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.