CNN's "Escape From Jonestown"-- Powerful But Still Incomplete Reporting On The Eve Of A Terrible Anniversary

"Thirty years ago," says CNN, "900 people died by murder and suicide. Only a few survived. Now, CNN special correspondent Soledad O'Brien reports on their untold stories...."
In its special report that originally aired last Thursday--five days before we observe the anniversary of that horrific day--CNN did a fine job interviewing former cult members who miraculously survived the slaughter. They told the truth about life in Jonestown, in all its graphic, shocking details.

But what the CNN producers refused to reveal was just how preventable this crime of the century really was. Not that this coverup wasn't expected. But just imagine if all the guilty parties that aided and abetted Jim Jones
in his rise to power were to step forward with one massive, long-overdue apology (in the style of Robert MacNamera's Vietnam mea culpa) AND media behemoths like the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle admitted they could have stopped Jones's cult assassins LONG before November 18, 1978?

Imagine if, just once, the San Francisco Examiner came clean about their cowardice in not standing up to Jones and his threats to sue because of the paper's exposes in 1972 (half of which were shelved by those editors.) Imagine, too, if the San Francisco Chronicle at last gave us an accurate retrospect of what they did and didn't do to save the Temple cult members from their hellish captivity and ultimate destruction

Imagine.

Maybe this could be made into a song. Call it "Imagine II." Much less sanguine than the first.

As it is, the Chronicle's series, "Ten Days That Shook S.F.," kicked off yesterday, bringing on an added dimension to the world of media whitewash.

Imagine (sorry, the thought keeps poppin' up) the public's reaction if the Chronicle revealed how their "Institution", the late, great columnist Herb Caen, had been in virtual cahoots with Jim Jones. Caen did all kinds of shimmering plugs for the cult; just a little over a year before the November, 1978 mass murder, Caen claimed Jones was the "target of a ceaseless media barrage" and was actually "doing the work of the Lord" in Guyana.

Oh, but of course, Herb. The "work of the Lord", .....

Don't worry folks, the secret's safe. Current Chronicle editor-in-chief Phil Bronstein would no more disclose this on his pages than he would discuss the shameless behavior of his former employer, the S.F. Examiner. The Examiner, of course, had been bullied by Jones's attack dog attorney, Tim Stoen, to shelve half of my father's 1972 Temple exposes, even after he had returned from Ukiah with taped sworn statements and signed affidavits from members of the Concerned Citizens who were facing down--unlike the Chronicle & Examiner--the cult terror all around them.

That brings us to yet another exceedingly dishonest voice that has already been telling his Anniversary Historic Fiction Story over the Associated Press network: Mr. Tim Reiterman. Ol' Tim, as I have said, was unquestionably brave in going down there to Jonestown with the Ryan party, and nearly got killed on that airstrip. Still, this can't excuse his lying about investigative reporter Les Kinsolving, loaded down with sworn statements and affidavits fresh from Ukiah, and falsely accusing him of having exposes "not well substantiated."


Clearly our "Raven" star author was angling for some insurance that it would be REITERMAN that would stay bathed in limelights, despite the fact that he, like Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff and all the rest, did NOTHING for all those years leading up to 1977. NOTHING to lift a hand to write a critical word about this dangerous cult leader. NOTHING to try and save all those people trapped in a madman's crushing iron grip.

Better late than never?? Not this time.


That's the truly phenomenal thing about this People's Temple Saga. Like the astoundingly evil Indiana con man that gave birth to this frightful cult, so also came a school of relentless bottom feeders.


Be they ruthless opportunists or gutless appeasers, their sordid behavior was the ultimate key to Jim Jones's breath-taking success before The Fall.

San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church's Radical Reverend Cecil Williams gave his blessing......
"We are pleased and honored that you will be with us...to accept Glide's 4th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award", Williams wrote to Jones, in January, 1977, "in recognition of your leadership to many communities of people."

Rev. Williams presented this coveted honor to Jones at the height of the Temple's power in San Francisco. Interestingly enough, the Martin Luther King Award was offered up just two years after Humanitarian Mister Jones had stuffed $6,500 into Williams's pocket. Who knows, maybe Jones was flush with some freshly extorted cash from some senior's "donated" life savings....

And what did the high and mighty local media baron Charles deYoung Thieriot have to say about all this? ".....The church is best known and highly regarded for its
social works," said the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, "which include housing and feeding senior citizens and medical convalescents, maintaining a home for retarded boys, rehabilitating youthful drug users. . ."







Now here's yet another famous fellow, something of a community leader in his day, who also was highly regarded for his social works, too. The city of Chicago surely must have been deeply grateful when "Uncle Al" started a program, which was continued for decades after his death, to fight rickets by providing a daily milk ration to Chicago school children. Not only that, but he ALSO opened up many soup kitchens for the poor and homeless....





But of all of Jim Jones's benefactors, none could dare hold a candle to flamboyant, dynamic, and dapper local politician, Willie Brown. "When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene," said Brown, in July, 1977, just after the New West expose hit the streets, "...and constantly stresses the need for freedom of speech and equal justice under law for all people, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody...I will be here when you are under attack, because what you are about is what the whole system ought to be about!"



Thus, a cornucopia of local celebrities......all of them did their part to make the truly avoidable massacre......unavoidable.

For all the agonizing questions regarding the "hows" and "whys" of such a thing like this happening, one need only look deep into the face of the social psychology dynamic working in tandem with the primeval acts of unscrupulous power brokers.

My best friend, Gregory, is still living in California. He remembers as well as I do the fall day in 1972 when Temple thugs broke into my house at the corner of Marin and Spruce Streets, in the Berkeley Hills. They got what they came for--copies of my father's future columns. The great & powerful Rev. Jim Jones and his top henchman, Tim Stoen, were reaching the point of plotting exactly how to murder the Examiner investigative reporter (no, not you yet, Reiterman.)

Gregory asked me, just after viewing the CNN documentary:

"Did the government officials believe Jones or did they think he was a non-violent quack they could use for political gain? What happens to peoples brains when people like Jones or Hitler or a screaming Drill Sargent keep on screaming at them?

"Is there something hard-wired in children (and adult dumb f----) that when someone screams at them long enough, they will do what they say, and believe anything, because the ones who didn't believe and do what the group did, were taken out of the gene pool....?"

Excellent, relevant questions. One of the best resources available for such inquiry is the renowned Stanford social psychology scholar, Prof. Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo, whose famed 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment set a standard in gauging the capacity for cruelty, recently authored, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

Judging from the reviews, including these kudos from author Gail Sheehy, there seems little doubt about this book offering some solid insight.

"Stunning!" says the 'Passages' author. "Drawing on a lifetime of brilliant social psychological research, Zimbardo demonstrates how good people can be transformed into 'evil doers' by the power of situation--even you! He decodes how the Bush administration, in the delusion it alone can rid the world of the evil of terrorism, has turned into a model of 'administrative evil.' But Zimbardo also offers us a vision of how we can challenge an unjust system."

A number of sections in Zimbardo's book ultimately had to be deleted for lack of space. One of them was entitled (and can be found on the book's website): "Killing Your Children on Command: Ultimate Demonstration of Situational Power by Reverend Jim Jones"

It is enthralling, to say the least.

"Our final extension of the social psychology of evil from artificial laboratory experiments to real-world contexts comes from the jungles of Guyana, where a very popular American religious leader persuaded more than 900 of his followers to commit mass suicide or be killed by their relatives and friends on November 18, 1978.

"Jim Jones, pastor of Peoples Temple congregations in San Francisco and Los Angeles, set out to create a Socialist utopia in South America where brotherhood and tolerance would be dominant over the materialism and racism he loathed in the United States. But Jones was transformed over time and place from the caring, spiritual 'Father' of this large Protestant congregation into the Angel of Death--a truly cosmic transformation of Luciferian proportions. For now, I want only to establish the obedience link between Milgram’s basement laboratory in New Haven and the jungle killing-field in Guyana.

"The dream of the many poor members of Peoples Temple for a new and better life in Utopia were demolished as soon as Jones instituted forced extended labor, armed guards, the total restriction of all civil liberties, semi-starvation diets, and daily punishments for the slightest breach of any of his many rules that amounted to torture.

"When concerned relatives forced a Congressman and his media crew to inspect the compound, Jones arranged for them to be murdered. He then gathered almost all of those members who were at the compound and gave a speech that lasted less than an hour in which he exhorted them all to take their lives by drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Those who refused were forced to drink by the guards or were shot trying to escape, but most obeyed their leader.

"Jones was surely an egomaniac; he had all of his speeches and proclamations, and even his torture sessions tape-recorded -- including this last hour suicide drill. In it Jones distorts reality. He lies, pleads, makes false analogies, appeals to ideology, and gives assurance of transcendent after lives. Finally, he outright insists that they follow his orders, as his staff efficiently distributes the deadly poison to the more than 900 members gathered around him." [NOTE: Link above ("Torture Sessions")--then click the "Audio"--for a sampling of the cult's unspeakable brutality in CNN's "Punishment With Snake" audio. Jones's shocking sadism is all the more chilling with the sound of his hideous high-pitched laughter as the woman is tortured while the cult mob cheers it on.]

"And they did; they died for 'Dad.' The power of charismatic tyrannical leaders, like Jim Jones and Adolph Hitler, endures long after their deaths, even though they have done terrible things to their followers. Whatever little good they may have done earlier, however, somehow comes to dominate their legacy in the minds of the faithful.

