I wrote: "Nonetheless, we ought to remember that the _Satanist day-care panic_ is a particularly _American_ phenomenon, even though the fetishization of the 'child' has taken place in other rich nations as well, sometimes triggering moral panics of various kinds (out of analyses of which Jim Heartfield, in part, makes a living)." If you didn't cut off the sentence in the middle, you'd see I mentioned the moral panics of various kinds elsewhere. Have there been _Satanist *day-care* panics_ outside the USA? If you can find me one, I'll stand corrected. The Musti Affair is interesting, and in case Jim H is reading, I post the gist of it here, but the affair has nothing to do with day care workers accused of practicing "ritual abuses" on children. I think that the "satanic day care scares" are particularly American in that Americans seem more ambivalent of socializing child care than Europeans are. Americans are in fact more backward than Europeans in providing social services in general. Yoshie
***** 1. What Is The Musti Affair?
Lucia Musti, vice-District Attorney in Bologna and former Public Prosecutor in a famous trial against an innocuous cult called 'Bambini di Satana' [Children of Satan], sued a 'traditional' publisher (Castelvecchi Edizioni, based in Rome) and two Internet service providers (Cybercore, based in Bologna, and 2mila8, based in L'Aquila) for having published or put into electronic circulation Luther Blissett's book 'Lasciate che i bimbi. "Pedofilia": un pretesto per la caccia alle streghe' (Let The Children... "Pedophilia" as A Pretext for A Witch Hunt]. The book is anti-copyright, thereby it is also freely available on the Web. Lucia Musti wants the book to be banned, all the copies to be destroyed and its electronic versions to be removed from the indicted servers. Moreover, she claims moral damages for 450 million lire (approximately $300,000). She asked the competent magistrate to sequestrate Castelvecchi's accounts and contracts (officially in order to know how many copies were put into circulation - more likely she wants to find out the real names of the authors). *****