Reflections Journal

Time Monk Clif High on Big Changes in March

2012-01-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

I've listened to this Time Monks Radio Network interview with Clif High a few times. I've found it hard to get through because it is long and much of it is really ponderous. There are some stunning revelations, though. It just isn't immediately obvious because they've buried the lede.

The big news is that dramatic happenings are anticipated for March of this year. This looks to be the long anticipated "hard wall" of the "data gap" which coincides with something High is calling a "breakthrough" point. There is an extended period of alternating release language and building tension language that ends with nothing but release language as far as the eye can see. This points to a fundamental change in the nature of society and possibly of reality itself. Whether or not High is aware of it, there are intimations of the kinds of changes the airy-fairiest of lightworkers have been talking about for some time. Of course it could also mean something cataclysmic and hideously destructive. And of course, it could go both ways. Within the lighworker paradigm, that dichotomy should be familiar. As light increases and the dark is disrupted, the purging process is awful. And I've found it to be axiomatic that whenever Karen Bishop, for instance, signaled a positive expansion, the fallout was horrible. It got to where I used to brace myself for the coming misery whenever she gave her sunniest predictions. To put that in more pedestrian terms, for something new to be built, whatever's in it's way has to be destroyed. And it could well be that in this case, what is set for demolition is the world as we know it.

In her last energy update, Lauren Gorgo announced that it was... wait for it... her last energy update. The reason? We're there. Gorgo, whose last 5 or 6 updates have been stunningly on the money for me, personally, says that we've reached the "promised land."

This is the year when all the proposed solutions to bringing our planetary systems to the next level will be met with great cosmic support, and all those who have sustained the visions of the future and held the pristine memories of home will be given the divine flow of perpetual grace to physicalize those visions of LOVE. This year we begin to live our purpose (out loud) and finally make manifest the creations we have envisaged for what seems like forever.

So, it makes sense that we might see some rather dramatic expressions of change in the material world, some of which could get really uncomfortable. Gorgo says as much.

We will continue to exist between worlds (3D & 5D) for a while, using the 4th dimension as the bridge between the two, so the Pleiadians suggest a need to be more discerning with our energy & opportunities in order to maintain a sense of equilibrium during a potentially stressful time on the planet, especially for those (4D) bridgers working with more of the masses and those people yet to choose LOVE.

There is a fairly direct comparison to be made between that vision and High's explanation of the infinitely extended release language period he sees ahead. He explains, as he has before that release language periods can be either good or bad in terms of experience. It can be like a giant keg party where the majority of the conversation is in release even though a few exchanges in the mix are building tension. It can also be people reacting to learning that their about exterminated in a holocaust. The language pattern would look the same in his data. But here's what he says about the immediate future at around an hour and forty minutes into the interview.

I would hope that we're a smart enough species that when pushed to the brink -- because we're basically lazy butts and we don't do anything until we're forced to -- that we will get off our lazy butts, stop these idiots, and go right into perpetual, exponential renaissance, which I think of as giant party, where we all agree we're adults now. We grant ourselves the freedom to interact with universe the way we need to. We get out from under these parental institutions in a kind and gentle way -- because we wanna rehabilitate these poor souls -- and grab all the cool stuff and start go out and start inventing our future in a giant party mode. Because I sure don't want to live in the alternative.

After this period in March of a "crocodile teeth" pattern alternating and between release and building tension language, it's all release except for some very small subsets of building tension language which look to be amongst the "powers that be" and may have to do with solar flares. (Right around the 41 minute mark.)

High, for his part, seems ecstatic in this interview. He is very excited at the possibility that the game is afoot. I think this is the first time I've ever heard him sound upbeat and positive. He seems to be very much of the opinion that something truly huge is coming and that whatever it is, it will dramatically change the power dynamics on the planet. This looks to be the point at which the "powers that be" become, as he has been calling them for some time, "the powers that were." But, he says, this is a moment decisive action.

"Truly, we are at a point of commitment. If you are not taking action to thwart the powers that be in February and March of this year, there may not be a point to it in April or May."

High is still unclear -- though he engages in some wild speculation -- as to what causes the data gap. This is the time period that has shown up in report after report where-in his system is no longer able to gather data for these reports from the internet. Whether that means the internet will go down, the power grid will go down in a Carrington event, or we'll all lose our mental faculties, is anyone's guess. That there may be a mental component to this is bolstered by High's contention, at about an hour and a half in, that Russian parapsychologists are anticipating a "consciousness event" early in 2012.

In the first ten minutes of the interview, High postulates that our mental state (much like our electronics) is being affected by the changes on the sun. He also described in a number of interviews (and about the 43 minute mark in this interview) a mental state in which people just shut down and are basically standing in the middle of the street, drooling on themselves. I noticed that Denise LeFay has noted a similar phenomenon associated with the increasing solar flares and says she's seen the beginning stages of it.

This morning (Nov. 28, 2011) I had to go to two stores to grocery shop and it was as usual physically and psychologically painful, but there was something different that happened and that’s why I’m writing this. What I saw today while shopping was an eye-opener for me and gave me a sense of what 2012 is probably going to be like for many, many, people.

While in these two stores grocery shopping this morning (Nov. 28, 2011) my Mom and I kept running into other shoppers in the isles which is normal, BUT, every one of these people was totally unaware, confused, dazed, incapable of responding with any sort of normal reaction to their being in the way of other shoppers and so on. The first few times this happened I ignored it and pushed on past them all. But isle after isle we kept encountering this same mentally dazed, brain-dead, zombie-like state in 99% of all the shoppers...

These shoppers were not all seniors either but a good mix of society both in age and sex so this can’t all be blamed on the old people having a senior moment. Isle after isle we kept running into small groups of shoppers behaving like zombies who’d gotten themselves—and everyone else who came upon them—stuck in a zombie cluster-fuck traffic jam pile-up where none of them could even figure out how to solve the problem and escape the congestion. It really was unbelievable.

At about the 30 minute mark, High discusses psychic predictions that an off-planet entity may prevent a nuclear holocaust here on earth. After discounting much of it as a "savior myth," High allows that that doesn't mean it isn't true. There may be off-world entities that would prevent that because the damage would affect more than our planet but severely impact the rest of the solar system or farther out into the galaxy. I'd just like to point out that this is precisely what Bashar claimed in the eponymous channeled book. After first explaining that there was collective agreement not to destroy ourselves at some point in the early 1980s, he goes on to explain that we would never have been allowed to do so by nuclear means anyway.

Because you have made that decision, we can also tell you the following: that you never would have been allowed to annihilate yourselves through nuclear means anyway. It is your world: you can do with it what you will . . . as long as what you do remains in your own back yard! Nuclear annihilation would have torn through the dimensional fabric of other space/time continuums, and affected other civilizations that have nothing to do with you. That is not allowed.

Another curious possible correlation to some of the more out there predictions I've heard through the years comes about the 2 hour and 17 minute mark. He describes a change in the "photonics" in which we begin to perceive colors that we didn't previously perceive. He suggests this may be due to changes in the magnetosphere and which affect our consciousness. This is something I remember Drunvalo Melchizedek talking about years ago regarding the pole shift -- that we would suddenly see colors that never existed in nature before.

I do think the entire interview is worth listening to, even though it's long and lacks narrative structure. I've tried to pinpoint the juicy bits by noting the times. Also, in the player below is a set of clips some helpful soul collected.

Also of note: High's newest report was just posted on High's site but it comes with some important caveats.

Future Recent History:2020 is specifically NOT a Shape of Things to Come report, although it has some element similarities. However, there are no immediacy, nor shorter term values used, thus much of the Shape report is not there, and a huge unreliability factor is present.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Vatican Scandal

2012-01-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

And it's not... You know...

Money. This time it's money.

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

. . .

Vigano, currently the Vatican's ambassador in Washington, said in the letters that when he took the job in 2009 he discovered a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices.

In one letter, Vigano tells the pope of a smear campaign against him (Vigano) by other Vatican officials who wanted him transferred because they were upset that he had taken drastic steps to save the Vatican money by cleaning up its procedures.

For his crime of trying to bring the Vatican's spending into integrity, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was "promoted" to a figurative Siberia: Washington DC, where he now serves as the papal nuncio.

Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, insisted on the show that Vigano’s transfer to Washington wasn’t a punishment for exposing wrongdoing or stepping on too many toes. He noted that Vigano had been in the Vatican’s diplomatic service for years and said he was being promoted to the Holy See’s most important overseas post.

“He wasn’t sent away. He was made the pope’s representative in Washington!” Vian said.

Letters revealed in Wednesday's broadcast show that Vigano was quite clear that he was being forced out of a position he was supposed to hold until 2014 because he was being all correct and stuff by demanding proper bidding for contracts.

Vigano's transfer may point to deeper rifts within the Vatican.

Marco Politi, a Vatican correspondent for the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and the author of a book about the pope, said in an interview that there were signs that “discontent is growing” with Cardinal Bertone’s administration.

“This shows once again that Bertone does not know how to manage the Vatican machine,” Mr. Politi said. “It also shows that there is tension within the Curia, because that’s how the letters got out.”

Officially, the Vatican is putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of the media, expressing "disappointment," and threatening litigation over the public revelation of its internal communication.

The Vatican also warned that it could take legal action against a TV show that reported on the case. The Italian investigative news program, "The Untouchables," showed letters from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano to Pope Benedict XVI begging not to be transferred after exposing corruption costing the Vatican millions of euros (dollars).

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Robot Baby Weirds People Out

2012-01-26T09:43:00.000-05:00

The wriggling, the squirming, the Moro reflex-induced jump... If you want proof that artificial intelligence is thriving, look no further than this robotic -- and yes, somewhat creepy -- baby.

. . .

Many bloggers and online commenters have called the animatronic baby "creepy" and "freaky" -- Technabob even ran a post about the clip with the headline "Skinless Robot Baby is the Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of." But, whether you are horrified or fascinated, there is no denying that Clarke's tiny robots serve an important purpose -- keeping real infants safe.

Sure, it's cute. But, do I really need to point out where this kind of thing can lead? Here?

Or maybe even here?

Things to bear in mind.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Huckabee, Mormons, and Blood Libel?

2012-01-23T12:18:00.000-05:00

I will give a dollar to the first person who can explain to me why Mike Huckabee made this bizarre allusion to blood libel in his discussion of Mitt Romney's Mormon problem... because I'm flabbergasted.

"I'd like to believe that's not the issue," Huckabee told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto. "Four years ago, I was accused of making it an issue. It wasn't for me then, it isn't for me now. I would no more not vote for someone because they were Mormon than I would vote for somebody like Al Gore because he's a Baptist, for heaven's sake. I think that's a ridiculous reason to vote or not vote for someone, unless they've done something that's so wacky — like mix the blood of little children together in a public ceremony."

If you, like Sarah Palin, are unfamiliar with the meaning of "blood libel," here's a quick tutorial. Once upon a time, Jews were rumored to kill little Christian children and use their blood to make their matzo. Such tales served as a justification for pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence. Okay, Jews were not the only religious minority ever accused of killing children to use their blood in rituals, but this is the first time I've ever heard this even tangentially tied to Mormonism.

So what on earth was Huckabee on about? He reached for a random example of weird religion and pulled out blood libel? Who does that?!

And why has there been near silence about this bizarre and extremely provocative statement? The only mention I've seen to date is this one in the Arkansas Times.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Graham Hancock on UFOs, Faeries, and Shamans

2012-01-23T01:46:00.001-05:00

One of the most fascinating theories explored in Graham Hancock's Supernatural is that there is a some correlation between UFO abductions, faerie lore, and shamanic experiences. In this lecture he discusses some of the overlapping elements and addresses the use of hallucinogens in shamanic practice which may date back to the paleolithic era. Brilliant!

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

More William Henry: 2012 and Sion

2012-01-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

In this very recent Red Ice Radio interview, William Henry discusses his increasing discomfort with some of the factually challenged hype around 2012. He is also becoming more outspoken in his challenge of conspiracy theories about "the illuminati" and the like.

The major takeaway from this interview is Henry's illustrative tale of how the "the gods" hid the great mysteries from humanity.

The body is absolutely the machine. And that's the diversion to me. Because if you're lookin' for a machine out here -- I mean everybody's lookin' for the Ark of the Covenant. Where's the Ark of the Covenant? Is it in Ethiopia? Or is it? Where is it? Well, according to this tradition, the Ark of the Covenant is your first three chakras. And the reason why archaeologists can never find the Ark of the Covenant is 'cause they're always sitting on it. I mean, that's the old joke isn't it? Oh, the gods got together. They have this secret. They wanna hide this secret from humanity. Should we bury it in the ocean? No. They'll create a submarine. They'll be able to find it. Well, let's put it high up on a mountain. Oh, no, no. They'll be able to climb that mountain. Well, we should bury it in the desert. No. Someone will find it. Oh, I know. Let's put it inside them. They'll never think to look there.

If there is a "dark side of the illuminati," the biggest psych op they're running is planting conspiracy theories that demonize the very information that could set us free. As Henry points out, we're told that there are secret technologies that only the elite have access to, when the human body itself is the technology. We've just forgotten how to use it. And the key symbols and archetypes that serve as a reminder of how to activate that technology -- such as the "all seeing eye" -- are inverted and recast as symbols of oppression.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

William Henry Talks Sun Worship, 2012, and More

2012-01-10T01:12:00.000-05:00

I have not been and will not be doing much blogging until I get some computer problems resolved. Don't ask. It's been a rough few months on many levels. But, in the meantime, I've managed to catch some good new YouTube vids and this Coast to Coast interview from November is an excellent reminder of how much more advanced the ancients were than our current tech dependent civilization. George Noory's interview with William Henry begins a little before the 40 minute mark.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

The Invincible Sun of Winter Solstice

2011-12-22T11:41:00.000-05:00

Buy From Art.com

Wishing all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Yule, Raucous Saturnalia, and all other celebrations of the enduring of the light at Midwinter.

The Shortest Day
Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!

Midwinter
Tomas Tranströmer translated by Robert Bly

A blue glow
Streams out from my clothes.
Midwinter.
A clinking tambour made of ice.
I close my eyes.
Somewhere there’s a silent world
And there is an opening
Where the dead
Are smuggled over the border.

An Old Man's Winter Night
Robert Frost

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

Midwinter
Sophie Jewett

All night I dreamed of roses,
    Wild tangle by the sea,
And shadowy garden closes.
    Dream-led I met with thee.

Around thee swayed the roses,
    Beyond thee sang the sea;
The shadowy garden closes
    Were Paradise to me.

O Love, ’mid the dream-roses
    Abide to heal, to save!
The world that day discloses
    Narrows to one white grave.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Michigan Christian Notices Christmas is Pagan

2011-12-19T12:10:00.001-05:00

Buy From Art.com

Christmas lovers in a quiet Michigan neighborhood were shocked to find a note appended to their mailboxes denouncing their holiday light displays. It began:

Hi neighbor
You have a nice display of lights and this love note explains how that pagan tradition began. For thousands of years Sun worshippers have celebrated the Sungod's rebirth after solstice. Pagans honored the birth of the "invincible sun" with a "festival of lights." They used big bonfires, pigs fat tallow candle lights, and today, billions of colored christmass [sic] lights. Rome's seven-day December Saturnalia was religious revelry with decadent drunkenness outrageous adultery and giving Saturn's nativity birth gifts to the children. The Norseman's yuletide solstice carousal used sexual soliciting mistletoe, Yule-log bonfire, and decorated evergreen wreaths and tree worship. None of this honors the life of Yeshua the Christ.

But for the invective, that could have been written by a pagan. (I particularly like the way Sungod and Saturnalia are capitalized but "christmass" isn't.) In fact, last year I offered a bit of history regarding the pre-Christian roots of bringing evergreens into the home during solstice and the Bible's condemnation of it. But light-displaying Michiganders scoff at such litmus tests of their Christianity and do not take kindly to the grievous insult of being called "pagan."

Danette Hoekman, who received the letter, said: 'I laughed because I think it’s ridiculous that people would get upset over Christmas lights.'

. . .

Miss Hoekman added: 'It's a sin to judge other people and to tell people that if they have Christmas lights they are Pagans.

'We're not Pagans, we go to church regularly, my kids go to the Christian school.'

The mash note writer isn't the only one calling Hoekman's faith into question. George Conger at Get Religion points out that Christianity and single motherhood are oxymoronic and strangely conflates the whole thing with lesbianism.

A “Miss” whose kids go to the Christian school? That would be news.

But facts and George Conger don't seem to be well acquainted. Conger also takes both the Michigan do-gooder and the Huffington Post to task for claiming that it was Christians who coopted the pagan holiday when it was the Roman Emperor Aurelian.

This bit of conventional wisdom does not stand up to scrutiny. It will disappoint the crank of Hudsonville no doubt, but he (and the Huffington Post) have it backwards. As Prof. William Tighe wrote in Touchstone magazine a few years ago:
… the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date [Dec 25] in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians.
In other words, it was the pagan Emporer Aurelian who sought to paganize the Dec 25 holiday of the Christians, not the Christians who sought to Christianize the Roman pagan holiday.

Never mind that Christianity owes ancient Rome and its emperors for most of the Christian foundations we hold dear. It was the pagan Emperor Constantine who formally legalized Christianity and organized the Council of Nicaea which was responsible for hammering out Christian doctrine and assembling the Bible that fundamentalists today consider the irrefutable word of God. Constantine was only baptized into the Christian faith on his deathbed after a living a thoroughly debauched, wife-murdering, life.

More to the point, "the crank" doesn't appear to have said anything at all about who it was who so thoroughly enmeshed Christmas with paganism. But that enmeshment cannot be reasonably disputed.

The Wild Hunt has more on the link between Saturnalia and Christmas.

So get out your statue of Saturn, or if you don’t have one, I suppose a statue of Santa will have to do, place him on your best couch, and let the merriment begin!
“According to the Augustan historian Livy, following the sacrifice the Roman senate arranged a lectisternium, a ritual of Greek origin that typically involved placing the deity’s image on a sumptuous couch, as if he were present and actively participating in the festivities. A public banquet was held (convivium publicum), and afterward the shouting of io Saturnalia began, originally only on the single day.”

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Harmonic Indigence

2011-12-14T16:46:00.000-05:00

Well, we knew this was coming. James Ray's lawyers have washed their hands of the Harmonic Wealth author who hasn't been able to pay them for some time. It's funny. I was opening some of the newly posted court documents and before I even read this one, my eyes lit on Brad Brian's name at the top of the letter head and felt a rush of relief. I had this overwhelming sense that he felt done with James Ray. Then I read it. He is done with James Ray. As are his legal eagles Luis Li and Truc Do and all the other nameless, faceless attorneys and paralegals at Munger, Tolles, & Olson who have put in thousands of billable hours on this case. For all Li's grandstanding about how they're going to appeal this, that, and the other thing, his firm is handing Ray off to the public defender's office.

James Arthur Ray hopes to rely on a court-appointed attorney to further the appeal of his negligent homicide conviction, according to a request filed Monday.

. . .

If his request is granted, he will likely receive an in-house or contract attorney through the county public defender's office.

So the tax payers of Arizona will have the pay the legal bills of a man who until very recently claimed be a millionaire on his way to be being a billionaire. He'll either be represented by some overworked public defender or the state will contract it out. Could that be to Tom Kelly? Maybe. I can't help noticing that Kelly has been the one signing off on all the recent documents, such as his notice of appeal.

Meanwhile, Sheila Polk is preparing to appeal a number of the judge's rulings in the case, which could potentially negate many of the defense's arguments for appeal.

Also on Monday, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk filed a notice of cross-appeal that outlines her intention to do more than merely defend allegations in the upcoming appeal of Ray's conviction, sentence, restitution and fines.

. . .

In the cross-appeal notice, Polk lists, without elaboration at this point, several areas of legal dispute the state intends to argue when the case goes to the Arizona Court of Appeals. All stem from rulings by Judge Warren Darrow that went against the prosecution.

Her notice of appeal is here. Among the decisions she's appealing is Judge Darrow's decision to run the sentences concurrently, which apparently means she's seeking the longer, six-year sentence.

Arizona prosecutors will seek a longer prison sentence for self-help promoter James Arthur Ray.

He was given two years for causing the deaths of James Shore of Milwaukee and two others in a 2009 sweat-lodge ceremony.

I didn't know you could do that. Huh.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Sean Stephenson: Diploma Mill Yoda -- UPDATED

2011-12-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

It was probably apparent in my previous post that I really took a scunner to Sean Stephenson. Aside from finding him appallingly arrogant, he struck me as something of a phony. When I first looked at his website, I thought it was a little sketchy on the details of his education, but I didn't want to go down that particular rabbit hole. His testimony constituted a small part of a very long post. My husband, however, couldn't let it go. It probably has something to do with the fact that he holds a doctorate from a legitimate institution, but he's a little touchy when it comes to people arrogating to themselves the title of Doctor without the proper educational credentials. So he started digging and I did more digging and we found, not to any great surprise, that there are some rather serious issues when it comes to Stephenson's academic background. No wonder he was so evasive when Sheila Polk questioned him on the importance of having the proper credentials if you're going to tinker around with someone's mind.

In his bio, Stephenson lists his undergraduate degree as being from DePaul University but he doesn't say what it's in. According to a very uncritical Wikipedia entry, it's in political science. So far so good. And DePaul's a fine school. But a degree in political science doesn't qualify anyone to counsel people, something he felt called upon to do in his work as a motivational speaker. In his quest to help people with their emotional problems, he pursued higher education... in hypnosis and NLP. I have not been able to find reference to any education in psychology.

For his hypnosis and NLP training he went to Bennett/Stellar University, an alternative healing school, which claims to be accredited but does not say who it is accredited by. According to this, it's accredited by the International Coaching Society. It is not listed in the government database of accredited institutions.

But it's his doctoral degree that really looks dodgy. In his bio, he claims to have received his doctorate from Kona University, previously American Pacific University. His Wikipedia entry goes into a little more detail. He began his doctoral program in clinical hypnosis in 2004 when it was American Pacific University. It doesn't say when he completed it. As explained in a footnote, American Pacific University was unaccredited, but when it became Kona University in 2009, it gained accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council. I confirmed this through the government database. It is accredited, although it does not have regional accreditation which is really the gold standard of accreditation.

DETC is a national accreditor and should not be confused with regional accreditation. The vast majority of all schools in the United States are regionally accredited from elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and higher education institutions. Some regionally accredited schools accept and recognize the accreditations of nationally accredited schools, but others do not.^[4]^[5] Michael Lambert, Chief Executive Officer of the DETC, says that about 70% of DETC graduates are successful in transferring credits. He also asserts that the "vast majority" of employers do view DETC as being equal, since DETC institutions are accepted for the tuition reimbursement programs in most corporations today.^[6]

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) offered an opinion in a November 2000 statement that, "Institutions and accreditors need to assure that transfer decisions are not made solely on the source of accreditation of a sending program or institution."^[7] The Higher Education Transfer Alliance (HETA) online directory^[8] was designed by DETC to help students and the public find educational institutions with transfer practices consistent with criteria articulated by CHEA in its Statement to the Community: Transfer and Public Interest.^[9] According to CHEA, institutions that are members of HETA have agreed that their "transfer decisions are not made solely on the basis of the accredited status of a sending institution and that the institution has agreed at least to consider transfer requests from other institutions."^[8] The HETA directory provides links to member institutions so that students and others can review a specific institution's transfer policies and practice.

While it's not entirely clear whether Stephenson received his doctorate from the accredited Kona or the unaccredited American Pacific University he started with, the distinction is meaningless for several reasons. The first is that Kona doesn't offer a doctoral degree. It only offers a masters degree in transpersonal psychology which is not the degree Stephenson holds. The second is that the hypnotherapy program originally offered by American Pacific was terminated in 2008. (More here retrieved by the Wayback Machine.) The third, and probably most important, is that there is no such thing as a doctorate in clinical hypnotherapy in the United States.

So Stephenson studied hypnosis and NLP at an unaccredited school that claims to be accredited. He got his doctorate in something you can't legally hold a doctorate in from a university that may or may not have been accredited at the time he graduated, but was never accredited to give that fictitious degree. Note that there is no mention of his holding a masters degree which is a prerequisite to a doctoral degree.

All of this somehow qualified him for "Board Certification in Clinical Psychotherapy," despite having no discernible education in psychology. But that certification comes from the Association of Integrative Psychology. This prestigious institution has been around since all of 2005. It certifies practitioners, not of psychology, but of hypnotherapy, NLP, or some trademarked entity they call Time Empowerment® or TE®. I know that's not the sort of training and education I think of when I hear the term "psychotherapist."

It's one thing to train in holistic disciplines for which there are no governmentally recognized accrediting bodies, as long as you're transparent about the nature of that training. Here's what you don't get to do: You don't get to call yourself "Dr." In fact, it's illegal in a number of states to claim degrees from unaccredited schools.

Jurisdictions that have restricted or made illegal the use of credentials from unaccredited schools include Oregon,^[80]^[81] Michigan,^[83] Maine,^[84] North Dakota,^[80] New Jersey,^[80] Washington,^[81]^[85] Nevada,^[81]^[86] Illinois,^[81] Indiana,^[81] and Texas.^[87]^[88] Many other states are also considering restrictions on the use of degrees from unaccredited institutions.^[89]

Hmmm... Illinois... Isn't that the home of one Sean Stephenson? Yeah. It is.

Update:

Credit where credit is due: Sean Stephenson did, indeed, amend the information on his site as promised. He has removed "Dr." from his name everywhere that I can see on his website and from his Twitter profile. He has added the following information to his bio and similar text to his private sessions page.

Sean Stephenson completed a seven year educational journey in Clinical Hypnotherapy from American Pacific University (now named Kona University). His Doctorate in Clinical Hypnotherapy, while unaccredited by the Department of Education, is one of the most elite and comprehensive educations in the field of Hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistics.

