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Slashback items tonight on India's satellite launch, a bi-coastal EFF-organized protest (yes, will involve leaving your cubicle, basement, silo, remote farm, etc.), Apple not falling far from the tree, and the death of Indrema. Read on below :)

Show your truuuuueee colors ... h0mee writes: "Howdy! This has already been posted on slashdot, but we still need more volunteers showing up at the protests. This protest is being organized by the EFF against federally mandated censorware in schools and libraries. The protests are occuring on this friday in the SF Bay Area and the NYC areas. I'd like to remind slashdot readers on the completely cynical side that even small groups of protestors showing up will have big impacts, as the FCC will be caught completely off guard by hordes of angry geeks showing up- this protest can make a difference! Please check out the EFF's protest page on this for more info for coordination and ridesharing, or this rant on craigslist for SF bay locals. Show your geek pride, and help us distribute Clue to the FCC!"

Hey, stop looking at me! And no feeling, either! In response to CmdrTaco's recent post about Apple moving yet again to block the makers of Apple-reminscent themes, WillAdams writes:h "The response, and the original letter are up at http://www.macthemes.org.

They'd like a lawyer..."

Sounds fair. Soon lawyers defending Open Source will take over as the heros of the software world. "Didn't there used to be programmers, too, dad?"

Up in the air, Junior Birdman w00ly_mammoth writes: "After an aborted attempt, India has launched a satellite rocket. Signals from it were picked up in Canada. The Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, or GSLV-D1, is capable of giving the nation communication and military capabilities, according to western analysts. The US has been concerned about this development for a while. This could also rattle the aerospace industry, since it marks an entry into the lucrative satellite launch market."

(Invent your own aphorism involving ashes, phoenixes and plant life.) impaler writes: "Games Mania has a story with three people's views on the death of indrema. They interview Mark Collins (author of Linux Game Programming), Clinton Ebadi (me / that lamer that does nothing useful), and Steve Baker (of TuxKart fame). All three offer different opinions on why indrema went down."

Speaking of games, ryants writes: "OpenGL.org is reporting that NVidia's GeForce3 meets or beats the functionality available in DX8 via OpenGL extensions. This bodes well for Linux gaming." Take your grains of salt, head out back, and play some TuxKart;)

For the duration of the Republican National Convention last week, the City of Philadelphia played host to delegates, members of the media, and thousands of protesters ranging from equal rights organizations to anti-poverty coalitions. This story is told by Vergil Bushnell, an e-commerce policy analyst who took part in the protest as a private citizen. In a few days, his story will be displayed in its entirety with photographs at http://www.hackedtobits.com.

TUESDAY

Fly-on-the-Wall No More

My original plan was to spend a weekend in Philly -- Friday to Sunday. A friend had sacrificed a room of his group house for my photographer (who returned home early in the week) and I. I expected to snap some photos, scrawl some notes, and arrive at my real job as usual Monday morning slightly tired, but armed with a fistful of interesting parables. What actually happened was quite different from the journalistic drive in the country I had envisaged. I wound up spending eight days in Philly sleeping during hour-long lulls on unfamiliar floors, in the rain, in a muddy park; fed by the generosity of Quakers. I startle to consciousness with contorted images of my friends struggling, screaming, smiling. I wake with my mouth full of screams and my limbs jerking to dodge imagined obstacles.

I departed from my original plan early in the week. Midway through an anti-poverty march, I spotted a well-known activist on a sidewalk and called out to him. After explaining who I was and dropping two or three names, he pulled his face close and whispered that he needed support people, and more importantly, people willing to get arrested. He provided an address that I hastily inked on my forearm before rejoining the procession.

Went to a meeting, made a 1 am call. Luckily, an experienced activist had vouched for my legitimacy. Met my affinity group early next morning in a stifling, cockroach infested, upper-level rowhouse apartment. I still don't know their real names. We crouched on the floor, periodically sipping water (to stave off dehydration during the action) and smoking while the process of consensus ground on. Activist meetings are typically conducted by consensus a democratic process that scorns dominant personalities (there are no leaders, only facilitators), and eventually produces unified, mutually agreeable resolutions. People sit in circles during consensus, and use silent hand gestures instead of shouting to signify their reaction to the topic being discussed. Eschewing the rigid hierarchy of the corporate boardroom, such meetings are tedious, but fulfilling. After introductions, the human circle on the bedroom floor was partitioned into arrestables and non-arrestables. Depending on experience, the non-arrestables became medics, legal liaisons and support personnel. Tactics were finalized and rehearsed.

Before heading out, we marked up our legs, arms and shoes with the legal team's phone number. If the apartment was raided during this meeting (something that used to happen to dissidents in this nation, and, I think will become frequent again), I probably would not be writing this article for another week. I would be punished with a daisy-chain of hysterical misdemeanors like "Conspiracy to incite a riot, or Conspiracy to endanger property."

We had agreed to meet again in several hours. I handed my ID, wallet, keys and bike to my photographer. He would take a few shots of the action, and head back down to Baltimore. I blew a kiss at my bike -- which was chained to a stop sign -- wheeled around, and marched toward the predetermined meeting point.

I spotted my group immediately. They were huddled around a plastic table in the back of a restaurant. The multi-hued bandanas, dreadlocks, and environmentalist slogans weren't exactly covert. Then again, the pairs of heavies encamped around the huddle while scrutinizing last-page classifieds and nursing full beers weren't deep cover, either. A water jug was passed around, last minute lavatory trips were made, and we dissipated into pairs.

