1483 lines
92 KiB
Plaintext
1483 lines
92 KiB
Plaintext
SNUFF IT #4
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The Journal of the Church of Euthanasia
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EDITORIAL
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Let me start by asking you a question. If you don't know, just guess, how
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long--months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds--how long do you think it
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takes for the human population to increase by one million? Net increase.
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Okay, I'll give it to you, it's four days. Four days, a quarter million
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per day, if you do the math, that comes out to *95 million people per year*,
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and just for a reference, 95 million is the population of Mexico, so next time
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you look at a map of the world, look at Mexico, and imagine the human
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population increasing by Mexico, every year.
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What do we do with all those people? They all need to eat, they all need
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houses, clothes, TVs, cars, and every other damn thing, who are *we* to say
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they shouldn't have them, and what's the result? The global environmental
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crisis. Massive species extinction. *Ecocide*. In the United States alone we
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lose an acre of trees every eight seconds. Worldwide, we're now losing an
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entire *species* every 40 minutes, that's up from every sixty minutes in the
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1970's, and in the tropical rainforest we're losing a species every *fifteen
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minutes*. By some estimates we've already wiped out one third of the species
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on earth. Those species are *gone*, they're not coming back, this isn't some
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cute nature show on television, this is *real*. In terms of sheer power, this
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is our great accomplishment: severely damaging the chemical and organic
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structure of an entire planet, including the oceans and the atmosphere. We've
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got to do something, very quickly, and the most important thing we can do is
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*reduce our numbers*. It's something each one of us can do, it doesn't require
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special training, and that's why I, myself, and every one of the Church of
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Euthanasia's members have taken a *lifetime vow to not procreate*.
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Now people say to me, population reduction is one thing, but how can you
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support suicide and euthanasia, isn't that going too far, and I say this: right
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now, one third, that's a rough figure, it's probably higher, one third of the
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people on this earth are going to bed hungry every night. Does this surprise
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you? Maybe you're lucky: maybe you live in a country that still has some
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topsoil, or maybe your country steals food from everyone else. Don't get too
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smug, though, because simple arithmetic says the population will reach *8
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billion* by 2010. Now that's well within my, and many of your lifetimes, and
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I'm telling you that if we, as *individuals*, allow that to happen, we are
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going to see suffering on a scale we can't even imagine yet, even right here,
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in the United States, and some of you are going to wish you had killed
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yourselves, because this planet is going to be a very grim and frightening
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place. It already is for most people.
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So that's why I say "save the planet, kill yourself." Because it really
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has come to this, and if you've had enough, and you want to get out of the
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game, and you honestly believe that's the best thing you can do for yourself
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and for the planet, I, Rev. Chris Korda, am not going to stand in your way.
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I'll make you a Euthanasian saint. And if no one listens to me, and the
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population keeps on growing, until there's no trees, and no hope, I'll join
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you. I think about it every day, and I feel *shame*. I'm ashamed of the way
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humans have behaved, especially *American* humans. When I look at the ugliness
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Americans have created in just two hundred years, and when I read about the
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"savages" we've exterminated to make room for our so-called civilization, *I
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feel suicidal rage*, and that's okay, because that's what the Church of
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Euthanasia is all about.
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Now suppose, for the sake of argument, we divide people into two groups:
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those who think there are too many of us, and those who think there aren't
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enough. If you think there are too many of us, why not take some personal
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responsibility for it? Maybe we're the church for you. But if you think
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there's not enough of us, consider your allies. The people who oppose
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euthanasia, and say it's morally wrong, are very often the same people who
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oppose abortion; they're the same people who oppose contraception and family
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planning; they've opposed sex for pleasure for a thousand years, and you know
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who these people are, they are the *Catholic church and the fundamentalist
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christians*. Their religious teachings have been a disaster for the planet,
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and we cannot allow them to dominate us any longer. They're the *real*
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sinners, and they can't help themselves, so we have to help them: we have to
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*lead by example*.
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How do we lead by example? By practicing sex for pleasure, it's a
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revolutionary act, remember Joycelyn Elders, she wanted to teach masturbation
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and look what happened to her...by showing the maximum compassion for *all*
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beings, we can start by not eating their flesh, why are we feeding most of our
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grain to cattle when people are starving...by supporting abortion, we're *not*
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pro-choice, we're pro-*abortion*, why isn't it *free*, it's every woman's
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sacred right...by supporting Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the right to die, and above
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all by *choosing to not procreate*, until their churches are empty and ours is
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full, until the population is reduced to a sustainable level, and balance is
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restored between ourselves and every other species on this beautiful, living
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planet. Thank you.
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Banana Cup Cake
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Banana
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Cake
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Broken tea cups
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--Lori Kramer
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I think, Dr. Railly, you've given the alarmists a bad
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name...surely there's very real and very convincing data that
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the planet cannot survive the excesses of the human race.
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Proliferation of atomic devices...uncontrolled breeding
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habits...pollution of land, sea *and* air, the rape of the
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environment...in this context isn't it obvious that Chicken
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Little represents the sane vision, and that *homo sapiens*'
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motto--"let's go shopping"--is the cry of the true lunatic?
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--Dr. Peters, "12 Monkeys"
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Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom
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diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in
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the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas
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molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how
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many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of
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existence is possible for those who do survive.
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--Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
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LETTERS
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Chris:
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About a month ago, three British alleged neo-Nazi kids who had been
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vacationing in America for six weeks blew their brains out--two of them
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simultaneously at an Arizona gun range, the other one the next day on a
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little-traveled Northern California road.
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The woman who shot herself alone--Jane Greenhow, 22--had called our voice
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mail a few days before killing herself, asking to verify our PO box address. I
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ignored the first call, but responded the next day after she left a similar
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message with the admonition "don't bother calling after tomorrow." She sounded
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intensely depressed, but all she wanted to know was whether our PO box was
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still valid. I told her that it was.
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On March 4--a full two weeks after she killed herself--I finally received
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her letter, which stated that she felt unable to articulate her frustration
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with life. She also sent me three $700 money orders--her life's savings.
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Knowing that with my recent luck I'd be struck by lightning if I spent a penny
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of it, I sent the money back to her parents.
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Jane had a degree in astrophysics and read ANSWER Me! Too bad she fit into
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the 1/10th of 1 percent demographic which actually had value in my book.
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Whereas the great bulk of human suffering doesn't do a thing for me, her
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departure actually saddened me greatly.
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You can imagine how the press--especially the vampiric British press--is
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treating these suicides. DID A PORTLAND PUBLICATION 'GOAD' THREE BRITS INTO
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KILLING THEMSELVES? et al. Typically, the ones who would portray me as some
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unfeeling creep have displayed far less remorse over Jane's death than I have.
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I figure the Nazi affiliation (Jane had left a note signed "Mrs. Hitler" next
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to her body) renders these goofy kids nonhuman in some eyes.
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Anyway, I wanted to gently caution you to be careful regarding your
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publishing endeavors. You and I know that depression and suicidal impulses
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betoken a mental condition which can't be neatly traced to (or blamed on) one
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source. However, in a social climate which tends to abdicate any notion of
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personal responsibility, very few others seem to know this. Since I see value
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in what you're doing, I'd hate to see you become embroiled in the sort of
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controversy/lawsuits which have dogged us for the past couple years. Believe
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me, it's nowhere near as fun as it might seem. And I'm not advising that you
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soften your approach--but it might make sense to lay the disclaimers on a
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little thicker.
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--Jim Goad, goad@teleport.com
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I make my money from the Defense Department. Usually I feel embarrassed to
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tell people because they associate Warfare with the inhumanity of killing
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people, but I can tell you with pride. Since reading your publication I have a
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whole new perspective on my career. The only problem is the U.S. usually kills
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third world people who don't consume as much of the world's resources as first
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world people. Also the Defense Dept. is the top worst polluter. I hope to
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offset that by sending you a contribution each month so you can continue your
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good work.
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P.S. I think Rev. Korda may be the 1st 21st century saint. Please document any
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miracles (preferably with video) so the canonization will go smoothly.
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P.P.S. Typed on a Defense Dept. typewriter.
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Rev. Chris:
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I received the latest SNUFF iT, and i must state that i was again
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impressed. I have always known that breeding was not at all for me, and
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although i have only recently pursued such a philosophy (after discovering the
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definition of what had before only been within me a vague but relatively
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eternally-practiced concept), it is one to which i shall forever adhere. That
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there are other folk out there who not only believe related philosophies and
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ethics but advocate them and still enjoy life, is nice to know. Cheers, Rev.
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Randall Tin-ear
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I work as a secretary during the day with the Passaic Board of Education at
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the High School in the MediaCenter and see the awful results of human
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overbreeding every day. Our school enrollment has increased about 750 kids
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each year in the past three years. The Board is having to lease new buildings
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every year and build additions on existing schools to compensate for the
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overcrowding. I live in a building where the apartments are very small and yet
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my fellow tenants insist on overbreeding and providing shelter to their young
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ones in a space that only one would be comfortable in. Needless to say the
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problem of overbreeding is all around me daily but how do you speak up about
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it? Procreation is the most sacred of rights and if you talk about it to
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people (even intelligently) they think you are a Nazi or something worse. Why
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do only a few of us see what is wrong? Why are so many fools still bringing
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children into the world? I have a full life and never had any children--what
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is this compulsion to breed?
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--Moo Oom, David R. Wyder/Daily Cow
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You can count on me to help you in any way I can. If abortion were mandatory
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it would prevent people like me from ever being born. I once considered
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having kids but when I realized they might all turn out to look like me (I
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look like Herve Vilachez), I immediately had my doctor castrate me. I'd kill
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myself but I'm too chicken shit. I just bought a new Harley and I'm hoping
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I'll have an unfortunate accident while riding it. As it is, my feet barely
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touch the ground when I sit on it and I can barely reach the handle bars.
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Let's hope I cross paths with a pyschotic truck driver! Keep up the good work!
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--Marc (Herve) Bifano
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CHURCH NEWS
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Lydia Eccles Interviews Rev. Chris Korda
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LE: Last year about this time you were soliciting funds for a suicide
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assistance hotline. Whatever happened to that?
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CK: That was Pastor Scott's idea, and it got off to a great start. The plan
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was to get a 900 number, put up a billboard for it, maybe take out a few
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advertisements. People would call up and pay to hear suicide assistance
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messages from a voice mail system. We were going to have a bunch of
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prerecorded messages--celebrity suicides, techniques from A to Z, damned good
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reasons to do it, style, etiquette--you could listen to all these messages and
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get useful tips on how to kill yourself, without making a big mess and
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inconveniencing a lot of people--and meanwhile you'd be paying by the minute
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and the Church would be making money. I made a bet with Pastor Scott that he
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would never get Ackerley [our local billboard company] to put up the billboard,
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and that if he did I'd pay for the hotline. He won the bet; they would say
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things like, "Are you sure you want it to say 'suicide assistance hotline'? It
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almost sounds like you're going to help people kill themselves." He's such a
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smooth operator, he was able to totally flummox them.
