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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."
My friend, you are aware that The Jews are behind this, yes?
"Trust me" - Every Politician
Just to let you know, I'm one of those "religious" type people. I don't tell people to trust any man. In fact, I tell people to trust no man. All men fail at some point.
In fact, I would tell you that my faith actually makes the case that you can't trust men. But what do I know, I'm a religious nutjob.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
At some point, everything depends on faith. In empirical science, we accept that the observations of our senses is real (at least at some level), even though we have no "proof" that anything outside our thoughts is really real (remember DeCartes?). In geometry, you start with postulates -- things that we believe to be true, but for which we have not yet derived proofs.
So, it's somewhat disingenuous to knock religion because "it requires you to believe in things that cannot be proven."
For what it is worth, my faith is based upon my personal observation and experience, not just stories I have read...much like my belief that my wife, my daughter, my parents, my siblings, etc. are real and actually exist. You may not have any more personal knowledge of my relatives than you have for God, but you will readily believe I have relatives based upon my recounting of experiences I have had with them, yet doubt any experience I claim I -- or any of millions of other people throughout history -- may have had with God. Curious.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
The Davidians, fortunately, didn't do what they should have and instantly surrender. They asked for what happened to them, and given the toxicity of religion I'm fine with them provoking their own destruction.
There is no reason to negotiate with people who rebel against the state, and every reason to kill them. Killing rebels poses an appropriate, stabilizing "barrier to entry" to power. Either get voted in, or fight a successful revolution.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"But if they are, CoS will soon have its own Waco."
There's is nothing bad about that prospect except the possibility of government casualties.
ProTip:
Don't storm bunkered enemy with infantry until there are no enemy left alive.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Washington Times. Washington Times.
Or was your error the kind of error that Fox News always commits when a Republican gets caught fucking whores or little boys.
Fox News crawler: David Vitter (D) caught fucking whores!
Very good, except Vitter is a Republicafuckstick.
Or Fox News reports Mark Foley (D) caught fucking boys!
Very good, except Foley is a Republicocksucker.
I am suspicious. I don't think your error was an error at all.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Please mod parent insightful (or informative) and not funny. Thank you very much.
Yeh, I'm sure Scientology has done some good. So what? Are you suggesting we try and keep some kind of score card, we can put "imprison children and malke them slaves" on one side and "feed homeless" on the other? Not sure what we do when they "convert" a follower with those "selfless acts" though.
Of course Atheists never do any charitable works on their own, so as long as the nutjobs "help" roughly as many as they screw over, it's all good.
That's right, I forgot that most "organised" religions fought so hard for equal rights and civil rights, oh wait...
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
"Except that science only requires observation as a postulate and no other 'leaps of faith'. That is the difference between science and religion. "
Not quite. Religion - the practical, mystical, experiential psychological kind, as practiced by, say, Quakers, Sufis, Pentecostals, Buddhists, and Catholic monks - also only requires observation.
The word 'religion' is often blurred, you see, between two very different concepts: spirituality, and authority. In each religion, the mystics are the experimentalists; the theologians are the theorists. Often the two camps do not agree.
I think what would be a more coherent argument would be to say that BOTH the physical and the spiritual/metaphysical worlds can be investigated using EITHER direct personal observation, or inferred third-party observation based on trusted authorities, and that both ways of observation and both fields of enquiry are ech useful and problematic in their separate ways.
If you're trying to argue that the metaphysical world simply does not exist and therefore any writing which refers to it is a priori false, that's factually incorrect. Stuff which does not play by the current laws of physics is out there and it does pop up and go 'hi' every now and then.
http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259722267&sr=8-1
Which is cool really, because the world would be a very boring and frightening place if it were exactly as the current dogma of science (to be distinguished from the methods of science) tell us it is: mostly empty, devoid of intelligent life for thousands of years, limited to lightspeed, and ending in personal extinction.
Fortunately it's not like that. But coming to terms with this knowledge will be a challenge for both science and religion together.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I don't really care if it was light-hearted or not.
I don't either, nor did I address that point. Ever heard of gallows humor?
Associating the two followings, even through satire and jokes, only makes things worse.
Worse for who? People who can tell that Lord Xenu is made up, but can't figure out the same thing about Jehovah? You can't help everyone.
We all can agree that Scientology is bad. We all can't agree that Catholicism is bad.
You can't help everyone, I guess.
If we confuse the two, we end up with both in the end. If we focus on Scientology, we all are better off.
You are creating a false dichotomy; it is not at all clear that conflating the ridiculousness of the two essentially equivalent religions (both of which are synthetic religions which use and abuse their followers for the profit of their ruling class) will result in any kind of boost for either one, or that it will delay the demise of either. I would argue that by making the argument, you are lending Catholicism unwarranted legitimacy. Too much tolerance of logically fallacious ideas (like all these so-called Catholics who feel free to disagree with the pope) simply leads to more logically fallacious behavior... like that you're currently demonstrating.
You can focus on Scientology if you want. Don't try to tell me what to do. In addition, you're trying to turn your original comment into something it isn't. You asserted that the references to Catholicism in stories on Scientology were an attempt to lend legitimacy to Scientology, and I disagreed. That is all. You may continue to rant and rail irrelevantly, but you're not going to convince me that Catholicism is anything other than a cultish sect of Christianity led by a guy with a funny hat who isn't mentioned anywhere in the bible, which is further on its way out. Catholicism is circling the toilet bowl due to a combination of a batshit pope who says what's wrong with the world is an overabundance of demonic possession and the basic fact that the church is doing spectacularly less than it could do to stop raping young boys. I don't really see how you can say that Scientology is any crazier or any worse than that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A virgin birth is pretty easy to arrange, even with 2000 year old technology.
The hardest part is finding the virgin and a reason to do it..
I also don't think that leaders of major religions truly believe the shit they espouse. Fucking con artists the lot of them.