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My Recent Posts · Mar 18 09 6:54 PM

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"Hurry, My Children, Hurry"

Monday, Mar. 26, 1979

A recording reveals the death throes of the Jim Jones cult

First had come the numbing photos: nearly 900 colorfully clad bodies clustered near a vat of poison. Next, the anguished accounts of the bewildering tragedy by its few survivors. Last week, nearly four months after they had occurred, the mass deaths at Jonestown in the remoteness of Guyana's jungles took on a new and far more personal dimension. Americans sat in their living rooms and heard the actual sounds of the Peoples Temple dying.

In an incredible aftermath to a bizarre event, NBC television broadcast a tape recording of the Rev. Jim Jones' pleading with his followers to "die in dignity" by sipping a cyanide-laced drink. A few of the cultists protested. Some women screamed. Children cried. Armed guards took up positions around the camp to keep anyone from escaping. Other cultists, assembled around their leader's wicker-chair throne in an open hall, applauded as Jones implored in a high-pitched, agitated voice: "Please, for God's sake, let's get on with it."

Someone in the schizophrenic California-based cult, which hacked a spare living out of the Guyana soil while banking millions in secret Swiss accounts, had recorded the final 43 minutes of the colony's existence. The tape was found by a U.S. consular employee in Guyana and turned over to the FBI. Guyanese officials were given a copy. While both Guyana and the U.S. Justice Department refused to release the tape, copies somehow proliferated. The one obtained by TIME last week discloses that Jones' death decree was met with stubborn resistance as well as fatal acquiescence.

Jones had called his followers together after a two-day visit by California Congressman Leo Ryan. The Temple leader was outraged by the fact that a score of the cultists had asked Ryan to help them escape the colony. Ryan's party and the defectors had left Jonestown to fly home from a nearby airstrip. Jones knew of a plot by his group to shoot the pilot of one of the visitors' two planes. He was not aware, at first, that Ryan and four others in the party had already been ambushed and slain at the airfield.

Jones: We are sitting here, waiting on a powder keg. To sit here and wait for the catastrophe that's going to happen on that airplane−it's going to be a catastrophe. It almost happened here when the Congressman was nearly killed here. [A cultist had attacked Ryan with a knife.] You can't take off with people's children without expecting a violent reaction. [Some of the defectors were children whose parents had split on whether to flee or stay.] We've been so terribly betrayed.

What's going to happen here in a matter of a few minutes is that one of those people on the plane is going to shoot the pilot. I know that. I didn't plan it, but I know it's going to happen. And we better not have any of our children left when it's over. Because they'll parachute in here on us. [He feared the Guyanese army would retaliate.] So you be kind to the children and be kind to seniors, and take the potion like they used to take in ancient Greece, and step over quietly, because we are not committing suicide−it's a revolutionary act.

Cultist Christine Miller: Is it too late for Russia? [The colony had considered fleeing to Russia if life became too difficult in Guyana.]

Jones: It's too late. I can't control these people. They've gone with the guns. And it's too late.

Miller: Well, I say let's make an airlift to Russia. I don't think nothing is impossible, if you believe it.

Jones: How are we going to do that?

How are you going to airlift to Russia?

Miller: Well, I thought they said if we got in an emergency, they gave you a code to let them know.

Jones: No, they didn't. [Apparently to pacify the woman, Jones said he would try to check with the Russians, but doubted it would help.] To me death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's cursed. It's not worth living like this.

Miller: I think that there were too few who left for 1,200 people to give their lives for those people that left.

Jones: Do you know how many left?

Miller: Oh, 20-odd. That's small compared to what's here.

Jones: 20-odd. But what's gonna happen when they don't leave? When they get on the plane and the plane goes down? That plane'll come out of the air There's no way you fly a plane without a pilot. You think Russia's gonna want us with all this stigma? We had some value, but now we don't have any value.

Miller: Well, I don't see it like that.

I mean, I feel like that as long as there's life there's hope.

Jones: Well, everybody dies. I haven't seen anybody yet didn't die. And I like to choose my own kind of death for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell. Tired of it. [Applause.]

Miller: But I look at all the babies and I think they deserve to live.

Jones: But don't they deserve much more? They deserve peace.

Miller: I think we all have a right to our own destiny as individuals. And I have a right to choose mine, and everybody else has a right to choose theirs.

Jones: The best testimony we can make is to leave this goddam world. [After applause, more argument breaks out in the crowd. Jones' voice, remarkably controlled, begins to rise.] Everybody hold it! Hold it! Hold it! Lay down your burdens. Down by the riverside. Shall we lay them down here by the side of Guyana? When they start parachuting out of the air, they'll shoot some of our innocent babies. Can you let them take your child?

Voices: No! No! No!

Man: I'm ready to go. If you tell us we have to give our lives now, we're ready; all the rest of the sisters and brothers are with me.

Jones: I've tried to keep this thing from happening. But I now see it's the will of sovereign Being that we lay down our lives in protest against what's been done. If they come after our children, and we give them our children, then our children will suffer forever. [Cultists returning from the airstrip tell Jones that Congressman Ryan has been killed.]

Jones: Please get us some medication.

It's simple, there's no convulsions with it. Just, please get it. Before it's too late. The G.D.F. [Guyanese army] will be here. Get movin', get movin'. Don't be afraid to die. Are you going to separate yourself from whoever shot the Congressman? I don't know who shot him.

Voices: No! No! No!

Jones: How many are dead? [One of the airstrip party reports that others were killed.] Aw, God, Almighty God. It's too late. They're all laying out there dead. Please, can we hasten our medication?

Woman: O.K. There's nothing to worry about. Everybody keep calm and try and keep your children calm. Let the little children in and reassure them. [The children are given the poison first.] They're not crying from pain; it's just a little bitter-tasting.

Jones: It's hard only at first. Living is much, much more difficult. Raising in the morning and not knowing what the night's bringing.

Woman: This is nothing to cry about.

This is something we could all rejoice about. I'm looking at so many people crying. I wish you would not cry. [Applause.]

Jones: Please, for God's sake, let's get on with it. We've lived as no other people lived and loved. We've had as much of this world as you're gonna get. Let's just be done with it. I want to see you go. They can take me and do what they want, whatever they want to do. I don't want to see you go through this hell no more. No more.

Man: The way the children are laying there now, I'd rather see them lay like that than to see them have to die like the Jews did, which was pitiful. Like Dad [the cultists called Jones "Dad"] said, when they come in, they're going to massacre our children. And the ones that they take cap ture, they're gonna just let them grow up and be dummies. And not grow up to be a person like the one and only Jim Jones. [Applause.]

Jones: Let's get gone. Let's get gone.

We tried to find a new beginning. But it's too late. I don't know who killed the Congressman. But as far as I'm concerned I killed him. He had no business coming. I told him not to come.

Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay down with tears and agony. It's just stepping over into another plane. [Crying and screaming in background.] Stop this hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialistic Communists to die. Children, it's just something to put you to rest. Oh, God. [Continued crying.]

Mother, mother, please. Don't do this.

Lay down your life with your child. Free at last. Keep your emotions down. Children, it will not hurt. If you be quiet. [Music in background. Children still crying.] I don't care how many screams you hear; death is a million times preferable to spend more days in this life. If you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to be stepping over tonight.

I call on you to quit exciting your children. Stop this nonsense. Hurry, my children, hurry. Quickly. Quickly. Quickly. No more pain. No more pain. All they do is take a drink to go to sleep. That's what death is, sleep. Have trust. You have to step across. This world was not our home.

The tape ends in a long period of silence broken only by mournful music that is made more eerie as the tape recorder's batteries seem to run down. The sound stops before the crack of the pistol shot that killed Jim Jones, presumably fired by his own hand. -

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916666-1,00.html

Tim Reiterman's Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People.

Q&A: A Jonestown Survivor Remembers

By Andrea Sachs Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008

Tim Reiterman's Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People.

No one knows more about the Jonestown massacre than journalist Tim Reiterman. He began investigating Reverend Jim Jones, the twisted leader of the Peoples Temple cult, for the San Francisco Chronicle 18 months before Jones burst on the world's stage 30 years ago. Reiterman's articles caught the attention of Congressman Leo Ryan, who was concerned about constituents who had joined the group. Reiterman was one of a handful of journalists who accompanied the Congressman on a fact-finding mission to Jonestown, Guyana. On November 18, 1978, after meeting with Jones and his followers, their small party was ambushed by Peoples Temple gunmen as they were leaving. Ryan and four others were killed; Reiterman himself was wounded. The shootings were just the beginning of the carnage. Later that day more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide ceremony, most after they lined up to drink poisoned Flavor Aid. (See pictures of Jonestown).

After recovering from his injuries, Reiterman spent the next four years researching and writing a comprehensive book about the tragedy, "Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People," which has just been reissued by Tarcher/Penguin. The 624-page book is an extraordinary act of scholarship, the definitive account of an event that continues to fascinate and mystify. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs spoke to Reiterman from San Francisco, where he is now the news editor for the Associated Press in northern California.

Hear the extended interview with Tim Reiterman here:

See pictures of the cults that went wacko.

TIME: Was Jim Jones a bad person from the beginning, or did he grow into one?