Minus the gas-mask holster strapped to my left leg, my partner and I may have been our AG's most clean-cut detachment. I wore orange target shooting lenses to tone down my tunnel vision. The heavies had amassed. We stepped quickly to the street, precisely halting several feet before every crosswalk. Looking both ways, and snatching peeks behind. Several blocks away now.

"Tear it to pieces! Eat it!"

ASSHOLES!

Every night with darkness came rain. Heavy, drilling downpours. The remnants of our AG scattered in loose formation back to the apartment, ducking under every available overhang. I bought a coffee at a Wawa, and requested a plastic bag to shroud my camera. I don't believe that probability governs human behavior. But I can state with certainty that, after dusk, there is always at least one cop shuffling through each of Philly's well-lit Wawas. I could feel his brown eyes jerk up from the body count tally scrawled on the back of my flak jacket to lock on my medulla.

I exited the Wawa, coffee already diluted by rain. We splashed uphill. A squad car roared past us. It slowed half a block ahead. The passenger's window rolled down. "ASSHOLES!" yelled several voices from the dark interior of the cruiser. Then it roared off.

I retorted with a Rebel Yell, the only response that came to mind before I doubled over.

WEDNESDAY

"The Wagon's Cool, But Not Too Cold"

I was walking near City Hall with a friend, winding through the vestiges of a small Citibank demonstration. I policeman stepped into my path and thrust a finger at my solar plexus.

"What's in your vest?" I was wearing a camouflage vest over a olive drab polo shirt (that approximately matched my green cargo trousers with a vintage gas mask case strapped to one leg). Officially, the vest buckled to my torso is called a "load bearing harness." It has multiple cylindrical pouches, loops, and clips and distributes weight between the shoulders and belt line. My pouches were stuffed with pens, granola bars, cigarettes and notebooks. In wartime, such pouches hold one grenade each.

"Left my 'nades at home, officer." "Let's see what's in your backpack." "Fuck no. You need an arrest warrant for that."

In my backpack were several pieces of soggy clothing, and a folded flak jacket nothing explicitly illegal, but I didn't feel like baring all to the first cop that asked.

"Let's see your ID." By this time, three to four more officers had surrounded me. "No." I looked around me. Several people I knew had gathered outside the perimeter of police. "Go get a legal observer!" I yelled. They ran down the sidewalk. I told the police that I wouldn't do anything including display identification until a lawyer appeared on the scene. This stalled them for approximately three minutes. Eventually, I was grabbed, and marched to the back of a police van. This police van had two sets of doors, the outer like an ordinary van (with a few more deadbolts), the inner were metal with a tiny grill punched out near the top. The outer doors opened to reveal an orange-shirted occupant who appeared to be near my age. I didn't realize until later that, for someone who didn't know me very well, he might have appeared to resemble me. He slid down the smooth (no sharp angles) white plastic bench to make way. Before I could get in, the cops emptied my pockets and placed all my affects in the narrow space between the two sets of doors.

"Don't take any of my fucking money!" I shouted out the van, more to the swarming news cameras than to my jailers. The presence of the cameras saved me; the policemen became meticulously polite with vacuous, black lenses hovering behind them. "They're arresting me for no reason!" I pleaded before the media.

"Don't worry, sir. All of your money and stuff will be right here." I heard one cop yank a pair of plastic zip-cuffs from his belt. "No," said another cop. "Don't cuff him."

I entered the van (with my hands free), and the doors snapped shut. A fist pounded the plexiglass square separating the driver's compartment and our white plastic prison. "Is it cool enough in there?" asked the muffled voice connected to the fist. I looked up at the stainless steel air vent. "It's fine!" We had to yell this several times.

Orange shirt and I talked for a while. I had heard stories from paddy-wagon veterans about cops mixing undercover cops or stool pigeons in with the legitimate lawbreakers. So I spoke about my great respect for the police, and my admiration for their restraint. He said that he was popped for the same reason as I was walking down the street. I noticed that I didn't feel nervous or frightened. I figured that I would be in jail, re-united with my friends in a few scant hours. That I would be incarcerated for no reason didn't bother me. I would be with my friends. I would see their faces again and my guilt would be gone.

The first set of doors swung open. I was asked for my ID again. "Fuck it," I thought, "I was going to be public with my name anyway." I dug my passport out of my backpack and gave it up. One cop scratched my stats on a clipboard. He was going to put 5'9" for my height before I explained (a little offended) that I was 3 inches shorter. I know they got my race wrong. They ordered orange shirt to move back on the bench. Then they handed me my gear, and I hopped to the curb.

"Thank you," I said, stretching my arms. "I just want to play it safe, officers. Just let me pull out my notebook and write down all of y'alls names and badge numbers. For the lawyers, you understand."

My friends met me at the curb. One said that he had summoned the television cameras. After waiting for me to calm down, he explained that a reporter had asked him what I was being arrested for. She nodded knowingly -- "Word on the Street" was that I had acid on me. For the first time in a week, my friend was speechless, stunned by the simple stupidity. "Where the FUCK did you hear that?" he finally blurted. She told him that a cop had told her. I still can't fucking believe it. I hope you understand that it took me several days before I could write the last few sections. At least my friends in Baltimore saw me on the news.