Jonestown: Perfectly Preventable Tragedy -- If Not For The Craven California Power Elite That Loved The Beast....

If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved

Eureka Times Standard
March 4, 2005

This is the final preface to the series of eight shocking San Francisco Examiner exposes by my father that, had they been allowed to run in their entirety, would have blasted charlatan Jim Jones out of business. But those miserable Examiner editors, and the rest of the pathetic regional media, didn't have the backbone, so frightened by law suits from Peoples Temple enforcer Tim Stoen (who today they JUST don't care to mention, you'll notice). And so, THEY DID NOTHING. After running only four articles in September 17-20, 1972, and getting picketed by Temple cultists, the Examiner went into a fetal position and surrendered, for almost the next five years.

Tim Stoen
The sordid details of that scandal have been efficiently covered up until now, by the Examiner and the usual suspects, Tim Reiterman and Marshal Kilduff, who shamelessly attempt little fairy tale rewrites of this into a minor footnote.

If, on the other hand, you'll be watching for the first--or perhaps the second time--the History Channel's "Jonestown: Paradise Lost" docudrama tomorrow night, abandon any hope of having the record set straight there. The same goes for it's accompanying documentary on cults, in "Decoding the Past," which while a superb expose as a whole that puts cult apologists (NRM) on the run, still inexcusably neglects Top Jones Aide Stoen, who was the Co-Engineer of this cult nightmare until finally defecting close to the end. The "Decoding" producers decide instead to allow Kilduff run his twisted little spin on it throughout.

One of the other questions that people should ask directors Nelson and Wolochatiuk is WHY they squelched the story of the crisis over John Stoen, the little boy claimed to be fathered by both Jones and Stoen? What made this so compelling is that it nearly precipitated the mass killing over a year earlier-- "The September, 1977 Crisis."

All this, clearly explained in Debbie Layton's famous affidavit given to the U.S. State Department, now part of the historical record, now a part of the history that is standard to anyone versed in Jonestown history. I understand Nelson censoring it, because he has an apologist agenda to follow. It's easy for him to delude a universe of theatre goers and bloggers with his cinematic sleight of hand.

But Tim Wolochatiuk? The Producers of "Decoding History?"

Why did you do it?

That fun couple, Becky Moore and Mac McGhee, who serve up the grandest fish tales on earth at the "Jonestown Institute," did succeed wonderfully in working over their visitor, "Paradise" director Tim Wolochatiuk. In the end, they made sure he got all the "proper fact balance" he needed. And then there was that curious name--did Becky think that one up, per chance?! As one viewer comments in a Guyana-based blog, "I wonder why the 'Paradise Lost' portion of the title....What about it was 'Paradise'?" though not nearly to the brain-numbing level they achieved with Stanley Nelson. As Mac McGhee proudly boasted to me (with his usual panache):

“…..Would it interest you to know that your main punching bag these days cooperated as much with ‘Paradise Lost’ as we did with Stanley’s film? Check the closing credits, next time it comes round on your TV.

Your whipping boy, Mac."

Fielding M. McGhee III
The Jonestown Institute

At least, however, "Paradise Lost" didn't offer up some grotesque apologist tripe about Jonestown, like the kind you see on these "NRM" websites. Lamentably, however, it did miss the mark, like all the others. But no mind. Now you'll have a chance to "read all about it,"

In this editorial by the Times Standard, they focus on Tim Stoen and his published apology to my father, which first ran in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (to be posted.) Interesting thing: The Examiner just didn't have any room for such a story!

And, like Orwell's Big Brother hard at work on "fixing history," our "Jonestown" director, Stanley Nelson, too, just didn't have any room for such a story.... Coincidence?? Somebody needs to call Stan, or Mrs. Nelson (his writer, Marcia Smith) and ask them why, don't you think?

The editorial is called:

LESSONS LEARNED?

"After three decades, Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen wrote a letter of apology to the reporter whose life he helped make miserable in the early 1970s for stories written on the strangely violent and pseudo-messianic happenings at the People's Temple under Jim Jones.

Stoen, as is well known, was a top aide to Jones until about a year before the cult's infamous mass suicide. Before his break with the temple, he and other Jones supporters publicly flayed the reporter and protested the offices of the San Francisco Examiner for his unpopular accounts of the goings-on at the People's Temple.

While perhaps startling, the letter was a thoughtful gesture from Stoen to reporter Les Kinsolving, who had recently suffered a heart attack; Kinsolving released the letter to the press. Meant as a private communication, it seemed heartfelt and expressed a level of regret that Stoen hadn't said publicly over his involvement with the People's Temple.

That made it newsworthy to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and to this newspaper as well.

But Stoen said he felt the Press Democrat reporter who wrote the story made too much out of something that Stoen said has been consistent all along: he has repented and apologized for his actions with the People's Temple and Jim Jones.

Stoen may not realize that in the letter he admits more wrongdoing than he has in the past; for the second-highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Humboldt County, that by itself makes it a big deal.

Remembering that more than 900 people died as the end result of Jones' ministry makes the letter's importance even more clear.

Since he became right-hand man to DA Paul Gallegos, Stoen has blazed a maverick and sometimes unusual trail of his own, including an odd three-day Senate campaign run and a personal style that has put him at odds with some in the local legal community.

Be that as it may: We applaud Stoen for writing the letter and for making the admissions he did -- it seems to show a mature man making a thoughtful amends for past bad judgments.

We hope the lessons expressed in the letter will not go unlearned: The media can still function as a safeguard for society. If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved."

Surely could have. But weren't. The politicians, clergy, journalists, and others that aided and abetted Jones aren't yet ready to admit to this, or their role. The public needs to confront them. Call Cecil Williams. Send e-mails to Willie AND Jerry Brown and all the rest. Ask them WHY??

Moreover, even worse, are the cult apologists. These people suffer dangerous delusions regarding the parameters of freedom of religion. From flying saucer worshipers to child abusers, it seems everybody's welcome to come on over and join the fruitcake express train, "New Religious Movements"(NRM). Charter members include Becky Moore, Catherine Wessinger, Eileen Barker, Douglas Cowan, John Hall, and, easily the two most bizarre, J. Gordon Melton & Massimo Introvigne--who have a very strong affinity for vampires (Melton described one of their vampire society conventions as "a bunch of silly people dressing up and biting each other on the neck.")

Drop in on the next annual "CESNUR" (Center for Studies of New Religions) conference--last year's was held in San Diego--but you might want to take a couple of garlic cloves to ward off the attending vampires. (Some of the attendees went on "field trips" to pay their respects to the flying saucer worshipers and the 12 Tribes cult, a "family-oriented" bunch that preaches the benefits of child abuse.)

And San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Sandi Dolbee, who is assigned to cover the "religion and ethics" beat, just missed all that. She did, however, do a splendid job of whitewashing the 25th Anniversary of Jonestown, when she provided Becky Moore a Cult Apologist Sermon in her story. Moreover, at this CESNUR conference, Dolbee gave all these "scholars" free reign to cheer on the extravaganza's opening film, which was, but of course: Nelson's "Jonestown."

With this kind of "ethical" coverage, it makes one wonder if perhaps its time to move Dolbee to a different beat. Has she become "one of them"??

It's astounding the ease in which these so-called "scholars" make fabrications about the People's Temple. Interestingly enough, again, Nelson's choice of a "scholar" for his film, besides featuring Moore (sister of two of Jones's enforcers), was John Hall, of U.C. Davis, who publishes outrageous papers condoning the Temple's excesses and abuses (this is the cult that also tortured children as young as five, recall.)

Uncanny how Nelson was so hardpressed to find ANYONE with a contrasting view, say, that had experience with the cult in its "glory days" in Redwood valley, when they were happily picking crops, and singing, hugging, laughing, and "sharing lots of love," according to our director.

He could have interviewed Norman Clow, now living in Houston, who lived in Redwood Valley at the time and attended school with some of these cult captives. Norman wrote to me, shortly after reading the Stoen apology story over the Associated Press wire (made the AP, so the story went as far as Australia, ladies and gentlemen--yet, still NO ROOM FOR IT IN EITHER OF THOSE SPINELESS SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPERS....).

