2000 - 2010: The Decade of Scientology's Annihilation?

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Monday December 07, 2009 · 11:00 AM PST

2009/12/07 · 11:00

As I hope many people already know, John Lindstein filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and David Miscavige on the 25th of November this year. A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you, Mr. Miscavige.

The document details Scientology 'business' practices that should be more or less common knowledge by now: human trafficking, child labor, imprisonment, providing abhorrent living conditions and zero compensation to their 'employees' (hereafter referred to be the only word that can give proper justice to what is done to those unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of the 'church': slaves).

This is only the latest chiming of the alarm in recent years. In October, Clair Headley filed a suit with similar charges - though not naming Miscavige personally - and the date for her jury trial has been set for 2010.

Kevin R Brown

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Friday December 04, 2009 · 12:21 AM PST

2009/12/04 · 00:21

I find it difficult to find fault with President Obama's proposed Afghanistan strategy (with the caveat, of course, that at this point I'm taking things at face value). There is a set objective, there is a set deadline for the accomplishment of said objective, there has been little to no talk of 'nation building' (the popular contemporary code word for occupation) and the objective is, in my opinion, worthwhile (I'm a Canadian citizen, and have been tossing away tax dollars on an Afghanistan babysitting campaign while the American forces decided to focus on Iraq, so it's not like I don't have money involved here, either).

There are many criticisms of further involvement in Afghanistan by Western governments that I agree with (the corruption of the Karzai government, for example, and the continued misappropriation of aid money & labor), but none are directly applicable to what Obama has proposed: creating a dense static line of conventional ground forces, squeezing out the fighters in Waziristan and heading home.

Kevin R Brown

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Thursday November 19, 2009 · 2:41 AM PST

2009/11/19 · 02:41

Did you know that the Earth has, perhaps, as little 5,000,000 years left to live (EDIT: My mistake; the current hypothesis suggest about 1 billion or so years left)? Perhaps that seems like a long time, but if you consider that she's been inhabited for some 4.5 billion years, this news might strike you as comparable to a senior citizen being told that their heart will stop beating in a year's time (it does to me, anyway).

5,000,000,000 years is a lot of human generations, but the vault we borrow from is never bottomless, and someone at some point had best be able to say, "We're not taking another step back. We just don't have the time."

My thoughts are that it may as well be us.

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2000 - 2010: The Decade of Scientology's Annihilation?

Discussing Afghanistan

The Beer Hall Putsch of Today, the Fascism of Tomorrow