BEWARE THE HUNTER
Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter...(Genesis 10:8-11).
Deliver thyself from the hand of the Hunter; and as a bird from the hand (the snare) of the fowler...(Proverbs 6:5; Ps.124:7).
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ESAU, a cunning hunter...(Genesis 25:27; Hebrews 12:13-17).
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And Isaac, who was old, and whose senses failed him, favored Esau (the Natural man)...(Genesis 27:1-41).
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Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord; yet I loved Jacob (the spiritual man).
And I hated Esau (the natural man), and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons in the wilderness...(Malachi 1:1-10).
The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence His soul hateth...(Psalm 11:5).
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And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
The first man (Esau) is of the earth, earthy: the second man (Jacob) is the Lord from heaven.
As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and is the heavenly, such are they also which are heavenly. (See Ecclesiastes 3:18-20).
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly...(1 Corinthians 15:45-49).
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"As they went they met a man who trained dogs to hunt other creatures. He said to the man, Why? The man said, By this I live, and what profit is there in any of these creatures? They are weak, but the dogs are strong. And Iesus said, Thou lackest wisdom and love. Lo, every creature which God hath made hath its end and its purpose...
And for thy living, behold the fields yielding their increase, and the fruit-bearing trees and herbs: what needest thou more than these which honest work with thy hands will not give thee?
Woe to the strong who misuse their strength. Woe to the crafty who hurt the creatures of God. WOE TO THE HUNTER, FOR THEY SHALL BE HUNTED." The Gospel of the Perfect Life XIV.6,7.
There are certain cultures and individuals in the earth who are permitted by Nature to hunt and eat meat (to live, that is, in shamanic, sacred symbiotic and ceremonial relationship with the animal kingdom) withing incurring Karmic debt. All others do so at the very expense of their own souls.
VIOLENCE is the key word here...Genesis 6:11-13; Psalm 55:9-14; Proverbs 4:17; Prov.13:1-3; Isaiah 59:4-9:
Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hands.
And they covet fields, and take them by VIOLENCE; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage...(Micah 2:1,2)...
BEWARE OF THE HUNTER
"The Hermitage...The house had something of the awkward appearance of a fortification, which was hardly a matter for wonder, since it was built originally as a blockhouse when Indians were bad in Tennessee. It had since acquired a sheathing of white painted clapboards to cover its log walls, and a shake roof. But these improvements failed to add measurably to the symmetry or congruity of the place.
Yet it was a home, a well-loved home, where people lived, and went about their daily tasks...And though there were in Tennessee many finer houses, this home was the most notable in the state, because it was the dwelling of a man nobody really knew or quite understood, AN UNPREDICTABLE MAN; A MAN FULL OF SECRET VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE OF THE MIND AND VIOLENCE OF THE BODY; A VOLCANIC MAN (a criminally psychotic man); a man who by the very force of his personality, and without making any special effort, turned the thoughts and speculations of other men toward himself--ANDREW JACKSON." Magnificent Destiny, by Paul I. Wellman, pp.35-38.
Habakkuk, chapter 1...(KJV).
The NRA and other Second Amendment adherents believe that this is what the present American government is trying to do to them--that they are the oppressed, that it is their right to bear arms, to hunt, and to protect themselves from predators, that are being attacked. But in reality this is what the founders of their own American order of things, and the framers of their revered Second Amendment itself, did to the original inhabitants of this land (and which they are still doing):
For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans (America), that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not their's...(Habakkuk 1:6).
Thus the word is judgment now, as it is written: In the cup which she has filled, filled to her double. (Revelation 18:6-8). The word is fear, as it is written:
I will also choose their delusions, and I will bring their fears upon them; because when I called none did answer; when I spake they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that which I delighted not...(Isaiah 66:4).
NRA ARMED WITH PRIDE
(This article is accompanied by a photo of Charleton Heston dressed in Western hat and hunting gear)
There's a cultural war raging across America. Anti-gun media, politicians, educators and thought police are storming YOUR values. Assaulting YOUR freedoms. Killing YOUR self-confidence. If you don't believe it, then why are you ashamed to tell people you're a gun owner? Fight back. ARM YOURSELF with the courage of your convictions. Be proud of who you are and what you believe. Only then and only together CAN WE DEFY THEM AND DEFEND OUR WAY OF LIFE. Join me. Join us. JOIN TODAY.
SLAMS HER LIRR MOVIE
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA...Charleton Heston called Barbara Streisand the "Hanoi Jane of the Second Amendment" yesterday, continuing his criticism of the "Long Island Incident," a TV movie she produced.
Heston, the ACTOR and National Rifle Association vice president (Now president), said the movie...misrepresented the NRA and the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which deals WITH THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.
"WE ARE TALKING ABOUT A SACRED DOCUMENT IN AMERICA, AND TO DISTORT IT AND MISSTATE ITS REALITY IS A VERY SERIOUS ERROR," Heston said at a news conference at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel. The Associated Press.
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Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
Why should you be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: THE WHOLE HEAD IS SICK, and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
Your country (the state of mind in which ye reside) is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land (your physical and mental faculties) strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers...(Isaiah 1:4-7).
THESE THINGS ARE SELF-EVIDENT
by Marie Cocco
On Dec.7, 1993, a deranged man named Colin Ferguson opened fire on a Long Island Railroad train as it approached the Merillon Avenue Station, killing six commuters and wounding 19 others in a random, bloody rampage. Among the dead was Dennis McCarthy of Mineola and among those gravely wounded was his son Kevin.
Ferguson had traveled to California to purchase his weapons, and equipped it with an assault-style magazine and Black Talon bullets, which explode on impact and shred human tissue. Their manufacturer has since pulled them from the market (the whole head is sick)...
Carolyn McCarthy, widow of Dennis and mother of Kevin, channeled her grief and her rage into political activism, becoming first, a gun control advocate, and now a member of the U.S. Congress who is a leading proponent of gun control.
She is, according to politicians of both parties (the whole head is sick), so lacking in partisanship and so unwavering in her commitment to doing what she believes is right that she not only gets a few things done but often annoys the heck out of career politicians who chaff at her refusal to play their game (their whole head is sick)...
So you would think that an organization like the National Rifle Association and its top gun Charleton Heston would simply let the movie pass (the whole head is sick).
Because there is nothing the NRA can say that will change the truth about what happened on the LIRR that day, or what happened atop the Empire State Building four years later and what has happened in schoolyards and spring dances around the country lately...New York Newsday.
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TO THE EDITOR...The National Rifle Association's latest brainstorm is that it should be given "one large American city" in which to try out its ideas on how to bring the murder rate down: encourage residents to own guns and learn self defense; BE UNCOMPROMISINGLY TOUGH WITH CRIMINALS. (the whole head is sick)...Gaithersburg Md.
The solution to violence in America, of course, has nothing to do with punishing and containing the criminal element in the street, or in even imagining that such a thing is possible. For God hath formed all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of evil. (Proverbs 16:4). The sword to slay, dogs to tear, fowls of heaven, and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. (Jer.15:3): Is there crime in the streets of America?
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people be not afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?...(Amos 3:6).
But rather it has to do with repenting of the American state of mind...
