=== Waco / Branch Davidians
1. Final Report From John C. Danforth, Office of Special Counsel, Waco Investigation
2. Waco deputy U.S. marshal asked to return for testify before special grand jury
3. Whistle-Blowers Deserve Some Leeway, Not Prosecution

=== Falun Gong
4. Another Falun Gong Member Dies in Chinese Prison

=== Scientology
5. Scientology criticizes German Microsoft agreement
6. Deinstallation of Windows 2000 Defragmentation program
7. Ban Scientology

=== Buddhism
8. Where East meets West

=== Hate Groups
9. Experts Says France Could Block Most Nazi Web Sales
10. Asylum hearings pofficially opened in the USA for ''Satan's Killer''

=== Other News
11. Vietnam Police Crack Down on Sect, Seize Documents
12. Fined - for running rings round crop circles
13. China Tries To Tighten Grip on Web

» Part 2

=== Noted
14. When faith fails children--religion-based neglect: Pervasive, deadly...and legal?
15. Fake blood could save lives
16. It's all in your mind
17. Expert says don't always trust memory (Loftus)
18. Beware a Rash of Exorcisms (Loftus)
19. Scholar studies why we hate (Lifton)
20. Digital Angel: The New Eye in the Sky
21. Scholars Consider a Messiah Before Jesus

=== Death Penalty
22. Court: Invoking God Was Prejudicial
23. State Dept. Asks Texas to Review Capital Case

=== Books
24. Minister wants Harry Potter expelled from school
25. Book review: Frankly, he's skeptical


=== Waco / Branch Davidians

1. Final Report From John C. Danforth, Office of Special Counsel, Waco Investigation
PRNewswire, Nov. 8, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Special Counsel John C. Danforth today delivered to Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder his Final Report Concerning the 1993 Confrontation at the Mt. Carmel Complex, Waco, Texas. This Report unequivocally reaffirms the conclusions contained in the Special Counsel's Interim Report of July 21, 2000.

Specifically:

1. Government agents did not start the fire at Waco;
2. Government agents did not shoot at the Branch Davidians on April 19, 1993;
3. Government agents did not improperly use the United States military;
4. Government agents did not engage in a massive conspiracy and cover-up. There is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Attorney General Reno, the present and former Director of the FBI, other high officials of the United States, or the individual members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team who fired three pyrotechnic tear gas rounds on April 19, 1993.
5. Responsibility for the tragedy at Waco rests with certain of the Branch Davidians and their leader, David Koresh, who shot and killed four ATF agents, wounded twenty others, shot at FBI agents trying to insert tear gas into the complex, burned down the complex, and shot at least twenty of their own people, including five children.

(...)

Significantly, however, the Office of Special Counsel concluded that certain members of the Department of Justice's trial team that prosecuted the Branch Davidians knew about the pyrotechnic tear gas rounds in 1993 and wrongly chose not to disclose this information to defense attorneys for the Davidians, to Congress, and to others within the Department of Justice. Danforth's Final Report is sharply critical of several of these individuals for obstructing his investigation by misleading investigators and attempting to cast blame on others in order to conceal their own role in this matter. The Final Report is also critical of the two FBI agents who were in charge of the evidence collection at the Branch Davidian complex.

Closely related to these conclusions, a federal grand jury sitting in St. Louis today returned an indictment against former Assistant United States Attorney William Johnston, one member of the trial team that prosecuted the Davidians. The five-count indictment charges that Johnston obstructed Danforth's investigation and made false statements to Danforth's investigators.

The charges set forth in an indictment are merely accusations and each defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

Because of the pending indictment, the Office of Special Counsel has redacted some portions of its Report as required by (1) the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure; (2) the Department of Justice's guidelines regarding the treatment of individuals under indictment; and (3) the need to protect law enforcement sensitive information. At such time as these redactions are no longer necessary, the Department of Justice will make available an unredacted version of the Report.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


2. Waco deputy U.S. marshal asked to return for testify before special grand jury
Waco Tribune-Herald, Nov. 6, 2000
http://www.accesswaco.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A special grand jury in St. Louis investigating the Branch Davidian case has asked that Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike McNamara of Waco return for a second round of testimony this morning.

