Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review Volume 0, Issue 28 11/05/95 by Rod Keller [rkeller@netaxs.com] copyright 1995
Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review summarizes the most significant postings from the Usenet group Alt.religion.scientology for the preceding week for the benefit of those who can't follow the group as closely as they'd like. Out of thousands of postings, I attempt to include news of significant events, new affidavits, court rulings, new contributors, whatever. I hope you find it useful. Like many readers of a.r.s, I have a kill file. So please take into consideration that I may not have seen some of the most significant postings.
The articles in A.r.s Week in Review are brief summaries of the articles. Many include an excerpt, and all include message IDs for the articles I cover. This may or may not be useful to you, depending on how long your site stores articles in the newsgroup before expiring them.
Free A.r.s Week in Review subscriptions are available, just email me at rkeller@voicenet.com It is archived at: http://www.amazing.com/scientology/ars-summary.html http://users.aimnet.com/~jdiver/scieno.htm http://www.thur.de/religio/publik/arsfaq.html http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/ars-summary.html
Kim Baker this week resigned as a Director of FACTNet. She also signed a 17 page declaration against Joe Harrington, Larry Wollersheim, Bob Penny and others. Kim posted extensively to explain her actions. Here are excerpts from her various posts.
"In sifting through to the very basic issue here, I found that the fundamental issue is whether Scientology uses mind control, or not. Clearly, where we *all* agree, is that mind control is an evil thing. So, those who accept that Scientology uses mind control will oppose it on that basis, because they are opposing an evil thing.
"I have come to believe, based on my personal experience, only, that they do NOT. This will jar many people, because I have been advocating that they do, for so long. And so, I need to jump back in time, to when I wrote 'My Story'.
"I told some of you, in private, that I had been subjected to some extreme measures by OSA. This was not true. I lied. I *did* have an ethics handling, I was questioned about people like Old Timer, Homer, and Dennis, but not in any coercive manner. At this stage, I was operating in fear and paranoia, interpreting every statement and utterance by anyone in the Church as having sinister implications.
"What FACTNET is doing is wrong, and what I was doing in supporting it was wrong. This is a different kind of violence we were advocating - attack the copyrights themselves, take away from them that which they hold sacred. An eye for an eye makes the world blind, and so, EVEN IF the Church is making a lot of money from them, EVEN if the Church has been provocative, THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT.
"Scientology HAS helped people. To the degree it helps people, they will continue to support it, and to the degree that it helps people, it DESERVES to expand. To the degree that it fails to help people, it will not expand, or get any support - my evidence is here at the Local Org, where they do not deliver a very good service - and so, they stay small. And so, if Scientology is not genuinely helping people, it won't expand. The only justification for attacking the Church the way I and FACTNET have been is if they are using mind-control to expand, artificially. Based on my research, my personal knowledge, and a personal reassessment of myself, I say they do NOT.
"To all of those who are fighting the Church on the basis that they are an evil, mind-control organisation, who are going for the kill to spread around their Upper Levels, who are participating in any way in this spontaneous revolution, I urge you to re-assess what you are doing. You are hurting more people than you realise, because THEY consider it their religion.
"Yes, OSA did come to my doorstep, yes, the discussions were very lengthy. Was I co-erced into signing the Declarations? No. NO AMOUNT of co-ercion could have gotten me to sign anything I did not believe was true. I admitted defeat on points of truth, and if anything I have said is not true, there is NOTHING TO FEAR. I will not say any more on the Declarations now, in view of the legal dimension to this, and on the advice of my own legal counsel.
"I have never had any financial interest in this, not when I was in FACTNET, and not now. I am not, have never been, and never will be, a Church agent of any kind. I am firm in not going back to the Church. I helped them because on THIS issue (the copyrights), I believe they ARE RIGHT. I helped them on the copyrights, and the copyrights only."
Joe Harrington described the circumstances under which Kim signed her declaration.
"The day after Kim resigned from FACTNET OSA came knocking on her door, took her to a hotel room, and over the next two days they spent 18 hours grilling her. At 3:30 am they gave her the affidavit to sign.
"Apparently the new conspiracy story is a new global squirrel group that is going to undercut the Cult and 'clear' the planet."
Dennis Erlich posted a description of the statement, and some excerpts.
