Crazy things seem to always happen on Wednesdays here. I can rememeber a few Wednesday nights coming to the Dry River meeting and finding out some bad news about some arrest or raid or something.

Today is another one. Rod Coronado apparently was arrested at his workplace today. His girlfriend reportedly went to his house and found FBI and ATF agents searching it.

We really don't know more than that. There's speculation that it's something to do with the grand jury investigation in San Diego, connected to Rod's speaking event there a couple years ago. This has been brewing for awhile. (I wish I had more links about this grand jury investigation but the search function on the SD IMC site seems to be screwed up, so I only have the above link which I had bookmarked a couple months ago).

I shouldn't say anything else yet. I feel like I should be writing this on the AZ IMC site, but indymedia folks here are skittish about writing stuff too soon. There's a certain preciousness to feature articles here that is a big contrast to Portland. I personally think it's better to write a little bit ASAP, maybe even speculate a little bit, rather than sit on a story till you have 5 paragraphs worth of absolute truth - as long as it doesn't put anyone at risk or incriminate anyone. But, whatever, I'm new here and when in Tucson, do as the Tucsonans.

Anyway, we'll have something up in the morning, I think.

Things are really picking up speed here regarding my film. It's almost as if as soon as I decided to stop meekly and passively waiting for various festivals to bestow their validation upon me and my work, things started to really get going in a nice way. It's exciting, and makes me wonder if it was a mistake to try the festival route at all. I guess it was good to try this once, but I may not bother the next time. Lots of activist filmmakers, Greg Berger being a good example, are going around that whole process because there are other ways to do things. DIY!!! I'm still waiting to hear from a few more festivals but I'm going ahead with other plans while I do that.

I just heard from the organizers of the Justice for Women symposium at New Mexico State University that they want to screen the film during that event, March 30. I'm also working on getting screenings in San Diego and Albuquerque around that time. I also just recently signed a non-exclusive license with Free Speech TV and they will probably start airing it in late March. That's a potential 11 million viewers so that's really exciting.

Further exciting things coming up - I'm planning to attend the symposium at NMSU and bring along some friends from Tucson, and we're going to go visit Juarez afterward and hopefully meet with some community members. There are also plans brewing for showing it in Arivaca in April, and also again in Tucson, perhaps with some of the musicians that did the soundtrack playing live the same night.

Meanwhile I continue to work on transcribing the English parts of the film, so that they can be translated to Spanish for subtitling. I hope to get the transcription done today and start posting sections of it to the Indymedia Translation Tool. Then when the translation is done I can have a bunch of copies of the DVD made, I start getting it out there even further.

Apropo my conversation with someone recently about the new Battlestar Galactica series (I can't remember who I was talking to): I just saw in the bathroom at Epic, every hipster's favorite coffeehouse in Tucson, the following graffito: "Adama is a cylon."

If you don't watch the show, I'll explain: Commander Adama is the military leader of the fleet that comprises the last surviving humans, after the Cylons devastated all the human planets. The Cylons can make androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans, which provides a lot of the suspense and intrigue of the show. Who's a cylon, who's not?

An article in the journal Neuron (I love that name) reports that a study found that when people cooperate, a part of their brain associated with pleasure is stimulated. They don't know why humans evolved to be this way, but now they know why it feels good to help each other out and work together.

(via José)

This is pretty cool. The rights of an attention-giver. Nice.

Almost everyone left of center likes Democracy Now and is constantly listening to it, talking about it, linking to it in their blogs, and going to see Amy Goodman speak whenever she comes through town.

I'm here to say something I've been wanting to say out loud for a long time but have hestitated because of its possible controversial nature: I don't quite understand why people like the show and Goodman so much. I myself almost can't stand to listen to or watch it, and I certainly don't listen or watch regularly.

I guess the simple answer is: the content, and the fact that there's not really very many other shows out there that are like it. It's the only show of its kind with its level of resources and professionalism. And the good thing about Amy Goodman is at least she's not a wingnut. There are lots of left-wing news/analysis shows, especially on internet radio and such, that have hosts that just come off sounding like wacko conspiracy nuts.

But Goodman is simply one of the worst interviewers I've ever heard or seen. At first I thought it was because I was watching her on TV at first and she's really coming from a radio background, but whenever i listen to the radio version I feel the same way. Not because of what she says, but how she says it. Her whole manner is so wooden and tactless and impolite, it's almost offensive. Now, don't get me wrong, the subject matter rocks, Goodman has great people on her show and she's getting some really important information out to the world that is pretty underreported. But next time you listen to her check out how she talks when she's interviewing. Her phrasing is so awkward that I frequently even get confused about what she's saying. For instance, I was just listening to an old archived show where she was interviewing John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Every once in awhile, as broadcasters always do, she mentions what you're listening to. Station identification, or whatever. But there's literally no pause between that and the previous sentence or her next question. For this case she would say stuff like "For those of you just joining us, you're listening to Democracy Now tell us about the dealings with the house of Saud and the agreements the U.S. government made with them." I'm totally serious, it was literally a run on sentence to the point where I got confused; and can't believe that a professional broadcast journalist would talk that way.

