Talk:Alfred W. McCoy/Archives/2015

Storage

Removed from article. --Gwern (contribs) 00:26 17 May 2007 (GMT)

"The target of all these measures has been the recent writings and Congressional testimony of Alfred W. McCoy, a 26-year old graduate student who spent 18 months investigating the narcotics operations in Southeast Asia." Hersh, Seymour M. (21 July 1972). "C.I.A. aides assail Asia drug charge: Agency fights reports that it ignored heroin traffic among allies of U.S." New York Times. p. A1. Retrieved 2007-05-01.

Awkward incoherent sentences

"McCoy points out that the French Connection found its basis on the control of the opium production in the Golden Triangle by the French SDECE military intelligence agency, who financed its covert operations during the First Indochina War (1947-1954) in this way."

• "found its basis" —what does this mean? And "military intelligence agency which" [not who] —an "agency" is a non-specific entity. Who would require agents. Finally, "...in this way" is misplaced (more or less) because it refers to "found its basis"; however the complete meaning of this entire sentence is incoherent. It needs to be rewritten by the primary editor who began this article, and who knows what all this means. Hag2 (talk) 17:29, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
• Okay. I follow you so far. But —

McCoy points out that during the the First Indochina War (1947-1954), the French SDECE military intelligence agency was in need of money for its covert operations. Its [meaning: SDECE] officers contacted opium producers in the Golden Triangle, and [the officers] set up an international system of smuggling aided [who was aided? The officers, right?] by intelligence and other aid from SDECE [from the military intelligence agency, right?—that is, the SDECE aided its own officers?]. This system persisted past the war, and became the French Connection.

See, I am still a little confused—though this rewrite is a vast improvement over the original. Is the following what you are saying: "McCoy points out that during the the First Indochina War (1947-1954), the French SDECE military intelligence agency was in need of money for its covert operations. SDECE officers contacted opium producers in the Golden Triangle, and set up an international system of smuggling aided by intelligence and other aid gathered by the agency. This system persisted past the war, and became the French Connection." Hag2 (talk) 20:41, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is roughly what I mean. Some details are missing - the nature of SDECE's organizing didn't have actual SDECE employees stashing blocks of opium or heroin in their luggage and flying to Marsailles or Turkey. Rather they seem to've set up meetings between the producers and the smugglers, and that sort of thing. --Gwern (contribs) 22:26 10 December 2008 (GMT)

• hmmmmmm...

Gwern, you are a tough one. The following sentence believe it or not is a single sentence, and one which is soooo long a reader looses concentration (and his breath) by the time he reads "...Lucky Luciano". You need to do something about this:

[McCoy asserts that the "French Connection" conspiracy arose from an alliance between the Corsican Mafia, who had an historical presence in South Vietnam dating back to the French occupation, and leading members of the American and Sicilian Mafia, under the leadership of Lucky Luciano, who had been imprisoned in the U.S. during World War II for racketeering, but was asked to provide assistance to American military intelligence about Axis infiltration of the waterfront in American ports (which was effectively controlled by the Mafia), as well as assisting Allied forces in their invasion of Sicily and Italy.]

Your prose needs work. At a maximum, the first PERIOD belongs after the words "Sicilian Mafia", but this overlooks the other problems.

