Father grieves as cold case simmers

Monica Yant Kinney
The Philadelphia Inquirer

September 26, 2006

September is a cruel month for Jack Gilbride. Within 30 short days, he mourns a murdered son and a wife whose death two years later was hastened by her own pounding grief.

The ambush killing of former MOVE member John Gilbride is not the only unsolved homicide in Burlington County. But given all the publicity before and after the shooting, it's the hottest cold case for miles.

Last week, Prosecutor Robert Bernardi declined my request to talk about the mystery of a suburban dad killed amid a custody fight with an urban cult, MOVE.

Jack Gilbride, John's father, has long struggled with whether to hold back to respect the legal process, or speak out in the hope it sparks a tip to give his family closure.

Yesterday, on the eve of another anniversary with no news - in spite of a $20,000 reward - he turned up the volume ever so slightly.

Gilbride says he speaks to investigators every two weeks. From those talks, he believes they have long ago ruled out the theories that John was killed because of drinking, gambling or another woman. Ditto for the far-out suggestions he was the target of a government rubout or mob hit.

As for the victim's well-documented disputes with MOVE? That cannot be dismissed.

"The investigators know where the responsibility for John's murder lies," Jack Gilbride asserts. They just don't know with whom it lies.

A murder mystery

John Gilbride was found dead at 12:08 a.m. Sept. 27, 2002, in his car in the parking lot of the Ryan's Run apartment complex in Maple Shade.

The 34-year-old US Airways baggage supervisor had just returned home from work. The car radio was still on, the engine still running.

Gilbride was in the midst of a vicious, four-year custody battle, but his ex was no ordinary scorned woman. The woman he left was Alberta Wicker Africa, the widow of MOVE's spiritual founder, John Africa, and matriarch of the volatile Philadelphia cult.

Leaving MOVE was one thing. Trying to take a MOVE child from the family was a declaration of war.

"John knows that my belief would never allow me to just hand him over my son like that," Africa testified in a Philadelphia Family Court hearing 17 days before the murder - the very same hearing in which Gilbride testified that a MOVE supporter had threatened to kill him.

In the two weeks before Gilbride's murder, MOVE fortified its West Philadelphia house, demonstrated in South Jersey, accused him of being a child abuser, vowed to defy the court order granting him time alone with his boy and - perhaps prophetically - posted a Sept. 17, 2002, Internet alert warning of "dangerous developments" in the custody case and urging supporters to do "whatever it is their power to do to avert this government assault."

In the end, MOVE got its wish to keep Gilbride at bay: He was killed mere hours before he was to have his first unsupervised visit with his son.

Timing is everything

Early on, Bernardi said the custody fight was one of several leads investigators would explore. Later, he acknowledged interviews with MOVE members provided no real insight.


"There is still this problem with the timing of this homicide given what was pending in the custody dispute," the prosecutor said in 2003. "Is that a coincidence, or is there something more to it?"

For the father, timing is everything.

"I'm very sure this wasn't a random killing," Jack Gilbride told me. "Someone had to know he'd be that place, at that time."

Just like now, Jack Gilbride is easy to find sitting in church pews every September at two Masses said for his fallen family: one for the son who died fighting for his boy, and one for the sorrowful mother who followed hers.

CultNEWS101 "MOVE" Collection.

Asia-Pacific islands seek warmer ties

Jean Lin
Taipei Times
June 9, 2006

REGIONAL MEETING: Twenty-two countries are taking part in the Asia-Pacific Island Nations Summit, discussing issues such as peace-building

The second Asia-Pacific Island Nations Summit was launched yesterday in Taipei with the aim of strengthening cooperation between island countries, especially in light of pressure from "major powers" in the region.

The conference is being held by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), a non-governmental organization (NGO) with special consultative status to the UN's Economic and Social Council.

The group aims to resolve conflicts and promote international peace.

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, who is also chairman of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a sponsor of the event, said during a keynote speech that the Asia-Pacific region was well-known for its rapid economic development, which has influenced the world.

However, with Taiwan's cross-strait issues and North Korea's nuclear threat, the stability of the region, as well as world peace, is deeply affected, Wang said.

"The government must incorporate NGOs, religious groups and other sources of civic power to achieve the goal of world peace," he said.

Johnson Toribiong, Palau's ambassador to Taiwan, said that Asia-Pacific island nations had many things in common, including having lived through World War II and colonization, and therefore understand the importance of regional peace.

"We must encourage and promote mutual understanding of our island nations through education and international conferences," Toribiong said. "Ignorance creates conflicts."

Thomas Walsh, the secretary-general of UPF International, said that NGOs have an advantage in promoting peace since they can take action more quickly than governments, which are bogged down by bureaucracy.

Chen Tou-huan, the secretary-general of UPF Taiwan said that Asia-Pacific island nations play an important role in the world, and the goal of the summit was to increase cooperation and establish peace and stability in the region.

Some powerful countries in the region care only about their own interests, creating instability for the whole area, Chen said.

Lily Lin, vice-president of the Women's Federation for World Peace Taiwan, said that China had been trying to penetrate and influence island nations in the area.

Taiwan, Japan and other countries must build strong relations to fight such a power, Lin said.

China should not be an enemy to the US, the other major power in the region, said Mark Barry, director of the Northeast Asia Peace Initiative.

"US policies should guide China to become a responsible major power and not just a self-interested country," Barry said.

Some of the issues to be discussed at the summit are interreligious cooperation, reconciliation and peace-building, as well as how to strengthen the community of Asia-Pacific island nations. Twenty-two nations are participating in the summit, which ends today.


http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2006/06/09/2003312455 

Sushi and Rev. Moon

Monica Eng and Delroy Alexander and David Jackson

Chicago Tribune

Apr 11, 2006

On a mission from their leader, five young men arrived in Chicago to open a little fish shop on Elston Avenue. Back then, in 1980, people of their faith were castigated as "Moonies" and called cult members. Yet the Japanese and American friends worked grueling hours and slept in a communal apartment as they slowly built the foundation of a commercial empire.

They were led by the vision of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed messiah who sustained their spirits as they played their part in fulfilling the global business plan he had devised.

Moon founded his controversial Unification Church six decades ago with the proclamation that he was asked by Jesus to save humanity. But he also built the empire blending his conservative politics, savvy capitalism and flair for spectacles such as mass weddings in Madison Square Garden.

In a remarkable story that has gone largely untold, Moon and his followers created an enterprise that reaped millions of dollars by dominating one of America's trendiest indulgences: sushi.

Today, one of those five Elston Avenue pioneers, Takeshi Yashiro, serves as a top executive of a sprawling conglomerate that supplies much of the raw fish Americans eat.

Adhering to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of sermons, members of his movement managed to integrate virtually every facet of the highly competitive seafood industry. The Moon followers' seafood operation is driven by a commercial powerhouse, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of distribution centers and, each day, supplies most of the nation's estimated 9,000 sushi restaurants.

Although few seafood lovers may consider they're indirectly supporting Moon's religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.

Over the last three decades, as Moon has faced down accusations of brainwashing followers and personally profiting from the church, he and sushi have made similar if unlikely journeys from the fringes of American society to the mainstream.

These parallel paths are not coincidence. They reflect Moon's dream of revitalizing and dominating the American fishing industry while helping to fund his church's activities.

"I have the entire system worked out, starting with boat building," Moon said in "The Way of Tuna," a speech given in 1980. "After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the market, and then have a distribution network. This is not just on the drawing board; I have already done it."

In the same speech, he called himself "king of the ocean." It proved not to be an idle boast. The businesses now employ hundreds, including non-church members, from the frigid waters of the Alaskan coast to the iconic American fishing town of Gloucester, Mass.

Records and interviews with church insiders and competitors trace how Moon and members of his movement carried out his vision.

In a recent interview Rev. Phillip Schanker, a Unification Church spokesman, said the seafood businesses were "not organizationally or legally connected" to Moon's church, but were simply "businesses founded by members of the Unification Church."

Schanker compared the relationship to successful business owners-such as J. Willard "Bill" Marriott, a prominent Mormon who founded the hotel chain that bears his name-who donate money to their church.

"Marriott supports the Mormon Church but no one who checks into a Marriott Hotel thinks they are dealing with Mormonism," he said. "In the same way I would hope that every business founded by a member based on inspiration from Rev. Moon's vision also would be in a position to support the church."

LEADER'S SEAFOOD STRATEGY

But links between Moon's religious organization and the fish businesses are spelled out in court and government records as well as in statements by Moon and his top church officials. For one thing, Moon personally devised the seafood strategy, helped fund it at its outset and served as a director of one of its earliest companies.

