PERSONAL:
DRIVING AROUND WINNIPEG:
      It's a quick trip from the Slav Rebchuk bridge and the missing "People Before Profit" sign to Selkirk Avenue, the main drag of Canada's second poorest neighbourhood. That's Winnipeg for you. This burg can't even be the winner in a competition for bad.
     Anyways  it's an east turn down Selkirk to Main Street, and the first block shows where the 'People Before Profit' sign may have gone. Yup it's up in BIG LETTERS on the local headquarters of the goddamn Communist Party. Now the commies have been many things in their regretable history, and "thief" is one of the minor insults that could be thrown their way. But there it is in big red letters for all to see.This slogan has also been present for years (decades ?), but it only becomes apparent when the entering North End sign disappears.
     I don't know whether to congratulate or laugh at the commies plunking their head office down in thne middle of a decidedly non-proletarian neighbourhood. To say that it has been useless in signing up the lumpen proletariat would be understating the case.Most cemetaries do a far more lively business than these souls nostalgic for the days of Moscow gold. I do a lot of driving back and forth in this city, and the only sign of life that I have ever seen at Commie HQ is that once they cut the grass/weeds in their yard.Never in hundreds of passes have I seen a person enter, leave or merely hang around this particular mausoleum to an idea past its best before date.
      Not that I am at all displeased by this. As the subtitle of this series of vignettes says, "may they never rise from the dead". A resurgence of sympathy for organizations involved in the cover-up of the greatest atrocities in history would be the death certificate of any radical opposition.
     But then we sail past this monument to an unlamented past, and head out to "Pharmacy Row" on Main Street. Makes you wonder why a neighbourhood with the highest concentration of addicts in the city also has the highest concentration of drug stores.Heading north now, and we leave the dreaded North End behind.

DRIVING AROUND WINNIPEG:
PERCEPTUAL EXPECTANCY
      As you drove over the Slaw Rebchuk bridge from downtown Winnipeg to the North End you were greeted for years by the "Welcome To The North End: People Before Profit" sign on the roof of the Nippon Auto building at the north foot of the bridge. For years this somewhat incongrous sign on the roof of an auto body shop (whose owners must certainly be quite concerned about profit) set the tone for the neighbourhood where so much of Winnipeg's radical history came to pass. Nobody seemed to know how long it had been there. In my own memory for many years.

     Nobody knows how it came to be placed on the roof, though last November when the "People Before Profit" part was eliminated the owners of Nippon Motors claimed that this tag-on had been painted by vandals. On a dark and non-stormy night I presume. The official explanation was that the slogan was removed in the process of re-roofing the business.Some how I don't think so, but the intent was plain whether done by itself or in the process of putting on a new roof. Gotta bump that anti-capitalist slogan after all, though I would be utterly amazed to hear that the literary gem on the rooftop lost Nippon Motors a single cent of business.

      Here we are however. The slogan disappears in November. Through the next few hundred times I drive north over the bridge I fail to notice anything amiss. In other words my brain was registering the whole two phrases while only one was still on the roof. This is an amazingly persistant illusion.

     Finally one day in February my fact checker must have been on as I headed up into the North End. "What The Hell ?". The "People Before Profit" part is missing. Where the hell did it go ? Having done roofing in my youth I was fairly certain few people would be insane enough to be up on a roof in Winnipeg in February. Which leaves me with the question of when exactly was the "ideological rectification" done.

     All that being said, however, the case of Nippon Motors' roof came up again when a few weeks ago Winnipeg Free Press columnist Colleen Simard wrote a piece implying that the offending phrase was still up. This really threw me into a tailspin. Had it really been put back up? Nope. The 'socialist-speak' was as absent as ever. For all I know Simard still is seeing the illusionary "People Before Profit" every time she heads north on Salter. Just like I did for months.

     What this is called is "visual expectancy". This functions as both addition and subtraction. Details that are no longer present i a situation, image, etc. have their blanks filled in by a brain attuned to the "grand picture". This is addition. The most famous instance of subtraction is the inability of many subjects in one experiment to see a gorilla in the background of images whose foreground is a major item of interest.

     Fill it in or erase it. The brain can do both. Both abilities for illusion actually have survival value, and it is little wonder that they have been selected for over millions of years of evolution. I wonder if other animals have the same capacity for illusion. I also wonder if there are any people or anyone in an "altered state" who has to suffer the full impact of being unable to filter out the irrelevant and add the missing details. If there are I feel sorry for them.



PERSONAL

HAPPY NEW YEAR:

Welcome to 2012 all you friends, enemies and innocent bystanders of Molly's Blog. May it be even more eventful and productive than 2011.

RELIGION:

PAPAL SINS:

Amazingly enough I finished reading two books on a single day. There are two more rather technical books that I am still reading, but probably few would be interested in them. The first book I finished was the collected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. I've already mentioned said book here. The second book is Garry Wills' 'Papal Sin'. You can read it yourself here at Google Books. I hope the referral is right. I often make mistakes in long addresses.

I have to say that the book surprised me. From the title and a brief perusal I expected this book to get into the gritty details of medieval and Renaissance Popes with all the neat stories about simony, nepotism, sexual impropriety and political treachery. Nope. The network of deception that the author heads for began in the 19th century with Pope Pius IX. There is, however, more than enough dogs' dinner in the last 1 1/2 centuries to satisfy the most ardent critic of the Papacy.

Wills is hardly the most ardent. He is still a very devoted Catholic, whatever his heretical opinions. He denies the 1870 Vatican I promulgation of Papal Infallibility from the point of view of Church tradition in addition to the thuggish schemes initiated by Pius to gain the acceptance of his infallibility.

I must say that I enjoyed this book immensely, especially considered the recent death of my Sister Ann who was a nun with heterodox opinions. Wills begins his book with chapters showing the "bad faith" and lies of the Catholic Church. He saves his own reformist opinion for the latter chapters where he contrasts the views of the Church Father Augustine to modern Papal opinion.

Along the way he scatters gems such as the fact that the apostles were married; that there were no priests in the very early times of Christianity and no bishops until even later. He emphasizes the democracy of the early Church and suggests that this should be a model for today's Church.

What can I say here as an ex-Catholic and an atheist for over 45 years ? This book is obviously addressed to other Catholic believers. It makes an appeal to the "winter soldiers" who continue to resist foolish Papal pronouncements.I would recommend it for believers as an eye openers to the fact that there can be dissent in the Catholic Church. Perhaps even unbelievers could profit even more by reading this book. It may allow them to formulate their objections at a higher level.

PERSONAL:

FAREWELL TO MY SISTER:

I've reached the age where I see my siblings dying, something quite different from having your parents die (many years in the past for me). Just this week I have been to Calgary for the funeral of my sister Anne. Sister sister actually. She had been a member of the Congregation of the Sisters Of Charity of St, Louis for many decades (since 1959), and had actually been Sister Superior on two different occasions. My sister died in the Calgary airport. For some inexplicable reason I want to attribute her massive heart attack to running to make a connecting flight. I don't know why I want to insist on this. It was indeed chance. Perhaps I want to be assured that the dice of chance were really loaded against her.

In any case I will miss her tremendously. I always enjoyed argueing religion with her, no matter how upset her and I may have been at the time. She was actually one of the people I have met in my life who could make a reasonable argument for the existence of God. Her political views were a strange mixture, containing great sympathy for the semi-anarchist Catholic left such as the Berrigans, along with justification of the evil done by the Catholic Church vis-a-vis the first nations of Canada. To her credit I did see a certain antipathy to the Jesuits (I survived five years of the bastards). Too bad I never heard her views when she was teaching theology in Edmonton.

My sister: Four degrees. A PhD in English literature which led to a few arguments about post modernism. She was open to it. My own position, based in empiricism, was that it was nonsense through and through. She was on her way to Montreal to deliver a paper when she died. Actually I never saw evidence that academia had poisoned her taste for literature which postmodernism has a great tendency to do. On the other hand our tastes in literature were quite different.

In any case she was a remarkable woman whose career spanned Canada, Europe, Africa, the Caribean and the USA. While we often disagreed we loved each other and had great respect for each other. Memorial tributes, according to her will, may be made to a charity supporting women's education in Kenya. She herself taught there under the sponsorship of Canadian Crossroads International.

PERSONAL

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT PART 3

As I've mentioned before, both here and on my Facebook page, the very fact that the movement has refused to set up a list of demands to the power elite is a source of strength not weakness. What the Occupy movement is is a widely based challenge to the very power of that elite to direct society. It is not a delegation ,cap in hand, for whatever meagre reforms the elite my offer. The very lack of clarity that the movement is accused of is actually a formidable strength.

A consequence of this refusal to limit the movement's meaning to a shopping list is the amazing fact that the Occupy movement has touched the "Populist Chord" that the traditional left has been unable to play upon for decades. Looking at the participants one sees a broad cross section of society, and the "99%" slogan has caught on with a population not yet ready to camp out themselves. I have noticed a truly remarkable absence of the usual lefty private language and even the fractious "anti-isms" that doom most leftist movement. Those who have taken up this struggle obviously understand the value of unity, and they act accordingly. This has hardly been the case amongst the left of the last few decades, and it is a welcome breath of fresh air.

This lack of particular demands is actually quite unifying. The Occupy movement doesn't just demand a larger slice of the pie for groups a, b, and c. It says there is a whole different and better way to cook pies.

PERSONAL:

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE STATE:

It's been many many years since I left my old home town. 48 if I count right. I left it at precisely the right time, when I was turning 13. Enough of "being one with nature". Time to get into some serious trouble. Which, of course, I found in the (cough) "beautiful" city of Regina. My purpose in what I write below is to show a life that was as "stateless" as possible, under harsh climatic conditions. A life that was endured and sometimes enjoyed by a diverse mixture of ethnic groups and not just some favoured "oppressed" group. Perhaps the town of my childhood memories doesn't deserve recording. Except for one salient feature. It was a town in an area that never had a functioning and overbearing government. Now it is true that most natives in this part of the world grew up under exactly the same conditions with the difference that they saw more of the cops than we did. They also suffered a lot more from the (triple cough) helping arm of the churches, something that simply couldn't happen in a town where there were 3 distinct churches and education was public and non-demoninational.

