[CLUE-Talk] Iraq Stuph

[Matt Gushee]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 11:03:10PM -0600, David Willson wrote:
> The following may be new and important information for my anti-war
> friends, so I am risking being called out on breaking my 'quit claim'. 
> I have seen now two articles like this, the one I link below, and one
> from a 'human shield'.  If this sort of article has already been
> submitted for consideration in the debate, please forgive me for the
> redundancy.
> 
> http://assyrianchristians.com/i_was_wrong_mar_26_03.htm

I am also reluctant to step back into this, since I can barely hold my
temper in these debates, but ...

I'm not sure what to think of that story. If Mr. Joseph is honestly
reporting his personal experience, then ... well, it's a personal
anecdote, no more and no less. I don't mean to dismiss his story
lightly, but I had already heard of this Ken Joseph, and I think there
is reason to question whether he is in fact honestly reporting his
experience and his background:

  http://counterpunch.org/lipton04122003.html

Now, some of you may be inclined to dismiss this article's claims about
the Moonie media network as just another left-wing conspiracy theory.
Based on my personal research and experience, I'll tell you it's real.

If only I really had time to get into this ... but real quickly: back in
1989 I was working at a Japanese restaurant in Portsmouth, NH. I began
noticing that the management and some of the core staff members were,
well, rather odd. Odd in a way that sometimes made for an unpleasant
work environment. And through conversations with some of my co-workers,
it developed that a number of people had noticed this. And somewhere
along the line I noticed a few things that made me suspicious: a CAUSA
sweatshirt (CAUSA is a Moon-associated organization), a copy of Insight
magazine (branch of the Washington Times) ... and I decided to do a
little research.

Over the next several months I spent hundreds of hours going over New
Hampshire and Massachusetts corporate records and newspaper articles,
tracing connections to the Unification Church (and yes, my restaurant
was very definitely connected ... I believe its list of officers was
about 3 steps removed from Unification Church HQ in Boston) and what it
might all mean. Yes, I was a little obsessed--partly because not long
before this, I had extricated myself from an "alternative" religious
group that some might call a cult. BTW, I kept a big box full of files
from that investigation. Unfortunately they're in my parents' attic in
Illinois, but if I can ever get back there, I plan to salvage them and
put them up on the Web.

But anyway, so the Unification Church owns a shitload of businesses--so
what? Catholics and Mormons do too. And what does any of this have to do
with our current subject? 

I think a couple of things are relevant here. One is that the
Unification movement is explicitly political as well as religious: they
are well-known for their vehement anti-Communism; they also have allied
themselves closely with the New Right in the US. The other is that they
have a strong and long-standing interest in owning media outlets.  The
Washington Times is the best-known example, but there are others; at
the time I did my research, one of the most recent acquisitions was a
video production company in Northern Virginia, said to be one of the
best in the country. And this company, not long after coming under
Moonie ownership, produced the famous Oliver North video, which was
paraded around the country in an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation.