Friday, October 22, 2010
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.
Labels: cars., furnace, Halloween, Nanaimo, personal, thanks.hospitality, Victoria, Winnipeg
Sunday, October 03, 2010
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.
Labels: free speech, free trade deal, Molly's trip, personal, religion
Saturday, October 02, 2010
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.
Labels: Molly's Blog, personal
Saturday, September 25, 2010
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.
Labels: anaphylaxis, personal, wasps, Winnipeg Radical Bookfair
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
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.
Labels: anarchist youth, anarcho-syndicalism, blogging, CGT, CNT, FAU, KRAS., personal, SAC., Workers' Initiative
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
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.
Labels: blogging, childhood., insects, internet, personal, spam
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
PERSONAL:
HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
Can you imagine ? It's mid-July and I'm still planting flowers. Rain, rain and rain. They aren't likely to do well, but I make the effort anyways. It's been a very busy spring and summer, and, of course, my productivity at this blog has fallen off. Hopefully this will change in the next few weeks.
On a rather happier note I can say that the project of listing the SAC contacts is finally coming near to the end of the tunnel. I've even managed to learn a tiny, itsy bitsy bit of Swedish during this. Or at least how to type their accents. Not enough for sure to get me more beer and complain about the price in Stockholm, but it is interesting nonetheless.
On an even happier note the hacking into my personal email seems to have ended. The last "check" as to what I was writing about Siemans came in through the usual front door rather than through my email. I went all the way up to have the most secure password possible as the first password change was also 'decoded". It is also possible, however, that they simply lost interest in me. I hope to rectify this situation. As an even greater chuckle Siemens itself, according to Business Week, has been attacked in its operating system by something called the 'Stuxnet Worm'. Somehow I have extreme difficulty working up sympathy for them. Or suppressing my giggles for that matter.
That's it for now. The squirrels continue their antics in the backyard. Put the nuts out last night. The grey squirrel came early, and, as they say, "the early squirrel gets the nut". At the same time, however, as I was loading the car for the day one of the lazy red squirrels showed up. Big squirrel fight with the red chasing a grey at least three times its size. Over the garage and far away. I still am in amazement at people who report that grey squirrels "replace" red squirrels in various localities (anecdotal here in Winnipeg, documented and fretted about in England ). Maybe all that it is is that they are less than double plus thick to the 3rd power as to where they bury the nuts. That may be hard to believe if you have ever seen a grey squirrel close up (I have). They tend to project stupidity.
Labels: blogging, hacking, internet, links, personal, SAC., Siemens, squirrels
Saturday, July 17, 2010
PERSONAL:
MOLLY GETS HACKED:
I'm impressed. I'm really and truly impressed. For a long time now I've had "visitors" who are not exactly the curious average citizen. They are basically of two types. One is the various government agencies, usually Canadian but sometimes American, who are "news gathering" in general. They will drop by concerning a particular issue, person or organization, and its understandable that they have to pretend to be working their office staff. In the end I expect that they gather so much trivia and repeated posts from the internet that their activities are pretty well useless. But isn't that something of a part of the definition of "bureaucracy" ? It's actually been a long time since either the RCMP or the Defense Research Establishment has dropped by here, and I sort of miss the buggers. Maybe, just maybe, after an extended period they finally got the idea that nothing sensitive is ever discussed here. Maybe, just maybe, the lightbulb finally went on in their heads and they realized that I have always been opposed to the sort of "sensitivity" that they publicly always oppose themselves but privately promote in certain instances. Ah well, I'm sure they have enough 'fake work' to occupy themselves without dropping by here.
Then there is the other category...private enterprise. I suppose it is simply good corporate policy (if that is not an oxymoron) for a business to keep a beady eye on how it is portrayed in the media, even in tiny little blogs. I've certainly seen dozens upon dozens of these corporate checks over the years. There are even supposed internet "services" who offer businesses info on how they are being portrayed on the internet, and I suspect that they are a great shell for doing nothing but a google search 99 times out of 100. Who am I to say how a corporation should waste its money on this sort of thing or on the innumerable "management consultant" scams ? If they didn't waste it here they'd waste it elsewhere.
The latest incident, however, is over and beyond the usual. It began with the previous article on the CAW's demonstration against the plant closure of Siemens in Hamilton. Fairly standard. I've probably written hundreds of similar articles on labour issues. These quite often attract the attention of the corporation concerned. This, however, is the first and only time that the corporation has gone to the extent of breaking into my private email. They even went so far as to look into the emails that I have sent to others. There are actually very few of these which I hadn't previously deleted, and I'm sure that none of them were of any use to the company. God only knows how they did this. In any case I have done my best to block future access.