He also changed text describing his client services and eliminated the incorrect information from the Washington Post quotation he and I discussed in the comments.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Observations on James Ray's Sentencing

2011-11-30T14:16:00.001-05:00

Two months ago I whined like a petulant child that James Arthur Ray was not sentenced, as scheduled, on my birthday. Considering that when he was finally sentenced on November 18, he was given the far too lenient sentence of two years minus time served, leave say, my birthday was probably the better for not knowing. I actually had a great birthday. I think it's fair to say it was a far sight better than James Ray's 54th which he celebrated last Tuesday at the Phx-Alhambra intake center, where he remains in detention, incommunicado, for two weeks before being transitioned to a state penitentiary to serve out his sentence. I'm not prone to schadenfreude but I guess there's some measure of justice in that. Does it in any way make up for three lives lost or for the devastation of three families? Absolutely not. But at least they have some measure of closure after this incredibly protracted quest for justice. Said the very articulate Ginny Brown, mother of the late Kirby Brown:

"There are no winners today," said Virginia Brown, Kirby's mother. "No sentencing can bring our daughter back, or bring Liz or James back. But at least this will be a deterrent, to Mr. Ray and to others who might think about putting people at risk. The judge referred to common sense and there was surely a lack of common sense here."

No punishment the justice system can mete out can bring back a loved one or balance any great, cosmic scale. One hopes it will go some way to protecting society, so if Ray's doing some jail time serves as a deterrent, that's an accomplishment for which prosecutors Sheila Polk, Bill Hughes, case officer Det. Diskin, and every other person who worked that long, involved case deserves a whole lot of credit. Said Det. Diskin, “I’ve been investigating this case longer than James Ray will spend in prison.”

Laugh or go mad, as they say.

Ray's sentencing day was a rough and fairly demoralizing one for me, personally. A very thorough write-up I had done on the second week of the presentencing hearing was eaten by Blogger as I was preparing to post. I had a day of weird computer glitches and freeze-ups -- something which as a Mac person I'm unaccustomed to. I was also in the final throes of a very nasty bug that had me out of commission for weeks. The mitigated sentence was disappointing and the whole thing just left me with a tired, empty feeling, really.

The sentencing hearing was streamed by CNN and when my computer wasn't frozen and when the ever inadequate CNNLive remembered to run the stream I saw a lot that made me heartsick. There were the poignant and articulate impact statements from family members of the deceased. And there was the thoroughly sickening "apology" from James Ray. The video above gives an overview.

Ray's performance went on like that for some time with him appealing to both family members in the gallery and the judge. Although I could not see his face during most of it, the voice was enough. His meter never varied, he sniffled with metronomic precision, he never stumbled on a single word. He was in total control the entire time. Normal people aren't in control when they break down into tears. They fight the tears back. They struggle to regain the composure they've lost. Ray's tears were on display as props.

As Tragedy in Sedona author Connie Joy discovered, the theatrically trained Ray can cry on cue. It became apparent to her, because she went to the same seminars repeatedly as a Dream Team volunteer, that the tears became predictable. From Tragedy in Sedona:

We watched James go through his material over and over again. The benefit was we were really getting to know it! For example, there was one part in his story about what it was like growing up as a nerd where he always cried. After seeing it a few times, we all noticed he cried at exactly the same spot, on cue each time. What any reasonable participant would see in a single viewing as real emotion now looked like an act; the realization was unsettling. Even now people still talk about James' ability to cry on cue.

It sparked a memory within me. At our first Harmonic Wealth Weekend, James mentioned to us he had taken lessons but decided not to pursue acting.

Maybe he did pursue it after all.

But Ray's weepy performance put me in mind of something else -- his mother's interview on In Session. The only difference is that James Ray can produce actual tears.

I did catch a glimpse of his face as he turned to go back to his seat and I saw the dead eyes, steely determination, and barest hint of a smirk, that was so incongruous with the dramatic display he'd just given the court.

Whether or not Judge Darrow was swayed by Ray's performance, I can't say. He did say that his decision was based on the law, not on emotion. I tend to believe him. He seems to have reduced all the emotionally laden content down to a mathematical equation. Ray says his goal was to help people. Some people said they were helped by his work. Therefore: mitigated sentence.

I will concede, as Ginny Brown did during the hearing, that some people were helped by Ray's work. Connie Joy shares in her book that she learned a lot about herself and gained a lot of healing and growth in her years of study with Ray. As I've said repeatedly, Ray stole from good teachers and bad and some of what he taught had value. Message, not the messenger, as they say.

What many learned from James Ray were hard and painful lessons about putting their trust in the wrong people. These were valuable but expensive lessons. The steepest losses came in the form of emotional injury. With James Ray the cost always outweighs the benefit on every level. And that was something Judge Darrow seems not to have factored into his calculus.

As a side note, I offer this example of Ray in action. It was not something that came up in trial testimony but this "game" was discussed in Tragedy in Sedona and graphically described by Dorothy Schley.

There was the money game where unsuspecting, innocent people took out all the money they had (when asked what their education was worth to them) and passed it around a room of 400 people, not knowing they would never see it again. And the unaffected look on JR’s face when several stood up and said they had lost $600.00, $900.00 and $1100.00. He simply asked him if they had learned their lesson. What lesson? I have always believed that money flows and have never been one to be afraid of it. I just felt like this was more of a mind control than educational game. Once I realized we were “trading” money, I only pulled out $1.00. I ended up with $5.00 after the game was over. I was shocked at the people who did not get up and return the large amounts of money that was obviously not theirs. One woman stood up and said that she had given all the money she had for the weekend, $600.00 and was left with $5.00. She pleaded for money after the conference was over. I don’t know how much she was given.

That's Ray all over. Telling people to participate in an activity without any warning of what they're risking and perfectly content to leave people without money on a weekend away from home, never mind how unsafe that can be. To Ray other people's money is like water and their safety is their responsibility even when he's the one who's compromised it.

In a passionate closing argument last week, Sheila Polk called on Judge Darrow to consider Ray's character. She described him as "sadistic and intimidating."

"What kind of man," Polk asked, "leaves a scene of death and sickness to shower and eat?"

Judge Darrow either did not consider or did not grasp Ray's character. Instead he seemed to bend over over backwards to take a neutral view of some of the most blatantly disturbing indicators, including a support letter from Wendy Benkowski, which he specifically referenced in his remarks, saying that it could be read in two different ways.

In her closing, Polk pointed to the letter as evidence of Ray's bad effect on people. She asked why the defendant would submit such an "offensive, hurtful letter." Indeed. This is the closing of Benkowski's bizarre, stream of consciousness rant.

James has integrity and his message has integrity.
I am witnessing the power of his spoken word.
I am witnessing the shadow side of Harmonic Wealth.
The 2009 Spiritual Warrior Retreat is a great lesson.
The LESSON has touched the consciousness of the world.
I respect and honor the sacrifice of Liz, Kirby, and James.
I request compassion for my friend James Ray.

Polk did well in singling this out from the pile of dross that is Ray's support letters. The scariest of the letters came from Ray's most ardent supporters and this one is deeply nuts. The unmistakable implication that the deaths of three people were a necessary sacrifice for some undefined "lesson" is disturbing enough. But it gets even worse if you read the subtext. Her reference to the "shadow side of Harmonic Wealth" is chilling. It implies that there is loss penalty for gain -- something I know Ray was teaching. You can't manifest light without manifesting dark. I don't know to what extent he took that message in his teachings as they were progressing. Connie Joy related in Tragedy in Sedona this episode from their trip to Egypt:

Our second stop: the temple of Kom Ombo. Built for the god Sobek, the negative or dark in the world, and the god Horus, the positive or light in the world, the temple was, in reality, conjoined twin temples. We examined our anti-intentions, the less than desirable side effects that would happen as we worked towards our intentions. Were we ready to take them on as well? The law of polarity states that, to carry the light, we must also carry the dark. The negative aspects of our intentions will show up first. Say your intention is to double your income over the next year. The negative side effects of more business income over the next year. The negative effects of more business could be that you will be busier and therefore have less time to be with your family, to travel, read, and exercise. You might feel rushed with your family, to travel, read, and exercise. You might feel rushed more often or even most of the time. You will get busier before you see your income grow, and that is why most people stop the process at that point. They express their distaste for becoming busier by complaining, or by not working as hard. The universe acknowledges the stopping of the process by saying, "your wish is my command" and the goal slips away before it was to arrive. Seeing the negative consequences of your request appear in your life means you are getting close to your goal, but you have to persevere through the negative first! Be happy to see the negative side effects, because it means the results you want are almost here. So in examining anti-intentions, we have to decide and commit to accepting the negative consequences that come with attaining our goals.

In rereading the Benkowski letter, I have to wonder if this was how she views the sweat lodge disaster. Did she see the deaths of three people as some cosmic sacrifice for "wealth?" If so, is this is this a wild overstatement of what Ray was teaching or just following his teachings to their natural conclusion? Shudder.

Judge Darrow took an equally dispassionate view of the recorded discussion in which a number of women revealed their sex abuse histories -- the recording too sensitive to be played in court. Darrow discounted the prosecution's use of the term "vile" to characterize them and said his personal views of them were not relevant. He chose to look at exhibit 1160 "objectively" as demonstrating an "intimate, trusting environment," entered into by people who knew the "difference between therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and a motivational speaker." This grossly understates the role that many of Ray's students saw him as holding, which went well beyond that of a simple, motivational speaker. They saw him as a spiritual leader, an extensively trained shaman (dear God,), and someone who was only a few credits shy of a psychology degree because all of that was what he told them.

Defense attorney Tom Kelly had erroneously compared the event to an AA meeting or religious context. But Alcoholics ANONYMOUS has a privacy agreement in place. No one can take outside the meetings what they hear in them. The confessional is sealed. This seminar and the discussion in question were recorded and those recordings became the property of JRI. That's a pretty big difference. Unlike AA, which doesn't allow crosstalk, Ray's event included his commentary in which he trivialized the trauma of abuse by pointing out that it's common. Worse, in the context of the same discussion he made an off-color joke comparing a the mic to the male member, which all the women there surely knew how to "handle."

The most generous reading of that episode I could make would be to say that Ray is oblivious to what sex abuse survivors experience when those wounds are re-opened. The harshest read would be that he knows full well. Given his propensity for leveraging people's vulnerabilities to break them down and make them increasingly dependent, I'm inclined toward that interpretation.

There were hints, throughout the trial, at something truly sinister in James Ray. But none of that was proven in trial and it could not fairly have been expected of Judge Darrow to deduce that. There was, however, plenty that pointed to his being manipulative and mercenary and it was all available to the judge if not to the jury. The fact that he never gave refunds, for instance, Darrow knew. Whatever warnings about the events came in the form of waivers well after they'd paid, providing no opportunity for people to to pull out and get their money back.

Another indicator of Ray's ruthless financial policies came out during the sentencing hearing when the late Kirby Brown's cousin Bobby Magnanini spoke. Magnanini is also an attorney and he handled the civil litigation for the family. Explaining that they only took the settlement to ensure compensation for James Shore's family -- for which he was the sole breadwinner -- he gave some telling detail. The insurance policy Ray had to cover the business was for a million dollars. Magnanini was clever enough to find a way to go after a five million dollar media policy ("poorly designed" to protect against copyright infringement) because the events were recorded. But a million dollars was all that would normally have been available for a settlement in the event of, say, three people dying on his watch, which is what happened. He did, however, have a ten million dollar policy on himself and his home. Says a lot about his priorities, I think.

I, for one, don't buy that Ray's goal was to "help people" except as a means to an end -- that end being his ascent as the "first billionaire" spiritual teacher. That pecuniary focus seems blatantly obvious to me, but I can only speak for myself. I also think Ray stole power from people. From a shamanic perspective, he stole soul parts. That's not something that can be proven or prosecuted in a court of law but the disempowering verbal abuse and mind games were demonstrated repeatedly in witness testimony. It undercuts rather substantially whatever "help" Ray gave people.

Personally, I thought the mitigation testimony the defense put forward in the presentencing hearing was weak. It was lacking in both quality and quantity. The witness list went from twenty-three to twelve to ten as the week progressed. As per Bob Ortega, defense attorney Tom Kelly said he would call four more witnesses for Wednesday and five on Thursday, claiming that they were trimming their witness list to stay on schedule. But, as Tom McFeeley so astutely pointed out, if time was the issue, why were they out at 2:00 on Tuesday? They certainly had time to present more than three witnesses that day, even with Det. Diskin completing his testimony from the previous week. And the promised five witnesses for Thursday dwindled to three.

Conspicuous by his absence was Bob Proctor whose appalling letter of support I discussed here. So, the court was spared a lecture on his particular brand of victim blame. Also among the notable missing was Tony Alessandra, who spearheaded efforts to get letters of support for Ray's mitigation hearing. Alessandra, by the way, owned Life Results, the company Ray drained of funds. I can't imagine he wanted to answer questions about that.

So who was left to testify to all of James Ray's "help?"

There were a handful of former students. Jennifer Kwasny, a former Pima County juvenile probation officer who characterized Ray as "a stellar candidate for probation" but who admitted that she hadn't reviewed any of the police records, testimony, or documents from the case. One hopes she was a bit more thorough in her career as a probation officer. David McCall charged up $125,000 in Amex bills to join the World Wealth Society and put his whole family through Ray's curriculum. He says it was absolutely worth it because his daughter led her volleyball team to state finals. Dentist Matt Bynum credits Ray with saving his marriage and making him a better employer by teaching him to lay aside his ego -- one of many things Ray taught but seemingly did not learn. Dr. Art Mowery credits Ray with teaching him a "simple" philosophy easily worth the thousands of dollars Ray charges his students.

"He showed me that just having stuff wasn't going to make me happy," Mowery said. "It has to come from within. It sounds pretty simple and it really is, but it just took someone to make me sit down and write it down."

On cross-examination, Polk questioned why an educated person would need help with a simple philosophy.

"There's lots of things we all know already, like we shouldn't eat McDonald's all day long," Mowery said. "We just need somebody to stay on us about it."

I'm sure that was worth the thousands of dollars Ray charges.

Former employees also testified. Amy Grothe, Ray's former executive assistant, had the dubious distinction of stopping proceedings entirely when Judge Darrow noticed she was being coached by someone in the audience. Alex Smythe, the accountant for JRI, arguably did far more for the prosecution than the defense. He had no idea how much Ray made from JRI but knew that the company owed Ray $300,000 which had come from various nameless accounts. And, when pressed, he acknowledged that he didn't know if Ray had ever actually been a millionaire.

Ray also put forward a couple of people with disabilities whom he ostensibly helped, as a friend, for free. Mark Lane, a PTSD suffering veteran of dubious credibility, and Dr. Sean Stephenson, a wheelchair bound little person who is, himself, a motivational speaker. Born with a severe form of osteogenesis imperfecta, Stephenson seems a sympathetic character... until he opens his mouth. After that the condescending arrogance becomes painfully apparent even through the filter of someone else's tweets. He lectured the courtoom. He even lectured the judge. He interrupted the prosecutor repeatedly and dodged questions about the importance of credentials. He also appears to share Ray's well-known contempt for fat people, pointing out that he admired Ray's fit physique and indicating that he gets hate mail for his opinions on weight loss. It seems incongruous to think of a three-foot tall, deformed, wheelchair bound person being lookist and sizist, but there we are. But Stephenson was gracious enough to let people know that other people can achieve his level of Yoda-like wisdom. Then he went off to lecture people on Connie Joy's Facebook page in a series of posts so nasty he ended up deleting them all. To my knowledge he has never committed mass murder in a quest to find the hero to his anti-hero, so he has that going for him.

Do I feel like I'm kicking cripple by criticizing a severely disabled and deformed person like Dr. Stephenson? A little. But Stephenson has made it clear that he wants no special treatment or pity. Of course he welcomed free professional services and seminar tickets, deeply admiring that Ray never charged him for anything. So maybe he does want special treatment after all.

Of course Ray's family members -- mother Joyce and brother Jon -- testified to his wonderfulness and the need for him to free on probation. He's needed at home to take care of his cancer-stricken mother, because now he's also an uncredentialed expert on alternative cancer therapies. Besides, as a tearful brother Jon indicated, he's not safe in jail with all those mean Indians. They both made ludicrous claims about how well-behaved Ray was a child. His mother reiterated claims about his obedience and self discipline -- even as a baby. His brother claimed they never fought as kids. It all sounds a little implausible. If true, it points to something even more disturbing. How were they being raised that they were that buttoned down? What is Joyce Ray's obsession with obedience and self-discipline in small children?

So, with all ten of Ray's supporters, there was still plenty of time for Sheila Polk to redirect Det. Diskin and clear up some confusion left by Truc Do's typically shrill cross examination. In particular, Polk addressed head on Truc Do's attempts to marginalize the spiritual views of one of the letter writers for the prosecution, Marilyn Moss. As discussed, Do questioned her credibility because of her belief in Ray's ability to "shoot energy" at witnesses. But under Polk's redirect, it became even more clear that the entire belief system starts with Ray. Moss had described Ray as "a master of manipulating energy." She wrote, "It may sound far out there, but it is what he is doing right now." She further explained, "When we were Dream Team members, we were to stand around shooting energy with the 'triangle' gesture." She claimed that Ray was doing this in court, so Diskin began to watch Ray. The upshot? He saw Ray doing exactly that on more than one occasion. Judge Darrow even stood up to look at Diskin's demonstration of the gesture. So, as I said before, whatever "silliness" Do wants to mock in prosecution witnesses starts with her own client.

All in all, sentencing brought a less than satisfying ending to this long and painful saga. Two years in jail seems a small price to pay for cooking people to death. But, in the final analysis, Ray's greatest wounds were not inflicted by the criminal justice system but by himself. He could have addressed this head on, settled, plead out, and accepted responsibility early on. If he'd given his tearful apology two years ago, it wouldn't have looked so much like a transparent ploy to win over the judge deciding his fate. Instead he dragged this out for over two years, spent a fortune on legal counsel, and apparently wound up broke and living with his parents. Two years in jail may not seem like much but it means his plans to resume his career and rebuild his life through his fancy-schmancy new website are for naught. What works out to a bit less than two years in jail may not seem like much, but for someone like Ray, with his obvious need for control and inability to sit still without sedation, it's an eternity.

Ray also still has numerous lawsuits pending, including a new wrongful death suit from the family of Colleen Conaway whose inexplicable plunge in a San Diego mall still begs to be resolved. In the meanwhile, inmate 267823 can be tracked here.

The above is taken from press reports and from the excellent live tweeting of Bob Ortega and Camille Kimball who were our eyes and ears in the courtroom.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

FBI Raid on Amish Mullets

2011-11-23T13:47:00.001-05:00

Egads! The Amish haircutting attacks discussed here and here are now being prosecuted at the federal level. The FBI raided the Berholz stronghold and arrested seven men including Bishop and purported cult leader Sam Mullet. They're charging this as a hate crime.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said religious differences should be a matter of theological debate, not disputes "resolved by late night visits to people's homes with weapons and violent attacks."

He said he does not know how often hate crimes involve intradenominational disputes.

A little more insight into why the Bergholz clan is considered a cult can also be found in the above linked article.

One of [Sam] Mullet's daughters-in-law and a former brother-in-law told investigators that Mullet controls everything that happens within the community outside Bergholz and that he allowed others to beat members of the group who disobeyed him, according to an affidavit filed in federal court Wednesday.

Mullet punished some by making them sleep in a chicken coop for days and was sexually intimate with married women in the community so that he could "cleanse them of the devil," the two said in the affidavit.

Now Mullet faces charges along with three of his sons and three other of his followers. If convicted could spend the rest of their lives in a federal chicken coop.

The criminal complaint, filed in Cleveland, charges Samuel Mullet Sr., Johnny S. Mullet, Daniel S. Mullet, Levi F. Miller, Eli M. Miller and Emanuel Schrock, all of Bergholz, Ohio; and Lester S. Mullet, of Hammondsville, Ohio, with assaulting others because of their actual or perceived religion. The maximum potential penalty for these violations is life in prison.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray Sentenced to Two Years

2011-11-18T15:54:00.000-05:00

I have considered all of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in this case. And I've considered the purposes of the criminal law statutes: 13101. And there is an aspect of deterrence that is very prominent in this case. Mr. Ray, when a person has your incredible abilities to gain people's trust, there is a large, large responsibility that goes with that trust. And that responsibility was not honored. And I'm not considering lack of remorse in any way. I'm just simply saying, this was the nature, there were people in there, people who had spent their money, their time, and they placed their trust and that was violated… It is important that sentencing when appropriate conveys and insures that there is appropriate deterrence. So I see and I find that the aggravating circumstance of emotional harm is so strong and it's such that, uh, probation is simply not warranted in this case.

I find in, in mitigation, as I've mentioned, Mr. Ray did help people. It was his intent to help people. It was. And I recognize that. I recognize no prior criminal history of any kind. Nothing. No indication that you pose any kind of future threat. But it is the decision, a prison sentence is just mandated in this case. I do find, however, that looking at all the circumstances, considering my experience with precedent in cases -- and this certainly is a different kind of a case… It is certainly a case where the evidence of, uh, extreme negligence is strong. But I find looking at all the circumstances, at the mitigating circumstances, based on factors I've indicated are sufficiently substantial to call for mitigated terms and they will be concurrent.

It is the judgment and sentence of the court that Mr. Ray be imprisoned for the following mitigated terms: For negligent homicide of Kirby Brown, two years. For negligent homicide of Elizabeth Neuman, two years. For negligent homicide of James Shore, two years. All of these sentences date from today. They begin today. The defendant receives credit for 24 days time served. It is ordered imposing a consecutive term of community supervision as required by law. It's ordered that the defendant is committed the custody of the department of corrections to carry out these sentences.

~ Judge Warren Darrow on November 18, 2011

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray's Presentencing Hearing: Week 1

2011-11-13T11:11:00.004-05:00

Where were you when you first realized that James Arthur Ray was a colossal fraud? It's not a game I can play because I never thought he was up to much. But God knows I've experienced similar disillusionment so I can relate to the sense of loss, pain, confusion, and catharsis, that I hear echoed in so many of Ray's former students. That dawning realization theme figured heavily into the sweat lodge trial as survivors of Spiritual Warrior 2009 shared their tragic experiences -- many of them still conflicted and confused over how it could have gone so horribly wrong. The presentencing hearing, which heard the prosecution's case for three days this week, brought still more stories of disillusionment and realization.

In the protracted pre-sentence hearing for James Arthur Ray, the state has presented eight witnesses over the past three days in its effort to prove additional aggravating factors that would convince Judge Warren Darrow to sentence the motivational speaker and author to the maximum allowable term of nine years in prison.

Led by Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, the prosecution seeks to show that Ray exhibited a pattern of negligent conduct that led to harm, that the victims in the case placed trust in him to keep them safe, that he lacked qualifications to conduct his events, and that many people were harmed, both physically and emotionally, by his actions and omissions.

As I'd assumed from her appearance on the prosecution's witness list, Kristina Bivins has become disenchanted with Ray. Bivins, who notoriously supported him during media interviews after the sweat lodge deaths, finally reached the breaking point. So what was it that shattered her belief in her teacher? Well. It wasn't her post-sweat lodge hospitalization.

"I couldn't see anything except for shapes and light, and I didn't know where I was," Bivins said. "It felt like my body and mind weren't connected. I couldn't get out of that state and I didn't know what to do."

Nope. Not even such severe injury could break her ties with Ray. In the end, it came down to money.

And even after the deadly debacle in Sedona, Bivins said she still believed in Ray's hybrid teachings, to the point she helped him develop strategies she believed were intended to compensate victims at least to some degree, as well as to help Ray get back on his feet financially. She appeared in print stories and on television on Ray's behalf.

But it was a dispute between Ray and two contract salespeople for Life Results, the firm that arose to allow Ray a chance to make a living by doing personal mentoring sessions, that finally turned her against her former mentor.

Ray, according to Bivins, was not the owner of Life Results, but did control its finances. So when Ray told her he had taken the money from Life Results to pay the mortgage on his Beverly Hills home rather than paying the salespeople their full commission, she saw the light of his true character.

Ray used a company he didn't even own as his personal piggy-bank. Shocker. Well. It came as at least enough of a shock that it caused the scales to fall from Bivins's extremely intense eyes. Upon learning that Ray had drained the company's account, Bivin's shelled out 18K herself to pay one of the contractors and like so many on the very long list of people Ray owes money to, she has not been repaid. Bivins has discovered the ugly truth. James Ray is a fraud who lies about his credentials and puts people in danger. Said Bivins:

"At first, I thought he was going to make things right; then as the summer went on I realized it was just about making money," Bivins said, adding that she now regrets having supported him for so long.

There comes a moment, in dealing with a personality like Ray, when it suddenly dawns that you've been making a lot of assumptions. You've assumed that they're like you. You've projected your own values and emotions onto them. You've rescripted all the inappropriate things they've said and done, telling yourself, Oh he didn't mean it like that. It just came out wrong.

And then the penny drops. The person does something so egregious that your increasingly tested state of denial shatters. And over a period of months, or even years, you recollect all the things that were gnawing at your subconscious all along.

She tearfully told the court that she had long repressed memories of the sweat-lodge ceremony, until she came to rethink her faith in his teachings.

Julia Bunker, a former Dream Team member, also testified to her gradual realization that James Ray's events were not safe. Convinced against her better judgment to snap an arrow against her neck, she began to believe Ray that it was all "mind over matter" and signed on for another Ray event. She embraced more of Ray's cheap martial arts tricks and came to believe that "I get hurt when I do certain physical activities," was just another limiting belief to be defeated by smashing pine boards and the like.

Little did Bunker know that Kurt Reinkin, whose accounting Det. Diskin read into the record on Thursday, had his eyelid punctured when he broke one of those arrows. JRI didn't even have a first aid kit to deal with the blood gushing from his eye.

Bunker engaged in increasingly reckless exercises, including the homeless exercise. As discussed, Colleen Conaway died when she was similarly abandoned in downtown San Diego and left to fend for herself without money, ID, or cell phone. This event began to set off some alarm bells for Bunker, despite having convinced herself that Ray would never have people do things that might actually harm them, if for no other reason than the limits of insurance protection. (Assumptions.) But participants in the homeless exercise weren't even allowed to write anything down and had to rely on nothing but notional breadcrumbs to find their way back to the buses. Bunker was "horrified" to see another participant get into a stranger's car. When she raised these safety concerns, she was told "You're bringing that, projecting that."

Such is the magical thinking of The Secret. It's not the actual, material threats in life that matter. Dangerous things can only hurt you if you think they can. Stay in denial and all will be well.

