Why Don't Scientologists Burst Out Laughing and Walk Away?

I wondered, when I dropped on this third article by Tony Ortega, if it would go some way to explaining the same question that I asked when I earlier ran two previous articles by fellow. Basically, how can people be so fucking gullible when confronted with this tripe that is at the core of Scientology? Or as Ortega asks the very same:

Why don't Scientologists, when they've been in the organization long enough to reach the legendary material in "Operating Thetan Level Three" -- the stuff about Xenu the galactic overlord which made for a great 2005 episode of South Park -- bust out laughing and walk away?

One way of answering the question, would be to take the easy way out and dismiss it as simply the stupidity and gullibility of your average Yanky. Given that around half the population of America think the Earth is less than ten thousand years old and was willed into existence by a supernatural entity, I could be forgiven for thinking this. It may well turn out to be the case, for try as I may, and reading the accounts below, and doing so in all seriousness, I'm still at a loss as to the why of it all.

Is Ortega right in downplaying: their critical reasoning skills were so eroded, they would accept anything in favour of something else, something quite simple in fact:

. . . but by the time they learned it (the Xenu story) they had already spent so much of their lives invested in Scientology, they really had no personal will to walk away -- at least at that point.

Human nature being what it is, and considering how much time and money these people had invested to reach this level of enlightenment, OT3, it is not I think, an observation without merit.

Why Do Scientologists Accept the Xenu Story?
By Tony Ortega
July 21 2012

For going on 17 years I've been writing about Scientology, and over that time there's one question that has come up again and again.

Why don't Scientologists, when they've been in the organization long enough to reach the legendary material in "Operating Thetan Level Three" -- the stuff about Xenu the galactic overlord which made for a great 2005 episode of South Park -- bust out laughing and walk away?

Tom Cruise and John Travolta and thousands of other Scientologists have moved on beyond the space opera stuff in OT 3 (Cruise, for example, has moved up to OT 7), and for some reason, they accepted the Xenu story and never looked back.

When I've been asked that question, I had a ready answer that I'd put together after talking to many ex-Scientologists who told me their own experiences.

But now, I realize that the answer I was giving was wrong. The reason why Scientologists accept the story about Xenu and disembodied alien beings infesting this Earth is actually much simpler, and much more mindblowing, than I ever realized.

In the past, Scientologists had convinced me that their long, gradual indoctrination was so insidious, by the time they were allowed to read L. Ron Hubbard's strange OT 3 story -- which has a galactic overlord solving an overpopulation problem by bringing billions of disembodied alien souls to this planet 75 million years ago -- their critical reasoning skills were so eroded, they would accept anything.

I remember Jason Beghe, for example, telling me that other religions have their angels and demons, so was a story about alien spirits from another solar system really all that harder to believe? I could see what he was saying, but after spending so much money and time -- hundreds of thousands of dollars and several years of dedication to reach OT 3 -- wasn't it a shock for Scientologists to learn that this was what their religion is really all about?

Some ex-church members I met did admit that they had negative reactions to the Xenu story, but by the time they learned it they had already spent so much of their lives invested in Scientology, they really had no personal will to walk away -- at least at that point.

But then, recently, I had a new realization about what church members go through before they get to OT 3.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed a man named Dani Lemberger, and he made me understand the "whole track" and auditing better than anyone else had before. (In auditing -- Scientology's spiritual counseling -- a subject holds onto the sensors of an e-meter while an auditor asks questions prescribed by Hubbard, encouraging the subject to remember events earlier and earlier. The purpose is to remember and then disarm traumatic memories that happened in your past lives, and helps you move toward becoming "clear." As you do so, you gain a view down your entire "whole track" of existence as an immortal spirit, called a "thetan.")

For my story about Dani and the mission in Israel that is splitting away from the official church, I interviewed Lemberger for hours and sat, mesmerized, as he told me about his whole track auditing, during which he saw himself millions of years ago, leading groups during different lifetimes and on other planets. Over the eons, he said, he had lived lifetimes during which he had a tendency to get his head chopped off when his people rebelled.

Dani was serious. (And he's also a successful businessman with an MBA who characterizes himself as a "skeptic.")

Lemberger made me realize something very basic about Scientology that, for some reason, had never really sunk in before. And it is this...

The reason Scientologists accept Hubbard's bizarre story about Xenu is that by the time they reach OT 3, they have been "remembering" their own outlandish space opera "whole track" stories during auditing, perhaps for several years.

Why question Hubbard's tale about mass alien genocide 75 million years ago, when you've been "seeing" yourself as some kind of Buck Rogers fighting enemies and bedding beauties from one end of the galaxy to the other?

With this new realization, I went back to some of my ex-Scientology sources to put it to them: had they been holding out on me a little about their own Star Wars-like adventures?

Several of them admitted that yes, even ex-Scientologists long out of the church can be somewhat reluctant to discuss the wild things they "remembered" about their past during auditing. But I pressed them -- tell me about your adventures from millennia past.

