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