Born on a Queens Street, a Battle Over Falun Gong Goes to Court - The New York Times

In China, practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement have long complained of propaganda campaigns, imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Chinese government.

In Flushing, Queens, which has perhaps the largest Falun Gong following in the United States, members say their adversaries are a handful of spirited Chinese immigrants who tend a small folding table set up every day in front of a Chinese restaurant on a stretch of Main Street that is bustling with Chinese immigrants.

The opposition group distributes materials denouncing Falun Gong as an evil cult, an epithet that the organization incorporates into its name, the Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance.

Having staked out their turf in Flushing, the two factions have long waged a bitter ideological battle.

Now, a new battle front has opened — in a Brooklyn courthouse.

Members of the Falun Gong have filed a federal lawsuit against the anti-cult group seeking relief from what they call “an ongoing campaign of violent assaults, threats, intimidation and other abuses.”

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Although Falun Gong is known as a system that combines elements of Buddhism, mysticism and traditional exercise regimen, some followers also ascribe to the more unconventional teachings of Mr. Li, including alien visitation, ethnic separation and other beliefs that might clarify “why my clients have the constitutional right to call them a cult,” Mr. Fini said.

Mr. Fini said one plaintiff had already admitted in a deposition to sharing Mr. Li’s ideas about extraterrestrial visitors and the existence of different heavens for different races.

Born on a Queens Street, a Battle Over Falun Gong Goes to Court - The New York Times

Milefo Dao Cult Leader Made a lot of Money Selling Fake Healthcare Products : China News : Yibada

So long as there are gullible people seeking a cure for their ailments, using religion as a tool to become wealthy has become the road to riches of leaders of cults.

One such cult is Milefo Dao which is based on the worship of the Maitreya Buddha. However, its leader, 61-year-old Li Changlu, has been detained following a crackdown on cults in China when a woman was beaten to death in McDonald’s Zhaoyuan, Shandong Province, in 2014 for not giving her phone number to six members of a cult called Almighty God.

Li Changlu, who gathered former Zhong Gong cult members in 2011, established Milefo Dao and added more followers from 23 regions in China. He claims to be a reincarnation of the Maitreya Buddha and made tons of money – estimated to have reached 10 million yuan accumulated over a decade – by claiming the healthcare products he is selling has Buddha powers.
Milefo Dao Cult Leader Made a lot of Money Selling Fake Healthcare Products : China News : Yibada

WATCH: Shock Therapy Used to 'Cure' Chinese Gays, U.K. Journalist Reports | Advocate.com

Electroshock therapy was once commonly administered to gay people in the U.S. in an attempt to “cure” them — and it’s still being used in some countries, including China, as documented in a report that aired tonight on U.K. television.

Shaunagh Connaire of Britain’s Channel 4 reported on the distressing situation in an episode of the foreign affairs series Unreported World.

Connaire went from a part of the world that is embracing LGBT equality to one where the situation of LGBT people “is somewhat darker,” she told Elle U.K. She saw “clinics that offer gay conversion therapy, sometimes even electroshock therapy, as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality,” she said. This practice continues even though the Chinese Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness in 2001.

John Shen (pictured above with Connaire), a leader of the Beijing LGBT Centre, and his colleagues are seeking to expose those clinics, but it’s dangerous work in a nation “whose intelligence simply cannot be outmaneuvered,” Connaire noted. Filming was difficult too.

WATCH: Shock Therapy Used to 'Cure' Chinese Gays, U.K. Journalist Reports | Advocate.com

Chinese police shoot dead a lioness on Anhui highway | World news | The Guardian

A lioness found prowling along a motorway in China after apparently jumping from a moving lorry has been shot dead by police, according to reports.

How the protected animal came to be on the road in Anhui, eastern Chinese, was not clear, but the illegal raising of endangered species is not unusual in China.
,,,
Aside from a small population in north-western India, lions are native only to Africa, but the illegal raising of endangered species can be lucrative in China as some of their body parts are deemed to have curative properties in traditional Chinese medicine. There is no orthodox scientific evidence for such beliefs.

Chinese police shoot dead a lioness on Anhui highway | World news | The Guardian

Fmr. youth pastor extradited to TN after years of running from c - WMC Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

A former youth minister charged with rape was extradited to Shelby County on Thursday.

Luke Cooke was indicted on rape and aggravated sexual battery charges in 2007. Shelby County investigators said Cooke raped an 8-year-old and a 16-year-old.

Cooke then left the country. He was found in China, but when U.S. Marshals prepared to deport him back to the United States, he ran again.