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LE: They thought it was a suicide prevention hotline.
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CK: Absolutely. And we figured, what the hell? If Ackerley buys it, then
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maybe Nynex will buy it too. But it didn't work out that way. Nynex turned
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out to be quite a bit sharper than Ackerley. They took one look at our web
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site and the game was over.
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LE: But you had no problem getting the billboard up.
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CK: And what a great billboard it was: "Suicide Assistance Hotline--helping you
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every step of the way. Thousands helped, how about you?" It was just a shame
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that the number didn't work.
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LE: Did you contact lawyers about it?
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CK: Yeah, but we couldn't find one who'd take the case *pro bono*, and the
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ACLU didn't return our calls.
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LE: Did you do any research on the legality of providing concrete assistance to
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people who want to kill themselves?
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CK: Let them sue, we need the publicity. Besides, you can walk into any
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bookstore and buy a book like *Final Exit* that gives specific suicide
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instructions--drug dosages, everything. With Dr. Kevorkian leaving bodies in
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cars and getting away with it, I figured the courts probably wouldn't bother
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with us.
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LE: How about the other billboard activities this year?
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CK: Well, there was a billboard modification in Cambridge...
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LE: "Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea--
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CK: "never regains its original dimensions." That's right. It was modified to
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say "Man's anus, once stretched by"--
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LE & CK: "a big penis"
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CK: "never regains its original dimensions." Now whoever did this--these were
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obviously very disturbed individuals with sociopathic tendencies, presenting a
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serious danger to society.
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LE: Although they were advocating sodomy so technically the Church would have
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to stand aside and applaud.
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CK: But we can't have people running around modifying billboards and so forth;
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I mean, that's against the law.
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LE: I heard that the billboard got a lot of attention, and that the Boston
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Herald was interested and wanted to do a story but the editors nixed it.
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CK: Isn't that funny, that's what I heard too. I also heard that while the
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culprits were putting it up, people were stopping their cars in the middle of
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the street and honking their horns and hooting and hollering and getting out of
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their cars and taking pictures. It's kind of interesting that the Boston
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Herald went to all the trouble to send a crew down there to take pictures and
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interview everybody about it and then nixed the story at the last minute, but I
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guess you can't expect too much from the Boston Herald.
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LE: I heard it was up on the bulletin board at the paper, and everybody really
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liked it. But I guess the editorial decision-makers--their minds remained the
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original size.
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CK: [laughs]
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LE: How about the Institute for Global Dada event--this was during the heyday
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of Pat Buchanan, during the primaries, when Buchanan was making anti-Semitic
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remarks--
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CK: He'd just won New Hampshire, hadn't he?
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LE: Yes, and he'd just come to speak in Massachusetts and was using all kinds
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of military rhetoric--you know, really violent-sounding metaphors.
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CK: It was primary day in Massachusetts, around 7:30 in the morning, in front
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of the Boston Public Library--the largest polling place in Boston, where all
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the Beacon Hill brahmins in their pin-striped suits go to vote. You were
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already there with Doug and Jamie, holding "Unabomber for President" signs.
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Meanwhile, we're tooling down the sidewalk with what looks like a giant black
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tampon. We unroll it, and hoist it up, and suddenly it's a 25-foot wide,
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13-foot tall black banner, with giant red letters that say "GOP" and the "O" is
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a solid red circle with a black swastika cut out of it.
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LE: Like something you would see carried down a very wide thoroughfare during a
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Nazi demonstration.
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CK: Yeah, it took 4 people to hold it. Within 60 seconds, we were live on New
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England Cable, and a few minutes later the WRKO van was going by and they
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literally slammed on the brakes and pulled over. They put me on the air and
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asked me what I was doing, and I told them I was a Buchanan supporter. I said
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I was there to support my candidate like everyone else, and that Buchanan was
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the face of fascism in America. I stuck to my story, and finally Jim Rappaport
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[chairman of the state Republican committee] got on the air and called me
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disgusting. It was pure situationism, because on any other day the cops would
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have just said, "you're outta here" and that would have been it. But this was
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one day when the cops couldn't tell anybody to not hold a sign because
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everybody was holding signs, everywhere! All they could do was make sure that
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we were a certain distance from the polling booth--it was actually quite funny,
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because the cop came out and said "Look, you all have to move"--what was
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it?--"a hundred feet from the polls." Right? So one of the republican guys
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says to the cop, "You just mean them, right, not us?" And the cop starts
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yelling "Everybody! Everybody a hundred feet from the polls!" So everybody
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had to back up. It was an amazing thing to see. It got pretty rough towards
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the end, though--the library staff finally took matters into their own hands.
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The manager and the manager's assistant came out with their goon and started
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pushing and shoving, trying to make us take the banner down, saying we were on
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private property when we weren't, and then the goon threw hot coffee in Toto's
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face and punched him in the mouth. He was only taking pictures and got his lip
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busted--it was very unpleasant. I guess that's what happens when you call a
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spade a spade.
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LE: You spent a week at the Democratic National Convention campaigning for
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Unapack [the Unabomber for President Campaign] and then afterwards we all
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stopped off in Gary, Indiana and took photographs there. What was the reason
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for stopping in Gary and what is the significance of Gary to the Church?
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CK: I viewed it from the beginning as making a pilgrimage to Gary. I grew up
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in New York, but I'd always heard that Gary beat anything I'd ever seen, so I
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felt it was my duty to go out there and see what had been done to the Earth.
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We were driving down I-90 when suddenly you could actually see it from the
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highway; I remember the moment very clearly--we were all stunned. I don't
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think any of us were prepared for just how complete and utter the devastation
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was--it went on for miles and miles and you could see the clouds of smoke in
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the air. It really was a scene from hell. At that time, I knew that I would
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have to go to where the refineries were, to get up close and see it. I hooked
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up with $t. @ndrew (OGYR Network) and Pope Phred, and they drove us out there.
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I was staying with Deacon Kelly, and he kind of knew his way around, so he came
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along too. We were driving around all day, looking at the refineries. We
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stayed in the car mostly, but I got out and got down on my knees and prayed in
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front of one. I was so moved that you and I decided it would be worth it to go
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out there and do it again, do it properly.
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LE: We tried to get close to one of them and ended up getting followed by
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security.
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CK: It was a disaster! We were being followed the whole time by these Cherokee
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Jeep things with flashing lights on them. We were in the belly of the beast
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and they didn't like us one bit. They pulled us over and asked us to leave,
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and instead we pulled over somewhere else and got out and started taking
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pictures inside the perimeter, and then they nailed us. They wanted our film,
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and I think they were pretty much ready to haul us off until you told them we
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were doing a fashion shoot.
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LE: One of the things that amazed me was in the midst of all that wasteland and
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smoke to see tract housing popping up in between the factories every once in a
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while.
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CK: It was right out of Eraserhead; people living in the middle of an
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industrial wasteland. People are born and raised and grow old and die without
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ever leaving Gary, Indiana. I've never seen anything worse.
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LE: You also made a pilgrimage to the Rainbow this year--tell me about that.
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CK: The Church's annual meeting was held at the Rainbow Gathering, somewhere in
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the Ozark National Forest, in Missouri. It was my first Gathering, so it was
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quite an experience for me. I drove down with my friend Kevin--he's been to a
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bunch of them and told me a bit about it, but nothing could have prepared me
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for it really; it was unlike anything else I've been exposed to. The most
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obvious difference is it's a money-free zone; it's considered deadly impolite
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to offer people money at a Gathering. Another big difference is there's no
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homeless people; the general idea is that even if you have only the most
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minimal social skills, somewhere, somehow, somebody's going to feed you. There
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are people who show up with nothing, not even a cup or a spoon or a blanket.
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Nobody's going to serve them without a cup--they're going to have to find one
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or make one out of a Pepsi bottle or something. But once they do then
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somebody's going to feed them and they're going to be taken care of and not
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just left to die. That's a very different way of looking at things. Some
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people arrive months before and put tremendous energy and love into feeding
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people, other people show up with nothing--most people are somewhere in the
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middle, and hopefully it all balances out.
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LE: Did you do any Church activities while you were there, I mean aside from
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having your meeting?
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CK: Well, I came prepared to cause major trouble. I lugged all these signs in
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with me, like, "The Rainbow Family is Big Enough", "Bear Asses Not Children,"
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"A Hippie with Kids is Looking for Work," "Peace, Love and Sterility"--I was
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prepared to really tear it up with those Rainbow people.
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LE: This was because you thought there'd be a lot of breeders.
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CK: And there were a lot of breeders. But when it came down to it, I just
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||
couldn't do it. I would have been totally by myself. I couldn't find a single
|
||
other person to carry one of those signs.
|
||
LE: Also I got the impression that you wanted to just enjoy the experience of
|
||
being there.
|
||
CK: Yeah, I didn't want to have to be the Reverend the whole time. I wanted to
|
||
enjoy being close to the Earth, with like-minded people, and that's what I did
|
||
and it was the most powerful spiritual experience I've ever had. The Fourth of
|
||
July is the big day at the Gathering: the whole morning it's silent throughout
|
||
the area, everyone forms a huge circle around the sacred fire, thousands of
|
||
people meditating and praying their asses off, and then at noon the children
|
||
arrive in a big parade, the energy is released, and everyone goes cuckoo. It
|
||
was serious Earth magic, the largest scale magic I've ever participated in.
|
||
LE: What is the purpose of the Rainbow?
|
||
CK: Well, that's hard to say, because by long-standing tradition, no one speaks
|
||
for the Rainbow family. The Rainbow family is everyone who's there. I think
|
||
there's a strong Indian influence--for example decisions are made by consensus
|
||
in open councils, as opposed to the democratic method, which is tyranny of the
|
||
majority over the minority. There's lots of music, and hanging out, and
|
||
eating, and taking care of each other, and making love, and purifying yourself.
|
||
LE: You were there for a week. As a city kid, how was it being out in the
|
||
woods for that long?
|
||
CK: It was awfully hot, but clothing was optional, and there was a nice creek
|
||
to dip in. It was a three-mile hike in, and I did the hike several times, one
|
||
time with a 50 lb. bag of rice; that was rough. We were hauling around giant
|
||
buckets of water and digging shitters and carrying wood. I'm not used to that
|
||
type of thing, so my back hurt a lot, and the chiggers were gross, but overall
|
||
it was very exhilarating for me. I was incredibly lucky; I found Scott Lamorte
|
||
right away and he hooked Kevin and me up with his friends at Bi The Way
|
||
kitchen. They are wonderful people; they welcomed me into their family, and
|
||
I'm very grateful.
