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Scientology Charged With Slavery, Human Trafficking
eldavojohn writes "A formal complaint was filed in California (caged PDF) last week by John Lindstein naming David Miscavige and the Church of Scientology International as defendants. Lindstein claims that for sixteen years (from age 8) he was forced to work as a slave at Gold Base, a secret CoS site run by Golden Era Productions with 'razor wire, security guard patrols, surveillance posts, and three roll calls each day.' The pay was $50 a week. The allegations include 'Violations of wage and hour laws as well as unfair/illegal business practices actionable under California B&P 17200 Et. Seq.' and a complaint under the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which abolished slavery. Members of the group Anonymous praised the summons."
Now if we can see a slashdot article saying that they were found guilty and someone went to prison for it... the fat lady ain't sang yet, boys.
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Since they are classified as a religion (thanks to infiltration of CoS into the IRS) wouldn't his service be considered 'worship' and 'volunteering'. However it wouldn't surprise me if they actually were actually doing much worse than just killing people.
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It isn't religion that is the problem, it is organization and trust. Take any group of trusted people and you will find that a minority want to use their trust for personal gain. In America, corporations, schools, etc. are all looked at pretty thoroughly for abuses, religion usually isn't.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Pay as meager as $50 is similar to the allowance given to indentured servants back in old times. He was also forced into labor, he couldn't leave. That $50 had to be spent on the compound at the canteen. It was slavery.
Hmm, how come every Scientology story must have some post diverting attention to Catholicism, trying to lend legitimacy to Scientology as a religion?
Let's stick to the topic at hand, shall we? And that topic is that Scientology apparently enslaved this person.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I think you started a little late. The Muslim crusades. The Catholic crusades. The Inquisition. (What a show...) The common thread is people... A corrupt person has no problem using anything as an excuse from religion, to communism, to security, to social justice. No "idea" stays pure once people start to use it.
Religions, though, have the unpleasant architectural problem of (in the vast majority of cases) coupling social and organizational power with strongly implied, or even overt, assertions of trustworthiness.
Because they purport to deal in moral and divine matters, those who have power within the organization generally(either as an official point of doctrine, or in lay understanding) tend to be imbued with greater "goodness" or "holiness" or access to divine command, or whatever. Priests and CEOs are both potentially dangerous, and quite likely to cover for their buddies; but you don't generally tell children that CEOs are trusted authority figures who deserve their respect and obedience.
That's really hard, because the benefits of most religions are often highly subjective. The only defense I can think of is that they could be a lot worse (ie. Jonestown, Heaven's Gate), and they certainly aren't worse than the TV evangelist types who also rake in obscene amounts of money from the True Believers.
I remember one article I read on them stated that their biggest problem is their intense paranoia of the outside world. A lot of the reasons they've done some of the nasty things they've done (like infiltrating Ontario government offices in the 1970s) are ill-informed and misjudged attempts at security.
L. Ron Hubbard was most certainly a con artist, but he was also a bit of a paranoid type, not to mention the self-aggrandizing that he got out of a lot of the cloak-and-dagger bullshit. The problem for $cientologists after him is that I think a lot of them didn't get the joke. In short, their inheritors of L. Ron's madness, but in a more pure and fanatical form.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dude - there are (and were) cults out in the US today that do much, much worse. Past examples? Branch Davidians (Waco), the SunYungMoon group during the 1980's ("Moonies"), and the recent polygamy compound in Colorado City, Arizona. They all stand out as some rather egregious examples, and I don't doubt there are more of 'em out there today.
They don't have barbed wire and guards per se, but I'm willing to wager that their denizens are brainwashed enough that none of the fencing and such is necessary.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Sticky subject that is likely to insult somebody, no matter how you approach it.
I can say that I have met some Jewish people with questionable business morals, but then again I've met people with NO religious beliefs that are far worse.
As far as slavery and forced labor goes, the long-running genocide in Darfur is essentially Muslim controlled militias attacking indigenous tribes-people, people that have been a source of slaves for Muslim slavers for hundreds of years.
The rallying cry for some of the Janjaweed (means "devil on horseback") militia forces has been "Kill the slaves, kill the slaves!"
But then again, the region where the Janjaweed are killing defenseless, unarmed villagers also happens to center around a government-held oil pipeline that sends 80% of the regions oil to China.
So maybe religion has nothing to do with it? Maybe some people are just assholes?
And to complicate matters, some people seem to feel compelled to put Scientology in the same group as Christianity and Islam when we ALL know Scientology is just a big SCAM. It is NOT a religion just because they say it is. It is a scam disguised as a religion.
Oranges and Apples, my friends...Don't give them the credit they so desire.
Slavery actually connotes a position of involuntary servitude rather than one where payment is withheld. That is, it is the lack of freedom that is the main attribute of slavery, not the lack of compensation.
Slavery actually connotes a position of involuntary servitude rather than one where payment is withheld. That is, it is the lack of freedom that is the main attribute of slavery, not the lack of compensation.
The barbed wire at Gold Base is on the inside of the fence not on the outside.
