Insanity, George Bush, & the Unification Church

[jcldragon]

http://www.counterpunch.org/hill01042003.html

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory
Bush's Armageddon Obsession, Revisited

by MICHAEL ORTIZ HILL

"We are lived by forces we scarcely understand," wrote W.H. Auden. What forces live us now as America again torques toward war?

George W. Bush is certainly the plaything of such forces as the geopolitics of oil but it seems that he is susceptible to other even darker archetypal concerns. Let me be blunt. The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would attack so many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy to the environment may seem confusing from the point of view of realpolitik but becomes transparent in terms of the apocalyptic worldview to which he subscribes. All systems are supposed to go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly, has taken on the role of the one who brings this to pass.

The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped Bush's political understanding of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr. Evans, the pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should be seen from a divine viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.

S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes, "Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.' Dominionism pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued.... It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so to speak, to bring in the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this delusion, "Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the role usually ascribed to the Messiah.

In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."

"To answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," says Bush. And again, "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation." Grandiose visions. Woodward comments, "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."

In dominionism we can see the theological source of Bush's monomania. Not to be distracted by the fact that he lost the popular election by a half a million votes, that the Joint Chief of Staff at the Pentagon were so concerned about his plans to invade Iraq that they leaked their unanimous objection, that he has systematically alienated much of the world, that roughly seventy percent of Americans remain unconvinced of the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein and the same percentage object to war if there will be significant American casualties--none of this is in the least relevant. He believes his mandate toward action is from God.

As humans we live within stories. Some stories, like apocalypse are thousands of years old. The scriptured text that informs Bush understanding of and enactment of the End of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book that justifies violence of any kind, and this it takes to the limit: Christ himself the agent of mass murder.

"I saw heaven open and there before me was a white horse who is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war...He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the word of God...Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the Nations. And I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds flying in midair--come gather together for the great supper of God, so you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great."

Such is "the glory of the coming of the Lord." Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy of vultures. In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates "a new heaven and a new earth." The dead are judged, the Christians saved and the rest damned to eternal torment. The New Jerusalem is established and the Lord rules it "with an iron scepter."

It is not inconceivable that Bush is literally and determinedly drawn, consciously and unconsciously, toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he believes, for God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in the Middle East suggests as much.

It dishonors the profundity of the Christian tradition if one doesn't note that Revelations has always been a rogue text. Because of its association with the Montanist heresy (which like contemporary fundamentalists took it to be literal rather than allegorical) it was with great reluctance that it was made scripture three centuries after the death of Christ. Traditionally attributed to St. John, most Biblical scholars now recognize its literary style and its theology has little in common with John's gospel or his epistles and was likely written after his death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of Revelations incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the appendix of his German translation of the New Testament instead of the body of scripture. All the Protestant reformers except Calvin regarded apocalyptic millenialism to be heresy.

But Revelations is also a rogue text because it is unmoored from its origins, which are far from Christian. It is a late variant on a story that was pervasive in the ancient world: the defeat of the wild and the uncivilized by a superior order upon which a New World would be established. Two thousand years before Revelations depicted Christ slaying the antichrist and laying out the New Jerusalem, Marduk slayed Tiamat and founded Babylon.

This pagan myth recycled as a suspiciously unchristian Biblical test found new credence in the 19th century when John Darby virtually revived the Montanist heresy of investing it with a passionate literalism. Given to visions (he saw the British as one of the ten tribes of Israel) Darby left the priesthood of the Church of Ireland and preached Revelations as both prophecy and imminent history. In this he inaugurated a lineage in which Bush's mentors, the Reverend Billy Graham and Dr. Tony Evans are recent heirs. Revelations is much beloved by Muslim fundamentalists and like their Christian compatriots they also thrill to redemption through apocalypse. Jewish fundamentalists of course do not believe in Revelations but have nonetheless made common cause with the Christian Right.

"It's a very tragic situation in which Christian fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus on Armageddon and the Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims and Jews in bringing about the Second Coming, are involved in a folie a deux with extremist Jews," said Ian Lustick, the author of For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (and yes it is a single tradition) is being led by its fringe into the abyss and the rest of us with it.

The world has been readied for the fire but the critical element is the Bush Administration. Never in the history of Christendom has there been a moment when this rogue element has carried anything like the credibility and political power that it carries now.