Tim Reiterman: Good and evil coexisted in Jim Jones throughout his life. I really do believe, having gone back to his birthplace in Indiana and tracing his life, that the seeds of the madness that the world saw in November 1978 were there from his earliest years. He was somewhat neglected as a child. He was part of an unconventional family where his mother was the breadwinner and his father was a brooding man whose work life was cut short by mustard gas scarring from World War I on his lungs. Jones sought out acceptance and a sense of family through churches, but at the same time he had a tremendous need for power and control. He would conduct little church services up in the loft of a barn and lock his playmates in there; later he used a firearm to try to control his best friend. These early incidents, as well as some cruelty to animals, were harbingers for the sickness that grew in him over the years.

TIME: But throughout his whole life, Jones found followers. How?

Even as a kid, he was a really engaging speaker and character. He would go out and play minister. He would entertain people. He had a way of spinning words and a power to his voice. He drew people who were basically religious for the most part in the early years. They were hard-working people, and they were drawn initially to a rare thing in the Midwest, an integrated Christian congregation. When Jones brought his group to California, he started attracting a broader base of people, too. Not just people from the churches, especially the black churches, but also young, idealistic, many of them college-educated people, who wanted to belong to an organization that practiced what it preached and had a social and political component. He also built through the communal organizations that he set up within the Temple a sense of family. At the same time, however, he was breaking down the individual family units within the Temple, and he was getting a tighter and tighter grip on his followers, just as he locked up his playmates in a barn in Indiana. He found ways to take control of and isolate his members from their families and from the outside. One of the things that he did was press them to give up their belongings, sign over their houses in some cases, sign over custody of their children. One of the cruelest things, I thought, was that he had them sign false confessions that they had sexually molested their children-which, of course, left those members vulnerable and bound them in a perverse way to the church.

TIME: Is it true that his followers were disenfranchised people, people outside of society?

The short answer is no. The people who were attracted to the Temple did, for the most part, have one common trait. They were altruistic. They wanted to be part of something larger than themselves. So in that sense they were seekers, but in the main they were hard-working, functioning individuals who had lives that were ordinary in most senses. They had a need to join an organization where they were doing something meaningful. Keep in mind that this was in the post-civil rights and post-Vietnam eras, and a lot of young people, in particular, and older ones, too, were looking for some outlet for their desire to do things for their fellow man.

TIME: What was your impression of Jones when you interviewed him in Guyana?

He did not appear to be well. His skin appeared sallow. His eyes were almost gelatinous. His handshake seemed rather weak, and when he spoke there was a constant undercurrent of paranoia. He even seemed to put a figurative gun in the hands of us journalists, saying we don't need to shoot him, that our words have that kind of effect. He was clearly viewing himself as a martyr and it was very bothersome to realize that over 900 lives were in the hands of this man.

TIME: When you and the Congressman's group got ready to leave Jonestown, what happened?

Fifteen people stepped forward [asking to leave], including one entire family, and much of another family, and both of these families were long-time followers of Jim Jones dating back to Indiana days. The mood of Jonestown grew darker as this day went on, and late in the afternoon the clouds turned black and there was this freakish wind that just tore through the pavilion as I was talking with Jones. Then there was this torrent of rain. He basically said that the Temple was being destroyed from within, and what he meant by that was that these defectors-were going to tell the world eventually what was really going on inside Jonestown, and that the end was drawing near. So it was a very ominous moment before we even left Jonestown.

TIME: What happened when you went to your plane?

During that boarding procedure, a Temple tractor and trailer full of gunmen raced towards us. They jumped out and they started firing. That's when I was hit by gunfire as I was trying to take cover behind one of the plane wheels. Fortunately I was only hit in the arm a couple of times and was able to jump up and sprint to the jungle and take cover. When I came out a few moments later, I saw that the Congressman had been killed, that three of the newsmen had been killed-including my partner on that trip, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson-and one of the defectors also was killed.

TIME: Do you think that the 900 deaths that immediately followed were suicides, or were they murders?

I believe that this was a mass murder. First of all, there were over 200 children who could not have formed the intent to commit suicide. Second, Jim Jones had isolated his people and conditioned them through suicide rehearsals and mock sieges to accept death. Third, he orchestrated the events on that final day so that the outcome was never in doubt. He had gunmen go shoot the Congressman. Then he turned around to his followers, once he got news the Congressman was dead, and announced it. He said, now some among us have done something that's going to cause the army to come in here and nobody will be safe. Let's bring forward the potion and let's bring the children first. By having the children die first, he sealed the fate of their parents and other elders, because no one would have any reason to live. As this was all going on, the pavilion was surrounded with armed guards with guns and crossbows, so people were not going to go anywhere. Many appeared to have been injected with poison.

TIME: What happened to Jones himself?

Jim Jones was found with a single bullet wound to the head, pretty much a contact wound. I believe that he either shot himself or was shot by a close aide as he had planned.

TIME: Do you think about Jonestown now?

I think about it every day. I think about the people, the 900 people I saw who were young and old and vibrant and talented and performing on that first evening when I met them. I think about those images of their bodies in piles and final graves that have been used again and again and again. I think about what happened on the airstrip, too. I don't replay those events every day in full, but they cross my mind. When you're part of something like the events in Jonestown, they become part of you.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1859903-1,00.html

Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later

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San Francisco Examiner / AP

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Cult Leader, the Rev. Jim Jones
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, as it was formally known, was founded in the 1950's by Indiana native James Warren "Jim" Jones, who preached a quasi-socialist philosophy that he called "apostolic socialism." By most accounts a highly paranoid man, Jones relocated his group to the South American nation of Guyana in 1974, in order to avoid increasing media scrutiny in the U.S. and, in his words, to create a "socialist paradise" and community based on his own communal-agrarian ideals.

My Recent Posts · Mar 18 09 7:12 PM

Jonestown Massacre Photos

Jonestown Massacre, The Peoples Temple Photos

On November 18, 1978 912 followers of American cult leader Jim Jones ("Peoples Temple") died in a remote South American jungle compound called "Jonestown" in British Guyana. Some members were shot, others were forced to drink poison, but most willingly participated in what Jones said was an act of "revolutionary suicide."

Jim Jones began his ministry in 1953 as an independent minister in Indianapolis, but was later ordained in 1964 by the Disciples of Christ. By the end of 1971 he had moved his congregation to California eventually establishing two churches there. His main church remained in San Francisco, but a second was also opened in Los Angeles. The Peoples Temple peaked during the 70s to include perhaps as many as 8,000 members. Though racially diverse, most of Jones followers were African Americans.

Jim Jones was once a popular community activist in San Francisco who contributed cash and coordinated volunteers to support both causes and political leaders.

He could turn out thousands for almost any event or effort. During the 70s he appeared with many prominent politicians including then State Assemblyman Willie Brown. In 1976 Mayor George Moscone gave Jones a seat on the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. Governor Jerry Brown was even seen attending services at the Peoples Temple.

But after the tragic deaths at Jonestown Willie Brown said, "If we knew then he was mad, clearly we wouldn't have appeared with him. But it's not fair to say what you would have done if you knew the kind of madness that would take place years later.''

Negative press reports began to surface about Jim Jones in the summer of 1977. In response to such criticism he moved many of his followers to British Guyana. Eventually about 1,000 core supporters gathered at an isolated retreat there, which was later officially named "Jonestown." But complaints from former members and families continued, ultimately culminating in requests for an official investigation.

According to an affidavit dated June 15, 1978 one-time Temple member and Jonestown resident Deborah Layton stated that "conditions had become so bad that half of Jonestown was ill with severe diarrhea and high fevers." But despite this they "were required to work in the fields from 7 AM to 6 PM six days per week and on Sunday from 7 AM to 2 PM" and the "food was woefully inadequate." Ms. Layton advised that "Rev. Jones...claimed that he was the reincarnation of...Lenin, Jesus Christ [and]...had divine powers." And further stated that Jones also "appeared deluded by a paranoid vision of the world. He would not sleep for days at a time and talk[ed] compulsively about the conspiracies against him." The compound "was swarming with armed guards [and] no one was permitted to leave unless on a special assignment," Layton said. Jim Jones warned "that the time was not far off when it would become necessary for [his followers] to die by [their] own hands," she added. A so-called "White Night" or "state of emergency" was often declared at the compound and within this context mass suicide was rehearsed.

California Congressman Leo J. Ryan received many complaints from his constituents regarding family members who were followers of Jim Jones. He subsequently responded through an investigation. With permission from Jim Jones, Ryan came to visit the group's compound on November 17, 1978. The congressman toured the settlement and met with Jim Jones. On the 18th some Temple members passed notes to Congressman Ryan's party requesting to leave with them. Ryan agreed and took some members of the Peoples Temple with him. At an isolated airstrip on the 18th, apparently under orders from Jim Jones, gunmen from Jonestown ambushed Congressman Ryan's party. Leo J. Ryan and four others were killed immediately, some of the Ryan party escaped into the jungle.

Anticipating the end of his ministry and certain arrest, Jim Jones then ordered the "state of emergency" he had so long anticipated. This carefully rehearsed mass suicide now finally took place. Everyone, except the very few that escaped into the surrounding jungle, either committed suicide or was murdered. More than 280 children were killed. Jim Jones body was found at Jonestown, fatally wounded by a gunshot to the head.

Willie Brown now the Mayor of San Francisco lamented in 1998, twenty years after the mass suicide and murders, that "Jonestown was a tragedy of the first order, and it remains a painful and sorrowful event in our history. Not a year has gone by that I have not stopped to remember San Francisco's terrible loss."