Supporters of former U.S. attorney Bill Johnston, who has been targeted by Special Counsel John Danforth's investigation, view the grand jury's request to hear from McNamara again as a positive sign for Johnston.

''As I understand it, it is not the lawyers, it is the grand jury members who want to talk to Mike, so we are viewing that as a good sign,'' said former Waco City Manager David Smith, who also testified last month before Danforth's grand jury.
(...)

While at least five of the seven tried to have the subpoenas against them thrown out and were eventually granted immunity to force them to testify, Smith, Hobbs and Goble said they came away from the grand jury feeling good about their experience.

''We think the grand jury never had heard the good things about Bill Johnston, and Mike and all of us got to expand on that and got to tell our story about Bill and what a great job he had done down here,'' Smith said. ''So we felt that the grand jury hadn't heard all of that before and that is why we think Mike being called back up there is a good thing.''
(...)

Goble had been quoted as saying that he wondered what Danforth's staff had ''been smoking'' by targeting Johnston and he was grilled about that statement during his grand jury appearance, he said.

''I still wonder what they have been smoking,'' Goble said when he returned from St. Louis.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


3. Whistle-Blowers Deserve Some Leeway, Not Prosecution
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov. 8, 2000 (Commentary. William Johnston, Waco, Texas, is a former federal prosecutor.)
http://www.postnet.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
I have spent a lot of time in St. Louis this past year -- not as a tourist, but as the unhappy guest of the office of special counsel. The OSC was launched last year to investigate still-unanswered questions arising from the 1993 shoot-out and inferno at the Branch Davidian compound in my hometown of Waco, Texas, that left more than 80 dead. Former Sen. John C. Danforth was appointed to create and run the OSC, and he chose to do so in St. Louis, a few blocks from his downtown law firm, rather than in Texas.

The OSC was created largely because of me. I became Waco's federal prosecutor in 1987, and I held that post until early this year. It was my practice to get out in the field and work with law- enforcement officers. During the Davidian siege, I tried to give aid and comfort to wounded ATF agents and their families. After the siege, I was one of three people assigned to prosecute surviving Davidians who had fired upon those agents.

At the time, I didn't think there were any significant unanswered questions about the siege. Michael McNulty, a documentary filmmaker, thought otherwise. He believed that government agents had acted improperly, perhaps even started the fire. Basically because I thought it would only heighten mistrust of government if McNulty was stonewalled, I paved the way for him to examine the evidence. He found two shell casings from grenades fired by the FBI that were pyrotechnic (capable of causing fire), though not incendiary (designed to cause fire). I remain certain that the grenades did not start the blaze, but McNulty's discovery was shocking. In August of last year, I repeatedly passed the information up the chain of command. For a month, Attorney General Janet Reno continued to deny the use of pyrotechnics. Finally, I broke ranks with my superiors and wrote to her directly. A few days later, the news media learned about the grenades, and all hell broke loose. To answer criticism, Reno appointed Danforth.

WHISTLE-BLOWERS are seldom popular. I became a pariah within the Justice Department, and the target of reprisals -- most of them petty, though one quite ominous and suggestive of a smear campaign. Certain people leaked a memo to the news media making it appear -- falsely -- that I attended a 1993 meeting at which the term ''pyrotechnic'' was used. I'm not sure I heard that term seven years ago when I was preparing for the Davidian trial. If I did, it could not have registered, because McNulty's discovery astonished me.