"Jim Jones taught in our schools in Anderson Valley in the 60's (Boonville, west of Ukiah/Redwood Valley) and in fall 1967 he brought a dozen or so Temple students to our high school. Three were in my senior class and two of them died (Anita Ijames and Judy Stahl-Ijames). One, Faith Worley-Kice, left before the move.

Dale Parks, who was one of the defectors during Ryan's visit and whose mother was killed at the airstrip was a friend for that year. We were good friends, as much as possible under the circumstances. I saw Dale in Ukiah a year later and he was "recovering". I met his dad, who I don't believe ever would. Ava Cobb was another great friend. Her brother Jim, who I knew, was one of the ones pushing for the investigation.

I always understood that she had left the movement with her brother but recently saw her name and a picture - could have been here - in a list of those who died. I know many of her family members did die there. I hope she didn't. They were all good kids, fun to be around even given their unhappiness over the Temple, and none of them deserved any of it.

I believe Jones was a madman practically from the day he was born. Many of us kids at the school thought the guy was a little wierd and maybe even dangerous in the 60's, but no one would listen, certainly not the school authorities.

You could tell the students he brought to the school were very uneasy, just always intimating some fear or regrets about their situation. But you couldn't get past a certain point with them - they still deferred to that loyalty he had built in them, called him Father, and there was an invisible wall that kept you always a certain unassailable length away.

Of course you realize Tim Stoen went back to Mendocino County as an assistant DA and is now in that capacity in Eureka, Humboldt County. He has publicly apologized several times for his involvement, recently admitting it was a terrible mistake and asking forgiveness. Fine, but I'd still just as soon not have him as the local DA.

As a lay pastor of the rare conservative stripe in the United Methodist Church, I often wonder what on earth was going on in the eyes of the various churches back then.

Your dad was a very brave man to do what he did. Many of us knew he was right all along and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for the part he played in getting all of this out. Thank him for me."

--Norm Clow
Houston

Now let's say we climb into that time machine and travel back to a misty Sunday morning. .....We've....arrived. There's still time. It's September 17th, 1972...San Francisco. A foghorn softly booms. There's a headline up ahead, in that Sunday edition newspaper:

"THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD"
by Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

A different kind of "Inconvenient Truth"

"JONESTOWN" DIRECTOR NELSON DISCOVERED ACCUSED OF "GLOSSING OVER OF FACTS" IN ANOTHER FILM;
VISITS UC-SANTA CRUZ THIS WEEK TO LECTURE STUDENTS ON "HOW TO WRITE HISTORY" IN DOCUMENTARIES....

There he was, smirking and bantering about the usual edifying subjects, such as tossing trash in movie theatres. It was more than a mild shock to see my favorite comedian, the sometimes "master of his domain" walk out on that stage at the Kodak Theatre to take charge of a very special nomination list on Hollywood's holy night.



That list Jerry Seinfeld read at the Academy Awards on February 25 named the five nominated best documentaries of 2006, out of which, of course, "An Inconvenient Truth" got the Oscar. The ultimate winner was the Academy itself, and all of us.

Unlike the Grand Army of the Obtuse that makes up nearly all of our film critics, Academy voters had the wisdom to give thumbs down to a piece of cult apologist cinema that's brought new meaning to the reckless disregard for another "inconvenient truth."

In reality, a multitude of inconvenient truths are suppressed ruthlessly and repeatedly--in "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple"

Director Stanley Nelson's editing tricks in his "Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple" easily sent nearly every movie critic swooning, yet another reminder about film's power over those ignorant of history.

Nelson's film is a potent propaganda showcase, largely owing to its subject matter, of course. No questioning his craft, folks. This is one gunslinger that doesn't miss his mark: He fuses together enough of the "correct" film clips of the cult; enough of the "correct" heart-wrenching, toe-tapping music; and enough of the "correct" interviews rigged to paint a portrait of a cult that was, as one interviewee claims, "vibrant" right up to the day before mass-murder in Jonestown.

"Vibrant?" So the forced labor, malnutrition, and torture (which started in California, protected by the media), was secondary. "Vibrant" isn't the only superlative our "documentarian" has cherry picked from carefully screened interviewees in redecorating what social psychologists have concluded as one of history's most destructive cults.

In Nelson's 90-minute window dressing, this group of brainwashed people that burned little children with cattle prods -- for years, in California, while the "crusading media" did nothing-- has a whole lot more than "vibrant" attached to it.

Here are some of Nelson's sweetened-up interview samplings: „"..People's Temple truly had the potential to be something big - something powerful" "As soon as I walked in (the Temple), I was home""...Every single person felt like they had a role there." Everyone felt like they were exceptionally special..." "There were many reasons to love, admire, overlook, and excuse the things Jim did."

Yes. Of course. While a gang of your frenzied fellow cultists are electro-shocking your five year-old for being "naughty, you just keep countin' ALL the heart-wrenching reasons to admire the great social activist, "Father" Jones. Not a big problem, though, since this perverted version of a rainbow coalition mutated out of the deadly efficient mind control and terror tactics employed by Jones', with an always helpful little nudge from those Temple "Angels of Death" (his gun-toting enforcers).

Nelson, however, doesn't see the need to go through the motions of excusing such inconvenient truths. For instance, his documentary remarkably covers up ANY MENTION WHATSOEVER of the horrendous children's torture feature, "Blue Eyed Monster," practiced by the People's Temple, in the California years, which he instead has papered over in some of the most disgraceful, dishonest film making on record.

Card stacking

Insidious, but a tried & true method in many scenarios. Nelson used one of the oldest tactics in a playbook traditionally employed by conmen strictly out to make a buck - "card stacking," - defined as follows:

Card stacking refers to the method of intentionally deceiving people so that they will support a cause or ideal in which the propagandist strongly believes or from which he or she will realize financial gain. The term originated from the magician's gimmick of "Stacking the deck," which involves presenting a deck of cards that appears to have been randomly-shuffled but which is, in fact, in a pre-conceived and logical order. The magician knows the order and is able to predict or control the outcome of the trick; the audience is unaware of the gimmick. In poker a deck can be 'stacked' so certain hands are dealt to certain players.

Card stacking is full of half-truths, outright lies, omissions, and distortions.

Of course, Stan's in this mainly to score points as the genius film maker he is, on behalf of what he's digested from his meals at Becky Moore and Mac McGehee Jonestown Institute Inn. They happily held his hand and guided him in finding the "right" info and interviewees, and, yes, would include token citations of those unsavory sides of the cult, but in "just the right measure."

Take the interview of the married male cult member who related the time a young male made an announcement regarding "Father" Jones' sexual predations on the other men. Nelson finishes the scene with the interviewee laughing and making light of it.

Stack a card, Stan.

Another interview, a cult member recounts one of the cult's physical tortures carried out, "the boxing punishment." He told about throwing water on someone he had beaten unconscious, and then being forced to beat him further. He then related how "tiring" it was having to fight five people in one night.

Once again, like the sexual predation scene, Nelson films the cult member laughing over this horrifying ordeal. Once again; is this something a responsible director edits into making light of? Minimize--the facts (and these are just a bare few of the unsavory that are disclosed) of a boxing torture and Jones sexually preying on males?

Stack another one, Stan.

On the other hand, the "positives" are hand-dipped in super-sweet seductive coating. You only have to see the film's trailer on Nelson's website, showing that staged clip of smiling, hugging, laughing, happy Temple folks to realize something is amiss. That is, unless you have some notion that destructive cults deserve a second look. It is safe to say that you (a) were too young too recall the People's Temple, (b) are a fanatic in the "New Religious Movements," or (c) should do some homework.

While Stan boasted openly about making "somewhat objective" documentaries this year to the New York Times, he and wife/writer Marcia Smith's credibility was called into question three years ago for another of their films, "Beyond Brown: Pursuing the Promise," in a May, 2004 Washington Post Live Online program.

A caller from Austin, Texas had caught them ˜playing fast and loose with history..." "I honor and understand the meaning of Brown vs. Topeka board of Education," said the unnamed caller, "However, I do not understand the glossing over of facts to sell the story."

In a November, 2006 KQED (San Francisco) Radio interview, Nelson trumpeted for the umpteenth time the Big Lie that he has so cleverly mesmerized much of the public with in his film. People's Temple, you ask?

"They delivered on their promise," said Stan, of the cult that practiced forced labor, death threats, malnutrition, extortion, child abuse, torture, all occurring in California.

