Utah board manages polygamous property in Canada, and probably will for a long time

NATE CARLISLE

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 01 2016

Members of board from Hildale traveling to British Columbia to visit community.

Lister, British Columbia • A board in Hildale, Utah, has oversight of 55 homes here.

Residents like Mary Jayne Blackmore are thinking about whether there should be another arrangement.

"We don't expect the board in Utah to understand what our needs are," Blackmore said.

Blackmore lives in the enclave of Bountiful, a community within Lister that is the Canadian home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 2005, the state of Utah seized the trust that held FLDS-controlled lands and homes here — and in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

While managers of the trust, called the United Effort Plan, have been divesting the property in Utah and Arizona, Canadian laws have prevented them from doing the same in Bountiful and have thus far prevented the creation of a Canadian nonprofit to govern the land.

Members of the United Effort board, which is based in Hildale, are traveling to Bountiful this week to see the community, speak with residents and discuss solutions for longterm management. Bountiful consists of 300 acres and 55 residences. It all sits against the Skimmerhorn Mountains, five miles north of the Idaho Panhandle.

Don Timpson, president of the United Effort's governing board, said he is going to Bountiful to get an orientation. Although he lives in Arizona, Timpson said he feels a kinship toward the residents in Bountiful. There has been a lot of intermarriage between families in Bountiful, Hildale and Colorado City.

"It's one people, one group, historically," Timpson said.

Bountiful has undergone much of the same upheaval that Hildale and Colorado City have experienced.

In 2002, the Jeffs family ousted the FLDS Bishop in Bountiful, Winston Blackmore. In what residents there refer to as "The Split," many of Blackmore's parishioners followed him out of the FLDS. Some remained loyal to the FLDS for a time and have since left.

The residents in Bountiful now largely fall into three groups: those loyal to imprisoned FLDS President Warren Jeffs, those loyal to Winston Blackmore and those who do not worship with the other two groups.

The second and third groups participate in civic events together, manage community affairs and have been working with the United Effort on a governance plan. The Jeffs loyalists wave hello but don't interact with the others.

When the state of Utah sized the United Effort in 2005, Bountiful was largely left to manage itself. The court-appointed fiduciary did not make Bountiful residents pay the $100-a-month fee that was imposed on those living in United Effort homes in Hildale and Colorado City.

That's largely because residents in Bountiful were not as litigious and did not rack up lawyer bills for the trust, said Zach Shields, a Salt Lake City attorney for the United Effort. But there is no clear way to make Bountiful autonomous.

Subdividing the property would be prohibitively expensive under Canadian law, Shields said. Selling property would require paying high Canadian taxes on the transfer.

"It's just not economically feasible," Shields said.

There might be a possibility of creating another entity to which Bountiful can be transferred, Shields said. Or the United Effort may create a Canadian board to advise the board in Hildale.

In 2014, Bountiful residents created Mountain Land Management Society to coordinate infrastructure improvements and the payment of taxes. Miriam Chatwin sit on the board.

"We don't want to be paying money to a board in Utah that doesn't understand our needs," Blackmore said.

During an interview on a warm evening with a clear view of the Mount Thompson towering above Bountiful, Mary Jayne Blackmore, a 33-year-old teacher who is one of Winston Blackmore's 145 children, and Chatwin discussed the community's needs. Water comes from the mountains and is gravity fed and some residences on the end of the line don't receive water in the summer, they said. They want to install pumps, but it will be expensive.

Mary Jayne Blackmore and Chatwin want to set aside some forest for preservation. Chatwin also wants create an orderly process for building new homes in Bountiful. There is room for 30 more, she said.

"It's essentially the wild west," Chatwin said. "If I can fence it, it's mine."

Mountain Land Management has already performed one upgrade. Instead of dividing the community tax bill 55 ways, as had been done in the past, in 2015 Mountain Land Management conducted assessments on residences similar to how county assessors perform them in Utah.

But Blackmore does not want Bountiful homes sold or given away the way the United Effort has done in Hildale. Her family has lived in Bountiful for four generations, and she doesn't want its people separated by property lines.

"Our inability to divide that land is our biggest blessing," Blackmore said.

Winston Blackmore, 59, spoke about his family Friday at the Sunstone Salt Lake Symposium. After his lecture, he said the United Effort has been managed as well as it could be since the state takeover. He said he was trying to retire from what he called the local "politics" of managing the Bountiful property and was willing to let the United Effort board decide what to do next.

"So whatever they decide will be fine," he said.

ncarlisle@sltrib.com

Twitter: @natecarlisle

http://www.sltrib.com/home/4138618-155/utah-board-manages-polygamous-property-in?fullpage=1

 

Teachers Group: The cult-like group linked to a charity that gets UK aid

Anna Meisel & Simon Cox
BBC News
2 August 2016

A charity that has been paid millions by the UK government for its work in Africa is under the control of a cult-like organisation, an investigation by the BBC and US partners has revealed. The group's senior leaders - wanted by Interpol - are thought to be holed up in a luxury coastal compound in Mexico.

Patrick Goteka was working for a charity in Zimbabwe when, in 2006, his employer offered him a big break - the chance to transfer to the US.

Goteka, who would be working as a manager in the recycled clothes business, knew the move would mean sacrifices - separating him from his wife and three children. But he says he didn't bank on also having to join a cult-like organisation - the Teachers Group - and surrender a chunk of his monthly salary when he took on his new role.

Goteka thinks back to the conversation he had at the time.

"They said, 'We cannot send someone who is not in the Teachers Group.' So they said: 'You should join.'"

He also remembers being told he would be making a good living.

"We are going to support you when you are sick," they said. "We'll support your family. We'll give you good conditions."

