Scientologists - Letter to Sunday Standard 9/9/2006

Outsa Mokone

The Editor
The Sunday Standard
P/Bag 351
Gaborone
Botswana

9^th April 2006

Dear Mr Mokone

I was very surprised to see the article published in the Sunday Standard on 9^th April entitled “Scientology paints Botswana yellow” which covers the efforts this bizarre cult is making to convert people in Pandamatenga.

You make very veiled suggestions about me in the article, even though I am not named. As far I can recall only two people or organisations have written anything negative about the Scientologists in the Botswana press. I was one and the other was the Sunday Standard. You refer to “vitriolic letters to the editor write-ups”, which can only have been the ones I wrote. If you don’t have the courage to name me then please let me do it for you. What persuaded you at the Sunday Standard to fall for their propaganda? Have the alien ghosts the Scientologists believe in got to you?

My impression of your article is that it has been lifted directly from Scientology propaganda. 17 of your 24 paragraphs contain quotes directly from the Scientologists or flattering statement written to them from their gullible admirers. Only one paragraph even suggests that their may be any reasonable critics of this ridiculous cult, namely the very sensible German Government.

I wonder how many of the people in Pandamatenga really know what the Scientologists believe in? How honest have they been? Maybe I can fill in the gap they left?

One of their core (and confidential) beliefs is only made available to those who have paid enough and reached what they call “Operating Thetan Level 3”. This is that 75 million years ago Xemu, the Emperor of the Galactic Federation, decided to cure his over-population problems by murdering excess aliens by bringing them to Earth and killing them with hydrogen bombs. The souls of these people were then brainwashed with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. These souls managed to escape and now haunt our minds and cause all our mental health problems. At the same time apparently this Xemu guy implanted both Christianity and Islam in our collective memory.

I am NOT making this up! Court records from the USA prove this and I would be very happy to make copies available to anyone interested. Oh and do the cult mention that before he founded his own religion L Ron Hubbard was a failed science fiction writer?

You appear to have breached your own “accuracy test” in publishing the article. Your own standards state that you must ask yourself “what absolute proof do I have that the story is correct”. Much of what you wrote in the article is absolutely false. For instance towards the end you refer to “how successful it’s drug treatment programs are” when the only scientific research into Narconon, the Scientology drug treatment program, showed it to be a catastrophic failure.

This study was conducted in Sweden in 1981 and the Scientologists claim that it showed 76.8% of 61 drug abusers they treated were drug-free four years later. However if you examine the report you find that only 14 of the 61 actually completed the Narconon program. Of those 14 only 4 said they hadn’t used drugs since. That’s a real success rate of just under 7%. That is not a success by anyone’s standards.

Incidentally your readers may have noticed that it’s not even possible to have 76.8% of 61 drug abusers without cutting them into pieces. It doesn’t come to a whole number.

In February 2005 the California State Superintendent Jack O'Connell urged all schools to drop the Narconon program after research concluded that it offers inaccurate and unscientific information and is seen by most as just a recruitment wing of the Church. In 1989 Everett R. Rhoades, M.D., the US Assistant Surgeon General said of Narconon that it “cannot be considered medically sound”. In 1991 the Board of Mental Health of the State of Oklahoma declared that Narconon “is not medically safe”.

I must also say that I am genuinely outraged that the cult has persuaded our police officers, teachers, customs officers and community leaders to lend them their support in their official capacities. Maybe we should ask Government if these officials were in fact authorised to endorse the actions of this cult?

Yes, people may think I have some grudge against the Scientologists. Yes, I suppose I do. Maybe my problem is that they were founded by a lying, cheating, apartheid-supporting, drug-abusing fantasist who constructed a church to make money from the gullible and the naïve. How can the cult he founded deserve any respect when they still idolise and canonise this now deceased drug-crazed madman?

I would like to end with a few quotes from the lunatic Hubbard himself that give a flavour of the true beliefs and ethics of the Scientology cult.

“Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make more money.”

Regarding critics of the cult he said “May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any

Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed”

And my personal favourite, written in 1952: “The only way you can control people is to lie to them. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL ANYBODY IS TO LIE TO THEM.”

With best regards

Richard Harriman