Good news for human rights in Germany

After 17 years of operation the "Scientology Task Force" of the city of Hamburg has been shut down.

Of course they didn't announce the fact that after 17 years of intrusive and unconstitutional investigation of the Church of Scientology's activities they found nothing - as in zip, nada, sweet FA, zilch - illegal going on. Nothing they could prosecute, nothing they could publish a government pamphlet about, basically nothing at all.

Must be pretty embarrassing for the Hamburg government and the notorious, human rights violating head of the "task force", Ursula Caberta. They created a task force based on rumors, lies and bigotry and after 17 years finally realized they were wasting government time and tax payer money.

Oh well, it's one more step forward in the fight for Religious Freedom and a great day for human rights in Germany.

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Valkyrie and Germany

A fellow blogger just saw the movie Valkyrie and had something to say about its message and present day Germany: Valkyrie

I very much agree with her that a re-evaluation of discriminatory government policies is needed in Germany.

Scientology and Germany - Latest News

The German government's announcement last week that it is dropping its attempts to ban the Scientology religion in Germany is something that could probably have been predicted by simply looking at the history of such attempts.

In his 1974 book "The Hidden Story of Scientology", investigative writer Omar V. Garrison says:

I have read through thousands of pages of transcripts covering such hearings, official enquiries and parliamentary debates in the U.S., Australia, South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain. Yet in not a single instance that I have been able to discover have any of these lengthy proceedings produced a shred of evidence that Scientologists or Scientology's founder have been guilty of anything actionable under the criminal or civil laws of the countries conducting them.

The inquiries in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were conducted by repressive, apartheid governments, and even they couldn't find anything wrong.

I'm not familiar with the Canadian investigation, but as far as I know the inquiry in New Zealand was probably the quickest and most honest of them all. The New Zealanders found one minor policy they didn't like so the Church canceled it.

In Australia, in the late 1960's an inquiry in the state of Victoria banned Scientology. But in 1975 after many years of legal attempts to right this blatant wrong, the Supreme Court of Australia fully recognized Scientology as a religion and the ban went the way of the dinosaur.

In the UK in the early 1970's a government inquiry resulted in a ban on foreign Scientologists entering the country. No evidence was ever presented as to why such a ban was put in place and after a decade the ban was lifted after demands were made in the House of Commons for the evidence to be made public.

In Spain, an investigation went on for seventeen years and resulted in full religious recognition just last year.

The US government has the record for the longest history of harassment and bogus investigations: after 35 years of "investigations", which included infiltrating agent provocateurs into the Church, attempting to plant false documents and other illegal activities, the IRS fully recognized every Scientology Church and related organization as religious, public benefit organizations.

So, now it is Germany's turn. After eleven years of wasting tax-payers money while they spied on the Church in Germany, they have found that the Church of Scientology and its members have not been guilty of doing anything wrong. (For the history of this up until 2003, scroll down to "fact sheet".)

You can probably see a repeating pattern in all this:

1. Accusations are made.
2. Measures are taken or investigations are instigated.
3. After many years, and millions of taxpayer dollars, marks or euros being spent, no wrong doing of any kind is found.

Because governments are limited in their activities by the law, eventually the fact that no evidence of wrong doing exists forces them to stop their harassment and remove the false reports they have been gathering and disseminating.

Unfortunately this is not the case with the Internet. Accusations can be made, lies can be told and no one has to prove it in a court of law, so the lies can go on forever. Entities such as "Anonymous" can gather supporters based on accusations backed by nothing that would stand up in a court of law and the poor dupes who believe them then go on spreading the lies and getting themselves into trouble.

Hopefully, this article will be instructive to people who have been duped and will help them to re-examine their ideas about Scientology and perhaps they will begin to use the requirements of legal evidence as their yardstick when examining information they encounter about Scientology, the Church and Scientologists.

More Information:

• Scientology: Religious Recognition


• Official Recognition of Scientology as a Religion


• What Religious Scholars Say About The Scientology Religion


• Governments and courts of countries worldwide recognize the religious character of the Church of Scientology


• What is Scientology? Religious Recognition

 

Tom Cruise receives award for courage in Germany

I've said several times that the international media should apologize to the German people for its portrayal of Germany as still being somehow steeped in Nazi traditions. Such disgusting headlines as "Why Germany hates Tom Cruise" from Time Magazine clearly attempts to make Germany look like some sort of extremist fascist state, which it most certainly is not.

(My earlier posts on this subject: The German People Deserve an Apology from the International Media and Unfair Treatment of Germany in the Press.)

