ANARCHIST MAGAZINES:

THE MATCH ! ISSUE 106 NOW AVAILABLE:

Fred Woodworth is the publisher of the longest continually published anarchist magazine on the North American continent. Through thick and through thin since 1969 Fred has been fighting the forces of statism and authoritarian, and doing it in a rational and artistic way. The Match ! , typeset, laid out and printed without the soiled hands of computers, is always a visual and intellectual treat. Woodworth hates these machines, and the degradation that they inflict on the printer's art. Some days I can see what he means. Like today, when I tried to load the front cover of the latest issue onto this site using a scanner that doesn't seem to want to produce gif files. Ah, the time wasted ! The graphic above is from a previous issue.

The content of The Match ! is always stimulating, and the latest issue is no exception. For those of us very much wound up in "social anarchism", opposing this or that business or government atrocity it is instructive to every once in awhile travel back to our roots, to the reason why we are "anarchists", and not everyday lefties. It's instructive to remember that, at all times and places, the individual is the most oppressed minority". Without this reminder the organizations we create, the goals we fight for (and occasionally achieve) will end up as nothing but recycled copies of the authoritarianism that we oppose. No amount of rhetoric imported from "new movements", no cultish "consciousness-raising", no essentially meaningless babble from those who think they have "gone beyond anarchism", no bureaucratic checks and balances on the part of the more rational will replace the individual commitment to liberty. Woodworth has, for decades, presented this essential core of what anarchism is in a lucid and logical form. He keeps on talking because there is still so much to criticize.

The Match ! is very much a personal journal, but a perusal of the numerous letters in what Fred calls "The World's Largest Letters Column" shows that his efforts reach large numbers of ordinary people that all too many anarchist projects fail to appeal to (often they repulse, sometimes quite deliberately, anybody outside of a charmed circle). Woodworth has a fiery hate on for such things as the police and religion, and he makes sure that every issue contains items pointing out the brutality and mendacity of same. "Who the Police Beat" is a regular column that has been running for years. My favourite column, however, is the "Crap Detection Department", and Woodworth spares no sacred cows. All such manure machines, from cheap scams, to expensive corporate gizmos, from jargon laden verbal feces in the major newspapers to the same sort of thing dolled up as "anarchism".

Try out The Match ! if you want to think for yourself. You may not agree with everything Fred says- I don't-, but you will find the opinions expressed far more stimulating than the usual political dreck. No, The Match ! can't be ordered via the internet (what did I say about Fred and computers?), only from its physical address:

The Match !

Box 3012

Tuscon, Arizona

85702

USA

Another little speed bump you should be aware of- Woodworth also hates banks ie "no cheques". He is always open to providing free samples, but any donations-The Match ! is "priceless"- should be in cash. Yeah, I know, but Fred is willing to take the chance of mail theft over the certainty of theft via "service" charges via the banks. Another stand by one of the most principled people on Earth.

THE MATCH SHINES ONCE AGAIN:

Always welcome. Never boring. The Match, North America's longest running anarchist periodical, has wound its way to Molly's mailbox once more. Opinionated and mercifully free of dogma and rhetoric The Match is always a delight to read, and one of the few publications that inspires cover to cover reading. Issue number 105 for Summer of 2007 is now out despite editor Fred Woodworth's always present struggles, both financial and health-wise.

This issue contains more of Fred's explorations of what exactly anarchism means, ethical anarchism that is. Attacking both the shibboleths of statism and those of the cult anarchists Woodworth stands out as the preeminent individualist anarchist today. Commentary, fiction, news; it's all there in The Match. There is no set price for a subscription, and the editor requests that you send cash(US currency)-not cheques or money orders. Woodworth doesn't use banks. Give whatever you think is fair for a 72 page hand crafted production with fine old fashioned press production rather than computer generated mishmash. The address of The Match is:

The Match

Box 3012

Tucson, Arizona

85702

USA

CONTRADICTING 'THE TOMB OF JESUS':
Molly's television viewing is pretty well restricted to sitting in front of the tube during supper and flipping through the channels to try and find the least stupid electronic blah-blah while she shovels the daily caloric intake down her throat. In pursuit of this mindless activity she came across the sleazy "documentary" tonight about 'The Tomb of Jesus'. Like many other things, such as Anne Marie what's her name who died of a presumed drug overdose in (I think) the Bahamas and the so-called star who shaved her head bald (which Molly very happily can't recall the name of at the moment- hey my mind blocks work!) this crap is inescapable, and Molly devotes a considerable amount of effort to forgetting such things even before they are forgotten by the general public. Eat your heart out Freud, "garbage dump" is superior to "repression" any day of the week. By doing this I free the diminishing amount of free neurons that I have for stuff that is much more interesting such as the grammar of foreign languages or odd biological and astronomical facts. I also consider this pseudo-news as something very akin to elephantiasis, or any other parasite that sets up residence in my precious body- or in this case my mind. I get the creepy feeling of invasion whenever such nonsense hits either my ears or eyes. It goes as follows,
"I don't care. I never will care. I also hate you for trying to waste my time with useless gossip".
For somebody who spends far too much time on the phone every day, and plots ways to cut conversations short this is an important thing. It's also important for somebody who tries to take medical histories in the face of the ever present human tendency to never answer a direct question. I've had to circle back to start 8 times sometimes to get the information I want (which is what these people are paying me for after all), and sometimes I've had to give up on ever getting a straight answer. I hate people who waste my time without paying me while I merely plot ways to get information from those that do pay me so that I can be of service to them. Fair deal to my mind. But nobody pays me to pay attention to celebrities or ideas that are essentially boring.
Also my "crook detector apparatus" gets more refined every year that I live. I'm actually amazed by how efficient it is. When I get a message from the answering service this "spider sense" usually starts tingling even if the crook in question hasn't left any obvious clues to their intentions. Something is operating below the level of rational calculation here, and the message conveyed is emotional, but just as obvious nonetheless.
Thus I viewed the sound bites hitting my ears about 'The Tomb of Jesus', though here I don't have to rely on emotion. Oh yeah, a crew of film-makers makes a spectacular pseudo-documentary about discovering Jesus' tomb shortly after a multi-million dollar film grosses megabucks at the cinema. Ah...toooooo obvious. I wonder what bribes had to be paid to get it aired as I doubt that this is the first scam about this thing. Rational suspicion will suffice here. Let's also note that this stunning discovery escaped the scholars who originally unearthed the remains decades ago. This is about as obvious as a tele-evangelist pitch to send money or they will be "called home" (please hurry on that matter).
Anyways, I'd like to call the readers' attention to an interesting debunking of this matter at the Catholic Anarchy site. Not that this implies any sympathy on my part for the Church I left over 40 years ago, but the owner of this blog (see also our 'Blogs' section in the Links) has a bit more interest in this matter than I do, being as I am inclined to dismiss it as "one more crook". If I didn't write about it here I'd forget it ever existed within two weeks- which I almost did except that it disturbed my digestion. Anyways, a good debunking is presented there.
I hope, though I have no "faith", that this piece of silliness will not be adopted by atheists as some sort of "proof" against Christianity. Atheism is no more immune to nonsense than any theism, which is perhaps why I prefer to call myself a "skeptic" rather than an "atheist". Not that I believe in any theism, but I am hardly "evangelical" about the matter. Lest anyone believe that atheism cannot reproduce the worst of evangelical Christianity I urge people to look at the case of American Atheists and its founder Madelaine Murray O'Hare. The anarchist writer Fred Woodworth, who is much more of a militant atheist than I could ever be, took on O'Hare at the very height of her power.
Molly would like to take this opportunity to express a theory about theories. It is very much modelled on the "random search" model of evolutionary biology where a "fitness landscape" allows the possibility of perhaps a great number of "fitness peaks" as organisms evolve. It can be formulated as follows:
"Given the fact that the "fitness" of memes (ie beliefs) doesn't depend solely on either their logical coherence, their approximation to truth nor their compatibility to other memes such standards of morality there will always be a great number of "fit" memes which represent both a gross simplification of the original ideas and even a moral degradation of same. These will evolve and propagate amongst a population of "hosts" for a number of reasons, but, like "the poor" they will always be with us."
I call this The law of Chintz. Every great idea will eventually find a thuggish and low expression. Christianity will evolve tele-evangelists. Ideas such as those of Ellul, Shumacher, and Illich will end up as the degraded rhetoric of primitivists. Critiques of ideology and abstraction such as those of Stirner will end up as ideological gobbledygook such as "post leftism". Observations about the social context of thought, scientific and otherwise, will end up as the petty academic power politics of "post-modernism". Marxism will end up as either Stalinism or sterile academic arguments about dialectics. The anarchist idea of "direct action" will be reduced to the travelling rent-a-riots of protest. Protestanism will end up with the Jehovahs. Catholicism will end up with Austrian arch-bishops who try to deny evolution and a half assed apology to Galleleo. Islam will end up with Wahabism. The evolution of such memes is inevitable, but their triumph is not such.
Enough of the "Molly hiss" for now. The world contains better things than crooks trying to scam bucks by- probably- deliberately lying. I find it hard to believe that the film makers are not deliberate about what they are doing. In any case check out the site of my Catholic comrade for the debunking. For now I zip out to finish the day's unloading and feed the squirrels for tomorrow. They, at least, don't lie. Neither do the stars.
Molly

Latest Match Now Out:
Issue # 104 of 'The Match !", North America's longest running specifically anarchist publication is now out. Copies can be ordered from:
The Match
Box 3012
Tucson, Arizona
85702
USA.
Unlike some other long running anarchist publications the Match began with the label of anarchist and remained committed to it over the course of decades. Never one to bow to fashion or fad, the editor Fred Woodworth has made his common-sense version of anarchism a standard by which other, more ideological, efforts can be judged. Fred is heavy on the atheism side of historical anarchism, and not an issue passes by without at least two or three anti-religious articles.
Always interesting, whether you agree with all that Fred says or not. One of the few anarchist publications likely to inspire cover to cover reading.