So let's start with the obvious ie the police. We saw the RCMP a grand total of one time in the 13 years I lived in said town. Did this mean that we were a community of saints. Obviously not. There was the usual vandalism and petty theft which the community found it could deal with far better on its own than by calling for the 'tender actions' of government. Not that the retaliation wasn't sometimes overdone, but short of cutting off fingers or toes any physical pain is preferable to being cast as raw material for socia1l workers to "reform". The one occasion where the state/government proved itself useful was when one farmer went nuts and killed his wife. He came down to the general store to surrender, and he sat there for the required hours until the RCMP felt it was convenient to pick him up.

I mention this just because it is the most obvious "state function" that comes to people's minds, right up there with firefighters and above education and health care. The point that I want to make is that many of the functions that government now performs were or are provided by other means in the not-so-distant past, Or a little bit beyond the city limits in most provinces where rural firefighting is on a volunteer basis. Many other things such as education or health care could easily be provided via cooperatives rather than government. Sometimes a person may recognize all of this but still draw the line at police and the "justice" system. It seems almost unbelievable that people could do without what radicals call "the oppressive arm of the state". It is, however, true that the vast majority of people in history have lived without police (unless you count the agents of the landlord coming to steal things), and there are those such as myself who grew up in such conditions ie it is a living memory.

This doesn't mean that I think some almost mythical revolution could abolish the need for police, courts and prisons overnight. If I were having coffee with a cop I would admit that people like him or her are needed in the near future. Yet I would also say that it is indeed possible to do without police. More than possible. It is a fact that I can remember in my own life. Yet a change in the way people in a neighbourhood act towards each other is a much more effective remedy for crime than more police even today. What anarchists, at least those in the broad majority tradition of anarchism is not a society without demands and rules. It is a society without a specialized caste who enforce such rules or in the case of our present society also enforce the rules of the more wealthy.

What anarchists propose is perhaps summed up by a very clumsy neologism ie the "smalltownization" of a society that presently lives mostly in cities. This is not some marijuana addled vision from the 60s and 70s where everyone has to "go back to the land" and "pretend" to be indpendent of the wider society. What it means is that urban neighbourhoods could grow to have many of the virtues of a small town (such as its ability to live without police) without some of the vices.

Not that my home town was any anarchist utopia by far. We were connected into the wider society by such things as electricity from Sask Power. The electrical grid came in on the same year as I was born. Before that the town had its own generator like most northern communities have even today. This was also the same year, ironically enough, that they took passenger service on the railway away from the town. I see no reason, however, why a crown corporation such as Sask Power couldn't be run as a cooperative. Many advantages actually. Similarily the Province paid teachers' salaries, something that was different from my father's time when teachers were paid by the local community. Another example of memory of a different life. We actually had a Provincial highway a couple of miles from town, but the road to town was maintained (or not) by the RM as were the dirt trails that led out to various farms.

Then, most importantly, we were connected to the wider society and hence to the state by the fact that our rural economy was built on the availability of gasoline (and also oil for the privileged few who didn't have to depend on wood in the winter). Can the universal availability of hyrdocarbon products be provided outside of the state or big business ? The answer is obviously yes as Co-op service stations are a constant feature of most of the western provinces of Canada. If it is done it is possible.

I have to admit that what I have said may seem like something conservative rather than radical, but I have to say that most "conservatives" are actually quite "progressive" in their desire to clear away all obstacles to the increase in power and wealth of the people they imagine are the "wealth creators". My vision is frankly reactionary in the desire to turn back the clock (or ahead if you like) to a different sort of politics and economy. I stand in the anarchist tradition of such people as Paul Goodman in his book 'Notes Of A Neolithic Conservative'.

More on this topic later.

PERSONAL:

SORRY FOR THE LACK OF CONTENT HERE:

Regular readers of this of this blog may have noticed a lack of content recently. I've explained this before as I have transfered a lot of my activity over the my Facebook account. I've been contemplating this for some time, and have posted on it before. I MOST certainly don't intend to abandon Molly's Blog because it reaches a larger audience that even the 2100 + "friends" I have on Facebook. It also a fact that most of the people that I am connected to on Facebook are those who I already agree with in one way or another, ie they are anarchists, union activists or people involved in such things as "time banks" or social justice efforts. THIS blog, however, has the potential for a larger outreach given the way the internet operates. So...don't despair; there will be things here that I couldn't express on facebook or are better expressed here.

PERSONAL:

THE CAT IS ON FACEBOOK:

People may have noticed fewer posts here recently. The reason is that I've been spending a lot of time over at my Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1078669782 ). Does this mean I'm abandoning Molly's Blog ? Far from it. I'm still, however, trying to work out the proper balance. Facebook has its advantages. I can post things there from other sites far faster than I can here, but the ability to explain and give background is considerably less (non-existent ???) . The chance to archive over there is zero, and linking via their "Friends" section is highly restricted. On the other hand I can easily post music and video, and I encourage my readers to drop over to see these efforts. The Facebook page also has a far larger selection of current news than I am able to give here. Some ( I hope few ) may miss my personal comments over there, but far more people respond to things there than they do to blogs so you can get the, unfortunately short, opinions of others.