The Syndicate
There is violence in America because violence is rooted in the American state of mind. As the Mind thinks, the Body acts. The body (in this case the people) behaves as the Mind (in this case the leaders of the nation) thinks. When there is violence and criminal behavior among those at the top (spiritual wickedness in high places), it will just as certainly manifest itself everywhere below, among the people. It is natural karma--the Law of Nature itself. America is founded in violence, in the insane use of guns and munitions (in outright rebellion against the teachings of Christ). And it has sustained itself through two centuries of crime and violence against both man and nature--pillage, rape, genocide, slavery, oppression and injustice, not only against its own peoples--in the name of Christ-- but against peoples everywhere throughout the earth (the whole head is sick). America is now reaping as a nation what it has sown as a nation. It is the law of Nature, the law to which the natural mind is subject. Only through grace and repentence are the laws of Karma suspended. (In a recent book entitled The Unfinished Presidency the author says that Jimmy Carter is the only one of the recent American presidents that is not criminally insane. But even he, despite all his lofty religious rhetoric, is an American first. And true to the American ideal he is also a warmaker of the highest order. The whole head is sick.
"The American spirit is an intangible yet personal part of all our lives. It has been our lifeblood both in war and peace...it is found in all strata of our society.
In this booklet, we strive to present the major documents which form the foundation for the American spirit.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution embody not only the spirit of America, but also the assurance that the way of life we hold so dear will continue...for generations to come.
To those persons--past, present, and future--who cherish and maintain the concepts of freedom for which our country stands, we dedicate the 'Your Land and Mine' booklet.
O Beautiful for Spacious Skies
O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea...Your Land And Mine, Compliments of Western-Southern Life, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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HAST THOU KILLED AND ALSO TAKEN POSSESSION? (1 Kings 21:19).
THE RAPE OF THE WEST
A Review of Timothy Egan's Lasso The Wind.
By Timothy Foote
"In my book a pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, cut down the trees, killed the Indian who owned the land, and called it progress." Timothy Egan is quoting a surprising source, the celebrated cowboy artist Charles Russell. But he could as easily be quoting himself. In Lasso The Wind, Egan, a national correspondant for the New York Times, alternately comes on as a Jeremiah with notebook and running shoes...
Egan grew up in Washington State. In an earlier book, The Good Rain, he wrote eloquently about what has been done to salmon, Indians and the environment in the Pacific Northwest. Now, on a larger canvas, he rages against big ranchers, mine owners, dam builders, real estate moguls, timbermen and, of course, the dead-hand grip still exerted by the Legend of the Old West, which he sees as "pitiful excuse for history," a brief, shameful period, (1846-1890) driven by greed, lawlessness and attempted genocide... The New York Times Book Review.
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"After the treaty had been signed by the requisite number to make it law (Sitting Bull) was asked by a white man what the Indians thought about it. With a burst of passionate indignation he replied, 'Indians! There are no Indians left now but me.' However misguided he may have been in thus continuing a losing fight with the inevitable, it is possible that from the Indian point of view he may have been their patriot as he was their high priest. He had been mercilessly denounced as a bad man and a liar; but there can be no doubt that he was honest in his hatred of the whites; and his breaking of the peace pipe; saying that he 'wanted to fight and wanted to die,' showed that he was no coward. But he represented the Past. His influence was incompatible with progress, and his death marks an era in the civilization of the Sioux. In the language of General Miles, 'His tragic fate was but the ending of a tragic life. Since the days of Pontiac, Tecumseh, and Red Jacket no Indian has had the power of drawing to him so large a following of his race and molding and wielding it against the authority of the United States, or of inspiring it with greater animosity against the white race and civilization."
On the morning of December 29, 1890, preparations were made to DISARM the Indians preparatory to taking them to the agency and thence to the railroad...Shortly after 8 oclock in the morning the warriors were ordered to come out of their tipis and deliver their arms. They came forward and seated themselves on the ground in front of the troops. They were then ordered to go by themselves into their tipis and bring out and surrender their guns. The first twenty went and returned...with only two guns. It seemed evident that they were unwilling to give them up...The (subsequent) search (by the soldiers) had consumed considerable time and created a good deal of excitement among the women and children , as the soldiers found it necessary in the process to overturn the beds and other furniture of the tipis and in some instances drove out the residents. All of this had its effect on their husbands and brothers, already wrought up to a high nervous tension and not knowing what might come next. While the soldiers had been looking for the guns Yellow Bird, a medicine man, had been walking about among the warriors, blowing on an eagle bone whistle, and urging them to resistance, telling them that the soldiers would become weak and powerless, and that the bullets would bounce off the sacred 'ghost shirts' which nearly every one of the Indians wore...
From the number of sticks set up by the Indians to mark where the dead fell, as seen by the author a year later, this one volley must have killed nearly half the warriors. The survivors sprung to their feet, throwing their blankets from their shoulders as they rose...Although many of the warriors had no guns, nearly all had revolvers and knives in their belts...The very lack of guns made the fight more bloody, as it brought the combatants to close quarters.
At the first volley the Hotchkiss guns trained on the camp opened fire and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children, who had gathered in front of the tipis to watch the unusual spectacle of military display. The guns poured in 2-pound explosive shells at the rate of nearly fifty per minute, mowing down everything alive. The terrible effect may be judged by the fact that one woman survivor, Blue Whirlwind...received fourteen wounds, while each of her two little boys was also wounded by her side. In a few minutes 200 Indian men, women, and children, with 60 soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground, the tipis had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic to the shelter of the ravine, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers and followed by a raking fire from the Hotchkiss guns, which had been moved into position to sweep the ravine.
There can be no question that the pursuit was simply a massacre, where fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. On this point such a careful writer as Herbert Welsh says: 'From the fact that so many women and children were killed, and that their bodies were found far from the scene of action, and as though they were shot down while flying, it would look as though blind rage had been at work." The Ghost Dance, by James Mooney, pp.230, 31.
HARVEST TIME IN AMERICA
By William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States
"Another year has passed on our American journey. THE SEASONS HAVE COMPLETED ANOTHER CYCLE, AND IT IS HARVEST TIME IN AMERICA. Once again, millions of us will gather with family and friends to give thanks to God for the many blessings that He has bestowed upon us.
This Thanksgiving Day, as every day, we are grateful for the gift of freedom, for the vision made real by our Nation's founders and preserved by the courage, vigilance, and sacrifice of generations of Americans. We are thankful for the bounty and beauty of this great land, which has welcomed so many to its shores across the years. We cherish the love of our families and friends. We value the opportunity to provide for our children's future with the fruits of our honest labor. And like the Pilgrims who celebrated Thanksgiving 300 years ago, we thank God for bringing us safely to the threshold of a new world, full of exhilarating challenge and promise. (CONTINUED)...
Genesis 15:12-16; Ezekiel 32:1-6...(KJV).
...In this new world, our children are growing up free from the shadows of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Nations once held captive by Communism are learning the lessons of liberty and democracy. A revolution in technology has brought the world closer together and holds the prospect of greater knowledge and prosperity for people across the globe.
More than three centuries of change and growth separate us from the Pilgrims and their Native American friends who sat down together for their Thanksgiving meal (read the true history of these events). But the example and experience of those early Americans still hold great meaning for us today. They remind us that God's love strengthens and sustains us, both as individuals AND AS A NATION. They remind us that everyone has something to contribute, and that we are richer when we learn to share. They teach us a simple but powerful lesson that each new generation of Americans must learn and pass on: We need one another. Like the Pilgrims, if we are to flourish in our new world, we must do so not as isolated individuals, but as members of a family, one America, sharing our gifts and leaving no one behind."
SALVADOR ATROCITY UNDENIABLE NOW
by Anthony Lewis
Once in a rare while a writer examines a debated episode of recent history with such thoroughness and integrity that the truth can no longer be in doubt. Mark Danner did just that in a long article that took up last week's issue of The New Yorker.