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http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f158/jonestown-massacre-photos-11317/

My Recent Posts · Apr 14 09 6:24 AM

is the cult sill alive i mean is it still going on what happened to jims sons? they did not die

My Recent Posts · Apr 21 09 7:15 PM

Good question. I'm still trying to find out more bold.

But here is some more information for now.

Peoples Temple:

Survivors' perspectives

differ

San Diego Union-Tribune, USA
Nov. 16, 2003
Sandi Dolbee

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 5048 • Posted: Monday November 17, 2003

More articles on this topic: Peoples Temple

Not everyone associated with Peoples Temple died Nov. 18, 1978.

Roughly 80 members who were in Guyana lived. Most were in the capital city of Georgetown to the south, where the temple kept a house. There also are many former members who left the group or never moved to South America.

And there were survivors from the airstrip ambush.

"If anyone tells you that they've got the Jonestown story, you know they are lying," says Fielding McGehee III, a San Diego man who has spent years studying this subject with his wife, Rebecca Moore, an assistant professor in religious studies at San Diego State University.

"There is no one Jonestown story," he says. "There are as many stories as there are people who tell them."

Here are five of those stories.

Laura Johnston Kohl

SAN MARCOS ? She remembers Jonestown as "heaven on Earth."

Everyone was equal, pulling together toward a shared vision. She worked in the fields and made soap.

"I really loved it," says Laura Johnston Kohl. "It was so exciting."

She joined Peoples Temple in the Northern California community of Redwood Valley in 1970, moving to Guyana in 1977. She was drawn not by the religious part but the socialist political agenda. "Really, my interest was being in an integrated community," says the 56-year-old Kohl.

An estimated 68 percent of the members living in Guyana were African-American; 24 percent were white, and the remainder were either mixed or of another ethnic group, according to a demographic study by Moore of SDSU.

It doesn't take Kohl long to weep as she relives the memories. "Unfortunately," she says, "Jim really went crazy."

She says she didn't notice how bad he'd gotten. Or perhaps she was willing to overlook it. "The rest of our life was fine."

She was in Georgetown on the day of the mass deaths. She returned to the United States as a lost soul; her world had been obliterated. Kohl drifted into Synanon, another controversial, cultic group. She met her new husband, Ron, there, and they stayed until the late 1980s, when Synanon began falling apart.

They are now school teachers and Quakers who live in San Marcos with their 14-year-old son, Raul. "I have a really good life now," she says. "I really like who I am."

On Tuesday morning, when relatives, former members and others gather for the annual anniversary service at a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Kohl plans to be there. "It's reconnecting, reuniting, with the people who died," she says.

If she had been in Jonestown that day, would she have drunk the poisoned punch?

"I probably would have. I wasn't interested in returning to the life I had in the United States."

Stephan Jones and Jim Jones Jr.

THE BAY AREA ? They are sons of the father. Stephan Jones is the only biological son of the Rev. Jim and Marceline Jones. Jim Jones Jr. is an adopted son and namesake, one of a menagerie of accumulated children in their family coming from a rainbow of ethnicities.

Stephan Jones, a 44-year-old Marin County resident, is the introvert ? intense and cautious. Jim Jones Jr., who is a year younger and lives in Pacifica near San Francisco, is the extrovert ? a jokester who laughs easily and often.

They were in Georgetown with Jonestown's basketball team on the day of the deaths.

"My primary experience of my father was somebody who did it on the fly. He was an overgrown kid, and people were his candy store ? and most especially the people in Jonestown," says Stephan Jones.

His brother just shakes his head. "I had a great childhood. We had so much fun. I thought my brothers had fun. I didn't know until it was all over of the angst they were feeling."

Both say there were many reasons why folks were attracted to Peoples Temple. "But there is one universal ? that deep desire to belong to something," says Stephan Jones.

Stephan Jones, who has two daughters and works in the commercial furniture business, says people in Jonestown were looking outside of themselves for the answers. He has learned that the answers come from within.

Jim Jones Jr., who has three sons and works for a cardiac care company, says he last spoke to his father on the day of his death. His dad called the Georgetown house from Jonestown's radio. "He told me it was a day of reckoning."

Looking back on it, he says his father fed off his own neurosis, and there was no one to stop him. "The mind is a dangerous place," he says. "Don't go into it alone."

Tim Stoen

EUREKA ? On Tim Stoen's desk in the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office is a photograph of a young boy, his eyes bright, his smile warm.

It's his 6-year-old son, John Victor Stoen, who died in Jonestown.

For years, Stoen was lawyer to leader Jim Jones, a loyal member who turned over his child to the commune and even signed a statement saying that Jones was the boy's father. Like so many, he was attracted to Peoples Temple's egalitarianism. "I became very angry about how black people were being treated at large," he says. "I turned on the white power structure."

But in 1977, he says his estranged wife, Grace, another former insider who had already left Peoples Temple, unloaded on him about Jones' abusive behavior and staged healings. It was his epiphany. Stoen became a vocal opponent and fought for custody of the boy he left behind in Jonestown.

In November 1978, Stoen went to Guyana with Democratic Congressman Leo Ryan's fact-finding party. When they got there, he stayed in Georgetown to avoid angering Jones.

For 10 years afterward, he didn't speak about it. Eventually, he returned to Ukiah, went back to work for the Mendocinio County District Attorney's Office and remarried. Earlier this year, he took the job as assistant district attorney in neighboring Humboldt County.

Stoen won't say why he signed the paternity statement, except that it is not true. He insists that he is the boy's father.

He's 65 now, goes to a Baptist church and says he's at peace. He rejects suggestions that Ryan's visit, and his own public crusade against Jones, triggered the deaths.

"I'd do it again. If I hadn't tried everything, then I would have more guilt about losing my son. I believe it would have happened anyway. It was just a matter of time."

State Sen. Jackie Speier

SAN FRANCISCO ? Left for dead, bleeding from five bullet wounds, she prayed and waited. Her boss, Congressman Leo Ryan, was already dead. So were three journalists and a defector.

After 22 hours, Guyanese rescue workers airlifted her to safety.

Jackie Speier is a Democratic state senator now for parts of San Francisco and San Mateo counties. But then she was Ryan's 28-year-old legal counsel, who went along with a contingent of officials, journalists and relatives to take a look at what was going on in this jungle where Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple had moved to from California.

They arrived on Nov. 17, 1978, and things were going pretty well, she remembers, until a reporter was slipped a note saying some members wanted to leave. "Jones became almost manic," she says. She and the others in the departing group were attacked the next day at a remote airstrip near Jonestown.

"It was very much like a plantation, ironically, for someone who preached equality," Speier says of the compound. "The whites were in leadership, and the African-Americans were subservient."

What happened there was murder, she adds. "These people's minds had been manipulated."

And she's not sure we've learned anything. "Jim Jones got away with what he got away with because he was politically connected and because he had the ability to call what he had a religion.

"Our commitment to protecting the First Amendment clouded reasonable people from recognizing that even though religions have a right to exist, they do not have a right to conduct themselves in a manner that suggests criminal conduct."

Was it a mistake to go to Jonestown 25 years ago?

"I don't think people who got out thought it was a mistake," she says. "And there were people who got out because we went down there. It was a mistake that our State Department did such a lousy job of monitoring the situation. Those were American citizens."

She points out that the suicides had been rehearsed time and again, in drills that Peoples Temple called "white nights."

"We knew about the white-night trials. I think that Jim Jones was going to be exposed, and he couldn't allow that to happen and was willing to take 900 people with him. He was a maniacal narcissist."

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/5048/survivors-perspectives-differ

My Recent Posts · Apr 22 09 6:18 AM

he was a devil

My Recent Posts · May 14 09 10:11 AM

i mean is the two sons of his that lived did they become christian or are they still lost out there

My Recent Posts · Jun 25 09 9:28 AM

i beleive that the peoples temple still exsist today andif possible there is some one who would lead the people to do it all over again

My Recent Posts · Nov 16 10 8:21 PM

Jonestown
Apologists
Alert

Cult apologists always strive to unload the thickest sugarcoatings over the true horror of People's Temple. One of the most elaborate is director Stanley Nelson's amazing mockumentary, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple." This site is dedicated to exposing such insidious historic fiction, apologist promoters, and the self-serving power elite that lack the ethics and courage to confess the real truth about their role in this crime of the century.

November 15, 2010

by Tom Kinsolving

Cult Expert On Jonestown: "A Mass
Mentality 'Manchurian Candidate'
That Killed The Enemy On Demand"

Something very ironic about all this.

With the impending anniversary of that unspeakable tragedy over 30 years ago, I'm thinking about that infamous sign.��

You know the one.

We've all seen the assorted photos of the gruesome aftermath of the Temple Planning Commission executioners' handiwork.� This one, however, is particularly chilling.

It's right there hanging over "Father's"� throne, empty cause the occupant was sprawled nearby on the pavilion floor.� He was too much the coward to have that hideously painful cyanide forcibly injected into him, as more than 80 percent of the people had.� No, Jones took the easy exit with a bullet through the head.

He looked so pathetic in his death portrait.� Eyes wide open, no longer concealed by those menacing sunglasses.� Silenced at long last.� Tragically, however, not in time to stop him and his gang of mass murderers from carrying out their own Final Solution.