|
||
LE: Okay, now I want to get on to the abortion clinic activities. How did that
|
||
get started?
|
||
CK: I'm really not sure.
|
||
LE: I just remember that Der Spiegel [the German equivalent of *Time Magazine*]
|
||
was coming.
|
||
CK: Aaah, you're so right. I'd been wooing them all year, or they'd been
|
||
wooing me, really; it just had been a matter of getting it hooked up. They'd
|
||
been saying that they were going to come to Boston for months and they finally
|
||
were coming and they were coming the week after we got back from Chicago.
|
||
Pastor Kim and I talked about it and realized that we were going to have to
|
||
show them a good time. I mean, they made it pretty clear that they weren't
|
||
coming all the way to Boston just to sit around and chat and drink coffee.
|
||
They wanted to see us in action.
|
||
LE: So the first one was at Repro in Brookline, and Operation Rescue was
|
||
supposedly going to be there but--
|
||
CK: Yeah, there was only a handful of them there.
|
||
LE: Let's name off some of the signs you had because I know they're not all in
|
||
the photos. "Fuck Breeding," "Sperm-Free Cunts for the Earth"--
|
||
CK: "Fetuses are for Scraping," "Depressed? Commit Spermicide"-- [also "Make
|
||
Love, Not Babies," "No Kid, No Labor," "Love the Earth, Tie Your Tubes," and
|
||
"Feeling Maternal? Adopt!"] Vermin Supreme was there, and he was in rare form
|
||
that day. He had his Satan mask on and his little jiggling eyeballs--he had
|
||
his megaphone out and he was harassing people going by, saying something about
|
||
"This is Satan here, and I want you all to--
|
||
LE: "Watch TV, eat red meat, and try to drive your car as much as possible--
|
||
CK: "Read a newspaper, and throw it away."
|
||
LE: "And together we can make hell on Earth."
|
||
CK: [laughs]
|
||
LE: He also asked passers-by to raise their hands if they were using
|
||
contraception, or if they'd been sterilized. And a woman across the street was
|
||
praying with a rosary, and Vermin was yelling with a megaphone that we were
|
||
going to sacrifice a gerbil--
|
||
CK: Yes, we were going to sacrifice a gerbil to the unborn.
|
||
LE: And you were singing, "All we are saying"--
|
||
CK: "All we are saying is fetus pat<61>."
|
||
LE: The neighborhood around the clinic is very affluent and boring, and it was
|
||
great watching people walk by these incredible signs and Vermin in his Satan
|
||
mask and the dolls nailed on to sticks with bloody hands and mouths--and many
|
||
of these people would just walk by and pretend there was nothing strange going
|
||
on at all.
|
||
CK: We got a good reaction from the clinic escorts, though, and that was a huge
|
||
relief. If they'd asked us to leave, we would have had to leave, because
|
||
they're guarding the doors and hopefully keeping the Christians from going in
|
||
there and shooting everybody. But the escorts liked us.
|
||
LE: Now was that the clinic where the shooting actually took place?
|
||
CK: No, that was the next weekend. Der Spiegel had such a good time that they
|
||
decided to come back. We'd heard rumors that there was something big happening
|
||
at Preterm, so Becky infiltrated Operation Rescue and got the inside dope. We
|
||
wanted to turn the voltage way up, so we decided to make a 15 foot tall, 6 foot
|
||
wide "Eat a Queer Fetus for Jesus" banner--we figured that might get their
|
||
attention. We had the carnivorous babies again, but we used much bigger
|
||
sticks, just in case there was trouble, and we added life-size skulls on top,
|
||
painted blood-red. Also Vermin brought some gigantic cartoon fetuses that he'd
|
||
made out of day-glo paper, plus we had all the signs from last time.
|
||
LE: Since I was videotaping, I was at all of these events before you guys
|
||
showed up, which was fun because I got to see you make your entrance. Before
|
||
you came the Christians went marching down the sidewalk in formation singing
|
||
hymns through megaphones. They got to the building and planted themselves and
|
||
they were starting to say their prayers when all of a sudden I saw the "Eat a
|
||
Queer Fetus for Jesus" banner come marching down the street. And everyone
|
||
stopped, they were all staring in total disbelief.
|
||
CK: We had at least 20 of our own people there, and we were marching down the
|
||
street in formation with all of our stuff. The cops saw us coming, and the
|
||
first thing they said was, "If you turn on that megaphone, we're going to
|
||
arrest all of you." We came and we stayed--we were there for hours, in the
|
||
rain. There were two TV stations, the cops were videotaping, the clinic was
|
||
videotaping, the Christians were videotaping. It was a pitched battle: they
|
||
had their trench and we had ours, and they were singing their hymns and praying
|
||
and we were singing "Every Sperm is Sacred" and "All we are saying is fetus
|
||
pat<EFBFBD>"--
|
||
LE: That was also where Nevada's speech premiered, right?
|
||
CK: "Abortion as a Sacred Right." [see page 9] Pastor Kim screamed it at them
|
||
until he lost his voice.
|
||
LE: The police kept you behind the barricades for a while, until Vermin noticed
|
||
that some of the Christians were doing a walking picket in front of the clinic.
|
||
So he said, "If they can walk, we can walk." People were sneaking out one by
|
||
one, and you ended up with a walking picket that was half Christians and half
|
||
Church of Euthanasia. One person would walk by with a scraped fetus and right
|
||
behind them would be someone holding "Fetuses are for Scraping."
|
||
CK: [laughs]
|
||
LE: And it was really confusing. The best thing about these events is that it
|
||
creates confusion as to who's on what side.
|
||
CK: We were standing in front of one of the clinics where a shooting had taken
|
||
place not even a year ago, and there were five people from NOW [National
|
||
Organization for Women] facing hundreds of Christians--it seemed to me that the
|
||
situation called for extreme tactics. The pro-life agenda is fundamentally
|
||
coercive; they want to push you into a situation where you have to respond to
|
||
them. They seize control of the issue, and try to pin the violence on you, but
|
||
we know perfectly well that the violence is coming from them. So our object is
|
||
to unseat the Christians, to expose the violence that's slumbering in them. We
|
||
want the violence to be on the surface, because when it's out in the open, it's
|
||
less dangerous.
|
||
LE: I think NOW's big problem is that they permit themselves to play the role
|
||
of audience, and of course the news isn't going to cover the audience at a
|
||
theatrical event.
|
||
CK: NOW is fucking up. Abortion is restricted in almost every state, and if
|
||
you don't have money, forget it. Why are the Christians winning? They're
|
||
winning because their tactics are better: they have good timing, they're
|
||
imaginative, they use visuals well, and they definitely go for the throat. But
|
||
they count on people taking them seriously, and that's their Achilles heel. It
|
||
makes them extremely susceptible to ridicule; the one thing they can't stand is
|
||
being made fun of. They try to intimidate everyone with shock tactics and
|
||
disgusting props, but we can out-shock and out-disgust them any day. We're
|
||
seizing the moral low ground right out from under them.
|
||
LE: Let's go to the third abortion clinic demonstration, at Gynecare, and this
|
||
is where you introduced the Pedophile Priests for Life.
|
||
CK: We did some reconnaissance this time. I went down there myself a week
|
||
early and fraternized with the Christians--it turned out they all belonged to a
|
||
group called "Our Lady's Crusaders for Life." I talked to them quite a bit and
|
||
managed to get a hold of one of their newsletters.
|
||
LE: That's kind of a handy aspect of your dressing in women's clothes, that you
|
||
can go undercover as a man.
|
||
CK: Absolutely, it's very convenient. I think a lot of them still haven't put
|
||
two and two together.
|
||
LE: That's where we get our little line, "Don't be fooled by the dress."
|
||
CK: So the newsletter was denouncing the Catholic church for allowing sex
|
||
education in Catholic schools. They had an example of some "obscene" Catholic
|
||
sex-ed material, and it was all about eggs and sperm and God's plan--no mention
|
||
of orgasm or masturbation, not even the slightest hint that sex might be
|
||
enjoyable. It went on and on about the miracle of life--it even said a fetus
|
||
has the same rights as a person, but it was still too much for them. They
|
||
wanted to burn the books. I remember talking to Nevada about it, and
|
||
understanding that the real issue is sexual pleasure. These people are
|
||
terrified of human sexuality, and especially of pleasure.
|
||
LE: The basic point is they want to make it impossible for people to have sex
|
||
without having children. It's not that they care about fetuses, it's that they
|
||
want to stop sex.
|
||
CK: They want to stop sex because it's so connected to the body. The body
|
||
reminds them of death, and they can't deal with death, so they deny the
|
||
body--in the old days they tortured it too, especially if it was female. They
|
||
idolize innocence and virginity, and meanwhile the priests can't keep their
|
||
hands off the altar boys. How could they be expected to? It's ridiculous.
|
||
The sexual urges are still there, and the boys are a safe outlet. People can't
|
||
deny their sexuality, it just comes back in another way.
|
||
LE: ACT UP has brought this out a lot, they have these special condoms for
|
||
priests--it's well known that many men join the priesthood because they're
|
||
homosexual anyway.
|
||
CK: I'd been reading Wilhelm Reich all year, and thinking about sexuality, and
|
||
I came to the conclusion that he was absolutely right. He said that one of the
|
||
greatest mistakes our society makes is the repression of childhood sexuality;
|
||
that children should be not just free but encouraged to explore sexually; to
|
||
explore their own bodies and to explore the bodies of other children their own
|
||
age--that it's healthy and positive. Meanwhile I just happened to have these
|
||
beautiful line drawings of naked boys, so I put two and two together, blew them
|
||
up, and added in giant letters "SEX IS GOOD" and "Pedophile Priests for Life."
|
||
I also made a new batch of signs, yellow ones with black letters that said
|
||
"Drink Your Holy Water." This was a bit of a pun [and a reference to *Snuff
|
||
It* #2] because if you make Pedophile Priests for Life into an acronym it
|
||
spells PPFL, which sounds like "pee-pee fell."
|
||
LE: How about Brigitte?
|
||
CK: Pastor Kim and I were talking about how to symbolize the situation and we
|
||
came up with the idea of a blow-up doll on a cross. So I went down to the zone
|
||
[where the porn shops are] and found a lovely blond doll named Brigitte. I put
|
||
her on a giant wooden cross, and gave her a blue-and-white striped hospital
|
||
robe, ankle socks, rosary beads, a crown of thorns made of barbed wire--plus
|
||
she had a carnivorous baby coming out of her vagina, with blood dripping down
|
||
its chin. A real traffic stopper.
