"Milk": Another People's Temple Political Strongman Gets The Whitewash -- And Just Maybe Even An Oscar Or Two?

Tonight the Academy Awards Community has to make a decision: Should they, or shouldn't they--despite the well-honed production--reward a film that both mangles history and portrays a man that deliriously supported a mass-murdering cultist?

How much longer will Harvey Milk's tragic murder continue to allow him this waiver, to the point to sanctifying him now in a multi-Oscar nominated film, that includes not just Best Picture and Best Actor, but a couple of other categories that seem to say it all:

"Best Original Screenplay" and "Best Editing."

Right. Very "original screenplay." The very "best editing."

But not for the same reasons that our august Academy members would say, of course. The "original screenplay" is an amazing thing, because it can give carte blanche to all manner of fictional add-ons, while the "best editing" is that enchanting process that, in equally unscrupulous hands, may produce small & large milestones in fantasy-turned-reality.

No one of course knows this better than the man running "Firelight Media," our acclaimed left-wing Producer/Director Stanley Nelson. With joyous and unlimited "expert guidance" from those rousing official National People's Temple Cheerleaders, Becky Moore & "Mac" McGhee, the three of them cooked up the most insidious cult apologist film in history, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple."

The good news is, folks: The Academy didn't get suckered in and refused Nelson and his revolting cult whitewash even a nomination. He does, however, manage to keep on getting film gigs in "fantastic fiction" documentaries, the latest of which is part of PBS's upcoming American Indian series. Nelson's fantasy segment is on the gun-slinging militant American Indian Movement (AIM) that blasted its way through a 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee Battlefield.

I'm suuuuuure that ol' Stan will, like he did with the People's Temple, provide ALL the relevant facts so that viewers have an sterling accurate portrait of history, with not a trace of leftest bias. Now if anyone out there has the slightest question about how Nelson manages his magic, I'd say just give him a call at the office:

STANLEY NELSON, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER FIRELIGHT MEDIA
Phone: 212-234-1324

You can also send Stan a fax: 212-234-6688 in case you want more
details about what he terms his "evocative technique" in film making.

I'm certain that Lord Nelson was more than pleased over any and all aspects of "Milk," even if he can't take credit. The important thing is that the Great Spirit of Obfuscation was in full cinematic force, right?

"Milk," of course, is a very interesting part of history, dealing with the very first openly gay man to be elected to office in California. It is a poignant story, and worth telling, no question. The big problem, however, comes with this "original screenplay" and "editing." And for that, all the rest of the awards should go out the door, just to teach these fabricators a lesson about telling THE WHOLE TRUTH.

The "whole truth"? What whole truth? What, pray tell, is MISSING from our Oscar-nominated film, that has such a spectacular performance, as is almost always the case, by lead actor Sean Penn.

Well, how about this little tidbit for starters.
It's a letter written to President Jimmy Carter, in February, 1978, by none other than St. Harvey himself. He wrote it just nine months away from the slaughter, but LONG after all the long-overdue 1977 exposes had finally told him, his fellow Temple boosters such as George Moscone, Willie Brown, and the rest of their degenerate San Francisco political cronies about Jim Jones's reign of terror, his extortion, fraud, torture of children, and all the rest.

And did Milk, or any of them--except for one courageous man named Leo Ryan--do ONE DAMN THING TO HELP THOSE POOR PEOPLE TRAPPED IN JONESTOWN?

More importantly: how much does the film "Milk," nominated for multiple Academy Awards tonight, have of this in the script?

25 minutes? No.

15? Guess again, people.

5 minutes?? You're gettin' warm.....think "Nelsonesque Film School" now.

Zero???

A "biopic" about a man that, while achieving greatness in fighting for his minority's rights, doesn't want you to know that before his own tragic murder, he aggressively aided in condemning over 900 Americans to death?

Incredible. Utterly incredible.

While Jones was busy in his Guyana Gulag dunking little children at the bottom of dark wells, confining others for weeks in a box, and doping up dissidents with heavy narcotics, Milk insisted on describing him as a "loving protective parent" and "a man of the highest character."

Gay activist and historian Michael Bellefountaine, who passed away in 2007 had been working on the final stages of his book "A Lavender Look At The People's Temple." A couple of years earlier, in the midst of all his research, the real picture of a far less saintly Harvey Milk appeared to emerge, as Bellefountaine explained in an article he wrote on the 25th Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.

