=== Attleboro Cult
1. Authorities recover children's bodies
2. Authorities searching for children's bodies locate coffins

=== Waco / Branch Davidians
3. Five more Waco residents subpoenaed for grand jury examining Davidian case

=== Aum Shinrikyo
4. AUM cultist nabbed for allegedly faking resident registration

=== Ho No Hana Sanpogyo
5. Honohana cultists admit to fraud

=== Falun Gong
6. Sect leader appears in public

=== Scientology
7. Stars join Scientologists protest
8. Scientology under surveillance
9. USA does battle for sects, Scientologists and the Jehova's Witnesses
10. FOCUS: Professor reports on Scientology penal camps
11. F.A.Q.: John Travolta Lost in space

=== Nation of Islam
12. Farrakhan creates political fund for poor

=== Mungiki
13. Fury at attacks against women
14. Abong'o Must Act On These Hooligans

=== Hate Groups
15. Richard Butler said to have left the property he lost in lawsuit
16. Richard Butler leaves his hate compound
17. Aryan victim threatened

=== Witchcraft
18. Child sacrifice case: Death sentence for two upheld

=== Other News
19. Father says he was protecting himself when disciplining boys
20. Satan ritual stabbing case opens
21. Judge orders 2 trials in 'rebirth' case

=== Death Penalty / US Human Rights Abuses
22. Doctors Approve Assisted Executions

=== Noted
23. Wall Street Meets Pornography

=== Internet
24. Website confronts the Net Nazis


=== Attleboro Cult

1. Authorities recover children's bodies
Boston.com/AP, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.boston.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BAXTER STATE PARK, Maine -- A member of a Massachusetts religious sect that buried two children in a 200,000-acre wilderness preserve a year ago guided a search team to their unmarked graves today.
(...)

The search in Baxter State Park was launched a day after Corneau agreed to lead authorities to the bodies in exchange for immunity from prosecution for himself and his wife.

The agreement does not preclude charges against other members of the sect, and Bristol County District Attorney Paul F. Walsh said ''it's likely'' that someone will be charged. He declined to speculate on who might be charged or the nature of the offenses.
(...)

The prosecutor said authorities never would have found the site without Corneau's help.

Acting on tips from former sect members, police searched Baxter State Park several times last year but found nothing.
(...)

Walsh said the state medical examiner would conduct autopsies, but Corneau's lawyer, Robert A. George, said his client's agreement with the prosecutor specified that there would be no autopsy on Jeremiah's remains.

Sect members, based in the southeastern Massachusetts city of Attleboro, do not recognize the legal system and remained silent for months before a grand jury investigating the boys' disappearance.

Corneau, 33, was one of eight members of the group jailed for refusing to respond to the grand jury's questions. He was freed last month after taking the Fifth Amendment.
(...)

Corneau's pregnant wife, Rebecca, 32, was recently held in state custody after a judge expressed concern for the well-being of the unborn child. She gave birth last week to a girl, who remains in state custody until her fate is decided by the courts.

Gerry FitzGerald, a spokesman for the district attorney's office in Massachusetts' Bristol County, indicated Tuesday that prosecutors are more interested in punishing sect members involved in the death of Samuel Robidoux, who allegedly starved to death after he stopped nursing.

''(Corneau's) degree of culpability in any crime that could be proven is considerably less than that of other persons,'' FitzGerald said.

Asked why Corneau had been granted immunity after months of stonewalling the investigation, FitzGerald said: ''Finding the bodies is very important. Prosecuting persons for an intentionally inflicted death of a child is very important. Having an eyewitness is very important.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


2. Authorities searching for children's bodies locate coffins
Boston Herald/AP, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.bostonherald.com/m
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BAXTER STATE PARK, Maine - A pair of small coffins was found buried at an unmarked gravesite today in a remote, wooded spot after a team of searchers was led there by a member of a Massachusetts religious sect.
(...)

The site, which was 1.3 miles north of Grand Lake Matagamon, was so remote that sect member David Corneau and the search team had to be transported by float plane. The nearest road was at least five miles away.
(...)

Corneau used landmarks and compass bearings to lead searchers to the site, which investigators immediately blocked off as a crime scene to protect evidence from being disturbed.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Waco / Branch Davidians

3. Five more Waco residents subpoenaed for grand jury examining Davidian case
Waco Herald-Tribune, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.accesswaco.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Special Counsel John Danforth has subpoenaed five more Waco residents to testify before a federal grand jury in St. Louis next week, less than a week after U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. testified before the same panel.

The former Missouri senator, appointed last year to investigate allegations in the Branch Davidian case, has subpoenaed deputy U.S. marshals Mike McNamara and his brother, Parnell McNamara; Waco businessman Carey Hobbs; former Waco city manager David Smith; and Waco attorney Rod Goble to appear before the special grand jury on Thursday.

Jan Diltz, a spokeswoman for the Office of Special Counsel, declined comment on the new round of subpoenas or on Judge Smith's 21/2-hour appearance before the grand jury on Friday.