Bunker's concerns that Ray was not taking responsibility for putting people in danger grew considerably at an event in Hawaii. Numerous people had broken bones against the bricks they were pseudo-Karate chopping. And Ray did nothing. Injured people had to carpool to the hospital because Ray took no responsibility for getting them there. JRI also made it clear that they were not responsible for medical costs.

Ultimately, Bunker realized that suspending all fear might not be the best plan. Fear appears to have served her fairly well at the Spiritual Warrior 2008 when she left the sweat lodge after the second round. She also saw how ill some people who got at that event. In retrospect, she says if she had it to do over, she'd call 911. Perhaps if someone had called an ambulance then, no one would have died in 2009, she speculated.

Former Dream Team member Margaret Clancy also had her revelation amidst a myriad of breaking bones in Hawaii. When she considered how remote the location would be in Sedona, and the fact that Ray was doing nothing about the obvious injuries she was witnessing in Hawaii, she decided to forfeit the thousands of dollars in unrefundable fees for Spiritual Warrior 2008, rather than risk her health and safety.

Clancy described herself as "in shock" over Ray's inaction when people were injured. Ray never responded to an email she sent expressing her concerns over the injuries she'd witnessed. So Clancy was disillusioned when she realized that Ray didn't care at all if he put people at risk of injury. That was her big turning point but there were other red flags. According to Clancy, Ray claimed that he was only a few credits shy of being a psychologist. Wow.

Ray's qualifications, or the lack of them, was a key subject of hearing testimony this week. Ginny Brown, mother of the late Kirby Brown, testified that she had become disturbed at how he "allowed people to delve too deeply into their personal issues in front of a large crowd." Brown is an educator and therapist.

The information Ray prompted people to reveal was of such a sensitive nature that Judge Darrow stopped its reporting in open court and ordered the exhibit sealed this week. Prosecutors attempted to play a recording of Ray's "recapitulation" exercise. In it he called on people to write about their first sexual experience in the present tense, thus causing a number of people to relive their childhood sexual abuse. The highly personal disclosures on the recording brought objections from Truc Do and her objections were upheld. So, by Do's reasoning, the information was too sensitive to hear in open court but perfectly fine for Ray to publicly air at a large event in front of people many of whom were strangers to one another and who had no privacy agreement in place.

Do also objected to Det. Diskin's characterization of Ray's comments as nonchalant and insensitive. That objection was also upheld. But much as Connie Joy reported in her book about her own similar experience at a Ray event, Ray's response to these highly charged revelations was to comment that sex abuse of females is ubiquitous. I can't help thinking that someone who was really "a few credits short" of a psychology degree might have handled the revelation of such profound trauma with a little more sensitivity.

It looks like Det. Diskin's testimony was extremely contentious. It fell to Diskin to read a number of letters from Ray's disillusioned students and to testify to the numerous assertions about Ray's lack of qualifications. I have to admit that I'm almost glad that none of this was broadcast and I never had to hear Truc Do's cross examination of the detective. I don't know if there's anything worse than the sound of Truc Do's voice when she's being relentless.

It looks like Det. Diskin held his own against her repeated assertions that he wasn't doing his job properly or reporting accurate information. For instance, Do accused Diskin of "assuming" that figures quoted from a sales document were "actual income." But Diskin pointed out that it said "actual income" on the document retrieved from Ray's Carlsbad offices. So Diskin deserves at a least a few points for knowing how to read.

Diskin and Do went round and round on the issue of what Ray was or was not qualified to facilitate. A discussion of the trademarked Samurai Game^®, which Ray is not certified to lead, brought a surprising disclosure from Do. In an attempt to explain the complexity of copyright law, Do explained that neither she nor Luis Li really understand it. So the limitations of their legal comprehension were offered as justification of Ray's use of proprietary material without permission. The owners of the game certainly think their copyright has been violated.

I would humbly suggest that the issue is not whether or not Allied Ronin's copyright claim would hold up in court, but the fact that Ray misrepresented his qualifications to people who were paying him a lot of money.

Ray also misrepresented his qualifications as a shaman and as a sweat lodge pourer. While Diskin concedes that there is no law regulating who can run a sweat lodge, numerous Native Americans have expressed their discontent. He explained that representatives of various tribes described a "spiritual calling" to be a water pourer. When Do asserted that there was no certification to lead a sweat lodge, Diskin corrected her by pointing out that each tribe has its own process for appointing pourers.

Once again, it comes down to how Ray represented himself to his students, most of whom believed him to be extensively trained by indigenous shamans. Lest we forget, one of Connie Joy's disillusioning moments was came she learned that Ray's Peruvian shaman was really a tour guide -- something Det. Diskin also pointed out on the stand.

Do underscored the fact that Ray had never claimed to be a licensed therapist. Diskin clarified that the issue was that he wasn't qualified to act as one. But as per Margaret Clancy's testimony, the knowledge and training of a psychologist, if not the certification, is yet another qualification Ray has arrogated to himself.

People paid this man thousands of dollars based, in large part, on his claims of lifelong study with spiritual teachers of various traditions. When those teachers turn out to be tour guides, or even nonexistent, it comes as a blow to the many people who thought he knew what he was doing and that they were safe in his care. A number of those who've been painfully disabused of their trust and faith in Ray were in court this week in person, in letters, or in spirit. And Judge Darrow heard them out.

Darrow heard a lot of the evidence that was precluded during the jury trial. He listened to details of Colleen Conaway's mysterious death and Det. Diskin and Truc Do tussled over whether or not Daniel Pfankuch had experienced heat stroke in 2005. Diskin argued that his body temperature had simply cooled too much by the time he finally got to the hospital to be properly diagnosed. Pfankuch, of course, has never been the same.

Ray's entire defense squadron was stuffed into Judge Darrow's tiny new courtroom in Prescott. They apparently cleared their schedules for the hearing and got their acts together after all the delays and confusion brought about Tom Kelly's unspecified "heart condition." They were full of piss, vinegar, and objections, as usual. They started the festivities with an attempt to strike all the aggravators. Their justification is here. Their motion was denied.

Predictably, they tried to garner pity for Ray and attack the veracity of his detractors. In a particularly disgusting turn of a events, Do attempted to attack the competence of one letter writer because of her spiritual beliefs. She had raised concerns about Ray's abilities to shoot energy at the witnesses, which Do characterized as silly. But Diskin pointed out that all of Ray's followers believe wacky things and that it's legitimate to them.

So once again, Ray's spiritual beliefs are protected but those of witnesses against him aren't. Never mind that it was Ray who was constantly conflating shamanism and sorcery, like his hero in the ways of fraud Carlos Castaneda. That some of his former students have gotten the idea that he is capable of harming people by manipulating energy shouldn't come as a shock. He certainly manipulated them all in enough ways -- sleep deprivation, NLP, stage hypnosis -- that many feel intimidated by his power over them. If Truc Do had any integrity, she'd a) honor the first amendment protected spiritual beliefs of witnesses, and b) consider that it's her own client who is the fountainhead of "silliness" in this context.

What else does the defense have, though, besides attempts to silence or discredit the many people who have been harmed by James Ray? They've got a broken down Harmonic Wealth author who can't afford his legal bills, has lost his many homes, and is living with his parents. All they can do is lean into the pathos. He had to pay millions in settlements, so of course he had no choice but to steal money from a company he didn't own. And his mother has cancer. He has to be there to take care of her. Never mind that he has nowhere else to live. Someone has to be there to tell her that it's all just mind over matter and that she has to play full on against those cancer cells... or something. I can't even begin to imagine what help from Ray in a health crisis looks like. Maybe he just sits around "in shock" like he did when people weren't breathing after that atrocity of a sweat lodge.

In the upcoming week, will come the defense's full case for Ray to receive the lightest possible sentence of probation only. An overview of their reasoning is here. Their witness list is here. And their objection to the presentencing report is here.

The above is taken from press reports and from the excellent live tweeting of Bob Ortega and Camille Kimball who were our eyes and ears in the courtroom this week.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Ireland to Close Vatican Embassy

2011-11-03T22:32:00.001-04:00

Ireland is closing its embassy to the Vatican. But it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the dispute that, ahem, didn't cause the Vatican to pull their ambassador to Ireland.

Ireland announced Thursday it is closing its embassies to the Vatican and two other nations, but denied that its deteriorating relations with the Catholic Church played a role in its choice of cuts.

Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said Ireland was under grave financial pressure as it tries to slash spending in line with its international bailout last year. He said a review determined that Ireland's diplomatic posts to the Vatican, Iran and Timor Leste offered the least returns in foreign investment.

"The government believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador," Gilmore said, suggesting that a diplomat based in another European country would be assigned the Vatican brief, too.

In Rome, the Vatican likewise dismissed concerns that the Irish were sending another rebuke to the Catholic Church over its cover-ups of decades of child abuse in Ireland.

Right. Gotcha.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Herman Cain: Napoleon Hill Fan?

2011-10-30T11:14:00.001-04:00

I knew something sounded familiar about this staggering quote from Herman Cain regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! ... It is not a person's fault if they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed.

I've placed it. Cain's statement sounds a lot like this little gem from Napleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS.

As discussed here, that's an exact quote -- all caps, bad grammar, and all. And I think it's a fairly heartless philosophy. Worse, as I've observed many times, much of "new thought" is basically apologia for the worst excesses of capitalism. It's little wonder that books like The Secret get the full sanction of the corporate media. (It's also, arguably, why James Arthur Ray got the kid gloves treatment throughout the sweat lodge trial.) Poor people have no one to blame but themselves. And having money and success equals legitimacy. Nothing to threaten the power structure there.

I can remember leafing through Hill's perennial favorite -- a book that's been in print since 1937 -- when I was working in a new age bookstore. It never really clicked for me, even when I was enjoying the works of other new thought leaders like Louise Hay and wanted desperately to believe that I could control everything with my thoughts and make all the bad things go away. Paging through a little of it now reminds me as to why Hill never really resonated. He says far too much that makes no sense at all. One needn't look much further than the passage from which I take the above quote to see how badly the book fails the basic logic test.

In planning to acquire your share of the riches, let no one influence you to scorn the dreamer. To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit which serves as the life-blood of our own country, your opportunity and mine, to develop and market our talents.

Let us not forget, Columbus dreamed of an Unknown world, staked his life on the existence of such a world, and discovered it!

Copernicus, the great astronomer, dreamed of a multiplicity of worlds, and revealed them! No one denounced him as "impractical" after he had triumphed. Instead, the world worshipped at his shrine, thus proving once more that "SUCCESS REQUIRES NO APOLOGIES, FAILURE PERMITS NO ALIBIS."

So Hill had kind of a myopic view of history. While it's true that Copernicus's work is legendary and foundational to our current understanding of astronomy, his escape from negative consequences may have owed something to fact that he died of natural causes rather promptly after publishing on his heliocentric model. During his life, he kept a lot of his ideas close to the vest to protect himself from consequences.

About 1532 Copernicus had basically completed his work on the manuscript of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium; but despite urging by his closest friends, he resisted openly publishing his views, not wishing—as he confessed—to risk the scorn "to which he would expose himself on account of the novelty and incomprehensibility of his theses."^[63]

His theories were denounced by some Church officials and debated for some time. His grave was not so much venerated back then as it was lost and his epitaph destroyed during wars in the late 17th or early 18th century. Some of his remains were very recently found and reburied.

Copernicus was reportedly buried in Frombork Cathedral, where archaeologists for over two centuries searched in vain for his remains. Efforts to locate the remains in 1802, 1909, 1939 and 2004 had come to nought. In August 2005, however, a team led by Jerzy Gąssowski, head of an archaeology and anthropology institute in Pułtusk, after scanning beneath the cathedral floor, discovered what they believed to be Copernicus' remains.^[73]

. . .

The grave was in poor condition, and not all the remains of the skeleton were found; missing, among other things, was the lower jaw.^[74] The DNA from the bones found in the grave matched hair samples taken from a book owned by Copernicus which was kept at the library of the University of Uppsala in Sweden.^[75]^[76]

On 22 May 2010 Copernicus was given a second funeral in a Mass led by Józef Kowalczyk, the former papal nuncio to Poland and newly named Primate of Poland. Copernicus' remains were reburied in the same spot in Frombork Cathedral where part of his skull and other bones had been found. A black granite tombstone now identifies him as the founder of the heliocentric theory and also a church canon. The tombstone bears a representation of Copernicus' model of the solar system—a golden sun encircled by six of the planets.^[77]

So, I don't know. Maybe Hill was talking about some other "shrine" somewhere.

Copernicus's ideas were far from uncontroversial and continued to be so long after his death. Galileo, who famously embraced the Copernican model, was found guilty of heresy, was forced to recant, and lived out his days under house arrest. Such was his reward for being as bold as Hill recommends.

More to the point, Columbus... Wow... So, as per Hill, Columbus seized the day and the world is all the better for it. In fact, we owe our way of life to Columbus. Some might call that revisionist. Some might call it a grievous insult to the millions of native peoples on two continents whose cultures were destroyed in one bloodbath after another over hundreds of years.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my country. As you can see, I'm spending the duration of the DC40 celebrating the Goddess Columbia, whose name is ostensibly derived from that of Columbus. But our history is far from clean and is the product of a kind of violent imperialism that we like to think of as consigned to the annals of history. Yes, conquest was the way of the world back then and history is littered with the corpses of people who've been on the wrong side of its relentless march toward "progress." But that Hill blindly accepted the version of history that was written by the winners is about the kindest thing you could say about that sentiment. The idea that the European conquest of the Americas was an unalloyed good is the worst kind of white, imperialistic arrogance.

There are some successes that require far more than simple apologies. Our treatment of Native Americans in this country is our national shame for which we can never make adequate restitution.

It might just be time to reassess a hierarchical, patriarchal model that makes the successes of some dependent on the failures of others. Anyone who divides the world into winners and losers and posits that the winners never have anything to apologize for loses morality points as far as I'm concerned.

As discussed here, new thought tomes like The Secret and Think and Grow Rich effectively blame the victims of the excesses of others. It is the opposite of a balanced, inclusive world view in which we take responsibility, not only for our actions, but for our entire co-creation.

As Christina Pratt explained in an episode of Why Shamanism Now? devoted to The Secret, this completely misses the point. We're not all just creating our own, individual, discrete reality. We are part of a collective reality that we are constantly co-creating. She calls this "the big dream." Says Pratt:

Do not think that you can use this idea that we are dreaming our reality to bludgeon other people who are suffering. In other words, if there is a drought-ridden country somewhere, you can't just go, "Oh well those people dreamt up that drought." Not only is that, um, ignorant, and not remotely compassionate, but you're missing the point, entirely, which is that we are dreaming. We, the entire family of humanity is dreaming life as we know it. And so the drought over there is most likely the manifestation of a dream that is dreaming excess somewhere else. That the dream -- because, we are never not dreaming -- but we have not been trained the responsibility of being a dreamer. We've not been trained to dream well; to dream with maturity for easily, oh, two thousand years or more. And so, consequently, we are dreaming constantly pollution, toxicity, excess, deficiency, and what results then in disease in our human lives into the dream. Because we are not disciplined, we are not even aware, that we, every moment, we are contributing to the dream. And so The Secret says, you know, every moment you're manifesting your life. Well, yes, you are. Every moment you're also manifesting mine and I'm manifesting yours.

So, it comes down to whether we want to continue to extol the individual "dreamers" of Napoleon Hill's unapologetic, imperialist world view or embrace our role in co-creating a "big dream" in which all people can thrive.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Gloria Steinem: Feminist, Writer, Pagan

2011-10-25T21:23:00.001-04:00

Buy From Art.com

Hat-tip to The Wild Hunt on this intriguing little tid-bit. In an article about Gloria Steinem's collaboration with Egyptian-born feminist Mona Eltahawy, Steinem reveals that she considers herself a pagan.

Steinem’s father was Jewish, her mother was not, and she was raised without religion. She now calls herself a “pagan,” inspired by a trip down the Nile, where she witnessed how the ancient Egyptians incorporated nature into their worship.

Paganism is, compared to the "great religions," much more affirming of women and feminine power. Speaking for myself, it was the goddess imagery that drew me towards earth-based religions once upon a time. It was the only religious construct I'd encountered that didn't view women as lesser creatures. Not necessarily in modern applications of those religions, many of which are progressing on that score, but in the ancient scriptures, and peppered throughout in the language.

What I find most interesting, though, is that Steinem's conversion was inspired by ancient Egyptian religion. What is it about the power of those symbols? There is just something about Egypt that awakens us, in some cases painfully, to some greater awareness.

As discussed here, the great pyramids at Giza forced themselves into my consciousness many years ago triggering a sense of rekindled memory. Graham Hancock describes them as a kind of "alarm clock" possibly designed to wake us up to the mystery of our human origins and past life history. So I found this new add campaign from Toyota kind of interesting.

I'm currently reading Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval's The Master Game which posits a through-line from ancient Egypt, through the Gnostics, the Cathars, the Rosicrucians, the Masons, and more, that found expression in the French and American revolutions. As discussed here, Egyptian icons like Isis, Horus, and the pyramids were an important symbols to French revolutionaries.

Egypt represents the way out of our current morass. So it doesn't really surprise me that one of the greatest way-showers of the modern era would find faith and meaning there.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray on Dateline's Deadly Retread

2011-10-23T23:49:00.067-04:00

Buy From Art.com

Okay... so um... yeah... So they aired "Deadly Retreat" as promised on Friday night. I DVR'd it and watched it over coffee with my husband on Saturday morning. So... um... it was... yeah...

As Salty so humorously pointed out, much of the back story was just a retread of the special of the same name that they aired last summer. So that was about as illuminating as it was then, which is to say not very. And then there was the trial footage and discussion. I have to say that I enjoyed being back in the virtual courtroom, where I spent months of my life... except when Truc Do was talking. Like nails on a chalkboard, that voice.

I know Dateline has to show both sides but I think they did so a little haphazardly and it was confusing. If I hadn't known so much about the trial and the evidence I think I would have been a bit confused as to how they brought in a conviction. I always feel that way when I watch these news magazine treatments of criminal cases. I hate watching them because I'm always left wondering how the verdict was reached based on the evidence I've just seen. But in this case, having watched virtually every moment of the trial that was streamed by CNNLive, I'm in the even more uncomfortable position of knowing where Dateline really failed to make it clear.

The biggest question I would have, after those two hours, is what about the poisoning theory? Could it have been organophosphates? They really plead the defense's case and Beth Karas quite predictably made it sound like organophosphate poisoning was a very valid theory. They never really explained how thoroughly debunked it was, especially by Dr. Dickson, whom they correctly show as having really brought the prosecution's case together.

Judging by my stats over the past couple of days, I'd say a lot of viewers were left with that question. I looked hard at the organophosphate issue throughout the trial and, yes, it was thoroughly debunked, most especially by Dickson, but also as a matter of plain logic. Dateline also did not make clear that the recording of the emergency responder who cited organophosphates, which was the only specific reference to that poison, was background noise in a recording of a police interview which took place in a crowded dining hall. I summarized the case against organophosphates here:

Never mind that the entire organphosphate theory has been demonstrated to be ludicrous by evidence already presented by prosecutors and, in a rather ironic twist, the defense:

If there was organophosphate poisoning, the paramedics did everything wrong. They would have killed a bunch of people by causing them drown in their own saliva... which did not happen. (See Dickson)
Organophosphates were, in fact, ruled out at the hospital. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that cholinergics were not part of the differential diagnosis by the toxicologist, who found the symptoms consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning. (CO was subsequently ruled out by blood work.) I say this despite Truc Do's complete incapacity to grasp this simple fact. (See Dickson)
None of the handful of pesticides so sparingly used at Angel Valley contain organophosphates. (As per Injun Samurai)
As per Truc Do's own evidence, death from organophosphate poisoning is an extremely rare event and requires massive exposure. (See Dickson)

Also not clear from Dateline's reporting is that the jury was ultimately unimpressed by the poisoning theory. In an AP interview, juror Phillip Lepacek explained. (Note: The article is no longer at the link provided provided in my post but it can be found here.)

"There were millions of things afterward that just didn't add up to these poisons being there," he said. "Even though the defense didn't have anything to prove or demonstrate, if they could just get those samples and test them and say 'Here it is.' So obviously I'm thinking there was none."

Dr. Matthew Dickson, who reviewed autopsy records and medical reports of the participants for the prosecution, gained major points with the jury because of his experience with heat-related illness and exposure to pesticides, Lepacek said.

Dickson testified he was 99-percent sure that heat caused the deaths, and that the signs and symptoms of the victims were inconsistent with exposure to organophosphates, a pesticide compound.

"It was a no-brainer there was heat," Lepacek said. "These people were baked."

Jury foreman Val Ripley echoed that in his interview with Mark Duncan, explaining that the jury found the poisoning theory "unacceptable."

"I know they didn't have to prove it," he said, "but I think if it could have been proven, the defense would have done a little bit more. I don't know of anybody on the jury who thought that was a valid defense."

I have to say that considering the fact that the two jurors were interviewed by Chris Hansen on the show, their views were surprisingly not well represented. Again, not clear from their statements in the show why they came to the decision they did. It was much clearer from the press reports. It's obvious it was the same two even though they weren't named in the broadcast.

I know that shows like this love dramatic tension but Hansen's claim that the jury was "sharply divided" was laughable. Sharply divided juries don't bring in verdicts in 10 hours.

It's also somewhat interesting that they show Lepacek complaining about the "overkill" of the prosecution's case. Hansen says the "jurors" told them they were frustrated. But only one of them did. Notably, they didn't get a statement on that subject from Ripley, who had this to say to Mark Duncan:

Ripley said he was impressed with the case that Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk presented.

"I thought she did an outstanding job from the first day when she laid out her case," he said, noting that he subscribed to Polk's theory that Ray became increasingly more reckless in the way he conducted the ceremonies. "She was very logical, very organized."

Yet, Dateline does make it clear that they were impressed with the defense attorneys. I'm just saying, it's kind of interesting.

I, personally, would like a little more clarity about what the breakdown was in the jury. The two print interviews are in contradiction. The AP article says four jurors wanted manslaughter. The Mark Duncan interview says eight wanted manslaughter. I'm inclined to view the Duncan article as more accurate because Ripley was the foreman and because he was directly quoted as follows:

"We were very close to the manslaughter conviction," Ripley said. "Eight of us wanted manslaughter, and the other four felt that he wasn't aware of all that those people were going through."

If that's the case, the jury's opinions really didn't come across on the show.

A couple of things did come across very clearly as a motivation to convict Ray. The first is Ray's insensitivity and inaction when people were obviously in trouble. Said Ripley:

He basically just walked out of the sweat lodge, they watered him down, hosed him down. He sat down, got a drink. He didn't do nothin.' He didn't, like, seem like he cared.

They also indicated that the audio tapes of Ray during Spiritual Warrior really affected the jury. Lepacek said that they showed that he could come across much more powerfully and convincingly than the timid appearance he gave in court, adding credence to the idea that he had a strong influence over the behavior of participants. The really damning statements offered up by Dateline were the everpopular, "I... Am... God!" (as discussed here) and the absolutely shocking,"At some point in time, you just have to let go and say, 'If I'm gonna die, it's OK, because I don't ever die.'"

Buy From Art.com

They also emphasized, to some degree, the power of Dr. Dickson's testimony but they really didn't show enough of it. I could have done with a lot more from Dickson. He was awesome. And, of course, he handed Truc Do her ass which scored major points with me, personally... but I wasn't on the jury. So never mind.

I also have to say that Hansen's language shows some bias.

One part of the prosecution's case did get their attention.

Really. Only one part. And yet they got a conviction. Explain that, lab partner.

There are some other nuggets to be mined from Dateline's coverage. As noted in my write-up on the original broadcast, Ray reveals a lot about himself with his language.

But such is the muddled, mixed message that typifies Ray's work. Dateline includes this segment from his appearance on Oprah. Says Ray:

Not what can I get but what can I give and how can I serve. And when you're in that moment the universe lines up behind you and it's at your command.

So are you supposed to be serving the universe or ordering it around? The moment you go from that surrendered place that allows you to consciously merge with the universe to one in which you are so in your ego that you start "commanding" things, that sense of limitless unity is gone. We can either become conscious of our oneness with all that is or delude ourselves into thinking we're the king of the world. We can't do both. One is the experience of mystical awareness. The other is just grandiosity.

Another major tell emerges in the interview with Ginny Brown, mother of the late Kirby Brown. She recounts for Hansen what Ray said to her when he finally got around to calling her five days later.

He didn't apologize. He said, I'm so upset and I have to find out what happened. He said, "This is the most awful thing that has ever happened to me in my life."

I really can't imagine what goes on in the mind of someone who would tell a mother who's just lost her daughter that it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It's beyond narcissistic and just stunningly insensitive.

Another statement that jumped out at me this time 'round was interview footage of Ray describing how the law of attraction brings wealth and success into your life.

You gotta to be in the right place at the right time, do the right things, get the right opportunities, make the right decisions meet the right people, and get the right results.

He says it with that same angry intensity that I've noted before. And he punches the word "right" every time he says it in this rapid-fire litany of wickets that you just have to hit. The whole thing just gives me agita. It's another example of building urgency language, like his "time is short" lecture at the beginning of Spiritual Warrior. Implied: Whatever you do, for the love of God, don't make any mistakes. A single wrong choice -- or wrong thought -- and it'll all just go to hell. Also implied: You need me to help you be perfect enough to magnetize the right things.

I know a two hour show can't do justice to a four month trial but this was mostly style without substance. It was very shiny and had lots of lovely shots of Sedona, but it could not help but leave viewers with a lot of questions. Worse, it could leave a distorted perception about the strength of the prosecution's case. They also didn't really put across what a reprobate Ray is. For instance, they didn't discuss at all that Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman, weren't his first casualties -- that less than three months before that Colleen Conaway fell to her death during another Ray event. James Ray has far more to answer for than is evident Dateline's treatment of this horrific tragedy.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

DC40 Counter Event Gets Beliefnet Treatment

2011-10-22T21:31:00.002-04:00

Buy From Art.com

Well, I still have my Beliefnet News feed, despite my disgust, and today I noticed an interesting item on a DC40 counter event coming up. Rob Kerby's post pretty much sticks to the press release and doesn't editorialize much. But if you're thinking the story was treated fairly, 'fraid not.

