Dialogue Ireland in its informative education programme in no way recommends or endorses any persons, or organizations on these links pages. We present them only as sources of information for researchers to consider about group-related concerns or questions.
Tom Lyons is the Chief Executive of The Currency. Named Business Journalist of the Year on three occasions, he won plaudits and respect for his unflinching coverage of Ireland’s boom, bust and recovery. He is an experienced broadcaster and the co-author of two books
A lot of journalism involves the threat of defamation and where a story is the law is soon behind.
He has worked with a number of newspapers which is a sign of the shrinking market for paper versions of news. How do you get people online when for some of us we need a break for a bit of paper once a week?
Wishing him well in this new venture.
Here is a selection of his articles which have included death threats. The currency is trying to get at the truth. When dealing with high pressure groups that exercise high levels of influence and control it is difficult to keep sane under the strain.
The currency is about addressing how the powerful try to stop you getting to the truth.
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In our work we often a threatened with legal attacks and in one case involving Tony Quinn we got a very pleasant surprise when Justice Hogan looked at this issue of our rights to assist the victims of cultism.
Paul Clarke was surprised to see the Church of Scientology giving out stress tests at the Tinahely show. He confronted them. It turns out they have been attending shows all over the country. Listeners told us of their encounters.
He saw that they had parked a Scientlogy van behind their stand but when asked had they any connection to Scientology they denied it.Paul could not remember the name of the group he had confronted. I knew as I had received a call from the public telling me about their presence the day of the show.
It was of course Dianetics. Here is a Conference they are holding this weekend.
Diana Stahl, from the Church of Scientology, has released a statement regarding the art competition.
‘To all critics of this initiative, self proclaimed experts and general complainers I have one question: what did you do about the drug problem?’
What I did was to make people aware that getting involved with Scientology is like getting hooked on drugs. Because they use these events to not educate the public about drugs but to recruit people to Scientology.
This Dianetics seminar is by a group who believe psychiatry is a Nazi discipline and who want you to hand over your mind to them. They also do not believe in the use of psychiatric drugs. Here the goal is to clear the planet and that means you. Clearing means sending millions of dollars over to Ireland to inflitrate every aspect of Irish life. One can only assume that they think this island is ripe for picking. Don’t be scared, no warnings just check this crew out before you sign up. The link below gives significant arguments to show what their game plan is. Continue reading →
Infiltration of Irish society. The purpose of these cleanups is to penetrate our society and local government. Good PR. I would suggest to DCC that they connect the Scientologists to local cleanup initiatives in their area. Their nearest project is the Dodder river near the Firhouse Scientology Community Centre. https://www.irishexaminer.com/…/clean-up-of-dodder-rubbish-…
What you have is international volunteers being diverted from their unpaid Scientology work to clean up litter as a or stunt.
Volunteers from A Way to Happiness carry out clean up work in the Guild Street area of Dublin’s north inner city. Photograph: Dublin City Council
The Church of Scientology has carried out more than 70 community clean-ups at various locations around Dublin over the past year in co-ordination with local councils.
Dublin City Council’s Central Area Committee revealed recently that a community group called A Way to Happiness contacted it seeking to carry out a clean-up in the Guild Street area of the north inner city, including around Sheriff Street Bridge, on March 2nd. The area is one of the most deprived parts of the capital.
“They cut back heavy buddleia and cleared hard-to-reach areas. Their efforts to improve the bridge and its environs have enhanced the area greatly,” the council said in a public domain report.
However, the action has been condemned by the anti-cult group, Dialogue Ireland, who warned that public clean-ups are a common tactic used by cult-like organisations to normalise their presence in local communities
Similar tactics were employed in Ireland in the past by the Unification Church, commonly known as The Moonies, said the organisation’s Mike Garde.
“Scientology have been doing this for a while. They’re trying to build bridges into the community so they can become identified with positivity.”
He compared it to Scientology’s recent anti-drug campaigns and the efforts of its affiliated association Narconon to set up a controversial drug treatment centre in a Co Meath village.
“Clean-ups like this can almost present them in a favourable light amongst county council officials,” Mr Garde added.
Science fiction
The Way to Happiness is the title of a 1980 pamphlet by science fiction author and Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard, which lists 21 moral commandments. Hubbard founded the church in 1953. The US and Spain are among the countries that recognise it as a religion, while other governments have declared it a cult.
In 2016 the Church of Scientology launched a “National Affairs Office” on Merrion Square in Dublin. In October 2017 it opened its European base at a large church and community centre in Firhouse, Dublin.
