Frankly, I trust the US government more than my local ones, to have this information.
What I don't trust is the neutrality regarding company sensitive information and competitors. (I still trust the US government more than I would trust most any other than that, but still not much.)
So, on one side you have the Nakba in a burning civil war when populations were thrown out (both Jews and Palestinians). Civil wars are horrible.
The other side is when the Jews were thrown out of the Muslim countries and their property stolen. Not in a civil war, but just from racism -- because they had the same religion as in some other country.
Note here that more Jews fled from the Muslim world than Palestinians in the Nakba. And in the fleeing Jews' stolen property there were more land than multiple times the size of Israel.
Contrast this with that not every Palestinian fled from Israel. They are still a large part of the population today -- the Israeli Palestinians were NOT thrown out as a reaction to when the Muslims threw out their Jews.
And you are really, really upset about Israel -- but dismiss the worse things happening in e.g. your home country Tunisia...
I have to stop here -- any further comment on your opinions, moral and intellectual integrity can't be polite. Let me just say that as a Westerner, I think you should judge yourself harder than you judge others.
As far as I know, the walls came up as security measures because of the second Intifada. Before that, people lived in Gaza and worked in Israel and people travelled between for shopping, etc. (This isolation gave serious economic problems in Israel too.)
So the isolation and security came up because of violence, the terror against civilian Israelis is not an original reaction to the wall.
So when a population misbehaves, you setup a ghetto to isolate it? We're talking about upwards of a million people here by the way. Is that really the right way to handle things?
Looking at the whole picture, I maintain that resistance is justified.
You don't contradict that you were aware of my points..?
If e.g. Finland or Estonia started to shoot rocket artilleri towards St Petersburg, the reaction would certainly be much worse than Israel's at Gaza...
(And because of Karelia etc for Finland and generations of slavery for Estonians, they have as good reasons as the Gazans.)
The situation is:
Side A attack side B's civilians. You only complain about side B's quite moderate defense against A's attacks. (Again, installed to stop the attacks.) Then you motivate that further attacks from A are understandable, because of B's defense.
It is such a sad case of hypocritical and hateful circular logic I get vertigo. :-(
I did not respond because you are oversimplifying the issue. The history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is long and bloody. Claiming in such a confident and final manner that the building of the wall was because Gaza started is very narrow-sighted.
Your analogy is incorrect.
When a sovereign nation attacks another, war ensues. That is very clear. But when resistance elements arise within a city that is supposedly part of a sovereign nation, you don't build a wall around the city. That's how you would handle it in the Middle Ages.
But the issue is even more complex than that, since the resistance aims to gain independence from the state. So I would say that the Gaza situation is somewhat similar to that of the IRA and the UK.
I don't recall the UK building a wall around Ireland and carpet bombing it every few years?
Woah woah woah man... quite moderate? The destruction of a third of Gaza and the death of thousands of people is quite moderate?
What makes you think bombing in that video was indiscriminate? On the opposite, I see single buildings being destroyed, while the neighbouring buildings stay intact. That's a very precise strike by any standard. Furthermore, there is nothing to convince me these buildings were not occupied by Hamas terrorists (which are known to hide behind civilian population).
And yes, I agree with you that knocking on the roof is a very considerate "last warning". Which other country goes to such lengths to minimize civilian loss of life? There are early warnings, too, though: by phone, text and leaflets. That's why you don't see any people running out of that house: it is already empty.
If Hamas recognizes the right of Israel to exist, the walls will be broken and the major part of the settlements moved. Israel has shown several times that they can exchange land for peace, even within right wing governments.
No one can believe that. That's one of the big lies of the Israeli government. Settlements will never be given back and the mission is to get all the land. That was the idea from the beginning and they think they have their god on their side.
So the basic problem is that the Jews and/or the democratic country are evil? Sigh... :-(
Arafat got at least two offers for a Palestinian state (at Camp David and once later), with about 91% of the West Bank iirc.
The later offer was when Barak needed Arafat's support of a peace agreement before an election (so the Palestinian side had a good negotiating position).
Arafat didn't accept either -- which was one thing. But there was no counter offer like "Give us XX and YY and customs advantages ZZ and ...". Instead Arafat started a terror campaign.