Jim Jones, despite all his perversions and sick Stalinist mania, still had it right with philosopher George Santayana's creed that "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."� It's something that spans across all realms. �

That's the irony:� Too many have still not learned the lessons of the past.� The madness of crazies like this, running cults from the smallest to the largest, religious, secular, commercial, political, even one-on-one, continues unabated to this day.� As do the cult apologists that keep on trying to somehow rehabilitate the Peoples Temple.� Santayana's prophecy lives on. �

� Ex-Temple member Laura Kohl is just one of the many desperately wanting to put a fresh, glowing face on this, one of the most destructive cults in history.� Maybe like the others, she's doing it in a sad quest for atonement.

"What happened then," claims Kohl, "was the fusion of all of our spirits, our hopes and our hard work--into a New World--a Heaven on Earth. We didn't know it was possible, and it seeped into our souls and hearts. What we created was more than we could have dreamed about. We grew into a greatness well beyond what we could have done individually."

How does someone descend to this level of denial over something that was a perfect Hell on Earth?� The answer probably rests in the syndrome of well-meaning people falling prey to brain washing that sometimes remains long after they've departed the cult.

Renowned expert Dr. Phillip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment that presented vivid proof of the power that a super-charged controlled environment has on behavior.� In 2005, he authored a paper entitled "Mind control in Orwell’s 1984: Fictional concepts become operational realities in Jim Jones’ jungle experiment.”

In his findings, Zimbardo drew from many sources corroborating how this was accomplished, along with exposing the shocking dichotomy between the Hellish reality of Jonestown and the "Heavenly" fantasies still entertained by the survivors of the death camp.

One of the most ghastly testimonies came from former member Debbie Layton, as described in a book by another member, Jeanne Mills:

"Mills describes other torture chambers in PT.� 'Debbie (Layton) told us about Bigfoot, a punishment that had replaced the Blue-Eyed Monster.� It’s a deep well about forty-five minutes’ walk away from the camp,’ she said sadly. ‘Counselors have to sit in there, and when the child is disciplined they throw the child down the well.

The kids would cry hysterically as soon as Jim would tell them they’d have to go visit Bigfoot. We’d hear them scream all the way there, and all the time they had to be down in the well, and by the time they got back they were begging for mercy. It was really awful. Some young people were forced to eat hot peppers or even have hot peppers put up their rectums as disciplines.”

So much for Kohl's notion about "growing into greatness."

Dr. Zimbardo's research blew apart such delusions.� His analysis was thorough and devastating, revealing how much the spirit of Big Brother suffocated anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped in the Jonestown Gulag.

"Obedience training, Newspeak, Crimestop, Doublethink, Reality Control, Emotional Control, sexual control, surveillance, hard work on starvation diets – the staples of the Orwellian Mind Controller’s repertoire – were adapted and put into effective operation by Jim Jones in his attempt to demonstrate total behavior modification beyond anything that MK-ULTRA had ever achieved. Jones succeeded in his perverted mind control 'experiment' by creating a mass mentality 'Manchurian Candidate' that killed the Enemy on demand, only the Enemy was one’s children, one’s parents, one’s mate, one’s friends, one’s self.

� I believe that Orwell would not have been pleased to see his warning about the dangers of a totalitarian state acted out by a latter-day disciple in the jungles of Guyana, and then recently reenacted by destructive cult leaders in many other countries, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and Uganda, all extracting the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of domination of free will, of individuality, of critical thought, and of the spirit of independence."�

Of course, a horde of "New Religious Movements" (NRM) academics infesting universities across the land are hell-bent on not yielding even one inch to Zimbardo or any other expert that exposes cult dynamics and their horrifying consequences.� They never fail to rush to defend cults as fast as five year olds running to the sound of an ice cream truck.
�

�

We'll give them their due before Thursday.� Until then, there's nothing quite like the illuminating power of a dramatization.� Sometimes they're way off target.� Film maker Stanley Nelson's purported documentary "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" was about as twisted a piece of cult apologist propaganda as they come.

On the other hand, straight fictional works can sometimes undo the damage by NRM puff pieces.� "When you blindly give up your free will to a higher authority," warns the narrator in this 2001 Outer Limits episode, "be sure you are not also giving up control of your ultimate destiny."

Entitled "A New Life," this 45 minute eye-opener is well worth the time and attention (forgive the occasional commercial interruptions.) � The alien theme provides the perfect metaphor.� Please pay close attention to the dialogue.� And should you just happen to wonder if there's any striking similarities with the Peoples Temple, you're right on target. �

Afterward, you'll likely be wary of any and all cult apologists--who knows, they could very well be on a mission from another planet.....

��

My Recent Posts · Nov 17 10 7:51 AM

Heaven on Earth my Aunt Fanny...what a load of garbage!

This was not a place of equality it was an evil racists dream.. He was not a prophet, he was a piece of human garbage and to say other wise is to bring more shame to the human race that allowed this man to preach hatred and garbage to those who followed him. Children were tortured . Children died horrible ugly deaths at this cowards hands.. he did not get injected so he could suffer such a horrible death that he inflicted upon little children, no he took the cowards way out with a bullet to the head..

I fully understand how this sort of things starts, but am at a loss to know how we can let it continue into the evil it becomes. How could so many people look the other way?

There is a cult right now that is doing the same thing, that will cause the death of children, preach hatred and racism, and folks hear it but they do not understand the danger that they are in, just like Jonestown..
That’s right, cults grow into being, the do not spring up over night, they lure in the innocent with promises of peace, but as time goes by this peace begins to take on a heavy price. Fake healings and lies are often part of this road to hell, as are stronger and stronger demands, and each one becomes more foolish than the last. But most important of all is that those who claim to be the reincarnated, the spirit, the manifested body of Jesus Christ are all big fat liars.. And this is a sure sign that the person making those claims is bilking you for your money, and lying to your face. Jesus tells us how he will return and warns us about those who will claim to be him.. Liars and thieves … that’s all that they are. This should have been a sign for all those following Jim Jones.. He was an evil deluded liar.. Not Christ.

For those who are Christians it should be very easy to detect if you are in a cult or not.. Were you asked to do something that Jesus would not ask you to do. Would Jesus have tossed a child down a well? Would Jesus say that some children were born evil? Would Jesus want to sleep with your wife or your daughter?
Would Jesus want your money or live in a fancy house while children starved?

We all have an inner knowledge of good and evil, it gives us feelings that of what we are doing is right or wrong, if we continue to do things that go against our nature we will begin to get sick.. For stress causes illness… mental and physical illness. So it is in our best interest to not cross that line that we have made in our hearts.. For to do so is to harm ourselves. You do not have to be a Christian to know that, you just have to be human.

My Recent Posts · Nov 28 10 1:38 PM

SEX, SOCIALISM, AND
CHILD TORTURE WITH
REV. JIM JONES

By Rev. Lester Kinsolving

Examiner Religion Writer

UKIAH,CALIFORNIA, SEPTEMBER, 1972 -- When the Rev. Jim Jones, charismatic pastor-prophet of the nearby People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in Redwood Valley, was teaching classes in the local school district's night school program, he illustrated his instruction with extensive and numerical accounts of his personal sex habits.

One of his former students, Mrs. Betty Bailey, distinctly recalls that in his advocating that young boys be taught to masturbate, the Rev. Mr. Jones provided graphic, detailed accounts of his own masturbating. ("I masturbated five times a day until I got married," Jones reportedly told his pupils.)

Mrs. Bailey, a stocky, feisty and good-humored lady, recalled that this unusual pedagogy was offered by The Prophet in his teaching of this class--in U.S. History.

"I wasn't impressed either by those two bodyguards who always preceeded him into the classroom," commented Mrs. Bailey, "nor did I believe this stuff about his own extrasensory perception. So I said that I'd be impressed if he could tell me my grandmother's maiden name. Instead of doing so, he shot back: 'You're fighting me!'"

Mrs. Bailey also recalls the The Prophet became so furious that he screamed at her, and on a separate occasion referred to another student as a "son of a !*$+%," while angrily chasing this student to the classroom door.

"Jones comes on TV as something like St. Francis and the angel Gabriel," commented Mrs. Bailey, "But as a Catholic, I didn't really appreciate his telling the class that the Catholic Church opposes birth control in order to try to rule the world."

Why is such conduct tolerated by the local school district?

"I've written complaints to the school board and even to Dr. Rafferty," recalled Mrs. Bailey, "but Max Rafferty simply referred it back to the local board--and they ignored it. After all, so many board members are either members of the People's Temple or are afraid of it."

Another of The Prophet's former night school students was Pat Rhea, now 21. She recalls that teacher Jim Jones included lengthy discussions of both extrasensory perception and syphilis--in a Civics class.

The course (for credit) had neither assigned texts nor examinations--for teacher Jones informed his pupils that they would be graded entirely on their performances when he engaged them in discussion. Rhea recalls that somehow Jones overlooked her entirely in this regard--but she received a grade of "B".

The Prophet's recurrent references to sex are vividly recalled by many witnesses.

Denise Kindopp, who has attended People's Temple, recalls:

"Almost every Sunday, there was some reference to sex. More than once I have heard Jones tell the congregation that 'I have been propositioned by many women.'"

In addition to this recurrent emphasis upon his personal sex life, The Prophet is remembered by some witnesses as having almost invariably been critical of the U.S. Government--in striking contrast to what they recall as no such criticism of such nations as Soviet Russia, Maoist China, or Castro's Cuba.

Jones, they recall, has expressed his admiration for Fidel Castro, having told his congregation that he once ministered in Cuba.

And while no one has contended that the Rev. Mr. Jones is a Communist, there are reports that The People's temple has distributed a paperback volume entitled "Introduction to Socialism,"--which members are ordered to burn when they finish reading.

While this rumor may be apocryphal, a copy of one other paperback book has been given to The Examiner, with a written affidavit that it was distributed to members of The People's Temple. (Note: The paperback was turned over to the FBI by the reporter.)

It is a songbook, entitled: "A Little Boy of Sunshine, Little Grain of Truth."

The affidavit notes that The Prophet Jones has "led the congregation in singing each and every one of these songs."

"Simple Grains"

"We are glad for emancipation from the profit motive lie...
We'll have to work together to survive, to overcome the systems and their lies...
It'll be a great day when the system's overcome...
We will shout Hallelujah living in communal beauty... There's a highway to Utopia walking in a revolutionary way..."

As for the Rev. Mr. Jones' alleged extrasensory perception (or divine omniscience, if you will), there are witnesses who are skeptical on the basis of experience.

One lady traveled to Redwood Valley from the Bay Area, with relatives in the Temple knowing of her impending visit. While she was en route, her 18-year old daughter received a phone call from a purported survey firm.

The line of questioning soon became so personal that a visiting neighbor asked to be included and proceeded to provide a series of answers which reflected a serious if entirely mythical set of personal problems.

Within the hour, during the Redwood Valley church service, the lady was asked to come forward by Prophet Jones--who proceeded to reveal the names of both her daughter and the neighbor. He then solemnly outlined the neighbor's reported problem.

Such ethics extend to children of The People's Temple, especially those in custody of members who have been ordered to divorce or separate from a spouse who is unwilling to follow The Prophet's orders.

There are witnesses who have had the bitter experience of listening to their children give prepared speeches (as one 7-year old inadvertently admitted) of resistance to their non-Temple-member parent.

These have taken the form of youngsters threatening to accuse a father of indecent exposure, or a mother of countenancing rape.

One divorced father discovered that his visiting daughter, accompanied by the daughter of one of People's Temple's assistant ministers, had made copies of his most confidential papers.

If such methods as practiced by People's Temple children seem horrifying, it may be due in part to the hardening provided by such rugged experiences as "Survival Training"--led by the Prophet Jones himself.

A 17-year old, who spent a month in People's Temple residences, recalls that while he was on what is called "Survival Training," all teenagers were ordered to walk into a cold river, at midnight.

The next morning, they were allowed to plunge in their bathing suits, but forbidden to change into dry clothing for the rest of the cold, overcast day.

For the youngest among them, who were non-swimmers, the experience was even more drastic.

These small children were strapped into life jackets and dropped into the middle of the river, in depth far above their heads--no matter how loudly they screamed.

This horrendous scene hardly fazed The Ukiah Messiah, however.

He subsequently informed the group that this was mild in comparison to the discipline he had imposed upon one young child of The People's Temple.

The little boy threw up at the table, which prompted Jones to force him to eat his own vomit.

When the child gagged and again threw up, the Prophet again forced him to eat his vomit.

The Rev. Mr. Jones is an ordained clergyman of the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church, while attorney Timothy O. Stoen is a member of the Board of Directors of that 1.9 million-member denominations's Northern California-Nevada Conference.

President of this conference, headquartered in Oakland, is the Rev. Dr. Karl Irvin.

When asked about the People's Temple and the Rev. Mr. Jones, Dr. Irvin mentioned an emphasis upon faith healing, social services, large congregations and "a high feeling for Jim Jones."

"They give a sizable financial report, although there isn't much of a breakdown provided and I don't know how they keep their records." explained Dr. Irvin. "There is a great deal of local autonomy in our denomination."

But The Examiner has received a photostatic copy of a 4-page letter of deep concern, sent to this headquarters on Sept. 4, 1970, asking among other things that an M.D. be asked to analyze the exhibited "cancers" which Jones claims to have taken out of people's bodies.

The letter was acknowledged in a letter written by the conference's acting president, Elizabeth Kratz.

While the Disciples of Christ have thus far announced no investigation of the Rev. Jim Jones, who proclaims himself Jesus Reincarnate, the Indianapolis Star has investigated this new version of Father Divine.

The Star reported "numerous property transactions involving real-estate transfers which wound up in his name, or that of a profit-making corporation controlled by the Rev. Mr. Jones, his wife, and his mother."

This corporation, titled "Jim-Lu-Mar", reported The Star, "lost its corporate charter on June 1, 1970, because, according to the (Indiana) Secretary of State: 'No annual reports were filed.'"

http://jonestownapologist...socialism-and-child.html

My Recent Posts · Nov 29 10 8:08 AM

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What is wrong with people.. come on! A prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ chucking children in the river to hear them scream.. no wonder so many folks have such
bad ideas about Christianity.. nut cases like this guy. But why was he not stopped?

To bad help for those children came to late. We must try and do better next time... and the next time is now.. today. There are cults out there
right now planning on abusing and murdering children. We must be more diligent at digging them out and shining a light in that darkness.

We let those children down, we allowed a sick pervert with a nasty streak and a God complex to get his hands on children.

We let him talk his sex talk to children and so that made him bolder and bolder until he killed them. Let us not let that happen again.

Who out there right now is preaching hatred.. for the US, for Blacks, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Immigrants, and Gay folks. Those

who preach hatred are also against God, and work for satan... even if they think they are doing the right thing they are evil, and deluded.

They must be stopped. Jim Jones could have been stopped.. and yet we did not, so we had to see the bloated murdered bodies of little children

who died a horrible death because we were asleep instead of dilligent .. we missed the wolf in sheeps clothing. How many time shall we let

that happen?

My Recent Posts · Mar 5 11 11:08 PM

Memorial to Jonestown
Cult victims spurs fight

4/2011

By CAROLYN JONES

OAKLAND, Calif. - The seemingly unending tragedy of Jonestown intensified last week when a group of victims' families ramped up their fight to stop a planned memorial that would include Jim Jones' name among the massacre victims.

Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives at the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana, led a somber rally and prayer vigil at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif., where 406 of Jonestown's nearly 1,000 victims are buried in a mass grave.

About 20 people attended, in hopes of pressuring the cemetery to scratch a memorial by another group of relatives and install theirs instead. Norwood's memorial would include the names of 305 children who died at Jonestown. No adults, including Jones, would be listed.

"We're demanding that Evergreen Cemetery not add the name of the executioner," Norwood said. "Would they tell the Jewish community to put the name of Hitler on a Holocaust memorial? It's insulting."

More than 900 people died at Jonestown, a so-called utopian community established by Bay Area minister Jim Jones. On Nov. 18, 1978, Jones ordered his followers in the People's Temple to drink cyanide-laced punch. Several others, including Rep. Leo Ryan, were shot and killed the same day when they arrived to investigate what families described as a cult.

Norwood's group has been raising money for 12 years to install a memorial at Evergreen, where the only marker now is a simple flat stone that reads, "In Memory of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy, Nov. 18, 1978."

Norwood's memorial originally was planned to be seven 7-foot-tall slabs of black granite standing upright, inscribed with the names of 917 victims. Jones' name would not be included.

But the project was scaled back due to the $90,000 price tag and the difficulties of installing such massive structures on an unstable hillside. In addition, Evergreen staff never signed off on the project, in part because of the engineering challenges.

Norwood's group has already paid $30,000 to the memorial maker, Marin Monument Co., although now the proposal is a bit more modest: smaller slabs engraved with only children's names.

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory was among those at the Feb .28 event.

"This has become a tragedy within a tragedy," he said. "But now it's about the children. Those children never got to reach adulthood, and we need to remember them."

Norwood's cause could be a moot point, however. Evergreen and a second group of survivors, led in part by Jones' son, Jim Jones Jr., are moving ahead with a $15,000 memorial they expect to install by the tragedy's 33rd anniversary, Nov. 18.

The memorial is four flat, understated granite plaques that match the existing marker. It would include 918 names, including Jones.

"If we left off Jones' name, we'd be giving him an awful lot of power," said Fielding McGehee III, who lost several relatives at Guyana and is now head of the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University. "Let's recognize his culpability, but let's also recognize his death."

Jones was not the only one to blame for the massacre, McGehee said. Many others helped coordinate the deaths, from ordering the poison to shooting Ryan on the nearby tarmac.

"It really is hard to draw a line if we're trying to define responsibility," McGehee said. "Where does it stop?"

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/60117

My Recent Posts · May 14 11 7:52 AM

Outrage at Jonestown
Massacre Monument

By IULIA FILIP

OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) - A woman who lost 27 family members in the 1978 Jonestown Massacre has sued an Oakland cemetery association and its top officers, claiming that after she spent 18 years raising money to build a monument to the victims, the cemetery pulled a switch and decided to erect a different monument, based on a design from Jones' People's Church, which "proposes to include the name of Jim Jones himself as a victim of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides."

Jynona Norwood and her nonprofit, the Guyana Tribute Foundation, sued The Evergreen Cemetery Association, its president Buck Kamphausen, and its executive director Ron Haulman, in Alameda County Court.


