-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: The Culture War
Date: Wed Sep 13 17:15:19 CDT 1995
Message number: 1
Reply to message number: unavailable

 Commentators like Pat Buchanan tend to make a lot of the "culture war". 
This base is a place to discuss the so-called culture war and try to make 
sense of it all.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: FROGGY
Subject: Re: Rconscructionism
Date: Tue Jul 30 07:00:54 CDT 1996
Message number: 2
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Froggy to Daedalus Rising <=-

 DR>    A book which insists that homosexuality is a "kind of convenantal
 DR> violation...so serious in God's eyes that He actually declared it
 DR> subject to capital punishment" is being recommended to members of the
 DR> Christian Coalition through the group's magazine, "Christian
 DR> American."  The latest issue of Church&State notes that the January
 
 DR> Sect.  Reconstructionism is a distinct body of teachings, based
 DR> largely on the writings of theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, including
 DR> his 800-page "Institutes of Biblical Law" (1973) .  Theologically, it

 Fr> Is this real or a put-on?

 100% real. Ronald Reagan was a sympathizer, as were many people in his
administration including James Watt. Many reconstructionists want to 
secularize the state at any cost, bringing "god's law" to the masses. 
This is their primary goal, and everything else is secondary to that.

 They honestly believe that it is their duty to do this, awaiting the 
return of Jesus - and he will not return until the world has been
"Reconstructed".


... Yield to temptation; It may not pass your way again.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Reconstructionism
Date: Tue Jul 30 13:32:59 CDT 1996
Message number: 3
Reply to message number: 1


 > including sodomy, rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy,
 > witchcraft, astrology, adultery, incest, striking a parent,
 > incorrigible juvenile behavior, apostasy (abandonment of faith) and in
 > the case of women, "unchastity before marriage."
DR>  
         I am still trying to think of anyone I know who will be alive if this
is enforced.  If women are to be put to death for being unchaste before 
marriage and men aren't, I wonder who the women are being unchaste with.

         Hmmm.  Apostasy.  Since we assume that they mean abandoning *their* 
faith, are you still guilty if you never believed that way in the first place,
and therefore didn't abandon it? 

         What a group.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Rconscructionism
Date: Tue Jul 30 13:36:59 CDT 1996
Message number: 4
Reply to message number: 2


DR>  100% real. Ronald Reagan was a sympathizer, as were many people in his

DR>  They honestly believe that it is their duty to do this, awaiting the 
DR> return of Jesus - and he will not return until the world has been
DR> "Reconstructed".
DR> 
         I'd like to suggest that they reread *Revelations.*  As I read it, it
does not require people to reconstruct the world, but themselves, and that in 
the Second Coming, Jesus will judge and separate all the people.  I didn't see
James Watt or Ronald Reagan named as generals in it anywhere.

         I know.  They have made up their minds.  Don't bother them with the 
truth.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: FROGGY
Subject: Re: Reconscructionism
Date: Tue Jul 30 19:05:11 CDT 1996
Message number: 5
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Froggy to Daedalus Rising <=-

 DR>  They honestly believe that it is their duty to do this, awaiting the 
 DR> return of Jesus - and he will not return until the world has been
 DR> "Reconstructed".
 
 Fr> I know.  They have made up their minds.  Don't bother them
 Fr> with the  truth.

 That may be true of a lot of the leadership, but not necessarily the
followers. Oftentimes, the ground troops in these `christian armies'
aren't as violently single-minded as their leaders and can be reasoned 
with.

 Still, the reconstructionists are more wacko than most. Since their
goal is to remake the world into a secular state, there's not much
room for compromise.


___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Dittoheads and Indians
Date: Wed Jul 31 17:54:06 CDT 1996
Message number: 6
Reply to message number: unavailable

        The following is an article that appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of
_Native Americas_.  This article recently won the 1996 Best Editorial Award
at the Native American Journalists Association Annual Conference. For
further information please reply to native_americas-mailbox@cornell.edu.

In my car, alone, and sometimes at home - to my wife's discomfort - I listen
to Rush Limbaugh or catch his TV show.

I have heard enough of Limbaugh over the years to get the gist of his
message and of his style, which is the medium of his message. The man's
opinions might not be of much interest except that they are nearly
inescapable. He has national air time for over twenty hours a week and he
reaches some five million people every day, in long, continuous monologues.
Limbaugh, a veritable rotor of right wing politics in North America, is
furthermore an entertainer. He can make people laugh.

The problem is that the man has an ugly side-a very ugly side.

The quote above must be considered. It is vintage Limbaugh when he gets
rolling on his radio show. (He writes books, too, but they are severely
whitewashed; you have to listen to Limbaugh's radio voice to get to know
him). On the radio, usually from a position of outrageous umbrage, he is
one major national commentator willing to prejudge a whole race of people
and perpetrate a racial slur that must be seen as significant, considering
the breadth of the source. Why would a man in Limbaugh's position call
Native peoples savages in this day and age?

Limbaugh is neither stupid nor particularly careless. True, he is
self-promoting to an embarrassing degree, but he is nevertheless a master
manipulator of public discourse with stated political goals. He is also a
commentator who regularly uses the power of the medium and of his formatted
personae to persuade, cajole and, at appointed times, command a large
public to political action.

With a message well-suited for these mean times-his dominant idea seems to
be championing unmitigated business development by dismissing all gestures
of cooperative (as opposed to confrontational) thinking, and all efforts to
regulate human activity to protect the earth and its resources - he plays to
a major national audience, whose frustration and anger he mines in pursuit
of ideological imperatives.

Dismissed for years as mostly buffoon while his popularity increased
exponentially, Limbaugh whipped up the troops last November and, ditto,
ditto, ditto, won an election for the Republicans. Time put him on a cover
then and Ted Koppel invited him to comment on his news show (as if twenty
hours of national air time per week is not enough for one mortal). Thus
Limbaugh proved himself a hugely influential and highly marketable
commentator. All of which makes it particularly troubling that
dehumanization through racist stereotyping (used against Indians since
Cotton Mather) is a trademark of the rotund disc jockey.

Limbaugh developed his national audience by cleverly employing an old
shtick: funny umbrage at imagined groups-the media, people on welfare,
immigrants, feminists, and now Native Americans-that he props up to hit
with a wide-slapping brush of ridicule, outright misinterpretation, and
wanton disrespect. Limbaugh's shtick, becoming increasingly evident in
media and in politics, is a 1990s kind of bigotry.

Those who like their politics mixed in with ridicule especially enjoy his
antagonistic sarcasm, ostensibly directed at "Liberals" but hitting,
double-barreled, at many of the poor and resourceless groups whom Limbaugh
giddily and nastily defines coast to coast. A master at reducing truth to
comic line, he also knows how to repeat a half-truth that serves his
purpose so regularly that it becomes a sort of reality substitute.
Apparently, he is confident enough in his own positioning to hurl out
stereotypes at whole classes and races of people without the slightest fear
of rebuttal. In this era of trial by airtime, Limbaugh is a hanging judge.

The comment quoted earlier is not his first on Native peoples. I remember
another, from 1992, when Native delegations met at the landmark Rio
conference on environment and development. "What a ragtag looking bunch,"
he laughed on the air, expounding then too on the savage ways of Indians
and mocking "these fools out there" in the environmental movement who
support Indians and want "us to live like stone-age people."

As Limbaugh is unabashedly political, one must assume that his attacks are
orchestrated, his targets carefully selected. In this context, the
connection with Native peoples is about the general public concern over
environmental degradation, which Limbaugh and the interests he truly
represents would like to see discredited or at least reduced. If the
promised new era of non-regulated exploitative extraction of natural
resources is to get underway, concern over environment and Indians is a
troublesome factor.

But, hey, the Indians "these people were out there destroying timber."
What Rush is doing is transparent. It is part of the lining up of forces.
Since Native peoples' issues often and naturally coincide with
environmental concerns, Native peoples themselves must be attacked. As
environmentalists are increasingly recognizing, interest in Native peoples
and causes offers a convergence point where ecological issues can be
creatively conceived. Native peoples' traditions are not made up by
counter-culturalists or academic theorists - they are long-standing human
ways that speak to the relationship to the natural world and can form the
core of a realistic discussion among broad sectors of the population.

Native Traditional Knowledge is sometimes abused or trivialized, but it is
now widely accepted as a base to on which to develop a true environmental
philosophy.

A man in Limbaugh's position, I believe, must find ways to discredit that
connection. That is his job. And Limbaugh is clearly very diligent about
doing his job.

We might do well to consider Rush Limbaugh and his way with words - not to
banter with him, but because he should not so wantonly dominate and even
seriously impact this most serious of topics. He should not be allowed to
issue bigoted and racialist statements unchallenged. We should not pretend
such language and attitudes are proper for a public commentator of such
wide reach.

Let's remember what Rush said. 
"The American Indians were meaner to themselves than anybody was ever mean
to them."

This is the basic stereotype on Indians: a warlike nature. Rush is starting
by harping on this one. Watch him run with it again and again. It has just
enough reality in it to make it useful. For instance, it is true that
Indians warred, and that during wartime people sometimes acted with
meanness and brutality. You won't hear from Limbaugh, however, how the
damage inflicted in traditional Indian disputes pales in comparison to the
mass exterminations carried out against tribes, or by nation-states against
civilian populations. It is a cheap stereotype. A trick.

"The people were savages. It's true, they damn well were. Scalping people."
This is a deepening of the stereotype, deceitful and manipulative not only
for what it says, but for what it hides and obfuscates.

By focusing on the "war-like" Indian image, by invoking the designation of
"savage," the far more prevalent philosophies of Native American societies -
governmental and spiritual constructs that emphasize values such as
cooperation, reciprocity, and spiritual appreciation - the documented
reality of Native American knowledge systems is completely left out of the
listeners' perceptions. This reflects the Limbaugh style: over hours and
hours each week, only negative images are reinforced of anyone Limbaugh
perceives to be an enemy.

You won't tune in to find Rush asking Carl Sagan about ozone layer
depletion or interviewing Native scholars on the variety of Native cultural
viewpoints. Why present a balanced view when ridicule can suffice? Perhaps
for Limbaugh a dialogue with "savages" would be unthinkable. "I am equal
time," the commentator is prone to answer, when questioned on the lack of
balance in his shows.

They taught at my journalism alma mater how principles of public
information handling were worked out over many decades. Major thinkers in
American life contributed to the idea of balanced use of information
channels - especially the national networks. Whether the law dictates it
or not, the ethic holds that balanced journalism, well documented, is of
central value to society. Simple, preferably depersonalized, styles were
expected from information handlers.

In that context, Limbaugh is to the national discourse what professional
wrestling is to sports. Blowing his point of view often and loudly he takes
center stage in the arena. His loud reductionism bombards the mind. His
trick hold? That most scurrilous form of argumentation - crafting straw men
for demolition - which he has down to a fine science. His sarcastic,
constantly mocking style stresses the negative as primary - the negative, of
course, of whatever he is against; the positive, and only the positive, of
what he is for.

Still, despite his self-consciously arrogant style, Rush can make people
laugh. He is superb at skewering politicians' vanities, for instance. And
no one is better at pulling out the loose threads of the Liberal coat,
which he can then retie in clever knots of common logic, bathed in acid
humor. He identifies some of what is wrong with the country after forty
years of (so-called) Liberal policies, and he can make sense. The problem
is that Limbaugh projects his opinions in such one-sided, pin-the-blame
contexts that the truth of matters is inevitably trivialized.

Limbaugh is superb at reducing environmentalism to some "animal rights nut"
who won't kill a rat even to save her child from going through painful
rabies shots. Listeners can identify with Rush's outrage as his unbroken
monologue guides us through. But then, hey, how about that spotted owl, he
says, and feigns eating a spotted owl, as if that somehow eliminates the
need for biodiversity conservation. Rush tells us that there are more trees
today than a century ago. Deforestation is not a problem. According to him,
well, ahem, "there is no damage to the ozone layer, ha ha." Indians and
environment? Hey, "these people were out there destroying timber."

We used to know the difference between a stand-up comic with a political
bent and a social commentator who, with respect and journalistic balance
(the operative principle), integrates a range of information, analyzes the
conflicting viewpoints, and strives to provide the public with a better
ability to interpret. But Limbaugh blurs the two roles more thoroughly than
anyone. His ego expands visibly as his "talent, on-loan from God,"
apparently grants him infallibility.

Limbaugh likes to run down a long list of people and causes that, in his
eyes, fuel the Liberal conspiracy to end Free Enterprise, which must be
saved from those he seems to consider less legitimate peoples with inferior
viewpoints. That Free Enterprise might have excesses or that market-driven
ideas are not always sacrosanct does not enter the picture. That some
situations might not fit within the Left/Right dichotomy seems inconceivable
to Limbaugh. With him, it's full speed ahead, economically, and damn the
rest. We can be sure now though: Native peoples - long condemned as
"obstacles to progress" - are on the list.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Dittoheads and Indians - II
Date: Wed Jul 31 17:54:41 CDT 1996
Message number: 7
Reply to message number: unavailable

[cont]

It may be wise to keep watch on the bigoted views of Rush Limbaugh. Since
he serves as a barometer of the national climate, familiarity with his
points of attack can be useful. But remember also this truth: Native
Americans - Limbaugh's so-called savages - carried out a prescribed protocol
of participatory democracy that sat human beings in a circle. The object of
discussion was placed in the center of the circle and in relation to it,
everyone in the circle had a view, a unique vantage point. The truth was
said to emerge from the common discussion, the respectful appreciation of
everyone else's point of view. Highly trained specialists (elders) gathered
the consensus. This style of governance spawned confederacies and produced
a palpable freedom, a shared experience that inspired colonial American
leaders, and that is more "of America" than Rush Limbaugh, from his glass-
enclosed, push-button, over-blown, self-aggrandizing world will ever be.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFOX
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Atlanta bombing
Date: Thu Aug 01 07:45:43 CDT 1996
Message number: 8
Reply to message number: -5


DR>  Fool, it's the Federal Government that set the bomb itself! They're in
DR> league with the Olympic Committee to take over the world - even as we
DR> speak, the UN posse is heading towards Des Moines.
DR> 
DR>  Arise, you have nothing to fear but the trilateralists in your own
DR> government!

Fool, it was an ANARCHIST!!  One of the ones who say the whole world wold work
together for peace!

and YOU have nothing to fear but a nucular war!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Starfox
Subject: Re: Atlanta bombing
Date: Thu Aug 01 10:01:00 CDT 1996
Message number: 9
Reply to message number: 8

DR>  Fool, it's the Federal Government that set the bomb itself! They're in
DR> league with the Olympic Committee to take over the world - even as we

S> Fool, it was an ANARCHIST!!  One of the ones who say the whole world wold wo
S> together for peace!
S> 
         It was a fool.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Dittoheads and Indians
Date: Thu Aug 01 13:46:55 CDT 1996
Message number: 10
Reply to message number: 6

DR> The problem is that the man has an ugly side-a very ugly side.

...his front side.

DR> Limbaugh developed his national audience by cleverly employing an old
DR> shtick: funny umbrage at imagined groups-the media, people on welfare,
DR> immigrants, feminists, and now Native Americans-that he props up to hit

I've noticed that he likes to do a lot of label-lumping.  "You liberals are 
fools", "The Democracts are at fault", "The Republicans can save America", why
is he so afraid to center on individuals and certain issues without his 
weapons of stereotypes?

DR> connection with Native peoples is about the general public concern over
DR> environmental degradation, which Limbaugh and the interests he truly
DR> represents would like to see discredited or at least reduced. If the
DR> promised new era of non-regulated exploitative extraction of natural

Me, I'm waiting for the action toys..


*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Starfox
Subject: Re: Atlanta bombing
Date: Thu Aug 01 13:49:47 CDT 1996
Message number: 11
Reply to message number: 8

S> Fool, it was an ANARCHIST!!  One of the ones who say the whole world wold wo
S> together for peace!

Always blame the Anarchist, (Or the socialist, or the democrat, or the damn 
commie) Rush does! :)

S> and YOU have nothing to fear but a nucular war!

"We we're promised nuclear annihlation and it never happened.  Now you left us
with this screwed up world and we can't fix it."

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFOX
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Dittoheads and Indians
Date: Thu Aug 01 16:36:50 CDT 1996
Message number: 12
Reply to message number: 10

BT> Me, I'm waiting for the action toys..

Where are you?  I am waiting for the WEB PAGE MAN!!!

Damn I-net..  It's done it again.  DIE DIE DIE.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFOX
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Atlanta bombing
Date: Thu Aug 01 16:39:40 CDT 1996
Message number: 13
Reply to message number: 11

S> Fool, it was an ANARCHIST!!  One of the ones who say the whole world wold wo
S> together for peace!
BT> 
BT> Always blame the Anarchist, (Or the socialist, or the democrat, or the damn
BT> commie) Rush does! :)

Yes my son.  YOu are catching on :)
(not saying your my son or anything.. I just was being funny.  :)  )


BT> "We we're promised nuclear annihlation and it never happened.  Now you left
BT> with this screwed up world and we can't fix it."

Thats not what all the right wingers say..  Just take the government away,
create tyranny, and take money from the poor.  That will fix it (SiKe!)

Yeah.. And cows dont fly either.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFIRE
To: Starfox
Subject: Re: Atlanta bombing
Date: Fri Aug 02 18:44:41 CDT 1996
Message number: 14
Reply to message number: 13

In a perfect society anarchy is a truely beautiful thing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Essay: Blaming Newcomers
Date: Thu Aug 22 18:02:29 CDT 1996
Message number: 15
Reply to message number: unavailable

Pnews

Blaming the Newcomers

Repressive Legislation Targets Immigrants, Mobilization Planned

By Greg Guma

Anti-immigrant fever is sweeping the US Congress, fueled by election-year
posturing and resurgent racism aimed largely at Latinos. Ground was lost in
April when President Clinton signed the so-called Anti-Terrorism bill,
followed by the passage of draconion "Immigration Reform"  legislation and a
Welfare bill that will deny most benefits to immigrants, even if they are
legal
residents.

As passed by the US House and Senate, so-called Welfare Reform will put
the burden of cuts on immigrants, eliminating access to food stamps and
Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Even disabled legal immigrants will be
ineligible. Child nutrition, school lunch, and critical health programs will
be
forced to verify immigration status and turn away children.

Over 40 percent of the projected $60 million in cuts focus on benefits to
immigrants, even though legal immigrants are only five percent of all welfare
recipients. In the New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert calls the
legislation "a form of officially sanctioned brutality aimed at the usual
suspects--the poor, the black and the brown, the very young, the uneducated,
immigrants. Somebody has to be the scapegoat and they're it."

President Clinton has promised to veto legislation that hurts children and
legal
immigrants, but may bend to pressure and sign the final version of the bill.

Terrorizing Newcomers

Clinton has already signed the terrorism bill, a severe version of
legislation
proposed in the past. Although civil libertarians did win some minor
victories-
-preventing increased use of the military in domestic law enforcement and so-
called "roving" wiretaps in neighborhoods--the rights of non-citizens were
further undermined.

For example, people can be kept out of the country simply because they are
affiliated with a "prohibited" group. This is a clear attack on First
Amendment
rights, since suspicion of criminal activity is no longer needed.

Under the new law, asylum officers at the border are permitted to turn back
people fleeing persecution or death just because they didn't thoroughly
document their case--or request travel documents from the government
threatening them. And if the US wants to deport someone simply because of
affiliation with an unpopular cause, secret evidence can be used and the
legal
immigrant is denied the right to confront his or her accuser.

Immigration Reform: A Fortress Mentality

The most sweeping attacks on immigrants are contained in the "reform"
legislation currently waiting for consideration by a House-Senate Conference
Committee. This bill will drive the undocumented underground, perpetuate
exploitation, divide communities, and punish children. It epitomizes the
fortress mentality that is fueling increases in hate crimes, allowing racism
to
wrap itself in the flag.

What will this legislation do? Among other things, it will:

* Bar anyone entering the US without inspection from re-entering for 10
years

* Fund the building of a triple fence along the border

* Make it easier and more profitable to exploit undocumented workers

* Discourage the undocumented from contacting the police--even if they
witness crimes or become victims

* Increase the disparity between Latino immigrants who enter without papers
and the other 50 percent--many of them Europeans--who overstay their visas

* Allow legal immigrants to be deported if they receive welfare for more than
a year

But it doesn't end there. Rather than face complex domestic--and global--
problems, anti-immigrant opportunists want to exclude undocumented
children from public schools. In New Mexico, for example, Republican Gov.
Gary Johnson has already announced that the state "can't afford" to educate
these children. If the Gallegly Amendment--which allows states to deny
education to the undocumented--remains in the immigration bill, Johnson and
other governors  may well take their case to state legislatures next year.

For the politicians, immigrants are obvious election-year targets. Both major
parties have aired TV ads that refer to undocumented immigrants as "aliens"
and show people fleeing--apparently across the border. The National Council
of LaRaza has protested, noting that Latinos "are indeed the Willie Hortons
of
1996." Newspapers across the country have recently printed stories linking
immigrants to fires, drugs, and even AIDS. Albuquerque Journal columnist
Paul Wieck,  who argued in July that the INS and Border Patrol are
"undermanned,"  says "We're in a war, we have to fight it like a war, and
it's
time to call out the troop."

Demand Justice for All!

Even if the worst aspects of the current legislation are eliminated, what's
left
means more hardships for immigrants, and will lead to more discrimination
against people of color. Calls urging President Clinton to veto the
immigration
bill could make a difference. But many activists are already working to
create
an ongoing movement to fight for the rights of all immigrants. Human rights
should not be eclipsed by fear and misinformation.

In a recent article, Roberto Rodriguez discusses the plans for an October 12
march to Washington. "The purpose of the march," he writes, "is to proclaim
to the world that we will no longer allow our communities to be ignored,
trampled upon, or treated as subhuman."  He points to a pattern of brutality
from San Diego, to Chicago, to New York, and especially along the
U.S.-Mexico border,  Latino immigrants have also been taking beatings
from politicians such California Governor Pete Wilson and Pat Buchanan,
who have made them popular scapegoats.

In response, a massive Latino-led rally will be held this summer in San Diego
at the site of the Repbulican convention. Organizers note that anti-immigrant
sentiment, fueled by both major parties, is taking many forms: the
militarization of the US-Mexico border, proposals for a national
identification
system, the "English only" movement, and the elimination bilingual
education, ethnic studies, and Affirmative Action.

In addition to the Washington march, plans are underway for a major art and
music festival, as well as a national student conference at Georgetown
University and week-long activities addressing the concerns of Puerto Ricans,
Dominicans, Central Americans, women, and youth. In Teotihuacan, Mexico
thousands of indigenous peoples will also gather on October 12 in prayer to
highlight the grievances of indigenous people everywhere.

The real story must be told: migration is a global issue, caused largely by
harsh neo-liberal policies that are dislocating millions. Other reasons
include
rapid population growth, environmental decline, civil war, persecution, and
disease. It should also be noted that, contrary to myth, only one percent of
the
world's migrants come to the US. And according to US government figures,
they contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits.

If you want to help counter anti-immigrant hysteria or join a movement to
protect the basic rights of all newcomers, contact Maria Jimenez at
Coordinadora '96 (713-926-2799) . Coordinadora also has information about
the Latino March. In New Mexico, ABC is currently organizing an Allience
to Protect Immigrant Rights and a fall schedule of activities.

******************************************************
Greg Guma is director of the Albuquerque Border City Project (ABC), and
editor of Toward Freedom. ABC is an immigrants rights organization that
provides pro bono and lost-cost legal help, assistance to immigrant battered
women seeking legal status, a public justice program in Central and Northern
New Mexico, and information and organizing support to other human rights,
social justice and immigrant groups. Toward Freedom is a progressive world
affairs magazine. A special edition of global immigration issues is currently
being planned. To learn more or submit articles, contact ABC at 505-766-
5404, TF at 802-658-2523, or e-mail to MavMedia@aol.com.


... Know why they raised the postage rate?  Storage charges.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: All
Subject: Culture Jamming 1/4
Date: Sun Oct 13 16:32:46 CDT 1996
Message number: 16
Reply to message number: unavailable

    In "Media Burn," Ant Farm indulged publicly in the guilty
pleasure of kicking a hole in the cathode-ray tube.  Now, almost
two decades later, TV's Cyclopean eye peers into every corner of
the cultural arena, and the desire to blind it is as strong as
ever.  "Media Burn" materializes the wish-fulfillment dream of a
consumer democracy that yearns, in its hollow heart and empty head,
for a belief system loftier than the "family values" promised by a
Volvo ad campaign, discourse more elevated than that offered by the
shark tank feeding-frenzy of _The McLaughlin Hour_.    
     It is a postmodern commonplace that our lives are intimately
and inextricably bound up in the TV experience.  Ninety-eight
percent of all American households---more than have indoor
plumbing---have at least one television, which is on seven hours a
day, on the average.  Dwindling funds for public schools and
libraries, counterpointed by the skyrocketing sales of VCRs and
electronic games, have given rise to a culture of "aliteracy,"
defined by Roger Cohen as "the rejection of books by children and
young adults who know how to read but choose not to."  The drear
truth that two thirds of Americans get "most of their information"
from television is hardly a revelation. 
     Media prospector Bill McKibben wonders about the exchange
value of such information:
     We believe we live in the 'age of information,' that
     there has been an information 'explosion,' an information
     'revolution.'  While in a certain narrow sense this is
     the case, in many important ways just the opposite is
     true.  We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when
     vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about
     who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach.  An
     Unenlightenment.  An age of missing information.  
     
     The effects of television are most deleterious in the realms
of journalism and politics; in both spheres, TV has reduced
discourse to photo ops and sound bites, asserting the hegemony of
image over language, emotion over intellect.  These developments
are bodied forth in Ronald Reagan, a TV conjuration who for eight
years held the news media, and thus the American public,
spellbound.  As Mark Hertsgaard points out, the President's media-
savvy handlers were able to reduce the fourth estate, which likes
to think of itself as an unblinking watchdog, to a fawning lapdog: 
     Deaver, Gergen and their colleagues effectively rewrote
     the rules of presidential image-making.  On the basis of 
     a sophisticated analysis of the American news media---how
     it worked, which buttons to push when, what techniques
     had and had not worked for previous administrations---
     they introduced a new model for packaging the nation's
     top politician and using the press to sell him to the
     American public.  Their objective was not simply to tame
     the press but to transform it into an unwitting
     mouthpiece of the government.  

     During the Reagan years, America was transformed into a TV
democracy whose prime directive is social control through the
fabrication and manipulation of images.  "We [the Reagan campaign
staff] tried to create the most entertaining, visually attractive
scene to fill that box, so that the cameras from the networks would
have to use it," explained former Reagan advisor Michael Deaver. 
"It would be so good that they'd say, 'Boy, this is going to make
our show tonight.'  [W]e became Hollywood producers."
     The conversion of American society into a virtual reality was
lamentably evident in the Persian Gulf War, a made-for-TV
miniseries with piggybacked merchandising (T-shirts, baseball caps,
Saddam toilet paper, Original Desert Shield Condoms) and gushy,
_Entertainment Tonight_-style hype from a cheerleading media.  When
filmmaker Jon Alpert, under contract to NBC, brought back stomach-
churning footage of Iraq under U.S. bombardment, the network---
which is owned by one of the world's largest arms manufacturers,
General Electric---fired Alpert and refused to air the film.  Not
that Alpert's film would have roused the body politic: throughout
the war, the American people demanded the right not to know.  A
poll cited in _The New York Times_ was particularly distressing:
"Given a choice between increasing military control over
information or leaving it to news organizations to make most
decisions about reporting on the war, 57 per cent of those
responding said they would favor greater military control."  
     During the war's first weeks, as home front news organizations
aided Pentagon spin control by maintaining a near-total blackout on
coverage of protest marches, Deaver was giddy with enthusiasm.  "If
you were going to hire a public relations firm to do the media
relations for an international event," he bubbled, "it couldn't be
done any better than this is being done."  In fact, a P.R. firm,
Hill & Knowlton, was hired; it orchestrated the congressional
testimony of the overwrought young Kuwaiti woman whose horror
stories about babies ripped from incubators and left "on the cold
floor to die" by Iraqi soldiers was highly effective in mobilizing
public support for the war.  Her testimony was never substantiated,
and her identity---she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador
to the U.S.---was concealed, but why niggle over details? 
"Formulated like a World War II movie, the Gulf War even ended like
a World War II movie," wrote Neal Gabler, "with the troops marching
triumphantly down Broadway or Main Street, bathed in the gratitude
of their fellow Americans while the final credits rolled."  
     After the yellow ribbons were taken down, however, a creeping
disaffection remained.  A slowly-spreading rancor at the televisual
Weltanschauung, it is with us still, exacerbated by the prattle of
talk show hosts, anchorclones, and the Teen Talk Barbie advertised
on Saturday mornings whose "four fun phrases" include "I love
shopping" and "Meet me at the mall."  Mark Crispin Miller neatly
sums TV's place in our society:  
     Everybody watches it, but no one really likes it.  This
     is the open secret of TV today.  Its only champions are 
     its own executives, the advertisers who exploit it, and
     a compromised network of academic boosters.  Otherwise, 
     TV has no spontaneous defenders, because there is almost
     nothing in it to defend.  

     The rage and frustration of the disempowered viewer exorcised
in "Media Burn" bubbles up, unexpectedly, in "57 Channels (And
Nothin' On)", Bruce Springsteen's Scorsese-esque tale of a man
unhinged by the welter of meaningless information that assails him
from every channel.  Springsteen sings: "So I bought a .44 magnum
it was solid steel cast/ And in the blessed name of Elvis well I
just let it blast/ 'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet/ And
they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace." 
     Significantly, the video for "57 Channels" incorporates
footage of a white Cadillac on a collision course with a wall of
flaming TV sets in obvious homage to "Media Burn."  The ritual
destruction of the TV set, endlessly iterated in American mass
culture, can be seen as a retaliatory gesture by an audience that
has begun to bridle, if only intuitively, at the suggestion that
"power" resides in the remote control unit, that "freedom of
choice" refers to the ever-greater options offered around the dial. 
     This techno-voodoo rite constitutes the symbolic obliteration
of a one-way information pipeline that only transmits, never
receives.  It is an act of sympathetic magic performed in the name
of all who are obliged to peer at the world through peepholes owned
by multinational conglomerates for whom the profit margin is the
bottom line.  "To the eye of the consumer," notes Ben Bagdikian,
     the global media oligopoly is not visible...Newsstands
     still display rows of newspapers and magazines, in a 
     dazzling array of colors and subjects...Throughout the
     world, broadcast and cable channels continue to multiply,
     as do video cassettes and music recordings.  But...if
     this bright kaleidoscope suddenly disappeared and was
     replaced by the corporate colophons of those who own this
     output, the collage would go gray with the names of the
     few multinationals that now command the field.
     In his watershed work, _The Media Monopoly_, Bagdikian reports
that the number of transnational media giants has dropped to 23 
and is rapidly shrinking.  Following another vector, Herbert
Schiller considers the interlocked issues of privatized information
and limited access:  
     The commercialization of information, its private
     acquisition and sale, has become a major industry.  While
     more material than ever before, in formats created for
     special use, is available at a price, free public
     information supported by general taxation is attacked by
     the private sector as an unacceptable form of
     subsidy...An individual's ability to know the actual
     circumstances of national and international existence has
     progressively diminished.  

     Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon level another, equally
disturbing charge:
     In an era of network news cutbacks and staff layoffs,
     many reporters are reluctant to pursue stories they know
     will upset management.  "People are more careful now,"
     remarked a former NBC news producer, "because this whole
     notion of freedom of the press becomes a contradiction
     when the people who own the media are the same people who
     need to be reported on."  
     Corporate ownership of the newsmedia, the subsumption of an
ever-larger number of publishing companies and television networks
into an ever-smaller number of multinationals, and the increased
privatization of truth by an information-rich, technocratic elite
are not newly-risen issues.  More recent is the notion that the
public mind is being colonized by corporate phantasms---wraithlike
images of power and desire that haunt our dreams.  Consider the
observations of Neal Gabler and Marshall Blonsky:
     Everywhere the fabricated, the inauthentic and the
     theatrical have gradually driven out the natural, the
     genuine and the spontaneous until there is no distinction
     between real life and stagecraft.  In fact, one could
     argue that the theatricalization of American life is the
     major cultural transformation of this century.  

     We can no longer do anything without wanting to see it
     immediately on video...There is never any longer an event
     or a person who acts for himself, in himself.  The
     direction of events and of people is to be reproduced
     into image, to be doubled in the image of television. 
     [T]oday the referent disappears.  In circulation are
     images.  Only images.
     
     The eutopic (literally, "no-place") territory demarcated by
Gabler and Blonsky, lush with fictions yet strangely barren, has
been mapped in detail by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard.  In his
landmark 1975 essay, "The Precession of Simulacra," Baudrillard put
forth the notion that we inhabit a "hyperreality," a hall of media
mirrors in which reality has been lost in an infinity of
reflections.  We "experience" events, first and foremost, as
electronic reproductions of rumored phenomena many times removed,
he maintains; originals, invariably compared to their
digitally-enhanced representations, inevitably fall short.  In the
"desert of the real," asserts Baudrillard, mirages outnumber oases
and are more alluring to the thirsty eye.        

