The Church of Scientology is set to go on trial in France, accused of organised fraud.
The Church of Scientology in France will be tried in court for "organised fraud", according to legal sources.
Wikinews has learned that the Church of Scientology warned the documents-leaking site Wikileaks.org that they are in violation of United States copyright laws after they published several documents related to the Church. Wikileaks has no intention of complying, and states that in response, it intends to publish thousand pages of additional Scientology materials beginning Monday.
Infoshop has a round-up of reports about today's anti-Scientology protests on the occassion of L. Ron Hubbard's birthday.
On January 24th someone emailed me about a "raid" on the London Scientology HQ, asking if I wanted to support it. In the end I didn't go because I didn't have the energy but I heard reports that a fair number of people did attend. I just did a bit of research and found some background information. Project Chanology, also called Operation Chanology, is a protest against the Church of Scientology by an Internet-based group known as "Anonymous". The project was publicly launched in the form of a video posted to YouTube, "Message to Scientology", on January 21, 2008.
On December 5th 1995 Lisa McPherson was pronounced dead at a hospital in New Port Richey. It seem like she died as a result of botched unconventional forms of treatment forced on her while being held against her will by the Church of Scientology. CoS has spent tends of millions of dollars fighting to prevent the case coming to court and have ruthlessly persecuted anyone involved in trying to seek justice for Lisa. This and many other details of the case are from an article called A Church's Lethal Contract by Dr. David S. Touretzky and Peter Alexander.
About one month ago, a low-budget movie about Scientology was made available on the Web entitled The Bridge, directed by Brett Hanover. It seems the Scientology legal attack team have beaten Brett into submission as he has now disassociated himself from the film and requested that it be withdrawn from circulation. It is still currently available at the Internet Archive.
From the Wikipedia article on the Church of Spiritual Technology:
The CST oversees the Scientology scriptural archiving project, which aims to preserve the works of Hubbard on stainless steel tablets and encased in titanium capsules in specially constructed vaults throughout the world. The most famous example is the Trementina Base, an underground vault built into a mountainside near Trementina, New Mexico. It is marked by a CST logo visible only from a high altitude and is patrolled by armed guards.
Scientology kills another website.
South Park's creators have renewed their "battle" with Scientology, after a US TV channel dropped a show which mocked its church and actor Tom Cruise. Here is a good introduction to Scientology and check out The Sea Organization.
One day, a long time ago, I was wandering down Tottenham Court Road in London with time on my hands and was lured into a strange building with the promise of some sort of "personality test". I sat down and started looking through the questions but alarm bells were ringing in my head so I just stood up and walked out.
A few years later, I found out that a childhood friend had done the same thing, but unfortunately for her she had completed the test and signed her name. BIG MISTAKE! Shortly afterwards she was contacted with a demand for a sum of money that she could not possibly pay. She was too scared to tell her parents - what could she do? She had been ensnared by the Church of Scientology. Well, she was effectively used as slave labour until finally she cracked and confessed all to her mother. Her parents hired a lawyer who sent a letter to the CoS who immediately backed off - blackmail of a minor being a very serious offence.
If you or anyone you know is in a similar situation and needs help, or if you just want to find out more about Scientology, I would strongly advise checking out Andreas Heldal-Lund's Operation Clambake website.
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010