Here's the relevant info from Capital Witch:

Priestesses and priests from the Washington, DC Pagan community will hold a Celebration of the Divine Feminine and Religious Freedom in Lafayette Square Park across from the White House on Sunday, October 30th, 2011, as a protest to the New Apostolic Reformation’s 51-day prayer campaign targeting Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Druids, Heathens, and other Goddess-worshipers nationwide.

The New Apostolic Reformation is a Dominionist group of Christians preaching that all feminine forms of deity are demonic. The NAR is engaged in a 51-day campaign of imprecatory prayer to create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the USA. Republican presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry are influenced by the NAR agenda.

. . .

The event in Lafayette Square Park begins at noon and ends at 5pm on Sunday, October 30th, Samhain eve to many Pagans, leading into one of the most holy days of the Pagan year. “Samhain, or Halloween, is the Feast of the Ancestors in some of our Pagan religions. We will invoke the Founding Fathers and Mothers of our nation during our ceremony, along with a multitude of Goddesses from pantheons both ancient and modern. Among our Goddesses will be Lady Liberty and Columbia, the Goddess who stands guard atop the Capitol Building,” said Ms. Kenner. “The New Apostolic Reformation people would topple Columbia from Her pinnacle, and rename DC the District of Christ.”

So, that much is completely awesome and I'm glad to know about it. Whether you're going or not, I'd say that'd be a good time to join in in spirit and Om the Dome.

While much of the Kerby's post is "just the facts" there is a bit of subtle snark, like the lede which could be read as pagans being irritated that Christians are praying for the country.

A group that says it represents the District of Columbia’s pagan community is upset that a group of Christians is praying for America.

He also put Samhain eve in quotes which makes it look like it's something novel that the organizers made up, as opposed to an established holiday. That's particularly alarming when you consider that Beliefnet has a pagan community section... for now.

All of that I could let go but where the bias really becomes apparent is in the disappearing comments. When I first read this story earlier today there was a very smart comment from, if memory serves, someone named Erica. It's gone now. I wish I'd taken a screen capture. It didn't occur to me that it would be deleted. When will I learn?! The comment said something about how Erica (???) was reading the founding father's writings every day of the DC40 as a reminder of how committed they were to the separation of church and state. I'm not doing it justice.

It's funny. One of the other things I've been noticing about Beliefnet over the past several months is the paucity of comments. There used to be a lot more. I assumed their readership was down or that the news stories just weren't interesting enough to invite comment. I'm rethinking that. It would seem that only comments that echo Kerby's views are welcome. The rest go down the memory hole. And it would seem that separation of church and state is not big with Mr. Kerby. Good to know.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Beliefnet Goes Bigot

2011-10-21T11:34:00.000-04:00

Remember when Beliefnet.com was all about tolerance and religious diversity? Well, I do. I'm not saying there wasn't the occasional dustup. And, in fairness, I've never been a really active member or reader. But it was always a good place to find interesting content on many different religions and events around the globe pertaining to religion.

Years ago I put a Beliefnet news feed on my iGoogle page and often saw interesting items scroll through. More recently, however, I've noticed a dramatic shift in tone. It's taken a sharp Christian Right turn. I often see articles that seem to pit the Christian West against other cultures -- Muslims in particular. I toyed with the idea of removing the feed but I haven't as yet. It's taken on a kind of compelling, train-wreck quality. Periodically I just have to see what bold, new wingnuttery is gracing its pages.

Now, bear in mind, this is the feed for Beliefnet News. It's the not the Christian section, let alone the Christian Right section, which doesn't exist as near as I can tell. Well, it wouldn't need to because now the news section is fitting that particular bill.

The news feed used to bring reprints or excerpts from world religion related news stories without commentary. Now it appears to be the blog of one Rob Kerby who I'm afraid holds the title of Senior Editor. So is he a Christianist (to borrow a Sullyism) and bigot? Here's a recent post.

Members of the football team stomped out of a Hartford, Connecticut, high school assembly when a pro-homosexual advocacy play featured two boys kissing on stage.

. . .

It apparently did not occur to [Principal David Chambers] that some of the kids had moral issues with the scene — believing that glorifying same-gender romance is wrong. Chambers’ intent was to wear down the students sense of disgust and discomfort with viewing homosexuality on stage.

He goes on to quote a bevy of outraged Christians and closes with this:

“I applaud the young men that got up and left the show,” wrote Jacqueline. ”It shows courage to stand up for what is right. Instead of sitting by silently and being forced to accept views they do not agree with, they stood up for their on beliefs and convictions. Real men stand with courage for what is right.”

I posted a comment questioning the pro-bigotry tone of the piece. I asked why these supposedly Bible believing Christians aren't demanding the execution of gay people, along the lines of points I addressed here. And I asked when these Christians were going to stop slacking and go after all the pork and shellfish eaters. As you can plainly see, that comment is no longer there. So I attempted to post another comment questioning the censorious nature of the site. It wouldn't post so they've clearly blocked my IP or something.

So, the "news" section of Beliefnet is now little more than a megaphone for far right, Christianist bigotry and they're not tolerating any questions about that policy. Pity. It used to be a very worthwhile site.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Dateline to Air New James Ray Special

2011-10-20T10:02:00.000-04:00

Dateline will revisit the James Arthur Ray sweat lodge fiasco this Friday night. So set your DVRs. I have.

In October 2009, James Arthur Ray, a renowned self-help author and speaker, held a "Spiritual Warrior" retreat in Sedona, AZ. Three people died during the retreat, and Ray was charged with manslaughter but convicted of a lesser charge. Chris Hansen reports Deadly Retreat this Friday, October 21st, at 9pm/8c.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Is Mormonism a Cult?

2011-10-19T09:00:00.002-04:00

Buy From Art.com

I got an email the other day asking me that question? Why I got it and how on earth I came to be on that particular mailing I have no idea. But I was intrigued so I followed the link to find out just why this particular Christian group would characterize the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a cult. I have a little trouble with their definition.

But what is a cult? Dr. Charles Braden, coauthor with John C. Schaffer of the book These Also Believe, said this:
By the term cult, I mean nothing derogatory to any group so classified. A cult, as I define it, is any religious group which differs significantly in one or more respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total culture.

The question arises, obviously, because of Mormon Mitt Romney's candidacy. And because Rick Perry supporter Robert Jeffress put the issue front and center.

Texas pastor Robert Jeffress generated headlines last week when he told reporters that Mormonism is a cult—a belief system at odds with historic Christianity.

Since then he has been accused of bigotry, called a “poster boy for hatred,” and a “moron.”

Despite those harsh charges, Jeffress, who backs Texas governor Rick Perry for the GOP presidential nomination, has made it clear that his view of Mormonism is theologically grounded and not an expression of bigotry. He made it clear that he would be willing to vote for Romney in the general election if he wins the Republican nomination and said he thinks that Romney is a “fine family person."

Romney's a good person and worth voting for. It's just so unfortunate that he has no first name. Seriously. Nowhere in the article is his entire name used. Telling, I think.

But, to my point, I have a little difficulty with their use of the term cult to define a religion just because its beliefs and doctrines differ from their own.

I'm somewhat sensitized to the issue after months of following the James Ray trial. The term cult was discussed more than a little and Ray has been observed by many cult watchers -- fairly I think. But I was alarmed at how much I read that characterized Ray's followers as a cult because their beliefs are nontraditional and "new agey." The beliefs of any group, in my opinion, are not what defines that group as a cult. It's not about what people believe but how they believe it. Any group can be a cult or have cult-like elements, including non-religious groups. Political groups, for instance, can be cults.

Admittedly, I'm defining cult somewhat narrowly in the sense of "mind control" or "negative" cults. The term cult has the same word root as cultivate and culture. It implies the shared beliefs of a community. But over time it came to be used in reference to marginalized groups.

When someone like Jeffress uses the term it's just thinly veiled sectarianism; something which has absolutely no place in the political process of a country where freedom of religion is a constitutionally protected right.

It merits mentioning that Jeffress has also characterized Catholicism as a cult -- specifically, "a Babylonian mystery religion that spread like a cult," which demonstrates "the genius of Satan." This revelation seems to have a gotten a more proactive response from Rick Perry than did the anti-Mormon statement.

Where it all gets really murky is in the conflation of these two meanings of the word cult. Again, something I saw a lot of in discussions of James Ray. The assumption seems to be: Your beliefs are weird so you must have been brainwashed to believe them.

I'm going to go on record and say that I don't define Mormonism as a cult because their beliefs are weird -- certainly not because they're not in alignment with other Christian sects. That's not to say that LDS is not a mind-control cult, however. There's actually a very strong case to be made that the Mormon Church employs enough manipulative tactics to be defined that way. That case is most often made by ex-Mormons.

Psychologist, cult expert, and cult survivor Steven Hassan has, at the behest of ex-Mormons, started to look at the cultish elements of LDS. Hassan uses what he calls the BITE model to define a cult.

Behavioral control
Information control
Thought control
Emotional control

In this article he's applied the BITE model the Mormon Church relying reporting from a former member. It's a detailed breakdown and indicates a fairly strong system of control.

In 2009 Hassan was invited to speak by a group of ex-Mormons in Salt Lake City. The lecture is well worth a listen. He doesn't talk a lot about LDS. He leaves that to the ex-Mormons themselves. But he shares from his own experience as a Moonie and underscores the commonality with his audience. Most interesting are the responses from audience members and how strongly they identify with Hassan's experience as a follower of Sun Myung Moon.

What struck me, though, was how much this lecture put me in mind of my fairly short-lived immersion into born-again Christianity. The thought-stopping, the use of singing and repetitive phrasing to silence challenging thoughts, the characterization of any questions with temptation by the devil, the enforced group-think, and, of course, the belief in an absolute truth. It causes me to ponder, and not for the first time, how my born-again experience was a study cult techniques, albeit not to the extreme end occupied the Moonies. No one ever tried to come between me and my family, for instance. There was just a lot of hope that I'd convert my family so that we wouldn't be separated by death. You know, because they were all going to hell.

There's a certain sense of irony when a fundamentalist Christian group defines another group as a cult because it has the "wrong" beliefs. Believing yours is the only valid path is one of the more common features of a mind-control cult.

Rick Perry seems to have attached himself to more than a handful of Christian leaders who define themselves by this sort of elitism. Both he and Michele Bachmann have ties to dominionist groups.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. Most writers, myself included, who explore it have been called paranoid. In a contemptuous 2006 First Things review of several books, including Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, and my own Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “the fear of theocracy has become a defining panic of the Bush era.”

Rick Perry created waves recently when was involved in a prayer rally organized by leaders of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation. It's the NAR that is responsible for the current DC40 campaign to turn the District of Columbia into the District of Christ.

One of the things Hassan mentions in the lecture embedded above is that the various cults he's dealt with -- most especially the Unification Church of which he was a part -- are in competition with each other for control of the world. Just something to think about.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Setting the Record Straight on Bishop Finn

2011-10-15T20:18:00.004-04:00

Bishop Robert Finn was indicted this week for failure to report a pedophile priest.

Bishop Robert Finn on Friday became the highest-ranking Catholic official in the nation to face criminal prosecution in the decades-old child sexual abuse scandal — an action that stunned many inside and outside the church.

A Jackson County grand jury on Oct. 6 secretly indicted both Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on misdemeanor charges of failure to report child abuse in a case involving a priest facing child pornography charges.

As Finn and the diocese denied wrongdoing Friday after appearing in court, news of the charges roiled the nation and the Catholic world.

I have been reading about this case as its developed for months but everything I've read has left me a little ambivalent. There's a problem with this story and it's been covered unevenly from the outset. On the surface it comports well with a familiar narrative about Catholic bishops protecting the Church's reputation and abusive priests at the expense of children. But it's not that straightforward.

I'm not saying that Bishop Finn handled this situation well or that he was anywhere near as proactive as he needed to be. But at the end of the day, I have to say the same about the police and that element has been ignored in most of the reporting.

I first became aware of the problems in the Kansas City Diocese in May of this year when the story of of priest in possession of child pornography broke wide. Early reports claimed that the diocese had sat on the evidence for months and failed to act on concerns about Father Shawn Ratigan. After reading more in depth stories, I learned that this was not quite accurate. Bishop Finn, who quickly donned a hair shirt and prostrated himself before God and the media, actually did have someone from the diocese talk to police early on. Could he have been more proactive? Definitely. But that doesn't excuse the lazy reporting that has blatantly misstated the facts.

The current media narrative says that the Bishop knew of troubling images on Father Ratigan's computer for months before reporting them to police. But some of the more thorough reporting from this past May says the opposite. A nude image that particularly concerned them was described to police immediately and shown to church counsel. Both said that the image did not constitute child pornography

This story in the paper of record is a case on point:

Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has acknowledged that he knew of the existence of photographs last December but did not turn them over to the police until May.

. . .

Stoking much of the anger is the fact that only three years ago, Bishop Finn settled lawsuits with 47 plaintiffs in sexual abuse cases for $10 million and agreed to a long list of preventive measures, among them to immediately report anyone suspected of being a pedophile to law enforcement authorities.

Michael Hunter, an abuse victim who was part of that settlement and is now the president of the Kansas City chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said: “There were 19 nonmonetary agreements that the diocese signed on to, and they were things like reporting immediately to the police. And they didn’t do it. That’s really what sickens us as much as the abuse.”

Their reporting is incomplete but it does provide a link to a pdf Bishop Finn's May statement:

When the Diocese of Kansas City ~ St. Joseph reported its concerns about Father Shawn Ratigan to the Kansas City Police Department on May 12, we set into motion a series of events that have provoked feelings of concern, anger and shame.

During the last two weeks, I have learned facts that I had not previously known. As Bishop, I owe it to people to say, “Things must change.”

I must also acknowledge my own failings.

Yesterday evening, I read, for the first time, the memorandum prepared in May 2010 by our principal at St. Patrick School. There, she reported her concerns about Shawn Ratigan’s inappropriate behavior with children at her school.

In the following days, Diocesan Vicar General Msgr. Murphy gave me a brief verbal summary of the report and his meeting with Shawn Ratigan, which had occurred immediately after the report was received. Msgr. Murphy told me that he had thoroughly discussed these concerns with Shawn Ratigan, and how he was to change his behaviors.

Shawn Ratigan expressed both the willingness and the desire to make these changes.
To the best of my knowledge, no one on my staff, other than Msgr. Murphy, read the report. Hindsight makes it clear that I should have requested from Msgr. Murphy an actual copy of the report. And, so, I also have to change. Please understand that at the time of the May 2010 report, we had no knowledge of any inappropriate photographs or images in Shawn Ratigan’s possession. Those were not discovered until December 2010.

How will we change?

I already have met with the people of the St. Patrick Parish community, priests of the diocese, diocesan staff, and the chair of the Independent Review Board. As a result of these meetings, I have asked the Independent Review Board to expand its role in receiving and evaluating reports of misconduct with children. I will be meeting with others, to determine how best to change our internal structure, reporting and procedures. The changes could be unsettling but, more than ever, I realize that they are necessary.

Please pray for me in these resolutions. And, let us pray for each other in these difficult days.

Where the New York Times fails is in leaving out the very important point that the diocese did contact the police immediately after learning of questionable images from a computer technician.

More accurate accounting of the sequence of events can be found in reporting from the time. In point of fact, the diocese contacted the police the day after they learned from a computer tech that there were troubling images on Father Ratigan's computer. Neither the police nor church counsel thought the images were actionable.

Captain Steve Young explained, “A member of the Diocese contacted a member of this department and told that member of the department that they'd found a computer and on that computer was a single image of a naked young girl."

The Diocese asked if the photos were pornographic.

He continued, “The answer to that is no, it is not child porn. It is not a prosecutable offense."

Bishop Robert Finn said in a statement Friday, the Diocese did seek advice from its legal council. Finn said, “The photographs did not constitute pornography as they did not depict sexual conduct or contact."

Now, Finn regrets not pushing for a full investigation.

The situation was further complicated when Father Ratigan unsuccessfully attempted suicide upon discovery of his digital of images. After that he was sent for psychiatric evaluation. The diocese also ordered him to stay away from children -- another item that seems to get dropped from much of the reporting. The above cited New York Times article claims Father Ratigan was able to attend multiple events with children present. What it ignores is that it was Ratigan's violation of his order to stay away from such events that precipitated further investigation from the diocese.

A number of the articles that I'd saved on this case were lost when my link service went tats up without warning, but this story from the National Catholic Register provides a chronology that pretty well comports with my recollection.

In December 2010, a computer technician working on Father Ratigan’s laptop found what he described as “disturbing images” of children, including pictures focusing on the children’s crotch areas, and a young girl with her genitals exposed.

According to a diocese-commissioned investigation, led by former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves, Msgr. Murphy described one image — but did not produce it — to a police captain who is a member of the diocese’s independent review board. Msgr. Murphy described a single photo of a nude child that was not sexual in nature.

According to Graves’ report, issued Sept. 1, Police Capt. Rick Smith said Msgr. Murphy informed him that Father Ratigan’s computer contained a single picture of a nude girl; that it was a family member or a niece; and that it was not a sexual pose.

However, Msgr. Murphy said he did not remember telling the police captain that the picture depicted a young relative or that it was not a sexual pose.

Either way, the report says Capt. Smith, after seeking advice from a police colleague, told Msgr. Murphy that a single photo in a non‐sexual pose might meet the definition of child pornography, but it would not likely be investigated or prosecuted.
[emphasis added]

The day after the images were found, Father Ratigan was ordered to meet with diocesan officials, but the next morning, he was found unconscious in his garage, with his motorcycle running, according to The Catholic Key, the diocesan newspaper.

Father Ratigan was placed on administrative leave and underwent a psychiatric evaluation. He was not permitted to return to this parish and prohibited from having any contact with children or using a camera and computer.

On May 12, after Father Ratigan allegedly violated those restrictions, Msgr. Murphy again contacted the police officer, who in turn submitted a report to the Cyber Crimes Against Children Unit. Six days later, police arrested the priest after finding a flash drive with several pictures of child pornography.

What I find interesting in that article is that it describes a differing recollection between police and the monsignor who conferred with them, so it's a case of he said, he said. I also find it interesting that in the direct statement from Captain Young quoted above, he doesn't acknowledge that the image could have been pornographic. The Graves Commission report shows Captain Smith saying that it could have been pornography but would not likely have been investigated or prosecuted. That's a pretty big difference.

None of this is to excuse Bishop Finn's ostrich behavior on this case and their definitely was some. But my sense is that the police also dropped the ball. Why they didn't push for an investigation if there was any chance that the image described could have been pornographic is beyond me.

I find this particularly troubling in the wake of so much effort to get the Catholic Church on board with reporting requirements. Those efforts assume that the police are the people to turn to.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

When Amish Attack

2011-10-13T22:48:00.000-04:00

Five Amish men were arraigned today for the hair-cutting attacks discussed here. Three are sons of Bishop Sam Mullet and all five are part of the Bergholz community he leads.

The latest Amish men to turn themselves in are Daniel Mullet, 37, along with Eli Miller, 32. Also accused are Levi Miller, 53; Johnny Mullet, 38; and Lester Mullet, 26, who were arrested on Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, on charges of kidnapping and aggravated burglary. Those three originally told the Jefferson Count judge Tuesday, that they wanted Bishop Sam Mullet to decide if they should waive extradition, but later agreed on their own. The three accused were being held at the Jefferson County Justice Facility, in a segregated area, on $250,000 cash bond each, according to reports. The trio told the judge that Bishop Mullet was expected to arrive with the $750,000 cash bond needed to be freed. Bishop Mullet did show up, but did not have the money; therefore, Holmes County came and transported back to their jail, sources said.

These incidents have dragged the normally very private Amish into the media and some of them are speaking openly. Bishop Mullet, the man at the center of this dustup, has proved to be quite loquacious. His former son-in-law -- whose custody claim resulted in the SWAT at the schoolhouse incident -- has also given a lengthy statement to the press. He compared the splinter group to Jim Jones's Peoples Temple which ended in a notorious mass suicide in 1978.

"I'm not surprised if I have to call the sheriff some day and say there are a lot of dead people lying around here. That would not be a surprise to me nor would it be a surprise to the sheriff of that county," Ayden said.

. . .

"I have enough inside information that I have no question if something is not done, there will be people that get hurt," Ayden said.

The former member says there were forced beatings, pitting one member against another.

Ayden says there is a heavy price to pay for disagreeing with Sam Mullet.

"He would take the wife from the man. The wife would have to go and live with Sam. The husband of that wife would have to go to the chicken coop or out in the barn in the middle of the winter, sometimes day and night," Ayden said.

Disturbing accusations, if true. But having read Sam Mullet's statements to the press, I'm inclined to believe it.

Mullet, 66, said the goal of the hair-cutting was to send a message to Amish in Holmes County that they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they were treating Mullet and his community.

"They changed the rulings of our church here, and they're trying to force their way down our throat, make us do like they want us to do, and we're not going to do that," Mullet told The Associated Press outside his house on the outskirts of Bergholz, a village of about 700 residents.

"We know what we did and why we did it," he continued. "We excommunicated some members here because they didn't want to obey the rules of the church."

. . .

"You have your laws on the road and the town -- if somebody doesn't obey them, you punish them. But I'm not allowed to punish the church people?" Mullet said. "I just let them run over me? If every family would just do as they pleased, what kind of church would we have?"

His statements are very revealing. By his own admission, he sees degrading people as an appropriate corrective and goes so far as to compare that degradation to our judicial system. Actually, we English have laws against that. Also, like any classic abusers, he paints himself repeatedly as the victim.

He also seems to see kidnapping and assault as an exercise of religion rather than felonies.

Mullet said whoever is responsible for the attacks, in which a truckful of Amish men are said to approach a house and eventually attack its occupant, has religious, not criminal motivation.

"It's all religion," he maintained, "that's why we can't understand why the sheriff has his nose in our business. It started with us excommunicating members that weren't listening or obeying our laws. That's where it all started. I didn't know the courts could stick their nose in religion, but that seems what they did here."

For all his openness, Mullet has neither confirmed nor denied his own involvement in the hair-cutting attacks. But typical Amish fashion, the assailants were apparently quite honest and straightforward about their intentions.

After a few minutes of small talk about the weather, the men suddenly announced, "We're here for Sam Mullet to get revenge," [Sheriff Timothy] Zimmerly said.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Escaping Warren Jeffs

2011-10-13T16:57:00.001-04:00

video platform video management video solutions video player

A twenty-five year old woman purported to be one of Warren Jeffs's many, many wives, is currently in a women's shelter after fleeing the FLDS compound in Colorado City, Arizona. For reasons that remain unclear, she was apparently shoeless.

She sought help from disenfranchised FLDS member Willie Jessop after fleeing her parents' home. Police responded to a "keep the peace call."

The sheriff’s deputies helped diffuse what had become a standoff with FLDS men outside Jessop’s office, Wyler said, adding that the woman was taken to a shelter.

Jessop declined to provide details about the situation.

"It’s all about the welfare of a girl who sought help," Jessop said. "We’re keeping this focused on what’s in the best interest of the young lady."

According to some reports, this was not her first attempt to flee Jeffs's compound.

This is allegedly not the first time the woman tried to escape and the Washington County Attorney’s Office is investigating.

They are looking into allegations he was held against her own will and even drugged.

Kidnapping and drugs! Jeffs and his clan really know how to charm the ladies.

Jeffs is, of course, in a Texas prison. having been convicted for child molestation because some of many, many wives are a tad young. But even from prison, he seems to have quite a grip on his church and wives, with compounds in Utah, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, and Canada. Few have fled.

Colorado City and its sister community of Hildale are the home base of Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect, which has about 10,000 members, practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have sometimes involved underage girls.

Leaving the devout, insular community has historically been difficult for FLDS members in part because it essentially severs all ties with family and friends.

No one seems to know how many wives Jeffs has. One story says 70, another says 85, but most just say "at least 78."

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Serial Murder of Peruvian Shamans

2011-10-12T00:20:00.000-04:00

Buy From Art.com

Well, this is horrible. As per The Wild Hunt, Peruvian shamans are the targets of a serial murder spree. To date fourteen shamans are believed to have been murdered over twenty months. Seven have been found dead and another seven have been reported missing. In a recent press conference, deputy minister of foreign affairs Vincente Otta and an Amazon rainforest expert Roger Rumrrill described the brutal slayings and said suspicion has fallen on a local mayor.

Mr. Rumrrill, said: "The healers were murdered in a brutal way, hacked by machetes and axes, stoned, and even shot with rifles, and their bodies then hurled into rivers where they were devoured by piranhas."

Mr Otta said that prosecutors are investigating Balsapuerto Mayor Alfredo Torres and his brother Augusto in connection with the murders.

According to Mr Rumrrill, Mayor Torres "is a religious fanatic and Protestant fundamentalist who considers the shamans his enemies'' and "people possessed by demons''.

Bautista Inuma, who was mistaken for a shaman, survived a machete attack, but lost an arm. He directly accused Augusto Torres, brother of the mayor. And one of the alleged gunmen, Solomon Napo, confessed to one of the killings and claimed to have been hired by the mayor's brother.

Mayer Torres denies involvement and has pointed the finger at villagers displeased with the shaman's failed cures.

District Mayor Alfredo Torres Balsapuerto, has consistently upheld the charges. Until recently went underground, but recently appeared in the media and said "political reasons" trying to discredit him. Vehemently rejected the accusation of the alleged assassin Solomon Napo and downplayed the alleged involvement of his brother Augustus in the crimes. He said the killings were due to possible "revenge" for shamanism wrongdoing, but he denies having been involved in them. It reiterates, firmly, that he believes in "witchcraft".

Otta, I think fairly, characterized Torres's statements as an attempt to "'legitimise the killings' by blaming the victims for the high level of infant mortality in the area."

[Rumrrill] alleged that the mayor, who is an evangelical Christian, ordered the killings on hearing that the shamans planned to form an association. He said the mayor's brother was known in the area as a matabrujos or witch killer.

"For Protestant sects, the shamans are possessed by the devil; a totally sectarian, primitive and racist concept," he said.