I hope to get back into the swing of things with Molly's Blog so expect the number of posts to return to a "normal" level. In the future I will give short references here to things published over at Facebook. So...this is not a shrinkage of this blog but rather an expansion.

Enjoy.

PERSONAL:

A MESSAGE FROM MOLLYMEW:

A happy holiday season to one and all, my friends and my detractors. May the New Year bring all the best.

ANARCHIST TACTICS:

THE "FACEBOOKALIZATION" OF ANARCHISM:

There's something I've noticed over the past few months given that Molly's Blog is a 'contact site' for anarchists across the world. As I gradually go through my editing process I find that not only are the majority of sites that I add 'Facebook sites', but that I am either deleting or sending to the Zombie listing a lot of others who were on the internet via other internet providers (blogspot/wordpress,etc).

That's fine, but a few cautions should be given here. First of all, as anyone who has followed this blog for long enough should be aware I am utterly and completely opposed to conspiracy to commit illegal acts. Not that I am opposed to "illegal acts" of civil disobedience, but I am completely opposed to the idea of trying to make them "secret". SECRET ???? I am completely astonished by the wishful thinking that a radical organization's plans could be kept "private" whenever it is communicated via the internet. I have debated this up and down with many people who are under the delusion that their "encryption" is sufficient to guard their plans. All that I can say here is that they are either wrong or actual state agents.

That, however, is something quite different from what is presently bothering me. What I have noticed is a gradual shift of anarchists to Facebook sites, and NOT always as simply a mirror of their main site. What does this mean besides the fact that, whether it is admitted or not, that their sites are continually monitored by US intelligence ? What it means is that unlike a blog post on website post whatever they say is eternally lost once a few days (hours, minutes,seconds ????) passes. THAT is what posting on Facebook means. It is lost forever. It is "etherbuzz".

I, of course, intend to maintain Molly's Blog as a main site while also using Facebook, but I would ask people to recognize the limitations of the latter. I would also ask others to consider the limitations of Facebook.

PERSONAL:

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

Well it seems like the flood of links from the conservative blog 'Small Dead Animals' is over,and I'm back to my usual visits (about 150/day). SDA has done this before, and I actually appreciate the opportunity to explain anarchism to those who will see nothing about it except play acting riots. After the over 1500 hits from SMA I hope that I have convinced at least three people to investigate the idea beyond what is spread to them from the conservative media. To be honest I received an actual intelligent conservative post (alongside a lot of nonsense that reminds me of he worst sent out by my own "comrades") Yes, a lot of conservative beliefs depend upon ignorance, but so do a lot of leftist beliefs as well. That is simple sad history. I know how to answer the intelligent conservative bit by bit, but I must sat that I am pleased beyond measure about the attractiveness of this blog to "non-anarchists". That really my great goal.

As to other matters I am continuing the editing of my links. It's is coming close to the situation where "facebook pages" outnumber actual websites or blogs. Is this a good thing ? I have my doubts. Hence 'Molly's Blog' is the central site for what I want to say, not my facebook page. What dies Facebook lack ? Obviously content, and blogs can have such content. That is why this blog will stay as it is, whatever the fact that I announce a lot of things over at Facebook.

Usually nothing of great importance. but sometimes Facebook is usable. Blogger has its advantages, but so does Facebook. Interesting contrast.

PERSONAL:

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

Oh the guilt. Oh the shame. After having had a personal conversation with a friend where he remarked about "how I was able to keep the links current" I was visited by a comrade from Bosnia who pointed out some dead links on this blog. It takes me way back to an internet conversation with an "anarchist hero" I shall refer to as "Dink Ass", and his refusal to list a certain anarchist site because it had "dead links". This was despite the fact that he had "dead links" in his own listings that were at least 7 years dead and perhaps ten years in the grave.

All that being said those words plus the undeserved admiration and the unexpected help from Bosnia put me on a campaign track. As far as I can determine this blog has the most complete listing of the libertarian left in the entire world. It is, of course, a work in progress, and will continue to expand. The way that I have devised is; whenever I add a new listing is to go four or five listings both above and below the new one. I look for things that have to be either deleted or put into the 'Zombie' (long inactive ) category. The latter is not entirely useless. Some things actually do come back to life. Recent examples include the 'Institute For Social Ecology', 'Barking Coins Blog' and the 'Centre For A Stateless Society' which were inactive for a long time but are quite alive today. The 'Zombie' category has its uses.

This is how I hope to keep the links on this blog current (something that anyone with experience with anarchist websites knows is a problem). Quite frankly I cannot go down the lists of literally hundreds of items to try and eliminate dead links, but this method will allow me to "punt the corpses" rather efficiently. Once more I request anyone who detects dead links to report them at the 'Molly's Suggestion Box' link on this blog. Until then I hope this method serves everybody well.

