The war tax resistance documentary is taking me out of town again, for 9 whole days. I'll be flying to New York City tomorrow and we'll be shooting Sunday and Monday there, and then heading down to DC for the big anti-war demo there on Wednesday. Activists will be blocking the IRS building that morning, and all sorts of other things will be happening. Later in the week we'll head up to Western Mass. to talk to WTRs there.

I'm kind of tired of travelling so much, and i'm not looking forward to cold and snow out there just when it's starting to really be nice and warm here in Tucson... although a side effect of that is that the pollen count has been crazy high and my sinuses are under assault to an almost intolerable degree.. so in that sense it will be good to get away....

Well, the nice thing is that a judge in Texas slapped down Chertoff for not following the law and consulting with landowners before having Homeland Security try to force its way onto their property to build the border wall.

On the other hand, back here in Arizona 2 more fascist and racist things happened: a mistrial was declared in the murder case against border patrol agent Nicolas Corbett, who shot dead in the back an apprehended migrant who posed no threat to him. The jury couldn't decide after 3 days of delibration and so now it has to be tried all over again and meanwhile the asshole walks free.

And in the Arizona state legislature last week several anti-immigrant bills passed through their respective committees. All of the ones that had been introduced, in fact.

But hey, more good news, Chertoff says that on the white border, err, I mean, the Canadian border, there won't be a wall, just another broken high-tech cyber fence, like the brilliant $15 million boondoggle that Boeing scammed the feds on here in Southern Arizona, which even McCain is calling "a disgrace."

Meanwhile unknown parties on bicycles are blowing up army recruiter stations in Times Square and not getting caught. I feel so damn safe I can hardly stand it, Michael. You're doing a heckuva job.

I'm getting increasingly tired of people using the name "Turtle Island" without, in my view, really understanding it. Activists, new agers, poets, etc have been using it to be another name for the North American continent, in an effort to get away from using names invented by the white colonizers, ever since Gary Snyder published a book of poetry by that name. I guess it's somewhat debatable, but here's my point: the idea comes from the common Native American cosmovision that all the world is perched on the back of a giant turtle. One might argue that it refers to just this continent because they weren't aware of any other continents, but if there were there would be Deer Island and Whale Island and whatever else besides Turtle Island. But the point is that it's a cosmological, not geographic, worldview - they believed this continent was the entire world, was all there was for humans and other animals to live on. Therefore, I think you're really being too specific if you refer to North America as "Turtle Island." The whole world is Turtle Island.

I admit that it is ambiguous though. Here's part of a version of the myth:

Nanaboozhoo took the piece of Earth from Muskrat's paw. Just then, the turtle swam forward and said, "Use my back to bear the weight of this piece of Earth. With the help of Kitchi-Manitou, we can make a new Earth." Nanaboozhoo put the piece of Earth on the turtle's back. Suddenly, the wind blew from each of the Four Directions, The tiny piece of Earth on the turtle's back began to grow. It grew and grew and grew until it formed a mi-ni-si', or island in the water. The island grew larger and larger, but still the turtle bore the weight of the Earth on his back. Nanaboozhoo and the animals all sang and danced in a widening circle on the growing island. After a while, the Four Winds ceased to blow and the waters became still. A huge island sat in the middle of the water

So, is it "a new Earth", or is it just "an island" that is part of the Earth? Maybe a European, over-rational mind just can't make sense of it.

Here's a photo of me in the Lower Rio Grande River Valley shooting an interview for the project I'm doing for the Sierra Club on the environmental impacts of border infrastructure.

The project is really coming along. I just got back from another interview with a biologist here in Tucson, just a few blocks away from my house. It's funny that I've been from the Gulf to the Pacific on this project and also working right in my neighborhood.

O and I have been in San Diego since Thursday night, here to work on the border wall enviro impact video.

It's actually chillier here than in Tucson this time of year. brrr. But, it's nice to see the ocean.

Anyway, interviews have been good. Throughout this project it's been impressive and inspiring that just about everyone I've talked to on camera has gone beyond just the environmental focus and talked about the bigger picture - the overall problem and that people are immigrating because of what the U.S. has done to their countries, and the responsibility to do something about that, not just build walls.

In a few minutes, we head down to the Tijuana Estuary to shoot there.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Great coverage by The Onion.

