The Gospel Masterclass: Understanding the Gospels as Literature | Dr. Ro...

COMMENTARY:

Robyn  darling, bless your heart, the entire 29 books of the New Testament, including Revelation, were written before The Hewish Wars. The Christians in Jerusalem evacuated Jerusalem after Gallus ended his siege and tried to make a break out of Judea, The Cristian's took Jesus warning in Mark 13 seriously and avoided the  Apocalypse Of curse, it wasn't Mark 13 at that time,

Both the Gospel of Mark and Gospel of John begin when Jesus appears above the Roman military horizon  by taking command of John the Baptist's Followers Mark 1:4 -  8, the portrait of John the Baptist, comes from exactly the same source Josephus drew upon in the Jewish Wars to characterize John the Baptist and that source was the intelligence archives of the 10th Legion, which occupied and patrolled the Area of Operations from Capernaum down to the Mt of Olives. The Romans were in Judeah to control and parol the trade routes coming from Ieurope and Asia to cross the land bridge at Gaza into Africa. Pilate was subordinate to the legate in Syria and was responsible for the good order and safe passage through the territory he controlled, The John the Baptist Followers were a potential insurgent formation and the 10th Legion kept track of everybody within there purview.

The 10th Legion is  Quelle, And Cornelius, who was the senior centurion in Judea , and Pilates administrative head and the Roman equivaeltn of the Command Sergeant Major of the two legions in the area, was, for all intents and purposes, Quelle. he is the common denominator is the Gospels as Acts, The Gospel of Mark is his intelligence appreciation of everything they had come to learn about Jesus since Pilate sent his initial euangelion to Rome which is lost to us but referenced in Book V of Tertullian's Apology,

The Gospel of Mark was written between 37 CE and 40 CE immediately after the encounter between Cornelius and Peter described in Acts 10 as an  explication of Pilates lost euangelion  that employed Peter's )and probably John Mark's) testimony plus 51 entries from the archives of the 10th Legion,  Peter' confession in Acts 34 - 43 became the narrative trajectory of the Gospel of Mark and the references surveillance reports about Jesus after He was baptized and before He was arrested form the corpus of the narrative.

Mark 15"1 - 16:8  represent the time boundaries of Pilate's lost euangelion and are coincident to the time  boundaries of The Gospel of Peter, which, in all probability, represents the contents of Pilate's lost euangelion that Cornelius conveyed to him off stage, so to speak, of Acts 10, Pilate's lost euangelion is the basis of Peter's vetting of Paul in Acts 15:7 and the basis of Paul's theology throughout the 19 citations of the 13 Epistles. He cites it 6 times in Philologians as part of his end zone celebration of his successful defense  in Rome.

None of this happened after 70 CE. The whole post-Jewish War premise of the Jesus Seminar is Marxist driven anti-theist bull shit right out of the anti0war movement of the 6-s. and the attempts by James Tabor and Dom Crossan to right Jesus out of history, For example, in one of his books, Tabor deletes the line "suffered under Pontius Pilate" from the Apostle's Creed  in the historical revisionism to eliminate the existential historicity of Pilate out of the Creed. Tabor's entire career amounts to 30 years of academic mal practice, I mean, the whole idea that Mark is derived from Pauline theology is is a case study in the willing suspension of disbelief by anyone who endorses the Jesus Seminar

Forgotten Misdeeds

I often see the word “psycho” associated to Fubuki - usually followed by referencing her attempt at recruiting Saitama - as a way to deflect any criticism directed towards tatsumaki. By employing this “whataboutism” kind of argument, tatsumaki is put under a more favorable light through the example of another character who is allegedly worse than her and that without having to disprove or refute the opponent arguments regarding the original subject of the debate. Too bad this kind of reasoning doesn’t take in account the series itself: so why not recap everytime tatsumaki has attacked fellow heroes? 

Since it would be overkill, I wil ignore the elephant in the room, the Esper Sisters arc (and relative Fubuki’s childhood flashback, so easily forgotten), as well every instance where tatsumaki only indirectly caused damage to her colleagues, exposed them to risks or endangered the mission as a result of her carelessness and/or recklessness (like in the webcomic MA arc). EDIT: fixed some grammar mistakes and some typos, rephrased some sentences. I want to highlight, if it wasn’t already clear, how most of these moments are relatively “old” and precede the 180 turn degree tatsumaki’s character has been subjected to from the Hero raid onwards: all of the following is ignored, not acknowledged or completely handwaved in the remake.

In no particular order, here we have:

-for starters, at the end of the Alien Invasion arc, Tatsumaki, offended of being ignored by Saitama, started throwing insults to the “B-Class”, thus enraging Genos who responded in kind. Therefore Tatsumaki resorted to smash Genos against a boulder. And not yet satisfied, she was about to do the same to Saitama (who barely said anything and was the one insulted in the first place) if wasn’t for Silver Fang. Caught in the act of attacking fellow heroes, Tatsumaki left out a “gasp” before re-taking her aura of superiority as nothing happened and nonchalantly leave the scene. Webcomic version. So, tatsumaki isn’t above beating two fellow heroes right after an emergency situation that reduced to dusts A-City and for extremely petty reasons even. What an hero!

-my personal favourite: tatsumaki completely disregarded Do-s’s presence (the one who injured Fubuki) and allowed the monster to flee away unschated, because she couldn’t resist the urge to slam the brainwashed Fubuki Group into concrete. If failing to kill Do-s, a “mere” Demon Level Threat, and being outsmarted by the monster would be enough to label tatsumaki as an incompetent hero, what makes this even more unjustifiable is that the “strongest esper” choosed to land in front of the Fubuki group just after they received the order by Do-s to attack her*: before that, they had no way to reach tatsumaki who was way above the ground. After this embarrassing performance, she blames Fubuki and her group for what happened. Hilarious. By the way, the Fubuki Group members are the only heroes who have been sent to hospital not by a monster or Garou, but by a colleague. Moreover in the Amai Mask vs Do-s redraw the Disciples proved that the brainwashing could be removed without severely injuring the victim;

-few chapters after this fiasco, she slammed Hundred-Eyes Octopus directly on the Death Gatling Group - who were barey able to dodge it (ah the time whens the characters were allowed to voice something other than praise and admiration towards the shapeshifter!). Then she reprehended Flashy Flash for not defeating the monster: too bad she failed (or better, she didn’t even try) to kill an even weaker Demon Level Threat few chapters earlier. And it’s ironic she was the one talking about collateral damage, of all people;

-without forgetting the Sixth OVA from Season 1, the one with the S-Class heroes and Saitama visiting a spa, where a drunken tatsumaki stabbed Zombieman because she couldn’t take Saitama’s comment about her not being old enough to drink. After that, when the S-Class were trying to figure out what happened to Zombieman, Tatsumaki, forgotten what she previously did, was ready to restrain all the S-Class purely because of assumptions (and despite her being the culprit). Reminder: these OVAs (the ones from the first season) are all written by ONE - about the S2 OVAs we know, for example, that the third one was simply approved by him;

-or when tatsumaki attacked Fubuki and then restricted her, Fang and Bomb (a civilian) for no reasons at all. More about this chapter here.

