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Mike Rinder's Blog

Something Can Be Done About It

Scientology’s Latest Whinesmear

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Scientology, in their zeal to sling mud and smear anyone they don't agree with, have created a new whinesmear site about Pastor Willy Rice of the Clearwater Calvary Baptist church. It is a typical scientology effort -- long on adjectives and pejoratives, short on facts and dripping with hypocrisy. Let's address the most obvious point first. Pastor Rice's stance on gays. I do not agree with his position. I FULLY support the rights of everyone in the LBGTQA community to be treated as equals in all things. But, to be honest, there are plenty of things I disagree with about teachings … [Read more...]

Scientology’s Response to Episode 1

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Though I commented on this in my post of yesterday, I wanted to highlight the insanity of the scientology response to the new season's first episode while it is hot off the press (Thursday Funnies are on hiatus for a week). In a word. Lame. Their "defense" for child abuse is: We found three people who knew Saina when she was a child and she didnt mention she had been sexually molested -- yes and I found 5 people who knew Jeffrey Dahmer and they said he never told them he had killed and eaten people. So it didn't happen apparently. What they DIDN'T "find" was Mirriam or Saina's mother … [Read more...]

Scientology The Aftermath S2 Ep 1: the Aftermath

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Thanks to everyone for supporting the show last night. There were too many tweets, messages, FB posts, blog comments here and at the Underground Bunker to possibly keep up, or respond to all the expressions of support and outrage. So let this be a general thanks to everyone. But thanks beyond all thanks goes to two incredible, brave women, Mirriam Francis and Saina Kamula who stood up, spoke up and gave voice to every victim of similar abuse in scientology. There is MUCH more to their stories as you might imagine. Only so much can fit in the minutes available for the show. I wish we … [Read more...]

Scientology’s Aftermath Part 2

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See previous blog post Scientology's Aftermath. this is the second new PR spin to tumble out of Scientology in the last 24 hours. Responding to an article in Rolling Stone, headlined Leah Remini Wants Federal Investigation Into Scientology, Dear Leader Miscavige offered up further butt hurt whining: Regarding Remini calling for an "investigation," it is pure balderdash. The Church is a religious institution committed to our religious, social and humanitarian missions. The Church says Remini and her "sources" have continuously filed false reports with law enforcement that have been … [Read more...]

Scientology’s Aftermath

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While Miscavige is busy telling scientologists to watch his 1993 IRS Event (see earlier post today When the Going Gets Tough...) in order to combat the new tidal wave of negative publicity flooding his dinghy, he is also rolling out a new external PR line. The cry from scientology has been that The Aftermath is just a means for Leah Remini to "make money" (they cleverly called it "Leah Remini; After Cash") -- but that line is kind of dead in the water as Leah is now filming Kevin Can Wait.  Even Miscavige knows that a network sitcom is a far more lucrative gig than any form of "reality TV." … [Read more...]

Clearwater: The Aftermath

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Leah and I wanted to clear the air about the planned episode of Aftermath focusing on Clearwater. We were very excited about shooting this as there is an amazing story to be told about the history of scientology in Clearwater, from the earliest days all the way to the present. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond our control conspired to make it impossible for Leah and me to put together the show in the way we had intended. If you know anything about us, you would know we do not like to compromise when it comes to trying to do justice to stories that need to be told. Though we were … [Read more...]

Scientology and Psychosis – The Aftermath

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Tonight's season finale of Leah Remini Scientology The Aftermath touches upon the subject of how scientologists address mental health issues. For many years, though Hubbard railed repeatedly against psychiatry, and called for psychiatrists to be shut down as a profession -- he had one caveat. The insane should be left to the institutions. They were barred from participating in scientology auditing. It was one of the many contradictions that can be found in Hubbard's writings - while he claimed all psychs were maiming people, he didn't want scientology to be involved in dealing with the i … [Read more...]

Scientology Aftermath Episode 2 Aftermath

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  The show has aired, my laundry has been hung out for all to see, and now it's on to Episode 3. As always, I am interested in your views - including criticisms and things you think might be better explained or covered (and I will try not to respond to everything with "it's in a later episode.") I also suspect there are quite a number of new people who are coming to this blog for the first time. To all of you, welcome. I thought you might find it instructive to be directed to some earlier postings I have done that may help explain some things if you just watched the show … [Read more...]