Scientology Spokesman admits XENU is real

Somehow I missed this important 2009 NewstalkZB interview with the spokesman of the Church of Scientology of New Zealand. Here he reluctantly confirms that the evil galactic overlord Xenu, is fact a part of Scientology 'scripture', although he states it's part of it's "esoteria" ( top level sekrreet from the flocks of blind lower cult members, myself having once been one of them )

Video: Xenu the Alien - Confirmed by Scientology!!
http://youtu.be/BhlueT3dryE

The cult had previously been denying the existence of Xenu (or XEMU) as demonstrated in this 2008 video after the South Park episode, where "Tommy Davis, a spokesperson for the Church of Scientology, categorically denied any knowledge of Xenu and the Alien genocide that is a pillar of their faith. In this video, (LRH) L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, describes the story in detail and proves Tommy Davis is a liar and South Park (SP) was right!"

Video: South Park Proved Right About Scientology XENU Story
http://youtu.be/T7EEOMbBIO8

To help you better digest this baloney, here is a transcript* of the story of Xenu (Xemu) from the audio tape "Class VIII "Assists" Lecture 3 October 1968":

"And they [the "loyal officers"] had elected a fellow by the name of Xemu, ah, could be spelled X-e-m-u, to the supreme ruler, and they were about to un-elect him. And he took the last moments he had in office to really 'goof the floof'.....he got these administrators and so on, and heads of planets in various positions and places.....and then troops not knowing what the hell they were doing, but were fed all kinds of false orders, were [sent in] against the population to pick them up, one after the other.....one of the mechanisms they used was to tell them [the population] to come in for an income tax investigation......But the truth of the matter is, that the loyal officers were not all killed. Xemu missed and they were not all killed, not by a long way.....and the administrators and renegades which Xemu had brought in were not very effective and a fire fight ensued which put the finishing touches on the Galactic Confederation.....the renegades that had been hired and so on, and the administrators that had been loyal to Xemu were still trying to hold out. Within a year he was in -- under arrest, and within six years the lot had been wiped out. The loyal officer was triumphant. Xemu was put with several of his cohorts in the center of a mountain which is still on one of these planets, and in a wired cage which is charged with an eternal battery. He's not likely ever to get out." (L. Ron Hubbard on "Xemu" (Xenu), hear the MP3 audio)

I just saved you a alot of money, as it costs** a scientologist up to $250,000 to get to where he learns about Xenu.

refs:
*Thank you to Phil Porvaznik of Evangelical Catholic Apologetics for his transcription and evaluation of this, which can be found here Xenu (Xemu) in Scientology

**How Much Does Scientology Cost?

Jason Beghe XenuTv Interview Highlights

This excellent 8 min video showing the highlights of the complete XenuTV interview of actor Jason Beghe by Mark Bunker was recently compiled by YouTube member svMilliways



What I like most about this is that it shows how much Jason Beghe knows about Scientology and how much he cares about those who are still members. Tom Cruise needs to listen to this.

Christopher Caldwell of Financial Times : 'Confusion over Scientology..........:

Financial Times
Confusion over Scientology
Is it a religion? A cult? A business? Or something else?
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: January 18 2008 19:45 | Last updated: January 18 2008 19:45

Christopher Caldwell asks how the hybrid should be handled

Here's a fair use bit from this excellent article.
[..]
" How Scientology gets treated is important. Hybrid organisations – which look religious from one angle and secular from another – are not what our laws on freedom of religion anticipated. When a Muslim charity gives money to, say, Hamas, or when a Bible-belt church starts a business, the line between sacred and secular gets harder to draw.

Scientology’s doctrines are based on Hubbard’s writings and programmes, sales of which are a considerable source of income for the Church. Some of its scriptures are “confidential”. They reportedly involve extraterrestrials who lived 75m years ago and sent spirit clusters (called “thetans”) to earth. The basic practice is “auditing”, which has been compared to Catholic confession or to self-help “talking cures”, but which is directed by a church member. Its goal is to eliminate “engrams” – negative mental pictures that block human development. It should not be confused with psychiatry, to which the Church has a special hostility, and which Hubbard considered a form of terrorism.