''I haven't the foggiest idea,'' Hobbs said when asked why he was called before the grand jury. ''I can't imagine. I asked the man, 'Why me?' and he said, 'You know it has to do with the Bill Johnston case.' ''

Attorneys for Johnston, the former assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute the Branch Davidian criminal case in 1994, have said that Danforth's investigators are targeting Johnston for possible indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Like the judge, the five men subpoenaed all have close ties to Johnston.

Hobbs and David Smith have established a legal defense fund for Johnston that so far as raised about $30,000, Hobbs said.
(...)

Johnston's attorneys have charged that he is being ''unfairly targeted for his frequent criticism of the U.S. government and for blowing the whistle on the government's efforts to mislead the public about the government's use of pyrotechnic devices against the Branch Davidians.''

Johnston, who resigned in January, wrote a letter to Reno last year warning of a possible Justice Department cover-up regarding the use of the incendiary devices on the final day of the siege.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Aum Shinrikyo

4. AUM cultist nabbed for allegedly faking resident registration
Kyodo News Service/Associated Press, Oct. 24, 2000
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
TOKYO, Oct. 24 (Kyodo) -- Police on Tuesday arrested a member of the AUM Shinrikyo cult for allegedly submitting a false resident registration document to a Tokyo ward office, and searched condominiums, the cult's facility and a personal computer shop.

According to police investigations, Atsushi Ogata, 45, submitted a resident registration document to the Bunkyo Ward office in December last year, saying that he would move in from Adachi Ward, although he in fact moved into a condominium in Taito Ward the following month.

Police apparently used the false registration case as a pretext to search several locations including the condo in Taito Ward, which police believe is used as an accommodation for other cult members and office to develop personal computer software.

Police also searched the cult's facility in Adachi Ward, where Fumihiro Joyu, a senior cult member, lived from Sept. 20 to Oct. 8, a condominium in Kita Ward where Joyu is currently living, and a PC shop cult members opened in June in Tokyo's Akihabara shopping district.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Ho No Hana Sanpogyo

5. Honohana cultists admit to fraud
Japan Times (Japan), Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Four former members of the Honohana Sanpogyo foot-reading cult on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring with cult founder Hogen Fukunaga to swindle 15 people out of 750 million yen.

In their first trial hearing before the Tokyo District Court, Kazuhisa Kawamura, 45, Hiroko Kaneko, 50, Tsukiko Nozoe, 52, and Harue Matsumoto, 64, also expressed remorse for the pain they caused the victims and offered their apologies.
(...)

In their opening statement, prosecutors said the four actively played important roles with Fukunaga, 55, in defrauding the victims.

They told the victims, who visited the cult for counseling about physical or family problems, that their problems would worsen unless they attended a cult seminar, which cost 2.25 million yen, or donated up to 14.3 million yen to the cult, prosecutors said.

To convince the victims, Fukunaga and the four insisted that the victims' feet told of their ominous future, and a ''voice from heaven,'' which only Fukunaga could hear, urged that the victims attend the seminar or pay the money.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong

6. Sect leader appears in public
South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Oct. 23, 2000
http://www.scmp.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
After staying away from the limelight for more than a year, Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi made a public appearance in San Francisco on Saturday.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said Mr Li made the surprise appearance during a Falun Gong conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco on Saturday afternoon.

He gave a half-hour speech to the 500 adherents at the conference and left in the company of several bodyguards.

The human rights group said Mr Li avoided public appearances because he feared assassination. It was rumoured, the group said, that Beijing had been considering hiring triad members in the US to carry out the killing.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Scientology

7. Stars join Scientologists protest
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Thousands of people, including actress Kirstie Alley and singer Isaac Hayes, went to Paris to protest at the French government's attitude toward the Los Angeles based Church of Scientology.

The protesters, from all over the world, gathered in the city centre but organisers say they were not given official clearance to march.

The Church of Scientology has a contentious relationship with France and figures on a list of 178 groups to be tracked to prevent cult activities. The Church is seeking recognition as a legitimate religion in Europe.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* The publisher of Apologetics Index fully agrees with the German government's assessment of the Scientology organization:

''The German government considers the Scientology organization a commercial enterprise with a history of taking advantage of vulnerable individuals and an extreme dislike of any criticism. The government is also concerned that the organization's totalitarian structure and methods may pose a risk to Germany's democratic society. Several kinds of evidence have influenced this view of Scientology, including the organization's activities in the United States.''

