The joys of being a non-American movie buff

One of the great frustrations of enjoying popular culture and of living outside the US is that one has to wait for movies, television programs, and a great deal else until the copyright holders deign to release them in the world outside the US. Movies and television programs tend to be released or shown in the US, and the US market judges how successful they are before deciding when and if we are going to get to see them. (One thus misses out on some of the more obscure and sometimes interesting detritus of popular culture entirely. The custom of starting lots of new series in the US in August and September and forcing them to suffer through a Darwinian struggle over the next few months, with only the high rating surviving, is something we don't see. Those that don't survive the struggle just don't get seen outside the US. This doesn't matter usually, but once in a while a cancelled series like My So-Called Life or Freaks and Geeks becomes something of a classic, and we don't get to see it, which is annoying).

Anthony Lane was discussing in Slate the other day how he couldn't get a ticket to a London screening of the new Harry Potter movie, as the people handling the tickets had never heard of the publication for which he reviews movies (The New Yorker). He also mentioned that movies are now coming to the UK from the US faster than they used to, and in many instances open on the same day, and it therefore is easier for he, a critic for a US publication, to live in the UK.

This is both true and untrue. Certainly in the bad old days we often had to wait a very long time before seeing even the biggest movies. And it is true that the very biggest releases, the Harry Potters and the Lords of the Rings, do now often open on the same day. Many other big budget Hollywood films open in the UK within a couple of weeks of their US opening. The studios claim that if this didn't happen, pirated versions of the movie would appear throughout the world within a few days, and they would lose their business. Therefore they need to open the movie simultaneously. (It's also that case that legitimate copies can make their way throughout the world after a few months too, as the DVD release of films in the US can sometimes occur before the theatrical release abroad. The studios tried to stop this with their silly regional coding scheme on DVDs, but that failed completely). In addition, there is the fact that the media now works in such a way that if you advertise and hype a movie in the US, then the hype will be heard around the world, and close release dates are needed to take advantage of this. News cycles are much shorter and the film will appear stale if released six months later elsewhere. So we get blockbuster movies quickly.

In my native Australia, the biggest time of the year for movie going is summer, just as everywhere else. However, summer in Australia occurs during winter in the US and Europe. It used to be the case that the biggest summer movies in the US were actually held over until the Australian summer before being released there. This is unthinkable now, because the hype would have died completely by the time the movie arrived in Australia. (Plus, many of us would have bought the DVD over the internet). In any event, many more big budget popcorn movies are released between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the US now anyway, so there is a good supply of material. The biggest movie season in Australia is January rather than November-December, but the studios can cope with this. Still, this year the new Harry Potter movie will be released in Australia before Christmas (although two weeks after the US release), although the Lord of the Rings movie will be held over until December 26, which is the biggest day of the year for film releases in Australia.

However, for lower budget studio movies, it can take six months or longer for a film to get to the UK or Australia. In a lot of instances the distributors want to see how the film does in the US before deciding on their marketing strategy elsewhere, so we have to wait. It is even worse at the level of marginal and independent films, where they wait to see how a film does in the US before deciding whether they are going to release it in the rest of the world at all. Occasionally, this leads to something ridiculous. Ed Harris' Pollock wasn't released in the US until more the 18 months after being released in the US, despite having won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Marcia Gay Harden. The most annoying situation is for small films that get good reviews in the US, and then may or may not ever be released anywhere else. The situation in London is much better than in Australia, because if films are going to be released anywhere outside the US then London is the place, but still, the experience of reading a US review of a film on the internet and wondering if I am ever going to get to see it, remains a common one. One can now usually buy a US DVD and watch the movie, and I have taken somewhat to doing this, but this is expensive compared to buying a ticket and the experience isn’t the same as seeing a movie in a cinema, the way God intended. It also occasionally leads to the experience of deciding that a film isn’t going to get a release in this part of the world, buying the DVD, and then discovering that the film is going to be released after all, merely two years after it was released in the US.

The existence of the internet also makes the situation worse, as we are tantalised by reviews of films we cannot see, or will not see for a couple of years, and if we join in the discussion of these movies on the internet, someone is certain to spoil the ending for us. Also, there is what might be called the “Mosiac Theory”. If a film has been released in the US that for some reason you are particularly looking forward to, and you are unable to see it, the temptation is to read twenty seven different American reviews on the internet. None of these will give away the ending, but if you read all twenty seven, you will discover that they all offer slightly different comments on the ending without actually giving it away, and if you put these all together the combination may well give it away.

While the response to this of many people might be “Well, don’t do that then”, I keep doing it, because by following films and film reviews, and film discussion on the internet, I get a much richer experience of film in general. By forsaking all spoilers, I would forsake this, and I do not want to. If I did not to this, I would probably not hear about many of the movies I wanted to see in the first place.

So much for movies. Television is just as bad. Of US programs, we only tend to get to see those programs that have been successful in the US: this means approximately those programs which have made it to the end of their first seasons and have been renewed for a second season. As I said above, this means that small gems tend to not be seen. (If they are seen at all, it is normally at two O’Clock Sunday mornings in summer). As for successful series, they tend to be shown around six months after their US showing. Australian TV networks never show new, first run material between November and February, so new seasons of US shows tend to commence being broadcast in Australia between mid-February and mid-March. This has one or two odd consequences, such as the fact that usually see Christmas episodes in May. It also has the same internet problem as form movies. If you want to follow the internet discussion then the content of the episodes is spoiled for you. This is annoying. If you have a broadband connection, it is possible to illegally download the episodes of your favourite program over the internet, but this is a nuisance, and is, well, illegal.

British network television has traditionally been even more lax than that of Australia, probably because the British TV market was traditionally much less competitive than that of Australia. American series tend to be shown at the same time of year that they were originally shown in the UK, but a year later. This has led to an opportunity for pay television in the UK, in which cable and satellite channels frequently split the cost of buying the program with a terrestrial broadcaster, and show series nearly simultaneously with the US network. The show is then broadcast on terrestrial television a year or so later. This means that you do not have to have episodes spoiled for you if you are willing to pay for it. I suppose this is something.

What I would like is for Hollywood to abandon its division of the world into international markets entirely. I would like to be able to watch the same movie in the UK, and in Australia, and in Botswana that I can see in New York, during the same week. If a program is being shown on NBC in the US, I would like to be able to tune my television and watch the same NBC in the UK, or in Singapore, or in Tokyo. With television, the technology to offer this to mere is here now. What I am asking for is technically pretty simple. With movies, it is possibly five years away, but it is no more than that.

However, the structure of the movie industry is entirely opposed to this. Their model involves selling product to the US market, and then having foreign subsidiaries to distribute content to foreign markets. It involves selling specific national rights, All these middle-men get their cut, and changing to global systems of distribution would require abolishing these middlemen and completely restructuring the distribution model. There are simply too many vested interests to change it.

Even if technology means that the existing distribution model is no longer viable (it isn't), and even if the existing distribution model is massively contrary to the interests of consumers (it is), the copyright industry is determined to cling to it, and is using intellectual property law to attempt to do so. (It also attempts from time to time to use technological measures to do so, such as DVD regional locking, but is so clueless about technology that one doesn't expect this to be effective). Intellectual property law is being used to attempt to maintain specific monopolies for distributors on importation, to fix prices, and to add legal force to technologically ineffective measures such as DVD region coding. This is once again about maintining existing business models, and protecting existing middle men from technological change, much more than it is about privacy.

There is plenty of fine coverage about how the music and movie industries screw people domestically, but the way in which they use the segmented structure of the international market and the way in which national copyright laws interact with each other to maintain monopolies and fix prices has good less publicity. And this is a shame.

(Sadly this article is a little long and rambling, I think. Maybe I will write a tighter version and attempt to sell it to Salon, or something).

Replacing these with single, worldwide distribution systems requires their model to be

The staff of my local Starbucks has changed: I think this is because Croydon has just changed from being a one Starbucks town into being a two Starbucks town, and the experienced staff have been sent off to run the new store. The very pleasant young woman who served me today looked at the newspaper I was carrying, pointed to the copy of The Times that I was carrying, and asked me what I thought of the Republicans taking over. I said I didn't think that it mattered much for the war, as the key resolution had been passed before the election. I said I didn't think it was a terribly positive development for international trade, given Bush's record on the issue. She looked at me and said that she was really a bit frightened by the way "that country" had behaved over the last year or so. I commented that being brutally and savagely attacked will do that to you. My smile did not leave my face at any point. I had come into the shop to enjoy my cup of coffee, and she was a perfectly pleasant young woman. And after all, I cannot imagine that she was the sort of person who would throw bricks through the windows of Starbucks.

At this point, the woman I think may have figured out that she and I did not perhaps share opinions on the United States, and she smiled at me, and stated that she wished me a good morning and stated that she hoped I enjoyed my coffee. I will give her points for knowing that there is a good time to back out of a conversation. I would have thought, however, that one of the fundamental rules of retail is to never start a conversation about religion or politics with a customer, as you never know where it is going to go. After all, I could have been a Nazi, or the king of Albania in exile, or a Scientologist, or a Mormon. (Actually, not a Mormon. However, if you go into the one city that was built in the US for religious reasons, Salt Lake City, and you go to the centre of the city, you will find the Mormon temple complex. If you go across the road from the front gate, you find a Barnes & Noble. If you go up a set of stairs in this Barnes & Noble, you will find a Starbucks, where you can buy yourself an excellent latte. I think this speaks well of the Americans, personally).

