Temple Terrace woman plans roadside plea to Chinese president over imprisoned mother

Tony Marrero,

Tampa Bay Times
April 6, 2017


One day in 2006, Iris Lu came home from high school in rural southern China to find her family's home ransacked and her mother gone.

Cuiping Deng, a primary school teacher, had been hauled away to a detention center, her second trip to prison for practicing a Chinese spiritual discipline called Falun Gong. Deng would be subjected to torture by a communist regime determined to make her recant her beliefs, according to Lu.

Last summer, Deng was arrested a third time and is now serving a six-year sentence.

Lu, an accountant for the University of South Florida who lives in Temple Terrace, will get into a friend's car today and travel from Tampa to Palm Beach, where they'll park on the side of the road near President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, unfurl a 10-foot-long vinyl banner, and wait.

At some point, they hope, Chinese president Xi Jinping's motorcade will pass and the leader will catch a glimpse of Lu and the banner that bears her mother's photo and a message.

"I just want to present my story to him and let him know there are ordinary families suffering in China, in the land that his government controls," Lu said. "And I hope he can do something to help me."

• • •

Deng started practicing Falun Gong in 1997 to ease stress, calm her mind and fight insomnia. It worked, but the physical effects were only part of the benefit, her daughter said.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a philosophy with roots in Buddhism and qigong, a relative of yoga. Deng read books espousing the faith's philosophy, centered on truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.

"That improved a lot of other personal relationships with her friends and her family," said Lu, who began to practice Falun Gong as a stressed-out undergraduate.

But as Falun Gong grew in popularity, the communist regime under then-President Jiang Zemin began to see the practice — counter to its militant atheism — as a threat. The government launched a campaign to eradicate the group, arresting people, often without due process, subjecting them to forced labor and torture that sometimes resulted in death, according to human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Deng was sentenced to three years in prison in 2006. During her confinement, she was forced to sit on a small stool for hours at a time, damaging her legs and hips, Lu said. Guards ordered other inmates to stab her with small needles. Deng continued to practice Falun Gong in secret. She'd lost friends, her health and her career. But she couldn't stay silent. Falun Gong, after all, stresses honesty.

"She couldn't lie to herself or to other people," Lu said. "We cannot just keep silent for our own safety and let this go."

• • •

Lu moved to America in 2012 and received her master's degree in accounting from the University of Tampa. She started her job at USF in 2015 and made plans to bring her parents to the United States, where they could apply for asylum.

Meanwhile, she spoke weekly with them on Skype. Last July, she called and finally reached her father, Wenming, who said Deng was tried in February on a charge of "using a cult organization to sabotage law enforcement." Her lawyer pointed to flaws in the charge — that China has never criminalized Falun Gong and that prosecutors couldn't point to which law had been sabotaged.

But the courts, Lu said, are an arm of the regime and Deng was found guilty.

Her lawyer visited her recently and found her health rapidly declining. A plum-sized tumor has sprouted on her leg, and it's painful for her to walk and sit.

Lu sought help from U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, a Lakeland Republican who represents eastern Hills­borough County. Ross penned a letter to President Xi in August expressing concerns about Deng's arrest. In October, Ross, Palm Harbor Republican Gus Bilirakis and two other members of Congress signed a letter requesting the release of Deng and seven other Falun Gong prisoners.

This week, Ross sent a third letter, noting Deng's ill health and seeking her "urgent release."

Ross said he has received no reply to any of the letters.

"We in the Congress should assert ourselves in the name of human rights and say this is unacceptable," Ross said. "These oppressions should cease, especially in the name of Iris' mother."

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

• • •

Lu and her friends planned to leave Tampa by 3 a.m., hoping to reach Palm Beach by the time the sun rises. They'll join other Falun Gong supporters along the road that leads to Mar-a-Lago.

Hoping to catch Xi's eye, Lu will be clutching one end of a banner that reads, "Help Rescue My Mother Cuiping Deng."

"He's human, too," Lu said. "He has a daughter. He has a wife. I just want to let him think about himself and his own family and give my a family a chance to be reunited."

Contact Tony Marrero at tmarrero@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes.



Falun Gong

Founding: Falun Gong is a spiritual movement founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992. Also known as Falun Dafa, it has its origins in qigong, a combination of meditation techniques and physical exercise to achieve good health and peace of mind.

Meaning: The name means "Discipline of the Dharma Wheel" and refers to the revolving wheel Li promised to install in his followers, purifying their bodies and freeing them from bodily concerns. The teachings draw from Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Chinese folklore, as well as Western new age movements.

'Cult' status: The growing popularity of the Falun Gong faith in the 1990s alarmed China's communist regime, which saw the practice as counter to the government's militant atheism and a threat to its authority. In 1999, then-President Jiang Zemin deemed Falun Gong a "heretical cult" and a danger to state security.

Crackdown: Falun Gong practitioners across China are subject to surveillance, detention, imprisonment and torture, and are at a high risk of extrajudicial execution, according to human rights groups such as Freedom House and Amnesty International.



Sources: brittanica.com; religionfacts.com; freedomhouse.org
http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/temple-terrace-woman-plans-roadside-plea-to-chinese-president-over/2319304

In Canada, Where Muslims Are Few, Group Stirs Fear of Islamists

CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
APRIL 5, 2017

STONEHAM-ET-TEWKESBURY, Quebec — Patrick Beaudry, bejeweled, tattooed and bearded, lives on a remote wooded hillside in rural Quebec, worrying about living under Shariah law.

A year and a half ago, he huddled with two friends in a Quebec maple sugar shack, discussing how to stop the spread of what they call “invasive political Islam” in Canada. They formed a group called La Meute, or Wolfpack, created a Facebook page and invited like-minded people to join.

Within a month, they had 15,000 followers. Today, the number has surpassed 50,000, and the group is still attracting people. Now, Mr. Beaudry and his colleagues say they are shaping those followers into dues-paying members who will give the group financial muscle and, they hope, political clout.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly opened Canada’s doors to refugees and presented a face of tolerance and inclusion in a world increasingly hostile to migration. But as Canadian immigration policy has transformed the nation over decades, pockets of intolerance have grown across the country.

Nowhere has it galvanized such large numbers as in Quebec, where many people still refer to themselves as pure laine, or pure wool, direct descendants of the 17th-century settlers of New France. The most emotional response has focused on conservative Muslim immigrants, who perhaps present the greatest contrast to traditional European-based culture and the secularism that Quebec struggled hard to win from the Roman Catholic Church.

The concerns are outsize by any measure. Muslims represent just 3 percent of Canada’s population, and while Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions in the country, Muslims will still account for less than 6 percent of the population in 2050, according to the Pew Research Center.

Nonetheless, Mr. Beaudry and his peers say they believe there is a real threat that Islamists are bending Canada’s tolerant culture to their will. The group’s main concern is political Islam pushed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Pan-Arab movement that grew out of Egypt after the fall of the Ottoman Empire following World War I.

“Political Islam is slowly invading our institutions,” Mr. Beaudry declared, claiming that his group had documentary proof, though he was not prepared to show it. “We have to wake up people and shake them up, and then we will be able to bring change.”

The theme is popular among right-wing groups across North America and Europe, where the slow integration of conservative Muslim immigrants into Judeo-Christian cultures has excited fears among some of a global culture war.

A 2004 move to set up Shariah mediation for Muslim family disputes in Ontario, which already allowed Jewish and Catholic faith-based tribunals to operate in the province, incited a national outcry.

Quebec subsequently passed a law banning Shariah tribunals. Ontario eventually banned faith-based tribunals for all religions. Nonetheless, the events left an impression among many people that conservative Muslims were working to instill Shariah law in Canada.

Canadian Muslims say that not only are such fears unfounded, but that propagating them is also dangerous, to Muslims and to society as a whole.

“They are creating a problem where there is no problem,” said Hassan Guillet, a lawyer and imam.

Mr. Guillet said Canadian Muslims were caught between what he called a relentless and often-negative media focus on Islam and right-wing groups like La Meute that spread misinformation.

“If you keep rejecting the young, they will feel frustrated and feel that they don’t belong, and they will look for their own society,” Mr. Guillet warned, adding that such disenfranchisement had led some young European Muslims down the path of radicalization. “We don’t want that. We want our kids to feel that they belong, we want our kids to feel Canadian.”

As for the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada, Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum and a frequent target of conspiracy theories, called it simple fearmongering.

He noted that the largest recent terrorist attack in Canada did not come from Muslims, but targeted them. He was referring to the January killing of six worshipers at a mosque in Quebec by a gunman; the man accused of the killings espoused far-right views.

Small, violent right-wing groups have appeared in the decades since Canada relaxed its immigration laws to embrace multiculturalism. But revulsion toward violence and hate speech has kept such groups on the margins. La Meute has created a more moderate setting where people can communicate their fears.

“La Meute is very different from what we have seen so far,” said Samuel Tanner, an associate professor at the International Center for Comparative Criminology at the University of Montreal who studies Canada’s far right.

He likened the group’s followers to the blue-collar Democrats in the United States who supported President Trump. “They are a new type of right, blending conservatism with some liberal values,” he said.

