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Abstract
A brief account of a medieval, obscurantist matter supported by crass ignorance and strong antidemocratic feelings
The protagonists
The facts, in short
On the 21st of October 2007 my friend Pino Valente, on one’s own initiative, published a biographical page about me on the Italian Wikipedia. Almost immediately somebody, always protected by a false name, called for the cancellation of that page. From that moment on, as you can easily see from the precise chronology of the events, the whole entire of the censor-editors of the Italian Wikipedia embraces in an absolutely close formation the idea of sending this page to the stake. They consequently pretend to prepare a case for trial, in which all the rules are rigged, and the rules themselves are changed over and over again. The censor-editors themselves declare their intention of burning the page even before the fake trial.
The first charge is the infringement of copyright because of sentences already used somewhere else.
In a matter of minutes Pino Valente changes the whole contribution so that the charge should be dropped consequently. But in the meanwhile the censor-editors have taken strongly to heart the notion of doing a contemptible and obscurantist deed and they change immediately the charge into ‘questionable enciclopedicity’.
Pino Valente had listed only few elements that might have demolished such a charge even in the eyes of a blind. Nevertheless, being prompted to do so, he added dozens of important national and international references, enough to demolish even this latter charge.
At this point the censor-editors, who had previously judged the evidence of ‘enciclopedicity’ of the undersigned, are now confronted by a list of the objective testimonies given by the one who had created that page. With a U-turn they invert their charge transforming it into ‘doubt of self-promotion’. This way, they prove that they are not realizing to be facing nothing else than a ‘compilation of a curricular list’.
At this point the call for vote starts and, as previously announced even before the fake trial, the page is burnt during the night of the 29th-30th of October.
It is my opinion that in this squalid story the following should be underlined.
1) The absolute bad faith of the editors of the Italian Wikipedia. They contradicted themselves in black and white several times. They played against their own rules, in the typical discrediting attack of those who do such an ethically despicable work (as they universally judge it in every civil country) like that of the censor.
2) Their decision, taken a priori and also declared in writing, to delete the article we are talking about before the false trial (Moongateclimber wrote at 08:25, 26 Oct 2007 (CEST): … although inclined to deletion…).
3) In their incredible effort of trying to prove that black is white and white black, the editors of the Italian Wikipedia produced contradictory and paradoxical statements. At the beginning the charge brought against my page was of infringed copyright, which charge was immediately dropped when Pino Valente entirely rewrote the article.
Then the charge became ‘questionable enciclopedicity’: in order to face this charge, Pino Valente decided to insert a very short list of testimonies from universally highly rated publications and newspapers (such as La Repubblica and Giorgio Galli’s book). With this list everyone in bona fide would have acknowledged that the charge was absolutely baseless.
If you search for “ciro discepolo” on Google, you can find about 12,500 documents about me and my work. This is an evidence of enciclopedicity, unless the editors of the Italian Wikipedia, supported by a personal specific aversion, want to overturn the meaning that they have written themselves in this connection.
This is another evidence given in this respect by mister Moongateclimber (whom we might rename the Lion-Heart in the usage of nickname): “…. The other publications that ‘quote him’, why there’s only three of them (if he’s the founder of a ‘branch’ of the astrology) and why have they been published in marginal contexts?”. Then Pino Valente makes the number of links to national and international publications grow, including the seminars that I’ve been asked to hold in prestigious universities, in Italy and abroad. But the indefatigable Moongateclimber seems to have sworn - like the Khomeinists - to destroy me (Be indulgent with him: try to put yourself in the place of those who do such a detestable work like that of a censor). As soon as Pino does that, Moongateclimber performs conjuring tricks in which the pages about me change continually and also the charges change, making a new charge appear, namely: ‘doubt of self-promotion’. Oh, then, why haven’t you told that before? “Whatever you do, whichever step you take you’re duped. If you put few links (had I wanted to, I could have flooded that space with at least three-four thousand pages of favourable comment about me, coming from people that - in your view - are estimable) you are not worth of encyclopaedic mention. If, on the contrary, you make their number grow with munificence, then it does not mean that you are acting in a curricular way, but that your are promoting yourself instead”.
Hadn’t it some tragic and squalid connotations on the cultural ground, this situation would be comical; it would in fact remind me of the statistical researches that I and few others have performed in the field of astrology.
Each time we reached a positive result to which the science set its seal somebody would get up and shout: “All right, you’ve demonstrated it by replicating your research four times. But in order to be credible, you must replicate it one more time!” We did so then, and they replied: “It is not enough, repeat it once again”, which amounts to saying: “You may repeat it over and over to infinity; I will always say that it isn’t enough!”
