MARE CRISIUM: THE SEA OF CRISES:
The Moon has just passed the first quarter (Jan 25th), and now is an excellent time to image the Mare Crisium, the feature labelled "12" in the map of the moon at the left. It is just to the "north" of the "Sea of Fecundity" and to the "east"(right) of the "Sea of Tranquillity" of moon lander fame. On the lower right of Crisium there is a cape like feature called the Promonitorium Agarum. Also to the left, about in the middle of the sea is the crater "Picard". Eat your heart out Jean Luc. Just on the left rim is the crater Yerkes, a little up from Picard. With a better pair of binoculars (or the telescope that I am too cowardly to set up in a wind chill of 34 below) you may be able to pick out the small Mare Anguis just to the upper right of the mare Crisium. The sea is a laval plain that flowed over previous impact features.

MORE ON THE KELVIN COMMUNITY CLUB:
The latest proposal from the residents of Elmwood is that the City of Winnipeg simply "sign over" the ownership of the Kelvin Community Club to the Association and let it sink or swim on its own. This proposal has been more or less supported by our local MLA, Jim Maloway, who has expressed the suspicion of many residents of this neighbourhood- that the property will be subject to a "quick flip" for commercial development. One should note that none of us will ever be invited to the Mayor's Christmas parties. The best that Molly can do in that regard is knowing one of the "contractors" (fucking literally) who helped build up the decadent decorations for Sammy's soiree. So it is just a "suspicion" that the property will be opened up for friends at a less than fair bidding process. I would never suggest such a thing as reality. People have, however, expressed this opinion on talk shows in this town, and Molly is merely a good reporter here.
What Molly can say is that this idea is the idea that she has promoted all along, that Community Centres should be independent of the ever tempting "free money" from government, whether it be city or otherwise. It is the only path to true security. The Mayor and his coterie have been on the media recently claiming that they have no plans to close other community centres in this city- just like Mayor Katz claimed in 2005 that there would be NO forced closures of any community centres(see previous posts on this blog for the references). Residents of Elmwood have caught him up in this lie. The next items on the list will inevitably be other centres in poorer areas of this city. The powers that be have, after all, "promised" to review the matter annually (can we say "plot" ?) to see what happens if this test case goes through.
WELL...Kelvin becoming an independent cooperative, just like other likely victims going the same route, would certainly save the City tax money. The only losers in such a case would be real estate developers who salivate over the prospect of acquiring such properties. But, of course, such people never socialize with the right wing majority on city council. Even if they do there would be no paper trail. Amazing what can be done over a glass of fine wine.
Well... if Kelvin closes Molly can expect a few things. Being well skilled in handling Rottweilers she has little fear of the increase in gang activity very close to her on the south. Molly is one nasty bloody cat, and she's lived in worse places before. She feels sorry for the kids who will be caught up in such things as the right wing of City Council attempts to correct it by more police, but it is minor. What Molly is really concerned about is the kids who have to trek east through a rough neighbourhood to get to the Chalmers Community Centre or have to trek north to the Bronx Community Centre just north of Molly's cathouse. So far my "window of excitement" on Henderson Highway is merely for vehicle accidents. As I have said before this happens at least once a month. I have no desire to watch kids trying to cross this goddamn speedway where nobody slows down for pedestrians and having them killed in front of me. To date many people have been killed crossing this road, but they have always been either to the south or the north. I've tended to schmucked dogs out on the median. I have no desire to tend to a schmucked kid. It's bad for my blood pressure. I've seen a lot of shit on this road, and I have no desire to see the potential increased by a factor of ten.
One kid quoted on the media said it would take him 45 minutes to walk from Kelvin to Bronx. I live just south of Bronx. I can get to a bit south of Kelvin in less than 30 minutes. On the other hand in my younger days I was able to run a mile in less than 4 minutes despite my tiny short little feline legs. Some 2o year olds could make it in 20 minutes, but these guys could also lift 200 pounds. I walk that sometimes to rent a car because walking is faster than waiting for a bus in this town...a little something to think about when you consider how kids are going to get up here to Bronx. Also think about wind chills of 40 below, But mainly think about crossing Henderson. It is one evil graveyard of a road.
Well, maybe Mayor Katz doesn't live on a major thoroughfare, and neither do his co-conspirators. Maybe they don't live a short distance from "gangland", and maybe they think that making rules about "panhandling" will address the issue of crime in this city. Maybe they think all sorts of things, and maybe they think that they can bask in the glory of Olympic athletes while undercutting the communities that produce them. Maybe they think that this is "progressive"- an ugly word if I've ever heard one. Progress to where and what ? Maybe they think that Olympians should only come from their own "good people", and that the underclass doesn't deserve such opportunity, small as it is.
This is the "cleanest" and simplest issue that this City has seen in decades. It's not muddied by issues of race, like much in Winnipeg is. Elmwood is very much a multi-racial community. It's not muddied by matters of special interests demanding fat easy jobs. It is starkly an issue of class, of the poor and the working class and small business people versus those who attempt to control their lives. It calls for the support of all ordinary people across this city, and the support of small business who oppose a corporate agenda for this city. Think about it. The bulldozer may head towards you next.
Molly

