The tactics to keep executives in line "are wrong from a Scientology viewpoint," said Rinder, who walked away two years ago. "They are not standard practice of Scientology. They are just not humanitarian. And they are just outright evil." Church spokesmen confirm that managers are ordered into pools and assembled for group confessions. It's part of the "ecclesiastical justice" system the church imposes on poor performers.

Tags: Amy Scobee, Apollo, Bohemian Rhapsody, David Miscavige, Faith Schermerhorn, Jeff Hawkins, Jessica Feshbach, Lisa McPherson, Marc Yager, Mark Ingber, Mark Rathbun, Michelle Miscavige, Mike Rinder, Monique Yingling, Norman Starkey, Overboarding, Ray Mithoff, Sea Org, Super Power, Tom De Vocht, Tommy Davis

At a ceremony at the Fort Harrison Hotel in September 1995, Lisa McPherson was designated "clear," meaning that through Scientology counseling, she had rid herself of all interference from troubling memories buried in her subconscious. Two months later she had a nervous breakdown. After 17 days in Scientology's care, she was dead.

Tags: Alain Kartuzinski, Amy Scobee, Angie Blankenship, Benadryl, Bernie McCabe, David Minkoff, David Miscavige, Don Jason, Flag Service Organization, Fort Harrison, Golden Age of Tech, International Association of Scientologists, Introspection Rundown, Janis Johnson, Jessica Feshbach, Joan Wood, Lisa McPherson, Mark Rathbun, Mike Rinder, Monique Yingling, Tom De Vocht, Tommy Davis, Violence, William Walsh

This account comes from executives who for decades were key figures in Scientology's powerful inner circle. Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time. Two other former executives who defected also agreed to interviews with the St. Petersburg Times: De Vocht, who for years oversaw the church's spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, and Amy Scobee, who helped create Scientology's celebrity network, which caters to the likes of John Travolta and Tom Cruise. One by one, the four defectors walked away from the only life they knew. That Rathbun and Rinder are speaking out is a stunning reversal because they were among Miscavige's closest associates, Haldeman and Ehrlichman to his Nixon.

Tags: Amy Scobee, Annie Broeker, Coalition of IRS Whistleblowers, David Miscavige, Earle Cooley, Ethics, Fort Harrison, Fred Goldberg, Gabe Cazares, Guardian Office, Guillaume Lesevre, IRS, L. Ron Hubbard, Lisa McPherson, Marc Yager, Marty Rathbun, Michelle Miscavige, Mike Rinder, Monique Yingling, Nelson Poynter, Norman Starkey, Office of Special Affairs, Pat Broeker, PC folders, Ray Mithoff, Religious Technology Center, Sea Org, Tom De Vocht, Tommy Davis, United Churches of Florida, Violence, William Walsh

The dispute offers a glimpse at a hidden online war that's been raging on the country's seventh-most-popular Web site. Wikipedia says the church and some of its vocal critics are engaged in "edit wars" — aggressively adding or removing complimentary or disparaging material from articles related to Scientology. The Web site also banned a handful of church critics from changing articles. "This long-standing dispute is a struggle between two rival factions: admirers of Scientology and critics of Scientology," the site's administrators concluded in a memo posted on the Web site. "Each side wishes the articles within this topic to reflect their point of view and have resorted to battlefield editing tactics."

Tags: Tommy Davis, Wikipedia

In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates. Closing out the longest-running court case in Wikiland history, the site's Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0 (with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect immediately.

Tags: Wikipedia

The Church of Scientology may have the support of global celebrities such as Tom Cruise to spread its message. But it can no longer rely on the worldwide web to be so supportive. Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia and world's eighth most popular website - has banned members of the Church from editing its own information on the site.

Tags: Wikipedia

The internet's war with Scientologists has stepped up a gear, after Wikipedia administrators decided to ban the church from making changes to its site. After a long debate, the online encyclopedia has decided to block anyone using an internet connection linked to the church from making changes to Wikipedia pages - in order to prevent propaganda changes and what it calls "sock puppet" attacks.

Tags: Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the giant online encyclopedia anyone can edit, has decided to block contributions from computers owned by the Church of Scientology, saying that it has changed copy to advance its own agenda.

Tags: Dan Rosenthal, Wikipedia

On Friday, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee voted to bar several IP addresses linked to the Church of Scientology from making edits to some or all articles on the site, as The Register first reported. The committee, a senior group of volunteers who frequently review matters related to controversial and high-activity articles, found these users to be in frequent violation of the site's “neutral point of view” principle – defined as content added or edited “as far as possible without bias” – among other policies. A Wikipedia representative says the verdict was the result of an extended period of review, and that the committee “looked at all sides of the situation” before making a decision. Indeed, the committee also banned some Wikipedia users for making edits to the “Scientology” article that were critical of the organization. Bans on IP addresses are not permanent; site administrators can lift them or make other concessions.

Tags: Jay Walsh, Karin Puow, Wikipedia

There are problems with how security for a Nashville Scientology event was handled, and laws appear to have been broken. In a home video, a group of protesters walk toward the Church of Scientology on the day of the church's grand opening and are stopped by security guards, who knock one protester to the ground and have him arrested for criminal trespass. The altercation happened 400 yards from the church, on the other side of the street. Public Works pulled all of the permits taken out for the Scientology event. The permits -- all of them for sidewalk closing and lane blocking -- are for the wrong day. They're for the day before the event and expire before the scuffle occurred.

Tags: Anonymous, Nashville

A protest at the Church of Scientology in Nashville led to pushing, shoving, an arrest and the whole thing was caught on tape. The tape, protesters said, proves they were assaulted and bullied by security guards for no reason. A Middle Tennessee State University student doesn't want his name revealed after what happened on April 25 at Nashville's new Church of Scientology on Eighth Avenue. The man is in a group called Anonymous that protests Church of Scientology events.

Tags: Anonymous, Nashville

"I was actually one of the older ones at 17. There were 13-year-olds, 12-year-olds," Bolstad recollects. "There was just one kid, 12-years-old that was given an executive responsibility doing something. He had a complete nervous breakdown." This is how Maureen spent her teenage years: making videos for the church. Looking at her social security tax forms, she says nobody ever told her about minimum wage. "I was taught to lie too. I got a worker's comp claim form. They ask you how many hours do you work a week. And I was told to put 40 hours."

Tags: Abortion, American Religious Identification Survey, Child labor, Maureen Bolstad, Tommy Davis

The Church of Scientology believes one woman, Maureen Bolstad, is one of the worst people in the world. She is one of a few to be declared a "suppressive person." Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard declared so-called "suppressive" people "cannot be granted the rights ordinarily accorded rational beings." Her crime? Talking to the media about the church. Bolstad was recruited into the Church of Scientology at age 16. She was told she'd get an education, and the chance to see the world.

Tags: Maureen Bolstad, RPF

Up until the late 1990's, each person inside received five cards. There's a pay card, a berthing or "housing" card, a chow card, a social card, and, a bonus card. If the production statistics for a worker or their team go down, management took a card or two away. If you lost your chow card, you had to make do with rice and beans. If you lost your berthing card, you lost your apartment. If you lost your pay card, you didn't get money.

Tags: Int Base, Office of Special Affairs, PIs, Riverside

The Flag Building, nicknamed the "Super Power" building, is a seven-story, 380,000-square-foot empty shell that encompasses a whole city block. The church gets fined $250 a day for not bringing it up to code, and the fines now total $245,000. Numerous promises to finish the building have come and gone, but church officials insist that this time it really is next on their to-do list. At this point, church architects and Clearwater building officials say they're going over some final details. "We're ready," said Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis. "All the money has been put aside, and the plans are in place. As soon as we get the go-ahead from the city, we'll begin."

Tags: Bill Horne, Clearwater, Fort Harrison, Frank Hibbard, Super Power, Tommy Davis

The Church of Scientology is expanding in Nashville, opening what the religion calls a "celebrity centre" at the historic Fall School Business Center on Eighth Avenue South and Chestnut Street. Renovations are under way at the 36,000 square-foot building, with an opening expected before summer, said Gaetane Asselin and Wendy Beccaccini, who are overseeing the project. The current location at 1204 16th Ave. South will close when the new one opens.

Tags: Brenda Morrow, Celebrity Centre, Gaetane Asselin, Nashville, Todd Lake, Wendy Beccaccini

Since our News Channel 3 investigation into the Church of Scientology began, nearly a dozen former church members came forward to tell us their accounts of what happens inside the church's world headquarters in Hemet. Jeff Hawkins was the first. He is the church's former marketing director.

Tags: News

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Our second half of our one-on-one interview with one of Scientology's leaders continues in Hollywood. We confront spokesman Tommy Davis with the confidential works of L. Ron Hubbard and ask why there are threats of death by pneumonia for those who read it.

Tags: News

Davis serves as the Church's spokesman. During the visit, we showed him video shot by members of "Anonymous" as they were being accosted and arrested by guards hired by the Church at the Scientology grounds in Hemet. Davis contends that the protestors arrested assaulted the guards.

Tags: Tommy Davis

Protests in front of the Church of Scientology's headquarters near Hemet may soon be illegal. Sheriff's deputies keep reminding protestors with the group known as "Anonymous" to stay within 50 feet from the center of the road going through the Scientology compound.

Tags: News

It's a full blown war you've likely never heard of. There is a battle between leaders of the Church of Scientology and a group of activists with both sides sworn to fight to the end. This is war; in the shadow of a cross, and behind the gaze of a mask.

Tags: News

An video from "Anonymous" posted on YouTube last year states, "Hello. Leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous. Over the years, we have been watching you. The extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided your organization should be destroyed." It's a declaration of war over the internet.

Tags: News

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Taking on the Church of Scientology in court is like picking a fight with the Russian army. When attacked, the church defends itself aggressively, wearing down opponents with a barrage of litigation while peering into their personal lives. Ken Dandar knows this better than anyone. In the 7-year-long Lisa McPherson case, the Tampa lawyer and the church waged one of the most grueling, fiercely contested legal battles in Tampa Bay history

Tags: Denis deVlaming, Denise Miscavige Gentile, Gerald Gentile, Ken Dandar, Kyle Brennan, Lee Fugate, Lisa McPherson, Robert Minton

A mother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Church of Scientology, its Flag Service Organization and three parishioners, claiming they brought about her son's death by denying him access to his antidepression medication. Among the three parishioners named as defendants: Denise Gentile, the twin sister of the church's current worldwide leader, David Miscavige, as well as her husband, Gerald Gentile.

Tags: Clearwater, Death, Denise Gentile, Gerald Gentile, Ken Dandar, Kyle Brennan, Narconon, Thomas Brennan, Tommy Davis

Victoria L. Britton has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Scientologists, including her son's father, of taking his antidepressant prescription from him and giving him access to a loaded gun.

Tags: Clearwater, Death, Denise Miscavige Gentile, Gerard Gentile, Ken Dandar, Kyle Brennan, Narconon, Thomas Brennan, Tommy Davis

Nashville's version of Anonymous, the one-year-old Rick Rollin' Scientology haters, are planning an 11 AM VDay protest and (of course) they'd like you to join them. L. Ron's Plucky Gang of Misfits have had a relatively low-key* presence in Nashvegas for years now, but they'll soon be movin' on up, and out, of their Music Row digs.

Tags: Anonymous, Nashville

Foes of the Church of Scientology in California say their free speech rights are being violated by a county law barring protests at a church video facility. The ordinance received quick passage this week with the support of Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone, the Los Angeles Times reported. It requires demonstrators to keep their distance from residential properties in unincorporated parts of the county. Golden Era Productions in Gilman is the church's main production center for videos. About 500 people live and work on the campus.

Tags: Catherine Fraser, Donald Meyers, Golden Era Productions, Int Base, Jeff Stone, Riverside County

The latest Wikievidence against Fresco was posted after he attempted to intervene in a Wikicourt trial involving the Church of Scientology. According to site administrators, several pro-Scientology accounts have been editing the site using Scientology-owned computers. One of these pro-Scientology editors - who once used the handle "COFS" - has admitted as much. And he vows to continue editing Scientology articles from Scientology computers. "I am not going to leave voluntarily and I will continue to use a) my own computer, b) public computers, c) my wireless laptop, d) computers in the Church of Scientology and any station I please," this editor wrote. And so the human comedy continues.

Tags: Durova, Guru Maharaj Ji, Jimmy Wales, Jossi Fresco, Prem Rawat, TeamScientology, Wikipedia

Everything seemed to be going great. Sure, Stein had endured seeing and hearing plenty of critics and outsiders mock and deride her adopted church over the years — saying it was a glorified cult, that it brainwashed its members and made it extremely difficult for members to leave the faith, and that its courses charged members up to tens of thousands of dollars at a time for tuition before revealing that much of its deepest beliefs are rooted in tales of alien earth visits and intergalactic warfare — but they faded away. The church has made special effort to blend into the societal mainstream since 1993, when it finally achieved tax-exempt status as a nonprofit religion after decades of battles with the IRS.

Tags: Anonymous, Bill Bogaard, Dave Tourje, Eden Stein, Pasadena, Real estate, Ron Penner, UN Declaration of Human Rights

Tom Cruise is at the centre of a privacy scare after he lost his BlackBerry mobile device in Canada. The Hollywood star is currently promoting his World War II film Valkyrie on Canadian TV shows and was dismayed to find his communication handheld missing. Cruise, 46, appears to mislaid his BlackBerry when he was appearing on Entertainment Tonight Canada.

Tags: Blackberry, Tom Cruise, Toronto

It's a program aimed at getting kids off the streets and away from drugs. But now Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima is saying "not so fast." The program is called the Drug-Free Marshall Program, and it was quite a hit until the mayor found out it was sponsored by the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Drug-Free Marshals, Ken Miyagishima, New Mexico

A-list followers including Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley and John Travolta believe their faith is the secret of their success. But for John Duignan it cost him everything and everyone he held dear after he become a leading figure in the church's British branch. John says he was so brainwashed that he would have killed for Scientology. And he claims another member was driven to a suicide bid when she was “rehabilitated” after trying to leave. John tells of his nightmare in his book.

Tags: John Duignan, Office of Special Affairs, RPF

Second Chance has been ridiculed for its expensive carrot juice and sauna approach to cleaning up addicts and now some people are questioning whether it's a good use of taxpayer dollars. "Let's put that money, especially right now, when were on real hard economic times, let's put that money where we know it has a proven successful track record," said Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White.

Tags: Albuquerque, Darren White, Second Chance

The Scientologists have been doing their damnedest to stop the international publication of John Duignan's memoir The Complex. Following legal representations, it is no longer possible to buy the book, published in Ireland by Merlin, from Amazon.co.uk. That made me curious, so I had a copy sent direct from Dublin. Here's my review.

Tags: Books, David Miscavige, INFORM, John Duignan, Office of Special Affairs, RPF, Sea Org, The Complex, Tom Cruise, Vistaril

Anonymous" monthly events in Times Square are becoming an attraction in their own right. Today passers-by took in the young and occasionally costumed protesters on West 46th Street. The curious giggled and took a flyer. Some chatted with Anons about more serious issues with the Church of Scientology, and even let themselves be taken on brief, fanciful "tours" of Scientology.

Tags: Anonymous, Uwe Stuckenbrock

As soon as protesters in a local anti-Scientology group, donning Guy Fawkes masks, arrived at the religious group's temporary Portland office Nov. 1, members of the organization hurried to the windows to close the curtains and blinds. Armed with picket signs proclaiming the Church of Scientology as an evil cult, the leaderless group, known as Anonymous, spread their ideas outside and around the offices of the religious organization, marching all over the downtown area.

Tags: Anonymous, Portland

While A-list followers like Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and John Travolta have credited their faith in the religion as the secret of their success, common man John Duignan said that it cost him everything and everyone he held dear. Duignan, 45, who had lost everything when he became a leading figure in the church's British branch, revealed that he was so brainwashed that he would have killed for Scientology.

Tags: John Duignan, Office of Special Affairs, RPF, Tom Cruise

The largest drug rehabilitation home in town, a longtime magnet for community anger, has agreed to shut down, officials said Friday. The 27-bed beachfront triplex operated by Narconon will close after its state license expires in February 2010, said Dan Carlton, a company attorney.

Tags: Dan Carlton, Narconon, Newport Beach

"If someone starts talking to me negatively about something they've never actually studied that actual text of, I don't really admire them very much because it shows they don't have much integrity, so I just kind of ignore them," Elfman told AAP in Sydney. "I'm not going to listen to gossip and hearsay about something that's affected my life so tremendously in such a tremendously positive way."

Tags: Jenna Elfman

Clients pay Ed Armstrong for legal help and his access to the upper reaches of county government, where leaders enjoy the benefits of being close to the Clearwater lawyer but are wary of appearing too cozy. It's a delicate dance of interests, and Armstrong may have overstepped it at last week's Pinellas County Commission meeting, where roughly 250 residents came to be heard on a slate of contentious land use cases.

Tags: Bob Stewart, Clearwater, Ed Armstrong, Ethel Hammer

Depending on whom you ask, Massachusetts-based protest organizer Gregg Housh had a major victory – or a significant loss – in Boston Municipal Court this Wednesday. As reported in The Phoenix this past week in the feature “Battling Scientology,” Housh faced charges of harassment, disturbing the peace, and disturbing religious worship for his involvement with the picket group Anonymous and his actions against the Boston Church of Scientology.

Tags: Anonymous, Boston, Gregg Housh, Marc LaCasse

In a world wracked with uncertainty, there is at least one thing you can bet on: pick a fight with the Church of Scientology (CoS), and its leaders will fight back — always with vigor, often with a vengeance, and sometimes with litigation that can be long and costly.

Tags: Anonymous, Boston, Gregg Housh

An 18-year-old New Jersey man will plead guilty to the January online attacks that took down the Church of Scientology's Web site, federal prosecutors said Friday. Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, New Jersey, was part of an underground hacking group called Anonymous that has made the church a target of several attacks. He was charged Friday but has agreed to plead guilty sometime in the next few weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Tags: Anonymous, Dmitriy Guzner

Some parents are upset with a study method introduced by a Montessori school in northwest Toronto, which they say has its roots in the Church of Scientology. Parents said the owner of the Bambolino Montessori Academy, a private school, told parents last week that it was introducing a new learning method called applied scholastics.

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Bambolino Montessori Academy, Canada, Julia Simon, Liz Zahari, Toronto

A religion with several famous members is hoping to turn a Bucks County building into its new home, but some people living nearby are becoming a little weary of their new neighbor.

Tags: A. Rhodes Wilson, Pennsylvania, Real Estate

Portlander and former Scientologist Susan Lentsch submitted an open letter to the head of communications for the Church of Scientology, Karin Pouw, last Thursday, September 4, asking why her daughter, Katherine, cannot be allowed home for a vacation from the church's elite management organization, the so-called "Sea Organization" or Sea Org ["Selling Scientology," Feature, August 7]. Lentsch alleges that since she allowed her daughter to join the Sea Org in 1993, Katherine was promised three weeks vacation a year, but that this has never happened. "You, yourself, have denied publicly that Scientology disconnects families," wrote Lentsch. "But the question is, Ms. Pouw, are you actually willing to stand by those words?" Lentsch has yet to receive a response.

Tags: Disconnection, Karin Pouw, Sea Org, Susan Lentsch

The Church of Scientology will be tried in a French court for "organised fraud," legal sources said Monday.

Tags: France, Fraud

Portlander, and former Scientologist Susan Lentsch, is submitting an open letter to the head of communications for the Church Of Scientology asking why her daughter, Katherine, cannot be allowed home for a vacation from the church's elite management organization.

Tags: Disconnection, Karin Pouw, Sea Org, Susan Lentsch

When I allowed my daughter, then a minor, to join the Sea Organization, I was told that Sea Organization Members are allowed three weeks holiday per year. In fact, it is stated in the contract that Katherine signed in 1993: “2. HOLIDAYS: '...three (3) weeks per continuous active year for Sea Org Members'.” This has never happened.

Tags: Karin Pouw, Office of Special Affairs, Portland, Sea Org, Susan Lentsch

Dr Allison Fraser, who has been in charge of Sandwell Council in the West Midlands over the last two years, will attend courses in the Avatar Professional Course to learn how to become 'more likeable'.

Tags: Avatar, UK

A year ago, it was introduced quietly in Nairobi. Its offices are tucked away on the third floor of an unremarkable building along Ngong Road between two Christian churches; a far cry from the mother church.

Tags: Kenya

Masked protesters are taking to Seattle streets as the church eyes new facilities downtown and in lower Queen Anne.

Tags: Ann Pearce, Anonymous, Real estate, Seattle

An ex-Scientologist and an army of online pranksters attempt to bring down the controversial religion. But Gorman's loyalty to Scientology turned to rage against it in 2001, after his then-teenage friend Jennifer Stewart, now his wife, alleged she was forcibly raped by an adult staff member of the Mountain View branch of the church. Both say that Scientology officials, including Quiros, urged them not to go to the police. Scientology staffers vigorously deny both allegations. In a later civil suit, the church weighed the bad press that might come from the "incendiary" allegations coming out at trial and paid Stewart a handsome 2005 out-of-court settlement that barely made the news.

Tags: Anonymous, Electric Klan, Fair Game, Ford Greene, Gabriel Williams, Jason Herr, Jeff Quiros, Kristi Wachter, Lawrence Wollersheim, Mark Warlick, Office of Special Affairs, Scientology Parishioners League, Sea Org, Suppressive Person, Tommy Gorman, Tory Christman

By 1982, Hawkins says he had already shot his fair share of attention-grabbing ads for the religion—whether they involved complex fly-by shots filmed from airplanes or interviewing celebrity Scientologists like former San Francisco 49ers quarterback John Brodie. Hubbard's philosophy, says Hawkins, was to use ads to "splash the volcano" at the general public. This was linked to Scientology's belief that the image of a volcano has been embedded in people's minds from an experience in a former lifetime. Hubbard is reported to have said that 75 million years ago, Earth's population was massacred by Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy, who stacked us all around a volcano and killed us using nuclear bombs—Hubbard's 1968 lecture on the "Xenu theory" is now publicly available on the Wikileaks website. "Splashing the volcano at them was supposed to hypnotize people back, or what they call 'key them in' to the whole Xenu incident," says Hawkins. "And then they would be somehow hypnotized to go and buy the book."

Tags: Anonymous, Apollo, Chuck Beatty, David Miscavige, Dianetics, Gwen Barnard, Jeff Hawkins, John Brodie, Larry Brennan, Marc Headley, Office of Special Affairs, Operating Thetan, Portland, Ronnie Miscavige, Sea Org, Sec Check, Shelly Corrias, Tommy Davis, Watchdog committee

A particular standout is the essay crafted by Mike Pride, a well-regarded, recently-retired editor of the Concord Monitor, who worked at the Sun through the '60s and '70s. He writes that the newspaper didn't learn for years that the reason Scientologists seemed to know so much about their efforts to investigate them, is because a clerk at the paper was a spy for the church.

Tags: Clearwater, Infiltration, June Phillips, Spies

The Church of Scientology is out and California-based First Republic Bank is in as a new owner takes control of the historic Helmer building in the heart of downtown Portland. The Goodman family, which owns or controls numerous commercial sites in downtown, closed its purchase of the Helmer building at 969 S.W. Broadway on July 25 in a deal worth about $5 million.

Tags: Gwen Barnard, Portland, Real estate

Among the 'garbage' that was washed ashore in Sri Lanka in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami were a number of foreign-funded, unscrupulous evangelist groups. Among these were the 'Scientologists' trying to fish in troubled waters. After exposure by several foreigners including some German journalists as well as the Venerable Medagama Dhammananda of the Asgiriya Buddhist Chapter Sri Lanka, the group kept a low-profile, while 'helping' in the tsunami relief operations for sometime. It now appears that these nefarious crusaders are creeping back into the island. Buddhists and followers of other established religions here need to be the high alert against these frauds.

Tags: Buddhism, Richard Behar, Sri Lanka, The Way to Happiness, Volunteer Ministers

Proponents said they have plenty of State House support and are hopeful. "We have every reason to believe the bill will come out," said Matt Noyes of the non-profit Health Care for All. The only opponents, Noyes said, have been the Church of Scientology, which does not believe in mental health care, and insurance companies.

Tags: CCHR, Massachusetts

They speak in "lolcats" terminology. They use terms like "lulz" and "epic win." They claim that members who have been found out have had their pets killed. They wear "V for Vendetta" Guy Fawkes masks. They are Anonymous, and they're gathering in Millennium Park this weekend for a gathering that's one part protest, one part flash mob, two parts performance art. Who are they really? Who knows. That's the point.

Tags: Anonymous, Chicago

A SHADOWY web-based protest group is apparently planning a global demonstration against Scientology next month, publishing its creepy "training video" the internet. The group, calling itself Anonymous has already staged demonstrations against Scientology in Australia and around the but now plans an even bigger international event on August 16.

Tags: Anonymous

A scandal has arisen at Scientology's NYC offices. When the local "org" dedicated a new building in 2004, a Scientologist named Stephan Hittman presented Scientology management with the Fire Department of New York's (FDNY) "Medal of Valor." Hittman, who falsely claimed to be an "Honorary Commissioner" of FDNY, had briefly held an administrative position at FDNY. Prior to that, he had spent more than 15 years as a "special education" administrator for the New York public school system. FDNY's "Medal of Valor" is only ever presented posthumously to firemen who have died in the line of duty. Numerous Scientology websites boast of receiving this "Medal of Valor" in recognition of the activities of Scientologists on 9/11.