8. Scientology under surveillance
Constitutional Security gives out information
Augsburger Allgemeine Stadtausgabe (Germany), Oct. 20, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/001020a.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(bo). The police and Constitutional Security have an opening of an ''encounter center'' by the controversial Scientology organization in the Dom district on their agenda. Scientology has been under surveillance by Constitutional Security since a 1997 decision by the Interior Ministers Conference. We operate on the assumption now, as we did before, that this organization has anti-constitutional currents,'' said Franz Gruber, spokesman of the Bavarian State Office for Constitutional Security. Therefore the office collects information on the organization's activities, which has 2,600 members in the Free State, according to findings.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


9. USA does battle for sects, Scientologists and the Jehova's Witnesses
Die Presse (Austria), Oct. 18, 2000
Translation:CISAR
http://cisar.org/001018c.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Washington. It is said that U.S. President Bill Clinton should hold talks with the political powers-that-be in France, Germany, Belgium and Austria about violations of religious freedom. This is proposed in a resolution (HR 588), which has been taken up recently in the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. The theme has already been dealt with in detail at a congressional hearing last June. The resolution was sponsored by Committee Chairman Ben Gilman and Republican Matt Salmon and Donald Payne. They have also expressed support that experts on religious freedom should be included in international meetings, such as OSCE. The resolution criticizes mainly France (for a parliamentary report on religions) and Germany (for discrimination against Scientology adherents in business), but it was also said that religious minorities were disadvantaged, monitored and boycotted in Austria and Belgium. Austria was said to produce ''intentional propaganda against religious groups,'' such as through its established sect office.

Severe criticism is being applied to a law which puts religious movements under observation as a condition for possible state acknowledgement. The Austrian model was also said to serve for new democracies in the east, like Hungary, Romania and Russia, as justification for more stringent laws. The U.S. State Department's annual report, as it did in the year previous, criticized the unequal treatment of religious communities (mainly Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientology), which division resulted in various categories with assorted legal statuses. An American singer, member of Scientology, was said to have been exposed to vehement protests, and a staff member at Telekom was said to have been degraded by transfer to a less responsible post because of his membership in Scientology. In any case, the State Department has emphasized that the religion law formalized the second-rate status of groups not recognized by the state.

Campaign of the FPOe
It was said that mistrust of non-recognized religious groups was spread in Austria, whereby governmental participation by the FPOe aroused the fear in religious minorities that the climate would continue to get worse. It was said that former FP chief Joerg Haider was continuing to make statements regarded as intolerant and anti-Semitic. It was further said that the Evangelical Superintendent Gertaud Knoll, after his appearance at the rally against hate of foreigners on Heldenplatz was threatened; however it was said not to be proven, but assumed, that the FPOe was behind the hate campaign. It was also noted with displeasure in the report that Social Minister Elisabeth Sickl (FP) wanted to increase the call to battle with specialists (teachers, people from youth work), an inter-ministerial work group on sects and non-acknowledged religious groups. Also the sect brochure distributed by the former Families Ministry is a thorn in the side of the USA.
[...entire item...]

* The USA government consistently meddles in the internal affairs of sovereign nations, trying to strongarm them into accepting cults and extremist groups like the Scientology organization as legitimate religions.

10. FOCUS: Professor reports on Scientology penal camps
Focus (Germany), Oct. 21, 2000
Translation: CISAR
http://cisar.org/001021a.htm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Munich. Apostate members of the Scientology organization's elite unit, ''Sea Organization,'' are subjected to ''brainwashing'' in at least ten penal camps in the USA, Denmark and England, according to Canadian professor Stephen Kent. As reported by news magazine ''Focus,'' Kent will present his scientific study in the coming weeks with a former camp inmate in Hamburg and Berlin. Those formerly involved report that deviants, including the former Hamburg chief Wiebke Hansen, must always run from one place to another in the heavily guarded camp, and have to work for up to 30 hours at a stretch. The food was said to be insufficient and ''terrible.'' Totalitarian methods such as forced confession of imaginary sins are alleged to be used to make the inmate toe the line.
[...entire item...]

* More about Scientology's prison camps (Rehabilitation Project Force):

Brainwashing in Scientology's Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF): Revised Version of a Presentation at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, San Diego, California (November 7, 1977). by Dr Stephen Kent [University of Alberta, Canada] - December 3, 1997 (2nd Draft)

Missing in Happy Valley (video)

Is Scientology breaking the law?
http://www.scientology-lies.com/imprisonment.html
Two Scientology programs call for false imprisonment - the Introspection Rundown, applied to Scientologists deemed to have had a psychotic break, and the RPF, Scientology's labor camps.

11. F.A.Q.: John Travolta Lost in space
The Scotsman (Scotland), Oct. 23, 2000)
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Dissatisfied with the panning the first instalment got from the critics, dancing boy's planning Battlefield Earth 2.

A return to Battlefield Earth? But the press branded the original the worst film ever made.

They sure did. Kicking off by calling it ''deeply dumb'', ''laughably bad'' and a ''monolithic monstrosity'', one critic observed that ''a million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed to write anything as cretinous''. When the flick finally made its half-hearted London debut, it was received with all the fanfare of a Remington hygienic nasal clipper commercial. In fact, Travolta was the only celebrity to attend.
(...)

So the guy's got a space fetish.

Less of a space fetish than a passion for L Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology. Battlefield Earth was based on a book penned by Hubbard, leading some to accuse him of investing in a thinly-veiled propaganda campaign for the cause.

What is all this Scientology nonsense anyway?

Well, 75 million years ago, Xenu, an intergalactic despot, exiled a load of aliens to earth before striking them with some kind of space-age blitzkrieg. The aliens died, but their spirits, or ''Thetans'' continue to float around, attaching themselves to humans and filling them with bad vibes, or ''engrams''. Ultimately, you can only be freed by being ''audited'', at which point you reach the state of ''Clear''. Oh, and if you want to reach a state of ''Clear'', you have to take sessions which cost $1,000 an hour.
(...)

