Wash Times Announces Resignation Of Executive Editor John Solomon

Read the story.

Must Read

"Media, Money and Sun Myung Moon" by Rory O'Connor (Thanks to politickybitch for the link).

Beefed-Up Security at Moonie Times

Here is the story.

The Washington Times' Anti-Gay War on Kevin Jennings

Surprised about The Washington Times' jihad against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings? It comes to know surprise from those who know about Sun Myung Moon's thoughts about gays, namely that they are "dung-eating dogs" who will be "eliminated" by God.

Settlement Reached in Stallings Case

According to the Washington Post, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has reached a settlement with a man who said he was sexually abused as a teenager by a former priest, George A. Stallings Jr., who is now a prominent member of Moon's Unification movement.

AP: Sun Myung Moon Turning Over Unification Movement to Sons

Here is the Associated Press story:

SEOUL, South Korea - The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, now approaching 90 and still one of the world's most controversial religious figures, is handing over day-to-day control of his Unification Church to three U.S.-educated sons.

There are some changes afoot in fundraising and boosting membership, the sons say. But Moon — who will preside over another series of his trademark mass weddings on Wednesday — remains in charge as the church's self-proclaimed "Messiah."

Read the full story.

George H.W. Bush and other World Leaders Puff Up Moon

Bush and other prominent current and former world leaders recently congratulated Moon on his autobiography. Bush wrote (6:37 of the video), "I salute Rev. Moon, and all of you, for your work and your service to the world. I believe that public service of all kinds is an honorable calling. Yes, there are great challenges, but our will and determination are, and must be, greater."

Watch the video:

Sun Myung Moon to Kick the Bucket on January 13, 2013?

In two recent speeches, Sun Myung Moon has claimed that January 13, 2013 will be an auspicious day. Two years, ago Moon told followers the following:

I have just six years until January 13, 2013. If I give the order, will you be able to move all the people below you? A great migration will occur. This is not just a dream; this can actually happen. Can a bird carry a lot of luggage to migrate? No. You yourselves should not have things that will burden you down; you must be able to migrate

Last year, Moon told his followers:

Today is the 13th of February. Thirteen is very important. There are five years from now until January 13, 2013. The 13th of every month should be marked as important days on our march to 2013. This is the ssang hap time of connecting the 7th and 8th jubilee years. We will expand the jubilee of God’s forgiveness every year through 2012.

In other Moon news, a Washington Times review of Moon's autobiography, "As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen" (to no surprise, it is a positive review) notes that the book is now in English. I previously noted that the book was a bestseller in South Korea.

Andrew Breitbart Throws Stones At ACORN from Sun Myung Moon's Glass House

(Updated below)
The right has been in a feeding frenzy since some hidden-camera tapes from right-wing operatives (don't call them journalists) were aired on Fox News. Clearly, the operatives cast a wide net, hoping that lower-level ACORN workers in field offices would make incriminating statements (here's an article on the nature of these sting operations and how people get caught up in them).

The operatives are now in the employ of Andrew Breitbart, a commentator for Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times. Breitbart was so outraged by alleged "deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division" that he wrote about it in The Washington Times. As an employee of the Washington Times, whether he knows it or not, Breitbart is contributing to Moon's attempt to legitimize his worldview to the world; Moon said, "That is why Father [Moon referring to himself in the third person] has been combining and organizing scholars from all over the world, and also newspaper organizations, in order to make propaganda." Since Breitbart used the pages of a paper devoted to promoting the Unification Movement's worldview to slam ACORN, I thought a comparison of ACORN and the Unification movement would be in order:

ACORN Versus The Unification Movement

Movement	ACORN	Unification Movement
Purpose	The empowerment of poor and disenfranchised through voter registration, affordable housing, health-care, and neighborhood safety.	The aggrandizement of Sun Myung Moon, who, according to Unification dogma, is "humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent"
Does the leadership compel members to engage in degrading, unhygienic sexual acts?	No	Yes
Has the Movement Scammed Japanese Widows?	No	To the tune of hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars
View of neo-Confederate groups	Strongly opposes efforts by neo-Confederates and anti-civil rights groups from denying the vote to the poor and minorities	Moon's Washington Times has had several prominent editors who were neo-Confederates or who supported white supremacy
Rapes Committed by Leadership	None	Moon procured an underage girl for his drug-addled, adult son
Actual Importing of Underage Girls	No	Yes
Supported Apartheid and Salvadorean death squads?	No.	Yes, Moon was a huge supporter of the WCAL

UPDATE: True to form, Moon's Washington Times has been prominent in spreading the smear that Department of Education official Kevin Jennings had covered up sexual abuse in a school where he had been a teacher.

Irony is Dead

Fox News managing editor (and former Washington Times operative) Bill Sammon writes a memo to Fox News staffers about the need to be impartial. To fully appreciate the irony of the memo, read my article about Sammon (written when he also worked for Moon).

Must Read Article on Moon's Ties to Nazis

(Updated below)
Robert Parry on Sun Myung Moon's Nazi ties:

One of the ugly ironies in the Right’s depiction of President Barack Obama as Hitler and health reform as a plan for Nazi-style euthanasia is that the owner of the Washington Times, which has pushed this line of attack, has had longstanding ties with World War II-era Nazis, neo-Nazis and rightist “death squads.”

Indeed, the Washington Times founder and funder, Sun Myung Moon, built his international religious-business-media empire in collaboration with Japanese fascist war criminals and with operational assistance from ex-Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon.”

The 89-year-old Moon also has had close ties to later generations of neo-Nazis and right-wing murderers, especially in Latin America where Moon-related organizations threw in their lot with brutal military dictators including some involved in cocaine trafficking.

UPDATE: Regarding the Nazi analogy used by the Washington Times, there was an apology; from the New York Times to the Washington Times for its assertion that the Moonie Times is an "outlet ... decidedly opposed to Mr. Obama." (Thanks to JG for the link).

UPDATE II: Media Matters for America asks: Do Wash. Times news pages really have "no agenda"? and discusses the Times' defense of its "fact-based" editorials comparing Obama to Nazis

Interesting and Revealing Post on the Washington Times

Matt Gertz of Media Matters for America:

Politico reports that Philadelphia Inquirer columnist and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum has written a fundraising email for the RNC – which was sent to the Washington Times’ subscriber list. In the email – addressed “Dear Fellow Conservative” – Santorum waxes sentimental about how “a great tide of conservative Republicans swept to victory in races all across America,” and claims that “we are facing a very similar opportunity today.”

This follows fundraising emails sent to the Times’ list on behalf of House Republican Leader John Boehner and the right-wing Judicial Confirmation Network. Perhaps John Solomon's promise that the Washington Times would maintain a "neutral, civil voice" kicks in next month?

The Ulitmate Irony?

On Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times' America's Morning News radio program, L. Brent Bozell appeared and said the following about Barack Obama: "He is the Messiah; he is The One. . . "

Click here is you don't see the irony of this.

I have previously written about the Bozell family.

Moon's Washington Times on Sotomayor

Media Matters for America: "Wash. Times changes word in Sotomayor statement to call for her defeat"

UPDATE: I just found out that the Washington Times is selling a limited edition book W. The Legacy of President George W. Bush. The e-mail promoting the book has the following text:

You have stood with former President Bush through some of our nation's most turbulent times. That is why we are making this special edition with personal remembrances by Vice President Cheney, Laura Bush and many others available to you now. "W" is packed with gripping pictures and stories all beautifully presented in this historical keepsake presentation of all eight years of the Presidency of George W. Bush.

From the Man Who Gave Us the Capitol Hill Moon Coronation

Joe Conason's recent article on Sarah Palin has some interesting information about Charlie Black, the Republican operative who arranged the 2004 coronation ceremony for Sun Myung Moon and his wife. Black had a big hand in John McCain's ill-fated decision to tap Palin as his running mate:

[McCain strategist Steve]Schmidt had collaborated with [lobbyist Rick] Davis and [speechwriter Mark] Salter to promote Palin over several more qualified candidates -- after a cursory background investigation that revealed almost nothing about her lack of knowledge, bizarre official conduct, and narcissistic temperament. When the three insiders presented her to a smitten, impetuous McCain, he accepted their judgment, ratified by Charlie Black, one of the most experienced Republican operatives in Washington, who told him that if he chose her, he might win -- and otherwise he would surely lose.

Exclusive: Sun Myung Moon's Alliance with Another Cult-Run Media Group

(Updated below)
Sun Myung Moon's media empire has branched out to right-wing talk radio with the recent establishment of the Washington Times America's Morning News program. The co-hosts of the radio program are John McCaslin, a columnist and a former editor of the Washington Times, and veteran right-wing talker Melanie Morgan.

The program is due to an alliance with Moon's Washington Times and another media outlet founded by a cult leader, the Talk Radio Network (TRN). TRN was founded by zany cult leader and radio talk show host Roy Masters and is currently run by Masters' son Mark. Having listened to Masters' radio program, I can confirm that Michael Savage (whose radio show is syndicated by TRN) is the embodiment of sanity compared to Masters (ConWebWatch has a succinct primer on Masters and TRN).

The alliance between Moon's Washington Times and the Masters' Talk Radio Network is, in Unification Church terminology, a "perfect marriage."

UPDATE I: Welcome readers of Crooks and Liars, American Politics Journal, and Oliver Willis' blog. Check out the articles on my main blog (the sidebar of hilarious transcripts of on-air conversations I've had with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc.). also, check out the front page of the Sun Myung Moon blog and watch the YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult."

UPDATE II: Lanny Davis is a regular guest on the show. Davis performs the same thing on the Washington Times radio program that he does for Fox News (and did on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show)--he acts as an on-air punching bag.

UPDATE III: When the news media focused on missing governor or South Carolina Mark Sanford (who it later turned out was having an affair with a woman in Argentina), the Washington Times let Sanford know that they were on his side. A WT staffer sent an e-mail to Sanford's office with the following message: "If you all want to speak on this publicly, you're welcome to Washington Times Radio. You know that you will be on friendly ground here!"

The Washington Times and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), joined at the hip

Media Matters for America has the full story.

Must Read

Joe Conason on the attempt by wingnuts, lead by the Moonie Times, to invent a "Walpin-gate" scandal revolving around the firing of Americorps inspector general Gerald Walpin.

UPDATE: Media Matters for America has more.

Paul Krugman mentions Wash. Times in his Column on Right-Wing Extremism

Read the entire column, "The Big Hate," here. Krugman on Moon's Washington Times:

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

Frank Gaffney Spreads Obama-is-a-Muslim Rumor in the Pages of the Washington Times

One of the biggest urban legends of the past few years is the rumor that Barack Obama was raised as a Muslim (variants of this smear are the claims that Obama is Arab and that he was born outside the United States). This canard was first publicized in the Sun Myung Moon-owned (and now-defunct) Insight magazine.

Today in the Moon-owned Washington Times, Frank Gaffney wrote an op-ed in which he make the jaw-dropping claim that "[t]here is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself." Media Matters for America is one of the media watchdogs that have debunked Gaffney's claim (MMFA also cited Gaffney's baseless claims made during the 2008 election about Obama's birth certificate and Gaffney's attempts to link Obama to a "convert to radical Islam" named Khalid al-Mansour).

Tamron Hall of MSNBC addresses the issue:

Wish I Said It

Last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith cited the conservative Washington Examiner and said that it's just like the Washington Times except that it has "fewer Moonies."

Addendum: Both the Washington Times and Washington Examiner have the dubious distinction of having had the notorious Bill Sammon in their employ.

FiveThirtyEight.com on the Washington Times' Obtuseness

Nate Silver on the right's meme about Sonia Sotomayor's 60 percent reversal rate by the Supreme Court.

Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times

Media Matters for America reports that Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times used photos of the Obama children for a news article about schoolchildren being murdered in Chicago.

UPDATE: Rachel Maddow addresses the Times' article. Here is the video.

Really Ironic

A few days ago, I noted the irony of someone on would-be messiah Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times discussing political messianism. The headline of a column by Wes Pruden in today's Times referencing President Obama: "Even a messiah loses his training wheels."

For further reading on the right's mocking use of messianic rhetoric to describe Barack Obama, check out my comparison chart of Sun Myung Moon and Obama.

Ironic

"Political messianism--the impulse to realize perfection on Earth by whatever means necessary--marks a common thread, along with the struggle between religion and secular ideologies that mimic it." --William Anthony, review in the Washington Times May 6, 2009

The Washington Times' Jeffrey Kuhner on Condoms

I have written about Kuhner previously (here, here, and here). I found this YouTube video in which Kuhner appeared on Michael Savage's radio show and excoriated birth control. My favorite gem in Kuhner's unhinged diatribe: "The Pill and the condom have been the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism."

What DoYou Expect from a Newspaper that was Home to White Supemacists?

Media Matters reports that the Washington Times didn't give the reasons Senator Sessions' own judicial nomination was blocked.

Frank Rich's Latest Column and the Cults

I enjoyed Frank Rich's Sunday column "Enough With the 100 Days Already." One criticism, a small violation of Occam's Razor--there is a needless complication in a description of the contemporary Republican Party: ". . . [T]he former party of Lincoln and liberty has now melted down to a fundamentalist core of aging, rural Dixiecrats and intrusive scolds-—as small as 20 percent of the populace in the latest polls. Its position on the American spectrum of ideas is somewhere between a doomsday cult and Scientology."

Why bring Scientology in the discussion when there is a real-life cult--Moon's Unification movement--that is a core component of the regional rump that the GOP has become?

Joseph Curl's Homophobic "Joke" in the Washington Times

It doesn't surprise me that Joseph Curl would use a homophobic double entrendre in yesterday's Washington Times. This is a guy who, right after 9/11, twisted Bill Clinton's words to make it appear as if the former president had placed the blame for the attack on America.

Revealing Article about Moon's Washington Times

Eric Boehlert, "The Washington Times vs. reality"

The Theocratic Chain of Misery

I have previously discussed the concept of what I have dubbed "the hierarchy of misery." The term refers to organizations or movements in which a tiny parasitic elite benefits on the backs of a large mass of people. I discussed how Amway and the Unification movement embody this category. In this post, I will show that one thing that makes these groups particularly pernicious is that many of them often have a mutually beneficial relationship with other hierarchies of misery. It is a synergistic relationship in which the overall pathology becomes greater than the sum of its component parts.

In the diagram, I have charted how this insidious mutualism has taken place in recent American history with groups that have a theocratic orientation. Let me discuss the players:
1) Amway/Kingpin IBOs. This refers to Amway Global network marketing company as well as some of the more reactionary distributor organizations headed by wealthy reactionary "kingpin" distributors (known in Amway as Independent Business Owners-or IBOs). Here is a newspaper story on the exploitative nature of many of the top Amway kingpin IBOs.
2) The Falwell Organization. This pertains to the various organizations run by Jerry Falwell (1933-2007).
3) Sun Myung Moon Groups. This includes the Family Federation for World Peace, 1000 front groups, and media organizations, notably the Washington Times and the UPI wire service.
4) The Right-Wing Governmental Apparatus. Prominent members of the right who exercise governmental power.
5) The Neo-Confederate Movement. This refers to the white supremacist movement in the United States that usually poses as a movement to preserve "Southern heritage." In fact, this heritage is largely one in which a small oligarchy kept itself in power in the American South for over a hundred years by pitting poor white against poor black--to keep both groups oppressed.