Tags: 911, FDNY, Fraud, Medal of Valor, NYC, Stephan Hittman

The Cook Islands High Court will hear an application today (Friday local time) for the demolition of a tent set up by the Church of Scientology in the middle of the capital, Avarua. The writ was filed in court by Reverend Alfred Morris, who leads a local Apostolic church in Rarotonga. Last week the Cook Islands government gave the green light to visiting Church of Scientology representatives Mathew Andrews and Winnie Lawrence to put up posters. However, they were advised the posters must not promote the church principles or doctrines but rather the community work they carry out as a church.

Tags: Cook Islands, Mathew Andrews, Volunteer Ministers, Winnie Lawrence

A rival church's petition against the Church of Scientology was dismissed by the Cook Islands High Court this afternoon after Scientology officials removed a display tent that was the focus of the court action. Local church leader Reverend Alfred Morris applied to the court this week for the removal of a display tent erected by the Church of Scientology in the capital Avarua.

Tags: Cook Islands, Mathew Andrews

The video of two men involved in an altercation outside a Church of Scientology has garnered a lot of hits on YouTube, but it happened right here in West Michigan. Two men protesting the Church of Scientology got more than they bargained for when a man and a woman from the church came out and confronted them last week.

Tags: Anonymous, Battle Creek

The Church of Scientology is actively targeting Guam as a potential base for expansion into East Asia and the Pacific. The power of this group should not be underestimated. Ten years ago the Cult Awareness Network received more complaints about Scientology than about any other organization, so they put Scientology at the top of their cult list. The Church of Scientology put the Cult Awareness Network into bankruptcy and then took it over. Scientology now operates the Cult Awareness Network as a promotional arm of their organization.

Tags: Cult Awareness Network, Guam

The Education and Childrens Services Minister in South Australia has attacked the controversial Church of Scientology, branding its faithful as bastard. Jane Lomax-Smith made the comment earlier this year while talking to a group of protesters outside the churchs offices in Adelaide.

Tags: Australia, Jane Lomax-Smith

But Paccar's recent purchases are what have people especially puzzled. In January, Paccar paid Leonard and Debra Giannola $2.89 million for the 0.14-acre Church of Scientology parcel at 10575 N.E. Fourth St., which includes a one-story office building built in 1964.

Tags: Bellevue, Real estate

"They'll probably tell you they have a 50 percent attendance rate—that is important for them to tell you because that helps them keep their brand as the fastest growing minority religion," Jacob Mercy told WW Saturday morning. “This brand makes numbers seem so large people wouldn't possibly think it could be a cult.”

Tags: Anonymous, Gwen Mayfield-Barnard, Portland, Real estate

THE South Australian Government was at odds with the Church of Scientology last night after backing the right of a senior state minister to brand its members "bastards". Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith has also questioned the organisation's tax-free status in comments to an anti-Scientology group called Anonymous, which it posted on popular internet site YouTube.

Tags: Anonymous, Australia, Jane Lomax-Smith, Mike Rann

The company was Goroway's creation, but it owed a debt to Dr. David Singer, a chiropractor who had long run his own seminar series. Goroway became a client of Singer's around 1991. He paid careful attention not just to the business concepts Singer preached but to Singer's delivery, his magnetic presence. Those seminars, it turned out, had also become a kind of recruiting tool for Singer, a devotee of the Church of Scientology, the controversial self-help system maligned as a cult by critics. Boulis was enamored of Singer too and followed him into Scientology. Goroway would later note that Boulis "chipped away" at him until finally, around 1999, as he was getting Practice Mechanix off the ground, he joined the church. By 2001, Practice Mechanix was using telemarketers and junk faxes to reach chiropractors. At its peak, Goroway claimed the company had 125 employees, a 34-seat telemarketing house in Pittsburgh, and $650,000 in operating expenses per month. Much of its success came from concepts of business organization that Goroway learned through Scientology, he would later say.

Tags: Chiropractic, David Goroway, David Singer Consultants

Running Crane isn't the only one forming a connection to Scientology. Emissaries connected to the religion and to Narconon, a nonprofit drug treatment and education program affiliated with Scientology, have been making inroads on the reservation throughout the past year. Scientologists have offered free seminars and all-expenses-paid retreats at a luxurious Scientology center near Los Angeles. They've also sent boxes of Hubbard's books to several tribal members working at Crystal Creek Lodge, the only drug-treatment center on the reservation. The center uses 12-step programs common to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon. (Narconon, despite its similar name, is not connected with any 12-step program.)

Tags: Alfred Johnson, Blackfeet, Blood Brother, Celebrity Centre, Chief Earl Old Person, Clark Carr, Crazy Dog Society, Galaxy Press, John Goodwin, Larry Ground, Marilyn Rhodes, Montana, Narconon, Old Tom, Pat Calf Looking, Patricia Devereaux, Rayola Running Crane, Rick Ross, Saginaw Grant, Steven Kent, War Bonnet

As a member of two vindictive cults — Fox News and Scientology — cable news anchor Greta Van Susteren is an absolute pro at channeling rage. Witness the blog post she typed up on the 4th of July holiday. The executive producer of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 last week called Susteren's On The Record "not a news program. It's missing-person of the day."

Tags: Anderson Cooper, Greta Van Susteren

More controversially, the site has begun posting confidential documents from the secretive and litigious Church of Scientology, and from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Those leaks demonstrate that the site has veered from its mission to expose the secrets of repressive governments, says Aftergood, treading instead on the dangerous ground of religious persecution.

Tags: ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Julian Assange, Steven Aftergood, Wikileaks

Late last Thursday, the church purchased the Fall School Business Center along Eighth Avenue South for $6 million. The property reportedly will become the new home of the church's Celebrity Centre Nashville, which currently sits in a small house along Music Row. The Fall School site has roughly 36,000-square-feet of space.

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Nashville, Real estate

The Church of Scientology Religious Trust purchased the executive suit building at 1130 Eighth Ave. S. along with adjacent properties at 1112 and 1114 Eighth Ave. S. for $6 million from Fall School Associates June 26, according to records and the Davidson County Register of Deeds.

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Church of Scientology Religious Trust, Nashville, Real estate

Even before it started, the 1986 trial of Lawrence Wollersheim v. the Church of Scientology of California caused a mob scene at L.A.'s downtown superior court. When a judge decided during pretrial motions that documents describing confidential Scientology beliefs should be put in a file open to the public, 1,500 Scientologists swamped the court clerk's office to keep anyone else from requesting them. The next day, the judge resealed those records. But an L.A. Times reporter managed to get past the crush of Scientologists and copy the file. Newspapers around the country had a field day with what the Times reported: the documents showed that high-level Scientologists are taught that each human contains the souls of alien creatures banished to Earth 75 million years ago by a galactic overlord named Xenu.

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Celebrity Centre, Charles O’Reilly, Criminon, CSC, CSI, Dan Leipold, David Chodos, David Miscavige, Donald Alexander, Earle Cooley, E-meter, FACTNet, Fair Game, Ford Greene, Frank Oliver, Fred Goldberg, Freewinds, GO, Heber Jentzsch, IRS, Jason Beghe, Joseph Yanny, Judge Hess, Lawrence Wollersheim, Legal, Leta Schlosser, Linda Hight, Narconon, Office of Special Affairs, Operation Snow White, OT III, Paul Streckfus, RICO, Robert Vaughn Young, RTC, Sea Org, SLAPP, Stephen Kent, The Way to Happiness, Tory Christman, Xenu

The Church of Scientology Religious Trust has bought the Fall School Business Center on 8th Avenue. The Scientology trust purchased the executive suit building at 1130 8th Ave. S. along with adjacent properties at 1112 and 1114 8th Ave. S. for $6 million from Fall School Associates June 26, according to records and the Davidson County Register of Deeds.

Tags: Nashville, Real estate

During the 1980s, Feshbach and his two brothers, Kurt and Joe, built up a $1 billion Feshbach Brothers investment fund that specialized in short selling -- or betting on stock declines -- winning him praise and vilification on Wall Street. Feshbach Brothers generated rich returns over 30 percent from 1982 to 1990, but later suffered a reversal of fortunes and liquidated in 1992.

Tags: Feshbach Brothers, Matt Feshbach, MLF Investments

The Church of Scientology -- the largest downtown property owner -- expects to begin work on the interior of its world spiritual headquarters almost 10 years after it first began construction of the building.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate, Super Power

The Scientology critic known as “Wise Beard Man” returned to YouTube this week after successfully filing counter-notifications to copyright claims that had earlier been made against his account. The takedown and delayed return illuminate another of the lesser-known shoals of the DMCA safe harbor, the 512(i)(1)(A) “repeat infringers” consideration.

Tags: Anonymous, DMCA, Free Speech, Mark Bunker, Viacom, Wise Beard Man, XenuTV, YouTube

A NORTHSIDE Scientologist has defended his religion and criticised those who have held continual protests outside the Church of Scientology in recent months. An opposition group called ‘Anonymous' has demonstrated outside the centre, which is located on Middle Abbey Street, once a month since the start of the year.

Tags: Anonymous, Gerard Ryan

This is nothing new. New Religious Movements (NRMs) are usually faced with such suspicion. Especially when referred to as a "cult", as is often the case with Scientology. Interestingly, articles that were outright attacks on the group were rare. The negative reports do not represent the church in a controversial or dangerous manner, but rather in a satirical fashion. There is a clear bias represented and although the media is not informing its readers to fear Scientology, it is stigmatising the group into a joke and presenting its central doctrine as a comic story. Scientology is clearly losing the PR war, particularly in Australia.

When Rev. John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology of New York, came face-to-face with a small contingent of Anonymous protestors this past Monday, he didn't engage them in a spiritual debate. Instead, he leaned into one member on a Times Square street and said, “Let me tell you this: I smell pussy.” Then, looking squarely at the Anon added, “You in particular.”

Tags: Anonymous, John Carmichael, NYC

If protest materials can be confiscated, then not much is left of the right to protest against Scientology. It read "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult." The lad was, by his account, warned "within five minutes of arriving" by police on the scene that his sign was unlikely to be permitted because it contained the word "cult." Shortly thereafter, a policewoman read him a section (introduced in 1994) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act:

Tags: Anonymous, London, UK

Narconon Scotland has leafleted homes in the city, but the leaflets do not mention the quasi-religious group, despite using the principles of Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard to treat addicts. Tom Wood, chairman of the Edinburgh Drug and Alcohol Action Team, said: "We know of this group, but we would only ever encourage people to attend credible counselling groups."

Tags: Narconon, Scotland, UK

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are it's a ... This was our thought upon reading the news that a teenage member of Scientology-protesting group Anonymous, who goes by the name EpicNoseGuy on the Enturbulation forums, had his sign confiscated at the May 10th anti-"Church" of Scientology protest in Queen Victoria Street by the City of London police, and has been issued with a court summons - all for using the word "cult" to describe the controversial "religion".

Tags: Anonymous, Cult, EpicNoseGuy, Free Speech, London, UK

The teenage boy facing prosecution for holding a placard saying that scientology is a "cult" serves to demonstrate the ridiculous mess that the Government has made of its attempts to protect religious observance in law. This nameless boy has been served with a summons under section five of the Public Order Act, which seeks to restrict signs that might be considered "threatening, abusive or insulting." Meanwhile, we have a Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which passed into law in 2006 with the express purpose of making it an offence to incite hatred on religious grounds.

Tags: ENG, UK

Actor Will Smith is funding his own private school that will teach youngsters using an educational system devised in part by the Scientology cult. The curriculum at Smith's New Village Academy of Calabasas, on which he has spent nearly £500,000, uses different educational theories including "study technology" – a learning method developed by L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Delphi, Study tech, Will Smith

About three dozen downtown business owners are upset with a group of anti-Scientology protesters and want the City Council to do something about them. But city leaders Tuesday said there's little they can do. "Suspending the First Amendment is something we shouldn't spend a whole lot of time on," council member Paul Gibson said.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater

“I felt sorry for Tommy. If he's reading this, I want to tell him: you're losing your soul. Look in the mirror. You look like a liar. And remember what happened to Mike Rinder. You're starting to look like that,” Beghe adds, referring to a former high-level official who recently “blew,” or left the organization. “They used Rinder as a spokesman, when he was the kind of person you'd cast in a movie as the villain. It was chilling. And Tommy is getting that look.”

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Disconnection, Jason Beghe, John Sweeney, Mike Rinder, RPF, Tommy Davis

Passengers aboard a Church of Scientology cruise ship, including actor Tom Cruise, could be forgiven for fearing such an eventuality after potentially coming into contact with blue asbestos earlier this month. The vessel, christened "Freewinds," was said to be under seal at Curacao after asbestos fibers were found. The ship, age forty years, was recently refurbished, and there is suspicion that passengers may have come in contact with asbestos fibers. The ship is used as a floating education center and for VIP parties. Besides Cruise, who is a senior Scientologist, jazz great Chick Corea and singer Lisa Marie Presley were among the celebrities on board.

Tags: Asbestos, Freewinds

Forgive us if we're breaking rules 1 and 2, but it didn't take us long to figure out that this fake Wii Battletoads website (site has changed, see Google cache for original) was a viral marketing campaign against the Church of Scientology's "Fair Game" policy.

Tags: Anonymous, Fair Game, Toronto

The crowd, wearing British folk-hero Guy Fawkes masks in the style of the book and film V for Vendetta, surrounded the bronze man with a parasol and were heading towards a clash with the disciples of Hubbard and Cruise. “We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forget,” they proclaim.

Tags: Anonymous, Disconnection, Fair Game, Gwen Mayfield-Barnard, Portland

Prodata, an award-winning Danish IT company with customers such as the Royal Family and public broadcaster DR, is run by some of the most prominent forces within the Danish branch of Scientology. Prodata has a pyramid-like structure with approximately 200 partners in 12 countries and around 2000 freelance IT professionals. The company has been voted best IT company in Denmark and been awarded financial daily Børsen's Gazelle prize.

Tags: Denmark, Henning Jørck, Prodata, Tom Thygesen Daugaard

Tribal members are getting advice, free trips—and perhaps a new rehab program—from their connection with L. Ron Hubbard's church. Is this the help they need?

Tags: Alfred Johnson, Blackfeet, Chief Earl Old Person, Clark Carr, Galaxy Press, John Goodwin, L. Ron Hubbard, Larry Ground, Narconon, Patricia Devereaux, Rick Ross, Running Crane, Saginaw Grant, Steven Kent

And yet Scientology is back on YouTube. This time, it's paying for the account. It's also paying for ads on the site, looking to drive some traffic onto its new channel. "Get the facts," the ads say. YouTube did not respond to requests for comment. But Scientology did. First, we received a phone call from a woman with an otherworldly French accent. "This is the Church," she said. "We may be able to answer your questions. But first we want your email address."

Tags: Anonymous, Mark Bunker, XenuTV, YouTube

The Church of Scientology made it clear from its first contacts with "Nightline" that it would not publicly discuss the ecclesiastical circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Mrs. Hill from Church staff, regardless of the nature of her allegations.

Tags: David Miscavige, Jenna Miscavige Hill

The Church of Scientology has been given the go-ahead to build a new facility on Dublin Road. Columbus City Council on Monday night voted 7-0 on a variance that will allow the organization to construct a 50,000-square-foot church in the old Time-Warner headquarters, 1266 Dublin Road, just outside of Grandview Heights.

Tags: John Carmichael, Ohio, Real estate

The 48-year-old was the first celebrity to speak out against the religion, telling how his 12 years with the church damaged him and accusing Scientology of being “destructive” and a “rip-off”. After Beghe's criticism of the church made headlines yesterday, YouTube suspended the account of the prolific Scientology critic who posted the video, making the clip unavailable to viewers.

Tags: Jason Beghe, Mark Bunker, YouTube

Law enforcement officers have searched the office of the Narconon Center of Promoting Healthy Lifestyle in the town of Dimitrovgrad in Ulyanovsk region.

Tags: Narconon, Russia

The actor, who estimates he gave the church $1 million (£500,000) over 12 years, has also given an interview to New York publication The Village Voice, explaining the church's relationship with Hollywood heavyweights. Beghe claims Scientology's fascination with celebrities is not just a PR exercise but that the late founder L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, had made it clear he wanted celebrities recruited to the church. If a member could recruit a celebrity, Beghe said, they were rewarded by having the contents of their “ethics file” – the record of misdeeds admitted during “auditing” or spiritual counselling – cleared.

Tags: Ethics file, Jason Beghe, Mark Bunker, XenuTV, YouTube

A TV star who once spruiked for the Church of Scientology, has escaped the religion and slammed it on YouTube, dubbing it 'destructive' and a 'rip off'.

Tags: Jason Beghe, YouTube

In 2005, Beghe appeared in promotional spots for the Church of Scientology. But now Beghe has escaped the Church after taking courses since 1994. He's made a video that's up on YouTube.

Tags: Jason Beghe

The Internet-based group Anonymous held its third protest in about three months Saturday outside the headquarters of the Church of Scientology. Although it started with about 50 people at 3 p.m., the number swelled to about 200 an hour later. Joshua Nussbaum, 20, an organizer, said the point of Saturday's protest was to focus public attention on what he says is the church's practice of ostracizing loved ones perceived as a threat.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater, Pat Harney

Demonstrations were held in several cities across Canada and around the world against the Church of Scientology Saturday. The rallies were organized by a group calling itself Anonymous, a loose coalition of protesters who wore masks to hide their identity to prevent what they fear is retaliation by Scientology hardliners.

Tags: Anonymous

"Scientology seduces you into thinking that it's a process through which you can truly become yourself. But ultimately, what it turns you into is a Scientologist — a brainwashed version of yourself."

Tags: Andreas Heldal-Lund, Auditing Folders, Bodie Elfman, Celebrity Centre, David Miscavige, David Petit, Jason Beghe, Mark Bunker, Milton Katselas, Tom Cruise

The Church of Scientology plans to move into a former Time Warner building on Dublin Road on the Northwest Side, near Grandview Heights. The church has to move out of its Downtown headquarters, 30 N. High St., because there isn't enough room, said the Rev. John Carmichael, president of the Church of Scientology of New York.

Tags: John Carmichael, Ohio, Real estate

Tags: Anonymous, Enturbulation, Youth for Human Rights

The Church of Scientology has acquired the famous Johannesburg landmark, the Kyalami Castle, to be the home of its new advanced spiritual retreat.

Tags: Real estate, South Africa

The report noted that the Education Ministry was unaware of the religious leanings of the one kindergarten when granting a license, which in and of itself betrayed a worrying lack of supervision over the Israeli education system.

Tags: Israel

At least three kindergartens spread out through Israeli urban sprawl offer children educational teachings of controversial cultist movement. Only one institute received municipal approval, but failed to note its religious leanings

Tags: Israel

If you cant beat them, join them. The Church of Scientology has enabled video on its Web site in an effort to further disseminate its religious message, a month after a widely publicized online campaign sought to discredit and "dismantle" the controversial religion.

Tags: Anonymous

On the heels of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, about 75 protestors from the group known as "Anonymous" hit the streets of Clearwater Saturday afternoon, protesting in front of Scientology's Clearwater headquarters, just a few days after a judge rejected the church's petition for a restraining order.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater

Tags: Anonymous, Karin Pouw, Mark Bunker, Wikileaks

After an embarrassing string of high-profile defection and leaked videos, Scientology is under attack from a faceless cabal of online activists. Has America's most controversial religion finally met its match?

Tags: Andrew Morton, Anonymous, Bruce Hines, Chuck Beatty, Clearwater, Dave Touretzky, David Miscavige, Donna Shannon, Fair Game, Golden Age of Tech, Guardian Office, Int Base, Jenna Miscavige Hill, Karin Pouw, Lisa McPherson, Lisa McPherson Trust, Matt Feshbach, Mike Rinder, Nicholai Allen, Office of Special Affairs, Operation Freakout, Patricia Greenway, Paulette Cooper, Peter Alexander, Richard Behar, RTC, Sea Org, Super Power, Tory Christman

On Thursday Circuit Judge Douglas Baird turned down the second of two requests to prevent protesters approaching within 500ft (150m) of church buildings on March 15, the birthday of church founder L. Ron Hubbard. The church used laws more commonly applied in cases of domestic abuse. Its petition failed because it was unable to establish a credible list of named individuals associated with earlier protests, or demonstrate that anybody it complained of posed a threat.

Tags: Anonymous, Judge Baird

Three Assembly of God ministers in American Samoa have staged a protest to discourage people from taking part in Scientology meetings.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

Timed to coincide with Scientology's celebration of founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, it was the second major protest in Clearwater by a loose-knit Internet activist group that goes by the name Anonymous.

Tags: Anonymous, Chuck Beatty, Clearwater, Frank Hibbard, Joanie Sigal, Pat Harney, Steve Sigal

The Church of Scientology was told again Thursday it could not have a court order restraining Anonymous protesters this weekend, largely because the church's foe is as elusive as thin air. But in its zeal to identify those who threatened the church, Scientology misfired, according to one woman who says she got fingered just because she works at Starbucks, near the church's headquarters.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater, Judge Baird, Pat Harney

The church filed a suit for an "injunction for protection" from a group called Anonymous.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater

Police are investigating a suspicious package found behind Scientology's downtown center today. Fourth Street between Central Avenue and 2nd Avenue N is blocked along with 1st Avenue N between 4th Street and 3rd Street. The building was evacuated.

Tags: Bomb threat

The Church of Scientology tried to stop protesters from returning to the sidewalks outside its headquarters this week by filing a type of petition in court usually used by women in fear for their safety. And in large part because of that approach, a Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge denied it late Wednesday afternoon.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater, Heber Jentzsch, Judge Linda Allan

Circuit Judge Douglas Baird today denied a motion for a temporary injunction sought by the Church of Scientology to prevent protesters from getting within 500 feet of Scientology buildings.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater, Judge Baird

The American Samoan governor, Togiola Tulafono, says the government cannot prohibit the display of Scientology Church billboards.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

With the Internet activist group Anonymous threatening a second round of protests against Scientology this weekend, the Clearwater-based church went to court late Tuesday, filing a petition for a temporary restraining order. The petition was filed just before the close of court Tuesday afternoon, and the St. Petersburg Times could not obtain a copy of the petition.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater, Legal, Pat Harney

Anonymous is protesting the bodies that lay in the Church's wake; the indoctrination and threats; the harmful practices and harassment of critics through its “Fair Game” policy. Anonymous finds beauty in truth and freedom and abhors fraud, delusion and defamation, ideas which the CoS traffic in.

Tags: Anonymous

Highland Beach - A group that sent out thousands of unsolicited copies of a guidebook promoting Scientology precepts is ending the practice after receiving hundreds of complaints from elected officials.

Tags: Florida, Karin Pouw, The Way to Happiness

Ron's been worm food for more than a score of years now, so it probably won't matter to him that the best birthday party being held in his name will take place a couple of days late. On Saturday, March 15, the surprisingly upstart, leaderless movement known as “Anonymous” will be holding its second worldwide anti-Scientology protests at Hubbard sites in more than a dozen countries.

Tags: Anonymous, Earthlink, Fair Game, Graham Berry, Mark Bunker, Paulette Cooper, Robert Cipriano, Tory Christman, Wise Beard Man

The Ides of March are nigh, says Anonymous, the group whose members have been organizing anti-Scientology protests around the world. This time they're planning Operation Party Hard for March 15, the birthday of sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, the man who created the madness.

Tags: L. Ron Hubbard

Mayors in Dallas, San Francisco, and Winnipeg also were not amused to see their photographs, cities' seals, even campaign slogans on the covers, according to news articles. But when a Scientology center opened in Buffalo in 2003, Mayor Anthony Masiello approved distribution of the booklet with a picture of city hall and the city seal. "Scientology is an abusive cult group, and any elected official who knowingly allows his office to be connected with the distribution of Scientology literature has betrayed the trust placed in him by the electorate," wrote David S. Touretzky, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and Scientology critic.

Tags: Boca Raton, Dallas, David Touretzky, Florida, Highland Beach, San Francisco, The Way to Happiness, Winnipeg

It's been close to three years since Keith Henson left Brantford and ran for the border, just ahead of the authorities who wanted to deport him to the U.S. The Scientology critic had lost his battle to stay in Canada. He arrived in Canada in 2002 to avoid being jailed in the U.S. over his anti-Scientology activities, which included picketing various sites and posting some Scientology information on the Internet.

Tags: Canada, Keith Henson

West Island Liberal MP Bernard Patry defended his recent endorsement of anti-drug organization Narconon Trois Rivière's prevention campaign despite the latter's supposed links to the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Bernard Patry, Canada, Carole Arvisais, Hubert Benoît, Jean Larivière, Jean Patrick Laflamme, Narconon, Quebec, Stephen Kent

Is Scientology as big a menace as it's made out to be? Shant Fabricatorian talks to some of the Church's longtime opponents

Tags: alt.scientology.war, Andreas Heldal-Lund, Anonymous

The anti-Cruise crusading "Anonymous" kicks off its lobbying campaign against Scientology today, with a letter, phone, and fax directive targeting the group's tax-exempt status.

Tags: Anonymous, IRS

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped." So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

Tags: Bruce Wiseman, Chilling Effects, David Miscavige, Douglas Frantz, EBay, Gawker, Jenna Miscavige Hill, Karin Pouw, Kendra Wiseman, Operation Clambake, Scott Pilutik

Jonathan Kay's article on Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard ("In fear of Xenu," Jan. 18.) certainly didn't give the picture of the religion I have known for the past 40 years.

Tags: Canada, Yvette Shank

Martine Boublil, who was found half naked on a mattress infested with insects and worms in a room full of rubbish on January 21, is still recovering in hospital from the ordeal but will return to France "sometime next week," the spokesman told AFP from the northern Sardinian town of Nuoro.

Tags: False imprisonment, Kidnapping, Martine Boublil

There are people who've been where you are now, Jenna Miscavige for example. Her uncle, David Miscavige, is the head of the Church of Scientology. Jenna, like many people who've been inside the Church of Scientology, state it is difficult to leave. Scientology has a process which members must go through in order to leave and part of that process is being declared a “suppressive person” or a “potential trouble source.” These SP's and PTS have reported being threatened, harassed, disconnected from loved ones still inside the Church, and ultimately cut off completely from their former lives for choosing to leave.