[jcldragon]

http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen01142003.html

Moon Shadow
The Rev, Bush & North Korea

by WAYNE MADSEN

When President Bush added North Korea to his list of "Axis of Evil" nations, the influence of the self-declared reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, loomed largely over the White House decision-making process. The decision by Bush to throw into the trash heap of history eight years of a joint American-South Korean-Japanese dialogue with the reclusive Communist regime would ultimately result in Pyongyang returning to using the rhetoric of bygone years. Just as the Bush administration reintroduced to regular use the terms "segregation," "civil rights," and "ban on abortions," the terms "demilitarized zone," "Panmunjom," and "38th parallel" would also re-enter the American political lexicon.

Bush, a self-described "born again Christian" who has maintained close links to Moon, hired David Frum as one of his speechwriters. Frum apparently came up with the term "axis of evil" for Bush's 2002 State of the Union address but it seems likely that Bush, heavily influenced by the propagandists of the rabidly anti-Pyongyang Washington Times, decided North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il was Satan reincarnate. Years before North Korea announced it was restarting its nuclear enrichment facility at Yongbyon, The Washington Times splashed front page headlines about North Korea being a threat while other major newspapers and wire services treated the sensationalistic reports as a non-story or more probably, plain disinformation masked as "intelligence reports" and "leaked" by anti-Clinton Pentagon officials.

For twenty years, Moon's main policy laundering enterprise for his incessant influence-peddling has been The Washington Times, the money-losing newspaper he owns outright through New World Communications, Inc., the paper's parent publishing company. New World also owns Insight Magazine, The Middle East Times (based in Cairo), Zambezi Times (based in Lusaka, Zambia), newspapers in Uruguay and Canada, a textbook publishing company in Russia, and United Press International, the formerly well-respected wire service that fell on hard financial times and was bailed out by Moon's seemingly unlimited cash flows.

Next year, an Insight magazine reporter is poised to take over as President of the venerable National Press Club in Washington. Thus, in a presidential election year, a Moon employee will have influence on what politicians and candidates are selected for televised luncheon speeches carried by C-SPAN and other cable news networks. Democrats and Greens should be very wary. Some former Washington Times officials claim The Washington Times and its affiliates are so tied in with Moon's agenda, its reporters and staff should register with the Justice Department as foreign lobbyists under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Moon launched The Washington Times in 1982, just a few years after one of Moon's associates, Tongsun Park, was indicted for paying bribes to a number of U.S. politicians. The paper, which has a dearth of advertising revenue, has lost more than $1 billion dollars since its inception. Nevertheless, it has become a powerful conservative voice throughout Republican ranks in both the White House and Congress. In 1996, former President Bush, who has taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from Moon, spoke before a Moon audience in Argentina and declared Moon to be a "man of vision." Bush 41, who could never really grasp the "vision thing," decided Moon had it.

Moon's own background, which reportedly includes links to both the Korean CIA and its American counterpart, parallels that of other ethically-tainted individuals who have once again found sanctuary in a Bush administration: Elliott Abrams, John Poindexter, Otto Reich, and John Negroponte, all of Iran-contra infamy. The Washington Times was a leading supporter of the Nicaraguan contras and a chief apologist for the perpetrators of the arms-for-hostages scandal. Violating one of the main canons of journalism -- that newspapers should not become part of or create their own stories -- the Washington Times established the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to the contras circumventing the Boland Amendment that prohibited Federal money for the rightist guerrillas. Moon was also one of the few influential people who continued to defend Richard Nixon even as the President was resigning over the Watergate scandal.

In addition to his media empire, Moon also owns a Jonestown-type compound in Brazil called New Hope. He has also invested in the sparsely-populated and impoverished Marshall Islands. He has infiltrated one of the secessionist movements fighting for independence for the Angolan enclave of Cabinda. Moon's favorites in Africa included some of the CIA's most reliable clients: UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique. Moon's fronts even maintained a dialogue with Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge murdered 3 million Cambodians. More surprisingly, Moon reportedly partly owns a hotel in Pyongyang and a North Korean Fiat automobile plant. His flirtation with mind control techniques is legendary. Parents have spent millions trying to deprogram their children from the effects of Moon's Pavlovian brain bending methods. Moon's mass marriages of unwitting American males to Korean wives, while humorous on the surface, nevertheless managed to trap Zambian Roman Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Milingo. At least one pre-eminent Washington Times reporter is said to have been enticed into one of his boss's mass marriage ceremonies.

