http://www.sptimes.com/News/062700/TampaBay/Who_ll_save_the_serfs.shtml

Good grief, Ms. Mary Jo Melone! You realize, I hope, that in writing your commentary titled "Who'll save the serfs in the Land of the Lost?" you also painted a series of concentric circles on your back. You must know that the Scientology cult doesn't take too kindly to anyone stating anything even remotely accurate or truthful about the consequences of their activities. Indeed, let me be the first to offer my condolences about the precarious state of your health.

Downtown Clearwater has all of the not-so-amusing classical earmarks of a Nazi theme park what with blank-eyed, robotic, paramilitary cultists unthinkingly following orders marching from place to place at the whim of their unfortunate leaders. No wonder everyone just drives through Clearwater on their way to some where else!

And what was the solution that the City of Clearwater finally came up with to try to revitalize Clearwater's economy? They're trying to get enough non-cultists to move into the area to "drown out" the adverse public image that Clearwater has. Is that remotely sane? It won't be non-cultists that flood into every available room for rent in downtown, it'll be even more unfortunate cultists - every one of them exercising the tax exemption status that the IRS insanely gave these nuts.

Lt. Ray Emmons of the Clearwater Police Department drafted an official summary of the problem many years ago: There are enough felonies and incidents of racketeering to go after the Scientology cult's leaders to halt their criminal abuses once and for all. The problem is, there is not enough money to do so. (See parts of Lt. Emmons' summary which are available on the Internet at http://www.raids.org/hs/cwfedmon.htm.) The expense of punishing the leaders of these nuts is prohibitive so on it goes, the body count slowly increasing (two more in Southern California just this last month, in fact.)

Fredric L. Rice
frice@raids.org