Well done. They won't move at all when it comes to adjusting those inaccurate mileage figures for IC engine cars, but they were pretty snappy redoing those hybrid numbers! Bush really helped the efficiency along when he appointed nothing but industry lobbyists to the regulatory agencies they once lobbied. That was FAST. His administration can do useful work; it just matters who they think their customers are. They lost a billion in foreign aid for New Orleans because they couldn't be bothered to set up an organization to dole it out, but Shazam! they can haul ass for oil and automobiles.
I imagine claims for electric cars will be *closely regulated* these next two years. Wouldn't want misinformation to bother those IC engine buyers.
Hiding secrets about your belief system to paying members is called "fraud". As in lying, as in cheating, as in being fake. If you have to reach back to bronze age Near Eastern mystery cults, than you've no footing here.
If they have to hide their real religion to sign people up, then it is a con.
"Because of this factor, refusal to register effectively constituted banning them from spreading their beliefs, which is (IMO) unacceptable unless done in full view of the world,"
THE VERY PROBLEM. They *don't* tell people what their beliefs are. They most particularly do not inform their public members about the space aliens and the galactic dictator Xenu.
This takes them outside the umbrella of spreading their beliefs. They don't. They spread their business. A religion that hides its tenets from the church members themselves is not a religion -- it is a scam, a fraud, a trick, and needs to be treated as such, which means they shouldn't get special tax treatment and they sure as hell don't get the protections of a religion in a democratic society.
OOOOOOhhhhh, no they haven't. They're just not covered by the New Media. They've been VERY busy locking up the fishing industry in the US, infiltrating the power structure of the Republican party, and getting Moon crowned as Emperor of the Universe in a ceremony attended by our Congressional representatives. That and funding the Washington Times at a billion dollar loss.
They're every bit as vile as the Scientologists. But even cultbusters get the dry heaves when they look into the Moonies.
whoever creates the torrent: thanks, and please include the word "scientology" in the name so we can find it. not that i need to mention it, but sometimes people get creative naming the torrent.
Well done. And yes, they hide from the fen like the vampire hides from the sun. We know where they came from.
I wish the writers and fans who can testify to what they knew about Hubbard would write it down and put the words quietly by until after they and their loved ones can't be harmed anymore. I imagine L. Sprague deCamp would have done so, but I think he knew he was leaving a hostage behind after he passed away. I would damned well want to know what happened in 1958 when they went after him and extorted his silence.
Stalking you and your family is standard procedure for Scientology. They usually hire private investigators for this. Sometimes off-duty cops. Sometimes they just send the mentally ill from their own ranks who volunteer for engagement with the enemy of mankind. And they want you to know that loonies are watching you. They make a point of it.
I've hope they will -- in he US, the BBC has a reputation for integrity that our CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox don't have, not since the conversion of news to a profit-making business in the late 90s. I think the BBC the best in the world when the subject news reporting. You may scoff, knowing more than I, but you haven't experienced the Murdochification of the news that we have here in the States. They LOVE Scientology here -- it gives them Cruise and Travolta to report on. The blonde heads gush when they talk about the cult, or at the least, they speak in repressed, terrified tones.
Scientology has billions, and a "spy" network willing to do anything in service of L. Ron Hubbard. The BBC will have to be *very* strong. And perhaps, just perhaps, someone there should establish a "Scientology" fund of some sort to cushion the blow against reporters and editors who will be pauperized by the cult. If not, there is no motivation to investigate; who wants to be ruined?
The religions you mention don't plant cameras, get you fired, and sue you until you scream with rage and your family leaves you. Don't conflate.
Scientology isn't hated because it's a wacky religion. It's hated because it's a evil corporation masquerading as a religion. And they always make it personal. Hubbard was a paranoid, insecure, vengeful little gamer twit (yes, he was a geek -- SF writer AND wargamer, probably bad at both), and he made Scientology an expression of his ego. When you deal with a Scientology Sea Org navy member, naval uniform and all, you are dealing with the mentally ill.
And their is a difference between the cute girls taking and giving personality tests in the public orgs and the bastards who join the Sea Org, and no comparison at all with the corporate lawyers who moved in from the top and run the thing.
