Various Linux News; Japanese Socialism, Religious Fascism, West Papua

[tcpip]

Last Tuesday night was the Linux Users of Victoria meeting which looked at two ends of development; Martin Paulo gave another excellent talk on the OpenStack free software cloud project, this time in a more tutorial framework, followed by Aryan Ameri (G+) on Ubuntu phones - more on how they don't quite work yet, but do show a roadmap of where they're going. The meeting also formally announed our Librarything, for our Library of LUV (LoL). Next Saturday I'll be presenting at the Beginners Workshop, An Introduction to Supercomputing. Further, as I've been working on another training manual I've had the opportunity to develop a few interesting scripts and posts over the past week; Backups and Synchronisations, Deleting Many Files, and Searching for Emails.

Earlier this week started writing about the decline of the socialist left in Japan. I am hoping that knowledgable people (e.g., aske) might suggest a few reasons. A pleasant surprise was the discovery that Matt Bush and I had been published in the latest issue of The Freethinker for our article on Islamofascism: A Real Term for A Real Problem, which argues that Islamic fascism really does exist and that the principles of secularism must be universalised. Finally, next Saturday the Isocracy Network is hosting a meeting (FB events) with Louis Byrne from West Papua Melbourne speaking. It remains an interesting question why West Papuan solidarity has never reached the mass appeal to that of East Timor, when both are of equal importance.

Comments

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I would imagine the Dili massacre has something to do with it.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* Widespread media coverage. There were, of course, similar massacres in Timor Leste around the same period but none caused the same sort of international outrage, because the cameras weren't rolling. Likewise Operasi Sapu Bersih has been almost completely forgotten.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I didn't find any obvious faults with your article on Islamofascism, but using Christopher Hitchens to defend your point seems an exceedingly poor choice, since from my PoV, racist Islamophobe is a rather mild and kind description of his attitudes.

Also, I'm pleased you also mentioned fundamentalist Christianity as an equal threat, but I find articles like this written by people of European ancestry who were raised in nations where most religious people are Christian to be inherently a bit dubious, both because I'm strongly opposed to all forms of international (or for that matter internal) military aggression (which articles of this sort are often used to justify) and also because none of us are going to know about the issues involved in primarily Muslim nations nearly as well as we are going to understand our own nations' problems with Christofascists.

Obviously, stoning gay people and punishing rape victims is vile and wrong, but there are vast and important social and economic differences between a violent failed state like Pakistan or an even more violent and chaotic mess like Afghanistan and functional prosperous and at least somewhat democratic nations like Iran that this article entirely ignores.

Also, and perhaps equally importantly, while I greatly approved of mentioning the link between Western (largely US) aggression and violent Muslim fundamentalism, what you didn't mention was any connection to economics. It's far too easy to see an article like this as a call for military intervention, drone strikes, and similar forms of violent, and vile idiocy, when it's perfectly clear that (as has so vividly happened in Ireland) if you solve the economic issues, the young people who might become terrorists or violent enforcers of local social norms are largely more than happy to get good jobs and spend their time buying consumer electronics and consuming mass media. Similarly, it seems perfectly clear that Iran would be in far better shape socially if the government and religious officials weren't able to regularly drum up support by playing up the very real threat of Western aggression and even of direct military attack by the US. This article talks more about this side of the issue, as does this post of mine.

In any case, given the complete lack of any credible large-scale threat to Europe, or to North American, Australia, or any of the other European-diaspora nations by any Muslim group or groups, it seems to me far better to encourage and disseminate articles written by liberal Muslims on the dangers of Muslim fundamentalism and focus on our own far more real threats of apocalyptic Christian zealots.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Whilst I obviously understand the distaste for military intervention of any sort (external and internal), ultimately the question does come down to a choice of whether interventions are for essentially imperialist reasons (e.g., Indonesia in West Papua, China in Tibet, & etc) or whether the cause of universal human rights is of consideration (e.g., Interfet in Timor-Leste).

