They don't own the Canadian Globe and Mail which repeats some of the comments about the media in Japan and highlights some questions about the Abe/(Moonie aka Unification Church aka Family Federation) relationship.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-tetsuya-yamaga...

The Spiegel didn't have much good to say about Abe either. The first article on their front page (when news of his death became known) was not a nice obituary. It might also reflect the huge gap between the way Germany responded to WWII and the way Japan did.

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/shinz-abe-nachruf-der-japanis...

Is it a requirement for every Asian cult to own a few American newspapers? I know of two others

Don't you dare besmirch The Epoch Times.

Edit: People don't understand /s. Poe's law strikes again.

Also, The Christian Science Monitor does a terrible job monitoring Christian Science and Christianity, but they do alright on science. They're absolutely flying off the handle with their obvious slant towards uncontroversial, neutral, factual reporting. Those bastards.

I hope no one misses the implied /s regarding CSM.

The Christian Science Monitor is a model of great reporting in a time when few models exist.

I am saddened when someone downplays a CSM report as biased because the listener assumes some form of Christian fundamentalism.

So, I'm not alone in wondering if they should be treated like bible thumpers, or not.

Good to know. Also good to know they aren't bible thumpers, and just happen to be 'Christians' monitoring science, as per the name implies.

Uh, no. Christian Science, like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, are yet another American-made Christian sect founded in the 19th century by a charismatic leader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Baker_Eddy

Val Kilmer is even a member! They definitely have a quieter, less evangelical profile than those other sects, but they do appear in the background of American cultural life, with Christian Science Reading Rooms in many cities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science_Reading_Room

That said, despite them being a new religious movement and having very suspect beliefs about medicine, this thread isn't the first time I've heard that their newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor does very good journalism, outside of the health news reporting.

CSM is fantastic (yes, outside health adjacent of faith healing) in terms of long-form investigative journalism.

They essentially don't have much to do with religion apart from including a page on religion and you wonder a bit about health topics.

The name should be read as The Monitor, owned by Christian Scientists. Christian Scientist is a specific sect. Monitor here is like any other newspaper name, it could be The Christian Science Times, or Christian Science Observer

Like kevinmchugh pointed out, imagine parentheses to group "(Christian Science) Monitor". Christian Science is a set of beliefs that the "First Church of Christ, Scientist" adhere to.

Stuff like the belief that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.

Sadly, this makes the appearance of the word "Science" even more confusing to the casual observer.

Fair enough. Though I do want to say anecdotally at least that mind over matter can be pretty powerful stuff...

Placebo's and Nocebo effects wouldn't exist without it.

True. I'd still rather listen to what my oncologist has to say, though.

That's what Val Kilmer did, yep.

https://www.etonline.com/val-kilmer-explains-why-he-got-chem...

There are no religious nuts in cancer-holes.

FYI: whether the placebo effect even exists is somewhat controversial (in a different way from does god exist). https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=placebo+effect+myth There certainly is a lot of bad science and misinformation about the placebo effect.

This seems to be a search that contains one editorial-style article (it isn't labeled as opinion/editorial, and is published in what superficially seems to be a research journal, but it is neither a study or meta-analysis, simply a stream of conclusion opinions and just so statements) and lots of secondary reporting of that same article.

I don't know... if it was 'somewhat controversial' you wouldn't be the first person trying to tell me about it...

And I am quite adept at finding controversial topics...

Annnnd my sources are usually from things like the NCBI... and Mayo Clinic...

But to be fair to you, I did find this study done by Wayne B Jonas posted to the NCBI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/

So I'll give it some consideration; but yeah... I usually ignore this kind of thing because of how misinformation is first seeded as being "They don't want you to know this" or "Unknown to others, but now you can learn the truth" etc, etc.

So no offense. Just me being my usual critical self.

Edit: I'd like to post this excerpt from the start of the article. It basically reiterates what I was ultimately getting at, while still pushing the authors original point and your point about placebo itself being a myth.

> The fact is people heal and that inherent healing capacity is both powerful and influenced by mental, social, and contextual factors that are embedded in every medical encounter since the idea of treatment began. In this chapter, I argue that our understanding of healing and ability to enhance it will be accelerated if we stop using the term “placebo response” and call it what it is—the meaning response, and its special application in medicine called the healing response.

That would be wrong too. I don't know who said it, but a well known quip about them is that they are neither Christian nor scientific. (It may actually have been Mark Twain for once, he had a brief disappointing interaction with them).