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: All
Subject: Culture Jamming 2/4
Date: Sun Oct 13 16:33:26 CDT 1996
Message number: 17
Reply to message number: unavailable

     Moreover, he argues, signs that once pointed toward distant
realities now refer only to themselves.  Disneyland's Main Street,
U.S.A, which depicts the sort of idyllic, turn-of-the-century burg
that exists only in Norman Rockwell paintings and MGM backlots, is
a textbook example of self-referential simulation, a painstaking
replica of something that never was.  "These would be the
successive phases of the image," writes Baudrillard, betraying an
almost necrophiliac relish as he contemplates the decomposition of
culturally-defined reality.  "[The image] is the reflection of a
basic reality; it masks and perverts a basic reality; it masks the
absence of a basic reality; it bears no relation to any reality
whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum."  
     Reality isn't what it used to be.  In America, factory
capitalism has been superseded by an information economy
characterized by the reduction of labor to the manipulation, on
computers, of symbols that stand in for the manufacturing process. 
The engines of industrial production have slowed, yielding to a
phantasmagoric capitalism that produces intangible commodities---
Hollywood blockbusters, television sit-coms, catchphrases, jingles,
buzzwords, images, one-minute megatrends, financial transactions
flickering through fiberoptic bundles.  Our wars are Nintendo wars,
fought with camera-equipped smart bombs that marry cinema and
weaponry in a television that kills.  Futurologists predict that
the flagship technology of the coming century will be "virtual
reality," a computer-based system that immerses users wearing
headsets wired for sight and sound in computer-animated worlds.  In
virtual reality, the television swallows the viewer, headfirst.  

     II. _Culture Jamming_ 

     Meanwhile, the question remains: How to box with shadows?  In
other words, what shape does an engaged politics assume in an
empire of signs?    
     The answer lies, perhaps, in the "semiological guerrilla
warfare" imagined by Umberto Eco.  "[T]he receiver of the message
seems to have a residual freedom: the freedom to read it in a 
different way...I am proposing an action to urge the audience to
control the message and its multiple possibilities of
interpretation," he writes.  "[O]ne medium can be employed to
communicate a series of opinions on another medium...The universe
of Technological Communication would then be patrolled by groups of
communications guerrillas, who would restore a critical dimension
to passive reception."        
     Eco assumes, a priori, the radical politics of visual
literacy, an idea eloquently argued by Stuart Ewen, a critic of
consumer culture.  "We live at a time when the image has become the
predominant mode of public address, eclipsing all other forms in
the structuring of meaning," asserts Ewen.  "Yet little in our
education prepares us to make sense of the rhetoric, historical
development or social implications of the images within our
lives."  In a society of heat, light and electronic poltergeists-
--an eerie otherworld of "illimitable vastness, brilliant light,
and the gloss and smoothness of material things"---the desperate
project of reconstructing meaning, or at least reclaiming that
notion from marketing departments and P.R. firms, requires
visually-literate ghostbusters.
     Culture jammers answer to that name.  "Jamming" is CB slang
for the illegal practice of interrupting radio broadcasts or
conversations between fellow hams with lip farts, obscenities, and
other equally jejune hijinx.  Culture jamming, by contrast, is
directed against an ever more intrusive, instrumental technoculture
whose operant mode is the manufacture of consent through the
manipulation of symbols.  
     The term "cultural jamming" was first used by the collage band
Negativland to describe billboard alteration and other forms of
media sabotage.  On _Jamcon '84_, a mock-serious bandmember
observes, "As awareness of how the media environment we occupy
affects and directs our inner life grows, some resist...The
skillfully reworked billboard...directs the public viewer to a
consideration of the original corporate strategy.  The studio for
the cultural jammer is the world at large."  
     Part artistic terrorists, part vernacular critics, culture
jammers, like Eco's "communications guerrillas," introduce noise
into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver,
encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations.  Intruding
on the intruders, they invest ads, newscasts, and other media
artifacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt
them, rendering their seductions impotent.  Jammers offer
irrefutable evidence that the right has no copyright on war waged
with incantations and simulations.  And, like Ewen's cultural
cryptographers, they refuse the role of passive shoppers, renewing
the notion of a public discourse.       
     Finally, and just as importantly, culture jammers are Groucho
Marxists, ever mindful of the fun to be had in the joyful
demolition of oppressive ideologies.  As the inveterate prankster
and former Dead Kennedy singer Jello Biafra once observed, "There's
a big difference between 'simple crime' like holding up a 7-11, and
'creative crime' as a form of expression...Creative crime
is...uplifting to the soul...What better way to survive our anthill
society than by abusing the very mass media that sedates the
public?...A prank a day keeps the dog leash away!"  
     Jamming is part of a historical continuum that includes
Russian samizdat (underground publishing in defiance of official
censorship); the anti-fascist photomontages of John Heartfield;
Situationist detournement (defined by Greil Marcus, in _Lipstick
Traces_, as "the theft of aesthetic artifacts from their contexts
and their diversion into contexts of one's own devise"); the
underground journalism of '60s radicals such as Paul Krassner,
Jerry Rubin, and Abbie Hoffman; Yippie street theater such as the
celebrated attempt to levitate the Pentagon; parody religions such
as the Dallas-based Church of the Subgenius; workplace sabotage of
the sort documented by _Processed World_, a magazine for
disaffected data entry drones; the ecopolitical monkeywrenching of
Earth First!; the random acts of Artaudian cruelty that radical
theorist Hakim Bey calls "poetic terrorism" ("weird dancing in all-
night computer banking lobbies...bizarre alien artifacts strewn in
State Parks"); the insurgent use of the "cut-up" collage technique
proposed by William Burroughs in "Electronic Revolution" ("The
control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of
association...Cut/up techniques could swamp the mass media with
total illusion"); and subcultural bricolage (the refunctioning, by
societal "outsiders," of symbols associated with the dominant
culture, as in the appropriation of corporate attire and _Vogue_
model poses by poor, gay, and largely nowhite drag queens).
     An elastic category, culture jamming accommodates multitude of
subcultural practices.  Outlaw computer hacking with the intent of
exposing institutional or corporate wrongdoing is one example;
"slashing," or textual poaching, is another.  (The term "slashing"
derives from the pornographic "K/S"---short for "Kirk/Spock"---
stories written by female _Star Trek_ fans and published in
underground fanzines.  Spun from the perceived homoerotic subtext
in _Star Trek_ narratives, K/S, or "slash," tales are often
animated by feminist impulses.  I have appropriated the term for
general use, applying it to any form of jamming in which tales told
for mass consumption are perversely reworked.)  Transmission
jamming; pirate TV and radio broadcasting; and camcorder
countersurveillance (in which low cost consumer technologies are
used by DIY muckrakers to document police brutality or governmental
corruption) are potential modus operandi for the culture jammer. 
So, too, is media activism such as the cheery immolation of a mound
of television sets in front of CBS's Manhattan offices---part of a
protest against media bias staged by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In
Reporting) during the Gulf War---and "media-wrenching" such as ACT
UP's disruption of _The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour_ in protest of
infrequent AIDS coverage.  A somewhat more conventional strain of
culture jamming is mediawatch projects such as Paper Tiger
Television, an independent production collective that produces
segments critiquing the information industry; Deep Dish TV, a
grassroots satellite network that distributes free-thinking
programming to public access cable channels nationwide; and Not
Channel Zero, a collective of young African-American "camcorder
activists" whose motto is "The Revolution, Televised."  And then
there is academy hacking---cultural studies, conducted outside
university walls, by insurgent intellectuals.
     Thus, culture jamming assumes many guises; let us consider, in
greater detail, some of its more typical manifestations.    
     _Sniping and Subvertising_ 
     "Subvertising," the production and dissemination of anti-ads
that deflect Madison Avenue's attempts to turn the consumer's
attention in a given direction, is an ubiquitous form of jamming. 
Often, it takes the form of "sniping"---illegal, late-night sneak
attacks on public space by operatives armed with posters, brushes,
and buckets of wheatpaste. 
     _Adbusters_, a Vancouver, B.C.-based quarterly that critiques
consumer culture, enlivens its pages with acid satires.  "Absolut
Nonsense," a cunningly-executed spoof featuring a suspiciously
familiar-looking bottle, proclaimed: "Any suggestion that our
advertising campaign has contributed to alcoholism, drunk driving
or wife and child beating is absolute nonsense.  No one pays any
attention to advertising."  Ewen, himself a covert jammer,
excoriates conspicuous consumption in his "Billboards of the
Future"---anonymously-mailed Xerox broadsides like his ad for
"Chutzpah: cologne for women & men, one splash and you'll be
demanding the equal distribution of wealth."  Guerrilla Girls, a
cabal of feminist artists that bills itself as "the conscience of
the art world," is known for savagely funny, on-target posters, one
of which depicted a nude odalisque in a gorilla mask, asking, "Do
women have to get naked to get into the Met. Museum?"  Los
Angeles's Robbie Conal covers urban walls with the information age
equivalent of Dorian Gray's portrait: grotesque renderings of
Oliver North, Ed Meese, and other scandal-ridden politicos.  "I'm
interested in counter-advertising," he says, "using the streamlined
sign language of advertising in a kind of reverse penetration."   
     For gay activists, subvertising and sniping have proven
formidable weapons.  A March, 1991 _Village Voice_ report from the
frontlines of the "outing" wars made mention of "Absolutely Queer"
posters, credited to a phantom organization called OUTPOST,
appearing on Manhattan buildings.  One, sparked by the controversy
over the perceived homophobia in _Silence of the Lambs_, featured
a photo of Jodie Foster, with the caption: "Oscar Winner.  Yale
Graduate.  Ex-Disney Moppet.  Dyke."  Queer Nation launched a
"Truth in Advertising" postering campaign that sent up New York
Lotto ads calculated to part the poor and their money; in them, the
official tagline, "All You Need is a Dollar and a Dream" became
"All You Need is a Three-Dollar Bill and a Dream."  The graphics
collective Gran Fury, formerly part of ACT UP, has taken its sharp-
tongued message even further: a superslick Benetton parody ran on
buses in San Francisco and New York in 1989.  Its headline blared
"Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do" over a row of
kissing couples, all of them racially-mixed and two of them gay. 
"We are trying to fight for attention as hard as Coca-Cola fights
for attention," says group member Loring Mcalpin.  "[I]f anyone is
angry enough and has a Xerox machine and has five or six friends
who feel the same way, you'd be surprised how far you can go."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: All
Subject: Culture Jamming 3/4
Date: Sun Oct 13 16:33:58 CDT 1996
Message number: 18
Reply to message number: unavailable

     _Media Hoaxing_  
     Media hoaxing, the fine art of hoodwinking journalists into
covering exhaustively-researched, elaborately-staged deceptions, 
is culture jamming in its purest form.  Conceptual con artists like
Joey Skaggs dramatize the dangers inherent in a press that seems to
have forgotten the difference between the public good and the
bottom line, between the responsibility to enlighten and the desire
to entertain. 
     Skaggs has been flimflamming journalists since 1966, pointing
up the self-replicating, almost viral nature of news stories in a
wired world.  The trick, he confides, "is to get someone from an
out-of-state newspaper to run a story on something sight unseen,
and then you Xerox that story and include it in a second mailing. 
Journalists see that it has appeared in print and think, therefore,
that there's no need to do any further research.  That's how a
snowflake becomes a snowball and finally an avalanche, which is the
scary part.  There's a point at which it becomes very difficult to
believe anything the media tells you."
     In 1976, Skaggs created the Cathouse For Dogs, a canine 
bordello that offered a "savory selection" of doggie Delilahs, 
ranging from pedigree (Fifi, the French poodle) to mutt (Lady the 
Tramp).  The ASPCA was outraged, the _Soho News_ was incensed, and 
ABC devoted a segment to it which later received an Emmy 
nomination for best news broadcast of the year.  In time, Skaggs 
reappeared as the leader of Walk Right!, a combat-booted Guardian
Angels-meet-Emily Post outfit determined to improve sidewalk
etiquette, and later as Joe Bones, head of a Fat Squad whose tough
guy enforcers promised, for a fee, to prevent overweight clients
from cheating on diets.  As Dr. Joseph Gregor, Skaggs convinced UPI
and New York's WNBC-TV that hormones extracted from mutant
cockroaches could cure arthritis, acne, and nuclear radiation
sickness.  
     After reeling in the media outlets who have taken his bait,
Skaggs holds a conference at which he reveals his deception.  "The
hoax," he insists, "is just the hook.  The second phase, in which
I reveal the hoax, is the important part.  As Joey Skaggs, I can't
call a press conference to talk about how the media has been turned
into a government propaganda machine, manipulating us into
believing we've got to go to war in the Middle East.  But as a
jammer, I can go into these issues in the process of revealing a
hoax."
     _Audio Agitprop_  
     Audio agitprop, much of which utilizes digital samplers to
deconstruct media culture and challenge copyright law, is a
somewhat more innocuous manifestation.  Likely suspects include
Sucking Chest Wound, whose _God Family Country_ ponders mobthink
and media bias; The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, who take aim
in "Television, the Drug of the Nation" at "happy talk" newscasts
that embrace the values of MTV and _Entertainment Tonight_;
Producers For Bob, whose pert, chittering dance tracks provide an
unlikely backdrop for monologues about "media ecology," a McLuhan-
inspired strategy for survival in a toxic media environment; and
Chris Burke, whose _Oil War_, with its cut-up press conferences,
presidential speeches, and nightly newsbites, is pirate C-Span for
Noam Chomsky readers.  Sucking Chest Wound's Wayne Morris speaks
for all when he says, "I get really angry with the biased coverage
that's passed off as objective journalism.  By taking scraps of the
news and blatantly manipulating them, we're having our revenge on
manipulative media."
     _Billboard Banditry_      
     Lastly, there is billboard banditry, the phenomenon that
inspired Negativland's coinage.  Australia's BUGA UP stages hit-
and-run "demotions," or anti-promotions, scrawling graffiti on
cigarette or liquor ads.  The group's name is at once an acronym
for "Billboard-Utilizing Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions"
and a pun on "bugger up," Aussie slang for "screw up."   
     In like fashion, African-American activists have decided to
resist cigarette and liquor ads targeting communities of color by
any means necessary.  Describing Reverend Calvin Butts and fellow
Harlem residents attacking a Hennesey billboard with paint and
rollers, _Z_ magazine's Michael Kamber reports, "In less than a
minute there's only a large white blotch where moments before the
woman had smiled coyly down at the street."  Chicago's Reverend
Michael Pfleger is a comrade-in-arms; he and his Operation Clean
defaced---some prefer the term "refaced"---approximately 1,000
cigarette and alcohol billboards in 1990 alone.  "It started with
the illegal drug problem," says Pfleger.  "But you soon realize
that the number-one killer isn't crack or heroin, but tobacco.  And
we realized that to stop tobacco and alcohol we [had] to go after
the advertising problem."          
     San Francisco's Billboard Liberation Front, together with
Truth in Advertising, a band of "midnight billboard editors" based
in Santa Cruz, snap motorists out of their rush hour trances with
deconstructed, reconstructed billboards.  In the wake of the
_Valdez_ disaster, the BLF reinvented a radio promo---"Hits Happen. 
New X-100"---as "Shit Happens---New Exxon"; TIA turned "Tropical
Blend.  The Savage Tan" into "Typical Blend.  Sex in Ads."       
          Inspired by a newsflash that plans were underway to begin
producing neutron bombs, a Seattle-based trio known as SSS reworked
a Kent billboard proclaiming "Hollywood Bowled Over By Kent III
Taste!" to read "Hollywood Bowled Over By Neutron Bomb!," replacing
the cigarette pack with a portrait of then-President Ronald Reagan. 
     Artfux, and the newly-formed breakaway group Cicada Corps of
Artists, are New Jersey-based agitprop collectives who snipe and
stage neo-Situationist happenings.  On one occasion, Artfux members
joined painter Ron English for a tutorial of sorts, in which
English instructed the group in the fine art of billboard banditry. 
Painting and mounting posters conceptualized by English, Artfux
joined the New York artist on a one-day, all-out attack on
Manhattan.  One undercover operation used math symbols to spell out
the corporate equation for animal murder and ecological disaster:
A hapless-looking cow plus a death's-head equalled a McDonald's
polystyrene clamshell.  "Food, foam and Fun!," the tagline taunted. 
In a similar vein, the group mocked "Smooth Joe," the Camel
cigarettes camel, turning his phallic nose into a flaccid penis and
his sagging lips into bobbing testicles.  One altered billboard
adjured, "Drink Coca-Cola---It Makes You Fart," while another
showed a seamed, careworn Uncle Sam opposite the legend,
"Censorship is good because -- --- ----!"  
     "Corporations and the government have the money and the means
to sell anything they want, good or bad," noted Artfux member
Orlando Cuevas in a _Jersey Journal_ feature on the group. 
"We...[are] ringing the alarm for everyone else." 

     III. _Guerrilla Semiotics_

     Culture jammers often make use of what might be called
"guerrilla" semiotics---analytical techniques not unlike those
employed by scholars to decipher the signs and symbols that
constitute a culture's secret language, what literary theorist
Roland Barthes called "systems of signification."  These systems,
notes Barthes in the introduction to _Elements of Semiology_,
comprise nonverbal as well as verbal modes of communication,
encompassing "images, gestures, musical sounds, objects, and the
complex associations of all these."  
     It is no small irony---or tragedy---that semiotics, which
seeks to make explicit the implicit meanings in the sign language
of society, has become pop culture shorthand for an academic parlor
trick useful in divining the hidden significance in _Casablanca_,
Disneyland, or our never-ending obsession with Marilyn Monroe.  In
paranoid pop psych (Vance Packard's _The Hidden Persuaders_, Wilson
Bryan Key's _Subliminal Seduction_), semiotics offers titillating
decryptions of naughty advertising.  "This preoccupation with
subliminal advertising," writes Ewen, "is part of the legendary
life of post-World War II American capitalism: the word 'SEX'
written on the surface of Ritz crackers, copulating bodies or death
images concealed in ice cubes, and so forth."  Increasingly,
advertising assumes this popular mythology: a recent print ad
depicted a rocks glass filled with icecubes, the words "Absolut
vodka" faintly discernible on the their craggy, shadowed surfaces. 
The tagline: "Absolut Subliminal."   
     All of which makes semiotics seem trivial, effete, although it
is an inherently political project; Barthes "set out..to examine
the normally hidden set of rules, codes and conventions through
which meanings particular to specific social groups (i.e. those in
power) are rendered universal and 'given' for the whole of
society."  Marshall Blonsky has called semiotics "a defense
against information sickness, the 'too-muchness' of the world,"
fulfilling Marshall McLuhan's prophecy that "just as we now try to
control atom-bomb fallout, so we will one day try to control media
fallout."  As used by culture jammers, it is an essential tool
in the all-important undertaking of making sense of the world, its
networks of power, the encoded messages that flicker ceaselessly
along its communication channels.  
     This is not to say that all of the jammers mentioned in this
essay knowingly derive their ideas from semiotics or are even
familiar with it, only that their ad hoc approach to cultural
analysis has much in common with the semiotician's attempt to "read
between the lines" of culture considered as a text.  Most jammers
have little interest in the deliria that result from long immersion
in the academic vacuum, breathing pure theory.  They intuitively
refuse the rejection of engaged politics typical of postmodernists
like Baudrillard, a disempowering stance that too often results in
an overeagerness for ringside seats at the gotterdammerung.  The
_L.A. Weekly_'s disquieting observation that Baudrillard "loves to
observe the liquidation of culture, to experience the delivery from
depth" calls to mind Walter Benjamin's pronouncement that mankind's
"self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience
its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first
order."  Jammers, in contrast, are attempting to reclaim the
public space ceded to the chimeras of Hollywood and Madison Avenue,
to restore a sense of equilibrium to a society sickened by the
vertiginous whirl of TV culture. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: All
Subject: Culture Jamming 4/4
Date: Sun Oct 13 16:34:32 CDT 1996
Message number: 19
Reply to message number: unavailable


     IV. _Postscript From the Edge_

     The territory mapped by this essay ends at the edge of the
electronic frontier, the "world space of multinational capital"
(Fredric Jameson) where vast sums are blipped from one computer to
another through phone lines twined around the globe.  Many of us
already spend our workdays in an incunabular form of cyberpunk
writer William Gibson's "cyberspace," defined in his novel
_Neuromancer_ as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by
billions of legitimate operators...A graphic representation of data
abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human
system."  The experience of computer scientist W. Daniel
Hillis, once novel, is becoming increasingly familiar:
     When I first met my wife, she was immersed in trading 
     options.  Her office was in the top of a skyscraper in
     Boston, and yet, in a very real sense, when she was at
     work she was in a world that could not be identified with
     any single physical location.  Sitting at a computer
     screen, she lived in a world that consisted of offers and
     trades, a world in which she knew friends and enemies,
     safe and stormy weather.  For a large portion of each
     day, that world was more real to her than her physical
     surroundings.
     In the next century, growing numbers of Americans will work
and play in artificial environments that only exist, in the truest
sense, as bytes stored in computer memory.  The explosion of
computer-based interactive media seems destined to sweep away (at
least in its familiar form) the decidedly non-interactive medium
that has dominated the latter half of this century: television. 
Much of this media may one day be connected to a high-capacity,
high-speed fiber optic network of "information superhighways"
linking as many homes as are currently serviced by the telephone
network.  This network, predicts computer journalist John Markoff,
"could do for the flow of information---words, music, movies,
medical images, manufacturing blueprints and much more---what the
transcontinental railroad did for the flow of goods a century ago
and the interstate highway system did in this century."    
     The culture jammer's question, as always, is: Who will have
access to this cornucopia of information, and on what terms?  Will
fiber-optic superhighways make stored knowledge universally
available, in the tradition of the public library, or will they
merely facilitate psychological carpet bombing designed to soften
up consumer defenses?  And what of the network news?  Will it be
superseded by local broadcasts, with their heartwarming (always
"heartwarming") tales of rescued puppies and shocking (always
"shocking") stories of senseless mayhem, mortared together with
airhead banter?  Or will the Big Three give way to innumerable news
channels, each a conduit for information about global, national and
local events germane to a specific demographic?  Will cyberpunk
telejournalists equipped with Hi-8 video cameras, digital scanners,
and PC-based editing facilities hack their way into legitimate
broadcasts?  Or will they, in a medium of almost infinite bandwidth
and channels beyond count, simply be given their own airtime?  In
short, will the electronic frontier be wormholed with "temporary
autonomous zones"---Hakim Bey's term for pirate utopias,
centrifuges in which social gravity is artificially suspended---or
will it be subdivided and overdeveloped by what cultural critic
Andrew Ross calls "the military-industrial-media complex?"        
     Gibson, who believes that we are "moving toward a world where
all of the consumers under a certain age will...identify
more...with the products they consume than...with any sort of
antiquated notion of nationality," is not sanguine.  In the
video documentary _Cyberpunk_, he conjures a minatory vision of
what will happen when virtual reality is married to a device that
stimulates the brain directly.  "It's going to be very commercial,"
he says.  "We could wind up with something that felt like having a
very, very expensive American television commercial injected
directly into your cortex."  
     "For Sale" signs already litter the unreal estate of
cyberspace.  A _New York Times_ article titled "A Rush to Stake
Claims on the Multimedia Frontier" prophesies "software and
hardware that will connect consumers seamlessly to
services...[allowing them] to shop from home," while a _Newsweek_
cover story on interactive media promises "new technology that will
change the way you shop, play and learn" (the order, here, speaks
volumes about American priorities).  Video retailers are betting
that the intersection of interactive media and home shopping will
result in zillions of dollars' worth of impulse buys: zirconium
rings, nonstick frying pans, costumed dolls, spray-on toupees. 
What a _New York Times_ author cutely calls Communicopia ("the
convergence of virtually all communications technologies") may end
up looking like the Home Shopping Network on steroids.    
     But hope springs eternal, even in cyberspace.  Jammers are
heartened by the electronic frontier's promise of a new media
paradigm---interactive rather than passive, nomadic and atomized
rather than resident and centralized, egalitarian rather than
elitist.  To date, this paradigm has assumed two forms: the virtual
community and the desktop-published or on-line 'zine.  ("'Zine,"
the preferred term among underground publishers, has subtly
political connotations: grassroots organization, a shoestring
budget, an anti-aesthetic of exuberant sloppiness, a lively give-
and-take between transmitters and receivers, and, more often than
not, a mocking, oppositional stance vis a vis mainstream media.)  
     Virtual communities are comprised of computer users connected
by modem to the bulletin board systems (BBS's) springing up all
over the Internet, the worldwide meta-network that connects
international computer networks.  Funded not by advertisers but by
paid subscribers, the BBS is a first, faltering step toward the
jammer's dream of a truly democratic mass medium.  Although virtual
communities fall short of utopia---women and people of color are
grossly underrepresented, and those who cannot afford the price of
admission or who are alienated from technology because of their
cultural status are denied access---they nonetheless represent a
profound improvement on the homogenous, hegemonic medium of
television.  
     On a BBS, any subscriber may initiate a discussion topic, no
matter how arcane, in which other subscribers may participate.  If
the bulletin board in question is plugged into the Internet, their
comments will be read and responded to by computer users scattered
across the Internet.  On-line forums retire, at long last, the
Sunday morning punditocracy, the expert elite, the celebrity
anchorclones of network news, even the electronic town hall, with
its carefully-screened audience and over-rehearsed politicians.  As
one resident of a San Francisco-based bulletin board called the
WELL noted,   
          This medium gives us the possibility (illusory
          as it may be) that we can build a world
          unmediated by authorities and experts.  The
          roles of reader, writer, and critic are so
          quickly interchangeable that they become
          increasingly irrelevant in a community of
          co-creation.
     In like fashion, ever-cheaper, increasingly sophisticated
desktop publishing packages (such as the software and hardware used
to produce this pamphlet) ensure that, in a society where freedom
of the press---as A.J. Leibling so presciently noted---is
guaranteed only to those who own one, multinational monoliths are
not the only publishers.  As Gareth Branwyn, 'zine publisher and
longtime resident of virtual communities, points out,    
     The current saturation of relatively inexpensive
     multimedia communication tools holds tremendous potential
     for destroying the monopoly of ideas we have lived with
     for so long...A personal computer can be configured to
     act as a publishing house, a broadcast-quality TV studio,
     a professional recording studio, or the node in an
     international computer bulletin board system.    
     Increasingly, 'zines are being published on-line, to be
bounced around the world via the Internet.  "I can see a future in
which any person can have a node on the net," says Mitch Kapor,
president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group concerned
with free speech, privacy, and other constitutional issues in
cyberspace.  "Any person can be a publisher.  It's better than the
media we now have."    
     The devil's advocate might well argue that _Festering Brain
Sore_, a fanzine for mass murderer aficionados, or the WELL topic
devoted to "armpit sex" are hardly going to crash the corporate
media system.  Hakim Bey writes, "The story of computer networks,
BBS's and various other experiments in electro-democracy has so far
been one of hobbyism for the most part.  Many anarchists and
libertarians have deep faith in the PC as a weapon of liberation
and self-liberation---but no real gains to show, no palpable
liberty."  
     Then again, involvement in virtual communities and the 'zine
scene is rapidly expanding beyond mere hobbyism: as this is
written, approximately 10 million people frequent BBS's, and an
estimated 10,000 'zines are being published (70 alone are given
over to left politics of a more or less radical nature).  These
burgeoning subcultures are driven not by the desire for commodities
but by the dream of community---precisely the sort of community now
sought in the nationally-shared experience of watching game shows,
sitcoms, sportscasts, talk shows, and, less and less, the evening
news.  It is this yearning for meaning and cohesion that lies at
the heart of the jammer's attempts to reassemble the fragments of
our world into something more profound than the luxury cars, sexy
technology, and overdesigned bodies that flit across our screens. 
Hackers who expose governmental wrongdoing, textual slashers,
wheatpaste snipers, billboard bandits, media hoaxers, subvertisers,
and unannounced political protestors who disrupt live newscasts
remind us that numberless stories go untold in the daily papers and
the evening news, that what is not reported speaks louder than what
is.  The jammer insists on choice: not the dizzying proliferation
of consumer options, in which a polyphony of brand names conceals
the essential monophony of the advertiser's song, but a true
plurality, in which the univocal world view promulgated by
corporate media yields to a multivocal, polyvalent one.
      The electronic frontier is an ever-expanding corner of Eco's
"universe of Technological Communication...patrolled by groups of
communications guerrillas" bent on restoring "a critical dimension
to passive reception."  These guerrilla semioticians are in pursuit
of new myths stitched from the material of their own lives, a
fabric of experiences and aspirations where neither the depressive
stories of an apolitical intelligentsia nor the repressive fictions
of corporate media's Magic Kingdom obtain.  "The images that
bombard and oppose us must be reorganized," insist Stuart and
Elizabeth Ewen.  "If our critique of commodity culture points to
better alternatives, let us explore---in our own billboards of the
future---what they might be."  Even now, hackers, slashers, and
snipers---culture jammers all---are rising to that challenge. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Bork the Dork!
Date: Wed Nov 06 17:39:42 CST 1996
Message number: 20
Reply to message number: unavailable

BORK SLOUCHES IN HIS RANT
AGAINST LIBERALISM

by Clarence Page

     WASHINGTON --- When Robert H. Bork's
Supreme Court nomination was rejected by a 58-42 vote
in 1087 for views many considered to be outside the
mainstream, many expressed misgivings about whether he
had been given a fair shake.
     The liberal campaign that brought the conservative,
now retired federal judge down, sweeping his formidable
judicial career and legal intellect aside, was so heavy-handed it
created a new term for the nation's political
lexicon: "borking," meaning to unleash every manner of
shot, cheap or otherwise, to block a nominee.
     Guilty liberals can rest easy.  Their instincts were on
target.  Bork's latest book "Slouching Towards Gomorrah:
Modern Liberalism and American Decline"
(ReganBooks/HarperCollins Publishers) erases all
remaining doubt.  Gone is the reflective legal scholar who
so impressed Senate Judiciary Committee members from
both parties.  Here instead is a snarling, radical grump, the
judicial equivalent of the grouch, old man chasing little brats
out of his apple tree.
     Thanks to those aging brats of post-'60s liberalism,
Bork writes, there are "aspects of almost every branch of
our culture that are worse than ever before," and "the rot is
spreading."
     Yes, we've got trouble right her in River City, folks,
with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "E" and that stands
for "radical egalitarianism" --- Bork's label for the world
view he opposes, which he says would sweep merit and
achievement aside to produce not just equal opportunity,
which is good, but also "equal results," which is very bad.

     WORSE, BORK SAYS, in areas where they can't
be equal, liberals have given us "radical individualism" which
he calls the "wish to be unhindered in the pursuit of
pleasure," particularly in areas of sexuality and the popular
arts to the detriment of traditional middle-class standards.
     Snarl, snarl.  Rant, rant.  Bork flails away at flag
burning, affirmative action, homosexual marriages, raunchy
rappers and "the more extreme versions of feminism,"
among other predictable targets.
     There will always be a market for the Chicken
Littles like Bork who see the sky as falling, even when their
own side is winning.  Bork may not have noticed, but
George McGovern liberalism fell out of fashion long ago.
Bill Clinton "centrism" is in.
     To clean up the rot, Bork proposes a return to the
era of community censors, even though experience shows
such censors tend to do little but grant the censored works
more attention than they deserve.

     BUT BORK GETS most interesting and incendiary
in his critique of the current Supreme Court.  Conservative?
Not according to Bork.  "Having no firm judicial
philosophy," he writes, they "migrate to the left."  (Even
Chief Justice William Rehnquist is sufficiently conservative
to Bork only "some of the time," Bork said in a recent
CNN interview.)
     To stop the court from legislating from the bench,
Bork would tilt the balance of powers by amending the
Constitution to allow congress to overturn Supreme Court
decisions by a simple majority in each house.  Otherwise,
Bork snorts, the courts "are not merely endangering our
freedoms but actually depriving us of them, particularly our
most precious freedom, the freedom to govern ourselves
democratically unless the Constitution actually says
otherwise."
     Actually, it does say otherwise.  After the framers
of the constitution put majority rule into place, they went
back and shored up minority rights in the Bill of Rights
precisely to guard against what James Madison called "the
tyranny of the majority."
     The brevity and generality of the language of the
Constitution deliberately make it adaptable to changing
times, which has been just fine with most Americans.  Once
the principle of judicial review was established in Marbury
vs. Madison, in 1803, the Supreme Court has changed the
Constitution more often than the amendment process has.
     Bork would trash Marbury.  He praises Great
Britain, the land this nation's founders rebelled against, for
having "developed and retained freedom without judicial
review."  I would argue that history shows America's
system not only has protected individual freedoms but also
promoted opportunities in ways unmatched by other
countries, especially class-conscious England.
     Bork's broadside against "radical egalitarianism"
glosses too lightly over the dangers posed by its opposite
evil, tyrannical elitism.  Fortunately, the framers of the
Constitution did not make that mistake.
     In fact, I wonder if Fork would be as sanguine
about enhancing the powers of Congress were Congress to
be retaken by liberal Democrats.
     After all, it was the Senate, accountable to
democratic processes, that blocked Bork's Supreme Court
nomination.  Judging by his latest book, the nation should
be eternally grateful.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
10-7-96
__________________________________________



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From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: AAN#196---1
Date: Wed Nov 20 18:35:29 CST 1996
Message number: 21
Reply to message number: unavailable

         A M E R I C A N   A T H E I S T S
     nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
     nnnnnnnnnn   AANEWS   nnnnnnnnnn
     #196 uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu 11/11/96
              http://www.atheists.org
          e-mail: aanews@atheists.org
              ftp: ftp.atheists.org/pub/

   In This Issue...
   * Who's God Throws The Best Punch?
   * Our New ftp Site...
   * About This List...

