BLOGGING:

THE BEST OF THE BLOGS- THE LETTERS "AN":

Here we are again with Molly's irregular feature, 'The Best of the Blogs', where she goes down the blogs on her links section, choosing those that have particularly interesting recent content. Today we do the letter combination "an".

A. Over at the Anarchia blog Asher muses on the existential condition of loneliness in 'On Being Alone'.

B. The Anarchist Philosophy Blog is more didactic, and the author explores his thoughts as to what anarchism is and isn't in his 'Anarchism Essay'. Special emphasis on the fact that the philosophy is not merely "negative"

C. The Anglican Resistance blog is closing down. The author, an Anglican priest, will be moving most of his efforts to his parish blog, the Blog of the Good Shepherd. He also recommends a couple of other blogs where his work occasionally appears, The Episcopal Cafe and The Covenant Journal.

D. Meanwhile out on the west coast the Anarcho-Cyclist has some interesting material on the "local foods movement". Check out his 'Radical Gardening and Local Food Production' and 'Saltspring Seeds 'Zero Mile Diet' Seed Kit'.

THE BEST OF THE BLOGS....THE "A" S:
Molly has rather neglected her blog reviews in the last little while. It's actually a larger task than some may imagine, but I'll try and chip away at it piece by piece. Molly intends to combine this with some editing- eliminating dead links-. If you have spotted any dead links or obvious misdirections in Molly's list of links this is the place to let her know about it via a comment.
For today Molly has gone through the letter "a" in her list of linked blogs and picked out the following recent postings as worthy of notice:
From After All, an American libertarian blog come 'Leftist: It's time for an alliance with the Libertarians', arguing that leftists should look more closely at the communality of interests between themselves and the libertarian left. More topical in the USA than up here in Canada.
From the Anarchist Philosophy blog comes an interesting little snippet titled 'UN Study says 2% of Adults have 50% of World's Wealth'. A little statistic to think about.
Finally, the AnarchoDin blog has a rather despairing item entitles 'To Anyone Who Cares', expressing the authors disillusionment with blogging and forums as well. Not that Molly doesn't agree with the author about many of the things he says, but she has to say that she thinks he has missed the point of the experience of blogging. The author complains about the experience of "arguing", and Molly is sure that, if this was the whole sum of what a blog was that it would get rather aggravating after not too long a time. Yet it shouldn't be the whole point of a blog. Not that Molly will not spit piss and vinegar at some people. She's done the same to both kooky "anarchists" and believers in the American empire who have dropped in here in the past. The old fart Molly still has it in her now and then. Yet I certainly wouldn't want to make it a daily diet. I'll leave that to people both younger and more aggressive than I am.
The point of 'blogging' is that you have to enjoy the actual experience of writing, of putting your thoughts into some sort of semi-coherent order and pouring them into the concrete mold. The audience is secondary but not unimportant. If you blog merely to make a political point the effort will eventually be seen as useless, if for no other reason that it is. People are not convinced by the usual sort of thing seen on the internet.The act of blogging should extend to many other things in your life, things that should strike you as worthy of notice besides political opinions. Molly writes on many things-astronomy, evolutionary biology, books she has read, humour,pet food, her trips, her own back yard, holidays, history,etc.,etc.,etc.- and that is the way it should be. In her tiny little feline opinion of course. Molly actually enjoys writing. She will often jot down her thoughts just because she wants to clarify something that she has learned. These posts are often the most visited. Writing makes your thoughts clear and coherent; at least it should whatever the prejudices of post-modernism may say.
Molly blogs on many things. The vast majority of visitors to this site don't come here for the anarchism. Even the majority of visitors here are not leftists at all. They come for the astronomy, for the posts on holidays, for the history, for the solidarity notices, and for continued coverage of some issues. If they are exposed to anarchism, an anarchism that is non-violent and sensible, when visiting this site and they take an interest then all the better. The other subjects are worthy of writing about on their own even if the visitor takes no interest in the other aspects of this blog.
Let's put it another way. Molly is an "anarchist". She believes that human beings should be free of external social control to the maximum extent possible. She is confident from what she knows of animal behavior that a sustainable society is possible under these conditions. She is also convinced that it would be a better society than the one we have today in many different ways. Molly is also, at the same time, very aggressive towards some things within anarchism that she perceives as both a perversion of this ideal and efforts to throw up barriers towards greater public acceptance of anarchism as a "philosophy of life". This means fools who glorify violence and try and shut down debate about same by calling for harassment of those who complain about a so-called "diversity of tactics". It also means fools who debase the traditional anarchist project to both reduce the use of prison and eventually eliminate it (if possible) by play acting at 'play-pen revolution' by glorifying and trying to recruit common criminals. It also means having a certain suspicion about those who opt to make a living off modern anarchism.
Molly believes a lot of things. There is one thing that is certain however. If anarchists, as a group, would be as aggressive as Molly is towards those who pick up anarchism as a semblance of a masochistic cult of sacrifice and 'political correctness' then the more distressing forms of anarchism would wither rather fast and anarchism would equally become an option for the average person just as fast. If you have many interests in life; if you are selfish enough to demand that this "freedom to do" is as important as a "freedom from"; if you have an inbuilt cerebral burglar alarm that starts ringing just as much when some idiot demands you sacrifice yourself for "the oppressed" as when another idiot demands that you do the same "for the flag"; if you refuse to sacrifice your present life to some abstraction then you are well on the way to being an intelligent anarchist. Inoculated against American cult leftism disguised as anarchism just as much as you are inoculated against the demands of the state, of the employers and of some religious cult/sect to sacrifice yourself for other goals.
The whole point of blogging is that it should be both fun and an exercise in self-development. The whole latter word has been under attack by modern "liberalism", particularly in the USA, over the last few decades. Modern liberalism and too much of so-called "radicalism" has come to attach itself to some baggage that there are no objective standards to judge things by-except for the ideology itself, of course. Trying to actually learn under the illusion that this is true is a very painful and almost self-defeating project.
So, here's Molly's little unsolicited advise to AnarchoDin. Try and expand the topics that you write about. Try and present more of simple facts and less of opinion. Beyond all things recognize that the declining "academariat" has nothing to say about how to think and judge. Modern anarchism is gradually struggling to get beyond the point of nonsense that a lot of their university professors taught.
Yes Virginia, there is a real world. It is beautiful in its complexity and opportunities for discovery. If you wish to describe it to others try and grasp more than one of its aspects, particularly some aspects on which there is no arguing.