At the 20th anniversary celebration of The Washington Times held last year in Washington, Moon seemingly endlessly spoke in Korean at the alcohol-free affair. He said The Washington Times would "spread the truth about God to the world." But in Moon's world, he is God. President Bush sent a message to the banquet stating, "Since 1982, people across America and throughout the world have relied on The Washington Times as a distinguished source of information and opinion."

Bush seems to value Moon's commitment to family values. Bush named David Caprara, the head of Moon's American Family Coalition, as the director of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). Moon's commitment to family values was exemplified at his 20th anniversary celebration of The Washington Times. The keynote speaker was Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the holier-than-thou radio talk show host who is the psychiatric part of the daily ration of right wing AM radio venom that is complemented by the political indoctrination of Rush Limbaugh and his clones. Schlessinger's own commitment to family values was highlighted recently when she claimed the body of her 77-year-old mother from the Los Angeles County morgue after it had remained there for ten days after her unattended death in her condominium. Schlessinger, who lectures callers on how to keep their families together and wholesome, had not seen her own mother since 1984.

To Moon, however, disowning one's parents is a hallmark of his brainwashing techniques. In 1973, while a college student in Mississippi, I was once lured into a Moon recruiting function. I met a young Jewish girl from New Jersey who was traveling around the country in a van with her fellow Moon adherents. As a native of New Jersey myself, I asked the young woman what her parents thought about her roaming about the country. She replied, "Parents, I have no parents. Reverend Moon is my family." I wanted to call the nearest rabbi to help the poor girl get home to her parents who must have been worried sick. Nevertheless, Bush believes that Moon's family value system is credible enough to appoint one of his adherents to head VISTA.

But Moon is not only a danger to young people. While Bush accuses Kim Jong Il of all kinds of evil affronts he seems to ignore some of Moon's more bellicose and threatening comments. According to a 1978 House of Representatives investigation of Moon some of the more outrageous comments include:

---Unification Church members are to regard Korea with great reverence and look forward to the day when the Korean language will be spoken throughout the world.

---Members are to maintain a view to establishing a "unified civilization" of the whole world, to be centered in Korea and "corresponding to that of the Roman Empire."

---God was helping Moon to set up a final battle involving the United States, Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan.

---Moon's plans are to manipulate seven nations at least, to get hold of the whole world: the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia, and maybe Korea and Japan. "On God's side, Korea, Japan, America, England, France, Germany, and Italy, are the nations I count on in order to gain the whole world," Moon stated.

The House of Representatives report on the activities of the Korean CIA in the United States found evidence that the Moon organization had violated a number of Federal and state laws. In 1984, Moon was convicted of income tax violations and spent 13 months in prison. But remember, in 1996, Bush pere referred to Moon as a "man of vision." It should be noted that while Bush was head of the CIA, Moon was organizing a number of pro-American and anti-communist rallies and front organizations around the world. Moon was a convenient agent of influence for the CIA and Mr. Bush.

According to intelligence insiders, North Korean intelligence has quite a dossier on Reverend Moon and his payments to politicians in the United States and abroad. Some of the intelligence may prove embarrassing for some politicians, including the Bush family. So, here we are again. Noriega of Panama had the goods on the Bushes. He is now in a U.S. Federal prison; Sadaam knows what the Reagan-Bush administration sold him in the way of components for weapons of mass destruction. We are about ready to go to war against him. And Kim Jong Il has the juicy bits on Moon's financial links to Bush pere and dauphin. Kim is now a member of the "axis of evil," a man who George W. Bush hates because he "starves his own people."

Congress investigated Moon's operations in the late 1970s. It was at a time when Moon was involved with smaller scale influence peddling and brainwashing young college students into joining his cultist Unification Church, popularly known as the "Moonies."

Now, at a time when Moon may be influencing United States foreign policy vis a vis North Korea, a known nuclear power, and risking a nuclear war in northeast Asia and hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of deaths, it may be time for Congress to once again launch an investigation of a man whose sole purpose is to unify the world under his direction. It has been over 60 years since the world heard a man talk like that: his name was Adolf Hitler.

