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I'd actually like to see some actual believers. None of the people who have escaped Scientology, that I've heard, ever talked about the idealogy behind it. They may believe in the techniques but not the space beings, (Xenu), part of it.

If you look at Hubbard and the rise of Dianetics and Scientology it's all about the money. Even if it was Lester Del Ray and not Hubbard who made the famous quote about religion and wealth.
I sometimes get Scientology and The Church of the SubGenius mixed up, the later could have easily also taken things too far but were able (to the best of my knowledge) to remain a parody of cults ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._"Bob"_Dobbs

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7007520/
 
Hmmm.
Here's an interesting development. Apparently someone has finally pushed enough to get an investigation into the uncomfortable ties between the LAPD and the Scientology movement.
This link is to a short discussion on Popcorned Planet with some qualified commentators.
 
Another case.

A jury in Los Angeles has failed to reach a verdict in a rape case against US actor Danny Masterson.

Mr Masterson, who is best known for his role in the sitcom That 70s Show, was accused of raping three women at his home in Hollywood in the early 2000s.

He had denied the charges, saying he was being persecuted for his membership of the Church of Scientology.

The office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney said it was considering its next steps in the case. ...

Two of the women involved in the case alleged that the Church of Scientology, to which they and Mr Masterson belonged, had discouraged them from reporting the alleged rapes. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63817165
 
I've got a couple of Scientology stories for you.

When I first came to San Francisco in the mid-1980s, I lived down the hall from Layla and Barry. She was an African-American transwoman, who looked like Diana Ross except she was well over six feet tall, he was a clean-cut pothead who was pretty smart and educated, just...strange. He hung out sometimes at the local Scientology church or temple or what they call it and had undergone some auditing; at the time I was a Rainbow Family hippie and tolerant of nearly everything, so I didn't think on that very much. After a few weeks, I became fast friends with Layla and we spent most mornings drinking coffee and smoking reefers at her place. One afternoon, though, Layla knocked on my door; I opened it to see her standing at full height and looking about as furious as I've ever seen a person look. "I want you to come to my house and see something" she told me in a voice that crackled with rage. So I went to her pad. and there was this big box on the living room floor. "Open it!" she snapped at me. I did, and saw dozens of paperback copies of DIANETICS. "Look what MISTER Barry Steiner spent his rent money on!" Layla said at a high volume and with great indignation. It transpired that Barry's Scientologist friends had convinced him he could sell copies of DIANETICS to all his other friends and make enough money for the rent and more. So he bought a whole crate of them. In advance. With his rent money for the month. Of course, none of his other friends were really the Scientology or Dianetics sort, so he had a crate of paperbacks and no way to sell them.

Then Barry came through the front door. Instantly they were screaming furiously at each other so I beat a hasty retreat. The next day the crate of DIANETICS were gone; she had made him take them back to the temple and try to get his money back. I never did find out how it all shook out in the end, figured it was none of my biz.
 
My other Scientology story takes place twenty years and two boyfriends later than the first one--I had gotten with Racer (my current and probably permanent old man) a while before; we were feeling the pinch of short funds and flat wallets so I looked online for spot or gig jobs a lot, even running a classified ad on some free pages. One afternoon I got an e-mail from a stranger saying that if I wanted a night's hard work and was available that night, please call this phone number. I did, and was soon speaking to a woman we'll call Mary. She had a pressure washing gig at a few places, she said, and she needed another person or two to make up her crew tonight, and was I interested? I was.

She told me to meet her at the bus stop at Treasure Island at a pretty late hour that night, so I took a long-ass bus ride to the isolated bus stop, sat down, and waited about two cigarettes worth of minutes. It was a cold drizzly night and I was uneasily conscious of the desolation of that bus stop. After my second smoke a lightweight truck came along and slowed down at the bus stop. There was a hard-faced woman a little older than me behind the wheel--she turned out to be Mary, who I'd spoken to earlier. The back of her truck was filled with cleaning supplies and hoses. I climbed aboard and tried to make conversation. She was a strange person, courteous but cold and a bit distant. We were going back to San Francisco to pick up Bob (as we'll call her other crew guy) and start the pressure wash job, she explained.

This we did. Bob was about Mary's age and very clean-cut and square-looking. But with something mildly weird about him, something I couldn't quite put my finger on,like Mary. They obviously knew each other well and were quickly deep in conversation. I was only half-listening until I heard Bob tell Mary about a "great session" he'd had earlier, and how it had helped him "exteriorate a lot of shit". Now, I had learned a fair amount about Scientology by that time and I recognized the word "exteriorate". It's one of their words; nobody but a Scientologist would use the word "exteriorate". He said a little more but Mary cut him off, saying "Our friend Sparrow isn't a member". He shut right up, then so did she. I kept my peace, filing away the new information in my brain.

I understood at the time why they didn't necessarily want to identify as Scientologists to me, an utter stranger to both. People fuck with Scientologists, a lot, after all. So I elected to stay quiet, and after that Bob and Mary were a lot less talkative too.

