

The FBI's Scientology investigation - Pr0
http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology/article1270036.ece

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rwhitman
For 5 years I lived in a house in Los Angeles, where one of the previous
residents had been a member of Sea Org - almost 10 years before we moved in.
We would receive a piece of mail addressed to him from Scientology almost
every single day we lived there. Posters, letters, DVDs you name it. We'd
collect the mail and pile it on the floor as entertainment for friends. They
probably sent close to $200 worth of mailers to that house every year. People
from Scientology would come to the house asking for this guy, and we'd tell
them he hadn't lived there in years. They'd return, leave handwritten notes on
the door. In the storage area under the house were boxes of his family's
clothes and belongings, I wouldn't be surprised if they had just abandoned
their things and fled. Scientology is no joke.

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CapitalistCartr
I was born and raised here in Pinellas County with Scientology World
headquarters. I still live here in Tampa, and I've known a variety of
Scientologists, and done business with the Church.

They've been this way since before I was born; this is nothing new. I have yet
to see a news article accurately report on them, their beliefs, their
activities, or their crimes, which are legion.

The St. Pete. Times used to war with them regularly for years; not once did I
read an article that didn't have numerous sloppy mistakes that basic research
would have caught.

They really are a religion: they think they're saving souls and the World, and
anything they do is worth it; the ends justify the means. Since the World
hangs in the Balance, and they're the warriors on the front lines, they're
above the law.

What's worse is a lot of their minor techniques are quite effective,
especially on drug addiction and the like, which convinces many people that
they're the One True Path.

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MichaelGG
I find it interesting that "freedom of religion" helped them out of a case.
Why should doing something that'd otherwise be illegal suddenly change because
you claim it's "religious"?

Freedom of religion seems like a relic of an older time, or lack of clear
thinking. If you have freedom to think, assemble, speak, why does religion
need special casing? How is it different than having "freedom for hobby
clubs"?

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Because historically, nations have been eager to take advantage of Religion's
power to brainwash. They have found every way they could to worm religion into
their toolbox. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" prevents the government
from saying we all have freedom to assemble, speak, etc, but the gov't is
going to preferentially support this particular one over here. Or a myriad of
such tricks history has blessed us with.

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mrinterweb
I enjoy the content of this link, but I don't know what this has to do with
hacker news. This is a great link for reddit, or other like site. Hacker News
has been losing its focus on technology articles.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
mrinterweb
So basically absolutely anything that is not internet memes is on the table. I
would love it if Hacker News had a section of their site that was targeted
specifically to news about programming. Then I could treat reddit as reddit
and hacker news could have the programming news I want.

I have been following hacker news for years, and it seems that the subject of
the articles has been slowly straying from the topic of programming to more
general interest. I don't mean to pick on this article specifically.

~~~
franklinho
In a way, I think making a programming only section was what turned reddit
into the non-programming centric site it is now.

If you maintain one view, there is enough pressure on the main page to sustain
the programming articles rather than just say "go to the programming section".

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luney
I wonder if some of their techniques could be used for a hacker boot camp.
Voluntarily subject yourself to psychological abuse in order to get rid of
distractions and achieve "the zone" or high productive states. Great for those
experiencing longer than usual spells of burn-out. Mind hacking you back into
shape.

~~~
greenyoda
I don't think that abuse would be an effective way to get someone into the
zone. In fact, I think it would be a good way to keep people _out_ of the
zone.

