[Marxism] Fwd: For Scholars

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(From Jim Craven)

> George W. Bush and The Moonies
> -
> The National Examiner/January 9, 2001 By Tom Kuncl
> -
> President-Elect George W. Bush has a strong personal and financial 
> connection with the cult-like Moonie church, say sources. Critics say the 
> Moonie church opposes Christianity and the American way.
> -
> In fact, the Bush family may have received as much as $10 million from the 
> Moonies in recent years. Rev. Sun Myung Moon considers himself a personal 
> friend of our new president, according to newspaper reports.
> -
> The incoming chief executive's own father - former President George H. 
> Bush - has been courted by the Rev. Moon's Unification Church since he 
> became vice president in the Reagan administration, says a report by 
> investigative journalist and Newsweek correspondent Robert Parry.
> -
> Rev. Moon, now 80, was even a VIP guest at the Reagan-Bush inauguration.
> -
> The mega-wealthy South Korea-based church remained an unwavering supporter 
> of the elder Bush's presidency, especially in the Moonie-owned Washington 
> Times newspaper, Parry says. "The 15-year-old Washington Times doesn't 
> rank among the Top 100 U.S. dailies in terms of circulation," writes 
> columnist Norman Solomon.
> -
> "Yet, financied by the Unification Church's deep pockets, it wields 
> enormous influence in the nation's capital. Elevating innuendo to 'news', 
> the paper excels at smearing liberals and centrists."
> -
> This influence, writes Parry, "could extend into the next century as the 
> ex-president works to shore up convervative support for his eldest son." 
> The Times endorsed Bush in his election race against Al Gore.
> -
> "Sources close to Bush say the ex-president has worked hard to pull 
> well-to-do conservatives and their money behind their son's candidacy. 
> Moon is one of the deepest pockets in right-wing circles, having financed 
> important conservative activists from both the religious right, such as 
> Jerry Falwell, and Inside-the-Beltway right-wing professionals."
> -
> When the elder Bush was defeated after one term, says Solomon, the 
> Unification Church in essence handed the ex-president a so-called "golden 
> parachute" - business slang for chief executives' usually hefty severance 
> packages.
> -
> Solomon quoted a spokesman for the elder Bush as saying: "President Bush 
> has no relationship with Rev. Moon or the Unification Church." But, 
> Solomon wrote: "The facts tell a very different story."
> -
> Parry confirms that the elder Bush could have become a wealthy man merely 
> from the checks for speaking at many high-profile Moonie events on three 
> continents, including the launch of a church-owned newspaper in Buenos 
> Aires, Argentina.
> -
> "Estimates of Bush's fee for the Buenos Aires appearance alone ran between 
> $100,000 and $500,000," wrote Parry. "Sources close to the Unification 
> Church have put the total Bush-Moon package in the millions, with one 
> source [estimating] that Bush stood to make as much as $10 million." Bush 
> has consistently refused to answer if or how much he has been paid by Moon.
> -
> Shockingly, if the Bush family is accepting all this cash, it's coming 
> from a man who has given speeches calling America "the kingdom of Satan" 
> and vowing "the liquidation of American individualism."
> -
> John Stacey, a former Moonie, says: "It's very anti-Jesus. Moon says: 
> 'Jesus failed miserably. He died a lonely death. Rev. Moon is the hero 
> that comes and saves Jesus.' That's why I left." As President-elect George 
> W. Bush prepares to occupy the Oval Office, critics claim the elder Bush's 
> activities create a clear conflict of interest.
> -
> The elder Bush has a "public persona as the happy World War II veteran who 
> is letting the American people see him jumping out of airplanes and being 
> a good family man," says historian Douglas Brinkley of the University of 
> Louisiana. "And the covert persona is going around giving talks with 
> people like Rev. Moon."
> -
> Meanwhile, the incoming president has admitted that while his father won't 
> have a formal title in his administration, "of course, I will seek his advice."
> -
> To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject 
> click here.
> -
>
> Moonies knee-deep in faith-based funds Pushing celibacy, marriage 
> counseling under Bush plan - Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion WriterSunday, 
> October 3, 2004
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> President Bush has some new troops in his crusade to promote "healthy 
> marriage" and teen celibacy with federal funds -- followers of the Rev. 
