JREF Swift Blog

Galactic Overlord Xenu Strikes Scientology?

Hey,the news isn’t all bad. The Australian government may be about to make a decision that could bankrupt the Church of Scientology [CoS] in that country – and perhaps further. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of thieves! An Australian federal senator, Adelaide's Nick Xenophon, has made public the church's abuse of their own staff; they’re paid some A$50 a week [US$53] and have been receiving that salary for some 30 years now. The legal minimum wage there is A$590/week [US$630]… One way the church gets around this minor problem is by pretending that the staff consists of volunteers. Sure.

You see, the CoS is registered there as a South Australian charity, and thus pays no taxes. They’ve researched the tax picture all over the world and discovered that by using an Australian address for the Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc. [COSRECI] – which they did by simply choosing a suburban house – the church can have its UK and some Europe and Canadian facilities claim charity status through the COSRECI umbrella corporation, based in Adelaide. Their tax exempt status is currently under examination, and the legal definition of "charities" is also being looked into.

But all that is far less critical for the CoS than another matter. They could be required to pay millions of dollars in back pay – as well as taxes on that pay – and would have to raise every workers minimum wage into the future. Such a decision would immediately bankrupt the church there, though they could of course draw from their huge American reserves to pay for it.

Much of the CoS funds are spent on international management, and they've also been buying real estate, so they can't use that money to pay their staff. If the minimum-wage situation is applied in Australia, the next place that will follow is Europe, and perhaps, just perhaps, we here in the USA will finally catch up with the rest of the world, if we can overcome our fear of burdening any religion, no matter how puerile.

Membership in the CoS has been falling, and probably now amounts to about 40,000, internationally, so they’re pleading for parishioners in America to raise money for new facilities. Local Australian authorities still haven't done anything about COSRECI not paying taxes. The UK churches can get around paying taxes – not through their status, but by showing losses and debts each year, so there appear to be no profits on which they can be taxed.

In the U.S.A. and around the world the CoS is looked upon as a joke, of course. Their Holy Writ – and by that I mean anything that L. Ron Hubbard wrote – claims that a galactic overlord named Xenu imprisoned millions of people from all over the Milky Way in volcanoes and then had them erupt, thus freeing those souls to infect our species here on Earth. Yes, this has to be a comic-book scenario, but that’s what Scientologists actually believe! And Xenu itself – herself?, himself? – is a one-eyed gray blob of glossy sludge that looks like a spilled Slurpy made from cigarette ashes and Vaseline, and smells like a boiled vulture. (Hey, if L. Ron can make it up, so can I!)

Yes, things are looking up…!

James Randi.