Norwood says she lost 27 members of her family in the Jonestown Massacre of November 1978. Norwood's relatives were among the 918 people who died in the Guyana-based utopian community known as Jonestown, led by Jim Jones, the leader of the People's Temple cult.

Norwood says that "on or about November 21, 1978, more than 900 bodies were returned to the United States, and 406 of the bodies, most of whom were children, were buried in a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery."

Norwood says most of her family members who died at Jonestown are buried at the Evergreen mass grave site.

Since 1980, Norwood has been holding annual public memorials at Evergreen to honor the victims of the massacre. She says that for decades she has been trying to erect a memorial wall with the names of the 918 victims at the Evergreen Cemetery, and that she planned to exclude Jim Jones' name from the memorial.

"In or around November 1992, defendants orally agreed that they would be agreeable to, and willing to assist in, the building of a memorial wall honoring the victims of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides," the complaint states.

"Based upon this agreement, in or about 1993, plaintiff Norwood, by and through other local nonprofits, began raising funds for the construction of the memorial wall," the complaint states. Norwood says she created Guyana Tribute Foundation in 1998 to support her fundraising efforts.

She says the defendants promised to provide the base and setting for the memorial at the mass grave site, and reaffirmed their commitment in a September 2002 letter.

Norwood says that after she received a proposal from a monument company, the "defendants notified plaintiff that they would permit the construction of the memorial wall only if plaintiff used their preferred vendor, called Marin Monument Company Inc., working through Amador Memorial Company. Defendants further advised Norwood that Marin Monument Company and Amador Memorial Company would be best suited to construct the memorial wall, as the companies were familiar with the grounds at the cemetery and would best know the specifications of the size of granite that would properly fit at the mass grave site."

Norwood says she accepted Amador's proposal, to build a memorial consisting of "seven granite ledgers" for a total price of $97,800. She says she made the first payment of more than $30,000 by January 2008.

Amador provided Evergreen with a sketch of the memorial, the weight of the foundation, and the size and weight of the granite panels for the memorial wall. Evergreen did not object to the size of the panels, Norwood says.

"On or about November 18, 2008, at the thirty-year anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides, plaintiffs unveiled two of the panels of the memorial wall, upon which some of the victims' names were inscribed, by having the panels delivered to Evergreen for an annual public memorial held by plaintiffs," the complaint states.

Evergreen representatives were there and did not express any concerns about the size or design of the memorial wall, Norwood says.

Nevertheless, she says, "On or about December 15, 2009, defendants wrote a letter to Norwood wherein they alleged, among other things, that the memorial wall had never been approved and that it was too large."

Norwood says, "This was the first time that any objection was made by defendants to the size and general specifications of the memorial wall, despite having actually seen the written plans and size of the granite panels at Marin Monument Company in April 2008 and again at Evergreen in November 2008."

She says that in March this year, "Plaintiffs discovered by reading a news article that defendants had approved plans for another monument to be erected on the base and setting originally approved for plaintiffs' memorial wall. This monument is proposed by the surviving People's Church, led by [Jim Jones' adopted son] Jim Jones, Jr., and proposes to include the name of Jim Jones himself as a victim of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides." (Emphasis in complaint.)

Norwood says the defendants misappropriated the money she raised for the memorial and "defrauded plaintiffs of the use of a sacred site which plaintiffs have used for years to honor the victims of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides."

Norwood seeks compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract, misrepresentation and fraud. And she wants the defendants enjoined from building a memorial that honors Jim Jones "upon the mass grave site where most of the 305 children that Jim Jones ordered to be murdered are buried."

Norwood and her foundation are represented by Vernon Goins II.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/05/12/36526.htm

My Recent Posts · May 18 11 4:29 AM

This is horrible... how could such an evil thing even happen.. Shame on those who do such thing.

If you murder hundreds of Innocent people then you are a Mass Murderer... not a victim

My Recent Posts · Jun 1 11 12:07 PM

Ind. eatery pulls billboards with cult references

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — A northern Indiana restaurant that erected billboards referring to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in which more than 900 people died has removed the signs following complaints that the signs were offensive.

Jeff Leslie, vice president of sales and marketing at Hacienda, acknowledged that the billboards were a mistake. He said the South Bend-based company ordered the signs removed less than two weeks into Hacienda's new advertising campaign.

"Our role is not to be controversial or even edgy. We want to be noticed — and there's a difference," Leslie told the South Bend Tribune. "We have a responsibility to (advertise) with care, and that's why we're pulling this ad. We made a mistake and don't want to have a negative image in the community."

The billboards included the statement, "We're like a cult with better Kool-Aid," over a glass containing a mixed drink, as well as the phrase "To die for!"

In November 1978, more than 900 members of Jim Jones' People's Temple drank cyanide-laced, grape-flavored punch in a mass murder and suicide in the group's compound in Guyana.

Patricia Barbera-Brown of South Bend, who lives a few blocks away from one of the billboards, said she was so shocked when she initially read the message that she drove around the block.

"I thought perhaps I had misread the sign," she recalls. "It brought back quite a few horrible images and memories, and the very notion that a local restaurant would trivialize such a worldwide tragedy to simply increase their sales of cocktails is outrageous to me, and it offended me to the core."

She sent an e-mail to Hacienda's executive telling them the billboards weren't "funny at all," calling them "extremely offensive and very irresponsible marketing."

Hacienda executives responded in writing, apologizing for offending her and informing her that the billboards would be taken down.

Like many restaurant companies, Leslie said Hacienda uses billboard advertising to connect with the community and resonate with customers. He said that company leaders look every year at their restaurants, the economy, their customers, and the competition to determine an idea or theme to use for advertising.

As they brainstormed about how people belong to clubs and teams, he said they discussed how an entity can develop a cult following of like-minded people.

"It went the wrong direction, hit a nerve, and we have come to realize we should not have done this billboard. We lose the core message," he said.

Katherine Sredl, assistant professor of marketing at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, agreed that the company's message came across wrong.

"They want people to think there are more things to love there than the food, but it's not the right humor for its clientele," she said.
http://www.cbsnews.com/st...range/main20034571.shtml

Sharon Says... they brainstormed this.. did not come across right??? Please its to nasty for words. Yikes.

My Recent Posts · Oct 23 11 9:27 PM

Oct, 9, 2011

“A Thousand Lives”:
What really happened
in Jonestown?

New look at the largest mass
suicide in American history

By Laura Miller

Were the deaths, in 1978, of more than 900 Americans in Jonestown, Guyana, a mass suicide or a massacre? And were the members of the Peoples Temple, who founded the settlement, the hypnotized victims of a cult dominated by a purely evil man? In the decades since the tragedy, as it recedes from popular awareness, scholars (and not a few cranks) have argued over the answers to these questions, obvious as they may seem to anyone who knows of the event primarily through the mass media. The latest entry in the discussion is “A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown” by Julia Scheeres, which looks at Jonestown from the perspective of the church’s rank-and-file members.

Strictly speaking, this story is not “untold”; of the 100 or so survivors of Jonestown, a few have written their stories, and a compilation of oral and written firsthand accounts has been published. However, Scheeres used a large cache of recently released FBI files to write what she describes as the first “comprehensive history of the doomed community” to incorporate that material. She also conducted her own interviews with survivors. Above all, her account is notably levelheaded in a field where sensationalism, conspiracy theories and bizarre reasoning run free.

In particular, Scheeres wants to show that the people who died at Jonestown weren’t “brainwashed zombies,” as they have sometimes been described. She also deliberately refrains from use of the word “cult,” a term currently in disfavor with students of comparative religion. To paraphrase the Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich (who said, “A language is just a dialect with an army and navy”), they argue that the only thing distinguishing many religions from so-called cults is that the religions have more numerous and powerful members.

For those unfamiliar with the story of the Peoples Temple, Jones was a charismatic Pentecostal pastor who, in 1950s Indiana, founded a church remarkable for its commitment to racial integration and aiding the poor. In the 1960s, he persuaded much of his flock to move to a community in Northern California and, in the 1970s, the church’s headquarters was relocated to San Francisco. There, Jones continued to win converts from among the dispossessed — drug addicts, delinquents, single mothers, the elderly and the unemployed, most of them black — while also attracting educated idealists inspired by the mixture of spirituality and social justice that Jones called “apostolic socialism.”

In its early years, the Peoples Temple did many good works: running soup kitchens and food and clothing drives, rehabilitating at-risk kids, nursing junkies through the agonies of withdrawal, providing free healthcare and services to seniors. Jones also proved adept at impressing radical-chic celebrities and local politicians — the latter were particularly interested in the large blocks of obedient voters he could deliver. San Francisco Mayor George Moscone even appointed Jones to the Housing Authority, where his entourage of brawny bodyguards and cheering seniors made the meetings more exciting, if less functional.

From early on, Jones used charlatanry to gain followers and donations, figuring that he’d turn the usual revival-tent antics to the service of a “better cause.” With the assistance of trusted aides, he staged assorted healings, mind-readings and other “miracles.” He was indefatigable — mostly because he was gobbling prescription drugs, stimulants known to produce paranoia in those who abuse them. Soon he was faking assassination attempts as well as healings, and threatening to kill enemies and apostates by supernatural means. Scheeres clearly believes that Jones’ drug problems played a major role in the deterioration of the Peoples Temple from a progressive evangelical church into an authoritarian cult.