Responding to queries from The Irish Times, Dublin City Council said its Central Area Office “was first contacted in 2017 by A Way to Happiness. They informed us that they were Scientologists and that they were interested in carrying out a clean-up of the areas around the lifting bridge over the Royal Canal on Sheriff Street Upper.
“The usual assistance, as with other groups or community clean ups, was offered to them and hence were supplied with gloves, litter pickers, bags. When the clean-up was completed. Dublin City Council collected and removed all the bags.”
Encourages
Asked whether any other religious groups seek permission to carry out clean-ups, the council said “it encourages all community, residential, business and environmental groups to get involved in community clean-ups”.
The Church of Scientology said too many people leave the job of cleaning community areas to the council.
“The Church of Scientology has always encouraged people, no matter whether they are members or not, to take care of their environment,” a spokeswoman said. “Our volunteers have done more than 70 clean-ups at different locations around Dublin over the last year in co-ordination with the respective councils.”
She added that The Way to Happiness encourages people to safeguard and improve their environment and is used by groups and individuals around the world to “bring about moral values in a fun and cool manner”.
Anders Blichfeldt was a co-worker at the Dialog Centret from the end of the seventies. He had an amazing gift to have a camera always available so we have an interesting record of a developing movement and network which involved people all over ther world and especially the emerging Dialog Center International, (DCI.)
I am going to make a few comments about this documentary. Why is the documentary not more dialogical? The reason is simple when you make a documentary with Scientology it is a monologue. They view everyone as enemies and I know what this is like as on October 31, I brought a group of friends for lunch to their restaurant and Diane Stahl who features a lot in the statements given by the Scientology Organisation S.O. in the programme came up after we were about to take their tour and mentioned my name and then said you were telling lies about our church and asked us all to leave. It was an amazing experience for my friends who were very open to hearing the S.O. side of things. Most of us see the Scientology buildings from across a street and at a distance as they are not inviting places. I felt the use of aerial photography gave you a sense like being in an attack helicopter of the scope and scale of the Scientology project here in Ireland. It is massive overkill and to understand it you have to get inside the head of David Miscavige. Here it is about using the tax money to purchase trophy properties. It was Victory Church before the S.O. purchased it. It went bankrupt and the Scientologists bought it and are equally trying to use it to recruit.
There was no one in the building, and it is just a white elephant. It will be used to help the local community but in reality, it is just a total waste of space. There are no members as the programme showed. I had a small segment showing me commenting on Tom Cruise with Eamon Gilmore at Iveagh House where he was issued with a Certificate of Irish Heritage. My view is that Tom Cruise is a good friend of David Miscavige got him to buy into the idea that he was an Irish tourist Ambassador and the S.O. decided to place all their eggs in our basket. L.R Hubbard had always wanted to set up Scientology State. They decided to divert a lot of cash to try out that idea here. I believe this more than the current policy of opening Ideal Orgs all over the world. The location of so many Sea Org personnel here in Ireland suggests something different.
The results may not be very different namely empty buildings. The reason they can’t meet the public is there is no one in the buildings to engage with. They are declining numerically as they are growing financially due to their obtaining IRS status and as a result having a lot of cash. Their HQ is not a centre for dialogue as they are just too programmed to do this. They will not meet the media and try to stem the tide of negative views with PR consultants.
Pete Griffith was very clear and I felt very persuasive in his presentation. The programme also outlined the very complex issue of the common assault on Zabrina Collins or should I say, Shortt?
Showing how Pete’s defamation case against her was taken off course. His apology was clear and distancing himself from that episode clears the decks for him to engage with Scientologists. It also shows humility and a willingness to show vulnerability. Unfortunately, the S.O seem unable to engage beyond attack as my expulsion from their restaurant showed.
Scientology has tried to make it big in Ireland before, but now it’s back with a multi-million euro investment in three new facilities – one around the corner from Government Buildings in Dublin’s Merrion Square, another in the suburb of Firhouse, and a third, through its affiliated Narconon group, in Ballivor, County Meath.
It’s an expensive return, but it’s not been a popular one, and indeed, it’s been marked by controversy.
What is it about Scientology? After all, it is tiny. Though it claims a membership of millions worldwide, the available evidence suggests tens of thousands. Here in Ireland, in the last census, just 87 people said they were Scientologists. The comparator often used is, ‘Well, how many people claim to be Jedi knights?’, and in Ireland’s census, there were 2,000.