The original break in occurred via a 'Suddenlink' IP 74.198.28. this was forwarded via email to a Rogers IP 99.247.178 in Pickering Ontario. There are multiple links to Siemens in Pickering. Now, as I said I've seen corporations snooping before, and it hardly bothers me. At its low level it has resulted in the owners of some smaller business owners getting drunk and firing an angry email back to the blog. I think, however, that Siemens is the largest outfit that I have ever pissed off. They rank #40 in the world according to the Fortune 500. I don't think I have pissed off any of the top 39 yet. Give me time. Comparing their revenues to that of 'countries' they make more money than the GDP of 137 countries across the world. They are also very much the definition of a "conglomerate" with their fingers in more pies than I have fingers and toes. Some of their interests are, of course, in IT. Hence their ability to track critics. One also has to say that as a German company that one has to "admire" their Teutonic thoroughness bordering on obsession. Nobody else goes to such lengths.
I'm uncertain if Siemens has broken any laws by their actions, but I am quite certain that it would be impossible to make a legal case against them even if they have. This whole entry then is just a cautionary tale of the depths that corporations sink to probably regularly.
Labels: blogging, bureaucracy, Corporate criminals, corporations, hacking, personal, Siemens
Sunday, July 11, 2010
PERSONAL:
HERE AT MOLLY'S
BLOG:
What can I report besides the obvious ? Molly's 'Links' Section continues to grow day by day. Right now I'm on the last of the syndicalist unions that deserves a separate section, the SAC of Sweden. This will be the last major addition (I hope), and the rest will be tidying up and additions in the listings of other organizations. I dearly hope to be proved wrong on this. I await another country coming into a "multiple contact" situation. I have hardly finished the listings for the SAC. As the second largest anarchosyndicalist organization in the world (after the Spanish CGT) I guess that I should expect unexpected layers of complexity. It doesn't help that Swedish is a totally foreign language to me. Bear with me in the next couple of weeks as I add to the SAC listings. Once more the listings on our Links section are designed to be as comprehensive as possible. No doubt there will be call in the future to subdivide various headings. Also no doubt some of the listings are out of date despite my best efforts in deleting dead links.
As to the "content" of this blog, well that is my personal responsibility. It will always vary in terms of subject matter (and even stray from politics entirely- it is a blog after all) , but it will hold to one overwhelming principle. This blog is an anarchist blog for non-anarchists. You'll find no academic gobbledegook here,no "discourses", "dialectics", "intersectionalities" nor any other pseudointellectual words that dress up the speaker's ignorance. You may find rather uncommon words. They will be used properly according to their sense, unlike in leftist "theory". Use a dictionary. The basic ideas of anarchism are just that...basic, and after almost 40 years reading leftist essays I have come to the unshakable conclusion that pretty well all of what passes for "theory" is a waste of breath, especially when it is dolled up in the academic fashion of the day. This is especially true in the age of the internet. After dropping in on enough internet forums I have come to realize that there is an infinity of ways to make erudite, intelligent, well crafted defences of what is utter nonsense. Not that there isn't room for debate about the perennial "what is to be done", but I'm convinced this should be framed in English rather than in "leftish".
OK enough bitching. On with the show.
Labels: blogging, leftism, links, personal
Friday, April 02, 2010
PERSONAL:
HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
Well this blog continues, and it now passed the 100,000 mark for unique visitors, despite my ambition to "finish" the anarchosyndicalist links before that happened. I'm still working on the Spanish CNT which, as I have mentioned before, is a lot larger than I thought. The blog promotion hit a temporary road block, but I am working around it...especially as this blog tries to speak to non-anarchists. But more on that later. Until then I have to hold my arrogance in check. It's a hard task, but necessary.
I'd like to take this opportunity to invite readers to make their suggestions over at our sister site 'Molly's Suggestion Box' (see the sidebar). No doubt I am not perfect, and I'd appreciate suggestions for improvement.
Til then,
Keep Smiling,
Look up to the stars,
Realize how unimportant your troubles are.
mm
Labels: blogging, Molly's Blog, Molly's Suggestion Box, personal
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
CURRENT EVENTS:
THE POPE AND THE SEX SCANDALS:
"The big Vatican summit wrapped up, closing ceremonies were Harry Connick Jr. The Vatican is taking a tough stand now, three strikes and you're transferred"
-David Letterman
You know when a story is developing fast when Wikipedia can't keep up with it. Wikipedia entries such as 'Catholic Sex Abuse Cases' and 'Roman Catholic Sex Abuse Cases By Country' become outdated by the day. Allegations of clerical sex abuse which have been simmering for some time in Europe and Latin America have, in the last few days, reached the same level of public scandal that they have long had in North America and Ireland. Hundreds of victims are coming forward. This is not surprising as it would beggar the imagination to think that the problem was restricted to only a few countries.
A few things should be noted. One is that this is hardly "news". It was common knowledge and a standing joke when I was a kid. According to my dearly departed father it was the subject of jokes when he was young. My father, by the way, was born in 1895. The difference was that it was never published in those days. Trying to do so would have meant serious consequences. I have little doubt that the problem extends as far back as there have been celibate priests. Blame the "reforms" of the Middle Ages that got rid of the priestly "housekeepers".