"They shared a lot of love," said Stan.

Media knuckle-heads like Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic Barry Paris are enchanted by the Temple "delivery," with enough superlatives to get Jonestown Apologists CEOs Becky Moore and Mac McGhee worked up into a fever-pitch Irish jig just in time for upcoming St. Patty's Day.

"Jones, after all, was a bona-fide civil rights pioneer..." gushed Paris, "...He built a congregation that promised food, clothing, shelter and retirement homes to its people and delivered. Sure, folks had to give a 20-percent tithe (which evolved into giving all their money and possessions) to the church, but that wasn't so unusual and they did it voluntarily. In the utopian-community, a deal's a deal."

"A deal's a deal." That's right. And like the rest of our witless media "pundits," Paris is completely enamored by the Nelson's "revolutionary" film making process, and just can't be bothered with the possibility of any missing pieces. I wonder if Paris, for example, has ever even heard of Father Divine. Or does he even give a damn about it.

Nelson surely has. In fact, his wife Marcia mentioned Divine at the world premiere of their film, way back in January, 2006, in Salt Lake City, Utah, when they gathered with, oh, that's right, Becky Moore of all people! Salt Lake City, of all places, too. Home base of the Mormon Church. Not that this would be construed as some strategy to "snuggle up" our hard-working cult apologists (NRM's) with an established church, oh, Lord no.

Father Divine was an African-American cult leader in the 1930s, who established a famed interracial "flock," which Jones modeled himself after. Nelson has completely suppressed any mention whatsoever of Divine in his film, another of these dazzling "card-stackings" in his film's fixed deck. Why? Because the ruthless tactics Jones acquired from observing Divine in a 1957 visit to his Philadelphia cult center would simply not fit in with the notion of pre-Guyana "love-love-love" and "delivery of promises." (Jones, moreover, later tried to steal membership from Divine's cult, unsuccessfully---YET ANOTHER FACT SUPPRESSED BY NELSON. Why??)

"A turning point in JJ‚s career was his meeting with Father Divine, the legendary black pastor from Philadelphia," writes Maurice Brinton, author of "Suicide For Socialism." "Jones was vastly impressed both by his spell-binding preaching techniques and by the total control he still exerted on his congregation (which consisted mainly of elderly black women). From Divine, Jones learned all about "organizing congregations‚" about how to use an "Interrogation Committee‚" He saw the Committee as the logical extension of his grip on his flock."

In Indianapolis, Jones started to surround himself with a group of "totally loyal‚" men and women, black and white. They would watch and report to Jones on the other parishioners. This was probably the first instance in history of a totally integrated, "non-racist‚" Secret Police. Thomas Dixon, one of the early members of the Temple, broke with JJ on this issue. "The Committee‚" he said, "was primarily to deal with those who disagreed with Jones. Whoever was summoned by the Committee was grilled for hours on end with questions such as "Why are you against the Reverend?"

Integration, especially pre-Civil Rights era, was a bold, brave act, absolutely. But AT THIS COST? This, in essence, is the utter disgrace of Nelson's film - his deliberate cover up of Father Divine's critical impact on Jones and Jones's totalitarian savagery that began percolating all the way back to the Indianapolis years and grew exponentially as the cult drifted to California, and to its final tragic end in Guyana.

But our stunningly astute in Pennsylvania critic swallowed Stan's Subterfuge like a four-year old would gobble down a bowl of sugar pops.

"Watching footage of Jones‚ congregants building their church and homes and tilling the soil in their communal farm in Guyana," wrote Paris of Pittsburg, "we see that most of them are clearly quite happy. The irony is that, in many ways, Jonestown was succeeding, not failing and Jones had done an impressive job of carving out a self-sufficient collective community there."

Clearly quite happy?? As, say, the Jonestown children being repeatedly dunked at the bottom of community well (Jonestown's "Big Foot" attraction), screaming over and over in the middle of the night for a mommy or daddy to rescue them. But who never arrived, thanks to the "impressive" effects of being drugged, beaten, starved, brainwashed, and forced back by gunmen.

The reality of course was that Mr. Green Jeans Jones' little ol' "communal farm" (thank you, "Jonestown Institute" Bank of Depraved Euphemisms) was nothing more than a gulag. Nice work Stan--Paris is convinced he was looking at scenes from Disney's Frontierland.

Perhaps Paris Hilton could give a more reliable assessment the next time.
















ALERT:

Now here's a news flash for all of you in California who'd like to have a genuine crack at this big rotten egg that the Nelsons have laid. Tomorrow and Wednesday, March 6 and 7, none other than Stanley and Mrs. Nelson will be making a personal appearance at the Univ. of Calif-Santa Cruz campus. On Tuesday evening, at 7 p.m., at Classroom Unit 2, there will be another of their free screenings (get yer free cult conditioner narcotics, students!....Time to alert CultsOnCampus.com)

The day after tomorrow, Wednesday, March 7, Stan and Marcia will appear at noon in the Mural Room at Oakes College Campus, to participate in a conference. This will be the real entertainment. If you've seen the film by now, you should have more than enough inquiries to present Mr. and Mrs. Nelson about this putrid blob of revisionism. Don't expect any straight answers, of course, but at least they can face more than the mush the media reviewers have been offering them. And the topic of the conference is a downright scream (Ah, "Hello, is Orwell in the House??!!"):

"How To Write History: Research and Representation in the Historical Documentary." Okay, so we all now know the folks at UC-Santa Cruz have a good sense of humor. Twisted, but rousing.

In another, more serious milieu, a Nelson-attended conference might better be titled "How to Write Sophistry: Faulty Research and Card-stacking Technique in a Historical Documentary." What is vitally important is that students and visitors not give the Nelsons a free ride, like the critics have.

Get out there and grill them with questions, people!

Besides the major role of Father Divine, you could ask Nelson:

Why did he leave out the role of Tim Stoen, Jim Jones's top enforcer? Without Stoen's legal terror tactics, exposes long before 1977 would have been published that would have put the cult out of business. Stoen later lied publicly, long after Jonestown, about having been in Jones's "inner circle," in a self-serving ploy to get his old job back in the Mendocino District Attorney's Office.

Nelson, predictably, will have some flimsy excuse for censoring Tim Stoen. Last summer when confronted by my father and me at a film screening, he claimed it was "another one of the stories that we wish we had been able to include."

This is where Nelson jumps from disingenuous into Stoen's camp outright lying. I doubt there was even the slightest shred of desire to include Stoen. And that is yet another in this parade of countless outrages.

Suppose Nelson had presented us with a film, "Steel Revolutionary: Life and Death of Stalin." And he had, time after time after time, deleted, embellished, minimized, and sugar-coated this monster's rise and fall. (No, of course, Jones didn't kill as many or rule a nation, etc. - but he ruled his little empire like a Stalinist.)

Millions deliberately starved to death in the Ukrainian forced famine. But what if Nelson shows footage of families happily working in the fields. Millions are sent to forced labor camps. Nelson's footage shows dancing Russians, and kids getting free schools and medical care.

Such lethal omissions about history can have devastating consequences on the future. You know what the saying is about not learning the lessons of history and its consequences--made famous on that forboding sign in that horrifying pavilion.

Here's another hypothetical in a Nelson film on Stalin: Our "revolutionary" director decides to leave the audience almost completely in the dark about Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, who was Stalin's rival, later assassinated, might have succeeded in stopping the monster in his assent to power, had he been more astute politically and made certain Lenin's Testament had been read publicly.

But Trotsky never did. The Testament was censored in the USSR. And he, and millions of people, paid dearly for it. Still, Nelson decides, "Well, I just don't have room for Trotsky in this story, sorry about that....!" Responsible, accurate way to "write history"??

Some directors, it seems, are more than willing to leave out key facts as such, if it suits their "ideology agenda." You can love Michael Moore or hate 'em; his film "Fahrenheit 911" had a couple of scenes that stick out as some of the most appalling instances of this syndrome. The first scene has an American soldier in Iraq singing to a heavy metal song, "...let the motherf----- burn, burn motherf-----, burn..." The other shows, just prior to the U.S. invasion, Moore's POV (point of view - film jargon, that is) of Saddam's brutal regime: Kids are playing, a wedding, and people are laughing. No scenes of Saddam's torture chambers in the montage.

