[Times photos: Scott Keeler]
Posted on 03/27/2005 6:00:35 AM PST by dennisw
As Scientologists launch unprecedented expansion, downtown Clearwater's identity is at stake. A two-part special report
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[Times photos: Scott Keeler]
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| Scientology’s new Flag Building is the centerpiece of a $160-million construction campaign. “I get chills when I see that building,” says Scientologist Randy Poletz. But its sheer size — it commands a full city block — makes some non-church members nervous. |
CLEARWATER - The room is packed with computer consultants, real estate agents, home financing professionals, Web site designers, accountants, hairstylists, artists, interior designers.
All based in Clearwater. All Scientologists.
Guest speaker Mark DeEulio bursts in.
"How are you doing?" he booms.
"Great!" comes an enthusiastic chorus.
"Who could use more money?" DeEulio teases.
Without pause, he launches into the basics of financial planning - as taught by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
It is the weekly meeting of the Clearwater chapter of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises, business people using Hubbard's business techniques. Akin to a chamber of commerce for Scientologists, WISE members network, recruit employees, share business tips and hear lectures on topics such as marketing.
And they refine ideas for new businesses for downtown Clearwater.
For Scientologists, opening a business is "just as natural . . . as taking a shower and putting their shoes on," said WISE's Tampa Bay area president, Bud Reichel.
In Clearwater, the shoes fit especially well.
Scientologists now own more than 200 shops, restaurants, service outlets and small businesses in and around Clearwater's downtown. Many employ fellow Scientologists. WISE's Clearwater membership stands at 687, more than triple what it was five years ago.
More growth is coming. Scientologists will open twice as many businesses in the next five years, Reichel predicts. As many as 900 condos and townhouses are to be developed downtown, mostly by Scientologists.
A group of Scientologists from Mexico plans a project that could bring hundreds of condos to prime downtown property bought last year for $9.8-million.
Just two blocks away, a Scientologist will break ground this summer on a 146-unit, 15-story condo tower. Church members also will build dozens of townhomes downtown.
For Clearwater, it's an unprecedented wave of private-sector investment by entrepreneurial Scientologists. And it's taking root alongside the numerous high-profile properties of the expansion-minded Church of Scientology, which since 1976 has made Clearwater its worldwide spiritual headquarters.............
ping
Yyyyyyyyyawn.
ot oh. if the st. pete times is trying to distract us with Scientology, the nature of the evil that rules Pinellas County may not be so clear cut after all.
Do you really expect us to belive this garbage? This is from that link you provided.
I think it much more likely that Terri's husband used some of the $20M to buy heavy influence in the corrupt Democrat machine.
The extent of the wickedness in that place has yet to be exposed.
read later bump
Michael Schiavo Changed His Story About How He Found Terri!
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT
OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA, IN AND FOR PINELLAS COUNTY
2 CIVIL DIVISION
DATE AND TIME: July 27, 1992; 9:05 a.m. CASE NO. 92-939CI-15
p.99 Michael Schiavo Deposition Medical Malpractice Pt 4
24 Q Now, what -- when you saw her, do you know
25 what time it was? ___
p.103 of MS Depo Med Mal Pt 4
1 A I believe it was almost five a.m..
2 Q When you saw her, how was she lying; in other
3 words, on her back or --
4 A On her back.
5 Q Did she make any sound at all before she fell
6 that you heard?
Excerpts of Michael Schiavo's July 27, 1992 Deposition
CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT
STATE OF FLORIDA IN AND FOR PINELLAS COUNTY
PROBATE DIVISION
CASE NO. 90-2908-GD3 January 24, 2000
BEFORE: GEORGE W. GREER Circuit Court Judge
PLACE: Clearwater Courthouse
Clearwater, FL 33756
Q Michael, tell me what occurred on
11 February 25, 1990.
12 A I got home late from work that night. I
13 came in the house. Terri woke up. She heard me.
14 I gave her a kiss good night. She gave me a kiss
15 good night. A few hours later, I was getting out
16 of bed for some reason and I heard this thud. So
17 I ran out into the hall and I found Terri on the
18 floor. I knelt down next to her and I turned her
19 over because she sort of fell on her face. On her
20 stomach and face.
