June 11, 2004

Syung Mung Moon Crowned King in US Senate Building

Well - apparently America really is a Christian Nation - but it's the Moonies who have officially been chosen by the US Government to be the official state religion. On March 23rd 2004 Moon was officially crowned messiah by Congress in the Senate Dirksen Office Building.

What's scary is - why don't you see this in the news media? Maybe this is why it feels like America is one big cult - because it is! America is being run by the Moonies and they own a lot of Americas press uncluding United Press International (UPI) and The Washington Times. When the government crowns Sun Myung Moon king, (Moon spokesman explains moon corination cerimony - windows media format) recognizes Moon as messiah, and supports his campaign to replace the Cross with the Crown - don't you think that Christians would want to know that?

If this isn't a reason to support the separation of church and state I don't know what is. There are those out there who believe that America is a Christian nation. Well - apparently from this they are right. But the dominate flavor of Christianity is the Moonies. It's the Unification Church that is the brand of Christianity that is pulling the governments strings.

You see - the idea of a Christian Nation is very appealing to Christians until the Moonies get control. But when the Moonies get it - I suppose the Christians would want some sort of separation of the State and Denominations. Would it be any different if the Baptists were in control? Or if the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Seventh Day Adventists, or the Church of Scientology was in control? After all - from the perspective of the only true religion, The Church of Reality all these Christian denominations are just as crazy as the Moonies. Especially if they had the kind of power that the Moonies have.

I challenge all Christians to look into this and find out how much influence the Moonies have in your church and in your denomination. If you only knew it would shock the hell out of you. Now that the government wants you to Take Down the Cross and put up the Crown - how do you feel about the separation of church and state now?

Moon Over Washington

Why are some of the capital’s most influential power players hanging out with a bizarre Korean billionaire who claims to be the Messiah?

by John Gorenfeld, Contributor
6.09.04

Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah – with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building?

The Washington Post didn't think so. For a moment on April 4, a quote from the keynote speech was in the Web version of its "Reliable Sources" column. The speaker: Sun Myung Moon, 84, an ex-convict whose political activities were at the center of the 1976-8 Koreagate influence-peddling probe. That's when an investigation by Congress warned that Moon, after having befriended Richard Nixon in his darkest hour, was surrounding himself with other politicians to overcome his reputation: as the leader of the cult-like Unification Church, which recruited unwary college students, filled Madison Square Garden with couples in white robes, wed them in bulk and demanded obedience.

That was before he launched the Washington Times – "in response to Heaven’s direction," as he would later say – and a 20-year quest to make his enemies bow to him. He has also claimed, in newspaper ads taken out by the Unification Church, that Jesus, Confucius, and the Buddha have endorsed him. Muhammad, according to the 2002 ad, led the council in three cries of "mansei," or victory. And every dead U.S. president was there, too – because Moon's gospel is inseparable from visions of true-blue American power.

Now, this March, Moon was telling guests at the Dirksen Senate Office Building that Hitler and Stalin, having cleaned up their acts, had, in a rare public statement from beyond the grave, called him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

But not long after it appeared on the Post's web site, the paper erased the quote. Columnist Richard Leiby told me via e-mail that it shouldn't have gone out in the first place. The paper replaced it with breaking news about "Celebrity Jeopardy!" with Tim Russert.

The Return of the King

So no one covered this American coronation, except Moon's own Times, which skipped the Messiah part. It wasn't in other newspapers, which only wink at the influence of Moon's far-right movement in Washington, when they cover it at all.

In fact, the only place you could read about the new king, unless you bookmarked Moon's Korean-language website, was in the blog world. There, dozens of the most CSPAN2-hardened cynics reacted to the screenshots with a resounding "WTF," the sound of dismay and confusion at a scene that news coverage hadn't prepared them for. The images might as well have come from Star Trek's Mirror Universe.

First, we're shown a rabbi blowing a ram's horn. Most Jews would hold off on this until the High Holy Days, but it probably counts if the Moshiach shows up in a federal office building at taxpayer expense. Then we see the man of the hour, Moon, chilling at a table at the Dirksen in a tuxedo, soaking all this up. He claps. He's having a ball.

Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.

But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation.

Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman."

The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted.

"I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there."