Another thing is that the problem is hardly restricted to the Catholic clergy, as defenders of same have noted-over and over and over and over. It existed and exists in other religious denominations and in any work situation where adults are given excessive power over children. In actual fact I suspect that the greatest incidence of such things, when all the furore has died down and all the prosecutions have been completed, will be found to have been not just in the Church "orphanages" but also in state run "kid jails". There have certainly been such cases in Canada,a nd there will be others. All this doesn't excuse the Catholic Church, but it does put the scandal in its proper perspective ie where adults have excessive control of children. Beware the "helping professions" and what they help themselves to.
The final thing to note is that the obsession with sexual abuse tends to deflect attention from the much more prevalent problem of physical violence. Trust me, I grew up Catholic, leaving the Church at age 15. Sometimes the violence was indeed associated with sex of the sadistic bent, but I suspect that the will to power rather than the will to pecker had a lot more to do with it. There are lots of personal anecdotes that I could relate such as actually outlasting the sadistic vice principal of the Catholic high school that I attended, as he whipped my hands until they were covered with blood from the deep cuts. To my credit I never flinched and looked at him with hatred the whole time. His hard on faded (yes he was a sexual sadist) and it became a simple power struggle. I won, at the cost of the wounds as he gave up first. The priest who sent me to the office because I was an asshole was all over himself with apologies because he knew damn well what his "brother" was. he thought that I was going to meet the intelligent fascist Principal. Ooops. Father Daniel later left the Jesuits and married the nun who used to meet him in the dead of night in the field between the boys and girls school for decent sex. One of the few decent priests I ever met. There were other incidents, but rather than be personal any more I'll merely note that some of the "techniques" that they used on us were things I later read about as military torture methods.
What has to be noted here is that I was a "white boy" with parents with which I lived and leftist parents at that. Here in Canada there is controversy about how many Indian children were actually "murdered" via the physical abuse that they suffered. So...you can perhaps see why the fixation on "sex" makes me a bit uneasy. Speaking of the Natives (and probably kids in Newfoundland) I think that murder is a greater crime than buggery.
Back to the present. As the revelations, late coming as they may be, sweep across Europe the present Pope Benedict is feeling the heat. His own brother has been linked to at least one abuse case. In his own term as Archbishop of Munich (1977-1981) Ratzinger was himself involved in at least one case of transferring rather than either reporting or disciplining a molester priest. His aide at the time, Gerhard Gruber, "took the rap" for him, claiming that Ratzinger was unaware of the case in question.
That's all fair and good. Maybe true. Maybe not true. What is incontestable is that Ratzinger, before he became Pope, was for many years the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (old name the 'Holy Inquisition'). In that capacity pretty well every case of clerical sexual abuse would pass into his notice as the administrator of Canon Law. His response was pretty plain. In 2001 he sent a circular admonishing the Catholic bishops to "observe Papal secrecy" in relation to sexual abuse allegations against Catholic clergy. This was backed up by the treat of "ecclesiastical sanctions" should the bishops report the cases to civil authorities or make them public in any way. Nothing could be plainer. If there was one person who was most responsible for the cover up it was Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
"Arens’s criticism echoes an attack on the church leadership by dissident Swiss theologian Hans Küng.
In an interview published in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday, Küng said the pope should apologise personally, as "no other person within the church had seen so many cases of abuse pass through their office”.
Joseph Ratzinger [the pope] was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for 24 years – an office that has authority over church doctrine and jurisdiction for various matters including sexual misconduct of clergy.
“Protecting their priests seems to have counted more for the bishops than protecting children,” said Küng.
After the scandals in Ireland last month, more reports have emerged over recent months of abuse at church-run schools and institutions in Germany, including one linked to the Regensburg choir run by the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, from 1964 to 1994. Some 300 victims have come forward since January.
Could anything be plainer ? By the way, go over to our sister site Molly's Polls to express your opinion about whether ratzinger will be "caught" in the court of public opinion on this matter and how much it will affact his Papacy.
Labels: Catholicism, children's rights, clerical sex abuse, current events, personal, Pope, religion, violence
Thursday, March 18, 2010
BLOGGING HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
IT'S THE NEW MEAN MOLLY MACHINE:
Well, all my computer problems are over, and even my hangover from St. Patrick's Day is a thing of the past. Molly has finally surrendered to the modern world and changed everything over to cable and high speed. I can hardly describe the difference. Now I can actually watch video on the internet, and I hope to start providing it soon here at the blog. My dear old 'Tyrannostar' is being permanently retired from the internet as the new and improved base computer and the laptop are far better for this sort of thing. Dear old TS will now be just a record keeping machine. Despite the beginning of my busy season I hope to be even more productive at this blog than in the past. We'll see what happens. Til then...come along with us as Molly enters a new era. A little late but with a lot of enthusiasm.