There was no big initiation ceremony. No documentation. They just shook hands and, with that, Goteka had been inducted into the Teachers Group.


Find out more

§ Listen to Malawi's Big Charity Secret at 20:00 on BBC Radio 4, or catch up later on BBC iPlayer radio

§ You can listen to a shorter version for Assignment, on the BBC World Service ,here

§ This story was produced in partnership with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting - read their stories here and here


The organisation Goteka found himself joining had been set up in Denmark in the early 1970s by a man called Mogens Amdi Petersen.

For years the Teachers Group has run a government-funded alternative school system, but in 2001 the Danish authorities raided its offices and charged Petersen with fraud. Found not guilty in 2006, he and some of his associates immediately left the country, but prosecutors appealed and the group are now wanted by Interpol. It's thought they may have taken refuge in a massive luxury compound, worth an estimated £20m ($26m), on the Pacific coast in Mexico.

This is just one part of the Teachers Group global network, which includes offshore companies and commercial ventures. It is also behind Dapp Malawi - the Malawian branch of a charity, Development Aid from People to People - which employed Goteka after his return from the US.

Dapp runs education, health and agriculture projects in Malawi, and has received tens of millions of pounds in the last decade from Unicef, the EU and the UK's Department for International Development (DfID).

Part of these funds will have been used to pay the charity's staff. But as the experience of Goteka and others reveals, a proportion of the money paid to some staff eventually finds its way to the Teachers Group.

Once in the US, Goteka was introduced to the next stage of the Teachers Group philosophy - the "common economy". This is a fund which all members are expected to contribute to. Goteka says he ended up paying 50% of his salary, much of which he would otherwise have sent back to his family in Zimbabwe.

The organisation calls these payments "voluntary" but Goteka says employees are really left without a choice.

"If you write more money to your wife they will say, 'Cancel this and start again.' People were crying when they were making those budgets. It was just a shame."

Dapp Malawi didn't want to be interviewed and responded to our questions through a British law firm. It says there are Dapp Malawi staff who are members of the TG but says "this is a private matter for them, it has nothing to do with donors, whose funds are not applied to TG".

What is Dapp?

§ Dapp Malawi is part of a global federation of charities called Humana People to People, which has its headquarters in Zimbabwe

§ The organisation has more than 30 different members around the world - there is a Dapp UK, a Dapp Zambia, Humana People to People Brazil, and so on

§ Dapp is one of the major NGOs active in Malawi, providing a range of aid projects from farming to health and education


It's not just money that the Teachers Group demands of its members - but also their spare time.

Christopher Banda is a smiling but earnest young field officer for Dapp in Malawi. He is also a member of the Teachers Group, having joined in 2009 because, he says, "it was like my job security".

"We call ourselves comrades... and we share the private life together," says Banda, referring to what is known in the group as "common time". This is personal time Teachers Group members are required to give up for the benefit of the organisation, for example to help maintaining buildings.

"In the common time we are always together," says Banda. "We only get a chance one weekend a month to visit our family."

It was while running a Dapp project to improve sanitation in villages in Malawi, that Banda raised the alarm about the charity's links with the Teachers Group. The project was being jointly funded by DfID and Unicef - the UN children's charity.

Banned, he says, from talking to donors about the project, he was one of a group of field officers who wrote to Unicef in May this year about a number of concerns, including employees' contributions to the Teacher's Group.

We introduced Banda to Patsy Nakell from Unicef. As she hears his tale she looks increasingly perturbed, before concluding: "I've never seen any such thing in my life before, and I don't understand the logic behind this, it just is bizarre."

She adds that if it's true that some of Banda's Unicef-funded wage was deducted to be sent directly from Dapp to the Teachers Group "then it's unacceptable, it's abhorrent".

The alarm bell sounded by Banda and others has already had an effect, with Unicef pulling all its funding from the Dapp project he was working on in Malawi at the end of June. Unicef is now conducting a full audit of the project and is reviewing other contracts with Dapp in Africa.

Dapp told us: "At no time has Unicef ever raised with Dapp Malawi concerns over deductions from salaries of TG members."

Evidence uncovered by the BBC proves that these contributions are not confined to just a few people, such as Banda and Goteka.

In his small office, Harrison Longwe, an accountant at Dapp in 2014 and 2015, pulls out a laptop and shows me a spreadsheet with the names of more than 700 Dapp employees in Malawi. For a quarter of them there's a column with additional deductions.

"This is what goes to TG [Teachers Group] direct," Longwe explains. "Some would be contributing as high as 30% to the TG."

Of those sending money to the Teachers Group, the average contribution was 25%.

It's astounding when you consider that the average monthly salary in Malawi is just £60 ($80). Few of those employed by Dapp could have easily afforded to part with any of their salary, let alone a quarter of it.

In a statement Dapp denies "that it demands contributions from staff for membership of TG, that it pressurises employees to contribute to TG" or it makes any deduction from salaries other than "per instruction by the individual employee".

While the Teachers Group started in Denmark and is recruiting in Africa, the centre of its orbit now is the luxury coastal compound at San Juan de las Pulgas in Mexico, 150 miles south of Tijuana.





Teachers Group

§ The Teachers Group is the inner circle of a movement known as Tvind, founded by Mogens Amdi Petersen in the early 1970s

§ It is linked with schools and teacher training colleges, charities, and businesses - including plantations in South America

§ Some of the charities in the US and Europe collect second-hand clothes

§ The BBC reported in 2002 that Danish police had estimated Petersen's wealth at £100m






Banda was one of the chosen ones sent there. It is a stunning vision of polished stone and bright white cathedral-like buildings with a futuristic feel. Designed by a renowned Danish architect, it has been described as a combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal.