The diagram shows what each groups gives and receives from other groups
1.Amway to Falwell. Falwell's ministry has been receiving significant financial support from Amway kingpin IBO Dexter Yager (more on Yager here).
2. Falwell to Amway. In turn, Falwell spoke out in defense of Amway against critics who were trying to expose unethical practices by Amway and various kingpin organizations.
3. Moon to Falwell. In the early 1990's, Sun Myung Moon funneled $3.5 million to bail out Falwell's floundering diploma mill, Liberty University (quick note: a Brown University student went undercover at Liberty U. and is writing a book about his experiences). Also, when Moon was facing legal problems in the 1980's, he freely gave to various sectarian right groups.
4. Falwell to Moon. Jerry Falwell was not a big fan of Moon when the would-be Messiah was converting young Americans to the Unification Church in the 1970's, Falwell said, "Reverend Sun Myung Moon is like the plague: he exploits boys and girls, and he should be exported [sic]." Falwell changed his tune in a big hurry when Falwell had a chance to line his pockets with Moon's ill-gotten cash. Falwell lavishly praised Moon, giving Moon further legitimacy with the American conservative movement.
5. Moon to the right-wing governmental apparatus. Moon has been the biggest contributor to the American right. Moon has dumped over $3 billion into the right-wing newspaper the Washington Times and has provided workers and funds to right-wing causes. Moon has given lucrative speaking fees to prominent GOP politicians, notable former president George H. W. Bush.
6. The right-wing governmental apparatus to Moon. Prominent GOP politicians, such as Orrin Hatch and former President Bush have given Moon the legitimacy he craves. This culminated in the disgraceful coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in 2004. In addition, the videos of prominent politicians heaping fulsome praise on Moon have allowed Moon to gain converts and bilk money from gullible people.
7. The Falwell groups to the right-wing governmental apparatus. Falwell has devoted massive resources to electing right-wing politicians and causes. Falwell bragged that once a person entered his church the new convert was registered to vote (as a Republican, of course).
8. The right-wing governmental apparatus to Falwell. Falwell has been given legitimacy by every Republican president since Reagan. When Falwell died, Republican presidential candidates tried to outdo each other in praising Falwell.
9. Amway has been one of the largest contributors to the GOP and right-wing causes. In 1994, Amway gave to then what was the largest corporate contribution to the Republicans--$2.5 million. Most of the kingpin IBOs are on the hard right (a recent post on my main blog has a lot of information about the warped ideology of Amway's biggest IBO Dexter Yager). In addition, at Amway rallies, prominent right-wing politicians are paid huge speaking fees to extol the virtues of Amway to distributors; GOP politicians who have spoken at Amway rallies include "former Presidents George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and former Vice Presidents Bob Dole and Dan Quayle, along with other GOP heavyweights like Gingrich, Oliver North, Senator Rick Santorum and even the latest SE Regional Chairman for the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign, Ralph Reed."
10. These de facto contributions to prominent Republicans have been lucrative for Amway. The late Molly Ivins reported that then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich inserted a special tax break in a bill that created a $283 million for Amway's parent corporation Aliticor. It is also worth noting that during the Bush years, nothing was done by governmental regulatory bodies like the FTC regarding the illegal but highly lucrative tools pyramid scheme (YouTube has the Dateline NBC segment here and here that has undercover footage of how the tools scam works--the segment also shows the bizarre cult-like atmosphere of the Amway/Quixtar rallies; quick note: for more of the fucked up shit that goes on at Amway rallies, watch Dexter Yager's wife Birdie speak at a rally here).
11. & 12. I put these two grouping together because, unfortunately, much of the right's governmental apparatus is comprised of neo-Confederates or people sympathetic to the neo-Confederate movement.
13. The neo-Confederate movement has filled the Washington Times' editorial page. I have written about this on my Moon blog. The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Nation's Max Blumenthal have addressed this phenomenon.
14. The Washington Times' editorial page appears to be the last quasi-respectable refuge for white supremacist crackpots. Having white supremacists working for a newspaper in the nation's capital has accorded the neo-Confederate movement a great deal of undeserved legitimacy. A quick note on Moon and white supremacists: I'm not sure what Moon's deal is with white supremacists. Although Moon is Korean, like the white supremacists, he is an anti-Semite and an anti-black racist. I recently asked a prominent academician about this and she told me that she had asked some people and they didn't have a clue).

Who loses?
Humanity in general loses when these reactionary and benighted ideologies prosper. However, there are specific victims:
1) New and prospective Amway distributors. Despite claims by Amway kingpins that Amway is the best way to get rich, only one person per 100,000 who joined Amway/Quixtar in 1999-2000 attained an income over $90,000 a year.
2) Moonie converts. These people waste their lives in the belief that a demented megalomaniac is the Messiah. It is very sad.
3) Victims of Moon scams. This category includes not only those who contributed to Moon canvassers claiming to represent charities and youth groups (this practice is know as "heavenly deception" in Moonie circles) but more seriously it includes the "spiritual sales" scandal in which widows in Japan were swindles out of their life savings by church operatives.
4) American journalism. It's bad enough that Moon scammed many people out of their life savings. It's worse when he uses $3 billion of this ill-gotten money to create a rag like the Washington Times. The Washington Times constitutes an assault on journalism.
5) Jerry Falwell's victims. This includes not only those members of Falwell's flock who were scammed by paying huge amounts for Falwell's tapes that purportedly showed evidence that Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in murder and drug-running but the American people in general. Falwell poisoned American political discourse and he will not be missed.

Biography of Sun Myung Moon a Bestseller in Korea

A biography of Sun Myung Moon, Becoming a World Figure through the Love of Peace, was released in South Korea last month and has become a bestseller. The book was published by a respectable publishing house, GimmYoungSa. From what I have gleaned from the Internet, prominent Christians in South Korea have denounced the book. The fact that this book is selling well shouldn't be an indicator that even a significant plurality of South Koreans embrace Moon's worldview. Take for example the case in the United States; the current number one book on the New York Times' best-seller list is Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin, a right-wing nut. A few years ago, Michael Savage's The Savage Nation was on the top of the best-seller list (I have written about the lunacy of both Levin and Savage here--also read my previous posts about Savage and Washington Times operative Jeffrey Kuhner, here and here).

Addendum: Before my anti-Moon activism became prominent, Robert Stacy McCain, Dixie dick, quoted my assessment of Savage's book in an article about Savage: "The Savage Nation is a scabrous book by a man who is a nutcase, a quack and a virulent hatemonger."

Exclusive: Washington Times Commentator on President Obama: "You are a traitor to your country."

Today Jeffrey Kuhner, commentator for Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, gave his weekly "special report" on Michael Savage's radio show and discussed President Obama's recent speech before the Turkish parliament. Like some others on the American right, Kuhner accused Obama for apologizing for America to the parliament. Throughout his report, Kuhner referred to the president as "Barack Hussein Obama" and ended his report by saying to President Obama: "You are a traitor to your country."

This is not unusual for Kuhner. When he was editor of Moon's now-defunct online magazine Insight, Kuhner first propagated the myth that Obama had been raised as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa (On Sean Hannity's radio program, Kuhner encouraged Muslim extremists to view Obama as an apostate). Having Kuhner making these inflammatory comments to the audience of an unhinged nut like Savage is scary. Kuhner's rhetoric supports the report by the Department of Homeland Security that warns about the potential for violence by the American right.

New Videos on the Sun Myung Moon Video Blog

Click here

Moon's Washington Times Distorts Obama's Position on Iraq war Funding Bills

Media Matters for America has the story.

Must See Video: Heartbreak and Rage: : Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, A Cult Survivor's Memoir

K. Gordon Neufeld, author of Heartbreak and Rage: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, A Cult Survivor's Memoir, has a YouTube video that summarizes his ordeal in the Unification Church:

Must Read

Salon.com's Alex Koppelman on a Washington Times editorial by Drudge Report editor Andrew Breitbart who is bemoaning the level of discourse in American politics. More on the Washington Times editorial page on my YouTube video and more on the Drudge Report's standard of discourse here.

Sun Myung Moon and 1970's Pop Culture

If you ask someone younger than 30 about Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement, more likely than not, you'll receive a blank stare. Moon is more influential than ever but he keeps a relatively low public profile than during the 1970's. As I have pointed out previously, Moon and the Unification movement had a very high public profile in the 1970's. It remained somewhat high during the first half of the 1980's with Moon's establishment of the Washington Times and his highly-publicized conviction for tax fraud and conspiracy.

During the 1970's, Moon and the Unification movement had a high public profile. This is largely due to several phenomena: 1) Moon had highly publicized rallies and mass marriage ceremonies at Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, etc.; 2) The Unifcation movement had a big presence on U.S. college campuses which led to modest recruitment to the Moonies (and visible recruits hawking flowers and candy on American streets); The "cult" controversies involving Moon, the Peoples' Temple, and various Eastern gurus.

Moon was mercilessly skewered by Mad magazine in 1977 in a 4-page story titled "Mad's 'Religious Cult Leader' of the Year." in which "Mike Malice", a character clearly based on Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, interviewed "The Reverend Sun Set Loony." Today I scanned a panel from the story (quick note: click on the illustrations to enlarge them). The art is by George Woodbridge and the writer is Lou Silverstone. Someday I will try to post the entire story online. Silverston was thorough--he even mentioned Moon's sexual exploitation of females converts in the guise of sexual "purification ceremonies." It's a devastating satire.


Moon and the Unification movement were also fodder for the adult satire magazine, National Lampoon. In the February 1980 issue (which was a retrospective of the 1970's), there was a piece titled "Weird Beliefs of the Seventies," in which the core belief of the Unification Church is listed as "[t]here is no god but the CIA, and Reverend Moon is its prophet." Also, in the gallery of people who defined the seventies were the "Kult Kids," smiling, clean-cut automatons selling trinkets and copies of Moon's now-defunct New York City Tribune.

One final note on 1970's parodies of Moon, Saturday Night Live's skit "Night of the Moonies" is no longer available on youTube due to copyright issues. Bummer.

Reverend Moon's Media and the Saddam/Oklahoma City Bombing "Connection"

Frank Gaffney, a prominent neo-conservative who writes for the Washington Times, was recently on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and revived the discredited neo-con talking point that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing (Crooks and Liars has the video and transcript). As sane people know, the ghastly crime was concocted and executed by two American right-wing fanatics, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols) and not a shred of evidence has linked them to Saddam or his regime. This has not stopped people like Gaffney from spreading this misinformation not only on Hardball but on the pages of Moon's Washington Times.

UPDATE: (via Roger Ailes) Richard Miniter has been named
editor of the editorial pages and vice president of opinion of the Washington Times.

Congresswoman Scrubbed from Upcoming Moonie Event

A few days ago, the Moon Tribune reported that an upcoming conference co-sponsored by two Unification front groups had Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson listed as one of the speakers. This is no longer the case (here is the official invitation). It is my hope that Johnson backed out when she realized that it was a Moon-related event.

Moon Co-Sponsored Event at U.S. Capitol, Rayburn House Office Building Features Croatian Ambassador

(Updated below)
The online Moon Tribune reported that two Sun Myung Moon affiliated groups, the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) and the Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP)are sponsoring a conference devoted to "women as peacemakers" on Capitol Hill along with a Peace X Peace, a women's peace group not affiliated with Moon. The event will be held March 12, 2009 in Room B339 of U.S. Capitol's Rayburn House Office Building. Featured speakers of the Croatian ambassador to the United States, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović as well as yet-to-be-named "congresswomen." Here is the official announcement for the event. [Update: The Moon Tribune reports that invitation now lists Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) as one of the speakers]

The Moon Tribune article discusses some of the implications of this event (as well as other Moon-sponsored events such as the 2004 "coronation" in the Dirksen Senate Office Buildling--namely that Moon uses these events to gain power and legitimacy. More later.

UPDATE: The Moon Tribune is on top of this: the invitation now lists Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX) as one of the speakers.

Breaking News: Moonie Capitol Hill Gathering

Breaking
Organization run by Sun Myung Moon to hold gathering on Capitol Hill involving yet-to-be named U.S. congresswomen.

Article that Mentions Sun Myung Moon and the Washington Times

From Robert Parry's article "The US Media & Democracy in Crisis":

The right-wing media infrastructure continued to grow with the influx of mysterious money from the likes of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean theocrat who launched the Washington Times in 1982. Later, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch got into the act with purchases of U.S. newspapers and eventually the founding of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and right-wing Fox News.

By the late years of the Reagan-Bush-41 era, right-wing talk radio was taking off with Rush Limbaugh and other angry white men filling the AM dial with venomous attacks on liberals. When Bill Clinton managed to eke out a victory in 1992, he immediately came under sustained attack from this potent right-wing media machine.

Must Read

Joan Walsh on the Washington Times versus Ty'Sheoma Bethea

Moon's Wash. Times and the Obama Citizenship Urban Legend

On my personal blog, I have a long post on how the right has put forth paranoid conspiracy theories against both the Clinton and Obama administrations. To no surprise, Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times has been a major part of these media campaigns (one thing I didn't mention in the post was how the Moonie media was instrumental in starting the rumor that Obama was raised as a Muslim). One more thing, here's another article on how Moon's media apparatus has attempted to poison the well of American political discourse during the Clinton administration and the Clinton administration's inept response.

Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times Attacks on the Obama Administration

I noticed that in the past several days, Media Matters for America has documented several attempts by the Washington Times to sully the Obama administration (MMFA also documented the attempt by former Washington Times operative Bill Sammon to disseminate misinformation about the stimulus).

Here are the recent posts on Moon's Washington Times: Media Matters documented how a Times editorial invoked Hitler in falsely suggesting that a provision in a House bill would lead to the cutting off of medical treatment to the elderly and the disabled; The Times adopted the GOP's inflated cost-per-job calculation for recovery bill; The Times falsely claimed CBO "estimated that the full cost of" recovery bill "will reach $3.2 trillion by 2019"; Wash. Times article revives Obama flag smears, including inflammatory rants from radio shock jock Michael Savage. I had recently posted about the relationship between Savage (née Weiner) and the Times.

Lanny Davis: Glutton for Punishment and Ridicule

When I was doing research for a post on my main blog about why taking on Rush Limbaugh is a winning strategy for the Obama administration, I found some interesting information about former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis. The reason I was doing research on Davis was that early in the Clinton administration, when Limbaugh and other talk radio jocks were running roughshod over the truth and concocting lunatic conspiracy theories about Bill and Hillary being behind the death of Vince Foster, instead of an strategy of aggressively exposing the lies of Limbaugh, Falwell, Liddy and others, the Clinton administration sent out Lanny Davis to appear on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Liddy was one of the top proponents of the various Vince Foster conspiracy theories. He should have been easy to discredit. For one thing, the man is an unrepentant terrorist who had planned to bomb the Brookings Institution. He had Nazi sympathies and was one of the Watergate conspirators. I defy anyone to read Liddy's autobiography Will without concluding that the man is a complete nutcase.

Instead of taking the fight to Liddy, Davis appeared on Liddy's radio show and took the role of the liberal punching bag (good practice for Davis' later role as a Fox News Democrat). Liddy and Davis became fast friends. What a clueless pussy.