Thus, the point arrives where mister Moongateclimber claims: “What does Camilla Cederna says about him? don’t know (perhaps a capital letter should come after the question mark, but let’s not cavil: if you are a demigod who can decide whether to delete or not delete your fellow creatures, you are not expected to know the Italian language and spelling) for (perhaps a capital letter is missing here too) me this link, the way it has been done, should be removed”. Perhaps I’m missing something: isn’t he the censor? Should not he read what Camilla Cederna writes about me? And if he’s rushed for time, or if he isn’t up for reading it, then - according to him - should not Camilla Cederna be deleted too? We are clearly facing delusions of omnipotence.
4) As I told you, this story seems to me like the game of chance of the three cards - here it is and here it isn’t; now you see it and now you don’t - with the name of the player rigged too! I tell you why the dice are loaded in this game. In any trial worth its name (although our censors prefer to call otherwise the dirty question that they have raised) roles are shared out among different individual persons: while in this case the prosecutor, the judge and the executor of the sentence are the same individuals. Shame! In any trial worth its name there is the possibility of appealing to a different court. Not here, so won’t you come and talk about democracy to me. This is not all. Once I was invited to fight a ‘duel’ against an astrophysicist, in a public and crowded place: mind you, not on a neutral ground, but virtually at my challenger’s home. Being a teacher of astrophysics, he asked all the students of his course who had to take an examination with him, to be there to support him. You can easily guess the hooligan-like rooting they produced.
Now, if the suppression (let us call a spade a spade: the stake) of my page is hypocritically put to the ballot, what really happens? It happens that any scientifist teacher (as philosopher Raffaello Franchini used to define them) will ask his students to vote with thumbs down, and the page will be burnt. And you call this democracy? Isn’t it evidently a joke instead? Similarly, we can assume that a ‘Joseph the Kid Killer’ from Memphis death row publishes a page on the Wikipedia, celebrating how he once cut his little sister’s throat.
Somebody calls for the cancellation of the article and there is a ‘call for vote’. Thousands of inmates from Memphis, Raiford and Utah would vote for the Kid Killer, and the Kid Killer would enrich the marvellous free encyclopaedia, the Italian Wikipedia. Wonderful, isn’t it?
5) This leads us to another point: the entitlement of voters. In order to paint their hateful, fascistically inspired act with a layer of democracy, the censor-editors of the Italian Wikipedia count the ‘votes for’ and the ‘votes against’ of those who accessed the voting page, expressing their preference with a plus or a minus.
But who controlled those people’s entitlement to vote? Why do the aforementioned censor-editors pretend to be scrupulously asking themselves whether La Repubblica is a really important daily newspaper, whether the TV programs of Gianni Minoli are really important, whether Giorgio Galli’s book is really important - but they don’t eventually check whether those who will judge are really entitled to do so?
It is like if in a street lynching of the plague-spreaders mentioned in Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, somebody - before hanging up the alleged plague-spreader - would have asked the enraged crowd: “Do you want me to hang him up?” Everybody would have answered “Yes!” for the great satisfaction of the hangman, who could consider himself as a real democrat.
6) Since they don’t sell locusts in Africa, the censor-editors of the Italian Wikipedia are supposed to have a minimum of culture. It is not so, as you can see in the following sequel of ‘pearls’, not only they are abysmally ignorant with regard to the matters they discuss about: they are also very ignorant when it comes to general culture, and they aren’t even able to write correctly in Italian.
So it’s such people who should judge whether somebody, who published over 50 books for real publishers, is worthy of appearing in an encyclopaedia. Get on with you!
7) In the execution of their wicked project, the censor-editors of the Italian Wikipedia have deliberately infringed the rules that they had imposed themselves and that they are allegedly guaranteeing:
“Encyclopaedic, and therefore to be accepted without any specific scrutiny of the community, are considered the articles concerning biography of people or groups of people who have distinguished themselves in a particular and noteworthy way for their activities and/or their thought, which is usually proven by a verifiable and reliable bibliography”.
Beside satisfying this first point (see my bibliography and the bibliographic references in the page), in my twenty-year activity for the national daily newspaper Il Mattino, I wrote several articles on the front-page, thus matching the following criterion that Italian Wikipedia applies in order to establish the enciclopedicity of an individual:
“having published in several occasions articles on the front page and/or editing a daily newspaper or a magazine of national relevance (also on-line)”.
As if that wasn’t enough, my school of Astrology called the ‘Active Astrology’ is universally acknowledged: it’s a particular methodology of use of the Astrology; besides having a predictive goal, it may be used actively by an individual in order to take control (at a level of trends) over the future events that will concern him/her.
The latter aspect matches another discriminating principle set by the Italian Wikipedia:
“having defined and/or given name to some theorem or principle (any science), mathematical formula, chemical reaction, algorithm, law or invention”
The same can be said for a precise discovery in the field of the astral heredity: an original discovery, never proven before, supported by the examination of over 75,000 births and by the endorsement of science concerning the correctness of the applied methodology and the significance of the attained results.