"I blew up a water dam that destroyed a third of the cities that were downriver of it. That would be about 300 million years ago -- but you would say something like '346,767,813 years ago' to your auditor. I think it was on some planet that started with the letter 'V'," says Chuck Beatty, and he laughs, knowing how ridiculous it sounds.

Even after I had explained what I was asking, it took me some while to pry that answer out of Chuck, who is, just about anyone will tell you, the most forthcoming and talkative source of information on Scientology in the world.

Tiziano Lugli was the same way. He spoke to me at length about his own auditing and the entire progression of the OT levels. But I had to keep pushing him until he finally coughed up one of his whole track events...

"It was 250,000 years ago, in a space ship, and I'd gathered all these people from these planets, and I'm implanting them with mental pictures and then throwing them down to the earth, a prison planet," Lugli said. "I was the guy in charge, and I'm responsible for this prison planet. The feeling of that responsibility and what I went through freaked me out for a year."

And that's really the purpose of "remembering" such material -- Scientologists believe that if they can recall and "handle" things that happened to them eons ago, it will solve whatever problems they have going on in their current lives.

"At the end of a session you feel invincible," Lugli says. "You've been having planets built and destroyed. After that, you come out into this normal world and you feel like the most powerful person around because you've been traveling through space and time."

Marc Headley pointed out that if you're having those kinds of experiences, Hubbard's story about a galactic overlord is just not very surprising.

"OK, so there's a galactic overlord named Xenu. Big deal. That's not the craziest thing you're going to hear on your way to spending three hundred thousand dollars," he says, referring to the ballpark figure for what it takes to get through the years of services to get to OT 3. At the upper levels, such counseling reaches about a thousand dollars an hour.

But during their journey to OT 3, not everyone has such outlandish "memories," they all pointed out to me.

Amy Scobee, for example, told me a pretty mundane story about seeing herself in a scene from about two centuries ago (which, even though it was rather tame, she asked me not to share). Other memories she worked with were almost contemporary.

She just didn't have wild space opera experiences the way some others did. So when she she reached OT 3, I asked her, how did it hit her?

"I did wonder if it was true," she says. But when she then ran the auditing routines involved in the level, the e-meter's needle seemed to indicate that what the material proposed -- that disembodied alien souls were hovering around her -- seemed to be confirmed. "It's weird. I don't know what to say. I didn't feel like I went through that incident, but the needle was going wild, so I had to assume that someone had."

I also called Jefferson Hawkins, who I've always considered one of the smartest, most level-headed of the ex-Scientologists who speak out about their experiences. He laughed as soon as I explained why I was calling.

"I ran a lot of that stuff, as anybody does, and people don't want to talk about it because it's kind of silly when you get out. But when you're in it's very real," he says.

And Jeff's "whole track" auditing memory? "I was a navigator on a space ship, and it had this very complex navigation system that I was in charge of and I could describe it in great detail," he says. "It was just very vivid. I could see the equipment and could describe it."

He points out that Hubbard had suggested these kinds of stories in his books and lectures, talking about waves of "invader forces" that had colonized the solar system.

"As a kid I was a real science fiction fan. And the idea that this stuff had actually occurred millions of years ago -- it was crazy, but in a good way," he says.

So these Scientologists, in their auditing sessions, were "remembering" pretty mindblowing stuff. But there was a catch -- they weren't supposed to tell other church members about it.

Lugli describes the scene to me: "You would go to the restaurant at the Sandcastle Hotel in Flag [Scientology's spiritual mecca in Clearwater, Florida], and everyone is out of session, saying things like, 'Wow, this really blew me away! I've never handled more charge in one session!' But you can't actually say what happened," he says.

However, people would violate the rules and spill secrets about their past lives, they tell me. Some folks just couldn't help themselves.

"It was a status thing," Hawkins explains. "I knew probably four or five Scientologists who told me confidentially that they were Jesus."

And in the 1980s, he remembers, "there was this fad for a while that people were all remembering that they were Nazis in World War II, and that's why things were so screwed up in their present lives," Hawkins says. "That's why they had to be so active in Scientology, to atone for what they had done in past lives."

I also pointed out to Jeff that there seemed to be another status thing going on -- the better Scientologist you were, the farther back in your whole track you could go, retrieve incidents, and handle them. Hubbard himself seemed to promote this idea, that if his followers could travel back hundreds of millions of years, he was so advanced he was going back trillions of years. (Astronomers tell us the universe itself is only about 14 billion years old, but that didn't stop Hubbard.)

Hubbard claimed that he'd visited Heaven 43 trillion years ago and then a trillion years later. And, as we pointed out (and Beatty gave us credit for being the first ever to do so), when Hubbard died, Pat Broeker showed a number with 347 digits on it to the audience when it was announced that Hubbard had merely left his body in order to continue his research on another plane.

That number, Broeker told the audience, represented in years the farthest back in his whole track that Hubbard had been able to go at the end of his life.

We did the math, and here's what that number represented...

24 billion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years.