So, we have more instances of tatsumaki being violent and petty than Fubuki. Actually, going by the manga (for example), we have proof that Fubuki doesn’t rely on violence as much as some think: Glasses, who left the group, and Needle Start, a troublemaker kicked out of the Fubuki Group, are all alive, still working in the HA and doing well, without suffering any consequences. And let’s not forget how Psykos was spared back in Highschool with only her powers sealed and nothing more. Yes, this is really how a psycho would act!

Fubuki may rookie crushes other heroes in order to mantain her position, but tatsumaki beats up (or almost kills) her colleagues for petty or trivial reasons (if any at all) during or right after world crisis scenarios. And all of this is usually put under the rug, leaving all her misdoings and her flaws unaccounted and ignored. 

By the way, it’s an incredible coincidence that both sister are rather violent heroes. It’s like the two of them share a backstory and the older sibling played a role in the younger one’s life, upbringing and mindset. Ah, if only there was a flashback clarifying this...

*Do-s and Fubuki have even the time to back and forth. 

History will leave you behind and you TERFS and transphobes will go down as just another hateful group of oppressors. Science, history, and the LGBTQ community stands with trans people. This blog is absolutely disgusting and anti-science.

...do genderists just put buzzwords in a blender and think they've made a point?

I don't even know why I'm gracing this with a longer response, since it's a rather ridiculous case of projection.

My header says I'm a radfem sideblog and most of my content is just reblogs. If you want to claim that my blog is "disgusting", take it up with the original posters.

"Another hateful group of oppressors" an oppressor is someone who holds institutional privilege over the oppressed. TERFs are by definition women, who are oppressed for their biological sex. A group cannot be privileged and oppressed on the same axis. Hence radical feminists do not oppress transpeople, especially not transwomen, who are biologically male and therefore oppress women on the basis of sex.

"Science" is an objective field of study that seeks to understand our natural world. It cannot stand with anyone (much like history), as it is not a person with feelings or opinions. However, science has consistently proven that mammals (a biological class that includes humans) are sexually dimorphic. There are only two types of mammal gametes, sperm and egg, Y and X. There are some controversies over the idea of brain sex; some creative misinterpretations of data led some to draw the conclusion that men and women have different brains (based on gray matter, brain size); but more studies proved this to be untrue, and the minute differences can be explained by social conditioning. Gender is a social construct, and therefore does not exist in the realm of natural science. So I can't really say scientific research supports your argument.

History is another field that has been subject to some horrifying misinterpretations by genderists to support their arguments. Women such as the warrior Joan of Arc, the doctor Margaret Ann Bulkey, the Mexican Revolutionary colonel Amelia Robles, the artist Hannah Gluck, lesbian author Radcliffe Hall and even lesbian activist Storme deLarverie, have been posthumously transed simply for being gender non conforming (pursuing careers women "shouldn't") in eras even more viciously misogynistic than our own; that about half of these women are lesbians and some of them butch indicates how lesbophobic this interpretation of history is. Women can't achieve great things or love other women without secretly having a "male soul", is the logical conclusion of transing these women. Male historical figures get transed much less often; Malcolm "Marsha P" Johnson is the most common despite having stated 11 days before his death that he was "a man" and "just a transvestite" aka a man that dressed in women's clothes. Ignoring the context and even the very words people in history have said in order to prop up transgenderism is revisionism. Historical analysis doesn't support your arguments either.

It only stands to reason that, with the denial of observable biological sex which has led to the horrific "cotton ceiling" (that lesbians must be open to dating people they cannot be attracted to, males), the appropriation of lesbian historical figures as trans men, the no-platforming to outright physical assault of lesbian feminists on college campuses, the protests of libraries and domestic violence shelters because of "anti trans books" or that they don't allow transwomen to work with vulnerable women, the attempted silencing of detransitioners (many of them butch lesbians)...that lesbians are simply tired. They are tired of having to support people that would throw them under the bus the moment it's convenient. They are tired of having to redefine their homosexuality as "non-men attracted to non-men" or "queer", or their womanhood as "uterus bearers" while men get to keep their language. They are tired of having their foremothers that inspire them called men based on regressive gender stereotypes. They are tired of being silenced when trying to talk about their female bodies and experiences. They feel dismayed when they see the rapidly dwindling number of lesbian-only spaces in the US, from over 200 lesbian bars in the late 1980s to just 15 in 2020, and feel hopeless when those reporting on it claim this is a good thing because it "makes them inclusive." Well, lesbianism is a sexual orientation, and sexual orientations are by definition exclusive. If you don't feel included in the label, then it's because you likely aren't a homosexual female. The homophobia and misogyny of the genderist movement has caused many lesbians to "peak" and become gender-critical feminists because of their personal experience with harassment bordering on conversion therapy in LGBTQ groups simply for being lesbian. Other women have become gender-critical as they fear that their biological sex will no longer be a protected category under the law. Even some gay men, disgusted by the homophobic entitlement of trans men on Twitter/tumblr (called the "jockstrap ceiling"), have peaked and decided to stand with women.

So, keep the TQ community. The LGB will be there to rebuild our community after the mainstream finally realizes the anti-science, anti-history, anti-logic, of the trans movement and apologizes for ever having supported it thinking they were helping gays and lesbians. It has already started. Don't be so certain the radfems, some of whom were fighting for women long before you were an idea in your disappointed mother's mind, will be the ones history leaves behind.

PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT SNOWDROP'S CONTROVERSY, BECAUSE IT IS IN FACT FAR RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA

I want to clarify, this isn't in any way an attempt to hate on Jisoo or BP or any of the actors. And this isn't knetz exaggerating to hate on them, this is actually a hurtful show related to the kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, and even murder of Korean students in the 80s protesting for their rights and demanding democracy under the pretext of them being "North Korean spies", a way for the government of the time to justify the horrors bestowed upon innocent civilians.

I'm going to ask you all to NOT support or watch Snowdrop because it features historical revisionism by presenting characters based on people that were involved in the torture and murder of real-life students in a sympathetic light.

Jisoo's father in the drama was the real-life director of the torture agency that operated the horrible acts above mentioned, but in the drama he's presented as a man who is more fit to be a lit teacher who likes books and just happens to be involved in a messy situation, when in reality, this man was deeply involved in the crimes against the human rights perpetrated by his organization.

