Slashdot Mirror
Scientologists In Row With BBC
CmdrGravy writes "The Church Of Scientology is currently engaged in a row with the BBC, a result of an investigation by reporter John Sweeney. Sweeney is investigating the Church Of Scientology, trying to judge changes in the organization over the last few years; He's trying to discover if they've moved away from the questionable practices and secrecy they have employed in the past. The conflict centers around a YouTube video posted by the scientologists. It shows Mr. Sweeney losing his temper with a scientology spokesman. Mr. Sweeney's outburst came at the end of a tour of a scientology exhibition which attempts to portray psychiatrists as evil nazi type torturers entitled 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death' which is both gruesome and utterly unconvincing. The BBC appears willing to stand behind its reporter, in spite of the pressure brought to bear by the scientologist organization."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5NPhtLI There ya go!
If there were ever devil-worshipping human slime, with a penchant for pederasty, it was L. Ron Hubbard.
Oh, yeah. Charles Manson was a Scientologist.
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/02/why
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You're obviously new here. Slashdot and the Co$ are old buddies.
3 49237d =99
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/03/16/1256226.shtml
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/10/1
http://slashdot.org/yro/02/03/21/0453200.shtml?ti
They've attempted to force comments off slashdot. They've forced xenu.net to be delisted from google. They're going after people who publish the OTIII "documents". They're abusing the DMCA.
That's why this is on slashdot.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
How about having to pay to be a member? Scientology is a manipulative business, and that is put mildly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8hpHY9zDQ It doesn't seem so harsh at this angle and the scientologist is the one who starts with the voice raising. Sweeney just takes it to the next level. Obviously out of hand for a journalist, but quite satisfying to see.
The one characteristic that I've noticed is consistent across scientologist interviews I've seen is that they all have a creepy boneheadedness when it comes to answering any question, no matter how innocuous it may be. It's as if every moment in life has to be a confirmation of their beliefs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology _Moscow_versus_Russia
This is a recent development - in April the European court of human rights decided that it was against EU law for Russia to deny Scientology religeon status - a judgement that applies to all EU member states including the UK and Germany (who have previously been quite outspoken against it).
May I draw people's attention to http://www.xenu.net/
Scientology - the cult pyramid scheme
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
It's most likely here because scientology nutjobs have sent Slashdot a cease and desist in the past, and made them pull down posts with copyrighted material (I'm fine with that) and links to copyrighted material (I'm not fine with that).
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Do not fuck withe Xenu, Man !! Read 'em and weep !! Aces over Kings !! L. Ron Hubbard showed them !!
(You see, L Ron said he could start a religion to a pack of fellow nuts while playing poker, and that it would be based on aliens (yes, the outerspace kind) !! he won the bet.)
Stupid, stupid people worshipping their god. But those screwballs are not any worse than Nazis (Hitler), Islamic wackos (Alah), paedo-priesthood (Pope), etc.
Yes, I'm sure. I'm also sure that I was the one that first discovered it, reported it to kuro5hin, to alt.religion.scientology, and attempted to report it to slashdot (but someone got their article accepted instead of mine ).
4 53200&tid=991 41250
Here are the links:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/21/0
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/22/0
So, they did force xenu.net to be delisted by google. Google luckily changed hearts, probably due to the enourmous amounts of attention that was generated here, on kuro5hin, and all over the internet. In addition to hating the idea of letting themselves be censored in such a way. It was also one of the first time google linked that some searches were excluded - linking to chillingeffects.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The end of the BBC...
You are aware that it is effectively part of the British state apparatus, aren't you? It isn't just a British CNN, NBC or whatever, it was established and is maintained by Royal Charter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/charter/
I think it highly likely that any action launched against the BBC in this respect would fall flat at the first hurdle. And if they do actually get sued in the US then in every other place the BBC operates, the plaintiff can expect a huge campaign of negative publicity for the rest of time; they won't back down when they believe that they are right - for any reason.
This has, in fact, happened. As far as I am aware this is the only time in history that a Slashdot comment has been edited.
qntm.org
The documentary "Scientology And Me" is being shown tonight (Monday 14/5/2007) on BBC1 at 8:30pm
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Islam is a homogeneous entity. There appear to be as many different interpretations of Islam as there are of Christianity. Most of the Muslim world weren't burning the Satanic Verses. But of course these moderate silences didn't make as good tv.