In 2014, detectives learned that Cooke was in Morocco.  A few weeks later in April 2014, Interpol contacted the Shelby County Sheriff's Office to say they found Cooke in an airport in Albania with an expired passport.

Fmr. youth pastor extradited to TN after years of running from c - WMC Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

Man in hospital after eating 3 boiled toads | Shanghai Daily

So ya think Chinese medicine is so advanced and effective?

A 70-year-old man in Shanghai was sent to hospital after eating three boiled toads believing it to be a folk remedy for his skin disease, Jiefang Daily said yesterday.

The man, surnamed Gao, had a skin disease for many years. He was told eating toads could help clear toxins in the body and was an effective treatment for skin diseases, the report said.

Gao boiled the toads into a soup and ate them. He started to vomit and feel dizzy about an hour later. He went into shock with his heart rate dropping to as low as 30 beats per minute. After emergency treatment and washing of the stomach, Gao was sent to the intensive care unit of Songjiang District Central Hospital, the report said.

Man in hospital after eating 3 boiled toads | Shanghai Daily

ADDENDUM::Lawyer Who Advised Churches in China Faces Secretive Detention - The New York Times

A Chinese lawyer who has opposed a government campaign to tear down churches and church crosses faces up to six months in secretive detention after the police detained him and accused him of threatening state security, his colleague said on Tuesday.

The lawyer, Zhang Kai, who is from Beijing, disappeared into custody a week ago while in Wenzhou, a commercial city on the coast of Zhejiang Province, where many members of the large and prosperous Christian community have fought the government’s efforts to reduce the presence of churches.

Mr. Zhang was in Wenzhou advising a church when the police took him away last Tuesday, and they have since issued an order that could place him under secretive detention for six months, said Yang Xingquan, a colleague of Mr. Zhang’s from the Xinqiao Law Firm in Beijing. Mr. Yang, who was in Wenzhou looking for Mr. Zhang, cited information from the police and Christians in the city.

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Mr. Zhang’s case combines two aspects of tightening restrictions on civic life in China under President Xi Jinping that have alarmed human rights advocates: an intense drive against human rights lawyers and restrictions on religion.

Lawyer Who Advised Churches in China Faces Secretive Detention - The New York Times

Five from Church of Almighty God cult jailed in China ucanews.com

A court in the city of Wuhan has sentenced five Church of Almighty God members to between three and four years in prison as China continues a crackdown against the Christian cult.

The group was found guilty of recording “cult training materials” using mobile phones, laptops and voice recorders in September, the Wuhan Evening News reported Wednesday.

“They spread the materials among cult members and others,” the newspaper said. “They also communicated with each other with handwritten notes taken during the training in order to ‘cultivate dissemination talents’.”

Another court in Hubei province sentenced six members of the same cult to similar prison terms for “brainwashing” and spreading information in mid-May.

Authorities have arrested more than 1,000 Church of Almighty God members over the past year after five members of the same family were arrested for the killing of a woman in a McDonald’s restaurant in Shandong province in May last year.

Five from Church of Almighty God cult jailed in China ucanews.com

Religion in China: Cracks in the atheist edifice | The Economist

THE coastal city of Wenzhou is sometimes called China’s Jerusalem. Ringed by mountains and far from the capital, Beijing, it has long been a haven for a religion that China’s Communist leaders view with deep unease: Christianity. Most cities of its size, with about 9m people, have no more than a dozen or so visibly Christian buildings. Until recently, in Wenzhou, hundreds of crosses decorated church roofs.

This year, however, more than 230 have been classed as “illegal structures” and removed. Videos posted on the internet show crowds of parishioners trying to form a human shield around their churches. Dozens have been injured. Other films show weeping believers defiantly singing hymns as huge red crosses are hoisted off the buildings. In April one of Wenzhou’s largest churches was completely demolished. Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism.

Christians in China have long suffered persecutiont. Under Mao Zedong, freedom of belief was enshrined in the new Communist constitution (largely to accommodate Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists in the west of the country). Yet perhaps as many as half a million Christians were harried to death, and tens of thousands more were sent to labour camps. Since the death of Mao in 1976, the party has slowly allowed more religious freedom. Most of the churches in Wenzhou are so-called “Three Self” churches, of which there are about 57,000 round the country. These, in the official jargon, are self-supporting, self-governed and self-propagating (therefore closed to foreign influence). They profess loyalty to China, and are registered with the government. But many of those in Wenzhou had obviously incurred official displeasure all the same; and most of the Christians who survived Maoist persecution, along with many new believers, refuse to join such churches anyway, continuing to meet in unregistered “house churches”, which the party for a long time tried to suppress.