Labels: blogging, computers, personal
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
BLOGGING HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
DISPATCHES FROM THE SPAM WARS:
I'm still stuck with my old Tyrannosaur computer. Hopefully (!!!!!!!) Dr. Dave will have good news for me tomorrow. Meanwhile the laptop continues to refuse to turn on. I think I blew the battery, but I will find out about that later. Note to self-find the fucking receipts. Good luck on collecting on the warrantee.
In any case I've taken the opportunity of this break to start going through the archives and deleting commercial spam.
I began at the beginning in August 2006 and was chugging happily along until I came to the first item in the archives in November 2006. The clunking sound was my eyeballs falling out of my head and rolling down the floor. To my astonishment the first item in that archive contained no less than 86 items of commercial spam. Delete, delete, delete, delete and, for a change, delete ! Some of the stuff might actually have been of interest to someone: an ad for a certain French cheese, hair restoring methods, the usual porn and blah blah about pirate movie copies and, best of all, an ad for the "atomic yoyo". The mind boggles at what the later is, but I'd definitely want one if it was free.
I also noticed how Blogger had managed to eat (ie delete) about half of the posts in November 2006, just as they did in February of this year. These posts don't show up in the archives but they do show up when I go to the "edit posts" item in Blogger. My best guess is that I am over my space quota. This is a rather large blog after all. I may, however, be totally off track on this, and Blogger may delete things randomly. I guess I'll find out in the fullness of time.
Til then, and when I return to normal blogging and get away from this personal nonsense ...remember that things are never as serious as they seem. In the long view everything is short. Even me. I actually like the idea.
Labels: blogging, humour, Molly's Blog, personal
Monday, March 15, 2010
BLOGGING HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
HELP FIND THE ZOMBIES:
Anyone who takes a glance at our Links section which we hope to make a comprehensive list of anarchist and libertarian socialist contacts on the internet will see how extensive it is. The Links are always in state of upgrade, pretty well from day to day, but because of their extent there are often dead links that we miss deleting. Some of them are on the various "to-do" lists, but a large number are ones we are unaware of. Checking all the links would probably take the better part of two days.
So...we're asking for our readers' help. We've opened up an item over at Molly's Suggestion Box (see sidebar) where you can list any dead links as a comment to the post. Or you can do it here of course.
Another thing where help would be appreciated would be in the deletion of commercial spam from the comments. I try to keep current with this, but I have little doubt that many items in the Archives have loads of such items attached as comments. If you come across such things try to post us either here or at the suggestion box. Give date and title of the blog post, and we'll try and make it a priority to get around to deleting the spam.
Any help you can give us on these matters would be greatly appreciated.
Labels: blogging, dead links, Molly's Blog, personal, spam
BLOGGING HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES-PLEASE STAND BY:
It's starting out to be a hard week here at Molly's blog. Just as the busy season starts the damn computer does a hard drive crash. Then the laptop won't turn on. I'm typing this on my old 'Tyrannostar' model of a computer that had whiskers before I was born.
We hope to be back in blogging business soon, but until then productivity will be quite low here. All God's chillun' got problems, and I'm hardly into maudlin self pity. I can say, from experience, that it's better than colon cancer.
Labels: blogging, computers, personal
Saturday, February 06, 2010
PERSONAL:
HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
Well time ticks on, and so do things here at Molly's Blog. I'm presently in the process of listing the links for the CNT-AIT in Spain, and I've found that there are a heck of a lot more than I expected. As I have made plain before on this blog I am more in sympathy with the CGT in Spain than I am with the CNT, but the CNT is still a repository of classical anarcho-syndicalism that deserves respect. Hence the listing of it and others in the AIT that are in sympathy with their point of view. Also, however, people who adhere to the point of view exemplified by the CNT are a signpost that says that certain compromises are "beyond the pale". as such they have great value. For now I am still in Andalucia in terms of the CNT listings. There is much more to come.
PURPOSE
I am also, of course, promoting this blog as much as I can. In the course of this I run into some very weird aggressive responses. In particular I run into these when I post to certain blog aggregator sites where it is "assumed" that the posts will be about nothing of any importance whatsoever. In such situations, because I post for a "purpose" I am assumed to be a "spammer".
Molly's Blog does indeed have items that are totally my own opinion. It also has items that are unique translations from either French or Spanish to English. Supposedly this is spam. More importantly this blog aims to be an "aggregator" for news, anarchist, labour, Canadian, whatever. Not everything published here is even something I agree with. I merely think it is important.