It is not okay to present a far right-wing, authoritarian figure in a humanizing way, and divorce him from the crimes he was actively involved in, by making his character a soft lit boy who is uncomfortable with the agency he ran, when in reality he has never even apologized or shown any remorse for what he did. It would be like portraying Hitler in a human light, by showing his love for animals and making him feel icky about the holocaust but unable to do anything about it, do you see how messed up it is?

These last months, the far right-wing has been rising in Korea, pushing a revisionist agenda in which all the horrible things done against civilians fighting for their rights in the 80s are justified by twisting what happened as something justified. The government can't just ban a show based on its content, because it is operating as a democracy where artistic freedom is granted.

They have never prohibited a show since the fall of the authoritarian regime that caused the atrocities that are being glossed over in the show. Korean citizens are trying to file complaints for it to not air, but it is important to not give it visibility internationally. Int-fans don't know about the painful history behind this show, and could easily believe its propagandistic content. It could seriously warp the idea the international community has about the dictatorship that took place at the time. it is an authoritarian regime apologist show.

I'll leave a thread written by a Korean person who was raised by victims of the 80s regime. it dates from months back, but their standing on the matter hasn't changed after watching the premiere and they have updated the thread. They explain the history the show is based on better than I could.

https://twitter.com/gatamchun/status/1471205914174967808

Update: The family of Park Jong-cheol, who was the student who died after brutal water torture by the NSA has spoken out about how Snowdrop is causing harm to victims of the NSA.

I translated some excerpts from the Naver article:

"Associating the democratization movement with spies is another persecution against the victims of that time."

"In the first place, the democratization movement and the NSA shouldn't be linked to spies. In fact, during the military dictatorship, many victims were subjected to violence and torture under the charge of espionage, ruining their lives, taking extreme choices, and even executing them. The logic of the state's institutions was that it happened "because they were spies". In the drama, the NSA chases real spies, and the colleague students hide spies thinking they're activists, giving their (the NSA's) claims rationality and justification."

Naver link: https://n.news.naver.com/article/079/0003587836

secondly, im not a tumblr teen. ive been on this website for god knows how long and ive been well versed in queer history. me calling them a pedophile, after a conversation with them resulted in them refusing to admit sexual imagery is not for children, them calling me a bootlicker and several other names, before getting wildly upset and blocking me, had nothing to do with their sexuality and everything to do with the fact that they couldnt tell me sexual imagery is not a thing for minors to consume period end of story. this is AFTER the fact i had been a bit more educated about pride and had ALREADY agreed where i went wrong. now about the sanitization of pride- thats wrong as well. dont get me wrong. but you cant seriously look me in the face and tell me that sexual imagery is not for minors. like- just that statement alone, right? so how is this such a controversy?

ugh okay I guess I’m gonna write A Thing. I’ll get into a proper response to your final questions but first, let’s do some context work.

first thing to make clear is that I know Jux irl, and I also want to make it pretty clear that they and I have pretty similar opinions here, I’m just slightly more likely to put my anger aside to reply to stuff. Do not get it twisted, rhetoric like the kind you were/are using is like, a big red flag for me, it’s the kind of shit reactionaries have been using for eons and like, were I in a less chill mood, I would’ve also likely written you off as a bootlicker troll. Their response was pretty aggressive but not completely misplaced, so I just want to make it clear that like, as another queer dude who is tired of seeing this shit every fucking May for the better part of a decade, I’m also exhausted and pissed off.

As for my claim of teenagerdom, I apologize if that offended, but you have to understand that, generally speaking, the loudest groups having this conversation on the regular are (1) right-wing reactionaries, TERFs, and their ilk trying to stir shit up (see: Operation Pridefall) and (2) young people who don’t have any context for Pride, often haven’t been, and only really have queer politic and history from tumblr and twitter threads featuring reactionary revisionism from the first group. When I see people engage in this conversation, I generally assume they’re in the latter group, as it helps me try to frame my responses in the best faith I can given how tired I am of this shit.

But that aside, sure. Kink isn’t for children. But provided there’s a parent accompanying this hypothetical child at Pride, their job is to explain and provide context for the things they can, and give a solid “you’ll learn more when you’re older” for the things they can’t. The Village People are all each in different kink gear, and as a kid I was told “they like to dress up, and there’s some costumes specifically for adults,” and I was good. I saw bare titties at festivals, smelled weed at concerts, saw bulge at the beach — these are normal human things that happen in the world, and having a responsible adult nearby to explain or provide context for them made them non-issues for me. I don’t think a kid seeing a pup hood is thinking anything more than “oh cool, that dude is dressed up as a dog.” Kids understand fantasy and make-believe. And especially as they age into their teenage years, withholding or sheltering them from knowledge about sex and sexuality can do real damage — hell, we’ve been having that conversation for over a century at least.

(Spring’s Awakening was first published in 1891 and was deeply censored in productions for the better part of a century, due to the content of the work, which is about how sheltering young teens (both straight and queer) from sexual content (and also mental health resources) leads them to try to figure shit out on their own and make catastrophic decisions that they don’t understand the consequences of until it’s too late. Great play, pretty great musical adaptation, wild that we keep rehashing its points like clockwork over a century after publication.)

But I am also of the opinion that Pride isn’t for children, as, while two decades of assimilationist politic would desperately try to argue otherwise, I am queer because I am sexually attracted to, and have sex with, other men. Pride is a response to the criminalization of queer sex acts, and so it is, in turn, a celebration of queer sex acts. So if someone wants to walk around in chaps and a jock, great! If someone wants to wear their pup gear or a harness or a rope tie or a vest, fuck yeah! It’s a space specially carved out for celebrating the queer experience — the original Pride flag (before it was simplified to make it easier to mass produce for profit, which, again, love seeing our culture made into product) had a pink stripe at the very top, specifically representing sexuality. It is, ostensibly, the thing that defines our community (at least the L G and B parts of it) as an outgroup against the mainstream society.

I think that, if you are uncomfortable with kink displays, or you’re uncomfortable with children seeing kink displays, then Pride is not for you or your children! Don’t go! There’s kid-friendly and sanitized versions of Pride in most major cities, do some research into your local/state Stonewall organizations and you can find more about them. But I’m already sick of having actual cops at Pride, I don’t need people who are uncomfortable with displays of sexuality also policing myself or any other queer person in a space they have spent decades carving out for themselves.

A final note — if you don’t understand why a queer person would blow up and completely write off your bullshit after calling them a pedophile, I urge you to do more reading, more listening. I know that in this brave new world of same-sex marriage equality and PrEP access that it’s hard to remember the collective trauma that the community has experienced, but this shit is inflammatory, you’re straight up spewing fightin’ words. The dude wearing a leather harness at Pride isn’t trying to corrupt any youth or fuck any kids, they’re just trying to live their shit, and I’m sorry that you and so many others have somehow decided that that’s an attack on a demographic of people who aren’t the audience for a celebration of sexuality. We’re not fucking pedophiles, and this “think about the kids” nonsense is some Reagan-era bullshit.