> Sun Myung Moon, the controversial Korean evangelist and self-proclaimed 
> new world messiah.
> -
> At least four longtime operatives of Moon's Unification Church are on the 
> federal payroll or getting government grants in the administration's 
> Healthy Marriage Initiative and other "faith-based" programs.
> -
> Two of those Moon associates were in Oakland last week leading dozens of 
> local pastors and social workers enrolled in a "Certified Marriage 
> Education Training Seminar" at the Holiday Inn next to the Coliseum.
> -
> In some ways, Moon is an unlikely ally for President Bush's crusade to 
> promote traditional family values.
> -
> The 85-year-old Korean is perhaps best known for presiding over mass 
> marriage ceremonies for devotees whose unions are arranged by Moon or 
> other church leaders. After marriage, Unification Church couples are given 
> detailed instructions for their honeymoon, right down to the sexual 
> positions they are supposed to assume during their first three conjugal 
> couplings. According to Unification Church teachings, the children born 
> from these marriages are "blessed children,'' who, unlike the rest of 
> humanity, are born without original sin.
> -
> At the Oakland seminar, Josephine Hauer, a graduate of the Rev. Moon's 
> Unification Theological Seminary in New York and a newly hired "marriage 
> specialist" with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, worked 
> the crowd of ministers and church workers packed into a stuffy room.
> -
> "Family is a good thing," said Hauer, holding a cordless microphone in one 
> hand and her PowerPoint remote in the other. "I want to make this a 
> marriage culture again -- a healthy marriage culture.''
> -
> As Hauer spoke, the Rev. Bento Leal, another graduate of the seminary and 
> the associate minister at the Bay Area Family Church, a Unification Church 
> congregation in San Leandro, checked a list of names at the door.
> -
> Before her new federal job, Hauer was the director of marriage education 
> at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. That school was taken 
> over in 1992 by the Professors World Peace Academy, a Moon-affiliated 
> group, and its current president, Neil Salonen, is a former president of 
> the Unification Church in America.
> -
> After less than three days, attendees of the Sept. 23-25 seminar in 
> Oakland were awarded a "Certified Marriage Education Professional Document 
> of Completion," issued by Moon's University of Bridgeport.
> -
> "Sixteen hours of training won't make you the best marriage educator," 
> Hauer told her students. "But it takes all kinds of work to save marriage 
> -- people to run the sound system, write the press releases.''
> -
> During a seminar break, Hauer declined to answer any questions about her 
> ties to the Unification Church.
> -
> "I'm a professional. I don't talk about my religion or my politics," she 
> said. "My religion is not an issue.''
> -
> Bush administration officials agreed.
> -
> "We don't ask people's religious affiliation before we hire them,'' said 
> Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department 
> of Health and Human Services.
> -
> "But if someone uses federal funds to proselytize, that would be a 
> violation,'' Horn said. "It doesn't matter whether they are Baptist, 
> Presbyterian, Jewish, or even members of the Unification Church."
> -
> Last week's crash course on marriage education was sponsored by the 
> California State Healthy Marriage Initiative, an organization founded two 
> years ago by the Rev. Dion Evans, pastor of Chosen Vessels Christian 
> Church in Oakland.
> -
> Last month, Evans and his partners won a $366,179 grant from the Bush 
> administration's Compassion Capital Fund -- part of the latest $45 million 
> in social service contracts given to churches and community groups from 
> the program this year.
> -
> "For four years, I did this work with no government funds,'' said Evans, 
> adding that he has not yet received his first check from the Compassion 
> Capital Fund. Evans said he partnered with the University of Bridgeport 
> because "acknowledgement from a university gives them (seminar 
> participants) support.''
> -
> "We had to settle for the University of Bridgeport,'' he said. "This is 
> the last time we will be using them."
> -
> Critics say the Oakland program shows how difficult it is to give money to 
> religious organizations while maintaining separation of church and state.
> -
> "Moon has been a big backer of the faith-based initiative,'' said the Rev. 
> Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of 
> Church and State. "But it's beyond belief that you can have the University 
> of Bridgeport issuing marriage education certificates and claim that is 
> secular.''
> -
> Lynn said the Oakland program also shows how "there is virtually no 
> monitoring of where this money is going.''
> -
> "Money goes out and nobody knows how it's used and nobody knows what it's 
> for,'' he said.
> -
> Following the money from the federal government to the streets of Oakland 
> is not easy.
> -
> The organization that actually received the federal grant is the Institute 
> for Contemporary Studies, a conservative think tank in Oakland and one of 
> Evans' key partners in the California Healthy Marriage Initiative. That 
> partnership comes through another recently founded organization, the Bay 
> Area Inner City Leadership Alliance.
> -
> It was founded by the Rev. Walter L. Humphrey, the pastor of Moriah 
> Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in Oakland, and Robert Hawkins Jr., 
> president of the Institute for Contemporary Studies. Board members include 
> Evans and Leal, the Unification Church minister. Leal said the Institute 
> for Contemporary Studies, not the Unification Church, applied for the 
> federal funding for the marriage education training.
> -
> "Unificationism is my own faith," Leal said. "This just gives me a chance 
> to work with clergy who are also interested in this issue.''
> -
> Hawkins, the director of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, said 
> Moon's teachings were not part of the marriage education program.
> -
> "Bento (Leal) has never proselytized, and I didn't know Josie (Hauer) was 
> a Moonie,'' he said. "I just looked at her curriculum and thought it was 
> good. ''
> -
> Hawkins said the project is designed to give pastors of smaller inner city 
> churches new skills for "marriage and family strengthening." He added, 
> "It's an experiment. You have to start somewhere.''
> -
> Moon has also partnered with the Bush administration in support of the 
> Korean evangelist's strong teachings against premarital sex.
> -
> Free Teens USA, an after-school program in New Jersey promoting abstinence 
> until marriage, has been given $475,000 by the federal Health Resources 
> and Services Administration, another part of the Department of Health and 
> Human Services. Free Teens is led by Richard Panzer, another alumnus of 
> Unification Theological Seminary. Panzer was also a leader in the American 
> Constitution Committee, one of many political organizations affiliated 
> with Moon.
> -
> Panzer insists that his program is "devoid of any religious content.''
> -
> "I am a Unificationist, but I am also a professional,'' he said. "The 
> purpose of Free Teens is not to bring young people to any one religious 
> faith. ''
> -
> Another longtime political operative in Moon front groups, David Caprara, 
> now directs the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the 
> federal government's Corporation for National and Community Service. That 
> agency runs, among other things, AmeriCorps Vista, which works with 
> community organizations in low-income neighborhoods, and has emerged as a 
> key player in Bush's faith-based initiative, handing out $61 million to 
> faith-based organizations in fiscal year 2003.
> -
> Caprara is the former president of the American Family Coalition, a 
> "grassroots leadership alliance" funded by the Washington Times Foundation 
> and founded by Moon in 1984. Caprara declined to comment on his 
> Unification Church ties, referring questions to his press secretary, Sandy 
> Scott.
> -
> "We don't inquire about employee's personal religious beliefs,'' Scott 
> said. "What inspires David's work is a dedication to fighting poverty.''
> -
> During the 1970s, Moon's Unification Church was widely accused of 
> deceptively recruiting and "brainwashing" idealistic converts on street 
> corners and college campuses across the nation. In 1982, Moon made 
> headlines around the world when he presided over a mass marriage ceremony 
> involving 2,075 couples in New York's Madison Square Garden.
> -
> Late that decade, Moon spent a year in federal prison after being 
> convicted of income tax evasion.
> -
> For the past three decades, his controversial sect has struggled to make 
> the leap from "cult" to "religion," to win credibility among political and 
> religious leaders in the United States and around the world.
> -
> Through such publications as the Washington Times, a church-financed, 
> conservative daily newspaper in the nation's capital, and through 
> alliances with priests and pastors across the theological spectrum, Moon 
> and company have spent a fortune courting the opinion-makers of church and 
> state.
