Someone funneled $40 million (that's the figure currently being mentioned) to Disney in order to broadcast a lying mockudrama on the ABC network -- sans commercials or any known sponsor. Who?
The impetus -- and perhaps the cash -- seems to have come from a bizarre Christian cult called Youth With a Mission (YWAM), founded in the 1960 by Loren Cunningham, father to David Cunningham, the film's director. A
fine researcher over at Democratic Underground found a page linked to YWAM which inlcuded a very revealing paragraph:
Starting in July, along with our 'normal' discipleship efforts in YWAM, we will officially join The Film Institute - a new auxiliary branch of Youth With A Mission focused on tranforming film and television from the inside out. TFI's first project is a doozy: simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!
The miniseries was called Untitled History Project during production; the production company was called UHP Productions. Tellingly, the web site containing this information went missing the moment "outsiders" discovered it.
YWAM has many of the attributes of a dangerous mind control cult. Not only that: Preliminary web research indicates that YWAM has long had both far-right political ambitions and "spooky" links.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)The following comes from the Rick Ross entry on YWAM:
Further information surfaced concerning YWAM in the book "Spiritual Warfare" written by Sarah Diamond published in 1989. It seems that YWAM has sought political influence. Specifically, active participation in the so-called "Anatole Fellowship" later reorganized as the "Christian Public Policy Council". Ron Boehme of YWAM was an executive committee member in 1985. The group sought "to gain influence within the Republican Party" and later in a 1987 meeting discussed "electrical strategies" with "South Africa, Nicaragua and El Salvador (page 130)".
Further political involvement is evident through a meeting (June 1982) with an aide to Rios Montt, former dictator of Guatemala and a small group of so-called "Christian Right" leaders. This group included Loren Cunningham, head of YWAM. Montt was a leader in Gospel Outreach's Guatemalan Verbo Church. Gospel Outreach is based in California. Rios Montt traveled extensively throughout the United States on a speaking tour put together by leadership of the "Christian Right" (pages 164-167). The regime of General Rios Montt (1982-83) was later accused and exposed for its crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. One complaint filed by survivors states that more than 1,000 people were murdered in 11 village massacres between March and December of 1982 within Guatemala.
Third World missionaries for YWAM may travel at personal, risk perhaps due to these political involvement. In 1987, six white YWAM missionaries were held captive by RENAMO (a South African backed guerrilla force) after several attempts, they were "rescued". It is unclear whether they were kidnapped, or "removed for their own protection" by RENAMO. "News reports indicated an alliance between elements of the Christian Right and RENAMO (pages 198-200)."
In the mid-1980s, The Christian Century published a series of exposes on Christian missionary groups which provided cover for CIA agents in thrid world nations. YWAM certainly seems to fit the profile.
The bloodthirsty Rios Montt was placed into power by the CIA. The following will give you some idea of the sort of fellow he was and is:The generals also unleashed a scorched earth attack on the nation's Mayan population that, according to a UN commission, resulted in the annihilation of at nearly 600 villages. Within 18 months, more than 19,000 people had perished at the hands of Ríos Montt 's death squads. The killings continued even after Ríos Montt was eased from office in 1983. By 1990, more than 200,000 people had died in Guatemalan's bloody civil war, with more than 90 percent of the dead killed by government forces. Of those, more than 83 percent were indigenous Mayans.
Also see Robert Parry's piece here.
Worth noting: The Path to 9/11 is one of the very few Hollywood productions ever to receive permission to film at CIA headquarters.
The financing of YWAM remains mysterious.
You may want to check out this testimony: "Saturated in Abuse at YWAM Maui," as well as this expose of YWAM's connections with the controversial Binny Hinn. Jaded heathen though I may be, I was certainly struck by these words: "When "Christians" start marching around cities, making little icons (voodoo dolls?) of churches and pastors to "visualize" them better..."
I wonder if director Cunningham carried around a voodoo doll of Dad?
Better question: How the hell did the crazies of YWAM hook up with Disney? Considering the fact that Disney is one of hte most gay-friendly workplaces in the United States, and thus despised by the fundamentalist right, the match would seem -- well, very strange indeed.
