The Pageless Book

Photo Above by Jarnocan. Photo Below by Ralph Hockens. Last Photo by Tracy Olson.

Yesterday I wrote about the questionable policies of the Church of Scientology, in my attempt to show why I applaud Anonymous in opposing the Church of Scientology. Today, I am interesting in talking about some of the more specific acts of this organization - in particular, illegal acts. However, I find myself at a loss. When I went to research for this article, I found that I could barely scratch the surface in the 500 - 700 words I normally write. As such, I’ve decided to only detail a few of the more grievous offenses this so-called Church.

Operation Snow White is the code-name of the Scientology project to infiltrate government agencies (both U.S. and Foreign) and destroy undesirable documents related to the Church of Scientology and its founder, Ron L. Hubbard. The FBI uncovered the operation as apart of a raid on Scientology property in 1977. The documents included plans to not only steal and destroy documents, but to plant false documents, and wiretaps on the IRS. This led to the conviction of eleven of the top ranking members of the Church, including Ronnie’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard. You can read more about Operation Snow White here.

During the same raid, the FBI uncovered another project, Operation Freak Out, which targeted the journalist and author Paulette Cooper. In the early 1970’s she had written a book on the church which was considered libel by the church. The purpose of Operation Freak Out was to incriminate Paulette Cooper in anyway possible to destroy her credibility. This first began with escalating sexual harassment including subscribing her to pornographic magazines, obscene phone calls, and letters to her neighbors with various unsavory claims about her sex life. Then they forged bomb threats on stationary they had stole from her home and mailed it to the New York Church of Scientology in such a way to make it seem like she sent them. The final phase of Operation Freak Out conspired to frame Paulette Cooper with the Federal crime of making threats on the life of the President of the United States. You can read more about Operation Freak Out here.

Thankfully, the Church of Scientology was raided before they could put this plan into action. However, what I want to point out about this is the timing; these acts of harassment all occurred after the Fair Game policy was supposedly discontinued. All evidence suggests that the Fair Game policy is still in effect. What evidence? The evidence found on Xenu.net - claims of harassment, assault, false imprisonment, extortion, and invasion of privacy backed up by court documents. These are only the people who have come forward.

Now, to be fair, these are individuals who are outside the Church. We should judge the Church of Scientology by the good it does for its members, employees, and their children. You should keep this in mind, while reading the following stories:

Adeline Dodd-Bova describes her time as a teacher in Scientology schools and writes of troubling cases of insufficient sleep and children having little or no food. Even more disturbing is her description of children whose sexual and physical abuse were not reported to Social Services.

Mary Tabayoyon’s sworn affidavit describes several instances of women coerced into having abortions under threat of severe punishment. Note that Scientology considers abortion to be a serious sin, so these women were also being coerced into committing a grave violation of their religious beliefs.

Stacy Young’s sworn declaration states that RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) “slave labor” is used to build luxury facilities for Scientology celebrities and are paid $5 a week for 70-hour weeks.

Lisa McPherson died in the custody of Scientology in Clearwater, FL. She was treated by a Scientology doctor who was not licensed to practice in Florida. In addition, it appears that Scientology had put Lisa on the Introspection Rundown. Her family is suing Scientology for wrongful death.

The Church charge its members hundreds of thousands of dollars to be treated in this manner. Worse yet, because they have declared themselves a religion, they are not required to pay taxes. The organization known as the Church of Scientology is, in my opinion, the most corrupt cooperate enterprises in the English speaking world today. This is why Scientology deserves to be protested against. A cry for justice must not be misconstrued for religious intolerance.

Photo Above by Bryan Gosline. Photo Below by Vincent Diamante. Last Photo by Todd “Hryckowian”.

Little more than two months ago, I first wrote about the actions of an internet group going by “Anonymous” and their war against the cult of Scientology. At that time my main question was whether or not the actions of Anonymous are religious persecution, or whether they had a valid reason to protest against Scientology. It was my opinion that Anonymous had excellent reasons why we should protest against Scientology. I was one of the first, if not the first, blogger to write about Anonymous and the brewing confrontation. For standing up and voicing my opinion, I was rewarded with a huge influx of traffic and comments to my site.

I would be lying if I said that it didn’t scare me a little. I didn’t want my site to become a strictly Anti-Scientology website. I was afraid that the popularity of that particular article threatened to limit the scope of what people expected of me as a religion and spirituality writer. So, I avoided that topic for the next two months.

Yet, now as I look back upon that article, I realized that there was an awful lot I didn’t explain. Most importantly, I hadn’t properly explained exactly what it is that the Church of Scientology has done to incur the wrath of so many people of the internet community. Sure, there is a long history overly aggressive tactics against copyright infringements and criticism, but the same can be said of the more aggressive international conglomerates.

What has the Church of Scientology done that is so reprehensible? Well let us start from the top. Scientology represents itself as a program of self improvement which relies on techniques that have not been tested in any controlled scientific manner. While the same can be said about holistic practices and new age self improvement, everyone in the holistic or new age community would be quick to say that holistic medicine should be used in conjunction with traditional medicine.

Neither The American Medical Association or American Psychological Association have endorsed Scientology and both actively discouraged treating Scientology as legitimate medicine. Because these organizations failed to acquiesce to Ron L. Hubbard’s ambitions, he declared both psychology and psychiatry to be poisonous unfounded sciences. This would be just another ironic twist if Scientology did not then strongly discourage the use of psychiatric medicine, even for those who desperately need it.

But how is that different than Christian Science, who abstain from medical treatment? It isn’t; of everything that the Church of Scientology does, this is the least of their offenses. There is also the matter of Scientology’s disconnect policy, which has ruined hundreds of families, ended marriages, and separated parents from their children. If the Church deems a particular person to be “suppressive,” that is in opposition to an individual member’s personal development within the Church, they mandate that member to sever all ties with the suppressive person. This, of course, only serves to further isolate their members from the rest of society.

Again, similar policies have been enacted by other young religions, which forces us to ask whether or not Scientology is any worse than these. It is the Church’s “Fair Game” policy that sets Scientology apart from these legitimate religions. The Fair Game policy reads that suppressive persons -

May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed. (HCOPL 18 October 67 Issue IV, Penalties for Lower Conditions)

The next year after the Fair Game policy was put in place, the Fair Game policy was allegedly canceled. However, pay attention to how the cancellation of this policy was worded.

The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP. (HCOPL 21 Oct 68, Cancellation of Fair Game)

This had left many people wondering if the Church of Scientology had merely canceled the term “Fair Game” and left the actual policy in tact. There is a great deal of evidence that suggests the Church is still operating under the assumption that any non-Scientologist may be deprived of property, injured, tricked, sued, lied to, or destroyed. Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the specific crimes that the Church of Scientology has allegedly committed.

Image above by “reedbiotch”. Photo below by “gutter”.

In case you haven’t heard about the current internet war against Scientology, let me bring you up to speed. Since the days of the usernet in the 1980’s, The Church of Scientology has actively attempted to quiet all criticism of its actives by citing copyright laws, harassing website owners, and allegedly abusing any means possible to silence detractors. Individuals have had their computers confiscated, been sued, and slandered in opposition of Scientology. On January 16th, a four year old video of Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology surfaced on YouTube and went viral. This brought negative media attention to the Church of Scientology, which prompted them to contact YouTube and demand that they take the video down or face legal proceedings.

I guess this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. On the 21st of the month, several groups of hackers joined together and, calling themselves “Anonymous,” declared war against Scientology in a YouTube video. You can see the original video here, as well as a second video addressing the followers of Scientology in particular here, and a video listing the alleged crimes of Scientology here. So far, the war has resulted in numerous denial of server attacks against the Chuch’s websites, the various videos I link to above, and most likely several acts that I am not yet privy.

So why is this important to me? It brings up an important question about religious tolerance, or the lack there of. Is this just bigotry practiced on a large scale by the hackers of the internet or is Scientology truly a sinister organization as Anonymous would have us believe? Where do I stand as a blogger, a citizen of the internet, and a champion of religious tolerance? What should I do, if anything? These are not easy questions for me to answer, but if I am to be honest with myself, they need to be asked.

Let’s assume for a moment that the accusations of illegal activities made against Scientology are all false and consider only the verifiable facts of how this organization has conducted itself in the past. The organization is heavily reliant on litigation as its means of defending itself and is not interested in open dialogue. They charge an incredible amount of money for access to their teachings and openly prevents the sharing of those teachings by others. Scientology rejects the importance of psychological and psychiatric medicine and offer their own scientifically unproved methods as means of overcoming mental illness… Even without mentioning the rumored illegal activities, I have to question the motives of this organization.

I have come to the conclusion that if even a quarter of what Anonymous has said is true, than Scientology is a detriment to society. The thing is, we don’t have to rely on the word of Anonymous to come to this decision; Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Mexico, and the United Kingdom refuse to recognize Scientology as a religion. Germany has even considered a ban on Scientology, and the government of Belgium is currently in the process of prosecuting the Church. You could even read the opinions of the judges who have ruled against the Church in the past, including this ruling from the California Supreme Court in the case of Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology:

“Substantial evidence supports the conclusion Scientology leaders made the deliberate decision to ruin Wollersheim economically and possible psychologically….We do not mean to suggest Scientology’s retributive program… represented a full scale modern day ‘inquisition.’ Nevertheless there are some parallels in purpose and effect. ‘Fair game,’ like the ‘inquisition,’ targeted heretics.

“Other testimony established Scientology is a hierarchal organization which exhibits near paranoid attitudes toward certain institutions and individuals — in particular the government, mental health professionals, disaffected members, and others who criticize the organization or its leadership… During trial, Wollersheim’s experts testified Scientology’s ‘auditing’ and ‘disconnect’ practices constituted ‘brainwashing’ and ‘thought reform’ akin to what the Chinese and North Koreans practiced on American prisoners of war…

“Using its position as religious leader, the church and its agents coerced Wollersheim into continuing auditing even though his sanity was repeatedly threatened by this practice… Thus there is adequate proof the religious practice in this instance caused real harm to the individual and the appellant’s outrageous conduct caused that harm… Church practices conducted in a coercive environment are not qualified to be voluntary religious practices entitled to first amendment religious freedom guarantees…

“We hold that the state has a compelling interest in allowing its citizens to recover for serious emotional injuries they suffer through religious practices they are coerced into accepting. Such conduct is too outrageous to be protected under the constitution and too unworthy to be privileged under the law of torts.”

-California appellate court, 2nd district, 7th division, Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology of California, Civ. No. B023193 Cal. Super. (1986)

So are the actions of Anonymous religious intolerance? Regardless of whether I believe the Church of Scientology to be a religion or not, no person or organization should be allowed to abuse the rights of others. No, Anonymous acts not out of religious intolerance, but instead of outrage at injustice. They seek only to work against a corrupt organization, not against the beliefs of others. Despite the fact that I do not agree with their methods, I have a great deal of respect for their purpose and will support them in the one way I can - by adding my voice to their choir.

ARTICLE 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
~The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris.