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FTR #1142 Deep Politics and the Death of Park Won-Soon, Part 3

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FTR #1142 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

NB: This descrip­tion has mate­r­i­al that was not in the orig­i­nal broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: Flesh­ing out the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the life and death of Park Won-soon, this pro­gram builds on the foun­da­tion of first two pro­grams in the series. Park Won-soon’s crit­i­cism of Japan’s colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, his advo­ca­cy of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the two Kore­as and his suit against the lead­er­ship of the fas­cist Shin­cheon­ji mind con­trol cult (over­lapped with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church), all bear on the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ics of the Sec­ond World War, the Cold War, the Kore­an War, and the car­tel arrange­ments that con­sti­tute a crit­i­cal, though large­ly invis­i­ble, under­pin­ning of the events of the Twen­ti­eth and Twen­ty-First cen­turies.

Essen­tial to an under­stand­ing of these over­lap­ping events is the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Indeed, one can­not prop­er­ly ana­lyze the par­ti­tion of Korea after World War II, the Kore­an War and the Cold War as sep­a­rate events. They are inter­con­nect­ed and, in turn, are out­growths of the com­plex pol­i­tics of the Sec­ond World War and the actions and atti­tudes of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s nar­co-fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship.

Although nom­i­nal­ly a mem­ber of the Allied nations, Chi­ang’s Kuom­intang gov­ern­ment was pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with fend­ing off Mao Tse-Tung’s com­mu­nist armies and worked with the invad­ing Japan­ese in crit­i­cal areas. In par­tic­u­lar, the Kuom­intang’s pro­found involve­ment with the nar­cotics trade helped dri­ve its trad­ing with the Japan­ese.

The pro­gram begins with the obit­u­ary of gen­er­al Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose ser­vice in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army dur­ing World War II has been a focal point of con­tro­ver­sy in South Korea. Gen­er­al Sun-yup embod­ied the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy in Korea over Japan’s occu­pa­tion and the sub­se­quent unfold­ing of events lead­ing up to, and includ­ing the Kore­an War.

Again, the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Korea was a major focal point of Park Won-soon’s crit­i­cism. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence . . .”

A lit­tle known fac­tor in the devel­op­ment of the Kore­an par­ti­tion and Cold War pol­i­tics in Asia was the involve­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek, his wife (the for­mer Mei-Ling Soong, sis­ter of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ter T.V. Soong–the wealth­i­est man in the world at the time) and advis­ers in the Cairo Con­fer­ence of 1943 and the sub­se­quent Tehran Con­fer­ence with Stal­in and Churchill.

Accord­ing to Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty, who flew the Kuom­intang inter­ests to Tehran from Cairo, Chi­ang and com­pa­ny were a dri­ving force in set­ting the stage for war in Korea and Indochi­na.

While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .”

To appre­ci­ate Chi­ang’s influ­ence in the Cairo and Tehran con­fer­ences, it is impor­tant to under­stand that he was “work­ing both sides of the street” in World War II.

Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road at great risk and cost to Allied ser­vice­men found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er.

Gen­er­al Ku Chu-Tung com­mand­ed a dev­as­tat­ing oper­a­tion against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist New Fourth Army, illus­trat­ing why the Sea­graves called him “one of the most hat­ed men in Chi­na.”

Although obscured by the sands of time and pro­pa­gan­dized his­to­ry, Ku-Chu Tung’s actions illus­trate why Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well held Chi­ang Kai-Shek in con­tempt. Still­well not only (cor­rect­ly) viewed Chi­ang Kai-Shek as a fas­cist, but (cor­rect­ly) saw him as an imped­i­ment to opti­miz­ing Chi­nese resis­tance to the hat­ed Japan­ese invaders.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Kodama Yoshio, the Japan­ese crime boss and Admi­ral of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Navy, the Ku broth­ers swapped U.S. lend lease sup­plies for drugs.

It is impor­tant to note the role of the Black Drag­on Soci­ety in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Drag­on, along with Black Ocean, are key Japan­ese ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties and the appar­ent fore­run­ners of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and, pos­si­bly the over­lap­ping Shin­cheon­ji cult that was sued by Park Won-soon.

Kodama played a key role in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 291  and 970.

Acquir­ing key strate­gic raw mate­ri­als for the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Naval Air Force, Kodama bought many of these direct­ly from the chief of Kuom­intang secret ser­vice, Gen­er­al Tai Li, who was paid direct­ly in hero­in.

Before turn­ing to the sub­ject of the Kore­an War and its deci­sive influ­ence on the dis­po­si­tion of glob­al wealth and the resus­ci­ta­tion of the glob­al car­tel sys­tem, we recount the assas­si­na­tion of Kim Koo, an impor­tant Kore­an patri­ot, whose advo­ca­cy of reuni­fi­ca­tion for Korea placed him in the crosshairs of Amer­i­can Cold War strate­gists. (Park Won-soon was called a “com­mie” for advo­cat­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the Kore­as.) ” . . . . In June 1949, Gen­er­al Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advi­sor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intel­li­gence Corps (CIC)—found­ed by and pat­terned after the CIA—conspired with Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cers and a young lieu­tenant to assas­si­nate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the sev­en­ty-three-year-old Kim was rest­ing in his sec­ond-floor bed­room, Lieu­tenant Ahn Do hi walked past three police­men stand­ing guard out­side, entered the house, pro­ceed­ed to Kim’s bed­room, and shot him to death. . . .”

On the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, John Fos­ter Dulles was in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio. It is not known just what they were doing, but Fos­ter direct­ly fore­shad­owed the impend­ing (and alleged­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed) North Kore­an inva­sion in a speech just before the com­mence­ment of hos­til­i­ties.

Kodama recruit­ed thou­sands of yakuza sol­diers and Japan­ese World War II vet­er­ans to fight for South Korea, dressed in Kore­an uni­forms.

Next, we high­light the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict.

Japan was not bank­rupt at all when John Fos­ter Dulles nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty. U.S. bomb­ing left crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture intact, and the infu­sion of war loot helped boost the 1951 Japan­ese econ­o­my above its pre-World War II peak.

Fos­ter Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curi­ous pres­ence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, his pre­scient fore­shad­ow­ing of the con­flict just before the North Kore­an inva­sion and the role of these events in shap­ing the post World War II glob­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal land­scapes may well have been designed to help jump­start the Japan­ese and Ger­man economies.

The Kore­an War did just that” . . . . A sub­stan­tial infu­sion of mon­ey into this new Fed­er­al Repub­lic econ­o­my result­ed from the Kore­an War in 1950. The Unit­ed States was not geared to sup­ply­ing all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pen­ta­gon placed huge orders in West Ger­many and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of boom­ing good times. . . .”

Indeed, John Fos­ter Dulles’s world view enun­ci­at­ed a phi­los­o­phy alto­geth­er con­sis­tent with those aims: ” . . . . He churned out mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles assert­ing that the ‘dynam­ic’ coun­tries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–‘feel with­in them­selves poten­tial­i­ties which are sup­pressed’ . . .”

Those economies, the car­tels that dom­i­nat­ed them and the Dulles broth­ers Cold War strate­gic out­look are dom­i­nant fac­tors in the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the life, and death, of Park Won-soon.

1.  The pro­gram begins with the obit­u­ary of gen­er­al Paik Sun-yup of Korea, whose ser­vice in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army dur­ing World War II has been a focal point of con­tro­ver­sy in South Korea. Gen­er­al Sun-yup embod­ied the ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy in Korea over Japan’s occu­pa­tion and the sub­se­quent unfold­ing of events lead­ing up to, and includ­ing the Kore­an War. “. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence . . .”

“Paik Sun-yup, South Kore­an Gen­er­al Seen as Hero or Trai­tor, Dies at 99” by Choe Sang-Hun; The New York Times; 7/15/2020; p. A22.

Paik Sun-yup, South Kore­a’s first four-star gen­er­al, who was lion­ized as a Kore­an War hero by the South Kore­an and Unit­ed States mil­i­taries but dis­missed by many in his coun­try as a trai­tor, died here on Fri­day. He was 99. . . .

. . . . Though wide­ly cred­it­ed for lead­ing his troops in a piv­otal bat­tle of the Kore­an War, Mr. Paik was a divi­sive fig­ure in his home coun­try. In 2009, a South Kore­an pres­i­den­tial com­mit­tee put him on a list of “pro-Japan­ese and anti-nation” fig­ures who had col­lab­o­rat­ed with Japan­ese col­o­niz­ers dur­ing their rule of the Kore­an Penin­su­la. . . .

. . . . In 1941, he joined the army of Manchukuo, a pup­pet state that impe­r­i­al Japan had estab­lished in Manchuria, and served in a unit known for hunt­ing down Kore­an guer­ril­las fight­ing for inde­pen­dence, though Mr. Paik said he had nev­er engaged in bat­tles with them.

He was a first lieu­tenant when Japan was defeat­ed in World War II and Korea was lib­er­at­ed. After the coun­try was divid­ed into the pro-Amer­i­can South and the Com­mu­nist North, Mr. Paik was among the Kore­ans in Japan’s colo­nial mil­i­tary who were recruit­ed when the Unit­ed States was help­ing to build a mil­i­tary for the South. . . .

. . . . IF Paik Sun-yup is called a ‘hero,’ what does that make Kore­an inde­pen­dence fight­ers who lost their lives at the hand of his old Manchuria unit?” asked Kim Won-woong, the head of Her­itage of Kore­an Inde­pen­dence, a group rec­og­nized by the gov­ern­ment for its mem­bers’ strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.

“If he real­ly want­ed to be treat­ed like ‘a Kore­an War hero,’ he should at least have expressed repen­tance and remorse for his pro-Japan­ese deed,” Mr. Kim added, in an inter­view pub­lished last year. “But he nev­er has.”

2. The Cold War in Asia, includ­ing the Kore­an War and atten­dant insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the Amer­i­can­iza­tion of Gold­en Lily prof­its had its gen­e­sis in the influ­ence of the Kuom­intang in the Cairo and Tehran talks dur­ing 1943.

In addi­tion to Chi­ang Kai-shek him­self, his wife (the for­mer Mei-Ling Soon, sis­ter of T.V. Soong) played an impor­tant part in the nego­ti­a­tions.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; p. 13.

. . . . Although the alliance between the West and the Sovi­et Union dur­ing WWII had been weld­ed in the heat of bat­tle, it had nev­er been on too firm a foot­ing. This was espe­cial­ly true of its struc­ture in the Far East. The Chi­nese leader, Chi­ang Kai-shek, was as much a dic­ta­tor as either Hitler or Mus­soli­ni. . . .

