Freewinds Hides Information about Presence of Asbestos [pic]

• MV Freewinds is a cruise ship operated by International Shipping - Miami and owned by San Donato Properties, which is a company connected to the Church of Scientology.

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[APR.28.08 daily herald] WILLEMSTAD ~ During refurbishing and reparatory work, which involved removing the ceiling and paneling on cruise ship Freewinds, blue asbestos was released and ended up in the ventilation system.

Freewinds' captain did not report this when it's own personnel were working on the ship on the Mathey wharf in Otrobanda. The Curacao Drydock Company (CDM), where the ship was taken for reparatory work on the hull, heard from the surveyor that there may be asbestos on the ship.

The captain acknowledged the incident and said that after the incident Freewinds had some investigation done. Keeping the incident quiet became more noticeable when it turned out that the 40-year-old ship contained blue asbestos.

The question is whether or not the blue asbestos dust, which can cause cancer, can be removed from the ship. The CDM has stopped all work on the ship. The ship was sealed and isolated and experts will investigate and measure the presence of asbestos dust in the hull and surrounding areas. Commissioners Eugene Rhuggenaath (Economic Affairs) and Humphrey Davelaar (Public Health) said on Friday.

CDM interim director Frank Esser, deputy head of the Department of Labour Affairs Christiene van der Biezen were accompanied by two inspectors and head of the health Department Tico Ras. Samples taken from the paneling last week by inspectors that were sent to the Netherlands showed that they contained significant amounts of blue asbestos.

After an extraordinary meeting, the Executive Council decided to inform the public in general about the incident to avoid remours and panic. The CDM personnel were also informed via the media because it was impossible to gather all the workers Friday evening to personally give them the information.

[thanks to neogaf.com for archive]

Scientology Cruise Ship Locked Down Due to Blue Asbestos Contamination

[05.18.08] The Scientology cult's 440-foot long luxury cruise ship, MV Freewinds, has been locked down by public health officials on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, after local contractors doing repair work noticed widespread blue asbestos contamination. One Curaçao paper pointed out that Scientology officials had known about the contamination since at least 2001, yet had done nothing.

Blue asbestos is the most dangerous kind of asbestos, and people exposed to it are at much higher risk of mesothelioma (an especially deadly lung cancer). According to reports from several Caribbean newspapers as well as the shipping news journal Lloyd's List, the Freewinds was sealed on April 26. One Curaçao paper, La Prensa Cur, pointed out that Scientology officials had known about the contamination since at least 2001, yet had done nothing.

Until the 1960s, when the Freewinds was built, blue asbestos was often used in shipbuilding (it was not known at the time to be so carcinogenic). Former Scientologist Lawrence Woodcraft, a licensed architect by profession, supervised interior remodeling work on the ship in 1987 when the cult first purchased it. According to a legal affidavit made after Woodcraft left the cult in 2001, Woodcraft had notified Scientology officials immediately about the widespread blue asbestos and the dangers it posed. The response he received was that he should carry on with the work, and leave the asbestos where it was. Since Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard had never mentioned that asbestos was dangerous, they were not going to worry about it. Scientologists believe that disease is caused not by microbes or toxic substances, but by the presence of "suppressive persons" (SPs), or people who disagree with Scientology and its goals.

Scientology: Interview with Lawrence Woodcraft
(40 minutes) Former Scientologist Lawrence Woodcraft, a licensed architect by profession, supervised interior remodeling work on the ship in 1987 when the cult first purchased it.





The ship is used by Scientology for advanced training in "Operating Thetan" levels, for members who have paid fees of between $100,000 and $400,000 (USD), as well as for tax-deductible Caribbean cruises for its members and their families. Curaçao has been the ship's homeport since it was purchased by Scientology, as it is not permitted to dock in any US port.

Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw responded to "Radar Online" about the asbestos reports, in an email published in an article in Radar on May 1. "The Freewinds regularly inspects the air quality on board and always meets or exceeds US standards," said Pouw. She stated that two inspections performed in April "confirmed that the air quality is safe," and claimed that the inspections revealed the Freewinds satisfies standards set by the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U.S. Clean Air Act. Pouw told Radar that "The Freewinds will be completing its refit on schedule." The Church of Scientology-affiliated organization Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) had been planning a cruise aboard the Freewinds scheduled for May 8. As of May 18, the ship was still locked down.

