Scientology Cruise Ship Under Quarantine

Clearly the dark space lord Xenu is at it again. The cruise ship Freewinds, which is owned by the Church of Scientology and used for religious retreats, is currently under quarantine in the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia because a passenger with a case of measles was discovered onboard.

"Given the highly infectious nature of measles, along with the possibility that other persons onboard the vessel may have been in contact with and are now possibly infectious due to this disease, a decision was made not to allow persons to disembark," said Merlene Fredericks-James, the island's chief medical officer.

She added that the infected patient was a female crew member and that the ship was the Freewinds -- a 440-foot (134-meter) vessel the Church of Scientology says is used for religious retreats and is normally based in Curacao.

The ship asked for 100 doses of measles vaccine, which Saint Lucia authorities are providing at no cost, with the patient under observation. The church, founded by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard in 1953, did not respond to requests for comment. Its teachings do not directly oppose vaccination, but followers consider illness a sign of personal failing and generally eschew medical interventions.

Tony Ortega, who runs a blog about the group, told AFP: "When a Scientologist gets a cold, they would be asked to write an essay about who they think that is against the church that is making them sick. "They would definitely be interrogating that person and they would punish that person because when you're sick like that, in Scientology, it's always your own fault."

It also should be pointed out that Scientology is explictly opposed to psychiatric treatment, on the grounds that anybody suffering from mental illness should just go for a bunch of Dianetics auditing to overcome their "engrams" and/or "body thetans." The only reason everybody doesn't do that is the corrupt psychiatric establishment is suppressing the work of the greatest man who ever lived, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

None of that necessarily means that the infected crew member is an anti-vaxxer, as a few early reports suggested. It is possible to still get measles even if you are vaccinated, the odds are just a lot lower. It is true, though, that continuing to believe in Andrew Wakefield's study linking autism to the MMR vaccine when Wakefield himself admitted that he made the whole thing up is perilously close to mental illness territory these days. I would suggest any Scientologist who does should get themselves to an auditor at once.

Inside the E-Meter

Here's an interesting article up today on Vice. A Swiss YouTuber found a used e-meter on eBay, bought it, and took it apart for his viewers to see how it works. The e-meter is the tool used by the Church of Scientology during auditing sessions, and the church does its best to keep them off the market. Nevertheless, they're apparently not all that hard to find with a little determination.

Scientology, a religion founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1952, is renowned for its veil of secrecy. The religion has its roots in Hubbard’s dianetics program, which he once described as a “mix of Western technology and Oriental philosophy.” Perhaps the most infamous technology to be produced by the Church of Scientology is the electropsychometer, or E-Meter, which is used for auditing, a question-and-answer session that is a core ritual of scientologists.

E-Meters are essentially ways of measuring electrodermal activity, or the ebb-and-flow of electrical activity on the surface of the skin. For scientologists, this measurement is interpreted as a way to “see a thought,” similar to a lie detector, although there is no scientific evidence to back up the Church’s claims. Over the years there have been several versions of the E-Meter produced by the Church of Scientology, which sells E-Meters to members for thousands of dollars apiece.

As I've mentioned previously, there's no need to spend thousands of dollars on an e-meter to get a device that does what the Scientology version does. All you need is a multimeter. Amazon carries quite the selection and they generally cost under a hundred dollars. As you can see in the video, you would calibrate your meter to measure resistance from 4000 to 6000 ohms and you should be good to go. The Scientology e-meter appears to be hand-assembled, which would make it a little more pricey, but no more than a few hundred if you were paying what the thing is really worth.

The idea behind auditing is that the e-meter works like a simple lie detector, measuring physiological stress in the form of electrical resistance. However, as shown in the video one of the biggest flaws in the design is that it's extremely easy to get the needle to jump all over the place by squeezing the two copper tube contacts. It stands to reason that anyone who's been through a few auditing sessions should have learned to do this pretty quickly. So if you want to try auditing for yourself you'll get more accurate readings off a multimeter with a more tamper-proof set of contacts.

Scientology TV

As many of you probably know, in 1946 L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons performed a magical operation inspired by the (fictional) Moonchild ritual from Aleister Crowley's novel of the same name. Meanwhile, Crowley himself would write to Karl Germer regarding said operation that "Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts." As I see it, Crowley was right to be concerned, because as things worked out what the ritual eventually gave birth to was the Church of Scientology. That's a powerful argument right there that it should never be performed again.

