Scientologists Run Their Scam Again… In Haiti

So it seems that the folks living in Haiti have had quite a bad streak of luck lately.  First, they get hammered with a devastating earthquake which kills thousands and leaves millions homeless, and in the process their government – for all practical purposes – collapses & is virtually non-existent to deal with the crisis that follows.  After that, Uber-Asshole Pat Robertson heaps scorn upon them for their cultural heritage, and now this… the Church of Scientology has arrived to “save” the Haitians.

As this article from Gawker.com states…

Our Scientology sources tell us there’s an interesting reason that some members of the church are swarming into Haiti. And it’s even more appalling than you might have thought — tragedy profiteering.

John Travolta arranged for one plane of supplies to get to Port-au-Prince, and personally flew another Boeing 707 there himself. Those planes contained much needed food and equipment and genuine doctors. But they also contained volunteer ministers, ready to spread the word of Scientology.

Many Scientologists, says one of our sources, a longtime veteran of the church, “genuinely think that only they can help in an emergency.” They are misguided, but well-intentioned. But there are others who “are just total buzzards.” Those, he says, are engaging in a vain attempt to profit from the tragedy — a tale corroborated by another former church member. This email is doing the rounds:

By ‘help’, they mean money. And if those seminars result in confused and vulnerable Haitians signing up for any further courses in Scientology — unlikely as that seems, given the poverty in that country — these Global Pioneers get a 12 per cent cut of their future course fees. Our source says that over 100 plan to go to Port-au-Prince, and that he gets email and Facebook spam all day from ‘Pioneers’ seeking donations.

UPDATE: It seems, according to a tipster, that this email had done the rounds before the earthquake as well, apparently, as after. As such it’s not the smoking gun we first thought. But this may be. It’s a press release from the Global Pioneers, sent by the same man who sent the above missive — a Cary Goulston — outlining their achievements in Haiti since the earthquake:

I’m all for people helping out the Haitians in their hour of need, but from these documents I get the eerie sense that the Scientologists are looking to use this tragedy as a way of 1) raising money for non-relief efforts, and 2) spreading their twisted ideology. One reason I say this is the constant reference in the above documents to VMs – also known as “volunteer ministers”.  The VMs are the folks who will be spreading the Scientology doctrine among the vulnerable population in Haiti.

My advice: people of Haiti, beware.  Fortunately, there is a silver lining, because it seems that Anonymous is on the case.