Davis is a masochist. He loves being abused by the right. Davis was in George W. Bush's fraternity at Yale and being an underclassman to Dubya, Davis was hazed by the future president. In addition to being an on-air punching bag on Fox News, Davis provides legitimacy to Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times by writing a column for the rag.

One hilarious thing I recently found out, Davis was a victim of the right-wing scam-business Amway (for more information on the Amway Global scam, read my blog devoted to Amway). That's right: Lanny Davis used to be an Amway salesman. This is the nadir of humiliation. Not only was Davis a victim of a scam that helped to fund the radical right but Davis acted like a typical Amway drone. I busted a gut when I read this excerpt from a 1997 Washington Post article by Lloyd Grove on Davis:

After he narrowly lost a 1976 House race, Davis, 51, began evangelizing for the motivational door-to-door distribution company, which markets everything from toothpaste to telephone service. A prominent Maryland lawyer-lobbyist, who refused to speak for attribution, recalled that Davis once invited him to lunch to discuss a "business opportunity."

"We didn't order yet when he started talking, and it was like a switch went on," the lobbyist recounted. "He asked, `Are you interested in making more money?' Well, what lawyer isn't? `Do you want to be in control of your destiny?' And I go, `Wait a minute, Lanny -- is this an Amway pitch?'

"And he says, `Can I finish? I've got these wonderful products to show you.' So he opens this box from the front to reveal a beautiful array of multicolored bottles and packages of toothpaste, dishwashing soap and other stuff. And I said, `No, Lanny. Please. No demonstrations. Thank you and good luck.' I had to virtually push myself away from him, but I got up and left."

This guy is a piece of work. It's just sad that the Clintons trusted him to deal with the right's media.

Addendum: Grove's Washington Post article is not available online so I posted it on the archives of my main blog.

Jeffrey Kuhner and Michael Savage: Birds of a Feather

I was flipping through radio stations today and tuned into Michael Savage's radio program. For those of you not familiar with Savage and his radio show, the guy is a complete loon. I wrote a review blog of his book Savage Nation that gives some examples of Savage's lunacy and racism (I also have a more recent post on my main blog about Savage and racism). What is scary about Savage is the fact that he has a radio audience of 8 million people.

Today when I was listening, I discovered that Washington Times operative Jeffrey T. Kuhner provides a weekly "special report" for Savage's radio program. Kuhner, when he wrote for Moon's Insight magazine, started the rumor that Barack Obama was a Muslim who went to school in a madrassa. I transcribed a radio conversation of Kuhner with Sean Hannity in which Kuhner makes a veiled call for Obama to be assassinated by Muslim extremists (I have another post that mentions Kuhner). True to form on Savage's program, Kuhner had a special message to members of the American military. Kuhner told the troops: "You have a commander-in-chief who no longer believes in you." This from a drone who gets his paycheck from a megalomaniac who believes America is "Satan's harvest."

UPDATE I: I almost forgot: before Kuhner was on, Savage's guest was right-wing activist Daniel Flynn. A few years ago, when Flynn was on a radio program in LA, I confronted him about Sun Myung Moon.

UPDATE II: On April 14, 2009, Kuhner appeared on Savage's radio program and called President Obama "a traitor."

The Washington Times Caught Re-writing the GOP Script on Stimulus Bill

No big surprise. Media Matters for America has the scoop.

Søren Kierkegaard, Sun Myung Moon, and Liberation

One of my favorite philosophers is Søren Kierkegaard who, along with one of my other favorite philosophers Albert Camus, developed the theory of philosophical absurdism--the belief that "the efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe ultimately fail (and, hence, are absurd) because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity." I'm not an orthodox absurdist but one of the things that leads me to give credence to the tenets of absurdism is the fact that a complete nutjob like Moon has become a power player in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world and how the Washington media has relinquished its role of watchdog regarding Moon (apparently, if you are good enough of a thief to be able to buy a printing press and subsidize it for a quarter of a century from the proceeds of a scam that wiped out the life savings of many bereaved widows, then somehow in the logic of many DC journalists, then you're one of the gang.

Martin Herbst, a former head of the Moonies in Slovenia, who according to this rough translation of a Danish journal, decided to leave Moon's sphere of influence after he read Kierkegaard. Perhaps I can send some of Kierkegaard's writings to members of the Washington press corps.

Coincidence? Don't count on it

I addressed sun Myung Moon's role in the fascistic World Anti-Communist League (WACL) in my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" as well as in this post. Richard Bartholomew reports that a conference co-sponsored by Moonie front groups such as the Women's Federation for World Peace and the Universal Peace Federation took place at the same location as a WACL conference held earlier this year.

Will George W. Bush Pardon Sun Myung Moon?

I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me.

1/23/09 UPDATE: Bush is out of office and no pardon for Moon.

Who is the Real Knave?

The Moonie Times has its list of Nobles and Knaves of the year 2008. Not surprisingly, the political people list of knaves includes only Democrats or people left-of-center (Hillary Clinton, ACORN, Sandra Bernhard, Harry Reid) while the political poeple listed as nobles are Republicans or right-of-center (Governor Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal and the late Tony Snow). I found it more than a bit interesting that a list of knaves would be concocted by an alleged newspaper whose only reason for existence is due to the grandiose vision of a predatory megalomaniac whose goal is to gain power in the nation's capital and who paid over $3 billion to operate this rag through cleaning out Japanese widows of their life savings.

UPDATE: On the subject of knaves, also in today's Times is an op-ed by Jeffrey Kuhner, the Moonie operative who started the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor and appeared on Sean Hannity's radio program and all but called for radical Muslims to assassinate Obama for being "an apostate." Kuhner calls 2008 a year of infamy because it was the year that Obama was elected. Kuhner blames the US news media:

An honest and serious media would have exposed all of these issues - and the dangerous pitfalls of an Obama presidency. Instead, the 2008 campaign represented the final culmination of a low, dishonest decade. A sycophantic press corps suppressed damaging information about Mr. Obama and effectively carried him into the White House. They have thus carried America's Neville Chamberlain on their shoulders, in a massive delusion that the problem was George W. Bush when, in fact, the problem we face are the evil forces aligned against us.

Kuhner doesn't mention the supposedly damaging information that the media suppressed. Was he referring the rumor that Kuhner started about Obama being a closet Muslim?

Danny Davis Does the Right Thing (at long last)

Readers of this blog know that I'm no fan of U.S. Representative Danny Davis (D-IL) for his part in the deranged Moon coronation ceremony and his pathetic apologia for his participation (according to Davis, Moon declaring himself the Messiah "was similar to a baseball team owner telling team members that 'we are the greatest team on earth'" prior to a baseball game).

Davis is the right thing by turning down disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's offer to appoint him to Barack Obama's seat in the U.S. Senate.

Have a happy 2009!

My Fitzmas: The Indictment of Danny Davis

Of course, only if Davis did something illegal in his lobbying for Barack Obama's Senate seat. I am hoping and praying that Davis did something illegal and gets caught up in the Blagojevich investigation. We already know that Davis has no soul: this is the guy who presented the crown to Moon and his wife at the demented coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in 2004 and gave a completely lame excuse when pressed about it. I just hope he did something illegal and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald finds a smoking gun.

Remembering Gary Webb

On the forth anniversary of the tragic suicide death of journalist Gary Webb, Robert Parry wrote a great article in Consortium News on how Webb, who uncovered the contra-cocaine connection, was hounded out of the journalistic profession and notes how the lion's share of the credit goes to operatives for Reverend Moon's Washington Times.

The Hell with Danny Davis--He doesn't Deserve Obama's Senate Seat

(Updated below)
Appointing a clown like Representative Danny Davis to serve out Barack Obama's term in the U.S. Senate would be a slap in the face to those victims of Sun Myung Moon's predatory reign as head of the Unification Church. Moon is a criminal and sexual predator who has used billions stolen from Japanese widows and others to buy legitimacy in Washington. This led to the bizarre 2004 coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in which Representative Davis presented a crown to the demented would-be Messiah. More on this is on Crooks and Liars and Firedoglake.

UPDATE I:Another Moon-related item: in Moon's Washington Times, rightly called the Bush administration's "house organ" by Paul Krugman, I just read the following words, written without irony, in an editorial by Alan Nathan:

What chance do arguments have to rise and fall on their merits if they're framed by a seemingly party-owned press? And once that party comes to power, won't its lackey journalists constitute a type of state-owned press? In other words (after Inauguration Day), how can the blushing news media keep from sharing President-elect Barack Obama's political bed - given they have already serviced his electoral needs?

The news reporting world must recognize that responsible journalism requires universal standards of neutrality, and that this can only occur when facts are presented in their self-evident form. When they're not, the public naturally becomes more propagandized than informed. Punditry from all political perspectives is wonderfully helpful and perfectly legitimate - until it masquerades as news.

For information on how the Washington Times is a force of reaction and racial bigotry, check out my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult."


UPDATE II: Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune thinks that Davis should gives some answers about his participation in the Moon Coronation.

Three Cheers for the Solomon Islands Clergy

(via The Moon Tribune)an article in the Solomon Times newspaper: "Boycott "Moonie" Festival: Church Leaders":

Christian ministries and organizations are unanimous in their call for a boycott of the Global Peace Festival and their description of Reverend Moon as the "Devil and the Anti-Christ, the end time figure spoken off in the Book of Revelation" . . . The Church leader stated that the Reverend Moon Movement has succeeded in brain washing such young Christians, and Moon is now using them to fill up his own pockets, "he has also been making a mockery of the institution of marriage as part of his strategy to win followers" . . .
The Church leader said that Mr. and Mrs. Moon have been using words and ideas that are familiar, attractive including their constant talking about family; "but it is not God' family that Mr. and Mrs. Moon are talking about, it is all about unity under the leadership of Reverend Moon."

Sun Myung Moon and the Right's Media Apparatus

Robert Parry on the media's asymmetry:

Despite Barack Obama’s election victory, this media asymmetry will not go away. Indeed, it is almost certain to limit his ability to bring about significant change and could tilt the country back in the direction of the Republicans in the not-too-distant future.

It is a pattern I have seen often since 1977 when I arrived in Washington as a reporter for the Associated Press.

During that time, while the American Left has been largely absent from the national media landscape, wealthy right-wingers (from foundations like Olin and Scaife to media moguls like Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch) have poured tens of billions of dollars into media.

Over those years, the Right built a towering – and vertically integrated – media structure reaching from newspapers, magazines and books to talk radio, cable TV and the Internet, an apparatus concentrated in the power centers of New York and Washington.

The Right also invested money in attack groups to go after mainstream journalists who dared dig up information that put right-wing policies or politicians in a negative light. Offending journalists were accused of “liberal bias” and often found themselves hounded from the national press corps.

Over time, this imbalance had a spillover effect. Many right-wing and neoconservative pundits landed prime spots on mainstream TV news shows and the Op-Ed pages of leading newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Even the most dangerous of right-wing ideas – such as free-market absolutism at home and neoconservative imperialism abroad – got respectful if not reverential treatment across the mainstream-to-right-wing media spectrum, the news outlets that most Americans read, heard and watched.

Obama Campaign Boots Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times from its Press Plane

(Updated below)
Last night I heard about the Obama campaign's to get expel the "reporter" for the Washington Times (as well as reporters from the New York Post and the Dallas Morning News). Why did it take so long? Just because a Messiah wannabe buys a printing press doesn't mean that what is produced is a legitimate journalistic entity. In fact, the Moonie Times has a long history of engaging in political dirty tricks against Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., see my video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" for more information).

It's interesting how the right's media is spinning it. To no surprise, Fox News is suggesting that the reason was that all three of the papers endorsed McCain. The Times' editor-in-chief John Solomon appeared on right-wing talk radio show hosted by Mark Levin, a former Reagan Justice Department official and former (?) recipient of wing-nut welfare from Richard Mellon Scaife. Solomon (whom Levin described as a good friend) and said pretty much what he said to the Washington Post. Here is today's Times story on the expulsion.

UPDATE: Fox News Democrat Kirsten Powers is slightly less critical than her Fox News colleagues:

All three papers endorsed McCain - was the Obama move retaliation? It seems unlikely. More likely, the campaign wanted to make room for fawning coverage - and who better to get rid of than papers that cover you critically?

The GOP's "FBI-Is-Investigating" Smear and Moon's Washington Times

Robert Parry has written about the the Times' role in the Clinton passport scandal of the 1992 election before. In his latest article, Parry puts in in context with the current FBI investigation of ACORN.

John McCain, The U.S. Council for World Freedom, the World Anti-Communist League, and Sun Myung Moon

This morning on Meet the Press, when the topic of the discussion was the attempts by the McCain campaign and the right's media to link Barack Obama to former Weather Underground member William Ayers, Democratic strategist Paul Begala noted that McCain has his own problem with consorting with extremists considering his membership of the board of the U.S. Council for World Freedom, an affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Begala noted that the Anti=Defamation League has documented how the WACL (now known as the World League for Freedom and Democracy) “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

That's putting it lightly. I did some research on the WACL for my Sun Myung Moon blog when I heard that Moon had been a major financial supporter of the League in the 1970's and 1980's. The definitive book on the League is Scott and Jon Lee Anderson's Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (I used information culled from the book for my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult"). What the book documents is shocking. The League has served as a resource for neo-Nazis (former chairman of the WACL was expelled when it was discovered that he been in various neo-Nazi organizations). The League did what it could to prop up undemocratic regimes and aided Salvadorian terrorist death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson whose nickname "Blowtorch Bob" was coined because of his favorite instrument of torture (quick aside: D'Aubuisson had also received support from figures beloved by "values voters": Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell).

The big difference between Obama and McCain: Obama did some educational reform projects with William Ayers decades after his Weather Underground activities. McCain was affiliated with the WACL at the time in which it was a nest of neo-Nazis and was openly supporting terrorist like D'Aubuisson. How come I didn't know about McCain's affiliation with the group until today?

The Washington Media Establishment and Sun Myung Moon

Today I spoke with NPR's Juan Williams after he gave a talk at the 3rd Annual San Diego City College International Book Fair. I asked him about Moon and his media apparatus. While Williams was familiar with the Times and Insightmag.com, he confessed that he knew little about the massive amounts of money that the Moon was sinking into the Times and his other media projects to keep them afloat. More important, Williams didn't know about the schemes that Moon and his operatives have used to fund these white elephants.

Sadly, Williams is typical of the DC journalistic community. Moon and his operation warrant scrutiny from Washington journalists. I'm an optimist but I'm not holding my breath.

The Media Landscape 2008

Washington Times' Tony Blankley Excoriates Media for Not Swiftboating Obama
Read Blankley's column here. Blankley was a promoter of the Swift Boat lies during the 2004 campaign.

Blankley's two columns are revealing. During the 2004 campaign, the Kerry campaign was run by vacillating people like Bob Shrum who didn't want to take on these operatives head on--their lack of action was an unmitigated disaster. Also, Media Matters for America had just been established. The mainstream media took a he-said-she-said approach to the lies put forth by the Swift Boat operatives.

Although the hard right's media apparatus is still dominant, the media landscape has changed significantly in the last four years. Media Matters has gained a significant audience. Keith Olbermann is on the air and holding the media's feet to the fire. The Huffington Post is providing stiff competition for Drudge. Fox News is rightfully becoming marginalized by increasing numbers of Americans.

