#FFWPU

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July 2022. Inset: Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, in 1984.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

On the last morning of his life, Shinzo Abe arrived in the Japanese city of Nara, famous for its ancient pagodas and sacred deer. His destination was more prosaic: a broad urban intersection across from the city’s main train station, where he would be giving a speech to endorse a lawmaker running for reelection to the National Diet, Japan’s parliament. Abe had retired two years earlier, but because he was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, his name carried enormous weight. The date was July 8, 2022.

In photos taken from the crowd, Abe—instantly recognizable by his wavy, swept-back hair; charcoal eyebrows; and folksy grin—can be seen stepping onto a makeshift podium at about 11:30 a.m., one hand clutching a microphone. A claque of supporters surrounds him. No one in the photos seems to notice the youngish-looking man about 20 feet behind Abe, dressed in a gray polo shirt and cargo pants, a black strap across his shoulder. Unlike everyone else, the man is not clapping.

Abe started to speak. Moments later, his remarks were interrupted by two loud reports, followed by a burst of white smoke. He collapsed to the ground. His security guards ran toward the man in the gray polo shirt, who held a homemade gun—two 16-inch metal pipes strapped together with black duct tape. The man made no effort to flee. The guards tackled him, sending his gun skittering across the pavement. Abe, shot in the neck, would be dead within hours.

At a Nara police station, the suspect—a 41-year-old named Tetsuya Yamagami—admitted to the shooting barely 30 minutes after pulling the trigger. He then offered a motive that sounded too outlandish to be true: He saw Abe as an ally of the Unification Church, a group better known as the Moonies—the cult founded in the 1950s by the Korean evangelist Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Yamagami said his life had been ruined when his mother gave the church all of the family’s money, leaving him and his siblings so poor that they often didn’t have enough to eat. His brother had committed suicide, and he himself had tried to.

“My prime target was the Unification Church’s top official, Hak Ja Han, not Abe,” he told the police, according to an account published in January in a newspaper called The Asahi Shimbun. He could not get to Han—Moon’s widow—so he shot Abe, who was “deeply connected” to the church, Yamagami said, just as Abe’s grandfather, also a prime minister and renowned political figure in Japan, had been.

Investigators looked into Yamagami’s wild-sounding claims and found, to their alarm, that they were true. After a quick huddle, the police appear to have decided that the Moonie connection was too sensitive to reveal, at least for the moment. It might even affect the outcome of the elections for the Upper House of the Diet, set to take place on July 10. At a press conference on the night of the assassination, a police official would say only that Yamagami had carried out the attack because he “harbored a grudge against a specific group and he assumed that Abe was linked to it.” When reporters clamored for details, the official said nothing.

After the election, the Unification Church confirmed press reports that Yamagami’s mother was a member, and the story quickly took off. The Moonies, it emerged, maintained a volunteer army of campaign workers who had long been a secret weapon not just for Abe but for many other politicians in his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which remains in power under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Later that month, the Japanese tabloid Nikkan Gendai published a list of 111 members of parliament who had connections to the church. In early September 2022, the LDP announced that almost half of its 379 Diet members had admitted to some kind of contact with the Unification Church, whether that meant accepting campaign assistance or paying membership fees or attending church events. According to a survey by The Asahi Shimbun, 290 members of prefectural assemblies, as well as seven prefectural governors, also said they had church ties. The rising numbers exposed a scandal hiding in plain sight: A right-wing Korean cult had a near-umbilical connection to the political party that had governed Japan for most of the past 70 years.

The Japanese were outraged not just by the appearance of influence-peddling but by a galling hypocrisy. Abe was a fervent nationalist, eager to rebuild Japan’s global standing and proudly unapologetic for its imperial past. Now he and his party had been caught in a secretive electoral alliance with a cult that—it soon emerged—had been accused of preying on Japanese war guilt to squeeze billions of dollars from credulous followers.

Follow LINK to read full story

[whatisonthemoon]

Ten Years After Jonestown, the Battle Intensifies Over the Influence of ‘Alternative’ Religions (1988)

by Bob Sipchen - November 17, 1988 - Los Angeles Times

Eldridge Broussard Jr.’s face screwed into a grimace of such anger and pain that the unflappable Oprah Winfrey seemed unnerved. It hurts to be branded “the new Jimmy Jones” by a society eager to condemn what it doesn’t understand, the founder of the Ecclesia Athletic Assn. lamented on TV just a few days after his 8-year-old daughter had been beaten to death, apparently by Ecclesia members.

At issue were complex questions of whether the group he had formed to instill discipline in ghetto youth, and led from Watts to Oregon, had evolved into a dangerous cult. But Broussard couldn’t have found a less sympathetic audience than the group gathered around the TV in the bar of the Portland Holiday Inn.

There last month for the annual conference of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network were people whose kin had crumpled onto the body heaps at Jonestown, Guyana, 10 years ago, and people who believed they or family members had lost not their lives, but good chunks of them, to gurus and avatars less infamous but no less evil than Jim Jones.