They believe Jesus (but mostly the founder, Mary Baker Eddy) came with secret knowledge of how you can heal by thinking the right thoughts. This is possible because, basically, objective reality is an illusion/all in your mind. On the heresy scale, if JW is a 3 and Mormonism is 4, i would say Christian Science is 10.

They regularly come up in the news when their kids die from rejecting medical treatment in favour of faith healing (or maybe correct-thinking healing is more accurate).

CSM lost almost all its connection to CS along with the decline of the cult's popularity.

How are you calibrating that scale and where would Seventh-Day Adventists be on it

Wow, CSM, that's a name I haven't thought of in a long time. Over a decade ago while I was still in college I worked for a local web dev shop and I worked on their website (csmonitor.com). I can barely remember what I was doing, minor UI stuff and I think maybe spinning up more sites in their "network". IIRC it was a WordPress multisite (if that's even the right name, back when the "multisite" was a plugin though I think there is some core support now? Not sure).

I knew absolutely nothing about them and more than once I took down parts of their live site by accident (back in the bad old days of FTP-ing files directly to the prod server, there was no "dev"/"qa"/etc). At some point along the way I read a little more about them and was pretty disgusted by it all. Thankfully that work didn't last for very long and I was moved to other projects.

no requirement, just smart business

Last I checked American newspapers were not profit centers, so business is likely not the motivation - other than perhaps the value of controlling media in terms of propaganda, i.e. narrative control, which may be of value to other businesses owned by the entity. (Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post, for example, is only a 'good business decision' in the context of providing a platform that enhances the business interests of Amazon (which seeks to avoid unionization) and AWS (which seeks expanded government contracts)).

your second point was the main point in my admittedly overly cryptic comment.

Narrative control + amplification power + even brand awareness = revenue opportunity. For example, The Epoch Times, the media mouthpiece of Falun Gong, promotes Shen Yun, the Chinese Dance troupe showcasing the 'beauty of China before Communism'. Propaganda and Profit need each other

Can you tell about the two others?

The Epoch Times is owned by Falun Gong. (They are apocalyptic/UFO/meditation cult, they have been banned in China and, if you believe their claims, organ harvested. I don’t know how much to believe those claims, but China does keep a lot of things with organs weirdly secret. FG are present at every anti-Chinese protest. They also do the Chinese ballet which name I forgot now…. ah yeah Shen Yun)

I don’t know any other.

Attended one of the shows in France, a few months ago. They politicized it right from the beginning, by having some bozos with English language fluency critize the Chinese government (not that they don't deserve it, but the way it was done sounded like far right American rhetoric). The show itself was vomit inducing, so I left after the first half an hour. As I was waiting outside for someone to exit, at the formal intermezzo mark, I couldn't help noticing lots of other people leaving the avenue. Doesn't surprise me to learn about the relationship with falun gong cult.

The tagline on their flyers used to be "5000 years of culture reborn"

And I guess they rethought the subtlety because now it's "China before communism"

In Toronto (probably also everywhere) FG tend to hijack parades by having 100s of marchers, regardless of what the parade itself is celebrating. I find it quite obnoxious, since it makes every parade except for Pride look like it's Falun Gong Day.

They must pay a lot into the parades in order to even be accepted in such large numbers.

They do 4th of July all over the US. It's quite impressive actually. Saw them recently in DC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqHvBqLZghI

Impressive because of the numbers. They don't care about July 4, just like they don't care about Canada day. They do care about taking up half the parade to make sure you notice them and are impressed by their numbers, though.

There is no other reason they constantly try to outdo and outnumber everyone in parades that have nothing to do with religions or cults. That's why I refer to it as hijacking. It's not about them, but they absolutely make sure they are the ones you remember.

I read what I think is the Zhuan Falun years ago when the cult was newer and they posted documents online[*]. One of their beliefs that jumped out at me was that they believe that David Copperfield is an actual magician who is only pretending to be a stage magician, and was actually doing magic during his stage shows.

edit: The Falun Gong have three OTA broadcast channels in Chicago, but Iranian official government news is too dangerous for me to be exposed to.

* Looks like they still do at https://en.falundafa.org/falun-dafa-books.html

Wow I did not know they did that Chinese ballet. I will be sure to never attend that now. I had checked the prices before and was amazed at how unexpectedly expensive it was.

>They are apocalyptic/UFO/meditation cult

I didn't see anything like you describe[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong#Central_teachings

>through a process of moral cultivation, one can achieve Tao and obtain special powers and a level of divinity

If you read their books (e.g. https://falundafa.org/eng/eng/pdf/flg_en.pdf, just search for "David Copperfield"), they elaborate a bit more on the potential supernatural abilities that one can achieve through meditation.