This--a "documentary?" Oh, almost forgot. Nelson worked for Moore one time.

But then, it would be unfair to pick on just poor ol' Stan. No, indeed. As said at the start, this People's Temple Rogue's Gallery is enormous. There are so, so many more to discuss and confront. So many that helped that Beast Jones, who they DEFENDED and PROMOTED SHAMELESSLY ...reporters, columnists, editors, talk show hosts, clergy, lawyers, state assemblymen..it is mind-boggling. Many of them have turned revisionists, like Nelson, and lie compulsively, like Nelson, in order to maintain their place in the limelight.

Truly sickening. It's time to set the record straight.

The next Jonestown Apologists Alert will premiere a special series of stories, exposes that you, the public, should and must read. The San Francisco Examiner, when it was still a "functioning" newspaper, published a three-part series back in November, 1998, on the 20th Anniversary of Jonestown.

It was called "Days of Darkness." Then-Executive Editor Phil Bronstein made the following breath-taking promise:

"The Examiner owes it to its readers ...to publish a series that goes far beyond a recollection of what happened. What we hope to do in these stories is raise and answer key questions that still haunt us all about Rev. Jim Jones and the tragedy that befell his followers˜and all San Franciscans˜two decades ago."

But of course predictably what Bronstein, now at the S.F. Chronicle, then offered up was the same, tired old fabricated garbage the California media has continued spewing out non-stop for what is now close to 30 years. This heap of self-congratulatory drivel is designed to cover up their weakness, stupidity, and cowardice in not shutting down Jones and his Temple Mafia when they easily had the chance. Bronstein, you--and the rest--STILL OWE.

When there was still time to do it. A time such as September, 1972, when my father, Les Kinsolving, was honing in on them like a Hellcat fighter in the Pacific.

He had eight exposes set to run in the Examiner of the fraudulent, menacing cult. Four, however, never saw the light of day, thanks to Jones enforcer Tim Stoen (who later apologized for his actions, whose motives are still unclear).

The first expose, "The Prophet Who Raises The Dead," ran on the front page of The Examiner, Sunday, Sept. 17, 1972. Those that have wanted it, or the other three, never published again, for their own self-serving, immoral reasons, will now no longer have their way. These, and the other four exposes that were originally censored under the threat of Jones and Stoen's law suits, will be published in their chilling entirety right here.

Then you'll understand that one of the greatest crimes was simply that the Jonestown Massacre never needed to happen, only for the fact that the Examiner, and the rest of the California media lost their backbone in 1972--but will still not own up to it. And it's clear that our Cult Appologist film maker has thrown that one, as well, into his cinematic chamber of secrets. He's consistent, people.

Stanley Nelson, in his KQED program, proclaimed that [not until 1977] "Marshall Kilduff rang the first alarm about People's Temple!"

Tomorrow and Wednesday, when Nelson appears at UC Santa Cruz, and gives instructions on "How To Write History: Research and Representation in the Historical Documentary, " will he continue displaying the same level of candor?

"Jonestown" Director's Phone Isn't Ringing....

Lucifer shifts uneasily in his overheated throne, watching with grave concern as the oversized sunglasses of one of his favorite tenants are steaming up like a Turkish Bath. The “pastor,” as they all call him down here, has been raging all day. And there’s nothing bunkmates Mao or Stalin can do to calm him down.

Another milestone erupts in the world of unmitigated hell for Jim Jones.

It’s old news, but still riling him. Jones continues struggling with one of the debilitating, widely-shared post-People’s Temple era maladies: Denial. He just cannot believe that his crafty, devoted director Stanley Nelson has really been shut out of what was sure to be—HAD TO HAVE BEEN--a no-brainer Oscar nomination for Stan’s docu-ganda, “Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple”! A great wailing, gnashing of teeth, moaning, groaning and, the repeated question, over and over: Impossible--how the Devil could this happen??

“Tell me, please!” shrieks Jones, yanking himself free from the usually restraining steel grip of Stalin’s one good arm. “How am I going to sit and watch Stanley sweat out yet another week—from today--just to see them Academy Awards folks all gather on February 25th and collectively turn their backsides on our cult’s magnificent apologist tribute??!!”

Rev. Jones’s great horned god of “apostolic socialism” glowered, then slowly leaned forward and chastised his incurably upstart retired cultist with the razor-slicing paternal tones Jones had so expertly used in Indiana, California, and Guyana.

“Listen, and listen well, Jimmy,” assured the Prince of Darkness, “did I not promise you, just before your final departure from the Jonestown, that you would have your own apologist web site, hmmm?”

“Yes…..you did,” Jones sighed, “I haven’t forgotten, Oh Great One. The Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple website has surpassed all my expectations. Has all the requisite qualifications—it’s mind-blowing. My PR reps, Becky Moore and Mac McGehee, have pulled off a spectacular coup, masterfully redecorating our Temple portrait with a breath-taking tapestry of “positives."

“The impact has been staggering, as if we’ve been serving all our official media “pundits” a second batch of Flavor-Aide spiked with LSD!! Bravo, Mac & Becky….”

“Damn straight, pastor,” seethed Satan, kicking up a cloud of brimstone in Jones’s direction, “so show a little more gratitude and less whining over that fact that we can’t win ‘em all. Some of our tactics can go only so far. In this case, the Academy voters walked through that field and smelled Nelson’s apologist propaganda like fresh fertilizer. Deal with it, Jimmy."

“But cheer up. Because often enough, too, it can be a ‘Lose the battle, win….”

“…..the War,” finished Jones, as the steam suddenly vanished from his sunglasses, revealing demonic, narrowing eyes. A grotesque grin began spreading across Jones’s face, the kind he wore on special occasions, such as during the San Francisco Chronicle-owned KRON-TV interview promoting his “good works” in September, 1972. Those were the proverbial good ol’ days, when his power mounted exponentially, thanks to having all the California reporters—save one--portraying him as hero, crusader, activist, year after year after year, until he escaped to his Guyana prison fortress .

The rush. He could feel it surge once again. Yeah. First thing they had to do was tell Stanley to get over Oscar.

“Father,” he beamed, as they began their afternoon walk, “Our film is still sweeping through theaters across the country. In April, we’ll enter millions and millions of homes through the family television, courtesy of that “liberal” media outlet, PBS. And God help ‘em—heh-heh-heh—when it gets loaded onto that marvelous, portable weapon, the DVD, where Stan has promised to pack in for us even more apologetics!”

“The DVD, eh….??,” cracked Satan, as they strolled around the shore of his favorite lake of fire, “…..Devil’s….Video….Deception…”


This was the second installment of our Jim Jones allegory. The People’s Temple cult, nevertheless, remains under revisionist siege despite the Academy of Motion Pictures astute decision to drop-kick “Jonestown: Life and Death of People’s Temple” off the nomination ballot.

True, this particular battle, the first big one, was a decisive victory. The Cult Apologists Pagans were driven back from the gates. When the Big Night arrives in Hollywood next Sunday night, a 10,000 decibel applause should be given to the Academy for not being taken in by Nelson’s outrageously fraudulent portrait of this criminal, child-abusing, destructive group.

But make no mistake. The Nelsons remain a formidable weapon. Stanley’s potent, emotionally-charged directing of what he calls his “somewhat objective” documentary was expertly scripted by wife/writer Mrs. Nelson (Marcia Smith), who did the following to the loads of People’s Temple history that didn’t fit into her and Stan’s left-wing “literary license” framework.

They censored it. Totalitarian style. Well, then again, it is a “somewhat objective” film about a Stalinist cult leader, isn’t it?

In perfect Sgt. Pepper harmony, Stan got by “with a little help” from his friends. Yes, our very own “Jonestown Institute” operators, Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee, were there in force, as they were for the recent television docudrama, “Paradise Lost,” In fact, I received this bizarre, taunting confirmation on January 24, via e-mail:

“…..Would it interest you to know that your main punching bag these days cooperated as much with ‘Paradise Lost’ as we did with Stanley’s film? Check the closing credits, next time it comes round on your TV.

Your whipping boy, Mac

Fielding M. McGhee III
The Jonestown Institute”

Interesting self-appointed nicknames, Mr. McGhee. Beyond this is the real issue of your “cooperation” with film maker Stan. It doesn’t take much at all to taste the identical rancid flavor in both of your cult apologist side shows.