Scheeres may not want to use that word, or “brainwashed,” but her own book demonstrates the need for stronger language to describe the Peoples Temple than “new religious movement,” the “value neutral” term preferred by religious scholars. Jones and his lieutenants employed techniques of isolation, intimidation and coercion to control church members, former members and perceived enemies — like the journalists who began asking too many awkward questions in 1973, prompting Jones to set up an “agricultural mission” in the small South American nation of Guyana. Many church members went to Jonestown for what they thought would be a few months, only to find themselves stranded in the middle of a dense jungle with no funds and their passports locked in a safe by church authorities.

As Jones’ paranoia worsened and the ability of the community to sustain itself faltered, the residents — effectively prisoners — were subjected to starvation rations, public denunciations, beatings, grueling labor details and the interminable demented harangues Jones slurred into the PA system at all hours. During drills that were dubbed “white nights,” Jones put everyone on alert, braced for military attacks from the commandos he insisted were lurking just outside the fences. He kept his weary flock up until the wee hours, demanding vote after vote on the option of “revolutionary suicide,” that is, a community-wide resolution to kill themselves rather than fall into the hands of their (nonexistent) beseigers. On more than one occasion, he ordered them to drink a Kool-Aid-like punch that he pretended was poisoned, as a “test” of their loyalty.

The physical and psychological stresses Jones inflicted on his followers — many of which fall within agreed-upon definitions of torture — explain in part why they were so vulnerable to his apocalyptic hysteria. They also lived in apocalyptic times, under the shadow of the political assassinations of the 1960s and haunted by an ever-present intimation that some form of revolution might happen at any moment. Also, church members believed that “fascist America” was spying on them and plotting their deaths because federal officials really were doing just that to such groups as the Black Panthers, who considered the Peoples Temple their allies.

The triggering event for the tragedy was an investigatory expedition to the compound led by Rep. Leo Ryan in response to relatives outside the church who complained that their family members were being held captive. Although Jones customarily kept dissidents and potential defectors drugged and confined during such official visits, several residents still managed to ask Ryan to take them with him when he left. As the group boarded two small aircraft outside the settlement, some church members followed and opened fire on them, killing Ryan, three journalists and one of the defectors. At that point, Jones realized that this would be his last chance to fulfill his long-cherished, megalomaniacal fantasy of making his followers die for him.

Scheeres calls the horrors of Nov. 18, 1978, a “massacre” rather than a mass suicide, pointing out that many of the victims — exhausted and disoriented as they were when Jones ordered them once more to drink poisoned punch — resisted, especially when they realized that this time the poison was real. Some were compelled to drink at gunpoint while others were forcible injected. Twenty-four of the victims were infants who were fed the drink by adults and 150 were under the age of 10. However, the willingness of enough church members to carry out Jones’ orders — murdering their own families, friends and finally themselves — indicates that his control over much of his flock remained absolute.

They would become the largest number of American civilians to die in a single, non-natural disaster until 9/11, yet Jonestown is less well-known than, say, the Manson Family murders to many people born since 1980. It doesn’t fit into a familiar narrative or offer a politically convenient villain. Jonestown illustrates the corruptibility of both religious piety and leftist utopianism, but the left does seem to struggle with it more than conservatives. For anyone who places too much faith in the espousal of right-on ideology (and that would include a lot of academics), Jim Jones is particularly troubling: How can someone who said all the right things go so wrong?

For all the thoughtfulness of “A Thousand Lives,” Scheeres herself runs aground trying to defend Jones’ followers from being written off as suicidal sheep. “If anything, the people who moved to Jonestown were idealists,” she writes. “They wanted to create a better, more equitable society.” But it is precisely the idealists who are most likely to get sucked into a nightmare like Jonestown, because when your goal is so very beautiful, it is so very tempting to cut moral corners.

It all began back when Jim Jones told himself that for the sake of social justice, it would be OK to fake a few “miracles.” Each new act of deception or bullying simply amplified that leeway a little more, infecting the whole community. For Jones, the power to do good mutated into power for its own sake. Jonestown is the darkest reminder of how, when the ends are allowed to justify the means, the means become an end in themselves.

http://www.salon.com/2011..._ride_harleys_to_church/

My Recent Posts · Nov 13 11 7:10 PM

18th November, 1978: The Cult leader Jim Jones instructed 400 members of his church, "People's Temple", to drink a soft drink brewed in a tub with cyanide and sedatives at a mass meeting at the Jonestown camp, the bodies were later discovered at a camp in the Jungle . The cult leader was being investigated by American Authorities for conditions at the camp and Jones was also being investigated for tax fraud . Prior to the mass suicide Jones had a number of his followers shoot reporters and the head of the investigation team Congressman Ryan.

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18th November, 1978

REMEMBER!

My Recent Posts · Nov 19 11 2:43 PM

18 November 2011

Jonestown:
Guyana ponders
massacre site's future

By Sarah Grainger

The site of Jonestown lies deep in the Guyanese rainforest and bears only a few reminders of what happened there

It's hard to believe that Jonestown ever existed.

The patch of rainforest in remote north-eastern Guyana where Jim Jones moved his People's Temple in the 1970s has been almost entirely reclaimed by the jungle.

Locals say if you search long enough, you can still find remnants of a tractor used for transport and agriculture and a filing cabinet that would have kept documents about the community.

The metal drums in which Jones mixed cyanide and fruit punch in preparation for the mass murder-suicide which took place at the site 33 years ago are also still in place.

"We should make sure it's not forgotten by the young people. They should know what can happen," says 80-year-old Wilfred Jupiter, a labourer who helped clear the land and build Jonestown in the 1970s.

Guyana is still the undeveloped backwater that first attracted the self-appointed Reverend Jim Jones. A former British colonial outpost in South America, its tropical location has done little for its tourist industry. It lacks the turquoise waters and white sandy beaches of nearby Caribbean islands.

Jonestown is one of the sites Gerry Gouveia thinks could draw tourists to Guyana

But some Guyanese would like to see the notoriety it gained through its connection with Jones converted into tourist dollars.

Carlton Daniels is the former postmaster in Port Kaituma, a scrappy mining town close to the old Jonestown compound. He's one of the few residents who remembers what happened there.

"Bringing in some tourist dollars could be good for development. There's a lot of gold mining right now, but minerals don't last for ever," he says.

'Most horrific scene'

Guyana unwittingly became the focus of media attention when Jones leased land there in 1974 to set up a branch of his People's Temple. In Jones' native United States, the cult had garnered criticism; some members had defected.

It was the most horrific scene, and it hasn't left me yet”

Gerry Gouveia First responder to the Jonestown massacre

English-speaking and largely undeveloped, Guyana offered a place for Jones to set up a commune away from prying eyes. Cult members built a school, a pavilion and cottages, growing what food they could in the tropical heat. But the critics' worst fears were realised on 18 November 1978.

After escaped cult members complained that the organisation was being run like a prison camp, US Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown to try to help some residents to leave.

As they got ready to board a plane at a nearby airstrip, some of Jones' security guards opened fire. Ryan was killed, along with four others.

"It was the most horrific scene, and it hasn't left me yet," says Gerry Gouveia.

As a young pilot in the military, he was one of the first on the scene.

"The priority was to evacuate the wounded from the airstrip and then we went back for the bodies, but we still had no idea about what was happening in Jonestown itself."

Only a few members of Jonestown escaped, some by walking through the jungle

After the shootings at the airstrip, Jones had gathered the remaining residents of the People's Temple and made them drink punch laced with cyanide.

Many "drank the Kool-Aid" but others were shot or had their throats cut. Jones himself was found shot dead. A total of 918 people died, all of them US citizens.

In memory

The compound was reclaimed by the jungle while Guyana dropped out of the headlines. Now, some Guyanese would like to see Jonestown redeveloped as a way of bringing much-needed income to the local area and putting this forgotten country on the tourism map.

"What we need to do is attract people to come to Guyana, whether that attraction is Jonestown or Kaieteur Falls or birding or ecotourism or cricket, to see what a wonderful country Guyana has turned out to be," says Mr Gouveia, who now runs his own airline and tour company.

The country erected a plaque at the site two years ago that reads "In Memory of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy".

A memorial graces the site, but Guyana is wary of the infamous association

Events are sometimes held on 18 November to commemorate the tragedy, although this year the anniversary is overshadowed by upcoming presidential elections. But the authorities in Guyana acknowledge that much more could be done.

"It's possible to recreate something to give people a walk-through experience, to show the videos and literature, to put up a museum of Jonestown," says Indranauth Haralsingh, director of the Guyanese tourism authority. "There could be targeted marketing first to the US and then elsewhere."

Other nations have shown that it's possible to commemorate atrocities with compassion and provide the opportunity for tourists to reflect on past events.

At the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, visitors can tread the same path as those who were about to enter the gas chambers. In Kigali, a memorial centre remembers the Rwandan genocide, a tragedy less than 20 years old.

But Guyana's government is wary of marrying the country's public image inextricably to Jonestown.

"We don't want to bring back the association with Jonestown and tragedy," Mr Haralsingh says. "So it's not our priority."

Advocates for a memorial centre at Jonestown face one huge hurdle - the remote location of the site.

Like much of Guyana's interior, there are no paved roads and few flights into this section of the rainforest. Jonestown will likely be left deep in the jungle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news...d-latin-america-15799345

My Recent Posts · Nov 19 11 4:31 PM

November 18, 2011

Combatting Those That
Are Honoring A Madman
"The Kiss Of Death"
On This Sad Anniversary

It's a special day. An especially sad day. 33 years ago a massacre occurred that never should have happened.

But for those in today's New Peoples Temple, the cultish behavior goes on and on. One of the red flags is when they attempt to sanitize and rationalize a monster, for his "good works," and to try any way they can to remain in denial about the true picture.

They really pulled it off this time, didn't they? And this afternoon at an Oakland, California cemetery, where there's a mass grave for hundreds of his victim, adopted son Jim Jones, Jr. will join with his other New Temple cronies and pay homage to his father--as a official "victim."

How do they do it--placing the name of the mastermind of a massacre right along side his victims?? (And, for that matter, the names of his accomplices--the Moore Sisters, Larry Schacht, Thomas Kice, Sr, et al-- that carried out the killings like a regiment of crazed Nazi SS executioners?)

But they did. And today these shameless cult apologists will pay their respects to a monster. Although not before an earlier memorial service, the authentic one, by a courageous woman who lost 27 members of her family at the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.

Her news release spells it out, revealing the added anguish of having to witness the memory of her murdered mother and 26 other family members defiled on this, one of the most painful days in her life:

Dr. Jynona Norwood, Jonestown Memorial Services & Wall founder and executive director, LEADS33rd Annual OfficialJonestown Memorial Service in honor of the beloved children-not jim jones AKA "THE KISS OF DEATH"

Survivors, Families and Friends of
Victims and Community Leaders Take Part

OAKLAND, CA - On Nov. 18, 1978 the world were reluctant witnesses to the human sacrifices in Jonestown, Guyana--that Paradise of Pain founded and led by James Warren "Jim" Jones, forever rendered infamous by its name "Jonestown." Total death toll: 918, Forty (40) tiny helpless infants, 265 frightened and tortured children from toddlers to teens a total of 305 innocent youths were ordered to be murdered by Jim Jones aka the Kiss of Death. Jim Jones - the Kiss of Death ordered the Assassination of U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and a United Press International film crew. the Jonestown Massacre remains the only time in history in which a U.S. Congressman was killed in the line of duty. Reported by CNN only Thirty - three (33) people escaped Jonestown on that fatal day and now thirty - three years later Jim Jones as we know him has been honored and his name rests in desecration on top of the children's sacred final resting place at Evergreen Cemetery in an act to sanitize his bloody tenure on earth for the horrific acts that he committed against humanity. Jonestown was the single most deadly non-natural disaster in U.S. history until September 11, 2001 and it is critical to remember and honor the real victims on this historically important day.
Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory said prior to the 2010 memorial, "As a family man with ten children and 12 grandchildren, I can feel the pain of that tragedy and I want to share the sympathy with family and friends."
WHO:	Dr. Jynona Norwood, Special Guests, Civil Rights leaders, community leaders,ministers and family members
WHAT:	Prayer Vigil at 33rd Annual Jonestown Memorial Service
WHEN:	Friday, Nov. 18, 2011 \| 11:00 a.m.
WHERE:	Evergreen Cemetery, 6450 Camden St. (at Foothill Blvd.), Oakland, CA
WHY:	To honor the victims and remind the public of the tragic murders of hard working and generous people, who had been in search of better lives for themselves and their children, were killed by Jim Jones
PRESS RSVP:	Dr. Jynona Norwood \| 310.292.5800 \| drnorwood4@aol.com Free refreshments

http://jonestownapologist...e-that-are-honoring.html　

My Recent Posts · Nov 22 11 2:24 PM

Amazon reclaims
site of U.S. cult
tragedy

By Girish Gupta
Nov 22, 2011

Wilfred Jupiter, 80, clears foliage from an oversized gravestone on a site deep in the Guyanese rainforest in Jonestown November 18, 2011.

JONESTOWN, Guyana - Wilfred Jupiter clears foliage from an oversized gravestone on a site deep in the Guyanese rainforest where more than 900 Americans died.

The 80-year-old is one of few locals in the remote Amazonian nation who recalls the commune set up here by Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple cult in 1974.

Four years later, the cult ended in a mass murder-suicide that was one of the largest ever losses of civilian U.S. life.

"I was shocked," said Jupiter, who had helped clear the thick jungle so Jones and his followers could set up their self-styled Utopia.

"I worked with these people every day ... then they all killed themselves."

Jones took his followers to this remote corner of Latin America, sandwiched between Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil, as U.S. authorities and the media began to scrutinize his activities, threatening the organization's existence.

Just a few rusty remnants remain at the site, which Jones billed as a socialist idyll complete with hospital, workshops and dormitories for the roughly 1,000 followers.

It was left to decay after Jones persuaded almost all his members to kill themselves in the tragedy that also took the life of a U.S. congressman in November 1978.

California representative Leo Ryan had traveled there following reports members of the cult were held against their will, according to media accounts from the time. He had wanted to offer them a chance to return to the United States.

As Ryan arrived at the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip with several defectors in tow, he was killed by Jones' security guards along with four others, according to witnesses, some of whom played dead until the gunmen drove off.

"It was the most horrific thing you'll ever see in your life," said Gerry Gouveia, then a young army pilot who loaded Ryan's body into a bag and flew it to the country's coastal capital Georgetown.

Gouveia had previously flown Jones to the commune and knew it well.

"These people had gone into the jungle and cleared it to create a beautiful living space," he said during an interview in the Guyanese capital Georgetown. "To me, it represented a kind of Utopia."

On November 18, 1978, that dream came to an end as, according to media reports, Jones forced followers to drink cyanide-laced "Flavor Aid" in a "revolutionary suicide" that Jones had forced them to rehearse many times before.

Those who resisted were shot or stabbed to death, according to the reports.

FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY

Local resident Carlton Daniels was present as U.S. troops came to collect the decaying bodies three days later.

"You can tell the (ethnicity) of people from the texture of their hair," said Daniels, 65, as he looked down at the ground where he had seen the bodies, their faces unrecognizable due to the effects of cyanide poisoning.

"The skin was transparent and covered in a grey fluid. Their features weren't there."

In all, according to U.S. authorities, 918 people died that day, 909 in Jonestown, five at the landing strip and a family of four in the country's capital Georgetown, having received orders to commit suicide.

Cheap corrugated plastic signs poke out of the jungle now in a feeble attempt to show the site's layout, pointing out the playground, kitchen and hospital. Despite only having been erected two years ago by local authorities, they are in tatters as the jungle rapidly takes over.

The memorial that Jupiter so fondly clears was built in 2009 though its white paint is already peeling under a relentless sun.

The site is now unrecognizable as that of a massacre.

"It would be nice to remind people of the dangers of cults," said Daniels. "You have to be more careful when you enter these organizations. They tell you one part of it but you've got to think for yourself and see if the truth is there."

http://www.reuters.com/ar...wn-idUSTRE7AL1QF20111122

My Recent Posts · Nov 23 11 3:00 PM

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How heartbreaking... cults... the devils own glory.

How could so many fall prey to this evil mans way... it is hard to believe..

And yet we must believe because it happened... and will happen again.. other cults will rise as some fall away.

Yuku free message boards

PEOPLES TEMPLE CULT ~ JIM JONES

PEOPLES TEMPLE CULT ~ JIM JONES

"Hurry, My Children, Hurry"

Q&A: A Jonestown Survivor Remembers

Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later

Survivors' perspectives

differ

Jonestown
Apologists
Alert

November 15, 2010

by Tom Kinsolving

Cult Expert On Jonestown: "A Mass
Mentality 'Manchurian Candidate'
That Killed The Enemy On Demand"

Memorial to Jonestown
Cult victims spurs fight

Outrage at Jonestown
Massacre Monument

“A Thousand Lives”:
What really happened
in Jonestown?

New look at the largest mass
suicide in American history

Jonestown:
Guyana ponders
massacre site's future

Amazon reclaims
site of U.S. cult
tragedy

By Girish Gupta
Nov 22, 2011

Yuku free message boards

PEOPLES TEMPLE CULT ~ JIM JONES

PEOPLES TEMPLE CULT ~ JIM JONES

"Hurry, My Children, Hurry"

Q&A: A Jonestown Survivor Remembers

Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later

Survivors' perspectives differ

Jonestown Apologists Alert

November 15, 2010by Tom Kinsolving

Cult Expert On Jonestown: "A Mass Mentality 'Manchurian Candidate' That Killed The Enemy On Demand"

Memorial to Jonestown Cult victims spurs fight

Outrage at Jonestown Massacre Monument

“A Thousand Lives”: What really happened in Jonestown?

New look at the largest mass suicide in American history

Jonestown: Guyana ponders massacre site's future

Amazon reclaims site of U.S. cult tragedyBy Girish GuptaNov 22, 2011

Survivors' perspectives

differ

Jonestown
Apologists
Alert

November 15, 2010

by Tom Kinsolving

Cult Expert On Jonestown: "A Mass
Mentality 'Manchurian Candidate'
That Killed The Enemy On Demand"

Memorial to Jonestown
Cult victims spurs fight

Outrage at Jonestown
Massacre Monument

“A Thousand Lives”:
What really happened
in Jonestown?

New look at the largest mass
suicide in American history

Jonestown:
Guyana ponders
massacre site's future

Amazon reclaims
site of U.S. cult
tragedy

By Girish Gupta
Nov 22, 2011