=== Life Space
1. Court hears wrongful death case Mainichi Shimbun

=== Falun Gong
2. Falun Gong Cancel Meeting in Thailand
3. Inside the Falun Gong
4. Reports from China's government-controlled media

=== Scientology
5. Scientology Chic [Must reading...]

Start Battle Creek Enquirer Special Report
6. [Battle Creek Enquirer] Editors Note

» Part 2

7. Scientology in Battle Creek: Church's workings a mystery to many
8. Scientology's Code of Honor
9. The Church's Creed
10. Church's teachings spark a bitter debate

» Part 3

11. Perspectives on church clash: 'The benefits are fantastic'
12. Celebrity members
13. Perspectives on church clash: Ex-member claims he was locked up
14. Classes offer Scientologists 'Bridge to Total Freedom'
15. Restoration planned for hotel

» Part 4

16. Church blends quietly in progressive Ann Arbor
17. L. Ron Hubbard
End of Battle Creek Enquirer Special Report

18. Interior Agency issues warning on Scientology recruitment strategy
19. Scientology's dirty trick with Einstein
20. 2001 Leipzig Award

=== Hate Groups
21. AP Corrects Aryan-Motel Suit Story
22. Health show drops anti-Semitic author


=== Life Space

1. Court hears wrongful death case Mainichi Shimbun
Mainichi Daily News (Japan), Feb. 24, 2001
http://www.mainichi.co.jp/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CHIBA - A man should be jailed for four years if he allows his ailing father to be dragged from a hospital to a hotel only to die and have his mummified body left alone for months, a court here heard Friday.

Prosecutors demanded that the Chiba District Court convict Kenji Kobayashi of abandonment by a person responsible for protection of a victim resulting in death after he allegedly allowed his 66-year-old father to be treated by the Life Space mystical group.
(...)

Prosecutors said that during February 1999, Kobayashi entered a hospital room in Hyogo Prefecture where his father was in a coma after suffering a stroke. Kobayashi had his father discharged into his care and took him to a hotel room in Narita, Chiba Prefecture. There, he refused to seek medical treatment for his father, instead allowing Life Space gurus to offer their prayers and chant mantras over his body. Eventually, the father died of asphyxiation.

Kobayashi's case is attracting attention because Life Space guru Koji Takahashi is standing trial for the murder of Kobayashi's father. The trial of Takahashi, whose appearance and comments attracted enormous attention in the media before his arrest, is also being heard in the same court.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong

2. Falun Gong Cancel Meeting in Thailand
AFP, Feb. 26, 2001
http://www.insidechina.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BANGKOK, Feb 26, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Falun Gong followers in Thailand have decided to cancel a planned meeting in April after warnings from the police and foreign ministry, the religious sect said in a statement Monday.

The decision comes despite a go-ahead for the gathering from authorities here, who warned the group to abide by Thai laws and not to use it as a platform to attack Beijing.
(...)

''Due to the principle of Falun Gong to abide by truth, mercy and patience, we have agreed to cancel the meeting scheduled on 21 April and not to invite foreign Falun Gong followers to join us in Thailand.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


3. Inside the Falun Gong
The Independent (England), Feb. 23, 2001
http://www.independent.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) To avoid my office wiretap, I use phone boxes or handsets with freshly swapped SIM cards. I am meeting some ''enemies of the state'', and for them any slip-up could be fatal.

They are prime targets in a very uncivil war the Chinese government is waging against its own citizens. The two-year engagement has claimed more than 100 victims, and imprisoned thousands more. Their crime? Their refusal to renounce Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that is banned in China as an ''evil cult''.
(...)

The rendezvous point is crowded with people, muffled up against the freezing cold. I am approached by a bundle of clothes. We drop the right passwords, and walk silently to a nearby restaurant. Braving the elements and the security forces, seven followers of Falun Gong have gathered there to explain their beliefs, unshaken despite fearful intimidation. In a private room, we unwrap our masks against the cold. Two of the group reveal heavy bruising on their faces. All share the hunted look of people who have endured time inside, and suffer many privations outside. Five are still on the run from the authorities. Sacked from their jobs, spurned by nervous friends and relatives, they survive on the spiritual sustenance of Falun Dafa, and the physical charity of fellow believers.
(...)

