THE MAGIC DOOR TO MEMORY LANE:
The Ontario Coalition against Poverty (also see our links list) has mounted a campaign in support of restaurateur Victor Jiang, a Chinese immigrant who operates a restaurant on behalf of his elderly father in downtown Toronto (the view from here in the West is Ick!, but we'll leave that aside). The powers that be in TO have determined that no good deed should go unpunished and hence they are determined to close down this restaurant, the Cabbagetown Restaurant, first by denying it its liquor licence because it is "a centre of drug dealing and drunkenness" (even though it closes in the early evening). Mr. Jiang has become something of a local fixture because he offers a place where poor people can gather and socialize. He is very easy going about tabs and even has gone into the street to invite poor people in for a free snack and coffee. The real reason why Mr. Jiang is being persecuted is that "development plans" are afoot to "upscale" the neighbourhood he operates in, and a restaurant catering to poor people just doesn't fit into such plans. The OCAP website will hopefully explain more about this campaign. Go there to see more.
Why this tweaks Molly's diminishing number of memory neurons is that I can remember exactly the same sort or gathering places from my misspent youth. When I was about 13 my father retired and we moved into one of the "not nice" neighbourhoods of downtown Regina (though hardly the most "not nice" one). It was like right out of 'West Side Story'. I actually lived in Regina's "West End" and picked up the usual turf stuff very quick. It helped that I came in from the country and was at least twice as strong pound for pound as any city kid and was even quicker. Took me a little time to pick up the nastiness, however. Nowadays this sort of culture shock is reserved for the poor buggers who come in from the reserve, but 40 years ago it was the fate of a lot of us "white boys" as well. At the time we fought occasional petty wars with others from the same class from Regina's "North End" (presently Regina's worst neighbourhood), but our main venom was reserved for the more affluent people in the "South End". Lots of stuff to tell there, but it is long ago and far away.
But anyways, while I was trying to make my way as a country boy in this alien environment I rapidly became aware of certain "points of honour". There were certain small businesses that were located in our neighbourhood whom we very obviously recognized as "our own". We were befriended by the owners and whatever the conflicts that might arise from our "occasional"(or more than occasional) bad behavior, all was forgiven in the end. These businesses gave coherence to the neighbourhood, not just to us kids but to all residents. None of this stuff was very "politically correct" in our present day phraseology. Because us kids were on the street at all sorts of hours we would beat the shit out of anyone trying to break into "Willy the Chinaman's " store. Later in life I had the opportunity to help his son who was studying in the sciences. This was not done out of any ideology such as is common today but only because "Willy" was recognized as "one of us". You "owe" your own.
It was a different world that most people today cannot appreciate, where class and neighbourhood trumped the sort of identity politics that was to be invented shortly thereafter. West Side Story, like I said.Similarly for "John the Greek" who ran the "Chicken Inn". It was a "hangout" in the same sense that I suspect Mr. Jiang's place is. Though we were "rougher" in some ways and far less "rough" in other ways. The world changes. John had what he called the "Centennial Broom". He went to Expo 67, and named his weapon after it. He's use this club to break apart a few of the fights we started in his restaurant. He also used it twice (at least when I was present) when thieves attempted to rob him. After he's downed the thugs the rest of us would get in on the job to finish the beating. NEVER was anybody beaten to the point of near death, and NEVER were the police called. Also never did any fool try to come back to either Willy's or John's.
Presently Molly lives in what is basically a middle working class neighbourhood. She likes it. Life is nowhere near as rough now here. Molly is much older now. But still....
EVERY time when someone talks about "revitalizing a neighbourhood" what they are really talking about is pushing either sleaze or working class people to somewhere else. Molly's old "13th Avenue" neighbourhood in Regina has seen a gradual expansion of trendiness,expanding each year from the East to the West. I see the results every year when I visit the city to see relatives(none of whom live in the old neighbourhood). From a blinkered "lefty" point of view this may seem great, as the "trendiness" looks like progress to their eyes. Downtown is worse. It's a concrete area of monuments that makes downtown Winnipeg look "vibrant". That is the "vision" of those lefties who see no problem in joining the Liberal Party. No room for those left behind in their "progressive" vision. I forget how many "unsolved fires" occurred in each year to clear the area for this development. For those in the know!!!-God bless Montreal. At least Winnipeg never got into the "arson mode of urban redevelopment". Better an abandoned storefront than a burned out hulk that would serve as a good parking lot here in Winnipeg.
So, for any readers of this blog, go to the OCAP site. Do what you can to help in this "conservative" cause because not all progress is good. Think of your own childhood. Long live real conservatism !!!
Molly

STILL MORE LINKS:
Molly has added a few more links to this blog in the last few days. Under the general 'Links' section is the Interactivist Info Exchange, something like an Indymedia without a locality but rather a subject- activism. It is an open source publishing site, but mercifully lacks at least one flavour of the cranks that infest some Indymedias. Under 'Other Interesting Sites' I have also included the IndyMedia Watch, not because I agree with all that it says but because it has some interesting things to say.
Meanwhile I've also added two new blogs to the list, the Lonestone Revolution and Anarchy Reloaded.
Finally, under the 'Scientific Links' section I've added the Carl Sagan Portal and the website of the Manitoba Naturalists' Society . More on both Sagan and the MNS later.
Molly