"Harvey Milk’s name appears throughout San Francisco," wrote Bellefountaine, "A municipal railway station and plaza, a park and recreation building and one of the city’s most influential political clubs are all named in his memory. A local elementary school is known as the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, and the Eureka Valley Library is now called the Harvey Milk Branch.

"The theme for this year’s gay pride parade was 'give them hope,' Milk’s inspirational rallying cry from gays and lesbians in San Francisco to their brothers and sisters living in rural America. The International Gay and Lesbian Historical Society is producing an extensive exhibit of Milk memorabilia which includes the blood-stained suit he was wearing when he and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down in San Francisco City Hall on November 27, 1978. Twenty-five years after his murder, Harvey Milk has been catapulted to the level of gay martyr. Without question, he has left his mark on San Francisco.

"Despite all the exhibits and memorials of Harvey Milk throughout San Francisco, though, none of them acknowledges Milk’s relationship with Jim Jones and Peoples Temple....

"When Milk and Moscone were killed, San Franciscans were still reeling from the murder of Representative Leo Ryan and the news that hundreds of Jonestown residents, previously thought to have saved themselves by running into the jungle, were apparently willing participants in a suicide ritual. In the aftermath of their murders all mention of connections between Milk, Moscone and Jones were intentionally obscured.

"Out of respect for the politicians, their followers took all necessary steps to sever Milk and Moscone from the pariah Jones. It was not the only mass exodus of political support in the wake of the Jonestown tragedy. Politicians who once enjoyed volunteers, donations and votes from Peoples Temple, could not distance themselves from Jim Jones fast enough.

"Many of these people are still in politics today.

"....One story has it that Milk asked Peoples Temple to remove his name from the church’s list of supporters when reports of violence and theft first came to light, and that he was outraged when the Temple failed to comply with his demand. Eventually, history settled on an official story: Jim Jones was a master manipulator who used unwitting local politicians to gain power for himself.

"The politicians, including Milk and Moscone, used Jones for volunteers and votes, while remaining personally distant and blissfully unaware of rumors of Temple violence, abuse, theft, and even murder. The timing of Dan White’s murderous rampage was deemed coincidental.

"However, upon closer inspection, it is clear that Harvey Milk was a strong advocate for Peoples Temple and Jim Jones during his political career, including the tumultuous year leading up to the Jonestown tragedy.

"Milk spoke at the Temple often, wrote personal letters to Jim Jones contacted other elected officials on the Temple’s behalf, and used space in his weekly column to support the works of the Temple, even after the negative New West article went to press. Milk appeared in the pages of the Peoples Forum, the Temple newspaper, and received over fifty letters of sympathy from the residents of Jonestown when his lover, Jack Lira, killed himself in September 1978.

"It is readily apparent from the letters and historical memorabilia that Milk and the Temple enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship until their concurrent deaths. Why then is the relationship such a secret, even taboo to discuss?

"The only biography of Milk to date, 'The Mayor of Castro Street,' by Randy Shilts, downplays the Milk/Temple relationship, even going so far as to paint Milk as one of the countless people who cruelly ridiculed and ostracized the surviving Temple members and their supporters. Like most historians, Shilts opted for an image of an expedient politician, instead of truthfully portraying how Milk worked with Peoples Temple until the end of his life."

Congratulations, Randy Shilts, you have have definitely earned your honorary membership in the People's Temple History Hall Of Shame.

Of course, your portrait will most certainly be in one of the lower tiers, Randy. There are too many others--sleazy politicos, scribes, academics, and wolves in clerical garb--whose depraved notion of ethics will forever ensure them top billing.

As for tonight's Academy Awards spectacle, should for some godawful reason the heavily whitewashed "Milk" take home even one golden statue, let's hope that someone includes in their insufferable acceptance speech a recognition of just how St. Harvey traveled on Beatification Highway.

Reflections Of Fading Anniversary -- And For Many, A Lesson Still Lost

The world rocks and rolls into 2009 in just over an hour as we watch our Jonestown Turns Thirty year officially sink into oblivion.

One of the most ironic things about self-appointed "prophet" Jim Jones was that painfully prophetic sign hanging over his jungle kingdom's throne, bearing Santanya's warning that "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Consider carefully the cult carnage of the Branch Davidians, Solar Temple, Heaven's Gate, and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. All were a senseless slaughter like that madman's "revolutionary suicide," all a hideous byproduct of brainwashing and coercion.