Some experts warn that groups like La Meute, however much they eschew violence, create an enabling environment in which hate can grow. “They are embedded in a broader cultural ethos that bestows ‘permission to hate,’” said Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology who has written extensively on right-wing extremism in Canada.

The conversation within La Meute’s private Facebook page can border on hateful. In response to one person’s request about what could be done to prevent construction of a mosque in the neighborhood, another follower suggested pouring pig’s blood on the ground and letting Muslims know the land had been desecrated.

While primarily confined to French-speaking Canada, La Meute lies on a continuum of conservative thought that is propelling politicians like Kellie Leitch, a member of Parliament who is vying for leadership of Canada’s Conservative Party. Ms. Leitch once proposed a tip line for people to report “barbaric cultural practices,” and has suggested that immigrants be screened for “Canadian values” so that the country can maintain “a unified Canadian identity.”

Mr. Beaudry, the son of a onetime lumberjack and heavy equipment operator, joined the Canadian Army when he was 17 and spent years in Germany. He retired from the army after a car accident in 2002 and subsequently spent several months working as a private contractor in Afghanistan. He was greatly influenced by the specter of Taliban rule.

He said he and his friends were motivated by the 2014 killing of two soldiers in Canada in separate episodes, both at the hands of Canadian extremists who had converted to Islam. “We realized something was happening,” Mr. Beaudry said, adding that terrorist attacks in France and Belgium followed soon after.

He said that the primary goal in founding La Meute was to educate members and others about the growth of political Islam in Canada.

Mr. Beaudry spoke specifically about the group’s opposition to the niqab and the burqa, Islamic styles of dress that cover women’s faces. Only a tiny sliver of the Canadian population adopts them, but “if people cannot blend with the society,” Mr. Beaudry said, “it becomes a cancer and if you want to save your life, you have to take action.”

He also believes a parliamentary motion passed last month that condemns Islamophobia is a move to silence criticism of political Islam and is the first step toward an Islamic anti-blasphemy law.

On the private Facebook page, La Meute’s leaders quiz followers, screening for the most informed and dedicated who might fill positions in the hierarchy.

Mr. Beaudry said La Meute was assigning followers to 17 geographic “clans,” each with officers and staff, “so people know who to report to and where to go when things happen.” He said five clans were “fully operational,” and he expected all to be formed by the end of the year.

The group has transportation cells that take people to meetings and has medical units to care for the injured. Some members recently started an online radio station. Last month, La Meute fielded about 400 people in four cities to protest the anti-Islamophobia motion.

“We are trying to teach people that they have much more political power, they matter much more than the majority believes,” Mr. Beaudry said. “We want to influence our world, our politics.”

Email Craig S. Smith at craig.smith@nytimes.com or follow him on Twitter @craigss.

Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.

A version of this article appears in print on April 6, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Canada, Where Muslims Are Few, Group Stirs Fear of Islamistshttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/world/canada/la-meute-muslims-quebec.html?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=b16bc0029f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-b16bc0029f-400018169&_r=0

RUSSIA: JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES BREAK LAW BY REFUSING BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS

JASON LE MIERE

Newsweek
April 6, 2017

Jehovah’s Witnesses break the law forbidding “extremism” when its members refuse blood transfusions, Russia’s Justice Ministry said Thursday at a Supreme Court hearing on the question of banning the religious group in the country. The ministry added that if the organization is outlawed, its members could be prosecuted individually for extremism.

The Justice Ministry last month suspended the organization’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, alleging that its activities “violate Russia’s law on combating extremism." The country’s Supreme Court Wednesday began hearing a case that could outlaw the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has 175,000 members and 395 branches across the country, as an extremist organization.

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the Bible prohibits the ingesting of blood and so refuse to allow blood transfusions or donations. At a session of the Supreme Court Thursday, a spokesperson for the Justice Ministry argued that the stance meant the organization violated the anti-extremism law that was passed following Russia’s second war in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000 and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

“Checks have found that the organization is in breach of the law on resistance to extremism,” she said, according to Russian news agency TASS. “In particular, the organization’s religious literature forbids blood transfusion for its members in defiance of the doctors’ recommendation.”

The group had been warned in March 2016 that it could be banned if further evidence of alleged extremism was found in the following 12 months.

“The religious organization Jehovah’s Witnesses has been repeatedly warned by courts of law, but it has taken no required measures to eliminate the violations,” the Justice Ministry spokeswoman said.

A representative for the ministry asserted that the Jehovah’s Witnesses promoted the idea of their exceptionalism and supremacy over other religions, which similarly violated anti-extremism legislation.

The Supreme Court dismissed a counterclaim from the Jehovah’s Witnesses that its members were victims of repression.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have strongly denied the accusations against it, arguing that “extremism is profoundly alien to the Bible-based beliefs and morality” of members of the faith.

The federal United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said Wednesday that the Justice Ministry’s move “reflects the Russian government’s tendency to view all independent religious activity as a threat to its control and the country’s political stability.”
http://www.newsweek.com/russia-jehovahs-witnesses-ban-case-580227

The Souls of China by Ian Johnson - the resurgence of religion after Mao

The author meets Taoist musicians, rebel Christians and celebrity Zen Buddhists – but communism is the official faith


Julia Lovell
The Guardian
April 7, 2017

In the spring of last year, Xi Jinping – China’s paramount leader – presided over a national conference on religion. He seized the opportunity to declare Chinese Communist party (CCP) authority over questions of faith. Religious matters, Xi announced, are of “special importance” to the CCP: “We should guide and educate the religious circle and their followers with the socialist core values.” Believers must “dig deep into doctrines and canons that are in line with social harmony and progress, and favourable for the building of a healthy and civilised society, and interpret religious doctrines in a way that is conducive to modern China’s progress and in line with our excellent traditional culture”. Members of the CCP, he further emphasised, must remain “unyielding Marxist atheists, consolidate their faith, and bear in mind the party’s tenets”.

Xi’s remarks exemplified the fierce tensions that surround the past and present role of religion in communist China. While the party acknowledges and accepts the resurgence of religious belief made possible by the post-Mao thaw, it retains an ongoing compulsion to regulate faith – a compulsion that has resulted in violent suppressions of spiritual movements such as Falun Gong.

In his fascinating odyssey through contemporary Chinese religion, Ian Johnson uncovers the roots of these tensions, and the contradictory, complex face of religion in China today. He begins by describing the interlocking relations in pre-20th-century China between politics, society and multiple faiths. In the west, he argues, we are accustomed to thinking “in exclusive terms: this person is Catholic, that person is Jewish, another is Muslim. These faiths have … set places of worship, a holy book and, quite often, a clergy.” In pre-modern China, religious attachment lacked this absoluteness: believers veered between the “three teachings” (Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism) according to social and ritual need. Religion blurred ubiquitously into political power. Control of local temples and religious practices gave local bigwigs community clout; religious authority constituted the “lifeblood” of imperial rule. “The emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, who presided over elaborate rituals that underscored his semi-divine nature.”

Religion’s saturation of political life made it an obvious target for reformers and revolutionaries discontented with a China torn apart by foreign enemies and domestic rebels. In searching for the roots of the country’s crises, many early 20th-century radicals blamed religious tradition – particularly but not only Confucianism – for holding China back from becoming a cohesive, modern state populated by rational, dynamic citizens. This antagonism towards religious tradition peaked during the Mao years (1949-76): temples and monasteries were destroyed; clergy were beaten, imprisoned and killed; Christians were automatically suspect as adherents of a “western” faith. (The religious impulse, of course, did not disappear through these decades: especially from the 1960s onwards, Mao was worshipped as an infallible deity.)

Yet religion has made a striking comeback since intense political repression eased after Mao’s death. A survey carried out in 2005 by one of China’s top universities revealed that almost a third of the population (some 300 million people) subscribe in some way to a faith: mainly Buddhism, Taoism, folk religion or Christianity. But the party remains deeply ambivalent about China’s religious turn. “Traditional values and practices are encouraged as a source of stability and morality,” Johnson writes. “But faith is also feared as an uncontrollable force – an alternative ideology to the government’s vision of how society should be run.”

His book features an ensemble cast of believers, and follows the rhythms of the traditional Chinese lunar year. Johnson spends weeks with Taoist musicians, whose ritual performances bring the deceased “over to the other side”. He attends an unregistered Christian church in western China that challenges the party’s claim to be moral arbiter of society. He dines with celebrity Zen Buddhists, who dispense wisdom to real estate developers, the offspring of party aristocracy, executives and bank managers. He practises qigong – religious breathing exercises and meditation – with a master in an apartment block reserved for once-persecuted party elders rehabilitated after Mao’s death. With nicely understated irony, Johnson weaves the political rituals of the self-proclaimed atheistic CCP through this calendar: its conferences held in the Great Hall of the People, a communist temple saturated with legitimising ritual symbols; the intensely ritualistic departures and ascensions of communist leaders. “Like a Taoist priest,” he observes of Hu Jintao anointing a successor at the 18th party congress in November 2012, “Hu emulated an immortal … dyeing his hair jet-black to make himself look ageless, and surrounding himself with propaganda banners conferring immortality on the Communist party.”

