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CoS Bigwig Likens Wikipedia Ban to Nazis' Yellow Star Decree
We mentioned on Thursday that Wikipedia has banned edits originating from certain IP addresses belonging to the Church of Scientology; reader newtley writes now that Scientology leader (CEO and Chairman of the Board of the linked, but legally separate, Religious Technology Center) David Miscavige calls the ban "a 'despicable hate crime,' and asks, 'What's next, will Scientologists have to wear yellow, six-pointed stars on our clothing?' During World War II, Hitler forced Jewish men, women and children to wear a a yellow cloth star bearing the word Jude to brand them in the streets of Europe, and in the Nazi death camps."
"Work makes you free" is believe is the correct translation, but I may be wrong. I remember seeing this in my son's history textbook.
But on the other hand, if we did take them and make them actually work, then the world would be better.
I AM NOT SAYING THAT HITLER WAS GOOD, BTW!!! I am simply saying that if these people got off their lazy a$$e$ and worked, our economy/life would be better without these corner preachers.
Smoking cures cancer. Smoking also cures stupidity. check darwinawards . com for some stupid stuff
I'm torn between giving someone "equal time" to respond to something done to them by a company, and saying that Slashdot did nothing more than feed a troll by allowing this particular posting.
I talk about stuff.
I'll skip commenting on the "Wikipedia Ban = Nazism" claim. Many, many other people, I'm sure, will point out just how ridiculous it is. After you place that ridiculousness to the side, however, I found something odd. The person making the comparison is "Scientology religion's chief executive officer Mr. David Miscavige". A religion's "chief executive officer"? Since when does a religion have a CEO? Am I just ignorant of the structure of religions other than Judaism (which has a very loose-knit make up - the joke is that if you ask two Jews a question, you'll get three opinions)? Are there other religions with CEO's?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
<sarcasm mode="dripping">Whoa! Watch out for the Global Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical Anti-Religion Conspiracy! They won't stop at nothing less than global domination!</sarcasm>
Talk about extreme paranoia! This guy's talking about pushing for a sane world and blaming the insane for stopping Scientology, when, obviously, this guy is the insane one.
Mr. Miscaivge: My wife, as a psychologist and therapist, works in the "Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical industry" and I can tell you with absolute certainty that these guys can't even agree on whether "Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder" is a real disease or not, let alone organize a global anti-religion conspiracy, seeking to destroy any religion (or anything really), let alone the Church of Scientology. You should seek professional help for that, it sounds like you're paranoid-delusional.
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If I were Jewish I'd be really insulted by this. I wouldn't want the genocide of my people compared to getting kicked out of McDonalds for repeatedly setting the restroom on fire.
To be clear, there are subtle differences between what you said and what wikipedia said. They didn't say "This is the truth", they merely said, "CoS is unable to behave itself, so it can't post anymore". The rest of the world at large is still free to post new articles or update any current ones.
By banning CoS, they are essentially trying to keep their content 'open' to all, not just a single corporation who can pay enough to keep the articles the way they want them.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If losing editing rights (on Wikipedia) from CoS IPs is akin to Nazi prosecution of Jews then I wonder what they say about "The Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services is considering prosecuting and banning some Scientology practices, in particular the use of the Scientology personality test to sell courses. State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud said that the activities in question might be prosecuted as fraud or as violations of existing healthcare regulations." Or for that matter the trials against them in France.
If just losing editing rights is as bad as Nazi prosecution then by comparison other forms of prosecution must be like killing kittens with sledgehammers.
The Long Now Foundation
As was once said (I think) in the Register: "Scientology is a religion in the same way as Dunkin Donuts is a restaurant".
But the decision to ban Scientology's IP's was perfectly in line with a reasonable prior policy. That's what makes this is OK, not the fact that Wikipedia is private property.
Well, I do know that the decision was based on a very reasonable prior policy (abuse the system and get your IP address(es) banned), and I agree that Wikipedia owes a lot of its existence to the community and that they have a duty to the community to not push a personal agenda, that's all a given.
But that's all besides the point: the Church of Scientology simply has no leg to stand on here. Wikipedia, for whatever reasons and policies are enacted, has every right to tell the CoS to piss off, espoecially if they are being abusive.
My blog
Scientology is an elective class of people, on the whole. It is not an ethnic grouping of some historical standing, with traditional relations - good and bad - with the broader community.