I contrast this to what seems to be "important" on this aggregators. A recent list of the top items:
1)My Awesome Girlfriend Made Me My own Companion Cube"
2)Best Seat Belt Ever-Embrace Life
3)Blizzard +Ingenuity=wm
4)If The World Was Inverted By Altitude
5)Amazing Video Of White Blood Cell Literally Chasing Down And Devouring A Bacterium
Well, I don't hold anything against someone who may find these items of interest. I have my own quirks. What I object to is when I get ragged for items that might actually have some importance, especially when the aggression is disguised under the terms that only original posts are allowed. YES, Molly's Blog reprints the posts of others. That is part of its purpose, and I even often reprint posts that I am not in agreement with.
It all comes down to "purpose". Quite frankly I can't see any purpose to being on the internet merely to show the temporary and usually very boring emotions of one's very boring everyday life. No doubt this is a very large portion of what the internet is. Some people get so entranced by this that they sign on to blog aggregators merely to express their, usually aggressive, opinions by comment after comment. Others do this in certain websites.
It's all very good, but what is the purpose of it ? Quite frankly, I find an honest disagreement with an honest, shall we say "conservative", much more enlightening that the sort of 13 year old comment I often get on the blog aggregators. Also, quite frankly, I would rather argue with a legitimate conservative than some of the "anarchists" I have argued with before on this blog.
All that's neither here nor there. It's the way I feel today from what I have seen today.
MORE ON PURPOSE
To a large extent I see what has often been proferred as opposition to Molly's Blog on the blog aggregators as an "dance-macabre", an attempt to give meaning by opposition to meaning in an individual life. It may "feel" good, but, in the end it is unsatisfying because it is obviously untrue. I don't speak of any opposition to the opinions on Molly's Blog but rather to the attempt to circumvent them.by various tricks of rhetoric.
What can I say ? I have a purpose to what I present here. If I didn't I wouldn't bother. This purpose is beyond me. If any purpose is to be real it has to be beyond the individual proponents of it. Other than that it is simply self interest. Perhaps this belongs in 'Molly's Anarchism' more than it belongs here. Still...I cannot help speaking out against irrelevance and trvia. Trivia is what the posts of my opponents think the internet should be.
Whatever, I will continue on despite the criticisms. Such is Molly`s promise to her readers.
Labels: blogging, Molly's Blog, personal
Sunday, January 31, 2010
ANARCHIST THEORY:
MOLLY’S ANARCHISM PART 4-
FREEDOM TO AND FREEDOM FROM:
FREEDOM TO AND FREEDOM FROM:
In parts one, two and three of this series I began to define what I consider the anarchism that I have held to for many decades. To say the least my ideas have changed over that time, hopefully becoming clearer and more realistic. Some thing, however, have remained the same, but I feel at this time of my life the need to define them more exactly. This series is not meant to be any definitive statement of anarchism in all its variety. it is merely the views of one anarchist who has had a certain amount of experience in the movement. Others are free to agree or disagree as they will, and I doubt that there will be any earth shattering consequences. So, on to part four of this series which I hope will explain my concept of "freedom", a concept very important to anarchism, better than I did in part 2.
In the last part of this series I promised to look into the matter of “freedom to’ and “freedom from” in relation to the often overused (by anarchists) word ‘freedom. I got sidetracked into n extended criticism of both the “left” and the “right” and the way they use this emotionally loaded term. A mistake on my part for sure, but at least very close to the heart of how this term should be used and not misused.
In the last part of this series I promised to look into the matter of “freedom to’ and “freedom from” in relation to the often overused (by anarchists) word ‘freedom. I got sidetracked into n extended criticism of both the “left” and the “right” and the way they use this emotionally loaded term. A mistake on my part for sure, but at least very close to the heart of how this term should be used and not misused.
Everybody and his dog is in favour of “freedom”. All too often, however, the word is used a free floating noun with no references, by both the left and the right. The most prevalent misuse of the term in recent times has been by the American (and Canadian) government in reference to a justification for their most salient imperial adventure ie the war in Afghanistan. The US government has long tried to say, for instance, that its opponents “hate us because of our freedom”. Which freedom pray tell is that and how would ‘Ali Blow’ out there herding goats near to Kandahar care about it ? Then, of course, there is the justification that the invading troops in that country are “defending our freedom”. How this actually comes about is, of course, rather mystical given as the opponents make no direct attack on said freedom whatsoever.
The left, and particularly many anarchists also misuse the term, using it a free floating abstract noun signifying something that is assumed to be good, but not stating exactly what that something is. My own opinion is that the word should always be suffixed with either of the prepositions “to” or “from” to make any sense. When looked at this way is may be understandable why various political ideologues want to restrict the term to an abstract feel good piece of rhetoric. It is also, in my opinion, plain, when looked at in this way why any anarchism worthy of the name has to be socialist. Yes, Nicolas I’m finally getting to your point.