One group’s cult is another’s “new religious movement,” though, and in the 10 years since Jonestown, a heated holy war of sorts has been mounting over the issues of how to define and contend with so-called cults.

The battle lines aren’t always well defined. Ongoing guerrilla actions between those who see themselves as crusaders against potential Jonestowns and those who see themselves as the persecuted members of outcast religious groups comprise the shifting legal and political fronts. On the outskirts of the ideological battleground is another loosely knit force that sees itself as the defender of a First Amendment besieged by vigilantes all too eager to kiss off the Constitution as they quash beliefs that don’t fit their narrow-minded criteria of what’s good and real. As one often-quoted definition has it: “A cult is a religion someone I don’t like belongs to.”

“It’s spiritual McCarthyism,” Lowell D. Streiker, a Northern California counselor, said of the cult awareness cause. To him, “the anti-cult network” is itself as a “cult of persecution,” cut from the same cloth as Colonial witch hunters and the Ku Klux Klan.

The key anti-cult groups, by most accounts, are CAN, a secular nondenominational group of 30 local affiliates; the Massachusetts-based American Family Foundation; the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults and the Jewish Federation Council’s Commission on Cults and Missionaries.

Although they contend that their ranks continue to fill with the victims of cults or angry family members, they concede that the most significant rallying point came in the fall of 1978 when the leader of one alleged cult put a rattlesnake in an enemy’s mailbox and another led 912 people to their deaths.

Even though nothing so dramatic has happened since, cults have quietly been making inroads into the fabric of mainstream American life, and the effects are potentially as serious as the deaths at Jonestown, cult critics say.

With increased wealth and public relations acumen--with members clothed by Brooks Brothers rather than in saffron sheets--the 1,000 or more new cults that some estimate have sprung up in America since the ‘60s have become “a growth industry which is diversifying,” said Dr. Louis Jolyon West, director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “They have made steady progress on all fronts.”

Uglier Connotations

In the broadest sense, Webster defines a cult as simply “a system of religious worship or ritual.” Even before Jonestown, though, the word had taken on broader and uglier connotations.

To make a distinction, critics use the term destructive cult, or totalist cult. The issue, they say, pivots on the methods groups use to recruit and hold together followers.

CAN describes a destructive cult as one that “uses systematic, manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control to obtain followers and constrict their thoughts and actions. These techniques are imposed without the person’s knowledge and produce observable changes in the individual’s autonomy, thoughts and actions. . . .”

A 1985 conference on cults co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the American Family Federation came up with this definition:

“A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control . . . designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”

The “manipulative techniques” in question are what cult critics call mind control or brainwashing.

To critics of the critics, on the other hand, brainwashing amounts to hooey.

And both sides say the weight of evidence is on their side.

New Beliefs, Personalities

Cult critics often point to classic surveys on brainwashing, which catalogue methods which they say are routinely used by cults of every color, religious and secular, to manipulate unsuspecting people into adopting new beliefs, and often, in effect, new personalities.

Among the techniques are constant repetition of doctrine; application of intense peer pressure; manipulation of diet so that critical faculties are adversely affected; deprivation of sleep; lack of privacy and time for reflection; cutting ties with the recruits’ past life; reduction of outside stimulation and influences; skillful use of ritual to heighten mystical experience; and invention of a new vocabulary which narrows the range of experience and constructs a new reality for cult members.

Margaret Singer, a former professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, describes psychological problems that have been attributed to cultic experiences, ranging from the despair that comes from having suddenly abandoned ones previous values, norms and ideals to types of “induced psychopathy.” Other psychologists and lay observers list similar mental and emotional problems linked to the indoctrination and rituals of cults.

Sociologist Dick Anthony, author of the book “Spiritual Choices,” and former director of the UC Berkeley-affiliated Center for the Study of New Religions, argues the exact opposite position.

“There’s a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions,” he said. “For the most part the effects seem to be positive in any way that’s measurable.”

He and other defenders of new religions discount so-called mind control techniques, or believe the term has been misappropriated by anti-cult activists.

“Coercive Persuasion is a bombastic redescription of familiar forms of influence which occur everyday and everywhere,” said Streiker. “Someone being converted to a demanding religious movement is no more or less brainwashed than children being exposed to commercials during kiddy programs which encourage them to eat empty calories or buy expensive toys.”

“An attempt to persuade someone of something is a process protected by our country’s First Amendment right of free speech and communication,” said attorney Jeremiah Gutman head of the New York City branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and an outspoken critic of the anti-cult groups. “What one person believes to be an irrefutable and obvious truth is someone else’s errant nonsense.”

