Reverend Moon jumps the shark

The Reverend Kevin Thompson, San Francisco's main representative of Korean "Messiah" Sun Myung Moon, has been sentenced to a year for poaching baby leopard sharks.

Sorry. I have to stop here. It suddenly struck me how bloody strange that first sentence is.

And the story gets stranger still. On a 2003 audio tape, Thompson admitted that Moon had personal knowledge of the poaching operation:

When I had the chance to tell our founder Reverend Moon about it ... he told me, you know, 'You need twenty boats out there fishing!'" he boasted. "He had this big plan drawn out, you know." Thompson, a Brit who speaks with a Scottish accent, also said he had to convince the excited Moon not to expand the operation, apparently out of fear that it would attract notice.

Incidentally, it seems that there is a lucrative market for sharks of this sort. People collect the damnedest things.

Here's the really eye-catching part of the story:

From the get-go, however, Special Agent Roy Torres of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uncovered evidence that the shark ring extended beyond Thompson. Among his more telling discoveries was the close tie between the pastor and True World Foods, the nation's largest supplier of sushi-grade fish. Moon's followers launched True World in the 1980s after the church leader issued a series of lectures, extolling the virtues of fishing. While Moon's followers call him "True Father," he calls himself "King of the Ocean."

Over the years, True World quietly rose to the top of the food chain in the domestic wholesale sushi business. The company, which has a warehouse in San Leandro near Thompson's church, makes beaucoup bucks in the East Bay, and has supplied some of the area's premier sushi restaurants, including Berkeley's Kirala, Alameda's Angelfish, and Oakland's Tachibana Sushi Bar and Grill.

King of the Ocean. Sort of like Aquaman, eh wot? No, not Aquaman. Cthulhu.

Keep in mind, next time you grab a plate of raw fish wrapped in rice, that you are supporting Moon and his para-weird ambitions of global rule. See also here and here.

Moon's status as King of the Ocean suggests one useful role for the Washington Times. And what about Moon's massive spread in Paraguay, right next to the newly-purchased Bush spread? There's something fishy about that.