The website of Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers, detailing their latest “news,” is shown in this screen capture today, March 30, 2023, at 12:03 MST.
According to their stated mission…
Volunteer Ministers work with public servants in their own communities, helping to improve conditions right at home. Their information and training centers are bright yellow tents open to the public at weekend events and fairs, where anyone may enroll on a course or seminar that is delivered right in the tent.
Because of their courage, compassion and training, they have become indispensable in times of greatest human need—traveling halfway around the world to help people who have lost everything in an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, flood or the like.
Now take a look at the most recent “news” on the screen capture above. The most recent date they have “traveled halfway around the world” is February 7, 2022. One might be tempted to wonder what happened to all of those missing natural disasters during the past year. But I digress.
Apart from Scientology’s own website, just where does news of the Volunteer Ministers from other sources show up? Let’s take a look … here is a Google news search for “Scientology disaster relief in Turkey.” Among the results are 10 links, all of which point back to just two sources … “Send2Press Newswire” and “EIN News.” Are these press release services merely pawns in the great scheme of things?
HERE’S WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING!
Does Scientology control “news” at websites like “Send2Press Newswire” and “EIN News.”? Admittedly, “control” is rather subjective…and maybe it means “taking full advantage of.”
Let’s take a look at the press releases from Einpresswire.com on “Scientology.”
How about “Send2Press?” How about that … a similar set of results.
According to Send2Press, they are located in … WAIT FOR IT … Temecula, California! This organization was a spinoff from Neotrope as a press release service in 1997. Well, son of a gun … there’s a Church of Scientology Mission in Temeculah. They once had their own website, Temecula.ScientologyMissions.org, but the URL now merely defaults to Scientology’s main site. This is one of the “dead” pages captured at the Internet Archive.
Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at Neotrope, as described in their original website, which I’ve screen captured, just in case it disappears:
Neotrope® is the company formerly known as Mindset™, founded in 1983 by Christopher Simmons in Redondo Beach, Calif. (later located in Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, and Torrance, Calif.). We have NO relationship past or present to any other company called “Mindset Software,” “Mindset Design,” or “Mindset Interactive,” et al.
The current version of Neotrope is here, described as a company which…
The company specializes in brand identity, advertising, multimedia, search engine optimization, e-marketing, public relations (PR) services, and web development based around WordPress and/or HTML5/Bootstrap with Fluid-Karma™. Neotrope is also an entertainment company, involved in books, music, and online publishing.
If you’ve bothered navigating to Neotrope’s “Team” page, you will have already discovered that the members of the team are just ONE GUY … Christopher Simmons. And amazingly, he has his own website at ChristopherSimmons.com where he has posted a ton of “press releases” on … WAIT FOR IT … himself. It appears as though he lost interest in mid-2013, as that is the date of his last post.
Christopher also has a music-focused news site called Musewire, but it looks as though he’s gone through some rough times…
View our staff page for information about our editorial team. We’re all professional musicians, working journalists, gear heads, and/or creative gurus across multiple disciplines. This is no personal blog or impersonal mega-portal, but — we hope — will become a daily destination for anybody who loves making or listening to music in all forms.
As of Summer 2017, our staff has primarily been condensed down to a single person, editor/publisher Christopher Simmons.
We are located in Temecula, California, USA (as of 2019). MuseWire is part of the Neotrope® Entertainment Network and is a trademark and service mark of Neotrope. Our company was established in 1983 by Christopher Laird Simmons and was formerly known as Mindset.
TEMECULA … where have I seen that town name before?
A seasoned private investigator might be asking the question at this point, “Does Christopher Simmons have even the remotest connection to Scientology?” Well gee whiz, here’s a post at California Newswire, an affiliate of Neotrope, by Christoper Simmons himself in 2022, “Starting the Year Right With a Book to Help Bring Happiness: watch book-on-film on the Scientology Network”:
Avoid the pitfalls that can derail those New Year’s resolutions by adopting the common-sense moral code contained in “The Way to Happiness.”