Moon's Unification Church is organized under a tax-exempt non-profit entity called The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. The businesses are controlled by a separate non-profit company called Unification Church International Inc., or UCI.

That company's connections to Moon's Unification Church go deeper than the shared name. A 1978 congressional investigation into Moon's businesses concluded: "It was unclear whether the UCI had any independent functions other than serving as a financial clearinghouse for various Moon organization subsidiaries and projects."

UCI as well as its subsidiaries and affiliates such as True World are run largely by church members, Schanker said. The companies were "founded by church members in line with Rev. Moon's vision,'' he said. "It's not coincidence."

Sometimes the links are more direct. The boatbuilding firm US Marine Corporation shares its headquarters offices with the church and lists the church as its majority shareholder, according to corporate records.

SERVING THROUGH BUSINESS

The last thing you want to deal with when having fun in the sun is a problem with your vehicle.

A portion of True World's profits makes its way to the church through the layers of parent corporations, Yashiro said, adding: "We live to serve others, and this is how we serve by building a strong business."

Moon predicted in 1974 that the fishing business would "lay a foundation for the future economy of the Unification Church." In fact, while Moon and businesses affiliated with him reportedly have poured millions of dollars into money-losing ventures including The Washington Times newspaper, the seafood ventures have created a profit-making infrastructure that could last-and help support the church-long after the 86-year-old Moon is gone.

Much of the foundation for that success has its roots in Chicago. True World Foods, Yashiro's wholesale fish distribution business spawned near Lawrence and Elston Avenues, now operates from a 30,000-square-foot complex in Elk Grove Village.

The company says it supplies hundreds of local sushi and fine-dining establishments. Even many who might have religious reservations about buying from the company do so for one simple reason: It dependably delivers high-quality sushi.

"We try not to think of the religion part,'' said Haruko Imamura, who with her husband runs Katsu on West Peterson Avenue. "We don't agree with their religion but it's nothing to do with the business."

Like Moon himself, who served a 13-month prison sentence for tax fraud in the 1980s, the seafood companies have at times run afoul of U.S. laws.

In June 2001, True World Foods' Kodiak, Alaska, fish processing company pleaded guilty to a federal felony for accepting a load of pollock that exceeded the boat's 300,000-pound trip limit. The firm was fined $150,000 and put on probation for five years under a plea agreement with prosecutors.

The company also has been cited for sanitation lapses by the Food and Drug Administration. Last year, after repeated FDA inspections found "gross unsanitary conditions" at True World's suburban Detroit plant, the facility manager tried to bar inspectors from production areas and refused to provide records, according to an FDA report. The plant manager told the inspectors that his True World supervisor was "a great man, that he was a part of a new religion, and that if we took advantage of him, then `God help you!'."

Later, according to that FDA report, an employee wearing a ski mask approached one female inspector, put his thumb and forefinger in the shape of a gun, pointed at her and said: "You're out of uniform. Pow!"

Saying they had been "hindered, intimidated and threatened," the FDA inspectors took the unusual step of securing a court order compelling True World to let them inspect the facility. Yashiro, chief executive of True World Foods, said in a written statement that the "isolated instance ..... arose from a miscommunication." The plant is now closed; Yashiro said its operations were consolidated into the Elk Grove Village plant in January, adding: "We maintain the highest standards of food safety."

THE OCEAN KING'S VISION

In the late 1970s, Moon laid out a plan to build seafood operations in all 50 states as part of what he called "the oceanic providence."

This dream of harvesting the sea would help fund the church, feed the world and save the American fishing industry, Moon said.

He even suggested that the church's mass weddings could play a role in the business plan by making American citizens out of Japanese members of the movement. This would help them avoid fishing restrictions applied to foreigners.

"A few years ago the American government set up a 200-mile limit for offshore fishing by foreign boats," Moon said in the 1980 "Way of Tuna" sermon. But by marrying Japanese members to Americans, "we are not foreigners; therefore Japanese brothers, particularly those matched to Americans, are becoming ..... leaders for fishing and distribution" of his movement's businesses.

Sushi's popularity had flowered enough by 1986 for Moon to gloat that Americans who once thought Japanese were "just like animals, eating raw fish," were now "paying a great deal of money, eating at expensive sushi restaurants." He recommended that his flock open "1,000 restaurants" in America.

In fashioning a chain of businesses that would stretch from the ocean to restaurant tables across America, Moon and his followers created a structure uniquely able to capitalize on the nation's growing appetite for sushi and fresh fish.

Some of the business start-up funds came from the Unification Church. In a seven-month period from October 1976 to May 1977, Moon signed some of the nearly $1 million in checks used to establish the fishing business, according to a 1978 congressional report on allegations of improprieties by Moon's church.

After acquiring an ailing boatmaking operation, Master Marine, Moon and his followers turned their attention to establishing the next link in the network. Church members who saw fishing as their calling took to the seas, many powered by Master Marine boats. Moon's Ocean Church would bring together members and potential converts for 40-day tuna fishing trips every summer in 80 boats he bought for his followers.

Many of the tournaments took place off the coast of Gloucester, Mass., by no coincidence one of the first homes to a church-affiliated seafood processing plant. Moon proudly declared in his "Way of Tuna" speech that "Gloucester is almost a Moonie town now!" (The church has since rejected the term Moonies as derogatory.)

FROM ANGER TO ACCEPTANCE

Sometimes working surreptitiously, Moon affiliates and followers bought large chunks of the key fishing towns--in each case initially sparking anger and suspicion from longtime residents.

The church and its members created an uproar when they bought a villa that had been a retirement home run by Roman Catholic nuns. Moon was hanged in effigy in the local harbor.

Eventually, such resistance withered away. In Bayou La Batre, Ala., Russell Steiner was among community leaders who clashed with the newcomers. But like many in the town, Steiner has mellowed considerably since the church's arrival. "They have been very active in the community and are very nice people, actually," he said.

The Alabama shrimp business is among the largest in the Gulf of Mexico, and the nearby boat-building plant has not only built more than 300 boats, but also done repairs on the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy ships, according to federal documents.

And the fish businesses have thrived. Company officials say the wholesale distribution arm, True World Foods, had revenue of $250 million last year.

According to True World Foods, its fleet of 230 refrigerated trucks delivers raw fish to 7,000 sushi and fine-dining restaurants nationwide. Dozens of those trucks leave each day from the Elk Grove Village warehouse, one of 22 distribution facilities around the country.

True World Foods' Alaska plant processes more than 20 million pounds of salmon, cod and pollock each year, the company says. Its International Lobster operation in Gloucester ships monkfish and lobster around the world from a 25,000-square-foot cold storage facility that is among the largest on the East Coast.

And it is again in an expansionist mood. True World recently opened up shop in England and established offices in Japan and Korea, setting its sights on the world's biggest market for sushi.

AN EMPIRE'S CHICAGO ROOTS

When Takeshi Yashiro arrived in Chicago in 1980 to help set up one of the earliest outposts of the fishing empire, the area had just a handful of sushi joints. That number has ballooned to more than 200 restaurants statewide, and Yashiro's fish house has flourished.

The son of an Episcopalian Japanese minister, he immigrated to the U.S. and joined the church as a student in San Francisco. On July 1, 1982, Moon blessed Yashiro and his bride along with more than 2,000 other couples in one of his mass wedding ceremonies, in New York City's Madison Square Garden.

The Rainbow Fish House that Yashiro and fellow church members founded on Chicago's Northwest Side has become not only the city's dominant sushi supplier but also the nation's. The fish house became True World Foods, which buys so much tuna from around the world that it has seven people in Chicago solely dedicated to sourcing and pricing the best grades.

One of True World's advantages is that its sales force speaks Chinese, Korean and Japanese, making it easy for first-generation ethnic restaurant owners to do business with them.

"It's kind of tough to compete in this industry with a company that is so global, has a major presence in almost every market and that is driven by religious fervor," said Bill Dugan, who has been in the fish business for almost 30 years and owns the Fish Guy Market on Elston Avenue, near the original Rainbow shop. "We should all be so blessed."

But not all of True World's employees are church members. Tuna buyer Eddie Lin recently left True World for Fortune Fish Co., a local rival. Lin said his former workplace was not overtly religious, but he added that as a non-church member he felt his ability to advance was limited. "You can feel the difference between the way they see members and non-members," Lin said.

FAITH-BASED BUSINESS CULTURE

While disputing such assertions, Yashiro noted that new employees "have to know that the founder is the founder of the Unification Church. … It's a very clear distinction between joining the church or not joining the church. There's no discrimination, but I think our culture is definitely based on our faith."

