Introduction
A shorter presentation of the following article is posted on AAANativearts.com's web
site. It is AAANativearts.com's most read "issues & activism" article. It has had over
20,000 readers. It can be viewed at:
http://www.aaanativearts.
com/printout683.html
.
The staff of the The Health Reformer website/newsletter recently used four paragraphs
from the following article to create their lead in article to present their stance against
the use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist/Last Supper. They refer to me as
a Native American in the article's title. I only have a little Native blood in me. The article
can be viewed and
read by clicking
The Health Reformer
.
Skip Stone, the webmaster of the biggest hippie site in the world, posted a revised
edition of my "Solving the Alcohol Abuse Epidemic" article on his hippy.com website's
sister site Coolove. It can viewed and read by clicking
Coolove.
This article is also displayed on the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community's sister site. You can
go directly
to it by clicking
MMDC sister site article
Note: When I wrote the following article I was a Roman Catholic. I am now of the New Age
Religion.
************************************************************************
Solving The Alcohol Abuse Epidemic
By Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
In a Minnesota U.S.A. county newspaper article, subtitled: "300 gather to note the toll by
alcohol abuse", Melvin Eagle, the hereditary Chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is
quoted as saying: "Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together
and away from alcohol because it is destroying our people."
I am an indigenous peoples' rights activist who is spearheading a local (Minnesota), national and international
movement to change the faulty-translation and profane name of Minnesota's badly named "Rum River" back to its sacred Dakota aboriginal Native name
Wakan, which when translated into English means (Great) Spirit.
In a book published by the Minnesota Historical society, a book titled:
Minnesota Geographic Names: Their Origins and
Historic Significances, Warren Upham wrote: the Rum River name is "the white men's perversion of the
ancient Sioux name Wakan". Another reason
why the current name for the Rum River is inappropriate is because, as stated by Upham, "rum brought misery and ruin, as Duluth
observed of whisky, to many of the Indians".
I believe the restoration of the river's original name would help uplift the aboriginal Native community, which
has been historically plagued by alcohol. When
Europeans came to the Americas, the homelands of nearly 100,000,000 indigenous people, they brought
rum and other alcoholic beverages with them. At
the time, the Natives had no cultural controls in place for their usage. Hence, because of alcohol
abuse, things moved into degradation and
multitudes of premature deaths. And this situation was made even worse by the White's frequent use
of alcohol in ruthless genocidal attacks, alcohol
was given to the Natives in order to kill, subdue, or cheat them.
I believe that by drawing attention to the Rum River name-change issue "white guilt" will increase,
because of a heightened awareness of the
catastrophic consequences caused by white settlers introducing and selling alcohol to the indigenous
peoples of the Americas; and that this
increase of "white guilt" will, in a lot of ways, cause the dominate cultures of the Americas' different nations to offer
all the indigenous peoples of the Americas
their long over due restitution justice, especially when it comes to making amends to help them free
themselves from the plague of
alcoholism.
I also believe that, by reverting the pofane name of the Rum River back to its original Indian
name Wakan we would be honoring the importance of spirituality for Indians. I believe that the Rum River name
has become like a joke - an antagonistic joke
that's very antagonistic, and that by changing the river's name we would be putting an end to a
source of racial antagonism.
During prohibition there was a movement to change the name of the Rum River. At the time, a lot
of people did not want rivers and other geographic
places to have names that were advertisements for alcoholic beverages, or addictive products that
they considered harmful to society. And this is
another reason why I am spearheading the movement to change the name of the Rum River.
In the Mentota Mdewakanton Dakota Community's letter of support - Jim Anderson, the Historian
and Cultural Chairman for Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota
Community, wrote:
"I believe that renaming the river "Wakpa Wakan" or "Spirit
River" is a great stride in mending the circle that we share with all
four colors of man. We, as Dakotas, are very happy that there are people out there that are trying to
understand that by using names like "rum" and
"devil" to label sacred sites and places is degrading to our children, our elders and
also to our ancestors. These places were already named in our
language by our people because of their special meaning. When we have to tell our children why these
places have been named after a poison or the
worst words in their language. It is demoralizing to us to have to explain why a place is named after
the same things that helped to steal our land
and language. To have to be reminded of the cultural genocide that has been perpetrated on all Indian
people. So, in changing the name back to the
Dakota language, it will help in the healing process that our people continue to deal with."
"Many schools and teams have already changed their names in respect to our children and adults. It
promotes us to be proud of our heritage, language
and culture, to respect themselves and being Indian in our own homeland. I am writing in support of
the name change of the Rum River."
"We, as the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota, request the County Commissioners in the affected counties to
support our hope of righting this wrong.
Please do the respectful and moral thing and change this disrespectful and culturally damaging name.
"
In a Star Tribune newspaper article Jim Anderson is quoted as saying: "It's another derogatory
term." "Naming a sacred river after what they were
binging up to our people is wrong. We're in favor of the name change."
In an Isanti County News newspaper article, LeMoine LaPointe, director of the Healthy Nations Program at the Minneapolis American Indian Center,
is quoted as saying: "...reclaiming the Rum River is important to the health of the Dakota community. Over thousands of years of repeated use
of that river Indian people saw something there that was good for them, and infused that into their physical and spiritual health. Knowing and
interacting with that river had an enormous positive impact on them. It's also important to the health of Native American people that the river
be called by its original name. Rum is a pollutant, a destructive chemical. It's not a poison river, it's a holy river."
During an early stage of this river name-change movement, I was asked to use this name-change issue
to gain access to public forums wherein I would
be able to express my opinion on whether it was right or wrong for Europeans to bring alcohol to the
homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the
Americas; and that if, in my opinion, it was not right, explain what could and should be done to rid
alcohol from the Americas. And because of
the world-wide support that I have received for my effort to change the name of the Rum River,
I believe that it will not be long until I will
be receiving recognition in the U.S.A mainstream news media as a social engineer in the forefront
of a world-wide movement to stop the Indigenous
Peoples of the Americas alcohol-abuse epidemic.
