#iowc

[whatisonthemoon]

IOWC as Counterinsurgency

There’s good reason to believe that the One World Crusade of the early 70s Unification Church in America was an attempt to both gather intel on anti-war groups, to hijack anti-war demonstrations, as many of their tours were coordinated with anti-war demonstrations and their events often occurred at such demonstrations or nearby, and to recruit from their fold. The government was actively trying to de-radicalize the increasingly revolutionary students and youth of the US. Many of the centers at the time were in college towns and were attempting to be friendly with leftists and anti-war organizations in deceptive ways, including hiding their religious beliefs. Many of these organizations could see through the Moonies in short time. At the time, the US government had a lot of coordinated efforts to gather intelligence on these organizations, which follow very similar tactics to the IOWC. Understanding that the UC was paid by the FBI in the 80s to spy on and sabotage the activism of El Salvador solidarity activists, it seems very probable that this was the case.

[everynewsnow]

अंतर्राष्ट्रीय महिला वीरता पुरस्कार प्राप्त करने के लिए म्यांमार, नेपाल, लंका और चीन की महिलाएँ

अंतर्राष्ट्रीय महिला वीरता पुरस्कार प्राप्त करने के लिए म्यांमार, नेपाल, लंका और चीन की महिलाएँ

अमेरिकी विदेश विभाग ने कहा है कि म्यांमार, नेपाल, श्रीलंका और चीन की महिलाओं को न्याय, लैंगिक समानता और महिला सशक्तीकरण की वकालत करने में असाधारण साहस और नेतृत्व का प्रदर्शन करने के लिए एक प्रतिष्ठित पुरस्कार के लिए चुना गया है। वार्षिक इंटरनेशनल वीमेन ऑफ करेज (IWOC) पुरस्कार दुनिया भर की महिलाओं को मान्यता देता है। विभाग ने कहा कि यह अगले सप्ताह एक आभासी समारोह में पेश किया जाएगा। पहली महिला डॉ…

[estonia22]

Ideen für das Euro-BBW

In den drei Tagen in Tallinn haben wir sehr viel gesehen und gehört - ein wahrer “information overload”. Wir sind recht erschöpft, aber viele der Dinge und Menschen, die wir sehen und treffen durften, waren sehr inspirierend für uns.

Im Folgenden möchten wir einige Ideen auflisten, die wir uns auch im Euro-BBW vorstellen könnten.

1. Mitarbeitergalerie im Flur

Mitarbeitergalerie des Astangu - Namen und Gesichter aus Datenschutzgründen verwischt

Im Flur des Erdgeschosses hängt im Astangu diese Mitarbeitergalerie. Nach Abteilungen aufgeteilt kann man sich hier orientieren, wer welche Aufgabe im Hause hat. Die Abbildung der Gesichter erleichtert das Erkennen der Kolleg*innen. Sehr übersichtlich und sehr hilfreich!

Viele Mitarbeitende des Euro-BBW haben sicherlich Sorge, ihr Portrait so offen zu zeigen. Die Galerie ist aber äußerst hilfreich bei der Orientierung!

2. Sitzgelegenheiten und Beschilderung

Überall im Astangu findet man solche Sitzgelegenheiten, die zum Gespräch oder Ausruhen einladen. Haben wir viel zu wenig!

Die Beschilderung ist auffälliger und besser zu lesen als bei uns.

3. Freiwillige aus dem Europäischen Freiwilligen-Corps

Eine junge Frau aus Porto ist derzeit als Freiwillige im Astangu beschäftigt. Sie kümmert sich vorwiegend um das Freizeitangebot. Eine tolle Lerngelegenheit für sie, und eine Bereicherung für das Astangu.

Die Website https://www.solidaritaetskorps.de/ bringt Einrichtungen und Freiwillige zusammen - sollten wir uns anschauen!

4. Motivierende Botschaften an den Wänden

Schon im Isle of Wight College sahen wir solche Sprüche an den Wänden, und auch die Deutsche Technologieschule in Pärnu hat sie. Die Übersetzung des obigen habe ich schon wieder vergessen, aber hier sind noch ein paar Beispiele aus dem IOWC.

Zitate von Schüler*innen an den Wänden des IOWC

5. Videos in den Ausbildungsräumen

In der Ausbildungsküche wurde vor dem Waffelbacken ein YouTube-Video gezeigt, das die Zubereitung visuell erklärte. Während des Backens konnte man sich Teile nochmals ansehen, und das Rezept wurde eingeblendet. Das fanden wir nützlich für die Teilnehmenden.

Schon im Isle of Wight College hatten wir beobachten können, dass man dort Videos der hauseigenen Lernplattform auf Tablets ansehen konnte. Hier wurden damals den angehenden Köch*innen Schneidetechniken per Video beigebracht. Wer lernen wollte, nahm sich einfach ein Tablet und startete das Video. So kann jede*r im eigenen Tempo Fähigkeiten verbessern.

6. Jobpics in der BVB

Möglicherweise geschieht ähnliches schon längst in der BVB - aber wir wollen nochmals das Jobpics-Projekt hervorheben, in dem per Fotoauswahl eine spontane Karriereentscheidung getroffen werden kann, auf die man aufbauen kann und die gleichzeitig viel über die Neigungen der Person aussagt. Siehe dazu den betreffenden Jobpics-Artikel hier im Blog!

Jobpics-Bildkarten

7. Videospiel zur Stärkung der Arbeitskompetenzen

Auch hier hatten wir es schon in einem anderen Artikel erwähnt: Die Job-Coaches des Astangu nehmen an einem EU-Projekt teil, in dessen Verlauf ein Videospiel namens Work@ble entwickelt wurde, das Stärken und Schwächen von Spielenden in Bezug auf die Aufnahme einer Arbeitstätigkeit  erkennt und sie gleichzeitig trainiert. Das Spiel soll nächstes Jahr verfügbar sein - vielleicht können wir es nutzen!

8. Career Day

Einmal jährlich veranstaltet das Astangu einen Career Day, an dem nicht nur Arbeitgeber*innen eingeladen und Firmen der Region vorgestellt werden. Es kommen auch Ehemalige und berichten über ihren Lebensweg. Ähnliches gab es wohl schon einmal im BBW, wenn ich mich recht entsinne - vielleicht kann man hier nochmal anknüpfen.

9. Digital Resilience

Im Astangu hat man durchaus Probleme mit Mobbing - dies aber mittlerweile verlegt in die digitale Welt in Form von Cyber-Bullying.

Unseres Erachtens kann man junge Menschen mit den Problemen, die die Digitalisierung ja auch mit sich bringt, nicht alleine lassen. Im Stab Q&E gibt es schon seit längerem eine Projektidee zum Thema “Digital Resilience”. Viele junge Menschen können zwar mit dem Smartphone geschickter umgehen als manche ältere Mitarbeitende, aber zu Medienkompetenz gehört viel mehr. Das Projekt sollte daher nicht (nur) Medienkompetenz à la “Wie nutze ich Word” vermitteln, sondern vielmehr gegen die vielen Gefahren im Web wappnen. Dazu gehört Aufklärung über das Erkennen von Fake News und Hoaxes, Schutz vor Identitätsdiebstahl und Schadsoftware sowie das Thema “Big Data” und entsprechende Verhaltensempfehlungen zur Datensparsamkeit.

Sollten wir angehen - vielleicht können wir hier mit dem Astangu zusammenarbeiten!

