Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
SeekingTruth
()
Date: May 14, 2007 06:48AM
[www.timesonline.co.uk]
From The Sunday Times
May 13, 2007
Scientologists to BBC: what planet are you on?
Steven Swinford
THE Church of Scientology is trying to counter a BBC exposé by turning the cameras on the Panorama investigators and distributing 100,000 DVDs of its “findings”.
In a preemptive strike that is costing the church £30,000, it is sending copies of the DVD to all MPs and peers, religious leaders and other “influential” figures.
So determined has it been to neuter claims in the programme that it is a cult that its film makers tailed the journalists, employed CCTV and repeatedly confronted reporters.
It accuses the BBC of sharp practice and “gross bias” — and has posted footage on YouTube of the programme’s reporter John Sweeney “losing it” by screaming at a Scientology spokesman.
From The Sunday Times
May 13, 2007
Scientologists to BBC: what planet are you on?
Steven Swinford
THE Church of Scientology is trying to counter a BBC exposé by turning the cameras on the Panorama investigators and distributing 100,000 DVDs of its “findings”.
In a preemptive strike that is costing the church £30,000, it is sending copies of the DVD to all MPs and peers, religious leaders and other “influential” figures.
So determined has it been to neuter claims in the programme that it is a cult that its film makers tailed the journalists, employed CCTV and repeatedly confronted reporters.
It accuses the BBC of sharp practice and “gross bias” — and has posted footage on YouTube of the programme’s reporter John Sweeney “losing it” by screaming at a Scientology spokesman.
Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
SeekingTruth
()
Date: May 14, 2007 09:16PM
BBC 1 - Panarama - Monday 14-May-2007
[www.bbc.co.uk]
Row over Scientology video
By John Sweeney
BBC News
Scientology has fought many battles to keep its secrets off the web, now they are using it to attack my investigation into them.
Scientology has prepared an attack video, and they have shown the Scientology v Sweeney shouting match to anyone who would watch it.
There is talk of 100,000 copies being released.
Family 'disconnects'
Scientology works. That is the message from celebs like John Travolta and Tom Cruise - who is, some say, keen on recruiting new Hollywood arrivals David and Victoria Beckham to what he calls his religion.
Others back the Church in various ways: Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley of the City of London police helped open a new £20 million Scientology centre in London, and the authorities in the City of London have granted it cut-price rates.
But start asking questions and you see a different face of Scientology.
While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists, brain-washed - that is how it felt to me - in a mock up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.
Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.
I have met mothers who say they have suffered
Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
Psychiatry battle
Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber.
Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany.
To prove their point, they showed me hideous images of people having needles stuffed in their eyeballs, of patients undergoing electric shocks and having their brains operated on.
Sickening, nasty and wholly unconvincing - modern psychiatry, for all its faults, is not Nazi and to press the point in the way that Scientology does devalues the horror of the Holocaust.
I felt as though I was being brain-washed - and that if I did not fight it, they would have taken over my mind.
Ironically or not, it was in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition that I lost it.
'Exploding tomato'
As often in life, I snapped over something completely different and quite trivial.
Top Scientologist Tommy "Don't mention the word cult" Davis had been goading me all week, and on the seventh day I fell into his elephant trap. He shouted at me and I shouted back, louder.
This is the context Scientology will not tell you about. I have met too many good people who say Scientology was founded by a liar, L Ron Hubbard; that it attacks its critics without mercy; and the celebrities who endorse it have not the foggiest idea what it is really like.
Take "Rosemary", who is an ordinary mum and lives in England. She had two children and one died. Her surviving daughter was also her best friend. Then her daughter joined Scientology and her mother saw less and less of her.
Almost two years ago she received a "disconnect" - a letter cutting her mother out of her life totally.
Rosemary received no Christmas cards, no birthday cards, no Mother's Day cards.
Rosemary said Scientology was a cult. It was one of the most moving and shocking interviews I have ever done.
Out of the blue, three hours after we left, her daughter came round for the first time in almost two years seeking a reconciliation. The next day she begged her mum not to use the interview. So we won't.
Pay as you go
In Florida I met Mike Henderson, who with his wife Donna Shannon, spent $1m over three decades on Scientology's path to superhuman powers. When the couple left, they were disconnected from 20-odd family members left inside Scientology.
Mike's father - also disconnected - is dying, but five out of his six children will not speak to him because they are still inside Scientology.
After a long day with Mike and Donna we went back to our hotel at midnight, only to find Tommy Davis waiting in the lobby with his own black-clad Scientology cameraman.
He harangued me for talking to the heretics. I told him that Scientology had been spying on the BBC and that was creepy.
In LA, the moment our hire car left the airport we realised we were being followed by two cars.
John Sweeney spent many weeks investigating Scientology
In our hotel a weird stranger spent every breakfast listening to us. In all, we count 13 strangers - private investigators? - who were following us. Scientology denied sending PIs after the BBC.
Scientology is a pay-as-you-go religion - which is one of the reasons why the Charity Commission in Britain does not class it as a religion.
When you have paid as much as £100,000, you get to Operating Thetan Level Three and learn about "The Incident".
L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs.
Ex-Scientologists have insisted to me that Xenu is part of Scientology. If so, it is a religion that requires its followers not to tell others about its core belief, which is very odd.
Critics say that if we all knew about Xenu, then Scientology could not charge people as much as £100,000 to find out about him.
Despite all the pressure - the letters from lawyers, the letters from MPs, the strangers knocking up my family and neighbours - if people from "disconnected" families tell me that Scientology is a cult, that will be reported.
Scientology And Me, Panorama, Monday, 8.30pm, BBC1.
[www.bbc.co.uk]
Row over Scientology video
By John Sweeney
BBC News
Scientology has fought many battles to keep its secrets off the web, now they are using it to attack my investigation into them.
Scientology has prepared an attack video, and they have shown the Scientology v Sweeney shouting match to anyone who would watch it.
There is talk of 100,000 copies being released.
Family 'disconnects'
Scientology works. That is the message from celebs like John Travolta and Tom Cruise - who is, some say, keen on recruiting new Hollywood arrivals David and Victoria Beckham to what he calls his religion.
Others back the Church in various ways: Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley of the City of London police helped open a new £20 million Scientology centre in London, and the authorities in the City of London have granted it cut-price rates.
But start asking questions and you see a different face of Scientology.
While making our BBC Panorama film "Scientology and Me" I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a "bigot" by star Scientologists, brain-washed - that is how it felt to me - in a mock up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.
Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law's house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.
I have met mothers who say they have suffered
Scientology "disconnects" - meaning that their children have cut them completely out of their life so that they can spend more time with an organisation which a judge in 1984 characterised as "corrupt, sinister and dangerous".
Psychiatry battle
Scientology has two faces - nice and smiley, and sinister and dark. If you do not believe me, go and see their exhibition in Los Angeles, Psychiatry: Industry of Death. You enter through a door that is a mock-up of a torture chamber.
Scientologists want "the global obliteration" of psychiatrists, who they say were to blame for the rise of Nazi Germany.
To prove their point, they showed me hideous images of people having needles stuffed in their eyeballs, of patients undergoing electric shocks and having their brains operated on.
Sickening, nasty and wholly unconvincing - modern psychiatry, for all its faults, is not Nazi and to press the point in the way that Scientology does devalues the horror of the Holocaust.
I felt as though I was being brain-washed - and that if I did not fight it, they would have taken over my mind.
Ironically or not, it was in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition that I lost it.
'Exploding tomato'
As often in life, I snapped over something completely different and quite trivial.
Top Scientologist Tommy "Don't mention the word cult" Davis had been goading me all week, and on the seventh day I fell into his elephant trap. He shouted at me and I shouted back, louder.
This is the context Scientology will not tell you about. I have met too many good people who say Scientology was founded by a liar, L Ron Hubbard; that it attacks its critics without mercy; and the celebrities who endorse it have not the foggiest idea what it is really like.
Take "Rosemary", who is an ordinary mum and lives in England. She had two children and one died. Her surviving daughter was also her best friend. Then her daughter joined Scientology and her mother saw less and less of her.
Almost two years ago she received a "disconnect" - a letter cutting her mother out of her life totally.
Rosemary received no Christmas cards, no birthday cards, no Mother's Day cards.
Rosemary said Scientology was a cult. It was one of the most moving and shocking interviews I have ever done.
Out of the blue, three hours after we left, her daughter came round for the first time in almost two years seeking a reconciliation. The next day she begged her mum not to use the interview. So we won't.
Pay as you go
In Florida I met Mike Henderson, who with his wife Donna Shannon, spent $1m over three decades on Scientology's path to superhuman powers. When the couple left, they were disconnected from 20-odd family members left inside Scientology.
Mike's father - also disconnected - is dying, but five out of his six children will not speak to him because they are still inside Scientology.
After a long day with Mike and Donna we went back to our hotel at midnight, only to find Tommy Davis waiting in the lobby with his own black-clad Scientology cameraman.
He harangued me for talking to the heretics. I told him that Scientology had been spying on the BBC and that was creepy.
In LA, the moment our hire car left the airport we realised we were being followed by two cars.
John Sweeney spent many weeks investigating Scientology
In our hotel a weird stranger spent every breakfast listening to us. In all, we count 13 strangers - private investigators? - who were following us. Scientology denied sending PIs after the BBC.
Scientology is a pay-as-you-go religion - which is one of the reasons why the Charity Commission in Britain does not class it as a religion.
When you have paid as much as £100,000, you get to Operating Thetan Level Three and learn about "The Incident".
L Ron wrote that 75 million years ago an intergalactic space alien lord called Xenu kidnapped Thetans to earth, dumped them in volcanoes and blew them up with atomic bombs.
Ex-Scientologists have insisted to me that Xenu is part of Scientology. If so, it is a religion that requires its followers not to tell others about its core belief, which is very odd.
Critics say that if we all knew about Xenu, then Scientology could not charge people as much as £100,000 to find out about him.
Despite all the pressure - the letters from lawyers, the letters from MPs, the strangers knocking up my family and neighbours - if people from "disconnected" families tell me that Scientology is a cult, that will be reported.
Scientology And Me, Panorama, Monday, 8.30pm, BBC1.
Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
SeekingTruth
()
Date: May 16, 2007 06:52AM
The real scandals exposed were:
* The subsidy to the tune of 270,000 GBP by the City of London corporation for CO$'s new HQ near St. Paul's Cathedral. This will be paid for out of public funds.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]
And
* The scandal of the involvment of a high ranking police chief in not only opening the HQ in full dress uniform but welcoming CO$ to the City.
[www.24dash.com]
"Kevin Hurley, divisional commander of the local Snow Hill police station welcomed the church to the City and said its members were "raising the spiritual wealth of society"."
* The subsidy to the tune of 270,000 GBP by the City of London corporation for CO$'s new HQ near St. Paul's Cathedral. This will be paid for out of public funds.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]
And
* The scandal of the involvment of a high ranking police chief in not only opening the HQ in full dress uniform but welcoming CO$ to the City.
[www.24dash.com]
"Kevin Hurley, divisional commander of the local Snow Hill police station welcomed the church to the City and said its members were "raising the spiritual wealth of society"."
Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
kath
()
Date: May 16, 2007 08:14AM
[news.bbc.co.uk]
This programme's available for all to watch online here :)
This programme's available for all to watch online here :)
Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
cultreporter
()
Date: May 17, 2007 07:03PM
The Australian Premiere of this documentary was on tonight on the current affairs program Today Tonight
[au.todaytonight.yahoo.com]
Scientology made no comment to them except to ask that they refer to the second link below to see their side of the story. How they could possibly conceive that anyone would not see them as a cult when they openly admitted to digging into the past of critics the BBC journalist spoke to, and he caght them repeatedly on camera following them. Scientologists are freaky to the extreme. They spoke with Rick Ross on the airing that we watched - you looked great Rick.
The BBC Panorama documentary is online at /www.bbc.co.uk/panorama.
The Church of Scientology asked us to point out that you can view the church's own documentary of the BBC documentary, on the web at www.freedommag.org
[au.todaytonight.yahoo.com]
Scientology made no comment to them except to ask that they refer to the second link below to see their side of the story. How they could possibly conceive that anyone would not see them as a cult when they openly admitted to digging into the past of critics the BBC journalist spoke to, and he caght them repeatedly on camera following them. Scientologists are freaky to the extreme. They spoke with Rick Ross on the airing that we watched - you looked great Rick.
The BBC Panorama documentary is online at /www.bbc.co.uk/panorama.
The Church of Scientology asked us to point out that you can view the church's own documentary of the BBC documentary, on the web at www.freedommag.org
Scientology rants and raves about BBC Expose
Posted by:
SeekingTruth
()
Date: May 21, 2007 01:47AM
See the following for more CO$ exposes and responses re: this vile and nasty org.:
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
SB
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
[www.dailymail.co.uk]
SB
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