DebateGate

Crying Kids Pray Over George Bush At Jesus Camp
Film Documents Childrens' Summer At 'Jesus Camp'

POSTED: 9:08 am EDT September 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- The new documentary "Jesus Camp" is shocking Christians and non-Christians alike with its scenes of children sobbing and crying out to God at a Pentecostal summer camp in North Dakota.

The film follows Midwestern children Rachael, now 10, Levi, now 13, and Tory, now 11, who attended Fischer's Bible camp in Devils Lake, N.D., in 2005, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Filmmaker Heidi Ewing said she was raised Catholic and her co-director, Rachel Grady, is Jewish, enabling them to present what they hope is a neutral view of Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire" program.

Grady said Fischer let them make the documentary in hopes of reaching unsaved people.

In the film, the children cheered when asked if they'd be willing to give up their lives for Jesus, prayed over a cardboard cutout of President George W. Bush and cried as they pleaded for an end to abortion, the Los Angeles Times reported. The paper said that one of the children is home-schooled by a mother who teaches that "science doesn't prove anything."

Ewing said the children explained that they wept because God's heart is broken over a lost and sinful world. But she added that the children didn't seem unhappy -- just more intense than the average American child. Grady said all of the kids plan to become missionaries.

Some critics have labeled the camp a frightening example of brainwashing and child abuse.

"This is war! Are you part of it or not?," Fischer shouted at the children during the film.

Fischer proudly compared her Bible camp to indoctrination of young boys by extremist Muslims.

"If you look at the world's population, one third of that 6.7 billion people are children under the age of 15," Fischer said. "Where should we be putting our efforts? Where should we be putting our focus? I'll tell you where our enemies are putting it. They're putting it on the kids. They're going into the schools."

Fischer went on to say that Muslims in other countries are taking their kids to camps like "we take our kids" to bible camps. She said Muslims are teaching their kids to use rifles, how to put on bomb belts and to use machine guns.

"It's no wonder with that kind of intense training in discipling (sic) that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam," Fischer said. "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and in Israel and Palestine and all those different places. Because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth."

The filmmakers told the Times that they want the film to "make a broad statement about how politics and faith have become inexorably intertwined in America."

Fischer said that she plans to help promote the movie and that she is grateful for the national attention she's gotten from the movie and its controversy.

"I couldn't have paid for this kind of advertising," she said.

In the About Film section of the movie's Web site, it describes the movie as follows:

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement. Jesus Camp follows a group of young children to Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire Summer Camp", where kids are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God's army and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

"Jesus Camp" is already open in New York and will open in 20 more cities across the United States Oct. 6.


http://www.wftv.com/family/9935738/detail.html

Three Sulawesi militants executed

Three Indonesian Christian militants sentenced to death for attacks on Muslims in 2000 have been executed by firing squad.

Fabianus Tibo, Marianus Riwu and Dominggus Silva were found guilty of inciting attacks during religious rioting in Central Sulawesi in 2000.

The execution was delayed last month after an appeal from the Pope.

Local community leaders have expressed concern that the executions might re-ignite religious violence.

"It has been done... the location was around the airport," a police official who would not give his name told Reuters news agency.

He said the bodies had been taken to a police hospital.

Some 4,000 extra troops had been deployed in religiously-divided Sulawesi to boost security ahead of the executions.

Gang violence

The men say they are innocent of the charges that they masterminded a series of attacks on the Muslim community in the Central Sulawesi district of Poso in 2000, killing at least 70 people.

The attack was part of a wave of violence that left more than 1,000 people killed. It was triggered by a brawl between Christian and Muslim gangs in December 1998.

The execution had been due to take place last month, but the three were given a reprieve after a plea for clemency from Pope Benedict XVI and demonstrations by thousands of Indonesian Christians.

The militants' supporters and rights groups have questioned the fairness of the trial.

Three Muslim militants are also currently on death row for their part in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5368922.stm

Substitute terrorism for gun crime, then decide what you are willing to give up.

The Real Crocodile Dundee
by Vin Suprynowicz

A few days ago, the Review-Journal – along with a lot of other metropolitan dailies – gave prominent coverage to the death of Steve Irwin, the popular Australian zookeeper who charmed international audiences with his enthusiastic animal-chasing on the Discovery Network's Animal Planet channel.

Irwin, widely known as "the Crocodile Hunter," was killed Monday by a stingray that rose and stabbed him in the chest with its spine while the 44-year-old was at work filming a television segment, swimming at Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Irwin's enthusiasm was infectious. His manner of death was certainly noteworthy. All doubtless sympathize with his wife and two young children.

Still, Irwin died doing what he loved. And without diminishing his memory or his family's loss, perhaps we can draw a distinction between a death that is merely unfortunate and fascinating and one that is significant.