        HOLYFIELD-TYSON ~~ CUT AND JAB, OR THE SECOND COMING?

   No doubt about it, there was a helluva' fight last night in Las Vegas.
 The oddsmeisters put a 25-1 underdog tag on Evander Holyfield, saying that
he couldn't out punch a beefed-up Mike Tyson, who in the minds and sports
columns of some has come to symbolize just about everything wrong with "the
sweet science." Those odds cuiously dropped to 6-1 when Holyfield and Tyson
stepped into the ring at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. The smart money was on
the champ, and 47 of 48 sports writers polled by the Las Vegas Review-Journal
predicted a Tyson cake walk.  It didn't happen.   And 11 brutal rounds later,
Holyfield was describing his decision-verdict over "the Baddest Man on the
Planet" as the will of god, and the sports reporters were acting like it was
the second coming of Christ.
   This was a bout that on so many levels was repleat with religious themes.
 There's Tyson, a "jailhouse Muslim"  whose rape conviction led to a stint in
the slammer, and who was variously described after last night's
less-than-credible jabbing performance as everything from a "beast" to a
"shark" who likes to hang out in flashy hotel rooms and "lap-dancing" joints
in Manhattan.  And there's Evander, a born-again Christian who has huddled
with televangelist Pat Robertson in his dressing room before bouts, and who
sported a "Jesus is Lord" baseball cap and gown inscribed with "Phil iv, 13",
a reference to the bible passage which reads: "I can do all things through
Jesus, which strengthens me."
   It was good versus evil, the "great religious hope" against some cash cow
for a much-disliked Don King.  Had Tyson landed one of his lethal deliveries
instead of sustaining 21 unanswered blows by Holyfield, well, there would a
different spin on today's sport headlines, and a lot less gushing by Pat
Robertson and crew on the Monday morning "700 Club." The truth is that Jesus
wasn't in the ring, and that Evander Holyfield employed a simply and
systematic strategy in dismantling any threat the 222 lb. reigning champ had
to offer.  He delivered a medley of punches that Tyson just couldn't answer,
and floored the champ for only the second time in Tyson's 47-fight career. In
the sixth round, Holyfield dumped Iron Mike onto the canvas, and opened a cut
over the left eye.  By the top of the ninth, Tyson was wobbly and on the
ropes.  And in the 11th, referee Mitch Halpern had to salvage Tyson and call
the fight for Evander Holyfield.
   The fact that Holyfield is an exuberant religious proselytizer who invokes
God and Jesus with every jab seems to have captivated the sports-writing
establishment, and bathed last night's slugfest with a near-metaphysical
cache.  He was "guided by an unwavering inner spirit," mused USA TODAY, and
Holyfield himself wasn't shy on recounting how "I prayed during training.  I
prayed when I got into the ring.  I prayed when I was fighting him..."
Columnist Bryan Burwell gushed that "Holyfield's excellent night rescues
boxing," as if Evander and his spirit-world corner men had managed to
vanquish the infidels and retake Jerusalem for the pope.  Would he, or any of
the other sports columnist, have been so generous if Tyson had won?  Or if
Tyson had been upset by some other Buster Douglas stand-in?  We doubt it.

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From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: aan#196--2
Date: Wed Nov 20 18:35:30 CST 1996
Message number: 22
Reply to message number: unavailable

                                            Another Religious Symbol?
   Evander is already a bit of a poster-boy for religious causes, having
flirted with Pat Robertson, religious performance-artist and faith healer
Benny Hinn, and even signed on to the Advisory Committee of the "National
Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools."  Mr. Hinn has been the
recipient of considerable Holyfield largesse , and no doubt last night's
winner's purse of at least $45 million could go a long way in compensating
Holyfield, and spreading the true word.
   His involvement with faith healer Hinn is even more bizarre than last
night's clobbering of Mike Tyson.  Operating out of Orlando, Florida, Hinn
has managed to become one of the most successful -- and controversial --
televangelists and religious crusaders peddling spiritual goods in the belief
market place.  His daily television program "This Is Your Day" is pumped into
millions of households on 90 cable outlets, and reaches overseas to Russia,
Norway, Iceland, Italy, South Africa, and down to Latin America.  His World
Outreach Center boasts a home-congregation membership of over 10,000 people.
   Hinn has attracted media attention, and even the concern of mainstream
religious groups for his claims of faith healing, his statement that he is a
channel for god, and his involvement with Evander Holyfield.  For years, Hinn
claimed that he believed in "revelation knowledge," whereby truths were
revealed directly to him by god.  He has also massaged new age and even
gnostic-manichean teachings into his ministry, maintaining that there are
nine spirits or manifestations of the deity, namely three bodies, souls and
spirits for each member of the Trinity.
   Skeptics and even many religious groups are wary of Hinn's fabulous claims
as a faith healer, which explains the involvement between Hinn and boxer
Evander Holyfield.  Following a diagnosis several years ago for a non-life
threatening heart condition which threatened to sideline his career,
 Holyfield attended one of Hinn's faith healing marathons. Reportedly,
Holyfield ended up on the stage where he remained paralyzed for over an hour
as he "allowed the spirit" to enter him.  He credit that miraculous event
with the beginning of a successful medical recovery, and reportedly presented
Hinn with $250,000

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From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: aan#196--3
Date: Wed Nov 20 18:35:31 CST 1996
Message number: 23
Reply to message number: unavailable

                                        Punching Out Public Schools ?
   Evander Holyfield is an Advisory Board member of a group known as the
 National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.  This organization
is  another one of those disingenuous schemes of sneaking religious exercise
back into the public education system, all under the guise of "informing
students of the importance of religion in world and national history," albeit
without supposedly "imposing the doctrines of any particular religious sect."
 The Council wants the Bible taught as an "important literary form," which
would give students "insight into the world views of America's founding
fathers" and the "Biblical influences on their views on human rights."
   The new champ who doubtless will be using his position in the ring to
broadcast the benefits of religious faith, has some interesting company
within this group, including some of the nation's most authoritarian
religious ideologists and anti-gay activists.  There's Christian
Reconstructionist Howard Phillips (US Taxpayers Party), and Ted Baehr of the
Christian Film and Television Commission.  Evander might want to take a look
in the mirror, then recall how Baehr and his "Good News Communications" were
grinding out phoney propaganda videos on behalf of the old apartheid regime
in South Africa which included questionable footage supplied by that
government's secret service.
   Other participants in the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public
Schools include:

  * D. James Kennedy ~ "700 Club" and Trinity Broadcasting Co. regular, head
of Coral Ridge Ministries, and one of the original inncer-circle behind Jerry
Falwell's "Moral Majority" group.  Kennedy is also linked to cult leader Rev.
Moon (Unification Church) through the "Coalition for Religious Freedom."

   * Russ Walton ~ Walton's involvement in religious-political activism goes
back to the 1970's when he participated in the so-called "Third Century"
movement, and authored an electioneering manual titled "One Nation Under
God." Walton now is active in Howard Phillip's US Taxpayers Party, and
founded the Plymouth Rock Foundation and the offshoot group known as
Christian Committee of Correspondence.  The latter group is composed of those
"who desire to rebuild the biblical foundations of this nation...They join
together to learn the true Christian history of the United States, to study
scriptural principles of government, economics and education, and to apply
those principles to both their personal lives and public affairs."
   While Mr. Walton has flirted with the Christian Reconstructionist idea of
imposing the death penalty for homosexuals, insisting that "Sodomy gnaws at
the vitals and rots the soul of the nation that permits it to go
unchallenged" ("Biblical Principles Concerning Issues of Importance to
Christians," by Rus Walton), homosexuality is actually a personal issue in
the Walton family.  His daughter, Pam, is a lesbian filmmaker who has
produced gay documentaries; she has been estranged from her father since
1981.

   * John Munday ~ Dean with Pat Robertson's Regent University.

   * Two other members of the National Council on Bible Curriculum have links
to the anti-gay movement, and were involved in the secret "Glen Eyrie
Conference" held in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Hosted by the "Colorado For
Family Values" group, the two-day event was even described by the
Moonie-funded Washington Times as "two days of top secret meetings," designed
to lay out a nationwide, religious anti-gay agenda.  Participants included
the Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for American, American Family
Association and the Christian Coalition.  REV. RAYMOND KWONG of the
California-based Chinese Family Alliance was a Glen Eyrie strategist, and
serves on the NCBCPS Advisory Committee; he also appears in the anti-gay
video "The Gay Agenda."  The Chinese Family Alliance is one of a nexus of
California groups working on behalf of "family values," and was involved in a
flap over high school materials in San Francisco which dealt with the problem
of female genital mutilation.  The book, "Warrior Masks," was called
"disturbing, hdeous, nasty, gross, horrifying, insulting and totally
inappropriate for teenagers" by the group.
   Another National Council on Bible Curriculum member with strong ties to
religious right, anti-gay groups is Colonel RONALD D. RAY, a military
historian and participant in the Glen Eyrie conclave.  Ray is a former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense who authored the controversial "Military
Necessity and Homosexuality," which argued for keeping homosexuals out of the
military.

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From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: aan#196---4
Date: Wed Nov 20 18:35:32 CST 1996
Message number: 24
Reply to message number: unavailable

                                      Sports Heroes As Religious Icons
   The mythic linkage of athletic success, 'clean living" and religious
belief is deeply rooted in contemporary consciousness.  There are a number of
religious evangelical groups which focus on recruiting "Christian athletes" ;
and the Promise Keepers movement with its emphasis on athletic metaphors and
venues has attracted nearly a million male participants for its "Rallies."
American evangelist Billy Sunday was widely praised as an example of
"Christian manhood" for his religious belief and wholesome lifestyle while
playing professional baseball, prior to embarking on a full-time career on
the stump for Jesus (see: "Preacher ~ Billy Sunday & Big Time American
Evangelism," by Roger Bruns.)   The award-winning hit film "Chariots of Fire"
focused on the athletic prowess of missionary Eric Liddel, and his refusal to
compete on the sabbath day during the Olympic games because of his religious
beliefs.  Religious television and radio programming and publications abound
with the "testimony" of athletes who credit prayer, god and religious belief
for their physical achievements.
   As for Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson, last night's bout would have been
seen as a vindication of religious belief regardless of the outcome.
 Holyfield had insisted "You can pray to some gods and some gods don't hear
prayers, but there's a god out there that do (sic) hear prayers..."  His
reference to "some gods" could well have been Mr. Tyson's Islamic deity;
indeed, a Tyson victory (last night or in the rematch) could be dredged up as
proof that the Muslim deity is more efficacious, if not in reforming human
conduct, then certainly in giving one an athletic or mental edge.
   The celebration of Mr. Holyfield's near-moral victory in the ring fits
aptly with the new religious wave of "muscular Christianity," a rejection of
problematic feminism or lurking, repressed homosexual cravings,  and
certainly  the attitude espoused by Promise Keepers and other religious-right
movements that men must re-assert their divinely-inspired roles as "head of
household" and "clean living," strong leaders of society.  Tyson, the "beast"
and afficianado of morally decadent table dancing was exposed as what one
leading sports columnist, Bill Lyon, described as a "bully," although one is
left wondering how that label adequately describes  a man with a 45-2 career
record.
    Mr. Holyfield certainly deserves credit for rigorous training and a
devastating performance against Mike Tyson inside the ropes last evening. .
 But his credulous religious beliefs and associations with more sophsticated
and menacing representatives of the American religious fundamentalist cause
should be warning flags to anyone who seeks to elevate him to the status of a
hero.
                                                                    **
                             AMERICAN ATHEISTS LAUNCHES NEW FTP SITE

   The American Atheists ftp site is not up and running at
ftp.atheists.org/pub/.  Eventually, there will be a complete directory of
back issues of AANEWS.  There is already a long list of materials available
for downloading, including a history of the organization, copies of press
releases and articles which have appeared in our publications.
   Our thanks to Don Rivers, Wayne Aiken and Ed Gauci for their continued
work on the ftp site.  We'll keep readers informed as new materials are made
available.
                                                                  **
   About This List...
   AANEWS is a free service from American Atheists, a nationwide movement
founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair for the advancement of Atheism, and the
total, absolute separation of government and religion. For more information
about American Atheists, send mail to info@atheists.org and include your name
and postal mailing address.  You can also check out our cool new site on the
web at http://www.atheists.org, or visit our ftp site at
ftp.atheists.org/pub/.
    You may forward, post or quote from this dispatch, provided that
appropriate credit is given to aanews and American Atheists.  For
subscribe/unsubscribe information, send mail to
aanews-request@listserv.atheists.org and put "info aanews" (minus the
quotation marks, please) in the message body.  Edited and written by Conrad
F. Goeringer (cg@atheists.org), The LISTMASTER.  Internet Representative for
American Atheists is Margie Wait, irep@atheists.org.

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Same-sex marriages
Date: Wed Dec 04 01:15:49 CST 1996
Message number: 25
Reply to message number: unavailable


From MaTsMiTh@aol.com Tue Dec  3 20:37:43 1996
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 19:24:35 -0500
From: MaTsMiTh@aol.com
Reply-To: dflfc@wavefront.com
To: dflfc@wavefront.com
Subject: WE WON BIG!!!!

The following is from Associated Press.

Matthea Smith
Minneapolis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By BRUCE DUNFORD
.c The Associated Press

    HONOLULU (Dec. 3) - A state judge Tuesday barred Hawaii from denying
marriage licenses to gay couples, a decision certain to be appealed.

    The first word of the decision by Circuit Judge Kevin Chang came from
Kirk Cashmere, an attorney for three gay couples who sued the state.

    An appeal by the state would send the case back to the Hawaii Supreme
Court. It ruled in 1993 that denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples
amounted to gender discrimination under the state constitution's Equal Rights
Amendment. But it sent the case back to a lower court to give the state a
chance to show a compelling public interest in allowing such discrimination.

    Copies of Chang's ruling were to be distributed later Tuesday.

    Chang ''in a nutshell ruled that the sex-based classification in the
state's marriage law is unconstitutional,'' Cashmere said.

    The judge said the state had not shown any compelling state interest to
deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, the attorney said.

    Two gay men and two lesbian couples sued in 1991 for the right to marry,
to the dismay of some national gay rights organizations that feared backlash
from a legal move some considered premature.

    The Hawaii case prompted Congress to approve a law President Clinton
signed in September, saying the federal government will not recognize gay
marriages, and allowing states not to recognize such marriages licensed in
other states.

    If the Hawaii ruling is upheld, gay activists would then sue to overturn
the national law, called the Defense of Marriage Act, said David Smith,
spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group based in
Washington, D.C.

    ''This is a tremendous victory, but the battle's not over. A major bridge
has been crossed, but the battle will continue,'' Smith said.

    Chang ''made the only decision that he could, given the evidence in this
case,'' said Daniel Foley, also an attorney for the three couples who sued
when they were denied marriage licenses in 1991. ''This decision is not only
historic, but of vital personal consequence to the couples who want to get
married.''

    Rick Eichor, the deputy state attorney general who handled the state's
case, was not immediately available for comment.

    Both sides had said they would appeal if Chang ruled against them.

    The 1993 state Supreme Court decision ordered the state to show a
compelling public interest in refusing to allow marriage between couples of
the same sex. The state then argued during a two-week trial in September that
the welfare of Hawaii's children was at stake.

    Eichor argued that Hawaii's marriage law is intended to promote the best
environment for the procreation and rearing of children who thrive best when
raised by biological parents. He also contended that legalizing same-sex
marriages would open the door to demands that the state also license bigamy,
polygamy and consensual incestuous relationships.

    The trial featured conflicting testimony from a parade of expert
witnesses on family and child development.

    State lawmakers failed to agree this year on either a proposed
constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, or domestic partnership
legislation giving gay and lesbian couples many of the legal and financial
benefits of married couples.

    Genora Dancel, who sued along with partner Ninia Baehr, said the Hawaii
case is a prelude to national acton.

    ''Many people around the country helped break through this wall of
discrimination,'' she told a New York City news conference organized by the
Lambda Legal Defense and Education fund. ''While we face much more work ahead
to secure this right nationally, Ninia and I are deeply honored to be part of
today's victory.''

AP-NY-12-03-96 1805EST

Copyright 1996 The Associated Press. The information contained in  the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


__________________________________________________________________________
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             unsubscribe dflfc {your email address}

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Same-sex marriages
Date: Wed Dec 04 03:16:29 CST 1996
Message number: 26
Reply to message number: 25

DR> .c The Associated Press
DR> 
DR>     HONOLULU (Dec. 3) - A state judge Tuesday barred Hawaii from denying
DR> marriage licenses to gay couples, a decision certain to be appealed.
DR> 
DR>     The judge said the state had not shown any compelling state interest to
DR> deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, the attorney said.
DR> 
         This is why I don't think that this is an issue at all.  I have heard
the opponents saying a lot of religious opinions about it, but unless I am 
mistaken, the Constitution separates religious litmus from policies of 
government.  Whether someone's religious scruples like it or not cannot be 
used as a basis for law. 

         However, I do not believe that the pure "rightness" is the real issue
here. I think it is primarily economic. Allowing legal marriages to be 
enrolled for people who cannot now have them legal will open the door for 
other benefits such as family coverage on health insurance, tax status, and 
other areas where married people are given financial advantages over those 
who are "not" married.  I think that this is the *real* reason that there 
is so much opposition to the idea of more diverse marriages being given a 
legal status.  Sure will cost certain people a lot of money.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Same-sex marriages
Date: Wed Dec 04 13:26:15 CST 1996
Message number: 27
Reply to message number: 26

F>          However, I do not believe that the pure "rightness" is the real iss
F> here. I think it is primarily economic. Allowing legal marriages to be 
F> enrolled for people who cannot now have them legal will open the door for 
F> other benefits such as family coverage on health insurance, tax status, and 
F> other areas where married people are given financial advantages over those 
F> who are "not" married.  I think that this is the *real* reason that there 
F> is so much opposition to the idea of more diverse marriages being given a 
F> legal status.  Sure will cost certain people a lot of money.

 I disagree. I think it is mainly moral, with some people having very strong 
opinions on the subject. There's not enough incentive to make it an economic 
issue, becasue companies that want to skimp on benefits already do so - they 
don't need any excuse.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: All
Subject: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 04 13:49:34 CST 1996
Message number: 28
Reply to message number: unavailable

So, what do all of you think of the new laws (pending?) in Arizona and 
California?  Do you think they will be overturned, or do you think this 
indicates a growing maturity in spite of propaganda and drug wars?

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 04 16:03:33 CST 1996
Message number: 29
Reply to message number: 28

BT> So, what do all of you think of the new laws (pending?) in Arizona and 
BT> California?  Do you think they will be overturned, or do you think this 
BT> indicates a growing maturity in spite of propaganda and drug wars?

I think they'll get blown down in the Supreme Court for going against national
legislation.  I also think that the laws realizing a new legitimacy describes 
a change in the beliefs of the people regarding drugs such as marijuana.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 04 21:35:38 CST 1996
Message number: 30
Reply to message number: 29


BT> So, what do all of you think of the new laws (pending?) in Arizona and 
BT> California?  Do you think they will be overturned, or do you think this 
BT> indicates a growing maturity in spite of propaganda and drug wars?
S> 
S> I think they'll get blown down in the Supreme Court for going against nation
S> legislation.  I also think that the laws realizing a new legitimacy describe
S> a change in the beliefs of the people regarding drugs such as marijuana.

         I think it represents a step forward, by accepting that marijuana has
worthwhile uses and validating that.  Some of the new herbal pharmacological 
testing equipment will also help by finding the chemical tracings of its 
active ingredients for medical use.  I think that the problem was that this 
was basically bad law.  It was too broad and ill-defined.  I think that it may
be replaced by a better law.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 05 02:17:21 CST 1996
Message number: 31
Reply to message number: 28

BT> So, what do all of you think of the new laws (pending?) in Arizona and 
BT> California?  Do you think they will be overturned, or do you think this 
BT> indicates a growing maturity in spite of propaganda and drug wars?

 The only thing it indicates is that people are still somewhat sympathetic 
towards the sick. But does that indicate some sort of "maturity" on drugs? I 
think not. There's just too much impetus to be stopped right now, and until we
lock up half the population we won't be happy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 05 15:57:07 CST 1996
Message number: 32
Reply to message number: 30

F>          I think it represents a step forward, by accepting that marijuana h
F> worthwhile uses and validating that.  Some of the new herbal pharmacological
F> testing equipment will also help by finding the chemical tracings of its 
F> active ingredients for medical use.  I think that the problem was that this 
F> was basically bad law.  It was too broad and ill-defined.  I think that it m
F> be replaced by a better law.

I'd be happy if they defined a well written law such that marijuana could be 
used for true medical purposes.  Clarify some of the details and I think such 
laws could eventually become generally accepted rather than violently opposed 
by a portion of the population unwilling to recognize the true values of 
marijuana for medicine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 05 16:59:19 CST 1996
Message number: 33
Reply to message number: 32

S> I'd be happy if they defined a well written law such that marijuana could be
S> used for true medical purposes.  Clarify some of the details and I think suc
S> laws could eventually become generally accepted rather than violently oppose
S> by a portion of the population unwilling to recognize the true values of 
S> marijuana for medicine.

         I do to.  But remember that there are a lot of people who are hostile
to Marijuana, but think that alcol has good points.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Fri Dec 06 10:02:03 CST 1996
Message number: 34
Reply to message number: 33


F>          I do to.  But remember that there are a lot of people who are hosti
F> to Marijuana, but think that alcol has good points.

Oh yes,  everyone in my family for instance, who all went off on a tirade when
they found out that Californian measure had been passed.  Alchohol has some 
good points, mainly I like it in wine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Fri Dec 06 14:18:32 CST 1996
Message number: 35
Reply to message number: 33

F>          I do to.  But remember that there are a lot of people who are hosti
F> to Marijuana, but think that alcol has good points.

I find it humourous that marijuana under the new law wont require a 
perscription - just doctors recommendation.  So, hypothetically, a doctor 
could go on television and say "I think everybody should use marijuana because
it releives unnessary tention" and bamo..

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Fri Dec 06 15:12:14 CST 1996
Message number: 36
Reply to message number: 35

BT> I find it humourous that marijuana under the new law wont require a 
BT> perscription - just doctors recommendation.  So, hypothetically, a doctor 
BT> could go on television and say "I think everybody should use marijuana beca
BT> it releives unnessary tention" and bamo..
BT> 
         That is one thing I meant when I said that the law was too vague.  It
also allows cocaine and other drugs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: ALL
Subject: The art of art
Date: Sat Dec 07 14:44:41 CST 1996
Message number: 37
Reply to message number: unavailable

Art student vomits on 'stale' masterpieces

December 1, 1996
Web posted at: 2:40 p.m. EST (1940 GMT)

TORONTO (AP) -- A Canadian art student says he can't stomach 
some of the art world's masterpieces. So, he is on a mission 
to publicly vomit on at least three of the paintings -- each 
time regurgitating in a primary color.

Jubal Brown of Ontario College of Art and Design fortified 
himself with blue gelatin and cake icing on November 2 before 
vomiting on "Composition in Red, White and Blue" by Piet 
Mondrian at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

He spewed red on Raoul Dufy's "Harbour at le Havre" at the 
Art Gallery of Ontario in May.

He plans to gush yellow on an as-yet unannounced target.

The 22-year-old student, who shaves his eyebrows and has a 
pierced lower lip, said in an interview that the paintings 
are "stale, obedient, lifeless crusts." His intention: "To 
destroy art, to liberate individuals and living creatures 
from its banal, oppressive representation."

He claims he needed no inducement to vomit on the Dutch 
master's work in New York, which he called a typically 
geometric canvas.

"I found its lifelessness threatening and it made me sick."

Neither of the paintings defiled so far has suffered 
permanent damage, and the museums have not publicized the 
incidents, apparently for fear of copycat attacks. No arrest 
has been made, and no legal action launched so far.

Shortly after the New York attack, MOMA spokesman John Wolfe 
was quoted in the New York Times as saying, "It was an 
unfortunate incident, a fluke."

But MOMA director Glenn Lowry has been in touch with the 
Ontario museum since then and the two museums have begun an 
investigation, the (Toronto) Globe and Mail reported 
Saturday.

The AGO said in a statement Friday that it had only just 
realized the Dufy attack was a deliberate act, and that it is 
now considering legal action against Brown. The museum had no 
further comment.

"I don't want to give anyone like that undue publicity," 
museum spokeswoman Sandra Lawrence said.

Brown said a group of 15 friends accompanied him when he 
disgorged on the Dufy canvas, but that the New York incident 
was witnessed mostly by startled gallery patrons. Although he 
does have a photograph of the aftermath.

Brown said he was interrogated by museum officials and New 
York police after the Mondrian attack, and that he had 
explained his project.

No one could be immediately reached at the New York museum.

Officials at Brown's college say they have met with the 
student and are considering whether his actions contravene 
the school's conduct code. Spokesman Jack Kado said expulsion 
was a "worst-case scenario."

Brown said he still intends to implement Phase III of his 
project, which he considers art, though short-lived art.

"It doesn't get stale like the rest of the art in the 
gallery," he said. "It only lasts for a few minutes before 
they bring out the Kleenex and take it away."


... Jesus saves, Allah protects, Cthulhu thinks you'd make a nice sandwich    
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: The art of art
Date: Sat Dec 07 14:48:13 CST 1996
Message number: 38
Reply to message number: 37

DR> Jubal Brown of Ontario College of Art and Design fortified 
DR> himself with blue gelatin and cake icing on November 2 before 
DR> vomiting on "Composition in Red, White and Blue" by Piet 
DR> Mondrian at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

 That really *is* a disgusting piece of art, but I don't know if I'd go to the
trouble to puke on it. It's bad enough the way it is.

 The painting they're referring to is basically a series of drawn lines on the
canvas with solid color inbetween them. It's about as creative as a Domino's 
pizza box ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: The art of art
Date: Mon Dec 09 16:24:02 CST 1996
Message number: 39
Reply to message number: 37

DR> are "stale, obedient, lifeless crusts." His intention: "To 
DR> destroy art, to liberate individuals and living creatures 
DR> from its banal, oppressive representation."

A (somewhat) creative reation, very obscene, so I like it.  But he sounds more
like a snobby art twit than anything else..  I hate art twits.  He definitly 
will bring attention to his cause by using this "unorthodox" method of speech,
but it all sounds very selfcentered. (there's that art twit thing again...)  
What if people vomited on him because they disagreed with him?  Hey, George
Bush did it, why shouldn't he..

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: The art of art
Date: Tue Dec 10 12:39:02 CST 1996
Message number: 40
Reply to message number: 39

DR> are "stale, obedient, lifeless crusts." His intention: "To 
DR> destroy art, to liberate individuals and living creatures 
DR> from its banal, oppressive representation."

BT> A (somewhat) creative reation, very obscene, so I like it.  But he sounds m
BT> like a snobby art twit than anything else..  I hate art twits.  

 Unfortunately, the world is full of art twits. Has been since the mid-19th 
century ... there was a boomlet of twits between the two world wars.

BT> What if people vomited on him because they disagreed with him?  

 In primary colors, or pastel?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 11 14:48:24 CST 1996
Message number: 41
Reply to message number: 36

  Funny that nobody has focused on the more serious legal point represented in
the Arizona law.
  Arizona's "pot" law is, in effect, a direct slap in the face to the "3 
strikes" law passed a few years back in California.  Why?  Part of the hoopla 
over "3 strikes" was that it gave prosecutors and judges a way to put "drug 
criminals" behind bars "for good"--on a third felony conviction, and most drug
charges in the southwest, including marijuana over a certain amount, are 
felonies, the automatic sentancing goes into effect and locks the offender 
into major jail time.
  How does the new AZ law slap this?  Because of a clause in the text of the 
referendum that reduces the penalties of non-violent drug offenses.  Criminal 
possession of most drugs in AZ under this new law are no longer felonies, so 
the "3-strikes" law no longer stacks up for non-violent drug offenders.
  In as much as this might be a "maturing" about the drug war, I think that 
it's a realization that the war should target the violent predators who use 
drugs as a weapon, not the regular citizens who use drugs responsibly and in 
the privacy of their own homes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 11 15:27:45 CST 1996
Message number: 42
Reply to message number: 41

DT>   How does the new AZ law slap this?  Because of a clause in the text of th
DT> referendum that reduces the penalties of non-violent drug offenses.  Crimin
DT> possession of most drugs in AZ under this new law are no longer felonies, s
DT> the "3-strikes" law no longer stacks up for non-violent drug offenders.

An interesting solution to getting around the 3-strikes law.  I'm surprised 
that if Arizona is a conservative state that they would try to get around that
law.  I'd assume that a conservative state would be more likely to support 
stiffer sentences for any drug possesion or use.  Could you explain why
Arizona would deliver a slap in the face to that law, outside of 
recognizing that the laws should target violent predators rather than 
otherwise law-abiding citizens?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Wed Dec 11 15:44:56 CST 1996
Message number: 43
Reply to message number: 41

DT>   In as much as this might be a "maturing" about the drug war, I think that
DT> it's a realization that the war should target the violent predators who use
DT> drugs as a weapon, not the regular citizens who use drugs responsibly and i

 It might also be a simple realization that there's no more money to be spent
building prisons ... thanks for the info.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 12 12:58:01 CST 1996
Message number: 44
Reply to message number: 42

S> An interesting solution to getting around the 3-strikes law.  I'm surprised 
S> that if Arizona is a conservative state that they would try to get around th
S> law.  I'd assume that a conservative state would be more likely to support 
S> stiffer sentences for any drug possesion or use.

  Arizona isn't as conservative as people think.  The second largest city in 
AZ, Tucson, is basically a large college town (home of the University of AZ), 
and the fourth largest metro area, Flagstaff, is quite progressive (and 
another college town, home of Northern Arizona University).
  Yes, Barry Goldwater is from AZ, but so is Bruce Babbitt--the Democrat who 
served as Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton during the first 
term.
  What AZ is, politically, is libertarian, though few actually admit it.  
Support for Perot in this last election was so high that it cut into Dole's 
base and nearly gave President Clinton a win in the state.  If you remember 
back a bit farther, Steve Forbes became a realistic candidate in the race for 
the
Republican nomination after winning the AZ Republican primary (though he spent
a ton of money to do it).
  Friends back in AZ tell me the referendum victory was largely unexpected by 
the true-blue conservatives in the state; they ran a typical "just say no" 
conservative reaction to the idea and fully expected to win.  On the other 
hand, the libertarians mounted a "stealth campaign" (largely because they 
never took direct credit for their ads) in which they pointed out a number of 
three-strikes sentences given in California (and AZ, which has a similar, 
though not identical law) which seemed just plain outrageous.  For example, a 
57-year old grandmother was convicted of her third marijuana possession; the 
judge had no choice but to give her 20 years in prison.  The voters dismissed 
the conservatives as mindless rhetoreticians while applauding the supporters 
fo the law for using common sense in pursuit of justice.
  Still, despite the high hopes, the law will probably never see the light of 
day--there's already a restraining order against it's enaction until the AZ 
court system can review the new law's constitutionality.  So much for 
enlightenment.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 12 13:00:38 CST 1996
Message number: 45
Reply to message number: 43

DR>  It might also be a simple realization that there's no more money to be spe
DR> building prisons ...

  Yes and no.  AZ taxpayers realize that there's no money for expensive, 
modern facilities, so the governor has promised that the states next prison 
will literally consist of a bunch of pup-tents in the middle of the Sonora 
Desert.  They call it the "boot-camp prison".  The idea was very popular in 
the Republican-controlled state Senate.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Sat Dec 14 13:28:55 CST 1996
Message number: 46
Reply to message number: 44

DT>   Arizona isn't as conservative as people think.  The second largest city i
DT> AZ, Tucson, is basically a large college town (home of the University of AZ
DT> and the fourth largest metro area, Flagstaff, is quite progressive (and 
DT> another college town, home of Northern Arizona University).

ok that explains some of it.

DT>   Friends back in AZ tell me the referendum victory was largely unexpected 
DT> the true-blue conservatives in the state; they ran a typical "just say no" 
DT> conservative reaction to the idea and fully expected to win.  On the other 
DT> hand, the libertarians mounted a "stealth campaign" (largely because they 
DT> never took direct credit for their ads) in which they pointed out a number 
DT> three-strikes sentences given in California (and AZ, which has a similar, 
DT> though not identical law) which seemed just plain outrageous.  For example,
DT> 57-year old grandmother was convicted of her third marijuana possession; th
DT> judge had no choice but to give her 20 years in prison.  The voters dismiss
DT> the conservatives as mindless rhetoreticians while applauding the supporter
DT> fo the law for using common sense in pursuit of justice.

And that explains the rest.  Thanks

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Sat Dec 14 13:32:34 CST 1996
Message number: 47
Reply to message number: 45

DT>   Yes and no.  AZ taxpayers realize that there's no money for expensive, 
DT> modern facilities, so the governor has promised that the states next prison
DT> will literally consist of a bunch of pup-tents in the middle of the Sonora 
DT> Desert.  They call it the "boot-camp prison".  The idea was very popular in
DT> the Republican-controlled state Senate.

    Sounds great. (sarcasm)  just a bunch a criminals stuck in the middle of
the desert, living living like soldiers.  I suppose there isn't too many ways 
to escape in those conditions.  Of course it very well could end up being
an Southwest American version of the Siberian prison camp.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFIRE
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 19 10:54:58 CST 1996
Message number: 48
Reply to message number: 44

DT>   Arizona isn't as conservative as people think.  The second largest city i
DT> AZ, Tucson, is basically a large college town (home of the University of AZ
DT> and the fourth largest metro area, Flagstaff, is quite progressive (and 
DT> another college town, home of Northern Arizona University).