The book is full of moving encounters with Chinese citizens struggling to find the “lost middle” of the country known as Middle Kingdom: funeral-goers wondering “Why are we here?”; civil rights lawyers and bloggers inspired by the spiritual independence of Chinese Christians; a Taoist functionary too overworked by clients clamouring for his spiritual services to stay connected with his 11-year-old son. At the winter solstice, many fall prey to apocalyptic imaginings from which, as ever in China, some try to make a buck: “A Beijing office worker constructed what he said was a cataclysm-proof bunker high up on the Tibetan plateau with an $8,000 entry fee.”

By the close of his lunar year, Johnson succeeds in having produced a nuanced group portrait of Chinese citizens striving for non-material answers in an era of frenetic materialism. All the while, they are overseen by an uneasy Communist party striving both to control spiritual life and to boost its legitimacy by hijacking some of the rhetoric and ritual of China’s old political-religious empire.

• The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao is published by Allen Lane. To order a copy for £21.25 (RRP £25) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/07/the-souls-of-china-ian-johnson-review-religion-after-mao?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=99db394456-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-99db394456-400018169

The myths of Jonestown: "Jim Jones was who Charlie Manson wanted to be," says author of new book on 1978 tragedy

It wasn't really Kool-Aid — and author Jeff Guinn says the Jonestown story has lessons about demagoguery in 2017

BOB CALHOUN

April 8, 2017

On Nov. 19, 1978, a small Guyanese military detachment marched through their South American country’s foreboding jungle into the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an American farming community known as Jonestown. The troops, accompanied by 20 teenaged trainees, feared they’d find themselves in a firefight with the followers of the Rev. Jim Jones, who established the 3,800-acre agricultural project in 1974 with the blessings of the Guyanese government. What the Guyanese Defense Forces found there, however, had them longing for a shootout instead.

The grounds of the Jonestown compound were covered in corpses. The bodies were already bloated from the jungle’s intense heat and humidity, even though Jones and his followers had been dead for barely a day. A handful of the Peoples Temple members, including Jones himself, had been shot. The rest of the 900-odd people who died there had killed themselves by drinking a grape-flavored drink spiked with cyanide.

The press called the tragedy the “Jonestown Massacre,” and they spun it as a cautionary tale of a Svengali-like Jones — always shown wearing oversized shades and looking like a brooding Elvis impersonator — exerting total control over a legion of brainwashed followers who would do anything at his command. They literally “drank the Kool-Aid,” spawning a trope that has lingered in American culture long after its origins have been forgotten.

“As I started to poke around, first thing I found out was that it wasn’t Kool-Aid,” author Jeff Guinn said in an interview, recalling the research for his new book, “The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple.” Indeed it wasn’t. The poison-delivery system at Jonestown on Nov. 18, 1978, was actually Flavor-Aid, a discount Kool-Aid knockoff.

“A lot of the people who died that day didn’t drink the poison voluntarily,” Guinn added. The Jonestown story, he said, “is once again a reminder that too often instead of actual history, we prefer mythology. It’s easier to believe that over 900 people died in Jonestown, including about 300 innocent kids, because they were all foolhardy and stupid, and trusted somebody who clearly they should not have trusted. The tragedy goes greater when you realize why they were there and how, in the end, they were willing to give up their lives, even though it wasn’t because they believed in Jim Jones anymore, but because they thought there was just nothing else for them.”

When Guinn isn’t writing fictional Westerns, the Texas native writes in-depth biographies exploring the facts behind the myths surrounding such violent American figures as Wyatt Earp or Bonnie and Clyde. “The Road to Jonestown” is Guinn’s follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 “Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson.” Following a book about Manson with one on Jim Jones might seem a natural progression; Guinn sees any similarities between the two cult leaders as mostly superficial.

“Comparing Charlie Manson to Jim Jones is like comparing Mickey Mouse to Machiavelli,” Guinn said. “Manson at his best could only attract a couple dozen drug-addled kids, and even then he couldn’t hold onto most of them very long.

“Jim Jones was who Charlie Manson wanted to be,” he went on. “Someone with thousands of followers; someone with real political and cultural influence.”

Jones took an unlikely path to prominence. He was a white minister to a mostly African-American congregation in 1950s Indianapolis, a Midwestern city with very Southern policies toward race. As a voice for the powerless, Jones became a driving force for integration in the Indiana capital by 1960.

Jones’ successes continued when he moved the Peoples Temple to Northern California in the mid-1960s, after an Esquire article convinced him that Mendocino County was where he and his church could survive the nuclear Armageddon he had prophesied. By 1976, Peoples Temple had helped mobilize enough votes to make George Moscone the mayor of San Francisco, transforming what was then a relatively conservative city dominated by business interests and Democratic machine politics into the liberal bastion we know today. But only two years after reaching his zenith of prestige and influence, Jones and his core followers would be lying dead in the jungle.

There were early warning signs, such as Jones’ childhood penchant for staging funerals for roadkill, or his comfort with faked faith-healings on the rural revival circuit. But Guinn never lets the more lurid aspects of the Peoples Temple story overwhelm the narrative. In taking this measured approach, Guinn gives us a better understanding of why so many stayed with the Peoples Temple even after Jones became increasingly controlling and abusive as the 1970s went on.

“If Jim Jones had been killed in a car wreck on his way moving from Indiana to California, he would be remembered as one of the great leaders in the early civil rights movement,” Guinn said, “and he’d deserve to be remembered this way.

“I mean, you have people walking around San Francisco who say they wouldn’t be alive today without Peoples Temple and their drug programs,” Guinn said. “Peoples Temple really did do all these fine things.

“One of the surprising things to me when I started writing this book, and meeting Temple survivors, is that so many of them are really intelligent, capable people,” Guinn explained. While the handful of young people who followed Manson hoped to rule the world by Charlie’s side after a race war called Helter Skelter, Jones was the rare demagogue who attracted followers by appealing to their better angels.

“Nobody joined Peoples Temple to get anything,” Guinn says. “They were willing to give up material things to try to make it a better world for everybody, and that, to me, is the definition of tragedy.”

Guinn found himself even more awed by what the Peoples Temple had achieved after he and five other men hacked through two miles of “triple-canopy jungle” with machetes to get to the Jonestown site in Guyana.

“There’s snakes everywhere, and all kinds of biting insects,” Guinn recalled. “You can hear animals rustling just out of sight, and the animals can include big cats. It’s a dangerous place.” Despite these tremendous obstacles, Jones was able to motivate his mostly African-American followers from the forgotten neighborhoods of Los Angeles and San Francisco “who’d never so much as mowed a lawn” to “carve out an almost self-sustaining farm out of this place.”

It’s a “staggering” achievement, Guinn observed, one that the Guyanese government has not come close to replicating, although it has tried several times over the years.

Whether Jones was always a disordered and dangerous personality, or was more like a well-meaning person gradually overtaken by hubris and paranoia, can be debated but never known. At some point during the 1970s, Guinn says that Jones abandoned being a shepherd to his flock, and began “to think of himself as a general,” and his followers as “troops or soldiers.”

“Jim Jones wanted to make one final great statement that would make his name live in history,” Guinn explained. “If that meant the soldiers had to be sacrificed for that victory, he was willing to do it. Of course, I hope he’s remembered in a way he never would have wanted.”

Although the story of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple is deeper than the simplified mythic version of it that haunts the American zeitgeist, the real story of Jonestown still holds lessons for dealing with demagogues in 2017.

“Anytime a leader, or someone presenting himself or herself as a leader, tries to first define the world into us and everyone who’s against us,” Guinn said, “that is a huge sign of danger, and everybody ought to back away.

We have demagogues today as we’ve had in 1978, and have had them through recorded civilization,” Guinn reflected. “At some point I hope our culture starts making people who want to be leaders focus a little bit more on the facts, and a little less on whatever is convenient to try and make people believe something that is not necessarily true.”

http://www.salon.com/2017/04/08/the-myths-of-jonestown-jim-jones-was-who-charlie-manson-wanted-to-be-says-author-of-new-book-on-1978-tragedy/

Pope Francis' Approval of SSPX Marriages Offers Hopeful Step to Unity

This is the latest effort by the Church to bring the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X into full communion.


Edward Pentin
National Catholic Register
VATICAN | APR. 7, 2017


VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ decision to approve a way for the Church to recognize marriages celebrated by priests of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X is a helpful step toward the priestly fraternity reconciling with Rome, but full communion is most probably still some way off.

This is according to sources both inside the Vatican and the priestly fraternity who, in April 6 comments to the Register, said that the Pope’s decision, made in a March 27 letter to the SSPX and publicized April 4, is not a sign of acceleration toward an agreement.

Rather, they believe it paves the way to creating a possible canonical structure to allow the society to come into full communion in the future.

In the letter from the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei — the Vatican body charged with regularizing the SSPX with Rome — the Pope gave diocesan bishops, or other local ordinaries, the authorization to grant SSPX priests the ability to licitly and validly celebrate the marriages of faithful belonging to the society.

The authorization is granted under the condition that a diocesan, or otherwise fully regular, priest is delegated to hear and receive the consent of the parties during the marriage rite itself, which can then be followed by the celebration of the liturgy by a priest of the society.

The Holy Father approved this authorization following a proposal by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Ecclesia Dei commission, as a way to ensure the validity and lawfulness of the sacrament and to “reassure the conscience of the faithful,” the commission’s letter explains.

“Despite the objective persistence of the canonical irregularity in which for the time being the Society of St. Pius X finds itself, the Holy Father … has decided to authorize local ordinaries the possibility to grant faculties for the celebration of marriages of faithful who follow the pastoral activity of the society,” the letter states.

If the first provision is not possible, or if no priests of the diocese are able to receive the consent of those marrying, then the local ordinary, most commonly the bishop of the area, may then grant the priest of the society presiding over the Mass the necessary faculties to receive the consent in the marriage rite.

In this case, the priest of the society is obliged to then send the relevant documents to the diocesan Curia as soon as possible.

The signatories of the letter — Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the congregation, and Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary of the commission — explained the effort is part of the Church’s current efforts “to bring the Society of St. Pius X into full communion.”

Archbishop Pozzo

In April 6 comments to the Register, Archbishop Pozzo explained that the measure aims to “avoid doubts” about the validity of marriages celebrated by SSPX priests. For Catholics, he added, “Marriage always demands respect for the canonical form” and, in so doing, a “special attention” to the bonum matrimonii [goods of marriage], which is a right of the Catholic faithful.”

Affirming the validity of SSPX marriages follows the Pope’s decision in 2015 to grant society priests faculties for absolving sins — a move also seen as furthering the reconciliation process.

“This is the second of these initiatives; it’s another piece of candy,” said a Vatican official close to the discussions.

In an April 4 statement, the SSPX expressed its “deep gratitude” to the Holy Father for his decision, adding that it shows the Pope wants to eradicate any doubts about the validity of the sacrament of marriage celebrated by a society priest. The SSPX added in the statement that it hopes all bishops “share this same pastoral attitude” — an indication that it foresees possible obstructions from some ordinaries unwilling to cooperate with them.

Unlike the Pope’s decision on the validity of SSPX confessions, this step is less straightforward to implement, as it requires SSPX priests contacting their local dioceses to receive the necessary jurisdiction.

The society, which only found out about the March 27 letter at the same time as everyone else, is therefore taking a “wait-and-see” attitude to see how extensive that level of cooperation will be.

In recognition of the current crisis in the Church concerning the indissolubility of marriage, the society ended its statement by stressing that its priests will continue to “strive faithfully” to prepare future spouses for marriage “according to the unchangeable doctrine of Christ about the unity and indissolubility of this union, before receiving the parties’ consent in the traditional rite of the Holy Church.”

The society wanted to stress that, whatever the current situation, its priests will continue to uphold the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage.

The Society of St. Pius X was founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970 in response to opposition to certain teachings of the Second Vatican Council. Its communion with Rome was impaired when the SSPX’s leadership consecrated four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II in 1988.

The bishops were consequently excommunicated until Benedict XVI lifted the penalty in 2009, after which talks began on bringing the society back into “full communion” with Rome. Those talks ended in 2013 due to the society’s inability to accept the Vatican terms of an agreement, one that insisted on accepting the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, but informal discussions have continued.

The main obstacles for the society’s reconciliation have been the statements on religious liberty in Vatican II’s declarations Dignitatis Humanae (The Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious) and Nostra Aetate (The Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), which the SSPX says contradict previous Catholic teaching.

The Vatican’s insistence on the SSPX adhering to the Council’s teaching appears unchanged: Archbishop Pozzo told the Register that in order to achieve full reconciliation, the superior general of the SSPX, currently Swiss Bishop Bernard Fellay, “must sign the doctrinal declaration” that the Holy See has asked the fraternity to accept. But he also said the fraternity must be able to “fully safeguard” its “spiritual, disciplinary, theological and pastoral identity,” which will come through the “development of its particular legal statutes” necessary for the creation of a personal prelature — a proposed canonical structure, similar to that of Opus Dei, which would enable the fraternity to operate within a Catholic diocese.

Archbishop Pozzo said he hopes such circumstances and the creation of a personal prelature “will happen soon.”

Remaining Obstacles

Sources in both the Vatican and the SSPX, however, say that reconciliation will take some time, and certainly won’t be achieved until after the summer, at the earliest. For the society, a final obstacle concerns modifications, safeguards and clarifications they have requested concerning the canonical structure, but which they have yet to receive. They also say the speed at which an agreement can be made depends on the determination of the Pope.

The Vatican recognizes that delays revolve around questions of “confidence and trust,” as well as finalizing the “mechanics and fine tuning” of a final agreement. Holy See officials see themselves as presenting an “open door” to the society, offering everything they can to realize an agreement.

Sources in the SSPX, speaking on the record only on the condition they would remain anonymous, told the Register they have witnessed greater outreach from the Vatican as internal conflicts deepen, especially concerning ambiguities in the Pope’s apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). Cardinal Müller, said one, is “more open to solutions” than before and now “seeing us more as allies than enemies.”

Another obstacle, one the society readily admits, is whether it can maintain a united front. Opinions differ over whether now is a prudent time to be regularized, although the general consensus is that most will accept the prelature proposal.

A further concern in the society is that reconciliation is a trap, one aimed at silencing the priestly fraternity and weakening its influence. But the Register understands this is not Bishop Fellay’s view, who is insisting, in the talks, on the freedom to continue to speak up.

Abuse Allegations

One factor heightening fears of a potential snare is the lack of opposition from those in the Church averse to more traditional practices of the faith. So far, contrary voices have been practically silent, although recent allegations that four cases of clerical sex abuse within the fraternity were covered up are being viewed by the society as an effort to derail the talks.

Sources in the society insist there were no “cover-ups” and that the four cases, involving abuse of 12 minors over three decades, were handled “carefully and prudently.” They believe the allegations, broadcast on Swedish television’s Uppdrag Granskning program — the same program that aired a highly inflammatory interview in 2009 with former SSPX bishop Richard Williamson — are being highlighted as part of an attack on the Church and the Pope and, as with the Williamson interview, are aimed at trying to thwart SSPX-Vatican reconciliation.

Overall, however, both sides remain optimistic about a resolution, with Ecclesia Dei the more enthusiastic of the two about the prospects.

The society, meanwhile, is moving cautiously, believing a solution could appear relatively soon, but conscious that some crucial issues still need to be finalized.



Edward Pentin is the Register’s Rome correspondent.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-approval-of-sspx-marriages-offers-hopeful-step-to-unity

Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia v. in the US

Mark Silk
Religion News Service
April 7, 2017

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have been on trial in St. Petersburg this week for violating a Russian law against extremism. The alleged extremism includes refusing blood transfusions, publishing pamphlets critical of the Russian Orthodox Church, and undermining support for the state.

No doubt, JWs do refuse blood transfusions, lack a high regard for other religions, and decline to vote, serve in the military, and otherwise participate in civic life.

The Russians think that entitles them to be suppressed. In the United States, it entitles them to a significant share of the credit for how we understand religious liberty.

In 1940, the Supreme Court — employing the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection — for the first time applied the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise to the states. Cantwell v. Connecticut reversed the conviction of Newton Cantwell and his two sons, Jehovah’s Witnesses who were found guilty of breaching the peace by aggressively proselytizing in a Catholic neighborhood of New Haven.

Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Owen Roberts acknowledged that while the Free Exercise Clause does not preclude state regulation of religious practices, “In every case the power to regulate must be so exercised as not, in attaining a permissible end, unduly to infringe the protected freedom.”

The Cantwells’ freedom had, the court found, been unduly infringed:

We find in the instant case no assault or threatening of bodily harm, no truculent bearing, no intentional discourtesy, no personal abuse. On the contrary, we find only an effort to persuade a willing listener to buy a book or to contribute money in the interest of what Cantwell, however misguided others may think him, conceived to be true religion.

In 1943, the Court — reversing a decision made just three years earlier — decided that West Virginia could not force two Jehovah’s Witnesses children to say the Pledge of Allegiance, as mandated by state law. Writing for the majority in the midst of World War II, Justice Robert Jackson penned some of the most stirring words ever to appear in an American judicial opinion:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

In Russia, they don’t see things that way.

As a report prepared for the prosecution characterized the Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Their disregard for the state erodes any sense of civic affiliation and promotes the destruction of national and state security.”

These days, American courts are struggling more than ever to decide when religious practices are unduly infringed. But in our current polarized political environment, it is always good to be reminded of Jackson’s fixed star.

http://religionnews.com/2017/04/07/jehovahs-witnesses-in-russia-v-in-the-u-s/

Churches on alert of "dangerous cult" Shincheonji on takeover mission

Lincoln Tan
New Zealand Herald
April 5, 2017

Lincoln Tan is the New Zealand Herald’s diversity, ethnic affairs and immigration senior reporter.

Churches in New Zealand are being warned of a South Korean-linked group accused of being a religious cult that infiltrates churches and uses "real deceit" to recruit members.

A Herald investigation has found that the group, Shincheonji, or the "New Heaven and New Earth" church, has set up a base in Auckland.

Members of the group, also known as Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony, or SCJ, believe its founder Lee Man-hee is the appointed successor of Jesus Christ.

A University of Auckland law student and former Shincheonji church attendee claimed members of the group helped his mate "escape his family" in Auckland and paid for his airfare to live with believers in Korea.

Another student also allegedly donated his entire year's university fees to the group after he was convinced that earthly education was of no use to him.

Police here said they were "gathering intel" about the group, and assessing threat and response.

Last November, the Church of England in the United Kingdom issued a formal alert to 500 parishes in London about its activities and called for vigilance.

The New Zealand Korean Churches Association, representing Korean Protestant churches, has been rolling out similar warnings to its member churches.

Spokesman Edward Moon said the association was planning to extend the alert to all other Christian denominations here.

A Shincheonji representative in Auckland did not respond to the Herald's request for comments.

Moon described Shincheonji as a "dangerous cult".

"They are extreme people...they can harm families, and cause serious problems in society and churches as well," Moon said.

"They send their people into the church, some try to get into positions of pastors, with the final aim of taking over the church."

Overseas reports claimed some who got involved with the group gradually withdrew from family and friends, and lied about their real lives.

"The cult has also helped many believers run away from home, cut ties with their families and (they have been) asked to give all their money to Shincheonji," Moon said.

"They're not only targeting Koreans but non-Koreans, including Europeans, Asians and Africans."

The Herald uncovered the secretive group's Auckland headquarters, which is based on the fourth floor of a commercial building in Grafton.

It had two rooms, one a classroom for Bible studies and the other a worship room where only the "purified" could enter, we were told.

The double door entrance, with a large Shincheonji emblem, marks the entrance to the worship room.

Inside, an altar stands against a backdrop of a blue sky with clouds, rainbow and sun.

A member who gave his name as Jack Yoon confirmed the property was used for Shincheonji activities, but declined to be interviewed.

Massey University religion and cult expert Professor Peter Lineham said the presence of the group in New Zealand was "concerning".

The group's 2016 annual report, written in Korean script, confirmed it had set up bases in two Oceania countries.

Lineham said Shincheonji's recruitment method of new members involved "real deceit".

"They pretend that they themselves are searching for the answer but they are actually full members of the cult," Lineham said.

"They lead people along to believe that they're individually discovering together, and then the truth comes out only when the person has effectively joined up."

Lineham said Shincheonji was a "Christian conversionist, separationist group where there's a messiah at the heart of it".

Founded in the 1980s, followers are taught to believe that Lee, the founder, was the second coming or the returned Jesus Christ.

"It fits with a number of similar cults, where...the new messiah will take over the role of Jesus and comes with all the authority of Jesus...it has a huge, huge appeal," Lineham said.

"This type of religion involves learning to read the Bible in a very distinct way, so you read the Bible as a kind of code, and you're looking for ways to interpret this code...everything then confirms the 'absolute truth' of this kind of movement."

Lineham said the identification of the messiah blocks members out of "any ability to see anything else".

For many Koreans living here, Lineham said, churches provided a way of connecting with each other.

"A cult usually provides for those who are feeling insecure, or troubled, or struggling a much closer group and warmer network than most other churches," he said.

"That's what I suspect is the appeal, and of course there's a bit of money provided to fly people back to Korea to connect them with the leaders of the cult back in Korea."

Shincheonji members are alleged to have visited church congregations and student groups in universities here, inviting people to special study groups.

Senior pastor John Kim of the Immanuel Korean Church said he had studied the recruitment and infiltration methods used by the group.

"They befriend people, invite them to Bible classes, and when a friendship is established then they advocate their beliefs and gradually encourage believers to cut ties with family and friends," Kim said.

"Some of the members become 'reapers' and get sent out to infiltrate churches. Their aim is to eventually takeover these churches and turn them into Shincheonji churches."

John Lee, a senior pastor at the Korean Auckland Community Christian Church, has for the past two weeks been warning his congregation about Shincheonji.

"I look very carefully at every new member because I do not want Shincheonji to come into my church," Lee said.

"Shincheonji is poison, and churches are all very worried that they are in New Zealand."

Police ethnic liaison officer Jason Park said police was aware of the group's presence in Auckland.

"Police are still gathering intel about (Shincheonji) and assessing any threat and response," Park said.

- NZ Herald



http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11817352

Renegade Catholic order in UK 'harbours clergy accused of sexual abuse'

Two priests accused of abuse allegedly found refuge in Kent with Holocaust denier Richard Williamson's SSPX Resistance

Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian
April 5, 2017

A British Catholic priest who has been excommunicated twice by different popes is allegedly harbouring clergy accused of sexual abuse in his renegade religious order.

Richard Williamson, who was illicitly ordained as a bishop in 1988 by an ultra-conservative group, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), and later convicted of Holocaust denial by a German court, is now head of the "SSPX Resistance", based in Broadstairs, Kent.

Two Catholic SSPX priests who have been accused of sexual abuse have found a refuge in Williamson's breakaway movement, according to an investigative documentary to be aired on Swedish television on Wednesday.

The Golden Jail, made by Ali Fegan, a Swedish journalist whose interview with Williamson about his Holocaust denial was broadcast in 2009, claims that the SSPX protected priests and failed to report claims of abuse to the police or civil authorities. Internal canonical trials of two men – one French, one English – were allegedly conducted with Vatican approval.

The English priest, referred to as Father S, left the SSPX before the conclusion of the trial to join the SSPX Resistance in 2014, going to live in Broadstairs. He declined to speak to the documentary team.

The French priest, Father P, was found guilty and banned from working with children. He joined the SSPX Resistance, and was filmed celebrating mass at a church in Bordeaux last November. He also refused to discuss allegations against him with the TV journalists.

Williamson's movement, also known as Respice Stellam, describes itself as "a group of traditional Catholics who wish to practise their faith without compromise to liberalism or modernism". It says reforms over recent decades have "contributed and are still contributing to the destruction of the church, to the ruin of the priesthood, to the abolition of the sacrifice of the mass and of the sacraments, to the disappearance of religious life."

More than 100 former SSPX priests around the world have joined the renegade order, according to the documentary. Its headquarters is in a detached property in Broadstairs, named Regina Martyrum House, with a statue of the Virgin Mary in the front garden.

Members of the UK branch of SSPX Resistance celebrate mass each Sunday in a hired room in Earlsfield public library in south London, which recently put on a display of books for Holocaust Memorial Day. A spokesperson for GLL, which manages the library, said: "The hall booking is with the Stella Maris Mass Fund – which is a registered charity." The booking had been running since January 2015 with no problems reported, the spokesperson said.

Mass is also celebrated by the group in Bingley, West Yorkshire, and Liverpool.

The SSPX confirmed that Father S and Father P were accused of sexual abuse when priests in the order, that canonical trials were held, and that both men later joined the SSPX Resistance.

In the case of Father S, an allegation of sexual abuse was reported to civil authorities in France where he was based at the time, the order said. The SSPX moved Father S to Bristol, where he had therapy for several years. The civil authorities closed the case without further action, according to SSPX. His canonical trial was still in process when the priest left the order to join Williamson's group.

Father P was found guilty and forbidden to work with children, although permitted to celebrate mass. The families of his alleged victims said they did not wish a complaint to be made to the civil authorities.

"The SSPX, under no legal obligation to report at that time, chose to respect the wishes of these parents," said the SSPX statement. An alleged victim did make a complaint 25 years later to the police, who are currently investigating, it said, adding: "A number of our priests are cooperating."

Williamson, who did not respond to Fegan's or the Guardian's requests for comment on the allegations regarding the two priests, has a turbulent history in the Catholic church.

The son of an Anglican vicar, he was educated at Winchester College and Cambridge, and later converted to Catholicism. He joined the SSPX, which was highly critical of what it saw as a moral and theological crisis in the church in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which sought to make Catholicism more relevant to the modern world.

In 1988, Williamson was one of four SSPX priests ordained as bishops by the SSPX founder, archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, against the orders of Pope John Paul II. All four were instantly excommunicated.

But in January 2009, the excommunication was reversed by Pope Benedict XVI in an attempt at reconciliation with the order. Three days earlier, in a filmed interview with Fegan, Williamson insisted that no Jews were killed in Nazi gas chambers. The Vatican said it had not known of Williamson's Holocaust denial when it lifted the excommunication.

The move came under fire from Jewish groups and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. In February 2009, a German court fined Williamson €12,000 after convicting him of Holocaust denial. In 2014 the conviction was upheld on appeal but the fine reduced to €1,600.

The Vatican's rapprochement with SSPX has continued under Pope Francis, who this week paved the way for recognition of marriages conducted by the order's priests.

In 2012, Williamson was expelled from SSPX, allegedly for failing to show respect and obedience. He immediately called for a Catholic "resistance".

Two years ago, Williamson ordained without papal approval another former SSPX priest, Jean-Michel Faure, as a bishop at a ceremony in Brazil. Both Williamson and Faure were excommunicated by the Vatican.

In an email to his supporters around the time of the illicit ordination, Williamson said the "nightingale's nest" of the Catholic church had been occupied by "modernist cuckoos".