Wayne Madsen

[jcldragon]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20.../index_np.html

Bad Moon on the rise
Overcoming his church's bizarre reputation and his own criminal record, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon has cemented ties with the Bush administration -- and gained government funding for his closest disciples.

Editor's Note: The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's "coronation" in a Senate office building, the subject of a Salon story this week, has now captured the attention of Washington lawmakers and the media. In September 2003, writer John Gorenfeld illustrated Moon's close ties to the Bush administration -- and to George H.W. Bush, who has spoken to Moonie-run causes abroad, and once said he shares values with Moon's group, including "strengthening the family." Salon has reposted this piece for the convenience of our readers.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Gorenfeld



Sept. 24, 2003 | Last December, at his three-day God and World Peace event, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon drew a notable slate of political figures, from Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and, perhaps most notably, James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who offered some respectful opening remarks to Moon's Unification Church faithful. Moon followed, and called for all religions to come together in support of the Bush plan for faith-based initiatives.

Coming from Moon that made perfect sense, because he already believes all religions will come together -- under him. "The separation between religion and politics," he has observed on many occasions, "is what Satan likes most." His gospel: Jesus failed because he never attained worldly power. Moon will succeed, he says, by purifying our sex-corrupted culture, and that includes cleaning up gays ("dung-eating dogs," as he calls them) and American women ("a line of prostitutes"). Jews had better repent, too. (Moon claims that the Holocaust was payback for the crucifixion of Christ: "Through the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews.") His solution is a world theocracy that will enforce proper sexual habits in order to bring about heaven on earth.

What sort of proper sexual habits? According to Moon, in order to restore blood purity, very specific practices are prescribed. Sex before marriage is out of the question, and when sexual consummation does happen, it must adhere to very specific instructions. First, a photograph of Moon must be nearby, so that everything occurs under the reverend's watchful eye. After two nights of woman-on-top sex, the couple reverse positions, whereupon the man, according to Moon, restores dominion over Eve, via the proper missionary position. Then, according to the instructions attributed to the U.C.'s American Blessed Family Department, "after the act of love, both spouses should wipe their sexual areas with the Holy Handkerchief" --referring to the church-supplied washcloth -- which must "be kept individually labeled and should never be laundered or mixed up."

And, it now appears, under the new priorities of the budding Faith-Based Initiative, the federal government has given Moon disciples its imprimatur -- and funds.

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gave a $475,280 grant to fund Free Teens USA, an after-school celibacy club in urban New Jersey. Free Teens USA, like other Moon civic organizations, claims it has no ties to the Unification Church. But according to documents obtained by Salon under the Freedom of Information Act, the director and chief finance officer of the Free Teens USA club, as well as others listed on the group's board of directors, are former or present high-ranking Unification Church officials who omitted those leadership roles from their applications for the federal grant.

The small success of Free Teens' government funding is just a small indication of the remarkable transformation of the billionaire Moon. A man who once inspired considerable public horror in the 1970s when his church faced a congressional inquiry and battled accusations of coercive recruitment and mind control, not to mention his own criminal conviction for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice, now goes about his business generally unnoticed. (The Unification Church would not return calls for this story.) Along the way, he has been able to gain acceptance by the most powerful people in the country, surely with the help of his media mini-empire -- including the UPI wire service and the right-wing newspapers Tiempos del Mundo, in South America, and the Washington Times, which he runs at losses well into the tens of millions every year. His exorbitant spending on politicians, largely conservative, hasn't hurt either; his Washington Times foundation gave $1 million to the George H.W. Bush presidential library and has paid the former president untold amounts in speaking fees.

And Moon has also made impressive headway into the current Bush White House. Other administration officials have attended Moon events, including then-incoming Attorney General John Ashcroft, who attended Moon's Inaugural Prayer Luncheon for Unity and Renewal, just before George W. Bush took office. And perhaps more important, other former and current members of his Unification faithful have ascended to high levels of the Bush administration.

