Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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The Moonies and Michael Jackson

Com­ment: In FTR #695, we exam­ined the array of sin­is­ter forces grouped around Jack­son at the time of his demise. To these, we can now add the Moonies–the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon, ana­lyzed in AFA #7 and FTR #291 as exten­sions of the Japan­ese Patri­ot­ic and Ultra-Nation­al­ist soci­eties. [Those soci­eties paved the way for the rise of fas­cism in Japan through a wave of assas­si­na­tions.]

“Michael Jack­son: Moonies Want Mil­lions from His Par­ents” by Roger Fried­man; Celebri­ty; 6/28/2010.

As usu­al, every­one has this wrong.

Michael Jackson’s par­ents have been sued once again by a news­pa­per called the Segye Times in South Korea.

But the Segye Times is a front for Rev­erend Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. The church owns the paper, just the way they did the Wash­ing­ton Times.

This finan­cial back and forth between the Moonies and the Jack­sons has been going on since 1990. The Jack­sons had not toured since the Vic­to­ry Tour end­ed in 1984. Here’s what hap­pened:

The Moonies want­ed to under­write a Jack­sons tour of South Korea with Michael. Accord­ing to sources, they con­tact­ed Joseph and Kather­ine Jack­son and mem­bers of the Jack­son fam­i­ly. They gave them all gifts and cash, rang­ing from Rolex watch­es to lux­u­ry cars. At one point, the group’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive went to Frank DiLeo, Michael’s man­ag­er and brought two casher’s checks for $500,000 apiece. DiLeo refused to accept the mon­ey. He said, “If Michael wants to tour South Korea, we’ll call you.”

The truth was, DiLeo and Jack­son did not want to be involved with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church.

The Moonies mean­time made a deal with Joseph Jack­son and the ever astute Jer­maine for the tour. When it didn’t mate­ri­al­ize, they sued for their mon­ey and gifts to be returned.

In the law­suit, the Moonies claimed they were out $5.5 mil­lion. To avoid los­ing their Enci­no home, the Jack­sons trans­ferred own­er­ship to Michael. (That’s the short ver­sion. The long ver­sion, includ­ing the par­ents suing LaToya, is too hard to explain here.)

Michael Jack­son set­tled with the Moonies in 1992. But his par­ents were sep­a­rate defen­dants, as was a con­cert pro­mot­er named Ken­neth Choi. They nev­er showed up for tri­al. In 1994,  a tri­al judg­ment was filed against them total­ing $4 mil­lion. In 1996, the Moonies filed to take pos­ses­sion of the home. That’s when they trans­ferred it to Michael. Since then, the Moonies have just wait­ed. And with inter­est, they say they’re up to $13 mil­lion.

This is inter­est­ing: accord­ing to sources, because of this judg­ment, nei­ther Kather­ine or Joseph Jack­son uses cred­it cards or can get cred­it. “Every­thing they do is in cash,” the source says. The judg­ment was report­ed­ly part of the Jack­sons’ 1999 bank­rupt­cy fil­ing for $24 mil­lion.

Now, of course, with Michael’s estate being the sub­ject of so much press–and procla­ma­tions of earn­ing so much recently–the Moonies are back to get their dough.

Real­ly, you can’t make this stuff up.

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