Current Affairs

Keep Calm and Protest On #OWS

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Guns and flowers

This morning when I woke up my Twitter feed was full of news of how the NYPD was clearing out the Occupy Wall Street camp. The fact that they found it necessary to do so in the middle of the night, while imposing a complete media blackout, tells you all you need to know about what was going on.

Doubtless there is a lot of anger that protests are being cleared like this. (Other cities have done the same, sometimes less secretively with more violence.) On the other hand, it is a clear sign that the authorities are on the run, and making mistakes. I’m old enough to remember the Kent State shootings, and what they did to American public opinion.

Also, yesterday I was making some edits to my interview with Ahmed Khaled Towfik, the author of Utopia. One of the things he told me about was the brutal murder, by Egyptian police, of a young man called Khaled Saeed, and how this was one of the main sparks that led to the Egyptian revolution.

No one wants people to have to die for protesting authority, but equally it is true that few things get the media and public opinion on your side more effectively than some good old-fashioned police brutality. That we are starting to see it happen means that we are winning.

At one point during the morning Amanda tweeted some lyrics from a song I remember well. It is old, but it is just as appropriate today as it was when I was a kid. Here’s the whole thing.

Keep calm, protest on, and sing!

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today is November 5th, or as us old folks say, “Guy Fawkes”. I say “old folks” because the tradition of Guy burning has pretty much died out. Indeed, an American ex-pat friend of mine tweeted today that she’s been in the UK for 9 years and has never yet seen anyone ask for a “penny for the Guy”, or seen a bonfire be anything other than a bonfire. These days the festival is known as “Bonfire Night” and, given the health and safety concerns surrounding fireworks, it is increasingly being replaced in the popular imagination by Hallowe’en.

That’s kind of ironic, because Hallowe’en is a much older festival than Guy Fawkes. The date of the Gunpowder Plot is a matter of historical fact. However, given the religious nature of the Plot, I am sure that the Protestant rulers of the UK found it useful to be able to impose a celebration at almost the same time as the old Catholic festival of All Saints Day (also known as All Hallows, so the day that Hallowe’en preceeds). And of course All Hallows Day was, in turn, a Catholic invention intended to replace the old Celtic festival of Samhain. We have almost come full circle.

These days, of course, fear of Catholics is much less prevalent than it was, even 20 years ago. No one worries about Catholic terrorists anymore, at least in England. The Prime Minister is even proposing to allow the monarch to marry a Catholic, which would have caused an outcry when I was a kid. So it is perhaps appropriate that we no longer spend one night a year burning an effigy of a Catholic terrorist. Indeed, thanks to David Lloyd and V for Vendetta we have re-imagined Guido Fawkes as an anarchist revolutionary rather than a right-wing religious fundamentalist. Clearly there is a need for such a figure.

For an historical point of view, however, something is being lost. Guy Fawkes Day has been a grand tradition here for centuries, and some communities have made a very big deal of it. If you still want to celebrate the failure of Guido Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, Darkest Somerset is a good place to go.

A Taste of Arabic

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I spent yesterday evening in Bristol for a Festival of Ideas event involving three Egyptian authors. The main thrust of the event was to show how Egyptian literature is involved in, and reacting to, the political changes in that country. This was interesting in itself, but the main attraction for me is that one of the authors involved is a science fiction writer, and he now has a book available in English translation, thanks to Bloomsbury whose Arabic literature imprint was behind the event.

First to be introduced was Khaled AlKhamissi. His book, Taxi, is the most “literary” of the three. It is composed of 58 fictional conversations that the anonymous narrator has with different taxi drivers. The point here is to illustrate how the Egyptian man in the street (or at least in the taxi cab) thinks about the current political situation. It looks like a lot of fun as well as being deadly serious.

Ahmed Khaled Towfik is a literary phenomenon in Eqypt. He has written over 500 books, though most of those are novella length. As well as SF he writes horror and medical thrillers. There will be a lot more about him in the interview, which has been promised to Locus, but I have started reading his book, Utopia, and am impressed this far. The Independent‘s reviewer loved it.

