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AU Senator Calls Scientology a "Criminal Organization"
An anonymous reader passes along news that an Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, has denounced the Church of Scientology as "a criminal organization" from the floor of Parliament. "Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, and forced abortion. He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status." It wasn't that long ago that the CoS was calling for Net censorship in Australia; a month later the organization was convicted of fraud in France.
Senator Xenophon? He must be in the clutches of Xenu! Someone get me an e-meter, quick!
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To me, all religions are a scam. Some have been around longer than others and thus emanate a sense of legitimacy but they're mostly cults with a God that we offer our prayers and money to in return for a hope of a better life.
Religions come and go, their Gods are offered gold, placed upon altars and have great building and churches erected in their names - and yet, people die of violence, starvation, and famine. Their Gods grow weak and frail, their subjects grow old and a new religion eventually emerges and takes its place as the new "true" religion. A sad cycle indeed.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Nick Xenophon is the only independenr of the Australian Senate. I wonder if that is related, as he doesnt have to please his party?
For those unfamiliar with the australian parliment - the definition of what "Parliamentary Privilege" is: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/pubs/briefs/brief11.htm#1
I think you miss understand the purpose of "parliamentary privilege", my fellow australian. Our elected representitives can discuss such issues as the authenticity of Scientology, without fear of slander/libel suits or gag orders or general legal hoop-la to silence their criticisms. It is their role to raise issues of their consitutents in such as manner, so that members of the public can come forth/organise/e.t.c to provide the necessary PROOF that the laws are being broken. Then the appropriate law enforcement agency can be engaged.
Sorry mate - I don't want to live in your world where if no-one talks about a problem it doesn't exist - that's just plain foolish.
But regardless, by READING THE FIRETRUCKING ARTICLE, you would have encountered the first two paragraphs stating:
"Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment and forced abortion.
He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status."
First sentence of your post: "If you think a person has broken the law then call the cops" ... Check - he's passed on the letters to the police. ... Unless you're a scientologist too...
As for the rest - I can't believe you're trying to align criticism of Scientology with an attack on your freedom to associate
Addendum: For those in America - Australia doesn't have a "Bill of Rights". We work on the principle you have a right to everything, unless prohibited by law. There's no explicit listing of rights that you guys have ... YFMV? (Your Freedom May Vary)
Xenophon, for those unfamiliar, was an ancient Greek general best known for writing The Anabasis -- an account of the trials and adventures of The Ten Thousand, a group of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger. After he's killed in battle, the Greeks have to march back to Greece from deep within enemy territory. It's quite a thrilling tale with plenty of action and treachery. Surprised they haven't made a movie out of it a la 300.
If I was Mr. Xenophon, I'd rather go up against the Persians than the Scientologists :D In any event, he has an awesome last name.
It would be easy to test too. Religions that are not willing to publish their teachings on the web and give away free books are non profit, ones that sue people to take those teachings down are for profit and get to pay tax. Actually religions that try to stop other people talking about them should at the very least lose their tax free status and should probably be sued too.
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 can only hope this means no more promotional tours from John Travolta and Tom Cruise. That's a protest I can live with and love. Also, Jenna Elfman.
for example weet-bix, produce by sanitarium.
Run by seventh day Adventist, given tax free status..... bet you didn't know that! How to other business compete with tax free status - it very hard.
"In November 2009, Xenophon labelled the Church of Scientology as a criminal organisation in a speech to the Senate. [42] This is clear evidence that he has very large testicles."
I'm not in favor of vandalism, but LOL!
Still not dead.
Lionel Murphy (A High Court Judge) was responsible for campaigning to get Scientology recognised as a religion in Australia.
Campaigning?! I'm calling bullshit on that one mate. (Though I'm open to change my mind if you can provide some evidence to back that claim up.) True he sat on the court that decided the "Scientology Case" but his wasn't even the leading judgment. I think a little quote from his Honour will serve to enlighten as to his attitude towards religion and towards its tax exempt status. Responding to the argument that the "commercial nature" of Scientology showed it wasn't "religious" in nature, he wrote:
Most organized religions have been riddled with commercialism, this being an integral part of the drive by their leaders for social authority and power (in conformity with the "iron law of oligarchy"). The amassing of wealth by organized religions often means that the leaders live richly (sometimes in palaces) even though many of the believers live in poverty. Many religions have been notorious for corrupt trafficking in relics, other sacred objects, and religious offices, as well as for condoning "sin" even in advance, for money. The great organized religions are big business. They engage in large scale real estate investment, money-dealing and other commercial ventures. In country after country, religious tax exemption has led to enormous wealth for religious bodies, presenting severe social problems. ... Commercialism is so characteristic of organized religion that it is absurd to regard it as disqualifying.