And I, as a Catholic social activist, have radical grievances against my Church's supreme hierarchal
authorities' world-wide support for the
legality and use of the addictive and harmful drug alcohol. And I am especially troubled by their
support for the legality and use of alcohol in
the Americas, where the homelands of a great multitude of indigenous people our located. In addition,
I am radically opposed to my Church's use
of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I have talked to the pastors of Catholic churches in
Minnesota's Mille Lacs Lake area about petitioning
our Bishop, Bishop John Kinney of Saint Cloud Diocese, to give them permission to stop using wine
in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I am trying
to evangelize the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe to the Catholic churches located on the south end of
Mille Lacs Lake. And at least some Mille Lacs
Band members are trying to "pull together and away from alcohol", but my Church's supreme hierarchal
authorities want me to lead them to alcohol
(wine) on these churches' alters.
An open letter to my pastor about this issue:
During last Sunday's Mass a song with the words "I will drink wine on my knees" was sung. Those words
filled me with holy indignation. Why sing
those words when everywhere in the world where alcohol is legal and available there are catastrophic
consequences?
Now-days, we know a lot more about the dangers of alcohol than they did back when Jesus walked the
earth. And when Jesus turned the water into
wine at the wedding party those people who drank the wine did not have cars to get in and drive off
and kill people. The circumstances associated
with the moral issue concerning the legality and use of alcohol has, over a 2000 year period of time,
radically changed. But most people are
stuck in the past and can not accept this truth. Even our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities
are still stuck in their erroneous
traditional way of thinking when it comes to the question as to whether or not our Church should
change
its attitude about alcohol. I
believe that our supreme hierarchical authorities should stop supporting the legality and use of
alcohol throughout the world, and
especially in the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
When it comes to our supreme hierarchical authorities' other traditionally approved of deadly drug
(tobacco), they are beginning to change
their traditional attitude and policies. They just recently banded the smoking of tobacco in Vatican
buildings. When modern-day scientific
evidence first indicated that it was wrong to continue to allow smoking of tobacco in buildings where
people would have to breath second hand
smoke, our Church's hierarchical authorities did not take the moral lead and become the first, or one
of the first major building managerial
committees to ban smoking from their buildings, but rather they waited quite a long time before
banning the smoking of tobacco in their public
buildings.
When they were pressured by concerned public health activists to deal with this modern-day tobacco
use in public buildings moral issue, they
finally had to admitted that they had made a mistake in the past, and that they made it when they
originally allowed the use of tobacco in
Vatican buildings. We know that in the past they have gotten stuck in some erroneous traditional ways
of thinking, and then made immoral
judgments when new scientific evidence was telling them that their traditional stances on some issues
were radically wrong. Imagine how much
Galileo had to suffer because he discovered that the Church's traditional position on an issue was
radically wrong, and our Church's supreme
hierarchical authorities would not, for a long time, accept the new scientific evidence that indicated
that he was right.
Modern-day scientific evidence informs us, and this is even the official position of the French
government, that when comparing the
traditional mood-altering drug of both the Church and the white raced people (alcohol) with the drugs
of colored people throughout the
world, alcohol has been found to be one of the most addictive and harmful drugs, and that everywhere it
is legal and available there
are catastrophic health and social consequences. But never-the-less our Church's supreme hierarchical
authorities continue to disapprove
of the use of colored people's traditional mood-altering drugs and then give their (back in the days
of Jesus' earthly life and out of
touch with today's reality) traditional white racist support for the legality and use of alcohol.
And they also continue in their
erroneous traditional way of thinking when it comes to their misguided support for the legal use of
tobacco.
One of Alcoholics Anonymous' twelve steps for alcohol abuse treatment deals with the "big shot
syndrome". And one of today's biggest questions is what was the primary cause as to why the white
raced people developed such a diluted superiority complex that they were able to commit such radical
atrocities against colored people. And when trying to find the answer to this question, it made sense
to me, that if a race of people were to use and abuse alcohol for a long time, they would consequently
develop the "big shot syndrome". People with diluted "big shot" mentalities need to subjugate and
manipulate people. And this type of mentality portrays the history of the white raced people. Hence,
I have concluded that because - where there is legal use of alcohol there is also a lot of alcohol
abuse - that therefore our Church's long standing position of sanctioning the legal use of alcohol
was the primary cause for all of the white-racist atrocities committed against colored people.
And now-days, even when it is known that where ever alcohol is legal and available there are
catastrophic
consequences our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities never-the-less continue to promote the
legal use
(and consequently the abuse) of alcohol.
When writing the new Catechism Of The Catholic Church, our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities
included an erroneous statement that has influenced a great multitude of people to believe that the
use of alcohol is not dangerous. And because of this highly influential opinion of theirs, a lot of
people have started drinking alcoholic beverages and many of them are now suffering from alcohol abuse
problems. In the Catechism our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities proclaim that alcohol is not
dangerous, but that all other drugs are dangerous. They should have known not to put that erroneous
statement in the Catechism. Even the advisory doctor for the nationally broadcasted Good Morning
America television program said on national television that too many people who start using alcohol
with the intention of using it moderately end up becoming habitual abusers of alcohol; and that the
belief that the use of alcohol is not dangerous for the average person causes a lot of grief and
suffering for multitudes of people. Note: In America 10% of men and 5% of women who start drinking
alcohol will become habitual abusers of alcohol.
I would like the world community of nations to advocate the creation of an United Nations world
court indictment in order to bring our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities to justice for
their long-standing and persistent support for the legality and use of the addictive and dangerous
drug alcohol, it is a crime against humanity. I am sure that the many anti-alcohol Islamic nations
would like to participate in this righteous plan to bring them to justice. And for the Church's
supreme hierarchical authorities to continue to promote the legal use of the addictive and dangerous
drug alcohol during this critical time when there is a war against other harmful and dangerous drugs
makes this crime of theirs even more evil.
European salve traders shipped thousands of barrels of rum across the sea to African tribal
leaders and gave some of the barrels of rum to them. And they did this without warning them
that it was addictive. And they also neglected to warn them that, if they were to get addicted
to it they would do evil things to get more of it. And by neglecting to warn them of the addictive
and dangerous qualities of alcohol, the white salve traders intentionally deceived the African
tribal leaders for the purpose of gaining an opportunity to coheres them into capturing their own
people for the purpose of trading them (as salves) for rum.