MOLLY'S ANARCHISM: PART TWO, CHAPTER ONE:
WHY I AM NOT A "REVOLUTIONIST":
Wayne Price of NEFAC (The Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists) has recently published an essay entitled 'Why I am Not a Pacifist' on the Anarkismo board. His essay makes some telling points (no, there was no way to remove Hitler without violence, pacifists mistake their actions for "non-coercion", etc,etc) with things that can best be styled "flights of fancy" (the only way to avoid the holocaust was through a 'proletarian revolution', Americans may have to call for an invasion from Mexico to "save their revolution",once more, etc.,etc.,etc.).
Now, Molly has actually met a very few real pacifists in her life. They don't include the majority of those who style themselves as such. Wayne's points about "coercion" can be telling in these cases. Molly likes these people even if she considers them wrongheaded. However "wrongheaded" they may be, however, they are less so than others whom Molly has met who are under some sort of delusion that a "revolution" in imminent in North America (or any European country for that matter) and especially that they can hasten this apocalypse by mindless acts of militancy. Mr. Price is, of course, not amongst this collection of fools. As a member of NEFAC he recognizes the value of patient organization and is at least somewhat aware of the broad outlines of reality in terms of how (un)popular a libertarian view of socialism is in North America. Yet, perhaps for 'romantic reasons' he clings to the idea of "revolution" as a Deus ex-machina that is both possible and necessary to achieve the goals of libertarian socialism in his country (the USA) and mine (Canada). Molly disagrees with both the term "possible" and the term "necessary", and I will try and explain this as I go along in this blog. Not all will be said in this post. I will also eventually reproduce Price's essay here and reply to it, but that is unimportant for now.
For now I refer the reader back to my previous post on 'Molly's Anarchism' and what I quoted professor Richards as saying. The non-statist trend of world socialism has always be present in Canadian socialism, just as it has been present elsewhere under different names, often taking the word "anarchism" to describe itself. In Canada non-statist socialism has been represented by the cooperative movement, whether it be that of Western Canada (with which I am most familiar), Quebec or the Antigonish movement of the East Coast. It has been represented in the unions, whether they were the IWW or the OBU of history or the more recent attempts to chart a course independent of the US based Internationals. It has even been present in a multitude of local community struggles for various things, struggles that presuppose that local communities should have a greater role than the feds, the provinces or even the cities in determining things in their immediate environment. Native struggles have been lighthouses in this matter, but they are hardly unique or even more than a minority of such struggles across Canada.
This socialism is different from that which has been the dominant strain in Canada to date. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "building political parties" whether they be social democratic such as the NDP or bizarre communist sects. It has everything to do with building cooperatives, both producer and consumer cooperatives. It has everything to do with attempting at all times to recover political power for the most local community possible and to expand the scope of democracy beyond that of a popularity contest. It has everything to do with the day to day struggle of working people to control the conditions of their work life and eventually to take the workplaces over and govern them by democratic principles.
This sort of socialism is neither pacifist nor revolutionary. It is merely "realistic". It recognizes and builds on popular struggles that have occurred throughout Canadian (and American) history and asks for the maximum possible clarity in regards to same. This clarity means that we have to "work with" those who believe in "political means" but that we should always be apart from them, with an ideal of total independence for the popular organizations as the ultimate goal. It means that we push bit by tiny bit towards this goal, navigating the possible, and not recruiting for some dangerous enterprise in the foggy future. It means that we agree to be pluralistic and not dream of some show of force in the future, a dream that would almost inevitably lead to disaster.
It furthermore means that we take the best of our own socialist traditions and build on them, and that we call ourselves "anarchists" because this is the best, though limited, name for what we want to achieve- a socialism that builds cooperation without the excessive burden of state imposed conformity. Look above to the graphic on this blog. This is the graphic of the Spanish CGT. Spain has always been the "heartland" of anarchism. There have been disagreements in Spanish anarchism for well over a century about how to proceed towards libertarian socialism. The present day CGT which represents about 2 million Spanish workers is the heir of one of these currents, the anarchism of Salvador Segui, of Juan Piero, of Angel Pestana (before he deserted the cause). This anarchism is the reborn anarchism of the Iberian Peninsula, an anarchism that is appropriate for the modern age. It is the same as the socialism of those here in Canada who advocated (and advocate today) for community clinics, for local control, for increased rights for workers, for producers and consumers cooperatives. It is the only socialism worthy of the name, and its name is anarchism. It does not imply a quasi-religious commitment to some future "revolution", only the commitment to advance the cause today in the here and now.
Molly is not a "revolutionist" for many reasons which I will detail later, but the main reason is that the "revolution" is a fantasy which is way in the future and far away from how we live today. But the struggle for socialism- well that I've seen every day of my life. It exists here and now. One more cooperative is socialism. One more victory against the state is socialism. I don't live in an utopia. I live in the here and now.
Much more later,
Molly