[pianotiles]

Cable news has announced: Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

For what did America vote?Cable news has announced: Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. If that's the case, what ideas won? For what, precisely, did America vote? I'm speaking, to be clear, of policy. Among those who punched the ticket for Joe and Kamala, what was the ideological demand? To generalize is to err, and it would be foolish to paint Donkey Party supporters with a broad brush. I'm focusing solely on a subset. You're well aware of them — people who evidently exclusively get their news via a laser-focused, inaccurate narrative against Trump. Concerning that particular group of voters, if Biden's the new Commander-in-Chief, what ideas won? It seems to me the answer is none. No ideas. Who has time for ideas when Satan is at the door? For the sake of the planet, I believe many Blue voters waged war at the polls, not for something, but against. They were combatting a cartoon. For the last half decade, talking heads have crafted an animated evil in the White House by perpetually passing along a portrayal of what could never have walked the earth. We were presented with the notion that a Democrat celebrity fawned over for decades as a lovable eccentric billionaire and championed in rap songs had all the while — and without notice from anyone anywhere, including close liberals and minorities — been an angry white supremacist hatemonger sent from the bowels of hell to, suddenly and without warning at 70 years old, become the 21st century's Hitler. Even as his opponents were socialists, like the Nazis. What was crafted was a character drawn with a sharpie…

http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Clemson-v-Notr-m10 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Colorad-v-ucla-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Colorado-v-ucla-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Iowa-v-Baylo-m10 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Oregon-v-stan-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Oregon-v-stan-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Ruth-v-ohis-yy http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/ruth-v-ohitrm-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/SC-v-texas-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/south-ala-v-coast-caro-yy1 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/South-Alabama-v-Coastal-Carolina-ggc http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/ten-v-arka-jp1 http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/tenn-v-arkan-ccj http://count.idahokidscount.org/khoka/Texas-v-scarol-m10 http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Bay-v-iowa-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Bay-v-iowr-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Clem-v-notra-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Clemso-v-notrd-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/ohi-v-rotrd-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Ohio-v-ruth-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Stan-v-Oregon-m10 http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Stanf-v-ore-yy http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Texa-v-caro5 http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/Ucla-v-colora-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/fgc1v/UCLA-v-Colorado5 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/ark-v-tennes-yy1 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/arkansas-v-tennessee-gg http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Bayl-v-Iowa5 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/bayl-v-iowc-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Clem-v-notrm-liv2 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/coas-carov-south-alb-ccj http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/coasta-alab-v-coas-caro-pj http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Notrd-v-Clems-yy http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Ohio-v-Rutg-m10 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/soth-carov-cosat-caro-jp1 http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Stan-v-oregon-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/Tennessee-v-Arkansas-pj http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/tex-v-southc-st http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/texa-v-scar-th http://count.idahokidscount.org/dixo/ucl-v-colo-m10

[fortheweeones]

heel toe dosey doe https://www.instagram.com/p/2tTrf-IowC/?igshid=icsttybchfvu

[frankbic]

50cc Rock n Roll. #hondamotorcycle #hondacb50 #motorradtreffen #motorradtechnik http://motorradphilosophen https://www.instagram.com/p/B_XtJG-IoWc/?igshid=1hlimmxcff0xb

[liteforex-broker]

Dollar is puzzled There are still many details unclear in the US-China trade agreement  December has been so far a positive month for financial markets. Yes, the UK hasn’t yet left the EU, and the US-China trade war hasn’t yet finished, but the most important is that the risks are gradually easing. Conservatives’ victory in the UK general election has almost removed the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, and the phase one trade agreement between the US and China has somehow relieved investors’ stress. The US administration announced they won’t pursue a new round of tariffs on $160 billion of Chinese imports set...Read full author’s opinion and review in blog of #LiteForex http://amp.gs/iOwC

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

NEW ON TPARENTS.ORG

Peter Brown’s IOWC team - The fundraising testimony I gave over and over:

http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks4/Fragosa/Fragosa-161218.pdf#search="**"

[wight2017]

Let's dance

23.11.2017

Heute am Vormittag waren wir mit Michelle und Paul vom Student Service verabredet. Michelle ist Head of Student Advocacy and Safeguarding, Paul ist ihr Vorgesetzter und kennt sogar unsere Vermieter. Der Student Service im IOWC ist eine Art "begleitender Sozialdienst", bei uns vergleichbar mit einer Mischung aus Fachdienst und Reha-Verwaltung. Hier auf der Insel geht die Schere zwischen Armen und Reichen immer weiter auseinander, viele sind arbeitslos und sozial benachteiligt. Der Student Service beschaeftigt sich mit den daraus resultierenden Problemen, wie z. B. finanzielle Angelegenheiten der Students, Fahrkarten, Essensgeld etc.und betreuen diese waehrend der gesamten Zeit am College. Sie arbeiten mit den Eltern bzw. den Pflegefamilien oder auch Kinderheimen zusammen und achten besonders darauf, dass das Gesetz z. B. Kinderschutz eingehalten wird. Ueber die Datenbank e-Tracker haben sie eine genaue und aktuelle Uebersicht ueber alle Anwesenheiten, Fehlzeiten und Vorkommnisse. Es war fuer uns ein durchaus anspruchsvolles Gespraech und wegen der Komplexitaet nicht immer so ganz leicht zu verstehen.

Am Nachmittag durften wir wieder eine Gruppe des Bereiches "Pathways" besuchen. Der Unterricht mit Liz findet immer nur Donnerstagsnachmittags statt und beginnt deshalb erst einmal mit einer News-Runde. Die Schuelerin J. ist heute an der Reihe, die News-Runde zu leiten. Jede/r erzaehlt, was er/sie seit der letzten Unterrichtsstunde erlebt hat, bevor das Warm-up beginnt. Nach Liz' Anleitung wurden einfache gymnastische Uebungen durchgefuehrt, bei denen es hauptsaechlich um Koerperwahrnehmung, Aufmerksamkeit und gegenseitige Ruecksichtnahme ging. Auch unsere alten Knochen wurden auf diese Weise mal wieder beansprucht :-) Weiter ging es mit einer einstudierten Tanzdarbietung mit Hut und Stock. Bemerkenswert war, dass die Schueler/innen ihre Rolle mit Stolz, Freude und einem tollen Ausdruck vorfuehrten. Zum Ende der Stunde wurde ein neuer Tanz auf das Lied "I like to be in America" (West Side Story) einstudiert, bei dem wir wieder mitmachen durften.

Am Abend waren wir mit Pat und Isabel zum Abschlussessen im Restaurant des Colleges verabredet. Schon beim Eintreten hatten wir das Gefuehl, voellig underdressed zu sein. Der Service war im feinen Zwirn gekleidet und alles war sehr gediegen. Es erwartete uns ein spanisches Menue, das von den Azubis selbst in der Kueche zubereitet wurde. Das Essen war koestlich und wir hatten einen sehr netten gemeinsamen Abend, wo wir die letzten beiden Wochen mit Pat und Isabel noch einmal Revue passieren liessen. Zum kroenenden Abschluss wurden uns noch unsere Zertifikate ueberreicht.    

[pathwaysintoinsanity]

Feeling frustrated with people who wish we could "go back" to Obama & who think things would have been just fine "with Hillary." Here's why neither of them (much less the current guy) were good for America.

Let's review our recent history...

Under Clinton (Bill) we saw the explosion of Monsanto's criminal activities across the globe, the ongoing global warming behaviors which have gotten us to where we are, the set up for mass incarceration of minorities (the new Jim Crow), the elimination of the law which protected our country from out-of-control investment banking (setting the stage for the economic collapse of 2000 and 2008)...

Under Bush Jr. we saw the absolute hoodwinking of the American People with the Iraqi War for Oil & HUGE military base grab in the middle east and the BLIND EYE or the actual firing of those who spoke up about the incoming economic collapse of 2008...

Under Obama we immediately saw our nation pillaged with a "welfare bill for the wealth class" (bank bailout), massive military increases (drones, spying/NSA), the greatest number of persecuted whistle blowers in American History (Obama persecuted more loyal Americans who spoke up than ALL the previous presidents combined), the soft handling of the Gulf Oil Spill (where the media was given permission or ordered to limit images to palatable ones - only oil soaked birds were allowed on American television: no turtles, dolphins, whales or other animals Americans are considered to be soft-hearted about), the LIE that we would increase our energy independence by sourcing local resources (Go Fracking! Yeah Oil Drilling in the Arctic! Who cares about oil spills in rivers?) which got people to believe it was a good idea (OMG) to approve a massive oil extraction network of pipelines......only to THEN, after the lines were approved, eliminate the law which blocked the export of raw, crude to other nations......so, that oil that was supposed to help us get out of oil wars elsewhere is not for that purpose at all (it is to allow the wealth class to make money the only way they know how - resource extraction).

Not to mention. Obama was VERY friendly to Big Pharma - placing industry insiders into key regulatory positions right and left. AND HE WAS THE MAJOR PROPONENT OF THE TPP ALONG WITH CLINTON!!!!!

Friendly to people, the environment, and labor...he...was...not.

And then, to top it off, he presided over the most corrupt Democratic Party Primary we've ever seen, which set out to ensure that Hillary Clinton was the candidate (no matter the actual will of the people, or how popular and likely to win Bernie Sanders might be) because the desires of the people don't matter to the wealth class -- and don't you know, the Democratic Party IS a tool of the wealth class?!

So, we are here, in a huge shit-fest with Trump and only a corrupt Democratic Party as our possible ally to defeat the wealth class Trump represents (only, the wealth class will not really go up against it's wealth class brethren).....and I've got people telling me, "It would have been better with Hillary."

