"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human
race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and
those who have no such desire."

- Robert A Heinlein

Nobody seems to know when "Bordertown," the Hollywood J-lo vehicle about the murders in Juarez is going to be released, but it's fairly certain now that it won't be in March, which is what IMDB still lists as the release date. I did find a silly movie-tracking site/blog with production stills. Hard to tell much about the film from them, other than it will be typically sensational, with exploding colonia shacks and all, it looks like. To date I don't think any young women killed in the femicide were killed by burning down their house. But, y'know, J-lo looks good, that's what matters, right?

And in other news, good news, I just got an email from a New York Times writer who wants to talk to me about my film. More on that after it happens.

what do the pros use to author DVDs?
i've been spending the last 3 days doing the authoring for the final version of my DVD of my juarez doc. i'm using apple's DVD Studio Pro and it's not the first time i've used it but i have to say it's one of the most frustrating pieces of software i've ever used. it's got me almost pulling out my hair. and it's so surprising because Final Cut Pro is such a pleasure to use and works SO WELL, and then this other software with apple's name on it just blows. i mean you can do a lot of cool stuff with it but the way the interface works and the general performance of the interface just is fucking shameful.

so i was wondering what people who do this for a living use, cuz the "pro" in dvdsp is obviously a lie.

Here's just one little dumb example: When working with subtitles, you can only move ONE subtitle at a time. You can't select a whole bunch in the stream and slide it around, or move them to a different stream. You just can't. Why? Why the fuck wouldn't they allow one to do that? After 4 versions of the software?

Or here's another one. Why is it that when you import subtitles from an STL file, it blows away any existing subtitles on that stream, even if they don't conflict timewise with the new ones you're bringing in? Why? There's no logical reason for that.

And then there's all the ridiculous wait times. Why can't they come up with some some kind of preview mode so that you aren't waiting for the spinning rainbow wheel of death every time you click? ARRRGGH!! Apple, get your fucking act together!!

Protests last week against the World Water Forum in Mexico City. More info at Mexico Indymedia and a short video from the Centro Medios Libres in D.F.

shit i just lost a long blog post about how i didnt have time to be even posting it and what i did today. stupid browser did some stupid fuckign thing and i lost it all. fuck.
I've been insanely busy working on the final DVD of my film. subtitling sucks and is very time consuming. i shouldnt even be doing this.

I did take time out to go "cover" the peace march today. unremarkable except that there was quite a big anti-peace turnout too. i took lots of photos.

back to work.

The Urban Dictionary has some pretty funny, and mostly negative, definitions of Indymedia. One consistent theme seems to be that Indymedia is anti-semitic, a critique that sort of surprises me. I can see that that would be one critique, because most Indymedia coverage, where it needs to be, is anti-zionist, and zionists are going to label anti-zionists as anti-semitic. But for that to be the main thing people repeatedly harp on is kind of strange.

A chain of several localized websites where 16-year-old stoners with Che T-Shirts can pretend to be journalists and write bullshit news articles containing zero credibility or research. What better way to fight back against the corporate-controlled media by getting your news by some of the most blatantly agenda-driven sources in the world? YUH MAAN FOCK DA SYSTEM RAGE AGINST DA MACHINE!!!1!!
Oh Indymedia, what won't you blame on the Jews?

This lecture by Clay Shirky at Etech, a recent O'Reilly conference in San Diego, is really excellent and concerns how you manage web software that allows some degree of free posting by the public. He has some really really good ideas, many of which are very relevant to how Indymedia Centers manage themselves. Especially important is this concluding remark he makes:

Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn't realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression in our tools. We need to have conversations about the explicit goals of what it is that we're supporting and what we are trying to do, because that conversation matters. Because we have short-term goals and the cliff-face of annoyance comes in quickly when we let users talk to each other. But we also need to get it right in the long term because society needs us to get it right. I think having the language to talk about this is the right place to start.

(via Jos&eacute)

This is hee-lar-ee-ous. Chip off the old block, I say. Got a prosperous career ahead of him, I'm sure....

(via José)

I just heard from Free Speech TV that they're airing

29 hours of special programming in the days surrounding the Three Year Anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Iraq. This programming is scheduled to coincide with numerous and diverse protest events taking place across the U.S. and around the world.

including 2 pieces of mine that I licensed to them last year. So, instead of going out to a protest, stay home and watch my videos! heh. just kiddin. but anyway here they are:

Cops of the World
Broadcast Date/Times: Saturday March 18 @ 6:51 am ET; 5:51 pm ET; 10:51 pm ET
Steve Hise
5:07
TVPG
A video for a modernized version of a Phil Ochs song, linking U.S. domestic police brutality to foreign policy brutalities.

Nexus-6
Broadcast Date/Times: Saturday March 18 @ 6:56 am ET; 5:56 pm ET; 10:56 pm ET
Steve Hise
2:46
TVPG
A re-working of a President Bush speech reveals a potentially more accurate sentiment of his administration.

And there's a bunch of other great documentary pieces they're showing, including Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered: The War on Iraq."

Free Speech TV reaches 25 million U.S. homes through its full time channel (DISH Network, channel 9415), and part time on 170 public, educational and government access (PEG) channels. For a complete list of PEG stations carrying FSTV: http://www.freespeech.org/html/affiliates_list.html

Reporting on a delegation of Latin American activist women who came to Washington D.C. on International Women's Day, this excellent article about the increasing trend of femicide across the area contains a lot of good information and points. There's the definite concensus emerging that the Juarez situation has raised awareness of a regional problem for which it is only the tip of the iceberg. And there are very serious related consequences:

In the view of Adriana Beltran, the power of organized criminal groups and the persistence of femicide serve to undermine the democratic transition Guatemala was supposed to experience after the peace accords. In former military dictatorships like Guatemala where civilian government institutions are still fragile, the security threats posed by organized criminal bands and their impunity are paradoxically reviving the former national security state apparatus as the military is being drawn into law enforcement. Beltran believes that this is a temptation that should be resisted at all costs. "We strongly believe that the lines between police and military should be kept separate, especially in countries that had armed conflicts," she says.