WINNIPEG INDYMEDIA SHUTS DOWN:
Plagued by a chronic lack of volunteers, old feuds and a never ending volume of spam from anti-semites, conspiracy nuts and campaigners for the Canadian military Winnipeg Indymedia has closed its portals for now. Visitors to the site will be greeted by an appeal for volunteers to hopefully resurrect the site at some unspecified time in the future. The problems of the Winnipeg site are reflexions of what may be a wide spread malaise amongst Indymedia sites across the world. Many question whether Indymedia sites have any more function in a world filled with blogs. Mollymew feels that they do. A blog such as this one is very much a personal statement. As such it can hardly cover the range of subjects that a truly cooperative effort such as what an Indymedia site should !!! do. At the same time blogs will almost inevitably cover subject matter that is hardly "news" in the narrow sense of the term. Websites such as Indymedias can provide a more impersonal and wider view than any blog can do. Items should obviously be reprinted from blogs on such sites as these blogs are often the news sources of our day, but the individualistic slant of blogs should have no place in what, after all, aims to be a community media/meeting place.
Molly did a little survey of the 12 Canadian Indymedia sites still listed on the internet. Five have been closed (Winnipeg makes six). Two (Montreal/Quebec and Vancouver/Victoria) are "consolidated sites". The Vancouver site has seperated off into local, national and international sections. BOTH the national and international areas are infested with the sort of neo-Nazis that were such a plague in the case of Winnipeg. The Montreal/Quebec site (CMAQ) along with the sites in Ottawa and Thunder Bay appear to have taken a hard line on the nuts. All three have a good selection of local news, especially so in the case of Thunder Bay. The CMAQ, however, gives every indication of being an almost totally anarchist oriented site. It may seem strange coming from a self-confessed anarchist that I find this inadvisable, but I certainly do. To Molly's tiny little feline mind this at once is a disservice to the larger community that should be served by something such as an Indymedia and a disservice to the anarchist movement itself. It allows an overestimation of one's own importance and encourages the isolation that breeds "triumphalism" and ill considered actions.
Two other Canadian Indymedia sites, the Maritimes and London, Ontario are still arguing about the nuts, and neither site features much local news anymore. They seem to be going down the same road that Winnipeg went.
The problems of the Canadian Indymedias are reflected worldwide. There is even a blog, Indymedia Watch dedicated, with a certain amount of malice, to exposing the problems of Indymedias across the world. What that blogger has to say, however, is not what the more rhetorical would imagine. There is more than enough wrong with what has been appearing on Indymedia sites worldwide, wrongs that deserve legitimate criticism. The blogger puts most of this down to a "lack of accountability" in that the informal leaders of Indymedias have abdicated all responsibility in terms of fact checking and of removing the hate mongers and the conspiracy mongers from the sites. Failure to do so means that the latter two categories rapidly take up the majority of space on the sites. This is a lack of responsibility not just to abstract concepts such as truth and sanity. It also reeks of a direct betrayal of the communities that Indymedia sites are supposed to serve. It's "going rat" just because of some abstract principle or simply laziness.
The Wikipedia Empire (evil or not- a burning question) has launched its own alternative to the Indymedia sites, called the Wikinews . It hardly seems to be likely to offer anything like the coverage that other mainstream online news services do today, even though its efforts at "journalistic neutrality" seem a mirror image of what such services aspire to. Looking over its recent efforts one finds them quite sparse, and hardly evidence of the sort of different viewpoints that one can already get simply by looking at the news services of different countries.
In the discussions on Winnipeg Indymedia shortly before it was shut down Molly put forward the proposition that not just certain opinions like anti-semitism should be banned but that a whole area of discussion,- the Middle East, its religions and any conspiracy theories connected to same- should be declared off limits, at least for a time. Also that priority should be given to local news. Perhaps only local and national news should be allowed. The Indymedias in Canada that are most likely to last are basically those who have come closest to such strictures, those who have taken a hard line not just with the nuts but also with well meaning leftists who think they can solve the problems of the other side of the world by taking one or another side. This well meaning cheerleading is precisely !! the door through which the neo-Nazis enter.
So...that's it for now. This whole matter has actually made me reconsider my own policy here at Molly's Blog. To date I have deleted only commercial spam from the comments. I still have no problem whatsoever with fanatic conservatives, commies who don't realize their religion is dead, other religious proselytizers, "anarchists" who disgrace the name or those who simply want to insult me. It stays in. I can be twice as abusive as any one of these. But, from this point forward, any anti-semitic trash or conspiracy theories in general will be deleted forthwith. Nobody has ever posted such a thing yet, and I hope they never do. But I will hit the delete button just as fast as I advocate others should do.
End of the Molly hissssss.

A LITTLE APOLOGY:
International readers of this Blog(From Argentina to India to Rumania) may lose interest as I go on and on about local matters recently. I'm sorry about this, but I've become involved in a campaign to reform the local Indymedia site. The sad fact is that our local Indymedia site here in Winnipeg has become nothing more than a sounding board for anti-semitic propaganda, praise for both Canada's and the USA's imperial adventures and silly fatwaas from a presumed mullah . I'm doing my best to correct this, though I will probably fail. But i will at least try..
I ALWAYS intend to feature a certain amount of "local content" here, but I find it disgusting that the small amount that I have featured is about 10 times what has been featured on our local Indymedia site. If you are interested in what is happening on the local Winnipeg Indymedia site visit it and see for yourself. Hold your nose.
For my other readers, I will continue to post matters biological, anarchistic and astronomical. I beg your indulgence for the moment.

STILL MORE LINKS:
Molly has recently added a few more links to her 'Scientific Links' section. All of these are "skeptical sites" about medical quackery, something near to Molly's feline heart. Basically, if so called "radicals" could expend at most 10% of the skepticism that they apply to real medicine to quack medicine it would both make them far better people and help left wing politics in general. Orwell had a lot to say about this over 70 years ago, and little has changed since that day. Anyways, here they are:
National Council against Health Fraud
NutriWatch
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Anti-Quakery Ring
QuackWatch
HomeoWatch , skepticism
NaturoWatch
Be a skeptic. don't take my word for it. Go over to these sites.