The BBC has twenty regional United Kingdom stations broadcasting TV and Radio programs in each of the regional accent. The main BBC news show on Radio Four http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/ has John Humphries (Welsh - that's the country on the left hand side of the bottom part of the island) and James McNaughtie (Scottish- that's the country at the top of the island). So how the BBC will implement its plan to rule the world with "their dialect of the English language" will be worth observing. Will the subjugated peoples sound like the cast of Upstairs & Downstairs on Nembutal or perhaps they will all talk in Gordonstoun, that funny version of the Scots dialect that the Royal Family (HRH Prince Charles, HRH his mom The Queen and their various relatives) uses? I watch Fox News and I still can't get that Bill O'Reilly accent down pat. Weird.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
The UK is referenced because we STILL can't have stores be open more than 6 hours on a Sunday because of some fictional character in some fictional pile of cod-swallop from 2000 years ago
Just wanted to let you know that the primary reason behind current sunday-trading laws is actually "protecting the family" and not religiously motivated. Religious concerns dictated the choice of sunday as the day, but the primary motivation was purely secular.
>>because we STILL can't have stores be open more than 6 hours on a Sunday
Thats England, come north of the border Badboy. Mind you that's if we can get our Parliament
members to talk to each other..
Now mod me me offtopic/pedantic!
Acid House saves Souls
* Slashdot earns money from traffic (via ad clicks). Admittedly, the poster was not receiving financial reward.
* It was the whole of OT III, which at the time was not very easy to find.
* I don't think the original post had any criticism, just the text.
* Why is it unlikely to affect its commercial value? If people were able to read OT III when they were just joining then Scientology would practically collapse.
I'll thank you to refer to Our Betty as Her Majesty. (She's also HRH the Duchess of Edinburgh, but when you're referring to her queenship, it's HM.)
In the UK, we have the right of "Fair Comment". Thus, if I say "catbutt pours hot grits down his pants" then the onus is on you to prove that you do not, in fact, pour hot grits down your pants. You may not like me saying that you pour hot grits down your pants, but if it's actually *true* there's not a lot you can do to stop me saying it. Contrast this with the legal situation in the US where you could probably sue me for libel (Libel is Letters, Slander is Speech) whether you pour hot grits down your pants or not.
The practical upshot of all this is that if I say "Scientology is a batshit insane cult purely designed to extract as much money from its members as possible" then it's up to the Scientologists to prove their story isn't crazy, they're not a cult and they're not just all about the money.
Now stop doing that and get those pants in the washing machine.
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion. The Church of Scientology disconnects its members from their families so they have nowhere to go when they leave, and brainwashes them under hypnosis to keep them from wanting to. The Church of Scientology is also the only "religion" to keep its core beliefs secret, to be run for profit, and to have its own paramilitary[1] and counter-intelligence[2] operations.
There may be a Scientology religion, but that is NOT the same as the Church of Scientology. Separate the religion from the organization which practices it, and you will see that the organization is so thoroughly corrupt that it cannot be allowed to continue to exist in its present form.
(Posted anonymously for my own protection, as everyone else who casually criticizes Scientology should.)
[1] http://www.xenu.net/archive/so/[2] http://www.xenu.net/archive/go/index.htm
Other stuff to read is anything about the sort of tricks that Derren Brown gets up to - he has done a 2 DVD pack with card tricks of which the second one is mostly about psychological manipulation like how to make people think of one particular card in a full 52 deck.
Study, and be amazed as to just how easy it is to put someone on the wrong track. The "church" (bit of an insult to the word) makes full use of this. Start an argument on false premises and then walk away, witter away at one flaw in a story to invalidate the whole story .. hey! Where did I hear that before?
Insert
If you're referring to the "Chef" episode of South Park, and assuming that Hayes did say the things attributed to him (*), then he deserved all the piss-taking he got. No-one likes a hypocrite who's happy to take part in making fun of any religion until it comes to their own.
(*) At the time (he was ill with a stroke) it was unclear if words had been put in his mouth by other figures in the Scientology movement, but I don't see him denying it now.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Neither Scotland, England nor Wales are countries. They don't exist.
