I still held the copyright for my books, I decided to put them on the web free of charge. Students, from all over the world, were therefore being provided with free teaching materials. This is especially useful for students in the Third World who do not have the money to purchase textbooks or to those who study in countries where the authorities use the political system to control the information they receive. On average, we get 6 million page impressions a month. A survey carried out by the Fischer Family Trust showed that the Spartacus Educational website was used by more history students in the UK than any other website, including that of the BBC. As you can see, I am a very dangerous person.

http://www.fischertrust.org/

According to this page “three of the arbitrators deem Spartacus as "unreliable" and dedicated to a "propagandistic point of view." It goes on to say: “The complaining editors want defending editor RPJ banned from Wikipedia for, among other things, citing Spartacus.”

It seems strange that the arbitrators want to “ban” someone for citing a source of information because it apparently puts forward a “"propagandistic point of view". In fact, if these arbitrators spent just a short period of time on my website they would soon discover that one of my main themes is to expose propaganda from wherever it comes. See for example, my section on the communist government in the Soviet Union:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RussiaSU.htm

I especially recommend those pages on Socialist Realism, NKVD Secret Police, Soviet Writers' Union and banned writers such as Yevgeni Zamyatin, Isaac Babel, Boris Pilnyak, Nickolai Tikhonov, Mikhail Slonimski, Vsevolod Ivanov, Victor Serge, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Yesenin, Konstantin Fedin, Victor Shklovsky, Mikhail Zoshchenko and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The arbitrators seem more interested in my pages on American history. After looking at my pages on “Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, and a few other historical figures” it is concluded that I “have, what an American might believe, is a foreign viewpoint of modern American history which might seem stark, candid, and non-deferential”. I have to confess that I am indeed “candid and non-deferential”. However, that is not only true of my pages on American historical figures. I take the same approach with historical figures from all countries, not just those from the United States.

The debate about me being a reliable source is apparently based on my pages on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That I am guilty of putting forward a "propagandistic point of view." This seems to completely misunderstand the contents of my encyclopaedia. The website was created to support the teaching of history in the UK. One of the aspects of the history curriculum in the UK is to teach “interpretations”. That is to say, we teach our students that people interpret the past in different ways. There are several factors involved in this process - this includes the political beliefs of the person creating the “interpretation”. Nationalistic factors are also important, hence the reasons why arbitrators at Wikipedia based in the United States have taken offence at my “candid and non-deferential” interpretations of American political figures.

Educators in the UK have tried to deal with this problem by rejecting the idea that it is possible to create a “standardized, neutral, objective” interpretation of the past of the type favoured by the Soviet Union under Stalin and Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. Instead, history teachers in the UK attempt to arm its students with the skills needed to deal with issues like subjectivity and propaganda. Therefore, when we teach any historical subjects, we expose our students to different interpretations of the past. We also provide them with the sources of evidence that these historians use to support their interpretation of the past. This is true whether you are studying Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is reflected by my encyclopaedia. Therefore on most pages you will get examples of different interpretations of that subject. It seems that the Wikipedia arbitrators, who dislike my website, have concentrated on those interpretations they disagree with.

I suspect that attempts to get my links banned from Wikipedia has very little to do with my page on Lee Harvey Oswald. It has more to do with my pages on people like George H. W. Bush, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Robert Gates, that have links to my site from Wikipedia. This is a debate about people who are still alive. It is a debate about the present and not the past. When Wikipedia arbitrators talk about the need to produce “neutral and objective” entries, they are really concerned about the provision of a standardized view of the past. They are the modern Stalins and Hitlers who believe that the state should determine the way we see the world. Before I edited it, the Wikipedia entry for the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird described it as an “urban myth”. In fact, the CIA is still attempting to control the world’s mass media and that includes the internet. It is only to be expected that today’s struggle over how we interpret the past and the present is taking place at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

I am very interested to know something about the people who accuse me of producing propaganda. We always teach our history students that it is important to explore the background of the people creating these “interpretations”. That is why, in my encyclopedia I provide a link to a page on the person who has created the material. I also provide a link to my own biography:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/author.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simkin

Maybe my accusers at Wikipedia should provide also provide biographies that provides us some information about their experience of studying or teaching history.

I expect that this entry will soon be deleted so I have also posted it on the International Education Forum. Maybe the Wikipedia arbitrators would like to join the forum so they can post a defence of their views.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... topic=8861

It was of course deleted straight away.

Hey Nat, that was a fascinating link, thanks for posting it. I love that forum and I'm sure I would have never found it any other way...sorry to be so off topic.

Have you read much about the history of propaganda in the US media?

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LEFTY-- glad to have finally done something usefull with my life

Actually, im almost not kidding. Thats how great I think that the Spartaus Education Forum sight is.

The reason I think its so importatant is that THERE HAS BEEN SO MUCH WORK INTO CREATING AN articial dichotomy between structural analysis and "conspiracy theory" with so little analysis of what the hell the latter means.

Spartacus and Education Forum undermines this dichotomy by showing that it is false. It is a deeply historical site and also its structural, real real structural to paraphrase the Shirelles.

By the way see ALL OF THE POSTS BY THAT GUY NAMED STERLING SEAGRAVE. He is a well known sinologis (sorry, classs anxiety showing) and he also used to be an editor at Washington Post. Interesting narratives indeed. Worth findling. Also if you get a chance the Book Someone Would Have Talked is great by Larry Hancock who contributes a lot to the forum.

I also very strongly recommend Our Man In Mexico by former Washington Post editor Jefferson Morley, who is fielding questions on the book on education forum right now.

PLEASE TELL OTHERS ABOUT SPARTACUS / EDUCATION FORUM. This is a site that I really believe could change the world if more people knew about. The twains that the gov. really dont want to meet meet there!

[quote="A Proud Liberal"]So by following the same type of logic flow above we can conclude that Daily Kos and Bill Maher are fronts and tools for the CIA since neither will entertain discussion on the concept that 9/11 was an inside job. If this is what passes for logic for you, then discussion with you is fruitless for both of us. For me being a Proud Liberal does not mean giving up on my God given intellect.[/quote
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Proud liberal. relax. I did not say that. There is no reason to create a charicacture of what I suggested was a possibility that was not without historical precedent in order to create a dismisssable straw dog argument. Media disinformation is subtle.

It has to be or it wouldn't work.

A great book is called Nervous Liberals by Brett Gary, Columbira University press, American History series. If you reject a priori the idea that left-liberal media venues might SOMETIMES serve a gatekeeping function, a bit of reading might be interesting. No need to put words in my mouth or become unfriendly.