Thank you. While it’s true that I’m generally against this sort of thing, professionally, this isn’t generic activist outrage. This has affected everyone who does this work in this community, including me. My whole work day today was about this. I may have future days also derailed by this.
So I’m really mad on multiple levels.
I’m infuriated it even happened, I’m infuriated it happened here, I’m infuriated by the lack of accountability and I’m infuriated they are now a pain in my ass.
Yeah, it’s starting to look as though this wasn’t an accident; maybe someone thought they could get more publicity for the BAFTAs by miking up the Tourette’s guy and just didn’t think through how badly that might go.
A Japanese court has ordered the Unification Church (aka “the Moonies”) to disband, after finding it had caused “unprecedented damage to society” in an investigation triggered after the assassination of Shinzo Abe.
(For clarity’s sake, the Moonies are the evil MFers.)
Not that I care to defend the Unification Church, but as I understand it, they’re based in South Korea, and I’m not sure how a Japanese court would be able to enforce a dissolution order for a non-Japanese organization.
(Maybe they are simply forcing them to shut down operations in Japan, I don’t know.)
The article says this:
The controversial organization lost its status as a religious corporation and its associated tax advantages as the liquidation process began.
Kihara, the top government spokesman, added that he has instructed the relevant ministries and agencies to work together to quickly implement the necessary measures to provide relief to the victims.
So it looks like the organization can no longer operate as a church within Japan, and it is required to pay restitution to its victims. Obviously Japan can’t control what any organization does outside of its own borders, same as any nation, though the ruling might affect their status elsewhere, including South Korea.
Another way to look at it is that there are by necessity different religious organizations in different nations that are internationally coordinated, but structured and operated according to each nation’s laws. So they are effectively different chruches, and Japan has ordered the dissolution of the one in its nation.
1/6 rioter pardoned by Trump is sentenced to life in prison for raping two 12-year-olds who he attempted to silence by promising them restitution money he believed Trump was going to pay him.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5725470/trump-jan-6-pardon-sexual-abuse-prison
Good!
Now can they declare the same to the Yakuza?
The Yakuza don’t operate as a legally registered religious organization in Japan, so unfortunately they cannot.
Besides, the Yakuza games from Sega are dope as shit. Kazuma Kiryu kicks ass! I love to beat someone to death with a traffic cone in a busy Tokyo street.
But they do kill more people than the Moonies.
True.
They’ve also long ago been declared illegal. It’s getting them rounded up, surrendered, and their assets captured that’s proving difficult.
Only the very best people.
trump’s tankies: What a grab-bag of absolute loser animals.
Two men arrested for throwing IEDs at Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral residence during an “anti-Islam” protest organized by a pardoned 1/6 traitor.
David Copperfield is ending his Vegas residency after documents in the Epstein files revealed he was using it to prey on potentially underage girls.
In a 2019 email that appears to have been sent from one FBI official to another, which was sent after Epstein died in prison, the FBI official said: the FBI investigation into Copperfield “showed that Copperfield trained his employees to identify young females (teens to early twenties) in the audience of his shows”. The women, the person said, were “separated from their boyfriends, families and husbands and brought backstage”.
Copperfield’s employees were given access to a notebook that instructed them how to provide Copperfield with females. He kept a notebook with the females he was with” that included “contact information, whether he had sex with them, and a photograph”, the FBI official said.
The FBI official added: “I don’t know if any of his victims were underage. There were allegations that he drugged some of the females. I recall Epstein’s name coming up in our investigation a number of times and Copperfield appeared to have a very close relationship with Epstein.”
I wonder what grudge Trump has against him.
He wants the Statue of Liberty to belong to him, and doesn’t like the idea that someone else can make it disappear.
Please don’t give Trump any ideas about putting up a gold-colored statue of himself on the island to dwarf the one of Liberty.*
*it would feature Trump holding up a middle finger to the huddled masses yearning for freedom in America.
Turn it sideways so he can give a finger to the country at the same time.
Just put it on a slowly spinning pedestal.
That would require him to be sitting on something out of sight.
Like a giant thumb?