I must have heard the term ''incendiary,'' however, because it appeared among three pages of notes I scribbled in a legal pad in 1993. That term, I have since learned, is a red herring -- no incendiary device was fired at the compound. In any event, when I uncovered the notes, only days after the memo was leaked, I panicked, because I had just been ordered to place all my trial materials in the hands of the people behind the smear campaign. I should have turned those notes over anyway and suffered the consequences. But I didn't. And for several months, I didn't give the notes to the OSC either -- quite frankly, because OSC investigators treated me with the same loathing and hostility I had encountered with the Justice Department. This past July, I finally acknowledged the existence of the notes to the grand jury convened by the OSC and made them available. Along with the notes came an expression of regret to the grand jury for having temporarily misled them. I owe the American public an apology as well.

Unfortunately, Danforth and his prosecutors want a lot more than a public apology. They have threatened me with 21 months of incarceration.

Danforth is openly scornful of people who, in his view, make the public cynical about the federal government. Whistle-blowers must rank high on his list. He says I can avoid the prospect of prison if I will plead to a felony and sign a confession taking full blame for the fact that the FBI's use of pyrotechnics was so long concealed.

I can't do that. My actions were foolish, regrettable and wrong, but they were not criminal -- unless fear of character assassination is a crime. I can't confess to concealing the pyrotechnics when I was the government employee most responsible for disclosing them. And I can't take full blame when where is so much blame to be spread around. A recent report on Waco from the House of Representatives points an accusing finger at a large number of people, including the FBI hostage team leader, who authorized the use of those pyrotechnics ''in deviation from his express orders.'' Danforth has given no indication that he will ask the grand jury to indict any of these other people -- and he has publicly given the hostage team leader a pass.

If the OSC grand jurors, who have shown me a lot more courtesy than the investigators, accept Danforth's recommendation to indict me, so be it. But perhaps Danforth should ask himself whether seeking to send a whistle-blower to the penitentiary -- to the exclusion of everybody else -- is really the cure for public cynicism.
[...entire item...]


=== Falun Gong

4. Another Falun Gong Member Dies in Chinese Prison
Inside China Today/AFP, Nov. 8, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HONG KONG, Nov 8, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Another member of the Falun Gong spiritual group has died in prison in China, bringing the number of members reported to have died in police custody to 68, a Hong Kong-based rights group said Wednesday.

Zou Songtao, 28, a biology professor at Qingdao Maritime University in eastern Shandong province, died Saturday in the Number Three Shandong Reform Through Education Camp in Zibo city, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Officials at the detention center told the family that Zou had committed suicide, but they refused to allow Zou's wife to see the body, the center said.

His cremated remains were returned to the family on Sunday.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Scientology

5. Scientology criticizes German Microsoft agreement
dpa (Germany), Nov. 6, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Washington - The international Scientology organization described an agreement between the German federal government and the Microsoft software corporation as an unprecedented example of religious discrimination.
(...)

A rhetorical ''Should non-Catholic Americans now boycott Mercedes automobiles because they are built by Catholics in Stuttgart?'' was stated in Scientology's response on Monday. The organization which is acknowledged in the USA as a church is regarded in Germany as a sect with undemocratic goals.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


6. Deinstallation of Windows 2000 Defragmentation program
http://www.microsoft.com/ (in German)
Microsoft, Oct. 19, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/001019c.htm
[No excerpt. See URL for complete article]

* Note: at the same URL, a 1991 news article shows that Scientologist Craig Jensen, President of Executive Software, himself engages in discrimination:

Diskeeper user stunned by denial of tech support
Digital news, Feb. 3, 1991
http://cisar.org/001019c.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Ciba-Geigy was refused technical support for its disk defragmenter after the supplier, Executive Software Inc., learned that the Swiss chemical company made Ritalin, a drug sometimes prescribed for hyperactive children.

Executive Software, maker of the dominant disk defragmenter for the VAX, Diskeeper, objects to the production of Ritalin as a drug that is prescribed by psychiatrists. The drug has provoked controversy based upon some studies that document several cases of suicides among young adolescents who had been given the drug as children. The Physicians' Desk Reference indicates that the side effects of Ritalin withdrawal include paranoia with thoughts of suicide.