Hey your post about BBC Scotland I think is a bit unfair and inaccurate. I don't think they do report Scotland as a failing country. It's a news station that has to hold politicians to account regardless of SNP, Labour or tory. We can't become a country that just glosses over reality. Not to mention that BBC Scotland also has a huge amount of Gaelic output and it does way more than just news.

Jackie Bird, is this your tumblr account?

If it is, I have a bone to pick with you. If it’s not, well pour yourself a drink and have a wee seat because you’re going to do some learning.

Correct, the BBC does indeed more than just news, it also does documentaries on Scottish history. Why, who could forget this particular one?

The Highland clearances was a genocidal act by the UK government. The BBC portrayed it as voluntary migration. Historical revisionism at its worst.

A few short months ago, @ayeforscotland made a post about the economic growth figures;

The Scottish Tories came out with a damning prediction ahead of Scotland’s growth figures being published earlier today.

“They can’t point to Brexit, because the rest of the UK is powering ahead - This is all on the SNP’s shoulders.”

You’ll have seen earlier than Scotland’s quarterly growth was 0.8%. “Powering ahead” the rest of the UK had 0.2% growth.

You heard it from the Tories, folks, Scotland’s growth is entirely on the SNP’s shoulders.

Which I reblogged with this comment after seeing it on the BBC;

And in a stunning display of doublespeak from the BBC, they have referred to this in their news as “Scotland avoids recession”. I also manage to “avoid homelessness” by paying my rent, “avoid starvation” by eating food, and “avoid drowning” by being able to swim.

But of course, this is the BBC. They couldn’t possibly write the words “Scotland outperforms the rest of the UK”. Oh no, they must do everything they can to try and make the SNP look bad and make sure that they talk down Scotland at all times.

Words and tone have an impact. Which the BBC must know about since there was this from last year where people complained about the BBC giving a misleading statement on their TV show;

They upheld the complaint, but this apology was tucked away on their website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/comp-reports/ecu/reportingscotland240816

Of course, upholding this complaint would have more of an impact if, you know, they were to show it on the Reporting Scotland TV show where they reported it in the first place, you know?

Just because they show Gaelic programming doesn’t mean that it has a commitment to Scotland. What about the rest of their content?

The number of programmes broadcast by the BBC which contain the word ‘British’ or ‘Britain’ in the title has increased twentyfold since the SNP came to power at Holyrood.Research carried out by Newsnet Scotland has revealed that in that last year of the Labour/Lib Dem administration at Holyrood there were just 25 separate TV broadcasts of shows which had the words Britain or British in the title.

However for the period between Jan 2013 and Jan 2014, that number had risen to a whopping 516.

A breakdown showed that the number of broadcasts containing the word British totalled 15 in 2006, however this number rose to 308 in 2013.

Those programmes with the word Britain in their title totalled a mere 10 when Jack McConnell was First Minister but rose to 208 under Alex Salmond.

The figures also showed that the variety of programmes to contain either Britain or British in their title also tripled from 9 in 2006 to 28 in 2013.

The number of programmes containing the words Scotland in the title in 2013 totalled 54, however on inspection almost all were either sport related (Scottish Bowls, Scottish Rally) or were party political broadcasts by Scottish Labour/Lib Dems etc.Similarly, of the over 1300 broadcasts in 2013 containing the word ‘Scotland’, almost all were made up of Reporting Scotland, Newsnight Scotland and the Politics Scotland programmes.There were nine broadcasts of Artworks Scotland, one BBC Proms in Scotland, seventeen BBC Scotland investigates, Twelve Grand Tours of Scotland, one Storm Force Scotland, one The L.A.B Scotland and sixteen of Watching Ourselves: 60 Years of TV in Scotland.

http://newsnet.scot/archive/massive-increase-in-british-themed-tv-shows-on-bbc-since-snp-came-to-power/

The British Propaganda Broadcasting Machine Corporation in action.

Tell me, what sort of television station would resort to this sort of slur in its reporting?

“Jock shock”.

Anyway, I think that’s probably enough for now.

Just kidding, I didn’t even touch on the articles about BBC bias over the independence referendum in 2014. But here is some reading for you!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/alex-salmond-bbc-bias-was-significant-factor-in-deciding-scottish-independence-referendum-10506491.html

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/18/scottish-viewers-bbc-news-impartiality-independence-referendum

https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/john-robertson/bbc-bias-and-scots-referendum-new-report

http://www.thenational.scot/news/14900302.SNP_MP_demands_answers_from_BBC_Director_General_on__bias__during_referendum/

http://newsnet.scot/archive/the-dirty-dozen-the-case-against-bbc-scotland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Scottish_independence_referendum.2C_2014

But really… don’t come here again and proclaim that the BBC is impartial in its reporting in Scotland. It isn’t, it’s a wholly complicit propaganda machine for the Westminster government.

Proof that it was all about the money…...

Two dol haruebang statues on Jeju Island where Moon held his workshops.

by Frank F.  (amended and extended by the HWDYKYM editorial team)

This excellent article reveals Moon’s core personal motivation when examined in light of the circumstances and the time period:

Moon personally extracted $500 MILLION from Japanese sisters in the fall of 1993. He demanded that 50,000 sisters attend HIS workshops on Jeju Island and each had to pay a fee of $10,000.

Moon had to have known that Chung-hwa Pak (his former first disciple) – along with other disaffected members – were working on an explosive exposé on the early history of the church, which included Moon’s sex rituals. The book, The Tragedy of the Six Marys, was published in Japan in 1993, shortly after Moon conducted the above mentioned workshops on Jeju/Cheju Island. Pak then went on a promotional tour in Japan to sell the book. Many magazine articles about the UC were published around that time. 

Video of Pak and the other contributors to the Six Marys book (with abbreviated English subtitles)

Complete English translation of the full transcript of the video of Pak with other contributors –  featuring exclusive new photos

Chung-hwa Pak probably got sanction from South Korean Intelligence to write the book and publish in Japan but was careful to avoid revealing any and all connections between Moon and the Intelligence services of South Korea, Japan and the U.S. The K.C.I.A. had developed a reputation for being violent and ruthless but was undergoing changes at this time, with the rest of Korean society, which was entering the process of Democratization with the recent election of former dissident Kim Young Sam. Previous to this time, South Korea was dominated by a series of strict military Governments. Pak actually mentions this in his book “The Tragedy of the Six Marys”.