Also Tempe  (home of ASU) is a very liberal place to live but we must also 
take into consideration the fact that it is a warm retirement location for 
those who can afford it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Starfire
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Thu Dec 19 13:21:15 CST 1996
Message number: 49
Reply to message number: 48

S> Also Tempe  (home of ASU) is a very liberal place to live but we must also 
S> take into consideration the fact that it is a warm retirement location for 
S> those who can afford it.

Tempe is fairly liberal, I guess.  ASU looks like an extension of downtown to 
me, not a real college campus.

Tempe is also only one of the suburbs of Phoenix.  The "retirement 
communities" of Scottsdale, Mesa, and a couple of others whose names I can't 
remember do tend to push the place to the right.  Still, a lot of white people
who live in Phoenix tend to be conservative jerks--they would claim that 
they're perfectly normal people, but they wish there weren't so many Hispanics
around...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: STARFIRE
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Sat Dec 21 17:33:45 CST 1996
Message number: 50
Reply to message number: 49

DT> remember do tend to push the place to the right.  Still, a lot of white peo
DT> who live in Phoenix tend to be conservative jerks--they would claim that 
DT> they're perfectly normal people, but they wish there weren't so many Hispan
DT> around...

I think that anyone that closed minded is unfortunate.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Starfire (Et Al.)
Subject: Diversity
Date: Sun Dec 22 12:28:26 CST 1996
Message number: 51
Reply to message number: unavailable

I lived on-campus at Arizona Western College for three years.  (In fact, now 
that I think about it, that seems very strange--AWC is a community college, so
it only gives out two-year degrees, plus I know of very few community colleges
that have dormitories.)  Largely because AWC was very committed to sports 
(another anomaly among two-year schools), the dorms there were exceptionally 
diverse.

Only a very small percentage of the Yuma community is black, for example, but 
because the football team did a lot of recruiting, the male dorms consisted of
about 30% black men, mostly from the east coast, carted cross-country on 
scholarships.  There was also a smattering of Hawai'ians (their spelling), men
recruited for the line on the football team, and women recruited as blockers 
for the volleyball team.  A couple of Japanese guys played on the baseball 
team as well.  Plus, while there were a number of Hispanics on the different 
sports teams at the school (particularly the soccer team), many more lived on 
campus because they had study-visas from Mexico, and preferred to live in the 
US rather than commute over 30 miles to their home country every school day.  
"White" people (like myself) were a minority, but there was no majority.

I'd like to say that we all studiously learned each others' backgrounds and 
racial histories and applied them judiciously in living in harmony.  We didn't
go that far, but "what's it like where you come from?" became a common 
ice-breaking question in and around the dorms, and interracial dating was the 
norm rather than the exception.  As a tutor, I mingled among all the different
students in the dorms (though I was never able to transform any of the 
gratitude I felt at making the female students better prepared to pass exams 
into any sort of dating advantage).  I can report that at some point, the 
mind's natural tendency to separate people into groups based on race broke 
down; while there was still a gross separation into "jocks" and non-athletes, 
for the most part we pretty much saw all of ourselves as "dorm students", and 
acted appropriately.  Because of our unity, we won a number of concessions 
from the administration:  extended curfew for "study" sessions, free cable TV,
and a computer lab strictly for dorm student use.  As I left, my boss, Pete 
Self, an old hippie helping to arouse the students in the dorms, announced 
that the local Army Proving Ground was willing to donate a bunch of old 
computers to the college so that every dorm room could have one, and Pete was 
pressuring the administration to hook the dorm-computers into the school's 
Internet connection.

Diversity for it's own sake is valuable, but unity within diversity brings the
greatest rewards.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: LUCIUS SULLA
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: marijuana
Date: Mon Jan 20 16:00:22 CST 1997
Message number: 52
Reply to message number: 28

BT> So, what do all of you think of the new laws (pending?) in Arizona and 
BT> California?  Do you think they will be overturned, or do you think this 
BT> indicates a growing maturity in spite of propaganda and drug wars?

I don't have much faith in Pete Wilson's balls to stand up to the Fed, so I 
don't know how California will handle it, but either way, this will be perhaps
the biggest case to show where we stand as a country in regards to States 
Rights. A federal judge overturned the overwhelming majority vote to prop 209 
and now Washington is saying the People didn't know what they were doing when 
they voted to legalize marijuana for medical uses. I see some very fascinating
precedents about to be set in the next 2 years.

Sulla

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Wed Feb 05 17:22:29 CST 1997
Message number: 53
Reply to message number: unavailable

http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~antipas/fliers.html/hawaii_12-03-96.txt



December 4, 1996
                         BOYCOTT HAWAII!

      Land of same-sex marriage.  Leper colony to the world.

On Dec. 3, 1996, a state court judge in Hawaii ordered that same sex
couples  be allowed to marry one another, and be recognized by the
state as legally  married for all purposes.  Henceforth, Hawaii will
be held in contempt and  revulsion by all decent people of every
state and nation.  Hawaii is now a  moral leper colony, where none
but the dregs of humanity will voluntarily go.   For fear that the
wrath of God will presently decree the violent eruption of the
islands' volcanoes, swiftly burying every living creature that moves
there under mountains of white-hot ash, cinder and molten rock, as at
Pompeii  in 79 A.D., for similar transgressions.

Henceforth, Hawaii is fit only for fags, turning it over lock, stock
and  barrel as a sanatorium for the compulsory quarantining of all
guilty,  homosexual AIDS carriers.  There they can be wholly given
over (as God has  given them up, Rom. 1:24) to uncleanness, through
the lust of their own  hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among
themselves.  Their only law will  be the law of the jungle beasts the
Bible declares them to be: "as natural  brute beasts, made to be
taken and destroyed."  2 Pet. 2:12.  There they can  eat, sleep and
copulate, and the whole of Hawaii will be their toilet.   Hawaii, The
Islands of the Damned.  Anteroom to Hell.  Sperm Bank of Satan.

                         PATRONIZE CUBA!

      Castro quarantines AIDS carriers.  Halts AIDS spread. 
       Enlightened Cuba may replace Hawaii for sun and fun.
                                 
Cowardly U.S. politicians, intimidated by the homosexual lobby, have
no moral  authority to compel utilization of well-established
methodologies for  arresting communicable disease epidemics,to wit:
reporting all cases, contact- tracing to identify unreported cases,
and quarantine of all AIDS carriers to  stop new infections.  If the
sodomites will not modify their filthy  promiscuous sex activities,
we must stop them, or perish.  Who will not be  guided by the rudder
must be guided by the rock.  Castro has more sense in  this matter
than all our moral midgets ensconced in positions of governmental
power, combined.  Professing wisdom, they're fools.

To President Castro we say: This, Sir, is your golden opportunity.
Open your  island up as a vacation mecca, where decent, snow-bound
Americans and  Europeans can go in lieu of Hawaii.  Make and keep
Cuba a clean, fag-free  place, where predatory, disease ridden
sodomites are continued to be rounded  up and quarantined like the
unclean dogs, hogs, fourfooted beasts and  creeping things the Bible
says they are.  An honest atheist (which they say you are, Sir) is
infinitely superior, morally and ethically, to the  apostate
Christians and Jews who have mutated the God-forsaken U.S.A. into a
hellish kingdom of sodomites.  Cuba, long the butt of arrogant
American scorn,  now lifted on the wings of tourista golden eagles,
may become a bright,  shining, prosperous island in the sun.  Thanks
to a holy back-lash of  righteous indignation of decent people
against the foul folly of the filthy,  fornicating American faggots
sucking, slobbering and sodomizing one with  another until the Stars
and Stripes commingle to passion pink in the clutch  of a brazen
Sappho atop the Capitol Dome.

President Castro, Sir, your friend the Pope will soon visit your
island.   Welcome him, as one who stands boldly, as you do, against
promiscuous  sodomite filth.  In his wisdom, he will counsel you to
loosen up a bit.   Grant unbridled religious freedom to your people.
You will reap enormous  benefits thereby.  The U.S. has taken away
our religious freedom, at the behest of the sodomites who control the
government here.  The rule of law is  dead here -- a legacy of the
sodomites.  You have heard of our vaunted First  Amendment.  It, too,
is dead here -- killed by sodomites.  The U.S. flag that  flies from
a 50-foot flagpole in front of our church, now flies every day
upside down, at half staff.  Upside down as the international signal
of  distress!  At half staff as the international signal of death.
Decency is  dead in America.  The fear of God is dead in America.
But God's everlasting  word and solemn warnings stand: GOD HATES FAGS
(Rom. 9:13),  FAGS ARE WORTHY  OF DEATH (Rom. 1:32), and FAGS DIE,
GOD LAUGHS (Psa. 2:4). Amen!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Wed Feb 05 19:51:56 CST 1997
Message number: 54
Reply to message number: 53

DR>                          BOYCOTT HAWAII!
DR> 
DR>       Land of same-sex marriage.  Leper colony to the world.
DR> 
DR> Henceforth, Hawaii is fit only for fags, turning it over lock, stock
DR> and  barrel as a sanatorium for the compulsory quarantining of all
DR> guilty,  homosexual AIDS carriers.  There they can be wholly given

DR>                          PATRONIZE CUBA!
DR> 
DR>       Castro quarantines AIDS carriers.  Halts AIDS spread. 
DR>        Enlightened Cuba may replace Hawaii for sun and fun.
DR>                                  
DR> Cowardly U.S. politicians, intimidated by the homosexual lobby, have
DR> no moral  authority to compel utilization of well-established
DR> methodologies for  arresting communicable disease epidemics,to wit:

DR> Americans and  Europeans can go in lieu of Hawaii.  Make and keep
DR> Cuba a clean, fag-free  place, where predatory, disease ridden
DR> sodomites are continued to be rounded  up and quarantined like the
DR> unclean dogs, hogs, fourfooted beasts and  creeping things the Bible
DR> says they are.  An honest atheist (which they say you are, Sir) is
DR> infinitely superior, morally and ethically, to the  apostate
DR> Christians and Jews who have mutated the God-forsaken U.S.A. into a
    
         Scraping the bottom of the barrel for reading material, eh, DR?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Thu Feb 06 12:44:41 CST 1997
Message number: 55
Reply to message number: 54

DR>                          BOYCOTT HAWAII!
DR> 
DR>       Land of same-sex marriage.  Leper colony to the world.

F>     
F>          Scraping the bottom of the barrel for reading material, eh, DR?

 Actually, I think this is grade-A material. I couldn't satirize people 
likethis if I tried ... I mean really, it takes creative genius to turn Cuba 
into some sort of puritanical Christian heavan.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Fri Feb 07 23:13:53 CST 1997
Message number: 56
Reply to message number: 55

\
DR>                          BOYCOTT HAWAII!
DR> 
DR>       Land of same-sex marriage.  Leper colony to the world.
*
dr,
where did you get this? it's amazing...and you're right about 
satirization...do not people like this *realize* they are human jokes? oops, i
guess not...sigh
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sat Feb 08 09:36:06 CST 1997
Message number: 57
Reply to message number: 55

DR>  Actually, I think this is grade-A material. I couldn't satirize people 
DR> likethis if I tried ... I mean really, it takes creative genius to turn Cub
DR> into some sort of puritanical Christian heavan.

Absolutely amazing.  I was reading and couldn't help but feel pity for the 
amount of hate these people are carrying around with them.  Then after about 
half-way through I got sick and stopped.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sat Feb 08 12:36:19 CST 1997
Message number: 58
Reply to message number: 57

S> Absolutely amazing.  I was reading and couldn't help but feel pity for the 
S> amount of hate these people are carrying around with them.  Then after about
S> half-way through I got sick and stopped.
    
         That is pretty much the same way I reacted to it too.  Except that I 
can't figure out whether the writer is really serious or pulling our legs.  
Apparently, you think they are serious.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 08:59:54 CST 1997
Message number: 59
Reply to message number: 58

S> Absolutely amazing.  I was reading and couldn't help but feel pity for the 
S> amount of hate these people are carrying around with them.  Then after about
S> half-way through I got sick and stopped.
F>     
F>          That is pretty much the same way I reacted to it too.  Except that 
F> can't figure out whether the writer is really serious or pulling our legs.  
F> Apparently, you think they are serious.
*
unfortunately, i've seen enough hate-writing like this to know that people ARE
serious about it- and, worse, that they think they're doing it in the name of 
a christian god. i saw a great bumper sticker yesterday- in great big letters 
it said
                   J      E      S     U     S
and in little letters underneath, it said
       please save me from your followers
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 09:58:05 CST 1997
Message number: 60
Reply to message number: 58

F>          That is pretty much the same way I reacted to it too.  Except that 
F> can't figure out whether the writer is really serious or pulling our legs.  
F> Apparently, you think they are serious.

I don't know, I think the sheer quantity of hate seemed too awful to be not 
serious.  I've heard too many people who sound like this to not take them at 
their word.  Maybe if I knew them, and knew they were often sarcastic, I might
think they were pulling our legs, but what I read there didn't give me that 
impression.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 12:18:22 CST 1997
Message number: 61
Reply to message number: 59

C>                    J      E      S     U     S
C> and in little letters underneath, it said
C>        please save me from your followers
    
         I wore a pin like this to a political meeting a couple of years ago. 
I was trapped by a woman who hadn't read the second line.  After a couple of 
minutes of trying to be polite while she complained about sinners, she 
launched into this, "MEN!  I blame the men!  They should do what the Bible 
says and not allow their women to get abortions."  Then I asked her if she 
knew what this other pin meant -- the one with the coat hanger and the Ban 
symbol.  Doh.  No, she had never seen that one.  I booked out of there fast.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 12:20:04 CST 1997
Message number: 62
Reply to message number: 60


S> their word.  Maybe if I knew them, and knew they were often sarcastic, I mig
S> think they were pulling our legs, but what I read there didn't give me that 
S> impression.
    
         Possibly so.  It is just difficult for me to believe that there 
really are people this hateful and warped.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: COSIMA
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 16:43:11 CST 1997
Message number: 63
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Cosima :
 \
 DR>                          BOYCOTT HAWAII!
 DR> 
 DR>       Land of same-sex marriage.  Leper colony to the world.
 Co> *
 Co> dr,
 Co> where did you get this?

 I included the URL in the original post, it's from a Baptist church out
West somewhere. 

 Co> it's amazing...and you're right about
 Co> satirization...do not people like this *realize* they are human jokes?

 All of us are jokes to someone, the question is - how seriously do we
take ourselves?


... Money can't buy happiness, but allows a choice of misery.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: FROGGY
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 16:43:12 CST 1997
Message number: 64
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Froggy :

 S> Absolutely amazing.  I was reading and couldn't help but feel pity for the
 S> amount of hate these people are carrying around with them.  Then after abo
 S> half-way through I got sick and stopped.
 Fr> 
 Fr> That is pretty much the same way I reacted to it too.  Except
 Fr> that I  can't figure out whether the writer is really serious or
 Fr> pulling our legs.   Apparently, you think they are serious.

 They are serious, 110% serious. And they have pictures to prove it.


... Success is just a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 16:46:49 CST 1997
Message number: 65
Reply to message number: 61

F> knew what this other pin meant -- the one with the coat hanger and the Ban 
F> symbol.  Doh.  No, she had never seen that one.  I booked out of there fast.

 Does that have something to do with the movie "Mommy Dearest" or 
something?I have the oddest memory of an old hag yelling at her kid about 
"wire hangers! wire hangers!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sun Feb 09 23:48:24 CST 1997
Message number: 66
Reply to message number: 65

F> knew what this other pin meant -- the one with the coat hanger and the Ban 
F> symbol.  Doh.  No, she had never seen that one.  I booked out of there fast.
DR> 
DR>  Does that have something to do with the movie "Mommy Dearest" or 
DR> something?I have the oddest memory of an old hag yelling at her kid about 
DR> "wire hangers! wire hangers!"
    
         Hardly.  It is made by the pro-choice4 advocates.  It basically 
means, "ban the coat hanger."  Get it?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 01:07:21 CST 1997
Message number: 67
Reply to message number: 63

DR>  All of us are jokes to someone, the question is - how seriously do we
DR> take ourselves?
*
you, sir, are a joke. *I*, on the other hand, am a human who should be taken 
seriously. <kidding>
good point, though. i'm sure there are people in germany who never thought 
that that idiot hitler would be taken seriously. and i always remember 
watching a re-run of 'laugh-in' when they had 'news of the future, 10 years 
from now' and started an article 'today, president ronald reagan'...and they 
couldn't go on reading, everyone was laughing so hard...
*
DR> ... Money can't buy happiness, but allows a choice of misery.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 07:10:32 CST 1997
Message number: 68
Reply to message number: 67

C> watching a re-run of 'laugh-in' when they had 'news of the future, 10 years 
C> from now' and started an article 'today, president ronald reagan'...and they
C> couldn't go on reading, everyone was laughing so hard...
    
         I reacted similarly when I heard that he was going to run against 
Carter.  WHOOO????  Oh, the idiot with the 20 mule team.  Then, in 1979, we 
all quit laughing and started sobbing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 09:29:07 CST 1997
Message number: 69
Reply to message number: 66

DR>  Does that have something to do with the movie "Mommy Dearest" or 
DR> something?I have the oddest memory of an old hag yelling at her kid about 
DR> "wire hangers! wire hangers!"
F>     
F>          Hardly.  It is made by the pro-choice4 advocates.  It basically 
F> means, "ban the coat hanger."  Get it?

 Yeah, of course I get it. It's kind of like Frank Lloyd Wright, get rid of 
all the closets and coat hangers and force people to live out of their 
suitcases. I can see pro-choice liberals going for this kind of thing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 09:36:28 CST 1997
Message number: 70
Reply to message number: 67

C> good point, though. i'm sure there are people in germany who never thought 
C> that that idiot hitler would be taken seriously.

 In all honesty, I don't think that many people *did* take Hitler seriously. 
They just took what he could do to them seriously, if they chose not to act 
like he was lord and god of the world.

C> you, sir, are a joke. *I*, on the other hand, am a human who should be taken
C> seriously. <kidding>

 Do you have any proof for that "human" bit?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 12:52:03 CST 1997
Message number: 71
Reply to message number: 69

F>          Hardly.  It is made by the pro-choice4 advocates.  It basically 
F> means, "ban the coat hanger."  Get it?
DR> 
DR>  Yeah, of course I get it. It's kind of like Frank Lloyd Wright, get rid of
DR> all the closets and coat hangers and force people to live out of their 
DR> suitcases. I can see pro-choice liberals going for this kind of thing.
    
         You've gone weird on us, DR.  Have you been drinking that St. Paul 
tap water?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 16:25:50 CST 1997
Message number: 72
Reply to message number: 71

F>          You've gone weird on us, DR. 

 Which implies, perhaps, that I was ever sane or normal?

F> Have you been drinking that St. Paul tap water?
                                    
 No, the Inver Grove tap water. But it's almost as bad, tastes like rusty car 
exhaust.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 17:32:22 CST 1997
Message number: 73
Reply to message number: 70

C> you, sir, are a joke. *I*, on the other hand, am a human who should be taken
C> seriously. <kidding>
DR> 
DR>  Do you have any proof for that "human" bit?
*
LOL! of course. Jesus told me so.
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 10 17:33:38 CST 1997
Message number: 74
Reply to message number: 72

F>          You've gone weird on us, DR. 
DR> 
DR>  Which implies, perhaps, that I was ever sane or normal?
*
i think he's been smoking strange stuff and re-reading old posts from Viper, 
the Main Man.
*
F> Have you been drinking that St. Paul tap water?
DR>                                     
DR>  No, the Inver Grove tap water. But it's almost as bad, tastes like rusty c
DR> exhaust.
*
so that explains it. he's from the SUBURBS, frogster.
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Tue Feb 11 03:22:14 CST 1997
Message number: 75
Reply to message number: 72

F>          You've gone weird on us, DR. 
DR> 
DR>  Which implies, perhaps, that I was ever sane or normal?
DR> 
         No.  Everything is a question of degree.

F> Have you been drinking that St. Paul tap water?
DR>                                     
DR>  No, the Inver Grove tap water. But it's almost as bad, tastes like rusty c
DR> exhaust.

         That doesn't explain it, then.  You have been drinking IGH water all 
along.  What could account for the difference?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Tue Feb 11 03:23:24 CST 1997
Message number: 76
Reply to message number: 74

F>          You've gone weird on us, DR. 
DR> 
DR>  Which implies, perhaps, that I was ever sane or normal?
C> *
C> i think he's been smoking strange stuff and re-reading old posts from Viper,
C> the Main Man.
    
         That would do it.  Not the smoking, but the reading.  :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Tue Feb 11 11:34:59 CST 1997
Message number: 77
Reply to message number: 76

C> i think he's been smoking strange stuff and re-reading old posts from Viper,
C> the Main Man.
F>     
F>          That would do it.  Not the smoking, but the reading.  :)
*
what's worse is....he's starting to *understand* them...
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Tue Feb 11 12:57:56 CST 1997
Message number: 78
Reply to message number: 77

C> i think he's been smoking strange stuff and re-reading old posts from Viper,
C> the Main Man.
F>     
F>          That would do it.  Not the smoking, but the reading.  :)
C> *
C> what's worse is....he's starting to *understand* them...

         And repeat them.  Ewwwwwwwwwww!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: COSIMA
Subject: Re: The burbs
Date: Tue Feb 11 19:10:03 CST 1997
Message number: 79
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Cosima :

 DR>  No, the Inver Grove tap water. But it's almost as bad, tastes like rusty
 DR> exhaust.
 Co> *
 Co> so that explains it. he's from the SUBURBS, frogster.
 Co> -=c=-

 Actually, no. I'm from the boonies, little house on the prarie country.
I live in Inver Grove Heights, a halfway decent 'burb as far as those
things go.



... If Christ loved & forgave people, why can't Christians?
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Thu Feb 13 09:23:26 CST 1997
Message number: 80
Reply to message number: 62


F>          Possibly so.  It is just difficult for me to believe that there 
F> really are people this hateful and warped.

Mmm...  I've met people like this, I might add I've avoided them since then, 
but I know people like this exist and I take articles like this for truth 
unless it is written by someone like DR for instance who uses sarcasm quite 
often...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAVE THE LUCKY
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sat Feb 15 10:49:35 CST 1997
Message number: 81
Reply to message number: 76

F>          You've gone weird on us, DR. 
DR> 
DR>  Which implies, perhaps, that I was ever sane or normal?
C> *
C> i think he's been smoking strange stuff and re-reading old posts from Viper,
C> the Main Man.
F>     
F>          That would do it.  Not the smoking, but the reading.  :)

Don't know who Viper is, but I'll take your word for it.  Still, the mentions 
of tap water got me thinking about a story I once came across:

Long ago, a pious man was visited by an angel.  The angel told the man that
God had grown displeased with the world, and would soon change all the water 
in the world into water that would drive men mad.  God had decided to spare 
this one good man from the madness that would soon come, and the angel told 
him how to store water so it would not be affected by God's curse.

So the man acted on the angel's warning and stored away a vast quantity of 
water, more than he would need for the rest of his life.  The day came, and 
everyone around him went mad.  The man could clearly see that everyone else 
was mad, but, since they were mad, they couldn't tell.  However, they all 
thought the pious man had gone mad, when in fact he had not changed.

The pious man tried desperately to get even one person to drink his protected 
water, in the hope that that person might be cured of madness, but no one 
would listen.  They ostracized him, threatened him, and finally drove him out 
of the city to live as a hermit in the hills with his pure water.  Finally, 
the pious man could bear it no more, and out of loneliness, drank of the 
cursed water and became mad with everyone else.

Been visited by any angels recently, DR?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Dave The Lucky
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Sat Feb 15 13:07:37 CST 1997
Message number: 82
Reply to message number: 81

DT> Don't know who Viper is, but I'll take your word for it.  Still, the mentio
DT> of tap water got me thinking about a story I once came across:
DT> 
         Viper is a user who drove us all nuts, except DR, who seemed to 
appreciate the challenge of also driving HIM crazy. He posted mostly in 
American Dream, in a pompous and arrogant sryle, calling us all "Libs," and 
other anathemas.  When he was ejected from BBSs, he immediately logged back on
under a new handle.  I don't know how far back they kept the posts, but there 
may still be some way, way back in American Dream.

DT> Long ago, a pious man was visited by an angel.  The angel told the man that
DT> God had grown displeased with the world, and would soon change all the wate
    
         That is a great story.  Unfortunately, its end was a forgone 
conclusion.  Sanity is often just a cultural convention.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 17 05:45:04 CST 1997
Message number: 83
Reply to message number: 82

F>          Viper is a user who drove us all nuts, except DR, who seemed to 
F> appreciate the challenge of also driving HIM crazy. He posted mostly in 
F> American Dream, in a pompous and arrogant sryle, calling us all "Libs," and 
F> other anathemas.  When he was ejected from BBSs, he immediately logged back 
F> under a new handle.  I don't know how far back they kept the posts, but ther
F> may still be some way, way back in American Dream.
*
the saddest thing is that, for this geek, giving people grief on the bbs and 
having intelligent people actually *argue* with him might have been the 
highlight of his miserable, otherwise ineffective life.
i'm sure he's gone back to his former hobbies...things like pulling wings off 
butterflies and tripping people with canes.
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: DAVE THE LUCKY
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Mon Feb 17 11:21:59 CST 1997
Message number: 84
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Dave The Lucky :

 DTL> madness, but no one  would listen.  They ostracized him, threatened
 DTL> him, and finally drove him out  of the city to live as a hermit in the
 DTL> hills with his pure water.

 How does one carry "enough water to last them a lifetime" around with
them, anyways?

 DTL> Been visited by any angels recently, DR?

 No, no. I've been much too busy with my lint collection to notice
anything like that!



... The best defense against logic is stupidity.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: NOLAN
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Boycott Hawaii!
Date: Thu Feb 20 09:04:18 CST 1997
Message number: 85
Reply to message number: 71


F>          You've gone weird on us, DR.  Have you been drinking that St. Paul 
F> tap water?

that tap water is what made me grow to 7 feet tall by age 11.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Thu Mar 06 19:21:49 CST 1997
Message number: 86
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 1 of 3...


Ä Area: CHURCH&STATE ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  Msg#: 507                                          Date: 01-31-97  20:44
  From: Lenny Flank                                  Read: Yes    Replied: No
    To: All                                          Mark:
  Subj: political fundies
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
WHAT IS THE POLITICAL PROGRAM OF THE CREATIONIST
MOVEMENT AND ITS SUPPORTERS?

by Lenny Flank

(c) 1995)


In order to fully understand the creation science movement, we must
look at the larger movement of which it is a part--the fundamentalist
religious crusade in the United States--and how the creationists fit
into this.
     The creationist movement has numerous ties to the
Christian fundamentalist Right.  In addition to providing financial
support for creationist organizations, Christian Right televangelists
advertise and promote creationist books and literature, and
"experts" from the ICR and CRS are frequent guests on such
fundamentalist religious programs as "The 700 Club".
     Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority Inc. have become
particularly close to the creationists.   Falwell was a guest pastor
at Henry Morris's College Baptist Church in the days before Morris
founded the CRS and ICR.  The Institute for Creation Research
itself was founded using money raised by Rev. Tim LaHaye, a
fundamentalist preacher who was a co-founder and member of the
board of Moral Majority Inc.
     In late 1981, Falwell telecast an appeal for money to help
defend the anti-evolution laws in Arkansas and Louisiana--using
as the backdrop for his appeal the very same Dayton, Tennessee,
courthouse in which the original Scopes trial was held.  Moral
Majority also ran a number of ads in various magazines to
publicize the trial and raise money.  One of the ads took the form
of a "survey", which asked the reader (with all the appropriate
catch words emphasized) to mail in a "ballot":

     "Cast your vote for creation or evolution.  Where do you
stand in this vital debate?
     1.  Do you agree with 'theories' of evolution that DENY the
Biblical account of creation?
     2.  Do you agree that public school teachers should be
permitted our children AS FACT that they are descended from
APES?
     3. Do you agree with the evolutionists who are attempting to
PREVENT the Biblical account of creation from also being taught
in public schools?" (TV Guide, June 13, 1981, p. A-105)

     Those who sent in their "ballot" (with the "proper" answers
checked) were put on Moral Majority's mailing list for fundraising
and further anti-evolution mailings.
     More recently, Falwell has turned the resources of Liberty
University, a large Bible college which is wholly funded by Moral
Majority, towards the fight against evolution.  All students at
Liberty University, regardless of major, are required to take a
semester-long course in creationist biology.  The state-approved
teacher training program at Liberty is heavily focused on
creationism.  The Center for Creation Research, directed by former
ICR staff member Lane Lester, boasts the largest "creation
museum" in the United States.  As a symbol of the close affinities
between the creationists and the Moral Majority, Liberty University
Chancellor Jerry Falwell himself awarded an honorary doctorate to
ICR founder Henry Morris during commencement exercises in 1989.
     As researcher Philip Kitcher points out, both the creationists
and the fundamentalists gain benefits from this partnership.
"Jerry Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour offers a forum for
broadcasting creationist ideas.  On the other hand, Falwell needs
concrete issues around which to build his movement." (Kitcher,
1982, p. 2)  The televangelists recognize the creation "scientists" as
powerful apologetic tools to bring new people into the Christian
political movement, while the creationists have come to depend
upon the Religious Right as a powerful political and economic ally.
     Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye also has close ties to
the creationists.  In his influential fundamentalist manifesto Battle
for the Mind, LaHaye puts the fight against evolution squarely in
the middle of the evangelical Christian world-view.  The basic
enemy of the Christian Right is something they refer to as "secular
humanism", which seems to be a catch-all term for any outlook or
philosophy which they find religiously offensive--everything from
pornography to feminism to socialism to evolutionary science.
"Most of the evils in the world today," says LaHaye, "can be traced
to humanism, which has taken over our government, the UN,
education, TV and most of the other influential things in life."
(LaHaye, 1980, p. 1)
     And a major component of this "secular humanism", LaHaye
asserts, is evolutionary theory:  "The humanistic doctrine of
evolution has naturally led to the destruction of the moral
foundation upon which this country was originally built.  If you
believe that man is an animal, you will naturally expect him to live
like one.  Consequently, almost every sexual law that is required in
order to maintain a morally sane society has been struck down by
the humanists, so that man may follow his animal appetites."
(LaHaye, 1980, p. 64)  LaHaye's book depicts a diagram of "secular
humanism", which shows a pyramidical construction in which
"evolution" rests on the base of "atheism", in turn supporting
"amorality" and, at the top, the "socialist one world view" (LaHaye,
1980, p. 63)
     Some of the statements made by creationists reveal the
underlying connection between creation "science" and LaHaye's
religious crusade against "secular humanism".  Many times,
statements made by creationists are indistinguishable from those
made by Moral Majority and others of their fundamentalist ilk.
"Since animals are indiscriminate with regards to partners in
mating," says Henry Morris, "and since men and women are
believed to have evolved from animals, then why shouldn't we live
like animals?" (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, p. 167)
 Morris has declared that evolutionary theory is literally the work
of the Devil--given to Nimrod at the Tower of Babel-- and that most
scientists refuse to accept creationism solely because they are
atheists.  Ken Ham of the ICR says, "As the creation foundation is
removed, we see the Godly institutions also start to collapse.  On
the other hand, as the evolution foundation remains firm, the
structures built on that foundation--lawlessness, homosexuality,
abortion, etc--logically increase.  We must understand this
connection." (cited in Eve and Harrold, 1991, pp 58-59)
     The Creation Science Research Center blames the scientific
model of evolution for "the moral decay of spiritual values, which
contributes to the destruction of mental health", as well as "a
widespread breakdown in law and order" (Creation Science Report,
April 1976, cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 285).  Evolutionary theory,
the CSRC pontificates, is directly responsible for "divorce,
abortion, and rampant venereal diseases."  (Segraves, The Creation
Report, 1977, cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 285)
     The creationists and the Religious Right thus share a world-
view, a world-view that revolves around the supposed evils of
evolutionary theory.  Both groups see evolution as a major pillar
which supports Satanic "secular humanism", and both are
determined to do away with that pillar and substitute a "Godly"
outlook instead--creationism.  "Although they make every effort to
be diplomatic about the subject," notes writer Perry Dean Young,
"the religious-right leaders are not speaking of teaching the story
of the creation in Genesis alongside Darwin's theory; they want it
taught instead of evolution.  A headline in Religious Roundtable's
newsletter that read 'Get Evolution Out of Our Schools' let that
fact slip." (Young, 1982, p. 73)  The creationists also occasionally
let their ultimate goal slip in print too;  while pushing the
Arkansas "Balanced Treatment Act" through, creationist Paul
Ellwanger, who drafted the original bill, wrote to a supporter,
"Perhaps this is old hat to you, Tom, and if so, I'd appreciate it
your telling me so and perhaps where you've heard it before--the
idea of killing evolution instead of playing these debating games
that we've been playing for nigh over a decade already."
(Attachment to Ellwanger Deposition, McLean v Arkansas, 1981,
cited in Overton Opinion)
     But "killing evolution" is not their only goal.  The Christian
Right is defiantly open about its ultimate aims.  As Bob Werner, a
leader of the "Christian shepherding" movement, bluntly puts it,
"The Bible says we are to . . . rule.  If you don't rule and I don't
rule, the atheists and the humanists and the agnostics are going
to rule.  We should be the head of our school board.  We should be
the head of our nation.  We should be the Senators and
Congressmen.  We should be the editors of our newspapers.  We
should be taking over every area of life." (cited in Diamond, 1989,
p. 45)  Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of Moral Majority and director
of the fundamentalist Committee for the Survival of a Free
Congress, declares, "We are no longer working to preserve the
status quo.  We are radicals, working to overturn the present
power structures of this country." (cited in Young, 1982, p. 321
and Kater 1982, p. 7)  Weyrich adds, "We are talking about the
Christianizing of America." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 5)

     Presidential candidate Pat Robertson echoed, "We have enough
votes to run the country.  And when the people say 'We've had enough',
we are going to take over (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 29)  Robertson
told his supporters that his presidential bid was direct command from
God:  "I heard the Lord saying, 'I have something else for you to do.
I want you to run for President of the United States'".  (Washington
Post, Feb 15, 1988, cited in Boston, 1996, p. 39)
 In a fundraising letter for the Christian Coalition in July 1991
(Robertson founded the Coalition and serves (along with his son) as
one of the four members of the Board of Directors), Robertson asserts:
 "We at the Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares.  We are
training people to be effective--to be elected to school boards, to
city councils, to state legislatures and to key positions in political
parties. . . . By the end of this decade, if we work and give and
organize and train, the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful

 >>> Continued to next message...
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Thu Mar 06 19:21:50 CST 1997
Message number: 87
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 2 of 3...

political organization in America." (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 85)
Ralph Reed, who serves as Robertson's front man in the Christian
Coalition, says: "What Christians have got to do is take back this
country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time and one
state at a time . . . I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will
see a country once again governed by Christians." (cited in Boston,
1996, p. 90)
  To carry out their goal of "overturning the power structures"
and "taking over every area of life" and becoming "the most powerful
political organization in America", the Christian Right has formed an
alliance with conservative political forces, particularly within the
Republican Party, which has openly proclaimed the Christian Right
agenda in its much-vaunted "Contract for the Family".  Fundamentalists
openly declare that they intend to impose a "Christian government"
that will make America "godly" again.  Jerry Falwell pontificates, "I
have a Divine Mandate to go into the halls of Congress and fight for
laws that will save America." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 119)   Falwell
also declares, "We must, from the highest office in the land right
down to the shoeshine boy in the airport, have a return to Biblical
basics." (cited in Conway and Siegelman, 1984, p. 88)
     Falwell makes his idea of the role of government very clear:  "A
politician, as a minister of God, is a revenger to execute wrath upon
those who do evil . . . The role of government is to minister justice
and to protect the rights of its citizens by being a terror to
evildoers within and without the nation."  (cited in Conway and
Siegelman, 1984, p. 89)  Pat Robertson echoes: "There was no concept
of separation between God and government in the New Testament or the
Old Testament . . . The concept that was before us in the Bible is
that rulers are ministers of God, that the sword they weild is not in
vain, but they've been placed in authority by God . . ." (700 Club,
Aug 1, 1995, cited in Boston, 1996, p. 72)
       Robertson is just one of the several Religious Right leaders
who adamantly oppose the separation of church and state.  At one
point, Robertson flatly asserted that only Christians are fit to hold
public office in the United States:

"ROBERTSON:  Individual Christians are the only ones really--and
Jewish people, those who trust the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob--are the only ones that are qualified to have the reign,
because, hopefully, they will be governed by God and submit to him.