Tags: David Miscavige, Disconnection, Jenna Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman

She's on the board of the Church of Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights and has sponsored bills on its behalf to limit use of psychiatric medications, though at least one of her children has struggled with drug and mental health problems and another was an alcoholic.

Tags: CCHR, Karen Johnson

Tags: Heber Jentzsch, Kendra Wiseman

Authorities have shut down a child-care facility in Munich, saying it was trying to indoctrinate young minds with Scientology. The war between the California "church" and the German government continues.

Tags: Germany, Office for the Protection of the Constitution

CITY authorities in Munich, southern Germany, have closed down a kindergarten with immediate effect after discovering it was run by the Church of Scientology, the municipality said overnight.

Tags: Germany

Detoxification program is touted by officers, but legislator is asking for scientific proof it works

Tags: Bio-Cleansing Centers, Detox, Mark Shurtleff

In one case involving a consultation for the Church of Scientology, Dr. Wecht authorized Ms. Young to send an invoice that overcharged for an airline trip by $686, plus $80 for a limousine ride he never took. Over the next few years, Dr. Wecht would earn roughly $75,000 from the same client for his services.

Tags: Cyril Wecht, Lisa McPherson

Mr. Wilson spent much of the afternoon showing Ms. Young numerous invoices she sent to Dr. Wecht's private clients -- including Exxon Mobil Corp., the Church of Scientology and a Jewish center in Florida -- that overcharged for airfare, sometimes by more than $1,000.

Tags: Cyril Wecht, Lisa McPherson

"Part of me thinks they fixed up this dump and they don't bother anybody," says one neighbor. "But for an organization with a secretive and cultish reputation, I'm not really comfortable with the way they came into this community, telling everyone a dozen different stories."

Tags: Portland

Lonsdale became a public nemesis of the church in 2006 when he began videotaping outside its downtown Clearwater offices, the church's spiritual headquarters. He often stood next to a sign that said, "Cult Watch. Now Filming!"

Tags: Lisa McPherson Trust, Pat Harney, Shawn Lonsdale

Shawn Lonsdale, a vocal Scientology critic who both directed his own anti-church documentary and appeared in a BBC Panorama documentary titled Scientology And Me, was found dead in his home over the weekend in an apparent suicide, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Tags: Shawn Lonsdale

CLEARWATER - A Church of Scientology critic was found dead over the weekend in what police are calling a suicide.

Tags: Lisa McPherson Trust, Luke Lirot, Pat Harney, Robert Minton, Shawn Lonsdale

A federal appeals court is being asked to tell the Internal Revenue Service to open up a secret deal with the Church of Scientology that reportedly allows members to deduct certain educational, or "auditing," expenses, a benefit denied members of other faiths in the United States.

Tags: IRS, Judge Silverman, Judge Wardlaw, Monique Yingling, Sklar, United States Court of Appeals

Pierrefonds-Dollard MP Bernard Patry added his name to a banner declaring he promised to live a life without drugs, a symbolic gesture aimed to help non-profit organization Narconon Trois-Rivières preach prevention to grade school students across Quebec.

Tags: Bernard Patry, Canada, Jean Lapointe, Narconon, Quebec

CLEARWATER - Shawn Lonsdale, whose one-man crusade against Scientology made him a public enemy of the church, was found dead at his home over the weekend in an apparent suicide. He was 39.

Tags: Luke Lirot, Pat Harney, Randy Payne, Shawn Lonsdale

And yet this latest turn against the organization founded in 1954 by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard has an air of farcical comedy to it. Why? Why aren't civil rights organizations and anti-hate-speech activists pouncing on these protesters? The reason, I suspect, is that most of us do not consider Scientology a religion, at least not a religion that resembles in the slightest the world's major faiths.

Tags: Anonymous

Over the years, Priya, who owns and runs a leadership training company, and Bunty, have been travelling to the country's main Scientology centre in New Delhi on their quest for knowledge. But this will change as Mumbai will soon get its very own Scientology centre. “We're still looking for a location and we need to recruit and train people who can run it,” said Scientologist Thomas Goeldentiz, who was recently in Mumbai. "We should be ready by early next year."

Tags: India, Mumbai, Priya Kumar, Thomas Goeldentiz

The Church of Scientology is no stranger to controversy. From its practice of charging high prices for spiritual counsel ("auditing") to its vicious "Attack the Attacker" stance on criticism, there are simply a lot of aspects of Scientology that don't sit well with the general public.

Tags: Anonymous, Lisa McPherson, South Park, Tom Cruise

Convinced, Yong joined the church, signed up for a $700 business management course and spent hundreds more on Scientology literature. But within two months his longest-serving employee had quit because of harassment by Wenborn, who had persuaded Yong she was "draining his life-force". Yong landed before the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) and in 2006 was fined $13,000 for unjustified dismissal. Wenborn has returned to Australia, but other members are still hounding Yong. "They never stop," he says. "I kick one out and another comes in."

Tags: Allison Axford, Andrew Morton, Andrew Wenborn, Andrew Yong, David Miscavige, Graham Berry, Mike Ferris, New Zealand, Real estate, Reed Slatkin, Tom Cruise, WISE

Hollywood actor Tom Cruise was used as a profile for domestic violence at a NSW Police conference in Wollongong yesterday. Internationally renowned social psychologist and author Dr Dina McMillan said Cruise demonstrated an "absolute exceptional case" of controlling behaviour which he was using on third wife Katie Holmes. "His behaviour towards Katie Holmes, how they got together, everything has all the indicators of an abusive relationship," she told the Mercury.

Tags: Dina McMillan, Tom Cruise

"There are concrete indications that the plaintiff (Scientology), as well as its members, maintains ambitions against the free, democratic basic order," said a statement by the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court on Tuesday. It added, however, that the verdict "specifically left open whether Scientology is considered a religious organization" or a business.

Tags: Germany, Karin Pouw, Legal, Sabine Weber, The Way to Happiness

It is clear from your questions that you have no intention of writing a fair and balanced piece. Your questions ask little more than “When did you stop beating your wife?” and reflect your bias and religious bigotry.

Tags: David Miscavige, Karin Puow

A German court has deemed that the country's government is within its rights to watch over the Church of Scientology. But the debate over whether Scientology is a sect or a genuine religion is sure to continue.

Tags: Germany

A spokesperson for the Church of Scientology labelled Sunday's protest outside its office at Yonge & St Mary—part of a worldwide series of protests—a "religious hate crime" and said that the "hate crimes of Anonymous should be condemned," as reported in Torontoist, CTV and the Toronto Sun, among others. That got us thinking. Accusing someone of a "hate crime" is pretty damning. Are the protestors guilty of it? Our preliminary answer, based on the facts known to us: probably—and almost certainly—not.

Tags: Anonymous, Canada, Toronto

As for most of the other 200 anti-Scientology protesters who gathered outside the religious group's Yonge St. offices yesterday, they did care. Many said they believe that if the controversial religious group learned their identities, it would attempt to keep tabs on them.

Tags: Anonymous, Canada, Kim Palmer, Toronto, Yvette Shank

Twenty-five activists gathered across Whalley Avenue from the Church of Scientology Sunday to protest the religion's recent attempts to keep a promotional video featuring actor Tom Cruise under wraps.

Tags: Anonymous, Carol Yingling, Connecticut, Fair Game, Office of Special Affairs, Patty Pieniadz, RFW

A group of more than 50 masked protesters gathered yesterday outside of the Church of Scientology of Boston headquarters on Beacon Street to demonstrate against the policies of the church. Protesters said the event was part of a worldwide demonstration against the church by Anonymous, an informal Internet-based group.

Tags: Anonymous, Boston, Gerard Renna

Anonymous, the loosely bound group of Internet activists who have targeted the Church of Scientology in recent weeks, showed up Sunday morning to protest at the church's largest Los Angeles locations.

Tags: Anonymous, Los Angeles, Lynn Campbell

Masked demonstrators gathered outside London's Church of Scientology in protest against the organisation. The group, called Anonymous, said they wanted to highlight the organisation's "inherent flaws" and "fight for freedom of knowledge and information". The City of London Police said about 200 people took part in the peaceful protest in Queen Victoria Street.

Tags: Anonymous, Janet Laveau, London, UK

DRESSED in black, sporting masks and handing out leaflets on a sunny Sunday morning, more than 30 people stand on an Edinburgh pavement protesting against the Church of Scientology in Scotland. John is among them, a 29-year-old from Edinburgh who lifts up his grinning Guy Fawkes mask so he can explain why he's standing with complete strangers on the city's South Bridge with a flyer urging Scots not to "let a UFO cult take us back to the Middle Ages".

Tags: Anonymous, Edinburgh, UK

One side of East Carson Street had members of a "violent cult." The other side had "cyber-terrorists, communists and religious bigots." At least, that's how the opposing groups saw each other.

Tags: Anonymous, Bruce Thompson, David Touretzky, Pittsburgh

They were masked and anonymous. They held placards, answered questions and gave pamphlets away. Yesterday, a group of about 20 people braved frigid weather to join a worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology. They stood outside the church on King Street in downtown Kitchener for about an hour at 11 a.m.

Tags: Anonymous, Canada, Kitchener

No religious organization in recent memory has drawn so much ire from so many different groups, as the Church of Scientology has. Then again, the church isn't really a religious organization.

Tags: Anonymous, Germany, IRS

They are anonymous. They are legion. And they are either an elaborate, viral Internet prank played by bored adolescents on a painfully easy target – the much-maligned, star-studded Church of Scientology – or the amalgamation of a vast network of resourceful cyber-activists intent on wobbling the organization permanently.

Tags: Anonymous, Canada, David Miscavige, Mark Bunker, Operation Snow White, Toronto, Wise Beard Man

Wearing face masks, purple latex gloves and dressed all in black, a group of protestors who call themselves "Anonymous" held signs in front of the Church of Scientology of Arizona near Indian School Road and 7th Street in Phoenix Sunday morning to protest the controversial church.

Tags: Anonymous, Phoenix

The crowd along Cleveland Street swelled to nearly 200 people as the Anonymous protest against the Church of Scientology got underway late Sunday morning, but the reaction of bystanders was mixed.

Tags: Anonymous, Clearwater

A GLOBAL day of protest against the Church of Scientology organised by internet group "Anonymous" began today with demonstrations outside the church's Australian offices. About 150 people gathered at the Church of Scientology building in the Sydney CBD this morning, most of them carrying picket signs and wearing costumes or masks. At 11am, when the protest was scheduled to start, staff inside the building set up a video camera pointed at the street below and locked the front doors. Two security guards stood outside the building and were later joined by several police officers.

Tags: Anonymous, Australia, Sydney

f you passed the Church of Scientology's Toronto chapter at Yonge & St. Mary on Sunday, you may have momentarily entertained a dark fantasy that Tom Cruise would emerge from the masked masses amid gales of manic laughter, igniting the dissenting throng with bolts of righteous lightning.

Tags: Anonymous, Canada, Gregg Hagglund, Toronto, Yvette Shank

Judges on a 9th Circuit panel hearing a New York couple's appeal of an adverse Internal Revenue Service tax ruling this week reportedly appeared sympathetic to the couple's claim that the federal agency isn't treating members of all religious groups fairly concerning charitable deductions for educational expenses.

Tags: IRS, Sklar

It's always dangerous for a newspaper to predict the outcome of a court case, but at one point, Mr. Gerstein reports, Judge Kim Wardlaw put it this way: "The view of the IRS is it can unconstitutionally violate the Constitution by establishing religion, by treating one religion more favorably than other religions in terms of what is allowed as deductions, and there can never be any judicial review of that?" A hapless lawyer for the IRS tried to argue that's not what she was saying. Snapped two judges from the bench: "That's the bottom line." Added Judge Wardlaw: "This does intrude into the Establishment Clause."

Tags: IRS, Judge Wardlaw, Sklar, United States Court of Appeals

A Jewish couple's bid to take a tax deduction they say the Internal Revenue Service reserves only for members of the Church of Scientology is getting a friendly reception from a federal appeals court, increasing the possibility of a ruling that could create a tax break for taxpayers of many religions who pay tuition to religious schools.

Tags: IRS, Sklar

Kimora Lee Simmons -- celebrity designer, ex wife of Russell Simmons, and great beauty -- is not happy with Scientology.

Tags: David Miscavige, The Way to Happiness

Miscavige is under fire these days, by the way. His 24-year-old niece, Jenna, has left the group after being raised in it, and has a lot to say about what's gone on behind the scenes. She's already turned up on one syndicated show, "Inside Edition," and likely will have more to say in the next few days, I am told.

Tags: David Miscavige, The Way to Happiness

A new Scientology opponent has arisen in the last few weeks, composed of computer-savvy young people who accuse the church of stifling free speech.

Tags: Anonymous, Arnaldo Lerma, Pat Harney

A shadowy, loose-knit consortium of activists and hackers called "Anonymous" is just the latest thorn in Scientology's side.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Anonymous, David Miscavige, Jenna Miscavige Hill, Mark Bunker, Tom Cruise

The nine-minute clip features a wide-eyed Cruise trumpeting his Scientology beliefs with what many have described as messianic zeal. Soon after the video surfaced on the Web, the Church of Scientology International demanded it be removed -- claiming the posting of the stolen video violated its copyright. Most of the sites have complied. One -- the New York-based Gawker -- has not, defiantly claiming a right to post the video under the copyright doctrine of fair use.

Tags: Arnaldo Lerma, Gawker, International Association of Scientologists, Keith Henson, Tom Cruise

Neither Tom Cruise nor the Church of Scientology is a stranger to media attention, though lately that attention has taken a very different tone. You"ve no doubt read or seen something about Tom Cruise's controversial video, which seems to have cropped up across the media spectrum. You"ve also likely seen the Church of Scientology's (Scientology) cease and desist letter demanding its removal, and the subsequent online declaration of war by a group calling itself "Anonymous," which promises to "systematically dismantle" the Church. The resulting legal and public relations battle has given bloggers and lawyers alike no shortage of entertainment.

Tags: Anonymous, Legal, RFW

According to the Page Six report, Jenna now says she is being harassed by the "church." "The church has contacted several of my friends, telling them that I am smearing the church and I am going to be declared a suppressive person and asking my friends if they would disconnect from me and, in at least one case, insisting that they do," Jenna told reporter Philip Recchia for Page Six.

Tags: Andrew Morton, David Miscavige, Disconnection, Fair Game, Jenna Miscavige Hill

Think of it as Wikipedia's police department hotline. The "encyclopedia anyone can edit" includes a page where you can instantly alert the site's brain trust to foul play. It's called the "Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. If you suspect someone has rigged the system, using the encyclopedia to push their own agenda, this is where you turn. But there's a catch. One of the site's leading administrators bears an extreme conflict of interest, but you can't expose him from the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. He created the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard.

Tags: Guru Maharaj Ji, Jimmy Wales, Jossi Fresco, Mike Finch, Prem Rawat, SlimVirgin, Wikipedia

The Church of Scientology, the subject of a barrage of negative headlines in the last few weeks, is claiming that there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

Tags: Janet Laveau, UK

A long-simmering dispute over digital copyrights between the Church of Scientology and its critics has boiled over in recent weeks after video clips turned up on the Internet from a 2004 interview by the church's most famous member, actor Tom Cruise.

Tags: Anonymous, Karin Pouw, Mark Bunker, Prolexic

The hackers were infuriated by the removal from YouTube last month of a Scientologists" video clip featuring Tom Cruise. They have alleged that Scientologists forced YouTube to remove the embarrassing footage, in which the actor hailed the religion as "a blast".

Tags: Andreas Heldal-Lund, Anonymous, Janet Laveau, Karin Spaink, Project Chanology

However, in the last few weeks it has scored a couple of big successes, first by carrying out a denial of service attack on the Church of Scientology's international website, causing it to crash, and a sustained campaign of "Google bombing" - manipulating the way the internet search engine works - to ensure that the Church of Scientology is returned as the first hit whenever anyone enters the search string "dangerous cult".

Tags: Anonymous

The Church of Scientology plans to spend up to $10 million to convert a landmark building in the Exchange District into a church and community outreach centre. Rev. Yvette Shank, president of the church's Canadian office in Toronto, said the church plans to undertake a major refurbishing of the 115-year-old Peck Building, which it quietly acquired last March for a previously unheard of price for the Exchange of $2.2 million.

Tags: Canada, Real estate, Winnipeg, Yvette Shank

Let me start off by paraphrasing a popular disclaimer: I'm not "Anonymous," nor am I affiliated with the mysterious internet group in any way.

Tags: Anonymous

Now Scientology is under attack from a group of internet activists known only as Anonymous. Organised from a Wikipedia-style website (editable by anyone) and through anonymous internet chat rooms, “Project Chanology”, as the initiative is known, presents no easy target for Scientology's lawyers.

Tags: Anonymous

Mailings of a suspicious white powder to 10 Church of Scientology addresses prompted the evacuation of dozens of people and the closure of a major thoroughfare Wednesday as hazmat teams were called to examine the packages.

Tags: California

A group calling itself the Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East, which denies any connection with the Church of Scientology, has sent e-mails to social workers in Sderot offering to help the residents cope with the Kassam rocket attacks.

Tags: APUME, Israel, Mordi Bucai, The Way to Happiness

Longtime Scientologist Nancy Cartwright — best known as the voice of Bart Simpson — last year gave the church $10 million to help spread the word of founder L. Ron Hubbard into other galaxies. It was all part of Scientology's Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth — meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behavior. Surprisingly, Nancy, 50, forked over twice as much as the Scientology's most prominent member, Tom Cruise, who only gave $5 million in an installment plan.

Tags: Nancy Cartwright

The building has been bought by the Church of Scientology, which wants to turn it into its regional headquarters, for about R8-million. Recently approved by the commissioner of revenue as a public benefit organisation, and also tax- exempted, the church has also recently acquired new property in Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.

Tags: Real estate, South Africa

The Church of Scientology of Boston Inc. has bought the historic Alexandra Hotel building at Washington Street and Massachusetts Avenue in the South End and plans to relocate its local headquarters from the Back Bay, following extensive renovations.

Tags: Boston, Real estate

The church's actions have not gone unnoticed. In what is a fantastic example of empowerment the Internet gives to the common user, a grassroots movement of various Internet communities has banded together to attack, dismantle and ultimately destroy the institution. Calling themselves Anonymous, these vigilantes are a collection of various message board communities previously concerned with less noble feats such as raiding virtual online hotels, harassing the furry-fetish community and creating internet memes.

Tags: Anonymous

The author of a controversial new biography on celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise has found an unexpected new ally: the niece of Scientology's current leader, David Miscavige. In an open letter to a senior Scientology official that has been widely posted on the Internet, Jenna Miscavige Hill described how her own family was broken apart by the movement's policies.

Tags: Andrew Morton, David Miscavige, Disconnection, Jenna Miscavige Hill, Karin Pouw, Ron Miscavige, Tom Cruise

On Monday, a group of hackers and activists calling themselves "Anonymous," posted a video message on YouTube addressed to the leaders of the Church of Scientology, accusing them of "campaigns of misinformation" and "suppression of dissent."

Tags: Anonymous, Stephen Kent, Yvette Shank

A group of hackers calling itself "Anonymous" has hit the Church of Scientology's Web site with an online attack.

Tags: Anonymous

When Tom Cruise's pro-Scientology video rant made blogosphere headlines two weeks ago, not everyone saw a strange and incomprehensible fanatic. Darren Shearer, executive director of the Church of Scientology's new Mission of Riverdale, saw a crusader, someone who has put his neck on the line, in his - and the church's - battle for human rights. "We have these rights," he says, "and they're violated all the time by the psychiatric industry. I'm thrilled that someone with a such a large voice has stepped up to the plate." Sitting in the serene, book-lined front room of the Mission, opened last fall in East Chinatown on Broadview, a block south of Gerrard, Mr. Shearer actually bears some resemblance to Mr. Cruise: He's clean-cut, fit, slightly boyish and wild-eyed. And, like Mr. Cruise, he possesses the same self-satisfaction that Scientology instills in its followers, an unshakeable belief in the church's abilities to solve the world's problems.

Tags: Assists, Canada, Darren Shearer, Purification Rundown, Toronto

Tags: Anonymous

Disruptions against the Church of Scientology's official website continued today after a hacker group this week announced intentions to shut down the controversial organization. “We shall proceed to expel you from the internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form,” a YouTube video posted by the hacker group, “Anonymous,” said.

Tags: Anonymous, Prolexic

Tags: Anonymous

Hackers have mounted a wave of attacks against the Church after it tried to take down a leaked video of Tom Cruise

Tags: Anonymous

A hacking group calling itself "Anonymous" has posted a chilling video on the internet, announcing that it plans to "dismantle" the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Anonymous

"Over the years, we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature. All of these things have caught our eye. "With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment. "We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form."

Tags: Anonymous

The callers are all in search of insights from Halperin on his incendiary Hollywood Undercover (Random House), for which the Montreal author/filmmaker posed as a gay actor to infiltrate the Church of Scientology, long rumoured to promise a "cure" for homosexuality. The book was just released on Tuesday.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Gay, Hollywood Undercover, Ian Halperin, John Travolta, Michael Pattinson

The exhibit, which opens today and runs through Monday, is hardly subtle. Its title: “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.” It's a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group formed by members of the Church of Scientology. The exhibit was last on display in the Missouri Capitol and before that in St. Louis.

Tags: CCHR, Kansas, Melanie Wertin

As an historian compares a Tom Cruise PR video for Scientology to the work of Goebbels, Chris Ayres reports from LA: is the organisation a dangerous cult, or a harmless celebrity club?

Tags: Bob Adams, Celebrity Centre, David Miscavige, Fair Game, Karin Spaink, Paulette Cooper, RPF, Sea Org, Tom Cruise, Xenu

But when I next decided to expose a then relatively unknown organization called Scientology (and the related Dianetics) I ended up arrested, facing 15 years in jail, had 19 lawsuits filed against me all over the world by Scientology, was the almost victim of a near murder, was the subject of 5 disgusting anonymous smear letters sent to my family and neighbors about me, and endured constant and continual harassment for almost 15 years.

Tags: Anthony Pellicano, Bruce Brotman, Charles Batdorf, Charles Manson, Charles Stillman, Fair Game, James Meisler, Jerry Levin, Margery Wakefield, Operation Dynamite, Operation Freakout, Paulette Cooper, Ron DeWolf, Roy Wallis

A loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous have declared war on the Church of Scientology by flooding its servers with fake data requests, describing the attacks as punishment for the Church's alleged abuse of copyright laws and alleged brainwashing of its members.

Tags: Anonymous

Los Angeles-based India Scientology Goodwill Tour organized the workshop to make police interactions more effective and people-friendly.

Tags: India, Mariana Vitta

Knopp said: "It may be the case that Cruise's delivery style is not uncommon in certain religious movements in the U.S. "But for Germans with an interest in history, that scene where he asks whether the Scientologists should clean up the world and everyone shouts 'yes' is inevitably reminiscent of Goebbels' notorious speech."

Tags: Germany, Guido Knopp, Karin Pouw, Thomas Gandow, Tom Cruise

British author Andrew Morton - is, according to the Church of Scientology, nothing more than a tissue of lies and, in accord with the church's standard operating procedures, no effort has been spared to disparage book and author. But Australian readers won't get the chance to make up their own minds. Aware of the church's litigious approach to anything critical of its beliefs or philosophies, Australian publishers and distributors have decided it's not worth the trouble to stock the volume. So, whether the Cruise book would have been a best seller here, we"ll never know.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Australia, Free Speech, KSW, Tom Cruise

A SCIENTOLOGY orientation film which accuses the US Government of spending millions on mind control techniques and attempting to "steal" church founder L. Ron Hubbard's work has reappeared online. The grainy 36-minute video, entitled Orientation: A Scientology Information Film, appeared to have been uploaded after being captured by a handheld camera from inside one of the church's introductory sessions.

Tags: Norman Starkey, Orientation

Three French members of the Church of Scientology, suspected of holding a fourth person against their will, were arrested Monday in Nuoro, Sardinia, a local police spokesman told AFP. "The three people belong to the Church of Scientology, whereas the person being held was probably not a member," Fabrizio Mustaro, of the Nuoro Prefecture on the Mediterranean island, told AFP.

Tags: Arrest, False imprisonment, France, Italy, Kidnapping, Martine Boublil

The rotunda, though, is jumping. A group called the Citizen Commission on Human Rights has packed the central space with no fewer than eight flat-panel TVs and 185 feet of six-foot-tall, full-color displays, all of them blasting the practice of psychiatry. The exhibit's title captures its subtlety: “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.”

Tags: CCHR, Kansas City

John Travolta has gone to the defense of Hollywood star and fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise whose religious views have been widely criticized.

Tags: John Travolta, Tom Cruise

Have you been wondering who Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, would vote for to be President?

Tags: Hollywood Undercover, Ian Halperin

POLICE officers across the country have been used by the Church of Scientology to promote its antidrugs campaign in schools. Officers have been handing out booklets that praise the science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, the church's founder, and describe both prescription and illegal drugs as “poison”.

Tags: Cult Information Centre, Detox, Ian Howarth, Say No to Drugs, UK

Scientology "devotes vast resources to squelching its critics", Time magazine wrote in 1991 - and this was before Scientology sued Time Warner for $416m over the article in which that passage appeared. In 2001, the US Supreme Court, in refusing to revisit Scientology's failed suit against Time Warner, cited a 1984 California Superior Court case that found: "The Church or its minions is fully capable of intimidation or other physical or psychological abuse if it suits their ends. The record is replete with evidence of such abuse."