A new world order

The last time someone declared himself Emperor of the United States, it was the Gold Rush's Joshua Norton, a sort of failed dot-commer of the 1850s. But he was broke, whereas a random sampling of Moon's properties might include a healthy chunk of the U.S. fishing industry, the graphic tablet company Wacom, and swaths of real estate on an epic scale. The money-losing Times is paid for by the $1 billion he's sunk into it, along with untold funding for conservative policy foundations like the American Family Coalition.

George Soros has recently gotten lots of coverage as a supposedly eccentric billionaire influencing U.S. politics. But Soros is no Moon. In Moon's speeches, a "peace kingdom" is envisioned, in which homosexuals – whom he calls "dung-eating dogs" – would be a thing of the past. He said in January: "Gays will be eliminated, the three Israels will unite. If not, then they will be burned. We do not know what kind of world God will bring, but this is what happens. It will be greater than the communist purge but at God's orders."

And ignoring every mainline Christian denomination's rejection of the idea of Jewish collective guilt, Moon's latest world tour calls on rabbis to repent for betraying Christ, the Jerusalem Post reported last week. Speaking in Arlington, VA in 2003, Moon said Hitler killed six million Jews as a penalty for this rejection. And he's frank about calling for democracy and the U.S. Constitution to be replaced by religious government that he calls "Godism," calling the church-state separation the work of Satan. "The church and the state must become one as Cain and Abel," he said in the same sermon.

Towards this end, Moon's "Ambassadors for Peace" have been promoting his goal of a "Religious United Nations" organized around God, not countries. In the June 19, 2003 Congressional Record, Rep. Davis joins Rep. Weldon in thanking Moon and the Ambassadors for "promoting the vision of world peace." He praises their plan to "support the leaders of the United Nations" through interfaith dialogue. Much of the dialogue has consisted of getting Moon's retinue of rabbis, ministers and Muslim clerics to hug each other, and be photographed handing out awards to politicians. The Ambassadors have addressed the United Nations and the British House of Lords. They have also honored at least one neo-Nazi, William Baker, former chair of the Holocaust-denying Populist Party.

And far from the free lunches that Emperor Norton received in San Francisco, Moon's groups have taken home grant money from the Bush Administration, which has given his anti-sex missionaries $475,000 in Abstinence-Only dollars to bring Moon's crusade against "free sex" to both black New Jersey high-schoolers and native Africans. The Centers for Disease Control briefly announced that another Moon foundation was the only group qualified to receive another, no-bid grant for HIV education in Africa. Only after a competitor raised objections did the CDC cancel the grant program entirely. Meanwhile, one of Moon's top political movers, David Caprara, has been appointed by George W. Bush to head AmeriCorps VISTA; and another former church VIP, Josette Shiner, was given a senior trade position.

Friends in high places

In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon's anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event. Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that "brings sanity to Washington," famous guests often spoke at front groups that concealed ties to the Unification Church. Bill Cosby was horrified to discover he'd agreed to speak at one. The reputation of future "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye suffered after his wife accidentally gave Mother Jones a recording of him dictating a fond letter to Moon's lieutenant Bo Hi Pak, plotting to replace Vice-President Bush with Jerry Falwell on the 1988 ticket. To many Christians, Moon was offensive, preaching that Jesus failed and that he would clean up the mess.

But now that he's forged unbreakable ties with conservative Christians, Moon has moved on to African-American ministers, and, through them, allies in the Democratic Party. This has been below the radar of the press, but not for lack of outlandishness. Moon celebrated Easter Sunday, 2003 by launching a coast to coast series of "tear down the cross/Who is Rev. Moon?" events, targeting pastors in poor neighborhoods. From the Bronx to L.A., Moon's people were convincing pastors to pull the crosses off their walls and replace them with his Family Federation flag. An old hymn was invoked: "I'll trade the old cross for a crown."

To Congressmen attending earlier stops in this roadshow, all this mysticism may have seemed too murky and exotic to understand. But the storyline is simple enough, if you take a step back.

Moon's newest followers were invited to tear down the traditional symbol of Christianity, told they could swap it for a crown. But unlike the crown in the hymn, it wasn't for them. It was the one that Congressmen gave, March 23 at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to a wealthy right-wing newspaper owner, one described by Time magazine in 1976 as "megalomaniacal," not much of an exaggeration for someone who claims to be the Second Coming. Unless of course he actually is.