It could be an interesting exercise to compare the prominent coverage of Irwin's death with the slim few paragraphs (at most) devoted by the America news media on or about Aug. 4, 1999, to the death of 44-year-old Rodney William Ansell. The 1988 Australian Northern Territory Man of the Year – so honored in part because he was widely acknowledged to be the real-life character on whom Paul Hogan, Ken Shadie, and John Cornell based their movie character "Crocodile Dundee" – was killed in a shootout with police.

Yes, the circumstances surrounding Ansell's death took a little more time to put together. The question is: Did anyone in the press ever bother, and if not, why not?

Ansell was just 21 when he became lost for two months in the bush west of Darwin. He'd been on a fishing trip near the mouth of the Victoria River, accompanied only by his two cattle dogs, when his boat was capsized and sunk, possibly by a whale. He managed to board his tender vessel, a small dinghy with only one oar, and retrieve his dogs and a small amount of equipment including his rifle, knives and bedding – but no fresh water.

Alone, far from any shipping lanes, Ansell traveled up the Fitzmaurice River over the next 72 hours, becoming severely dehydrated before finally finding fresh water above the tide line. He then managed to survive for two months by hunting and shooting cattle for food, before being rescued by a small party of drovers. (Presumably it wasn't their cattle he'd been shooting, or our tale might be much shorter.)

Ansell, blond and bearing an uncanny resemblance to actor Paul Hogan, wrote a book and starred in a documentary about his exploits, both called "To Fight the Wild." The story sparked the interest of actor Hogan and his co-writers, who scored a major hit with their 1986 film "Crocodile Dundee."

Seven years ago, Ansell was killed in a shootout with police just south of Darwin. An Australian police sergeant also died. Why?

In a June 2000 essay, physician, author, and Cuban émigré Dr. Miguel Faria asks what was going on in Australia in the late 1990s that could help explain the timing of this famous Australian survivalist shooting it out with authorities:

"Although Ansell was no angel and had had previous run-ins with police, he had been named 1988 Australian Northern Territory Man of the Year for inspiring the movie and putting 'the Australian Outback on the map,'" Dr. Faria notes.

"What motivated this shooting? In 1996, Australia adopted Draconian gun control laws banning certain guns (60 percent of all firearms), requiring registration of all firearms and licensing of all gun owners. 'Crocodile Dundee' believed the police were coming to confiscate his unregistered firearms.

"In Australia today, police can enter your house and search for guns, copy the hard drive of your computer, seize records, and do it all without a search warrant," Dr. Faria reports. "It's the law that police can go door to door searching for weapons that have not been surrendered in their much publicized gun buy-back program. They have been using previous registration and firearm license lists to check for lapses and confiscate non-surrendered firearms."

It all began with the Port Arthur (a Tasmanian resort) tragedy on April 28, 1996, Dr. Faria recalls, "when a crazed assailant opened fire and shot 35 people. Australians were shocked, and the government reacted quickly.

"Draconian gun legislation was passed in the heat of the moment. ... As a result of stringent gun laws (really a ban on firearms) in Australia, all semiautomatic firearms (rifles and handguns) are proscribed, including .22-caliber rabbit guns and duck-hunting Remington shotguns.

"At a cost of $500 million, out of an estimated 7 million firearms (of which 2.8 million were prohibited), only 640,000 guns were surrendered to police. What has been the result? Same as in England. ... Crime Down Under has escalated.

"Twelve months after the law was implemented in 1997, there had been a 44 percent increase in armed robberies, an 8.6 percent increase in aggravated assaults, and a 3.2 percent increase in homicides," reports Dr. Faria, a retired Georgia neurosurgeon who wrote "Medical Warrior" and "Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise," and served until recently as editor-in-chief of "The Medical Sentinel," the journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

"That same year in the state of Victoria, there was a 300 percent increase in homicides committed with firearms. The following year, robberies increased almost 60 percent in South Australia. ...

"Two years after the ban, there have been further increases in crime: armed robberies by 73 percent; unarmed robberies by 28 percent; kidnappings by 38 percent ... according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

"And consider the fact that over the previous 25-year period, Australia had shown a steady decrease both in homicide with firearms and armed robbery – until the ban. ...

"The ban on firearms and the disarmament of ordinary Australians has left criminals free to roam the countryside as they please.

"Bandits, of course, kept their guns. ... Yet the leftist Australian government has responded by passing more laws; in 1998 Bowie knives and other knives and items including handcuffs were banned.

"Licensing is difficult. Self and family protection is not considered a valid reason to own a firearm. The right to self-defense, like in Great Britain and Canada, is not recognized in Australia. ... A way of life has ended. Please, don't tell me it cannot happen here!"

Did the real-life Crocodile Dundee die because his own government left him with no choice but to "use his guns" – guns which had saved his life – "or lose them"?

If so, why did we hear so little about it? Because many in the press are loath to report the "bad outcomes" of victim disarmament? It certainly doesn't seem to be because Americans don't care about the fate of famous, good-looking Australian crocodile hunters.




September 19, 2006
http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz48.html

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