But there is no blame for all that refusal to even give a counter proposal; it is all a big Israeli conspiracy.
(Seriously, I feel a bit sick when I chat with hateful people.)
I was only saying that Israel government lies , i have not said that jews are evil. So stop lying and putting words i have not said. I have not even said that Palestinian government is good. I feel sorry for people like you , so brainwashed that can not even see reality.
Saying that the Israel government lies when every government lies doesn't add anything to the discussion. The difference is that Israel in his very short history has shown that they can exchange land for peace in an extent no other country recently did after winning wars from the weaker side.
The lies you are talking about are just part of a long term negotiation until Hamas recognizes the right of Israel to exist and live in peace. Once this milestone is achieved, Israel will not have any excuse to move forward with the peace process because the Israelis, and the jewish people will not tolerate more excuses.
See, this is a reasonable presentation of ideas, not accusing me of being hateful, thanks for being polite and stating your points. Maybe i don't agree with you, i still don't believe that Israel wants to give back anything when they are building more every year. So the exchanges of land they are so proud is returning land they have stolen before so nothing to be proud of. Apart from that i still think that Hamas is stupid not trying to reach a real peace, it would be good for all, cause having a neighbor like Israel could help to accelerate the development of a Palestinian state. IMHO the problem is that both sides think they can win and the other side lose and that makes real efforts for peace look they are in vain.
What I've read, is that the border to Gaza was open enough for commuting and shopping trips -- until the systematic attacks on civilians.
You had no problem with that description in your previous comment.
But good references to non partisan sources would be interesting?
(AGAIN: If the ones controlling an area -- including doing elections, defense, police and taxes -- put all their economy into rocket artillery against another country's civilians, the reaction will not be mild... And Gaza is not part of a city, it was a free area.)
Regarding the killed children -- wasn't the people doing a revenge murder of a Palestinian teenager sentenced to long jail sentences when they got caught?
The Palestinian terrorists are declared martyrs, mural paintings are done, their relatives get a pension from PLO -- while caught Israeli murderers are sent to jail..?
It do seem like equivalent sides, as you claim... :-)
> The Palestinian terrorists are declared martyrs, mural paintings are done, their relatives get a pension from PLO -- while caught Israeli murderers are sent to jail..?
Judging from the public reaction in Israel to the manslaughter conviction of Elor Azaria (polling suggests something like 67% want him pardoned), some segment of the Israeli public isn't above sticking up for its murderers.
Yes things are getting worse, the cinfkuct is wearing patience thin, and, as of today, he had not been pardoned. But there will be no streets named after him, he will be dishonourably discharged from the military, and he will not be generally celebrated as a hero. He is viewed as yet another victim, except by some extremists who get a lot of screen time.
Now can we get back to discussing supporting the coding academy in Gaza?
You are not contradicting my point. He is still going to jail.
The sympathy for due process of terrorists will wear thin in most democracies. Afaik, most countries with continuous terror problems throw out the law book.
This is a quite logical result, since the point of terror is to get a fear and horror reaction from the civilian population to influence them. Scared voters make politicians hysterical, so everything is done to stop the situation. (Democracies seems to be even worse here, since voters are more important than non democracies.)
Afaik, this goes for USA, Germany, Israel, Britain, Spain, etc. (I saw claims from some English guy that they did it different regarding IRA, then some other GB guy contradicted and listed some English laws. Let's call that example uncertain.)
> You are not contradicting my point. He is still going to jail.
Israel undeniably has a better and more principled legal system than whatever the Palestinians have under the occupation. It's admirable that they found this guy guilty in the face of public opinion.
Insofar as your "mural paintings" statement spoke to the cultural differences, I think it's important (and unbelievably sad) to note that the difference when it comes to acceptance of bloody murder is just a matter of degree. All the parties involved have been degraded by this conflict.
Another poster wrote that this kind of argument takes away from the discussion of the good that's being done there, and I believe he's right, so... :)
"just a matter of degree"? OK, let's look at it then:
Side A is officially antisemitic in their founding document (Hamas) and TV programs (even for children!); they literally took inspirations from the 3rd Reich. They condone murders of civilians (even children) and pay pensions to the family of killed murderers. They have expelled all members of side B. They persecute members of side B everywhere on the planet where both groups live in the same society.