The next day, according to a speech posted to a Moon mailing list and Usenet by a Unification church webmaster, Damian Anderson, Moon said he was leaving the country. "True Father spent 34 years here in America to guide this country in the right way," he told followers. "Yesterday was the turning point." But you can't buy Moon's high opinion of your country so easily (he's called the U.S. "Satan's harvest").

America, he said, was on the road to its doom. Why? "Homo marriage."

Here's a link that will shoch the fuck out of you - especially if you are a Christian. Democrat, Republican push Moon's dreams on the floor of Congress

Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my commitment to world peace and to stress the importance of establishing dialogue and understanding among all people. It is in recognition of this need that on Tuesday, June 24, at 6:30 p.m. in the Rayburn Room B338-340, the American Leadership Initiative will hold a special awards ceremony to honor great Americans from all 50 States who have demonstrated a commitment to peace. Many of my colleagues will join me and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), co-chair, in giving tribute to some of the outstanding Americans from our districts. Members of the clergy, legislators, educators, business and community leaders will be among those honored with the ``Ambassadors for Peace Award-Excellence in Leadership.'' These committed citizens have been working to renew and strengthen our families and marriages, restore our communities, and rebuild our Nation and indeed our world. We are grateful to the founders of Ambassadors for Peace, the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon], for promoting the vision of world peace, and we commend them for their work.

These Ambassadors for Peace have become increasingly effective and relevant in their communities since the tragedy of 9-11. They have been working together to promote understanding among all faiths, particularly with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders. With the realization that many of the tensions currently facing the world cannot be addressed without consideration of the religious implications involved, the Ambassadors for Peace have formed an American Interreligious Council. This council seeks to support and advise our Nation's leaders concerning the issues and challenges of seeking lasting peace. The American Interreligious Council is also part of the effort to create an international council of religious leaders. The members of this council will support the leaders of the United Nations as they work to resolve conflicts throughout the world. This body will provide a direct link between international leaders and the various religious peoples in their constituencies.

Posted by marc at 10:55 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Republicans have a plan to take power if they lose the elections

If there comes a point where the Republican Party realizes that they can not win in the election - they will try to take America by force. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there is a coup in the works as a backup plan should Republicans lose the election.

If the Republicans lose - they will not just walk away and hand over power. They will make a move to take America by force. And - we have to figure it out first and stop it before they succeed.

We must be prepared to defent America against a Reoublican coup. Right now the best way to do that is to try to out think them - to figure out the plan and expost it before they can use it. I suspect that they are still figuring it out and that they are putting the pieces in place now. And - these people are sloppy.

If we watch carefully enough we should be able to figure it out in time. But we have to start looking now - looking hard - and making the right moves. If anyone doubts that the Republicans are ruthless enough to do this - just look at what they've done so far. It's pretty obvious to be the direction they are heading based on what they have done already.

Bush and his ilk are a threat to the entire civilized world and is a greater threat that bin Laden or any other terrorist. He attacks countries without provocation. He wanted to use nuclear weapons in Iraq. He authorized the use of torture and under his command children were raped in Abu Griab prison in front of their parents. (Video of that coming soon)

There is nothing that Bush and the GOP won't do to hold onto power. And - I don't know what to do except sound the alert and hope that the alert spreads to the point where when the time comes and the shit goes down that we will be ready for it.

Like I said - if this sounds tin foil hat to you - I say - lok at what they have done so far and you tell me - is this not a serious possibility that is at least worthy of discussion and being alert? Bush puts out fake terror alerts all the time and there's not doubt at all that this alert is a lot more real than his alerts are.

So - I say to you - join me in my paranoid delusion so that maybe America will wake up from the nightmare that we call reality and restore the dignaty of America as the leader in peace and freedom. I say it's time for America to get off the "war footing" and get on a "peace footing". But that's not going to happen until we get rid of our unelected dictator and take the firture of our planet from armegeddon and towards a better future where we move in a positive direction.

