Good stuff, Stoic. I like the line here (regarding organophosphates):

QUOTE: The defense's objection stems from the Hamiltons' recent contact with Det. Diskin and their turning over materials pertaining to the poisoning issue. These include some photos of rat poison, information about the wood that was used in the fire, and so forth.


Interesting. I am unaware that "Organophosphates" are used to kill rats. I do know that various rat poisons consist of Warfarin(blood thinner), cyanide (called "A-Dust"), and other things called "Tracking Powder" where rats walk through it and lick their feet to get the dust off and die (because rodents cannot regurgitate the poison up). Unless the people ATE rat poison I can't see how they were "poisoned". (A-dust aka cyanide dust poisoning would be fast and certainly have been picked up by a first-year pathology student.)

Perhaps the cured hardwood used in the Death Lodge was saturated with Organophosphates...ha ha! Right.

The first mention of organophosphates by the defence was swiftly followed by an article on DeathRay's site (which he had recently sold to another hard-sell scammer along with the rights to flog his book and tape packages.)

[www.jamesray.com]

This article contends that the wood used to heat the stones was 'pressed wood', lumber offcuts and that this was likely to be contaminated with formaldehyde which is toxic when burned (organophosphates are pesticides used in farming)
This article seems to be pure speculation as this info has been mentioned nowhere else. Various Native American lodge pourers (writing on the Droid's blog) have confirmed that experienced water-pourers and fire-keepers are aware of this hazard and do not use pressed wood for this reason.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2011 07:09AM by Stoic.

So then to follow your point, Stoic, if DeathRay had used pressed wood for is Death Lodge fire, he is guilty of negligence and therefore guilty of manslaughter.

Prison is looming, DeathRay....enjoy the group showers!

I think the point of the speculative article was to try to shift the blame from Ray to the Angel Valley proprietor and the fire-keeper for the Spiritual Warrior sweat tent--and the defence has picked that up and is trying to run with it.
But yeah, it was Ray's gig so he is ultimately responsible.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2011 08:25AM by Stoic.

Article: Medical Examiner autopsies finds victims of Death Lodge died of heat stroke.

[www.azcentral.com]

FTA:

CAMP VERDE - A medical examiner who performed autopsies on two people who died in a sweat lodge ceremony said Thursday that he saw no signs they were exposed to pesticides or poisons but that he didn't initially test for them either.

Dr. Robert Lyon said Thursday that testing for organophosphates was unnecessary because he received no information that could have factored into the deaths of Kirby Brown and James Shore.

An attorney representing a self-help author facing manslaughter charges contends that authorities cherry picked the information given to Lyon, leaving out medical records or statements that mention toxins. Lyon testified in James Arthur Ray's trial that he based his conclusion on the deaths of Brown and Shore almost entirely on circumstantial evidence.

"You would agree that the reliability, accuracy, integrity of your conclusion is only as good as the information that was provided to you?" said defense attorney Truc Do.

Lyon agreed but said he was more certain than not that heat stroke caused the deaths of Brown and Shore based on their autopsies, toxicology tests, some of the participants' medical records and information from authorities investigating the case. A third participant, Liz Neuman, slipped into a coma and died nine days later due to multi-system organ failure.

Ray has pleaded not guilty to three counts of manslaughter



Read more: [www.azcentral.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2011 03:33AM by Sparky.

All those JRI employed _______ want to do is to try and create confusion for the jury.
Ray knows from the NLP material, that all they need to do is to try and manufacture "uncertainty" in the jurors, of any kind.

I know you are right, The Anticult, but I pray you are wrong.

DeathRay must NOT be a slippery eel and escape his responisblity!

If this had been anyone here we would be rotting in jail for 20 years. DeathRay must NOT be allowed to escape on STUPID juror sentiment.

