John Gorenfeld has posted a video clip of Sun Myung Moon appearing before the Judiciary Committee on June 26, 1984. In the clip, Moon acknowledges that by then he had already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into America from overseas.
Quoting Moon from Gorenfeld's clip:
Several hundred million dollars have been poured into America because this nation will decide the destiny of the world. These contributions are primarily coming from overseas.
That quote was from 1984. As of today the amount Moon has
"poured" into America has reached well into the billions. Stay with me on the flop and I will interpret the Mooneeze in that quote and tell you where billions Moon used to bring the right to power in America originated...
First let me interpret the Mooneeze in that quote for you, this is what the conservative's Savior was saying:
"Though I am not citizen, I have brought bags and bags of cash from overseas into the USA to manipulate your political structure - I do this to bring about my world vision. You are too damn naive to see it or care; you will laugh at me or ignore me, so I will get away with it. I will push you to a right wing, theocratic, homophobic, authoritarian governance and I will do this right before your eyes and you will not see for you are blind to my efforts. In fact, the conservative movement in America, the Christian right, who as the Messiah I am here to raise up to control your government, will help me. You will all help me, either directly or by your silence."
This is the overseas money that created the empire which has funded the Washington Times, and people like Falwell, theocrat Lahaye, and to bail out and help keep in business conservative mail order guru Richard Viguerie. This is the money that paid for George Bush 41 to shill for Moon on three continents. This is the money which created front groups designed to gather the "Christian" right for political power like the American Freedom Coalition.
Moon has been wildly successful but the media will not talk about it.
Think about this as you read below. For a couple years now we have watched the right, O'Reilly, Rush, Coulter, Hannity and all the rest of the mind molders of the conservative movement, as they bitched and moaned that U.S. citizen George Soros was trying to "buy the Democratic Party" with his donations of roughly 25 million dollars to liberal causes during the 2004 election cycle. Do you ever hear them tell their followers that Sun Myung Moon has spent BILLIONS bringing them to power? If you ask a conservative who their "sugar daddy" is, they will likely mention Richard Mellon Scaife. The WP reported a few years ago that Scaife had spent some $300 million on conservative causes over 40 years. SUN MYUNG MOON has outspent Scaife 7 fold on the Washington Times alone in 20, yet most of the people in the country don't know Moon is still alive and certainly most conservatives don't know he is their prime "sugar daddy."
No, he didn't do it by himself, but let's look at the money Moon used to play a major role in bringing the right to power. Let's look at the money the Moon organization used to give right wing conservatism the boost it needed to put it in control of our closely divided government. Let's look at the money without which it is doubtful George Bush would would have been nominated, let alone allowed to become president.
From the WP Nov 1997
The long-standing explanation: It is Japan, not Korea, that provides the bulk of the church's wealth -- as much as 70 percent, church observers estimate. A former high-ranking Japanese church member told The Post in 1984 that $800 million had come from Japan into the United States in the previous nine years.
Japanese church members have long turned profits selling ginseng products and religious items such as miniature stone pagodas -- products imported from Moon companies in Korea. But tough sales tactics -- as well as disputed claims of spiritual power -- have led to class-action suits in Japan, and hundreds of claimants have won judgments and settlements in the last five years.
I STRONGLY URGE YOU to read part two here to get a good picture of how the swindles worked.
From the WP Sept 1984
Exhorted by pep talks to meet "the respected father's" needs, Japanese church members have worked in recent years under sales quotas requiring them to transfer to the United States roughly $2.5 million a month earmarked for The Times, Soejima said.
"The Washington Times was the top priority of the entire Unification Church worldwide," said Soejima, who was editor of Sekai Nippo (World Daily News), a church-controlled Tokyo newspaper, before being fired last October following a dispute with church officials over control of the paper. .....
Starting in 1975, they said, the church mobilized its Japanese members for a massive fund-raising effort that has used high-pressure sales techniques to take advantage of the religious superstitions of Japanese consumers.
Handwritten notes that Soejima made at some church finance meetings indicate that the Japanese church was taking in more than $100 million a year during 1981 and 1982, most of which was transferred to church headquarters in New York. ...
According to Soejima and others, the profits from sales of these items can be enormous. In an extreme case, he said, a vase that cost about $21 was sold for $8,300. A quantity of ginseng worth about $42 sold for eight times that amount. One salesman can raise about $4,000 per month, he said.
The salesmen's expenses are minimal. During his years in the church, Soejima said, he often visited church members at grimy group houses where they slept half a dozen to a room. The members receive no salary from the church and immediately hand over all their sales proceeds to the house "leader." Once a month, Soejima said, a church official comes to the house and "they collect it in cash and bring it to Tokyo."
The Unification Church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, has been found responsible by the Japanese court system of swindling the citizens of Japan.
This is how the Japanese Lawyers association described what followers of Moon have been put through in Japan.
All day long, they are forced to do fund-raising by committing illegal acts such as swindling through a fraudulent missionary work and spiritual sales.
As of today, UC appeals to the higher courts in Japan have failed. This is an older quote from one ruling where the Japanese courts found the UNIFICATION CHURCH responsible.