. . . . In this cli­mate, Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt maneu­vered to have Chi­ang Kai-shek join him in Cairo or a Novem­ber 22–26, 1943, meet­ing with Churchill. Roo­sevelt want­ed to cre­ate the atmos­phere of a “Big Four” by plac­ing Chi­ang on the world stage. Chi­ang appeared in Cairo, along with his attrac­tive and pow­er­ful wife, Madame Chi­ang Kai-shek—nee Mei- Ling Soong, daugh­ter of Char­lie Jones Soong and sis­ter of T.V. Soong, at that time the wealth­i­est man in the world [and Chi­ang Kai-shek’s finance minister—D.E.]. Few pic­tures pro­duce dur­ing WWII have been more strik­ing than those of Chi­ang and Roo­sevelt “appar­ent­ly” jok­ing with each oth­er on one side and an “appar­ent­ly” con­vivial Churchill and Madame Chi­ang smil­ing togeth­er on the oth­er. . . .

. . . . With the close of the Cairo Con­fer­ence, the Churchill and Roo­sevelt del­e­ga­tions flew to Tehran for their own first meet­ing with Mar­shal Stal­in. This much was released to the pub­lic. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chi­ang and the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion were also present at the Tehran Con­fer­ence of Novem­ber 28-Decem­ber 1, 1943. . . .

3. After Franklin Roo­sevelt’s death in 1945, the role of Chi­ang Kai-shek and asso­ciates helped shape the post­war shape of Asia, set­ting the stage for the Kore­an War. Note that T.V. Soong was Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ter and the rich­est man in the world at that time.

His U.S. edu­cat­ed sis­ter was mar­ried to Chi­ang Kai-shek and wield­ed great influ­ence both in the Kuom­intang admin­is­tra­tion and in the Cairo and Tehran dis­cus­sion that set the stage for post-World War II in Asia.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; p. xxvi­ii.

. . . . How many of us real­ize that back in Novem­ber 1943, when Win­ston Churchill and Franklin Dr. Roo­sevelt met in Cairo with Chi­ang Kai-shek, they were not only mak­ing plans for vic­to­ry over the Axis pow­ers in Europe, they were lay­ing the ground­work for a fol­low-on peri­od of war­fare in east­ern Asia, in Indochi­na (1945), Korea (1950 . . . . fol­low­ing the defeat of Japan?

Few his­to­ri­ans seem to recall that also in Cairo was Chi­ang Kai-shek’s wife Mei-Ling, the Amer­i­can-edu­cat­ed sis­ter of T.V. Soong, then the wealth­i­est man in the world, and she actu­al­ly took part in the work of the con­fer­ence along with activ­i­ties of T.V. Soong’s Chi­nese del­e­gates, who were Chiang’s advis­ers. . . .

. . . . Even more impor­tant­ly, after these del­e­gates of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and T. V. Soong had active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in Cairo in the plan­ning for the post-World War II activ­i­ties in the Far East, they flew on to Tehran . . . The fact that imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the Cairo Con­fer­ence the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion was in Teheran . . . . has not been record­ed in the his­to­ry books of this era. This is a most impor­tant omis­sion. I was pilot of the plane that flew them there from Cairo. Dur­ing the some­times heat­ed exchanges . . . . plans were made . . . . for a peri­od of con­tin­u­ing war­fare in Indochi­na, Korea, and Indone­sia under the guise of that Cold War “cov­er sto­ry.” . . .

4. Hav­ing been born in 1949, I grew up with World War II as a crit­i­cal ele­ment of my polit­i­cal, civic and cog­ni­tive upbring­ing. I vivid­ly remem­ber watch­ing the doc­u­men­tary “Vic­to­ry at Sea” on tele­vi­sion as a child. As I have grown old­er, more knowl­edge­able and wis­er, learn­ing the truth about World War II has been very sad and painful.

In FTR #1095, we not­ed the his­tor­i­cal back­ground to the ongo­ing con­flict with China–the bru­tal Japan­ese onslaught and the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship with Japan’s attack and occu­pa­tion.

As a boy, I was awed and moved by the hero­ism of Amer­i­can and Allied ser­vice per­son­nel who braved the dan­gers of fly­ing over the Hump to bring U.S. sup­plies to Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces. Although offi­cial­ly allied with the U.S., Chi­ang Kai-shek’s forces were actu­al­ly work­ing “both sides of the street.”

We have encoun­tered noth­ing more grotesque­ly trag­ic and dis­il­lu­sion­ing than the aware­ness that Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­plies flown over the Hump and/or sent along the Bur­ma Road found their way into the hands of the Japan­ese, cour­tesy of KMT gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung and his orga­nized crime broth­er.

Col­lab­o­rat­ing with Kodama Yoshio, the Japan­ese crime boss and Admi­ral of the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Navy, the broth­ers swapped U.S. lend lease sup­plies for drugs.

In the pas­sage below, it is impor­tant to note the role of the Black Drag­on Soci­ety in the ascent of Kodama Yoshio. Black Drag­on, along with Black Ocean, are key Japan­ese ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties and the appar­ent fore­run­ners of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and, pos­si­bly the over­lap­ping Shin­cheon­ji cult.

Kodama played a key role in the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 291  and 970.

Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 41.

. . . . He [Kodama] was sprung from jail by [Gen­er­al] Doi­hara in April 1937, on the con­di­tion that he devot­ed his vio­lent ener­gies to loot­ing Chi­na’s under­world. This epiphany, the trans­for­ma­tion of Kodama from thug to super-patri­ot, was sug­gest­ed by Black Drag­on’s Toya­ma [Mit­su­ru], whose own stature as a patri­ot was affirmed in 1924 when he was a guest at Emper­or Hiro­hi­to’s wed­ding. . . .

. . . . All pro­ceeds were divert­ed from Chi­nese rack­e­teers to Gold­en Lily, minus a han­dling charge for Kodama him­self. Ulti­mate­ly, Kodama was respon­si­ble to Prince Chichibu, and to the throne.

Princes were not equipped to deal with gang­sters. Kodama saved them from soil­ing their hands. He con­vert­ed nar­cotics into bul­lion by the sim­ple method of trad­ing hero­in to gang­sters for gold ingots. How bro­kers got the ingots was not his con­cern. He closed a deal with water­front boss Ku Tsu-chuan to swap hero­in for gold through­out the Yangtze Val­ley. Thanks to Ku’s broth­er, KMT senior gen­er­al Ku Chu-tung, Japan also gained access to U.S. Lend-Lease sup­plies reach­ing west­ern Chi­na by way of the Bur­ma road, or on air­craft fly­ing over the Hump from India. Once in ware­hous­es in Kun­ming or Chungk­ing, the Lend-Lease was re-sold to the Japan­ese Army, with Kodama as pur­chas­ing agent. . . .

5. Gen­er­al Ku Chu-Tung com­mand­ed a dev­as­tat­ing oper­a­tion against the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist New Fourth Army, illus­trat­ing why the Sea­graves called him “one of the most hat­ed men in Chi­na.”

Although obscured by the sands of time and pro­pa­gan­dized his­to­ry, Ku-Chu Tung’s actions illus­trate why Gen­er­al Joseph Still­well held Chi­ang Kai-Shek in con­tempt. Still­well not only (cor­rect­ly) viewed Chi­ang Kai-Shek as a fas­cist, but (cor­rect­ly) saw him as an imped­i­ment to opti­miz­ing Chi­nese resis­tance to the hat­ed Japan­ese invaders.

Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. 300–301.

. . . . The Ku broth­ers had evil rep­u­ta­tions. In 1940, Gen­er­al Ku became one of China’s most hat­ed men. When the Chi­nese com­mu­nist New Fourth Army passed through his ter­ri­to­ry on their way to attack the Japan­ese held rail­way between Nanking and Shang­hai, Ku ambushed them and mas­sa­cred all but the head­quar­ters con­tin­gent, includ­ing many women cadres. All these women were sub­ject­ed to mass rape and kept in KMT army broth­els for the next 18 months, where a num­ber of them com­mit­ted sui­cide. As his reward, Gen­er­al Ku was pro­mot­ed to com­man­der in chief of the KMT armies. . . .

6. Next, we sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime with the Japan­ese. Once again, Kodama Yoshio is front and cen­ter. Acquir­ing key strate­gic raw mate­ri­als for the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Naval Air Force, Kodama bought many of these direct­ly from the chief of Kuom­intang secret ser­vice, Gen­er­al Tai Li, who was paid direct­ly in hero­in.

Note that the Strike South ref­er­enced in the quote below was the cam­paign of which the attack on Pearl Har­bor was a key part. The attack on Pearl Har­bor was designed to neu­tral­ize the U.S. Sev­enth Fleet, in order to facil­i­tate the Japan­ese cam­paign in the South Pacif­ic, chiefly the cap­ture of the Indone­sian oil fields.

The cap­ture of Indone­sia and the Strike South was neces­si­tat­ed by Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt’s cut-off of the sale of oil to Japan. Reflec­tive of the U.S/Japanese car­tel asso­ci­a­tion high­light­ed in FTR #905, the U.S. had fueled the bal­ance of the Japan­ese war effort up to that point.

Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 42.

. . . . Offi­cial­ly, Kodama was in Shang­hai as a buy­er for the Impe­r­i­al Navy Air Force, under the rubric of the Kodama Kikan, or Kodama Agency. (Spe­cial Ser­vice Units were named after the offi­cer in charge and then called an agency.) On paper, his mis­sion was to locate and acquire sup­plies of cop­per, cobalt, nick­el and mica. In most cas­es he bought these direct­ly from KMT secret police chief Gen­er­al Tai Li, who was paid in hero­in. Accord­ing to U.S. intel­li­gence, the Kodama Agency took over the salt monop­oly, molyb­de­num mines, farms, fish­eries and muni­tions plants. . . .

. . . . Just before Pearl Har­bor and the Strike South, Kodama accom­pa­nied Prince Take­da to Japan’s south­ern mil­i­tary head­quar­ters in Saigon to con­fer with Field Mar­shal Ter­auchi, son of the gen­er­al who had loot­ed and bru­tal­ized Korea. Because the Strike South would involve Japan’s navy, and the navy would admin­is­ter the Malay Arch­i­pel­ago through which trea­sure ships must pass, Kodama was trans­ferred overnight from the army to the navy, and giv­en the rank of rear admi­ral. This was like mak­ing Al Capone a U.S. Navy admi­ral. Kodama’s rank enabled him to com­man­deer ships, and gave him lever­age with Chi­nese smug­glers who roved the arch­i­pel­ago. As Jonathan Mar­shall explains, “because the Japan­ese lacked a coastal navy, they grant­ed Chi­nese ‘pirates’ a monop­oly on smug­gling in return for infor­ma­tion . . . . The Japan­ese sold them nar­cotics for $1,600 an ounce, which the pirates in turn could sell along the coast for $6,000.”

Kodama returned to Shang­hai just in time for Pearl Har­bor . . . .

7. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. ” . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .”

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

One of the best-kept and least-dis­cussed secrets of ear­ly Cold War plan­ning took place some­time before the sur­ren­der of Japan. It had a great impact upon the selec­tion of Korea and Indochi­na as the loca­tions of the ear­ly “Cold War” hos­til­i­ties between the Com­mu­nists and the anti-Com­mu­nists.

