~The Internet-vs-Scientology~ The War on Scientology

If it were only one or two stories, I'd agree ? but when all the information we have on Sea Org agrees, and nothing contradicts it, what does that say? Has some worldwide, anti-CoS conspiracy (probably funded by psychologists) gotten together to tell the same bogus story for years and years? Given the CoS' massive, documented crimes, is Sea Org really that unbelievable?

By all means, gather all the information you can before deciding what to believe ? but again, all the information that's ever come out points one way only, and it comes from many, many sources over the course of decades.

Here's one source: The Sea Org contract. Just as described in exscientologykids, it features the words, "I COMMIT MYSELF TO THE SEA ORG FOR THE NEXT BILLION YEARS."

Janet Reitman corroborates the existence ? and purpose ? of the RPF in her Rolling Stone article "Inside Scientology."

This may be the first you've heard of any of this, and you're not alone in that regard; the CoS works hard to keep its skeletons in the closet. But don't write it off just because it might sound too bad to be true.

Speaking of bad: CoS leader David Miscavige takes a group of 17 large men to bully an elderly widow into signing away her fortune, as told in a court affidavit by one of the large men. (The widow, of course, was Hubbard's wife, who Miscavige promptly stripped of rank and placed under surveillance for the rest of her life.)

Five different private investigators testify to being paid by the CoS to stalk that same large man, after he left the church, in an attempt to undermine the credibility of his testimony in the Lisa McPherson wrongful death case.

And, just in case you hadn't heard of it: The Lisa McPherson wrongful death case. With sources galore.

Religious or secular, this is not how a legitimate organization behaves.

 

Yes, multiple corroborating stories make it much easier for me to believe it. I was responding to the singular source quoted above. A single website does not constitute "hard damning evidence" in my book.

 

Honestly, if you would follow the link to the site, you'd see that these ex-S'ists' "agenda" is to help current children of S'ists deal with their difficult lifestyle "in a non-judgemental fashion" and to publicly air their grievances -- and hundreds of others' grievances -- with the CoS. The three women who maintain the site are in fact very respectful to the CoS and are careful not to slander it or break copyright law. If you simply follow the link (on the previous page) to the site and surf around for awhile, you'll see that these are obviously not made-up stories at all, but true testimonies from ex- and current members of the CoS. If they were made up they'd be a lot more damning, but alot of the testimony is simply boring. One has to sift through reams of verbiage to get to the occasional instances of Church malfeasance. This is why an article like the one I posted on the previous page is so helpful, because it collates all the stories into one edited overview of the particular subject. I offered the article about the Sea Org, but there are numerous other articles and links to video interviews that are obviously valid and truthful.

There are also numerous official documents of the CoS itself, re-printed within the Fair Use
clauses of copyright law, that show the CoS is not above injuring, slandering, and otherwise harrassing to the extreme persons it deems to be its enemies. This is not conjecture or spurious finger-pointing; it's hard evidence, the official papers and laws of the organization itself.

You may continue to dismiss the detailed testimonies of hundreds of ex-members, and the printed materials of the organization itself, and suggest that these accusations may be slander and libel, but that does nothing to explain why so many ex-members would have an "axe to grind" in the first place. The Catholic Church, for example, does not face opposing websites that feature hundreds of articles, testimonies and videos of ex-members decrying its abuses in uniformly detailed accounts of clear and obvious human rights violations.

I was on the fence about Scientology before I spent about 4 hours last night following many of the various links listed on previous pages of this thread. The sheer volume of accusations against the CoS -- in court documents by a former second-in-command of the Sea Org, for one -- indicate to my logical mind that something outside normal acceptable religious practices is taking place here, and has been for at least 40 years.

 

I followed the link and accessed the site and have done so many times reading material brought up in this thread. You might find it all very compelling and to a degree I do as well but I am also very cautious about accepting such stories at face value. Anyone can allege and provide detailed and compelling testimony, if anything the less dramatic the more believable it is. There are two sides to every story and I am being fed only one side which is not the proper basis for judgement. Ten years in the law has taught me that.