The country is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
Deleted
Wrong. The difference between a cult and a religion is that you can leave a religion. The Church of Scientology disconnects its members from their families so they have nowhere to go when they leave, and brainwashes them under hypnosis to keep them from wanting to. The Church of Scientology is also the only "religion" to keep its core beliefs secret, to be run for profit,
All very true--though your definition of cult is interesting. I would define a cult as an organisation that requires its adherents to place it at the centre of their lives, bar nothing. Given that definition, I would argue that most (all?) religions aspire to be cults, and that cults are the most successful of religions. But then, I would also argue that religion is institutional and communicable mental illness (as they systematically undermine their adherents' ability to think rationally--a fundamental requirement and definition of sanity). Regarding your last point, however:
and to have its own paramilitary[1] and counter-intelligence[2] operations.
The Mormon Cult (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) also has had (and still has, in various forms) its own paramilitary and counter-intelligence operations (c.f. the "Council of Fifty" and Church Security apparatus). The CIA and FBI have in the past recruited heavily from the LDS church, something that should send chills down everyone's spine given the power those organisations wield today.
The Mormon church has been known to tap the telephones of members and ex-members trying to get free of the "faith." People have died under suspicious circumstances as recently as the 1990s. So while I agree with your characterisation of Scientology as a cult, they are by no means the only cult with its own paramilitary and counter-intelligence operations. Having said all that, Scientology is, without a doubt, at least as dangerous as the Mormon church, quite possibly more so.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Specifically a human sacrifice who has come of his own free will.
Thanks for dropping by. Your decision to post anonymously indicates that you are probably a scientologist sent here to astro turf.
I guess this will post will give you a discount during your next dianetics session.
First a few facts:
1. No religion in existence goes after dissenters the way the church of scientology does; yes, it is true that in some third world countries and in the middle east, turning away from islam can get you killed. But in the west and in most westernized nations, there is the rule of law and the law protects people from being targetted by proponents of their religion. But CoS is able to pervert even this system of law in western nations to target even influential dissenters via harassment, and even death.
2. Scientology is perhaps the only religion in the world where the only way to get to its "cures" is by paying a lot of money. Any other religion - Islam, Christianity etc - it is possible to become a muslim or a christian without paying any money.
3. Scientology is also the newest religion on this planet created by Ron Hubbard - a known criminal. LRH's views on using harassment as a way of quelling dissent is well documented.
4. Scientology also copyrights its "scriptures" - the only religion in the world to do that.
In short - you guys are just scamsters trying to pass off what is really a scam as a religion; scientology was created by LRH with the explicit purpose of scamming people.
In a ten minute TV interview on Sunday morning, the editor of the Panorama series gives some background, including describing some of the techniques the Scientologists used to harass the BBC film crew. Transcript here
www.weird.co.uk/martin
Yes, I can argue that. You don't seem to be too informed about the history of Christianity. Back in the day, before banks proper even got invented, it was the biggest money-laundry and extortion operation in the world. You were supposed to pay the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to get to heaven, while no one was supposed to ever Learn about Christianity except what the clergy would tell you. The biblical texts were in Latin/Greek, and were not to be translated.
Things got a little better thanks to people like Martin Luther (not King, in this context), who pushed for mainstream access to translated Bibles, but the basic premise of mind-control or financial extortion didn't change much. One modern day example that comes to mind is Sweden. In Sweden, the State and Church only got separated in 2000, but still almost all of its citizens pay a 1.25% tax to the church automatically. And that's in a socialist country. It amazes me every time I think about it.
Scientology isn't much worse, it would just appear that it's still in the primitive, expansionist cult-state that Christianity managed to shake in most parts of the world. Way I see it, this is a part of the life-cycle of any religion or dogma.
I quite agree. However nasty the religion, it's important not to mod down its apologists. For one thing it makes the debate hard to follow.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm not sure it's fair to say they got fscked by the government.
For one thing, if you recall, they were right. The problem was that at the time, they couldn't prove it sufficiently to defend themselves. But history has shown that they made the right call, and it's entirely possible that they knew they were making the right call at the time but didn't back it up to avoid compromising their sources.
For another thing, although the two top guys stepped down — effectively "doing the decent thing" and taking the hit to protect everyone below them — they left with crowds of hundreds of BBC staff cheering them outside the building, and hundreds more sending them personal messages encouraging them not to go. Name me any other organisation in the world, on the same scale, where the staff publicly show that much loyalty to the guys at the top. Can't? That's why the culture at the Beeb is special in a world full of cookie-cutter journalism and commercial advertising.
