7
A Brief History of Making Sense of the Iraq War
"This particular book-or rather, set of books-is every edit made to a single Wikipedia article, The Iraq War, during the five years between the article's inception in December 2004 and November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages. It amounts to twelve volumes: the size of a single old-style encyclopaedia. It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes 'Saddam Hussein was a dickhead.'" (via)
Land Reform. Saudi and Kuwaiti interests in Iraq. Electrical grid destruction and progress. Clean water projects. Political redistricting. No one cares. Iraqis suffered under Saddam, sanctions, and we've decapitated their society. When I hear people say that the Iraqis need to take responsibility for their country, or fixate on how Iran has taken over, I know I am actually talking to a cruel and hopeless animal.
So, obviously newspapers are flawed in this respect. But is Wikipedia, format-wise, that much better? Can someone please find a way to bridge the information distribution gap between news cycle and wikipedia?
History is written by the victors
History is written by
the victorspeople with too much time on their hands.Conspiracy!
Think it's a coincidence that Volumes 9 and 11 are larger than the rest?
I love you when you hate Iran, I hate you when you hate Kuwait.
Here, take my money and bombs.
THIS IS SLAM POETRY.
Who owns the intellectual property rights to the wikipedia edits?