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Surprise Arrest For Online Scientology Critic
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu May 10, 2007 09:36 AM
from the don't-make-fun-of-the-FSM dept.
from the don't-make-fun-of-the-FSM dept.
destinyland writes "An online critic of Scientology was confronted at a routine hearing Tuesday with surprise arrest warrants and thrown into jail. Six years as a fugitive ended in February. (After picketing a Scientology complex in 2000 over the unexplained death of a woman there, he'd been arrested for 'threatening a religion' over a Usenet joke about 'Tom Cruise Missiles.') But 64-year-old Keith Henson had been out on bail, and was even scheduled to address the European Space Agency conference on Space Elevators. He's a co-founder of the Space Colony movement, and one of the original researchers at Texas Instruments. In this interview he discusses both space-based solar energy and his war with the Scientologists — just a few days before he was arrested."
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How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Threatening a person, yeah, but a religion? If I express a wish that Christianity or Islam die out can I be arrested? What happened to America's much touted freedom of speech?
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me, though, that it's one of those laws that aren't really enforced except when local authorities are pressured. The linked interview also suggests there's some collusion between the local government and Scientology... claims of a falsified "Failure to Appear" warrant dated from 2000, illegally storing documents not entered in the dockets.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean seriously, we're getting to the point now where even doing something that could possibly be maybe related to a threat against a person/place/idea is a criminal offense. If you can be thrown in jail for picketing a group, especially if you have a good reason, then you have lost way too much freedom. I mean, if someone came and picketed my church I'd probably be more curious to hear their side of the story than wanting them thrown in jail.
Ugh...whatever happened to the place where you could jokingly punch your friend in the shoulder in school and say "I'm gonna kill you for that" then go off and demonstrate peacefully about something you care about and the police wouldn't care a bit?
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientology, however, keeps its religious texts secret and hidden, and you are not allowed to view them until they deem you worthy. So if you decide to set off on the path of becoming a scientologist, you have no idea what beliefs you're ultimately going to be expected to hold until you've already spent considerable time and money to make it to high-enough level to be justified to view those texts. And at that point you've invested enough time and money that you won't want to back out, etc.
I also think that in Scientology if you decide to leave the 'Church' then other Scientologists are required to shun you. And considering that one needs to invest years to advance to the higher levels and that a significant fraction of their friends will be Scientologists, this makes it even difficult to leave the Church.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Funny)
Despite both being crap.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly the same amount of evidence as there is for a gigantic wooden ship floating around an earth completely covered with water. Or Nefilim roaming the earth, or people rising from their graves, or Herodes killing every young boy.
Hard to say (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, it's obvious that some people are using Christianity as a tool to help themselves. Ted Haggard is a loser and a hypocrite, but he pales in comparison to some 'Christian' pastors who embezzeled, molested children, or ran lynch mobs. But there are people who can latch on to any cause (good or bad) and abuse that power for their own ends. Whether it's embezzeling money from the United Way or trolling on slashdot, some people are just bastards, and the larger the group you're looking at is the more of them you will find.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Informative)
Read up on what Keith has gone through. Scientology is a very dangerous organized crime operation.
-jcr
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be upset though I wouldn't shed a tear. If the person was just standing there with a sign not hurting anyone, he should be able to.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your right to religion doesn't give you a right to silence all speech related to said religion. Free speech is important.
Re:How the hell... (Score:5, Insightful)
I blame the voters (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it okay for a religion to threaten me with hell, but not okay for me to openly state that I'm trying to bring down a religion? Isn't it my state-given right to work to destroy unfavorable institutions so long as I work within the confines of the law?
A law against "threatening" a religion is a violation of my right to freedom of speech.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
How very insightful of you. Why should there be a problem with it? If I say I'm working to defeat the Neo-Nazi movement, it would seem no one would care but the Neo-Nazis and most folks would cheer me on. It wouldn't seem likely a judge would have me arrested, either. But as soon as I say I'm working to bring down Scientology, I'm 'threatening a religion'? As long as I work within the confines of the law, I should have the right to say what I want against any institution. That's why the Framers wrote the 1st Amendment -- because bad institutions should be openly criticized.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
As to whether that law restricts your free speech, the claim is that "hate speech" is not protected by the Constitution, particularly when it interferes with the right of others to worship freely. The logic is that allowing people to threaten religions is implicit State approval of those threats.
I believe Scientology abuses the law; but I also believe the law is necessary to protect people's right to worship freely.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Along the same lines... (speaking generally, not to you in specific) As a human, you have rights. The constitution was created to guarantee your rights are not trampled on. The constitution does not grant anything, it protects right you alredy had from being violated by a government.
Believe it or not, this country was founded upon the experience of people who were ruled by fundamentally corrupt governments. Over the years they've found ways to constrict how the constitution defends your rights... and that's why we have the sad state we're in today.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, at least in Germany, courts have ruled they are a commercial enterprise and not a religion
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Informative)
As a former treasurer of a 501(c)(3) religious organization, I can tell you that it's not illegal for a tax-exempt organization to charge money for things. It's done all the time. Ever buy Girl Scout Cookies?
In fact, non-profits are expected to run as a business -- they are required to use GAAP methods for accounting and everything.
Non-profits are only prohibited from, among a few other things, participating in politics -- doing things like backing or opposing particular political candidates or parties for office, from backing or opposing particular pieces of legislation, etc. Also, they're required to donate a certain percentage of their income to charity. There's nothing wrong with making money -- it's just that whatever is brought in has to go either to administration cost, towards the organization's stated purposes in line with its bylaws, or towards a charity that is in line with the organizations goals and purposes.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless you're a Scientologist.
This is the very ultra special tax break that Scientology members get - Fees for auditing, to the tune of (last I heard) $700/hour or so, are fully and completely tax deductible, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling that they were not. The IRS overruled the Supreme Court and said Scientology auditing fees were fully deductible in 1993.
Now, you may well ask, how come the IRS has the authority to overrule the Supreme Court? That is an extremely good question that I would really, really love to see answered.
Re:What I want to know... (Score:5, Informative)
If the majority of a faith's adherents are people who were born and raised into that faith then it is a religion. If the majority of the faith's adherents are people who have joined as allegedly freely consenting adults then it is a cult. Cults are also often characterized by their more blatant and strident attempts at brain-washing the flock and vigorously defending their legitimacy. (A religion doesn't need to be as obvious in it's brain washing since it gets most of it's members while they are young at a time when there are no other competing theologies in their brains that need to be displaced. It also doesn't need to defend it's legitimacy as vigorously because it's been around so long that it has become an institution...) This definition isn't perfect however, as it leaves such conceptual groups like the followers of the FSM [wikipedia.org] or IPU [wikipedia.org] in the class of cult rather than religion.
Personally, I think the whole concept is futile and consider myself to be an Ignostic [wikipedia.org]
Total BS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to see people arrested for criticizing Christianity and I sure as hell don't want to see people jailed for criticizing other religions either! Why is the free speech of non-Christians important than that of Christians??
Re:Total BS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to start an off topic discussion with you (seriously, I'm not trolling). Have you played Bible Fight at adultswim.com, and if so, what do you think? Grievous insult to the Christian faith? Over the top satire? Humorous satire? Not especially playable? I'm just curious.
Remember (Score:5, Funny)
Why only Scientology? (Score:5, Insightful)
If so, who was it and what happened to them? If not, why?
How long until people wake up and realize that scientology is not a religion but a dangerous, money-grubbing, control-freak cult/business?
Name one other religion that refuses to open its documents so someone can look at them WITHOUT you having to pay to see them.
Scientologists (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing stopping me is I always thought L. Ron Hubbard was a terrible writer, and I can't imagine having to read all that crap as part of my 'religion'.
Xenu Built My Hotrod (Score:5, Funny)
He Made Mistakes in His Fight (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to "ruin Scientology," don't approach it like that. Don't align yourself with anyone that might make you an easier target for their lawyers. Ask questions. Investigate yourself. Don't do anything mildly against the law. Present your findings to newspapers or publish them online, but do not turn to violent attitudes. If you expect to be taken seriously about it, don't joke about it and don't joke about things that people might take the wrong way.
These people have a lot of money and a lot of lawyers, you have to be smart and careful and cautious if you want to expose them for what you believe they are.
why you should care (Score:5, Insightful)
the only reason anyone would oppose free speech is if what they have to say would suffer if it had more scrutiny
scientologists have legions of zombie lawyers attacking anyone who infringes on their "intellectual property" and "religious principles" simply because if that crap got out in more general circulation, they would be revealed as the fascist ufo wackjobs they are
same with oppressive governments, same with ip lawyer whores
and so, in the spirit of the recent dmca take down notice on digg for a stupid numer [com.com], i would like to serve and support keith and attack the immoral, yet somehow, incredibly, legal basis for arresting him by serving his cause: posting stuff the church of scientology does not want posted
the digg number fiasco prompted wordwide press coverage. this should to:
it is the exact same issue [kuro5hin.org]
expand the digg number revolution folks. use everything that was used in the digg number fiasco and make it used again. weidl it as a weapon agains tthose who wish to censor in the name of fascist religious fundamentalism and corporate greed. let this revolution continue! let them fear us, not us fear them!