DeathRay's staff tore down the Death Lodge after the deaths:

[prescottdailycourier.com]

FTA:


home : latest news : latest news Share April 02, 2011

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



4/1/2011 9:48:00 PM
Sweat lodge trial
Angel Valley employee helped tear down sweat lodge



Jack Kurtz/The Associated Press, file


Mark Duncan
Enterprise Reporter


CAMP VERDE - Three days after emergency lights had ripped into the night in Angel Valley, three days after two souls had departed, Fawn Foster and others tore the sweat lodge down.

"It is my belief that when a lodge has been desecrated it needs to come down in a sacred way," Foster said. "It should never be used again."

Sometimes angry and sometimes sad, Foster testified Friday in the manslaughter trial of James Arthur Ray, who is accused of recklessly causing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore and Liz Neuman. The three died after taking part in a sweat lodge ceremony at Ray's Spiritual Warrior seminar at the Angel Valley Retreat Center near Sedona.

Foster has been an employee of Angel Valley since April 2008. She described herself as one-fourth Cherokee and one-fourth Sioux and freely admitted that it offended her to have someone charge for a sweat lodge ceremony.

"I'm not in agreement with anybody charging money for a sweat lodge," she said. "It doesn't have anything to do with him (Ray) personally."

Foster was filling multiple roles during the Spiritual Warrior event, working in the kitchen as well as doing maintenance and housekeeping tasks. She had previously participated in a sweat in the same structure that Ray was to use.

So, when it was time for the seminar's climactic event to begin, and all her work was done, she decided to hang around for the sweat lodge ceremony.

"I just sat down and watched," she said, "because my gut told me to."

The first thing that struck her was when Ray ordered in 12 stones for the first round, more than twice as many as she had seen used before.

"It seemed like an astronomical amount to me," she said.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/02/2011 10:41PM by Sparky.

Are any "Lurkers" here that have been through Ray's program and thought it was good for them and helped their lives? Just curious...

I found a good analysis of one of Deathray's talks from a rhetorical point of view (rhetoric is the 3000 year old discipline of persuasion through discourse) on this site:

[agent3155.com]


The clip of James Ray speaking that the author analyses is this one:

[www.youtube.com]

and his analysis makes it clear that Deathray is a master of seducing his audience through the use of rhetoric--and that nothing much has changed in the way that persuasion tactics can seduce an audience.



'Prosecutors are claiming “criminal negligence” for Ray’s failure to heed signs that his participants were suffering, but the defense is saying that the participants could have chosen to leave at any time. Why is it, then, that the deaths occurred at all? If the participants who felt close to death were never forced to stay, why didn’t they leave? The sweat lodge was indeed meant as an exercise of spirituality, but surely Ray didn’t posses a power over the participants in a way that delivered them to their own deaths.

Or did he?

Rhetorically speaking, he very well may have. The art of persuasion is to rhetorically seduce, a word that, in itself, can sometimes bring a person to behave in a way that they would not otherwise. Did participants become too scared to leave, or does rhetoric truly have the power to persuade in favor of an ideal even when fatigue is screaming warnings to stop?

The logical answer may be yes, but not in such a short amount of time. To shore up persuasion’s qualities and use them on entire groups to the point of death in only a few days suggests a terrible power. It’s unlikely that the power rhetoric can wield was supernaturally injected within the confines of this ceremony. Examining James Arthur Ray’s work as a collective body and questioning its effectiveness over the years may prove rhetoric to be the truest culprit behind the deaths, while raising questions of its potential as a dark influence that can sometimes deceive those drawn by its influence.


A few years back, Ray presented a speech to an audience on the merits of the Law of Attraction. In the video (which I recommend viewing) he is seen using a string of rhetorical strategies to persuade the audience in his favor. The smugness that develops in his face is easy to read as he assesses the scope of his catch, a true sign of his confidence as a master rhetorician. There are some critical points to make about this speech that speaks of its persuasive appeal:

-Ethos: argument by character. Ray appears preened, built, and confident. He speaks about how dedicated he is to personal responsibility before showing a softer, human side by mentioning a close relationship to his family. Audience members love a comfortable speaker, and even more so if he/she represents the type of person whom they would like to become.