What about our national and planetary peril doesn't spell it out for these people? Trump is the RESULT of the problem.

The Problem HAS BEEN HERE in the shape of Obama, Bush, Clinton & Clinton...as the puppets and servants of an extremely small, extremely immoral, extremely self-centered, extremely short-sighted, extremely arrogant, extremely war-oriented, extremely uncaring International Oligarchical Wealth Class....which has loyalty to NO country. Only to themselves, their wealth, and their power.

So. Now is not the time for "Hillary would have been better" thinking. Now is the time for "Hillary would have been not quite as bad, but she was still a continuation of the planet-destroying IOWC's control of our nation."

Our country would have stood up, under Bernie Sanders, and said, "Let's change things, fix things, and let's do it for all of us, in a hurry."

Because the "status quo" is what's killing us. Not Trump.

[mysticbaconslice]

HOKY CRAP. MY WRISTB HEURS T SO BAD WHY

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

FFWPU children sent to orphanages in Korea – and mothers sent away in the US

Frank Frivilous [pseudonym]:

“Although Sun Myung Moon has his own peculiar interpretation of biblical stories, they only tend to serve his own interests and not that of their stated purpose. Restoration through indemnity as prescribed in Adam’s family in the Divine Principle quickly gets abused – as we see in the high numbers of disaffected church members. Then there is the shameful way that Moon treats his own illegitimate children. In the following testimonial and speech by Moon, he acknowledges that some members have resorted to sending their children to orphanages.”

Here are the quotes:

Sun Myung Moon, July 14, 2002, East Garden, Irvington, NY “In 1970, I mobilized wives for three years. That was the second such mobilization, and I said that the third mobilization would come. ... In the 1960s those unmarried girls received the blessing. Later they stood up for another mobilization. They did not have enough space for their babies. They asked their relatives to take care of their children, and even left them in orphanages, and all blessed wives went to a public mission. The family foundation was offered up, and the households were so miserable, and it was done in order to save the nation. It was a three-year course. Each blessed couple has to prepare to do this.”

_______________________

“On hearing my teachings, she [Yun-yeong Yang] temporarily lodged her two children in an orphanage, so determined was she to follow this way. History and Heaven will remember her for that.”

http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/SunMyungMoon-Life/SunMyungMoon-Life-19.htm

▲ Yun-yeong Yang 梁允永 was professor of music at Ewha Womans University in Seoul in 1955. She later left Moon and the UC, as did Ewha Professor Chung-hwa Han 韓忠嬅 who joined at around the same time.

The early members who gave up their children to follow Moon are legendary – but was it principled? Did they do so voluntarily, or was it required by Moon? What is being restored by rejecting these “Abel” children? This can only be interpreted as a failure by those who believe they are in Abel position. A contradiction of one of Moon’s most important teachings and the pattern that is well established by the man himself. If the members cannot even care for their own children, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to serve and win over their “Cain” recruits. This was borne out repeatedly in church history, including some of Moon’s own key followers.

This can only be explained as an expression of extreme narcissism.

Frank Frivilous

__________________________________________________

Linda Feher responds:

Yes Frank, you are correct. But don’t forget that it wasn’t only demanded of earlier members. I know so many “sisters” who joined the FFWPU and were told they had to “sacrifice” their “blessed” children in order to “save” the “Cain” children of the world. So they abandoned their children and went out to fundraise and witness for Moon. (The purpose of witnessing was to bring in more fundraisers.)

Also, when the marching orders came for all sisters all over the world to leave their blessed children to join the IOWC (International One World Crusade) teams and travel all over the USA, I witnessed much suffering and tears.

When I asked some who I saw suffering and crying the most why they didn’t just stay home with their children I was told, that they were told, “If you don’t sacrifice your blesses children Satan will attack them”. To me that is spiritual terrorism. They left their children and joined mobile IOWC teams because they were threatened with harm to their children. It makes my blood boil! That kind of spiritual threat always has been the modus operandi of Moon and his style of leadership.

Full definition of Modus Operandi: a method of procedure; especially: a distinct pattern or method of operation that indicates or suggests the work of a single criminal in more than one crime…

Moon convinced the leaders that Satan will attack us if we didn’t follow his every whim, they believed him and then learned from Moon to use that same form of spiritual terrorism to control our every thought, feeling and action.

One sister on my IOWC team left to visit her husband to start their family. During the 3 day ceremony she got pregnant. She was told that she was not supposed to get pregnant during her 3 day ceremony. That it was “bad luck” and that her child would be invaded by Satan. I watched her cry day in and day out on the IOWC team because she was made to fear for her unborn child’s life. That kind of teaching/belief is evil and sickening.

Living on the IOWC team was like living at a funeral 24/7 because so many sisters were hurting over the fact that they had left their children for what was an UNSPECIFIED time period. We had to move to a new city every 21 days, never knowing how many years we would have to serve on IOWC teams. Even that fact, never knowing how long we’d have to be on IOWC traveling teams was a form of spiritual terrorism. Would it be months, years? No one knew and so we were always kept in an emotionally unstable frame of mind.

Moon was a hater of the family and a spiritual blackmailer.

How many couples and how many children have suffered because he terrified them into abandoning their families in order to serve him and his insatiable appetite for power and wealth?

Linda Feher

reposted from WIOTM

__________________________________________________

Moon instructed: “Whenever the Blessed couples have children, as soon as the child become 100 days old, they will put him in the nursery school.”

Why love matters – book by Sue Gerhardt

“Children … taken from the parents and placed in nurseries for three years,” Margie Laflin.

Another mother, Shin-hee Eu, gives her testimony

VIDEO: Eu Shin-hee spoke on Japanese TV, and her son, Gap Yoon-gil, was also interviewed about being sent to an orphanage.

What was the qualification of Sun Myung Moon among 70 other Korean messiahs?

“I see only a tiny version of myself, seated on the bare floor, encircled by darkness.” – Nansook Hong

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

A mother dropped her children off at Jacob House, N.Y., and went to fundraise – as directed by Moon. She was killed…

Michiko Koide and Eric Mahnken both died while fundraising for the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon.

The Unification Church was also known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. Many CARP members also fundraised.

_______________________________

“… There has been considerable attention [on] the fact that Moon required early members to leave their children with relatives and even orphanages while serving as missionaries. This is documented in some of the testimonials of early members which can be found easily in the archives of TParents.org.  The issue was also raised by Chung-hwa Pak in his legendary “The Tragedy of the Six Marys” book. This same requirement was made of western blessed couples in the U.S., resulting in some tragic circumstances which was also related in a previous post. The Michael Warder video posted here recently contains his admission that he left the church over his and his wife’s concerns about the safety of their infant children at the unregistered nursery at the Jacob House. …

On a personal note I can tell you that the nursery at Jacob House was never officially shut down. When I was in N.Y. in the mid 1980s, I was tasked with repair and maintenance at both White House and Jacob House where I discovered a group of forlorn Japanese children residing in the care of a couple older sisters. This included the the two children of [Michiko Koide].

The children [a boy, Michikuni, and a girl, Sachiyo] were dropped off when she was sent out to fundraise at Moon’s direction. After she was killed in [an] accident, her devastated husband abandoned both the kids and the church returning to Japan. I have no idea what happened to the children afterward but considering the church’s track history on this sort of thing, it’s probably another tragedy. …”

Frank Frivilous

____________________________________

Oscala Star-Banner, October 12, 1984

Three Killed, Four Injured in Crash near Pensacola, Florida

PENSACOLA (AP) – Three people were killed and four others injured when a van carrying Unification Church missionaries on their way to Jackson, Miss., was struck from behind by another van, officials said.

The dead were identified as Michael Jeffrey Atkins, 27, of Pensacola, and missionary Michiko Koide Lux, 36, of Jackson, authorities said. The identity of the third fatality, [Eric Mahnken] a missionary, was being withheld until his relatives where notified. The other missionaries were hospitalized.

The accident happened at about 2a.m. Thursday, said dispatchers with the Pensacola police and the Escambia County Sheriff’s departments.

The van carrying the missionaries had stopped on Interstate 110 because of a flat tire. The second van, driven by Michael Atkins, struck it from behind, dispatchers said. Five missionaries, including Ms. Lux, were inside the parked van when the accident happened. The driver of the parked van, Robert Hole, 34, had just gotten out to help with the tire. He escaped injury.

“The moment I stepped out, I saw the white van hit our van,” Hole said. “If I had been in longer, I might have gotten hit.”

He said that “quite a few” motorists drove by without stopping before someone finally called police.