A good example of these changes are the way that the media have responded to fringe writer Jerome Corsi, the co-author of the Swift Boat book, Unfit for Command, and who in 2008, wrote an anti-Obama book. This year, Corsi has received the scrutiny he deserved and his lies were not allowed to be recycled through Fox News to the mainstream media.

There's a lot of work to be done but we've come a long way in four years.

The Moonie Media, Sean Hannity, Fox News, and the "Obama is a Muslim" Meme

Last weekend in Reverend Moon's Washington Times, Jeffrey Kuhner expressed concern that "[t]he liberal media are determined to tarnish the reputation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin." Kuhner was the one who started the rumor that Barack Obama was a closet Muslim. In January 2007 edition Kuhner made the claim in the online Moonie publication, InsightMag.com, that the Clinton campaign was spreading the rumor that Obama was a closet Muslim and had attended a madrassa (here's a brief overview of Kuhner's debunked claims). As I reported in my personal blog, Kuhner went on Sean Hannity's radio program and made inflammatory statements about Obama and Islam that included a veiled call for Muslim extremists to assassinate Obama (Hannity, of course, ate it up). Last week, Sean Hannity--against all evidence--claimed that nobody on Fox News claimed that Obama is a Muslim.

My thoughts: It's ironic that Obama's Americanism would be challenged by publications owned by an America-hating theocratic criminal (though this is hardly unique: some of the voices on the right that accuse the left of hating America have a soft spot of the old Confederacy). This is an illustration of how fringe Moonie publications can lead to a disinformation campaign that reaches tens of millions (I previously explained how this media food chain operated--though for more info, check out David Brock's book The Republican Noise Machine).

Final Thought: The "Obama is a Muslim" Spam E-mails"
The fact that dirty tricks operatives use spam e-mails to spread the Obama/Muslim rumor is proof that a small but significant number of Americans are morons. I have had e-mail for the last 14 years and the only thing in my spam folder have been solicitations for prescription drugs, Nigerian 419 scams, skanks wanting me to check out their webcams, people selling Rolex watch knock-offs, and people selling concoctions to enlarge penises. For fuck's sake, why would anyone read an anonymous spam e-mail and believe it, especially when a quick Google search will find that the rumor in question is false?

Bad Education: Moon's University of Bridgeport Named "Worst College in America"

Radar magazine has the scoop.

Previously, Radar listed the Univeristy of Bridgeport and another insititution with financial ties to Moon, the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty Univerity on its annual list of worst colleges.

Quick note: Radar featured me in its article on crashing the Oscars.

The Daily Snark

Wes Pruden of the Washington Times fans the phony controversy about whether Barack Obama has a valid U.S. birth certificate. This from a guy who wishes his own birth certificate was from The Confederate States of America.

The U.S. Justice Department Apparently Likes My Blogs

I have noticed that someone from the U.S. Justice Department has been lurking on my main blog and my anti-Amway blog for the past several months (see the addendum for info from my Statcounter page on the Amway blog).

Quick note to Justice Department lurker(s): if you really want to do your job, do something about illegal activity, do something about the illegal "tools" pyramid created by some top Amway distributors which have netted them hundreds of millions of dollars--if not billions of dollars. Also, you could refer to the INS the charges made by Nansook Hong about how the Reverend Sun Myung Moon engaged in immigration fraud to bring an underage girl to the United States to become the unlawful bride of his adult son.

Initially I was amused that the Justice Department reads my blog; however, this morning I listened to Sam Seder's interview of journalist Scott Horton.

Addendum: Info from my Statcounter page for my anti-Amway blog:
Host Name wdcsun27.usdoj.gov
IP Address 149.101.1.127 [Label IP Address]
Country United States
Region District Of Columbia
City Washington
ISP Us Dept Of Justice
Returning Visits 10
Visit Length 54 seconds
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser MSIE 6.0
Operating System Windows XP
Resolution 1280x1024
Javascript Enabled

When?

With all the talk about Obama as the Messiah, when is someone from the Washington establishment going to mention Sun Myung Moon, a power player who really thinks that God ordained him as humanity's savior. I'm not holding my breath.

Regnery Publishing's War on American Democracy

Regnery Publishing just released The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso. I have not read the book so I can’t comment on the specifics of the book. However, I can cite some reports about that raise serious questions: 1) There has been some pre-release information about the book that show that there are some serious problems with the truthfulness of the book. The media watchdog Media Matters for America uncovered some falsehoods in the introduction and the first few pages which were released by Regnery prior to publication. Media Matters has been doing an excellent job of documenting misinformation in the anti-Obama book by Jerome Corsi (who co-authored the wildly inaccurate Regnery 2004 hit book on John Kerry, Unfit for Command).

However, what is particularly revealing is that the publisher of the book, Regnery Publishing has a pattern of publishing books that denigrate true American heroes, such as John Kerry, as well as books that elevate sociopaths--namely the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Regnery's History of Elevating Sun Myung Moon and Unification Thought

Regnery has been the publisher of five books that have served the purposes of Sun Myung Moon, who is 1) a sexual predator who committed immigration fraud in order to bring an underage girl to the United States to be the illegal bride for his violent and drug-addicted son; 2) a thief who has stolen hundreds of millions, possibly billions, from vulnerable Japanese widows in what is known as the spiritual sales scam; 3) A megalomaniac who believes that he is the Messiah and the world’s savior; 4) A would-be tyrant who believes that American democracy—-which he views as “Satan’s harvest”—-should be overthrown and replaced with a theocratic rule. In a word, the guy is a nutjob (my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" gives a succinct overview of Moon and a more comprehensive look at Moon can be found in John Gorenfeld's recent book Bad Moon Rising as well as my blog devoted to Moon).

Regnery has published not one but five books promoting Moon’s pathological philosophy. Two of those books specifically defend Moon’s criminality and anti-democratic worldview and attribute criticism of Moon’s predation to racism and bigotry. I will discuss each of these Regnery books, starting with the two books that specifically defend Moon's indefensible behavior and outlook.

1) To Bigotry, No Sanction: Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church by Mose Durst. Then-president of the Unification Church Mose Durst wrote this apologia of Moon and the Unification movement and blamed Moon's unpopularity with Americans to racism and bigotry. These charges of racism and xenophobia are not only an example of blaming America first but they are particularly ironic since Moon's Washington Times has been a repository for white supremist and neo-Confederate thought.

Quick aside: It's revealing that Regnery's anti-Obama author David Freddroso is a contributor to William F. Buckley's National Review. The back of the dust jacket of Durst's book has an endorsement by William Rusher, then-publisher of National Review (as I noted, the popular narrative about Buckley and NR marginalizing crackpots and extremists from the American conservative movement is a crock).

2) Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon by Carlton Sherwood. When Moon was sent to prison for tax fraud and conspiracy, Sherwood served as Moon's primary literary apologist. The main premise of Sherwood's book was that Moon was railroaded because of racial and religious bigotry. Sherwood claimed that he wrote the book independent of Moon or the Unification Church but a PBS Frontline documentary found that unification Church officials reviewed and edited Sherwood's manuscript (Quick note: I confronted Fox News Democrat Tammy Bruce about Sherwood's dishonesty on her radio show--friends have told me that the transcript is priceless).

It should be no surprise that during the 2004 election, Sherwood produced the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor--a film that contained many misrepresentations and libels.

3) At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election by Bill Sammon.
Sammon, an operative for Moon's Washington Times, wrote this apologia for the Bush campaign. This is hardly surprising since the Bush and Moon families are very close and there has been a history of Moon's Times doing dirty work for the Bush family. Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler uncovered blatant examples of journalistic misconduct by Sammon (I addressed this in an article for American Politics Journal).

4) Icons of Evolution and 5) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design both by Jonathan Wells.
Wells, a well-known proponent of the form of creationism known as intelligent design, is one of Moon's most fanatical member of Moon's shock troops. Wells' motivation for his embrace of creationist pseudo-science is his devotion to his "father," the Reverend Moon (note the warlike language):

Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.

Regnery Publishing's Bizarro World
In Regnery Publishing's bizarro world, true patriots like Kerry and Obama are deserving of denigration while a deranged megalomaniac like Moon is praised. This should be a news story but isn't

Sun Myung Moon Underestimated Once Again

I got a chance to check out Allan J. Lichtman's new book White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. Overall, it is a very solid book and I recommend it. There is one significant flaw: Lichtman underestimated Sun Myung Moon's influence. Here's Lichtman's take on Moon:

From 1971 through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Unification Church built by far the most expansive and expensive anticommunist network in he history of the Cold War. The church likely spent more than a billion dollars on its political and related enterprises during those years. The decline of the red menace in the 1990's, however, diminished the appeal of Moon's political activities in the United States.

Actually, Moon most likely spent a lot more than a billion dollars during that period on various political activities. However, the most glaring flaw in the passage is that Moon's influence and appeal was in decline after the end of the Cold War. If anything, Moon has been amping things up since the late 1980's--as this blog and other sources have documented. Nevertheless, overall Lichtman's book is a good read and I reccommend it.

Addendum: Lichtman defends the book against critics on the right.

Moon-backed Global Peace Festival in Washington

Here's the flyer for the Moon-backed gathering. The festival has gospel music; the featured artist is Yolanda Adams.

Two Moon-related Deaths

Tony Snow and Patricia Buckley Bozell, two operatives who had close ties with Sun Myung Moon and his media operation have recently died. Snow, who was recently press secretary for George W. Bush, was the editorial page editor of Moon's Washington Times from 1987 to 1991. Bozell had been an editor at Regnery Publishing. She was had an instrumental in the publication of Regnery's apologia for Moon, Inquisition (authored by Carlton Sherwood). She was the mother of L. Brent Bozell, the head of the Media Research Center. I wrote a long post on the Bozell family.

Moonies Censor Bush/Holy Wine YouTube Video

In March, I posted a video on YouTube of Unification Church president Michael Jenkins explaining to church members how he got former president Bush to participate in the church's creepy "Holy Wine" ceremony. As I explained in the post for the video:

The meaning of the Holy Wine Ceremony: According to Moon's theology, those who participate in this ceremony become part of Moon's "blessed family," giving the recipient what Moonies believe is a pure, untainted "lineage." In Unification theology, "lineage" is a central concept. Moon believes that Adam and Eve were perfected beings whose lineage was corrupted by Eve's sexual seduction by Lucifer. Since the Fall, humanity's blood line has been corrupted. Moon believes that Jesus emerged to save humanity but failed because he was crucified before he could fulfill his mission to marry and produce perfect children. Moon believes that he is the second Messiah who will restore humanity to its uncorrupted state and create the kingdom of heaven on earth. Drinking the church-sanctioned wine is part of the process of becoming, in Jenkin's words, "engrafted into the lineage of Heaven" by separating from Satan's lineage and becoming one of Moon's "blessed families"--the "chosen people" that Jenkins mentions near the end of the video. As Moon himself claims, as a consequence of participating in the Holy Wine Ceremony, "[y]ou are going to be in ultimate infinite faith to God, to True Parents [Rev. Moon and his wife], grateful to them and obedient to their will."

When I checked my e-mail this morning, I received an e-mail from YouTube with the subject heading, "Video Removed: Copyright Infringement." When I opened the email, I received the following message:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity claiming that this material is infringing:

George Bush and the Moonie Cult's "Holy Wine" Ceremony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkq44UTt5pI

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

The location where the video used to be informs people that "[t]he video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity."

When I posted the video, I did not edit it for the following reasons:
1) At that time, I didn't have easy access to editing equipment.
2) I wanted to include the entirety of the video I had so that viewers could draw their own conclusions.

In the near future, I will take portions of the videos and edit them with an explanation of the holy wine ceremony. If the Unification Church attempts to take the video down due to an alleged copyright infringement, I believe I have a strong case for fair use of video excerpts.

The video in question was not intended to be viewed by non-Moonies. Because I and others posted it, the video has been an embarrassment to Moon, the Unification movement, and especially to former president Bush. One way to counter the Unifications movement's actions is to publicize the deleting of the video and create the "Streisand Effect."

Addendum: It is revealing that since I quoted Moon's words regarding how participating in the holy wine ceremony makes a person "obedient to [the] will" of the True Parents, the Unification Church removed the sermon from their web site containing the quote. When I clicked the original link to the sermon on the church's web site, I discovered that it is now a dead link.

The Moonies Removed My YouTube Video!

More later today.

The Case Against Deprogramming

I just finished watching the 1999 film Holy Smoke. It is a flawed but thought-provoking film in which a young Australian woman played by Kate Blanchett falls under the spell of a quasi-Hindu religious leader while traveling in India. Her family in Australia has her abducted and held by an American "exit counselor" played by Harvey Keitel. Sun Myung Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han make cameo appearences in the film; Keitel's character shows the family a video about destructive religious groups--the video shows a montage of footage of the Manson family, Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate, Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple, and the Branch Davidians; it also shows footage of Moon and his wife at a mass marriage ceremony.

People ask me what I think about deprogramming. I am strongly opposed to the practice. Abducting people is a serious felony and it is also morally wrong. While I feel for people trapped in Moon's destructive religion, I also believe that adults have the right to be wrong. While I disagree with aspects of the book, Bromley and Shupe's Strange Gods: The Great American Cult Scare has an informative chapter on the deprogramming controversy which was particularly salient in the 1970's. Prosecution against reprogrammers have put many of them out of business or have made them resort to legal tactics.

What should people do when a loved one joins a destructive group. One legal, ethical, and effective tactic was used by the family of Cathryn Mazer, a NYU student who was lured into Moon's cult in the early 1990's. The family went to the media and staged vigils outside of apartment in which Cathryn was living with other Unification Church members. The footage was used on NBC's Today Show. this led to a lot of bad publicity for Moon's group and it put enough pressure on the Unification Church that it allowed Cathyn's family to speak with her and persuade her to leave the church. For more on this story, check out the BBC video Emperor of the Universe.

5000 Plays

My YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" has just reached the 5000 mark. That's not out of the stratosphere but it's not bad.

Help to spread the video in any way you can whther it's watching it, e-mailing it to a friend or member of the media, or by mentioning it on an Internet forum. Thanks in advance.

Video: The World's Most Powerful Cult

I'm traveling right now and posting will be light for a while. In the meantime, check out my video "The World's Most Powerful Cult":

Who's the Miserable Creature? A Tale of Two Latter-day Political Conversions

In the wake of the too-little-too-late regrets by Scott McClellan over the Bush administration's pervasive mendacity, former senator Bob Dole ripped the Bush's former press secretary calling him a "miserable" creature. Dole blasted McClellan for his political conversion, accusing McClellan of betraying his ideals for a quick buck:

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

Projection, anyone? There are a valid criticism of McClellan's change of heart about the Bush administration (e.g., why did he wait so long). Betraying his ideals is not one of them. When McClellan was a mouthpiece for Bush, Rove, and company, he had no ideals: he was a soulless hack. McClellan's confessions, years after the fact, are far from heroic, but at least he is coming clean about his past.

The same can't be said about another political conversion--that of Bob Dole regarding Sun Myung Moon. In the mid-1970's, Dole was an ambitious member of the U.S. Senate who had eyes on the White House. He held informal congressional hearings in 1976 and 1979 on the subject of new religious movements. New religious movements were a hot topic in the 1970's because a small but significant number of mostly college-aged middle class Americans were joining groups such as ISKCON, the Children of God, Eckankar and, of course, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The focus of the Dole's hearings was Sun Myung Moon and Dole was not a fan of the self-proclaimed Messiah. Dole used every opportunity in the hearing to slam Moon and allowed many of Moon's victims to speak out about their victimization. Carleton Sherwood, a Moon defender and harsh critic of the hearings, lagely credits Dole for being responsible for the later investigations of Moon that led to his conviction and imprisonment for tax fraud and conspiracy.

