The infamous death tape is available for free at the internet archive: http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16
It's reputation as being extremely disturbing is well earned..... absolutely not for the faint of heart.
the women who talks one this tape is f_cking brave
I hate snow!
This tape really angers me! When I listen to it, it's so clear how subtle Jim Jones is in convincing some 900 odd people to commit mass suicide. I have to commend the "Christine" on this tape, who really tried to reason their way out of this "last resort," but what an incredible example of mob think when the crowd turned on her, simply because she thought "she had a right to choose her own destiny."
What the hell?
Also, as "religious" as this People's Temple is supposed to be, I heard NOT ONE mention of God, of Jesus, not one time! It's all about "Jim Jones said we should die," not that "Jesus said we should die," and that's the problem.
It's all about Jim Jones, who tells Christine: "If you live, who's going to care for you? I won't be here. You won't have Jim Jones to take care of you."
Which, if she had any theological reasoning, she should have said: "I'll still have Jesus. Go ahead and die!"
But, then the mob would *really* turn on her then, wouldn't they?
And, I'm sorry, but even the Devil lets you choose your destiny.
This is just so sad, and listening to the babies screaming in the background, all I can think of is: I hope Jim Jones is rotting in hell!
Dirty Bastard!
""Also, as "religious" as this People's Temple is supposed to be, I heard NOT ONE mention of God, of Jesus, not one time! It's all about "Jim Jones said we should die," not that "Jesus said we should die," and that's the problem.""
even if it was jesus who said that they should dye, I would still consider that a problem, just because is jesus doesn't make it right!! no one has the right to say who should live and who should dye!
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is there anything in this that isn't in the "jonestown" doc cause it seemed like they played a fair amount of it. i don't think i want to listen to it.
shareHer name was Christine Miller, and we have no idea if she forcibly was injected or if she drank of her own will.
I can believe both sides. Obviously we hear her argue for saving the lives of the babies and children. But she was also commited to her Temple 'brothers and sisters' and might have joined them because she figured it was better to die together and there was no use being alive. I don't know and I guess we will never know.
what really upset me was when i heard one child screaming no more like a deep gut-wrenching scream "Mummy i don't feel well".
How could any parent do it?
Here is a link with info on Christine Miller.
Such a brave woman. What a shame.
http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume7/remem -Bellefountaine5.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnzkCFZSOEQ
I can't listen to that. It creeps the crap outta me.
*Common sense is not so common
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Excellent, i've been looking for this for a while. Thanks!
http://www.last.fm/group/Bring+back+the+old+Last.fm
This tape was so creepy! I'm totally moved and horrified!
" I wrote this because I know that many people will judge these people who died in Jonestown and think they must had been ignorant or uneducated or poor or depressed or even mentally ill but I want to say that my friend, Christine Miller, was none of the above. ", wrote someone on that archives page's comment space.
WOW!
Dissident or not, Ms Miller joined and stayed, and even moved to the friggin' jungle. There's a point where she should have realized that the "father" was in fact a sadistic, brutal, sick, immature child who just had a persuasive (to dumbasses) way of talking people into believing he was a god.
I just had to answer :
"Because your friend was from the educated [...] upper-middle class automatically exonerates her from being qualified as a dumbass? Please.
Not to insult the dead, but Jones wiped a few hundred idiots off the planet and that's not necessarily bad. He was totally fecal though, for the killing of innocent kids who couldn't defend themselves from the crazy adults around them (like their own parents, for instance).
Notwithstanding the aforementioned person's comment, I believe that if you enter a cult, which in my definition includes every organized religion, you ARE an ignorant, uneducated, mentally poor, depressed or mentally ill dumb-ass. Instead of seeking a good shrink or sitting down with your own mummy and daddy to find out why you're emotionally immature, you go whoop and holler in a barn with the likes of Jones, a man very obviously illiterate and somewhat retarded. You only have ONE father and ONE mother. You’re supposed to detach yourself from them at some point. You’re NOT supposed to seek love, affection and a sense of worth from strangers at any and all costs.
Go on in if you like, idiots, but leave the children with official protective services of some sort. Then, commit "revolutionary suicide" if it suits you; the world won't miss you.
Morons.
Geez this tape was creepy!! And I just watched the “Witness to Jonestown” doc on MSNBC… I severely need to erase these commie mud-bathers from my mind; I’m dressing up in my slickest duds, am off to the most glam lounge to get a Martini with some of my civilized, responsibly capitalist, college-educated friends. Then we’ll go check out the latest 007 flick."
This incident pretty much ended the alternative commune lifestyle. Many people had to be deprogrammed following this, and combined with the 68 race riots, the Mansion Murders and the Chicago riot began the "wall of consumerism of the early 80s". This pretty much cemented any possibility of pseudo-socialism or any sustained living organization developed toward racial equality.
The good of the movement was ultimately undermined.
Note;"I severely need to erase these commie mud-bathers from my mind; I’m dressing up in my slickest duds, am off to the most glam lounge to get a Martini with some of my civilized, responsibly capitalist, college-educated friends. Then we’ll go check out the latest 007 flick."