‘Fraud and Manipulation’

But anti-cult spokespeople say they have no interest in a group’s beliefs. Their concern is when destructive cults use “fraud and manipulation,” to get people to arrive at those beliefs, whatever they may be. Because people are unaware of the issues, though, cults have insinuated themselves into areas of American life where they are influencing people who may not even know where the influence is coming from, they contend.

The political arena is the obvious example, anti-cult activists say.

Followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a major impact on the small town government of Antelope, Ore., and Jim Jones had managed to thrust himself and his church into the most respectable Democratic party circles in San Francisco before the exodus to Guyana, for instance.

But recently the process has expanded, with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church the leading example of a cult that is quietly gaining political clout, they say.

“What Jim Jones did to Democrats in San Francisco, Sun Myung Moon is doing to Republicans all across country now,” Kisser said.

Moon’s most obvious stab at mainstream legitimacy, critics say, was his purchase in 1982 of the Washington Times, a D.C. daily newspaper, and his financial nurturing of the paper’s magazine Insight--both of which have an official policy of complete editorial independence from the church.

In September, 1987, the conservative American Spectator magazine published an article titled “Can Buy Me Love: The Mooning of Conservative America,” in which managing editor Andrew Ferguson questioned the way the political right is lapping up Moon money, citing, among many examples, the $500,000 or more the late Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Alliance accepted in 1984. When the church got wind of the article, the Spectator received a call from the executive director of the Unification Church’s World Media Assn. warning that if it ran, the Times “would strike back and strike back severely,” Ferguson wrote in an addendum to the piece.

‘Everyone Speaks Korean’

Therapist Steven Hassan, a former “Moonie” and the author of the just-released book “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” estimates that the church now sponsors 200 businesses and “front organizations.”

Moon “has said he wants an automatic theocracy to rule the world,” explained Hassan, who, on Moon’s orders, engaged in a public fast for Nixon during Watergate and another fast at the U.N. to protest the withdrawal of troops from Korea. “He visualizes a world where everyone speaks Korean only, where all religion but his is abolished, where his organization chooses who will mate, and he and family and descendants rule in a heroic monarchy.”

Moon “is very much in support of the democratic system,” counters John Biermans , director of public affairs for the church. “His desire is for people to become God-centered people. Then democracy can fulfill its potential”

Besides, he said, “this is a pluralistic society, people of all faiths inject their beliefs into the system on every level . . . Using terms like ‘front groups’ and ‘insinuating,’ is just a way to attack something. It’s not even honest.”

Some observers dismiss concern about alleged Unificationist infiltration as self-serving hysteria whipped up by the anti-cultists.

“How much actual influence (the Unification Church) has seems questionable,” said David Bromley, a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and the author of the 1981 book “Strange Gods, the Great American Cult Scare.”

Bromley estimates, for instance, that the church brings $200 million a year into the U.S. from abroad. But he sees no evidence that the money, much of it spent on all-expense-paid fact-finding tours and conferences for journalists, politicians and clergypeople, is money well-invested as far as political impact goes.

The church, he estimates, is losing about $50 million a year on its Washington Times newspaper and the ranks of Unificationists, and most other new religions, in America are thinning as well.

Veterans of the anti-cult front, however, say that the appearance that cults are fading is an illusion. “Like viruses, many of them mutate into new forms,” when under attack, West of UCLA said. And new types of cults are arising to fill the void, they say.

Cult critics point, for instance, to the rise of such groups as the est offshoot called Forum, and to Lifespring and Insight--all of which CAN characterizes as “human potential cults” and all of which are utilized in mainstream American business to promote productivity and motivation.

Observers such as Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of Religious Institutions in Santa Barbara explain that many of these New Age-type trainings have their roots in the old fashioned motivational pep talks and sales technique seminars that have been the staples of American business for decades.

But critics see the so-called “psychotechnologies” utilized by some of these groups as insidious. For one thing, they say, the meditation, confessional sharing, and guided imagery methods some of them use are more likely to make employees muzzy-headed than competitive.

Other critics say the trainings violate employee’s rights. Richard Watring, a personnel director for Budget Rent-a-Car, who has been charting the incorporation of “New Age” philosophies into business trainings, is concerned that employees are often compelled to take the courses and then required to adapt a new belief system which may be incompatible with their own religious convictions. As a Christian he finds such mental meddling inappropriate for corporations.

He and other cult critics are heartened by recent cases, still pending, in which employees, or former employees, have sued their employer for compelling them to take trainings they felt conflicted with their own religious beliefs.

Most observers scoring the action on the broader legal battlefield, however, call it a toss-up, and perceived victories for either side have often proved Pyrrhic.

Threats of Litigation

Richard Ofshe, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, fought three separate legal battles with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization Synanon over research he published on the group. Although he ultimately won the suits, he said the battle wound up costing the university $600,000. And evidence obtained in other lawsuits showed that Synanon had skillfully wielded threats of litigation to keep several other critical stories from being published or broadcast, he said.

