In New South Wales, Australia, members of the local Church of Scientology are being investigated by a Senate group for allegedly shunting unpopular members into labor camps:

NSW police are now looking into the shocking allegations, which include the use of labour camps known as the Rehabilitation Project Force, for church members who rated poorly on tests using a device known as the electropsychometer, or E-meter. Ex-Scientologist Peta O'Brien told [senator Nick] Xenophon, in a letter tabled in the Senate, that she was forced to spend five hours a day breakingrocks with crow bars to help build a road and carparking area at the church's Dundas base, in Sydney's west. O'Brien alleged Scientologists in the RPF were not allowed to speak until spoken to, were banned from listening to music or driving, and were not given any medical or dental assistance.

Another ex-Scientologist says that pregnant women in Scientology were pressured to have abortions, sometimes to the pont of being locked up if they refused. Another former member of the church says both his young daughters died under suspicious circumstances:

Paul David Schofield claims in his letter tabled in parliament his toddler daughter Lauren died while being babysat in the Sydney church, when she was "allowed to wander the stairs by herself and fell". Church officials not only discouraged him and his wife from seeking compensation, he alleges, but encouraged him to request that no inquest be held. Schofield wrote that his second daughter, Kirsty, died after ingesting potassium chloride kept at his house. "I covered up that this substance was widely used in both the Sydney church's `purification' programs and a similar program at the church's drug rehab organisation," he wrote. "I perjured myself . . . I did not tell the whole truth either to police or the court (to my shame) but omitted details which would have `embarrassed' the church. I knew if I didn't do this I would be heavily penalised by the church for getting it into trouble." Schofield wrote that most Scientologists did not trust non-believers - referred to as wogs - and thought that "wog justice just made people worse".

The Church has responded that the children's deaths were investigated by police at the time. They say their freedom of religion is being threatened.

Senator Xenophon replied:

Religious freedom did not mean the Catholic or Anglican churches were not held accountable for crimes and abuses committed by their priests, nuns and officials, albeit belatedly. In Australia there are not limits on what you can believe but there are limits on how you can behave. It's called the law, and no one is above it.

via The Australian

Image via Steve Garfield.

Writes member "humphrey" over at WhyWeProtest:

If Scientology were pretty much exactly the same but centered around Philip K Dick, my god — I'd want in, for his secret scriptures! The lectures on cosmogony! The resonant gnostic insights that made PKD's work so mythic!

The discussion devolves into some weird irrelevant stories about strange experiences with science-fiction authors and their cult followings. But there's also a nice thread where people ask which other SF authors would have been good choices to start a religion. The main recommendations: Isaac Asimov (his religion would have had a more thought-out cosmology) and Frederik Pohl.

But I bet we can come up with some other good ones — which classic (or recent) SF authors would you prefer to see as religious founders, rather than Hubbard? [Why We Protest]

The unlikely charge came from an email we received yesterday:

Just wanted to point out that the new game Dead Space has some elements that weren't advertised. Like: the plot is about space-scientologists that manage to find an alien and convince themselves that it's the god they made up.

And then you have to FIGHT the aliens because the space scientoligists wouldn't stop screwing around with them, and got it all into a scary mess.

I dislike the church of scientology, Dead Space is a good game, and it's a fun plot I haven't seen anyone mentioning on any gaming or sci fi sites.

As you might expect, this surprised us; we'd seen a lot of the pre-production of the game, as well as the game itself, and we hadn't seen any scientologists in there. So, we asked EA themselves about this take on it, and here's their official response:

Dead Space is a work of science fiction. Any coincidence to real-world people, organizations, or events is unintended.

Short and to the point... And enough to make us wonder exactly what kind of anti-Scientologist programming our original emailer has undergone to see the hand of L. Ron Hubbard where it wasn't in the first place.

In this scene, social climber Travolta welcomes a higher up from the "Home Office," whom he hopes is about to transfer him to a nicer post. I just love the horrible acting here from actors who know better, plus the incredibly cheese effects and costumes. Of course, Travolta is about to find out that he's been assigned to Earth permanently for wronging a Senator's daughter. And the humans are about to revolt. The rest of the movie is filled with zany alien antics ala Home Alone, with the humans in the Macaulay Culkin role and the aliens as the bumbling thieves. Great flick to watch with the fast-forward button close at hand and your irony-colored glasses on. [Battlefield Earth via IMDB]

Now you can read about Xenu's evil plan and his nefarious dealings with psychiatrists in this excerpt from the story's climax, below. Watch out for nuclear lava!

Apparently, Xenu was fond of dark suits. He also had dark hair and liked classical music, as well as cold drinks. He's a pretty bitter guy, and when he rounded up the people he would later bring to Earth and blow up with atomics placed inside volcanoes, he picked psychiatrists to help him weed out these undesirables. Those undesirables included "motion picture producers," as well as "writers" and "blacks." Also, "salesmen." Interesting mix.

Other interesting things of note: apparently the aliens from millions of years ago who hung out with Xenu used "felt tip pens." Makes sense. Felt-tips are pretty advanced technology. Want to know more? Check out the whole story. It's full of awesome adjectives, moody generals, and tragic esplosions. Of course, if you need the full Scientology back story, check out our handy chart.

"Revolt in the Stars" [PDF via Wikileaks — or, if you can't get that one, we are hosting our own PDF]

A few notes for the uninitiated. According to Scientology, "Thetans" are aliens whose spirits live within humans today. So Thetans are kind of like proto-humans. Also, within the Scientology time frame, the biggest incidents usually involve the Thetans being traumatized with "implants" or "brainwashing" from other aliens. So you'll see a lot of references to various brainwashing incidents here, including the invention of the Christianity Implant, which Hubbard believed was a very corrosive form of mind-control. Illustration by Stephanie Fox.