All taking place in the years after the Guyana holocaust. Grim oracle indeed.

How many more will we witness? Moreover, how much longer will cults, if not committing outright murder, continue exploiting, brutalizing, and destroying lives? That really depends on the direction of the raging battle by present-day cults and their apologist brigades for today's hearts and minds gullible enough to fall for the dangerous false advertising of "New Religious Movements (NRM)."

Such a perky little euphemism, don't ya think? Throw it onto the rest of the pile, along with so many well-used ones. My favorites include some of the military gems, "pacification," "ethnic cleansing," and "enhanced interrogation techniques." The last one, in fact, is real close to home, isn't it?

But George Bush's torture tag teams have to share some credit. Our Jonestown "pioneers" -- as Becky Moore likes to call them -- had their own special little waterboarding parties just for uncooperative kids, in a quaint ritual called "Big Foot," where terrified children were repeatedly dunked at the bottom of a dark well. On the other hand, film maker Stanley Nelson told the world: "I see them in Jonestown and part of me sees a huge party, you know what I mean?....They can party as hard as they want. All the people are there, everybody that you know and love, you can go put the kids to bed, and they're safe in their beds..."

Ah, so then perhaps the children were treated to the Temple Waterboard Ride around lunchtime, Stan?

What we can almost certainly count on in 2009 and beyond is more of the same doling out by cult aplogist hordes of generous servings of thought-crushing cliches and propaganda pyrotechnics. Sometimes even the most noxious cultists such as Lafayette Ronnie Hubbard's science fictionologist flakes manage to have a rampaging Tom Cruise be their featured act on a leash.

Entertainment Nirvana!

Recently I heard from reader, Alan Havlick, who shared the frustration of having to deal with an especially twisted cultist in Texas, Doyle Davidson, who's been menacing the public from the airwaves.

"A few years ago," wrote Havlick, "I came across a cult leader and decided to inform cult-stopping groups of his activities. I went online thinking, 'After Jim Jones, there must be hundreds of groups out there, keeping track of these evil men...'

"Sadly, I was wrong.

"I had to open my own website and expose him. We have removed him from every TV station but one and now no one can search his name without also seeing the truth about him at my site. But I am still amazed by the people who continue to follow him -- they have been to my website and seen the truth. Several ex-members post there and confirm the truth, yet they refuse to get out.

"I think you're right about his (Jim Jones) adopted son; he is hanging around with the wrong people. 'Villainized'?? Get real, Jones, Jr.

"While researching Jim Jones I saw that there are several former members and family who still excuse everything with that crud about 'Oh, we helped the poor and elderly.' I would ask, 'So you don't mind if I kill 900 people as long as I help the poor and elderly?!'

"Again, I say: 'Get real.'"

Below is a sampling of the "Water of Life" ministries Grand Guru Doyle, warmly embracing a sinful follower, in a room that appears populated with department store mannequins.



Davidson, besides bedding down with a married member of his flock (and going bonkers when she finally returned to her spouse & children), also equates modern medicine with "witchcraft."

Scientologists, you got a friend.

Speaking of friends, not all my readers are quite as agreeable as Alan is. "Joanne" (no last name) takes a psychoanalytical, if not just plain heated viewpoint.

"I can't help but look," she wrote, "at all these different websites and filmakers and make a spectrum. Rebecca Moore and Mac all the way to the left....you all the way to the right. I don't understand why you can't wrap your head around the similarities you have with Moore and McGhee. You are obviously warped by your father's experience. You can't see past what information you get from that. Rebecca is obviously warped by her family's experience.

"I just don't understand YOUR obvious hatred. There were people in power in the Peoples Temple that were evil and believed in the evil they were doing. But there were many people, who were never in a position of power, who were predominantly black, who were desperately searching for something better. Yes, they were duped, but how can you shamelessly ignore the positive efforts of some of these people?? I believe that's what Stanley Nelson's intentions were...

"To me you are so filled with hate, rage, and self righteousness, I can't read any more of your blogs. You are the equivalent of a four year-old having a temper tantrum..."

Ouch.

Sometimes I never know when it's one of Mac or Becky's pals writing in, so I'll just have to give my critic Joanne the benefit of the doubt. I will say this, as I've said before: I do not hate Becky or Mac.