Scientology is one of the world's biggest and most famous cults. They're most well-known for hoovering up every spare bit of cash their members come across, going after any and all ex-members who dare to criticize their organization with a vengeance, and threatening to sue people right and left. I might even get a cease-and-desist letter for calling the group a cult on this blog. But I don't use the term lightly. Any new religious movement that requires the investment of the amount of money that Scientology does, and/or harasses members who try to leave like Scientology does, really does deserve that epithet.

Anyway, for those of you who were anxiously waiting for Scientology to get with the times and create its own television network (and, yeah, that's basically nobody), you're in luck. The Church of Scientology is in fact starting its own television network on DIRECTV AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, iTunes, and Google Play. But a number of critics have pointed out that starting up a television network now might not be the best thing for the church to be doing.

Given the organization's decades-long controversies, perhaps there's no great time for it to expand it media platform. But right now does feel particularly odd. For starters, the February mass murder in Parkland, Florida brought a deluge of attention to another niche broadcaster — NRATV — and a wave of threatened boycotts against its platform, Amazon. On Twitter Monday morning, users were already expressing surprise at DirectTV, and saying how to contact the network directly. Then there's the increased scrutiny the organization has faced in recent years, thanks in no small part to its high profile defectors. In 2015, filmmaker Alex Gibney's documentary series "Going Clear" made a splash on HBO, and garnered three Emmy awards. The same year, "King of Queens" star Leah Remini released the bestselling "Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology." She followed up with her own documentary series to "give a voice to victims of the Church of Scientology despite public attempts to discredit them."

New Scientology Expose on the Way

L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology has been the target of critics for a long time. Last year, HBO released a documentary critical of the church and leaders of the Belgian branch of the organization were charged with fraud and extortion.

Now Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley and a longtime Scientologist, is believed to be behind the promotion of a memoir written by Ron Miscavige, father of Scientology leader David Miscavige. Ron will be appearing on ABC's 20/20 on April 29th to discuss his experiences in the church, and the book is slated to be released next week.

Lisa Marie is using her media savvy and connections with other celebrities and other important figures inside Scientology to release explosive revelations about Miscavige, while keeping her own role quiet. The result, so far, has been the skillfully timed release of media stories that have damaged Miscavige at the same time that Scientology is in a long term decline.

In Lisa Marie Presley, David Miscavige has cultivated a powerful enemy. And in this story, we explain how things got to that point.

Yesterday, we described how David Miscavige’s family has been ripped apart by Scientology’s toxic policy of “disconnection,” which has left David and his twin sister, Denise Gentile, cut off from other members of the family, including their father, Ron Miscavige.

On May 3, Ron will release a memoir titled Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me. On April 29, he will be interviewed by ABC’s Dan Harris as part of a full hour 20/20 is dedicating to Scientology. The book and interview come as the result of series of events that began with Ron’s escape from Scientology’s International Base near Hemet, California in March 2012.

Ron had been a Scientologist for about 40 years, and was a well liked and popular member as the Sea Org’s musical director. But by 2012, he could no longer take the deprivations of Sea Org life under his dictatorial son, and with his wife Becky Bigelow, he “blew” from the base, as Scientologists say. We’re looking forward to reading in his book just how he managed that escape.

It's not clear whether Presley's goal is to bring down the church or simply to damage Miscavige, with whom she's been engaged in a long-running feud. It's hard to deny, though, that Miscavige is largely responsible for much of the cultish behavior reported with regard to the group. At the very least, he continued all of Hubbard's most paranoid policies and jacked up fees to ridiculous levels during his tenure.

As I've mentioned before, Scientology does have some beliefs I consider weird, but then so do most religions. My problem with the group has nothing to do with what it teaches, but rather with how it goes about suppressing dissent, threatens legal action and engages in outright harassment against anyone who tries to leave, and soaks its members for huge sums of money that are really out of line compared to every other initiatory religious organization.

Maybe new leadership is just what the church needs. On the other hand, if Miscavige is pressured into stepping down and the new boss is the same as the old one, the criticism of the church is probably going to continue.

Belgian Scientologists On Trial

The Church of Scientology has gotten a lot of bad press over the last couple of years, and now members of its Belgian branch are on trial for fraud and extortion. While I personally find what I've heard of the higher Scientology levels to be kind of silly, that's not my problem with the organization. Lots of religions have teachings that sound silly to outsiders, and they still have a right to teach them.

Rather, my problem is that there are way too many reports of the organization operating as a classic destructive cult. It allegedly uses various forms of trickery to recruit members, charges them large sums of money, and most telling goes after anyone who tries to leave in the form of flat-out harassment and all sorts of outlandish legal threats. It seems to me that any legitimate organization should allow people to quit without threatening to ruin their lives.

