world scientific literature roars free online

A couple of months ago I tweeted "It is high time the world scientific literature was made freely available to anyone who cares to read it" and linked to Peter Suber's updated overview of Open Access--just as he stepped back after nearly a decade of titan effort on the issue.

Like most anonymous cowards on the internet, my initial pronouncement was based on irrational prejudice rather than any extensive research. Although Suber's site alone has an immense richness of links, I decided to use "web 2.0" social networking tools as I updated myself on the effort, fully ten years since I had last looked at the subject.

The problem updating yourself in these circumstances is what you don't know you don't know. To use a search engine--I'm still a fan of Google, though it increasingly pops up links to toll-access papers and in-copyright book material that are not immediately accessible--would be to limit myself to terms that may be outdated or already well-travelled.

So, using Twitter, RSS feeds linked to Google reader, and Delicious, I followed my nose for a couple of months, and built a rich information environment that finally led to this.

Finding, with these tools, the online personae of researchers, librarians, and journalists who have shared their own journey through the literature online, I have a congenial, idiosyncratic, ragged plethora of sources I can view in my browser, that is wider and more immediate than any process I can imagine in a traditional dead-tree library.

Back to school for M. Beezer too

The London Vegetable Garden: Back from Holiday!

M. Mandelson on "intellectual property": #fail

Rejuvenated no doubt by his summer holidays with his billionaire bosses, M. Mandelson returns to his duties determined to save the cultural industries from the depredations of illegal downloaders. His simplistic article argues "that taking something for nothing is wrong," with no consideration of the changed reality of the public interest when that "something" has in fact a marginal cost of distribution that approaches zero.
If he informed himself elsewhere than the decks of media moguls' yachts, he might find that the public interest actually lay in shortening copyright terms, and restricting the grant of (often ludicrous) patents. Duke University law professor James Boyle's book The Public Domain outlines the case for a radical reform of intellectual property law from its present corporate hegemony. It's a free download licensed under Creative Commons, yet its publisher, Yale University Press expects to sell more physical copies of the book as a result. Go figure, M. Mandelson.
Naturally M. Murdoch's lackeys didn't see fit to publish my comment to this effect alongside the article.

English anarchists at forefront of battle against climate change

How to change the climate, WAG-style.
Get drunk.
Shout at the cops.
Accuse everyone around you of counter-revolutionary compromise.
Go home.
Well done chaps!

Racism in Europe: Polish shame

I'm afraid it's my dismal experience of many eastern Europeans (and Italians) that they are capable of a kind of crude racism that you might have found in Britain in the 'seventies, but which, hopefully, thankfully, as we become less parochial, is dying out.
I was reminded of this a couple of months ago on a Midland train between Sheffield and London, when the Polish tealady served me (white) nicely enough, but was frankly rude to a black lady at the next seat, making all kinds of problems about her change. The tealady's evident distaste for the position she had found herself in--serving a murzyn--was evident in her sneering manner, made all the cruder for her somewhat basic command of English. It was ugly.
More ugliness, this, from Microsoft Poland.
And an orthogonal, but valuable perspective (from UK football fans).
But what to do? One could google. An excellent page; but the measures described rely on having a minority culture to interact with. Hence the eastern/southern european hideousness, derived from their lifelong inhabitation of monoethnic cultures. Take a lot to break that; better get started.

Update 3/09/09: Another example of the phenomenon with illuminating discussion.

French curiously absent from European medical associations

Looking round the European medical scene, I find the RCGP is affiliated to UEMO who curiously lack the French. There is also the CPME, again, without the French.

What is going on? The French are usually keen citizens of the European ideal. Very strange, and worth further investigation.

Update 17 August 2009: CPME functionary Irene Klepinine kindly forwarded a 22 July 2008 letter sent by the CPME executive to its members. It appears a number of issues led to the resignation of the French, Italian and Spanish delegations, but at heart this was a Romance/Anglophone split, the Latins accusing the CPME of lack of commitment to the multilingualism at the heart of the European ideal, which "should not be perceived as a cost or a constraint." Though plainly it is. Ho hum!

Reading between the lines, the "rump" of 27 countries who remain are those who are either anglophone (UK, Ireland, Malta), seem to have no difficulty acquiring English (Netherlands, Germany, Sweden) or the new eastern European states (Lithuania, Latvia) who, looking for a standard for a working language, (obviously) gravitate to English rather than French.