The four injured passengers, all from Jackson, were taken to Pensacola hospitals by ambulance and Lifeflight helicopter.

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In Memoriam Michiko Koide and Eric Mahnken

Church members Michiko Koide and Eric Mahnken were killed on October 11, 1984, in a car accident in Pensacola, Florida. They and five other brothers and sisters, all on the Mississippi church fundraising team, had just completed a 40-day campaign and were returning home when their vehicle had a flat tire. While Eric was fixing the tire, a speeding van swerved off the highway into our vehicle, killing him instantly. … Michiko died several hours later; one other member suffered a broken back, and another a broken leg. The driver of the out-of-control van [Michael Atkins] was also killed.

Michiko Koide was born December 16, 1948 in Chibu-Ken, Japan. She joined the Unification Church there in 1972, and was blessed in 1975 with the 1800 couples. She is survived by her husband, Masaaki Koide, and two children… She is remembered for her exemplary dedication, prayerfulness, sacrifice, and service. Ministers and their families in Jackson, Mississippi, remember her for her unflagging community service. To the state center, where she was the eldest member, she brought the deep-hearted, self-giving tradition of our Japanese church “mothers.”

Eric Alexander Mahnken was born January 4, 1960. He joined the church in 1974 at the age of 14. He was blessed to Mary Hutchison in the Madison Square Garden blessing of 2,000 couples in 1982. He is survived by his parents, and his sisters Carla and Paula, who also joined the church. He worked in Performing Arts before he joined IOWC in March 1983. He is, fondly remembered for his warm-heartedness and friendliness. Always outgoing and vibrant, Eric did not hesitate to volunteer for difficult tasks, and he performed them with constancy and enthusiasm.

A Seunghwa Ceremony for Michiko and Eric was held October 13 in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Michiko’s body was buried there, while Eric’s body was flown to New York for burial in Westchester County, where his father lives, following memorial services in New York City.  LINK  

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

“Children … taken from the parents and placed in nurseries for three years,” Margie Laflin.

Infants abandoned by UC parents in the US. Two die.

UC children sent to orphanages in Korea or left behind in the US

The baby was very small and undernourished

Another mother, Shin-hee Eu, gives her testimony

Transcript and Video: Eu Shin-hee spoke on Japanese TV, and her son, Gap Yoon-gil, was also interviewed about being sent to an orphanage.

UC babies dying and UC members starving

More hungry UC members

Dr. Seuk “I neither saw nor heard from my mother for 10 years”

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

“Children … taken from the parents and placed in nurseries for three years,” Margie Laflin.

The Milwaukee Journal, Dec 29, 1981   pages 1 and 3A

New Berlin – Two months ago, Margie Laflin, 20, was selling flowers on street corners and preaching the principles of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Now she is free … and said she wanted to warn other young people not to get involved with a cult as she did. She said she planned to speak at area colleges and high schools. …

To marry, a member must be in the cult for at least three years and must be between the ages of 24 and 29. Marriages are performed by Moon, she said, and the partners are then separated and allowed to consummate the marriage only with Moon’s permission. Children of such marriages are taken from the parents and placed in nurseries for three years, she said. They are taught Korean which many believe will become a universal language, Laflin said.

___________________________

Lodi News-Sentinel, Sept 6, 1980   San Francisco (UPI)

By Lidia Wasowicz

“… I accepted an invitation to lunch at the San Francisco C.A.R.P. headquarters … At a Sutter Street flat, I was delivered into the hands of Loretta, a magnetic woman of 29, who impressed me, and the other newcomers, with her soothing voice, assuring smile and sincere warmth. …

By dinner time, Loretta had showed me pictures of two of her babies, who were staying with other Moonie children at the Unification Church nursery in upstate New York while the parents travelled spreading God’s word.”

___________________________

The Bulletin, Bend, Oregon May 27, 1984    page B4

Moonie marriages – Arranged matches typically unconventional.

Washington (UPI)

Like other sun Myung Moon inspired rituals in the Unification Church, marriage is far from conventional.

The 64-year-old church leader hand-picks a spouse for each of his followers. Then he presides over a mass ceremony, cloaked head to toe in white.

One such spectacle on July 1, 1982, paired 2,075 couples in Madison Square Garden. Three months later, Moon married 5,837 couples in Korea. A large percentage are Western-Oriental or black-white mixes. Part of the ceremony called for followers to drink wine tinged with blood from the “True Parents,” Moon and his wife.

Unificationists rely on them to choose their mates because “Reverend Moon knows better than us – he can see the future,” says Jack Harford, a member for more than eight years who is married to a Japanese woman.

Marriage and procreation are viewed as an essential for entry into the kingdom of heaven. …

Although members may request partners of a particular ethnic background, the final decision is up to Moon. As soon as the matchmaking takes place in a special ceremony, couples spend some time together to see if marriage looks feasible. Moon’s first choice is usually honored, although he has been known to match a follower several times before finding an acceptable mate.

Detractors see the process as a disaster.

“His marriages are the worst P.R. mistake Moon has ever made. That is the number one criticism I hear from people who left the church,” reports of Dr. Lowell Streiker, who works with former members and their families at his Freedom Counselling Center in Burlingame, California.

Marriage practices are precisely the reason a former church leader left.

“The marriage itself is treated like an engagement,” he remembers.  “You go through a separation after the ceremony, 40 days to five years.You can’t sleep together until Moon gives the say-so.

“That’s not why I quit, though,” he adds. “I left the church because Moon said all the families would have to separate for three years and the kids would go in a church nursery and wives would go on an evangelizing tour of college campuses. We put our eight-month old daughter in a nursery and my wife, who was pregnant, went on a bus tour.

“That made us think that Moon was not who he claimed he was. Here’s his ‘ideal family’ where the wife is one place and the kids as someone else.”

His family fled the church five years ago and requested anonymity so they can “cut it clean” with their past.

Some church critics also find Moon’s matchmaking techniques “shocking,” as a Washington, D.C., mother of a member puts it. Revealing her name would “cause problems for my son,” she said.

“He married a Japanese girl, at Madison Square Garden, who he had never met until a week or two before the wedding,” she said. They work apart now; I think he’s maybe seen her once or twice a year. I’m numb at this point.”

Another East Coast mother is equally distraught.

“My daughter was sent to Korea to marry a man she had never seen before,” she says of the ceremony that took place in the fall of 1982. “She said she was crying so hard during the ceremony, she didn’t even know what nationality he was.” As it turned out, he was a Jewish New Yorker.

When asked if her daughter loves the man, the mother says: “She says if you love God more than you love yourself and if your partner loves God more than he loves himself, you should be able to live happily ever after with anybody…”

Followers, however see it all differently. Argues Bento Leal, a member for 10 years: “We are not his slaves. Reverend Moon is just more spiritually advanced than most. His marriages are a very rich experience.”

___________________________

Linda Feher has written on this topic:

Don’t forget that it wasn’t only demanded of earlier members. I know so many “sisters” who joined the UC and were told they had to “sacrifice” their “blessed” children in order to “save” the “Cain” children of the world. So they abandoned their children to fundraise and witness for Moon. (The purpose of witnessing was to bring in more fundraisers.)

Also, when the marching orders came for all sisters all over the world to leave their blessed children to join IOWC (International One World Crusade) teams and travel all over the USA, I witnessed much suffering and tears.

When I asked some who I saw suffering and crying the most why they didn’t just stay home with their children I was told, that they were told, “If you don’t sacrifice your blesses children Satan will attack them”. To me that is spiritual terrorism. They left their children and joined mobile IOWC teams because they were threatened with harm to their children. It makes my blood boil! …

Moon convinced the leaders that Satan will attack us if we didn’t follow his every whim, they believed him and then learned from Moon to use that same form of spiritual terrorism to control our every thought, feeling and action.

One sister on my IOWC team left to visit her husband to start their family. During the 3 day ceremony she got pregnant. She was told that she was not supposed to get pregnant during her 3 day ceremony. That it was “bad luck” and that her child would be invaded by Satan. I watched her cry day in and day out on the IOWC team because she was made to fear for her unborn child’s life. That kind of teaching/belief is evil and sickening.

Living on the IOWC team was like living at a funeral 24/7 because so many sisters were hurting over the fact that they had left their children for what was an UNSPECIFIED time period. We had to move to a new city every 21 days. never knowing how many years we would have to serve on IOWC teams. Even that fact, never knowing how long we’d have to be on IOWC traveling teams was a form of spiritual terrorism. Would it be months, years? No one knew and so we were always kept in an emotionally unstable frame of mind. …

How many couples and how many children have suffered because Moon terrified them into abandoning their families in order to serve him and his insatiable appetite for power and wealth?