Similarly, a recently released book “Cults and Consequences,” went unpublished for several years because insurers were wary of the litigious nature of some of the groups mentioned, said Rachel Andres, director of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ Commission on Cults and Missionaries and the book’s co-editor.

But the most interesting litigation of late involves either a former member who is suing the organization to which he or she belonged, or a current member of a new religious group who is suing a deprogrammer who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the person to leave the group.

The most significant case, everyone agrees, is last month’s Molko decision by the California Supreme Court, which anti-cult groups have cheered as a major victory.

In that reversal of lower court decisions, the justices agreed that David Molko and another former member of the Unification Church could bring before a jury the claim that they were defrauded by recruiters who denied they had a church affiliation and then subjected the two to church mind control techniques, eventually converting them.

Mainstream religious organizations including the National Council on Churches, the American Baptist Churches in the USA and the California Ecumenical Council had filed briefs in support of the Unification Church, claiming that allowing lawsuits over proselytizing techniques could paralyze all religions.

“What they’re attacking is prayer, fasting and lectures,” said Biermans of the Unification Church. “The whole idea of brainwashing is unbelievably absurd. . . . If someone had really figured out a method of brainwashing, they could control the world.” The church plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Paul Morantz, the attorney who was struck by the rattlesnake placed in his mailbox by the “Imperial Marines” of Synanon, gave pro-bono assistance to the plaintiffs in the Molko case.

“For me, it was a great decision for freedom of religion and to protect against the . . . use of coercive persuasion,” he said.

Morantz currently is defending Bent Corydon, author of the book “L. Ron Hubbard, Madman or Messiah” against a lawsuit by the Church of Scientology. He said he’s confident of how that case will turn out.

But he shares the belief of others on several sides of the multifaceted cult battle, in concluding that education rather than litigation should be the first defense of religious and intellectual liberty.

He’s not, however, optimistic.

“If anyone thinks they’re ever going to win this war, they’re wrong,” he said. “As long as we have human behavior, there will be sociopaths who will stand up and say ‘follow me.’ And there will always be searchers who will follow.”

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-17-vw-257-story.html

[divinum-pacis]

May 6, 2023: The Family Federation of World Peace and Unification, commonly known as the Unification Church, hosts a satellite Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony in Las Vegas, Nevada. The main mass wedding event was held in South Korea. Hundreds of couples participated. (Photo by FFWPU USA/CC BY-ND)

[jeffersonvann]

in the long run

20241111 Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com in the long run Proverbs 11:1-31 (JDV). Proverbs 11:1 Fraudulent scales are detestable to Yahveh, but an accurate weight is his delight.Proverbs 11:2 When arrogance comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.Proverbs 11:3 The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of traitors destroys them.Proverbs 11:4 Wealth is not…

[superiorcatholicinspiration]

Daily Mass: We aspire to greatness through a humble heart. Catholic Inspiration

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com When the disciples ask who will be great in heaven, Jesus teaches that the path is found in a humble heart. Mass Readings – Tuesday of the 19th Week of the Year (#414) *************** Catholic Inspiration Archives St. Pontian & St. Hippolytus, pray for us!

[frombehindthepen]

Trying to Catch Up?

Trying to Catch Up? #Blogging #Reading #Awareness

Image Credit: RUN 4 FFWPU/Pexels Remember…You Have a Life! Good day everyone! Listen up! This is a public service announcement for those of you with over 5 followers on your blog site.  Trying to play catch up? Well, let me say this. Realistically, unless you are sitting at your computer doing marathon blog readings on all of your connections’s sites without taking a bathroom, eating, or…

[kilimanjarosunrise]

Is Climbing Kilimanjaro Harder Than a Marathon?

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and running a marathon are both monumental feats of endurance and determination, but they are fundamentally different challenges. Comparing the two involves examining the physical demands, mental challenges, preparation required, and the overall experience of each. PHYSICAL DEMANDS MARATHON Photo: RUN FFWPU Distance and Duration: A marathon is a 26.2-mile (42.195…

[ondessiderales]

La secte Moon

« La secte Moon, appelée officiellement fédération des familles pour la paix mondiale et l’unification (en anglais Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, FFWPU), est une organisation religieuse à caractère sectaire fondée en Corée du Sud en 1954 par Sun Myung Moon.

Jusqu’en 1996, l’organisation était officiellement connue en tant qu’Église de l’unification ou encore association de l’esprit saint pour l’unification du christianisme mondial. »

« En 1938, Sun Myung Moon quitte son village pour suivre ses études à Séoul. En 1941, il se rend à Tokyo où il fréquente l'université Waseda. En 1943, de retour en Corée, tout en travaillant dans une entreprise de construction, il est actif au sein d'un mouvement nationaliste coréen de lutte contre l'occupation japonaise, ce qui lui vaut d'être arrêté et emprisonné pendant 4 mois par la police japonaise.