It doesn't take a cynic to suspect that Dole didn't give a flying fuck about Moon's victims. It didn't take a lot of political courage to stand against Moon. It wasn't as if there were a lot of Americans who supported the Unification movement. The findings of 1977 Gallup poll found that Moon "elicited one of the most overwhelmingly negative responses ever reported by a major poll."

Dole's recent thawing of hostility toward his former enemy also raises questions. Since Moon has become a major funder of Republican and reactionary causes, Dole hasn't said a word against Moon. Dole has even attended at least one Moon-sponsored event, a Washington prayer breakfast. Dole is the last one to scold anyone about cashing in on a political change of heart.

The Houston Chronicle Addresses Bush the Elder and "Holy Wine"

Rick Casey "Did Bush sip Moon's 'holy wine'?" Here's the video I posted on YouTube showing top Moon operative Michael Jenkins crow about the Bush/Wine coup:

The Reverend Sun Myung Moon's MySpace Page

Check it out before it gets shut down.

Shadow Elites And Religion: Sun Myung Moon

Paul Rosenberg of Open Left has a long post on Moon.

George H. W. Bush Appears at Recent Moonie Summit

Lou of Talk To Action has the details about Bush's appearance at the Americas Summit held from April 28 to May 2 in Washington:

Sun Myung Moon's end time political front, the Universal Peace Federation had a summit from April 28 to May 2 in Washington DC. The participants took a tour of the Moon owned Washington Times and chartered a plane to go visit George H. W. Bush's library. Once again, George 41 gave a keynote address in support of Moon's efforts.

John Solomon, the new executive editor of the Washington Times who told C-span viewers recently that the paper does not push Moon's agenda, made an appearance at one function apparently hosted by the paper. (see slide show link below)

Brent Scowcroft and former congressman Earl Hillard also showed up to help Moon subdue the planet.

The Universal Peace Federation (UPF) is the Unification Church as Moon intended it to be. The reason his was a "religion" was for tax and First Amendment purposes it appears to me.

Here's how Steve Hassan described it:

In the 70s [Moon] was saying that democracy was evil, Americans were lazy, the Koreans are the master race. [In] fact he believes that when he takes over the world, which is his espoused goal, there'll be a theocracy which will rule with himself and other leaders. All other religions will be abolished. The only language spoken will be Korean. I mean this man is a demagogue who doesn't believe in pro family values, that's just a hoax. What he believes is he is the True Parents of mankind and his group and the people who have been - quote "blessed" unquote - by him are now "the family." Everyone else is in Satan's world. [Steve Hassan - Greater Boston - WGBH Boston - Dec. 1, 1997 ]

Moon's plan has always been to create a world wide political front made up of people who take their direction from his organization. The UPF is the culmination of Moon's grand plan to control the direction of world events.

IT IS WORKING!

Yes, Moon is on schedule to be the last to laugh.

You may not understand why this is important; you may still be under the illusion that Moon is a clown. But I ask you to look and keep looking until you see.

From the UPF webpage: (photo of Bush at link)

In his keynote address, the 41st President agreed. "This is not the time for America to be turning inward," he said. "The United States needs to stand up and work for peace in the world, especially in the neighborhood of nations near to home. It is a matter of conscience, not just a concept. The challenges are more complex and more compelling than they were in the past, but they are so important we cannot afford to get them wrong. We need better solutions for issues like poverty and immigration and make sure that the successes of the past in the fight against drugs are not lost."

"However, too many citizens these days are becoming disengaged at a time when we need more involvement, more debate, and more foreign exchanges," he said. "That's why the work of the Universal Peace Federation and The Washington Times is so important, and I thank Rev. Moon and salute all of you for coming here to address these urgent issues."

From Moon's address:

"We are entering into a new and hopeful time," said Rev. Moon in his remarks, "And all of us are being called - whether we know it or not - to bring our best efforts to bear on creating a new culture of peace, centered on the ideal of one family under God." He went on to describe a vision of a future world where some of the weaknesses of democracy, and in particular the wasted efforts of extreme partisanship, [partisanship in America helped along by Moon's media] can be relieved by the involvement of elder statesmen as senior advisers. [Read: Moon's Ambassadors for Peace who study Moon's ideology. Moon preacher Michael Jenkins said the Ambassadors for Peace were created "to be True Parent's representatives to govern the world."]

"We believe that groups of political, religious and community leaders such as these working together in new partnerships hold the key to lasting peace," said Dr. Thomas Walsh, the UPF Secretary General. [and long time Moon follower]

Read the entire post.

New Blog Featuring Videos About Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Movement

I wanted to create a website that serves as a one-stop hub for informative and critical videos about Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement. I created this video blog for this purpose. I will add new videos soon.

Must Read: Robert Parry on The Right's America-Hating Preacher, Sun Myung Moon

Every American should read Parry's latest article on the American right's love affair with Reverend Moon:

The Right's America-Hating Preacher
One of the advantages that the American Right has achieved from investing tens of billions of dollars in media – from talk radio and cable TV, to print and the Internet – is the ability to define what is and what isn’t a "scandal," a powerful factor in determining who wins national elections.

By comparison, American progressives have short-changed their own investments in media. The disparity leads to the spectacle of Democratic presidential candidates submitting to questioning on Fox News while no one would expect a Republican leader to undergo interrogation from, say, the Daily Kos.

On another level, this media imbalance has propelled the rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into the category of big news, effectively altering the course of Campaign 2008 by associating Barack Obama with his ex-pastor’s harsh – and at times over-the-top – criticism of the U.S. government.

However, it’s not news that a viciously anti-American religious figure has invested billions of dollars in financing the U.S. conservative movement and put fat wads of cash into the pockets of many prominent Republicans, including members of President George W. Bush’s own family.

While Sen. Obama has to explain what he knew and when he knew it about Wright’s angry sermons, the Bush Family floats above its financial and political associations with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat who had denounced the United States as “Satan’s harvest” and likened American women to “prostitutes.”

In his angry sermons, Moon has gone further than saying “God-damn America” – as Wright did – to vowing to sweep aside American democracy and individualism as he builds a one-world state.

Read the rest of Parry's article

Anti-Catholic Preacher John Hagee Praises Pope In Washington Times

John Hagee--whom I have written about previously (click here, and here)--is an anti-Catholic and apocalyptic fundamentalist preacher from San Antonio. When John McCain sought and received Hagee's endorsement in February, bloggers noted Hagee's inflammatory End Times theology, his anti-Catholic rhetoric, his blaming Hurricane Katrina on gays, and his controversial views about Jews.

In tomorrow morning's Washington Times, Hagee has a column praising Pop Benedict for his recent visit to the United States.

Life in The Unification Theological Seminary (UTS)

In the March issues of First Things, K. Gordon Neufeld, former Unification Church member and author of In Heartbreak and Rage: Ten Years Under Sun Myung Moon, a Cult Survivor's Memoir, discusses his experiences at Moon's Unification Theological Seminary.

Poisoning Young Minds: Miami University of Ohio Honors Discredited Former Moon Operative

(Updated below)
In 2007, the student leadership program for my alma mater, Miami University hosted a lecture given by Bill Sammon, who had worked for Sun Myung Moon as an operative for The Washington Times (currently Sammon is employed by The Washington Examiner).

When Sammon was at the Moon's Times, he covered the 2000 presidential contest. It was during this campaign that Bob Somerby of media blog The Daily Howler uncovered two egregious cases of journalistic misconduct. First, Somerby uncovered Sammon's attempt to manufacture an Al Gore scandal that he dubbed "floodgate" (Eric Boehlert gave a succinct explanation of the phony scandal in Rolling Stone). After the election, Sammon wrote a book chronicling the Florida ballot controversy titled At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election. Somerby caught Sammon red-handed systematically distorting a Washington Post article in order to libel Gore (I summarized Sammon's libel and discussed its larger implications for the American Politics Journal).

I addressed the Washington Times in a broader context in my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult." Sammon and the Washington Times represents a mutant strain of pseudo-journalism that constitutes an assault on genuine journalism. Why was Sammon invited? My American Politics article and two of Somerby's articles detailing Sammon's misconduct (click here and here) turn up in the top ten sites for a A Google search of "Bill Sammon." Miami University students were ill-served by having someone of Sammon's ilk lecture them about leadership.

UPDATE: Miami University's has a friendly rivalry with another state university in Ohio: Ohio University (I also viewed it as the snobs (Miami) versus the slobs (Ohio University). As luck would have it, i just found out that Ohio University is rededicating the student radio and TV newsroom in honor of Fox News' chief operative Roger Ailes. As a poster on Democratic Underground noted, "What is next: the Leni Riefenstahl school of film?"

An Open Letter to the Members of the Anti-Scientology Movement Known as Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

I applaud your efforts to counter the Church of Scientology. I share your view that Scientology is a pseudo-scientific rip-off and a dangerous cult that exploits its members and discourages people with mental health problems from seeking proper medical care. I would like to compliment members how members of your movement have creatively used your abilities to oppose this pernicious movement.

I am involved in the fight against another destructive group that ruins lives: Sun Myung Moon's Unification Movement. In case you are not familiar with Moon and his organization, my YouTube video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" succinctly shows what anti-Unification activists are fighting (you will probably notice that the video is styled after the video "The Un-Funny Truth about Scientology").

I don't think it would be constructive for me to make the argument that Moon's cult is worse than Scientology because both are predatory organizations that destroy lives. However, there are a couple of important distinctions between Scientology and the Unification movement:

• Although there are some highly publicized attempts by the Church of Scientology to use the power of the government for its purposes (namely Operation Snow White), the Unification movement has spent billions to influence the U.S. government to influence the U.S. government to achieve its dominionist and reactionary political agenda. Moon's activities in the political sphere affect us all.


• While the fight against Scientology is being undertaken by many people, the opposition to the Unification movement, though dedicated and scrappy, is relatively small and it has few resources.

That why I am asking that some of you devote some of your time and energy to fight the Unification movement. Any help you can provide--whether it is in the form of suggestions, web sites, YouTube videos, or publicity--would be welcome. Thank you.

Sincerely,

S

Regime Change in the Unification Movement: Hyung Jin Moon Replaces Sun Myung Moon as Leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification

(Updated below)
The French global news agency, Agence France-Presse reports that there has been a change in leadership in the Unification movement: Hyung Jin Moon, the 28 year-old son of Sun Myung Moon has taken over as the Chairman of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). The official announcement from the FFWPU web page confirms the news report:

During Hoondokhwae on April 16 at Cheon Jeong Gung, True Parents appointed Rev. Hyung Jin Moon as International President of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). Regional presidents, national leaders and other leaders should do their best in working together with the new international president in substantially completing the settlement of Cheon Il Guk.

I think this is an unusual development. I, like many people, thought that Hyun Jin "Preston" Moon would be taking over the family business. According to Wikipedia, Hyung Jin Moon "shaved his head and wore the gray robes of a monk." He is the author of A Bald Head and a Strawberry (click here to view the book's web site--it's freaky).

UPDATE: I spoke with a trusted confidante who assured me that even though Hyung Jin Moon is the head of the FFFWPU, that doesn't mean that Sun Myung Moon won't still be calling the shots or that Preston Moon is not in line to take over the political arm of the Unification movement. One thing I know about the Unification movement is that outward appearances can be deceiving.

Birds of a Feather: Warren Jeffs and Sun Myung Moon

With all of the news coverage of the raids conducted at the compound of Warren Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I thought it would be good to remind people of the similarities between Jeffs and Sun Myung Moon. Here's a post I wrote after Jeffs' capture.

Sun Myung Moon in the Media

Listen to John Gorenfeld discuss his new book Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created The Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom on "The Spirit of Things" with Rachel Kohn.

Also, here is a YouTube video of a segment of the Canadian television program Test of Faith with Valerie Pringle. The subject of the program is new religious movements. The Reverend Phillip Schanker is on the panel representing the Unification Church. Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta, discusses how Sun Myung Moon has been less than a "perfect" parent and has enriched himself at the expense of his followers. Schanker's retort compares Moon to Mahatma Gandhi and he extols Moon's "sacrificial and committed life." Schanker also discusses his own marriage that was arranged by Moon.

Another Under-The-Radar Attempt to Gain Credibility

Ed Brayton of the Michigan Messenger has the details.

Moonie Cola?

Sun Myung Moon has his fingers in a lot of pies. One of Moon's business fronts is the McCol Beverage Factory, the maker of the popular South Korean barley-based soft drink McCol. According to a blogger at the Daily Kimchi, McCol tastes "like Coke/Pepsi, but less [sweet] and with a taste of barley as the finisher."

Hmmm. . .

I noticed on my Statcounter stats page today that someone from the U.S. State Department spent almost a half hour on my post on the heir apparent to the Unification empire, Hyun Jin "Preston" Moon after he/she did a Google search of "Preston Moon."

Chung Hwan Kwak and George W. Bush

One of the top leaders of the Unification movement who has not been given enough attention on this blog is Sun Myung Moon's right hand man, Chung Hwan Kwak. John Gorenfeld has a revealing post on the ruthless Svengeli. Like Moon, Kwak is an unrepentant anti-Semite whose theodicy of the Holocaust holds that the victims had nobody to blame but themselves. The post also gives the details of how Kwak dealt with Moon's previous top aide Bo Hi Pak: Kwak set up Pak for a brutal ritual beating from "the Black Heung Jin Nim," a Zimbabwean named Cleophas whom Moonies claimed to be the channel for the spirit of Moon's deceased son.

Members of the Bush family have assiduously avoided being photographed with the politically radioactive Moon but they have allowed themselves to be photographed with Moon's closest surrogates. The post includes a photo of Kwak with Bush, Cheney and their wives. Will the mainstream media report on this? Don't hold your breath.

Thanks

Since I let people know about my new YouTube video on Sun Myung Moon last Wednesday, about 1000 people have viewed the video. Moon has billions of dollars of ill-gotten money to line the pockets of politicians and members of the mainstream media. Critics of the Unification movement have considerably fewer financial resources than Moon (to say the least). However, we have the truth so it's a fair fight.

You can help out by doing one of the following things:
1. E-mail the video to friends, associates, and people whom you think might be interested in the content. You can either use your email account to send people the URL of the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAAgzAL7QBw) or you can go to the video and use YouTube's "Share" function A(right below the video screen).
2. Counter the Unification Church's YouTube ratings manipulation by getting a free YouTube account and giving the video a good rating(I broke the story on the Unification Church's efforts to game the YouTube ratings system). What this does is to push this video closer to the top of a keyword search for information on the Unification Church on YouTube.
3. If you have a web site or blog, please link to it.
4. Place the URL on a bulletin board or discussion group

Thanks in advance.

Reverend Moon and the GOP

DarkSyde at The Daily Kos writes about Sun Myung Moon's connections with the Republican Party and the conservative movement, including mention of John McCain's senior adviser Charlie Black, one of the organizers of the infamous 2004 Moon coronation at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. More on Black here.

UPDATE: Desert Beacon has more.

