John Travolta flies to Haiti

kowloon wrote: »

Maybe if we ridicule the celebrities too much they'll stop helping out charities.
Should we care whether their motives are selfless or not? I'm sure a lot of it is PR, but is the result any different?

Those that deserve ridicule, should get it. To maintain silence is to be complicit in their ways by inaction
"Evil persists while good men do nothing"

I have yet to see Paul walker and Vin Diesel being ridiculed.
They just went down there and got on with the helping without bibles, cult posters and theoretical strange mind healers.

For Travolta to go down to Haiti (which in itself IS commendable) he would have to get permission for taking fellow cult staff.
* The org' NEVER lets any of their staff go anywhere without some form of clearance and without exception - without good reason that will be favourable to themselves first and foremost, just ask once very high ranked Irishman John Duignan: http://www.eason.ie/look/9781903582848/Complex/John-Duignan

Bringing food is good but if it just an excuse to facilitate a PR exercise to the convenience of the cult - and the cult is extremely professional at PR, in fact everything they do which they always do for self-rewarding reasons - their actions should be condemned.
The suffering people of Haiti are not an excuse of any kind, to be exploited in any shape or fashion, for the sake of a cult trying to gain more credence.

Travolta knows exactly what he is doing - and so does the cult.
They have practised enough at this scam alone - and thats on media record - many times now.

Dr. Feelgood wrote: »

That sounds a bit harsh. It's like saying John Travolta (or any scientologist) can't do anything charatible unless it's for the benefit of scientology. I doubt that's the case. Fair play to him for going there.

While I commend Travolta for bringing food alone to help without question, one cannot but question why was the other weighty crap brought including the strange "healers" and that term must be used very loosely.
I've (and many others) have personally tackled this cult literally hands on for years.
It cannot be understated that they (the cult) do ABSOLUTELY nothing without personal advantage to be sought by PR gain and/or eventual monetary reason.
Among the many many sites detailing their "stunts" and ways of operation, have a look at the following: http://unitedpeople.ie/exposed.html

General Zod wrote: »

BTW biggins, I believe there is some contact with Odhrann and his family nowadays. Although I guess you know most of the back story also.

True. It took something like ten years to bring about that due to the bad PR press the cult was continuously getting.
When they saw that the family was not giving up the fight for their son (one of the few that didn't cave to them) they relented after a lot of years and allowed Odhrann some access to his family without being "guarded" or shadowed at all times by a member of their well known goon squad.

The above clip is included to show some of the professional levels to which they operate and are willing to go.
Meanwhile the cult process of "Disconnection" alone carries on even today...
For example: http://alley.ethercat.com/cgi-bin/disconnection/disconnection.cgi

Naos wrote: »

Why isn't it a religion?

They are claiming they are a "Religion" as such just just monetary advantageous reasons. This started initially in the states with the IRS on 1 October 1993 when the Church of Scientology obtained tax exemption from the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

This ended 26 years of what the Church itself has described as a "war" against the IRS, in which it used extraordinary and in many cases illegal tactics - bugging of government offices, theft of mountains of classified files, private detectives pursuing senior government officials, thousands of lawsuits, full-page attack adverts in US daily newspapers, and so on.

They then decided to extent and test themselves as being classed as a "Religion" in other countries. However despite they trying to infiltrate government departments such as in France, Germany and Italy, there have been refused religious recognition in a number of countries that have - instead - seen through the screen of what they try to show themselves as, and instead rejected their cult for what it is.
A money grabbing, family dividing, law breaking, military (Sea-Org) cult and nothing more.

They have no one one god that they pray to, they have no prayers, they have no monotheism "being" (besides an alien "Xenu" who was a warmonger supposedly) that they can use as a peace loving central target for devotion.
With the absence of even a single monotheism devotion principle, the basis for classifying "Scientology" as a religion has been thrown out the window by many countries as a bunch of con artists who are just selling their "Bible" to make money also.
- (note: a "bible" by the way that consists of "levels" of teachings that you have to pay for in the hundreds and thousands to begin with - and thats just to buy their many versions of their bible alone - then in the hundreds of thousands as you go higher! Some bible!!! Its been shown that every time they want to fund raise, they bring out a new edition of their "bible" that members MUST buy in order to be considered to be loyal and not become seen as a "Suppressive Person")

How they infiltrated the American IRS: http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/irs_infiltrated.html
or
http://www.raids.org/afterirs.htm
or
http://www.xenu.net/archive/oca/irs.html

- just three of many well, well documented reports.

The cost of Scientology!!!: http://www.xenu.net/archive/prices.html
and
http://www.xenu.net/archive/CoS_prices.html

General Zod wrote: »

Just to correct this, so as to avoid confusion.

Xenu is not seen as a higher power. The Xenu story gets ONLY shown to Scientologists who are on the OTIII course (which in itself would take 6 figures to get to). It's a handwritten note by Hubbard explaining how "thetans" came into being. In the note, Thetans are the souls of hundreds of millions of alien life forms which were exploded on earth (then known as Teegeeak) in volcanoes (there's a long baqckstory to this, which doesn't need repeating here). these alien souls wander around the planet to this day and infiltrate your body and "get stuck" when something traumatic happens to you.

Auditing and doing the courses (both of which cost money to do) free these from your body.

One of the other fun pseudoscience techniques Scientology uses is "Locational Assists". This is basically getting the traumatised person to look at the ground, then at a tree, then at other random things in their environment for 10 minutes. After that they are cured.

All correct - and thats why so many wiser countries have basically told the cult to go to hell and in some cases "get out" in no uncertain terms.
By the time they (lower basic members/victims - if ever - get to the higher level after years and years of being sucked in, they are out hundreds of thousands if not more.
This is besides the other many, many down-sided effects of being in the cult.