La fin de la guerre voit l'apparition en Corée d'une grande ferveur religieuse et d'une quête intense du sacré. Des douzaines de religions nouvelles et d'églises évangéliques indépendantes se constituent pendant cette période, annonçant le retour de Jésus à cette époque en Corée. Sun Myung Moon décide alors de se consacrer à la prédication à temps complet. »

« Les Principes divins se présentent comme la suite inspirée des écrits sacrés judéo-chrétiens. Ils affirment que Dieu, en créant l'homme et la femme, avait pour but de s'incarner en eux et de vivre avec eux une relation d'amour parent-enfants, que la chute d'Adam et Ève a été un drame absolu puisque l'amour dans ce premier couple a été vécu centré sur Satan, au lieu d'être centré sur Dieu, puis transmis à ses descendants ; dès cet instant, Dieu a travaillé avec toutes les grandes figures de l'Ancien Testament pour réunir les conditions lui permettant d'envoyer un nouvel Adam et une nouvelle Ève. Il a ainsi préparé le peuple juif pendant quatre mille ans, pour recevoir et accueillir le Christ ou le Messie, ce nouvel Adam, venu pour vivre et non pas pour mourir, mais celui-ci a été tué au lieu d'être accueilli. Selon les Principes, il a ressuscité spirituellement ; Dieu a dû alors préparer un autre peuple, le peuple coréen, pour envoyer, deux mille ans plus tard, un troisième Adam, avec ce même but d'épouser une nouvelle Ève, réalisant ainsi les noces de l'Agneau dont parle l'Apocalypse. Cela passerait nécessairement par le déclenchement d'une Troisième Guerre mondiale, que les disciples de la secte sont censés provoquer ou encourager. »

« Au Japon, dans les années 1980, l’Église est critiquée pour ses techniques de collecte de fonds, les « ventes spirituelles » : les fidèles sont convaincus que leurs problèmes proviennent d'un « karma ancestral » et que l'achat d'objets sacrés, qui leur sont vendus chers, peut les résoudre. En 2009, plusieurs personnes liées à ces pratiques sont arrêtées. En outre, selon l’Église, le Japon a causé de nombreux maux envers la Corée, maux pour lesquels les Japonais doivent se repentir. Paradoxalement, l’Église entretient de nombreux liens avec l'aile la plus conservatrice et nationaliste du Parti libéral-démocrate, à cause de leur anticommunisme commun, ce qui est difficile à comprendre pour l'opinion publique. L’Église est également critiquée pour avoir encouragé la pratique d'adoptions d'enfants entre membres de l'organisation. »

« La secte Moon est également impliquée indirectement dans l'assassinat du Premier ministre japonais Shinzo Abe. Lors de son interrogatoire, Yamagami, l'auteur de l'assassinat, déclare aux enquêteurs qu'« il était mécontent de l'ancien Premier ministre et avait l'intention de le tuer » avant d'ajouter que « ce n'était pas une rancune contre les convictions politiques de l'ancien Premier ministre ». Il précise qu'il a consulté l'agenda détaillé de sa journée sur son site internet. Il affirme en outre qu'il en veut à un « groupe religieux particulier » et qu'il a tiré sur Abe parce qu'il le pense lié à ce groupe et non pas en raison des convictions politiques de l'homme d'État. Les médias rapportent que l'homme était en colère contre l'Église de l'Unification (mieux connue sous le nom de secte Moon), à laquelle sa mère avait donné de larges sommes d'argent, et qu'il s'en est pris à Shinzō Abe en raison de ses liens avec l'organisation religieuse. Bien que la police n'ait pas révélé le nom de l'organisation religieuse, l'Église de l'Unification a confirmé que la mère de Yamagami en était membre. »

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

What kind of members were Michael Warder and Gary Jarmin?

Another re-posting of Don Diligent’s research – this one from February 7, 2017 – “What kind of members were Michael Warder & Gary Jarmin?! How dangerous is the Council for National Policy?!”

Some editing and re-formatting not done by Don Diligent (Ed Coffman) on this page – bolding added for emphasis or to point out people of interest

▲ Mother Jones (link) - May 1981 - Page 14 - article that goes into Warder, Jarmin, and Moon’s organizing in D.C.

“Moonies in Reagandom” article in Mother Jones:

Two former top leaders of the Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church have landed big jobs in right-wing bases in Washington, D.C. Michael Young Warder…is now director of administration at the Heritage Foundation…meanwhile, Gary Jarmin…is now legislative director of the Christian Voice Lobby. Both men say they are no longer associated with Moon. Former Moonies have been eagerly awaiting the defection of someone on Warder’s level. But when telephoned by “Ex-Moon”, the national coalition of apostate Moonies, the former publisher wouldn’t talk. When “Mother Jones” called Warder to ask if he is a mole for Moon, he denied the charge. Stressing that he has made a clean break… But he declined to reveal any information on the operations of the Moon projects he led. Over at Christian Voice, Gary Jarmin insisted to us. “I’m no longer affiliated with the church; “I’m not a member of it and I don’t consult with their people…I think my actions speak louder than my words.” Some of Jarmin’s actions however, seem to speak out of both sides of his mouth. The February 20 edition of the Moonie student newspaper ran a lengthy interview with him, in which he hyped Christian Voice but did not mention his own history with Moon.