MORE ON THE KELVIN COMMUNITY CENTRE:
In reference to my previous blog on this matter the councillor who "flipped out" on our dear and sacred Major Sam Katz was our local councillor for this area (Elmwood-East Kildonan). She was not actually the originator of the new name for loan-ducker Mayor Sam Katz. The term "sell out-Sammy" was yelled out by the crowd at the meeting concerned. Her rather alliterative term was " "mindless mincing minions" for the members of Katz's "cabinet" the EPC (Executive Policy Committee) who towed the proper line at the meeting. I'm sure they will get their proper reward, either in this present life as city councillors or in the future life when they do business with the City.
Thomas was, of course, called "unprofessional" by the winners of this little fracas. "Professional" is one of the great misused words in the English language. She actually "showed emotion"- the proper English term- because her constituents had been betrayed while her opponents were busy with the gloating of "got you now you son-of-a-bitch" which is, of course, VERY "professional". When the people you represent have been lied to and deprived of their rights then "emotion" is "not professional" while talking behind peoples' backs and gloating at a victory is quite "professional". "Professional" has come to mean very much the power to smile at some poor bugger while you screw them over. No emotion there, of course, because smug satisfaction doesn't count as an emotion in that ideology.
Of the members of the EPC only Mike O'Shaughnessey (Old Kildonan) voted against the proposal to close the Kelvin Community Centre. Many kudos to him, though I'm sure he will have to make it up to Sammy to stay on the EPC. For out of town readers the EPC is appointed by our local right wing Mayor, and it has powers accorded to it separate from the full City Council.
Molly has in her possession a copy of 'The Herald' written shortly before this atrocity took place. this, our local community newspaper, expressed some optimism that the decision to close this centre would be rescinded, but events have proven this wrong. The PLAN to build mega centres goes on even if we up the road DON'T want an expansion and even if the problems at Kelvin have been corrected.
The COST, by the way, awarded to some consulting firm that planned the consolidation of Winnipeg's Community Centres was $500,000. One wonders whether City employees couldn't have done this for the cost of their salaries. But maybe somebody wouldn't have received a favour then? One also wonders about the consistency of this present administration who are the first to point out the cost of "consultants" hired by former lefty Mayor Glen Murray (not that Molly defends lefty corruption either, but the old saying about "sauce for the goose" holds here). One should also note that the PLAN (like many of Stalin's five year plans) has an "estimated" cost of $43 MILLION. No "consultant" will ever be hired to compare this cost with that of keeping our present Community centres running.
Spokesmen for the 'Concerned Elmwood Neighbours' noted that the meetings of the EPC were held during working hours when many residents of Elmwood and East Kildonan could not attend, and that many of the residents of Elmwood don't own cars (a rather poor neighbourhood) necessary to take their children to the Bronx Centre. The spokesman also noted that this is part of a general plan on the part of the City to close centres in poorer neighbourhoods of the city.
The final vote on the closure will take place at a a general meeting of City Council on January 24th. Load voices are required and encouraged.
Molly Notes:
This is one of the sad situations that result when there is NO libertarian socialist alternative ready to present alternative ways of organizing society. the simple fact is that, as long as a government gives the money, you are dependent on said government. When the complexion of the government changes , as it has here in Winnipeg, you are simply shit out of luck. The usual "lefty" solution, advocated by those who have never seen a tax or a government expenditure that they couldn't love is no solution, as this situation amongst many millions demonstrates. The ONLY solution is independence for community initiatives, and no matter how much Molly may advocate the conservative option of preserving this or that community asset, she recognizes that this is not some sort of eternal and infallible guard-whatever leftists may say.
The real !!! guard would be a reform of tax law, federal, provincial and municipal, such that people could choose the expenditures that their tax dollars went to. Organizations such as the United Way already offer this option. It is not impossible. One could also say that contributions to this and that would be "deductible from income tax" as so many things are today. If your buying sports equipment for your child is a tax deduction under federal law(as it is now) then a contribution to a community centre should be as well.
Community Centres will never be free of external powers that impose their agendas for ideological reasons until they are financially independent. THAT should be a long term goal.

KELVIN COMMUNITY CENTRE TO CLOSE:
The news today is that the Kelvin Community Centre here in East Kildonan will be shut down by the City of Winnipeg. The rationale is partly that the buildings are "dated", though from what Molly has seen of them they are quite structurally sound, perhaps more so than some other public buildings here in Winnipeg. The second rationale is that said Community Centre has lacked volunteers in years past and has had to be run by a City department. This has NOT been true during the past few months since the City floated the idea of closing the Centre. Since the plan was unveiled the Kelvin Centre has attracted enough volunteers to become one of the more vibrant Community Centres in the city. But the City continues with its original plan despite changed circumstances.
A little setting is in order for readers from the other side of the world. East Kildonan is basically a middle level working class neighbourhood here in Winnipeg. It is part of a federal constituency that is considered one of the safest NDP (Canadian social democrats) seats in Canada. The further south you go in this neighbourhood, closer and closer to the dreaded downtown Winnipeg, the poorer the people get. The Kelvin Centre is located on the south end of this neighbourhood.
The City's plan is to close down the Centre and expand the more northerly Bronx Community Centre. Molly lives between the two centres, closer to the Bronx Centre. What hasn't been mentioned in the local news about this event-so far- is that many of us in this part of EK oppose the expansion of the Bronx Centre because the city plans to cut off the "back road" that we often use to avoid the traffic on Henderson Highway. People have been organizing against this City plan around here for over a year now, but it appears that they won't listen to us either.
So what you have is the City overriding a newly viable community group who want to keep their own community centre in order to expand another where the residents want no part of such expansion. Is this democracy ?
Apparently a local city councillor for this ward threw a temper tantrum at Mayor Sam Katz in the hearing today and graced him with yet another name ie "sell-out Sam". Sammy has acquired quite a few of such names in his career. Local representatives of the Kelvin group claim that Katz and his confreres on City Council have said two different things. In public he says that the age of the building and the old state of the community's lack of volunteers is the reason for closing the Centre while in private meetings without the media he admits that this is part and parcel of the City's "general plan". These community reps are calling on support from other parts of the city because this general plan is to close more and more of the local centres.
More on this as the story develops.
Molly

THE BEST OF THE BLOGS:
"ANTI-CIV ANARCHISTS" FROM ANARCHAFAIRY:
The following is a reprint from the New Zealand Blog 'Anarchafairy' mentioned previously. as the author mentions the ideology of "primitivism" hardly translates outside of North America and, in particular, its birthplace the USA. While Molly may disagree with the author saying that this ideology stands in the tradition of American individualism (it actually stands much more firmly in the tradition of American millenarian religious cultism) what he says is very perceptive. It should be seen as the statement of the classic "unbiased outside observer". Anyways here it is:


"I just received a copy of Green Anarchy(Issue 23) today- an American "anti-civ" journal.
Now, I must admit before going any further that I used to call myself something of an anarcho-primitivist. The images of going back to a simpler, more peaceful, "wild" undomesticated existence really did something for me, and in many ways they still do. But I think anti-civ anarchists have really lost the plot, and I'm really not surprised that this is a current largely confined to the US (and a little to Britain). (1)
Anti-civ anarchists are strongly influenced by insurrectionism(2), though they probably don't know it as they religiously claim to be "anti-ideology" This critique of insurrectionalism applies very well to the anti-civ crew. It seems that the anti-civ fetish with small-scale militant direct action, their perceived(REAL!-Molly Note) social isolation and their perceived backwardness of the majority of people are very much a reflexion of their desire for radical social change in the face of ecological destruction but the lack of mass struggle. I can understand their rejection of mass organization, but not their rejection of mass movements. They seem to be very much trapped in the American individualist tradition and quite out of touch with popular struggles in North America (!!!!!!-Molly)(excepting their fetishizing of indigenous struggle...they're wild peoples, you see). In fact, they remind me of the desperation of militant groups in 1970s US, the Weather Underground, who became more militant the more apathetic the general population became.(3)
The other major point of critique has to be questioning exactly what the fuck "civilization" is. Having read a lot of this, I know that the definitions(4) are all over the place. It seems bizarre to reify such a vacuous concept and create a whole political ideology seeking its abolition. They claim they seek the end of domestication, while "leftist" anarchists merely seek the destruction of the State and capitalism. What do they mean by domestication ? Well, at times it refers to human domestication, at other times it refers to animal domestication and at other times to all forms of domestication of life, including plants. Surely the first is the aim of any anarchist project, and the second the aim of any anarchist project with the slightest of an animal-lib tinge. The third is more bizarre, and obviously aims for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle simply not possible in a lot of countries (NZ included) (5) and not possible with current population levels. Their reasoning for it is based in Marxism, and some recent (6) , rather weak anthropological studies that point to the domestication of plants and the resulting surplus as the seed of domination. This fails to take into account all the anthropological evidence, from the likes of David Graeber, that show that hunter-gatherer societies come in both authoritarian and and non-authoritarian varieties, as do horticultural societies. See Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology for more on this(he takes a paricularly vicious swipe at John Zerzan(7) ).
John Zerzan, while were on the topic, also seeks as part of his abolition of civilization the abolition of time, language and symbolic thinking. Go figure. Thankfully most of the anti-civ people haven't taken this on board.
Anti-civ anarchists go to great lengths to characterize other anarchists as latent authoritarians, going so far as to claim that after our revolution 99% of social life will be the same. Well I certainly hope not. I would imagine the destruction of the State, capitalist relations, patriarchy, ecological domination, etc. would mean quite a major shift i daily life for most people.

Molly Notes:
1)I've personally observed and read about a very small number of Spanish and Italian adherents to this American export, though in both countries their influence on the much larger anarchist movements there is virtually nil.
2)Very true, sometimes the "personnel" is virtually interchangeable. Cheering on mindless militancy that can easily veer into terrorism is part and parcel of the American anti-civ fad.
3)One hopes that the analogy only holds for that part of American anarchism that is romantically attached to "summit-hopping" and perpetually losing street battles against the police. The phenomenon of 'Weatherman' was a symptom of a movement in terminal decline. One hopes that present day NA anarchism has grown up and moved on to better things rather than being hooked into nostalgia for the "glories" of the recent past.
4)So are the definitions of such things as "technology" in the wordplay that passes for "theory" in such circles.
5)Speaking from Canada it is still possible for a small number of people to live as "hunter-gatherers" here and, to a lesser degree, in the USA. What is actually astonishing if you stop and think about it is that a few people do indeed make such an attempt, but none ie exactly zero of the ideologues of primitivism have ever been known to do such a thing. An ideology that is never practiced by its proponents while others do make the attempt to live according to the dictates without professing the ideology. There is something more than slightly smelly here.
The high priests of primitivism in the USA have declared "ex-cathedra" that the accusation of "hypocrisy" is not applicable, but they have never said why it is not except for the fact that they have said it.
6)Actually the most cited anthropological studies amongst the primitivist cult are about 40 years old and have been well debunked decades ago. The whole matter of cultural materialism and the concept of "surplus" is not restricted to Marxism and is a matter of great dispute amongst the legitimate study of anthropology outside of cultism.
7)Zerzan may not be the total dip that his Papal pronouncements make him out to be. After all he acquires both fame and money from his bullshit, an accomplishment ! for somebody who has never acquired a useful skill to make his living in the real world. Those who take his nonsense as gospel, however, are quite likely to end up serving lengthy prison terms...but the Pope keeps on getting paid for interviews. In a low reptilian way he's a lot smarter than his followers. But never let us forget that the accusation of "hypocrisy" doesn't apply to these "cosmonauts of critique". They say so themselves.

MARXISM UNDER THE MICROSCOPE:
While browsing through the links in an article on the AnarchaFairy Blog mentioned previously I happened to come upon an interesting "factoid" that I had never noticed before, or if I did it never clicked. Now Molly loves factoids almost as much as she loves catnip and mouse guts, and she can't resist pointing this one out. The source is David Graeber's 'Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology', and the quotes reads as follows,
"...Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Gramscians, Althusserians...(Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seemlessly into French professors)...Now consider the different schools of anarchism. There are Anarcho-Syndicalists, Anarcho-Communists, Insurrectionists, Cooperativists, Individualists, Platformists...None are named after some Great Thinker (sic ! -Molly); instead, they are invariably named either after some sort of practice, or most often, organizational principle.(Significantly, those Marxist tendencies which are not named after individuals, like autonomism or Council Communism, are also the ones closest to anarchism)."
Graeber's quote above is embedded in a discussion of why there are so few anarchists in academia. Perhaps this may be something to be quite proud of considering the cesspool that academic leftism has been in the past, let alone what it has become in recent decades. The quote is also embedded in an argument about how Marxism reproduces the worst aspects of academia (or maybe it is the other way around). Still... this is an observation that our little cat never really took to heart before, and it speaks well of anarchism. Give it some thought. To parody it in scientific language:
This reviewer feels that the recent microscopic demonstration of the egobootile organelles of the pathogenic bacterium Socialisma degenerata var. totalitinaria may open up fruitful lines of research into the pathogenesis of this disease that has killed close to 100 million victims in the past century. Understanding of the signalling mechanisms whereby this organism gains entry into susceptible victims may lead to innovative methods of prevention in the future and even give insights into other pathogens such as Francsisella fundamentala and its close relative F. fascisata, both of which pale in terms of total death tolls compared to S. degenerata but are much more likely to cause pandemics in the future. With a genuflection to the unspoken God of most science, further research is required.