The Court recognized that the Unification Church as a religious corporate body did perpetrate unlawful acts against plaintiffs "A" and "B". In addition to corporate liability, the Court also holds the employees of the Unification Church liable for the actions of the church corporate body. The Court ruling has set a new, epoch-making legal precedent for future District Court decisions. [Judgment by the Fukuoka District Court on the Unification Church [English Translation] Court: Fukuoka District Case Number: 1990 #1082 Date of Judgment: 27 May 1994
According to the WP, the Unification Church had paid 150 million dollars settling many of the claims by 1996.
At last count a couple of years ago, there were 20,000 claims totaling $800 million dollars. The people fighting for the citizens of Japan against the UC say this about the figures "...most certainly this sum is only a fraction of all real damages incurred by people in Japan as a result of Unification Church activities."
That would put the amounts swindled from the Japanese into the billions.
How did they get the cash into the USA? Nansook Hong, Moon's ex-daughter-in-law, reported a good bit on the group's cash smuggling activities in her book, In the Shadows of the Moons.
Here is an excerpt from a Robert Parry article which discussed Hong's book:
According to Nansook Hong, much of the money went into family safes to be doled out later to fund Moon's American businesses, his political operations and his family's luxuries.
Nansook Hong described one incident in 1992 when she personally participated in smuggling cash past U.S. Customs at the instructions of Rev. Moon's wife, Hak Ja Han Moon. Hong recounted numerous other cases in which the Moons received cash from church members who brought money from overseas and delivered it in bags. ...
Millions more pour through Moon front groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as the Women's Federation for World Peace and the American Freedom Coalition, indirectly benefiting other leading conservatives, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Iran-contra figure Oliver L. North. ...
"The Unification Church was a cash operation," Nansook Hong wrote. "I watched Japanese church leaders arrive at regular intervals at East Garden [the Moon compound north of New York City] with paper bags full of money, which the Reverend Moon would either pocket or distribute to the heads of various church-owned business enterprises at his breakfast table.
" The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States; they would tell customs agents that they were in America to gamble at Atlantic City. In addition, many businesses run by the church were cash operations, including several Japanese restaurants in New York City. I saw deliveries of cash from church headquarters that went directly into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon's closet."
Mrs. Moon pressed her daughter-in-law into one cash-smuggling incident after a trip to Japan in 1992. Mrs. Moon had received "stacks of money" and divvied it up among her entourage for the return trip through Seattle, Hong wrote.
"I was given $20,000 in two packs of crisp new bills," Hong remembered. "I hid them beneath the tray in my makeup case. ... I knew that smuggling was illegal, but I believed the followers of Sun Myung Moon answered to higher laws."...
In 1994, Rev. Moon sent Hyo Jin $1 million in cash, Hong wrote. Hyo Jin delivered $600,000 to the Manhattan Center in a Bloomingdale's shopping bag and "skimmed off" $400,000 for himself. Former Manhattan Center officials have confirmed independently that the $600,000 was laundered through other Moon business enterprises.
Nansook Hong wrote that Moon "demonstrated contempt for U.S. law every time he accepted a paper bag full of untraceable, undeclared cash collected from true believers." ["Moon's Dark Shadow" by Robert Parry Oct 1, 1998]
The Washington Post reported this in 1997:
Ron Paquette, who was president of Manhattan Center Studio, the church's New York recording facility, until he left the faith in 1994. Paquette, whose job gave him access to financial information about several church-related businesses, said he believes virtually none of Unification's U.S. operations is profitable. "A lot of the stuff they do is for prestige, so they can show President Bush our dance academy and our newspaper," Paquette said. "The idea is to bring Bush in, use his name and picture, buy Moon credibility."
The road to that credibility, critics say, is paved with cash.
"Rev. Moon sent bags of cash, big fat bags, stacks and stacks of hundreds, from Korea and Japan to Manhattan Center," the church's recording studio in New York City, Paquette said. "Whenever we asked where the money was coming from, the answer was it just came 'from Father.'"
From Robert Parry, "The Bush-Moon Money Conduit"
Maria Madelene Pretorious, a former Unification Church member who worked at Moon's Manhattan Center, a New York City music venue and recording studio, testified at a court hearing in Massachusetts that in December of 1993 or January of 1994, one of Moon's sons, Hyo Jin Moon, returned from a trip to Korea "with $600,000 in cash which he had received from his father. ... Myself along with three or four other members that worked at Manhattan Center saw the cash in bags, shopping bags."
In an interview with me in the mid-1990s, Pretorious said Asian church members would bring cash into the United States where it would be circulated through Moon's business empire as a way to launder it. At the center of this financial operation, Pretorious said, was One-Up Corp., a Delaware-registered holding company that owned many Moon enterprises including the Manhattan Center and New World Communications, the parent company of the Washington Times.
"Once that cash is at the Manhattan Center, it has to be accounted for," Pretorious said. "The way that's done is to launder the cash. Manhattan Center gives cash to a business called Happy World which owns restaurants. ... Happy World needs to pay illegal aliens. ... Happy World pays some back to the Manhattan Center for 'services rendered.' The rest goes to One-Up and then comes back to Manhattan Center as an investment."
