Death of the Ideal Scientologist, Konrad Aigner

Alongside a well-placed ad from the Cult of Scientology encouraging viewers to “Get the facts” is an article by John Brown entitled The Ideal Scientologist: Konrad Aigner. This must-read story summarizes the life and death in Scientology of Konrad Aigner.

Aigner joined the cult in 1976, after leaving his family’s German farm to take up employment as a bus driver in Munich. Aigner became a committed Scientologist, devoting himself to crossing Scientology’s disingenuously-named Bridge to Total Freedom, which Brown described as “a very expensive process, currently believed to cost US$360,000″ that leads not to Total Freedom “but to Total Disillusionment, as several OT8s have stated in no uncertain terms.”

In order to be able to devote more funds to traversing the Bridge, Aigner returned to the family farm in 1995 and began working as an independent bus driver. Aigner’s family reported changes in Konrad. Normally cheerful and easy-going, Konrad was said to have become tense, nervous and preoccupied. In 1996, Aigner tried to leave Scientology but ended up sticking around. In 1997, Konrad told his mother that he wanted out, claiming that “he had learned something so terrible that it would kill her to hear about it”. That August, after three months in a coma, Aigner was dead.

London Anon Protester Given Court Summons For Sign Declaring Scientology a Cult

A London protester who goes by the pseudonym “Epic Nose Guy” was handed a Court Summons yesterday at Operation: FairGameStop in London for not giving up his right to accurately refer to the Cult of Scientology as a cult. ENG was told by an officer to discontinue displaying his sign and was given 30 minutes to do so. ENG decided not to do this, on the grounds that Scientology does in fact reflect multiple dictionary definitions of cult and that he has the right to call a spade a spade.

This is absolutely ridiculous on multiple grounds. Firstly, Scientology does indeed fit the bill of being a cult.

Here are some relevant attributes of cults as specified by a the American Heritage Dictionary:

• a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
• a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
• a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.
• any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific

Secondly, why should Scientology get special consideration? Scientology itself calls psychiatry an evil nazi pseudoscience that is responsible for many of the worst crimes of the Holocaust and for many of the greatest problems facing humanity today and in the past. On what grounds is it okay for Scientologists to make these types of disingenuous statements while it is not okay for protesters of Scientology to apply the semantically valid label “cult” to Scientology? Is it because Scientology is a religion? Well, this is not at all a valid differentiating factor, for two reasons. Firstly, Scientology is not a religion, and England does not recognize it as such. Secondly, even if it were a religion, so what? Can we please move past the inane notions that religions are special and that religion is a license for special treatment?

For more on Scientology from The Frame Problem, click here.

Outstanding YouTubery

I keep preaching Fair Game because I have nothing else to complain about?

I’ve been having an email discussion with the person who runs http://scientologymyths.wordpress.com, a pro-Scientology site by a Scientologist (”Louanne”) that pays shallow and transparent lip-service to neutrality. The things she are saying are just ridiculous. After writing off numerous cases against Scientology - e.g., the case against Scientology in Belgium, Bob Minton, Gregg Hagglund, the nature of OSA - basically just saying that all of these cases are false, that their perpetrators have zero evidence and are just doing it for money (even if they’re already rich and there are far better and safer ways to get paid) or attention (even though any attention they get runs the risk of drawing Black PR from Scientology along with further brutal abuse), she says the following:

“You keep on preaching “Fair Game” because you have nothing else to complain about.”

What?! Fair Game is OFFICIAL “CHURCH” OF SCIENTOLOGY POLICY written by Hubbard and STILL IN PRACTICE TODAY which states that anyone deemed to be an enemy of the “Church” can be LIED TO, TRICKED, SUED OR *DESTROYED*!

Since when is official “Church” policy that all active dissenters can be destroyed a trivial matter that one only brings up repeatedly because they supposedly have “nothing else to complain about”. It seems to me that a neutral info source on Scientology would at least concede this.

I wonder if this is the sort of thing that Louanne joined Scientology for - to demonize and support the destruction of anyone who stands against the practices of her cult. Or maybe she was brainwashed since childhood by Scientologist parents.

For more on Scientology, click here and/or go to Xenu.Net (i.e., both of which, Louanne would probably call hate-links).

And of course, if you feel like complaining but have run out of ideas, do not forget about Operation: FairGameStop on Saturday!

CarnivUL of The fraudless: exposing the CULT

Welcome to the first CarnivUL of The fraudless!!!

This first CarnivUL(…T) will be dedicated to tracking major developments that have taken place since January in the international protest against the Cult of Scientology, discussing the why of the protest, the who of Anonymous, and compiling some of the best relevant YouTube video produced over the past 3 months.

For those who have visited Blog Carnivals before, be warned that this will be an unconventional carnival. CarnivUL of The fraudless, or CarnivUL(…T), will not in this edition or subsequent editions take all of its content from blogs. It is anticipated that much of CarnivUL(…T)’s content will come from sources such as YouTube, Enturbulation.Org, websites, and of course blogs.

On with the CarnivUL(…T)!

Mini-Raid on Scientology in Toronto

Yesterday, a small group of Toronto area Anons engaged in a spontaneous mini-raid picket on the Cult of Scientology. This was reported to be the third mini-raid on Scientology in Toronto - at least by this set of individuals. There was also a mini-raid of the Pickering Flea Market (where a Dianetics booth is set up), just outside of Toronto, a few weeks back. The next planned mini-raid is said to be scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday) at 2 PM at Toronto CoS.

Between the major international days of protests which occur every four weeks, and these increasingly popular flash mini-raids, can the cult really afford to keep shutting down every time a protester is outside? I thought the expression was “Confront and shatter suppression”, not “Draw the curtains, stay inside, and herd all the Scientolo-sheep away from the windows”. The first one is a lot zippier

For more on Scientology, click here.

I’ve been spoofed!

I’m feeling pretty flattered right now because I just discovered a spoof blog of The Frame Problem. You’ll love the name of it: TheProblemFrame!

Happily, he is another critic of the Cult of Scientology. I’m not sure if he plans to actually develop his blog, or if this was just something he quickly threw together as a funny way of saying “I think LRB is a douche bag”. In any case, I thought it was pretty funny and so may you.

Where does “spam” come from?

Have you ever thought to yourself Why do they call junk mail ”spam”? Today, in reading what is shaping up to be an outstanding book - Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature - I learned the etymology of this funny word. Pinker is quoted below.

Unreal: Witchcraft, Penis thievery, and lynchings, Oh my!

From Reuters via Yahoo News:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

…

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten,” Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

“I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Oleko said.

“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.

Survey: What is more awe-striking: these sorts of extreme mythical beliefs in a relatively isolated part of the world that has minimal access to the views of other religions and to science and secular thinking - and thus, where inherited ways of thinking can exist with relatively few direct challenges - or Young Earth Creationism in the scientifically, pluralistically, and philosophically access-rich Western world? I’m actually going with the latter.

Another survey question: this Congo story versus religious moderation in the West; what is more awe-striking, religious moderation in America (e.g., liberal Christians that believe in Christ but take little within the Bible to be literal), or full-blown mythical obsession like that just reported in the Congo?

What?