Tomorrow's May Day in London. This year's FUD probably garuntees some bad vibes. In the interest of research for my film and an itch to get off the fence for one of the few times ever, I've volunteered to be a steward for the Stop the War Coalition crowd. What consists a panicked crowd scene? Tomorrow may be a chance to help out the calmers and learn.
I don't have a good feeling about the day. I expected some massively organised thing but when I showed up to the stewards meeting there was a grand total of seven people. Friend reckons my goose is cooked with MI5. "Who's that with the floppy red hair?" The things people will do when they're procrastinating elsewhere with stuff. All I learnt about the secretive and mysterious London anti-authority activist quasi-terrorist anti-establishment trade unionist green leftist socialist communist liberal whatevers (hi there gov spiders, you're welcome) was that the police and the march people sort it all out in advance. "We just want to get you from A to B" is apparently how the police put it. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Oh yes, and Injustice will be projected onto the Channel Four building on: 9.00 pm THURSDAY 1st MAY 2003. Families of those who have died in police custody will be in attendance. Great film that should be on TV for people to judge for themselves. A bit awkward for anyone holding themselves up to be moral guardians.
UK Government offices have also been advised that they are economic targets, whatever that means. It's the symbolic violence aspect of May Day that gets to me. It's not damage per se, people love being primal. It's when the target is meditated, the effects calculated for broader interpretation. That's not me, not something I want to be part of. I'm up for pounding the pavement again though. Bit of fresh air, a bit of venting, a bit of soaking up the community vibe, a bit real. Anything to get away from this LCD.
I've been happily beta-testing UCE Free, a commercial service provider of SpamAssassin run by Paul Makepeace. I managed to avoid spam for the last ten years online but as of the start of this year, I started getting my share of the crap.
As to whether a client-side or server-side solution is best, I'll leave the debate to ZDNet. Similarly I won't be buying a CAUCE t-shirt. All I ask for is a way to forget about spam and get back to a life without penile enhancement emails. I would have thought that after ten years of posting online, the ad guys would have worked out that I've had a sex change...
Looking forward to my next VJ gigs in Milan, Italy, on May 9th and 10th. Playing a Chillout set on Friday (3am - 5am) and the closing set (4am - 6am) in the Theatre on Saturday, with DJ Sydney Rome.
The event, ContactEurope VJ festival, is coming together, with plans for a second event in Austria in August.
It's probably horribly uncool now to like the Onion but hey what a concept man... New Fox Reality Show To Determine Ruler Of Iraq
One step forward, two steps back. While one part of the Australian government is winning kudos for its world-leading government content syndication model, another department has won the Privacy International Stupid Security award. Trust and reputation are wonderful things to hang on to. Not as easy to implement as FUD however.
freshmeat is the site to keep abreast of for the latest in free and open source software. An illuminating debate on whether or not there is Too Much Free Software is unfolding. A great primer of what's what in OSS land.
Judging from the private response I got to my last post there is a pretty diverse range of opinions out there. Which is fine. No one has yet convinced me though that this war was something to be supported. Being afraid to state an opinion either way, that I can understand, but going with the flow... now that's scary. Sure, the bombs are a long way away, for some of us, but how many regrettable historical precedents have been set like that, by looking the other way?
First, this was a war against so-called harborers of global terrorism. Then when that didn't stand up in court, it became a war against people who have weapons of mass destruction. Inconveniently, most of these weapons had been provided by so-called "globally responsible" leaders like Thatcher. Then it became a war of "liberation" for the people of Iraq! Hooray! So what if a few cluster bombs have to be dropped. It's all worth it for the future. Exactly who's future are we talking about?
If what that means is simply "the West" expanded eastward, our virally replicated values and beliefs, and an extension to the reach of global enterprises and the monoculture mentality, then somebody's god help us all. White boys in power does not a democracy make.
Now back to my regular schedule as an apolitical person sitting uneasily on the fence.
John Bradley sums it up well in Arab News.
... perhaps the only honest statement to make under the circumstances is that you don’t honestly know what to think. Of course, the problem with this is that the world now wants only the fog of war to be lifted by a whirlwind of simple answers and deceptively short-term solutions.