Little Brother

Activism, Autoritarianism, Civil liberties
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Remember the scene in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where Manny sketches a structure for an underground organization? Now imagine that, done properly. With X-boxes.
— Ken MacLeod

You may already have seen the hype for Cory “Boing Boing” Doctorow’s latest novel, Little Brother all over the internet; certainly I’ve seen it mentioned on a fair few of the blogs I frequent. There’s a reason for this, as it’s not just another science fiction novel, or even another young adult science fiction novel, but an attempt to inoculate a new generation against the phony security mindset that swept America in the wake of the September 11 attacks and arguably the UK some years earlier. We’ve all have had to deal with the results, in everything from having to carry an ID with us at all times to stupid rules about how much fluid you can take along on your airplane trip. But for anybody under twentyone it’s worse and it has been worse for much longer. Every inch of their lives is controlled and regulated these days because it has become so much more easier to do so. As Cory puts it in the preface to Little Brother:

The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood.

So what Cory does is to give them the tools to take their lives back. Little Brother is basically one long infodump on, well, hacking, in the good old-fashioned sense of the word, packaged in a neat near-future thriller. It’s a novel in the best tradition of didactic science fiction –Ken MacLeod makes the comparison with Heinlein, while the title itself is of course a reference to 1984. But didactic doesn’t mean dull, as the synopsis makes clear:

Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works –and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

Best thing about Little Brother? It’s not just a book, it’s a movement. And Cory is putting his money where his mouth is and made the book available as a free, Creative Commons licensed e-book. In all, this is a noble attempt at not just making people aware of the encrouching security society, but help them find the tools to fight against it, circumvent it, pervert it.

Books read in April

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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Another month gone by means another list of books read.

Madame de Pompadour — Nancy Mitford
Following on from her biography of Frederick the Great. This was written much earlier, in 1954 as opposed to 1971 and I found it slightly harder going. It’s also longer, which doesn’t help. After a while Mitford’s light, teasing style began to annoy a bit.

The Clan Corporate — Charlie Stross
The third novel in the Merchant Wars series, charlie’s attempt at writing a proper epic fantasy series, though it owns more to H. Beam Piper than to J. R. R. Tolkien.

London: A Social History — Roy Porter
This was published in 1994, so it misses the developments of the past fourteen years, but this is still an excellent one volume history of London and its peoples. It’s not as comprehensive as Peter Acroyd’s later London the Biography, but it’s not as up itself either.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar — Michael Parenti
Takes the murder of Julius Caesar and puts it in a class war context.

The Year of Our War — Steph Swainston
Interesting fantasy novel by a new and unknown to me writer.

The People of the Talisman — Leigh Brackett
Another short Eric John Stark novel, in the vein of the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom novels, but much better written.

Tanks in Detail — Panzer III — Terry J. Gander
What should be an indepth look at one of the more important German World War 2 tanks is let down by its shortness and doesn’t contain much not already known to the tank enthusiast.

Tanks in Detail — Sherman & Firefly — Terry J. Gander
Another entry in the same series as above, suffering from the same flaws and with a less interesting selection of pictures and drawings to liven it up.

Stations of the Tide — Michael Swanwick
Okay but not spectacular science fiction novel by a writer who has done better. It never quite gelled into a coherent story.

Postwar — Tony Judt
Flawed history of postwar Europe, too focused on the big countries (Germany, France, Italy and the UK) in my opinion.

The Voyage of the Sable Keech — Neal Asher
The first Asher novel I’ve read, not the best starting point as it needs a lot of backstory knowledge to make sense out of.

The Great History of Comic Books — Ron Goulart
A nicely chatty history of the American comic book, which largely confines itself to the socalled Golden Age (1920s-1950s). Dated, sketchy but a reasonable overview still.

Worlds of the Imperium — Keith Laumer
Fun fast-paced adventure sf by the master. Not an unmissable classic by any means, but good enough to pick up secondhand.

A Plague of Demons — Keith Laumer
Another sf adventure novel by Laumer. It was interesting reading those two so short after each other and see the simularities. Both are set partially in North Africa – Algeria to be precise, both feature tough loners whose name starts with a B, etc.

The Prefect — Alastair Reynolds
This is a prequel to Revelation Space and its sequels, set at a time when the Glitter Band was not yet destroyed and as a consequence somewhat of a less sombre novel than Reynolds usually writes. It took a while for me to get in it, but once it did it was rather
good.

Chain of Command — Seymour Hersh
A good though dated (written in 2004) overview of the crimes of the Bush administration in their war on terror, going from what happened in Abu Ghraib all the way back up the chain of command to the crimes at the heart of the War on Iraq.

Rainbows End — Vernor Vinge
Once upon a time I would’ve said Vernor Vinge was the science fiction author with the most convincing view of the future. Now however it just seems old fashioned, even slightly dull. Nevertheless this is still an accomplished novel, though not half as convincing in its depiction of the near future as e.g. Halting State or Brasyl.