Banda was ostensibly there for a conference about agriculture, but he says it was nothing of the sort.

"Most of the times we were busy in the class discussing about how we can protect the Teachers Group," he says.

Goteka has also been to the Mexico compound.

"It's quite beautiful, most of the materials are imported, it's just a different type of furniture, beautiful and expensive," he says, recalling his visit.

Like Banda, Goteka met Petersen in Mexico. He knew him personally, because Petersen had hired him to search for his lost dog - for two years - when it went missing in Zimbabwe in 1998. It was afterwards that he started working with Dapp Zimbabwe, and later for Dapp Malawi.

When we meet in Malawi, Goteka takes me to see one of Dapp's teaching colleges, called Amalika.

Like many of the Dapp sites it is remote, lying at the end of a single-track road bordered by towering bluegum trees and dense forest. Goteka was a campus manager at the college, which, he says, was a recruiting ground for the Teachers Group.

"When students are done here they are persuaded how nice TG is so they can join," he says.

It's what happened to a teacher we meet later. He is nervous and will only chat inside our car, where he can't be seen. He joined the Teachers Group three years ago and voluntarily pays contributions out of his government salary.

"You feel a commitment to them, even though you don't know where the money is going," he says.

The TG philosophy is, he says, "Forget about your family - think about Teachers Group."

He adds: "It's like you have sacrificed the whole of your life, 100% in Teachers Group."

Speaking to him one gets a sense of the cult-like nature of the group especially when it comes to dissent.

"It's automatic. You are in a private meeting… and they try to make you to agree to their side."

There is no need for force, he says. "Those people are intelligent. They try to explain to you... so you agree to say, 'Ah, thank you very much. Now I'm agreeing. I didn't understand it.'"

We have discovered that he is one of 90 government teachers in Malawi who are also Teachers Group members - and that Teachers Group has a target to recruit 400 teachers from Dapp's teaching colleges in Malawi.

One of the colleges used as recruiting grounds was built with £2m ($2.6m) from DfID.

We left Patrick at the bus station for his long journey back to his home in Zimbabwe.



He said he hoped the BBC's work would bring change to Dapp.

"I just feel embarrassed, I cannot imagine they [Teachers Group] still exist in our continent and all over the world."

DfID told the BBC: "We will not hesitate to act in any situation if wrongdoing is proven. DfID welcomes any evidence and documentation that the BBC can send us in order to investigate these serious allegations."

We are taking our evidence to DfID and other donors who have the power to investigate further and make sure aid money is all used for the benefit of the people who need it most in Malawi.



http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36940384

2 polygamous leaders are arrested while awaiting trial on food-stamp-fraud charges

ERIN ALBERTY

The Salt Lake Tribune

Aug 01 2016

           

Seth Jeffs and John Wayman allegedly violated terms of their pre-trial release.

Two leaders in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were arrested Monday on suspicion of violating the terms of their release from jail as they await trial in a food-stamp-fraud case.

Seth Jeffs — brother to imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs — and John Wayman, a business owner and former bishop for the polygamous sect, were booked into Washington County jail after being accused of violating their pre-trial release conditions, said Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Salt Lake City.

The men were ordered to wear GPS ankle monitors and remain in Utah, though Seth Jeffs was given limited travel release to South Dakota, where he leads an FLDS congregation. Rydalch did not say which conditions the men are suspected of violating. Jail records indicate Seth Jeffs was arrested by a Washington County sheriff's deputy, while Wayman was arrested by a federal agent.

Meanwhile, agents have been searching for Lyle Jeffs, FLDS bishop and Warren Jeffs' second-in-command, since he escaped June 18 from home confinement. Investigators say he likely lubricated his ankle monitor with olive oil and slipped out of it, leaving his Salt Lake City home.

Neighbors said they saw a dark, newer model Ford Mustang arrive and later leave the home the night of June 18 but could not identify who was in the car, the FBI has reported. Jeffs was prohibited from talking with witnesses, co-defendants and Warren Jeffs. The judge also ordered him to surrender his passport.

The FBI has urged anyone with information on Lyle Jeffs' whereabouts to call the FBI Salt Lake City Field Office at 801-579-1400 or, if outside of Utah, the nearest FBI office.

Lyle Jeffs, Seth Jeffs, Wayman and eight others have pleaded not guilty to fraud and money-laundering charges alleging they diverted at least $12 million worth of food-stamp benefits from FLDS members in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., collectively known as Short Creek. FLDS sect leaders instructed followers to donate items they bought with their food-stamp cards to a church warehouse, prosecutors say, then the leaders decided how to distribute the products among the membership.

In addition, food stamps allegedly were cashed at sect-owned stores without the users getting anything in return. The money was then diverted to front companies and used to pay thousands for a tractor, truck and other items, prosecutors say.

ealberty@sltrib.com

Twitter: @erinalberty

http://www.sltrib.com/home/4183763-155/2-polygamous-leaders-are-arrested-while

 

UNICEF cuts off funding to nonprofit linked to alleged cult

Reveal | from The Center for Investigative Reporting
By Matt Smith and Amy Walters
August 1, 2016

UNICEF has cut its ties with an organization that coordinates U.S. humanitarian programs in Malawi, following an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showing that the group diverted money intended to alleviate hunger and disease.

Reveal also uncovered evidence that the organization, Development Aid from People to People Malawi, also known as DAPP, coerced some employees to deposit wages in their bosses’ bank accounts. UNICEF officials highlighted such wage-skimming allegations as particularly disconcerting.

DAPP Malawi had received $920,000 over the past three years from UNICEF – the United Nations Children’s Fund. A spokeswoman said UNICEF ended that relationship by halting funding to the project June 30. By July, UNICEF was conducting a deeper audit of the DAPP programs to determine whether funds were misused.

“The information in the pieces you put out was useful to us, and when we did our most recent spot check, we had a clear picture of what we wanted to look at,” said UNICEF Malawi spokeswoman Angela Travis. “We want to make sure there are no benefits, there are no funds going to the organization.”

THERE’S MORE TO THE STORY

US taxpayers are financing alleged cult through African aid charities

Alleged cult leader plays shell game with US foreign aid

Teachers Group: The cult-like group linked to a charity that gets UK aid

The UNICEF funding came on top of $45 million in funding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service has allocated for DAPP Malawi projects since 2006. That’s about one-third of the USDA money routed to DAPP’s U.S.-based sister organization Planet Aid, which also raised funds for a DAPP affiliate in Mozambique.

At one farming project in Malawi held up by the organization as a success, Reveal found little evidence the money had reached its intended destination.

In June, a UNICEF representative traveled to Malawi from South Africa to visit a DAPP sanitation project. Patsy Nakell was accompanied by BBC journalists working in partnership with Reveal and Christopher Banda, a DAPP employee.

Banda managed the UNICEF-funded sanitation program meant to provide toilets, washbasins, clotheslines and dish racks and to teach cleanliness aimed at preventing the spread of diarrhea, dysentery and cholera.

DAPP had reported to UNICEF that it had completed the sanitation project in Gilioti village in southern Malawi. But Banda showed Nakell a different story: A supposedly successful project had slipped.

What was supposed to have been a covered latrine was actually a damp, uncovered hole with a few cornstalks propped beside it for privacy. Multiple households shared similar crude toilets, which meant residents often defecated outdoors. A pathway was strewn with human feces surrounded by swarms of flies.

“It tells me that the village has never changed; it is still in the old situation,” Banda said. “There has not been any sanitation message.”

UNICEF had other concerns as well. On May 30, a group of DAPP Malawi workers had written a five-page letter to UNICEF and Malawi newspapers outlining a pattern of exploitation and fraud.

They wrote that money from project budgets did not reach the field. Employees said they had been asked to sign contracts pledging to return portions of their UNICEF-funded salaries to their employers. They also said that by coming forward, they feared “we may either (lose) our jobs some of us may even (lose) our lives.”

Accompanying the letter was an example of a contract they said DAPP project managers were compelled to sign, pledging a portion of their salaries to the Teachers Group, an organization that has been likened to a cult. Previously, Reveal had spoken with more than a dozen current and former DAPP employees who said they were forced to deposit wages into a bank account controlled by Teachers Group overseers.

“They take advantage of employment opportunity scarcity, (and) for this reason we choose to remain silent and keep on suffering inwardly and just watch even when things at the project are not OK,” the letter said. “Please help us.”

Banda added in an interview: “To keep my employment, I had to join the Teachers Group. Since 2009, since a year after I joined, I have been contributing. It is not by free will.”

Nakell, the UNICEF representative, was appalled by the filthy village scene, as well as by the allegations that UNICEF funds meant to pay African staff were diverted.

“I’ve never seen any such thing in my life before, and I don’t understand the logic behind this, and it just is bizarre,” she said.

In a July 27 letter to the BBC, a London law firm representing DAPP denied that employees had been coerced into returning pay to their employer.

“As far as DAPP Malawi is concerned, this is a private matter for them as individuals – just as membership of or donations to churches or other benevolent causes are a matter for the individuals – and has nothing to do with donors,” the letter from Discreet Law said.

The secretive Teachers Group is widely regarded as a cult, led by Danish fugitive Mogens Amdi Petersen, who since 2013 has been listed by Interpol for fleeing charges of embezzlement and tax evasion. Petersen’s followers run a network of humanitarian aid groups, businesses and an offshore financial network that Danish police say was set up to hide assets intended for charity.

Discreet Law defended Petersen’s reputation, however, pointing out that the Teachers Group founder and leader had been acquitted of Danish fraud and tax evasion charges.

The firm did not mention that in 2006, Danish prosecutors appealed the verdicts freeing Petersen and several of his top associates. Petersen and four of the defendants disappeared around the same time. Three years later, the one defendant remaining in Denmark, Poul Jørgensen, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on fraud charges. In 2013, Petersen and his fellow fugitives were sentenced in absentia on fraud and embezzlement charges, and Interpol issued an alert for them.

DAPP’s attorneys sought to distance DAPP Malawi from Petersen and the Teachers Group fraud case, writing that “neither DAPP Malawi nor any of its present or former board members had an involvement in the Danish court case. Mr. Petersen has never held any position in DAPP Malawi.”

However, Maria Darsbo – whom Malawian public records show serving as a DAPP Malawi trustee as well as its secretary – is described in the case against Petersen as having helped carry out a transaction that prosecutors said was meant to skim money from an African anti-AIDS project for Petersen’s personal use.

Seven current and former DAPP managers told Reveal that they were flown to Petersen’s hideout in Mexico to meet the Teachers Group leader and receive instructions from him on how to run DAPP programs. Chiku Malabwe, DAPP Malawi’s former chief purchasing agent, was among them.

The Teachers Group's complex in Mexico is a sprawling, marble-floored combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal. In 2012, the organization released documents suggesting it valued the compound at about $26 million.
The Teachers Group’s complex in Mexico is a sprawling, marble-floored combination of Disney World, Club Med and the Taj Mahal. In 2012, the organization released documents suggesting it valued the compound at about $26 million.
Credit: Courtesy of Enrique Botello

Malabwe said he flew to Mexico three times – in 2007, 2008 and 2013 – to receive orders from Petersen.