Despite the ter­rif­ic dam­age done to main­land Japan by aer­i­al bom­bard­ment, even before the use of atom­ic bombs, the inva­sion of Japan had been con­sid­ered to be an essen­tial pre­lude to vic­to­ry and to “uncon­di­tion­al” sur­ren­der. Plan­ning for this inva­sion had been under way for years. As soon as the island of Oki­nawa became avail­able as the launch­ing site for this oper­a­tion, sup­plies and equip­ment for an inva­sion force of at least half a mil­lion men began to be stacked up, fif­teen to twen­ty feet high, all over the island.

Then, with the ear­ly sur­ren­der of Japan, this mas­sive inva­sion did not occur, and the use of this enor­mous stock­pile of mil­i­tary equip­ment was not nec­es­sary. Almost imme­di­ate­ly, U.S. Navy trans­port ves­sels began to show up in Naha Har­bor, Oki­nawa. This vast load of war mate­r­i­al was reloaded onto those ships. I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States.

His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: “Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.”

In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .

8. Next, we set forth the assas­si­na­tion of Kore­an patri­ot Kim Koo. Advo­cat­ing the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Korea, he stood in the way of Cold War plan­ning. His assas­si­na­tion was, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, engi­neered by the CIA. ” . . . . In June 1949, Gen­er­al Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advi­sor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intel­li­gence Corps (CIC)—found­ed by and pat­terned after the CIA—conspired with Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cers and a young lieu­tenant to assas­si­nate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the sev­en­ty-three-year-old Kim was rest­ing in his sec­ond-floor bed­room, Lieu­tenant Ahn Do hi walked past three police­men stand­ing guard out­side, entered the house, pro­ceed­ed to Kim’s bed­room, and shot him to death. . . .”

The Judas Fac­tor: The Plot to Kill Mal­colm X by Karl Evanzz; Thun­der’s Mouth Press [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Karl Evanzz; ISBN 1–56025-049–6; pp. 55–56.

. . . . After World War II end­ed and Japan was eject­ed from Korea, U.S. Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and Joseph Stal­in of the Sovi­et Union reached an agree­ment at the Yal­ta con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary of 1945, under which Korea would be gov­erned by a joint trustee­ship. The Unit­ed States would gov­ern the south­ern half of the nation, while North Korea would be under the Sovi­et Union’s con­trol.

Enter Kim Koo. Kim, who had lived in Shang­hai dur­ing the war, returned to Korea after the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion end­ed. He opposed the joint trustee­ship fear­ing it would lead to a per­ma­nent divi­sion of his home­land. Kim became a folk hero to Kore­ans, but a fly in the oint­ment to the Unit­ed States . . . . Kim’s fears became real­i­ty when Gen­er­al John R. Hodge, Com­man­der of the U.S. Occu­pa­tion Forces, held a rigged elec­tion in which Kim and [U.S. pro­tégé] Syn­g­man Rhee became lead­ers of South Korea. In the inter­im, the Sovi­et Union installed Kim Il Sung in new­ly inde­pen­dent North Korea. Rhee opposed the pow­er-shar­ing plan in the South, par­tic­u­lar­ly since Kim Koo was press­ing for­ward with plans to reunite Korea.

In June 1949, Gen­er­al Kim Chang-Yong, Rhee’s close advi­sor and Chief of Korea’s Counter-Intel­li­gence Corps (CIC)—found­ed by and pat­terned after the CIA—conspired with Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cers and a young lieu­tenant to assas­si­nate Kim Koo. On June 26, 1949, while the sev­en­ty-three-year-old Kim was rest­ing in his sec­ond-floor bed­room, Lieu­tenant Ahn Do hi walked past three police­men stand­ing guard out­side, entered the house, pro­ceed­ed to Kim’s bed­room, and shot him to death.

Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai, who had har­bored Kim for more than twen­ty years, were cer­tain that the assas­si­na­tion had been ordered by Rhee’s Amer­i­can advis­er, who also served as Rhee’s anti-espi­onage chief. Although there was evi­dence that the Amer­i­can was a CIA offi­cer . . .  no one was able to prove it, and Ahn wasn’t talk­ing. Short­ly after the assas­si­na­tion, Ahn’s fam­i­ly was spir­it­ed out of Korea and brought to Amer­i­ca. The Ahn family’s depar­ture only served to height­en spec­u­la­tion that Kim’s assas­si­na­tion was engi­neered by the CIA. Ahn tried to join his fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca, but was [pre­vent­ed by forces loy­al to Kim. Today, June 26 is a nation­al day of mourn­ing in Korea. . . .

9.  In dis­cus­sion below, we high­light the 1951 “Peace” Treaty between the Allies and Japan, an agree­ment which false­ly main­tained that Japan had not stolen any wealth from the nations it occu­pied dur­ing World War II and that the (already) boom­ing nation was bank­rupt and would not be able to pay repa­ra­tions to the slave labor­ers and “com­fort women” it had pressed into ser­vice dur­ing the con­flict.

In the con­text of the fan­tas­tic sums loot­ed by Japan under the aus­pices of Gold­en Lily and the incor­po­ra­tion of that wealth with Nazi Gold to form the Black Eagle Trust, that 1951 treaty and the advent of the Kore­an War raise some inter­est­ing, unre­solved ques­tions.

One of the prin­ci­pal fig­ures in the loot­ing of occu­pied Asia dur­ing World War II was the remark­able Kodama Yoshio. Net­worked with the pow­er­ful Yakuza Japan­ese orga­nized crime milieu, the Black Drag­on soci­ety (the most pow­er­ful of the patri­ot­ic and ultra-nation­al­ist soci­eties), the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese mil­i­tary and the Roy­al fam­i­ly of Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, Kodama loot­ed the Chi­nese under­world and traf­ficked in nar­cotics with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s fas­cist nar­co-dic­ta­tor­ship.

We can but won­der about Kodama Yosh­io’s pres­ence along with 1951 “Peace” Treaty author John Fos­ter Dulles at nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

As dis­cussed in numer­ous pro­grams in an inter­view with Daniel Junas, the Kore­an War was a huge eco­nom­ic boom for Japan, and gen­er­at­ed con­sid­er­able prof­it for Ger­man firms as well. Thyssen, for exam­ple, won lucra­tive con­tracts for mak­ing steel for the war effort. Is there some con­nec­tion between the Kodama/Dulles pres­ence in Seoul on the eve of the out­break of war linked to the Gold­en Lily/Black Eagle/1951 “Peace” Treaty nexus?

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

10. Inter­est­ing­ly, and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly, John Fos­ter Dulles made a star­tling­ly pre­scient speech in South Korea, augur­ing North Kore­a’s inva­sion short­ly there­after.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if Dulles and Kodama had been involved in delib­er­ate­ly lur­ing the North Kore­ans to invade, in a man­ner not unlike that in which U.S. Ambas­sador to Iraq April Glaspie appears to have bait­ed Sad­dam Hus­sein into invad­ing Kuwait.

Note, also, Dulles’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Syn­g­man Rhee and Chi­ang Kai-shek as Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men. Chi­ang Kai-shek’s redemp­tion­ist cre­den­tials are high­light­ed in some of the pas­sages above.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 38–39.

. . . . It was this same John Fos­ter Dulles in Korea, serv­ing as no more than a “bipar­ti­san con­sul­tant” to the Depart­ment of State in June 1950, who had said, “No mat­ter what you say about the pres­i­dent of Korea [Syn­g­man Rhee] and the pres­i­dent of Nation­al­ist Chi­na [Chi­ang Kai-shek], these two gen­tle­men are the equiv­a­lent of the founder of the church . . . . they are Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men.”

Then, while still in Korea, on June 19, 1950, John Fos­ter Dulles made a most unusu­al speech before the Kore­an par­lia­ment: “The Amer­i­can peo­ple wel­come you as an equal part­ner in the great com­pa­ny of those who make up the free world. . . . I say to you: You are not alone. You will nev­er be alone so long as you con­tin­ue to play worthi­ly your part in the great design of human free­dom.”

The Kore­ans, tak­en com­plete­ly by sur­prise, won­dered what he meant by those words. Less than one week lat­er, when the North Kore­ans invad­ed South Korea, they found out. On the very next Sun­day, while Dulles was still in Japan, the Kore­an War broke out with an attack on the south by the North Kore­ans. For some­one of his stature—a senior part­ner of the largest law firm in New York City, Sul­li­van & Cromwell, and a man who had found a world­wide plat­form in the World Coun­cil of Churches—these had been most unusu­al state­ments on many counts. They were sur­passed only by his “pre­dic­tion” of the out­break of the Kore­an War at that time. As for his oth­er state­ment about “Chris­t­ian gen­tle­men,” few there are who have held the same opin­ion of Pres­i­dent Rhee and Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lat­ter. . . .

11. The hero­ism of Allied and U.S. com­bat­ants was deeply impressed on my per­son­al­i­ty and per­cep­tions, in sig­nif­i­cant mea­sure by watch­ing “Vic­to­ry at Sea” . Footage of U.S. air­men in com­bat with Ger­man and Japan­ese planes res­onates dif­fer­ent­ly now, under­scor­ing the tragedy of the events and the cyn­i­cism that appears to have dic­tat­ed strat­e­gy devised by key offi­cers and politi­cians.

In FTR #905, among oth­er broad­casts, we have detailed the pro­found cor­po­rate links between Amer­i­can oli­garchs and their coun­ter­parts in Japan. As the Sea­graves not­ed in an excerpt of The Yam­a­to Dynasty sum­ma­riz­ing the after­math of World War II in Asia: “. . . . Amer­i­ca’s oli­garchs had res­cued Japan’s oli­garchs. . . .”

The Amer­i­can air war against Japan may well have been selec­tive­ly con­duct­ed, with dev­as­tat­ing fire­bomb­ing raids dec­i­mat­ing the res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods of much of Japan, while spar­ing the infra­struc­ture vital to the zaibat­sus (giant con­glom­er­ates that dominated–and con­tin­ue to dominate–the Japan­ese econ­o­my) and the coun­try’s war-mak­ing capac­i­ty.

The pos­si­bly that this appar­ent­ly delib­er­ate strat­e­gy was designed to dec­i­mate that ele­ment of the Japan­ese pop­u­la­tion that might have sought a more egal­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal and social struc­ture, while spar­ing the elite is one to be seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed.

One should enter­tain the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the con­duct of the U.S. air war may have been strate­gi­cal­ly designed to posi­tion Japan for the 1951 peace treaty that insti­tu­tion­al­ized the Gold­en Lily incor­po­ra­tion into the glob­al econ­o­my and post­war intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; pp. 115–116.

