GAPYEONG, South Korea (AP) -- The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed messiah who built a global business empire. He called both North Korean leaders and American presidents his friends, but spent time in prisons in both countries. His followers around the world cherished him, while his detractors accused him of brainwashing recruits and extracting money from worshippers.
These contradictions did nothing to stop the founder of the Unification Church from turning his religious vision into a worldwide movement and a multibillion-dollar corporation stretching from the Korean Peninsula to the United States.
Moon died Monday at a church-owned hospital near his home in Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, two weeks after being hospitalized with pneumonia, Unification Church spokesman Ahn Ho-yeul told The Associated Press. Moon''s wife and children were at his side, Ahn said. He was 92.
The church will hold a 13-day mourning period beginning Monday and start accepting mourners Thursday at a multipurpose gym at its nearby religious center, the church said in a statement. The funeral will be held Sept. 15, and Moon will be buried at nearby Cheonseung Mountain, where his home is located, the statement said.
Moon founded his Bible-based religion in Seoul in 1954, a year after the Korean War ended, saying Jesus Christ personally called on him to complete his work.
The church gained fame -- and notoriety -- by marrying thousands of followers in mass ceremonies presided over by Moon himself. The couples often came from different countries and had never met, but were matched up by Moon in a bid to build a multicultural religious world.
Today, the Unification Church has 3 million followers, including 100,000 members in the U.S., and has sent missionaries to 194 countries, Ahn said. But ex-members and critics say the figure is actually no more than 100,000 members worldwide.
The church''s holdings include the Washington Times newspaper; the New Yorker Hotel, a midtown Manhattan art deco landmark; and a seafood distribution firm that supplies sushi to Japanese restaurants across the U.S. It gave the University of Bridgeport $110 million over more than a decade to keep the Connecticut school operating.
It acquired a ski resort, a professional football team and other businesses in South Korea. It also operates a foreign-owned luxury hotel in North Korea and jointly operates a fledgling North Korean automaker.
The church has been accused of using devious recruitment tactics and duping followers out of money. Parents of followers in the United States and elsewhere have expressed worries that their children were brainwashed into joining. The church has pointed out that many new religious movements faced similar accusations in their early years. Moon''s followers were often called "Moonies," a term many found pejorative.
Moon was born in 1920 in a rural part of what is today North Korea. He said he was 16 when Jesus Christ first appeared to him and told him to finish the work he had begun on Earth 2,000 years earlier. Moon, who tried to preach the gospel in the North, was imprisoned there in the late 1940s for alleged spying for South Korea; he disputed the charge.
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, he went to South Korea. After divorcing his first wife, he married Hak Ja Han Moon in 1960.
In South Korea, Moon quickly drew young acolytes to his conservative, family-oriented value system and unusual interpretation of the Bible. He conducted his first mass wedding in Seoul in the early 1960s, and the "blessing ceremonies" grew in scale over the years. A 1982 wedding at New York''s Madison Square Garden -- the first outside South Korea -- drew thousands of participants.
"International and intercultural marriages are the quickest way to bring about an ideal world of peace," Moon said in a 2009 autobiography. "People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so that the world of peace can come that much more quickly."
Despite his prior condemnations of communism as the Devil''s work, Moon began building a relationshio with North Korea in 1991, even meeting with the country''s founder, Kim Il Sung, in the eastern North Korean port city of Hamhung. In his autobiography, Moon said he urged Kim to give up his nuclear ambitions, and that Kim responded by saying that his atomic program was for peaceful purposes and he had no intention to use it to "kill my own people."
"The two of us were able to communicate well about our shared hobbies of hunting and fishing," Moon wrote. "At one point, we each felt we had so much to say to the other that we just started talking like old friends meeting after a long separation."
When Kim died in 1994, Moon sent a condolence delegation to North Korea, drawing criticism from conservatives at home. The late Kim Jong Il, who succeeded his father as North Korean leader, sent roses, prized wild ginseng, Rolex watches and other gifts to Moon on his birthday each year. Moon said Kim Il Sung had instructed Kim Jong Il that "after I die, if there are things to discuss pertaining to North-South relations, you must always seek the advice of President Moon."
The church also sent a delegation to pay its respects after Kim Jong Il died in December and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Un.
Moon sought and eventually developed a good relationship with conservative American leaders such as former Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Yet he also served 13 months at a U.S. federal prison in the mid-1980s after a New York City jury convicted him of filing false tax returns. The church says the U.S. government persecuted Moon because of his growing influence and popularity with young Americans.
One of the more bizarre chapters in Moon''s relationship with Washington came in 2004, when more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers attended a "coronation ceremony" for Moon and his wife in which Moon declared himself humanity''s savior and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons." Some of the congressmen later said they had been misled and hadn''t been aware that Moon would be at the event.
In later years, the church adopted a lower profile in the United States and focused on building up its businesses. Moon lived for more than 30 years in the United States, the church said.
As he grew older, Moon also handed over day-to-day control of his empire to his children, but in 2009 he married 45,000 people in simultaneous ceremonies worldwide in his first large-scale mass wedding in years, the church said. Some were newlyweds and others reaffirmed past vows.
Moon married an additional 7,000 couples in South Korea in February 2010. The ceremonies attracted media coverage but little of the controversy that dogged the church in earlier decades.
Moon and Hak Ja Han have 10 surviving sons and daughters, according to the church.
One of Moon''s sons reportedly sued his mother in 2011 demanding the return of more than $22 million allegedly sent without his consent from a company he runs to his mother''s missionary group. Yonhap news agency reported that a court ruled the money was a loan but ordered it returned.
Another son committed suicide in 1999, officials said, plunging to his death from the 17th floor of Harrah''s hotel in downtown Reno, Nevada. Two other sons reportedly died in accidents, one in a car accident and another in a train wreck.
Moon''s U.S.-born youngest son, the Rev. Hyung-jin Moon, was named the church''s top religious director in April 2008. Other children run the church''s businesses and charitable activities in South Korea and abroad.
Hyung-jin Moon told The Associated Press in February 2010 that his father''s offspring do not see themselves as his successors.
"Our role is not inheriting that messianic role," he said. "Our role is more of the apostles ... where we become the bridge between understanding what kind of lives (our) two parents have lived."
[CBC] Egypt's new defence minister has retired 70 army generals and removed a few of them from the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, according to media reports.
BBC News and Al-Arabiya network say Col.-Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi acted to get rid of the generals ahead of a plan to form a new military council.
The reports say al-Sisi removed six members from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... those men will still remain as members of the armed forces.
Sisi was appointed only weeks ago by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who had forced then-Defence Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and the armed forces chief of staff Sami Anan to step down. Both now serve as consultants to the government.
Both men had been key members of the military council, which had broad legislative and executive powers.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
This should go down well as it has in Turkey. I guess they got the idea in their last meeting.
The politicians want to play the game themselves.
I believe the same thing is happening in China at this time. Then just recently in North Korea.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Foreign observer missions monitoring the Angolan election, which is set to return long-ruling Jose Eduardo dos Santos to power, said Sunday the vote was credible.
"The general elections in Angola were free, fair, transparent and credible," said Pedro Verona Pires, who headed the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... team of observers.
The Community of Portuguese-speaking countries, CPLP, said the elections were "free, transparent and democratic".
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (CIRGL), also shared similar findings.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Veuillot's quote has been used many times to describe the essence of African politics:
When I am weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle. Louis Veuillot
[Yemen Post] A Yemeni court convicted two people of marketing and trading in drugs sentencing them to 25 years in prison each, the Yemeni official agency Saba reported on Sunday.
The specialized penal court in Hadramout ...the formerly independent Qu'aiti state and sultanate, annexed by Communist South Yemen in 1968, encompassing a region along the Gulf of Aden, extending eastwards to the borders of the Dhofar region of Oman. The people are called Hadhramis and speak Hadhrami Arabic. The city Tarimis estimated to contain the highest concentration of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (PTUI) anywhere in the world, approximately seven in every square yard... delivered the ruling against Hani Salah Ahmed Al-Bakri and Khalil Salim Muhammad Bawazir with which the authorities seized 5 kg of hashish, the agency added.
On Saturday, the authorities seized a large quantity of drugs, about one million drug bills, in Sanaa international airport. The authorities did not give more details about the drugs amid reports warning of increasing drugs trade and consumption in the country.
This year, the authorities destroyed large quantities of drugs worth about $5 million in Hadramout province that were seized last year and this year.
In recent years, Yemen locked away Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! tens of drugs traders and traffickers including Iranians and Paks. Some of them have went on trials and received sentences including death ones.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2012 00:00 ||
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Unusually light sentences - must have had connections.
[Bangla Daily Star] The mystery surrounding the killing of Dr Narayan Chandra Dutta Nitai on August 23 deepened as six suspects placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! by the Rapid Action Battaliongrabbed credit for the murder before the media yesterday.
Earlier, four men nabbed Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! by the Detective Branch of police on August 25 and another on Saturday admitted to being involved in the murder of Nitai, assistant professor of the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH), at his Mohakhali residence in the capital.
Both the groups, however, named one person, Masum Mintu, 24, placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! on Saturday by DB, as the one who had stabbed the physician, who also owned a private clinic named Reliance Medical and Services in Dhaka.
A few Rab sources, meanwhile, said two doctors of the NIDCH had links with the killing as prior to the incident they had communicated several times with the manager of Nitai's clinic, his driver and assistant.
One of the two doctors had already been placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! by Rab, a Rab source said, wishing anonymity. But the Rab authorities denied it.
The arrestees in Rab custody are Nitai's manager Saifur Rahman, 36, driver Kamrul Hasan Arun, 27, assistant Tariqul Islam, 24, and three others -- Bakul Miah, 26, Rafiqul Islam, 24, and Sayeed, 25.
At a press briefing yesterday at the Rab headquarters in Dhaka, Arun said he had hired Bakul, Rafiqul, Sayeed, Hossain and Mintu on the instructions of manager Saifur and medical assistant Tariqul to loot Tk 20 lakh in cash and 108 tolas of gold from the doctor's house.
"We were five in the gang. Bakul, Sayeed, Hossain, Mintu and I entered the house. Mintu stabbed the doctor to death," Rafiqul said.
Saifur, however, claimed that he had not been involved.
Another four arrestees -- Peda Mashud, 25, Saidul, 37, Pichhi Kalam, 26, and Faisal, 30 -- at the briefing arranged by DB on August 25 said they had been seven in a group. Four of them had entered the house while the other three had remained outside.
Mintu was the one who had stabbed the doctor, resulting in his death, they said.
Mintu after his arrest on Saturday said his associates Sayeed and Bakul had taken him to rob, with them, Nitai's house at NIDCH compound at dead of night.
He also said Nitai's driver had informed them of the cash from the sale of a piece of land and gold and that a group of seven had attempted the robbery.
Both Rab and DB have been claiming that they have placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! the real killers.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/03/2012 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
GAPYEONG, South Korea (AP) -- The Rev. Sun Myung Moon was a self-proclaimed messiah who built a global business empire. He called both North Korean leaders and American presidents his friends, but spent time in prisons in both countries. His followers around the world cherished him, while his detractors accused him of brainwashing recruits and extracting money from worshippers.
[CBC] Egypt's new defence minister has retired 70 army generals and removed a few of them from the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, according to media reports.
