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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."
Do a google search for slashdot deleted posts scientology, and see what comes up.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
Maybe they figure that now they've cut their teeth on a big player (and they came out on top, eventually) they can tackle the big guys. I won't be fun, though... Scientology doesn't play by the same rules as normal corporations with rational customers. They fight as dirty as possible; tactics that would easily sink a normal business if they got out are business as usual, and they don't pretend otherwise to their members; they just made it part of their belief system that it's morally okay to use any means necessary to stop their detractors.
This is probably the best time to do it, though, while WikiLeaks still has quite a lot of active attention because of the Julius Baer legal business.
I just hope they didn't waste some of that capital calling for the eNom boycott. Not exactly the same level of "evil"....
But I guess we'll see, either way. Stay tuned -- same bat-time, same bat-channel!
I wonder if they'll care if they do. They're set up in many different countries with mirrors across the world for a reason - because they *expect* every organization they mention to try to shut them down. Won't work. The cult might bring down a server or two, but they'll just pop back up as quickly as they can and in the mean time alternate servers will take the burden.
I know the cult is sue-happy and has successes under its belt, but wikileaks is set up *specifically* for this. The documents are out, they're on servers worldwide already, and a dozen bit torrents as well. There is no way to suppress this even if they were to somehow take down all of wikileaks.
LRH on Data Mining - pg 117:
By all standards modern governments are not sane.
Thus, somewhere at the bottom of the pile is some hidden intention.
In collecting government files and the various false reports in them, through the use of Freedom of Information Act, it is not enough to simply see they are false and DA them. This of course is a necessary action but is NOT _the_ basic action.
One needs to construct a data bank of all documents and cross-index to get _all_ documents in their possession - using one file to find things that will detect the existence of unrevealed additional documents.
Interesting read...
> as no-one could ever confuse this group with any modern day religion!
I'm curious; why wouldn't you confuse it with a religion? What is a 'modern day' religion?
I ask these questions as a Christian myself, and a regular old boring protestant one at that.
Max.
If I asked you what you believe, you would point me to materials I can read, tell me yourself, or point me to someone else who can explain it better.
Scientology forces you to pay lots of money and undergo questionable interrogations before they will trust you to with their secrets. By which point you have made a huge emotional and financial investment. So it's unlikely you would question what you are being told anyway.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Three girls who are ex-scientology kids have come forward and started a website about the issues with Scientology. (Not bad looking either). One is Jenna Miscavige Hill (niece of David Miscavige, the current head of Scientology). Another is Kendra Wiseman, who is the daughter of the current head of CCHR (Scilon front group).
http://www.exscientologykids.com/admins.html
The stories of all three are quite fascinating in terms of getting a look on the inside.
So, when you say, They are no better, and no worse than any other major religion with extremist/fundamentalist groups., I'm afraid I have to say that you are extraordinarily naive and just plain wrong And to compare Islam to the Discovery Institute... I'm sorry, how many people have been killed by people from the Discovery Institute? How many civilian markets and embassies have been bombed? How many children and mentally retarded people have they used to blow up innocent civilians? Did you say Zero? If you did, then you are correct. Any other answer is just plain ignorant.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I'm curious; why wouldn't you confuse it with a religion?
1) All real religions will gladly tell you what they're about before hand. 2) No real religion will brainwash you into mortgaging your house. 3) No real religion protects their materials by copyright, so they can do #2, and use the law to squelch leaks and critics. 4) No real religion will make you disconnect from your friends and family, so you will have nobody to instill some sense into you--and stop you from doing #2. 5) All real religions on this planet are inclusive, instead of exclusive.
I could go on and on (and on and on), but I really don't want fingertip blisters pointing out stuff that's obvious to the un-brainwashed masses after they've completed about 10 minutes of research (2 of which might be clicking on google links).
What is a 'modern day' religion?
I'm guessing he means any religion that is widely practiced, and has evolved enough to be generally accepted as (at least) "mostly not evil" by most people (especially by most who don't practice that particular religion). For instance, there's plenty of passages from the old testament, and all of the Abrahamic traditions, which are not generally acknowledged as being things which apply to the modern world; and extremists who believe these things are generally shunned from the mainstream of their own religion. Islam is probably the one exception to the last part, because Islamic extremists are often heroes within their communities. So, whatever.
That scientology eventually teaches the idea that some Xenu character planted frosty dead people and hydrogen bombs in the Worlds' volcanoes, and that they have these ghosts stuck to them doesn't particularly enrage most of the scientology critics I know; it's their abuses and covertly hostile nature that disturbs them, and me. Fact is, that part isn't all that much different from other equally silly stories religions teach.
Still, the fact that it was dreamed up by some twice divorced sea-faring, drugged up satanic NAMBLA perv, is a lot less noble than the supposed origins of the other religions... And scientology makes it out that LRH was a 7' tall descendant of European nobility, who shot rainbows and unicorns out of his ass. So, because of that, add this to my list: 6) It's easily demonstrable that a) the people who run scientology are either purely malevolent because of the lies and contradictions in their teachings, or b) they're incredibly incompetent nincompoops who couldn't find their asses with both hands.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Never if you can help it. It consumes time, means little but trouble for you. Suits are basically best as threats. Page 101: At this instance there are men hiding in terror on Earth because they found out what they were attacking. There are men dead because they attacked us - for instance Dr. Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. There are men bankrupt because they attacked us But if you do put the wrong head on a pike, be sure to put it back on the body again as soon as the need for its being on a pike is over Page 102: It is mercy to put the padlock on such a person's activities. Every word he says or writes against us, every plot he enters into, alike punish him further and further down
How bad can it get? We have evidence in a book Dr. Winder wrote. He knew it consisted of stolen ideas and enthete lies. Every code it sold killed him a little more. And one day he died Page 103: It's a relief for a bad case to be punished. Sometimes they choose us for their executioners - worse luck Page 107: 2. By having high-toned investigators who have no possibility of being blackmailed, we can make up in effectiveness what we at this time lack in numbers.