In a May 15 statement to the United Kingdom daily newspaper Metro, a representative for Scientology said that "There is not now and never has been a situation of asbestos exposure on the Freewinds."

"I stand by everything I wrote in my 2001 affidavit," said Lawrence Woodcraft in a statement given to "Wikinews." Woodcraft went on to state: "I would also comment that if the Church of Scientology claims to have removed the blue asbestos, I just don't see how, it's everywhere. You would first have to remove all the pipes, plumbing, a/c ducts, electrical wiring etc. etc. just a maze of stuff. Also paneling as well, basically strip the ship back to a steel hull. Also blue asbestos is sprayed onto the outer walls and then covered in paint. It's in every nook and cranny."

Many Scientologist celebrities have spent time aboard the Freewinds, including Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Chick Corea, Lisa Marie Presley, Catherine Bell, Kate Ceberano, and Juliette Lewis. "Now" magazine reported that Tom Cruise has been urged to seek medical attention regarding potential asbestos exposure, however a representative for Cruise stated he has "absolutely no knowledge" of the recent asbestos controversy. Cruise, Holmes, Travolta and Preston have celebrated birthdays and other events on the Freewinds.

Raw blue asbestos is the most hazardous form of asbestos, and has been banned in the United Kingdom since 1970. Blue asbestos fibers are very narrow and thus easily inhaled, and are a major cause of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a form of cancer which can develop in the lining of the lungs and chest cavity, the lining of the abdominal cavity, or the pericardium sac surrounding the heart. The cancer is incurable, and can manifest over 40 years after the initial exposure to asbestos.

"This is the most dangerous type of asbestos because the fibres are smaller than the white asbestos and can penetrate the lung more easily," said toxicologist Dr. Chris Coggins in a statement published in "OK! Magazine." Dr. Coggins went on to note that "Once diagnosed with mesothelioma, the victim has six months to a year to live. It gradually reduces lung function until the victim is no longer able to breathe and dies."

The Scientology cult was founded in 1950 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Its primary goal is to "clear the planet" by "obliterating psychiatry." Scientology's many front groups include the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), Criminon, Narconon, and Applied Scholastics. Scientology claims to be the "world's fastest growing religion," with some 8 million members, but mainstream demographic surveys have shown that the number of members is closer to 55,000 worldwide, and declining. Scientology is currently under investigation in several countries for a variety of human rights abuses, including child abuse, violation of child labor laws, kidnapping and running secret internal prison camps, as well as for a number of financial crimes.

How many Scientologists are there?

How many Scientologists are there in the world? News reports about the Scientology organization's many crimes and unethical practices quite often provide a figure of "8 million," "10 million," "12 million" or even "15 million" when describing how many Scientologists there are in the world.

These numbers are provided to journalists by Scientology spokesmen, but they are very, very far from accurate. Indeed, along with the cult's insistent stories about Scientology's "explosive growth" and "massive expansion" worldwide, these figures are just another example of manufacturing public perception by telling a huge lie, loudly and repeatedly, until everyone believes that "it must be true."

At the end of 2009, the reality is that there are probably only around 50,000 people in the world who would admit to being Scientologists. A series of posts in an excellent blog called "Ask the Scientologist" explains the situation very clearly.

According to an insider, sometime in the 60s or 70s at International Management, top management wanted to issue a press release about Scientology and they wanted to know how many Scientologists there were. Nobody knew. Not only didn't they know, but their records were so messed up there was absolutely no way to find out. What to do?

They just made it up, "Five million Scientologists world wide with more than three million in the U.S." They didn't know, but then, who could prove them wrong? . . . .

The next year, management asked the same question, "How many Scientologists now?"
The insider tells me that the guys looked around and said "Um... five and a half million!" And so it went on, year after year.
Management would come in and ask, "How many now?" and there'd be a small discussion, "How about six million?"
"No, we said that last time, it has to be more!"
"Then, how about six and a half?" "OK!"
Then they'd give top management the answer, "Six and a half million now, sir!"
It's based on nothing.

Eventually, a few journalists began to wonder about such figures.

In 1992, Heber Jentzsch tried to explain how the membership numbers got so badly out of sync with reality. This is from Forrest Sawyer, on ABC Nightline, Feb. 14, 1992 interviewing Heber Jentzsch, President, Church of Scientology:
• Sawyer: How do you get to call them members?
• Jentzsch: Because they joined and they came in and they studied Scientology.
• Sawyer: They took one course, maybe.
• Jentzsch: Well, that's how valuable the course is. Eight million people, yes, over a period of the last - since 1954.