Christianity is hard to control in China, and getting harder all the time. It is spreading rapidly, and infiltrating the party’s own ranks. The line is blurring between house churches and official ones, and Christians are starting to emerge from hiding to play a more active part in society. The Communist Party has to find a new way to deal with all this. There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organisation, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx.

Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organisations, often with a religious colouring, which the party treats with suspicion, but which are also spreading fast.

The upsurge in religion in China, especially among the ethnic Han who make up more than 90% of the population, is a general one. From the bullet trains that sweep across the Chinese countryside, passengers can see new churches and temples springing up everywhere. Buddhism, much longer established in China than Christianity, is surging too, as is folk religion; many more Han are making pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines in search of spiritual comfort. All this worries many officials, for whom religion is not only Marx’s “opium of the people” but also, they believe, a dangerous perverter of loyalty away from the party and the state. Christianity, in particular, is associated with 19th-century Western imperial encroachment; and thus the party’s treatment of Christians offers a sharp insight into the way its attitudes are changing.

[,,,]
In recent years the party’s concerns have shifted from people beliefs to the maintenance of stability and the party’s monopoly of power. If working with churches helps achieve these aims, it will do so, even though it still frets about encouraging an alternative source of authority. In 2000 Jiang Zemin, then party chief, and himself a painter of calligraphy for his local Buddhist temples, said in an official speech that religion would probably still be around when concepts of class and state had vanished.

Religion in China: Cracks in the atheist edifice | The Economist

UPDATE::The murderous Chinese cult that thinks Jesus has returned — as a Chinese woman - The Washington Post

It was at the back of the restaurant – beyond the fry stand, the grease-slicked counter, the droves of gawking patrons — where the murder happened. The restaurant was a McDonald’s. It was a Wednesday evening. The murderers, who bludgeoned the woman to death with chairs and a mop, belonged to a cult described as China’s “most radical.” Called the Church of the Almighty God, it claims to have a million followers, aggressively promotes Doomsday scenarios, wants to destroy the Chinese Communist Party and believes that Jesus Christ has returned — as a Chinese woman.

But it was the McDonald’s murder that has consumed a Chinese court’s attention over the last two months. Days ago, two church members were convicted and sentenced to death for a killing that, even by the standards of the Church of the Almighty God, was peculiar and brutal.

According to prosecutors, five members tried to recruit a woman patronizing the McDonald’s in question, asked for her phone number and beat her to death when she refused. Defendant Zhang Lidong, who arrived that night in luxury Porsche Cayenne car, never offered much explanation.

“You could just tell she was not a good person,” he said in a state television interview, describing the 35-year-old mother. “She was a demon, the evil spirit. We had to beat her to death.”

[,,,]
Much of the church’s teaching hinges on Jesus, who to them is now a woman named Yang Xiangbin. Little is known of the woman beyond this: she reportedly suffered some sort of mental breakdown after failing a national exam and “has a history of mental illness,” according to China’s People’s Daily. In the early 1990s, the 30-year-old woman came into the orbit of a square-jawed man named Zhao Weishan in Zhengzhou, Henan province, according to the Christian Research Institute. Zhao claimed that God had told him she was the “female Christ,” and he began attracting followers to her.



The murderous Chinese cult that thinks Jesus has returned — as a Chinese woman - The Washington Post

Chinese man brings gay conversion therapy lawsuit

This is interesting in that the "want" for conversion therapy doesn't appear to be based on religious belief but more a societal pressure point.

A gay Chinese man said Thursday he was suing a psychological clinic for carrying out electric shocks intended to turn him straight, as well as the search engine giant Baidu for advertising the center.

The Beijing LGBT Center, which campaigns for gay rights, said it was the first court case involving so-called conversion therapy in China.

China declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 2001.

The center's executive director, Xin Ying, said some professional hospitals in China, as well as smaller private clinics, still provide conversion therapy and that the group hopes the case at the Haidian District People's Court in Beijing will lead to a ban on the therapy.

Yang Teng, 30, told The Associated Press that the therapy given to him included hypnosis and electric shock and he was left physically and mentally hurt. He said he voluntarily underwent the therapy in February following pressure from his parents to get married and have a child.

"My hometown is a small city, people there still care about carrying on the family line," Yang said, adding that now he can finally accept his homosexuality.

His lawyer, Li Duilong, said Yang was suing the Chongqing Xinyu Piaoxiang clinic for infringing his personal and health rights because they told him electric shock treatment was not dangerous but then harmed his health. He also said that Baidu bore joint liability because it carried its advertisement.

Li said part of their argument was that homosexuality was not a disease and should not be treated.

