"The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" is a Time magazine article
highly critical of Scientology that was first published on May 6, 1991,
as an eight-page cover story. Written by investigative journalist
Richard Behar, the article was later published in Reader's Digest in
October 1991. Behar's article covers topics including: L. Ron Hubbard
(pictured) and the development of Scientology, its controversies over
the years and history of litigation, conflict with psychiatry and the
IRS, the suicide of a Scientologist, its status as a religion, and its
business dealings. After the article's publication, the Church of
Scientology mounted a public relations campaign to inform the public of
what it felt were falsehoods in the piece. It took out advertisements
in USA Today for twelve weeks, and Church leader David Miscavige was
interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline about what he considered to be
an objective bias by the article's author. The Church of Scientology
brought a libel suit against Time Warner and Behar, and sued Reader's
Digest in multiple countries in Europe in an attempt to stop the
article's publication there. The suit against Time Warner was dismissed
in 1996, and the Church of Scientology's petition for a writ of
certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case was
denied in 2001. Behar received awards in honor of his work on the
article, including the Gerald Loeb Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, and
the Conscience-in-Media Award.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thriving_Cult_of_Greed_and_Power>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1881:
Andrew Watson made his debut with the Scotland national football team
and became the world's first black international football player.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Watson_%28footballer%29>
1913:
The future capital of Australia was officially named Canberra during a
ceremony officiated by Lady Gertrude Denman, the wife of
Governor-General Lord Thomas Denman.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra>
1930:
Gandhi began the Dandi March , a 24-day walk to defy the British tax on
salt in colonial India.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha>
1952:
Hastings Ismay was appointed as the first Secretary General of NATO.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay%2C_1st_Baron_Ismay>
2004:
The National Assembly of South Korea voted to impeach President Roh
Moo-hyun on charges of illegal electioneering and incompetence, a move
that was largely opposed by the public.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roh_Moo-hyun>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
ebony (n):
1. A hard, heavy, deep black wood from various subtropical and tropical
trees, especially of the genus Diospyros.
2. A tree that yields such wood.
3. A deep, dark black colour
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ebony>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of
plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with
small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common
fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have
been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually
sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change,
the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing
the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless
successions of life and happiness.
--William Buckland
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Buckland>