BEN KINCHLOW:  Obviously you're not saying that there are no other
people qualified to be in government or whatever if they aren't
Christians or Jews.

ROBERTSON:  Yeah, I'm saying that.  I just said it.  I think anybody
whose mind and body is not controlled by God Almighty is not qualified
in the ultimate sense to be the judge of someone else . . . No one is
fit to govern other people unless first of all something governs him.
And there is only one governor I know of that is suitable to be judge
of all the universe, that's God Almighty.  Yes, I did say that.  You
can quote me.  I believe it." (700 Club, January 11, 1985, cited in
Boston, 1996, p. 50)

	Robertson has also remarked on several occasions that the principle
of separation of church and state is illegal and communistic.  "There
is nothing in the US Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
church and state." (700 Club, October 2, 1984, cited in Boston, 1996,
p. 70)  "We often hear of the constitutionally-mandated 'separation of
church and state'.  Of course, as you know, that phrase appears
nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. . . We do find this
phrase in the constitution of another nation, however: 'The state
shall be separate from the church, and the church from the school.'
These words are not in the constitution of the United States, but that
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--an atheistic nation sworn
to the destruction of the United States of America." (Testimony before
Senate Judiciary Committee, Aug 18, 1982, cited in Boston, 1996, p.
70)   "They have kept us in submission because they have talked about
separation of church and state.  There is no such thing in the
constitution. It is a lie of the left, and we're not going to take it
anymore." (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 71)
	The Christian Roundtable, an umbrella group of Religious Right
figures, agrees with Robertson, and flatly states, "The Constitution
was designed to perpetuate a Christian order." (cited in Vetter 1982,
p. 5)   "It is time," declares the Moral Majority Report, "to reject
the godless,  communistic definition of separation of church and state
that says there is no place for Biblical moral law in public policy."
(cited in Hill and Owen 1982, p. 45)  The Colorado chapter of the
Christian Coalition echoes: "There should be absolutely no 'separation
of church and state' in America. (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 76)
     As the fundamentalists point out, one of the most important areas
in which they must impose "Biblical moral law" are the local school
districts--and they make it clear that creationism is the issue which
provides them with the opportunity to do this.  As Tim LaHaye bluntly
puts it, "The elite-evolutionist-humanist is not going to be able to
control education in America forever." (LaHaye 1980, p. 3)  Pat
Robertson says, "Humanist values are being taught in the schools
through such methods as 'values clarification'.  All of these things
constitute an attempt to wean children away from biblical
Christianity".  (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 168)
     Other fundamentalist spokesmen add:

     "There are 15,700 school districts in America.  When we get an
active Christian Parents committee in operation in all districts, we
can take complete control of all local school boards.  This would
aloow us to determine all local policy; select good textbooks; good
curriculum programs; superintendants and principals." (Robert Simonds,
Citizens for Excellence in Education, undated letter, 1984)

     "Our purpose must be to spread the gospel on the new mission
field that the Lord has opened--public high schools." (Jay Alan
Sekulow, American Center for Law and Justice, CASE Bulletin, July 1990)

     "One day, I hope within the next ten years, I trust that we will
have more Christian day schools than there are public schools.  I hope
I will live to see the day when, as in the early history of our
country, we won't have any public schools.  The churches will have
taken them over again and Christians will be running them."  (Jerry
Falwell, "American Can be Saved", 1979)

     "To abandon public education to Satan is to compormise our
calling.  The attitude and approach of Christians should be that they
should never expose their children to public education, but that they
should work increasingly to expose public education to the claims of
Christ.  Certain specially suited Christians, in fact, should pray and
work tirelessly to obtain teaching and school board and even
administrative posts within public education.  The penultimate goal of
these Christians should be the privatization of these larcenous
institutions, and the ultimate aim the bringing of them under the
authority of Christ and His word." (Rev. Andrew Sandlin, "Chalcedon
Report", March 1994)

    "The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army
of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and
use them to influence the nation for Christ."  (D. James Kennedy,
Education: Public Problems and Private Solutions, Coral Ridge
Ministries, 1993)

     A fundraising letter sent from the Creation Science Research
Center echoes this sentiment:  "We already have a state-mandated
religion of atheism--of Godlessness--of Satanism--and no church
training of one hour a week will overcome this onslaught of anti-God
teachings in the classroom.  The Church must get involved." (Letter
from CSRC, cited in LaFollette 1983, p. 126)  (There is, of course, no
law currently in effect, state or Federal, which mandates the teaching
of evolutionary theory, and there never has been such a law.)
     Although the creationists like to speak about "academic
freedom" and about allowing students to make a "choice",
statements by creationists and their fundamentalist supporters make it
clear that this is just rhetoric.  The fundamentalists have a deep and
barely-concealed contempt for democracy and free choice--an attitude
which is not surprising given their world-view, which is based upon
unquestioned obedience to an inerrant Bible and the infallible
authority of those who interpret it.  Jerry  Falwell, in a moment of
remarkable candor, once remarked that "Christians, like slaves and
soldiers, ask no questions." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 17)
Democracy, then, with its messy guarantees of freedom of thought and
popular control over authority, is dangerous to the fundamentalists
and their world-view.   Pat Robertson bluntly says, "I think 'one man,
one vote', just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise".  (700
Club, March 18, 1992, cited in Boston, 1996, p. 166)  "Our Founding
Fathers," Falwell declares, "would not accept the tyranny of a
democracy because they recognized that the only sovereign over men and
nations was Almighty God." (cited in Young, 1982, p. 184)   Charles
Stanly of Moral Majority made this anti-democratic attitude even more
plain:  "We do not want a democracy in this land because if we have a
democracy a majority rules," (cited in Young 1982, p. 65)  while Rich
Anguin of the Minnesota Moral Majority adds, "Freedom of speech has
never been right.  We've never had freedom of speech in this country
and we never should have." (cited in Young, 1982, p. 65)
     Gary Potter, a Weyrich partner and head of Catholics for
Political Action, states his theocratic goals with chilling clarity:
"When the Christian majority takes over the country, there will be no
Satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more
abortion on demand, and no more talk of rights for homosexuals.  After
the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as
immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to
practice evil." (cited in Conway and Siegelman, 1984, p. 115-116)
Gary North, of the Institute for Christian Economics, echos that true
Christians should "get busy in constructing a Bible-based social,
political and religious order which finally denies the religious
liberty of the enemies of God". (cited in Bill Moyers, "God and
Politics", PBS, 1987)
     And this contempt for political democracy is reflected by the
creationists as well.  Kelly Segraves, the co-founder of the Creation
Science Research Society, declares, "Humanism is a far-reaching social
program that aims for the establishment throughout the world of
democracy (lowest common denominator mob rule), peace and a high
standard of living." (Segraves, Creation-Science Report, January 1980,
cited in LaFollette, 1983, p. 182)  Apparently, Segraves views
democracy, peace and a high standard of living as the work of the

 >>> Continued to next message...
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Creation Agenda [3/3]
Date: Thu Mar 06 19:21:51 CST 1997
Message number: 88
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 3 of 3...

Devil, and is determined to use creation science" to help stamp these
evils out.
     In essence, the fundamentalists and their creationist allies want
to do for the United States what the fundamentalist Ayatollahs have
done for Iran--they want to run the country in accordance with their
interpretations of "God's will".  As they make clear, they are
perfectly willing to dismantle most of American democracy in order to
save us all from Satan.  Rev. James Robison puts it like this, "Let me
tell you something else about the
character of God.  If necessary, God would raise up a tyrant--a man
who might not have the best ethics--to protect the freedom and the
interests of the ethical and the godly." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 6)
 And there seem to be no dearth of fundamentalists willing to
volunteer to become that "tyrant".
     The most militant of the Ayatollah wanna-be's are the
members of the "Reconstructionist" movement.  The
Reconstructionists were founded by Rouas J. Rushdoony, a
militant fundamentalist who was instrumental in getting Henry Morris's
book The Genesis Flood published in 1961.  According to Rushdoony's
view, the United States should be directly transformed into a
theocracy in which the fundamentalists would rule directly according
to the will of God.  "There can be no separation of Church and State,"
Rushdoony declares. (cited in Marty and Appleby 1991, p. 51)
"Christians," a Reconstructionist pamphlet declares, "are called upon
by God to exercise dominion." (cited in Marty and Appleby 1991, p. 50)
 The Reconstructionists
propose doing away with the US Constitution and laws, and
instead ruling directly according to the laws of God as set out in the
Bible---they advocate a return to judicial punishment for religious
crimes such as blasphemy or violating the Sabbath, as well as a return
to such Biblically-approved punishments as stoning.
     According to Rushdoony, the Second Coming of Christ can
only happen after the "Godly" have taken over the earth and
constructed the Kingdom of Heaven here:  "The dominion that
Adam first received and then lost by his Fall will be restored to
redeemed Man.  God's People will then have a long reign over the
entire earth, after which, when all enemies have been put under
Christ's feet, the end shall come." (cited in Diamond, 1989, p. 139)
"Christian Reconstructionism," another pamphlet says, "is a call to
the Church to awaken to its Biblical responsibility to subdue the
earth for the glory of God . . . Christian Reconstructionism therefore
looks for and works for the rebuilding of the institutions of society
according to a Biblical blueprint." (cited in Diamond 1989, p. 136)
In the Reconstructionist view, evolution is one of the "enemies" which
must be "put under Christ's feet" if the godly
are to subdue the earth for the glory of God.
     While some members of both the fundamentalist and
creationist movements view the Reconstructionists as somewhat kooky,
some of them have had nice things to say about Rushdoony and his
followers.  Pat Robertson has also had some nice things to say about
some of the right-wing "militias", and invited a guest from the
Militia of Montana to serve as an "expert" for a piece on the BATF and
FBI that ran after the Oklahoma bombing.  "A lot of it goes right back
to what happened with the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver and these
other people," Robertson said (in a statement that could have come
from any of a dozen different militia nuts).  "It's reminiscient of
the Nazis, and something's got to be done". (700 Club, July 11, 1995,
cited in Boston, 1996, p. 141)  In his book "The New World Order",
Robertson manages to parrot virtually every one of the canards tossed
around by the paranoid Right.  According to Robertson, a secret cabal
of "international (read: "Jewish") bankers and financiers", along with
the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission  and various other groups,
is trying to destroy Christianity, take over the world and impose a
satanic "one world government". Among other things, says Robertson,
these conspirators killed Lincoln, started the First World War, have
taken over the world monetary system, and are using the education
system to destroy morality so the US can be taken over by UN troops.
	In the book, Robertson cites as "authorities" Nesta Webster, an early
20th century anti-Semite who wrote "Secret Societies and Subversive
Movements".  Robertson also lists as a resource "Secrets of the
Federal Reserve", by Eustace Mullins.  Mullins, an anti-Semite and
racist who argued that the Jews were using the Federal Reserve to
control the country, was also the author of "Proof of Negro
Inferiority" and "The Hitler We Loved and Why".  Robertson's paranoid
ravings are extremely popular among the militia and neo-Nazi
movements, and the book is available from many far-Right sources.
	Another evangelist with ties to neo-Nazi and right-wing militia
movements is Jack van Impe.  On several occasions, van Impe has
presented "news stories" about foreign troops in the US which are
training to take over the country at the behest of the UN--a standard
canard of the loony Right. He has further stated that the armed
militias are one way to counter the evils of the "one world
government".  Van Impe's sources for his "news stories" include "The
Spotlight", the publication of the anti-Semitic and racist Liberty
Lobby and the "Patriot Report".
	Finally, there is Chuck Missler, founder of Koinonia House in Idaho
and a minister with the Cavalry Chapels in california.  Missler
publishes the newsletter "Personal Update", which uses at its sources
"The Spotlight" and the American Patriot Fax Network, run by various
militias, "Christian Identity" racist groups, and neo-Nazis.  Among
other things, Missler has suggested that the Federal government blew
up the Alfred Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in an attempt to blame
it on the militia movement and discredit it.
	Creationists also parrot a lot of standard militia and "Christian
Patriot" baloney.  In a "Back to Genesis" article that discusses the
Pope's recent announcement concerning evolution, Morris presents a
picture that could could have come from any of a number of far-right
loons and militia types.  After informing readers that His Holiness
the Pope has announced that it's not ungodly to believe the theory of
evolution, Morris makes this VERY curious statement:  "One cannot help
suspecting that the recent spate of events and media articles
'puffing' evolution is being orchestrated somewhere to combat the
modern resurgance of creationism around the world." (ICR, Back to
Genesis, "Evolution and the Pope", December 1996, p. 1)
	Veteran right-wing watchers will immediately recognize this
schtick----the old "worldwide conspiracy to destroy god, mother and
country".  "They" are "orchestrating" everywhere, according to
Morris---and evolution is their weapon.  The Pope's pronouncement
comes as no surprise to Morris, since after all he already KNEW that
the Whore of Babylon was doing the work of Satan on earth.  After all,
Morris points out, Teilhard de Chardin, a CATHOLIC PRIEST, was a
supporter of evolutionary theory.  "Evolution was, to all intents and
purposes," says Morris, "Teilhard's 'god', and his goal was globalism,
a unified world government, culture and religion, with all religions
merged into one." (Back to Genesis, December 1996)  Again, right-wing
watchers will immediately recognize Morris's description of "the
enemy"---it is "the new world order", that international
conglomeration of dark forces who are conspiring to force the world
into socialism, atheism, free sex, anarchy and humanism.  As Morris
puts it, "All cults and movements associated with the "new world
order" of the so-called New Age Movement have two things in
common--evolutionism as their base and globalism as their goal." (Back
to Genesis, December 1996)
	And who is beind this "globalist conspiracy"?  Well, of course the
Pope must be a member in good standing:  "Since his election, he has
increasingly been promoting a syncrestic agenda." (Back to Genesis,
December 1996).  And, says Morris, just look at who the Pope has met
with during his tenure:  "There are more and more signs that such
globalism is also the aim of Pope John Paul II and other modern
liberal Catholics.  If so, this publicized commitment to evolutionism
would contribute substantially to such a goal.  All world
religions--including most of mainline Protestantism, as well as
Hinduism, Buddhism and the rest--except for Biblical Christianity,
Orthodox Judaism and Fundamentalist Islam, have embraced some form of
evolutionism (either theistic, deistic or pantheistic) and rejected or
allegorized the true record of origins in Genesis.  The Pope has
participated in important meetings with leaders of Communism, Zen
Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Lamaism and others, as well as the World
Council of Churches, the Trilateral Commission, the B'nai B'rith of
liberal Judaism, and a wide assortment of still others."
	So there you have it, folks.  The Pope, in concert with the
Communists and the Trilateral Commission (an "enemies list" that will
be very familiar to right-wing militia-watchers) is part of a vast
international conspiracy to destroy Christianity and impose a secular
humanist one-world-government upon us all.
	Indeed, the Reconstructionists and the militia "Christian Patriots"
differ from other fundamentalists only in degree, not in kind.  All of
these factions agree that the US should be run according to
"Christian" values and beliefs;  all of these factions agree that THEY
are the final arbiters of what "God's will" really is.  And all of
these factions view creationism as a
weapon with which to bring about this "Christian order".
     And what would this fundamentalist utopia look like?  Some of the
statements and actions of the fundamentalists are illustrative.  The
Christian Right has spent enormous time and effort in pushing for
legislation to protect the "traditional family", as they define it
according to Biblical terms.  In Indiana and Washington,
fundamentalists have sued in an attempt to have all state child-abuse
and wife-beating laws repealed, on the grounds that such laws violated
their religious freedom by interfering with the Biblical right of a
father to "have dominion" over his wife and children and by abridging
the father's "divine right to discipline" (cited in Vetter, 1982 pp.
6-7)
     Another area which attracts a lot of fundamentalist attention is
homosexuality; fundamentalists have made massive efforts to oppose and
roll back civil rights for gays and lesbians, in an effort to
marginalize them and eventually ghettoize them.  And some
fundamentalists make no secret of the fact that they would go much
further in their treatment of homosexuals if given the chance--Dean
Wycoff of the California Moral Majority frankly admits, "I agree with
capital punishment and I believe that homosexuality . . . could be
coupled with murder and other sins.  It would be the government that
sits upon this land who will be executing the homosexuals." (cited in
Young, 1982, p. 77)
     This, then, is the picture that emerges of the ultimate aims of
the fundamentalists and their creationist allies:  a country in which
a "Christian order" will "take over every area of life"; in which
democracy is contemptuously referred to as "mob rule" and a "tyranny",
and where we "never should have" freedom of speech;  in which
"pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil" and "the state will not
permit anybody the right to sin"; a nation in which people, "like
slaves and soldiers", ask no questions; where the separation of church
and state is "communistic" and Christians rule by "Divine mandate";
where laws are ordained by God and the "sinful" are executed by the
state.  In short, the fundamentalists want a theocratic police state.
After all, a police state is great--if you happen to be the police.


-!-
 * POW 1.0  On Trial * Powerline Offline reader for Windows - New Windows OLR

-!- WILDMAIL!/WC v4.12
 ! Origin: Father & Son*610-439-1509*Whitehall Pa  (1:2607/112.0)
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Fri Mar 07 17:15:39 CST 1997
Message number: 89
Reply to message number: 86

S> "Most of the evils in the world today," says LaHaye, "can be traced
S> to humanism, which has taken over our government, the UN,

It's kind of hard to have _functioning_ grouping of different religious 
nations when only one religion can be present, eh?

S> pornography to feminism to socialism to evolutionary science.

Hey kids, feminism is the treatment of equal respect towards women as men ...
fuckin commies..

S> evolution has naturally led to the destruction of the moral
S> foundation upon which this country was originally built.  If you

Rich slave owning males that created the seperation of state are considered 
"moral" by them?

S> like one.  Consequently, almost every sexual law that is required in
S> order to maintain a morally sane society has been struck down by
S> the humanists, so that man may follow his animal appetites."

Sounds good to me!  Where do I sign up?

S> "Since animals are indiscriminate with regards to partners in
S> mating," says Henry Morris, "and since men and women are
S> believed to have evolved from animals, then why shouldn't we live
S> like animals?" (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, p. 167)

Excellent point, I need to get me some tail ... and now I can quote an 
evangelical zealot to make my point as well!  Ladies look out..

S> structures built on that foundation--lawlessness, homosexuality,
S> abortion, etc--logically increase.  We must understand this

S> widespread breakdown in law and order" (Creation Science Report,

Boogedyboogedyboo!

S> "The Bible says we are to . . . rule.  If you don't rule and I don't
S> rule, the atheists and the humanists and the agnostics are going
S> to rule.  We should be the head of our school board.  We should be

Yeah, Christians RULE dude!  They kick some butt and stuff!

This is silly.  Teehee.

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Fri Mar 07 17:23:08 CST 1997
Message number: 90
Reply to message number: 87

S> ROBERTSON:  Yeah, I'm saying that.  I just said it.  I think anybody
S> whose mind and body is not controlled by God Almighty is not qualified
S> in the ultimate sense to be the judge of someone else . . . No one is

Wow, I'd like to see how _they_ do on tests!

...or maybe that's "it" in this case?

S> of separation of church and state is illegal and communistic.  "There
S> is nothing in the US Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
S> church and state." (700 Club, October 2, 1984, cited in Boston, 1996,

Amendment I. "...no law respecting an establishment of religion,"

Nope, I guess he's right..  If you want to quote it..  I think you're just 
supposed to get the general jist of it..  For instance nowhere in the Bible 
does it say "Secular humanism is the work of Satan" word for word, nor does it
say "Kill faggots for Jesus!".

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Fri Mar 07 18:30:12 CST 1997
Message number: 91
Reply to message number: 89

S> "Since animals are indiscriminate with regards to partners in
S> mating," says Henry Morris, "and since men and women are
S> believed to have evolved from animals, then why shouldn't we live
S> like animals?" (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, p. 167)
BT> 
BT> Excellent point, I need to get me some tail ... and now I can quote an 
BT> evangelical zealot to make my point as well!  Ladies look out..

 Just stay away from the men, then you'd be immoral, animalistic, *and* damned
to hell for all eternity.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Fri Mar 07 22:16:06 CST 1997
Message number: 92
Reply to message number: 89


S> evolution has naturally led to the destruction of the moral
S> foundation upon which this country was originally built.  If you
BT> 
BT> Rich slave owning males that created the seperation of state are considered
BT> "moral" by them?
BT> 
         It always facinates me when this group of ying-yangs claim that this 
country was "originally built" by Christians. Obviously, their zeal has much
more depth than their education.  If they looked it up, they would find out 
that several of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were avowed 
atheists. Several, including Thomas Jefferson were Freemason who were not 
particularly affiliated with a church, and in fact, are much like the 
humanists that these guys hate so much. In their personal lives, many, 
including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would probably not pass the 
Right's litmus test for morality.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Fri Mar 07 22:20:08 CST 1997
Message number: 93
Reply to message number: 90


S> of separation of church and state is illegal and communistic.  "There
S> is nothing in the US Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
S> church and state." (700 Club, October 2, 1984, cited in Boston, 1996,
BT> 
BT> Amendment I. "...no law respecting an establishment of religion,"
BT> 
BT> Nope, I guess he's right..  If you want to quote it..  I think you're just 
    
         Give him a break.  He does not consider the Constitution a sacred 
document, therefore it does not sanctify anything.  Including his personal 
freedom to say this tripe.  He probably objects to my Constitution-based right
to pull the plug and tune him out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Sat Mar 08 05:12:24 CST 1997
Message number: 94
Reply to message number: 86


S> asserts, is evolutionary theory:  "The humanistic doctrine of
S> evolution has naturally led to the destruction of the moral
S> foundation upon which this country was originally built.  If you
S> believe that man is an animal, you will naturally expect him to live
S> like one.  Consequently, almost every sexual law that is required in
S> order to maintain a morally sane society has been struck down by
S> the humanists, so that man may follow his animal appetites."

Hmm, I've forgotten the book, chapter and verse, but somewhere in the Old 
Testament they refer to humans as being the same as animals in terms of 
spirit. Found it... (Eccles. 3:18-20) "The sons of men... are in their nature 
but beasts, the fate of the sons of men adn the fate of beasts is one: as 
thhis dies, so dies that; they have all sthe same spirit, and man has no 
superiority above the beasts"  Apparently even parts of the Bible disagree 
with this.

S> (LaHaye, 1980, p. 64)  LaHaye's book depicts a diagram of "secular
S> humanism", which shows a pyramidical construction in which
S> "evolution" rests on the base of "atheism", in turn supporting
S> "amorality" and, at the top, the "socialist one world view" (LaHaye,

Funny that some very early Christians lived a communal lifestyle without 
anyone owning property of their own, but only as a group.  I guess if 
Christianity leads to socialism too, then we'd better get rid of it too, but 
oh wait, that destroys the entire ignore evolution Christian basis.

Shoot.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sat Mar 08 05:17:08 CST 1997
Message number: 95
Reply to message number: 90


BT> Amendment I. "...no law respecting an establishment of religion,"

Now I certainly don't remember that line, no I do not.

BT> supposed to get the general jist of it..  For instance nowhere in the Bible
BT> does it say "Secular humanism is the work of Satan" word for word, nor does
BT> say "Kill faggots for Jesus!".

Sure it does, in Revelations when everyone is dying all the angels run around 
screaming that.  You know, the deep spiritual connection between Christ and
God's all encompassing Love and Compassion and ruthless slaughter.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Specter
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Sat Mar 08 08:30:43 CST 1997
Message number: 96
Reply to message number: 94

S> Hmm, I've forgotten the book, chapter and verse, but somewhere in the Old 
S> Testament they refer to humans as being the same as animals in terms of 
S> spirit. Found it... (Eccles. 3:18-20) "The sons of men... are in their natur
S> but beasts, the fate of the sons of men adn the fate of beasts is one: as 
S> thhis dies, so dies that; they have all sthe same spirit, and man has no 
S> superiority above the beasts"  Apparently even parts of the Bible disagree 
S> with this.
S> 
    Here is how I think the Righties would read this.  Ecclesiates is saying 
thwt thw physical bodies of men are the same as animals.  Of course, their 
souls are different, and superior.  Then they will quote someone like Paul to 
prove it. The disagreements in the Bible is if you try ti interpret it 
literally.  This is an excellent example of that.  As a general guide book, it
is wonderful, but as soon as you start nitpicking it falls apart.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [1/3]
Date: Mon Mar 10 13:24:55 CST 1997
Message number: 97
Reply to message number: 96

F>     Here is how I think the Righties would read this.  Ecclesiates is saying
F> thwt thw physical bodies of men are the same as animals.  Of course, their 
F> souls are different, and superior.  Then they will quote someone like Paul t
F> prove it. The disagreements in the Bible is if you try ti interpret it 
F> literally.  This is an excellent example of that.  As a general guide book, 
F> is wonderful, but as soon as you start nitpicking it falls apart.

True, True.  My problem with Paul is that all his letters were simply one 
man's view and yet he takes up what, nearly half the New Testament.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: BIG TEEBO
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Wed Mar 12 20:47:05 CST 1997
Message number: 98
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Big Teebo to Sandman <=-

 S> of separation of church and state is illegal and communistic.  "There
 S> is nothing in the US Constitution that sanctifies the separation of
 S> church and state." (700 Club, October 2, 1984, cited in Boston, 1996,

 BT> Amendment I. "...no law respecting an establishment of religion,"

     But they don't "interpret" Amendment I in that way.
     They would love to interpret the "establishment" as only applying
     to the Federal Government and not the individual states.

     The separation of church & state only exists if the 1st Amendment
     is interpreted broadly and not narrowly.

     It's funny that these same Religious Right people once rejoiced in
     the separation of Church & State when a catholic by the name of
     John Kennedy was running for the Whitehouse, but now they oppose it
     because it prevents their use of government to promote &
     "establish" their religion.

 BT> Nope, I guess he's right..  If you want to quote it..  I think you're
 BT> just  supposed to get the general jist of it..  For instance nowhere in
 BT> the Bible  does it say "Secular humanism is the work of Satan" word for
 BT> word, nor does it say "Kill faggots for Jesus!".

     But when one is self-righteous their bloated ego grows so large
     that they begin to believe that God speaks directly to them.

     For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out
     the fact that a nuclear accident had occurred in Japan at a Nuclear
     Plant that he used in his fictional book "The End of the Age".
     He was smiling from ear to ear with delight today.

     This is just further evidence that he is special to God.

... AIDS and Global Warming don't scare me:  Pat Robertson does!
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Thu Mar 13 00:47:59 CST 1997
Message number: 99
Reply to message number: 98

S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out
S>      the fact that a nuclear accident had occurred in Japan at a Nuclear
S>      Plant that he used in his fictional book "The End of the Age".
S>      He was smiling from ear to ear with delight today.
S> 
         You actually WATCH that?  You are a sick puppy!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Froggy
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sat Mar 15 05:30:59 CST 1997
Message number: 100
Reply to message number: 99


S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out
S>      the fact that a nuclear accident had occurred in Japan at a Nuclear
S>      Plant that he used in his fictional book "The End of the Age".
S>      He was smiling from ear to ear with delight today.
S> 
F>          You actually WATCH that?  You are a sick puppy!

 It's good for a laugh once in a while. I particularly love the stories of 
conversion, where some soulless bastard finds the love and joy of Jesus in his
heart and devotes his life to liberal-killing.

 Okay, that last part is a stretch. But not by much :-)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THE INVISIBLE MAN
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Fri Mar 21 14:22:28 CST 1997
Message number: 101
Reply to message number: 100

S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out

DR>  It's good for a laugh once in a while. I particularly love the stories of 
DR> conversion, where some soulless bastard finds the love and joy of Jesus in 
DR> heart and devotes his life to liberal-killing.

    Is it anything like the part in Fletch where Chevy Chase masquerades as 
the preacher? I have to say, that is one of the better movie scenes. Bah, 
it's so hard to be religious with televangelism around. BTW, why is it called 
the 700 Club, any idea?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: The Invisible Man
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Fri Mar 21 15:34:09 CST 1997
Message number: 102
Reply to message number: 101

TI>     Is it anything like the part in Fletch where Chevy Chase masquerades as
TI> the preacher? I have to say, that is one of the better movie scenes. Bah, 
TI> it's so hard to be religious with televangelism around. BTW, why is it call
TI> the 700 Club, any idea?

 I think that $700 was the original amount of money needed to become a 
"full member", or else the number of people (700) needed at a particular level
of donation. It's one or the other.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: FROGGY
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sun Mar 23 18:10:18 CST 1997
Message number: 103
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Froggy to Sandman <=-

 S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out
 S>      the fact that a nuclear accident had occurred in Japan at a Nuclear
 S>      Plant that he used in his fictional book "The End of the Age".
 S>      He was smiling from ear to ear with delight today.
 S>
 Fr> You actually WATCH that?  You are a sick puppy!

     Arf! Arf!

     I learn alot about the tactics of the religious right and what they
     are really about.

     For example one time Pat Robertson was a couple of days away from a
     business trip to China. On the program that day they reported on
     the Chinese forced abortion policies.
     Patty-Boy commented on how he did not have to feed all of those
     people over there.

     My conclusion was that abortion to Pat Robertson is about choice.
     If a woman is making the "choice" then abortion is bad.
     If government is making the "choice" then abortion is acceptable.

     Pat Robertson is truly the most dangerous man in America.
     The Christian Coalition controls many of the state republican
     parties.
     The ACLJ is on the front lines to defeat the Separation of C&S.
     Regent University is producing hundreds of lawyers or other "law"
     professionals determine to promote Christianity in the courts.

     PR has done a wonderful job.


... AIDS is a virus. Pat ROBert$on is a punishment from God.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: THE INVISIBLE MAN
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sun Mar 23 18:10:24 CST 1997
Message number: 104
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting The Invisible Man to Daedalus Rising <=-

 S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out

 DR>  It's good for a laugh once in a while. I particularly love the stories o
 DR> conversion, where some soulless bastard finds the love and joy of Jesus i
 DR> heart and devotes his life to liberal-killing.