Today Moon's organization is involved with or is attempting to insinuate itself into peace negotiations with North Korea, the Middle East and into the political structure of countries all over the world. He has now opened up the left flank of Christianity having
gathered many African American ministers into his web of influence. No doubt Moon has used conservatism and right wing Christianity as his predominate agents to bring his vision to America. But democratic politicians, mostly on the local and state level, send his fronts greetings on their stops around the country and do nothing to discourage his plans for the planet.
Moon, as you know, claims he is the Messiah and that Jesus failed to complete his mission. They have gone so far as to perform a service in which Jesus was married to Korean woman to get Him into heaven.
From Parry's discussion of Nansook Hong, Moon's x daughter in law's book:
Even as Moon poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the American Right and ingratiated himself with President Reagan, Moon's religious pronouncements grew increasingly bizarre. When one of his teenage sons, Heung Jin, died in a car crash in 1983, Moon declared the Heung Jin had supplanted Jesus as the King of Heaven.
In 1984, Moon arranged a strange ceremony in which he married his dead son's spirit to Hoon Sook Pak, the daughter of longtime Moon lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, then the publisher of The Washington Times. Moon's theology required the wedding because he believed only married individuals could enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Even Jesus needed Rev. Moon's help in this way. "In what must stand as his ultimate act of arrogance, Sun Myung Moon actually had matched Jesus to an elderly Korean woman," Nansook Hong wrote. "Jesus himself needed the intervention of the Reverend Moon to move through those gates" of heaven.
I am not a Biblical scholar but everything I do know about the Book is explicit that Christians should expose false teaching and then shun or ignore the person or group who teaches those falsehoods. It does not say you should
honor them, work with them and it certainly doesn't say you should
promote them.
From U.S News and World Report March 27, 1989 (transcribed not available on the net):
On New Year's Day, 1987, South Korean mystic Sun Myung Moon, who considers himself to be the son of God, told his Unification Church followers that he wanted to expand the church's political influence in the United States. His aim, Moon said, was "the natural subjugation of the American government and population." ...
[the Unification Church] has established a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation, the largest of the conservative think tanks and an important source of government personnel during the Reagan administration. Although Heritage officials deny it, the foundation has dramatically changed its policy toward the Unification Church. In the early 80's the foundation, wary of the church's aims, prohibited staff or fellows from being associated with Unification Church organizations or taking money from the church or church-financed institutions.
As the Washington Times has become the voice of capital conservatives, the Heritage Foundation has become far more tolerant of church ties. ...
The Unification Church's newfound influence has occasioned intense debate among conservatives. One group of worried young conservatives meets regularly in private to compare notes about the problem. But little of the debate has surfaced in public forums. "Most people are afraid to address the issue because they don't want to publicize the extent of the church's involvement," says Amy Moritz of the Conservative National Center for Public Policy Research.
Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to the church, conservatives also fear repercussions if they expose the church's role. That happened when one organization, the Capital Research Center, published a newsletter last November warning of the church's attempt to create a "centralized world theocracy." One of its board members, who was also on the board of the International Security Council, resigned in protest, and conservatives charging that the paper was creating discord on the right, besieged the center with angry calls. "We got a very, very strong reaction -- almost as if we were the enemy -- because we raised the issue," says CRC Chairman Willa Johnson, a former president of the Heritage Foundation.
From Mr. Parry's
Dark Side of Rev. Moon: Buying the Right
By the mid-1980s, Moon's Unification Church had carved out a niche as an acceptable part of the American right. In one speech to his followers, Moon boasted that "without knowing it, even President Reagan is being guided by Father (Moon)." Yet, Moon also made clear that his longer-range goal was the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and America's democratic form of government. "History will make the position of Reverend Moon clear, and his enemies, the American population and government will bow down to him." Moon said, speaking of himself in the third person. "That is Father's tactic, the natural subjugation of the American government and population."
While we still haven't figured out what he did here,
Moon has moved onto the planet and he will be successful there also because no one sees what he is doing and the media refuses to report on his efforts.
No one post nor any one individual can cover Moon and his efforts, the story is much to large and involved. The above is just a very small snapshot. Please look around on your own. If you would like more on his money, about how the Unification Church has funded its operation in the United States try reading the links in numbers 41-51 here.
For more on all aspects of the Moon organization visit John Gorenfeld's eye opening blog which is back in operation after a short hiatus. Also check out former members, Steve Hassan and Allen Tate Wood's sites.
ON EDIT: One of many things I forgot to mention with regard to the Moon organziation making all this money from Japan: You might think the leaders would feel guilty about these swindles but Moon simply made it part of the doctrine that Japan, as the "Eve" country, supply him with funds.
from the WP Aug 4, 1996
Oe [church official] said Unification Church doctrine requires Japan to bankroll church activities. He said South Korea is "Adam's country," Japan is "Eve's country" and the other countries where the church has followers are their offspring. "Japan is mother and wife," Oe said. "So Japan has the mission to support her husband and raise her children."