AU Senator Calls Scientology a "Criminal Organization"

An anonymous reader passes along news that an Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, has denounced the Church of Scientology as "a criminal organization" from the floor of Parliament. "Senator Xenophon used a speech in Parliament last night to raise allegations of widespread criminal conduct within the church, saying he had received letters from former followers detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, and forced abortion. He says he has passed on the letters to the police and is calling for a Senate inquiry into the religion and its tax-exempt status." It wasn't that long ago that the CoS was calling for Net censorship in Australia; a month later the organization was convicted of fraud in France.

Interesting name.

[palegray.net]

Senator Xenophon? He must be in the clutches of Xenu! Someone get me an e-meter, quick!

Re:Interesting name.

[Mikkeles]

Nah, he just rode in with his 10,000 followers and is trying to crush the opposition ;^)

Cause and effect?

[T Murphy]

It wasn't that long ago that the CoS was calling for Net censorship in Australia; a month later the organization was convicted of fraud in France.

So does the CoS have to call for Net censorship in Belgium before Australia can convict them of fraud?

So ...

[msp0]

Would that make Xenophon a Xenuphobe? ... to be fair, I got that line from Dominic Knight's Twitter feed :)

Scat-entology - A free replacement

[xC0000005]

Have friends who are into scientology? Get them hooked on Scat-entology [kuro5hin.org] instead. I formed it from the words "Shit" and "To sell as a religion". The difference is I accidentally set the buy it now price at $0 and so it's free. I'll get it right next time.

Re:Interesting name.

[ChromeAeonium]

Here's one! [amazon.com]

we are anonymous

[TakeoffZebra]

An "anonymous" reader. Hm, ironic?

Celebrity backlash, awesome!

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

I can only hope this means no more promotional tours from John Travolta and Tom Cruise. That's a protest I can live with and love. Also, Jenna Elfman.

On wikipedia right now...

[Zarniwoop]

"In November 2009, Xenophon labelled the Church of Scientology as a criminal organisation in a speech to the Senate. [42] This is clear evidence that he has very large testicles."

I'm not in favor of vandalism, but LOL!

Re:Interesting name.

[CodeBuster]

Only Tom Cruise, with his awesome mental powers, can free Senator Xenophon from the clutches of the evil psychiatrists and their terrible leader, Lord Xenu himself! (To hear the exiting conclusion of Incident II: suggested donation of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00)

Xenophon? Sounds Foreign

[Anonymous Coward]

Xenophon? Sounds Foreign

Re:A word on Xenophon

[Anonymous Coward]

"Cyrus the younger" you say. This morning the spokesman and vice president of COS Australia was defending his religious organisation on the radio and other media. His name was... Cyrus, Cyrus Brooks. One day Senator Xenophon may give an account of the "trials and adventures of The Ten Thousand"s of scientologists in Australia. :)

Nooooo!

[martin-boundary]

Nooooo! Somebody please stop the Australians before the Americans wake up, or else Tom Cruise is going to jump up and down on the sofa again!

Re:Interesting name.

[GrubLord]

Well... if politicians aren't going to be politically correct, then who is? One might say that's their job.

Re:Should they get off tax-free?

[Hal_Porter]

Er, yeah

I meant to say

Religions that are not not unwilling to publish their teachings on the web and give away free books are not not not non profit

When writing sentences like this, this script might come in handy

cat con | sed "s/not not//g" | sed "s/not non profit/for profit/g" | sed "s/not unwilling/willing/g"

Re:Read The Full Article

[Max Littlemore]

Well as usual we hope that the police police police are effective in policing the police police's policing of the police.

Re:Xenophon? Sounds Foreign

[elrous0]

Greece isn't foreign?

Re:Should they get off tax-free?

[AlamedaStone]

Scientology is no more a religeon than "Jedi"

I find your lack of faith... disturbing.

Re:Should they get off tax-free?

[c6gunner]

Ooh, I wish I could smell religion...

Just find the closest farm, and go for a walk through the fields ...