"Wherever the remainder of the true nightingales are visibly gathered, in whatever makeshift nest, they are in the church, they are the true visible church, and their beautiful song testifies to anyone who has ears to hear that the cuckoos are nothing but cuckoos who have stolen the catholic nest which they presently occupy," he wrote.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/05/catholic-sspx-resistance-uk-harbours-clergy-accused-sexual-abuse-richard-williamson

Russia's top court puts off hearing on Jehovah's Witnesses bid to fight ban until April 6

Russian Politics & Diplomacy
April 05, 2017

If the court satisfies the Justice Ministry’s petition and it comes into legal force, members of this religious organization could be charged with a criminal offense

MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Russia’s Supreme Court has postponed a hearing on outlawing the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious organization along with its 395 local branches and confiscating its property until April 6, a TASS correspondent reports.

Through its decision, the court satisfied a motion entered by the Jehovah’s Witnesses representatives to get acquainted with their case files. Earlier in the day, the court turned down a number of their appeals - on adjudicating a counterclaim against the Russian Justice Ministry for allegedly repressing the organization and for the participation of its 395 local branches in the court hearings.

If the court satisfies the Justice Ministry’s petition and it comes into legal force, members of this religious organization could be charged with a criminal offense under Article 282.1 ("Creation of an Extremist Community") of the Russian Criminal Code. In its lawsuit, the ministry pointed to various violations in the organization’s activities revealed during a surprise inspection, including of the Law on Counteracting Extremist Activities.

For its part, the organization’s press service told TASS that they were alarmed by the decision, since it could affect 175,000 active believers.

On October 12, 2016, Moscow’s Tverskoy district court issued a warning to the Jehovah’s Witnesses Administrative Center in connection with the revelations of extremism there. Under Russian law, a religious association or organization is subject to termination if it does not remedy the specified manifestations of extremism before the required deadline or displays new ones.

On January 16, 2017, Moscow City Court passed a resolution that corroborated the validity of the warning for extremist activities.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses is an international religious organization that supports offbeat views on the essence of the Christian faith and provides special interpretations of many commonly accepted notions. In Russia, it had 21 local organizations but three of them were eliminated for extremism.

http://tass.com/politics/939572

Russia Moves to Ban Jehovah's Witnesses as 'Extremist'

ANDREW HIGGINS
The New York Times
APRIL 4, 2017

VOROKHOBINO, Russia — A dedicated pacifist who has never even held a gun, Andrei Sivak discovered that his government considered him a dangerous extremist when he tried to change some money and the teller “suddenly looked up at me with a face full of fear.”

His name had popped up on the exchange bureau’s computer system, along with those of members of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other militant groups responsible for shocking acts of violence.

The only group the 43-year-old father of three has ever belonged to, however, is Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian denomination committed to the belief that the Bible must be taken literally, particularly its injunction “Thou shalt not kill.”

Yet, in a throwback to the days of the Soviet Union, when Jehovah’s Witnesses were hounded as spies and malcontents by the K.G.B., the denomination is at the center of an escalating campaign by the authorities to curtail religious groups that compete with the Russian Orthodox Church and that challenge President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts to rally the country behind traditional and often militaristic patriotic values.

The Justice Ministry on Thursday put the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, an office complex near St. Petersburg, on a list of the bodies banned “in connection with the carrying out of extremist activities.”

Last month, the ministry asked the Supreme Court to outlaw the religious organization and stop its more than 170,000 Russian members from spreading “extremist” texts. The court is scheduled to hear — and is likely to rule on — the case on Wednesday.

Extremism, as defined by a law passed in 2002 but amended and expanded several times since, has become a catchall charge that can be deployed against just about anybody, as it has been against some of those involved in recent anti-corruption protests in Moscow and scores of other cities.

Several students who took part in demonstrations in the Siberian city of Tomsk are now being investigated by a special anti-extremism unit, while Leonid Volkov, the senior aide to the jailed protest leader Aleksei A. Navalny, said he himself was detained last week under the extremism law.

In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the putative extremism seems to derive mostly from the group’s absolute opposition to violence, a stand that infuriated Soviet and now Russian authorities whose legitimacy rests in large part on the celebration of martial triumphs, most notably over Nazi Germany in World War II but also over rebels in Syria.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of a denomination founded in the United States in the 19th century and active in Russia for more than 100 years, refuse military service, do not vote and view God as the only true leader. They shun the patriotic festivals promoted with gusto by the Kremlin, like the annual celebration of victory in 1945 and recent events to celebrate the annexation of Crimea in March 2014.

Mr. Sivak, who says he lost his job as a physical education teacher because of his role as a Jehovah’s Witnesses elder, said he voted for Mr. Putin in 2000, three years before joining the denomination. He added that while he had not voted since, nor had he supported anti-Kremlin activities of the sort that usually attract the attention of Russia’s post-Soviet version of the K.G.B., the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B.

“I have absolutely no interest in politics,” he said during a recent Jehovah’s Witnesses Friday service in a wooden country house in Vorokhobino, a snow-covered village north of Moscow. Around 100 worshipers crammed into a long, chilly room under fluorescent lights to listen to readings from the Bible, sing and watch a video advising them to dress for worship as they would for a meeting with the president.

“From the Russian state’s perspective, Jehovah’s Witnesses are completely separate,” said Geraldine Fagan, the author of “Believing in Russia — Religious Policy After Communism.” She added, “They don’t get involved in politics, but this is itself seen as a suspicious political deviation.”

“The idea of independent and public religious activity that is completely outside the control of — and also indifferent to — the state sets all sorts of alarm bells ringing in the Orthodox Church and the security services,” she said.

That the worldwide headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses is in the United States and that its publications are mostly prepared there, Ms. Fagan added, “all adds up to a big conspiracy theory” for the increasingly assertive F.S.B.

For Mr. Sivak, it has added up to a long legal nightmare. His troubles began, he said, when undercover security officers posed as worshipers and secretly filmed a service where he was helping to officiate in 2010.

Accused of “inciting hatred and disparaging the human dignity of citizens,” he was put on trial for extremism along with a second elder, Vyacheslav Stepanov, 40. The prosecutor’s case, heard by a municipal court in Sergiyev Posad, a center of the Russian Orthodox Church, produced no evidence of extremism and focused instead on the insufficient patriotism of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“Their disregard for the state,” a report prepared for the prosecution said, “erodes any sense of civic affiliation and promotes the destruction of national and state security.”

In a ruling last year, the court found the two men not guilty, and their ordeal seemed over — until Mr. Sivak tried to change money and was told that he had been placed on a list of “terrorists and extremists.”

He and Mr. Stepanov now face new charges of extremism and are to appear before a regional court this month. “There is a big wave of repression breaking,” Mr. Stepanov said.

In response to written questions, the Justice Ministry in Moscow said a yearlong review of documents at the Jehovah’s Witnesses “administrative center” near St. Petersburg had uncovered violations of a Russian law banning extremism. As a result, it added, the center should be “liquidated,” along with nearly 400 locally registered branches of the group and other structures.

For the denomination’s leaders in Russia, the sharp escalation in a long campaign of harassment, previously driven mostly by local officials, drew horrifying flashbacks to the Soviet era.

Vasily Kalin, the chairman of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Russian arm, recalled that his whole family had been deported to Siberia when he was a child. “It is sad and reprehensible that my children and grandchildren should be facing a similar fate,” he said. “Never did I expect that we would again face the threat of religious persecution in modern Russia.”

In Russia, as in many countries, the door-to-door proselytizing of Jehovah’s Witnesses often causes irritation, and their theological idiosyncrasies disturb many mainstream Christians. The group has also been widely criticized for saying that the Bible prohibits blood transfusions. But it has never promoted violent or even peaceful political resistance.

“I cannot imagine that anyone really thinks they are a threat,” said Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, which monitors extremism in Russia. “But they are seen as a good target. They are pacifists, so they cannot be radicalized, no matter what you do to them. They can be used to send a message.”

That message, it would seem, is that everyone needs to get with the Putin program — or risk being branded as an extremist for displaying indifference, never mind hostility, to the Kremlin’s drive to make Russia a great power again.

“A big reason they are being targeted is simply that they are an easy target,” Ms. Fagan said. “They don’t vote, so nobody is going to lose votes by attacking them.”

Attacking Jehovah’s Witnesses also sends a signal that even the mildest deviation from the norm, if proclaimed publicly and insistently, can be punished under the anti-extremism law, which was passed after Russia’s second war in Chechnya and the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Billed as a move by Russia to join a worldwide struggle against terrorism, the law prohibited “incitement of racial, national or religious strife, and social hatred associated with violence or calls for violence.”

But the reference to violence was later deleted, opening the way for the authorities to classify as extremist any group claiming to offer a unique, true path to religious or political salvation.

Even the Russian Orthodox Church has sometimes fallen afoul of the law: The slogan “Orthodoxy or Death!” — a rallying cry embraced by some hard-line believers — has been banned as an illegal extremist text.

To help protect the Orthodox Church and other established religions, Parliament passed a law in 2015 to exempt the Bible and the Quran, as well as Jewish and Buddhist scripture, from charges of extremism based on their claims to offer the only true faith.

The main impetus for the current crackdown, however, appears to come from the security services, not the Orthodox Church. Roman Lunkin, director of the Institute of Religion and Law, a Moscow research group, described it as “part of a broad policy of suppressing all nongovernmental organizations” that has gained particular force because of the highly centralized structure of Jehovah’s Witnesses under a worldwide leadership based in the United States.

