Discovery of Rwandan genocide priest taints Vatican

Uwayezu, far left, meets Giuseppe Betori, archbishop of Florence, who approved the Rwandan’s appointment

London Times | May 17, 2009

By Jon Swain

THE Vatican has come under renewed pressure to purge its ranks of suspected killers after a second Rwandan Catholic priest accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide was found to be working in Italy under an assumed name.

An international arrest warrant is being prepared by Rwanda for Father Emmanuel Uwayezu following the discovery that he is working in a parish at Empoli, near Florence. It will accuse him of direct complicity in the massacre of more than 80 students, aged from 12 to 20, at a Catholic school where he was headmaster.

One of the few survivors lives in Britain. She still has nightmares and is too afraid to be identified by name. Last week she identified Uwayezu and described how he brought soldiers to the school at Kibeho and conspired with them to have the Tutsi students killed.

“He seemed to be happy with what he was doing. He told us to stay in the classroom. Some people who were working in the kitchen were shot in front of his eyes but he did not say a word. Others were hacked to death, raped or buried alive,” she said. “Now Uwayezu is enjoying his life. Is he really a father [priest]?”

Uwayezu denied taking part in the genocide and said he had tried to save the students. He said their deaths still haunted him. He is a Hutu like another notorious Rwandan priest, Athanase Seromba, who joined the campaign to exterminate Rwanda’s Tutsi minority and who also ended up in Florence.

After the genocide they both escaped to Italy with the help of Catholic supporters and began new lives as priests with the approval of Florence’s archbishop. Seromba, who was found in Italy by The Sunday Times, is serving a life sentence after being convicted of slaughtering 2,000 of his parishioners by bulldozing his church as they cowered inside. He was the first priest to be tried by a United Nations war crimes tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity.

For a long time the Vatican had vigorously proclaimed his innocence. It also questioned the objectivity of a Belgian court that had given two Rwandan Benedictine nuns long jail sentences for genocide.

It remains to be seen how it will react in Uwayezu’s case. He has modified his name slightly and is known to his parishioners as Wayezu.

In Rwanda in 1994, the Catholic church was the most powerful institution after the government, but some senior members sided openly with the Hutu extremist government and the church hierarchy failed to prevent the slaughter. In 100 days of killing, 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority were massacred. Some priests and nuns sided with the Hutu militias and joined in the slaughter.

Yesterday Rakiya Omaar, the director of African Rights, a human rights organisation that has investigated the genocide and which has issued a comprehensive report on Uwayezu’s activities during the genocide, called on the Catholic church and the Italian and Rwandan authorities to conduct their own investigation.

“All concerned will have drawn lessons from the Seromba case,” she said. “Denials and dismissals by the Catholic church eventually led to his conviction and imprisonment for the remainder of his life.”

Speaker explains Nazi euthanasia, beginnings of eugenics

The Vista | Apr 30, 2009

By Caleb Williams, Staff Writer

The Nazi euthanasia programs, which used starvation, gas chambers and Phenobarbital overdoses to kill its victims, grew out of the pseudoscience of eugenics that did not come from Germany, but largely the United States.

Dr. Susan Benedict, from the University of Botswana, spoke Tuesday about the “steps to the final solution” in the Third Reich, and specifically about the sterilization and euthanasia programs that led to the death or concentration camps usually associated with the Holocaust.

“The handicapped were not only devalued but stigmatized greatly,” Benedict said. “So, more than 350,000 people were sterilized in Germany.”

In addition to sterilization models that were actually narrower in Germany than in the United States, Benedict described Commander of the Nazi Party Adolph Hitler’s plans to begin euthanasia in the event of war.

“He planned for it to coincide with war because people would be distracted by the war effort,” Benedict said, “and people would see the need to divert money away from institutionalized patients to soldiers in the war effort.”

Benedict said in his book “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote of eugenics: “People who are physically and mentally unhealthy or unworthy must not perpetuate the suffering on their children.”

After a few technical difficulties with her projector, Benedict showed some examples of the propaganda used by the Nazis to “socialize the people into expecting not only sterilization, but eventually euthanasia.”