It's that faith that makes some uneasy. Wang Kim, a Chicago-area youth ministry director and Moon critic, was certain he could find local Korean Christian sushi restaurateurs who didn't use True World because they might consider his views heretical. As Kim said, Moon "says that he is the Messiah, and we hate that."

But Kim called back empty-handed. "I checked with several of my friends,'' he said, "and they know it is from Moon but they have to use [them because] they have to give quality to their customers."

The sheer success of the venture has left lingering questions even in the minds of Moon's dedicated followers. Yashiro, the Chicago pioneer who now heads True World Foods, remembers dedicating his career and life 26 years ago to achieving Moon's dream, which included solving world hunger.

But that part of Moon's grand vision has yet to materialize. "I was wondering if we are really here to solve the world's hunger," Yashiro said. "Every day I ..... pray on it."

He still hopes True World Foods eventually will help end hunger. But until then, he said, his role will be to grow the business and make money.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/chi-0604sushi-1-story-story.html

From remote home in a Dutch forest, ex-Beatles guru aims at bigger goals

AP

Jamaican Observer
February 16, 2006

VLODROP, The Netherlands (AP) - The wizened sage sits alone upstairs in his secluded wooden house, massaging his temples in fatigue as he speaks to the camera.

It's late afternoon, and he has been at it since 3:00 am, conducting his business by video link-up around the world: new schools in India, new meditation centres in Europe, a new medical curriculum for his university in Iowa.

At his age - believed to be 89 - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has no interest in dwelling on the halcyon days of the 1960s and '70s when he was guru to the Beatles and the Beach Boys and his Transcendental Meditation movement was the new buzz on college campuses.

Sleeping only two or three hours a day, he is grappling with weightier problems, his aides say - translating the theory of meditative power into a blueprint for feeding the hungry and bringing peace to the world.

https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/98787_From-remote-home-in-a-Dutch-forest--ex-Beatles-guru-aims-at-bigger-goals

The Rise of Dominionism

Frederick Clarkson
Political Research Associates
December 5, 2005

When Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, installed a two-and-one-half-ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama state courthouse in Montgomery in June of 2001, he knew it was a deeply symbolic act. He was saying that God’s laws are the foundation of the nation; and of all our laws. Or at least, they ought to be.1 The monument (wags call it “Roy’s rock”) was installed under cover of night – but Moore had a camera crew from Rev. D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries on hand to record the historic event. Kennedy then sold videos of the installation as a fundraiser for Moore’s legal defense.

They knew he would need it.

The story of Roy’s rock epitomizes the rise of what many are calling “dominionism.” It is a story of how notions of “Biblical law” as an alternative to traditional, secular ideas of constitutional law are edging into mainstream American politics.

As readers of The Public Eye know, dominionism—in its “softest” form the belief that “America is a Christian Nation,” and that Christians need to re-assert control over political and cultural institutions—has been on the rise for a long time. Since The Public Eye first began writing about dominionism ten years ago, the movement, broadly defined, has gained considerable power. Recently however, the term has become fashionable with some lumping every form of evangelical Christianity and every faction in the Bush White House into one big, single-minded imperial dominionist plot. Dominionism is narrower and more profound than that. It is the driving ideology of the Christian Right.

It comes in “hard” and “soft” varieties, with the “hard” or theocratic dominionists “a religious trend that arose in the 1970s as a series of small Christian movements that seek to establish a theocratic form of government,” according Political Research Associates Senior Analyst Chip Berlet. The seminal form of Hard Dominionism is Christian Reconstructionism, which seeks to replace secular governance, and subsequently the U.S. Constitution, with a political and judicial system based on Old Testament Law, or Mosaic Law (see box). Not all dominionists embrace this view, though most dominionists look back to the early years of the American colonies to argue that before the Constitution, “the United States was originally envisioned as a society based on Biblical law.”2

Berlet’s distinction between hard and soft dominionists is clear and broad enough to describe the two main wings of the movement. But these viewpoints, like the terms “theocrat” and “theocracy,” are openly embraced by few. They are terms used by outside observers to understand a complex yet vitally important trend. So for people trying to figure out if a conservative politician, organization, or religious leader is “dominionist,” I notice three characteristics that bridge both the hard and the soft kind.

Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity.Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.

Pieces of dominionism spill out in the day-to-day words and activities of our nation’s leaders all the time. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) routinely hosts tours of the Capitol for constituents, Congressmembers and their staffs by Christian nationalist propagandist David Barton. President George W. Bush claimed during one of his presidential campaign debates with John Kerry that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has said the United States should be governed under Biblical law.

And a dominionist— Sen. Sam Brownback (RKS) —is a hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination for 2008, while other dominionists are challenging the GOP through the Constitution Party, the third largest party in the nation. Moore himself is challenging a business-oriented incumbent in the GOP gubernatorial primary in Alabama for 2006.

Hard dominionists like Moore take these ideas to their extremes. They want to rewrite or replace or supplement the Constitution and Bill of Rights to codify specific elements of Biblical law. This would create a society that would be a theocracy. Soft dominionists like Brownback, on the other hand, propose a form of Christian nationalism that stops short of a codified legal theocracy. They may embrace a flat tax of 10% whose origins they place in the Bible. They are comfortable with little or no separation of church and state, seeing the secular state as eroding the place of the church in society.

Dominionism is therefore a broad political tendency—consisting of both hard and soft branches—organized through religiously based social movements that seeks power primarily through the electoral system. Dominionists work in coalitions with other religious and secular groups that primarily are active inside the Republican Party. They seek to build the kingdom of God in the here and now.

The three-shared Dominionist characteristics of religious supremacy, Christian nationalism, and theocratic visions are on vivid display in the politics of Moore’s ally, Rev. D. James Kennedy, the prominent televangelist. In early 2005, Kennedy displayed Roy’s rock at his annual political conference, “Reclaiming America for Christ” in Ft. Lauderdale. “For more than 900 other Christians from across the United States,” reported the Christian Science Monitor, “the monument stood as a potent symbol of their hopes for changing the course of the nation.”

“In material given to conference attendees, [Kennedy] wrote: ‘As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government … our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”

Kennedy, the Monitor noted, “regularly calls the United States a Christian nation that should be governed by Christians. He has created a Center for Christian Statesmanship in Washington that seeks to evangelize members of Congress and their staffs, and to counsel conservative Christian officeholders.”

The Monitor story shows Kennedy manifesting all three characteristic of a dominionist: he is a Christian nationalist; he is a religious supremacist; and his politics are decidedly theocratic.3 But of the three characteristics, Kennedy would embrace the first, but deny the second and third.

MOORE AND THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

The notion we often hear in public these days—of the supposed suppression of Christian expression by an alleged secular humanist conspiracy—stems largely from the works of Reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony and those of the Reconstructionist- influenced writer, Francis Schaefer. Tim LaHaye, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson also echo these claims.

The charge can be heard across the decades in Christian Right claims that “secular humanism” is being taught in the public schools and that Christians are “persecuted” in America. A recent variation of this claim was made by soft dominionist, Dr. Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. “The greatest threat to religious freedom in America,” Land declared, “are secular fundamentalists who want to ghetto-ize religious faith and make the wall of separation between church and state a prison wall keeping religious voices out of political discourse.”4

Virginia Reconstructionist Rev. Byron Snapp maintains, “religious pluralism is a myth. At no point in Scripture do we read that God teaches, supports, or condones pluralism. To support pluralism is to recognize all religions as equal.”5 This is, of course, exactly what the U.S. Constitution requires.6 It is because this is so, in part, that there is such a desperate push for what Rushdoony called “Christian revisionism” of history.

Arguably, Moore is emerging as the leading Christian Reconstructionist politician in America. So let’s return to the story of Roy’s rock.

A few years ago, Moore was an obscure Alabama county judge. He gained notoriety when the American Civil Liberties Union sued because he insisted on hanging a hand-carved Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom and opening the proceedings with a prayer. While the case was ultimately dismissed because the plaintiff lacked standing to sue, Roy Moore became a nationally known as the “Ten Commandments Judge.” Moore, 58, turned his notoriety into election as chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2000. Six months after his inauguration, he installed the now-famous monument. The ruling by Federal District Court Judge Myron H. Thompson in the inevitable lawsuit declared that the display constituted “a religious sanctuary, within the walls of a courthouse.” He ordered Moore to remove it; Moore refused, and he was ultimately removed from the bench.

Judge Thompson was additionally troubled by Moore’s partnership with Rev. Kennedy. He wrote that it “can be viewed as a joint venture between the Chief Justice and Coral Ridge, as both parties have a direct interest in its continued presence in the rotunda…. In a very real way, then, it could be argued that Coral Ridge’s religious activity is being sponsored and financially supported by the Chief Justice’s installation of the monument as a government official.”