NEW ON YOUTUBE:
Jonathan Culp, aka 'Satan Macnuggit', an Ontario video and performance artist and activist, has begun to place his short videos on Youtube, and all are invited over for a viewing. As Jonathan says, "from OCAP stuff to stuffed animals, and it's free". Pop on over and have a look at:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=satanmacnuggit

AN OUT OF PLACE ITEM AND TWO INTERESTING NEW LINKS:
Just a little Molly notice here. I took some time preparing a review of Bryan Sykes book 'The Seven Daughters of Eve' which I have recently read. I began the review of January 3rd, and have only published it today. Thus it appears back in time on the date of January 3rd on this blog thanks to the wonders of blogger.
I'll also eventually get around to recreating the archives links on the main page that got lost in my Christmas time ooops. I recreated the links first. Honest, honest, honest .
Finally, there are a couple of new links I's like to draw your attention to. Both are from a Kiwi. The first is the Anarchofairy blog, and the second is the New Zealand anarchist publishing project from the same person (I think) called Rebel Press under the anarchist Publishers and Distributors section. I've pulled a particularly good essay off the first item and hope to republish it later here under 'The Best of The Blogs' title.
Til Then,
Molly

• 
  A LITTLE ITEM FROM THE LOCAL PRESS:
  The Sunday Books supplement of the Winnipeg Free Press contained a review of 'Natural Causes' (author Dan Hurley) by local writer Don Marks. The book in question is an expose of the American vitamin and herbal supplement industry as its subtitle makes plain: 'Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry'. Essays in muckraking are long overdue in this field, and Hurley's attempt would make John Steinbeck proud, though it is a sad comment on the decline of "radicalism" (sic) in North America that books such as this inspire at least 100 times as may defenses of an $21 billion (one estimate) amongst "progressives" as it does agreements on the subject. The review of the book is pretty well fair, though Molly could spot some howlers. In general the reviewer agreed with the author that a simple common sense approach to diet and that sick managerial word "lifestyle" is a much more effective way to stay healthy than purchasing miracle cures. The reviewer, however, obviously lacks any general view of the "manipulation and commodification of belief" that would allow him to put the "natural hocus pocus" into some sort of context.
  This can be seen from small things such as the complaint that Hurley's book has an "almost total absence of any effective counter-arguments". Molly suggests that there may indeed be NO such things. But this obscures another and more significant matter of blindness on the reviewer's part. He undoubtedly visits bookstores, and as such the opportunity to count "shelf space" is always open to him. Should he visit even the "better book stores" he should notice that the amount of space devoted to only health quackery is at least 50 times greater than that devoted to all debunking books that deals not just with this matter but matters far afield such as psychic frauds, ufos, etc.,etc.,etc.. I challenge the reviewer to find the great and golden "balanced argument" in any ie just one of the titles that proliferate on the market. Debunking books, of course, are simply not stocked in the majority of bookstores.
  Perhaps the reviewer felt that he had to make some sort of "critical comment" about the book he reviewed, and, even if he agrees with the author's general thesis, he felt compelled to make an even greater howler in the following statement;
  "He acknowledges the powerful lobby that supports the massive pharmaceutical industry in the U.S.. But he also tries to convince the reader that manufacturers and marketers of alternative remedies wield almost as much power."
  Ack, cough, choke !!! There's a dirty little secret hidden here that a little probing can easily uncover, but those who buy into the ideological camouflage of the "new entrepreneurs" will consistently ignore it because of ideology. Nobody ever bothers to look up the market share of the vitamin and supplement market because they are under the magic influence of a mythology of evil corporate dragons versus pure and noble New Age Saints. Some ideology survives all bruising contact with reality ! The evil corporate dragons and the saintly purveyors of "natural cures" are very much exactly the same people. Look it up yourself, but here is a list of the major players in the "neutraceuticals market" in the USA circa 2005. It should be noted that almost all of the market for "functional foods" is monopolized by major international food and drink manufacturers, and that the market for vitamin, mineral and supplements is increasingly dominated by the "house brands" of major retailers. The list:
• Bayer Corporation
• GNC Corporation (formerly General Nutrition Companies Inc.)
• GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals
• Leiner Health Products Inc.
• NBTY Inc. (includes Rexall Sundown Inc.)
• Perrigo Company
• Pharmavite LLC (Otsuka Pharmaceuticals Group)
• Twinlab Corporation
• Weider Nutrition International Inc.
• Wyeth (formerly American Home Products Corporation)

Doesn't sound like a left wing conspiracy to me. Anyways, if you are curious about the effects of such fad diets you can look to such references as the Merck index or Current Medical Diagnosis where the sections of nutritionally based disease are pretty dependent on food fashion for a lot of their entries. There is an overwhelming amount of pro-food fad material on the market, a lot of it poorly disguised advertising. For the other side try the following references:

Quack Watch

Homeowatch (on homeopathy)

Naturowatch (on naturopathy)

National Council Against Health Fraud

Nutriwatch

The Skeptics Dictionary

Anti-Quackery Ring

HAPPY UKRAINIAN CHRISTMAS EVE !!!!!
FROM MOLLYMEW

Well, maybe a little late, but happy Ukrainian Christmas anyways!