|
||
LE: It definitely created massive confusion. I'm sure a lot of people,
|
||
including the tour buses that were passing by, thought that those were
|
||
Christian representations.
|
||
CK: Yes! There was confusion and shock and disgust--
|
||
LE: Because you also had "Eat A Queer Fetus For Jesus" there, so there were
|
||
three different images that related to Christian imagery.
|
||
CK: It wasn't one group in one trench and one group in another. It was
|
||
everybody all mingled together. So you couldn't tell anybody from anybody.
|
||
And there were groups that we'd never even heard of that were showing up
|
||
because of our publicity. We had the pro-masturbation, anti-intercourse group
|
||
that was claiming they were the middle ground, that both sides were wrong. We
|
||
had the Satanist Youth Corps doing their thing--
|
||
LE: You had the reelect Michael Dukakis guy...
|
||
CK: Yeah, I don't know how he got in there. Then there was the Pedophile
|
||
Priests for Life which were ostensibly a separate group from the Church of
|
||
Euthanasia. Pastor Kim was all dressed up in his priestly outfit. So, it was
|
||
absolute bedlam. I mean, if you were walking down the street--
|
||
LE: It was a circus. People weren't just walking by this time, they were
|
||
gaping; they were sticking around to see what would happen.
|
||
CK: Dan and his friends were banging on their tambourines and singing and
|
||
dancing around--it was like a Fellini film. I'd never seen anything like it.
|
||
LE: Moments after you guys arrived, the Christians were on their cell phones
|
||
calling the cops and then calling the state cops--I heard the guy say to them,
|
||
"We've been coming here for ten years! These people have no right to be here."
|
||
And the first thing the cop wanted to do was separate the two groups, which, of
|
||
course, was impossible--he had no idea how to separate them, because he didn't
|
||
know who was on what side. And then he said, "Take me to the leader of this
|
||
group" and people said, "there is no leader, just a lot of people who really
|
||
believe in what they have to say."
|
||
CK: That's right! So then he went over and talked to Pastor Kim, and I guess
|
||
he didn't get anywhere, because he came back and asked me if I was the leader,
|
||
and I said no, I wasn't the leader. He was one confused-looking cop. Of
|
||
course, it had gotten ugly by that point because Vermin had finally squirted
|
||
one of the Christians with his water penis.
|
||
LE: He was saying, "Spread those Christian cheeks to receive the holy water!"
|
||
CK: He squirted the guy who was holding the giant Madonna statue, the same guy
|
||
who called the state police, what an asshole--he started screaming "Assault!"
|
||
and the cops ran over and said, "Look, you can't do that anymore." I knew that
|
||
if I gave Vermin the water penis that he was going to squirt a Christian with
|
||
it. I warned him not to do it, but I knew he was going to do it anyway and
|
||
that as soon as he did, all hell would break loose and he wouldn't get to do it
|
||
twice. He didn't do it twice, because if he had they would have arrested him.
|
||
LE: The Christians had a megaphone and were sitting there praying and singing
|
||
into it throughout the entire thing. So of course Vermin was on a megaphone
|
||
too.
|
||
CK: And I was on my megaphone, and the pro-masturbation guys had one. There
|
||
were four megaphones going at once!
|
||
LE: One of my favorite parts was when they started saying that they were
|
||
surrounded by demons, that Satan was among them. They were praying for help,
|
||
and then they started saying "God will not be mocked." And Vermin meanwhile
|
||
was yelling into the megaphone, "God will be mocked and that's what we're here
|
||
to do!"
|
||
CK: [laughs]
|
||
LE: And the other thing was that Madonna had just had her child and Vermin had
|
||
a great spiel going about it--"Madonna has just given birth, isn't that enough
|
||
for you people?" "It's the second coming!" and all that kind of stuff, which
|
||
horrified them as well. But one tactic you used, both at this clinic and the
|
||
previous one, was talking about sex and using explicit sexual terms, yelling
|
||
them loud in front of these people to disconcert them, like cock and pussy.
|
||
CK: That's right, we were chanting "sex is good, pussy is good, cock is good,
|
||
orgasm is good"--
|
||
LE: And then you went off into a rant about, "it's a well-kept secret, but
|
||
there's such a thing as sexual pleasure."
|
||
CK: I was shouting about genitalia, and all kinds of sex, and how orgasm was
|
||
good and positive and nothing to be afraid of. And pretty soon there was not
|
||
one, but two, three, four cop cars--a lot of cops, and a lot of us, and it was
|
||
getting to be, you know, pretty exciting. And then finally the head cop came
|
||
up to me and told me that Brigitte had to go. I was amazed that we got away
|
||
with it as long as we did. I mean, we had electrical tape over her nipples,
|
||
but her robe was wide open, and her--everything was quite visible, and we were
|
||
out there for an hour before they did anything about it. Anyway, the cop says
|
||
"We've received complaints, the doll is lewd and lascivious, it's gotta go."
|
||
So I said I was just as offended by the enormous photo of a mangled fetus that
|
||
the Christians were displaying right next to me, and why didn't that have to go
|
||
too, and he gives me a stony look and says "The doll has to go, now." He
|
||
wasn't budging, so I said, "What if we just close her robe?" and quickly tied
|
||
it back up. I think the cameras were having a soothing effect on him, because
|
||
he said "Make sure the robe *stays* closed," and walked back to his car [the
|
||
police are your friends].
|
||
LE: They didn't seem to do anything about the nude boys on the Pedophile
|
||
Priests for Life signs.
|
||
CK: That's because we had those little pink crosses over their penises. I was
|
||
so tempted to let them hang out, I agonized over it, but in retrospect I'm glad
|
||
we drew the line--I mean, one of them had an erection, and I think if it hadn't
|
||
been for the little pink crosses it would have been over in 5 minutes instead
|
||
of an hour and a half.
|
||
LE: It was kind of like religious lingerie.
|
||
CK: [laughs] Yes it was! And every now and then the wind would blow and lift
|
||
up the pink crosses. There was something kind of lascivious about that too.
|
||
Between the young boys and the penis pistol and the blow up doll--the whole
|
||
thing had a kind of peep show feeling to it that was very nice. It was all
|
||
very sexually charged.
|
||
LE: Vermin jumped up on a wall and delivered Nevada's speech again, which had
|
||
the crowd transfixed.
|
||
CK: It was even better the second time. It's great oratory and it was
|
||
wonderful to hear it. We screamed until our megaphones went out, you could
|
||
hardly hear what was happening. Everything was going on simultaneously.
|
||
LE: That was the power of confusion, I think.
|
||
CK: The power of confusion and ambiguity.
|
||
|
||
ASK CHRISSY
|
||
|
||
The CoE has as part of its guiding principles a fondness for this planet. If
|
||
this is so, how can you not value humankind after having any kind of a life?
|
||
[What a piece of work is man, etc.]
|
||
--Lee
|
||
|
||
Unlike other "misanthropic" organizations (e.g. VHEMT, GLF), the CoE does not
|
||
advocate complete Human extinction--except as a last resort, should efforts to
|
||
restore *balance* between Humans and the remaining species fail. It was
|
||
exceedingly difficult for nineteenth-century Indians to value the white man
|
||
while he was systematically destroying their way of life. It's equally
|
||
difficult for me to value Humans while they're turning the Earth into a giant
|
||
sewer. Nonetheless, many Indians did--and still do--manage to feel *sympathy*
|
||
for whites. I usually manage to feel sympathy for Humans, but don't push your
|
||
luck by bragging about how great they are.
|
||
|
||
What does cannibalism have to do with the Church's mission, other than the
|
||
shock value? Isn't it enough that a body be dead? What's the point of eating
|
||
it?
|
||
--Steve
|
||
|
||
If you're a typical flesh-eating Human in a "civilized" industrial nation,
|
||
you've probably never killed anything in your life. What do you think about as
|
||
you bite into your cheeseburger? Do you feel any compassion for the animal
|
||
that died so that you could live? Are you even aware that you're eating the
|
||
flesh of an animal? How can you tell? Is there any blood? Where are the skin
|
||
and bones and organs? Maybe they're not good enough for you, fit only for your
|
||
pet. Are you aware that the animal you're eating lived its entire adult life
|
||
in a tiny pen, force-fed, and unable to take a single step? Do you think the
|
||
people who killed the animal spoke kindly to it, or prayed for it, or did
|
||
anything to make its death less painful? Could it be that they smashed its
|
||
head with a sledgehammer and threw it on a conveyor belt? Could it be that the
|
||
meat industry is engineered to conceal these truths, to hide them from you with
|
||
processing and marketing? Would you enjoy your cheeseburger as much if you had
|
||
to watch the animal die first? Do you think that the animal feels pain less
|
||
than you, or that its suffering is unimportant? Do you imagine that you are
|
||
superior to the animal?
|
||
Maybe if a third of the people on earth weren't going to bed hungry every
|
||
night, often because their land was taken away to grow food for livestock, and
|
||
maybe if you knew how to hunt and kill an animal, as an equal, with weapons you
|
||
made yourself with your bare hands, and maybe if you knew how to skin the
|
||
animal, how to remove its flesh, how to cook what you could eat, preserve the
|
||
rest, and utilize every piece of the animal, wasting nothing, and maybe if you
|
||
were willing to get down on your knees and *thank* the animal for allowing you
|
||
to live, *then* maybe you wouldn't have to eat Human flesh instead.
|
||
|
||
The US population is growing faster than that of eighteen other
|
||
industrialized nations and, in terms of energy consumption,
|
||
when an American couple stops spawning at two babies, it's the
|
||
same as an average East Indian couple stopping at sixty-six, or
|
||
an Ethiopian couple drawing the line at one thousand.
|
||
|
||
--Joy Williams, "The Case Against Babies"
|
||
|
||
ABORTION AS A SACRED RITE
|
||
by Nevada Kerr
|
||
|
||
Abortion is a sacred rite that has been performed by women for centuries. The
|
||
midwife, healer, shaman or witch is the holy abortionist. She has been hounded
|
||
by christians for millennia. It is time for this witch-hunt to end! With the
|
||
help of the holy abortionist, in the form of the death goddess, the crone, or
|
||
the medusa, we will overcome this new onslaught by the christian fanatics.
|
||
Century after century these zealots try to impose their feeble morality on
|
||
women. They claim that god has sovereign power over issues of life and death.
|
||
This is far from the truth. Women as the goddess incarnate in all her forms
|
||
and in particular in the shape of the hag, shrew, or fury who devours life in
|
||
her gaping mouth with her sharp fangs, has sovereign power over issues of life
|
||
and death. Let us not forget that when she decides her children are fated to
|
||
die, so be it! She is the mother of necessity. She is the groomless bride who
|
||
traverses the bridge between the worlds and carries the souls of aborted
|
||
children to the other side. Like Lilith, she mercifully robs them of their
|
||
breath. We are all on loan here and the death goddess must protect her own
|
||
interests! No one can argue with the whirlwind who sweeps the doomed away!
