Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
This is just the latest in a relationship between the Bush family and the Moonies that goes back decades:
Neil Bush, younger brother of U.S. President George W. Bush, called on Paraguay's president as the guest of a business federation founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.A presidential press office source, who spoke on condition of not being named, confirmed the younger Bush met President Nicanor Duarte on Thursday along with a delegation from the Universal Peace Federation, a group associated with Moon.
Neil Bush has made millions from Moon, as has his father, George H.W. Bush, traveling all over the world pimping him as an agent of change. It is baffling to me how one of the nation's most powerful political families can be in bed with a fascist cult leader and have the media pay almost no attention to it.
Comments
What can one say? More lunacy from the Crawford village idiot. -DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | March 2, 2008 9:42 AM
Ed wrote:
Geez Ed, you should know better than anyone around here: its national security. Click your heels three times, say "national security," and all the bad stuff goes away. Its magic.
Posted by: Dan | March 2, 2008 9:50 AM
Weren't there rumors about GW buying hundreds of acres in Paraguay about a year ago?
Posted by: lauram | March 2, 2008 10:30 AM
Doesn't Moon or his cult own, or at least control, The Washington Times? Which, I understand, is a rather rabid wingnut outfit. I've read, but not from unbiased sources, that The Washington Times is also a favorite place for The Cheney and Bush II Circus to deliberately "leak" "information".
Not that any of that necessarily has anything to do with your point. It may provide yet another connection (especially(?) if the claims about leaking are true?).
Posted by: blf | March 2, 2008 10:46 AM
Yep. Here is The Grauniad's report at the time, Paraguay in a spin about Bush's alleged 100,000 acre hideaway (Oct 2006). I've no idea of the rumours were ever confirmed or not.
Posted by: blf | March 2, 2008 10:55 AM
IF the lunatics own the Washtion Post how does that effesct individual journalists?
Just Curious DJ
Posted by: DingoJavk | March 2, 2008 11:45 AM
The Washington Times is not just owned and operated by Moon - Moon brags about using it to "influence" our nation. He created it to manipulate our political system hard right and to make fertile the political ground for the theocrats he also funded - like Falwell, Lahaye and their ilk.
Moon has outspent anyone the last 25 years promoting, propping up, and molding today's conservatism.
James Whelan, the first editor of the Washington Times, described Moon's efforts this way:
from the article Ed posted:
Grossly uninformed.
The UPF is not "associated" with Moon. It is the culmination of his grand plan to control the direction of world events. He has even put his "church" under the UPF.
Moon believes he is the arbiter of G-d's will. He recently said G-d sees Himself as a sinner before him(Moon). The UPF is the delusional Moon's end game for all his life's planning. They call the UPF the "central dispensation of G-d."
This quote is from one of the big wigs in the UPF and long time follower of Moon's. Make no mistake the UPF will be run by Moon and his inner circle. Here he is introducing the old devil at the 1st anniversary of the UPF.
Posted by: Q | March 2, 2008 12:15 PM
Dingo Jack: It's the Washington Times that Moon owns, not the Post. But your underlying point is a good one, and whether it is right or wrong, I consider anyone on staff at the Times presumptively lacking in credibility unless there is proof they've not partaken of the Moon koolaid. To make matters worse, I can't say what that proof might be short of quitting or being fired by the organization for failing to toe the Moonie line.
Posted by: Dan | March 2, 2008 12:17 PM
My name isn't Bush, so I don't get opportunities like this. I'm just making it known now, that I'm available to pimp for any religious cause if the compensation package is right, and if it leaves me sufficient time to enjoy the benefits of that compensation package. Oh yeah! Will I lie and spread preposterous stories for a religious cult in exchange for the yachts, mansions, private jets, and hot gold digging babes that tons of dough brings? You bet! Too many other ventures that can give you that lifestyle run the risk of imprisonment with the resulting shank in your ass in the showers, but not religion. So, anyone looking for a pimp out there...I'm available.
