A “science” class in Dayton, Tennessee, from the BBC1 documentary Science Friction: Creation from 1996. These kids have been skull-fucked by superstition and generational ignorance. Fourteen years later and I wonder what some of these kids are doing now: if they ever escaped fundamentalist dogma or if they’re running for Congress as a Tea party candidate… Stick with this for the last line, it’s a classic.
 
I saw the above clip at Religious Douchebags, a great site that Christian Nightmares introduced to me. And check out this stupidly paranoiac and tres cheesy ‘80s ditty called Cathy Don’t Go that was posted on Christian Nightmares. Don’t go where, you ask? Listen to the song and find out!
 

 
(Religious Douchebags)

(Scientology’s main man, David Miscavige, front and center)
 
Today’s Broadsheet tips us off to some Scientology news that’s as disturbing as it is, perhaps, unsurprising.  According to a two-part investigation by the St. Petersburg Times, Scientology’s maritime-y power base, Sea Org, has been treating its pregnant members to campaigns of intimidation, isolation and, in some cases, forced manual labor.

In exchange for signing “billion-year contracts,” Sea Org women are given food, housing, and medical care, but being a member of Scientology’s spiritual elite apparently leaves no time for mothering.

Or so believes Church spokesman Tommy Davis (son of actress and Church grande dame, Anne Archer), who says that a no-children policy was created because babies were “viewed as interfering with the productivity of Sea Org members,” and “the long and demanding working hours required of Sea Org members…were obstacles to parents properly raising their children.”

But former Scientology security chief Gary Morehead goes several (more ominous) steps further, saying that the organization considered pregnancies “a slap in the face,” and that “special councils formulated strategies to convince women to abort.”  Interviews with some of these “convinced” women follow below:

 
That’s what they mean. Satan’s been literally paralyzed. He’s in a wheelchair now. Or so say the singing Christian pirate puppets. Or something.

 
You could call Charles Fort (1874 – 1932) the “first Ufologist”—and many do—but that’s already, um, damning the quirky author of The Book of the Damned with feint praise. Fort was more of a scientist (or scientific researcher), but not in any sort of traditional sense most people would recognize as science. A better description of his interests would be to say that what fascinated Fort were the things which were intellectually excluded by science. Rains of frogs, alien spacecraft, meat falling from the sky and spontaneous human combustion were the grist for his mill and this is what he spent his life meticulously cataloging.

Fort was also a bit of a comedian, a Swiftian satirist of science. He hated the idea of experts and thumbed his nose at scientific authority. Fort was a sworn enemy of orthodox rationality. His prose is a delight and is a part of his strong attraction for many readers. His style is “circular,” I guess you might say. Repetitive, but this is kind of the point, to be bludgeoned by the sheer force of the number of examples he’d throw at readers, into accepting the simple fact that something awfully strange is going on here.

Fort, who invented words like “teleporter” kept his notes, his Forteana, if you will, on notecards. Although from time to time, the eccentric author would burn his research, tens of thousands of his cards survive and can be viewed at the New York Library’s Rare Book Room (I’ve looked at some of them myself). In his day, Fort had his share of detracters (his friend H.L. Mencken said his head was filled with “Bohemian mush”!) but also many prominent admirers such as Ben Hecht, Theodore Drieser and Oliver Wendell Homes.

The influence of Charles Fort’s work is subtle but pervasive throughout popular culture. No Fort, no X-Files, for instance. No Art Bell or George Noory, either. Although Fort was in life and after his death, a relatively obscure writer, his work still holds a strong fascination for many people who consider him an intellectual giant. And of course there is a magazine, The Fortean Times, which keeps the flame alive as well as regional organizations of Fortean enthusiasts and a yearly convention.