Finally we had Ahmed Mourad who is one of the few authors of political thrillers in Egypt. He’s a photographer and film-maker as well, so I’m expecting so really good action scenes in Vertigo. I was interested to note that, while AlKhamissi talked about his family’s love of Tolstoy, and Towfik talked to me about reading Asimov, Clarke and Ballard, the younger Mourad said he grew up reading the books of Ahmed Khaled Towfik. Novel reading is apparently a relatively new hobby in Egypt, and it is good to know that the new generation of book readers has SF available.

I don’t want to comment much on the actual politics as I know so little about it. I will say that I thought these three men were incredibly brave. AlKhamissi has spent some time in prison, as have most of his family. But it is worth noting how these guys saw the struggle. Asked what their hopes and fears were, they talked about how they expected to see the rich ruling classes impose a new leader who was very much like Mubarak. AlKhamissi talks of the revolution, not as removing a dictator, but as an attempt to win independence from the USA. As with when the UK used to mess with African politics, it is where the guns and the money come from that really matters.

Time For Action

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Hello UK readers. The whole News of the World thing has been fun, hasn’t it? But it isn’t over yet. Just because King Rupert and his cronies have been exposed as a bunch of criminals, that doesn’t mean that our elected representatives won’t vote to give them a lot more power. Allowing News International to take full control of BSkyB will, I suspect, lead to the creation of a local version of Faux News, with all that entails, and give Murdoch even more influence over British politics. Our MPs need to be encouraged to stand up for democracy. It really doesn’t matter which party you support, it is in the interests of all of us to have our government doing what we want, not just what Rupert Murdoch wants. If you want to write to your MP, there’s a handy website to help you do so. Editing the message to make it personal will help.

Sorry, I don’t normally get this preachy. But this is a unique opportunity, and I’d hate to see the country miss it.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Newspapers

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Dear Rebekah Brooks,

I understand from various respectable sources (e.g. The Guardian) that you have responded to allegations made about the actions of the newspaper you edit as follows:

It is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.

Well, no. No one is actually accusing you of sanctioning the allegations. They are being made by other newspapers, not yours. What you are being accused of is sanctioning the actions that your newspaper is alleged to have taken, which is an entirely different matter.

Is constructing a coherent sentence in an announcement likely to be quoted by every news outlet in the country beyond you? You are the editor of a nationally distributed newspaper, are you not?

Or is this perhaps, as David Allen Green appears to think, part of an exercise in spin that will enable you to claim later that you “never lied” about the matter.

People outside of the UK who are wondering what all the fuss is about can find a history of the affair at the BBC.

Amazon and The Book Depository

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Yesterday’s Twitter updates brought the depressing news that Amazon is to buy up my second favorite online bookstore (the first being my own, naturally), The Book Depository. Reaction to this in my corner of the blogosphere has been pretty much uniformly negative, with many people suggesting that they’ll stop using TBD.

Meanwhile business-oriented news sites are trying to figure out what this is all about. Paid Content suggests that it is a question of expertise. While Amazon has largely followed chain bookstores such as B&N and Waterstones in focusing on the bestseller market, TBD has followed a more diverse business strategy, catering for a wide market and a diversity of tastes. By buying TBD, Amazon may be seeking to cover both bases.

The idea is given some credibility by the news that the two companies will remain independent. So it will be sort of like a hotel company owning several brands, each catering to a different segment of the market. I don’t think this will work. I think the economics of online retailing will inevitably favor a bestseller approach. While TBD might be happy with a less-profitable business model if it means it appears to be a viable alternative to, rather than a pale copy of, Amazon, once the two operations are overseen by the same board of directors it won’t be long before TBD is deemed insufficiently profitable and is wound up.

Consumers, especially those in countries without a local Amazon affiliate, appear to be mainly worried about pricing, in particular TBD’s famous “free shipping” policy. I have seen suggestions elsewhere that this is an illusion — what they do is check which country you are logging in from and adjust book prices accordingly. In any case it seems unlikely that Amazon will want to compete with itself, especially given the lengths it goes to in order to try to prevent publishers from ever offering a book for sale at less than you can buy it for on Amazon. The only thing slowing down price matching will be the time needed to build the IT systems that enforce it.

