Statement of interest: I work for an organisation which advises the Government of Somaliland.
I completely agree that it is surprising that the world has only just discovered the Somali piracy problem. It's been very serious for years - the US-led Combined Task Force 150 was set up as long ago as 2002, though it has got worse in recent months.
One of the ironies in the situation is that the most stable part of the disintegrated Somalia state, the former British colony of Somaliland, actually has a pretty good record of preventing piracy off its part of the coast - the official UN maps show only two incidents there of the dozens of the last few years (and I'm told that even those two have been mislabelled). Somaliland's coastguard, of course, cannot be sold arms legally due to the international arms embargo applying to the whole of the former country; yet at the same time, of course, the internationals will demand that Somaliland do its bit to prevent piracy!
Thanks for picking this up and running with it, Patrick; meant that while Livejournal was out there was still somewhere external to the bowels of WikiPedia where things could be discussed. Thanks also to Arwel for his actions, and to various contributors above for their helpful comments. Those who want to read further details on WikiPedia can see them here and here.
I'm going to address the idea that blogging about this achieves nothing. First off, I believe that for the WikiPedia user concerned, it was a last resort, not a first resort. He is a rules man; he attempted to go through the system; the system reacted by banning him again and banning one of hs friends, because it apparently automatically penalises people who make unjust decisions. It is at that point that he reached for livejournal.
I too am a rules man; I too am a WikiPedia editor; I had a good long look at how I might flag this issue up internally in WikiPedia on my friend's behalf; I found I understood even less of it than my friend did, and what I could see was not encouraging; so I too reached for my livejournal.
If your procedures are not user-friendly, and your actions are unfriendly, people will talk.
As for the idea that "blogging achieves nothing"; well, it got this block reversed for a start; and hopefully it will get some WikiPedia folks to look long and hard at how their procedures got them into this mess in the first place, before this incident disappears into the bowels of the archives.
Thanks for the nod, Patrick. A shame that some of your commenters don't seem to have followed your advice and actually read my piece or the one by Homais.
Vardibian, have you actually read the Vatican statement which lists a good half dozen points of agreement between himself and Islam? Also I have checked the original German ("in erstaunlich schroffer, uns überraschend schroffer Form") which does look to my eye rather harsher than the English translation.
You say "Nor did he, in expressing regret for the hoo-hah, express regret that he did not in the speech make it clear that he disagreed with the quote."
The Vatican says "As for the opinion of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus which he quoted during his Regensburg talk, the Holy Father did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way... The Holy Father thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful, and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions."
I have to say that for me the theory that he intended to cause deliberate offence is critically undermined by the subsequent apologies.
On the other hand, I have to ask Dave Luckett whether he has in fact been tracking incidents of Islamic activism quantitatively and systematically over the last few weeks, or just allowing lazy journalism to reinforce his prejudices.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 1 |
| 2007 | 3 |
| 2006 | 1 |
Total: 6 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Nicholas Whyte:
Show all comments by Nicholas Whyte.