-Decorum/virtue: The audience wants to hear how they too can be successful, and Ray represents many of the values that people want to see in themselves. He appeals to two entirely different beliefs systems by noting that an important decision took a tremendous amount of both “meditation” and “prayer.”

-Storytelling: Tales of past success are in full force here, told from the first-person as a way of personalizing it for the audience. Keeping them interested is a great way of controlling the mood of an audience.

-Showing off experience: This one is so evident that it almost requires no explanation. A speaker is better able to persuade an audience to do something if he/she has actually done it, and Ray sets aside plenty of space for describing the ups and downs of his life.

-Bragging: What does bragging do? It pumps someone up. It makes them look good ( or at least in the context of a motivational speech). Ray speaks out a number of times about the honorable things that he claims to have done.

-Getting a witness to brag: If hearing someone talk about how good they are is a tad too unconvincing, hearing good things that others have said about them is much more likely to seal the deal. Ray didn’t call anyone up on stage to do this bit of dirty work, but he didn’t have to. He spoke of a compliment given to him by a former boss: “James, you’re a mover and a shaker.” If his boss believed it, an audience is likely to do the same.

-Inductive logic: Here is where Ray shines. To reason in an inductive way is to prove by example. Jay Heinrichs, in his book, “Thank you for Arguing,” describes it best: “This kind of logic starts with the specific and moves to the general…inductive logic uses the circumstances to form a belief.” Ray is using himself as an example that anyone can overcome adversity and find success.

-Urbane humor and wit: Urbane humor plays off of a word (Ray calls Missouri “misery”) and wit is situational based (“I was married to my future ex-wife”). Both do a good job keeping the audience calm and improving the ethos of the speaker.

-Fixing blame: Finally we get to some resolution. Fixing blame on a person (or group) is persuasive in that it tells an audience what not to be or do. That is what Ray does here. When he makes the claim that “anytime you hear someone say, ‘A little bit of luck,’ it’s because they don’t understand how the universe works,” he is effectively telling his audience to “not be like them.”

-Deliberative choice: By presenting the audience a choice – or what appears to be a choice – every rhetorical strategy used thus far serves to motivate this decision. We can assume that more blatant, straightforward choices were given later on in this speech, but we can hear it begin to come out in Ray’s rhetoric: “Luck has nothing to do with it. You live in a universe that is divinely designed and it operates on very specific laws and rules. Luck is an acronym for ‘Living Under Correct Knowledge.’ When you begin to have correct knowledge and act and live upon it, everyone around you will say, ‘You’re so lucky.’ And you can just smile. Because inside, you know the truth.” A few in this audience likely did smile and nod their head in agreement.

Why go this far into explaining how and why Ray put rhetorical strategies to use? Isn’t it his job to be motivational? I argue that in analyzing this speech, his expertise at moving an audience in a deliberative fashion becomes astonishingly evident – all this in just nine minutes. Undeniably, some in this audience walked away convinced that personal transformation was in their hands – or in the hands of James Arthur Ray. They may have even found themselves at Arizona in October 2009.


Which brings about my previous question: If the participants who felt close to death were never forced to stay, why didn’t they leave? Was it because they became too convinced to follow Ray in a spiritual journey that ultimately got out of control? Two other rhetorical strategies may reveal the answer, which I will quote directly from Heinrichs:

-“Patriotism: Attaches a choice or action to the audience’s sense of group identity. You can stir it by comparing the audience with a successful rival.”

-“Emulation: Responds emotionally to a role model. The greater your ethos, the more the audience will imitate you.”

In other words, the participants of the Yavapai ceremony 2009 may have based their determination to achieve transformation on that combined ambition of the group as a whole – all directed toward the ideals and model that James Arthur Ray presented them. As the stakes became real, people may have been so convinced in the need to endure that they failed to realize what they were being subjected to until it was physically and emotionally too late.'