So what does Travolta have to say for himself?

''It's about popcorn and entertainment.''

Well, the critics have lambasted the latter claim, so I guess it's all about the popcorn.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Nation of Islam

12. Farrakhan creates political fund for poor
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.suntimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
One week after he organized his Million Family March in Washington, D.C., Minister Louis Farrakhan said Monday he has met with investment banks to establish the Million Family March Fund.
(...)

''The fund will focus on domestic and foreign policy issues. But until now, we couldn't compete with corporate America. We must electrify the poor as Jesus did in Rome.''

The fund will allow Farrakhan to support political causes, congressmen, senators and new candidates who will focus on the needs of the voiceless, basic working people, he said. The goal is to collect $1 billion next year.

''It's time to bury the weapons of war,'' he added. ''The peace process in the Middle East will fail because the Palestinians have no justice and no equality. The Palestinians have been portrayed as the aggressors.''
(...)

''God is purifying my heart,'' Farrakhan said with a smile.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

» For news about Israel, see offshore radio station Arutz Sheva

For documentation of Palestinian aggression, see the video ''Jihad for Kids''

=== Mungiki

13. Fury at attacks against women
Daily Nation (Kenya), Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.nationaudio.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Various institutions and individuals yesterday strenuously condemned attacks and harassment meted out on women by members of the Mungiki sect in Nairobi at the weekend.

The sect members turned rowdy after police barred them from holding prayers on the Kayole Estate on Sunday. They vented their anger on women passersby dressed in trousers.

Yesterday, the National Convention Executive Council, the Federation of Women Lawyers and the Kenya Women's Political Caucus condemned the thuggery as shameful and shocking, and called for the arrest of those involved in the attack.

The NCEC also condemned Mungiki's attacks against some sections of the Christian Church and the Freemasons.

''Whereas the NCEC respects and defends the right of Mungiki and its voluntary followers to practice their religion as they please, we also believe that our society should neither accept nor tolerate the intrusion and abuse of the rights, liberties and dignity of other Kenyans by any group, creed, religion or cult,'' the group said in a statement signed by three officials.

The council asked Kenyans to reject acts of violence regardless of the perpetrators.

''Mungiki or anybody else cannot arrogate to themselves the role of moral, dress or cultural policemen,'' the statement said.

It added that African tradition respects and venerates women, contrary to the view Mungiki is pushing.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


14. Abong'o Must Act On These Hooligans
The Nation/Africa News Service (Kenya), Oct. 24, 2000 (Opinion)
http://allafrica.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Nairobi - We never thought the day would come when we would demand that the police take a more ruthless line against crime. But this is precisely what Police Commissioner Philemon Abong'o and his crew must do if we are to stamp out the lawlessness prevailing to the east of Nairobi.

On Sunday evening, in a drama in Kayole captured live on Nation Television, an unruly mob claiming to be members of the Mungiki sect set upon six women and whipped and stripped them - because they were wearing trousers! We have yet to unearth any dress code in this country that dictates what Kenyans can or cannot wear. Mungiki should be told in no uncertain terms that, freedom of worship notwithstanding, they will not be allowed to impose their beliefs on those who do not profess their faith.

The point to be made here is that assaulting innocent people going about their business is unacceptable conduct. The liberties of our women must not be curtailed by common criminals masquerading as religious zealots. Kenyans remain free to move about any part of this country as long as they are operating within the law.

And yet we are seeing increasingly barbaric conduct among members of Mungiki. Though a good number of those who took part in humiliating the women in Kayole appeared to be youths, it is noteworthy that there has been no communication from the sect distancing itself from the atrocities committed in its name.

The sect has, indeed, gained the dubious reputation of being at the centre of acts of vandalism and aggression against law-abiding Kenyans. The trail of destruction is long: The recent attack on Nyakianga Police Station in Kangema, in which one policeman was killed and a gun snatched by the raiders; a raid on the Freemasons; riots in Nyeri and Machakos and many others. Indeed, it has become a weekly ritual for Mungiki followers to engage in running battles with police.

The sect, which advocates a return to so-called African traditional beliefs, seems to reserve special venom for women and authority. Sunday's assault was based on the argument that women wearing trousers is un-African. Few of those in the crowd could claim to be in African dress - if there is anything of the sort. Only last month, sect followers meeting in Nyeri called for the circumcision of women throughout the country to ''rid Kenyans of the present socio- economic woes''.

Ironically, these orgies of violence happen right under the noses of police. It is as if police are reluctant to deal directly with the threat that Mungiki poses, especially to the people who have to live with its members on a daily basis. In the Sunday incident, police reportedly arrived late and appeared disinclined to take any real action.