That brings us to the question of competition law. As The Guardian notes, the deal is not yet done. Regulatory approval is required. I can’t see the Office of Fair Trading doing anything. There wasn’t really any serious competition in the UK anyway as we have a local Amazon affiliate and prices were probably matched already. Besides, Tory government. Other countries may see things differently, but whether the EU has jurisdiction over the matter isn’t clear.

One other thing does spring to mind. Amazon has recently been closing affiliate accounts in various parts of the USA because state governments have been imposing local taxes on internet sales. California was the latest to go. I don’t know what the situation with US residents signing up to affiliate schemes with TBD is. My own TBD affiliate account is in US$, but is linked to the Wizard’s Tower PayPal account which is UK-registered, so it isn’t a good guideline. Does anyone know? Could this be Amazon exploring a loophole in US tax legislation to allow them to continue running affiliate schemes?

Further Thoughts

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Thinking about this gender debate it the shower this morning, it occurred to me that what irritates me about the whole process is how effectively it is derailed. First of all some women make what they hope is a reasoned argument, backed by facts, with suggestions for how we can move forward. Then a bunch of men spot the discussion and think, “ooh, a fight, let’s pile in!” They get aggressive, they get personal, and they try to wind people up. Finally the people who get targeted by these attacks fight back, complain about how unfair this all is, but put the blame on the issue, not on the way it has been distorted.

I’m sure this has all been said by Joanna Russ.

But there is always hope, and in response to all those people complaining about positive discrimination, quotas and the like I offer this article from today’s Observer. It is about something called the 30% Club, which seeks to significantly improve the proportion of women serving on the boards of major UK companies. It is backed by, amongst other people, the (male) bosses of Centrica (energy company), the Royal Bank of Scotland, John Lewis (major retailer) and Ernst & Young; and by the (Tory) government.

If they can do this, and recognize it is valuable to them to do so, can we not we manage something similar?

What’s On That Laptop?

~ Cheryl

It probably isn’t necessary to point you at something Neil Gaiman has tweeted about, but just in case there are a few of you out there who are not on Twitter, or don’t follow Neil, I’d like to direct you to this press release from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

The actual case in question is about a US citizen who was arrested at the Canadian border on charges of possessing child pornography because he had manga on his laptop. In part this is simply re-hashing old issues. Cartoon sex is not the same as real sex, and in manga all characters tend to look a bit child-like to someone who is not familiar with the art style. However, as the press release notes, this is part of a much wider trend of border guards searching the computers and other portable devices belonging to travelers. Do you know exactly what is on your laptop? Have you checked all of the spam email you get to be sure no pornographic pictures remain?

The main issue here is that border guards are, to a large extent, outside of the law. While you are asking for admission to another country you are neither under their laws nor your own. Eventually this poor American kid will go before a Canadian court, but if the judge throws the case out he will probably have no recourse, and the guards who arrested him will remain free to do the same to other people.

Alt.Fiction Reminder

~ Cheryl

I’ll be heading off to Derby tomorrow. My involvement is as follows:

  • Saturday 10:00am: The Digital Revolution
  • Saturday 3:00pm: Al Reynolds meets My Little Space Pony (and GoH speech)
  • Saturday 10:00pm (approx): Locus Awards live from Seattle
  • Sunday 3:00pm: The Value of Literary Awards

And one thing you can bet I am going to bring up on that Sunday panel is that winning awards gives authors an opportunity to speak out, like this. Fabulous stuff, Patrick.

Private IDAHO?

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today is IDAHO, the International Day Against HOmophobia and transphobia. Those of you versed in queer politics can doubtless already see where I am going with this. A day that should be spent fighting for human rights for all sorts of people is, to a large extent, being spent instead on arguments between various parts of the Queer community as to who is actually included and whether they should have a letter in the acronym. There should be a T, because otherwise transphobia is not properly covered. There should be a B, because otherwise bisexuals are being made invisible. There should be an I, because intersex people resent being included under the trans umbrella. And so on. Sometimes I think that if we expended half as much energy on fighting external bigotry that we expended on fighting each other then there would be no need for things like IDAHO.