English is a dreadful language in many respects: I have recoiled in horror from even its simplest grammar. I'm certainly glad I learned it at my doting parents' knees and not in some sultry classroom where the sound of the bluebottle dotting the walls competes in monotony with the incorrectly stressed rhythm and fudged consonants of modern Latins, and the teacher tediously outlining a long list of exceptions to some rule or other. It could be taught much better of course. At base: the Romance idea that you can legislate for language, impose a grammar, rather than considering it a description of what actually is, and just get on with it. Poor things.

Anyway, along the way I have the answer to the question that started this train of enquiry, which is that it seems to be the Conseil National de l’Ordre des Médecins Français which forms the homologue to the RCGP in France.

Time for real justice on Iraq

M. Gordon Brown announced the long awaited inquiry into the Iraq war yesterday. Sir John Chilcot (the chairman), Baroness Usha Prashar, Sir Roderic Lyne, Sir Lawrence Freedman, and Sir Martin Gilbert will meet in private to "identify the lessons learned" from the conflict. There will be no obligation for any witness to attend, nor will there be any attempt to apportion blame, or any civil or criminal liability.

In other words, it is pointless. Yesterday's announcement merely serves to make clear to Britain's politicians, civil servants, and military that whatever international conventions and treaties are breached, they can always be assured of a cosy and recrimination-free cover-up when all's said and done.

The terms of the inquiry should have been:

1) to consider in public the process by which the 414 members of parliament who voted for war were influenced to do so, though public opinion, as evidenced by opinion polls and demonstrations, was so clearly against;
2) to review the circumstances of the deaths of Dr David Kelly and Mr Robin Cook;
3) to provide a clear and concise statement of all treaties and conventions relating to the conduct of war that have pertained in the UK since 1945;
4) to consider whether UK conduct since March 2003 has led to any breaches of those treaties and conventions;
5) to consider whether, in the event of any breaches of those treaties and conventions being found, such breaches are best tried in a court in the UK or the International Criminal Court."

So how to take this forward?

What is so vexing about Iraq is that public opinion was so clearly against the war: not at all indifferent or apathetic. The biggest demonstration since VE Day in 1945 took place in London in February 2003 with more than 1 million marchers. Opinion polls showed 70%+ of the public against the war. There was no UN resolution, there was no agreement in NATO, there was no agreement in the EU. Without that agreement, an invasion of one state by another is a crime: an illegal war of aggression. This principle is clear from the Nuremberg trials (1946), the United Nations charter (1948), and the Rome statute (1998). The UK is party to all of them.

My opposition to the war in February 2003 was not based on this. What I did think was if a foreign power invaded Britain, do you think we would have any trouble finding a few thousand nutters to join the resistance? Answer: no! So why do we think it will be any different in Iraq? I predicted a bloodbath, and without knowing any of the complexities of the situation there, merely from common sense. I was not alone: I was apparently in the majority.

So why did MPs fail to reach the same judgement? I would really like to know. I hypothesise that their acculturation to the political system warped their basic judgement in some important way. We could talk about the whips, or the greasy party pole, or the professionalisation of political representation, or the likelihood of sociopathic personalities being drawn into politics, or the dysfunctional lobby, or Sir Humphrey, or the royal perogative, or prime ministerial patronage, or sofa government, endlessly. But somewhere along the line, there was a disconnect: the man in the street was stating the bleeding obvious, yet 414 MPs walked through that lobby and did exactly the opposite of what was sane.

This was a major error. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead as a direct consequence of this error, and it was paid for with my taxes. Well, I thought, they will pay at the election. But in May 2005, the British electorate (well, 22% of it) returned M. Blair with a thumping parliamentary majority. And then we had the stories of both British and American forces' involvement in torture, extraordinary rendition, Abu Graibh, Guantanamo Bay and so on. This pre-emptive war has clearly been found to be baseless, even on the terms chosen by the M. Bush and M. Blair themselves.

The natural loyalty of British people to British troops serving in a theatre of combat has had a chilling effect on political protest. Now they are home.

The inquiry Gordon Brown has announced will lead only to cover-up. But the point of prosecution is above all to state society's disapproval of the crime, not necessarily to punish any individual involved. If there were errors of judgement, a public record of them will serve best to instruct those who must navigate the difficult waters of international diplomacy in future. There is no need to be vengeful.

If the government won't do it, then it seems the only recourse that has actual legal traction is a private prosecution, funded, hopefully, by numerous modest donations from the public. If the one million who marched each give ten pounds I am sure a set of lawyers and a courtroom in London can be found who are willing to give it a try.

If not, then to the International Criminal Court at the Hague we must go.