One example Benedict showed was a math problem from a high school textbook that asked students to calculate how many houses could be built for the same amount of money that was used to build an institution, while another showed a strong Aryan German man holding up two deformed people.

“The right to live must be earned,” Benedict quoted from a written by a lawyer and a physician during this time.

“Destroying lives not worth living would be humane, and the elimination of these lives was not a crime, but was permissible and even beneficial,” Benedict said of the book’s themes.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Hitler began three phases of killing as part of his eugenics campaign.

The first, a children’s euthanasia program, began with a written request from the father of a deformed child to the Chancellor.

“From 1939 to 1945, between five and seven thousand children were killed,” Benedict said, adding that midwives who reported children with afflictions received an 80-cent bonus.

Parents were tricked into relinquishing their children, Benedict said, by nurses who promised excellent care for their children and a chance to “be able to go back to work.”

“After the children were admitted, they basically were starved to death,” Benedict said. “They would cut down their food until the children went into a coma. They would then notify the parents by mail that ‘your child died yesterday, but we had to go ahead and cremate your child because there was a hazard of contagious disease’” Benedict said. “The parents had no way of investigating.”

After the children’s euthanasia program, Germany instituted the T4 program – a similar program for adults.

Patients at the six killing centers were euthanized, as well as patients who were brought from over centers on buses with their windows painted over.

“The patients were never admitted to the hospital. They came in, they were given a very cursory examination by a doctor, and then they were taken outside to walk into the basement to the gas chamber,” Benedict said.

Benedict emphasized that doctors and nurses did not have to euthanize people, but were allowed to at their discretion.

Benedict said of one of the facilities that “there was no way people could not know something awful was going on there.”

“The children of the town and other towns would taunt each other with: ‘Be good, or you’ll get on the gray bus and you’ll go up the chimney’ because soon after the gray bus would arrive, black smoke would come up the chimney,” she said.

Following the death of 70,273 people, the T4 program ended and was succeeded by “wild euthanasia,” which did the same thing with a different method, Benedict said.

“Patients were killed individually,” she said. “[They] were taken one-by-one to the so-called ’special rooms’ and they were overdosed and buried on the grounds.”

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American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

The Georgia Guidestones may be the most enigmatic monument in the US: huge slabs of granite, inscribed with directions for rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse. Only one man knows who created them—and he’s not talking. Photo: Dan Winters

Wired | Apr 20, 2009

By Randall Sullivan

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it’s hard not to think immediately of England’s Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.

Called the Georgia Guidestones, the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the “guides” themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (prize truth—beauty—love—seeking harmony with the infinite).

What’s most widely agreed upon—based on the evidence available—is that the Guidestones are meant to instruct the dazed survivors of some impending apocalypse as they attempt to reconstitute civilization. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion. A few days before I visited, the stones had been splattered with polyurethane and spray-painted with graffiti, including slogans like “Death to the new world order.” This defacement was the first serious act of vandalism in the Guidestones’ history, but it was hardly the first objection to their existence. In fact, for more than three decades this uncanny structure in the heart of the Bible Belt has been generating responses that range from enchantment to horror. Supporters (notable among them Yoko Ono) have praised the messages as a stirring call to rational thinking, akin to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason. Opponents have attacked them as the Ten Commandments of the Antichrist.

Whoever the anonymous architects of the Guidestones were, they knew what they were doing: The monument is a highly engineered structure that flawlessly tracks the sun. It also manages to engender endless fascination, thanks to a carefully orchestrated aura of mystery. And the stones have attracted plenty of devotees to defend against folks who would like them destroyed. Clearly, whoever had the monument placed here understood one thing very well: People prize what they don’t understand at least as much as what they do.

The story of the Georgia Guidestones began on a Friday afternoon in June 1979, when an elegant gray-haired gentleman showed up in Elbert County, made his way to the offices of Elberton Granite Finishing, and introduced himself as Robert C. Christian. He claimed to represent “a small group of loyal Americans” who had been planning the installation of an unusually large and complex stone monument. Christian had come to Elberton—the county seat and the granite capital of the world—because he believed its quarries produced the finest stone on the planet.