Dangerous Minds pal Skylaire Alfvegren organizes The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists (or L.O.W.F.I) and she’s got a great short biographical essay of Charles Fort at the Fortean West website:

There is a man, largely undiscovered by the modern world, whom I, and many others, believe made one of the most significant contributions to the world of science. Had it not been that he vehemently opposed modern scientists and their methods, his work might be enjoying a greater popularity than it does. Had this man decided to write about completely different topics, he would be hailed as a fabulous literary character. Here was a peculiar fellow. Charles Fort devoted 26 years of his life to compiling documented reports of scientific anomalies from journals and newspapers from all around the world. He lived in dire poverty so that truth could prevail. His life’s work may one day be of great scientific worth, should the established scientific community ever muster the courage to approach it.

Anomalies. This is what Fort trafficked in. Reports of prehistoric beasts frolicking in the world’s oceans. (Loch Ness, Champ, Storsjon Animal). Ancient artifacts found in improbable places (Roman coins in the deserts of Arizona, Chinese seals found buried deep in the forests of Ireland, small statues of horses discovered in pre-Columbian Venezuela). Falls of things other than rain from the sky (red rains in 1571 England, 1744 Genoa; a rain of “73 organic formations, particular to South America” in France in 1846). Unidentified aerial phenomena (excluding Ezekiel’s Biblical description. Fort’s list contains the first known report of a so-called “UFO”, dating from 1779). These are but a few of the subjects Fort spent his lifetime collecting reports of. This anomalous data are roped together under the banner of “Forteana”, a term which probably does not exist in any dictionary, because that which it pertains to isn’t supposed to exist at all.

He who championed underdogs, has been and will likely continue to be, one of the greatest underdogs of all time. For he has not a baseball team or brooding thespians to compete with, but the entire history of the scientific world. His work spat in the face of conventional scientists. There is much going on around us that defies explanation. Fort amassed reports of events seen by humans around the world countless times, which, none the less, have been dismissed. The data he collected were excommunicated by science, which acts like a religion. “The monks of science” he wrote, “dwell on smuggeries that are walled away from event-jungles- Science has done its utmost to prevent whatever science has done” (the Book of the Damned, p. 245). His legacy, his collection of data lies before us. It is indisputable, and yet still ignored. The reports he gathered could make any enemy of science acquire a renewed enthusiasm for the subject. In his four published works, the Book of the Damned (1919). New Lands (1923) Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932) we find over 1,200 documented reports of occurrences which orthodox science refuses to attempt to explain. Explanation was not Fort’s purpose. He merely presented the data, sometimes with his own speculations, sometimes with tongue in cheek. While anomalies can be entertaining, they can also be deeply disturbing, for they undermine the foundations of science, the idea that every thing in this world is rational and under control. Articles like those collected in Fortean Times and the INFO Journal (International Fortean Organization), two publications which continue Fort’s work, prove that things are not under our control, nor will they ever be. Many people, including scientists, find this discomforting and so ignore that which they cannot explain.

The Life, Work and Influence of Charles Fort (Fortean West)

 
Earlier this year, in a stunning verbal gaffe, South Carolina’s (soon to be former) Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer compared helping the poor to feeding stray animals, because they “breed”! Obviously a Republican, Bauer, a wealthy white man who flies small planes, later said he wasn’t saying those who receive government help “were animals or anything else.” (What were you trying to say, fuck wit?) Well, he lost his election bid yesterday, coming in DEAD LAST in a state where over 50% of all schoolchildren receive subsidized or free lunches from the government. Clearly his political instincts are shit. Just like his brains.

This is someone showing you the very stuff his black, immoral little soul is made of. From CBS News:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

As the Greenville News notes, more than half of the students in South Carolina participate in a program that allows them to get their lunch for free, or at a reduced cost.

Bauer later said he wasn’t saying those who receive government help “were animals or anything else.”