Moon conducted the Jeju Island workshops in anticipation of significant fallout from Pak’s revelations, and made revealing explanations justifying his behavior to the participants of the workshop. The audience were exclusively Japanese women and under strict guidelines not to reveal the contents to the general membership. There was a media blackout in the United States on Pak’s book and the church’s posture was business as usual during these events in Japan. 

There was also a series of workshops in Japan presenting a theology of justification for Moon’s pikareum sex rituals to cleanse wombs from original sin. A number of members left after the workshops and the workshops were curtailed. The purpose of the workshops had been to inoculate the UC membership against Pak’s about to be published Six Marys book.

Why Moon had sex ceremonies with the wives of all the first 36 couples.

It is significant that the publication of Pak’s book, both in Japan and Korea, was never prevented through the courts. The facts in the The Tragedy of the Six Marys were known to be true, and they were supported with many photographs.

Having extracted as much money from the Japanese membership that Moon judged bearable at the time, Moon went on a land buying spree in South America – presumably to escape public scrutiny and restart the church in a more favorable environment. He felt that the U.S. was failing him. 

The Japanese church went into hyper damage control to contain the revelations and members tried to buy up all the Six Marys books available on the news stands that they could.

「六マリアの悲劇   真のサタンは、文鮮明だ!!」

（恒友出版)

Tragedy of the Six Marys – the real Satan is Sun Myung Moon!!

(Constant Friend Publishing)

Published November 1993  Four printings  (296 pages)

The Japanese edition is available on the internet here

https://六マリアの悲劇.com

Eventually the UC / FFWPU allegedly negotiated to bribe off Chung-hwa Pak for a considerable sum and he was persuaded to tour the U.C. in Japan, apologizing before the members. 

▲ This photo shows Pak surrounded by UC church leaders, probably in the hotel where he was interviewed. He has just signed the cover artwork for the “Traitor” book. He was under pressure. One of the people in the photo is Mr. Ishi who ‘fixed’ many problems for Sun Myung Moon.

The Japanese Unification Church interviewed Chung-hwa Pak for a day or two in a hotel room in Japan. The UC then put together a propaganda book written at the Sekai Nippo newspaper offices and published it under the title:

私は裏切り者―その時、サタンが私に入った !

I Am A Traitor – At that time Satan possessed me!

Published January 1996 (288 pages) Publisher: 世界日報社 = Sekai Nippo Company

Both books are available on Japanese Amazon. “Traitor” is on the right. Their relative merits are examined here:

Did Chung-hwa Pak really write such a book?

Other ex-members, such as Hyo-min Eu, who contributed their testimonials to the Six Marys book were furious at Pak’s arrangement with the church, and therefore published the book in South Korea. In 1996 the Six Marys book was published in Korean under a different title:

野錄 統一敎會史

(세계기독교 통일신령협회사)

박 정 화 외2인 지음 (前 통일교창립위원)

문용명(龍明) ⟶ 선명(鮮明)  ⟶ 선생 ⟶ 목사 ⟶ 재림주 ⟶ 참 아버지

自稱 하나님이다。

진짜 사단은   文鮮明이다。

큰샘출판사

An Unofficial History of the Unification Church

(A History of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity)

Pak Chung-hwa (founding member of the Unification Church) and 2 others

Moon Yong Myung (龍明) ⟶ Sun Myung (鮮明) ⟶ Teacher ⟶ Pastor ⟶

Lord of the Second Advent ⟶ True Father   

He claims to be God.

The real Satan is Moon Sun Myung.

Keunsaem Publishing Company (Seoul)  

March 1, 1996

The book was promoted in the Korean newspapers:

The Korean edition is available on the internet here

English translation ( in progress ) available here

Moon was successful in staving off being publicly exposed in the United States for a number of years through clever compartmentalization of the membership by language and culture. There also appears to be an arrangement of tacit support for Moon by the C.I.A., who wield significant influence in the media in the U.S. 

When Moon’s son, Hyo Jin, had his messy public divorce in the late nineties and Nansook Hong wrote her exposé, In the Shadow of the Moons, the public interest in the cult increased. 

Chung-hwa Pak’s book, The Tragedy of the Six Marys, began circulating from South Korean sources and a few Western ex-members attempted a full translation with publication on the internet that was just coming into prominence. 

Moon’s venture in South America once again became an important focus of the church with Moon again charging exorbitant fees to Japanese members to visit his earthly paradise there. Moon also encouraged Western members to sell their homes and donate the proceeds to the church, then relocate to his properties in South America. I don’t believe many followed him except to take expensive camping and fishing trips to the location. Possibly due to the resemblance of the scenario to the Peoples Temple-Jonestown debacle.

This isn't my first or last attempt at Unification Church historical revisionism and, as always, I welcome any and all honest criticism of my presentation of the facts.

Table of Contents of ‘The Tragedy of the Six Marys – the real Satan is Sun Myung Moon!!’

A Japanese member of parliament, Mr Atsuo Nakamura, interviewed Mr Chung-hwa Pak about the ‘SEX relays’ of Sun Myung Moon

Baek-moon Kim talked about ‘sexual union with God.’ He was Sun Myung Moon’s teacher.

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family by Nansook Hong

Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews, including ‘60 Minutes’

Nansook Hong – [C-Span] Book Discussion – ‘In The Shadow of the Moons’ with FULL TRANSCRIPT

Pikareum explained in Moon’s own words

‘There were many sexually abused women. Moon Sun Myung arrested.’ 1955 Seoul newspaper report

Moon arrested for kidnapping a female student for three days 1955 Seoul newspaper report

Did Moon followers use money from prostitution to get him out of jail when he was charged with adultery in 1955?

Hyo-min Eu’s ‘Friday’ magazine article: ‘Moon’s Gigantic Lie’

Pikareum emerged during the “Ewha Woman’s University Incident” in the early days of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Neil Salonen is asked about pikareum

In Japanese:

「血分け問題」 “The Pikareum Problem” lecture notes written by a UC member at 宮崎台研修センター  Miyazaki dai Training Center, near Tokyo, January 9-12, 1992

Video of Pak and the other contributors (with full Japanese transcript)