Danner's subject was the massacre in December 1981 in the Salvadoran village of El Mozote. Over the years politicians and journalists have differed bitterly over what happened there--who did the killing, indeed whether there was a massacre at all. The argument is now over.
After the Danner report, no rational person can doubt that Salvadoran government forces carried out a massacre. They killed hundreds of people in El Mozote and other hamlets nearby: men, women, children, infants. They killed with savagery that is hard even to read about.
Chepe Mozote was 7 years old at the time, one of a group of children taken by the soldiers to a playing field near the school. He told Danner:
"I didn't really understand what was happening until I saw a soldier take a kid he had been carrying--maybe 3 years old--throw him in the air and stab him with a bayonet. They slit some of the kid's throats, and many they hanged from the tree...The soldiers kept telling us, 'You are guerrillas and this is justice. This is justice.'"...
THE KILLERS WERE FROM THE U.S. TRAINED ATLACATL BATTALION. (At the School of the Americas in Georgia). Their commanders, making a drive through territory where rebel forces had been, decided to kill everyone on the theory that the local population had nurtured the rebels. In fact, El Mozote was a stronghold of evangelical Christians, who were FIERCELY anti-communist...
Reagan administration officials denounced the massacre reports as false. The Wall Street Journal attacked the reporters as "credulous" victims of communist propaganda...
Drawing on newly released documents and his own follow-up interviews, Danner traces how the U.S. government's misleading denials of the massacre were created.
After the newspaper stories, the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador sent two men to investigate the alleged massacre...They got within a few miles of El Mozote, but the Salvadoran government forces taking them would go no further.
Both men were convinced, from talks with refugees nearby, that something terrible had happened...But they had no firsthand evidence, and that was what the embassy cable to Washington said: "No evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians." The Reagan administration used that line to deny the massacre stories. Its interest was not in truth but in getting congress to continue military aid to El Salvador (the whole head is sick)...
Some of the Americans who have denied the massacre have come to regret their actions and said so. Other politicians and editors have been unrepentant. I hope they will read Danner's report. THEY MIGHT TRY TO READ ALOUD, TO THEIR FAMILIES, THE PASSAGES ABOUT THE KILLING OF THE CHILDREN OF EL MOZOTE.
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Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, and to get dishonest gain.
And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken (for them but against them).
The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and the needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own ways have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God...(Ezekiel 22:27-31).
CARNAGE
Endless gun horror
Four more mass shootings were in Monday's news: In Baltimore, five women were found shot to death in a home. Police said they were killed execution-style by gunmen using rapid-fire weapons.
At Fort Gibson, Okla., a thirteen year-old boy with a 9mm pistol opened fire on classmates at a middle school. He wounded four children, including a girl shot in the face. Police said the shooter had "A BLANK LOOK" and told them he didn't know why he did it.
At Sacramento, Calif., a Laotian immigrant quarreled with his wife, who left their apartment--whereupon the man shot five of their children to death, then killed himself.
At Las Vegas, four robbers stuck up a bar, but off-duty police in the club opened fire. The shootout killed one of the intruders, a teenager, and wounded six customers.
THAT'S DAILY LIFE IN THE MOST GUN-POLLUTED SOCIETY AMONG ADVANCED NATIONS.
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley wants a crackdown on concealed weapons (the whole head is sick). He wants national registration of all guns and licensing of owners (the whole head is sick). He also wants to ban "Saturday night special" stickup pistols--"small guns that are only used to kill people." And he wants trigger locks and background checks of buyers at gun shows (the whole head is sick).
Bradley outlined his plan last week (the whole head is sick) during an address in Cleveland, in a neighborhood where a 16-year-old girl on her way to school was shot to death by a stalker...
Another worthy plan is Project Exile, which uses federal gun laws to put gun offenders in prison for long terms (the whole head is sick). It cuts the murder rate wherever it is adopted...With the news filled with gun horrors, America must take steps to protect people. The Charleston, W.Va. Gazette.
VIOLENT CULTURE
It was an almost unimaginable crime, allegedly committed by unimaginably young boys: Arkansas middle-school students were flushed from their school by a false fire alarm, and then mercilessly picked off, one by one, by a 13 year-old and his 11 year-old cousin, dressed in camouflage fatigues and crouching in the woods. Now four of their classmates, all girls, are dead, along with a vibrant and beloved TEACHER who used her body to keep the bullets from hitting yet another child.
"THERE'S NO EXPLANATION IN MY OPINION WHY AN 11 YEAR-OLD OR A 13 YEAR-OLD WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS," was the reaction of the local sherrif...It's an understandable reaction at first, perhaps, but to accept that there is "no explanation" is to despair at ever finding an answer, much less ever doing something about the rising tide of violence in this country...
WE SIMPLY MUST START HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT WE HAVE CREATED HERE, A CULTURE SATURATED WITH CONFLICT, WORSHIPFUL OF WEAPONRY OF ALL KINDS, where little things become big issues to be settled in big ways. THOSE BOYS DIDN'T DRESS UP IN CAMOUFLAGE AND ARM THEMSELVES TO THE TEETH BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT IT UP THEMSELVES; THEY WERE TAUGHT THIS BEHAVIOR, taught these responses by the adults in their lives--adults who continue to rationalize their own bad example by saying things like "There's no explanation." The Standard Times, New Bedford, Mass.
WHEN CHILDREN KILL
Last weekend another child shot up another group of teachers and schoolmates, this time at a middle-school dance in Edinboro, Pa. Suddenly a troubling coincidence looks like a terrifying pattern. Three other times this school year, students have ambushed and murdered peers and teachers; five dead in Arkansas last month, three in Kentucky in December, two in Mississippi in October.
Plainly, the nation is missing some important thing. We know that access to firearms is a component of these calamities. CHILDREN EQUIPPED WITH IMMATURE EMOTIONS AND ADULT WEAPONS are a common denominator in each case. We also know that the killers give off signals--threats to kill; warning to friends to stay away; ASSERTIONS THAT PERCEIVED INJUSTICES SOON WOULD BE VIOLENTLY RESOLVED.
But guns are everywhere in rural and suburban America, and they always have been. And immature youngsters are bound to bark and bluff. The same utterances a decade ago--"I wish you were dead"; "I'm going to kill you,"--reliably meant nothing.
SO WHAT'S CHANGED? Maybe there's an unknown Darkness in some children, A RECESSED PSYCHOSIS triggered by an intense and sometimes lurid coverage of such events. (What events?) It's easy to accuse the psycho-posing Marilyn Mansons and leering Jerry Springers of misdirecting young minds incapable of compromise.
SURE, GUNS PLAY A ROLE (the whole head is sick). We need child-access laws (the whole head is sick), and we need them enforced (the whole head is sick). And children must be taught to take every threat seriously. But in the pooling light of another bloody ambush (this article was written before Columbine), such pragmatism feels inadequate. When children take the lives of others to validate their own, you know that some awful threshold was crossed long before any trigger was pulled. So we have to wonder; what did we fail to teach those children? AND WHAT DID THEY FAIL TO LEARN?
FROM ADOLESCENT ANGST TO
SHOOTING UP SCHOOLS
by Timothy Egan
MOSES LAKE,Wash...Well before the school shootings in Oregon and the South prompted A SEARCH TO THE DEPTHS OF THE NATIONAL SOUL, a 14 year-old honor student...walked into his algebra class in this hard little farm town and shot his teacher in the back and two students in the chest.
Guns and violent videos were always around the boy's house. HE LEARNED HOW TO FIRE WEAPONS FROM HIS FATHER. And he picked up a pose from the Oliver Stone movie "Natural Born Killers," telling a friend it would be "pretty cool" to go on a killing spree just like the two lead characters in the film.
Dressed in black and armed WITH THREE OF THE FAMILY FIREARMS, he entered Frontier Middle School...and turned his guns loose on his fellow ninth graders. "This sure beats Algebra, doesn't it," he said...as he stood over a dying boy who was choking on his own blood...
A sign soon appeared on a nearby school, bearing a single word: WHY? Of late, that question has been asked around the nation, following a spate of multiple-victim school shootings over the last nine months...People wonder whether something aberrant and terrifying--like a lethal virus, some have called it--is in the bloodstream...
From this case and interviews with police officers, prosecutors, psychologists and parents of the attackers--as well as the boys own words--several patterns emerge...
The killers were able to easily acquire high-powered guns, and in many cases their parents helped the children get them, either directly or through negligence. Guns with rapid-fire capability, usually semi-automatic rifles that can spray a burst of bullets in a matter of seconds, were used in the incidents with the most victims...
"When you look at the overall pattern, it's a pretty serious wake-up call," said Dr. Ronald D. Stephans..."We are seeing an increasing number of violent, callous, remorseless juveniles."
"What's behind it," Dr, Stephans said, "seems to be a combination of issues that range from the availability of weapons to the culture our kids immerse themselves in..." New York Times.
C.I.A. PLOTTED KILLING OF 58
IN GUATEMALA
by Tim Weiner
WASHINGTON, May 27_ The Central Intelligence Agency, plotting to overthrow the Guatemalan Government in the early 1950s, drew up a "disposal list" of at least 58 key leaders, and it trained assassins to kill them, newly declassified documents show.
The coup, code-named Operation Success, toppled the freely elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, and installed the first of a series of right-wing leaders friendly to the United States.
The assassination plans were never carried out, according to an official C.I.A. history of the coup. "Until the day that Arbenz resigned in June 1954 the option of assassination was still being considered," the history concludes...
The 1954 coup was the first chapter in the C.I.A.'s long and continuing liaison with the Guatemalan military. Those ties deepened over the decades during a scorched-earth campaign against a small Communist insurgency. The civil war in Guatemala touched off in part by the coup, ended only five months ago. More than 100,000 civilians were killed.
GUATEMALA DIGS UP ARMY'S SECRET CEMETERIES
by Larry Rohter
SAN MARTIN JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala _ At the height of this country's long civil war, travelers dreaded the military checkpoints on the road just south of here. Passengers who lacked proper documents or aroused the suspicion of soldiers for whatever reason were routinely yanked from buses, cars, or pickup trucks and never seen again...
More than 100,000 people were killed during the 36-year conflict, which ended with the United Nations-supervised peace last December. Another 40,000 disappeared and are presumed dead... "People have estimated that there are 400 of these clandestine cemeteries spread all over the country, but that is absurd." The director of the forensic group's office in the capital said, "There are many, many more than that, the result of a systematic policy of extermination."
Thus far, 25 clandestine cemeteries have been excavated by the scientists, most of whom studied at universities...anticipating a lifetime of recovering artifacts from Maya temples and tombs. Instead they find themselves sifting through bits of bone and cloth belonging to the Maya's modern-day descendants, who bore the brunt of Guatemalan Army brutality.
A PRIESTLY MISSION
by Bob Keeler
In perhaps her greatest film role, Susan Sarandon won a 1996 Oscar for playing Sister Helen Prejean, the antideath-penalty nun who wrote the book "Dead Men Walking." Now Sarandon narrates the story of Prejean's friend, the Rev, Roy Bourgeois, in a TV documentary this weekend.
The hour-long film is named "FATHER ROY, INSIDE THE SCHOOL OF ASSASSINS"
The school in question is the United States Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. The film tells how Bourgeois, a Purple Heart winner in Vietnam, later became a Maryknoll missionary, saw repressive regimes in Bolivia and El Salvador, and came to believe that Latin American soldiers trained at the school were far too often involved in atrocities. He is now serving a six-month prison sentence for entering Benning...to protest the school's presence...
The film shows Joseph Reeder, a Department of the Army official, arguing that the school should not be judged on a few bad graduates, but on its curriculum, including what he calls exemplary human rights training. In contrast it shows graduates of the school talking about training for torture.
Richter hopes the film can help people decide and act. "In the democratic process," he said, "you inform people and you hope they will respond in taking constructive action based what they see."
Those who have eyes, let them see.
VIETNAM WAR NEWS STILL TOUCHES A NERVE
by Danny Schecter
There seems to a scandal a week in the press--about the press. Now it is CNN's turn. The network has retracted and apologized for a June 7 broadcast called "Operation Tailwind," a heavily hyped story charging that a secret U.S. military unit deployed sarin, the deadly nerve gas, against Vietnamese troops and suspected U.S. defectors in the illegal war in Laos 28 years ago...
So was nerve gas used? I'm still not clear, but I can't rule it out, perhaps because I remember past cover-ups of bombings, burnings, napalm, Agent Orange, the C.I.A.'s use of poisons in assassination attempts, the murder of civilians, the My-Lais, war crimes and blatant lies that have made for a continuing credibility gap.
When the Pentagon starts denying Vietnam horrors, I reach for my truth detector. The only way we will get the real facts about suppressed information is when we establish a South Africa-style Truth Commission with subpoena power. Then we can discover what the military brass knew and when they forgot they knew it.
ARRESTING SCHOOL VIOLENCE
CLINTON SUGGESTS NATIONAL MEETING
NEW ORLEANS__President Clinton is calling a special White House conference for October, just before congressional elections, focusing on the "terrible toll" that school violence is taking on students and teachers...
"We either have discipline in the classroom, or we have disorder and, quite often danger," Clinton told the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers. "Learning cannot occur unless OUR schools are safe and orderly places where teachers can teach and children can learn," he said.
Tight curfews, strong anti-truancy measures, wider use of school uniforms AND ZERO TOLERANCE FOR GUNS in schools, Clinton said, are important steps toward improving behavior in classrooms and improving learning. The Associated Press.
NO, NIMROD WASN'T LIGHT ON HIS FEET
WASHINGTON__"Nimrod Dancer," the name of the operation that dispatched 2,000 U.S. combat troops to Panama, is the latest of a long list of fanciful, hokey, and sometimes incongruous codes used by the Pentagon to describe its missions...
Nimrod, the Bible tells us, was a mighty hunter. Was he a dancer too?
"No," said a Pentagon spokeswoman. "These names aren't supposed to mean anything. They have absolutely no significance on the face of it."
To make sure the names are totally random, a computer picks them, she said. But once chosen, the combination of words, the number of their syllables or some other pattern does have significance for "those who need to know."
Before computers got in on the act, some operation names actually had meaning the public at large could understand...In a more figurative, although still understandable name, Operation Niagra...conducted an average of 300 bombings daily in support of a besieged Marine base at Khe Sanh, Vietnam. "The bombs rained down like a water fall, get it?" Associated Press.
And he (the Beast of Revelation) doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on earth in the sight of men...(Revelation 13:13). GET IT?
PLANNING FOR PEACE OR INVASION
Washington__ A ground invasion of Kosovo is on the agenda today as the nation's military leaders and its commander in chief meet to discuss strategy for a campaign in its third month of air attacks...
In a commencement address to the 804 men and 140 women graduating in the Air Force Acadamy's class of 1999, the president also announced yesterday he was deploying 68 more aircraft, including four dozen fighters, for the current NATO mission. That will bring the total number of U.S. aircraft supporting the air strikes to 769.
"Some things are worth fighting (killing) for," Clinton said. Combined News Services.
INSIDE THE TRENCH COAT MAFIA
THE CREEPY WORLD OF THE HS NERDS WHO KILLED 13
THE NEW YORK POST
One was a nerdy loner looking for someone he could lead, and he found a willing follower in the other.
The pair who were inseparable through their years at Columbine HS--playing endless hours of "death match" computer games--made a terrible kind of history with a rampage Tuesday that killed 13 and injured dozens. Some friend saw trouble brewing--but no one expected such violence.
Harris was a military brat who moved from town to town whenever his father, a now-retired major in the Air Force, changed assignments... An old classmate of Harris said, "my mouth just dropped" when he saw his former friend turned killer.
"He was a typical kid," he said. But in Colorado, Harris, 18, became known for his enjoyment of explosives...They said he liked making "dry ice bombs," and "potato launcher" explosives, using the vegetable and an aerosol product. "It didn't seem like a big deal at the time...He was AN upbeat guy, but something changed."...
MONSTERS' *WEAPONS OF CHOICE
These are the types of weapons and explosives authorities found..
Crude 6-inch bombs...Foot-long pipe bombs...Grenade-type contraptions--some with timers--made with propane cylinders...A 9mm semiautomatic assault-type rifle...Two sawed-off shotguns...A handgun of unknown caliber...Nine empty ammunition clips and numerous shotgun shells. The New York Post, Thursday, April 22, 1999.
* We ourselves do not subscribe to these epithets. The thought of these two young men being used as instruments of both judgment and instruction should bring tears to our eyes and sorrow to our heart. Not only for them, and their victims, but for the tens of thousands of other young people who are being led away by the spirit of Nimrod in our time to commit the same atrocities in other lands. And for their victims, and for all others upon whom the judgments of this age are falling. For all of these do I implore the God of Judgment.
VERY VIOLENT INITIAL HIT
TARGETS CHOSEN WIDE, PULVERIZING AIR ATTACK LIKELY
by Susanne M. Schafer
WASHINGTON _ First hit would be Iraq's network of air defenses and communications. After that, Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard--in particular those troops closest to the border with Kuwait--and if possible production sites for chemical and biological weapons.
The overall strategy: Flatten as much as possible, as quickly as possible. And keep it up for days, maybe for weeks.
"It's going to be a very different war; it's not a ground war this time," said Gen. John Sheehan, the retired four-star Marine Corps general who headed the U.S. Atlantic Command.
"THE OPENING HOURS WILL BE VERY VIOLENT" he predicted. The Associated press.
GROUP HERE PROTESTS BOMBING
by Tom Campbell
About the time Baghdad was bracing for another night of U.S. bombing, protesters were lining up outside the U.S. Courthouse in Richmond displaying signs with logans such as "Violence begets violence, begets violence" and "Don't Shed Iraqi's Blood For Me." (One read: "576,000 CHILDREN DEAD IN IRAQ").
The General Strike Collective, calling itself a grass-roots group that confronts injustice and oppression, staged the noontime demonstration yesterday to complain that U.S. military action against Iraq is "an act of political brutality that is unlikely to achieve its goals."
When Santa Claus walked up the Main Street steps on his way to the Courthouse Christmas party, he dropped small gifts of candy over the railing to the protesters' children on the sidewalk below.
The disparity of images--planes dropping bombs and Santa dropping bags of candy--made protester Ione Dusinberre burst into tears.
"I'm very upset," she said. "This is hardly the way to celebrate Christmas--bombing Iraq. We are bombing Iraq. The children there are suffering. (And dying). The Richmond Times Dispatch.
Madeleine Albright, reminded of the untold suffering being experienced by Iraqi families, and the increasing death rate among children, because of America's policies toward that nation, was asked if it "was worth it?" SHE THOUGHT BRIEFLY, AND REPLIED, "YES."
CLINTON, NATO, WARN MILOSEVIC
'CLOCK IS TICKING'
by Roy Gutman
WASHINGTON _ President Bill Clinton, preparing Congress and the public for U.S.-led airstrikes against Yugoslavia, said Friday, that NATO must act to secure future future peace in Europe and should not wait for another Bosnia-style massacre of civilians to occur.
He said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic "stands in the way of peace" and has already assembled 40,000 troops in preparation for an attack on the mostly-Albanian province of Kosovo...
"Whatever threshold they need to cross has been crossed," Clinton said of Milosovic's forces. "With all the troops that have been massed and what we know about their plans...I would hate to think that we would have to see a lot of other little children die before we could do what seems to me the clearly right thing to do to prevent it...
"I do not believe that we ought to have to have thousands more people slaughtered and buried in open soccer fields before we do something."
A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways...(James 1:8).
"THE BAIT HAS BEEN TAKEN: NATO AND THE U.S. ARE HEADED DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF EVER INCREASING COMMITMENT IN YUGOSLAVIA." TIME, APRIL 26, 1999.
Not only in Yugoslavia, but now in the Middle East, Central Asia and Korea, as well as in Africa and Central America. The Grand Chessboard? Indeed, and the Grand Chessmaster has the pieces now spread out upon the face of the Earth, preparing for the Final Checkmate...Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39...(KJV) Look directly into the mouth of the Dragon in Chapter 3.
CLINTON: BEWARE HISTORY'S TURN OF WHEEL
by James P. Pinkerton
To build support for his Kosovo policy, President Bill Clinton has played seemingly every historical-rhetorical card: World War I, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam--even the struggle against hate crimes and discrimination against gays and lesbians. But Clinton's orgy of analogy only proves, as Alexander Pope wrote nearly three centuries ago, "a little learning is a dangerous thing"--and so drink deep, the poet advised, or drink not at all from the spring of wisdom.
Clinton's arguments show that he has learned the contradictory lessons of the last century of statecraft and that he agrees with all of them. The most poignant of these historical references is World War I, which was triggered by an assassination in the Balkan city of Sarajevo, just 100 miles from Kosovo.
ONE BY ONE IN THE SUMMER OF 1914, THE GREAT POWERS OF EUROPE WERE PPULLED BY THEIR ALLIANCES INTO THECAULDRON OF CONFLICT...
Serbia is no strategic threat to America. But that doesn't mean that Milosovic is completely without retaliatory capacity; it was Serb terror that precipitated World War I and, since enemies tend to have long memories, an act of vengeance (For vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord...Deut.32:35-42; Heb.10:30,31) could come in a year, a decade, or a century.
Americans have gotten used to push-button conflicts in which we suffer virtually no casualties. But our power, however well-intentioned and well-aimed, feels far different to those who have been on the receiving end of a cruise missile or who think they may be next. IF CLINTON UNDERSTOOD HISTORY AS WELL AS HE CLAIMS TO, HE WOULD BE MORE COGNIZANT OF THE COST TO A PROUD POWER WHEN THE HISTORICAL WHEEL TURNS. AS IT SURELY WILL.
NATO TO CARPET BOMB YUGO
by Richard Sisk and William Goldschlag
WASHINGTON _ Ten B-52s will conduct old-fashioned carpet bombing of Serb forces in Kosovo despite risks to civilians, Defense Secretary William Cohen said yesterday.
