U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday warned Scientology’s attorney that he wouldn’t allow what he called “shenanigans” to interfere any further with the progress of a wrongful death case against the church now pending in his court.

In the process, one of the cult’s most vocal critics may be spared the hate group’s designs on him.

One of the Scientology cult’s most vocal critics, Tampa lawyer Ken Dandar, is in a pickle.

Six years ago, he settled a wrongful death case against the church on behalf of the family of Lisa McPherson, who died in 1995 after 17 days in the care of cult members in Clearwater.

Part of the settlement agreement, approved by a judge in state court, required Dandar to never again represent anyone suing the Scientology cult.

But last year, Dandar took on another wrongful death case against the church’s Flag Service Organization — in federal court.

Subsequently Senior Circuit Judge Robert Beach in June 2009 ordered Dandar to withdraw from the new case.

But on April 12, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday told him he cannot get out of it. The reason: No other attorney wants to take on Scientology. It is, after all, a cult known for its hate- and harassment campaigns against critics.

So Dandar is stuck between a state judge telling him to leave Scientology alone and a federal judge telling him he can’t.

Australian of the Year Prof Patrick McGorry is among a number of top psychiatrists who have been targeted by the Church of Scientology after they spoke out against the religion.

The University of Melbourne professor, with Monash University’s Prof Louise Newman and Prof Ian Hickie, director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the University of Sydney, publicly backed calls by South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon in March for a senate inquiry into Scientology.

Prosecutors in Russa’s Samara Region are taking a high-flying businessman to task for forcing his employees to go on scientology courses. The director of electronics company RosKabelSvyaz, Lev Syrolev, was threatening to sack faithless workers, but now faces charges for using extremist material.

“These practices are illegal and violate laws on combating extremist activity, labour laws, as well as the constitution of Russia,” Prosecutors said in a press release. The Surgut city court considers the ideas of L Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, to “justify violence, and in particular ways to combat critics of scientology.”

“The works of Hubbard present demands for social and religious discord, to promote the superiority and inferiority of people based on their social and religious affiliation, and to commit crimes for reasons of ideological and religious hatred,” Interfax reported.

The city of Hamburg said this week it would suspend the work of its 17-year-old Scientology task force, one of the most vociferous critics of the secretive organization. Leader Ursula Caberta has successfully defended herself in numerous cases brought by Scientologists.

However, the city says it will continue to monitor the group.

Claire and Marc Headley, who left Scientology in 2005, said the church controlled them with threats of harsh punishment and other tactics that prevented them from leaving the Sea Organization, Scientology’s religious order.

But U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer ruled that the Sea Org is protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion.

Prominent members of the Church of Scientology of Amsterdam have dived into a niche in the market: launching economic doomsday scenarios in conjunction with selling gold.

Two senior Scientology officials, Manuel Nugteren en Joop van der Linde, operate within an opaque organization that — via the internet — attempts to interest individuals in investing in gold. These potential investors are told that economic collapse is imminent, and that gold is the only safe investment.

In March, 2009, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer became the first major metro daily newspaper to go online-only. It now thrives as seattlepi.com. Good for them, but we hope their recent article about the opening of Seattle’s new Church of Scientology regional headquarters is not representative of the news outlet’s journalistic standards.

The piece reads like a PR brochure for the cult. It’s a missed opportunity to hold Scientology up to daylight.

In a separate item the ‘reporter’ also uncritically describes her experience with the E-meter, a gadget Scientologists use to bamboozle potential customers into accepting the cult’s quackery. “Did it measure my (not-so-subconscious) distress?” she asks.

Well, Amy: “None of the scientology theories associated with, or claims made for, the E-meter is justified.”

Prosecutors have opened a criminal case against a Scientology center in the town of Shchyolkovo, 13 kilometers northeast of Moscow, on charges of inciting hatred, punishable with up to five years in prison.

In April, works by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard were added to a federal list of extremist materials on the decision of a Siberian court, which de facto rendered all Scientology centers open to prosecution.

The court’s decision slammed Hubbard’s books as inciting social and religious hatred, justifying violence, especially toward opponents of Scientology, and promoting anti-state views.

As support for local councillor John Dixon shows, Scientologists may have a harder time silencing critics online than elsewhere.

That’s a good thing, given the destructive cult’s record of hate- and harassment activities — unethical behaviour dreamed up Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

A councillor is facing a disciplinary hearing after calling the Church of Scientology “stupid” in a post on the Twitter website.

Wales’ public standards watchdog said John Dixon is likely to have breached the code of conduct for local authority members with his short message last year.

Religion News Blog, whose publishers consider Scientology to be a destructive cult, often files news about the organization under the header ‘hate group’ — in light of the cult’s lengthy history of hate- and harassment activities.

Today’s best quote: “Scientology is both entertainingly crazy on the surface and enormously creepy on closer examination. It provides none of the charitable benefits generally associated with religion – aside from personality tests that seem to always come up with the answer ‘your horrible personality could be improved by Scientology’ – and is dogged with accusations of separating families and engaging in cult-like persecutions of those trying to leave.”

The subject is Australia’s debate on tax benefits for religious organizations (and cults…).

Good news: Will Smith didn’t make any charitable donations to Scientology last year, says Showbiz411.com. In the recent past, Smith’s private self-named charitable foundation had donated thousands of dollars to groups associated with Scientology.

So despite Will and wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s recent appearance at a Scientology lunch in Hollywood with celebrity disciples Tom Cruise and Jenna Elfman, the couple is not giving the cultish group tax free contributions any more.

But New Village Academy, the private school founded by Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, still advertises Scientology teaching on its curriculum list. Here’s why that is a very bad thing.

And this could be bad as well: even though so many alarming things are known about Scientology, people apparently are still getting sucked into it.

As previously reported the Scientology cult — notorious for its hate- and harassment activities — recently launched a hate campaign against CNN host Anderson Cooper.

The smear job is in apparent reply to a series of exposés Cooper broadcast earlier this year about Scientology’s history of violence.

Now the destructive cult has also brought its campaign to Google. Anyone searching for “Anderson Cooper,” “Anderson Cooper Scientology,” “AC360″ or similar terms gets to see an ad for one of scientology’s countless websites (this one ironically including the word ‘freedom,’ in reference to its magazine). Clicking on the ads gives you the opportunity to read the cult’s hate rag online.

The explanation for such behavior can be found in the unethical ideas of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

If you want to, er, clear the world of that particular kind of insanity, see Why We Protest.

Over the past couple of weeks, the influential anti-Scientology message boards Operation Clambake [check out the reason for the site's name] and Why We Protest have reported with glee that the Church of Scientology in Orange County can’t pay its water bill on its downtown SanTana building.

The ‘Church’ of Scientology has a lengthy history of hate- and harassment activities — unethical behaviour condoned and encouraged by the movement’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

This time the destructive cult has attacked CNN host Anderson Cooper — apparently in reply to Cooper’s four part series of exposés earlier this year about Scientology’s history of violence.

Somehow the behaviour of this group — that falsely claims to be ‘fastest growing religion’ — always reminds us of those ‘This is your brain on drugs‘ ads. Then again, these sad folks also hate drugs. And pyschiatrists. Go figure…

Given the recruitment efforts of the Church of Scientology of Orange County you’d almost feel sorry for the, er, ‘fastest growing religion’ (their claim, of course).

Concerned parents contacted a television station about one of the groups approved for tutoring by D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) – a group that has connections to the founder of the Church of Scientology.

Applied Scholastics International, a Scientology front group, is one of 29 tutoring services listed in the Title I Supplemental Educational Services Guide.

Video: Listen in on a casual conversation between cult expert Steve Hassan, ex-Scientologist Paul Grosswald — a long-time anti-cult activist, and ex-Scientologist Karen Pressley, who was a top person at the cult’s Celebrity Centre, a Seo Org member, and who worked directly for David Miscavige for 4 years.

Karen talks about her presentation at the ICSA conference with ex-Children of God member Miriam Boeri (who wrote Heaven’s Harlots), suppression of her new book by the Scientology cult, and its forthcoming release.

A parliamentary inquiry has heard claims the Church of Scientology leaves members to fund local charitable activities out of their own pockets, as it siphons donations to church officials overseas.

The Senate committee was formed after Independent Senator Nick Xenophon raised concerns about Scientology, and proposed changes to tax law that would require religions to pass a public benefit test in order to be exempt from income tax.

According to the official website of the Church of Scientology the word ‘Scientology’ literally means “the study of truth.” It claims that “Scientology is the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life. The religion comprises a body of knowledge extending from certain fundamental truths.”

At the same time it says that “In Scientology no one is asked to accept anything as belief or on faith. That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true.”

Critics have labeled Scientology as everything from a dangerous cult run by amateur psychologists to a scam exploiting money from its members, writes Herón Márquez.

“We don’t expect mainstream religions to lie, to exploit people, to engage in illegal activity,” said David Touretzky, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Scientology is not a true religion, because it does all of these things.”

• Scientology research resources