Chinese man brings gay conversion therapy lawsuit

UPDATE::BBC News - The Chinese cult that kills 'demons'

China is about to try one of the most notorious murders in recent memory.

In late May a group belonging to a banned cult beat a woman to death in a fast food restaurant. Her only crime was to refuse to give them her telephone number.

The cult in question is called the Church of the Almighty God and claims to have millions of members.

It was an ordinary evening in a small town McDonald's in east China until a family of six arrived trying to recruit new members to their Christian cult.

They moved between the tables asking for phone numbers and when one diner refused they beat her to death, screaming at other diners to keep away or they would face the same fate.

The savage murder was filmed on closed circuit TV and on mobile phones.

It shocked China. Who were these people prepared to kill over a telephone number?

Interviewed in prison later, one of the murderers, Zhang Lidong, showed no remorse and no fear.

He said: "I beat her with all my might and stamped on her too. She was a demon. We had to destroy her."

BBC News - The Chinese cult that kills 'demons'

REPOST::Stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business - The Week

Finally someone gets it and isn't afraid to say it,,,

"We're Christians," Hobby Lobby's president Steve Green proclaims, "and we run our business on Christian principles."

That is music to the ears of many conservative Christians, who rallied around Hobby Lobby when the retail chain argued at the Supreme Court that ObamaCare's contraception mandate unlawfully burdened their religious beliefs. But a closer look at Hobby Lobby's actual business practices reveals this claim to be as hollow as a flute. Turn over just about any trinket in a Hobby Lobby store and you'll find a gold oval stamped with "Made in China," a country that is one of the worst offenders of human dignity, unborn infant life, and economic justice anywhere in the world.

As such, those shiny stickers littering every Hobby Lobby from sea to shining sea are more than a statement about a product's geographical origin; they are also a stinging indictment against the way the retailer has sought to label itself.

[,,,]
Now, of course, a huge number of American companies outsource labor to China, and thus help prop up this shameful status quo. But very few of these American companies simultaneously trumpet themselves as "Christian businesses," arguing in court that providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. How can this ObamaCare mandate be so foul to Hobby Lobby executives, while they say very little about Chinese policies forcing women to have abortions against their wills? Is abortion wrong only when the terminated life is American?

The most glaring inconsistency between Hobby Lobby's ethical proclamations and its business decisions concerns the matter of religious liberty. The craft store chain is hailed by conservatives as standing up to Uncle Sam and fighting for religious freedom. Yet Hobby Lobby imports billions of dollars worth of bric-a-brac from a nation that denies 1.35 billion citizens freedom of worship.

If Hobby Lobby was concerned with religious freedoms — not just those of conservative American Christians — it would quit doing business in China.

Stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business - The Week

ADDENDUM::In China, a park warns citizens away from cults - Los Angeles Times

There is no easy means to understand religion and religious suppression and persecution in China, which has been governed by the Communist Party since 1949. As an atheist regime, religious practices are heavily regulated. It presently recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism but restricts how groups can organize and practice.

But when it comes to cults (or what they deem a cult) their tolerance level drops even further - Falun Gong being a prime example (although please note they are not responsible for the attack posted about on June 2nd, it is the "control" issues that is pertinent.)
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Authorities, though, take a dim view of charismatic sects, especially those with any overseas connections. Falun Gong, for instance, a spiritual movement with roots in Buddhism and Taoism and whose leader lives in the United States, was banned as an evil cult in 1999.

In Wenzhou last week, authorities demolished a church, saying it had been built much larger than permits allowed for. But some in the city say officials fear the rise of another spiritual organization beyond its control.

"The government fears another group like Falun Gong," said a taxi driver, who goes by the nickname A-Hai. "They had a thousand or more people at that church, and the believers there, they handled things really poorly."


In China, a park warns citizens away from cults - Los Angeles Times

Shocking moment mother is murdered in McDonalds by religious cult trying to recruit her - Mirror Online

Wu Ting, 23, is believed to have refused to give her telephone number to members of the All-Powerful Spirit cult moments before she was smashed round the head with a mop.

People watch on helplessly as the attack continues with the young woman lying on the ground as the man who appears to be attacking her is egged on by fellow members of the cult.

Nobody stepped in to help the woman, instead standing around before leaving the McDonald's before standing outside and watching through the window.

The lack of action by other people has shocked many in China where the incident happened.

In a video of the attack a woman can be heard shouting "beat her to death" while someone else says "call the police".

[,,,]
The All Powerful Spirit cult was founded in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang in the early 1990s and later spread to the country’s eastern provinces. The cults philosophy is based on a distorted reading of the Christian Bible and it was banned under the country's corporals in 1995.