Joe Fendley, Elberton Granite’s president, nodded absently, distracted by the rush to complete his weekly payroll. But when Christian began to describe the monument he had in mind, Fendley stopped what he was doing. Not only was the man asking for stones larger than any that had been quarried in the county, he also wanted them cut, finished, and assembled into some kind of enormous astronomical instrument.

What in the world would it be for? Fendley asked. Christian explained that the structure he had in mind would serve as a compass, calendar, and clock. It would also need to be engraved with a set of guides written in eight of the world’s major languages. And it had to be capable of withstanding the most catastrophic events, so that the shattered remnants of humanity would be able to use those guides to reestablish a better civilization than the one that was about to destroy itself.

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Time: A Brief History Of The Skull & Bones Society

Time | Feb 23, 2009

By M.J. Stephey

The Skull and Bones Society Building

On Feb. 17, the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death, descendants of the Apache warrior filed a federal lawsuit against the secretive Skull and Bones society of Yale University demanding that the group — which it claims is in possession of Geronimo’s remains — return them to his family. “I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Haryln Geronimo, 61, told the National Press Club.

As legend has it, Prescott S. Bush — the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush — dug up Geronimo’s grave in 1918 with the help of several other “Bonesmen,” as members of the society are known, and stole the warrior’s skull, two bones and some riding gear from his grave at Fort Sill, Okla. The society allegedly put the remains on display at the “The Tomb,” an imposing, windowless crypt in New Haven, Conn. that has served as the group’s headquarters since its founding in 1832.

Conspiracy theories about the Skull & Bones Society are almost as old as the society itself. The group has been blamed for everything from the creation of the nuclear bomb to the Kennedy assassination. It’s been aped in bad teen horror films and satirized, along with fellow conspiracy-group targets the Freemasons and the Illuminati, in The Simpsons. Even CNN has done a segment on the Prescott grave-robbery saga.

Prescott Bush stole Geronimo’s Bones – CNN Report

A young Yale junior named William Russell founded the group after spending a year abroad in Germany among members of some of the most mystical and elite clubs in the world, including organizations that mimicked the Enlightenment-era Illuminati. Russell returned to the U.S. determined to found a secret society of his own and “tapped” Alfonso Taft, whose son would later become President William H. Taft, to be among the first members of “The Brotherhood of Death,” or as it was more formally known, “The Order of the Skull and Bones.” Members worshipped Eulogia, a fake goddess of eloquence, glorified pirates and reportedly hatched schemes of world domination at the “Tomb” — which is rumored to have a landing pad on the roof for the society’s private helicopter.

Skull and Bones formed at Yale University, the third-oldest school in the U.S. and an institution “known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past,” according to journalist (and Yale secret society alumnae) Alexandra Robbins. Skull and Bones is not the only secret society at the school either: others include the Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head, Berzelius and Book and Snake, all of which like keeping tabs on one another, some in the form of dossiers that include “reliability ratings.” Each group picks its members in a highly confidential manner and subjects them to rounds of occult hazing rituals — what pledging a fraternity might be like, perhaps, at Hogwarts.

But given the secrecy of the groups, whether a young Henry Luce (founder of Time magazine) really laid naked in a coffin and told the tales of his early sex life during his Skull and Bones initiation, or if William F. Buckley jumped into a mud pie as part of his hazing, or whether any of the three Bush Bonesman (Prescott, H.W., and W.) actually received a gift of $15,000 and the guarantee of a lifetime of financial security upon being selected — all these rumors, publicized over the years by Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times and numerous independent book authors, might never be known.

Minus the trappings of wealth, privilege and power, Skull and Bones could be a laughably juvenile club for Dungeons-and-Dragon geeks. But its rumored alumni have made up a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s most powerful leaders. (One historian has likened the society’s powers to that of an “international mafia,” for as another writer put it, “the mafia is, after all, the most secret of societies.”) Bonesmen have, at one time, controlled the fortunes of the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford families, as well as posts in the Central Intelligance Agency, the American Psychological Association, the Council on Foreign Relations and some of the most powerful law firms in the world.