21 I turned her over going, "Terri, Terri.
The 'anti-Terri pressure' was coming from every group guided by the 'Evil One'.
He never got a $20 million insurance settlement though that's what he begged the court for so he could take care of Terri for the next 51 years. Once he and Terri got a lousy 1.3 million he started trying to kill her.
The man is a scammer, con artist. In his diseased mind he was counting on that 20 million and to make a career of taking care of Terri and to do it in high style. With girlfriends, a huge house with a separate wing for him etc (my speculation)
And the governor and president are running scared from them?
You bettcha and the evil one(s) have opperatives stationed in every party, every government office, every family...and on every forum.
OMGosh! One of the Schiavo lawyers is named Thomas Dolby!
"She blinded me with Scientology"
Judge Greer is legally blind. Needs a driver, cannot drive a car
Greer is legally blind and has a soft voice and a patient manner in the courtroom. He was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Dunedin, Fla., a small town on the Gulf of Mexico. He stayed in Florida for college and law school, and returned to the Tampa area to practice law. He divorced and remarried, and has two adult sons. He won a seat on the Pinellas County Commission in 1984 and spent the next eight years learning how to weather political maelstroms.
Stop posting your cherry picked trash. A lot from that link is valid
You want scientology then try this site
http://www.libertytothecaptives.net/
nuts imo........
"The Republican Party of Pinellas County welcomes the support of various Scientologists. Scientologists tend be conservative in a number of areas and therefore find agreement with Republicans and, politicians being the whores they are, are more than happy to jump through a hoop or two, or look the other way when it's expedient, in order to get some money or even an endorsement or two."
Based upon my understanding of the situation, I would expect the Scientologists to swing Democratic in 2008. Nobody panders to a special interest group like the Clintons.
Hillary would let them build a monument to aliens from outer-space on the Capitol lawn if she thought it could get her into the White House. And Pinellas County is a "swing" region.
And think of all that Hollywood money from Tom Cruise and John Travolta. In fact, isn't Travolta already a big fan of the Clintons?
You want Scientology then try this site ..... http://www.xenu.net/ The inner secrets of Scientology. With servers located in Norway, far from the reach of Scientology lawyers.
Perhaps you can share with us your own brilliant analysis of the theory of 666 lol.
Nothing of any moment gets done there without the big players -- of which scientology is one of the biggest -- weighing in.
Ping
Very, very interesting. I knew Felos was a Scientologist, but I didn't realize their power or size in that part of Florida.
Did Scientology finally get itself declared a religion for tax purposes? IIRC there was some controversy over that years ago, and I can't remember how it ended.
What's the difference between "Scientologists" and "Christian Science"? OR are these two names for the same thing?
What's the difference between "Scientologists" and "Christian Science"? OR are these two names for the same thing?
______________
They are very very different. The first is a Christian sect while Scientology is warped, New Age, your_ego_is_supreme, mumbo jumbo
He is closely associated with Scientology. Not sure if he actually is one
but I didn't realize their power or size in that part of Florida.
I was surprised myself
Did Scientology finally get itself declared a religion for tax purposes?
In some places yes. Perhaps even with the IRS. Churches don't pay property taxes!
IIRC there was some controversy over that years ago, and I can't remember how it ended.
Mega-kook New Ager. M Schiavo's death dealing lawyer George Felos. ^
Posted by dennisw
On Bloggers & Personal ^ 03/27/2005 8:43:39 AM EST · 27 replies · 356+ views
floridabaptistwitness ^ | felos
Litigation as Spiritual Practice by George FelosHoly cow! This lawyer Felos is a New Age nut case. He has somehow perverted yoga and other ancient religions into meshing with the kill'em (the disabled) ethos of Scientology_________ “As a spiritual aspirant for close to twenty-five years with definite monastic tendencies, my friends don’t understand how I survive within the aggressive and often highly negative energies of the courtroom.” (x)“The urge behind this book is to encourage and impel you to utilize your life’s endeavor, whatever it may be, to its highest purpose – to move from making a living...