More on "The World's Most Powerful Cult"

Over the next few days, I will provide full references for my new YouTube video on Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church.

The World's Most Powerful Cult

Hillary Clinton's Campaign and Sun Myung Moon's Media Apparatus

I have a long post on my personal blog that addresses how the Hillary Clinton's campaign has made a deal with the devil by according legitimacy to fringe media outlets, including Moon's organizations.

The Washington Times and the Clinton "Black Love Child" Rumor

I was doing some research for a post on my personal blog and came across a Daily Howler post about Washington Times emeritus editor Wesley Pruden's role in the spreading of the rumor that Bill Clinton had a black love child.

The Pure Love Studies Major at Sun Moon University

The role of colleges and universities is to encourage intellectual growth as well as teaching job skills and academic disciplines. Total ideologies, because they are closed systems of thought, impede creativity and seek to create and maintain followers. Thus, the goals of true institutions of higher learning are at extreme odds with authoritarian groups. This is why colleges and universities run by absolutists are viewed with disdain by serious scholars (e.g., to no surprise, Pat Robertson's Regent University law school is viewed as "tier four").

I have written about Moon's financial support for the University of Bridgeport and Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. I knew a little bit about Moon's colleges in South Korea. It was only today that I learned that the Unification-owned Sun Moon University in South Korea has two campuses "catering to more than 8,500 undergraduate students and 500 postgraduate students."

I'm not familiar with Sun Moon University's reputation as an institution of higher learning but one thing I learned is that one can major in "Pure Love Studies." In Unification theology, "pure love" between men and women is a necessary precondition for the establishment of an uncorrupted lineage of Moon couples who will become the vanguard of a forthcoming Perfect World. To become a student in the Department of Pure Love (yes, that's what they call it), one has to be admitted to the university and pay between $7500 and $10000 in tuition A Unificatonist explains the process of being a Pure Love major:

In 1999, he established the first Pure Love Studies Major at Sun Moon University. It is not only to educate the youth about the values of purity, but to help them actualize a culture of pure love, so they can make a world where people can live a life of pure love. The students are also nurtured to become leaders who can spread these values and messages and to help educate and guide world leaders in this endeavor.

In order to do this, it first guides the students to substantiate these values by helping them realize the importance of a life of purity. They also receive training and practice throughout their 4 years of study. After graduating, they will go overseas and become Pure Love Missionaries for 4 years, educating and spreading its message and also assist Peace Ambassadors to help realize a world of peace where true love can be actualized.

In a world where self-individualism is becoming rampant, the message of purity hasn't always been received with great fanfare. Mishuku Nikkuni, a senior in pure love studies, admitted, "Sometimes it's hard because not everyone agrees with our thought. Of course there are those that oppose us like lesbians and extreme feminists."

Addendum: Moon originally had grand plans for higher education in the United States. In the Fraser Committee's report, Moon is quoted as saying, "Once we can control two or three universities, then we will be on the way to controlling the certification for the major professions in the United States."

Reverend Moon and America

Ishmael Reed in CounterPunch:

And if that weren't enough, On Saturday, C-Span's guest was Donald Lambro, The Washington Times' chief political correspondence who joined in the media's running loop devoted to criticizing Obama's relationship with his pastor [Jeremiah Wright]. The Friday before, Diana West, a reporter for the same paper, appearing on the Lou Dobbs show, criticized Michelle Obama and Rev. Wright for their "anti-Americanism," and quoted Victor Davis Hanson a far right columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Their boss is Rev. Sun Myung Moon who warns Korean widows that their husbands will go to hell if they don't give him money. If, for them, Obama should disown Rev. Wright, why are they still working for a religious shakedown artist? Why don't they step away from Rev. Moon's anti-Americanism reported by Robert Parry of consortiumnews: Moon's jingle of deep-pocket cash also has caused conservatives to turn a deaf ear toward Moon's recent anti-American diatribes. With growing virulence, Moon has denounced the United States and its democratic principles, often referring to America as "Satanic." But these statements have gone virtually unreported, even though the texts of his sermons are carried on the Internet and their timing has coincided with Bush's warm endorsements of Moon.

"America has become the kingdom of individualism, and its people are individualists," Moon preached in Tarrytown, N. Y., on March 5, 1995. "You must realize that America has become the kingdom of Satan."

In similar remarks to followers on Aug. 4, 1996, Moon vowed that the church's eventual dominance over the United States would be followed by the liquidation of American individualism."Americans who continue to maintain their privacy and extreme individualism are foolish people," Moon declared."The world will reject Americans who continue to be so foolish. Once you have this great power of love, which is big enough to swallow entire America, there may be some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested."

During the same sermon, Moon decried assertive American women."American women have the tendency to consider that women are in the subject position," he said. "However, woman's shape is like that of a receptacle. The concave shape is a receiving shape. Whereas, the convex shape symbolizes giving. . . . Since man contains the seed of life, he should plant it in the deepest place.

"Does woman contain the seed of life? ["No."] Absolutely not. Then if you desire to receive the seed of life, you have to become an absolute object. In order to qualify as an absolute object, you need to demonstrate absolute faith, love and obedience to your subject. Absolute obedience means that you have to negate yourself 100 percent."

Diana West and Donald Lambro are applying a double standard for their boss and for Rev. Wright.

John Gorenfeld's The King of America Video

Check it out here. It's great.

Must Read

John Gorenfeld on Jeremiah Wright Versus Sun Myung Moon

The Washington Times and the 1992 Passport Scandal

In light of the recent unauthorized accessing of Senator Barack Obama's passport files, Robert Parry reminds us of another passport files scandal that arose during the 1992 presidential campaign. Operatives for then-president George H. W. Bush illegally examined Democratic candidate Bill Clinton's passport file and ham-handedly tried to red-bait Clinton with the innuendo that he had been a "KGB agent of influence." To no surprise, Moon's Washington Times did what it could to turn these baseless accusations into a campaign issue. What I found incredible about the whole episode was the Kafkaesque line of reasoning used by Moon's Times and the Bush campaign: that the lack of anything incriminating in Clinton's passport file was itself proof that a Clinton supporter had removed incriminating evidence. This time, the dirty trick backfired (though fortunately for the Bush administration, Joseph diGenova was named special prosecutor to investigate any possible wrongdoing by the Bush administration; diGenova's wife Victoria Toensing did the current Bush administration's bidding in the congressional hearings that looked into the outing of Valerie Plame).

Addendum--Dirty Tricks by the Washington Times During Presidential Campaigns: In 1988, Times' editor-in-chief Wes Pruden used the paper to spread the unfounded rumor that Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis has received psychiatric treatment (then-president Reagan remarked soon after the story appeared that he wasn't going "to pick on an invalid" . . . During the 2000 campaign, Times reporter Bill Sammon concocted the phony "Floodgate" charges against candidate Al Gore (In his book on the election, Sammon doctored newspaper reports to intentionally misrepresent Gore's actions during the Florida recount) . . . The Washington Times' sister publication Insight first spread the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim who was schooled in a madrassa . . . It's a minor synchronicity that Parry wrote the article. I did the YouTube video that is currently being edited that addresses the Times' McCarthyite tactics. I hope to have the video online soon.

Opposing Racial and Religious Bigotry

On my personal blog, I have a post that deals with the problem of racial and religious bigotry. The post addresses the irony that many of those who fight against the bigotry of the sectarian right are themselves accused of being bigots. The post also touches upon the Unification movement.

The leadership of the Unification Church has been at the forefront of tarring opponents as religious bigots and racists--this strategy was employed when Moon was brought up on charges of income tax fraud and conspiracy. The theme of then-Unification Church president Mose Durst's 1984 book To Bigotry, No Sanction: Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church was that the United States prosecuted Moon because of its legacy of racism and religious intolerance.

The Web Vs. Cults: The Cults are Losing

A while ago, I did a post on why the Internet is the bane of totalistic movements. I gave examples of three destructive organizations (Scientology, Amway Global, and the Unification movement) that have had a difficult time adjusting to a populace that free access to information at the click of a mouse. John Cook of Radar magazine has a article on the anti-Scientology group Anonymous and their use of conventional protests along with computer-based tactics to put the Church of Scientology on the defensive.

Addendum: Radar magazine interviewed me for its 2007 article on Oscars crashers (I'm mentioned on the second and third pages of the article).

Hyo Jin Moon, Sun Myung Moon's Eldest Son, Dies

Hyo Jin Moon was 45. Moon's United Press International was the first media outlet to report this.

Although Hyo Jin Moon was initially groomed to run the Unification empire after his father's death, his substance abuse and bizarre behavior (watch the 60 Minutes segment) led to his younger brother Hyun Jin "Preston" Moon to be next in line to be the patriarch of "The Perfect Family." I have written about Hyo Jin Moon's marriage to Nansook Hong (also here), a 15 years-old girl (the illegal marriage was arranged by Sun Myung Moon).

Hong wrote of her years of abuse with Hyo Jin Moon and the Moon family in her memoirs, In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family.

Here is the video of a Boston-area news report on Hyo Jin Moon and the 1998 60 Minutes interview with Hong.

The Washington Times on Obama & Racism

From today's Washington Times editorial (written without apparent irony):

In Mr. Obama's "movement for change" there should be no room for racism, real or perceived. His "movement for change" should include repudiating intolerance and bigotry, even if it comes from someone you've called pastor, friend and spiritual leader for 20 years. Mr. [Jeremiah] Wright's "preaching" is not only political but hateful and runs the risk of further dividing a country Mr. Obama insists on unifying. If, "[Obama] transcends race" as FOX News analyst Fred Barnes put it last week, not only does he have a duty but a responsibility — as a candidate, leader, American — to reject the man and his message.

I have more about the Times and racism here and here.

Former President Bush and Sun Myung Moon's "Holy Wine" Ceremony

On this YouTube video, Unification Church president Michael Jenkins explains how Sun Myung Moon ordered his subordinates to have former president George H.W. Bush unwittingly participate in the Unification Church's "Holy Wine" ceremony. Jenkins' discussion of how they slipped the wine to the former president begins around the 2:30 point in the video. The Bush/Holy Wine episode was first reported in John Gorenfeld's book Bad Moon Rising. As I have mentioned, it is an excellent book (Quick note: for those of you who don't want to watch the entire seven-minute video, John Gorenfeld has an edited version on YouTube).

The meaning of the Holy Wine Ceremony: According to Moon's theology, those who participate in this ceremony become part of Moon's "blessed family," giving the recipient what Moonies believe is a pure, untainted "lineage." In Unification theology, "lineage" is a central concept. Moon believes that Adam and Eve were perfected beings whose lineage was corrupted by Eve's sexual seduction by Lucifer. Since the Fall, humanity's blood line has been corrupted. Moon believes that Jesus emerged to save humanity but failed because he was crucified before he could fulfill his mission to marry and produce perfect children. Moon believes that he is the second Messiah who will restore humanity to its uncorrupted state and create the kingdom of heaven on earth. Drinking the church-sanctioned wine is part of the process of becoming, in Jenkin's words, "engrafted into the lineage of Heaven" by separating from Satan's lineage and becoming one of Moon's "blessed families"--the "chosen people" that Jenkins mentions near the end of the video. As Moon himself claims, as a consequence of participating in the Holy Wine Ceremony, "[y]ou are going to be in ultimate infinite faith to God, to True Parents [Rev. Moon and his wife], grateful to them and obedient to their will."

All in all, it was quite a coup for Moon, especially since the Moonies were able to successfully violate Secret Service protocol. It also allows leaders of the Unification Church to tell church members that a former president is now supposedly obedient to Moon's will and how the ingestion of the wine supposedly caused Bush the Elder to subsequently give high praise to the Moon patriarch:

Must See: Sun Myung Moon's Rant

John Gorenfeld has the video of Sun Myung Moon's barely coherent rant at the Washington Times' 15th Anniversary Dinner Party. Concave and convex, indeed.
UPDATE: I embedded it:

By Popular Demand: "Who's the Cult Leader?"

People have e-mailed me about my blog post that compares Sun Myung Moon with Barack Obama. The post uses humor to respond to irony of some members of the national media who are facilely comparing Obama's supporters to cult devotees while oblivious to the emergence of Moon as an influential player in the nation's capital. Apparently when I revised the post, the link's URL changed. To access the post either scroll down to February 18 or click here.

Bad Moon Rising

I recently finished reading John Gorenfeld's new book Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom. Every American should read this book. It is shocking. This book succinctly documents how a predatory cult leader has become one of Washington's biggest power players. It is unfortunate that laughable books written by unprincipled self-promoters (e.g., here and here) can become bestsellers but important books like Bad Moon Rising don't receive the attention they deserve. If you are a blogger or have a web site, please mention the book to your readers.

Bad Moon Rising Now Available!

John Gorenfeld, the independent journalist who scooped the national press corps with his story on the bizarre Capitol Hill coronation ceremony in 2004, has a new book, Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom. This is a book that every American should read. Find it at your local bookstore or buy it at Amazon.com.

Neil Bush Hangs Out with the Moonies in Paraquay

(UPDATED BELOW)
From the EFE wire service:

Asuncion, Feb 28 (EFE).- Neil Bush, the younger brother of U.S. President George W. Bush, and a delegation from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Family Federation for World Peace and Unification met Thursday with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte.

Neil Bush also toured with Moon a couple years ago promoting Moon's proposed $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" project. The President's younger brother also attended Unification functions late last year.

UPDATE: Mark Crispin Miller has a lot more on Moon and the dysfunctional Bush family. Quick aside: I'm reading John Gorenfeld's new book Bad Moon Rising and I find it simultaneously shocking and hilarious how Moon contemptuously views former president George H. W. Bush, his supposed friend, behind his back. Also, on pp. 50-51, Gorenfeld relates an uncomfortable incident in which Moon offers the elder Bush "Holy Wine." For more details, get the book.

Moon Media Creates the Next Anti-Obama Meme: The Military "Fears" Him

(Updated below)
Last year, Moon's media apparatus created the meme that presidential candidate Barack Obama was raised Muslim and attended a madrassa (I have a transcript of one of Moon's operatives discussing the hit job with Sean Hannity). Media Matters for America and Greg Sargent report on the next anti-Obama meme: The U.S. military "fears" Obama. The Times article by Rowen Scarborough cites a Fox News analyst and a defense contractor.

People tell me that I shouldn't be concerned about a newspaper like the Washington Times because it is a low circulation cult-owned rag that isn't taken seriously. However, it is capable of doing a lot of damage and it has influence that goes way beyond it tiny circulation (about one seventh of its crosstown rival, The Washington Post). I cited how a fallacious Times story was transmitted to tens of millions of people (with help from Drudge, Fox News, and talk radio). Let's not forget also that with recent presidential elections that have been decided by razor thin margins, it doesn't take a lot to swing things to a given candidate. For instance, during the 2000 campaign, Times reporter Bill Sammon created the phony "Floodgate" story for the Times that created a lot of problem for the Gore campaign. A Moon operative also bragged that The Washington Times is one of the most cited newspapers in the nation. It would be a mistake to ignore the power of the Unification movement's media.

Disclosure: I am a political independent and voted in the primary for Obama mainly because I received an Obama poster done by one of my favorite artists, Shepard Fairey.

UPDATE: The Washington Times is doing some "style changes" to keep up with changing times. It's also doing away with "scare quotes."

UPDATE II: A former Washington Times reporter has more.