Oh, and did we mention that almost all of the other staff who were directly responsible for the original reporting in that case are still working at the BBC in the same or similar roles? Just because they cut the head off, doesn't mean the rest of the beast is dead.
It's a shame they are tending toward "celebrity journalists" like Nick Robinson and Evan Davies these days. There's certainly been a lot of Blair worship in recent days, with some very rose-tinted views of the results of his ten years in power. Bring back Andrew Marr, I say!
But that's about the limit of their political compromise, even now. If it ever comes down to Hubbard vs. Paxman, I know which side I'll be betting on.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's actually horseshit. I know this, because I have been on the receiving end of some libel action, which was thrown out because it was "Fair Comment".
Also, as another poster said, power isn't solely dependent on raw numbers. Finally, even if its potential for damage is more limited that it was during the 70s and 80s, it's all relative, and certainly no excuse for letting it off the hook.
Apologies for another trite Slashdot analogy, but if homocides were down from 3 in 100 to 1 in 100 per year should we just shrug and say "it's not as bad as it used to be"?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
No, that's just revisionist bullshit. It's been demonstrated multiple times in both the media and in the courtroom that Intelligent Design(tm) is exactly equal to Creationism with the religous serial numbers filed off. All of ID's earliest proponents are "former" creationists, their first major publication was a 99% verbatim creationist essay retro-edited to delete mentions of God, and of course, when citizens/judges/schoolboards pushed ID out of their local curricula, Pat Robertson and friends gravely announced that these foolish people were endangering their immortal souls.
The religions you mention don't plant cameras, get you fired, and sue you until you scream with rage and your family leaves you. Don't conflate.
Scientology isn't hated because it's a wacky religion. It's hated because it's a evil corporation masquerading as a religion. And they always make it personal. Hubbard was a paranoid, insecure, vengeful little gamer twit (yes, he was a geek -- SF writer AND wargamer, probably bad at both), and he made Scientology an expression of his ego. When you deal with a Scientology Sea Org navy member, naval uniform and all, you are dealing with the mentally ill.
And their is a difference between the cute girls taking and giving personality tests in the public orgs and the bastards who join the Sea Org, and no comparison at all with the corporate lawyers who moved in from the top and run the thing.
And religions don't keep their beliefs secret from their own members. That's the critical thing, the moral difference, all Hubbard detestation aside. They don't tell their recruits that they REALLY believe that we are infested with spirits from aliens killed by H-bombs inside of volcanoes by the evil galactic dictator Xenu, and that it will cost them either a lifetime of work or tens of thousands of dollars to find this fact out. It's not a health club, it's a UFO cult.
This is definitely the one thing that struck from the videos posted on Youtube. Tommy Davies was ice-cool under all situations. When he blew outside and he told Sweeney how mad he was, he was in total control. Every word he said, you could very clearly understand. There was no foaming at the mouth, no contortion of the face, nothing. There was no emotion in his face, even if the words coming out of his mouth were all about rage and justice and righteous indignation.
If there are only a few people more like him in the upper echelons of Scientology, they're gonna be around for a long time. There's a word for people like these, and it's sociopath. And judging from the success of another group of sociopaths (CEOs), I suspect we're gonna have to deal with Scientology for a long time. I wonder if it's gonna take something like what happened to the Knights Templar to deal with Scientology.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Neither are you, apparently.
Paying one's way into heaven was never a fundamental part of Christianity; the closest thing that happened historically was the selling of indulgences (remission of the earthly consequences of sin), a real and grave abuse, but one which emerged late in Christian history and which was subsequently eliminated.
It's also worth pointing out that for much of Church history, Greek (and later Latin; the texts were translated accordingly) was the language everyone spoke, and even after the various Romance languages became differentiated, for a long time it was a reasonable expectation that anyone who was literate could still read the two languages (Latin, at a minimum). Later, as literacy in these local languages became more widespread, there were recurring issues with "creative" translations which did result in many local translations being banned. The Church, an organization more than a millennium old at that point, was (perhaps overly) conservative about producing new, official, translations, but did eventually produce them out of necessity as more people became literate in their local tongues.