Yet, its tiny membership has not deterred Scientology. It has said its investment has been funded by donors abroad. Its return is a big effort – aside from the new facilities, its spend is on outreach, with free events, Google and mobile ads, Promoted Tweets, mailshots, booklets, and leaflets through your door – all material printed at its own distribution works in Los Angeles.
Why Ireland? Well, contrary to reports, we’re nothing special. Since the start of last year, Scientology has opened over a dozen new buildings worldwide.
They follow a formula it keeps repeating: its leader, David Miscavige and committed members fly into the openings, which are staged events. Videos of those launches are then shown at annual internal gala events, where donor members are dazzled with special Scientology statistics promoting its claim of rapid expansion. Scientology calls additions like Firhouse, ‘Ideal Organisations’, and it says that Mr. Miscavige “personally supervises the selection of each new Ideal Org”.
The weekend after its Firhouse centre opened in October 2017, Scientology launched another building in Birmingham, and the weekend after that, in Amsterdam: three weekends in a row – all staged openings, off-limits to the general public.
The organisation already has a Brussels office and its European headquarters is in Copenhagen.
Journalist Tony Ortega, editor of the ‘The Underground Bunker’, has reported on Scientology for over two decades. He points out: “The new Ideal Org in Dublin is not a new European centre or headquarters, it has nothing to do with Brexit and it has nothing to do with taxes. The Church of Scientology is already tax exempt in the United States, it pays no taxes; it is not looking for new tax shelters.”
But its office in Merrion Square, opened in 2016, is one of only a few ‘National Affairs’ offices it has. “These are moves that reflect what David Miscavige has done in the United States”, Mr. Ortega says. “Several years ago, Miscavige refurbished a building in Washington DC for a new ‘national affairs office’. It was a new sort of idea for Scientology – they then extended that to Ireland. And why Merrion Square? Well, because it means a lot to Scientologists, that location because L Ron Hubbard himself had worked out of Merrion Square back in the 1950s.”
It was at the end of 1955, and Scientology’s creator, L Ron Hubbard was already a controversial figure. He had been refused a visa renewal to the UK, where he had a base, and he had temporarily moved to Ireland to what he called “the swankiest address in Dublin”, Merrion Square.
On 17 April 1956, while he was still based there, the Director of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, noted that in divorce proceedings, Hubbard’s second wife, Sara Northrup, had described him as “hopelessly insane”. “His recent letters have been unanswered inasmuch as he is considered obviously a mental case”, Mr. Hoover wrote.
At the time, (20 April 1956) L Ron Hubbard was writing to his followers that his Merrion Square office was a “British fallback point in the event of an atomic attack”.
His stay was short-lived: he left within months. His organisation, Scientology, however, set up in Ireland from the 1980s.
Mike Garde of Dialogue Ireland has followed its arrival, decline and return since then. He says that though it is small, its impact can be devastating.
“I’ve been dealing with the families of people from Malin Head to Mizen Head in this country who have been affected by this Scientology organisation”, Mike Garde says, “breakup of marriages, the breakup of families – of one guy, he became addicted completely to alcohol, they tore him apart”.
It is that concern and concerns like it that led to tonight’s Prime Time: ‘Scientology – The Return’.
Rita O’Reilly is the reporter behind several Prime Time and Prime Time Investigates documentaries, amongst them, the highest ever rating Prime Time Investigates – Carry on Regardless, on Irish developers, and a report by Prime Time into the Stardust fire. Her work has helped contribute to political and legislative change. Her first programme, Prime Time Investigates internet child pornography, won TV Documentary of the Year (ESB National Media Awards, 2003). Her reporting on the recent documentary on suicides in the Irish army and anti-malarial drug Lariam won her Journalist of the Year at the Irish Medical Media Awards (RTÉ Investigations Unit, 2013). A former press and court reporter who co-authored an award-winning bestseller on the Catherine Nevin murder trial. She is from Co. Galway.
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Infiltration of Irish society. The purpose of these cleanups is to penetrate our society and local government. Good PR. I would suggest to DCC that they connect the Scientologists to local cleanup initiatives in their area. Their nearest project is the Dodder river near the Firhouse Scientology Community Centre.
The photographic record of the Dialog Centre Aarhus Denmark
Anders Blichfeldt was a co-worker at the Dialog Centret from the end of the seventies. He had an amazing gift to have a camera always available so we have an interesting record of a developing movement and network which involved people all over ther world and especially the emerging Dialog Center International, (DCI.)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dialogcenterimages
The photographer and documentarist Anders Blichfeldt
Dalai Lama and Johannes Aagaard
Hatha Yogi in Rishikesh, India
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