Scientology Escapee Breaks her Silence
From ScienceBlogs.com:
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
Scientology On Its Last Legs?
There once was a time when the media were scared to report on the madness that is the “Church” of Scientology for fear of costly litigation. No more. While there have been occasional reports over the years, last year ABC News went hard after Scientology leader David Miscavige. Now the New York Times runs a front page story suggesting that the “Church” is losing members fast and may have as few as 25,000 members in the United States, versus the millions claimed by the organization:
Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.
They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.
But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave…
We Are Anonymous. We Are Legion. We Plead Guilty In Court.
From TechCrunch:
On Thursday 8 January 2009, then 18-year old Mahoud Samed Almahadin (aka Matt Connor aka Agent Pubeit
) took off his shirt, proceeded to rub vaseline all over his upper body and subsequently used it to hold toenail clippings and pubic hair. He then ran into the New York Scientology building, tossed some books around and smeared the mixture on objects.
After his greasy raid
Scientologists Using Touch to ‘Heal’ Haitian Earthquake Victims
Charles Onians writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Amid the mass of aid agencies piling in to help Haiti quake victims is a batch of Church of Scientology “volunteer ministers”, claiming to use the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems.
Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling volunteers fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie.
“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,”…
John Travolta Will Assist Haitians By Airlifting In Scientology Ministers
In the too good to be true department, brought to you by Gawker:
Scientologists have mobilized to seize on the promotional and recruitment opportunities presented by the horror going on in Haiti, and John Travolta has personally arranged to fly “volunteer ministers” to Haiti to inflict his junk science on victims there.
Anywhere people are suffering, Scientology’s yellow-shirted “volunteer ministers” can be found lurking near news cameras and claiming to help people with their bullshit technology. They performed “purification rundowns” on recovery workers sifting through the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11, administered “touch assists” to victims of the tsunami, distributed literature after the Virginia Tech shooting, and are on the ground in Haiti right now warning the starving, dehydrated populace about the dangers of psychiatry.
John Travolta is using his air miles…
Leave Churchill Out of Scientology, Says Family
From The Independent:
Fight them on the beaches if you will. But the descendants of Sir Winston Churchill have decided that a more effective way to prevent the Church of Scientology from hijacking the memory of Britain’s wartime leader involves stern cease-and-desist letters and the threat of a costly PR battle.
In an unlikely dispute that pits Sir Winston’s grandchildren against followers of the late L Ron Hubbard – the science-fiction writer who believed, among other things, that mankind descended from aliens who arrived on Earth via spaceships – the controversial church has been asked to remove Churchill’s image and quotations from its fundraising literature.
The literary agency Curtis Brown, which represents several members of the Churchill family, has written to the church’s London branch protesting at a range of advertising leaflets and…
Celebrities Lead Charge Against Scientology
Peter Beaumont in London, Toni O’Loughlin in Sydney, and Paul Harris in New York report for the Guardian:
The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston’s waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city’s bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise.
The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology’s top legal adviser for a quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it.
Miscavige may since have wondered privately what Cooley would have made of the events of last week. Scientology, founded in 1953 by the late science fiction pulp novelist, serial fantasist and inveterate self-publicist L Ron Hubbard, is under fire again across the globe, following years of struggle to be recognised – with some success – as a legitimate church.
The church has just been denounced in the strongest possible terms in the Australian parliament. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has expressed his concern over allegations of “a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality” and is contemplating a parliamentary inquiry. The organisation is under police investigation…
Concern at Magazine Over Sale to Scientologists
From the New York Times (see this earlier post on disinfo.com linking to the St. Petersburg Times expose and video referred to below):
Over the last several months, The St. Petersburg Times published a series of scathing articles on the Church of Scientology under the rubric “The Truth Rundown.” In 1980, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for an investigation of the church’s inner workings.
Coverage of Scientology has long been an important story for The St. Petersburg Times, given that the organization’s headquarters is located in nearby Clearwater, Fla.
So it came as a bit of a shock when, on Friday, the newspaper’s management announced that it would sell one of its sibling publications to a California media company whose top management are Scientologists, The New York Times’s Tim Arango writes.
Governing magazine, which is…
Church of Scientology Accused Of Torture And Forced Abortions
Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney reports for the Times:
The Church of Scientology faces the prospect of a police investigation in Australia after being accused of torture and embezzlement and of forcing employees to have abortions.
Nick Xenophon, an independent senator, presented letters to the Australian Parliament from seven former Scientologists which he said showed that the secretive church was a front for physical violence, intimidation and blackmail.
“I am deeply concerned about this organisation and the devastating impact it can have on its followers,” he told the Australian Senate in Canberra. He called for a Senate inquiry…
Scientology Employees Forced To Watch Tom Cruise Videos
Just when you think Scientology can’t get more bat-shit crazy, it does … the gift that keeps on giving. It would be more fun to be a Scientologist if the Tom Cruise videos were like this:
On RadarOnline:
Having left Scientology after more than 15-years Marc Headley is lifting the lid on the bizarre religion in his explosive new book Blown for Good. And in an exclusive interview with RadarOnline.com, the author is speaking out about his experiences at the, much talked about, compound.
