I was still reeling from the way the media handled the recent TTC strike when I was subjected to a truly inane article by Christie Blatchford in the Globe and Mail. Comparing the Toronto 18, who I've written about before, to the gangsters in the Wire (which I haven't written about though I did spend 60 hours over the past month or so watching it like the addiction that it is, and I suppose mentioned it during a talk I gave last month), Blatchford showed a spectacular ability to miss the point on both sides of the comparison.

I live in Toronto. I live right in the city, and have no car. I get around using public transit - the TTC. Over the weekend, TTC employees went on strike, against a deal that wasn't all that transparently presented in the media but the contentious part of which involved the increasing use of short-term contracts by the employer (that's my understanding anyway). The strike took effect midnight on Friday/Saturday.

Some more audio tracks for those of you who listen to streaming audio.

I was on Chris Cook's fine CFUV radio show, again, to talk about the KI first nation and Platinex and Ontario mining. The audio is here.

The other weekend I was in Texas doing some talks on climate change and environmental issues.

The talk I gave on Climate Change was posted to the New Texas Radical and reposted to ZNet. You can listen here.

Just read that Canada maneuvered to ensure water wouldn't be a basic human right at the UN. My first thought was: couldn't Canada have just allowed it to become a human right, and then ignored it, as with all other rights? And then I realized that it is another element of abandoning hypocrisy, which the Harper regime seems particularly keen on: presenting the ugliest of Canada to ourselves and the world, as if to revel in it.

I gave a couple of environmental talks in Texas over the weekend, which have since been published on the web. One on sustainability in general. The other on climate change, science and politics.

To prepare for them and before and since, I read a bunch of environmental books, that I'll discuss below.

[Published on ZNet March 31/08]

en espanol, gracias a Michelle Olimpia Boido y ALAI

I am watching, on YouTube, a good film called "Unfair Dealing", about the "Toronto Terror Plot" that broke about two years ago now. The "plot" always had the smell of entrapment and political expediency. I've researched it a little bit but haven't written about it yet. In addition to Toronto18.com, and captiveincanada.com, I'd also recommend the video on YouTube. From the film, it looks a lot dirtier than it even seemed...

Part 1

I'm reproducing the full statement, including a long criticism of Uribe's politics, but only translating the short communique on the crisis that the PDA put forward on March 2.

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The PDA's National Directorate, meeting in Bogota on February 29-March 2 and facing the crisis of relations of the Colombian State with the neighbouring republics of Ecuador and Venezuela:

Colombia accepted at the OAS that it did in fact violate Ecuador's sovereignty. Venezuela and Ecuador are to discuss the situation further. Latin American countries all rejected this - it is a good sign to the US, and there have been numerous of these in recent years, many of which had to do with Colombia or Venezuela, that the Latin American countries won't tolerate these sorts of violations of sovereignty (except for Haiti). The text of the OAS resolution, below, in Spanish.

Colombia's regime is using a well-known tactic. When caught committing a crime, accuse the other party. The more mud slung, the better. El Tiempo's headline, quoting Colombia's representative to the OAS, "One hopes that Ecuador and Venezuela will have the courage to expel the terrorists from their territory." Colombia's claiming they found "evidence" on Raul Reyes's computer (captured during the massacre and violation of sovereignty that they committed when they assassinated Reyes) of support for FARC by Ecuador and Venezuela.