|
||
Her word is law! Today we hope to invoke the wisdom and justice of the sacred
|
||
abortionist, and in defense of women we scoff at these hysterical christians!
|
||
All hope for an overpopulated planet is born in the darkness of her lethal
|
||
grasp! Praise loudly the victorious destroyer of unwanted and unneeded
|
||
children! She who has the right of jurisdiction owns the souls of this earthly
|
||
tribe! You may shudder, shake, and tremble! These are appropriate responses.
|
||
Fear, awe, dread, and reverence are what the death mother has come to expect!
|
||
With sickle in hand, she seizes the sated and weary souls of the damned! These
|
||
christians here today only make her job more difficult than it needs to be.
|
||
Like a goblin-mother, she who suckles the stillborn babe also comforts the mad
|
||
and possessed. Beloved and misguided christians--know that you are vigilantly
|
||
watched over by the ever-present destroyer who will someday swoop down upon you
|
||
and gracefully carry you away! The nature of desire, the truth of life itself
|
||
has always been death--the all-seeing one who demands responsibility from those
|
||
who procreate and overpopulate this overburdened planet. Do not misunderstand!
|
||
She means to do harm! You can invoke your insane and giddy god all day long.
|
||
It will do no good. He has no power here! She who whets your appetite with
|
||
sexual pleasures also whets the knife. She grasps, binds, and enthralls! The
|
||
holy abortionist only summons those who are deserving of the call! She is free
|
||
from imperfection! Like husks removed from grain, the unborn are hers! She
|
||
marks her territory, a boundary these christians here today have crossed over.
|
||
These misguided christians think they can strike a bargain with the grave,
|
||
shriek at the whirlwind, bellow and screech at the all-devouring one. The
|
||
fearful one, the holy abortionist is deaf to their pleading and will win in the
|
||
end!
|
||
|
||
There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe.
|
||
It has symmetry, elegance, and grace--those qualities you find
|
||
always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it
|
||
in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a
|
||
ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the
|
||
pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our
|
||
lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the
|
||
forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the
|
||
finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate
|
||
pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all
|
||
things move towards death.
|
||
|
||
--from "The Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
|
||
|
||
E-SERMON #15
|
||
|
||
Dear brethren, these are difficult times we live in. I'm sure that the bombing
|
||
in Oklahoma leaves us all with a deep uneasiness about our future here in the
|
||
Land of Opportunity. The Dollar drops precipitously against the Yen,
|
||
unemployment keeps rising no matter what the president says, the streets are
|
||
dirty and dangerous and crawling with crazed crack dealers...even the
|
||
atmosphere is full of holes. It's enough to make any decent citizen depressed.
|
||
But don't despair! No matter how overwhelmed and powerless you might feel in
|
||
the face of such adversity, there is something you can do, right here, maybe
|
||
even right now, to help solve all of these problems, and ensure your happiness
|
||
and the happiness of generations to come: you can have a baby! That's right,
|
||
it's time to raise a family!
|
||
That woke you up, didn't it? I saw you snoozing there in the back row.
|
||
Pay attention! This is important! Now, you've heard the politicians
|
||
complaining about the decline of the family, and the collapse of moral values,
|
||
right? And how many of them are doing their share? Not many! They're too
|
||
busy driving their fancy cars, and besides, half of them are closet queers!
|
||
They can complain until they're blue in the face, but they're not going to save
|
||
the planet. It's time to take matters into our own hands! If you're a guy,
|
||
punch some holes in those rubbers, or better yet, throw them out the window,
|
||
and tell your beloved to expect a little visit from the stork! She'll
|
||
understand, and what's more, she'll respect you for it. If you're a girl, stop
|
||
taking those poisonous birth control pills, today! Wait for the right time of
|
||
the month, ask your mother if you don't know what I mean, and then slip your
|
||
boyfriend's penis into your vagina. Don't be shy about it, just slide it in
|
||
and out until his sperm shoots right up into your cervix! He'll fall asleep,
|
||
and you can rejoice in the absolutely certain knowledge that you are carrying
|
||
out God's Plan on Earth!
|
||
Think of all the years you've wasted, flushing that sperm down the toilet,
|
||
in condoms or wads of kleenex, wiping it off your chin with a t-shirt, or even
|
||
swallowing it, when you could have been helping to save the planet! But that's
|
||
okay, because with today's modern scientific miracles, it's almost never too
|
||
late! Soon you'll be making up for lost time, with a little cutie-pie on each
|
||
nipple and a bun in the oven. What joy! There's no cure for the blues like
|
||
hungry mouths to feed. You won't have time to feel depressed anymore! You'll
|
||
be pumping out copies of yourself like there's no tomorrow, and if your man
|
||
doesn't like it, well, you'll just have to find another one! Slap him in the
|
||
face! Tell him to snap out of it and deliver the goods, because only a crazy
|
||
man would stand in the way of God's Plan! That's grounds for divorce in any
|
||
state, and worse if he's not careful!
|
||
The Founding Fathers of this great nation made laws to protect us against
|
||
men and women who use their sex organs for lewd, disgusting perversions instead
|
||
of procreation. God doesn't like people who masturbate, or engage in unnatural
|
||
acts, with members of the same sex no less! God hates these wicked people, and
|
||
strikes them down with terrible diseases like herpes and AIDS! They are even
|
||
lower than animals, almost as low as abortionists, and the Founding Fathers
|
||
knew this and created sodomy laws so these foul creatures could be safely
|
||
locked away, or killed like rabid dogs. Don't let it happen to you! Would you
|
||
rather rot in a filthy jail cell, or follow the path of righteousness? Would
|
||
you rather roast in the electric chair, or help build the new Jerusalem? You
|
||
know the answer, so what are you waiting for? Put your sex organs to work for
|
||
Jesus!
|
||
Hear me brethren, God needs warm bodies, right now! God wants us to have
|
||
more babies than fingers! God wants us to fuck like bunnies until there's no
|
||
room for anything else, not even animals! God doesn't love animals! God wants
|
||
us to push the cows and pigs and chickens into the sea, and still keep on
|
||
fucking, until there's no more space left on Earth, until we tear into each
|
||
other's flesh like rats in a cage, because GOD LOVES PEOPLE!
|
||
|
||
And now dear brethren, let us rise, and sing along with the Borg:
|
||
|
||
No animals.
|
||
No animals.
|
||
|
||
No cats to purr.
|
||
No dogs to scratch.
|
||
No birds to sing.
|
||
No cows to kill.
|
||
|
||
Dream, dream, we can dream,
|
||
We can dream.
|
||
(Wolf! Sheep! Wolf! Sheep!)
|
||
|
||
No lions to tame.
|
||
No cocks to crow.
|
||
No mice to trap.
|
||
No deer to kill.
|
||
|
||
Dream, dream, we can dream,
|
||
We can dream.
|
||
|
||
No animals.
|
||
No animals.
|
||
|
||
Thanks to TMax and Izzy for translating the preceding hymn from the Borg
|
||
Collective. They can be reached at The Noise, 74 Jamaica Street, Jamaica
|
||
Plain, MA 02130.
|
||
|
||
The life of a laying hen begins in a hatchery. Because male
|
||
chicks will never lay eggs and are not bred to gain weight
|
||
quickly for slaughter, they are promptly suffocated, gassed, or
|
||
put through a crushing machine which grinds up their bodies
|
||
into pulp. Female chicks are de-beaked [see the film
|
||
*Baraka*], toe-clipped, vaccinated, and sent to large
|
||
windowless buildings. At 20 weeks of age, when they are ready
|
||
to begin laying eggs, they are transferred to laying houses,
|
||
which typically hold 80,000 hens confined in wire cages so
|
||
small that 4-5 birds live in a cage the size of a single
|
||
newspaper page. Under these highly unnatural conditions, hens
|
||
become aggressive, cannibalistic, and often die from stress.
|
||
A 10-18% mortality rate is not considered unusual. But on the
|
||
factory farm, the individual animal is worth little in terms of
|
||
the overall profit margin.
|
||
|
||
I WOOD
|
||
by Rev. Chris Korda
|
||
|
||
Make yourself as comfortable as possible. Okay, now close your eyes, relax,
|
||
and try to imagine yourself dying. It's bound to happen eventually, right? So
|
||
try to imagine yourself dying. It could be suddenly or gradually, by chance or
|
||
by design, far in the future, or tomorrow, but imagine yourself passing into
|
||
the twilight world between life and death. Your body is letting go, growing
|
||
heavy, the life force is passing out of it, and finally your body is
|
||
completely, irrevocably, dead. Now there's a ceremony, a wake, and your
|
||
friends and family are gathered around your body, expressing their love for
|
||
you, honoring you, wishing you well. Meanwhile, your detailed instructions for
|
||
the disposal of your body have mysteriously disappeared, and so, due to
|
||
circumstances beyond anyone's control, your body is buried, naked, without
|
||
casket or shroud, in the forest.
|
||
Time is passing. Your body is decomposing, rotting, breaking down into the
|
||
simple substances that sustain organic life. The worms and beetles are
|
||
chewing, burrowing into you, digesting you, I know it's creepy, but don't
|
||
worry; you can't feel it. They're just playing their role, doing what they do
|
||
best: helping the Earth recycle you. After a lifetime of eating, consuming the
|
||
riches of the Earth, now the Earth is eating you. You're part of the food
|
||
chain after all, because while your body's nutrients are slowly dissolving into
|
||
the soil, they're being absorbed by the roots of a tree.
|
||
Now try to imagine that nameless part of yourself that survives every stage
|
||
of death. Beyond your ego, beyond your consciousness; your highest self, your
|
||
spirit. Try to imagine that while your body is composting, feeding the tree's
|
||
roots, your spirit is also passing into the tree. And slowly, very slowly, you
|
||
begin to have sensation again. New, unfamiliar sensation. Where your feet
|
||
used to be, you have roots that sink deep into the warm, moist Earth. And
|
||
where your poor, aching spine used to be, you have a thick trunk, flexible but
|
||
incredibly strong, and covered with bark instead of skin. And instead of arms
|
||
and a head, you have a profusion of branches, ending in thousands of delicate
|
||
twigs instead of fingers. And your twigs are thrust out in every direction,
|
||
towards the heavens, towards the sun, and instead of hair, they're covered with
|
||
tender, green leaves.