SOLIDARITY NEEDED FOR PAKISTANI WORKERS:
Workers at the Coca-Cola plant in Karachi, Pakistan are continuing to struggle for their rights against continued management efforts to deny them their rights. The management of 'Coke-Pakistan' has always attempted to impede the efforts of their workers to unionize. union activists have been targeted in dismissals and when this failed to achieve the desired effect massive "casualization" was tried. Regular employees were classified as temporary so as to expedite their firing if they should seem to be pro-union. Large numbers of employees who were not management in any sense of the term were reclassified as outside of union organization efforts. The management of the plant has also attempted to shift its hiring more and more to "employment agencies". On December 9th termination notices were sent to 150 workers at the plant, coincidentally including known union activists. The Karachi government was very compliant in sending extra police to the plant to add to security after this move.
To learn more about this assault on workers' rights and to add your voice to international solidarity against it visit the IUF site at http://www.iuf.org/den3999 or see our links section for the IUF under the 'Other Interesting Links' section.
Molly

FOUND TREASURES WE SHOULDN'T LOSE:
The Winnipeg Free Press has recently (Friday, Jan 5th) reported on the latest plans for the City of Winnipeg to divest itself of the railroad that it owns under the Water and Waste Department. The railroad was originally built to provide access to Shoal lake from which Winnipeg draws its water supply in 1914. In its early years the line named 'The Greater Winnipeg Water District railway' offered not just access to the construction site and the aqueduct but also access to Winnipeg for rural communities, a supply line for products of the Shield and an opportunity for Winnipeg residents to go on excursions to the Lake. When present Mayor Sam Katz came to power he was reportedly "shocked" to discover that Winnipeg actually owned its own railroad, and, like the bell ringing in front of Pavlov's dogs, the reflex action of "sell it" came to mind. to this date the city tries to concoct a different way of maintaining the aqueduct without a railroad. Sounds sort of hopeless to me. The line runs through country inaccessible by any other route, but the effort persists in trying to find a way to do the impossible- let alone do it cheaper than what exists. Seems that some "conservatives" have forgotten the meaning of the word "conserve", let alone common sense prescriptions such as "don't fix what isn't broke".
Now Molly was "surprised" herself to find that the City has its own private choo choo, but even as an anarchist it doesn't offend her moral sensibilities--so she is not "shocked". As a matter of fact she sees it as an opportunity rather than a liability for the people of this city. Something that should NOT be torn up in favour of some crackpot scheme devised by a porkbarrel consultant. Something that should NOT be sold off for the ideological illusion-contrary to simple economic principles- that a private profit making firm will ALWAYS provide a cheaper service.
But much more on this later. It's still new to our good cat, and there is much to be explored. Unlike the bureaucrats that Sam demands to produce some way to fulfill his dream I'll charge nothing for my services as the study goes on. I haven't formed a full opinion yet.
Molly on the cheap.

LABOUR SITE OF THE YEAR: VOTING NOW OPEN:
The labour solidarity site Labour Start has begun the voting for the Labour Site of the Year'. People interested in voting for what they feel is the best union website in the whole, whole world can register their vote by going to the site (or see our links list) or by going directly to http://www.labourstart.org/lwsoty/index2007.html .

HEAVEN
BY RUPERT BROOKE



FISH(fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away there wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.


Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond ?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were.


One may not doubt that,somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.


We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not wholly dry.
Mud unto mud!--Death eddies near--
Not here the appointed End, not here !


But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime !
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One,
Who swam ere rivers were begun.


Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.


Oh ! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;


Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies
And the worm that never dies.


And in that Heaven of their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.


Molly Notes:
As yes. Heaven is not a place. It's a construction project with cranes of imagination, scaffolds of hope and front end loaders of resentment.
Truer words were never spoken that by this poet, a person who exemplifies the truism that you don't have to be swift in other ways to be a great poet (something like T.S. Elliot). Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was born into the English middle class and eventually won a scholarship to Cambridge. As the son of a schoolmaster at Rugby he exerted himself to appear more upper class than his upper class peers. He became acquainted with the Bloomsbury group and was widely admired by them. If he couldn't impress people by his brilliance he could always impress them with what was called his "boyish charm" and good looks. He could play on anybody that way for Brooke was bisexual in a time when the word to describe such a thing was hardly current.
Brooke was the classic "overachiever". He struggled to charm and write his way to the admiration of an audience of upper class people that he never felt he could truly belong to just as he could not belong sexually to either the dominant Victorian/Edwardian form or the every present subculture of upper class English homosexuality. His early work was his greatest. While it may appear rather juvenile with its obsession with death it occasionally threw off great sparks such as the above poem.
Brooke's quest to appear more true blue British than the upper class he had graduated into led to his early death. His cuteness came to the attention of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and he was commissioned as a naval officer in 1914. He participated in the Navy's 1914 Antwerp expedition in 1914, and in 1915 he died from a disease transmitted by a mosquito bite on his way to the total disaster of the Gallipoli expedition. A rather sad and less than glorious end. Churchill wrote his obituary, saying "he advanced to the brink...with absolute conviction of the rightness of his country's cause".
Probably true. As Brooke attempted to out Blimp the Blimps his latter poetry became jingoism worthy of being the obverse side of the coin of "socialist realism". His volume of 'War Sonnets', written during WW1 became quite famous. The English government built a myth around him in an attempt to encourage recruiting- to such an extent that his first name "Rupert" became slang in the British army for the sort of gung-ho idiot officer produced by the upper class English public schools.
Today there are statues and monuments of and to Brooke in numerous places in England and out here in the "colonies" such as at the Canadian Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. Generations of suffering school children have been forced to memorize the opening lines from his poem 'The Soldier';
"If I should die think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England"
All of the teachers and, of course, all of the good patriots will always neglect to mention Brooke's sexuality when teaching him or eulogizing him. Doesn't make good copy I guess.
No matter how silly the tributes to the undying British Empire may appear in this century a casual reading seems to say that they were a cut above what is preferred by "intellectuals" celebrating our present world power- America. That's however, something for the next century to judge properly. Find me a poem, however, celebrating the American invasion of Iraq.
For the other side of what happened in WW1 poetry wise look up the poet Siegfried Sassoon and what he had to say about the war.
Molly