THE BEST OF THE BLOGS:

MOLLY'S WEEKLY FEATURE:

Every week Molly tries to sweep through recent posts on the blogs that are listed in her Links list to find those that have interested her the most. So here is this week's listing in no particular order:

The Molly prize once more goes to Uber-Blogger Eugene Plawiuk for his recent efforts on Le Revue Gauche concerning both the recent inquiry into the Air India Disaster and his demand that the whole actions of the RCMP and CSIS be subject to a public inquiry. The stench around what happened in the Air India bombing grows by the day, and there is a huge elephant sitting in the middle of the room on this matter. Were the warnings deliberately ignored? It wouldn't be the first time that a terrorist action has been allowed to proceed "for reasons of state". At times such actions have actually been organized by the secret police of various states for political purposes. Comrade Plawiuk says no such thing, but others in the Indo-Canadian community have raised this possibility, and Molly will here. Maybe the Canadian secret police are indeed woefully stupid, or maybe there are other things that will come out in 100 years about their machinations. Plawiuk also has several posts on the plan to use nuclear power in the Alberta Tar Sands project, an ill-advised plan.

Amor y Resistencia has an article on the anarchist Mayday actions across the world as does Bombs and Shields. The Anarchist Philosophy site has an article titled 'Should Anarchists Use Violence to Fight Oppression'. The answer is 'no'. Auckland's Burning has an attempt to placate the prrimitivists entitled 'The Fallacy of Wilderness', arguing for permaculture rather than the ideological construct of "wilderness". An Australian Anarchist Weblog has a collection of quotes on patriotism entitled 'The last Refuge of a Scoundrel'. The Freedom of Speech blog from Canada has an interesting essay on proper internet etiquette. Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog features a draft of a new work of his entitled 'Decentralized Production', an exploration of the economics of local production. Finally, Janet Biehl's blog continues her project of a comic strip presentation of the work and life of Murray Bookchin. Really great in Molly's opinion.