Another point that I would like to make: I think that you would benefit from reading the Wikipedia material about personal essays because your article has taken the tone of an essay quickly. Now, I am NOT suggesting my opinion to be any sort of value judgment; it is just that your style of writing needs to be supported by adequate reliable and verifiable third-party sources. This, of course, will come along as your article progresses. But my point in mentioning these problems at this time is because your article is being written currently in Articlespace (i.e. Wikipedia:Main namespace). Since it is in Articlespace, it is subject to the whims of Wikipedians who insist on one technical thing after another, often over-looking that fact that their interference could be annoying (such as mine is probably now to you). I think what I am suggesting is that you move your article into your Userspace until you have refined it under the guidelines of the B-Class criteria, and until you feel ready for a peer review. I believe you can do this easily by following the directions at the top of Alfred W. McCoy's tabs marked MOVE. This could be a good article. I would like to see you develop it further without distractions; however as you can see, you and I have stumbled greatly over the first three or four sentences. Hag2 (talk) 20:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not annoyed at your questions, just at the timing. My editing goes in cycles - I get interested in one area and work on it and move on. I know all my edits are justified/justifiable, but at this moment I can barely remember anything at all about the topic. It's all just out of my head. It's a big complex topic - the book alone is a very detailed 600 pages, to say nothing of ancillary emails and PDFs and such that I used - and other things are in my head now. And I intended this article's content to just be a summary of the content in the book's article, besides. --Gwern (contribs) 04:07 13 December 2008 (GMT)

Coatrack tag

I added the wp:coatrack tag to this article as it is largely about the author's book, not the author himself. Biographies should contain biographical material and only summarize works they have done. Bonewah (talk) 15:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I think the biography, Alfred W. McCoy, and his book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, should be mergered into one article. 24.170.225.180 (talk) 20:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. McCoy is notable for more than one book. --Gwern (contribs) 20:10 21 January 2010 (GMT

okay. Then perhaps the section about the thesis and his Politics of Heroin... should be handled as a subpage in a similar manner as the subpages are handled in The Sopranos. See Further information details e.g. See the tags called ((for|xxx)) and ((see|xxx)). I think Bonewah's point is that the biography needs lots of biographical detail, and much less thesis detail. 24.170.225.180 (talk) 20:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. This biography contains only 2 sentences of biographical material, in the lead. The portion titled "McCoy's thesis" represents the bulk of this article. Bonewah (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't actually say much about him or his work.--Jack Upland (talk) 00:25, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:02, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Controversy section

I removed [1] the "Controversy" section per WP:UNDUE, WP:CONTROVERSY and WP:DOLT, based on a suggestion at WP:ANI. Thoughts? JoeSperrazza (talk) 10:19, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that's much better. By quickly looking at some websites, it appears there was a proposal to name a school after a Hmong general, and McCoy made certain claims about the general to assert that the proposal was unsound. The usual "controversy" followed with a few back-and-forth claims, and the section in question was added as part of that campaign. McCoy is a professor of history and it is not reasonable for an encyclopedic article to feature nebulous objections from general commentators, particularly given that McCoy's statements about the general are (correctly) not in the article. Johnuniq (talk) 11:14, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

A couple things to point out: 1) the article is built upon primary source material, 2) the article clearly lacks material cited to reliable secondary sources, and 3) almost all of the reliable secondary source coverage I have found about McCoy refers to his early controversial statements regarding the heroin trafficking allegations and the book based on those allegations (e.g. GNews archives search). His latest comments reiterating his view that Vang Pao was a drug trafficker appear to be an extension of that controversy (e.g. contemporary report that you may have already read). I'm not certain how to go about it since this is all news to me, but it seems as though there should be some discussion of his views and response to those views beyond what can be obtained from primary source material. - Location (talk) 21:04, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Weasel words

@YeOldeGentleman: Regarding this edit summarized as "This kind of mealy-mouthing is really shocking", I did not insert "claims" into the article but it is equally "mealy-mouthed" to insert words such as "showed", "described" and "detailed" into the article when that is apparently your interpretation of what he achieved with these works. Similarly, you cannot take WP:REDFLAG claims from primary sources and word them as fact (e.g. "McCoy uncovered money laundering activities by banks controlled by the CIA...") You need secondary sources and even the UPI reports McCoy's Golden Triangle allegations as "claims". - Location (talk) 08:52, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

@Location: Hey, buddy! Let's leave it all here, if it's all the same with you? I'm at 3RR now anyway. Hugs and kisses! --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 22:03, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Date of birth

Disclosed when McCoy read excerpts of his FBI file, acquired under a FOIA request, in class, 16 June 2008. CarterHayes (talk) 03:01, 17 June 2008 (UTC)