MAHYE BE HAVIN' A WEE HAPPY ROBBIE BURNS DAY:
Today, January 25th, is the celebration of the radical democratic poet Robbie Burns. However much "yon birkie, ca's a lord, wha struts, an states, an' a' that" may try to disguise the democratic and socialist sentiments at the heart of Burns' poetry the flame is very much findable for anyone who cares to look.
Molly can suggest no better place to begin than Eugene Plawiuk's blog. Two years ago Plawiuk did a masterful piece on Robbie Burns. You can have a look at http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/radical-robbie-burns-peoples-poet.html .
Ga on ovr an' ha' a peek. Now Molly's off to chase the haggis for tonight. More later. Til then we wait the day, as the poet says,
"Then let us pray that come it may,
(as come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."
Molly

CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO CLOSE KELVIN:
After the Mother of All City Council Meetings, while Elmwood residents filled the Council chambers and spilled into the hallway- a very unusual happening for any meeting of City Council- councillors debated for close to six hours on the closing of Kelvin. Yet, in the end, the Mayor's circle held firm and the final vote was 11 to 4 to close the Kelvin Community Centre despite the fact that the "lack of volunteers" had long since been corrected and despite the fact that plans were afoot to raise the money for renovations outside of city grants. A motion to postpone Kelvin's closing under the expansion of the Bronx Community Centre was completed was also turned down. Emotional residents vowed that "this is not the end", and hopefully it will not be. More on this in days to follow.

MONTREAL ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR
The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair , which bills itself as "the largest Anarchist event in North America", has issued a "callout" for tablers, workshops, presentations and art exhibits. The Bookfair will be held on Saturday, May 19th, from 10am to 6pm and will be followed on Sunday, May 20th by workshops and presentations. The deadline for workshops is Feb 15th, 2007. The deadline for tabling, art exhibits, and films is April 1st, 2007. The Bookfair will be part of a month long 'Festival of Anarchy' in the Montreal area. For information on the Festival of Anarchy see http://salonanarchiste.taktic.org/festival_of_anarchy.html . The organizers of the Bookfair can be contacted at the Salon Anarchiste website, by email at anarchistbookfair@taktic.org , by phone at 514-859-9090 or by mail at Montreal Anarchist Bookfair, 1500 Maisonneuve Ouest, Suite 204, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1N1, Canada.
Please note that the website gives a list of events and times from last year, the 7th Bookfair. This year is the 8th, and the website will hopefully be updated soon.

NEW FROM CHRISTIE BOOKS:
Christie Books , a British anarchist multimedia publisher has recently added the film 'The Wobblies' to its list of anarchist videos available via the internet. The Wobblies by Stewart Bird and Deborah Schaeffer is a moving study of the men and women of the Industrial Workers of the World, the IWW. Christie Books now has over 165 films on file that can be viewed from your website. You can get instructions on the process from http://tinyurl/t8sta or http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=219646953&firstVideo=0 . The Wobblies can be viewed by accessing http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=433480993 . Steaming video.
Christie Books is financed by sales of its publications and posters as well as by donations. Instructions are available on the website.

