The St. Petersburg Times, which has a lengthy history of exposing the Church of Scientology to daylight reports about a controversial company operated on the management principles of the cult’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard

Oscar-Winning director Paul Haggis has a new movie out, The Next Three Days. Metro asked him about his exit from the Scientology cult:It’s tempting to read the jailbreak plot of The Next Three Days as a metaphor for Haggis’s escape from Scientology. Is it the sinister cult we all think it is? ‘How would you define sinister?’ he hedges. ‘The philosophy seems fine to me but there was a lot of stuff that I found increasingly disturbing.‘The thing is you get inside and you really have this feeling of being in a cocoon and that you’re part of a minority group and that everyone else is out to get you.‘There’s a lot of bigotry and intolerance in this world and I saw the organisation – with all its warts, growing pains and problems – as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for underdogs. I’ve always loved the idea of being part of a group that everyone reviled.’

A Chicago judge will decide this month whether a city code prevents protesters who oppose Scientology’s teachings from expressing their discontent any time the church’s doors are open or only during its conventional Sunday worship service.

Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s law department, said that in preparation for the hearing, the city is examining the factors that led to the citation as well as the wording and intent of the ordinance.

For 34 years, thousands of Scientologists traveled to Clearwater and stayed in hotels owned by their church, enjoying a free ride from the 5 percent tourist tax that other visitors pay at Pinellas’ commercial hotels.

But that quietly changed earlier this year.

Pressed by the staff of Pinellas Tax Collector Diane Nelson, the Church of Scientology agreed to start collecting the tourist tax a few months ago and pay it monthly to Nelson’s office, the St. Petersburg Times has learned.

It’s a surprising reversal that will generate significant new revenue for Pinellas’ tourist promotion efforts.

But the change raises questions about another tax that Pinellas hotel guests pay – the 7 percent sales tax. Does the church now collect that tax from its guests too?

The Florida Department of Revenue, which separately administers the sales tax, wouldn’t say, citing state laws that make confidential almost all information about sales-tax payers.

The church, meanwhile, suggested it doesn’t collect sales tax on hotel stays. Read the full story here.

Then, if you haven’t already done so, inoculate yourself against the Scientology cult — which we consider to be a commercial enterprise masquerading as a religion, and acting like a destructive cult.

Scientology head David Miscavige has declared victory over Anonymous in an internal church magazine.

Miscavige described Anonymous as a group of “mask-wearing subversive and anarchistic internet denizens,” The Register reports. Big words for a man who heads an organization some consider a hate group at best and a fraudulent business enterprise marketing quackery under the guise of religion.

Miscavige’s declaration brings to mind former President George Bush’s early declaration that the War in Iraq was won days after the capture of Baghdad, says The Register

WhyWeProtest (WWP), run by the anti-Scientology part of Anonymous, maintains a portal explaining its aims and objectives here.

Meanwhile, by way of a consumer alert, read up on Scientology and marvel at the idiocy of the cult’s founder L. Ron Hubbard — a man who, not surprisingly, had trouble separating truth from fiction.

Incidentally, if you do decide to hand over your money and your mind, here’s a buyer beware: you may also be forced to lose your family and friends. Here is how Miscavige’s niece described that horrendous side of Scientology.

As for David Miscavige, see The Truth Rundown. In that series of special reports the St. Peterburg Times highlights the alleged abusive behavior of current Scientology leader David Miscavige, as well as other criticism leveled at Scientology by a number of high-level defectors.

Vanity Fair asked Scientologist Juliette Lewis whether she celebrates Christmas.

“I’m a Christian! I think there’s so much confusion because people don’t understand a religion where you can be another religion but you can still practice Scientology,” the actress replied.

That’s a standard Scientology claim — and like so many other things that religious cult teaches — total nonsense.

Scientology is incompatible with Christianity because its teachings (not to mention a good many of its practices) violate the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.

The Church of Scientology has been offering alcohol-dependent Aborigines a drug bomb therapy, which it has been told could kill people with kidney problems.

The Scientologists this week responded to a warning by the Northern Territory Health Department and stopped distributing literature which promotes a dangerous drug detoxification therapy.

The person who posted this video to YouTube writes, David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology has strange and dangerous simliarities with Jim Jones, former leader of the People’s Temple, who killed 909 people on Nov. 18th, 1977• Scientology    • Peoples Temple

Remember A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant?

This December the satire it’s going to play in Tampa Bay, right in the backyard of the spiritual headquarters of the Scientology cult.

“I had no idea they were doing the show down there,” Kyle Jarrow, author of the musical, said. “Clearwater is almost ground zero for Scientology. That’s sure to be extra controversial.”

He readily acknowledges that the 60-minute musical is intended to ridicule Scientology, writes the St. Petersburg Times (which, by the way, has published numerous investigative reports on Scientology). “At the time I wrote it, Scientology was sort of a punch line on South Park, but I think people knew a lot less about it than they do now,” he said. “For that reason, it seemed like it would be interesting to explore what the religion was about.”

But the playwright also has a larger point to make about organized religion. “Yeah, I have some things to say about Scientology in the play, but part of what I wanted to say is that in any religion, there are certain things that people could find ridiculous,” he said. “There are plenty of Christian doctrines that, if one met an alien and tried to explain it to them, they’d think it sounded pretty ridiculous. So I think it’s more than just a spoof.”

“This was not an easy book to write. For three years following my departure from the Church of Scientology, I was not able to write anything sensible about my experience. Then gradually, the onion layers of indoctrination started to peel off, one by one, and I began to get some distance and perspective.”

“I knew that I could never tell part of the story; it had to be the whole story or nothing. When I would try to tell people about the abuses I experienced within the Church of Scientology, they would ask me one thing: why had I stayed so long? And understanding that meant telling the whole thing.”

“Once my blog account was completed, my readers and friends encouraged me to expand Counterfeit Dreams to book-length and publish it.”- Jefferson Hawkins

A father claims Narconon International and the Association for Living and Education International are fronts for Scientology, and that he paid them $35,500 for “essentially worthless treatment” for his drug-addicted son.

He says the groups run rehab programs “to enrich themselves and to provide a recruit base for the Church of Scientology rather than to provide competent treatment for chemical dependency.”

The government is urging councils across the country to stop giving hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax breaks to the Church of Scientology.

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said a majority of the public did not want the “controversial organisation” to be given the kind of favourable treatment usually reserved for charities and questioned this use of public money.

Initially, fire officials attributed the blaze to an electrical short circuit, but once the identity of the owners became clear, investigators began to suspect arson.

Arab and Jewish residents of Jaffa have mounted protests in the hope of denying the Scientologists a foothold in the city and launched a petition on Facebook calling on the authorities to keep the organization away

Nine construction workers were saved from a burning building in Tel Aviv. The building, which is undergoing renovations, belongs to the Scientology cult.

Arson is suspected as the cause of the fire.

In a rare clash between courts, a federal judge today said he will order a state judge not to interfere with a lawyer’s handling of a federal case involving the Church of Scientology.

A visibly irritated U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday granted a motion by lawyer Kennan Dandar, who is representing the estate of Kyle Thomas Brennan in a wrongful death suit against the church.

[Note: due to Scientology's behavior we file news items like these under the heading of 'hate groups.']

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