The European church taxes which you are rightly appalled by were actually an (unintended!) consequence of the Reformation movement led by Martin Luther et al. -- unmoored from the central organization of the Church, the European monarchs were able to establish themselves as the heads of the national churches and turned them into instruments of the State. While the Church, as the only central institution left after the collapse of the Roman Empire, had become too involved in secular affairs, such a development represented a radical overcompensation which made the situation worse rather than better. Incidentally, it is a desire to avoid this state of affairs -- an established State church -- which motivated the Establishment Clause in the US Constitution.
Lastly, as the two religions (if Scientology can be called that) differ greatly in their fundamentals, I think it would be especially constructive for you examine the first few decades of Christianity and compare them with the first few decades of Scientology. For instance, how many Christians (particularly the leadership!) could expect to be (and generally were) killed for their religion? Money really was the least of their concerns...
DNA just wants to be free...
This is why agnostics are so great. :)
Also, weak atheists don't make the positive claim that there isn't a God, so they're exempted from the circle.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
There is of course not just one Greek text and any modern edition of the NT has many comments and comparisons - I have two editions and they differ in many places as to which version to choose. But compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the later fragments that exist of the Testaments, the NT is remarkably homogeneous. As you would expect from people for whom the exact words are sacred. In arche estin ho Logos!
Pining for the fjords
...and I am very worried by its contents. Not the reporters outbursts (which were covered, along with profuse apologies), but the behaviour of the Scientologists, who, at times, acted like some form of Gestapo, attempting to stifle debate on the issue and sending stalkers out to harras the intimidate the reporter. The show should have been on longer, and perhaps focussed more on the contorversial anti-psychiatrist angle, and those families isolated from their loved ones by Scientology practises. Freedom of speech is one thing, but this cult should be closed down.
My web domain.
It's important to distinguish between paying for indulgences and obtaining indulgences in another fashion (i.e. performing acts of piety, as one can still do today), as what I wrote makes sense only when that distinction is made. Additionally, as they are not a characteristic of Eastern Christianity, one cannot describe them as fundamental to Christianity as a whole. Are they fundamental to Western Christianity specifically? Even that is a very difficult argument to make, as there they are considered neither sufficient nor even necessary for salvation.
It does sound like I successfully made my point that the early Christians weren't in it for the money.
...and you find this admirable?
Perhaps Scientology entirely rejects reason, but Christianity does not. Mutually exclusive propositions cannot simultaneously be true, and belief systems containing mutually exclusive propositions are necessarily incompatible, though one remains free to acknowledge common ground.
Scientology's positions are a lot more comprehensive than simply avoiding certain drugs.
I do not think most people who have tried to leave Scientology would describe the organization as "tolerant".
DNA just wants to be free...
I believe they call it "bull baiting" or something like that. Go to Operation Clambake or xenu.net or something if you want all the details, but they practice not reacting while people shout at them, etc. (and, of course, someone like that person interviewed would likely have been one of the shouters, more than once, in all probability).
I think it's... TR 0 or something like that? It's been so long since I wrote that report on them. Anyhow, they're pretty practiced about doing crap like that, although some celebrities may have less control because I think they get preferential treatment and may not get put through the ringer quite so hard (e.g. Tom Cruise).
I think anyone with a decent knowledge of history knows that Christians, generally, have done quite a lot of bad things. Your point, though, is that some of those bad things are intrinsic to Christianity, isn't it? That's a point which would require more specific support.
"Technicalities" are important because words have definite meanings. It should be clear at this point that we both regard the granting of indulgences for money as it was done in the time leading up the Reformation to be an abuse (as did Martin Luther), but we seem to differ in our understanding of what an indulgence itself is. Compare:
...with the real definition (CCC 1471-1472):
Indulgences have always been granted for specific pious acts (prayers, etc; the norms for this are presently set out in the Enchiridon of Indulgences); money could only be involved inasmuch as some pious acts could involve it (e.g. almsgiving or donating to a good cause), and inasmuch as those very specific acts (donating to a particular cause) had been approved for the grant of an indulgence (which is no longer possible as the grant of indulgences for any acts involving money was banned after the worst abuses).
Dying for something one knows to be false is tragic, but dying honestly is far more honorable than knowingly cheating people for money.
Perhaps, but there are substantial disagreements between Scientology and Christianity in areas like soter
DNA just wants to be free...