“The church’s revenues were roughly 5,000 euros a week; 2,000 came from the sale of books and videos and 3,000 from courses and training,” the Belga news agency quoted the group’s treasurer as saying. The treasurer, who worked for the church until 2005, said she was not paid but was not required to pay the church fees, while her husband contributed about 10,000 euros ($11,000) for training.

The church stirs sharp divisions — critics say it is cult and a scam, while supporters say it offers much-needed spiritual support in a fast-changing world. The Belgian authorities launched a first investigation in 1997 after several former members complained about its practices. A second probe followed in 2008 when an employment agency charged that the church had made bogus job offers so as to draw in and recruit new members.

The authorities as a result charged 11 members of the Belgian branch, plus two affiliated bodies, with fraud, extortion, running a criminal organisation and violating the right to privacy. A conviction could lead to a ban.

While it's true that many churches require volunteer labor, the whole bogus job offer thing is the sort of trickery I'm talking about. It's not clear to me why any church would have to resort to such tactics in order to find members, though from the amounts of money quoted above it sounds like the Belgian group is pretty small. At around 10,000 euros per person per year, 3000 euros per week from training means 16 or so people, plus the treasurer who paid no fees, plus whoever runs the group.

Scientology is already banned in several European countries, and if the trial goes badly the church could also face a ban in Belgium. Still, given the size of the group it sounds like such a ban wouldn't affect many people.

Scientology Under Attack

The Church of Scientology has long been the target of critics who accuse it of cult-like behavior. Now the church is facing a new round of negative publicity as it finds itself in the news once more. No, I'm not talking about the recent HBO documentary Going Clear, which exposes many of the church's misdeeds. I'm talking about the shocking case of Scientology auditor Frank D. Linehan, who goes on trial today in Los Angeles on charges of molesting hundreds of thetans, beginning around 1978. The church is accused of covering up the abuse for decades.

Most victims were between 60- and 65-million-years old with some as young as 58 million, investigators said, prompting accusations of serial abuse that have shaken the church to its core. If convicted, Linehan could face life in prison for his crimes, according to California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

“The thing that makes this case so troubling and so shocking is the total abuse of trust,” Harris told reporters at a press conference outside the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles, where police believe the majority of assaults took place. “These are unbelievably horrific cases where someone abused their position of power to target those who are defenseless. No one in the community could believe someone could do this to a thetan, a thetan who is voiceless.”

“Both as an attorney general and as a person with possibly hundreds of murdered alien souls clinging to her body, it shocks the conscience,” Harris continued. “But I’d like to take this opportunity to tell everyone that we are doing everything in our power to protect young immortal spiritual beings and pursue this case to the fullest extent of the law.”

Thetans, trapped souls of ancient aliens transported to Earth, dropped onto volcanoes, and blown up with nuclear bombs by the evil Xenu 75 million years ago, have few legal protections, and the Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether or not they possess basic human rights that the rest of us take for granted. But prosecutors claim that the legal status of these disembodied entities is not central to the case, even though they admit that compelling Linehan's victims to testify will prove challenging. They are now testing a system involving an e-meter connected with a Ouija board that they hope will convince a jury.

HBO Versus Scientology

There's a fine line between a New Religious Movement and a cult. While the term "cult" is sometimes thrown around to mean any religion that one doesn't happen to approve of, there is also a more technical definition that describes specific harmful practices. Such cults generally separate people from family and friends during their involvement, and then ostracize anyone who decides to leave. They demand that members donate extravagant amounts of money. They subject members to varying forms of punishment which are doled out on a whim and to which the only alternative is to leave the group. And so forth.

Perhaps the largest organization that arguably fits this second definition of "cult" is the Church of Scientology. While representatives of the church claim that it's just another new religion, reports of cultish behavior have been coming out of the organization for years. Now HBO has gotten in on the action, with a new documentary that claims to expose the truth about the organization. The documentary is based on the bestselling 2013 book Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, who interviewed many former members of the church and compiled their stories.

Among the bombshells asserted by eight former church members: Scientology intentionally broke up Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman; it tortured some of its members in a prison known as "the hole" and subjected others to hard labor; it harassed those who left the organization and forced their family members to cut off all contact.

The film offers an intimate portrait of founder L. Ron Hubbard (or LRH as he's referred to by members) and follows the rise of current leader David Miscavige, alleging his misuse of power and that he physically abused several members.