|
||
Feel the warm sun beating down on your leaves. Breathe. Breathe with your
|
||
leaves. In...out. In...out. Your leaves are a million tiny lungs. Feel how
|
||
they ripple in the breeze. Your branches are swaying, gently swaying, back and
|
||
forth, back and forth, and the sap is running up and down your trunk, carrying
|
||
nutrients from the soil up to the branches and leaves. Birds are resting on
|
||
you, and insects scurry around on your bark, but they move so fast you barely
|
||
notice them. Time has slowed down for you. You're not going anywhere.
|
||
Day becomes twilight, and then night. The stars come out, and the moon
|
||
rises. Feel the other trees, all around you. You're one tree, among many
|
||
other trees, in the forest. Hear the sound of the forest. Animals, birds,
|
||
insects, singing the song of the Earth. You're singing too, with a deep, slow
|
||
sound, all the trees singing together. Mist creeps along the ground, and the
|
||
stars fade, as dawn approaches. The song is louder now, and your leaves are
|
||
wet with dew. The sun creeps over the horizon, and into the sky.
|
||
Days pass. Weeks pass, and the air gets colder. Your leaves are dry and
|
||
brittle, and the wind blows them away. Now the ground is hard, and ice covers
|
||
everything. Your sap thickens, the snow lies heavy on your branches, and the
|
||
forest is still. In the stillness of winter, all along your twigs and
|
||
branches, tiny buds are forming, under the ice.
|
||
As the years pass, you grow bigger, and bigger still. Your roots crack
|
||
open boulders, birds make nests in your branches, and animals hide in the
|
||
caverns of your trunk. Beneath your roots, the flesh of your old body is gone,
|
||
and even the bones crumble, but your spirit lives on.
|
||
|
||
Sometimes when I watch TV, I stop being myself, and oh, I'm a
|
||
star of a series, or, or, I have my own talk show, or I'm on
|
||
the news, getting out of a limo, going some place important.
|
||
All I ever have to do is be famous! People watch me, and they
|
||
love me, and I never, never grow old, and I never die.
|
||
|
||
--John Carpenter's "They Live"
|
||
|
||
Ask a few questions here and there, but do it casually.
|
||
|
||
THE POLITICS OF DAILY LIFE
|
||
by Lydia Eccles
|
||
|
||
Think of your direct bodily experience of life.
|
||
No one can lie to you about that.
|
||
|
||
Do you hear insect sound of drones clickering keyboards
|
||
in a fluorescent hive of fabric-padded cubicles?
|
||
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a TV screen?
|
||
A computer screen? An automobile screen? All three screens
|
||
combined? Is software your supervisor?
|
||
And how many hours a day do you sleep?
|
||
How are you affected by sound?
|
||
How are you affected by light?
|
||
How are you affected by warmth and touch?
|
||
How are you affected by music?
|
||
Is a good record better than live music raw?
|
||
Is it simply sound you want? Or shared ritual magic?
|
||
How many of your rituals come at you through a glass,
|
||
vicariously?
|
||
What are you being screened from?
|
||
Does it bother you if the windows don't open,
|
||
and even your air is "conditioned"?
|
||
How about your degree and variety of body movement?
|
||
How do you feel in situations of enforced passivity?
|
||
How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic
|
||
communication, audio, robotic voices video, print, billboard,
|
||
as you stumble through the forest of signs?
|
||
What are they urging upon you?
|
||
Do you need contemplation? Do you remember it?
|
||
Thinking from inside, rather than reacting to stimuli?
|
||
Is it hard to look away?
|
||
Is looking in the very thing that cannot be permitted?
|
||
How are you affected by being in crowds?
|
||
How much bodily space do you need?
|
||
Do you find yourself blocking your empathetic responses to other humans?
|
||
Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence?
|
||
How are you affected by the size of the room you're in?
|
||
By living in two and three dimensional grids?
|
||
And by the visual space?
|
||
Do you need to see the sky? Water?
|
||
Foliage? Animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving?
|
||
(Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, and fernplants?)
|
||
Or is video your glinting, glimmering, moving?
|
||
Who prepares your meals? Do you eat standing up?
|
||
Do you trust what you're eating?
|
||
How are you affected by standardized time,
|
||
designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of
|
||
millions of others? How long do you ever go without knowing
|
||
what time it is? Who or what controls your minutes and hours?
|
||
The minutes and hours that add up to your life?
|
||
How are you affected by being moved around
|
||
without control, in elevators, subways, escalators, conveyor belts?
|
||
How are you affected by waiting?
|
||
Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to pee, waiting...learning
|
||
to discipline and punish your spontaneous urges?
|
||
How are you affected by being immobilized and scheduled
|
||
rather than wandering and roaming freely and spontaneously?
|
||
Scavenging? (Shoplifting?)
|
||
Can you use your hands creatively,
|
||
building making touching a variety of materials?
|
||
How are you affected by holding in your desires?
|
||
By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure,
|
||
starting in childhood, along with suppression of everything in you that
|
||
evidences your wild nature, your animal life?
|
||
Is pleasure dangerous? Is danger joy?
|
||
What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices?
|
||
And thought-saving devices?
|
||
How are you affected by the efficiency requirement that puts the
|
||
end product ahead of the process, that values only the future
|
||
and never the moment, the present moment that gets shorter
|
||
and shorter, as we try to speed to the future endpoint?
|
||
Are you saving time?
|
||
Are you lonely in a way that language can't allay
|
||
or even express?
|
||
Do you sometimes feel yourself ready to
|
||
LOSE CONTROL?
|
||
|
||
That had been the signal.
|
||
|
||
Nature allows for only very slow change. Accepting a change of
|
||
species...before a change of conscience. I'm more rational
|
||
than you. I respond rationally to stimulus. If someone
|
||
suffers, I console him. If someone needs my help, I give it.
|
||
Why do you think I'm crazy? If someone looks at me, I respond.
|
||
If someone talks, I listen. You have gone slowly crazy, by
|
||
ignoring these stimuli...simply for having ignored them.
|
||
Someone dies. You let him die. Someone asks for help. You
|
||
look the other way. Someone is hungry. You squander what you
|
||
have. Someone is dying of sorrow. You lock him up so as not
|
||
to see him. One who systematically adopts this conduct...who
|
||
walks among the victims, ignoring them...may dress well, may
|
||
pay taxes...go to Mass...but you cannot deny he is sick. Your
|
||
reality is terrifying, Doctor. Why don't you look at the real
|
||
madness for once? Stop persecuting the sad ones...the
|
||
meek...those who don't want to buy, or cannot buy, that shit
|
||
you would gladly sell me. That is, if you could.
|
||
|
||
--Rantes, "Man Facing Southeast"
|
||
|
||
THE AGE OF SIMULATION
|
||
by Rev. Chris Korda
|
||
|
||
A visionary is one who has visions, one who dreams. Visions are by definition
|
||
nonverbal experiences, and therefore difficult to communicate. Throughout most
|
||
of human history, nonverbal experience was shared telepathically, and the
|
||
atrophy of this ability directly coincides with the end of the Age of Magic.
|
||
There is no way to be sure how long the Age of Magic lasted, partly because
|
||
its time was not linear but mythic, and partly because the continuity and
|
||
rootedness of Magic-based cultures encouraged oral rather than written history.
|
||
It is the turmoil of Magic's demise that has inspired people to write their
|
||
history down; what most people call history is merely the brief and violent
|
||
history of Industrial Society. The history of the Age of Magic exists, not in
|
||
libraries or museums, but in the timeless realm of mystical experience, and
|
||
within all beings who maintain their connection to that realm. As the number
|
||
of *human* beings who remain open to spiritual awareness dwindles, entire
|
||
aspects of this hidden history disappear from human knowledge, to be recovered
|
||
only laboriously, or perhaps lost forever.
|
||
It is possible to communicate visions through any of the nonverbal media
|
||
which comprise "art," but this requires sensitivity of both the creator and the
|
||
viewer. Ideally these two are joined as one, if in not in body, then in
|
||
spirit. Spiritual or Magical art is by definition *participational*, and
|
||
encompasses every aspect of life. Unfortunately, sensitivity and "oneness" are
|
||
qualities that Industrial Society must ruthlessly seek out and destroy, in its
|
||
effort to create passivity and "sameness." In Magic, the many meet as one, and
|
||
return to the many: in Industrial Society, the many are crushed, and
|
||
homogenized into a uniform *mass*.
|
||
Due to the rapid growth of "mass" society, and the resulting loss of
|
||
participation in the rituals of Magical art, I am obliged to verbalize, and
|
||
communicate my visions through the written or spoken word. In a mass society
|
||
only that knowledge which conforms to the inherent laws of mass communication
|
||
can be kept alive and disseminated. These laws have been explained in great
|
||
detail by others; suffice it to say that the verbal forms of mass communication
|
||
require, above all, that knowledge be *rational*.
|
||
Since spiritual knowledge emanates from aspects of reality that are beyond
|
||
the scope of rationalism, it follows that spiritual knowledge cannot be
|
||
verbalized except approximately and allegorically. This paradox led early
|
||
Chinese thinkers to divide reality into two spheres of influence: the spheres
|
||
of Relative and Absolute Truth. According to this division, all verbalized
|
||
experience, and by extension all spoken or written communication, is relative,
|
||
because it depends on the participants' points of view, and on the symbolic
|
||
language that each participant applies to their observations. Thus Lao-Tze
|
||
proclaimed in the *Book of Changes* that "the Tao that has a name, is not the
|
||
true Tao." Absolute Truth was assumed to be nonverbal, and accessible only
|
||
though meditation.
|
||
This caveat was lost on many subsequent thinkers, including the ancient
|
||
Greeks. The confusion of reality with words about reality led to insoluble
|
||
philosophical contradictions, including the conflict between *rationalism* and
|
||
***empiricism*. The empiricists, led by Francis Bacon, held that all knowledge
|
||
derived from the senses, while the rationalists, led by Descartes, argued that
|
||
knowledge was acquired by reason alone. The dilemma was brought to a head by
|
||
Hume, and threatened to undermine the still-delicate foundation of material
|
||
science. Though Kant eventually negotiated a truce, by ceding mathematics and
|
||
logic to the rationalists, while claiming the rest for empiricism, the
|
||
corresponding split between Mind and Body continues to this day. Meanwhile
|
||
both sides cheerfully extended the mechanical world-view into every human
|
||
pursuit, and thus laid the foundations of Industrial Society. The result of
|
||
their zeal is a senseless world in which all truth is relative, and it is to
|
||
this world, and its mass society, that I find myself attempting to communicate
|
||
my irrational visions of Absolute Truth, hampered by a lack of spirit, not only
|
||
in people, but in the language itself.
|
||
In spite of these difficulties, I begin by agreeing with Jeremy Rifkin that
|
||
this is the Age of Simulation. By this I mean that people now accept *mediated
|
||
experience* in the place of real experience. This change has taken place in a
|
||
series of leaps, each corresponding to a technological innovation. The
|
||
printing press, camera, telephone, radio, television, and computer form a
|
||
continuum; with each "advance" the simulation becomes more complete. The
|
||
simulation spreads, by eliminating human capacities it has no use for, while
|
||
excessively stimulating others; in this sense it behaves like a virus, which
|
||
replicates by altering the structure of its host. Simulation creates
|
||
conditions favorable to itself by isolating people from other living beings, by
|
||
reducing their range of sensation, and especially by narrowing their attention
|
||
span. Parents and teachers, unable to grasp this, surround children with
|
||
televisions and computers, and then complain about learning disabilities and
|
||
"attention disorders."
|
||
As Rifkin points out, today's children dismiss someone with the phrase
|
||
"you're history," and as history recedes, the future becomes equally uncertain.
|
||
Unlike the Iroquois, who considered the impact of their deliberations on the
|
||
next seven generations, today's leaders plan no further than their reelection.
|
||
Obsession with an ever-changing present destroys *continuity*: the cycles of
|
||
gradual change so essential to biological and spiritual health, are shattered
|
||
into furtive, splintered motion. Calculus becomes a way of life, as matter,
|
||
energy and even time are quantized into ever-smaller units. The search for
|
||
irreducible elements conceals the desire to *standardize*, to make things
|
||
uniform and interchangeable; humans seek total control, to avoid the disorder
|
||
that their control-lust creates.
|
||
Through simulation, humans seek not only to concentrate all their knowledge
|
||
in the present, but to use that knowledge, as power to *transform* the present,
|
||
ever more quickly. Thus while the stated goal of technological "progress" is
|
||
increased *efficiency*, which by itself seems beneficial, the concealed goal is
|
||
to use that efficiency, not to reduce waste, but to go even faster.
|
||
Yesterday's model is discarded, efficient or not, and as the speed of
|
||
development increases, more and more of earth's structure is consumed, and
|
||
dissipated as waste and heat. This dissipation is *entropy*, or unrecoverable
|
||
energy.
|
||
Entropy describes not only energy loss, but also the tendency of order to
|
||
expand and decay into chaos. On a universal scale, chaos, like death, is
|
||
inevitable, but "progress" towards it can be slowed down, or even reversed, if
|
||
only temporarily. Life itself is a miracle of negative entropy: chaos evolves,
|
||
in a harmony of self-sustaining changes, and the monoculture of primordial
|
||
nothingness, over eons of time, becomes biological diversity. Humans try to
|
||
mimic nature's feat, and succeed in creating short-term order and complexity in
|
||
one place, but only at the price of creating long-term chaos and loss of
|
||
diversity somewhere else. In this way a forest, which for practical purposes
|
||
would have lasted forever, is traded for consumer goods that will last a few
|
||
years, or for packaging, to be discarded immediately. Similarly, America's
|
||
Great Plains, once built for eternity, generate riches for a time, but
|
||
meanwhile the topsoil washes into the sea, never to return. Shifting sand
|
||
demonstrates high entropy; the expanding man-made deserts are a grim reminder
|
||
that Industrial Society's goal is not to "steward" the earth, or even sustain
|
||
life on it, but to *use* it.
|
||
But use it for what? Simulation continues to masquerade as convenience, or
|
||
as novelty, but its object has always been to *replace* reality. This is now
|
||
openly acknowledged in the term "virtual reality." Just as the mechanical
|
||
world-view permitted standardized information to be collected, and centralized
|
||
as *surveillance*, so that surveillance now permits the *assimilation* of
|
||
reality by machines. The process is destructive and one-way: as aspects of
|
||
reality are reduced to commodity, **and assimilated as data, they are
|
||
disfigured and erased. This is illustrated by nature shows, in which extinct
|
||
species live on, as stored information.1
|
||
Simulation concentrates mental energy at the expense of the physical. The
|
||
resulting imbalance exhausts the body, making assimilation more urgent. The
|
||
virtual reality is an *out-of-body experience*, and the mind must free itself
|
||
of the body, or lose its war of secession. Industrial Society attempts to
|
||
extend the body's life, or even replace it, through bionics and genetic
|
||
engineering, but these efforts only cause more disruption, and divert energy
|
||
from healing the split between Mind and Body. As the mind abandons the body,
|
||
entropy begins to manifest itself in devastating syndromes, such as AIDS and
|
||
cancer. The split is a belief system, and can be unlearned, to varying
|
||
degrees; thus true healers consider *belief* to be their single greatest
|
||
obstacle.
|
||
Humans have been usefully compared to cancer, but it is a mistake to assume
|
||
that cancer is genetic in origin, and that humans are therefore inevitably
|
||
programmed to destroy the planet. It is the mechanical world-view of
|
||
Industrial Society which is destroying the planet; humans are merely the agents
|
||
by which this world-view is applied. In this sense the cancer is ideological,
|
||
and humans cannot be blamed for the desecration, anymore than a dreamer can be
|
||
blamed for a nightmare. Though irreversible, the desecration is preventable,
|
||
and can be stopped at any time, so it is not a question of blame at all, but of
|
||
how to wake the dreamer, without further injury.
|
||
The ideological cancer has its roots in *humanism*, the Sophist idea that
|
||
"man is the measure of all things." Goethe's followers built on this notion to
|
||
create their pyramidal "levels of being," with humans at the top, a chosen
|
||
species for whom all was created, and without whom all would have no meaning.
|
||
When Europeans arrived in the New World, this hierarchy of consciousness was
|
||
their chief ideological export; it was poorly received by the First People, who
|
||
in general saw themselves as part of a larger organism, and no better, or worse
|
||
than any other living thing.2
|
||
Humanism views man as the super-ape, who seeks to bend nature to his will
|
||
through the use of his reason. The next logical step is to the super-man or
|
||
*trans-human*, who seeks to liberate his reason from the biological limitations
|
||
of nature, and thus achieve immortality. The cancer, faced with the immanent
|
||
death of its host, makes plans to escape, by building machines and transferring
|
||
itself into them. The danger is not that humans, in the grip of their
|
||
nightmare, will actually build machines capable of self-awareness and
|
||
interplanetary conquest, but that in attempting this folly, they will damage
|
||
the earth so severely that life will no longer be possible, even for humans.3
|
||
The Hopis saw Industrial Society in visions, thousands of years ago, and
|
||
though they did not always comprehend these visions at the time, they preserved
|
||
them in the form of prophecies, which only now begin to make sense. An example
|
||
is their prophecy that there would be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.
|
||
This can be understood not only as a reference to power lines, but also to the
|
||
trails of light made by our ground and air vehicles, as revealed in time-elapse
|
||
photography.4 These changes in perception illustrate the Hopi's ability to
|
||
shift their awareness, in this case from fleeting human consciousness to the
|
||
slower vibrations of the vegetable and mineral worlds.
|
||
The Hopis are well aware of the power of dreams, and they know that our
|
||
illness is a matter of the *heart*. They have also recognized the many signs
|
||
that the illness becomes terminal, and have repeatedly attempted to warn the
|
||
world through the United Nations, finally succeeding in 1992. The signs have
|
||
included earthquakes and drastic changes in weather patterns, as well as Mother
|
||
Earth "crying" through the formation of crop circles. These are symptoms not
|
||
only of deforestation and massive extinction of species, but of *geological*
|
||
damage to the earth. Mining in general, and particularly mining of radioactive
|
||
materials, is seen as a direct assault on the planet, and on its magnetic
|
||
balance and weather. By spewing waste into the air and water, humans poison
|
||
the planet's blood, but by digging precious things from the land, humans injure
|
||
the vital organs of a living organism, and invite disaster, for all beings.
|
||
The Hopis are sworn to protect the treasures that lie beneath them. In victory
|
||
or defeat, they stand for the ultimate truth that *earth is sacred*.
|
||
|
||
1. It is truly ironic that humans regain their long-lost oneness only in mass
|
||
hallucination. The experience is *collective* because its source is not the
|
||
diversity of organic life, but the technological monoculture.
|
||
|
||
2. This is illustrated by Lakota hunters, who left a piece of their flesh at
|
||
the spot where an animal was killed, as a symbol of their indebtedness, and as
|
||
a reminder that through death, came life. Even if modern man left fingers in
|
||
fast-food restaurants, the ritual would be empty; the killing is not done by
|
||
him, but anonymously, by remote control.
|
||
|
||
3. This danger is often downplayed by technological utopians; books such as
|
||
*Third Wave* and *Futureshock* present the soft side of trans-humanism. By
|
||
comparison, the libertarian trans-humanists, also known as Extropians, speak
|
||
openly of "downloading" human awareness into machines, gutting other planets,
|
||
and turning the universe into a cyberspace.
|
||
|
||
4. The film *Koyaanisqatsi*, which explored this discovery, takes its name from
|
||
the Hopi word for *disintegration*, crazy life, or a state of life that calls
|
||
for another way of being. Commuters are compared to sausages flowing through a
|
||
packaging plant, and a rocket launch becomes the ultimate symbol of Industrial
|
||
Society.
|
||
|
||
Wisdom
|
||
|
||
Earth and sky
|
||
Hear my song
|
||
I am weary
|
||
And the way is long
|
||
The wind is wild
|
||
And the waves are rough
|
||
Give me wisdom
|
||
Make me strong enough
|
||
To swim that sea
|
||
To crawl up that shore
|
||
To breathe deep and stand
|
||
And find out who I am
|
||
To reach high and climb up
|
||
To find my place
|
||
To be
|
||
To live my life
|
||
To love
|
||
And be loved
|
||
To die
|
||
Peacefully
|
||
In heaven
|
||
Above
|
||
|
||
-Chris Korda
|
||
|
||
RECOMMENDED READING
|
||
|
||
Black Elk Speaks, John G. Neihardt. After having a great vision at an early
|
||
age, Black Elk became a medicine man. He spent the rest of his life trying to
|
||
realize his dream for the Lakota--and for all people--of the tree of life
|
||
blooming at the center of the sacred hoop. His dream ended in the butchering
|
||
at Wounded Knee. Years later, with tears running down his face, Black Elk
|
||
tells the Great Spirit that the tree never bloomed, and is withered: "A pitiful
|
||
old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and done nothing...It may be
|
||
that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it
|
||
may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds." To see how things could be,
|
||
but be powerless to make them so, surely nothing is harder. Does the
|
||
preservation of Black Elk's vision in a popular book lessen his defeat? The
|
||
author thought so, but I'm unsure. Even if the tree still lives, how can I
|
||
nourish it when I can barely nourish myself? Or are these two are the same,
|
||
because the tree is in each of us? I also have a vision, and feel unable to
|
||
realize it. Will I end up like Black Elk?