Dutch mumps epidemic: how religion threatens public health

Oh Those Crazy Cloggies, wingnuts
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You wouldn’t think it possible anymore in a modern, rich country like the Netherlands, but we are in the midst of a mumps epidemic. Actually, that’s not quite right: only part of the country is influenced by this epidemic and not so coincidently, it’s the most Christian part, the socalled bible belt, which stretches from my homeland of Zeeland, up to the central part of the Netherlands. This is where the communities of strict protestant churches are the largest and unfortunately many of these churches belief vaccinations, like insurances, are incompatible with a proper Christian belief. If god wants you to be sick, you will be sick and you shouldn’t attempt to thwart the will of god. More sane christians argue that if god wants you to be sick you will get sick, vaccination or not, but these are hardcore.

Normally, this isn’t that much of a problem, apart for those unfortunates who get polio because their parents refuse to protect them against it. But get enough of those loons together and it’s not a question of a few children getting diseases they needed have had, but you get a proper epidemic threatening not just them, but everybody. Vaccination programmes only work if enough people participate; once you get enough unprotected people infected, the risk that you will get the disease as well despite your vaccination gets much bigger. Which seems indeed to have happened, as about a quarter of cases in this epidemic concern vaccinated children as well.

In other words, this is a case in which freedom of religion conflicts directly with public health. Because of their beliefs about vaccination, these Christian groups endager not just themselves and their children, which is bad enough already, but also the rest of us. that’s why vaccination programmes should be mandatory and religious beliefs not be allowed as a reason to opt out. Especially since so often it’s the parent‘s beliefs which are responsible for the refusal to protect the child.

Dutch media bias in the Middle East

Israel/Palestine, Manufacturing Consent, Zionism
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Branko reports on the findings of political scientist Jacqueline de Bruijn on how the Dutch media reports on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The results are depressing but unsurprising:

  • the press under-reports Israeli attacks on Palestinians, even when there are dozens of victims, but it reports on every Palestinian attack on Israelis, even when there are no victims;
  • as a result, the few times Israeli aggression is reported on, this makes it seem that the supposedly rare Israeli attack is a response to a continuous stream of Palestinian aggression

As one person cynically noted: dead Palestinians are not news, simply because there are so many of them. Israel’s state propaganda makes handy use of this fact by continuously stressing that its attacks are merely responses to Palestinian aggression (a tactic Israel also uses with the PR for its attacks on Lebanon). What makes the whole matter worse is that Israel’s heavy handed violence against the occupied population is actually beneficial for this PR strategy. There’s no reason for Israel to tone down the murderousness of its regime.

[…]

For the press to combat this bias, it first has to recognize that it does have a problem. Everybody can see that De Bruijn’s qualitative statements are correct simply by opening the newspaper and observing the loaded language, regardless of the merits of De Bruijn’s methodology and quantitative statements. Next, the press has to figure out how to attack this problem.

De Bruijn presented her findings during a meeting in which the press were present. Also there was essayist Mohammed Benzakour who came with an equally interesting observation: several of the major Dutch newspapers have correspondents in Israel who are allied with the Zionist cause. The correspondent for Algemeen Dagblad and broadcaster EO (evangelists) is former chairman of the Nederlandse Zionisten Bond and has a daughter who works as press spokes person for the Israeli army, and the correspondent of the Volkskrant organizes trips to Jerusalem for Cidi. That does not necessarily invalidate their reporting (for all I know they take great care to remain as objective as possible), but it does signal a clear conflict of interest, which should in turn alert news consumers. Then again, why should I consume news from a suspect source?

I’ve noticed the tendency of the Dutch media to largely look at the conflict through Israeli eyes before, so it’s good to see my suspicions being confirmed. It’s also another blow against zionist propagandists like the bad news movement who like to pretend the Dutch media are biased against Israel.

If there was a retard cup, FC Groningen would’ve won it

Football, funny, Numpties
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Quick question: if you are a football club and one of your main rivals comes over for a game, not long after they bought three of your best players, would you think it was a good idea to hand out thousands of bogrolls? No, I don’t think so either, but FC Groningen thought this was a marvelous idea to allow it, as “a fun way to say goodbye to those players going to Ajax”. Even the fire brigade allegedly gave permission for this stunt. So of course the obvious happened. Some nutters thought it would enhance the party mood if they set fire to those bogrolls, more and more people started throwing lit rolls and before you know it, there was a fire and panic. Worse, the firehoses available in the stadium turned out not to have pressure on them, the fire retardant chairs didn’t turn out to be so fire retarding and finally some or all emergency exits were locked.

That winning combination of club incompetence and hooligan violence has led to incredible disasters in the past. Remember Heizel stadium? Fortunately here, despite the fire and the panic, the worst that happened was a complicated ankle fracture for one unlucky fan. No thanks to FC Groningen though. Stupidity all around.