> -
> Moon showed an early interest in the Bush administration's faith-based 
> initiative. In the spring of 2001, the American Leadership Conference, a 
> project of the Caprara's American Family Coalition and Washington Times 
> Foundation, sponsored a "Faith-Based Initiative Summit," a conference that 
> was transmitted via satellite to 40 gatherings in churches and hotel 
> meeting rooms across the country.
> -
> That summit came just months after one of President Bush's strongest 
> supporters in the Christian Right, TV evangelist Pat Robertson, warned 
> that religious cults would soon be eligible for federal funds.
> -
> In the Feb. 20, 2001, broadcast of his "700 Club" television show, 
> Robertson said the president's faith-based initiative "could be a real 
> Pandora's box."
> -
> "What seems to be such a great initiative can rise up to bite the 
> organizations as well as the federal government," said Robertson, who 
> expressed particular concern about federal money going to the Church of 
> Scientology, the Hare Krishas and "the Moonies."
> -
> Robertson and Bush have since come to a meeting of minds on the 
> president's faith-based initiative.
> -
> Another of the 145 recipients in the most recent outlay of the Compassion 
> Capital Fund was Robertson's charity, Operation Blessing International, 
> which got $500,000 from the Department of Health and Human Services.
> -
> E-mail Don Lattin at dlattin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Page A - URL: 
> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi file=/c/a/2004/10/03/MNG4M936HP1.DTL 
> ©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
>
> -
> Neil Bush Meets the Messiah
> -
> By John Gorenfeld, AlterNetPosted on December 5, 2005, Printed on December 
> 11, 2005http://www.alternet.org/story/29054/
> -
> "Those who stray from the heavenly way," the owner of the flagship 
> Republican newspaper the Washington Times admonished an audience in Taipei 
> on Friday, "will be punished."
> -
> This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile 
> underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row: 
> Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.
> -
> Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who 
> owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his 
> $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream. As he describes it, the tunnel 
> would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy 
> of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be 
> reinvented as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual 
> freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.
> -
> The name Peace King Tunnel would allude to the title of authority to which 
> Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. congressmen paid respect on 
> Capitol Hill in last year's controversial "Crown of Peace" coronation ritual.
> -
> Moon's lobbying campaign is "ambitious and diffuse," as the D.C. newspaper 
> The Hill reported last year, and the sheer range of guests revealed just 
> how many Pacific Rim political leaders the Times owner has won over, 
> including Filipino and Taiwanese politicians. And the head of the Arizona 
> GOP attended a recent stop in San Francisco. But perhaps the most 
> surprising VIP to tag along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush's youngest and 
> most wayward son, who made both the Philippines and Taiwan legs of the 
> journey, according to reports in newspapers from those countries and 
> statements from Moon's Family Federation.
> -
> While Neil Bush and Moon's church couldn't be reached for comment on the 
> tunnel or his speaking fees, a brochure from Moon's Family Federation 
> underscores that the project is "God's fervent desire," dwarfing such past 
> wonders as the Chunnel and heralding a "new era of automobile travel."
> -
> Moon, reviled in the 1980s as the leader of a group that separated young 
> recruits from their families, says he is the Messiah. His far-flung 
> business empire includes the UPI wire service, Washington, D.C. television 
> studios, a gun factory, and enormous swaths of real estate, and he donates 
> millions to conservative politics. In 1989, U.S. News & World Report 
> linked his group to the Heritage Foundation and other conservative 
> organizations. "Because almost all conservative organizations in 
> Washington have some ties to [Moon's] church," wrote reporter John Judis, 
> "conservatives ... fear repercussions if they expose the church's role."
> -
> The billionaire Moon has never been one to pander to the Sierra Club, 
> having subsidized the anti-environmental "wise use" movement. Likewise, 
> his group anticipates an anti-tunnel backlash by those who "demand the 
> preservation of the polar region's ecosystem and the protection of polar 
> bears and seals," and proposes an aggressive media strategy: "[P]ublic 
> opinion polls must be carried out all over the world and it is absolutely 
> essential that a public relations campaign to educate environmental 
> groups, concerned organizations and residents near the proposed 
> construction sites be carried out as well." (Moon has said in the past 
> that Caucasians are descended from polar bears.)