PERSONAL:

HALLOWEEN AT THE MOLLY HOUSE:

Halloween here at Molly's Haunted House of Horrors was a great success, better than last year. Over 150 kids dropped by. As usual I went whole pig on the yard decorations, and both kids and adults got a great kick out of it. I say adults because almost all kids were accompanied by one or two adults. This seems to be a trend that increases year by year. As usual there were the carloads of kids who were driven around town looking for houses with decorations. This was even more prominent this time around because many people from the North End simply didn't feel safe having their kids do trick or treating in their own neighbourhood because of the recent night of three shootings ( 2 separate deaths and one where the gunman opened up on a group of kids for no perceptible reason, almost fatally injuring one girl). Word is that not own my own East Kildonan but also St. Boniface and Hippy Town (Wolseley) had a great increase in kids this year. I guess that people didn't want to drive too far (no reports of such increases out in the suburbs) , but they still wanted to avoid the shooting gallery. Talking to people in the North End, and they said that in their case all kids were accompanied by at least two adults, unlike in past years. The Indian and Métis Friendship Centre held an alternative Halloween party in the North End for people who were too nervous to let their kids out onto the streets at all. Reality can be scarier than fantasy.

Too bad such a night of fun has to be spoiled by such anxiety. For me at least it was great fun even if I didn't have time to put everything up. New decorations this year, people taking pictures of the yard, the usual for what I consider the best holiday of the year. Nothing to do from now until the New Year except accounting and slouching my way towards Christmas.

PERSONAL:

MOLLY IS BACK IN HER FOXHOLE:

Well, in case my fans and enemies haven't gathered Corporal Molly is back in her foxhole at the front. Almost a week to be exact. It takes little time for a paranoid mind to get used to a city where cars don't stop for pedestrians, unlike out in Victoria. To be honest I could never get used to the idea that some son-of-a-bitch wasn't ready to gun it and run me down, just like here in my home territory. Here you look both ways before crossing the street, run like hell to the middle, catch your breath and repeat the process providing there is no traffic either way. I will also have to get used to the less than benign presence of "street demons" here, but that is easy as my pissed off button is very near the surface. Quite frankly I have always (I've been in Victoria before) had a hard time adjusting to the idea that threat is not the best way of dealing with street demons. In Victoria they have better manners than the average Winnipeger, non-demon Winnipeger that is.

Let's say slightly that I and what one wag has called "Mrs Molly" enjoyed our stay our there immensely. It's a great place, even though a bit "crowded" for my taste. We liked the bars. Hell. I even found 'Murphy's Stout' on tap, something you could never find here at the ends of the Earth. Winnipeg actually has a few "pubs", rather than sleazy bars, and we may even have our own (one) micro-brewery now. This puts us on the same level as Regina which should be a great matter of shame.

Molly drove up to Nanaimo to visit Comrade Larry and was properly impressed by the scenery along the way. Many photos were taken. I was even more impressed by the hospitality that I received from Larry and Rosie. I also found out that Nanaimo was a neat little city with a very vibrant anarchist community. Many thanks to L and R.

So here we arrived back in Winnipeg. Open the door. Cling, cling. cling comes loud from the basement. Appreciate that Molly's house was built in 1929, and the water heat furnace is from the original. Oh Fucking Jesus. At least the place hasn't burnt down. The problem is a water pump that is attached to the furnace, and a spring connector on it. Click, click,click. Check, check check. It's a few days later that I call Winnipeg Supply and have the pump fixed. This is because, to my utter amazement, despite the fact that the pump is fucked we still have heat and hot water. It gets shoved down the priority list.

Meanwhile the wife tries to start her car. Dead as a doornail. Now...I've always been happy to screw around with cars. Furnaces I won't touch with a ten foot pole., I pull up the hood on the wife's car. Jesus H. Christ !!! I have never seen such an accumulation of copper sulfate on a battery in my life. Now Molly is from from Saskatchewan, and I swear that there was enough bluestone to sterilize about 3 dugouts. Screwdriver and baking soda go to work. I get the mess cleaned up and boost the wife's battery. Vroom, vroom.

Piss and Jesus. MY car goes dead. Click, click,click. Fuck,fuck,fuck.. We do a back boost and the machine is working fine. With great circling the wife drives off to get her battery charged by driving. I take off elsewhere. Stop at the pharmacy to pick up my nicotine lozenges. Come out. Click, click, click. God knows what my blood pressure was then.

Up goes the hood. Bang, bang,bang, Twist,twist, twist. Vroom, vroom. vroom. I never knew before that you could screw up your battery connections just by giving somebody a boost. Live and learn. Oh God do I hate machinery.

Welcome back to Winnipeg. Actually I don't mind it as much as it may seem. It is far better than Saskatchewan, espcially Regina where I "served" 14 years. Back to decorating the yard for Halloween. Such is my more or less boring personal life. Mechanical disasters are great events. I gues it's better than noting bites from Rottweillers.

PERSONAL MOLLY'S TRIP TALES:

FUN AT THE AIRPORT WITH GOD BOY AND GOD GIRL:

We're off and running, or at least hanging around in a lineup waiting for boarding at the airport. Putter, putter, putter, eavesdrop, eavesdrop, eavesdrop.The plane will be flying from the wilds of Winnipeg to a gentle civilized land of milder weather...with an unfortunate stop over in that northern extension of Alabama known as Alberta. Or at least that is what is believed by those that think Noah's Flood deposited it there. The pair in front of us are, appropriately enough, two evangelicals just returning from praying up a storm down east somewhere, and they are in full Jesus mode.