It's possible, I suppose, that millions of people have taken a Scientology course since 1954. It's more likely that these millions have taken a "stress test" or "personality test," or bought one of the cult's books.

There aren't any comprehensive worldwide surveys of what people believe, but there is plenty of other evidence to show that there aren't really very many Scientologists in the world.

• In 2001, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reported that there were 55,000 adults in the United States who consider themselves Scientologists.
• In 2008, the same survey team estimated there to be 25,000 Americans identifying as Scientologists.
• The 2001 United Kingdom census contained a voluntary question on religion, to which approximately 48,000,000 chose to respond. Of those living in England and Wales who responded, a total of 1,781 said they were Scientologists.
• In 2001, Statistics Canada, the national census agency, reported a total of 1,525 Scientologists nationwide.
• In the 2006 New Zealand census, 357 people identified themselves as Scientologists.
• In 2006, Australia's national census recorded 2,507 Scientologists nationwide.
• In 2008, the Pew Forum's Statistics on Religion in America Report didn't even bother to mention the number of Scientologists they found, though their analysis noted religious affiliations down to less than 0.3%, with such beliefs as "Wiccan" and "Pagan"

Scientology's spokesmen have sometimes attempted to refute the statistical estimates by saying that perhaps the respondents were also Christians or members of other religions, and that it is possible to be both a Scientologist and a member of another religion. Such claims are patently false, both in the essentials of belief as well as in Scientology's explicit declaration that "as a practical matter Scientologists are expected to and do become fully devoted to Scientology to the exclusion of other faiths."[also, see video below]

Despite Scientology's attempts to create a perception of "tremendous planetary expansion," there is an abundance of evidence, even beyond the census and survey data, that the cult has never been particularly large, and is rapidly getting smaller. Journalists tempted to cite Scientology's figures at face value had better brush up on "Fact-Checking 101."

Scientology [part of the Comparison series] a look inside World Religions, by Tim Passmore of Woodland Community Church in Bradenton, Florida.



REFERENCES:

• ARIS 2001
• ARIS 2008 & research on disaggregated 2008 data
• Arnie Lerma's website
• Lewis, James R. "New Religion Adherents: An Overview of Anglophone Census and Survey Data" (PDF). Marburg Journal of Religion 9 (1) September 2004
• Pew Forum: Statistics on Religion in America Report, 2008
• Truth About Scientology: Scientology's "Stats" are down
• Where Are All the Scientologists? Part 1; Part 2; Part 3.

SEE ALSO:

• Operation Clambake
• Scientology Critical Directory
• Why We Protest activism

PSYCHIATRISTS to Blame for 9/11 Attacks

Psychiatrists are to blame for the 9/11 attacks, according to two leading officials of Scientology front group “Citizens Commission on Human Rights” (sic), or CCHR.

In a just-released video compiled from two interviews on a Florida Scientologist’s local cable-access TV show, these officials, CCHR-Florida president David Figueroa and former CCHR-International president Dennis H. Clarke assert that Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, normally considered to be Osama bin Laden’s next-in-command, is really bin Laden’s psychiatrist, and is directly responsible for bin Laden’s transformation into an international terrorist.

Figueroa says that al-Zawahiri convinced bin Laden to form al-Qaida, and used psychiatric drugs to change bin Laden from an ordinary freedom fighter in Afghanistan’s resistance against the Soviet Union, a regular guy, into his current status as the “poster child” for international terrorism. He goes on to explain that psychiatrists are responsible for the 9/11 attacks and other kinds of suicide bombings.

“Whether it’s a person who’s gonna carry a bomb into a marketplace, you know, in a crowded, inner city area, or whether he’s gonna jump on a plane and fly into the World Trade Center, it’s documented that these guys are on some form of psychiatric drug, and/or have psychiatric influence in their backgrounds.”

In the second segment of the video, Dennis Clarke contends that al-Zawahiri “runs” bin Laden.

“We got a mental patient here in this fellow Osama bin Laden, does anybody doubt that? That’s his psychiatrist right there. That’s the guy giving the orders. That’s the guy who’s running him.”

In closing his TV program, the host offers a brochure that describes how “notorious terrorist acts like 9/11 were basically created by psychiatrists operating behind the scenes.”