"Her main allegation about me is actually about Joe Harrington. She asserts that Joe formed a church of some kind (and ordained me) in order to engage in a conspiracy to strip the scienos of their copyrights and trade sekrits, and to compete with the scienos. "She says it's all a big conspiracy between and Wollersheim, Penny, Lerma, Harrington, and (last and perhaps least) Your Humble Narrator. (me)"
"DECLARATION OF KIM BAKER (paraphrased)
"I swear to the following: I was a scieno from '90 - '94. Never staff. In Aug 95 Bob Penny tricked me into being a Director of Factnet. In Oct I resigned because it was becoming a hate group which promoted violence.
"Through ars and e-mail conversations I came to know a number of the bitter critics of scn, personally. They are lying, hatemongers. But they convinced me to leave the church. At first I didn't believe their lies, but after I listened to them for a while even tho I had no reason or personal experience which would indicate it was correct to believe them, I did anyway because I was upset and disllusioned with the church.
"Bob Penny involved me in the Factnet conspiracy. Also involved were Vaughn and Stacy Young, Joe Harrington, Arnie Lerma, Larry Wollersheim, Jeff Jacobson. They were all agents of Wollersheim who had control money from the group. I resigned because I saw that the hatred being spread would inevitably turn to violence against the scienos. Henry's bomb threat, being investigated by the police, is a good example.
"Joe Harrington told me he had founded an independent church to trick the government and rip off the cult's skriptures. The church was a total scam. Harrington ordained Erlich and Lerma, who both were then sued by the church for violating copyrights."
Message-ID: <m0t9onl-00051DC@uctmail2.uct.ac.za> Message-ID: <m0t9ooV-000530C@uctmail2.uct.ac.za> Message-ID: <m0tBdb6-0004xXC@uctmail2.uct.ac.za> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.951103231926.445G-100000@server.nlbbs.com> Message-ID: <9511040739.0AR2500@support.com>
Merchant of Chaos provided a synopsis of the CAN Conference, taking place this weekend.
"Steve Hassan did a mind control seminar in which he explained 'thought control,' 'behavior control,' 'emotional control,' and 'information control,' while former cult members gave examples from their personal experiences. The former members were Monica Pignotti (ex-Scientologist), Adam Mali (ex-Asthetic Realism), John Knapp (ex-TM), and Candy Anderson (I don't remember what group she was in.) I made a brief appearance as well.
"One video contained the 'Today Show' from November 8, 1993, a piece which slam-dunks the Moonies BIG TIME, another contained video footage of a picket, in which members of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (a Scientology front group) were protesting outside a psychiatric hospital.
"A woman told us, at one of the FOCUS workshops, how she as cornered by clams at last year's conference, in Cleveland, when she found herself alone in an elevator with them. She said they started grabbing her arms and laughing at her. Everyone was warned to beware of who they get into elevators with." Message-ID: <47cc2j$mqu@linet02.li.net>
Transcripts of the Denver FACTNet hearings were placed on the WWW this week at http://www.faegre.com/scien/injunc/injunc.html. Statements and testimony from Earle Cooley, [Thomas?] Kelley, Warren L. McShane, Ron Tencati, Richard K. Cleek, Warren L. McShane, Robert Vaughn Young, Lawrence Wollersheim, Michael Rinder, and Norman Parades.
Read all about what the cult thinks is secret and what is not.
Message-ID: <475n9g$g7b@uwm.edu>
The cult has still not returned Dennis Erlich's seized property, as Dennis reported this week.
"Currently there is an excellent motion before MoFo to find the scienos in contempt. They refuse to relinquish the 'fruits' of the illegal search."
Message-ID: <9510272144.0UJDI02@support.com>
The controversy continues: Does the cult artificially inflate the sales of Hubbard's books? Wolf Trip provided a first person account this week.
"In the 70's a program ran which had the stated purpose of bringing DMSMH back to #1 rating. I was responsible for the selling of over 20,000 copies of DMSMH. Staff members of Missions and orgs around the world were sent out to buy copies. The mission I ran at the time was involved in a library plan to buy a copy for every library in the USA. Did it work? Of course it did. With people of my considerable talent doing the selling it was a given."
"The book reseller market uses the NYTimes list as a barometer for ordering. Usually all it takes to get a book on a roll is to give it a shove upward. If the book's content doesn't generate sales, I'd guess 8 million church members buying their relatives a copy will. This is not only illegal, it's shameful."