During the 2004 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic candidates were both former Bonesmen, though neither would say much about the subject. “It’s a secret,” John Kerry said when asked about his membership; “So secret, I can’t say anything more,” George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, as if to complete Kerry’s sentence.

The group has remained silent about the lawsuit from Geronimo’s descendants. But in a time when the Internet is opening up previously private information to the world and even Swiss banks are spilling their secrets, the activities of the Skull & Bones society might not be able to stay so clandestine for long.

Geronimo’s descendants sue Yale secret society for stolen skull

Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill after decades spent fighting against US and Mexican expansion into Apache lands. Photo: National Archive

American Indian leader Geronimo’s descendants have launched a legal fight to have his ’stolen’ remains returned to his birthplace in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico.

Telegraph | Feb 18, 2009

By Tom Leonard in New York

They claim his body was taken by members of Skull and Bones, a secret student society, and are hidden at Yale University.

George W Bush’s grandfather and two other members of the group are said to have taken the remains of the Apache warrior Geronimo during the First World War.

However, the society’s repeated refusal to comment on the story, or on rumours that new members have to kiss the chief’s skull, have prompted the extraordinary lawsuit.

In a court action that names not only Yale and the society, but also Barack Obama and Robert Gates, his defence secretary, 20 descendants of the famous American Indian leader are seeking to recover his remains so his spirit can be laid to rest in his tribal homeland.

Their legal action, filed this week in a federal-district court in Washington DC on the 100th anniversary of his death, will seek to determine the truth of rumours that Geronimo’s burial at Fort Sill in Oklahoma was not his final resting place.

Three Bonesmen, including Prescott Bush, served at Fort Sill during the First World War.

The trio were rumoured to have dug up Geronimo’s remains in 1918 and took some of them back to Yale where they are supposedly still kept in the society’s hall – known as the “Tomb” – on the university campus.

The Skull and Bones, whose illustrious membership has numbered three US presidents including both Bushes, supposedly makes new members kiss the Chiricahua Apache’s skull.

The lawsuit – which also names Pete Geren, the Army Secretary, as a defendant – seeks to “to free Geronimo, his remains, funerary objects and spirit from 100 years of imprisonment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Yale University campus at New Haven, Connecticut and wherever else they may be found”.

Mr Obama and his colleagues were included in the action because Geronimo was initially buried on US government land.

The remains would be returned to Geronimo’s birthplace in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico for a traditional Apache burial, said his great-grandson, Harlyn.

He stressed that such a burial was one of the most important sacred rites in his tribe’s culture.

“It’s been 100 years since the death of my great-grandfather in 1909. It’s been 100 years of imprisonment,” Mr Geronimo said outside court.

“The spirit is wandering until a proper burial has been performed. The only way to put this into closure is to release the remains, his spirit, so that he can be taken back to his homeland in the Gila Mountains, at the head of the Gila River.” The suit contends that Geronimo’s descendants are entitled to his remains and funerary possessions under the 1990 American Indian Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The Geronimo family are being represented by Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson.

“In this lawsuit, we’re going to find out if the bones are there or not,” he said.

Mr Geronimo said he hoped the people named in the suit would take it seriously.

A spokesman for Yale said the university had “no relics or bones belonging to Geronimo” but stressed it could not answer for Skull and Bones because it was independent. The society has so far refused to comment.

Aged 79, Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill after decades spent fighting against US and Mexican expansion into Apache lands.

Skull and Bones, about which George W Bush once wrote that it was “so secret, I can’t say anything more”, has never said whether any of Geronimo’s remains are in its possession.

However, in 2006, the Yale Alumni magazine published a letter written at the time of the alleged grave robbery in which a Skull and Bones member confirmed that Geronimo’s skull, femurs and some of his riding gear had been taken to the society’s hall.

The letter prompted Harlyn Geronimo to write to President Bush, but he said he never got a reply.

‘Warped’ teen convicted of shooting his parents in the head after they took away his X-Box game

A teenager convicted of killing his mother ‘may have had his mind warped by playing a violent video game’, a judge heard.