Mobile Suit Gundam Pt. 2

               Personally, the most striking interaction in the second half of Mobile Suit Gundam for me was Amuro’s interaction with his mother in episode 13. When Amuro’s mother learns about Amuro’s interaction in the war, she is stunned and is surprised to hear how her child goes from a pacifist to a key soldier and Gundam suit operator. While both Spirited Away and Barefoot Gen had themes of childhood innocence, the film is more similar to Spirited Away because we see the central character transition from being more child-like in nature to more independent. In addition to this transition, it is also interesting how we see the war transform people. We see that Amuro becomes much more disconnected from killing and confident in his military endeavors as well as many of his fellow peers. While they do deal with grieving, they do seem to become much more desensitized with their role in the war and the consequent deaths of people they don’t know.                Another striking interaction form the second half of Mobile Suit Gundam, also found in episode 13, was the exchange between the apple vendor and the federation soldiers. Rather than paying for the apples, the Earth Federation soldiers simply take the apple despite the woman exclaiming that she was in need of money. Because the Earth Federation soldiers see themselves as saviors from the Zeon Dictatorship. This really emphasizes how the division between good and evil is continually blurred unlike western comic films and the Star Wars franchise.                Lastly, I also thought Ashbaugh’s Contesting War Narratives was interesting because it describes how in the post war era in Japan the Japanese society readily accepted pacificism as an ideology and saw films such as Gundam as parallels to the second world war. During this time,  the memories of the second world war were still very relevant in Japanese society and related with the destruction depicted in these films. The obvious destruction in Japan enabled Japanese society to adopt a view that Japan was a victim of the war. As a result of this and national pride, we saw that the Japanese government downplayed their war atrocities in the second world war and heavily regulated history textbook content. Some of the most notable instances of this historical revisionism could be seen in the Korean and Chinese “comfort women” that have sometimes been depicted as voluntary sex workers and natural romantic relationships by historical revisionists. Additionally, the Rape of Nanjing is often downplayed if not outright denied. Instead of referring to it as the Rape of Nanjing, it is also referred to as the “Nanjing Incident” with death counts severely underestimated. No formal apology has been issued for the Rape of Nanjing and many politicians in Japan refuse to do so because it could result in career suicide.

‘Fear’ and ‘favor’ chill newsroom at storied Japanese paper

‘Fear’ and ‘favor’ chill newsroom at storied Japanese paper TOKYO — Early in December, dozens of journalists and editors from the Japan Times gathered for an emergency meeting in a glass-walled conference room in their brand-new 14th floor office. On the agenda was a single, incendiary issue: the newspaper’s new descriptions of how Japan compelled thousands of foreigners into military brothels and labor during World War Two. In the past, the Japan Times described Korean workers as “forced laborers” and comfort women as those “forced to provide sex for Japanese troops before and during World War II.” But the five-sentence note published on Nov. 30 said the country’s oldest English-language paper would refer to Korean workers simply as “wartime laborers.” The paper also said that because of the varied experiences of comfort women, it would describe them as “women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will.” Such terms are social flashpoints in Japan and a topic of bitter dispute with South Korea, whose government argues comfort women were clear victims of wartime abuse. The changes come amid simmering tensions; South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled in October that Japanese companies must compensate South Koreans forced to work during the war. The executive editor of the Japan Times, Hiroyasu Mizuno, told staff at the start of the December meeting that he had “three main goals” in making the style change. He said it would avoid creating the perception that the paper was “anti-Japanese,” which he said was necessary for the paper’s survival. He also said the paper would maintain “a high level of neutrality” and continue to report the positions of Japan, South Korea, China and others. As the meeting continued, Mizuno reiterated the “anti-Japanese” issue and the need to preserve advertising revenue. Some readers said the change glossed over Japan’s wartime actions. Prominent Japanese conservatives, meanwhile, applauded the move, calling it a coup for nationalist activists agitating for English-language news outlets to change such descriptions. In an email, Mizuno told Reuters he and senior editorial managers decided to revise the paper’s descriptions to “better reflect a more objective view of topics that are both contentious and difficult to summarize.” He said the Nov. 30 note did not signal a change in the paper’s editorial direction, adding: “I categorically deny any accusations that The Japan Times has bowed to external pressure.” The Japan Times has an outsized impact on how the country is perceived abroad – it is distributed in Japan with The New York Times – and is seen domestically as an unofficial style guide for other English-language outlets. A New York Times representative said that the editorial operations of the two organizations were separate, and that the paper used precise language on the topic and would continue to do so. Reuters interviews with nearly a dozen Japan Times employees – all of whom requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal – along with hundreds of pages of internal emails and presentation materials, show the editorial changes started taking shape when the paper changed hands in June 2017. ‘ANTI-JAPANESE’ Some media critics say self-censorship is a problem in Japanese newsrooms, fed by fear of losing access, advertising revenue and subscribers. In the past, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his top aide, Yoshihide Suga, have singled out the liberal Asahi Shimbun for criticism, including over its articles on comfort women and the Fukushima disaster, some of which it later retracted, citing errors. Suga told Reuters the government would not comment on media companies’ editorial policies, including those of the Japan Times. Conservative groups in Japan have pushed hard to change how Japan’s World War Two activities are described. For instance, an Australian-Japanese organization that protests comfort women statues, saying the monuments feed anti-Japanese sentiment, along with Kent Gilbert, a well-known conservative commentator and lawyer who has worked in Japan for decades, petitioned Asahi Shimbun last year to remove “forced” from its description of comfort women. The paper did not amend its wording, saying in a public statement that it took care “to use the most appropriate phrasing” for stories. Similar pressure led the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun to apologize to readers in 2014 for using “sex slaves” to refer to comfort women in its English-language edition. “The Yomiuri Shimbun apologizes for having used these misleading expressions,” the paper’s English site said in a statement at the time. The chilling effect in newsrooms often comes from within the organization, experts say. “It’s less a result of direct government pressure and more from people inside newsrooms looking to their superiors and the public,” said Minako Beppu, a journalism professor at Hosei University who studies media censorship. “It’s things like, ‘Let’s not criticize them too much,’ or ‘Let’s tone things down a bit.’” At the Dec. 3 staff meeting, Mizuno said the changes were not political. “I want to get rid of criticism that Japan Times is anti-Japanese,” he said, according to a transcript and audio recording. Being seen as “anti-Japanese” would hurt advertising revenue from Japanese companies and institutions, he told staff. A senior manager in charge of sponsored content then said the paper had already increased government ad sales and scored an exclusive interview with Abe after dropping a column by Jeff Kingston, director of Asia studies at Temple University Japan, who had been writing weekly on what he saw as the Abe administration’s historical revisionism. “From a journalistic standpoint, that’s fatal, really,” a senior Japan Times reporter responded, according to the transcript. On Jan. 25, South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “We regret that some Japanese media organizations have adopted terms that distort the historical facts regarding the victims of comfort women for the Japanese military, and forced labor, which is merely an attempt to sidestep the essence of the problems.” In December, Reuters received a letter from a Japanese government official objecting to the term “sex slave” in a Nov. 22 article about South Korean comfort women. Reuters removed the term because the wording breached the agency’s stylebook guidance on “comfort women.”(http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=C#.22comfort_women.22) NEW MASTERS Founded in 1897, the Japan Times has a circulation of just 45,000. After years of losses and the death of its previous owner, the paper – published under the banner “All the news without fear or favor” – was sold in 2017 to News2u, a PR company. It’s not unusual in Japan for new management to shift a paper’s editorial stance, and readers may miss subtle changes. But a few months after the sale, some longtime contributors, including Kingston, were told their regular columns were being cut. “I got an email out of the blue saying, ‘We’re terminating your column,’” Kingston said. Mizuno said the paper was open to future submissions from Kingston, but did not say why the column was canceled. “We have retained commentary writers and columnists that are, when appropriate, critical of the Japanese government,” he said in an email. Several reporters also said they felt more editorial pressure. In August 2017, when a local newspaper reported that Tokyo’s governor would snub an annual memorial for Koreans killed by mobs after an earthquake in 1923, reporters rushed to cover the news. But the reporters said they were particularly shocked when, in an email seen by Reuters, Mizuno told staff, “I think there is absolutely no value for us to report on this.” A SWIFT CHANGE A few months after the paper’s exclusive sit-down with Abe in February, Mizuno tried to revise the paper’s style on comfort women and other sensitive topics, presenting editors with more than 100 meticulously annotated articles and columns. In the notes, seen by Reuters, Mizuno objected to calling comfort women “victims” or mentioning that they included girls; questioned referring to Japan’s occupation of Korea as “brutal”; and criticized the paper’s reporting and stories by wire services, including Reuters, as generally “pro-Korea” and not adequately reflecting Japan’s view. “We’re not historians or arbiters of history, nor are we judges,” he wrote. Ultimately, he failed to persuade others, and the matter was put on hold. But the South Korean court ruling in October led to a swift denunciation from the Japanese government and a flurry of coverage. Mizuno turned to senior managers and the board of directors to make broader changes, according to Japan Times employees. Around the same time, the ultra-conservative think tank Japan Institute for National Fundamentals called on English-language media and specifically the Japan Times to refer to plaintiffs in the Seoul case as “wartime Korean workers,” leaving out references to coercion. Two weeks later, the editor’s note appeared in the Japan Times. ($1 = 108.10 yen) (Reporting by Mari Saito and Ami Miyazaki; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Editing by Gerry Doyle) Published at Fri, 19 Jul 2019 06:03:55 +0000 Read the full article