Readers Digest, Time magazine and others have reported that the Church keeps records of its confessional “audits” in case a member should turn against it. Defectors from the group have claimed that they were subjected to psychological pressure and, in some cases, lost their life’s savings. Scientology is rich. It has a real estate empire in Clearwater, Florida and desirable properties in the major cities of the world, along with reported assets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Scientology “devotes vast resources to squelching its critics”, Time magazine wrote in 1991 – and this was before Scientology sued Time Warner for $416m over the article in which that passage appeared. In 2001, the US Supreme Court, in refusing to revisit Scientology’s filed suit against Time Warner, cited a 1984 California Superior Court case that found: “The Church or its minions is fully capable of intimidation or other physical or psychological abuse if it suits their ends. The record is replete with evidence of such abuse.”

The Church repeatedly sued a US watchdog group called the Cult Awareness Network until it went bankrupt in the 1990s. And Mr Morton told the Toronto-based Globe and Mail this week that his biography of Mr Cruise had not been published in Britain “because the publishers, Pan-Macmillan, felt the costs of defending any action outweighed any kind of freedom of expression”. "[..]

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Recently, the Editor of the St Petersburg Times in Clearwater, FL had similar concerns about scientology because of the city's history with the church. The editoria makes a public suggestion to Sen. Grassley in an editorial titled Opinion: A Church Accounting .


"Politicians should be careful when delving into religious matters, but Grassley has raised some legitimate issues about enforcement of tax laws. While religious institutions have constitutional protection against certain taxation, they are also expected not to abuse their special status. In fact, while Grassley is looking into such matters, he should add the Church of Scientology to the list.

Scientology's shameful past includes a 25-year legal and psychological campaign against the IRS to be recognized as a tax-exempt religion. Scientology tactics included a criminal conspiracy in the 1970s to bug IRS offices, which led to 11 convictions of church members including founder L. Ron Hubbard's wife. Scientology filed dozens of lawsuits against the IRS, hired private investigators to dig up dirt on IRS employees and financed other IRS critics.

In an unprecedented concession in 1993, the IRS dropped its long-held position that Scientology operations where commercial, and granted the organization tax-exempt status as a religion. Mysteriously, that decision came after then IRS Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg Jr. held an impromptu private meeting with top Scientologist David Miscavige. Goldberg and the IRS still refuse to discuss their decision or release details of the settlement even though there is no legal obligation for them to remain silent. Perhaps Grassley could shed some light on what happened in that private meeting.

While federal law gives great leeway to recognized religions to collect money without paying taxes, there are some clear limitations. A religion's income and assets cannot be used to benefit church insiders beyond their normal compensation, and must be used for charitable, educational or religious purposes rather than to enrich individuals"

--------------------------------

That took courage and the article put the church on notice. So has Christopher Caldwell and Financial Times. This is a timely subject worthy of a complete review.

To All the Curious Current, Former and Never Members Of Scientology

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

CNET & more on KEITH HENSON ......... The 'Tom Cruise' Missile Jokester Who Scientology Wants Jailed

"Scn is like HIV. Gets in there and screws up the immune system, perverts the law to its own ends. Forget government taking the lead role in bringing down scn, that task falls to you and me." --- Keith Henson

David Rice "Shy David") tells us:
"The sinister Scientology® business claimed it attacked Keith Henson because of "copyright violations." In reality, the reason is because Mr. Henson spoke the truth about Scientology Inc.'s crimes and human rights abuses. The business attacked Henson as a "warning" to others who would be so bold as to tell the truth about Scientology. This is called the "Monkey on a Stick" deterrent: one or two "monkeys" are selected from the crowd of critics, and harassed in front of them--- this is to cause the other critics to cease objecting to Scientology Inc.'s crimes and gross human rights abuses.


Before we get to the CNET article on Keith Henson, the 'Tom Cruise' Missile Jokester, it's important to know that the story of his fight for free speech and his flight to avoid persecution by the 'church' of scientology is something we can all benefit from reading up on.