Daily Mail | Jan 14, 2009

17-year-old Daniel Petric went into his parents room and shot them both with a shotgun after they took away a video game

17-year-old Daniel Petric shot both his parents in the head with a shotgun after they took away his video game.

He then fled the house in Lorain County, Ohio, U.S., clutching his copy of ‘Halo 3′, one of the flagship titled for the Microsoft Xbox 360 console.

The father, Mark Petric, a church minister, survived the shooting, but Susan Petric died from the gunshot wound.

Prosecutors said Petric planned to kill his parents because he was angry that his father would not allow him to play the video game, in which players shoot alien monsters that have taken over the Earth.

On the night of the shooting in october 2007, Petric used his father’s key to open a lockbox and remove a 9mm handgun and the game.

Mark Petric testified that his son came into the room and asked: ‘Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you.’

He testified that he expected a pleasant surprise. Then his head went numb from the gunshot.

Deputy prosecuting attorney Anthony Cillo argued during the trial that the teenager had planned to make it appear to be a murder-suicide by putting the gun in his father’s hand.

Although the defence did not contest the facts around the shooting, Defense Attorney James Kersey argued the teenager was not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming the computer game had affected his sense of reality.

Violent: Halo 3 is rated 15

He said that when the teenager fled the grisly scene, he only took one item with him: the ‘Halo 3′ game.

Judge James Burge said, ‘I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever’.

However he rejected the insanity plea, and said that while Petric may have been addicted to the game, the evidence showed he planned the crime for weeks.

The teenager was found guilty of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and other charges.

Tried as an adult, Petric faces a maximum possible penalty of life in prison without parole. The judge did not set a sentencing date.

As the verdict was read the teenager turned to his father, who gave him an encouraging nod. He has previously stated he has forgiven his son.

The ‘Halo’ games are produced by Bungie LLC, once part of Microsoft. The flagship series is credited with selling millions of Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles

Microsoft, which owns the intellectual copyright of the game, declined to comment beyond a statement: ‘We are aware of the situation and it is a tragic case.’

Death on TV: assisted suicide to be screened

Craig Ewert, 59, whose death in an assisted suicide in a Swiss clinic will be broadcast on British television. Photograph: Sky Real Lives/PA

• Sky documentary shows moment British man dies

• Critics label programme ‘macabre voyeurism’

Guardian | Dec 10, 2008

By Steven Morris and John Plunkett

A documentary that appears to show the moment when a man dies after going through with an assisted suicide was strongly criticised yesterday by anti-euthanasia campaigners and a television watchdog.

The film, which is being screened on the Sky Real Lives channel tonight, seems to show the moment when 59-year-old Craig Ewert, who had motor neurone disease, died. It is believed this would be the first time the instant of the a person’s death in an assisted suicide has been shown on British television.

Both the documentary maker, Oscar winner John Zaritsky, and Sky insisted that the film, Right to Die? – which is being shown at 9pm – is an important contribution to a vital debate.

Ewert, a retired university professor from Harrogate, Yorkshire, travelled to Dignitas, the organisation in Zurich that helps people to die, because he did not want to spend the rest of his days in a “living tomb”.

The documentary shows Ewert and his wife, Mary, exchanging a last kiss. He says: “I love you sweetheart – so much.” She replies: “Have a safe journey. I will see you some time.”

Ewert is then given a liquid and told he will die if he drinks it. He drinks through a pink straw, then asks for some apple juice and music. Shortly before his eyes close, he says: “Thank you.”

Dr Peter Saunders, a director of the Care Not Killing alliance, branded the film “macabre death voyeurism”. He said: “This is taking us a little further down the slippery slope. It seems there is a macabre fascination in this death tourism.

“It’s creating the impression that there is a huge demand for this. There isn’t. There are only a very few people going over to use this service but an inordinate amount of media coverage. It’s all part of a calculated campaign to get the issue back before parliament.”

Saunders, a general surgeon, said there was a danger that people could feel “subtly” pressurised into going down the same route.

Dominica Roberts, of the Pro-Life Alliance, said the programme sent out the message that some people’s lives are “worthless”, adding: “It is both sad and dangerous to show this kind of thing on the television.”

