Killers, Thieves and Liars….

Posted by Karoli in ADHD, Health, News July 9th, 2006

[8/18/2006: Comments are now closed on this entry]

Speaking of rebuking wrongdoers, and spreaders of lies…

There are political liars, lunatics, the intellectually dishonest (and irresponsible) and then there are the worst ones — the institutional liars. Today’s Liars of the Day are the Scientologists.

This greeted me when I walked into Starbucks this morning. Fortunately for Starbucks it wasn’t on their window, but the business adjacent. On first glance it almost looks like a government warning. It certainly looks like something “official”.

Frauds

Whoa. The Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights International. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the first lie. That name makes it sound as though a group of concerned citizens from all walks of life are speaking out for all sorts of human rights abuses around the world, sort of a grassroots Amnesty International. No. It is owned and operated by Scientologists. The Whois data gives a link to a Scientology store on Sunset Blvd. Not that they really try to hide the association — they don’t.

In fact, you can “apply” to become a “Human Rights Investigator”. Gosh, we all want to protect the rights of others don’t we?

So let’s debunk their lies one by one:

  1. 17 million children worldwide - A Google Search on this exact term yields the following first-page results: 6 links to cchf.org, directly or indirectly. (A list of affiliated sites is at the end of this post so that you actually know what you’re reading and who wrote it when you click on the result), one link to africanfront.org (an association concerned with starvation in Africa), one link to a NY Times article on child trafficking in Southeast Asia, and one to Women’sCommission.org, discussing a food distribution plan. That 17 million children figure appears to have no basis in fact. The closest I could get was an American Psychiatric Association article which mentioned depression affecting 17 million Americans.

    A search on “17 million” and “psychiatric” yielded a scary Google video as the top result, labeled as a “Public Service Announcement”

  2. Abused by psychiatry - Beware terms like this. Especially when they come from an organization/cult that is structured to control their members. Now their website defines psychiatric abuse as:

    The world would be a safer place without psychiatry’s abuses. “Abuse” essentially means, “to treat badly” or to “maltreat or injure.” Psychiatric treatments are harmful—electroshock, drugs, and psychosurgery all cause damage.

    On the right-hand side of their main page, they list celebrities who have died from drug overdoses — not, by the way, legally obtained prescription drug overdoses.

  3. “It’s a Crime” Um, no. “Psychiatric abuse”, as they describe it, is not a crime. There may indeed be abuses and misuses of the relationship between therapist and patient, but it is not a crime to prescribe medications and other treatments to patients in need. This is a patently false statement

This harmless-looking flyer is really an insidious attempt to draw people with the best intentions into Scientology, get their data into their database via applications to become “Human Rights Investigators”. By attaching celebrity names to their efforts (most notably the despicable Tom Cruise), they hope to attract the starstruck do-gooders who desperately want to “save the children”.

Don’t be fooled. The title of this post accurately describes my opinion of this particular aspect of their “movement”. One suicide, one delusional act of violence, one lost child as a result of their anti-psychiatry campaign makes them killers, thieves and liars.

If you want more information on the truth about Scientology, visit Operation Clambake, a site dedicated to “undressing Scientology”.

Scientology-Affiliated Propaganda Sites:

cchr.com
cchr.org
fightforkids.com
fightforkids.org
narconon.org

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Viewing 9 Comments

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    Great post - I love it when sources and examples are linked to. Thank you for the time you took in putting this post together.

    I have known of few mentally ill people that were convinced by a group to throw out their meds and they had the answer. Unfortunately the members were not Doctors. Two weeks and a few days later we were at a funeral - the minister that officiated was not from the anti med group.
    • ^
    • v
    By and large, science works. It's a self-correcting system that has been proven over the ages. Sure, it may take a while for the corrections to kick in at times, but when they do, it's based on a huge body of evidence, not wishful thinking.

    Scientology dresses up quackery as dogma and then spins their dogma as 'real science'. Then they prey on people who are looking for a quick fix, with sad, sometimes (as you've pointed out) tragic results.

    They also have a history of scouring the net and trying to suppress anybody with a negative opinion of their methods. I wouldn't be surprised if you end up welcoming some trolls to your blog in the near future.

    If they do, I'll be there to man the barricades:)
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    Thanks, Finnigh and Kmilyun for taking the time to comment on this...it's pretty near and dear to my heart.

    The most concerning thing to me about Scientology is the backhanded ways they try to suck people in and the fact that they have celebrity firepower spouting off about it. This poster is the most egregious and blatant I have seen them get, however.

    There was a local phone number at the top of the poster for the "local chapter". I cropped it out because I wasn't interested in giving them any more publicity than my criticism already will. What a gross display of trickery.

    As to the trolls, well...they have their choice of troll topics, including my illegal immigration stance which elicited some...um...interesting comments. :)
    • ^
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    This is a great post, DNW.

    I nominated it for the next Skeptic's Circle (June 20 2006 hosted at

    http://mikesweeklyskepticrant.blogspot.com/

    I'm going to work on one on bogus "treatments" for LD that are being flogged about.
    • ^
    • v
    I shall simply add my well-wishes for this post. Wonderful work.
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks for the posting, We need to speak out against this group's irrational hatred and fear of psychiatry. The sheer hypocrisy of Scientology is astounding, considering the many cases (i.e. Lisa McPherson) of physical and mental abuse that have been attributed to this society of control-freaks. There was a recent case where they persuaded a schizophrenic to swap his medication for their 'treatment' of vitamin pills, and he ultimately stabbed his mother (also a Scientologist) to death. Scientologists know that their name is associated with mind-control, ridiculous beliefs, criminal activities and extortionate fees so they are now hiding behind fronts like the Citizen's Commission for Human Rights, Applied Scholastics, Criminon and Narconon.
    • ^
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    Thank you for speaking up. The more people who tell the truth about Scientology and their outrageous behavior, the fewer people will be taken in by them. Hooray for you :)
    • ^
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    You wrote:

    “This harmless-looking flyer is really an insidious attempt to draw people with the best intentions into Scientology”

    - You got it right there. It’s a bait and switch con to get you to part with your money. They get you in on one pretext, and then they get you to go to the next level, which always involves paying more. It’s typical of all cults in that they don’t tell you at the outset what the ultimate purpose is. I wrote more about this here:

    http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/03/unde...
    • ^
    • v
    Great work! We have to keep an eye on The Clams, 'cause no one else will.
 

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