 TIM> Is it anything like the part in Fletch where Chevy Chase
 TIM> masquerades as  the preacher? I have to say, that is one of the better
 TIM> movie scenes. Bah,  it's so hard to be religious with televangelism
 TIM> around. BTW, why is it called  the 700 Club, any idea?

      SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY!!!!!!!!!

      $700 was the amount of money to join Pat Robertsons little club
      when he started in the 60's.

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: FROGGY
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sun Mar 23 23:31:18 CST 1997
Message number: 105
Reply to message number: 103

 S>      For example: On todays 700 Club 3-12-97 Pat Robertson pointed out

S>  Fr> You actually WATCH that?  You are a sick puppy!
S> 
S>      Arf! Arf!
S>      I learn alot about the tactics of the religious right and what they
S>      are really about.
S> 
         Actully, I appreciate that.  I have used it too -- the idea of 
knowing thy enemy.  I just can't stomach the religiosos who think that they 
are oh, so, much better than everyone else.  I am glad that you and others are
watching them.

S>      Patty-Boy commented on how he did not have to feed all of those
S>      people over there.

S>      If a woman is making the "choice" then abortion is bad.
S>      If government is making the "choice" then abortion is acceptable.
S> 
         Neither are PR and his troops feeding all those people here.  If they
were willing to, there would be fewer women making the choice to have an 
abortion.

S>      Pat Robertson is truly the most dangerous man in America.
    
         I am not sure about that.  What worries me is that there are 
literally hundreds just like him.  Some of them may even be smarter than he 
is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Wed Mar 26 17:15:18 CST 1997
Message number: 106
Reply to message number: 103


S>      Pat Robertson is truly the most dangerous man in America.

S> ... AIDS is a virus. Pat ROBert$on is a punishment from God.

And God help us all.  Pat Robertson's continued existence as a popular icon 
only brings our nation closer and closer to a state of oblivious and mindless 
obedience to a central authority.  What does he peddle, a controlling central 
authority where all decisions are simple and made by one man (himself) and 
no one needs to think because all decisions are made by him.  And he
claims authority from God, making all the dictatorship nice and permissible, 
disguising something people should naturally reject.  Interesting that with 
all the talk from Robertson and company about the approaching New World Order,
Robertson and the like are the central authority we should be most worried 
about.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THE INVISIBLE MAN
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Thu Mar 27 08:33:56 CST 1997
Message number: 107
Reply to message number: 102

DR>  I think that $700 was the original amount of money needed to become a 
DR> "full member", or else the number of people (700) needed at a particular le
DR> of donation. It's one or the other.

    You would think the 700 club would be a little more inconspicuous if they 
wanted money. Maybe the "Devotion Group" or something.. but maybe it fools 
people w/o the $ sign (700$ club)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THE INVISIBLE MAN
To: Specter
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Thu Mar 27 08:46:05 CST 1997
Message number: 108
Reply to message number: 106

S> ... AIDS is a virus. Pat ROBert$on is a punishment from God.

S> no one needs to think because all decisions are made by him.  And he
S> claims authority from God, making all the dictatorship nice and permissible,
S> disguising something people should naturally reject.  Interesting that with 

    Possibly pat thinks along the lines of this:
    
    God != Guy in the above sky
    Pat >= God
    God != God, God == Pat

?? Maybe it's one of those deals :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: The Invisible Man
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Fri Mar 28 16:07:28 CST 1997
Message number: 109
Reply to message number: 108


TI>     God != Guy in the above sky
TI>     Pat >= God
TI>     God != God, God == Pat
TI> 
TI> ?? Maybe it's one of those deals :)

Ah! Now there's a possibility.  Yes, yes, I do see now.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: THE INVISIBLE MAN
Subject: Re: Creation Agenda [2/3]
Date: Sun Mar 30 03:17:25 CST 1997
Message number: 110
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting The Invisible Man :

 TIM> You would think the 700 club would be a little more inconspicuous
 TIM> if they  wanted money. Maybe the "Devotion Group" or something.. but
 TIM> maybe it fools  people w/o the $ sign (700$ club)

 How many people know the 700 stands for money, anyways?

 Plus, it makes donations easier - by definition, membership to their
group is defined by the amount you donate.



... Success is just a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: ACLU
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:06 CDT 1997
Message number: 111
Reply to message number: unavailable

----------------------------------------------------------------
04-12-97
ACLU Newsfeed -- ACLU News Direct to YOU
----------------------------------------------------------------
TODAY'S NEWS:
Sender: owner-news@aclu.org
Precedence: bulk

* ACLU of Alabama Briefing On "Save the Commandments" Rally

* Experts Report Violence, Neglect, Improper Care At Illinois
   Psychiatric Hospitals

* ACLU's Reinstein Honored in Boston

* Megan's Laws Ensnaring Older Gay Men

----------------------------------------------------------------
ACLU of Alabama Briefing On "Save the Commandments" Rally

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 11, 1997

MONTGOMERY, AL -- A rally to "Save The Commandments" is scheduled here
on Saturday, April 12. As the ACLU of Alabama expects to be the target
of much commentary from the rally speakers and participants, we have
identified several contentions made by Judge Moore and his supporters
and provided relevant facts about each contention.

In reaching the conclusion that prayer in Alabama courtrooms is
unconstitutional, and that the display of the Ten Commandments as a
religious symbol is unconstitutional, Judge Charles Price relied on
existing caselaw and precedents. As Judge Price stated in court,  and
as is true for all judges, "The Supreme Court tells me what to do, I
do not tell the Supreme Court what to do."

1. Judge Moore and his supporters say the Ten Commandments need to be
   saved.

"The Court states, as Judge Shoob stated, to those who have asked the
Court by phone calls, individual and multiple signature letters, and
postcards "to save the Ten Commandments," all of whom the Court
respects, that the Ten Commandments are not in peril. They are neither
stained, tarnished nor thrashed. They may be displayed in every
church, synagogue, temple, mosque, home and storefront. They may be
displayed in cars, on lawns and in corporate boardrooms. Where this
precious gift cannot and should not be displayed as an obvious
religious text or to promote religion is on government property
(particularly in the courtroom)."
-- From Judge Charles Price's Circuit Court order.

Judge Price has ordered Judge Moore to display his Ten Commandments
Plaque in an "historical, educational context" or remove them.

Judge Moore has repeatedly stated he will not "secularize" the
Commandments by surrounding them with other historical documents,
while at the same time his attorneys claim he has already done so.
Judge Moore, when given the option of keeping the Ten Commandments on
his wall in a Constitutionally appropriate manner, chose not to take
this option and chose to continue the lawsuit.

2. Judge Moore and his supporters say this lawsuit is only about the
Ten Commandments.

The primary focus of this lawsuit is Judge Moore's use of his office
to promote his particular religious views. Judge Moore has a practice
of exclusively inviting Christian clergy to lead the jury pool in
prayer. This has been ruled unconstitutional by Judge Price and
numerous other courts.  Moore and the State of Alabama are appealing
this ruling -- even though the Governor of Alabama filed the case.

3. Judge Moore and his supporters say the US Supreme Court displays
the Ten Commandments.

A frieze surrounding the ceiling of the US Supreme Court contains a
representation of Moses holding stone tablets. He is surrounded by
more than twenty other law-givers from history -- both pre-Christian
and modern.  Ironically, one of the lawgivers represented is Mohammad,
the followers of whom Judge Moore has said will not be allowed to pray
in his court, and Gov.  James has said should not be allowed to sit on
the bench anywhere  in this country.

Clearly, the Ten Commandments display at the US Supreme Court is in an
historical, educational context. Judge Moore repeatedly refuses to
display the Commandments in anything other than a prominent and
exclusive religious context.

4. Judge Moore and his supporters say he is exercising his First
Amendment Rights.

Acting as a private citizen, Roy Moore is free to exercise his
religious liberties as he sees fit. When Judge Moore enters a
courtroom as an agent of the government, he is restricted from using
his government derived powers to propagate his personal religious
views. As a government agent, he is not exercising his rights, he is
violating the rights of the persons in his courtroom and jury pool.
The government and its agents have no right to endorse, promote, nor
establish a religion.

5. Judge Moore and his supporters say that "Separation of Church and
State" appears nowhere in the Constitution.

Nor does "the right to a fair trial." "Separation of Church and State"
is simply legal shorthand to describe the principles of the Free
Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment to the US
Constitution's Bill of Rights.

6. Judge Moore and his supporters say that this is a Christian nation.

Although Christians have long been the majority religion in this
country, our Constitution gives no special preference to Christianity
or other forms of worship. God is mentioned no where in the
Constitution, the document against which our laws are measured.

7. Judge Moore and his supporters say that our Founding Fathers were
Christians.

Indeed, most were. This does not mean they wished to use Government to
enforce their religion (although, like any group of politicians, they
disagreed over this, also).

There will be many quotes from the Founding Fathers. Let us contribute
this from the primary author of the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights, James Madison, arguing against government support of religion:

"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish
Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with
the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all
other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to
contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one
establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in
all cases whatsoever."

-- James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

8. Judge Moore and his supporter say that Ten Commandments are the
basis for our laws.

Although the Ten Commandments are a part of our legal history (hence
their inclusion in the Supreme Court's frieze), they are hardly the
basis of our laws. Laws commanding persons which God to worship,
whether and how God should be worshiped, or prohibiting graven images
are clearly contradictory to our Constitution, as would be laws
setting a Sabbath or telling citizens not to have covetous thoughts.

Prohibitions against stealing, lying, killing and adultery are common
to most legal codes -- including those predating Christianity -- and
are not exclusive to the Ten Commandments.

9. Judge Moore and his supporters say the ACLU is suing him for
everything he owns.

For the last two years this falsehood has been repeated on many
Christian broadcasts, most notably by Coral Ridge Ministries which has
committed $20,000 to Judge Moore's cause. The ACLU's counterclaim
against the State does not seek monetary damage awards from Judge
Moore or the State.

10. Judge Moore and his supporters say that the ACLU is trying to
remove religion from the public square.

The ACLU is fighting to protect religion from the meddling hand of
government, thereby preserving the sanctity of religious faith and
practice.  The United States is the most religious country in the
world because it prevents government from interfering with religion.
For more than 75 years the ACLU has fought to protect religious
liberty by opposing the attempts of government to involve itself in
religion.

When an elected politician uses his governmentally granted powers to
propagate his religious preferences, the ACLU will be there to defend
the Constitution no matter how many rally against us.
----------------------------------------------------------------

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Aclu 2
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:07 CDT 1997
Message number: 112
Reply to message number: unavailable

----------------------------------------------------------------
Experts Report Violence, Neglect, Improper Care
At Illinois Psychiatric Hospitals

Study conducted in response to ACLU lawsuit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, April 11, 1997

CHICAGO -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois today
released an expert report that is sharply critical of care and
treatment at several state psychiatric hospitals in Illinois.   The
report, prepared after an extensive investigation of nine Illinois
state operated psychiatric hospitals by a team of psychiatrists and
psychologists from Yale University, was the latest development in a
class-action lawsuit filed in 1992 by the ACLU.

The suit, K.L. v. Edgar, challenges the conditions, management and
care provided at nine state-operated mental health facilities.  It
charges the state of Illinois with violating patients' constitutional
rights to safety, freedom of movement, and adequate medical and
psychiatric services as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution.

According to the report, several of the state hospitals have serious
deficiencies in the care and treatment they provide, including staff
intimidation, abuse and neglect of patients, high rates of runaways by
 patients who are dangerous to themselves and others, injuries, and
frequent imposition of restrictive procedures -- such as confining
patients to isolation rooms for hours or even days on end without
adequate medical supervision, or access to fluids or toilets.

The experts, who were retained by the ACLU after a court-appointed
panel of experts was disqualified from testifying last year, conducted
on-site inspections of each of the nine hospitals last November,
interviewed staff and patients, and studied thousands of pages of
documents, including patient medical records and numerous internal and
external studies and surveys of the facilities.  The experts returned
to three of the hospitals in February --Elgin Mental Health Center in
Elgin, Choate Mental Health Center in Anna and Zeller Mental Health
Center in Peoria -- to conduct follow-up inspections that focused on
issues of particular concern.

Among their findings:

-- Choate Mental Health Center has "a culture of staff intimidation
and abuse of patients on the treatment units...Patients and family
members reported that patients routinely were afraid of and
intimidated by staff, whether in anticipation of losing privileges or
being physically injured.  Intimidating and threatening staff
behaviors were apparently unchecked either by administrative oversight
or by the OIG [Office of Inspector General] process [for investigating
allegations of abuse and neglect]."

-- Chicago-Read Mental Health Center on Chicago's northwest side has
long been unable to prevent dangerous or suicidal patients from
running away even when they are under the direct supervision of staff.
The rate of elopements at this hospital "was four times greater than
the average elopement rate for the other eight facilities...and
departed significantly from a minimum acceptable professional
standard."  This problem "reflected a failure of the DMHDD system to
ensure the safety of the patients treated in this facility."

-- A unit at Elgin Mental Health Center demonstrated a "long-standing
pattern of abuse and neglect of patients" and " a "high incidence of
injuries." Senior and middle management of the facility were "not
adequately organized to detect the magnitude of the problems or to
respond in a concerted manner to rectify these problems within a
reasonable time frame."

-- Zeller Mental Health Center had a widespread practice of locking
patients alone in seclusion rooms at the discretion of staff without
adequate justification or monitoring, resulting in a "serious risk of
injury and/or death." Choate Mental Health Center similarly isolated
patients alone in rooms for extended periods of time without
physicians' orders or appropriate monitoring.

-- Choate also demonstrated "serious deficiencies in all aspects of
the assessment and treatment process," including misuse of psychiatric
medications and punitive responses to patient needs and physical
disabilities.

--  The Department's central office provided little structured
oversight of the hospitals and often seemed "absent" as they
confronted their most difficult problems.

The report acknowledges some improvement at several of the hospitals,
and it specifically finds that three of the hospitals did not have any
major deficiencies.  The experts conclude, however, that they are "not
persuaded that progress noted in the system had been sustained over an
extensive period of time.  Consequently, it was hard to be confident
about the durability of the improvements already accomplished."

The report provides several specific examples of the poor care at
several of the hospitals:

-- A blind patient at Choate Mental Health Center was isolated on a
nearly continuous basis in a "special observation room" for 58 days
without adequate justification or appropriate monitoring.

-- A patient at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center was permitted to run
away three times over a single weekend.

-- A patient at Elgin Mental Health Center was forced to perform oral
sex on a staff member.  The same staff member had previously been
accused of sexual abuse but had escaped discipline because of poor
recordkeeping.

-- Two patients at Zeller Mental Health Center attempted to commit
suicide while locked alone in isolation rooms without proper
monitoring or physician oversight -- a consequence of a widespread and
unlawful practice at Zeller referred to as "locked time out."

-- One patient who had a colostomy as the result of a multiple rape
repeatedly was punished by staff at Choate Mental Health Center when
she demonstrated urinary and fecal incontinence.  Her treatment plan
took no account of the fact that she had suffered serious emotional
harm from a traumatic brain injury and a multiple rape, nor did her
plan consider the physical causes of her incontinence.

-- A patient, discharged from Elgin Mental Health Center without
seeing her psychiatrist, had no place to live and had received an
inappropriate amount of medication.  Shortly thereafter she checked
into a motel, overdosed on these medications, and died.  Her
caseworker later falsified records in an effort to conceal what had
happened.

"This report demonstrates that, in spite of several years of
litigation, Illinois continues to subject many of the patients in
state psychiatric hospitals to appalling care and treatment," said
Benjamin Wolf, Director of the Institutionalized Persons Project of
the ACLU of Illinois and the lead attorney in K.L.  "Instead of
continuing to spend millions of dollars in legal and expert fees
defending its misconduct, we call upon the State to agree to a court-
supervised process to protect the rights of our most powerless
citizens."

The expert panel consisted of several eminent mental health
professionals with extensive experience working in state psychiatric
hospitals and public mental health systems.  The panel was supervised
by Ezra Griffith, M.D., a psychiatrist, and Michael Hoge, Ph.D., a
psychologist.  The panel also included two additional psychiatrists,
Michael Norko, M.D. and Richard Belitsky, M.D., and two psychologists,
Jacob Tebes, Ph.D. and Larry Davidson, Ph.D.  All six members of the
panel are affiliated with the Yale University Medical School.

The  experts will testify at the trial, now scheduled to begin on July
17, 1997.
----------------------------------------------------------------

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: aclu 3
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:08 CDT 1997
Message number: 113
Reply to message number: unavailable

----------------------------------------------------------------
ACLU's Reinstein Honored in Boston

BOSTON -- Over the last 25 years, the Boston Globe reports, John
Reinstein has stood by people from all walks of life, defending
litigants who span the gamut, including paranoid UFO fanatics and
supercilious neo-Nazis.

His tenacity led him to a chandeliered ballroom where Reinstein, a
once-rebellious student agitator who is now the Legal Director of the
ACLU of Massachusetts, was honored by his peers for 25 years of
service to the ACLU.

"For the gentle attorney," the Globe wrote, "it has been a rugged
route, navigated with fervent casework and a penchant for advocacy."

"There are certain issues that never go away, like abortion or the
death penalty," Reinstein told the Globe. "Those are the cases that
keep me going.  You resolve them, and yet you don't resolve them."

Reinstein said that the true reward of his 25 years lies in affecting
real change. "Sometimes," he said, "the people whose ideas are the
least popular are the ones whose claims are most compelling.

"People who are despised or powerless, those are the cases that are
the most rewarding," he added.
----------------------------------------------------------------

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: aclu 4
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:09 CDT 1997
Message number: 114
Reply to message number: unavailable

----------------------------------------------------------------
Megan's Laws Ensnaring Older Gay Men

LOS ANGELES -- Gay men arrested by police in the 1940s, '50s and '60s
for seeking consensual sex with other adult men are under legal
scrutiny again --this time as registered sex offenders who fear they
could be subject to the recently enacted Megan's Law, the Los Angeles
Times reports.

Struggling to implement Megan's Law and similar statutes, the Times
says that law enforcement agencies across California -- and the nation
-- are scrambling to update long-neglected files, sending police to
knock on the doors of elderly men whose forgotten indiscretions have
suddenly come back to haunt them.

California Department of Justice officials told the Times that they
acknowledge that vague, decades-old criminal records and ever-shifting
laws on sexual behavior make it difficult for them to know which
offender did what -- and therefore, who truly belongs on a list of
sexual offenders.

That means that people like Paul, a 90-year-old Orange County Leisure
World resident who -- like others in the Times report -- asked that
his real name not be used, can remain on the register. In 1944, Paul
was charged with lewd conduct after police found him touching the knee
of another man in a parked car on a secluded West Hollywood street. He
pleaded guilty to the charges, but went on with his life and
eventually married.

That long-closed chapter of his life was painfully reopened in 1995,
the Times said, when his wife of 50 years went to the mailbox and
found an envelope addressed to him, stamped "SEX CRIME" in red ink.
Inside was a letter warning that if he did not register as a sex
offender, he would be arrested.

After hiring a lawyer, Paul was able to have his name removed from the
list.  But like others who had the past come back with a vengeance, it
almost destroyed him.

The process of being identified almost killed Harold, a 63-year-old
Koren War veteran who one drunken night in 1956 was caught having oral
sex with another sailer in a car parked in the hills above La Jolla.
He pled guilty to the lew conduct charges and was dishonorably
discharged. His record was eventually expunged and he thought his
troubles were over.

Then he received a letter from the Los Angeles Police Department in
1995 which was erroneously delivered to his next door neighbor, who
opened it. "At my age, I thought my battles were over," Harold told
the Times.

Living in a cramped Los Angeles duplex on his Social Security checks,
Harold said he believed he would be ruined while a bevy of attorneys
who donated their services spent 16 months struggling to have his name
removed.

Elizabeth Schroeder, the Associate Director of the ACLU of Southern
California who helped Harold, told the Times that he was lucky.

"It took considerable efforts of an attorney going through 40-year-old
court records to get Harold off in the first place," she said. "Most
people don't have those kind of resources."

----------------------------------------------------------------
ONLINE RESOURCES FROM THE ACLU NATIONAL OFFICE
----------------------------------------------------------------
ACLU Freedom Network Web Page:  http://www.aclu.org.
America Online users should check out our live chats, auditorium
events, *very* active message boards, and complete news on civil
liberties, at keyword ACLU.

----------------------------------------------------------------
ACLU Newsfeed
American Civil Liberties Union National Office
132 West 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036

To subscribe to the ACLU Newsfeed, send a message to
majordomo@aclu.org with "subscribe News" in the body of the message.
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For general information about the ACLU, write to info@aclu.org.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent to the news

 [end part 2 of 2]

  - DB B2300sl/001027
 @ Origin: Rights On!-Host/Moderator of A_THEIST-Edgewater_FL_USA (1:18/14)
@PATH: 18/14


-!- GenMsg [0002] (cbaker84@digital.net)
 ! Origin: Rights On! for Privacy! It's a Right not a privilege! (1:18/14)

... Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (S)lap nearest innocent bystander.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S1
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:11 CDT 1997
Message number: 115
Reply to message number: unavailable

Ä Area: Church&State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  From: Charles Sumner                               Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Clinton Rossiter
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
"The twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individua
conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America's most
magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man."

--historian Clinton Rossiter


... Don't like abortion? ... Then don't have one.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S2
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:12 CDT 1997
Message number: 116
Reply to message number: unavailable

Ä Area: Church&State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  From: Charles Sumner                               Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Re: [chstate] Burns on Je
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

>From the PBS documentary series on Thomas Jefferson by Ken Burns:

Jefferson .. is an author of our religious freedom, the absolutely
essential and often misunderstood separation of church and state.  For
the first time in history, in his Virginia Statute, he codified into law
a magnificent wall to keep religion from direct involvement in the
mechanics of politics.  No longer would religious doctrine involve itself
with the organization, and most important, administration of our
government.  What he insisted we do - and it must be remembered this went
against the grain and impulse of the entire history of the world - was to
separate our political dealings from our collective religious beliefs and
instincts.  that was revolutionary.

Though we still debate the degree of that separation, its importance is
undeniable and, to for most Americans, critical to our freedom as
citizens and spiritual beings.  Many scholars, in fact, hold that
singular accomplishment as Jefferson's most important, even greater than
the individual rights set forth and implied in the Declaration of
Independence.


Further comment:

The above was taken from the award-winning monthly journal CHURCH &
STATE, published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

It is important the the general public be aware of the true historical
facts, so that they are not misled by the torrent of propaganda from the
Religious Right, which denies the separation of church and state.  If you
tell a lie often enough, some gullible people are likely to believe it.
You can help promote the truth by circulating such information in
whatever manner is convenient to you.

I would be happy to add to my distribution list others with e-mail who
might benefit from church-state information.  Reply to
charles.sumner@juno.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send just the word   unsubscribe
in the body of a note to chstate-request@ecunet.org
---------------------------------------------------------------

... I don't know how these hacks sleep at night.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S3
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:13 CDT 1997
Message number: 117
Reply to message number: unavailable

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               Contact:  Joseph
Conn
April 10, 1997                        Rob
Boston

RELIGIOUS RIGHT RALLY FOR TEN COMMANDMENTS
MASKS RADICAL AGENDA,
SAYS AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

RALLY PROMOTES LAWLESSNESS AND THEOCRACY,
WATCHDOG GROUP CHARGES

    A Religious Right-sponsored "Save the Commandments" rally this
Saturday in Montgomery, Ala., is a scam intended to lure Christians into
a radical crusade against the Constitution and the rule of law, a
national church-state watchdog group has charged.

    Americans United for Separation of Church and State says organizers
of the Montgomery, Ala., event are supporting Alabama public officials
who have threatened to defy court orders upholding the constitutional
separation of church and state.

    Etowah County Judge Roy S. Moore has vowed to defy a court decision
ordering him to take down a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments
displayed in his courtroom and discontinue Protestant invocational
prayers before court proceedings. Alabama Gov. Fob James has threatened
to call out the National Guard and use state troopers to keep the
Christian religious activities in place.

    The issue has become a cause celebre among Religious Right
activists, and a rally to support Moore and James has been set for this
Saturday in front of the state capitol in Montgomery. Thousands are
expected to attend. Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed,
the American Family Association's Donald Wildmon, author George Grant
and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes are scheduled to
speak, as are the governor and Judge Moore.

    Said Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn, "The
organizers of this rally are courting anarchy and promoting theocracy.
Many Christians have been fooled into thinking this rally is about
support for the Ten Commandments. In fact, it's about opposition to the
rule of law and church-state separation. When public officials threaten
to defy lawful court orders and vow to enforce their personal religious
agenda, the American form of government is placed in jeopardy.

    "Ralph Reed has tried to moderate the image of the Christian
Coalition and the rest of the Religious Right," Lynn continued. "But
Reed's support for this rally shows his extreme agenda. The Religious
Right's crusaders won't rest until they impose their religion on all of
us by law."

    Lynn, a United Church of Christ minister and civil liberties
attorney, charged that the radicalism of event organizers is apparent in
their choice of speakers. Reed will be sharing the stage with George
Grant, an activist affiliated with Christian Reconstructionism, the most
radical wing of the Religious Right. Reconstructionists seek to replace
American secular law with "God's law," including the harsh penal code of
the Old Testament.

    In his 1993 book, Legislating Immorality, Grant expressed regret
that unrepentant homosexuals are no longer executed by the government in
keeping with Old Testament requirements.

    The rally is also being cosponsored by anti-abortion zealot Randall
Terry and others from the farthest fringes of the religio-political
camp.

    Last week, one rally cosponsor, the Council of Conservative
Citizens, withdrew from participation after its record of racist and
anti-Semitic rhetoric was made public by Americans United. Despite the
CCC's clear pattern of extremism and bigotry, rally organizers refused
to repudiate the group and its views.

    Americans United for Separation of Church and State represents some
50,000 individual members, as well as hundreds of churches, synagogues
and other houses of worship. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization
is marking its 50th anniversary this year.


Americans United for Separation of Church and State
1816 Jefferson Place, N.W.
Washington, D.C.  20036
202.466.3234
202.466.2587 fax
E-mail: americansunited@au.org
WWW site: http://www.au.org/

Distributed by charles.sumner@juno.com
---------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send just the word   unsubscribe
in the body of a note to chstate-request@ecunet.org
---------------------------------------------------------------
@Via ifmail 1:374/103@fidonet, Fri Apr 11 1997 at 18:17 (2.8b)
@Via 1:374/98 @19970412.053517 GEcho/32 1.20/Pro


-!- GenMsg [0002] (cbaker84@digital.net)
 ! Origin: Rights On! for Privacy! It's a Right not a privilege! (1:18/14)

... What distinguishes an PC from a boat anchor? Brand loyalty.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S 4
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:14 CDT 1997
Message number: 118
Reply to message number: unavailable


COURAGEOUS MISSISSIPPI MOTHER TO SPEAK IN ROCHESTER MAY 4 AT
30TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROCHESTER CHAPTER AMERICANS UNITED

In 1993 Lisa Herdahl and her family moved from Wisconsin to the small
community of Ecru, Mississippi.  When Mrs. Herdahl enrolled her five
oldest children in the only public school in Ecru, she learned that
sectarian prayers were broadcast each morning over the school intercom
and recited in classrooms during the school day, and that religious
Bible instruction was part of the official school curriculum.

Mrs. Herdahl is a Christian, and she is raising her children as
Christians, but she believes that it is her right as a parent, and not
the business of the public schools, to teach her children religion and
what to pray.  She also believes strongly in the Constitutional
guarantees of religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

Mrs. Herdahl complained to school officials about the unconstitutional
practices and asked that they be stopped.  Her pleas were ignored, and
she and her children were harassed and taunted because of their
objection to the unlawful practices.  Among other things, they were
falsely called atheists and devil-worshipers.  When Mrs. Herdahl's son,
Jason, was seven years old and in second grade, his teacher put
earphones over his head to drown out the intercom prayers; his
classmates then teased him by calling him "football head' and "baseball
head."  In order to avoid the unconstitutional Bible instruction, Mrs.
Herdahl's children who are in the elementary grades must get up in front
of their classmates and leave their classroom.  On one such occasion, as
eleven-year-old David was leaving his sixth grade classroom, his teacher
announced (in similar words) that "David doesn't believe in God.  People
who believe in God go to Bible class - those who don't, don't go to
Bible class."  David was later harassed by other children who falsely
accused him of not believing in God.

When Mrs. Herdahl's complaints to the assistant principal and principal
about the unconstitutional practices were ignored, she took her
complaints to the school board, to no avail.  As a result, she was left
with no choice but to file a lawsuit to protect her family.  People for
the American way and the ACLU of Mississippi filed suit in federal court
on behalf of Mrs. Herdahl and her children seeking an end to the school
district's practices.  After the suit was filed, harassment of the
family got worse.  Mrs. Herdahl received a death threat in the mail from
out of state, and her family received bomb threats.  The local paper was
filled with letters condemning Mrs. Herdahl, and signs and ribbons were
put up all over town in opposition to the lawsuit.  Nonetheless, the
brave mother and her family have persevered.

A Federal judge ruled in Mrs. Herdahl's favor, issuing a preliminary
injunction prohibiting the prayers over the intercom and in classrooms
and later ruling in her favor on the Bible classes. . The case garnered
much media attention, including stories on CBS This Morning, The Today
Show, and 60 Minutes.

You can hear what has happened to her since if you attend the public
meeting on Sunday, May 4, at 6 pm. at the Diplomat Party House on Lyell
Avenue near I-390.   The buffet dinner requires a reservation by April
25 (716-392-2752) or you can arrive about 7:45 for the balance of the
event sponsored by Rochester Chapter Americans United for Separation of
Church and State.  Mrs. Herdahl will probably also be the focus of a
church program on Sunday morning to be announced.

Because Mrs. Herdahl is virtually unemployable in her county, donations
are being collected for an honorarium.  Rochester Chapter will provide
scholarships for several students to attend; call for information.

We will be honored by attendance of staff from the New York office of
People for the American Way  and by the Director of Chapters and Faith
Groups of national Americans United.

Please feel free to use any portions of this information for publicity
purposes or contact Charles Sumner at 716-334-2989.

LISA HERDAHL WILL ALSO SPEAK IN SYRACUSE NY AS PART OF A "SUMMIT ON THE
RELIGIOUS RIGHT" MONDAY, MAY 5, AT THE MAY MEMORIAL UNITARIAN CHURCH.
HOURS OF THIS EVENT ARE 1:30 TO 5.  CONTACT: PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY,
NYC, 212-944-5820 or IN SYRACUSE, LINDA FUCHS, 315-446-6151.
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-!- GenMsg [0002] (cbaker84@digital.net)
 ! Origin: Rights On! for Privacy! It's a Right not a privilege! (1:18/14)


... A Mystic asking for a hotdog: "Make me one with everything".
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S 5
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:15 CDT 1997
Message number: 119
Reply to message number: unavailable

  From: Charles Sumner                               Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Myth 1
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
MYTH 1: Separation of church and state is not in the U.S.
Constitution.

     It is true that the literal phrase "separation of church and
state" does not appear in the Constitution, but that does not mean
the concept isn't there. The First Amendment says "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof...."

     What does that mean? A little history is helpful: In an 1802
letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association, Thomas
Jefferson, then president, declared that the American people
through the First Amendment had erected a "wall of separation
between church and state."  (Colonial religious liberty pioneer
Roger Williams used a similar phrase 150 years earlier.)

     Jefferson, however, was not the only leading figure of the
post-revolutionary period to use the term separation. James
Madison, considered to be the Father of the Constitution, said in
an 1819 letter, "[T]he number, the industry and the morality of
the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly
increased by the total separation of the church and state." In an
earlier, undated essay (probably early 1800s), Madison wrote,
"Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and
government in the Constitution of the United States."

     As eminent church-state scholar Leo Pfeffer notes in his book,
Church, State and Freedom, "It is true, of course, that the phrase
'separation of church and state' does not appear in the
Constitution. But it was inevitable that some convenient term
should come into existence to verbalize a principle so clearly and
widely held by the American people....[T]he right to a fair trial
is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the
term 'fair trial' is not found in the Constitution. To bring the
point even closer home, who would deny that 'religious liberty' is
a constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the
Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms,
including 'separation of church and state,' have received in
America would seem to confirm rather than disparage their reality
as basic American democratic principles."

     Thus, it is entirely appropriate to speak of the
"constitutional principle of church-state separation" since that
phrase summarizes what the First Amendment's religion clauses do -
they separate church and state.

Provided by Americans United for Separation of Church and State
1816 Jefferson Place NW, Washington, DC 20036-2505; 202-466-3234.

... Freedom OF religion includes freedom FROM religion.

... We won't get fooled again . . . .
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: C&S 6
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:16 CDT 1997
Message number: 120
Reply to message number: unavailable

Ä Area: Church&State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  From: Charles Sumner                               Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Re: [chstate] "Save the C
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 23:45:03 -0400

Dear Friends & Supporters,

This past Saturday I drove over to Montgomery for the "Save the
Commandments" rally, sponsored in support of Alabama Governor Fob James
and Etowah County Judge Roy Moore. Moore, as you probably already know,
has refused another judge's order to stop opening session with a Baptist
prayer and remove a hand carved replica of the Ten Commandments from his
courtroom wall. He has become a hero to the religious right for his
refusal to abide by Judge Price's ruling and Fob James has jumped on the
bandwagon, as well.

Attendance was estimated by rally organizers to be between 20 and 25
thousand. I can tell you from one who was in the crowd it was no where
near that. The New York Times estimated about 6 thousand, and other
media outlets ranged up to 10 thousand. Probably between these last two
is the more accurate number. But what they lacked in size they more than
made up for in over zealousness!