The Glendale, Calif. software firm has a longstanding policy against selling its products to psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions. On Jan. 9 the firm's board of directors voted to expand that policy to include psychiatric drug manufacturers, after a company employee brought it to President Craig Jensen's attention that the makers of Ritalin had purchased a copy of Diskeeper.

''Ciba-Geigy ranks with the scum of the earth in my opinion,'' said Jensen. ''The primary effect of Ritalin is suicide. When some of our employees heard we sold our software to them, I agreed to cancel that license, if necessary, and refuse to do business with drug manufacturers in the future.''

The U.S.-based Ciba-Geigy MIS manager who bought Diskeeper late last year is not part of the pharmaceutical division of the company, which has eight seperate divisions that produce products ranging from pigments to plastics. He asked that he and his division not be identified. He said that he sought technical support when his employees ran into difficulty installing Diskeeper and that he was referred by the support staff to Dave Kluge, Executive Software's corporate affairs manager.

He said Kluge told him Executive Software would not provide Ciba-Geigy with any technical support. ''He told me 'You people make psychiatric drugs and implements of torture.' [...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

» Why Scientology hates psychiatry

7. Ban Scientology
PC Format (England), Nov. 2000
http://www.pcformat.co.uk/news/detail.asp?id=25413
[Story no longer online? Read this]
...From your copy of Windows 2000, that is. Microsoft shows you how.

Well, here's a turn-up for the books: Microsoft actually telling people how to uninstall a built-in Windows component, instead of insisting that this can't be done, as it did with Win98 and Internet Explorer. But then this time around the circumstances are kind of unusual. To say the least.
(...)

Back in the 1950s Hubbard invented Scientology, what its adherents call an ''applied religious philosophy'' and what a lot of other people call a dangerous, vicious and exploitative cult. Noteworthy followers include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and the slightly less well-known Craig Jensen, CEO of Executive Software Incorporated. And there's the problem.

Executive Software Incorporated made the disk defragmentation tool for Windows 2000. A number of Germans are seriously worried that it might pose a security problem. Given Scientology's track record - accusations of bugging, burglary and intimidation, to name but a few - you can see where they're coming from, but just this once people do seem to be getting just a teensy bit paranoid. Nevertheless, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, Germany's Federal Office for Security in Information Technology, became involved, and because people weren't going buy Windows 2000 without BSI approval, Microsoft capitulated.
(...)

Interested in Scientology? Before you join Travolta, Cruise, and chums, you might want to take a look here.

=== Buddhism

8. Where East meets West
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nov. 4, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) They are a mixed group --- lawyers, professors, salespeople and college students. In the past, they might have been spotted at a Presbyterian or Catholic or Jewish service. But these men and women have latched onto a religion of the Far East, an ancient tradition more than 2,000 years old, and today they are walking the Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born to lavish wealth about 563 B.C. in what is modern Nepal. Renouncing the privileges of his birth, he set out to find an end to human suffering. Gautama became known as the Buddha, or the enlightened one, and he spent the next 45 years teaching the path to liberation to others.

His struggles and beliefs have ignited a slow, but steady, interest in Buddhism in the West in recent years as people search for meaning and happiness in a world that sometimes seems harsh and confusing.

It is estimated that there are about 350 million Buddhists worldwide, the majority in Asia. But in the past two decades Buddhism has taken root around the world.

The religion has found particularly fertile soil in the United States.

Of about 3 million Buddhists here, about 2 million are Asian, estimated Ken Tanaka, author of ''The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine'' and ''Ocean: An Introduction to Jodo-Shinshu Buddhism in America.'' Tanaka has taught at the Institute of Buddhist Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and currently teaches Buddhism in Japan.

''The question is who is a Buddhist,'' he said. ''One of my colleagues has come up with the term 'nightstand Buddhist' for those who read books about Buddhism at night.''

