WHAT MOLLY MEANS:

Molly is in the middle of another "hit blitz" vis-a-vis her posts on the Menu Foods recall issue. What Molly has tried to do in this matter is to be as objective as possible and give the most appropriate references for both the public and her veterinary colleagues. My objectivity doesn't detract from my "anarchist" views because I believe that "the truth" is an anarchist value, and that ANY political view has to be congruent with reality or it is of no value. Molly is critical of the centralization of the pet food industry, just as she is critical of any other centralization. She points out the problems of "globalization" in that the imports of gluten from across the world affects pets (and perhaps humans) here and across the world, and she points out the irrationalities of a market based system for commodities such as wheat that leads to such imports. She further points out the irrationality of some pseudo-oppositions such as health food cultism, which have fed into the present problem- and may be in the news in the near future.

All this is from a "scientific" point of view which is nothing more than amplified common sense. I take the "scientific" point of view because it says that one should test statements in terms of evidence and not because one likes the rhetoric behind it or because "the enemy" says something else. Everything should be viewed in the cold light of sobriety without the usual emotional buzzwords associated with politics. This is, of course, threatening to those who want to construct grand political theories such as the now almost dead Marxists wanted to. It is not , however, threatening to anarchists who recognize the "provisional" nature of knowledge and who, unlike post-modernists and other ideologues, are willing to accept reality as a test of their theories.

Molly accepts these tests. She refers people to government agencies even though she opposes government because they are the best sources of information in the here and now. Molly knows that pretty well all "anarchist" sites that discuss science are unreliable to the point of total lies, mostly because they oppose an abstract concept of "science" that is pretty well an imaginary construction of ageing Maoists in the academy - without any connection to science as it is actually done. Primitivism is nothing more than "consistent Maoism", and their "utopia" is the same utopia as that of the Kymer Rouge. This, of course, is not all of anarchism, and many younger people have come forward to oppose this ideological mindset. Whether it be the people who want to make anarchism congruent with real evolutionary biology or those who see the potential in the technology of communication, the struggle is the same. The struggle is to save the idea of freedom from those who would restrict it to a religious cultism demanding the sacrifice of "technique".

Molly's present "hit flurry" has the value of introducing people who are concerned about their pet foods to the ideas of anarchism, just as her last "hit flurry" about the lunar eclipse had the same function. But perhaps even more importantly this blog can act to introduce anarchists to the ideas- and more importantly the state of mind that lies behind modern science. Anarchists are often just not "scientifically illiterate" but actually predisposed by some people's propaganda to remain in a state of ignorance. This blog hopes to give its little contribution to correcting this problem, if in no other way than to show how "looking up" is a more emotionally satisfying state than seeing your low opinions confirmed in a cult. The sky is more attractive than your belly button.

Molly