The rowdy mob at Kayole certainly demonstrated no fear that they could suffer any repercussions from their abusive actions, even coming to preen themselves before the television cameras - secure in the knowledge that no action would be taken against them, despite their being easily identified.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Hate Groups

15. Richard Butler said to have left the property he lost in lawsuit
Seatlle Post-Intelligencer/AP, Oct. 24, 2000
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
SPOKANE -- Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler has moved out of his 20-acre northern Idaho compound, according to one of his supporters.

The neo-Nazi must relinquish the compound soon to satisfy part of a $6.3 million judgment against him in a civil lawsuit.

Wealthy supporter Vincent Bertollini last week purchased a home for Butler in nearby Hayden, Idaho, and Butler has moved in, Bertollini said yesterday.

Hayden is about 40 miles east of Spokane, Wash.

''The icon of the now defunct (ha) Aryan Nations has 'left the property,''' Bertollini wrote in an e-mail to reporters. ''There is nothing but silence there now.''
(...)

The lawsuit also stripped Butler of the right to use the name Aryan Nations, but he has settled on an alternative, ''The Aryan National Alliance,'' Bertollini wrote.

Butler, 82, was due to turn over the property to Victoria and Jason Keenan as early as this week. The Keenans last month won a negligence lawsuit against Butler after they were shot at and assaulted by Aryan Nations security guards in 1998.

Bertollini said Butler's enemies ''can hire their trucks, vans and minions to cart away Pastor Butler's possessions of a lifetime.''

''Pastor Butler will continue preaching. Pastor Butler will continue printing and Pastor Butler will continue to ride the Internet,'' Bertollini wrote.

Bertollini and associate Carl Story, both of nearby Sandpoint, Idaho, operate the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, which shares the anti-Semitic, white supremacist philosophy of Aryan Nations. They have used wealth from their Silicon Valley computer ventures to finance mass mailings and other activities.
(...)

On Saturday, Butler and an unknown number of supporters will march down the main street of nearby Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
(...)

Butler still hopes to receive a new trial after losing the negligence lawsuit Sept. 7. His motion alleged there was juror misconduct, with some jurors allegedly saying they wanted to send a message to the Aryan Nations that it was not wanted in northern Idaho.

First District Judge Charles Hosack is still working on the decision, a clerk said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


16. Richard Butler leaves his hate compound
The Spokesman-Review, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Richard Girnt Butler has moved away from 20 acres he spent the last quarter-century fashioning into one of the premier hate compounds in the United States.

The 82-year-old white supremacy leader will retain control of the Aryan compound, north of Hayden Lake, at least through Saturday when he plans a parade in downtown Coeur d'Alene.

Butler moved on Friday to a neighborhood tract home in Hayden, purchased by his friend and racist-ally Vince Bertollini of the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger.
(...)

Bertollini and wealthy retired businessman Carl Story comprise the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, which has supported the Aryan Nations and shares its racist philosophy through a religion known as Christian Identity.
(...)

Butler must relinquish the 20-acre compound and the name ''Aryan Nations'' and its Web site to partially satisfy a $6.3 million judgment returned against him on Sept. 7.

He says his new organization will be called the Aryan National Alliance, which will have a new Web site.

The judgment against Butler came in a suit brought by Victoria and Jason Keenan, a woman and her son who were assaulted by three Aryan guards in 1998.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


17. Aryan victim threatened
The Spokesman-Review, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Hayden, Idaho _ Police say a man who appeared to have affiliations with the Aryan Nations followed Victoria Keenan and her husband, Richard Wallace, on Friday.

Wallace reported to Kootenai County Sheriff's deputies that a man driving a 1985 Dodge Caravan with Aryan Nations bumper stickers on the back followed them to their car in a grocery store parking lot, deputies reports said.

When the couple arrived at their car, Keenan asked the driver ''What do you want?''

The man, who was wearing a baseball cap with the Aryan Nations logo, said, ''You will see soon,'' reports said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Witchcraft

18. Child sacrifice case: Death sentence for two upheld
The Hindustan Times (India), Oct. 22, 2000
http://www.hindustantimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The Delhi High Court has upheld death sentence on a man and a woman for murdering a one-and-half-year-old girl for a witchcraft ritual and converted capital punishment for two others into seven-year rigorous imprisonment.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Arijit Passayat and Justice DK Jain, which heard the reference for confirmation of capital punishment for the six convicts, however, acquitted two of them giving them benefit of doubt.
(...)

Government counsel Anil Soni said Shakila had arranged the witchcraft for the benefit of her daughter Chaman in Sultanpuri area of West Delhi on October 2, 1987. Babu Lal had selected one-and-half-year-old Kavita for the 'sacrifice'.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Other News

19. Father says he was protecting himself when disciplining boys
CNN, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, California (AP) -- A father accused of torturing his two sons, sometimes chaining them to their bedposts, said he was following biblical teachings to protect himself.

John Davis, 53, on Monday pleaded innocent to charges of torture, child abuse and false imprisonment. His wife, Carrie Lee Davis, 41, and Faye Potts, 46, a woman who lived with the family, also pleaded innocent to the same charges. All three could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Davis, who calls himself Rajohn Lord and claims to be an ordained minister, said it was his eldest son, 17-year-old Yahweh, he feared most. The teen had become unruly and tried to hurt himself and his 12-year-old brother, Angel, Davis said.

''Proverbs tells you to discipline your children, or else they will grow up and kill their parents,'' he told The Press-Enterprise in a jailhouse interview published Monday. ''All I did was discipline them.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


20. Satan ritual stabbing case opens
Miami Herald, Oct. 24, 2000
http://www.herald.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Prosecutors began making their case Monday against an 18-year-old Sunrise man charged with trying to kill a friend as part of a Satan-worshiping ritual.

Robert Menendez, who was stabbed in the throat and the back, says he and his Satan-worshiping friends were in the middle of a ritual ceremony when Darrell Harris tried to cut his throat as part of a human sacrifice.

Harris is charged with attempted first-degree murder.
(...)

Police found Menendez after he ran from an abandoned Fort Lauderdale nursery to a neighbor's house and called the police in April 1999. Bleeding from stab wounds to his neck and back, he told police he and three other people sneaked into the 30-acre abandoned nursery, carved a pentagram on the floor of a gazebo there, and conducted a satanic ritual. Menendez, 23, said he was told to sit Indian-style and place his hands in the middle of the pentagram.
(...)

Menendez, a slight, pale man with bleached-blond hair, told police he saw his fingers disappearing and then reappearing.

He said Harris then stabbed him, slashing near his jugular vein and in his back. As he lay on the ground bleeding, Menendez said, Harris looked at him and walked away.

Harris' attorney, Louis Pironti, told jurors Menendez's story was ridiculous.

``The state wants you to convict someone of attempted first-degree murder on the statement of a guy who says `my fingers were disappearing and reappearing'?'' Pironti said. ``Last time I checked, that was called hallucination.''

Harris told the police he's an atheist, not a Satan-worshiper, and that he stabbed Menendez after he ``started talking some crazy [stuff]'' and lunged at Harris.
(...)

Harris told detectives that his e-mail address is Satan spelled backward, followed by 6661, which was the year upside down. Before he was arrested, Menendez said he got an unsigned, threatening e-mail that came from Harris' e-mail account. It was signed ``promote the goat,'' which Elsinger said is a reference to promoting Satanism because it uses a goat as one of its symbols.
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21. Judge orders 2 trials in 'rebirth' case
Denver Post, Oct. 20, 2000
http://www.denverpost.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Oct. 20, 2000 - There will be two separate trials for four defendants in the ''rebirthing'' death of a 10-year-old girl, a judge ruled Thursday.

Connell Watkins, 53, and Julie Ponder, 40, will be tried together; Brita St. Clair, 41, and Jack McDaniel, 47, face a separate trial.

Jefferson County prosecutors had asked that all four defendants be tried together, but District Judge Jane Tidball ruled against it.

''Obviously, we would have preferred one, but this is the second-best alternative,'' said Steve Jensen, deputy district attorney.
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=== Death Penalty / US Human Rights Abuses

22. Doctors Approve Assisted Executions
AP, Oct. 22, 2000
http://wire.ap.org/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[US Human Rights Abuses]
CHICAGO (AP) - A substantial number of doctors approve of allowing physicians to participate in executions, even though it violates medical ethics guidelines, a new study found.

Of 482 doctors surveyed, a majority said they approved of at least one execution-related action opposed by organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the study said.

When asked about specific duties, 43 percent said it's all right for doctors to inject condemned inmates with lethal drugs and 74 percent said it's OK for doctors to pronounce an inmate dead - a task in which doctors might have to tell an executioner that more drugs are needed to complete the job. Opponents, including the study's lead author, say both actions violate the Hippocratic oath to do no harm.

The findings appear in the Oct. 23 issue of the AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine. Doctors were randomly selected to get the mail survey, sent to 1,000 doctors nationwide in 1998.

``We are troubled by the number of respondents who approved of professional involvement in many aspects of lethal injection executions,'' wrote the authors, led by Dr. Neil Farber of Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del.

``No matter what physicians think about the death penalty itself, long traditions in medical ethics disallow killing by physicians,'' the authors wrote.

Still, Farber noted, 28 states require or permit doctors to be involved in executions.

Dr. Herbert Rakatansky, chairman of the AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, said the findings were troubling.

``It is wrong for doctors to use their medical knowledge and judgment to kill people in any circumstance - certainly not at the behest of the state,'' Rakatansky said. He said AMA policy has been well-publicized and is available on the Web.

The American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, the nation's largest medical specialty society, also believes it is unethical for doctors to participate in executions.

Dr. Daniel P. Sulmasy, a member of the ACP-ASIM's ethics and human rights committee, said ``making positions of the organizations more widely known might help,'' and could prompt a debate that would show proponents have a weaker moral argument.

Committee member and medical ethicist Dr. Jay Jacobson said if doctors violate guidelines, they could potentially face sanctions including loss of membership. Membership to medical societies is not required of doctors, however.
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=== Noted

23. Wall Street Meets Pornography
New York Times, Oct. 23, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[Trends]
(...) Just before the trial, Mr. Peterman's lawyer, Randy Spencer, came up with an idea while looking out the window of the courtroom at the Provo Marriott. He sent an investigator to the hotel to record all the sex films that a guest could obtain through the hotel's pay-per-view channels. He then obtained records on how much erotic fare people here were buying from their cable and satellite television providers.