Obviously these cases can be somewhat mixed (e.g., Libya, perhaps IFOR in Bosnia) and in the fog of war who is right and wrong is likewise mixed in varying proportions. Nevertheless in an increasingly globalised world I find it implausible to suggest that the state sovereignty argument has a lasting justification for inaction when states fail to protect human rights or even carry out atrocities themselves.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

We already have established means of formally legitimising such violations of state sovereignty as we might like to engage in. That's not an immediate practical issue. If we want to invade somewhere, we'll have the UN declare them in violation of some set of accepted principles about how one should run a country or something. (Of course, this is a much harder proposition if, say, we're thinking of deposing a Russian client, but my point is that the initial justification part is a secondary concern. We'll think of something.) Setting up a replacement government that will leave us smelling like roses at the end of the day, though... now that can be very difficult.

(Also, sorry for flooding you like this, but I should also clarify that I'm not taking a position on whether going to war for western ideals is desirable or not. I'm merely identifying a... let's call it an evidently recurring technical problem that seems to be involved with doing so.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but there is difficulties about state sovereignty issues as you point out with regard to client (or even just supportive) states. Notoriously both China and the United States were unwilling to do anything about Pol Pot, until Vietnam said "screw this, we're going in regardless of what the Security Council" says... and I suppose that does become the issue at stake. Countries which are the power brokers on the Security Council determine for themselves what is, and isn't, a mass atrocity (e.g., Russia in Grozny).

The principle of humanitarian intervention seems sound enough. The fog of war clouds responsibilities. And the structure of the United Nations ensures a balance of powers rather than principled decision making - and all of this is beside the point you make about having a new government that seems to have a modicum of stability and legitimacy (although both Bosnia and Timor-Leste seem to have come out OK with this, Libya is perhaps too early to tell).

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

And the structure of the United Nations ensures a balance of powers rather than principled decision making

A fair reservation. It's not fool-proof, I'll grant that. One might not be able to tap into the UN's mystical aura of legitimacy when needed, and you'd be right to point out that just about any other international forum we might care to set up on a sufficiently wide-ranging, multilateral basis would act similarly. It's a... given constraint on action on the international playing field. How broad a coalition can be created and psychologically maintained with the UN so paralysed would have to be decided on a case-to-case basis, and that will in itself generally throw us into the world of strategic calculation.

The principle of humanitarian intervention seems sound enough.

Well, I won't specifically dispute that -- I can't possibly comment on matters of the spirit world.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

The case of Pol Pot and Vietnam invading is useful to examine. In college, I knew some students who had fled Cambodia with their parents after Vietnam invaded, and from their accounts, the Vietnamese replaced genocide with brutal authoritarian rule. All too often, any sort of invasion, even those (very) few that are for altruistic and humanitarian purposes cause massive suffering and death. Killing 60,000 people while you were in the process of saving 100,000 lives seems dubious using anything other than the most calculatingly utilitarian ethics, and that's often what any sort of military action - even the most well intentioned looks like. Giving arms to a side that seems non-monstrous seems to me to be a good idea, and in fact sometimes even works. However, the track record for invasions is honestly quite dreadful.

Of course, that's not to say that I don't support some sorts of direct intervention. I can think of a number of cases where political assassination worked wonderfully well - the clearest example I know of being the assassination of Franco's chosen successor Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. I'm all in favor of outside governments assassinating hideous tyrants. However, it's very clear that the reason most government would rather use war than assassination is that the leaders starting those wars don't like the idea of giving other governments the idea that killing political leaders is acceptable and instead prefer the traditional method of sending young people with little or no political power out to die by the thousands.

If someone wanted to use a drone to kill Assad, Kim Jong-un, or one of the various other monstrous autocrats currently in power around the world, I'd have no problem. However, I remain entirely skeptical that even well-intentioned modern wars actually cause more good than harm.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The assessment of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia is pretty much what I've heard as well.

I am not so sure that the track record of direct humanitarian intervention (as distinct from invasions) is that bad however, particularly if they have troops on the ground (unlike Libya) and it's actually a genuinely UN supported intervention (unlike Korea in the 50s). So I am thinking more recent missions like Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Haiti, and perhaps even several of the African missions. None of these were perfect or a cakewalk either, but they've certainly been successful in reducing the probably death-toll (with reference to the grim calculus mentioned).

There two places in the world which I seriously think could do with a large influx of blue helmets; Syria and West Papua.... which I suppose so much of my current interest on international affairs is orientated towards those places.

[fluffyblanket.livejournal.com]

Excellent article!

[aske.livejournal.com]

Hello! Will have a read of the piece and see if I can come up with any thoughts or ideas.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks! If there is anyone who might have a degree of expertise in the subject, it is your good self.