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Burrobert ( talk) 13:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
We currently include twitter quotes from the Venezuelan foreign affairs minister and someone called Roberto Deniz. Twitter has some other quotes that we could include:
Burrobert ( talk) 04:17, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Regarding the reliability of Counterpunch, the Perennial Source list says "There is no consensus regarding the reliability of CounterPunch. As a biased or opinionated source, its statements should be attributed". The statements sourced to CounterPunch have been attributed.
A question was asked about whether something that appeared in CounterPunch was noteworthy. I think the following statement is noteworthy as it provides the reader with a list of countries which oppose the detention of Saab, something we have not done elsewhere.
The other statement that references Counterpunch is
This statement could be combined with an earlier sentence. The key point is the date for the response from the US. Something like :The US is required to respond by 7 October" would work.
In the earlier sentence a wikilink to the "Task Force on the Americas" has been added but the page does not exist. Burrobert ( talk) 13:25, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Apparently Cape Verde has no extradition treaty with the US. We have not mentioned that fact, which seems quite pertinent. Any thoughts? Burrobert ( talk) 16:02, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
On what basis are CounterPunch and Al Bawaba being tagged as unreliable sources? Burrobert ( talk) 02:42, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
seems to have been re-posted unchanged from Dissident Voice, which I don't think has any editorial oversight, which should be inmeidately a red flag. However, I there are some other issues at hand. Besides the misrepresentation that I explained above (
The United Nations Human Rights Committee is not the same as the United Nations, and the ECOWAS Court of Justice is not the same as the Economic Community of West African States), both articles clearly lack neutrality. In the case of Counterpunch, some of the examples are the following:
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab remains defiant
he is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies of food, fuel, and medicine from Iran in violation of illegal US sanctions.
Saab continues to fight this flagrant attempt of extra-territorial judicial overreach by the US.
To begin with, Saab’s arrest on June 12, 2020, was arbitrary, illegal, and irregular.
Such is the truly farcical legal basis for the diplomat’s detention.
This was denied on the absurd grounds (...)
This legal theatre around the Saab case serves as an obfuscation for what is fundamentally a political case of the US (...)
Saab, however, remains defiant([sic], again)
Unfortunately, rather than focus on the humanitarian needs of Alex Saab the Cape Verde authorities decided to politicise a health matter and focussed instead on the jurisdiction of the ECOWAS Court to rule on Mr Saab’s application.
(...) but once again the Cape Verde authorities elected to politicise the matter rather than demonstrate the compassion which the TRB espouses in its decision of yesterday.
I've given my view at RSP. I'm pasting here what I said about Al Bawaba: I'm less familiar with Al Bawaba, but their reporting on Alex Saab seems a little off to me. As NoonIcarus notes on the talk page, their reporting in the cited article [2] seems pretty partisan. It is also almost entirely made up of quotes from the defense team, suggesting it a lot of it is copied from a press release or similar. It seems Al Bawaba has quite a large number of articles on Saab, [3] which are all basically long verbatim quotes from the defense team. The latest, "Defense Team Responds, Alex Saab, is a Victim of a Failing Judicial System in Cape Verde", [4] makes not attempt at neutral reporting. I suspect this is a case of churnalism, with the co-ordinated PR campaign using an online magazine's desire for content to seed biased opinion in the newsphere. I don't know if this is a common MO for al Bawaba, but I think it needs to be treated with extreme caution. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:25, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
For the record, this discussion led to a decision on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to deprecate CounterPunch (see WP:COUNTERPUNCH). There was no consensus on Al-Bawaba. [5] BobFromBrockley ( talk) 11:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
I removed the phrase 'mentioned in the Panama Papers' from the description 'Alex Nain Saab Morán is a Colombian businessman of Lebanese descent mentioned in the Panama Papers.' My reason is that the fact that he is 'mentioned' in the Panama papers is a detail that can't be the most important thing about him, unless it's a way to hint that he is corrupt without actually saying it, which is hardly compatible with the BLP. User:NoonIcarus reverted my removal with the edit summary 'Significant coverage of the issue'. I don't think that this justification makes sense. The Panama papers are not mentioned anywhere in the article. If this is supposed to mean that there is significant coverage of the fact that he is mentioned in the Panama papers, this isn't true - little of the coverage of Saab deals specifically with the Panama papers. If it's supposed to mean that the Panama papers are themselves significant coverage, there is no reason to mention the source of that coverage in the lede any more than an introductory sentence such as 'XY is a businessman mentioned in El País' would make sense.-- 79.100.149.219 ( talk) 09:16, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
As far as I can see, he hasn't been convicted of a crime by any court yet. I don't think indictments are enough to justify such a description in a biography of a living person.-- 79.100.149.219 ( talk) 02:40, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I agree. The guy is in jail because he was kidnapped while he was traveling. And just because USA accuses him of something should not be enough to categorize him as a criminal. Also, if this is going to stay, for example we can consider Obama for the category of "American criminals" as he approved drone attacks that killed thousands people.-- Andres arg ( talk) 03:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Wallyfromdilbert: Hi. The image from the infobox belongs to the Broward County of Florida, as it is stated in its Commons page description, and it has been used by multiple outlets; arrests.org is merely adding its watermark. As such, I believe that there shouldn't be doubts about the authenticity of the picture and that it should be restored. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 16:03, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
I should also mention: the photo has been in the article since 23 October; I only restored it after a copyvio image was included in the infobox and deleted shortly thereafter. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 16:05, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
Per
WP:RSSELF, Never use self-published sources as independent sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.