Defying almost two years of suppression, the Falun Gong challenge remains the most sustained affront to the Communist Party in its 51-year rule. Adherents stress apolitical motives, but their frequent forays into China's political heartland reinforce government paranoia that the movement is a ''reactionary force'', bent on sabotaging socialist China in league with various ''foreign enemies''.

''We have done nothing wrong,'' says the vet. ''Justice is on our side. We only want the right to practise Falun Gong. The ban breaks China's constitution and international human rights covenants. I don't oppose the government, but I will protect Falun Dafa with my life.''

Armed only with their faith, Falun Gong protesters have become a tourist attraction, playing almost daily on the vast plaza in central Beijing, with gala shows on public holidays or anniversaries of the official campaign against the movement. Evading police cordons, disciples of the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, flock to Tiananmen.
(...)

There is no shortage of willing martyrs for the cause, and they are learning from bitter experience.
(...)

Human rights organisations estimate that at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are detained in Chinese labour camps and ''transformation'' or detention centres.
There is good reason to fear deportation. If their treatment in Beijing is horrific, away from the capital anything goes. ''The central government has told local officials 'however you stop them coming to Beijing, nothing is too excessive','' claims a 27-year-old practitioner. ''Local officials can lose their jobs or promotions if too many people from their area come, so they try and destroy us.''

Human rights organisations have documented more than 100 deaths in custody of Falun Gong believers. The UN has criticised China for specific cases of torture, such as the beating to death of Chen Zixiu, a 58-year-old grandmother, in Weifang, east China. Beijing rejects these ''false accusations'', and maintains that all deaths in custody have been either natural or suicides. Instead, the government points to more than 1,600 deaths it blames on Li Hongzhi's mystical concepts, such as advocating meditation over medicine.

''The Master's books do not prohibit taking medicine,'' retorts one of the group, a former policeman from south-west China. ''But we don't need it! We cultivate ourselves, do good deeds for other people, and we don't get sick. We save China so much money on medical bills!''

The communists denounce the sect's claims as ''anti-science'', the kind of feudalistic thinking the 1949 revolution tried to eradicate. For 30 years, the party inspired an often blind faith in Maoism, but the last two decades of cut-throat capitalist reforms have left gaping ideological holes.
(...)

Many followers still cannot comprehend the government's reaction. ''Falun Gong teaches you to eliminate bad thoughts and think only of others,'' says a 24-year-old Qinghua University graduate. ''We are good citizens in society, good workers in our jobs and good family people at home.''

The government disagrees, especially on the latter claim. Official pressure to renounce the ''cult'' has forced many followers into painful tests of loyalty, or perhaps zealotry. One 36-year-old woman tells of her regret that she has not seen her 10-year-old daughter for 18 months, since her husband asked her to choose between Falun Gong and a ''normal'' family life. He quickly won a divorce. The former policeman from south-west China admits that he left his fiancée behind, as well as his job, to fight to clear his Master's name.

None of the believers would reveal whether protests are planned to disrupt the International Olympic Committee inspection taking place this week.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Falun Gong - China's Government-Controlled Media

4. Reports from China's government-controlled media

* China's government-controlled media has, in recent days, published dozens
of items denouncing Falun Gong. As these items are essentially press
releases meant as propaganda rather than news reporting, there is little
to be gained by including them in RNR. Those interested may access the
reports via this Falun Gong news page


=== Scientology

5. Scientology Chic
National Review, Feb. 24-25, 2001
http://www.nationalreview.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...)
All this has subsequently been denied, but if it is true, who would blame her? Even if one ignores the number of fairly sinister stories told about Scientology, some of its precepts reflect the sort of ideas that put it squarely in the lunatic fringe. Founded half a century ago by pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology's roots lie in a mixture of junkyard sci-fi and bargain-basement psychoanalysis. Not too bargain basement, mind you. Unlike most faiths, Scientology charges admission. To progress ever closer to enlightenment, devotees pay to go through a series of sessions that are part confessional, part therapy. These encounters are designed to reveal (and remove) past traumas called ''engrams'' (don't ask) and are helped along by the use of an electro-psychometer (''E-Meter'' to the cognoscenti), a specially designed instrument which can supposedly locate areas of spiritual distress or travail.
(...)