Side B have racism from individuals, which is officially condemned by a democratically elected government. They throw murderers of civilians in jail. 20% (?) of the population in side B are really part of side A, with no expulsions (except once in a bad civil war, when both sides did it, almost 70 years ago).
And so on, there are lots of examples.
You can dismiss this as "just a matter of degree". But then note that there is also "just a matter of degree" in Celsius between Antarctica and Hawaii.
When do "double standards for different sides" go over the limit to the definition of stronger terms?
(Edit: If you're going to argue that persecution and hatred of Jews are excusable because of X, note that more Jews were expelled from the Muslim world than Palestinians that fled from the Nakba. And multiple times more land was stolen from them than the total area of Israel.)
Why are we talking about Side A and Side B at all? Each of those is a vast overgeneralization. Israelis are diverse, as are Palestinians/Gazans. It's easy to make broad generalizations until you actually meet people on both sides and understand their human context.
Have you ever met a Gazan (outside of any military situation, if you're Israeli and had to serve)? If not, check this out since it may be the closest you can get... I don't think these people are ones you'd have any reason to dislike or want to punish:
> If you're going to argue that persecution and hatred of Jews are excusable because of X
If it seemed to you that anything I wrote intended to argue that persecution and hatred of anyone is "excusable because of X", this was rather a waste of time.
Which is of course a surprise, since discussion of the Palestinian conflict online is ordinarily so productive...
That was just answering a common bad argument in advance.
I wrote it INSIDE "()", AS AN EDIT. since that was the only thing you could comment on, sad...
EDIT: I used a ":-)" three comments ago as a mark of irony. Well, justin66 have no serious answer, so I end it here.
Edit 2: Justin66 seems to downvote my comments in this old discussion now, with multiple accounts... 15+ downvotes on old and new comments in 20 minutes. That is what happens when people lack both a serious argument and maturity. (Easy to find for HN mods..)
Edit 3: detaro -- The karma is irrelevant. And I should be equally ashamed as justin66 for needling whai I hope is a teenager when he have dearly held wrong opinions. Enough.
The guidelines ask us not to complain about downvotes in the first place, but it's definitely not OK to attack and accuse other users like this here. Please stop.
Now that I know that not all of what you've written is meant to be taken seriously, I really have no idea what point you're trying to get across, aside from some vague pro-Israel, anti-Palestine thing. My mistake for responding to a message ending in ":-)" in the first place.
You have a point, I am easily trolled when people lack arguments and start discussing person.
Regarding earlier comments... I got mainly upvotes, until an hour ago.
I have argued, a year or two ago, that this subject have to much emotional attachments and doesn't work on HN. It is twice as true today, it seems people now often have secondary accounts used for trolling when they lack answers about soemthing they find important.
I don't think what you're seeing is the action of secondary accounts. The tone of a number of your comments has been rude and aggressive, and the accusations of other users is also uncivil. You've been called out by a mod, and at least two other members have commented on your behavior. I've downvoted and flagged a number of your comments as well.
You may be right about the topic not being appropriate for HN. Regardless of the behavior of other members—even if you think they're trolling—it's important to be civil. Even more so when the topic is emotional. Otherwise it's just better to refrain from commenting.
I have found that I am easily trolled when I have the beginning of allergy troubles. It is better to not comment than to find out the hard way I need anti histamines.
I am absolutely not in the possession of two HN accounts. It strikes me as not completely inconceivable that someone else finds your posts on this topic, which seem to represent an internal dialogue as much as an attempt to communicate, irritating.
>> sabre-rattling coming, frankly, largely from the West
Uh, the Western democracies have started to do wars in Europe for territory? :-)
After Soviet fell, the NATO forces (and the neutral countries) in Europe melted away; the US/Canadian units in Germany went home and so on. This changed after Russia started to rebuild and do wars.
Edit: This was about the new "sabre rattling". Long, long after the Balkan horrible tragedies. (And I'd really argue if the "West" rattled any sabers there, but it isn't relevant anyway.)