Still, as we have a day to celebrate, here are a few things to note.

Firstly ILGA Europe has produced a Rainbow Europe Index that shows how different European countries are doing in passing LGBT-friendly legislation. The good news is that the UK comes out top of the heap, with 12.5 out of 17 points, and it loses 2 for not having a constitution, which I suspect some people will see as unfair.

Digging deeper, however, I discover that the UK was awarded 2 points for having legislation about supply of goods & services discrimination on the grounds of gender identity. Well it does. It has legislation that specifically makes is legal to discriminate on the grounds of gender identity. That’s the infamous “Equality” Act, of course, which human rights lawyers are itching for an opportunity to challenge as it may well be contradicting other UK legislation such as the Gender Recognition Act. I’m not sure that the 2 points is warranted here.

And that half point? Hate crimes legislation for gender identity protection — a half point because it is Scotland only.

Unfortunately, while the UK is leading Europe in LGBT protection, it is setting a very bad example elsewhere. There is this thing called the Commonwealth (the political institution formerly known as the British Empire), and it is a festering bastion of homophobia and transphobia. Over at The Guardian, Peter Tatchell explains all. You would think that an organization headed by someone called “The Queen” could do better in this regard.

And finally, I am delighted to report that my beloved World Champion San Francisco Giants are to become the first sports team to record an “It Gets Better” video. Details from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Protest in High Heels

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

The protest movement known as Slutwalking, in which women march through cities dressed (supposedly) sexily, has arrived in the UK. It hasn’t met with universal approval. A couple of unreconstructed second wave feminists denounced it in The Guardian, and on the train yesterday I overheard a group of young women complaining about how awful it is. We are a bit stuffy in this country. And I guess it has to be selective protest activity. I am way too old and fat for such things.

The point of protests, however, is to get people to think, and if they do they might produce something like Nilanjana Roy has written. She notes that the movement started after a policeman in Toronto suggested that women could protect themselves better by not dressing provocatively. Nilanjana wondered what the world would be like if the same things were said about men. For example:

According to police experts, women should be careful around men in tight jeans. Men in tight jeans are showcasing their sexuality and drawing attention to the power of their libido. Women should also be careful around men in loose jeans. Men in loose jeans have something to conceal, and may either be covering up an excess of sexuality or compensating for feelings of inadequacy.

Yes, it is daft, but no more daft than what gets said about how women dress. Read the whole thing, it is quite amusing, and it makes the point rather better than an actual slutwalk, I think.

I noticed the post when one of my Indian Twitter followers re-tweeted a link to it. Nilanjana’s original tweet read:

There’s no male word for slut, is there? Brief rant: if we discussed men the way we talk about women

Followed by a link to the post. I re-tweeted it, and guess what happened? The ladies will have probably got it immediately. A man tweeted back to inform me that I was wrong.

Really, I don’t care much whether there’s a male word for slut or not. I wanted people to read Nilanjana’s post. Also I don’t think the guy had a clue what he had just done. He was just following that age-old instinct that says, “If a woman says something, you should correct her, because she’s bound to be wrong and we don’t want her getting ideas above her station.” That’s not a conscious thought. It is something that men seem to just do on autopilot. Maybe something like a Slutwalk will shock them out of it. But not if the point of the protest gets lots amidst a storm of complaints about how it is anti-feminist to dress sexily.

Living in a Bubble

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Almost everyone I know well and who had a vote voted Yes to AV. Nevertheless it was defeated by a fairly wide margin. Most of the people I know who voted No are hard-core Socialists who are unwilling to give up the prospect of a big parliamentary majority for “their side”. (I don’t know many hard-core Tories well, partly as I no longer work in an office, and partly because most hard-core Tories wouldn’t want to be seen dead with a social pariah like me.)

In contrast what little I have seen of pro-No commentary elsewhere has been either from people who have swallowed the scare stories being put out by the No campaign (most of my friends, of course, have used AV, and are therefore less gullible), or it has been from people who don’t want to lose the raw “us against them” contest that 2-party FPTP elections produce. I have seen some fairly feral comments suggesting that AV is preferred by people who like to confuse with words rather than people who will fight for what is right.