And their scam worked, the black African tribal leaders became addicted to alcohol and then captured
their own people for the purpose of trading them (as slaves) for more rum. Hence, the white slave
traders were able to make a lot of money. They put the captured black African slaves in their ships
as cargo bound for America. And on the way to America 8,000,000 of them died because of the ships
unhealthy
living conditions. And for the slaves that survived the trip they were separated (husband from wife,
children from parents) and sold to white customers who lived many miles apart. And many of those white
customers were Catholics. Both Catholic Bishops, as well as Catholic laymen bought and owned black
African slaves. They greedily made a profit from the slave traders' promotion of alcohol abuse in
Africa. The slave trade was a promotion of alcohol abuse, greedy money-making, white racist scam
and atrocity that many of our nation's Bishops and laymen participated in. And our Church's supreme
hierarchical authorities permitted this alcohol abuse related atrocity to continue, and this radical
neglect of their moral responsibility caused untold grief and suffering for multitudes of
people.
And when Catholic missionary priests entered the homelands of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
they brought the addictive and dangerous drug alcohol with them. And the Catholic missionary priests,
in the process of their Holy See directed mission to evangelize the natives, gave the addictive and
dangerous drug alcohol to the natives. And they committed this grave sin because they wanted the
natives to believe that alcohol was a good and safe drug. And did so, because it was being used
during the summit of the Church's worship services. And this grave sin of theirs was the primary
cause for the Indian alcoholic-abuse genocidal epidemic, a genocidal epidemic that is still being
perpetrated against Indians throughout the Americas.
And our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities also sanctioned North American cultural genocidal
boarding schools. Native American children were legally kidnapped from their parents and taken away
to Catholic boarding schools there they were brain washed to believe that their culture, religion,
language, and drugs, drugs that their adult relatives used moderately and spiritual, were evil, and
that the white man's culture, religion, language and drug (alcohol, an addictive and dangerous drug)
were good. And in the evil environment of Catholic boarding schools, alcohol demented homosexual
pedophile priests had a field day sexually molesting the native boys. And our Church in North America
is headed toward bankruptcy because of all the evil things that happened in those brain washing
boarding schools.
When our nation's bishops found out that a pre-Columbus traditionally used Indian mind-altering
medicinal
drug (peyote) was being used spiritually and therapeutically by an increasing number of American
Indians
and that its use was helping them to stop the alcohol abuse genocidal health epidemic that was being
perpetrated
against them our nation's bishops condemned its use and proclaimed it a heresy for Catholic Indians
to use it,
and did so because of their white racist belief that the white man's drug (alcohol) was the superior
drug and
the only good mind altering drug, and that therefore Indians should use alcohol and not their
traditional
drug peyote. And this is another reason why the Indian alcohol abuse health epidemic and genocide
continues
to plague Indians today.
Jesus wanted the church to go into all parts of the world in order to evangelize all of mankind
to God's saving plan, but he did not want the church to take the negative aspects of Jewish
culture with them and impose those negative aspects of Jewish culture on the peoples of different
races and cultures. But in respect to the alcohol-use negative aspect of Jewish culture, that is
exactly what our Church's supreme hierarchical authorities did when they imposed, in the process
of their evangelization mission, the use of alcohol on Indians and other non-alcohol drinking
indigenous peoples throughout the world, and they are still committing this same grave sin. But,
thanks be to God, at least some of the Protestant churches have switched from wine to grape juice
when it comes to the Last Supper segment of their worship services.
In our country 23% of Catholic priest are alcoholics. And at every Mass that these priest officiate
at red wine is placed on the alters in front of them. But in Proverbs 23:31-32 the word of God says:
"Look not on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the glass. It goes down smoothly; but in the
end it bites like a serpent, or like a poisonous adder". And alcoholics are not suppose to drink any
amount of alcohol, but alcoholic priests are required to do so at very Mass that they officiate at.
You would think that our supreme hierarchal authorities would have enough compassion for their
alcoholic priests to stop using wine in the sacrifice of the Mass. But I am not surprise that they
do not. And the reason why, is because just recently there was, as you know, a hierarchal scandal
wherein it was discovered that high ranking church officials did not have enough compassion for
their addicted to child molesting priests to send them to treatment centers, instead they (a
Cardinal, some Archbishops and Bishops) moved mentally ill child molesting priests from one parish
to another, a grave sin that put these sick priests in situations wherein they were enabled to
continue on in their child molestation sickness. This is another example of how much compassion
they have for their priests who have addiction problems.
When alcohol was criminalized in our country there was only one U.S. Christian Church that objected, it
was our Catholic Church. And at the time, our church refused to use grape juice instead of the alcoholic
beverage (wine) during the summit of our church's worship services. This was another factor that
contributed to the decriminalization of alcohol and subsequent alcohol poisoning health epidemic and
related social atrocities, including the re-establishment of the legalized American Indian alcohol-abuse
genocidal health epidemic.
According to the Centers of Disease Control, approximately 85,000 Americans
die each year from alcohol induced deaths (not including motor vehicle fatalities where alcohol
impairment was a contributing factor) such as overdose and cirrhosis. The death rate for Native people
via alcoholism is seven times the national average. And alcohol also frequently figures into the
extremely high Indian suicide rate which is almost 75% above that of all other races, and 2-3 times
higher than the national average for Native males in the 15-34 age range.
And in a study published in the March 2004 issue of Alcoholism:
Clinical & Experimental Research - evidence
clearly shows that even small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can have a significant impact on
child
development." This study found that: "There
is no safe level of drinking during pregnancy and there is no safe time to drink during pregnancy."
Multitudes
of pre-born babies are being killed or severely brain damaged by their mother's consumption of alcohol
during
pregnancy. In the U.S., 15% of pregnant women drink alcohol. When viewing this evidence you would
think that
our bishops would have come out with a statement asking government officials to criminalize
alcoholic beverages
for at least pregnant women. But because - back in the days when Jesus walked the earth pregnant
women drank
alcoholic beverages and Jesus did not, at the time, inform them about how evil it was to drink
alcohol when
pregnant - our bishops therefore erroneously believe that they can not, at this time in the evolution
of church
history, ask for government officials to criminalize alcohol for at least pregnant women. Hence from
this
prospective their "pro-life" stance looks quite hypocritical.
In the October 3, 2005 edition of Newsweek there is an article about alcohol
and how it effects our health. When referring to the intake of alcohol beverages the author of this
article
wrote:
"Heavy intake causes blood pressure to rise. In a new study,
five or
more drinks a day also increased the incidence of atrial fobrillation - a type
of irregular heartbeat that can be lethal because it allows blood to pool in the
heart and form clots. And over the years, heavy consumption can lead to
congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart becomes too weak to
pump efficiently. "Alcohol has a direct toxic effect on heart muscle," says Dr.
Robert Eckel, president of the American Heart Association. And who needs
reminding that too much liquor damages the liver, kills brain cells and causes
auto accidents?"
"The most sobering news concerns cancer. A recent analysis of 156 studies found
that as alcohol increases, so do risks of tumors in the mouth, esophagus, larynx,
liver and colon. Even moderate drinking can boost breast-cancer risk a small
amount. Why? Alcohol does not damage DNA directly. But it can make cells more
vulnerable to other carcinogens. And according to Dr. Jian-WeiGu of the
University of Mississippi Medical Center, once abnormal cells have formed,
alcohol can help them progress to a full-blown tumor. Gu showed earlier this
year in chicken embryos that small, repeated does of alcohol promoted angiogenesis -
the formation of new blood vessels, which nourish the tumor with a steady supply
of food and oxygen.
The study by France's National Cancer Institute (INCA) reports that several cancers are more likely to strike alcohol drinkers.
reference article
The Washington Post published a simmular
article
Quotes from reference articles:
Dominique Maraninchi, INCA's president, said: 'Small daily doses of alcohol are the most
harmful. There is no amount, however small, which is good for you.'
The findings go against previous research, which has found that the antioxidants
in red wine can actually reduce the risk of cancer.
The INCA study warned: 'The consumption of alcohol is associated with an increase
in the risk of cancers - mouth, larynx, oesophagus, colon-rectum, and breast cancer.
'The cause is above all the transformation of ethanol in alcohol to acetaldehyde,
which damages DNA in healthy cells.'
This is particularly likely to happen if alcohol is introduced into the
body daily - even in small measures, it added. Official figures show that alcohol
is responsible for around 6 per cent - or 9,000 cases - of all cancer deaths in
the UK each year, including 5,000 cases of mouth and oesophagus cancer and
2,000 cases of breast cancer.
Dr Jodie Moffat, of charity Cancer Research UK, said: 'We know that drinking
just small amounts of alcohol, in the form of beer, wine or spirits, increases
the risk of several different types of cancer.
Drinking just a small glass of wine a day can more than double the risk of cancer, a study claims.
It says that consuming just one 125ml glass of wine increases the chance of developing mouth and throat cancer by 168 per cent.
Other cancers are also more likely to strike regular drinkers, the study by France's National Cancer Institute (INCA) reports.
In any group of 1,000 U.S. women up to age 75 who consumed an average of one drink a day, the researchers calculated
there would be 15 extra cancers; two drinks per day would result in 30 extra cancers and so forth.
In a October 2, 2005 Saint Paul Pioneer Press article titled "Colleges at a
loss to curb deadly binge drinking" the following statements were published.
"In the war against binge drinking among college students, victory is nowhere
near at hand."
"Despite crusades by college administrators and public health officials for more
than a decade, nearly half of all college students nationwide continue to indulge
in the practice."
"And fatalities linked directly to alcohol use by students have risen to more
than 1,700 a year, according to the most recent national statistics."
In respect to the effort to stop the plague of binge drinking amongst college
students the author of this article wrote: "The opposing forces are a lot
stronger, whether you're talking about peer pressure, social pressure or
marketing."
"Between 1998 and 2001, the number of alcohol related deaths amongst college
students nationwide increased from 1,500 to 1700. During the same period, the
number of students who said they drove drunk increased from 2.3 million to 2.8
million."
"44 percent of students were classified as binge drinkers"
Excerpts from an article in the Washington Post- By Charles Krauthammer:
Prohibition: It was a public health triumph. The decline it caused in cirrhosis
and alcoholic psychosis was dramatic.
"The demonization of drugs allows delusion about alcohol to flourish".
Why not go after alcohol with vigor? TV sports, for example, are one long
paean to the glories of drink, interrupted by the occasional forward pass or
double play. It is scandal that teens and preteens should lean to want beer
while watching baseball on TV.
The banning of tobacco advertising from TV has set a precedence. Now we
should ban alcohol advertising from TV. After all, alcohol is an addictive
drug and its consequences are as devastating as tobacco's. In fact, it has
short term consequences - traffic deaths, domestic violence - that tobacco is
entirely free of. And its long-range consequences are devastating: $13 billion
in direct medical cost, $37 billion in lost production, and 100,000 premature
deaths every year. Addiction to alcohol, unlike tobacco, causes psychological
derangement and pathological behavior that devastates not just individuals but
whole families.
A commission report shows that "binge drinking is the NO. 1 substance abuse
problem in American colleges," far out weighting the use of drugs. The
widespread use of alcohol at nearly every American school affects everything
from prevalence of venereal disease to failure rate.
Ninety percent of all reported campus rapes occur when either the victim's
assailant has been drinking. At least one in five college students abandons
"safe sex" practices when drunk that they'd use when sober.
Two-thirds of college suicide victims were legally intoxicated at the time of
death. Estimates of alcoholism range from 10 to 15 percent of the college
population.
These statistics would normally be the stuff of vocal lobbies, calls for
action and regulation. Instead alcohol manufactures openly court the
college market, advertising in campus newspapers despite the fact that
many of the readers are too young to drink legally.
"When parents visit, their concern is drugs, "said one college
administrator. They're surprised if we want to talk about drinking. A few
are even annoyed."
"There are 18.5 million people with alcohol problems and only 5 million
drug addicts. Illicit drug use on campus has decreased 60 percent in the
last decade. Beer is the dope of the quad."
"College authorities and parents both have to find some way to
communicate that using alcohol to anesthetize doubt and insecurity can
become a lifelong habit as fast as you can say AA. And that way lies
disaster, disappointment, even death
STAR TRIBUNE March 15, 1999
WASHINGTON DC - Rep. Jim Ramstad:
"He is using his own struggle with alcoholism to promote a solution to what
he says is an American epidemic.
" He opened a speech before a convention of alcohol counselors Tuesday
and said ignorance is to blame for the nation's persistent alcohol
abuse problem."
"Congress is a case in point, he said: The vast majority of the
members don't understand alcoholism and other drug abuse as a
disease. They might give it lip service, but they don't really get it."
"His message was similar to one delivered by Sen. Paul Wellstone, a day
earlier to the same group. You are working in a society that doesn't
understand the problem nor the solution, Wellstone said.
Ramstad said solving the alcohol abuse epidemic will be difficult. "One
obstacle he identified is the $104 billion-per-year beer, wine and liquor
industry that contributed more than $2.2 million to federal campaigns "
"Ramstad said, the nation's drug and alcohol policies need to be reevaluated
- and soon. It's only going to get worse unless we get smarter.
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, July 7,1999
NEXT TARGET: LIQUOR COMPANIES?
"Plaintiffs' lawyers, federal regulators, and state officials forced tobacco
companies into a $368.5 billion settlement to pay for the damage to public
heath caused by cigarettes. The same arguments used against the tobacco
industry can be used against makers of beer, wine, and hard liquor."
"Sobering facts. To be consistent with their crusade against cigarettes,
the health police have to go after alcohol. The most recent calculation by
the Center for Disease Control and Prevention place the number of
alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year at 108,000. That's
fewer than the 419,000 deaths attributed to smoking, but there's a big
difference: While cigarettes kill in the middle age or later, alcohol kills
people in their prime, often in car crashes. As a result, the CDC
estimates that smoking deprives Americans of 1.2 million years of life
before age 65; alcohol, 1.5 million years."
"Alcohol not only kills, it wounds. In 1990, reports the U.S. Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, "alcohol-related crashes
resulted in 22,084 fatalities and 1.9 million injuries."
"Accidents are only the beginning. Alcohol-induced liver diseases kill
20,000 yearly. In 1993, some 708,255 patients were treated for
alcoholism, and addiction was the fourth-leading cause of hospital stays for
men ages 16 to 44, requiring a total of more than 1 million days of hospital
care, compared with 741,000 for heart disease. The National Institute on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that 13.8 million adults "met
standard diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence during 1992."
In addition, says the NIAAN, "30 percent of suicides, and 50 percent of
homicides, and 30 percent of accidental deaths are associated with alcohol
abuse." Two thirds of all violent crimes are committed by people under the
influence of alcohol.
Protesting the alcoholic beverage (wine) located in Wahkon, Minnesota's
Sacred Heart Church:
Almost every day, I see alcoholic drunkard American Indians from the Isle reservation going to both
the Isle and Wahkon
liquor stores to pick up more alcoholic beverages to keep their health destroying alcoholic binges
going. Over the last
thirty years, I have witnessed many alcohol abuse related deaths of local American Indians. Why can
these American Indians
go to Isle or Wahkon and buy alcoholic beverages but not cocaine, heroin, meth, or even
marijuana?
Answer: There are liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon where alcoholic drunkard American Indians can buy
alcoholic beverages
because the prohibition of alcohol laws came to an end and they have not yet been reestablished.
And I believe that the
primary reason why they came to an end and have not yet been reestablished is because our church was
opposed to prohibition
(it was the only church to oppose prohibition) and it still believes in and promotes the legalization
of alcohol throughout
our nation, where a multitude of American Indians are suffering from a - largely Catholic influenced -
genocidal alcohol
abuse health epidemic.
Note: Two published Mille Lacs Messenger letters to the editor of mine about
this issue, along with information
about a state bill to protect Sacred Native American site by criminalizing bars and liquor stores near
them, can be found
by clicking reference
Our church was opposed to prohibition, a stance that influenced a lot of people to brake the
prohibition laws, which in turn
caused legislators to repeal prohibition. Hence we now have liquor stores in Isle and Wahkon.
___________________________________________________________________________
Reference:
History of
Prohibition:
Reference quotes from History of Prohibition:
(1.) "Speaking in behalf of Blaine (a U.S. Republican Presidential candidate) at a New York City rally, Presbyterian minister Samuel
Burchard denounced the Democrats as the party of 'Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion'."
(2.) "Every successful temperance movement of the last century has been merely the instrument-the
machinery and equipment through which the fundamental principles of the Christian religion have
expressed themselves in terms of life and action."
(3.) The fundamental principles of the Christian religion, with the exception of Roman Catholic
"Christian" fundamental
principles "damned not only rum, but all of the kindred vices, profaneness and
gambling and beseeched members to discourage...by...
example and influence, every kind
of.....immorality."
(4.) "Largely middle class, rural, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant comprised the temperance movement
and they confronted the urban and
industrial communities head-on.
(5.) "Calling itself "The Protestant church in action", the Anti-Saloon League
concentrated single-mindedly and evangelically on
the cause of temperance."
(6.) "The focus of the League's indictments included not simply alcohol, but the saloon itself,
as the purveyor of spirits. The
myriad League publications denounced the saloon for annually sending thousands of our youths
to destruction, for corrupting politics,
dissipating workmen's wages, leading astray 60,000 girls each year into lives of immorality and
banishing children from school."
(7.) The League stated: "Liquor is responsible for 19% of the divorces, 25% of the poverty, 25% of
the insanity, 37% of
the pauperism, 45% of child desertion, and 50% of the crime in this country, the League determined.
And this, it concluded ,
is a very conservative estimate."
(8.) "League posters appeared everywhere depicting the saloon-keeper as a profiteer who feasted on
death and enslavement."
(9.)" While Jewish and Catholic groups generally opposed their (the AntiSallon
League's) objective."