“They are controlled from outside Russia, and this is very suspicious for our secret services,” he said. “They don’t like having an organization that they do not and cannot control.”

Artyom Grigoryan, a former Jehovah’s Witness who used to work at the group’s Russian headquarters but who now follows the Orthodox Church, said the organization had “many positive elements,” like its ban on excessive drinking, smoking and other unhealthy habits.

All the same, he said it deserved to be treated with suspicion. “Look at it from the view of the state,” he said. “Here is an organization that is run from America, that gets financing from abroad, and whose members don’t serve in the army and don’t vote.”

Estranged from his parents, who are still members and view his departure as sinful, he said Jehovah’s Witnesses broke up families and “in the logic of the state, it presents a threat.”

He added, “I am not saying this is real or not, but it needs to be checked by objective experts.”

Mr. Sivak, now preparing for yet another trial, said that he had always tried to follow the law and that he respected the state, but could not put its interests above the commands of his faith.

“They say I am a terrorist,” he said, “but all I ever wanted to do was to get people to pay attention to the Bible.”

Correction: April 4, 2017



An earlier version of this article misstated Andrei Sivak’s age. He is 43, not 42. The error was repeated in a picture caption, which also misstated the age of Vyacheslav Stepanov. He is 40, not 39. And because of an editing error, the article also misidentified the person who said he was detained last week under Russia’s extremism law. It was Leonid Volkov, not Aleksei A. Navalny.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/europe/russia-moves-to-ban-jehovahs-witnesses-as-extremist.html?_r=0

Jehovah's Witnesses congregation's efforts to block inquiry squashed

Tribunal rejects claim investigation into charity’s handling of sexual abuse allegations amounts to religious discrimination

Alice Ross
The Guardian
April 4, 2017

A Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Manchester has lost a legal attempt to block an investigation into its handling of sexual abuse allegations, after failing to convince a judge that the inquiry amounted to religious discrimination.

Organisations linked to the religion have fought legally to prevent the Charity Commission from launching two inquiries into allegations that survivors of sexual abuse were being forced to face their attackers in so-called judicial committees. The organisation’s efforts have been described by the commission as unprecedented.

The Charity Commission launched a statutory inquiry into the Manchester New Moston congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2014, after reports surfaced that a convicted paedophile, Jonathan Rose, was brought face-to-face with survivors of his abuse in a judicial committee.

After Rose served nine months in prison for child sex offences, the New Moston congregation held a meeting attended by senior members, Rose and three of his victims – now adults – to see if he would be “disfellowshipped”, or expelled from of the congregation, the judgment notes. This would have involved “the elders of the charity (its trustees) and Mr Rose interviewing his victims, in an apparently intrusive way”.

This raised serious concerns at the Charity Commission, which oversees whether charity trustees are meeting their safeguarding responsibilities.

The commission also launched a statutory inquiry into safeguarding the UK’s main Jehovah’s Witnesses charity, the Watch Tower Bible Tract Society of Great Britain (WTBTS), which oversees the UK’s 1,500 congregations and is believed to play a key role in deciding how claims of abuse are handled.

WTBTS launched litigation including an attempt to challenge in the supreme court the commission’s decision to start an investigation. The charity also fought in the lower courts against production orders that would oblige it to give the commission access to records showing how it handled the allegations, although in January it dropped its opposition to these requests.

The Manchester New Moston congregation launched appeals at the first-tier tribunal challenging the Charity Commission’s decision to open a formal inquiry, arguing among other things that the investigation interfered with the congregation’s human rights, and that the decision to launch the inquiry amounted to religious discrimination. The charity alleged the commission had investigated safeguarding concerns at other charities without launching a full statutory inquiry.

When the first appeal was dismissed, the congregation appealed to the upper tribunal. This was rejected on Tuesday at the upper tribunal of the tax and chancery division at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

Mrs Justice Asplin ruled the lower tribunal had been “entitled to decide that there was no direct discrimination on the grounds of religion, the inquiry having been opened on the basis of unusual and distinctive factual reasons ... and that there were no other comparable cases from which to infer discrimination on the grounds of religious beliefs.”

The Charity Commission’s head of litigation, Chris Willis Pickup, said: “We regret that public and charity funds have been used on this protracted litigation, but we will continue to defend robustly our legitimate role in investigating serious concerns about charities.

“We hope and expect that this judgment concludes the litigation on this matter and allows us, and the charity, to focus our efforts on concluding the Commission’s inquiry.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/jehovahs-witnesses-congregations-efforts-to-block-inquiry-squashed

Scientology-linked drug rehab centre sued over $150,000 sniffer dog bills

Tom Cowie
The Age
April 4, 2017

A private security company that provided round-the-clock sniffer dogs to a secretive drug rehabilitation facility linked to the Church of Scientology is suing over more than $150,000 in unpaid debts.

The company, Australian K9 Detection Unit, lodged a writ in the County Court last week, claiming the secluded Narconon rehab centre in the Yarra Valley stopped paying bills racked up from the daily use of a narcotics dog and handler in late 2015.

The controversial international drug rehabilitation program Narconon was founded in 1966 and is based on the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, the creator of the Church of Scientology.

The program has drawn criticism for its focus on detoxing from drugs through the heavy use of saunas. It has operated at O'Shannessy Lodge in Warburton East since 2001.

Court documents show Australian K9 Detection Unit began providing sniffer dogs and handlers to the Narconon program, which was also run under the name Get Off Drugs Naturally, in October 2013.

Sniffer dogs were on site at Narconon seven days a week between 6pm and midnight, according to court documents, with extra late-night services provided on Friday and Saturday.

The unit was also stationed at the 48-bed centre for family visiting day on Sunday afternoons.

The security company provided "student control", according to a statement of claim lodged in court, which involved regular sweeps of the facility to ensure drugs were not brought on to the premises.

A photo posted on social media shows employees with a German Shepherd outside the facility.

The security company claims the centre fell behind in payments in late 2015.

But dogs were still being provided until July 31 last year after the centre assured the plaintiff it would pay up "once a large donation was received".

Australian K9 Detection Unit is seeking $158,767.75 that it claims is still outstanding, plus late fees. Small weekly payments of between $500 and $2000 were still being made by the centre when the action was lodged, the writ said.

The writ was filed against the Association for Better Living and Education, an offshoot of the Church of Scientology, as well as the previous secretary and executive directors of Get Off Drugs Naturally.

The program was investigated by Consumer Affairs Victoria in 2015 and subsequently fined after claiming on its website that it had a high success rate of curing drug addiction with detox treatments.

Clients are charged about $30,000 for a six-to-nine-month stay, as well as $260 weekly fees for board.

Association for Better Living and Education was blocked by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in 2015 from opening a new centre in central Warburton after more than a year of intense community opposition.

In the decision, VCAT ruled the residential site was an inappropriate location for the centre, due to the program's insufficient security and management regime.

The objectors cited 26 police callouts to the centre since 2005, including an incident in which a student threatened staff with an axe, a psychotic offender threatened to kill and an offender detoxing from heroin and ice harassed neighbours.

According to its website, Australian K9 Detection Unit also provides bomb detection dogs for government and private companies, including music concerts.

The company's CEO declined to comment on the case on Tuesday. Get Off Drugs Naturally was contacted for comment.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/scientologylinked-drug-rehab-centre-sued-over-150000-sniffer-dog-bills-20170404-gvd8en.html

What it was like to grow up at Mangrove Yoga Ashram

news.com.au
April 4, 2017



GROWING up at the notorious Mangrove Yoga Ashram, then known as Satyananda Ashram, Sandra* was a victim of physical and mental abuse.

Last year, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found there were no policies to protect children at the ashram on the NSW central coast after hearing evidence of horrific child sexual abuse.

While Sandra did not experience sexual abuse, the treatment she endured while living there in the 1970s and 1980s has stayed with her forever.

This is her story.

I did not receive the nurturing that is needed as a child so that I could grow up to be a normal functioning person.

I did not have parents with me who loved me and guided me and whispered words of encouragement.

I was not brought up in a house nor a home, with nurturing parents and normal schooling, choosing to leave all of that behind and partake in an alternative lifestyle — it was thrust upon me.

Instead, my upbringing broke me. I might even go so far as to say that it fragmented me.

I went to live in ‘the Ashram’ at the tender age of four in the 1970s.

It was set among a beautiful backdrop in a valley in Mangrove Mountain, on the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

It appeared idyllic to my mother who was so keen to break free of mainstream society’s old paradigms and forge a new way of living. One that appeared to hold no religion (they said they were non-denominational yet they ‘initiated’ their disciples into becoming ‘Sannyasins’, a Hindu belief). It was based on yoga, karma and organic food.

It promised the road to ‘enlightenment’ and thanks partly to the Beatles, people were swallowing that up with their lentils in the 60s and 70s.

One of the main rules of the Ashram was ‘renunciation’. To become ‘enlightened’ you must ‘let go’ of all that you were attached to in the ‘material world’- renounce your ego — shave your head and all wear orange clothes — renounce your attachment to your previous life and family — change your name and become ‘initiated’ with a ‘spiritual name’ (All names started with Swami and ended with Saraswati with a unique name in the middle.)