CoS shared some characteristics with Israeli intelligence and guerilla information warfare outfits. Beyond this, the analogy that refers to this effort by the "Church" to control its public perception to the Nazi program to decimate European Jewry is disgusting.
"Calling 4Chan!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I think they should be issued yellow stars. They can wear them in opposition to the Wikipedia action and everybody who interacts with them can have a reasoned debate knowing they are talking with a religious zealot over a resource striving, however imperfectly, to be somewhat scientifically, socially and economically accurate.
Sometimes religious zealot rants go against that. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with CoS creating a web page refuting every objectionable thing in Wikipedia and adding any color needed to enhance clarity from their perspective. There is nothing wrong with respectfully asking that site be linked in the Wiki article.
The information need not be suppressed. It need not be endorsed by Wikipedia. It needs to be identified as strongly supported by a faction of the society, and refuted on some rational basis by another larger faction of society.
This is a religion invented and created by a science fiction author as a lark. The fact there are so many zealots involved in the day to day "process" of the religion in no way makes it any more or less real than any other religion, but to some it seems more of a fixation than a belief.
But then I suppose plenty of people say that about the genuflections of Jews and Muslims too.
The problem with most scams is the people that do them usually aren't that smart and get caught. Scientology is an extremely well thought out scam operated and organized by the same people who run Amway and other scams. (Yes... I called AmWay a scam because it is). They keep control close to them and only let people *think* they have power. Only the super rich can make it to the top and by then those people are so greedy the truth doesn't bother them at all.
I truly believe in everyone's right to believe in what they want to. However... when your organization is blatant in it's manipulation of desperate people... then i have a problem. Hiding behind the wall of religion to promote an incredible pyramid scam is beyond cowardice. The only reason they haven't been busted is the lack of evidence... but that is because they are so secretive and protective of their "secrets".
Sigh... it's so sad that there are so many people in the world like this.
People don't realize that Crowley was crazy like a fox. He played the religion game the same as the Scientologists do: mix in some common sense advice with some absolutely crazy BS. Crowley says to do things like meditate, exercise, and do yoga, but it's all mixed in with nonsense. His stuff was designed to appeal to a certain kind of English spiritual dilettante, and in some ways can be considered a huge joke at their expense.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I believe L.Ron Huber's views of a, "Church of Scientology", are a form of Passive Intolerance. Much of today's news is filled with the antics of those who do not Tolerate. Proud Ignorance, to me, is not a badge of honor, but a cancer of the inner self. Also, in a some-what permissive culture such as what I live in, I find it troubling that the "Scientology Show-off's" find it easier to to sue their detractors, than live by a way where strength in conviction has always proven to be the best offense.
That's a weak semantic point, raised in an effort to justify a rigid, easy-answer ideology. :(
It's harder to commit extensive abuses of power without the force of law, I'll grant you. But when someone with an agenda can, in a targeted fashion, change how millions of students do research, that's the kind of "power" that doesn't require double quotes. You can say that's not censorship, but then I can call you a naïve ideologue, so that's fair.
State Secretary Rigmor Aasrud said that the activities in question might be prosecuted as fraud or as violations of existing healthcare regulations.
