Fun_People Archive
9 Dec
Quadro, cults, news....

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon,  9 Dec 96 16:59:56 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Quadro, cults, news....

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
From: James Randi --- Wizard <randi-hotline@ssr.com>

I just learned that the executives of Quadro Corporation are due to be tried
on criminal charges January 21.  This should be very interesting.  No amount
of scientific testimony will ever answer the most important question about
this case: how is it that so many police departments, school boards,
scientists, and engineers, fell for the claims Quadro made? And, more
importantly, why do these people CONTINUE to believe, even after all the
evidence is in?

Meanwhile, this just came to my attention:

There's a lengthy article beginning on the front page of the Washington Post
for Sunday, Dec. 1, about how the Cult Awareness Network has been forced
into bankruptcy, due to 45 lawsuits filed by the Scientologists.  A judge
went for one of them and entered a $1.8 million judgement against the CAN.

The CAN's assets were put up for auction.  Their name, logo, P.O. Box and
phone number--their identity--were sold to the highest bidder, who turned
out to be a Scientologist.  He intends to keep the organization going, but
utilizing it for his own purposes.  Thus, people who find CAN's 20-year-old
phone number & call, worried about a son who just became a Hubbardite, will
be talking to a Scientologist unknowingly!  CAN said that throughout their
career, "aside from Satanic groups, more callers asked about Scientology
than any other group."

There's more: Pending is a sale of 600 feet of files on cults accumulated
over the years.  The Church of Sci wants these bad.  Not only to finger
people who have blown the whistle on their own activities, but to get dirt
on rival cults.

"Scientology will pay anything to get their hands on those files," said
Robert Young, a former Scientologist spokesman who quit and became a major
critic, "We always figured CAN was the nexus for all the rest of the
problems Scientology had.  So the idea of getting the files is similar to
the KGB being able to buy the files of the CIA." A judge is thinking this
over right now.

					James Randi.

© 1996 Peter Langston