Shocking moment mother is murdered in McDonalds by religious cult trying to recruit her - Mirror Online

Fox’s Eric Bolling suggests ditching minimum wage and labor laws because China works hard

What Bolling fails to realize in espousing this view, he has shown the true colors of the Reich. The political model of the Chinese government is an oligarchy which enhances the wealth of the few (the elite, ie the Reich) while enslaving the rest of the people. He is therefore supporting a tyrannical form of government, relying on the oppression of the masses.
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Fox News host Eric Bolling and most of his colleagues on The Five dismissed seemingly the whole idea of a balance between life and work on Tuesday, with Bolling suggesting that the U.S. look to China, and not Europe, for inspiration.

“Some of the economies that are starting to kick our butt, those people work hard,” Bolling said. “There aren’t labor laws, there aren’t minimum wages, they’re working harder than we are.”

“That’s what we should have — no labor law and no minimum wage,” co-host Bob Beckel countered. “They work for a dollar a week.”


Fox’s Eric Bolling suggests ditching minimum wage and labor laws because China works hard



Note: 

Some may argue we are already there, Bernie Sanders for example, an

,,,upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economicand political life of our country.

Or, as reported by Common Dreams, a new study not yet published gives this sober analysis,

,,,When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average Americanappear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically
non-significant impact upon public policy,,,The United States is nodemocracy, but actually an oligarchy."

Chinese share the Holocaust's bitter memory | Benjamin Peng | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel

I've been mulling over this OP for a few days. Trying to determine if it was a part of history I never learned about, or I did learn and forgot, or maybe I just ignored it.

The 27th of January was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, memorializing the victims of WW2 Holocaust, especially the Jewish victims murdered by Nazi Germany. During WW2, six million European Jews lost their lives. In the same conflict, at least 18 million Chinese people (most of them civilians) were killed by ferocious Japanese Army forces who invaded China. Thousands of Jewish refugees fled to China from Europe, where they lived in Shanghai for many years. For this reason, the Chinese people share the bitterness of the Holocaust with Jewish people.

[,,,]
Aside from those who were held accountable for their actions, a number of heinous Japanese war criminals who were directly responsible for the carnage escaped punishment. Asaka Yasuhiko signed the order to “kill all captives” that resulted in Nanjing’s brutal massacre. He and other war culprits evaded the penalty because of their royal status.

In China, there is no institution such as the Mossad to track war culprits, leaving numerous war criminals living carefree lives, free to propagate their militarism in Japan. Despite this, a number have returned to China to repent for their actions. After establishing diplomatic relationships with China, the Japanese government initially provided financial aid to China, however there was no sincere repentance for their actions in China. Many Japanese officials deny the Nanjing Massacre ever occurred, with the government refusing to apologize officially to survivors.



Chinese share the Holocaust's bitter memory | Benjamin Peng | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel

The Cult Who Kidnaps Christians and Is at War with the Chinese Government | VICE Australia / NZ

In some ways, Eastern Lightning are hilarious. For starters, the cult's core belief is that Jesus Christ has been reincarnated as a middle-aged Chinese woman called Lightning Deng who now lives in Chinatown in New York. Then there are the bizarre evangelizing attempts to recruit China's rural communities—stuff like the sudden appearance of live snakes painted with scripture and mysterious glow sticks hidden in people's homes that somehow (I'm really not sure how) signal the second coming of Christ.

Leaders of Christian groups warn their members against the "flirty fishing" methods supposedly adopted by Eastern Lightning ladies to convert Christian men to the path of their female Christ. Lastly, of course, there's the name, which sounds more like an energy drink or AC/DC cover band than a cult. Perhaps that's why, these days, they often use the alias "Church of the Almighty God."

To their victims, though, Eastern Lightning aren't a joke. In fact, to some they must seem kind of terrifying. The cult operates by infiltrating China’s underground house churches (proper ones are banned in China) and integrating themselves into the community, before allegedly seducing, kidnapping, bribing, or blackmailing members into joining them. Highly organized and comprised of more than a million members, according to some estimates, Eastern Lightning train their leaders to build trust slowly over months before making their move.

Their activities have not gone unnoticed by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the two sides are currently engaged in a low-key fight to the death.

[,,,]
The pair are currently thought to be “escaping religious persecution” in Chinatown, New York, where they continue to spread their religion safe from the fiery death-breath of the Great Red Dragon. Eastern Lightning pamphlets have also shown up in San Francisco, which has a large Chinese immigrant population.

The Cult Who Kidnaps Christians and Is at War with the Chinese Government | VICE Australia / NZ