Here's a lot more information on Scientology, as well as the Lisa McPherson case, which is quite relevant to this one, IMHO.
www.lisamcpherson.org
But the issue of how Scientology obtains exemption is of major importance, most obviously to US citizens but also to citizens of those countries, like the UK, where Scientology is attempting to gain exemption. There is now sufficient evidence to suggest that Scientology may have pursued a twin- track strategy to gain exemption from the IRS...
(snip)
...But the Church also adopted a "hardball" campaign against the IRS during the 1980s and early 1990s. There is no evidence - yet - that it did anything illegal. However, it plainly did try to exert maximum pressure against the IRS. None of the following is disputed by Scientology officials and, indeed, some of it was boasted about by David Miscavige in his October 1993 speech:
* The IRS and its individual officers were sued for $128m.
* 2,500 lawsuits were launched against the IRS.
* Private detectives were employed to find out what "crimes" IRS officials were guilty of in their private lives.
* Freedom magazine printed lurid allegations about "IRS crimes".
* Vicious attack adverts were placed in the US press with captions such as: "Don't you kill my daddy", "How do you spell IRS in Russian? Answer - KGB!"
Is this what one would expect of a charitable religious organisation?
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After a couple of conversations on the phone, Frantz flew to Jacksonville to take Shomers to dinner. The private detective turned out to be an excellent source, direct and forthcoming about what he had done for the Scientologists. He said he had gathered personal information about IRS agents who might be vulnerable to pressure in 1990 and 1991, taken IRS documents from a conference the agency held in California and investigated conditions at apartment houses owned by IRS officials to see if they violated the local housing codes. He said he later developed second thoughts about the Scientologists and how they might be using the information he had acquired. Most helpful of all, he had kept documents that Frantz could use to double-check what Shomers told him.
"Corroboration is essential when dealing with any source, but particularly when you're dealing with a source who's making allegations involving both the IRS and the Church of Scientology," said Frantz. "Corroboration is better than gold."
He began meticulously to assemble a picture of Scientology's efforts to put pressure on the IRS. He had Shomers's account of efforts to find exploitable weaknesses in the lives of various IRS agents. With the help of former church officials, who spoke on the record, and participants in these efforts, Frantz established that Scientology had created and funded an organization called the National Coalition of IRS Whistle-blowers, which was active "for nearly a decade," beginning in 1984. Its greatest success was to provoke a 1989 congressional investigation of IRS enforcement activities.
Altogether Frantz spent several months looking for and talking to private investigators and others who had worked for Scientology on IRS-related matters, and then checking out their stories independently. He even found residents of apartments owned by IRS officials who confirmed that a man had visited their homes looking for housing-code violations.
Not every lead produced new facts. Frantz had difficulty tracking down another private investigator who had worked with Shomers for Scientology. When Frantz finally got him on the telephone, the investigator said he would have to check with his client and call back. He never did.
"By that time," Frantz recounted, "I'd figured out where he lived, so I drove out to his house late one afternoon out in Rockville [a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.], and it was a very nondescript tract house. And I went up and knocked on the door and nobody was home. So I sat out in my car for a couple of hours in front of the house waiting for him to come home. And a next-door neighbor came out and was angry that I was sitting on their street and wondered what in the hell I was doing there. I apologized and said I was waiting for [the private investigator] to come home and he said, 'Well, he's never here.' I don't know whether that's true or not, but I figured it was a long shot that I would catch him at home anyway. So I left."
A dramatic moment in Frantz's reporting came about four months into his investigation, when he felt ready to talk to officials of the Church of Scientology. This is an important step in most investigative reporting projects, when the reporter confronts his subject with questions that have arisen during the investigation. It gives the subject an opportunity to respond to the reporter's findings. For good reporters, this is important both to ensure accuracy and fairness and to demonstrate open-mindedness.
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:npNbHyqi6tYJ:www.raids.org/afterirs.htm+Scientology++Private+detectives++irs&hl=en
Very interesting. I just read on the Lisa McPherson site (describing a young woman who was starved to death as a Scientology "treatment") that the IRS finally gave Scientology tax exempt status as a charitable organization to stop the flood of frivolous lawsuits that Scientologists had filed against it.
Personally, I think the IRS should have charged the organization with barratry and fought back, but apparently the didn't.
Felos (the known Scientologist in the Schiavo case, although there may be others) is the one who has been in and out of her room saying how "beautiful" she looks as she starves to death, etc. and he is clearly regarding this as some sort of Scientology procedure.
Criminal charges were filed in the Lisa McPherson case, but it appeared that the DA dropped them finally because of some problem about the reliability of the testimony of the medical examiner. From the site:
June 12, 2000 the criminal charges were dropped against Scientology because (so the prosecutor claims) the medical examiner could not be counted on to confidently testify, even though the criminal charges were abuse of a disabled person and practicing medicine without a license. You can read much of the Clearwater police department's evidence and Scientology's logs of Lisa's stay, view some of the autopsy photos, and decide for yourself. Then ask why Scientology now makes members sign a waiver specifically against suing Scientology over the Introspection Rundown...
Scientologist Dr. David I. Minkoff had his license suspended on August 3, 2001 for one year and was fined for prescribing medicine to Lisa without even seeing her at the request of Lisa's "caretakers."
Operation Clambake - The Inner Secrets Of Scientology
Major anti Scientology site, with extensive news articles, analyses, and criticism of the alleged Scientology cult, Dianetics, and L. Ron Hubbard, ...
www.xenu.net/ - 36k - Mar 26, 2005 -Cached - Similar pages
Felos (the known Scientologist in the Schiavo case) .....
He works with them. I have never read that he is one, though he might well be. For sure he is a new age kook and wrote a book about this kookery. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1371707/posts
Scientology's roots are built upon SATANISM..
L.Ron Hubbard carries the Mantel of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley , now dead, called himself the beast/a magician one of the most evil men ever born.
Satantanic cults do exist and they are deeply rooted in the USA who call themselves Scientologists.
http://ezlink.com/~perry/Co$/Christian/christian.htm
"Now, he could simply say, "I have action." A magician - the magic cults of the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries in the Middle East were fascinating. The only modern work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots, but it's fascinating work in itself, and that's work written by Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my very good friend. And he did himself a splendid piece of aesthetics built around those magic cults. It's very interesting reading to get hold of a copy of a book, quite rare, but it can be obtained. the Master Therion, T-h-e-r-i-o-n, The Master Therion by Aleister Crowley. He signs himself "The Beast"; "The Mark of the Beast, 666." Very, very something or other, but anyway the ... Crowley exhumed a lot of the data from these old magic cults.", The Philadelphia Doctorate Course, L. Ron. Hubbard, Tape #18, Dec 5, 1952. Real Audio (USA) [296K] Real Audio (UK) [296K]
They will twist the rule of law to no end and are becoming powerful enough to get their own into public offices or positions. This is a very dangerous organization that hides behind the label of "religion."
And don't let that cross with the "rays" shooting out fool you into thinking they're Christian. It's the big "in your face" cross-out of Jesus' deity.
More--
http://ezlink.com/~perry/Co$/Christian/christian.htm
Hubbard's black magik "research" of that time. Hubbard's black magick sex rituals to invoke the Whore of Babalon are confirmed by Armstrong (Hubbard's biographer) and L. Ron Hubbard, Jr..
cross with the "rays" shooting out
--
I'm not familiar with that. Do you have a picture or something?
Thanks-
Is that logo on Scientology buildings or books. I've never seen that before as I don't read Scientology books, etc.
I've added Clearwater to my list of never visit places.
There's a TON of information and documentation on the web that I used to dig into, and so much of it made me sick to my stomach. I don't how intense the fight still is but there were quite a few x-Scn and others fighting them 5 years or so ago. I don't know if you've seen this but www.xenutv.com is loaded with very eye-opening videos, particularly with the cult members in action.
PROUD - Well Clearwater does have its good points. I lived there for a few years in the time frame the Scientologist occupied a large old hotel (I believe that is what it was). It needed paint badly in the main thing I recall. We viewed them as a cult (still do).
Clearwater has a great beach for kids (and I found it boring, no waves!).. the weather is decent except in summer when it is stiffling; and the traffic is terrible.
There are many strong and active Christian churches there & the schools are above average. community college & good rec programs.
But there are many places in Fla I would rather visit than Clearwater.
Thanks for article DennisW -it will be interesting to see the developments
For once I agree with the Europeans on something - they have been very reluctant to permit Scientology to be considered a religion under their law.
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