The B-52 Stratofortresses--each hauling 70,000 pounds of "dumb" gravity bombs lacking modern guidance systems--will go after large staging areas for troops and concentrations of "artillery and other types of weapons," Cohen said.
He acknowledged the risk of "collateral damage" to civilians, adding "WE WILL DO OUR BEST to make sure we minimize it."...
The NATO air campaign has relied almost exclusively on precision-guided weapons in its first 37 days. But the Air Force is running short of air-launched cruise missiles, with fewer than 80 left in the inventory.
LETTERS
TIME, April 26, 1999
Despite his air of ridicule in describing Clinton's disbelief in the efficacy of conflict resolution (bring in the other Global Warmaker), he said this is the only lasting way of resolving the situation in Kosovo. The use of armed conflict to settle differences throughout the centuries is what led to the current situation. Fighting has not brought a lasting peace; it never will. War means winners and losers, and losers mean bitterness and desire for revenge. With war comes death and destruction and children's growing up without parents and siblings, scarred and fearful. War perpetuates further acts of violence. The cycle is endless. Anna Cassilly, Chapel Hill, N.C.
YES, IT'S TIME TO GET ANGRY
Just when it seems we've become immunized to the steady diet of murder reported in the daily news, we're handed a new shock. And it leaves us angry, perplexed, and yes, frightened. Now we have kids killing kids. In Jonesboro, Ark., four students and a teacher were killed Tuesday, when they were ambushed by two middle-school students.
What happened in Jonesboro would be horrific enough if it were a freak event. Instead its part of a deadly pattern. In December, a boy started shooting into a prayer circle at a high school in West Paducah, Ky., killing three and wounding five. In October, a kid in Pearl, Miss., fatally shot two fellow students.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he's "angry" about the school shooting. "It makes me angry not so much at the individual children that have done it as much as angry at the world in which such a thing can happen....What kind of world is that?" (he says).
It's a world where children are raised in a gun-crazy society. We firmly believe in the right of Americans to own guns for hunting, target shooting and, yes, for the protection of their homes and families (the whole head is sick). But with that right goes a responsibility (the whole head is sick). Part of that responsibility involves teaching youngsters about the rights and wrongs of guns (the whole head is sick).
Of course this governor is perplexed and angry. Not only is he both for and against the same things--the insane use of lethal weapons--he refuses to acknowledge the Universal Hand of Divine Judgment in any of these affairs, and thus cannot put any of it in the context of the greater World-picture. After all, his is only one of Fifty other gun-obsessed states whose leaders cannot make the connection, who continue to decry the killing while they continue to train up their children in the ways of killing...
Now show them the king they have chosen...1 Samuel, chapter 8 (KJV).
Of course they do not think they do. They rationalize it instead, as if the taking of another life as a policeman or a soldier was different, or that it was accomplished on some higher moral plain. Thus these leaders and parents disobediently and continually pass their children through the Fires (of War and Violence) by training them up in these ways, and by sending them away to kill, and to die...and for what? For some very high purpose we have been told, "OUR Way of life" as they call it, but not, of course, simply to sustain the global commercial interests of the rich and powerful of the earth. Let us open our eyes, God is already judging this way of life. (Understand Revelation, chapter 18. It is speaking directly of the United States of America in the 20th century). We have been somehow convinced along the way, not simply by our adulation (fear) of these violent men--these political leaders--but by our own religious teachers as well, that we should willingly and heroically perform the civic and military duties that are prescribed for us IN THE NAME OF CHRIST, despite the words that say:
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils...(1 Corinthians 10:20; see 1 Samuel 8:6-20)
__________
Deliver me O Lord from the evil man, preserve me from the violent man, which imagine mischief in their hearts. Continually they are gathered together for war. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders poison is under their lips...(Psalm 140)
CHILD'S PLAY
LEARNING WHAT IT'S LIKE TO
PULL THE TRIGGER
COMPUTER VIOLENCE ARE YOUR KIDS AT RISK?
Some Video Games are Teaching Children to Kill For a Thrill
by Stephan Barr
Dinner was almost ready when the killing occurred. The father wandered into the living room of his home in Leawood, Kan., one evening last September. His ten-year-old son, and a 12-year-old friend were sitting in front of a large-screen television set. They were playing a video game they had rented called Goldeneye 007, one of the top-selling titles of 1998. (Don't forget Mortal Combat).
Standing behind the boys, he saw the video, rated T (Teen) for ages 13 and older, depicted the shooter's point of view, with his large gun jutting into the bottom of the TV frame. After a few minutes the friend cornered an unarmed opponent and held the gun to his head at point-blank range. "You can't get away!" the boy said with a maniacal (demonic) sneer, taunting the character on the screen, "You're mine!"
The boy pushed the button and shot the character in the face. Blood splattered on the lab coat of the character as he whirled and fell...
Chilled by the child's obvious glee, the father ordered the boys to turn the game off. "This game is disgusting,"`he said sternly..."I'm not going to invite somebody into my house to teach kids to kill.
MURDER AND MAYHEM
Video games have become a pervasive form of entertainment in the 1990s. Today an estimated 69 percent of American families own or rent video and computer games. Most are harmless entertainment (?), but in far too many of the most popular ones, kids are acting out realistical violent experiences on their TV and computer screens. They hare severing heads and snapping spines in Mortal Kombat IV. They are paying a go-go dancer to flash her breasts and then blowing her away in Duke Nukem 3D. They are scorching the high school band with a flamethrower until they burn to death in Postal.
"These are not games any more," says Rick Dyer, president of the San Diego based Virtual Image Productions and an outspoken critic of titles with violent and sexual content. "THESE ARE LEARNING MACHINES. We are teaching kids in the most incredible manner what it's like to pull the trigger. The focus is on the thrill, enjoyment and reward. What they are not learning is the real-life consequences...
Makers of the more violent games are pushing the outer limits of savagery and depravity. One of the most hotly anticipated videos is the sequel to CARMAGEDDON...In CARPOCALYPSE NOW, your victims not only squish under your tires and splatter blood on the windshield, they also get on their knees and beg for mercy, or commit suicide. If you like, you can dismember them...
POTENTIAL FOR HARM
When it comes to the effects of video games on children, there's a double standard in the industry: While publishers trumpet educational games in helping develop kid's learning skills, they discount that violent games can have baser influences on behavior and attitude. "There has been no evidence to show that video games increase violence in children," says Pat Becker of Electronic Arts, the industry's largest publisher. (And this, because this industry as well as the American people at large believe that the level of violence that already exists, and particularly state-sponsored violence in almost all of its forms, is normal social behavior, and therefore pretends to see no abnormal, or appreciable rise in what to them is actually standard behavior)...
"With video games kids don't just observe an aggressor rewarded; they experience the direct reward," says Stanford communications professor Donald Roberts. "Engaging in these activities rather than watching them increases the potential for the negative effects to take hold."
INDEED, SOLDIERS TRAINED TO KILL IN COMBAT USE THE SAME BRUTALIZATION AND DESENSITIZATION TECHNIQUES NOW USED TO ENTERTAIN CHILDREN. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman..."a military expert on the psychology of killing," notes: "Every time a child plays a point-and-shoot video game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex skills as a soldier or police officer in training."
"The media are probably more powerful than we realize," says...David Walsh. "And if parents are (spiritually) responsible for caring for their children, then our definition of "caring" has to keep pace with a changing media world. The Reader's Digest, January 1999.