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There are many other signs suggesting the Unification Church keeps close tabs on Free Teens USA as providential work for Moon. In a remarkable 2000 sermon titled "God's Tylenol", Tyler Hendricks, president of Moon's Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, praises the group, along with other Moon nonprofits, as helping to treat the "three headaches of God." For headaches No. 1 and 2 ("the disunity of Christianity" and "the scourge of Communism," respectively) Hendricks claims Moon brought God "Tylenol" in the form of his charitable, confusingly named organizations. For headache No. 3 -- youthful immorality –- Hendricks says that Moon prescribed the medicine of the Pure Love Alliance, Free Teens USA, and two other groups. Indeed, he said, alumni of the seminary that's uniting Christianity are, even now, "on the frontline for the relief of God's third headache, the decline of youth morality and the family."



In its grant application to the Department of Health, Free Teens identifies Martin Porter as the group's central figure. Porter -- who has a Ph.D. and an MBA from Century University, a correspondence school that was in California until it fled the state in the late '80s to avoid new regulations -- discloses that he was CEO of the "Tongil Trading Company" in Toronto from 1977 to 1983. But Porter was also Moon's chief lieutenant in Canada from 1977 to 1983, and his face appeared throughout Toronto on promotional posters that called him "Moon's Man in Canada," according to published church history. (Tongil, a Korean word for "unification," sold ginseng tea and vases, and it was also affiliated with Moon's fleet of tuna fishing boats.)


In the Summer 1987 issue of the Church publication Blessing Quarterly, Porter testified to a series of supernatural visions he received in 1968 that led him to Moon. "I was sitting in my car, thinking about Father and what he may be doing. I was unaware that on that particular day the Blessing would take place. Suddenly I saw little pink hearts appear in the car all around me!" he wrote. "Spiritual experiences were so common in those days, that if several days went by without one, we thought there must be something wrong."

Similarly, the application does not mention that director Richard Panzer was head of the Unification Church of Rhode Island in the 1980s, as well as the special projects director for Moon's morality lobbying group, the American Freedom Coalition.

Free Teens' directors are also solidly Unificationist -- with the notable exception of New Jersey state assemblyman and Baptist pastor Alfred E. Steele. (According to the Unification News, Steele did once introduce Moon as a leader sent by God at a 2001 revival stop in Newark organized by Free Teens director David Konn. Steele, listed as the president of Free Teens, didn't return calls for this story.)

Of Free Teens' other eight directors, at least seven are close to the Moon organization. Among them:

* Director Eric Holt, at one time comptroller of the Unification Church, lists an address just down the block from Moon's secluded East Garden estate, 40 minutes north of New York City.


* The working address of another director, Anthony Appia, has doubled as the offices of the Blessed Family Department, as well as Washington Times owners One Up Enterprises, the Unification Thought Institute, and dozens of other Moon religious projects -- according to various litanies of "front groups" compiled by outside observers of the church. One lists Appia's 481 Eighth Ave. address no fewer than 66 times.


* David Konn is identified, in a lawsuit against the gun company Kahr Arms, as the president of Kahr's Moon-owned parent company Saeilo, whose Web site advertises "Absolute Concealed Power." (Here, Konn is shown brandishing 9 mm pistols.)


* Directors William Gaigg and Bjorn Ottosson both work with Moon's jewelry company, Christian Bernard. Ottosson is also a former vice president of Moon's campus group CARP (Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles).



Panzer bristles at the idea that Free Teens -- which celebrates "Gen Xers ... rebelling against their divorced baby boomer parents and seek[ing] lasting love relationships" -- in any way encourages a lasting love relationship with the True Father of the Unification Church. He will not be made a part of a "conspiracy theory," he told Salon.

"If groups founded by Catholics receive abstinence funding, as there surely are, is that a sign the pope is infiltrating the White House with his pro-chastity beliefs and influence?" he said.

Panzer maintains that Free Teens is his idea, and his life's work.

But Free Teens was first alleged to be a Moon operation in 1995, when a Free Teens program was dropped from private Catholic and Protestant schools on Long Island. Despite the bad press, the club has enjoyed the approval of the state of the New Jersey, whose $100,000 grant in 2001 was one step along the club's journey to federal funding. The organization is based in three New Jersey cities and Westchester City, N.Y., employing about 25 people, according to its tax forms, and claims to operate in 38 states.

The group boasts a "reality centered" approach toward sex education, summed up by a fairly simple message: Don't have sex before marriage, or you will probably die.