List of Current and Former Unification Church Members

Click here

This Would Be Funny if It Weren't True

In my research on the Unification Movment, I have come across information about the tragicomic life of former Bush appointee and Unification operative Josette Sheeran (Shiner). Here's a passage from an 1988 article by Edmond Jacoby in the now-defunct Regardie's magazine:

. . .I also heard tales of the fantastic, such as Jack Knarr's story of predawn rites in the newsroom . . . Forced inside by frigid weather one night,[Knarr] was snoozing in a corner of the newsroom when he was awakened at 4:30 A.m. by chanting. He swears he saw a procession of candle-waving Moonies, led by deputy managing editor Josette Shiner, circle the newsroom on the mezzanine balcony. They then proceeded, candles in hand, to the basement cafeteria for a prayer meeting and breakfast.

Exclusive: Moonies Trying to Manipulate YouTube Rankings

(Updated below)

The following is the text from an internal Unification Church memorandum:

MEMORANDUM

TO: District, State and Church Leaders, Blessed Family
Department Representatives; for all Blessed Central
Families and Second Generation
FROM: Rev. Phillip Schanker – VP for Education, FFWPU-USA
David Hunter – Director of Youth Education, FFWPU-USA
Education Dept.
DATE: February 9, 2008
RE: Changing the Image of True Parents and the Unification
Movement on the Internet, especially YouTube

In keeping with some of the desired outcomes of the four
national level Witnessing Summits, the Education Department
of FFWPU-USA is taking steps to present more positive
messages about True Parents and the Unification Movement on
the Internet. But we need your help!

Unfortunately, we can not remove or delete negative content
on the internet. But we can take steps to offset that
content by saturating the internet with positive media and
taking steps so that the positive content rises to the top
of search results lists related to the Unification
Movement.

The Education Department is currently focusing on YouTube,
the most commonly used video-viewing website on the
internet. We are making efforts to place on YouTube a
large resource of videos that truly represents the ideals,
life and work of our True Parents and the Unification
Movement – videos focusing on family values, the Blessing
of marriage, and peace.

Placing such videos on YouTube is not enough, however.
Despite many videos already uploaded, negative videos still
top the list when you search “Unification Church.” We are
realizing that the videos that end up at the top of the
list are the ones that have the most views, are the
highest-rated, and have the most comments. This is where
we need the concerted efforts of all Blessed Central
Families.

You can make a difference by following these simple steps:
1. Go to www.Youtube.com.
2. Create a free YouTube account if you don’t already have
one.
3. Log into YouTube using your new or existing account.
4. Find the Education Department’s user account, called
“FFWPUUSA.”
5. Click on, “Subscribe to this User.”
6. View all the videos that we have already uploaded.
7. Rate each video (we hope you will feel that each one
deserves five stars!), and add your comments about them.
(We welcome your critiques, but please send those directly
to us by email. We hope your comments on YouTube will
inspire others to watch these videos as well.)

By subscribing to our account (FFWPUUSA), you will be
notified by email anytime we upload a new video. In this
way, you will always be able to quickly view our new
videos, rate them and make (positive) comments on them.

We are confident that you will enjoy and benefit from the
videos we place on YouTube. At the same time, deliberate
efforts of our American membership can quickly give our
True Parents, and us, a more balanced and accurate (and
positive) image on YouTube. Isn’t this worth a couple
minutes of your time?

Thank you in advance for helping to make True Parents and
the Unification Movement better understood on the internet.

May God bless you and your family,

Rev. Phillip Schanker David P. Hunter
VP for Education Director of Youth Education
FFWPU-USA FFWPU-USA Education Department

UPDATE: I created the video "The World's Most Powerful Cult" for YouTube. One way to thwart the Moonies' attempt to manipulate YouTube would be to give the video a high ranking (I have a list of things to do).

Inchon: Masterpiece of Moonie Cinema

Mark Jordan Legan of Slate V has a video showing clips of "Oscar-winning actors who have gone on to roles in truly wretched films." He included a clip of Academy Award-winning actor Sir Laurence Olivier who portrayed General Douglas MacArthur in the Sun Myung Moon-financed cinematic catastrophe, Inchon (note: the Gipper thought it was a good film). I have written about the film as well as about Moon's handling of the critical and audience to the film.

Legan gave me a heads up about the video last Tuesday at Arianna's book party celebrating Slate editor Jacob Weisberg's new book The Bush Tragedy (yeah, I was invited).

Reverend Moon's Quote of the Day

--The Reverend Sun Myung Moon:

Every [sic] people or every organization that goes against the Unification Church will gradually come down or drastically come down and die. Many people will die--those who oppose our movement.

Source: Ann Nelson, "God, Man, and the Reverend Moon," The Nation, March 31, 1979

Helen Thomas and Journalistic Principles

(UPDATE: Jon Stewart video--see below)
When Sun Myung Moon bought the struggling United Press International (UPI) wire service in 2000, Helen Thomas--UPI's chief White House correspondent who was spent 57 years at the company--promptly resigned her position. She didn't make a fuss--in contrast to Mike Royko who quit the Chicago Sun-Times when Rupert Murdoch acquired it, saying that "no self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper." The other day, Thomas was a bit more outspoken about Moon's acquisition in an interview with Wonkette's Lauren Selsky:

Your reaction when you found out that the Saudis sold UPI to the Moonies?
I had seen what had happened to children and people of that cult. To work for them would have meant that I had to compromise my beliefs, which was something I could not do.

So you don’t believe Sun Myung Moon is the Messiah? No.

UPDATE: If you enjoyed the Jon Stewart video on the Moon coronation, here's more: I found a hilarious video of a Daily Show episode from 2000 dealing with the Thomas/Moonie flap:

Blast from the Past: Carlton Sherwood

Carlton Sherwood, a former Washington Times reporter--who wrote a supposedly independent book, Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, that was critical of the government's tax fraud conviction of Moon--gained notoriety when PBS's Frontline obtained documents showing that Moon and Unification Church officials vetted Sherwood's manuscript (Quick note: I discuss Sherwood's book briefly here).

In 2004, Sherwood produced a film Stolen Honor, a film version of the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry's military record.

Anyway, the blog EmptyWheel discusses a Sherwood connection in the McCain/Iseman story.

Barack Obama Versus Sun Myung Moon: Who is the Cult Leader?

In the past week or so, there has been a lot of talk among the chattering classes that Barack Obama's presidential campaign is cult-like and that Obama is positioning himself as a messiah. The Obama Cult Meme apparently started some idle observations by Joe Klein who claimed to be creeped out by the Obama campaign's supposed "mass messianism." This was followed soon thereafter with a snarky blog post by ABC's Jake Tapper titled, "And Obama wept." The meme has metastasized since then, even Paul Krugman has gotten into the act.

I find the whole matter disconcerting. First, there isn't one shred of evidence that Obama supporters are fanatical extremists or that Obama has tried to establish himself as a messiah figure. It is nothing more than a facile (and lame) attempt to tar a personable candidate as a whackjob. What is particularly noxious about this snark-fest is that these members of the Washington press corps have looked the other way while a real cult leader, Sun Myung Moon, has run roughshod over the American political process for the past 35 years. It was insult added to injury when David Brooks--who previously mocked those who decried the closeness of the Bush and Moon families--remarked that "Obama’s people are so taken with their messiah that soon they’ll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings."

For the benefit of the kewl kids of the DC press corps, I created a table (inspired by a consumer guide created by John Gorenfeld) showing the difference between cult leaders and non-cultists:

	Barack Obama	Sun Myung Moon
Has he ever claimed to be the Messiah?	No	Yes
Instances of having members of the US Congress covering him with royal vestments and placing a crown on his head in a ceremony held at a US government building.	None	Once
Has he ever told supporters, "I am your brain"?	No	At least once
Encourages S & M to supporters?	No	Yes, The "Indemnity Stick" ceremony
Concerned with the sex lives of his supporters?	No	Moon has a strict regimen regarding sexual activity, which includes:1) 40 days of abstinence prior to marriage sex; 2) The first two acts of sexual congress involve woman-on-top sex (no specific dogma addresses whether the reverse cowgirl position is acceptable); 3) After sexual congress, the couple wipes their genitals with a church-provided "Holy Handkerchief."
Does he select marriage partners of his supporters?	No	Yes. (quick note: apparently God's law is in conflict with man's law because some of the divinely-selected marriage partners have been jailbait--including Moon's own daughter-in-law)
Claims to have personally communicated with all deceased US Presidents, Mao, Hitler, Jesus, Buddha, and Karl Marx?	No	Yes
Preferred type of government	Representative     democracy	A theocratic system known as "Godism" in which democracy is crushed and the world is ruled according to Unification Church dogma.
Views about the rights of political opponents	Believes in the rights of political opponents.	Those who try to maintain their individuality in a Moon-inspired "Godist" regime will be "digested." Speaking in the third person, Moon told his followers, "Those that oppose Rev. Moon will perish."

Written Without Apparent Irony in the Washington Times

Thomas Sowell:

Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they betray the trust of the public and corrupt their own profession. . . It is bad enough that politicians betray their followers as a matter of expediency. It is real chutzpah when they demand that journalists betray the public trust as a matter of principle, for the benefit of politicians.

Real chutzpah, indeed.

Washington Times Airbrushes John & Cindy

Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times never avoided a chance to chide Bill Clinton about his sexual misconduct--real or imagined (recent example: Robert Stacey McCain's promotion of operative David Bossie's anti-Hillary movie--which has an interview with dubious Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey). Cliff Schecter finds some interesting omissions in the Times' coverage of John McCain's romancing of Wife Number 2, Cindy (Trading one's wife in for a younger model is a favorite pastime for many Republicans).

The Internet as Enemy of Destructive Cults: Three Case Studies

An imbalance of information is the mother's milk of totalistic movements. Conversely, an informed citizenry is the bane of predatory cults. Cults thrive on secrecy. They strive for a situation in which they know much more about a potential mark than he/she knows about the group. This allows the cult members to know what values a person has and makes it easier for them to push the buttons of the novice member. This asymmetrical relationship between the cult and the devotee is the cult's source of power. If increasing numbers of potential recruits have access to critical information about the cult, the cult's power will be significantly diminished. Information is the bane of groups the seek to control people.

In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, the authors describe how a lone gadfly helped to break the back of the Ku Klux Klan during the post-World War II years. Stetson Kennedy, a civil rights activist, determined that one of the Klan sources of power was its information control regarding its organizational structure and culture. Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and sent information regarding the Klan's mode of operations, including secret code words and rituals, to the writers of the popular Superman radio show. The writers incorporated
the Klan's heretofore secrets radio shows in which Superman fought the Klan. The workings of the Klan's inner operations were broadcast to the nation and, as a result, the Klan was demystified and it has flagged in influence ever since.

With the advent of the Internet, it is a lot easier for those opposed to destructive secretive organizations to expose these groups for what they are. Here are three examples of how Internet activist have exposed the dark secrets of destructive organizations:

The Church of Scientology
I first heard about Xenu, the galactic overlord described to Scientology converts in the highest levels of the cult, from William Poundstone's book Bigger Secrets in the late 1980's (and later in Bent Corydon and L. Ron Hubbard Jr.'s book L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah Or Madman?). When the Internet took off in the early 1990's, the Xenu cat was out of the bag. Anti-Scientology sites popped up exposing the Xenu theology to widespread mockery (the most prominent site has been Operation Clambake which uses the URL Xenu.net). Attempts by Scientology to suppress these sites have been a complete failure--one of the earliest examples of "the Streisand Effect." Although there has been much attention given to the tactics of a group of Internet-based anti-Scientology hackers known as Anonymous (click here for a video about the group), it was the older web-based groups that have set the stage for the mass exposure of the church's exploitation of its followers.

Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Movement
As I have noted previously, Sun Myung Moon and the Unification movement have kept a much lower profile in the US since staging massive public rallies and actively recruiting American members (mainly because because the would-be Messiah is the anti-Obama: the more people are exposed to the cult leader, the more they are repelled). It's revealing the the story about the coronation of the "True Parents" in the Dirksen Senate Office building was broke on an internet site, Salon.com (by John Gorenfeld--whose book on Moon will be available March 1). Other critical web pages and blogs have made it into the top sites for Google searches of Moon's name and Unification-related keywords.

Amway/Quixtar
I have to hand it to Amway. As soon as critical but truthful web sites emerged to counter the company's propaganda, Amway started google bombing--"using its large network of websites to move sites critical of Quixtar lower in search engine rankings." This was ineffectual because a counter-google bomb that I created more than counteracted the effects of the company's efforts to manipulate search engine results. The result: the first page of Google searches for "Amway" and "Quixtar" are loaded with critical sites.

Moon Ally Ousted as Philippines House Speaker

On February 5, influential Philippines politician, Jose de Venecia Jr., a member of the presiding council of Moon Universal Peace Federation, was ousted as Speaker of the House. De Venecia has attempted to use the United Nations to promote Unification theology. From de Venencia's speech to the "King of Peace Crowning Ceremony of Cosmic Unity" on February 14, 2005:

One of the great missions of Rev. Moon is to see how we can bring about a unification of the great religions of the world for we have descended from Adam and Eve and from Abraham. Today gathered here are the great leaders of Buddhism, of Islam, the Jews of the world, the Roman Catholics, the Confucians, the Hindus - are all gathered in this great hall of the people and I am happy to report to you as a result of the lifelong work of Rev. Moon and of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, under the chairmanship of Rev. Kwak, I am happy to report to you that as the result of the mutual pioneering efforts of the Philippines, of Iran and of many nations of Europe and in Asia and in Africa - and under the leadership of Rev. Moon - I had the privilege to present to the Security Council last year – a resolution for a dialogue among civilizations, among religions, among cultures, for an interfaith dialogue and I am happy to report to you that the following month, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved our resolution calling for an interfaith dialogue among the great religions of the world.

The Washington Times on Barack Obama

The headline: "Black Horse." This headline and radio talk show host Laura Ingraham's recent dissing of John McCain at the Conservative Political Action Conference(CPAC), jogged another newspaper story title from my memory: when Ingraham was on the staff of the Dartmouth Review, a right-wing foundation-funded conservative college papers, one of the editorials was titled, "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro."

Addendum: I have written about how the Washington Times has attempted to mainstream white supremacist and neo-Confederate thought. One character I haven't mentioned is Bill White, a WT contributing writer. John Gorenfeld has an informative article about him.

UPDATE: BuzzFlash has more.

Homeland Security Money Funneled to Group with Ties to North Korea

The blog Left in Alabama reports that Master Marine, Inc., a Unification-controlled business involved in the building and repair of ships, received over $330,000 in the past two years from the Department of Homeland Security for "maintenance, repair and rebuilding of equipment."

It concerns me that the government department responsible for the safety of our nation would do business with a firm owned by Sun Myung Moon, who has given millions of dollars to subsidize North Korea's weapons program and has had extensive financial dealings with a regime that the Bush administration considers one of the remaining two components of the "axis of evil." It also concerns me that Department of Homeland Security would go to a man who has an open hostility to democratic forms of government and who views the United States as "Satan's harvest."

This action raises several questions: 1. Why was Moon's firm chosen for the contract with DHS? 2. Were employees of Master Marine, Inc. given access to classified information? 3. Does the relationship between DHS and Master Marine, Inc. constitute a threat to national security?