“Amdi Petersen, he controls everything. Whatever they do, they do it for Teachers Group, and Petersen controls it,” Malabwe told Reveal. “If they say there’s no connection, it would be, like – that’s a total lie. There’s a big connection: DAPP means Teachers Group.”

In a 2001 FBI document related to extraditing Petersen from the U.S., DAPP, Planet Aid and a third group – Humana People to People – all are described as being part of the Teachers Group network, which diverts funds with “little or no money going to the charities.”

Reveal previously reported that the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service has allocated more than $133 million to Planet Aid since 2004 for aid work in Malawi and Mozambique.

In the spring, as part of its scheduled review of how its funds were used, UNICEF asked to see DAPP payroll records.

“We requested them, and they haven’t been produced, despite the fact we warned them of this investigation some weeks ago,” said Travis, the UNICEF Malawi spokeswoman. “Any organization would report payments to whom and when, and that would be in your payroll statement. Any organization should be able to produce that fairly quickly.”

The USDA has not responded to repeated requests for comment about UNICEF’s decision to halt funding. The agency’s inspector general confirmed that it is aware of Reveal’s findings and still is considering the USDA’s request that it audit the Planet Aid/DAPP grants.

DAPP Malawi and Planet Aid long have been dues-paying members of the Humana People to People network. Reveal requested an interview with Marie Lichtenberg, the director of international partnerships for Planet Aid and Humana People to People and a longtime Teachers Group member. She referred all questions to a public relations consultant.

That consultant, Andrew Rice, issued a denial similar to that of DAPP’s London law firm.

“Planet Aid has no knowledge of the situation you describe between UNICEF and DAPP Malawi nor is Planet Aid involved in any way,” Rice wrote in an email. “It would be inappropriate to give you an interview about something Planet Aid knows nothing about and is not party to.”

Yet records show such connections abound.

Both Planet Aid and DAPP Malawi are listed on the USDA agreements from 2006 and 2009 that allocated $45 million for work in Malawi. Lichtenberg and DAPP Malawi Country Director Lisbeth Thomsen both are identified as “applicants” for those funds.

Documents obtained by Reveal ­­– including Lichtenberg’s personal calendars, emails and memos – show her working with DAPP Malawi leaders to obtain funding, manage relationships with donors and coordinate with the Teachers Group.

UNICEF was among their funding targets.

An August 2013 document titled, “Marie, Charlotte and Lisbeth Partnership Communication Form & Log Book,” is a chart of fundraising activities showing Lichtenberg working with Thomsen and DAPP Malawi Partnership Manager Charlotte Danckert to seek money from UNICEF.

Lichtenberg’s personal calendars from 2000 to 2013 show her meeting on a regular basis with UNICEF officials. And a Feb. 17, 2011, memo titled, “UNICEF Overview,” obtained from Lichtenberg’s personal files, describes UNICEF funding for sanitation projects in Malawi. Lichtenberg’s files show the relationship extended beyond that country as well, noting UNICEF funds were raised for other DAPP programs in Zambia, Congo, Namibia, Angola, India and Guinea-Bissau.

Atheists urge Australians not to joke around by putting Jedi as their religion on the census

·        JULY 29 2016

Brisbane Times

·       

Matthew Knott

 

Kylie Sturgess loves science fiction - so much that at the last census, the radio tutor marked "Jedi" in the religion section. Her husband, who has attended several sci-fi conventions with her, did the same.

"We thought: why not put down Jedi?" Ms Sturgess said.

"It seemed hilarious.

"We didn't really reflect on it."

Ms Sturgess and her husband were far from alone. 

In the 2011 census 64,390 Australians marked Jedi as their religion, up from 58,053 in 2006. This put the number of Jedi in Australia just behind Sikhs and above Seventh Day Adventists.

The Jedi phenomenon began in 2001 when an email campaign mistakenly claimed the government would have to recognise it as an official religion if 8000 people selected it in the census.

Now Ms Sturgess, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, is leading a campaign for people not to treat the census as a joke.

This is because if people fill in the "other" box in the religion section of the census with an answer such as Jedi they are counted as "not defined" rather than "no religion".

Ms Sturgess said this skews the census results by making Australia appear more religious than it is.

"People shouldn't waste their answer," she said. 

"Answering the religion question thoughtfully and honestly matters because it benefits all Australians when decisions on how to spend taxpayer dollars are made on sound data that accurately reflects modern-day Australia."

Posters promoting the campaign to tick the "no religion" box say: "If old religious men in robes do not represent you don't mask yourself as 'Jedi'."

Avid Star Wars fan Chris Brennan, from Melbourne, said: "Some people put down Jedi as a snub to the government, saying, 'You can't tell me what to do.'

"But others put it down as a serious commitment."

Mr Brennan said there are "many genuine followers of the Jedi way and they're not all nut jobs and ferals".

He said the Jedi belief system includes views such as "all life is sacred", "be kind to others" and "protect the innocent and the weak". The phrase "no religion" does not necessarily sum up many people's views of faith even if they don't follow an organised religion, he said. 

This year's census, to be held on Tuesday August 9, will be the first where "no religion" sits at the top of ten possible responses rather than at the bottom. 

At the 2011 census, 22 per cent of Australians chose "no religion" with Catholics on 25 per cent and Anglicans on 18 per cent.

Ms Sturgess said people can still feel spiritual and lead moral lives without identifying as religious.

Separate email campaigns by anti-Islam groups are urging Australians to select a Christian religion on the census, even if they are not practising, to stop Australia becoming seen as a "Muslim nation". 