I was rereading the Esper Sisters arc and I noticed this: apparently Tatsumaki was only locked in a cell right at the very end of the three years she spent at the facility.

[Title Redacted]

 How Not to Address Holocaust Denial and Anti-Semitism

When initially asked about Facebook’s refusal to remove the InfoWars page, John Hegeman, head of Facebook’s News Feed, said, “I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards.” More recently, however, InfoWars was banned from YouTube, iTunes, Spotify and Facebook, all within a twelve-hour period.

Although it might seem uncontroversial to keep objectively awful content off social media, historically, censorship and de-platforming has done nothing at all to slow down its spread. In fact, as many conspiracy theories are centered around a victim complex, censorship of any kind can make that complex worse. What has, historically, slowed down the spread of false information is exposure.

In 2009, when Facebook was initially asked to remove holocaust denial pages, their official position was that “being offensive or objectionable doesn’t get it taken off Facebook.” More recently, Mark Zuckerberg said that he wasn’t going to remove Facebook pages advocating holocaust denial, because “there are things that different people get wrong” and it’s more or less impossible to “understand the intent” of such pages. Conversely, the AskHistorians subreddit has pre-emptively banned all Holocaust denial, and strongly urged Facebook to do the same.

Does Facebook Have a Point?

To the delight of an unlikely alliance of authoritarian left wingers and right-wing Israelis, Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly illegal in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Switzerland.

While there can be no reasonable doubt that the Third Reich did its best to eliminate an entire race of people, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses and gays, inter alia, a problem arises when you legally prevent people from saying that this never happened. These governments have taken it upon themselves to censor people’s opinions. The fact that these opinions are incorrect or that they stem from people with a Nazi ideology is irrelevant: freedom of speech is meaningless if you are only free to speak the right opinion.

Anti-Semitism

In 1979, French academic Robert Faurisson was fined 21,000 francs and given a suspended sentence for denying the Holocaust on national television. Hundreds of people (most notably Noam Chomsky) signed a petition, registering their concern about the consequences for civil rights in France. The following year, Faurisson used a copyright-free essay by Chomsky in defense of the general principles of free speech—without Chomsky’s permission—as the preface to his book, “Mémoire en Défense: contre ceux qui m’accusent de falsifier l’histoire”. Although he specifically rejected the idea that he was defending Faurisson in the piece, Chomsky was subsequently vilified as a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite.

Claims of anti-Semitism are so commonly used to silence everything from the mildest criticism of Israeli government policy to genuinely egregious attempts at historical revisionism that it’s almost impossible to assess such accusations objectively. It doesn’t make things any easier that the Israeli government is quite open about its official organization, hasbara, which trains and deploys people to intervene in any and all criticisms of Israel found everywhere from Facebook comment sections to campus debating societies, and has been criticized by the Israeli press for acting as a “substitute for policymaking.”

What we can say, with some certainty, is that anti-Semitic attacks have been measurably on the rise in Europe and the United States. We may not know for some time whether this alarming rise is causing, or caused by, the recent lurch to the right of the electorate in the developed world.

The Holocaust Denial Mind

The more you learn about the Holocaust, the more grotesque and horrifying it seems. The human mind recoils so much that you may even momentarily entertain the thought that surely such a thing could not possibly have happened. But it is important for the study of history, politics and the human mind to understand that it did.

In 1980, the right-wing Institute for Historical Review, whose mission was to promulgate Holocaust denial, announced a $50,000 reward for anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein applied for the reward. When they refused to pay, Mr. Mermelstein took them to court and effectively won his case. In 1985, the institute issued a formal apology to Mr. Mermelstein “for the pain, anguish and suffering he and all other Auschwitz survivors have sustained” as a result of their having made such an offer.

If you trawl the dark corners of the internet, where conspiracy theories breed, you will encounter lots of Holocaust deniers. They occupy the same mental space (and sometimes the same physical space) as people who question the JFK assassination, or who believe that the 9/11 bombings were an inside job. The psychology behind these conspiracy theories is easy enough to understand. First, it’s much more comfortable to believe that dark forces are causing these terrible things than to accept that sometimes genuinely awful things happen for fairly banal reasons. Secondly—much like praying to a god—holding secret knowledge about the “real” explanations for significant events gives a sense of control to the kind of people who have often been excluded from avenues of power.