"Consider the example of a young man, Garry Scott, who followed his father into The Peoples Temple but was expelled for being disobedient. Listen to his brief statement as he called the National Call-that followed the broadcast of the NPR show, 'Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown,' by James Reston, Jr. Listen to how he was punished for an infraction of the rules. But more importantly, listen to his articulation of his enduring reaction to this torment.

"Does he hate Jim Jones? Not one bit. He has become a 'True Believer,' a 'Faithful Follower.' Even though his father died of poisoning in Jonestown and he himself was brutally tortured and humiliated, Gary still admires and loves his 'Dad'--Jim Jones. Not even George Orwell’s omnipotent 1984 Party could honestly claim such a victory.

"Gary: 'Like a lot of other young people, I had my sort of rebellion against some of the doctrinal methods that were taking place in the church, and I rebelled, and for that I was punished to become a better Christian. I was physically abused. Beaten with a two-by-four. I was whipped.

'One of the big problems I have in life is I have a phobia against snakes and for one punishment I was tied up and a snake [a boa] was put on top of me and that was psychological torment that I had to go through for a while. And I was sexually abused as well.'

"Moderator Bill Moyers then asked: “What did you see in Jim Jones when you were in the Temple that caused you to be faithful despite your treatment?

"Gary: 'I think the guilt. I felt that I was responsible for everything that was taking place around me. If there was any bad attitudes or any bad feelings emitting from persons in the Temple, I felt that they were my actions.... I followed Jim Jones because he was a very caring person.

'And even today, you know, despite the fact that a lot of my friends, which I considered my brothers and sisters, died, and a lot of them were forced to their death, there is a very personal part of Reverend Jim Jones that still lives today. And even though I’m very frustrated and very disappointed by what happened to my father, there’s still a peace (piece?) here that I see in Reverend Jones.'

"Like Orwell's protagonist, Winston Smith, Gary Scott seems 'to have won a victory over himself. 'In the end, they love Big Brother and Father Jones, alike. Powerful Authority Systems conquer individual personality systems more often than does the reverse."


So true, Dr. Zimbardo.

I'll have to take issue, however, with his statement that "most obeyed their leader" in taking their lives. Guyanese Chief Coroner Leslie Mootoo examined the corpses at Jonestown and discovered that up to 90 percent of the victims had been injected with the cynanide, shot, or strangled.

In the final analysis, over 900 plus Americans were simply coerced, brainwashed, and enslaved. One Jonestown visitor said it resembled a southern antebellum slave plantation, with "Dad" Jones acting the part of the white master, surrounded by his lily-white planning commission crew serving as the overseers, carrying out Marxist Master Jones's crazed orders.

In the end, of course, Temple planning commissioners cold-bloodedly murdered nearly every one in sight. One of these killers, Becky Moore's own sister Annie, left a final note that corroborates how she, as Gary Scot and Orwell's Winston Smith, had won a victory over herself. For Annie Moore, this meant simply surrendering to a "Big Brother" named Jones.

"Where can I begin — JONESTOWN — the most peaceful, loving community that ever existed,' wrote Annie, 'JIM JONES — the one who made this paradise possible — much to the contrary of the lies stated about Jim Jones being a power-hungry sadistic, mean person who thought he was God — of all things.

I want you who read this to know that Jim was the most honest, loving, caring concerned person whom I ever met and knew.....His love for humans was insurmountable and it was many of those whom he put his love and trust in that left him and spit in his face....."

Maybe it was that ringing endorsement that transformed older sister, Rebecca, into one of today's most unabashed cult shills. In fact, the other day she told the Palo Alto Daily News the following:

"The larger question that we should ask," claimed Moore, in that beguiling pitch she uses so effectively on an unaware audience, "is what would have happened if relatives or the media hadn't pressured the community? If they had tried different means, would they have succeeded, and would 900 people be alive today?"

THAT is the "larger question"??

Okay, then. It appears the issue of accountability is at last solved. We'll all remember that on tomorrow's anniversary of when a captive group of men, women, children, and babies were annihilated by a Frankenstein in sunglasses.

With a little help from his friends, of course.


Postscript: JONESTOWN ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18, tune into the online WCBM (Baltimore) radio broadcast of "The Les Kinsolving Show", 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time). Les will be joined by both myself and sister Kathleen, as we continue our fight to get the WHOLE story told about Jim Jones and The People's Temple.

Remember, 9 p.m. EST, at URL: WWW.WCBM.COM

Join us and call in with your comments! Talk to you soon.

MSNBC's Jonestown "Witness" Documentary Verdict: PERJURY. And Tonight-- More Of The Same From CNN?

Move over Stanley Nelson. You've got company.

As predicted, MSNBC's "Witness To Jonestown" carried all the earmarks of a Rebecca Moore behind-the-scenes production. One of my readers, "Dave," had this to say about the two-hour program last Sunday:

"I observed all the same criminal omissions. The most glaring being the way they always present the People Temple's accommodation of old people and children as 'humanitarian' and ignore that it was the primary source of income. (California child welfare and social security checks were coming in at the rate of $65,000 per month.)

Moore and her ilk have reduced the label for these destructive, con-games-on-a-massive-scale to the word 'cult' and have then dismissed the word.

She should be ashamed of herself.

As a religious scholar, she needs to know that putting cults and the worship of God on the same plane diminishes religion. Period."

An unquestionably cogent observation, Dave. Bravo.

Unfortunately, however, for a flaming cult apologist like our "religious scholar" Moore, it's next to impossible for her to feel ashamed until she changes her shameless ways.

Becky Moore and husband "Mac" McGehee's San Diego-based "Jonestown Institute" offers up an endless dunghill range of cult apologist propaganda, to any and all gullible individuals, with extra heavy shovel loads for knuckle headed producers, directors, editors, and reporters. To make it truly palatable, Mac & Becky market their message with an insidious concoction of fact & fantasy that works the public like some macabre supermarket tabloid.

They're willing, able, and ecstatic dispensing all the data, just as long as it's spiked with compelling "evidence" promoting all the wonderful, cheery facets of this so-very destructive cult.

And the Moore/McGehee dynamic duo knows exactly how to play such corporate media outfits like MSNBC, so that a nice, sturdy apologist undercurrent will run in the script just enough to chalk up another "mission accomplished."

And so it was with "Witness To Jonestown." One after another of Becky's friends testified to the "bad" as well as the "good" of the Jones Cult. Interesting, though, because Producer Stephen Stept seemed to have not cared less about interviewing a very relevant source named Pat Lynch.


Pat Lynch is a former NBC (as in the corporate chunk that completes MSNBC) Nightly News producer who had prepared a series of reports on the increasingly dangerous People's Temple cult in the months preceding November, 1978.

Last year, with the circulation of Stan Nelson's outrageous People's Temple whitewash ("The Life and Death of Peoples Temple"), Lynch could no longer remain silent. She wrote in the Huffingon Post about NBC's withholding of hours of footage she had produced:

"I didn't realize the extent of the media cover-up," said Lynch, "until I began revisiting these issues 28 years later. How could NBC lose -- or worse, destroy historical footage of an event like Jonestown? Why? And what about my interviews with the people who predicted from firsthand experience what would happen if the Ryan party entered Jonestown? The documentaries aired recently as the anniversary approaches are a revisionist history of the event. 'Lovely people. Tragic story.'

The real story has yet to be told and must be told for at least three reasons. First, there's the matter of accountability for 918 needless deaths. Second, there's the issue of journalistic responsibility. Those who made these fateful decisions at NBC, including former company president Fred Silverman, former NBC News president Les Crystal and NBC lawyers, are still alive. Finally, at a time when the media is criticized for missing the truth about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for its own lack of transparency, telling this story is not only a way to come clean but a cautionary tale for all news organizations."

Come clean, indeed. Not a hopeful scenario as long as media moguls like Fred Silverman continue keeping it all swept under their very dirty little rug.

In addition to Dave's comment about the "Witness" load of half-truths, I received this little invite from one of Mac & Becky's cronies, named "Roger":

"Tom,

I am a family friend of the Moore's (Rebecca and Mac McGehee). I've written many articles on the website and I've invited your father to write an article for the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown website. Trust me, they have NOTHING against you or your father. Recently at our annual gathering in San Diego, I suggested we solicit Les to write an article of his experience....."

Well, Roger, please don't think me ungrateful, but this side of the fence will have to take a rain check. One of the more obvious sticking points is the fact that Rebecca's father, Rev. John Moore, delivered--quite cunningly--the contents of my father's briefcase (containing Temple exposes) to Jim Jones himself in 1975. This was to be my father's last-ditch effort to stop the cult--two entire years before Marshall Kilduff rose from his lazy, negligent duff to finally do his job responsibly. Rebecca, meanwhile, has lied outright about why my father left the San Francisco Examiner, in her apologist magnus opus, "A Sympathetic History of Jonestown: The Moore Family Involvement of People's Temple."

We'll discuss that particular Moore scandal a little later, in all its sordid details.

In the meantime, did anyone out there bother taking up my little wager (in the last posting) on the odds that MSNBC would cover up, distort and serve up a generous serving of half-truths, per the "Jonestown Institute's" schematic?

Payday, folks!

Incredibly, there are other apologists like Moore who continue to sing praises for the "bright side" to The Guyana Gulag That Jim Built. Denise Stephenson, Becky Moore's college roommate, produced the atrocious 2005 book "Dear People: Remembering Jonestown," containing "joyful" letters cult captives frequently were forced to send back to the United States.


Some of the letters in particular raved about the "marvelous" food available at Jonestown. Interesting. What a flagrant contrast to then-12 year-old Tracy Parks's (daughter of slain cult defector Patricia Parks) account of the "People's Temple Agricultural Project."

In a recent interview with the Ukiah Daily Journal--a newspaper that once served as one of the many mouth organs for Jim Jones--Tracy recalled the reality of Jonestown:

"It turned out to be hell on earth," she said. "Once we were there it just finally sunk in and I said, 'Oh my God, I'm going to die here.' We couldn't really get caught talking to each other. Because they knew if you did that you would be planning something."

Diaz [her current married name] said that although the community was advertised as a self-sustainable jungle paradise, that couldn't have been further from the truth.

"My breakfast consisted of rice and milk with bugs in it," she said. "And I joke today that that's how I got my protein. We were just severely malnourished. We found out later it was the rice they fed to the hogs. They would test you periodically. You had to know Chinese, Russian. You had to teach yourself these things. If they asked you something when you were line for food and you didn't know the answer you'd get turned away. It was a constant fear, exhaustion to keep you from rebelling and keep you more able to brainwash, keep you pretty sedate."

Sedated, fearful, and exhausted.

Oh, AND brainwashed,too??

Not a chance--that is, if our renowned Cult Apologist Queen and her pals can help it.

Rebecca Moore and Massimo Introvigne, on an official 2006 visit to the California headquarters of "Unarius," a flying saucer cult. Introvigne is founder and managing director of CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions), as well as a proud director of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula. One of Introvigne's more well-known "scholarly papers" was entitled: "'Brainwashing': Career of a Myth in the United States and Europe."

NOTE: Tonight, Thursday, November 13 (9 p.m. EST), CNN will debut its own Jonestown anniversary special, "Escape From Jonestown." They have disclosed recently the discovery that Jim Jones and his inner circle--including Moore's two sisters, Annie and Carolyn--had been importing cyanide every month into Jonestown, for at least two years before their mass murder of the rest of the cult in 1978.

Of course, the real question is whether CNN, like MSNBC, fell prey to the toxic revisionist charms of Mac & Becky's Jonestown Apologist Institute.

Stay tuned, one and all.

Now The Really Big Question: Will MSNBC Honestly Bear "Witness To Jonestown"?

Tonight, on network television, we're going to once again be served another purported slice of the real story of the People's Temple.

This month, after all, is a banner anniversary--the 30th--of the November, 1978 Jonestown Massacre in a South American jungle. So a retrospect of this so very, very avoidable tragedy is more than appropriate.

The only question, of course, again is: Will our Big Media finally, at long last, tell the whole truth this time? Or will MSNBC's "Witness To Jonestown" special turn out to be just another truncated tale, with the same old media smokescreen covering up their shameless sloth and cowardice that let Jim Jones get away with mass murder?


Even worse, will it be a companion piece to Director Stanley Nelson's scandalous 2006 cult apologist mockumentary, "The Life and Death of Peoples Temple"?

This is not to say it might not have valuable components, featuring credible interviews with survivors, including the very significant ex-Temple insider, Terri Bufurd. But what really concerns me have been some of the remarks by "Witness To Jonestown" producer/writer Stephen Stept.

"And what is a cult anyway?" writes Stept in the MSNBC website, "Even former members disagree on whether that 'four-letter word' applies to Peoples Temple."

Really?

Quite astounding. That's just exactly the bunkum we've been getting for years and years from Official Jonestown Apologist Rebecca Moore.
She's more than qualified for the job, as the sister of two Jonestown mass murderers as well as daughter of one of that "four-letter word's" most ardent propagandists.

"That's a term [cult] we use to describe groups we don't like," Moore told the Sacramento Bee in 2002. "But it's so loaded with negative connotations. If we label something a cult, then we don't make any effort to understand it."

Of course, Professor Becky. She currently uses the San Diego State Univ. Religious Studies Department to promote--not cults, mind you--but what she and her nationwide network of academic cronies like to call "New Religious Movements" (NRM). Scientologists. The Moonies. The Children of God (reported to be child abusers.)

My question is: Who did the Good Professor spend more time lecturing the joys of cult life to, Director Nelson or Producer Stept?

On the other hand, there's always the chance that Stept didn't bother with Rebecca Moore or take seriously her landmark book, "A Sympathetic History of Jonestown," which has countless gems such as, "....Peoples Temple followed a long tradition common to other groups trying to forge a new society."

A long "tradition"? Say, like, attacking five year-old children with cattle prods, and dunking them at the bottom of a well?? Then again, Jim Jones lived and breathed like a good Stalinist, so sure, that would make perfect sense.

So stay tuned tonight, 9:00 p.m. EST, to see if MSNBC finally fesses up the WHOLE story, including how their former San Francisco affiliate station KRON promoted this sadistic cult in the early 1970s, and the way the San Francisco Examiner ran away from Jones and his law suit blustering enforcer, Tim Stoen.

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat is virtually the only newspaper decades later to finally tell the authentic story of the Temple cult's terrorizing of Redwood Valley, California, in the 1960's and early 70's.

Will MSNBC have the guts and honesty to do the same tonight, as the Press Democrat did five years ago with this report?

Peoples Temple:
FRIENDS' WARNINGS IGNORED

by Mike Geniella
Press Democrat

Nov. 16, 2003


Twenty-five years have done nothing to diminish the anger of Brenda Ganatos and Nancy Busch.

The two women still get fighting mad about how Mendocino County officials and the local news media, and later their counterparts in San Francisco, turned a blind eye to the Rev. Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple. Jones arrived in Mendocino County in 1965, and he and his followers quickly infiltrated the local political and government establishments.

Temple members worked at every level of local government, from the Social Services Department to the District Attorney’s Office. Jones was to repeat the pattern on an even grander scale when he moved on to San Francisco in the early 1970s.

“We can live with ourselves today because we know we did everything we could to try and stop this madman,” Ganatos said.

“Frankly, I still don’t understand how all those people who should have been concerned and weren’t can look themselves in the mirror today,” adds Busch.

Ganatos first learned of Jones and his Peoples Temple when some followers from Indiana moved in next door in the late 1960s.

“They were lovely people. I liked them, and helped get them settled,” said Ganatos.

But by 1970, Ganatos began to take note of persistent rumors about misconduct at the Redwood Valley church.

Ganatos went into action after hearing a story about a 4-year-old boy named Tommy. On a “survival training” camping trip, Jones allegedly forced the boy to eat his own vomit after he became ill at dinner.

“That was it. I couldn’t handle any more of these stories without doing something,” Ganatos said.

Ganatos and Busch organized about a dozen friends and co-workers into a group called “Concerned Citizens.”

The group began to plead with local and state law enforcement agencies and government officials to take notice of the many concerns that were being outlined to them by neighbors and former temple members. They included a litany of incidents at Jones’ Redwood Valley church, including armed guards, beatings, sexual abuse and financial wrongdoing.

Ganatos and Busch say they were rebuffed at every level of law enforcement, government, and the news media.

“We were dismissed as busybodies and kooks,” said Ganatos, a retired telephone company supervisor who now lives in Oregon.

Busch, who still lives in her Ukiah home, believes she was frequently put under surveillance by Jones, and said it wasn’t easy to be among the few who were publicly questioning a man so eagerly accepted by community leaders and the local political elite.

“We kept being reminded what good deeds Jones was doing on behalf of the poor and the elderly, and how he was so informed that a local judge decided to name him foreman of the county grand jury,” recalled Busch.

Finally, in 1972, a San Francisco Examiner religion writer — the Rev. Lester Kinsolving — took notice of Ganatos and Busch and their citizens’ group.

Kinsolving, working with an Indiana reporter who also was investigating Jones, soon wrote the first published stories in Northern California about a man he dubbed the “messiah from Ukiah.”

The response from Jones and Temple members was swift. They threw up a picket line around the Examiner building, and Jones’ lawyers threatened legal action. Four more Kinsolving articles were shelved.

It wasn’t until publication in 1977 of a damning article in New West magazine that media attention was revived in Jones and the temple’s surging influence in San Francisco politics.


“By then it was too late. The wheels were already in motion,” said Ganatos.

After the Jonestown mass murder-suicide in 1978, Ganatos and Busch received calls from reporters around the globe inquiring about the information they had gathered.

“It probably wasn’t very smart, but I used to snap at them and say, ‘Where were you then?’” Ganatos recalled.

How about that. These Redwood Valley residents fought to stop the cult LONG before the "Concerned Relatives" ever started making waves. Now what do you think are the odds that you'll hear even one word mentioned tonight, or any night, by our MSNBC about the valiant fight by the "Concerned Citizens"?

I'll predict it may have something do with them being rebuffed by not just all levels of local law enforcement and government, but just by a wild coincidence, our courageous, crusading media!

Anybody taking bets out there??

The horrendous consequences of our law enforcement, government, and media officials doing NOTHING--except backing up Jones as they were all backing away--until it was too late are all too obvious, as much as the disgrace of this California power elite in its attempt to keep it covered up.

Ponder this reality. Be devastated by the unbearable grief in this preview of "Witness To Jonestown." Know that it was all completely preventable.

Then dry your tears. Get angry.

Two Tragic Anniversaries: Will Our Mass Media Still Refuse To Tell The Whole Story?

The frightening sensation of this day, again. Just like it clobbered me the first time and has repeated itself, times seven. The view is now obliterated by horror visions of that long, excruciating day.

Today, the nation mourns the greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster.

I wonder, though, about a certain something. Does anyone think our mass media will give even a fraction of this coverage for the other unspeakable slaughter? You know. The one that was the second greatest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster?


I'm willing to wager that not only will this year's anniversary--the 30th Anniversary--of the Jonestown Massacre get just token attention, but it will be exactly the same wretched slop of half-truths that our distinguished media elites have been serving up since that terrible day, November 18, 1978.

The 9/11 disaster, of course, occurred in a completely different context. Indeed it did. The cause, the scope, repercussions. No question about it.

But one thing that shot alarmingly to the surface (our right-wing, loyal Bush Boosters have done like Dubya and just looked away) was that this horrendous tragedy seven years ago today was entirely preventable. What got in way of wiping out Bin Laden's savages before they struck was the most miserable, bumbling, and corrupt president in American history.

And the other horrendous tragedy, in Guyana? Oh, the thing that has been purposely anchored beneath the surface is that it also was entirely preventable. It, too, featured a miserable and corrupt politician. Left-wing, unlike Bush, but just as vile. In fact, a whole lot of them. Elected officials, such as former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who came out with his autobiography this year. (Brown's fleeting and self-serving "What did I do?" will leave your breathless.) Others, well, they wore editor outfits and preacher suits.

But you don't have to dwell on all of that, any more than you would have to face the truth about 9/11. Just focus on the corporate media's stew of truncated facts and
and self-congratulatory praises, if you feel more comfortable thinking that Jim Jones's mass murder of 276 children and over 700 others was completely unavoidable.

If you don't, then feel free to return here later. I've got much more to share.

If this woman doesn't look familiar, please send your thank-you notes to our media, and an especially loud applause to Mockumentary Wizard Stanley Nelson, director of "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple." Lord Nelson left her completely out, because his "scripted" little tale wouldn't fly so well if his audience learned about Maxine Harpe, the Temple Cult's first murder victim--in California.

Was it just one of those "inconvenient truths", Stan, that compelled you to hide Maxine's story, a woman ruthlessly targeted by Jim Jones years before his Guyana Gulag was even a blueprint??

And guess what: She wasn't the only life to be snuffed out during this brutal cult's California years.

The rest of the story is on the way.

On Celebrating Independence Day--and Forgetting The Lessons of History

Yesterday, on the eve of our nation's 232nd birthday, they released a now-healthy bald eagle near Lake Tohopekaliga, Florida. The proud national bird had been recuperating for the past two months after an apparent fight with another eagle.

Every time I think bald eagle, I recall the story of "Old Abe," the 8th Wisconsin Regiment's mascot during the Civil War that bravely served through 36 battles, including the decisive capture of Vicksburg on our Independence Day in 1863.

The daring "Old Abe" managed to survive the war, despite being repeatedly fired upon by indignant rebel forces. But of course several hundred thousand Americans weren't so lucky. And they were the ones that magnificent bird's namesake called in his Gettysburg Address "these honored dead" that "we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom..."

Freedom. So often such a relative term, depending upon where you might find yourself, and to what authority you're forced to answer to.


Of course, Abraham Lincoln had a decidedly ruthless scorch earth policy when it came to winning the peace for that new birth of freedom, e.g., blocking all medical supplies to the Southern people, locking up anyone he wanted without trial, etc.

Still, I strongly doubt he would have approved of the totalitarian tactics practiced by well-known cultists in peace time, past or present. The most recent news item was the lamentable court decision to return the children to the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) Texas prison farm. Yes, separating children from their mothers can never be easy, yet what is far more agonizing is knowing these children are captives in a horrendously oppressive cult.


Exactly how oppressive is this FLDS "Yearning For Zion Ranch"? Well, here's just a sampling of some of the "privileges" doled out to aspiring saints by now-incarcerated leader Warren Jeffs:

1. Forbidden members to use television sets, VCRs, video games or to have connections to the Internet.

2. Banned boating, fishing and other water activities.

3. Instructed parents to throw away most children's books including the Bible.

4. Terminated community and holiday celebrations, such as observing the birthdays of previous leaders and Pioneer Day.

5. Stopped dances, socials, and other get-togethers.

6. Warned members that laughter causes the spirit of God to leak from their bodies. He based this belief on an obscure statement by Joseph Smith.

7. Expelled many men and reassigned their wives and children to other men.

8. Expelled large numbers of teenage boys from his areas of control in order to artificially increase the ratio of females to males. Only by discharging young males does polygamy become possible.

Tyrannical. Absolutist. Outrageous. And, still, the children were shipped right back into the jaws of the beast.

The "specs" on this particular machine, yeah, might differ from other cult mental meat grinders. Nevertheless, it has all the efficiency of other past and present models.

Santanya, a grand salute as the people keep on keepin' on forgettin' those history lessons...














"Prophet" Jones: "Now if you just had had friends like Herb Caine, John Moore, and Willie Brown, you might be sittin' in the Dallas Housing Authority Chair, Warren--instead of a prison cell!" "Prophet" Jeffs: "....Hey, don't forget Tim Stoen, Jimmy!"

FANATIC NATIONALISTS -- JUST CULTISTS WITH BIGGER GUNS??

Time to rouse the Apologists Alert from hiatus, everyone....and we'll do it with something very special!

There's a whole lot to talk about, with this Mormon Polygamist Cult story still unfolding in Texas (bearing eerie parallels, of course, with some of the perversity that made People's Temple tick.) Brainwashing, coercion, and child abuse, to name a few.


And it's bound to happen that the cult apologists will slither out from under their rocks to sing the Fight Song for those FLDS Wonders. The ACLU--surprise, surprise--has already chimed in. “Children and parents," say the Bold Barristers that once went to bat for child pornographers, "have the right to be together....children may not be separated from their parents based solely on the state’s disagreement with a group’s thoughts or beliefs, religious or otherwise.”

As if it were just that simple. No wonder some of the cult communities around us have literally gotten away with murder.

Speaking of which, it has to be said that the murder tally for political extremist groups, worldwide, has never had to worry that their record will ever be broken. Mass murder, persecution, discrimination--and sometimes the most grotesque ethnic cleansing campaigns have been perpetrated in the name of a "cause" for which they've been conditioned.

And, no matter the cataclysmic outcome, how many thousands, or millions of innocents' lifes destroyed, or even if the "blowback" will haunt them for 50, 100, 500 years--they never learn.

We get a lot of news coverage, especially from the Middle East. But for some odd reason, not all this large-scale cultish savagery has gotten equal time.



Or equal treatment.

Join me at the address below for an intriguing story at the Alert's sister site, would you?

www.incandescentplanetreflections.blogspot.com

38 Years Ago Today: Temple Cult Assassins Devour Their First Victim--In California

The very first victim of Jim Jones's brand of "revolutionary suicide" didn't have her life snuffed out with a force-feeding of cynanide punch. No, turned out it was a hangman's noose.

Daniel remembers that terrible moment being woken up in the middle of the night in his home in Talmage, California. It was March 28, 1970, more than eight years before the cult's mass slaughter in a South American jungle. Maxine Harpe's young son and two daughters discovered their mother's lifeless body in the garage of their house. Their nightmare as cult captives would now go into overdrive.

The Temple's squad of enforcers made certain to conceal all the evidence, so the very cooperative local powers-that-be conveniently glossed it over as a "suicide." There would be five other killings to follow in the cult's "Golden California Years" that proceeded the mass flight to Guyana in 1977.

Like Maxine Harpe, the others all had suspicious deaths. The kind that have "unsolved murder" written all over. Ones which our sterling film maker Stanley Nelson just didn't care a damn about investigating.

Daniel Harpe today remembers life in that "loving church," recalling: "At temple meetings, we were not allowed to talk, go to the bathroom, or fall asleep. Jones said if you got caught chewing gum at a meeting, you were to be automatically thrown into the pool. One day a black man wearing a suit got caught and he got thrown into the pool....There were these men walking around, keeping people awake, and moving people who where talking.

These men also wore guns on their sides....These meetings would go on all night. With locked doors, no one in, no one out. Several nights a week. I saw a grown man pass out and piss all over himself. I would be like a zombie in school each following day--totally out of it."

That wasn't all, either. Daniel was forced to undergo the cult's "kids' survival training", chock-full of generous servings of mental and physical abuse. Surely Daniel is not the sole child survivor today, either. But somehow, that amazing Nelson "documentary" flew blindfolded right over all these details. He just couldn't be bothered with the trivial matter of all the abused and battered children, like Daniel, who managed to survive the horror.

Then again, one has to understand that Nelson is a true believer in achieving a sparkling whitewash of any and all unsavory, incompatible realities that would stunt his landmark docuganda.

But don't worry, Stan. We'll be happy to address all the ever-widening chasms in your credibility. Coming up next time is more about Daniel's ordeal and the brutality carried out against his doomed mother.

Maybe one day Mr. and Mrs. Nelson (his writer) will offer up confessions on why so many film makers behave no different than the armada of morally bankrupt politicians currently running this country into ruin.

The Cult Apologists Parade Continues--With Drum Major J. Gordon Melton

And the question remains: How do these cult psychopaths continue scoring goals, capturing and enslaving souls, with cash registers swelling with fresh cash??

A reader calling himself "Vannevar Bush" (there was a famous American scientist of the same name, but he's been dead for close to 25 years) offers up an interesting theory. While I'm not sure about his contention that every family ultimately leaves all their wealth to the church, he has some unquestionably peppery insights:

"There is a very organic, very fundamental reason," wrote Bush, "why psychopaths will always (ALWAYS) be free to plunder and abuse within the confines of the church:

In May 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estate General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred clergy. The Second Estate, three hundred nobles. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years later, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, 'Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.'

There is a reason why the clergy holds the position of the "first estate." And it has nothing to do with divine authority.

Sooner or later, every family leaves its wealth to the church. Sooner or later, the church inherits it all. Some old heir decides to leave it to the diocese, and not the nieces and nephews. Sooner or later, it always happens.

And that is the reason that professional religious academics look the other way when they break out the brainwashing and the homicides. That is the reason why cults are tolerated. Why the rape of a congregation by a gifted huckster is always protected. Celebrated even.

Were it not for the flavor aide, Jones would still be celebrated by the religious academics. Because he understood how to butter the bread.

Simple as that, Serpico."


Serpico, eh?

Yeah, well, considering the depravity of the legions of these "professional religious academics", a Serpico-strength investigation and public hearing on their corrupt alliance with cults is long overdue. But considering the track record of our chronically self-serving, mushy headed media, don't count on breaking news anytime soon. Just more of the same predictable fluff. And the same tired old cover up.

Cult Apologists, Inc. can be found all over the map. Go crisscross the nation, and the Atlantic, to see them perform, usually under the bright lights of a university stage. The cast includes:


Nancy Ammerman


Philip Arnold







Eileen Barker








David Bromley






J. Gordon Melton

Ah, a grand pause for the highly provocative Mister Melton. The Gallery of Notorious Cult-coddlers has still more mugs to present, but for now give J. Gordo some well-earned basking in the spotlight.

It's the least we can do for the one they call "The Father of Cult Apologists."

He's received this honor for serving as perhaps the most brazen faced cult shill in the universe, for groups ranging from those star-studded Scientologist parasites all the way down to Aum Shinrikyo terrorists. That's right, Aum, the same gang that unleashed the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on a Tokyo subway, murdering 12 people and injuring over 5,000.

Among Melton's close associates is another gusting cult apologist that runs her racket as a religious studies professor at San Diego State University.

My guess is that Rebecca Moore is rightly inspired by her colleague's exploits, which help fuel her own wildly ruthless campaign to dress up the most murderous cult in American history. The finer details of Becky's (and father John) shockingly corrupt rendition of the People's Temple are yet to come.

Today, however, let us give the Father of Apologists his due. The following report comes courtesy of cult expert Rick Ross, who has the blessed knack for leaving no slime-encrusted stone unturned. Among other things, we're reminded of our Big Media's incurable habit of bedding down with any apologist hustler on the block.

In the next posting, you'll learn about one man's chilling account of what life was like as one of the child captives of the People's Temple during its Redwood Valley years. Stanley Nelson covered up all the child torture in his celebrated "documentary," which the Big Media--surprise, surprise--let him get away with.

Just like they did for so long, with a certain mass murderer named Jim Jones.

Now sit back and hear this expose of Melton, who claims that the Jones cult was "a respectable, mainline Christian group.”

Los Angeles Times Promotes “Cult Apologist” Recommended By Scientology

By Rick Ross
Cult News

April 13, 2006

According to Los Angeles Times staff writer Louis Sahagun, J. Gordon Melton is “eternally curious,” has an “encyclopedic mind” and “is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on religion.” Scientology, which has recommended Melton as a “religious resource," would certainly endorse the reporter’s view.

But serious journalists have often found Melton’s expertise a bit biased to say the least and he has been called a ”cult apologist.”

The 64-year-old Melton was apparently using the article to tout his ”Encyclopedia of American Religions,” a boring book that weighs about seven pounds and retails for $320.00.

But don’t expect to find weighty research within his creation, at least not anything that the groups listed don’t want the general public to know.

There seems to be something like a “quid pro quo” understanding between Melton and groups frequently called “cults,” which is essentially that he won’t write up anything they don’t like.

For example, you won’t find out about the Scientology belief in space aliens and how that’s linked to pesky little critters the controversial church calls “body thetans,” because Melton’s “encyclopedic mind” doesn’t allow such information to leak out, at least not to the public.

Note this short study by Melton about Scientology. He doesn’t even mention the mythical Xenu, who 75 million years ago sent billions of beings to earth that still haunt us.

Melton could easily add a page or two about the legendary galactic overlord within his 1,250-page book, but Scientology wouldn’t like that.

Maybe its cost and/or the questionable quality of his research that makes the ranking of his book so low at Amazon.com. Melton’s encyclopedia has at times been listed below 500,000, though the LA Times article gave it a bump up recently.

Melton is not known for meaningful analysis about what he calls “new religions.” The itinerant academic doesn’t appear all that “curious” when it comes to the darker side of groups more commonly called “cults.”

Perhaps that’s why many of those same groups have paid Melton hefty fees to help them out with a friendly book, or as an “expert witness” and “consultant.”

The part-time teacher and library worker lionized within the LA Times, basically is known to reiterate whatever “cults” want and/or need for him to say.

However, first he attempted to sell himself as a resource to “help” those working against “cults,” but for “$5,000.00,” to expose the “soft underbelly” of cults because he was “convinced that such groups cannot stand the light of day.”

But later Melton found that the real money lay on the other side of the ”cult” question.

J.Z. Knight, a purported “cult” leader who claims she channels the spirit of a 35,000-year-old dead general from the lost continent of Atlantis, had no problem getting Melton to take her seriously. She paid him to write a book for her titled "Finding Enlightenment: Ramtha’s School of Ancient Wisdom."

And after Scientology lawyers bankrupted the Cult Awareness Network, they gave that organization’s files to Melton, who subsequently went through them before he eventually handed them over to UC Santa Barbara.

Melton has often collaborated with Scientologists and was also recommended as a “religious resource” by so-called “new Cult Awareness Network” essentially controlled by Scientology.

The librarian/author seems eager to help “cults” whenever he can.

Once he flew all the way to Japan to defend the cult Aum, right after it released poison gas within Tokyo’s subway system murdering twelve. While thousands of victims were being rushed to hospitals Melton came to the rescue, of the cult that is.

Melton’s traveling companions were James Lewis, another “religious resource” recommended by Scientology and Los Angeles attorney Barry Fisher, recommended by the “new Cult Awareness Network.” The trio’s expenses were paid for by the Japanese cult.

The Washington Post reported that the three Americans pronounced the subway gassing cult “innocent of criminal charges and…a victim of excessive police pressure.”

This remains a profound embarrassment for Melton, since Aum was ultimately proven guilty by overwhelming evidence and its leaders are now sentenced to death

Melton’s insists otherwise, “We concluded that there was a high likelihood that the groups’ leaders had done what they were accused of,” he told Sahagun at the LA Times.

It appears that Sahagun didn’t take the time to Google Melton, or he doesn’t care about such research search results.

Cult News thinks the Washington Post got it right and the LA Times apparently was taken in by Melton’s spin.

For a “scholar,” Gordon Melton often seems indifferent regarding historical facts.

Jim Jones was responsible for the cult mass murder-suicide of more than 900 people in Jonestown November 18, 1978. However, Melton says, “This wasn’t a cult. This was a respectable, mainline Christian group.”

Melton most often completely dismisses or ignores the testimony of former cult members that he calls “apostates.”

Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of the University of Haifa noted, “In every single case since the Jonestown tragedy, statements by ex-members turned out to be more accurate than those of apologists and NRM researchers…It is indeed baffling…the strange, deafening, silence of [such scholars]…a thorny issue…like the dog that didn’t bark… should make us curious, if not outright suspicious.”

Is Gordon Melton and example of a silent scholar, or perhaps more like a “silent partner”?

Melton was prominently mentioned within a confidential memo written and distributed by Jeffery Hadden. This memo has been cited as a kind of “smoking gun,” regarding the tacit cooperation of like-minded “cult apologists” within academia cooperation in a kind of network.

Within that memo the now deceased Hadden cited Melton’s importance and willingness to cooperate in an organized effort, which would hopefully be funded by “cults,” to essentially quell criticism about them.

Hadden said, “We recognize that Gordon Melton’s Institute is singularly the most important information resource in the US, and we feel that any new organization would need to work closely with him.”

More recently Melton was exposed for receiving a specious gift, or what looked like a possible payoff, from a notorious group once known as the “Children of God” (COG) now called “The Family.” The purported “cult” taught its members to sexualize their minor children and encouraged women to become “hookers for Christ.”

Melton apparently hooked $10,000.00 for his so-called “International Religious Directory,” a pet project he runs.

Melton was exposed by Moving On.org, a Web site created by young adults that were raised within COG, but have left the group and formed a support network through the Internet.

Their Web site made public a portion of a 2000 IRS disclosure document filed by a charity linked to COG listing Melton as a recipient of a $10,000.00 gift.

Sahagun didn’t report about the cash Melton has received, but did find the space to discuss Melton’s “fascination with vampires.” The supposed scholar once was paid to testify in court about “vampire and werewolf relationships.” An attorney that worked with Melton lauded his ability to recall examples off the top of his head.

Maybe that’s because just such a relationship has become J. Gordon Melton’s stock in trade?

Melton markets himself to groups often seen as something like werewolves in sheep's clothing, and he feeds on the misery they create much like a vampire.


And now, please say "gooooot eeeeevening" to Mr. J. Gordon Melton, President of the American chapter of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula, as he prepares for another feeding with gal pal "Elvira" (Princess of the Dark).

Bloody good work, Count.

Question: Active Cults--STILL the best place for psychopaths to dabble??

The marvel of Internet publishing. Who could have imagined 50 years ago the extraordinary freedom everyone now has to connect with the rest of the world?

One of the greatest achievements of the Information Interstate is the demolition of that constrained little world once ruled by self-serving corporate media hacks. For too long, too many of them were corrupted by the power they used to extinguish the corrupt. For too long, this unelected congress of the Fourth Estate dictated the agenda and created their own version of reality.

Like the Newseum, there's more than enough "reality" exhibits to fill up a temple. We could call it, oh, how about "The People's Temple II: Media Atrocities".

At last, this is a real Global Village, with an unfettered 24-hour marketplace of ideas. Now the public can truly interact and become empowered. Big Media Punditry can go furrow their highbrows, and get over it.

And when it comes to village interactions, some are downright luminescent enough to earn a trip from comments section to center stage. This was a recent exchange I had with "Anonymous" reader:

T.K. ".....That's one thing never to be underestimated in the macabre Alice In Wonderland world of the cult apologists: their talent for creative, endless self-delusions--which they want to share generously with an unsuspecting public.

Your first reference of course alludes to the classic "Animal Farm," by one of history's greatest prophet-writers, George Orwell. Comrade Jones would go on and on and on about racial equality and integration, yet oddly enough the little Stalinist's spiritual politburo ("The Planning Commission") was about as Lily White as a pre-civil rights Mississippi county board.

And double the level of evil.

True, also, is the fact that the "free enterprise" exploitation that Jones himself exploited for his own megalomaniacal mission still goes on, e.g., witness the human cost of today's "Globalization."

But Barnum, like Orwell, has been proven correct time and again. The suckers keep on falling for the charades, political, religious, or otherwise. Take a good look at all the hollow, hackneyed rhetoric spewed about by so many of the current candidates hoping to succeed the unquestioned worst president in our history (whose hollow, hackneyed rhetoric makes all else refreshingly poetic.)


Becky Moore and Massimo Introvigne, prominent cult apologists at large.
They're posing at a flying saucer cult's "Star Map" (not making this up.)
Click on "Becky & Massi's Space Cadets" for more info and entertainment.

The day will come, my friend, when that apologist barn door will suddenly spring open and all those chickens will come home to roost.

Cluck, cluck."


Anonymous: "Active cults are still the best place for psychopaths to dabble in their most evil and cruel tortures..."

Scientology high priest Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, who, shall we say, made more than a million clams...

"...all behind a cloak of spiritual open-mindedness. A few apologists still singing the songs and making the bliss ninny noises thirty years after the thing was tragically shut down is just a curious side show. Not a thing of any consequence.

Some of those apologists lost daughters. Sisters. Nephews. They have paid. But they failed to learn what they ought to have learned. Now they teach about "new religions." They let the family members of the modern day recruits suffer the same fate that they suffered.

They've condemned others to suffer the same tragic loss. And there are your chickens."

Warm-and-Fuzzy Cultist Cruise: One good round of sofa boogie and he'll make things perfectly "clear".

"Roosting on the families of all those concerned relatives connected with all the kids in all those groups currently being tracked by Rick Ross and Steve Hassan.

As regards Mr. Orwell, most of us read him and took heed of his dire (and completely accurate) warnings. Others - like Jones and Koresh and Father Divine read his warnings like a blueprint. Like a get rich quick scheme.

The People's Temple criminal enterprise, and others like it, don't just grow up out of the ground. They are crafted and carefully orchestrated.

That lily-white planning commission was discussing the intricacies of setting the trap, controlling the people and stealing their money from day one."

"Anonymous" later gave this afterthought:

"P.S. There is a very conscious reason why I post anonymously. I never wanted a cult in my life. I didn't want it. And when it came, I did not welcome it. My argument is now, and always was, that there are a few minor adjustments that the cult needs to make, and I will simmer down. Open up your books. Stop using brainwashing techniques - giving kids a diet of coca cola until they are so protein deficient they can't think straight. Stuff like that. But of course I was ignored.

So I use the Internet and I use this forum to voice opposition.

But I don't want it in my life. I consciously choose to not do the brave thing that Les Kinsolving did. I chose to stay in the background - fuming. But not making myself a target. These are nasty people, and they don't play nice. And I don't need it in my life.

So I come here, and I voice my opinion, and I speak my truth, and I don't leave my name, and the guy in the next cube doesn't even know I have an opinion. And that is exactly the way I want it. And frankly, I think my right to privacy is respected in our little Republic, and protected. So I'll sign off 'Anonymous' -- again."

It's prudent to be especially vigilant of the right to privacy, in light of the Bush Regime's methodical shredding of our civil liberties. Meanwhile, we suffer with the other plague, destructive cults--lead by their apologist cheerleaders--that continue ruthlessly exploiting "religious rights" in order to rob people of their cognitive, financial, and spiritual freedoms.

The battle rages.

Division And Controversy Roils Construction of Jonestown Memorial Wall

Dr. Jynona Norwood with son, the Rev. Ed Norwood, at Jonestown Memorial Service, Evergreen Cemetery, where controversial wall is planned.

Before sharing the inside story of a People's Temple child who would lose his mother to the cult in California--long before the cyanide mass murder in Guyana--I'd like to share this most recent message from Lela Howard, subject of the last posting.

She first asked me some direct questions, and then followed up with some even more pointed inquiry and outright criticism of the current status quo of the memorial wall project. First, her questions to me:

Q: "Are you concerned with the victims and how their families feel about Peoples Temple, the media's spin on the tragedy and how we (family) have been treated over the years?"

A: Quite obviously I am concerned, and that is why this blog came to be. I'm both saddened and outraged. Sad for the men, women, and children that fell victim to cult enslavement, one of those super destructive cults that resulted in mass murder. The media's "spin", as I've repeatedly said, is deceptive and deplorable. They owe you a voice, not a twisted echo.

Q: "Are you concerned about those family and survivors who are still so afraid to speak about Peoples Temple or their relatives who perished, because of the salacious, scandalous manner the media, press, etc., has made a joke out of the deaths?"

A: Any of them, from bottom feeding shock jocks like Howard Stern to glib, ignorant news reporters, who would make "fun" out of a mass murder, deserve censure. This is why it is so important to educate the public about the dynamics of how cults DESTROY independent spirit, thought, action, and defenseless children.

Q: "Are you more concerned with getting those who disassociated themselves after giving Jim Jones the power to create Jonestown, acquire the poison and allow him to rise to 'fame'? Because if so, those individuals are still around the political circuit and have not (to my knowledge) answered the tough questions. (Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they never fathomed the horrors of November 18, 1978 and probably feel loads of guilt.)"


Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown reacted to the news of the mass murder of over 900 people that "he has not regrets" over his past association with Jones and the People's Temple. Brown also mentioned he would not try to dissociate himself like so many other politicians were, claiming "They all like to say, 'Forgive me, I was wrong', but that's bulls--t. It doesn't mean a thing now, it just isn't relevant."

A: Such a sizable, sleazy population of culprits, Lela. Temple Untouchables like politician Willie Brown, preacher John Moore, and Examiner editor Charles Gould played important parts in the reckless creation of the Jim Jones Frankenstein. All the cult cheer leaders still with us clearly have neither the morality or courage to publicly admit to their aiding & abetting. They refuse to apologize to you, and all the other relatives who lost their loved ones. Don't let them forget that you know they're still hiding in their vast swamp of denial.

Lela then opened up about the impending memorial wall, and some deep concerns (which today's media, surprise, surprise--has ignored.)

"A memorial wall at Oakland cemetery is great!" she wrote, "But I thought money was collected for that many years ago--what happened to those funds? It seems as if there's an unnecessary competition in regards to memorials for the victims, which takes away from the focal point of remembering them.

This makes me very sad and confused, because this separates us or leans towards a school yard 'choosing sides' type of mentality, instead of family and survivors coming together and honoring our loved ones. It's more about the living and their egos, rather than those who perished...very, very, very sad.

The latter I understand you can't answer, or maybe you can....ask around, use your platform to correct the wrong and continuous wrong doings."

The current wall project is being administered by the "Cherishing The Children/Guyana Tribute Foundation," headed by Dr. Jynona Norwood, who is CEO. Norwood, pictured at the beginning of this post, lost 27 family members in the massacre.

"Although the donations have come in slowly over the years," says Norwood on her official website, "the monies, which remain in escrow for the Cherishing the Children Healing Memorial Wall,
still continue to gain interest. Senator Dianne Feinstein appointed the late police psychologist, Dr. Chris Hatcher, to the surviving families for counseling.

Dr. Hatcher became the first signature on the memorial wall bank account, along with former Human Rights Commissioner, Rev. Eugene Lumpkin. Rev. Lumpkin was appointed by then-Mayor Frank Jordan as our liaison to San Francisco City Hall. Dr. Hatcher and Rev. Lumpkin joined me as we opened the Jonestown Memorial Wall Fund with our own money.

We have always had four signatures on our bank account. Also, it is mandatory that two signatures are required in order to remove any funds from the account. The Jonestown Memorial Wall Fund account is always available for public viewing.