Nothing they do is unique or substantially different than many of the Asiatic religions that have existed. People tend to fear what they don't understand.

You don't have to trust them, the organ harvesting is well documented and criticized by human rights organizations. Don't make the mistake of being agnostic about their victimization just because they are an usympathetic right wing person cult.

Most people that are criticizing FG here are either natural born Chinese who are taught to hate them or unknowing westerners that have been swayed by CCP propaganda (I am willing to bet there is some on this very thread). I don't see any valid attacks on here other than ad hominem.

I'm guessing the other one, besides Falun Gong and the Unification Church, is Olivet Church, a Korean messianic sect that bought Newsweek.

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/03/newsweek-ibt-olive...

They aren't nearly as influential as you might think, especially in modern times. Maybe they were during the cold war or when they protested in support of Nixon. Their media reach is pretty limited, The Washington Times has a small number of readers.

Edit: to the comment about $2B: that's almost mostly belonging to the founder who takes his money from followers. $2B is 130k a person when we're talking about 15,000 followers.

A big reason they aren't as influential anymore is because Reverend Moon died, and there is currently a battle royale going on between his widow and some of his batshit insane kids [1] over his fortune.

The True World Foods story is truly fascinating to me. Since slavery is illegal, better to get true believers to work long and hard nearly for free.

1. https://www.the-sun.com/news/us-news/2977349/inside-maga-sup...

This article [1] is a bit more informative on the history and soap-opera dynastic schism.

I don't have firsthand knowledge of it all, but I do know some ex-Moonies who've spoken of their efforts to safely detach their still-adherent relatives.

1. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/530522/lengthy-lawsu...

They might not be as wealthy or powerful as other religious sects, but them being a cult is still of concern because by nature they are 1) secretive and non-transparent, 2) capable of fierce organizational discipline including taking advantage of members, 3) operate via proselytizing including underhanded means, 4) open to extremist and authoritarian beliefs. That's in the very nature of cults. Add that to their historically-potent political influence from the Cold War, and they're still worthy of investigation.

Their political strength is decreasing in the US, while Falun Gong's is on the rise. Both have similar political goals. Falun Gong is the cult that owns right wing rag The Epoch Times and puts on the Shen Yun show.

NYT did a great article on True World Foods: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/05/magazine/sush...

Archive version: https://archive.ph/ZAy6D

Pod version: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sunday-read-the-un...

YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EqHuAJYdr8

I found this list of companies affiliated with the Moonies (many defunct).

https://culteducation.com/unif121.html

Here is an interesting quote by someone who ran two of these businesses in the SF bay area.

"'With no labor costs and people willing to work 14 to 15 hours a day, you can undercut anybody' he said. Scales said that when he ran the Aladdin restaurants, employees signed over their pay-checks to the personal slush fund of West Coast church leader"

The article was from 1977 - and the Moonies tried to reform themselves later, but at that time they were slave labor businesses. Moon was able to shield his practices using his tax exempt status as a religious organisation.

Replace "Moonie" with any mainstream religion and mention of race with the race such religion most widely applies to, and I hope the bigotry of this comment becomes far more clear.

Eh..not really. Moonie is a specific religious sect (and a horrible, vile, dim-witted one without sugar-coating). If you ask me, they should be singled out and massively shamed for their atrocities.

Mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam have billions of adherents between them and aren't a single group. They're many sub-sets within them, many of whom aren't fond of each other, so you can't generalize with that case.

Call it "bigotry"...but what else can we say about a "church" whose adherents bless their AR-15 and wear a crown of bullets [1]. It's not bigotry to be scared of such loons and the kind of havoc they can potentially cause.

Religious freedom does not give people the authority to be nuisances within their community.

1- https://www.vox.com/2018/3/1/17067894/church-bullet-crowns-a...

This article is specifically about Moonies though. I've also heard first hand accounts of that exact situation happening in the town where I went to college many years ago.

I’m not saying anything about the content of the article, the article is fine. I am remarking on the commenters bigoted tone, and how people let it slide because it’s a religion they are unfamiliar with.

I think people feel more confident making generalizations about novel religious groups, even relatively large ones. And maybe especially novel religious groups with centralized control. Unification Church is basically the same age as Scientology.