There are two aspects to Holocaust denialism. The first, of course, is to deny the Holocaust: to claim that it either never happened, or has been wildly exaggerated for reasons which invariably include the idea that this is all a marketing exercise to ensure sympathy for the formation of a Jewish state—to assert that all the records were faked, all the witnesses were lying. I’ve seen people claim, for instance, that around 500,000 Jews were killed, instead of the generally accepted figure of 6 million. Only an anti-Semitic mind could believe that killing 500,000 Jews for any reason would not itself be noteworthy. There are also those who claim that Hitler wasn’t as bad as he has been made out to be, and that he was perfectly fair to Jews in Germany.

The second common gambit is to explain at length how Jews are destroying the world, how they only look after their own kind, how they run the banks and the movies, how they’re also somehow in charge of the labor movements, and how the whole world economy is just a front for Jews who want to get rich from the labor of others. Some even urge that the Jews need to be stopped by any means necessary. Though it is rarely explicitly stated, there is a strong undercurrent to this sort of thinking—that no one could really have blamed Hitler for killing so many Jews.

So, according to this view, the Jews were not killed in the Holocaust, and anyway, if they were, they had it coming. As it turns out, the anti-Semitic thread running through all these arguments is precisely the same sort of hateful rubbish that led to an environment of acceptance of genocide. At the very least, the more hate you promulgate towards the Jews, the greater the demonstration of how much worse it must have been when hating Jews was socially acceptable.

In 1987, revisionist historian David Irving published a book called “Churchill’s War”. In 1993, historian Deborah Lipstadt published “Denying the Holocaust”, which referred to “Churchill’s War” and accused Irving of using different standards of evidence, depending on whether or not a piece of information fit his anti-Semitic theories. In 1996, Irving sued Lipstadt for libel. Despite the fact that he purposefully filed the case in an English court, where the lower standards of evidence required made it easier to prosecute a case for defamation than in any other jurisdiction in which Lipstadt’s book was published, the judge ruled that “he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist.”

Irving was bankrupted by the case, and his career was destroyed, as historians pored over his previous works in the light of Lipstadt’s book. In the end, what destroyed Irving was not his repeated de-platforming all over the world, but the presentation of Lipstadt’s more compelling view, backed up by more convincing facts.

In 2005, Austrian police arrested Irving on the basis of a 1989 warrant for publicly denying the Holocaust. During these proceedings, he said he had changed his mind: “I made a mistake,” because “The Nazis did murder millions of Jews.”

Stopping Hate

One of the problems with fascism, like other fringe political movements, is that it thrives in the dark. The idea that some things can’t be talked about feeds into the victim complex that far-right ideology requires. Censorship doesn’t shut fascists down: it empowers them. Removing offensive opinions from public discourse does not remove them from our lives, but, like vampires, they explode when sunlight hits them.

For Facebook, whose primary interest is in making money, rather than acting as a fact-checking site for political propaganda, mass action on hate speech is very difficult, given that it’s a demand-side rather than a supply-side problem. Although it probably doesn’t feel like it at the time, people choose when and how to take offence. There is always a risk that people will get offended by worthwhile ideas that are nevertheless very unpopular, and safeguarding people from toxic ideologies could turn into babysitting the most offendable users. Catering to the most sensitive members of the audience has a stultifying effect on public discourse, and presumably the more worthwhile values are not so fragile that they require paternalistic protection from being questioned. The best response to bad ideas will always be good ideas and it still counts as censorship even if the thing you’re not allowed to say is incredibly stupid.

One of the prices of free speech is the risk that charismatic malefactors might influence others to do harm, but free speech is objectively more important than that risk. Freedom of speech necessarily supersedes anything you have to say.

The original title of this article was the ironic “Was The Holocaust Really That Bad?” The fact that the title had to be redacted, to ensure it avoided ending up on a list on a server in a dark basement somewhere demonstrates the need for this sort of discussion. The fact that people would have reacted with outrage without actually reading any of the article is part of the problem. Censoring all references to it merely prevents public access to the information necessary to understand why Holocaust denial is such an odious ideology.

Areo Magazine, 9 August 2018

Proof that it was all about the money…...

This excellent article reveals Moon's core personal motivation when examined in light of the circumstances and the time period:

http://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/post/169659162458/moon-personally-extracted-500-million-from

Moon had to have known that Chun Hwa Pak  (his former first disciple), was working on his explosive expose on Moon's sexual fetishes along with other disaffected members. The book was published in Japan shortly after Moon conducted this workshop in Cheju Island and Pak went on a promotional tour in Japan to sell the book. Chun Hwa Pak probably got sanction from South Korean Intelligence to write the book and publish in Japan but was careful to avoid revealing any and all connections between Moon and the Intelligence services of S. Korea, Japan and the U.S. The K.C.I.A. had developed a reputation for being violent and ruthless but was undergoing changes at this time with the rest of Korean society which was entering the process of Democratization with the recent election of former dissident Kim Young Sam. Previous to this time, South Korea was dominated by a series of strict military Governments. Pak actually mentions this in his book "The Tragedy of the six Marys".

Moon conducted this workshop in anticipation of significant fallout from Pak's revelations and made revealing explanations justifying his behavior to the participants of the workshop. The audience were exclusively Japanese women and under strict guidelines not to reveal the contents to the general membership. There was a media blackout in the United States on Pak's book and the church's posture was business as usual during these events in Japan. Having extracted as much money from the Japanese membership that they judged bearable at the time, Moon went on a land buying spree in South America presumably to escape public scrutiny and restart the church in a more favorable environment.  The Japanese church went into hyper damage control to contain the revelations and members tried to buy up all the books available on the news stands that they could. Eventually they negotiated to bribe Chun Hwa Pak off for a considerable sum and he was persuaded to tour the U.C. in Japan apologizing before the members. The book stayed in circulation but wasn't reprinted and was never published in S. Korea. Because the other ex-members involved in writing their testimonials in the book were not privy to Pak's arrangement with the church, they released the book to the S. Korean public through an informal network of Christian churches. 

Moon was successful in staving off being publicly exposed in the United States for a number of years through clever compartmentalization of membership by language and culture. There also appears to be an arrangement of tacit support for Moon by the C.I.A. who wield significant influence in the media in the U.S. When Moon's son Hyo Jin had his messy public divorce in the late nineties and Nan Sook wrote her expose, the public interest in the cult increased. Chun Hwa Pak's book, Tragedy of the Six Marys, began circulating from S. Korean sources and a few Western ex-members attempted a partial translation and publication on the Internet that was just coming into prominence. Moon's venture in South America once again became an important focus of the church with Moon again charging exorbitant fees to Japanese members to visit his earthly paradise. He also encouraged Western members to sell their homes and donate the proceeds to the church, then relocate to his property in South America. I don't believe many followed him except to take expensive camping and fishing trips to the location. Possibly due to the resemblance of the scenario to the Peoples temple-Jonestown debacle.

This isn't my first or last attempt at Unification church historical revisionism and as always I welcome any and all honest criticism of my presentation of the facts. Frank F