HAMBURG, Germany, Aug. 8 (UPI) — The interior minister of Hamburg, Germany, sees Scientology as a threat to his state's security. Scientology is not a religious community but an "extremist grouping" that needs to be banned, said Udo Nagel, the interior minister of the northern German state of Hamburg. According to Nagel, Germany’s Interior Ministry in Berlin is currently probing whether a ban of Scientology would hold up in court. Observers and virtually all political parties in Germany see Scientology as ...

BBC reporter John Sweeney was last week seen losing his temper at the end of a sixmonth investigation into scientology. In 1994, The Argus published a damning exposé of the East Grinsteadbased "religion". Former chief reporter Paul Bracchi, who secretly infiltrated the cult, remembers how its followers relentlessly threatened and pursued him in revenge for criticising their deceptive and manipulative methods. Here Mr Bracchi, who now lives in London, tells the chilling story of how he was stalked and intimidated ...

This week a BBC reporter was shown screaming in fury after being hounded by Scientology fanatics. Here, a Mail writer tells how he, too, was the victim of a vicious cult smear campaign. The voice at the end of the line was trembling. "Is that Mr Bracchi?" "Yes, it is," I replied. The caller could not have been more relieved. I was supposed to be dead. Someone had started a rumour that I had been killed in a fire. The same ...

The BBC has hit back at accusations that it orchestrated a demonstration against Scientologists during which a "terrorist death threat" was allegedly made. It comes as a bitter row develops between the Corporation and Scientologists over a highly critical Panorama documentary about the religion, in which a veteran reporter lost his temper and screamed for 30 seconds at a Church member. The BBC has seriously reprimanded John Sweeney for the outburst, which the journalist has admitted was "wrong and stupid". The ...

HOLLYWOOD - A novel theory of what lay behind the sacking of Tom Cruise by his Hollywood studio has emerged: he got up the nose of the main man's wife. Reports are circulating that the star so angered Paula Fortunato, wife of Sumner Redstone, boss of the studio's parent company, that she told her husband she was "boycotting Cruise's product for ever". Some film-world blogs have suggested this statement - provoked apparently by Cruise's criticisms of Brooke Shields's use of prescribed ...

A New Zealand website spoofing Hollywood actor Tom Cruise and his religion of choice is facing legal action from the Church of Scientology. The church is not amused by scienTOMogy - which features spoof videos of the star - and says it is breaching copyright. When Cruise engaged in some sofa stomping, he coined a new phrase called jumping the couch - the defining moment when someone has gone of the deep end. From that moment Glen Stollery has been chronicling ...

"Just sue. Just do it. Sue, sue, sue. Do it. Go, go, go, go." -Tom Cruise, revealing in Details magazine how he tells his lawyer to deal with negative press. It’s been a fun couple of weeks here at the Beast. After a long, hard Buffalo winter spent slogging away, running on fumes with little relief and few rewards, the last few days have brought some cheer, and put some gas in our tank. Smiles abound in the usually ...

Newports Balboa Peninsula has become the place to go when youve got no place else to go. Longtime residents say theyre fighting for their way of life. Addicts struggling to get clean say theyre fighting for their lives The "convicts" and "liars" don'tagree on much, but they seem to agree on this: the tension started early in 2003. That's when Narconon opened a second rehabilitation house for recovering substance abusers behind the oceanfront rehab house it already operated at 18th Street ...

At last, audiences can discover the secrets of Scientology without being zapped by the fabled electropsychometer, writes Dan Glaister It is the show that has everything: music, dancing, children, celebrities. Hey, it even has threatening phone calls and the hint of divine retribution. A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant opened in Los Angeles last week after a successful run in New York at the end of last year. The play is pretty much what the title implies: an unauthorised pageant ...

Controversial organization uses any means to get "apostate" Karlsruhe. Gerry Armstrong has not lost hope. His will to survive has not given out on him either – amazing, with several lawsuits, imminent threats from the antagonistic lawyers at his throat, Gerry is impressed, but he has a clear message, "From Germany I will and must convince the authorities in my Canadian homeland and also in the USA, that Scientology is neither a religion nor even a church, and certainly not a ...

Parents seeking the removal of Superintendent Joseph Olchefske warned the Seattle School Board last night that they might mount a campaign to defeat two levies next February if he remains. That threat came from members of the Citizens for Effective Administration of Seattle Education (CEASE) during a week in which the teachers union and the principals association are taking no-confidence votes on Olchefske. CEASE member Maggie Metcalf-Hess said the group also might seek to replace School Board members who have supported ...

Critic: Are you guys a cult? Mike Ferris, Public Relations Spokesperson, Church of Scientology of NZ: Depends on what you mean by a cult. Every religion in its forming stage was considered to be a cult, pretty much. Critic: You guys aren't in your forming stages though, you've been around for fifty years. You claim to be the only major religion that's emerged out of the twentieth century. So, are you a cult? Ferris: Not in the derogatory sense, no, we ...

