Today's Topics:
A Dobbstown for Rednecks?
Here's good news!
Is "Bob" a subgenius?
Xtians
When the war breaks out in Mexico I'll be in orbit
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Message-Id: <8907241559.AA15310@BEETHOVEN.MIT.EDU>
From: "The Rt. Rev. Wor. Dr. Y. Foo" <dryfoo@athena.mit.edu>
Subject: A Dobbstown for Rednecks?
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 89 11:59:46 EDT
REFERENCE:
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 89 23:42:42 EDT
From: clipsend@jennings.LCS.MIT.EDU (Clipping Service)
Subject: BC SECT WEAPONS SFCHRON
Matched Filter Line: gay
type: NYT (Copyright 1989 The New York Times)
priority: Regular
date: 07-20-89 0759EST
category: Domestic
subject: BC SECT WEAPONS SFCHRON
title: MONTANA SECT MEMBERS STOCKPILING WEAPONS
author: DON LATTIN
text:
PARADISE VALLEY, Mont. -- Residents of this picturesque valley bordering
Yellowstone National Park are in a frenzy this week amid allegations
that a burgeoning New Age sect in the area is stockpiling arms and
frantically building underground bomb shelters.
Fear in the community was heightened earlier this month with the arrest
of a leading church member on federal firearms charges.
Vernon Hamilton, described by federal officials as the security chief of
Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant, was arrested
July 7 in Spokane for allegedly purchasing arms under a false name.
Documents taken from Hamilton's church-owned vehicle, federal officials
said, detail plans to purchase more than $130,000 worth of high-powered
weapons and ammunition -- an arsenal designed to arm 200 people. Federal
authorities seized more than a dozen semi-automatic weapons from
Hamilton's car and storage locker.
Included in the arsenal were .50-caliber Barrett rifles equipped with
spotting scopes and ``intended to take out an armored personnel
carrier,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said.
``There's trouble in paradise,'' Park County Commissioner Carlo Cieri
said.
Until the latest revelations, ranchers living around the commune had
become used to neighbors who chant for spiritual protection and follow
the disembodied advice of an obscure 18th century French count.
Much of their church members' time in recent months has been spent
building underground fallout shelters and stockpiling food to survive
what church members believe may be an imminent nuclear attack.
This activity is inspired by a ``prophetic message'' issued by the sect
two years ago that the nation must shore up its nuclear defenses by
October 1989.
Otherwise, Prophet warned, ``you invite the bear into your own haven''
for ``a reckoning and a confrontation.''
Hoping to defuse the uproar in Paradise Valley, sect leader Elizabeth
Clare Prophet and other church leaders held a three-hour ``town
meeting'' Tuesday night for neighboring ranchers and residents of nearby
Gardiner and Livingston.
Standing before a packed dining room of 300 church members and grizzled
ranchers in cowboy hats eating pizza and drinking sodas at the Ranch
Kitchen, a church-owned restaurant on the sect's 33,000-acre Royal Teton
Ranch, Prophet denied that she knew anything about a church plan to
amass an arsenal of assault weapons on the commune.
She stressed, however, that ``individual members of our staff have the
right to bear arms,'' adding that most of them do.
``If I were in your shoes, I would be concerned, too,'' said Prophet,
dressed in a pink suit and standing ramrod straight before a microphone.
(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL ADD FOLLOWS.)
``I will not stop until I get to the bottom of this.''
Neighbors say Prophet may want to start her probe by talking to Ed
Francis, her husband and vice president of Church Universal and
Triumphant.
Among the documents seized in the church-owned car is a handwritten
letter from Hamilton to Francis describing an elaborate scheme to obtain
false identification under which Hamilton would go by the name Malcolm
Edward Pace.
Pace, a gay attorney and the son of former San Jose, Calif., Mayor
Joseph Pace, died of AIDS last year.
It was unknown why Hamilton picked that name, although Pace's story was
part of a Public Broadcasting Service documentary about AIDS shown last
February.
Francis, previously an easily accessible media spokesman for the church,
has dropped out of sight since Hamilton's arrest.
Prophet said he was ``out of town on church business.''
Prophet's first husband, Mark Prophet, died in 1973, some 25 years after
founding the Church Universal and Triumphant, which was called The
Summitt Lighthouse until then.
Their teachings about ``channeled'' messages from ``ascended masters''
draw heavily on the century-old ideas of Theosophy and the ``Mighty I
Am'' movement of Guy and Edna Ballard, who attracted more than 1 million
followers in the 1930s and 1940s.
Today, the chief channeler is Elizabeth Clare Prophet, known as ``Guru
Ma'' or ``Mother'' by her disciples, who are estimated to number between
10,000 and 25,000.
After 10 years in Southern California, her sect began buying property
here in 1981. About 600 members of the sect live on and around the
ranch, which is now the church's world headquarters.
Unlike most of the amorphous ``New Age'' movement, Church Universal and
Triumphant has a rigidly conservative political bent.
It is fiercely anti-Communist and has called for government support of
the Nicaraguan Contras and the Star Wars defense system.
``Coyote Bob'' Watters, whose 15-acre spread is surrounded by
church-owned land, said the recent revelations about bomb shelters and
possible arms caches has him and his wife worried.
``This is beyond religion now. This is a social problem,'' he said.
``It'll take nine months for the National Guard to flush them out of
there.''
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From: dryfoo@athena.mit.edu
Message-Id: <8907241605.AA15318@BEETHOVEN.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Here's good news!
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 89 12:05:21 EDT
} you mean i should go all the way to plymouth for this?
Yeah. You and about a hundred of your weirdest friends. Dress real
normal and get there an hour before the suggested time. Take up the
entire front section. Then we start cheering and singing at all the
wrong times, booing all mentions of "Xian liberty" et cetera. We could
ruin his day, and make ours.
Fun?
-- dr foo
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Date: Mon, 24 Jul 89 11:40:53 CDT
From: Joshua Glasser <glasser@src.honeywell.com>
Message-Id: <8907241640.AA09984@fiesta.src.honeywell.com>
Subject: Is "Bob" a subgenius?
yesterday, at the kiddy parade at Showboat Days, i saw a man smoking
a pipe driving a mint condition, old hardtop convertible with the top half
retracted. or was it half extended? at any rate, the man was throwing gold
out of his car, and the kids were scrambling to pick it up. i jumped in,
pushed a few kids out of the way and nabbed quite a few peices for myself.
they were not in fact gold. just colored gold foil wrapped chocolate covered
peanut butter. the man stopped his car, and hailed me. up close he didn't
look very much like bob. but the pipe was the same! i felt quite at ease in
his presence. he said: "what kind of watch is that? you like candy, eh?
give you the whole bag for that watch.". sure. i threw him the watch. he
drove right off without giving me the bag.
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Date: Mon, 24 Jul 89 12:47:23 EDT
From: "joel s. kollin" <joel@media-lab.media.mit.edu>
Message-Id: <8907241647.AA25555@media-lab>
Subject: Xtians
I've been thinking about this for a while, and I came to the conclusion
that the correct spelling should be Xians, not Xtians. More consistant
with X-mas etc, and reminiscent of the little creatures in Hack that
sap your strength. ("the Xian hits - your wallet feels lighter")
And if they give you shit about it, tell them you won't take the name
of the Fighting Jesus in vain.
Rev. K
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Date: Mon, 24 Jul 89 16:34 EDT
From: Michael Travers <mt@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: When the war breaks out in Mexico I'll be in orbit
Message-ID: <19890724203450.5.MT@OUROBOROS.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
[From Spaceflight, May issue, courtesy Henry Spencer.]
Tass reports that Soviet bureaucrats are trying to prosecute Sergei
Krikalev for draft-dodging, given that he failed to report for army-
reserve duty several months ago. Krikalev has been unable to report as
requested because he has been in orbit aboard Mir. The Tass headline
was "Space is no escape from dim-wit bureaucrats, cosmonaut learns."
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End of SubGenius Digest
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