I am also very aware that the Church of Scientology takes aggressive action against people who are openly and publicly hostile to it and this action stands in stark contrast to the position taken by other 'religions'. I accept that but I think we all know that Scientology is not really a "religion" but a very big and powerful commercial enterprise. I think of the Church of Scientology as I would any large corporate organisation and so I don't hold the organisation as whole responsible for the actions of its executive. There are many, many examples of corporate wrongdoing and in my opinion the Church of Scientology is at risk because it has fused pure commercialism with a religious angle which has attracted to it the sort of people who we see acting quite despicably. Unfortunately, it is these people that ruin some of the potential positives that might come out of Scientology and Dianetics.

I'm no fan of Scientology but I'm also not entirely convinced that everything I see and read about Scientology is necessarily true. Also, coming from Australia we don't seem to have the same issues here, so my persepctive is a little different to yours.

 

Fair enough, but I would remind you that court documents, and the official papers of the CoS itself, reproduced in various places under the "Fair Use" clauses of copyright law, are not "stories" at all and do not constitute conjecture, slander or libel on any level. Rather these official materials, legally and freely available for all to study, constitute direct proof that the Church willfully engages in, or has engaged in, human rights abuses -- including monetary extortion of its own members (see the sworn statements of the second-in-command of the Sea Org, 1976), infiltration of US government agencies for the purposes of blackmail and the acquisition of national secrets, and unethical lawsuits designed to ruin individuals who publicly oppose the CoS. I'll privide links to these various legal documents if you like. Or is your stance that these materials are also in error, and/or were fraudulently submitted by people with as-yet unexplained "axes to grind"?

Nevermind the hundreds of detailed testimonies from ex-members describing as-yet uninvestigated claims of human rights abuses, including the apparent indentured servitude of children; nevermind, too, my earlier question as to "why so many ex-members would have an 'axe to grind' in the first place". The sheer quantity of such claims -- whether real or deriving from some mass-delusion -- would seem to indicate that something unpleasant and possibly illegal is occurring in the CoS, which warrants further investigation.

Your facile dismissal of a possible ongoing catastrophe of mind control, extortion and enforced servitude is baffling, to say the least. These are not crimes applicable in such extreme degrees to other worldwide religious organizations. As I noted above, the current version of the Catholic Church does not face public opposition in the form of hundreds of articles, testimonies and videos of ex-members decrying its abuses in uniformly detailed accounts of clear and obvious human rights violations.

 

Yes, it may warrant further investigation but that's about as far as you can go. Court documents are just that "court documents". They contain the allegations, some sworn evidence, a defence and a possible a judgment and that's about it. Without the court judgment at the end, the documents are meaningless. They just tell the plaintiff's side of the story. That evidence should be tested in court.

You can't take a sworn statement and hold that up as incontrovertible evidence in support of your claims.

I've read the "court documents" and watched the "depostion" posted in this thread and have commented on them above. If you have further stuff then please post away and I'll have a look. I'd like to see copies of an actual court judgment which substantiates the claims being made.

As to why there are so may ex-members with an axe to grind - who knows, presumably it is because the Church of Scientology in some parts of the world treats its customers badly and rips them off. That much is pretty evident. There are clearly many thousands of disgruntled ex Scientologists out there. My point is that many of the claims made in this thread are not backed up with anything totally convincing. There may be such evidence out there but I have yet to see it. As I said above, I have an open mind.

Your aggressive attitude is unwarranted and uneccesary - you come across like a mouth frothing zealot. I'll say it again, I'm no supporter of Scientology, I don't have an L Ron Hubbard tattoo on my buttocks, but I'm not going to rush to judgement on the basis of what I've seen to date.

 

LostOnHoth,

In invite you to indicate any portion of my above dialectic wherein you perceive "aggression" from a "mouth frothing zealot". My aim has not been to attack or insult you, but rather to persuade you to see that your skepticism of the materials at hand comes too easily. Is it possible you're not attending closely enough to what evidence we have, based on your opinion that such materials lack validity because they've not been proven in a court of law? I did not state nor even imply that the evidence is "incontrovertible"; yet it is evidence just the same.

I repeat that your dismissal of what I perceive to be evidence -- in a scientific if not a strictly legal sense, as I am not a lawyer -- is "baffling" to me. Mine have not been the words of a "zealot", nor have they been aggressive. I wholeheartedly invite you to continue our disagreement as gentlemen, without recourse to derogatory terms.

 

Thanks but no thanks.

 

That's because child molestation victims are usually too ashamed to come out in public. It becomes even more difficult when church administrators engage in cover-up activities.

 

^ ^ I can only agree with that statement in principle. The difference here is that there have been criminal investigations into and official charges brought against a number of Catholic priests worldwide, many of whom have since been brought to justice. The world is now aware there's a problem with criminal pedophilia in the RC Church.

Nothing of the kind, so far as I'm aware, has happened with the CoS (except the US government-infiltration case in 1977, which perhaps is considered acceptable because the US government itself is corrupt? Is that the thinking here?). Instead we have a general disinclination to believe the testimonies of the CoS's ex-members and other detractors, and apparently a dearth of willingness on the part of law-enforcement agencies to properly investigate the accusations of malfeasance coming from former members, whose complaints are far beyond purely monetary in character.

 

This is a transcript of a CoS document seized in an FBI raid. It's a training program on how to make the Church's members better liars.

Why does the CoS have a training program to make its members better liars?

Also: A very detailed report on the CoS' shady dealings from the St. Petersburg Times.

 

Not to just bump this; this is originally a group of sites known collectively as the *chans who originally started this. Scientology and the internet had issues for 1-2 decades over copyrights which contradicted and went against the basic beliefs of the early hackers.

for info on the chans, see http://www.wikichan.org/ and also see http://www.partyvan.info/ (NOTE: sites might have graphic content on this; this is why I didn't mention encyclopediadramatica. just google 'Project Chanology')

also, a list of *chans is provided at http://www.2ch.us/

EDIT: The chans have an odd history, their "Army" collectively known as anonymous is contradictory, attacking racist sites but beign racist themselves (see Hal Turner raids, but "**** **** ****" spam), baiting "pedophiles" while posting child porn on their boards (Chris Forcand trolling, but 12chan and the smaller chans having r@ygold or at least child models), etc.

EDIT 2: Yes, the Anonymous hate the organization of the Scientology church but do not wish to degrade their beliefs.


if you ask for info, I can provide it for you

 

The /b/tards are not racist, not even subtly. They state racist stuff and porn to make their targets in their raids look bad.

 

How does saying racist stuff and spaming porn make their ENEMIES look bad? :?

 

Because when people look at a hacked myspace account w/ goatses etc, they won't know it's been hacked. They think it's the doing of said hacked individual.

 

ahh....okay. What about the Habbo Hotel raids and other internet wars that do not really involve subterfuge like that?

 

It's for the lulz.

And that's more of a chan thing, not an Anonymous thing.

 

But of course . But you must remember that Anonymous is a synomym of *chans (as in Anon being the chan military/citizens). At least it was.

 

Anon has spread far in cyberspace.

Now they show up in places that you least expect.

 

In case there's any doubt as to the what the CoS charges people, here's an invoice and receipt for $12,000.

What did the lady pay all that money for, you ask?

50 hours' worth of background checks and confessionals.

On herself.

Which she paid for at her church superiors' orders.

The site that image comes from is pretty informative too.

 

Scans of the Sea Org application form.

The whole document reeks of CoS paranoia, but the worst is Page 3, Question 12:

Followed shortly by Question 13:

 

Jenna Miscavige speaks on Nightline, and describes what it's like to grow up in the church.

 

LOL!!!!

That's toooo funny!!

 

pity it went over the heads of the majority of the people here