SG-eye quotes a story from the Weekly Post. To SG-eye, this makes it a valid and factual story.

The Weekly Post is a tabloid, long an enemy of the Soka Gakkai, and any American reader will notice immediately that the story is anything but "journalism". It deals with the unethical (and probably illegal) exploitation of government lines-of-credit by financial brokers with ties to certain politicians, one of whom was a Soka U. graduate and a member of the New Komeito Party. An unattributed source characterizes this person as "the central figure" of the scheme, and the same source extrapolates, without any documentation whatsoever, that a "university network" was used to forward the fraud. The politician was expelled from New Komeito after its own investigation. Somehow, the Weekly Post construes the undertaking of the investigation, and disciplining of the guilty party, as "evading the scandal".

Nichiren Shoshu makes frequent use of such "stories," in which a writer in a Japanese tabloid will express his own ideas as "fact." The only "facts" in the story are that there was a scandal; that a Komeito member was involved, and that the Komeito took the proper action when his offense was discovered. The Weekly Post has never published a story about the Soka Gakkai or New Komeito which has been even neutral, let alone positive; as in this one, it regularly takes any situation in which the words "Soka Gakkai" and "crime" both appear, and report it as a deliberate organizational policy to commit crimes.

4) "Gakkai Crackdown on Dissidents" 
A group of SGI members have gotten together to form what they call the "Independent Reassessment Group" (IRG). They have picked a number of areas in which they feel the SGI should reassess it's policies, and has used the Internet to recruit members. Thus, what should be private, internal discussions within the SGI are, for all intents and purposes, held in public so that even those who want to destroy the SGI are privy to them. The IRG has raised many valid issues; the problem is that they seem to think that the best way to effect change is to broadcast their arguments (while failing to broadcast others' arguments) so that external pressure forces the SGI to adopt their platform. 

Other SGI members have had arguments with the SGI leadership, the author among them. These arguments are held with the people concerned, and conducted privately so that the arguments can be reasoned, and whatever time is needed for persuasion and resolution can be employed. There have been changes in SGI policy as a result of these discussions. This method has been suggested to the founders of the IRG almost from the minute they opened shop over two years ago; they have dismissed the suggestion out of hand.

The problems caused by the IRG method (besides their use of external pressure to hurry change) are: some of their recommendations have been considered and rejected with valid reasons, but the IRG will accept no reason for not implementing their agenda; their use of the Internet to enumerate their complaints allow Nichiren Shoshu to extract parts of discussions, out of context and distorted by Nichiren Shoshu "spin", to influence people away from the SGI; and, they accept propaganda originating with Nichiren Shoshu.

Despite all this, for two years the SGI said nothing, and allowed these members to express themselves without public censure or even argument. Late in 2000, the electronic publication Justice Chronicle published an opinion by a member that was highly critical of the IRG — particularly of its insistence that the SGI allow Nichiren Shoshu to make its accusations and distortions while, essentially, turning the other cheek.

This is what the SG-eye site calls a "crackdown on dissidents". The article is in issue 63, dated December 15, 2000, and can be examined by anyone so inclined. Those who do so will see that SG-eye quite deliberately misquoted the article: there is no use of the phrase "heinous sins", nor does it condemn anyone for "speaking to other Buddhists" or "criticizing Ikeda". It's criticisms of the IRG are, in fact, almost identical to those listed above — the difference being that it is more detailed and gives examples. 

5) "Buster Williams Leaves a Big Impression"
Buster Williams is a long-time SGI member and world renowned jazz bass player. In his capacity as an SGI leader, he gave a talk at a seminar about the problems between Nichiren Shoshu and the SGI. All that is know of the talk - all that is the basis for the SG-eye characterization of the talk — is from the rough notes taken by a non-Buddhist attendee of the seminar, who chose to post them on the Internet. 

As it is a bedrock tenet of the IRG that the SGI should cease fighting the influence of Nichiren Shoshu, many IRG followers engaged in condemnation of Mr. Williams — though, of course, they, like I, have no idea what he really said. These condemnations, naturally, are fodder for Nichiren Shoshu.

SG-eye neglects to mention an interesting aftermath: when they saw the notes, members of Nichiren Shoshu immediately began bombarding Mr Williams' business website with critical and condescending email, demanding he answer to them. They also posted insulting meesages on the publically accessible "guestbook" on that site. When it was suggested on ARBN that this was childish and unethical, they blamed Mr. Williams for the spamming — "I will throw an egg at your house every night until you act the way I want you to. If you don't do what I demand, it's your fault your house is getting egged."

The spam stopped eventually. To his credit, Mr. Williams refused to participate in the Nichiren Shoshu attempt at email extortion.