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.

[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.

[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.