Martin's Booklog

Reefer Madness — Eric Schlosser

Published on September 11, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Reefer Madness

Reefer Madness
Eric Schlosser
310 pages including index
published in 2003

When I think of black markets, I associate them with World War II and occupied Europe; not with modern day America. Yet, as Eric Schlosser shows in Reefer Madness, they are alive and well. America’s underground economy may be as big as ten percent of its Gross Domestic Product, though obviously any estimate of by definition hidden economic activities is bound to be imprecise. Nevertheless, it is clear that there’s a huge hidden economy shadowing the official economy. In Reefer Madness traces three different parts of it: the marijuana trade, porn and illegal labour in Southern California. Schlosser’s intention is to use these examples to illuminate the way in which the underground and official economies are linked and how these underground economies influence the country as a whole.

I don’t think he succeeded completely in turning what are in essence three separate essays into a coherent argument. The three aspects of the underground economy he looks at are not embedded in much of a context, apart from a short foreword and a slightly longer afterword, while the crosslinks between the essays are also missing. In theory Schlosser could’ve provided a good overview of how illegal and semi-illegal industries interact with the socalled official economy, as he has an example of an activity vigerously combatted by government and industry alike (marijuana trade), one that’s officially illegal but which is not just tolerated but to a certain extent encouraged (illegal migrant labour) and one which is now legal but barely condoned though financially enormously succesful (porn). Unfortunately however he remains stuck at a semi-anecdotal level, providing a lot data on each of these fields but without the analysis to match it. On their own the essays are quite good, but the book as a whole therefore doesn’t quite gel.

De Snuffelstaat — Buro Jansen en Janssen

Published on September 11, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of De Snuffelstaat

De Snuffelstaat
Buro Jansen en Janssen
223 pages including index
published in 2002

Buro Jansen en Janssen -named after the bumbling detective duo from the Tintin comics- is a Dutch leftwing collective which has set itself the goal of critically following the various Dutch police forces and intelligence services, as well as commenting on any new legislation that intrudes on civil rights. It was founded in 1984, as a response
to the continuing harassement of leftwing groups as well as the squatters movement by the police and the intelligence services. Since then the buro has gotten a good reputation as a civil liberties watchdog, bringing out publications under its own name as well as supporting journalists writing on these issues and directly helping people caught up in intelligence service or police operations where appropriate.

The Snuffelstaat, best translated as The Snooping State, is one result of the buro’s work, an overview of how the main Dutch intelligence service, originally called the BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheids Dienst; internal security service), from 2002 onwards the AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheids Dienst; general intelligence and security service) functions and the impact it has on Dutch politics as well as ordinary Dutch people. The Snuffelstaat is intended as a snapshot of the work of the BVD, its methods, ties to other intelligence services and networks in Holland and abroad and the legislation surrounding the work of the intelligence services in the Netherlands.

Learning the World — Ken MacLeod

Published on September 3, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Learning the World

Learning the World
Ken MacLeod
398 pages
published in 2005

It only occurred to me after I finished this novel, that this was in fact Ken MacLeod’s version of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky. Like that, Learning the World is a novel of first contact between a planetbound alien civilisation and a human interstellar trading expedition. That realisation only dawned so late because despite the simular premise, the novels do not resemble each other all that much. MacLeod’s version is much more straightforward than Vinge’s book was.

Nevertheless, if you read these novels back to back MacLeod’s novel does start to look like a cheap knockoff, especially in synopsis. Both have a species of planetbound aliens, operating at a more or less early twentieth century level of technology, divided into several nations in a political situation that resembles that of pre-World War I Europe. For both the arrival of the humans represent both an opportunity and a threat, with their presence accelerating the political tension already present. In both the humans are also divided amongst themselves about how to handle first contact.

Battle for Empire — Tom Pocock

Published on September 2, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Battle for Empire

Battle for Empire
Tom Pocock
272 pages including index
published in 1998

It was described by Winston Churchill as the very first world war, with war raging between France and Britain for supremacy not just in Europe, but worldwide. Fighting between the two sides took place in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, India and even the Philippines. It was the Seven Years’ War. And even though it was one of the wars that is at the root of the modern world, according to Tom Pocock, it’s largely a forgotten war, especially those parts of the war that took place outside Europe. To rectify this Pocock wrote this book, Battle for Empire; he may have had somewhat of an ulterior motive, as one of his ancestors, vice-admiral Sir George Pocock, was one of the major participants in these events…

This then is not a history of the Seven Years’ War as a whole, but strictly the story of several of the major campaigns in the war outside Europe: the battles between Britain and France in India, the English invasion of Quebec and New France in America, as well as the expeditions against Spanish held Havanna and Manilla. Together they show how wide the war raged and how bold the British waged it. Little context is given to the wider war in which these campaigns took place, even less of the reasons for the war.

Blair’s Wars — John Kampfner

Published on September 2, 2007Leave a comment

Cover of Blair's Wars

Blair’s Wars
John Kampfner
401 pages including index
published in 2004

Tony Blair is the first UK prime minister to take his country to war five times in six years. It’s this for which he will be remembered, especially for the last war he started, the War on Iraq. Yet, ccording to John Kampfner in Blair’s Wars, Blair was never that much interested in foreign policy until well after he became prime minister. It’s this seeming contradiction that forms the heart of this book, an examination of what drove Blair to go to war so often and how he managed his wars.

John Kampfner is the current editor of the New Statesman and before that was a longtime foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, chief political correspondent for the Financial Times, as well as political commentator for the Today programme at the BBC. In all a fairly typical representative of the political media elite, who describes himself as leftist and whose opinions, as showcased on his website, are firmly in the mainstream of British politics, even if not necessarily shared by the British voter.

This background is echoed in Blair’s Wars: this is a book about the politics behind the wars, not the wars themselves. So there’s plenty of material about how Blair tried to get UN approval for the War on Iraq, how he succeeded or failed to persuaded the Americans to do something or to not do something, all from an insider’s point of view, with various senior advisors describing their roles in these processes. Kampfner is very good at describing the mechanics of this, but it is all treated somewhat like a ballgame, in that who wins these behind the scenes political struggles and the struggle itself is given more attention than what the outcome of such a struggle means.