L. Ron Hubbard Wow.. I started out by cherry picking the juicy parts, but once Hubbard's memos start appearing it's pretty much all juicy.. Black propaganda--Hubbard, The genus of insane governments--Hubbard, Why governments attack religion--Hubbard Look at the situation. Every time the enemy offers an attack, you defend against it and that is all you do. Any castle, to hold out, has got to sortie. The proper strategy for any battle is to find a weak point in the enemy lines and attack it.
The reason the United States is losing against communism is simply on these same mathematics. That they are losing is patent. All they are doing is defending the points attacked. We are lucky Hubbard was a sci-fi writer and didn't go on to become a politician.. I would have like to see his handling of the Cuba missile crisis going by the above logic..
I can see the parallels of religion to CoS, but I have to say this goes way beyond any religion. Nothing other than a cult would write such aggressive, practical advice on silencing critics as this. With Immams declaring fatwahs at least that's not actually an officially sanctioned part of Islam, with Scientology it is.
I think all the media attention will eventually kill scientology. Hearing about "Xenu" has been worse for Scientology than hearing about even the worst silencing of critics, blackmail, and manslaughter.
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When WikiLeaks got popular, I knew it would be a matter of time before they ran up against the most prolific extra-national censorship institution on Earth. I'm eager to see if in WikiLeaks the CoS finally meet their match - the BJB case was nothing against this.
There's a chance, depending on how extensive these documents are, that CoS will merely try to "distance" themselves from "rogue members" - but if the fight turns dirty, WikiLeaks will have their hands full. Besides lawsuits, they can expect stalkers, death threats, sabotage, major network "failures" (see Blue Security Inc. vs the spammers) and other things that not even the shadiest bank would consider. I hope that free information will win the day.
Consider this difference:
When Bin Laden calls for a Jihad against the US, we can say that it isn't Islam that's at fault, because the religion of Islam itself grants no inherent authority to Bin Laden, he simply twists some of its teachings.
However, if the Pope were to call for a Crusade and start up a new Inquisition, and Catholics (or at least enough of them) were to go along with him, we would be more justified holding Catholicism at fault. It teaches obedience to the Pope and its core leadership would have initiated the action.
You can certainly separate the religion from its followers. However, with Scientology you have a situation where the leadership of the church practices abusive actions against individuals, the majority of its followers go along with the abusive practices of the leadership (or are unaware of them), and the teachings of the church often call for those abusive practices. It's because of this that many people lay the blame on the church as a whole.
Considering what they were doing, I think they got off very lightly. 5 years is not a lengthy sentence for espionage and subversion, not to mention the huge conspiracy.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Your grandmother referred to what is known as "Pascal's Wager": if you believe in God and are wrong, you pay no price, whereas if you do not believe in God and are wrong, you pay the price of Eternal Damnation.
The wager is uniformly understood by anyone with a passing understanding of logic to be facially invalid and incorrect.
The reason is simple: the wager makes the blatantly false assumption that believing in God while alive has no cost. Moreover, it fails to account for the fact that the 'value' of a cost paid over time is intrinsically linked to the duration of your existence (i.e. your 'life' plus any 'afterlife' you may have). If God doesn't exist, and you believe in God while alive, you pay the maximal price of wasting all that time and energy (along with all the missed opportunities this entails) during the entirety of your existence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that this cost is not greater than living an actual life of happiness without a deity followed by an afterlife of 'hell'.
Moreover, belief out of fear of the results of being wrong is no belief at all: it is a shallow, deceitful pretense of belief. It is an insult to the very God you would claim to believe in, by virtue of saying that the only reason you believe is that you think it would be too costly not to believe. This is like a person who abstains from murder not out of respect for life, but rather out of avoidance of the prison-sentence. That person is a monstrous imitation of morality, not a moral man.
Belief, if you value it at all, must spring from an honest embrace of some purported truth. It cannot spring from a callow desire to avoid consequences.
"Stumble before you crawl"
As a disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the Mormon church.
I would definitely say that if we call LDS a cult, we must continue to call the Catholic Church a cult. The principle is the same: a religious group built around a cult of personality, where the original leader is subsequently replaced by a series of leaders chosen according to the originator's alleged principles.
The only difference - and I mean this honestly and without irony or sarcasm - between the cult/religion status of the Mormon and Catholic churches is time. That doesn't mean they aren't perceived differently, but it does mean that many people aren't being fair to LDS.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Espionage and subversion against your own government used to be called treason, if a islamic or a socialist organisation had done the same thing they probably would still be in jail now and their organisation banned.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
You're joking, but this is perfectly easy to do. You just barely listen to what the questioner is saying, while simultaneously thinking hard -- the way actors do, method acting, trying to *live* your thoughts -- about calming or embarrassing things from your past. You can teach yourself to drive e-meters. They're a little more complicated than just a Wheatstone, but that's basically what they are. When I was a kid I made one as a science project and taught myself to push the needle from the bottom to the top and back again while talking to people (I grew up without a TV and had a lot of time on my hands, okay?) and later ended up dating a Scientologist (she was hot and I *still* didn't have a TV, okay?) and she and her family did *not* appreciate my ability to push an e-meter around.
I don't think carrying a charge could break one: the ones I've gotten to look at didn't have much vulnerable electronics. They used a transistor to drive the meter itself, based on the differential voltage across the bridge.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.