WAR GADGETS
"You can tell that the Pac-Man generation of whiz kids is taking charge of the Pentagon. Among the high-tech gizmos moving from the drawing board to the battlefield is the Army's Howitzer--projected spy camera that will snap pictures of damage done by the first round of shelling, helping retarget the next round. The Air Force (using similar technology) has plans for an inexpensive and tiny bomb or missile that can knock out moving targets like tanks and stationary sites such as antiaircraft missile sites.
FIRST IT'S ABOUT KILLING
by Russell Baker
The military exists to kill people in large numbers. Its press agents prefer to say, "No, it exists to prevent such mass killings." It does so, they say, by being ready and willing to kill in large numbers.
And so, this being the land of the free, and the home of the press agent, instead of naming it the War Department, we prettify reality by calling it the Defense Department, while referring to death as "body count."
Mushmouth talk of this sort produces slogans like "Peace is Our Business" for B-52 crews whose actual business is to kill multitudes by dropping nuclear bombs at official command.
Historically, our military killing work has been inflicted exclusively on men. Men who hated it were forced to do it anyhow.
Such men must always constitute a great majority, since (1) most men instinctively shrink from killing people, and (2) most men fear the prospect of being killed or maimed, which are high probability risks of the job. Commanders sensibly pack their armies with males young enough to think themselves immortal.
Until recently few women have shown much zest for this ghastly toil. Now, however, they clamor for official license to kill and be killed, just like all those wretched men...
What we have here is a cockamamie perversion of the otherwise sensible principles of the Feminist movement. What was to be hoped for from feminism was a maturing influence on the essentially boyish, game-playing nature of American life...
MACHO MILITARY MAKES COMEBACK
ALL AROUND US WE SEE SIGNS THAT THE JOHN WAYNE MILITARY IMAGE MAY BECOME AN ICON RATHER THAN A JOKE
by Michael Medved
Recent motion picture box-office returns confirm a surprising and significant national trend: A quarter century after the Vietnam War's demoralizing conclusion, America has renewed its love affair with macho men in uniform. Despite well-publicized attempts to feminize our military, despite all the efforts by a kinder, gentler defense establishment to deploy its personnel as peacekeepers and social workers, the public prefers though, no-nonsense fighting men...
Many factors may contribute to the new attitude toward the military. For one, the fascination may stem from the fact that the armed forces have never seemed so distant...from the population at large. Despite the obvious public interest, in fact, recruitment levels remain dangerously low. We also live in an era nearly ten years removed from the confusing dangers and mass killings of a major war.
The comback of the military personality (in films) may also connect with a reborn interest in manliness in general--with testosterone recently making the cover of Time magazine. After eight years of honoring SNAGS (Sensitive New Age Guys) from the White House to your house, we all seem hungry for an older male image--of discipline, self-sacrifice, outspokenness, honor and unabashed patriotism. These are characteristics that our military, despite all efforts to keep up with the times and the trends, never quite managed to forget. USA Today, May, 15,2000.
KENT STATE, THEN AND NOW
IN THE WEEKS LEADING UP TO THE COMMEMORATION, THE MEMORIAL REMAINS A PLACE FOR VISITORS AND STUDENTS TO REFLECT ON THE EVENTS OF MAY 4, 1970
Three-Part Dramatic Presentation Gives Mother's View of May 4
by Adrienne Wise
A girl screams, kneeling at the side of a dead man. She sings the anthem of a generation and its lost innocence. Four mothers comfort each other after each lost a child in a brutal shooting. The room was silent except for the pounding of keys on a hidden piano...
These scenes were part of a three-part presentation held Wednesday afternoon. It included "Kent State: A Requiem," a play written from the perspective of slain student Bill Schroeder's mother. "Four Mothers," a dance and oral presentation from the perspective of the mothers of the four students, and "The Meditated Reality of the Kent State Incident," a discussion panel on writing the truth of May 4.
The play opened with a slideshow of the 1960s, with images of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and pro-war protests. The sounds of the times, including Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" and "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," played while the images flashed before the audience.
Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Bill Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer came on stage, talking about the problems of the period, as if spirits visiting present day.
The play told of the events of the weekend and the actual shooting on May 4. Many hints also were given about the conspiracy of the Ohio and federal governments against the protesters. The dance and oral performance described the emotions and reactions of the mothers of the slain students. The words spoken were from actual documents written by the mothers.
PEACE, LEARN IT, LIVE IT, TEACH IT
LIVING IN MAY 4's SHADOW
Kent State Staff Reporters
Once again, the eyes of the nation are on Kent State University as it observed another milestone anniversary of the events that earned it a lasting place in American history.
Thirty years have passed since the volley of gunfire (from the rifles of the Army National Guard) that claimed the lives of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer and wounded nine other KSU students on a sunny afternoon on May 4, 1970. And, more than a generation later, questions remain about what happened at Kent State.
In the 30 years since that day, the shootings have been acknowledged as a turning point in the protests over the Vietnam War that ripped this nation apart. What happened at Kent State "brought the war home" to many Americans and drove home the need to bring that long and bloody misadventure to a close...
What happened on May 4, 1970 was a tragedy, the result of a series of events which spiraled out of control to a bloody conclusion. The historic distinction that Kent State bears as a result is not a welcome one, but it is one the university as an institution, and its students, as individuals, have had to grapple with for three decades...
Like the people of Oklahoma City and Littleton, Colorado, the Kent community appears fated to relive a terrible moment of its history on a regular basis in the national spotlight. The media spotlight will end today, at least for a while, but nothing can erase May 4. 1970 from Kent's history.
For many the highlight of these observances was the Dance Performance on the 3rd of May, when several members of the student dance troupe appeared among those of us milling and conversing about the campus grounds, in a choreographed display of military close-order and rifle fire drill. The performers then led the observers to the parking lot where the four students were slain that fateful day, and where the entire dance team was waiting. The next stage of the performance was a heart-stirring reenactment of the chaos, the panic, the defiance of that day, and the ensuing grief everyone felt as the dancers spiraled around the places where each of the students fell. Then the crowd of observers were led by the dancers hand-in-hand across Blanket Hill where the demonstrations began on the 4th, and down onto the commons where the soldiers of the national guard were assembled that morning. The performance continued and ended there. Tears of deep emotion and stunned silence were evident everywhere as the dance came to its conclusion about a half hour later. Four students were left lifeless on the field, as the rest of the performers walked away, in every direction, off the field, and back onto the campus, back, they would have us all understand , to their own private lives and personal careers--back into the same system that had just slaughtered their own fellow students. Each, of course, was left free to interpret it all for themselves. To many of us it was clear. The dancers were portraying the spirit of forgetfulness that has gripped America since those days.
NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER
Mark Your Calendar, May 4, 2000
(These have forgotten. Actually they haven't even understood yet):
Thursday, May 4th, marks the 49th annual National Day of Prayer. The theme is "PRAY2K," AMERICA'S HOPE FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM" and is based on Romans 12:12, where we read: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."
As America embraces the new century, prayer is our greatest hope--not just one special day a year, but every day of our lives. God is moving in a powerful way and you can play a significant role through your participation in praying for OUR nation and its leaders.
Your prayers have the power to transform your neighborhood, city, state, and yes, YOUR country. How can you begin to do this? Exercise your CONSTITUTIONAL right to pray publicly. From its inception, this nation was founded on the timeless principle of freedom. It's a precious privilege and a gift, but if we do not exercise our rights we may lose them... Tri-State Christian News, The Gospel in Action, April 2000.