As it turned out, people in Utah County, a place that often boasts of being the most conservative area in the nation, were disproportionately large consumers of the very videos that prosecutors had labeled obscene and illegal. And far more Utah County residents were getting their adult movies from the sky or cable than they were from the stores owned by Larry Peterman.

Why file criminal charges against a lone video retailer, Mr. Spencer argued, when some of the biggest corporations in America, including a hotel chain whose board of directors includes W. Mitt Romney, president of the Salt Lake City Olympics organizing committee, and a satellite broadcaster heavily backed by Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, were selling the same product?

''I despise this stuff - some of it is really raunchy,'' said Mr. Spencer, a public defender who described himself as a devout Mormon. ''But the fact is that an awful lot of people here in Utah County are paying to look at porn. What that says to me is that we're normal.''

It took only a few minutes for the jury to find Mr. Peterman not guilty on all charges. His case illustrates what has happened to an industry that used to be confined to the margins of commerce, in the seedy parts of most towns, run by people who never dreamed of taking their companies to Wall Street.

Spurred by changes in technology that make pornography easier to order into the home than pizza, and court decisions that offer broad legal protection, the business of selling sexual desire through images has become a $10 billion annual industry in the United States, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., and the industry's own Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Whatever the phenomenon may say about the nature of American society, the financial rewards are so great that some of the biggest distributors of explicit sex on film and online include the country's most recognizable corporate names.

The General Motors Corporation, the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satellite, according to estimates provided by distributors of the films, estimates the company did not dispute.

EchoStar Communications Corporation, the No. 2 satellite provider, whose chief financial backers include Mr. Murdoch, makes more money selling graphic adult films through its satellite subsidiary than Playboy, the oldest and best-known company in the sex business, does with its magazine, cable and Internet businesses combined, according to public and private revenue accounts by the companies.

AT&T Corporation, the nation's biggest communications company, offers a hard- core sex channel called the Hot Network to subscribers to its broadband cable service. It also owns a company that sells sex videos to nearly a million hotel rooms. Nearly one in five of AT&T's broadband cable customers pays an average of $10 a film to see what the distributor calls ''real, live all-American sex - not simulated by actors.''
(...)

None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or the News Corporation - all companies that have a big financial stake in adult films and that are held by millions of shareholders - were willing to speak publicly about the sex side of their businesses.

''How can we?'' said an official at AT&T. ''It's the crazy aunt in the attic. Everyone knows she's there, but you can't say anything about it.''

For hotels, the sex that can be piped through television generates far more money than the beer, wine and snacks sold from the rooms' mini-bars.
(...)

Based on estimates provided by the hotel industry, at least half of all guests buy these adult movies, which means that pay-per-view sex from television hotel rooms may generate about $190 million a year in sales.

At home, Americans buy or rent more than $4 billion a year worth of graphic sex videos from retail outlets and spend an additional $800 million on less explicit sexual films - all told, about 32 percent of the business for general-interest video retailers that carry adult topics, according to compilations done by two trade organizations that track video rentals.
(...)

On the Internet, sex is one of the few things that prompts large numbers of people to disclose their credit card numbers. According to two Web ratings services, about one in four regular Internet users, or 21 million Americans, visits one of the more than 60,000 sex sites on the Web at least once a month - more people than go to sports or government sites.
(...)

Thirty years ago, a federal study put the total retail value of hard-core pornography in the United States between $5 million and $10 million - or about the same amount that a single successful sex-related Web site brings in today.
(...)

What kept the market relatively small, in the view of people in the industry, were the barriers between consumer and product.
(...)

In 1975, the Sony Corporation released the videocassette recorder to the broad market, and within 10 years, about 75 percent of all American households owned a VCR. Once the venue had moved from theater to the privacy of the home, the adult entertainment industry was never the same.
(...)

But even with most Americans owning VCR's, people still had to take a trip to the video store, risking some embarrassment. Pay-per-view television and the Internet removed the final barriers.

Cable and satellite programmers allow people to buy a variety of sex-based programming, from Playboy, on the lighter side, to the Hot Network, owned by Vivid, and the Erotic Television Network, distributed by New Frontier, on the more explicit end of the spectrum. Consumers could watch movies of people having sex without ever leaving home.

What investors and bigger corporations soon discovered was the vast audience for pornography - once the privacy barrier was eliminated.
(...)

The number of people visiting sex sites on the Web doubled over the last year, outpacing the number of new Internet users. Some of the more popular sex Web sites attract in excess of 50 million hits, or visits, a month, according to the ratings services Nielsen/ Net and Media Metrix.
(...)

At the same time that technology was making it easier for people to view pornography, legal obstacles were falling. The 1973 Supreme Court case Miller v. California established a threshold for defining illegal pornography; a major test was that it had to be considered obscene to the ''average person, applying contemporary community standards.''