And religions don't keep their beliefs secret from their own members. That's the critical thing, the moral difference, all Hubbard detestation aside. They don't tell their recruits that they REALLY believe that we are infested with spirits from aliens killed by H-bombs inside of volcanoes by the evil galactic dictator Xenu, and that it will cost them either a lifetime of work or tens of thousands of dollars to find this fact out. It's not a health club, it's a UFO cult.
They simply torture you. Years after today, after they have pauperized the reporter and broken up his family, they will still be suing him and recording his every move.
I recall back in 1958 L. Sprague deCamp wrote a small essay warning of the increasing militancy and fanaticism of the Hubbardites. I've read the essay. Legend has it, and I believe it, they started Fair Gaming him; the primary mode of attack was plastering his neighborhood with flyers warning the neighbors that L. Sprague deCamp was a pedophile. He stopped writing about the Hubbardites. Legend also states, and multiple examples from other people later attest to this methodology, that the made him sign a contract stating that he would never write naughtiness about them again. Standard procedure when they do call off the little brain-damaged skunks who do these little "ops" is to make you sign a legal contract agreeing to not speak about them, the harrassment, or the contract itself, with vicious penalities should you renege. If they REALLY hate you, they will keep on harrassing you after you sign the contract, because you can't talk about it! Who would you tell? How do you prove, say, that the 25 people suing you are doing so because the org officer let it be known that Fair Game is afoot? It's impossible.
They have no limits. Our law should have some, but corporate law is *designed to shield individuals*, another reason why corporations as structured today should be legally dismantled and individuals laid open to liability for their actions. RICO laws should also be redesigned to deal with broad patterns of illegal cult operations.
I'd like to second that. I've no doubt that their recruitment from the ranks of prison members and the mentally ill bodes well, and that their infiltration of the IRS, Earthlink's organization, the FBI and the Congress via the lovely Senator Bono is meant to ease acceptance of a kind, open organization, and that a organization run by corporate lawyers has no evil intent whatsoever.
Actually, in the U.S., there is no qualification to be a religion. What we have here instead is a non-profit status that is granted by the IRS. Everything else is merely custom. No organization can be declared a religion by the government, no matter how much the Scientologists claim the IRS "declared" their little club a religion.
What we could call the Scientology organization is a false non-profit; they are a profoundly profitable business pretending to be a religion, and that tax-free status should be rescinded. Easier said than done; before 1992, they did not have non-profit status, and yet they still refused to any tax, much less pay back taxes (back 'til 1952?).
Thousands of members simultaneously sued individual employees of the IRS at the end of the 1980's. For all I know, they did the Fair Game life-destroying sneak attacks as well, but we'll never know. They kept at it until '92, when the top dogs of Hubbard's organization marched into the head of the IRS's office, unannounced, and presented a "settlement" that gave them everything they wanted, and the IRS nothing at all. The IRS caved on the spot.
The 1000+ lawsuits were dropped immediately, strange as they allegedly were filed by individuals who didn't have anything to do with the upper management.
As tolerant of immigration as I am, I must say that the French have a point. They're not really worried about people not speaking French as much as they are rightly perceiving that they are being colonized by Muslim nations. The immigrants, especially the young adults, really aren't showing much intention of adopting western ideas about women, religious tolerance, etc. It's not paranoid if they really aren't assimilating. Risking skating close to the rightists on this, I would be worried too. The intolerance feeds suspicion on the part of the host country, which becomes validated when a kid blows away a filmmaker or a girl who shows ankle. Then the circle of anger starts, feeding on every incident of violence or inability to find a good job.
Is it really so unreasonable to expect immigrants to become French? If they don't wish to become French or even western, then why not just stay in their home country? Really, the west is not obligated to absorb the runaway population growth of the hyperreligious nations of the world.
We will spend at least two trillion on securing Iraq's oil. We spent a small fortune on Kuwait. We subsidize coal plant and oil companies with enormous tax breaks and military deployment to protect their assets. Why, then, do we let solar technology seek a market price based on cost accounting we don't use for our fossil fuel companies?
If we can give up civil liberties and tolerate torture for national security reasons, is not subsidizing solar panel production one hell of a lot more sensible -- and cost effective -- for our future? Isn't it a fact that every problem we have, environmental and international, goes back to our oil consumption?