My nose starts twitching when God Boy opens his mouth to launch into his Muslim conspiracy spiel connected with the Cordoba Islamic Centre in New York which he, of course, calls a mosque. Now understand that Molly grew up out in the country on the Canadian prairies. I have also spent over 40 years listening to leftist hogwash of various sorts from 'dialectics' to 'abolishing civilization' with all the nonsense in between. What I can say is that my nose is so good that I can smell the excrement from the hind end of a male animal of the bovine persuasion from 5 miles away...upwind.

The old nostril hairs stand erect as God Boy jumps from the North America continent to (I think) Europe with his concern that "10 years ago there were only 800 mosques and now there are 80,000". He is, of course, off by a factor of about 10. Yet he goes on about how this is true for everywhere in Europe "except Russia".Uh Yeah ! This is prefaced with what really set the old nose hairs tingling. He was "there on a security job for the American government". All that I can say is if the US Empire has been reduced to hiring idiots who brag about such things in public lineups then it is in even more trouble than I could imagine or even want. Sorta reminds me of some of my braggart would-be revolutionist anarchist "comrades".

The conversation goes on, and God Boy has the floor. To my horror he says what may be the only true part of his monologue...he's apparently a "teacher". That I can believe. It doesn't take much smarts to bullshit in front of a bunch of kids at the 'Holy TV Hour Bible School' in Constipation, Alberta. Then we're off into the ozone again about the dastardly Islamic plot concerning the naming of the 'Cordoba House' in New York.

A little aside and a small history lesson here. The Moors invaded Spain in 711 AD, overthrowing the ruling Visigoth kingdom who were not a great source of fun for the average downtrodden peasant. The new rulers were a slight improvement over the Visigoths, particularly the Emirate of Cordoba who set some sort of standard for the day of enlightened rule and tolerance to other religions (Christian and Jewish). The Emirate, however, ceased to be in 1031.Muslim rulers who followed this emirate were at least half as nasty as the Christians. I have a sneaking suspicion that the example of this emirate was high in the minds of those who decided to set up the centre in NYC, in more than childish ignorance of what country they lived in and the equally childish innocence of their belief that Americans would "get the message" of tolerance and living peaceably together. This in a country in which the majority of its citizens can't identify their own states, let alone tell that 'Bahrain" is not a weather condition.

But back to God Boy. He's on a roll. What according to him is the "reason" for naming the centre (mosque-sic) after Cordoba. Well, it's because "in the Second Crusade the Moslems took Cordoba". The Second Crusade (another boring history lesson) by the way was from 1145 to 1149, and its object was the recovery of Edessa which had been recaptured subsequent to its capture in the First Crusade. Let Molly remind you that the Emirate of Cordoba was overthrown by another Muslim power in 1031. Lest you think that God Boy simply is not only about 3,000 kilometers and 100 years out to lunch (or is it 400 years out to lunch) consider the following.

I've already spoken about the naivete of the Muslims who set in motion the idea of the Cordoba Centre. Their ignorance might be compared to that of say a Canadian immigrant to Greece or Turkey ignorant of history who was to praise the wrong country in public company. One could adduce other examples as well. There is what may be described as "honest ignorance", but then there is something that might best be described as "deliberate ignorance with malevolent intent". In such cases one believes a rather treacherous "authority" because the statements of said authority accord with what one wants to believe. If the reader has some slight knowledge of either medicine or anthropology he or she can find great and grievous examples of such malevolent evil and deliberate ignorance amongst the American perversion of anarchism called "primitivism", and their bizarre idea that their fantasy of "traditional healing" can more than replace modern medicine (a great evil in their pretty well religious point of view). But that is certainly another subject.

Where the Holy Rollers of Alberta get their perversion of history is from a peripheral event in the Second Crusade. The crusaders had already acquired a well deserved reputation for treachery, brutality and thievery in the First Crusade. The main efforts of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel during the Second Crusade were to get the armies through Byzantine territory with the minimum of pillage on other Christians. The greatest effort of "fighting for God" of the crusaders, of course, occurred in the Fourth Crusade when the armies of God sacked Constantinople. But during the Second Crusade a number of those bound for the so-called 'Holy Land' saw an opportunity for profit in hiring themselves out to the King of Portugal in his campaign to conquer what is now Lisbon. They were, of course, promised the opportunity of looting. They succeeded, and the inevitable happened.

Sometime, somehow some ill intentioned "authority" amongst the Evangelists got hold of this peripheral factoid, and through great distortion, both deliberate and inadvertent it got worked up into the nonsense that God Boy believes. Somehow Cordoba got thrown into the mix, particularly as it was ideologically useful in present day America. God Boy is, of course, just as unlikely to check his facts as a true believer in the great wisdom of so-called "primitive" people is.

Well let's just say that I was "hot to trot" to get at this guy. The wife told me that I had "the look" on my face that signals that I am about to attack either verbally or physically. It's the same look that I use to deal with street demons in Winnipeg. God knows that I hate to leave gross bullshit uncorrected. On the other hand the self preservation instinct was operating as well. It actually DID go through my mind to call out to security when the argument got too heated and they gathered around that I suspected God Boy of being some sort of "fundamentalist terrorist" who planned to blow the plane up. All that would have accomplished, however, would be for BOTH of us to be in the back rooms. So I shut my face.

