WTimes, Bushes Hail Rev. Moon

[laststeamtrain]

WTimes, Bushes Hail Rev. Moon

By Robert Parry
October 2, 2009

Since journalist John Solomon decamped from the Washington Post to become executive editor of the right-wing Washington Times in 2008, the newspaper has tried to shake its image as a political front for its founder, right-wing South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon.

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So what is one to make of the “independent” Washington Times leading its “Nation” news section Friday with a puff piece about Rev. Moon’s “much-anticipated autobiography that recounts the joys and challenges, the teachable moments and the monumental experiences of his life – much of it spent as a spiritual leader”?

The article by Jennifer Harper starts with this hard-hitting lede: “He has been on the planet nine decades, and he is buoyant of spirit and sure of step.” But the article doesn’t tell us much about the substance of the book, which is entitled As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, or almost anything about Moon’s real history.

For instance, there’s no mention of Moon’s financial and political support for right-wing death squads that terrorized Central America in the 1980s, nor his collaboration with right-wing regimes implicated in the drug trade in Asia and Latin America, nor his long record of illegal money-laundering.

Nor are there any interesting tidbits about his bizarre “religious” views, such as his early practice of “blessing the wombs” of female followers by having intercourse with them in rituals to purify the human race. Nor do we learn about Moon as the self-proclaimed new Messiah sent by God to correct the errors of Jesus, who supposedly didn’t do his part by having sex with women.

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Still, there was real news in the article. We learn that among the “written congratulatory greetings” delivered to the “celebration” at an Arlington, Virginia, hotel were letters from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, and former President George H.W. Bush “handwritten and hand-delivered by his son Neil Bush.”

<more>

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/100209.html

[JohnWxy]

1. "in praise of ignorance"