Shamans in the Peruvian Amazon use psychoactive plants such as the jungle vine ayahuascafor spiritual ceremonies. As early as the 16th century, Spanish and Portuguese missionaries described its use by native people in the Amazon as the work of the devil.

"Until now the death of 14 curanderos [healers] who are the depositaries of Amazon knowledge wasn't worth the attention of the press," Rumrrill said. "That's an expression of how fragmented and racist this country is. A centralised country which continues to look at its interior with total indifference."

The incursion of fundamentalist Christianity into third world cultures causing problems for "witches" is certainly not unheard of. When Sarah Palin made headlines for pallin' around with Kenyan witch-hunter Thomas Muthee, she unwittingly brought attention to the problem. As I wrote here, it's a phenomenon riddled with irony.

The Peruvian government is taking the problem seriously, however, and has launched an official investigation; ostensibly at the behest of the accused mayor. And the Foundation for Shamanic Studies is currently seeking help and support for the endangered Peruvian shamans.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

The Dark Side of Amish Forgiveness

2011-10-10T16:46:00.001-04:00

Buy From Art.com

When I first noticed a headline about Amish being attacked by a roving band of haircutters I thought it must be some horrible hate crime. So I was a little surprised to learn that, in fact, it was a case of Amish on Amish violence. The story behind the headline seems like something hatched from the mind of a comedy writer. A splinter faction called the Bergholz Clan, under the leadership of a Bishop Mullet, has allegedly taken up scissors against other Amish, escaping on a truck with a horse trailer in tow. Two Mullets and a third man have been arrested for the crime. But they weren't giving their former brethren achy breaky haircuts. They've been lopping the beards off of male victims and the hair off of female victims as young as thirteen. And to the Amish that's anything but funny.

Donald Kraybill, an expert on Amish culture, explains:

Cutting the victims' beards is degrading and insulting in the Amish culture.

"Wearing a beard is a common and required practice for all married Amish men," Kraybill said. "Likewise, women do not cut their hair based on biblical teaching. These appear to be malicious assaults on symbols of Amish identity by a renegade little group of Amish origin who, for whatever reason, have been estranged from other Amish groups."

Says Kraybill of the unusual and surprising attacks:

"This story is very odd and clearly outlier behavior, an aberration in Amish society," he said. "Amish-on-Amish violence is extremely rare. In some cases, it happens when someone has a psychological disorder and/or during Rumspringa, when some youth engage in mischief or pranks that can go awry."

But this statement ignores one very salient point. There is a form of violence that is by some accounts rampant in Amish communities and its practice appears to have been an underlying factor in this spate of haircutting attacks. That crime is sexual abuse.

The conflict surrounding the Bernholz Clan traces back to an incident four years ago. The same Sheriff Abdalla investigating this case made headlines then for calling a SWAT team to a tiny Amish schoolhouse to remove two small children from Bishop Mullet's daughter Wilma Troyer. He defended these unusual actions by explaining that the Mullets had made death threats over a heated custody dispute.

"I don't care if it's a school or church. I'm going to take whatever action is necessary," he said. "Based on threats to my life and on my deputies' lives, based on the threats (Mullet) has made on his own family, surely Mr. Bryan Felmet doesn't think I should approach that situation with sticks in my hand."

. . .

Abdalla also said there are "some very serious allegations" of molestation and attempted rape in that Amish community. The sheriff's department is also investigating the death of a 2-year-old Amish boy who lived in the community. An autopsy on that toddler was never performed though required by law, Abdalla said.

He showed a stack of letters from people he claims left the Bergholz community and are begging him to step in. Further, he said the Amish in that community are being threatened psychologically.

A recent court document explains the court's later decision to prohibit contact with four Mullets in the custody arrangement between the divorced Troyers. In addition to a number of violent and psychotic episodes involving the Mullet family, one Christopher Mullet is now a convicted sex offender.

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in prohibiting Christopher Mullet from having contact with the minor children. There was uncontroverted testimony from witnesses for both sides that Christopher Mullet sexually molested several young children in the Bergholz community. Plaintiff's Exhibit A includes written statements made by I.T., A.T., D.T., and R.T., in which they state Christopher sexually molested them when they were children.

Further, there was testimony that Christopher Mullet confessed his abuse to the Bergholz Amish church and was forgiven and permitted to continue to reside in the community. As of the time of the hearings, Christopher had not been prosecuted. The Guardian ad Litem expressed serious concerns about Christopher Mullet having contact with the minor children. Thus, there is certainly competent credible evidence supporting the trial court's decision that it was not in the best interests of the minor children to have contact with Christopher Mullet.

Wilma also challenges the trial court's refusal to hear additional evidence regarding Christopher Mullet. In her December 5, 2008 Request for Oral Hearing and Request for Consideration of Additional Evidence, Wilma sought to introduce evidence that Christopher Mullet had subsequently been prosecuted for his crimes, convicted, found guilty, sentenced, and classified as a Tier II sex offender. Wilma wanted the trial court to consider this evidence when ruling on her objections to the magistrate's decision. [typographical errors corrected for clarity]

Rejected by the court was a confession by Aden Troyer that he had had an incestuous relationship with his mother. This statement, he said, was coerced by Bishop Mullet who made reconciliation with his wife and family contingent on this confession.

Allegations and counter-allegations of incest and abuse amongst the "Gentle People" seems incongruous but it's alarmingly common. When news-making violence erupts among the Amish, sex abuse is a common theme.

Buy From Art.com

In 2006 an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania was the site of an horrific mass murder. Charles Carl Roberts IV, who was not Amish, entered the unprotected schoolhouse and took ten young girls hostage. A showdown with local police ensued but it ended badly. He shot the girls execution style, killing five, and then killed himself. His primary motivation appears to have been a preoccupation with fantasies of sexually abusing young girls.

Roberts reportedly contacted his wife while still in the schoolhouse and stated that he had molested two young female relatives (between the ages of three and five) 20 years ago (when he would have been 12), and had been daydreaming about molesting again.^[7] Both of the relatives in question have denied these claims. Among the items he brought to the school was a tube of KY Jelly, which investigators surmised he might have intended to use as a sexual lubricant.^[7] His suicide notes stated that he was still angry at God for the death of a premature infant daughter nine years prior.^[8]

The incident brought an incredible amount of media attention to the typically private Amish community but what captured the public imagination more than anything was their readiness to forgive the assailant who had taken five young lives and left other girls with permanent injury. A Booklist review of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy is emblematic of the reaction.

The crime—shooting innocent schoolchildren in a one-room schoolhouse—was shockingly vicious. More shocking, virtually incredible, was where it happened, in the heart of Pennsylvania's Amish country, commonly associated with bucolic tranquility, not gun violence. This remarkable book explains, exceedingly well, Amish reaction to the horrific Nickel Mines shootings. The outside world was gravely taken aback by the Amish response of forgiveness. Some in the media criticized the Amish as naive and hypocritical (didn't they shun members of their own community?), but most simply couldn't understand the Amish concept of forgiveness as unmerited gift. How could they forgive humanly embodied evil? The authors, all authorities on Amish culture, emphasize that the Amish response reflected the sect's heritage and deeply embedded faith. They distinguish forgiveness from pardon and reconciliation. Forgiveness relinquishes the right to vengeance, while pardon forfeits punishment altogether, and reconciliation restores the relationship of victim and offender or creates a new one. They discuss the shooting mercifully straightforwardly before exploring the broader perspectives of forgiveness and concluding with reflections on the meaning of forgiveness. At times difficult to read, this anguished and devastating account of a national tragedy and a hopeful, life-affirming lesson in how to live is itself a marvel of grace.

People everywhere marveled at the Christian kindness of the Amish in their ability to live the Biblical admonition to turn the other cheek. Their compassion is certainly admirable. But there is another side to Amish forgiveness and it has caused inestimable harm in their communities. There is nothing new about Amish forgiving, pardoning, and reconciling sex abusers, most of whom don't shoot their victims or get mountains of press attention. Sadly, in the urgency to forgive any publicly repentant sinner, the victims of abuse do not get the help they need and are not sufficiently protected from repeat offenders within their communities.

The case of Mary Byler who had been repeatedly molested by her father, who died when she was a small child, and later by her brothers and cousins, also achieved some public notoriety. Frustrated by her community's unwillingness to protect her, she did the unthinkable. She went to the police. Her brothers confessed and were convicted of sexual abuse of a minor. Yet the sympathy from her community was not for Mary but for her brothers.

The community viewed Mary, not Johnny, as the villain, because they had already punished Johnny within the church, according to Garrett. "He went through that process. He was sorry for what he had done, so to the Amish he was forgiven and it should be forgotten," she said.

That had long been the response not only from her community but from her own mother.

In an Amish culture unaccustomed to women speaking up, Mary felt she got more scolding than sympathy when she told her mother what was going on.

She said her mother told her, "You don't fight hard enough and you don't pray hard enough." Mary said her mother made her feel as if the assaults were her fault. "Every time I would talk about this she would say that they have already confessed in church and you're just being unforgiving," she said.

Mary had been molested by just one of these brothers over a hundred times by her count. (He puts the total closer to 75.) The total count of assaults by Mary's male relatives, who were repeatedly forgiven by the church and community, is inestimable.

There is a growing tension between civil authorities and Amish communities as what may be epidemic levels of sex abuse are coming to greater awareness. The largely autonomous Amish insist on handling the problem internally and reintegrating repentant abusers, but numerous repeat victims and recidivist offenders are forcing the problem into the open.

In some church districts, which encompass only two or three dozen families scattered along back roads, there appear to be many crimes like Johnny and Eli's to forgive. No statistics are available, but according to one Amish counselor who works with troubled church members across the Midwest, sexual abuse of children is "almost a plague in some communities." Some police forces and district attorneys do their best to step in, though they are rarely welcomed. Others are slow to investigate or quick to let off Amish offenders with light punishments. When that happens, girls like Mary are failed three times: by their families, their church, and their state.

Investigating police encounter a simultaneous community protectiveness and a peculiar openness from the offenders themselves. In the case of yet another abusive Byler -- a prolific pedophile into old age named Norman -- an "English," meaning non-Amish, neighbor sought help from authorities. The reaction from the Amish community included death threats against the accuser, yet the old man was perfectly open with police when he was confronted.

Deborah Love, an English neighbor who lived next to the Yoders, saw Norman take his 3-year-old granddaughter into his woodshed on a fall day in 1999. She knew that one of Norman's daughters had recently moved her family to Iowa after saying that Norman had asked to sleep with one of her girls. "He was with me enough. He wasn't going to be with my daughter," Love said the woman told her.

A day after Norman took the 3-year-old into his shed, Love noticed some dried blood on the girl's leg. She called Guernsey County Children's Services. The Amish accused Love of lying, and she said she has felt their anger. When some of the men passed her house, they raised their hats and turned them sideways to avoid looking at her. Love's husband said that one young Amish man warned him during hunting season that, "Accidents do happen, so you'd better be careful." In the spring of 2000, the Loves moved out of the neighborhood.

. . .

When the police identify a perpetrator, however, their work in one sense becomes easy. The Amish ethic of confession extends to answering questions asked by outsiders. With little prompting from the detectives who questioned him, Norman Byler admitted to manually penetrating his 8-year-old granddaughter. He said that he hurt the child to get back at her father, who had refused to take Norman to the hospital to treat a torn muscle.

Get it? He was getting back at his son by molesting his granddaughter. And therein lies one clue as to the prevalence of the problem. Women and children are the property of men in Amish life. Why wouldn't they be when that is what the only book they take seriously, the Bible, says? Another clue is in the haircutting assaults that have put the insular community on a collision course with the law in Ohio. As stated, the attachment to the hair of women and girls is based on their reading of scripture.

"The Bible says women are not to cut their hair, that hair is a blessing and is part of a woman's beauty and it belongs to their husband. To have hair forcefully cut is to be shamed," [Beverly] Cushman said.

"For the men with a beard, you can only begin to grow a beard when you get married. It is a symbol of full status, a symbol of your adult manhood. Again, for it to be cut is to be shamed," she said.

That the Bible says women must not cut their hair is a subject of some debate even among fundamentalists. That women -- and their hair -- belong to their husbands, not so much. The tenet in question came up not long ago when presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's purported submissiveness to her husband did a turn through the news cycle. The primary passage that addresses hair cutting is in 1 Corinthians 11.

3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

It's just a little unclear whether the covering for the woman's head is her hair or a veil and whether it could ever be cut or if it's being long is sufficient. Amongst the Amish however, the doctrine is clear as is their belief in the power of beard. So the actions attributed to the Mullet gang are a violation of the highest order.

The formerly Amish Seloma Furlong addressed the problem on her blog.

Even though I was born and raised in an Amish community and endured sexual abuse myself, it is hard for me to say just how prevalent sexual abuse is among the Amish in general. But what I do know is that Amish men are dominate in the culture and that girls are taught they should be submissive to the men (and boys) from the time they can understand the concept. Most Amish do not educate their children about sex, so girls can easily fall prey to sexual abuse. They often have no reference to know what is happening to them, even as the abuse takes place. And to make matters worse, the usual avenues for getting help are not available to Amish children. Very often abuses are first noticed and reported by schoolteachers in mainstream society, but even that avenue is blocked for most Amish children who attend their own parochial schools.

When sexual abuse is uncovered among the Amish, they focus mainly on the perpetrator’s repentance, rather than on the welfare of the children, which allows pedophiles to walk freely among innocents. They are simply not equipped to deal with these issues, and their isolation from mainstream society means that public services are largely out of reach, especially for children. Even if people in the community know of abuse, they will usually not intervene on behalf of the children, because they do not want to be seen as meddling in other families’ everyday lives. This leaves those Amish children who are being abused with few or no advocates, just when they need them the most.

It seems a toxic brew of masculine hierarchy, insularity, and a sincere belief in Christian forgiveness as a cure-all.

Much like the Amish, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church long treated sex abuse by its priests as a problem of sin, the answer for which was redemption through confession and prayer. And like the Amish they shunned the intrusion of civil authorities. They are being forced to come 'round to the demands of the greater society and the awareness that spiritual remediation is not sufficient to tackle the problem of sex offenders in their midst. And they have been repeatedly called on the carpet for putting the spiritual well-being of abusers above the needs of the children they abuse.

Lesson for today: There are some problems the Bible can't fix. In fact, Biblical teachings can cause or exacerbate some problems. That's not only because of some of its more regressive elements, like its rules for women, but because of the highest of Christian aspirations like forgiveness and redemption.

Like the Catholic Church, the Amish are being forced by internal events to embrace the knowledge of the secular world where its own system has failed. The case cited by Seloma Furlong in her blog post above is a prime example of the Amish having no choice but to turn a problem over to civil authorities.

Community members say that in an effort to cure Mr. Mast of his affliction, they excommunicated him on three occasions: in 2004 when he returned from Wisconsin amid accusations that he had raped his cousin; and again in 2009, when new revelations surfaced of his alleged sexual misconduct. The third excommunication came this year, when after a tortuous internal debate, the community appealed to law enforcement.

“We seen this coming for years,” said Noah Schwartz, another of Mr. Mast’s uncles. “The church worked desperately to get behind him, but it was a lost cause. I don’t think we realized the seriousness of the crimes.”

Mr. Schwartz added that unlike most Amish children — who are often raised with many siblings — Chester Mast was adopted at 5 days old and raised as an only child, mollycoddled by his parents. Mr. Mast’s father, Albert Mast, declined an interview request on behalf of the family.

“This was a boy who had no discipline,” Mr. Schwartz said. “He didn’t respect authority. That’s why he’s behind bars.”

They came into further conflict with the justice system when their policy of confession collided with Mast's defense attorney's sworn duty to protect her client, in this case by pleading not guilty. The two world views seem largely impossible to reconcile.

The rogue band of Amish haircutters is another situation that seems to beg for outside intervention. But many of the Amish are reluctant to press charges or support an investigation, preferring to pray for their assailants.

The reluctance of the Amish community to cooperate with law enforcement agencies has made the investigation more difficult, Abdalla said.

"They sent messages to me to go out and tell the children they're praying for them," he told WJW. "And my response was, 'Pray for them after we put them in jail.' You know, maybe that will be a better time to do that."

But their own internal system apparently failed to deal with the anomie of the Mullets.

The sheriff said the elder Mullet was upbraided four years ago during a meeting of about 300 Amish bishops from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York for his leadership of his group and for ordering the "shunning" of two families.

"They brought him on the carpet, and he told them to go to hell. He thumbed his nose at them," Abdalla said.

I grew up in Trumbull County where some of these bizarre haircutting attacks have occurred. The wagons and traditional dress were familiar fixtures in my young life. I found it both baffling and intriguing that people would choose to live without modern conveniences, so foreign in their own country. There is much about Amish life to recommend it: the simplicity, the frugality, the traditional farming, the craftsmanship, the sense of community. But community cohesion is always a double-edged sword. It protects and nurtures but it also stifles and suppresses. In a close-knit community the abnormal can become the norm. It seems that in much of the Amish world sexual abuse is part of a repeated social pattern. And it looks like it may cause the Amish to be dragged, at least to some degree, into modernity.

Buy From Art.com

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

In Memoriam

2011-10-08T15:59:00.000-04:00

Two years ago today, James Shore, Kirby Brown, and Liz Neuman, entered an abnormally hot sweat lodge officiated by James Arthur Ray. Along with a number of other participants, they were severely injured by the high temperatures. They did not survive their injuries.

On July 22, 2011, James Ray was convicted of three counts of criminally negligent homicide. He is still awaiting sentencing and remains free on bond. Said former Ray student, and survivor of an earlier sweat lodge, Connie Joy:

"When this trial started, never in my mind did I think we would be here at the two-year anniversary. I just feel like it's such a limbo. I want this to be resolved."

To the families and friends of James Shore, Kirby Brown, Liz Neuman, and Colleen Conaway, who died on July 25th of the same year at another James Ray event, my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray Sentencing: New Dates

2011-10-07T23:33:00.000-04:00

Judge Darrow has set a new date of November 18th for James Ray's sentencing with the presentencing hearing to precede. The new hearing schedule reads as follows:

(1)     Tuesday, November 8, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m)
(2)     Wednesday, November 9, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)
(3)     Thursday, November 10, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)
(4)     Tuesday, November 15, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)
(5)     Wednesday, November 16, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)
(6)     Thursday, November 17, 2011 (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.)

So... um... yeah...

The good news is that Sheila Polk has received still more letters to use in the hearing. They're itemized in the most recent disclosure. Of particular interest is one from Kristina Bivins. Bivins can be seen on the Primetime: Mind Games special from last year. The money quote:

It's horrible what happened in the sweat lodge, that three people died. But my life is better and I am so grateful for that. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Second thoughts perhaps? Has Ms. Bivins had her come to Jesus moment? I look forward to learning what she has to say about James Ray these days but it looks like I'll have to wait until November... unless the defense team pulls another stunt pushing this whole thing back even further... sigh...

In the meanwhile, I'm just going to keep working on my vision board.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Amanda Knox: Another Witch Trial?

2011-10-05T23:46:00.074-04:00

I will be the first to admit that I know next to nothing about the Amanda Knox murder trial. I didn't follow it when it was going on and most of the hysterical coverage here in the states was little more than background noise to me. I will also freely admit that I should have been paying more attention. In the wake of her exoneration on appeal, the coverage has been most interesting. I don't know if she and her boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito were guilty or innocent. I haven't read enough about the case to have a fully formed opinion. But it seems evident at this point that whatever else it may have been, this was another case of a woman being put on trial for her sexuality. There are also disturbing elements of a Satanic Panic similar to that that robbed the West Memphis Three of eighteen years of their lives. The Wild Hunt gives a little overview.

Now that Amanda Knox has been acquitted of the murder of Meredith Kercher on appeal, more than a few have been noting the ties to “Satanic panic” that marred the original conviction. However, a bizarre editorial from Brendan O’Neill in The Telegraph says that the Satanic panics were started by feminists, not Christians, using one whole data point (and Oprah) to feed his narrative. In truth, this moral panic incubated, at least in the United States, in Christian churches, not feminist gatherings. The textual evidence for this is so pervasive that I can only think that O’Neill has an ax to grind.

The Brendan O'Neill piece is nothing short of bizarre and his animus towards feminism is glaringly apparent.

This idea that the modern-day obsession with Satanism and crazy sexual degradation springs from somewhere within the Vatican is completely mad. It wasn’t Catholic officials or men of the cloth who in recent years rehabilitated the Middle Ages view that there are evil people out there who worship the devil and have sex while they’re doing it – no, it was radical feminists and social workers, in fact some of the same kind of people currently shedding tears over the witch-hunting of Knox. Across Western Europe and America in the 1980s and 90s, it was implacably atheistic, supposedly “Left-wing” activists who spread the idea that Satanism was making a comeback and that children were being raped and killed as a result. It was writers like Beatrix Campbell, a feminist and contributor to the Guardian, who argued in 1990 in Marxism Today, the then bible of the chattering Left, that Satanists were “organising rituals to penetrate any available orifice in troops of little children; to cut open rabbits or cats or people and drink their blood; to shit on silver trays and make the children eat it”. It was feministic social workers who, with the help of police, kidnapped working-class children from their families on the bizarre basis that they were being ritualistically abused. It was people like Oprah Winfrey, echoing academic feminists, who hosted TV shows claiming that some families in America were involved in "human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism" – watch the clip here.

He's not entirely wrong as to how, in part, the Satanic Panic was disseminated, but has ripped these elements from their proper context and transparently used them to bash feminism. In his version of events the sex abuse of children is a fictional element of a feminist obsession with Satanism. This is about exactly backwards. There were definitely erroneous reports of Satanic ritual abuse; some that ruined people's lives unfairly. This was part of a larger belief in the recovery of repressed memory that dominated discussions of sex abuse more generally. Much of the repressed memory theory has been discredited. That far more sex abuse of children occurs than society had previously wanted to admit has not. And the repressed memory theory was one part of bringing the horrors of this crime out into the open, in part because it allowed for legal avenues where the statute of limitations would otherwise have made prosecution impossible.

Repressed memory theory remains controversial. The American Psychiatric Association considers its occurrence as possible but unproven.

First, it's important to state that there is a consensus among memory researchers and clinicians that most people who were sexually abused as children remember all or part of what happened to them although they may not fully understand or disclose it. Concerning the issue of a recovered versus a pseudomemory, like many questions in science, the final answer is yet to be known. But most leaders in the field agree that although it is a rare occurrence, a memory of early childhood abuse that has been forgotten can be remembered later. However, these leaders also agree that it is possible to construct convincing pseudomemories for events that never occurred.

The mechanism(s) by which both of these phenomena happen are not well understood and, at this point it is impossible, without other corroborative evidence, to distinguish a true memory from a false one.

In The Myth of Repressed Memory, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus effectively challenged the theoretical framework of repressed memory therapy. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I wrote the press release for the book when it was originally released.) It was a fascinating book and while I would not say that Loftus entirely disproved the phenomenon of repressed and recovered memory, she demonstrated quite conclusively that memory is a creative and mutable function. We rescript memories all the time, which is why two people can remember the same events very differently. And under guidance we can completely fabricate false memories. I think there is little question that there are cases of people fabricating memories under hypnosis and other forms of therapy that are partly or, in some instances, entirely false.

I think in many cases it was accidental and with the best of intentions that therapists guided people through a process of memory recovery that created false memories. And in some of those cases, the memories that arose involved Satanic ritual abuse and some people saw things that looked like horror movies complete with supernatural phenomena. These memories were treated as real by therapists and talk show hosts and formed one tributary that fed the Satanic Panic of the '80s and '90s. I would never be so arrogant as to say that no instance of Satanic ritual abuse ever occurred. I will say that there has never been documented evidence of it and point out that the FBI was never able to corroborate the instances of Satanic ritual murders and the like.

To chalk this up to some kind feminist conspiracy, however, is ludicrous. Women, some self-described feminists and some not, have been at the forefront of a movement to bring the horrors of childhood sexual abuse into the open and to provide avenues for effective therapy. Some of it has been disastrous. Some of it has been life-saving for survivors of sex abuse.

A social worker friend of mine explained to me, some years ago, his theory of why Satanic ritual abuse has come up repeatedly in the therapy of sex abuse survivors and I consider his reasoning quite sound. It was his supposition that people who'd been sexually abused as children found themselves in an experience of unfathomable evil and a total sense of powerlessness. That they would augment those memories with imaginings of the archetype of ultimate evil, Satan, made perfect sense.

All that said, I think O'Neill's supposition that the prosecutor in Italy was led astray by feminists in his Satanic theory of Amanda Knox's criminal proclivities is the height of absurdity. His case against Knox was the antithesis of feminism but, more to the point, he seems to have something of an obsession with Satanism.

The story begins almost a decade ago, long before Meredith Kercher's murder, when the pubblico ministero (public prosecutor) of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini, opened an investigation into the mysterious death of a doctor whose body was found floating in Lake Trasimeno in 1985.

Mignini believed the doctor was connected to a satanic sect, which had murdered him because he was about to go to the police and reveal its many crimes. Mignini believed this shadowy cult was connected to infamous murders committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence.

. . .

Mignini theorised that this satanic cult consisted of powerful people – noblemen, pharmacists, journalists and freemasons – who ordered the Monster killings because they needed female body parts to use as the blasphemous wafer in their black masses. Putting himself in charge of the investigation, Mignini became so obsessed that he crossed the line of legality, wiretapping journalists and conducting illegal investigations of newspapers.

He was indicted for these and other crimes, including abuso d'ufficio, abuse of office, in 2006. One prosecutor said he was a man "prey to a kind of delirium".

Far from a feminist inspired sex abuse theory, Mignini's case took as its departure point the mere fact that Amanda Knox was a young woman very much in possession of her sex drive. This, to his way of thinking, made her "'a diabolical, satanic, demonic she-devil' who 'likes alcohol, drugs and hot, wild sex'. "

As Hugo Schwyzer explained in a recent column, the prosecution put her perfectly normal, nonviolent sexuality on trial.

That mixture of prurience and contempt was on full display in Perugia, where Knox was tried. The prosecutor devoted extensive time to discussing the defendant’s sex life and her clothing, including her taste in (or lack of) underwear. He was positively obsessed with her vibrator, as if female masturbation was indicative of a propensity for homicide. Her diary, replete with the personal details one would expect in a private journal, was read repeatedly in court.

