In Godless We Trust

Church of Scientology Accused of Child Labor in Australia

Bryan Seymour writing for Yahoo has the disturbing tale of a Scientology compound in rural Australia where members are forcibly kept and forced to work, including children.

A young man who escaped the place with the help of his father, Shane Kelsey says “I lived in that garage for about a year and a half, maybe two years.”

…

“You’re not allowed to read any books other than scientology books, you can’t read newspapers, no radio, no movies, nothing,” Shane said.

…

The true Australian headquarters of the Church of Scientology are located in the Sydney suburb of Dundas. The RPF base – which stands for Rehabilitation Project Force – is where Scientologists are sent for punishment and training, for crimes that most of us would regard as trivial.

More than 50 requests for interviews on camera with representatives from the Church of Scientology have been flatly refused.

This is not the first time Scientology has been accused of illegal captivity and slavery.

AmericanAtheist

This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Considering the ‘thousand year’ contracts for SeaOrg.

~Mooglets

Mutiny at Sea (Org): top Scientologist launches attack on leader

Big news from the higher echelons of the Church of Scientology, where a leaked email from a senior member provides an indication of mutiny within the ranks of the Church’s secretive, military-style bureaucracy, the Sea Org.

Debbie Cook, who worked for the Church for three decades and led its Flag Service Organization (as many of you will know, this kind of jargon is standard Scientology fare) in Clearwater, Florida before leaving the post a few years ago, began the New Year by sending an email to 12,000 Scientologists criticising its notoriously uncompromising leader David Miscavige.

The email is long and jargon-filled (you can find it in full here), but, to summarise, it accuses Miscavige of mismanagement and failing to uphold the legacy of the cult’s founder, pulp science-fiction author L Ron Hubbard. In particular, Cook suggests that the Church’s vast wealth, accumulated through donations and the large sums required to take Scientology training courses, goes against the teaching of Hubbard, who wrote that lifetime membership should cost no more than $75:

“Currently membership monies are held as Int [jargon for Scientology’s international management] reserves and have grown to well in excess of a billion dollars. Only a tiny fraction has ever been spent, in violation of the policy above. Only the interest earned from the holdings have been used very sparingly to fund projects through grants.”

What’s particularly interesting about Cook’s email is that it is not the work of an ex-Scientologist looking to discredit the organisation, but rather someone who continues to firmly believe in the religion, as it was imagined by Hubbard before he died in 1986. Cook makes this clear at the end of her email, where she urges fellow Scientologists to protect Hubbard’s legacy by taking action against Miscavige’s mismanagement:

“I […] know that I dedicated my entire adult life to supporting LRH and the application of LRH technology and if I ever had to look LRH in the eye I wouldn’t be able to say I did everything I could to Keep Scientology Working if I didn’t do something about it now.”

While the Church’s organisational discord is fascinating, and welcome news for those who have followed stories concerning Miscavige’s hardline leadership (see, for instance,my interview with whistleblower Marc Headley from a couple of years ago), this persistence of belief among some of those who have rejected Scientology in its current, Miscavige-led form is of equal interest to cult-watchers. The former senior Scientologist Mark Rathbun has been criticising the Church in this manner for a number of years, even going so far as to regularly leak confidential documents via his blog, but he still professes his belief in Scientology. That those who have witnessed the abuses of Scientology at first hand, and have even gone so far as to publicly split with the Church, can nevertheless continue to hold beliefs that are widely dismissed and ridiculed in the world outside certainly provides an interesting case study in the resilience of religious belief.

It will be intriguing to observe how this apparent schism develops this year – could we be seeing the beginnings of a breakaway Church of Scientology, and if so how popular will it prove with those currently within Miscavige’s organisation?

New Humanist

Why does your blog only seem to bash the Christian faith? Honestly, I don’t see the need to bash any faith at all, though. There are so many faiths and religions that people around the world practice and it means a lot to them and their culture. I understand you believe what you believe and you criticize some things in current events regarding faith in a God. But still, do you have to bash bash bash the heck out of a faith in order to show your point???

-Anonymous

—-

Oh hey, and good morning to you, too Nonnie. 

You must not have actually looked though this blog, I’ll give you the benefit of doubt though and say maybe you only looked at the first few pages? Whatever. 

This blog doesn’t ‘only bash the Christian faith’, dearest, it ‘bashes’ all faiths. I just happen to live in an area where Christianity is the predominant faith, so of course there’s a hell of a lot of it in the news for me to get incredibly annoyed at. 

If you actually went back through the archives properly, you’d find Islam and Sikhism also mentioned - and if I find things about other faiths, they also get mentioned. 

Honestly? I don’t give a flying fuck if people’s faiths mean a lot to them. People can do what ever the fuck they want on their own time, on their own property and in their own heads. 

As soon as people start shoving their private faiths into the public? Into schools and politics and hospitals? 

That’s when I start getting pissed off. Because you know what? 

A religions age, cultural standing and huge amount of followers does not make it real. Religious beliefs are nothing but fantasy. Pretty fantasies, sure, sometimes, but fantasies all the same.

So forcing them into places where what we need is empirical truth and reality? I see that as a bad thing.