MORE ON THE WINNIPEG GREYHOUND BUS DEPOT:
There has been more reported on the plans to relocate the Greyhound bus depot here in Winnipeg. Company spokesman Mel Levandoski recently presented more on the company's reasons for planning to relocate to the local media. Any move, however, would be delayed until 2009 when the company's lease on its present facilities expires. With a proper genuflection towards the idea that Greyhound has "to make sure this is the right thing to do for the community, for our customers, for the company" Levandoski went on to present reasons why the move is being contemplated. He mentions that the facility isn't large enough as over 300,000 people used it in 2006. Here Molly asks you to take out a calculator. The "big number" divided by 365 equals 822 in any given day. Molly further asks you to consider the "hours of the day". Let's be generous and say the bus depot is only open 12 hours a day. Divide again. The result is 68 people. It's amazing how fast large numbers become less impressive when looked at in a different perspective. All of these 68 people could bring their whole families to the present depot and there would still be lots of room. The place is not wall to wall people even at its busiest time.
A more serious problem is that the facility was built in 1964 for buses with a length of 13 meters. Present day buses are about three meters long, and according to Levandoski, "often tow five-metre-long cargo trailers". This might present a better case even if the present depot seems to handle this traffic adequately at this time. The "trailers" mentioned should perhaps have a different adverb in the sentence as opposed to "often". Everybody certainly has seen such trailers. Are they "often", "sometimes", "occasionally" or "rarely". Molly's observations would seem to indicate a choice of the latter two rather than the first. It should be noted also that the present day depot does handle buses of the present length. Are there plans to purchase buses that are even longer ? How would these handle on the highways ? Finally, if the length of present day buses is presenting a problem would it perhaps be a call for another facility close to downtown rather than out on the edge of the city ? Once more, a large proportion of the Dog's customers are from rural areas or have limited means and pretty well all of what they want to access in Winnipeg is located downtown.
Levandoski stated that "the company is not looking anywhere but to the airport at the moment". Is this wise management ? Shouldn't other options at least be considered ?
The company spokesman reiterated the Dog's promise to provide a free shuttle service between the city centre and the airport. Try to remember that word free is years to come. It's not quite a promise, but it is being made to try and soften a public relations blow. Other questions come to mind. Is it "free" both ways or just on incoming buses ? What will the hours be for the remaining downtown office ? How frequently will it run- will you have to sit 5 hours at the airport to catch a bus because the shuttle doesn't run often enough ? Does the word "free" mean "included in the (increased) price of a ticket" or really and truly "free". If the latter is meant how can the company save costs so as to keep ticket prices steady ? Can they really do this by incurring a capital debt by new construction and acquiring a new fleet of shuttles ? Seems hard to me to see how you can save money by spending more. A much more likely outcome is an increase in the price of bus tickets.
Finally, for those passengers mentioned who travel to Winnipeg by bus to take a plane, wouldn't it make more sense to have a shuttle for this minority going to the airport ? Without inconveniencing the majority.
More later as this story goes on
Molly

THE USUAL TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE DEPT:
The latest news on the late afternoon radio this day (Jan 4th) is that University of Manitoba student Evelynn Ye will be released from custody as a judge has agreed to the applications of her lawyer, John Corona, to have the court agree to her release on the surety that her father CAN provide. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
The Ye family are Chinese refugees from Vietnam. Her father speaks VERY little English. Her mother, who is separated from her ex-husband, has little to no money. Other family members are presently overseas on a return trip to Vietnam(conditions are much better there now for ethnic Chinese).
The Crown initially demanded a $10,000 surety. Two days ago Queen's Bench Justice Karen Simonson set bail at $2,000. The initial judgement was that Mr. Ye could not meet the conditions for his daughter's release. This has been overturned according to the news.
Ms Ye is presently studying for a Bachelor of Science degree at the U. of M. Has she committed any crime that would justify imprisonment ? She was arrested five days ago and held since then in that "wonderful" tourist hotel known as the Winnipeg Remand Centre, an interesting "trip" for a 20 year old with no previous criminal involvement.
Her crime ???? NONE WHATSOEVER, as EVEN the Crown who applied for her arrest FULLY admitted. She was being held as a "material witness" in the case of one of "beautiful" downtown Winnipeg's recent murders. In June, 2005 one 'Tam Le'(30) (NO relation to Evelyn Ye) allegedly killed 20 year old Miguel Munoz (of a family of refugees from Guatemala) outside the Montcalm Gordon Motor Hotel. Molly has NO OPINION of the facts of the case. That is for a jury to decide. All that our good cat can say is it is a shame how many immigrants are murdered in this city because they are under the illusion that this is a "safe place". Mr. Munoz is hardly the first refugee from a war zone to come to Winnipeg and be murdered. Think about THAT all you "Winnipeg Boosters". Rah, rah on !
What this little cat DOES know is that Evelyn Le claims to NOT have witnessed the fatal shooting, NOT an uncommon occurrence in a brawl outside a bar in this town. There are a lot of unanswered questions that come from the Crown's actions in this case.
A. What is so BLOODY IMPORTANT about a VERY circumstantial witness to an event who has already !!! expressed the fact that she is NOT a "direct witness" ? Does her testimony deserve jail ?
B. If the family cannot afford $2,000 bail can they REALLY afford the money to fly her out of the country to Vietnam ? I regularly pass by an Oriental travel agency on my little drives through downtown, and I idly read the ads on their signs. Someday I'D like to visit China. China is less expensive to get to than Vietnam, and China is more than a FEW bucks. Check out airline tickets to Ho Chi Minh City if you like.
Is there more than a "little hole" in the Crown's case ? Or as the old anarchist in the movie Seven Beauties said to the idiot young mafioso, "bullsheeet amigo".
C. Is this POSSIBLY an attempt to intimidate a witness into giving testimony that agrees with the Crown's case ? Perish the thought that educated Crown prosecutors could EVER stoop so low as to "imagine" that throwing an innocent 20 year old in a cell with 'Big Bertha' could EVER be a form of pressure. Of course not. As Mark Anthony said, "they are honourable men". Perish the thought that they could imagine in their wildest dreams that throwing a member of a refugee family from a Communist dictatorship into a jail could "ever" be a way of exerting pressure to testify in a "certain way". Of course not, for as Mark Anthony said, "they are honourable men". Of course not. They REALLY believe their own case, and such thoughts could NEVER cross their educated minds.
Ah well, we'll see what the morrow brings.