|
||
|
||
O-Zone, Paul Theroux. Industrial society concentrates its power in cities, but
|
||
only by ceding control over outlying areas, as Hakim Bey and others have
|
||
observed. Already the elite submit to surveillance, and willingly trade
|
||
freedom of movement for increased security. Today's "knowledge workers"
|
||
telecommute, and rarely leave their gated communities, complete with shopping
|
||
malls, recreation facilities, and private police. How much longer will it be
|
||
before cities become walled cities? Are we returning to a feudal world?
|
||
Theroux's answer is yes, and his bone-chilling novel searches for life outside
|
||
the walls. "I'm an Owner...get out of my way and let me through!"
|
||
|
||
On Behalf of Wolf and the First Peoples, Joseph Marshall III. Unlike hundreds
|
||
of tribes that became stacks of paper, names on a list, or nothing at all, the
|
||
Lakota are alive, with a surprising amount of their heritage intact. Marshall
|
||
moves easily in the white man's world, but he also listens to his ancestors,
|
||
and their voices permeate his essays. They stress the importance of knowing
|
||
one's place, and living within the limits of the shared physical world. Every
|
||
species has a part to play in the dance of life, and possesses unique strengths
|
||
that enable it to survive. The first peoples "did not see their ability to
|
||
reason or understand as anything that made them superior; instead, it was
|
||
simply *their* key to survival." Like Vonnegut, Marshall distinguishes the
|
||
Europeans not by their technology, but by their *arrogance*. Their merciless
|
||
campaign to exterminate the wolf--and the remaining first peoples--in the late
|
||
1800s is one of many examples.
|
||
|
||
The Only Planet of Choice: Essential Briefings from Deep Space, Phyllis V.
|
||
Schlemmer and Mary Bennett. After three hundred pages of channelled interviews
|
||
with the Being who speaks for the Council of Nine (also known as Tom), the mind
|
||
boggles. The good news is that total destruction won't be permitted, but other
|
||
than that, it's up to us, as usual. Eyebrow-raising topics include universal
|
||
civilizations, Atlantis, and Hebrew aliens. Despite urgent warnings to get
|
||
"unstuck," overall the message is positive: "You all have come to Earth to
|
||
beautify it, to purify it, to love it and be in joy with it. Know this: in
|
||
your time, through your and others' dedication, through the quality of your
|
||
being on Planet Earth, you may bring it to the fulfillment of its creation.
|
||
That is for us a great joy and we thank you." The Being who visited me was
|
||
considerably less cheerful. How do you say "don't count your chickens"?
|
||
|
||
The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess. In this outrageous Malthusian comedy from
|
||
the author of *A Clockwork Orange*, overpopulation is so bad that the
|
||
government promotes homosexuality. Their slogan: "It's Sapiens to be Homo."
|
||
The humor is very British, of course, and it overwhelms in places, but
|
||
civilization is demolished, and three out of four pillars are covered, in short
|
||
order. Fans of Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World* (written thirty years
|
||
earlier) will notice many interesting similarities and differences. Thank you,
|
||
William, for making me read this.
|
||
|
||
Where White Men Fear To Tread, Russell Means with Marvin J. Wolf.
|
||
Means--another Lakota--achieved lasting fame as one of the most outspoken
|
||
leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM), for which he and many others
|
||
suffered almost unimaginable violence. His autobiography is white-hot with
|
||
anger, and it left me exhausted, racked by alternating spasms of self-hate and
|
||
self-pity from which I'm still recovering. I can't overcome all of my social
|
||
conditioning in one lifetime; it's too much to ask. I was born and raised in a
|
||
city, and indoctrinated into the intellectual elite. As a child, my knowledge
|
||
of the world came from books. I thought food came from behind the mirrors in
|
||
the supermarket: I didn't know any better. I learned to read and write and
|
||
control machines, and the damage is done. My skills are only useful to
|
||
industrial society, and it tempts me, with distractions and a comfortable
|
||
existence. I drink its poison, and my spirit is sick. I have no tradition,
|
||
and I can't be a Lakota, no matter how much I purify myself. I'm an outsider,
|
||
a mental European. Sometimes I want to live in a right way, but I'm weak, and
|
||
Microsoft is big. I weep for myself, I'm so ashamed.
|
||
|
||
There's an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance
|
||
on any man-healthy planet...You see in this beauty a dynamic
|
||
stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple:
|
||
to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and
|
||
greater diversity. Life improves the closed system's capacity
|
||
to sustain life. Life--all life--is in the service of life.
|
||
Necessary nutrients are made available to life *by* life in
|
||
greater and greater richness as the diversity of life
|
||
increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with
|
||
relationships and relationships within relationships.
|
||
|
||
--Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
|
||
|
||
More Reading
|
||
|
||
1984, George Orwell.
|
||
All's Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque.
|
||
Biodiversity, E.O.Wilson.
|
||
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut.
|
||
The Decade of Destruction, Adrian Cowell.
|
||
Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World, Jeremy Rifkin.
|
||
Final Exit, Derek Humphry.
|
||
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon.
|
||
A Guide for the Perplexed, E.F.Schumacher.
|
||
Howl, Allen Ginsberg.
|
||
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair.
|
||
The Lorax, Dr. Seuss.
|
||
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S.
|
||
Herman and Noam Chomsky.
|
||
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke.
|
||
A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn.
|
||
Our Plundered Planet, Fairfield Osborn.
|
||
The Population Explosion, Paul Erlich.
|
||
Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History, Jim Keith.
|
||
The Sixteen Satires, Juvenal.
|
||
Tales of Power, Carlos Castenada.
|
||
The Tarot, Paul Foster Case.
|
||
The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul.
|
||
Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the
|
||
Destination of Man, Rudolph Steiner.
|
||
Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, the Dalai Lama.
|
||
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig.
|
||
|
||
CHURCH MOVIES
|
||
|
||
1. Eraserhead
|
||
2. Koyaanisqatsi
|
||
3. Providence
|
||
4. The Man Who Fell to Earth
|
||
5. THX 1138
|
||
6. Hearts and Minds
|
||
7. Network
|
||
8. Soylent Green
|
||
9. Being There
|
||
10. Liquid Sky
|
||
11. Clearcut
|
||
12. Man Facing Southeast
|
||
13. The Gods Must Be Crazy
|
||
14. Metropolis
|
||
15. Dr. Strangelove
|
||
|
||
CONTACTS
|
||
|
||
BOTA (Builders of the Adytum)
|
||
P.O.Box 42278, Los Angeles, CA 90042-0278
|
||
CPR (Circles Phenomenon Research)
|
||
P.O.Box 3378, Branford, CT 06405
|
||
Daily Cow (David R. Wyder)
|
||
121 Gregory Ave #B7, Passaic NJ 07055
|
||
FCCA (First Church of Christ, Abortionist)
|
||
Box 6098, 4902 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3799
|
||
GLF (Gaia Liberation Front)
|
||
P.O.Box 127, Station P, Toronto, ON, M5S 2S7, Canada
|
||
Goad To Hell Enterprises (Jim & Debbie Goad)
|
||
P.O.Box 31009, Portland, OR 97231
|
||
GRB (Globally Responsible Birthing)
|
||
Route 1, Box 28, Delancey, NY 13752
|
||
The Hemlock Society (Derek Humphry)
|
||
P.O.Box 11830, Eugene, Oregon 97440
|
||
HToMC (Holy Temple of Mass Consumption)
|
||
P.O.Box 30904, Raleigh, NC 27622-0904
|
||
M.C.McDonald
|
||
418 Kearney, Manhattan KS 66502
|
||
Mike Merrill
|
||
P.O.Box 4214, Buffalo, NY 14217
|
||
Misinformed Citizens (Vermin Supreme)
|
||
P.O.Box 1313, Galosha, MA 01930
|
||
OGYR Network ($t @ndrew)
|
||
P.O.Box 53, Plainfield, IL 60544
|
||
Nina Paley
|
||
P.O.Box 460736, San Francisco CA 94146
|
||
Randall Phillips
|
||
P.O.Box 2217, Philadelphia, PA 19103
|
||
Reality Hoax (Eric T. Sorebo)
|
||
P.O.Box 428, Cornell, WI 54732-0428
|
||
Spit Gland (Ingmar)
|
||
P.O.Box 1079,Dunkirk, MD 20754
|
||
Unapack (Lydia Eccles)
|
||
P.O.Box 120494, Boston, MA 02112
|
||
VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement)
|
||
P.O.Box 86646, Portland, OR 97286-0646
|
||
X.S.Despot
|
||
2225 Montego Drive, Lansing, MI 48912
|
||
|
||
The Church of Euthanasia is a nonprofit 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. The Church is exempt from federal income tax under 501(a) and
|
||
501(c)(3), EIN 04-324-9910. Donations are tax-deductible.
|
||
|
||
editor: Rev. Chris Korda
|
||
asst. editors: Pastor Kim, Sister Catherine, Lydia Eccles
|
||
photo editor: William Plowman
|
||
proofreader: Nevada Kerr
|
||
typist: Nancy Young
|
||
scan boy: Justin P. Moore
|
||
postal: The Church of Euthanasia
|
||
P.O.Box 261
|
||
Somerville, MA 02143
|
||
e-mail: coe@netcom.com
|
||
ftp: ftp.etext.org /pub/Zines/Snuffit
|
||
gopher: gopher.etext.org Zines/Snuffit
|
||
www: www.paranoia.com/coe/
|
||
www mirror: www.envirolink.org/orgs/coe/
|
||
|
||
THANKS to $aint @ndrew, Tim Anderson, Bob Baden, Cardinal Bailey, Ronald
|
||
Bleier, Boboroshi, James Bredt, Henryk Broder, Sister Catherine, Jim Cypher,
|
||
Becky Day, Tess Decosta, Christopher Dinardo, Dane Donato, Lydia Eccles, Paulie
|
||
Gurspam, Annie Harrison, America Hoffman, Iah House, Susan Johnson, Slyther
|
||
Kalson, Deacon Kelly, Pagan Kennedy, Nevada Kerr, Angela Kimberk, Ryu Kirtz,
|
||
Keith Krisa, Father Lamorte, Dan Martinez, T & Izzy Max, Nova Maynard, Cassy
|
||
Mitchell, Kent Miller, Justin P. Moore, Nina Paley, Anne Phillips, Stephen M.
|
||
Pike, William Plowman, Kevin Roche, Ashkan Sahini, Pastor Scott, Doug Sery,
|
||
Sara Stewart, Vermin Supreme, Mike Therion, Toto, Karen Tozzi, Burt Urbanowski,
|
||
Jamie Wheelock, Nancy Young, and especially Pastor Kim.
|