textfiles/magazines/EUTHANASIA/korda.interview

YET ANOTHER INTERVIEW WITH REV. KORDA
by Jonathan Konrath <jonathan@homer.spry.com> for _Rock Out Censorship_

> What is the Church of Euthanasia? What are your views?

The Church of Euthanasia is a non-profit educational foundation devoted to
restoring balance between Humans and the remaining species on Earth. We believe
this can only be accomplished by a massive *voluntary* population reduction,
which will require a leap in Human consciousness to a new *species awareness*.

Every aspect of the deepening global environmental crisis, including climate
change, reduction of biodiversity, poisoning of the water and atmosphere, and
topsoil erosion, directly results from the over-abundance of a single species:
homo sapiens. The Human population is increasing by one million every four
days, according the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. This is a net
increase of 95 million per year, the current population of Mexico.

Even a major war or epidemic hardly dents the rate of growth, and modern wars
have tremendous environmental consequences. It is for these practical reasons,
as well as moral ones, that Euthanasists support only *voluntary* forms of
population reduction, including suicide, abortion, and sodomy, which we define
as any sexual act not intended for procreation. We are also fiercely
vegetarian, and support cannibalism for those who insist on eating flesh.

> How, when and why did you start the CoE? How big is it now?

The CoE was inspired by a dream, in which I confronted an alien intelligence
known as "the Being" who speaks for the inhabitants of Earth in other
dimensions. The Being warned that our planet's ecosystem is failing, and that
our leaders deny this. The Being asked why our leaders lie to us, and why so
many of us believe these lies. I awoke from the dream moaning the church's
infamous slogan, "Save the Planet - Kill Yourself."

The CoE was incorporated on March 25, 1994, and the IRS granted us tax-exempt
status in July 1995. We now have around a hundred "card-carrying" members who
have sworn to uphold the One Commandment ("Thou Shalt Not Procreate"), and well
over a thousand "virtual" members on the Internet, plus clergy and directors.

> Is the CoE really a church?

The CoE was founded as a church, because the world-view that inspires it is
fundamentally *spiritual*, not political. According to the IRS, our *primary*
activity is the dissemination of information, and we are therefore tax-exempt
as an educational foundation, but this is purely a legal distinction. We
continue to call ourselves a church, act like a church, and *be* a church. We
have issued many sermons on the internet, and held several public services here
in Boston. Construction of the CoE chapel was completed in 1995, and our first
official members-only service was held there in October.

> How have you been involved with the internet?

The CoE's presence on the internet started in August of 1994. The original goal
was simply to disseminate the electronic version of our journal ("Snuff It").
We started out by setting up a moderated mailing list (SNUFFIT-L), and then
arranged for it to be fully archived at U. Michigan's ETEXT archives. This was
followed by a massive e-mail spam (27,000 Save the Planet Kill Yourself
"greeting cards" sent to folks who posted to certain Usenet groups). It took a
long while for the flames to die down, but the end result was a very successful
mailing list with over a thousand members. The list has also been used to
disseminate "e-sermons" and church news, as well as other texts, including the
Unabomber's manifesto, ibu's anarchist classic "Bolo'bolo," and Bob Arson's
controversial "Butchering the Human Carcass for Consumption."

In January 1995, with the invaluable assistance of Father R. Scott LaMorte, the
CoE launched its official WWW site. The site contains all of our material,
including past and present issues of Snuff It, complete with graphics and color
photographs. Some of the material is linked to a hypertextual history of the
CoE which is accessible from the home page; this helps new visitors by giving
them a place to start. Perhaps the most important feature of the web site is
the "on-line resources" page, which consists of pointers to various "church
approved" sites (Princeton's National Directory of "morning after" pill
providers, for example) and information on our sister organizations: the
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), the Gaia Liberation Front (GLF),
the Freedom Club, and the First Church of Christ, Abortionist. The site also
includes an elaborate on-line catalog and order form.

At some point someone asked whether the CoE had a Usenet group. We soon
discovered that the word "euthanasia" did not appear anywhere in the Usenet
hierarchy; obviously a new group was called for. The original proposals called
for some type of "alt" group, but response was so positive that we decided to
aim for the "big seven": talk.euthanasia passed by 211 to 57 in May 1995.

> What other activities is the church involved with? (rallies, marches)

We cause trouble fairly regularly. Our last big show was the 1995 Boston First
Night parade. I won't tell you about it here though, because I couldn't do it
justice; it's thoroughly covered in issue #3 of Snuff It. Visit our web site,
or pick up a copy at Tower Records. The pictures say it all...

> How does the CoE differ from pro-choice groups, such as the Feminist
Majority?