Tags: Cult Awareness Network, Germany, PC folders, SCOTUS, Spain, Time Warner, Tom Cruise

Last night Anderson Cooper, CNN's prettiest anchor, investigated that infamous video of Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise, Scientologist. His correspondent talked to a former member of the church and took us deep into the world of strange symbols and acronyms and claims made by America's favorite tiny grinning superstar actor. Then Cooper replayed a contentious interview with Scientology's head Inquisitor into the crimes of Psychology. Cooper even called the religion a fraud based on pseudo-science (or at least pointed out that that is a "criticism leveled against Scientology"). What's Anderson's beef with LRH?

Tags: Anderson Cooper, Gay, Quentin Hubbard, Trementina

Tom Cruise has branded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) liars for saying the air was clean after 9/11. The 'Mission Impossible' star has revealed how, as a Scientologist, he recognised there was a problem and provided rescue workers in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attack with detoxification therapy based upon the works of Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Tags: Detox, EPA, Jerry Seinfeld, Tom Cruise

Following the lead of other branches throughout the world, the Church of Scientology of Portland has bought a new headquarters building in downtown to meet the needs of its growing membership. The church bought the Stevens Building for $5.4 million from a foundation created by real estate investor Joseph Weston.

Tags: Gwen Barnard, Portland, Real estate, Secondary copy

But almost as interesting is watching the church try to remove the video from the Internet. It's another small skirmish in a war that Scientology has been waging for almost 15 years, since the early days of newsgroups such as alt.religion.scientology, which posted internal church documents in 1994. Lawsuits have been filed, mailing lists have been shut down, homes of discussion group participants have been raided and their computers seized -- an all-out war. When it comes to the Cruise video, it's easy enough to get YouTube to take the clip down, because the company is already extra-sensitive to claims of copyright infringement (Scientology says the video is copyrighted content meant for internal church use) as a result of being sued for $1-billion by Viacom, and so it essentially pulls videos down as soon as it gets a letter from someone who looks like a lawyer. Other websites aren't so easily cowed, however.

Tags: alt.religion.scientology, alt.scientology.war, Gawker, Tom Cruise

TOM Cruise brands federal officials "liars" and takes credit for saving the lives of hundreds of supposedly poisoned workers at Ground Zero in a wacky new Scientology video.

Tags: 911, Downtown Medical, EPA, Mike Bloomberg, Tom Cruise

The main thrill here is voyeuristic, but I'm trying to dignify the viewing experience by imagining that it offers are a few small lessons of social science, clues to the combination of total humility and absolute arrogance that can characterize all types of true believers.

Tags: David Miscavige, Detox, Gawker, Tom Cruise

The crisis has been spearheaded by this week's leaked internet video, showing the star making a bizarre rant in praise of Scientology, on top of the stress caused by the publication of a scandal-drenched biography and his continually misfiring career.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, David Miscavige, Karin Pouw, Katie Holmes, Paul Barresi, Sumner Redstone, Tom Cruise, United Artists

These videos have more material on the Scientology “9/11 rescue worker detox” project I've been talking about for the last couple of days. I've been doing more research on it, and it's just another name for an L. Ron Hubbard-designed technique called the Purification Rundown: sauna, exercise, vitamins. That's all it is. But Scientology uses it for everything and says it can cure anything.

Tags: Detox, Downtown Medical

What the book does assert is that Cruise has become the Scientology cult's principal propagandist in trying to win recruits and extend its reach into Europe. His method includes targeting high-profile individuals, such as the soccer star David Beckham and the businessman James Packer.

Tags: Andrew Morton, David Beckham, James Packer, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise

First came Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise tell-all, now author Ian Halperin turns his attention to the out-of-this-world religion. Hollywood Undercover chronicles Halperin's adventures as a "gay actor" trying to join the church, which he says promised to cure him of his homosexuality.

Tags: Gay, Hollywood Undercover, Ian Halperin, Jon Atack, Michael Pattinson, Quentin Hubbard, Robert Vaughn Young

But perhaps the weirdest part of it all is that Hubbard himself — a paranoid megalomaniac and sci-fi writer who cobbled the roots of Scientology together out of eastern mythology, utopian futurism, and his own eccentric phobias and schoolboy's love of campy sci-fi neologisms — was able to attract followers despite being quite plain about the mercantile side. A quote of his from a 1980 Reader's Digest article sums it up: “If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”

Tags: Celebrity Centre, KSW, Office of Special Affairs, Tom Cruise

"It's rough and tumble, wild and woolly" and "a blast," according to Tom Cruise. But Scientology also confers some serious bling, none shinier than the Freedom Medal of Valour.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Janet Laveau, Tom Cruise

The publishers and author of the book Tom Cruise: An Unauthorised Biography could be sued under Australian defamation laws if anyone in Australia read it online in the form of an e-book.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Australia, Tom Cruise

Ian Halperin, a 43-year-old guerrilla investigative reporter from Montreal, claims to be the first person to record a Scientology employee affirming that they might be able to cure the homosexuality that was hampering his confidence to pursue an acting career, through the process of "auditing." The encounter is just one part of Hollywood Undercover, set for release next week, and billed as "the world's first YouTube-compatible book".

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Gay, Hollywood Undercover, Ian Halperin

Following up on yesterday's item (”Dear Tom, You're Not Helping“): Defamer has another eye-opening piece of Scientology propaganda here, and it deals directly with that exploitative quack Scientology “org” that's been tricking sick 9/11 workers into thinking they're getting better. I'll try to transcribe Tom Cruise's meandering dreck as best as I can. As the narrator's reading the bizarrely written voiceover copy, you see various clips of the 9/11 cleanup, Cruise at Ground Zero wasting people's time, Cruise paying a visit to the worse-than-useless “detox” center, and so forth:

Tags: 911, Detox, NYC

If ever there was evidence that Tom poses a threat to a house plant, let alone a minor child or adult woman, it's contained in a videotape he made on behalf of his religion, Scientology. I got to see it yesterday. It is Tom Cruise: Unhinged. In the video, he claims to be among the few who can really help victims of traffic accidents. He puts himself among the few whose counsel world leaders seek. But why? Because he's one of those who "know."

Tags: Tom Cruise

A video of actor Tom Cruise touting himself and fellow Scientologists as "authorities on the mind" has appeared on the Internet, coinciding with a new biography that examines his role in the movement.

Tags: International Association of Scientologists, Tom Cruise

Well, in case you hadn't heard the news, we got hit with a copyright infringement notice from the Church Of Scientology earlier today.

Tags: Tom Cruise

"I want to know that I"ve done everything I could every day I think of all those people out there who are depending on us. I think about it. It does make me feel we need more work, more help. Get those spectators on the playing field, or out of the arena. Really, that is how I feel about it. I do what I can, and I do it the way I do everything... there's nothing part of the way for me. (Fades out as Cruise laughs )

Morton's portrait of Cruise can be sharp and damning — he depicts him as cold, calculating, manipulative and one who easily cuts off people after they have outlived their usefulness — but he begins sympathetically, noting that the movie star's childhood was a rough-and-tumble one.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Tom Cruise

Independent publisher Henry Rosenbloom says more and more larger publishing houses are being scared off by possible legal threats. "There's been a really chilling effect on the publication of current affairs matters, for instance," he said.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Nicole Kidman, Pan Macmillan, Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise an Unauthorised Biography will not be distributed in New Zealand by the publisher MacMillan.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Dymocks, Tom Cruise

Mr. Cruise, in short, has never had a pulpit like this, and judging by the efforts of his church to remove the video from YouTube and other online video sites, neither does he seek one. The video was apparently meant for Scientologists only, though a call to the church's press office was not returned. Undeterred by legal troubles, several sites have re-posted the video anyway, including The New York Post and Gawker, which vowed to stand its ground. “It's newsworthy,” Nick Denton wrote. “And we will not be removing it.”

Tags: Tom Cruise

Pan Macmillan will not print a local edition of the book Tom Cruise, An Unauthorised Biography in Australia due to legal concerns, a move that has been labelled an act of censorship. But the book, which alleges that Scientology played a major role in the breakdown of the marriage between Hollywood superstar Cruise and Nicole Kidman, will still be imported for sale at independent bookshops.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Nicole Kidman, Pan Macmillan, Tom Cruise

"Obviously their main motivation in having us tour the facility is to let us know who they are," said County Supervisor John Tavaglione. "I got a good feeling from them."

Tags: Catherine Fraser, Cynthia Rathbun, Gilman Hot Springs, Gold Base, Golden Era Productions, John Tavaglione, Karin Pouw, Keith Henson, Melissa Brugger, Muriel Dufresne

A spokeswoman for Macmillan Publishers said Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography would not be available for distribution in New Zealand. She would not comment further.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Macmillan Publishers, New Zealand, Nicole Kidman

In the videos, Cruise expresses his disgust for psychiatrists — vowing to “crush” them with “no mercy” — spews Scientology lingo and addresses the group's dead founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as if he were still alive. Hubbard died in 1986. Cruise, who does not have a college degree, is also described in the videos by a voice-over narrator as a NASA spokesman and an expert on illiteracy.

Tags: Andrew Morton, David Miscavige, Tom Cruise

In lieu of Golden Globes awards speeches, our East Coasted sibling site posted a memorable video package, via Hollywood Interrupted, fêting messianic Scientology mouthpiece Tom Cruise as he accepted their 2005 Freedom Medal of Valor. Like most of Scientology's sacred babblings, the text was never meant to reach outside eyes; the video quickly disappeared from YouTube, soon to shake off from the temporary effects of the tranquilizing serum plunged into its neck and find itself buried alive beneath a patch of carefully attended petunias on the grounds of Gilman Hot Springs HQ.

Tags: Tom Cruise

The dozens of local buildings owned by the Church, many of them historically significant and now prominently marked with posters advertising “Dianetics” or with the eight-pointed cross that serves as one of Scientology's symbols, have entered the landscape of iconic L.A. architecture as a visually stimulating mash of old Hollywood and seventies-style art direction and signage. At Celebrity Centre, where a large yellow sign affixed to a south-facing roof overlooking the 101 Freeway announces the building and its owner, this juxtaposition is especially acute. Diane Kanner, an architectural historian who specializes in twentieth-century Los Angeles, calls the building Château Scientology.

Tags: Art Medeiros, ASI, Bob Adams, Celebrity Centre, Charlize Theron, David Miscavige, FBI, Golden Age of Tech, Greg LaClaire, Hilary Royce, Hollywood Police Activities League, Hubbard Communications Office, IRS, Jenna Elfman, Jim Meskimen, Juliette Lewis, Kelly Preston, Kenneth Anger, Kids on Stage for a Better World, Kirstie Alley, Lynsey Bartilson, Marissa Ribisi, Patrick Renna, Project Celebrity, RPF, RTC, Stephen Kent, Xenu

In advance of his live TODAY show appearance that day, Morton took some time to answer questions from TODAYshow.com readers.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise

"Most people in Hollywood are scared of talking publicly and candidly about Tom Cruise," Morton says. "They know that he and the church (of Scientology) are extremely litigious and can be quite intimidating." Still, Morton says, he conducted about 130 interviews — off and on the record — during the past two years. Most of those named in the book knew Cruise before he rose to stardom. Others have broken with the Church of Scientology. But, Morton says, his other sources include people "who I would have to say didn't speak to me, but, of course, they have."

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Tom Cruise

Church of Scientology New Zealand spokesman Mike Ferris said the book was "pretty scurrilous" and the church would prefer that it not be distributed here.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Mike Ferris, New Zealand, Tom Cruise

Australian book retailers have bowed to pressure from the Church of Scientology and will not stock a biography on Tom Cruise by British writer Andrew Morton.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Australia, Elliot Abelson

AUSTRALIA'S major book retailers have bowed to pressure from the Church of Scientology and will not stock the controversial biography on Tom Cruise by British writer Andrew Morton. Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography will hit American shelves on January 15 and has already generated its fair share of controversy.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Australia, Free Speech, Tom Cruise

The apparent suicide occurred near a neighborhood heavily populated by drug and alcohol rehabilitation homes. Investigators said, however, that Russell was not a client at any, police said.

Tags: Narconon

At a conditional use hearing today at the Albuquerque Planning Department, the Church of Scientology of New Mexico and those opposed to its plan to turn a landmark Downtown building into a Scientology center were not allowed to outline their respective arguments.

Tags: Albuquerque, David Campbell, Real estate, Sanford Block

THE new Andrew Morton biography of Tom Cruise has it wrong: Tom is definitely not gay. He is, however, quite bonkers and whatever it is that's driving him is clearly much weirder than being merely gay.

The most damning thing one learns from reading Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography is that the actor being biographed is a control freak. Also, perhaps, a bit of a self-obsessed bore.

If Andrew Morton's “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography” is published peacefully next Tuesday, one of its basic assertions will be undermined. That is because if Mr. Morton is right about the litigious fervor of either Mr. Cruise, who is the book's ostensible subject, or the Church of Scientology, which is its real one, the publication will be met with dirty tricks, messianic anger and relentless harassment.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise

After a years-long search for a building to call its own, The Church of Scientology of Portland has acquired the historic Stevens Building in an all-cash deal for $5.38 million.

Tags: Portland, Real estate

A Clearwater private school that uses study methods created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is planning to add a new campus in the Largo area. Clearwater Academy International purchased the 2.8-acre lot at the corner of S Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Wyatt Street in August 2006 for $995,000. The school recently applied for a sewer permit on the site.

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Clearwater Academy, Jim Zwers, Real estate

Cruise to sue over shock biography

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, David Miscavige, Tom Cruise

Cruise's lawyers and the Church of Scientology are pondering suing Morton and the book's publisher, St. Martin's Press, for the staggering sum, the New York Daily News reported.

"His book is a rehash of tired old lies about Tom and his religion, some new grotesque lies, like the sick comparison of his child to 'Rosemary's Baby' and the nutty assertion that he's the No. 2 head of the Church of Scientology," said Cruise's longtime lawyer, Bert Fields.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Tom Cruise

"He's very angry," lawyer pal Burt Fields said after speaking with Cruise about the soon-to-be-released bio.

Scary Hollywood Lawyer and Designated Protector of the Cruise Brand Bert Fields was already hurling himself upon the grenades Morton had lobbed in the direction of his prized client (whom the author says has ascended to the position of the vice-pope of Scientology), especially a headline-grabbing, "sick and bizarre" section that claims some Scientologists believe that Suri is L. Ron Hubbard's baster-baby, according to the Mail:

If I am to follow convention, I should dismiss Andrew Morton as a tabloid vulgarian and a northern oik inclined to pomposity. I should also point out that, following the pattern of most of his biographies, he hasn't spoken to his latest cash cow, who happens to be Tom Cruise. Journalists, you will note, are jealous of hacks who bounce out of daily toil and into bestselling authorship, especially when their success reels in millions.

THERE are no tapes of Nicole Kidman talking about her sex life with Tom Cruise - despite blackmail claims in a new book, the Church of Scientology said yesterday. "It's all lies and it's completely gross to even suggest it," said the Australian head of the church, Vicki Dunstan, in defending Scientology's highest-profile recruit.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Australia, Elliot Abelson, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, Vicki Dunstan

According to Morton's book, Mr Miscavige even joined Cruise on honeymoon in the Maldives after his wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006. Cruise denies each of the claims, and Scientology lawyers are believed to be drawing up a lawsuit seeking £50m in compensation from Morton's publishers, St Martin's Press, based in New York.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, David Miscavige, St Martin's Press, Tom Cruise

Representatives for Tom Cruise wasted no time in speaking out against Andrew Morton's new book “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,” saying that even though Cruise has been “a top star for 25 years, (Morton) never spoke to Cruise's business partners, directors, studio executives, friends or family, and the list can go on.”

Tags: Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise

Andrew Morton's unauthorised biography claims Scientology has taken over the 45-year-old actor's life, with its officials selecting many of the staff at his Hollywood mansion. The biographer of Princess Diana alleges Cruise is consulted by Scientology leader David Miscavige on "every aspect of planning and policy" and is tailoring his career to fit the aims of Scientology.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Bill Beslow, Celebrity Centre, David Beckham, David Miscavige, Elliot Abelson, Germany, Gold Base, Jesse Prince, John Travolta, Karen Pressley, Katie Holmes, Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, PTS, Ron DeWolf, Sea Org, Shelley Miscavige, Sofia Vergara, St Martin's Press, Tom Cruise, Victoria Beckham

Biographer Andrew Morton also claims Cruise's former wife, Nicole Kidman, fears the release of tapes made with Scientologists revealing intimate sexual details. Cruise has strongly denied the claims and has already instructed lawyers to draw up a $110 million lawsuit against the book's publisher, St Martin's Press.

Tom, 45, also denies claims that his ex NICOLE KIDMAN was told her sex secrets would be leaked if she criticised the “church”, and that he aims to convert pals DAVID and VICTORIA BECKHAM. He is set to launch a £50million lawsuit when the unauthorised biography goes on sale in the US on January 15.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise

In an unauthorized biography of actor Tom Cruise, Diana biographer Andrew Morton has made some claims that have the Church of Scientology planning to sue publisher St. Martin's Press for £50 million, the Daily Mail reported. The book, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, claims that Cruise is the second-in-command of the Church of Scientology and that the controversial religion has taken over his life.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, David Miscavige, Tom Cruise

THE Church of Scientology has rejected media reports that Australian actress Nicole Kidman was threatened with blackmail after the breakdown of her marriage to its most famous follower, Tom Cruise.

Tags: Elliot Abelson

Scientologists threatened to blackmail Nicole Kidman if she spoke out against the controversial religion after her failed marriage to its most famous follower, Tom Cruise, a new book claims. Author Andrew Morton writes in his unauthorised biography of Cruise that Scientology played a major role in the breakdown of Kidman's marriage to the Hollywood superstar.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bill Beslow, Nicole Kidman, St Martin's Press, Tom Cruise

Lawyers for the Church of Scientology are believed to be drawing up a lawsuit against the British journalist Andrew Morton who has written an unauthorised biography of Tom Cruise claiming the actor is de facto second-in-command of the controversial sect.

But the idea that he is No. 2 in the organization is far-fetched, Abelson said. "That's like saying I'm Jewish, so I have the ability to control the Israeli army," Abelson said, adding that there is no No. 2 in the organization. "The church is run by executives for the church, and he is not part of that and has never been a part of that."

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Elliot Abelson, Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has no plans to read an explosive new tell-all about his life, the actor's camp said Sunday, but he may be readying a multimillion-dollar legal assault against the biography that likens daughter Suri to "Rosemary's Baby.

For online oddsmakers, who have placed bets on every conceivable aspect of Cruise's life including what he and his wife would name their new born and whether Cruise would have a nervous breakdown, are now contemplating whether to offer betting odds on a lawsuit.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has become the de-facto second-in-command of the Church of Scientology and is consulted on every aspect of the controversial group's planning and policy, according to a new book by the royal biographer Andrew Morton.

"He (Morton) has made a number of claims that are false and demonstrably so," said Fields, who added that he had read Morton's book, "Clearly the book is actionable, but I'm not commenting on anything to do with legal issues." The Church of Scientology in London did not reply to an e-mail asking for comment on the allegations. Scientology was founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in Los Angeles more than 50 years ago. In a brief statement on Monday, St Martin's Press spokesman Steve Troha said: "We stand by our book and our author."

It was a sad day in the Dose.ca offices last month, when the British press reported muckraker Andrew Morton's upcoming biography on Tom Cruise was being shelved in the U.K. because it was "too boring." Imagine our delight to discover "too boring" is actually just Brit speak for "so scandalous the publisher is scared silly of getting sued." All hail, Xenu!

It was the best of times and the worst of times for actor Tom Cruise this weekend, thanks respectively to the WGA and British author Andrew Morton.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Lee Ann Devette, Pat Kingsley, Paul Bloch, St. Martin’s Press, Tom Cruise

TOM Cruise has been slammed in a new unauthorised biography which claims his daughter Suri was sired by the head of the Church of Scientology and Cruise himself has become second in command.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, David Miscavige, Elliot Abelson, Gold Base, Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise

A biography of Tom Cruise due out this month may prompt a dispute between its author and the U.S. actor, a report said Sunday. The New York Post reported that based on the book's stance toward Cruise's Scientology beliefs and romantic life, the actor may take offense at author Andrew Morton's work.

Claims that Tom Cruise is the second-in-command of the Church of Scientology and that some scientologists believe his daughter Suri is the product of a sperm donation from Scientology's late founder L. Ron Hubbard are among the explosive charges author Andrew Morton alleges in his new book, "Tom Cruise, An Unauthorized Biography," London's Daily Mail reported Sunday.

The Church of Scientology has paid more than $3 million to buy a vacant eight-story building at the vacant Raymond James Building at Jefferson and Griswold Street, facing Hart Plaza.

Tags: Detroit, Real estate

A bombshell biography of Tom Cruise could put muckraking author Andrew Morton back in the cross-hairs of the megawatt star and Scientology bigwigs who are pilloried in the tell-all. "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography," by Morton - who penned a biography of Princess Diana - is due in bookstores Jan. 15. The Post obtained copies through online retailers. With its claims about the influence of Scientology in the star's life and loves, the book could kick up a storm of controversy with the sect.

Tags: Andrew Morton, Bert Fields, Celebrity Centre, David Miscavige, Elliot Abelson, Katie Holmes, Matt Lauer, Pat Kingsley, Ray Mithoff, Tom Cruise

The expansion is a response to increased demand and to help meet the needs of area church members. Carmichael could not say how many church members there are in Michigan, but he said there are about 3 million members worldwide.

Tags: Detroit, John Carmichael, Real estate

During a Thursday news conference, Chavez cited potential future problems faced by nearby businesses that serve alcohol. Although the church has waived its power to protest the obtaining of new liquor licenses in the area, the mayor wondered if it was possible for such an agreement to be made legally binding.

Tags: Albuquerque, Real estate

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Karin Pouw

March The Church of Scientology buys a historic former bank building at 1801 Grand Blvd. in which to move its local offices and worship center from 39th and Main streets.

Tags: Kansas City, Real estate

In the end, the government of Germany is unlikely to give Scientology the bum's rush it so dearly wishes to.

Tags: Germany

Back in May, I wrote a short blog item for the Blade's web site urging gays to boycott the new “Hairspray” film because the lead role — originated by the inimitable Divine — was being played by John Travolta, the nation's second-most-prominent Scientologist. In the interest of avoiding another round of death threats, let's just say Scientology has a “complicated” history when it comes to its treatment of gays.

Tags: Gay

He casually brushes aside any mention of anti-Scientology protests and critics who have compared him to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. "I really don't have anything to say about it. Just look at the sunset," he said, abruptly changing the subject as he mingled with the cast and crew of the movie Valkyrie and some of Berlin's civic dignitaries at a cocktail reception on a hotel rooftop.

The Church of Scientology has applied for a permit to use the Gizmo building near Fourth and Central. The building will include a high-end cafe, reading room and theater.

Tags: Albuquerque, Real estate

Tom Cruise is reportedly "bitterly disappointed" because he worked hard to charm Germany into tolerating Scientology and it didn't work, according to Hollywood reporter Janet Charlton.

Tags: Germany, Tom Cruise

Raymond James Financial Services sold One Griswold St. in Detroit, MI, to the Church of Scientology for $3.5 million, or approximately $70 per square foot.

Tags: Detroit, Real estate

Opposing forces are squaring off over the Scientologists" plan to open a church Downtown. A Jan. 11 variance hearing at the Albuquerque Planning Department could determine whether the Church of Scientology of New Mexico will finalize its purchase of a prominent Central Avenue building. The hearing will determine if the church should be issued a conditional use permit for the site. The opposition says the church does not fit into the Downtown 2010 Sector Development Plan. The Scientologists say the plan does not preclude such use.

Tags: Albuquerque, Body routing, David Campbell, Real estate, Sanford Block

The Ramona building, a 78-year-old former hotel at Sixth and J streets, will be converted into Sacramento headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Two years after it paid $4.75 million for the downtown Ramona building, the Church of Scientology is about to gain full control of the property.

Tags: Mike Klagenberg, Real estate, Sacramento

Goodwill spokeswoman Michael Ann Harvey said Wednesday that the purchase is still "uncertain." The nonprofit won't know whether it will buy the property until next month. Goodwill has not received all building inspection reports from its due diligence, she said. And some completed reports show potential problems with the condition of the buildings. The 3-acre site, assessed at $3.06-million for tax purposes, is listed for sale at $6-million. The proposed purchase price has not been disclosed.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate

A "For Sale" sign has taken the place of the stone "Church of Scientology" sign that once graced the building's front lawn. The mansion has been on the market for about two months, according to ReMax realtor Dean Graves. "We're exploring moving farther east," said David Slaughter, who holds the local charter issued by Los Angeles" Church of Scientology headquarters. "Having to drive all the way in from Collierville has become a situation for a lot of our parishioners."

Tags: David Slaughter, Memphis, Real estate

A TEAM of Scientology volunteers is conducting disaster relief training for organisations and public services in the Oshana Region. The volunteers are selling Scientology booklets too.

Tags: Eben van Loggerenberg, Nambia, Volunteer Ministers

A Tom Cruise bio is about to drop upon us. St. Martin's Press is thrilled. Tom Cruise is maybe less thrilled. The thing is unauthorized. Also possibly unwanted and unappreciated. In fact, its title is "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography."

Tags: Andrew Morton, Tom Cruise

As in the rest of the world, Scientology is an expanding movement in Germany.

Tags: Germany, Pat Harney

The interior ministers of Germany's 16 states have launched an investigation into the activities of the Church of Scientology, hoping to assemble the evidence to support banning the U.S.-based organization from operating in Germany. But skeptics question whether such a move is politically and legally tenable — or wise.

