Well, for the first time in 5 days it's really nice and warm and sunny here by the Baltic Sea, and various groups are by now at blockade points by the thousands around Heiligendamm, trying to stop the symbolic personal representatives of world power from getting to meet each other.

But I slept in, because I was up late encoding and uploading video and hanging out with the Kein TV video volk till very late. Finally my coverage of monday's migration demos are online, both as an mp4 from my site, and an ogg file on v2v.cc, via bittorrent and other peer-to-peer technologies. I was trying all day to upload it, to Indymedia Germany, to YouTube, etc, and both at the IMC here and at Kein.TV's lab there were internet problems and/or congestion which made it impossible.

Anyway, you should watch, I like how it turned out.

Today, who knows what will happen. There were rumors about police banning absolutely everything, all blockades, all further demos, everything, but it appears, according to the indymedia germany news ticker, that stuff is still going down. I hurt my foot yesterday so i don't know if I'll be running around filming a lot like I would like to. We'll see.

Today is my 7th day in Germany and my 3rd day in Rostock, where the anti-G8 mobilzation is happening all this week.

Things are a lot calmer than the huge crazy protests on Saturday that I missed because I was still in Berlin. There has been constant tension with police, but nothing serious has actually happened, and one has to remember that the mainstream media reports are greatly exaggerated and focused on the violence and the extremes. I'm hoping to counter that in my own coverage, focusing instead on the issues, the real reason we're here.

Yesterday's focus was migration and borders. I spent all day shooting video of 3 dfiferent actions. This post to Indymedia Germany that I posted this morning has a brief description of each and some stills I shot. Then last night I went to a panel discussion on migration. What an exhausting time, and yet inspiring. It has been really good to see, after getting involved via my own proximity to the US-Mexico border, how other struggles over borders and immigration and migration compare and contrast. The commonalities really resonate. One really inspiring thing is the slogan which I used for the title of this blog post. I think this needs to start being used in the US, because it encapsulates the real problem so concisely.

All day so far today I have been editing the footage I shot, sitting here for the last 5 hours at the Indymedia Center in downtown Rostock, next to a window looking out over the harbor and the little yard where activists sit on couches and drink tea. Dozens of other indymedia people from all over the world (well, mostly Europe) come in and out, doing some work, posting some news to their own local IMCs, sending emails.

In a couple of hours is another panel dicussion that is part of the "Alternative Summit," a more moderate, NGO response to the G8 this week - I'm interested in a panel tommorrow though because John Holloway will be there - the author of "Change the World Without Seizing Power," a book whose main ideas I found extrememly inspiring but whose academic tone made it the biggest reading disappointment of 2006 for me. However I still hope he will be interesting to hear speak.

I'm sitting here waiting for my finished video to upload. I'll post again to say where it is. I'm tired of waiting...

My 5th day in Germany and Berlin. Things have gone well other than the usual new-place frustrations from time to time of getting lost or being super tired or hungry and wandering looking for a place to rest or eat that is suitable.

Yesterday I went to a rally and march concerning migration and immigration and borders - against deportations and oppression and borders. "Kein Mensch Ist Illegal" is the German for a slogan I'm quite familiar with from being in in the US-Mexico borderlands: No One Is Illegal. I shot a few stills, some video, and recorded some great audio, including a great trio of german singers at the rally who did this sort of electroindustrial rap music, a few songs worth, which seemed to be relevant to the issues at hand but I couldn't be sure, of course. I made my first post to Germany Indymedia's website with some of the photos.

Today as I made my way around the city picking a few more bits of gear and supplies, the week of G8 protests officially began in Rostock and Schwerin. Police have already started huring people and arresting people. I've been following the Germany IMC news ticker to see the latest news. Julia and I will be driving her mother's car to Rostock tommorrow morning. I intend to spend most of the day just getting oriented and attending border/migration related forums and workshops at one of the convergence centers. Then monday is the big migration demo and march. I plan to stay safe and relatively out of the action, playing my usual role of media activist and documenting, rather than getting in the thick of the action.

Tonight though we'll be at a screening at NGBK, a gallery in the Kreuzberg neighborhood here in Berlin, where they will screen some of Julia's work. Later in the week they plan to screen some videos of mine as well as indymedia videos I've gathered during my stint as indymedia newsreal editor.

Something seems to have broken regarding my Twitter feed, which used to appear on the right column of my blog thanx to some stolen and hacked javascript code... You may want to check my Twitter page if it seems like a long time since I've blogged and you're worried or curious what's going on. I may not get to my blog that often in the coming week, though i'll try, but I can post to Twitter with my phone, so I might do that, even though it costs money, just to keep you avid readers informed...

