Wikileaks Airs Scientology Black Ops

An anonymous reader alerts us to new material up on Wikileaks: 208 scanned pages (in one PDF) relating to the Church of Scientology and its former "Office of Special Affairs" employee (and subsequent apostate) Frank Oliver. "The documents are dated between 1986 and 1992 inclusive, when, according to the file, Frank Oliver was declared a 'suppressive person' and excommunicated. Frank Oliver should be able to verify the material and has appeared in the media before on subjects relating to the church. Starting on page 107, the document shows that at the time of writing the Church of Scientology was still actively engaged in black propaganda (especially concerning psychiatry), 'fair game' and infiltration."

Comments

Get 'em while they're hot

[Carnildo]

Make sure you get your copy before the Scientologists take the site down.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[aarggh]

The official course of action for COS in cases like these is set down by elron himself, basically sue, sue, harass, and then sue some more regardless of winning or losing. And unfortunately they have so much sway that sending multiple C&D's to sites/ISP's will cause most sites to drop any links or references anyway as they are too intimidated by the COS. Note that by "COS" I am of course referring to the "Cult of Scientology", as no-one could ever confuse this group with any modern day religion!

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[Marful]

Probably because it is classed as a "Cult" and not a "Religion" due to the secretive nature of the core teachings, ceremonies, inner workings, etc, etc.

Oh and the fact that the "founder" pretty much straight up acknowledges that he made up the fictitious "religion" *cough*Cult*cough* to sell books and make money.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[aarggh]

Without starting a flame war on who has the best imaginary friend, and while there are many valid points raised as to the validity of reilgion with regards to suicide bombings, hangings, etc, I should have generalized more along the lines of "modern day, somewhat civilized" religions. In other words religions that over the millennium have evolved from the original (somewhat fairly hideous and violent) sect beginnings to what most western based religions are now, which for all their faults generally try to be a positive source of strength and support in todays society. Unlike specifically the money making machine that is the COS built on a Sci-Fi story as part of a bet, that routinely victimises and harasses any form of opposition, sometimes to their deaths. Thanks to living in democracies, people can voice their opinion that the COS is being picked on, or question how is it different to any modern day religion, and so on, but I would not expect that the vast majority of people in the western world would even remotely consider suicide bombings, hangings, persecution, etc, to be the norm in religion. And for that same reason, I don't think it unreasonable to consider the "documented and recorded" behaviour and practices of the COS falls most certainly more into the organised cult area than a western based church. Especially given that people have no excuse to not know more about COS with the release of large amounts of information legally and illegaly. Sometimes people confuse playing Devil's Advocate with being pedantic.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[budgenator]

Modern day religions typically have a single benevolent deity the is normally credited with creation that extols it's followers to behave in a moral and kindly manner. Scientologist on the other hand behave as others are either prey (even their own) or minions, and they have no deity.
Modern religions have a theology or a philosophy and they actively share that with their peers and others, while a particular translation of a religions holy book may be copyrighted, the original is not, a person can typically obtain the holy book of any modern religion simply by asking; scientology text are copyrighted and the copyrights, trademarks and servicemarks are vigorously defended, the only way to legally obtain scientology texts are to purchase them and not even the CoS members in good standing have access to the totality of the "religion" Scientology is secretive rather than open like modern religions. Scientology just doesn't fit any definition of religion that applies to modern religions, it's a form of shammanism or which doctor-ism where only the annoited have the secret knowledge reveled to them who then shake their beads and rattles for the unwashed masses.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[geekboy642]

Anybody that shoots up a school is a person who has severe mental issues.

People with severe mental issues are frequently prescribed drugs to try to alleviate those issues.

Correlation DOES NOT EQUAL causation. In fact the most recent school shooting I can remember occurred when the shooter stopped taking his drugs and regressed to a much worse state. Clearly the drugs were at least holding his psychosis in check while he was taking them. To put your statement in a clearer light, "the 9-11 hijackers took aspirin when they had head-aches! Ban aspirin, it causes hijackers!"

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

If you are a good person, and you do good things, but you don't believe in the "right" God, what kind of God would punish you? Not the kind of God I'd want to spend eternity with, that's for sure. So I'm going to continue to help people and do the right thing and believing in no God.

And if your God is real, do you think he won't know that all the good YOU did was because you were afraid of burning in hell for all eternity?

Re:organizations that prohibit criticism

[icegreentea]

Why are you specifically stating Islam, and then forgetting all about those wonderful little people at the Discovery Institute. I understand that 'like religions' really does encompass all possible religions, singling out Islam by name is a bit unfair. They are no better, and no worse than any other major religion with extremist/fundamentalist groups.

Re:After reading this PDF...

[zakeria]

Start by boycotting Tom's films! support him in anyway supports the Church.

Re:slashdotted

[fishbowl]

>I mean, the CoS would easily bomb a data center

Being linked to a literal act of terrorism would be the end of Scientology in the US.

This shows Germany was 100% right to ban them

[golodh]

I have heard a lot of (fairly uninformed) criticism of Germany's decision to outlaw the Scientology sect.

However, with the Fishman affidavit, the whole case concerning Karin Spaink (see http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/fishman/home.html), and now this I feel strengthened in my support for the decision of the German government to outlaw this sect.

Regrettably it doesn't work like that in the US. We gave them the tax-exempt status of "church" instead.

Re:slashdotted

[Detritus]

They survived the aftermath of Operation "Snow White" with no long-term consequences.