NEWS RELEASE

Dr. George Tiller Victim of America's Christian Taliban

Was Dr. George Tiller just the latest victim of America's Christian Taliban? Atheists For Human Rights (AFHR), a nationally oriented organization headquartered in Minneapolis, has no doubt about this.

"These people who kill abortion doctors, bomb their clinics, kill and maim their staff, and terrorize women who seek their services are no different from the women-hating Taliban of Islamic countries," said Marie Alena Castle, communications director for AFHR. However, she said, the blame does not rest entirely on those who pull the trigger.

"Anti-abortion terrorists do not become murderous on their own. They are incited to violence by the churches that rant against abortion, the equivalent of Islam's madrassas," she said. "They are driven by dogma that cares nothing for the wellbeing of women and considers them reproductive vessels at best, and disposable ones at that. There are hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths every year worldwide because women have no access to birth control and abortion, thanks to the political power of anti-abortion, anti-contraceptive churches. Dr. Tiller's church, the site of his murder, is to be commended for not being a party to such misogyny."

In memory of Dr. George Tiller, AFHR will increase its Moral High Ground budget, which provides assistance to victims of religion-based laws. Among other things, the Moral High Ground project helps fund abortions for poor women. Those grants will now be expanded, Castle said.

NEWS UPDATES
AND OTHER INFORMATION

The May-June issue of The Moral Atheist has been mailed/emailed. Here is a PDF of the cover. To get the complete 20-page publication mailed to you, just ask. We send 3 introductory issues free.

Beginning with the July-August issue, The Moral Atheist will increase from 20 pages to 24 and move to bimonthly publication. This will allow for more articles and better presentation while easing the editorial work and even saving some printing and mailing costs. In the month between each issue, we will put news updates on this web site. Our goal is to give you as large a publication as possible while staying within the 3.5 ounce limit beyond which postal rates rise to a costlier level and our PDF version has readers suffering page-overload.

No Fireside Chats at the Hub of Atheism until 18 September. During the summer, we will replace them with picnics. In the Twin Cities metro area, all-freethought potluck picnics are scheduled for Sundays, 14 June, 19 July, and 16 August, from noon to 3 PM at Columbia Park in Columbia Heights. It's off Central Ave. NE behind the golf course between St. Anthony Parkway and 37th Ave. NE. Besides Atheists For Human Rights, participating groups are Humanists of Minnesota, Minnesota Atheists, and Campus Atheists & Secular Humanists. Others are welcome too, as this is open to all nonreligious groups. Call or email us if you need more information. There will be music and maybe some other interesting stuff going on.

Our 17 May public forum with Dr. Ed Buckner went very well, with a large turnout and some fascinating hostile feedback from insecure Christians. Watch for a full report in the July-August issue of The Moral Atheist.

The attack on Final Exit Network continues with new raids on Network chapters in Arizona. A full report on this is also coming in The Moral Atheist.

We are beginning to be listed as a national atheist organization. Corridor A - Team, a web site that organizes freethought meetups, is the first (so far as we know) to do so.

We will be more structurally national as soon as we update our bylaws to reflect that orientation. We hope to accomplish that for the July-August issue of The Moral Atheist.

Meanwhile, we welcome your comments, questions and good advice.

The public forums, begun in June, 2006, have focused on preserving our democratic freedoms and basing political/social policies on reason and evidence rather than sectarian doctrine.

Speakers have been Barry Lynn (Americans United for Separation of Church & State, on dangers of theocracy), PZ Myers (biologist, on religious-right attacks on science), Susan Sacket (assistant to "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, on his vision of a peaceful, secular world), Michael Newdow (challenger of "under God" in the pledge, on our secular Constitution), Andy Dawkins (attorney and former state legislator, on creating stable families and livable communities), Dr. Robert Price (biblical scholar, on the roots of democracy), Rep. Keith Ellison (first Muslim elected to Congress, on the value of state-church separation), Dan Barker (co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation, on the dangers of an imperial presidency), Arvonne Fraser (noted feminist and civic leader, on human rights issues), and Dr. Goparaju Vijayam, executive director of the Atheist Centre in India, a major social reform organization honored by the Indian government in 2002 with a commemorative postage stamp.

Atheists, perhaps more so than any other group, are intensely aware that life, and even the existence of our planet, is fragile and there is no escape hatch. Rigid, self-serving, authoritarian ideologies have made a real-world hell for most of humanity for most of its existence. We must work together to achieve a good life for all of humanity. Atheism is, fundamentally, a life affirming worldview that looks to the common good. To seek a peaceful world through work and friendship and civic action is the most life-affirming thing we can do. Our public forums are part of this effort.

