Riots over Wikipedia and threats to its founder?

No I am not talking about the factual errors and faulty editing that you occasionally find there. More on this eventually.

I have had a couple of interesting days checking out things on the Internet about the Netherlands (where I lived for nine years). Last night I was checking out some of its more notorious criminals of recent years - the late Klaas Bruinsma, the late Sam Klepper, the late John Mieremet ....

Which brought me by a side road to the former mayor of Amsterdam, current leader of the Dutch Labour Party, and renowned fighter against organised crime, Job Cohen. From him we went through other leading Dutch politicians, Mark Rutte (the current Prime Minister), Alex Pechtold, Geert "kick Islam out of the Netherlands" Wilders ....

I noted then that Geert Wilders is on a list of individuals internationally, who are under threat of permanent extinction by a group of Muslim fanatics, along with, among others, Kurt Westergaard. In case you do not know who Kurt Westergaard is, he was one of the cartoonists who produced a series of cartoons of Mahomet in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in 2005, which caused riots in, and the emanation of very nasty unwarranted threats from, many parts of the so-called "Muslim world".

As one tends to do with Wikipedia, I followed the link to the article about the cartoons. There, staring at me, was a copy of the page from the Jyllands-Posten displaying the "offending" cartoons of Mahomet.

Well if the reward for publishing these cartoons is that these fanatical idiots can try to kill Scandinavian cartoonists, attempt to destroy Danish embassies in various countries, and generally attempt to influence what the press can and cannot publish, what will happen to Wikipedia? It is difficult to do much damage to an electronic encyclopedia (any more than what hackers already succeed in doing). Threaten the founder maybe, or what employees they have?

Of course the controversy has died down and people might have forgotten about all this (although fanatics tend to have long memories), and nobody would have noticed after this time. And then comes my insignificant little blog and .... wham! Riots in Rawalpindi, Riyadh and Sanaa? And not over democracy either!

Ah well - never overestimate your own significance!

The other thing that interests me about this is the silly old "Left" versus "Right" political debate (as everyone knows, I despise the terms and dismiss them as meaningless).

The "Right" though were up in arms that freedom of the press was threatened when these cartoons first appeared. Intriguingly the second media outlet to publish them was the very "Left" oriented French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo", which also published cartoons poking fun at all religions (there is nothing like religious fervour to rouse the sceptical, and mainly agnostic or atheistic, French "Left"!). All which shows, though, how blurred these political distinctions are, and how meaningless the terminology is.

Finally, at the risk of having some fanatic coming round to rid me of the last vestiges of this life (which is going nowhere anyway - come round, I have little left to lose! - so it would be more symbolic than anything else), I will admit to being on the side of those who published the cartoons. Not so much on the grounds that nothing is sacred, but rather down to the fact that the tolerant atheist in me refuses to accept that you can get away with imposing your fanatical (and IMHO silly and superstitious) beliefs by violent means.