8) In my world-view, the Readers are always the highest judges: they will form an idea about the infamy that back this obscurantist and despicable story, by reading on the Italian Wikipedia the following articles:
- Magic Shop (Buffy l’ammazzavampiri) - Here you can see the English version of the article
- Passera
Passera [literally: hen sparrow]
It's the feminine for "passero" (sparrow, Passer italiae), a very common bird in Italy.
Yet, in the Italian language this is also a slang word for vagina, and the Italian Wikipedia devotes a whole page to this subject.
- Tecniche di Dragon Ball
Tecniche di Dragon Ball [Dragon Ball techniques]
The fighting techniques of the characters of a manga, now transposed into a videogame.
- Con Caparezza... nella mondezza
"Con Caparezza... nella mondezza" [literally "With Caparezza… in the rubbish"] is an album of the Italian rapper singer CapaRezza, in a trash disposition.
Now many people proposed me to re-propose the page once again. I have no intention of doing it. As I wrote on my homepage, I do not intend to appear on the Italian Wikipedia.
André Barbault, the greatest astrologer of the last two centuries, in a preface of one of my books wrote about me the following: “His name is already written in golden letters in the pantheon of Urania”. Have I any interest in coming down from the pantheon of Urania to reach the above listed trash?
Last, here are some howlers of these followers of the firemen of Fahrenheit 451:
Moongateclimber (false name) writes: “What does Camilla Cederna says about him? don’t know. for me this link, the way it has been done, should be removed”.
As you can notice, he doesn’t even know how to write in his mother tongue; moreover, in evident delusions of omnipotence he would like to delete even Camilla Cederna.
Inviaggio (false name): “Substantially speaking, he’s the astrologer of Il Mattino, the Neapolitan daily paper”.
What a barefaced lie - nonetheless the others have allowed him to vote - for he knows very well that I have never compiled ‘horoscopes of the solar signs’ - neither for Il Mattino, nor for any other papers or magazines.
Lucas (false name) “Reading his biography, one would say he’s rather encyclopaedic (just as encyclopaedic as a wizard would be encyclopaedic at the times of Mayas, just to set the record straight)”.
Also this contribution has been counted in favour of the elimination of the page.
Vito (false name) “Oh, well…”.
Also this contribution has been counted in favour of the elimination of the page.
Ylebru (false name) “Astrology is not a ‘field’, but an ensemble of superstitions that the scientific and academic community does not absolutely hold into esteem. Superstitions - perhaps interesting ones, from the sociological and anthropological point of view; but surely not from the scientific point of view (as this article wants to impose to us, with those computerized studies and the connections with the National Research Council”.
This individual shows to know nothing, from the point of view of the philosophy of science, about the value of the astrology; nevertheless he has been allowed to vote. But - wasn’t it a vote about Ciro Discepolo’s questionable enciclopedicity? Or do they vote about the value of astrology?
Leoman (false name) “[he’s] surely less known than Paolo Fox”.
Also this individual’s vote has been accepted, as well as the others’, despite the fact that he - and the whole censorship-editorship of the Italian Wikipedia - does not even know the difference between astrology and the so-called ‘astrology of the solar signs’, i.e. the one that doles out daily, weekly, monthly and yearly horoscopes for popular magazines. These people’s ignorance is so crass that it is hard to believe that they have been put there to censor the articles of the ‘Italian Wikipedia the Free Encyclopaedia’ by mere accident. On the contrary, all this matter makes you think that on purpose somebody selected for this task people of the lowest culture, virtually completely ignorant even in their mother tongue, all of them possessing a common sense of hatred against culture and democracy, and against the free circulation of ideas.
Blackcat (false name) “He’s a likeable guy, I don’t deny - but Astrology and Encyclopaedia don’t go together well even if they rhyme in Italian”.
This is another marvellous example of prejudice. Also this vote has been counted - together with all the other ones - for burning the page: but - wasn’t it a vote about my questionable enciclopedicity? Or was it against astrology?
Beechs (false name). In a pathetic attempt of self defence, he goes so far as to theorize that only those crimes where blood is lost are to be considered as crimes against humanity. He also adds that, hadn’t I rebelled against this farce disguised as trial, perhaps ‘they’ may have pardoned me…
Sannita (false name. I think he also belong to the staff of censor-editors): “I don’t like those shouting: Censure! Censure!”
Of course he doesn’t - for he makes censure, doesn’t it?
Maquesta (false name I think that he (she?) also belongs to the staff of censor-editors) “This is not a hosting website for advertising self-proclaimed coffee-cup readers”.
Her ignorance is abysmal. Furthermore, she uses lying and insult in order to instigate the others (although there was no need to do so) to hatred against the one brought to trial.