Moore became a cause celebre and a popular speaker at major gatherings of such organizations as the Christian Coalition and Eagle Forum. He was publicly courted to head the national ticket of the overtly theocratic Constitution Party in 2004 and he appeared at numerous state party conventions while being publicly coy about his intentions.7 (Founded in 1994, it was originally called the U.S. Taxpayers Party.) The GOP was rightfully concerned that Moore might divide Bush’s conservative Christian constituency and threaten his reelection.

But he was able to use this leverage to move elements of the GOP in his direction. Moore and his attorney Herb Titus (vice-presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in 1996) drafted the Constitution Restoration Act, which would allow local, state and federal officials to acknowledge “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government” and prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from gagging them. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) signed on as the bill’s main sponsors, and announced its introduction at a press conference in Montgomery, Ala., in February 2004.

That same day, a conference sponsored by Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law drew a who’s who of dominionists and dominionist-influenced Christian rightists, including Howard Philips, Herb Titus, John Eidsmoe, Phyllis Schlafly, Alan Keyes and representatives from such leading Christian Right organization as Coral Ridge Ministries, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and Eagle Forum. One of the featured speakers was Rev. Joseph Morecraft, a leader of the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement.8

Both the House and Senate held hearings on the bill in 2004, and Sen. Shelby reintroduced it in 2005 (S.520). As of September, it had eight GOP cosponsors. In the House (H.R.1070) Rep. Aderholt had 43 cosponsors. It is a classic and pioneering “court stripping” bill, stripping the Supreme Court of its power of oversight. The clear presumption of the bill is that God’s law is, once was, and should always have been the cornerstone of law and jurisprudence in the United States. While at this writing, the bill has not, and may never progress out of committee, the depth of support for a bill of such profound consequence is one fair measure of how far the most overt dominionist agenda has come.

The rhetoric of Roy Moore, David Barton and other Christian Right leaders not withstanding, the framers of the U.S. Constitution explicitly rejected the idea of a Christian Nation. The framers, seeking to inoculate the new nation against the religious persecution and warfare that had wracked Europe for a millennium, made America the first nation in the history of the world founded without the blessing of an official god, church or religion. They were leaving behind local theocracies that had governed the colonies for the previous 150 years in which only white propertied men who were members of the correct, established sect were able to vote and hold public office. One of the formative experiences of the young James Madison was witnessing the beating and jailing of Baptist preacher who preached—it was against the law in Anglican Virginia.

Madison went on to become the principal author of both the Constitution and the First Amendment. Among the many historical issues faced by dominionists who embrace Christian nationalism and seek to revise history in support of their contemporary political aims, one is so clear and insurmountable that it is routinely ignored: Article 6 of the Constitution bans religious tests for holding public office—no more swearing of Christian oaths. By extension, this meant that one’s religious orientation became irrelevant to one’s status as a citizen. It was this right to believe differently, that set in motion the disestablishment of the state churches—and set the stage for every advance in civil and human rights that followed.

GRANITE ROCK BEGETS A SLATE OF CANDIDATES

Moore has taken his show on the road, speaking about his alternative view of American history at major and minor Christian Right conventions, and displaying the monument. It is typically cordoned off with velvet ropes and viewed with reverence, awe and rubber necking.

Moore leveraged this notoriety beyond the lecture tour into a campaign for governor of Alabama. Not only is he given a (long)shot at winning the June 2006 GOP primary against the incumbent business oriented GOP governor Bob Riley, The Atlantic Monthly reports Moore is assembling “an entire slate of candidates to run under his auspices in the Republican primary… Moore has, in effect established a splinter sect of religious conservatives bent on taking over the Republican Party, and his reach extends to every corner of the state.” This has establishment types in both parties worried. “In style in if not in substance,” the article concludes, “Moore’s religious populism is a lineal descendant of the race-baiting that propelled Wallace to the statehouse a generation ago.”9

Moore evidently set out to provoke a confrontation with the federal courts over the Ten Commandments monument—one he was destined to lose, much as Alabama Governor George Wallace lost in his defense of legal segregation 40 years before.

Some GOP strategists fear that if Moore wins, he may set up a confrontation with the federal government by once again installing the Ten Commandments somewhere the federal courts are likely to rule violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment.10

CONCLUSION

The sudden rise of a Christian Right agenda in many states and the federal government has taken many by surprise. It may be tempting to see Roy Moore as an exception, but his rise is reviving old coalitions. In 2004, his former spokesman and legal advisor, Tom Parker, was elected as an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. At Parker’s request, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made the trek to Montgomery to swear him in. Ex-judge Moore then also swore him in. “The Chief’s courage to stand for principle over personal position inspired me and animated voters during my campaign for the Alabama Supreme Court” said Parker. “So, I have been doubly blessed to have been sworn into office by two heroes of the judiciary.”11 But Parker’s politics has additional roots in the politics of the Wallace era. He has longstanding ties to neoconfederate organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens and the white supremacist League of the South and calls his home “Ft. Dixie.”12

While Alabama has its distinctive politics, we can also see dominionist politics in the mix of the aggressive efforts to restrict access to abortion and to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians—and in the efforts to teach creationism and its variant “intelligent design” in the public schools.

Naturally, people look for explanations for how it has come to this. There are many factors for this trend, just like any other important trend in history. But many Americans, regardless of their political orientation, seem genuinely baffled and obsessed about one or another factor in the rise to power of the Christian Right: they look to issues of funding, mass media, megachurches, dominionism, and so on. It is all of these and more. However, following the logic of Occam’s Razor, that the best explanation is usually the simplest, I offer this: the Christian Right social movement, fueled by the growing influence of dominionist ideology, gained political influence because it was sufficiently well organized and willing to struggle for power. And now they are exercising it.

While most dominionists would say they favor the U.S. Constitution, and merely seek to restore it to the original intentions of the founders, in fact, their views are profoundly anti-democratic. The dominionist worldview is not one based on the rights of the individual as we have come to know them, but on notions of biblical law. Among the political models admired by the likes of D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and Reconstructionist writer Gary North is the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a government ruled by the intensely Calvinist Protestant sect, Puritanism. In the dominionist worldview, the biblically incorrect (and those of other religious views) are second-class citizens at best. While few would admit to the clear implications of Christian nationalism, dominionism in the short run necessarily means, as a matter of theocratic public policy, reducing or eliminating the legal standing of those who do not share their views.

Indeed the dominionist movement and its allies in Congress are actively seeking to eviscerate the capacity of the federal courts to protect the rights of all citizens. Developing a coherent understanding of the ongoing role of dominionism in the dynamic growth of the Christian Right movement will be integral to any effective counter strategy in this, one of the central struggles of our time.

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONISM?

While Rev. D. James Kennedy of the Coral Ridge teleministry appears to represent “soft dominionism,” he is a borderline case. Some of the political agenda he, Moore and their allies pursue strikes me as hard dominionist. And by this I mean rooted in Christian Reconstructionism, a theology that arose out of conservative Presbyterianism in the 1970’s. It asserts that contemporary application of the laws of Old Testament Israel should be the basis for reconstructing society towards the Kingdom of God on earth.

Led by the movement’s seminal thinker, the late Rev. R. J. Rushdoony, Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life, art, education, health care, government, family life, law and so on. They have formulated a “biblical worldview” and “biblical principles” to inform and govern their lives and their politics. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly described this view: “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s Law.”13

It has been difficult for many Americans to accept the idea that a theocratic movement could be afoot, let along gain much influence in 20th century America, but Robert Billings, one of the founders of the Moral Majority once said, “if it weren’t for [Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.” This does not, of course, mean that everyone influenced by Rushdoony’s work is a Reconstructionist. Rather, as Billings indicated, it provided a catalyst and an ideological center of gravity for the wider movement of ideas that have percolated throughout evangelical Christianity, and parts of mainline Protestantism and Catholicism for the past three decades.

The original and defining text of Reconstructionism, is Rushdoony’s 1973 opus, The Institutes of Biblical Law – an 800-page explanation of the Ten Commandments, the Biblical “case law” that derives from them and their application today. “The only true order,” he wrote, “is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion.” In brief, he continues, “every law-order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare.”14

The Chalcedon Foundation, a Reconstructionist think tank under whose auspices Rushdoony did most of his writing, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with a conference on the life and work of Rushdoony.

Interestingly, the Chalcedon Report, the journal of the Chalcedon Foundation, recently reported that Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law is preparing “to hold seminars that will teach judges, lawyers, and law students about Biblical Law as the basis of America’s laws and Constitution.” “There is a lot more being written and said about this than there was a few years ago,” Moore told Chalcedon Report. “The truth that’s been cut off for so long is being brought out into the open, and it will prevail.”15

Frederick Clarkson, “On Ten Commandments bill, Christian Right has it wrong,” Christian Science Monitor, April 21, 2004.Chip Berlet. 2004. “Mapping the Political Right: Gender and Race Oppression in Right-Wing Movements.” In Abby Ferber, ed, Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism. New York: Routledge.Jane Lampman, For evangelicals, a bid to ‘reclaim America,’ The Christian Science Monitor, March 16, 2005.Brent Thompson, “Baptist idea of religious liberty affirmed at doctrinal conference,” Baptist Press, September15, 2005.David Cantor, The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America, Anti-Defamation League, 1994.For a detailed discussion, see Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997.Fred Clarkson, “Will Roy Moore Crack the Bush base?” Salon, May 4, 2004.Joe Morecraft III, “Restoring the Foundations,” Counsel of Chalcedon, June 2004. This speech is “An Exposition and application of Psalm 11 given at Judge Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law conference in Montgomery, Alabama, February 13, 2004.”Joshua Green, “Roy and His Rock,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 2005.Nina Easton, “Conservative’s popularity may be problem for GOP,” The Boston Globe, June 14, 2005.Tom Parker for Justice, http://www.parkerforjustice.comHeidi Beirich and Mark Potok, “Honoring the Confederacy: In Alabama, a well-known Supreme Court candidate lauds an antebellum slave trader and appears with hate group leaders,” Intelligence Report, Fall 2004.Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, 1997, pg 78.Ibid, pg, 79.Lee Duigon, “Is There Hope for Our Judiciary? Yes, Says Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore,” Chalcedon Report, October 6, 2005.







Frederick Clarkson is a senior fellow at Political Research Associates. He co-founded the group blog Talk To Action and authored Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Follow him on Twitter at @FredClarkson.

http://www.politicalresearch.org/2005/12/05/the-rise-of-dominionismremaking-america-as-a-christian-nation/#sthash.WH7PgunH.JKL9bZNN.dpbs

New 'warriors' bare their souls

Jim Greenhill
The Durango Herald, Colorado

August 21, 2005

Bill Stanley did not like what he saw in the mirror, but the Durango salesman couldn't tear himself away.

"I got to a point where I screwed up my life so profoundly that I couldn't get away from my own reflection," he told nine other men at a chiropractic office Thursday.

"Men have lost the ability to communicate," Stanley said, holding an aspen talking stick decorated with black, red, white and yellow ribbons representing the four primary directions.

"We've lost our ability to connect with each other spiritually and emotionally and to be authentic and real with each other and with ourselves," he said.

Stanley completed a weekend called the New Warrior Training Adventure, and on Thursday he was among a half-dozen initiates describing his experience to area men who responded to recent advertisements in local publications.

For $600, the nonprofit ManKind Project, based in New York City, offers the training weekend with a motto "changing the world one man at a time." Men who cannot afford the fee are welcome anyway, members say.

The project's Web site explains that:

Every man has a warrior side. Many repress this, substituting a distorted "shadow form."

But new warriors confront the shadow, releasing a healthier energy.

"Our intention is twofold," according to the Web site. "To enable men to live lives of integrity, accountability and connection to feeling. To be of service to the community at large."

Its statement of purpose proclaims: "We are an order of men called to reclaim the sacred masculine for our time through initiation, training and action in the world."

Specifics are hidden in secret ceremonies during the initiation weekend and in the variety of succor that different men seem to find.

Thursday evening's group included a carpenter, educator, chiropractor, counselor, three salesmen, an unemployed political science major, the owner of an excavation company and a man who requested anonymity. Ages ranged from early 20s to, perhaps, late 50s.

The group talked about lost initiation rites for youths and the lapsed tradition of elders who guide youths to manhood. About how sometimes it seems modern men relate only over business, spectator sports, beer and women.

"Prior to initiation, my relationship with men was nonexistent," said Arthur Riegel, a counselor. "Men were competition."

Riegel called other men mere measuring sticks. Who had the "better" girlfriend, car, motorcycle or sports team?

"My relationship with women wasn't very good, either," he confessed. "It was dishonest. It was manipulative. It left me very much alone … feeling disconnected, feeling separated."

Riegel completed his New Warrior Training Adventure weekend in 1992, heading into it with 200 others, fearful and cursing the man who'd invited him.

Afterwards, "there were men in my life who were closer to me than blood brothers had ever been," he said.

Based on interviews and the group's literature, the Mankind ManKind Project appears to be part men's movement, part service organization, part group therapy, part spiritual healing and part fraternity.

For Mike Clark, a Durango excavation business owner, it was an accelerator of growth.

"I had been so separated from my feelings," he said. "I had an emotion, I didn't even know what the hell it was."

The weekend and subsequent meetings in small groups changed that, he said.

"I am really, really thrilled. I feel better than I ever have."

When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-Saucer Group - Diana G. Tumminia

Oxford University Press
July 14, 2005 - 
Social Science - 240 pages

Of the approximately fifty percent of Americans who believe in UFOs, a fraction are devotees of one of the numerous UFO-based new religious movements.

The Unarius Academy of Science is one of the oldest of these groups. Founded in 1954 by "Cosmic Visionaries" Ruth and Ernest Norman (also known, respectively, as Archangels Uriel and Raphiel), Unarius is devoted to teaching the all-encompassing Uranian Science.

Combining elements of pop psychology, new age thought, and science fiction, the Science asks its students to channel messages from the infinitely intelligent Space Brothers and to heal themselves through the practice of past-life therapy. Unarians await the arrival of spaceships, manned by the Space Brothers, that will bring to earth advanced intergalactic technology that will benefit all humankind. Tumminia has been conducting research on Unarius for over a decade - attending meetings, inteviewing members, and studying official Unarian literature and videos. Here she offers an inside look at this fascinating movement. She pays particular attention to the ways Unarians adapt when their prophecies - and particularly their prediction that the Space Brothers would land in 2001 - don't materialize. This is the first in-depth study of any UFO religion.

A dangerous war on psychiatry

Raj Persaud
The Independent (UK)
June 30, 2005

Commentary

The public's fear of psychiatric drugs has itself become a serious public health problem

Tom Cruise denounced psychiatry as a "pseudo science" this week when questioned by the American NBC-TV host Matt Lauer about his stance against anti-depressant drugs. The actor had criticised Brooke Shields for taking drugs for post-natal depression, which in turn has drawn a rebuke from the American Psychiatric Association. In response to Cruise's comments, it stated that: "It was irresponsible for Mr Cruise to use his movie publicity tour to promote his own ideological views."

The Association, which represents more than 36,000 physicians specialising in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, challenged Cruise's assertion that psychiatry lacks scientific merit. "Rigorous, published, peer-reviewed research clearly demonstrates that treatment [of mental illness] works," they asserted.

Cruise's comments come as no surprise to many psychiatrists, not because much of his recent behaviour has been found so strange by the press, but more because it is widely reported he is a follower of the Church of Scientology, which is virulently against psychiatry. Stephen Kent, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Canada, points out in a recent paper in the academic journal 'Religion' that the "war" against psychiatry was integral to the mission of the founder of Scientology, Ron Hubbard, since his first book, Dianetics, in 1950, and continues to this day. Hubbard indicated as far back as the 1960s that one of the key enemies of Scientology was the profession of psychiatry. This small but internationally connected group, Hubbard claimed, according to Professor Kent, was behind the "lies and slander" that both the press and government agencies received about Scientology.

But Hubbard went further, Kent points out, and argued that psychiatry was not just a threat to Scientology but was a vehicle to undermine and destroy the West through purveying techniques like electric shocks and brain operations. Hubbard believed that psychiatrists had sought to obtain power by becoming the contemporary "confessors" and counsellors of not just the ordinary person but also the politically powerful.

Kent's paper, entitled 'The globalization of Scientology: Influence, Control and Opposition in Transnational Markets' shows that psychiatrists took on the classic characteristics of evil in a cartoon printed in the first International Edition of Scientology's publication, Freedom, where a front-page drawing depicted eight psychiatrists as horned, goateed, tailed, and cloven-hoofed devils injecting "patients" with drugs, and performing electric shock and lobotomies. Since psychiatry is Scientology's alleged cosmic enemy, his followers want to see the profession destroyed, and its functions in society replaced by Scientology.

Kent demonstrates the specific social action group designed to eliminate psychiatry through political and press lobbying is the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, whose efforts are coordinated worldwide under Scientology's Office of Special Affairs International. Its efforts to portray psychiatry in a negative light has led CCHR to support the rights of patients, occasionally uncovering instances of questionable, if not calamitous, psychiatric care. In 1981, for example, Scientologists received national attention in Canada for exposure of the demonstrably detrimental effects of institutionalisation upon a psychiatric patient, Henry Kowalski, who was confined with the criminally insane while receiving unpleasant drug treatments and electric shocks.

While patients have occasionally benefited from the Church of Scientology publicising examples of poor psychiatric care, this doesn't mean that the general thrust of Scientology's case against psychiatry stands up. They appear to be reflexively against medication and other scientifically supported treatments which often are needed and are indeed life-saving.

Some psychiatric patients in the US and Canada recently became so convinced about the alleged dangers of psychiatric treatments, as a result of Scientology's campaigns, that they stopped taking their medication. US psychiatrists have concluded that the public's fear of psychiatric drugs has itself become a potentially serious public health problem, as people begin to avoid and fear treatment.

The most irresponsible aspect of Cruise's comments, as well as the approach of Scientology, is not so much their criticism of psychiatry as their failure to provide a valid alternative response to major mental illnesses. What are the treatments they advocate? Do they run centres for the clinically depressed where they take legal responsibility for their care? And do they publish data proving the effectiveness of their methods?

Cruise should outline what treatments he would recommend and show us the evidence that they work. Otherwise, he is just launching a War of the Worlds in his provocative comments. This may make good film publicity, but it does no service to the mentally ill.

The writer is Gresham professor for public understanding of psychiatry

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/raj-persaud-a-dangerous-war-on-psychiatry-497016.html

1985 bombing in Philadelphia still unsettled

Martha T. Moore
USA Today

May 11, 2005

Philadelphia -- The last block of Osage Avenue is a half-abandoned and lonely place. Most of the houses on the narrow street are boarded up.

Twenty years ago this Friday, city police dropped a bomb on this block and let it burn. Five children and six adults, members of a small radical collective called MOVE, died; 61 homes in a middle-class neighborhood were destroyed. As the nation watched, Philadelphia became the city that bombed its own people.

A generation later, MOVE is still around, its members still agitating for the release of eight who have been in prison since a 1978 cop-killing. Most of the other two dozen or so members, all of whom take the surname Africa, live in a house 3 miles from Osage. The mayor who approved the bombing, Wilson Goode, 66, is a pastor who runs a youth-mentoring program. And the residents of Osage Avenue are still trying to get their homes back.

Philadelphia has spent $42 million in financial settlements, investigation and rebuilding to try to fix what happened that day. It was a law enforcement failure so spectacular that it would not be equaled until the siege near Waco eight years later. A month ago, 24 homeowners won a $12 million suit against the city for the botched rebuilding and repairs of their homes.

"We're still in it," says Mayor John Street, who was a city councilman in 1985. "It's the never-ending story."

The memory of the bungled decisions and bad judgment that led police to drop a satchel of explosives from a helicopter onto a residential neighborhood — and the horror that resulted — still stings.

"Every year when May comes around, I think of it, of course, because I'll never forget that it's May 13, 1985," says Mary Ellen Krober, a lawyer for the city who negotiated settlements with 11 MOVE families.

'Grossly negligent' actions

When the Rev. Isaac Miller arrived in Philadelphia shortly after the bombing, there was little discussion of it, he says. It was too disturbing: The city's first black mayor had dropped a bomb on a black neighborhood.

"In many ways, for African-Americans, it's painful to remember," says Miller, an Episcopal priest who will speak Friday at a commemoration. "But ... it has to be" remembered.

A commission that investigated found that Goode and two other officials, police commissioner Gregore Sambor and fire commissioner William Richmond, had been "grossly negligent." The deaths of the MOVE children "appeared to be unjustified homicide," it said. Police had not taken them out of the house when they had the chance. They had used excessive force in firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house. The plan to drop explosives was "reckless" and "unconscionable." And they let the fire burn until it was too late to control.

Sambor resigned six months later. Richmond retired in 1988. Goode apologized tearfully on TV and was re-elected in 1988

"Everybody was shouting at the television set, 'Put out the fire!' " says Carl Singley, a lawyer who was counsel to the MOVE commission.

That five children died, huddled in the basement of the MOVE house, brings tears to his eyes. "I imagine those last hours down in the basement," he says.

Police have changed tactics

The confrontation came after months of complaints from neighbors about MOVE, which is not an abbreviation for anything. Members broadcast political harangues on bullhorns day and night, threw garbage and filth into their yard and kept their children naked as part of a dedication to "Mom Nature." The violence was touched off when police tried to evict members and arrest some of them.

"You can say whatever you want about the adult MOVE people in the house and whether they got what they deserved," says John Anderson, co-author of Burning Down the House, a book about MOVE. "But there were kids in the house."

Eight years later, the standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, echoed the MOVE scenario. Since then, says Henry Ruth, who served on commissions investigating MOVE and Waco, police have changed their tactics. In 1996, the Montana Freemen standoff ended peacefully when federal agents simply waited out the Freemen. "They learned a lot from Waco, and I think they learned from MOVE about the inevitability of tragedy when you start raiding a cult where you have no contingency plan," Ruth says. "Law enforcement has seen the need to wait and wait and wait. I think we've learned a lot of lessons. But it took MOVE and it took Ruby Ridge and it took Waco to learn that, and that was over 100 lives."


One of the two who escaped the fire, Ramona Africa, 49, spent seven years in prison for riot and conspiracy. Today, she earns her living speaking about MOVE and Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death-row inmate convicted in an unrelated 1981 killing of a police officer.

"I am angry, and bitter, and justifiably so," she says. "Not a single official went to prison for murdering my family," referring to the whole Africa clan. The bombing, she says, was "not bad judgment. That is murder."

Members now live in a big house in West Philadelphia, eat "a lot" of raw food, Africa says, and home-school their children. But the tactics have changed, she says, since the bombing drew the world's attention. "It's not necessary for us to be on the bullhorn now. People are calling us for information."

Today, the site of the bombed house, 6221 Osage, is occupied by the police Civil Affairs Unit. The city rebuilt Osage Avenue, but the construction was so shoddy that years of repairs failed to fix the homes. Finally, the city condemned them and offered owners $150,000. Many took the buyout, but 24 families went to federal court. The city is appealing the judgment.

"I'm really disgusted," says resident Nan Chainey. I'm tired, and I want to end this thing."

Twenty years of struggle left the residents of Osage Avenue distrustful of the government they asked in 1985 to help them with their neighbors.

"They want us, the people, physically out," says Gerald Renfrow, a roofer who has lived on the block since 1959. "When we're out, that means there's no one left on Osage to tell the story of what happened."

CultNEWS101 "MOVE" Collection.

Interrogation Methods Can Elicit Confessions From Innocent People

Sharon Begley Staff Reporter 

The Wall Street Journal

April 15, 2005

For cops, this was as good as it gets: The 14-year-old boy they arrested in the February murder of a man who found an intruder in his parked car in Rockford, Ill., didn't just confess. After the police took him from his home around midnight and isolated and interrogated him until dawn, he also re-enacted the crime for them, describing the inside of the car and relating how he had broken into it, struggled with the victim and shot him in the chest.

There was only one problem. After the boy had spent two weeks in detention, police, acting on a tip, discovered the real shooter was a 17-year-old.

Scientists who study false confessions aren't surprised. During the hours-long interrogation, says Shelton Green, the boy's public defender, detectives called the boy a liar, told him he would go to prison for 10 to 15 years if he didn't admit his role, suggested he shot the man in self-defense and promised to help him if he would own up.

"This was almost a perfect storm of criminal injustice," says Rockford prosecutor Paul Logli, president-elect of the National District Attorneys Association.

Suspects confess for a number of reasons. "But the most important," says Saul M. Kassin, professor of psychology at Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., "is that standard interrogation techniques are masterfully designed to leave people with almost no rational choice but to confess."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB111351995072807538

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David B. Caruso
Associated Press

March 31, 2005

Philadelphia -- Mayor John F. Street spent 90 uncomfortable minutes before a federal jury Thursday explaining how the city has treated families who lost their homes when police dropped a bomb on their neighborhood during a battle with the militant group MOVE.

The explosion, on May 13, 1985, is remembered as one of the sorriest moments in city history.

Police trying to evict armed members of the cult dropped the explosive from a helicopter, then ordered firefighters to keep their distance as flames killed six adults and five children inside the MOVE compound and consumed 61 adjacent homes.

Embarrassed city officials promised to rebuild, but the project lurched from scandal to scandal.

A contractor went to prison. The new houses were defective. Cracks opened in the walls. Electrical systems failed. The city spent millions of dollars on repairs, but couldn't solve the problems.