Sadly, there is nothing new about the demonization of female sexuality. It's quite ancient, really.

There is also nothing new about accusations of Satanism, heresy, and evil Masonic plots. And despite Brendon O'Neill's protestations, far more of that falls to the history of the Catholic church than to modern feminism. And Giulliano Mignini looks like an old-school inquisitor, pursuing specters of witchery and other enemies of the Church.

Mignini got encouragement and theoretical assistance in the esoteric aspects of previous investigations from an unusual source: Gabriella Carlizzi, a wealthy Roman woman and courthouse gadfly whose day job consisted of running a Catholic charity that worked with prisoners. Carlizzi, who died of cancer in 2010, was, like Mignini, a serious practicing Catholic herself who had dedicated her life to exposing and fighting satanic sects.

. . .

One of Carlizzi’s primary obsessions were the Masons.

There are 24 Masonic lodges in Perugia, making it Italy’s per-capita center of Masonic activity. Perugians believe that members of those lodges secretly control most aspects of banking, business and administration in their community.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Hail Columbia

2011-10-02T23:35:00.000-04:00

Buy at Allposters.com

At 6:00 this evening, DC40 kicked off their "siege" in the US capital. Tomorrow they begin their prayer mission of "reformation" in each of the 50 states starting with Hawaii because it was the last state to join the union. From there, they'll continue through the states in reverse order. As discussed here, they're turning turning their guns directly on the goddess Columbia as they attempt to obliterate the pagan underpinnings of the US. In response, this site, and many others, will be engaging in a counter campaign to honor the pagan underpinnings of the US by honoring Columbia. See how that works?

When the organizers on the DC40 got wind of pagan interest in their event they responded with a blood invocation.

The New Apostolic Reformation, a neo-Pentecostal Christian movement, hosts an event called DC40 to “lay siege” for 40 days on Washington D.C. to change the District of Columbia into the District of Christ and eliminate compromise in our government. Pagans around the country attempt to counter the event’s goal of influencing elected officials.

. . .

In their latest newsletter, DC40 sent out this response to the Pagan community:

We are well aware of the websites and blogs rallying to try and curse our effort and counter it. Always remember, You can’t curse what God has blessed! Read Psalm 2. Remember also that Jesus is the light of every man. We have read some of your accusations and false perceptions of us, and we say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We were once in darkness too, and we call you out of the darkness and into the light. We release the power of blood-covered light over you.

I for one don't want to be covered with "blood-covered light." It's all just too evocative of Carrie... on so many levels. I also don't want to see the District of Columbia turned into the "District of Christ." I'm rather too fond of the principles of our founding fathers.

The New Apostolic Reformation is about turning everything this country stands for on its head. That includes a, dear Goddess, Declaration of Dependence. Eek!! I much prefer the original document.

Their schedule is as follows, with the first forty days taking place in DC and another eleven days in the former capital, Philadelphia.

Hawaii (50)The Pentecost Harvest State10-03-11

Alaska (49)The Alpha and Omega State10-04-11

Arizona (48)The Greenhouse State 10-05-11

New Mexico (47)The Supernatural State10-06-11

Oklahoma (46)The Open Heaven State10-07-11

Utah (45)The Worship State10-08-11

Wyoming (44)The Deliverance State10-09-11

Idaho (43)The Treasure State (Isaiah 45)10-10-11

Washington (42)The Whirlwind State10-11-11

Montana (41)The Pure Atmosphere State10-12-11

South Dakota (40)The Stronghold State10-13-11

North Dakota (39)The Faith and New Wineskin State10-14-11

Colorado (38)The State of Breaking the Drought10-15-11

Nebraska (37)The Unique State10-16-11

Nevada (36)The Transformation State10-17-11

West Virginia (35)The Breakthrough State10-18-11

Kansas (34)The Revival State10-19-11

Oregon (33)The State to Throw Jezebel From the Wall10-20-11

Minnesota (32)The Threshing Floor State10-21-11

California (31)The Crossing Over State10-22-11

Wisconsin (30)The River State10-23-11

Iowa (29)The Corn State –Supply and Release10-24-11

Texas (28)The Prophetic State10-25-11

Florida (27)First for Revival; the Forerunner State10-26-11

Michigan (26)A State With a Restored Voice10-27-11

Arkansas (25)The State of Exposing & Dislodging the Serpent10-28-11

Missouri (24)The “Show Me Your Glory” State10-29-11

Maine (23)The East Gate for the King10-30-11

Alabama (22)The Reformer and Justice State10-31-11

Illinois (21)The Apostolic State11-01-11

Mississippi (20)The State in the Valley of Decision11-02-11

Indiana (19)The First – Strike State11-03-11

Louisiana (18)The Governmental Mantle State11-04-11

Ohio (17)The State That Swings the Sword11-05-11

Tennessee (16)A State Receiving God’s Covenant Blessing11-06-11

Kentucky (15)The Trumpet Has Sounded –11-07-11
It’s Time to Run With the Horses!

Vermont (14)The Passover State & The Sleeping Beauty State11-08-11

Rhode Island (13)The Miracle State11-09-11

North Carolina (12)Shifting Into a Release of Wealth11-10-11

District of Christ (DC) The Ruler or Seat of Authority11-11-11

New York (11)His Kingdom State11-12-11

Virginia (10)The Covenant Root State11-13-11

New Hampshire (9)The State of Freedom11-14-11

South Carolina (8)The State That Reversed the Curse11-15-11

Maryland (7)“I will awaken the seed”11-16-11

Massachusetts (6)The Mother of Our Nation11-17-11

Connecticut (5)The State of Favor11-18-11

Georgia (4)A Governmental Gate11-19-11

New Jersey (3)The Watchman State11-20-11

Pennsylvania (2)The First Shall Be Last -11-21-11
A Governmental Shift State

Delaware (1)Releasing the Firstfruit of a Nation11-22-11

Meanwhile, pagans, Wiccans, and other non-traditional types, will be responding with observances of the land of liberty. Sosanna has started a Facebook page and has kicked off her own campaign today.

Today I'd like to reach out to the great state of Hawaii. The prayer attack is starting up and they have decided to start with the last state and work their way backwards. In show support for these states and to launch a state of protection, I will will be highlighting each state for the next 51 days. Offering facts, blessings and protection for them. If you'd like to join in I welcome to you to post your comments of support here or join the group on facebook called "What Makes Your State Great".

Developing...

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Will James Arthur Ray EVER Be Sentenced?

2011-09-27T23:15:00.005-04:00

Well... I think he will... presently. But I sure do understand the frustration of the families and friends of the deceased -- let alone the many, many, many people who have suffered physical, emotional, and financial damage at the hands of this lunatic. Due to Kelly's health issues, Judge Darrow said in a hearing yesterday that he will not reschedule the presentencing hearing before the middle of October.

Attorney Tom Kelly, still recovering from treatment for a heart condition, appeared alone in court and outlined the defense's difficulties in arranging schedules, both their own and that of the many witnesses they intend to present at a pre-sentence hearing.

Kelly said his doctor has cleared him to defend a client in a jury trial that begins Oct. 19, but emphasized that he was also ordered to be on light duty. He said he needs a second procedure that has not yet been scheduled.

The re-emergence of Kelly prompted Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk to suggest that the proceedings could resume immediately, even offering to forego a scheduled family vacation the week of Oct. 7-15. Saying that the state has made a strong showing, both in arguments and pleadings, of "the need to move this case forward," Polk said she would be fine with the previous scheduling, which would have started the pre-sentence hearings on Wednesday.

Darrow, though, said he would not set the hearings and sentencing, which will require at least six court days, to begin before Oct. 15, adding that perceptions that the delays have been solely caused by defense maneuverings were somewhat inaccurate.

Notice the use of the weasel word "somewhat." In other words it's essentially accurate, if not entirely. I don't know if Mark Duncan is quoting Darrow or if that phrasing points to his own subconscious understanding of how much the defense team, of which he seems so enamored, is playing the system here. They play it well. And having read both the motion for continuance and the response I'm not at all surprised the defense got their continuance. I think Darrow was between a rock and a hard place on that one. Kelly even openly threatened to use this as yet another appellate issue in his reply. Personally, I think Judge Darrow is well aware of how litigious Ray's defense is and no judge wants his case overturned on appeal. So he's given the defense a lot of leeway and not a little rope to hang themselves. And they have, repeatedly.

Aside from granting the continuance, Judge Darrow denied several of the defense's other motions. He denied a motion to seal Tom Kelly's affidavit to protect his private medical data, in the interest of a transparent legal process. He is, however, allowing the defense time to provide a redacted copy. He denied their motion to have much of the prosecution's evidence for the presentencing hearing excluded, as discussed here. And he denied the defense's request to seal the support letters for the presentencing hearing because they "inadvertently" failed to redact the contact information of the letter writers. Yes, they copped to having screwed that up royally.

Aside from their error in, once again, broadcasting the addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of private citizens, I can understand why they'd want to hide those letters from public view. They totally betray the weakness of their hand going into the presentencing hearing. Far from demonstrating support from over a hundred people, in some cases multiple letters are from the same people, it's not clear in many cases how old the letters are and if that support is still forthcoming, and some of the most supportive letters are totally whack.

It's also not clear how well the defense's witness list is holding up. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the foot-dragging is about the crumbling of support for Ray going into the mitigation hearing. The letters are not as represented. And I have a sneaking suspicion that their witness lineup isn't either. It's already officially gone from twenty-seven to nineteen. And in their motion for continuance they repeatedly hedge on the number of witnesses described. They use the word "several" as in this footnote:

Several of these witnesses had flown into Prescott at their own expense for the hearing that was scheduled for Monday, September 19, 2011, and were present in Prescott on Monday.

Strictly speaking, several means more than two or three but not many. If they're using the term appropriately, that's considerably fewer than nineteen.

Later in the document they refer to an unspecified "number."

Undersigned counsel from Munger, Tolles & Olson had not been in direct communication with any witnesses prior to today, as Mr. Kelly was handling all witnesses, but upon reliable information believe that a number of these witnesses are not available during the week of September 26.

Such vagaries bode ill for Ray's defense. There's a whiff of desperation and more than a small sense that their long list of supporters is evaporating. That's not to say that Ray doesn't have steadfast support. He definitely does, but among the more telling details is the fact, noted by many, that only his mother and brother are scheduled to testified -- not his father. Weird.

One letter-writer whose support for Ray appears to be unflagging is coming under scrutiny by some of Ray's former students. Bill Harris, he of Holosync fame, received a letter from Connie Joy and an earful from Nancy Ogilvie. The details can be found in this thread on Joy's Facebook page. I note that Joy graciously referred him to my blog for background. Were he to read through my coverage of the trial -- and I'm not holding my breath -- he'd learn some interesting things. Among them, the fact that Ray misused the Holosync meditation CDs, which is to say, not in accordance with the warnings provided by Holosync. And when Dennis Mehravar testified that he experienced exactly the kind of "severe overwhelm" the Holosync FAQ warns is possible through overuse, Ray's attorney Luis Li mocked him mercilessly for not being able to handle a relaxation tape.

On the plus side, the additional downtime will allow the prosecution to scrutinize this crazy batch of letters and possibly challenge the inconsistencies. Meanwhile, they appear to have assembled a strong contrary case, which Judge Darrow has signaled he wants to hear. Connie Joy will be appearing for the prosecution and will testify to, among other things, Ray's attempt to slime his way out of refunding the prepayments for events he canceled. I wrote about this bit of blatant chicanery here.

In a sense it's not surprising that the sentencing is dragging on forever. This whole trial has happened in slow motion. From the long, involved, and thoroughly compelling case the prosecution presented, to the numerous stall tactics of the defense, to a closing argument by Luis Li that caused me to age ten years. (Dear God that was surreal.) During the trial itself I think I sort of became one with the proceedings. I spent those months in a kind of fugue state, unaware of the passage of time, and almost unconcerned as to whether or not it ever ended. The process itself was so fascinating and so consuming.

Sure, I find it sickening that Ray remains free to tweet his sanctimonious platitudes and extol the virtues of expensive coffee and tea -- despite having convinced numerous students not to "poison" themselves with coffee. (Yeah. He's a hypocrite. So what else is new?) I also think he just looks sort of sad and desperate with his new website and other attempts to reinvent himself, while simultaneously claiming that he's too broke to pay his mortgage or his lawyers. (!!!) This path he's on may be long and a little desultory but I firmly believe it will end in the clink.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Shel Silverstein's Vision Serpent

2011-09-25T22:02:00.000-04:00

Today is Shel Silverstein's birthday and there doesn't seem to be any escape from Silverstein hagiography. That's probably due in part to a well timed pub date for this new collection of his work from HarperCollins. No lover of Shel Silverstein, I. I think I've made my views on the thoroughly offensive Giving Tree very clear. But this image really grabbed me when I was reading Andrew Sullivan earlier today.

I immediately thought that it was very evocative of Mayan hieroglyphs I've seen. Something about a squat, little person with a convoluted tangle of images rising in front of him put me in mind of a number of Mayan reliefs. I did a bit of digging and I think it was this image, specifically, that was jogged in my memory, because the parallels are really quite striking.

An umbrella in Silverstein's drawing is positioned where the emerging head is in the relief. Underneath that, his flag is in the same position as the extended hand in the Mayan apparition. The hat on the stick in the lower quarter of the tangled image is in the same position as one of the swirls and has a similar, small swirl directly under it. The hot dog in the bun is incredibly evocative of the bowl out of which the shaman's vision unfolds. And, of course, Silverstein's drawing includes a "vision serpent" perched at the very top.

There are more parallels between the images than can be easily described but spend a little time comparing the two and they emerge. Assuming Silverstein was not deliberately alluding to that relief, it's positively eerie.

Boa Constrictor
by Shel Silverstein

Oh, I'm being eaten
By a boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor,
And I don't like it one bit.
Well, what do you know?
It's nibblin' my toe.
Oh, gee,
It's up to my knee.
Oh my,
It's up to my thigh.
Oh, fiddle,
It's up to my middle.
Oh, heck,
It's up to my neck.
Oh, dread,
It's upmmmmmmmmmmffffffffff...

For more background on Mayan Shamanism and the meaning of images like the above, I highly recommend the excellent Shaman's Secret by Douglas Gillette.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray: I'm Sorry, Now Give Me Probation!

2011-09-21T23:11:00.000-04:00

James Ray must be getting very, very nervous. Know how I know that? He's all apologies and remorse all of a sudden.

A self-help author convicted of negligent homicide expressed extreme remorse for the deaths of three people following an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony he led and vowed never to conduct another one, a probation officer wrote in a presentence report obtained by The Associated Press.

. . .

Ray told the probation officer that he was responsible for the sweat lodge but that he is not a threat to society. He said he wanted to apologize to the victims' families but he hasn't been allowed to contact them, nor did he think it was appropriate to do so at an earlier time.

I guess it was also inappropriate for him to contact the families of the dead and dying when they were rushed to area hospitals after his 2009 sweat lodge. And it would have been positively crass to hand over their identification and paperwork to medical personnel so that they could be admitted as something other than Jane and John Does. And Ray would never have been so forward as to call 911 just because people had stopped breathing. If James Ray knows anything, it's how to respect other people's boundaries when they're in a life and death crisis.

Here I was thinking it was self-absorption and a complete lack of consideration for the health and safety for people who'd forked over thousands of dollars for his expertise and care. In fact, it was just a tremendous sense of propriety. Apparently, it's just good manners to let people die alone without your meddling. Who knew?

Ray also knew better than to bum everyone out during the evening soiree hours after Colleen Conaway plunged to her death. The last thing anyone wants to hear when they're sipping champagne at a black-tie affair is that someone they know is lying on slab. I mean, what a downer. Ray knew that and he put the comfort of the other attendees ahead of his own selfish desire to blurt out the horrible truth that someone who'd paid him thousands of dollars had spent the day as a Jane Doe in the county morgue. And he certainly wasn't going to interfere by contacting her family. Ray has really just been a gentleman to the last.

The family members of the deceased disagree, of course:

"He abandoned his followers when they needed him the most," said Neuman's son, Bryan. "He has shown absolutely no remorse, no compassion and no humanity. I didn't know monsters like Mr. Ray even really existed until after this tragedy."

In letters that prosecutors want considered at sentencing, friends and family of the victims described Ray as a sociopath who blatantly disregarded repeated concerns. Brown's brother said he cannot move past the images of his sister gasping for breath and, like others, struggles to explain the deaths to his small children.

Eh, sociopath, gentleman, potato, potahhto...

But, hey, he's sorry and he won't hold any more dangerous activities. Of course, dangerous activities are his metier. The man could turn a game of cards into a bloodsport. What he'll do without the firewalks, the rebar bending, the cement block karate chopping, and the blindfolded mountain hikes, that are the tools of his trade I can't imagine.

Oh, here we go: James Ray TV:

Over the last few months I’ve really tried to concentrate on how I could offer more to my loyal followers. Each day I find myself answering questions from friends wanting to know how to get more out of life, or how to get through a trying time. James Ray TV will be my way of saying Thank You for your support. It will allow you to ask those questions and have me myself answer them through video feed. I look forward to interacting with you and hope that you would check back for this added feature.

Yes, he himself will answer all those questions you've been dying to ask him when he wouldn't give you the time of day. Access, baby, access. And you won't even have to show off your cleavage and wait for a dream teamer to tap you on the shoulder and let you know you're his dinner date for the evening.

Yes, just in time for his mitigation hearing and sentencing, Ray has completely retooled his website. I just looked at it yesterday and it didn't look like this. (Please, use restraint when viewing. The last thing you want to do is give him page views and income.) I am a little curious about permissions when it comes to the use of Oprah and Larry King voice-overs taken from their shows. Why do I think that they might not want to have their proprietary material used to promote a convicted felon? Hmmm... We'll have to take a wait and see posture on that one but I'm not sure that's kosher.

But, look, Ray is putting his best foot forward as he faces Judge Darrow and attempts to prove that he should be given probation and returned to his life of, um, "teaching." Not to worry, Your Honor. No more cooking people to death or breaking their limbs. He'll just be interacting with them through the magic of streaming video on his snazzy new site. Safe. Contained. And contrite.

Meanwhile, his defense team is moving forward with their attempt to stop everything in its tracks. Their motion for continuance hasn't been uploaded yet, but Judge Darrow's order for the prosecution to promptly respond has. One gets the feeling he'd like to move this along. As per Mark Duncan, he did not seem to take kindly to the defense's oral argument for continuance in yesterday's hearing.

After an attorney's health emergency shattered the scheduling of James Arthur Ray's presentence hearings, Judge Warren Darrow decided to get the proceedings back on track beginning next week, despite a defense request for a longer delay.

Tom Kelly, Ray's local counsel, was treated over the weekend and on Monday for a heart condition. And even though his co-counsel, Luis Li, argued that Kelly's presence in the courtroom for the presentence hearings was critical, Darrow recalled that, during the four months of Ray's trial that ended in a conviction on three counts of negligent homicide, at least three other highly qualified attorneys were in court.

"To say that Tom Kelly has to make all the decisions," Darrow said during a telephonic scheduling hearing Tuesday, "is just too much."

Jeannika also asks some hard questions as to why this needed to be continued at all, as her research did not find the necessity of having an Arizona attorney in the courtroom for this proceeding.

According the rules of the Arizona Supreme Court ::: nonresident attorneys who want to to appear as counsel (pro hac vice) simply need to comply with Rule 38(a).

This basically means any out of state lawyer with the proper credentials and fees (Translation: ALL of James Arthur Ray's MTO folks) simply completes a pro hac vice form and sends it ::: along with the fees ::: to the State Bar of Arizona. They don't need an Arizona Lawyer on their team ::: don't need nada beyond a client that is ::: all they need to do is show up for trial.

Camille Kimball explains that it may not be that simple and that Kelly may be a little nervous about those fancy-schmancy LA lawyers operate under his imprimatur while he's convalescing.

First there is the slightly sticky wicket that Tom Kelly, as Arizona counsel, would have taken on the burden to be answerable to Arizona authorities for the actions of the California contingent, whether he was present to keep an eye on them or not:

. . .

Even if lead counsel objects to going forward without Tom Kelly’s presence, the Court has the discretion to require him to proceed. If it is brought to the Court’s attention that Tom Kelly was prepared to handle a particular aspect of the mitigation (and Lead Counsel was unprepared to do so) it might be a good reason to ask for a continuance.

I think that last sentence that is the one I would put my money on. If Luis Li, Truc Do and the rest of the crew were not the ones who'd been studying up on these witnesses and this particular procedure, Darrow could reasonably conclude it would be an insult to justice to leave a defendant at the mercy of lawyers making it up on the fly through no fault of their own.

No lawyer, me. I'm just a concerned citizen who would have liked to see this fiasco brought to a close in time for my birthday. But, at this point, I will gladly settle for seeing James Ray sentenced before the second anniversary of his sweat lodge from hell on October 8.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray Hearing: New Dates and More Objections

2011-09-21T01:48:00.002-04:00

Sentencing has been rescheduled for October 6; a day that is not my birthday. The mitigation and presentencing hearing is now scheduled to begin September 28. Worse, word on the street is that the defense intends to object to the new schedule. As per Tom McFeeley, they are claiming that Tom Kelly needs more time to prepare. Being hospitalized for a heart ailment certainly prevented him from appearing yesterday but how did this sudden, health emergency prevent him from being prepared for the previously scheduled dates? Did the dog eat his homework, too?

Once again, I find myself stunned by the slap-dash approach of this expensive, high-power defense team. They always seem to be whining that they've been caught flat-footed by an under-resourced, small-town DA's office. So overwhelmed are they that they can't even find the time to black out the addresses and phone numbers of private citizens on publicly posted documents.

They've got bigger problems with those letters from James Ray's supporters, too. I've been picking my way through them and there are some things that don't add up. I noticed a discussion on Connie Joy's Facebook page that raises some serious questions. Many of the letters were written last fall before the the trial began. It's unclear whether support from some of those letter writers is still forthcoming. From some of the comments in that thread, I would guess not.

I myself noticed that a lot of the letters were dated from September 2010. A number of them don't address the sweat lodge tragedy at all. Some of them aren't even dated and don't address the tragedy. There's no telling when those letters were written. Some of them aren't even letters. They're single paragraph blurbs. Considering that Ray has an extant, if widowed, web page that sports a testimonial blurb from a woman whose death he caused, as well as at least one from a woman who has written a letter for the prosecution, leave say, I'm dubious about undated, nonspecific testimonial blurbs.

The support letters run the gamut. I haven't read them all but what I've read raises considerable concern. One, for instance, contains the following paragraph:

I've had a personal saying that I've shared with both of my children throughout their lifetime and it is exactly as follows:
"If you come home dead, I don't care who's fault it was!"
and what I use as an example to each of them is this: If you are walking down the street and you stop at a intersection, when the light turns green do you walk? NO! You wait, You look around, When it's clear you then walk! Then I remind them how many people see a green light and they start walking (with absolutely no regard for cars or buses). When I am out driving my own car with my children and we are sitting at a light, I'll often point out a stranger and we will make a game of it as we each take a guess ahead of time if a given person will look or walk. Can you guess what happens in most cases? They walk! (without looking). To me personally, it seems like such a common sense thing to do (to look around to make sure it is safe to walk.) I can hardly believe myself that people don't feel the need to do this.

Get it? If some driver runs a red light and hits you, it's your fault, kiddo, because you trusted that they'd be law abiding and pay attention to traffic signals. "Walk on the green, not in between," just isn't gonna cut it. Driving and walking defensively is certainly good advice, in and of itself, but Charlene D of Toronto, Ontario takes it about ten steps further. If her children fail to take responsibility, not only for their own behavior, but for irresponsible, drunk, or otherwise errant drivers, it's their own damn fault if they get hit. And she won't be bothering to seek justice for the vehicular homicide of her own children. So don't expect it.

That letter is just nutty enough to qualify as a bona fide letter of support for the recently convicted James Ray. The message: You're responsible for everything that happens to you even if it's caused by the irresponsibility of others. Implied: Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman should have left the sweat lodge even though they were delirious from the totally irresponsible levels of heat and humidity and the fact that they were repeatedly told that their delirium was a normal and desirable state.

Like Bob Proctor, Charlene D seems incapable of recognizing the inconsistency of blaming the victims of bad acts for their deaths while simultaneously absolving Ray of responsibility for the legal predicament he finds himself in. In the topsy-turvy world of this rabid "law of attraction" set, people who are hit by drivers who run red lights aren't victims. They're responsible for everything that happens to them. But those felonious drivers are being victimized by those who prosecute them and it's all just horribly unfair.

I'm amazed that I was able to keep reading after that particular letter but I did. And then I stumbled on the letter from one Jack Lane -- not to be confused with Jack LaLane. What immediately struck me about this letter is that Lane claims of to be a combat veteran of the "US Military," but he never says what branch of the military he served in. He claims to have won "Distinguished service medals," plural, but he never says how many of these high honors he received and doesn't appear to know that the Distingished Service Medal is the name of an award and is always capitalized. He claims to have "participated in campaigns such as Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." So he's been busy. But operations in Pakistan are strictly unofficial. We are not at war with Pakistan. In fact, it's purportedly an ally. The killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this year on Pakistan's soil has created major problems because it brought clandestine missions into the open. That someone who claimed to be a Staff Sergeant in the Special Forces of some unnamed (???) military branch would just throw out something about serving in Pakistan is extremely suspect. But even if I accept that a combat veteran wouldn't specify what branch or know how to write out the name of an award or claim to have fought in a country we're not fighting with, I still find it about impossible to buy that James Ray cured his PTSD -- let alone his somehow only recently diagnosed "bi-polar" disorder.

My bullshit meter thus pegged, I took a break from the James Ray is a great guy letters.

I would advise against anyone with a weak heart or a blood sugar disorder even attempting to read those letters but I do recommend the memorandum from Sheila Polk's office. In it she calls for a maximum, consecutively served sentence of three years for each count. She also argues that Ray make restitution for the State's costs in excess of $67,000 and for the expenses of family members and witnesses during the trial. Go, Sheila!!