I had better stop here because I’m getting nausea. I also believe that this is the best way to end this section, giving the exact measure of how this action squadron operated - and I say squad in the meaning that a certain man born in Predappio gave to this term. I hope to be able or allowed to get to know the real names of their members sooner or later, who presently hide behind anonymity.
Ciro Discepolo
Clicking over this link you can find all (or almost all: many people have been censored in the page of discussions in the hours immediately preceding vote, they are ready to give witness before a court) the staff related with this false trial, including the false discussion and the false vote. This is to prevent anybody from claiming that in this page I have used out, of contexts, single passages of wider threads: just click on this link and you can read everything that has been written by the censors and their supporters, no words barred.
Four contributions of mine follow. The last one has been published on the page of the trial organized for the deletion of Bianco-Valente’s page as a vendetta of the editors of the Italian Wikipedia for having supported my reasons). As you can read, I did not plead for saving my page. On the contrary, I invited everybody to vote against me. I simply intended to muddy those shady customers with all the filth they deserve.
1st intervention
I have been informed that there is a trial in process, regarding me. I don’t know whether the defendant is allowed to have his say in such a trial, so I try. At worst, you will reject my intervention or you will delete with a correction fluid the parts that you don’t like.
I think that censorship has ancient roots; we find evidence of it even in the Old Testament. But do not worry: it is not my intention to start with the Bible!
Let us not consider the hard job of centuries in which inquisitors must have eliminated with tortures and murder those who didn’t think like they did. Frankly, had I to express my sincere opinion I would not say that Voltaire’s alleged motto - For all my life I’ll fight against your ideas, but for all my life I’ll also fight for your right to express them - is the flag of Italian Wikipedia, the free web encyclopaedia.
Perhaps - of course this is only my opinion - more realistically your libertarian politics may be closer to another motto, a less famous one, created by woody Allen in his ‘Bananas’: “Differences of opinion should be tolerated, but not when they’re too different.”.
Talking about much closer times, I like to remember the burning of ‘Last tango in Paris’, when the censors took care to destroy to the last copy of that film.
Another enlightening example of odium theologicum and censorship is, in my opinion, Ray Bradbury’s wonderful novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ in which a fire brigade (isn’t this parallel wonderful?) ransacks the town of a future society in search of hidden books in order to burn them in huge public bonfires, claiming that culture may manipulate the souls.
It would be interesting to have a psychological profile of the censor in these few examples above; but above all, it would be interesting to understand once again who assigns the sheriff stars that allow some individuals establish what other individuals can or cannot read.
It would also be interesting to be able to consult the written laws that rule the application of censorship to Italian Wikipedia, and to know whether they have been self-decided or they have been approved by some world-wide organization like human rights, independent international courts and so on.
It would also be intriguing to learn whether such rules allow certain degrees of freedom. For example, may a pop-folk music singer be struck off? And a football player, say one playing in a minor league - can he be cancelled by pressing a key of a computer?
There’s yet another thing that I don’t understand. In your pages it is felt that promotional texts cannot be used, even if related to friends or acquaintances that you esteem. If I wished to compile a page on Ernest Hemingway and if I wrote that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature with his novel ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, would this be considered a ‘promotional message’? If I quoted the works of any other writer, perhaps more appreciated by the editor of censorship of Italian Wikipedia, would not be violated in this case the principle of ‘abuse in the sense of promotion’?
A very last question I raise for the sake of curiosity: if I prepared a shorter version of my bibliography, listing about fifteen works instead of the ‘real’ quantity which is over 55 volumes, would this incite positively your indulgence for me, so that I would not be cancelled or deleted with the correction fluid?
As you can understand, this is something that matters to me, for a few years before the last holocaust, all started more or less in a way similar to this…
Ciro Discepolo
2nd intervention
I don’t think I’d be able to undergo a ‘duel’ with mister Moongateclimber because it would not be a fight on equal terms: in fact he is empowered to ‘cancel me’, while I am not.
Secondly, those who hide behind a nickname have always a lead over those who sign using their real name and surname, and whose telephone number appears in the telephone directory. Nonetheless I shall confine myself to some very short remark considering that the Readers are able to judge with their own brain all that has been written, with an evident sense of dislike, by the editor of the free web encyclopaedia.
The difference that he makes between censorship and ‘what to put and what not to put’, in my opinion, is a masterpiece of rhetoric: the realm where it is possible to say anything and its contrary.
Yet he doesn’t answers my simple questions: why there is a doubt of ‘promotion’ for certain authors, and not for others?
Does the questionable ‘enciclopedicity’ apply only to me or has it caused a lot of sleepless nights to you before accepting an article concerning a neomelodical singer or a full back player of the most popular sport in Italy?
The idea and the compilation of this article come from one of my pupils and admirer, whom I also admire for his artistic works, on exhibition in the most important museums of the world. Yet I am defined an ‘advertiser’ and I intend to intervene later on this fact, in due places, for it is not the inverted commas and the shield of a nickname what will defend anybody when he or she wants to insult somebody, in public and in a written text that can not be deleted.
