I often glance through The Libertarian Enterprise, an online newsletter published by L. Neil Smith and edited by Ken Holder. In the current issue one contributor by the name of Michael Bradshaw riffs on a letter to the editor from Victor Milan, and so I read the hole thing. A few paragraphs into the article I had to carefully lift my jaw off the table. Is this person advocating murder as a strategy for achieving liberty? I think Milan’s original letter nailed the issue: too many libertarians are focused on the so-called Libertarian Party, and political campaigning such as the recent Ron Paul movement. Instead of reasonable discourse, Bradshaw instead calls for “sacrific[ing] the state. Literally. On an altar of fire” through killing political leaders. I am staggered that TLE actually published this stuff, as murder and violence never advances liberty. I abhor the loss of liberty throughout the world, but I certainly don’t consider John Ross’s Unintended Consequences or Vin Supryniwicz’s The Black Arrow as manifestos for liberty. I am no pacifist, for I believe in self-defense, but assassination politics is still politics and better left to professional criminals. It is also insane and completely without ethical grounding.
Author: Anders Monsen (Page 49 of 82)
Breaking with tradition, the Libertarian Futurist Society yesterday announced the winners of the 2008 Prometheus Award for best novel published in 2007, as well as the classic fiction award (what used to be called the Hall of Fame). None of the five finalists consider themselves libertarian, from what I understand, but the LFS judges and voters (I am one of the latter) found enough pro-liberty content in the novels to declare one, no wait, two books the winner. Jo Walton’s Ha’Penny and Harry Turtledove’s The Gladiator tied for the award, which is a first in LFS history. The awards will be presented at the 2008 WorldCon in Denver. At the moment the time for the presentation has been set for 14:30 on Wednesday August 6th. I am in Colorado that week (mostly in Colorado Springs) and plan to be there in the audience that day.
As far as my own votes, I placed Jo Walton first, followed tightly by Ken MacLeod’s The Execution Channel. I think I had Turtledove’s book third or fourth, as I found his writing style somewhat simplistic, even for a juvie.
The classic fiction award went to Anthony Burgess for A Clockwork Orange. I have seen the movie, but not yet read the book, so I did not place it on my ballot. I have been trying to find the book in used book stores around town, but so far no luck.
I’m currently reading one of the most depressing books ever published, Anne Applebaum’s account of the Russian Gulag system. Entitled simply Gulag, this detailed history covers virtually every aspect of the camps, from conception to dissolution. Many years ago I read Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow, but Gulag covers a more insidious aspect of Soviet history. An aspect few Westerns remember or seem to care much about, or appear to excuse as merely trivial.
The 20th century may well have been the bloodiest and most brutal time in human history, though perhaps I say this because I came of age in that century and thus I am more aware of the detail of atrocities committed by humans against their own kind in those well-document years. I know this has been the case since time immemorial, but I still stand in shock and despair every time I read of such events. The 20th century is full of such instances, such as the Holocaust, the terror of Pol Pot, the rape of Nanking, the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The list goes on and on. If I ever feel miserable about the state of political events in America, I can always turn to books like this one; nothing here is tough compared to what the early Soviets suffered. Nothing.
It appears this feature dropped in my transition to Blogger’s new layout settings, or fumbled the transition somehow. I think this now should work once more.
Recently I ordered a new Michael Shea collection, The Autopsy and Other Tales, from Centipede Press. This has to be the biggest book I have ever owned. It measures 11 and 1/4 inches high, and barely fits in my tallest shelf. Sadly, it is not the complete collection of all his tales, but sometime after the next issue of Prometheus I plan to write a review of this book and will see if I can send it off to some sf review site or publication. It’s a fairly expensive book and I wish Night Shade or Subterranean had done a smaller collection at a more reasonable rate, as this would have reached a wider audience.
I’ve been an iTunes fan since the moment it was released. I used SoundJam prior to iTunes, the app that apple’s software was based on originally. I have all my CDs in my iTunes library, have gone through three of four different iPods over the years, and used to buy lots of stuff from the iTunes Store. My current iPod has almost 10,000 tracks, the vast majority ripped from my eclectic CD collection. I thought for a while I would stop buying CDs, since I now could find almost any album I wanted for $9.99 or less (sometime more). However, since January 14th 2008 I have not bought a single song from the iTunes Store, and am resisting out of a matter of principle. I bought an album a couple of days earlier: The Stars at Saint Andrea, by Devics. For the first time since I had listened to a song on the iTunes Store, I experienced several poorly encoded songs. I contacted the support staff to report a problem. They credited me for the five songs that clicked and hissed, and reassured me that in a matter of weeks the problem should have been corrected. Now, six months later, nothing has changed. Until those songs are fixed I will continue my resolution to only buy music in the forms of CDs, and also only buy them from a local, independent music store. Perhaps I should consider Amazon or eMusic.
I’m also peeved that Apple still has many DRM’d songs. Plus, I wanted to get Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, which is the only Radiohead album I don’t own, but refuse to buy anything that is tagged in bright red as Explicit. I could not believe it when Apple did this with some Lloyd Cole songs I bought a couple of years ago. A nice way to kill interest from customers.
I’d rather still be buying stuff from from iTunes, and me staying away will not affect their bottom line, but I did write an online review warning people to stay away from this album until the issue is fixed.
I don’t own an iPhone.I think it’s a neat device, though over-priced for my modest needs at the moment in terms of cellular communication. Still, I saw Shazaam! in action last week, and that might be enough to make me buy one of those sexy critters. This app allows you to pick up the names of songs being played, just by pointing the phone for a few seconds at the audio. Worked fine in my car, but the background noise at Chipotle drowned out the same attempt there. Maybe that’s just a cute toy affect, but it didn’t help that 70% of people I was around at the conference last week had iPhones. Peer pressure…
I just returned from a week long developer conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I hesitate to state what type of development, as multiple areas were covered. I returned quite exhausted from lack of sleep, but feel rejuvenated and inspired. Many ideas are competing for time in my head at the moment, and I think the next few months will be quite busy. I am going to try to juggle editing Prometheus, this sparse site, and a myriad other projects.