Regarding Sweden and WW II: If Sweden shouldn't have been a "lapdog" -- which side of the war should it have joined? With Norway or with Finland? Not a simple choice, neither now nor at the time.
And regarding USA today:
Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. (Not even USA. :-) ) So it is arguably in the Swedish interest to help all democracies be as strong and informed as ever possible.
That said, I doubt the reason Sweden is such a handmaid to US interests was so philosophical, of course. Every country do realpolitik and lies shamelessly about it. We don't know what the US paid (hopefully not just bribes to Swedish politicians, old hatt/mössa style... :-) ).
Edit: These comments really jumps up/down in votes. :-)
Sweden always claims to be neutral, but the open secret is that Sweden is protected by NATO in case "someone" = Russia invades. Such protection costs, but since it's a secret, there can be no public debate about the price and if it's worth it.
So each elected government gets to negotiate the protection payment themselves, and the whole reason for the FRA law was to legally increase and secure the amount of sigint that could be collected and handed over to the US. The whole public debate over that got really weird, because the executive branch was SUPER INSISTENT that the law got passed, but couldn't argue for it, because the actual reason was secret.
Does covertly overthrowing a democratically elected government, installing a dictator only to later invade count as two democracies going to war? Otherwise it sounds like a very big loophole and one the US uses all of the time.
Uh? What examples [of deposing democracies then invading when the dictator becomes too oppressive] exist after the cold war?
Edit: Point is, there was a war of influence in the cold war; dictators played Soviet/West against each others for support. E.g. South Korea and Taiwan became democratic after the cold war, to not risk being ostracized.
Yeah, even Reagan (Grenada & Panama) and the Bushes (Panama & Iraq) pretty much installed democracies.
The world is slightly different after Kissinger left office (Argentina)... realpolitik is really more of a Euro-Russian thing than a US thing. Although that could change again with the new president.
You mean the US's middle East policy hasn't been driven by realpolitik? That it was idealistic? Why the has the US propped up so many dictatorships? Saudi Arabia?
I think most people believe their own country's propaganda. :-)
In Sweden, since that is the subject, we really used to be naive and trust what we were told.
Some of the typical characteristics you saw, all the way back to before written history, is that we are group oriented and do what we were told. This made for a high trust society, which is probably what made the place work.
But no more, the society elites are really destroying this trust now.
That the democratic world supports Saudi A is an extreme example of realpolitik, of course. We need stability in that part of the world.
>> Bushes (Panama & Iraq) pretty much installed democracies.
I would use the word "democracy" pretty loosely when it comes to Iraq.
A consistent insurgency with widespread sectarian violence and much of the Sunni population not taking part in the elections, it was hardly what anybody would deem a "democracy".
Not to mention banning the Ba'ath party, which, while it had ruled under a dictator, nonetheless had the support of much of the population, who were disenfranchised as a result.
>In June 2003, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority banned the Ba'ath Party, and banned all members of the party's top four tiers from the new government and from public schools and colleges, a move which some criticised for blocking too many experienced people from participating in the new government. Thousands were removed from their positions, including doctors, professors, school teachers and bureaucrats. Many teachers lost their jobs, causing protests and demonstrations at schools and universities.
A revolution is scary, the dice are thrown in the air and you have no clue how they fall. It didn't go well in Libya, so far.
But mainly Putin and his employees seem to think that it was bad to support an uprising to get rid of the previous junta in Libya (and they are probably mostly upset because Gadaffi was a good customer).
And about Syria -- how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians have the Assad regime bombed/tortured/etc to death?! That ought to weigh heavily on Obama in the history books.
(Regarding Iraq, I do believe in that it was an honest attempt, but of course it is hard to go to a functional democracy in half a generation. The spectacular failure was extreme, of course...)
Revolutions are reasonably predictable, after all, history rhymes.
From my point of view I would agree that Libya was better off with Gaddafi. Gaddafi was negotiating a surrender with free elections but Hillary Clinton blocked it because she wanted him dead and needed to boost her foreign policy resume. She then bragged about it afterwards. Libya is unlikely to recover in a meaningful way for the duration of the modern islamic uprising - which will be a very long time.
Syria was, is, going to be a massacre either way. We are much much better off to have Assad winning. Obama's support of Al Nusra / ISIS in their fight against Syria / Russia resulted in much greater destruction, suffering and loss of life that what would have happened without Obamas help.