A Brief History of the "America" Brand

I really enjoyed the recent Media Matters video on Fox News' attempted branding of Rudy Giuliani as "America's mayor" (it's at the bottom of this post).

This is hardly surprising. Fox News' chief operative Roger Ailes was a campaign consultant for Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign (Reagan declared the GOP "America's party" in his convention speech). Others followed suit; Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times refers to itself "America's newspaper," despite the owner's view of America as "Satan's harvest" and his desire to destroy American democracy (they even went as far as to buy the domain name "americasnewspaper.com").

I suspect that Ailes got the idea after Ted Turner began using his cable station WTBS to dub the Atlanta Braves "America's team" in the early 1980's (or perhaps after the "America's team" meme was first applied to the Dallas Cowboys). In any case, it remains one of Ailes' favorite devices in his rhetorical toolbox; Ailes has even named two of the Fox News channel's shows "America's Newsroom" and "America's Pulse."

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart on the Moon Coronation

Hilarious:

Great Moments in Good Taste

A Washington Times editorial cartoon:

Another Universal Peace Federation Video

A Rambling talk by former Arizona representative Matt Salmon about the Universal Peace Federation. Note: this guy was almost elected governor of Arizona.

UPDATE: A reader e-mailed me over my amazement that Salmon was almost elected governor of Arizona and reminded me that Evan Mecham had been elected.

Hillary Clinton and Sun Myung Moon: A Strategic Catastrophe

Sun Myung Moon's Universal Peace Television web site has a video with testimonials for the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) from several prominent politicians and world leaders. The dignitaries are mostly foreign leaders: President Umaru Yar'Adua of Nigeria; President Pratibha Patil of India; President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica; Speaker of the Philippines House of Representatives, Jose de Venecia, Jr.; and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. The video included one prominent American politician, Senator Hillary Clinton who is quoted as expressing the following sentiments: "I applaud the Universal Peace Federation's global networks of individuals and organizations committed to peace building through dialogue, education, and service." (hat tip to John Gorenfeld for the screen shot). Apparently, this quote was culled from the letter of support that Senator Clinton sent praising Moon's 2007 Universal Peace Federation Assembly (I reported on this last September).

Destructive Cults and the Insatiable Quest for Credibility
Destructive cults thrive on receiving plaudits from influential people, namely celebrities, industrialists, journalists, and politicians. There are many reasons for this--the most important is that an influential person's imprimatur is worth its weight in gold in terms of giving credibility to the group. The Church of Scientology is noted for recruiting Hollywood celebrities (the cult also uses politicians; when I visited the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition, at the end of the tour was a display of letters and proclamations from prominent politicians). Amway has a rich history of cultivating close ties with Republican politicians (Of course with a business-related cult like Amway, there is the additional incentive of receiving corporate welfare from grateful legislators).

However, regarding the cultivation of ties with influential politicians, the Church of Scientology and Amway are pikers compared to Moon and the Unification movement. Not only has Moon established ties with the aforementioned world leaders, but he has made significant inroads in the American political system over the past thirty years. It would not be an exaggeration to posit that Moon is the most powerful lobbyist in the United States (quick note: Moon doesn't feel the need to register and report under the Lobbying Disclosure Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act).

The Problem with Hillary
Hillary represents the worst of both worlds. The American right has demonized her as a ruthless political strategist who will do anything, including mass murder, to achieve her political goals. This was largely done by right-wing talk radio in order to discredit the Clinton presidency and to appeal to the latent misogyny of its listeners (Rush Limbaugh has led the pack in terms of paranoid accusations--also here).

The truth is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are not only not the ruthless politicos the right portrays them as but they have left a lot of political capital on the table needlessly. When Bill Clinton entered the White House in 1993, he wrapped up investigations of George H.W. Bush's administration to disastrous results; Hillary is hinting that she will do the same for George W. Bush if she were to gain the presidency. It just isn't the Clintons but the Democratic Party that has failed to address vulnerable targets on the right. What makes this latest episode with the Unification movement particularly appalling is that this isn't the first time that the Unification movement exploited Hillary's political gullibility. As I reported, in 1997, Hillary approached one of Moon's operatives--Josette Sheeran Shiner, then the managing editor of Moon's Washington Times--and proposed that her syndicated column be included in the Times.

The simple fact is this: according legitimacy to Moon or any of his front groups constitutes aid and comfort to an totalistic movement that exploits people financially, psychologically, and sexually.

Addendum: Misc. Notes. . . What's in the Holy Juice? As John Gorenfeld witnessed, at Universal Peace Federation events, there is a strange communion-like ceremony: "The hosts persuaded a ballroom full of people to drink special packets of "Holy Juice" symbolizing the blood and body of Reverend Moon, provided in transparent plastic cups the size of dairy creamer at Denny's. I couldn't get a straight answer about what's in the Holy Juice." The Unification movement has a history of including noxious and potentially biohazardous substances in their ceremonial drinks. The "holy wine"--used in marriage ceremonies--contains Moon and his wife's . After Moon's wife, Hak Ja Han, gave birth, her "breast milk was cut with cow's milk and ceremonially served to Church members.". . . Richard Bartholomew, who has a notable blog on religion, has a new blog that addresses the Universal Peace Federation and Moon's Ambassadors for Peace.

Washington Times' John Solomon Takes on "Liberal Blogs"

Greg Sargent has the story.

Stay tuned. I will have a long post on Hillary and Sun Myung Moon soon.

A Quick Thought

There has been a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton's hardball tactics against Barack Obama in the campaign. It would have been nice if she had used those same tactics against a real enemy: Moon's media apparatus.

Success!

This blog is in the top 20 for a Google search of "Sun Myung Moon."

Sun Myung Moon's UPF Makes Inroads in Nepal

Richard Bartholomew has the story

Washington Times Reprints Misinformation about Obama's Religion
Media Matters for America has the story.

Moon-Funded Former Congressman Indicted on Money Laundering Charges for Charity Linked to al Qaeda Terrorism

The Daily Kos has an informative post on former Republican Representative Mark Deli Siljander. Frederick Clarkson on Siljander's ties to Sun Myung Moon.

Who is John Solomon?

I'm preparing a post on the new Washington Times executive editor John Solomon. In my brief research, I have learned some interesting information about him. E-mail me at scoobiedavis77@yahoo.com if you have any information that might be useful.

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic: The New Washington Times Editor

John Solomon replaces Wes Pruden as executive editor. John Aravosis of AmericaBlog has written extensively about Solomon's shoddy reporting here and here. Media Matters has an article on Solomon's journalistic lapses. Looks as if Solomon will be at home in his new job.

UPDATE: Think Progress has more on Solomon.

UPDATE II: Media Matters for America has a comprehensive look at Solomon's pattern of spreading right-wing and GOP disinformation.

The Inchon Backlash: Blame America First

Sun Myung Moon is fond of financing project that turn out to be financial albatrosses (not a problem when you make billions off of the gullibility of people). The Washington Times is one good example; Moon has dumped over three billion dollars into this dubious venture and after 25 years, the paper is viewed as a joke by serious journalists.

I have written previously about Moon's attempt to become a film producer. The result: the 1982 film Inchon. The film was almost universally panned by critics and audiences. The only notable person I could find who liked the film was then-president Reagan (quick note: The Washington Times was Reagan's preferred newspaper).

The movie is godawful. K. Gordon Neufeld, a former Unificationist and author of a poignant memoir about his experiences in the cult, gave some compelling reasons for the film was a flop:

. . . [T]otalist ideologies are inherently shallow; they see things in simplistic terms, and any contradictions are simply ignored or explained away with doublethink. A script written from such a viewpoint would lack subtlety and would contain inherent contradictions that the writer would feel he or she dare not examine or even acknowledge. Some of the best European writers of the last century were former Communists who abandoned their ideology in later years: George Orwell, for example, or Arthur Koestler. They were able to produce fine works only after they left their ideology behind.

I would add that totalist ideologies like Unificationism also lack the ability to attribute failure to the inherent weakness of their ideas. Cult leaders like Moon are isolated from reality by sycophants who tell the Leader that his failures are due to external factors. When Moon was convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy, his followers claimed religious persecution and racism (Moon even created a front group,The National Committee Against Religions Bigotry and Racism). Likewise, when American moviegoers stayed away from Inchon in droves (despite a sweepstakes promotion with a million dollar prize), Moon blamed it on the religious bigotry of the American people. Moon took out full-page ads in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, consisting of open letters to the American people. Here is the transcript of the letter:

DEAR AMERICAN PEOPLE,

I note with sorrow how motion picture critics have reacted to the new film "Inchon." Most press coverage, including reviews, seems to emphasize the credit of Sun Myung Moon as the film's Special Adviser instead of dealing with the merits of the production itself.

But what saddens me most is that this should happen in the United States which is, and always has been, the champion of freedom of religion. To judge a motion picture--or any art form--by the religious convictions of the people who produce that art does not reflect the true American spirit.

I urge the public to make its own decision concerning "Inchon." I consider it both a privilege and an honor to have participated with the producer in bringing to the motion picture audience a film so poignantly depicting the spirit of MacArthur--and the spirit of America.

[signed] Sun Myung Moon

Synchronicity
Today I went into a men's room in the San Fernando Valley and there was one of those signs telling employees to wash their hands. Someone had engaged in some creative graffiti by scratching out some words and replacing them with others. The sign looked like this:

WASH YOUR HANDS
Brain
Handwashing is The Most Effective Way to Stop the Spread of
Illness
Freedom

Crossposted on the Amway blog.

1/9 UPDATE: I was in the library and in the new books section was a copy of Dominic Streatfeild's book Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control. Streatfeild devoted over 20 pages to the Unification Church and Sun Myung Moon.

Ancestor Liberation: A Twist on the "Spiritual Sales" Scam

The "Spiritual Sales" scam was a scam used by the Unification movement to swindle Japanese widows out of their life savings by pressuring them to spend tens of thousands of dollars on relics that allegedly had the power to free their deceased husbands and family members from eternal punishment. It is estimated that the church scammed between $600 million and $1 billion before the Japanese government cracked down on the practice.

Ancestor Liberation is a new twist on spiritual sales. The main difference is that this scam is aimed at church members. I have obtained Unification Church documents that indicate a particularly disturbing element of the practice. What is particularly bizarre is that the liberation of one's ancestors is accomplished by attending workshops conducted by dead people--namely, the channeled spirits of Reverend Moon's mother-in-law, Dae Mo Nim and Moon's son, Heung Jin Moon (aka Heung Jin Nim). I obtained an internal church memo written by FFWPU leaders Chang Shik Yang and Michael Jenkins announcing the preparation for an ancestor liberation tour by these deceased relatives of Moon.

I will write more about this phenomenon. One thing I noticed when reviewing the church documents relating to ancestor liberation is the similarly between this practice and the Church of Scientology's lucrative practice of clearing oneself of body thetans through the process of auditing. From a Unification Church memo on ancestor liberation:

Another situation is that due to the sins committed by our ancestors, those spirits who were wronged while on earth carry their resentment into the spirit world. Those resentful spirits drive us toward suffering and sickness in order to relieve their resentment. During the holy song sessions we have to liberate and pluck these resentful spirits out of our bodies. Liberation helps us to prevent many difficulties and hardships and protect our descendants from harm.

By ultimately liberating 210 generations, we can clean up and fix the fallen history of 6000 years since the Fall of Adam and Eve. This process of correcting history is needed to create a new order in the spirit world – which God has been longing for 6,000 years to see happen. It is our privilege to comfort God by accomplishing this.

Reverend Moon's Catholic Splinter Group in Zambia

Richard Bartholomew has the story. Here's another article.

Neil Bush Still Chilling with the Moons

John Gorenfeld, whose book is due out in March, has the details. A belated retraction, Mr. Brooks?

John Gorenfeld's book Bad Moon Rising to be Available March 2008
The complete title of the book is Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom. For those of you not familiar with the author John Gorenfeld, he is the scrappy journalist who scooped the Washington press corps with his reporting of the bizarre 2004 coronation ceremony of Moon and his wife in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. I look forward to reading the book. If enough people bought the book, it would send a message to the negligent journalistic community that the emergence of Moon as a Washington power player is a huge story that they should cover.

UPDATE: Welcome to readers of Crooks and Liars. Go to the front page of this blog to read more about Sun Myung Moon.

The Washington Times and the Mainstreaming of White Supremacist Thought

The Washington Times sure knows how to spread the spirit of the holiday season: for its Christmas day edition, it published an attack on Barack Obama by noted white supremacist and VDARE columnist Steve Sailer. As I and others have noted, the editorial page of the Times is one of the last refuges for white supremacist thought in American journalism.

UPDATE: David Neiwert has a detailed analysis.

Charlie Wilson's War and The Washington Times

A few days ago, I saw Charlie Wilson's War. It was a decent enough film and I give it a mild thumbs up.

I noticed something odd when I checked the Washington Times' review of the film. The initial title for the review by Scott Galupo was "Liberal and pro-U.S.? Who knew?" but was changed to the more benign "The Sorkin Doctrine" (the review is here).

Merry Christmas

On my main blog, I have a post that focuses on Pastor John Hagee but touches on the Unification movement.

Blast from the Past: The Washington Times, Sun Myung Moon, and the "War on Christmas"

Here's the transcript of me on Bill O'Reilly's radio show.

UPDATE: Robert Parry on Mike Huckabee and the supposed war on Christmas and Christians.

Why So Little Attention on Moon?

People ask me why there's so little attention on Moon's activities. The short answer: the American journalism community has failed. Robert Parry has more on this failure.

The South Korean Presidential Election

Moon's Washington Times seems to be happy about the landslide election of Lee Myung-bak of the right-wing Grand National Party.

Sun Myung Moon and the American People

Last week I posted the video clip of the Saturday Night Live spoof of Moonies and deprogrammers from 1977. A similar skit would not work on SNL now.

Why not? I ask people about Moon. Generally if the person I'm asking is under 35, the likelihood is that he/she has never heard of Moon. Most older people have heard of Moon but they generally mention things such as mass marriages and the deprogramming controversy.

Moon and his organizations have changed tactics. During the 1970's, Moon had a very high public profile with highly publicized rallies at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden. The Unification Church actively recruited American young people who then became highly visible hawkers of flowers and trinkets on the streets of major American cities. Putting his cards on the table was not a way for Moon to earn the love of the American people--it made him the object of intense dislke and fear among Americans. In 1979, a survey of Americans who ranked 155 famous people on likability had Moon ranked 154 (the only famous person Moon beat out was Charles Manson).

Beginning in the 1980's, Reverend Moon began keeping a much lower profile. He deemphasized the recruitment of American college students to do his fund raising (quick aside: most of the Moonies who have approached me in the past few years were Japanese nationals). Moon and his organizations focused on the American power structure--creating the Washington Times, buying UPI, and courting prominent American politicians and journalists.

The irony is that Moon is more powerful than he was during the 1970's and because his political activities are more-or-less under the radar, people tend not to know about them. Also, it doesn't hurt Moon that we have a timid journalistic community (click here and skip to 47:00 and hear from former Washington Times editor James Whelan on why this is the case) and a feckless and clueless Democratic Party.

Saturday Night Live: Night of the Moonies

With the original cast of Saturday Night Live. It's from 1977 and has the original cast members including the late great John Belushi as Sun Myung Moon, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, and Bill Murray. Shelley Duvall was the guest host: