Last week, I needed to take a taxi out to the suburbs of Oaxaca City to play some tennis. The place where I'm staying is close to the main bus station, and that's a good place to catch a taxi.

When I got there, I asked the first taxi driver in line to take me to "Deportivo Brenamiel, Carretera Internacional". This turned out to be a problem, because I mis-pronounced both "Brenamiel" and "carretera". The driver understood me to say "deportivo internacional" which, for all I know, could be in Huatulco.

There was a group of three people waiting for a taxi, so I thought, I'll just let these people take this taxi, and I'll get the next one. However, a young woman in this group of three observed what was happening, and said "Deportivo Brenamiel" to the driver, with the proper pronunciation. (You have to roll the "r" in "Brenamiel", which is something we English speakers aren't very good at.) The driver said, "Oh, Deportivo BRENAMIEL". I got in the cab, and we were on our way.

However, for all I know, those three people had just gotten off a long bus ride, and would have liked to be on their way home. Instead, they gave up a chance to get in a taxi right away in order to help me out.

As was the case in previous incidents like this, documented on this blog, I thanked these people profusely, but my limited ability to speak Spanish is an obstacle to communication, so I've taken the trouble to write this as another way of expressing my gratitude.

Now, the former Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, said last week that President Obama should not have sent his daughter Malia to Oaxaca City. (No, I didn't cross paths with her group.) Here's a message especially for you, Rick: There's no need for you to ever go to Mexico. There are plenty of mental institutions in the United States that are capable of taking care of you.

Click here for more pictures I've taken along the way.

At the time I'm writing this, I have been traveling in Mexico for 19 days. By bus, except for a ferry between La Paz and Mazatlan. I've made stops in Ensenada, Loreto, La Paz, Mazatlan, Mexico City, and Oaxaca de Juarez, and I plan to stay in Oaxaca de Juarez for four weeks.

At no time during this trip have I felt unsafe or threatened. Because I'm on a long trip, I'm carrying along a lot of stuff, and I have a justifiable concern about the stuff being stolen. That hasn't happened. There have been military checkpoints along my route, a military presence in Loreto and La Paz, and a visible police presence in Oaxaca. When I arrived at the Terminal Norte in Mexico City, they have the same arrangement for taxis that they have at the airport; there's a desk where you tell the lady where you're going, she tells you how much it will cost, and sells you a ticket that you can use only on approved taxis. (Taking an unlicensed taxi is the most dangerous thing you can do in Mexico City.)

My experience has been the opposite of warnings that have been issued by people who should know better, such as the Texas Department of Public Safety. Here's two experiences I've had that say a lot more about this country.

1. I went out late at night in Mazatlan to purchase some fruit. I found a juice stand at the Mercado in the Old Town, and asked for a banana and a grapefruit. Then I asked the lady, "how much", and she said "nada". I even pulled out a few pesos to pay for the stuff, and she still refused to accept them.

2. I had to go to an agency on Avenida Insurgentes, a major north-south thoroughfare in Mexico City, to purchase my bus ticket for Oaxaca. My next destination was Coyoacán, a neighbourhood in the south part of Mexico City. There's a rapid bus line on Insurgentes, similar to ones that exist in Bogata and other cities working on low-cost transit solutions. So, I got on a southbound bus, with the intention of making a left turn somewhere to get to Coyoacán. Once on board, I learned from nearby passengers that I should get off at the Altavista station, and take a bus marked "General Anaya".

I did this. However, the bus stop wasn't very visible, and I walked right by it. When I saw the next station on the Insurgentes line, I realized I had done something wrong, and turned around and started back. As soon as I did this, I saw a short middle-age lady, one of the people who provided the directions on the rapid bus. She saw that I had walked by the stop, and followed me down the street in order to show me the error of my ways. Since she was shorter than I am, she couldn't walk anywhere near as fast. She escorted me back to where the stop for the General Anaya bus is, and made sure that I got on the right bus.

Of course, I said "muchas gracias" to this woman and the one at the Mercado in Mazatlan several times. Because my Spanish is very much a work in progress (that's why I'm in Oaxaca, as a student in a Spanish immersion program), I was unable to say more to them. So, I'm writing this article as another way of thanking them.

The message I want you to get from the two anecdotes presented here is, think about them the next time you see a story in the news about some new inconvenience legislated by some state for Mexicans, such as the one passed in Arizona requiring police to ask for papers from any brown-skinned person. Or the law passed in Alabama requiring brown-skinned people to carry identification at all times.

I've described people here that deserve the same respect from you as the people at your country club or Rotary. They want their children to go to good schools, and have a secure future.

Click here for more pictures I've taken along the way.

The Kindom of Saudi Arabia was in the news twice during the month of December, 2011. On December 12, a woman in her sixties named Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded for practicing "witchcraft and sorcery." On December 29, a deal between Saudi Arabia and the United States was announced; Saudi Arabia will purchase 84 F-15SA fighter jets for $30 billion.

You can read the details of the fighter plane sale here. The F15 is more sophisticated than the F35's that Canada is buying, and Canada will manage to defend a much longer coast line with only 65 of them. Arms sales to foreign goverments have to be approved by the President and Congress of the United States, and Obama and Congress had no problem with it. That's not hard to understand; the sale will put $3.5 billion annually into the US economy, supporting 50,000 jobs with 600 suppliers in 44 states.

There's so much wrong with this that I don't know where to start, so I'll start here: where were the screams from the wingnuts who believe that Obama is a secret Muslim? The ones who were having a fit over a proposed Muslim cultural centre in a former coat factory in lower Manhattan. (First Amendment? What First Amendment?) Why weren't the talking heads on Faux News devoting a couple of days worth of air time to this subject? Why do we need Stephen Colbert to remind us that "only 15 the the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens?"