MILLION MOM MARCH
MOTHER'S DAY RALLIES FOR GUN CONTROL WILL MOBILIZE A NATIONAL ACTIVIST NETWORK, ORGANIZERS HOPE
By Wendy Koch
Mary Leigh Blek had never been active in politics. She was a stay-at-home mom who organized PTA events and lived in a gated community in Orange County, California. But that was before--before June June 29, 1994, the day her 21-year-old son Matthew was murdered with a cheap handgun in New York City, the day, she says, "pure joy" was taken from her life.
"I realized I was not immune to gun violence," says Blek, a Republican who is the volunteer president of the board of directors for the Bell Campaign, a national gun-control group. She'll take her message to Washington on Mother's Day, May 14, when she'll join other parents for what is being billed as the Million Mom March...
The rallies might not succeed in prodding Congress to pass new gun laws this year, and critics are skeptical of a lasting impact. "Marches in Washington are many," says the National Rifle Association's chief lobbyist, James Jay Baker, who doubts it will change the dynamics on Capitol Hill...
"If this Congress doesn't act, we'll elect a new one," says Donna Dees-Thomases, a New Jersey mother and part-time publicist who founded the march. Dees-Thomases got the idea for the march in August after watching TV news coverage of a shooting at a Los Angeles day camp that looked like one her two daughters attend. The image haunted her: "I couldn't stop thinking about those kids." She applied for a march permit, hoping to harness what she called the "mystical power of mom."...
"My feeling is these big demonstrations are kind of tiresome," says Phyllis Schlafly, a social conservative known for battling the Equal Rights Amendment during the 1970s. "You get the impression they are there for the media. They show up, the cameras are there, and then they're gone."...
Regardless, scholars say the results of any mass demonstrations might not be known until years later. Even then, they say, it is difficult to point to the protest as the reason for change, legislative or otherwise.
The Vietnam Moratorium Rally of Nov. 15, 1969, for instance--with a crowd of 600,000, perhaps the largest protest in the capital's history--might never have grown so large had it not been for a far more more modest demonstration four years before...
And although Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech might have made the civil-rights march of 1963 the most memorable in the capital's history...the more modest marches in the South, particularly in Selma, did more to prompt passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
"We're going to keep the momentum up," promises Steve Young, one of the march organizers. We are encouraging all the million moms to keep active back in their hometowns and states." Young is certain the impact of the march will extend beyond Sunday. How can he be sure? "I went to D.C. in the spring of 71 to protest the war in Vietnam," he recounts..."That march was basically the turning point," he says. "That's the kind of energy the Million Mom March has." (SHOW THEM THE KING THAT THEY HAVE CHOSEN).
As I lay in bed at night I often ponder depths and height,
Of mountains, sky, and oceans vast, Of the days of now, of times long past.
I wonder about births and growths, and timely fruits, Of babies, trees, seeds and roots.
I see the Moon reflect the Sun And somehow know the two are one.
How high is high, and where is low, The earth cries out and longs to know.
The spirit flies to heights above, Where truth unfolds in God's pure love. Nancy Elizabeth Guaracci.
MORNING - MOURNING
I turn and stretch, only half-conscious of the sun peeking in, dancing gaily in rythm with the gentle wind...Ummm, and I snuggle warmly and securely within my deliciously wrinkled bed.
Oh the heat is intense, the night spent only partially in sleep and mostly alert, waiting and listening. The sweated soil sticking uncomfortably on my back. Gees a foxhole makes a lousy bed. The hot sun is pure hell.
Let's see, half past ten. Gee I better get going. Got to pick up the kids at pre-school and then it will be time to pick up Charlie at the station. Boy, the days go fast. We hardly have any time together, especially on Thursdays. That's Charlie's bowling night, and Friday's my night. I wish the days were longer.
Man, it must be nearing 6 at least. A few hours to mail call. Gaud, I wish I could be with Mary and the kids. The kids! Why I'll bet Tommy is walking by now. And hell, little Beth must be so-high, in first grade. Damn, the days are so long. Dear God, my head aches from the noise here. My heart aches for the waste here. Damn it, I wish this day would end. N.E.G.
RE-ENACTING WACO
By Al Guart
The stage is set for a controversial re-enactment of the deadly 1993 siege of Waco at the Branch Davidian compound--complete with tanks, submachine gun fire and exploding grenades.
The federal judge presiding over a wrongful-death suit filed by relatives of cult members killed at the end of a 51-day standoff with federal agents has ordered the re-enactment at Fort Hood, Texas.
Seventy-four followers of David Koresh died in a raging blaze at the complex. (Including wives and children).
The lawsuit charges that the government caused the fire by blasting the building with incendiary tear gas for nearly six hours, then shooting and ramming it with tanks.
The suit also charges that the government used excessive force, prevented cult members from escaping the burning compound by shooting at it and was negligent for not having plans to fight the blaze.
According to a plan approved by the U.S. Attorney General, the gassing was supposed to continue for 48 hours, with the tanks then moving in if no one surrendered.
In the re-enactment, men in camouflage and painted faces will run alongside of the tanks; eight gunmen will fire submachine guns and pistols, and grenades will explode in a field filled with shattered glass... according to court documents.
The FBI has insisted it did not shoot at the compound--that heat flashes seen on infrared footage of the event were caused by sunlight hitting debris, not gunfire--and that the re-enactment will prove it.
But the plaintiffs argue the FBI is trying to stack the deck. The agency is now asking to be allowed an 8-by-10-foot tent covered with a reflective "space blanket" to guarantee flashes from sources other than gunfire.
"It is clear that the government and their experts are so desperate to create a flash during the demonstrations from something other than gunfire, that they are willing to sacrifice credibility and scientific accuracy in the process," said Houston lawyer Michael Caddell, who represents some of the victims.
"It is clear to everyone that there was nothing like a 6-foot-high tent covered with space blankets at the site on April 19, 1993," Cadell said.
The FBI declined to comment on any aspects of the case.
Another sore point is that the re-enactment will be supervised and filmed by Vector Data Systems, a British subsidiary of a U.S. firm that has approximately $300 million in federal contracts...
The new footage will be compared with the FBI's film, (the film that incriminates the FBI).
"If there are flashes on the tape from gunfire, then we've got a huge problem," Caddell said. "Then we have seven years of FBI agents lying about whether they fired on April 19."
The trial is set for May. New York Post, March 12, 2000.
(Needless to say, the initial test concluded there was no government rifle fire at the WACO compound that day. The problem here is that even if the government is telling the truth in this case, we do not believe it. We do not believe it because we know that it is both capable and willing in all other cases to lie. The government is the author of incessant lies and constant cover ups...John 8:43.44).
by Jo Thomas
DENVER, Aug.14 _ Moments before a Federal judge imposed the DEATH SENTENCE that a jury had decreed for the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy J. McVeigh today broke the silence he had maintained throughout his trial.
But his remarks were exceptionally brief--only four sentences--and their meaning was obscure to many in the courtroom.
Mr. McVeigh, wearing prison khakis and a military haircut, clasped his hands behind him and, standing at a lectern, said in the controlled voice of a student giving a recitation:
"I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote: 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have."...
In the larger passage from which the quotation was taken, Justice Brandeis warned that the Government may not commit crimes to enforce the law and may expect "terrible retribution" if it does.
__________
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities...(Revelation 18:4,5).
The Number Six Hundred Sixty and Six
(Having just seen Michael Moore's Columbine, we thank him for corroborating all that we have said here).