We are not a part of any other groups who are collecting monies for any type of memorial in the name of the Jonestown victims.

The staff remains vigilant in their efforts to erect the wall, which will have a three-fold purpose: To honor the sanctity of the innocent lives that were lost; to raise public awareness that you never give up your ability to think for yourself; and to question everyone and everything!"

Grieving Relative of Jonestown Victim Wants Those Responsible To "Pay For Their Treacherous Ways"

Of all the Big Media, the most noxious right-wing ideologues are those talking blockheads at "Faux" News. After their amazing partisan performance in 2000's Presidential Installment Circus, there was absolutely no doubting it: Rupert Murdoch's raging Republican mouthpiece had won the crown as The American BBC ("Bush Broadcasting Corporation".)

Such is--in the words of that supreme faux, Blathering Bill O'Reilly--the talking point of the above portrait of an ersatz "Live" report of the massacre taking place on their watch.

Sensational, false, and harmful; this is the "entertainment/ratings at ANY COST" nature of news that so much of our mainstream media has degenerated today. But the past, it turned out, was merely the calm before this storm. At that time, the problem was too often lazy, slipshod, or sleeping-on-the-job journalism. All of this helped produce Jonestown, a tragedy of epic proportions, the accountability (of silence) from which nearly all these media groups run.

But leave it to Fox News to be probably the only Big Media group to actually offer any coverage on the 29th anniversary this year. Of course, they stuck to the typical formula glimpse at the People's Temple cult. Their "Line Up" show host asked Jonestown survivor Thom Bogue about the "changes in Jim Jones", which he might have noticed "in Guyana".

In Guyana?? So, in other words, St. James really actually wasn't all that bad in those years preceding his escape to Guyana in 1977? Interesting, how easily Big Media has developed amnesia over Jones's fraud, extortion, unsolved killings, and child torture that went on all those years in California. They're real adept, though, when it comes to hammering politicians running away from other large and small private & public scandals, aren't they?

Bogue did manage to tell Fox about the "punishments" at Jonestown, which he said became "more intense" (which should have prompted the reporter to ask about all the others in the past.) He talked about what the cult called the "Green Eyed Monster", an electro-shock treatment machine used to torture children, one of which was as young as four years.

Too bad Fox lacked the integrity to ask about the "Blue Eyed Monster" torture, a ghastly practice carried out on the cult's children during its California years. This one involved sending terrified small children into dark rooms, where Jones's thugs would convulse them with cattle prods. No, reporters like Marshall Kilduff and others were too busy pursuing Jones "early and often" at City Hall to be bothered with such "unsubstantiated" matters.

This, then, is the first of the Top Ten Talking Points to present in the spirit of the ritual end-of-the-year round up. But there's something very important that belongs with with Point #10.

It is an appeal for the still long overdue accountability. By someone who understandably still suffers for the terrible, senseless loss of her loved one at Jonestown. For others, it might be two, five, or even twenty-five lost relatives.

While I don't agree with everything Lela Howard says in this letter sent to my father last November, there is much that touches me, much that rings true. Yes, there were many well-meaning people that were a part of People's Temple, that were lured in by Jim Jones's call for "spiritual redemption" and "social justice." Many of them, I'm sure, did not outright participate in the crimes ordered by Jones's little politburo, but rather were victims of it.

Victims of thought reform. Mind control. Brain washing. Call it what you will. Cult apologists like Becky Moore and Mac McGhee desperately want to dismiss this, by perverting reality and revising history. They won't succeed.

The Greek statesman Demosthenes once said: "Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true."

Here, then, is the voice of one of the many, many grieving. She'd like, among other things, to confront all those that aided and abetted Jim Jones while he marched over 900 men, women, and children into the hell of cult captivity, and slaughter.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Mr Les Kinsolving:

My aunt died that horrible day in Jonestown and last year I found her picture on the 'Who Died' list on Mac and Becky's website. They have allowed me to voice my thoughts about growing up listening to the awful comments about my aunt, which no other format exists to do so. I decided to contact you after reading your son's blog, speaking harshly about them. The frown on my face won't disappear until I hit the send button. I can't understand how or why the good they've done is being twisted.

I am not contacting you to debate, but simply to be a voice for my aunt. She did not deserve to die. Her name does not deserve to be defined as one of those 'drinking the Kool-aide' crazy people.

Yes, there are many who should step forward and explain their roles in the deaths, but as you know, that's not going to happen. Yes, I would like to know the names of those responsible. Yes, I would like to confront them and ask 'Why?' Yes, I would like them to pay for their treacherous ways.

But most important to me is to let the world(i.e., you, your son, the media,
educators, etc.) know that Mary Pearl Willis was my aunt. She deserves to be here today living her life, having Sunday dinners with her family, getting old and gray.

Unfortunately, she lays six feet under a sealed lead casket, identified as 'Body #71-E and a Member of the People's Temple' by the State Department. Her identity has has been taken from her and it is used to take jabs at others, not giving thought to how her family feels as we approach another year marking the day she ascended into heaven.

Why not write about how survivors and families have been made to feel ashamed? How we've been treated as their lives didn't matter? Forced to see biased movies, showing our loved ones as anything other than human? Stanley and Tim's movies are the closest it comes to showing them as individuals, see it from that point of view. I can't make you do it, but for one moment think how good it felt to see a project showing my aunt as a human being and not a robot.

If you or your son are willing to hear a different perspective, contact me. I would love to end the 'Hatfields vs. McCoys' type of blogging and explain how it feels to not have the massacre taught in schools as a part of history. Personally, I have contacted schools asking to have it added and will continue to pursue this until it's done.

Every interview I've given before the cameras roll, I make the reporters promise not to say 'suicide,' because it was murder! The latest projects are the first to show that, don't you think that's great? It's educating people about facts, instead of the spoon-fed fiction for nearly 30 years. With your voice, help educate, getting the facts out about that horrible day.

How much longer can fingers be pointed? Let's get on the same page. You've called out the ones who did wrong--now let's talk about getting the media to spread the truth.

Sincerely,

Lela Howard


Agreed, Lela: Let those responsible for backing Jim Jones step forward and face the music. If they don't, then we'll just give 'em a bugle blast warning and charge right in. I understand the part about Stanley Nelson's film humanizing the members of the Temple, which it certainly does and should. The problem with Nelson is his appalling dishonesty in telling the WHOLE story of the People's Temple. He deliberately rearranged, embellished, and outright deleted so many facts that it devolved into an insidious patchwork of cult apologist half-truths.

Of course, it surely exceeded the wildest dreams of our friends at the "Jonestown Institute", didn't it, Mac and Becky??

Okay, okay....you can stop applauding now.

In the next post, the year's Talking Point #9 will feature the exclusive story told of a former cult member who'll describe what it was like to be a child in the People's Temple during its Redwood Valley, California years, a time where Nelson was quoted claiming the Temple "shared a lot of love."

A "lot of love"? More importantly for this boy, and his sisters, was the probability that cult operatives had murdered his mother.

Now try and guess just exactly how much screen time Scrupulous Stanley offered for this little tidbit of background on that "loving, activist" period of Rev. Jones's Apostolic Socialist Experiment.

Stay tuned.

Jonestown Anniversary Gets Near-Universal Blackout--By The Same Media That Largely Condoned People's Temple Terror

A week ago this day they gathered, as they've done on the same date each passing year of the cataclysm, to mourn what was so utterly avoidable.

The lonely tombstone on an Oakland hillside stands watch over the 400 murder victims resting in the mass grave. For too many years, it has been essentially ignored by the Big Media. This year appears to be little different than most of the rest.


Many, if not most, of those in this mass grave are the children and babies slaughtered in one of the worst cult crimes in history. But on this, the 29th anniversary, a dramatic difference unfolded. Members of a group calling themselves the Guyana Memorial Wall Project were holding a ceremony, in which they did more than light a candle for each of the children and read off their names.

They announced, at long last, that a memorial wall--featuring a special dedication written by famed poet Maya Angelou--is finally going up in Evergreen Cemetery.

The project's executive director, Jynana Norwood, suffered the unspeakable loss of 27of her closest relatives, including her mother. “Our wall is in the spirit of others whose lives were lost due to hate or ignorance," said Norwood, citing the Jewish Holocaust, African slave trade, Vietnam War, and other modern-day tragedies.

Norwood added that this memorial "will honor the children and others, who were victimized by Jim Jones, including Congressman Leo Ryan and the UPI news crew. We will donate a percentage of the funds to help educate any child that wants to attend college or a technical school. Our focus is for the future.”

What, readers? You mean you DIDN'T HEAR A WORD OF COVERAGE about this event last week??

Oh, well, a few of you were lucky enough to catch one of the two local TV news broadcasts, or even unearth this story from an online edition of the Black newspaper, New Pittsburgh Courier.

But for the vast public they supposedly are to keep informed, our Big Media once again has deliberately fumbled the ball. Just as they did in prostrating themselves before Jim Jones in the 60's and early 70's, until those publishers and editors regrew their backbones, and exposed his destructive cult--too little, too late.

Yes, they'll likely oblige a bit of perfunctory coverage on next year's magic number 30 anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, especially if this wall is finished and officially dedicated. But don't expect the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, or any of the broadcast networks to give you any thing different than the same old fabricated slop they claim was the Rise and Fall of People's Temple.


