I'm at Java House in Iowa City, which is halfway between my Dad's place near Cedar Rapids and my Mom's place in the Quad-Cities. I just had lunch with Kembrew, ,who's a professor here at the University of Iowa, and then I had coffee with an old friend from high school who I hadn't seen for like 6 years. It was great. We had a really great conversation. It's cool to know that someone who was one of my favorite people 20 years ago is still a really really interesting person.

Not much more to report. Oh, it snowed last night. That's it for now.

In the past two days, the Guatemalan government has responded to massive anti-CAFTA protests with violence and repression. As least 11 people have been injured and as many as 14 are unaccounted for and assumed to be in police custody. The Guatemalan popular movement is calling on international solidarity to denounce these actions and pressure the government for an end to violence.

Reuters story on protests.

Call or Fax the Guatemala Embassy at Phone: (202) 745 4952; Fax: (202) 745 1908 and demand that the Guatemalan government cease the
repression against peaceful protesters.

I tried out Google's new video search tool and typed in "juarez" and found this, a recent episode of Cops. The google search gives a transcript and frame grabs of the segment that contains the search term, so i get this minute-by-minute record of these cops from El Paso who hear about a shooting on one of the bridges to Juarez. So they look for where it happened and eventually find blood on the U.S. side, so they know it's their jurisdiction. Interesting. I'm sure full segement doesn't even begin to touch on the femicides or larger context of what is happening in Juarez.

I wonder if anyone at Cops has considered working with foreign law enforcement? They could do a whole new series called "Federales" or something. I'm moving off into surreal joke mode here I guess, but imagine if Fox gave out so much money to Mexico's police in order to have them on the show, that it actually decreased corruption? Hah. Of course it would replace it with a different kind of corruption. Is the U.S. entertainment industry bigger and more powerful than the Mexican drug industry?

The Times reports on Carlos Mesa's announcement that he is resigning the presidency of Bolivia. Many think he's trying to get more support and doesn't really want to quit, is hoping that congress rejects his resignation. What an amazing gamble. If he's out who knows what will happen? He's definitely had a hard time. "By Mr. Mesa's own count, there have been more than 800 protests against him since he replaced Mr. Sanchez de Lozada," in October 2003.

Also in the article are quotes from neoliberal 'experts' who want Mesa to stop being such a wimp and quell the protests with violence: "Mesa has to understand that governments have the right, the legitimate right, to use force"....

On the Publius Pundit blog is an excellent timeline of recent events in Bolivia. Warning: I've never read this blog before but the author reveals himself to probably be on the conservative side. But he really does his homework, even linking to the Lonely Planet traveller's bulletin board where there are backpackers reporting on what roads are blockaded and stuff. wow...

I wish I was there.

Barring that I've been hoping to get an indymedia global feature up about recent Bolivian events. With the continuation of the El Alto water war and now this, things are really pretty crazy, and we need to be covering it. I wish I knew better Spanish so I could really know what the best article would be to use from the CMI-Bolivia site. There seem to be a lot.

Well, that's why i'm going to Guatemala next month... I'm really looking forward to learning more spanish, to really making that my prime priority for a 6 weeks or so.

Jim Shultz of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba is a really smart guy. A few days ago he wrote about his meetings with Brazilian citizen groups and their optimism. And he said the following, which is exactly the sort of thing I've been trying to articulate about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez:

Some like the swagger of Chavez in Venezuela, but ignore the authoritarian instincts that are evident in his governance as well. He is also a one man show. Lula is the visible face of a movement that has been building here for years and will survive long after Lula leaves office.

Check out also, more recently, his reporting from more recent days in Bolivia. There is intense stuff happening once again in El Alto and elswhere, as mi companero Luis G

My brother Allan sent me a mix CD with a bunch of music I'd never heard before, since he's been in Germany getting all into German music. One of the songs is by Rammstein, who I've known about for awhile but never really gotten into, I think because I thought up till now that they were just another industrial band in the lineage of Ministry or KMFDM and not much new.

But this song "Amerika" was something that really stuck in my head. Then he told me about the video and I also looked up a translation of the lyrics and it really revealed itself to be a scathing song. I found the video online and, I'm not quite sure why, but it moved me so much I actually started to cry. I think it's because the song and the video are just really dark and sad and, in a way, true, showing the whole world, from Kalahari Bushmen to Tibetan monks, eating hamburgers and pizza and sitting on Santa Claus' lap and singing along with the song like puppets. Meanwhile the band plays the song on the moon dressed as U.S. astronauts and fumble around trying to set up the U.S. flag.

an excerpt of the lyrics:

When there's dancing I want to lead
even if you're whirling around alone
Let yourselves be controlled a little
I'll show you how it really goes
We're making a nice round dance
Freedom is playing on all violins
Music is coming out of the White House
and Mickey Mouse is standing in front of Paris

We're all living in America
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra
We're all living in America
America, America

It's just so fucked up how my country is fucking the whole world up so bad, and the video just reminded me of that.

So in this article on indybay it is reported that Arnold "declared a state of emergency and announced that he was going to take away California workers' lunch breaks."

How surreal. I mean, just from a media standpoint, to see story like that. I'm sure it's very real to the workers who are fighting it.

For the past couple days I've been just outside of Shellsburg, Iowa, at the house of my father and stepmother. It's a comfortable place, and I'm looking foward to relaxing and also getting lots of things accomplished, most importantly getting my Juarez documentary finished, or mostly finished.

Above is a photo from the large backyard, looking past my father's robotic telescope observatory (not quite finished) up the hill to the house. When the observatory is done, he'll be able to remotely control a telescope and take photos of the sky, via wireless internet. He started putting it together last summer, but didn't quite get it working before the weather got bad.

Is it any wonder why I'm so geeky?

Anyway, so I've been trying to get "organizized," to quote deNiro in Taxi Driver. I've started trying this new method invented by David Allen, called simply "Getting Things Done." A friend gave me some audio files of Allen doing a presentation about the whole method. It's pretty exciting because he seems to really have a handle on how our minds work and how to be more productive and less stressed-out.

One interesting tidbit he mentions is that people who are intelligent, creative, and sensitive tend to procrastinate more than others. Which makes total sense - people who can clearly visualise how difficult something will be or the possible failures involved will be scared off and delay doing that thing, whereas dumb oafs who can't imagine anything but simplicity will just blunder on ahead. I definitely know several people in both categories...

A Washington Post story tells of a former elite force of anti-drug commandos in Mexico, called the Zetas, are now working for the drug cartels. In their periodic news and analysis mailing, the Mexico Solidarity Network adds that the leaders of the Zetas were trained at the School of the Americas in the U.S.

The Post article mentions again the State Departments warnings to U.S. citizens about Northern Mexico and the various abductions, as I wrote about a couple weeks ago. In my interview with Bill Conroy while I was in Austin, he stressed further the idea that the drug cartels don't do anything if it doesn't earn them money, and kidnapping gringos is not a big money-maker.

I just had a great idea. What if Mexico simply disbanded all of its law enforcement agencies? No one trusts or relies on police anyway, there, it seems. Why not just make an announcement that there is now no such thing as a Mexican cop? No more corruption, since you can't corrupt something that doesn't exist. No more drug thugs impersonating cops. If you're dressed as a cop, that would prove you're a criminal. Unrealistic, I guess, but an interesting thought experiment.

Perhaps of general interest is an entry to the other blog I write for over at Detritus.net, in which I detail what I was doing last Friday and some related events concerning intellectual property issues.