That's some time travel!

So you see, 75 million years ago is not really such a big deal, and Xenu and his alien overpopulation problem isn't going to scare off your average spacefaring Scientologist.

Someday, I'd love to hear Tom Cruise's whole track tales. They must be something. Update and two short clips

Again in all seriousness, I have upped this now infamous video of Tom Cruise, not to take the piss, which would be too easy, but to actually study someone who is so far off the wall, it's something to behold.

Scientology: More Contempt

Contempt for anyone so gullible as to swallow this nonsense, brainwashed or not. And a brief word below concerning the IRS.

. . . . And that’s when Wollersheim learned the secrets of OT III.

Hubbard claimed that he had nearly paid with his life learning the revelations of OT III, the third level of materials that Scientologists must master after going clear and becoming an “operating thetan,” or OT. The information in OT III was so explosive, Hubbard said, he believed its secrets must have been designed to kill anyone who discovered it. The danger those secrets posed to the uninitiated was one of the ways Scientologists justified not telling newer members about them. (Today they are available on the Internet for perusal, if you know where to look. This reporter suffered no ill effects from reading them.) Former members say that today the typical Scientologist must spend several years and about $100,000 in auditing before they find out on OT III that they are filled with alien souls that must be removed by further, even more expensive auditing.

“OT III totally shatters the core sense of identity. The central concept of mind control is attacking the core personality, the threat that you are not who you think you are. At OT III, you find out that you’re really thousands of individual beings struggling for control of your body. Aliens left over from space wars that are giving you cancer or making you crazy or making you impotent. The reason for every bad thing in your life is these alien beings,” Wollersheim says. “I went psychotic on OT III. I lost a sense of who I was.”

Years can be spent removing these aliens—called “body thetans” or “BT’s”—by talking to and about these supposed hitchhiking entities while holding onto a device called an “e-meter.” “You’re talking to thousands of beings. They have histories. And anger. They’re complex personalities. I started drinking heavily to drown out the voices. I was non-functional, irrational, filthy. I wandered the streets of L.A. for three days. Finally I came enough to my senses to get in touch with Scientologists I knew.” He was cleaned up and calmed down, but Wollersheim was told that the solution to his troubles was just more auditing.

It would appear the IRS resisted Scientology for years over granting it tax free status, but in the end, and hard as it may be to believe, Scientology just wore out the IRS and they subsequently folded on the issue.

. . . . . Hubbard organized Scientology as a religion in 1954. But in 1967, it was stripped of its tax exempt status by the IRS. For the next 25 years, the U.S. government repeatedly turned down Scientology’s appeals to regain its exemption on the grounds that Scientology was not so much a religion as a money-making venture benefiting one man, Hubbard.

Scientology retaliated in an extraordinary way. With Hubbard’s knowledge and direction, agents of his intelligence unit, the Guardian’s Office, began infiltrating IRS and other government offices in the mid 1970s. Dubbed Operation Snow White by Hubbard, the illegal operation netted stolen government documents by the yard, and went undiscovered until a 1977 raid of Scientology offices by the FBI. Eleven Scientologists, including Hubbard’s wife Mary Sue, were sentenced to prison. Hubbard himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator.

Scientology subsequently disbanded the Guardian’s Office, claiming that it was a rogue outfit. But its war with the IRS did not stop.

Even after Hubbard’s death in 1986, the IRS continued to deny the organization tax-exempt status, and Scientology fought back by siccing personal investigators on individual IRS employees and filing more than 2,000 separate lawsuits against the agency.

Despite the harassment, however, the IRS continued to win victories against Scientology in court. In 1992, A United States Claims Court upheld the IRS denial, citing “the commercial character of much of Scientology” and its “scripturally based hostility to taxation.” Tax exempt organizations, the claims court wrote, “simply do not exhibit the financial complexity or the phenomenal preoccupation with money displayed by Scientology’s management churches and organizers.”

By then, however, the IRS had already, secretly, caved. In 1991, under the first George Bush presidency, the IRS had reversed itself and began a process that wasn’t made public until 1993, under the Clinton administration, when the IRS revealed that it was giving nearly every Scientology entity the tax exempt status it coveted.

It was a stunning turnaround and one that, [more than] a decade later, still has tax experts shaking their heads. Article proper: Scientology's Crushing Defeat

Full list of articles by Tony Ortega

Previous: Scientology: Contempt Contempt Contempt

Scientology: Contempt Contempt Contempt

Contempt for any such organisation as sinister as the Church of Scientology, not to mention contempt for short arsed megalomaniacs who by comparison make the term Napoleon Complex seem almost benign.

Contempt for the United States of America, the FBI and the IRS, who not only allow such a cult to flourish unhindered, but recognise Scientology as a religion and bestow on it tax free status.

Contempt for anyone dumb enough, shallow enough or pathetic enough, to walk through the portals of, and embrace any organisation, that were it not so sinister, should be laughed and ridiculed out of existence, the brain-child of a third rate science fiction writer, L Ron Hubbard and his Church of Scientology.

