User talk:AgadaUrbanit/Archives/2012/July

Probably not very helpful

Agada, based on your contributions to the FG namespace, I have strong reason to doubt the extent of your readings on this subject. It appears to me that you read a single, 3-page article on the topic (one which is not very sound or well sourced, at that; some of the sources employed by that scholar are very poorly regarded by experts on FG), and you admitted that you did not have access to the more authoritative books on the topic. You were told before by a disciplinary admin that you would benefit from reading more if you wished to participate here, and that doing so would likely narrow the gap between your views and those of myself and TSTF. If you would like to understand the difference between Zhong Gong and Falun Gong, for instance, you may want to consider reading David Ownby's book. For other perspective, consider picking up Benjamin Penny, David Palmer, Noah Porter and Danny Schechter's writings. Homunculus (duihua) 20:14, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Zhong Gong

WRT Zhong Gong, the founder Zhang Hongbao died in a Vegas car crash a few years ago, and the practice basically died with him. Zhong Gong was never really a political organization, and the Chinese regime rounded up those guys much in the same fashion as Falun Gong because they were too paranoid of qigong in general. Colipon+(Talk) 20:23, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Zhang Hongbao died in 2006, but Zhong Gong collapsed many years earlier when the commercial and titular incentives offered to its leaders were removed. Read Palmer or Ownby. They write that whereas Falun Gong was decentralized and its adherents were drawn by spiritual incentives, Zhong Gong was highly centralized and commercialized. When it was swept up in the larger suppression, authorities shuttered its offices and detained about 600 of its leaders. It quickly subsided when the organization and money flows fell apart. There was a mass movement launched against Falun Gong (including a mass media campaign to discredit it), but not against Zhong Gong. Unlike Falun Gong, its elimination was not a priority for the leadership, bound up in Chinese nationalism and five-year plans. Also unlike Falun Gong, there were no campaigns of state-sanctioned torture against Zhong Gong; ordinary followers were not rounded up and detained, whereas hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong members were (and are). Homunculus (duihua) 23:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

AE ban

Per this AE thread, and under the authority of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, as incorporated by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Standard discretionary sanctions, you are banned indefinitely from filing new AE reports, or making comments in existing ones, except that you are permitted to comment in threads in which you are the subject of a report, but only to the extent necessary to defend yourself, and that you are permitted to appeal this restriction at AE. T. Canens (talk) 13:49, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I am still scratching my head and trying to figure out what happened. Anyway the consensus was extremely wide. Thank you for closing the discussion. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 20:32, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

That's what, more or less, happened -- ElComandanteChe^ταλκ 22:16, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

It happens, sometimes ... AgadaUrbanit (talk) 10:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I can't withstand the temptation -- ElComandanteChe^ταλκ 16:44, 16 July 2012 (UTC)