A safer and more constructive way to live life is to take effective action.
Your own happiness can be turned to tragedy and sorrow by the dishonesty and misconduct of others
…this nonreligious moral code can help pave the way to a more successful, more decent and happier life through applying its 21 precepts, or principles, and sharing them with others.
Enroll on the free online eCourse on The Way to Happiness website. Read the book, watch “The Way to Happiness” book-on-film, and see how its application has transformed lives, as documented in episodes of Voices for Humanity on the Scientology Network.
Now it gets really weird.
A search of his Twitter timeline reveals some interesting information from 4 to 9 years BEFORE his apparent promotion of Scientology. If these tweets from the years 2013, 2015, and 2018 are any indication, Christopher would qualify among those that the church would deem an “SP,” (Suppressive Person).
Notable tweets…
Tip for lone wolf crackpot gunmen: next time, skip the movie theatre and head to a Scientology “church” and give them ***. Xenu will thanku
— Christopher Laird Simmons (@tophersimmons) August 19, 2015
Can we get a Kickstarter going to firebomb the Church of Scientology off the map ? They keep calling me (3 times in past half hour), when I’ve had nothing to do with them since a child in the 1970s when my parents we’re in the cult for awhile; keep telling them to fuck off
— Christopher Laird Simmons (@tophersimmons) June 20, 2018
Will somebody please blowup the Cult of @scientology call center? I’m a SP and loving it. They call me every day and I say STOP CALLING ME.
— Christopher Laird Simmons (@tophersimmons) November 13, 2013
Notice is hereby given that we are going to give Christopher Simmons a temporary absolution of all accusations of being closely related to the Church of Scientology. We will place his current “status” in the “Hold for Review” folder as his post above promoting “The Way To Happiness” was nearly 10 years AFTER his derogatory tweets. Not judging … just observing.
The fact remains that Scientology continues to promote its “Press Releases” using Mr. Simmon’s services. We obviously have no inside information about the client list of “Send2Press Newswire” and “EIN News,” but the links provided above are indisputable. Simmons may not even know about the links and perhaps one of Scientology’s infamous “front groups” or other third-party organizations has purchased the service and pushes stories into the news ecosystem, thus remaining at arms-length … but who knows? The fact remains that the Volunteer Minister’s world influence never makes its appearance on any mainstream media news sites … it is purely manufactured as “Public Relations” like everything else created within the world of Scientology, from its bogus “Freedom Magazine” to “Stand League” to “Narconon” to “Youth for Human Rights International” or any of its other hundreds of insidious front groups.
Mike Rinder, a former Scientologist of nearly 50 years and author of “A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology”, has also documented this, providing a basic understanding of the purpose of these “Press Releases” that will never see the light of day among the general population:
Scientology has many front groups that are designed to create the impression that the organization is a benevolent group that does good work in their community.
I have noted many times that the “good work” does not happen if it cannot be documented by a video team who then use the video to fundraise and for propaganda pieces about the great things they are doing around the world.
Here are some very recent pitches from some of their main front groups. They tell the sheeple literally anything to persuade them they need to participate — but if they don’t they are shamed into giving money. After all, what sort of lowlife would refuse to help make human rights a reality? Or help respond to disasters? Cut off the international drug pipeline? Make LA safe and green? Eradicate barbaric psychiatric practices? Only an SP would not want those things.
And who can forget this infamous Volunteer Ministers Twitter post from 2017 that featured what an uninformed person might conclude is a YELLOW helicopter owned by the group? Actually, they “appropriated” the photo of the MH-60T Jayhawk medium-range recovery helicopter from the United States Coast Guard website.
Also noted today at Mike Rinder’s blog, “No Scientology Volunteer Ministers Activities Since January 2022?”
If you’re shaking your head, you are to be congratulated.
You have just discovered Scientology
merely makes up this crap.
