Re: (renamed) Misc mailing list

[andrew]

On 22/04/18 09:26PM, Yasuaki Kudo wrote:
> (I have just 'replied all' from my (God forbid, proprietary!) IPhone 
> so forgive me, the addresses in To or CC are pretty arbitrary)

RIP
 
> I am very sympathetic to everyone who live in authoritarian regimes
> .   Pre-1945, someone like me, (an anarchist, pacifist, democrat, an 
> apologist for enemy states and all the rest... ) in Japan would have 
> been probably arrested, tortured and or killed for trumped up charges.

As far as I know, those still happen in places like the DPRK, and
sometimes Russia.

> I often wonder what my escape hatch would be, if I lived in North 
> Korea or something.   I might learn how to be a good singer, a 
> computer programmer, or anything else and stay away from politics.

Sing any western songs with *slight* political meanings? Gunboom.

> But there are many in-between states where the regime may mimic a 
> shambolic 'democracy' just for the show, or strongly suppress 
> unwanted opinions by murder, kidnap, etc and the majority would 
> happily live without questioning too much, and not call the state 
> totalitarian.  The regime will allow a certain range of public 
> discourse that are irrelevant or useful to the regime.

> In such cases, and I suspect PRC may qualify, (But I don't know the 
> country well enough) the discussion of Free Software might be within 
> the permitted range of discourse, as its purported aim is just to 
> promote a particular form of software licensing, no big deal.

It *might* fall into that category, but murder, kidnap aren't the case,
rather it's more of "the police takes you to the station and you agree
to not do it or you sue the police" or something similar.

> But of course, there is another dimension in that it is a way of 
> hinting a bigger idea such as democracy and free speech, while 
> stopping short of directly mentioning them.

I do that all the time.  Many people critize the high centralization of
the central government, as long as it doesn't go further than "normal"
(definitely not going to showcase that!), you'd be okay.

> My apologies if I am completely off the track here but again, I feel 
> deeply for people who don't have the kind of freedoms completely 
> taken for granted in advanced industrial 'Western' countries (for 
> which Japan seems to be an honorary member from the East😅) and I 
> would love to work with everyone to do everything practical to 
> improve the situation!

Thank you!

> I am not sure whether this helps in the discussion of what the 
> appropriate topic is for this mailing list, etc, but wanted to 
> mention that I think the social context could be very different for 
> each participant.

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