___________________________

Why Love Matters – book by Sue Gerhardt

Infants abandoned by UC parents in the US. Two die at Jacob House.

UC babies dying and UC members starving

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

Moon instructed: “Whenever the Blessed couples have children, as soon as the child become 100 days old, they will put him in the nursery school.”

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Sun Myung Moon had no respect for US immigration law

“Right now our foremost problem is the difficulty with the immigration Department. Unless we can successfully obtain legitimate residency for our foreign members, our movement will suffer a setback. We cannot fail to do this. If we do fail, my entire strategy will be totally altered, because all the foreign members here will have to leave. Therefore, by all means, at any cost, we must win the immigration battle.” – Sun Myung Moon, MASTER SPEAKS, April 14, 1974

“Americans know that I have brought many young people from all over the world. I have read that the immigration officials say I’m violating immigration laws. Americans don’t realize that God has declared war against the satanic power, and that it is not I who have called the youth from all over the world to the United States to fight, but God. I am the commander and you are the volunteer army summoned by God. If the American people don’t realize this and persecute and obstruct you, they will be faced with perdition.” – Sun Myung Moon, MASTER SPEAKS 456, Tarrytown, New York, February 16, 1975, ‘True Parents’ Birthday’

__________________________________

A History Of The Unification Church In America, 1959-74 – Emergence of a National Movement

by Michael L Mickler “Mr. [Papasan] Choi continued to lead the church in Japan until he was taken by the Immigration Service and deported in 1964.

... A new stage of Northwest involvement in the Bay Area began following incorporation of the group as United Faith, Inc. in June, 1969. The previous October, through the intercessory efforts of Congressman Lawrence J. Burton (R-Utah), David Kim won his immigration battle and was awarded a permanent visa.

... Problems with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service surfaced during the thirty-two city tour. Initially having obtained six-month tourist visas for missionaries, the church’s petition to have these visas altered was denied. In Salt Lake City, forty German IOWC members were apprehended by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, charged with over-extension of their visas and given thirty days to leave the United States. By late 1974, 583 foreign members of the Unification Church were subject to deportation proceedings. 346

346 “A U.S. Agency’s Act May Eclipse Crusade of Sun Myung Moon,” The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 1974.

[Daniel Junas: Rising Moon: the Unification Church’s Japan connection August 1989 Institute for Global Security Studies Ryoichi Sasakawa helped Papasan Choi’s immigration proceedings in Japan by appearing as his guarantor.]

__________________________________

The Pull of Sun Moon by Berkeley Rice (who was a senior editor of Psychology Today.)

New York Times Magazine – May 30, 1976 starting page 8

“Thousands of young Americans believe he has led them to truth and love. Hundreds of parents have formed a national organization to get back their children.

... Because of complaints about the Unification Church’s interest in politics, and its emphasis on fund raising, various Federal, state and local government agencies have begun questioning its claims as a religious movement. The Internal Revenue Service has not taken action against it—on complaints about its $10 million income-tax exemption—but the U.S. Immigration Service has—ordering the deportation of 600 Moonies, mostly from Japan, for illegal soliciting. Their visas had been granted for “religious education and training.” But the Immigration official in charge of the case subsequently found little evidence of formal religious education: “As nearly as we can determine, their ‘training’ consists of soliciting funds and selling some items.” ”

__________________________________

‘The Moonstruck Cult’ Disciples Fill Moon’s Pockets

The Pittsburgh Press Wednesday, June 1, 1977

Barbara Underwood became an assistant leader, and finally the leader, of a seven-member flower team and was trusted to establish a sales base in Toronto. In Canada, she got an importer’s license, opened a bank account and rented vehicles using a phony address and pretending to be a Canadian citizen, in apparent violation of Canadian immigration laws.

“We were going by divine law,” she explained. “We weren’t going by secular law, democratic law.”

__________________________________

Unification Church may move to London or West Germany as its US popularity reaches a low ebb

The Times April 5, 1978 From Diana Patt, Washington

Last January the New York State Social Welfare Board revoked the right of the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a Moon organization headed by Mr Pak Bo Hi, to solicit funds in the state. The foundation was accused of using less than 7 per cent of $1.5 million (£750,000) raised nationally for the stated aim of child relief.

In April, the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York began deportation proceedings against 178 Japanese members of the Unification Church who entered the United States years ago as temporary visitors. Some 50 of these members applied for the status of permanent residents, for extensions of visas or voluntary deportation.

The final report of the Fraser Subcommittee investigation had an eighty-page section on the Unification Church. The report found that the Moon organization “systematically violated U.S. tax, immigration, banking, currency, and Foreign Agents Registration Act laws, as well as state and local laws relating to charity fraud.” It called for an interagency task force to continue to gather evidence and to prosecute Moon and other Unification Church leaders for their criminal violations. The subcommittee’s Republican minority included its own statement, reading in part, “It is difficult to understand why the appropriate agencies of the Executive Branch have not long since taken action against those activities of the Moon organization that are illegal.”

__________________________________

Nansook Hong: “I entered the United States illegally on January 3, 1982”

There are examples of marriages (some never consumated) arranged by Sun Myung Moon for the purposes of gaining visas.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

My Four and One Half Years with The Lord of The Flies

                 Allen Tate Wood, center, with friends at Sewanee in 1968

                                       updated November 11, 2020

by Allen Tate Wood

Prologue

“I pulled the wings off the fly so that it couldn’t get away,” explained Moon to a rapt audience of several hundred young disciples. He had been telling us about one of his experiences in prison. “I was dreadfully lonely,” he said. “My only companion was a fly. I spent hours each day watching it. I watched it clean its legs. I loved it so much that I didn’t want it to escape. That is why I pulled it’s wings off.”

This occasion contrasted with those meetings in which Moon brings his followers to a fever pitch by exhortations and threats. “Are you willing to follow me?”

The response is a deafening “Yes” accompanied by clenched fists raised in unison. Sun Myung Moon, a 76 year old Korean industrialist, owns a munitions factory, a titanium plant, a ginseng refining plant and he is a successful real estate entrepreneur in the U.S. He is also the increasingly well known creator of, and alleged messiah of the Unification Church. Moon founded the church in Seoul, South Korea, in 1954. Today the church claims more than half a million members in 50 countries of which the big three are Japan, the U.S. and Germany. Seventy percent of the membership has been claimed since 1971. In the State of New York in the last few years Moon has purchased over nine million dollars worth of real estate. Under the banner of the Second Coming, Sun Myung Moon commands the allegiance of thousands of young people. They finance and operate a network of front groups whose sole purpose is to catapult Moon into a position of prominence and eventually of absolute power in American politics. By the fall of 1969 the church was acting as a political pressure group in the nation’s capitol. From March to December of 1970 I was head of the Unification Church’s political arm in the United States (The Freedom Leadership Foundation). On Moon’s behalf we sought to defuse the Peace Movement and buttress the hawk position by convincing senators and congressmen that there was substantial grass roots support for a hard line stand in Asia. In 1969 we were just scratching the surface. Today Moon’s organization is in a position of vastly increased power and prestige. Through the Freedom Leadership Foundation, and its descendant CAUSA [Confederación de las Asociaciones para la Unifiación de las Sociedades de las Américas], Moon has won the gratitude and respect of many congressmen and senators, not to mention former presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush. With The D. C. Striders, an inner city track club, Moon parades as a conscientious church leader doing his bit for black teenagers in the nation’s capitol. The Little Angels, a Korean Children’s Folk Ballet, gives him an entree into the entertainment world. Through the person of Jhoon Rhee, director of a mushrooming chain of Korean Karate schools, he enters the world of amateur and professional athletics. 

▲ Jhoon Rhee is standing fourth from the left, and Bo-Hi Pak is on the right. Jhoon Rhee is a cousin of Bo-Hi Pak.

Through annual conferences on the “unity of the sciences,” [International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, ICUS] he presents himself as a philanthropic patron of the sciences and the humanities. With his burgeoning fortune Moon has the resources to underwrite scientific research and to endow fellowships in universities. If Moon’s movement in America continues unchecked, he will soon be able to directly influence the outcome of elections.

In Korea, Moon’s is [one of two] “Christian” groups that has not suffered at the hands of President Park’s brutal suppression of free speech and civil liberties. Moon, far from repudiating the Park government’s beating and torture of Korean ministers, sponsored and organized a pro government rally in which one million people participated. (1.2 million according to a press release given by the Unification Church in Washington). 

