Operation Freakout was only never implemented because they got caught first.
I am also sensing some goalposts moving. First, you contended that Scientologist leaders were guilty of “some abuse of process”. Now you are admitting that yes, the organization did commit crimes, but they were all in the past and some never even implemented. This is boilerplate apologetics.
You are conflating two different arguments and are completely mischaracterizing the issue. Your apology for the misbegotten is so reflexive that I wonder if you are even reading what you are writing here.
The rationale to impose further restrictions on the group are the charges of systematic fraud commited by the organization in France and Belgium.
You contend that these are abuses by individuals and are not characteristic by the organization. Our rejoinder is that Scientology has a long history of fraud, extortion, and and other criminality, and we point to large scale past abuses. And now you have the temerity to suggest that 30 year old crimes are in fact the rationale for imposing new sanctions.
In your own words: I see what you did here.
Scientology isn’t Judaism: it hasn’t been around all that long. It’s amassed quite a rap sheet in its short life. The Shah of Iran was deposed thirty years ago. Are you ready to let the Council of Guardians off the hook for that one?
Oprah doesn’t bash Scientology. Intelligent people fork over millions of dollars to produce Scientology films. Dianetics still sells millions of copies. Fashionable? Really?
I have never heard of this broader usage. Blood libel has a very specific meaning. Come over and I will lend you a few books about it, including especially The Formation of a Persecuting Society. It is short, tight as a drum, and is absolutely brilliant. You will learn more about blood libel than you ever wanted to know.
This is the whole point. No one here has posted any evidence that it is a religion being persecuted rather than a criminal organization being prosecuted. None. Zero. It really is astonishing how easily some people can be manipulated.
I would personally define it as any following that has unprovable beliefs, and cares more about teaching the perceived truth of these beliefs then money or power.
Granted that’d rule out a few other “religions”, but I’m okay with that.
That definition is worse than useless. The Boy Scouts have unprovable beliefs, for heaven’s sake- and how do you plan to objectively measure how much they care about teaching their beliefs?
I don’t really care whether or not the religion spreads. People can believe in Xenu, auditing, electroanusometers, or in whatever the hell they want. I have no desire to suppress these teachings. when you get right down to it, the only people who do suppress the teachings are the Scientologists themselves, since they charge for them. They are really no differenet from any other mostly corrupt corporate scheme. We haven’t gotten around to breaking most of those up yet, but they’re on the list. The fact that Scientology wraps its product in the packaging of religion doesn’t really change what the institution itself is or does, and that’s the part that needs to be broken up.
I didn’t see him blithely denying that. I saw him disagreeing with how we should react to past harms that have already been prosecuted.
You’re a pretty solid debater aren’t you? But you’re right, I posted that before I read **Maeglin’s **posts. He’s making a case much better than most of you.
Yes, but Kimmy_Gibbler’s problem here at least as you are treating it is that he doesn’t just accept your assertions at face value. For a forum that claims to be dedicated to fighting ignorance, the tolerance for logical fallacies committed by the mainstream opinion is startlingly high.
Kimmy_Gibbler posted the wiki article as a cite, and right there in the first paragraph it outlined the way he was using it. So clearly that colloquial usage is wider spread than just him.
Something that I’ve noticed lately is that we are heading toward a radical redefinition of the way we treat religion in general. Personally, I can’t wait. As it is the arguments are too self-serving. All religions have an aspect of business, and many businesses have an aspect of religion.
Let me quite plain: I do not dispute that OSW occurred or that it was criminal activity. It was, as far as it goes, relatively minor. Scientology got a member or two employed as a file clerk at the IRS so they could monitor that agency’s activities regarding tax-exemptions for religious organizations. The plants were tasked with illicitly obtaining photocopies of government documents concerning tax-exemptions and tax-exempt organizations.
Another thing people do not like about Scientology is its readiness to institute legal proceedings against people it feels criticizes them. Myself, I think the defamation laws are quite antiquated and the social ills they purport to address can be better handled by the privacy torts for gross cases and developing a thicker skin for the minor outrages. Such a legal regime would take away a great deal of Scientology’s legal cudgel. But! That is not the law now, and CoS has as much right as any other organization to petition the courts for relief.
If I have conflated the issue, it is only because when I have asked for the evidence that supports the indictment of Scientology, I get, at best, references to OSW and Operation Freakout, and at worst, “You’re an obtuse retard; everyone knows this is true.”
If, on the other hand, you would like to demonstrate the charge of official fraud and extortion in contemporary Europe, then I will have to deal with that evidence. As yet, it hasn’t been offered, so I don’t know what you expect me to do.
I wasn’t there, so I can only go on what I credibly read about OSW. Like from the New York Times.
This was not one file clerk in the IRS. A preponderance of credible sources, including available public court documents, indicate that this was a pretty big international job. I am trying to see things your way, but even a cursory search of available documents testifies to the scale of OSW. The individual acts of mischief might have been minor, but the mischief was systematic. To me, this is the nail in the organization’s coffin.
That is putting it somewhat mildly.
Please. The SDMB is not trying Scientology: France and Belgium are. You aren’t the judge. As human beings who observe happenings in the world, we make educated guesses about the truth and the outcomes of these kinds of allegations. Based on the organization’s long rap sheet and stated MO, many of us are going to conclude that the allegations are likely true. The claims against Scientology in France are not extraordinary, so we do not require extraordinary evidence to believe them. It’s a heuristic, sure, but as far as practical reason goes, it tends to work.
I live in New York. I can’t rehearse the evidence for a trial in Europe that only began a few weeks ago. Although I am somewhat ignoring it now, I do have a day job. I think in your spirited defense for the maligned underdog, you are setting the bar a little bit high for the rest of us here, especially since you are moving your own.
Maybe, but it is also pretty understandable that it would cause some confusion. I am also probably an outlier given my peculiar education. I was tempted to jump on this earlier, but other stuff downthread distracted me.
No. Asshole. It is NOT. And if you say otherwise then YOU need to provide some credible evidence that people are being persecuted for their beliefs. Otherwise you are spouting bullshit as you usually do.
Court documents, of course, include the prosecutor-drafted complaint. I think the Wikipedia article on Operation Snow White ought to serve as a balanced and factual source. It reports the outcome of the trial:
For the prosecution a worldwide conspiracy of infiltrating national governments across the globe, 9 defendants going away on a single obstruction charge each (or a misdemeanor!), certainly is ending with whimper, not a bang.
Scientology is the only “religion” I know of which started as an explicitly secular organization and which became a religion only for legal purposes - which has already been documented in this thread. I don’t know if Hubbard was an atheist but his attitude to the very concept of God in “Typewriter in the Sky” makes me think he was - just like Heinlein, Asimov, and many other sf writers of the day.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, no matter what I feel about them, clearly were a religion from the very beginning.
So was finally being able to convict Al Capone on tax evasion. Or OJ. To turn your above example on its head, Martha was convicted of something and sent to prison. Does the conviction itself establish the magnitude of the crime? You seem to think that she was unfairly persecuted. What can we safely presume by virtue of a conviction Anything?
I would also not expect to see individuals in foreign governments tried in the United States, either. Shockingly enough, Scientology has been sanctioned in many countries. What should we make of the outcomes of these processes? If lack of a whizzbang conviction in the US indicates its innocence, what do its sanctions mean?
As an interesting aside, according to the wiki, Scientology in Israel does not even claim to be a religion.
I am going to reiterate the point that given Scientology’s short and extremely checkered history, it is by no means an unfair presumption that the charges in France and Belgium are not actually motivated by a desire to persecute people for their beliefs. It is an unfair presumption that the blowhards on the SDMB would have to rehearse for you all of the arguments of the prosecution to demonstrate the believability of these charges. People do not live their lives nor form basic confidence judgments that way. I give you Bayes’ rule.
I think it’d be nice to know what a French ban on a religion entails. I’ve had a cursory look for details about their supposed ban of Satanism, and have had precisely no luck. In fact, I can find no reference to the ban at all, save in the Time article already referred to, and articles citing said Time article. Without knowing the nature of France’s actions against organised religions it Doesn’t Like The Face Of, it’s very hard to have sensible discussion about them.
I don’t suppose there’s an actual French person on this board who can help us out, is there? Does the French ban on Satanism exist? What does it entail? Can you sacrifice a goat to Ba’al in the safety of your own home (subject to animal cruelty regulation, natch)? Can you invoke the name of LaVey without les gendarmes battering down the door? Can you sell a book on Satanism? What can’t Satanists do that Christians can?