And the Navy just named a ship after him....SMH!
Posted on 11/14/2021 10:57:04 AM PST by Drew68
This was a contemporary testimony but nearly 43 years later, is still horrific.
It's also timeless, given current events.
And finally, it's a reminder that at one time, Rolling Stone engaged in actual investigative journalism, before they just started making crap up.
It's long, not excerpted, but worth the read.
Left-wing death cult...
You should be commended for posting the whole thing. Thank you.
Quickly scrolled through, stopping at a few points to imbibe the verbiage in consideration of whether to bear down and read the whole.
The nagging truth is this: The Rolling Stone has so soiled itself with fabrications of late that I am jaded in regard to their reporting from decades ago.
This is confirmation for me that is the America the Democrats are trying to foist on Americans with unwanted and crude vaccines being the cyanide kool-aid! Jim Jones has been playing around in my head a few weeks now, even before the news of of this movie being done. Much of the brow beating Jim Jones psychology is the same. We are being pushed to national suicide by these sons of belial Democratic brigands and it time to say enough!
FWIW, it's been my personal policy in the 20 years I've been here to post complete articles except when excerpts are required, and then I'll post as much as I can get away with.
All too often articles disappear (or are edited later).
Thank you for posting. Jim Jones was a model liberal in too many ways. And like Jones, liberalism is bringing us down the same path to death and destruction.
After those opening paragraphs, describing the state of the cadavers, I had read enough for the time being.
It’s an important article, but I knew a family in Oakland who lost a member to that group. This brought it all back to that dark week in November.
Congresswoman Jackie Speier was there in Guyanna with Congressman Ryan the day he was shot. She and others in the group were also shot. Jackie played dead to survive.
She’s a Liberal menace in my state today, but I still admire her strength to make it through such a calamity and not retreat from society.
This was Communism on a small scale. All the twisted ingredients were there and the end result is always the same: death and destruction. Let it be an example of what we must resist as our own Communist Revolution unfolds.
I had followed the rabbit hole of google photos. I think most of us recall the photos at the time, taken from about 300 feet in the air. The bodies were nondescript, face down. Back then, the media shied away from publishing the more gruesome stuff. But they're out there, in full color. Close up. Bodies bloated and twisted, purple from the cyanide. The worst are the children.
No reason to provide any links. We all know how to use google.
Another thing that struck me from the opening paragraphs was the writer's encounters with Hare Krishnas at the airport. Another quaint detail of 1970s American life that has largely vanished. I had forgotten all about this but remembered seeing them as a kid. One gave me a book with very colorful, artistic drawings. My mom let me keep it just because I found it so weird and creepy.
Thanks for posting this. I also recommend the excellent book “Raven” for the definitive work on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. I’ve gone to one of the yearly memorials in the Oakland ceremony (for all the children killed in Guyana).
Many of the dead left wills giving all their possessions to the USSR. Originally, fleeing to the Soviet Union was part of their end-times planning but it all fell through. They idolized the Soviets, believing the USSR to be a perfect society.
I wonder how much of this will be glossed over in the upcoming film.
"Raven" was written by reporter Tim Reiterman who survived the attack at the airfield that killed Congressman Leo Ryan.
As of five years ago, the book was in development as a miniseries by Vince Gilligan, who was the developer of "Breaking Bad". I don't know where it is now.
My sympathies go to whatever group of humans who had to clean that site up. People don’t think about that part.
Such carnage doesn’t just disappear because it’s ugly or ghoulish. It would take nature and animals too long to dispose of all this toxic organic material.
Most of it would need to be loaded and carted away, dropped into a body of water, buried under soil, or set aflame. I don’t know which disposal method was finally chosen. My own nature is morbid just enough to ponder such things, but not necessarily look up the answers.
And the Navy just named a ship after him....SMH!
I can't believe it either.
They couldn't have found a gay guy that didn't rape runaway boys for this honor?
It's discussed in the article, and about as unpleasant a task as one could imagine. The bodies were not cooperating.