We're not pro-choice. We're pro-abortion. There's a big difference. Abortion
usually involves destroying a small Human fetus by sucking it out of the womb
with a vacuum. "Pro-choice" is a euphemism created by people who want to keep
abortion legal but don't have the guts to face this reality. The strategy of
conceding that abortion is morally indefensible in order to build a wider
coalition has led directly to a dwindling Roe vs. Wade instead of abortion on
demand throughout pregnancy. Abortion should be safe, legal, and free,
everywhere.

Many of the folks who get worked up over abortion show little or no remorse
when it comes to slaughtering their fellow creatures and eating their flesh. In
addition, these same people tend to be supporters of capital punishment, and
enemies of sexual freedom. These observations suggest that the underlying issue
is not compassion for living beings at all, but fear of sexuality. The
connections between fascism and repression of orgiastic libido described by Dr.
Wilhelm Reich in his study of "emotional plague" seem especially relevant. In
short, the pope should be dining on Human fetuses.

> Have you had opposition from the religious right/moral majority? Do you feel
they have unjust ties with the US government?

Actually we get most of our opposition from "liberals," the type of super
politically-correct folks that the Unabomber directed so much rage at in his
manifesto. We've been very disappointed in the Christian right; we've baited
them repeatedly and the bastards keep turning the other cheek. It goes without
saying that the Christian right is tied to the U.S. government; they elected
Reagan and Bush, after all. The interesting question is what their real agenda
is, behind all the pious fundamentalist posturing, and the answer depends on
which conspiracy theories you subscribe to, if any. The popular "Illuminati"
theory pits the Vatican empire against the Freemason/Jewish/Protestant empire
that began in England and is now centered in the U.S., with the two giants
battling for control of the Earth's resources.

This idea also comes up in the ultra-libertarian "patriot" or "freedom fighter"
type of rhetoric that the militias have been using their new-found media
attention to circulate. These people see the so-called "one-world" government
(i.e. the United Nations and/or the Federal Reserve Bank) as a sign of the
Apocalypse, and rail against the replacement of cash with electronic money. In
their worst nightmares, religion is forbidden, abortion is mandatory, and
everyone speaks the same language and has a microchip implanted in them (the
"mark of the beast"). They're stockpiling automatic weapons for just such an
occasion; Dr. Hunter S. Thompson refers to them as "the guns and Jesus crowd,"
appropriately enough.

I tend to view this type of thinking as a dangerous distraction from the real
issue. Yes, there have undoubtably been, and continue to be warring factions
among the dominant Humans, but what all factions have in common is the idea
that the Earth is giant cigar, and should be smoked, as soon as possible.
People have asked me whether the CoE supports a "one-world" government, and my
answer is always that it depends on what type of government. If it's a
government based on commodification, and if it inspires vast structures of
domination and control, then obviously we're against it. If it's a government
based on compassion for all beings, and if it inspires the idea that Humans are
one species housed among the many other species of plants and animals that
comprise the living being we call Earth, then we're all for it.

I'd also have to say that while the Freemasons are a creepy bunch, the
Catholics are absolutely terrifying, and much more public. Remember, we're
talking about the institution that launched the Crusades: state-of-the-art
repression, torture and genocide, for their time. Lately the Vatican has been
teaming up with the Islamic countries to make sure nothing useful is
accomplished at various global population conferences. To think that an
institution as morally bankrupt as the Catholic Church can still wield so much
power...it's outrageous. I can't support violence, it being against my religion
and all, but sometimes it's tempting...if I ever make an exception, it'll be
for the Pope.

> Why the four pillars? Why don't we just nuke France, drive-by a bunch of
politicians, or add cyanide to the drinking water to lower the population?

Remember, we only support *voluntary* methods. In our view, any other methods
will only perpetuate the cycle of karma, and are therefore doomed to fail.
There are plenty of folks (too many to list) that support mass murder,
especially of the poor and black (by the rich and white): it's hardly a new
idea. Relatively few people are willing to support the more egalitarian notion
of complete Human extinction. The only two groups I know of are our sister
organizations, VHEMT (the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement), and the GLF
(Gaia Liberation Front).

VHEMT's motto is "live long and die out": they advocate no more births, ever,
until the Human population dwindles to nothing. The GLF, on the other hand,
views Humans as a "hostile alien species," and advocates worldwide distribution
of genetically engineered airborne viruses that attack only Humans (with
provisions for a second round after the generals and politicians come out of
their shelters). Like VHEMT, we're opposed to further birthing, but we're not
(yet) convinced that complete extinction is warranted; we're hoping to restore
*balance* between Humans and the other species. We agree with the GLF's
observation that "while Humans may have evolved *on* the Earth, they are no
longer *of* the Earth"; we just can't support their methods.

> Has the CoE had problems with censorship or other opposition?

Not so far, surprisingly enough. It's interesting to consider which side of the
population issue our Federal government is really on, particularly when viewed
as part of the increasingly powerful defacto "world government" of
trans-national corporations. Do the corporations assume that more people = more
customers, and therefore support limitless population growth? I think not. In
fact, as Jeremy Rifkin and many others have pointed out, the new global economy
is all about creating greater wealth for *fewer people*, by replacing people
with *cybernetic systems* (robots). This explains the mysterious economic
recovery in which "productivity" rises even though unemployment rises.

Marx and his followers always maintained that capitalism contains the seeds of
its own destruction: if you keep replacing labor with automated machinery,
eventually no one has money to buy consumer goods and the corporations collapse
from lack of income. Unfortunately, what Marx could not foresee is that to an
ever-greater extent, corporations are becoming their own customers, by
producing and marketing goods for, and to, each other. In the not-too-distant
future, the vast majority of the population may find themselves excluded from
the economic system entirely. Hakim Bey and others have written about this
possibility extensively, and I believe it was Bey who coined the term
"temporary autonomous zone" to describe the areas of anarchy that would
flourish outside the fortresses of "Babylon."

All of this supports the argument that government, in its various forms, has
everything to gain from population reduction, particularly reduction of the
"have-nots." Those fortunate enough to possess skills useful to the new
"information society," the "symbolic analysts" (e.g. computer programmers) and
other "knowledge workers," will be in demand, for the moment, but the masses of
regular folks are expendable, and are in fact disrupting progress towards the
goal. Judging by the writings of Newt Gingrich's "extropian" friends, the goal
appears to be the "downloading" of genetically altered Human consciousness into
machines, to facilitate the creation of super-robots for the conquest of outer
space. Sounds like Dr. Who, right? Read their magazine ("Extropy") or visit
their web site at http://www.c2.org/~arkuat/extr/ if you don't believe me.

Our leaders may not be censoring us (yet), but they obviously aren't interested
in compassion towards other species either; they're converting wilderness into
wasteland as fast as they can get their hands on it. If the government actually
supports our population-reduction efforts, they probably do so for all the
wrong reasons. This would be unfortunate, but would explain the lack of
opposition.

> What's an extropian?

An extropian is a libertarian trans-Humanist. Humanism can be defined as the
belief that "man is the measure of all things"; trans-Humanists believe that
man's alleged "intelligence" is the measure of all things, as distinct from his
presumably grotty biological "limitations." By comparison, Euthanasists are
neither Humanist or trans-Humanist, but *anti-Humanist*: we are firmly opposed
to the arrogant notion that Humans are superior beings. The trans-Humanists
(particularly the extropians) are about as close as anyone gets to being our
mortal enemies. Very few people seem to realize that Newt and his pals the
Tofflers (authors of "Futureshock," "Third Wave," etc.) are extropians, or what
the implications of this fact might be.

The trans-Humanists would gladly sacrifice every non-Human living being (and
many of the Human beings) on Earth for their dream of transforming the entire
universe into a cyberspace ruled by intelligent machines. Their fantasies of
immortality (rooted in fear of both life *and* death) oppose them to the
biological; thus they actively seek to "defetishize" food and sex, among other
things. The idea is that a Human, through proper conditioning, will (and in
many cases, already does) find a tasty meal or a good orgasm less satisfying
than, say, writing a really clever software program (e.g. see Nick Szabo's
"Uploading, Self-transformation and Sexual Engineering," at
http://www.digicash.com/~nick/uploadsex.html).

Such conditioning, combined with genetic engineering and so-called "smart
drugs," will produce a Human suitably adapted to life undergound or better
still, life in outer space. This is convenient, since the trans-Human program
will increase short-term order (extropy) at the price of unimaginable global
entropy, and quickly render the surface of the planet uninhabitable even for
Humans. Trans-Humanists also propose to remove all forms of the verb "to be"
from the English language (the resulting language is known as "E-prime"), in
order to facilitate its assimilation by machines, which apparently have a hard
time interpreting qualitative associations (or anything else that really
matters if you ask me).

> What has been some of the more amusing opposition the church has received?

As I said, our worst enemies are usually "liberals," and the best example I can
think of took place at Boston's Population Awareness Day rally back in 1994.
The local chapter of ZPG (Zero Population Growth) invited us initially, and
then reneged when they found out who we were. Of course, we showed up anyway,
in full regalia, with signs saying "Save the Planet, Kill Yourself," a giant
RU-486 pill, and a ten-foot tall effigy of the Being. Meanwhile the other
groups (ZPG, Carrying Capacity Network, Sierra Club, etc.) were sitting behind
their tables, thunderstruck, while a hired band played jazz standards. It was
absolutely pathetic. We were ranting, chanting, screaming environmental facts,
reading Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," so of course we drew a crowd. There were
confrontations and arguments; people were hating it, or loving it, and asking
questions. So what did ZPG do? Call the cops, of course. The next thing we
knew, ranger Doherty was politely explaining that we had to move because ZPG
had a permit and we were "disrupting their rally." What rally? This type of
thing has happened to us repeatedly, and in every case, the police were our
friends, relatively speaking.