Especially now that they've championed Director Stanley Nelson's cinematic apologia that impresses viewers with all the "good things" about that cult nightmare, that none of us really could fully appreciate until Stan's editing wizardry was showcased.

Nelson, like the reckless, irresponsible media directors that ushered into power Miracle Man Jim Jones, has been gullible enough to swallow all the fairy tales from cult-friendly sources.

His primary fountain of disinformation is Rebecca Moore, head of the "Jonestown Institute," who does a magnificent job of fusing truth and fiction when doling out "the facts" about People's Temple, Jonestown, and cults in general. But the "C" word is absolutely verboten around Becky; no, cults--even the most destructive--must be dolled up in palatable terms: "New Religious Movements".

But let's not give Prof. Moore ALL the credit. She's got lots of friends, such as her two equally flaming cult apologists, Douglas Cowan and Catherine Wessinger. The three of them produce "Nova Religio," a Univ. of California Press journal purporting to give "scholarly interpretations and examinations of alternative religious movements."

Certainly. "Scholarly interpretations" much like those planted throughout Moore's (and husband "Mac" McGehee) website, such as the statement about "mixed reports" on conditions at the Guyana Gulag. "Work was hard, and as Jones seemed to grow more paranoid, never-ending," she concedes in her FAQ section. Then Moore tosses in this clever little canard: "...At the same time, however, audiotapes the community made of its own meetings reveal a sense of camaraderie, laughter, good times, and high purpose."

A "sense" of "good times"?

It's a shame that film maker Nelson was too lazy to consult with some ethical, genuine expert sources on cult social psychological dynamics, especially after Moore spoon fed him all this hogwash.

Dr. Moss David Posner, for instance, could have easily provided an antidote for Nelson's subsequent delusion. An excerpt from Posner's paper entitled, "How to Control Americans--Thought Control, Mind Control, Disinformation, and Other Naughty Things":

"Have you ever asked yourself—-how on earth can he or she believe such-and-such a story? Sometimes we are not even sure if a speaker, or news commentator, or whoever—actually believes what they are saying. The truth of the matter, however, is often more subtle:

There are degrees of awareness; and in those cases where we know that what we are hearing is patently absurd or indefensible, that speaker may have started by knowing better; but over a period of time, by virtue of their motivation, known or unknown, they have come to be convinced otherwise....

.....Consider the song from 'The King and I:'

'Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect
--I’m afraid.'

Later on, we hear:

'The result of this deception
Is very strange to tell
For when I fool the people I fear
I fool myself as well.'

Please take this very seriously. Several years ago there was a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The customers were taken hostage and held for several days, clearly against their will. Days later when the authorities came subsequently to rescue the hostages, not only did they not welcome the police, but many of them actually threw themselves in front of the robbers in an attempt to shield them from being killed in a hail of bullets. This phenomenon is recognized as “The Stockholm Syndrome.”

It was I believe the film “Bridge over the River Kwai,” in which the leader of a British force captured by the Japanese is ordered to build a bridge. At first, with resistance, then with reluctance, he begins to build the bridge. By the time the Allied forces come to rescue him and his men, he was at the point of attacking his allies in order to defend his creation. In one dramatic moment, he looks squarely at the camera and says, with quiet horror, 'My God! What have I done?'

On a wider scale, we see this behavior in the success of cults. On the other hand, cutting off a person from the outside world, constantly and repetitively indoctrinating them, and accompanying this with threats of social group disapproval on the one hand, and loving acceptance based upon obedience, on the other, can drastically change a person’s behavior changed in a chillingly short period of time."

And if simple mind-control didn't complete the enslavement of those at Jonestown, besides the menacing armed guards, "Dad" Jim employed drugs to ensure the continuation what Becky Moore points to as not only "good times", but a "high purpose."

Yes, "high" would be one way to describe conditions at Jonestown. According to one of the post-massacre reports from the S.F. Examiner, entitled "How Jones Used Drugs," surviving Temple defector Dale Parks recalled:

"If a person wanted to leave Jonestown or if there was a breach of rules, one was taken to the extended-care unit," he explained. "It was a rehabilitation place, where one would be re-integrated back into the community. The people were given drugs to keep them under control."

After a few days or weeks, Parks said, the patients lost their desire to leave the commune and no further behavioral problems were anticipated.

Asked about the use of drugs for brainwashing, Parks said, "It is a reasonable assumption that such went on in the extended-care unit."

The report ends with a chilling list of the drugs cult enforcers used to ensure--as Moore claims--"camaraderie":

The following are examples from a partial inventory that has been independently authenticated by law enforcement sources.

1. Thorazine (chlorpromazine), 10,000 injectable doses and 1,000 tablets in a size normally given only "for severe neuropsychiatric conditions." The drug acts "at all levels of the central nervous system." It is effective for the "management of the manifestations of psychotic disorders" and for control of the manic depressive.

2. Quaaludes, 1,000 doses of the sedative-hypnotic drug frequently used in suicide attempts.

3. Vistaril, 1,000 doses. Used for total management of anxiety, tension and psycho motor agitation; can render the disturbed patient more amenable to psychotherapy in long-term treatment of neurotics and psychotics.

4. Noludar, 1,000 pills. A sleeping aid that produces both physiological and psychological dependence. Moderate overdoses can produce delirium and confusion; large overdoses, stupor leading to coma.

5. Valium injectable, 3,000 doses. Useful in treating neurotic states manifested by tension, anxiety, apprehension, fatigue, depressive symptoms or agitation.

6. Valium tablets, 2,000. An overdose of Valium in either form tends to make suicidal patients more likely to make a death attempt.

7. Morphine sulphate, injectable, 200 vials. This strong pain killer can be habit-forming and have complex psychological effects.

8. Demerol, 20,000 doses. A narcotic analgesic, it should be used with great caution and has multiple reactions similar to those of morphine.

9. Talwin, 1,150 doses. Similar to Demerol in morphine-like actions. The drug has a history of creating psychological and physical dependence.

10. Seconal, 1,000 pills. An extremely dangerous sedative and hypnotic that can be habit-forming. Must be used under medical supervision.

So, if a week-long stint in one of the cult's wooden "punishment boxes" (where children were sent, as well) didn't produce a "good times were had by all" attitude, then forcing a cultist to get wasted on multiple hits of Demerol or Quaaludes surely would.

What is so absolutely reprehensible is that anyone would seriously promote the "positive" sides of the People's Temple, be it the cult's California years or its hellish final phase in Guyana. For Becky Moore, and for that matter, her disgraceful father, Rev. John Moore, maintaining this charade is obviously their way of coping with two family members--Carolyn and Annie--that were cult enforcers and, in the end, executioners of the children that lie under that tombstone today in Evergreen Cemetery.

Jynana Norwood had the courage and wisdom to resist the cult, and at least rescue her son, instead of degenerating into a Temple apologist and pathological liar.

She might consider, however, before handing out educational grants from the Guyana Memorial Project, that all recipients have in their required courseload, a class that will teach all the danger signs of destructive cults.

That, of course, would be the prerequisite to the other mandatory course:

Confronting the Cult Apologist Plague on the College Campus.

Remembering The Victims Of The Cult Crime Of The Century

Yesterday I spent part of my afternoon with friends in a joy-filled, nourishing park called Cordornices, in the lush hills of Berkeley, California, where I had grown up in the sixties and early seventies. Now, as then, children frolicked on that wondrous cement slide built into a hillside sheltered by a magnificent oak tree. In all my childhood outings, I have remembered this slide as one of the all-time unchallenged thrill rides. I tried it out again, wondering if it just might still pack the same punch.

Yes, it did.

I really needed some renewal, too, after the experience earlier that day. A great sadness was still suffocating me from an earlier visit to the mass grave of more than 400 people on a hill in cemetery in neighboring Oakland.

As I placed the flower and said a silent prayer at the simple tombstone, I couldn't help but wonder how old today, and how many children they would have had, if those scores of children and babies entombed from that nightmarish day in Jonestown had been spared. I thought about it again, watching the many kids running about joyfully in the Berkeley park, and knowing that some of those babies slaughtered by Jim Jones and his executioners by now would be old enough to be some of those parents, smiling, and savoring the joys of watching their little ones play.

This Sunday, November 18, is the 29th anniversary of the massacre. Perhaps it still won't get the same media attention as the 25th or next year's big 30th. But certainly there will be the annual memorial service. The cult apologists and creators of the official historic fiction account of the People's Temple cult will be there in strength, as well.

Count on them never admitting the real truth about the events that produced Jonestown. Count on the reporters to not report the facts that they hide from the public. And count on a continuing refusal by those that are accountable--the cowardly editors, the immoral clergy, and the sleazy, self-serving politicians--who aided and abetted the setting of the stage for the slaughter.

Another dark anniversary.

Les Kinsolving's Original Exposes

Originally published in The Examiner:
Part One....THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD
Part Two....'HEALING' PROPHET HAILED AS GOD AT S.F. REVIVAL
Part Three....D.A. AIDE OFFICIATES FOR MINOR BRIDE
Part Four....PROBE ASKED OF PEOPLE'S TEMPLE

Previously Unpublished:
Part Five....THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE AND MAXINE HARPE
Part Six....THE REINCARNATION OF JESUS CHRIST -- IN UKIAH
Part Seven....JIM JONES DEFAMES A BLACK PASTOR
Part eight/Final....SEX, SOCIALISM, AND CHILD TORTURE WITH REV. JIM JONES
Jonestown Apologist's Alert