Scores of especially glaring samplings are available in the “FAQ” section about “Who Joined People’s Temple,” of Moore and McGhee’s website, which claims the cult comprised “idealists trying to create a perfect society. In one respect, they succeeded: the community at Jonestown was inter-racial, inter-generational, and more or less classless, although a few people may have had privileges that others did not share….”

Yes, a few people may have had privileges that others did not share….at Jonestown. Incredible.

But it doesn’t stop at their website. Oh, no, one of California’s own university libraries has decided to host the following fairy tale that could be called the perfect primer for the Nelson Fiction Fest:

Peoples Temple Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, Library and Information Access, San Diego State University.
Provenance
Gift of Dr. Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee III, 2003-2004.
The collection is open for research.
Historical Note

In 1954, a young preacher in Indianapolis, Indiana named James Warren Jones left his position with the Laurel Street Tabernacle of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church over the church’s inability to accept racial integration. Together with other disaffected congregants, Jones founded a new, more open church named the Wings of Deliverance Church. As the congregation grew and gained mainline church affiliation, it adopted a new name: Peoples Temple Christian Church. Peoples Temple emphasized the need for racial integration and made social welfare projects its primary focus. As its views expanded, the congregation met much resistance from the public and thus was forced to move the location of the church numerous times. Eventually, Jones decided to leave Indiana. He chose the rural area of Redwood Valley in northern California as his destination after reading an article in Esquire magazine, which described it as one of the few places in the world that would survive a nuclear holocaust.

Redwood Valley and its nearest town, Ukiah, were idyllic, but they weren’t perfect. Almost all-white, the area had difficulties of its own with a multiracial church. Jones acquired church facilities in San Francisco and Los Angeles, urban areas that were both more accepting of the Temples members and where the social services that the church offered were more needed. Jones eventually moved the main headquarters of the church to San Francisco but continued to minister in all three locations, sometimes during the same weekend.

Jones’s sense of mission was not complete, however. Haunted by what he perceived as the inevitability of Americas nuclear annihilation and confronted on a daily basis with the inescapable racism he saw in American society, Jones looked elsewhere to build a utopian society which he referred to as the Promised Land. Its location was in Guyana, an English-speaking, black-governed socialist democracy on the north coast of South America. Beginning in 1974, Temple pioneers worked to construct the community formally known as the Peoples Temple Agricultural Mission, but better known as Jonestown, and leaders of the group planned for a slow, steady migration of Temple members to begin in mid-1977.

About that time, however, the Temple began receiving unfavorable news coverage generated by some of its apostates. The same disaffected members also filed lawsuits to reclaim property which they had previously donated to the church, as well as court petitions for custody of their relatives still in the church. Their allegations, and the press coverage of them, led to investigations by various federal and state government agencies, including ones that threatened the church’s very existence, such as Internal Revenue Service. Jones response was to speed up the migration to the Promised Land. What once was planned to extend over many months was reduced to a six-week period in late summer 1977.

Jones problems didn’t end there, though. The same Temple defectors, now united in an organization called Concerned Relatives, continued to call for government investigations and to press for decisions by American courts on their petitions. They also lobbied for congressional action, bringing their pleas to the attention of Leo Ryan (D-CA), the representative of several Temple members and families.

Congressman Ryan agreed to conduct a neutral, fact-finding mission in November of 1978 to assess the situation at Jonestown, but he took a number of Jones antagonists with him. Jones immediate inclination was to decline permission for a visit to the community, but his lawyers prevailed upon him to relent, and the Ryan party arrived in Jonestown on November 17. The visit seemed to go well on the first day, but on the second day, a number of Jonestown residents, unhappy with living and working conditions in the Promised Land, asked to leave with Ryan.

The events of the next few hours remain shrouded in mystery. What is known is that the Ryan party, now enlarged by 16 defectors, returned to a jungle airstrip at Port Kaituma, about five miles from Jonestown, in preparation to return to Guyana’s capital of Georgetown and then back to the U.S. Shortly after their arrival at the airstrip, a tractor towing a flatbed trailer pulled up at the other end of the airstrip, and men on the trailer started firing weapons. A few minutes later, Ryan and four others were dead, and a half dozen more were wounded.

Meanwhile, back in Jonestown, Jones proclaimed that all was lost, and that when Guyanese military forces soon invaded the community, they shouldn’t find anyone alive. According to a tape made during the final hours, Jones warned that they would be tortured, and that it was better to die by their own hands. Some of the few survivors deny that the deaths were by suicide, and point to the presence of guards and the injection marks found on many of the bodies. Whatever the circumstances, the results shocked the world: 909 dead at Jonestown, five dead at Port Kaituma, and four Temple members dead in Georgetown.

Well, that certainly wasn’t fair—the Temple “receiving unfavorable news coverage generated by some of its apostates.”! The nerve. [What is really unnerving is that a state university would exhibit a statement containing so many outrageous, absurd fabrications. Who is in charge there?]

There is so much more to this story, however, that a legion of future postings will be needed to cover all the squalid details, including:

• How Rebecca Moore’s former college roommate, Denise Stephenson, manages the People’s Temple archive collection at the California Historical Society, where Stan Nelson researched his film. She also assisted in the research for a 2005 play that whitewashed the People’s Temple.

• The army of “New Religious Movements” to which Moore is aligned, which includes the co-editor of her “Nova Religio” journal, Catherine Wessinger, a notorious cult apologist. Wessinger has claimed, “If Jones and his community had succeeded in creating their Promised Land, they would still be here. But due to the attacks and investigations they endured, they opted for the Gnostic view that devalued this world.”

As for Stan Nelson, despite most of the critics fawning over his work, some have been getting suspicious.

“It would be nice to report,” wrote Washington Post critic Stephen Hunter, “that director Stanley Nelson comes up with something new, some illumination, some revelation, some heretofore unglimpsed irony, but he doesn’t…..he fails to grasp a larger point.”

Baltimore Sun Critic Chris Kaltenbach is similarly unimpressed with Nelson’s shallow approach: “But the film never gets behind the chill,” observes Kaltenbach, “it paints Jones’ People’s Temple as a utopian idea gone terribly wrong, but it never gets a handle on how things went so bad so quickly. What made people follow Jones so blindly?”
And, the most significant, chilling question about Nelson’s cult apologist offering, why it should be thrown out like last week’s garbage, as stated by Kaltenbach:

“More problematic, it leaves too many questions unanswered.”

As for Stan, he’s resigned to the reality that the Academy got wise to all the unacceptable “unanswered questions” in his docu-ganda and booted him off Oscar’s door step, as it well should have.

In a nauseating puff piece by San Francisco Chronicle critic Ruthe Stein, Nelson was asked how he “put together films.”

“I do things a little differently than many documentary filmmakers,” admitted “Revolutionary Stan, “If I’m doing something historical, I prefer not to interview historians…..”

Oh, but of course. Something about history? Right, ignore the historians.

And if it’s something about cults, definitely ignore the social psychologists. Good job, Mr. Nelson.

On the other hand, Stein’s final cotton candy question might serve as more than just food for thought for this amazing director. Perhaps there’s a lesson here in the making, though he still appears sadly oblivious. Maybe it’s the cultist company he keeps.

Steine asked: Did the acclaim for “Jonestown” open any doors in Hollywood?

“Not really,” lamented Lord Nelson, “No opportunities. I don’t know why that is. My phone doesn’t ring for anything. I have to pretty much make my own way. If I sat here and waited for my phone to ring, I would starve.”

Or try a Jonestown diet, Stan.

"Jonestown: Paradise Lost:" Antidote to Stanley Nelson's Cult Apologist Snake Bite

If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure not to miss this Saturday’s History Channel docudrama, “Jonestown: Paradise Lost,” a gripping look at an abominable cult’s final four days culminating in one of the most infamous mass murders on record.

Some suicides, yes—but the simple, ugly reality is that these men, women, and little children were brutally murdered, through mental and physical coercion. Consider the body discovered of the woman with nearly every joint in her body yanked apart in a desperate attempt to escape the grasp of cult thugs poisoning her.

Guyana’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, accompanied the teams that counted the dead hours after the massacre. He found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades of 80-90 percent of the victims he examined. Others had been shot or strangled.