Hooray for self control because I would have missed the best part. God Boy was doing his best to be impressive to God Girl, all the way from his "secret agent man" pose to his "intellectual" lectures. God Girl, however, was not to be outdone, and she pulled one of what I assume is a great trump card in such circles...healing. While she was down in Ontario she went traipsing down to a revival meeting at about the same time the rest of us would be heading to the bar. Her problem according to her own view of her condition was that she had had years of "bleeding in the knee" whatever that means. YET...when she prayed and went before "Brother X" (I forget the name) she was "healed". Better than that EVERYBODY, her doctors, her relatives, her friends, strangers, EVERYBODY had always told her that it was her right leg that was the problem. Brother X, however, "discovered" that it was her LEFT leg that was lame. He prayed for its healing, and YES it was healed. Praise God !

At this point the line started to move. God Girl moved forward with the rest of us limping severely ON THE RIGHT LEG. We boarded the plane. God Girl sat forward from us. As we tried to get past God Boy was saying his goodbyes to God Girl. I couldn't escape the impression that I had witnessed some sort of primitive and crude sexual display behavior gone seriously wrong.

Ah well, that was my adventure in anthropology during this trip.

Just as a note to the wise...I have as little sympathy for Isalamic loonies as I do for evil "Christian" loonies. It's just that THEY would NEVER spew their bullshit in a public lineup AND MOST IMPORTANTLY nobody with knowledge would ever suffer consequences for correcting them. Unless, of course, they lived in one of the theocracies that mirror the USA in the Middle East. Consider what you have to fear the next time you travel.

PERSONAL:

MOLLY GOES ON VACATION:

Well, as promised (threatened ?) before Molly is now off on vacation. I'll be checking in here every once in awhile while on the road, but nowhere near as frequently. We will return to our regular schedule in about 2 weeks.

PERSONAL:

TOO MUCH SPICE IN THAT CURRY:

Molly loves hot foods ie heavily spiced. Back when I was younger I used to eat hot peppers by the jar. There is, however, a limit that it seems I passed today. It's the day of the Winnipeg Radical Bookfair, and as is her habit Molly is down there flogging the pamphlets and distributing the balloons (A-loons) to the kids and the occasional kid at heart. It's just about closing time, and many are packing up their tables. Molly likewise, but I dip into the lunch bag for a final glug of orange juice. My mistake.

Understand that the event was being held outside at a time of year when wasps replace mosquitoes as the major insect pest in Winnipeg. They are also particularly angry this time of year as they are in full hunt mode for food for the upcoming winter. My experience has usually been that you should leave them alone, but even if you swat them away they won't attack as they have better things to do. The evil little critters were swarming all afternoon, and especially bugged the people at the table next to mine. I opened my mouth and bragged that wasps never bite me. Said mouth was soon to be my downfall.

In the time it took me from opening the bottle and getting it to my mouth a wasp zeroes in on what must have looked like the Horn of Plenty. I don't know if other people have enough danger sense to pull a bottle back because there is some moving blur in front of their face. It's impossible to focus that close unless you are so nearsighted that you can use coke bottles as an acceptable substitute for your glasses.

Down it goes...no. Out it goes very fast as I get direct first hand experience with what a lot of my canine patients experience. But I didn't try to eat the wasp deliberately. In any case the wasp went into survival mode and started chewing on my lower lip. Phhhheeewww, out it goes with the unswallowed orange juice all over some of the pamphlets. Now that drink has kick. The spit stream hasn't touched down when I am already letting loose with the profanity.

Needles to say I kill the struggling bastard there on the table, and then continue cursing and killing a few more for good measure. OK, now it's really time to pack up. Hustle, hustle, back and forth, back and forth. A few people want to get a gander at my rapidly developing egg sized lower lip, and one woman in particular is concerned. One person suggests ice packs. Now where am I going to find icepacks outside a community centre ? I pack it all in, and find a lingering kid and her mama. Said kid gets five balloons that I have already inflated.

Off I go to the nearest pharmacy on the way home which just so happens to be Safeway, the edema developing all the way. All the way the lower lip keeps expanding until it is the size of an extra-large egg. Grab the nicotine lozenges (much more important than possible death from anaphylaxis- I ran out shortly before the end of the sale) and also a large bottle of Benadrl. Head to the "express" checkout where I have the misfortune of being in a line of five people. At least I wasn't behind grannie counting out payment one penny at a time and taking more time with each one than I would take running half a city block. Even so I'm tempted to push in and talk my way to the head of the line with some story about "right now" and "keel over right here in the store".

Back in the car. 100 milligrams Benadrl are under my belt. I get home and sleep off the antihistamine. Now what's interesting is the following. Statistics say that only 50 to 150 people die of insect bite anaphylaxis in the USA per year (about 7 in Canada). What I had was not general anaphylaxis, the sort of condition that these deaths are usually attributed to. It was localized anaphylaxis, and you can't die from that...unless. The swelling on the lower lip was quite large by the time I reached pharmacy. I do not, however, use my lower lip to breath.