"I know that taking a stand against Scientology is likely to subject me and my family to the same abuse Mr. Ward has experienced. But there comes a point where people of good will *must* stand up to criminals-- even to those who are experts in using the courts to harass." ---Keith Henson


___________________________________________

CNET SPECIAL REPOST (FAIR USE) Published: February 5, 2007
'Tom Cruise' Missile Jokester Arrested
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

"A Silicon Valley figure who fled the country after being convicted in part because of a Usenet joke about Tom Cruise and Scientology has been arrested in Arizona.

Keith Henson, an engineer, writer and futurist, was arrested Friday in Prescott, Ariz., where he has been living for the past few years, and now faces extradition to California. Henson originally fled to Canada after the 2001 conviction.

Keith Henson
The misdemeanor conviction in California stems from a post that Henson made in the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup that joked about aiming a nuclear "Tom Cruise" missile at Scientologists, and Henson's picketing of the group's Golden Era Productions in Riverside, Calif.

Michael Kielsky, Henson's defense attorney, said Monday that his client will likely be released on Monday evening and is required to appear in court for a March 5 hearing.

Kielsky said that Henson was mistreated by police and jailers--including being told during the arrest that he had no right to an attorney and being held in solitary confinement in a poorly heated cell without adequate bedding. "My best information is that it's very political," he said. "They gave him an extra blanket but then an hour later they took it away--(this is) a 66-year-old man with a heart problem."

A message left with Sheila Polk, the Yavapai County Attorney, was not returned on Monday.

A brief flap that ensued over the amount of Henson's bond delayed the process. A judge initially set the amount at $7,500, but then increased it to $500,000 at the request of prosecutors, according to the Yavapai County Detention Center. After a telephone conference with the judge and attorneys on Monday afternoon, the bond was lowered to $5,000.

Henson's frequent encounters with Scientology, coupled with his lengthy resume of programming, electrical engineering and futurist accomplishments, have made him something of a legal cause celebre in technology circles.

Supporters have created a "Free Keith Henson" blog, posted a note from his wife, Arel Lucas, and are asking for donations to a legal defense fund. The fund was set up by members of the Extropy Institute, a nonprofit group that has been a gathering point for futurists and technologists since 1991.

Convicted of making threat to interfere with religion Henson was convicted in 2001 under a California law (Sec. 422.6) that criminalizes any threat to interfere with someone else's "free exercise" of religion. One Usenet post that was introduced at his trial included jokes about sending a "Tom Cruise" missile against a Scientology compound (the actor is a prominent Scientologist). Picketing Scientology buildings and other "odd behavior" were also part of the charges, Deputy District Attorney Robert Schwarz said at the time.

Jeanne Roy, a deputy district attorney in Riverside County, Calif., said that the next step for her office is to see whether Henson shows up for his March 5 court date. If he does not, an Arizona warrant would be issued for his arrest. If he does, Roy said, another court date would be set to deal with extradition through a process known as a governor's warrant.

"That won't happen by March 5," Roy said. "It's usually a 30- to 90-day process, depending on the state, for that paperwork." If extradited to California, she said, Henson faces a year in jail or six months in jail and 3 years of probation.

When asked whether it's common for California to try to extradite someone on a misdemeanor conviction, Roy said: "It's not common, but it's not unusual either. We do it in some cases."

Henson's family is concerned about what might happen to him in jail. "The Scientologists have made death threats to my father," his daughter Amber Henson said in an e-mail message to CNET News.com. "My mom and I are going to do everything possible to make sure that they are not able to silently do away with him." (The Church of Scientology could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.)

Before his misdemeanor conviction, Henson had become embroiled in a civil lawsuit that Scientology filed against him.

It arose out of supposedly secret scriptures written by L. Ron Hubbard, the late science fiction author and founder of Scientology, which describe a galactic overlord named Xenu who is allegedly the source of all human evil. Since the early 1990s, Scientology has made a concerted effort to remove those documents from the Internet--including suing Henson--but they finally found a permanent legal home in the Netherlands.

Scientology's tactics, which critics say include cult-like retention practices and intimidation, have drawn fire in the past. A Time magazine cover story, for instance, concluded that "Scientology poses as a religion but really is a ruthless global scam." Xenu and Cruise were also satirized in a November 2005 episode of South Park."


NB:It's sure nice to see good writers writing about good people like Keith Henson.