I’d like to underline to mister Moongateclimber or whatever his nickname is, that important universities in Italy and abroad have invited me to hold seminars, also paying for them. Some of my statistical researches have led to discoveries that nobody had never hypothesized before. My works and studies are quoted by authoritative works published also by universities.
This, as he says, has made me a ‘renowned’ one for decades and the fact that he does not ‘know’ me, at worst makes my eyebrows knit between the afternoon news and the commercial of homogenized food.
Ciro Discepolo at 14:10, also in my case: Central European Summer Time
3rd intervention
I did not intend to intervene once again in this really bad story. But I have to, because it seems to me that - as explained at the beginning - really excessive things are happening. Almost certainly what at the beginning seemed to be an almost private matter is ending up in my opinion, by investing important juridical and civil aspects of out society, and these aspects will certainly lead to sequels in the most appropriate places.
Ciro Discepolo, at 14:06 (CEST)
The operation that is being performing to my detriment, even if you appeal to self-produced rules and laws, is nothing else than a pillory to which I have been publicly pilloried; somebody will have to answer for the huge moral damages that I am suffering for this.
The dimension of this matter has been enormously widening; I am certain that I’ll have to program - against my own will, for I would have liked to invest my time better - further interventions in which I’ll demonstrate what follows:
1) The absolute bad faith of the editors of Italian Wikipedia, who contradicted themselves in black and white several times. They played against their own rules, in the typical discrediting attack of those who do such an ethically despicable work (as they universally judge it in every civil country) like that of the censor.
2) Their decision, taken a priori and also declared in writing, to delete the article we are talking about before the false trial (Moongateclimber 08:25, 26 Oct 2007 (CEST): … although inclined to deletion…).
For the time being, I have sent this letter to the director of the magazine PC Professionale:
Subject: Italian Wikipedia, Fahrenheit 451 and other pages ready for the stake Dear Director, your monthly magazine is (I believe) the main reference for the informatics in Italy. It constantly deals with problems connected with censorship on the Internet. So perhaps you may be interested in following, for a few days, the inquisitorial trial with which the editors of this organization have intended to pillory a page, compiled for me by a friend who admires me, and whom I admire too for his art, on exhibition in the most important museums of the world. Here are the pages we are talking of:
http://it.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciro_Discepolo
http://it.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussione:Ciro_Discepolo
www.bianco-valente.com
I haven’t written articles on newspaper for ages, but if you judge it useful, I am at your disposition for a free written contribution on your magazine on the subject of censorship. My best wished for the next issue of PC Professional, yours Ciro Discepolo
Immediately after I have started writing a dossier that I’ll send to ANSA when completed, for its diffusion on all the national newspapers. Meanwhile I report what follows.
1) Master Pino Valente (together with his wife Giovanna Bianco they form a couple of renowned contemporary artists), has been punished by the editors of Italian Wikipedia for his excessive activity in my favour, for having compiled the aforementioned page as a mark of his esteem for me: his account in Italian Wikipedia has been suspended for two days. Therefore Pino Valente and Giovanna Bianco have written in their homepage what follows:
bianco-valente do not want to appear on the Italian Wikipedia any longer.
The Italian Wikipedia is not inspired by principles of freedom. The Italian Wikipedia censors the knowledge.
The Italian Wikipedia, the only ‘free’ encyclopaedia with a red bolt:
And a red bolt has been really placed on the article Bianco-Valente in the Italian Wikipedia.
2) Now I invite all the Internet people, even those who are against me and against my ideas, but who are against any form of censorship, to write the same sentences in their own homepages, so that this slogan may become the logo of all the real democrats of knowledge, at least on the web.
3) As I told, in their incredible effort of trying to prove that black is white and white black, the editors of the Italian Wikipedia are producing contradictory and paradoxical statements. At the beginning the charge brought against my page was of infringed copyright, which charge was immediately dropped when Pino Valente entirely rewrote the article.
Then the charge became ‘questionable enciclopedicity’: in order to face this charge, Pino Valente decided to insert a very short list of testimonies from universally highly rated publications and newspapers (such as La Repubblica and Giorgio Galli’s book). With this list everyone in bona fide would have acknowledged that the charge was absolutely baseless.
If you search for ‘ciro discepolo’ on Google, you can find about 12,500 documents about me and my work. This is an evidence of enciclopedicity, unless the editors of the Italian Wikipedia, supported by a personal specific aversion, want to overturn the meaning that they have written themselves in this connection. This is another piece of evidence given in this respect by mister Moongateclimber (whom we might rename the Lion-Heart in the usage of nickname): “…. The other publications that ‘quote him’, why there’s only three of them (if he’s the founder of a ‘branch’ of the astrology) and why have they been published in marginal contexts?”.