What an utterly contemptible ass-clown this guy is. This is the kind of comment that haunts you forever, hanging around your neck like a big, dumb, dead albatross. Google Andre Bauer for the rest of his life, and there future employers, voters and anyone else who cares enough about this twat to type his name into a search field will find people like me telling this story. It serves him right, but the thing is, look at him. Do you think there is a chance in Hell that Andre Bauer has a self-reflexive bone in his body? Not a chance. If he did he wouldn’t think this way in the first place. He got what he deserved yesterday from the voters of his state: the bum’s rush. Karma’s a bitch, Andre!

And more in politics from the hilariously funny great state of South Carolina: A random unemployed guy who no one seems to know much of anything about (update) wins Democratic senate primary: The mysterious Alvin Greene has become “an inspiration for random unemployed dudes everywhere,” as Gawker tells it. The chairwoman of the S.C. Democratic party speculated to the AP that “people who didn’t know either candidate and voted alphabetically may help explain Greene’s win.”

Random Unemployed Dude Wins South Carolina Democratic Primary (Gawker)

South Carolina’s Mysterious Dem Senate Candidate Likes Showing Sexy Pics to College Ladies (Gawker)

 
Although it’s fairly obvious why someone would say hypnotist and mass “faith healer” Anatoly Kashpirovsky is Russia’s “new” Rasputin, calling him Russia’s Uri Geller or even Russia’s Benny Hinn, seems like a better fit. Kashpirovsky, a controversial—and very famous—television “remote healer” was all the rage when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, but the psychic left Russia 15 years ago to “treat” Russian ex-pats in the US (see what I mean about him being a Russian Benny Hinn?). Now he’s back on television in Russia and opinion is no less contentious. From a fascinating article in the Guardian by Moscow-based journalist Marc Bennetts:

Clad entirely in black, his piercing eyes staring into apartments across the vast territory of the USSR, Kashpirovsky “treated” millions, his voice both reassuring and oddly threatening.

“For those of you with high blood pressure, your blood pressure will lower… whoever has hip injuries, they will heal…” he droned, his litany of the suffering and the saved a potent lullaby that plunged the nation into a communal trance.

Who cared if the country was collapsing around them, if the shops were almost empty, and the threat of separatist violence in the Caucasus was moving ever closer? The USSR turned on, tuned in and switched off.

“The streets would empty whenever Kashpirovsky came on,” journalist Katya Murzina tells me. “I was just a kid, but I remember we all talked about his shows at school. Everyone was convinced he really could heal the nation.

“We had never seen anything like this on TV before,” she goes on. “You have to remember, there were basically no adverts on Soviet TV. Everything was taken at face value. So if state TV presented him as possessing these incredible powers, most people believed it.”

I suppose that would explain why anyone would be convinced of Kashpirovsky’s “talents: after watching something as silly as this:
 

 
Faith healer Anatoly Kashpirovsky: Russia’s new Rasputin (Guardian)

Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 
“The Mashin’ of the Christ,” an amazing short film set to Negativland’s “Christianity is Stupid.” Made by Negativland, i.d. and Heath Hanlin. From the Our Favorite Things DVD. (I just bought it today, it’s awesome.)

Want to know more about the preacher on the song? Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Christploitation Cinema: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

Negativland’s Mark Hosler discusses the making of Christianity is Stupid (YouTube)

 
What fun watching Republicans in Raleigh, N.C. trying to throw Tea party-supported candidate Tim D’Annunzio under a bus. He’s ahead in the polls, his campaign has deep pockets and yet Tim’s a pariah in establishment GOP circles in the state. If I lived in North Carolina, I’d vote for this guy and I have not cast a single Republican vote in my life. To elect a pothead, ex-junkie deadbeat dad Republican who believes he’s the Messiah? You are kidding me? This is going to be the best contest in the entire country! I may donate to this guy’s campaign.

From AP:

Tim D’Annunzio, a congressional candidate in North Carolina’s most competitive district, has run an anti-establishment campaign with vows to dismantle entire branches of the federal government. His ideas have drawn support from tea party activists, and he has raised more money from individuals than his GOP rival while also contributing more than $1 million to his own campaign.