Posted by marc at 10:25 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Voice over IP Telephone Calls (VoIP)

I got a cool new technology toy. It's a new way to make telephone calls without having a telephone line. You use the Internet to make phone calls. It's called Voice over IP (VoIP) and I just got one and I love it. I can now make phone calls over my cable modem and get rid of my phone line. I'm only paying $30/month for telephone with unlimited long distance in the US and Canada and International calling rates are about 4 cents a minute. It eliminates my real phone which was costing me $55 a month with unlimited US long distance and less features. So I have a better phone and saving money.

The plan I got was from a company called Vonage. After a lot of research it looks like they have the best deal. Here's how it works. They send you this unit that is the Internet to telephone adapter. You plug it into your DSL or Cable Modem and then plug your phone into it. On my home network it lives happily behind my firewall router.

The install was simple. I plugged it in and it worked. There was absolutely nothing to configure. It powered up and the first thing it did was phone home and download an upgrade and configured itself. That takes about 5 minutes. It has one green blinky light on it and when it stops blinking - it's ready to work. I plugged my phone in and made a call.

The voice quality was BETTER than a real phone. It's all digital which is why the quality is higher. And - it comes with a lot of features that real phone lines don't have. For example - it comes with voice mail that can email you the voice mail message as an attached WAV file. You can also add extra "virtual numbers" in any area code you want for $5/month per number. So - if you have a friend in another state you can have another virtual number which allows your friends in that area to call you by calling a local number.

One very cool feature is that if I go on a trip I can take the phone with me and plug it into the Internet whereever I go. So if I went to Australia I can plug it in and get my calls as if I were home. With an IP phone location doesn't matter. The phone is where the adapter box is.

For those who want privacy - this phone isn't easilly tapable like line phones are. The box created a vpn back to the home network and encrypts the data. The perfect phone for the paranoid, people who support civil liberties, computer geeks, and drug dealers. I've always assumed Ashcroft is listening to me. But now he's going to have to work a little harder.

The terminal adapter supports 2 lines so for another $10/month you can get a second line to use as a fax line or make two phone callse at once from to different phones.

Another cool feature is that you can set it to automatically forward the phone line in case the network phone fails. So if my internet connection goes down incoming calls are forwarded to my cell phone. And if I want that to happen I just unplug the adapter and the forwarding instantly kicks in.

Voicemail is very cool. I get an email alert when I get a message recorded. I can set it to forward me the message as an attached WAV file - or - I can just go to the web site and listen to it. Or - I cal dial *123 from my phone and put in my passcode and listen to my voice mail. It also gives me the choice of reading me the caller ID number and the time stamp of the call.

If you have a laptop and a USB headset you can get a "software phone" that turns your laptop into a telephone with all the same calling power as the terminal adapter.

One of the reasons it's so much cheaper is that they don't load you up with all those taxes that you get on phone lines. You know how the government is - they hate people who have phones and drive cars. So - this is one of those middle class taxes that I don't have to pay anymore. (Except for my cell phone). I say - screw the government. They are already getting too much of my money.

I moved my existing phone number over to the new service. Because I was moving my number - which isn't instant - they gave me a temporary number until the move occurs. However - since I have call forwarding on the old number I forwarded the old line to the new temporary number and thus managed to get everything working instantly.

Posted by marc at 06:13 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

US government faked Bush news reports

From the Gaurdian

TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged.

The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits.

Investigators are examining the film segments, in which actors pretending to be journalists praise the benefits of the new law passed last year by President Bush, to see if they could be construed as propaganda.

Two of the films are signed off by "Karen Ryan", who was an actor hired to read a script prepared by the government, according to production company Home Front Communications.

Another video, intended for Hispanic viewers, shows a government official being interviewed in Spanish by a actor posing as a reporter with the name "Alberto Garcia".

One segment shows a pharmacist telling an elderly customer the new law "helps you better afford your medications".

"It sounds like a good idea," the customer says, to which the pharmacist replies, "A very good idea."

And in some scenes President Bush is shown receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering him as he signed the Medicare law, which is designed to help elderly people with prescriptions.

The government also prepared scripts to be used by news anchors. "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare," the script reads.

"Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.

Lawyers from the investigative arm of Congress discovered the tapes as part of an investigation into federal money that was used to publicise the new law.