Sources on Scientology cosmology: Wikipedia, Operation Clambake.

According to the blog, Scientologists are totally sensible:

The Bizarro World (also known as Htrae - earth spelled backwards) is a fictional planet in the DC comics universe. Introduced in the early 1960s, Htrae is a cube-shaped planet, home to Bizarro and his companions, all of whom were initially Bizarro versions of Superman, Lois Lane and their children. Later, other Bizarros were created to add to the population including Bizarro Flash, "the Yellow Lantern", Bizarro-Kltpzyxm and Batzarro, the World's Worst Detective. Everyone views the Bizarro people as strange and weird ... except THEM!

In the Bizarro world of "Htrae," society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!". In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: "Guaranteed to lose money for you". Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro #1 to investigate a crime, "Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together". This is intended and taken as a great compliment. And now, after just a few paragraphs of explanation, you understand precisely what Scientology is all about.

The authors of the above site are unaware of any instance in which the robot L-Ron has overtly stated that he is a Scientologist. This classification is based primarily on his name.

I just KNEW this Scientology nonsense sounded familiar [PsuedoScientology]

• Alien: Blowing up the Nostromo in order to kill one single Alien was one of the biggest (and best) sacrifices in movie history, and the resulting explosion as Ripley flees in the shuttle still stands alone as a perfect example of why you don't need 40 billion rendered polygons showing you just how the ship would look as it broke up into its component atoms. (You can see video of it above.) Plus, you have the audible countdown over the ship's PA system literally beating a ticking clock against Sigourney's ass every step of the way. It worked so good that they decided to repeat it in Aliens.
• Battlestar Galactica — "Exodus Part 2": Lee Adama's emotional outbursts might not win him another command anytime soon, because when he took over as the helmer of the Pegasus he got complacent and fat. However, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his superior ship (with its fighter-building ability) in order to save the Galactica, his pop, and everyone on the planet below. This still stands as one of the most powerful moments in the show. Just when you think everything is hopeless, the camera pulls extremely far back, and... boom. Pegasus to the short-lived rescue.

  
  

• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Captains of the Enterprise sure have been careless with their ships. What are they on, Enterprise-Q by now? However, the first time the Enterprise was sacrificed was probably the best. Faced with insurmountable odds, Kirk proves he's best at surviving by activating the ship's self-destruct sequence and letting it take out some nosy Klingons. As he watched it burn to cinders from the planet below, he asks Bones "My god, what have I done." Nothing that Starfleet will court martial him for, apparently.

  

• The Fifth Element: Even cruise ships aren't safe in this film, especially when carrying blue-skinned singing divas with stones buried in their stomachs. The poor luxury spaceliner Fhloston Paradise survives an attempt by Zorg to blow it to smithereens, only to find itself blown up moments later by someone with the sense to use a very short timer and not a wonky thing that you deactivate with a hotel cardkey. Cool escape pods, though.

• Tron: While fleeing Sark and his troops, Tron and his girlriend Yori narrowly escape on a Syd Mead designed Solar Sailer, which rides beams of light around Tronworld. Sark's massive carrier eventually catches up with it and opens up a ship-chomping hole, reducing it to pieces. The best comparison would be if a modern-day aircraft carrier chewed up a catamaran. Sark and the others leave the ship, and he orders it to be derezzed, which is what is really cool about Tron. If you need something, the system can rez it up, and when you're done, you just recycle it.

  

• Lost in Space: Bonehead Joey, er... Major West uses remote control to ignite the engines on the superior Proteus, full of futuretech and possibly life-saving equipment in order to get hull-burning space spiders off the Jupiter 2. However, not content to just let them burn up in the engine's wake, he also makes the ship self-destruct. Even though his ship has had its systems majorly trashed by the malfunctioning Robot, he still blows up the first sweet ride they find. Oh, and it manages to make their own ship crash. Genius.

• The Last Starfighter: When video game expert turned space pilot Alex keys the "Death Blossom" onboard his Gunstar, it turns into a hypersonic laser death machine. However, once it's in the post-orgasmic glow it's rendered dead and useless. They can't even steer out of the way of Xur's approaching ship, which shipicides itself into a moon. However, that bastard Xur got away, never to be caught since the movie didn't get a sequel.

  

• Independence Day: This is more of a shipicide from within, but when Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly up to the alien mothership and plant the virus, they're basically giving the thing a huge case of indigestion, which it doesn't quite recover from. Sadly (or maybe gladly) I couldn't get a clip from this since three of the Blockbuster stores I visited in Los Angeles don't carry ID4. Lame. But as a bonus, enjoy this clip mashing up Star Wars with Independence Day. Randy Quaid uses the Force.

  

• Return of the Jedi: While this one wasn't done on purpose, it's sort of a hilarious "Oops" moment as a rebel A-Wing pilot banzais into the bridge of the Imperial Flagship Super Star Destroyer Executor. This causes the ship to veer out of control and crash right into the the new and improved Death Star. Either that was one extremely lucky hit on the bridge, or whoever built the windshield of that thing needs to be fired. It can withstand the rigors of laser fire and hyperspeed, but can't take the impact of a measly A-Wing? I wonder if that have a transportation safety board that investigates these things.

  

• Vanilla Sky: Cameron Diaz gets an honorable mention in this film for tanking her "ship" (okay, a Buick Skylark) off a bridge in an effort to die in a warped suicide love pact with Tom Cruise. Let this be a note to you love 'em and leave 'em types out there: if you scorn someone, they may seek revenge, fuck up your face, and force you to go into a bizarre cryogenic freeze / lucid dreaming / virtual reality state of existence. Just so you know.

  

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