Then Pino Valente makes the number of links to national and international publications grow, including the seminars that I’ve been asked to hold in prestigious universities, in Italy and abroad. But the indefatigable Moongateclimber seems to have sworn - like the Khomeinists - to destroy me (Be indulgent with him: try to put yourself in the place of those who do such a detestable work like that of a censor). As soon as Pino does that, Moongateclimber performs conjuring tricks in which the pages about me change continually and also the charges change, making a new charge appear, namely: ‘doubt of self-promotion’. Oh, then, why haven’t you told that before? Whatever you do, whichever step you take you’re duped. If you put few links (had I wanted to, I could have flooded that space with at least three-four thousand pages of favourable comment about me, coming from people that - in your view - are estimable) you are not worth of encyclopaedic mention. If, on the contrary, you make their number grow with munificence, then it does not mean that you are acting in a curricular way, but that you are promoting yourself instead.
Hadn’t it some tragic and squalid connotations on the cultural ground, this situation would be comical; it would in fact remind me of the statistical researches that I and few others have performed in the field of astrology.
Each time we reached a positive result to which the science set its seal somebody would get up and shout: “All right, you’ve demonstrated it by replicating your research four times. But in order to be credible, you must replicate it one more time!”. We did so then, and they replied: “It is not enough, repeat it once again”, which amounts to saying: “You may repeat it over and over to infinity; I will always say that it isn’t enough!”
Thus, the point arrives where mister Moongateclimber claims: “What does Camilla Cederna says about him? don’t know (perhaps a capital letter should come after the question mark, but let’s not cavil: if you are a demigod who can decide whether to delete or not delete your fellow creatures, you are not expected to know the Italian language and spelling) for (perhaps a capital letter is missing here too) me this link, the way it has been done, should be removed”.
Perhaps I’m missing something: isn’t he the censor? Should not he read what Camilla Cederna writes about me? And if he’s rushed for time, or if he isn’t up for reading it, then - according to him - should not Camilla Cederna be deleted too? We are clearly facing delusions of omnipotence.
4) As I told you, this story seems to me like the game of chance of the three cards - here it is and here it isn’t; now you see it and now you don’t - with the name of the player rigged too! I tell you why the dice are loaded in this game. In any trial worth its name (although our censors prefer to call otherwise the dirty question that they have raised) roles are shared out among different individual persons: while in this case the prosecutor, the judge and the executor of the sentence are the same individuals.
Shame! In any trial worth its name there is the possibility of appealing to a different court. Not here, so won’t you come and talk about democracy to me. This is not all. Once I was invited to fight a ‘duel’ against an astrophysicist, in a public and crowded place: mind you, not on a neutral ground, but virtually at my challenger’s home. Being a teacher of astrophysics, he asked all the students of his course who had to take an examination with him, to be there to support him. You can easily guess the hooligan-like rooting they produced.
Now, if the suppression (let us call a spade a spade: the stake) of my page is hypocritically put to the ballot, what really happens? It happens that any scientifist teacher (as philosopher Raffaello Franchini used to define them) will ask his students to vote with thumbs down, and the page will be burnt. And you call this democracy? Isn’t it evidently a joke instead?
Similarly, we can assume that an ‘Al Capon’ from Alcatraz publishes a page on the Italian Wikipedia, celebrating how he once cut his little sister’s throat. Somebody calls for the cancellation of the article and there is a ‘call for vote’. Thousands of Italian inmates from Alcatraz, Sing Sing and other prisons from all over the world would vote for the Capon, and the Capon would enrich the marvellous free encyclopaedia, the Italian Wikipedia. Wonderful, isn’t it?
5) But how do things work abroad? Much more seriously and democratically than here in Italy, where the ‘castor oil nostalgia’ still produces amazing things. On the last 23rd of October, on the English Wikipedia, another champion of Italian bravery, still wearing a nicknamed bullet-proof vest, called for the cancellation of my corresponding American page, and immediately an American blocked the process and the page stayed there, immaculate. I don’t know what these censors of ours may have on their business card. Probably some status with cryptic acronyms in American language. But you can easily translate them into one single substantive: censor. I don’t know how I would feel if one day one of my beautiful daughters arrived home and asked me: “Dad, is it true that you are a censor?”. I’d probably commit suicide, much to my shame.
6) A temporary conclusion. I do not invite you to vote for me (as for me, you can imagine how much my books care for having being cancelled from the Italian Wikipedia, since they are selling better and better). On the contrary: I’d like to ask you something provocative. Vote against me but also insert the following three lines on the homepages of your websites. I don’t mind if you do it with hatred against me, but do it for the sake of democracy.
bianco-valente do not want to appear on the Italian Wikipedia any longer.