Some of you may have this to compare with the images presented, or reported by some witless film critic, in Director Stanley Nelson’s, “Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple.” This stark contrast of a film winds down, featuring some poignant music accompanying a narrative of “The Final Note,” written by a doomed cult member—either Dick Tropp or Marceline Jones--on the day of the slaughter of these 913 Americans.

“A tiny kitten sits next to me,” are some of the lines read, “Watching. A dog barks. The birds gather on the telephone wires. Let all the story of this Peoples Temple be told….” Of course, consistent with the rest of Nelson’s revisionist opus, is Mrs. Nelson’s (wife Marcia Smith, his script writer) impeccable editing OUT of some of the appalling cult ravings contained in that “Final Note,” like the following:

“….We hope that the world will someday realize the ideals of brotherhood, justice and equality that Jim Jones has lived and died for. We have all chosen to die for this cause.”

He (Tropp) or she (Mrs. Jones) was speaking on behalf of the 276 murdered children, we presume.

What’s critical about “Jonestown: Paradise Lost,, besides being well-done, is its value as a partial antidote to the horrendous cult apologist propaganda of Nelson’s film. No, it’s not a perfect film. The most egregious error is the one made by just about everyone dealing with the subject, either out of sheer ignorance or inexcusable dishonesty.

That error, of course, is the claim in the film that “At the height of his power….Jim Jones’s ‘dark’ side emerged.” Hogwash. The director presents a copy of the New West article, as if to suggest it was The First Expose of People’s Temple; we’re supposed to assume the Temple was not all that beastly until at least the mid-70’s; and that the public shouldn’t be concerned with those collaborators—the public officials, politicians, clergy, journalists—that aided and abetted Jones, unwittingly facilitating the impending November, 1978 bloodbath, should not be given their just recognition?

Marshall Kilduff, co-author of this New West article, is every bit as reprehensible as the reporter featured in the program, Tim Reiterman. While Reiterman surely deserves praise for risking his life going to Guyana, he disgraces himself with fabrications in his People’s Temple book, “Raven” debunking my father’s 1972 Examiner People’s Temple expose series--a time period in which he and Kilduff did nothing but sit on their supercilious duffs.

There’s enough sordid details in the Kilduff & Rieterman sideshow that these two—like the other upcoming exhibits this People’s Temple Hall of Shame—will be awarded a posting all to themselves. Coming soon.

Jonestown survivor Stephan Jones provided some of the most compelling impute in “Paradise Lost,” revealing the pain of having a hideously deranged father. “I knew he was sick from very early on,” said Stephen, citing how the “Marxist” Jim Jones had “demoralized, malnourished, and exhausted a population,” utilizing widespread “abuse, theft, and torturing of children.”

Another cult survivor, Vernon Gosney, related how he had gone to live in Jonestown for, among other reasons, to become “a good socialist.” Socialist. That’s the time-worn euphemism used by that breed of tyrants such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro; his fan Rev. Jones, along with ardent California supporters such as Angela Davis, used it like a mantra.

And, lamentably, this film doesn’t show Fidel, Angela, or the freighter-load of other People’s Temple cheerleaders, like famed San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who assured Californians in 1977 that Jones, who was dunking children down into wells, was “doing the work of the Lord” in Guyana. Oh, yes, that’s right; Nelson, Lord of the Cult Apologists, also somehow left all this (and much more) out in his film, too.

Shocker.

As the docudrama shows enthralling reenacted scenes of a young Gosney plotting his escape from the Stalinist prison camp, it then takes the viewer back up to present-day, where the real-life Gosney makes this revealing statement.

“Conditions at Jonestown,” he said, “were not conducive to think clearly.” A little later on in the film, Gosney again commented on the sensation — “I wasn’t thinking clearly”--as he desperately tried to figure how to get out safely with Congressman Leo Ryan’s delegation.

Not “thinking clearly”?

Herein is the clue on how Jim Jones controlled his “flock.” It is what the cult apologists, from Rebecca Moore to John Hall and all the rest, are frantic about, because it signals the effects of the obvious:

Mind Control. Thought Reform. Brain Washing.

This is about as close as the “Paradise Lost” film comes to providing viewers something of an accurate picture of the People’s Temple, and all destructive cults, for that matter. It is a great movie for its humanity in showing, yes, these were human beings, trapped by a monster.

It would have been helpful if the producers could have had Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton discuss the landmark research in his book, “Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of ‘Brainwashing’ in China.”

They might have also turned to an expert on the work of the late psychologist Margaret Singer, author of “Cults in our Midst.” Singer cited the six conditions that create an atmosphere where minds can be controlled:

• Control a person’s time and environment, leaving no time for thought
• Create a sense of powerlessness, fear, and dependency
• Manipulate rewards and punishments to suppress former social behavior
• Manipulate rewards and punishments to elicit the desired behavior
• Create a closed system of logic which makes dissenters feel as if something was wrong with them
• Keep recruits unaware about any agenda to control or change them

They could have consulted with other cult experts, such as Rick Ross or Steven Hassan, the latter whose book “Releasing the Bonds” describes the mind control model, BITE, in which a cult leader creates dependency and obedience through control over:
• Behavior
• Information
• Thought
• Emotions

Of course, none of this was discussed in the film. It’s not nearly as exciting. Nonetheless, “Jonestown: Paradise Lost” had a thousand times the integrity of Stanley Nelson’s “Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple.”

Maybe the biggest problem was Stanley’s shocking naiveté entering the portals of the Temple. He looks at it like it’s some kind of “social activist revolution” that “brought people together,” almost as if he has 60’s brain-lock. Here is what he told interviewer Susan Gerhard last October in her “SF360” web log:

“I went into it knowing so little about it,” admitted Nelson, “I didn’t know that Jim Jones was such a part of the political social establishment of the Bay Area. I didn’t understand how he was coddled and courted by politicians.”

Funny thing, too, how Nelson refused to examine that most vital part. Without all that “coddling and courting” (Jones did some of it himself, too, especially with cash payoffs to the newspapers), the road to the Jonestown Massacre would have never been built.

The next part of his statement, however, truly reveals Stan’s Alice in Wonderland perception of the story:

“In the bigger pictures: I learned why and how people would join Peoples Temple and why and how they would stay and hold on to this thing, even thought they saw it going wrong."

“They wanted to hold onto this dream,” reasons the director of this “acclaimed” film, “they held on as it led to disaster.”

Held on to it. As tightly as, say, those Temple cult killers held down and yanked out all the joints in that doomed woman’s body on November 18, 1978 in Mr. Jones’s gulag.

Stanley Nelson—the same one they’re talking about giving an Oscar nomination to tomorrow?

Keep prayin’, one and all.

An Appeal To The Academy...

The deadline is over. Best Documentary nominations, and the rest, were all due in yesterday, 5 p.m. It’s time now for a lot of genuine faith, which fits right in with the subject matter, after all.

Just please say it ain’t so, voting members of the Academy. This obscene con job of a film that slithered onto the short-list—“Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple”—you couldn’t have put this thing into the final five.
image source
The “New Religious Movement” hordes naturally have other designs. They must be chanting now, humming, clanging tambourines, and rattling e-meters over the thought of Director Stanley Nelson’s cult apologist film capturing an Academy Award.

We now wait while they count, until January 23. That’s when the official five nominations are announced. Then we’ll have one more sign if the moral depravity meter has risen another notch.

So please focus, all ye readers of sound mind…. Pray that enough Academy members were not lured in like throngs of cult captives or mindless film critics. Grant that the voters fled far and away from this fetid Potemkin Village that Stanley built.

A handful of the critics did, in fact, manage to send a couple of warning flares about “Jonestown.” The media “too-little, too-late” People’s Temple rerun features Newsweek headliner David Ansen, whose ground-shaking revelation was that his favorite films of 2006 “blurred the lines between reality and fiction.”

Bravo, Sir David. No, he didn’t quite come out and say Nelson served up the public a “faux-documentary.” He didn’t need to. Director Stan did it for him. In a recent New York Times interview, Nelson glowed, “What’s fascinating about documentary today is the different ways to approach it.”

He went to qualify exactly what he means: Historical accuracy, in a Nelson-mutated documentary, will be relegated in place of “advocacy.” You see, big change is coming your way. Objectivity…is on the official endangered list.

Image Source
“Just by being somewhat objective,” said Nelson, “We were being revolutionary.”

“Somewhat objective”?

