Talk:Frederick Wills (Guyana)

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Please stop the malicious reverts of this article. Fred Wills was a close friend of LaRouche for 20 years, and this is undisputed. The reverts are petty and childish. --Caroline 21:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * My revertions are not malicious. I have no reason to act with malice. If you can provide third-party evidence that, in 1976 when he made the speech, Wills was promoting LaRouche's proposals, then I have no problem with you inserting it. But, following the Arb Comm's ruling, you are not allowed to insert LaRouche promotions unless you can show that they are backed up by independent sources. All Wikipedia users are authorized to remove LaRouche "original research" (meaning unattributable to anyone but the LaRouche organization). Slim 21:44, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

I have added the NPOV tag because it appears that Slim Virgins deletions are motivated by his anti-LaRouche POV, rather than by a desire to make this article accurate and complete. When Fred Wills was alive, he proudly spoke of his speech to the UN as being the presentation of LaRouche's proposal from the previous year. I would like to know whether Slim Virgin has any real basis for disputing this.

Also, Slim Virgin has deleted the material about Fred being on the original board of the Schiller Institute when it was founded in '84, as well as the title "the honorable Frederick Wills." Was that deliberate? Is he also disputing Wills' board membership? Or the title "honorable"? Weed Harper 21:48, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Weed, I have no problem at all with that material, or anything else, being in the aticle if it is true and substantiated. The other three users (Herschel, C Colden and 64.30.208.48) have been banned for a week for re-inserting material into this article that came only from the LaRouche organization: in particular the claim that it was LaRouche's ideas on debt that Wills presented to the UN, rather than his own or someone else's. If you have third-party attribution for any of those claims, please go ahead and insert them with the attribution. It is not for us to find the basis to dispute the claims. It is for you who wants to insert information to show that it is true (or, at least, that it is accepted by other sources).
 * Many editors, myself included, are very tired of this constant LaRouche issue and upset by it. Please stay here and be a Wikipedia editor rather than a LaRouche promoter. I can't argument about these issues any more, as I've spent too much time on them already. Slim 00:01, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Slim, it is my understanding that an NPOV tag may not be removed until all parties to the dispute agree. I have replaced it. However, I also re-wrote the article to balance it in a way that I hope will satisfy all parties. If everyone is happy now, by all means, remove the tag. Weed Harper 14:47, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Since there has been no more editing, I took the tag off. If you are dissatisfied, put it back on. Weed Harper 15:58, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I deleted the titles Honorable and Doctor. Virtually all government officials can be called 'honorable' (believe it or not), so indicating his government service is sufficient (unless we want to go and edit every politician to add the title). What was he a doctor of? Where did he get the degree? If it was an honorary degree then it shouldn't be included. If it was not a medical degree, and if Wills did not use it himself as a title, then we should only reference it in the text. I can't find any biography of him, only mentions. Does anyone know anything about his education? -Willmcw 23:22, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nothing in this article has been verified, Will; not the text of the speech, not that he was an important leader for LaRouche. He was a government official, and, according to the Schiller Institute, he was involved with them. Wills is dead and so cannot be asked to confirm. The article should not exist in my view. The article was created by Herschelkrustofsky and the point of it, for the LaRouche supporters, was that they wanted to insert the claim that Wills' speech on debt relief was based on LaRouche's ideas. If you check out the history, you'll see the claim. That was removed because there was no evidence to support it. There isn't even evidence that Wills had heard of LaRouche at the time he made the speech, if he did make it. Slim 00:12, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * A Foreign Minister of Guyana isn't notable enough for Wiki? That's harsh! From an ameri-centric POV, he may have had some minor involvement in the Jim Jones affair. Again, the lack of sources makes it hard to tell. -Willmcw 00:50, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It's not that it's not notable enough. It's that it's the only thing we know to be true. To be encyclopedic, the article should state that he was foreign minister of Guyana and should not state anything else, and if that were the case, it probably wouldn't exist, except as a stub. It's the lack of sources that are the problem. Wikipedia isn't about truth; it's about verifiability. See Cite sources and Verifiability. Even if you personally know something to be true, and even if you witnessed it with your own eyes, it can't go into Wikipedia unless it's been published somewhere else, because everything in Wikipedia must be verifiable by any casual reader. The problem with the Wills material is that it isn't, and therefore should not, in my view, exist. Slim 01:01, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * So what sources are there? I don't even see an authorized biography on the Schiller website. -Willmcw 01:48, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am not aware of any sources, or of any authorized biography. Slim 01:54, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

Will, Herschelkrustofsky created this article in order to be able to mention LaRouche. The first version said: "In 1975, [Wills] made an address to the United Nations General Assembly, promoting Lyndon LaRouche's proposal for a Third World debt moratorium." 

It is instructive to look at the basis for this claim. Here is the LaRouche (Schiller Institute) article mentioning the Frederick Wills' debt speech to the UN. You will notice that not even they say explicitly that Wills was promoting LaRouche's proposal. Below are the relevant sections. Please note the careful wording:


 * "In this environment there occurred the Fifth Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a meeting of 85 nations, representing approximately 2 billion people. [T]he conference issued a declaration demanding "a new world economic order" . ..


 * "The leading spokesman in the industrialized West for achieving this new global monetary arrangement, then as now, was economist and political leader Lyndon LaRouche . ..


 * "LaRouche's collaborators [they are not named and the term 'collaborator' is not defined] had been involved in shaping the Colombo resolution, and they moved aggressively in its wake, to exploit the breakthrough to force debt moratoria and negotiations for a new monetary system. One of those collaborators, Guyanese Foreign Minister Dr. Frederick Wills, took the point.


 * "[Wills] used his address at the United Nations General Assembly, on Sept. 27, 1976, to demand the replacement of the IMF system by "development banks." Citing the Colombo resolution by name, as well as other UN resolutions, Wills' presentation reached a climax at the following point . . . "

This confusing, unconfirmed, self-published story ended up in Wikipedia as "In 1975, [Wills] made an address to the United Nations General Assembly, promoting Lyndon LaRouche's proposal for a Third World debt moratorium", with no references; and, because it was on Wikipedia, it was copied by mirror sites all over the Internet.

Aside from the fact that we don't even know Wills made that speech &mdash; if he did make it, we were doing him a disservice by saying that all he was doing was proposing something Lyndon LaRouche came up with. There's no evidence Wills and LaRouche had ever been in contact at that point.

This is the problem I have with virtually all the LaRouche supporters' edits. When you look for evidence, there usually isn't any outside LaRouche publications; and sometimes when you look carefully at the LaRouche articles themselves, even they don't support what is being inserted into Wikipedia.

After a somewhat protracted edit dispute, the LaRouche debt claim finally came out of this article, which means the original purpose of the article (for the LaRouche editors) no longer exists; and we are left with an article about Wills containing almost entirely unverifiable claims, and making him sound as though the only thing of note he ever did was join the Schiller Institute. Slim 02:35, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * I had expected HK or other editors to jump in with some references. If none appear soon, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and re-write this article based on available sources, which are pretty minimal. I'm not sure how this guy qualifies as being a major LaRouche leader - he wasn't even head of the Schiller Institute. He should probably be dropped from the LaRouche Template unless some substantial role in the organization is shown. It appears that he was a prominent lawyer and cricketeer who briefly served as the foreign minister of a third-world country under a dictator, who made one minor international speech, and then left the country and worked for LaRouche. I can't even find his date of birth.... -Willmcw 17:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Willmcw, due in large part to the weighting of internet coverage that seems to fit your use of the term "ameri-centric", there is a paucity of material on the web about Third World leaders. I have a number of books on Guyana which I could use as source material, and I am in contact with friends in Guyana who could provide far more extensive sources. However, I have limitations on my time and I am presently preoccupied with my wrangling with Berlet and SlimVirgin, so I would appreciate it if you would allow me some more time. This article is probably not anyone's major priority at the moment. --HK 22:02, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Herschel, don't start on me again. You are not involved in "wrangling" with SlimVirgin. I am only trying to find a way to sort out the mess you've created regarding Chip. If you would stick to using reputable third-party sources for your edits, then no one could reasonably object to them, and your Wikipedia life would become trouble-free.

Wllmcw, there's also no evidence that Wills worked for the Schiller Institute. It is possible they paid him a small retainer in order to be able to call him a founder member or a director. I have seen no evidence that he did anything for them. Where did you find the information that he was a prominent lawyer and cricketeer? Sorry not to have been online earlier, but Wikipedia has been very slow for me today, and I couldn't get it to load. Slim 22:30, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Wills didn't "work" for the Schiller Institute. He was one of its founders, in every sense of the word. He was not a figurehead, paid to add a touch of glamor to the board. Your insinuations dishonor his memory. Weed Harper 01:32, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why do you always have to personalize things, Weed? If you have a citation for what you wrote, provide it, and then it can go into the article. Slim 02:58, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * I transcribed a bunch of searches, and then my browser crashed. So instead of an annotated list here is the source: Google brings up confirmation that Wills wa a great cricketeer, a prominent lawyer, the Guyanese Foreign Minister, that he may have spoken to Jim Jones, that he gave a speech on E. Timor in 1975, that he served only part of a term as Security Council President, and that's all I've found so far from non-LaRouchce sources. From LaRouche sources I can see about the debt moratorium speech and serving on the founding board (though not an officer) of the Schiller Inst. I don't think HK needs to worry about time. There's no rush of people waiting to read a perfected Fred Wills article. If we cut out some things that are later substantiated then it is easy to add them back. It's a short article anyway.  Cheers,-Willmcw 01:36, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. . . I just transferred a bunch of searches on Berlet into my word processing program, which then crashed, and now won't open. Weird. If I were a conspiracy theorist. . . Luckily, I'm not. :-)

Thanks for doing this, Will. What you found sounds good. Slim 02:58, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