Tanaka said Buddhism is no longer considered an ''exotic religion'' in America, as it was during his youth in the 1960s.

''I could almost wear a button, 'Proud to be a Buddhist,' '' he said.

But he draws a distinction between ''American Buddhists'' and ''Buddhists in America.'' Many Asian teachers, because of limitation in language, are virtually invisible, he said. And some Asian Buddhists are concerned that American converts and practitioners are not authentically Buddhist.
(...)

American Jews and Christians have adopted Buddhist practices to various degrees because they found their synagogues and churches spiritually unfulfilling, says Jack Kornfield, founder of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center and author of ''A Path With Heart'' and ''After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.'' Some have left their faiths for Americanized forms of Buddhism, while others bring Buddhist practices of meditation and contemplation into their own traditions, Kornfield said, citing Catholic ''centering prayer'' as an example.

Kornfield pointed to three other ways in which he said America has had an impact on the character of Buddhism here:

Democratization: In Eastern countries with strong traditions of Buddhist monks, the hierarchical structure is limiting, he said. ''In America, there is more power-sharing. People feel empowered to be participants, not just lowly students on the totem pole but in some significant way.''

Integration: Since most American Buddhists have no desire to become monks or nuns, they are finding ways to use their faith in their daily lives and jobs, he said. Instead of meditating to leave the world spiritually, they are practicing Buddhism in order to cope better with the world.

Feminization: In much of American Buddhism, he said, he sees an emphasis on values such as tenderness, relationship to Earth and nature, and interdependence instead of competition and ambition.
(...)

McKay says she was surprised to find that becoming a Buddhist actually gave her a greater understanding of Christianity, a religion for which she had sometimes felt hostility. ''When I started taking Buddhism seriously, it opened the door to other thoughts. It's like a kind of switch --- and now all the lights in the house are on.''

The lack of division between religious practice and daily living appeals strongly to Western converts. ''It's something I try to integrate into situations rather than having it be a separate part of my life,'' McKay says.

This sentiment is strong in the United States, where a modern, somewhat secularized Buddhism is often used as the basis for social and political action. Miller says she tries to ''engage in things that will be of benefit to others.''
(...)

Because Buddhism is an ancient and characteristically Eastern faith that originated in a feudal agricultural society, it isn't always translated easily in modern Western culture. Mizelle doubts Buddhism will ever be a mass movement in the United States.

''It's not like we're winning the world for Buddha,'' he laughs.

Nonetheless, Buddhism has found a place in the West, often in Americanized versions. Mizelle mentions that while the practice of ordaining Buddhist nuns has practically died out in Asia outside of China, ''American women don't put up with not being ordained,'' so the practice has had a revival in the United States.

McKay feels certain that the ancient belief is firmly established here and that, in fact, its arrival in the United States was foretold.

''When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels,'' she quotes from the prophecy of an 8th-century Buddhist, ''the Tibetan people will scatter like ants across the face of the Earth and the dharma will come to the land of the red-faced people.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups

9. Experts Says France Could Block Most Nazi Web Sales
Reuters, Nov. 6, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
PARIS (Reuters) - People in France could be prevented from gaining access to on-line Nazi memorabilia sales hosted by U.S. Internet giant Yahoo, but the system would never be fail-safe, computer experts told a French court Monday.

The court ordered Yahoo Inc in May to block French surfers from outlawed English-language web sites where items like Nazi uniforms and SS badges are sold by auction.

The judge subsequently asked a panel of three specialists to verify if the ruling was viable after Yahoo asserted that it was technologically impossible to cut off French Internet users from Web sites governed by less restrictive U.S. laws.

The trio delivered their findings Monday, arguing that while Yahoo itself could not screen all the pages that it hosted, a filter system registering keywords could block out access to Nazi sales to 90 percent of French web surfers.