Republican leaders in both Raleigh and Washington, however, are worried about his electability in November if he wins a primary runoff next month. They’re publicizing court documents about D’Annunzio’s past legal, martial and business troubles and denouncing him as unfit for office.“Mr. D’Annunzio has disqualified himself by his background, his record and his behavior,” said Tom Fetzer, North Carolina’s Republican Party chairman. He said the GOP embraces the tea party but doesn’t believe a person with such a checkered past should be the party’s nominee.

In Hoke County divorce records, his wife said in 1995 that D’Annunzio had claimed to be the Messiah, had traveled to New Jersey to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. A doctor’s evaluation the following month said D’Annunzio used marijuana almost daily, had been living with another woman for several months, had once been in drug treatment for heroin dependence and was jailed a couple times as a teenager.

The doctor concluded that his religious beliefs were not delusional. A judge wrote in a child support ruling a few years later that D’Annunzio was a self-described “religious zealot” who believed the government was the “Antichrist.” The judge said he was willfully failing to make child support payments.

D’Annunzio declined Monday to discuss the specifics of his past and refused to confirm or deny the details of the court documents. He acknowledged having “a troubled upbringing” but that he got himself out of it and changed his life 16 years ago, when he had a religious conversion.

“The bigger story is that the power brokers in Raleigh and in Washington are willing to go to any length and use any unscrupulous tactic to try to destroy somebody,” he said. “They think that they’re losing their control over the Republican party.

“

They obviously are! This character makes even Rand Paul seem sane. Can the Sarah Palin endorsement be far behind?

 
Meet the wolf-pack! They’re not goth. They aren’t “Emo,” either. They’re something altogether goofier! Not so much mall-rats as mall-wolves, I suppose. And they will have you know that they are not posers!

 
Mobile, Alabama-based traveling evangelist, Anthony Hopkins, who authorities say terrorized his family while preaching the gospel was sentenced to life in prison, plus 51 years after being convicted of killing his wife and hiding her body in a home freezer for three years. Circuit Judge John Lockett imposed the sentence Thursday on Anthony Hopkins in Mobile. Assistant District Attorney Ashley Rich called Hopkins “evil of the worst kind.”

Prosecutor told jurors that Anthony Hopkins terrorized his wife and young children, isolated them and used the Bible to manipulate them. “He was the supreme commander of his own little army,” said Assistant District Attorney Jill Phillips.

After 90 ,minutes of deliberation, the jury in Mobile also found Hopkins guilty of sodomy, rape, incest and sexual abuse of a child between the ages of 12 and 16.

From an April 6th, 2010 article on the Black Christian News website, prior to the trial’s conclusion:

People who heard traveling evangelist Anthony Hopkins deliver sermons in the rural Southern towns where he preached sometimes called him a psychic or even a prophet.

But prosecutors say the former soldier kept dark secrets while spreading God’s word. They accuse him of killing his wife, storing her body in a freezer for years and raping and molesting a young female relative.

Opening statements in his trial were expected to start Tuesday.

Hopkins, 39, was arrested in 2008 while preaching a rural revival in Clarke County. A teenage relative allegedly pregnant with his baby led police to the body of 36-year-old Arletha Hopkins, a mother of eight ranging in age from an infant to late teens.

Investigators say Hopkins killed his wife in 2004 after she caught him having sex with a female relative, then stuffed her body into a freezer at the Mobile home he shared with her, six children and two stepchildren.

Nicholas L. Jackson Sr., pastor of a small church in Jackson where Hopkins sometimes preached, told a local newspaper in 2008 that many who heard him considered him a prophet with psychic abilities.

“When he told you something was going to happen, you could pretty much count on it,” he said.

Then Hopkins should have seen his own sordid fate. May he rot in hell.

There’s one slightly amusing note to this tragic story: When asked if ministers should be held to a higher standard than laymen, one of the potential jurors is said to have replied “Yeah, they should practice what they preach!” Amen, brother.
 

WKRG.com News