I have restored the U.N. speech quote; of all the material in the article, it was the most informative, and since this is a "LaRouche-related" article, the prosecution may not exclude that material from the trial. On the other hand, regarding the prosecution's attempt to introduce hearsay evidence that "Wills may have spoken to Jim Jones", I have removed it on the grounds that it is unsourced, that (if correct) it tells you nothing about Wills other than that he was working for Burnham, and that ultimately Willmcw introduced it for the purposes of what Chip Berlet calls "guilt by association." --HK 15:39, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not the prosecution. I'm a biographer and the Jim Jones conversation was one of the few facts I could find about the guy, and interesting fact at that. It is as relevant as a speech which he might not have even written. I'll admit that I am not conversant with all the ArbCom decisions. If LaRouche info is OK then so much the better. How is the decision made that a person is LaRouche-related? Cheers,-Willmcw 21:48, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I've dug up the old Arbcom decision Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche/Proposed decision - whew, lots of electrons! Anyway, the standard seems to be "closely related". I don't see any evidence that Wills was closely related to LaRouche. Wills and LaRouche never served on a board together and Wills is not even mentioned in our articles on Lyndon LaRouche or Schiller Institute. They may have been friends, but that is never claimed. Simply serving on the board of an organization chaired by LaRouche's wife hardly seems to qualify Wills as closely-related to LaRouche. Does anybody have any indication of a closer relationship? -Willmcw 00:25, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Schiller Institute, since its founding in 1984, has been the one international "umbrella" organization that unites all of the various LaRouchite groups in various parts of the world. The fact that Wills was founding member of the Institute board does indeed indicate a close relationship. --HK 00:31, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * No, that is not sufficient. LaRouche and Wills never even served on a board together, Wills may have been one of several founders of the Schiller but he was not even one of its officers, and there is virtually no mention of Wills on the LaRouche or Schiller websites outside of that one speech. The Schiller is not described in our article, or anywhere else that I can find, as the international umbrella for the LaRouche organization. All in all, I could make a better case that Ronald Reagan is closely related. ;) Cheers, -Willmcw 00:49, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The Schiller Institute is the only LaRouche-affiliated institution that is active internationally. LaRouche's various PACs in the U.S., or LaRouche-affiliated political parties like the CEC in Australia, do not participate in conferences in say, Russia or Thailand, as is the case with the S.I. "Umbrella" is my own descriptive term. --HK 13:21, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * That's nice, but it does nothing to indicate that Wills' life was closely-related to Lyndon LaRouche's. I further note that Wills did not speak at the Schiller Institute's opening conference, despite being listed as a founder in later publications. . -Willmcw 17:35, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, again, if the criterion is whether the subject's "life was closely-related to Lyndon LaRouche's," then out goes Jeremiah Duggan. Wills life was in fact closely related to LaROuche's -- I knew Wills personally --but I know of nothing on the web to corroborate it. When time permits, I'll go through my books. --HK 22:23, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I am happy that you were able to know Wills. He sounds like he was a fine man. Cheers, -Willmcw 22:59, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Amelia Boynton Robinson also did not speak at the opening conference, despite sometimes being said to be a founder, but at other times not. Below she is simply called "a leading member," and "vice-chairman," which is contrasted with "founder," though not further defined. At other times, they call her a "founder." There seemed to be no mention of her LaRouche connection in the reports of the trial. (Actually, I'm going to move this comment and put it on her page.) Slim 23:48, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * "Amelia Robinson today is a leading member and Vice chairmana [sic] of the Schiller Institute, founded by Lyndon LaRouche and Helgala [sic] Zepp-LaRouche in 1984. Mrs. Robinson considers the Institute to be "following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King." http://www.larouchepub.com/tv/tlc_biographies.html December 3, 2002
 * That info is all on the Amelia Boynton Robinson. No one would dispute that Robinson is a close associate of LaRouche, even if she was not exactly a founder of the Schiller. Heck, she is at least an officer of the Institute. But since the only claim to a substantial connection between Wills and LaRouche is his status as a founder of the Schiller, it is relevant that he is not recorded as having addressed the first (or any subsequent) meeting. This is a very minor point in the scheme of things. IF HK comes up with some smoking gun then that's great. Otherwise, life goes on.  Cheers, -Willmcw 05:01, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Do you agree that there's no evidence Boynton Robinson was a founder of the Schiller Institute? I have looked for evidence but can't find any. For example, in her biography, the Schiller Institute simply says: "Amelia Robinson today is a leading member and Vice Chairman of the Schiller Institute, founded by Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche in 1984. Mrs. Robinson considers the Institute to be “following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King.” Yet in the introduction to the Wikipedia Schiller Institute, we say she was a founder. I would like to delete it, but will wait in case you've seen some evidence of it. Slim 09:02, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * I suppose the relevent document is the incorporation paper. It would be signed by the founding board. Ot a program from the first conference might list the founding board. BTW, the Tribute to Robinson (it's linked in the article) is a much better biography than the short bio is. There might be more there if you are interested. -Willmcw 09:08, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank you all for your comments. In fact I found the article very useful indeed because of the difficulty of locating the information it contains from any other source. As an example, the Cricketer Sir Clive Lloyd writes glowingly of Dr Wills in his biography 'Supercat' and seems to have regarded him as his Mentor. I'm not an academic or Editor, I'm simply gathering information about Dr Wills for personal reasons and would be glad to share any verifiable material I come across. Thanks once again. Robbert Thompson (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)