Scientology in France

Scientology has this court case going in France. It's annoying as a Scientologist to see someone working at religions again.

Then again that's a bit of French history repeating itself isn't it. Its understandable that there is a bit of a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of some French when one goes through history and what some religions have done to minority groups.

But we're in the 21st century... people have learned to think now and to look and observe (well most have I'm excluding those rabid fanatics that spend most of their time on the internet destroying lives).

Well anyways, back to the post: Scientology in France, the Court case? well really how can one ban a religion? It's a pretty silly thing to even think. It's like banning an idea, so what's next the Thought Police?

Whatever happens - the idea grows as long a people believe it and find truth in it.

Scientology just happens to be going through a very stabilizing phase called the Golden Age of Knowledge where all the basic texts of the religion have returned to their originals plus hundreds of additional lectures released to go with it.

Scientolgists understand and apply it much more.

So... it's not really about to go too far.

The future of Wikipedia?

I've often had my doubts on the value of the Wikipedia. And yet I often find myself using it when searching for information.

My doubts on it's validity started when I saw the text on Scientology. Some true some false but constantly changing and often to the worse. In fact the whole page is quite slanted and really doesn't give a full factual view of Scientology. It's just not really what one would expect from a source that is meant to have some authority. Somehow after reading the article one would expect to have an overview of the subject. The plus and the minus equaling out and in the end being able to make up one's own mind.

What has always had me rather skeptical was how could people who randomly consider themselves experts on a subject decide to update an entry. Sure they have to base it on facts but "facts" are so easily made up.

Unfortunately this affects the dream of the web 2.0 encyclopedia.

I believe in web 2.0 and I have loved it since it started. But it works as long as nobody claims to be an authority on a subject. A blog is perfect, it's an opinion and most people can make the difference between a fact and an opinion.

An encyclopedia can't be web 2.0 its just against the whole concept. Its like calling a meeting with a thousand people and doing a dictionary with them. "The definition of the word computer is:..." and a thousand answers later we have a useless mess or something that is 168 definitions long and equally useless.

If someone were to start an article about me and decide to "factually" spread a bunch of crap about me, dig out somethings I did when I was a teenager and focus on that, I guess I wouldn't be happy. And then when I edit it I am banned from the site because it then becomes slanted? Wait a minute - who is slanted here?

Well the wikipedia has a future and in my opinion it will go either of two ways:
(a) crash and burn and the articles become more and more slanted or
(b) like any encyclopedia, they will need to hire scholars and professionals and get all their facts verified and edited before they publish them.

I hope they take the latter, because it does have some value that everyone in the world can propose articles and we could create a massive encyclopedia that would be much bigger than anything ever done before.


PS: BTW if you really want an honest view of what Scientology is, find a Scientologist and take him/her out for a coffee and find out all about it. Then read a book and make your own opinion. But that will be the subject of another post at another time.

Scientology goes to court in France

Scientology is being sued in France by a woman who claims that the religion has been manipulating her and pressuring her to pay large sums after having been offered a free personality test. The case is against the entire church of Scientology - the belief.

I don't know the details of the court case and am getting more facts on that. But looking at the information I do find, it seems like a pretty ordinary "case" against Scientology.

The scenario goes something like this.
1. Find something about a group that the general public wont understand.
2. Publicize it as the standard thing of that group and give it an angle of evil and bad intent.
3. General public who doesn't have the time to study up on it for real will believe what he hears.
4. Roll out with "evidences" if you can't find any, look for unhappy former members and get their interviews. In most cases for a bit of money or some status reward.

Voila you have a "good" case. Add a bit of controversy, money and big names and you even have a news story! It's not that hard.

In fact there was a TV Program on M6 (French TV station) called "Enquête exclusive" it depicted the story of Senegalese salesmen under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, on tourist locations in Rome and on street stands in New York or elsewhere around the world. Per that piece of journalistic wonder these "salesmen" are part of a "very organized" religion in Senegal and that part of all the money made by these "salesmen" goes to the head of that religion.

The connection between the religion and these salesmen is dubious. The evidence on screen is a bunch of people praying in a medium to small sized, dropping coins in a bag and a few doller bills in a box. Right after that claims are made that "Religion and Business are mixed here" shortly after a member of the church is interviewed who says that any believing member would give everything he had to the church.

And with that and a few more images which the narrator clearly tinges with his opinions, the "investigation" links the street salesmen to a religious group. The street salesmen seemingly being the "money machine" for the religion.

But when you look just about 1 nanometer under the surface - that is what the narrator is saying based on no fact. Unless putting a few coins in a donations bag is part of a secret financial system of a mysterious religion of Africa...

Well back to Scientology now. The court case is about someone who claims Scientology is an extortion and took their money by force. Well if Scientology really did that and if that really was part of the religion it would long since have ended and people (not the justice system) would have shut down the religion long ago.

