On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 06:46:44 GMT, Neo@The_Matrix.not (Neo Andersen) wrote:

>On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 04:41:30 GMT, hkhenson@rogers.com (Keith Henson)
>wrote:

snip

>>With enough money to twist the court system and force recusal on any
>>judge, the law is of no use to control abuses such as this cult--which
>>is (like all cults) really a dope cartel.
>
>These are good observations in this thread. The church has way too
>much money to be taken as a easy opponent. The normal rallying of an
>opposition needs a special touch in this case. Who really want's to
>go through the risks and hassles associated with fighting this mob?

Unfortunately it *has* to be done.

snip

>>When the government goes after scientology again, it is a good bet
>>they will not be using the courts.
>
>I *assume* the secret executive order for "Special Operations" has
>already been signed.

That is not at all clear, though there is rather strong indirect evidence that the problems are getting a considerable amount of mid level attention.

>Of course Scientology does actually lose some
>court cases from time to time as well.

That's true, finally paying off the Wollersheim cases showed that as well as the Time Magazine case. But while scientology lost in the technical sense, it took 22 years for Wollersheim to collect. And that would not have been done without large financial support from Bob Minton. The result is that there are (to my best knowledge) no lawyers left in the US that would even consider taking a really good case against scientology on contingency.

They lost the Time Magazine case but they won in that it cost Time about ten million in legal fees. This well known fact is going to make bottom line oriented media companies think long and hard about more stories about them. I know of several cases where stories in the works were dumped because of the entirely reasonable fear that even a groundless scientology suit costs very big bucks, ties up management time, and gets PIs rooting in your trash.

>I am sure the hard-core
>scientology oppenents by now have figured out some legal theories and
>legal points of vulnerability.

Yeah. Don't get involved.

>I say charge ahead on all fronts, but
>stay ethical, leave little room for the "Your attacking my religion"
>argument.

Given the choice between "ethical" and not doing anything, what would you do? A lot of people have been thinking about this for years and years now, and nothing has come out of it that looks effective so far. The historical examples such as the British vs the Thuggee religion or the US government against the Mormons don't seem to offer much guidance.

>We are not against the religion of any person, only the
>abuses and illegal activity of a corrupt organization. That this
>organization believes in the religion of Scientology is no reason to
>allow it to use its religion as a shield for illegal activity.

Unfortunately the "religion" aspects are so directly tied up in criminal activity that it is not possible to sort it out. (Last time I looked, a higher per capita number of scientologists were in jail than any other identifiable group.) If organized scientology was gone tomorrow, my bet is some branch of the free zone would move into the vacuum and become just like the current CoS, lawsuits, OSA and all.

The problem is rooted in human brain reward circuits and economics. What scientology acts like is a drug cartel, and what they sell is closer to dope than anything else.

Finding a general way to make people resistant to drug addiction may be the answer to cults.