i will respond to this comment with another comment with text the church of scientology does not want known
slashdot may get attacked by me doing this, slashdot has been forced to remove comments before [slashdot.org]. i may be attacked too. i don't care, because i know i am in the right, and i know this is important, and i know i have support
the proper response to my post of the sensitive scientology information? post it some more yourself. post it and post it some more.
post it more, post it more, post it more. post it everywhere. post it a million times
scientology has legions of aggressive fanatical laywers, but we, who love free speech are yet legion more
i support free speech, do you? did the recent imbroglio over that stupid number on digg stoke your righteous indignation at censorship in the name of corporate idiocy? well this man was just arrested in the name of religious fundamentalism. you should be stoked at this too. it is the exact same thing. let's make the revolution over the digg number a permanent fixture on the internet. let's band together and in the same of social justice fight these censoring fascist assholes
the proper response to keith being arrested is bomb post every and all sensitive church of scientology material any of us can find. the more the material makes those fascist assholes squeal, the more it should be disseminated. digg, slashdot, fark, every and all sites you can find. bomb post away, bomb away, bomb away
this is important folks. if a man can be arrested for making a dumb joke on a newsgroup, any of us can. so all of us should band together and prove the futility of what scientology thinks they are doing: when someone is arrested for simply criticizing their stupid church then us on the internet will respond by hurting them where they hurt the most: the mass public airing of that which they deem so personal and sensitive
dear church of scientology and your legal whores: fuck you you fascist censoring pricks
this is war
fire away
PART 1 (Score:5, Informative)
[Operating Thetan Level 3]
BODY THETANS
by L. Ron Hubbard
The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet - 178 billion on average) by mass implanting..
He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken - in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc was placed in the unplants. When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert.
The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development. One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.
In December 1967 1 know someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.
One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.
One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing.
You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.
Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error.
Good luck.
* * *
For the purpose of clarity, by BODY THETAN is meant a thetan who is stuck to another thetan or body but is not in control.
A THETAN is, of course, a Scientology word using the Greek theta which was the Greek symbol for thought or life. An individual being such as a man is a thetan, he is not a body and he does not think because he has a brain.
A CLUSTER is a group of body thetans crushed or hold together by some mutual bad experience.
----------
Character of Body Thetans
Body Thetans are just Thetans. When you get rid of one he goes off and possibly squares around, picks up a body or admires daisies. He is in fact a sort of cleared Being. He cannot fail to eventually, if not at once, regain many abilities. Many have been asleep for the last 75,000,000 years. A body Thetan responds to any process any Thetan responds to.
Some body Thetans are suppressive. A suppressive is out of valence in R6. He is in valence in Incident I almost always.
One can't run a human being on these two incidents since human beings are composites and would not be able to run the lot. Aside from that, non-clears are way below awareness required to even find these Incidents.
Huge amounts of charge have already been removed from the case and the body thetans by Clearing and OT I and OT II to say nothing of engrams and lower grades.
Awareness is proportional to the charge removed from the case.
Although a human is a composite being there is only one I (that is you) who runs things.
Body thetans just hold one back.
You will continue to be you. You, inside, can of course separate out body thetans and so solo auditing is the answer. How good do you have to be to run body thetans off? Well, if you didn't skip your grades, Clearing and OT II particularly, you. should be able to'command body thetans easily.
* * *
Incident II is over 36 days long. Capture on other planets was weeks or months before the implant. Tho
PART 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Amongst OT III errors are "a BT run on Incident I fails to blow". There are three reasons:
1. Auditor is trying to run a cluster with an Incident I. The right thing to do is date and get the character of the incident that made it a cluster and then run Incident Its on those left when it breaks up. Or get Dianetic auditing.
2. There is an earlier Incident I on the same BT. Find it and run it. The BT has a chain of them all by himself.
3. Another BT is copying the Incident I just run so it looks like it didn't blow. Failure to ever run Incident I can also cause a bog. Routine Dianetic auditing by a Dianetic HDC who is also on or above OT III using triple flows and LDN OT III also handles bogged OT III pre- OT's.
----------
Cluster Formation - Cumulative
In doing a cluster one is likely to find it is made up of other earlier clusters. This looks like this. 1898 impact horse accident. When engram 1898 run on R3R, that part blows. No F/N occurs, TA remains up. Remainder will grind after the blow. Earlier portion dates as 93,000,000 years ago, electric shock. When run on R3R, that part blows, no FIN. TA remains up, will grind if run further. Earliest portion dares as 72 trillion implant. When run on R3R, all blow, FIN.