. . . . Despite pro­pa­gan­da to the con­trary, Amer­i­can and Euro­peans who toured Japan imme­di­ate­ly after the sur­ren­der were sur­prised that infra­struc­ture, fac­to­ries, util­i­ties, and rail­ways were large­ly intact, thanks to selec­tive Amer­i­can bomb­ing. Fire­bomb­ing had destroyed tens of thou­sands of the tin­der­box homes of ordi­nary Japan­ese, giv­ing Tokyo the look of a dev­as­tat­ed city, but great estates, fac­to­ries and vital infra­struc­ture seemed mag­i­cal­ly to have been spared. John Dow­er notes: “Vast areas of poor peo­ple’s res­i­dences, small shops and fac­to­ries in the cap­i­tal were gut­ted . . . but a good num­ber of the homes of the wealthy in fash­ion­able neigh­bor­hoods sur­vived. . . Toky­o’s finan­cial dis­trict [was] large­ly undam­aged. Undam­aged, also, was the build­ing that housed much of the impe­r­i­al mil­i­tary bureau­cra­cy at war’s end. . . . Rail­ways still func­tioned more or less effec­tive­ly through­out the coun­try . . . U.S bomb­ing pol­i­cy . . . had tend­ed to reaf­firm exist­ing hier­ar­chies of for­tune.” . . . 

. . . . Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, many ordi­nary Japan­ese worked two jobs to earn enough to buy one pota­to each day. Dur­ing the same peri­od, Hiro­hi­to was earn­ing $50-mil­lion a year in inter­est mere­ly on his Swiss bank accounts. . . .

12. As stat­ed above, in FTR #905, among oth­er broad­casts, we have detailed the pro­found cor­po­rate links between Amer­i­can oli­garchs and their coun­ter­parts in Japan. As the Sea­graves not­ed in an excerpt of The Yam­a­to Dynasty sum­ma­riz­ing the after­math of World War II in Asia: “. . . . Amer­i­ca’s oli­garchs had res­cued Japan’s oli­garchs. . . .”

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we not­ed that “. . . . U.S.bomb­ing pol­i­cy [in Japan]. . . had tend­ed to reaf­firm exist­ing hier­ar­chies of for­tune. . .”

The corporate/cartel links between Amer­i­can and Japan­ese oli­garchs, the Cold War strat­e­gy of using Japan as an anti-Com­mu­nist bul­wark, and the fun­da­men­tal posi­tion of the Gold­en Lily loot at the foun­da­tion of the Black Eagle Trust loom large in the scan­dalous terms of the 1951 peace treaty with Japan.

The treaty was nego­ti­at­ed by Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s John Fos­ter Dulles, who was serv­ing as an appoint­ed U.S. Sen­a­tor at the time. (Fos­ter became Sec­re­tary of State under Eisen­how­er, assum­ing office in Jan­u­ary of 1953, while his broth­er and fel­low Sul­li­van & Cromwell part­ner Allen Dulles head­ed the CIA.)

The treaty was found­ed on the myth of Japan being bank­rupt and not hav­ing plun­dered the ter­ri­to­ries it plun­dered in World War II. This myth was the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for exempt­ing Japan from hav­ing to com­pen­sate those who had been enslaved as labor­ers and com­fort women.

“. . . . Wash­ing­ton insist­ed, begin­ning in 1945, that Japan nev­er stole any­thing, and was flat broke and bank­rupt when the war end­ed. Here was the begin­ning of many great dis­tor­tions which would become ter­ri­ble secrets. . . . Because the trea­sure amassed by Gold­en Lily and recov­ered by Wash­ing­ton had to be kept secret, cit­i­zens of Japan and Amer­i­ca were gross­ly deceived. The 1951 peace treaty with Japan and was skewed by these deceits, so thou­sands of POWs and civil­ians (who were forced to per­form slave labor for Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions) received no com­pen­sa­tion for their suf­fer­ing. To shield Japan from demands for war repa­ra­tions, John Fos­ter Dulles met pri­vate­ly with three Japan­ese to work out the treaty terms in secret. . . . Accord­ing to arti­cle 14 of the treaty, ‘It is rec­og­nized that Japan should pay repa­ra­tions to the Allied Pow­ers for the dam­age and suf­fer­ing caused by it dur­ing the war. Nev­er­the­less it is also rec­og­nized that the resources of Japan are not present­ly suf­fi­cient.’ To rein­force the claim that Japan was broke, Arti­cle 14 stat­ed, ‘the Allied Pow­ers waive all repa­ra­tions claims of the Allied Pow­ers and their nation­als aris­ing out of any actions tak­en by Japan’. By sign­ing the treaty, Allied coun­tries con­curred that Japan’s plun­der had van­ished down a rab­bit hole, and all Japan’s vic­tims were out of luck. . . .”

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 6.

. . . . Wash­ing­ton insist­ed, begin­ning in 1945, that Japan nev­er stole any­thing, and was flat broke and bank­rupt when the war end­ed. Here was the begin­ning of many great dis­tor­tions which would become ter­ri­ble secrets.

Because the trea­sure amassed by Gold­en Lily and recov­ered by Wash­ing­ton had to be kept secret, cit­i­zens of Japan and Amer­i­ca were gross­ly deceived. The 1951 peace treaty with Japan and was skewed by these deceits, so thou­sands of POWs and civil­ians (who were forced to per­form slave labor for Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions) received no com­pen­sa­tion for their suf­fer­ing. To shield Japan from demands for war repa­ra­tions, John Fos­ter Dulles met pri­vate­ly with three Japan­ese to work out the treaty terms in secret. One of the three Miyaza­wa Kiichi, lat­er served as Japan’s prime min­is­ter and repeat­ed­ly as its min­is­ter of finance. Accord­ing to arti­cle 14 of the treaty, “It is rec­og­nized that Japan should pay repa­ra­tions to the Allied Pow­ers for the dam­age and suf­fer­ing caused by it dur­ing the war. Nev­er­the­less it is also rec­og­nized that the resources of Japan are not present­ly suf­fi­cient.”

To rein­force the claim that Japan was broke, Arti­cle 14 stat­ed, “the Allied Pow­ers waive all repa­ra­tions claims of the Allied Pow­ers and their nation­als aris­ing out of any actions tak­en by Japan”. By sign­ing the treaty, Allied coun­tries con­curred that Japan’s plun­der had van­ished down a rab­bit hole, and all Japan’s vic­tims were out of luck.

In return for going along with the treaty, we doc­u­ment that Wash­ing­ton sent secret ship­ments of black gold recov­ered by San­ta Romana, to beef up the Allies’ exhaust­ed cen­tral banks. . . .

13. At the time of the treaty’s negotiation–1951–Japan’s econ­o­my was at its zenith, to date. This high­lights the appar­ent­ly strate­gi­cal­ly selec­tive nature of Amer­i­can bomb­ing dur­ing the war, as well as the fact that Japan was allowed to keep the Gold­en Lily plun­der that had been brought back to the home islands.”. . . . As we now know, Japan was not bank­rupt­ed by the war. By 1951, six years after the war, Japan’s econ­o­my was stronger than it had been dur­ing the best busi­ness years before the war. . . . Japan’s indus­tri­al activ­i­ty was 32 per­cent above pre-war lev­els, its fis­cal posi­tion showed a sur­plus, and its bal­ance of trade had moved into the black. In dis­cus­sions between U.S. mon­e­tary experts and Japan’s Finance Min­is­ter Ide­da Hay­a­to just before the peace con­fer­ence, he admit­ted to a bud­get sur­plus of over 100-bil­lion yen . . . .”

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 237.

. . . . As we now know, Japan was not bank­rupt­ed by the war. By 1951, six years after the war, Japan’s econ­o­my was stronger than it had been dur­ing the best busi­ness years before the war. [Ital­ics mine–D.E.] Car­los Romu­lo, head of the Philip­pine del­e­ga­tion to the peace con­fer­ence, “demol­ished the U.S. argu­ment that Japan lacked the abil­i­ty to pay for eco­nom­ic rea­sons”.  Japan’s indus­tri­al activ­i­ty was 32 per­cent above pre-war lev­els, its fis­cal posi­tion showed a sur­plus, and its bal­ance of trade had moved into the black. In dis­cus­sions between U.S. mon­e­tary experts and Japan’s Finance Min­is­ter Ide­da Hay­a­to just before the peace con­fer­ence, he admit­ted to a bud­get sur­plus of over 100-bil­lion yen and planned to use 40-bil­lion of it as a tax rebate to Japan­ese cit­i­zens. The gov­er­nor of the Bank of Japan plead­ed with U.S. author­i­ties to take cus­tody of $200-mil­lion worth of gold hold­ings because he feared “the Fil­ipinos might try to attach the gold as repa­ra­tions”. . . .

14. The pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion in assess­ing the career of John Fos­ter Dulles and the con­text for his actions in Asia fol­low­ing World War II con­cerns car­tels. Dulles and his Sul­li­van & Cromwell asso­ciate, broth­er and CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles were mid­wives of the car­tel sys­tem which, dur­ing the peri­od between the World Wars, saw the nation state, per se, super­seded by inter­na­tion­al cor­po­rate arrange­ments.

Fos­ter was the archi­tect of the I.G. Far­ben car­tel and the over­lap­ping inter­na­tion­al nick­el car­tel.

Fos­ter’s role as a mid­wife of the dom­i­na­tion of the glob­al econ­o­my by the car­tel sys­tem is reviewed below. His polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion is embod­ied in this pas­sage: ” . . . . He churned out mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles assert­ing that the ‘dynam­ic’ coun­tries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–‘feel with­in them­selves poten­tial­i­ties which are sup­pressed’ . . .”

His actions with regard to the par­ti­tion of Korea, the gen­e­sis of the Kore­an War and the nego­ti­a­tion of the 1951 peace treaty with Japan insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing Japan’s eco­nom­ic plun­der of Asia embody the phi­los­o­phy set forth above.

The Broth­ers: John Fos­ter Dulls, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinz­er; St. Mar­tin Grif­fin [SC]; Copy­right 2013 by Stephen Kinz­er; ISBN 978–1‑250–05312‑1; pp. 49–52.

. . . . Fos­ter had helped design the Dawes Plan of 1924, which restruc­tured Ger­many’s repa­ra­tion pay­ments in ways that opened up huge new mar­kets for Amer­i­can banks, and lat­er that year he arranged for five of them to lend $100 mil­lion to Ger­man bor­row­ers. In the sev­en years that fol­lowed, he and his part­ners bro­kered anoth­er $900 mil­lion in loans to Ger­many–the equiv­a­lent of more than $15 bil­lion in ear­ly-twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry dol­lars. This made him the pre­em­i­nent sales­man of Ger­man bonds in the Unit­ed States, prob­a­bly the world. He sharply reject­ed crit­ics who argued that Amer­i­can banks should invest more inside the Unit­ed States and protest­ed when the State Depart­ment sought to restrict loans to Ger­many that were unre­lat­ed to repa­ra­tion pay­ments or that sup­port­ed car­tels or monop­o­lies.