. Per
WP:TWITTER, Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves
Unless the tweets are from a verified account of Alex Saab, they cannot be used as sources in this BLP. If the information that the twitter refs support cannot be verified in a reliable source, that information also needs to be removed.
Schazjmd
(talk) 17:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Burrobert: Despite continuing to point out my "idiosyncratic" English, you have additionally removed referenced content from the article; as such, the "Expand article" edit summary is misleading, since no content was apparently added besides the one already included, and the changes appear to consist only in a revert with minor changes. In the removed text there were several important facts, including the following:
All of the text can be consulted in the sources. Without this information, the article remains without much needed context. I have included quotes to the references that should make it easier to verify the information, but I ask you to be careful the next time and ask me if you have any concerns regarding content that you have difficulties to find. Regards, -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 12:02, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Rivkin is acting for Saab in the legal issue of diplomatic immunity before the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.", while the original version says "
Another of Saab's lawyers that sought that the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in favor of diplomatic immunity, David B. Rivkin". You can also compare it with the Spanish version of the AP article for reference: "
Sin embargo, otro de los abogados de Saab que busca que una corte de apelaciones de Atlanta falle en favor de la inmunidad diplomática, negó todo tipo de cooperación." I don't see how the former is more understandable, or how the latter is "mangled nonsense", particularly since I have broken the sentence further, one of the observations. Besides that, the main difference is the position, and I honestly don't see how putting the introduction after the statement improves understandability. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 11:23, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
@ Ravenswing: Since you have edited in the article, I'll ping you in this section hoping to further explain my concerns regarding this specific change. Besides the due weight concerns that I have expressed, where Alex Suarez is placed among high ranking government officials and judicial institutions, The addition remains poorly referenced: the book "The Diplomat" is nowhere to be seen in the WLRN source (a WP:SYNTH issue), and relies solely on a bare URL link from its Amazon description page, a clear primary source. I looked online for independent references that mention The Diplomat, to no avail. No independent coverage of the book has been demonstrated, as well as its relevance to be included in the article; it lacks reviews even from Amazon's own website. BLP specifically has a higher bar regarding verifiability. As such, the addition should be removed.
I should also note that the proposed change also refers to Suarez as a "Journalist/writer
". None of these descriptions are used in the WLRN article, making the terms effectively unreferenced and original research.
NoonIcarus (
talk) 18:01, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Advocacy representative Alex Suarez was present at the hearing of Alex Saab in February 2022. This stresses the problem with the added text: this doesn't have any impact whatsoever on the trial on Saab, and Suarez does not have any relationship to Saab other than his trial. As far as I know, trials are public and any person can assist to them, meaning that Suarez also does not have any special status for being present at it. His only position mentioned is "president of the Hands Off Venezuela chapter of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville", which further suggests only a local and limited importance, contrary to a national one. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 12:23, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Seeing no response from the proponent for a week now, I'll proceed to remove the sentence for the stated reasons. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 19:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Saab was not on his way to Venezuela from Iran, he was on his way to Iran from Venezuela. He had three letters in his briefcase, including one from Venezuelan President Maduro to the Supreme Leader of Iran. He still had the letters in his possession when he was arrested, obviously because he had not been to Iran to deliver them. 2600:4040:A53D:C200:D139:7CD3:28FA:D955 ( talk) 22:33, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
This comes from the cited source translated from Spanish, but it’s not correct in any form. Is it $25 billion (which is 25000 million) or is it a mistranslation of $25 million, which makes more sense contextually? I don’t know the answer. 174.52.55.118 ( talk) 20:33, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Alex Saab article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A member of the Guild of Copy Editors, Wikignome Wintergreen, reviewed a version of this article for copy editing on December 2020. However, a major copy edit was inappropriate at that time because of the issues specified below, or the other tags now found on this article. Once these issues have been addressed, and any related tags have been cleared, please tag the article once again for {{ copyedit}}. The Guild welcomes all editors with a good grasp of English. Visit our project page if you are interested in joining! |
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
Burrobert ( talk) 13:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
We currently include twitter quotes from the Venezuelan foreign affairs minister and someone called Roberto Deniz. Twitter has some other quotes that we could include:
Burrobert ( talk) 04:17, 8 July 2021 (UTC)
Regarding the reliability of Counterpunch, the Perennial Source list says "There is no consensus regarding the reliability of CounterPunch. As a biased or opinionated source, its statements should be attributed". The statements sourced to CounterPunch have been attributed.
A question was asked about whether something that appeared in CounterPunch was noteworthy. I think the following statement is noteworthy as it provides the reader with a list of countries which oppose the detention of Saab, something we have not done elsewhere.
The other statement that references Counterpunch is
This statement could be combined with an earlier sentence. The key point is the date for the response from the US. Something like :The US is required to respond by 7 October" would work.
In the earlier sentence a wikilink to the "Task Force on the Americas" has been added but the page does not exist. Burrobert ( talk) 13:25, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Apparently Cape Verde has no extradition treaty with the US. We have not mentioned that fact, which seems quite pertinent. Any thoughts? Burrobert ( talk) 16:02, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
On what basis are CounterPunch and Al Bawaba being tagged as unreliable sources? Burrobert ( talk) 02:42, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
seems to have been re-posted unchanged from Dissident Voice, which I don't think has any editorial oversight, which should be inmeidately a red flag. However, I there are some other issues at hand. Besides the misrepresentation that I explained above (
The United Nations Human Rights Committee is not the same as the United Nations, and the ECOWAS Court of Justice is not the same as the Economic Community of West African States), both articles clearly lack neutrality. In the case of Counterpunch, some of the examples are the following:
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab remains defiant
he is fighting extradition to the US for the “crime” of trying to procure humanitarian supplies of food, fuel, and medicine from Iran in violation of illegal US sanctions.
Saab continues to fight this flagrant attempt of extra-territorial judicial overreach by the US.
To begin with, Saab’s arrest on June 12, 2020, was arbitrary, illegal, and irregular.
Such is the truly farcical legal basis for the diplomat’s detention.
This was denied on the absurd grounds (...)
This legal theatre around the Saab case serves as an obfuscation for what is fundamentally a political case of the US (...)
Saab, however, remains defiant([sic], again)
Unfortunately, rather than focus on the humanitarian needs of Alex Saab the Cape Verde authorities decided to politicise a health matter and focussed instead on the jurisdiction of the ECOWAS Court to rule on Mr Saab’s application.
(...) but once again the Cape Verde authorities elected to politicise the matter rather than demonstrate the compassion which the TRB espouses in its decision of yesterday.
I've given my view at RSP. I'm pasting here what I said about Al Bawaba: I'm less familiar with Al Bawaba, but their reporting on Alex Saab seems a little off to me. As NoonIcarus notes on the talk page, their reporting in the cited article [2] seems pretty partisan. It is also almost entirely made up of quotes from the defense team, suggesting it a lot of it is copied from a press release or similar. It seems Al Bawaba has quite a large number of articles on Saab, [3] which are all basically long verbatim quotes from the defense team. The latest, "Defense Team Responds, Alex Saab, is a Victim of a Failing Judicial System in Cape Verde", [4] makes not attempt at neutral reporting. I suspect this is a case of churnalism, with the co-ordinated PR campaign using an online magazine's desire for content to seed biased opinion in the newsphere. I don't know if this is a common MO for al Bawaba, but I think it needs to be treated with extreme caution. BobFromBrockley ( talk) 16:25, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
For the record, this discussion led to a decision on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard to deprecate CounterPunch (see WP:COUNTERPUNCH). There was no consensus on Al-Bawaba. [5] BobFromBrockley ( talk) 11:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
I removed the phrase 'mentioned in the Panama Papers' from the description 'Alex Nain Saab Morán is a Colombian businessman of Lebanese descent mentioned in the Panama Papers.' My reason is that the fact that he is 'mentioned' in the Panama papers is a detail that can't be the most important thing about him, unless it's a way to hint that he is corrupt without actually saying it, which is hardly compatible with the BLP. User:NoonIcarus reverted my removal with the edit summary 'Significant coverage of the issue'. I don't think that this justification makes sense. The Panama papers are not mentioned anywhere in the article. If this is supposed to mean that there is significant coverage of the fact that he is mentioned in the Panama papers, this isn't true - little of the coverage of Saab deals specifically with the Panama papers. If it's supposed to mean that the Panama papers are themselves significant coverage, there is no reason to mention the source of that coverage in the lede any more than an introductory sentence such as 'XY is a businessman mentioned in El País' would make sense.-- 79.100.149.219 ( talk) 09:16, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
As far as I can see, he hasn't been convicted of a crime by any court yet. I don't think indictments are enough to justify such a description in a biography of a living person.-- 79.100.149.219 ( talk) 02:40, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
I agree. The guy is in jail because he was kidnapped while he was traveling. And just because USA accuses him of something should not be enough to categorize him as a criminal. Also, if this is going to stay, for example we can consider Obama for the category of "American criminals" as he approved drone attacks that killed thousands people.-- Andres arg ( talk) 03:29, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Wallyfromdilbert: Hi. The image from the infobox belongs to the Broward County of Florida, as it is stated in its Commons page description, and it has been used by multiple outlets; arrests.org is merely adding its watermark. As such, I believe that there shouldn't be doubts about the authenticity of the picture and that it should be restored. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 16:03, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
I should also mention: the photo has been in the article since 23 October; I only restored it after a copyvio image was included in the infobox and deleted shortly thereafter. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 16:05, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
Per
WP:RSSELF, Never use self-published sources as independent sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.
