WordPress won’t let me insert videos from Vimeo, so you’ll have to use the link right here to watch the film. Que Viva La Revolucion Mexicana!

But in the meantime, I’ve been working this film job and going out into the streets when I can, like today when Ali called to tell me about a big demonstration going on. So I rolled over and shot some pics and talked to some of the participants.

There were a whole slew of groups demonstrating, like these folks, called “Diableros” (Devil-men). Their job is an incredibly menial one: hauling things on dolly carts around the markets in the Centro.

Now the government is arresting them and/or fining them 500 pesos (enough to buy about 50 cheap meals, or around 40$ U.S.) for doing their job. It’s part of the ongoing efforts of the Mexico City government to “clean up” (I hate calling it that) the downtown, by getting rid of any and all evidence of poverty, i.e. street vendors, prostitutes, and manual laborers like the Diableros.

By the way, the reason they are nicknamed Diableros is because of the horn-shaped handles on their carts. You’ll also notice (on their sign above) that they are Magonistas, i.e. they take as inspiration Ricardo Flores Magon, that most famous of Mexican anarchists, who was born in Oaxaca and died in Leavenworth Prison, Kansas.

Also present were the Frente Popular Francisco Villa, marching with the micro-bus drivers who are protesting the new Metro-Bus, a dedicated bus lane on a major thoroughfare that gets exceptional traffic privlelges. This puts the smaller, poorer, micro-bus drivers at a loss and so they are taking to the streets.

I guess they have such big sticks for their flags so the police will stay well enough away…..

Also present were Triqui folks from Oaxaca, carrying a banner in honor of the two people, Alberta Cariño Trujillo and Tyri Antero Jaakkolo (of Finland) who were killed by paramilitaries in San Juan Copola.

In any event the march went to the Procurador General de la Republica, which is sort of like the Justice Department, where there were speeches, etc. All evidence of theongoing grind that Mexico’s poor are facing under this new global austerity. More to come….

For those readers that don’t know, Shane Bauer and I made a film together in Africa called Songs To Enemies And Deserts, and more information about it can be found by clicking above on the tab of that name.

Pictured here are Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd at the airport in Washington, D.C., shortly before Shane and I boarded a plane for Africa. May we see them free soon.

Here I asked him the question, “What is the most important news story to be following right now?” His answer may surprise you….

On Latin America, Mexico, and their relationship to the United States:

On the medium-term prospects for the U.S. dollar:

And on the importance of Central Asia, especially as regards the recent uprising against the government in Kyrgyzstan:

Enjoy, ponder, and spread wide.

The march ended at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland and after several speakers and lots of energetic chants and songs, a smaller group of some two hundred people marched away from the main rally. Brandon and I followed, cameras in hand, following them on several twists and turns through downtown and eventually onto the 880 Interstate onramp where they stopped rush-hour traffic and marched down the freeway with banners and bullhorns. At that point the Oakland riot police came charging in like a herd of bison and started swinging their truncheons and arresting folks, despite the fact that we were clearly media, Brandon and I were arrested and spent the next twenty-or so hours in the Santa Rita jail along with the rest of the protesters.

Here is a picture of myself being arrested, wearing headphones and with camera on the ground in front of me, being arrested. Note the corporate media cameraman being politely shown the way out of the police cordon. Thanks to John Gibler for the picture.

But before this came the cops and their batons were flying. We made this short video about those moments and via the interweb it has now spread far and wide. This is what happened on the 880 Interstate last Thursday, March 4th, 2010, at about four o’clock in the afternoon:

But I did come across two interesting short documentaries, well worth a look. The first is by Avi Lewsi over at Al Jazeera English and it’s really just a well-done piece of long-form video journalism, the kind we are sorely lacking in the U.S. It’s a breakdown of the politics that are going on in Haiti under the aegis of aid and rebuilding. Check it out:

In other news, I’ve been following the story of the assasination of the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, which went down in Dubai last week. It seems that 12 (some say up to 26!) of Israel’s Mossad spooks tailed the man into his hotel and did him in his room, most likely with a combination some sort of taser-like weapon and simple suffocation.

The hotel’s surveillance cameras give a blow-by-blow of the lead up to the operation and offer a fascinating glimpse of how secret agents work. Gulf TV has assembled all of the footage and you can watch it all here. Note how many of the agents are engaged in simple surveillance themselves: watching the hotel hallways, watching their target’s movements, watching each other. Only four people are actually involved in the hit, and they are the biggest and thuggiest looking of the bunch, too.

So next time you feel like there’s a strange guy watching you, think twice, as he probably has ten more people helping him.

My old friend Pratap Chatterjee has just written a piece comparing Obama’s bombing war in Pakistan with Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia. While I shy away from comparing past events to present ones as some sort of guideline to what the future holds, it is worth a minute to consider the possibility that the U.S.’s blundering interventions in Afghanistan and Pakistan could help pave the way for the Pakistani Taliban (as opposed to the Afghan Taliban) to come to power in that country.  One huge obstacle would be the very large Pakistani middle class, who aren’t too keen on having their country turned into a theocracy. However, in a country where Islamicists regularly stage simultaneous attacks across whole cities, anything may be possible.