I'm typing this as I sit in the dining car of a high-speed train from Frankfurt to Berlin. I'm not online as I type this, but I thought it would be nice to jot down some thoughts while I'm having them. Or re-jot, as I 've already been jotting in my journal. [I'm editing this, slightly, by the way, as I sit in my friend's apartment in East Berlin 2 days later].

This is train is fast clean and efficient. Germany seems like a very efficient, clean, but wet place, at least today. Germans seems very quiet, proper, well-mannered, and concious of others personal space and boundaries. Maybe I'm just projecting that after hearing the story my friend Jose told me yesterday about his experience years ago in Germany, getting scolded by a train conductor for having his walkman turned up to high. Jose told that story to me over lunch in LA, which I took with him because I had a 7 hour layover on my way to Germany. The experience ended up being extravagantly expensive, mainly because I had to take a shuttle from LAX to Beverly Hills and then a taxi back to LAX. But it was a good prelude to extravagantly expensive Germany ( I just spent about $1.40 to go to the bathroom at the Frankfurt train station, for example).

I'm definitely jetlagged. I'm on hour 26 or so of a 28 hour total transit time from Tucson to Berlin. But I don't feel much worse than if I'd stayed up too late and drunk too much.

Air India was an interesting experience and made me wish I was taking the plane all the way to New Delhi rather than getting off in Frankfurt. There was Indianesque food served for dinner last night, probably the most flavorful airplane food I've had, and cheesy (though with high-production values) Hindi movies playing on the screens, which also frequently reminded the viewer that the map of the plane's route that it displayed showed "physical features only. no political borders depicted."

Ah, it looks like we're pulling into Hannover. Another nice city surrounded by green.

I'm feeling frustrated....

I'm careening toward another cliff (it always feels like that) of long-duration international travel - a month in Germany and the Czech Republic. I'll be leaving Monday morning for Berlin and I've been scrambling to wrap up obligations, tidy my house (literally and figuratively), and gather together everthing I'll need.

Today I'm finshing up the last of about a half-dozen video projects I had to have done this week before I go, a rough edit of a piece Pan Left is doing for Wingspan.

More news as it happens or soon after. I think i'll be relatively wired, and I'll be "covering" the G8 protests, along with probably hundreds of other citizen journalists and media activists that will be there in northern germany June 2 thru 9 or so. so look for audio, video, fotos or text from me soon, full of exciting riot porn, i'm sure.

I'll also be showing some video work, including new stuff, and excerpts of my Juarez doc, at a gallery in Prague on June 18. More details on that when I get them.

In other news, the bike I've been building at BICAS is finally done and it rocks. too bad i just have this half-week to use it before i leave town.

classic Ze Frank video about how to hire a web developer. LOL.

A hilarious political protest campaign is going on in Belgium, making fun of the system in a really effective way and encouraging people to vote for empty seats in the Belgian parliament.

And parodying unrealistic campaign promises:

(via Brian)

What looks like a really great conference on Femicide is happening at Stanford May 16-19. I wish I'd known about it sooner. All the big names in the 'movement', both activist and academic, look like they'll be there. There's even a new doc about the femicide in Guatemala that will have its US premiere there.

Over 3 years ago i went to Bolivia and started a long, frustrating attempt at technology solidarity. It turned out to be just too big a project, too difficult, too unrealistic, too crazy, and without the support of enough people at either end.

Last September the computers we'd gathered over the years were finally cleaned out of the storage space, the rent for which was sucking money down a drain. They were donated to another group, World Computer Exchange, which does simliar work. Then last month the bank account I'd set up to hold the funds, which I and a colleague in Oregon had raised over the years, was closed, and the money given to her. She and some techies from Portland Indymedia will use the money for a continuing related goal, a smaller scale project to get smaller numbers of newer computers to Bolivian media activists, hidden in luggage rather than packed into huge expensive cargo containers.

A wistful sigh, but a relieved sigh as well. Past follies and crazy dreams, dissolved into a few digital traces and memories.

Here's a a great tutorial on using GUI GPG tools with Apple's Mail client. really easy once you get it set up. yay.

In other news, I'm also really excited about the bike I'm building. The more progress I make the more excited I get. Tonite I attached some awesome cruiser-style handlebars and we did brakes. Sadly, I will finish it just a few days before I go to Europe for a month, so i won't have that much time to enjoy the thing till I get back in July.

Speaking of bikes I told some activists today how I could easily rant at them about how they all drive cars to our meetings, but that our group isn't about bicycle activism or even about global warming so I don't think it's appropriate. It's not the focus.

I'm a big fan of focus.