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Ryan McCarthy, The Gray Zone, October 05 2019:… The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein’s patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country. Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK
Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Reports on China Organ harvesting derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gang
A wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult, whose followers believe “Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.”
Western corporate media outlets have gone wild with claims that the Chinese state is “harvesting” the organs of ethnic minorities and political opposition figures. But an investigation by The Grayzone has found that these allegations originate from front groups run by the far-right opposition cult Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and performing coordinated qi gong routines in crowded city centers, runs an ultra-conservative, staunchly pro-Donald Trump media network that has been compared to Alex Jones’ Infowars.
According to a former member of the fringe religious group, Falun Gong believes that an apocalyptic judgement day is soon approaching and “that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party.”
In order to understand, then, how heavily politicized rumors from an obscure far-right cult found their way into the headlines, it is essential to trace the roots of the story through an elaborate network of front groups.
In June 2019, a London-based organization called the China Tribunal published a report claiming that the Chinese government has been systematically executing and harvesting the organs of members of Falun Gong, a leading force of opposition to Beijing in the diaspora.
The China Tribunal describes itself as an “independent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.” Most Western journalists took the organization at its word.
Up to and after it published the report, the China Tribunal received scattered coverage from various mainstream media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. In September, the coverage ramped up considerably after the China Tribunal presented its case to the UN Human Rights Council, with major outlets like The Independent and Reuters joining in.
Anne Khodabandeh ICSA Conference : Mapping the Cult Landscape
One thing all this reporting has in common is that it assumes the China Tribunal is truly “independent.” On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was “initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”
So what is ETAC, really?
On ETAC’s website, one finds a “management” page with a list of people, devoid of any information except their names, photographs, and positions in the organization. The executive director and co-founder is Susie Hughes; Margo MacVicar is named as the New Zealand national manager; Rebecca James is the UK national manager for outreach, and so on.
Where do these figures come from, and what brought them together? The website has no bios. But follow the names, and it soon becomes apparent that there is another connection apart from ETAC — the Epoch Times.
Some of the $1.5 million worth of pro-Trump Facebook ads from Falun Gong’s propaganda arm the Epoch Times
A far-right anti-China propaganda network run by a cult
The Epoch Times, which uses the slogan “Truth and Tradition,” has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
But NBC News published a major exposé in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
NBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, “more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.”
And while the NBC reporters, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins, cautiously refer to Falun Gong as a “spiritual community,” the behavior they document very easily fits into the popular definition of “cult.” (It’s okay, Zadrozny and Collins, you can say it — say it with me: “Falun Gong is a cult.” Now doesn’t that feel better?)
A quick look at Falun Gong’s official emblem, posted on its website, should raise some eyebrows: it features an ancient swastika symbol. Falun Gong reassures skeptics on the web page, “Some people say: ‘This symbol looks like Hitler’s stuff.’ Let me tell you that this symbol itself does not connote any concepts of class.”
Falun Gong’s official symbol
So where do the ETAC managers fit in with Falun Gong? Susie Hughes has photographer credits on several Epoch Times articles (her name seems to have been scrubbed, the photos merely credited to “The Epoch Times,” but the credit still shows up on Google searches at the time of writing). Margo MacVicar has numerous articles gushing about Shen Yun, Falun Gong’s traveling dance show. Rebecca “Becky” James shows up organizing a Falun Gong art exhibition in Bristol and sharing vegan drink recipes.
ETAC’s UK national manager for initiatives, Andy Moody, is credited by Epoch Times as a reporter for its sibling NTD, or New Tang Dynasty Television, Falun Gong’s TV arm. (Concerned Canadians have noted that the cult’s propaganda network has received millions of their tax dollars worth of disproportionate funding.)
ETAC’s UK communications coordinator Victoria Ledwidge appears in another Epoch Times article, coming to greet Shen Yun performers in London and, of course, acclaiming the “amazing” performance.
As one goes down the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections spring up for almost everyone. ETAC is very clearly a Falun Gong front group.
Neither ETAC nor China Tribunal discloses these connections, but it hardly takes an intrepid investigative journalist to find them. So why was this level of basic research a step too far for, say, Owen Bowcott at the Guardian, who does little more than transmit ETAC’s talking points?
In fact, Falun Gong itself is actively spreading this “organ harvesting” rumor in major North American cities. The Grayzone’s Ben Norton saw some of the cult’s activists standing in central Toronto next to a giant banner titled “Stop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China.”
They handed out pamphlets to passers-by declaring that the “Chinese Communist Regime Is Slaughtering Innocents” (using a painting as supposed evidence), while preaching about the “great health benefits” of Falun Gong.