Tags: Germany, Ralf Stegner, Ulrike Sweden, Wolfgang Schaeuble

The church wants to sell the site, which it bought more than 25 years ago, to consolidate operations in its downtown Clearwater properties, said Scientology spokeswoman Pat Harney. About 200 church families who lived at the U.S. 19 property, a former Quality Inn in unincorporated Pinellas County, have relocated to Sherwood Gardens, which the church bought in 1999.

Tags: Clearwater, Pat Harney, Real estate

Also speaking at the event was David A. Meyer, member of the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance, and President of San Diego's Church of Scientology. Meyer addressed some of the backdoor crimes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that have directly affected the rest of the world.

Tags: David Meyer, International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance

Q.I read that Germany has outlawed Scientology, saying it is not a true religion. Why do we, the United States, let it have tax-exempt status as a church and everything else when it's not a religion? A.The most recent action taken by the Federal Republic of Germany does not outlaw Scientology but may be a precursor to such an edict. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the group will be investigated because "the organization is not compatible with the constitution.” The investigation may lead to a ban.

Tags: Germany

ON STAGE "A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant" More silliness from the people who brought you "Bat Boy: The Musical."

This year, it was discovered Narconon, the Scientology-linked group, has been invited into British schools to lecture pupils on drugs, and the organisation's outpost in East Grinstead – known as the Effective Education centre – attempts to coach mainstream teachers in some of the precepts of Scientology, which advocates a form of self-help invented by its founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Tags: Narconon, UK

In 2005, the medal was a source of Hollywood controversy when Anne Hidalgo a senior socialist politician promised in the name of Delanoe that the mayor intended “to be vigilant” that Tom Cruise would never receive the Grand Medaille due to his membership of the church Scientology, regarded as a cult in official French circles.

Tags: France, Tom Cruise

“Flaherty stated he had taken Dowell's truck and driven it to Canadian, Okla., where he was trying to check into Narconon rehab center,” Rudd said. Rudd said he then called the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Department in Canadian and spoke with an officer who went to the rehabilitation center where the truck and Flaherty were located.

Tags: Narconon

Tags: Kate Ceberano, Youth for Human Rights

The homeland of legendary church reformer Martin Luther said over the weekend it will seek to ban the Church of Scientology – an organization considered to be in conflict with Germany's constitution.

Tags: Germany, Jeannette Schweitzer, Wilfried Handl

Mr Schaeuble and the country's 16 state interior ministers have declared Scientology unconstitutional. And in a newspaper interview, he said: "Scientology is working in Germany to secure political power and influence. Fundamental rights, including human rights like the right to equal treatment, are limited or abrogated. The democratic system is rejected."

Tags: Germany

Germany's domestic intelligence agencies are warning that an effort by the country's interior ministers to ban Scientology could fail. They say the group has failed to gain a foothold in German society and that there isn't enough evidence to support freezing its activities.

Tags: Germany, Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Sabine Weber, Wolfgang Schäuble

The Church of Scientology vowed yesterday to invoke America's help in its battle against the German government, which declared it unconstitutional last week in the first step towards an outright ban. Sabine Weber, president of the church in Berlin, said the organisation would drag the German government through the courts and expected to win, with support from the US State Department.

Tags: Germany, Jeannette Schweitzer, Sabine Weber, Wilfried Handl

Germany paved the way yesterday for a ban on the Church of Scientology, with federal and regional ministers declaring that the US-based organisation contravened the constitution and posed a danger to democratic order. In a sharp escalation of a decade-long row, German officials asked the domestic intelligence agency to gather evidence that could be used in support of a legal move to secure a ban.

Tags: Germany, Sabine Weber

Germany's federal and state interior ministers have declared the Church of Scientology unconstitutional, clearing the way for a possible ban. The ministers have asked Germany's domestic intelligence agency to examine whether the Church's legal status as an association could be challenged. Scientology is not recognised as a religion in Germany.

Tags: Germany

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his 16 regional counterparts have consider Scientology [church website] "an organization that is not compatible with the constitution", and will work to ban it in Germany, Schäuble said at the end of a two-day ministerial meeting Friday.

Tags: Germany

Here's a real bargain for those of you looking for a nice homey place in Central Gardens: The Church of Scientology is offering to sell its Memphis headquarters at 1440 Central for a mere $895,000.

Tags: Memphis, Real estate

German federal and state interior ministers declared the Church of Scientology unconstitutional on Friday, opening the door for a possible ban on the organization. Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and 16 state interior chiefs agreed "that we do not consider Scientology an organization that is compatible with the constitution," Ehrhart Koerting, Berlin's interior minister and chairman of a ministers" conference in Berlin, told reporters.

Tags: Germany

Top German officials announced Friday that they will seek to outlaw the U.S.-based Church of Scientology. The announcement came after a two-day conference of interior ministers of Germany's 16 states well as federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Berlin Interior Minister Erhart Koerting, who presided over the two-day conference, told reporters that Scientology is an organization that is not compatible with the German constitution.

Tags: Germany, Sabine Weber

Germany's top security officials said Friday they consider the goals of the Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation's constitution and will seek to ban the organization.

Tags: Germany, Sabine Weber

Germany's interior ministers announced on Friday that they considered Scientology to be unconstitutional and said they would seek to ban the organization.

Tags: Germany

German interior ministers said Friday they would step up police surveillance of Scientology, the US creed which was established by a science-fiction writer and is accused by German officials of extracting money from its adherents.

Tags: Germany

The interior ministers of the nation's 16 states as well as federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble "consider Scientology to be an organization that is not compatible with the constitution," Berlin Interior Minister Erhart Körting told reporters after a two-day meeting of the officials, on Friday, Dec. 7. Körting said Germany's domestic intelligence agencies would collect material that could possibly serve as the basis for a ban of the sect. Federal Interior Minister Schäuble said there was not yet enough information to justify a ban.

Tags: Germany

The following is a response from the Church of Scientology to German security officials stating they would seek to ban the organization in the country:

Tags: Germany

Some interior ministers have also voiced their support for using this tactic on other groups. "That must also be valid for left extreme or radical foreign establishments," Bouffier said. Such a foreign establishment could include the Church of Scientology, which German politicians have labelled as a money-making cult and denied it recognition as a legitimate religious institution.

Tags: Germany

Hamburg's Interior Minister Udo Nagel wants a national ban in Germany on Scientology, which claims many high-profile adherents, including Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. Nagel's opposition to Scientology is premised on his view of the religion as a commercial enterprise and an anti-constitutional body with aggressive tactics.

Tags: Germany, Udo Nagel

A tax exemption has been awarded to the SA Church of Scientology by the SA Revenue Services (SARS), the Church said on Tuesday. "We cannot confirm the exemption due to a confidentiality clause, but if the public wishes to donate money to the church - then they could ask to view the certificate," Lackey said. - Sapa

Tags: Ryan Hogarth, South Africa

A landmark Durban building sold to the Church of Scientology in Africa is to become the headquarters for its community work in the province.

Tags: Paul Sondergaard, Real estate, South Africa

A spokesman for Samoa's Catholic archbishop says new religions are threatening to erode the country's faith.

Tags: Samoa

Ironically, the incident came at a time when relations between Spielberg and Cruise were poor. Spielberg felt the actor's antics had hurt his own movie, 2005's War of the Worlds. Far worse, though, had been an episode when Spielberg told Cruise the name of a doctor who had prescribed medication to a relative and the doctor's office was subsequently picketed by Scientologists.

Tags: CCHR, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise

CLEARWATER -- City officials hoped to stir civic pride with their $10-million makeover of Cleveland Street. But so far they"ve got confusion. As in, just what the heck are those 12 giant concrete spheres doing in the medians?

Tags: Clearwater, Super Power

Vanity Fair has stringent fact checkers. To repeat "when Spielberg told Cruise the name of a doctor who had prescribed medication to a relative and the doctor's office was subsequently picketed by Scientologists." The sentence begs the question, what kind of doctor and medication? Could it be psychiatric? Cruise and Scientology have a well-documented opposition to psychiatry, and now it seems Spielberg has a documented dislike of Cruise.

Tags: Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise

Tags: Andrew Morton

A controversial Church of Scientology treatment used on World Trade Center emergency responders is being used in Utah to "detoxify" cops who raided methamphetamine labs in the 1980s and 1990s. The Utah Meth Cops Project is treating around a dozen former and current police officers at taxpayers" expense, using a regime devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard at a Bio-Cleansing Centers of America facility in Orem, Utah.

Tags: Bio-Cleansing Centers, Downtown Medical, Gerald Ross, Mark Shurtleff, Utah

The review board determined that LifeWorks" president, physician David Minkoff, had failed to properly report the deaths. The delays — one of them five weeks — made it difficult to determine if the treatments had caused or contributed to the deaths. The review board, as required, alerted the FDA about the lapse. In a letter to the review board, Minkoff wrote that the "treatments had nothing to do with their demises." During the study, Florida health officials suspended Minkoff's medical license. They determined that he had prescribed medications inappropriately to a woman in 1995, according to the FDA and the Florida Board of Medicine.

Tags: David Minkoff, FDA, Lisa McPherson

It will be the first established Scientology church in Richmond. The church could open by December and will offer introductory lectures, meetings and a book store, said Sylvia Standard, director of external affairs for the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C.

Tags: Real estate, Richmond, Robert Kaufman, Sylvia Standard

No cause of death has been determined. It was found south of Gilman Springs Road approximately a half mile east of Highway 79, or Sanderson Avenue, which puts it just to the west of the Scientology complex.

Tags: Int Base

But the Tax Office had been over-ruled in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Federal Court, and now the full bench of the Federal Court had confirmed that businesses were not taxable as long as the profits were entirely used for the charity and to advance religion. The ruling will also apply to controversial religious groups such as Exclusive Brethren and the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Australia

Attention Richmond, the mother ship is landing — assuming it doesn't get shot down by city building inspectors.

Tags: Real estate, Sylvia Stanard

Scientology's shameful past includes a 25-year legal and psychological campaign against the IRS to be recognized as a tax-exempt religion. Scientology tactics included a criminal conspiracy in the 1970s to bug IRS offices, which led to 11 convictions of church members including founder L. Ron Hubbard's wife. Scientology filed dozens of lawsuits against the IRS, hired private investigators to dig up dirt on IRS employees and financed other IRS critics.

Tags: Charles Grassley, Fred Goldberg, IRS, Operation Snow White

If you sense a tinge of the otherworldly in those alluring green eyes of hers, you are probably right: Rep. Bono has met twice with representatives of the Church of Scientology since coming to Capitol Hill. The Church's headquarters are in her district, and their records show she has taken several classes with them. Also, someone really needs to rescue her and her alienlike beauty from who she's currently going out with: another congressman named Rep. Cornelius McGillicuddy IV, R-Fla. Seriously. Look it up.

Tags: Mary Bono

Call is one of eight retired and current Utah police officers undergoing - at taxpayer expense - an Orem clinic's detoxification treatment, which is based on Scientology teachings. Its medical director, Gerald H. Ross, acknowledges no studies have been conducted to show whether the program helps people exposed to meth. Experts are skeptical. But Call and other officers are convinced the treatments work, and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff argues they are a worthwhile expense.

Tags: Bio-Cleansing Centers, Detox, Downtown Medical, Gerald Ross, Mark Shurtleff, Utah

The treatment is expensive, $7,000 per officer, and Shurtleff would like the public to chip in. Shurtleff has already given a $50,000 grant from his office to pay for treatment of officers, but according to initial estimates, at least 20 more need crucial treatment and more than 100 others qualify. "The good news is we didn't have to start from scratch and build a new facility," Shurtleff said Wednesday at the Biocleansing Center of America in Orem.

Tags: Bio-Cleansing Centers, Detox, Mark Shurtleff

Watchman Fellowship materials housed at Southwestern's library, in addition to the organization's Fellowship's voluminous collection of books, includes files, periodicals and other media that provide original materials produced by groups such as the Church of Scientology, the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Tags: Watchman Fellowship

The Sonoma Valley Ministerial Association has come out against putting the crèche back on the Plaza. In a statement to the Sonoma City Council, which will be debating the issue at its meeting Wednesday evening, the ministers said they don't believe the "display of the crèche on the Sonoma Plaza would serve the religious and spiritual health of the community at this time."

Tags: Donna Barton, Sonoma

Body of woman found by hikers The body of a woman was found by two hikers at about 10 a.m. Tuesday dumped about 100 feet from Gilman Springs Road.

Tags: Int Base

Sunday night, Tom Cruise rewarded high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology with tickets to a private screening of his new movie, "Lions for Lambs."

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Cal Henry, Carole Hamaker, Eric Lieberman, Jim Woodworth, John Carmichael, John Danielson, Lori Alpers, Marian Henry, Randy Hepner, Tom Cruise

In 1997 a former member of the Church of Scientology, unhappy with courses she had taken, tried to get a refund of 700,000 Belgian francs - about $17,000. Authorities began looking into the church's finances and interviewing people. Now, 10 years and 76 cartons of documents later, prosecutors say the evidence points to one conclusion: The Church of Scientology in Belgium is a "criminal organization" that has used fraud and extortion to separate members from their money. "I always say that you are innocent until proven guilty, but we really have enough elements and statements that we can prosecute them for a number of crimes and misdemeanors," says Lieve Pellens, a spokesperson for Belgium's Office of the Federal Prosecutor.

Tags: Belgian Buildings Acquisitions, Belgium, Fabio Amicarelli, Henri de Cordes, Jean-Marie Surinx, Legal, Luc Willems, Real estate, Ute Surinx, William Walsh

The most contentious part of Scientology is that it considers homosexuality a perversion, an incendiary view today in the West.

Tags: Felix Lange, France, Gay, India, Interpol, IRS, Lisa McPherson, Marion Whitta, New Life Rundown, Russell Miller, Shalini Sharma, Super Power, USPS

MADRID (AFP) - A court in Spain has ruled in favour of listing the controversial Church of Scientology among the nation's official register of religions, according to a decision obtained by AFP Thursday. The administrative tribunal of Madrid's High Court ruled that a 2005 justice ministry decision to scrap the church from the register was "against the law."

Tags: Spain

A religious booklet sent to his office makes it seem that Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz officially endorses the musings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Tags: Canada, The Way to Happiness, Winnipeg

The Founding Church of Scientology sits just blocks from the Dupont Circle metro station. Tony Bokas, a member of the Scientology Church and Maryland resident, described the area as an essential spot in the District that attracts a huge number of politicians. "Important people come by all the time with police squads guarding them," he said.

Tags: DC, Tony Bokas

IN a booklet called The Way To Happiness, it appears as if Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz officially endorses the musings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Katz's image and the official City of Winnipeg logo appear on the back cover of the 68-page booklet, which implores readers to observe life lessons such as "do not take alcohol to excess," "don't be promiscuous," "preserve your teeth" and "don't do anything illegal." The booklet purports to be "presented by Sam Katz, mayor" and even includes Katz's 2006 re-election slogan, "our city, our future" above a bogus letter laden with Katz slogans such as a "climate of opportunity."

Tags: Canada, Lance Miller, The Way to Happiness, Winnipeg

The concert, which included performances from Academy Award nominated film composer Mark Isham and the UK's top swing band, The Jive Aces, raised £150,000 for the construction of the Bluebell Railway Station in East Grinstead.

Tags: East Grinstead, Jive Aces

UNIFORMED police distributed Church of Scientology propaganda at Whyalla High School, contrary to guidelines for religious education. A team of police officers visiting the school showed classes a DVD on living a moral life and distributed a booklet entitled "Whyalla High School presents the way to happiness, a common-sense guide for better living", written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Tags: Australia, The Way to Happiness

The Church of Scientology sued the Sun and Bono. Three or four times in short order, as I recall. Some Scientologist managed to intercept a letter sent by Bonokoski to a colleague in a Florida paper. Bono sued the Church for this invasion of privacy. The Sun files on Scientology disappeared. It was feared a Scientologist had taken the file. Years later I learned a Scientologist got a job at my law firm and took copies of documents from my files at night -- the young lady pleaded guilty to theft, but I digress.

Tags: Canada, Legal, Operation Snow White

THE Church of Scientology is preparing to expand its creed to the north of England by opening a centre in Manchester next year. The church, which has been criticised as a cult, has paid £3.6m for a disused distillery in the city. It plans to turn the five-storey building, near Old Trafford, into “a place of worship and religious instruction”. The move is part of a world-wide expansion strategy by the American organisation, which was founded by L Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, in 1952. According to Graeme Wilson, Scientology's head of communications, its aim is to establish “large new centres in major cities around the world, and Manchester is one of the priority cities for having such a centre”.

Tags: Graeme Wilson, Real estate, UK

THE CHURCH of Scientology is pressing ahead with plans to convert a Trafford distillery into a "place of worship" for hundreds of followers. The controversial group - whose celebrity members include Tom Cruise and John Travolta - bought the Grade II-listed building on Chester Road for a reported £3.6m.

Tags: Real estate, UK

Last month, the School Board sent a warning to parents about the “harmful effects” of drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Much of the flier's information was taken from the Internet, including from a Web site run by a group founded by the Church of Scientology. This week, six national organizations and eight local groups sent a letter requesting that the School Board retract the flier and send a new one stating that ADHD is a disease that requires treatment. The groups include the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, the Virginia chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Tidewater chapter of Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Tags: CCHR

Pollack, a member of the Church of Scientology, said Island View is a private project not affiliated with the church. Condos will be sold to both Scientologists and non-Scientologists. Prices for units in the first phase range from $478,000 to $1-million. The project has been in the works since 2004, when it started out as a small 39-condominium development.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate, Ron Pollack, Triangle Development

Jerry Seinfeld on his commitment to comedy and how martial arts training helped prepare him for marriage In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful. I took a couple of courses. One of them was in communication, and I learned some things about communication that really got my act going.

The 25-year-old, who cannot be named, is facing two counts of murder and a third of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent to murder over a stabbing at her south-western Sydney home on July 5. The woman, who has been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, allegedly fatally stabbed her 53-year-old father and 15-year-old sister in a psychotic rage at the family home.

Tags: Australia, Murder, Sydney

A settlement has been reached between a local gun range and its members. The $8 million dollar deal ends the class action lawsuit against the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute. I-Team Reporter Colleen McCarty first broke the story about allegations of fraud and racketeering at the resort a few years ago.

After a box full of the booklets was delivered to Newsom's City Hall office this week, the city attorney's office promptly sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Southern California group distributing them, saying it was violating city and state laws by using the city seal and the mayor's endorsement without consent.

Tags: Lance Miller, San Francisco, The Way to Happiness

SAN FRANCISCO – The city of San Francisco has ordered a Scientology group to stop using a picture of Mayor Gavin Newsom on its promotional materials. A group called the Way to Happiness Foundation International sent a box full of booklets to Newsom's City Hall office describing some of Scientology's core principles.

Tags: San Francisco, The Way to Happiness

No, Mayor Tom Leppert hasn't made the leap from public servant to spiritual healer. And despite the claims of a booklet that landed on his desk at City Hall this week, he isn't endorsing The Way to Happiness. The booklet, so titled and featuring the writings of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, was sent to the mayor's office complete with the city of Dallas seal and a ringing endorsement purportedly from Mr. Leppert.

Tags: The Way to Happiness

"I think there's been a slow shift from a very strong adversarial relationship to a tolerance," says Ron Stuart, who clashed with church officials as an editor of the now-defunct Clearwater Sun in the "70s.

Tags: Clearwater, Frank Hibbard, Mary Repper, Pat Harney, Ray Emmons, Ron Stuart, Super Power, Susan Latvala

The visit hit a bad patch when claims were made that the tour received the blessings of the National Council of Churches (NCC). Reverend Oka Fauolo, NCC Chairman, publicly denied the claims ,even turning down a request by Mathew Adams (head of the Scientology group) to give the opening prayer at the exhibitions launch as this might give the impression that he endorsed the organisation.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

The validity of the program should be verified by an independent, disinterested party, Brick adds. "As a scientist, I like to see data. To the best of my knowledge, no one has clearly demonstrated a causal relationship between the treatment and the outcome." The mainstream medical establishment looks askance at the Hubbard detox program. Over the years, some doctors and scientists have denounced it as unsound and dangerous. Critics say the program is based on physiological fallacies and is unsubstantiated by science and credible studies.

Tags: Bruce Roe, David Carpenter, Detox, Downtown Medical, FASE, Jim Woodworth, Keith Miller

“There is a very genuine concern about the value or even perhaps the harmful consequences of the techniques which they are employing or in which they are training people. The psychotherapeutic techniques employed by scientologists are not highly regarded outside scientology.”

The damage to the footage is the latest in a series of mishaps that have been associated with the shooting of the movie. At first the German authorities refused to permit Tom Cruise to film at a historic site which currently serves as a memorial site for the anti-Nazi underground, because of Cruise's involvement in scientology.

Tags: Germany, Tom Cruise

Among medical professionals calling for further research into what's going on at the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, Lisa Gengo is unique. Since July, Gengo has been visiting the clinic once a week and she plans to go through the detox program herself.

Tags: Detox

For the first three days, her sweat was dark blue. By the second week, it was yellow, black and gray, she says. Her body was also excreting "a lot of glass and fiberglass." "You can see the blood coming out of your pores," Bettis says. "It feels like little razors going through your skin. A couple of times, the pieces were big enough to see."

Tags: Detox, Jim Woodworth, Jodi Bettis, Ooze towel

Overview

Tags: Detox, Narconon

His health is vastly better now than it was before, he says, and he's convinced the detox program removed poisons from his body. "I ain't nauseated and sick," he says. But he's less certain that his lungs are free of asbestos and other particles and irritants.

Tags: Bobby Morrill, Detox

The first time in the sauna, he leaned back against the wall. Because the wall was uncomfortably hot, he put a towel behind his back. Twenty minutes later, when he left the sauna to shower, Jim Woodworth, of the detox clinic staff, noticed that the towel bore a purple imprint of Bulger's shoulder blades and back. "I couldn't believe it. It can't be me," Bulger says. Even more amazing: The imprint on the towel was exactly where Bulger had experienced a terrible rash, which emerged about four weeks after 9/11 and lasted for months, despite all sorts of salves and medications. Bulger continued to stain towels for several days. He also noticed something else coming from his body -- "a kerosene smell. I swear on my father's grave."

Tags: Downtown Medical, Jim Woodworth, Ooze towel, Tom Bulger

Samoa's acting police commissioner says he welcomes the goodwill visit by scientology volunteers who will train police officers in disaster management.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

Hundreds of Christian believers in Samoa from Pentecostal churches and ministries have marched in protest against the government's support of the Scientology religion. They marched to the front of the government building in Apia where Scientology tents have been put up as the main venue for its disaster training and seminars over the next two weeks.

Samoa's Minister of Police, Tole'afoa Apulu Fa'afisi, says a goodwill visit by Scientology volunteer ministers is crucial for the country as their mission is to provide disaster seminars and training for everyone. The minister, who opened the Scientology training programme yesterday was responding to more than a hundred Christian protesters from various denominations who marched to show their disapproval of the Scientologists visit.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

The chairman of the Council of Churches in Samoa, the Reverend Oka Fau'olo, has dismissed reports saying the Church Council is supporting a goodwill visit by Scientology representatives currently in the country. The chairman says there is no need for Scientology ministers to come through the council in order to provide disaster training and seminars for the public because there are other suitable organizations such as the local medical association.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

Friends of Hawai"i Charities Inc. recently awarded $10,000 to Narconon Hawai"i. The grant will be used for the Narconon Hawaii New Life Detoxification Program.

Tags: Hawaii, Narconon

The Church of Scientology is in announcement mode again, this time saying it will spend $20-million on a major upgrade of its iconic Fort Harrison Hotel. But what church officials aren't saying is exactly when the work will start. So, expect some eye rolls.

Tags: Clearwater, Frank Hibbard, Pat Harney, Super Power, Uli Huber

The Australian Church of Scientology applied for and was granted access to the report by Burwood Local Court, where the woman is on trial, although reporters were subsequently told the document would not be publicly released. Cyrus Brooks, community relations officer for the church, said it had sought access to the document after media coverage linking Scientology to the alleged murders, although access was granted on condition that the church not release the report to the media. Despite this, Mr Brooks has emailed excerpts from the report to journalists to "correct" their reporting of the case.

Tags: Australia, Cyrus Brooks, Murder, Sydney

If you are looking for a tourist town that lives the UFO lifestyle you would be hard pressed to find a town more worthy than Clearwater Florida. Clearwater is to Scientologists what Salt Lake City is to Mormons.

Tags: Clearwater, Super Power

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against Dr. James Orrington, DDS, alleging religious and sexual harassment. The suit, filed on behalf of ten employees — 9 women and 1 man? 10 women? — claims the South Side dentist required employees to recite passages from Scientology literature before he"d give them their checks.

Tags: James Orrington, Religious harassment

The Church of Scientology is setting up shop at the former Artcraft Building in the South Loop, at 650 S. Clark. When the flagship center opens next summer there will be activities, social services and, presumably, auditing.

Tags: Chicago, Real estate

The first thing I noticed was Scientology's rip-off of the crucifix. They have a cross similar to the Christian one, but they have an X going through theirs. What could that mean? At school an X through my maths meant it was wrong. Could this have anything to do with the fact that Hubbard has been quoted as saying "The man on the cross; there is no Christ."?

Tags: Personality test

A Southwest Side dentist sexually harassed female workers and forced them to recite Scientology formulas in order to get their paychecks, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Thursday. The EEOC sued Dr. James L. Orrington on behalf of 10 former female employees, including three who were fired by the doctor shortly after they lodged complaints with the commission, said Ann Henry, an EEOC lawyer. The dentist fired two others after they complained to him about harassment, Henry said.