When I began thinking of examples of “freedoms” it became evident to me that almost all of “freedom froms” could be equally well expressed by “freedom tos”. Often partisans on either side of the left right divide do their level best to ignore this truism. A simplistic example would be the hoary old gun control matter. Freedom to own a gun presupposes freedom from arbitrary government intrusion on your private property. Yeah, I know, freedoms can be in conflict, and I’ll get to that later.
The matter becomes even more complicated when you realize that many freedom tos and freedom froms depend not just upon their semantic converse but upon often several other freedoms. Our much touted “democratic freedom” to govern ourselves, for instance (much exaggerated by apologists for the present system) depends upon many other freedoms to be as minimally effective as it might be without “changing the rules”. It depends, for instance, on freedom from overwork that prevents the citizen from realistically taking part in public debate. It also depends upon freedom from straightened economic circumstances such that one has the resources to contribute to said debate. It depends upon freedom to access the media available to influence others outside of one’s personal circle, something that is obviously very much governed by one’s economic position. It depends upon the freedom to educate oneself, once more dependent upon economics and freedom from overwork. It depends more closely upon a freedom to connect to a large personal circle in an immediate way, a freedom that may be either expanded or restricted by the manner of living in neighbourhoods, with the freedoms or lack thereof they provide.
Yes, the whole matter can become quite complicated. I have only given a very partial list of a few of the things that may make the “democratic freedom” that our governments claim we have more or less real. Without looking at the full set of such circumstances, with all the freedoms involved things like our “democratic freedom” become empty rhetoric, something like the talk of “freedom” when our governments engage in imperial wars. Anarchists, of course, are very much in favour of “democratic freedom” (within limits-see later), but if it is not to be just rhetoric, like that spewed out by governments it has to take account of all the circumstances and other freedoms that enlarge or diminish such a freedom. This is why I think that any real anarchism has to be socialist because only a socialist society that offers equality and the maximum of access to democratic mechanisms to all its citizens can realize democracy (and many other values as well).
This socialism, however, cannot be the grant on a presumably benevolent ruling class, even one that styles itself as ‘socialist”. Think the social democratic parties, the “liberals” in the USA and the presumably good hearted social welfare bureaucracies, even those who pretend to “empower”(a new fashionable managerial word) others. Such classes will grant certain limited freedoms (though one could hardly imagine social “animators” working consistently towards an absolute equality of income for instance). They will, however, take with one hand what they give with the other. The invariable history of state socialist experiments has proven this over and over. Their grants will fall far short of real equality and therefore far short of real freedom for the majority in whose name they presumably rule. What seems to be a grant of income, for instance, will often be more than balanced by a decrease in income via such things as consumption taxes. What may seem like a freedom to say, live in decent housing, will often be balanced by an decrease in freedom from arbitrary intrusion on ones life by government bureaucrats and the consequent fear and insecurity.
I have only gone into one aspect of freedom above, democratic freedom. There are many others that could be discussed. Freedom of speech, for instance; the freedom to say what you believe and to have freedom from government interference with what you say. But the existence of government always makes this freedom precarious. The right complains, at least here in Canada, about restrictions on this freedom in terms of so-called “hate laws” that favour this or that societal group. This may be true, but it is far overshadowed by the government support of “libel laws” that restrict the freedom of expression of far more people to criticize those with the financial resources to sue. I have little doubt that for every prosecution for “hate speech” there are many more successful lawsuits for libel in our society. Without the support of government such atrocities couldn’t happen, and it is hypocritical in the extreme for a society thatb gives this privilege to its wealthy to claim to have “freedom of speech”. This is yet another example of why a socialist society, where equality is the rule, would be the only truly free society.
In a society that was not equal freedom of speech, restricted by lack of access to financial means and consequent power would be an empty phrase for the majority of the people. Perhaps just as it is today. In the USA ,and to a very less degree elsewhere in the world, there are those who style themselves “anarcho-capitalists” in contradiction to the way that the vast majority of anarchists have always seen themselves as ie socialist. The way that the society that they desire would inevitably lead to a massive restriction on the freedom of the majority of the people is just one of the contradictions of their view, but it is indeed a major one. What they desire is just as absurd, in the end, as the Marxist project of delivering equality and freedom through dictatorship.
One could go on and on about various freedoms, but I think I’ve made my point with the two examples above. Anarchism leads to the maximum of freedom because it takes the whole complexity of social life into account. There is a worm here, however. What about the “rights of the minority” ? What about the restrictions on democracy and the freedom of the majority to make rules that restrict the freedoms of a minority. In my view anarchism is not a complete system for solving this conundrum, and, given that I don’t believe in some sudden revolutionary transition to an anarchist society, I am more than happy to let history work itself out in its particulars in this matter. Just as, of course, it is working itself out in industrial parliamentary societies as we speak. It’s a common misconception that anarchism means a society with no rules. In actual fact the vast majority of human history has been spent under conditions of anarchy ie without a government, and, despite the illusions of romantics, many of these societies were very repressive and inegalitarian. There will indeed be rules in the decentralized communities that would characterize an anarchist society, and, yes, they would be enforced by many different mechanisms, some of them perhaps less desirable than the way our rules are enforced today. One of the advantages of an anarchist society, however, is in its small scale nature. Dissidents would be far freer to leave then they are today (pretty well impossible in most states). Perhaps just as importantly the decentralized nature of an anarchy would mean that, given the inevitable corruption of human nature, when a community “turns sour” it would, at best, have the ability to inflict harm on its near neighbours. The idea of an anarchist society using predator drones to bomb a population on the other side of the world “to give them freedom” is an absurdity.
