FW: (fwd from Hunter Gray) final comment -- and a request

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

With respect to Adam Levenstein's comments:

I know of no instances where Mormons killed Indians.  As a matter of fact,
the relationship tended to be very close from the very beginning.  Beyond
saying that for the record, I see no point in spending any time with either
Levenstein or Craven.

I have asked several times in the past few minutes that I be unsubbed from
Marxism.  Can't seem to effect it via the conventional route and, thus, this
request.  Thanks.


Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org (strawberry socialism)
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´


Response Jim C: You know on Marxism list, I see some stuff that pisses me
off. I either respond to it or just leave it be preferring to focus on the
wealth of other information, debate, concepts, references, sources, humor
etc that I find valuable; and that is a lot.

Reference has been made to my having "personal motives" for attacking the
Mormons. What about "personal motives" for defending them? I suspect that my
"personal motives" have to do with the fact that my own mother was grabbed
by Mormons, put into one of their tuning-up factories at Fort Hall where she
was sexually and physically abused as a child. Just before my mother
committed suicide, she made/left several references to her early childhood
experiences and the demons that had come back to haunt her as PART (not all)
of her reasons for picking the time, place and manner of her leaving this
earth. But my "personal motives" go beyond that: part of my duties among
Blackfoot and other Nations has been to help victims of Residential/Boarding
schools prepare for the highly invasive and traumatic despositions and
testimonies that go with lawsuits against the churces and governents that
ran the Residential/Boarding Schools. In this work I have interviewed
literally hundreds of victims, many victims of Mormon doctrine, dogma and
practices vis-a-vis Indian children; and yes, it is very personal as I
cannot and will not ever forget what was told to me and I will never in my
life use anything told to me for a book, publications, CV notching or
whatever from which I could possibly gain personally.

But what I wrote about Mormon doctrine, dogma and practices is absolutely
true and can be verified from faithful sources inside the Mormon church
without any need to go to former Mormons or anti-Mormon sources. I only
invited everyone to read the Book of Mormon itself
which of course the Mormons also invite everyone to do (under their careful
framing and "guidance" of course). for someone who has formerly taught
"Native Studies" to say that Mormons have never been involved in killing
Indians is truly amazing; it is an out-and-out lie. Never mind all the
children brutalized in their tuning-up factories called Residential/Boarding
schools; the Book of Mormon itself is about the epic battles between the
Nephites and Lamanites (read pure, God-blessed and white settler Nephites
versus the savage, evil, backward and barbaric Lamanites). The Mormon
church, using its vast wealth has been among the chief movers of
dispossessing Indians and Indian lands throughout U.S. history (also in
Canada and elsewhere where their are Indigenous Peoples as in Australia, New
Zealand, Guatemala etc). Covert Action Bulletin did a whole expose on Mormon
missionary practices in the Third World, noted that they have worked in
concert with the Moonies (imagine that, both say they and only they are the
true way) and that the Mormons have traditionally fronted for CIA and FBI
operations domestic and abroad (Why, and it is a fact, would the FBI and CIA
have a clear preference in hiring for Mormons? And it involves more than
"clean-living" and "no-vices"). What about the "Prophet and Revelator"
Hinkley's statement that Indian children, when in Mormon "care" experience
"lighter skin color" (as if non-white is impure and ugly) and "even DNA
changes"?

On the matter of sexual abuse, there has been as much in the Moromon Church
as in the Catholic Church with the same cover-ups and involvements of high
officials; the difference is that the sanctions in the Mormon Church for
exposing abusers, especially high-level ones, can be and often are more
extreme than even among the Catholics. I don't know of Catholics organizing
boycotts of the businesses, tire slashings and fire bombings and total
ostracization of anyone daring to expose abusers and critics of their
Church.

Again this is not about individuals or even individual missionaries. Sure
the Mormons are often pleasant and easy to get along with; they are taught
to be that way not only as part of "old-fashioned values" (my Mormon
students are typically the most polite, most disciplined, most hard-working
and least likely to whine about grades than any other group of students) but
also because they are taught that among non-Mormons, there are two kinds:
those yet to be converted; those whose own commitment to their own
non-Mormon beliefs are as intense and committed as the Mormons want their
own to be about Mormon beliefs and practices.

So if all of this is too intense for Hunter, a former teacher of Native
studies writing, for some reason, and I didn't inquire about any personal
motives for his defense of Mormonism on his part, that he would choose to
leave Marxism (and leave access to all the other subjects and issues on this
list) over this, really because he could not/would not deal with real
evidence and reason beyond his narcissistic commentaries, assertion of
ultimate authority from his own personal experiences real or imagined,
appeal to authority (Big Bill Haywood etc) and historical revisionism worthy
of the most anti-Indian revisionists, then it only means to me that another
phony and wannabe (of which their are many in Indian Country) has been
exposed and his departure his good riddance.

Imperialism has many masks and many tentacles. Mormon dogma and doctrine is
but one of the many and that is not a matter of my opinion or "personal
interests", that is a matter of fact, history and their own written dogma
and doctrine: racist, sexist, homophobic, ultra-capitalist, national
chauvinist and just plain vile shit.

Jim Craven

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