USA should have done this to Scientology after they infiltrated the CIA or whatever it was.
At some point you have to be able to do so, despite religious protections. Otherwise “we are a religion” is a “get out of jail” card.
It was various offices but mainly the IRS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
Operation Snow White was a criminal conspiracy by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of infiltrations into and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members in more than 30 countries.
I was watching a video by right to repair advocate Louis Rossman yesterday and he was basically saying that he's fine to go after big companies and the government to try and get right to repair passed, but he doesn't want to fuck with Scientology because they appear to be psychos that will harass the shit out of him and probably wreck his life if he gets in their way. Apparently they are anti-right to repair because they have some fake ass thetan reading machines they sell for $5000.
Anyway, he mentions some of the shit they did in his video, and while I'm not sure if it's a fact or not, he does mention that they were going after the IRS for years to try and get out of paying taxes after laws changed and they lost their tax-exempt status. After a huge amount of harassment and other crime against the IRS over 37 years, they eventually got their taxes reduced from something like a billion+ dollars to $12.5 million... How did they not just end up in jail?
It is fact:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/irs.html
On 1 October 1993, the Church of Scientology obtained tax exemption from the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This ended 26 years of what the Church itself has described as a "war" against the IRS, in which it used extraordinary and in many cases illegal tactics - bugging of government offices, theft of mountains of classified files, private detectives pursuing senior government officials, thousands of lawsuits, full-page attack adverts in US daily newspapers, and so on.
So perhaps it is not such a great surprise that the settlement itself came about in some very unusual circumstances, raising questions about the actions of both the Church of Scientology and the IRS. Neither party has been willing to provide answers, with the IRS refusing to disclose the terms of the exemption agreement in defiance of a court order and US taxation law. But with the leak in December 1997 of the secret agreement, the relationship between Scientology and the IRS is under greater scrutiny now than ever before.
imo if the religion itself violates the separation of church and state by meddling in affairs of the state, then in the name of separation of church and state they MUST react somehow, separation doesn't just go one way. This especially counts the evangelicals who dabble in politics.
Lol they don’t dabble. They cleverly wield the corrupt political game to ensure they profit off the poor idiots who are members of the “church” and that money flows through politics, stopping in pocket after pocket until it finally reaches the bank, tax free.
Really? You want to hand Christians that kind of power?
Who said anything about christians???
Who do you think runs the US?
Rich people.
Rich that use Christianity as a cover.
Religion is a useful tool for mass manipulation.
It can also be a useful tool for self-development.
So can a college education.
I can't believe that a gunman shot a former Prime Minister in the middle of the street and when people read his manifesto the they went "Yeah, that's fair" and started fixing things. It's insane how shitty you must be for people to side with your murderer.
Reverend Moon's church funded literal Nazi death squads in South America after WW2. So yeah, they're pretty bad.
Assassinating Abe wasn't right, but when I heard the killer's side of the story I honestly felt a bit sorry for him. Glad to hear something is being done about the Moonies.
Helped that he didn't blow up a building with innocent people in it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=wFn6gWYMDpo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Fun fact: The Washington Times newspaper, which in the DC market is the conservative competitor to the Washington Post, was founded by (and I think is still run by) the Moonies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times
And they apparently sell the majority of fish to Sushi restaurants in the US:
2 (at least, I haven't really gone too deep down this rabbit hole) of the founders sons broke away and formed their own church, it got a decent amount of attention a few years back for doing some mass wedding thing with ar15s, as well as rifle blessing ceremonies. A few of the members of that church including the son who founded it were involved in 1/6, and the other one is the owner of Kahr firearms.
Again, they're a breakaway sect, not the main Moonie church, so there's surely some important ideological differences, but there are 2 guys who were raised by their founder, and the one was considered to be in line to take the whole thing over before having a falling out with his mom and deciding to make their own crazy cult instead, so you kind of have to wonder if these 2 nuts actually fell all that far from the tree.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/24/usa.religion
It’s weird…
Some democrats say they were duped. Regardless the whole thing is fucked up.
I wonder how that would affect the The Washington Times since it is owned by Moon.
I thought they sold it?
"The Washington Times was founded on May 17, 1982, by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon and owned until 2010 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Moon. It is currently owned by Operations Holdings, which is a part of the Unification Church movement."
Lol nothing like shell companies to distance a corrupt entity. “It’s not corrupt shitty church. It’s Operations Holdings, Inc. That doesn’t sound bad, right? Right?”
Ok, fair enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The church, whose members are known colloquially as Moonies, could be subject to a court order to disband as early as next month, pending the completion of an inquiry into the group’s controversial fundraising activities, according to the Kyodo news agency, which cited an unnamed government source.
The government has been investigating the church – formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – over its fundraising activities, while battling a scandal over the group’s ties to Japanese politicians, particularly members of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP).
In the months after Abe’s death, the media uncovered evidence that LDP politicians – and a much smaller number of opposition MPs – had ties to the group, from giving speeches at church-sponsored events to enlisting followers to work on election campaigns.
The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, whose trial on murder and other charges is not expected to start until next year, has reportedly told police he targeted the politician, whom he shot at close range with a homemade weapon at an election rally, because of his family’s ties to the Moonies.
Testimony by former members, court rulings in civil lawsuits and church documents showed the group demanded huge financial donations through “spiritual sales” – in which followers are pressured into buying items, such as vases, at exorbitant prices.
Japan has around 180,000 registered religious organisations, but only two have received dissolution orders: the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult, whose members carried out a deadly sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, and the Myokakuji temple group, whose leaders were accused of defrauding followers.
The original article contains 674 words, the summary contains 265 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
More Goonies less Moonies
HEY YOU GUUUUUUUYS!
I've listened to multiple podcasts that detail how this is a cult. Dunno why we can't stomp out cults in the states. Helping people would help.
Like ... in acid?
Nah, despite what TV has said, bases are much better at dissolving bodies than acid.
But All your base are belong to us!
Better use a strong base.
The base support must be strong
took long enough
I had no idea that that they were the Moonies.
'In the wake'? Time must be running for them.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/