They will be keen to ascertain whether the government might have misled viewers by failing to reveal the source of the videos, which were broadcast in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.

"Video news releases" of this sort have been used in the US since the 1980s, but the way they blur the lines between news and advertising troubles many media experts and campaigners.

The government defended the videos, which Democrats described as "disturbing". "The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," a health department spokesman told the New York Times.

VNRs are also used in Europe but a furore surrounding a Greenpeace video package about its campaign to prevent the dumping of Shell's Brent Spar oil platform sent to British broadcasters some years ago led to new rules clamping down on their use.

Greenpeace's sophisticated media offensive - including the provision of emotive film footage of its occupation of the platform - resulted in one-dimensional coverage by BBC and ITN, news chiefs admitted at the time.

Guidelines were subsequently drawn up to label video news releases as such - a category which the regular Osama bin Laden videos now fall.

Posted by marc at 04:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Rush Limbaugh to Divorce - Again!

I remember during the Monica Lewinshy affair how the right wingers salivated over the impending demise of the clinton family. "Surely she will divorce him" they drooled waiting for the impending announcement that never came. That's because Clinton's marriage was much more solid than his Republican detractors like Rush Limbaugh.

Generally I don't revel in the misfortune of others - but I have a rule which is what I call the "hypocracy exception" - which in this case means that when Rush cheers at the downfall of others - it's ok to cheer at his downfall. This is so that an important point is made to warn other of the dark side of self richeousness and moral masturbation.

Some day it will be my turn but for now - let them eat crow!

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh announced Friday that he and his wife, Marta, were divorcing.

The Limbaughs "mutually decided to end their marriage of 10 years" and have "separated pending an amicable resolution," according to a statement released by Limbaugh's publicist.

The couple shared a $24 million oceanfront mansion in nearby Palm Beach, from where Limbaugh often broadcast his daily three-hour show.

Spokesman Tony Knight said the matter was personal and declined further comment.

It was the third marriage for both Limbaugh, 53, and his 44-year-old wife, who were wed May 27, 1994 at the Virginia home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas officiated the ceremony.

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Reagan Funeral GOP FuckFest Nearly Over

Of course the media is grateful to Reagan because he's the one who turned media ownership over to the current right wing owners. As everyone tries to rewrite history in favor of a really sorry president, it doesn't seem to be helping the GOP hold on to power in the midst of the revelations that Bush authorized the torture and rape of children of Abu Griab - pictures soon to be released.

Finally their get the sucker into the ground and we can get back to reality.

Posted by marc at 02:11 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Reagan did not win the Cold War

Actually Gorbechev did.

Here's an exerpt from MSNBC Story where Gorbechev sets the record straight.

'We all lost'
But if he had warm, appreciative words for Reagan, Gorbachev brusquely dismissed the suggestion that Reagan had intimidated either him or the Soviet Union, or forced them to make concessions. Was it accurate to say that Reagan won the Cold War? "That's not serious," Gorbachev said, using the same words several times. "I think we all lost the Cold War, particularly the Soviet Union. We each lost $10 trillion," he said, referring to the money Russians and Americans spent on an arms race that lasted more than four decades. "We only won when the Cold War ended."

By Gorbachev's account, it was his early successes on the world stage that convinced the Americans that they had to deal with him and to match his fervor for arms control and other agreements that could reduce East-West tensions. "We had an intelligence report from Washington in 1987," he said, "reporting on a meeting of the National Security Council." Senior U.S. officials had concluded that Gorbachev's "growing credibility and prestige did not serve the interests of the United States" and had to be countered. A desire in Washington not to let him make too good an impression on the world did more to promote subsequent Soviet-American agreements than any American intimidation, he said. "They wanted to look good in terms of making peace and achieving arms control," he said of the Reagan administration.

The changes he wrought in the Soviet Union, from ending much of the official censorship to sweeping political and economic reforms, were undertaken not because of any foreign pressure or concern, Gorbachev said, but because Russia was dying under the weight of the Stalinist system. "The country was being stifled by the lack of freedom," he said. "We were increasingly behind the West, which . . . was achieving a new technological era, a new kind of productivity. . . . And I was ashamed for my country -- perhaps the country with the richest resources on Earth, and we couldn't provide toothpaste for our people."

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