Posted by: soboco | March 2, 2008 1:55 PM
I don't know that we should expect the public to get excited about it. They didn't seem to concerned that the family wealth was enhanced by lending to the Nazis, even after the war started.
Wealth excuses everything, even treason.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 2, 2008 2:59 PM
My personal guess is, this is appropriate advice for politicians:
http://www.davidbrin.com/blackmail.html
Try reading it all the way through, slowly and thoughtfully, before replying that it can't be happening.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | March 2, 2008 6:17 PM
And yet the conservative Christians keep insisting we need to vote for "Christian" leaders. I've brought this up with a couple of them, and as much as they hate cults, this just doesn't seem to phase them.
Which reinforces my belief that they've all sold their souls for temporal power, and they'd better hope that the atheists are right about their being no hell.
Posted by: James Hanley | March 2, 2008 8:51 PM
Dan - Whoops. The only excuse is that it was late here when I typed the post. Yes Washington Times not Washington Post.
Mike Haubrich, FCD. When did the Bush family lend money to the Nazis? If it was between September 1939 & December 1941, then it would not be treason. Between those dates the US was a neutral. BTW many others also traded with the Nazi regime including Henry Ford and Thomas J Watson. -DJ
"Treason never prospers. What's the reason?
For if it prospers none dare call it treson"
Posted by: DingoJack | March 2, 2008 11:29 PM
The fact that religious right leaders aren't in an uproar over Moon is truly odd, strange, and puzzling.
According to Moon's theology, Jesus was a flawed prophet because he allowed himself to be killed by his persecuters.
In conventional Christian terms that is *extreme* heresy, as Jesus' willingness to die such a horrible death is taken as one of the signs of his divine nature. In Buddhist terms it would be seen as a sign of supreme enlightenment to be able to face such a death with equanimity, and in Hindu terms it would also be a sign that one was an Avatar or "being of light," an enlightened person.
For Moon to denigrate the significance of the crucifixion is nothing short of a major slap in the face to Christians, and to people of other faiths who recognize the special nature of an individual who is willing to go to a horrible death by way of their teachings about religion and philosophy.
Further, Moon holds that he himself is the next incarnation of Godhood on Earth: the Second Coming, as it were. But he does it in an insinuating, weasely way: by describing the conditions under which this individual will arise, and the circumstances of his life. Specifically, he will start out as a successful Asian businessman, specifically Korean... you get the idea.
To mainstream Christianity this is also blasphemous, by way of its sheer hubris and self-serving character compared to the selflessness that characterizes Jesus and thus would presumably characterize an individual who fulfilled the Biblical role of a returning Christ figure. Jesus after all spoke of himself as little more than just another Rabbi. (In Buddhism it's simply crass to, in effect, brag about one's enlightenment. Hinduism is a little more liberal about these things, being more concerned with the ways in which one conducts oneself in that role even if self-appointed.)
So.
Given all of the above, plus the fact that Moon's recruitment and indoctrination techniques are notorious for splitting teenagers off from their families (thus the significance of the "true parent" remark), why hasn't the religious right gone after him? I think what we are seeing here is a marriage of convenience to obtain worldly goals. Moon provides money with which to advance a political agenda that also produces power for other religious right leaders.
In other words, it's all about the Mammon-worship.
Posted by: g510 | March 3, 2008 12:35 AM
So g510 - what you are basically saying that dying for some cause is a noble thing. Like the suicide bombers at Bali, Madrid or New York...sorry if I don't seem COMPLETELY convinced. If you want to pour petrol over yourself and set it alight then go right ahead, if it nvolves killing innocents, well really the only word that is applicable is "evil" -DJ
Posted by: DIngoJack | March 3, 2008 6:14 AM
No, DJ, that's not what g510 is saying, and you know it. Your point...?
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 3, 2008 9:50 AM