THE SEVEN DAUGHTERS OF EVE:
BY BRYAN SYKES
Since beginning his research career on mitochondrial DNA in the late 1980s Bryan Sykes has found himself propelled to the forefront of a virtual revolution in the way that genetics perceives the origin and spread of modern humans. This book(1), published in 2001, is a two part story. The first part covers how Sykes travelled from his early career as a medical researcher studying "brittle bone disease", also known as "osteogenesis imperfecta", an inherited disease of collagen formation found in cats, cattle, dogs and humans. As part of this the author gives a brief reconstruction of the history and science behind human genotyping in such chapters as 'From Blood Groups to Genes' and 'The Special Messenger'. Interspersed with this is a layman's explanation of DNA and, especially, mitochondrial DNA(2). Mitochondrial DNA is what Sykes research has been focused on. This is DNA that is inherited only (or at least 99.99%) through the maternal line. Sperm only contain mitochondria in their tails which are shed at the time of egg fertilization. As such they contribute only nuclear DNA to the new embryo.
What this means is that sequencing of mitochondrial DNA and its mutations can provide an estimate of the relatedness of individuals via their mothers, and their mothers, and their mothers,etc.. Research separate from that of Sykes and his group in this field has contributed to the idea of "Mitochondrial Eve", the mother of us all who lived in Africa(3) about 150,000 years ago.
After his excursion into the history and basic science of human genotyping Sykes describes the development of his field through an autobiographical account of his research. Not all of this is in chronological order, but the cast of characters that passes by is impressive. His early work was on extracting and amplifying mitochondrial DNA from bones only a few hundred years old at a time when the whole matter of the PCR technique was a matter of "shake and bake" chemistry in flasks rather than automated machines. From this it is on to proving the technique by research on golden hamsters. All of these pet animals are descended from one female first captured in Syria in 1930. Yup, it worked. The mitochondrial DNA of all pet and lab hamsters in the world was exactly identical. The story was true. They were indeed all descended from one mother.
From that humble beginning it's upward and onward. Tracing the presumed bones of the last Tsar and his family discovered in Ekateringburg in 1991 by comparison with living relatives of the Romanovs (at least a partial confirmation of the fate of Russia's last Royals and a disconfirmation of several claims to "Anasthasiahood"); genotyping of the "Iceman" found in the Italian Alps in 1991(and finding his living relatives in many present day Europeans); definitive proof of the South East Asian origins of the Polynesians (as opposed to the theory of their American origin); disproof (though often disputed) of the theory that Neanderthals interbred with early modern humans. All of this and more, all the time interspersed with clear explanations of the technical details involved and the disputes to which mitochondrial DNA testified.
All of this is perhaps a lead-in to what Sykes obviously considers his greatest triumph, his dispute with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the acknowledged world expert on human genetics. The matter was the origin of modern European populations and whether they date deep into the paleolithic or whether they are the result of fairly recent "replacement" by agriculturalists "invading" from the Middle East. After a great amount of dispute and sound and fury Cavalli-Sforza came to accept Sykes' theories as derived from a study of mitochondrial DNA. In Sforza's case the clincher came from his own research on the DNA of the Y Chromosome, the "paternal line" as contrasted with Sykes' maternal line. Agriculture came to Europe by diffusion rather than invasion, and the present population of Europe traces back to women who lived in the paleolithic- despite a small contribution from the Middle East.
As a matter of fact Sykes traces the vast majority of present day Europeans back to just seven "founding mothers", the "daughters of Eve" of the book's title. Other researchers in the field have claimed that there are actually 10 to 12 "matrilines" present in Europe, and ongoing research is tracing more than 29 other "matrilines" across the world that descend from the original Mitochondrial Eve. The relationships between these clades(4) is a matter of present day dispute, but the general idea that individuals can trace their genetic ancestry to a small number of "founding mothers" is pretty well an established fact.
The new science of human origins founded on facts such as these is light years removed from the sort of "population origins" theorized about in faculties of anthropology even 25 years ago. Every population is a mosaic of origins in which different individuals trace their origins back to different "founding mothers", and in which the descendants of these mothers can easily live at opposite ends of the Earth. Combine this with the fact, as demonstrated by writers such as Richard Dawkins that various genes in a human individual may have totally different ancestors, and the concept of "race" becomes even more like a relic from a bygone age that only politicians can argue about.
The latter half of Sykes' book is devoted to an imaginative reconstruction of the everyday lives of each of the presumed daughters of Eve. They lived in different times and places, but their lives held more than a few commonalities. Despite the different climes and technologies available the lives of these women had much more in common than they had in difference. Sykes basically follows the consensus view of most modern archaeologists in that the lives or these women were indeed short and hard (in contrast to the Arcadian dream world of some ideologists), but they had more than their share of joys. The worlds that Sykes describes have a much greater feel of reality about them than the projected wishes of said ideologists who seem to envision "primitive people" as bodiless distillations of the ideologue's hopes and dreams, wistful ghosts who drift around busying themselves with "being one with nature" and playing whatever "joyful games" the modern ideologue may approve of (but never those he might disapprove of). On the other hand this paleolithic world may have always had the potential for intergroup conflict, but the consensus is that this was a rare event compared to the fantasies of the ideologues of "man the warrior". This also holds the aura of truth rather than ideological begging the question.
The second half of Sykes' book is admittedly not a work of science, but it is at least a journeyman's work of historical fiction.
MOLLY NOTES:
1)'The Seven Daughters of Eve' by Bryan Sykes, W. W. Norton and company Ltd., New York, London (2001). ISBN 0-393-02018-5
2)See the following references on mitochondria and their DNA
i)Mitochondria
ii)Mitochondrial DNA
iii)The Mitochondrial Genome
3) The actual homeland of Mitochondrial Eve is in dispute. The majority opt for the area of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. A minority feel that an Asian origin is more likely. What is hardly in dispute, however, is that this woman lived at a time of a "population bottleneck" when the number of proto-moderns was extremely low. Hence the fact that all of us today descend from her in a line traced through our mothers. It should also be noted that this woman was not the "single ancestor" that the term Eve suggests. It is pretty well certain that other women living at that time left descendants, but she is the only one whom we can trace back in an unbroken line of mothers. Many others left their genes to their sons to pass on. their nuclear DNA lived on, but their mitochondrial line was broken.
4)Clades are groups of organisms that are traced through common descent and not just through anatomical similarities.