We got to the first job. It was an old hotel in San Francisco with a marble sidewalk out front. We went over it for an hour with a pressure hose, a broom, and soap powder. Then without a breather we were off for the major part of the job quite a ways down the peninsula. Our destination was the parking area for San Mateo County's entire fleet of garbage trucks. Great big white garbage trucks with the week's accumulation of dust and mud and garbage all over them. Mary, it seemed, had gotten the contract for cleaning the entire San Mateo County garbage-truck squadron. She told me we'd be working until 6 or 7AM, it was bout 1:30.

After a couple of hours I was exhausted and frantic. Mary had hooked up a high pressure hose for me and Bob showed me how to hose down the trucks. It was pretty hard; I'd swoosh one layer of mud off a truck only to spot the next one. Bob and Mary both came to check on me occasionally and never failed to show me a spot I'd missed or tell me how I'd done it wrong. I was sweating like a pig even though it was a cold foggy late night. There were nine rows of garbage trucks and we'd each taken three to work on as our share--I was halfway through my first row when they were both on their second or third. They were tireless, I had to hand that to them. Eventually it got to where I was not only trying to hose down garbage trucks but to hide from my co-workers as well.

At 7AM we quit, finally. I snuck off to smoke a cigarette then came back to get paid. $40. For a night's work. Admittedly I was fairly shitty at it, but nonetheless it stung.

Mary gave me a ride back into San Francisco, but dropped me off half-way across town from where me and Racer lived. It was very early Sunday morning so I waited half an hour for the bus to get me most of the way home. Walked the last few blocks and when I got home I took off my clothes and dropped on our bed without saying a word to Racer and fell into the sleep of the utterly bone tired.

So there you have it. Scientologists worked me nearly to death one night, for a measly forty bucks.
 

Where is Scientology’s David Miscavige? Opposing lawyers want to know


The process servers showed up to 10 Church of Scientology properties in Clearwater, Florida, and California with legal documents in hand.

1200x0.jpg



David Miscavige addresses the crowd during the opening of the Church of Scientology's new church in the City of London in October 2006. Yui Mok - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images

They tried 27 times over four months to serve Scientology leader David Miscavige with a federal trafficking lawsuit that names him as a defendant, according to records filed in the case.

Security guards, the court filings state, refused to accept documents from the process servers, declined to answer questions and said they did not know where Miscavige lived or worked despite him being the ecclesiastical leader of the organization.

The case revolves around allegations from three former Scientologists who say they were trafficked into the church as children and forced to work through adulthood for little or no pay. Valeska Paris and husband and wife Gawain and Laura Baxter, who filed the complaint in April, left the church’s military-style workforce called the Sea Org in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Where-is-Scientology-s-David-Miscavige-17682998.php

maximus otter
 
Mischievous Miscavige to finally face justice?

Scientology leader David Miscavige was finally served with a long-standing human trafficking lawsuit this week.

The suit was filed last year on behalf of three former members of the church who accused Miscavige of trafficking them into his organization as minors, per Insider.


In court documents viewed by the outlet, Valeska Paris and married couple Gawain and Laura Baxter alleged that they were “coerced” to join the religion — and its notorious Sea Organization arm — to “provide unpaid labor and services for a decade or longer.”
“Plaintiffs were placed on a ship they could not leave and routinely punished by being humiliated, interrogated, and imprisoned, for the sole purpose of ensuring Plaintiffs would continue to perform back breaking free labor,” the suit alleged.

A recent absence from public view — widely chronicled in the press — had prevented Miscavige from being served. According to the court documents, he evaded process servers 27 times at five different locations in Florida and California over four months.

Florida Magistrate Judge Julie Sneed, however, ruled this week that he’s now considered served. The church leader has been given 21 days to respond to the civil suit.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scie...rafficking-lawsuit_n_63ee6cb9e4b02c25737b92ca
 
I love to hear apostates for this talk about their experiences, but always with the caveat:
It's a scam, it was always a scam, it was set up as a scam, and it remains... a scam.

Fascinating, though.

It is a striking idea that you are so convincing in telling people that you have secret knowledge that by the time you make them jump through hoops to get it, you can tell them any old shit and they still swallow it as profound.
 
It might be an obvious and shameless scam ... but in a nation where money outweighs morality or democracy, a money-making scam can overrule democracy and moral right.
 
I love to hear apostates for this talk about their experiences, but always with the caveat:
It's a scam, it was always a scam, it was set up as a scam, and it remains... a scam.

Fascinating, though.

It is a striking idea that you are so convincing in telling people that you have secret knowledge that by the time you make them jump through hoops to get it, you can tell them any old shit and they still swallow it as profound.
New recruits are eager to please the church and will do anything asked of them so as not to diminish their chances of becoming a member in good standing. New recruits are treated like kidnap victims. When someone is deprived of sleep, proper nutrition and made to perform back breaking physical labour, one tends to fold ones will to the captive in charge of them over time.
 
This is directly related to the subject and I think it is correct to put it here: Danny Masterson, the star of 'That 70s Show' has been found guilty of rape, facing up to 30 years in prison.

As the Guardian reports it: "The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent."