What I hate is what they're doing. Because cult apologist promotion is WRONG. It's unethical. It's outright dishonest. They have been dishonest and I have proof.

Yes, it does make me feel enraged to know that the imprisonment, abuse, and mass murder of over 900 Americans was entirely preventable, Joanne. PREVENTABLE. That doesn't seem to make any more difference to you than trying to grasp the social psychological dynamics of thought control.




Meet Frankie Fountain (L), David Sanders (R), and Jewel Fountain (above). Two brothers and a sister that helped make up the nearly 300 children slaughtered by Jim Jones.

Frankie was five years old, David, nine, and Jewel, well, this little girl was all of four years old when she was murdered by selected Temple mass murderers. You ever wonder if or how many times they got beaten up, abused, or receive that horrifically cruel cult water torture?

Four year-old Jewel. Maybe she had a temper tantrum when they held her down and forced cyanide down her throat.



Say hello to Dr. Lawrence Schacht (top), Annie Moore (L), and Carolyn Moore (R).

Top-ranking Jonestown death camp executioners who, after their unspeakable crimes, took their own lives. Becky referred to this as "poetic justice."

Wondrously convenient things, these euphemisms.

Grief And Discord Mark Jonestown's 30th Anniversary; Cult Leader's Son Claims His Father A "Victim" Being "Villainized"

Another Thanksgiving gone and there's little doubt about one thing:

For this group of people, their great American family event was forever shattered 30 years ago by an unspeakable horror.

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons, massacred by a madman in a distant jungle. Senseless and appalling. More than this -- what nearly all the religious, media, and political powers-that-be still refuse to admit to this day -- preventable.

For the Concerned Relatives and all the others, seeing Cult Ruler Jim Jones destroy their loved ones was unimaginable anguish. And only a little over a week before that Thanksgiving Day in 1978.

But many of them were in for a shock last week during the annual memorial service at the Jonestown mass grave in Oakland, California's Evergreen Cemetery.

The Rev. Jynona Norwood, a Los Angeles evangelist who lost her mother and 26 other family members, unveiled the first two black granite panels of what will be a 36 foot-long stone wall with the names of all the victims.

Actually, all except one: The man who ordered his thugs to slaughter more than 900 people, nearly one-third of them children and infants. "Jones was not a victim," said Norwood, "To me, that's like putting Hitler's name on a memorial to the Holocaust."

It's clear, however, that her sentiment is not shared by all the relatives and survivors, including Lela Howard, who lost an aunt in Jonestown and had contacted the Apologist Alert late last year. She has publicly questioned Norwood's accounting of memorial funds (See "Division and Controversy Roils Construction of Jonestown Memorial," January 4, 2008 post.)

But that's not all. Howard's rival group of survivors unveiled their own memorial plaque at the ceremony, bearing all the names of the dead, including a vicious sociopath named James Warren Jones. They've arranged to have the plaque displayed at San Francisco's African American Historical and Cultural Society.

Norwood said she intends to inscribe the names of the Temple assassins that murdered Congressman Leo Ryan, three journalists, a defector, and shot 11 others (including Ryan's aide, Jackie Speier, who now holds his Congressional seat) at the Port Kaituma Airstrip.

But not Jones. Not ever. "To put Jim Jones's name on that wall is an insult ... to all the dead," she said. "He was the most evil man who walked on this earth."

Not so, says the man that carries his name, who survived the bloodbath with his bothers, thanks to a basketball tournament in Guyana's capital city, Georgetown. Jim Jones, Jr. sides with the Howard faction. "The tragedy is we're villainizing Jim Jones," said the cult leader's adopted son. "Jim Jones was also a victim, of his own madness. We need to memorialize all the bodies, as a great loss."

"Villainizing" a mass murderer??

Now there's a thought. And while we're at it, just quit all this villainizing of some of the late reverend's famously sadistic and murderous colleagues.


Lovable John Wayne Gacy, Jr. would be a good start. Yeeesssss, it's true he had some issues with an overcharged libido, torture, and burying bodies under the house. But you see, the plain and simple fact is that Gacy was a victim. After all, would you enjoy the terrible ordeal of being a misunderstood clown?