Yes, that means if you have any understanding about the principles of cult dynamics, or know the background of the unembellished, uncensored history of Jim Jones and the full horror he unleashed, Lord Nelson’s expert sanitizing will disabuse all that. True enough, he IS required to mention some of the requisite “negatives.” But the most destructive cult in American history? Oh, my heavens, no—far be it from that, according to our budding social scientist.

“What I learned from doing this film,” Nelson told Stylus Magazine in an interview last October, “was that one of the most dangerous things is when you join these communities and they deliver on their promise. I think People's Temple delivered on what it promised people. It promised them that they would be part of a big family and live a new way. And it delivered. That’s why they stayed.”

Well, how about that. Yes, “delivered.” It would be interesting hearing reputable cult experts in the field—the late Margaret Sanger, Robert Lifton, Philip Zimbardo, or any others—comment on Professor Stan’s assessment. Closer to the case is Dr. Keith Harrary’s analysis is of this “big family’s new way.”

Dr. Harrary had worked as counseling director at Al and Jeannie Mills’s Human Freedom Center in Berkeley, California, where they offered help to suffering People’s Temple defectors, as well as those from other cults ranging from the Moonies to Hare Krishnas.

[Al and Jeannie Mills (along with their daughter, in 1980, murdered by unknown assailants) had been top defectors themselves, but have been censored in the film—one of scores of the missing pieces in Nelson’s “somewhat objective” history.]

What does Dr. Harrary say about how “motivation” was instilled in someone, so they could continue enduring unspeakable brutality—in California, long before “Dad” shipped them off to his Guyana Gulag?

“Jones had forced them to prove their loyalty by signing blank pieces of paper,” wrote Dr. Harrary in a March, 1992, Psychology Today article, “blank power-of-attorney forms, and false confessions that they had molested their children, conspired to overthrow the U.S. government, and committed other crimes while members of the cult. It was the sort of thing Jones did to control people, like the time he tricked a member into putting her fingerprints on a gun and told her he would have someone killed with it and frame her for the murder if she ever left the group.”

And what about Nelson’s claims of this wondrous “new way,” which he insists was fulfilled in “the beginning,” and masquerades on screen? Again, in the Redwood Valley years well before Jonestown came about, the “new way” was something altogether different.

“There was a deliberate malevolence about the way Jones treated the members of his cult that went beyond mere perversion,” stated Dr. Harrary, “It was all about forcing members to experience themselves as vulgar and despicable people who could never return to a normal life outside of the group. It was about destroying any personal relationships that might come ahead of the relationship each individual member had with him."

“It was about terrorizing children and turning them against their parents. It was about seeing Jim Jones as an omnipotent figure who could snuff out members’ lives on a whim as easily as he had already snuffed out their self respect."

“In short, it was about mind control.”

Mind control. Find any cult apologist on your block, say this phrase three times fast, and they might just slowly spasm up the nearest wall like a crazed spiderman. Pepper them liberally with “cult”--a four-letter profanity spice to which they are allergic--and you got a real spectacle. But be prepared, audience: If you have the odd notion that Nelson’s “documentary” about one of history’s most notorious cults has ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER about cults or mind control, forget it.

The script says it was a “church,” okay? A “revolutionary” church, kind of like Stan’s “objectivity.” Written by Marcia Smith (Mrs. Nelson) and Noland Walker (who had family members in the cult and attended services), they provide Nelson some extra left-wing sizzle—as if he needs more—by incorporating a second official academic cult apologist in film. The first comes from Rebecca Moore, who teaches religious studies at San Diego State University. The second sound bite comes from John Hall, who dishes out his cult apologetics at UC Davis. The following, an excerpt entitled “The Collectivist Reformation,” from Hall’s book, “Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America,” might be the best explanation for Stanley and Mrs. Nelson’s bizarre vision:

“Where People’s Temple deviated much more dramatically from conventional social practice,” writes Hall, “was its members’ high rates of tithing, unsalaried labor, and donation of real and personal assets. In turn, these differences were part of a more profound difference—replacing individualism and the family unit with the communal equation of an organization that pooled the economic recourses of its most highly committed members, and in return, offered them economic security, an extended collectivist ‘family,’ and the opportunity to participate in a politically meaningful social cause larger than themselves."

“Balancing that equation, the Temple demanded commitment, discipline, and individual submission to collective authority.”

Oh, of course, Professor Marx. Logically stated. A “cause larger than themselves.” Today they have to listen to that hooey in those totalitarian hell-holes called Cuba and North Korea. Which is precisely what Jim Jones was for the captives of the Peoples Temple—a modern-day Stalin, whose mandated foreign language lesson of the day in Jonestown was, yes, Russian.

But, once again—Stanley, Mrs. Nelson, and their little comrade, Noland—somehow “forgot” to inform their audience of this little bit of trivia. And a shameful bit more.

Cult apologist, revisionist history with a vengeance. This, a short-listed nomination for Best Documentary of the Year??

Somebody ought to call Hollywood 911.

Tune in to "JONESTOWN - Paradise Lost"

Tune in to the History Channel
tomorrow (Monday) night
Check your local listings for times
JONESTOWN - Paradise Lost
Framed by recently released, U.S. Government information and eye witness accounts, this special follows Congressman Leo Ryan's fatal journey into "Jonestown", a community carved out of the jungles of Guyana by the followers of messianic/charismatic pastor, Jim Jones. Using extensive and fact backed dramatic re-enactments, as well as archival footage, and heart-rending interviews, we go beyond "official reality" and deep into the inner workings of this tragic cult and its apocalyptic end.
Rating: TVPG V
Running Time: 120 minutes

Here are other viewing times:
Monday, January 15 09:00 PM
Tuesday, January 16 01:00 AM
Saturday, January 20 08:00 PM
Sunday, January 21 12:00 AM
Saturday, January 27 05:00 PM

The Devil's Blueprint

Devil's Blueprint for an Apologists Playground

Imagine peering into a special cult crystal ball that captured a scene from the final, terrible twilight hour of Jonestown on November 18, 1978—and suddenly witnessing this foreboding dialogue of things to come in the new millennium.

You first see the slowly undulating man, languishing like a mortally wounded king cobra. Jim “Dad” Jones, totalitarian ruler of People’s Temple, naturally destined as one of the last official departures from this nightmarish gulag he so proudly created. So he sits out his final minutes on his infamous wooden “throne,” in that horrendous death-filled pavilion, waiting for his final special medication. No painful cyanide for him, of course. Just like a previous dictator, in Germany, he’ll opt for a bullet through the head.

But just before he’s about to “step across,” the defeated cult leader gets a friendly tap-tap-tap on his slumped over shoulder. It’s a very familiar friend. Jones is ecstatic. His prayers have been answered.

“So, my son,” says Lucifer, “Before you join your brethren below, what exactly are your three wishes to bestow here on Earth? Remember not to make them in haste, like some of your political friends did. Stalin—don’t even get me started. I mean, the guy wanted a permanent iron curtain across Europe! Now look at the place. So, ‘Reverend’….just be sure your three wishes are practical ones…..”

“Not a problem, pop,” replies Jones, “Got the perfect blueprint. My first wish: Replenish and rally our Cult Apologists Armada. I know my massacring babies, children, etc, has left them in something of a full retreat…. True, I’ll be long gone by the time they hit full speed again. But time is on our side. We know full well that older memories fade and younger ones can be corrupted. I’m sure of one thing, or I never would have gotten this far: In the next millennium, it’ll be a revisionist paradise.”

“Cult apologists, hmmm…..” grins the Beast, flashing his great canines, “….always so accommodating. And such superlative aim with those devilishly pleasing ‘religious freedom’ smoke bombs covering for our pals. Well, Jimmy, it may very well take close to a generation but, yes, your wish is granted. We will, however, have to come up with a nice lovable euphemism for our cronies carrying on the cult torch.”

“Okay….let’s see,” Jones thinks, “….we could call it…..’NEW…..”
“…..RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS’!!...” the Devil finished for him. The title was insidious. Perfect. Who could possibly take issue with the great champions of “New Religious Movements”? That would be anti-First Amendment, Un-American, and Un-Godly, after all. It was the proverbial stroke of wicked genus.

“Now, your second wish, faithful student?” asks the Fallen Angel.

“Well, I’m not quite sure yet,” replied the Pastor, who is feeling increasingly feverish as he’s edging towards the brink. “But I do want to have some future personal spin doctors pop up and wallpaper over all this with tales of the “positive” and “egalitarian” and “beautiful” realities of the People’s Temple.”

“Your wish is my command, James,” smirked the horned one. “You don’t know the half of it, but the future shows not only personal computers in nearly everyone’s home, but where people can have what are called websites, promoting any and all subjects.”

“ANY subjects??” said Jones.

“That’s correct, my boy…..even somebody like you,” answered Satan. “And guess what---you’ll even have your very own People’s Temple website that’ll feature the brilliant Stalinist accomplishments of your ‘Apostolic Socialism.’”

“Magnificent!” said Jones. Now, with the sound of the bullet now being loaded into the gun chamber, the soon-to-be extinct tyrant had just enough time for his third wish. This website thing really got him going, but it would still never eclipse his excitement for show business, which could provide a whole new realm of immortality.

He couldn’t resist. “The third wish,” he said, “is to put me in an award-winning documentary!!”

His master looked at him for a moment, as the gun barrel now slowly pressed up against Jones’s tortured skull. All this horror, tragedy, and carnage—in a documentary??

“…..and only if my film has all these NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS ‘production values’, Father….” pleaded Jones, as the trigger slowly moved backwards.

“Agreed!” answered the Prince of Darkness, just as the sound of a single gunshot erupted, echoing throughout the new ghost town in the Guyana Jungle.



Editor’s Note: The above allegory is a warning, essentially on the dangers posed by cult apologists, e.g., assorted “scholars” and other supporters that include prominent film makers. Cult apologists are the well-financed (sometimes by terrorist cults, it seems) defenders of so-called “New Religious Movements” (NRM). There is an abundance of information detailing their activities on my website links, such as Steve Hassan’s Freedom of Mind Center and the Rick Ross Institute.

The point about the allegory’s three wishes Jim Jones made to the Devil is that…..they have all now frighteningly become reality today.

There is, in fact, a website exclusively devoted to People’s Temple and Jonestown, run by one of the lesser known of these apologists, Rebecca Moore, who like a lot of “NRM” sages, teaches religious studies in a university (surprise, surprise). Along with her husband, Fielding 'Mac' McGhee, they have a clever fusion of “bad news”/”good news” about the People’s Temple, but ultimately their goal is to “recondition” the public toward a more “optimistic” view of this monstrously destructive cult

Take a look and decide for yourself:
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple

There is, for instance, this comment from Rebecca Moore’s “Katrina and Jonestown: A Commentary”:

“First, the situation of desperate poverty experienced by African Americans seems not just unchanged, but even worse in 2005 than in 1978. The message of hope, the overcoming of racial inequality, and the level of security which People’s Temple provided would be just as appealing today as it was back then.”

“Level of security”? This just has to beg that familiar question of “What Were You Thinking When You Wrote This?” Level of security?? Let’s see what child advocate and journalist Kenneth Wooden revealed about how this applied to the young cult captives, in his landmark book, “Children of Jonestown”:

“Physical abuse of the young was part of the routine at People’s Temple. As Jones began to exercise control, children were beaten if they failed to call him Father or were otherwise disrespectful or if they talked with peers who were not members of People’s Temple. Belts were used at first, then were replaced by elm switches, which in turn were replaced by the “board of education,” a long, hard piece of wood, swung by 250-pound Ruby Carroll.”

Message of hope? Wooden goes on to describe how this message was conveyed:

“Mild discipline gave way to making young girls….take cold showers or jump into the cold swimming pool at the Redwood Valley Church. Unequal boxing matches gave way to beatings with paddles, then electric shock, and finally something [Jones] called ‘blue-eyed’ monster, which hurt and terrorized the younger ones in a darkened room…..These abuses occurred while the People’s Temple was in California and regularly winning praise from newspapers and politicians.”

The last sentence should outrage every citizen in California, and everywhere else for that matter. Those elites still swaggering around should be confronted for aiding and abetting such crimes. Of course, that would likely not phase J. Gordon Melton, founder of the Santa Barbara-based Institute for the Study of American Religion, one single bit.

“This wasn’t a cult,” said Melton, commenting on the People’s Temple, “This was a respectable, mainline Christian group.”

Mind you, Melton claimed this in early 1988, nearly 10 years after the Jonestown Massacre. It’s no surprise he’s known as the “father of cult apologists.” And, yet, he sponsors religious conferences and defended the terrorist Aum Shinrikyo cult—receiving travel expenses from them in exchange-- in Japan (which launched a poison gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995).

But Melton is insignificant compared to the Devil’s third kept promise to Jim Jones in the allegory. Throughout the nation’s theatres, and now on the“short list” for a possible ”Best Documentary” Academy Award nomination, is Stanley Nelson’s “Jonestown: Life and Death of the People’s Temple”.



The award-winning Nelson is an amazingly talented film maker, although he really ought to give just a little more spotlight to his wife, Marcia Smith, also an award-winner, as she wrote the “story” for the film.



After seeing this astounding collage of unabashed cult apologist tripe, it’s fitting indeed that quotation marks hang over Mrs. Nelson’s “story”-telling. She admitted in an interview with the Writer’s Guild of America the following:

“I view my work as advocacy…..yes, they’re [documentaries] supposed to be based on fact, but you always have to make a choice about what part of the facts you’re going to put in a film.”

Yes, ma’am. And with such a skilled director as your husband, whom I’m certain has the same passionate view on “advocacy” and “fact deletion” as you, it’s no wonder we’ve come up with this breath-taking movie that surely has Jim Jones dancing in his grave, giving thanks to the unholy one—in our allegory.

Writer Bettina Drew of “The Nation” (presumably a sympathetic “advocacy” publication) provides one of the most ghastly of all accounts of life for the mind-controlled, now physically imprisoned cult members in the Guyana gulag, in her article “Indiana Jones’ Temple of Doom”:

“Like a plantation, Jonestown was closed, semi-self-sufficient agricultural world, with a sawmill, a school and a medical unit. Transplanted from their homes, their family relationships sundered, most of the able-bodied were made to work in the fields from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week, and on Sundays, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., while living in crowded, tin-roofed wooden barracks containing bunk beds for scores of people.

“They toiled in gangs observed by armed guards said to be for their own protections, and were physically abused if they slacked in their work or were defiant. Offenders were assigned to a socially segregated “Learning Crew”, which had to work double-time, heavily guarded, in the fields. There were also isolation units and an “Extended Care Unit”, where Thorazine, found in quantity, was said by a nurse and others to keep the truly backward sedated; for recalcitrant children, there were horrifying well-dunkings. The all-night harangues and Jones’s incessant voice over the loudspeaker were a psychological constant for a population that grew thin and susceptible to diarrhea on an inadequate rice-based diet.

“And Jones kept his followers in ignorance by selectively editing and delivering himself any news form the outside world. Though Jonestown wasn’t racially based, he re-created New World plantation slavery in Guyana. For, like slaves, Jones’s people were there to serve his vision, yet they were central to his identity.”

Isolation units? Slave labor and starvation diets? Totalitarian oppression?? Oh no, well that surely wasn’t compatible in Stanley and Mrs. Nelson’s Little Storyboard World. No doubt they torpedoed one freighter load of facts after another in their quest to get full sail with the rest of the Cult Apologist Armada.

But don’t fret--we’ll delve into all the things that Stan and the Mrs. censored, such as Jim Jones’s ex-enforcer Tim Stoen, who almost caused the mass murder to happen a year early. What’s more, how the Academy could possibly consider a Documentary Oscar for someone with the following mentality about one of the worst human rights atrocities in modern American history:

“I see them in Jonestown,” related Nelson, in an interview with Greencine Magazine, “and part of me sees a huge party, you know what I mean? When I see clips that NBC took of that last night, when they got that band playing…..and they’re in the middle of the jungle, and—you think about that—that band can play as late as you want them to play. 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, and you can come back and party all night long. Hey. Looked fun to me.”


Ah-huh. A whole lot of fun in Jonestown. Hopefully, Stanley and Mrs. Nelson will make public the exact reasons why they have so unconscionably exploited the American public with this screen derivative of Rebecca Moore’s appallingly twisted “Sympathetic History of People’s Temple”.

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