Only in America! Only in America!! You better fucking believe it.

The only thing more I have to say is, after you have read the first account, an account the plot of which, wouldn't do justice to a bad B movie, simply because it's too unbelievable, please read part two, which has all the basics required for a half decent novel thriller.

For myself right now, I'm going to open a few more links and continue reading what at best can be described as bizarre, and at worst, a good deal more than sinister.

Scientology's Concentration Camp for Its Executives: The Prisoners, Past and Present
By Tony Ortega
Aug. 2 2012

This weekend, we published a two-part story about the rather amazing 32-year Scientology career of John Brousseau, whose adventures included driving for L. Ron Hubbard, spending time in the Sea Org's prison program the RPF, and working in the Cruise household with Tom and Katie Holmes.

What seemed to generate the most comments, however, was Brousseau's involvement in the creation of Scientology's notorious office-prison for its top executives, variably known as "CMO Int," the "A to E Room," the "SP Hole," and simply "The Hole."

It was Brousseau who was ordered to put bars on the doors and locks on the windows to turn a set of offices at Scientology's International Base east of Los Angeles into a prison that housed out-of-favor church executives from 2004 to the present day.

But over that time, Brousseau tells us, the conditions of The Hole changed, and so did the roster of people kept inside. After the jump, what we know about the place, and a list of people who spent at least some time there.

As Brousseau explained, it was after Scientology finally got out from under the Lisa McPherson wrongful death lawsuit with a settlement in 2004 that church leader David Miscavige's attention seemed to turn inward.

Suddenly, he says, Miscavige directed an unending fury at his own top executives, some of his most loyal and longest-serving officials in international management. And in 2004, he rounded up about 50 of these Sea Org members, locked them in a room, and then confined them to another building for three days. He then asked Brousseau to secure the CMO Int offices, and then the next day moved the executives down to it.

The Hole was born.

Harrowing accounts of what occurred in The Hole turned up in a 2009 investigation by Joe Childs and Tom Tobin of the Tampa Bay Times, in Marc Headley's 2009 book Blown for Good, and in Janet Reitman's 2011 history of the church, Inside Scientology.

Then, this year, we heard from two additional sources about conditions in The Hole -- Debbie Cook's dramatic court testimony this February in San Antonio, and Mike Rinder's Voice video interview in March. (At Cook's hearing in February, the church put out a statement denying that The Hole exists. But the attorney who uttered that denial was not, as Cook, under oath in a court of law. He's also outnumbered by numerous former Scientologists who have spoken about the church's concentration camp with utter consistency.)

Rinder estimates that he spent a total of about two years in the Hole -- first in 2004 as it was beginning, and then later in 2006-2007.

Debbie Cook was in for only 7 weeks in 2007, but her experience was brutal. She testified that Miscavige had two hulking guards climb into her office through a window as she was talking to him on the phone. "Goodbye" he told her as she was hauled off to the gulag. Like Rinder, she described a place where dozens of men and women were confined to what had been a set of offices. Cook testified that the place was ant-infested, and during one two-week stretch in the summer with temperatures over 100 degrees, Miscavige had the air conditioning turned off as punishment. Food was brought up in a vat riding on a golf cart. Cook described it as a barely edible "slop" that was fed to them morning, noon, and night. Longtime residents of the Hole began to look gaunt.

They had to find places on the floor or on desks to sleep at night. Rinder said there were so many of them they slept only inches from each other, and having to get up in the middle of the night was a nightmare of stepping over sleeping figures in the dark.

In the morning, they were marched out of the offices and through a tunnel under Gilman Springs Road to a large building with communal showers. They were then marched back to the Hole, and during the day would be compelled to take part in mass confessions.

During these, Rinder says people he had considered friends would put on a show for the officials overseeing them, trying to outdo each other with vile accusations against each other. Cook testified that Miscavige wanted Marc Yager and Guillaume Lesevre, two of his longest-serving and highest-ranking officials, to confess to having a homosexual affair. The men were beaten until they made some forced admissions. When Cook objected to what was happening, she herself was made to stand in a trash can for twelve hours while insults were hurled at her, she was called a lesbian, and water was dumped on her head.

She testified that she saw one man, Mark Ginge Nelson, beaten and then made to lick a bathroom floor for half an hour. [Note: Cook testified that she witnessed this punishment at a Scientology location in Los Angeles, not in the Hole. Nelson, she testified, received this punishment for daring to object to the way executives were being locked up in the Hole.]

Rinder and Cook both eventually got out of the Hole in 2007 when Miscavige needed them on projects elsewhere. But others have reportedly spent five to seven years locked up in the Hole.

In more recent years, however, conditions have improved, Brousseau tells me.

"'The Truth Rundown' caused conditions to get better," Brousseau says. The landmark 2009 Tampa Bay Times series featured several former executives accusing Miscavige of assaulting them and creating an environment of violence and incarceration. (The church vehemently denied the accusations.)

