On Sun, 02 Dec 2001 19:26:02 GMT, "Jeffrey Liss" <jeffliss2xyz@mediaone.net> wrote: >"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of
>tyranny over the mind of man...especially that Scientology scam."
>
>---Thomas Jefferson (mostly)
Abusing handicapped people is considered one of the lowest things you can do in this society. Scientology is far from the only group that scams people. I have recently been helping law enforcement people against what is known as Nigerian scams. I am sure virtually everyone with an email address has seen at least one of them, the scam where they offer you a big cut of some millions of dollars of illegally sequestered Nigerian oil or defense money. If you contact these people, they ask for "good faith money" or expenses. The average was about $70,000, one guy they suckered out of $5 million. I have proposed to the law enforcement agents working on these scams (which one group working out of Canada used to take some 300 people for $200 million) that the people involved also be charged with abuse of the handicapped--on a scale of removing a barrier so a blind person fall into an open manhole. Being gullible enough to fall for the Nigerian or similar scams is diagnostic of being handicapped in a mental skill. Therefore, people who pull these scams are by definition abusing the handicapped. It would be making new law to add this charge, but there is sound reason from new developments in psychology to do so. In the Lopez case, his deficiency was the direct result of serious physical brain damage, but that is not required to have temporary or mental problems of this sort. The long range consequences to scientology and similar scams is obvious. Keith Henson