Temple of Xenu

Or, to give it its full title, the “DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL AFFAIRS INVESTIGATIONS OFFICER FULL HAT CHECKSHEET”. This is used during the training of agents for the Office of Special Affairs, Scientology’s KGB. Some key excerpts include:

7. Section: 1. GENERAL PUBLIC TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC
8. DEMO: Why the only way to defend anything is to attack.
9. ESSAY: An auditor from your org has just delivered an assist to an injured and unconscious person in the local hospital which resulted in the patient regaining consciousness. The hospital psychiatrist, seeing the results, has called the police in order to remove him from the premises. What should you do to handle this situation? Turn your write-up in to the Supervisor.

CLAY DEMO: “The goal of the department is to bring the government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. This is done by high level ability to control and in its absence by low level ability to overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control such agencies. Scientology is the only game on Earth where everybody wins. There is no overt in bringing good order.”

CLAY DEMO: How the fact that a criminal accuses others of doing things which he himself is doing can be used in investigating an attacker.

DEMO: 5 examples of the following stable datum: “We must ourselves fight on the basis of total attrition of the enemy. So never get reasonable about him. Just go all the way in and obliterate him.”

DRILL: Have another student take the role of a government agent who has arrived in the org. The org is building a new Test Centre down town and he is charging the org with some reported violation of zoning regulations. Drill the exact steps you would take to handle the immediate charges being made. The coach is to make up other examples as needed. Flunks are given for any incorrect hand- ling or uncertainty of the student on how to handle the situation, referring the student to the exact LRH material being violated. This drill is passed when the student can effectively handle any allegation put forward by the coach.

From SchNEWS:

Sects and the City (Note: link is to .pdf, will change to .html when the web version goes online)

City of London police have been cracking down hard on religious intolerance this week and on one four letter word in particular – CULT. And when does the word cult become illegal? Curiously only when it’s applied to the Church of Scientology (CoS) - and in the Square Mile. Around two-hundred anti-Scientology protesters gathered outside the CoS London base on Queen Victoria Street last Saturday as part of a day of action. Sporting Guy Fawkes masks, many carried signs accusing the organisation of being a cult. They were greeted by a number of City of London Police.
At 11.20, two offi cers approached one 15-year-old who was wearing a huge-nosed mask and holding a sign saying “Scientology is not a religion – it is a dangerous cult”. He was handed a pre-printed warning by a WPC stating, “The sign you are displaying commits an offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 .. you are strongly advised to remove the sign with immediate effect”. He riposted with a verbatim quote from a verdict given by Justice Latey in 1984 “Some might regard this as an extension of the entertaining science fi ction which Hubbard used to write before he invented and founded the cult . . Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious.”
One cop (A747) told SchNEWS’ man on the scene that, “the idea is that if somebody gets prosecuted there will be a test case” Police were clearly out to protect CoS’s reputation with one offi cer telling us, “Our solicitors at the Crown Prosecution Service have advised us that any signs saying ‘Scientology is a cult’ could be deemed offensive.” He added “They are being treated as a religious organisation for the purposes of today”. Ten minutes later and the cops returned. The youth was chased up an alleyway and then forced to hand over his details for a court summons.

SchNEWS is a weekly anti-capitalist direct-action magazine which combines coverage of protests and direct action with deeper analysis of particular issues. It has been running since the mid-90s.

Scientology Reacts to the Voice

If you watched Tommy Davis on CNN last week, you know that Scientology isn’t very adept at public relations.

I was reminded of that now that I’ve been reminiscing about what it was like to write about Hubbardites back in the day, and writing numerous stories about Jason Beghe. Yesterday I heard from Los Angeles-based Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw, my old friend, who noticed that I’m back on the Scientology beat.

Pouw and I go back a long way. When I was writing about Scientology at a newspaper in Los Angeles about eight years ago, she invited my editor and publisher out to lunch at the Celebrity Centre, hoping to talk them out of printing further stories. Instead, at the last minute when it turned out the publisher couldn’t make it, my editor brought me along instead.

In the early 1990s, much of Europe was in confusion, as the Iron Curtain fell, Germany reunited, and national borders were redrawn. Who could step forward and provide a voice of sanity in the heart of the madness?

Church of Scientology, come on down!

From 1992 the Church of Scientology was in preparations for Project Bulgravia, an attempt to gain political influence in areas of Bulgaria, Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia from which to have a political base. The first target for Scientology’s “aid” was to be Albania, with plans to use the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises to gain a foothold in key industries, combined with a presence in the media and banking.

Leaked documents
CoS letter (one)
CoS letter (two)
The origin of Bulgravia

Scientology’s Lawyers Threaten Anonymous

Hey, so you all remember how Scientology scheduled a protest for last month so as to hold off a protest by Anonymous? And then they didn’t protest at all? Well, for some reason the city has given the Church of Scientology yet another permit, for a June 14 protest against Xenu knows what, despite barely protesting at all during its last all-day protest.

The City of Philadelphia protesting code states that “[t]he term “Demonstration” shall not mean the casual use of City Property which does not have an intent or propensity to draw a crowd or onlookers.” Scientology’s last “protest” was just a few people handing out fliers for an hour or so despite the permit being requested for the entire day.

There’s more: Anonymous is, well, anonymous, and is designed to stave off any legal threats from the Church of Scientology; apparently the Philadelphia group looked into the local college student who handed in the check for a previous anonymous protest (apparently) and had a lawyer hand-deliver a letter to her parents’ house in Johnstown.

This documentary, French dubbed into English, gives an overview of Scientology in France, including an incident in which the cult stole documents from a French court (ala Operation Snow White.)

Sean Bell and Anonymous Protesters Join Forces in Midtown

Causes collided in Times Square this past weekend when Sean Bell protesters glimpsed an Anonymous member’s sign. On it was a quote you’d never find in Bartlett’s, “You shouldn’t be scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees. Get yourself a nigger; that’s what they’re born for.” Allegedly plucked from a letter L. Ron Hubbard sent to his first wife, the placard’s inflammatory, racist pull-quote, with the N-word pronounced in red letters, momentarily united the two groups.

Epic

Jason Beghe to Scientology Mouthpiece Tommy Davis: ‘You’re Losing Your Soul’

Last week, John Roberts of CNN grilled Tommy Davis, a Scientology spokesman, who was predictably evasive about what L. Ron Hubbard’s wacky minions are up to. ‘Disconnection,’ the church policy of splitting up families in order to shun critics of the church? Never happens, Davis claimed. And as for that high-priced stuff about removing alien souls with lie detector machines? “It’s unrecognizable to me,” Davis told Roberts.

But it was Davis himself who was practically unrecognizable, Jason Beghe tells the Voice.

Beghe is Scientology’s most notorious recent defector, a veteran film and television actor who, after twelve years and approximately $1 million spent on the religion, defected in spectacular manner with a web video in which he denounced Scientology as “destructive and a rip-off.”

Davis, meanwhile, is the son of another Scientology celebrity, actress Anne Archer. He’s a longtime Hubbardite himself, and helped to run the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Davis told Rolling Stone in 2006 that L. Ron Hubbard was “the coolest guy ever.” Davis is also well known for provoking BBC journalist John Sweeney into a temper tantrum that became a YouTube hit last year.

Beghe, however, has more personal memories of the man.