Free Teens hosted a contest at Marshall High School, Wis., in 1999, where teens were asked to compile a top-10 list of reasons not to have sex. The winning entries, celebrated on a Unification-affiliated Web site, included "If you don't want to kick the bucket, don't knock the boot," (No. 3) and "Two words: Brighter future" (No. 1).

[jcldragon]

Similarly, the specter of death hovers over the Free Teens Web site. There are grim morality tales: "Mary" testifies -- with diction and grammar so uneven it seems scripted -- that "[m]y son has not seen his father since the day he was born and i could've prevented that had I waited until I was married. I would not give up my son for the world but i will never be able to give him the world, and every child deserves that. So if you care about your future children you will wait."



Perhaps fearful her message will be misconstrued, Mary adds: "And don't think that protection works, cause i used protection and it obviously didn't. good luck!"


Another place on the site features Magic Johnson and interprets his tale of HIV survival to mean that even the most healthy-looking sex partners might be carrying the seeds of death. It's even hinted that not even French-kissers are safe from HIV. The site also heavily spins a 2001 study from the National Institutes of Health, saying that the "U.S. Gov Now DOUBTS Condoms!" And, in a slogan reminiscent of Moon's emphasis on the “blood lineage” that binds the biblical Adam to the True Father, Free Teens implores its subjects with the message: "It's not just your body, it's your whole lineage forever."

Free Teens recommends a classroom exercise in which teenagers spit into a cup, then are asked to trade with another student and drink out of it. The lesson: Sex is even more intimate, and it should be approached with all the vigilance of drinking a warm cup of spit.

Panzer, in an e-mail interview, writes of the cup exercise, "[W]e picked up this activity at a national abstinence conference several years ago from another abstinence group that was using it." As for its success, Free Teens cites a New Jersey trial showing that teenagers who participate in their program are two-thirds more likely to agree with the statement "Sexual intercourse can cause problems for people of my age" and that one-third were making plans to abstain from sex.

The men of Free Teens are not the only ones with Moon affiliations to benefit from Bush largesse. Josette Shiner, who rose up through the Moon organization first as a Washington Times reporter and Moon disciple and later as editor of that newspaper, was named deputy trade representative earlier this year. In 1982 she told the Washington Post, "I joined the church full well knowing it is something not yet understood by society." In the 1990s, she claimed to have broken ties with Moon and to have become an Episcopalian. Her press secretary, Richard Mills, refused to comment on whether Shiner had rethought Moon's political views.

And in December of last year, Bush appointed David Caprara, a top official for Moon in Washington, to head the War on Poverty program AmeriCorps VISTA. Caprara had been director of Moon's American Family Coalition and was one of the Unification Church's top political operatives.

A former aide to Jack Kemp, Caprara founded a pro-faith policy group called the Empowerment Network. It claimed Sens. Rick Santorum and Joseph Lieberman as leaders, though their names recently disappeared from the site. (Lieberman's spokesperson told Salon the senator had never been formally affiliated with the Empowerment Network; Santorum's office didn't return calls.) The site's Resources Directory section includes links to both Free Teens USA and the Pure Love Alliance -- a now seemingly defunct, openly Moonie entity that was discovered in 2000 to be operating in 61 Chicago public schools before being shut down.

And Caprara, according to a report on another Unification-affiliated site, is involved in the "effort to reach ministers" as well as "educating political leaders" about Moon's beliefs. Asked whether Caprara is presently opening doors for Moon, AmeriCorps spokesman Sandy Scott replies: "The premise of your question is wrong, and the answer to your question is no."

[jcldragon]

Moon has managed to forge powerful relationships through a cause that trumps most concerns: politics.


In 1996, Moon praised communism for producing obedient followers "trained under totalitarianism," who are "trained to follow once an order came from above," unlike wayward Americans ("individualism is what God hates most," went his refrain in a 1987 speech). And today his business holdings include an automotive company in U.S.-sanctioned North Korea. But before the fall of the Berlin Wall he was the sworn enemy of communism, having formed an aversion to it in a prison camp of the brutal Kim Il Sung regime. Later, he would play a key role in the Iran-Contra affair when the Washington Times created a fund that contributed the first $100,000 to Oliver North's Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. His followers still take credit for it as a blow to the Reds.


Now he has found common ground with the religious right on sexual abstinence. The alliance is financial, too. In 1995, it came to light that a debt-ridden Jerry Falwell (who told Esquire in 1978 that Moon was "like the plague: he exploits boys and girls") had quietly accepted $3.5 million from Moon's Women's Federation for World Peace IWFWP) to bail out his Liberty University.

Another important Moon contact is President Bush (the father), who has spoken to Moonie-run causes abroad. The elder Bush defended his closeness with Moon strictly on philosophical grounds, telling the Post through a spokesman that "this group is about strengthening the family and that's what President and Mrs. Bush are deeply focused on."

The question is, do Bush and Moon mean the same thing when they talk about family values?

In the past, Moon has taken out full-page advertisements in newspapers, transcribing his communications with the Spirit World, where figures from Confucius to former U.S. President James Buchanan have vouched that he is, indeed, the savior of humanity. Earlier this month, a two-page testimonial in the Washington Times quoted the 36 former U.S. presidents "from the vantage point of heaven" (Moon, according to George Washington, is "the messiah").

This year, claiming instructions from the True Father himself, Unificationists announced that a new stage had begun in the raising of Cheon Il Guk ( or heaven on earth). Believing that the crucifix could be the last obstacle keeping America from accepting Moon as the messiah, they have held conferences across the country with banners reading "Tear Down the Walls/Who is Rev. Moon?" culminating in a final crucifix-burying ceremony. Moon's Family Federation for World Peace Web site describes the inspiration as a vision that the True Father first made public last year at the 20th anniversary party of his Washington Times. (The speech, in which Moon said, "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world," sent many reporters to the bar for a drink, the Post reported.)

But while Moon's anti-cross rhetoric would surely turn off many of his friends on the religious right, he remains invisible in the media. Even though his rhetoric far surpasses Louis Farrakhan's in vitriol towards Jews and gays, he goes unnoticed by groups like the ADL, whose Web site highlights the Nation of Islam as a hate group, while its only mention of Moon comes in a warning about the violent threats of extremist rabbi Meir Kahane (who in 1976 "declared war" on Moon missionaries, vowing none "would walk the street safely").

Disciples insist it is a mistake to take Moon's words literally, out of the context of the broader Divine Principle. They hasten to add that the massive archives of speeches online are hastily written translations and are trustworthy only in the original Korean.

But at his Unification.net FAQ, webmaster Damian Anderson warns of any politically correct dilution of, for example, Moon's attack on Jews.

"The fact is that the Jewish people committed a grievous sin in rejecting the Lord, and the world is today committing a grievous sin in rejecting the Lord," he writes. "I will not water down what Father said to please liberal constituencies within his own church."

Within his church, his entreaties to cherish and punish your "love organ" (with pliers if necessary, he suggested in 2001) manage to find an audience. On Blessed Children World, an online message board for kids of Unification families, there is much discussion of church beliefs. "I hate gay people," one B.C. observes. Other B.C.'s ask whether it's a sin to go to the prom and debate a church doctrine that rape victims are considered impure. "Kill yourself before you ARE raped," one posts. "Bite out your tongue and choke on your own blood if you need to. (No joke, that was in Father's speech from some time ago). Anyhow, I know it sounds totally NAZI of us to say/think/believe such things..."

That frank admission has since been deleted from a Nov. 1, 2002, message thread titled "I cannot accept rape = fall," in which other posts contend sexual purity is "worth dying for." But the sentiment, at least, seems to be supported by Moon's speeches.

"If someone is trying to invade you, you would rather kill yourself than go through the fall. At least you won't go to hell that way ... this means love comes before life," he told an audience in 1992. For at all costs, women in Moon's view must not reenact the primal wrong, the perversion Moon sees as responsible for the Fall. "There is nothing more important than the new lineage."

[FJeff]

Jcld,
thanks for pulling these articles together. It's one of my favorite wacko-washington stories.

But it's not as wacko as the republicans' and Dubya's links to Tim LaHaye.

[jcldragon]

I'll look into those soon. Sherlock is great for finding things with a Mac.

Moon spoke at a large meeting in Boston in the mid-1970s, & I attended to check him out. He clearly has a very bloated & totally black aura.

[jcldragon]

More links

http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2003_11_01_barchive.html
http://www.gorenfeld.net/moon/
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourc...usinesses%20US

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...tion/image.htm
Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon is spending millions of dollars a year on a broad range of cultural and political programs, including academic conferences, foreign trips for journalists and conservative lobbying activities, that are designed to improve the church's image with the American public and promote an ideological "world war" against communism.

The church also is using its vast financial resources to foster a budding alliance with the New Right and conservative political leaders. In May, a church political group called the Freedom Leadership Foundation paid for four Republican Senate staff members -- including aides to Sens. Steve Symms (R-Idaho), Robert W. Kasten Jr. (R-Wis.) and William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.) -- to fly to Central America where they met with government leaders and U.S. Embassy officials in Honduras and Guatemala and joined the official U.S. observer delegation to the Salvadoran election.

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2003/1...yung-moon.html

http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/1998/feb9/8t2082.html
Moon-Related Funds Filter to Evangelicals

by John W. Kennedy

Affiliates of Sun Myung Moon, controversial leader of the Unification Church, have a history of supporting and courting conservative evangelicals. Now, according to published reports, financial support has been filtered to Liberty University from Moon-related enterprises. But Liberty founder Jerry Fallwell told Christianity Today that the source of the funds does not influence his ministry.

"If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an unrestricted gift to any of my ministries," Falwell says, "be assured I will operate on Billy Sunday's philosophy: The Devil's had it long enough, and quickly cash the check."

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=Ne...991l9p91.app1b

Moon Shadow

With Help From Congressional Republicans And The Bush 'Faith-Based' Initiative, Controversial Korean Evangelist Sun Myung Moon Is Trying To Expand His Religious-Political Empire

By Rob Boston

At first glance, the invitation many clergy and community leaders around the country received last April to attend conferences on "Faith-Based Initiatives For Family and Community Renewal" might have looked like it came from the Republican congressional leadership and the Bush administration.

The material, decorated with a drawing of the U.S. Capitol, noted that the events would include a satellite broadcast of a GOP-sponsored "faith-based summit" for clergy transmitted live from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and said that prominent congressional leaders and White House staffers would take part.

The flyer promised that the "cutting edge program" would "provide the latest information on innovative policies and programs from the Executive and Congressional leadership in Washington; and build alliances for faith-based services at the state and community level."

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.mediachannel.org/original...anscript.shtml

The Resurrection Of Reverend Moon

This is a transcript of a January 21, 1992 broadcast, "Frontline: The Ressurection Of Reverend Moon." Eric Nadler, reporter. Written and produced by Rory O'Connor. Copyright (c)1991 WGBH Educational Foundation. Used with permission.

Rory O'Connor is CEO of Globalvision New Media, producers of MediaChannel.
For information on purchasing this program contact Rory O'Connor at roc@globalvision.org.

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/unif/unif163.html

Moon Speech Raises Old Ghosts as the Times Turns 20

Washington Post/May 23, 2002
By Frank Ahrens

At Tuesday night's celebration of the Washington Times' 20th anniversary, its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, gripped a podium at the Washington Hilton and delivered an impassioned, hour-long evangelical sermon in Korean saying he established the newspaper "in response to heaven's direction."

During the sermon, he set the course for the Times' next 10 years: "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God." Later, he added: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world."

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...3Atparents.org

http://www.unification.net/1987/870125.html
I SHALL FOLLOW
WITH GRATITUDE AND
OBEDIENCE

January 25, 1987
Belvedere
Translator - Sang Kil Han

The words "I shall follow with gratitude and obedience" are good words, aren't they? What kind of people are we? What kind of work do we do? You say that we are religious people; what do religious people do? Well, the answer is rather simple: religious people are those who are heading for heaven. That is one definition of religious people. Therefore, those of us here are heading for heaven.

~snip~

[jcldragon]

http://www.csj.org/infoserv_press/pr...essucmoonq.htm

Sun Myung Moon Quotes


On Marriage
You will be happy to die on the earliest possible date. You will be pleased, won't you? (Yes!) But before you die, you must be blessed in marriage! If you die without getting blessed in marriage, it will be awful. So, wait until that time to die. Your physical parents too would like to have you get married before you die, at least.

Democracy
My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholic and all the religious sects. Then, the communist power will be helpless before ours....But when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rue the world. So, we cannot separate the political field from the religious. Democracy was born because people ruled the world, like the Pope does. ...The separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.

From MS-366, 9/17/73, Third Directors' Conference, Master Speaks.

~snip~