Fos­ter made much mon­ey build­ing and advis­ing car­tels, which are based on agree­ments among com­pet­ing firms to con­trol sup­plies, fix prices, and close their sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works to out­siders. Reform­ers in many coun­tries railed against these car­tels, but Fos­ter defend­ed them as guar­an­tors of sta­bil­i­ty that ensured prof­its while pro­tect­ing economies from unpre­dictable swings. Two that he shaped became glob­al forces.

Among Fos­ter’s pre­mier clients was the New Jer­sey-based Inter­na­tion­al Nick­el Com­pa­ny, for which he was not only coun­sel but also a direc­tor and mem­ber of the exec­u­tive board. In the ear­ly 1930s, he steered it, along with its Cana­di­an affil­i­ate, into a car­tel with France’s two major nick­el pro­duc­ers. In 1934, he brought the biggest Ger­man nick­el pro­duc­er, I.G. Far­ben, into the car­tel. This gave Nazi Ger­many access to the cartel’s resources. “With­out Dulles,” accord­ing to a study of Sul­li­van & Cromwell, “Ger­many would have lacked any nego­ti­at­ing strength with [Inter­na­tion­al Nick­el], which con­trolled the world’s sup­ply of nick­el, a cru­cial ingre­di­ent in stain­less steel and armor plate.”

I.G. Far­ben was also one of the world’s largest chem­i­cal companies–it would pro­duce the Zyk­lon B gas used at Nazi death camps–and as Fos­ter was bring­ing it into the nick­el car­tel, he also helped it estab­lish a glob­al chem­i­cal car­tel. He was a board mem­ber and legal coun­sel for anoth­er chem­i­cal pro­duc­er, the Solvay con­glom­er­ate, based in Bel­gium. Dur­ing the 1930s, he guid­ed Solvay, I. G. Far­ben, the Amer­i­can firm Allied Chem­i­cal & Dye, and sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies into a chem­i­cal car­tel just as potent as the one he had orga­nized for nick­el pro­duc­ers.

In mid-1931, a con­sor­tium of Amer­i­can banks, eager to safe­guard their invest­ments in Ger­many, per­suad­ed the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to accept a loan of near­ly $500 mil­lion to pre­vent default. Fos­ter was their agent. His ties to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment tight­ened after Hitler took pow­er at the begin­ning of 1933 and appoint­ed Fos­ter’s old friend Hjal­mar Schacht as min­is­ter of eco­nom­ics.

Allen [Dulles] had intro­duced the two men a decade ear­li­er, when he was a diplo­mat in Berlin and Fos­ter passed through reg­u­lar­ly on Sul­li­van & Cromwell busi­ness. They were imme­di­ate­ly drawn to each oth­er, Schacht spoke flu­ent Eng­lish and under­stood the Unit­ed States well. Like Dulles, he pro­ject­ed an air of brisk author­i­ty. He was tall, gaunt, and always erect, with close-cropped hair and high, tight col­lars. Both men had con­sid­ered enter­ing the cler­gy before turn­ing their pow­er­ful minds toward more remu­ner­a­tive pur­suits. Each admired the cul­ture that had pro­duced the oth­er. Both believed that a resur­gent Ger­many would stand against Bol­she­vism. Mobi­liz­ing Amer­i­can cap­i­tal to finance its rise was their com­mon inter­est.

Work­ing with Schacht, Fos­ter helped the Nation­al Social­ist state find rich sources of financ­ing in the Unit­ed States for its pub­lic agen­cies, banks, and indus­tries. The two men shaped com­plex restruc­tur­ings of Ger­man loan oblig­a­tions at sev­er­al “debt con­fer­ences” in Berlin–conferences that were offi­cial­ly among bankers, but were in fact close­ly guid­ed by the Ger­man and Amer­i­can governments–and came up with new for­mu­las that made it eas­i­er for the Ger­mans to bor­row mon­ey from Amer­i­can banks. Sul­li­van & Cromwell float­ed the first Amer­i­can bonds issued by the giant Ger­man steel­mak­er and arms man­u­fac­tur­er Krupp A.G., extend­ed I.G. Far­ben’s glob­al reach, and fought suc­cess­ful­ly to block Canada’s effort to restrict the export of steel to Ger­man arms mak­ers. Accord­ing to one his­to­ry, the firm “rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al provin­cial gov­ern­ments, some large indus­tri­al com­bines, a num­ber of big Amer­i­can com­pa­nies with inter­ests in the Reich, and some rich indi­vid­u­als.” By anoth­er account it “thrived on its car­tels and col­lu­sion with the new Nazi regime.” The colum­nist Drew Pear­son glee­ful­ly list­ed the Ger­man clients of Sul­li­van & Cromwell who had con­tributed mon­ey to the Nazis, and described Fos­ter as chief agent for “the bank­ing cir­cles that res­cued Adolf Hitler from the finan­cial depths and set up his Nazi par­ty as a going con­cern.”

Although the rela­tion­ship between Fos­ter and Schacht began well and thrived for years, it end­ed bad­ly. Schacht con­tributed deci­sive­ly to Ger­man rear­ma­ment and pub­licly urged Jews to “real­ize that their influ­ence in Ger­many has dis­ap­peared for all time.” Although he lat­er broke with Hitler and left the gov­ern­ment, he would be tried at Nurem­berg for “crimes against peace.” He was acquit­ted, but the chief Amer­i­can pros­e­cu­tor, Robert Jack­son, called him “the facade of starched respon­si­bil­i­ty, who in the ear­ly days pro­vid­ed the win­dow dress­ing, the bait for the hes­i­tant.” He bait­ed no one more suc­cess­ful­ly than Fos­ter.

Dur­ing the mid-1930s, through a series of cur­ren­cy maneu­vers, dis­count­ed buy­backs, and oth­er forms of finan­cial war­fare, Ger­many effec­tive­ly default­ed on its debts to Amer­i­can investors. Fos­ter rep­re­sent­ed the investors in unsuc­cess­ful appeals to Ger­many, many of them addressed to his old friend Schacht. Clients who had fol­lowed Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s advice to buy Ger­man bonds lost for­tunes. That advice, accord­ing to one study, “cost Amer­i­cans a bil­lion dol­lars because Schacht seduced Dulles into sup­port­ing Ger­many for far too long.’ . . . .

. . . . Fos­ter had clear finan­cial rea­sons to col­lab­o­rate with the Nazi regime, and his ide­o­log­i­cal reason–Hitler was fierce­ly anti-Bolshevik–was equal­ly com­pelling. In lat­er years, schol­ars would ask about his actions in the world. Did he do it out of a desire to pro­tect eco­nom­ic priv­i­lege, or out of anti-Com­mu­nist fer­vor? The best answer may be that to him there was no dif­fer­ence. In his mind defend­ing multi­na­tion­al busi­ness and fight­ing Bol­she­vism were the same thing.

Since 1933, all let­ters writ­ten from the Ger­man offices of Sul­li­van & Cromwell had end­ed, as required by Ger­man reg­u­la­tions, with the salu­ta­tion Heil Hitler! That did not dis­turb Fos­ter. He churned out mag­a­zine and news­pa­per arti­cles assert­ing that the “dynam­ic” coun­tries of the world–Germany, Italy, and Japan–“feel with­in them­selves poten­tial­i­ties which are sup­pressed,” and that Hitler’s semi-secret rear­ma­ment project sim­ply showed that “Ger­many, by uni­lat­er­al action, has now tak­en back her free­dom of action.” . . . .

15. Fos­ter Dulles’s role in the 1951 Peace Treaty with Japan, his curi­ous pres­ence in Seoul with Kodama Yoshio on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War, his pre­scient fore­shad­ow­ing of the con­flict just before the North Kore­an inva­sion and the role of these events in shap­ing the post World War II glob­al eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal land­scapes may well have been designed to help jump­start the Japan­ese and Ger­man economies.

Those economies, the car­tels that dom­i­nat­ed them and the Dulles broth­ers Cold War strate­gic out­look are dom­i­nant fac­tors in the deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the life, and death, of Park Won-soon.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 235–236.

. . . .  A sub­stan­tial infu­sion of mon­ey into this new Fed­er­al Repub­lic econ­o­my result­ed from the Kore­an War in 1950. The Unit­ed States was not geared to sup­ply­ing all its needs for armies in Korea, so the Pen­ta­gon placed huge orders in West Ger­many and in Japan; from that point on, both nations winged into an era of boom­ing good times. . . .

16. The Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter saw the Kore­an War as “a gift from the gods.”

The Yam­a­to Dynasty by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave; Broad­way Books [HC]; Copy­right 1999 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 0–7679-0496–6; p. 233.

. . . . As a pre­cau­tion, the great zaibat­su did change their names for a while. Mit­subishi Bank tem­porar­i­ly became Chiy­o­da Bank, Yasu­da Bank became Fuji Bank, and so on. (The boom brought about by the Kore­an War, 1950–1953, quick­ly returned them to prof­itabil­i­ty, and made it pos­si­ble to resur­face their care­ful­ly hid­den assets with­out attract­ing atten­tion. Prime Min­is­ter Yoshi­da called the Kore­an War “a gift from the gods.”) . . . .

17. Karu­makar Gup­ta of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don has pro­duced research indi­cat­ing that the Kore­an War was actu­al­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a South Kore­an attack on the North.

“Chi­na Appears Poised to Achieve through Coop­er­a­tion in the 21st Cen­tu­ry what Japan Sought to Achieve through Coer­cion in the 20th” by Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 1/31/2023.

 . . . . In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 25, 1950, South Korea’s Office of Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion report­ed a South Kore­an mil­i­tary attack on the bor­der city of Hae­ju, which North Korea con­firmed but South Korea lat­er retract­ed.

A detailed study by his­to­ri­an Karunakar Gup­ta of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don found that South Kore­an gov­ern­ment claims that their attack on Hae­ju had occurred much lat­er were effec­tive­ly impos­si­ble and that a South Kore­an attack like­ly did occur to pre­cip­i­tate the war. . .

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #1142 Deep Politics and the Death of Park Won-Soon, Part 3”

  1. https://thethaiger.com/coronavirus/south-korean-cult-leader-arrested-for-hiding-covid-19-data-embezzlement

    South Kore­an cult leader arrest­ed for hid­ing Covid-19 data, embez­zle­ment | The Thaiger

    Author­i­ties in South Korea this morn­ing arrest­ed the founder of a secre­tive Chris­t­ian sect at the cen­tre of the country’s largest out­break of Covid-19 infec­tions for alleged­ly con­ceal­ing cru­cial data from con­tact-trac­ers, and oth­er offences. Police nabbed Lee Man-hee, the pow­er­ful head of the Shin­cheon­ji Church of Jesus, which is linked to more than 5,200 coro­n­avirus infec­tions, or about 36% of South Korea’s total cas­es.