Brousseau says the publicity had an immediate effect.

"The mandate was to change the Hole's appearance," he says.

Over a two-week period, changes were made that were still in place when Brousseau left the base in 2010. (Through an intermediary, we've heard from Roanne Horwich, who left the base just a few months ago, that the changes are still in place.)

At night, the prisoners of the Hole were now allowed to sleep in actual beds, in one of several buildings on the south side of Gilman Springs Road which are collectively known as "Berthing."

Brousseau was never held in the Hole, but he observed the prisoners often and describes their day:

"They slept in Berthing. They got up, showered, then went to the dining hall at 9:30. They had 30 minutes for breakfast," he says. (No more bringing them a vat of slop on the back of a golf cart.)

"Then they walked up to the Hole. They sat down at desks. I have no clue what work they did," he says. "They worked until 12:30 or 1 pm. Then they were marched back to the dining hall and had 30 minutes for lunch. Then they were marched back to the Hole and were there until 6 pm."

The executives were then marched to the dining hall for a 30-minute dinner.

"Then they went up to the study hall. In the Qual building, the one with the big circular stained glass window," he says. More

Related and full of bizarre goings on: Mimi Faust's Mother, Olaiya Odufunke: Her Life in Scientology's Secret Service Maybe more links to come after more reading.

Full list of articles by Tony Ortega

In France It's a Fraud In America It's a Religion: Scientology Declared Organised Fraud

The Appeal Court Judgment

The Court of Appeal in Paris confirmed the convictions of the two Scientology organisations for organised fraud, a decision which some say is the beginning of the end for the movement.
2 February 2012

On Thursday, February 2, the Court of Appeal in Paris confirmed the conviction of two Scientology organisations for organised fraud.



It also upheld convictions for organised fraud and charges relating to the illegal practice of pharmacy against five Scientologists, increasing the sentences against two of the appellants.

The appeal court conformed the following convictions and sentences:

The Association Spirituelle de l’Eglise de Scientologie CC (ASES), the Celebrity Centre, was convicted of organised fraud.

It was fined 400,000 euros and ordered to pay for the details of the conviction to be published in several major French newpapers: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, Le Parisien and Ouest France.

Scientology’s network of bookshops Scientologie Espace Librarie (SEL) was also convicted of organised fraud.

It was fined 200,000 euros and ordered to pay for the publication of the conviction in the same newspapers.[i]

The court confirmed the convictions and sentences against three of the appelants:

Alain Rosenberg, the managing director of the Celebrity Centre, was convicted on appeal of organised fraud and of complicity in the illegal exercise of pharmacy. He received a two-year suspended prison sentence and a 30,000-euro fine;

Didier Michaux, the bookshop’s star salesman, was convicted on appeal of organised fraud. He received an 18-month suspended sentence and a 20,000-euro fine;

Jean-François Valli, the other bookshop salesman, who also did work for the Celebrity Centre, was convicted on appeal of organised fraud. He received an 18-months suspended sentence and a 10,000-euro fine.

But the court increased the sentence against two of the defendants:

Sabine Jacquart, the then president of the Celebrity Centre, was convicted on appeal of organised fraud and of complicity in the illegal exercise of pharmacy. She received a two-year suspended sentence and a 30,000-euro fine. (She was originally sentenced to a 10-month suspended sentence and a 5,000-euro fine.);

Aline Fabre, who supervised the Purification Rundown at the Celebrity Centre, was convicted on appeal of the illegal exercise of pharmacy. Her fine was increased from 2,000 euros in the original sentence to 10,000 euros.

Fabre, Jacquart, Rosenberg (and Anne-Marie Pasturel, who was not represented during the appeal trial) were each ordered to pay the National Order of Pharmacists 5,000 euros in compensation.

Neither the defendants nor their lawyers were in court to hear the judgment. They had walked-out half-way through the trial protesting that they could not get a fair hearing.

Outside the court, Maître Olivier Morice for the counter-cult group UNADFI described it as a historic victory, and a case which had been followed by several European countries where court cases are pending.

“It is the first time in France that Scientology has been convicted as an organisation for organised fraud,” he said.

“I think that we are at the beginning of other key decisions against Scientology, which could lead to its banning, or its dissolution,” he added.

Back in 1998, more http://infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com/

And they ain't all in Ameriki, I'm ashamed to say.

Previous: France Regards Scientology as a Cult, Not a Religion: Court to Rule on Appeal

France Regards Scientology as a Cult, Not a Religion: Court to Rule on Appeal

I think the fist time I ever heard of Anonymous, it was over their attacks on Scientology.

Founded in 1954 by US science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology is recognised as a religion in the United States.

Need one say more?

French court to rule on Scientology fraud appeal
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, February 2

A Paris court is to rule Thursday in an appeal against a fine of hundreds of thousands of euros imposed on the Church of Scientology after it was found guilty of fleecing vulnerable followers.

A 2009 fraud conviction saw Scientology’s Celebrity Centre and its bookshop in Paris, the two branches of its French operations, ordered to pay 600,000 euros ($790,000) in fines for preying financially on several followers in the 1990s.

The original ruling, while stopping short of banning the group from operating in France, dealt a blow to the movement best known for its Hollywood followers such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Alain Rosenberg, the French leader of the movement, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros on the same charge of fraud.

Five more Scientologists were given fines ranging from 1,000 to 20,000 euros for fraud or the illegal practice of pharmacy after plaintiffs said they were given vitamins and concoctions to improve their mental state.

On appeal, the prosecutor has sought a fine of not less than 1.5 million euros for the Celebrity Centre and the SEL bookshop, more than double the original penalty, and suspended prison sentences for most of the accused.

France regards Scientology as a cult, not a religion, and has prosecuted individual Scientologists before, but the original trial marked the first time the organisation as a whole had been convicted.

Church of Scientology lawyers in November raised five constitutional questions in a bid to get the trial annulled, but they were rejected, prompting the defendants and their lawyers to walk out.

The Celebrity Centre said in a statement on Tuesday that it had boycotted the trial because of “numerous violations of defence rights” and “doubts about the independence of the justice system felt throughout the trial, after the heavy interference of the executive in the judiciary.”

Prosecutor Hughes Woirhaye said the Scientologists were adopting an “evasive strategy” and making “a deliberate choice of systematic denial”.

Court hearings were curtailed because of the absence of the accused, while the four former followers who brought the case also withdrew from the trial.

The sole remaining witness was Catherine Picard, who heads Unadfi, an organisation that campaigns against sects and is a plaintiff in the case.

Picard testified to the “heavy debts, broken family ties” and the “state of subjection” that could result from the “sect-like methods” used by Scientology to “indoctrinate vulnerable people”.

The original case followed a complaint by two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into handing over 20,000 euros in 1998 for Scientology products including an “electrometer” to measure mental energy.

A second claimed she was forced by her Scientologist employer to undergo testing and enrol in courses, also in 1998. When she refused she was fired.

Founded in 1954 by US science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology is recognised as a religion in the United States. It claims a worldwide membership of 12 million and 45,000 followers in France. Raw Story

The Ever Sinister Church of Scientology: South Park Edition

A sinister account indeed. These are some serious motherfuckers, little wonder Germany wants to outlaw them as a cult. And the Belgiques. And the Francos. Unlike America of course, where they enjoy tax free status as a bona fide religion. Only in Ameriki folks, only in Ameriki.

But I do have a second, not so sinister Scientology story below. More shall we say, a batshit crazy Scientology story. Now who could that possibly feature I wonder?

A couple of clips before we start? Yes why not?

Scientology Targeted South Park's Parker and Stone in Investigation
By Tony Ortega
Oct 23 2011

Yesterday, we reported that former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun had revealed at his blog that in 2006, Scientology's Office of Special Affairs -- the church's intelligence and covert operations wing -- was actively investigating South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone by looking for vulnerabilities among their close friends.

Today, we have more leaked OSA documents which give some idea of the extent of the spying operation on the South Park offices and the people who worked there.

They suggest that after traditional approaches with private investigators had stalled, OSA turned to film consultant Eric Sherman, a Scientologist, to help them find a young filmmaker who would make an effective mole at the South Park offices.


For decades, Scientology has earned a reputation for severe retaliation against perceived enemies and carrying on "noisy investigations" that involve private investigators and intimidation squads. We've been documenting many examples of that this year as Scientology goes through perhaps its most difficult period.

The defection of former high ranking officials Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder has been a nightmare for the church. As Scientology expends enormous resources to surveill and harass each of them, Rathbun continues to leak formerly secret OSA documents at his blog.

Not on his blog, however, is a document which he supplied to Marc Headley, a man we have written about frequently here at the Voice, and who was subject to his own retaliation and spying operations by the church. Rathbun gave Headley extensive OSA documents which showed how the church attempted to turn his Scientologist friends into spies.

These documents are in the forms of reports made by operatives to OSA executives. Rathbun and Rinder say these reports would also have been read by church leader David Miscavige who, they say, watches carefully over all of Scientology's covert operations.

For some reason, in a document about Headley's Internet activity, there's also a portion about South Park. The document is dated April 24, 2006: For more story with links, clicky.

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This is just one of 'The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology' that can be found in the sidebar by following the link above.

Related clips below the article.

On August 5, we started a countdown that will give credit -- or blame -- to the people who have contributed most to the sad current state of Scientology. From its greatest expansion in the 1980s, the church is a shell of what it once was and is mired in countless controversies around the world. Some of that was self-inflicted, and some of it has come from outside. Join us now as we continue on our investigation of those people most responsible...

The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology
#4: Tom Cruise

In 2005, actor Tom Cruise fell in love. Like, hopelessly, famously, insanely in love. We know this because he expressed himself by jumping on furniture to show just how crazy in love he was with Katie Holmes.