I think the world is divided into two sorts of people: those whose ideal medical breakthrough is Botox, and those whose ideal medical breakthrough is Provigil. Guess which category I fall into. I have written about this before. New Scientist has more this week, however.

I would love to be able to do entirely without sleep. I could get an amazing amount of additional reading done. However, I wonder what the long term effects of this would be. We simply do not know what sleep is actually for, so we just do not know whether removing the urge to go to sleep will do horrible damage over the long term or not. From an evolutionary standpoint, the requirement that we sleep regularly is a substatial disadvantage though, so there must be some reason. The temptation to try it on myself to find out is surprisingly strong, however.

Okay, I had too much faith in markets, and I should have gone with my gut feeling.

It will be interesting to see what happens here. Last year when the Democrats controlled the senate, there were doubts about Bush's legitimacy and mandate. He will argue, justifiably, that this result removes the doubts. Before that, for Clinton's first two years of office he was a long way from many of the congressional Democrats on quite a few issues, so he found lots of congressional obstructions anyway. (His most important victories, eg NAFTA, involved lots of Republican votes). Before that, we had Bush 41 and Reagan and congressional Democrat majorities. Before that, we had Jimmy Carter. So, Bush could conceivably now be the most powerful president in 25 years. It will be interesting to see what he does with it. Certainly the Republicans will try to push their tax cut agenda further. Hopefully we can avoid more steel tarrifs and farm bills.

This is what most bothers me about Bush. He does not seem to have any natural instinct of committment to free trade. He may surprise me on this. I hope he does. But his record does not inspire me.

Well, I hope Americans all have fun doing their democratic duty today. A week ago I thought that the Democrats would pick up a seat or two in the Senate and the Republicans would (probably) retain the house. The last week feels like it has gone the Republicans' way, although the Iowa Electronic Market seems to be suggesting that this has not happened. Therefore, I still go with that. Democrats 52-48 in the Senate, and a small Republican majority in the house.

Glenn Reynolds is right about the advantages of ballot papers. They are much less susceptible to fraud and errors than are voting machines. This is why most of the rest of the world uses them. I think one reason why the rest of the world reacted the way it did to the Florida debacle two years ago was, quite simply bafflement at the way the Americans vote. Why use something complicated when you can use something simple?

There are reasons, of course. Americans vote for state, city, county, and federal office holders on the same day, and they vote for a much larger number of offices than is the case almost anywhere else. If you have thirty or forty elections occurring at once, then counting ballot papers becomes tremendously time consuming. In a lot of American instances, I really am not sure that ballot papers are practical. Counting them just takes too long.

The other uniquely American thing about their elections is the lack of uniformity. The combination of elections taking place is different in every county in the country. Therefore, ballot papers are constructed on a county by county basis, and often by local officials who are not experts in ballot paper design. Once in a while this leads to someone designing a butterfly ballot. In most other countries, elections taking place on a particular day are for only one level of government. If it is a federal election, then a federal body designs the ballot papers, and they have a common format nationwide. Because the papers are designed by a federal body, well funded experts can design (and test) the format of the ballot papers.

This still isn't perfect, and if the federal body makes a mistake, then conceivably the whole country is messed up rather than one county. As to whether this is worse than one county being messed up in a close election, I suppose it is hard to say.

I am a big fan of Peter Jackson . I am not as rapturous about The Lord of the Rings as are some people (although I love Heavenly Creatures )., but I think there is something very right about a world in which a semi-mad New Zealander can start out making splatter movies on the weekend in which he films his friends waving axes at one another and covering them with tomato sauce and somehow go from there to being given $270 million of Hollywood's money to make a Tolkien trilogy. And getting to make the movie at home in New Zealand too.

I have been waiting to see what Jackson was planning on doing after he had finished LOTR, and this little article is about the first I have seen about it. It's interesting that he might consider making The Hobbit as well. Certainly Hollywood would like this, as it would mean that they would get four immensely profitable Middle Earth films instead of three. However, I will believe it when I see it, as I imagine that getting the rights from Saul Zaentz will be both difficult and expensive.

However, there are two other good things in the article. Firstly, it seems that Jackson's remake of King Kong may happen after all. Jackson had agreed to make this for Universal about five years ago, but Universal got cold feet after Jackson's first Hollywood studio film, The Frighteneres failed at the box office. Given what Jackson has done since, keeping the King Kong remake on hold for when Jackson wants to do it is very sensible, but one doesn't always get sensible from Hollywood studios. (The one thing we don't need is another by the numbers King Kong remake from some hack).

The other thing is that Jackson appears to want to make another one of his good old splatter movies on the weekends. A lot of us would enjoy this.

One of the great cliches of movies (which may or may not predate Jaws ) is essentially the following. People see fins going through the water and feel a sense of unease. However, the police and other officials pooh pooh this. Then, one person is eaten by a shark. Rather than closing all the beaches, the major tries to hush the whole thing up, because he doesn't want to create panic, particularly during the tourist season. Then of course, when an even worse attack comes, the water is fully of people. Why does this remind me of this old cliche? The Australian government did in retrospect make a mistake in not being clearer about the warnings of imminent terrorist attacks that occurred before the Bali bombing. Thankfully though, it is having nothing of it now. For one thing, the Australian government simply doesn't want any more Australians killed if at all possible. Secondly, if it failed to warn Australians properly a second time, it probably wouldn't survive the reaction. That is a benefit of being a democracy.

Something that has not come up at length in the disussion of London's "Big Brother is Watching You" signs is a discussion of just why the British became so fond of Closed Circuit Television cameras in the first place. It was, of course, as a response to terrorism. London was a target of a great many IRA bombs in the 1980s and early 1990s (to an extent that people who didn't live here generally didn't realise), and London was rebuilt in a way that was defensive against terrorism as a consequence. We got CCTV, the removal of rubbish bins, redesign of traffic conditions to keep cars away from strategic buildings. If you go to the modern office buildings at Canary Wharf , it is a fortress. You cannot drive anywhere near them, there is no parking underneath them, there are cameras everywhere. It is probably safe, but very sterile. I do not want the office buildings of New York to turn into fortresses, but with more attacks it is fairly close to inevitable that they will.

In the worst case scenario where terrorism becomes a much greater problem throughout the developed world, it may be that poorer countries turn into Turkey, with semi-permanent and fairly arbitrary military rule, and richer countries turn into Singapore, with invasive and intrusive security and violations of civil liberties. Neither of these options is especially attractive to me. The excuse that is now made is that the CCTV cameras are about protecting people from crime, something at which I think they are not terribly effective. (The crime simply takes place somewhere else). The puzzle is why the British authorities seem to think that people will be glad that their liberties are being eroded. I am not glad myself.

Eric Raymond (via Instapundit ) discusses the changes in food in America over the last several decades. In particular, he talks about what he calls the capsaicinization of America: the trend of Americans to eater spicier and spicier food. He compares the food Americans eat now with the bland and unexciting food that they ate twenty or thirty years ago, and also how chili based food and cooking is "mens cooking", whereas most cooking is generally a female responsibility.

I think that there are actually two different trends here, that are mixed together in the US. One of them is the trend to spicier food. The other is the trend towards more diverse food. The first is largely (but not entirely) a US trend, and the second is a worldwide trend.

To illustrate this, let me compare Eric's experience with my Australian experience. I was born in 1968, and was a child in Australia in the 1970s. At the time, Australian food was generally a matter of “meat and three vegetables” type cooking. It was English style cooking, and it was generally pretty awful. (It was somewhat better than English food at the time, however, as Australia is a land of agricultural abundance, and the food was therefore made from fresher and higher quality ingredients than could normally be obtained in England). We would also have barbecues a lot, and this was something that men would cook. What was barbecued was steak and sausages, and maybe a few onions. The only condiment that these would be served with was tomato sauce. (Australians do not generally use the word "ketchup". When I first went to the US in 1991, I was asked if I wanted any ketchup in a McDonald's and I had no idea what that was. The word was used in both the US and the UK but not in Australia, which is etymologically quite unusual. The word is now used in Australia a little, but still is not standard).

At this time in Australia, there were actually quite a lot of first generation immigrants in the country from southern and Eastern Europe: from Italy and Greece in particular. Australia was also then opening its doors to people from Asia, and a substantial number of Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Indian people arrived in the next few years. People from these countries obviously brought their food with them, and such things as Italian and Greek food must have existed in Australia in the 1970s, but this was not something that had really worked its way through to the kitchens of Anglo Australians. I don't recall eating much in the way of "ethnic" food in the 1970s, but in the 1980s I recall an explosion of it. My mother started buying pasta from a local Italian delicatessan that I now realise was every bit as good as you get in Bologna. Australia was suddenly full of all manner of interesting restaurants: Italian and Greek, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish, Indonesian and a huge number of others. While Australia has had Chinese restaurants for a long time - since Chinese people came to Australia during the 1850s gold rushes - it was suddenly possible to get fairly authentic regional Chinese food rather than general westernised blandness. Suddenly Australians seemed to be eating all kinds of foods, both out and at home. Supermarkets were suddenly full of all kinds of ingredients and spices that had not been widely available ten years earlier. I thanked immigration for this revolution and I was certainly at least partly right to.

That said, the trend to spicier foods that Eric describes did not happen in the same way it did in the US. The variety of what we ate increased dramatically, and some of the cuisines that became available (particularly Thai, which Australians took to in a big way) were spicy, but there wasn't a general trend to spicy food. The update to the Instapundit article alludes to this. Australian men do not trade capsaicin-zap stories the way Eric descibes. Our barbecues are still are much the same (although we may now drink wine as well as beer with them). Australia lacked the Hispanic influence, and although our food changed immensely, it did so without the capsaicin-zap. Tomato sauce still dramatically outsells salsa in Australia.

As I said, I had thought that the trend to greater diversity in food in Australia was due to the large amount of immigration Australia had received. However, having now travelled a lot, I don't think this was as important a facter as I once did. One thing that we have seen is a reform of the supermarket business. When I was a child, supermarkets in Australia sold largely dry goods: canned and packaged food. Now, go into a supermarket in Australia and you will find a huge amount of the store devoted to fresh food: a wide diversity of fruit and vegetables, fresh pasta, cheeses, meats and the like. Plus you will find a choice of a great many spices, sauces, and ingredients from all over the world. The change is dramatic. (My mother uses these ingredients and cooks much more interesting, varied and appetising food than she once did. These days she is an excellent cook of a wide variety of different cuisines).

When I travel, one thing I always find interesting is to visit a supermarket, as you can learn a great deal about a country by seeing people buy groceries. And the revolution in what is sold in supermakets that has occurred in Australia has occurred in a great many other countries. I have seen it in the UK, in South Africa, in Finland, in Hong Kong, in Japan. Some of these places are immigrant countries. Some are not. In all of them however, the diversity of ingredients that are readily available has increased dramatically, and eating habits have changed considerably in the last two decades. Sure, people are travelling more, discovering foods and ingredients and then wanting them at home but I don't think this is the whole story either.

Why is this? I actually blame a fair bit of this on the computer revolution. Inventory management is now an advanced science. It is possible for a supermarket to carry a vastly greater number of lines than was the case a decade ago. A store can keep track of what is purchased, and how often, and can keep track of deliveries, sales and shelf life of every item it carries. Refrigerated container shipping means that is is much easier to move products from one part of the world to another. It has simply become logistically much easier to provide diverse food than it once was, and therefore people are eating more diverse food. This has happened everywhere.

Finally, a story. The biggest influence on British food in the last 40 years has been Indian. (Some would say that the Indians were the people who brought edible food to Great Britain). In any event, the UK is full of excellent Indian restaurants and British people today eat a lot of curries. British people eat much spicier food than they used to. This is an Indian influence. When I was studying at Cambridge, an English student of my acquaintance made a comment to an American friend of mine that Americans did not have this Indian influence, and therefore that Americans couldn't handle spicy food. (While one can get excellent Indian food in the US, I think it is fair to say that it hasn't been the huge influence it has been in the UK). My American friend was outraged by this remark, and challenged the Englishman to a duel. They went to a local Indian restaurant, explained the situation, and over the next couple of hours they were served hotter and hotter curries. Eventually they were served the hottest curries that the restaurant was able to make, and both managed to eat them. We all found this deeply amusing, as did the staff of the restaurant. Both the British and the American diets have become much spicier than they used to be. However, the influences from which they did so were different, so the sort of cultural misunderstandings that led to this duel do occasionally occur.

A tiny bit of good news

Australia has just signed a comprehensive free trade agreement with Singapore. This has been on the cards, and is not a big deal on a global scale, but is clearly good news. What would be nice from here is for Australia, NZ, and Singapore to negotiate membership of NAFTA (which presumably then would change its name) on essentially the same terms as Canada. I can see no reasonable arguments against this, so I wish they would get on with it. (Of course, there are unreasonable arguments against it - agriculture as always. What would be nice would be for Bush to demonstrate some guts and negotiate a deal regardless. However, I would not bet the farm on this one, given his record).

What would be nice would be for a deal like this to give citizens of the two countries complete freedom to move and work in both countries, as does the deal between Australia and New Zealand. Plus it would also make most professional qualifications from one country recognised in the other. From what I can gather from read, the deal allows freedom to work in the other country for many professionals, and includes recognition of professional qualifications in some but not all professions. Thus on immigration matters it seams closer to the NAFTA model (which allows fairly free movement for professionals but not for other workers) than the CER model between Australia and NZ (which allows genuinely free movement).

(Hmm. I just did a couple of google searches to attempt to find out a little more about the agreement, rather than just what the newspapers choose to tell me. Looking for a few terms such as "Singapore New Zealand free trade immigration", I found a 1994 Usenet article on aviation rights between Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Not strictly relevant, but it looked interesting. I was about a paragraph in when I realised I wrote it).

802.11 map of Manhattan

This is cool. It's interesting to see how much telecommunications infrastructure can grow organically without central planning if you let it. Also, notice the lower density downtown on the east side in Manhattan's administrative and public sector area. And the way it drops off north of Central Park. (And what are those sites actually in Central Park). Plus of course you can see where the World Trade Center was as a gap downtown).

I was in the Forbidden Planet science fiction bookshop in New Oxford Street on Thursday. After wandering around and browsing for a few minutes, I found myself vaguely watching a couple of other customers. In particular, I noticed a middle aged man and a red headed girl who looked about eleven, obviously his daughter. The father was holding several books and he and his daughter were earnestly discussing them. At least they were earnestly discussing something. I only think it was the books, because the conversation was in what sounded like Dutch and I therefore couldn't understand it. However, the father was the one doing the consulting. He was asking questions of some sort, and the daughter was replying in a friendly but oh so serious manner. Buying science fiction novels while on a trip to London was obviously a very important matter, and a great amount of scholarship and intelligence was necessary to get it right. There is a certain intensity that certain really bright people have. This girl had it in spades. Plus I was struck by how unapologetic about it this girl seemed.

My mind had a couple of thoughts. One is that the world does not contain enough eleven year olds like this, and we should treasure them all. (Often, though, we don't). The other is that I probably need a daughter of my own.

Update Perhaps I am imagining things. It was a cute little scene though.

Yesterday evening I attended this lecture at the London School of Economics on the subject

From Inter-regnum to General Crisis: a discussion on trends in international politics now.

Professor Gwyn Prins of LSE’s European Institute, author of the book Heart of War and Professor Jack Snyder of Columbia gave their thoughts on the subject: they then discussed it with Professor Margot Light and Dr Karen Smith of LSE, and there was finally a brief question and answer session.

I took notes throughout, and what I will do is summarise what each speaker said, and give my own thoughts in italics. It is quite possible that I have made one or two errors, but I think I have the gist of the arguments pretty much correct.

Professor Prins.started by commenting that he had been in St Petersburg at a seminar last week discussing the question of terror and terrorism. Both he and the head of the institute he was visiting in St Petersburg were of the opinion that September 11, Bali, and Chechnya were not part of a single global struggle, and that the US was not in fact the primary target of September 11. This was prior to the terrorist attack in Moscow last weekend.

That said, he does believe that we are at a profound shift in International relations, but that terror is not the primary motivation for this. We are at a point where the ability to distinguish friends and enemies is getting harder, and this is a classic sign of a revolutionary moment. We have been in a period of interregnum since the end of the cold war, and we are now moving to a General Crisis. The 1990s were a decade of lost opportunities. The golden moment with Russia was lost, the ability of the UN to remake itself with post cold war executive authority was lost, and there was a lost chance to pre-empt AIDS and looming environmental crises.

I would like to know his thoughts on what he thought would have been the way to seize the golden moment with Russia. As far as I am concerned, Russia's principal problems still come from the fact that it suffered 70 years of communism, and that institutional reform is hard after this. Yes, the west tacitly supported a badly botched scheme of privatisation, and supported some leaders who were venal and undemocratic, but the question is whether it was reasonable to expect better given Russia’s history and the institutions in place, or lack of institutions in place

We have at this point in time reached a situation where Russia may not be a friend but certainly isn’t an enemy, and where Russia slowly continues to evolve into something more democratic and market oriented. We may not have won Russia, but we certainly haven’t lost it either.


Professor Prins went on to argue that this was the first General Crisis since the 18th century. The previous one ended with the French revolution. As he sees it, a General Crisis is a time when it is unclear who is hegemon and there is a reworking of the social contract between citizens and society. He sees a massive withdrawal of population from formal politics in the rich world as a demonstration of this. This is a rich world phenomenon: in the poor world people have never been connected to formal politics and these countries run on informal economies anyway.

Maybe I misinterpreted him, but I think it is very clear who is hegemon at the moment. Perhaps he was arguing that the General Crisis is the point at which the hegemon becomes clear, and it may be that this is the moment where the US hegemony is made formally and structurally clear, so I probably agree with the reworking of the social contract point of view.

There are a variety of second order phenomena that go with this general crisis:

1. The collapse of the post colonial settlement that was established in the immediate post WWII years. Such things as the global illegal drugs market and ecological stress have contributed to this. In any event, the doctrine of “development” as a successor to colonial rule seems to have failed.

2. 20th century institutions such as NATO, the EU and the UN are on their last legs. NATO died last year when article 5 was activated and the following war was not fought on a NATO basis. The EU failed to deal with the war in the former Yugoslavia, it has had a collapse of popular support, and enlargement is problematic. The UN failed in a chance of gaining executive power as did the league of nations. It’s megaconferences have become a joke. France and Russia are playing their cards in the security council, but this is the last throw of the dice.

3. The American Imperial moment has arrived. The last time we saw such a mixture of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ power from the same source was in the Augustian period of the Roman Empire. Americans are reluctant to be imperial, at least partly due to their country coming into existence as a reaction against imperialism. Life would be easier if the Americans were less in two minds over this.


Professor Snyder followed up by saying that he less convinced we were at a singular moment in history, and in the long term he was less negative. He thought that in the long term we are heading for peace. Three reasons

1. No democracy has ever fought another democracy. He said that this was true if you were strict enough about your definition of democracy and your definition of war. This got a laugh. Most major powers are now democracies. This has never been true before.

2. The Scope of Civil Society is now greater than ever before. The international networks that now exist are powerful “tools of argument”. These networks are undergoing practical work, eg banning anti-personnel landmines.

3. The rise of US hegemonic power could entrench the above, if the US gets behinds these trends.

We have one speaker talking about the withdrawal from formal politics, the other talking about the scope of civil society being greater than ever before. I wonder if this is true civil society, or a sort of elite version. This sort of civil society certainly seems disconnected from me.

However, in the shorter term, the news is less good, as each trend increases the chance of war in the short term. If things go wrong because of this, the long term positives could be derailed.

The early stages of transition to democracy increases ethnic conflict, eg Yugoslavia, Burundi, the Caucasus, Indonesia, Nigeria. In these circumstances the old elites have wrapped themselves up in nationalism. New elites have also made popular appeals to ethnicity. This is especially dangerous where you get stuck in partly democratic partly authoritarian mode with weak institutions. Compare Burundi with South Africa. In Burundi, aid donors in 1993 pushed for democratic elections. There were no institutions in place, so this made things worse and it led to a massacre. In South Africa, there were procedures for elections, and the rule of law did exist. Some of the laws may have been reprehensible, but the rule of law did exist. Hence the transition in South Africa was relatively peaceful and successful. The sequence for the transition to democracy has to be got right. Institutions have to be in place first.

It helps to give the old elite a safe landing. Essentially they have to be made “weak but happy” in the new regime. Most of the easy cases for transition to democracy have happened: eg South Africa, Korea, Taiwan. In the future we have more Indonesias and Burundis.

I found the example of Korea in particular to be interesting here: I am not sure it proved the argument. 40 years ago Korea was extremely poor and ravaged by war, and I doubt it did have much institutional structure. In 1955 it really looked no better than many of the countries in Africa. Over 40 years it has evolved to being rich and democratic. (As an economic growth story it is an interesting one too, as everyone else that has evolved from poor to rich in that time had rather more to start with. I don’t think Korea had great institutions to start with. It had 30 years of military rule and corruption. And it evolved to democracy successfully. Okay, you can argue that the 30 years of military rule was building the institutions and then democracy came later with those institutions and it wouldn’t have come earlier. (Certainly there was little chance that earlier liberalisation would have led to ethnic strife in what is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world). Perhaps this argument contains a little too much looking at which countries are successful now and then looking back to find the institutional structure and prove the argument). A key point in Korea and Taiwan is of course that these countries industrialised, and the countries became economically much more economically productive. When you do this, an ultimate transition to democracy seems easy, or at least it has ultimately come in virtually all cases. It is possibly better to think about economically productive countries against non-economically productive countries, rather than countries with and without political institutions and traditions. Of course, certain institutions are necessary to become economically productive too, but these are not necessarily political. Korea is interesting also as a possible model for China in the long term.

While the growth of global civil society is a good thing, civil society activists are often so uncompromising in pursuit of their goals they lose sight of realism. For instance war crimes tribunals that have no provision for amnesties for people who step down voluntarily. For instance, in Macedonia, it was not possible to do a deal because local authorities were unable to offer an amnesty from supernational tribunals. Tribunals are supposed to reduce the chance of future atrocities, but they don’t seem to. Amnesties often seem to work as part of a package (eg in Mozambique, El Salvador, South Africa). The key point is that the rules for transition processes should be driven by pragmatism.

‘Civil society activists are often so uncompromising in pursuit of their goals..”. Yes. One has to agree with this. My feeling is that the often are to such an extent that they are extremely counterproductive and completely lose track of political and economic reality, and can potentially cause huge problems. I am actually very pessimistic about this. I would rather we had lots of free trade and largely allow the poor world to deal for itself, with occasional help in building institutions and removing particularly nasty regimes where needed. I don't think westerners trying to micromanage poor countries economic and/or environmental policies is a good thing.

On the 3rd point, Professor Snyder thought that US policy is improperly directed towards enlargement of the democratic sphere. History teaches us that the security of empire is seldom increased by expansion of power abroad. Bismarck had it right. Rather than being aggressive, you should wait until the other side attacks you and put an alliance together. Bush 41 did that in 1990, but Bush 43 is failing to. Fighting a war unilaterally ensures everyone will be against you.

What? We should wait until Iraq actually has nuclear weapons and takes out Tel Aviv? If he did this the Arab street would applaud, and while Europe might then come around, but it would be an utter disaster. My feeling is that the fact that Bush 41 was working with a coalition in 1991 was a big factor in why he didn’t finish the job and why we still have such a mess in Iraq. This left behind a festering sore in the middle east which ultimately has to be dealt with in some way. If the 1991 war was more unilateral we would have less of a problem now. I don’t see this war as being driven by expansion of power abroad so much as fixing a previous mistake. Again I think there is a technological issue at stake here. Rogue regimes and even rogue non-state actors can do far more damage than was the case in the time of Bismarck. This does require new thinking .

Basically, there is a 20 year window of opportunity to reform ourselves from a war system to a democratic system. If we blow this chance, the rise of China could occur at a moment of nationalism and disarray. This could be disastrous.

After the two main speakers, Prof Light and Dr Smith commented.

Prof Light said she was optimistic compared to Prins. There is no general crisis. There was no crisis of capitalism. There was no End of History or Clash of Civilizations. She doesn’t believe the masses are about to rise or the political classes to fail. Rather than post-colonial collapse, she sees one or two reasons for optimism. We have recognition of ecological danger and a diagnosis of post-colonial failure. This is good. The UN isn’t necessarily failing. Perhaps France and Russia are tempering the US usefully. The big UN conferences are not complete failures, but have started useful progress. As for NATO, it was a cold war institution and if it fades away, that means its job is done. It might still be useful for peacekeeping and such, but the old NATO is no longer needed.

I see a huge disparity between Africa and the Islamic world, and almost everywhere else, mostly. The things that Africa and much of the Islamic world have in common is not so much a lack of political institutions as the complete lack of economic skills. Some of the countries of the Middle East have high per-capita incomes due to oil, but the countries’ infrastructures are actually run by expatriate foreigners without any native skills at all. You have no education of women, and large demographic crises in terms of too many people. The ability to build the economic base that goes with a democratic transition is completely absent, as, sadly, it also is in much of Africa. (I don’t think it is entirely absent in Africa, but there isn’t much of it). I tend to think that the big UN conferences were complete failures, personally. What we need is another successful GATT/WTO round, which doesn’t look good right now. Much of Africa looks dreadful, but I am optimistic about most of Asia and I think democracy and liberalism have won in Latin America, occasional crisis notwithstanding. I don’t think the post-colonial system has failed, generally, in Asia – the exception being in Indonesia .

Dr Smith said she is not into doom and gloom on Europe. Europe is safer and more secure than ever before. There are problems on the periphery (N Ireland, Balkans) but the centre is strong. There are internal issues of far right politics etc, but Europe is very aware of this. The USSR is making progress to democracy. Even despite the Balkan failure, EU framework has contributed greatly to security. The prospect of joining the EU has helped stabilise the east. Ultimately it may in the Balkans too. The Franco-German relationship has its ups and downs but is still there. It is foolish to categorically state that enlargement will destroy the EU. In fact, civil society is contributing to EU reform and there is a good chance to get more efficient institutions.

A key question is how does Europe now deal with the US.

These comments are quite interesting, and I have weighed in on similar matters myself from time to time. I agree with quite a few of them. Basically, yes, it is true that Europe is safer and more secure than ever before. The benefits of the single market are great. However, the EU’s institutions are in a terrible state, and I do not see reform coming. The Franco-German axis is probably now an obstacle rather than a help, as pretty hopeless governments in both France and Germany are together blocking useful reform. For one thing, if enlargement is to work, the CAP has to be either greatly reformed or better abolished. In the present climate this cannot happen. These comments from Dr Smith were were not further commented on by the other speakers

Prof Prins then said that he didn’t consider himself a pessimist and preferred not to be categorised as one. A General Crisis is a time where you re-interpret everything. We are at a revolutionary moment, and there are five or six ways in which we could go. He finds a lot of Professor Snyder’s analysis plausible. He would like Prof Light to be right on the poor world, but he didn’t see evidence of it. The AIDS crisis is about to hit a new level in Africa and South East Asia. It’s a big question as to how it will hit China.

I am largely sceptical about all the discussion of how an environmental and AIDS crisis will affect the poor world. Environmentally speaking, I am largely with Bjorn Lomborg. I do not think that environmentally speaking the countries of the poor world are ever going to be any worse of than Europe was for much of its history prior to 1900. Improved technology means living standards are improving even in places you wouldn’t expect it. (For instance, look at the per capita calory consumption, or the number of people with clean water. The trends are very positive). As for AIDS, I again don’t believe that the disease is going to decimate the poor world, although it might in parts of Africa. The disease is not a developed world problem. Education and hygiene can largely eliminate its spread, even without fancy drug treatments Do China and India have the infrastructure to do this? I think they might. (This is not the same thing as saying they will: see, for instance South Africa).

Treatment of the disease is not static. Invent an effective vaccine, and AIDS will be about as big a worldwide problem as polio, ie no problem at all. Due to the nature of the disease this is hard, but I doubt it is impossible. It’s a question of decades rather than years, but it will happen. (India and China have a decade or two: Africa doesn’t, and African infections rates are already very high, so we probably will, sadly, see a catastrophe in Africa). Invent a single pill that can be taken daily that has the same effect as the present multi-drug treatment and again you can wipe out the disease in places where the infrastructure is not all that sophisticated. And something like this will happen. The power of modern drug researchers is quite frankly dazzling. In 1950 we knew nothing at all about the fundamentals of biology. In 2002, we know a huge amount. The extent of this particular revolution is staggering beyond words and medicine will achieve some seemingly utterly miraculous things over the next 20 years).

Professor Snyder said he though Zimbabwe supported his argument. Zimbabwe’s institutions were more like South Africa’s, but were clearly weaker. Zimbabwe failed. The key issue is that transitions to democracy are hard.

We then had a question and answer session.

Someone asked what was again special about South Africa. Prof Snyder again emphasised the presence of administrative and bureaucratic structure without democracy and democracy came later. In cases where a country does not have this the job of the international community is harder. He believes that if we go into Iraq, it’s necessary to build the structure first before democracy. Compare with Bosnia were elections were held to soon and this legitimised the nationalists.

Next Question: What does the American Hegemony mean for International Law?

Prof Prins said we should be optimistic compared to other empires because the US it committed to human rights. The US is an old country, that has an operating pre- French revolution constitution.

Next Question: What about Muslim relations with the US and Europe?

Prof Prins US was not the primary target of September 11. The target was corrupt governments in Egypt/Saudi Arabia/Pakistan that the US has foolishly supported. The great tragedy of the 20th century is that the Muslim world (and the Arabs in particular) failed with modernity. This is especially a tragedy given that the Muslim world preserved the legacy of Rome and Greece through the middle ages. The statistic that there are fewer books translated into Arabic in a decade than into Greek in a year is worrying. The structure of Muslim societies has meant no reformation is possible. Prof Snyder agreed with this. The fact that the US propped up bad Islamic governments was bad. The US needs to rectify this but is now stuck in a corner

My problem with this is that while I think this is true about causes, I am not sure how you get out of the corner. These causes have led in some instances to a pathological hatred of America. I am not sure how you get this to go away. This leads to people who think they are fighting a global war, and this means that disputes with other causes (Afghanistan, Egypt, Chechnya, Indonesia) become connected. Modern communications technology makes it easier for different groups to see themselves as fighting a single struggle, and to work together. Al Qaeda’s Wahabism is infecting a lot of previously unrelated struggles, and virulent anti-Americanism is a big part of this. With the oil money in the Middle East, and technological change, the danger to the West becomes very real. If the US and the West is harmed grievously, then its attitude to the rest of the world changes. I think this has the potential to upset the whole system. If someone has vaporised New York, the US is going to be a vastly different country than if this had not happened).

One last question: An Indian lady in the audience stated that she was annoyed that India had not been mentioned at all in the evening. India is the largest democracy, and in many ways a remarkably successful one, it had 250 million middle class people. I think this may be an exaggeration but I suppose it depends on how you define “middle class”. She also asked whether a comparison with Augustinian Rome was not pushing things a bit.

Prof Prins agreed with a lot of this. India also has excellent institutions to allow democratic institutions and the rule of law to be protected if they are under threat on a local basis. There is much to learn from India. (India does however have an AIDS time bomb ticking). As for the Augustinian Rome comparison, the key issue is America’s mixture of soft and hard power. Hard military power never endures. However, on the soft power front, everyone in the world practically has this idea of America. You may see this as a mixture of Hollywood, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, but it is more than this. This is unique in modern times.

Okay, that’s a good point, but I think it is an element in the fact that September 11 is in fact more about America than Prof Prins was arguing

Prof Snyder said that India had had institutions: political parties, free press etc. Over time there was an increase in political participation. It was like South Africa in his scheme of things. India’s institutions have been eroded at times, but it has adjusted well to challenges.

This is, to be truthful, a bugbear of mine. India contains a billion people, and is in many ways remarkably successful. It is genuinely a democracy. It is culturally vibrant. It is a poor country, but there are sections of its economy that work well. (Eg the Bangalore computer industry). It gets much less press than China, but in which country would you have rather spent the last 50 years? India has had no cultural revolution, no great leap forward, no mass starvation. Instead people at seminars like this spend their time discussing minor countries like South Africa. I could sense from her tone of voice that the questioner felt this way too, and I couldn't really blame her. I am very optimistic for India in the long term. The country seems to have advanced dramatically in the last decade, and unlike China it has political institutions that are quite advanced. At some point, this is going to tell. Another thing is that China is going to have a demographic crisis far too early when the consequences of the one child policy (in retrospect an extraordinarily misguided piece of policy) works its way through the intertia of the previous population growth. At that point, India and not China is going to be the growth country. Anyway, end of rant.

Overall I thought the evening was interesting, but as I have made clear in my comments, I was a little annoyed at the lack of consideration of technological and demographic change. I think that these factors make the present war different from previous superficially similar wars, and this was not really discussed. The contradiction is that the combinational of the failure of modernity in the Arab world, and the existence of modernity elsewhere makes the present a time of unique danger.

Update: One thought I have had since the lecture is that Prof Prins' thoughts on how an AIDS crisis is eventually going to ravage Africa, India, China etc strike me as being almost what a lot of people thought about world famine in the 1960s and 1970. It was almost conventional wisdom that the looming crisis in, say, India, was so bad that there was nothing that the developed world could do about it, and so we shouldn't even try. As it happened, higher yield crops and more intelligent agriculture meant that it just didn't happen. On this issue, I really think that the chances of something similar happening are good. The prognosis for Africa is undeniably appalling, but for India and China I don't think it is so bad.

On my complaint about the shortage of Internet Cafes in Germany, Alan Little, a reader who lives in Germany, has the following comment

I think the lack of internet cafes that you mentioned is more about lack of demand than German trading laws. The interenet cafes in every village that you mention in places you've travelled in Asia - which I've also seen in India - are at least as much patronised by locals, who can't afford their own PCs at home, as by travellers. I stayed for a week in March in a remote village in southern India, where the grandmother of the friend I was staying with said I was the first foreigner she had seen in at least a year, and there was still a busy internet cafe right across from the bus station. In Germany, on the other hand, most people have home PCs and lots have semi-broadband (ISDN or DSL). The traveller market alone probably isn't enough to support many businesses. London is different (loads of tourists and broke foreign students), but I haven't noticed many internet cafes in other British cities either.

The discussion of India, and how internet cafes are used by locals, is quite interesting. One thing that I have found in other parts of the world is that the nature of internet cafes does vary from place to place. In some places, you might describe what you find as "technology cafes" instead. In Bali late last year, I frequently ran into what could be described as "Playstation Cafes". Clearly, a Sony Playstation is too expensive for most Balinese to be able to afford to buy. However, it is cheap enough that it is possible for a business to buy one or several and then open a shop in which people can come in, pay a small amount of money, and then play some games for a while. In a situation in which the capital costs of buying a Playstation are high relative to your other costs, a situation where people can rent its use maximises the number of hours a day it can be used. In a western environment, the cost of a Playstation is relatively low, and it makes sense for people to buy their own and only use them for only an hour or two a day. Just disregarding the convenience factor for a moment, the other costs of running such a business in the developed world are much higher than the costs of the Playstations themselves, so these types of businesses don't exist.

Another thing I have seen (mostly in middle income countries, or in middle income suburbia of richer countries) is what could be described as a "broadband cafe". Essentially this is an internet cafe where the PCs are state of the art machines with graphics cards, have high speed LAN connections to one another, and higher speed connections to the internet. Essentially these are places where teenage or twentysomething men can come and play Counterstrike or other networked computer games. I have found these in shopping malls in the richer parts of Johannesburg, in shopping malls in the bleak, apartment building suburbia sections of Singapore, and in Istanbul. (Plus they famously exist in large numbers in South Korea ). These seem to be based on the same economics as the Playstation Cafes in Bali. High end PCs with broadband are expensive, so it makes sense to rent their use by the hour.

On intenet cafes in Hamburg, while I am sure that Alan is at least partly right - I am sure it is easy to find an Internet cafe in somewhere with more tourists and a more transient population (Berlin for instance) - I am still not convinced that an absense of local users is the whole story. This year I have looked for internet cafes in Singapore, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Brussels, and now Hamburg. In Britain I have looked in London, Brighton, Cambridge, Bath and Bristol. In all of the others I have found them without difficulty just by walking down the street and looking for one. Most of the above are tourist towns of varying degrees, and I shouldn't expect the same number of internet cafes as in London or Amsterdam, but is Hamburg really less of a tourist town than Bristol? (It's certainly a much bigger city than Bristol). In London I have found internet cafes in suburban areas where few tourists ever go, too. Okay, it may just come down to just bad luck on my score, as Hamburg actually does have internet cafes and the issue was simply that I couldn't find them. But I am still not entirely convinced this is the whole story. Perhaps I should reclassify my suspicions to it having to do with german labour and business laws being inflexible in general, rather than trading laws specifically.

And just why do we dislike Microsoft?

As a follow up to Samizdata's post on the Metropolitan Police's "Big Brother is watching you" campaign, let me add another picture. This one lacks the glorious Fritz Lang quality of the London wide poster, but it is straight to the point.



(Croydon is a southern borough of greater London. It uses the same London wide police force as the rest of the city, and has a local borough council which presumably approves of Big Brother).

The Onion does it again

The Following is a Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer posting

A belated comment on the death of Richard Harris. He was at his best a good actor, but I didn't like his performance in the first Harry Potter movie. In the role, he came across as a frail old man, and I didn't like this much. (I would blame this more on the direction, costuming and make-up as I would on the acting). Dumbledore has to be old, yes, but also, wise, powerful, and a little bit ruthless. (Maybe, ultimately, very ruthless. Without the last three books we don't know yet). While these characteristics aren't in the foreground in the first book, they have to be there. And they don't seem to be in the movie. Maybe they will be in the second movie. I shall know in a few weeks I guess. If Christopher Lee takes over the role it will be interesting to see how much darker he plays it.

The character of Dumbledore has to be like Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer . He exists as a mentor, a source of wisdom, and a source of power. But more than that he is there to protect the hero: to ensure that a true hero is capable of remaining one. This means he has to be ruthless when the hero cannot be. From The Gift

GILES
Can you move?


BEN
Need... a minute… She could have killed me.


GILES
No she couldn't. Never. And sooner or later, Glory will re-emerge and make Buffy pay for that mercy, and the world with her. Buffy even knows that, and still she wouldn't take a human life. Because she's a hero, you see. She's not like us.


BEN
Us?

Giles coldly clamps his hand over Ben's mouth and nose. Ben struggles feebly for a while. Then stops. Giles' expression never changes.

Anthony Stewart Head manages to catch the power and potential ruthlessness perfectly, right from the start. Sadly, he is too young to play Dumbledore.

There's a good piece in Opendemocracy (via the marvellously back Arts and Letters Daily ) about the Nobel Prize for economics, and how while it isn't really a Nobel Prize, the people who created it managed to make everybody think it is one. Certainly it is something that actual scientists rather turn their noses up at. I don't know if he has actually said so, but John Nash certainly would have preferred the Fields Medal, even if the general public hasn't actually heard of it. Still, I suppose things could be worse. We could have the Nobel Prize for Business Administration, or something awful like that.

Stream of consciousness blogging

I am sitting in my living room with my laptop, watching a 24 hour music video channel. I am not a big music fan, to tell the truth. Most of my CD collection consists of stuff I bought when I was 17, and/or movie soundtracks. I am interested in music from the point of view of what it can add to a movie, but not so much in the music in itself. (As people who have been reading this blog regularly are undoubtedly aware, I am a huge movie buff). Movies are about creating a mood and a state of mind, and the film-makers getting the music right is absolutely crucial to this. The music must have relevance to the plot, but this must be in an oblique and subtle way. The timing must be right, in the sense that it must follow the audience's moods rather than the plot directly. If the music is too obvious and telegraphs the content of the movie too directly it doesn't work. The style and timing of the music must fit the film. Getting this right it hard. One reason I like Donnie Darko so much is the perfect use of early 1980s pop music. The music isn't quite contemporary to the film - the film is set in 1988 and the music is mostly about five years older - but it suits the film perfectly. Unfortunately it was a relatively low budget film, and it appears they couldn't afford the original recordings for the soundtrack CD , so the CD consists mostly of the orchestral score rather than the wonderful music from Tears for Fears, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division that is in the film. (The orchestral score is good too, but it was the 80s pop tunes that were really striking in the movie).

Other movies that come to mind with wonderful contemporary music scores: Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia's use of Aimee Mann's music is wonderful, which is another reason I want to see Punch Drunk Love . Baz Luhrmann managed close to perfection with his Romeo and Juliet . (I don't think he got the music quite as right in Moulin Rouge ). The music in Amy Heckerling's Clueless is pretty good, although perhaps a little too obvious in places. (The music in her Loser , a much misunderstood and unfairly maligned film, is great too, although for some reason there is no soundtrack CD). Cameron Crowe's Say Anything... does of course have perfect use of music, as does most of everything Crowe has ever made. (I love the Icelandic unworldliness of the Sigur Ros in Vanilla Sky, too).

(There is a certain type of person who, when they are in your home, look at your CDs and think that they can figure out everything there is to know about you. I find this accutely embarassing, because my CD collection is not something I have every put much thought into, and as I said, it is a muddle of really naff stuff, plus some film soundtracks). Of course, there is a way to figure out a fair bit about me, which is to look at my bookshelves, or even my DVD collection. (There is some fairly naff stuff in my DVD collection, too, but I can usually defend my taste by talking about how the same Director of Photography won an Oscar for such and such, or something like that. That is, I have thought about my DVD collection). However, the sort of person who feels the need to check out your CDs isn't usually the sort of person who reads books, so this can be hard to explain).

Now, I think I started out talking about music, before wandering off into movies once more. I am not quite sure what I was going to say.

Well, we have now had a situation in which the Russians have used chemical weapons in Moscow, killing about 150 people in total, and it somehow doesn't even seem that much of a big deal any more. (I wish I knew what precisely it was that they used. Speculation seems to vary from Valium to "some kind of anaesthetic" to "Some kind of nerve gas". Surely someone will do a blood test in a western hospital reasonably soon which might tell us?) President Putin has a reputation for ruthlessness in situations like this, but more than anything I think this is an indication that the rules have completely changed since September 11. Presumably the worst case scenario in Moscow was an enormous detonation of explosivess, all 700 hostages dying and an enormous fire. 100 civilian casualties is seen as acceptable in preventing this. While I doubt that the United States would use a chemical agent in New York (for instance), it remains to be seen what the US will do when next faced with this type of situation. What the Russians did really isn't all that different from what the USAF was clearly preparing to do to flight 93 (ie shoot it down) when the passengers did it for them. The only real difference I suppose is that the Russians had longer to prepare. It seems we have reached a situation where this is the price you pay.

Of course this is a terrible price, and my sympathy goes out to the families and friends of all the Russians who died. It upsets me beyond words that this is the situation we have reached. But it seems we have.

Update And of course the Russian Alpha troops made sure that the terrorists were in fact dead and not just unconscious by shooting them in the head. As Glenn Reynolds has commented, nobody has commented much on this, and nobody seems to have a problem with it. I personally don't have a problem with it. The few survivors were presumably chosen to be taken off and tortured. We live in ugly times.

Michael Lewis' piece in the New York Times Magazine on the fallout of the internet boom is quite interesting. A key point is of course to me is that despite the financial hype at the top and the financial pessimism now, the technological revolution was (and is) real. Compare the way you live your life now with the way you lived it five years ago. The transformation to our lives and to the way the economy works is real, just as while lots of people lost money in the 19th century railway boom, it is also the case that a lot of railways were built.

The key story of the last couple of years is the commodotisation of a lot of things, from cellphones to PCs. Rather than getting better for the same price, technology items have got cheaper for the same (or better) quality. The key question I think is what can be put together with all this technology that is now really cheap. There are lots of fascinating possibilities.

I suppose it could have been Bruce Wayne

Well, I suppose it is good (or something) to see that Peter Guber is on the Winona Ryder jury.

A day earlier, Guber, on an elevator in the Beverly Hills courthouse, had said casually out loud, "I have about as much chance of getting on this jury as the man in the moon. I only made three pictures with the lady."

Neither Rundle nor Geragos probed Guber for the details of his ties to Ryder. Instead, both pointed their questions toward whether Guber, 60, who now runs Mandalay Entertainment, would feel comfortable sitting in judgment of Ryder.

"Would there be any repercussions for you?" Rundle asked.