Initially, the case helped prosecutors clamp down on publications and movies. But that proved to be short-lived. If ''Deep Throat'' could sell $100 million worth of copies, then what was the community standard?

''The court may have handed off the determination of obscenity to the local community, but the standards of local communities had fundamentally changed,'' writes Mr. Lane in ''Obscene Profits.''

When Mr. Peterman was prosecuted for distributing obscene material in Utah last year, he became one of the few video retailers in the nation charged with such a crime in recent years. In a state long regarded as a bastion of family-values morality, more than 4,000 people signed petitions supporting his prosecution.

But Mr. Peterman showed that he had 4,000 regular customers for sex videos. His lawyer argued that Mr. Peterman was not violating community standards, because people in Utah County bought 20,000 adult sex videos from one satellite programmer alone in the period that Mr. Peterman was said to have broken the law; it was double the volume in most cities the size of Provo. And in the Provo Marriott, guests were paying for nearly 3,000 explicit adult videos every year, according to court testimony. After the Peterman trial, that hotel dropped its adult movies.
(...)

When AT&T announced that it would start offering the hard-core Hot Network to its 2.2 million digital cable subscribers beginning in August, they were castigated by critics and pressured by religious and civic groups that hold stock in the company.

A group of mutual-fund investors, which included the Sisters of Charity of New York, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Mennonite Church, told AT&T its members did not want their three million shares invested in a company that sold pornography.
(...)

For AT&T, there are sound business reasons to start carrying the highly profitable Hot Network. Unlike distributors of mainstream Hollywood pictures, sex-film distributors typically offer the programmers a split of 80 percent of the revenue, compared with 50 percent or less for routine features.
(...)

Time Warner, EchoStar, General Motors and AT&T all say they are simply responding to a growing American market that wants pornography in the home.
(...)

Some critics said Marriott, run by several prominent members of the Mormon Church, though not affiliated in any way with the church itself, should drop its adult movies, given the stand against explicit sexual materials that Mormons have long taken. But company officials said they were mostly franchisers, and could not make unilateral decisions for the hotel owners who paid to be a part of the Marriott chain.
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=== Internet

24. Website confronts the Net Nazis
ITN (England), Oct. 23, 2000
http://www.itn.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Home Secretary Jack Straw's decision to use the Internet as a platform to promote Britain's first Holocaust Memorial Day has a significance far beyond the web's use as a global message board.

The site represents a Government effort to reclaim the web from the twilight extremes of the neo-Nazi right who have used it to peddle the myth of holocaust denial.

Mr Straw chose the Imperial War Museum as a setting because it houses a Holocaust exhibition opened by the Queen earlier this year.

The site has a twofold purpose - to revisit the history of the holocaust and to suggest to local authorities how they can mark the first memorial day in Britain on January 27 which will commemorate the murder of six million Jews.

The striped concentration camp uniforms, together with piles of combs and shoes stripped from the victims herded off trains, formed a poignant backdrop to the launch of the website.
(...)

The web is, however, an equally useful tool for those who want to deny the holocaust or promote virulent anti-Semitism.

One of the most infamous is the Canadian-run Zundelsite, created by Ernst Zundel. The site offers features including ''Auschwitz: myth and facts'' and ''Did six million really die?'' which openly dispute the reality of the Nazis' extermination programme.

Another site regarded as particularly pernicious by the Israeli authorities is the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH).
(...)

Hatewatch.org, a monitoring group, lists no less than 29 sites which promote holocaust denial. They vary from the crankier extremes of the far right - for example the American Nationalist Union - to the National Socialist German Workers' Party - the precise title of the party which Hitler led.

The UK-based Nation of Europa is also unrelenting in its anti-Semitic stance, stating: ''the holocaust is nothing but the invention of propagandists.''

Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the United States said that more than 300 extremist sites exist on the Internet, ranging from neo-Nazi alliances, the Ku Klux Klan, groups that hate gays and lesbians, conspiracy theorists and Holocaust denial sites.

That figure has climbed alarmingly, the group says, from 254 sites in 1998 and 163 in 1997.

Intelligence services across Europe also know the Net is used as a private network between far-right groups.
(...)

One notable victory was scored earlier this month in Australia when a government-funded commission ordered a website to stop publishing material questioning whether the Holocaust occurred.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission outlawed the material and ordered Frederick Toben to remove it from the site of a private group called the Adelaide Institute.
(...)

Earlier this month, Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper quoted a report from the country's internal security service voicing anxiety over the growth in racist websites.

The report emerged as vandals smashed two panes in the window of a Berlin synagogue - the latest in a rising spate of openly anti-Semitic attacks in Germany.

The issue of holocaust denial dominated headlines in Britain this April after historian and author David Irving lost a libel action against an American academic who accused him of denying the holocaust.

Irving, aged 62, was roundly condemned by a High Court Judge who concluded that he (Irving) ''is an active holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist; and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.''

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre - which continues its founder's hunt for ageing Nazis and their sympathisers - called the UK verdict ''a victory of history over hate.''

It is that same battle that the latest holocaust memorial day website is intended to continue.
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