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1995-05-09
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Subject: Cult "mind-control" and U.S. plots
Date: 22 Apr 1995 16:39:19 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Lines: 78
Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com
Subject: Cult "mind control" and U.S. plots...
(Al Bielek...phone Japan.)
Reuter news wire: 3/7/95
By Eugene Moosa
TOKYO, April 7 (Reuter) - Not everyone might believe in a guru
who says he time-travelled to the year 2006, but his followers
in Japan pay $116,000 for "telepathy head gear" just to share
visions he says he has experienced.
The estimated 10,000 members of Japan's Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme
Truth Sect) say they even drink tea made from locks of hair of
guru Shoko Asahara to enhance such abilities.
The cult is now the target of daily police raids following the
March 20 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway which killed 11
people and injured thousands. The cult denies any connection to
the attacks.
Despite the raids, which have turned up hundreds of tonnes of
chemicals, laboratories and secret plants, no formal charges
have been made against the sect. Nor have there been any
arrests directly linked to the attack.
But what the raids have revealed is that the cult was obsessed
with things more dangerous than time-travelling.
Investigators rummaging through the labyrinthine building of the
sect's complex at Kamiku Isshiki, at the foot of Mt Fuji west of
Tokyo, were silent on exact details of what they found.
But most agreed on one thing. "This is no police matter. This
is a national security issue," as one put it.
Day after day, the Japanese public have been fed hours of
television footage and newspaper coverage of the details of the
bizarre world of the Aum sect.
Some aspects, like its pyramid structure resembling a national
government, was straight out of pulp fiction. Its "defence
ministry" guarded the premises and kept an eye on would-be
escapees. Its "science ministry" ran chemical plants.
Other aspects bordered on the incredible. It repeatedly accused
the U.S.military of spraying nerve gas on the cult complex from
airplanes. It said cellular phones were actually devices used
in a government plot to control people's minds.
Religious commentators said Asahara attracted his following from
Japan's youth by appealing to their interest in the supernatural
and the occult.
His key prediction is that the world as we know it would end in
1997 in an "Armageddon" of nerve gas and biological wars.
In 1992, he predicted a nuclear war would break out and forced
his followers to move to Okinawa. Nothing happened.
In last December's issue of the sect's monthly magazine entitled
"Great Prophecy: the Shuddering End of the Century," Asahara
said he travelled to the world in the year 2006 and talked to
residents who said World War Three was over.
"I asked the people around me what year it was," Asahara wrote
in the magazine. "They said it was the year 2006. Mankind had
already experienced World War Three."
In a strange contrast to such far-fetched claims, the sect has
displayed an extremely realistic attitude over money.
It demands that a devoted follower wishing to live in its
ascetic community give every penny he or she has to the sect,
including house, land and life savings. The sect wants
everything, and that includes stamps in desk drawers and
telephone cards.
REUTER