You remember. It was an arresting moment. Why? Well, for a short time at least, this top-of-the-heap super-celebrity seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

He was jumping on Oprah's couch about Katie, but then, he was also getting into a strange debate about psych drugs with Matt Lauer, practically daring this country's mainstream media to debate him about his Scientology beliefs.

Even at the time, those of us in the Scientology watching community knew this was a huge moment.

For decades, celebrities like Cruise had made the mysterious church seem more intriguing, but it was something that the celebrities themselves seemed reluctant to discuss. Now, suddenly, Scientology was fair game.

If Tom's 2005 freakout opened a window onto Scientology, three years later, a 9-minute video of the actor really tore down the gates. The video had actually been made for a 2004 Scientology event in which Cruise was awarded the coveted International Association of Scientologists' Freedom Medal of Valor. If you've seen such events, you know that church leader David Miscavige likes to have video segments to show the audience. In this case, that took the form of a video interview with Tom which was clearly intended to pump up the audience with what a gung-ho, hardcore Scientologist he is.

But out of context, and shown to non-Scientologists, Tom's performance is simply bizarre.

Recently, for the first time, in this very countdown ex-Scientologist Patty Moher revealed that she was one of the people responsible for getting that video out to the world. Mark Bunker was another key part of that operation, as was Xenubarb. But after the video made it to YouTube, it was yanked down as Scientology tried to stuff a genie back in a bottle. Journalist Mark Ebner, however, delivered a copy of the video to Gawker's Nick Denton, and Denton would not back down to Scientology's threats as the video became a monster traffic success for the website.

But there's more to the reason Tom Cruise is on this list than his weird behavior on Oprah or the strange things he says on the IAS video.

As Amy Scobee explained recently to Mark Bunker for his upcoming documentary, Knowledge Report, that video had a very different effect on longtime, hardcore members of Scientology (which Scobee was at the time the video was first shown, in 2004).

Scobee described how hard it was to understand why Miscavige was treating Cruise, a pampered celebrity, like he was the ultimate, most loyal, and most effective example of a Scientologist. That felt like a slap in the face, she explained, to longtime executives who had not been pampered, who had endured years of meager pay, spartan conditions, and seemingly endless emergency orders. After all that hard work, it's a movie star who turns out to be the best example of a church member?

But Cruise seemed to relish that role. And that's what in part is so extremely strange about the man. There are other Scientologist celebrities who are gung-ho for the church, and who aren't afraid to speak out (a particularly humorless and unhinged actress comes to mind, but I'm not going to name her or she'll think she made the countdown). But Cruise is the only one who actually gives the appearance that, on some level at least, he's actually helping to run the everloving enterprise with his diminutive motorcycle buddy, Miscavige.

I think that sense has actually seeped into the larger culture, as well. If a certain Grease star, especially after the death of his son, seems more and more a pathetic victim, and if other celebrities, like an actress whose weight yo-yos, just seem clueless, Cruise actually has begun to scare people with how much he and Miscavige are joined at the hip.

I thought something Jane Lynch said the other night while she hosted the Emmy Awards was particularly telling:

"Katie Holmes is in the audience. I'd love to say something funny about her but I'm scared of her husband."

Was there even a single person watching who didn't get the implication of that joke? And that, to me, is about the best evidence you're going to get that Tom Cruise -- with his front-row cheering of David Miscavige, with his custom bike fashioned by penniless Sea Org members, and his willingness to, however briefly, become the aggressive, argumentative face for Scientology -- has badly damaged a brand that already had a creepy vibe.

But don't take it just from me. I asked Mark Bunker for his thoughts on the actor, and also Mark Ebner. First, some words from Wise Beard Man:

I like Tom Cruise. I'm a fan. I've been defending him far longer than I've been a critic of Scientology. He's a big, old fashioned movie star and I'm a big, old fashioned movie lover. I see no reason to stop liking the guy just because I don't like the organization he supports. So how do I feel about his career having been possibly harmed by the infamous Scientology tape which I had a hand in releasing to the net? Well, I'm OK with it. I'm not happy about it. I mean, I'm not a schmuck. But I take Cruise at his word that he loves Scientology. And I know Scientology loves Cruise. I think both parties should be proud of the tape and should want it to be seen. And now it is.

With Scientology crumbling, it is possible we actually may see Cruise leave Scientology someday. I think it would be good for him. He feels Scientology has helped his career but Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise because he's Tom Cruise. He has a charisma that comes through on film. He has star power. That's not something Scientology gave him. If they could do that, then everyone at the Celebrity Center would be a Tom Cruise megastar. Yes, even Frank Stallone. Tom Cruise doesn't need Scientology but Scientology desperately needs to hold on to Tom Cruise.

As I said, I also made the (journalistically questionable) decision to ask Mark Ebner to write up something on Cruise. Naturally, he sent over something very Ebneresque. You have been forewarned.

I've been making a cottage industry out of exposing Scientology since my Spy magazine story dropped in '96, and still, the number one question I get to this day is, "Is Tom Cruise Gay?" I really don't know, but his workout buddy (Scientology boss) David Miscavige tells me Tom's dick tastes like shit. I jest. Will Smith told me that. I kid. It was Travolta. Just joking. Ask his former wife Mimi Rogers, who, while discussing their split with Playboy in '93, said, ''Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk...he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument.'' Her own instrument, she complained, ''needed tuning.''

I don't really care if Cruise gobbles knob. In fact, I championed his he-manlihood in Hollywood, Interrupted by referring to him as "the heterosexual Tom Cruise" no less than a dozen times. Still, if Cruise really did come out of the closet as urged in the Emmy-nominated "Trapped In The Closet" episode of South Park I consulted on, he'd really be my hero. Instead, I just think he's an asshole for constantly, shamelessly shilling for the criminal mind control cult of Scientology and their various front groups.

Marty Rathbun recently revealed that in 2003 the movie star plotted with former President Bill Clinton to lobby Tony Blair for tax breaks in the UK.

Not long after the 9-11 tragedy, Cruise landed like a vulture on Ground Zero to promote his New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project urging first responders to eschew traditional medicine in favor of his hero Hubbard's sham of a "purification" program.

The actor also tried to convert the cast and crew of War of The Worlds by bringing Scientology "ministers" onto the set, and as part of his "get 'em while they're young" campaign, convinced his pal Will Smith to open a Scientology-based elementary school in California.

So yeah, I think Cruise is a prick, but I still wouldn't fuck him with yours. Me? I may be glib, but as I write this I'm beginning to feel bad about the name-calling. I mean, it's kind of like picking on a retard, because Tom Cruise, as evidenced by the infamous Tom Cruise "crazy tape" that I delivered to a giddy Nick Denton of Gawker in January of '08, is, for all appearances, batshit insane. Cruise's maniacal giggling and gibberish-spewing on that tape transcends the kind of crazy evidenced by his couch-jumping episode on Oprah, and if I had a dollar for every hit (3 million and counting) Gawker got off the video I gave them for fun and for free, I'd be a wealthy man. Who's crazy now?

Thank you, Ebner. Thank you very much. I really can't think of anything to add after that onslaught, so I'll just finish with a plea directed to the Mission Impossible man himself.

Tom, you can leave. Just do it, pardner. Village Voice

The original few minutes of South Park - Cruise in the closet, is a very rare animal. I did find a source, so I grabbed it and uploaded it to Youtube, but they were having none of it due to copyright. So if you wish to watch the thing, it can be viewed here.

Tom Cruise; iconic batshit crazy in nine minutes, is first up. But if you only watch the one clip, make it the last one. Bill Maher has it in a nutshell. Well, in ninety seconds to be exact.








The Rolling Stone article referred to in the clip, and a decent read as well as I remember, can be found here.

What An Absolute Cult

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Tom Cruise. Anorak has the story and video.

Scientology On a Roll In Spite Of Bad Press

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So say the cultists, does that mean they will stop threatening dissenters now?
Check out the penultimate paragraph, stroll on!

The negative coverage given to the Church of Scientology in the last two months is actually helping the organisation in its recruitment and contact with others the Church says.

Scientology has taken a battering in the early month's of 2008, with a video of prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise appearing on YouTube showing the actor ranting about the power of the Church and its vast reach.

During the video, Cruise appears to rant uncontrollably in "Scientology-speak", including an outburst about the damage Psychiatrists are doing to mental health patients.


The Cruise video was watched millions of times before being pulled from the site, amid accusations the Church had pressured Google (the owners of YouTube) to delete the video.

An online hacker group known as Anonymous has also pledged to take down the Church of Scientology, including the removal of their websites and online infrastructure.more

The video can be accessed here, condensed version first.

Andrew Morton's New Book: Tom Cruise Pissed

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Why am I running such crap? maybe it's because Cruise is such a fucking idiot.
Must be time to go back to bed.

Tom Cruise has become the de-facto second in command of the Church of Scientology, according to a new biography - which makes an extraordinary attack on the star by comparing his 20-month-old daughter Suri to the Devil's child in the film Rosemary's Baby.

Andrew Morton's unauthorised biography claims Scientology has taken over the 45-year-old actor's life, with its officials selecting many of the staff at his Hollywood mansion.

The biographer of Princess Diana alleges Cruise is consulted by Scientology leader David Miscavige on "every aspect of planning and policy" and is tailoring his career to fit the aims of Scientology.

Miscavige is said in the book to have gone to extraordinary lengths to charm Cruise, even ordering his staff to plant a field full of wild flowers at a Scientology base in California after Cruise had told him of his fantasy to run through a wildflower meadow with his then newlywed wife Nicole Kidman.

The relationship between the two men is so close that, according to Morton's book, Miscavige even joined him on honeymoon in the Maldives after his wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006.

Cruise denies each of the claims vehemently, and Scientology lawyers are believed to be drawing up a lawsuit seeking £50million in compensation from Morton's publishers, St Martin's Press.more