However, one of the three independent experts, Winton Cerf from the United States, said he disapproved of any attempts at censorship and added that the auction sites would simply come up with new key words to get past the filters.
(...)


Under French law, it is illegal to exhibit or sell objects with racist overtones and Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ruled in May that the Nazi auctions were ''an offence to the collective memory of the country.''
(...)

The French-language portal www.yahoo.fr does not carry the Nazi auctions, but anyone here can easily click onto the U.S. sister site and find all kinds of Nazi and neo-Nazi material up for auction, which is allowed by U.S. freedom-of-speech law.

Judge Gomez, who has rejected Yahoo's argument that French courts do not have the power to impose French law on the English-language portal Yahoo.com, will deliver a fresh ruling in the case on November 20.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* Note: CNN posted the same item, but with a different headline:

Nazi web site gag 'impossible'
CNN, Nov. 6, 2000


10. Asylum hearings officially opened in the USA for ''Satan's Killer''
dpa (Germany), Nov. 3, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/001103f.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Batavia (dpa) - After weeks of preparation, the asylum court proceedings have begun in the USA for Hendrik Moebus, rightwing extremist and ''Satan's Killer'' from Thueringen. The first hearing took place on Thursday, as verified by an INS spokesman (Immigration and Naturalization Service). The 24-year-old man from Sondershauser will not be extradited to Germany, where he faces up to three years in prison, until the hearings are finalized.

Moebus is in custody at an INS detention center in Batavia, New York. In early September he applied for political asylum in the USA. As a basis he stated that the Federal Republic of Germany would stop his freedom of opinion. One example he gave was that the Hitler salute is not forbidden in the USA. Moebus was taken into custody in August in a West Virginia racist refuge after months of evading authorities. He made his living partly by selling radical, rightwing CDs.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Other News

11. Vietnam Police Crack Down on Sect, Seize Documents
Reuters, Nov. 7, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
HANOI (Reuters) - Police in central Vietnam have seized anti-government and ''heretical'' literature in a crackdown on a quasi-Buddhist sect, official media reported on Tuesday.

The Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said 17 members of the Thanh Hai Vo Thuong Su sect had been caught practicing Zen Buddhism in Tuy Hoa, capital of the province of Phu Yen, but did not make clear whether they were detained.
(...)

Police declined to comment on the crackdown, which comes a little more than a week before President Clinton is due to make a historic visit to Vietnam, during which he is expected to raise the issue of religious freedom.
(...)

Official media have said the sect, originating in Taiwan, was founded by Thanh Hai, a Vietnamese living in exile. These reports say she has forecast the end of the world this year and preached that only her followers will be saved.

Restrictions on religious worship in communist Vietnam have eased since the adoption of economic reforms in the late 1980s and six religions are officially recognized.

But police still launch crackdowns on any movement questioning the authority of the state and ruling Communist Party and place restrictions on unauthorized religious groups.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


12. Fined - for running rings round crop circles
The Guardian (England), Nov. 7, 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
An unemployed computer programmer yesterday became the first person to be fined for creating an elaborate crop circle - an act he claimed he carried out in a bizarre effort to debunk wild theories about its origin.

Matthew Williams, with the help of a friend, used planks and bamboo poles to make an elaborate seven-pointed star in a Wiltshire field of ripening wheat over three nights in August.

Williams, 29, of Bishops Cannings, near Devizes, Wilts, decided to act after becoming incensed by the claims of Michael Glickman, a former professor of architecture who has studied crop circles for many years.

He heard Professor Glickman claim on an American radio show that is was impossible for a human to create a seven pointed star shape in a crop field - it could only have been created by aliens.

After listening to the show via the internet, Williams contacted the show's presenter by email dismissing Prof Blickman's claims.

When the presenter challenged him to prove the professor wrong, Williams went under cover of darkness with his friend to the field at Manor Farm, West Overton, near Marlborough, to create the design. He then emailed a picture of the work to the presenter. It was passed on to the professor who alerted police.