▲ The culmination of the work of the International One World Crusade (IOWC) in Korea in 1975 was this rally on Yoido Island in the center of Seoul. About a million people attended the World Rally for the salvation of Korea. Moon gave a slogan to the immense crowd: “Communism is the enemy of God and humanity.”

Borrowing from Moon’s historical metaphor (The Divine Principle) this is the equivalent of Jesus holding a pro government demonstration in Jerusalem in support of King Herod. When I was in Korea in October of 1970, Moon told me that when the Unification Church gains control of the South Korean government, “every South Korean Embassy in the world will become an expeditionary force for the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Setting Out On The Journey

My path to the Unification Church began in 1966 when I matriculated at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. I entered college with little concrete notion of what I wanted to do in life. I had rejected the establishment rewards that my secondary education promised. To me the academic challenge at Sewanee was meaningless. Absorbed in a search for values by which I could live, the Peace Movement offered the only channel for my frustrated idealism. From the steps of the burned out ROTC building at the University of the South in the spring of 1968, I was the first student to speak publicly against the War at Sewanee. That summer in New Jersey I worked for the Presidential campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy. In August I went to The National Democratic Convention in Chicago as a messenger for the New Jersey delegation. The ferocity of the police riots during the convention destroyed what lingering faith I had in the political process, and I returned to college in the fall bewildered by our national leaders’ refusal to respond to the people’s wish to end the war in Vietnam.

Unable to concentrate on my studies, I began to explore Eastern religions, specifically the religious synthesism of Rama Krishna. In the spring of 1969 I dropped out of the University of the South and hitchhiked to California, a stop on my way to India. In May I arrived in Berkeley, with a suitcase and a navy duffel bag and a copy of the Gospel According to Rama Krishna. I didn’t know it, but it was the end of the line.

Early one afternoon a few days later I met a young man on the steps of the student union on the campus at the University of California at Berkeley. I told him I had no place to stay and no money. He said I could keep my bags at the “Unified Family” a commune several blocks from the campus. He picked up my suitcase. I grabbed my duffle-bag, and off we went. At the commune Edwin Ang, an Indonesian man in his early forties, greeted us at the door. He was the center leader. We sat on cushions in the sparsely furnished living room while he asked me what I was doing. I replied: “I am searching for God.” He asked me to dinner and to a lecture that dealt with the commune’s philosophy. Within a week I had heard five lectures on the “Divine Principle.” In the last lecture an impassioned young woman spoke to us revealing that Moon was the “Messiah”. I already knew this. Earlier I had been looking for a sleeping bag in a closet and there, on a shelf, was a photograph of Sun Myung Moon, a man of 40, kimono-clad. He stared impassively into my startled eyes. I knew then that my new friends would soon tell me that this man was the Messiah. I joined the Unified Family in Berkeley. It then had thirteen members. In those days there was no Freedom Leadership Foundation, no CAUSA, no political activity and no fundraising. Our communal life consisted of meals, prayer services, singing, witnessing and studying the Divine Principle. At twenty-two I was the fourth oldest member of the group in Berkeley.

In the summer of 1969 the Unification Church in America had no more than 6 or 7 centers with a total membership numbering around 150. During that summer Neil Winterbottom, from the national headquarters in Washington D.C., visited the commune. He was English, about my age, bright and well read. He seemed more dynamic than my compadres in Berkeley.

He suggested that I should come to the headquarters in Washington. I came back East to Princeton, N.J., to visit my family, whose skepticism about my new found religion only strengthened my commitment. Their suggestion that this group might be a front for Korean neo-fascism was preposterous. I did not tell them then that I knew Moon was the Messiah. Time was short. The world had to be saved. I had found my work at last.

▲ Allen Tate Wood with Glenda Moody who founded the D.C. Striders.

Washington D.C. – Capitol Of The Archangel Nation

I arrived in Washington D.C. for the second FLF conference. Neil Salonen, who in 1975 was Moon’s right hand man in the United States, was ordered by Moon in the summer of 1969 to found the Church’s anti-Communist movement in this country and to name the organization the International Federation for The Extermination of Communism. Salonen set the Freedom Leadership Foundation as the American Branch of the IFEC. On paper the FLF exists as a nonprofit, non partisan educational corporation whose stated objective is to educate American Youth about the dangers of Communism. From its inception FLF was funded by the Unification Church. At this stage in the movement’s development, the general membership was politically unsophisticated. The idea of a political arm was new and the purists in the movement who believed that a Church should have nothing to do with politics voiced strong opposition. It was pointed out to them that the church in Japan and Korea carried out extensive anti-Communist political programs and that it was the “master’s” express desire to begin political work in the U.S. Thereafter opposition to political work was seen as infidelity to the Master.

In the fall of 1969 FLF launched a public relations campaign against the October 15 and November 15 Vietnam Moratoriums. Unification Church members went full steam into the political operation as well as stepping up the usual witnessing and teaching of the Divine Principle. From this perspective my paid job in the office of Congressman Frank Thompson Jr., democrat from New Jersey, certainly appears odd. “Thompy” was known as an opponent of the war and supported Gene McCarthy for President in 1968. While my “boss” on the Hill was making stronger statements than ever against the War in Vietnam, after hours I was in the streets leafleting for the Master in support of it. In the fall of 1969 and the winter of 1970 Salonen scouted the hard-line anti-Communist groups in D.C. The fruits of his labor were winning the friendship and support of several influential men, including David Martin, the late Senator Dodd’s foreign affairs assistant (later a member on the staff of the Senate’s Internal Security Committee), Dolph Droge and Sven Kramer, Nixon’s special assistants on Vietnam and Charles Stephens, an independently wealthy man in his early thirties, who devoted a good deal of his time to promoting aggressive war policies through ad hoc groups of his own creation on university campuses throughout the country. In the fall of 1969 and the spring of 1970 I worked increasingly with FLF.

Partisan Political Activity

In March of 1970 Salonen stepped down from the Presidency of FLF as a result of internecine conflict between himself and W. Farley Jones (then President of the Unification Church in America). Salonen was sent to Colorado to cool off and I was made President of FLF. It was not until a year later that I discovered that my sudden promotion over the heads of my superiors was a result of the leadership’s conviction that I could “easily be controlled,” and that my clean cut American good looks and the gift of gab made me an ideal front man.

In May, Charles Stephens and I, with coaching from David Martin, formed a political lobby group called “American Youth for A Just Peace.” I called Unification Church members from all over the country to assist in a lobbying campaign in defense of Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and against the McGovern-Hatfield and Cooper-Church bills to limit American involvement. We ran several full page advertisements in the Washington Star and Washington Post, defending military aid to Cambodia, signed with my name as chairman. As a result the South Vietnamese Embassy invited AYJP members on a VIP tour of Vietnam. Eight Unification Church members, Stephens and two of his associates and I flew to Vietnam on August 22, 1970 for a ten day visit crowned by dinner with South Vietnamese President Thieu in the Presidential Palace in Saigon. While we were in Saigon, the Cambodian government invited us to visit Cambodia. We spent five days there. General Lon Nol gave us an audience.

We appeared on CBS national television evening news. Walter Cronkite transported the audience at home in the U.S. to our group digging a fortification ditch around the perimeter of Phnom Penh. Shovel in hand, I begged for more military aid for Cambodia in its struggle against communist aggression. The CBS correspondent described me, I remember, as a spokesman for a group of young Americans who had come to Southeast Asia to “find the facts.” The South Vietnamese government paid for our round trip air fare with the explicit understanding that we would use the information we gathered to fight the Peace Movement on U.S. campuses and to generate support for the war. We were given royal treatment. At each stop the red carpet was rolled out. In Cambodia when we disembarked from the plane there were several thousand people waiting at the airport to greet us. A double row of 100 school girls was holding red roses. I felt like Lord Jim.

We left Cambodia and flew to Japan to visit the Japanese Unification Church and to participate in the World Anti-Communist League’s fourth annual conference held in Kyoto. That was followed by a mass rally of 25,000 people in Tokyo at the Budokan Sports Palace. The WACL conference was sponsored by the International Federation for Victory Over Communism, the political arm of the Japanese Unification Church. Delegates from 53 nations attended. The American delegate was Senator Strom Thurmond and the honorary chairman of the conference was a prominent Japanese industrialist, Ryoichi Sasakawa.

▲ World Anti-Communist League, WACL, rally at the Budokan Hall, Tokyo, Japan in September, 1970, sponsored by IFVC. The Freedom Leadership Foundation is the American affiliate of the IFVC.