Spend hundreds of billions, spend trillions, on developing solar cell factories. Call it a war. Just build the factories, and the unit cost will drop naturally from economies of scale alone. Pump out the panels, however inefficient, by the millions. Build farms in Nevada and Utah, ship the power around the country. Once the solar power plants are built, it's just maintenance cost from that point on, and the unit cost will constantly drop and the efficiency of the technology will constantly increase. Cost accounting per every itty bit of manufacturing efficiency has strangled the solar industry for decades. This is a national emergency, and we are try to use apple-cart accounting on the only thing that can save us, while slathering trillions on the oil industry.
Amazing how this tiny industry seems to win big in legislatures consistently.
Why? How far up the RIAA sock puppet is the Mafia's hand? Like waste disposal, construction, and similar, the mob owns the industry. I'm guessing. Try telling the Mafia's goons they aren't going to get their cut. No reporter or Congresscritter wants to discuss the Moonies, Scientology's, or the Mob's influence in legislation. Everyone knows, but no one wants get their head literally or figuratively cut off.
Americans fetishize not drinking milk. They consider it childish, some consider it fattening, some avoid it for health reasons; when I was a kid, we didn't drink it because it was too expensive. Um, how about those lactose intolerant folk - cancer rate should increase in direct proportion with their numbers. I now drink about a gallon or two a week, just to keep the ol' bones from wasting away.
It's lying once. The 28-year thing is sophistry. She's probably never referred to her degree in 28 years -- and never needed to. Because it wasn't an issue. Her job performance was.
Well done. They won't move at all when it comes to adjusting those inaccurate mileage figures for IC engine cars, but they were pretty snappy redoing those hybrid numbers! Bush really helped the efficiency along when he appointed nothing but industry lobbyists to the regulatory agencies they once lobbied. That was FAST. His administration can do useful work; it just matters who they think their customers are. They lost a billion in foreign aid for New Orleans because they couldn't be bothered to set up an organization to dole it out, but Shazam! they can haul ass for oil and automobiles.
I imagine claims for electric cars will be *closely regulated* these next two years. Wouldn't want misinformation to bother those IC engine buyers.
Watts per mile.
Hiding secrets about your belief system to paying members is called "fraud". As in lying, as in cheating, as in being fake. If you have to reach back to bronze age Near Eastern mystery cults, than you've no footing here.
If they have to hide their real religion to sign people up, then it is a con.
"Because of this factor, refusal to register effectively constituted banning them from spreading their beliefs, which is (IMO) unacceptable unless done in full view of the world,"
THE VERY PROBLEM. They *don't* tell people what their beliefs are. They most particularly do not inform their public members about the space aliens and the galactic dictator Xenu.
This takes them outside the umbrella of spreading their beliefs. They don't. They spread their business. A religion that hides its tenets from the church members themselves is not a religion -- it is a scam, a fraud, a trick, and needs to be treated as such, which means they shouldn't get special tax treatment and they sure as hell don't get the protections of a religion in a democratic society.
"He seemed a little shaken"
Scary that an RA would be shaken by a visit from a "religion", isn't it?
OOOOOOhhhhh, no they haven't. They're just not covered by the New Media. They've been VERY busy locking up the fishing industry in the US, infiltrating the power structure of the Republican party, and getting Moon crowned as Emperor of the Universe in a ceremony attended by our Congressional representatives. That and funding the Washington Times at a billion dollar loss.
They're every bit as vile as the Scientologists. But even cultbusters get the dry heaves when they look into the Moonies.
whoever creates the torrent: thanks, and please include the word "scientology" in the name so we can find it. not that i need to mention it, but sometimes people get creative naming the torrent.
Well done. And yes, they hide from the fen like the vampire hides from the sun. We know where they came from.
I wish the writers and fans who can testify to what they knew about Hubbard would write it down and put the words quietly by until after they and their loved ones can't be harmed anymore. I imagine L. Sprague deCamp would have done so, but I think he knew he was leaving a hostage behind after he passed away. I would damned well want to know what happened in 1958 when they went after him and extorted his silence.