    Pros­e­cu­tors say the 89 year old con­spired with sect lead­ers in Feb­ru­ary to with­hold infor­ma­tion from author­i­ties dur­ing the peak of the out­break, among his more than 200,000 fol­low­ers. Lee, who describes the virus as the “devil’s deed” to stop the sect’s growth, alleged­ly hid details on mem­bers and their meet­ing places as author­i­ties tried to trace infec­tion routes, Yon­hap news agency reports. He’s also sus­pect­ed of embez­zling about 5.6 bil­lion won (US$4.7 mil­lion) in church funds, which he alleged­ly used to build a retreat.

    The sect released a state­ment say­ing Lee was con­cerned about gov­ern­ment demands for mem­bers’ per­son­al infor­ma­tion but nev­er tried to hide any­thing.

    Lee was arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly after a court in Suwon Dis­trict, south of Seoul, approved the war­rant.

    Posted by CinqueAnon | August 3, 2020, 3:35 pm
  2. Check out how Don­ald Trump spent the 9/11 20th Anniver­sary: giv­ing a speech at a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church event. The near­ly 10-minute long vir­tu­al address for the event — a vir­tu­al event for every­one — is avail­able on YouTube. And while there’s plen­ty of dis­turb­ing con­tent in the speech filled with praise for the cult, per­haps the most dis­turb­ing part of this speech is how much is sounds like a cam­paign speech tout­ing Trump’s accom­plish­ments on the Kore­an Penin­su­la as pres­i­dent. In oth­er words, this was the lat­est hint of Trump 2024 run.

    But Trump was­n’t the only 2024 GOP hope­ful to speak at the event. Newt Gin­grich also spoke at the event. And as we’ll see, this was mere­ly the lat­est of a num­ber of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church “Ral­ly of Hope” events being held this year. It’s all part of a new Think Tank 2022 project launched by the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church ear­li­er this year. The 9/11 event was tech­ni­cal­ly the inau­gu­ra­tion of the “THINK TANK 2022 Asia-Pacif­ic Sec­re­tari­at”. As we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below, Think Tank 2022 was for­mal­ly launched at a May “Ral­ly of Hope” event attend­ed by Gin­grich, Mike Pom­peo, Mike Pence, for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Mark Esper, and even a son of Jer­ry Fal­well. Pence also attend­ed an ear­li­er Ral­ly of Hope event in March. He clear­ly wants the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church’s sup­port for 2024.

    As we’re going to also see, part of what makes the appear­ances by fig­ures like Pom­peo and Pence at events like these is how the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is being increas­ing­ly cultish in recent years, as amaz­ing as that is. And cultish in exact­ly the kinds of ways one would expect to enrage the Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian base that Pom­peo and Pence rely. For exam­ple, in 2017, Michael Jenk­ins quot­ed Ms Moon as say­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty failed and, “The Chris­t­ian era has end­ed.” Jenk­ins is the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, which host­ed the Ral­ly for Hope and cre­at­ed Think Tank 2022. Yes, the pres­i­dent of the group behind this entire Think Tank 2022 scheme let the world know that Ms Moon declared Chris­tian­i­ty failed and dead just four short years ago.

    So the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is already car­ry­ing out what could be inter­pret­ed as the infor­mal open­ing of the GOP 2024 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. An infor­mal pri­ma­ry defined by acts of feal­ty deliv­ered to a pow­er­ful secre­tive cult with ambi­tions of glob­al dom­i­na­tion. Acts of feal­ty done to cur­ry that cult’s favor for the pur­pose of obtain­ing more pow­er. An anti-Chris­t­ian cult that seems to stand in oppo­si­tion to every­thing these politi­cians pro­fess to stand for and yet also seems to more or less res­onate with their pow­er-at-all-costs true moral char­ac­ter. So in that sense this is actu­al­ly a very the­mat­i­cal­ly fit­ting infor­mal open­ing to the GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry:

    The Inde­pen­dent

    Trump gives vir­tu­al speech to event linked to con­tro­ver­sial reli­gious ‘cult’ on 9/11 anniver­sary

    Promi­nent GOP offi­cials includ­ing Mike Pence and Mike Pom­peo have also appeared at Uni­fi­ca­tion Church events
    Alex Wood­ward
    New York

    09/13/2021

    For­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has appeared in a vir­tu­al address for a con­tro­ver­sial reli­gious move­ment that aired on the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks.

    In the video, Mr Trump appears to float against a vir­tu­al back­drop of clouds as he prais­es the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, a move­ment that has long court­ed Repub­li­can offi­cials as part of an appar­ent pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, and been dubbed a cult.

    The event was organ­ised by Hak Ja Han Moon, wid­ow of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church founder Sun Myung Moon, who claimed to be the mes­si­ah. With­in the move­ment, the Moons are con­sid­ered the “true father” and “truth moth­er” to humankind.

    Fol­low­ers are part of a sprawl­ing busi­ness and polit­i­cal enter­prise to pro­mote its goals, which include the uni­fi­ca­tion of North and South Korea into a sin­gle Chris­t­ian state.

    Mr Trump appeared at the “Ral­ly of Hope Think Tank” event spon­sored by the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, a group co-found­ed by the Moons in 2005 and aligned with the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment.

    In his remarks, the for­mer pres­i­dent praised the move­ment and the late Moon.

    “What they have achieved on the penin­su­la is just amaz­ing,” Mr Trump said of the move­ment. “In just a few decades, the inspi­ra­tion that they have caused for the entire plan­et is unbe­liev­able, and I con­grat­u­late you again and again. … Their exam­ple reminds all of us who strive for peace and a bet­ter future, that we should nev­er give up and nev­er, ever lose hope.

    In his remarks, he also appeared to take cred­it for peace on the Kore­an penin­su­la.

    “Look­ing back today, it’s easy to for­get how dan­ger­ous the sit­u­a­tion was when I was elect­ed,” he said. “Mis­siles were fly­ing, nuclear weapons were being test­ed, and pow­er­ful threats were being issued every sin­gle day … Under my lead­er­ship, the Unit­ed States adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of unprece­dent­ed strength.”

    He also praised the Moons for cre­at­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive news out­let The Wash­ing­ton Times, which Mr Trump called “an orga­ni­za­tion for which I have tremen­dous respect and admi­ra­tion”.

    The event, which coin­cid­ed with the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror attacks, aimed to “pro­mote and facil­i­tate peace, dia­logue, medi­a­tion, and the strength­en­ing of the ecosys­tem of peace in the Asia Pacif­ic region,” accord­ing to organ­is­ers.

    In her address, Ms Moon claimed that “a new cul­ture of the Pacif­ic Rim civ­i­liza­tion will expand through­out Asia and around the world” fol­low­ing uni­fi­ca­tion, which can­not be a “sec­u­lar nation that can only focus on human inter­ests.”

    “It must become a nation that attends God as the heav­en­ly par­ent,” she said. “Not just polit­i­cal lead­ers.”

    The move­ment – which began in South Korea in 1954 before mov­ing to the US in 1971 – is known for its mass wed­ding cer­e­monies and ties to right-wing groups.

    Steve Has­san, a for­mer mem­ber of the move­ment and author of The Cult of Trump, said the for­mer president’s appear­ance is “pret­ty out­ra­geous, even for Trump”.

    The movement’s his­to­ry and affil­i­a­tions “are well doc­u­ment­ed,” he said. “There is no ambi­gu­i­ty here.”

    Crit­ic Jim Stew­art­son of the The Thinkin Project warned that the group’s appar­ent stag­ing of a glob­al peace event is “hard to over­state how deeply harm­ful and decep­tive this is”.

    “This is being pitched by a who’s who of estab­lish­ment extrem­ists as some sort of peace mis­sion to uni­fy Korea,” he said. “In real­i­ty it’s dan­ger­ous pro­pa­gan­da white­wash­ing a dan­ger­ous cult.”

    Mr Trump is not the only GOP fig­ure with ties to the move­ment.

    For­mer Repub­li­can House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich also appeared on video at the event. For­mer vice pres­i­dent Mike Pence and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo have also appeared at Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion events.

    In May, Mr Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bring­ing the wis­dom of lead­ers in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, reli­gion, civ­il soci­ety, ” accord­ing to Moth­er Jones.

    Mr Pom­peo, who was intro­duced as a “devout Chris­t­ian,” boast­ed about Mr Trump’s rela­tion­ship with North Kore­an leader Kim Jong Un.

    In the past Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, the son of the Moons, cam­paigned for Mr Trump and attend­ed the US Capi­tol insur­rec­tion on 6 Jan­u­ary.

    Okay everyone.“Moonies,” the author­i­tar­i­an CULT I was a part of, lat­er escaped and have been speak­ing out against for the last 45+ years is trending.If you want a crash course on this cult & their ties to the mod­ern GOP, read these blogs of mine. They will catch you up. ??— Steven Has­san, PhD (@CultExpert) Sep­tem­ber 12, 2021

    ...

    Mr Trump did not appear at any for­mal 9/11 memo­r­i­al ser­vices on Sat­ur­day.

    He vis­it­ed a New York Police Depart­ment precinct near his Man­hat­tan build­ing, Trump Tow­er, where he took pho­tos with offi­cers and hint­ed at a run for the White House in 2024.

    He lat­er attend­ed an Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian con­cert in Wash­ing­ton DC. The two-day “Let Us Wor­ship” con­cert is part of an ongo­ing protest of Covid health guide­lines.

    On Sat­ur­day night, the for­mer pres­i­dent gave ring­side com­men­tary at a box­ing event in Flori­da.

    ———–

    “Trump gives vir­tu­al speech to event linked to con­tro­ver­sial reli­gious ‘cult’ on 9/11 anniver­sary” by Alex Wood­ward
    ; The Inde­pen­dent; 09/13/2021

    “Steve Has­san, a for­mer mem­ber of the move­ment and author of The Cult of Trump, said the for­mer president’s appear­ance is “pret­ty out­ra­geous, even for Trump”.”

    Attend­ing an event like this is pret­ty out­ra­geous, even for Trump. That’s how awful and dan­ger­ous this cult is. And Trump did­n’t just attend the event. He was gush­ing with praise for the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church and praise for its goals. It was essen­tial­ly a ring­ing endors­ing of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church agen­da merged with a Trump for­eign pol­i­cy stump speech:

    ...
    “What they have achieved on the penin­su­la is just amaz­ing,” Mr Trump said of the move­ment. “In just a few decades, the inspi­ra­tion that they have caused for the entire plan­et is unbe­liev­able, and I con­grat­u­late you again and again. … Their exam­ple reminds all of us who strive for peace and a bet­ter future, that we should nev­er give up and nev­er, ever lose hope.

    In his remarks, he also appeared to take cred­it for peace on the Kore­an penin­su­la.

    “Look­ing back today, it’s easy to for­get how dan­ger­ous the sit­u­a­tion was when I was elect­ed,” he said. “Mis­siles were fly­ing, nuclear weapons were being test­ed, and pow­er­ful threats were being issued every sin­gle day … Under my lead­er­ship, the Unit­ed States adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of unprece­dent­ed strength.”
    ...