She's also just so brusque that it borders on rude. She will constantly say stuff like "You write about the assasination of Omar Trasero. explain," or "how closely did you work with the world bank." That's right, no question mark. Excerpt for the fact that there's a word like "how" or "when" or "why" at the beginning, her questions are not questions, there's no higher inflection at the end of the sentence to indicate that its a question, she just sort of snaps out a phrase. do you talk to people like that when you want them to tell you things? I sure don't.

It's so weird. How and why do people listen to this? Why do people appear on her shows? When are they going to fire her, or make her just a producer, and get someone else with a personality to sit behind the microphone? I just don't get how she rose so high with an interview manner like hers.

Maybe she's brusque and awkward like that because she's trying to seem to not be a wingnut, to be hyper-professional, and to counter the ditzy female newscaster stereotype, etc. But I'd say she's overcompensating and gone too far the other way. So, lighten up, Amy, be nice, and relax a little. Or step down, concentrate on writing the stories, and get someone else to read them.

Let's see how many flames I get about this....

The nonsequitur title of this entry comes from a friend who was telling me about Nietzche's position on anarchists. He said Nietzche knew various contemporaries who were anarchists but who just wanted to destroy, to tear stuff down, and Nietzche didn't want to be associated with them even though he was really an anarchist - but he said don't destroy, enjoy. Which should be a bumper sticker, even if Nietzche never said exactly that. I'll have to look into that idea. But I thought I'd just mention it because that conversation may have been one of the few redeeming aspects of my short trip to Tempe this weekend.

A bunch of us from Dry River and Indymedia went up there for Local to Global, a sort of conference held annually that includes all manner of different activists with different causes, from hippy biodiesel experts to Earth First! to 911 conspiracy types to border activists like No More Deaths. There were way too many workshops and way too few people. We had a table for Pan Left and AZ IMC and I co-taught a workshop on videoactivism but only 2 people showed up, which is no reflection on the workshop, I'm sure, it's just that when you have 50 people and 10 workshops going on at the same time, each one is not going to have very many attendees.

Add to that the brief but painful dip into the obnoxious Arizona State University college sports-bar district just to get a beer with friends last night, the filthy, hard, and cold floor I slept on, and the fact that I didnt sell any Pan Left videos at the Pan Left table - and I can sort of say the whole adventure was kind of a wash.

However, there were some things that maybe made it worthwhile - the couple people that did come to the workshop seemed really interested and dedicated; I sold another DVD copy of On The Edge; and I met or remet several pretty cool people from Prescott, Flagstaff, and Phoenix, including one of the members of the PMS Media Collective from Flag, who I have been wanting to meet for awhile; I saw part of a somewhat interesting if politically middle-of-the-road doc about urban development in Phoenix; I saw Joel Olsen talk about white privelege; and I attended a great workshop that Phoenix Copwatch did about knowing your rights when dealing with police.

So, I guess it was worth it. I got back this evening feeling exhausted and a little burned out. I was going to go to a friend's party but just changed my mind on that plan. Just going to take it easy and stay in.

We had a V-day event at the Dry River Space tonight, dedicated to the women of Juarez. I showed my film, and we also had speakers and we showed the short film that PMS Media did about the 2004 Juarez VDay.

There was a really good turnout, like, packed. And we sold several copies of the DVD, a little booklet that Mexico Solidarity Network published, and many patches and t-shirts that some dry river folks silkscreened yesterday. There was a really great discussion and Q&A at the end, and lots of great one-on-one interactions I had afterward with people, getting really good feedback and discussing possibilities for showings in other places in the future.

So, I'm pretty happy. Friday I'm going to Tempe for the Local To Global Teach-in, where I'll be giving a videoactivism workshop on behalf of Pan Left and Arizona Indymedia. I think it will be cool. I look forward to meeting Arizona IMC people from other cities. I know one or two from Phoenix but that's about it so far.

I'm always amazed at how some people I know I find just really easy to be around and talk with, in fact, I often feel refreshed or inspired after talking with them, and yet with others, it's just a chore, a draining experience. I keep remembering the hilarious but profound William S. Burroughs bit known as "Words of Advice for Young People" where he says

If, after having been exposed to someone's presence, you feel as if you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that presence. You need it like you need pernicious anemia.

We don't like to hear the word "vampire" around here; we're trying to improve our public image. Building a kindly, avuncular, benevolent image; "interdependence" is the keyword

I just read a great Reuters article about the political gains that women are making lately in Latin America, marked by the recent election of the first female president in Chile, but marred by the fact that machismo and sexism and a backlash against independent, strong women is still going on.