___________________________________________________________________________
And during prohibition neither did our Church's hierarchical leaders decide that grape
juice be used instead of an alcoholic beverage
(wine) during the last supper segment of the Mass, as I believe they should have. And I believe
that the longer our Church continues to
both use wine instead of grape juice, or a drug that heals people instead of harms them, on the Church's alters during Masses, and also does
not promote the reestablishment of the
prohibition of alcohol laws, the more it will be stacking up sins for the day of God's
judgment.
The hereditary chief of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is quoted, in a Messenger article, as saying -
to a large gathering of band
members; "Alcoholism is not our traditional way. We need to try to pull together and away from
alcohol because it is destroying
our people."
Alcoholism is a disease that is destroying indigenous people throughout the Americas. And the reason
why I believe that they are vulnerable
to this disease is because they have been deeply hurt by the ongoing genocide that our Church
instigated in 1493 and still promotes today.
Our Church sees that Natives are being destroyed by alcohol but continues to promote the legalization
and availability of alcohol near their
homelands, and this is an example of how our Church continues to commit genocide against the
indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere.
And this is why I hope to get an activist group together to protest the use of wine on Sacred Heart
Church's alter during Masses. I am trying
to put an end to the white European "Christian" genocidal system that promotes the legalization and
availability of alcohol within the
homelands of the aboriginal people of the Americas. Catholic leaders can see that alcohol is
destroying these aboriginal people, along with
a lot of other people, but never-the-less continue to support the legalization and availability of
alcohol in the Americas.
And I also believe that our Church's attitude and teachings about alcohol are the primary
reason why there continues to be a multi-racial
health epidemic and related social atrocities associated with the legal use and abuse of alcohol
in not only the Western hemisphere but
also within many other parts of the world where alcohol is still legal and available.
I and my anti-alcohol activist friends are on a mission to (first) establish a dry (alcohol free)
Mille Lacs County, then we'll be
working to establish a dry Isanti County, then a dry Sherburne County, and then a dry Anoka County.
And after these four "Rum" River
corridor counties become dry counties, we'll be working to make Minnesota a dry state. Then
we'll be working to make the U.S.A. a dry nation. And after the U.S.A. becomes a dry nation, we'll be
working to make all nations throughout the
world dry nations. We are going to shut the alcohol industry down!
Official governmental reports on the income of our nation's bars and liquor stores present evidence
that indicates that most of the money that is made from alcohol sales in bars and liquor stores
comes from the abusive users. And these reports are presented in the popular cultural mainstream
newspapers throughout our nation. And even though this information is known by the pastors of
the cultural mainstream "Christian" churches throughout our nation, most of them still support
private and municipal bars and liquor stores, and they do not even advocate that most of the
money made from the municipal bars and liquor stores go to alcohol abuse screening centers and
treatment centers. Descent moral people should be outraged by this fact.
The tax paying citizens of towns that have municipal bars and liquor stores are not making a profit
from these immoral businesses, but the greedy and corrupt corporate elite of the abusive alcohol
industry are. The average tax payer is paying for alcohol abuse treatment centers, the housing
and supervision of DUI incarcerated inmates, and also other alcoholic abuse related incarcerated
inmate cost. And the average tax payer is also paying for the medical cost of non-insured alcohol
abuse victims of car accidents and other alcohol abuse related violence. Two-thirds of domestic
violence is caused by alcohol abuse.
And the average tax payer is also paying for Supplement
Social Security payments to demented alcoholics who can't work, and they are also paying for the
cost of health and social problems due to the brain damage caused by the alcohol fetal syndrome
health epidemic. One out of every 100 children born in America has been brain damaged by his/her
mother's use of alcohol while pregnant. And between 60% and 80% of babies born on the Pine Ridge
Reservation in South Dakota exhibit Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that contributes to retardation.
And then there is the cost of welfare payments to the multitudes of alcoholic single mothers who
keep getting drunk and having more babies. And a lot of unwanted pregnancies occur when people
get drunk and have unplanned sex, and many of those pregnancies end with an abortion.
The negative
health and social ramifications associated with alcohol abuse are terrible and descent moral
people should be outraged by this fact, and then work to put a stop to this alcohol abuse epidemic
and related social atrocities. And you, and the vast majority of our country's other "Christian"
pastors, should begin telling it like it is, instead of giving watered down homilies about
this issue, homilies that deceive and therefore influence multitudes of our country's churchgoing
citizens to be apathetic when it comes to solving the alcohol abuse health epidemic and related
social atrocities.
In the Catechism Of The Catholic Church it says "The use of drugs (but, erroneously excludes alcohol
as one of these drugs) inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on
strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offence. Clandestine production of and trafficking in
drugs are scandalous practices." During our nation's prohibition of alcohol era a lot of American
citizens practiced civil disobedience by either buying alcohol or participated in the clandestine
production of and trafficking of the dangerous and harmful drug alcohol, and did so as a means to
regain their supposed basic human right to drink alcohol legally. And their involvement in these
civil disobedience activities is the reason why alcohol is a legal drug in our nation today. The
government could not stop the illegal use of alcohol so they made it a legal drug. Therefore, is
it right for Catholics in our nation to buy, produce or market alcohol? Under the present
circumstances how could it be? And if it is, is it not then justified for people to engage
in the equivalent illegal activities to gain their supposed basic human right to use present-day
illegal drugs? Why are the traditional drugs of American Indians illegal in their homelands
and alcohol, the traditional drug of the Church and white people legal? And in respect to our
Church's hierarchical authorities current answers to these questions, their answers and subsequent
policies impose a blatant white racist and scandalous double standard and principle on the great
multitudes of people who blindly follow them. And this is a disgrace and great scandal to our
Catholic Church.
A pre-Columbus Native American drug (Peyote) has been found to both help Indians resist the use
and abuse of alcohol as well as to find and follow Jesus Christ. The following summary of a book
entitled: Peyote Religion, by Omer C. Stewart, presents some information about this medicinal drug
peyote.
Preface:
In 1880 the modern peyote religion became formalized in Oklahoma.
"I will consider throughout the opposition to peyotism and the stubborn fight for what Americans
generally take for granted: religious freedom.
"I will consider the physical and psychological effects of eating the peyote cactus."