"Me?" Guber asked. "No."

"Mr. Guber, you're not afraid of working in this town again after sitting on this jury?" asked Geragos to laughter from the courtroom. Guber indicated he was not afraid.

Yesterday, I failed to attend a screening of Donnie Darko followed by a Question & Answer session with director Richard Kelly. (This was a simple matter of not discovering it was on until after it was sold out). This is very annoying, as the film is one of the most extraordinary and powerful I have seen in yonks, and I would have loved to ask him about the motivations of his satire on the teaching profession, or what was the significance of the giant talking rabbit, and did the world really end. Plus I would have liked to compliment him on the brilliant use of early 1980s pop music: particularly that of Tears for Fears

Perhaps this is a sign of the apocalypse

Two of the films I am presently most looking forward to seeing star Adam Sandler and Eminem respectively. I have to say, I wouldn't have suspected much in the way of interesting films from Adam Sandler, but Emily Watson is one of the finest actresses in the world (please, academy, watch your DVDs carefully and give her that much overdue Oscar this time), and Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those directors who clearly have a great film or two in them. (He hasn't made it up to now, and I doubt he has quite done it with Punch Drunk Love either, but he appears to have made a good film and I am always going to watch what he does.

Okay, I am not that surprised about the fact that I am looking forward to a film from Eminem. You only have to listen to his records to figure out that there is something interesting there. He is technically so good, and if you listen to his lyrics he is so self aware, and, frankly, so hysterically funny, that there was a better chance than with most musicians making films. Therefore I wasn't as surprised as some people when it was announced that he would be making his film with a film-maker whose last two films (LA Confidential and Wonder Boys) have been very impressive. I thought the omens were good even before we started to hear positive news about the film.

I read somewhere that 8 Mile is the first Hollywood film ever to be set in Detroit. This may or may not be true, but even if it isn't it is a demonstration of how Hollywood has neglected the city. The film industry never pays much attention to what goes on in places between New York and Los Angeles, given that Detroit is the home of lots of pop-culturally interesting things (although many of them seem to be more popular in Europe than the US), and given simply what a big and important city it is, this seems an odd omission. (John Cusack’s Grosse Point Blank was mostly set in Detroit (well, in Grosse Point) but does that count as a "Hollywood Film"? And where was it actually shot? The IMDB indicates locations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit, so it may just be they did some second unit world in Detroit). Plus for the last couple of decades the actual city of Detroit has been full of wonderful, run down abandoned buildings which in many cases should be amongst the treasures of 20th century architecture. One would things that some of these would make stupendously wonderful film locations. Many of these buildings are now all getting demolished to make way for new development, so the opportunity is being lost. It will be interesting to see if 8 Mile takes advantage of this to any extent. From the review it rather sounds like it does, so I am looking forward to the movie from this point of view, too.

I have a feeling that Eminem may end up being one of those stars who last: like Bob Dylan or Elton John, or Madonna. Some artists for whatever reason have a certain power about them. Eminem is one of them. I think he is going to be one of those people who is still very famous and is still making interesting records (and probably acting in interesting films) in 20 years time. I doubt that the reactions of horror to him are any different at core to the reactions of horror at Elvis. (Hey guys, he is mostly speaking in character.). We shall see, anyway.

Archives for October were not appearing on the archives index . This is now fixed.

As I had thought was likely to happen, Arts and Letters Daily (and its all important archive) is back.

There is a good piece on UPI by James Bennett (via Instapundit ) discussing what Australia's options are now after the Bali bombing. The basic point is that no, Indonesia is not going to go away, and it is foolish to try to pretend that it might. It's worth a read. Plus there is the issue of the Balinese.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Because our media has predominantly featured the Australian, British and other Western victims of the radical Islamist attacks on Bali, it is easy to forget that the primary intended victims of the assault were the Balinese themselves. To the extent that Australians and other non-Balinese were intended victims, it was primarily for the purpose of destroying the Balinese tourist industry. Killing Westerners was a tertiary, albeit welcome benefit in the eyes of the jihadists.

For them, the root cause they seek to fight against is not Israel, or Afghanistan. It is Christian "infidels" and Balinese "idolaters" polluting the Land of Islam, of which, in their view, Bali is part.

I am not actually sure I agree with this. I think that probably the attack was principally on westerners, and specifically on Australians, and that the Balinese were the side damage. It was an attack on Australia at least partly because of Australia's support of an independent East Timor. Now of course, East Timor is one other "non-Islamic" part of Indonesia (or at least "Indonesia" as perceived by the Indonesian army) in which the non-Islamic people were massacred for 30 years before the Indonesians were kicked out. But it doesn't matter much. The terrorists clearly wanted to do both things, so which was their primary aim is perhaps not the point.

Based on the Taliban experience in Afghanistan, we have a pretty good idea what the Balinese can expect should the radical Islamists fulfill their plans to take power in Indonesia. Bali's temples and religious monuments representing its unique blend of Hinduism and Buddhism would be destroyed -- remember the Bamiyan Buddhas -- and replaced with plain whitewashed mosques. Balinese music would be outlawed and their instruments destroyed. Those who resisted conversion to Islam would have to wear an identifying symbol such as a saffron patch on their clothes at all times. The Balinese tourism industry would be destroyed and the island, now poor but developing, would be plunged into primitive semi-starvation.

The Balinese understand this, and for the time being fervently support the national government, which preserves the traditional accommodations between Balinese and Muslim Indonesians. Should the government lose coherence, their only hope would be independence with foreign support which, as East Timor demonstrated, would be a very problematic option.

In the case of Bali, it would be impossible. Whereas Timor is a reasonably remote Indonesian island, Bali is right next to Java, in the sense that you can see Java across the strait easily. There are a few million Balinese, and 100 million Javanese. Foreign support for an independent Bali would be like foreign support for an independent Tibet. While a sense of justice might demand it, the facts of geography rule it out. To be truthful I find it astounding that Bali has retained its unique character. Traditionally the Balinese have accepted Javanese rule, and in return the Javanese would largely leave Bali alone. My gut feeling has been that if it has lasted this long, it will continue to last. (On the other hand, the Bamiyan Bhuddas lasted in Afghanistan for over a thousand years, before being blown up by the wretched Taliban, so maybe he is right).

In my native land of Australia, titles of French films are normally translated into English. That is, A bout de souffle was released as Breathless , A ma Soeur! was released as Fat Girl and La Ceremonie was released as A Judgement in Stone . This seems to often be the case in the US, as well. However, in Britain, they are usually released under the French name. This might or might not suggest that the British are more, pretentious, or simply that they speak better French. Or simply that they do this out of habit, and it means nothing.

However, in Germany it seems that English language films are generally released with English titles. This is fine. However, they don't always seem to keep the same English title that the film had when released in English language countries. If the title contains subtlety, or a play on words, or something that Germans are unlikely to be able to easily translate, they may go for a different English language title. As an example, a charming little British film called Bend it Like Beckham was successful in the UK earlier this year. It is about and Anglo-Indian girl who grows up and resists her mothers desire that she become a proper Indian young lady, because instead she just wants to play for a local girls soccer team. She wants to be able to learn to bend the ball like England and Manchester United captain David Beckham (one of the biggest celebrities in the UK, and famous throughout the footballing world). However, it was presumed that many Germans would not have good enough English to get this subtle usage of the word "Bend" so the film was released in Germany, under the English title Kick it Like Beckham . "Bend" may be a problem but "Beckham" translates into German just fine.

What I am wondering, however, is what title will the film be released under in the US. The whole title seems untranslatable into American.

There is a scene in the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Douglas Adams describes how in some circumstances a preponderance of shoe stores which all sell shoes in a single size drive out all other businesses. Something called "the shoe event horizon" is reached and civilization collapses (or something like that). This was apparently written when Adams was in a rage about having spent a whole day going from shoe shop to shoe shop but being unable to find a pair of shoes anywhere that would fit. This scene was scaled down to a fraction of its size in other versions of THHGTTG, which were written when Adams was not in such a rage.

Last week, after a particularly irritating check in experience at London Stansted airport, I got out my laptop and wrote about it when I was sitting on the plane. The resulting 1500 word rant is probably long and boring to many people. But since this is my blog and I do not have an editor, I will post it anyway.

I am in Germany for a couple of days, having purchased one of these extremely cheap airfares that now exist due to the European single market. When travelling for just a couple of days, I travel extremely light: just a tiny backpack with a change of clothes, a camera, a toothbrush, enough reading matter to last me a month, and a mass of electronics with an assortment of power adapters. My laptop was bought in Australia, and has an Australian power plug. In Germany, I plug it in via an Australian to British adaptor which in turn is plugged into a British to continental European adaptor. (I did have an Australian to European adaptor, but it was lost somewhere in the low countries). My cell phone was purchased in Britain, so it only has to go through the British to European adaptor. (I would like to have a Sony Micro-MV format digital camcorder as well, but the 1500 pound cost of one of these will have to wait until I get a job).