Meeting The Shogun

Sasakawa was a fascist youth leader in the 1930s. The Japanese Unification Church proudly told us that Sasakawa had helped create the Japanese Kamikaze program and that he had been instrumental in the Hitler Tojo pact. Sasakawa was convicted as a class A war criminal at the end of World War II and spent several years in jail. In 1975 he was the president of 13 major Japanese corporations, including the largest ship building company in Japan. He is also head of all Japanese karate schools. Sasakawa, on a visit to the Korean Unification Church, told church members that he was “Mr. Moon’s dog.”

▲ Left to right: Won-bok Choi (a ‘second wife’ of Moon), Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, unknown, Hyo-won Eu (who wrote the 1957 Divine Principle and was the main lecturer and organizer of the UC in Korea in the late 1950s and 1960s) and Osami Kuboki (leader of the UC of Japan) at Gimpo airport, Seoul.

After the WACL Conference we visited Unification Church centers in Japan. They were awe-inspiring to all of us. Then there were approximately 3,000 dedicated young followers who lived in Church centers for 20 to 100 members all over Japan. Seventy percent of them were involved in full time fundraising by selling flowers on street corners 14 hours a day. The rank and file members lived on a diet of rice and bread crusts. Church centers usually consisted of two large rooms with several smaller rooms adjacent. The large rooms served as separate men’s and women’s sleeping quarters. Anywhere from 10 to 50 people would sleep on tatami mats on the floor in one of the larger rooms. The center leader had a room to himself. The atmosphere in these centers was one of rigid military discipline and self-denial. All the Japanese martial virtues were harnessed and focussed on the molding of a group psyche whose sole object was to exalt Moon.

At The Feet Of “The Master”

▲ “Master” Sun Myung Moon

After 17 days in Japan, seven of us flew to Korea to meet Moon and to visit the Korean Unification Church. We were housed in the dormitory of one of Moon’s Anti-Communist training centers, inside the walls of the Unification Church’s air rifle factory, about an hour and a half drive from Seoul. Now, after praying in his name for 16 months, I was finally to meet the “Master”. From our window in the Anti-Communist training dormitory we saw Moon and his wife approaching across the dry mud field separating the dormitory and the air rifle factory. I, with the others, ran out of the building and raced across the muddy yard to greet them. I saw a dark haired, heavy set man whose receding hairline accentuated an already ample brow. He was wearing a white peasant tunic and dark trousers. He looked as he did in his photographs but older and heavier. His disciplined movements and compact body conveyed a sense of coiled power. Moon shook hands with each of us, smiling broadly. I saw, as he turned sideways in front of me, a large piece of red wax in his right ear. I treasured this excrescence as a sign of his humanity. (Perhaps it was a wax ear plug from the rifle factory.)

▲ A Unification Church owned gun factory in Korea, probably in the 1970s.

My Mission

During my visit to Korea in October I was given a private audience with Moon. I was ushered into a lounge adjacent to his private quarters above the main church building in Seoul. We sat opposite each other on a plain rug separated by a black lacquer table inlaid with two finely worked mother of pearl dragons. For an hour he instructed me on various matters. The only interruption was the arrival of a messenger, a Korean man in his forties who prostrated himself at Moon’s feet before addressing the “Master.” Moon said to me, “You have a great responsibility. It is your job to initiate the work of winning the academic community in America to my side.” Further he said, “The allegiance of the scholarly community is a vital key in my plan to restore the world. Since universities hold the reigns of certification for all the major professions and since universities are the crucible in which young Americans form their basic attitudes and life directions, we must forge a path toward influencing and ultimately controlling American campuses.”

Moon held the Japanese Church up to us as an example of the true pattern of serving the Messiah. It was his intention to shame us into greater fervor and zeal, and his tactic was largely successful. The relative impotence of the American church in comparison with the militancy, power and organization of the Japanese Unification Church was a source of humiliation to us all. Moon told us that he could not come to America until we had significantly increased the number of members, demonstrated a higher level of personal sacrifice, and achieved greater organizational unity. On our return to the U.S. we brought intimations of the future directions of the movement in America.

I returned to the U.S. on October 6, 1970, in time for an early morning press conference with AYJP co-chairman Charles Stephens. Between October and December Stephens and I spoke to civic groups in Washington, issued a tabloid [every two weeks] to congressmen and senators, and did all we could to beat the war drum in the nation’s capitol. AYJP was staffed entirely by Unification Church members.

In November of 1970 W. Farley Jones and Neil Salonen returned from Korea. There they had been “blessed” in a mass marriage ceremony by Moon. Unification Church doctrine states that marriage is available only to individuals who have attained perfection and that marriage by Moon is the instrument through which fallen man is grafted back onto the tree of life. (Moon’s revelation omits no detail and leaves nothing to the imagination. Its rigorous orthodoxy even prescribes the exact positions for consummation of the marriage.) On his return to the U.S., W. Farley Jones was informed that I had exhibited a romantic interest in a Unification Church woman. Any attachment of this sort not directly sanctioned by Moon is considered to be a sign of weakness and a manifestation of “satanic possession.”

Guilt By Accusation

Without the benefit of facing my accuser or of defending my actions, my guilt was established and tacit sentence was passed. For the time being this condemnation destroyed whatever prestige I had as an up and coming Church leader, and it made it difficult for me to continue as President of FLF. The Unification Church, lacking a philosophical or sacramental grasp of forgiveness, employs character assassination and guilt through innuendo as powerful tools in enforcing obedience. This incident was not a special case. It is an example of Church policy. Salonen, resurrected from Colorado and “blessed” by Moon, was now fit to reassume the Presidency of FLF.

In January of 1971, W. Farley Jones sent me to the Level Two Training Program as an anti-Communist lecturer. This was the first in a series of national church training programs conducted in Washington D.C.

In December of 1971, Moon came to the U.S. to take direct control of the American Unification Church. All income was collectivized immediately. Outside jobs were dropped. Membership in the Church became a full time occupation whose sole material reward was room and board. At this point Moon established the International One World Crusade, billed as a Christian revival youth movement. It was, in fact, a clever maneuver to recruit more troops for the Unification Church.

Moon assigned Travis Jones to start forming a center at the University of Maryland campus at College Park. In January of 1972 a number of us joined Travis in College Park. There we were left to our own devices. By June we had gained 12 new members, making a total of 21. Elated by this success and driven by the labor of 15 full time fund-raisers, we purchased an estate in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. The previous January we had started a candle factory to raise money to support ourselves and to further the work of the Unification Church. From early March of 1972 we delivered candles to church centers up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The churches sold the candles for a 400% profit.

In August the entire Unification Church began to raise $294,000 for the down payment on “Belvedere,” an $800,000 estate in Tarrytown, N.Y. This money was raised by young people selling candles and flowers 16 hours a day on a diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chicken soup — self-denial for the Master. We, in Upper Marlboro working three shifts, 24 hours a day for 40 days, produced 200,000 candles for the effort. The down payment was made. Moon stated, “Heaven gave me this house.” Belvedere served as Moon’s private residence until the purchase of a neighboring estate within the year costing $600,000.

▲ The Belvedere estate near New York

A year later, by March of 1973, we in Upper Marlboro, began to have serious doubts about Moon’s claim to be the “Messiah” and about his autocratic methods. That month, Travis Jones, who had pioneered the work in Maryland, was arbitrarily relieved of his responsibilities and sent to Belvedere to be reprogrammed. I was made One World Crusade Commander of Maryland, i.e., head of the Church in the state. Travis’ reports from New York State were grim.

Brainwashing: A Glimpse Into The Promised Land – 100 Days Training Program At Tarrytown

The training program at Belvedere was aimed at breaking down the individual’s identity by subjecting him or her to an emotionally and physically exhausting schedule of repetitive lectures, exercise and door to door soliciting. Trainees were quartered in large rooms in army bunks with little or no privacy. Men were strongly advised to cut their hair short. Mustaches and beards were unthinkable. The entire scenario was an echo of Marine boot camp. The restructuring of the trainee’s ego was based on Moon’s theology that projects absolute faith in Moon as the essential building block of a “restored” personality. It attacks the validity of the individual conscience. It explicitly denies the individual’s capacity to make morally responsible existential decisions. Somewhere along the line in the theology, love of God is translated into blind obedience to Moon and his representatives in the hierarchical chain. One is finally left with submission to Moon as the only answer to fallen man’s condition of moral paralysis.