Frankly, Masterson should rot in Hell (or whatever Scientology's equivalent is, if they even have one...).

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/may/31/danny-masterson-that-70s-show-found-guilty-rape
 
Sounds about right for a cult, its all about money and control, and protecting that money no matter what their cultists do. The worlds going to hell in a basket.
 
Last summer I was out walking the county lanes that surround my house, and walking towards me was somebody dressed entirely in orange, and at first, I thought it was somebody dressed in a high viz jacket and trousers. As the person got closer however, I could see it was an elderly woman who was wearing billowy orange robes.

She was scary looking though, was quite emaciated, and reminded me of that scary evangelical priest in the movie poltergeist 2. Two days later, I saw four or five of them all wearing the same robes walking over the fields. I found out later they have bought a farmhouse about 2 hundred yards from my home.

They have also changed the name of the farm from “new barn farm house” to “sannyasins”. What ever that means..?

A quick google told me that they are part of a cult called the Rajneesh movement.

some people eh..?
 
In the 80's when I was going to college I spent a lot of time in the University library and found a book by L. Ron Hubbard from the early 50's, forgot the name of it. It was not in the sci fi section. It was not a very long book but the whole thing was about how he invented a device to measure some enegy from people and it was proof of life after death. The whole thing was an advertisement for his device. The thing that bugged me then was that his version of life after death was to float around and find a pregnant woman to follow around to get in the body of the baby when it was born. Very flat land type of thing. I felt that he left a lot out or didn't get the concepts he was trying to convey.

Later my cousin ran away from her husband to go to a scientology rehab. She was a drug addict and they had a very good process for getting people clean, except that it included mind control for being minions selling books and making money they had to hand over to the organization. It grated on my cousin and she ran away after 6 months. The interesting (to me) part was that before she was incoherent in conversations, could not hold a job or even do simple tasks, after, she had a job, kept the flow of a conversation and only rarely mentioned that her mother was a demon. They did help her, and they kept tabs on her as she wanted to go back after she figured out how to be rich so that she would not be a minion. Later I met a man who also went to that rehab for alcoholism. It helped him and he told me that eventually you get your mind back and you run away because you aren't allowed to have your own life with them.

My cousin started a pattern with that stay at the 'refuge" in Denver. She would go on a year or two bender with drugs, then decide she wanted to get clean and join some church, finally she got hooked up with our mormon relatives and became a mormon (not an easy thing as so many rules are set, including what underwear you have on, but she did it). And from then on when she came back from a bender she found the local mormon church in what ever city she found herself and they helped her get clean again.

It is why the scientologist only want addicts, if you take their personality test and are not an addict they will avoid you.
 
the Rajneeshies are still around? that's either laudable or pathetic, i can't decide which. I remember when the old creeper was still alive, and also something of the scandals he and his chelas got up to.

i might have a story for y'all when i get back to the keys.
 
I was a Santa Cruz hippie when the Rajneeshis started to get big and go bad. There were lots of Sannyassins of both sexes around Santa Cruz at the time with their cheerful bright red and orange garb and their prayer beads with Bagwan's photo on them which I found somewhat servile, tacky and offensive. They kept mostly to themselves and didn't mix with street hippies much.

Then there was their big invitation of several hundred street people to their compound in Oregon. I had friends who went in on that, and the ones I talked to about it all said similar things...that they were housed separate from the Sanyassins in big tents, fed crap food and Stelazine-laced beer, and put to hard labor. The main point of the "charitable" invitation was to get all these folks registered to vote in Oregon, to vote the way the Sannyassins instructed them to, thus outvoting the locals in local elections and getting Rajneesh followers and sympathizers in local office. They really were trying to take over the entire county. Once the visitors had voted they were summarily told to go elsewhere by the Sannyassins. i always thought that that was a scabrous way to treat people.
 
I was a Santa Cruz hippie when the Rajneeshis started to get big and go bad. There were lots of Sannyassins of both sexes around Santa Cruz at the time with their cheerful bright red and orange garb and their prayer beads with Bagwan's photo on them which I found somewhat servile, tacky and offensive. They kept mostly to themselves and didn't mix with street hippies much.

Then there was their big invitation of several hundred street people to their compound in Oregon. I had friends who went in on that, and the ones I talked to about it all said similar things...that they were housed separate from the Sanyassins in big tents, fed crap food and Stelazine-laced beer, and put to hard labor. The main point of the "charitable" invitation was to get all these folks registered to vote in Oregon, to vote the way the Sannyassins instructed them to, thus outvoting the locals in local elections and getting Rajneesh followers and sympathizers in local office. They really were trying to take over the entire county. Once the visitors had voted they were summarily told to go elsewhere by the Sannyassins. i always thought that that was a scabrous way to treat people.
Wild Wild Country and Finding Sheela on netflix are films on the group....and individuals within.

When I watched Wild Wild Country I remember they bused the homeless in to subvert the vote to their benefit. Once they had rigged the votes so they could build a bigger compound or whatever......they had enough of the homeless and bused/dumped them outside the commune......How kind/charitable.....
 
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