Among the numerous problems in Scientology’s analysis of international terrorism, a big one is the fact that Ayman al-Zawahiri is not a psychiatrist at all. He was trained as a surgeon. There is no evidence whatsoever, other than Scientology’s saying so, that al-Zawahiri is a psychiatrist, psychologist, or anything other than a surgeon.

PSYCHIATRISTS to Blame for 9/11 Attacks



Scientology’s Beliefs about Psychiatry

According to Scientology and its front groups, psychiatrists are to blame not only for 9/11, but for the African slave trade, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and virtually every bad thing that has happened in human history. Scientologists believe that “psychiatric rape” occurs at epidemic levels in the USA, and that psychiatrists use lobotomies and electroshock therapy to keep their victims quiet.

Indeed, they believe that “ice-pick lobotomies” are routinely administered by psychiatrists. All Scientology front operations, including CCHR, “Youth for Human Rights” (sic), Narconon, Criminon, “Applied Scholastics,” “Volunteer Ministers,” and others, are 100% oriented to obliterating psychiatry. “Human rights,” in fact, is Scientology’s euphemism for “obliterating psychiatry.”

Beyond psychiatry’s evil deeds on this planet, Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard explained some other things about the vicious shrinks. According to high-level Scientology doctrine, not available to Scientologists until they have paid as much as USD $300,000, it started with some trouble 75 million years ago, in a far-away galaxy.

The place suffered from extreme overpopulation. A guy named Lord Xenu got the help of psychiatrists in summoning the galaxy’s inhabitants for an income tax inspection. Then each person was injected in the neck with a mixture of water and glycol, frozen, and put inside space-planes that looked very much like the DC-8 airliner that was popular in the 1960s.

These space-planes flew to Earth (then known as “Teegeeack”), where the beings were stacked inside several volcanoes around the planet.

Then Xenu dropped some massively large hydrogen bombs on top of them and blew them into smithereens — but smithereens that turned into parasitic ghosts. After a bunch of other crazy shenanigans involving movie theatres, implanted memories, a train, a circus, a gorilla, etc. etc. etc., these parasitic ghosts, or “body thetans,” now attach themselves in clusters to everyone on modern-day earth, and are responsible for all human mental, emotional and physical problems.

Later in space history, psychiatrists of the Marcab Confederacy, planets around a star in the “handle” of the “Big Dipper” constellation, imposed income tax as a punishment, not as a tax. The Psychiatrists came to earth 225,000 years ago with the 5th Invader Force, and began their reign of terror.

Scientology’s Ultamite Goal

Scientology’s goal is the “total obliteration” of psychiatry, according to current Scientology leader David Miscavige. During his lifetime, L. Ron Hubbard wrote voluminously and lectured ad nauseam on how bad these characters are and about how important it is to exterminate the mental health profession, replacing it with Scientology.

“While western countries are spending billions fighting terrorist activities abroad they are neglecting the one they have at home. The psychiatrist and his front groups operate straight out of the terrorist text- books…. Setting himself up as a terror symbol, the psychiatrist kidnaps, tortures and murders without any slightest police interference or action by western security forces…. A psychiatrist kills a young girl for sexual kicks, murders a dozen patients with an ice pick, castrates a hundred men. And they give him another million appropriation.”

“Crimes of extortion, mayhem and murder are done daily by these men in the name of “practice” and “treatment.” There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who, by ordinary criminal law, could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them.”

- Hubbard, Freedom Magazine, 1969

While civil society can debate the merits of psychiatric medications and their application in our lives, Scientology’s perception of psychiatry is so bizarre it leaves “crackpot” in the dust. It’s more like “crackpipe.” People are entitled to believe what they like, but Scientology’s monomania about psychiatry shows that it really is a lunatic, dangerous, outer-space cult. It is not the celebrity-strewn, do-gooder, “religion” illusion that it tries to present.

More Information:

• Chris Owen: The origins of Scientology's hostility to psychiatry
• Chris Owen: Scientology's Secret War against Psychiatry
• Salon Magazine: Scientology’s War on Psychiatry
• Wikipedia: Scientology and Psychiatry
• Scientology at Ground Zero
• Video: Scientology's leader advocates violence against psychiatry
• Wikipedia: Ayman al-Zawahiri
• Who Is David Miscavige?
• Operation Clambake
• Stop Scientology Abuses
• Why We Protest