> -
> In addition to the Taipei report, the Bush brother also surfaced in an 
> article last week from the Manila Times, which placed him at a similar 
> dinner in Manila attended by Washington Times president Dong Moon Joo and 
> respected Filipino House Speaker Jose de Venecia. (It's unclear if Bush 
> attended an intermediate stop in the Solomon Islands.) According to the 
> Manila Times piece, Venecia proposed Moon's idea for a trans-religious 
> council to President Bush in a 2003 meeting; President Bush was said to 
> have called it "a brilliant idea."
> -
> The Taiwan paper similarly revealed high-powered support for Moon, 
> describing Republic of China Vice President Annette Lu as listening "rapt" 
> to his speech.
> -
> In the United States, Moon's end-of-democracy vision has been honored on 
> the floor of Congress. According to the Congressional Record, on June 19, 
> 2003, Democrat Danny K. Davis joined Republican Curt Weldon in recognizing 
> Moon's "effort to create an international council of religious leaders ... 
> this body will provide a direct link between international leaders and the 
> various religious peoples in their constituencies," Davis said. "We are 
> grateful to ... the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon] for promoting the 
> vision of world peace, and we commend their work."
> -
> Davis later took part in Moon's March 23, 2004 Capitol Hill ceremony in 
> which he was brought a gold crown and royal robe to coronate him Peace 
> King. The sponsor of the event was the Virginia Republican Senator John 
> Warner, who later told the Washington Post he'd been "deceived" into 
> hosting the event, a charge that organizers rejected, saying the ritual 
> was taken out of context.
> -
> While Moon's proposal has been deliberated by politicians around the world 
> as a mere religious council, church promotional materials make clear that 
> it's intended to forge "God's fatherland," and not just idle talk. A video 
> from his group stresses that the U.N. will give way to a "Peace United 
> Nations," as Moon terms it, with fantastical reverberations.
> -
> "Like a candle that burns down, sacrificing itself to give light to the 
> world, the light of wisdom and hope will shine from the headquarters of 
> world governance -- the "Peace United Nations" -- into all realms of 
> life," a narrator says in a Family Federation video (available here via 
> BitTorrent). "This light will radiate beyond the high barrier separating 
> nations and will illuminate the road to peace, the path to the fulfillment 
> of humanity's hopes -- and dreams ..." Moon has frequently gone on the 
> record against Western-style democracy and individualism, calling them 
> results of the fall of Adam. "There are three guiding principles for the 
> world to choose from: democracy, Communism and Godism," he said in a 1987 
> sermon. "It is clear that democracy as the United States knows and 
> practices it cannot be the model for the world." "Individualism," he also 
> said at the speech -- entitled "I Will Follow With Gratitude And 
> Obedience" -- "is what God hates most and what Satan likes best."
> -
> Neil isn't the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father, 
> President George H.W. Bush, traveled to Buenos Aires with the Reverend in 
> one of several such fundraising expeditions. "The 41st president, who told 
> Argentine president Carlos Menem that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires 
> for the money, had actually known the Korean reasonably well for decades," 
> writes former top GOP strategist Kevin Phillips in his book "American 
> Dynasty." "Their relationship went back to the overlap between Bush's 
> one-year tenure as CIA director (1976) and the arrival in Washington of 
> Moon, whose Unification Church was widely reported to be a front group for 
> the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency." Moon and his aides have 
> called such claims bogus, saying his accusers were controlled by "Satan" 
> to distract from his campaign to destroy communism.
> -
> Reverend Moon is the latest in a line of unusual partners for Neil Bush in 
> recent years, including the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, 
> and fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who has been promoting the 
> younger Bush's educational software company, Ignite!, according to the 
> Washington Post.
> -
> A messy divorce case in 2003 exposed his dalliances with prostitutes in 
> Asia. Moon's group didn't return e-mails asking how this bore upon Neil 
> Bush's contributions to last week's events, whose central theme was "Ideal 
> Families."
> -
> John Gorenfeld is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He has a blog 
> focused on Rev. Moon and his church: I Approve This Messiah. © 2005 
> Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online 
> at: http://www.alternet.org/story/29054/
>
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