In article <ldPY5.130867$U46.4420891@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com>, Starshadow <starshadowis@home.com> writes > Tigger, the food and clothing are going to two local organizations I myself
>have both referred people to and gotten help from, as well as volunteered
>and given to in good or better times, which need all the help they can get.
>These are NW Harvest and The Millionair Club.
>
>Maybe it isn't enough to offset much of their bad works, but critics are
>always accusing Scientologists of focusing on only the negative, and vice
>versa. I think this one deserved a pat on the back.
Trouble is, I think there has to be real doubt about Scientology's sincerity in doing things like this. One should *never* forget that Scientology's aim, first and foremost, is to promote Scientology and enable its expansion. Everything else takes second place. When it performs "public services" of this sort, it's in pursuit of that principle, not because of some feeling of community spirit.

An example: in Greece in mid-1995, Scientology was under severe pressure because of the police raid of 9 June 1995, during which time numerous documents were seized (as a result of which the Greek Scientology organisation was eventually shut down by the courts). On 26 August 1995, OSA Greece issued an Executive Directive, the "Greece Raid Handling Pjt: 558 Pgm", setting out a programme to repair Scientology's bad public image. As well as the usual dead agenting and "noisy investigations" using private investigators, the programme included the following items:

29. Get at least one "Cleaning the Parks" action done each week. Take good pictures of it and make this action known.

29. Get events organized in which Scientologists go and plant new trees on the hills that have been recently burned down. Get media coverage.

In both instances these were not activities which Scientology had participated in previously; Scientology corporately had no interest whatsoever in cleaning Athens' parks or tree planting. The directive makes clear that both activities were carried out solely and exclusively for the purposes of public relations, not because Scientology thought they were good things to do. In both cases, the media coverage was the critical aspect.

This is a difficult issue for critics to deal with - if Scientology does beneficial things for cynical, self-serving purposes, does this negate the good done?

-- | Chris Owen - chriso@OISPAMNOlutefisk.demon.co.uk | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | THE TRUTH ABOUT L. RON HUBBARD AND THE UNITED STATES NAVY | | http://www.ronthewarhero.org |

Ron Hubbard, and people could get trees planted, or food banks could get food, or what have you. The problem is that Scientology mostly seems to undertake, consistently and quite enthusiastically, malevolent initiatives like bilking people of money and trying to silence critics. Scientology (and its members, judging by the Toronto thetan crowd) still feel all happy, but the result is beneficial to Scientology (in a Scientologically subjective fashion, anyway) and harmful to portions of the rest of the world.

I suppose the answer depends on whether Scientology can be encouraged to shift its efforts from the destructive to the constructive. No matter what Scientology's motivation, there wouldn't be any question about the Greek good deeds if there was no infiltration in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, the organization can think as malevolent as it wants so long as it behaves like a responsible corporate citizen. Scientology's motivations wouldn't matter if its selfish nature was channeled away from the sleaze into beneficial acts.

In the Greek case, and in other incidents like this one**, I'd say the actual specific good done isn't negated (trees, parks), but the whole episode just reinforces how Scientology is a sleazy, self-serving cult, which does most of its good deeds depending on if those deeds will benefit the Scientology organization.

(Of course, I don't think that Scientology *will* change for the better... but that's for another post.)
**Like this incident:
http://xenu.ca/media/globe-1988-07-26.html
http://xenu.ca/media/globe-1988-07-28.html
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Canadian Scientology information is now at:
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