"I would like to highlight here two conclusions I have reached about peyotism as a part of a
culture and historical process. First of all, peyotism has been a unifying influence in American
Indian life, providing the basis for Indian friendships, rituals, social gatherings, travel,
marriage, and more. It has been a source of comfort and healing and a means of expression for
a troubled people. And it has resulted in one of the strongest pan-Indian movements in the
United States.
Chapter 1 The Plant:
This book is about peyote, a small, spineless cactus having psychedelic properties which grows in
a limited area principally in northern Mexico and southern Texas. It is also about the peoples
and ceremonies concerned with the use of peyote over the last four hundred years, culminating in
the present-day Native American Church, the members of which number perhaps two hundred thousand
and the territory of which extends from Alberta, Canada, to west central Mexico and from Wisconsin
to the Pacific Coast states.
Eating peyote "produces a warm and pleasant euphoria, an agreeable point of view, relaxation,
colorful visual distortions, and a sense of timelessness that are conducive to all-night
ceremony of the Native American Church. To the church's members, peyote is the essential
ingredient, the sacrament, in their well-established, unique ceremony. Peyote is not habit-forming,
and in the controlled ambience of a peyote meeting it is in no way harmful.
Chapter 2 Peyote Eaters and Their Ceremonies:
Fernando Hernandez, making a study in 1577 of plants used by the Aztec, included peyote among other
intoxicating plants: tobacco, narcotic mushrooms, and psychedelic morning glory.
From the beginning, the Catholic church found in peyote another evil to be rooted out of the
New World. In an effort to purge their new Christian converts of the use of peyote the Church
prepared a catechism to be used by priest conducting confessionals.
That the use of peyote was pervasive throughout central and northern Mexico and deeply ingrained
in the lives of those who used it can be judged by the radical efforts of the Catholic church to
stamp it out.
The Catholic Church said: "We order that henceforth no person of whatever rank or social condition
can or may make use of said herb, peyote, nor any other kind under any name or appearance for the
same or similar purposes, nor shall he make the Indians or any other person take them, with the
further warning that disobedience to these decrees shall cause us. . . to take action against
such disobedient and recalcitrant persons as we would against those suspected of heresy to our
Holy Catholic Faith.
The earliest historical reference to peyote is that of Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagun.
He wrote: "...the Chichimec were the first to discover and use the root which they call peiotl
(peyote), and those who are accustomed to eat and drink them used them in the place of wine.
Page 91 Peyotists are strongly opposed to the use of liquor and claim that peyote destroys the taste
for alcohol.
Page 110 "...the use of whiskey spread among the Osages like a deadly epidemic.... More Osages are
turning to peyote religious cults which had been introduced among the Osages by John Wilson. . . The
adherents drink no alcoholic liquor. . . Peyote induced a beautiful state and behavior of adherents
was as different from that of whiskey drinkers on a spree as that of peaceful sheep and rampant
lions.
Page 133: Congress passed a new law against the sale of liquor to Indians. . . but "these changes
brought no improvement in the enforcement of the liquor laws on Indian lands, and the resulting
lawlessness had finally become a national scandal.
Superintendent Frank A. Thackery reported that: "With peyote there is very rarely any violence
shown from its use while quite the reverse is the case with alcohol."
Superintendent A. R. Miller, reporting on the Kaw, wrote: "There have been no deaths from its use
in this tribe. . . The Indians of this tribe who use peyote were formerly hard drinkers, but claim
that now they have no appetite for alcohol. . . It is used here, I am informed, in connection with
religion.
Page 171: "essentially, the religion is Christianity adapted to traditional Indian beliefs and
practices."
Page 163: I have a list of ninety-seven members of the (peyote) Society. Some have belonged for
five years, others have joined since that time. Of these ninety-seven, over sixty of them I knew
as habitual drunkards. Some ten or twelve of them got drunk every time they came to town. Of
this ninety-seven I have seen fully one-half of them under the influence of liquor on election
day. With hardly an exception the whole list of ninety-seven members are now total
abstainers.
Page 203: William H. Ketchum, to the Bureau of Indian Affairs indicated that the Catholics were
aware of peyote and eager to have it declared illegal.
Page 213: In March, Father William H. Ketchum, director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions,
sent to the Bureau of Indian Affairs a nine-page file and memorandum including a request to "rid
the Reservations of the Mescal [peyote] evil."
Page 213: Christian religious leaders felt a need for a federal law to prohibit the use
of peyote.
Page215: The Osage accumulated and published a pamphlet of documents to establish that peyotism
was a good influence on Indians behavior and not harmful.
Page 217: But he was ruined by drinking until rehabilitated by peyote.
Page 217: The Indians had made a strong statement to the effect that peyotism was a sincere
religion which helped them resist liquor.
Page 220: To justify their drinking they would say, "The white people drink, and why should not
we?" Matters began to grow from bad to worse, and it was simply a continuous drunken orgy for
several years. After a while white men became afraid to travel the roads on the reservation in
the night, and the Indians were afraid to travel on the roads for fear of meeting drunken men.
Murders and rape were committed and lawlessness had sway, and the Indians needed help in all this
trouble. The agent who had charge of these Indians needed help in all this trouble. The agent who
had charge of these Indians was aware of the condition, the Indian Office was aware of the
condition, and I think the Indian Rights Association and the missionaries were aware of this
desperate situation. What did they do? Nothing. They did absolutely nothing. Poor little
children became afraid of their mothers because they drank. They became afraid of their
fathers, and when they heard them coming home from town they ran into the ravines, into
the bushes, so as to avoid getting hurt.
But suddenly there came a lull in this drunkenness and lawlessness. I had a sister who was a
physician, and her practice was mostly among the Indians, and she wrote me regularly about the
conditions of the Omaha people. She was interested and one day I got a letter from her in which
she said: "A strange thing has happened among the Omahas. They have quit drinking and they have
taken to a new religion (the peyote religion) , and members of that new religion say that they
will not drink; and the extraordinary part of the thing is that these people pray, and they pray
intelligently, they pray to God, they pray to Jesus, and in their prayers they pray for their
little ones, and they ask God to bring them up to live sober lives; they ask help from God.