I agree with you on "replace it with any religion" but I don't find it bigotry necessarily - I am averse to any and all religious influence on anything, and I'm happy to see it brought up to attention and awareness everywhere. As to the frequent Venn diagram overlap of locally predominant religion with corresponding country / nationality / ethnicity / etc, while that frequently the case, I agree we should focus on the underlying viral meme that's religion and not the confounding variable of nationality.

I mean, I've lived in Canada for 20 years before I've realized that friendly kids asking for donation for salvation army in super markets are in fact members of a massive church. Things some people find obvious aren't well known to others.

> think twice before giving them money because you'd be supporting the late George Bush Sr's 2nd-favorite cult.

> They also own The Washington Times and United Press International (UPI).

> And True World Foods, which runs a major portion of the sushi trade in the US.

> Numerous other innocent-sounding organizations in many, many sports, interest groups, and industries.

Like if someone wrote any of that about Jews, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that they were an anti-semite.

Fair.

One of the tricky things about that is that "jew" is both a religion (presumed to be a "by choice affiliation") as well as ethnicity (less "by choice" affiliation), as well as culture and sometimes nationality.

If I say "people who believe in loch Ness are gullible", that's viewed as ok in most places. Saying "Germans are gullible" is less likely to be true or acceptable. Saying "Christians are gullible" will depend on location - even most freedom of speech democracies will have blasphemy laws and cultures where they protect belief in Jesus in ways they do not protect belief in Yeti (I clearly have an opinion on that :).

Saying "Jews are gullible" will probably be viewed as anti semitic due to history, pattern, likelihood, as well as the confluence of what the word itself means. "Jew" is such a massive Venn diagram.

FWIW Ultimately I believe (and I'm sometimes lonely in that) that intent rather than keywords are important. I chose to gave benefit of doubt to poster (perhaps mistakenly).

I think one can be particularly legitimately concerned about religions that:

* directly accumulate controlling ownership interests in key businesses.

* use dubious fundraising and recruitment practices.

* form complex webs of not-obviously-related entities to use in influence operations.

* have acted as a pseudo-cult of personality of a figure in living memory.

* are possibly abusive to their members in various ways.

Doesn't that cover most organized religions?

Not really.

> > * directly accumulate controlling ownership interests in key businesses.

OK, there's things like Catholic healthcare and schools or the Adventists' various interests. They're mostly pretty clearly branded as being Catholic or Adventist affiliated. For the most part, this is not something religions do, though certainly there are areas of concern, like faith-affiliated substance abuse programs used to recruit the vulnerable.

> > * use dubious fundraising and recruitment practices.

OK, perhaps religious fundraising isn't perfect, but most religions do not engage in employing missionaries as quasi-slave-labor to panhandle funds from the public at scale. Of course, you can find an exception or two, like the Salvation Army.

> > * form complex webs of not-obviously-related entities to use in influence operations.

Doing this on anywhere near the scale of the Unification Church is basically unheard of.

> > * have acted as a pseudo-cult of personality of a figure in living memory.

Basically here you've mostly got the Unification Church, Scientology, and various kinds of "prosperity" churches.

> > * are possibly abusive to their members in various ways.

OK, you've got me here: a lot of religions dabble in abusing their members.

Obviously not. And conversely, it does cover some political cults.

Jews are not comparable to the Moonies. They are not a single organization but rather a loosely related set of varying ethnic groups and religious practices.

A better analogy would be to imagine people writing similar things about, say, the Satmar Hasidim. In which case it wouldn’t sound anti-Semitic at all (although I’m sure the Satmar might try to claim it was).

Most synagogues aren't cult-like. Quite the opposite, really. However, there definitely are some forms of Judaism which deserve the label. Even my Israeli friends think the Haredi are batshit crazy. You would not accuse the people who made this film of being anti-semites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_of_Us_(2017_film)

It's fair to call out the wackiest religious cults, and Christendom offers many to choose from.

I'm prepared to say it about any tightly centrally controlled cult that uses front groups. Including Jewish ones, should I find any. (Though, Judaism has enough diversity that even if such one existed, it would not reflect on other religious Jews, let alone people who are Jews only in the culture/ethnicity sense).

It's not only about religion either. There are also political cults that employ large number of front groups, like the Danish Tvind.

And if they wrote it about scientology it would be entirely uncontroversial

Of course. No one here is denying being an anti-Moonite.

Just like when people here are anti-Google or anti-Apple, they aren't bigots.

Moonies, Google, and Apple, and the Mormon Church and Catholic Church, and unlike Judaism, are specific business organizations with observable behaviors, not a personal belief and lifestyle.