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Independent Web Sites

The following links are important for those who sincerely try to understand the cult and Scientology issue because so-called "critical" web sites, even though they will boast about "linking to both sides", will mostly ashew independent observers' pages. The reason is simple: a factual and non-partisan look at the issue will mostly disprove critics' wild allegations and expose the serious abuses anticultists have been guilty of in the past.

• Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance -  Scientology
  The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance (OCRT) web page on Scientology. Features one of the best summary of what Scientology is - something you will hardly ever find on so-called "critical" web site. These will usually tell you all the reasons you should hate Scientology, but will hardly ever tell you exactly what it is. Whatever critical sites will do in this aspect will be tainted by strong bias and  distortions. The OCRT provides a good alternative to both the official CoS presentation and critical ones. The OCRT web site also points to the early controversies about Scientology and the net but the more recent issues are not really up to date. Check also the OCRT very good pages on the anticult movement and on religious intolerance.

• New Religious Movements - Scientology - http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/soc257/nrms/scientology.html does not work anymore
  Web site from the Virginia University, maintained by Jeffrey Hadden, a so-called "cult apologists" but in reality a knowledgeable scholar who even manages to please some critics in this very exhaustive presentation of Scientogy by being uncompromising about the CoS' negative aspects. The NRM site covers many other New Religious Movements as well as addresses many of the related key issues.

• CESNUR - Scientology page
  Cesnur, or the Center for Studies on New Religions, directed by Massimo Introvigne, is certainly the leading figure of the opposition movement to religious discrimination and civil rights abuses in Europe at the moment. The web site, while not very organized, contains excellent articles and very up-to-date news. It also contains much of the "bad news" (read decisions running against anticultists' attempts to pass discriminative and dangerous measures) which so-called "critical" web sites will attempt to brush under the carpet. On other pages of this site, checking Introvignes' paper on Anti-Cult Terrorism via the Internet is a must, as is Gordon Melton's historical summary on the issue of Brainwashing and the Cults. The index page on The Anti-Cult Law in France gives an idea of the kind of discriminative and dangerous legislation the anti-cult movement currently tries to pass.

• Keith Wyatt's Bob Minton page (web page does not exist anymore)
  Check this page for alternative information to the pro-Minton propaganda put out by the LMT. Keith Wyatt is not a Scientologist and his anti-Minton page is better than that of the CoS. IMO.

• Institute for the Study of American Religion (Link http://www.americanreligion.org/cultwtch/ does not work anymore)
  General information about cults and the anti-cult movement. This scholarly page has been around for some time and probably not updated recently, but some of the themes are classical and the essays very well researched and written.

• Psychology of Religion Pages - Michael Nielsen (link http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/family.htm does not exist anymore)
  This links leads to a scholarly paper analysing the claims of child abuse in a New Religious Movement. From the same web site, check the interesting court document of a key deprogramming case.

Anti-Scientology Web Sites

Sadly, there isn't a single anti-Scientology web site I can recommend (but I don't loose hope and am still searching). The bias in all of them is just too strong and the best critical sites have now gone off line because their author have been (rightly) fed up with the anti-Scientology cause. Here's a quick review, however, of the most important ones.

• Operation Clambake - www.xenu.net
  This is no doubt the more promoted critical web site. It is constantly being referred to in ARS, on leaflets, etc, and is being linked by more than 600 web sites the last time I checked. It bears some apparency of being reasonable and open-minded (partly deserved as its author, Andreas Heldal-Lund is an intelligent and nice guy) but is in reality strongly slanted. A look at the introduction section tells the story. It feature a "What is scientology" page written by Roland Rashleigh-Berry, one of the more obnoxious poster in ARS, that presents Scientology under the simplistic view of an evil mind-control scam, followed by Tilman Hausherr's "FAQ" for kids, that basically tells the kids that their parents are deluded freaks who don't love them. It also feature a Baloney Detection Kit page that got to be the most ironic page of all, taking into account the mediocre power of "critical thinking" critics have demonstrated in ARS. The Legal section of course doesn't mention any of countless law suits won by the CoS, while the "Made for propaganda" page compares Scientology with Nazism through nothing else than very general statements that could be applied to anything else and ... the fact that both Hitler and Miscavige are crossing their hands in front of them! The positive aspect of Operation Clambake is that it is remarkably organized and designed. Andreas is really gifted in that aspect, and his latest creation, a Flash animation, is a master piece of propaganda - very pleasing to see and bringing up the most horrendous quotes aimed to portray Scientology, in big letters, as an evil and dangerous scam.

• The homepage of Tilman Hausherr
  Contrary to Operation Clambake, Tilman's page is badly organized and designed, but it does contain a lot of documents, some of them made by Tilman himself, such as the Cult Apologist FAQ, a document in which Tilman, through his simplistic anticult logic, tries to convince readers that the real motivation of scholars who find evidences that disprove anticult claims is money and power, the Scientology in Germany FAQ, that tries to show that discrimination in Germany is not really discrimination, or the result of Tilman's daily "Clam Sleuth on the net" - mercifully tracking everything that even remotely look as if it may be a "clam".

• Why are these people dead, Scientology?
  The aim of this page is to accumulate as many cases of death as possible and present them all on one page, mixed with out of context quotes, all to give the impression that Scientology is really a killer cult and that you risk your life by joining. It doesn't really matter if the death was caused by Scientology or not. All that is needed is that the person be remotely linked to Scientology. The son of a Scientology crosses the street and is killed by a car. A Scientologist dies of old age or sickness. Someone who once made a Scientology course committed suicide. Someone mentioned he heard someone say that a Scientologist died. Hell, even L. Ron Hubbard is on the list. LRH is dead, you know. And, yes, he was a Scientologist. In fact, people who aren't even born are on the list - they died because their mother where "forced to practice abortion", and people who are still alive are on the list too - they considered committing suicide. The one thing that my sympathic Dutch neighbor failed to show is a causal relationship. Needless to say, he also didn't provide any statistics to show that the death ratio is higher in a Scientology environment than in another one. Without these, the exercise is rather futile, and amounts to little more than emotional exploitation. Also check Mike's Tax-exempt Child Abuse and Neglect?, a page made in the same spirit. And don't  forget the question mark. You are not making an allegation... you are merely asking a question...

• Is Scientology breaking the law? (link  http://members.aol.com/jour0/investigation.html doesn't work anymore)
  Another page that tries to accumulate as many horror stories as possible and put them together for effect. Phobic impression guaranteed, even though few or any of these cases would pass requirement to be presented even in the lowest court. Many are based on apostates stories, known for exaggerating or distorting what actually happened. I have webbed a significative example of an apostate who claimed she was forcibly restrained, but really wasn't as it turned out later on closer examination. It clearly shows some of the basic reasons why apostates feel the need to literally lie.

• A.R.S. Web page summary
  The most complete list of critical links. Initially created by Marina Chong, it has been taken over by James Wood who is now maintaining the list. This is the only critical page that links to my own web site, but not before I insisted for nearly a year with James. Finally, James created an "anti-critic" category (duh), grouped together with a "cult apologist" category, but rather than web the independent links above, he pointed to Tilman Hausherr's Cult Apologists FAQ - just to make sure that your own mind is made through a politically correct "critical" interpretation and that you don't get confused by facts. However, the effort James made to represent on the list a viewpoint which he hates and which is feared by most critics is still commendable and ought to be noted.

• Cornelius Krasel (web site does not exist anymore)
  Another exhaustive German site. No frills but well organized. Features a Paulette Cooper page, using a time line made by Diane Richardson and Keith Spurgeon, but carefully avoiding any material dug up by Diane and Keit showing Cooper in a less than favorable light. It also features an "ARS Litigation FAQ" which conveniently stops on Mar 6, 1998, since after this date things become embarassing for critics, as all the critics mentioned on that page have been found guilty by the court of the offense they have been accused of by the CoS or had to settle their suit in favor of the CoS. (The only suit where this is not the case is still pending.) Cornelius, however, being somewhat less biased than your average critic, also features some documents that tells another story. Such is the case for his page that debunks Conway/Siegelman's Snapping studies, or the one that does the same with Steve Fishman's Lonesome Squirrel.

• Lisa McPherson Trust (web site does not exist anymore)
  This fairly new comer on the scene is maintained by Grady Ward, working for the LMT, and fuelled by "Minton's bucks". The website is fairly well organized and nicely designed. It also uses, like my own site, a human and civil right approach, with one difference, though: it is completely bogus on LMT's part. Why so? Because the anticult movement is doing anything but supporting human rights. It presently fully endorses religious discriminations that goes on in Germany and in France, among other things. This is similar to the supposed Human Rights "award" anticultists gave to themselves. Always in the same spirit, you read that the Lisa McPherson site, maintained by Jeff Jacobsen, a virulent critics and member of the LMT board, is an "independent" site. Yeah, right... Apart from this, the sites also features, in defense of Bob Minton's embroglio with Nigeria's dubious buy-back scheme, Noah's article which is an article replete with gratuitous and unsupported allegations, and quite obviously nothing but an hack job.

The rest will come soon (hopefully)

Bernie@bernie.cncfamily.com

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