Why the US is pushing so hard for an economic war / proxy war / shooting war with Russia is pretty complex and out of scope for this response. But as Noam Chomsky would say; modern states maintain power either by force or by propaganda. As a democracy we get the propaganda.
To round it out; Iraq was created by the British with the intent of making an easy to control failed state. Hence why their borders make no sense. The British have a long tradition of this and are very good at it. The fact that Iraq failed and keeps failing should be of no surprise to anyone.
I have clearly done none of what you accuse me of. I have never said, or even implied, that Russia is an innocent party. Nor have I suggested that US blunders excuse Russian war crimes.
I consider Russia to be an oppressive, dysfunctional, dictatorial regime. It's citizens are drinking themselves to death with depression.
I am more critical of US policies for the same reason George Orwell focused his writing to be critical of the left; obvious fascism is obvious. You are probably already aware of it so there is little point in me reminding you. Perhaps I could have done a better job in letting you know that I know about Russia and Syrias shortcomings. I assumed that would have been self evident.
I'm an America loving American and consider my belief system to be a mix of Noam Chompsky, Christopher Hitchens, Ron Paul, Bertrand Russell, and Nigel Farage... which is eclectic to say the least
That was yet another long list of extreme claims without references!
Edit: No references in the answer to this, as expected. (I can only blame myself for arguing with what looks like an extra account created to troll people someone don't agree with.)
(At least about modern, mainly international, politics -- what the Brits did before WWII seems quite irrelevant to anything by now.
Edit: WWII started almost 80 years ago for <vulgarity>'s sake, there is some time limit when even people in the Middle East have to stop blaming GB...)
The idea that British pre WWII history is irrelevant betrays your ignorance. Considering that Britain is the most recent world power to collapse, there is much that can be learned from them.
Also consider that we are entering a time that is quite similar to the pre-WWII era. For example; the modern hate speech laws being used against nationalist are making the nationalist more popular not less. This is basically a repeat as to what happened when Weimar Republic (Germany) used similar hate speech laws to jail the Nazis.
Ha ha ha ha, perhaps I have better things to do than provide you with particulars. Especially when my assertions are easily searchable. I'm guessing you're a member of the spoon fed generation.
I comment on topics that interest me and I cycle my account on a regular basis to preserve anonymity - which, for reasons, is important to me.
The idea that time makes someone less deserving of blame is nonsensical. The idea that people should simply get over past wrongs, especially WWII, will only serve to invite repeat abuses.
It is also impractical, as past wrongs are very effective tools for propaganda and thus will be evoked whenever convenient. A good example is China use of the West's involvement in the Opium Wars to stir up anti-western sentiment. Similarly they use the Rape of Nanking to stir up anti-japanese sentiment. This is to lay the groundwork for a future war with the US. These past events are very relevant to our future. And asking them to get over it isn't going to work.
What ought to weigh on your mind and on Obama's are the "many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians" that the "moderate Islamist" we're supporting have killed and tortured.
And do keep in mind that without the interventions in Libya and Syria, Europe would not be dealing with the immigration crisis it's facing now.
To start with, 30% of the 2015 asylum seekers in Sweden were from Syria -- so that is not really the reason for the flood wave. The politicians opened the gates, it was possible to get to West Europe.
The consensus is that the Assad junta is responsible for much more death/torture than even ISIS. They have the ability to use barrel bombs and artillery on civilians.
> Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others.
The Democratic Peace theory has always been bunk: even when it was formulated, for any definition of democracy restrictive enough for the claim "Democracies don't fight wars with each other", the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero.
Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensible than it was previously.
The US went to war with Mexico. Or, more accurately, Mexico went to war with itself, and the US supported the secession bloc well enough to legally adopt it.
Then the US went to war against its own secession immediately afterward.
Mexico, the United States, and the Confederate States are (were) all democratic republics, and their constituent states are all democratic republics.
And does it have to be a shooting war? Because democracies wage economic wars against each other quite frequently.
>> the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero.
There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?
>> Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensible than it was previously.
Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -- and Jugoslavia fell relatively quickly into a civil war. How does that reflect on democracies?