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

48 Hours Mystery -- West Memphis 3: Free

2011-09-20T20:02:00.001-04:00

In case you missed the new 48 Hours Mystery on the WM3, I have posted the show in its entirety above. Much of it is a rehash of their earlier coverage but the new interviews with Damien Echols, his wife Lorri Davis, and Jason Baldwin are incredibly heartening. It's wonderful to see that Echols has gotten some color. His skin looked like alabaster on the day of his release. And Jason Baldwin has won a whole new level of admiration from me. His joy and optimism after having lost half his life to the criminal justice system of Arkansas are amazing. He has proved himself to be a man of honor and integrity. He could have gotten a reduced sentence, all those years ago, if he'd testified against his friend. He refused. And torn between his desire to see a just verdict in a new trial and the certainty of saving Echols's life with the plea deal, he chose to save a life. Has the absurdity of putting this man behind bars for murder ever been more glaringly apparent?

The written coverage from CBS underscores the absurdity:

This is what justice in Arkansas looks like: On Aug. 19, 2011, Judge David Laser in Craighead County released three men who had spent the last 18 years in prison, one of them on death row. But as part of an unusual plea agreement, the three men -- Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley -- who insist they are innocent, had to first plead guilty to three counts of murder.

It struck more than a few observers in the packed courtroom that morning that the surreal spectacle had very little to do with justice. As one of the newly freed men, Jason Baldwin, later described it, "When we told prosecutors we were innocent, they put us in prison for life. Now when we plead guilty, they set us free!"

The county prosecuting attorney Scott Ellington's actions didn't help clear up matters either. He said publicly that he still believed these men were guilty of one of the most heinous crimes in the state's history: the brutal murder of three 8-year-old boys in 1993. And yet, he made them all sign a waiver promising not to sue the state.

Nope. It's still not justice. But at least three innocent men are finally free.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray Hearing Vacated Due to Illness

2011-09-19T22:02:00.000-04:00

What part of next Monday is my birthday don't these people understand?! James Ray was scheduled to be sentenced that day, but justice has been delayed... again.

Supporters of a self-help author convicted in the deaths of three people after an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony will have to wait to testify in an effort to convince a judge that James Arthur Ray deserves a lenient sentence.

An attorney in the case had a medical emergency, prompting the cancellation of a weeklong hearing that was supposed to start Monday, Yavapai County Superior Court officials said.

. . .

This week’s hearing hasn’t been rescheduled. Ray was scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 26, and it’s unclear whether that will go forward as planned.

Word is that Tom Kelly has been hospitalized and because he is Ray's Arizona counsel, the law requires his presence. Luis Li and Truc Do, in addition to being almost inconceivably annoying, are out-of-towners.

Sybil: Well, Basil, guess who's just called to cancel at twelve minutes past seven.
Basil: Who?
Sybil: The Coosters
Basil: What!? All four?
Sybil: Marvellous, isn't it?
Basil: Aagh! What did they say?
Sybil: One of them's ill.
Basil: Well, let's hope it's nothing trivial.

~ from Fawlty Towers, "Gourmet Night"

The whole thing seems a little too convenient. Delaying the inevitable seems to be the stock in trade of Ray's defense and their previous motion to have the mitigation hearing vacated was denied. I certainly don't wish Mr. Kelly any ill. I'm actually a little concerned that he may have been poisoned. Organophospates in his coffee, perhaps?

In the meanwhile, there's lots of fun reading in new court documents. Let's see... The defense moved last week to exclude the letters collected by the prosecution attesting to Ray's dirtbaggyness. (Background on those letters can be found here.) The prosecution has responded to their motion explaining that the rules of evidence are different in non-capital cases and that the "purpose of a presentence hearing is to ensure that the sentencing judge is fully informed as to the character of the individual." Ouch. That could hurt.

I remain confused as to how it is that the defense was unaware that Mary Latallade had met Ray and attended JRI events, as per the claim in their motion to exclude all that troublesome truth-telling. She was using her married name of Bryson when she attended the 2008 Spiritual Warrior event that nearly killed her, but her experience was spelled out in the her letter which was immediately disclosed to the defense. Their attention to detail continues to impress.

Also fun is the newly uploaded document containing the letters from Ray's supporters, some of whom are slated to testify in the mitigation hearing... should that ever happen.

It's piles of verbiage and I've only skimmed the reams of letters about the wonders of the "law of attraction" and Ray's teaching of it. But some really fun bits pop to the surface. For instance, the personal note to Ray that brackets the first letter:

Dear Mr. Ray,
I have searched hard to try to find an email address for you on the web (and failed.) During my search I glimpsed the furore about the deaths of three people and the only conclusion I could draw from it was that the media hates successful people. I dismiss it all.... I wish you peace and the strength to fight the subversive elements that are ready to denigrate your name.

Seriously? You're gonna open with that?

Yes. That's right. James Ray is a victim... of a hate campaign, really. No one understands that better than Ray. But this tragic martyr would forgive all of us who know not what we do.

James Ray is just like Jesus... except that Jesus never cooked anyone to death.

It's amazing how the whole "law of attraction" you're never a victim and you're solely responsible for your own reality thing evaporates when it's the people who teach it who find themselves in those merciless crosshairs.

No one does this doubletalk better than Bob Proctor. He's holding fast to his previous public statements in his letter of support.

I have offered, on a couple of occasions, to go to his court and testify in [Ray's] favor. I am of a firm opinion that although he is responsible for the work he does, he is definitely not responsible for the actions of others. I believe one of the glaring weaknesses in our educational system is that people are not taught to take responsibility for their own lives. It is obvious that if one person was free to walk out of the sweat lodge, every person was free to walk out of the sweat lodge and to punish James for someone else's actions, in my opinion, is a miscarriage of justice.

In a tragic situation like this, it would be very easy to get emotionally upset and feel someone has to be blamed. This was a terrible accident and I don't really believe anyone is to blame. I would urge you to permit James Ray to walk away from this situation and deal with himself and God in his own way.

So no one's to blame except the delirious and unconscious people in Ray's "hellacious hot," not "weeny-ass sweat lodge." He's not really saying it's their fault, though. Really, he blames society for not educating people properly about personal responsibility. But it's no one's fault.

I think Proctor's so good at this gobbledygook because he's not smart enough to realize that he's contradicting himself. But the cognitive dissonance for those of us with critical thinking skills is almost physically painful.

He's quite certain, though, that it's not James Ray's fault. I mean what did he do other than create the hottest sweat lodge ever conceived of by mortal men and shame people into staying in it when they tried to crawl to the door?

It can't be his fault. He did nothing! In particular, he didn't use the cell phone in his hand to call 911 when he learned that people weren't breathing. He knew better than to take responsibility for other people's stuff, including their unconsciousness and lack of respiration.

Proctor is slated to testify in the mitigation hearing. His name can be found on the list provided by the defense along with other luminaries like Genpo Roshi, a Buddhist priest who was disrobed over a sex scandal and "habitual abuses of power." So that should help. (The State's list is here.)

Salty has a rundown of some of the other defense witnesses here. Another fun revelation in that article is a link to a page from Ray's "decaying website" that includes a testimonial from Liz Neuman -- a woman he was convicted of cooking to death. Um... Clean-up on aisle 10, people!!! It's not enough to widow the page. You have to actually delete the damn thing. Unbelievable.

In addition to exploiting the sentiments of a dead woman, Ray, through his attorneys, has once again violated the privacy of private citizens in uploaded court documents. This time its his own witnesses. None of the address and contact info is redacted from the letters of support. Carelessness? Stupidity? Malice? I'm never sure.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

WM3 on 48 Hours Mystery

2011-09-16T18:17:00.000-04:00

CBS 48 Hours Mystery, which profiled Johnny Depp's interest in the West Memphis Three a year and ago will be doing a follow-up report. It will air Saturday, Sept. 17, at 10:00 PM Eastern Time. I know I already have my DVR set. More info can be found on the CBS website here.

When three men convicted of murdering three young boys were released from Arkansas prisons last month, it made headlines. This Saturday, "48 Hours Mystery" will air a comprehensive report on the case, including the first television interviews with two of the men known as the "West Memphis 3." Correspondent Erin Moriarty, who has been working this story for four years, offered a preview on "The Early Show."

Watch a preview of this "48 Hours Mystery" episode

Jason Baldwin, Moriarty reported, is beginning his life at age 34, doing the kinds of simple things most of us take for granted, such as getting his driver's license and enjoying the outdoors.

Baldwin told CBS News, "The first thing I did? Oh, I just smiled and got, like, a thousand hugs from everybody, you know?... I smiled so much that my face actually hurt from it, you know, but it is a good thing. ... It just felt like everything was alright. Like, here's the time to begin, you know?"

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Om the Dome for Fifty One Days

2011-09-15T23:36:00.157-04:00

Buy at Allposters.com

William Henry has been, for some time, calling on people to "Om the Dome" of the US Capitol. Henry's interest in the underlying symbolism in DC architecture, particularly in the Capitol Rotunda, I've discussed previously here, here, and here. An attack on that symbolism is underway by far right Christian groups who are organizing a prayer event called DC40.

The Reformation Prayer Network, led by Cindy Jacobs, and the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, headed by John Benefiel, have joined together to produce a nation-wide event called “DC40.″ The goal of DC40 is to effect “eternal change in our nation’s capitol so our elected officials can govern from a new position of uncompromising light and understanding as we change the spiritual atmosphere over Washington DC forever.” This effort is variously named DC40, Forty Days of Light Over D.C., and 51 Days of Reformation Intercession.

The change DC40 wants to make is electing leaders who fear the Christian God and “find that compromise is not the way” as it is impossible to “compromise with unrighteousness.” The “uncompromising light” refers to a statement released by Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, which says God’s word should be the legal authority in the United States and Christians should acknowledge no other, “no power to purpose or accept any compromise of the promises of God, and we declare illegal in the earth any action or any people, Nation or nations that undertake what is contradictory to the Word of God.”

DC40 will, in particular, take aim against the Goddess Columbia.

As a first step, DC40 is taking aim at Columbia, patron goddess of the United States. Benefiel says America is “cursed” for living under a Pagan goddess whom he alternatively calls Columbia or Baal. Benefiel went on to say naming the capitol after Columbia and having Her statue atop the capitol building “gives her a legal right to mess things up in our nation’s capital” and is the reason legislators “go crazy” when they arrive there. DC 40 says it is renaming the District of Columbia to the District of Christ to reclaim it for Jesus and urges the nation to repudiate Columbia. Benefiel says that the only way to solve our country’s current problems is to divorce ourselves from our nation’s Pagan trappings.

Pagan groups are organizing counter events, including daily devotions to this patron goddess of the US.

Bloggers Hecate and Literata, both of whom live in the Washington DC area, are calling for Pagans to make daily devotions to Columbia and to pray to Her to help this country preserve its foundational commitment to religious liberty.

“I will be spending this time making a daily devotion to her, not against these conservative Christians, but in hopes that they and I might find ways to live peaceably together in a nation that values religious pluralism,” writes Literata.

Hecate echos this call and adds other steps Pagans can take, ” I propose to seriously ward my Bit of Earth, my own tiny temple to Columbia. I propose to, a number of times between now and November 11, 2011, circle the United States Capitol, sprinkling, inter alia, rosemary and warding the beautiful statue of Columbia that presides over, and directs energy into, the United States Capitol. I propose to write to my Senators and Congress person, on paper that I’ve charged and with ink that I’ve mixed with sacred herbs, and ask them to disavow this hateful group of Dominionists. I propose to ask my own Circle if we can do some protective magic. I propose, as Summer slips into Autumn and as the Veils Between the Worlds begin to thin, to call upon all of my ancestresses and ancestors, especially those who have worked to make America the Home of the Free, and ask them to block what the Dominionists are doing to this country and to my beloved City on a Hill. I’m an urban Pagan and I propose to do magic to sustain my urban area. And because I don’t enjoy being merely reactive, I intend to do some magic to strengthen Columbia’s hold over her own city, to help everyone who lives here to see the benefits that she brings to her polis, to increase her influence over this landbase.”

Buy at Allposters.com

I find it interesting that this resurgence in attention to the iconography that is so evident in DC emerged just as I was getting ready to move back to the area. Notably Dan Brown's Lost Symbol, which I enjoyed, apparently spurred renewed interest in Masonry. But nearer and dearer to my heart is the more in depth William Henry material. I've always known there was a lot of Masonic and pagan symbolism hidden in plain sight in the Capitol but it's only recently that the I've become aware of the magnitude of the ideas that have been woven into this particular "navel" of the world.

I just started Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval's newly released Master Game, which is a somewhat updated version of their earlier book Talisman. I'm loving it. And looking at the vintage posters of Columbia, what strikes me most is what I now see is transparently borrowed from the French revolution. The liberty or Phrygian cap and Graeco-Roman garb is a dead giveaway. From The Master Game:

In street festivals staged during the French Revolution, the 'goddess Reason' was routinely personified by an actress garbed with a tricolor red, white and blue veil and wearing the so-called Phrygian cap . This same little red cap was in great vogue with the general public in the early part of the Revolution and was worn especially by the sans-culottes ('without culottes'), the most zealous faction who partook in the thousands guillotine executions in Paris and throughout the country.

The Phrygian cap is the typical headwear of two well-known pagan deities: the goddess Cybele and the god Mithras.

Cybele was the one of the [sic] great mother goddesses of antiquity and, more particularly at one stage of Roman history, whose 'republic' the French revolutionaries tried to emulate. As the name of her cap suggests, her cult origins were in ancient Phrygia (modern Turky). In statuary she was routinely associated with two lions, either depicted harnessed to her chariot or flanking the ceremonial throe used by the high-priests of her cult. Medieval and Renaissance scholars frequently identified her with the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis.

As per Hancock and Bauval, Isis made a stunning appearance after the destruction of the Bastille.

The day after the storming of the Bastille an enterprising local contractor, Monsieur Pierre-François Palloy, took it upon himself to mobilise a workforce of 800 citizens to dismantle the hated prison stone by stone. The work was so well done that within a month most of the structure had been reduced to rubble with only a small part of the perimeter wall and foundations still intact.

At this point something curious occurred. The suggestion was made and for a while taken seriously, that the stones of the Bastille should be salvaged in order to construct a replica of an ancient Egyptian pyramid on the site. And although the project later stalled for lack of funds, the core idea of making a symbolic connection with ancient Egypt persisted behind the scenes. If a pyramid could not be managed something less would have to suffice. Thus it was that on 10 August 1793 a group of revolutionaries ceremoniously installed a large statue of the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis where the Bastille had formerly stood. Depicting the goddess seated on a throne flanked by two lions, the statue had been conceived by Jacques-Louis David, the famous artist and propagandist of the revolution. It was to be one of the props in a macabre republican feast hastily put together in order to celebrate the decapitation of King Louis XVI six months previously and the forthcoming guillotining of Queen Marie-Antoinette still tow months ahead.

The sculptors, François Marie Suzanne and Pierre Cartelier, did not have sufficient time to cast the statue in the preferred medium of bronze so they simply moulded it in plaster and colored it with bronze paint. From the bare nipples of the 'goddess Isis' could be seen water being ejected into an open basin below the statue. Known as the 'Fountain of Regeneration' the general idea was for the crowd of people to pass in procession in front of 'Isis' and drink 'from her fertile breasts the pure and salutary liquor of regeneration'.

That this country is similarly steeped in Egyptian, pagan, and alchemical symbolism, cannot be plausibly disputed. Yes, we owe a lot to those cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Convinced against all evidence that this is supposed to be a "Christian nation" radical reformationists seek to overthrow the very not Christian underpinnings laid down by our founding fathers. And their choice of dates is no accident. Their 51 days of scheduled prayer will end on 11/11/11; a date many dispensationalists believe may coincide with Armageddon.

So there has never been a better time to "Om the Dome" and honor the archetypal road-map that has been provided for us in the nation's Capitol. This country was founded on the idea that state religion was a form of spiritual oppression. I'm convinced that their notion of "liberty" was far more profound than most people realize.

These folks, on the other hand, are terrifying:

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray New Trial Motion DENIED

2011-09-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

Not surprised, but relieved all the same, that Judge Darrow has rejected James Ray's motion for a new trial. As discussed here, Ray's attorneys had argued for a new trial alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

Without elaboration, Judge Warren Darrow on Wednesday denied a new trial for motivational speaker James Arthur Ray.

Ray, 53, was convicted in late June on three counts of negligent homicide in the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore and Liz Neuman after an October 2009 sweat lodge ceremony at a retreat center near Sedona. He faces the possibility of as long as nine years in prison.

Rejected last week was a request from Ray's attorneys to vacate the mitigation and pre-sentencing hearing scheduled for next week. From their motion, it appears that they were operating from the assumption that the new trial motion would be a granted. They have made no travel plans for witnesses and claim that scheduling at this point would be a hardship. Bill Hughes argued in the prosecution's objection to the request that they've had plenty of time to plan for the long scheduled hearing and that any further delays in sentencing are denying justice to the family members of the victims. It's a great read.

I noted that in Mark Duncan's write-up of today's decision, he mentions that Ray's attorneys will "present as many as 19 witnesses on Ray's behalf." That's down a bit from the 27 they'd previously claimed would appear. Prosecutor Sheila Polk plans to present 7 witnesses and 11 friends of the deceased to rebut assertions that he's a really great guy.

The hearing -- which follows Judge Darrow to his new courtroom digs in Prescott -- remains scheduled for September 19-23 with sentencing on September 26. That last also happens to be my birthday. I know what I want for a birthday present this year.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Enda Kenny Smacks Down Vatican Parsing

2011-09-07T18:37:00.000-04:00

Taoiseach Enda Kenny

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny gave his first formal response to the Vatican yesterday and he shows no sign of backing down.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has stood by his assertion that the Vatican attempted to frustrate a state inquiry into clerical child sex abuse. In its response to the Cloyne report at the weekend, the Vatican described as “unfounded” the Taoiseach’s Dáil claim that it attempted to frustrate an inquiry into abuse “as little as three years ago”.
Image

However, speaking at Fine Gael’s ‘think-in’ at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Galway yesterday, Mr Kenny said the Murphy Commission had requested information and assistance from the Vatican in 2006, 2007, and 2009, and that, in each case, those requests were either refused or rejected.

He stressed that, as the Murphy Commission is a statutory commission of inquiry, nothing less than full co-operation is required. “And anything less than full co-operation in my opinion is unwarranted interference,” he said.

It will be interesting to see if the Vatican will continue to parse Kenny's statements or deal with the substance. Because so far their response has been to nit pick the language in Kenny's blistering attack on the Vatican's credibility following the Cloyne report. As has been the case far too often in regards the sex abuse scandal, the Vatican has absolved itself with legal technicalities. There is something deeply alarming about an institution the purpose of which is making moral pronouncements falling back on legalese when their own moral infractions are exposed.

I think it was probably the obfuscatory nature of the legal minutia that Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore was referring to when he complained that the Vatican's response was "very technical and legalistic."

Speaking in Dublin, [Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin] said: “The Vatican responded to the questions they were asked and some of the questions were about norms and legislation. It is a bit unfair to say that they gave technical answers – they were technical questions.”

It seems to me that the Vatican and its defenders are doing the same diplomatic dance they've always done and the current Irish Government has walked off the dance floor. They've dispensed with diplomatic niceties. They've dispensed with subtlety entirely and are putting the anger of the Irish people in extremely blunt terms. It's a politically safe maneuver because they've so well captured the mood of a people sick to death of slick responses to a very serious problem.

Hitting back at demands by Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin for "specifics" regarding Government assertions that the Church deliberately frustrated investigations into child rape as recently as three years ago, the Tánaiste said Rome should focus on rooting out paedophilia.

"The specifics, let’s be clear about the specifics: children were abused — that’s specific. Let’s not be distracted, let’s not miss the point. No loose charges were made," he said.

"There was the most horrific sexual abuse of children perpetrated by clerics. The Catholic Church did not deal with that as it should have dealt with it. Let’s not be distracted. The Taoiseach and the Government stand over what was said."

In a brilliant column, Fergus Finlay lays what is so thoroughly frustrating and infuriating about the Vatican's posture in this whole affair and why the Irish Government needs to continue to stand firm and not be sucked into an argument on the Vatican's terms.

Gimlet eyes. Sharp-faced lawyers.

Read it in all its painful, pathetic and absurd detail. Then tell me if you can see any real compassion there, any real humility, any real pain at the suffering of victims and survivors. No. It’s 25 pages long and — to be generous about it — roughly a page is all it takes to outline the Catholic Church’s feelings of sorrow and shame at the abuse perpetrated by its priests and covered up by its bishops. The other 24 pages were written by lawyers trying to win on a technicality.

And since it was published they, and their apologists who have been all over the media all weekend, have been demanding that the Government should respond to their specifics with more specifics. Like some sharp-suited lawyers in the tv version of a courtroom drama, they have tried to put the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste on the defensive with page after page of wearying technicalities.

. . .

When it comes to divorce, or family planning, or abortion, the Church has never felt the need to be silent, or to take its lead from teacher unions or the Association of Social Workers. Why in the name of God did the Church feel the need to be led by others in its duty of protecting children?

Yes, it's amazing how proactive the Vatican is on the truly important issues like making sure women remain second class citizens and how cautious and slow they are when children's safety is at stake. If nothing else, they've made their priorities abundantly clear.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Vatican Responds to Angry Irish Government

2011-09-04T15:00:00.001-04:00

Buy at Allposters.com

The Vatican responded yesterday to the charges of the Irish Government. They have quite predictably deflected the criticism and rejected any claim that the Vatican can be blamed in any way for the failures in Cloyne.

I find it interesting that a response which was expected before the end of August was delivered instead in early September... on a Saturday. If the Irish news cycle is anything like ours in the US, that's a textbook method of making a story disappear. (There's a reason politicians post bad news on Friday afternoons.) And here in the US, where the priestly abuse scandal is keenly followed, it's a holiday weekend. The Vatican couldn't have planned it better if their intent was to bury the story in US news markets. I don't think it will work, however. The Irish Government wasted no time in responding to the Vatican's report.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, yet to formally reply to the statement, has said he stands by his criticism of Church leadership and its handling of the clerical sex abuse scandal in the Cloyne diocese.

“I do not regret my response to the report when I made that statement to the Dail (Irish parliament) in July, I will respond fully in due course,” said Kenny at a Cavalry Remembrance Day ceremony at the Curragh Army Camp.

Deputy Prime Minister Gilmore, leader of the Labor Party, has also responded to the Vatican statement and reminded the Church that the protection of children should be of the utmost importance for Church and State.

. . .

He added: “Some of the argumentation put forward by the Holy See was very technical and legalistic.

“The government’s concerns were never about the status of church documents but rather about the welfare of children.

At specific issue is a letter sent in 1997 by then Nuncio Cardinal Darion Castrillon Hoyos. The Vatican response diminishes the role of the letter and claims it was misinterpreted.

The Vatican became embroiled in the latest Irish church scandal after revelations about a 1997 letter, from the then papal nuncio to Irish bishops, a year after reporting guidelines were enforced to enhance child protection.

The correspondence stated that the bishops' policy was "merely a discussion document" and that the Vatican had serious moral and canon reservations about mandatory reporting of clerical abuse.

But the Vatican says that taken out of context, the comments in the letter from Archbishop Luciano Storero to Irish bishops "could be open to misinterpretation, giving rise to understandable criticism."

But it's the Vatican that seems to have a very selective reading of the Cardinal Hoyos's views on cooperating with civil authorities.

Surprisingly, the Vatican response Saturday cites a 1998 speech Castrillon Hoyos delivered to Irish bishops on dealing with sexual abuse in which he stressed that the church and its priests "should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice." The Vatican said his speech showed that civil law and church law can operate in parallel.

The response doesn't, however, cite the rest of Castrillon Hoyos' speech, in which he resoundingly criticized the Irish mandatory reporting policy, said it should be revised and that such reporting requirements risked that "the image of the bishop can be turned into more of a policeman than a true father."

He acknowledged that such crimes need to be dealt with quickly, but warned against "obsessive" pursuit of accused priests by bishops because of the damage it can do to the priests, whose souls, he said, were "at the center of the affair." [emphasis added]

"If he is guilty, we must, before anything else, be involved with his conversion," Castrillon Hoyos said. "If as often happens, he is a victim of calumny, we must help him to prove his innocence and carry this cross."

Such statements are emblematic of the Church's reflexive protection of abusive priests at the expense of the children they abuse.

As recently as 2001, Castriollon Hoyos was actively advocating the protection of abusive priests from the law. As I reported here, he sent out a letter to bishops extolling the virtues of a French bishop who refused to turn an abusive priest over to civil authorities. He has also claimed that the letter was approved by none other than Pope John Paul II.

It's history like that that fills so many of us with incredulity when the Vatican repeatedly pronounces itself blameless in the continuously unfolding sex abuse scandal.

A pdf of the full text of the Vatican's response is available from Irish Times.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Esoterica

2011-09-02T12:00:00.001-04:00

Buy at Allposters.com

Has King Arthur's round table been found in Scotland?

The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.

Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.

Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.

. . .

"The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur's Round Table was located in this vicinity."

We may have been a seafarin' people since before we were even human.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

Will we find the God Particle in time for Christmas?

The hunt for the Higgs particle is well ahead of schedule, say researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Earlier this year they said they would either discover the Higgs or confirm it does not exist by the end of 2012.

Now, because the machine is working so well, an LHC spokesman, Professor Guido Tonelli, has told BBC News that the search could be completed much sooner.

The Higgs Boson is the particle that in the physics "Standard Model" allows other particles to have mass.

Discovery or elimination of the particle is one of the LHC's major objectives; and it could come as early as Christmas 2011.

Edgar Cayce, look out! The sleeping artist is here. A nocturnal painter believes he may be receiving artistic guidance from the spirit world.

Being an artist is so easy, Lee Hadwin can do it in his sleep, but when he is awake, the 37-year-old, who got a D in art at school, cannot paint or draw to save his life.

He discovered his nocturnal talent aged four, when he began to sleepwalk and draw on his mother’s furniture.

. . .

Since then, he has produced almost 200 sleep-pictures, selling them to collectors such as illusionist Derren Brown, with one piece fetching a six-figure sum. He does not know why he can draw only in his sleep but believes it may be spirits communicating from the other side.