    But this event was­n’t a cel­e­bra­tion of Trump. It was a cel­e­bra­tion of the Moons (now just Ms Moon) — the “True Par­ents” of human­i­ty and — and their agen­da to uni­fy the world under the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. But more specif­i­cal­ly, it was the lat­est “Think Tank 2022” event, fol­low­ing the announce­ment of the for­ma­tion of Think Tank 2022 at a “Ral­ly of Hope” event back in April and the for­mal launch of the think tank at anoth­er Ral­ly of Hope event in May. As the church described in their PR releas­es about the 9/11 event, this was the inau­gu­ra­tion of the “THINK TANK 2022 Asia-Pacif­ic Sec­re­tari­at”, so this event was basi­cal­ly the for­mal begin­ning of the work of this mys­te­ri­ous new Uni­fi­ca­tion Church project:

    ...
    The event, which coin­cid­ed with the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror attacks, aimed to “pro­mote and facil­i­tate peace, dia­logue, medi­a­tion, and the strength­en­ing of the ecosys­tem of peace in the Asia Pacif­ic region,” accord­ing to organ­is­ers.

    In her address, Ms Moon claimed that “a new cul­ture of the Pacif­ic Rim civ­i­liza­tion will expand through­out Asia and around the world” fol­low­ing uni­fi­ca­tion, which can­not be a “sec­u­lar nation that can only focus on human inter­ests.”

    “It must become a nation that attends God as the heav­en­ly par­ent,” she said. “Not just polit­i­cal lead­ers.”
    ...

    And Trump is far from the only promi­nent Repub­li­can speak­ing at these events. The Uni­fi­ca­tion Church has been get­ting a Who’s Who of GOP lumi­nar­ies this year alone:

    ...
    Mr Trump is not the only GOP fig­ure with ties to the move­ment.

    For­mer Repub­li­can House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich also appeared on video at the event. For­mer vice pres­i­dent Mike Pence and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo have also appeared at Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion events.

    In May, Mr Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bring­ing the wis­dom of lead­ers in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, reli­gion, civ­il soci­ety, ” accord­ing to Moth­er Jones.

    Mr Pom­peo, who was intro­duced as a “devout Chris­t­ian,” boast­ed about Mr Trump’s rela­tion­ship with North Kore­an leader Kim Jong Un.
    ...

    Final­ly, recall how Steve Ban­non spoke at the Octo­ber 2020 event by Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon’s Uni­fi­ca­tion Church off­shoot group, where Moon pledged a ‘1776 Take Two’ if Joe Biden won and imple­ment­ed gun con­trol laws. It’s a reminder that one of the rea­sons these fig­ures have an inter­est in court­ing the sup­port of these groups is for their even­tu­al sup­port dur­ing any upcom­ing vio­lent insur­rec­tions and/or civ­il wars:

    ...
    In the past Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, the son of the Moons, cam­paigned for Mr Trump and attend­ed the US Capi­tol insur­rec­tion on 6 Jan­u­ary.
    ...

    And now here’s a Moth­er Jones about the May “Ral­ly of Hope” event where the Think Tank 2022 project was launch. Don­ald Trump was­n’t at this par­tic­u­lar event, but Newt Gin­grich was there, along with Mike Pomeo, Mike Pence, Mark Esper, and Jonathan Fal­well. An event host­ed by the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, led by Michael Jenk­ins, a key fig­ure in the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment. And it was just four short years ago when Jenk­ins quot­ed “Moth­er” Hak Ja Han Moon as say­ing Chris­tian­i­ty failed and the move­ment was in the process of replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. So while the state goal of Think Thank 2022 is the uni­fi­ca­tion of the Kore­an Penin­su­la, the unstat­ed goals of this move­ment include replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. That fig­ures like Pence and Pom­peo feel com­pelled to pub­licly show their feal­ty to a group like this is a demon­stra­tion of just how pow­er­ful this move­ment real­ly is in DC. This is a cult that will not be ignored:

    Moth­er Jones

    Pence and Pom­peo Head­lined an Event Mount­ed by a Group That Says the “Chris­t­ian Era Has End­ed”
    And they won’t say if they were paid for their speech­es.

    David Corn
    Wash­ing­ton, DC, Bureau Chief
    May 20, 2021

    On May 8, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo head­lined a vir­tu­al ral­ly orga­nized by an off­shoot of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, a con­tro­ver­sial reli­gious move­ment known for hold­ing mass wed­dings of its adher­ents and that has been accused of being a cult. Though Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives have long made com­mon cause with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, the head of the out­fit that pulled togeth­er this event declared not too long ago that the “Chris­t­ian era has ended”—which means Pence and Pom­peo, whose self-pro­fessed reli­gious devo­tion is a promi­nent part of their respec­tive polit­i­cal pro­files, were (know­ing­ly or not) col­lab­o­rat­ing with and bol­ster­ing a group that says it is sup­plant­i­ng the Chris­tian­i­ty they embrace.

    The event—called the “Ral­ly of Hope”—was host­ed by Hak Ja Han Moon, the head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church (whose mem­bers con­sid­er her and her late hus­band, Sun Myung Moon, the mes­si­ahs), and spon­sored by the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, a group co-found­ed by the Moons in 2005 and affil­i­at­ed with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church (which now refers to itself as the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment). Accord­ing to the UPF, the gath­er­ing, put on before a social­ly dis­tanced audi­ence and sup­pos­ed­ly streamed to 1 mil­lion peo­ple in 194 nations, was held to launch a project called Think Tank 2022, which aims to reuni­fy the Kore­an Penin­su­la.

    The UPF says this new out­fit is a “glob­al mul­ti-sec­tor net­work of more than 2,000 experts” in busi­ness, acad­e­mia, and oth­er fields, though Think Tank 2022 does not yet have much (or any) online pres­ence. Still, Hak Ja Han Moon was able to draw an impres­sive amount of star pow­er for this kick-off, with the event fea­tur­ing speech­es from Pence, Pom­peo, for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich, for­mer Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper, past UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon, for­mer Repub­lic of Korea Prime Min­is­ter Chung Sye-Kyun, and Zanz­ibar Pres­i­dent Hus­sein Ali Mwinyi. Also among the speak­ers were Jonathan Fal­well, a pas­tor at Thomas Road Bap­tist Church in Vir­ginia and a son of Jer­ry Fal­well, the founder of the Moral Major­i­ty. Anoth­er fea­tured par­tic­i­pant was Hun Sen, the dic­ta­to­r­i­al, long­time leader of Cam­bo­dia, who has amassed a hor­rif­ic human rights record.

    The three-hour-long event was a cel­e­bra­tion of both Moons, with Hak Ja Han Moon referred to as the “moth­er of Peace” and “Heav­en­ly Par­ent.” Dur­ing his video­taped speech, Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bring­ing the wis­dom of lead­ers in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, reli­gion, civ­il soci­ety” and that thanks to this new endeav­or, “the dream of peace­ful coop­er­a­tion and uni­ty will be clos­er to real­i­ty than ever before.” (Pence spoke at a pre­vi­ous and sim­i­lar Ral­ly of Hope in March.) Pom­peo, who was intro­duced as a “devout Chris­t­ian,” hailed for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s assort­ed engage­ments with Kim Jong Un, the tyran­ni­cal and mur­der­ous leader of North Korea. “We tried some­thing dif­fer­ent,” Pom­peo said. (For­eign pol­i­cy spe­cial­ists have tend­ed to note Trump’s over­ly pal­sy over­tures to Kim yield­ed no true progress.) Gin­grich praised the Moons, the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, Think Tank 2022, and the Wash­ing­ton Times, the con­ser­v­a­tive paper Sun Myung Moon found­ed. Esper not­ed that Hak Ja Han Moon has been “work­ing to help strength­en America’s role in the world.” He didn’t elab­o­rate on what he meant by that.

    The ral­ly end­ed with a cer­e­mo­ny that was staged to look like an offi­cial act. A col­or guard bran­dish­ing the flags of nations from around the world marched about. Then Hak Ja Han Moon came out to “receive” the “his­toric res­o­lu­tion” estab­lish­ing Think Tank 2022. She signed this doc­u­ment and then struck a gong to declare the project launched.

    It’s unclear what Think Tank 2022 is actu­al­ly doing. The group does not seem to have a web­site. A week after the ral­ly, the project was not men­tioned on the home page of the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion. Moth­er Jones sent Lar­ry Mof­fitt, a spokesper­son for UPF, an email with a list of ques­tions regard­ing Think Tank 2022—who are its 2,000 experts, who is run­ning this oper­a­tion, how much fund­ing does it have? The email also asked if Pence, Pom­peo, Esper, Gin­grich, and the oth­er speak­ers at the Ral­ly for Hope were paid for their par­tic­i­pa­tion. Reached by phone, Mof­fitt said he would look at that email “and get back to you.” He did not.

    ...

    The Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment has long sought to cul­ti­vate allies among Wash­ing­ton power­bro­kers, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the right. That was pre­sum­ably one moti­va­tion for Sun Myung Moon in 1982 to estab­lish the Wash­ing­ton Times, which has long been a mouth­piece for Repub­li­cans and con­ser­v­a­tives. In 2004, he man­aged to hold a bizarre crown­ing cer­e­mo­ny for him­self and his wife with­in a Sen­ate office build­ing, dur­ing which he declared in Kore­an that he was the Mes­si­ah. (Pres­i­dents and kings, he said, had ”declared to all heav­en and earth that Rev­erend Sun Myung Moon is none oth­er than humanity’s Sav­ior, Mes­si­ah, Return­ing Lord and True Par­ent.”) Some mem­bers of Con­gress who attend­ed the event—which was spon­sored by the Wash­ing­ton Times Foundation—insisted they had been duped.

    The rela­tion­ship between the right and the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment has long been curi­ous. Much of it has like­ly been influ­enced by the Wash­ing­ton Times and its stand­ing as a depend­able con­ser­v­a­tive out­let. But the the­ol­o­gy pushed by the Moons and their devo­tees chal­lenges the basic Chris­tian­i­ty embraced by so many con­ser­v­a­tives. The Moons’ claim to be the mes­si­ahs, of course, runs counter to main­stream Chris­tian­i­ty. And one Uni­fi­ca­tion tenet pro­mot­ed by a senior per­son in the move­ment is that Chris­tian­i­ty is essen­tial­ly over.

    In a 2017 video, Michael Jenk­ins, a main play­er in the Uni­fi­ca­tion movement’s cos­mos of non­prof­its and busi­ness­es, said, “The Chris­t­ian era has end­ed.” Jenk­ins is the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, which host­ed the Ral­ly for Hope and cre­at­ed Think Tank 2022. He is also pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton Times Foun­da­tion. (Accord­ing to its lat­est tax fil­ing, that foun­da­tion raised $242,303 in 2019 and only hand­ed out $2,595 in con­tri­bu­tions. It spent $256,005 on salaries and oth­er admin­is­tra­tive expens­es, includ­ing $93,400 in salary for Mof­fitt, the UPF spokesper­son, who is also the vice pres­i­dent of the foun­da­tion.)