Roxanne Saberi & Final Exit Network:
The Religious Zealot Connection

The late actor/comedian Steve Allen said atheists have the job of civilizing the Christians. So far, so good, but there are some Christians in Georgia still badly in need of civilizing.

JUSTICE IN ISLAMIC IRAN. At this writing, diplomatic efforts are still being made to free Iranian-American journalist Roxanne Saberi, convicted of espionage and sentenced to eight years in prison after a secret less-than-one-hour trial. She was originally arrested for buying wine, contrary to Islamic beliefs about what Allah wants or does not want one to drink. That charge apparently not being public-relations-worthy of stiff punishment, it was changed to spying for the United States -- an accusation so ludicrous it could be dealt with only by a quick and secret pretense of a trial.

JUSTICE IN CHRISTIAN GEORGIA. In our last issue we reported on the raid on Final Exit Network in Marietta, Georgia, and the arrest of four members by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. At this writing the four (president Ted Goodwin, medical director Dr. Larry Egbert, and volunteers Nick Sheridan and Claire Blehr) are out on bail.

On April 19 members of AFHR met Jerry Dincin, vice president of FEN, now president following Goodwin's arrest. He was speaking at a membership meeting of Minnesota Atheists, substituting for Goodwin, the intended speaker before the GBI raid. Dincin was given $400 for the death-with-dignity cause from AFHR's Moral High Ground project.

Here is a summary of what Dincin said:

WHAT FEN DOES. FEN offers only advice and a compassionate presence to someone whose physical condition has made life unbearable. The person must have a medically verified terminal or hopeless condition (such as cancer, Alzheimers, Parkinson's, ALS, etc.) that is irreversible and causing intolerable physical and/or psychological suffering. They do not deal with mental illnesses.

Two exit guides are always present at a self-deliverance. They use helium. The patients must acquire the tank themselves and purchase the hood, available from a supplier in Montana. (The helium won't work without it.) They must put on the hood and open the tank valve entirely by themselves. FEN is there to ensure that they are doing it correctly so as not to botch the job and leave the person brain-damaged but still alive. They do not touch the equipment or the person, except to hold the person's hand as they die as a gesture of human connection and compassion. The helium enters the brain, not the lungs, so there is no asphyxiation. The person is unconscious in 10 seconds and dead in 20 minutes. It is quiet, painless and peaceful. None of this is illegal!

THE ENTRAPMENT. The arrest came from a complaint by the divorced wife of a man FEN helped to die. "This being Georgia," Dincin said, the GBI decided to do an entrapment. They had an undercover cop impersonate a candidate for self-deliverance and had a doctor create a phony diagnosis to mislead the FEN doctor. They got a helium tank and replaced the helium with oxygen. When the "patient" turned on the tank, the GBI rushed in and arrested the guides, Ted Goodwin and Claire Blehr.

This is where it gets like the Islamic system of justice. The GBI charged FEN under the Georgia version of the federal RICO act (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations), an accusation as ludicrous as that used to impose Sharia law on Saberi. The law was passed originally to get at the Mafia, but apparently "racketeering" and "corrupt" can be stretched to mean whatever local police want. In this case, FEN's activities were contrary to papal and fundamentalist beliefs about how Jesus does or does not want one to die. (Mother Teresa said, "Suffering is the kiss of Jesus." The U.S. Catholic hierarchy says, "Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering.") Goodwin and Blehr were arrested for giving instructions on self-deliverance (not exactly public-relations-worthy of stiff punishment), but were then charged under RICO, allowing the GBI to play Christian Taliban.

Under RICO, the GBI then arrested Dr. Egbert for approving the phony diagnosis, and Sheridan for coordinating the assistance. They closed FEN and froze their bank accounts (about $500,000, which may get forfeited to the police department), seized their computers -- and did the same with the several FEN chapters around the country. They even closed down the hood supplier in Montana and raided the owner's home -- in Canada! Since Georgia does not require a speedy trial, the "Georgia Four" are not likely to go to trial for a year. FEN has hired four lawyers to defend them at a cost so far of $60,000 -- all FEN has raised in donations to date. The GBI's purpose has been clearly to destroy FEN, but Dincin vows this will not happen.

HOW TO HELP. FEN's computer guru (not in Georgia) had created a data management system only he can understand. The GBI frightened him so badly that he quit FEN and abandoned his system. Is there a computer geek out there who can help FEN access the data?

Send tax-deductible donations to:
Final Exit Network
c/o Jerry Dincin
1628 Huntington Lane
Highland Park, IL 60035

For general info contact:
Judy Snyderman
mmjudy@cinci.rr.com