John Beyer, director of the television monitoring group Mediawatch-UK, said: “This subject is something that is quite an important political issue at the moment and my anxieties are that the programme will influence public opinion.”

Zaritsky said filming Ewert’s death was the most difficult moment in his 26-year career. “When we were filming it we all had to remain very professional and just concentrate on doing our jobs,” he said. But he insisted: “I want the film to be controversial and I want people to debate it strongly.”

The veteran documentary maker Roger Graef, who has made more than 80 films, said: “”If someone has allowed the filming to happen I don’t see a problem with that. We don’t have to watch it. We know it’s a film about euthanasia. I think it informs the debate.”

Brian Woods, chief executive of True Vision TV, which specialises in documentaries about human rights, said: “I don’t think there is any moral problem with filming the moment of death. It is a matter of context and how appropriately and tastefully it is done.”

Barbara Gibbon, head of Sky Real Lives, said: “This is an issue that more and more people are confronting and this documentary is an informative, articulate and educated insight into the decisions some people have to make. I think it’s important that broadcasters give this controversial subject a wider airing.”

Asked if the actual moment of death is shown, a spokeswoman for Sky Real Lives said the crew filmed Ewert for 40 minutes as he died. But it was impossible to say at what point he actually did so.

Last year publicity material for an ITV1 documentary claimed it showed the moment Alzheimer’s sufferer Malcolm Pointon died. It later emerged that he died two and a half days after the cameras stopped rolling.

An Ofcom spokesman said: “All UK broadcasters must adhere to the broadcasting code which sets standards for the content of TV programmes.

“The code contains clear rules about the portrayal of self-harm and suicide in order to protect people from harm.”

Mexico death industry thrives on drug war killings

Firefighters, wearing chemical protective suits, remove barrels containing cut up bodies in acid in the border city of Tijuana September 30, 2008. Drug cartel hitmen have massacred some 70 people in the past eight days in Tijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border, once a freewheeling city serving Americans tequila, cheap medicines and sex that is being devastated by the war. Picture taken September 30, 2008. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes (MEXICO)

Reuters | Nov 1, 2008

By Lizbeth Diaz Lizbeth Diaz

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s drug wars are fueling a boom in the funeral industry near the U.S. border as undertakers capitalize on soaring murder rates and gruesome killings.

As Mexicans gather in cemeteries Sunday to place marigolds, candy skulls and candles on tombs for the Day of the Dead festival, a spike in drug violence means more bodies are bound for funeral parlors.

“We’ve seen a big increase in the number of clients because of the drug war, especially since September. It’s gone from a few (bodies) a week to one or two every day,” said Fernando, a funeral home owner in Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California. He declined to give his last name.

About 4,000 people have been killed in Mexico this year as gangs vie for control of the cocaine trade amid a crackdown that has thousands of army troops battling drug cartels on their home turf.

Drug cartel hit men have killed some 160 people in the past month in Tijuana, once a party town serving Americans tequila and sex that is being devastated by the war.

Gun battles and gangland mutilations are also boosting demand for facial reconstructions. Funeral parlors can charge more than $1,000 to make the dead presentable for their wakes.

And because of the rise in decapitations in the city, undertakers offer to hold the body and wait for the head to be found before proceeding with the funeral.

“No questions asked,” said Fernando, standing by three caskets on display for potential clients.

The trade carries risks, however. A funeral director was shot dead in front of his house in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, in late October and several mortuaries have been sprayed with bullets.

Although the motives for the mortuary killing in Ciudad Juarez were unclear, funeral home owners say they face extortion from drug gangs and have been threatened after organizing funerals for some drug war victims.

Undertakers from central and southern Mexico are opening branches in drug-violence hot spots near the border, and some are offering special deals to attract more clients.

“We’ll do the make-up on the body for free,” said one mortuary employee as he handed out promotional flyers outside a rival funeral home in Tijuana.

Some families want a quick burial for fear of attacks by rival drug gangs. They can pay the minimum of about $1,000 and buy a thin, unvarnished plywood coffin for a spot in a municipal graveyard.

Others want the engraved bronze and gold caskets with silver handles and red satin interiors that cost $25,000.