NEW ANARCHIST PAMPHLET:RESISTANCE TO NAZISM:
The Anarchist Federation (Britain) has published a new pamphlet, 'Anarchist Resistance to Nazism'. This is an exposition of the historical resistance to fascist tyranny in the 30s and 40s. It concentrates on the resistance to Nazism in Germany and France, telling the story of the 'Edelweiss Pirates' (Germany), the FAUD (Germany) and the Zazous (France) . It also, however, speaks of the British Jewish organization, the '43 Group' who resisted fascism in England and the 'Arditi del Popolo' in Italy. The Italian movement, being one of the largest outside of the Spanish speaking world, put up a particularly vigorous resistance to fascism, and an appendix details to anarchist underground press of the time, both inside and outside Italy.
The pamphlet can be ordered in a print version from the website of the AF. It is available in both html and pdf versions online at the following addresses:
http://flag.blackened.net/af/ace/anarchist_resistance_to_nazism.pdf
http://flag.blackened.net/af/ace/anarchist_resistance_to_nazism.html
http://afed.libcom.org.uk/ace/anarchist_resistance_to_nazism.pdf
http://afed.libcom.org.uk/ace/anarchist_resistance_to_nazism.html

RELIANCE ON THE INTERNET:
Molly has no great "revolutionary illusions" unlike the owner of one private anarchist empire who thinks he can rebuild the summit hopping fad such that "the crowd advancing towards the police will be so huge that they will run in fear". Actually in such situations look towards who will control the "Solidarity Fund" for those arrested, beaten and perhaps even killed. Human nature is the same whether it wears an "anarchist tag" or not.
This sort of thing is, of course, silly, and it could only gain currency in a closed subculture where criticism and contact with reality is considered the same sort of "mortal sin" as Catholicism defines so many things as. The owner of the empire has actually said that he will not tolerate any contact with the reality of other views "bad mouthing"the overblown rhetoric of anarchist triumphalism. Hard to build up a cult when the recruits are exposed to reality.
But that is neither here nor there. The same sort of nonsense appears on the site of the private empire as it does elsewhere in the anarchist "ethernet", that there is some sort of "security culture" that can prevent the state from knowing each and every time you burp. The whole idea that the supreme arrogance of such people leads them to imagine that they can brag in public forum about how much better they are better than organizations that have thousands of times more resources is actually quite stunning. This sort of arrogance can only exist where there is a deliberate effort to escape from reality. Not just ignorance but deliberate ignorance that will never have to be tested against the real world.
Fine and dandy. Leave those who wish to make a spectacle of anarchism to their games but warn them about the dishonesty of their leaders. What I find more disturbing is the reliance that anarchists who have a connection to to reality have placed on the Internet. One quick flick of a switch and all their communication ceases. That is neither here nor there for a reformist such as Molly, and it is certainly neither here nor there in the situation of most developed countries today. But it should be a matter of concern to those who hold revolutionary pretensions or who simply look either ahead or elsewhere.
Is the Internet overdone in terms of anarchist communication ? Something to think about.