[...] Begin time: 05/05/2002 17:29:30 End time: 05/05/2002 18:00:00 [...] Classification: THRX Disposition: N Staff: Z GORTON Event: 02-005875 Time: 0510512002 17:29:30 Call Taker: L CASTLEBERRY Location: 18950 GRIZZLY MINE RD, TUOLUMNE RP: MCNAIRN, JANE Synopsis: RP STATES THAT RICHARD ODOM, WHO LIVES NEXT TO THE CHURCH OF SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGY, HAS BEEN RECEIVING VERBAL DEATH THREATS. DISPATCH WAS UTL ON ANY EVENTS SHOWING ODOM AS THE RP OF THREATS, BUT RP IS CONCERNED AND REQUESTING CONTACT BECAUSE IT HAS COME BACK ...

it’s an unshaven and frazzled-looking Keith Henson who shuffles into the converted jail cell used as a hearing room Thursday morning at the Metro West Detention Centre. He’s in broad-rims, jail-issue orange jumpsuit and blue canvas runners that he’s wearing like flip-flops because they’re too small for his feet. A flap of grey hair is swooshed over a bald spot on the top of his head. The unrepentant Scientology foe was arrested in a parking lot in Oakville by Halton regional ...

The geek-culture destination Slashdot.org said on Friday that it deleted a post in response to legal threats from the Church of Scientology. Scientology's notoriously litigious team of attack attorneys successfully pressured the site's editors into erasing a discussion board message, which allegedly contained copyrighted material. "While Slashdot is an open forum and we encourage free discussion and sharing of ideas, our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment should come down," co-founder Rob "CmdrTaco" ...

John Travolta has threatened to make a sequel to his universally slammed sci-fi epic Battlefield Earth. Defending the scientology-inspired film to journalists this week, he said: "The bottom line is that I feel really good about it. Here I was taking big chances, breaking a new genre I am so thrilled, believe it or not, at the outcome because I didn't believe I could get it done." Asked whether there would be a 'Battlefield 2' he said: "Sure.Yeah." Described by critics ...

FactNet, a group battling Scientology, warned Thursday that "lawsuits may soon be flying" over MGM's upcoming release of Battlefield Earth, based on a sci-fi novel by Scientology's late founder L. Ron Hubbard and starring the group's most outspoken celebrity, John Travolta. In a statement, FactNet charged that Scientology "has placed subliminal messages in the BattleField Earth film master to surreptitiously recruit new members from the movie audience," that it secretly financed the film, that it will use the film to recruit ...

In yet another fine weekend for protest groups, the anti-scientology group FactNet has warned that "lawsuits may soon be flying" over John Travolta's upcoming Battlefield Earth. FactNet accuses the movie - adapted from a sci-fi novel by cult founder L Ron Hubbard and starring celebrity scientologist Travolta - of accommodating "subliminal messages to surreptitiously recruit new members from the movie audience". FactNet goes on to allege that the would-be religion - beloved of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and other film stars ...

Dr. John G. Clark of Weston, a psychiatrist who was among the first to note the damaging effects of cults, died Thursday in Belmont Manor nursing home. He was 73. Dr. Clark was a member of the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the staff at McLean Hospital in Belmont. He maintained a private practice in Weston. After several families consulted him in the early '70s about their children's membership in fringe religious groups, he became convinced that the young people ...

When A Piece of Blue Sky, a book critical of the Church of Scientology, suddenly disappeared from Amazon.com's online catalog early this year, newsgroups such as alt.religion.scientology buzzed with conspiracy theories. Then, in June, Amazon.co.uk, the online bookseller's British division, expunged a controversial book, The Committee, which implicates David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party, in atrocities against Catholics. Amazon's decision to remove two books from its online list demonstrates the perils of balancing a billion-dollar book business with a ...

Around the clock, from Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and every corner of the United States, the critics of Scientology discuss the controversial organization and its practices. A court decision in Sweden is quickly posted to the news group, followed quickly by a full translation. Daily transcripts of a trial in Northern California are up before daybreak the next day, and news accounts from all over the world are quickly translated and reproduced. Many of those who post messages to the central ...

pictures of FBI raid on Scn churches; newspaper article titled, “Secret probe sparks raid on Scientology” VO: On July 7, 1977, 134 FBI agents stormed into Scientology centers in Washington and Los Angeles. Washington Post newspaper article titled, “Scientologists Kept Files on ‘Enemies’ ROBERT VAUGHN YOUNG (voice of): We hit the front page of every newspaper in the country at that time. footage of Scn press conference; copy of “Alaska Mental Health Act”; newspaper article titled, “Woman Sees ‘Political Siberia’ In ...