To further prove the fact that if the media can't find controversy they will make it up there comes this story from Germany: Tom Cruise receives the BAMBI award for Courage .

It says on the BAMBI website: "BAMBI award ... is the most important award in Germany. With an audience awareness of 94%, it holds a top position – in Germany it is even more well-known than the legendary Academy Award, the OSCAR. ... This award is given to nominees in the whole sector of communication and to people in all other segments of entertainment and show business as well as economy, politics and sports."

It seems unlikely this award would have been given to Tom Cruise if things were as bad in Germany as the media likes to pretend. So, once again I call for an apology to the German people from such entities as AP, Reuters and Time Magazine.

Wouldn't it be nice if reporters actually told the truth? It would make freedom of the press something worth fighting for.

The German People Deserve an Apology from the International Media

In an earlier post (Unfair Treatment of Germany in the Press) I pointed out how the press had created controversy where there was none and had attempted to make modern day Germany look like a throwback to the Nazi era. The international media were drooling over a false report that the German government had denied access to a war memorial site for a movie production because the star was Tom Cruise. A week or so after the press frenzy, the German government stated that the memorial was closed to all filming because of an incident back in 2003 and it had nothing to do with anyone's religion.

So now it's a couple of months later and the movie company has been granted permission to film in the memorial (Cruise movie gets OK to film at key site).

So let's review what actually happened:

1. A right-wing anti-religious extremist politician made a post to her personal web-site saying that the German Military wouldn't allow the movie to be shot at the war memorial because of the religious beliefs of Tom Cruise.
2. Some over zealous reporter saw it.
3. Without verifying it's accuracy the media started reporting it as fact.
4. A few days later the German Military said they didn't have the authority to say "yes" or "no" to filming because they were not in charge of the building.
5. A few days after that the Finance Ministry said they didn't allow any filming in the building because of an incident in 2003.
6. Two months later the movie company convinces the Finance Ministry that they will treat the memorial with respect and the Finance Ministry says "okay".

So where was the controversy? Where was the conflict? Where was the Nazi-like behavior of the German Government? Answer: None of it ever existed. These things were created by the media who think they can't live without controversy and negative reporting.

Once more I call for an official apology to the German Government and especially to the German People from the reporters who told lies and passed around false information in a blatant attempt to paint Germany in a very bad light.

Freedom of the press will be lost if the press doesn't take some responsibility for what they report.

More on Germany and Scientology

Here is an article from columnist Susan Estrich regarding the recent situation in Germany: Tom Cruise And The German Problem.

I particularly agree with:

"... the film Mr. Cruise is set to star in has absolutely nothing to do with Scientology. Mr. Cruise is an actor seeking to work in his craft, and the Germans are seeking to prohibit him from doing so because of his religious views. If any country should be sensitive to the harms of religious discrimination, it is Germany."

Unfair Treatment of Germany in the Press

Because of the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust, the people of Germany are quite rightly sensitive about accusations or implications of anything touching on fascism in their current Government. Germany wants to be thought of as the birthplace of Strauss and Beethoven, as the producer of finely engineered luxury vehicles and as a modern democratic nation.

So the hullabaloo in the international press last week must have been painful. Lurid headlines such as Time Magazine's particularly offensive, "Why Germany Hates Tom Cruise" were bringing back unpleasant echos of the 1930s.

The ordinary people of Germany must have been gritting their teeth in frustration at the reports by Reuters, AP, Time, etc., etc., all loudly trumpeting the "fact" that a Hollywood movie studio, partly owned by the world's biggest movie star, was being denied access to a German military memorial because of his religious beliefs.

Worse still, the movie that was being thwarted was about the attempt by the German Resistance to assassinate Hitler. Tom Cruise was to play Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the plot. Surely this movie was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate to the world that during WW II Germans were opposed to Hitler and his atrocities? Yet, according to the media, the German Government was saying, "Nein!" for reasons that sounded hollow to any reasonable person.

After a few days of this the German Ministry of Defense finally spoke up saying that they weren't responsible for approving film shoots at the building in questions. The Ministry also said they had no opposition to the film shooting in Germany. (Germany now would welcome Cruise production)

It turns out that the source of the report was the web site of, Antje Blumenthal, a right-wing, anti-religious politician. No one in the news media had bothered to verify the accuracy of her posting.

The truth about the "ban" was not reported anywhere near as much as the lie. It seems that accuracy in reporting comes a poor second to sensationalism.

Personally, I think Reuters, AP, Time and the rest of the crew who published this lie should apologize, not only to Tom Cruise, but also to the people of Germany who now have a new stigma to live down, and this time it's not even a factual one.