. Per
WP:TWITTER, Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves
Unless the tweets are from a verified account of Alex Saab, they cannot be used as sources in this BLP. If the information that the twitter refs support cannot be verified in a reliable source, that information also needs to be removed.
Schazjmd
(talk) 17:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
@ Burrobert: Despite continuing to point out my "idiosyncratic" English, you have additionally removed referenced content from the article; as such, the "Expand article" edit summary is misleading, since no content was apparently added besides the one already included, and the changes appear to consist only in a revert with minor changes. In the removed text there were several important facts, including the following:
All of the text can be consulted in the sources. Without this information, the article remains without much needed context. I have included quotes to the references that should make it easier to verify the information, but I ask you to be careful the next time and ask me if you have any concerns regarding content that you have difficulties to find. Regards, -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 12:02, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Rivkin is acting for Saab in the legal issue of diplomatic immunity before the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.", while the original version says "
Another of Saab's lawyers that sought that the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in favor of diplomatic immunity, David B. Rivkin". You can also compare it with the Spanish version of the AP article for reference: "
Sin embargo, otro de los abogados de Saab que busca que una corte de apelaciones de Atlanta falle en favor de la inmunidad diplomática, negó todo tipo de cooperación." I don't see how the former is more understandable, or how the latter is "mangled nonsense", particularly since I have broken the sentence further, one of the observations. Besides that, the main difference is the position, and I honestly don't see how putting the introduction after the statement improves understandability. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 11:23, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
@ Ravenswing: Since you have edited in the article, I'll ping you in this section hoping to further explain my concerns regarding this specific change. Besides the due weight concerns that I have expressed, where Alex Suarez is placed among high ranking government officials and judicial institutions, The addition remains poorly referenced: the book "The Diplomat" is nowhere to be seen in the WLRN source (a WP:SYNTH issue), and relies solely on a bare URL link from its Amazon description page, a clear primary source. I looked online for independent references that mention The Diplomat, to no avail. No independent coverage of the book has been demonstrated, as well as its relevance to be included in the article; it lacks reviews even from Amazon's own website. BLP specifically has a higher bar regarding verifiability. As such, the addition should be removed.
I should also note that the proposed change also refers to Suarez as a "Journalist/writer
". None of these descriptions are used in the WLRN article, making the terms effectively unreferenced and original research.
NoonIcarus (
talk) 18:01, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
Advocacy representative Alex Suarez was present at the hearing of Alex Saab in February 2022. This stresses the problem with the added text: this doesn't have any impact whatsoever on the trial on Saab, and Suarez does not have any relationship to Saab other than his trial. As far as I know, trials are public and any person can assist to them, meaning that Suarez also does not have any special status for being present at it. His only position mentioned is "president of the Hands Off Venezuela chapter of the University of North Florida in Jacksonville", which further suggests only a local and limited importance, contrary to a national one. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 12:23, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Seeing no response from the proponent for a week now, I'll proceed to remove the sentence for the stated reasons. -- NoonIcarus ( talk) 19:06, 30 August 2022 (UTC)
Saab was not on his way to Venezuela from Iran, he was on his way to Iran from Venezuela. He had three letters in his briefcase, including one from Venezuelan President Maduro to the Supreme Leader of Iran. He still had the letters in his possession when he was arrested, obviously because he had not been to Iran to deliver them. 2600:4040:A53D:C200:D139:7CD3:28FA:D955 ( talk) 22:33, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
This comes from the cited source translated from Spanish, but it’s not correct in any form. Is it $25 billion (which is 25000 million) or is it a mistranslation of $25 million, which makes more sense contextually? I don’t know the answer. 174.52.55.118 ( talk) 20:33, 12 May 2024 (UTC)