The film also claims that Hubbard beat and threatened his first wife and kidnapped their daughter, leaving her in Cuba in the care of a mentally disabled woman. It also detailed Hubbard's elaborate cosmology incorporating space aliens, invading spirits, volcanoes and other elements that his sci-fi writing had contained.

As usual, the church claims that the book contains fabrications by disgruntled members while at the same time issuing legal threats to HBO and the producers. To be fair, it wouldn't surprise me to find that some of the stories are at least exaggerated. The problem is that there are so many of them from so many different people. It seems that the only way they could all be false is if everyone involved were part of some enormous conspiracy to discredit the church, which simply strikes me as implausible. And none of the individual stories make Scientology look like a benign religious movement.

Growing Up Scientologist

Cracked has an article up today by a former member who grew up in the Church of Scientology. Prior to reading it my opinion of Scientology was that while they believe a lot of silly things, that can be said about many religions and my main problem with the group was its overall cultishness and its never-ending quest to relieve its adherents of as much of their earnings as possible. But according to the article, the treatment of children in the organization is a serious problem as well.

Only the barest amount of natural light graced us through the tiny windows, and the teenagers they left in charge weren't exactly child-care pros. They wouldn't even let my baby sister go to the bathroom. Also? No food. My mom had to hide food in our pockets so we didn't starve while she spent hours in their meeting. Oh, and they actually locked all the doors into and out of these meetings. We had to leave early for a doctor's appointment once, and my mom realized this fact rather suddenly when she found she couldn't get out of the service. The whole congregation had been locked inside. So, you know, good thing there wasn't a fire.

Scientology "schools" are another mess altogether. They place a lot of emphasis on something called word clearing. L. Ron Hubbard believed that misunderstood words were quite literally the only possible way for a child to lose interest in a subject at school. Nerdy kids who read during math class can attest to the absurdity of this claim, but it's a lynchpin of Scientologist tech ("tech" is Scientology's equivalent to scripture, crossed with the owner's manual for a 1994 Buick Century). So if you go to a Scientologist school, you can look forward to a lot of time with your dictionary.

Best Apology Ever

The Church of Scientology is famous for threatening legal action against anyone issuing even mild criticisms of its teachings and methods. I still remember back in the days of Usenet how the alt.scientology newsgroup changed its name to alt.butthead.religion.sue.sue.sue in response to demands that the term "scientology" be dropped from the name. Up until now most mainstream news organizations have been cowed by these threats and have published very little negative coverage of the church. However, a recent flap involving the London Sun suggests the tactic's influence may be on the wane. In response to demands for an apology over a story connecting Scientology to a UFO sighting, the newspaper dutifully offered one - to the space aliens.

UK airport authorities said a Boeing 777 pilot first raised the alarm at 8.53am after spotting "two flat silver discs", followed minutes later by a Boeing 767 and an Airbus 319 which saw the same "saucer-like" shapes. The 777 crew said they looked "man-made" and "toylike".
The Sun spoke with investigators, who had considered the objects might be balloons or kites - a notion dismissed by Mr Pope, who said "none of the theories hold water".

When the newspaper published the story with a Photoshopped picture of Scientology's West Sussex property, the church sent a letter of complaint, requesting an apology. The Sun duly published it's apology yesterday:

"In an article on Saturday headlined 'Flying Saucers over British Scientology HQ', we stated 'two flat silver discs' were seen 'above the Church of Scientology HQ'. Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien life forms for linking them to Scientologists".

It's worth noting that the Church of Scientology hardly ever sues anyone. Rather, in accordance with a policy that was established by founder L. Ron Hubbard, they use the threat of legal action to manipulate people and organizations into giving in to their demands. The trouble with this approach is that everyone eventually gets wise to the fact that you're all bark and no bite. Given the response of the London Sun, it's clear that this is finally starting to happen. So I see only two real ways forward for the church. They can actually start filing lawsuits and risk losing in court, or better still they can just give the whole thing up.

The Scientology Cruise That Never Ends

The Church of Scientology's Sea Org has got to be one of the oddest ideas out there among new religious movements. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church, served in the US Navy and decided that his new religion needed a Navy of its own. The result was the Sea Org, an organization within the Church with military-inspired uniforms and some sort of ill-defined mission that requires its members to spend their time sailing the oceans on ships owned by the Church. The Sea Org has a reputation for strict discipline and cultish behavior, but the latest accusation against the organization made by a woman named Valeska Paris goes far beyond that. Paris claims that she was essentially kept as a prisoner on board the Scientology ship "Freewinds" for twelve years.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC News) Lateline program, Paris claims that Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige sent her to the ship when she was 18 in order to prevent her family from pulling her out of the organization.

"I was basically hauled in and told that my mum had attacked the church and that I needed to disconnect from her because she was suppressive," she said. "He decided the ship, and I found out two hours before my plane left, I was woken up in the morning and I was sent to the ship for 'two weeks.' "

Paris was born into a Scientology family, but her mother quit the group after her husband committed suicide, blaming Scientology for coercing him out of a self-made personal fortune of more than a million dollars.

Instead of the promised two week stay, Paris found herself unable to leave the ship without an official Scientology escort and was often forced into hard labor on the lower levels of the ship for stretches as long as two full days. "It's hot, it's extremely loud, it's smelly, it's not nice. I was sent down there at first for 48 hours straight on almost no sleep and I had to work by myself," she said.

With just about any other organization these charges would be hard to believe, but unfortunately Scientology has cultivated a reputation that at the very least makes them seem plausible. It's not just the Church's history of odd controlling actions and extravagant fees, but also the apparent mentality within the group that it is under attack and surrounded by enemies. The constant lawsuit threats the Church makes over trivial offenses don't help either, like years ago when it threatened to sue "the Internet" over the existence of Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology on the grounds that "Scientology" was trademarked. In response, the administrators of the offending newsgroup changed its name to alt.butthead.religion.sue.sue.sue. Yeah, Scientology came out of that one looking great - NOT! If Paris' account turns out to be true, it sounds like the organization's reputation will likely suffer a lot more.

Scientology Versus South Park

Back in 2005 the television program South Park produced an episode mocking the Church of Scientology, which led to something of a scandal. Comedy Central refused to air the episode and Isaac Hayes, a Scientologist who voiced one of the recurring characters, resigned from the show on the grounds that it "makes fun of people's religions." It should be noted that Hayes did not resign over earlier episodes ridiculing Catholicism, Mormonism, and Judaism, not to mention the "Super Best Friends" episode from 2001 in which Moses, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao-Tzu act as a super-team to defeat the evil sorcery of David Blaine - who calls his religious cult "Blaintology." Nope, no making fun of religion there!

At any rate, the scandal was a testament to the touchiness of the Church of Scientology, which is famous for threatening lawsuits right and left at the drop of a hat, regarding critcism of its beliefs. What is not widely known is how far the Church went in "investigating" Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park's creators. A recently leaked document supposedly details various actions the Church took in order to embarrass the two of them, which if true pretty clearly cross the line into stalking and harrassment.

Former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun, who left the church in 2005, released an internal Scientology document on his blog detailing the investigation by the religion's Office of Special Affairs (OSA) — which he calls "the harassment and terror network of Corporate Scientology." The probe of Parker and Stone was apparently direct "retaliation for the South Park episode that exposed the religion's bizarre upper-level teachings," says Tony Ortega at The Village Voice. According to Rathbun, the OSA uses methods comparable to Cold War-era CIA and KGB "intelligence and propaganda techniques," such as investigation, threats, and infiltration.

Wait, Travolta is Immortal Too?

According to various disreputable sources the world is secretly run by a cabal of powerful individuals with access to advanced spiritual and magical technology, such as the Philosopher's Stone that confers immortality. Recently actor Nicolas Cage was outed as a member of this secret society when a photo from 1870 emerged that appears to depict him. Now a second member has been identified - actor John Travolta, seen here in this photograph from 1860. This picture from Metro shows Travolta's face next to that of the man in the photograph, and actually it's a better match than the one of Cage.

The seller is asking for $50,000 for the ruby glass ambrotype photograph, which he says could be proof that John Travolta has been 'reincarnated' (not into a new being but an identical body, presumably).

'I believe this is the photograph of a very young John Travolta taken around 1860,' said the eBay seller. 'Of course, time travel can't be ruled out as well.'

Travolta is a highly-placed member of the Church of Scientology, the religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard to protect his Dianetics system from the Food and Drug Administration and at the same time relieve its adherents of their life savings in the most efficient manner possible. However, the actor's presence in 1860 reveals deeper and darker connections. After all, there was no Church of Scientology in the 1860's, and if the group really had access to time travel they would have sent an agent back in time to murder the founders of Operation Clambake two decades ago. So perhaps he is in fact an operative secretly inserted by the ruling cabal into Hubbard's organization - you know, to keep an eye on things.