A cluster or engram which is a cluster can repeatedly FIN as BT's blow. Dates as 778 million explosion. After run once or twice an FIN occurs as one BT blows. Run again to second FIN as two more BT's blow. Remainder blow with a wider FIN. The cluster has gone. This happens (repeating FIN) when picture persists and noter check reveals it is not a copy. It will be more BT's in same cluster. So above repeating FIN occurs when pre-OT is moved through it. Clusters are found by meter dating, listing for type of incident and run as an engram. Clusters can occur at Incident
* * *
I have lately been C/Sing a number of failed OT cases and have found them all running well on solo now. The errors are made as follows:
1. The solo auditor cannot audit, needs more training.
2. Cases are not well prepared with Dianetics.
The remedy for all of these is to:
1. Run the PC for at least a score or two of Dianetic items by R3R, done of course by a good HDC,
2. then do a GF 40.
And then repeat it until necessary auditing is complete. These two actions take care of the majority of difficult cases on OT
The real End Phenomena of OT III and OT IV is exterior with full perception. You can and should accomplish full stable exteriorization on doing the materials of III.
----------
Further III remedies:
3. High TA. This comes from not completing the Incidents I and II on body thetans.
4. The solo auditor puts too wide an intention on the BT and runs two or three when he is intending to run only one.
5. A cluster just won't break up. The remedy is a Dianetic session listing for impacts or incidents that would cause a cluster and doing R3R. The principle of earlier similar holds good. When this is completed, the solo auditor is sent back to solo to clean up the BT's shaken loose and to continue with OT III.
6. Rudiments go out on BT's. The remedy of course is to locate BT's who have out-ruds, put in the ruds and run Incident 1, at which the ST should leave.
7. A theta-bopping meter sometimes puzzles a solo auditor -on OT Ill. This means a BT is trying to exteriorize and can't. The remedy is to complete the partially run Incident 11 or Incident I or in extreme cages put the ruds in on the hung up BT.
8. One-hand electrode giving wrong TA read baffling the solo auditor with floating needles with a high TA. The remedy is to have two-hand electrodes handy and trim the trim knob so the one-hand electrode reads the same as two-hand electrodes.
9. A suppressive body thetan sometimes isn't auditable. The remedy is to run Grades IV
United States of Scientology? (Score:5, Informative)
I also remember an incident from the beginning of 90's where a Finnish anonymous email re-mailer service was accused in US, actually in California if I remember correctly, on being a nest of pedophiles and Johan Helsingius the maintainer of service being a pedophile too. Actually if my member serves me good some California states legislator in public speach demanded that US uses to it's power to pressure Finnish government to crack down on service. Later it was found at that the church of Scientology was behind this campaign as a pressuring way and as a retribution Johan for not cooperating with them and disclosing information about on the users of service. Wikipedia has a small article about this in their section about Johan Helsingius [wikipedia.org].
Just have to wonder how on earth US government hasn't cracked on Scientology and hard.
Re:United States of Scientology? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wonder no more... [wonkette.com]
Ok its decided - you americans ARE living in hell (Score:5, Funny)
just reading slashdot is enough to chill one from head to toe.
I'm a Frisbiterian (Score:5, Funny)
it's the space aliens that do it.
Re:How is this appropriate for slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
To answer your question, CmdrTaco was essentially forced several years ago to remove a comment from an AC that Scientology lawyers claimed was DMCA protected, namely a portion of their "sacred/copywritten" texts for OT3. The story is here [slashdot.org].
Re:How is this appropriate for slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
His name was Xenu."
I hope that's short enough for fair use
Re:How is this appropriate for slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
When you summarize it like that it sounds insane.
Operation Clambake (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What a strange world. (Score:5, Insightful)
The threat he posed was to expose their idiotic (and expensive) teachings, their lies and to illustrate what a malignant mind control cult they really are. This made him their enemy and they have been hounding him with nuisance lawsuits ever since. Unfortunately for him he made some throwaway remark on a usenet forum about aiming a missile at their HQ and they somehow managed to get him prosecuted for making terrorist threats as well as interfering with a religion.
His unrelating persecution by scientologists to silence and even jail the guy show who the terrorists really are.
This guy should have been arrested (Score:5, Insightful)
He did show up in court and plead his case ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This guy should have been arrested (Score:5, Informative)
Members of the Cult Of Scientology have been prosecuted for badly using their position in the IRS in USA, Canada and France.
They are also known to "infiltrate" (get hired into) prosecutors offices. Again cases exists in the USA and France (a big scandal there in the 90's).
Since you cannot discriminate future employees based on "personal believes" it is easy for them as long as they are competent in their domain.
When a prosecutor and a sheriff showing up with a search warrant are all members of the cult. When the warrant is signed by a judge member of the cult. When the warrant specifies "documents" but the sheriff leaves with computers including screens, printers and even phones.
When you lived thru these you tend to get paranoid.
Yes you have recourses, but it takes months or years. The COS has billions of $$$. Even the Washinton Post backed off following a law-suit threat.