The data has produced a fairly interesting map. The only pro-Yes regions of the country are those with large populations of what might might call “intellectuals”: Oxford, Cambridge, and the centers of big cities. It reminds me a lot of the way in which the Columbus, Ohio World Fantasy committee sneered at “coastal elites” who wanted to be able to buy memberships online. It is an interesting divide.

Democracy: It Is Hard

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Via Kevin (with a nod to James Nicoll) I discovered this post in which Mike Brotherton explains everything that is wrong with the Hugos.

There’s nothing much new here. Brotherton’s particular combination of hobby horses may be different from other people’s, but his opinions have all been espoused by other people at some time in the past. What is most familiar about his post, though, is his conviction that he knows how the Hugos ought to be run, and that all right-thinking people should agree with him.

Brotherton says he doesn’t have the time to try to fix things himself, which is fair enough, but I’ve seen people like him before turn up at the Business Meeting determined to make everyone else see the error of their ways. Usually such people run away very quickly, complaining that They are conspiring to prevent the required changes, and demanding that They (presumably another They) do something about it.

The reasons this happens are many, but one of them is that while people like Brotherton are convinced that they know what needs to be done, they all have a different recipe for change, and so when you put them together they can’t agree. Getting support for your ideas is hard work, and requires a willingness to compromise.

Why am I talking about this now? Well today in the UK we are having a referendum. The question we are being asked is whether we should replace our existing First Past The Post (FPTP) system for parliamentary elections by something called Alternative Vote (AV, also known as Instant Runoff Voting, Australian Ballot and the way we run the final ballot for the Hugos). I’m going to vote in favor, as are many of my friends, but the referendum is going to fail, probably with a fairly massive majority against.

The reason for this is fairly simple. AV is a system that fosters compromise. In order to win you have to present policies that are acceptable to an actual majority of people. FPTP works well enough in a simple two-party system: Us again Them. But the more of a plurality of political ideas you have, the easier it becomes to win FPTP simply by being the largest minority on the dung heap. As Kevin likes to point out, FPTP in the Hugos could allow a book to win Best Novel with 21% of the electorate loving it and the other 79% hating it.

Politics, of course, isn’t generally a 5-way fight. But neither is it necessarily a 2-way fight. It is, however, fought in much the same way across the country. Why do I mention this? Because while you may not need more than around 35% support to win some hotly contested constituencies, if you can do that in all of the marginal constituencies you end up with a massive majority in parliament. And then you have 5 years in which you can run the country however you like.

So the UK has a choice between a political system in which people will always have to negotiate and compromise, and one in which a given party may be out of power a lot, but is always in with a chance of a massive victory.

Being out of power is, of course, frustrating, but it is also easy because you can say what you want, and stick to your principles, without having to deliver on your promises. Being in a coalition, on the other hand, is no fun at all, because you have to work hard all the time to get support for your policies, and your own supporters are forever calling you “turncoat” when you can’t deliver only what they want.

So the majority of the UK’s politicians want to stick with a system that gives them that chance of a massive majority, and the majority of the UK’s voters want to stick with a system that gives their side a change to remake the country according to their vision, because they know what needs to be done, and surely all right-thinking people should agree with them.

Who wants a compromise, if it means you’ll never get the chance to impose your will on others?

More on the SF Threat

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

There have been a few follow-ups on that Guardian article I linked to yesterday, the best of which is by Nick Harkaway who is thoroughly unimpressed by the al-Qaida = The Foundation argument. Indeed he argues that it is more or less a tautology because science fiction is the only fiction that deals with the modern world, so there is no other fiction that political visionaries could look to:

Since mainstream literature is apparently defined by not looking forward – literary fiction and its fellows in the UK seem to be determined to avoid discussions of hard and soft technology, to the point of becoming a fiction of the recent-yet-curiously-extended-past, as if we’d never developed the cellphone or cracked the human genome – SF is the only place where possible futures are discussed.

Nick has more to say on that subject in the interview he did with me for Salon Futura.

Meanwhile Mark Charan Newton eschews the satire and makes a more direct science-fictional link to the way the British government has been behaving.