Buy From Art.com

Gardens in spaaaaaaaaace!

Astronauts on the first manned missions to Mars could tend “kitchen gardens” of salad and vegetables onboard spaceships, scientists claim.

Experts say the crops would not only give crews healthy food to eat during the long journey to the red planet, but would also improve the atmosphere onboard by producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide.

In addition, the plants suggested as suitable by a NASA scientist would require minimal tending and not take up much room on spacecraft.

Bad pizza in spaaaaaaaaace!

Domino's pizza has announced plans to conquer the final frontier by opening the first pizza restaurant on the Moon.

Domino's Japanese arm has proposed a branch on Earth's nearest galactic neighbour is the latest escalation in a pizza publicity war.

Rival chain Pizza Hut set the bar high in 2001 by delivering a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, but Domino's fought back last year in a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan.

Diamonds are forever.

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]

The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

Chimera alert! Spider goats developed for the military.

Researchers genetically engineered goats to produce milk which is packed with the same protein as silk spiders.

Once this is milked out it can be spun out and weaved into a material that is ten times stronger than steel.

The fabric can then be blended with human skin to make what the scientists hope will be tough enough to stop even a bullet.

Dutch researcher Jalila Essaidi said the ‘spidersilk’ project was called ’2.6g 329m/s’ after the weight and the velocity of a .22 calibre long rifle bullet.

An elephant never forgets. And elephants are smarter than we know.

Kandula, a seven year old Asian elephant living in Washington D.C.’s National Zoo, has proven that elephants are as smart as those that spend a lot of time around them have believed. In an experiment carried out by researchers at the zoo, the little elephant figured out all on his own, without resorting to trial and error, how to go get a cube to use as a footstool to help him reach some food that was just out of reach. The research team, led by Preston Foerder of the City University of New York, has published the results of their study on PLoS ONE.

Other animals (besides humans) such as chimpanzees and dolphins have demonstrated in various ways that they are capable of dreaming up solutions to problems in their head and then carrying them out. Called “aha” moments by researchers, such thinking, a form of insight, is one of the hallmarks of higher intelligence. Most people who have ever worked with elephants will attest to the fact that they are indeed intelligent creatures; though no one (at least in the research community) had ever witnessed an elephant using insight to solve a problem. This has perplexed scientists for several years, and has caused them to study the seeming paradox. It appears now that the team working with Kandula has seen it in action, that previous research had been attacking the problem from the wrong angle.

Buy From Art.com

More news items can always be found in the Esoterica feed in the right-hand column here.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Warren Jeffs Gravely Ill

2011-08-30T12:36:00.000-04:00

The punchline on Warren Jeffs's life sentence is that his life may be cut short by illness. Word broke yesterday that he was in a coma. It was a medically induced coma so that they could force nutrition to the "fasting" Jeffs. He has since regained consciousness but is still listed as critical. His fast or hunger strike (???) had only been going on for three days but that was enough to imperil the life of a man who is suffering from unnamed medical issues. According to officials, even without the fast, he is sick enough to require hospitalization.

I didn't think he looked well during the trial but he's always had a kind of gaunt, ill-formed, almost larval look about him, so who could say?

This is also not the first time he has starved himself in prison, having done so in both Arizona and Utah prisons. He is given to expressions of asceticism, having previously been treated for ulcerated knees from his hours of prayer.

The larger concern is that these demonstrations of piety will be read as martyrdom by followers.

"I think that's what he's trying to do, is become a martyr in their eyes and further exalt himself as far as they're concerned. Not necessarily with a bang, but this is precisely what he wants and this is how he wants it to end," said Sherie Jeffs, who is Jeffs' sister-in-law.

Two of Jeffs' children testified against their uncle in Texas that they had been sexually abused as children by the FLDS leader. She said Texas officials should force feed Warren Jeffs, if necessary, to keep him alive.

"I think he needs to stay alive and be able to ponder in that cell for many many years what he's done to people's lives, and children's lives, how many families he's destroyed," she told Fox 13.

Amen to that.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

WM3 Panel Discussion in Little Rock

2011-08-27T15:44:00.000-04:00

A West Memphis Three panel discussion held at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock Arkansas was filled to capacity with over 1,200 people. Both the panel and the audience seemed to be heavily tilted in the direction of WM3 supporters, but that's probably a reflection of public perception more generally. There are a lot more people who think the three are innocent than think they are guilty. Prosecutor Scott Ellington was the lone representative from the guilty camp, on a panel that was filled out by the three defense attorneys, Devil's Knot author Mara Leveritt, and Capi Peck of Arkansas Take Action.

The reflections of moderator Max Brantley can be found here. I watched the entire 1:42:02 program last night and I think it's well worth the time investment.

The take-away from the program is Scott Ellington's promise to test the DNA when the lab hired by the defense is done with it. He said they would run it through the data-base and cross-check it for contamination by police and lab techs. That could be important as DNA from three unidentified men has been detected.

"Once Bode labs gets their reports done, the state crime lab has agreed to run those through CODIS," Ellington said, referring to a database of known criminals as well as crime lab employees. "If there are any hits, then that evidence can be brought to the defense attorneys."

Ellington later told The Associated Press in an interview: "If the defendants have evidence they didn't commit the crime, let them prove it. That's why the crime lab is willing to test DNA results provided by the defense."

Prosecutors have contended that the absence of the three men's DNA at the crime scene does not prove their innocence, pointing out that jurors convicted the three on other evidence. Ellington said that although the DNA does not match the three men's, it may not be traceable to other suspects.

"The DNA they keep talking about has never been cross-checked with DNA from the law enforcement officers on the scene and has never been cross-checked with lab employees. ... We believe the right results are there, but we would be willing to run those and see if there are any matches," Ellington told reporters.

In other highlights, Mara Leveritt, who has a positively angelic voice and manner, fielded an audience question about the racial implications. Would there be so much interest in the West Memphis Three if they had been men of color? It's a good question and it's one I've pondered for years. Leveritt makes the point that the primary divide in this country is economic and with that and I heartily agree. It's not for nothing that advocacy for the poor of all races was Martin Luther King's primary focus shortly before he was assassinated. There is no question that if Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, had come from wealth and social stature, this case would never have gone to trial. And not just because of better legal representation. I still have to wonder, though, if this case would have gotten so much traction had they had been three black men.

I was very impressed by Jessie Misskelley's attorney Jeff Rosenzweig. I don't know what it is but for some reason, since their release, it's Jessie Misskelley who is tearing at my heartstrings. I looked at closeups of his face during their initial press conference and just burst into tears. He just seems so vulnerable. Rosenzweig spoke at length about his deficiencies, surmising that saying his IQ is 72 seems generous. He reads at third to fourth grade level and was most likely "socially" promoted through school until he dropped out after the ninth grade. And now that we know so much more about false confessions and their high correlation with low IQ it's incredibly clear how this happened.

Rozenzweig also had a lot to offer on the question of whether or not the West Memphis Three will be able to profit from writing or other art regarding their ordeal with the justice system. He questioned the Son of Sam law on First Amendment issues. More to the point, he said the law pertains to profiting from the crime not other observations about the overall experience of trial, incarceration, etc. They may be able to tell their stories about this Kafkaesque journey and earn income. I would hope so, considering that having lost out years of education and employment in prison, they can't even sue under their plea deal.

Also discussed was the disturbing issue of the blood evidence, um, misplaced (???) by the West Memphis PD immediately following the crime. That would be the blood recovered from the restroom of the Bojangles' [sic] near the crime scene left by a bloody, disheveled man. It sure would have been helpful to have that particular DNA?

Jason Baldwin's attorney Blake Hendrix had this to say:

To me the Bojangles' is a perfect exemplification in this case that this is one of those cases that it's a, an entire systemic failure. The system entirely failed. The system failed from the law enforcement ground up. The system failed in how the prosecution treated the case. The system failed in how the state forensic people treated this case. The system failed from the defense lawyers' standpoint. It is a total systemic failure…. There are a lot of people in my business who go around thumpin' their chest that this is the greatest system of justice on the planet earth. I don't necessarily agree with them. I think it is a flawed system and just like this case there are failures across the board…. Being a criminal defense lawyer is one of the greatest jobs on the planet. I am shocked that I lucked into this job. Because my function is to balance power -- prosecutorial power over here. My job is to get up every morning and make sure, just like in our constitutional system of government, checks and balances. We balance power.

These are defense attorneys at their absolute best, speaking as champions, not just of civil liberties, but of justice. After months of seeing defense attorneys at their most unholy during the James Ray trial, such genuine idealism gladdens my heart.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Can the WM3 Clear Their Names?

2011-08-25T16:25:00.000-04:00

Will Open in New Window

In an interview with Amy Goodman, filmmaker Joe Berlinger expressed his dismay that the plea bargain that got the West Memphis Three out of prison after eighteen years failed to bring justice in the case. Under the rare Alford Plea, they are still guilty as a matter law, even though they are able to claim their innocence. The fight to completely clear the names of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley will go on.

Governor Mike Beebe was asked if he would pardon the three but he refused explaining that he only considers pardons after people have served their sentences. So, note to anyone on death row seeking a pardon in Arkansas. Your current governor won't consider it until after you're dead. Helpful.

Beebe said he had no plans to pardon the recently freed West Memphis Three. He cited his policy of not considering pardon cases until sentences were completed. He said it was his understanding that the West Memphis Three still would serve up to 10 years of suspended sentences.

Beebe also said if new evidence were presented that pointed to a different killer, then he would reconsider the case.

Governor Beebe says he will consider it if there is evidence pointing to a new suspect. This could be tricky as District Attorney Scott Ellington has made it clear he considers the matter closed. There are no plans in West Memphis to actually seek justice for Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, or Michael Moore, whose brutal murder remains effectively unsolved.

Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh intend to continue to fund an investigation. Having previously funded the DNA testing and other forensic research that debunked much of the prosecution's original case, they intend to now fund a wider investigation. So if a murderer is indeed to be found, West Memphis will again have Hollywood to thank.

Entertainment Weekly has learned that director Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh will continue to fund the West Memphis Three investigation, even now that the men have been released from prison — free, but technically still considered guilty in the eyes of the law. “The ongoing work will focus on proving the convicted men’s innocence, as it always has,” says Jackson’s manager, Ken Kamins. He adds that the investigation will include “evidence testing and further investigation which will hopefully lead to the unmasking of the actual killer.”

The Lord of the Rings director has spent the past several years quietly funding private investigations and forensic experts to help clear the West Memphis Three. Jackson has been a longtime advocate of Jason Baldwin, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Damien Echols — the trio of men many believe were wrongly convicted in 1994 of murdering three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark., and whose nightmare odyssey in the legal system became the subject of the award-winning 1996 HBO documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, Natalie Maines, and Henry Rollins were among the others who rallied to support the West Memphis Three.

“When Peter and Fran got involved, they had to decide how to best serve the case,” Kamins says. “Damien, Jason, and Jessie had great public advocates in Eddie, Johnny, Natalie, Henry, Paradise Lost, and everyone else who was raising money and bringing public attention to the case. Peter and Fran, therefore, decided to put their attention into funding and spearheading DNA work, hiring forensic and other experts, plus extensive private investigations into all aspects of the case.”

More detail on how the information provided by the Echols extensive defense machine was used to leverage the Alford Plea that got all three released is provided in an article by Devil's Knot author Mara Leveritt. In this thoroughly detailed piece she gives a blow by blow on how they narrowed it down to the juror misconduct issue and the fact that both sides were motivated to keep this from going through a lengthy new trial that looked inevitable. Some of this I've posted previously but it's as galling to read it a second time. Nothing quite makes the blood pressure spike like reading that the judge who oversaw the original trial took credible information of juror misconduct, sealed it, and declined the defense's motion.

The stunning information that the jury foreman at their trial had violated court instructions had come to light three years earlier. Little Rock restaurateurs Capi Peck and Brent Peterson, who had become supporters of the three defendants, hosted a gathering at Trio's restaurant in early 2008 for several local attorneys, hoping to enlist further support. At that event, one attorney mentioned knowing that another attorney had received phone calls from the foreman throughout the Echols-Baldwin trial.

The Echols team contacted that attorney and in May 2008, Lloyd Warford, of Little Rock, signed an affidavit stating that, at the time of the trial, he was working for the jury foreman, Jonesboro real estate broker Kent Arnold, on an unrelated matter. Warford said Arnold called him repeatedly during the trial, purportedly about the other work, but that during the conversations, Arnold spoke passionately about the trial.

. . .

Evidence from other jurors supported Warford's affidavit — and his belief that "Kent Arnold saw himself as the real hero of this trial," because he had informed fellow jurors of Misskelley's confession. A flip-chart used in the jury room, listing reasons for and against convicting Echols and Baldwin, referenced Misskelley's confession in the "pro" column. Notes kept during the trial by another juror also mentioned Misskelley's statement.

Judge David Burnett, who officiated at the trials and throughout subsequent circuit court appeals, ordered Warford's affidavit to be sealed, and for the next couple of years, it remained unknown to all, except the judge, the defendants and a small circle of lawyers. By 2010, however, defense attorneys were able to argue before the state Supreme Court that the juror misconduct issue, along with the new DNA findings, warranted new trials.

This is the judge whose professional dispassion was on full display recently when he referred to the recently released men as "murderers." He sealed evidence of juror misconduct in his court. I still can't get over that. When I first read about that last year, I just paced around the house muttering for twenty minutes.

The punchline on so much of this is that "justice" comes with a heavy price tag. I repeat, were it not for an all-star line-up of defenders who raised funds and donated money, three innocent men would still be sitting in prison. Meanwhile an obviously guilty man, James Arthur Ray, remains free on bond while his high priced legal team leverages every possible technicality to get him off. It pays to be rich in this country.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

More Earthquakes and Weirdness

2011-08-25T13:11:00.002-04:00

Buy at Allposters.com

Someone George Ure refers to as "Deep Source" did some unusual calculations on the Virginia and Colorado earthquakes. Ure describes the dialogue:

“Did you notice the Colorado quake was 111-miles from the border of Mineral County, Colorado? he began.

No, I hadn’t.

“Notice it…it’s important…”

“Uh…OK…”

“And what was the first Virginia landmark referenced in the USGS report?”

“Well, the quake was 5 miles from Mineral, Virginia. So what?”

“And how far is it between the quakes?” he continued.

Uh…1,460 miles, or so, I guess, just eyeballing it on Streets & Trips.

“Add up all those numbers.”

“11.”

“Hold that. And how far from the Colorado quake to Mineral Well, Mississippi?”

“841 miles.”

“And from Mineral Wells, Mississippi to Mineral, Virginia?”

“About 700.”

“So here’s something to think about then: Doesn’t it strike you as a synch-wink that the quakes happened approximately equally spaced from Mineral Wells?”

“Hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Then look 111 miles North and slightly East of Mineral Wells, Tennessee. Tell me the name you see up there…”

New Madrid.

“Must I do all your work for you, George?” Click.

I really have no idea if the calculations are significant or if this is just someone torturing mathematics to cosmically tie Tuesday's quakes to the all-important New Madrid fault line. It caught my eye primarily because I have been seeing 111 and 11:11 coming up constantly now for weeks. So has my husband and we always seem to experience these upticks at the same time. I don't really know what to ascribe the 11:11 phenomenon to. I read Solara's book years ago and I'm very aware that the sequence of numbers has taken on a range of meanings in new age circles. I'm agnostic on the various explanations for it but I've been observing and enjoying the phenomenon for years. I don't really need to know exactly what it means.

Likewise, I don't read a lot into synchronicities except in as much as they are a reminder that we are not really separate from what we observe. I don't think they're God or the angels pointing at anything or that they're necessarily significant in and of themselves. But like the 11:11 phenomenon, they seem to increase in periods of high weirdness. Periods like now, which was feeling very surreal for a week or two before the quake. They're happening constantly.

I did find it interesting that a quake affected DC just as I'm reading The Lost Symbol; a book that's been on my list for a while. I'm reading it now because I enjoy a light read when I'm sitting by the pool. Hours after reading that the National Cathedral in DC was damaged in the quake, I opened to the chapter that begins:

Washington National Cathedral is the sixth-largest cathedral in the world and soars higher than a thirty-story skyscraper.

The damage to the cathedral is a bitter pill for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is my Episcopalian upbringing. But there was a lot of damage to DC landmarks and I read this morning that the Washington Monument was more seriously affected than they'd previously thought. It's a deeply significant piece of architecture, owing more to the ancient obelisks of Egypt than George Washington the man. For more on the significance of DC and the Capitol Building specifically, I'd point you to earlier posts on some William Henry's research here and here. But to appreciate the Washington Monument, you have to consider the pyramidion, or benben, sitting on the top.

Buy at Allposters.com

I continue to be amazed that we, personally, had no damage. A few things fell off of shelves. The Capitol, which is farther from the epicenter, really took some hits. Of course so did the Target near our house. I went there Tuesday night to pick up a box of Chai and a lot of the ceiling tiles had fallen out and taken the metal slats with them. Big areas were roped off. Pier One was closed. I wonder what that looked like with all that glass and pottery.

We're also still feeling aftershocks. My daughter was awakened last night by the rattling of the mirror on her vanity. It was a 4.5.

Despite the minimal damage, there's a weird, war-zone feeling in the air. There are cops everywhere. I've never seen them out in such force. People are being pulled over left and right and not just on the main arteries. They're being very proactive; about what I have no idea.

There's just a strange charge to the air lately. It's been like that for a while and it seems to be building. I mentioned a while ago that our atomic clock lost its mind. We're still using it until we find a suitable replacement. It keeps accurate minutes even if the hour is, um, not. And it still gives the temperature inside and out. But it tells time in another dimension. It's barfing up things that aren't even numbers. It's just weird.

What I didn't mention is that shortly after the clock went off the deep end, my credit card terminal started acting strangely. I went to ring up a SALE and the L was backwards. I cleared it and hit SALE again. It came up normal and then the L flipped again right before my eyes. The next day it was destroyed when lightning hit the phone line. When I was setting up the new machine I asked the tech if he was familiar with such problems. I don't think he even believed me.

These things come to mind, in part, because in reading through Ure's blog, I'm seeing other people have written in about clocks and the like acting in a completely aberrant fashion. How much of this is that everything is made in sweat shops in the third world these days (I'm tired of returning malfunctioning electronics), how much of it is electromagnetic interference from all the solar flares, and how much of it is that we're crossing over into greater... surreality, I can't say. But things feel incredibly strange.

Meanwhile, I just keep dreaming about trees. The other night I dreamt that I ran into Bloomingdales to pick up a gift. (I don't really shop at Bloomies, ever.) The store was just so strange. Most of it was big, wide hallways made of wood, with wood sculptures of nothing but shapes; one was just a kind of curl. Barely visible from the halls were small showrooms of merchandise. It seemed like an odd way to design a retail establishment. At a certain point, I realized that the whole store was in a giant tree and the halls went through the branches. Then I woke up.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

James Ray Trial Jury Foreman Speaks

2011-08-24T11:45:00.000-04:00

The foreman of the James Arthur Ray trial jury has spoken to the press. Val Ripley shares the sense of agita of so many who are awaiting Judge Darrow's decision on new trial. But that's not all he shares with the friends of family of people who lost their lives in 2009. He was among the eight jurors who wanted to see Ray convicted for reckless manslaughter rather than the lesser charge of negligent homicide.

Ripley said he was at a loss as to why the defense would want to risk another trial, feeling that the negligent homicide verdict was more than fair, even as it leaves Ray liable for as long as nine years in prison.

"We were very close to the manslaughter conviction," Ripley said. "Eight of us wanted manslaughter, and the other four felt that he wasn't aware of all that those people were going through."

Mark Duncan makes the point that because Ray was acquitted of manslaughter, it's unlikely he'll be retried on that charge in the event that this goes to a new trial. As with the conditions of the recent release of the West Memphis Three, it's a sobering reminder of what a pale reflection of justice our court system is.

As is so often the case with jurors once they are free from the restrictions on media, he is annoyed at how much information was kept from them.

"There were a lot of things the jury should have known that were kept from us," he said, specifically mentioning the incidents that occurred at prior sweat lodges and the death of a seminar participant in San Diego in July 2009, just three months before the ill-fated sweat lodge ceremony.

Ripley is, of course, referring to Colleen Conaway whose suicide during Ray's Creating Absolute Wealth seminar remains unexplained. There is no doubt that getting complete information on just how many people were sickened at prior sweat lodges and that there was a previous hospitalization would have likely changed the minds of the four jurors who wanted the lesser charge. That's why Ray's attorneys worked so hard to keep out his history of reckless disregard for the safety of people who paid him thousands of dollars. The truth was not the defense team's friend in this case.

Like the other juror who spoke out after the trial, he found the pesticide poisoning theory risible. He also found Sheila Polk's case to be "outstanding"... as did I. He also found Truc Do impressive. I did not. In fact, it is my solemn prayer that I never have to hear her say "correct" again. Like nails on a chalkboard that woman's voice. But control freaks always rub me the wrong way. So maybe it's just me.

Most interesting, Ripley actually went to Angel Valley, met with Michael Hamilton, and visited the memorial circle.

"That was very helpful," he said. "It helped me to put it all in perspective."

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Yes, I Felt It Here ~ UPDATED

2011-08-24T01:25:00.001-04:00

Well, that was a little scary. No major damage to report here. A couple of small things fell. But I've never experienced vibration like that in my life. How's that for irony? Several years in Southern California and the worst quake I've ever experienced was in Virginia. I thought it must be at least a 4 but it turns it was close to 6 at the epicenter; it was downgraded to 5.8 from 5.9 over the course of the afternoon. This was a fairly shallow quake and it was close to a minute before the rattling completely stopped. I grabbed my hysterical 9 year old daughter and stood in the doorway until the house completely stopped jerking around.

But this isn't about me. I just find it a little odd that there were two quakes in the US of over 5 point magnitude almost exactly 12 hours apart. Late last night Colorado had experienced a 5.3 -- also very unusual for the region. The quake there centered in Trinidad was clocked at 11:46pm MT on 8/22. Ours, about 50 miles from here in Mineral VA was at 1:51pm ET on 8/23. That's a little too close for comfort in every sense.

The one in Colorado was the strongest in over forty years. As near as I can tell, this was the first quake in Virginia of such magnitude in over a hundred years. There was another 5.8 in 1897.

There've been a few of aftershocks in Virginia but I haven't felt them. The strongest was a 4.2 around 8:00 pm but I think they initially thought it was in the Charlottesville area because of the original posting which has been removed and replaced with one that puts it in Mineral. The other two were under 3.0. Trinidad, Colorado has had multiple aftershocks and there was a foreshock the day before of 4.6. As of this writing, I count 5 aftershocks above 3.0 in Colorado.

Over the past couple of days I've been picking my way through the most recent interview with Time Monk Clif High. I still haven't listened to all of it because I just haven't had the time, but I'm going to post it now because this really jumps out. Last night I noted that there was mention of high potential for earthquakes. I just went back and listened to some of the earlier parts of the interview et voila. In the fourth video a little before the 5:00 minute mark, someone asks Clif if he still predicts two quakes for North America. The interview is from August 12 and he says he's still looking at a timespan from Aug 17 - 19, so as he typically is, he's a few days off.

My ears had pricked up when I listened to that last night because I've been on earthquake alert myself for the past week or so. I just thought it would be in a more predictable location. I'm still concerned about California and noting Baja on my earthquake feed about daily; sometimes a couple of times a day. I had a fleeting thought a day or two ago that what I was sensing could be here but dismissed it. I've experienced quakes here before but they've been of the momentary jolt that feels like a truck hit the building variety. Again, with history as my guide, I did not expect a major quake in this area. Joke's on me.

As ever, I offer up the Time Monk material without opinion on High's world view. He says things I agree with and things I don't... at all. In general, he's far more pessimistic than I am but I continue to be impressed with the technology he's developed for collating the collective unconscious. Turns out we humans, as a group, are fairly prescient.

I noticed this on Time Monk George Ure's blog the other day, for interest. A helpful reader noticed that the webbot data pretty clearly predicted the "global rev" eruption in Great Britain.

George, your comments and link Tuesday to the UK riots spreading and other stuff is right out of Clif’s Web-bot . He talks about the GlobalPop exhibiting “maniacal behaviour patterns”, and also for a really direct hit on his part – under the heading Tea Crazy – he writes:…”data sets have celtic isles as..center/focal point…of global revolution…British experience..provide emotional springboard…new subsets geographically tied to British Isles…long struggle against oppression/repression…challenges of mass national contention…fighting..displays as emotion…uncharacteristic of the national British character.

So the webbots predictions continue to be impressive on the global revolution.

While I was looking for that, though, I noticed something else from Ure that made me do a double-take.

What Clif and I are both worried about it how these events (or eventlets to coin a term for them) may presage that yet-to-be-noted reports about people “staring blankly’ ‘going into standing stupors’ and needing ‘help of others to survive’ which would seem to fit with that could happen to someone whose mental constructs are not ‘light enough’ to accept that the world is sinking back into what in previous ages was called “magick”.

They've been talking for a while about predictions of people just losing it and staring blankly into space. Here, Ure is putting that into context with a reader's experience of something I can only call a "reality glitch." It jumped out at me for a couple of reasons. One is that I've been noticing these "eventlets" or, to use my term, "reality glitches" for a while. I keep thinking I must be misperceiving but I'm less and less willing to say that. The other reason this statement caught my eye is that it echoes something I've been saying for a couple of years now -- that I see us entering a time of magic. I've been very reluctant to give details because what I see and sense... is just too weird. But I've mentioned it a couple of times; a quick search shows here and here but there are probably more. I don't know how George Ure means. I'm not even sure how I mean it but the future looks... surreal.

I think I just felt another minor tremor around 12:45am here. I'm going to keep checking the USGS site but nothing is showing yet. Weird day, anyway. But things are gonna get stranger. Just sayin.'

UPDATE: I did feel another quake last night. It took quite a while for it to show up in the reports -- and some of the smaller quakes seem to have disappeared from the site -- but it was a 3.4 and it occurred 12:45:26 this morning. I have to say it was very subtle. If I'd been doing anything other than sitting in a quite room typing I expect I would have missed it... as clearly I did the 4.2 last evening.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.