Suppose that I would have 'half-swallowed' the "orangejacket". Those who die from insect bites are generally classified as "anaphylaxis". If, however, you get a large egg near the entrance of the trachea you will just as surely die as if you had real anaphylaxis. I really wonder if when the corpse or soon to be corpse was delivered to the emerg that there would have been a resident there with the smarts to recognize the difference. If he did he would undoubtedly be able to publish a paper on an unique manner of mortality. So I would have died from one of the freakier accidents in the world.

To sum up Molly missed her opportunity today to make medical history as one of the co-authors of 'A unique non-immunological mortality connected to an insect bite' by Drs W. Upp, Troy Age, T. U. Late and I. M. A. Corpse. It's an interesting possibility.

All of which goes to show:

1)Never search for fifteen minutes of fame. It may very well be posthumous and more than 15 minutes.

2)In connection with the above...never try this at home.

3)Some orange juice has a better kick than others.

4)Develop a sense of near object paranoia.

5)Look before you spew.

PERSONAL:

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

The seasons change, and the leaves begin to fall. Molly is due to go on vacation soon so the number of posts at this blog will drop during that time. I hope I've provided at least a little information and amusement in the last little while. the squirrels are busy gathering their nuts, and Molly is busy decorating the yard for Halloween. It's a long process preparing for my favourite holiday, and each year the cars drive by, stop and take pictures.

In terms of this blog I'd like to call the readers' attention to three different sections that have been added in the last little while. All of them are under the anarcho-syndicalist rubric, the form of anarchism that I feel closest to and which I consider the most practical. The first is the listing for the KRAS, the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists in Russia. While it must be admitted that KRAS is still only a propaganda group rather than a functioning union it is still significant that they have at least expanded their online presence in the last little while. it is part and parcel of the general expansion of practical anarchism that I have taken such delight in in the last few years.

Speaking of such there is also a new listing for the youth section of the German FAU. The (take a deep breath) Anarhistisch-Syndikalistischer Jugen (Anarcho-Syndicalist Youth) in Germany has been expanding rapidly, and I have added a separate category for them following the FAU listings. While not up to the level of the youth federation of the Swedish SAC (also listed under our Links) the young German comrades seem to be expanding rapidly. I have to admit that it is beyond me why the Swedes and the Germans seem to be so successful while in Spain both the CNT with their FJIL (historical nostalgia ?) and the much larger CGT seem to have their youth sections "stillborn". There is also another Iberian youth federation that, as far as I can tell, is not an extension of one of the Spanish anarchosyndicalist unions, but it is also very small. They have been listed under the Spanish section of our links. As I said, beyond me, and I can definitely see the utility of a youth federation as it addresses concerns different from those of older people. As for here in North America this is obviously a project for the far distant future as "youth" would probably encompass close to 95% of anarchists here.

Perhaps most pleasantly there is now a listing for the Workers' Initiative/(another deep breath) Inicjatywa Pracownicza of Poland. These people are the "non-AIT' anarcho-syndicalist union federation in Poland, and despite my early misconceptions they are (as expected) far more successful in organizing than the AIT affiliated ZSP. Their base of strength is in Poznan, but as the listings point out they have branches in many Polish provinces. These are the people who have a "dual card" arrangement with the British IWW. The latest news that I have heard from their quarter is that their decision to actually run as candidates in the workplace councils has brought the same success (in a smaller way) as it brought to the Spanish CGT and the French CNT (Vignoles). The anarcho-syndicalist project faces some fundamental choices in the modern world...whether to actually collectively bargain, whether to participate in union elections (in both the North American and European sense) and so on. My own opinions are very much in favour of making the necessary compromises because the alternative is shrinking away to an irrelevant sect that will be of no use even if times were to change. I recognize the dangers, but I also recognize the dangers of the sectarian alternative.

Enough of this pontification. May the busy squirrels of Fall not shit on your head.

Molly.

PERSONAL

HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:

Molly has a confession to make. I was a murderous little kid. Of course a lot of my detractors knew this all along. Back where I grew up in rural Saskatchewan it was considered something of a patriotic duty to wage perpetual and unrelenting war against the gophers and crows. I did my part, though I have to admit that other kids outdid me in sadistic ways to dispose of the cs and gs. What I specialized in was the eternal war against the insects. Well the crawling ones anyways. Most of the flying ones were exempt. I actually liked them.

One of the residues of my childhood is what may be an unreasonable attachment to spiders. To this day, even as I enter into the first stage of my dotage, I get upset when I see someone kill a spider, and I do my best to plead for their lives. If I find a spider in an less than advantageous place I carry him or her to a place where it is likely to find prey. We were always on the same side after all.

This is a meandering way of explaining why I don't set up this blog so that commentators have to sign in via a code to post here. My "liberalism" here means that Molly's Blog gets more than its fair share of spam comments. Well....I love them. Every once in awhile I sweep through the old posts and amuse myself by killing these bugs ie deleting them. The fools usually make my task quite easy by "building nests" ie they will post dozens of comments on one blog post. To an unreformed insect killer this is like stumbling on the pot of gold. Kill, kill, kill with minimal effort.

Thank you spammers. You help me relive the "innocence" of childhood.