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Wikipedia decides to ban users of Church of Scientology IPs, after its Arbitration Committee found that those IPs were being used for biased edits to various entries on the site. Although controversies have erupted at times over the true neutrality of certain entries, Wikipedia has publicly attempted to remain as neutral as possible, while also positioning itself as the site that anybody can edit.

Wikipedia, after a period of protracted debate, has made the decision to ban any site edits originating from IP addresses associated with the Church of Scientology.

The final vote by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee was 10-to-0 in favor of a ban, with one member abstaining. The committee examined whether members of the Church of Scientology and their opponents had been riddling entries with “bad faith assumptions, personal attacks, edit wars, soapboxing, and other disruptions,” and found that users on Scientology IPs had been openly editing Scientology-related articles.

In addition, it also found that pro-Scientologist editors had been directing the changes through a handful of different IPs, making it difficult to verify individual users.

Such activity would, obviously, put Wikipedia’s public face as an unbiased provider of information at risk, and the committee acted accordingly.

“The worst casualties have been biographies of living people,” the committee wrote in a posting on Wikipedia, “where attempts have been repeatedly made to slant the article either towards or against the subject, depending on the point of view of the contributing editor.

“However,” the committee added, “this problem is not limited to biographies and many Scientology articles fail to reflect a neutral point of view and instead are either disparaging or complimentary.”

In that spirit, the ruling blocks Scientology IPs “as if they were open proxies.” Wikipedia, however, is leaving the door open for certain individuals to request exemptions.

Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikipedia Foundation, told The Wall Street Journal that “the arbitration committee wants to send the message that Wikipedians have to be neutral on all accounts and all fronts.” He emphasized that the banning of IPs was traditionally a last-ditch step by the site.

The banning of the Church of Scientology from Wikipedia represents the first time that the site has blocked a major organization from editing to the site. In the past, minor controversies have erupted as companies, and even U.S. congresspeople, have edited their entries to put themselves in a more positive light.

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

“Why did we work so hard for this organization,” Ms. Collbran said, “and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn’t understand.”

They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades.

Fifty-six years after its founding by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a Reformation. The defectors say Sea Org members were repeatedly beaten by the church’s chairman, David Miscavige, often during planning meetings; pressured to have abortions; forced to work without sleep on little pay; and held incommunicado if they wanted to leave. The church says the defectors are lying. Read more »

Amid the mass of aid agencies piling in to help Haiti quake victims is a batch of Church of Scientology “volunteer ministers”, claiming to use the power of touch to reconnect nervous systems.

Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling volunteers fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital.

“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”

Some doctors at the hospital are skeptical. One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted: “I didn’t know touching could heal gangrene.”

When asked what the Scientologists are doing here, another doctor said: “I don’t know.”

Do you care? “Not really,” she said, wheeling an unconscious patient out of the operating room to join hundreds of others in the hospital’s sunny courtyard.

Scientologists ‘heal’ Haiti quake victims using touch (Yahoo News)

Guardian UK 11-18-2009

The Australian prime minister has said he would consider an inquiry into allegations of  forced abortions, assault, torture, imprisonment, covering up sexual abuse, embezzlement of church funds and blackmail.

Australian Senator Nick Xenophon has publically accused The Church of Scientology of being “a criminal organization.”

This comes less than a month after a French court convicted the Church of fraud and fined it more $900,000. The religion of John Travolta and Tom Cruise seems to be on the run.

AP 10-27-2009

In 2007, Germany banned the makers of Tom Cruise’s movie Valkyrie from filming at military sites in the country because he was a Scientologist. The German defence ministry said Scientology is a cult that masquerades as a religion to make money.

BBC 2007

After reading My Twisted Life as a Scientologist (New York Post 11/15/2009),  I thought it would be fun to do a little looking into Scientology’s closet.  I gotta tell you, the closet is full.

L. Ron Hubbard, the American science fiction writer, created a self-help system he called Dianetics. First published in 1950, it developed into doctrines and rituals as part of a new religion he dubbed Scientology.

Scientology is legally recognized as a tax-exempt church in the United States. Many countries, however, refuse to grant Scientology the status of a church. Canada, UK, Germany, France Belgium, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg and Mexico do not recognize Scientology as a religion. In Greece, Scientology was banned in 1997, and the Greek government upheld the ban in 2003, rejecting an application for Scientology to be recognized as a religion.

Scientology is often referred to as a cult often accused of financially defrauding members. The teachings of The Church of Scientology are cloaked in secrecy. Most of what is known about the teachings of the church comes to us from ex-members.

An ex-member takes you on a behind the curtain tour