MOLLY'S ANARCHISM:
Before it disappears from the front page of this blog I'd like to reproduce a comment that appeared under the "Marxism Under the Microscope' posting, from someone who signs themselves as "Joe". It is something that has to be answered because it goes to the heart of why I style myself an "anarchist" despite all the bad connotations that such a label evokes. "Joe" says,
"I would assume that there aren't many 'anarchist' professors as Marxist professors because anarchy is obviously not a workable system. Marxism isn't a workable system either as it appears to lead almost at once into brutal dictatorship. Personally I like constitutional republics."
"Joe" is an example of the intelligent ordinary person whom I have devoted decades of my life to talking to. I can pick apart what he said easily by pointing out that there is a difference between Marxism, as a way of organizing observations about the world (which I mostly disagree with by the way) and the organizational principles set down by what is known as "Leninism" which is probably what he refers to as "Marxism". There are numerous "Marxists" who differ so little from anarchists that the only reason I can see that they don't make the leap is the eternal human tendency to "mental conservatism". I can also point out that there are Marxists such as the Socialist Party of Chile (drowned in blood by the USA sponsored coup of Pinochet) who have been fully committed to the "constitutional republic" means of government, even if they were in alliance with a Communist Party which was not.
I can further point out that the degree of brutality varies from one Marxist dictatorship to another. Stalin's USSR was far more brutal in terms of "body counts" than his erstwhile ally and later opponent Hitler. NO government in human history has ever equalled the "body counts" of the communist dictatorship in China, and, whatever Noam Chomsky may try to say, NO government has EVER equalled the "body count as a percentage of the population" that the Kymer Rouge did in Cambodia/Kampuchea. YET... the dictatorship in say Cuba(which I have NO sympathy for, by the way) has been FAR less brutal than a great number of dictatorships sponsored in that part of the world by the "constitutional republic" of the USA. Without the consent of the citizens of said "constitutional republic" !
I also disagree with the idea that representation in the academy is some sort of litmus test as to the "workability" of a political ideology. History is far more complex than that. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of German professors in the mid 1930s to 1945 were good Nazis. Does this prove that German fascism was a "more workable system" than the alternatives. The answer was delivered by steel and bombs in the most direct way possible. The over-representation of Marxists in the Academy has roots in the situation in the early and mid 60s when there were viable Leninist models active in the world, when the working class entered the academy in large numbers and when anarchism was considered, unlike today, as an antique historical curiosity. Things are different now.
All that being said "Joe" is still right. His question has to be answered even if it was phrased in the wrong context. Is "anarchism" a realistic view of the world ? Maybe yes. Maybe no. It depends on what you mean by "anarchism". All that Molly can do is present her own view of anarchism, of why she calls herself an anarchist. In this exposition she will try to point out the varieties of anarchism-which is no one single thing. some of these varieties are very much "unrealistic" as Joe says. Some are simply insane and vicious. Some are idealistic statements of sainthood that lack a broader view of the failings of humanity. But....some are very much a workable political set of tactics, as Molly will hope to demonstrate. This series will continue on this blog as long as is necessary to give intelligent non-anarchists an idea of where Molly's own anarchism stands and how it relates to other strands of anarchism.
For now lets begin with an observation by the Canadian professor of political economy John Richards. This was originally stated, I believe, though I may be wrong, in his book 'Prairie Capitalism'. He noted that there were two stands in the agrarian rebellion that gave birth to such Canadian political parties as the CCF. Now, Richards is the furthest thing from an anarchist. His own political career is opportunism personified as he went from being a fervent supporter of 'The Waffle' to being an advocate of the extreme right wing of the NDP. His earlier work, however, named the cooperative and localist impulses of the movement that gave birth to the CCF as "libertarian socialist" as opposed to the "state socialist" of the majority of the Party. Molly sees herself very much in this tradition of "prairie populism" that is anarchist at its core. In future posts I will try and show how this tradition that didn't know its name connects with the larger worldwide tradition of libertarian socialism that is called "anarchism". I will also try to point out how there has always been a struggle for "the soul of anarchism" between various tendencies in said movement. That is not surprising. As an astute reader of the above can see there has been a struggle for the soul of Marxism as well. There have been similar struggles in all political ideologies, and such struggles continue today. So... see subsequent posts on this blog.
Molly

DEMOCRACY WATCH:
Molly has just added another item to her links list under the heading of 'Other Interesting Links'. This is the Ottawa based organization Democracy Watch which attempts to improve the state of democracy in Canada by various campaigns involving violations of same by both government and the private sector. this site is quite far from anarchism, but it is a meliorist campaign that shares one of the central concerns of libertarian socialism ie the broadest possible participation of people affected by a decision in the making of same. I highlight this item here because one of their campaigns, 'Honesty in Politics' relates very much to what I said in the previous post about our mayor's broken promises. The Democracy watch believes that politicians should be penalized for breaking their promises just like those of us out here in the real world are. Drop on over to their site and have a look.
Molly

THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
BY CARL SAGAN
This is the second(1) posthumous book published and edited by Carl Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan(2). The subtitle is 'A personal view of the search for God', and this is because the book is a compilation of the 1985 Gifford Lectures (3)on Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow. Sagan himself describes "natural theology" in his introduction as "everything about the world not supplied by revelation" . A more apt description might be the attempt to read theological lessons from the natural world. I've recently finished reading this book, and these are my "midnight thoughts" on what the author says.
Sagan begins his lecture series with 'Nature and Wonder: A Reconnaissance of Heaven'. This presentation attempts to "travel outwards" from a terrestrial perspective to the furthest reaches of the visible universe. The slides that the author used to illustrate this journey are somewhat indifferently reproduced here- with updates from more recent astrophotography. Along the way to the furthest reaches the author picks up a number of historical turning points in humanity's conception of "the heavens", and how our sense of wonder has expanded as more and more of the vastness of "creation" is revealed, a vastness that makes many(most?) of our inherited religions seem paltry and petty by comparison.
Sagan used this first lecture to present the questions that he wished to pose to "natural theology", in particular the contrast between what are the really very parochial concerns and assertions of traditional theology and the huge scale of reality. as he says,
"...a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. it is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy much less of a universe."
In his second lecture, 'The Retreat From Copernicus: A Modern Loss of Nerve', Sagan goes further into this idea, relating the human tendency to "project" their own psychology (hence animism) and their own sociology (hence the illusion of privilege and class "reproduced in the heavens" with the privilege of the earth and humans) to the history of what he calls "a series of assaults on human vainglory". This is the very gradual growth of the virtue of humility in the face of actual knowledge. From the dethronement of the Earth centred Universe by Copernicus to the dethronement of even our ideas of time and space by relativity the march has been pretty well invincible. Attempts at reaction, from the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition on "modernism" to the present maelstrom of the "American Id" in all its technicolour varieties- from intelligent design to primitivism to post-modernism(4)- come and go and fail. Sagan devotes a good portion of this lecture to his disagreements with one of the more intellectually respectable "retreats from this advance", the anthropic principle. I guess this goes with his own cosmological concerns, though it hardly has an effect on the public consciousness, even amongst the "intellectuals". The alternative quantum theory of "many worlds" has something more of an "excitement value", though both show tendencies of where science can veer off into mere poetry.
In his next lecture 'The Organic Universe' Sagan proceeds into what was one of the central concerns of his scientific career, the origin of life and its possibility elsewhere in the Universe. He spells out the ubiquitous presence of organic chemicals in the astronomical field, and the vast stretches of time involved in the life of our universe. All this is tied in with his argument against the classical "argument from design". In lecture #4, 'Extraterrestrial Intelligence' he goes further into his own interests. This brings up the inevitable invocation of the Drake Equation and Sagan's views of it, including his own views that not every civilization will necessarily be technologically advanced and the possibility that those who are mostly self destruct.
Sagan brings up here the possibility of communication with such extraterrestrials which led him naturally into lecture five 'Extraterrestrial Folklore:Implications for the Evolution of Religion'. This is another aside into one of Sagan's other central concerns, the debunking of pseudoscience and occult faddism. Sagan uses this chapter to compare the claims that conventional religions make for their miracles with those made by obviously fraudulent modern "urban folklore", and the comparison is none too flattering for traditional religion.
In his next lecture, 'The God Hypothesis' Sagan finally goes right to the heart of the matter that is supposed to be at the centre of the Gifford Lectures, 'Natural Theology'. In this lecture Sagan goes into the full extent of the traditional proofs of the existence of God, and he also points out the very obvious point that there are many statements in the traditional Western concept of God that are actually quite separable. Omniscient is indeed quite separable from omnipotent as is the term "benevolent" and the term "eternal", and the term "omnipresent" (let alone its contradiction "transcendental"),etc.etc.. In actual fact the various terms inevitably contradict each other, and they are not always present in the description of "God" in either thinkers in the Western tradition or, especially, in other religious traditions. The heart of this is, as Sagan says,
"I therefore conclude that the alleged natural theological arguments for the existence of God, the sort we're talking about, simply are not very compelling."
In his next lecture, 'The Religious Experience' Sagan discusses the more "personal proofs" of the sacred ie "religious experiences" with emphasis on both its possible bases ie neurochemistry and evolutionary biology. This chapter is rather far ranging as it also compares these religious experiences across cultures and their content within various cultural settings and even their meaning within a broad sweep of human sociobiology. To say the least this chapter is sketchy as it is the subject of volumes of books and not a few pages.
Sagan then goes into lecture number eight, 'Crimes Against Creation'. This is a chapter that attempts to develop ideas that Sagan expressed previously, that traditional theology is actually quite a mixture of sometimes contradictory ideas, some of them benign and some of them quite toxic. In this lecture Sagan attempted to "set the stage" for some sort of alliance between humanists such as himself and those Christians who took the emotional content of "stewardship" quite seriously. This is particularly related to the centrepiece of Sagan's lifelong political commitment, the question of nuclear disarmament and nuclear war. One wonders what he would say today in the age of concern about global warming if he were alive today. Sagan had been arrested more than once in the course of protests against the American military machine.
Finally Sagan concluded his lectures with 'The Search' in which he ties all of what he has said together. He restates that his own vision of the immensity and beauty of the universe is just as valid an answer to the "big questions" posed by religion as the various dogmas are. With considerably more of the "cardinal virtue" of humility Molly may add. And with a much greater appreciation of the fragility of human life than any of the religious traditions provides. The book concludes with an appendix that consists of questions and answers from the various lectures. Molly concludes with the following quote from 'The Search',
"Now, another way of looking at this is as a conflict within the human heart, as a conflict between the bureaucratic, hierarchical, aggressive parts of our nature, which in a neurophysiological sense we share with our reptilian ancestors, and the other parts of our nature, the generalized capacity for love, for compassion, for identification with others who may superficially not look or talk or dress exactly like us, the ability to figure the world out that is concentrated in our cerebral cortex. Our survival is(how could we have imagined it to be anything else?) a reflexion of our own nature and how we manage these contending tendencies within the human heart and mind".