The Italian Wikipedia is not inspired by principles of freedom. The Italian Wikipedia censors the knowledge.
The Italian Wikipedia, the only ‘free’ encyclopaedia with a red bolt.
4th intervention
I am astonished, I can’t believe it. Only a week ago, if I had been told what happens on the Italian Wikipedia and under my eyes here and in my page, I would have said that it’s impossible. No learned and civilized person could, in fact, guess that in a self-defined site of culture and freedom such mean are used that not even in Yangon are used against together with the stake of the Buddhist monks. Here not only there is censorship, which is itself an extremely serious fact that would stigmatize this brand for centuries. There is also ignorance and hatred, weighing tons. Even more, in my article a terrible confusion is made between astrology and the horoscopes of the solar signs. I am compared with Paolo Fox, which demonstrates the ignorance of the censor-editors of this site on this subject. Others play the philosophers of science and they would like to establish, from the epistemological point of view, whether astrology is a science or not (would they feel like face this matter in a public debate, in the presence of press?). Eventually these people would decree the cancellation of the articles about Bianco-Valente and about me, with the algebraic sum of their ‘+1’s. I can’t believe it. Behind the appearance of the absolute rigour under which this and that false trial are being held, they try to hide the fact that those who vote, hidden behind a false name, might as well be complete illiterates and enemies of culture. Has anybody controlled those people’s entitlement to vote? No? If so, how come do they wonder - pretending an absolute rigour - whether certain museums may be considered of an international relevance? Is it still you, the demigods, who establish this? Or will some regular customers collected on the street decide it for you, under false names? Giovanna Bianco and Pino Valente had simply asked that their article would be cancelled from the Italian Wikipedia; instead you have organized against them a character assassination only similar to that already organized against me - a lynching still going on. The violence and gratuitousness of your actions is unbelievable; you do not even try to hide the very squalid way with which you try to harm to people by fighting against their works. It was enough, for you, to prevent Bianco and Valente from having the chance to intervene in writing. Your red cards might become physical tortures if somebody would grant you impunity for your actions, that are all fixed in writing and that you can not delete in the following thousand years (because I’ll publish them all in my books; and my future books - like the already published ones have already - will be sent to the most important public and private libraries of the world). Perhaps you haven’t realized it, but today you are pillorying us with a public pillory only because of a power that you have given to yourselves and with fixed rules, as I have proven in my interventions on the page that you are going to delete, the day after tomorrow. But my books will keep on existing, just like the works of Bianco-Valente. And the legacy that you (censors or editors as you prefer us to call you) will leave to the world, when you leave this world, will only be a little item of the next edition of Jorge Luis Borges’ Universal History of Infamy. I am also a little bit sorry for your kids, although not guilty, for they will have to hide their surname behind more and more impenetrable nicknames.
Ciro Discepolo, the 28th of October 2007 at 12:57 (CET).
The very last remark
I absolutely don’t consider myself injured party because of the absence of my article on the Italian Wikipedia, for the reasons explained above.
Ciro Discepolo
I know that many opponents, also among astrologers, may be drinking a toast to the stake of my pages; but it is evident to everybody - even to those with little brain - that unlike Ray Bradbury’s firemen, who burnt book for real, the members of this action squad called the Italian Wikipedia and the supporters who have cheered them haven’t been able to burn my books. On the contrary, my book will burn in their souls forever: the whole content of these pages will be published on Ricerca ‘90 and sent - as usual - to the most prestigious public and private libraries in Italy and abroad, where their infamy will be preserved for centuries.
This is one of the many interventions for maintaining the page, and that have been censored by the Italian Wikipedia
{{Wikipedia:Pagine_da_cancellare/Ciro_Discepolo}}
Marcella Foscarini
- I disagree with the deletion of Ciro Discepolo’s page. On the contrary, I think that it should be extended.
“It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom” said Albert Einstein. Things haven’t absolutely changed since then. The opinions that I have read supporting the cancellation are only of a prejudicial nature; in fact, they do not prove in a ‘scientific’ way their own theses.
I think it is now time to set aside the limitations imposed by pre-concepts and to open the mind to a systematic and rigorous experimentation, for the sake of the incredulous and the curious.
Otherwise you can not invoke science!
Astrology is a discipline that comes from very afar; it deserves respect for the only fact that it has arrived up to us, and that so many people deal with it. On the other side, I understand that its complexity may be a deterrent for many others.
Nonetheless “A scepticism that rejects facts without examining them is more blameworthy than an unreasonable credulity”. Humboldt
Or maybe not?
