http://www.rfi.fr/actuen/articles/105/article_1546.asp

Vive la liberté!!

This summer some Scientologists set up a booth at an outdoor event in our small town, offering some kind of counseling for diverse problems, and they had one of their “e-meters” there. If I’d had time and wasn’t with my family I would have taken up some of their time and gotten a few laughs.

Yeah, you can solve anyone’s problems by measuring their galvanic skin response while asking them questions, I guess.

“Replace “scientology” with “jesus” in his words and suddenly you have a video that very few would make such wide- spread fun of.”

You have to be joking.

“This is not about scientology’s adherents, but the actions of an corrupt organization, that obviously has enough institutional fear and paranoia that they feel they need to use these notices to silence critics. Don’t try to change the subject.”

I’m sorry. I had no idea that I was trying to change the subject. I just don’t see a line where scientology’s adherents end and an organization begins. It really is the same thing. This is not “Don’t ask me about it, I only work here,” kind of situation. There is no “auditor’s union.” It’s not an “us and them,” situation at all. Does this communicate? I mean it’s not like a restaurant where you have staff and customers. It doesn’t really work as an analogy, but if we were going to use a restaurant and customers as something to compare Scientology with, the customers would also learn to cook and would be taking cookery courses, serving apprenticeships under the chefs and so on. People would be graduating cookery courses and going out and starting their own restaurants, sending their chefs in for further training and so on.

Oh I’ve come across those who think they have status and act like they have something stuck up an orifice that’s usually reserved for the expulsion of substances, if you know what I mean. I live in fear of being disemvowelled! So I can’t say the “a” word, whether it’s spelled the English way – with an R or the American way – without one. But being stuck up is an aberration. It’s something the guy doesn’t want. It’s not him. It’s a reaction. As he has auditing, he gets rid of this kind of stuff. And just in case anyone thinks he’s being brainwashed, he isn’t. No one would say, “You gotta get rid of that stuck up stuff!” The auditor would just get him to take a look at a situation and without no suggestion or criticism on the auditor’s part, the guy getting audited would pull it apart and find out how he got to be that way. At which point, the behavior pattern would disappear.

There was a guy at St Hill in England who had “CRITICAL” written all over his face. He never had a good word for anyone. His expression was a permanent sneer. I HATED him the first few times I met him. Then, as he got auditing, he got milder and milder and his face changed. All the criticism dropped away and he became himself.

Once you could see the person himself, he was really nice. He was a very sensitive person, a poet, actually, very special.

This kind of thing happens every day.

Well, it would have to wouldn’t it? It’s only the fact that Scientology actually DOES get such tremendous results that is keeping it afloat.

Wait a minute…

Freeyourcrt: You have not been paying attention. $cientology has been discussed on other occasions than that one sad actor’s public raving event. The evidence is damning and overwhelming. They are a dangerous racket.

I’ve met some of the Church Of All Worlds people. They publish Green Egg Magazine, which is a general-purpose Pagan/Wiccan magazine. Basically, they’re eclectic pagans who took some rituals from the Heinlein books. So far as I know, they don’t take themselves too seriously either. They know that Heinlein laughed at the idea. They laugh at themselves too.

They’re OK sorts. Totally non-scary. Not like Scientology.

Strange that penalties are provided in law but that none of the mistaken/false takedown notices have been prosecuted.

There must be some high legal barrier there or anti-DMCA organizations would be on it.

The barrier is that perjury is a crime, not a civil infraction, so only the government can prosecute it. Random citizen organisations can’t do a thing.

Why is your district attorney not prosecuting these cases, and when are you going to replace him with somebody who will?

It’s a real shame you are so narrow minded.

“What you observe is what you observe. Look at things and life and others directly, not through any cloud of prejudice, curtain of fear or the interpretation of another.” L.Ron Hubbard

Doug117 @9, Wikipedia is also good for sorting out abbreviations.

BBNinja @10: Whatever your opinion of those or other denominations, they don’t belong in the same category as Scientology.

