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Mike Rinder's Blog

Something Can Be Done About It

Why Albuquerque?

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That is a question for which there are a few answers, but none of them are "this city wants scientology." The first answer is "COB wants it" -- so therefore it must be done. Scientology is no longer the kingdom of L. Ron Hubbard. Everyone knows you can't say that these building boondoggles are "what LRH wants". But that does not matter any more. After all, it's been Miscavige in charge of scientology for longer than Hubbard ran the show at this point. The second is "we always need new reasons to hand over cash, after all, that's what scientology is all about." Number 3 -- "It's Sea … [Read more...]

Episode 3: Scientology’s War on the Media with Richard Behar

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  We were very fortunate to speak with Richard Behar on this week's episode of the Fair Game podcast. Rich, along with Pauletter Cooper (who will feature in an upcoming episode) is a poster child for scientology Fair Game against journalists. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who first wrote about scientology in 1986 for Forbes magazine in an article entitled The Prophet and Profits of Scientology. His most famous scientology piece was the 1991 Time magazine cover story, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power. The subhead on his article pretty much sums up … [Read more...]

The War of the Hubbards

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This is a blog post by one of our regular posters, Mike Westen (MWesten), entitled The War of the Hubbards. He asked me if I would like to share it here. I think it's a thought-provoking piece, with English spelling and all. You can see the full article at his blog by clicking on the link above. I have excerpted the part that focuses on scientology (he draws analogies to islam in his longer piece -- I prefer to just focus on scientology here). A question for scientologists: what do you actually stand for? Scientologists are by no means unique when cherry-picking their most favoured … [Read more...]

Do They Have Any Idea?

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o   This promo piece just came in...   You have to wonder if these people have a clue what they are supporting? The two beauty queen pageanters seem to be more of what we have seen in the past. Meghan Fialkoff somehow managed to get her foot in the door of this world and there have been a few examples who have been called out on Tony Ortega's blog. These beauty queens are willing dupes looking for a "cause" they can say they support to sound good on their resume. Being anti-drug is a popular one. The scientology front groups make it easy for them and provide … [Read more...]

Religious Protections Run Amok

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This is a thought-provoking, and somewhat alarming article by Professor Marci Hamilton, Founder and CEO of Child USA Marci appeared on The Aftermath and was part of the team who filed the civil lawsuits on behalf of the Masterson victims and Valerie Haney. She is one of the country's foremost experts on First Amendment Law as it relates to religion. Marci eloquently and persuasively highlights something I have often said, conservative Supreme Court justices are overly zealous in their efforts to protect religions, and the umbrellas they establish allows scientology to get away with … [Read more...]

Scientology Recruitment

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Scientology's quest for money is unrelenting. They rake in tens of millions (perhaps hundreds) each year. But they have to spend at least some of it  to satisfy IRS requirements. They don't ever give it away. One of the things they spend it on is new buildings (they always say they have opened "a new church" but in fact they have not opened any new churches since the one in East Harlem NY and before that the one in Inglewood and before that, nobody can recall). Buildings remain assets on their books, so the statistic of "total reserves" does not go down (total reserves is cash, property, … [Read more...]

Heber Jentzsch’s Niece Welfare Check on Her Uncle

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The new episode of Scientology: Fair Game Podcast is now available here. We interview one of Heber Jentzsch's nieces, Tammy Clark. Tammy reached out to me and Leah as she was concerned about Heber. Many members of the rather large family had not heard from him and she was so concerned she thought it necessary to fly from Utah to try to see him as a representative of the family. But she was fearful of scientology and asked that we help her. Leah and I were more than happy to provide her support and a camera crew from The Aftermath accompanied us. Unfortunately, this is one of the shows … [Read more...]