In the last census 2.2 per cent of Australians identified as Muslim.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/atheists-urge-australians-not-to-joke-around-by-putting-jedi-as-their-religion-on-the-census-20160729-gqgqx4.html

 

An After School Satan Club could be coming to your kid’s elementary school

The Washington Post

By Katherine Stewart 

July 30, 2016

 

SALEM, Mass. —It's a hot summer night, and leaders of the Satanic Temple have gathered in the crimson­-walled living room of a Victorian manse in this city renowned for its witch trials in the 17th century. They're watching a sepia-toned video, in which children dance around a maypole, a spider crawls across a clown's face and eerie, ambient chanting gives way to a backward, demonic voice-over. The group chuckles with approval.

They're here plotting to bring their wisdom to the nation's public elementary school children. They point out that Christian evangelical groups already have infiltrated the lives of America's children through after-school religious programming in public schools, and they appear determined to give young students a choice: Jesus or Satan.

"It's critical that children understand that there are multiple perspectives on all issues, and that they have a choice in how they think," said Doug Mesner, the Satanic Temple's co-founder.

On Monday, the group plans to introduce its After School Satan Club to public elementary schools, including one in Prince George's County, petitioning school officials to allow them to open immediately as the academic year starts. Chapter heads from New York, Boston, Utah and Arizona were in Salem on July 10 talking strategy, with others from Minneapolis, Detroit, San Jose, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Florida participating online. The promotional video, which feels like a mash-up of a horror movie trailer and a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, will serve to promote the new club along with its website — Afterschoolsatan.com.

 

[Read the letter the Satantic Temple plans to send to school districts]

 

The Satanic Temple — which has been offering tongue-in-cheek support for the fallen angel in public arenas that have embraced prayer and parochial ceremonies — is bringing its fight over constitutional separation of church and state to the nation's schools.

But the group's plan for public schoolchildren isn't actually about promoting worship of the devil. The Satanic Temple doesn't espouse a belief in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions identify solemnly as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub. The Temple rejects all forms of supernaturalism and is committed to the view that scientific rationality provides the best measure of reality.

According to Mesner, who goes by the professional name of Lucien Greaves, "Satan" is just a "metaphorical construct" intended to represent the rejection of all forms of tyranny over the human mind.

The curriculum for the proposed after-school clubs emphasizes the development of reasoning and social skills. The group says meetings will include a healthful snack, literature lesson, creative learning activities, a science lesson, puzzle solving and an art project. Every child will receive a membership card and must have a signed parental­ permission slip to attend.

"We think it's important for kids to be able to see multiple points of view, to reason things through, to have empathy and feelings of benevolence for their fellow human beings," said the Satanic Temple's Utah chapter head, who goes by the name Chalice Blythe.

The emphasis on multiple perspectives is a hint pointing to the Temple's true foe. The group at first intends to roll out the clubs in a limited number of schools in districts that also host an evangelical Christian after-school program known as the Good News Club.

Good News Clubs, which are sponsored by an organization founded in 1937 called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), aim to reach children as young as 5 with a fundamentalist form of evangelical Christianity. For most of their history, Good News Clubs were largely excluded from public schools out of concern that their presence would violate the Constitution.

In 2001, in a case that commanded the resources of powerful legal advocacy groups on the religious right, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Liberty Counsel, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that to exclude an after-school program on account of the religious views of its sponsors amounted to a violation of free-speech rights. The CEF then went on a tear, and by 2011, it reported 3,560 Good News Clubs, putting them in more than 5 percent of the nation's public elementary schools.

The Satanic Temple makes no secret of its desire to use that same approach.

"We would like to thank the Liberty Counsel specifically for opening the doors to the After School Satan Clubs through their dedication to religious liberty," Greaves explained to the gathering of chapter heads in Salem. "So, 'the Satanic Temple leverages religious freedom laws that put after-school clubs in elementary schools nationwide.' That's going to be the message."

The Liberty Counsel agrees that the Satanic Temple has a right to organize its clubs in public schools and takes the view that they can't be banned so long as they're not disruptive or engaging in rituals that put people at risk.

"I would definitely oppose after­-school Satanic clubs, but they have a First Amendment right to meet," said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel's founder and chairman. "I suspect, in this particular case, I can't imagine there's going to be a lot of students participating in this. It's probably dust they're kicking up and is likely to fade away in the near future for lack of interest."

The Satanic Temple is eager to compete directly with the Good News Clubs and doesn't hide its belief that its own after-school product is on the right side.

"While the Good News Clubs focus on indoctrination, instilling children with a fear of hell and God's wrath, After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism," Greaves said. "We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of an everlasting other-worldly horror."

Good News Club leaders have defended their organization's presence in public schools. According to the Good News Club's website, "each club includes a clear presentation of the Gospel and an opportunity for children to trust the Lord Jesus as Savior. Every club also includes strong discipleship training to build character and strengthen moral and spiritual growth."

Amy Jensen, a professional educator in Tucson who has a master's degree in curriculum, instruction and teaching from the University of Denver, says she has decided to lead an After School Satan Club after comparing its curriculum materials with those of the Good News Club. Jensen noted that the Satanic Temple's materials say the group encourages benevolence and empathy among all people, and advocates practical common sense.

"As a teacher, if I were deciding whether to teach that or the fear and hatred of other people's beliefs, which is what Good News Clubs teach, I would choose what the Satanic Temple has available," she said.

Like all ASSC teachers, Jensen is a volunteer. To cover After School Satan Club costs, including facility use fees and curriculum materials, the Satanic Temple is launching a crowdfunding campaign — which is how it covers many of its initiatives.

