Jimmy's Corner

As talks on freedom of speech and expression continue on whether more responsibility is needed while using this responsibility-more-than-a-right freedom in reaction to Muslim peoples' anger over the Danish cartoon controversy, a new sense of freedom seems to be imposing itself. It is the freedom to polish biographies:

Online reference site Wikipedia blames US Congress staff for partisan changes to a number of political biographies.

Computers traced to Capitol Hill removed unpalatable facts from articles on senators, while other entries were "vandalised", the site said.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography.

Well, Marty Meehan was not alone:

Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, researchers collected the internet protocol numbers of computers linked to the US Senate and tracked the changes made to online pages.

The site lists half a dozen prominent biographies that had been changed by Senate computers, including those of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, California Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Well, guess who is being polished along with those guys:

It said the Congressional computer network has been blocked from editing for brief periods on a number of occasions in the last six months due to the inappropriate contributions.

The article on President Bush has been altered so many times - not just from within Congress - that Wikipedia's volunteer monitors have had to block further "editing".

Well is it a new kind of imposing on people what to know and hiding from them what they should not know? Most of the edits have to do with the politicians' biographies and history, so if they are lying about their history, what else are they ready to lie about?

In Egypt we call such polishing campaigns as "حملات التلميع الورنيشي" which means "Shoe-polishing campaigns", describing things that policians here are trying to polish as dirty as their shoes. I think American politicians are starting to learn from their Egyptian likes.

Article source: BBC News: Technology