An essential bibliography:
AAVV Storia illustrata del nazismo [An illustrated Story of Fascism], Giunti, 2002, 192 pages
Berni, Simone, A caccia di libri proibiti. Libri censurati, libri perseguitati. La storia scritta da mani invisibili [After forbidden books. Censored books, persecuted books. Our history written by invisible hands], Simple Ed., 2005, 240 pagine
Borges, Jorge L., Storia universale dell’infamia [A Universal History of Infamy], Adelphi, 1997, 115 pages
Camussone, P. F.; Occhini G. (edited by), Il costo dell’ignoranza nella società dell’informazione [The cost of Ignorance in the Society of Information], Etas, 2003, 192 pages
Cerroni, Andrea, Libertà e pregiudizio. Comunicazione e socializzazione alla conoscenza [Freedom and Prejudice. Communication and Socialization to the Knowledge], Franco Angeli, 2002, 128 pages
Discepolo, Ciro, Pregiudizi&Pregiudizi [Prejudices&Prejudices], An article published on Ricerca ‘90. You can download it here
Fabre, Giorgio, L’elenco. Censura fascista, editoria e autori ebrei [The List. Fascist censorship, publishing and Jew authors], Zamorani Ed., 1998, 500 pages
Frajese, Vittorio, Nascita dell’Indice. La censura ecclesiastica dal Rinascimento alla Controriforma [The birth the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The ecclesiastic censorship from Renaissance to Counter-Reformation], Morcelliana, 2006, 448 pages
Hoeung Ong T., Ho creduto nei Khmer rossi. Ripensamento di un’illusione [I believed in the Red Khmers. The reconsideration of an Illusion], Guerini e Associati, 2004, 235 pages
Jacobucci, Michelangelo, I nemici del dialogo. Ragioni e perversioni dell’intolleranza [The enemies of the dialogue. The reasons and perversions of intolerance], Armando Ed., 2005, 496 pages
McCauley, Martin, Stalin e lo stalinismo [Stalin and Stalinism], Il Mulino, 2004, 199 pages
Meynard, Jean-Albert, Il complesso di Barbablu. Psicologia della cattiveria e dell’odio [The complex of Bluebeard. The psychology of hatred and wickedness], Frassinelli, 2007, 240 pages
Michéa, Jean-Claude, L’insegnamento dell’ignoranza [The teaching of ignorance], Metauro Ed., 2005, 114 pages
Mullis, Kary, Ballando nudi nel campo della mente. Le idee (e le avventure) del più eccentrico tra gli scienziati moderni, [Dancing Naked in the Mind Field.] Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2007, 222 pages
Petrarca, Francesco, De ignorantia. Della mia ignoranza e di quella di molti altri [De ignorantia], Mursia, 1999, 544 pages
Rayfield, Donald, Stalin e i suoi boia. Un’analisi del regime e della psicologia stalinisti [An analyse of Stalin regime and its psychology], Garzanti Libri, 2005, 591
Rose, J. (a cura di), Il libro nella Shoah. Distruzione e conservazione [The book of Shoah. Destruction and preservation], Sylvestre Bonnard, 2003, 325 pages
Sternberg, R. J. (a cura di), Psicologia dell’odio. Conoscerlo per superarlo [Psychology of hatred. Know it to overcome it], Centro Studi Erickson, 2007, 276 pages
Tollet, Daniel, Dalla condanna del giudaismo all’odio per l’ebreo. Storia del passaggio dall’intolleranza religiosa alla persecuzione politica e sociale [From the condemnation of Judaism to the hatred for the Jews. History of the passage from religious intolerance to political and social persecution.], Marinotti, 2002, 288 pages
Varvaro, Paolo, Sul fascismo. Il pregiudizio antiliberale nella costruzione del regime totalitario [On Fascism. The antiliberal prejudice in the construction of the totalitarian regime], Rubbettino, 2007, 103 pages
Wolf, Hubert, Storia dell’Indice [History of the Index], Donzelli Ed., 2006, 278 pages
Wright, Charles, Breve storia dell’ombra [A brief history of shadow], Crocetti, 2006, 214 pages
Mississippi Burning - Le radici dell’odio [Mississippi Burning], Film dircted by Alan Parker, USA, 1989
Contro la cultura .com si torna al tadze-bao [Against the culture of .com, back to dàzìbàos], la Repubblica.it, 25th March 2000 (Link)
La finta democrazia digitale di myspace [The false digital democracy of myspace], by Fabio Izzo, Freaknet.it, 7th June 2007 (Link)
Il padre del web contro Wikipedia [The father of the web against Wikipedia], by Marina Rossi, Visionpost.it, 1st October 2007 (Link)
Azione legale per Wikipedia: «Troppi errori» [Legal action for Wikipedia: “Too many mistakes”], by Simone Bertelegni, Corriere della Sera.it, 18th december 2005 (Link)
«It is a nonsense to create an encyclopaedia in which all the information is concentrated, because the whole net is an encyclopaedia. The concentration of the sources is the opposite to the very idea of web»
Robert Cailliau
(the co-inventor of the WWW together with Tim Berners-Lee)
.