“Everyone there thought Tom Cruise was just brilliant,” said Headley, who left nearly five years ago. “Absolutely all the employees looked up to him.
“They think he is an exhilaration, which is very high up on what they call the ‘tone scale’…
The Crazy Dianetics & Scientology Holiday Catalog!
Girl blog Jezebel has come up with a great find! Make sure to click through the gallery to view “gotta see it to believe it” gifts such as a collection of 18 Nigerian goatskin-bound books of The Basics for $2,000 and a $4,650 E-Meter (in a wide range of colors, shown at right):
A million thank yous to the reader who mailed me the Dianetics & Scientology Holiday catalog! With so much crazytown inside, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
While Scientology has been going through tough times lately — a French court convicted the church of fraud and Oscar-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis resigned publicly — spokesperson Tommy Davis says the church is flourishing: assets and property holdings have doubled over the past five years. Is some of that cash from the catalog…
Mad Scientologists Caught in a Web of Their Own Making
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains rich, has excellent lawyers and, according to the International Scientology News, ”every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L. Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist”.
So unless the world’s supply of fools is melting away, they can hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion. And yet, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans. In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church’s trusty E-meter, a crude polygraph used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to…
Cult Busters: How Governments Decide Whether a Religion is Real or Not
From Slate:
A French court fined the Church of Scientology $888,000 on Tuesday after a couple claimed they’d been manipulated into buying between $30,000 and $73,000 worth of church products. The verdict is “a historical turning point for the fight against cult abuses,” said the leader of France’s “government cult-fighting unit.” How does this special cult-busting unit distinguish between cults and bona fide religions?
Vaguely. French law doesn’t define the term “cult.” Rather, it uses the expression “cultlike movements” to describe groups that demand unreasonable financial contributions, encourage nonparticipation in elections, promote anti-social behavior, or cut members off from their families. It’s easier to target bad behavior, the thinking goes, than to get into a semantic debate over what is and isn’t a cult. The French government has, however, tried to define the…
Open Season for Scientology Bashing
Now it’s Salon’s turn to whale on Scientology (more please mainstream media, you have a lot of catching up to do):
When Paul Haggis, the writer of “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” kicked his faith to the curb after 35 years, he did so as only an Oscar-winning scribe could: with a badass screed. His resignation letter, dated Aug. 19, emerged on ex-Scientologist Mark Rathburn’s blog yesterday and promptly went viral.
In his letter, Haggis explains, “for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California — rights that were granted them by the…
Church of Scientology Convicted of Fraud in France
The AP is reporting another example of the ‘Church’ of Scientology finally coming in for the critical attention it deserves but that the media has been afraid of for fear of costly litigation:
A Paris court convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it more than euro600,000 ($900,000) on Tuesday but stopped short of banning the group as prosecutors had demanded.
The group’s French branch immediately announced it would appeal the verdict.
The court convicted the Church of Scientology’s French office, its library and six of its leaders of organized fraud. Investigators said the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used “commercial harassment” against recruits.
The group was fined euro400,000 ($600,000) and the library euro200,000. Four of the leaders were given suspended sentences of between…
The Mainstream Media Plucks Up Courage and Pulls Back the Veil From the ‘Church’ of Scientology
The mainstream media, led by the broadcast networks, have been notoriously reluctant to air any negative news or views regarding the ‘Church’ of Scientology, largely due to that organization’s penchant for costly litigation intended to financially drain critics so thoroughly that any thought of following in their footsteps is squashed by network lawyers before any brave young producer or journalist can finish the idea.
Perhaps the wind has changed, however, with an in depth investigation by ABC News’ well-respected show Nightline, which has a variety of reports about Scientology here, as well as a lengthy ‘Inside Scientology’ video report from Martin Bashir (click that link to go to the full ABC News video site; the YouTube clips below are partial):
Tom and Katie Celebrate with Travoltas at Secret Scientology Event
Gossip mag US reports on the continuing public support for Scientology from stalwarts Cruise and Travolta:
Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and daughter Suri reunited with John Travolta and wife Kelly Preston — plus over 4000 other Scientologists — at a massive party in England on Oct. 16, Usmagazine.com has confirmed.
The stars were surprise guests at the 25th anniversary of the International Association of Scientologists held at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinsted, West Sussex. During nearly two hours of speeches, Cruise, 47, briefly addressed the rapturous, fist-pumping crowd: “Because we never took our eyes off the ultimate prize, we stand where we are today,” he intoned, witnesses tells Us. “We are in this together!”
When a choir took to the stage, the Cruise-Holmes family stood up with the rest of the audience. “Tom…
The Psychic Soldiers – Disinformation World News
Disinformation World News – Episode 8: The Psychic Soldiers
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Satanic rockers in Iran, Scientology’s European woes, and DARPA’s psychic soldiers of the future, this week on Disinformation World News.
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