The Cult Observer: AFF News

Volume 13, No. 1 -- 1996

AFF committee members and others who are vital to AFF's research, information, and education functions, will learn of one another's recent activities in this column. Of course, much more work occurs than is reported to us. We'll try to relate the news in the order we receive it.

Sandy Andron, of the Central Agency for Jewish Education in Miami, and Carol Giambalvo, cult-education specialist from Flagler Beach, Florida, are AFF associates who presented a workshop last October at Florida International University, North, sponsored by the Catholic Archdiocesan Campus Ministry Office. The students and campus administrators who attended were treated to a "thought-reading" illlusion by Sandy, who is also a skilled occasionally-practicing magician. "That's how [cults] control you," he said of his demonstration, "by giving the impression that they have something special that you lack, such as 'the way to peace, or to heaven, guaranteed.'" Carol explained manipulation and control by the narrowing of a recruit's options, guilt induction, and thought reform. In a particularly vivid display of one cult's spectacular success, she held up a computer printout of "thirty-one pages of names for Moonie front groups" and let the folded pages fan out onto the floor like an endless according to The Florida Catholic Archdiocesan magazine. She also said that the Unification Church has so much money from its many businesses and front organizations that their "conservative" Washington Times, ostensibly an alternative to The Washington Post, has no ads, the revenue not being needed. Another fact she revealed that is not generally known is that "Moonies even make the drive trains for Hyundai automobiles."

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