▲ 1800 Couple Blessing (February 8, 1975) list with Michael Warder and Cheryl Gilkerson (tparents.org) Michael Warder remains married to the wife he was “blessed” to in the Unification Church’s 1800 blessing. 

▲ A snippet from the Fraser report LINK Investigation of Korean-American Relations (Moonies, aka Unification Church) – Diplomat National Bank – Page 35:

The subcommittee’s interest in the Diplomat National Bank resulted from an allegation that persons associated with Sun Myung Moon and Tongsun Park tried to gain control of the bank…The Diplomat National Bank of Washington, D.C. opened on December 15, 1975…the chairman was Charles Kim. During the summer of 1975, when Charles Kim was soliciting stock subscriptions…Pak arranged a meeting at Moon’s residence in Tarrytown, N.Y., attended by Charles Kim, Jhoon Rhee, and Raymond Gilkerson, a businessman with banking experience whose son-in-law was prominent in the Moon Organization.

Power Elites: The Merger of Right and Left - Heritage Foundation - The Moon Connection (archive.org):

Edwin J. Feulner, Jr. was recruited in 1977 by Richard Scaife to become Heritage president…The 1975 Congressional investigation of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) activities in the U.S. noted a connection between Heritage and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon; ‘In 1975, Ed Feulner…was introduced to KCIA station chief Kim Yung Hwan by Neil Salonen and Dan Feffernan of the Freedom Leadership foundation.’ The Heritage offices in Washington, D.C. have housed and employed a number of Unification Church operatives: ‘Heritage’s Director of Administration in 1980 was Michael Warder, who was a key leader of Moon’s Unification network in the United States …

▲ Dr. Edwin J. Feulner, Jr of the Council for National Policy (CNP) The Council For National Policy – Past/Present Officers & Prominent Member Profiles (archive.org):

▲ Michael Warder in more recent years Southern Poverty Law Center – The Council For National Policy: Behind the Curtain – May 17, 2016 (splcenter.org)

The Council for National Policy (CNP) is, in the words of The New York Times, “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” an organization so tight-lipped that it tells its people not to admit membership or even name the group. It is important enough that last fall, according to an account in The National Review, Donald Trump and five other Republican presidential candidates each took 30 minutes to address the group; the conservative journal reported that Trump was by far the favorite candidate. The 2014 CNP directory is a remarkable roster of significant figures on the political and religious right…What follows is a list of leading officials of right-wing or conservative media organizations who are also members of the Council for National Policy (CNP) [ … ] the Washington Times - David Keene, Opinion Editor [ … ] The following list of 20 college and university officials at 16 schools who are also members of the Council for National Policy (CNP) gives a sense of how far the group has reached into conservative academia, particularly religious institutions. Two of those listed are also members of the CNP’s Board of Governors. [ … ] Pepperdine University - Vice Chancellor Michael Y. Warder

▲ Gary Jarmin The Council for National Policy - Selected Member Biographies (archive.org)

Gary Jarmin - CNP 1984-85, 1988, 1996, 1998…president, Jar-Mon Consultants, Inc;  Legislative Director, Christian Voice, a front for the Unification Church; Lobbyist and political consultant in Washington, D.C.; President of Jar-Mon Consultants, Inc., a firm specializing in political activism, election campaigns and foreign policy matters in East Asia; designed and directed registration drive in 1984 for American Coalition for Traditional Values; Chaired Christians for Reagan campaign in 1980 and 1984; Former leader of the Student Alliance for Education, former secretary general of Moon’s Freedom Leadership Foundation; 1975 worked for American Conservative Union, a senior group founded by Young Americans for Freedom, stayed as legislative director four years. Knew Moon since 1969.

Federal Election Commission (archive.org) - Page 19 and Page 156:

American Conservative Union……1976…Charles Black, David Keene, Donald Devine, and Phil Crane were both ACU directors and CFR regional coordinators [ … ] 1976 [ … ] Gary Louis Jarmin serves as legislative director of ACU and as director of ACU’s "bureaucratic watchdog project”, Public Monitor. He is responsible for ACU’s congressional lobbying efforts and for editing the Public Monitor Report. His supervisor is the ACU Executive Director. His subordinates are part-time student interns placed in his charge.