Good find and worth the read. Thanks
| Excerpts: |
“I hated being an addict,” Odell said. When the Peoples Temple buses came through Detroit, an alcoholic friend decided to join. The next time they came through, the friend looked up Odell. The friend was dry, sharp, well dressed. “He looked like a successful businessman,” Odell said. And Odell, who had failed twice trying to kick his habit, decided to check out the temple. Jim Jones, he said, gave him a new self-image. He was intelligent. He was useful. Odell was given a job in the San Francisco temple. “The area it was in,” he said, “was like where I had come from in Detroit. But I could walk down the street with money in my pocket and pass it all up.” The children would throw their arms around Odell and call him “Daddy.” He was worried about that at first. Jim Jones was Daddy. Jim Jones was Father. But the leaders in the organization appreciated his efforts. Odell, they said, was providing a stable image for the youngsters. His estimation of his own worth soared. “I really loved those kids,” he told me. Jones began making connections between events, part real, part delusion...The connections were made: Stennis, Nazi reporters, the Treasury Department. Now, an even more sinister force was against Jones. A group of temple defectors were telling “lies,” speaking to the “Nazi” reporters, and for publication....things started going sour in Jonestown. The food deteriorated. The workdays increased. It seemed, to Odell’s experienced eye, that Jim Jones was developing a serious drug problem....The books and magazines were about conspiracies, spies, political imprisonment, people who manipulate the news and Marxism. A large red book contained dozens of Russian posters; one showed Lenin speaking before a crowd of workers. Jones told the community he had cancer, a kidney disorder, diabetes, hypertension and hypoglycemia. He was God, “God manifested a hundredfold,” the only God they’d ever known. The God of the Bible had been used to oppress people for centuries. He was building a socialist utopia, providing economic and social equality to the oppressed and scorned. And now traitors were killing him with their plots. One top aide saw him “crying hysterically, as if his whole life was a failure.” His hate and fear were contagious. Elderly women united to kill the defectors. He held his hands up for the people to see, and they were running with blood. “I’m bleeding for the people,” he said. (“Ground glass,” a surviving Jonestown nurse told me later.) ...The community was totally dependent on him. Without him they were nothing and he told them so. It frightened them to realize he was ill. From an eighty-nine-year-old woman: “Dear Dad, I would rather die than go back to the States as there is plenty of hell there. I would give my body to be burned for the cause than be over there… If I had to go back, I would like to have a gun and use it [she names several temple defectors who worked with the anti temple Human Freedom Movement] and have them all in a room together and take a gun and spray the row of them. I am glad to have a Dad and Father like you… “ no one ever left and remained neutral. They sold out. They told lies. They joined the traitors. Perhaps those who spoke of leaving were infiltrators. Everyone could see what their words did to Father. He had to protect himself. “No one leaves Jonestown unless they’re dead,” Jones said. Jonestown itself had become a joycamp in its last year. There was no barbed wire around the perimeter. It wasn’t needed. Escape was a dream. The jungle stretched from horizon to horizon, thick, swampy and deadly. Armed security guards patrolled the few trails, and it was their business to know where an escapee would look for food and water. Rumor had it that captured escapees had had their arms broken. Toward the end, most of them were simply placed in the euphemistically named Extra Care Unit, where they were drugged senseless for a week at a time. Patients emerged from ECU unable to carry on a conversation, and their faces were blank, as if they had been temporarily lobotomized. They were told that even if they could survive the jungle, elude the guards and somehow make it almost 150 miles to Georgetown, they’d be stuck there. The temple held their passports as well as any money they might have had when they arrived. There were informers everywhere. They got time off, extra food, extra privileges, sometimes even a pat on the back from Father. Children informed on their parents, parents on children. Senior citizens were prized as informers. In rare moments of privacy, one resident might express “negative” opinions to another. It was unwise to reply with anything but criticism of such ideas. The person might be an informer, and any agreement would put you on the floor and result in a beating. The aftermath of a beating used to be called “discipline,” but the name was changed to the more euphemistic “public service.” Jones became more and more radical in his opinions. Charles Manson was misunderstood. The Red Brigades, who kidnapped and eventually murdered President Aldo Moro of Italy, had done a good thing. People took notes, dreading the tests. About nine p.m., it was time for Russian class. Such phrases as “Good day, comrade,” were practiced for an hour and a half. People paid attention, because supposedly they would someday visit Russia, a “paradise on earth” where the government “helped liberation movements.” On the boat from Georgetown to Jonestown, he met a young, female temple member. They talked about how they were home for the first time: home in a socialist country with black leaders. They were finally free The conspiracy came to a head on Saturday, November 18th, during Ryan’s visit. Some temple members had deserted in the morning, when security was concentrating on the Ryan party. Now others were saying they wanted to leave with Ryan. Whole families – the Parkses, the Bogues – had turned traitor. When Ryan and his collection of traitors left for Port Kaituma, gunmen followed. The shadow forces had won. But the party was too large and they were going to take two planes. .. gunmen arrived from Jonestown and began firing at the other plane. Ryan, Patty Parks and newsmen Bob Brown, Don Harris and Greg Robinson were killed. Others were wounded. The gunmen retreated to Jonestown. ..“Those people won’t reach the States,” Jones told the community. ..He instructed Larry Schact, the town doctor, to prepare the poison...It was time to die with dignity. The children would be first. Death came in less than five minutes. The baby weat into convulsions, and Jones – very calm, very deliberate – kept repeating, “We must take care of the babies first.” Some mothers brought their own children up to the killing trough. Others took children from reluctant mothers. Some of the parents and grandparents became hysterical, and they screamed and sobbed as their children died...Jones stepped off his throne and walked into the audience. “We must hurry,” he said. He grabbed people by the arm and pulled them to the poison... Security men with crossbows circled the pavilion. Men with guns guarded the periphery. Jones was a contradiction of everything he stood for. He denigrated sex, but he slept with any woman who pleased him. He brought homosexuals to the floor for beatings, but had sex with men. He stood for social equality, and ate platters full of meat while others ate rice. He preached racial equality, and yet the leadership of his primarily black organization was mostly white. He railed against slavery, but he forced his followers to work twelve hours a day in the fields. He fed them maggoty rice and they called him Father instead of Massa. He feared oppression but became an oppressor. In the end, he put a bullet through his brain, killing all those things he hated with such vehemence.This story is from the January 25, 1979 issue of Rolling Stone. |
Thanks for posting. More hideous and evil than I ever realized.
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