Stalking you and your family is standard procedure for Scientology. They usually hire private investigators for this. Sometimes off-duty cops. Sometimes they just send the mentally ill from their own ranks who volunteer for engagement with the enemy of mankind. And they want you to know that loonies are watching you. They make a point of it.
I've hope they will -- in he US, the BBC has a reputation for integrity that our CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox don't have, not since the conversion of news to a profit-making business in the late 90s. I think the BBC the best in the world when the subject news reporting. You may scoff, knowing more than I, but you haven't experienced the Murdochification of the news that we have here in the States. They LOVE Scientology here -- it gives them Cruise and Travolta to report on. The blonde heads gush when they talk about the cult, or at the least, they speak in repressed, terrified tones.
Scientology has billions, and a "spy" network willing to do anything in service of L. Ron Hubbard. The BBC will have to be *very* strong. And perhaps, just perhaps, someone there should establish a "Scientology" fund of some sort to cushion the blow against reporters and editors who will be pauperized by the cult. If not, there is no motivation to investigate; who wants to be ruined?
The religions you mention don't plant cameras, get you fired, and sue you until you scream with rage and your family leaves you. Don't conflate.
Scientology isn't hated because it's a wacky religion. It's hated because it's a evil corporation masquerading as a religion. And they always make it personal. Hubbard was a paranoid, insecure, vengeful little gamer twit (yes, he was a geek -- SF writer AND wargamer, probably bad at both), and he made Scientology an expression of his ego. When you deal with a Scientology Sea Org navy member, naval uniform and all, you are dealing with the mentally ill.
And their is a difference between the cute girls taking and giving personality tests in the public orgs and the bastards who join the Sea Org, and no comparison at all with the corporate lawyers who moved in from the top and run the thing.
And religions don't keep their beliefs secret from their own members. That's the critical thing, the moral difference, all Hubbard detestation aside. They don't tell their recruits that they REALLY believe that we are infested with spirits from aliens killed by H-bombs inside of volcanoes by the evil galactic dictator Xenu, and that it will cost them either a lifetime of work or tens of thousands of dollars to find this fact out. It's not a health club, it's a UFO cult.
They simply torture you. Years after today, after they have pauperized the reporter and broken up his family, they will still be suing him and recording his every move.
I recall back in 1958 L. Sprague deCamp wrote a small essay warning of the increasing militancy and fanaticism of the Hubbardites. I've read the essay. Legend has it, and I believe it, they started Fair Gaming him; the primary mode of attack was plastering his neighborhood with flyers warning the neighbors that L. Sprague deCamp was a pedophile. He stopped writing about the Hubbardites. Legend also states, and multiple examples from other people later attest to this methodology, that the made him sign a contract stating that he would never write naughtiness about them again. Standard procedure when they do call off the little brain-damaged skunks who do these little "ops" is to make you sign a legal contract agreeing to not speak about them, the harrassment, or the contract itself, with vicious penalities should you renege. If they REALLY hate you, they will keep on harrassing you after you sign the contract, because you can't talk about it! Who would you tell? How do you prove, say, that the 25 people suing you are doing so because the org officer let it be known that Fair Game is afoot? It's impossible.
They have no limits. Our law should have some, but corporate law is *designed to shield individuals*, another reason why corporations as structured today should be legally dismantled and individuals laid open to liability for their actions. RICO laws should also be redesigned to deal with broad patterns of illegal cult operations.
I'd like to second that. I've no doubt that their recruitment from the ranks of prison members and the mentally ill bodes well, and that their infiltration of the IRS, Earthlink's organization, the FBI and the Congress via the lovely Senator Bono is meant to ease acceptance of a kind, open organization, and that a organization run by corporate lawyers has no evil intent whatsoever.
Actually, in the U.S., there is no qualification to be a religion. What we have here instead is a non-profit status that is granted by the IRS. Everything else is merely custom. No organization can be declared a religion by the government, no matter how much the Scientologists claim the IRS "declared" their little club a religion.
What we could call the Scientology organization is a false non-profit; they are a profoundly profitable business pretending to be a religion, and that tax-free status should be rescinded. Easier said than done; before 1992, they did not have non-profit status, and yet they still refused to any tax, much less pay back taxes (back 'til 1952?).
Thousands of members simultaneously sued individual employees of the IRS at the end of the 1980's. For all I know, they did the Fair Game life-destroying sneak attacks as well, but we'll never know. They kept at it until '92, when the top dogs of Hubbard's organization marched into the head of the IRS's office, unannounced, and presented a "settlement" that gave them everything they wanted, and the IRS nothing at all. The IRS caved on the spot.
The 1000+ lawsuits were dropped immediately, strange as they allegedly were filed by individuals who didn't have anything to do with the upper management.
Welcome to the American Emprire! There's nowhere you can hide from our corporate power. On my mark, get on your knees and open wide:
1. 2. 3. MARK!
As tolerant of immigration as I am, I must say that the French have a point. They're not really worried about people not speaking French as much as they are rightly perceiving that they are being colonized by Muslim nations. The immigrants, especially the young adults, really aren't showing much intention of adopting western ideas about women, religious tolerance, etc. It's not paranoid if they really aren't assimilating. Risking skating close to the rightists on this, I would be worried too. The intolerance feeds suspicion on the part of the host country, which becomes validated when a kid blows away a filmmaker or a girl who shows ankle. Then the circle of anger starts, feeding on every incident of violence or inability to find a good job.
Is it really so unreasonable to expect immigrants to become French? If they don't wish to become French or even western, then why not just stay in their home country? Really, the west is not obligated to absorb the runaway population growth of the hyperreligious nations of the world.
Well, nuclear bombs never killed anyone without human assistance, yet we don't let everyone own a bomb.
1. Define terrorist as someone that frightens.
2. Say that laws are insufficient to protect us from terrorists.
3. Redefine what frightens.
We will spend at least two trillion on securing Iraq's oil. We spent a small fortune on Kuwait. We subsidize coal plant and oil companies with enormous tax breaks and military deployment to protect their assets. Why, then, do we let solar technology seek a market price based on cost accounting we don't use for our fossil fuel companies?
If we can give up civil liberties and tolerate torture for national security reasons, is not subsidizing solar panel production one hell of a lot more sensible -- and cost effective -- for our future? Isn't it a fact that every problem we have, environmental and international, goes back to our oil consumption?
Spend hundreds of billions, spend trillions, on developing solar cell factories. Call it a war. Just build the factories, and the unit cost will drop naturally from economies of scale alone. Pump out the panels, however inefficient, by the millions. Build farms in Nevada and Utah, ship the power around the country. Once the solar power plants are built, it's just maintenance cost from that point on, and the unit cost will constantly drop and the efficiency of the technology will constantly increase. Cost accounting per every itty bit of manufacturing efficiency has strangled the solar industry for decades. This is a national emergency, and we are try to use apple-cart accounting on the only thing that can save us, while slathering trillions on the oil industry.
Amazing how this tiny industry seems to win big in legislatures consistently.
Why? How far up the RIAA sock puppet is the Mafia's hand? Like waste disposal, construction, and similar, the mob owns the industry. I'm guessing. Try telling the Mafia's goons they aren't going to get their cut. No reporter or Congresscritter wants to discuss the Moonies, Scientology's, or the Mob's influence in legislation. Everyone knows, but no one wants get their head literally or figuratively cut off.
Where is the compassion, mercy, a sense of humor? Her life is destroyed. For a rule. Her performance wasn't an issue.
Rules are made to serve people. We don't live to serve the rules. You all seem take a deep pleasure in hurting people.
Americans fetishize not drinking milk. They consider it childish, some consider it fattening, some avoid it for health reasons; when I was a kid, we didn't drink it because it was too expensive. Um, how about those lactose intolerant folk - cancer rate should increase in direct proportion with their numbers. I now drink about a gallon or two a week, just to keep the ol' bones from wasting away.
It's lying once. The 28-year thing is sophistry. She's probably never referred to her degree in 28 years -- and never needed to. Because it wasn't an issue. Her job performance was.
Jack Valenti: The VCR finally killed me. You bastards.
Kissinger said we were beat weeks ago. The Generals say we're beat. Ah, FOX News! Those things weren't covered for you, I assume.
You do realize you're mad? And why you're at it, sign up, the Army needs more bodies, tough guy.