After Street became mayor in 2000, he suspended the repair work in mid-construction, declared the buildings on Osage Avenue too dangerous to live in and offered the remaining families a $150,000 buyout.

Most took it. The remaining 24 families went to court.

Testifying Thursday, Street said he believed the city had a "moral obligation" to help the families, but didn't think it was possible to repair the houses "in any fiscally responsible way."

"I had made a decision that the houses were dangerous, and the residents shouldn't be living there," he said.

He added that $150,000 was easily three or four times the value of other homes in the neighborhood.

"I thought it was fair. I thought it was more than fair," Street said.

But, pressed by the families' attorney, Adrian Moody, Street seemed unable to answer the most basic of questions about how he reached that decision.

Street said he didn't know how much it would have cost to do further repairs, or how much the city had spent trying to fix the buildings so far. When he was shown city documents and letters he had signed, he claimed he had no memory of them.

Several times, he said he was unaware the city had actually constructed new homes for the families after the old ones burned.

His inability or unwillingness to answer questions elicited moans from homeowners packed into the courtroom, and finally prompted an angry rebuke from U.S. District Judge Clarence C. Newcomer.

"Has there ever been an event in the city of Philadelphia as traumatic as the events at Osage Avenue?" Newcomer asked.

Street, a city councilman for 20 years before he became mayor, sat quietly for several moments before responding, "This is right up there."

"Then can you explain why you don't have a better recollection of the questions that are being asked of you?" Newcomer said.

Street bristled, faced the judge, and in a raised voice responded that, as the mayor of the nation's fifth largest city, he couldn't be expected to remember the details of each city problem he dealt with.

"In the course of a given week, I look at 10 issues as complicated as this issue," he said.

The trial is expected to last several days.

The 24 families involved in the suit are seeking between $250,000 and $300,000 apiece for their homes, plus additional damages for what they claim was an unfair attempt by the city to pressure them into taking the buyout.

Street sent the families a letter saying that if they didn't accept the offer, the city would seize the homes by imminent domain. His decision to halt repair work also left the families living in unfinished buildings with missing doors and walls.

"This is a disaster. It really is," Moody said in an interview. "To me, it is up to the jury to make a decision on this now. I think closure is necessary for all concerned."

The trial is the first civil suit related to the MOVE bombing since 1996, when a jury ordered the city to pay $1.5 million to a MOVE member who survived the bombing and the families of the people who died.

CultNEWS101 "MOVE" Collection.

A San Francisco Examiner Religion Reporter More Than 30 Years Ago

John McCaslin 

Washington Times

March 4, 2005 

Inside the Beltway

As a San Francisco Examiner religion reporter more than 30 years ago, veteran White House correspondent Lester Kinsolving sensed something sinister about Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple — long before the sect leader, 912 of his followers and a U.S. congressman perished in the jungle of Guyana.

"I went to the religion editors of 40 newspapers — including The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times — begging them to send reporters" to the temple's California headquarters during the early 1970s, he says.

On numerous occasions, the reporter was told and even witnessed for himself bizarre behavior by Jones, his armed guards and the temple's congregation.

"Not one of them sent anybody," Mr. Kinsolving tells Inside the Beltway. "They refused."

Besides newspaper editors, the sect leader was fooling most everybody in those days, from San Francisco's mayor to the future vice president and even the first lady of the United States.

"We had exposed this [sect activity] in 1973," Mr. Kinsolving recalls. "Then, wouldn't you know? Rosalynn Carter invited Jones to have dinner with her [at a California hotel]. She had a whole bunch of Secret Service agents with her, and when Jones showed up with his 'gunslingers' they still managed to work it out.

"And can you believe Walter 'Fritz' Mondale entertained Jones on his campaign plane?"

Not everybody was so enchanted.

Armed with Examiner newspaper articles questioning the activities of the temple and its subsequent exodus to South America, Rep. Leo J. Ryan, California Democrat, traveled to Jonestown, Guyana, to investigate. Before he could report back to Capitol Hill, the congressman was slain by Jones' followers on Nov. 18, 1978 — hours before the mass suicide.

"I remember when the news hit Washington that more than 900 people died ... and all the major media began acting as if it was something new," Mr. Kinsolving says. "Any way you look at this, it was such a terrible refusal of the major media not to tell the whole truth.

"There was only one person that I had gone to [in the early 1970s] who later apologized for not looking into it further — Brit Hume [now with Fox News]. He worked for [syndicated columnist] Jack Anderson then."

Now, about three decades later, somebody else has apologized to Mr. Kinsolving, who suffered a heart attack recently and is recovering in his suburban Washington home.

Tim Stoen, the former outspoken chief legal adviser to Jones who is a California deputy district attorney, wrote a lengthy letter to Mr. Kinsolving in recent weeks asking for forgiveness.

"You were right... I was totally wrong," wrote Mr. Stoen, having once filed a libel lawsuit (later dropped) against Mr. Kinsolving to squelch his reporting. "From my heart, I apologize for my mistreatment of you ... and castigating your motives."

"I was very surprised to receive the letter," Mr. Kinsolving tells this column. "I am very grateful."

John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin@washingtontimes.com.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:Kp4lfS5H_TkJ:www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm+As+a+San+Francisco+Examiner+religion+reporter+more+than+30+years+ago&hl=en 

On Avatar

Elliot Benjamin, Ph.D.
2005

I was first introduced to Avatar at an evening workshop at a metaphysical bookstore in Bangor, Maine in the summer of 1997. Avatar, founded in 1986, is Harry Palmer's New Age spiritual, philosophical, and psychological organization. There were only three people (including myself) attending this event, and one of the people described what he heard as the "new est," Werner Erhard's popular New Age, large-group experiential organization prominent in the 1970s that merged Western psychology with Eastern spirituality. [1]

Harry Palmer' known to all Avatar students as simply Harry is a psychologist, ex-hippie, and ex-Scientologist. He professes to not be a guru, but I'm afraid that I do not entirely agree with him on this point, for Palmer's impact upon his followers is quite similar to that which Erhard had upon his followers in est.

And Palmer is an exceptional businessman who has made a fortune with Avatar. The costs of doing Avatar are quite high: My tuition for the 1997 course was $2,300, not including costs for traveling approximately 1,000 miles in my car over the nine days. The workshop leaders are called Avatar Masters, who all spend an additional $3,000 (not including the extra travel, motel costs, etc.) for an advanced Masters' workshop. The Avatar Professional course is $2,500 plus extras. And for the supreme experience to be with the most enlightened beings on the planet, 'the Avatar Wizards' course costs $7,500 plus extras. Approximately 100,000 people have taken the Avatar training, and it is being offered in more than 60 countries all over the world. So, as you can see, Harry Palmer is quite the businessman.

Palmer has not written very much, and his writing style is quite terse but it is also quite high impact. His books have been translated into a number of different languages. His primary book is Living Deliberately, and his follow-up book is Resurfacing, which describes the first section of the three-section Avatar nine-day training course. [2] A few years ago Palmer wrote The Masters' Handbook, [3] which is presently available only to Avatar graduates (I am considered to be one of these enlightened beings). The Masters' Handbook is chock full of excellent business advice on successfully selling and becoming a professional Avatar Master.

Palmer's marketing and salesmanship abilities remind me of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology (in my opinion a cultish organization, which I experienced for two years in the 1970s [4]). Hubbard and Palmer share many philosophical, spiritual, and psychological similarities, as well.

In July 1999, two years after I had done the nine-day Avatar training (without quite completing it) in the summer of 1997, I did a review and completion of the Avatar course. Avatar graduates commonly do a review of the training, and the review costs are reasonable in the neighborhood of $200.

Both my original Avatar course and my review course were quite meaningful to me. In particular, I like the way the Avatar masters encourage, support, and train you to not give up on your dreams. They call these dreams your primaries, and if the course goes well, you end up feeling as if you are capable of attaining your life s deepest goals, dreams, and desires. [5] The emphasis in these courses is very much upon going into your deepest spiritual self, referred to in Avatar as going into 'source.; This concept is not very different from the notion of empty mind, or Buddha consciousness, achieved thru meditation. The Avatar techniques to achieve this state of mind are actually quite simple and pleasant, having to do with feeling and noticing what is in your environment through a series of exercises called feel its. Once you achieve this state of calm and relaxation, it is time to learn how to put total intention into overcoming the barriers to attaining your cherished goals. These barriers are called 'secondaries.' So the Avatar process can be described as going into source to eliminate your secondaries, in order to attain your primaries.