MOLLY NOTES:
Molly apologizes if this review has not conveyed the full sense of what Dr. Sagan presented in his lectures. Inevitably one individual will concentrate on those points that interest them the most. I urge readers of this blog to go to the original book as it is far richer than I could hope to present in a brief review. Those who are interested in Carl Sagan in a fuller sense are advised to go to the Carl Sagan Portal maintained by his last wife and his children and, of course, the very enlightening and entertaining Wikipedia item on him.
1)The first posthumous book was arranged by Ann Druyan and published in 1997 as 'Billions and Billions:Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium'. 'The Varieties of Scientific Experience' was published by Penguin Press, New York, in 2006 (ISBN # 1-59420-107-2).
2)Carl Sagan had the good fortune to be married to three outstanding women in his lifetime. Ann Druyan was his third wife. His second was the artist Linda Salzman , and the first the scientist Lynn Margullis was the most prominent of all. There is little doubt that Margullis was by far a greater scientist than Sagan ever was, whatever his ability to capture the public imagination. Her concerns were with the origins of eucaryotic life as a symbiosis of various organisms. Her ideas about the origins of such organelles as mitochondria and chloroplasts have gone from being heresy to being orthodoxy. Her ideas about the origins of such things as flagella and cilia are somewhat more controversial, but they have something to be said for them, just as her rather extreme views about genetic interchange in modern organisms have. Time will tell. Margulis, by the way, stands in the tradition of Kropotkin and other Russian naturalists who emphasized the role of cooperation (symbiosis is the extreme version) in evolution.
3) The Gifford Lectures and their presenters read like something of a who's who of modern intellectual life. They have included William James, John Dewey, Albert Schweitzer, Reinhold Neibuhr, Gabriel Marcel, Michael Polonyi, Arnold Toynbee, Paul Tillich, Werner Heisenberg, Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky and Roger Penrose amongst many others with which Molly in her ignorance is not familiar. Sagan's inclusion in this company is an indication of the respect in which his ideas are held today.
4)Just as there is little to be said intellectually for the Catholic Church's attempt to "hold back the tide of modernism", an attempt that the Church seems to want to repeat again, there is little to be said for most of the more fashionable trends coming out of the USA today. Whether they be the pseudo-respectable babble of post-modernist academics who decry all rational thought and proclaim a new "triumph of the will", whether they be the dressing up of biblical literalism in pseudoscientific garb of design, intelligent or otherwise or whether they be the far !!! more marginal cultists who disgrace anarchism by saying that it must oppose such abstractions as "civilization". There are probably hundreds of other examples. All of them stand in the classic American tradition of "hucksterism". Academic ex-Marxists who babble on about "texts" can best be understood as pale imitations of the more successful Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. This may seem insulting, but it is true, even though the academics make a much more immediate financial profit from their output. But they have little staying power.
Anyways, down from the heavens and back to the earth soon,
Molly

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.