(Are you defining "democracy" as "one free election, no power changes after consecutive free elections is needed"? That is hardly how the term is defined, last I checked either the democracy or the democratic peace theory.)
> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?
There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than the ratio of democracies to countries.
> Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -
Uh, Yugoslavia split from the Soviet bloc in 1948, and Tito died in 1980.
I know a lot of scholars count Serbia as a democracy, but it wasn't until 2001. Milosevic was a classic post-soviet Eastern European autocratic strongman. While Serbia had a parliament, electoral fraud was rife.
Milosevic's popular support was likely around 10% at the end. The country was governed by a weird coalition of financial interests that made up a ruling class of a few tens of thousands of people - many ex-communists.
In terms of success as a kleptocrat, Milosevic is only beaten out by Suharto, Marcos and a small number of others - he likely stole in excess of a billion.
That said - the Balkan wars do present another case of democracy v democracy at war as at some points Croatia and Bosnia (the Muslim canton) were at a state of war yet both were democracies (altho also arguably ruled by strongmen).
AGAIN: You claim that Yugoslavia was democratic before the civil war, since you claim that exact Balkan war (?) is a counterexample to the claim that democracies don't wage war.
How many free elections did they have? :-) How many free transfers of power did they have? :-)
(The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)
EDIT: I am NOT going to comment on Dragonwriter's answer to this and for a THIRD TIME ask for references about how Yugoslavia and Serbia are stable democracies that have been doing transfer of power after free elections AT THAT TIME PERIOD. :-( I am disappointed over a 30+K karma account for this bullshit.
I hope that Sweden got a renewal on its lease on the nuclear umbrella, hopefully long enough to increase its own operative military capability. This would be a win for both the US (capable bilateral partner/buffer zone in area) and Sweden (less likely to be strongarmed into uncomfortable positions). Is that too much to dream of?
I think it serves to remember that even though Sweden is tiny compared to the US and NATO, its capability locally during its prime in the 80s was much more than NATO could bring to that theater.
Interesting. Is this because the Perl ecosystem is more mature or because of the philosophy of backwards compatibility?
The "backwards compatibility" philosophy isn't so explicit for the ecosystem, mostly the language? Is the test-on-install-by-default making a big difference there?
That's a good question. I think it's not a coincidence that CPAN predated the widespread use of distributed source control systems whereas pypi and gems blew up just as mercurial and git were unseating svn and cvs. It's a different release philosophy (remember, in the 1990s you often didn't even get to see pre-release CVS commits of open source projects; that was an innovation of OpenBSD).
I also think the widespread use of VPSs rather than accounts on shared servers (again, containerization) was a factor. In the 90s and early 2000s, you usually (even in a corporate setting) had an unprivileged account on a server with a given version of apache and perl, your own cgi-bin directory, and possibly some latitude on a personal CPAN install directory. The lack of containerization meant you had to compromise between using newer software and breaking existing use cases.
So I guess I think it's not so much about Python vs. Perl per se but about the technologies available when those languages became popular among developers.
That would seem to be ironic. As a longtime Perl developer who switched (for pragmatic reasons -- a job) two and a half years ago, my impression is that Python [as a language] is much better suited to a business environment. What makes Perl such a wonderful language and why I enjoy it so much is exactly why it blows as a business language. Python's rigidity is very useful if you ever want someone else to read and understand code written by someone else. So the idea that Perl ends up with the more mature package management is exactly the opposite of what I would have predicted.
That said, I haven't had any more problems with PyPi packages than I did in the past with CPAN. Yes, pip always wants to upgrade itself, but that sort of every-damn-day software upgrade cycle seems to have become quite prevalent, not just in the Python world.
You talk about that Python have just one possible layout standard and so on, I guess? That is a different subject. (And sure, no coding standard is bad for a project, Python removes that discussion to a degree.)
I think the real problem with Python/Ruby/etc is the surprising lack of an analogue to CPAN Testers.
It isn't just all of CPAN that is tested on different OS/Perl version combinations, it also stress test the Perl versions.
What I don't trust is the neutrality regarding company sensitive information and competitors. (I still trust the US government more than I would trust most any other than that, but still not much.)