It is difficult not to laugh. Scientology, after all, is an easy target - with its oddball technology, goofy jargon, and, reportedly, a secret creation myth that revolves around the activities of the wicked intergalactic ruler, Xenu.

Now, many religions include a bizarre legend or two, and we probably should not worry too much about the Xenu saga.
(...)

Nevertheless, if there really is such a tale, it is yet another reminder that the intellectual origins of this creed appear to be, well, a little flaky.

Scientologists, of course, should be free to believe whatever they want, but it does not say a lot for the state of this nation's critical faculties that their philosophy has won as much acceptance as it has. Given some of Hubbard's teachings, you would expect his followers to be a little embarrassed, a little low key, content, perhaps, to twiddle their E-meters in some tumble-down Appalachian shack.

But the reverse is true. Scientology is rich, increasingly prominent, and unashamedly proselytizing.
(...)

In part, this success reflects the group's indubitable organizational skills, and its willingness to defend itself through aggressive litigation. It is also the case, however, that the growth of Scientology, and many other such philosophies, is an almost inevitable byproduct of a society that, over the years, has lost the art of religious argument, reasoning, and debate - and the ability or the inclination to resist the blandishments of our zanier sects.

Ask most Americans, and they will tell you about their respect for the spiritual, but it is a sloppy and uninformed devotion, a pastiche piety with no intellectual force behind it, more Hallmark than holy, the perfect background for a new cult recruit. Ironically, Nicole Kidman herself provided an example of this mindset in a 1998 interview with Newsweek. Asked about her religious beliefs, the actress replied, ''there is a little Buddhism, a little Scientology. I was raised Catholic, and a big part of me is still a Catholic girl.''

Hand in hand with such an attitude is an unwillingness to debate the religious beliefs of others. Such debate is now believed to be insensitive at best, bigoted and hateful at worst. These days everyone is meant to be a little bit Buddhist, Catholic, Scientologist , whatever. A sappy ecumenicism is now America's civic religion, and it appears to include just about everyone (other, interestingly, than atheists and agnostics). We are taught that such supposedly inclusive tolerance is the hallmark of a tolerant society, when, in fact, it is precisely the opposite. True religious tolerance is the acceptance of the right of others to follow a different creed. In our ersatz, contemporary version, however, it is denied that there are any different creeds. Instead, we are encouraged to think that all religions are basically the same, just different routes to the same transcendental Truth.

In the name of ''diversity,'' we try to erase difference.
(...)

This is a mistake. Old-style rigorous religious debate was bruising, tough, and frequently impolite, but it served a function. Homo Sapiens is a credulous creature, ready to believe just about anything, but, fortunately, he has an innate love of argument. Controversy sharpened our great faiths and pushed them, however painfully, towards some form of intellectual coherence. More than that, it acted as a filter for the worst of the nonsense that people would otherwise be tempted to accept. Now that filter has disappeared. The more established religions are gutted, sunk into PC blandness, or, ironically, introspective fundamentalism. In their intellectual retreat they have left behind a spiritual landscape in which anything goes.

The Scientologists are not the only ones to have seized this opportunity. We are becoming a nation of nitwit necromancers, idiot Astrologers, and suburban shamans. Others prefer to fool around with crystals, commune with UFOs, or worship the Earth.

And that is their right, but we should not be afraid to say that it is also their mistake. Somehow I suspect that, these days, Nicole Kidman might just agree.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


***** Start Battle Creek Enquirer Special Report

6. [Battle Creek Enquirer] Editors Note
Battle Creek Enquirer, Feb. 25, 2001
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In contrast with many religious organizations, the Church of Scientology is young and has a presence in relatively few cities. Later this year, though, Battle Creek is expected to become home to one of the two Scientology churches in Michigan. In this special report, the Battle Creek Enquirer examines Scientology's origins, its belief systems and workings, its plans for Battle Creek and the criticisms leveled against it.
[...series following...]


» Part 2