Although meant to be ironic, sardonic and childish humor. it is essentially the mindset that was crystalized from the mid 80s to dotcom 90s. Consume, make money responsibly (no matter how much the general populace suffers, because thats their problem).
The recent Economic crisis, will effect EVERYONE. So the "yuppie talk" is largely hollow.
*forgive my English ; francophone here*
"The recent Economic crisis, will effect EVERYONE. So the "yuppie talk" is largely hollow."
Of course it is. I'm not at all a dumb consumer who's (very American -- which I'm not) philosophy is "I buy therefore I am". My society is truly socialist compared to yours ; many southern bible-thumpin' Joe the Plumber types would die from a cowboy fit after a month in Canada.
But we don't necessarily adhere to the extremist egalitarian philosophy, contrary to what many of your countrymen think. I was just being sardonic.
But indeed, the worst kind of punishment someone could inflict on my ass would be to force me to live in a commune with people who strive for the mud of this world and not its higher, refined beauty. Some are just born with a better ability for the latter, some are unfortunately born (or unfortunately misreared from age 0 to age 6) with no ability for it. Some people think there is beauty in merely existing, growing food, eating it, *beep* eachother, crapping, dying.
We are all equal in rights and responsibilities. We should all have a chance to lead a decent life, get an educaiton, educate our kids, etc.
But we are just NOT all born equal in abilities and talents. This idea of sharing shortcomings and disabilities is backwards. There's not necessarily any justice in leveling everybody down, so that some can feel a little bit better about being behind.
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Hell, I'm mentally ill.
And I'm an atheist.
No cults here!
Gay people...robots in disguise!
"Also, as "religious" as this People's Temple is supposed to be, I heard NOT ONE mention of God, of Jesus, not one time! It's all about "Jim Jones said we should die," not that "Jesus said we should die," and that's the problem."
That's your problem? Not what he forced those people to do, but in whose name he was urging them to do it? That's backwards thinking if I ever heard it. If you don't think horrible brutality can be committed in the name of God and/or Jesus, you sure don't know history very well.
"I don't deduce, I observe."
As disturbing as the death tape is, I find it to be more sad. These people followed what they thought was a man of God to a place he promised them would be a jungle utopia... the sad thing about People's Temple is the way Jim Jones drew people in by exploiting the issues of the day, racism and the plight of the disenfranchised in particular. HOWEVER, the "death tape" is mainly the delusional ramblings of a seriously drug addicted man and a glimpse into mob mentality and brutality and is sad in a....oh.... a deviant sot of sad way, not as much an emotional, soulful sadness. To me, if you want to see and hear the true gut wrenching tragedy of the Jonestown Massacre, watch and listen to Tim Carter, a reasonably high ranking member of People's Temple whose wife Gloria and baby son both perished in Guyana-- he himself survived by fleeing into the jungle after their deaths if I remember correctly-- in the MSNBC documentary "Witness to Jonestown" as he describes seeing his infant son forcibly dosed with the tainted punch by the commune's resident Nurse Practitoner... the look on his wife's face as she reaalized not only that this was not another meeting or "White Night Raid" drill, but real, and her son was dead... and his account of then holding his wife as she too dies. If you don't have tears rolling down your cheeks as he recalls holding his dying wife and dead son in his arms, and saying "I just kept telling her, 'I love you... I love you so much' as if the power of my love could save her," you have no soul.
Christine Miller was an incredibly brave woman for being one of the only ones who stood up to say can't we do something else, but what disturbs me more than anything Jim Jones says to her is the fellow Temple member who says, "Christine, if it wasn't for him [Jones], you wouldn't even BE here." I find it to be, out of all the disturbing dialogue, the most disturbung of all.... because it's entirely the truth.... but in a sinister context, not the way the crowd thinks she should appreciate that fact. Watching this as well as "Witness to Jonestown" and "Jonestown: Paradise Lost" gives me nightmares. Even those who were lucky enough to survive drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid, they have never left Jonestown-- how can you see that, LIVE that, and not be left there forever... Not still be holding your wife as she dies, trying to save her with "I love you"... not watching people line up to drink their deaths, whether they chose to or were forced... not see those hundreds that had come looking ionly for a place to love and be loved, to live as they chose, to follow the man they thought could lead them to their ultimate salvation, only to die in a painful, pitiful way, instigated by the very man they called-- and considered-- their father.
Not to insult the dead, but Jones wiped a few hundred idiots off the planet and that's not necessarily bad.You just did insult the dead, ya know. It is easy to sneer and feel superior at a distance. Cults are insidious. Only a handful of people were able to leave the cult before they left for Guyana, out of over a thousand followers. What does that tell you? (And no, it wasn't because they were all "morons".) It isn't idiotic to long for community or to hope for a better world. Cults suck you in slowly and get a psychological hold on a person. As someone said at the beginning of the documentary "no one joins a cult". And Jones was particularly clever in his pitch--social justice. The fact that he was just using that as a come on for his power trip is incidental.