▲ Covert Action issue with an indepth article on Moonie politics that gives some history of the UC’s cooperation with both the Japanese and South Korean governments 

Covert Action Information Bulletin – Spring 1987 - Phasing out Democracy: Moon’s Law by Frederick Clarkson – Undercover Moonie - Gary Jarmin (Pages 44-45) (archive.org):

Christian Voice has come under fire recently for misrepresenting itself, and for its ties to the Moon organization…At the center of this controversy is lobbyist Gary Jarmin, a Moonie from 1967-1973(4?) who was active in Moon’s Freedom Leadership Foundation and who many suspect may be a Moon agent in the New Right. A May 1981 article in “Mother Jones” raised this question … [… ] by February 1983 Jarmin had helped organize the first CAUSA North America conference, held in Jamaica. Also in attendance were Christian Voice chairman Robert Grant and Advisory Board members W. Steuart McBirney and Ray Allen, and political strategist Colonel V. Doner. The relationships go even deeper. The three-member board of Christian Voice’s political action committee is chaired by Jarmin, and includes Rev. Don Sills of the Moon-funded Coalition for Religious Freedom. In August of 1985, Jarmin helped organize CRF’s God and Freedom Banquet held in celebration of Moon’s release from jail. He also led legislative workshops at secretive CAUSA indoctrination sessions for American state legislators during 1986. These events drew about 100 conservative legislators from both parties to all-expense-paid junkets, ostensibly to discuss the Constitution. A more elite version of these meetings is the CAUSA-sponsored American Leadership Conference, where Jarmin has spoken. Jarmin has been joined at other CAUSA events by Robert Grant, who addressed the 1985 CAUSA National Conference in San Francisco. Grant currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Coalition for Religious Freedom.

Power Elites: The Merger of Right and Left – Heritage Foundation – The Moon Connection (archive.org):

Christian Voice is one Moon-connected group that has operated out of the Heritage building. A ‘former’ Moon operative, Gary Jarmin joined the Christian Voice (CV) staff. CV’s chair, Robert Grant, has been a leader of Moon’s Unification network front groups such as the American Freedom Coalition.

*ADDITIONAL NOTE - added since Ed Coffman’s death:

Ex-Moonie Profile: Michael Warder (WIOTM):

Michael Warder, 1968 graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Political Science, quickly became a top Moonie directly reporting to Moon, rubbing up against known KCIA/CIA operatives, including Tom Ward and Bo Hi Pak. Michael Warder was a Director of the Unification Church of America in 1977. He was listed as Director of Tong II in 1978, and was the largest American stockholder of Tong II Enterprises in the 1970’s. He was Secretary of the International Cultural Foundation. He had an editorial position in News World Communications which published the UC New York newspaper, ‘The News World’ – later called ‘The New York Tribune’. Cheryl Gilkerson, his wife, joined the church in Paris, where Tom Ward also joined the church as a student around the same time. Cheryl and Michael left the church in 1979 and remain married, and Michael continues to be a proponent of right-wing politics, employed for years by the Claremont Institute, a conservative think thank. Their son Michael Warder Jr. also went into political science,  and later law. He spent five years in the Marine Corps. He founded the “Russian Club” at school. Their daughter Amy Lynn went into law as well.

Related:

The Curious Case of Gary Jarmin

Gary Jarmin was recruited to the Unification Church as a teenager from a trouble teens camp

More on Gary Jarmin

From Korea with love (1974) – the article that changed Jarmin’s trajectory in the Unification Church

Michael Warder’s reasons for leaving. As a top UC leader in the US in the 1970s he reported directly to Moon.

Former Unification Church Official, Michael Warder, Analyzes Moon’s Organization

Michael Warder explains Moon’s News World media strategy

Moon wanted a “Vast conglomerate of mutually supporting businesses”

The Unification Church and KCIA: Some Notes on Bud Han, Steve Kim, and Bo Hi Pak

Michael Warder: Another CIA Moonie Asset?

[whatisonthemoon]

Kumi Taguchi’s first Dateline report, The Church and the Assassin, which investigates links between the 2022 assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, and the Unification Church, aka “the Moonies”, opened her eyes to a side of her ancestral homeland she hadn’t seen before.

On family trips, and while filming her 2019 ABC documentary, Kumi’s Japan, in which she sought to understand her father’s last wishes, the Insight host came to know only a peaceful, harmonious country.

“It was the first time I have dug into a current, controversial story, and it felt different being there,” says Taguchi. “It was such a privilege, and a great way in which to look at my own sense of that country, still with these gentle, polite, lovely people, but there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.”

In the potentially explosive documentary, Taguchi meets with investigative journalist Yasuomi Sawa at the Yokohama Archives of History in Tokyo to learn about Abe’s connections with the Unification Church. (Abe’s alleged killer told investigators he was motivated by a grudge he held against the church over his mother’s bankruptcy.) Bizarre footage is also shown of Abe and Donald Trump at a Church event.

“What I know from my dad [who was an investigative journalist in Japan] and what I saw in Mr Sawa, is that Japanese journalists are very thorough,” says Taguchi. “You’d think maybe there’s a sense of restriction and they don’t want to criticise the government. There’s none of that. Speaking to Mr Sawa reminded me of that robust journalistic heritage in Japan, especially in that massive building in which every newspaper in the country is archived daily. Japan still has a very strong print industry where physical newspapers are still massively popular.”