The crowd wave signs concerning everything from Moore's prayer to
abortion, gay rights (or rather gay bashing), the ever esoteric "family
values" and all the other areas of deep concern to the religious right.

I photographed a couple of Operation Rescue supporters who wore t-shirts
declaring "Intolerance is Beautiful".

Several attendees told me that they believed non-Christians should not
be allowed to serve on juries or hold public office. Their reasoning
behind this is the fact that these duties involve swearing on a Bible,
and a non-Christian can't be trusted in this regard. My query as to
whether or not Christians "always" always perform their duties with 100
percent honesty brought a variety of unconvincing responses, including
not much more than scratched heads, and furrowed bushy, backwoods brows.

Another attendee informed me that the phrase "separation of church and
state" appears nowhere in the Constitution. I told him that the phrase
"right to a fair trial" does not appear as well, and then I asked him if
he supported the right to a fair trial. He paused for a moment and said,
"This nation was founded as a Christian nation." Folks, it's pretty hard
to keep up with this kind of reasoning.

The self-righteousness poured from the crowd in smothering proportions,
as did the disdain for their favorite targets of the day. On the top of
that list was the ACLU, or in right wing lingo, the "Un-American" Civil
Liberties Union. Next came the Supreme Court Justices, who were pounded
with accusations of being tyrants, elitist, and anything else that would
push the button of a paranoid fundamentalist.

One attendee assured me that we will soon see persecution of Christians
in this country equal to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany. He supported
this claim by explaining how people are not allowed to distribute Bibles
in the public schools.

When I asked several of them about the recent bombings here in Atlanta,
of course they were sure to point out they thought it was wrong, but it
was such a half-hearted attempt they might as well have come right out
and condoned them.

Myself and another young man, two of about ten rally opponents there
that day, found ourselves in the middle of a loud verbal assault from a
man in a suit about my age holding a Bible that could have prevented
Dorothy's house from being swept away in the tornado. He refused to
allow me to tape record him but instead screamed scripture at as us as
we dodged the fountain of saliva that was his mouth. We finally tired of
him and I began to describe the numerous incidences of sex and violence
I have personally read in the Bible and told him, "that book should be
pulled off of every library shelf in the country. It should only be
available in adult book stores, right next to the porno videos." This
silenced him for a moment as a couple of police officers moved closer to
us. He saw them and turned and walked away. One of the officers
remarked, "I thought for sure we'd be taking that guy (the preacher) in
for assault." He smiled at me and shook his head.

Ralph Reed can try all he wants to paint a tolerant picture of his
supporters, but it just is not the case, folks. They were all there that
day, from the radical right wing to the extreme right wing. Free books
on the New World Order were everywhere. One bumper sticker said, "Abort
Clinton". I got a great shot of a guy stomping on a United Nations flag.
He was very happy to have me take his picture until he asked me where it
was going to be printed. Walking past him I said, "The ACLU National
Journal; We'll raise two million dollars with your picture alone. Thanks
for the help."

Speaker after speaker blasted through loudspeakers the same
misinformation, the same rhetoric that is working so well for them.
Looking around the crowd they looked like a bunch of addicts, nodding
their heads as they got their fix of ridiculous propaganda.

Much kudos to my heroes of the day, the Birmingham Freethought Society
and the Alabama Freethought Society! I was standing near the front of
the crowd when some signs appeared that, without even reading them,
seemed strangely out of place. They read "Jesus Christ was not a
bigot!",  "This is not Roy Moore's Court", "Fight Religous Bigotry", and
several more.

Within two minutes they were surrounded by rally supporters, crowding
them and making sure they knew they were not welcome. It was rather
pathetic how this so-called "Christians" were so immature and
confrontational that they couldn't handle a few dissenters among them.
Jesus would have been so proud, huh?

But the freethinkers held their ground and were swamped by the media,
who must have been getting pretty sick and tired of the boring,
repetitious stuff they'd been hearing all day.

I was told that the police were thinking of removing them "for their own
safety" but after watching the situation, decided to let them stay.

I drove home from the rally with two things learned that day. First, the
people there have been spoon fed a carefully balanced diet of
misinformation and fear from Ralph Reed and his ilk for so long they are
now to the point of being like robots.

Secondly, and most importantly, they are fired up and out of control. I
hate to say this, but I think we're in for a rough time. I think there
will be more violence as the courts and governments hold them at bay and
their distorted perceptions turn every loss into persecution. As time
passes I think they will see extreme and even violent measures as last
resorts; that sentiment could be felt in the air at the rally.

For this last reason I think it is very important for us to work harder
to oppose them, and to wake more Americans up to the dangers they pose.
We have got to spread the message about the dangers of the religious
right. We here in Atlanta know too well what they are capable of when
they feel no other alternative but to lash out violently. It is our
obligation to help as many other people understand this as well.

Sincerely,

Skip Evans, President

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Atlanta Chapter
PO Box 79174
Atlanta GA 30357-7174
404-607-0660
tallulah@mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~tallulah/au/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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---------------------------------------------------------------
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-!- GenMsg [0002] (cbaker84@digital.net)
 ! Origin: Rights On! for Privacy! It's a Right not a privilege! (1:18/14)

... Friends: People who dislike the same people we do.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: c&s 7
Date: Sun Apr 27 19:42:17 CDT 1997
Message number: 121
Reply to message number: unavailable

Ä Area: Church&State ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  From: Mark Nelson                                  Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Historical Separation
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Historical basis for the separation of church and state, including legal
documents, court opinions, and personal opinions of presidents, etc.
Courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation:
http://www.infidels.org/org/ffrf/
[notes] are mine.

[Why to keep church separate from both the schools and state]

"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights. malignant
opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as
religion. Let it once enter our civil affairs, our government would soon
be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be
destroyed."

- Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890

[Why to keep religion out of schools and why not to give federal
subsidies] [to private religious schools (including the proposed voucher
program)]

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the
private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the
church and state forever separate."

- Ulysses S. Grant, "The President's Speech at Des Moines" (1875)

[sums it all up right here]

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
- First Amendment, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution

[separation of church and state]

Thomas Jefferson, author of the sweeping Virginia Statute of Religious
Freedom, stating that no citizen "shall be compelled to frequent or support
any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever..." and that to
"compell a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of
[religious] opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical." "I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should make no law `respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus
building a wall of separation between church and state."

- President Thomas Jefferson, 1802 letter to the Baptists of Danbury,
Connecticut


... Doubt is the beginning of Wisdom.


... Did that gesture mean your team is number one?
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Culture War
Date: Fri May 02 17:13:13 CDT 1997
Message number: 122
Reply to message number: unavailable

  Subj: [PN] The Civility Wars
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
Subject: [PN] The Civility Wars

*DISCLAIMER: As reprinted from UTNE MAGAZINE, March-April 97 edition,
pp. 15-16. Happy Easter!*


THE CIVILITY WARS
Is poverty more vulgar than profanity?


That America has become a coarser, cruder nation is undeniable. Baseball
stars spit in umpire's faces. Kids curse teachers. Motorists regularly
give each other the finger. Talk shows have become a contact sport.
Politicians - well, don't get me started on politicians.

Last year a nationwide poll in U.S. NEWS and WORLD REPORT found that 9
out of 10 Americans consider incivility a serious national problem; half
deem it a very serious problem. The fear of encroaching indecency has
penetrated so deeply that even Iowa is launching a statewide program to
foster understanding of the need for civility in everyday life.
Conservatives like William Bennett date the vulgarizing of America back
to the 1960s and the widespread rebellion against authority. He blames
the phenomenon on liberals who refuse to impose standards of moral
conduct. The result? Widespread nihilism.

Bennett's definition of incivility tends to be limited to the use of
four-letter words. To my knowledge he has never criticized fellow
conservatives for vulgarizing America's political discourse. Yet, for
many conservatives, vicious attacks on Democrats and liberals have been
the key to gaining power. In 1994 Newt Gingrich's political action
committee, GOPAC, sent Republican candidates a list of suggested words
that would allow them to "speak like Newt". Among the words recommended
to describe their Democratic opponents were 'sick', 'traitor',
'corrupt', 'bizarre', and 'cheat'.

 Republicans swept to power that year. Last October, as the
 well-mannered campaign of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp was sinking in a sea
 of politeness, the right-wing WASHINGTON TIMES (Oct.11, 1996) announced
 that civility was for losers. "What we need is not civility, but a
 higher standard of vitriol...There is nothing wrond with name-calling
 as long as it is done with flair," the editors insisted.

On the other side of the political spectrum, incivility is viewed as the
outraged cry of the powerless. Benjamin DeMott, writing in THE
NATION,(Dec.6,1996), sees incivility as "a response to an unendurable
surfeit of corruption." He approvingly quotes African-American law
professor Randall Kennedy speaking at a forum on civility at Yale
University: "If you're in an argument with a thug, there are things much
more important than civility."

Me? I'm glad you asked. I agree with both Bennett and DeMott. Bennett is
right when he says that the routine use of obscenity and visual and
verbal violence undermines our sense of community and debases our
culture. DeMott is right when he says that gentility can mask a
multitude of sins. The well-ordered and mannerly world of the 1950s
granted only limited rights to blacks and women and gays. Those who
asserted their rights were viewed as "uppity" and crude.

But in the final analysis, I take a somewhat different perspective on
the incivility debate. As James Morris notes in THE WILSON
QUARTERLY(Autumn 1996), the old rules of etiquette always have been less
important than "instilling a sensibility of concern and regard." The
current incivility debate seems limited to a discussion of how much
regard we should have for each others feelings. We need to broaden the
debate to take into account the more important issue of how much regard
we should have for each others' lives and welfare.

WASHINGTON POST etiquette columnist Judith Martin's latest book, MISS
MANNERS RESCUES CIVILIZATION(Crown,1996) sees the downfall of civilized
societies coming from a lack of courtesy. Economist Lester Thurow
worries in his latest book, THE FUTURE of CAPITALISM (Morrow,1996) that
American society could collapse from a lack of community: "No country
not experiencing a revolution or a military defeat with a subsequent
occupation has probably ever had as rapid or as widespread an increase
in inequality as has occurred in the United States in the past two
decades." Thurow raises the important question of whether massive and
widespread inequality is itself a sign of incivility.

America's economic productivity continues to rise and the stock market
sets new records. Yet the prospects of those at the bottom of society
have deteriorated: Tens of millions of us are one paycheck away from the
streets, and millions more lack health insurance. Doesn't this
constitute a disregard for the sensibilities of others?

People like William Bennett point to sport stars like Dennis Rodman and
Albert Belle as profiles in incivility. I prefer to put the spotlight on
a star of the business world: Albert J. Dunlap. Chainsaw Al went to
Scott Paper Company and in 20 monthes fired 11,200 workers, one third of
the workforce. By the time he left in 1995, shareholders had seen the
price of their stock rise 225 percent.(Al himself pocketted more than
$100 million.) He did such a good job, in fact, that Sunbeam hired him
to make its modestly profitable company into a very, very profitable
company. In July, 1996, when AL was hired, Wall Street applauded the
move by sending Sunbeam's stock up 50 percent even before he showed up
for work.

The title of Dennis Rodman's best seller BAD AS I WANNA BE(Delacorte,
1996), reflects his disdain for our moral sensibilities. The title of
Dunlap's new book, MEAN BUSINESS (Times Books, 1996), reflects his
disdain for the welfare of the community. Who is more vulgar? Who is
more dangerous?

-David Morris
 David Morris is vice-president of the
'Institute for Local Self-Reliance'.

-!-
 ! Origin: Usenet :church of divine nonchalance (1:343/70)

... "Lando's not a system, he's a man." - Han Solo
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Culture war [1/3]
Date: Fri May 02 17:13:15 CDT 1997
Message number: 123
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 1 of 3...

Ä Area: Skeptic ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  From: Sheppard Gordon                              Read: Yes    Replied: No
  Subj: Creationist Believers 1/4
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
 THE EVOLUTIONARY WAR

 More Than A Century After Darwin, Many People Still Believe The Theory
 Of Evolution Undermines The Foundations Of Faith. Its The Debate That
 Never Ends.

 03/09/97
 Sun-Sentinel  Ft. Lauderdale

   Looking through family albums, we instinctively trace the lines of
   our own faces in the fading photographs of our ancestors. We rekindle
   the memories of departed grandparents, uncles and aunts. All of us
   want to know our past, where we came from, who we are.

   It's the idea that makes genealogy such a popular pursuit, the idea
   that makes the search for our human origins such a fascinating and
   contentious endeavor. When we turn to the subject of evolution, we
   must face the deepest questions about our human identity and these
   questions make many people squirm. It is the point at which science
   bumps square into faith.

   Hardly any biologist today doubts the basic premise Charles Darwin
   stated in his groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species, in 1859.
   Darwin concluded that all plants and animals including human beings
   have evolved from earlier forms through the process of natural
   selection.

   To most scientists, the idea of evolution is as solid as the law of
gravity. Geologists have determined, through sophisticated means of
dating rocks and fossils, that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
Dozens of ice ages have occurred over a period of 2 billion years, with
the most recent glaciers receding about 20,000 years ago. Our earliest
human precursors, found in Africa in the 1970s, are nearly 4 million
years old.

   These principles are so well established among biologists, geologists
   and anthropologists that to doubt them would be tantamount to
   declaring that the Earth is flat.

   Yet millions of Americans believe they are hogwash.

   This past October, Pope John Paul II decreed that the Catholic Church
would no longer oppose evolution, but in conservative and fundamentalist
Christian circles creationism has become ever more entrenched. It is
nothing less than a touchstone of their faith. A nationwide poll in 1995
revealed that 47 percent of the American public did not believe in
evolution. It is an issue that simply cannot be resolved.

   For many people, the scientific view of creation and evolution is a
violation of their fundamental religious beliefs. In the United States
most of the outrage has come from the politically powerful Christian
right. (In recent years, several American Indian tribes have joined the
debate as well by preventing anthropologists from searching their burial
grounds; they dont need white science to tell them about their
ancestors, they say.)

   Several groups around the country, led by The Institute for Creation
   Re- search in California, exist solely to discredit Darwin and to
   propagate the biblical account of creation. The anti-evolution
   outpost in Fort Lauder-dale is the Creation Studies Institute,
   directed by Tom DeRosa, a science teach-er at Westminster Academy, a
   Christian school affiliated with the conservative Coral Ridge
   Presbyterian Church. DeRosa, a born-again creationist who was once an
   avowed agnostic and evolutionist, also conducts a weekly radio show
   promoting the biblical creation story.

   "This is a mission," he declares. "You can't compromise your belief
   in God. "

   DeROSA AND THE CREationists believe that every word in the Bible is
literally true. They believe God created the world in six days 144
hours, no more and no less that Eve was made from Adams rib, that an
angry God flooded the world to destroy it's evil ways and that the only
creatures to survive were on Noah's ark.

   They have their own views of fossils, geology, astronomy and the
   descent of man often at odds with mainstream science to support their
   biblical interpretation of life. They believe the Earth is only
   10,000 years old, rather than billions of years. There weren't dozens
   of ice ages but only one. Geological layers did not slowly build up
   over millions of years but were the result of sudden catastrophes,
   such as volcanoes and, especially, Noah's flood. Most of all,
   creationists believe that life on Earth did not evolve according to
   the Darwinian model but was divinely created in its present form.


   These beliefs have sometimes had the force of law. In 1925, John T.
   Scopes challenged the state of Tenn-essee to allow him to teach
   evolution. In his famous trial, his attorney, Clar-ence Darrow, made
   a monkey out of his courtroom opponent, William Jenn-ings Bryan, but
   Scopes was found guilty and the law remained in effect until 1967.

   The Supreme Court overturned all bans against the teaching of
   evolution in 1968, ruling that religious views could not enter the
   schoolhouse. In 1981, Louisiana passed a law mandating equal time for
   evolution and "creation science," but it was promptly struck down by
   the high court.

   Still, the biblical view of creation isnt about to disappear.
   Evolution became an issue in the Florida governors race in 1990 when
   Republican candidate Bob Martinez campaigned for creationism to be
   taught alongside evolution in the public schools. (A poll that year
   found that 56 percent of Floridians agreed with Martinez.)

   When Buddy MacKay, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor,
implied that creationists were ignorant, Martinez demanded and received
an apology.

   In his own day, Charles Darwin was denounced as a heretic whose ideas
undermined mankinds primacy in the world and, ultimately, denied the
importance of God. People in the street and bishops in the pulpit
mockingly wondered whether it was through his mother's side or his
father's side that Darwin was descended from apes. He is still being
de-nounced today.

   "I believe evolution is an irrational belief," says DeRosa, the
creationist science teacher. "Many scientists call scientific
creationism an oxymoron. That, in my mind, is a smokescreen. Scientific
creationism brings out the evidences that people have to face.

   "I thought this stuff had gone out 50 or 100 years ago," counters
   Edward J. Petuch, a professor of geology at Florida Atlantic
   University. "Evolution just means `change through time.' It doesn't
   mean `anti-God' or `Jesus is dead.' Everything evolves. Why is this
   term so horrible?"

   SUNSHINE HAD HOPED TO ARrange a debate between DeRosa and Petuch, but
Petuch refused on the grounds that a debate would generate more heat
than light.

   "I don't hate religion," he says. "I respect it highly. But they have
   to enter into the debate as scientists, not as religious persons. If
   they can make this a testable science, I would enter in the debate.
   But they can't, and I won't."

   Instead, Sunshine presented each teacher with the statements of the
   other, allowing them to comment.

   Tom DeRosa, 50, was born in Brooklyn and spent four years in a
   Catholic seminary as a teen-ager. He came to South Florida in 1967 to
   study at the University of Miami, where he received a bachelors
   degree in science education, with concentrations in chemistry and
   physics. He later received a masters in education from Florida
   Atlantic University. From 1970 to 1978, he taught in elementary and
   middle schools in the Broward public-school system. He is certified
   to teach all branches of science.

   "When I taught science in the public schools," he says, "I was
   basically an evolutionist-agnostic. I believed in evolution, and I
   didn't know any alternatives. My god was science education."

   In 1978, DeRosa applied for a science-teaching job at Westminster
   Academy, a Christian school with conservative, fundamentalist values.
   To accept the position, he signed a pledge that he would not smoke or
   drink.

   "I went to Sizzler Steakhouse and had my last cigarette," he recalls.
   "I liked an occasional beer, and being a good Italian, I liked my
   wine."

   More important, as far as his future was concerned, he accepted the
   strict interpretation of the Bible encouraged at Westminster and at
   Coral Ridge Presbyter-ian, the popular church presided over by the
   Rev. D. James Kennedy.

   "I had to rethink everything," says DeRosa. "That was the first time
   I began to take the Bible seriously. It was a life-changing
   experience, definitely."

   He abandoned his earlier views of evolution for Christian creationist
beliefs. Today, he is fond of linking Scripture and science and can
point out numerous biblical passages that suggest an understanding of
molecular structure, astronomy and DNA.

   "I felt I was robbed by my educational institutions," he says,
   "because there was so much more to science than I had been taught."

   He says his students at Westminster are introduced to evolutionary
   biology, but there is a clear creationist slant to science teaching
   at the school.

   "I don't think kids are getting the whole picture," he says. "I want
   my kids to see the fight, because it is a fight."

   "Everything the creationists stand for can be supported by scientific
   data, " without "one word of God, Jesus or even the Bible," says
   DeRosa.

   Yet the Bible is never far from his hand and is the backbone of his
argument and his faith.

   "Whatever we look at, we see with biased eyes," he says. "I have a

 >>> Continued to next message...
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

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From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Culture war [2/3]
Date: Fri May 02 17:13:16 CDT 1997
Message number: 124
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 2 of 3...

   right to my prejudice just like everybody has a right to theirs. The
   only way I can compensate is by using this book the Word of God."

   In 1988, DeRosa founded the Crea-tion Studies Institute, which
   publishes pamphlets advancing the creationist cause. For the past
   four years he has been the host of a weekly radio show about
   creationism (The Genesis Connection, Fridays at 9 p.m.) on the
   church's station, WAFG-FM.

   "I've been called names by evolutionists," he says. "On the radio
   once, someone called me a deceiver, a liar. When youre making a
   different standard, you develop a thick skin. You cant take it
   personally."

   Last spring, DeRosa led an expedition to the Peace River in Central
Florida that unearthed remains of an extinct mammoth evidence of Noah's
flood, in his view. Calling himself a "creation evangelist," he travels
all over the country to lecture about creationism and describes his
efforts as his "ministry."

   "This is what I really enjoy," he says. "I believe the idea of using
science as a tool is part of what God wants me to do."

   Edward J. Petuch (pronounced puh-TUKE), 47, is a tenured professor of
geology at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he has
taught for 13 years. He is the author of seven books on geology, fossils
and marine biology; his latest is about the prehistoric seas of North
America.

   Petuch has discovered and named more than 1,000 extinct fossils,
   mostly mollusks, that lived in the ocean that once covered Florida.
   On a field trip in January, he found eight new species of fossils.

   His great-grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest, and Petuch
   himself grew up in the Catholic Church. His first ambition was to be
   a pipe organist; he plays 11 musical instruments, specializing in the
   recorder and harpsichord, which he plays in early-music chamber
   groups.

   He has bachelor's and master's degrees in zoology from the University
   of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the
   University of Miami. He has done two years of postdoctoral research
   in geology and paleontology at the University of Maryland and the
   Smithsonian Institution.

   "Science is one of the most exciting human endeavors," says Petuch.
   "It is based on philosophical systems that are self-testable. That's
   the beauty of science - it's honest. It's the only truly
   intellectually honest endeavor in the history of mankind."

   THE FIRST WORDS of the Bible are, "In the beginning God created the
   heaven and the earth."

   How and when they were created have been a source of never-ending
   debate.

   "I would say the Earth is young," DeRosa declares. "It's not millions
   of years, but in the range of 10,000 years. I think there's a
   preponderance of evidence that supports a young Earth."

   He says a complete fossil record has never been found in one place.
   In the Grand Canyon, for instance, entire strata of rock are absent
   from the geological record. Fossilized trees reach through several
   layers of rock, spanning in the view of geologists millions of years.
   DeRosa maintains that volcanic lava and mud settled around these
   trees during the upheaval of the biblical flood.

   "It doesn't take millions of years," he says. "At Mount St. Helens,
   it took a day."

   Petuch says these anomalies are common. Missing geological layers, he
explains, are "unconformities" caused by erosion.

   "You can have millions of years of layers washed away," he says.
   "Erosion is a major thing on our planet."

   "Of course, there was erosion," DeRosa responds, "because there was a
universal flood."

   He is speaking of the flood de-scribed in Genesis, chapters six
   through eight.

   "The creationist movement began with the idea of the flood," says
   DeRosa. He points out that hundreds of cultures around the world have
   flood stories as part of their creation myths. (Many others, however,
   do not.)

   "All these legends," he continues, "agree that there was a vessel of
safety, that there was destruction by water, and that the human seed was
saved. When you have worldwide flood legends, you have to come to the
conclusion there's got to be something here. You can't dismiss this."

   The Old Testament states that God was dismayed by the evil ways of
   man and destroyed the world in order to remake it. He told Noah of an
   impending flood and gave him 120 years of warning, according to the
   creationists. (The Bible says Noah lived to be 950 years old.)

   Noah built his ark from "gopher wood" a term that appears nowhere but
Genesis 6:14 and took on board one male and one female of "every living
thing of all flesh." He collected seven couples of "clean beasts" and
"fowls also of the air." Creationists have calculated that the ark was
437 feet long, 43 feet high and 73 feet wide. Its capacity was
equivalent to 522 railroad stock cars, and it could hold 125,000 animals
the size of sheep.

   There are, however, more than 1.5 million species of animals on
   Earth. Scientists estimate there are millions more that we don't yet
   know about, and there are thousands of others that have become
   extinct. Dinosaurs, in the creationists' view, were wiped out by the
   flood and were not part of God's plan for the world after the Deluge.

   The Genesis account says the ark carried food for Noah's family his
   wife, three sons and their wives and the animals, but it doesn't say
   how it was stored. It also doesn't address the practical question of
   cleaning up the mess of hundreds of thousands of animals.

   "Where do you put those animals?" DeRosa ponders. "That's a fair
   question. You could take the eggs and juveniles and probably get them
   in there.

   "Could the environment on the ark cause hibernation to occur?" he
speculates. "It is believed that many of these animals were in
hibernation."

   He further theorizes that not every single variety of animal had to
   be on the ark. He thinks there was only one pair of the dog family,
   for instance, and that they later developed dare we say evolved? into
   Great Danes, Chihuahuas, wolves, coyotes and poodles. Fish and
   mollusks stayed in the sea.

   "Insects, we don't have to worry about," says DeRosa. "They can
   survive almost anywhere."

   "Put a beetle in a glass of sea water and see how well it does,"
   replies Professor Petuch. "How about spiders and scorpions? How about
   freshwater fish? "

   According to Genesis, it rained for 40 days and nights, and
   everything on Earth was killed. The only dry spot was the peak of
   Mount Ararat, where Noah took the ark.

   "No way," counters Petuch. "I've worked on six continents, and there
   is no evidence for a single worldwide flood."

   He wonders how Noah could travel all over the world, even if he had
   120 years, and collect wallabies, emus and tree kangaroos from
   Australia, flightless birds from New Zealand, Kodiak bears from
   Alaska, giant pandas from isolated regions of China, monkeys from
   Madagascar, tortoises from the Galapagos, as well as every snake,
   insect, crab and bird distinctive to each island chain in the world.

   "Noah had to take the ark out of the water and carry it up rivers
   into the mountains," Petuch says. "Then, afterward, poor old Noah had
   to go back and dump these animals back on every island."

   "The more you study science, the more you realize the vision given by
these churches is so childish, it loses validity." Petuch says he is not
trying to demean the faith of DeRosa or anyone else.

   "I commend fundamentalist Christians in their belief," he says,
   "because it gives them a sense of belonging, a purpose, a sense of
   worth, a moral structure. I find the ark legend very interesting, as
   an ancient Hebrew document. But there are thousands of creation
   myths, and each one is equally valid."

   He believes if creationism is to be taught, it should include the
   creation myths of American Indians, Shinto Buddhists, Tibetan
   Lamaists, Hindus, ancient Greeks and other cultures.

   "You can't tell me there's any more validity to Jesus than Zeus," he
   says. "Its all based on belief. Creationism is a branch of religion."

   SCIENCE HAS DIFFERENT principles from those of religious faith. It
   doesn't prescribe a moral code or offer eternal life. It's purpose is
   to explain the world we live in.

   "Scientists do not believe," Petuch says. "We cannot have faith. At a
personal level, I can if it gives me comfort, but it's not a premise of
our science."

   By observation and experiment, scientists prove or reject assumptions
about the natural world. Scientific evidence must be verified and
capable of being reproduced.

   "You can't separate chemistry from geology or biology," says Petuch.
   "They all use exactly the same method, the same philosophical base,
   which goes back to the Greeks. You don't make any presuppositions
   whatever. Scientists have to be open-minded, or they're not
   scientists."

   DeRosa believes mainstream scientists don't have an open mind at all
   and are biased in favor of evolution. He calls evolution a
   quasi-religious belief and says it simply isn't good science.

   "Whenever I'm in a debate about what makes evolution work," he says,
"there are different explanations, but the evidence is not there. If

 >>> Continued to next message...
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: ALL
Subject: Culture war [3/3]
Date: Fri May 02 17:13:17 CDT 1997
Message number: 125
Reply to message number: unavailable

 >>> Part 3 of 3...

it's true, we have to have evidence to support it."

   Many scientists can cite animals and plants that have altered their
   color or form in response to changes in the environment. A variety of
   English moth changed from white to black after air pollution darkened
   the trees that were its habitat. Finches on the Galapagos Islands
   observed almost 160 years ago by Charles Darwin himself have
   developed beaks of different shapes, depending on whether they eat
   seeds, insects or cactus. "The beaks vary in size because they will
   adapt to the environment," says DeRosa. "We don't debate that. From
   the creationist viewpoint, that's called `variation in kind.' The
   point is that it's still a bird."

   Scientists say evolution can be seen in the fossil record of horses,
   which developed from small, three-toed animals to their present form.
   (Creation- ists think these were unrelated creatures.) Whales which
   are mammals, not fish have evolved tails to propel them through the
   seas but retain vestigial leg bones from their terrestrial forebears.
   Fossils and even footprints of early human ancestors have been found,
   including a re-markable Australopithecus skeleton, more than 3
   million years old, known as Lucy.

   "I believe that was an extinct ape," says DeRosa though Lucy walked
upright on two legs, which no modern ape can do for long. He believes
there is no proof that one form of life has ever mutated into something
else.

   "You can't talk to these people," fumes Petuch. "It's a waste of
   time. They have to find an excuse for everything. They start with a
   belief, then twist the world around to fit that. It's absurd."

   WHAT MAKES DeROSA lose his patience is the question of whether the
universe has an orderly design. Current theories suggest that evolution
proceeds not by an or-dained pattern but through a series of chance
occurrences.

   The panda, for instance, has a wrist bone that has developed into
something like a thumb; several kinds of fish have appendages that act
as decoys. A leading paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, has written that
life evolves not from a grand design, but through a biological tinkering
with spare parts.

   "They've come to the conclusion that for life to exist, it would have
   to take a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a 747,"
   scoffs DeRosa. "It's irrational, because its key mechanism is luck.
   If you believe in an orderly, rational God, why would He use an
   irrational process?"

   "God is not ordered at all," answers Petuch. "God works through chaos
   in our universe. That's the new way that science is going."

   In recent years, science has explored the concept of chaos theory to
examine the effect of irregularities in everything from planetary orbits
to the puff of wind beneath a butterfly's wing.

   "That's where my hair rises up," says DeRosa. "There are specific
   laws that control the universe. To me, chance is the antithesis of
   science. Chaos theory will lead to chaos."

   "All sciences are moving in this direction," offers Petuch. "I think
   this gentleman is a sincere person. But judging from the comments
   he's made, it seems he hasn't kept up with the literature. He's
   really lost track of where science has gone."

   If DeRosa doesn't consider evolution evil in itself, it's clear that
   he believes it can lead to evil.

   "Karl Marx saw Darwins idea's as a denial of God," he says. (As a
historical footnote, Marx sent Darwin an early copy of Das Kapital,
asking him to write an introduction. Darwin politely refused.)

   "Stalin uses the theory of evolution to perpetuate communist belief.
Hitler endorsed the idea of the survival of the fittest. Darwinism leads
not only to Hitler, but once you exclude the basic ideas of God, you
deny that there's anybody to be ac-countable to."

   "I don't like this us-versus-them mentality," Petuch replies.
   "Scientists are brave, dedicated, hard-working people who are trying
   to figure out the workings of the universe. We are studying the past,
   present and future to create a better world."

   AT THE END OF THIS LONG debate, what do we have? DeRosa's faith is
unshaken, and Petuch still holds firm to the principles of science.
Neither man has persuaded the other.

   "I really think it's a philosophy versus a philosophy," says DeRosa.
"Evolution is not repeatable, it's not observable, it's not testable.
Although Dr. Petuch would say he isn't, he is following a philosophy."

   "That's offensive to me," retorts Petuch. "I follow the scientific
   method period. Somebody's got to get out and stand up for this.
   Evolution is not based on beliefs its based on facts."

   DeRosa maintains that the workings of the universe can be understood
   only through careful study of the Bible.

   "I used to think that a belief in the Bible was counter-intelligent,"
   he says. "Now, it's set me free. Everything is connected, and it's
   connected to one source, the Word of God."

   And in his view, God doesn't have accidents.

   "When I look at nature," he says, "I see a highly integrated process
   that can't have come by chance."

   When Petuch looks at nature and describes his own work, you hear a
   similar sense of wonder at the mysteries of our world however it came
   to be.

   "Geologists can't just look at a column of rocks in the Grand Canyon
   or at myths of creation," he says. "We look at the whole picture of
   the Earth, the universe."

   "You've got to have curiosity. That's what makes us a human being
   that reaching, exploring. That's the beauty of it. That's the
   grandeur of God -- if there is a God, and you choose to believe it."



... Certified Rocket Scientist <NOT!>
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Conservatism of the Heart 1/3
Date: Mon May 05 10:34:10 CDT 1997
Message number: 126
Reply to message number: unavailable

 I'd appreciate any comments on this paper, including nitpicky ones
... wrote  this one up in a hurry, so I'm particularly concerned
about whether I followed up on my points properly.



Conservatism of the Heart: 
Pat Buchanan and the Poltiics of Authoritarianism

by Erik Schimek 
 

 Known as a maverick among conservative circles, Pat Buchanan is
one of today's most divisive politial figures. Appealing to both 
the socially-conservative core of the Republican party and the 
disenfranchised middle-class, his message is an odd mixture of 
economic populism and reactionary social revisionism. While 
embracing a strict conservative ideology in most respects, 
Buchanan does differ from his fellow ideologues in his authoritaian
tendencies, his economic populism and his blatant hypocrisy.

 Having worn many hats over the years, Buchanan has a strong record
of public activity: he has been a Presidential speechwriter, a 
newspaper columnist, and a televison commentator. He even became 
a cantidate himself, running for President in 1992 and 1996. After 
years of speaking and writing, his public image remains that of a 
strong and active conservative. 

