On Mon, 04 Jun 2001 09:43:56 -0400, Captain Nerd <cptnerd@nerdwatch.com> wrote:

>> Oh, and the old 'It's never been policy, and we don't do
>> that any more, anyway it was a rogue parishioner, and
>> the policy's been changed, honest..." routine just won't
>> wash any more. At least, not in France. It will be
>> interesting to see how this plays out in the EU
>> Courts and Commissions.
> It will be interesting to see what happens after the
> "church" of scientology is prosecuted under this law.
> Will the members be treated as criminals, and prevented
> from re-forming their orgs? Will they be subject to
> monitoring, to make sure they aren't creating new groups
> in violation of the law?
What laws are you reading here?

The members will be perfectly free to continue to believe in whatever they want to believe in. The only thing that will be prevented, and only after the organization builds a history of instigating criminal activity by members, will be that the -organization- will no longer be free to operate for a period of time.

If the members want to form independent groups to practice their beliefs, that is fine. If they want to "franchise" a new "mission"

from the criminals who were convicted of the crimes, that would be prevented, as the criminals would no longer be able to operate.

How is this different than if a restaurant chain was repeatedly convicted of supplying tainted food to their franchisees? If the parent company refuses to stop this practice and is shut down for it, they can't sell more franchises for a period of time, or until they can prove they have cleaned up their act. Meanwhile, the franchisees can change their operations to independent restaurants as long as they stop buying their food from the source that was criminally convicted for refusing to stop selling tainted food. The independent restaurants can even start their own chain as long as they don't buy their food from the criminals.

How else are you going to stop criminal activity? If you give "religions" the special right to continue to operate no matter what they do, you can't stop them from continuing to perform criminal acts.

With Scientology®, it has been shown clearly that convicting the members for crimes has little effect on them continuing. In fact, it is pretty clear that Scientology® -selects- expendable members to commit crimes intentionally, with the policies of allowing marginal members to "strike a blow against the enemy" in order to get back in the good graces of the "church". It is also clear that they don't particularly care if members get convicted, as long as the "church"

doesn't. There is a clear history of them abandoning members when it looks like the member will be convicted of criminal acts instigated by the "church". They become "unpersons", deleted from web pages and edited out of books and photographs.

At the same time, they create a myriad of "corporations" that can be opened and closed at the drop of a hat specifically in order to avoid responsibility for criminal acts (and taxes, court judgements, etc.).

When the law has to deal with an organization like that, what other options are there?

> And who will be next on the chopping block after scientologists?
Any other groups that refuse to stop breaking the law?

Perhaps if one or two groups are shut down for criminal activity, others will stop, too. In my wildest dreams, I can hope that maybe Scientology® will stop the criminal acts -before- they are shut down, but I sincerely doubt that they will.

Please remember, we aren't talking about "thought crimes" here, we're talking about pure criminal acts. If you are afraid that "thought crimes" like "beliefs" are going to be included in the list of crimes in France, the place to fight that is in the laws that you oppose.

Opposing the "repeat offenders" laws does little to correct the problem if you are afraid that "beliefs" will be called crimes, and certainly doesn't help to correct something that is a current and real problem.

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