Tags: James Orrington, Religious harassment

CHICAGO (WBBM) -- A Southwest Side dentist sexually harassed female workers and forced them to recite Scientology formulas in order to get their paychecks, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says.

Tags: James Orrington, Religious harassment

Sure, says Mayor Frank Hibbard. It can be a little unsettling sometimes — throngs of Scientologists wandering Clearwater's streets in their blue or khaki trousers and crisp dress shirts. Sometimes, it makes the neighbors a bit uneasy. "When you come to downtown, no one likes being a minority," Mr. Hibbard said.

The night clubs, shops and lunch spots of downtown Albuquerque are about to get a new neighbor. The Church of Scientology is in the process of purchasing the Gizmo's building at 410 Central SE near Fourth Street, says Gabriel Rivera, a redevelopment planner with City Planning. "From what I"ve heard, in other places and other cities, [Scientologists] usually locate in the Downtown areas," Rivera says. Local Scientologists confirmed the deal.

Tags: Albuquerque, Real estate

Several volunteer ministers of the US-based Scientology religion are in Samoa to provide disaster response specialist courses for government representatives and local church councils.

Tags: Samoa, Volunteer Ministers

The flap erupted in June, after the Defense Ministry announced that it was going to bar filming at the Bendler Block. A key reason behind the decision, according to officials at the time, was Cruise's affiliation with Scientology. In Germany, where the government provides assistance to organized religions, a 1995 court ruling determined that Scientology was a cult "masquerading as a religion to make money." Moreover, the film's subject is close to the hearts of many in the German military. Cruise is playing Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a square-jawed young Prussian colonel who tried to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, but who was executed after his plot failed. Von Stauffenberg was resurrected as a resistance hero to many who rejected the war and its legacy.

Tags: Germany

When asked about their training, McClung and Matthews said most seminars they went to while working for Biery related to Scientology. McClung said she went to one training seminar in anesthesia. Jeff Swingholm, 54, a registered nurse anesthetist who has worked with anesthesia for 30 years, said that during his employment in 2002 and 2003, he told assistants they weren't qualified to give medicines. “I was very concerned,” he said. “They didn't even know they should be concerned.” Swingholm also described morning “huddles” where employees discussed financial goals like earning $20,000 for the day or signing up 100 new patients. Employees who met the goals would be rewarded with movie tickets or massages, he testified. Swingholm said he didn't participate in the huddles but overheard the discussions.

Tags: Kathryn Biery, Religious harassment, Virginia

South Loop residents will soon have a new neighbor-the Church of Scientology. The church's new flagship center of Chicago will move next summer into the former Artcraft Building, 650 S. Clark, and become the hub of Scientology-related activities and social services. "It's going to be a beacon of life," said Allyne Rosenthal, president of the Church of Scientology of Illinois.

Tags: ABLE, Allyne Rosenthal, Chicago, Criminon, Narconon, Real estate

But Penn and Teller weren't the only cultural guerillas with a knife out for Scientology, and in 2005, their friends Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of "South Park," came up with a now-classic episode of their own show called "Trapped in the Closet" — a double hit on Scientology and one of its most famous promoters, Tom Cruise. Penn was a little bummed about being beaten to the punch, but now he wonders how much "BS" really could have done with Scientology. " "South Park" can play a cheerleader role," he says. "Like with Ouija boards, where everybody knows it's bullsh -- and you just join in. But I always like there to be some sort of revelation, some really surprising information. And everyone who's not a Scientologist already knows it's bullsh -- ."

A bold, swanky sign went up less than a week ago in front of 1812 19th Street NW in Dupont, site of the “founding church” of Scientology that Hubbard set up in 1955. The house belonged to the church until the mid-'70s, when it was sold and reverted to a residence. It was repurchased by the Church of Scientology three years ago, according to acting director of the L. Ron Hubbard House and chairman of the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard, Bill Runyon.

Those prices are steep, particularly in Harlem. But for ardent believers who can't afford those rates, there's always the Sea Org, a quasi-military group of workers who sign billion-year contracts, wear naval outfits, and do low-paid work filing papers, answering phones, and anything else that needs getting done. "By setting up in Harlem and offering stress tests in New York City, what they are looking for is workers," explains Ross, whose rickross.com chronicles the many complaints against the church. "I think that people in Harlem need to wake up and know who their new neighbor is."

Tags: ABLE, Applied Scholastics, John Carmichael, Real estate, Rick Ross, Sea Org, Xenu

It's a dramatic turnaround for an area that has been in a free fall since the mid 1970s, when the Church of Scientology arrived and secretly bought downtown's biggest hotel, then started gobbling up properties nearby. In all, about $385-million in public and private sector investment is pouring into downtown Clearwater. After fits and starts, the city is attracting believers with deep pockets, ones willing to make plays where others - including Clearwater voters - previously saw too much risk.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate

But there are dissenters too. Students have left Katselas's school, the Beverly Hills Playhouse, because of the unspoken pressure they felt to join the Church of Scientology, the controversial religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Nobody ever told them to join, but they could not ignore how many of their classmates and teachers were Scientologists. Or the fact that Milton Katselas, the master himself, credits Hubbard for much of his success. And the assorted weirdness: one of Katselas's students has a day job at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, where Tom Cruise and John Travolta study, and one zealous television star left the Playhouse because she said she believed that Katselas wasn't committed enough to Scientology.

Tags: John Carmichael, Milton Katselas

After a ten-year investigation, Belgian prosecutors have charged twelve members of the Church of Scientology. The accusations include fraud, extortion, illegal practice of medicine, and infringement of privacy law, among others. The decision opens the way for Scientology to be considered a criminal organization.

Tags: Belgium, Legal

But, when you mention any hint of the nexus between Scientology and the nrst -- as I did briefly in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed -- you"ll be denounced by FairTax supporters as a smear artist. This retort, however, is simply evidence that these FairTax supporters don't know the history of their own proposal. That's too bad. Perhaps if they understood its origins in Scientology, they might have a greater appreciation for its inherent flaws.

Belgian prosecutors today accused the Church of Scientology of extortion, fraud and other crimes and sought to bring it and key members to trial. Federal prosecutors said they were charging the church in Belgium, its European office in Brussels and 12 members with offences including the illegal practice of medicine and breaches of commercial practices. Prosecutors were also considering whether the church should be considered a criminal organisation after an investigation prompted by complaints 10 years ago.

Tags: Belgium, European Court of Human Rights, Extortion, Fraud

A Belgian prosecutor recommended that the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology stand trial on charges of fraud and extortion, after a 10-year investigation.

Tags: Belgium

A Phoenix home may be turned into a museum to honor the work of the Church of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard, who lived in the Valley in the early 1950s. The house, near 44th Street and Camelback, has been restored and is now open for tours. But there is a proposal to turn it into a museum, according to city officials. For that to happen, the home's zoning would need to be changed.

Federal prosecutors said they were charging the church in Belgium, its European office in Brussels and 12 members with offences including the illegal practice of medicine and breaches of commercial practices. Prosecutors were also considering whether the church should be considered a criminal organisation after an investigation prompted by complaints 10 years ago.

Tags: Belgium, Legal

THE Church of Scientology has been branded a criminal organisation by a Belgian prosecutor, who has recommended it stands trial for fraud and extortion. The Los Angeles-based movement, whose members include the films stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta, now faces charges following a ten-year inquiry. Jean-Claude Van Espen, an investigating prosecutor, said up to 12 people, who have not been named, should be charged.

Tags: Belgium, Germany, Russia

Belgian prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen said Tuesday that the Church of Scientology should be classified as a criminal organization after completing a 10-year investigation into the church's activities.

Tags: Belgium, Extortion, Fraud, Legal

The Belgian authorities have indicted the Belgian chapter of the Church of Scientology, the European headquarters of the Church, as well as 12 of its leading members. According to the office of Public Prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen Scientology is a criminal organization which has committed several crimes including extortion, fraud, violations of the trade law, violations of the privacy law and the illegal practice of medicine.

Tags: Belgium, Extortion, Fraud, Jean-Claude Van Espen

Ketelhut's cause has also caught the attention of those in a national movement against the practice of psychiatry. Members of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights — an organization founded by the Church of Scientology — traveled to South Bend a few weeks ago to join Ketelhut's protest.

Tags: CCHR

The chance is real that several leading figures in the Church of Scientology in Belgium could be issued with court summonses. The Federal Judicial Authorities plan to prosecute the church for being a criminal organisation that has defrauded its members.

Tags: Belgium, Legal

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10- year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization. Scientology said it would fight the criminal charges recommended by investigating prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen, who said that up to 12 unidentified people should face charges. Van Espen's probe also concluded that Scientology's Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts, said Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors Office.

Tags: Belgium, Jean-Claude Van Espen

A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Tags: Belgium, Legal

Koth said Sequoia will be the first Applied Scholastics school in Wisconsin. She said her application to be a licensed home day-care center is being processed. She is aware of the state regulations for private schools and would comply with them if she begins teaching school-age children, she said. And, while she understands people will have questions, she"d like to put this Scientology connection behind her because, she said, there really is no connection between what she does and the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Caitlin Johnston, Christine Koth, Sequoia Academy

The CCHR and the Church of Scientology have, at times, discredited psychiatrists who have criticized their religion. One local psychiatrist organization would not speak to Free Times about Scientology out of fear that the church would hire private investigators to dig up dirt on its doctors.

Tags: Detox, Fair Game, Real estate, Russell Miller

Then he was torched by the press, by Hollywood and by just about anyone within striking distance of a celebrity newsweekly for criticizing psychiatry, antidepressants and Brooke Shields" handling of postpartum depression. And for talking up Scientology as if it had all the answers.

Tags: Sumner Redstone, Tom Cruise

Xenu is Loose! The Musical! follows the plight of Jen, a not-quite-convert to Scientology as she is charmed and seduced by a handsome member of the church during her initial tour. Meanwhile, Xenu has escaped from his native planet and has murder in mind.

Tags: Xenu

Nursing a pint of cider in a defiantly non-gastro north London pub, Sweeney, 49, attempts to make sense of his "Mr Shouty" moment. "It was like an animal cry of rage," he says, before going on to claim that he felt like the victim of a "psychological attack" by the Scientologists. "Their midnight presence at our hotel, the weird creeps who followed us around on the streets of LA and Davis in my face all the time had got to me."

Tags: John Sweeney, Shawn Lonsdale, Tommy Davis

No fewer than 50 programs (though not the Rotenberg Center) can trace their treatment philosophy, directly or indirectly, to an antidrug cult called Synanon. Founded in 1958, Synanon sold itself as a cure for hardcore heroin addicts who could help each other by "breaking" new initiates with isolation, humiliation, hard labor, and sleep deprivation.

Tags: Synanon

S. belonged to the Church of Scientology for about six years. "I did a course on how to get people to become Scientologists, how to sell people what they need, at their most vulnerable point. There are special techniques for learning where a person feels that something is screwing him in life, and then you tell him that there is a chance that Scientology can help. But soon the person forgets why he got into it in the first place, such as to be calmer with himself, to make more money, to achieve cosmic identification - all those goals are cast out and the person understands that it's a lot more important to help Scientology develop and to clean the planet."

Tags: Detox, Israel

The Church of Scientology, known for its celebrity devotees, is making a big push to expand its empire along 125th Street, purchasing three properties there last week, and planning a major recruitment drive in the neighborhood. The Rev. John Carmichael, president of the church in New York, declined to give details about the purchase, but reports put the total sales price at $10.2 million.

Tags: John Carmichael, NYC, Real estate

A controversial California-based "self-help" group was enlisting new recruits at a major Conservative youth meeting last weekend, the Star has learned. Landmark Education, the San Francisco organization descended from Werner Erhard's 1970's-era EST, held a 90-minute session as part of the Conservative Leadership Foundation conference. The foundation boasts connections to both provincial and federal Tory parties.

Tags: EST

A group teaching the core moral values as outlined by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard has been conducting workshops at Israeli summer camps this month without the knowledge of the children's parents. During the month of August, most Israeli children attend summer camps, as both parents typically work. News First Class, an online Israeli news agency, learned that at many of those camps, the children are getting morning lectures by volunteers from the Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East (APSME), a group that promotes Hubbard's teachings.

Tags: APSME, Front group, Israel, The Way to Happiness

What edits on Wikipedia have been made by people in congressional offices, at the CIA and by the Church of Scientology? A new online tool called WikiScanner reveals answers to such questions.

Tags: Wikipedia, WikiScanner

I found the Church of Scientology Mission of Sierra Nevada very interesting, but I"d have to return to get a more sophisticated idea of its principles.

Threat Level is running a poll where you can track and vote on the most shameful and/or disturbing Wikipedia edits found with Virgil Griffith's new Wikipedia search tool. For those that missed the story, Griffith created a tool that unmasks the anonymous edits made to Wikipedia pages.

Tags: Wikipedia

A computer linked to the Church of Scientology's network was used to delete references to links between it and a group dubbed the “Cult Awareness Network”.

Tags: Cult Awareness Network, Wikipedia

They run summer camps for children and teach them all about love, modesty, and safe sex. They even hand out awards. Yet, it turns out that behind the volunteers of the Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East stands the disputed Scientology sect. Association members insist they are not missionaries. "Our aim is to teach values," they say. The surprised parents are not convinced. "How come they run such activities without even asking us?"

Tags: Israel, The Way to Happiness, Youth for Human Rights

The first thing many subway riders hear as they exit the subway station at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue often is, “Ma'am, do you have stress in your life?”

Scientology was also integrated into the firm's work, when an organizational consultant who draws on the doctrine was hired to work with the staff, and job candidates were given tests based on Scientology. "Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, wrote many courses on advertising, public relations and marketing, and when I read them I saw they matched what I had learned in practice, my beliefs," Morell relates. Tzur finds this the appropriate time to leave the conference room we are sitting in so he can attend to prior commitments.

Scientologists say their interfaith partnerships show people of all faiths clamor for solutions to real-world problems. Detractors say it amounts to a cloaked effort to burnish the oft-maligned church's image and attract new members by appearing less clandestine and more diverse. And the clergy that have adopted aspects of the Scientologists" outreach say they're simply making use of programs that work.

Tags: ABLE, Andreas Heldal-Lund, Applied Scholastics, Narconon, Pat Harney, The Way to Happiness

An alarming book, fresh demands for a ban and a rejection of those calls for a prohibition: the controversial Scientology organization has been all over the media, yet still aims to missionize Europe.

Tags: Ursula Caberta

"A major purpose of Scientology is to destroy psychiatry and replace it with its own pseudo-counselling techniques. And CCHR is one of Scientology's front-group weapons attempting to achieve that goal," says Stephen Kent, a University of Alberta sociologist specializing in new religions and cults.

Tags: CCHR

Senior politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition have rejected calls for a ban on the Scientology cult. A legal bid to outlaw it would fail because authorities haven't had time to build a proper case against the organization, they say.

Tags: Germany

City Councilman Hiram Monserrate said he paid his own way Saturday to the glitzy Hollywood event celebrating the 38th anniversary of the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, NYC, Peter Vallone

Scientology is not a religious community but an "extremist grouping" that needs to be banned, said Udo Nagel, the interior minister of the northern German state of Hamburg. According to Nagel, Germany's Interior Ministry in Berlin is currently probing whether a ban of Scientology would hold up in court.

Narconon Gulf Coast, Inc. wants to purchase a three-story beach house at 263 Snowdrift Road and turn it into a 28-bed residential rehabilitation facility.

Tags: Narconon

In 2003, the Scientologists acquired 220 East 125th Street for $3.45 million. They're currently building a 33,000-square-foot church on that property and will build a new community center on the more recent acquisitions, according to Karin Pouw, a public affairs representative for the church.

Tags: Karin Pouw, NYC, Real estate, Richard Fear

MIRAMAR BEACH — Controversy over a proposed drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility has moved from one beachside neighborhood to another. Narconon Gulf Coast Inc. wants to purchase a beach house at 263 Snowdrift Road and turn it into a 28-bed residential facility. The nonprofit organization drew heated opposition earlier this year with its plan to buy a house on Scenic Gulf Drive for the same purpose. That purchase has since fallen through, and Narconon is now hoping to buy the house near the beach on Snowdrift Road.

Tags: Narconon

Though police kicked them out in 2005 for violating New York City Transit rules about vending in the subways, it seems they"ve still had a presence down there and, from this photo (taken in late 2006), they're still selling Dianetics (translated in 50 different languages, no less).

Tags: Body routing, NYC

A man who holds no truck with established religion is unsurprisingly unlikely to have much good to say about Scientology, which purports to use scientific tools such as its controversial “E-meter”. “It's purely made-up. It just taps into some ‘gullibiligy'. They find some film star or somebody like Tom Cruise or whatever his name is who's thick as two short planks and he becomes a sort of advertisement.”

Tags: Richard Dawkins

The Church of Scientology and its globetrotting team of volunteer ministers have been active over the last several years, arousing the ire of critics who read unholy motives into the group's charitable works. In Minneapolis, the group said it's working with the Red Cross. Yet members of the Red Cross working at the disaster zone questioned by ABC News weren't aware of the Church's assistance.

Tags: Karin Pouw, National Mental Health Association, Red Cross, Rick Ross, Volunteer Ministers

Harare - As inflation bites and shortages worsen, Zimbabwe's mandarins have been offered help from a highly-controversial source - the Church of Scientology, reports said Thursday. Government officials, including cabinet ministers have all been given free copies of the book The Problems of Work written by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard.

Tags: Zimbabwe

So let's cut Tom Cruise and co. some slack. Let's welcome the Scientologists to Philadelphia. Let's smile understandingly when they double-park outside their brainwashing center in the exact same way Christians double-park outside their brainwashing centers all over Philadelphia every single Sunday. And so—on behalf of all spiritual Philadelphians—I'd like to say: Aloha, crazy, swivel-eyed, ridiculous-stuff-made-up-by-a-not-very-good-;science-fiction-author-with-a-silly-name believers. Welcome to the City of Brotherly Love. Good luck with the human hunting. Now how about paying some taxes?

Some Americans may consider Scientology perhaps a cult, maybe a violent sect, and certainly very weird. And, like many, I find the Church of Scientology odd, to say the least. But Scientology is no more bizarre than other religions.

Tags: John Carmichael

Anderson, 45, hopes the sequel and its original will introduce a new generation of readers to van Vogt, a former giant in the world of pulp novels and serial magazines who fell into obscurity. Van Vogt's work fell out of style after he took a writing break to pitch the 1950 book "Dianetics," written by his friend and fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who created Scientology. He later became disillusioned and when he returned to writing, he didn't have the same zip.

For me, the story began May 2, 1978. My crew and I were filming the Synanon cult's property from a deserted public road in Marshall, California, when armed men, women and children with shaved heads held us captive for three hours. The story flashed across the AP wire, phoned in by Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Mitchell, owner of the Point Reyes Light weekly. My employer, NBC News, ignored the story. I didn't understand why, but it was a foreshadowing of what would happen when my far more dangerous story about Peoples Temple was ready for air in October, 1978.

Tags: Peoples Temple, Synanon

Some German officials believe Scientology's ideology is rooted in a kind of political extremism—a bit of a sensitive area for Germany since World War II. They also argue that Scientology is not a religion but a business, since local churches operate like franchises of the main organization.

Tags: France, Germany, Gordon Melton

"They thought Scientologists were really harassing them," Nichols said. "They would say, "They are following us, harassing our landlord." I did not see any evidence of that.

An Armenian immigrant accused of plotting to sell anti-aircraft missiles and other military weapons from the former Soviet Union to an FBI informant was convicted Tuesday along with five co-defendants.

Tags: Artur Solomonyan

Thomas Gandow, 60, chief spokesman on religious cults for the German Protestant Church, described Scientology as a "totalitarian organisation" and said that Mr Cruise had become "the Goebbels of Scientology".

Buddhism is the largest religion apart from Christianity and Hinduism (nearly 64,000), and outsizes all the religions that attract more attention, such as Islam (approximately 36,000), Brethren (18,000) and Scientology (357).

Tags: Census, New Zealand

Cruise was planning to shoot scenes at the site, until the German government decided it would be inappropriate to film at what is now a memorial and sacred ground to many. But the decision had more to do with Scientology than anything sacred. Cruise is a member of the church of Scientology. And having him play Stauffenberg didn't fly in Germany. One official put it this way. "It would not be a good signal if an ambassador of this psycho sect that has extremist character and no concern for basic human rights, shoots a movie in a place like that." It's not against the law to practice Scientology in Germany. Still, the government won't call it a religion. Germany views Scientology as a sect, whose chief purpose is to make money off people.

Tags: Germany, Tom Cruise

A SYDNEY woman allegedly stabbed by her daughter in an attack that killed two other family members has been released from hospital. The 52-year-old mother of six, who cannot be named, has been recovering in hospital since the deadly attack at the family home in Revesby, in Sydney's south-west, on July 6.

Tags: Australia, Sydney

The Church of Scientology of Pennsylvania purchased the 15-story Cunningham Building and an adjacent storefront retail building in Philadelphia for $7.85 million, or $131 per square foot.

Tags: Philadelphia, Real estate

Put the word on the street that you're writing about Milton Katselas, and every student he has ever had will want to tell you about the best acting teacher in the world, the man who took them from fresh-faced, straight-off-the-plane-at-LAX ingénues looking for work — commercials; God willing, someday a sitcom — to being real artists.

Tags: John Carmichael, Milton Katselas

The St. Petersburg City Court has closed down the city's Scientology Center, accusing it of offenses such as unlicensed teaching and other activities not stated in its charter, the city prosecutor's office said.

Tags: Detox, Russia

After the group's teachings were exposed in court this week following a double-slaying in Sydney, cult watchers including Aron see a rare opportunity to conduct a public debate about Scientology's influence on mental health and safety. "The (Scientologists) are probably hoping this will all go away and I'm hoping it won't just go away this time," Aron says. "Governments should be looking closely at this, at least to see if (Scientologists) are breaching a duty of care and if they are complicit in a terrible double tragedy. It is a very significant matter that needs to be looked at laterally and level-headedly. It is just amazing that nothing like this has happened before to force the issue into the public arena."

The New South Wales Mental Health Minister, Paul Lynch, says fringe groups will not be allowed to dictate the states" health policy.

Tags: Australia

A Russian court has ordered a center operated by the Scientology movement in St. Petersburg to be shut down, city prosecutors said Thursday, after accusing the organization of unlicensed teaching and other activities. The St. Petersburg City Court ordered the Scientology center closed after it agreed with prosecutors who said the center's operations were violating its charter.

Tags: Detox, Legal, Russia

SCIENTOLOGISTS have been bombarding NSW MPs with letters urging them not to make psychiatric drugs more available as part of an orchestrated campaign to stamp out their use. But not one of more than 120 letters obtained by the Daily Telegraph identifies the author as a Scientologist despite many coming from its inner-west offices.

Tags: Australia

Beals said he had been advised by the Church of Scientology against seeking therapy. According to him, the organisation's members talked him out of accessing psychological help while "bleeding dry" his bank accounts. "If I wouldn't have got involved with Scientology, I wouldn't have committed this crime," he said.

Tags: Australia, Cyrus Brooks, Gary Beals, Joava Good, Xenu

A woman accused of killing her father and sister and injuring her mother was denied psychiatric treatment by her parents who were Scientologists, a court heard yesterday.

THE Church of Scientology last night denied the Sydney man who was allegedly stabbed to death by his psychotic daughter after refusing her psychiatric drugs was a top recruiter for the church. A man with the same name as the dead father is listed on the Church of Scientology's "Honour Roll" in the 2002 Impact magazine which glorifies members worldwide for their efforts in "signing more than 20 members to the church" or for donating $US20,000 ($23,200) or more.

Mr Brooks went on to argue that modern psychiatry used many methods that were largely "unproven" and psychiatric assumptions - such as chemical imbalances in the brain - simply did not exist. Almost immediately after Mr Brooks finished his interview, Sydney University psychiatrist Chris Tennant phoned ABC Radio to reject the Scientologist's beliefs. Saying it was "so sad to hear the flat-earthers getting on the radio", Professor Tennant denied modern psychiatry was largely "unproven", stating the amount of research on mental illness was "as strong" as that for cancer and heart disease. "It's a tragedy to hear this mumbo jumbo being proselytised by this group," he said. "The sad thing about this sounds to be that this girl may well have been prescribed some psychiatric treatment but living in a family which had the Scientology attitude there is no way there would have been what we term compliance."

Tags: Australia, Chris Tennant, Cyrus Brooks, Rosanna Capolingua

A man with the same name as the dead father is listed on the Church of Scientology's "Honor Roll" in the 2002 Impact magazine which glorifies members worldwide for their efforts in "signing more than 20 members to the church" or for donating $US20,000 or more. The man's daughter, 25, faced Bankstown Local Court yesterday charged with fatally stabbing her father and sister at their Revesby home last Thursday. She is also charged with stabbing her mother, 52.

Tags: stop-wise.biz, Vicki Dunstan, WISE

A SYDNEY woman accused of fatally stabbing her father, sister and injuring her mother was denied psychiatric treatment by her parents who were Scientologists, a court was told today.

Tags: Australia, Sydney

The parents of a woman accused of murdering her father and sister apparently declined psychiatric treatment for her last year because of their Scientology beliefs, a report tendered in court states. And a police version of events tendered to the court outlined the nightmarish scenario faced by the family's neighbours following the alleged murders.

Tags: Australia, Sydney

VICTORIA'S Scientology population has almost doubled in a decade, figures reveal. There are 629 Scientologists in Victoria, compared with 324 in 1996. Census data prepared for the Herald Sun shows that Melbourne's Yarra Ranges and Whitehorse areas are the state's Scientology capitals. Australia-wide, there were 2507 Scientologists in 2006, up from 1489 a decade ago.

Tags: Australia, Census, Emmanuel Foundas

A SYDNEY woman charged with murdering her father and sister and seriously injuring her mother was apparently denied psychiatric treatment because of her parents" alleged Scientology beliefs, a court has been told.

Tags: Australia, Sydney

Sydney - An Australian woman accused of murdering her father and sister was apparently denied psychiatric treatment because of her parents" Scientology beliefs, a court heard on Monday.

Tags: Australia, Murder, Sydney

SACRAMENTO—A former Silicon Valley computer consultant whose decade-long fight with the Church of Scientology led to his ruin is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to free him from a Riverside County jail. Keith Henson's crusade against the church brought him a misdemeanor conviction for interfering with the rights of others to practice their religion. The 64-year-old Californian is now two months into a six-month jail sentence for the crime.

A Fourth of July celebration at a weapons training facility near Pahrump ended with the death of a young father.

Founded by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology is built on nonsense from whoa to go. Hubbard lied about his university qualifications. Thrice married, he posed as an expert on marital success. In 1964, an inquiry in Victoria found that Scientology presented a grave threat to family and home life. "As well as causing financial hardship, it engenders dissension, suspicion and mistrust among members of the family," said the inquiry. "Scientology has caused many family estrangements." As for Hubbard, the inquiry said he built a crazy and dangerous edifice based on a smattering of knowledge in various sciences. Essentially, Scientology is big business masquerading as religion and we all have reason to question it.

Tags: Australia, James Packer, Tom Cruise, UK Charity Commission

The Church of Scientology last month paid just under $8 million for a vacant 15-story office building and an adjoining one-story former toy store in the heart of downtown: the 1300 block of Chestnut Street - across the street from Macy's and next door to the furniture store Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams.

Tags: Philadelphia, Real estate

The German government has banned the makers of a film about a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler from shooting in the country because its lead is Tom Cruise. And Cruise, as he has ensured everyone knows, is a Scientologist. "[The ban] is a good thing," says Antje Blumenthal, a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who has campaigned against Scientology in Germany. "I don't like that whenever Tom Cruise is written about, it always says he is a Scientologist. I am concerned it could encourage young people to join."

Tags: Antje Blumenthal, Chick Corea, Germany, Tom Cruise, Ursula Caberta, Valkyrie

Boingo Wireless is designed to make Wi-Fi easy internationally and put billions of dollars into Scientology coffers. Dayton co-founded EarthLink with Reed Slatkin, who eventually went to jail as the creator of the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.

The German authorities have had a long history of run-ins with the Church of Scientology, which they accuse of masquerading as a church in order to make money — a charge the group vehemently rejects. Germany, along with several other European countries, has aggressive laws targeting groups that they deem to be cults.

Scientology is trying to transform its image from that of a shadowy cult A copy of the latest Cosreci accounts filed at Companies House shows an annual income of £10 million and nonproperty assets of £10.8 million including £6.7 million cash. The main Hubbard-influenced charity is Narconon, which claims to provide therapy and education against drug abuse. It has an annual income of £520,000. The Greenfields School, which promotes Hubbard's teachings for pupils aged 1 to 19, has £2.4 million assets and an annual turnover of £1 million.

Tags: Australia, Bob Keenan, Celebrity Centre, Church of Spiritual Technology, David Miscavige, East Grinstead, Monique Yingling, Narconon, Real estate, RTC, UK, WISE

A change in the legal definition of religion has opened the way for Scientology to claim a multi-million-pound British tax break by registering as a charity.

Tags: Bob Keenan, Monique Yingling, UK, UK Charity Commission

Scientology can seem more silly than scary, with its zany mythology, made-up lingo, and Tom Cruise. But it was no joke when the group's leaders set out to destroy investigative journalist Paulette Cooper's life.

Tags: Fair Game, Paulette Cooper

An indictment accused Solomonyan and others of conspiring between December 2003 and March 2005 to import shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and machine guns without a license.

Tags: Artur Solomonyan

Golden Era Golf Course, a historic golf course owned by the Church of Scientology near San Jacinto, is closing to the public effective July 15, church officials said.

Tags: Int Base

Tessa Mayes is the first reporter to have gone undercover in the London Celebrity Centre of the Church of Scientology. It is, she finds, like a pious version of Pop Idol. The adherents want to be celebrities at least as much as Scientologists

A former employee of a Southland telecommunications company claims the company's required training included courses "designed to indoctrinate employees" in Scientology, and when she objected to the religious aspects of the training she was fired. Margaret Warfield, of Montgomery, filed her religious discrimination lawsuit in federal court Monday against BTI Communications Group.

Tags: BTI Communications, Eric Brackett, Hubbard College, Hubbard Management System, Margaret Warfield, WISE

New housing is now available for members of the Church of Scientology's staff after $1.7 million in renovations were completed at Sherwood Gardens, a 106-unit apartment complex located three miles east of downtown Clearwater.

Tags: Clearwater, Real Estate

STAND by for the Fringe's first sect scandal. The world's biggest arts jamboree is facing a boycott over a scathing parody of the Church of Scientology. A musical about the controversial religious sect will premiere in Edinburgh during the event in August. Drama group Collapsible Theatre is staging Xenu Is Loose! - a satirical science-fiction production poking fun at the doctrines of the organisation, which has a host of celebrity adherents, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta. But the spoof drama has provoked an angry response from Scientologists, which has urged people to stay away, and is considering what action to take against the play.

A BBC Trust spokeswoman said: "As part of his routine monthly report, the director general has briefed the trust on the performance of Panorama most months since its move to Monday evenings, including the reaction to some particularly high-profile editions. "Panorama is the BBC's flagship current affairs programme and the trustees welcome these updates. The Trust has not asked for an investigation into Panorama or raised concerns with the BBC executive regarding its journalism.

Tags: John Sweeney

Thinking it was the Worcester of old, Renna says the Worcester visit was not what he expected. After a few days in town, he asked his ministers how it was going. “You must have hundreds of people.” he enthused. “They said, ‘No, it's quiet.' I said, ‘What about the mall?' They said, ‘It's not here any more.'”

Woodworth, the program president, said 930 people have signed up since 2002; 800 have completed the course. Fourhundred were firefighters - about 80 cops, the rest city workers who were first responders. Woodworth said there has been an 86 percent success rate, varying from those who were totally cured of toxicity, to those whose health improved.

Tags: Detox, Downtown Medical, Jim Woodworth, Jodi Bettis, Joe Higgins, Tom Cruise

It's a busy time to be a publicity officer for the Church of Scientology. First the controversy caused by the Panorama programme with the John Sweeney meltdown and now the creeping unease about My Name Is Earl. The Scientology-Earl connection begins with Earl himself - actor Jason Lee is a Scientologist, as is show creator Greg Garcia and Ethan Suplee who plays Earl's slow-reader brother Randy. So far, so creepy. But there has also been a guest appearance from Juliette Lewis, Suplee's sister-in-law and a practising Scientologist. Also down with the Church is Giovanni Ribisi, who plays recurring character Ralph Mariano. Church membership beats the crap out of having a union card and relevant experience, some might suggest.

Tags: Isaac Hayes, Jason Lee, John Sweeney, PC folders

The Association for Prosperity and Security in the Middle East has recently distributed an email to directors of summer camps in Israel, offering a range of activities free of charge. An inquiry by Ynet revealed that the messages and materials offered in the email originated from the Church of Scientology, whose activities in schools have previously been prohibited by the Education Ministry.

Tags: Israel, The Way to Happiness

The Church of Scientology is stepping up its image and presence here, spending $10 million to buy a prominent Auckland building.

Tags: Mike Ferriss, New Zealand, Real estate

Newly released Government papers have mired the Church of Scientology's Sussex headquarters in fresh controversy. Files from the National Archives at Kew include a confidential report produced by the then Department of Health and Social Security in 1977 for Home Secretary Merlyn Rees stating the church was a "considerable evil". It was written as the Government prepared to defend itself against a number of writs filed by the church relating to a 1968 statement announcing a ban on foreigners entering Britain to work or study at the church.

Tags: Merlyn Rees, UK, UK Charity Commission

The Vision Literacy Center is a nonprofit undertaking involving the partnership of E.L. Warren Ministries and Applied Scholastics International, which describes itself as a nonprofit, nonreligious organization founded in 1972. ASI materials say it is headquartered in suburban St. Louis with a mission to promote and develop programs of effective education for children and adults alike. Applied Scholastics is based on the Study Technology program developed by the late L. Ron Hubbard, an American fiction and self-help writer who became best-known as the creator of Dianetics and founder of the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Bennetta Slaughter

The protesters have joined forces with an off-shoot of the Church of Scientology movement to fight the decision. Brian Daniels, from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, said: "These people have a very pertinent point because they are concerned about the dangers of what is going on in psychiatric units.

Tags: CCHR

In response to this, Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), universally regarded as a front group for the Church of Scientology, has posted a rundown (pun intended) of the supposed crimes against journalism that I committed in the writing of my piece on the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Program.

Tags: David Touretzky, Detox, RFW, Robert Vaughn Young

With A-list celebrities among its followers and a string of unsavoury allegations from former members, the Church of Scientology is rarely far from the headlines. But newly released government files from the National Archives at Kew show controversy surrounding the church in the UK is nothing new. In the 1960s and 1970s officials debated whether or not to lift a ban on foreigners entering the UK to work or study at the church. In the documents, high-ranking mandarins referred to the church as "evil" and some described it repeatedly as a "cult". Many of the documents discussed a series of lawsuits filed by the church in the years after the entry ban was introduced in 1968.

Tags: East Grinstead, Fair Game, Foster Report, UK, UK Charity Commission

Religious Freedom Watch (RFW) has just put up an item on its website charging that in my New York Detox piece Scientology critic Dave Touretzky (left) could not defend himself from charges that he is a racist, but simply stated that the charges are untrue because they cannot be found via a Lexis-Nexis search. The RFW item can be found here.

Tags: David Touretzky, Detox

Here's a little source material for you all regarding my piece on the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project. In it, I mention a particularly strongly worded letter sent by Queens City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. to Rev. John Carmichael, president of the New York branch of the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Cynthia Kisser, Detox, HealthMed, John Carmichael, Lloyd Eshbach, Peter Vallone, Richard Behar, Vicki Aznaran, Xenu

What Scientologists aren't telling you about their detox program (and how much it's costing you) “I'm not here converting these men and women to Scientology. And I've got to tell you something—I've been a Scientologist 20 years. In Sacramento I, more than any other Scientologist, got new people into Scientology, me personally. I'm very good at converting people, if I want to.” Jim Woodworth is the director of the New York Rescue Workers' Detoxification Project, and he is bristling at the suggestion that his program is an arm of the Church of Scientology.

Tags: ABLE, Clear Body, Clear Mind, David Root, David Touretzky, Detox, Downtown Medical, FASE, Hiram Monserrate, International Academy of Detoxification Specialists, James Barnes, Jim Woodworth, John Carmichael, Margarita Lopez, Narconon, Ooze towel, Phyllis Gelb, Purif, RFW, Robert Vaughn Young, Tom Cruise

While the verdict may still be out as to whether Scientology is a brainwashing cult or not, after a recent run-in with the BBC, two things are abundantly clear: Scientologists can't stand being called cult members, and they have the power to drive even seasoned journalists absolutely insane.

Tags: John Sweeney, Tommy Davis

The Church of Scientology has always claimed that its goal was not to stifle criticism but to protect its "trade secrets", as it called the L. Ron Hubbard writings that adherents study for many expensive hours. Whether the CoS's claim was true or not doesn't really matter. Copyright maximalism (as Pamela Samuelson calls it) is that it provides a legal structure people can use to stifle critics if that's what they want to do and that remains the core issue no matter what anyone's motives were in a particular case.

Former chief reporter Paul Bracchi, who secretly infiltrated the cult, remembers how its followers relentlessly threatened and pursued him in revenge for criticising their deceptive and manipulative methods. Here Mr Bracchi, who now lives in London, tells the chilling story of how he was stalked and intimidated for months afterwards, even receiving a bullet in the post at The Argus headquarters in Hollingbury.

Tags: Eugene Ingram, Fair Game, Kevin Hurley, Paul Bracchi

The Church of Scientology has been accused of using British artists as a front for recruiting members. The Stuckist movement, which rails against conceptual art, is in turmoil over claims that sales of its artists" paintings are effectively funding Scientology, a religious sect accused of brainwashing its followers.

An East Tampa pastor stands united with Hubbard's study technology program.

Labelled a cult by its critics, defended as a bona fide religion by devotees, it is never far from the headlines, though it is generally viewed from these shores as another American oddity. But Scientology does have a foothold in Britain, claiming up to 7,000 members in Scotland alone. And the strange world of Scientology, which believes aliens visited Earth millions of years ago, was exposed last week by a Panorama documentary.

Tags: ABLE, Cult Information Centre, Operation Clambake, UK

THE INLAND Revenue is being asked to investigate why British Scientologists are refusing to pay a tax on the grounds they do charitable work – even though the controversial religion has been refused charitable status. Scientology, which came under fierce attack on the BBC last week, was denied the special status by the Charity Commission eight years ago.

Tags: Australia, Bob Keenan, Massimo Angius, Mike Rinder, Tommy Davis, UK, UK Charity Commission

BATON ROUGE, La. - Inside the industrial looking brick walls of one of Louisiana's poorest performing middle schools, Scientologists finally have achieved a longtime goal.

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Bennetta Slaughter, Carol Woodruff, David Touretzky, Diola Bagayoko, Elida Bera, Linda Behar-Horenstein, Michele Gill, Study tech, Venetta Whitaker

The caller could not have been more relieved. I was supposed to be dead. Someone had started a rumour that I had been killed in a fire. The same people who had tried to obtain my exdirectory phone number, handed out pamphlets attacking me, and dispatched an American private detective - an ex-Los Angeles police officer - to Britain to frighten and smear the source who had helped me expose their activities.

Tags: Eugene Ingram, Fair Game, Narconon

For the record, I've met families who say their lives have been wrecked. Many people who have since left the Church say they now see it, in the words of a High Court judge back in the Eighties, as “corrupt, sinister and dangerous”. His words, not mine. We didn't fake the demo by anti-Scientology protesters. We're not terrorists, I'm not a bigot and I don't take kindly to being compared to Hitler. Why did I lose it? I had had enough. During seven days on the road with Scientologists and ex-Scientologists I had been followed by creepy strangers, followed by cars, shouted at, called a bigot countless times, had my hotel invaded by top Scientologist Tommy Davis plus camera crew and had an interview with a critic of Scientology — who they call a “sex pervert” — interrupted by Davis.

Tags: Disconnection, Fair Game, John Sweeney, Nazi labelling, Russell Miller, Tommy Davis, Xenu

I WATCHED COOPER'S interview with interest, after my own run-in with the Scientologists a few weeks ago. I wrote a blog post about the new “Hairspray” film being released in July that stars prominent Scientologist John Travolta and urged gays to boycott the movie. The tongue-in-cheek nature of the post was lost on Scientologists.

Tags: Gay, John Travolta, Michael Pattinson

The Church of Scientology last night launched a fresh attempt to discredit the Panorama reporter John Sweeney, following the broadcast of a prime time BBC1 programme investigating its controversial beliefs and recruiting methods. As Panorama editor Sandy Smith took to the airwaves to defend Sweeney's investigation following the furore around his furious YouTube outburst captured by Scientology cameras, the war of words and online propaganda intensified.

Tags: John Sweeney, Mike Rinder

Today Sandy Smith, the Panorama editor, hit back at claims that the BBC had orchestrated a demonstration against the Scientologists while filming the documentary. He said: "Their DVD contains two grossly defamatory claims about us - one, that we staged a demonstration against Scientology and two, that a terrorist death threat was made. "It is absolutely outrageous to suggest that the BBC would organise a demonstration - why would we?" He claimed that the Scientologists wrote the script for the DVD in a "curious way" but that it "clearly implied that a terrorist death threat was made".

Tags: Fair Game, John Sweeney, Mike Rinder

COOPER: We pick up now where we left off before the break, the latest controversy to hit the Church of Scientology. A BBC reporter -- you just saw him there -- losing his cool during an interview while the church's cameras were rolling. The tape showing his melt-down ended up on YouTube. And now the reporter's accusing Scientology of playing hardball to try to discredit him to his investigation of the church will come under suspicion. The BBC reporter says he was followed as part of a church campaign against him. That's where we pick up my interview with Mike Rinder, director of the Church of Scientology International. [Transcript]

The Panorama editor, Sandy Smith, has defended tonight's controversial John Sweeney investigation into the Church of Scientology.

Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber. Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany.

Tags: Disconnection, Fair Game, John Sweeney, Mike Henderson, Nazi labelling, Tommy Davis, UK Charity Commission

Tags: Disconnection, Fair Game, John Sweeney, Shawn Lonsdale, Tommy Davis

While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers. Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged. I have met mothers who say they have suffered Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".

Tags: Disconnection, Fair Game, John Sweeney, Mike Henderson, Nazi labelling, Tommy Davis, UK Charity Commission

John Sweeney has apologised for the outburst against a scientologist which was filmed and then put on the video-sharing website YouTube, prompting criticism of the corporation. The BBC held an internal inquiry but said Sweeney had not breached any guidelines.

Tags: Tommy Davis

Although Mr Stewart insisted he was not a Scientologist, the news is the latest evidence of the extent to which the group has managed to forge links with the City police. Last year it emerged that officers from the force had accepted £11,000 worth of hospitality from the Church of Scientology

Tags: Cult Information Centre, Ian Haworth, Ken Stewart, Kevin Hurley, London, Police, UK

The Church of Scientology has lodged a development application with City of Sydney Council for a glass-fronted tower on the roof of its heritage building on Castlereagh Street.

Tags: Australia, James Packer, Real estate, Sydney, Vicki Dunstan

With his spirits on the rise, he won a bike in a contest after pledging to use it to recover his health. And a few months ago, he completed a Scientology-sponsored sauna treatment and found he no longer needed daily doses of steroids and his asthma inhaler.

Tags: Detox, Joe Montaperto

Think of those zany, cuckoo, wacky Scientologists as sort of the National Rifle Association of cults. So they can get plenty fired up over the vaguest prospect of a psychologist or psychiatrist getting anywhere remotely near someone who might be contemplating a crisis in their lives. To folks like Kramer, this isn't an issue about public health. It's competition for customers.

Tags: CCHR, Florida, Ken Kramer

BLACKSBURG -- Brian Grogan, 26, was chomping on a hot dog before heading to work Wednesday when he noticed people in canary yellow T-shirts handing out religious pamphlets. A moment later, he realized they were Scientologists. "They're leeches," Grogan said. "They show up wherever something bad happens and use that to spread their propaganda."

Tags: Sylvia Stanard, Volunteer Ministers

After wholesale blaming the massacre on psychiatric drugs before the killer was even identified, they descended like vultures upon the grief-stricken Virginia Tech campus. Based on internal memos I"ve received, I can prove that Scientology's goals at VT are not in the least bit altruistic. Hubbard's own doctrine specifies that they are not about charity "without fair exchange." They seek only to benefit from whatever good PR they imagine they can conjure, and how much "raw meat" (Hubbard's reference to new recruits) they can bring into their organization. The official internal Scientology memos I"ve been receiving call for the bulk purchasing of cult literature to be distributed by largely untrained adherents at V-Tech and, this time, give the false impression that they are actually working with the Salvation Army.

Tags: Virginia Tech, Volunteer Ministers

The e-mail, posted by an alert Radar reader in our Comments section, also claimed that the Salvation Army had urgently sought the help of L. Ron's kids: "We have been asked by the Salvation Army staff ... to provide 24-hour help for the next two days in the form of grief counseling and trauma relief for the parents and families of the victims." Well, not quite.

Tags: Sylvia Stanard, Volunteer Ministers

Two City Council members who attended Tom Cruise's fund-raiser for a controversial 9/11 "detoxification project" didn't pay the $6,250-a-ticket entry fee, but officials said they acted within the ethics rules. City Council members Joe Addabbo (D-Queens) and Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens) both turned up at the glitzy Manhattan affair Thursday night for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, co-founded by Cruise and linked to Scientology.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Joe Addabbo, Tom Cruise

Cruise vigorously defended the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, despite criticism that it offers nothing more than medical hocus-pocus. The program, based on principles developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, has provided more than 780 emergency workers suffering 9/11-related health problems with free treatment, which includes heavy doses of vitamins and hours in a sauna.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Joseph Addabbo, NYC, Patrick Bahnken, Tom Cruise

Some call it a cult concoction while silver screen celebrity Tom Cruise swears by it -- a Scientology program called the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project. City Councilman Hiram Monserrate said the program worked for him.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Tom Cruise

Despite Mayor Bloomberg's denouncement of the program as "not science" on Wednesday, those present at the fundraiser were clearly happy to give their approval to the project, which saw Cruise personally thank guests for their attendance.

Tags: Detox, Tom Cruise

LAST night another religious wack job came to attack Ground Zero: Tom bin Cruise. The warden of the Katie Holmes Correctional Facility zoomed in to do a "benefit" for his Scientology group, the "New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project." Only Cruise would hold a benefit for himself.

Tags: Detox, Tom Cruise

On Friday, Weaver told Radar, "Yesterday they just walked around campus without being obtrusive, but today they set up a bright yellow tent about 100 yards from the memorial." The tent, similar to the ones celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise routinely pitches on movie sets, is situated near another tent where victims" memorial boards are on display, so when aggrieved students come to pay their respects, they get accosted by the culties. "It's sick," says Weaver. "They can leave and take the media with them."

Tags: Volunteer Ministers

The money goes to the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a program Cruise co-founded in 2002. The 30-day program, based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's principles, offers free treatment to cops, firefighters and paramedics who believe they developed breathing difficulties and other ailments after working at Ground Zero. Participants receive vitamins, including high doses of niacin to release fatty acids into the bloodstream, and nutritional counseling. They also complete daily exercise regimens and sit in saunas as hot as 180 degrees.

Tags: Detox, Patrick Bahnken, Tom Cruise

Monserrate, a former cop, told me he spoke with Sept. 11 rescue workers who have benefited from the program, and said that critics are motivated by their own agendas. "The bottom line is the program provided a better quality of life for hundreds of rescue workers that have taken the program," he said. "I myself personally have spoken to dozens of them who"ve had serious ailments, problems with upper respiratory infections, breathing problems."

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Tom Cruise

As could be expected, Scientologists are none too happy with Mayor Mike Bloomberg and City Councilman Peter Vallone for questioning the scientific validity of their "sweat and vitamins" detox project for 9/11 rescue workers. And at least one California-based follower of the ways of L. Ron hubbard is speaking out, sending an open letter to a variety of elected officials, newspapers and others praising the scientific validity of the New York Rescue Workers Detox Project.

Tags: Brian Wenger, Detox, Mike Bloomberg, Peter Vallone

Tom Cruise appeared at a private dinner fundraiser on Thursday night for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a program he co-founded in 2002. The Scientology-based program offers free treatment to emergency workers who suffer breathing difficulties and other health problems stemming from exposure to toxins at ground zero after 9/11 terror attacks.

Cruise's program - which had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in city funds - hasn't been endorsed by the Fire or Police departments and has been described by some experts as little more than medical mumbo-jumbo. "This is just hocus-pocus," Dr. Bob Hoffman of the New York City Poison Control Center told The Post in 2004. "For some people, sitting in a hot environment can be very dangerous."

Tags: Bob Hoffman, Detox, NYC, Patrick Bahnken, Tom Cruise

SCIENTOLOGY fanatic Tom Cruise is in New York to solicit more cash for his controversial venture to "detox" the heroes of September 11. Cruise, 44, will appear at a private gala on Manhattan's West 18th Street tonight to raise funds for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a program he co-founded in 2002.

Tags: Detox, Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise comes to New York on Thursday night, hoping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Scientology. He's doing it under the guise of a detox program for members of the New York Fire Department who participated in the 9/11 clean-up. There's only problem: No one from the hierarchy of the FDNY endorses this program. The people I've talked to are furious with Cruise, and want the rank and file of firemen in New York to stay away from it.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Tom Cruise

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted official proclamations drafted by a city councilman honoring Tom Cruise and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for their roles in promoting a detoxification program for 9/11 rescue workers. "I don't think it's appropriate to do that," said the mayor, reacting to a report in yesterday's Post. "I think that reputable scientists do not think Scientology has any basis in science. It may be a cult, it may be a religion, it may be beliefs. It's other things, but it's not science, and we should only fund those programs that reputable scientists believe will stand the light of day and the scientific method."

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, Howard Teich, Mike Bloomberg, NYC, Peter Vallone, Rick Ross

In a move that has outraged some officials, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard has been honored by the City Council ahead of tomorrow night's Manhattan fund-raiser for a controversial 9/11 detox program, The Post has learned.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserrate, NYC, Peter Vallone

The Church of Scientology has dispatched "ministers" to provide "grief counseling" for shell-shocked youth at Virginia Tech - but critics suspect the sect hopes to convert the vulnerable students.

Tags: CCHR, Mark Ebner, Rick Ross, Sylvia Stannard, Volunteer Ministers

Hollywood, Interrupted calls BULLSHIT, and can now release an internal Scientology memo proving that proselytizing at the shooting tragedy site is exactly what they are doing.

Tags: Volunteer Ministers

Tags: Volunteer Ministers

"Drug abuse is ruining our culture," said Noelle North LA coordinator of the Drug-Free Marshals, sponsored by the Church of Scientology. "Overcoming this scourge requires real drug education about exactly what drugs do to our bodies and minds. Effective drug education at all levels of society can and will bring about drug abuse prevention."In the last decade, Scientology churches worldwide have printed and distributed more than 8.3 million informational brochures laying out the facts about drugs and including the Truth About Drugs booklets.

Tags: Drug-Free Marshals, Noelle North

The organisation was turned down for charitable status in 1999 because the Charity Commission ruled scientology was not a religion in English charity law. Graeme Wilson, the director and spokesman for the Church of Scientology in England and Wales, said it had not decided whether to reapply. But he said some UK bodies had already recognised scientology as a religion, including the City of London last October when it granted the Church charitable rates relief. He said: "Over the years there have been many official recognitions of scientology's religiosity throughout Europe, including in Britain.

Tags: East Grinstead, Graeme Wilson, Russia, UK Charity Commission, Youth for Human Rights

The Post reported yesterday that Monserrate is one of the hosts of an April 19 fund-raiser for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, where Cruise is appearing, and where tickets are going for as much as $100,000 for a table of eight.

Tags: Detox, Downtown Medical, Hiram Monserrate, Jim Woodworth, Pat Bahnken, Stephen Kent, Tom Cruise

Just weeks after opening their first facility in St. Petersburg, Scientologists have irked two of the city's most respected institutions - the Holocaust and Dali museums. Representatives of both museums say they were misled when asked to support a human rights march but not told that the organizers are a rights advocacy group affiliated with the Church of Scientology.

Moscow, April 6, Interfax – Moscow's South District office of public procurator instituted legal proceedings against the headship of the Narconon-Standard narcological clinic that bases its methods on Scientology, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reports on Friday. According to the daily, this ideology is disallowed to be practiced in Russian medical institutions. However parents are often ready to use any chance to save their children from drug addiction.

Tags: Narconon, Russia

Have you ever wanted to rub shoulders with Tom Cruise and learn about Scientology's detox treatment for 9/11 workers? Then you"ll be excited to learn that the superstar will be in town for an April 19 fund-raiser. The Post reports that while the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project hasn't been approved by the NYPD or FDNY, some swear by it. However, even those involved with the fund-raiser are conflicted.

Tags: Detox, Hiram Monserratte, Tom Cruise

Scientology superstar Tom Cruise is coming here to promote his controversial "detox" project to 9/11 workers, and will host a mega-fund-raising gala for it. Tickets for the April 19 fund-raiser, which will star Cruise and benefit the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, run as high as $100,000 for a table for eight.

A new drug treatment center uses saunas, vitamins and, some say, Scientology to rehab inmates. Now they have state money to do it.

Tags: Alfonso Paredes, Anna Crook, CARF, Charles Melton, Criminon, Detox, John Brennan, Joy Westrum, Nancy Dunham, Narconon, New Mexico, Purif, Randall Suggs, Raymond Sanchez, Rick Pendery, Robert Desiderio, Second Chance, The Way to Happiness

A HUMAN rights youth forum at Parliament House in Sydney promoted the views of the Scientology founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and was organised by a group linked to the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Australia, Front group, Nigel Mannock, Youth for Human Rights

Scientology is mounting an offensive on Europe's capitals and major cities. "National offices" already exist in Madrid, London and Brussels, and the opening of new branches was discussed at an "expansion summit" last year. "If we are to implement our planetary campaigns for salvation, then we have to reach the top levels of the German government in Berlin," a Scientology document states, adding that the Berlin headquarters is responsible for "building the necessary in-roads to the German parliament, in order to ensure that our solutions are genuinely introduced to the whole of German society."

Tags: Germany, Real estate

As president of sci-fi powerhouse Galaxy Press, Los Angeles publisher John Goodwin is no stranger to the idea of paranormal phenomena. So he knew Eugene was bucking the odds by producing winners in Galaxy's annual Writers of the Future contest six years in a row.

Tags: ASI, Galaxy Press, John Goodwin, Writers of the Future

Charles L. Stafford, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the St. Petersburg Times and its national correspondent for two decades, died at 83. The 1980 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting was awarded to him and fellow reporter Bette Orsini for their investigation of the Church of Scientology.

Tags: Bette Orsini, Charles Stafford, Fair Game, Pulitzer Prize

The Metropolitan Police have agreed to give the Church of Scientology privileged information on security, the Evening Standard can reveal. Under the agreement, the Met has placed the church on the database of groups provided with "current, fast-time”details about safety matters.

Tags: Cult Information Centre, Ian Haworth, London, UK, Volunteer Ministers

For more than 30 years, Clearwater has served as the worldwide spiritual headquarters of the Church of Scientology. But until now, St. Petersburg had largely remained virgin territory for the aggressively expansionist church.

Tags: John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Pat Harney, Real estate, St. Petersburg

Scientologists are not against all psychiatry, only cases when people are involuntarily committed or forced to take medication, Klagenberg said. During an auditing session, the subject is hooked up to an E-Meter, which sends a mild electrical current through the body and measures thoughts, Collins said. The sensitive device is similar in function to a polygraph, she said. Becoming an auditor takes years of training, and the sessions can cost $500 to $2,000.

Tags: Brian Daellenbach, Mike Klagenberg, Sande Collins, Sarah Pike

John Travolta says Scientology could have saved Anna Nicole Smith. The actor insists the late Playboy Playmate may still be alive if she had checked into the controversial Scientology drug and detox programme Narconon.

Tags: John Travolta, Narconon

Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, all well known devotees of Scientology. But what exactly is it? Celebrity fad? Self help therapy? Sci-fi wierdness? religion? Business club? With a peek inside the Sussex headquarters, Nihal attempts to uncover the truth about aliens, alternative therapies and hard cash. Featuring an exclusive interview with actress, musician and Scientologist Juliette Lewis.

Tags: Bob Keenan, East Grinstead, Hartley Patterson, Multimedia, Tory Christman

Many medical professionals have criticized the program he uses as ineffective and scientifically unsound, even dangerous. Critics point out that the program's inventor, the late L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, rested his scientific authority on a mail-in diploma from the now defunct Sequoia University.

Tags: Clear Body, Clear Mind, David Root, Detox, Narconon, Purif

Money. That's all it was about as far as I could see. It wasn't about spiritual enlightenment, helping people, or making my life better. They wanted to take me for my hard-earned dollars through persuasion, aggression, and good old-fashioned guilt tripping. (Don't you want to get better? Then buy this book! Attend this conference!) It was Madison Avenue thinly cloaked by religion. At least advertising companies are blatant about what they are trying to do. It's a known fact that advertisers try to make consumers feel like they are lacking, and that the solution to their problems will come once they purchase that beer/shoe/yogurt/lipstick/cruise/handbag.

Tags: Body routing, NYC

In an effort to sift fact from fiction, I"ve come to the Church of Scientology's massive new London HQ to talk to three of its leading British members - about their beliefs, primarily, but also about their reaction to the various controversies that swirl around this curious institution. Do they really believe in aliens? Why do they venerate Hubbard to the extent that he is mythologised and his achievements (to my eyes at least) embellished? Do they accept that free speech allows me the right to mock or is mild scepticism all I am allowed? And what's behind the hatred of psychiatry?

Tags: Applied Scholastics, Bob Keenan, Criminon, Dan Sherman, Graeme Wilson, Janet Laveau, Justice Latey, Narconon, Russell Miller, Study tech, The Way to Happiness, Xenu

Henson was arrested Feb. 2 on a fugitive warrant for failing to appear at his sentencing and booked into the Yavapai County Jail, Prescott, Ariz., police Sgt. Ken Morley said Thursday. Jail officials there were unable to immediately confirm he was in custody. Henson will be brought back to Riverside County within 90 days to face sentencing that also involves three years of probation, Riverside County district attorney spokeswoman Ingrid Wyatt said Thursday.

Tags: Arizona, Golden Era Productions, Ingrid Wyatt, Int Base, Keith Henson, Ken Morley, Muriel Dufresne, Riverside County

A Silicon Valley figure who fled the country after being convicted in part because of a Usenet joke about Tom Cruise and Scientology has been arrested in Arizona. Keith Henson, an engineer, writer and futurist, was arrested Friday in Prescott, Ariz., where he has been living for the past few years, and now faces extradition to California. Henson originally fled to Canada after the 2001 conviction. The misdemeanor conviction in California stems from a post that Henson made in the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup that joked about aiming a nuclear "Tom Cruise" missile at Scientologists, and Henson's picketing of the group's Golden Era Productions in Riverside, Calif.

Tags: Keith Henson

CLEARWATER - The Church of Scientology's mammoth new spiritual shrine has stood vacant and unfinished for years, its dusty Mediterranean-style shell surrounded by patches of scrubby grass and “no trespassing” signs. Now church officials say they are ready to resume work on the building as it has racked up more than $55,000 in fines for not meeting the city's deadline to finish the exterior. Clearwater's city building department issued a new construction permit that will allow the church to finish the exterior of the 384,000-square-foot structure, more than two years after the original permit expired. The church broke ground on the seven-story building in March 2000.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate, Super Power

With residents of a Berlin neighborhood deeply unhappy about the opening of a new Scientology center, city officials have found a creative way of limiting the church's activity. Because Scientology is considered a business and not a church in Germany, it falls under the country's rigid Sunday closing law.

Tags: Germany

The Church of Scientology Mission of York has opened at Matmer House in Hull Road - one of 14 Scientology "churches" now open in the UK.

Tags: Jive Aces, Real estate, UK

A group of demonstrators yesterday angered passersby, prompting them to shout out car windows and make obscene gestures at the sign holders, who demanded a list of medications taken by young murder suspect John Odgren. The group said its goal was to educate the community about the dangers of psychiatric drugs, but most said the demonstration five days after the death of Lincoln-Sudbury freshman James Alenson was ill-timed and inappropriate.

Tags: Abbi Baldarelli, CCHR, Kevin Hall

The company, BioPerformance, sold its product with a claim that putting a couple of the pills into an automobile fuel tank could increase gas mileage 30 percent. The state's investigation revealed that the product had no such power and that its main ingredient was naphthalene, used in making mothballs.

Tags: BioPerformance, WISE

This is not a spa. This is Second Chance, one of the country's most unusual alternatives to the nation's prison systems. Founded by a Scientologist and former real-estate developer -- and funded partly by federal tax dollars -- Second Chance is a treatment program for nonviolent prisoners with substance-abuse problems.

Tags: Anna Crook, Criminon, Judge Lang, Judge Sanchez, New Mexico, Purif, Randall Suggs, Rick Pendery, Second Chance, W. John Brennan

Who is behind invitation to party for "Youth for Human Rights"? The invitation is signed by Don Shaul, 13 year old, with title of Israeli director of "International Youth for Human Rights". But behind heartwarming initiative stands Scientology movement

Tags: CCHR, International Fund for Human Rights, Israel, Mary Shuttleworth, Youth for Human Rights

The German government says it considers Scientology a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people. The conservative interior minister of the southern state of Bavaria called for increased surveillance of the group's activities in Berlin and across Europe. Scientologists reject the government's accusations, saying they are a religion and calling surveillance an abuse of their right to religious freedom.

Tags: Anne Archer, Berlin, Germany, Office for the Protection of the Constitution, US State Department

The secretary general of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, Ronald Pofalla, said the left-leaning government in Berlin had made a serious mistake by allowing the new center to open. "It is intolerable that Scientology can throw its weight around in the capital of Germany," he said. The chairman of the Lutheran Church in Germany, Wolfgang Huber, said Scientology had nothing to do with religion "and certainly nothing to do with Christianity," and should not enjoy the protection of the state. "They want to pressure people and do business under the cloak of religion," he told the Berlin daily B.Z., adding that Scientology aimed to make its followers into "perfect machines."

The fact that the new Scientology Centre is now in the German capital has prompted a heated debate in the media. Critics accuse the organisation of cult-type practices and exploiting followers for financial gain and they argue that the centre may become a meeting point for Scientologists across Europe. But Scientologists reject this and they claim that they want to help people, and carry on their "community work".

Tags: Bundesverfassungsschutz, Germany, Thomas Gandow, Ute Kiessl

The controversial Scientology sect was accused of trying to inflitrate British politics last night after it emerged that they paid thousands of pounds to both the Labour and Tory parties.

Tags: ABLE, Criminon, Graeme Wilson, Justice Latey, Narconon, UK, UK Charity Commission

They allowed the charity, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), to take a stall at the party's annual conference in Manchester. Exhibitors at the conference have to pay up to £13,500. The stand was part of an extensive lobbying operation by Scientology members to promote its drug treatment programme, Narconon, and the criminal rehabilitation scheme Criminon.

Tags: ABLE, Criminon, Graeme Wilson, Narconon, UK

Körting told the mass circulation daily Bild Tuesday that Scientology is a "dangerous organization because it operates in the gray area between religion, commerce and sects." However he also said Tuesday in comments to the radio station RBB-Inforadio that there was no reason to ban the organization, saying a better approach was to educate the public about the ideology behind the church.

SHOULD media mogul James Packer and his fiancee, model Erica Baxter, ever face the strains that occasionally crop up in marriage, their key marital aid may be a device with steel cylinders held in each hand, attached by wires to a screen with dials and meters. It's the electropsychometer, or E-meter, and it's one element of a church with which Packer and Baxter are flirting: Scientology.

Devotees of the Church of Scientology have gained access to thousands of British children through a charity that visits schools to lecture on the dangers of drugs. A Sunday Times investigation has found that Marlborough College is one of more than 500 schools across Britain where the charity has taught.

In Clearwater, the church this month got city permits and a development order to complete the exterior of its Super Power building. Last year, the city lost patience with Scientology's lack of progress. The code enforcement board ordered the exterior, including landscaping and sidewalks, to be completed by early summer. Technically, the church is accruing daily fines of $250 — now totalling more than $40,000 — for failing to meet that deadline. But the city and the church have agreed on a new timetable for completion. If the church meets it, city officials expect the fine will be forgiven.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate, Super Power

My source within the Fire Department warns that Scientology will not be allowed in again if there's another terrorist attack. “Our crisis workers weren't equipped to deal with them last time. They're ready now,” my source said. By the way, the Scientology/Detox people should re-designate one of the spokeswomen in their recruitment and fundraising video. Margarita Lopez is no longer a New York City Councilwoman, as she is billed. She is now a Surrogate Court judge in Brooklyn. Her efforts to become Manhattan Borough president in 2005 were blunted when the New York Post reported that she directed hundreds of thousands of city dollars into the controversial detox program after receiving $115,000 in campaign donations from Scientology.

Tags: Bodhi Elfman, Detox, FDNY, Jenna Elfman, Joe Higgins, Margarita Lopez, New York Rescue Workers Detoxificiation Project, Roland Fink, Sebastian Rapanti, Steven Lager, Tom Cruise

MEMBERS of the Church of Scientology have reportedly been removed from a Gippsland staging ground where Country Fire Authority firefighters and crews have been recovering.

Tags: Australia, Mary Anderson, Volunteer Ministers

On Tuesday, the Church of Scientology will go before the city's Community Development Board to request a transfer of development rights from the site of its power plant on Court Street to the Oak Cove Building, a 13-story waterfront high-rise that the church intends to develop as a 251-room hotel for visiting Scientologists.

Tags: Ben Shaw, Clearwater, Frank Hibbard, Real estate, Super Power

The Association for Better Living and Education International (ABLE), under the new ownership name of Social Betterment Properties International, will appear before the county's revenue and personnel committee, perhaps as early as Dec. 19, seeking real and personal property tax exemption for Applied Scholastics for 2004 and forward. Campisi, who serves on that committee, said he will disqualify himself from any discussions on the matter.

Tags: ABLE, Applied Scholastics, Social Betterment Properties International, St. Louis

The centre used to be a shabby shop offering free personality tests. But Scientology has revamped it, and now it's bright and welcoming, as if to forestall the accusation that they might be a secretive cult. A smiling man in a suit smiled at me and invited me to watch a video. "Then I"ll explain some more," he smiled. Did I mention he was smiling? Space aliens notwithstanding, new age kookiness isn't the problem here. The more I explore self-help, the more tolerant I become of those who believe in angels and spirit guides: they're well-meaning, mostly, and if I happen not to share their metaphors for understanding life, so be it. But Scientologists claim to be scientific. (There's a clue in the name.)

Tags: UK

The centre used to be a shabby shop offering free personality tests. But Scientology has revamped it, and now it's bright and welcoming, as if to forestall the accusation that they might be a secretive cult. A smiling man in a suit smiled at me and invited me to watch a video. "Then I'll explain some more," he smiled. Did I mention he was smiling? Space aliens notwithstanding, new age kookiness isn't the problem here. The more I explore self-help, the more tolerant I become of those who believe in angels and spirit guides: they're well-meaning, mostly, and if I happen not to share their metaphors for understanding life, so be it. But Scientologists claim to be scientific. (There's a clue in the name.)

Tags: Life Improvement Centre, London, UK

The Court of Appeal for this district has rejected an attorney's claim to a portion of the millions of dollars recovered by a former Scientologist in the decades-long suit over what he said were coercive tactics by the church. Div. Two Wednesday affirmed Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert L. Hess' ruling invalidating Leta Schlosser's attorney fee lien against Lawrence D. Wollersheim's $8.7 million recovery from the Church of Scientology and its affiliated organizations.

Tags: Judge Hess, Justice Ashmann-Gerst, Lawrence Wollersheim, Leta Schlosser, SCOTUS

He said he wants to "keep her memory alive and to let people know that Clearwater has a little blight, something in the downtown that they shouldn't ignore. Lisa's death is just an example of the things that are happening with Scientology." Church spokesman Ben Shaw said he didn't see the banner and declined comment, saying, "It's over."

Tags: Ben Shaw, Jeff Jacobsen, Lisa McPherson

Another trap the media fall into is taking Scientology's claim of ten million members worldwide at face value. Membership figures are notoriously problematic. Are Church of England members everyone who has been baptised into it? Or all those who say they are C of E, meaning they're not anything else? Or Christmas or Easter communicants? So what about the 120,000 members Scientology are claiming in Britain?

Tags: Heber Jentzsch, Kevin Hurley, Membership, UK

Among the religions on the rise are Buddhism, up 79 per cent since 1996, Islam, up 40 per cent, Hinduism up 42 per cent, and Penatacostalism, up 11 per cent. Nature religions, including Wicca and witchcraft had grown by 130 per cent and Scientology had 37 per cent more followers.

Kyle Jarrow, the author of "A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant," is grooving along with this warm, yet somewhat disturbing scene on the sidelines at a rehearsal space in Watertown. He's watching a cast of 8- to 15-year-olds rehearse his script for a Boston Theatre Works production while across the ocean, the world's most famous Scientologist takes wedding vows for a third time. Tom Cruise, for better or worse, may have brought Scientology into the pages of People and Us Weekly. But Jarrow has created a musical about L. Ron Hubbard that is, in its own sardonic way, much more funny and touching than any of Cruise's diatribes against Ritalin. It starts previews at the Boston Center for the Arts tonight.

An internal review of the hospitality policy of City of London police was ordered yesterday after revelations that officers had been accepting invitations, dinners and gifts from the Church of Scientology worth thousands of pounds. Details of how the religious movement appeared to be cultivating officers in the force were revealed in a freedom of information inquiry made by the Guardian.

Tags: Police, UK

The Church of Scientology appears to be involved in an effort to woo officers from the City of London police - an unlikely partnership perhaps, but one that seems to be blossoming. Details of how more than 20 officers, from constables to chief superintendents, have been invited to a series of engagements by the scientologists over the last 15 months have been revealed by a freedom of information inquiry by the Guardian.

Tags: Detox, East Grinstead, Janet Laveau, Jive Aces, UK, UK Charity Commission, Volunteer Ministers

Officers have received sought-after free invitations to film premieres and £500-a-head charity dinners where the guest of honour is Hollywood superstar and renowned Scientologist, Tom Cruise. They have even been provided with the free use of a £5,000-a-night jazz band to play for officers and guests at a police station function. As a result of the revelations, an internal review of the force's hospitality policy has been launched.

TOM Cruise yesterday took his best man on honeymoon with him and new wife Katie Holmes after their lavish but bizarre wedding in Italy. The 44-year-old star was allegedly spotted hopping on a private jet to the Maldives with senior Scientologist David Miscavige, 46, as other boozed-up guests headed for the US.

Tags: David Miscavige, Tom Cruise

Today, Scientologists own much of downtown Clearwater. They"ve given new life to an ailing waterfront. They draw tourists and celebs such as Cruise and John Travolta, and they serve in a host of civic organizations. In one study commissioned by the church, Scientologists" direct spending in the community in 1999 was estimated at $119 million. But not everyone is pleased. Many residents complain the church, its controversial history and unique beliefs alienate residents from a downtown that, despite the development and prime location minutes from the beach, remains sleepy. Downtown may look better, they say, but unless you"re a Scientologist there's little reason to go there.

Tags: Clearwater, Gordon Melton

In past years, CCHR has undertaken campaigns against fluoxetine (Prozac), electroconvulsive therapy, methylphenidate (Ritalin) and the inclusion of psychiatric care in health care reform, among others. But in recent months, it has made psychiatry itself the direct target, with the publication of Psychiatry -- the Ultimate Betrayal by Bruce Wiseman, CCHR U.S. president, and the publication of the Psychiatry- Education's Ruin booklet. Asked about the American Psychiatric Association's stance on the booklet, Lynn Schultz-Writsel, associate director in the Division of Public Affairs, said: "We have not responded in any way, shape or form. There has not been a hue and cry from members to respond. And anyway, the publication speaks for itself."

Tags: APA, Bruce Wiseman, CCHR, Fred Baughman, Jan Eastgate, Peter Dockx

The settlement, approved Tuesday by a federal bankruptcy judge, is part of final efforts to recover funds for the victims of [Reed Slatkin], who is serving a 14-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Authorities say Slatkin led a long-running Ponzi scheme in which money from some investors was used to pay off others. Millions of dollars more in tainted funds were funneled through other investors to Scientology-affiliated groups, including Narconon International, the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International and the Church of Scientology Western United States, the filings said.

Tags: Celebrity Centre, Narconon, Reed Slatkin

And then there's this: The private developers who have proposed the land swap are Scientologists. That has led some people to speculate that Triangle Development's real plan is to secure the current PSTA site on Park Street for Church of Scientology expansion. Three of Scientology's key holdings in downtown Clearwater - its massive and unfinished Super Power Building, the Fort Harrison Hotel and the Coachman Building - ring the PSTA site.

Tags: Clearwater, Real estate, Ron Pollack, Triangle Development

On Saturday, "48 Hours" ran a story about the 2003 murder of Elli Perkins, a murder that her 28-year-old son Jeremy confessed to committing. Jeremy had been hallucinating and behaving erratically before his mother's death, but his parents, devout Scientologists, resisted giving him psychiatric treatment. As "48 Hours" notes, "[s]ome pro-Scientology materials declare that psychiatrists are not only useless, but evil – their medications nothing but poisons." The Perkins" opted to medicate their son primarily with vitamins.

Tags: Elli Perkins

Behind every successful man is a woman. But this time, there's a woman behind successful Hollywood star Tom Cruise's sacking from Paramount Pictures, the woman being the studio's head honcho Sumner Redstone's wife Paula.

Tags: Sumner Redstone, Tom Cruise

To the annoyance of the church's senior officials, a newly purchased three-storey property earmarked to become their Brussels HQ has been invaded by squatters. But their anger with the illegal lodgers is nothing compared to their beef with the Brussels authorities, who have declared the church persona non grata and say they will not enforce eviction orders.

Tags: Belgium, Fabio Amicarelli, Neil Levin

Close to the end of the course, and on the verge of my first auditing session, I asked Dorothy about the claims that Scientologists believe humans derive from aliens. She left the room. For several minutes, Dorothy and a shorter woman stood in the corridor, staring at me through a glass panel. Neither smiled. Eventually the shorter woman came back in and sat down opposite me. "I heard you had some questions for us," she said. "Do we look like aliens? Are you a journalist?"

Tags: Real estate, UK

In the fall of 2002, the Perkinses drove their 27-year-old son to Dr. Conrad Maulfair, a Scientologist and osteopath in Pennsylvania who promotes natural, drug-free healing methods. “They had to physically forcibly drag him in there. He didn't appreciate the treatment,” says Case. Nuchereno says Maulfair's clinic had an unusual explanation for Jeremy's symptoms. "They conclude that he was suffering from certain digestive problems, that he had certain chemical toxins in his body. And he needed to be purged of it. And he needed to be energized through vitamin therapy,” he explains. Asked if vitamin therapy for this profound mental illness is a treatment, Dr. Joseph says, "No, it's nonsense.”

Tags: CCHR, Celebrity Centre, Conrad Maulfair, Elli Perkins, FACTNet, Jan Eastgate, Jeff Carlson, Lawrence Wollersheim, Lisa McPherson, Rich Dunning, Richard Griffin, Sea Org, Stephen Kent, Tom Cruise

The unmistakable conclusion is that the burden for her murder (Jeremy stabbed his mom 77 times!) lies with Scientology and its belief that - as one Scientology former bigwig put it - "psychology and psychiatrists are the rats and vermin of our society." The Perkins family refused to have Jeremy treated with anti-psychotic medications despite the fact that he"d been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic after an arrest for jumping the wall at a nearby college and a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

Tags: CCHR, Elli Perkins

A cult information group has complained to a senior police officer about comments he made at the opening of the £24m Church of Scientology centre in London. It also emerged yesterday that four City of London police officers attended a lavish reception at the headquarters of the Scientology movement in East Grinstead on Saturday night. The officers, who have not been named, registered their attendance according to police rules on hospitality, according to a police spokeswoman.

Tags: Family Action Information Resource Centre, Kevin Hurley, London, UK

There cannot have been many such occasions when Chief Superintendent Hurley has been greeted with such enthusiastic whooping from an audience, his image simultaneously magnified on huge screens. Under massive red banners hanging from the front of the building and proclaiming DIANETICS - the underlying creed of the church - and SCIENTOLOGY, the officer was wildly applauded when he praised the "positive" work of its members in their anti-drugs work and their