 Like Buchanan, conservative Republicans hold many principles in 
common. They prefer individualism over collectivism, competition over
cooperation, merit over equality, Christianity over secular humanism,
faith over science, tradition over change, realism over idealism, 
natural law over conventional law, the private sector over the public
sector, and procedural equality over social democray.
  
 Conservatives also stress on the need for economic deregulation and 
lower taxes, which they believe would serve to free private industry
from  the shackles of big government. However, they do see the need
for  increasingly strong social regulation of abortion, sex,
pornography,  drugs, gambling, crime, immigration, etc.). 

 Buchanan's ideology is undeniably conservative, in that his beliefs
are very similar to those of the right wing of the Republican party. 
He supports lower and flatter taxation, state's rights, free and
loose  gun control laws and many other traditional conservative
issues.  He also believes in the need for an open economy, free from
government  intervention (at least for traditional American
companies).

 Buchanan also finds great value in Christianity and traditional the 
social order. In this realm, he is on the forefront of conservative 
leadership in America.

 Arguing that the excesses of liberal orthodoxy have destroyed the 
foundations of American society, Buchanan's harshest words are
reserved  for abortionists:

"Many of you grew up, as I did, in the '40s and '50s. Many of you 
may not remember those days. But America was a peaceful county then. 
We didn't have the kind of violence that we have today ... I believe 
the correlation between the violence in our society, and what has 
happened to 30 million unborn children, is absolute." [1]

This correlation between abortion and social violence is very typical
of modern conservative orthodoxy, which tends to blame liberals for 
dismissing the importance of traditional values and morals.

 This reaction against liberalism extends far beyond abortion:

"The altruists who launched the Great Society visited more social 
damage on black America than did segregation or the Depression." [2]

The Great Society is a source of evil, in that it robbed people of 
their work ethic and their self-sufficiency. By creating dependency 
on the government, the largess of the public dole has created moral
and social harm.

 Besides his strident stands on social issues, Buchanan is also one 
of the strongest defenders of the Republican party's conservative 
values. He regularly criticizes its leadership when they stray from 
the party's fundamental ideals. 

 One example of this could be found during the recent Presidential 
election, when Buchanan criticized presidential aspirant Bob Dole:

"Dole meekly went along with President Clinton's rash and foolish 
commitment of the U.S. army to police the truce in Bosnia's bloody 
civil war ... Now Sen. Dole appears to be sliding away from the 
conservative position on a balanced budget ... Resentment of Sen.
Dole's return to the politics of the deal is rising not only in the
Republican House, it is rising at the Republican grass-roots." [3]

Dole's moderate position on these critical issues, along with his 
willingness to compromise, marks him as a prime target for Buchanan.
By attacking Dole, Buchanan is defending the values of the
"Republican grass roots".

 His attacks on fellow Republicans are not limited to those whom
he is competing with, however - Buchanan has also made it clear
that he does not approve of Newt Gingrich's recent willingness to
compromise with President Clinton.

 Buchanan has a tendency to create strong feelings on both the 
right and the left. Any diversion from the fundamental tenets of 
conservatism has the potential to raise Buchanan's ire, which 
makes him a very divisive figure. 

 One internet author described Buchanan's philosopy this way:

"(Buchanan's) vision of the ideal America is White and Christian, 
bristling with weapons, strictly regimented, DEFINITELY Drug-Free 
(except for cigarettes probably), English only, with prayer, biblical
teaching and 'creationism' (cretinism) in the schools, and no 
abortions ever, for any reason. People who did not agree with these 
rules (in his dream world) would be deleted somehow, all Blacks, 
Mexicans, Jews, freaks and oddballs just edited out." [4]

While not entirly fair, this author does hook onto one of Buchanan's
most fascinating quirks - his tendencies towards authoritarianism.
In his views on power and democracy, Buchanan parts company with 
mainstream conservative thought and begins to slide towards fascism.

 This trend towards authoritarianism seems to have its roots in
Buchanan's  childhood:

"My father's religious beliefs, inculcated in Catholic schools,
permeated  everything. In my father's household, whatever Mother
Church taught,  that was it; there was no more debate." [5]

This home, stripped of "debate" and filled with the voice and
tone of Catholic ideology, was a strong influence on Buchanan's 
later political leanings. To this day, he continues to stress the 
need to teach strong morals and values to our nation's children:

"We have a crisis in American education because educators 
have lost sight of their goal ... to produce moral men and women ...
That is the goal of a Catholic education: The inculcation of values,
the shaping of conscience, the development of character, the
formation of souls ..." [6]

Catholic education is meant to teach children moral lessons, not
math and reading. These skills are secondary to the goal of 
"produc(ing) moral men and women".

 While it might be unusual for an individual to place the importance
of  biblical lessons and values over basic educational skills, it is 
certainly not authoritarian. But Buchanan goes farther - he wants to
bring these moral lessons into the public schools.

 Speaking of the need to improve education, Buchanan stated:

"[H]ow can we ever again succeed in educating children to become
moral men and women if, in America's public schools, we consciously
deny them all religious instruction, and deny them access to that 
primary source of morality, God's own word." [7] 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Mon May 05 10:35:05 CDT 1997
Message number: 127
Reply to message number: unavailable

 On other occasions, Buchanan is more overt about his belief that the
teachings of the bible must be brought into the public sphere:

"We would not deny children the healthiest and most nutritious foods,
lest their growth be stunted, and permanent damage be done. Yet, by
court order, we starve them of a diet of the greatest truths ever
taught ... Because teaching them the truth would violate their
rights." [8]

The boundaries between church and state have begun to blur. To
improve  public education, Buchanan advocates that educators use the
moral  lessons of the bible. The bible is essential, because its
teachings are  such an invauable and powerful tool, able to shape and
mold young minds and create strong and moral citizens.

 This "truth" that Buchanan speaks of, the light of revealed wisdom 
contained in the Christian Bible, is a universal morality which
all Americans should embrace and willingly indoctrinate their
children  into. Those who object to "the greatest moral code ever put
down on  paper" are dismissed as multiculturalists and moral
relativists, working to bring America down and destroy its cultural
strength and  unity.

 Dismissing boundaries between church and state in such a flagrant 
manner is symptomatic of a larger problem: Buchanan appaears to 
have little regard for our current form of Democracy. William Bennet,
for one, has accused Buchanan of "flirting with fascism". [9]

 Attacking the "democratist temptation, the worship of democracy as a
form  of governance," Buchanan writes:

"Like all idolatries, democratism substitutes a false god for the
real, a love of process for a love of country." [10]

This process that Buchanan decries is the process of
Constitutionalism: the Republican system of checks and balances, and
the protection of minority populations from the whims of the
majority. In particular,  the banishment of Christian symbols and
icons from the public sphere drives Buchanan into fits of rage.

 Writing on the despotism of the Federal courts, Buchanan stated
that:

"The American people were never consulted on whether they wanted
school prayer, Bible study, or the Ten Commandments out of their
schools and all expressions of religious belief expelled from public
life. The edict was handed down, without precedent in law, by a court
acting as arbitrarily as a Communist commissar." [11]

The true destroyers of Democracy, to Buchanan, are the Federal
courts. These courts have forced racial desegragation, removed prayer
from  the schools and legitimized pornography - all against the will
of the  people. These judges have overstepped their bounds by acting
in an  arbitrary manner, counter to the intent of the Constitution
and its  framers, and therefore must be removed from office. 

 Advocating the direct election of Federal judges, Buchanan's drive
is to remove the barriers in place in our system which serve to
protect minority peoples and viewpoints from the whims of the
majority. For  without a strong and independent judiciary, the
nation's cultural  majority would once again be free to use the
nation's public  institutions to spread their values and beliefs.

 If this appeal to the prejudices of the majority appears to be
somewhat  fascist, that should come as no surpirse - Buchanan has
praised the vision of several fascist leaders, including Adolf
hitler.

 Writing about the glories of the German fascist state in his 1977 
column, Buchanan offered praise for Hitler and his brave (if
genocidal)  leadership:

"(Hitler was) an individual of great courage...Hiter's success was 
not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an 
intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness 
masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen 
who stood in his path." [12]

A leader who understands his enemies is a man to be reckoned with, to
be sure. But it is a rare man who can appreciate the "extraordinary 
gifts" of Adolf Hitler.

 This admiration for Hitler is only the most shocking of Buchanan's
statements. On other occasions, he has praised the successes of
Spanish  dictator  Francisco Franco and communist witch-hunter Joseph
McCarthy.  Buchanan has also made a habit of defending accused Nazi 
collaborators, including Kurt Waldheim and John Demanjuk." [13]

 Buchanan not only admires the achievements of these authoritarian
figures, he'd like to see he same type of leader arise in America
today:

"Like Lincoln's army before Gen. Grant came east, the GOP has brave
soldiers but timid generals ... If the leadership does not pull
itself  together soon and lay out a battle plan to rally its
discontented,  disaffected troops, it is going to face a nasty
insurgency in its  own ranks. Vacuums never remain unfilled, and
vacuous leadership is  soon replaced." [14]
 
According to Buchanan, the party's weak and moderate leaders are a 
bane to the Republican cause, tearing the party apart. For the weak 
leadership that Buchanan sees in Dole and Gingrich is not only 
ideologically impure, it is also harmful for party unity. 

 When Buchanan attacks their failings, he is not only defending 
Republican ideals and values - he is striving to fill the "power 
vacuum" himself and lead the army of the GOP to victory.
 
 As much strength as Buchanan sees in the ranks of the Republican
party, he also recognizes that to build a true majority one needs a 
broader base of support.

Back as 1970, as a speechwriter for President Nixon, Buchanan wrote:

"We should aim our strategy primarily at disaffected Democrats, at
blue-collar workers, and at working-class ethnics. We should set out
to capture the vote of the 47-year-old Dayton housewife." [15]

These "disaffected democrats" are the key to building a new poliical
coalition - a coalition built on an ideologically pure message and
led  by strong and effective leaders.

 One of the areas in which Buchanan differs from his fellow 
conservative Republicans is in the realm of economics. Appealing
to the pocketbooks and patriotism of the "blue-collar worker",
Buchanan regularly attacks the international treaties and
multinational  corporations which eliminate American jobs and destroy
American  sovereignity. In this, he aims his appeal directly at the
middle-class voter.

 Attacking the corporations which export American jobs overseas, 
Buchanan writes:

"How did America's companies become the most competitive? By
ceasing to be so American; by becoming global companies ... The 
success of the new transnational companies has been paid for by 
the shrinkage of the U.S. manufacturing labor force ..." [16]

By seeking profit over patriotism, and by shrinking the U.S. 
manufacturing workforce, these once-proud corporations are
no longer American institutions - they are global behemoths,
sucking the lifeblood from the American economy, freed from 
their moorings by international treaties like NAFTA and GATT.
 
 Buchanan heaps scorn on those with complicity in this corporate 
sellout, including members of his own party:

"Is there anything Republicans will not grab off the shelf,
if it can be fitted into a container labeled "free trade"?" [17]

Favoring isolationism over free trade, Buchanan parts company
with his fellow Republicans on this issue and preaches the need
for a three-pronged test to weigh trade treaties against:

"Rather than making 'global free trade' a golden calf which we
all bow down to, and worship, all trade deals should be judged by
whether: a) they maintain U.S. sovereignty, b) they protect vital
economic  interests and c) they ensure a rising standard of living
for all our  workers. " [18]

By attacking this "golden calf", Buchanan is plaing into the
sentiments of the disenfranchised middle-class, many of whom have
lost their livelyhood to the demands of the new global economy.

 Buchanan's appeal to the disenfranchised middle class serves a
living  example of the "prestige interests" [19] which Max Weber
describes in his writings. These prestige interests are emotional
appeals to the  middle-class, a group lacking in power, prestige and
the power to improve their own positions.

 Buchanan emulates Weber's model in his speeches, by capitalizing on
the declining fortunes of the middle-class workers.  Lacking in
prestige, these workers can be hooked and engaged by an appeal to
their "prestige interests" - an appeal to their pride and pocketbook.

 By building a coalitian of these workers, along with his traditional
conservative constituency, Buchanan is striving to create a strong
and vibrant movement based on the principles of naive patriotism and
Christian culture. The goal of this coalition is a vision of economic
security, free from assaults on their traditional values and 
institutions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: All
Subject: Conservatism of the Heart 3/3
Date: Mon May 05 10:36:14 CDT 1997
Message number: 128
Reply to message number: unavailable

 Though overt in his intentions, one has to question whether Buchanan
is truly sincere in his appeal to the insecurities of the
middle-class. Unlike most conservative Republicans, Buchanan has a
strong record of hypocrisy - his highest credo seems to be his own
aggrandizement,  rather than any higher or nobler purpose.

 His most freqent and blatantly hypocritical acts arise from his
criticism of President Clinton. Buchanan freqently attacks the 
President's patriotism, gleefully playing up stories like "Filegate" 
and "Whitewater" in his columns and speeches.

 During the 1992 Republican Natonal Convention, he had this to say 
about Clinton's war record:

"When Bill Clinton's turn came in Vietnam, he sat up in a dormitory
in Oxford, England, and figured out how to dodge the draft." [20]

By sneaking off to England to evade the draft, Clinton was guilty of 
more than cowardice - he was guilty of unpatriotic acts against the 
nation.

 The problem with this logic, however, is that it comes from the lips
of Pat Buchanan - who has never served in the armed forces, in war or
in peace. Despite his rough-and-tumble patriotic style, and though he
was of age during the Vietnam War, Buchanan managed to evade service.
The reason generally given is a medical condition, but there are as
many stories about this as there are stars in the sky. [21]

 Buchanan also attacks President Clinton for his scandal-plagued 
administration:

"America may be about to witness yet another broken presidency ...
This week's startling confession by the vice president that he ran 
a boiler-room operation out of the West Wing may have started the 
rock slide that buries the Clinton presidency ... Last time anyone 
looked, giving government favors for campaign contributions was also 
a federal crime. Comparisons with Watergate are eerie." [22]

Odd that Buchanan should bring up Watergate, the scandal which
brought down President Nixon - a scandal with which he was intimately
involed:

"(Buchanan) recommended that Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign hire a 
political "prankster" to bedevil Democratic rivals ... wrote a White 
House memo recommending that Nixon burn the tapes of Oval Office 
conversations about the break-in and bugging of the Democratic 
National Committee office at the Watergate complex ... (and)
advocated  using the Internal Revenue Service against "leftist"
institutions." [23]

As one of Nixon's inner circle of advisors, Buchanan's role in the
Watergate scandal and coverup was very intimate. For a man with this 
kind of background to criticize Clinton for complicity in a unproven
scandal, particularly one in which it appears that the Republicans
are as guily as the Democrats, is the height of arrogance. 

 These kind of situational ethics are not uncommon for Buchanan. Even
his strongest beliefs, such as his patriotic economic populism,
are subject to debate when they conflict with his pocketbook:

"Buchanan has thousands of dollars invested in (companies) ...
which have laid off workers to boost profits or invested heavily in 
building plants outside the United States ... Stocks are a major 
component of the millionaire commentator's personal wealth." [24]

According to USA Today, Buchanan profits directly from these same 
companies which he decries for being unpatriotic and un-American; 
he profits from the decline of the working-class, the very group 
which he claims to have so much sympathy for.

 Buchanan does have core beliefs - he just doesn't let them get in
the way of his larger goals, whether they be money or power or
societal change. A patriot to the end, Buchanan is neither scared of
conflict nor militancy.

 Speaking of his early days on he Goldwater campaign, Buchanan 
writes:

"Every great movement--social, political, or religious--in its
infancy, is marked by militancy. Its faithful shine with a spirit of
sacrifice, a willingness to accept defeat and humiliation rather than
compromise principal. Its True Believers are impatient, to the point
of intolerance, with the half-hearted and the half-committed. He who
is not with us is against us. That is the way we were. " [25]

These days in the sun, riding high on the banner of ideologically
pure conservatism, hold great appeal for Buchanan. In many ways, he
strives to return to these salad days, when a fine moral man could
make his way through life free from social turmoil. Unafraid of
conflict, Buchanan is striving to create another great movement -
impatient, socially pure and militant to the core.

 Pat Buchanan is, in many ways, an ideologically pure conservative.
He values smaller government, strong Christian values and the 
dismantling of the social welfare state. But when it comes to his
embrace  of authoritarianism, his blatant hypocrisy and economic
populism, Buchanan  parts company with his conservative brethren and
charts his own path. Embracing the twin pillars of populism and
social conservatism,  Buchanan strives to create a coalition of
patriots led by strong and  vibrant men of character. This
coalition's goal is to create a nation of loyal American-borne
corporations, a nation of schools bristiling  with the joy of
Christian comraderie and worship, and a nation where traditional
values are unhampered by the blight of tyrannical  constitutionalism.


--------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Works Cited

[1] A Contract With the Unborn
        a href="http://www.buchanan.org/contract.html

[2] The Voice in the Desert
        http://www.buchanan.org/goldwatr.html

[3] Buchanan Rakes Dole
        http://www.buchanan.org/doledeal.html

[4] Pat Buchanan--Wolf in Pit Bull's Clothing
        http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/buch.htm

[5] Commencement Address for Christendom College
        http://www.buchanan.org/christen.html

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Of Truth and Tolerance....at Easter
        http://www.buchanan.org/easter.html

[9] William Bennett, "If I said what I meant, I'm sorry", Time, 
        April 3, 1995 p17

[10] Buchanan: In His Own Words
        http://www.igc.org/fair/buchanan-bigotry.html

[11] Defying The Despotism Of An Oligarchy
        http://www.buchanan.org/w_pat_fob.html

[12] Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: "Buchanan: In His Own Words"
        http://www.igc.org/fair/buchanan-bigotry.html

[13] "The Heresies of Pat Buchanan", Jacob Weisberg, The New 
        Republic, October 22, 1990, p22

[14] Where Have You Gone, Ronald Reagan?
        http://www.buchanan.org/pat_article08.html

[15] CQ's American Voter: "Buchanan Campaign Profile"
        http://voter96.cqalert.com/pat1.htm

[16] Revolt Brewing Among the Middle-Americans
        http://www.buchanan.org/revolt.html

[17] Is the Trade Issue Still Up for Grabs?
        http://www.buchanan.org/grabs.html

[18] Pat Buchanan on the Issues
        http://www.buchanan.org/pissue.html

[19] Weber, Max. "The Nation," in Nationalism, ed. Hutchinson, John
        and Smith, Anthony D. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 
        21-25.

[20] Text of Patrick J. Buchanan's Speech at the Republican National 
        Convention in Houston, Texas
        http://www.buchanan.org/speechtx.html

[21] "A Protectionist Without Protection", Jeanette Walls, Esquire 
        Magazine, May 1996, p16

[22] Another Broken President?
        http://www.buchanan.org/pat_article11.html

[23] Foster's Daily Democrat: "Buchanan's Call For Campaign Reform 
        Contrasts With His Watergate Testimony"
    http://www.fosters.com/FOSTERS/info/d1/d3/d2/d1/d7/public/pb1014a.htm

[24] USA Today Online: "Buchanan's investments called into question",
        "http://www.usatoday.com/elect/ep/epr/eprb027.htm"]

[25] The Voice in the Desert
        http://www.buchanan.org/goldwatr.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Thu May 08 12:06:13 CDT 1997
Message number: 129
Reply to message number: 127

DR> The true destroyers of Democracy, to Buchanan, are the Federal
DR> courts. These courts have forced racial desegragation, removed prayer
DR> from  the schools and legitimized pornography - all against the will
DR> of the  people. These judges have overstepped their bounds by acting
DR> in an  arbitrary manner, counter to the intent of the Constitution
DR> and its  framers, and therefore must be removed from office. 

As nutty as it may seem, I can actually side with this viewpoint to a certain 
degree.  America would be much more exciting if every city had it's own set of
laws and local customs.  Drugs would be legal in a few select cities (like 
berkely, LA, san francisco, etc.), some cities would be communist, some 
anarchist, some fascist, there would be "crime cities" like the pirate towns 
of history, there would be totalitarian-like cities (as I'm sure one Buchannan
would like to live in), etc.  This would provide a sense of Darwinism for 
culture, what doesn't work would eventually fade and lessons would be learned 
- but it wouldn't only affect an insignificant portion of the country.  This 
lends total freedom to individuals to A. join a community which fits their 
lifestyle or B. start their own community.

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THROCKMORTON
To: DAEDALUS RISING
Subject: Conservatism of the Heart
Date: Sun May 11 12:30:54 CDT 1997
Message number: 130
Reply to message number: unavailable


DR> Attacking the "democratist temptation, the worship of democracy as a
  >form  of governance," Buchanan writes:

DR>"Like all idolatries, democratism substitutes a false god for the
  >real, a love of process for a love of country." [10]

This has the possibility of becoming true.  I have seen city council
meeting where the council was more worried about following the process
than whether or not the action was right.


DR>This process that Buchanan decries is the process of
  >Constitutionalism: the Republican system of checks and balances, and
  >the protection of minority populations from the whims of the
  >majority. In particular,  the banishment of Christian symbols and
  >icons from the public sphere drives Buchanan into fits of rage.

If nothing else, one could say that the Christian faith is part of my
cultural heritage.  Since there can be no government support for my
cultural heritage there should not be any support for other cultures
either.  In other words no support for festivals/commemorations such as
Kwan Zulu or Cinco de Mayo.


DR> This admiration for Hitler is only the most shocking of Buchanan's
  >statements. On other occasions, he has praised the successes of
  >Spanish  dictator  Francisco Franco and communist witch-hunter Joseph
  >McCarthy.  Buchanan has also made a habit of defending accused Nazi
  >collaborators, including Kurt Waldheim and John Demanjuk." [13]

DR> Buchanan not only admires the achievements of these authoritarian
  >figures, he'd like to see he same type of leader arise in America
  >today:

Allow me to recommend "It Can't happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis as an
example of what this could lead to.

---
 þ OLX 1.53 þ The gene pool has no lifeguard

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Tue May 13 17:17:07 CDT 1997
Message number: 131
Reply to message number: 129

BT> would like to live in), etc.  This would provide a sense of Darwinism for 
BT> culture, what doesn't work would eventually fade and lessons would be learn
BT> - but it wouldn't only affect an insignificant portion of the country. 

 This would, in effect, turn society into some sort of laboratory.

 What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish family who
has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's children into the
Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in the Libertarian 
community who gets no education at all, or the small-business owner who has 
his shop "liberated" by the city's new socialist mayor?

 Is this the kind of democracy we want, with the will of the local majority 
running ramshod over the minority?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Throckmorton
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart
Date: Tue May 13 17:37:36 CDT 1997
Message number: 132
Reply to message number: 130

T> DR>"Like all idolatries, democratism substitutes a false god for the
T>   >real, a love of process for a love of country." [10]
T> 
T> This has the possibility of becoming true.  I have seen city council
T> meeting where the council was more worried about following the process
T> than whether or not the action was right.

 True, sometimes meetings do get bogged down in tedious detail. But this is
not a failing of democracy - communism, socialism and fascism all suffer from 
the same problem, a need for enforceable rules and paperwork.

 If that city council had been filled with fascists, would the result have 
been any different? 

T> DR>This process that Buchanan decries is the process of
T>   >Constitutionalism: the Republican system of checks and balances, and

T> If nothing else, one could say that the Christian faith is part of my
T> cultural heritage.  Since there can be no government support for my
T> cultural heritage there should not be any support for other cultures
T> either.  In other words no support for festivals/commemorations such as
T> Kwan Zulu or Cinco de Mayo.

 While culture and religion are often intertwined, most of the time it is not
too difficult to tell the two apart: Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are
culture. Rosary beads and the ten commandments are religion.

 I'd agree with you that public money should not go towards overtly religious
festivals, such as Lent or Passover ... although things get a bit more
complicated when these celebrations enter the realm of culture.  Two of the
most famous examples are Christmas and Easter, where I believe that the state
should avoid advocating or supporting any portions of that festival which are
overtly religious (like publicly-financed manger scenes), but should be free
to hold an Easter-egg hunt in the park. While both are connected to "Easter",
only one is overtly religious.

 I don't know much abotu Cinco de Mayo, but I suspect that it has become 
somewhat popularized, and is not a very religious festival for most 
attendees. As far as I can tell, it has become a popular excuse to drink 
and eat and dance. 

 Why bother trying to seperate all of this out? Because I don't beleive that 
it is healthy for a society to choose to promote one religion over another, 
even if that religion happens to be one which most people in the community can
resonate with and understand.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Wed May 14 17:02:56 CDT 1997
Message number: 133
Reply to message number: 131

DR>  What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish family wh
DR> has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's children into 
DR> Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in the Libertarian 
DR> community who gets no education at all, or the small-business owner who has
DR> his shop "liberated" by the city's new socialist mayor?

That's why these people would live within the society they find acceptable.
Can one honestly cry foul about the poor young American that lost his 
high-paying job because he happened to be living in Mexico?  Well there's an
interesting contradiction, he's not an American, he's probably a Mexican,
living in Mexico, making Mexican wages.  I'm not talking about an overnight
transition, I'm talking about an ideal form of state.  It could be on Mars
for the theoretical application.  The small-business owner wouldn't have his 
shop "liberated", because there wouldn't be a _new_ socialist mayor, I'm 
talking about starting from scratch.  Something of a "what-if" scenario of 
American/world inhabitation, which could be mimicked on new frontiers.

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SANDMAN
To: DAEDALUS RISING
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the H
Date: Wed May 14 21:02:20 CDT 1997
Message number: 134
Reply to message number: unavailable

 -=> Quoting Daedalus Rising to Big Teebo <=-


 DR> This would, in effect, turn society into some sort of laboratory.

 DR> What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish
 DR> family who has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's
 DR> children into the Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in
 DR> the Libertarian  community who gets no education at all, or the
 DR> small-business owner who has  his shop "liberated" by the city's new
 DR> socialist mayor?

 DR> Is this the kind of democracy we want, with the will of the local
 DR> majority  running ramshod over the minority?

     DAMN those Bill of Rights! Damn them to hell!

... Good printers do it without wrinkling the sheets.
___ Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: SPECTER
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart
Date: Fri May 16 11:42:45 CDT 1997
Message number: 135
Reply to message number: 132

DR>  If that city council had been filled with fascists, would the result have 
DR> been any different? 

yes, one person would have stood up, took control, and shot everyone who 
opposed them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THE INVISIBLE MAN
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 3/3
Date: Sat May 17 03:59:46 CDT 1997
Message number: 136
Reply to message number: 128

DR> [1] A Contract With the Unborn
DR>         a href="http://www.buchanan.org/contract.html
DR> 
DR> [2] The Voice in the Desert
DR>         http://www.buchanan.org/goldwatr.html
DR> 
DR> [3] Buchanan Rakes Dole
DR>         http://www.buchanan.org/doledeal.html
DR> 

    Isn't it lovely how to find anything bad about presidential candidates and
companies you normally have todig deeply and muckrake, and then validate the 
data? Not so with Pat Buchanan, I remember persuading a friend against him, 
100% of my information that I used against him was from his web site :). Just 
interesting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: COSIMA
To: Sandman
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the H
Date: Sun May 18 17:16:50 CDT 1997
Message number: 137
Reply to message number: 134

S>  DR> What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish
S>  DR> family who has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's
S>  DR> children into the Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in
S>  DR> the Libertarian  community who gets no education at all, or the
S>  DR> small-business owner who has  his shop "liberated" by the city's new
S>  DR> socialist mayor?
*
ahhhh. we all do shit like this all the time. part of my taxes go for road 
repair, although i didn't own a car for years. my taxes for for schools, altho
i don't have any kids. i pay a f*cking stadium tax every time i have a drink 
downtown, altho i've never been to the metrodome and don't intend to go. and 
if pohlad gets his stupid twins stadium deal, you can bet your assets that 
we're all going to be paying for that,one way or another. we all pay- and then
we hope that when *we* need to use things, other people will have been kicking
in for us. it's called living in a society.
-=c=-

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Big Teebo
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Sun May 18 17:54:47 CDT 1997
Message number: 138
Reply to message number: 133

DR>  What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish family wh
DR> has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's children into 
DR> Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in the Libertarian 
DR> community who gets no education at all, or the small-business owner who has
DR> his shop "liberated" by the city's new socialist mayor?

BT> I'm not talking about an overnight transition, I'm talking about an ideal
BT> form of state.  

 Case in point why I'm a history major and not a political science major:
I'm just too damned practical. 

 I don't think in terms of "what's ideal", I'm too grounded in the real world,
trying to make things work here. Which doesn't make what you say wrong, it's 
just wise to recognize that we're coming at this from two different
perspectives.

BT> shop "liberated", because there wouldn't be a _new_ socialist mayor, I'm 
BT> talking about starting from scratch.  Something of a "what-if" scenario of 
BT> American/world inhabitation, which could be mimicked on new frontiers.

 The problem being, there are no more new frontiers. Assuming we colonize the 
sea, Antarcita or the moons and planets, it will be a highly regulated 
environment unsuited for libertarianism or any form of stand-offish 
government. :-)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: The Invisible Man
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 3/3
Date: Sun May 18 17:56:31 CDT 1997
Message number: 139
Reply to message number: 136

TI>     Isn't it lovely how to find anything bad about presidential candidates 
TI> companies you normally have todig deeply and muckrake, and then validate th
TI> data? Not so with Pat Buchanan, I remember persuading a friend against him,
TI> 100% of my information that I used against him was from his web site :). Ju
TI> interesting.

 The juiciest material isn't on his web site, though ... just his more recent
"mainstream" writings.

 But yeah, he does have a lot of info on that site, which is one of the few 
respectable things I can say about him.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DAEDALUS RISING
To: Cosima
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the H
Date: Sun May 18 18:03:45 CDT 1997
Message number: 140
Reply to message number: 137

S>  DR> What do you say to the victims of these experiments - the Jewish
S>  DR> family who has to pay taxes to support the indoctrination of the city's
S>  DR> children into the Catholic faith, the underprivileged kid growing up in
S>  DR> the Libertarian  community who gets no education at all, or the
S>  DR> small-business owner who has  his shop "liberated" by the city's new
S>  DR> socialist mayor?
C> *
C> ahhhh. we all do shit like this all the time. part of my taxes go for road 
C> repair, although i didn't own a car for years. my taxes for for schools, alt
C> i don't have any kids. i pay a f*cking stadium tax every time i have a drink

 Libertarian rhetoric aside, there is a fundamental difference between paying
taxes and having your property confiscated. The first is something which you
and the rest of the community vote on, either directly or indirectly. It is 
also something which is relatively steady - you don't jump from 10% to 90%
overnight. Confiscation of property, on the other hand, is an overt violation
of contract/deed laws.

 As for paying for taxes on things you don't use ...  While I personally
thing our priorities are fucked (look at how much of the GDP we spend on
cars, for chrissakes), that's part of living in a democratic society.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: BIG TEEBO
To: Daedalus Rising
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the Heart 2/3
Date: Mon May 19 10:15:18 CDT 1997
Message number: 141
Reply to message number: 138

DR>  Case in point why I'm a history major and not a political science major:
DR> I'm just too damned practical. 

And I'm a silly billy, but luckily people still listen to me. :)

DR>  The problem being, there are no more new frontiers. Assuming we colonize t
DR> sea, Antarcita or the moons and planets, it will be a highly regulated 
DR> environment unsuited for libertarianism or any form of stand-offish 
DR> government. :-)

Yes, that is a problem.  But I have often thought of planets, distant 
galaxies, etc. being the new, limitless, frontier.  Of course the colonization
of these would take a large jump in technology, so here I sit it out getting 
cool ideas - maybe I'll write a book.

Another frontier may be autonomous space stations as opposed to habitable
planets.

*teebo

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: THROCKMORTON
To: DAEDALUS RISING
Subject: Re: Conservatism of the H
Date: Mon May 19 14:54:13 CDT 1997
Message number: 142
Reply to message number: unavailable

DR>T> DR>"Like all idolatries, democratism substitutes a false god for the
  >T>   >real, a love of process for a love of country." [10]
  >T>
  >T> This has the possibility of becoming true.  I have seen city council
  >T> meeting where the council was more worried about following the process
  >T> than whether or not the action was right.

DR> True, sometimes meetings do get bogged down in tedious detail. But this is
  >not a failing of democracy - communism, socialism and fascism all suffer fr
  >the same problem, a need for enforceable rules and paperwork.

DR> If that city council had been filled with fascists, would the result have
  >been any different?

In the situation I am thinking of, a decision would have been made.
It's been 6 months and the city council is still trying to decide what
the correct process should be.

---
 þ OLX 1.53 þ Your E-Mail has been returned due to insufficient voltage

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From: THROCKMORTON
To: ALL
Subject: Pantera
Date: Sun Sep 28 11:02:56 CDT 1997
Message number: 143
Reply to message number: unavailable

O.K., I admit that I am hopelessly out of touch with modern culture.
But somebody help me out.  The Friday St. Paul paper had an article
about people jumping out of the balcony at the pantera concert.  Why
would somebody do that.  If there's nobody down there it's a good way to
hurt yourself.  If there are others down there It's a good way to hurt
them.

---
 þ OLX 1.53 þ Save the ales

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From: LEMON
To: ...
Subject: ...
Date: Sun Sep 28 21:30:16 CDT 1997
Message number: 144
Reply to message number: unavailable

    I went to the show with Neurosis and unfoortunately got balcony seats. I 
jumped down. The reason why I did was because I wanted to be on the floor 
fucking up skinheads rather than headbanging like some 70 hair-rock impotent 
balding loser. I jumped feet first and was dandy.

    I don't believe I hurt anyone. Not like I give a shit.

                                  -lemon