Some families buy funeral packages that include huge, gaudy flower bouquets, banquets for guests, Mariachi musicians and stone mausoleums in private plots.

Macabre visions of death, debauchery and degeneration greet train travelers to London

Macabre: The frieze depicts a skeleton driving a tube train as a drunken tramp clutching a bottle looks on

Welcome to Britain? The shocking frieze which will greet visitors to London’s Eurostar terminal

Daily Mail | Oct 11, 2008

By Beth Hale

From next summer, travellers stepping off the train at St Pancras International will be greeted with an artwork that sums up modern Britain.

But it might not be the Britain we’d like them to see.

A copulating couple. A vagabond carrying a bottle. And a hoodie expressing himself with his middle finger.

All these are ‘concept’ designs for the bronze frieze which is to be installed in the station.

The frieze will sit around the base of the towering Meeting Place statue of an embracing couple, which was unveiled last year.

Designs in clay by the sculptor, Paul Day, were unveiled on Friday at the station.

London and Continental Railways, which commissioned the piece  -  thought to have cost half a million pounds  -  admits that the images will be ‘bold and edgy’.

However, a spokesman for the company said the image of a man ‘giving the finger’ was an early concept and would not be in the final work.

The frieze will wrap right around the plinth at the base of the existing statue and will depict different journeys on a railway theme.

The images of contemporary life will be punctuated by historical flashbacks, some that echo the station’s past and others that reflect how railways have defined modern society.

Last night Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said he thought some aspects of modern life should not appear in such a high-profile piece of public art.

He voiced particular concern about one image, a skeleton at the wheel of a train, given the number of tragedies on the Underground.

He said: ‘I think public art should be in good taste. Some of these images seem to be in poor taste and likely to cause offence.

‘I think the skeleton is in particularly poor taste considering the number of people who perished in the King’s Cross fire.’

Day, who also created the main Meeting Place statue, said the frieze was intended to be in contrast to the ‘ideal’ imagery of the main sculpture.

He added: ‘The statue represents an ideal and is physically out of reach, just as the ideal is unobtainable.

‘The frieze, on the other hand, is intimate, touchable and on a human scale.

‘It represents the richness and diversity of our lives.’

He said the image of the hoodie was simply an example of his work on show for the art event and not intended to be part of the frieze.

He said the art work was ultimately upbeat and he did not think it would be a negative welcome to those arriving in Britain from abroad.

Art critic David Lee, who criticised the quality of the main sculpture, said he admired the frieze.

‘It seemed to me a satirical take on what London is. It is brave of him to do something that is not just blandly and popularly descriptive. There’s a whole raft of emotions.’
frieze

The Meeting Place stands directly beneath the station clock at the southern end of the Eurostar terminus, under the imposing iron archways constructed by engineer William Barlow in 1868.

It represents the meeting of a chic French woman reunited with her English lover and aims to symbolise the meeting of two cultures.

Day, 41, fought off stiff competition for the commission which called for a work as memorable as the Statue of Liberty and a meeting place for the station’s 50million passengers a year.

Columbian youths killing themselves in ritual sacrifice to Satan

30 Satanic sects have infiltrated educational establishments in Pereira, the capital of the department of Risaralda, seeking to spread their message and win new converts

Kids killing themselves for Satan, says Colombian official

Columbia Reports | Sep 17, 2008

Devil worshippers in Pereira have convinced a 14-year-old and other local youths to commit suicide, charged the president of the western Colombian city’s Peace Judges Association.

Some 30 Satanic sects have infiltrated educational establishments in Pereira, the capital of the department of Risaralda, seeking to spread their message and win new converts, alleged the association president, Eissenhouer Zapata, in an interview with Caracol Radio.

One of their beliefs is that suicide is the culminating moment of the rites, thus various minors have taken their lives in the region in recent months by slitting their wrists, charged Zapata.

He gave the example of a 14-year-old boy who hung himself from a beam in his house, leaving behind a letter explaining that his objective was to meet with the Superior Being.

Zapata did not explain why satanic sects eager to expand would encourage their converts to kill themselves.