Message-ID: <474k81$t8j@mis02.micron.net>
Cory Brennan is still active on America Online even without permission to use the Internet, as reported by Diane Richardson this week. Diane reposted one of Cory's AOL rants, excerpted below.
"It's interesting that my free speech on A.R.S. has been attacked by specific critics of Scientology, who have attempted to get me removed from the group so I couldn't express my views.
"They used a thin excuse, that I was 'off topic': because I was discussing psychiatry. But I made clear in numerous posts that the reason I was discussing it was to let people know what the Church's viewpoint actually was on the subject, and why L Ron Hubbard expressed certain viewpoints on the subject.
"Apparently, it was undesirable to allow me to voice my side of the story on ARS, the critics apparently want to keep the forum for themselves and squelch the free speech of Scientologists. Again, I ask, why do the critics seem to have one standard of behavior for themselves, and another one for the Church of Scientology?"
Message-ID: <47458k$pr6@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>
The controversy continues over Hubbard's statements degrading Christianity. A sound file is available at ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/gr/grady/NoChrist.zip, in which he says the following, from a Class VIII course on the Apollo, October 3, 1968:
"Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madman or something. But since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity.
"The man on the cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman."
Message-ID: <46ttcr$uht@winx03.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de>
David Gerard posted an update on the cult's actions taken against a Victoria, Australia student magazine named Xenu.
"Two just came in this afternoon, a young woman and man, both in their mid-twenties; both hanging around, slowly prowling the campus for any remaining copies. Our agent gave them some copies, then got the shits with these people and sicced Security on them. The Security guard apprehended them, retrieved the papers and sent them on their way."
And a description of the unusual behaviour of a cult member who dropped off a reply for publication
"He came in w/ disk and printout and was *very* keen to see *me personally*. Was being slimily nice and trying to chat to everyone in the office. 'Oh, David works in here ... does he normally work over *here*? *Here*? Does he stay overnight?' etcetera, etcetera. 'Does he have a home phone number?' (looks over at phone-number list on wall, sees that I don't) 'What's he studying? Is he studying *psychology*? What's his actual job here?'
"I just called my old house. The new resident is also called David. Apparently, someone called last night at 11:30 and the resident who took the call was so pissed off at being called so late she screamed at him 'no, David isn't fucking home, fuck off' and hung up. I wouldn't comment except the person's name was Michael and he was from Sydney, or so he said to her; and I've warned them all about the CoS and they have some idea what to look out for."
An excerpt from their reply:
"As my own college years are now a distant memory, I must admit I'm not a regular reader of campus newspapers. However, my attention was drawn to the Intercampus edition for 1995 by some concerned citizens and parishioners of my Church who had taken exception to an article by a David Gerard.
"David Gerard states that he has 'nothing against Scientology as a religion per se. You can do what you want. Not my business,' but as he follows this disclaimer with a full page attack, it appears that Mr Gerard is far from unbiased and does not understand what Scientology is and what it practices. He can have his prejudices, but he is not entitled to spread disinformation.
"Freedom of expression is good and desirable but it must be tempered with responsibility. This includes accurate reporting of facts and respect for others' rights.
"Rev. Mary Anderson Church of Scientology Melbourne"
Message-ID: <474g55$58v@cougar.vut.edu.au> Message-ID: <46fkni$gv4@cougar.vut.edu.au> Message-ID: <46fl7i$h7i@cougar.vut.edu.au>
Origin of Islam
An excerpt was posted from the Philadelphia Doctorate Course tapes,
recorded in Dec 1952. The lecture title is "What's wrong with This
Universe: A Working Package for the Auditor", which includes this
description of the origin of Islam.
"He finds this enormous stone hanging suspended in the middle of the room.
This is an incident called the Emanator. By the way, and this thing is, by
the way, the source of the Mohammedan Lodestone that they have hanging
down there that - when Mohammed decided to be a good small-town booster in
Kansas, Middle East, or something of that sort. By the way, the only
reason he mocked that thing up is the trade wasn't good in his home town.
That's right. You read the life of Mohammed. And he's got a black one and
it's sort of hung between the ceiling and the floor and, I don't know, it
- maybe it's called a Casbah or something. Anyway, that thing is a mockup
of the Emanator. The Emanator is bright, not black."
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