Money
If someone's pay check depends upon their fighting Scientology -
perhaps upon their picketing and producing screeds of attacks on a daily basis -
then they aren't going to be easy to convince that Scientology ain't that bad.
************
From: "Brent Stone" <bstone@kudonet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000
Tory: >>> Also, OSA, will you Pulllleeeeeeeese find a new enemy line about this? The Minton Money deal is such an overrun. (IN lay man's terms: no one gives a shit about how much Bob Minton does or does not spend. It is HIS money, and thus he has a right to spend it as he sees fit....and they are beating this to death).
Freddie T: >>Yes, it ~is~ a shame.
>>And particularly when the critics are so good about not dragging up the same old stories year
after year.
BrentStone: > If there is a moral, legal or ethical problem with Bob spending his money as he sees
fit, perhaps you could point it out to us.
Sure.
It is only one aspect of the whole.
But it is an interesting factor that I take into account when assessing
the situation.
Why?
Well, you might like to look at the following interesting document which thoroughly
goes over one aspect:
http://www.bigotwatch.net/CounterClaim1.html
(link now broken)
Also Bob claimed that he paid an activist over a million dollars. We
know that he bought other activists a house, and pays the salaries of a
group more.
The possibility that they might get similar presents might make ~some~
people less keen on appreciating the validity of the arguments made by
Scientologists.
BS>After you do that, and it is agreed to be such a problem, it would be reasonably appropriate
to continue bringing it up as long as the issue goes uncorrected.
Great. I'll do that, although I don't think that I'll necessarily hold
my breath waiting for your approval Brent.
; )
********
Jonas> If you have any substantial evidence (invoice, sworn testimony, IRS
report), please post it. If all you can do is re-chew a.r.s. banter, you're
waisting bandwidth.
Oh I'm so sorry.
I certainly wouldn't want to waste any bandwidth around here.
I'll stop posting to ars now. You won't see me again.
Once again my apologies.
Goodbye everyone. Thank you for having me. It was a lovely party.
On the other hand . . .
I do have the following pertinent information. Perhaps you'd
rather I continued contributing to ars so that I can keep posting such
pieces.
Thinking. . .
Yes, good idea. Thanks for helping me clarify that Jonas.
**********
From: "Gerry Armstrong" <armstrong@dowco.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2000
Lame Duck > >>You are missing (or maybe avoiding) the point. These allegations against Bob and LMT are pretty serious. If true
it means that LMT is paying people to forward a hate-campaign,
GA> Assumes a fact not in evidence.
Really?
Well let's just take a look at ~some~ of what has been collected so far.
And this is just the stuff I could find with a quick web search.
But first we'll bring on a certain Karl Kludge who takes a
similar line to Gerry.
From: "Karl Kluge" <kckluge@yarf.eecs.umich.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2000
Bremenium>> the allegation is he's
paying people to promote a hate campaign. He is spending his money to foster hatred and intolerance.
KK > Allegations are a dime a dozen. No one gives a rat's ass about your unsubstantiated
allegations.
B>> He's paying people to commit hate-crimes.
KK> Which people? What specific "hate-crimes"?
OK. Ready guys?
Off we go then!
1) In 1999 Bob paid $80,000 for critical essays.
Or, as it says on the following web site:
"Minton paid $80,000.00 to a group of
hate-mongers to write hate essays. This is comparable to racist
academics producing research papers that "prove" that
African-Americans
are inferior as a justification for discriminating against them. "
http://www.parishioners.org/Intolerance/minton.html (this
link is now broken)
2) "It is not known how many hundreds of thousands of
dollars have been
poured into FACTNet by Bob Minton, but it was certainly Minton's money
that bought Jesse Prince with a new car and thousands in cash in
exchange for filing declarations in the FACTNet case."
http://www.parishioners.org/FreedomAlert/cultinfo/index.html (this
link is now broken)
3) " For example, he financed a certain Arnaldo Lerma,
who was legally
prohibited in April 1997 by an American district court from violating
the copyrights of the Scientology Church. Minton gave Lerma $60,000
AFTER he had lost in court. Acceptance would suggest that Lerma, with
this money, would be in the position to [illegible] his illegal
violations and to [illegible] the court judgement.
"Minton also gave copyright violator Grady Ward over $40,000. His
violations against copyright were so serious that a federal court set a
punitive settlement of $3 million. Ward is under a legally valid
restraining order and is making monthly payments to the Church for the
rest of his life. (enclosure 9). He is now working for Minton, for which
he receives a sum of $2,500 per month.
"Minton also transferred $750,000 to an association by the name of
FACTNet, which was taken to court for copyright violations of
Scientology materials. Only when FACTNet could no longer escape
conviction and confronted by heavy sanctions by the court did the
accused agree to cease further violations of the Church's copyrights and
to pay a million dollars in damages should there be a repeat occurrence."
http://strongsignals.com/minton/mingermanltr.txt (this
link is now broken)
4) "In March 1996 Minton offered a $360,000 reward on
the Internet for
anyone who would defect from Scientology with enough information to
cause the organization to lose its federal tax exemption. He got no
takers."
http://strongsignals.com/minton/minton_cos_feud.htm (this
link is now broken)
5) And my favorite and yours:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Minton" <bobminton@lisatrust.net>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 4:18 AM
Subject: Re: Gregg Hagglund - LIAR
Dorsai: > Gregg claimed he was a millionaire. He was not, nor has he ever been a millionaire.