> What do you think of the Exon bill? Would such actions hinder the church?

It sucks, and yes, they definitely would.

> How has the CoE been involved in the net anti-censorship movement?

Every anti-censorship petition we receive (and there have been many) is
distributed to SNUFFIT-L and linked to the web site. Our IRS tax status forbids
us from lobbying, so we can't get involved beyond this.

> How do you encourage people to help stop net censorship?

Personally (in a non-CoE capacity), I have written many letters, and repeatedly
criticized my provider (Netcom) for not making its position on net censorship
publicly known. Netcom replied several times that they had no position, but I
noticed that the last time the House debated the CDA, Netcom finally mentioned
the VTW alert in their message of the day; it's a step in the right direction.

> What are future plans for the church?

More of the same, really. We're interested in long-term sustainable effort,
rather than a burst of rapid growth followed by disintegration. We're in this
for the long haul, so we try to move slowly and decisively. Every day we reach
a few more people: they tell their friends, and our world-view grows. Not that
there won't be surprises; of course there will, but the emphasis will continue
to be on persuading more and more people to not procreate and not eat flesh.
This is the path we're on right now, the path of compassion for *all* beings.

Personally, my New Year's resolution is to build an orgone accumulator. I've
been reading Reich lately, and I resonate very strongly with a lot of what he
says. He argues convincingly that "civilization" is an ongoing attempt to
repress natural sexual energy into vast neurotic structures of domination and
control, and that the primary agents of repression are parents, closely
followed by schools. Most of the damage is done before a child begins to talk.
The child builds walls of "character armor" (emotional scar tissue) to keep out
the poisonous emotions of pain and rage and fear, but unfortunately the suit of
armor blocks pleasure and love and compassion just as easily. By the time the
child is a teenager, the "pain is so big you feel nothing at all," as John
Lennon said in "Working Class Hero." The teenager becomes sexually active, but
since the natural libido is unable to flow through the armor, it gets deflected
into "secondary" neurotic drives such as narcissism, sadism, and masochism. Our
sex-negative society considers these behaviors "normal" and reinforces them;
thus the resulting adult is empowered to inflict similar damage on his or her
children (or students), and the vicious cycle is completed.

The CoE's efforts help to break this cycle. Obviously if people don't have
children then they can't inflict any damage on them. The CoE also helps by
being sex-positive: "all acts of love and pleasure are our rituals," as the
Wiccans are fond of saying. This is very important, because pleasure eventually
leads to awareness of suffering, which is something we desperately need more of
right now. People aren't callous and insensitive to the suffering of their
fellow beings by choice: they're just trapped inside their armor, unable to
*feel* much of anything. Through pleasure, they become more able to feel pain,
and as they feel pain, they begin to feel *compassion*, first for themselves,
and then, gradually, for all beings.

> How can people get more information about the church? How can they help or
get involved?

If you're on the Internet, we're everywhere. If you have access to the web,
http://www.paranoia.com/coe/ is the URL, or just do a Lycos or Yahoo search on
the word "euthanasia" and we're bound to turn up. If you're e-mail only, just
send an e-mail to listserv@netcom.com containing ONLY the line:

subscribe snuffit-l

If all else fails, you can e-mail me at coe@netcom.

For folks who aren't on the Internet, our postal address is The Church of
Euthanasia, P.O.Box 261, Somerville, MA 02143. If you send us a SASE we'll send
you a catalog and some information, but honestly your best bet is to go for
broke and send us $2 (cash is fine) for issue #3 of Snuff It. It's a really
good one: 32 pages, packed with photos and graphics, and it includes the
catalog. Trust me, you won't be sorry.

One way to participate would be to join the CoE. If you choose to not
procreate, you're a member already, but why not make it official? Membership
includes a life-time subscription to the printed version of Snuff It, a
28-page E-sermon booklet, and a lovely embossed certificate suitable for
framing, all for only $10.

If you like to write or speak and have some "fire in the belly," we could also
use guest sermons. Other than that, the best thing you can do is help spread
the word. Talk to people. Proselytize shamelessly. Ask us for flyers and
catalogs, or better still, make your own: everything we have on the net is
yours to copy and distribute. Get on the radio or television. Be a nuisance.
Cause trouble. Piss people off, especially your breeding friends. Do it now!

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