Renounce your family: This included the parents and children that were living in the Ashram, not just the ones that hadn’t joined the Ashram/cult.

Who tells children they are not to love their own parents but are to worship the guru only? A paedophile who is breaking and grooming children, that’s who.

Although I had a mother, she was unavailable to me from a very young age, (perfect practice for grooming.) Instead, I was brought up among the melee that was the “Ashram Kids” living in huts together or dorms, away from the adults.

We were punished for the smallest things and yet, not reprimanded for things that we should have been.

We had our heads flushed down the public toilets if we didn’t brush our teeth (we had on average 100 people staying there at any given time with a row of toilets that everyone used and a row of showers with no privacy screen between them, much like a prison.) It was other kids that were ordered to do this to the un-brushed ‘offenders’, creating some form of hierarchy between the kids.

We would be beaten with a stick for talking on the hour-long bus ride from school and publicly beaten and shamed for small things such as saying something negative about our Guru’s yet we were encouraged to be brats towards the adults in the Ashram thus creating an effective divide between the children and the adults. All effective grooming practices.

You daren’t get sick as to get sick would result in being put in sick bay. Sick bay was a cement and brick room that was always cold and damp, no matter what time of year it was. It was away from everyone else and you weren’t allowed to leave unless you were to go to the toilet.

You would have your meals brought to you — if you were even allowed to eat, as fasting was believed to help you get over whatever it was that you were sick from.

We had to get up at 5am to practice hours of meditation and yoga before school.

There were times when only the females had to bath in the creek instead of having hot showers like the men. It was below zero, there was frost on the grass and the water was so cold that it felt like it burnt your skin.

I remember crying and shaking and saying “I don’t want to do this” and being told that I had to, just get in. According to the ‘guru’, women needed to be toughened up — which I now realise meant ‘women are harder to break’.

How did I cope with all of this? I didn’t.

I started to use drugs at the age of 14 and was in a self-induced coma for three days when I was 16. I have changed my name four times in my life. I can’t stick to one profession. I can’t really stick to anything.

I went from one abusive relationship to another. I find it hard to have long and strong connections with people. I have two children who have been my driving force to become a better person but I unfortunately had a child to a physically abusive paedophile.

No, I didn’t know that he was a paedophile and as soon as I found out, I moved myself and my children away and have remained in hiding ever since. I would never want my children to suffer the way that I did.

I have tried so hard to try and make a normal and functional life for them. Sometimes when I can’t get out of bed I wish that I was a better parent.

I wish that I could hold down a steady job, that I had some amazing talent that could lift us out of this hole of poverty that goes along with the inability to fit in with society, to form proper relationships, to hold down a steady job. But I don’t, all I have is fragments of myself that I try to pick up.

I can only describe that it’s like living with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) for a lifetime. I tell people that it is like being punched in the face. That’s the initial trauma. It knocks you down. Then you shake it off, you get therapy, you think you have dealt with it. And then, out of the blue, something triggers it again and this time, it’s like being coward punched from the right side.

It knocks you down again, you shake it off, you are seeing it from a completely different angle this time. You think you have dealt with it. This keeps going, each time there is a trigger, it blind sides you from a different angle.

Each time you have to process it all again, just when you think you have dealt with it, it comes at you from yet another angle. It doesn’t matter if you have gotten to a positive place with it, it comes back and knocks you over so you have to try and get yourself back up again.

This makes for hard living. It’s not easy to maintain anything when this is happening throughout your life.

* Name has been changed

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/what-it-was-like-to-grow-up-at-mangrove-yoga-ashram/news-story/07f4a9ed2b14eb49cfae8960f400c9e4

'Happiness Academy': Film Review

Frank Scheck

Hollywood Reporter
April 3, 2017

Kaori Kinoshita and Alain Della Negra's documentary/fiction hybrid examines a retreat for the members of the Raelian Church.


It’s hard to know what to make exactly of Kaori Kinoshita and Alain Della Negra’s documentary/fiction hybrid about the activities at a retreat run by the Raelian Church, a religious sect whose founder claims to have direct contact with extraterrestrials. Happiness Academy, which weaves an unnecessary fictional romantic triangle into a fly-on-the-wall look at the activities of the wacky subculture, exerts an undeniable fascination that could well drive up recruitment for the pleasure-loving cult. The film was recently given its U.S. premiere at the 2017 New Directors/New Films festival.

Resembling a New Age-style summer camp for hedonists, the Croatian retreat hosts dozens of attendees who all look really, really happy. And why shouldn’t they? They spend the bucolic summer days swimming, sunning, eating watermelon, meditating, doing yoga, and, oh yes, attending a masturbation class. The participants are a largely attractive and sexy bunch, although, admittedly, the filmmakers may simply have selected the more photogenic subjects.

The members, several of whom are seen delivering effusive testimonials to the church, follow the teachings of the elderly Claude Vorilhon, who calls himself “Rael.” Via Skype, the leader extols to his followers the virtues of “laughter, orgasm and meditation,” although he doesn’t specify in what order. The Raelians apparently also adhere to their own calendar, since some of the activities are occurring on a mid-summer night that they celebrate as New Year’s Eve. The holiday events include a cross-dressing dance party, with the attendees advised to stick to their new gender roles until at least the next day.

As you may have already deduced, sex is a key ingredient to the proceedings, although we never actually see anyone doing the deed. But we do see the attendees being given a choice of bracelets to wear, with the different colors signifying sexual preferences, including desires for a serious relationship or multiple partners. Naturally, the white bracelets indicate abstinence, although they don’t seem to be very much in demand.

The film’s weakest element is its fictional one, involving a rakish pop singer/composer (Arnaud Fleurent-Didier) and the two young women (Laure Calamy, Michele Gurtner) vying for his romantic attentions. As the three bland characters hang out in the resort’s spacious swimming pool engaging in tedious flirtatious banter, you’ll wonder why we’re supposed to care about them when we could instead be spending more time watching the masturbation seminar that at least might provide some useful tips.

Production company: Ecce Films
Directors: Kaori Kinoshita, Alain Della Negra
Screenwriters: Kaori Kinoshita, Alain Della Negra, Rose Philippon
Director of photography: Yoann de Montgrand
Editor: Nicolas Boucher
Costume designer: Francois-Louis Delfolie
Venue: New Directors/New Films

75 minutes

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/happiness-academy-990800

Guess who's a big Trump fan? Ramtha, as channeled by Democratic donor JZ Knight

The 35,000-year-old warrior Ramtha has come out as a fan of President Donald Trump, despite channeler JZ Knight’s history of big donations to Democrats.

Jim Brunner

Seattle Times
April 4, 2017

President Donald Trump is channeling a new source of support: winning over the 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha.

For years, JZ Knight, the Yelm, Thurston County, mystic who claims to channel Ramtha, has been a big Democratic donor, sending piles of money earned from her for-profit Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment.

That caused embarrassment to the party when videos surfaced in 2012 of Knight/Ramtha making offensive comments about Mexicans, gays, Jews and Roman Catholics. After that flap, the state Democratic Party rid itself of $70,000 in Knight donations.

But like Rust Belt manufacturing workers and other traditional Democratic constituencies, Ramtha apparently shifted allegiances when it came to last year’s presidential election.

On Monday, Knight posted video excerpts of a Dec. 8 “prophetic vision” in which she declared in her Ramtha voice: “The greatest misjudgment of character came when you thought a woman should win this race.”

In the Breitbart-worthy spiel, Ramtha/Knight, smoking a tobacco pipe, goes on to attack the Clinton Foundation and says the FBI was behind the leaking of Democratic Party documents to WikiLeaks. “It was never Russia,” she says.

Ramtha cheers the new president: “That man is trumping deceit. He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t do drugs, he does business!”

As a kicker, Ramtha predicts Trump will receive the protection of UFOs while flying in his jet: “And the first time he looks out the window … when he sees two silver disks as escort, he is going to know it all — and this is a man who is not afraid — he is going to know it all.”

Mike Wright, a Knight spokesman, said in an emailed statement that Knight continues to support Democratic candidates and causes in local and state elections.

“She did not vote for candidate Trump but she sees what Ramtha describes as ‘purposeful good’ in his election,” the statement said. “Ramtha’s prophecies teaching from December 2016 provides a dynamic perspective of these dynamic times.”

The Ramtha controversy that dogged local Democrats erupted in 2012 after videos were leaked by a conservative group of Knight, as Ramtha, making racist and offensive comments. That included referring to “the invasion of the Mexicans who just breed like rabbits” and saying Jews had “earned enough cash to have paid their way out of the (expletive) gas chambers by now.”

Knight’s defenders argued the videos were heavily edited and that her comments were taken out of context.

But the heat was too much for the state Democratic Party, which gave money she donated to a gay-marriage campaign and the Anti-Defamation League.

Still, Knight continued to send cash to the national Democratic Party and President Barack Obama’s campaign. She also has remained a major benefactor for the Thurston County Democrats, giving the group $50,000 last year.

There is no record of her donating to Trump’s campaign last year.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @Jim_Brunner



http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/guess-whos-a-big-trump-fan-ramtha-as-channeled-by-democratic-donor-jz-knight/