You don't count being held in a compound surrounded by razor wire and forced to work 16-24 hours a day at age 8 as "involuntary servitude"? Wow, you must have had a much rougher childhood than me.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My parents forced me to go to church every week, then sunday school, and during the week I would be forced to work as an altar boy for no pay. All the time I was brainwashed with repetitive prayers and actions. A cult is a cult is a cult. It doesn't matter that here in North America we tend to be fond of a particular one.
Dude - there are (and were) cults out in the US today that do much, much worse.
Yes there are, but nothing on the scale of Scientology. The bigger the group the bigger the target, the harder to keep secrets.
That's what I mean by being surprised. A local compound in one city? Zero information coming out of that would surprise me. But again, for something as large and well known as scientology... it is odd to me that this has not come forward before and is being practiced at all. They don't need to do this after all, they are making money hand over fist as it is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Quite right. GP also referred to the CoS as 'mainstream'. There is nothing mainstream about them. Most other countries don't even recognize them as a religion. They are a money making / power grabbing scheme dreamed up by a second rate megalomaniac science fiction author that has now taken on a life of its own.
I believe you have it backwards. I think the post you reference is trying to point out that there is really no reason not to treat catholicism with the same utter contempt that we treat scientology.
I personally think it should be taken one step further than that. All organized religion should be treated with utter contempt.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
"You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don'tcha call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store."
That song reflected the reality of tens of thousands of people in Appalachia.
Forgot this:
Q: What is the difference between a religion and a cult?
A: Time.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I wish Acts 17:11 would get preached more: "Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Healthy skepticism is part of a noble character.
I don't think examining the Scriptures to see if something is true can be reasonably considered "healthy skepticism". This would more properly be described as an unhealthy skewing of the meaning of "skepticism". Someone with a healthy level of skepticism would not consider examining the scriptures as a means of verifying truth. At best it can uncover contradictions, but proving that what Paul said was consistent would in no way indicate whether what Paul said was true. The Bereans, it appears, suffered from some very unhealthy misconceptions
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Yes, please, define "mainstream". Just because an organization makes the news frequently doesn't make them "mainstream". Take a hard look at the people who claim to be Scientologists. Fringe freaking element, all around. Huh? You point to some celebrity or other? Your point being what, exactly? Whoa, dude, you need to look at those celebrities again. We make celebrities out of people like Roman Polanski, who likes little girls. We make celebrities out of the likes of Michael Jackson, who liked - uhhh - sleepovers with little boys. We make celebrities out of rap singers who "sing" about killing cops. We make celebrities of other "singers" who celebrate gang raping little girls. Just because Tom Cruise happens to be in movies, people like his movies, does NOT make CoS "mainstream".
America worships freaks, but that worship doesn't make them "mainstream".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
They're really that terrible. Sorry.
The very first thing that happens when you're brought into Scientology is that they convince you that all that money you're spending on doctors is wasted, that Scientology will fix everything. Some people with actual life-threatening problems don't survive this phase. Doesn't bother Scientology a bit, though.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I personally think you took one step too far when you afforded the CoS the respect of referring to them as an organized religion. They're not, catholicism is, there's a huge difference.
Yep, about two thousand years and a few million followers.
Fraiser (to Niles): "Remember Niles, that which doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."
Nile: "Yes, but what about the people that don't make it into that second group?"
Except that science only requires observation as a postulate and no other 'leaps of faith'. That is the difference between science and religion. Science doesn't expect you to believe in a bearded man on a cloud that watches your every move, or in angels or in eternal damnation. Observation and thought, that's it.
But as long as your religion doesn't condone those slaves in the basement, that's fine with me.
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Allow me to re-phrase that for you:
The problem wasn't the conditions in which slaves were kept; the problem is that human beings were indistinguishable from livestock in the minds of their owners.
You ought to learn about what the loss of liberty does to a human being before you trot out this useless tripe again.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
The distinction between a religion and a cult, to my mind, isn't the quality of their beliefs-- we all believe utterly ridiculous things. (Do you actually believe in the *electron*? Or that we're all actually collections of waves? Quantum mechanics is as ridiculous as the virgin birth-- in fact, quantum mechanics ALLOWS for the virgin birth, since everything is possible (if highly improbable) in quantum mechanics). The difference is in the sincerity of the religion/cult's founders and leadership: do *they* believe in what they're saying, and are they primarily motivated by their belief? I personally think that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baha'i, Buddhism, etc were founded in all sincerity, and even through the contempt I feel for the evangelical Christian movement, and for the Pope (speaking as a Catholic), I think they are acting from a position of sincerity.
Scientology, on the other hand, was founded by a science fiction writer who is on record saying that founding a fake religion would be a great way to make money. Now, I think there are a number of Scientologists who are sincerely so, but I don't trust their leadership, and that makes them a cult to me.
And confusing "Charged with" with "Found guilty of".
I think you're confusing "not found guilty" and "not charged" with "innocent"
Either all these former Scientologists are in some kind of multi-decade conspiracy to slander CoS
OR the CoS really has been doing horrible things since its founding.
Which is the more plausible proposition?
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Cult: n, A small, unpopular religion.
Religion: n, A large, popular cult.
John