Takuan @18, what do you figure the odds are that one or more TLA has ties with Scientology?

TheMindFantastic @24: Shorter sentences! More paragraph breaks!

Baldhead @25:

Replace “scientology” with “jesus” in his words and suddenly you have a video that very few would make such widespread fun of.

Yes? Replacing one proper noun with another will often have that effect. The question is whether it’s reasonable to swap those two.

Marcel @28: Marcel, please — the Freemasons and Bilderbergers have higher standards than that.

BBNinja @33, ZippySpinCycle @34, thank you for introducing me to Raptor Jesus. Somehow, He had hitherto escaped my notice.

FreeYourCRT @37:

3. Lastly, I recall that this whole “pile-on” started when Hollywood darling and high-profile Scientologist, Tom Cruise, shared his opinion on national television about the questionable practices and history of psychiatric profession. Up until that point, I don’t recall these throngs of “independent-minded” people having a problem with this group. To me, this thing reeks of a smear campaign.

Throngs of independent-minded people have had problems with Scientology for decades now. If you just want the internet-related portion of the story, the Operation Clambake site is a good place to start. Also: the the alt.religion.scientology summary page. Wikipedia on alt.religion.scientology. Wikipedia on Scientology and the internet. The EFF’s summary and archive of legal cases involving Scientology. The “why we fight” page of Anonymous, a relatively recent anti-Scientology organization. A sample of tactics and campaigns that have been used: Denial of Service attacks. Claims of copyright violation. Flooding the nets with forged articles. Some summaries of earlier attacks dating from 1996, 1998, and 1998 again.

Et cetera. This is an old and ongoing fight.

Xenu (also Xemu) (pronounced /ˈziːnuː/ or /ˈziːmuː/), according to Scientology founder (and science fiction writer) L. Ron Hubbard, was the dictator of the “Galactic Confederacy” who, 75 million years ago, brought billions[1] of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Scientology holds that the essences of these many people remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm.[2][3] Members of the Church of Scientology widely deny or try to hide the Xenu story.

These events are known within Scientology as “Incident II”, and the traumatic memories associated with them as The Wall of Fire. The story of Xenu is part of Scientologist teachings about extraterrestrial civilizations and alien interventions in Earthly events, collectively described as space opera by Hubbard. Hubbard detailed the story in Operating Thetan level III (OT III) in 1967, warning that this material was “calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it.”[sic][4]

Criticism of the Church of Scientology often includes details of the Xenu story. The Church has tried to keep Xenu confidential[5] but critics say the story should be made public, given the high prices charged for OT III, part of Scientology’s secret “Advanced Technology” doctrines taught only to members who have already contributed large amounts of money to the organization.[6] The Church avoids making mention of Xenu in public statements and has gone to considerable effort to maintain the story’s confidentiality, including legal action on the grounds of both copyright and trade secrecy. Despite this, much material on Xenu has leaked to the public, largely via the Internet.

Again, I am not a Scientologist, and you’ll excuse me if I won’t be part of your mob. The Mormon temple in my town does not let me, or other non-members enter their building, nor film, or tape any of their ceremonies or proceedings. Would you like to come to town and storm their gates and expose their secrets? You can stay at my place. I could scrounge up some torches and stuff for you and your friends. Lastly, that some throw around the accusation of brain-washing is even more hilarious and kind of ironic to boot.

G’nite.

“The ‘idee fixe’ is the bug in sanity.”

“Whenever an observer himself has fixed ideas he tends to look at them, not at the information….”

“History is full of idiocies – and idiots – with fixed ideas. They cannot observe beyond the idea.”

“A fixed idea is something accepted without personal inspection or agreement. It is the perfect ‘authority knows best.’ It is the ‘reliable source’….

“A fixed idea is uninspected. It blocks the existence of any contrary observation.”

L.Ron Hubbard

I’m personally glad that the videos have been removed from YouTube.