    This video record­ed Jenk­ins giv­ing a talk at a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Colum­bus, Ohio, in which he quot­ed “Mother”—Hak Ja Han Moon—saying “Chris­tian­i­ty failed.” He not­ed that she had pro­claimed, “the New Tes­ta­ment era is over. The Chris­t­ian era has con­clud­ed.” He sug­gest­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is in the process of replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, Pence and Pom­peo con­tributed their celebri­ty to an effort mount­ed by a move­ment that appears to con­sid­er Chris­tian­i­ty kaput. (The video was orig­i­nal­ly obtained by War­ren Throck­mor­ton, a pro­fes­sor at Grove City Col­lege in Penn­syl­va­nia who writes a blog that cov­ers reli­gious issues.)

    ...

    Pence’s and Pompeo’s appear­ances at the ral­ly were much appre­ci­at­ed by the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, which released a cel­e­bra­to­ry press release not­ing that “world-class lead­ers” had “affirmed and enhanced the con­cept of Think Tank 2022.” But if one goal was to gar­ner media atten­tion in the Unit­ed States for this ven­ture through the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Pence, Pom­peo, Gin­grich, and oth­ers, the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion fell short. It seems the only major Amer­i­can media out­let that cov­ered the event was the Wash­ing­ton Times.

    ————

    “Pence and Pom­peo Head­lined an Event Mount­ed by a Group That Says the “Chris­t­ian Era Has End­ed”” by David Corn; Moth­er Jones; 05/20/2021

    “The event—called the “Ral­ly of Hope”—was host­ed by Hak Ja Han Moon, the head of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church (whose mem­bers con­sid­er her and her late hus­band, Sun Myung Moon, the mes­si­ahs), and spon­sored by the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, a group co-found­ed by the Moons in 2005 and affil­i­at­ed with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church (which now refers to itself as the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment). Accord­ing to the UPF, the gath­er­ing, put on before a social­ly dis­tanced audi­ence and sup­pos­ed­ly streamed to 1 mil­lion peo­ple in 194 nations, was held to launch a project called Think Tank 2022, which aims to reuni­fy the Kore­an Penin­su­la.”

    The May 8 “Ral­ly of Hope” event was held with a spe­cif­ic goal: launch­ing the Think Tank 2022 project, which claims to have the goal of reuni­fy­ing the Kore­an Penin­su­la. How that’s going to hap­pen remains a mys­tery:

    ...
    The ral­ly end­ed with a cer­e­mo­ny that was staged to look like an offi­cial act. A col­or guard bran­dish­ing the flags of nations from around the world marched about. Then Hak Ja Han Moon came out to “receive” the “his­toric res­o­lu­tion” estab­lish­ing Think Tank 2022. She signed this doc­u­ment and then struck a gong to declare the project launched.

    It’s unclear what Think Tank 2022 is actu­al­ly doing. The group does not seem to have a web­site. A week after the ral­ly, the project was not men­tioned on the home page of the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion. Moth­er Jones sent Lar­ry Mof­fitt, a spokesper­son for UPF, an email with a list of ques­tions regard­ing Think Tank 2022—who are its 2,000 experts, who is run­ning this oper­a­tion, how much fund­ing does it have? The email also asked if Pence, Pom­peo, Esper, Gin­grich, and the oth­er speak­ers at the Ral­ly for Hope were paid for their par­tic­i­pa­tion. Reached by phone, Mof­fitt said he would look at that email “and get back to you.” He did not.
    ...

    But while it was unclear how Think Tank 2022 would go about uni­fy­ing the Kore­an Penin­su­la, it was abun­dant­ly clear the group had plen­ty of will and eager right-wing sup­port­ers. Mike Pence was at his sec­ond Ral­ly of Hope event this year, hav­ing spo­ken at anoth­er one in March. Pom­peo and Gin­grich were also there. And then there was for­mer Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper and even the son of Jer­ry Fal­well. Along with for­mer dic­ta­tor of Cam­bo­dia Hun Sen and for­mer UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon. It was quite the vir­tu­al mix­er:

    ...
    The UPF says this new out­fit is a “glob­al mul­ti-sec­tor net­work of more than 2,000 experts” in busi­ness, acad­e­mia, and oth­er fields, though Think Tank 2022 does not yet have much (or any) online pres­ence. Still, Hak Ja Han Moon was able to draw an impres­sive amount of star pow­er for this kick-off, with the event fea­tur­ing speech­es from Pence, Pom­peo, for­mer House Speak­er Newt Gin­grich, for­mer Defense Sec­re­tary Mark Esper, past UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon, for­mer Repub­lic of Korea Prime Min­is­ter Chung Sye-Kyun, and Zanz­ibar Pres­i­dent Hus­sein Ali Mwinyi. Also among the speak­ers were Jonathan Fal­well, a pas­tor at Thomas Road Bap­tist Church in Vir­ginia and a son of Jer­ry Fal­well, the founder of the Moral Major­i­ty. Anoth­er fea­tured par­tic­i­pant was Hun Sen, the dic­ta­to­r­i­al, long­time leader of Cam­bo­dia, who has amassed a hor­rif­ic human rights record.

    The three-hour-long event was a cel­e­bra­tion of both Moons, with Hak Ja Han Moon referred to as the “moth­er of Peace” and “Heav­en­ly Par­ent.” Dur­ing his video­taped speech, Pence claimed that Think Tank 2022 is “bring­ing the wis­dom of lead­ers in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, reli­gion, civ­il soci­ety” and that thanks to this new endeav­or, “the dream of peace­ful coop­er­a­tion and uni­ty will be clos­er to real­i­ty than ever before.” (Pence spoke at a pre­vi­ous and sim­i­lar Ral­ly of Hope in March.) Pom­peo, who was intro­duced as a “devout Chris­t­ian,” hailed for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s assort­ed engage­ments with Kim Jong Un, the tyran­ni­cal and mur­der­ous leader of North Korea. “We tried some­thing dif­fer­ent,” Pom­peo said. (For­eign pol­i­cy spe­cial­ists have tend­ed to note Trump’s over­ly pal­sy over­tures to Kim yield­ed no true progress.) Gin­grich praised the Moons, the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, Think Tank 2022, and the Wash­ing­ton Times, the con­ser­v­a­tive paper Sun Myung Moon found­ed. Esper not­ed that Hak Ja Han Moon has been “work­ing to help strength­en America’s role in the world.” He didn’t elab­o­rate on what he meant by that.
    ...

    How much are these fig­ures being paid to speak at such an event? Are they being paid at all, or is this an audi­ence they want to court free of charge? The answer isn’t obvi­ous when you’re talk­ing about a group this polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic but also this polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful. Hav­ing good rela­tions with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is a pre­req­ui­site if you’re going to get the GOP nom­i­na­tion in 2024. The fact that Mike Pence, Mike Pom­peo, and all these oth­er self-pro­fessed super-Chris­tians are speak­ing at events held by a group has declared Chris­tian­i­ty dead and open­ly plans are effec­tive­ly replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty is a tes­ta­ment to the group’s gen­uine influ­ence. These vir­tu­al events, and the gross syco­phan­tic appear­ances of all these polit­i­cal fig­ures, are demon­stra­tions of very real pow­er:

    ...
    The rela­tion­ship between the right and the Uni­fi­ca­tion move­ment has long been curi­ous. Much of it has like­ly been influ­enced by the Wash­ing­ton Times and its stand­ing as a depend­able con­ser­v­a­tive out­let. But the the­ol­o­gy pushed by the Moons and their devo­tees chal­lenges the basic Chris­tian­i­ty embraced by so many con­ser­v­a­tives. The Moons’ claim to be the mes­si­ahs, of course, runs counter to main­stream Chris­tian­i­ty. And one Uni­fi­ca­tion tenet pro­mot­ed by a senior per­son in the move­ment is that Chris­tian­i­ty is essen­tial­ly over.

    In a 2017 video, Michael Jenk­ins, a main play­er in the Uni­fi­ca­tion movement’s cos­mos of non­prof­its and busi­ness­es, said, “The Chris­t­ian era has end­ed.” Jenk­ins is the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­sal Peace Fed­er­a­tion, which host­ed the Ral­ly for Hope and cre­at­ed Think Tank 2022. He is also pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton Times Foun­da­tion. (Accord­ing to its lat­est tax fil­ing, that foun­da­tion raised $242,303 in 2019 and only hand­ed out $2,595 in con­tri­bu­tions. It spent $256,005 on salaries and oth­er admin­is­tra­tive expens­es, includ­ing $93,400 in salary for Mof­fitt, the UPF spokesper­son, who is also the vice pres­i­dent of the foun­da­tion.)

    This video record­ed Jenk­ins giv­ing a talk at a Uni­fi­ca­tion Church in Colum­bus, Ohio, in which he quot­ed “Mother”—Hak Ja Han Moon—saying “Chris­tian­i­ty failed.” He not­ed that she had pro­claimed, “the New Tes­ta­ment era is over. The Chris­t­ian era has con­clud­ed.” He sug­gest­ed that the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is in the process of replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, Pence and Pom­peo con­tributed their celebri­ty to an effort mount­ed by a move­ment that appears to con­sid­er Chris­tian­i­ty kaput. (The video was orig­i­nal­ly obtained by War­ren Throck­mor­ton, a pro­fes­sor at Grove City Col­lege in Penn­syl­va­nia who writes a blog that cov­ers reli­gious issues.)
    ...

    Which Repub­li­can hope­fuls will end up demon­strat­ing their feal­ty at the next “Ral­ly of Hope”? Well Trump make a sec­ond appear­ance? Will Gin­grich and Pence a third appear­ance? How about more evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers like Jonathan Fal­well? Folks like Fal­well are prob­a­bly going to want to have a voice wit the group that’s going to replace Chris­tian­i­ty, after all.

    But giv­en that we have this con­ver­gence of the Trumpi­fied-GOP and Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian lead­ers with an anti-Chris­t­ian cult that’s intent on replac­ing Chris­tian­i­ty, it’s also keep­ing in mind that this sug­gests there’s an open­ing for new divine fig­ures in the yet-to-be-made Chris­tian­i­ty replace­ment. Recall how one of the more dis­turb­ing pat­terns of cultish behav­ior we’ve seen dur­ing the Trump era of the GOP is how Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers have rou­tine­ly been imply­ing that Trump him­self is a divine­ly inspired fig­ure, like King Cyrus in the Bible. So we have to ask: are fig­ures like Trump, Pom­peo, and Pence jock­ey­ing for a posi­tion in the ‘New Uni­fied Chris­tian­i­ty’ neo-Bible? It’s one of the tru­ly unset­tling ques­tions we’re forced to ask with these stories...along with ques­tions about what par­tic­u­lar type of ‘End Times’ sce­nario they’re plan­ning on car­ry­ing out for the big show before the new reli­gion’s final roll out.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 13, 2021, 4:13 pm

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