We know, of course, that it's US dependence on oil that causes the US government and media to enable the behavior of the Saudi regime. The suggestion I'm going to make here is, the next time you're having a holiday dinner ruined by a relative who spends too much time watching Faux News, you can respond with any of these reality checks:

• Since most Repugnikans (except Ron Paul) are competing with each other over who can be the biggest support of Israel, why is the US supplying a lot of weapons to the regime that doesn't care much for Israel?
• If Repugnikans want to offer us "Sharia Law" as a boogie man, does it make sense to enable the behavior of a regime that really practices Sharia Law? Maybe the people who want to turn the US into a theocracy think that Sharia Law and the beheading of sorceresses aren't such bad things.
• How come Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Palin, et al aren't going after Obama for supporting this deal? (If you get this answer: "Beck was fired by Faux News because he criticized the Saudi regime", you can respond "touché". It's a fact that the second-largest shareholder in the Fox Network is Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi prince.)
• If there is indeed some sort of "war on Christmas" going on, does it make sense to provide weapons to a culture that doesn't celebrate Christmas?

We shouldn't forget for one minute that the Middle East is a very dangerous place, and having nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic religious fanatics would be a very bad thing. However, making irrational public policy decisions based on Denial over dependence on Middle Eastern oil will make a dangerous situation even more dangerous.

The topic of an additional stop for Amtrak trains between Vancouver and Bellingham, WA has finally caught the attention of local media.

The need has existed for a long time. People who live in New Westminster, Surrey, and Delta who want to take a train to Seattle or Portland have to either travel to downtown Vancouver in order to catch a train that takes them right back out to New Westminster, Surrey, or Delta, or get a ride to Bellingham and catch the train there.

A possible solution has come for for this because of a seemingly unrelated event. Burlington Northern Santa Fe owns the train station building in Blaine, WA. It's 100 years old, in a state of disrepair, and hasn't been used as a passenger stop since 1980. BNSF announced a plan to demolish it, and people in Blaine decided that this was a bad idea. Not so much because of heritage value of the building, but because they recognize that access to passenger rail service would be beneficial to the community.

The station is within walking distance of the Peace Arch border crossing, although it would seem to be further if you're carrying heavy luggage. It should be possible to arrange secure parking for those people in Surrey, Delta, etc. would would like to catch a train in Blaine, and leave their car there for a few days.

I'm going to be at the Vancouver Law Courts (specifically, at the corner of Nelson and Hornby) at 9:30 AM on Monday, November 28.

The occasion is a court hearing on the Prosperity Mine proposal by Taseko Mines Ltd., based in Vancouver. This proposal is for a gold and copper mine in the Nemiah Valley, southwest of Hanceville, BC. It calls for dumping mine tailings in Fish Lake, known to the Nemiah Band (Xeni Gwet'in) as Teztan Biny.

I've been to every part of British Columbia sometime during my life, and the Chilcotin, along and south of route 20 between Williams Lake and Bella Coola, is my favourite. The last time I was there was about 14 years ago. I saw the herd of wild horses in the Brittany Triangle. Several people told me I should go to Fish Lake. I was within 5 km. of it, but didn't go there because the road was too rough for the car I was driving.

Here's a video that shows why Fish Lake is a very special place:

Blue Gold: The Tsilhqot'in Fight for Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) from Susan Smitten on Vimeo.

This project has already been turned down by the Federal Ministry of Environment. Taseko Mines responded by renaming the proposal the New Prosperity Mine, and trotted out the bogus claim that the project would create 71,000 jobs. (Taseko had only 414 employees in 2007.) They're insulting our intelligence, and they're certainly not fooling the Nemiah Band.

http://www.fonv.ca
http://www.raventrust.com/

An article in the August 30 Vancouver Sun, Cities push province for electronic voting, says that three BC municipalities are trying to get the influential Union of BC Municipalities to endorse the idea of internet voting.

The UBCM should say "no" to this idea. So should Elections BC, the Federal government, and all provincial governments. We shouldn't accept any voting arrangement that doesn't provide paper ballots that can be counted in the presence of multiple election officials and scrutineers, and can, if necessary, be recounted.

Here's a better idea. We got an excellent turnout with the mail-in ballots used in the recent HST referendum. Oregon has been using mail-in ballots since 1998, and Washington State started using mail-in ballots last year. It has worked well for them; voter turnout has gone up, and the cost of conducting elections has gone down. Let's go with something that works, and can be trusted.

I've pointed out before on this blog that the Conservative Party of Canada has a history of running campaign advertising that insults the intelligence of Canadians: see The Conservative "Tax Trick", published in July, 2008.

I heard another one of these insults on the radio yesterday. The ad claims that the New Democratic Party's "cap and trade" proposal would add ten cents to the price of a litre of gasoline.

Really? I can't give you an informed answer on this, because I haven't studied exactly what it is that the NDP is proposing. However, any Canadian who drives a car knows that the cost of gasoline has risen 20% over the past six months (much more than ten cents a litre), and 48% since the Conservatives became the government of Canada in February, 2006.

So, when the Conservatives accuse anyone other than themselves of increasing the price of gasoline, it's an obvious case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Here's my constructive suggestion for the Conservatives. Regardless of how the election turns out on Monday, the Conservatives will still have seats in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Harper will probably retain his seat, even if he is no longer the Prime Minister.

So, how about this? The Conservatives could phone or send emails to the petrochemical interests that fund the Conservative Party of Canada, and say, "Could you please drop the price of gasoline back to what is was in October, 2010?" If the Conservatives could accomplish this feat, I'm sure that a lot of Canadians would be grateful enough to vote Conservative next time around.