The topic of his speech was that we, as Canadians, shouldn’t think we are without blood on our hands, and then he went on to list about 40 minutes worth of contemporary examples of oppression, both internally and externally, domestic and abroad, that “Canada” (I didn’t understand if he was talking about Canada the society or Canada the government, or both) is actively involved in. And, that was basically the end, with no theory, no philosophy, no plan of action, except the standard Michael Moore type complaining, without any form of positive plans.Which is not to say I didn’t agree with him…. At an even whose fliers demanded an end uniquivicol to violence at the university (not just one type of violence), I found that calling US and Canadian oppressors “murderers” and those who retaliate with violence, such as the leaders of the Haitian revolution, “unequivocal”.(Jaggi called Toussaint L’Ouverture a hero).I got up and tried to point out the slight hypocrisy in that statement…. Later I discussed a wonderful Derrida essay with a member of the audience, “The Force of Law”, which, in short, says that all critique, all revolution, begins with a kind of Divine violence that does away with law, but that same movement of violence eventually sets up and enforces new law, defeating its original purpose.The end of violence, Derrida writes, exists in this messianic time (not a specific messianism) that is always in the future, but it never arrives.

Unfortunately, it is usually just some lone judge, like this guy.In a decision hailed by free-speech advocates, the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision requiring an Internet service provider to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger who targeted a local elected official.Of course, when entering the public sphere, the people are legally entitled to critique. The judge of the superior court wrote that the internet is a “unique democratizing medium unlike anything that has come before,” and argued that setting the bar too low would stop people from their given right to communicate and critique anonymously…. And this judge agreed:Steele noted in his opinion that plaintiffs in such cases can use the Internet to respond to character attacks and “generally set the record straight,” and that, as in Cahill’s case, blogs and chatrooms tend to be vehicles for people to express opinions, not facts.It is going to happen, in the not too distant future, when it won’t be the cultural norm to fight what we don’t like with legal means, if it is in the realm of ideas.

I encourage everyone to look at their website, which is very interesting as well as informative, and not dry at all: it is filled with lists of great and horrible spaces, as well as pictures of cities and their wonderful city life not only here in North America, but world wide.Their idea is that cities, specially car-driven North American ones, should return to this livable and public life of town squares, markets and urban diversity (as exemplified by Kensington Market:The areaÕs mixed uses have the streets occupied at all times of the day…. This struck me because I realized that I was listening to the radio, a medium which is slowly being eradicated (like market places or local shops): wiped out all together, or replaced with large, corporate, bland replacements of top-40 hits and sports stations (think the local mall).I hate the term “Virtual Reality”–it reminds me of too many bad mid-90’s movies…. Right now, it is just becoming cheap enough to produce video content, although I don’t think that video content is completely compatible with the way we interact with the internet, which is a whole other topic.We can have this lively debate between healthy and organic spaces of information very easily: how much easier is it to make an socialist and anarchist website, then go through the rigour to make a physical anarchist bookstore, especially when it is the bank granting you a loan, the same bank you are looking to do away with.

I am working at my last few shifts of my crappy undergraduate part-time job, and quickly moving into my better, full time, graduate-ish job at Autoshare, a car sharing company here in Toronto.As someone currently beginning to apply for a degree in the Faculty of Information Studies, I am slowly realizing that it is not one particular genre of book that I enjoy, but all genres together, and in fact the book itself. When first coming to Toronto, which has the second largest book collection after Harvard in North America, I got this classic feeling of Angst that I would not be able, even in a thousand lifetimes, to read all the books at Robarts Library…. Like Borges, I see books and library with touches of mysticism and religiousness, and for me this religiousness transcends East, West, analytic, literary, poetry, prose, fiction.In the future, I would love for this list to include some non-Western books, but as it stands it makes me very excited, to an unhealthy degree.