The blend of political activism, religious critique and performance art that characterizes the After School Satan Club proposal is not a new approach for the Satanic Temple. It is just the most recent in a series of efforts that have made the Temple famous and notorious.

In 2014, after the Supreme Court ruled that the regular recitation of prayers before town meetings did not violate the First Amendment, provided that towns do not discriminate among religions, the Temple decided to test just how much religious liberty towns allowed. They volunteered to perform a Satanic benediction in an Arizona town where the board had regularly opened with a Christian prayer. In that case, the town preferred to abolish the practice of opening prayers.

In this and other instances — such as when the Satanic Temple proposed the installation of a statue of Baphomet in Oklahoma in response to a stone monument emblazoned with the Ten Commandments — the thrust of the Temple's activism has been to prevent religious groups from claiming the mantle of implicit state endorsement.

The group's activism has much in common with a movement started a decade ago, when Bobby Henderson of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster penned an open letter to the Kansas School Board in 2005, citing fears that the introduction of teaching religious intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution would inculcate public school students with Christian thought. Henderson argued that believing that there is a benevolent deity made of spaghetti and meatballs is just as legitimate as believing in God. Believers in the Flying Spaghetti Monster took on the name "Pastafarians."

Like the Satanic Temple, the Pastafarians insist that theirs is a genuine religion. According to Henderson, who published "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" in 2006, it's inaccurate to say that his church is "purely a thought experiment or satire."

"The Church of FSM is legit, and backed by hard science. Anything that comes across as humor or satire is purely coincidental," Henderson says on his website. "Let me make this clear: we are not anti-religion, we are anti-crazy nonsense done in the name of religion. There is a difference."

Greaves likewise insists that the Satanic Temple is much more than satire: "We've moved well beyond being a simple political ploy and into being a very sincere movement that seeks to separate religion from superstition," he said.

The Satanic Temple expects to face opposition to its after-school proposal. When the group sought to erect the Baphomet monument, the Oklahoma governor's office dismissed the proposal as "absurd," and right-wing activists joined the attack.

Given the fight ahead and the long odds of pushing Christianity out of public schools, an important question about the After School Satan Clubs is: Does the Satanic Temple really want religion — even its own — in public schools?

Greaves is blunt: "We are only doing this because Good News Clubs have created a need for this. If Good News Clubs would operate in churches rather than public schools, that need would disappear. But our point is that if you let one religion into the public schools you have to let others, otherwise it's an establishment of religion."

In the 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Justice David Souter penned a scathing dissent. He suggested that the decision would bring about a world in which "any public school opened for civic meetings must be opened for use as a church, synagogue, or mosque."

The Satanic Temple probably wasn't front and center in his thinking. Yet it appears determined to prove him correct.

Stewart is a Boston-based journalist. She is the author of "The Good News Club," an investigative book about public education and religious fundamentalism in America. Follow her on Twitter: @kathsstewart

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/an-after-school-satan-club-could-be-coming-to-your-kids-elementary-school/2016/07/30/63f485e6-5427-11e6-88eb-7dda4e2f2aec_story.html

 

THE FAMILY REVIEW - RIDDLE OF A MELBOURNE CULT GOES LARGELY UNANSWERED

The tangled, creepy, improbable story of the cult and its charismatic leader proves too much for this higgledy-piggledy documentary

The Guardian

Luke Buckmaster

Monday 1 August 2016

The formation of Melbourne-based cult The Family and the behaviour of its charismatic leader – a yoga teacher who claimed, as you do, to be Jesus Christ reincarnated – is a terrific story, full of incredulous events and hair-raising details.

Teaching a hodge-podge of eastern mysticism and Christianity, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was the group’s self-appointed head honcho, who sat on a literal throne and fed her home-schooled young followers LSD.

Throughout the 60s and 70s Hamilton-Byre adopted children she raised (and claimed to be her own), dressing them in identical clothes and cutting their peroxide-dyed hair in the same bob cut. Looking at photographs of them evokes memories of Village of the Damned, or the twins from The Shining (“come play with us forever and ever and ever …”).

Anne Hamilton-Byrne, leader of Melbourne-based cult The Family. Photograph: Melbourne International film festival

A falling out between the leader and one of her “daughters”, Sarah, spelt the beginning of the end: police raided The Family’s property in Eildon in the late 80s and legal proceedings followed. In the field of stranger-than-fiction Australian tales, this one is certainly on the podium.

A terrific story indeed. But sadly, not the one presented in film-maker Rosie Jones’s ambitious attempt to make sense of it; a structurally higgledy-piggledy documentary that is less an expose than a tantalising suggestion of the history lesson that might have been.

The tendency for film-makers to shoot first and “pick it up in the edit” is a particularly tempting one in documentary. Here it seems to have overwhelmed the film-maker; there’s a feeling The Family was ordered retrospectively and the task was monumental.

Jones’s research is commendable (perhaps an upcoming book tie-in will provide a more accommodating format) and the film includes access to several of the now grown-up children.

But the riddle of what compelled Hamilton-Byrne’s followers to behave in ways they would otherwise find morally reprehensible remains largely out of reach. So too for more elementary questions. What did a standard day at the club cult-house look like? What did the adults get up to when they weren’t drugging the kids?

The Family drops most of its information about Hamilton-Byrne towards the end (her life is unquestionably interesting, journeying from an impoverished background to an insanely – in more than a single sense – privileged one) but that content might have worked better front-loaded. The film would have immeasurably benefited from a clearer, more palatable structure, a path to guide audiences through this tangled, creepy, improbable yarn.

At one point a new interview appears, credited as a current member of the sect. The viewer’s response is likely to be What’s that? Say again? This thing still exists?