Page 230: "We recognize all people who worship God and follow Christ as members of the one true
church. . .We believe in the sacrament and the sacramental bread and wine, but in so much as the
use of the same is forbidden to Indians, we of the people who cannot obtain or use the same have
adopted the use of bread as Peyote and water as wine."
Page 262: "...it was established that Peyote was not a narcotic. Their information was from the
Narcotic Bureau of the United States."
Page 263: Dr. Hoffer, and I who have done I suppose more research on the psycho physiological
aspects of this than anyone in Canada, frequently express this viewpoint and emphasize that all
the evidence that we have suggested that Peyote is wholely beneficial and in no way a drug of
addiction. It cannot even be defined in that way since it does not have the essential compelling
qualities or the withdrawal symptoms."
Page 283: The U. S. Indian Service, in a booklet, has declared peyote not habit-forming.
Page 306: Psychiatric Bernard Gordon M.D., who had studied the affects of mescaline
(the psychedelic chemical found in the peyote cactus) at the New York Psychiatric Institute
with Dr. Paul Hoch, an early researcher of peyote, was also a witness. Gordon maintained that
peyote was not harmful, not addictive, and not dangerous.
Page 333: "It was in the sixties when the hippie generation became interested in peyote..."
Page 325: The Drug Abuse Control Acts have been tested a number of times in a number of states and
in relation to other religions than peyotism. One of these involved the Neo-American Church, a
church which was organized and incorporated by Art Kleps when he and Timothy Leary (a hippie leader)
were promoting the general use of all psychedelic substances.
Page 304: "....and thru the grace of our Lord and God, we carry the banners forward. Onward,
Christian soldiers of the NAC everywhere thruout this land of ours and unto all the world
In the 1960s, I, as a hippy, took two hits of mescaline, the psychedelic drug found in peyote. And
during that "trip" I was converted from a somewhat Christian expression of New Age hippie Hinduism
to Christianity. In addition, I also received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.
When great multitudes of 1960s youth started to experiment with psychedelic substances, including
peyote, our brainwashed minds began to see the truth about our country's culture, including our
country's cultural mainstream Christian churches. In the past, when the slave traders arrived
in America, Catholic Bishops were there to greet them, shake their hands, and buy their black
African slaves. And with this fact in mind, us psychedelic drug using youth of the 1960s began
to question the morality of the alcoholic beverage drinking bishops' anti-psychedelic drugs stance.
We, at the time, came to believe that present-day bishops were a lot like the immoral slave owning
bishops of the past, but now they were not in cahoots with slave traders, but with the greedy and
corrupt corporate elite of the health and earth destroying industries, including the oil, coal,
nuclear, tobacco and alcohol industries. And that they were brainwashing their followers by
telling them that they should not question their positions on social justice issues, and that
there was no such thing as resistance loyalty.
In the 1960s us countercultural revolutionaries came to believe that these cultural mainstream
Christian bishops were telling their followers to basically conform to the mainstream culture
and that they should only take counter cultural positions on social justice issues when they
were asked to do so by themselves. And we believed that these bishops could not retain their
positions of power and influence over great multitudes of their people unless they continued to
make a lot of compromises in order to please the people who were running our nation, those people
being the greedy and corrupt corporate elite. Hence when we tried to expose the greedy and corrupt
corporate elite's evil deeds, we could not do so because these bishops' brainwashed cultural
mainstream followers were brainwashed to believe that they were not suppose to discern whether
our (not supported by the bishops) counter cultural positions on social justice issues were
right or wrong. They believed that they were suppose to blindly believe that they were wrong.
And the bishops' cultural mainstream brainwashed followers would not use traditional
Indian truth revealing psychedelic substances because their bishops were opposed to their
illegal use and also opposed to their legalization for spiritual use. And this same pitiful
situation has continued up to this present day. Hence our nation's greedy and corrupt elite
continue to lead our nation and the whole world toward destruction.
In 1914 narcotics were criminalized nation-wide and in 1919 it became a federal crime to posses
alcohol, but marijuana was not criminalized until 1932. During this time span when narcotics and
alcohol were illegal drugs and marijuana was still legal Mexican Indians were growing marijuana
and selling it to Hispanics who were migrating into our nation's southwestern states. And just
prior to the prohibition of marijuana our nation's governmental leaders came to believe that
marijuana would spread to the white people throughout our nation. Hence they decided to
criminalize it. It was to much to ask people to abstain from all mood altering substances
hence when marijuana was criminalized the prohibition of alcohol laws did not stop the use
and abuse of alcohol. Hence they legalized alcohol. We need to try to re-enact the prohibition
of alcohol laws again but not until we legalize marijuana for moderate spiritual use.
Numerous studies and federally
commissioned reports have endorsed marijuana's relative safety compared to other drugs, and
recommended its decriminalization or legalization. Virtually all of these studies have
concluded that the criminal "classification of cannabis is disproportionate in relation both
to its inherent harmfulness, and to the harmfulness of other substances." Even a pair of
editorials by the premiere British medical journal, The Lancet, acknowledge: "The smoking of
cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. It would be reasonable to judge
cannabis
as less of a threat than alcohol or tobacco."
Reference
I, as a Catholic prophet with a pharmaceutical social engineer ministry, am in the process of trying
to found a religious organization that will seek to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote
in a strictly therapeutic way during religious ceremonies. And in the process of trying to
establish this organization I am trying to influence our Catholic Church's supreme hierarchal
authorities to help me and others to gain the legal right to use marijuana and peyote moderately
and spiritually during future religious ceremonies.
I believe in "pulling together and away from alcohol", and that the moderate spiritual use of
marijuana would help people of alcohol drinking cultures to become alcohol free. I would like
to rid the world of the plague of alcohol abuse. And I believe that in nations where alcohol is
legal and available there should be both movements to criminalize it, as well as movements to
legalize moderate spiritual use of marijuana. And I believe that if these, hopefully futuristic,
movements were to become manifest and successful at accomplishing their goals they would put an
end to the world's alcohol abuse epidemic.
CNN.com video of a John Hopkins University study that revealed the spiritual benifits
of taking psilocybin mushrooms can be watched by clicking
CNN video about psilocybin mushrooms.
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related article
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