We can only work with the human material that we are presented with, and, given human nature, there is always the potential for evil in a crowd. Anarchism is no sure fire guarantee against this, and the history of some perversions of the ideal show that it can worm its way close to the heart of anarchism itself. Yet, in the end, the majority of anarchists have always rejected criminality because anarchism also carries within its moral baggage the legacy of tolerance bequeathed to the world by liberalism. The difference is that anarchism wants to make the ideals of liberalism real and not empty words. The struggle to protect the rights of minorities will be an eternal struggle, with many back and forths ,and this struggle will be just as much a part of an anarchist society as it is of our own societies today. What I can say is that, in my view, the decentralized nature of an anarchist society presents a better ground for such a struggle than our statist societies do today.
So that’s how I see the concept of “freedom” and its relation to the type of anarchism that I favour-socialist anarchism. I suppose that there is a lot more to be said on the subject, but I’ll leave that to those more philosophically inclined as I pass on to other matters in this series.
SEE ALSO
1) Molly's Anarchism Part 1
2)Molly's Anarchism Part 2
3)Molly's Anarchism Part 3
Labels: anarchism, anarchist theory, freedom., Moll's anarchism, personal
Sunday, January 17, 2010
PERSONAL:
HERE AT MOLLY'S BLOG:
Well, it's been back to work these past two weeks, after recovering from surgery, and my blog production has dropped off accordingly. It doesn't help that I am spending what I consider an excessive time on 'blog promotion'. Too bad the crowds don't flock to you without effort. The present readership has essentially doubled in the past year, but there are still many hills to climb.
One summit, however, has been achieved. Finally, after months of effort I have finished the listings for the Spanish CGT (see our Links section). 491 items. Larry Gambone, of the Porkupine Blog, gave me a little warning when I started this enterprise many months ago. Now I know. Now I know. The listing is actually more complete in a way than the CGT's own 'Directorio CGT' because I went into all sorts of subcategories that aren't directly accessible from the main CGT site. There are still, however, some items left out. Some are deliberate such as a few sites that contain computer threats. Also there are numerous publications of the CGT whose only address is a pdf file. I had trouble with these, so I omitted them.
There are still a few loose ends to tie up as there are many 'peripherals' to the CGT such as ateneos, radio stations, movie theatres, etc. that may or may not be listed. It took me months to list all of the CGT sites in the Links section. It didn't help that my usual typo ratio was one out of five, and so I was forced to do a lot of editing. The CGT is certainly the most successful anarcho-syndicalist organization in the world. As a matter of fact one could total the membership of all other anarchist organizations, both syndicalist and otherwise, in the entire world and not come close to that of the CGT. What they have done is to make anarchosyndicalism relevant to the modern world. That is something the rest of us are still working on.
As has been stated before on this blog this is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Spanish CNT, and the CGT sees itself as the legitimate heir of this tradition. I'll be presenting more from both the CGT and the much smaller CNT-AIT during the course of this year, hoping to show how anarchosyndicalism is still rlevant in the 21st century.
Til then.
Labels: anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, CGT, links, Molly's Blog, personal
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
ANARCHISM:
MOLLY'S ANARCHISM- PART TWO:
This is part two of my effort to define what I consider as anarchism, particularly "my anarchism". The first essay on this subject brought forth some responses which I have taken to heart, even if I see no reason to change what I wrote previously. As I go further in this project I am sure that there will be even more that various people disagree with. My purpose in this series is not to lay out some "overwhelming ideology" that I would expect should be adopted by all anarchists. That is a simple impossibility, as anarchism, by its nature, is a fluid set of positions that are given different emphases in different situations. The situation that anarchists find themselves in will very much govern which aspect of the principles come to the fore. Anarchism never was the sort of closed totalitarian system that Marxism aspired to be. In actual fact the principles that lie at the basis of anarchism do not form some conflict free "whole". They exist in a dynamic tension, sometimes reinforcing each other and sometimes in opposition to each other. This will become plainer as we go on, but, for now, all that I can say is that the very fact that humans always have and must always live in a society put a limit on the "total freedom of the individual" while, conversely, attempts to over-emphasize the "collective dimension" of anarchism (and socialism) run the grave risk of producing a society even worse than the one they wished to replace.