Yesterday, in what is thought to be the first prosecution of its kind in Britain, he admitted a charge of causing criminal damage to farmland and was fined &#pound;100.
(...)

Mr Clifford told the court: '''My client has strong beliefs that the public were being misled. His actions did not result in any financial gain for himself. He showed no malice to the farmer. Crop circles are known to boost tourism. He was simply trying to prove that a seven point star can be man-made.''

Magistrate Geoffrey Olsen told Williams he was unable to order him to compensate farmer Michael Maude who suffered damage to a crop of winter wheat put at &#pound;200. He said the farmer would have to pursue compensation through other agencies.

Fining him and ordering him to pay &#pound;40 costs, the magistrate told Williams: ''If you had found out who owned the field before you did what you did then the bench would certainly not be hearing this case today.
(...)

Outside court, Williams, who has set up his own magazine and website devoted to crop circles, said it had never been his intention to mislead. But he believed the academic world was conning the public into believing crop circles were an extra terrestrial phenomenon.

''There are some real circles but unfortunately there are researchers who aren't telling the truth,'' he claimed. ''There is a phenomenon that is being ignored.

''A lot of people will be upset by the creation of this seven-point star because they have a lot to lose by the truth coming out. The general public are being conned. The majority of crop circles are man-made, although I do believe some are the work of the paranormal.

''Researchers are spoiling the real truth and are determined to say that all crop formations are the result of another life form - when they know this is not always the case.''
(...)

Theories and myths
Crop circles became known to the public after a report in 1980 about circles that appeared below Westbury White Horse in Wiltshire. Since then numerous theories have emerged for their sudden overnight appearances

Wind
In 1989, meteorologist George Terence Meaden put forward a theory of natural wind forces.

Aliens
There have been many reports of suspected UFO sightings in the vicinity of crop circles. Some believe they are messages from another world. Others believe they are cosmic messages. Crop-circle researchers have also claimed to see lights whizzing around.

Hoaxers
In 1992 two artists in their 60s, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, appeared on TV to claim responsibility for all the simple circles that had been appearing in English fields since the mid-Seventies. They showed how they did it, with a garden roller and ropes.

Magnetic fields
A scientist, Colin Andrews, claimed earlier this year that some crop circles are caused by shifts in the earth's magnetic field. He believes crops can be 'electrocuted' by the effect, flattening them into circles.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

» Matthew Williams' web site:
http://www.truthseekers.freeserve.co.uk/

13. China Tries To Tighten Grip on Web
Associated Press, Nov. 7, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BEIJING (AP) -- China strengthened its censorship over the Internet on Tuesday, clamping restrictions on Web sites offering news reports and requiring chat rooms to use only officially approved topics.
(...)

The rules require general portal sites to use news from state-controlled media, seek special permission to offer news from foreign media and meet strict editorial conditions to generate their own news. Failure to do so could result in warnings, temporary suspension or permanent shutdown, the rules said.

Only state media would be allowed to set up news sites and even then only with government approval, the rules said.
(...)

Although the restrictions have been rumored for nearly a year, their publication marks the first formal prohibition against Web sites offering news from any but state-owned media.

''These were already the unwritten rules,'' said an executive of portal Sohu.com Inc., who asked not to be identified by name. ''In fact, this is better because we now know what the limits are.''

The executive and others in the industry predicted that rules would further trends already apparent in the sensitive world of China's Internet: more self-censorship by companies and more offerings of neutral fare like sports and entertainment.

Separate rules on bulletin board services and chat rooms, also released Tuesday, ordered operators to use only approved topics and monitor what users post.

Both sets of rules built on industry regulations issued last month and included a laundry list of previously announced prohibitions against content that reveal state secrets or propagate the overthrow of the communist government, ethnic or regional separatism or ''evil cults.''

The last category covers the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which has defied a 16-month-old government crackdown and frequently resorts to the Internet to spread its message.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]