When I was writing the recent post posing the question about whether Miscavige would show up to yank his ribbon in Paris, I tried to verify whether he had gone to Moscow for their ideal org, and also the status of the St. Petersburg org. I was surprised to discover when you search for scientology orgs in Russia on scientology.org -- it draws a complete blank. It only shows missions in neighboring countries when you enter "find a church" and type in "Russia"... Google it and there is a press release from 2011 announcing the opening of the first ideal org in Russia, in … [Read more...]
Moscow Ruling
The details are skimpy so far, but the essence of it seems to be that a Moscow City Court has ordered the church of scientology in Moscow to close up shop within 6 months for being in violation of business laws. They seem to conclude that scientology must be a business because the name (and other things) are trademarked. Tony Ortega has a pretty concise summary at his blog. This order will of course be appealed by scientology. And the last time the government in Moscow refused to register the church it eventually made its way to the European Court of Human Rights which sided with … [Read more...]