Label him a "villain" -- and create more tragedy? Absolutely not. Besides, we gotta give "Pogo The Killer Clown" some credit for doing social work for the needy, entertaining all those children at neighborhood block parties. One more thing: he was Democrat, and an active one at that. When First Lady Rosalynn Carter came to Chicago, guess who had a photo op with her (like that other activist in San Francisco.)


And speaking of entertainers, here's a famous fellow who plays a mean guitar and even befriended a real Beach Boy in sun-baked Southern California. Yes, it's all true, Charles Milles Manson did have some rather helter skelter notions about the future (which seems to be a common thread with these c----, aahhmmm, "New Religious Movements".) But remember; he had a really bad childhood, got locked up a lot, and did a whole lot of drugs. He continues to be a wee bit overbearing and manipulative, yes. But, no, definitely not a villain, that Charlie. Victimhood granted.


Rounding out this tragic trio is perhaps the most original of all "victims," Milwaukee's Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. Tragically, he suffered all manner of terrible vices at once: rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism. A struggling taxidermist, as well. His biggest fear was reported to be rejection & abandonment. That sounds eerily a bit like that fellow from nearby Indiana, who liked "God" for a nickname.

So tread lightly with such troubled souls, victimized by their madness and acting out. Avoid "villainizing" them whenever possible.


Maybe, though, I just misinterpreted Mr. Jones, Jr.'s message. Or, it could very well be he's been spending a bit too much time with the wrong crowd. Here he is, hanging with a scowling Stanley Nelson (on left.) Lord (of illusions) Nelson is the proud producer/director of the infamously disreputable, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple." Besides winning the biggest trophy as the most accomplished cult apologist film in history, Stan took care to give Jones, Jr. a starring role! Not that he necessarily needed to, since his editing/revisionist witchcraft alone was spellbinding.

On the other hand, Nelson billowed with so much amazing "info" fed by those Cult Apologists Titans Becky Moore and Mac McGehee, that he simply couldn't resist chiming at every interview about all "the good that People's Temple did" and that "the old people were cared for..." and the "sense of family -- a sense of community."

Try, try, though, to find anything in Nelson's film that goes beyond a sugar glazing of, say, this cult's horrendous, sadistic abuse of children and adults alike, or the full measure of Jones's astonishing partnership with California officials (who again and again, ignored the evidence LONG before 1977), the fraud & extortion, or even his Marxist-Leninist fanaticism that is so blatantly clear.

Now hold on, just one moment. You think that just maybe.....perhaps.....that all this really might boil down to, hmmmmm -- possibly some curious political bend afflicting Mr. Nelson, and, yeeahhh, Ms. Moore, too??.....and, even a chance that hoard of Lotus Land power brokers has it too?

I wonder....

One quite cogent observation comes from author Dan Flynn, who though receiving an automatic caveat as an unabashed right-winger, I think is worth a listen. See, Flynn's particular outlook doesn't necessarily mean a permanent confinement to perpetually twisted arguments, any more than it does for some some quick & clever leftist, such as, say, a Noam Chomsky. What matters: Do the polemics measure up?

You be the judge.

"On November 17, 1978," writes Flynn, "Jim Jones was a hero to American leftists. On November 18, 1978, Jones orchestrated the killings of 918 people and strangely morphed in the eyes of American leftists into an evangelical Christian fanatic. An unfortunately well-worn narrative, playing out contemporaneously in Pol Pot's Cambodia, of socialist dreams ending in ghoulish nightmares, then, conveniently shifted to one about the dangers of organized religion.

"But as The Nation magazine reported at the time, 'The temple was as much a left-wing political crusade as a church. In the course of the 1970s, its social program grew steadily more disaffiliated from what Jim Jones came to regard as Fascist America and drifted rapidly toward outspoken Communist sympathies.' So much so that the last will and testament of the Peoples Temple, and its individual members who left notes, bequeathed millions of dollars in assets to the Soviet Union.

"As Jones expressed to a Soviet diplomat upon upon his visit to Jonestown the month before the smiling suicides took place, 'For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother, but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland.'

"Jim Jones was an evangelical communist who became a minister to infiltrate the church with the gospel according to Marx and Lenin. He was an atheist missionary bringing his message of socialist redemption to the Christian heathen. 'I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism?,' remembered Jones of his days in 1950s Indiana. 'The thought was, infiltrate the church.' So in the forms of Pentecostal ritual, Jones smuggled socialism into the minds of true believers -- who gradually became true believers of a different sort.