In any event, I travel light, and for short trips I carry only hand luggage. This presents a problem post September 11 if I am not careful, because I like to carry a Swiss Army Knife with me. If I don't have any checked baggage I cannot put the kinife in the checked luggage, and it will be confiscated. When on my way to Turkey in June, I was delayed by a varietyof factors, and I ended up having to carry my checked luggage all the way to the gate in order to make the plane. This meant I had to take it through security. This meant my Swiss Army Knife was confiscated, despite my best efforts.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that in the check in line on my way to Germany, I realised I had my Swiss Army Knife in my pocket. I briefly considered checking in my one bag, but no, I was not putting my laptop in the hold of the plane. I then had an idea, went to W.H. Smith and purchased one of those postage envelopes with the plastic bubbles inside (known as a "Jiffy bag" in the United Kingdom, for some reason I do not understand), put the knife in it, addressed it to myself, put what was hopefully enough postage on the envelope, and attempted to post it. I took it to a nearby post box and attempted to post it. Problem solved. The person who sold me the envelope looked at what I was doing, and commented that the security precautions were so ineffective that I would probably have got it on the plane anyway. Problem solved.

Well, no. The postbox was designed specifically so that its slot was only 5mm wide, and therefore it could only take ordinary sized enveloped. (Presumably this was to make it hard to put bombs in the post box. Or possibly Her Majesty's Customs have a great selection of Swiss Army Knives and want to foil my attempts to prevent myself from adding to it). The Swiss Army knife in my envelope was probably 15mm wide, so there was no way it would fit.

At this point I was determined not to lose another Swiss Army Knife. The thought of hearing my mother's displeasure as she discovered that I had lost another Swiss Army Knife to airport security went through my head (if I told her). To lose two would definitely look like carelessness. Therefore, I contemplated doing something bad. Well, not actually bad in the sense that it could actually hurt anybody. (Let's face it, I wasn't planning on hijacking the aircraft). I thought about how to rearrange my bag in such a way that the knife would be least likely to show up on the X-Ray machine if I carried it on. I did in fact rearrange my bag to ensure this. (From looking over people's shoulders, I know that my laptop casts a large shadow on the X-Ray machine. The trick is presumably to place the knife in this shadow somewhere). Possibly someone was watching me on airport closed circuit television and they would have surrounded the security check point with guys with machine guns so as to prevent me from getting my knife onto the plane. (The scene in one of the "Airplane" movies where guards violently push a little old lady against a wall and frisk her while four or five guys wearing military fatigues and carrying machine guns and ammunition belts walk right through comes to mind here). Anyway, having done this, I was walking nervously through the terminal towards the gate. I saw another postbox. I thought that it would be the same as the first. But no, it had a much larger slot. As to why one postbox would have a narrow slot to foil terrorist bombs but not the other, I don't know. Perhaps losing one postbox to terrorist bombs could happen to any airport, but losing both would look like carelessness). I opened my bag, took the knife out from its perfectly concealed position behind the laptop, put it in the jiffy bag, and posted it. Presumably, when I get home, I will find the empty envelope with a letter from the Royal Mail telling me that the sending of knives through the post is prohibited and it has been confiscated. (Update: I actually did get my knife back).

Risking being machine gunned as a potential terrorist (or, more likely, seriously arrested. (Or more likely than that, given a stern warning and a full cavity search)) for a knife that I had bought in Amsterdam for 20 Euros was perhaps not a wise potential tradeoff for me to have made. But I nearly did. One thing that this might suggest is that I simply catch the train. When I brought the knife back from Amsterday through the Channel Tunnel, my luggage was X-Rayed but there was no trouble carrying the knife. Presumably it is hard to hijack a train with a knife and then crash it into a large building.

(That said, it is worth some time watching the movie Death Train, featuring Patrick Stewart, Pierce Brosnan, and a woman who was once in Baywatch who in the movie is supposedly an expert sniper trying to foil generic Russian terrorists who have hijacked a train in Germany and who are demanding that they be given clear passage to allow them to take the train to Iraq. (Yes, really. We are initially led to believe they are only slightly less implausably trying to take it to Serbia, but that turns out to be a ruse). Admittedly, in this case the train has been hijacked with a nuclear weapon rather than a Swiss Army Knife, which makes the plot either more or less silly depending on how you look at it. Either way, dumbest movie ever. One does wonder how this could be worked into the "Saddam Hussein is trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction and therefore we must invade his country" argument if it really happened, though).

Seriously though, as many people have observed, these security regulations are excessive and silly. They are not going to stop any more genuine hijackers than did the regulations in place before last September. People who want to get sharp objects onto an aircraft will succeed in doing so, because there are simply too many sharp objects. (I did carry a disposable razor and a glass mirror that are in my shaving kit onto the plane without difficulty. Certainly I could fashion a crude but effective weapon from those if I wanted to. However, even if terrorists do get sharp objects onto a plane, they are unlikely to be able to hijack a plane with them. The September 11 plot worked because the procedures then in place were that in the case of a hijacking you don't attack the hijackers and you wait for them to make demands, which they will. These procedures are no longer in place, and nobody will every treat hijackers like that again.

However, the regulations do cause utterly harmless people like me to contemplate breaking the law, to risk being caught by airport security. This isn't good, potentially because it can waste the time of said airport security, and secondly because having laws that reasonable people think about breaking as part of their everyday business are bad laws almost by definition. They lower respect for the idea of law in general, and this is not good.

I could now launch into a savage attack on present day intellectual property law, but I will refrain from that for now. (My fingers are crossed for a good result in Eldred vs Ashcroft, however).

Which side is the slayer on?

I don't know about Buffy , but I am sure Giles is in favour of the war. He certainly knows when to be ruthless.

It is clear from reading the press and from talking to people in coffee shops that Starbucks are in the process of preparing for an assault on Europe resembling that of 1944. Britain has been deluged with Starbucks stores for several years now. Starbucks have set up the infrastructure for a continental assault, and they are just beginning their push into a few markets. Their strategy (which I saw in Australia a couple of years ago) tends to be to carpet bomb cities, to continue the analogy. They might set one shop up for a few months before all the rest, just to feel out the idiosyncracies of a new market. Then they will go from one store to 20 stores in a city in what feels like a few months. They seem to have gone to the "just feel out a market" stage in a few European cities (Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, Madrid). Watch for the number of stores to increase dramatically in the next twelve months.

One interesting precursor is the "Starbucks clone" phenomenon. In cities of the world where Starbucks have not yet entered the market, somebody else will set up coffee shops that copy Starbuck's business model as closely as possible. I have written about this before: "The Seattle Coffee Company" in the UK set up Starbucks like coffee shops, and the easiest way for Starbucks to enter the market was for them to simply acquire the chain along with its suppliers and logistics. I have seen these in a few other places: I saw one or two Starbucks clones in Amsterdam earlier this year, but these were independents rather than chains.

However, in Hamburg last week I have seen the most extreme chain of Starbucks clones I have ever seen. These were called "Balzac Coffee". (The classy thing to do would be to name the chain after a character in Typee, but they didn't appear to have managed that. They had a circular logo of the same size as Starbuks, hanging in the window in the same way. (Although it was brown instead of green and wasn't nautical. They had the same mix of bagels, pastries and cakes in the identical sort of counter cabinet that Starbucks uses. They had the same mixture of comfortable sofas and chairs and slightly more serious upright chairs and tables. The tables had the same, not quite chessboard look you see in Starbucks. They had the same sorts of large, glass mounted "exotic coffee" pictures on the walls. The staff wore uniforms that were almost identical to those worn by Starbucks staff (although again brown instead of green). The choice of coffees was very similar to Starbucks: the hot and cold drinks, the brewed "coffee of the day". The boutique coffee machines and boutique coffee for sale. Large pictures of coffee growing in exotic locations on the walls. Everything. Somebody had gone to immense trouble to clone the operation exactly. So exactly that in some countries it would be asking for a lawsuit due to trademark violations.



What of course was interesting was that to turn this into a Starbucks, all you actually need to do is to change the fonts on the menu board, add a few trade marked words such as "Venti" and "Frappuccino". change the logo to something nautical, issue green aprons to the staff and bingo: Starbucks. There seems little point in cloning the operation merely to create a successful business. Starbucks have a good business model, but there is no need to be this obsessive about it. It looks more like an attempt to set up a business to be acquired by Starbucks, and the reason the model has been copied so exactly is to minimise the cost of converting the stores. It will be interesting to see if Starbucks will take (or have taken) the bait.

The positive of all this is that Balzac Coffee do in fact make good coffee. Decent coffee is hard to otherwise obtain in Germany. Starbucks will make a killing in this market (as they have in Britain and Japan). I would guess that in the longer term they will also make a killing in places like Poland and Russia. Whether they will in markets such as Italy and France, where the coffee is much better, remains to be seen. That said, Starbucks' entry to the Australian market seems quite successful, and there was no trouble buying a good cup of coffee in Australia prior to their entry to the market. Australia received a lot of Italian immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, and as a consequence good coffee became all-pervasive. In Sydney and Melbourne you can even obtain an excellent latte in a Chinese restaurant.

Well, we have an article in Wired on the industrial zones on the Pearl River estuary. This must have gone to press at almost exactly the same time as the one in the Economist. It's probably just a coincidence, but given the anonymous authorship of articles in the Economist, it is hard to tell.