For those of you in the US, Lynne Kiesling is once again complaining about the vast cost of the TSA’s security theatre program, and the lack of any sort of cost-benefit analysis of the work that they do.

There was a fair amount of hope on Twitter yesterday that OBL’s death might result in a cessation, or at least lessening in intensity, of the “war on terror”, but the very next article in my RSS feeds after Lynne’s was this one. Yes folks, the reaction of governments has not been, “the bad guy is dead, we can all relax now,” but rather, “OMG, we’ve just poked a hornet’s nest, we need lots more invasive security measures to keep us safe!”

Really, is anyone surprised?

Cameron Acts on Science Fiction Threat

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

An emergency police operation today resulted in the detention of many of the leaders of a shadowy, underground organization known as science fiction fandom. The arrests were made under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Speaking at a hastily convened press conference outside 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister David Cameron revealed that the organization had been under surveillance for some time.

“We already knew that they were behind the so-called ‘zombie flash mob’ anarchist attack that we foiled on the day of the Royal Wedding. The whole thing was inspired by science fiction novels, and many of the participants were hard core fans,” said the Prime Minister.

“This morning intelligence officers working for the Metropolitan Police uncovered reliable information linking science fiction to al-Qaida. Further investigation revealed a sister organization amongst UK science fiction fans, also known as The Foundation. Their leaders have been taken into custody.”

Amongst the people netted in the anti-terrorist swoop were David Langford, the aging, reclusive leader of UK fandom who regularly railed against the Establishment in his revolutionary pamphlet, Ansible. Mr. Langford was discovered to have large quantities of munitions in his possession.

Many UK science fiction fans are believed to have been radicalized by the Canadian Anarchist preacher, Cory Doctorow, who moved to London a few years ago and has been disseminating anti-government sermons through left-wing newspapers such as The Guardian and Locus (a science fiction magazine based near the notorious Communist enclave of Berkeley, California).

Members of a rival fan organization, the British Science Fiction Association, have quickly declared loyalty to the Crown. However, police sources revealed that they are also under investigation after a recent gathering of the group bestowed honors on a writer called Ian McDonald who lives in Belfast and whom officers therefore believe to have links to the IRA.

The CIA has submitted a request for the extradition of British comics writer, Paul Cornell, who is under investigation for un-American activities involving Superman.

While most of the leaders of this dangerous group are now in custody, some are believed to be in hiding or to have fled the country. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of China Mièville, Ken MacLeod and Tom Hunter, though sources noted that Hunter is suspected to be a pseudonym used by several terrorists due to the sheer volume of his Twitter activity.

Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was unable to shed any light on the affair. Asked for a comment, he said, “David won’t tell me anything. He says I’m a security risk because I watch Doctor Who.”

Attention: UK Trans People

~ Cheryl

Because I’m assuming that one or two do read this blog. 🙂

There are lots of things wrong with the current government, but one or two people involved do appear to be trying to do good while they are in office. In particular the Equalities Minister, Lynne Featherstone, is actually trying to do something about trans rights. For the first time ever the UK government is canvassing trans people for information about their problems and suggestions for action. There is, of course, no guarantee that anything will come of this, but it is a golden opportunity to register our views.

As with any government survey, it is important that as many people as possible respond, because the more people who respond the more votes the politicians will think are at stake. So if you identify as trans in any way, please take a look here (PDF, goodness knows why) and consider filling in the survey. You do not have to identify yourself.

And if you know any UK trans people who do not read this blog, please let them know about this.

Kiwi Fans Help Out

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

By now all of you will have heard about the latest earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. You may also remember that an earlier quake happened during Aussiecon 4 when many Kiwi fans were at the convention. We did what we could for them then, and we can help out once more. Via the NZ in 2020 web site, New Zealand fandom has some information about how you can help the relief effort.

You may also be aware the Neil Gaiman’s wife, Amanda Palmer, was due to fly to Christchurch to play a gig when the quake hit. Her colleague, Jason Webley, was already in Christchurch at the time. Amanda talks about the events on her blog. Some of the photographs are quite terrifying.