"Unless one counts his drug-induced bouts with self-messianism, Jones didn't believe in God. Get it -- a Peoples Temple. He shocked his parishioners, many of whom certainly did believe in God, by dramatically tossing the Bible onto the ground during a sermon. 'Nobody's going to come out of the sky!' an excited Jones had once informed his flock. 'There's no heaven up there! We'll have to have heaven down here!' Like so many efforts to usher in the millennium before it, Jones's Guyanese road to heaven on earth detoured to a hotter afterlife destination.

"The horrific scene in a Guyanese jungle clearing could have been avoided. Thousands of miles north, for years leading up to Jonestown, San Francisco officials and journalists had looked the other way while Jones acted as a law unto himself.

"So what if he abused children, sodomized a follower, tortured and held temple members at gun point, and defrauded the government and people of welfare and social security checks? He believes in socialism and so do we. That was the ends-justifies-the-means attitude that enabled Jim Jones to commit criminal acts in San Francisco with impunity. The people who should have stopped him instead encouraged him.

"....By virtue of producing rent-free rent-a-rallies for liberal politicians and causes, Jim Jones engendered enormous amounts of good will from Democratic politicians and activists. They allowed their political ambitions to derail their governing responsibilities. Frisco pols like Harvey Milk never seemed to care how Jones could, at the snap of his fingers, direct hundreds of people to stack a public meeting or volunteer for a campaign.

"City Councilman Milk just knew that he benefited from that control, and therefore never bothered to do anything to inhibit the dangerous cult operating in his city. Instead, he actively aided and abetted a homicidal maniac. It wasn't just local hacks Jones commanded respect from. He held court with future First Lady Rosalyn Carter, vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and California Governor Jerry Brown.

"A man who killed more African Americans than the Ku Klux Klan was awarded a local Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award and won the plaudits of California lieutenant governor Mervyn Dymally, state assemblyman Willie Brown, radical academic Angela Davis, preacher/politician Jesse Jackson, Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and other African American activists.

"From Newton, whom Jones had visited in Cuban exile in 1977, Jones got his lawyer and received support, such as a phone-to-megaphone address to Jonestown during a 'white night' dry run of mass suicide. This was appropriate, as it was from Newton whom Jones appropriated the phrase 'revolutionary suicide' -- the title of a 1973 Newton book -- that he used as a moniker for the murder-suicides of more than 900 people on November 18, 1978.

"'We didn't commit suicide,' Jones announced during the administering of cyanide-laced Flavoraid to his flock, 'we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.' Newton's comically idiotic slogan boomeranged on him, as several of his relatives perished in the Kool-Aid carnage.

"It's worth remembering that before the people of Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones's Kool-Aid, the leftist political establishment of San Francisco gulped it down.

"And without the latter, the former would have never happened."























Final note (excerpt from "Madman In Our Midst"):

"Gray skies dripped sadness and sorrow over San Francisco yesterday", wrote Herb Caen, "Headlines told of tragedy and madness in steaming jungles...how to judge the insanity surrounding the end of Rev. Jim Jones...Who would have expected THIS?"

Willie Brown stated "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. "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."



"....Not regrets..."?

Doesn't psychiatry have a word for that, Mr. Mayor?

On This Day, A Special Memoria For All The Children Of Jonestown

"I'll lend you for a little time a child of Mine," He said,

"For you to love the while he lives and mourn for when he's dead,

It may be six or seven years, or twenty-two or three,

But will you, till I call him back, take care of him for Me?

He'll bring his charms to gladden you, and shall his stay be brief

You'll have his lovely memories as solace for your grief.


"I cannot promise he will stay, since all from earth return,

But there are lessons taught down there I want this child to learn.

I've looked the wide world over in my search for teachers true

And from the throngs that crowd life's lanes I have selected you.

Now will you give him all your love, nor think the labor vain,

Nor hate me when I come to call to take him back again?"


I fancied that I heard them say, "Dear Lord, Thy will be done."

For all the joy Thy child shall bring, the risk of grief we'll run.

We'll shelter him with tenderness, we'll love him while we may

And for the happiness we've known forever grateful stay;

But shall the angels call for him much sooner than we've planned,

We'll brave the bitter grief that comes and try to understand."

--- Edgar Guest

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.