Nothing could match the revulsion we felt yesterday at the mass murder of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut.
But there was something else that made the bile rise in our throat yesterday.
Marty Rathbun, at his blog, pointed out that one of the anonymous attack web sites operated by the Church of Scientology has begun putting up slimy allegations about his mother’s mental health.
It turns out that it’s regurgitated material from a larger article that appeared in the church’s propaganda magazine, Freedom. (We won’t link to it. You can find it easily enough if you want to, or you can just assume that it’s the usual juvenile smear that Freedom specializes in.)
In a previous article, we showed the connections between the anonymous attack sites and the church. And now, Scientology leader David Miscavige appears to be dropping all pretense of holding the attack sites at arm’s length.
Officials in Hernando County, Florida aren’t backing down in a lawsuit brought by a wealthy Scientologist who wants to expand a Narconon drug rehab site against the wishes of local residents.
The Narconon center’s landowner has asked federal Judge James D. Whittemore that the facility’s connection to Scientology, and the recent deaths of three Narconon patients in Oklahoma, be kept from a jury if the lawsuit goes to trial. We have copies of two motions that Hernando County filed this week pushing back on that request.
And actually, we can think of several other things that a jury should hear if this case gets its day in court.
For at least eight months, the US Department of Homeland Security has been investigating allegations of human trafficking in the Church of Scientology, TONYORTEGA.ORG has learned.
Since at least the spring, agents with Homeland Security working out of its Tampa office have been interviewing former members of the church who have information about the way children are used as laborers in Scientology’s “Sea Organization” and other matters.
We put in a call to the lead investigator of the probe at the Tampa office, Justin Deutsch, who has been questioning former church members. We have not received a reply.
But we decided to reveal this news after talking to four different ex-Scientologists who gave us detailed information about being interviewed by Homeland Security, and after learning that the probe has been going on for so long.
That meany Jon Stewart and just about everyone else has made fun of this video from America’s favorite cute movie couple, Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson.
But we know that our readers will have special affection for this darling Christmas carol that features so many of the things that make the holidays special.
After all the new “Ideal Org” churches David Miscavige has been opening around the world in the last decade, there must be a giant surge of new members joining the Church of Scientology, right?
Um, well, no. In fact, the figures from the 2011 England and Wales census are out, and they are grim. In the second most important country to Scientology in the world, only 2,418 people claimed that they belonged to the church.
That’s not the only alarming number that came out this week regarding Scientology’s fortunes. Let’s dig in.
Tiziano Lugli just released at his website a new version of the “Blown for Good” rap that he and Marc Headley (author of the book Blown For Good) conceived and recorded.
When we were in Los Angeles, Tiziano played for us a version of the song that featured several ex-Scientologists, including Nazanin Boniadi, who was once “auditioned” by the Church of Scientology to be Tom Cruise’s girlfriend.
But Tiziano wanted to get an actual audio clip out with better quality than could be heard on our flip cam video, and he assembled a new version that features Marc Headley along with Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder, and Jamie Lugli.
Well, we’ve been looking forward to bringing you this for some time now, and thanks to the folks over at Gawker, it’s now live, for all the world to see.
The too-cool-for-school commenters over there will crap all over the video of course, which is as predictable as the sun rising in the morning.
But we trust our readers will see the value in this unique video.
That’s one of the odd things we found in the autopsy report of the son of Church of Scientology President Heber Jentzsch, who was found dead on July 3 at the home of his in-laws.
We reported earlier what the Los Angeles Department of Coroner told us, that Jentzsch died because he took Methadone while he was suffering from a serious case of pneumonia. The Coroner ruled it an accident.
We have little doubt that it was an accident. But we still wonder about this young man who died while he was cut off from both of his parents in a Scientology power struggle.
Once again our tipsters have come through for us this week, and we have another diverting set of Scientology fundraising mailers for our Sunday Funnies.
We’re counting on our formidable commenting community to analyze, synthesize, and deconstruct these latest dispatches from David Miscavige’s leaky barge of a church.
Nothing could match the revulsion we felt yesterday at the mass murder of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut.