The far-right cult is clearly using these rumors to proselytize and recruit new supporters.
Falun Gong activists are standing in major cities next to these signs, handing out these crazy pamphlets. It's such a transparently absurd propaganda operation.
The fact that mainstream "journalists" are falling for this is pitiful https://t.co/ENVTmSClSJ
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 26, 2019
‘Research’ overseen by a cult that sidelines real doctors
Turning to the China Tribunal’s report itself, it is apparent that, despite the authors’ claim to “have maintained distance and separation from ETAC in order to ensure their independence,” they rely heavily on information curated for them by ETAC.
The introduction, after describing ETAC as “a not-for-profit coalition of lawyers, medical professionals and others”, goes on to state that “ETAC’s main interest has been the alleged suffering of practitioners of ‘Falun Gong’, a group performing meditative exercises and pursuing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, but regarded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1999 as an ‘anti-humanitarian, anti-society and anti-science cult’.”
It is understandable that critics might hesitate to take the PRC’s characterization of Falun Gong at face value. But it is easy to make a fair evaluation of the group’s true character simply by perusing their own publications, where one will learn, for instance, that modern science was invented by aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies; or that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan’s plan to make us into communists; or that race-mixing severs our connection to the gods.
What Falun Gong means exactly when it preaches the timeless values of “truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance” is beyond this article’s scope. I leave it to the reader to judge how the above doctrines correspond to them.
The report summary goes on to state: “Evidence was submitted by ETAC for the first hearing, amplified by further evidence following the first and second evidence hearings.” So despite framing their investigation as separate and independent of ETAC, the authors admit that they began with evidence fed to them by ETAC.
Their reliance on ETAC is further highlighted later when several doctors are named who expressed skepticism about the Falun Gong organ harvesting narrative. These doctors are listed as “doctors speaking favourably of the PRC.”
The report then states:
“All of these doctors were invited by the Tribunal to participate in the Tribunal’s proceedings. Their participation would have greatly assisted the Tribunal in its work; they all declined the invitations. Further, although each did contribute in person to a recent report by an Australian Government Committee their contributions have been subject to review by ETAC that reveals that they produced no hard evidence to support what they said and could be criticised for their methodology or their experience in transplant surgery.”
In other words, the China Tribunal didn’t see any need to consider their testimony, because ETAC had already looked at it and declared it to be bogus.
One of these doctors, Francis Delmonico, was contacted by the science journal Nature for its article on the China Tribunal’s report — a rare case of a dissenting opinion being registered, however grudgingly.
MEK Rajavi Cult Terrorists . US Mercenaries Turned Click Farmers
Delmonico was asked specifically for his opinion on a research paper cited by the China Tribunal, which was published on the scientific archive, SocArXiv, by Matthew Robinson – a research fellow of the famously impartial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
“But Francis Delmonico, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that although there is evidence that organs were taken from prisoners in the past — which he condemns — he is not convinced by the SocArXiv evidence because it is not direct. Delmonico is chair of the World Health Organization’s Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and has been supporting organ-donation reform in China for more than a decade, although he made his comments to Nature in a personal capacity.”
Lobbyists for an anti-Iran cult go to bat for an anti-China one
The China Tribunal’s report is not the first alleging that the Chinese government is murdering Falun Gong prisoners en masse to harvest their organs. It relies heavily on an earlier document, known as the Kilgour-Matas report, which was initially released in 2006 and updated several times since then, with the title “Bloody Harvest.”
This previous report was commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. Unlike ETAC, CIPFG plainly states that it is a Falun Gong organization.
More interesting connections arise when probing the backgrounds of the co-authors of the report, David Kilgour and David Matas.
David Matas is the senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, a right-wing pro-Israel lobby that works hard to tar any critique of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism. He was also a member of the Canadian government’s now-defunct Rights and Democracy board, in which capacity he lobbied on behalf of the Iranian opposition cult Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), as part of an effort to remove the MEK from the Canadian and US lists of terrorist organizations — an effort that was eventually successful.
The Rights and Democracy board’s chairman, Aurel Braun, was also a strident MEK advocate, who promoted the cult as a replacement for Iran’s present government. Rights and Democracy eventually dissolved due in part to Braun’s and Matas’ relentless attacks on another board member for supposed contacts with Hezbollah and Hamas.
The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein’s patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country.