I still think that the first attempt at a definition of anarchist socialism that I put forward is useful to proceed from. I also think that it descriptive of what anarchism throughout almost all of its history and in almost all of the world has been. I am aware that there is a current of "anarchism" in the USA, the anarcho-capitalists, who are not socialist in any sense. I would ask the reader, however, to not confuse this current with the traditional individualist anarchist current that was prominent in the USA, but also in many other countries (Italy, France, Spain and England come to mind). This current of anarchism is a totally different beast than the ideological capitalism popular in some quarters in the USA, and the proponents of this sort of individualism were very much socialist by both their actions and their own self-definition. This sort of individualist anarchism still exists in the USA , even though it is small to the point of disappearance elsewhere. I cannot self-identify with it, but I can view it sympathetically. I hope that proponents of these views (opposite to those of the anarcho-capitalists) will forgive me if I use the term "left-libertarian" as broadly descriptive of what they believe.
Words can be treacherous things. There are words in the dictionary that can have 25 or more definitions appended after them. In the definition of "socialism" that I proffered in the first part of this series I tried to "get beneath" the disputes about ways and means that divide various schools of socialism and find a definition that would encompass all socialists whatever their attitude to "tactics". The contrary definition from Wikipedia excluded at least one form of enterprise that I consider socialist ie consumer cooperatives. It also seemed to imply that socialists, as a whole, believe in "total equality" rather than the "much more egalitarian" belief that I offered. That socialists, anarchists or otherwise, believe in such total equality is debatable. What is manifestly not debatable is that the vast majority of socialists, statist and libertarian alike, do not believe that we should concoct some grand scheme whereby consumption is governed solely by "labour hours" put in. On the anarchist side this was what was called "collectivism", and it has not been a popular option for over a century. On the statist side, if one imagines that this is a goal of statist socialists then where, on God's green Earth, do all the welfare measures and "collective consumption" that socialists have advocated over all of their history come from ? Certainly not from a belief in "labour vouchers".
Then we come to the matter of whether "anarcho-capitalists" are actually anarchists. These people certainly do not believe in equality. If the only defining point of anarchism were to be against government then one would have to admit the 'anarcho-caps' into the family. Even if, however, they have a tendency to define "government" to their own advantage. To their point of view the old classic of the peasants rising up to burn out the manor house is government while the manor lord hiring a gang of thugs to shoot down the peasants is "free enterprise" and not "government". In the end, to maintain the inequality that will be the result of their economics, they will inevitably have to employ the force that they deplore when it is used by present governments.
The problem with anarcho-capitalism is that it doesn't proceed from a deep enough ethical basis. One may argue about whether it has any ethics at all. It is here where I have to start tacking things onto the original position that I gave in the first essay, of anarchism as a form of egalitarian socialism that believes in decentralized governance. The purpose of both equality and personal political influence-which can only be exercised in direct rather than representative democracy to to produce both individual fulfilment/happiness (in a life that leaves less matter for envy and more of a sense of personal worth) and collective fulfilment/happiness (being that humans happen to be social animals who are happiest when they experience a life of "community").
The need for individual happiness necessitates the maximum possible personal freedom. This means that the sort of "equality" dictated by the collective (of which the Communist states, especially such horrors as Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge or North Korea today, were/are the primary example), whether state or otherwise is not a worthwhile goal. Freedom can certainly be restricted by the state, but, contrary to what anarcho-capitalists may think, the state is hardly the only way that a collective (or strong individuals within a community) can restrict individual freedom. The history of religion is, to a large extent, standing proof of how freedom can be restricted by practices other than statist ones. Also, despite the almost Stalinesque delusions of the true believers in the "noble savage", actual stateless societies that have existed have not necessarily been either egalitarian nor respecters of freedom.
The need for personal freedom, both in the negative sense (of "freedom from" ) and in the positive sense ( of "freedom to") is an absolutely necessary part of any anarchism. The positive aspect is pretty well totally ignored by such as the anarcho-capitalists, and because of this their "anarchism" is of the same dwarfed and twisted form that led all too many anarchists to make the opposite error in the past and assume the 'Soviet-anarchist' position as viable. Anarchism is not only class struggle, though such is an absolutely central part of it. It is also class struggle to a purpose. Dethroning the "Bosses" will only result in a new set of bosses being thrown up if the extent of personal liberty is not also expanded at the same time. Similarly trying to get rid of the state without, at the same time, increasing the equality in society and also increasing the "freedom to do" (two things that often are much the same thing) will merely result in a new state under a different name.
So, the idea of anarchism as a socialism of a different sort has to be supplemented with the idea of anarchism as a struggle for personal freedom. There is a lot more to be said on this "freedom", but I'll leave that for a subsequent essay.
Labels: anarchism, anarchist theory, anarcho-capitalism, freedom., personal, socialism