If anything Murphy J was "campaigning" to get rid of the tax exempt status for religions.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Xenophon? Sounds Foreign
You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion. - L. Ron Hubbard, 1948
.....and I can tell you from personal experience that it really is pure concentrated evil.
Scientology has gotten away with innumerable crimes over the years in part because the average person is incapable of imagining that anything can be so completely malign in its goals. The organization is completely sociopathic.
They kicked me out because I wouldn't drink the koolaide.
If you want to know more, I recommend you check out operation clambake (www.xenu.net)
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Not just essentially, that's exactly what L. Ron Hubbard did say
It should have been dissolved in France but what happened instead is really shameful. The judge was probably going to order the dissolution of the scientology, considered culprit of being a criminal organization of fraudulent aim (that means that money was considered their driving motivation). But two weeks before the verdict (a perfect synchronization). Our parliament made a "mistake". Inside a huge corpus of law modification (aimed at simplifying the laws regarding buisnesses and companies), someone "inadvertently" put a law removing the dissolution as a possible verdict for fraud. Nobody was able to point out the person who put this amendment (how comes !?) and everybody said it was a mistake and they would correct it with a new law. Unfortunately, the verdict was due two weeks later and instead of dissolution, the scientology got a record fine.
They are loosing adepts, but they still have people in the higher spheres...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I'm not GP, but this really bugs me:
So, you've basically said
Really, this kind of black-and-white "not A therefore B" extremism (which is really a large family of bad arguments) is perhaps the biggest generator of problems in our democratic/capitalistic (ie, the masses decide) society. To wit:
Tax is not a "punishment". (In theory) tax should be "We (the government) need money for services that are (arguably) untenable in or unsuited to private enterprise, how are we going to get it?". It's not "Hey, I don't like that guy, let's rob him! *cackle maniacally*". You are again making the "NOT A THEREFORE B" mistake by conflating "tax" with "punishment", because they both fit into the broader category "authorised arbitrated unpleasantness based on behaviour". But just as a motorbike is not an automobile (despite their many similarities), TAX IS NOT A PUNISHMENT, IT IS AN UNFORTUNATE NECESSITY.
Not every poor person is a lazy bum, and not every rich person is a hard worker. Now whilst I have no specific moral objections to tax in and of itself (I don't like it, but don't find it immoral), you regard it as a "punishment", and therefore imagine that you're "punishing" people simply for being poor - and conversely, rewarding people for being rich. Which would be fine if everyone who was poor deserved it - but for the third time, NOTHING IS THAT BLACK AND WHITE (even you admit there's not 100% correlation). Is it that you have no ethical quarrel with "punishing" people for probably being lazy (in which case, you are a frighteningly heartless person), or do you simply ignore corner cases (ie, another incarnation of the black-and-white mistake)?
As for the actual point you were trying to make about tax reform, I'm not going to enter into that. I'm merely going to point out that
means a MUCH smaller tax revenue (unless you plan to simply make the figures your tax proposal extremely high, which will probably create a black market and public outcry). Although many here might support reducing tax and reducing services (and this is an argument I *DEFINITELY* don't want to enter into), no government would never agree to it, in the same way that no employee would ever agree to take a massive pay cut just to make a moral stand (especially when morals are highly subjective - an argument I don't want to enter into because anyone who argues for universal morality is a damned moron, and I have better things to do than argue with morons).
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Stephen Fielding is the one you're talking about - Xenophon is anti-pokies, and seems to me to be relatively deliberative on other matters, and generally reasonable. Stephen Fielding is a climate change skeptic; Nick Xenophon is not.
Cheers.
Here in the UK there is a fascinating point of law - religions only get tax-exempt status if they are monotheistic. Richard Dawkins has a big thing about trying to persuade a Hindu temple to go to court for charity status, since they are legally a polytheistic, and thus heathen, religion, but actually all the gods are avatars of the one God, or something. Anyway, profit should be taxed, whether you dance around chicken innards or sell chocolate.
Be smart, help people!
The sad truth is that religions become centres of power, and centres of power attract criminals. It's interesting to see how even the green movement is being plagued with criminals selling people massively uneconomic wind and solar systems, because people's desire to do good often exceeds their ability to see through bullshit. But some religions - Zen, Quakers, Reform Judaism, the liberal wing of the Episcopalian Church - have proven very resistant to criminal infiltration. That's possibly because they attract mainly very educated people. To be blunt, one reason Scientology is so successful might be because it has targeted the rich and gullible.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."