The MEK emerged in 1960s Iran, promoting a strange mixture of Marxism and Shia Islam, and supported the 1979 Revolution until the Mullahs turned against it. MeK leadership then fled to Europe, from which they launched a series of terrorist bombings. They simultaneously maintained a presence in Iraq, where they enjoyed Saddam Hussein’s patronage, massacred Kurds on his behalf, and even fought with his troops against their own country.
The MEK promote themselves, to anyone who will listen, as the Iranian opposition and the best democratic alternative to the present government — and politicians and think tanks seeking regime change in Iran readily indulge them, despite wide reports of their cult-like behavior.
In August 2019 Canada’s National Observer published a report about Canadian politicians who love the MEK. Prominently featured in the article is the other co-author of “Bloody Harvest,” David Kilgour, a former MP who is co-chair for “Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran” and has been doing PR for the MEK for years.
Canadian Politicians and MEK , Iranian Mojahedin-e-Khalq in Albania
So both authors of “Bloody Harvest” advocate on behalf of, not one, but two cults that also happen to be darlings of regime-change enthusiasts in and around Western governments. (The latest edition of “Bloody Harvest” includes a third co-author, Ethan Gutmann, who, notably, has been affiliated with the Gulf monarchy-funded Brookings Institution and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
How does one unwind from all this hard shill work? David Kilgour makes a point of seeing Shen Yun’s dance performances year after year and effusing about it again and again and again to the Epoch Times.
A few reporters notice Falun Gong’s seamy side
In March, Jia Tolentino published her impressions of Shen Yun in the New Yorker. Like the aforementioned NBC piece on the Epoch Times, Tolentino ‘s article shows that more and more people are noticing that there is something very odd about Falun Gong.
From the “baroque and surreal” Shen Yun dance-propaganda show, which bills itself as a last bastion of genuine Chinese culture, she moves to consider some other very troubling aspects of the Falun Gong organization, such as their penchant for resisting journalistic inquiry and harassing critics.
Tolentino also mentions a 2017 Washington Post investigation by Simon Denyer, which, while hardly a pro-PRC puff piece, casts serious doubt on the claims of the Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting.
Denyer may be the only journalist in the mainstream US press who conducted an independent investigation on organ harvesting in China and seriously questions Falun Gong’s organ harvesting narrative. Naturally, Ethan Gutmann felt compelled to run a rebuttal to Denyer’s report on ETAC’s website — and one can only imagine the kinds of emails and phone calls Denyer has been getting since he dared to publish that piece.
For most of the Western corporate media, the “Bloody Harvest” horror story is too ghoulishly titillating to subject to serious scrutiny, especially when the “Yellow Peril”-style villain is an increasingly powerful state threatening the old hegemonies.
(End)
Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
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The Many Faces of the MEK, Explained By Its Former Top Spy Massoud Khodabandeh
The MEK’s man inside the White House (Maryam Rajavi cult, Mojahedin Khalq)
Secret MEK troll factory in Albania uses modern slaves (aka Mojahedin Khalq, MKO, NCRI ,Rajavi cult)
Also read:
Professor Tim Anderson, Balkans Post, August 19 2019:… Yes it is quite possible that Albania will de destabilized by U.S. proxies the MEK, and also by DAESH members. Between 2013 and 2016 Washington moved the 2,900 Camp Ashraf MEK members to Albania, where they had also moved some former DAESH/ISIS fighters (Spahiu 2018; Khodabandeh and Khodabandeh 2018). The U.S. and… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Jonathan Harounoff, Haaretz, August 11 2019:… Massoud Khodabandeh, tells Haaretz in an email interview that the group was no longer the highly organized and influential student-led movement of the ’70s that opposed the shah. By the ’80s, Khodabandeh says, the MEK had evolved almost unrecognizably into a violent, anti-ayatollah and pro-Saddam guerrilla organization that had no clear objectives other than… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Giorgio Cafiero, Inside Arabia, August 05 2019:… The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or Mujahedin-e Khalq ( MEK ), has a dark history of violence and acts of terrorism against American interests. Established in the 1960s, the Marxist-Islamist group killed members of the Shah’s security apparatus on the streets of Iranian cities. Anti-American to its core, the MEK quickly earned a… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Catherine Shakdam, Citizen truth, August 03 2019:… In an interview for Al Bawaba in 2018 Masoud Khodabandeh, a former high-ranking MKO/MEK official, shed light on Saudi Arabia’s financial support for the group, explaining how Riyadh regime has funneled, gold bars, cash and other valuables worth hundreds of millions of dollars through various third parties. Among other revelations, Khodabandeh described how after the… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Lobe Log, June 18 2019:… This is the tip of the iceberg. MEK interference in the internal affairs of America goes well beyond online attacks on Iran. In 2016, the Organization of Iranian American Communities in the US—a front for the MEK—announced a “General Elections Mobilization Effort,” publicly urging its members to “fulfill their civic duty through active… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept, June 10 2019:… Alavi’s articles also mixed criticisms of Iran and U.S. policy with overt advocacy for the MEK. His pieces in the Daily Caller, The Hill, and other outlets — though less numerous than his contributions to Forbes — employed a similar mix of advocacy against the Iranian regime and praise for the MEK. Though… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Dan Spinelli, Mother Jones, May 17 2019:… The MEK terrorists supported the Iranian Revolution and were cheerleaders for the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran, which led to the kidnapping of more than 50 American citizens for over a year, but ultimately broke with the ruling clerics and went into exile. The group is considered by some Iran experts to be a cult and, for more than… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Iranian.com, May 14 2019:… MEK operatives, brought from Albania, will be deployed to carry out false flag ops that can be blamed on Iran – such as a suicide attack. Albania is now home to the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult (MEK) and John Bolton has long believed he can use the MEK to facilitate regime change in Iran. One of those ways is… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Lobe Log, May 03 2019:… Hillary Clinton did not take money from the MEK while it was listed as a terrorist entity. And taking the group off the U.S. terrorist list, though controversial at the time due to the MEK’s own well-funded pressure campaign, was not wrong, as it enabled the UNHCR to relocate the members to the safety of… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Iranian.com, April 19 2019:… Activities aimed at silencing these Iranian Canadians indicates that the above achievements have rattled the house of Saud and their paid MEK agents. It looks like the failure to drive a wedge between the Iranians and Europeans who insist on saving the nuclear deal against the will of Trump has angered Netanyahu and Mohammad Bin… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Middle East Strategy Consultants, April 14 2019:… In July 2018 I wrote an article for the Balkans Post titled ‘MEK rebrands by assassinating unwanted members’ in which I brought up the case of Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi as one of many examples in which the Mojahedin Khalq have got rid of an affiliated disaffected operative to 1- Cleanse themselves… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Anne and Massoud Khodabandeh, Lobe log, March 09 2019:… Hommerich reported that inside the camp in Albania, MEK militants were still practicing the deadly techniques for combat taught them by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard—“cutting throats with a knife,” “breaking hands,” “removing eyes with fingers,” and “tearing the mouth open.” In 2017, the Trump administration reversed a 2013 plan by former Secretary… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Massoud Khodabandeh, Middle East Strategy Consultants, February 25 2019:… As the following articles show, the complex issue of ‘dealing’ with Iran cannot be solved by the Trump administration or the European Union using the defunct Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) to shake a stick at the country. Iran’s government and ruling system is proving far too sophisticated for this stupid ‘regime change’ narrative.… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Hamid Debashi, Aljazeera, February 11 2019:… The atrocities of the Islamic Republic over the past 40 years have created an expatriate opposition equally atrocious in its treacherous powermongering. The People’s Mojahedin Organisation (MEK), the monarchists, and their various incarnations have come together collectively to form and discredit the Iranian political opposition. These organisations are now actively collaborating with the US, Israel,… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Press TV, Interface, January 28 2019:… Terror and instability caused in the region by Israel and supporters of Daesh. Is Iran a victim of terrorism as it claims or are the US ruling party and Israel right to say Iran uses terror to achieve its goals? The guests in this episode of Interface are Mr. Massoud khodabandeh a former Peoples Mojahedin… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Ty Joplin, Albawaba, November 18 2018:… Khodabandeh admits that he had a difficult time reintegrating into society, as he struggled to rid himself of the constraints the MEK forces upon its members. He forbade himself from watching television, and did not know the extent of Iraq’s crimes against Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. But Khodabandeh considers himself lucky; he was able… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Albawaba, Gateway – A podcast from the Middle East, November 15 2018:… I remember when I was a student in London, I used to send books to Iran with translation form English to Farsi. They were all books about psychology and books relevant to cults. After two and a half decades I realised that this is what he was doing. He… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEKz Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
Anne and Massoud Khodabandeh, Balkans Post, November 06 2018:… Please, make sure that the MEK leadership does not lose its mind and commit horrific acts in your country. Enforce the law and impose the authority of your government over the MEK cult and reassure the European public that Albania is a responsible country. Your reply to this letter will be that… Nobody Can Be “Comfortable” With Regime Change Involving MEK Rajavi Cult Falun Gong and the Far Right Lobbyists