So I get annoyed. And I post about it. I spread awareness. In the hopes that other people will also see that it is bad. In the hopes that one day governments and teaching bodies and health officials will realise that pretty fantasies have nothing to do with their jobs and keep them the fuck out of them. 

So, really, Nonnie. You can go ahead and be offended on behalf of the biggest and most oppressive fucking religion on the planet, if you really want to, but I’m going to continue in my corner here to spread awareness and, possibly, swear a lot. 

Bye.

~Mooglets

[re-posted in rebloggable format]

In the Clear: On Scientology

A 2008 survey by Trinity College estimated there are about 25,000 committed Scientologists in the United States. As the study’s authors admit, their estimate could be off target. But even if the number of Scientologists were twice as large, Scientology would still be the smallest religion people bother to loathe. There are more Wisconsin Synod Lutherans than Scientologists—most likely by a factor of ten. There are more Hasidic Jews of the Bobover sect. There are more Wiccans. There are, I am certain, more people who thought the world was ending on May 21, 2011, than there are people who believe in this sci-fi religion of e-meters, thetans and a prehistoric cosmic warlord named Xenu. When I say “Scientologist,” half the time people think I mean “Christian Scientist.” L. Ron Hubbard, Mary Baker Eddy: what’s the difference?

Yet we can’t ignore Scientology, if only because the Scientologists won’t let us. You can go a lifetime without being invited to a Roman Catholic Mass, but sooner or later, especially in urban areas, the Scientologists will find you. They open recruitment centers all over the world. They place leaflets beneath windshield wipers, invitations to take free “stress tests.” They brag of sending missionaries to disaster areas like Ground Zero and post-earthquake Haiti. For many years, the church relentlessly harassed journalists, sued critics and fought the Internal Revenue Service over its tax status. Its proud Hollywood adherents include, besides small fish like Jeffrey Tambor and Jenna Elfman, box office whales like John Travolta and Tom Cruise, both quite vocal about their love for the church. Other celebrities express their support with money. In 2007 Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, was reported to have given $10 million to the church.

Scientology is, in other words, aggressively evangelical, and how one reacts to an encounter with it says a good deal about how one views religious freedom generally. We tend to think that freedom of speech and freedom of religion both live in the American soul, but the truth is that most of us value free speech far more than we value freedom of religion. Ask yourself: Should practitioners of Santería be allowed to sacrifice chickens? Should Native Americans be permitted to ingest sacramental peyote? Would you let Catholics send their children to parochial schools to learn their faith, or allow fundamentalist Mormons to take multiple wives? At various times, Americans have answered no to these questions. Even liberals for whom “tolerance” is a sacrament will find reasons consenting adults may not ingest harmless plants or enter plural marriages.

One danger of what might be called Abrahamic ecumenicalism—the idea that Protestant, Catholic, Jew and Muslim can all get along—is that it sets the bar for tolerance rather low. In the United States, where by the third generation every immigrant family succumbs to the English language and a pop-culture religion that venerates Angry Birds, Lady Gaga, Wiz Khalifa, Harry Potter and Entourage, most followers of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad can find a way to get along. Eventually, they locate a moderate mosque, a Reform temple or a prosperity-gospel megachurch. After worship, they agree by text message to meet up at Mickey Dee’s.

But what does the United States say to religious people who remain resolutely weird? That they may practice their beliefs but must expect to face bigotry and harassment? That they deserve legal rights but should also keep their distance—staying in Clearwater, Florida, a major seat of Scientology, but steering clear of our beach communities? Or do we, just maybe, fully accept these religious outliers, knowing that they are not just the price but the fruit of true toleration?

Continue to read this article here

~Mooglets

Church of Scientology allegedly ran background checks on friends of ‘South Park’ creators

A former Church of Scientology member has alleged the organization ran background checks on people it believed to be friends of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The investigations followed the 2005 screening of the South Park episode ‘Trapped in the Closet,” which lampooned both the church and, specifically, Scientology follower Tom Cruise.

Yesterday, former church executive Mark “Marty” Rathburn published on his website a report allegedly written by Scientology’s Commanding Officer, Office of Special Affairs, which, according to Rathburn, reveals the organization investigated the public records of non-Scientologists the church thought might help in getting a “direct line” to Stone and Parker. These included John Stamos, his ex-wife Rebecca Romijn, and South Park consultant Matt Prager.

Both Trey Parker and Matt Stone declined to comment on the subject. The Church of Scientology failed to respond to requests for a reaction to Rathburn’s allegations.

From Inside TV

(Found via Goodreasonnews)

Of course they did. This is in no way surprising. Scientology is one of the more toxic religions/cults (depending both on your personal view and the official view of the country you are currently residing in) - they’re extremely litigious and so paranoid it puts, well, any other paranoid on the planet to shame.

They’ve very likely looked into the backgrounds of every single person they are aware of who has said even the slightest ‘bad thing’ about them. Remember, they have a rule in their church: 

Fair Game

Which basically means, anyone not of the Church is an enemy, and Church members are allowed to take any means they deem necessary to hurt - physically, emotionally, financially, legally - them. 

So. I’m not surprised.

~Mooglets