But the film-maker greets the revelation with no sense of surprise, a frustrating approach, presumably predicated on an assumption audiences more or less know this story. Most of us don’t. A great one remains – evidently, like the cult itself – lurking somewhere, waiting to be told.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/aug/01/the-family-review-riddle-of-a-cult-goes-largely-unanswered

 

Turkey: Is the Gülen Organization a Cult?

Breitbart Newshe Associated Press

by ROBERT AMSTERDAM

31 Jul 2016

 

Note: Robert Amsterdam is a Canadian attorney based in London who has represented government officials, corporations and human rights activists around the world. He isworking with the Turkish government on litigation involving Gulen.

 

In the aftermath of the violent attempted military coup launched against the Government of Turkey on July 15-16, urgent questions have been raised regarding the role of the self-exiled cleric, Fethullah Gülen, resident in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

Gülen is not your typical radical. You won’t find him posting incendiary videos to the Internet or directly calling for violence or revealing his agenda to the public. He’s actually much smarter and more dangerous than that.

For years, he and his extensive hierarchy of loyalists have worked from behind closed doors in his mansion in the Poconos, where he has established more than 160 charter schools (via secretive front companies), 55,000 businesses operating worldwide, and thousands of members embedding themselves throughout the media, government, and military in Turkey.

In Turkey, people are not fooled by Gülen’s act. When the attempted coup took place, Turkish citizens flooded into the streets and risked their lives not to cheer on Gülen, but to resist the putschists and send them back to their barracks. The issue of his involvement in this attempted overthrow is a matter of general consensus – even those opposed to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledge the link.

But here in the United States, regrettably, it’s another story. Many members of the media (as well as many politicians benefitting from the largesse of his donations) treat Gülen with naïve acceptance of the “moderate Islam” narrative they are presented with while never questioning the vast array of inconsistencies, half-truths, and direct involvement in criminal activity.

Among Gülen’s leading U.S. supporters is the former high-ranking CIA officer Graham E. Fuller, who writing in the Huffington Post on July 22, described the Hizmet network as “one of the most encouraging faces of contemporary Islam in the world.” As he acknowledges in the piece, he played a key role as a character witness in protecting Gülen from deportation.

When Gülen’s green card application was rejected in 2007, Gülen appealed, citing as support for his application his widespread influence, educational leadership (which he previously had denied under oath), and scholarly activities. Lawyers representing the U.S. government were highly skeptical of Gülen’s submissions to support his lofty position, however: “The evidence submitted by plaintiff [Gülen], when carefully examined, reveals that he is not a scholar and his work is not the subject of serious scholarship. He is a religious and political figure attempting to buy academic prestige by paying people to write papers about him.”

Despite USCIS’s misgivings, Gülen won his appeal in 2008 largely due to Fuller’s support and has enjoyed permanent residency in the United States ever since. Fuller and other supporters high up within the U.S. intelligence apparatus are mistaken with regard to the intentions and risk posed by this organization.

While there may, in fact, exist many innocent members pursuing public works, there is also another side actively working on a much more sinister agenda. This is echoed by Mustafa Akyol in the New York Times, who writes that former Gülenists have told him “there is a darker side of the movement, and few of its members know it as it is.”

Years before the attempted coup took place, Gülen himself ordered his followers to secretly penetrate key state institutions, instructing them to “move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers.” He then instructed them to lie about ever receiving such instructions.

The Gülen organization practices what academics describe as “strategic ambiguity” – which means that they habitually conceal all connections while consistently and regularly denying the scope and purpose of their operations. As a telling example of this strategic ambiguity and the exploitation it enables, three Gülen charter schools were closed in Georgia after a series of forensic audits uncovered the schools’ use of a fake educational services vendor, the Grace Institute.

Over the course of our investigation into unlawful activities at Gülen’s U.S. charter schools, we have interviewed numerous whistleblowers and former teachers. The disturbing revelations very much point to the Gülen organization operating as a cult.

Former teachers have disclosed abusive treatment of Turkish nationals secured as employees of these schools through the H-1B visa program that borders on human trafficking. In the past, passports have been seized, the Turkish teachers’ movements limited, their earnings garnished, and their social lives and basic freedoms surveilled. These whistleblowers indicate a sophisticated level of control, including mandatory installation of tracking software on laptops and phones to prevent members from disclosing the Organization’s secrets. One whistleblower faced deportation from a European country after beginning to speak out about the Gülen organization’s illegal activity.

Yet despite all this, Gülen remains in favor with a variety of influential Americans such as Fuller. Fuller’s defense stands as an example of the strange level of support Gülen has received from former ambassadors and agents of the U.S. who appear to operate with eyes wide shut, oblivious to the extensive fraud schemes he is running. Despite numerous ongoing criminal investigations, Fuller and key figures in the US leap to the cult’s defense.

Think about it: a cult accused by a crucial NATO ally of operating a terror organization determined to overthrow its elected government is secretly running 160 charter schools and attempting to influence the international relations of the United States, and we are simply asked to look the other way. We believe those schools are operated by cells of Gülen’s followers, with the primary purpose of exploiting the public education sector to benefit one person only—Gülen.

Turkey has every reason to question the position of the United States in this matter, just as the U.S. would question other nations hosting similar criminal organizations. While asking Turkey for evidence of Gülen’s coup mongering, we should also be asking the American government why, with numerous audits, investigations, and evidence of wrongdoing by the Gülen Organization available in the public record, we still give this dangerous cult safe harbor.

Robert Amsterdam is the founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP. The firm has been appointed to represent the Republic of Turkey with regard to a global investigation of the unlawful conduct of the Gülen organization.

 

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/07/31/gulen-organization-cult/