(Note: When I first wrote the following, I was unsure if I should post it as-is; at first I thought it was too extreme and blunt. But a friend said "No, I think you should, it's how most grown-ups think." So, here it is.)

Last week there was a big protest in Florida against a natural gas facility being built that was conveniently located near the site of a big Earth First! semiannual meeting. After each of these meetings, which move around the country every time, organizers pick an environmentally-bad thing to go do a protest against when the meeting concludes - a coal mine, a factory, whatever is handy.

This time it was Palm Beach County's under-construction West County Energy Center. Ten or twelve activists locked down in a circle to prevent trucks carrying rock from getting out. Police came, riot gear, yada yada, hundreds moved aside but 27 were arrested. What did it accomplish? The construction was halted for 6 hours, traffic was blocked, and a couple local papers ran short articles.

Now we, the general, caring activist public around the world, are being asked to finance the bail bond for these brave folks.

Maybe I sound a little curmudgeonly, but frankly I think the whole action was ineffective, ill-advised, and wasteful of time and energy. It didn't have any real effect, it pissed off motorists and workers in the area, and it didn't even have much of a symbolic effect since national media didn't pick up on it. It's also just boring and old and tired, except to the couple dozen young traveller-kid adrenaline junkies that sat out there and got high from the excitement of "sticking it to the man".

And now I'm being asked to waste my money on its aftermath? On an action I never approved or even knew would happen (well, actually, of course I did, in general, because like i said, it happens every 6 months like clockwork).

Think of what else the money could have gone for.
The bond, to bail out 27 white gringos (at least from the photos they all looked pretty gabacho) from jail, was $13,500. That could feed about 22 Bolivian families for a year. Just as one example. Or another example closer to home - that's almost exactly the entire (minus in-kind donations) budget of the documentary about war tax resistance that I'm working on.

Agreed, we could debate about what is more or most effective. But that's not my point. I'm just asking you to think about it. Tactics and strategy matter, and the reasons, and aftereffects, and costs, behind their execution matter.

Another example of this kind of vain and foolish "action" is the upcoming "un-welcoming" of the RNC and DNC in Minneapolis and Denver. More useless mobilising, activists flying or bussing or driving or hoppin' freights in from all over the nation for a week, running around in the streets taunting cops, tipping over dumpsters and shouting at limos that might have delegates (and let's not even address for now that the candidates are already decided by then - the Conventions are just elaborate theater put on for show) in them, all so the kids can later retire to the convergence center each night and sing songs and smoke weed with their cool hipster activist friends and maybe get laid (direct action really gets the hormones pumping, y'know). What does it really accomplish outside of those exciting, social, "coming of age" goals for these youths?

What's effective and what's not? Should one engage in a tactic just because that's what's been done every year for years? Should one support something and bear the consequences just because someone else made a foolish decision? Should one be involved with foolish decisions just to satisfy some desperate and frustrated youthful need for adventure and catharsis?

This does seem harsh, but at this point I think it's extremely important to start honestly critiqueing tactics and strategies. Social change isn't just an empty gesture for bored suburbans youngsters to inject excitement back into their middleclass lives for a few years. A lot of people are in it for the long haul, and they're in it to win. So let's honestly and carefully figure out what works, what doesn't, and why and why not.

There's still interesting struggle going on in South Texas regarding the border wall. In yesterday's issue of The Monitor, the main newspaper down there, there was a big article about the newest levee-wall proposal and how the enviro concerns are the same or worse than the original fence plan.

The interesting thing about that article is that they have Fish & Wildlife officials coming right out and publicly talking about concerns, which is pretty new. DHS was making sure nobody in any federal agency said anything that wasn't thoroughly sanitized, and when I visited the USFW refuge there I was told that if I just wanted shots of scenery, fine, but if I wanted an interview about agency concerns, that would probably take forever to get through red tape and then never happen.

Meanwhile, I just found out that the sites of all 3 Indymedia centers in Texas (Austin, Houston, and North Texas) are down. Austin's perhaps permanently. Yikes. Poor Texas.

Some friends of mine have created a great site called Toonlet, where you can make your own cartoons really easily. here's one i just made:

Our WTR shoot yesterday ended on the shore of Suisun Bay looking out at a bunch of old warships parked in the water and rotting for the last 50 years or so.
It was a fitting spot to reflect on war and its various pricetags. And just a weird site.

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more background on the ghost fleet.