The bottom line of Avatar is that you decide how you feel and what you experience. In other words, you have the capability to control what you experience in life by coming from a place of source and visualizing what you want. This basic Avatar technique has remarkable philosophical similarities to the essential beliefs in both Neale Donald Walsch s Conversations with God philosophy (see my essay On Conversations with God in ICSA s E-Newsletter) and Helen Schuman s Course in Miracles. [6] But the nine-day training ground of Avatar is tremendously powerful and high impact, and extremely intensive.

I must also give credit to Avatar for not interfering in what a person decides his or her primary to be. As for me, at the time of my training, I was in the midst of wanting to believe that the new relationship I was involved in was going to be the beautiful life-long relationship I so much wanted to experience. The Avatar masters at first tried gently to convey to me that the lack of communication in this relationship was a very poor sign for attaining my primary in this particular relationship. But I was so stubborn and persistent that I refused to be open to what they were seeing, obviously more clearly than I was. However, true to Avatar form, they let me continue to work on making this goal my dominant primary and finding ways to attain it, though they did convince me to leave a little room for openness, in case this relationship turned out not to be the one for which I had been praying for such a long time. When the relationship did finally end about six months later for many of the reasons my Avatar masters saw in advance, I felt a strong appreciation for Avatar for allowing me to experience the relationship i.e., choose to experience it, in Avatar language in the way I apparently wanted to.

But what happens after the nine-day Avatar training ends? Well, there are the regular mailings of the Avatar journal every two months or so; the journal is full of inspirational writings by Harry Palmer and various Avatar graduates, Masters, and Wizards. And there are new books and tapes put out by Harry Palmer. But the real emphasis is on the Avatar graduate taking the next step: to do the Avatar Masters course and become an Avatar Master himself/herself.

Aside from the extreme expense involved in the Masters course, my basic feeling after having completed the Avatar review course was that I already had what I wanted to get out of Avatar. There are some valuable tools in the Avatar training make no mistake about this. But the follow-up courses in Avatar are financially exorbitant, and I could see the dangers of becoming addicted to Avatar if I were to succumb to these temptations. However, it was also true that I had gotten a jolt from Avatar that I had not experienced from anywhere else in quite the same way. This high-impact jolt, coupled with a smooth sales pitch from one of the Stars Edge trainers (the elite of Avatar) at a vulnerable time in my life, persuaded me to go to California in May 2001 to do the Avatar Masters course.

The Avatar Masters course was held in a luxurious hotel in the plush surroundings of the island of Coronado, outside of San Diego. I spent approximately $5,000, including hotel and transportation, and maxed out my credit cards to take this training. Why did I do it? I suppose I was ready to take a plunge into something uplifting and self-supporting after having gone through an extremely upsetting personal experience in a romantic relationship that involved losing important aspects of my self. And it was most certainly a plunge: 200 people, many of these Avatar masters reviewing the course, from all over the world. Six Stars Edge trainers and three assistant Stars Edge trainers the elite of Avatar were running the course. And we even got a surprise visit from none other than Harry Palmer himself and his quite-intense wife, Avra.

I ended up completing the course with only an Assistant Avatar Masters license, however, which meant that I could not teach Avatar to others. I would have had to do a review of the Masters course to upgrade my status, which would have meant a few thousand more dollars for hotel and transportation, even though the review course itself would be free.

What actually happened on this course? Well, I got myself into a great deal of trouble with the Stars Edge trainer who appeared to have the most power and influence over who was given the privileged status of becoming an Avatar Master and allowed to teach Avatar. I was quite outspoken in my concern over the expense of Avatar and the emphasis on selling Avatar to find my own students, and I freely questioned the Stars Edge trainers about how much money they were making for delivering the Masters course. The particular Stars Edge trainer with whom I had my difficulties took offense at my brazenness and became suspicious that I was taking the course for fraudulent purposes. He even asked me if I was a reporter for The New York Times. He gave me various self-repair processes to work on, but I have no doubt that, in the end, he was not willing to trust me to deliver Avatar to others.

In fact, I was being open to becoming a truthful and bona fide Avatar Master, and I had even formulated a plan to codeliver Avatar with a woman who was a professional sales/marketing director from Cincinnati. She was going to do the sales/marketing part and I was going to lead the actual teaching. We had planned to do the Section 1/Resurfacing part of the course in Cincinnati on a weekend in August 2001.

But all of this fell by the wayside once the course trainers gave me my Assistant Master status. It is true, as they tried to explain to me, that my status could have been lower: Some students got no license at all. The only benefit of my status compared to having no license was that I was allowed to assist a Qualified Master (official status with many Avatar requirements) on an Avatar course, which I would need to pay for unless I brought my own students. I was one of the first ones to finish the actual course (which, in terms of content, was little more than the original Avatar training course). I received many compliments on how I was working with other Avatar students and masters, and many people who were not completing the training as quickly as I were given the higher licensing status of Intern Master, which enabled them to teach the Section 1/Resurfacing weekend.

I felt extremely hurt, embarrassed, and dejected when the leaders told me my status, and my efforts to persuade them to reconsider fell upon deaf ears. But deep down I knew that there was a good, higher reason for this. My limited status was a signal to me that I was not supposed to take the easy way out and become a bona fide Avatar Master, feeling the comforts and camaraderie of being part of a New Age spiritual organization, learning how to be a successful New Age businessman, selling Avatar to the world, and so on. I had chosen to be myself at the Avatar Masters course, and I got what I got. I had chosen to not sell the ideas of Harry Palmer to the world because I had so many problems with the financial ethics, and I also felt uncomfortable with some of the philosophical beliefs and practices.

I think back to my essays on Scientology, described in my book Modern Religions: An Experiential Analysis and Expos�, in which I discuss the problems with the 100% mentality that is, in the case of Scientology, following 100% the ideas and techniques of the person in charge, L. Ron Hubbard. And I realize that Avatar is essentially no different from Scientology in this regard. Harry Palmer has come up with some significant and effective ideas and techniques to help people actualize their dreams. But the procedures are to be repeated verbatim according to Palmer s instructions, from Source List, to the Creative Handling Procedure, to the Initiation Session. This verbatim repetition most certainly reminds me of the Dianetic Auditing sessions of Scientology, and I have no doubt that it is far more than a mere coincidence that these similarities of procedure exist between Scientology and Avatar, given that Palmer himself is an ex-Scientologist.

So the viewpoint I choose to adopt (in Avatar language) is that my low status of Assistant Avatar Master enabled me to make a narrow escape from yet another New Age spiritual organization. I had spent roughly $8,000 on Avatar, and there was an intensive sales pitch at the Avatar Masters course to sign up for the next Avatar Wizard s course, the 13-day training in Florida that costs $7,500 plus all the extras.

But I have learned so much both about Avatar and about the dangers of New Age spirituality in the 2000s. To paraphrase the first statement on the Avatar Source List: I am happy to be who I am. And this I has been telling me that it is time to go back into action not do any more course work on Avatar, and not teach Avatar officially to others. Instead, it is time to offer to others what I have learned about Avatar and all my other New Age spirituality studies, and to facilitate heartfelt dialogue and discussion concerning the search for authentic spiritual truth.




_____

[1] See, for example, Adelaide Bry, Est: 60 Hours That Transform Your Life (New York: Avon Books, 1976); Steven Pressman, Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard, from est to Exile (Emeryville, CA: St. Martins Press, 1993); and my est essays in Elliot Benjamin, Modern Religions: An Experiential Analysis and Expos� (Swanville, Maine: Natural Dimension Publications, 2005).

[2] See Harry Palmer, Living Deliberately (Altamonte Springs, Florida: Stars Edge International, 1994) and Harry Palmer, Resurfacing (Altamonte Springs, Florida: Stars Edge International, 1994).

[3] See Harry Palmer, The Avatar Masters Handbook (Altamonte Springs, Florida: Stars Edge International, 1997).

[4] See, for example, L. Ron Hubbard, The Modern Science of Mental Health (Los Angeles: The American Saint Hill Organization, 1950, 1975); Joe Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics, and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990); and my Scientology essays in Modern Religions... (book information in endnote 1).

[5] For more personal information about my experiences with Avatar, see my Avatar essays in Modern Religions... (book information in endnote 1).

[6] See Foundation For Inner Peace, A Course in Miracles (New York: Penguin Books, 1975, 1996); Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue: Book 1 (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1993), Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue: Book 2 (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1997), and Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue: Book 3, (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1998); Elliot Benjamin, On Conversations with God (ICSA E-Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2004 at http://csj.org/infoserv_articles/benjamin_elliot__conversationswithgod.htm); and my Course in Miracles and Conversations with God essays in Modern Religions... (book information in endnote 1).