Kneeling Before The Master

During Travis’ tour at Belvedere and during my visits there throughout the spring and summer our doubts about Moon and the Unification Church were crystallized by a series of macabre demonstrations of Moon’s essentially psychopathic relationship with his followers. Shortly after Travis’ relocation to Belvedere, Moon spoke at a Sunday church service at National Headquarters at 1611 Upshur St. in Washington D.C. The entire Maryland group was there. As the One World Crusade Commander of Maryland I was given a coveted seat on the front row next to Unification Church President Neil Salonen. During his harangues, Moon hit me several times on the shoulder. When he finished his speech, he motioned me forward and asked me to kneel in front of the congregation. I thought he was going to ask me to confess my sins publicly. As I knelt, he kicked me in the hind quarters and then demanded of the audience whether they would follow him if he treated them like this. The immediate response was a deafening “yes” with clenched fists raised toward the ceiling.

Travis told me of a similar incident that took place while he was at Belvedere. In front of the entire training group of 70 young converts Moon hit Young Whi Kim, president of the Korean Unification Church, across the buttocks with a wooden cane with such force that the cane snapped in half. At Belvedere, Moon also directly supervised the “War Games” in which One World Crusade Commanders and State Representatives took part in a massive variant of tug of war. Two groups of 50 would try to drag each other bodily across a certain line and back 40 yards to “prison camp”. Moon stood on the tip of a boulder in the path of the line. On a signal from Moon the teams would charge across the line and engage in a no holds barred battle to subdue and capture their adversaries.

Travis saw one guy with a broken arm, somebody else with a separated collarbone, and bloody noses were on all sides. Moon conducts these games between different nationality groups to stimulate competition and to reinforce a sense of pride in victory and shame in defeat. I remember a day at Belvedere in May of 1973 during a leadership conference. Moon had just finished a short speech and he then asked for general questions. I rose to my feet to address him. I said, “as a One World Crusade Commander, I frequently encounter the problem of homosexuality among our men.” I asked him if there was anything we could do to help these people. He replied, “Tell them that if it really becomes a problem to cut it off, barbecue it, put it in a shoe box and send it to me.” The audience roared with laughter.

The summer of 1973 we had three centers in Maryland: one in Upper Marlboro, one in College Park and one in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore. We had approximately 35 members. In the late summer we began preparation for Moon’s ‘Day of Hope’ speaking tour that opened in Baltimore in the first week of October. We plastered the city with billboards. We flew a plane over the Columbus Day parade. We arranged a meeting for Moon with Sol Orlinsky, president of Baltimore’s city council. We rented the Lyric theater for three days for his speeches. With the help of two international bus teams composed of Unification Church members from Japan, England, Germany, France and Holland, we sold thousands of tickets to his speeches. The evening of October 6 we held a ceremonial dinner at the Baltimore Hilton. Political, business and social leaders attended the dinner. Telegrams of encouragement and support were received and read at the dinner from Cardinal Shehan and from Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, former Mayor of Baltimore and former governor of the State of Maryland respectively. All our fanfare was of little avail. Not more than 350 people attended Moon’s lectures at the Lyric Theater.

Imperial Taster For The Royal Consort

At the dinner I and ranking members of the palace guard were armed with concealed Billy Clubs to protect Mr. Moon. I was seated at the head table to the left of Mrs. Moon. I was instructed to switch all my servings of food with hers. In addition to my other titles, I had at last been raised to the exalted position of imperial taster for the royal consort.

Meanwhile Travis Jones had been sent to Louisiana to be the One World Crusade Commander there and to prepare for the ‘Day of Hope’ in New Orleans. A group of us from Upper Marlboro visited Travis in New Orleans shortly after Moon’s appearances. Travis was distraught by the direction of events in the church. We concurred in his disillusionment.

We returned to Upper Marlboro at the end of November to find “Doctor,” Joseph Sheftick, an unlicensed chiropractor, whose academic title was awarded to him by Moon, had been sent to Upper Marlboro to diagnose the situation and to see if an adjustment was needed. Sheftick felt that the prognosis was good, provided that the four leaders at Upper Marlboro were removed. He assured Moon that the rank and file would remain faithful.

In the days that followed, 26 Church members of our group in Maryland repudiated Moon and his teachings. In mid December, Moon’s full page newspaper advertisements appeared in the New York Times and other major papers exhorting the American people to forgive President Nixon before an indictment had been issued or guilt established. That clinched our decision to leave the Church. Early in the fall Moon had rejected the idea of publicly supporting President Nixon; but, during a two week visit to Japan and Korea he had second thoughts. On his return to the U.S. he publicly announced that God had instructed him to forgive President Nixon.

Shades of The Grand Inquisitor Forgiveness Through The Assumption of Power

We wrote Moon a letter explaining why we could no longer be a part of his church. Moon responded to us through Colonel Bo Hi Pak, President of the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation. He invited me and other leaders in Maryland to come to Belvedere for a vacation to be followed by retraining, after which we were to be awarded “positions of greater power and authority.” We refused. It was an extremely difficult time for all of us. Some returned to school, some to their families. Approximately 12 who left with us are today living and working with a pacifist Christian Community.

It was the unanimous decision of all three centers to sell all real estate and to liquidate all assets and to give the proceeds to bona fide Christian Charities. Unfortunately we were unable to do this, because the Unification Church brought suite against us. They claimed that we had stolen the land and properties from them. In a pre trial hearing the judge threw the case out of court. He said that he seemed to remember something in the Bible prohibiting Christians from suing one another or anyone else, for that matter. Mr. Moon is apparently unswayed by this tradition for law suites seem to figure prominently in his plan to restore the world.

It is now 27 years since I left the Unification Church. Time and distance have allowed me the opportunity of scrutinizing and reflecting on my time with Moon. Literature and mythology provide the parameters within which I attempt to assimilate and resolve the grotesque variables of this dark Odyssey. In literature and myth I find the type of myself in the young innocent, who is proud, blind, self-righteous and idealistic. I also find the type of Moon, the zealous Promethean whose paranoid delusions of grandeur become the altar upon which thousands of souls are sacrificially slaughtered along the road to Xanadu.

20th Century Protestantism’s Captain Ahab

Often I think of my years in service to Moon as an example, an instance of Ishmael’s journey with Captain Ahab on board the Pequod in search of the White Whale. To me, Moon is twentieth century Protestantism’s Captain Ahab, a titan whose flailing hubris filled fists would have us take vengeance in our own hands and send us all off after the white whale. In mythology, this experience lends itself to analogies with the Hero’s journey into the Underworld, where he must overcome or outwit the forces of darkness to earn the right to re-enter the world of light.

Unification Church doctrine states that those who follow Moon are the chosen. In that light they see themselves not so much as the servants of mankind, but rather as the architects of history. Men who have been called out of the anonymous masses to assist the messiah in laying the groundwork for the millennium. They believe that, as the chosen, they are above the law. Like Raskolnikov in Dostoievski’s Crime and Punishment, they have arrived at the humbling and exalting conclusion that they are more valuable to God, to history and to the future than other people.

History is teeming with people whose desire for reform has led them to accept the superman philosophy of men like Hitler and Moon. The fruits of this variety of psychological and political titanism are always catastrophic. Moon is an unfortunate and formidable by product of the West’s inability to live within its Judeo-Christian traditions.

In the name of the Second Coming and using the authority of Christian apocalyptic prophecy, Moon promises to restore the world to a state of peace and harmony essentially through the use of power. Jesus repudiated the use of force. Moon, who claims to fulfill the promises of Christianity, is resurrecting divine kingship on the scale [of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt]. He preaches genetic selection, and he practices sympathetic magic.

Up From The Abyss

The daylight of this world to which I have returned after my sojourn in the messianic abyss is not always clear or warm, but I rejoice in it, because I know that whatever path I take, my conscience will never be the prisoner or possession of another man.

END

Mis Cuatro Años y Medio con el Señor de las Moscas

Allen Tate Wood on Moon’s church – articles and video transcripts, etc.

1. Interview at North Texas State University (Summer 1985)

2. Deconstructing Extremism in 21st Century America (c. 2014)

3. Interview with Walter Evans in the Texas Metroplex (1985)

4. Moonstruck: A memoir of my life in a cult – by Allen Tate Wood with Jack Vitek (1979)

5. Defectors inside story: How the nickel and dime Moonies rake in $219 million

Report of the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the committee of International Relations 

U.S. House of Representatives  October 31, 1978 

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Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Sun Myung Moon makes me ashamed to be Korean

Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe, transcript and links

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Allen Tate Wood’s website: http://www.atwood7.com/