Bob Minton: snip dorsai's drivel
BM: You are the liar dorsai because I have personally given Gregg more than a million. You dorsai, who have no money, are not in a position to say who has or had what, except that OSA gives you your daily marching orders.
BM: You pathetic scum.
It's interesting that the ~stated~ figures are so wildly
out of
proportion. Gregg in Canada got more than $1million from Bob (according to them
both); Arnie got $60,000 a few years back; Ursula of the German
government won't say how much she got; Vaughn and Stacy got a fair-sized
house; Grady gets 2.5k a month; Rob Clarke, for all his hard work
attacking my religion, says he only got one measly payment of $1000.
It's wild. The figures have come way down in recent years and the
recipients of the largesse seem to be far more cautious about what they
admit to.
One other key figure is also way out of proportion - the $6billion that
was mislaid somehow in Nigeria.
One thing I noticed in the Sunday Express article on the subject was how
much the speech patterns of Bob's friends in London sound like something out of
the X-Files:
'When the Sunday Express contacted Patricia Cousins about
the
allegations she replied, "Do you know who I am? I am going to report
this to someone else." She declined to comment further. However a man
calling himself Luther Silver returned our call from Discount Bank And
Trust and said: "We want to know what documents you have. You are on
very dangerous ground." '
http://www.bigotwatch.net/publicrecorddocuments.html (this
link is now broken)
Patricia Cousins: 'Do you know who I am?'
Patricia Cousins: 'I am going to report this to someone else.' (Actually
that sentence isn't quite as funny.)
'Luther Silver': 'We want to know what documents you have. You are on very
dangerous ground.'
Amazing.
I wonder how Patricia and 'Luther Silver' feel about Bob's new hobby.
Would you be interested in my idle musings on how Bob got started on his
peculiar crusade?
While I was finishing up the dictation for another letter to my gorgeous amanuenses during our bath time, I had a flash of insight about what ~might~ have happened:
A few years ago, Bob, in his ruthless-master-of-the-universe-investment
banker mode was probably very happy indeed to make out like gangbusters
as he implemented his scheme to make a fortune by buying back the Nigerian
national debt.
Very, very happy indeed.
Game over.
Bob suddenly had more money than he could possibly eat, and no need to
ever work again.
End of story.
Except for one small, insignificant thing...
As he lay back in his sumptuous first-class aircraft seat returning in style
to the
U.S.; and as he realized just how fortunate he had been, it's possible that whilst ruthless-master-of-the-universe-Bob knew that he
had behaved impeccably (following the code of a modern financial
warrior); human-Bob, the cute-little-boy-Bob that Mrs Minton used to tell
bedtime stories to, was starting to have the first niggling pangs of
conscience.
Had he helped exacerbate the miserable living conditions of hundreds
of thousands of Nigerians? How might this affect his future peace of mind? How
would he sleep? Had he merely failed to help improve their financial situation? Or, by profiting from the corruption/naivety of
their bankers/leaders had he made things for the Nigerian people far, far ~worse~?
If that ~was~ what he was thinking, then it
becomes a little easier to
understand his curious passion for a fight against an enemy which he
patently fails to understand.
Why does Bob hate his chimera, his idea of what the C of S is, so ~very~ much?
I suspect that the worse the Church can be believed to be (and it is in many
people's financial interest to keep him convinced that it is remarkably bad
indeed),
then the better Bob can believe ~himself~ to be.
I could easily be wrong. Sorry if I am Bob; it's just an interesting idea.
The alternative (perhaps supplementary) theories are as follows:
1. The 'Dane Geld' Theory - this holds that by causing enough of a commotion Bob is hoping to persuade the church to pay him to go away (something the Danish Vikings once did in England). Giving gold to unpleasant Danes to encourage them to go home is tempting in the short term but, like paying for the return of kidnap victims, is a very bad idea when one looks at the long-term consequences.
2. The Investment Theory - this holds that Bob is hoping to sponsor people to sue the church for lots of money (of which he will then take a big cut) . It's somewhat born out by the fact that the the LMT - the Linda McPherson ~Trust~ is actually registered as a ~for profit~ enterprise.
3. The 'Bob is right' theory - which
personally of course I don't fully subscribe to.
However, philosophically there are no absolute rights or wrongs, so let's see if if we can work out where Bob might have been right.
a. There are legitimate areas of concern with regard to the church and these were not really faced for various reasons. The hugely invigorated critical scene that was made possible with global communication on the internet has brought these areas into public view.
Claire has said that she thinks that there is a kind of reformation in progress within the church, and I believe that a good deal of tweaking has already taken place.
b. There is plenty of information available to justify the position that the church is totally wicked (or on the other side that the church is totally wonderful and its enemies are totally wicked). If someone thinks the church/Scientology is quite simply ~bad~ (a Roger Gonnet style extremist view) - then it becomes 'legitimate' to try and make some money by attacking it. Historically unpopular and beleaguered religions have often been faced with such 'well justified' (but actually evil) motivations.
And once started on such a path, the justifications make it and more difficult for the attacker to see any good aspects in his or her enemy - and any bad aspects in his or her ~own~ conduct.
This can often be seen in normal life. For more information with regards to this situation take a look at my open letter to Frederic Rice.
As always comments and corrections would be welcome.
Freddie T
'Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your
tomorrow.'
L. Ron Hubbard, 1954, The Code of Honor.
http://www.scientology.org/wis/wiseng/33/33-hon.htm
