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Japan may seek to dissolve Moonies church in wake of Shinzo Abe killing (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

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[–] Bye@lemmy.world 133 points 1 year ago (3 children)

USA should have done this to Scientology after they infiltrated the CIA or whatever it was.

At some point you have to be able to do so, despite religious protections. Otherwise “we are a religion” is a “get out of jail” card.

[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It was various offices but mainly the IRS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

Operation Snow White was a criminal conspiracy by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. This project included a series of infiltrations into and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of Scientology, carried out by Church members in more than 30 countries.

[–] MrFlamey@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was watching a video by right to repair advocate Louis Rossman yesterday and he was basically saying that he's fine to go after big companies and the government to try and get right to repair passed, but he doesn't want to fuck with Scientology because they appear to be psychos that will harass the shit out of him and probably wreck his life if he gets in their way. Apparently they are anti-right to repair because they have some fake ass thetan reading machines they sell for $5000.

Anyway, he mentions some of the shit they did in his video, and while I'm not sure if it's a fact or not, he does mention that they were going after the IRS for years to try and get out of paying taxes after laws changed and they lost their tax-exempt status. After a huge amount of harassment and other crime against the IRS over 37 years, they eventually got their taxes reduced from something like a billion+ dollars to $12.5 million... How did they not just end up in jail?

[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

It is fact:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/irs.html

On 1 October 1993, the Church of Scientology obtained tax exemption from the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This ended 26 years of what the Church itself has described as a "war" against the IRS, in which it used extraordinary and in many cases illegal tactics - bugging of government offices, theft of mountains of classified files, private detectives pursuing senior government officials, thousands of lawsuits, full-page attack adverts in US daily newspapers, and so on.

So perhaps it is not such a great surprise that the settlement itself came about in some very unusual circumstances, raising questions about the actions of both the Church of Scientology and the IRS. Neither party has been willing to provide answers, with the IRS refusing to disclose the terms of the exemption agreement in defiance of a court order and US taxation law. But with the leak in December 1997 of the secret agreement, the relationship between Scientology and the IRS is under greater scrutiny now than ever before.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

imo if the religion itself violates the separation of church and state by meddling in affairs of the state, then in the name of separation of church and state they MUST react somehow, separation doesn't just go one way. This especially counts the evangelicals who dabble in politics.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Lol they don’t dabble. They cleverly wield the corrupt political game to ensure they profit off the poor idiots who are members of the “church” and that money flows through politics, stopping in pocket after pocket until it finally reaches the bank, tax free.