Whoa, wait a second. That's actually an excellent point. Are personality tests the domain of psychologists, particularly when used to render a diagnosis (even as simple as "you're depressed") unless clearly being used to entertainment value? If so, then it would seem that Scientology is either:
I can't see how they could avoid being subject to HIPAA if they're presenting their tests as legitimate, informative procedures. If HIPAA does govern them, then I can imagine about 1,000 ways they've violated it based on headlines over the years.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They had loads of fun in Canada, too. You see, Health Canada investigated their "auditing" and found them to be, in fact, pedaling "Alternative Healing" but doing so in a fraudulent manner, and they published this report. There was also a Canadian couple that quit Scientology and was telling their story. Now, fast forward a bit, and the Church of Scientology has infiltrated the US government almost to the top. There is a huge raid on their offices, which uncovers a lot of interesting information. First, it had information all about their undercover ops in the US and Canada. It also had information about how they bound and held prisoner Michael Miesner. For whatever reason, those charges in the USA got themselves vanished, but not before the FBI forwarded this information to Canada! Now Canada finds here in their cabinets, confidential government of Ontario and RCMP memos! They find they have agents infiltrating the hospital where the doctor who wrote that scathing report on their psychic healing works! They find they have guys in Canada Revenue looking for dirt on the couple I mentioned before, anything to bring them down! Not willing to bring charges on that alone, the RCMP sent two undercover agents into the Toronto branch. Using information they gathered, warrants were issued and all kinds of files and audiotapes were seized. They had all the evidence they needed for these break ins and thefts and assorted other crimes. They had also broken into many Toronto office buildings to steal corporate information, too, anything to potentially in the future be used against their enemies (who are legion). In the end, 14 people plus the Church itself were all summonsed. The Church tried to get the warrants invalidated. They failed. They tried to blackmail the judge, they failed. They tried to plea bargain, "we'll donate millions to any charity you want if you drop the charges against the church, you can have our members, fine, but not the church." It was declined. They tried to get all of their files detailing their undercover ops and breakins and criminal harassment ruled as confessional material, and inadmissible in court due to priest-parishioner confidentiality. That failed too. Then they tried a massive smear campaign against the Crown prosecutor. THAT stunt got the church itself a $1.6 million dollar judgment. And since their lawyer was spewing it too in press releases, he himself got a $400,000 judgment. (never libel nor slander a LAWYER). In the end, all of the criminals working for the Church were convicted (some cases are still ongoing I believe, 20 years later). The church is still trying to appeal its own convictions and judgments. Their fine for libel though, and their lawyer's, those have been upheld all the way to the Supreme Court, so that's done, no more appeals, only took 10 years! They repeated their slander every step of the way, too, in press releases and in court, and in every appeal they maintained its truth even though most of it was provably false. I would have thought that continuing to repeat the same lies after a judgment for doing so would be contempt of court, and get their lawyer hauled before the judge in irons, but I guess the Canadian legal system doesn't work like the American versions do on TV? ;)
And yes, the Church called the Ontario government Nazis. The church has its own fake "tolerance" watchdog organization. According to their brochures, they stand up against all intolerance, though in practice only if it is against the CoS. It condemned the government for persecuting a poor religion, when all the religion did was slander, libel, and order criminal acts against Canadians and their government. I believe the argument went, "Members of the church give all their worldly possessions to us, and we support them. So fining the church directly punishes all of our members! You have a slippery slope that says a church is responsible for the actions of its members, and you can punish all members of the church for the actions of one
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Actually if the author had looked it up in Wikipedia he would have found that Scientologists would not wear the Star of David.
More accurately;
If they were a religion they would wear a purple triangle
-or-
If they were mentally ill or an "asocial element" they would wear a black triangle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges
Tisha Hayes
In some respects, I would say yes, as kittens are unable to fight back. But maybe I'm odd... I've never cried for anyone I've known who's died, but I've cried for every pet I had to put down.
Now killing babies vs. killing kittens - there you've got me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Though a Calvanist might argue otherwise, all religions with some doctrine of "free will" or the like would claim that, yes, you do choose your faith.
You have a slippery slope that says a church is responsible for the actions of its members, and you can punish all members of the church for the actions of one.
See Scientology v. Cult Awareness Network in the US.
Essentially, Cult Awareness Network works to spread information gathered about cults. One woman at a CAN meeting wants help to get her son out of a cult. Another person volunteering for the group (but not acting on behalf of the group) recommends a cult deprogrammer.
They pick up the son and try to deprogram him. Sadly, the son is over the age of 18, which makes what the deprogrammer did tantamount to kidnapping and illegal imprisonment.
$cientology funds the sons resulting lawsuit against CAN, alleging that CAN was responsible for the actions of its volunteer, even though the action was not taken by the group, but an individual outside the actions of the group.
CAN is bankrupted by the legal bills. In the bankruptcy auction, a $cientologist buys up CANs assets, including name, logo, trademarks, and phone number.
Now, when you call the Cult Awareness Network (New CAN), you're calling a scientologist. If you think you're going to get help, you're not.
Well, duh. Kittens are waaaaaaay cuter. Besides, while there are undeniably far too many people, cats aren't really such significant spike on the Shelden spectrum. Also, while killing humans has palpable benefits to most of the people left alive, killing kittens really doesn't.
</bwahahaha>
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."