It appears that the Worldcon time slot for the 2008 Prometheus Awards has been moved to Wednesday August 6th (the first day of the convention), at 2:30 pm. More details to follow.
I will be in Colorado that week with the family, and plan to attend the Prometheus Award presentation. This will be my first WorldCon in 10 years. Whew! Time flies.
The day before July 4th I watched a German movie, The Tunnel. First
broadcast on German TV in 2001 and then shown as a feature film in
the US in 2005, I was unaware of the movie until it popped up on
Netflix as a recommended option. After long resisting Netflix, I
finally caved in two months ago and started at the second lowest
level, one movie at a time, unlimited movies per month. I figured
that if I watch one to two movies a week, that’s not a bad deal. I
probably never watched that many movies during the time I picked them
up at the local Hollywood movie store,but then that establishment has
slowly been going downhill for a few years now. The preview screen
tries gamely to interest people by broadcasting in audio only, but
when the staff changes in toto almost overnight to scruffy and
unfriendly scowlers behind the counter (even donning somber black
polo shirts) you know something is not right. In retrospect I should
have switched to Netflix sooner, as I can browse and select movies at
leisure, avoid the hassle of driving and spending 30 minutes in the
store picking out something decent and waiting in line, only for the
movie to be a complete waste of time.
Most of the movies in my “queue” are ones that I have heard of
beforehand, and am now finally getting around to watching. But The
Tunnel is different. When Netflix emailed me to say it was next on my
list, I could not remember why I had picked it. Then I read the
synopsis again. This is a movie about an escape from East Berlin
after the wall went up in 1961. But this tunnel did not start on the
east side, but rather from the west, with a small group of people
digging 142 meters by hand through clay and dirt to free almost 30
people living under the glorious communism of the German Democratic
Republic. You want an actual comparison between freedom and
totalitarianism? Look no further than the GDR. Split asunder by the
Soviets and Allies after WWII, Germany existed as two worlds, one a
western style democracy, the other a Soviet-inspired socialist state.
A few months after Joseph Stalin died early in 1953, East Germany
experienced a brief attempt at self-liberation, with June 17
uprising. Shut down by Russian tanks, the uprising had the effect of
creating the idea inside Soviet and East German leaders that the west
was corrupting and leading astray the people of the GDR, and they
needed to create a physical barrier between East and West. Work on
this wall started in 1961, and the wall itself lasted 28 years until
the bricks were torn out by hand and machine in the glorious and
bloodless revolution of 1989. While this wall existed, thousands of
people risked their lives to get to the other side, either going
through the wall, over the wall (in one famous instance, via
balloon), or under it. Hundreds of people died, killed while
attempting to escape the wonderful life in the GDR. Throughout the
building of the wall the western powers stood complicit in the murder
and imprisonment of those trapped in East Germany. Churchill feared
German re-unification. The US and other allies who had carved up the
country did little but stand by and state the could only protect
those in West Germany and West Berlin. Meanwhile, families and
friends were separated. Many escaped, while others either could not,
or were too afraid to make the attempt.
The Tunnel begins with a champion East German swimmer winning a
competition mere weeks before work on the wall begins. Called Harry
Melchior in the movie, he had spent four years in prison for
participating in the 1953 uprising as a student. He remains defiant,
refusing to shake the hands of the government official as he accepts
his medal. Two weeks later he dons a disguise and uses a forged
passport to cross over to West Berlin via Checkpoint Charlie; he made
this trip with Swiss passport, as this border crossing was restricted
to Americans and non-German citizens. There he meets up with his best
friend, Mattis, an engineer who also had managed to escape, although
in the attempt became separated from his wife in the sewers. Joined
by two other confederates, they hatch a plot to tunnel from the west
to the east to rescue friends and family. They rent an abandoned
factory just across from the wall, and begin digging. The tunnel is
seven meters below ground, and zig-zags under the wall and into
abandoned apartments on the other side.
The task appears monumental and daunting. How can four individuals
hope to accomplish this act? Even joined by a young woman who hopes
to free her boyfriend they face impossible odds. The East German
government employs a massive state spy agency which actively ferrets
out defectors and collaborators. Using a vast network of informers
and government resources, they hunt down and destroy attempts to
escape. This government agency, known as the Stasi, built up a vast
network of citizen informers, people who spied on their own
neighbors. Given almost no choice in some circumstances, as with two
people in The Tunnel, the risks of discovery were huge. Later on,
many famous East Germans were discovered to have worked for the
Stasi, which in some circumstances resulted in favors and better
living, as in the case of the ice-skater Katarina Witt. In The
Tunnel, both informers seem forced into their actions, and both
redeem themselves, though at great personal cost.
Death remained a constant risk. There is a famous photograph,
available to those who enter “Berlin Wall” in Wikipedia, of young
Peter Fechter, only 18 years old, who was shot at the base of the
wall and bled to death while those across the wall in the West
watched in horror, unable to help. Anyone who tried to reach over and
help this person would also have been shot. The movie captures than
scene and makes it personal, and no less powerful. As late as 1989,
shortly before the wall came down, the last person to be killed while
trying to cross fell under a hail of bullets. The guards responsible
for his murder received awards for their efforts, and even after
reunification received minimal sentences.
The movie runs around two hours and 43 minutes. To anyone who
experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Tunnel is a powerful
movie, from the opening scene to the last act. I cannot recommend it
enough.
