The murderer of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador was found liable in a civil lawsuit for crimes against humanity and for "an extrajudicial killing," and was fined $10 million. (I love that phrase, extrajudicial killing - killing outside the law, killing not sanctioned by a court. The government has a monopoly on killing - a subject for another time, perhaps.)

My friend Jos Read more>>>

I didn't really do it conciously, but in response to or in spite of my thoughts expressed in my earlier post this morning, I spent most of the afternoon at the Portland IMC space, helping out with the audio webcast. Before that I talked to friend on his cell phone who is in New York, and got news of everyone he knew who had been arrested or detained or was just missing. Then I wrote a story about it for the portland site.

All of this was fun and interesting and I felt very useful. It's hard to tell how useful it really is because we seem to be just duplicating the efforts of the NYC people, but I guess that's better than just passively watching from across the country. At least we're taking on some of the bandwidth load, and we have been getting lots of hits and listeners.

Again, I don't know if I should have instead worked on Bolivia videos today, or something. I'm really feeling indecisive lately. I wish someone would tell what was most important. No I don't, actually. But still, the Burden of Freedom is a heavy weight. sigh.

A friend got into the RNC yesterday and held up a sign saying "Girlymen for Arnold" - he consequently got lots of mainstream press attention. Now he's selling the sign
on ebay. Proceeds go to getting his friend and fellow video producer out of jail.

As the arrest count spirals upwards in Manhattan all eyes not there, including my own, turn that way, when they're not doing whatever they need to do otherwise - working to pay september rent, trying to concentrate on other projects, trying to figure out what i'm doing with my life. Etcetera. Read more>>>

Here's an article on NYC IMC about a flash mob street party tommorrow as part of the protests against the RNC. It's great to hear that the flash mob tactic has been taken up by the politically minded. When I first heard of it people were doing it just as a sort of Fluxus-like arty spectacle/prank, which I suppose in a way is inherently political, but I like the evolution it has come to now.

Wow, this is disturbing: bad moods help you be more aware and remember more accurately.

Makes sense, but it's unfortunate. What happens when science finally proves happiness is bad?

Last night was the start of a project to make a film in 72 hours. The idea is to do it collaboratively, non-hierarchically, and a little surreally, like "exquisite corpses," the surrealist parlor game. It's weird and complicated and the third time we've done something like this. All the details are on the site so be sure to click that link if you're interested. There's a blog and a wiki that I set up for the purpose.

I think we're off to a good start. The only unfortunate thing is that I ended up being the director of one crew and the editor of another, because we didn't really quite have enough people show up to the first meeting, especially enough experienced people. oh well.

This is hilarious. Look what dubya has inspired.

This article talks about the villages in Bolivia where Che Guevara died and was buried, the reverence many people have for him there, and the rise in tourism there.

It makes me think back to when I was there. My late, gruelling bus ride from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz, which passed through and stopped in Vallegrande (where Che was buried) for dinner on what happened to be Christmas eve. I rememeber thinking of the Che connection, though I didn't really see any signs of it during my brief presence there.

This guy is putting video cameras on animals and plants, I guess so people can see what the world is like from their point of view. It's really cool.