Could it be that someone (i.e. the media) is only listening to what they want to hear? Could it be that there is something more to Scientology than money? and that the donations made to the church are actually valid donations with a valid purpose?

Could it be that people donate because they truly are feeling spiritual enlightenment?

For some info from the Scientology site in France there is a link here: http://scientologie-espace-presse.fr/ it is all in French but could be of use if you want to hear some background info to what the news says.

Open-Source Terrorism

I love the internet, it's a great way for people to be able to communicate and for others to remain informed of what is happening. Probably thanks to the internet things like the second world war will never be able to happen again.

Recently I've been seeing these articles about a "group" called Anonymous. And it got me thinking. Who would want to call themselves anonymous leave no traces and just destroy the lives of others "for fun" what fun. The last person I knew who thought that was fun was in Germany and that was in the 1940s.

Well back to my headline. What is this anonymous thing? is it really some sort of organized on-line terrorist group? Or is it just open-source terrorism. I.e. anyone who wants to vandalize something in cyberspace just signs Anonymous and gives the idea that this was some sort of organized activity?

I think it is the latter.

It's so easy now to just create havoc, mess people's lives and assign it to some ambiguous group "anonymous". Some poor student sitting at home being bored can go in hack a computer, crash a window or whatever and sign it anonymous.

Meanwhile a few merchants of chaos can sell the idea, instigate the hate, propagandize the idea a la Goebbles and tell everyone that they are operating off some group called "anonymous".

Well, the bottom line is free speech doesn't mean free messing up of people's lives. And the internet is about free speech not free destruction.

Sandy Smith - amazing last words...

Sandy Smith is the editor of BBC's Panorama show. I won't go over the whole story with the BBC Panorama show. I've posted enough about that. But in my last post on the subject entitled BBC Versus Scientology Why? I referred to a statement by Sandy Smith. I thought I would quote the whole thing, it's quite an amazing statement when you think it over.

Just give it a minute of thought... You're making a documentary about something but you knowingly are giving it a unilateral view. It just doesn't make sense - well read my other post and it suddenly does.

from the morning news interview with Sandy Smith
Journalist: And is it a balanced film? I mean it isn't more heat than light is it? Because there is so much passion involved...

Sandy Smith: There is a fair amount of heat as you've seen. It doesn't claim to be the definitive film about Scientology we'll have to do that another time.

The BBC Panorama vs. Scientology - WHY?

John Sweeney - a week of branding has given his photo
and name (and the BBC's) a whole new view in the eyes of the public.

Why would the BBC Panorama show do a documentary on Scientology, knowingly making it mainly or entirely negative when they know Scientology will never let that go down without notice?

Answer: Panorama needs more viewers.

How to get more viewers, get in the media. How to solve getting in the media - get some big controversy going and start being in the news.

How to get controversy - religion is always a great place. Taking on Islam is a little too dangerous, the Danish newspaper did that last year and some of their staff are still hiding. So they take Scientology.

Scientology is doing pretty good in UK with two new centers opened in October 2006 and lots of expansion. They are sure to get a pretty big reaction to that. How to do it? Put the roughest journalist you have on the case and be 90% smear. Result, the Scientologists will do something and media will follow.

You saw the part in between.

The viewers on the show increased. Sandy Smith delivered to his bosses.

The flaw, BBC Panorama didn't know how bad their roughest journalist would mess up and didn't know how far the Scientologists would take it AND forgot to enter in the fact that YouTube and the Internet exists and they no longer have a monopoly on the news.

Result, yes they got more viewers that night but they've also spent a week with a branding iron stuck to them. BBC, Panorama, John Sweeney, Sandy Smith and the rest of the team have become synonymous with: exploding tomatoes, Banorama, yelling, loosing it, lame journalism and plus some.

The idiocy is as Sandy Smith said in his interview on the BBC the only positive on the show that he had included was going to be a few interviews with some celebrities. So he admits that it was going to be a big smear. Things like that are better left unsaid, at least not on TV. It makes me wonder what the qualifications are for working at the BBC - or maybe those are the people Sweeney talked about in his description of the BBC? but then two of them on the same team?

Enough said
(note these are just a bunch of opinions from seeing these stories :0)

Visit the exhibition where John Sweeney lost it!

Here's a press release that was sent around by CCHR. This is the exhibition where John Sweeney the reporter from the BBC lost it.

"Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" Museum Draws Controversy in International Media

Take a video tour of the museum

(Click on the picture to watch the video)

Denouncing the fact that internationally more than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) has opened an interactive and visually spectacular museum in Hollywood called Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.

The museum features 14 documentaries with statements from scores of health professionals, academics, legal and human rights experts, and victims of psychiatric brutalities ranging from electroshock and involuntary commitment to political torture, psychosurgery and the devastating effects of psychotropic drugs. Accompanying each documentary are dozens of displays chronicling mental health barbarity spanning hundreds of years right up to present day. Included are sections on the destructive psychiatric influence on our youth, with 6 million children in the U.S. alone taking prescribed cocaine-like stimulants, and psychiatry’s infiltration of Hollywood and the creative industries, resulting in a staggering loss of talent in many artistic fields, including Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. The state-of-the-art museum documents that psychiatry is an industry driven entirely by profit, and provides practical guidance for lawmakers, doctors, human rights advocates and private citizens to take action in their own sphere to bring psychiatry under the law, and to help protect themselves and others from the abuses rampant in the mental health field.

A sampling of current statistics and facts shown in the new museum include:

• Psychiatrists are using electroshock, drugs and other barbaric means to torture political dissidents.

• 20 million children worldwide are taking psychiatric drugs, which can cause suicide, hostility, violence, mania and drug dependence.

• More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions.

• Annually, psychiatrists kill up to 10,000 people with their use of electroshock—460 volts of electricity sent searing through the brain. Three-quarters of all electroshock victims are women.

• Psychiatrists and psychologists have raped 250,000 women. Studies show that 10 to 25 percent of psychiatrists sexually assault their patients; of every 20 of these victims one is likely to be a minor.

Visitors to the museum, which have included celebrities, doctors, educators and legislators, have described it as, “inspirational,” and that the museum should be viewed by “everyone who breathes.”

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.

You can also watch the Introduction to our new Documentary, Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.

For more information, contact the Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 800-869-2247 or email humanrights@cchr.org

BBC Reporter gets a taste of his own medicine and doesn’t like it

BBC Reporter John Sweeney, one of the main journalists behind the BBC Panorama show Scientology and Me should be quite experienced with journalism and the routines of the job.

We all know the techniques of journalists to elicit an unexpected emotional response from the subject. Nobody likes being in the camera spotlight like that with a fast paced and prying journalist in your face trying to make you err at every step.

They stalk the subject and film it at every possible moment, hopefully trying to capture something that nobody else has so they can have some sensational materiel for their show.

This is John Sweeney’s profession – he’s a journalist for a living on one of the worlds largest TV channels.

Now what does a journalist like John Sweeney say when the tables turn and he is the one being documented? When a journalist starts to investigate him, his actions and his life?

We’ve all seen the video on youtube.com, but before you look at it again, let’s rapidly look over the journalistic philosophy of John Sweeney per the BBC’s Panorama site. He says "First, find a crocodile. Two, poke it in the eye with a stick. Three, stand back and report what happens next. If it's a sodden log you'll be quite safe. If it's a crocodile you've got a story."

And let’s see the video now

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5NPhtLI

Have we got a story here? Per John himself I think we do.

We will all agree that one of the most fundamental journalistic skills is the mastery of language. Let’s see how John excused himself after this outburst; we would all expect a quick twist of words that would make it all seem rational and intelligent.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAeL8AyYeI&NR=1

For someone whose job it is to investigate and write stories one would expect a little more creativity than “I wanted to show you that my voice was louder than yours”. (I’ll have to try that next time I start yelling at someone I am investigating).

Now in response to this he claims he was feeling brainwashed because he was “being stalked” for several days. Actually the stalking in question here is a Scientology Documentary team that did a documentary on John Sweeney’s making of the Panorama show. But how can this be an excuse? Here is a Documentary journalist complaining of being stalked by a documentary team? Does he not realize what he is saying?

In other words, is documentary journalism brainwashing people?

I don't know about that last statement but I do know that John Sweeney is getting a taste of his own medecine and it's not tasing good.

A fellow blogger wrote an article and has some great videos on this. (the one who put the youtube video on)

Don Grey

RFID chips, BBC reporters and Human Rights ...

I was looking through some earlier Engadget blogs on RFID lately and remembered one of them about a company that had invented an RFID tattoo to track cows - and then someone mentions that this could also be used for the armed services. The tattoo is readable up to 4 feet away. Only for cattle now but the company wants to get this to military personel second.

It's sort of scary how we're moving into a control society where every move is being tracked. And how many people watch it happen and think that it's inevitable. I know as I've wondered sometimes myself what could be done about it.

Something can always be done about it. That's my motto - I'm a Scientologist and I believe in that. As I'm in the subject of human rights I thought I would write a little blurb.

I was looking at the news recently and it's amazing how human rights like Freedom of Press get perverted into "Freedom to lie and twist the truth". I've lived Scientology for some 12-15 years now and I look at the stuff the media reports, it's just weird - I mean it's just not what is happening, I wonder what planet these reporters like John Sweeney from the BBC are on.

I've always kept a good opinion of the BBC for it's pretty accurate reporting, but either the Management has changed and someone from The Sun became an editor or John Sweeney has been acting like a rogue journalist.

The film Mad City was a great eye opener on how easy it is to twist the truth. It's sad that BBC entered that game.

Swisscom for Human Rights

I just heard that Swisscom the Swiss Mobile Phone company are showing the Human Rights Public Service announcements from YouthforHumanRights in their shops.

That's pretty cool - using all those Gadgets for something good!

A more positive note on some issues!