In heartbreaking interviews, Taguchi speaks with people who claim their lives have been destroyed by the church’s donations requirements. She also conducts conversations, inside a shuttered church premises, with church members, including a leader.

“There’s a lot of fear among church members. But when we arrived, they were so welcoming. I was worried it might feel a little like [dealing with the Church of] Scientology, like, ‘Oh god, now I’m on the radar!’ I didn’t feel like that at all. We were very open and honest with what we were doing and what questions we were asking, and why we felt we needed to ask them.”

Regular viewers of Dateline, which is Australia’s longest-running international current affairs program, broadcast since 1984, may notice a shift in tone towards the end of the report. After a commercial break, Taguchi appears in the home of a young mother who has prepared for disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear explosions or military attacks, by installing a tiny portable bunker in her living room.

“It feels like a quirky thing at the end,” says Taguchi. “But it’s part of the culture in Japan and such disasters are not out of the realm of possibility.”

The structural change to include a five-minute human interest segment, following the main 25-minute report, is intended to broaden audience appeal and cater for digital platforms.

As well as umpiring Insight forums for her second year, a job Taguchi relishes because, “I feel like that’s where we need to constantly be aiming for in our daily lives – it’s OK to disagree and it doesn’t have to end in fisticuffs”, she plans to film another, as yet unspecified, report for Dateline. Other topics in the program’s 2023 slate include Scotland’s housing crisis due to the short-term rental industry and stories from Jamaica, Turkey, Ukraine and Denmark.

“I find it amazing that a program like Dateline can be still so strong when there’s so much competition in such a globalised market,” says Taguchi. “Twenty years ago, I remember switching on Dateline, and it was my only window into the world. I wonder whether its longevity is because it’s not a deliberate Australian lens, but there’s a way in which Australians ask questions and frame stories. Generally, as Australian storytellers, I don’t think we’re afraid to be a bit bold.”

[365momme]

Let’s Celebrate Global Running Day (Again)

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com In the whirlwind of 365MomMe life, there’s no denying the multitude of responsibilities and commitments that come our way. From orchestrating household chores to tending to the needs of our little ones, our days are often filled to the brim with an array of tasks. It’s a dance of managing, nurturing, and balancing that defines the essence of motherhood.…

[bibleteacher-org]

Growing Victorious In This Viperous World

Preached Sunday morning at Riverview

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-ripping-finish-line-strap-2524739/ 2 Peter 3:1-2 This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: 2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Savior: In this wonderful chapter…

[superiorcatholicinspiration]

Daily Mass: Christ empowers us to give and receive help. Catholic Inspiration

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com The Lord heals a paralytic who was carried by others, reminding us that sometimes we receive help, and sometimes we give it. Mass Readings – Thursday of the 13th Week of the Year (#380) *************** Catholic Inspiration Archives May this 4th of July be a time for all Americans to be thankful for the gift of freedom!

[sgsubra]

How to Help Superstar Employees Fulfill Their Potential

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com High-potential employees are those employees who have the potential to become future leaders and lead the organisation. These employees face many challenges, especially in the areas of multi-disciplinary development. Subscribe to our blog and get intimated by email when a new article is published Type your email… Subscribe The leadership team needs to…

[craycraytime]

The Dismantling of Rev. Moon's Empire in the US

With the news about the sale of UTS Barrytown, the Boston Church, and Morning Garden, and the possible sale of 43rd St. and the New Yorker Hotel, the powers that be are dismantling the physical assets of Rev. Moon's empire.

With the rewriting of the theological dogmas: Rev. Moon failed two of his primary missions, everything after the Principle of Creation must be extirpated from the the Divine Principle, and Mrs. Moon being the OBDOG and Jesus being the OBSOG (Which is true), and Rev. Moon being just a leader, the dismantling of the theological dogmas of Rev. Moon's religion.

With the picking and choosing of "church coaches", all graduates of another cults' ideology, that cult being the Landmark Forum (highly accepted by the homosexual community), almost the entire leadership is run by an outside ideology and leaders are chosen based on whether they graduated from the Landmark Forum's training.

As we can see the UC/FFWPU is not what it once was. People who are against these changes need to communicate and work together. We have been a community for decades. We love and respect one another. Let's do something about the false teachings and the corruption within the church!

[roadie1963]

Veloviews for July 7, 2023 - Local and National Summer Event Rides

Photo by RUN 4 FFWPU on Pexels.com It’s mid July and that means the summer is in full swing. Will you be taking a summer vacation somewhere soon? Sometimes the cost associated with planning a trip, such as flights, hotels, gas, food, work, or family obligations can put those plans on hold. However, if you are cyclist and you’re aching to load your bike in the car for a trip somewhere, never…