back to article Anonymous digs ahead of more assaults on Scientology

The Anonymous collective is moving on from the first anniversary of its protests against the Church of Scientology with a round of further demonstrations. The next round of global protests will span several weekends. Anonymous claims its campaign has scored a number of successes over the last 12 months, since indignation at …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    Religion is evil

    Nice work, now just try and take down the rest of the bullshit religions that exist (most of them) and we can all live happy and peaceful lives as Confucianists. Its all quite appropriate with the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin coming up on thursday the 12th of feb (the creationist museum in America states that he caused the holocaust lol). Religion is a business for the clever to take the money of the stupid and have them running around like headless drones believing without understanding.

  2. Ash

    Blogs blocked

    http://anoneire.ning.com/profiles/blogs/church-of-scientology-prevents is blocked where I am. Any other source for this story?

    If sale is restricted, is ownership too? I'd be interested in buying this book.

  3. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Stop

    On a serious note...

    Can anyone explain to me the legal grounding on which John Duignan’s book has been blocked from sale.

    Facts would be appreciated rather than your conspiracy theories.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Discrediting scientology

    We don't really need to discredit scientology - they do it themselves.

    Who could really believe that aliens arrived here in DC8s, hid in volcanoes and were oblitereated with hydrogen bombs? Scientologists do, apparently - just look at the wikipedia entry on "Xenu".

    If that wasn't hard enough to believe, the aliens are somehow still alive (withough bodies) and creep into our minds.

    If you somehow could read that and not laugh then try the first paragraph of:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera_in_Scientology_doctrine

    Paris because she may be stupid but she hasn't fallen for Scientology.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    woo!

    now they just have to do the same with the rest of the world's religions!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anonymous Quixote Style

    I haven't really been able to work out what why this group hates Scientology so much, so Project Chanology looked interesting. Until that is, you actually read the words.

    ' The residents are trying to block Scientologist efforts to turn the home into a museum or Org citing zoning law, traffic problems, pollution, and overall creepiness.'

    So, overall creepiness is the ender, and traffic problems is the begining.

    Kinda think there is perhaps more wrong in this world than these problems.

    Still if they wish to go chasing windmills, that is their lookout, just as long as they don't create traffic problems, or are creepy with it :)

  7. Elbrop
    Alien

    Win/win

    Scientologists and the bored masses of the internet go head to head – whoever loses, we win.

    Blessed be Xenu!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Are silver dragees cake thetans? All hail Xenu!

    Quoth el-Reg: all life’s anxieties and worries are "caused by the infestation of dead alien souls".

    And how does that teaching differ, other than in detail, from other religions?

    It's not the teachings of scientology that are the issue; they're merely decorations, the frosting on the cake as it were, with knobs on and silver dragees sprinkled about freely like little body thetans. It's the brainwashing of adherents to the point of driving them mad (cue Lisa McPherson) and the draining of them financially that are so offensive -- that and the suspicion that the money flows into the pockets of private individuals.

    Must be nice to be a pipsqueak cult owner!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    sage

    sage

    gb2enturb

    etc

    etc

  10. Not That Andrew

    Why? Libel Tourism

    Several notorious legal practices (check Private Eye for names) have reduced England's libel laws to the level of international ridicule by their eagerness to sue on behalf of foreign clients. Thus many publishers now refuse to make anything remotely controversial available in England, because they _will_ be sued if those lawyers can find even one copy on English soil, even if they have to bring it in themselves.

  11. sage
    Thumb Down

    sage

    sage

  12. David Hicks
    Thumb Down

    RE: Anonymous Quixote Style

    There's more to it than that. The lawsuits and harassment, the censorship, separation of people from their families, bankrupting effectively enslaving adherents...

    It's a crazy, crazy cult.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The basement dwellers have actually surprised me

    I had rather assumed this whole Chanology thing would fall apart after the first few rounds when they realised that not only are there no girls on the Internets, but none of them will put out for fat spotty neckbearded geeks, regardless of how much dedication they show to the cause of demonstrating their sensitive side. Admittedly, it has gone through the predictable schisms that bedevil any Internets community, but, hey, what doesn't kill you...

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    @mad dave

    sage

    sage

    sage

    gb2failchan/711chan

  15. Breandan Goodall
    Coat

    "Aristotles..." ...legal question

    Though I dread to imagine the UK's recent anti-sectarian/blasphemy legislation being employed here. I'd imagine that plain old copyright law is being used to prevent publication much as it helped JK Rowling in the recent past.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    What's with all the sage crap?

    That is all

  17. Thomas Kent
    Alert

    L. Ron Hubbard...

    ...was a lousy prophet and an even worse a Sci-Fi writer! (Have you ever read Battlefield Earth? Turgid!).

    Well now, I suppose I am now on Scientology's sh!t list!

  18. P. Lee
    Dead Vulture

    re: Religion is Evil

    I suspect what was actually said was that a prevalent scientific error of the time (all races are not equal) combined with the philosophical Darwinism (we are merely animals and must struggle to survive) provided the logic for the Holocaust.

    ‘One of the central planks in Nazi theory and doctrine was …evolutionary theory [and] … that all biology had evolved … upward, and that … less evolved types … should be actively eradicated [and] … that natural selection could and should be actively aided, and therefore [the Nazis] instituted political measures to eradicate … Jews, and … blacks, whom they considered as “underdeveloped”.’ - Hickman

    Which, having studied Nazi Germany at A-Level, I would have to agree with.

    You can have a go at refuting the logic at http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675/

    <cue David Attenborough voice>

    "What we see here is the struggle between two groups of animals each doing everything they can to gain power within the pack. The Scientologists using their financial fitness to exclude their rivals from the pack; and the Anonymous sub-grouping becoming ever more confident in their challenges to the status quo."

    Icon: when your dead, nothing matters and in the end, we're all dead.

  19. Robert Lindblad

    Scientology

    Here’s part of The June 1983 Penthouse Magazine interview with L.Ron Hubbard Jr.

    Hubbard: Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game. To use common, everyday English, Scientology says that you and I and everybody else willed ourselves into being hundreds of trillions of years ago -just by deciding to be. We willed ourselves into being ourselves. Through wild space games, interaction, fights, and wars in the grand science-fiction tradition, we created this universe -all the matter, energy, space, and time of this universe. And so through these trillions of years, we have become the effect of our own cause and we now find ourselves trapped in bodies. So the idea of Scientology “auditing” or “counseling” or “processing” is to free yourself from your body and to return you to the original godlike state or, in Scientology jargon, an operating Thetan -O.T. We are all fallen gods, according to Scientology, and the goal is to be returned to that state.

    Penthouse: And what is the Church of Scientology?

    Hubbard: It’s one of my father’s many organizations. It was formed in 1953, basically to avoid the harassment of my father by the medical profession and the IRS. The idea of Scientology didn’t really exist before that point as a religion, but my father hit upon turning it into a church after he started feeling pressured.

    Penthouse: Didn’t your father have any interest in helping people?

    Hubbard: No.

    Penthouse: Never?

    Hubbard: My father started out as a broke science-fiction writer. He was always broke in the late 1940s. He told me and a lot of other people that the way to make a million was to start a religion. Then he wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health while he was in Bayhead, New Jersey. When we later visited Bayhead, in about 1953, we were walking around and reminiscing -he told me that he had written the book in one month.

    Penthouse: There was no church when he wrote the book?

    Hubbard: Oh, no, no. You see, his goal was basically to write the book, take the money and run. But in 1950, this was the first major book of do-it-yourself psychotherapy, and it became a runaway best-seller. He kept getting, literally, mail trucks full of mail. And so he and some other people, including J. W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction , started the Dianetics Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the post office kept backing up and just dumping mail sacks into the building. The foundation had a staff that just ran through the envelopes and threw away anything that didn’t have any money in it.

    Penthouse: People sent money?

    Hubbard: Yeah, they wanted training and further Dianetic auditing, Dianetic processing. It was just an incredible avalanche.

    Penthouse: Did he write the book off the top of his head? Did he do any real research?

    Hubbard: No research at all. When he has answered that question over the years, his answer has changed according to which biography he was writing. Sometimes he used to write a new biography every week. He usually said that he had put thirty years of research into the book. But no, he did not. What he did, reaily, was take bits and pieces from other people and put them together in a blender and stir them all up -and out came Dianetics! All the examples in the book -some 200 “real-life experiences” -were just the result of his obsessions with abortions and unconscious states… In fact, the vast majority of those incidents were invented off the top of his head

    for the rest of the interview go to

    http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien240.html

    I know someone who got sucked into that Scientology I didn’t know he was a Scientologist until one day, about 4 years ago, he said “Rob here’s a book you should read.” He passed me Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard. I laughed and said “L. Con Flubbfart ha forget it.” For the first time in the years since I’ve known the guy he displayed anger and I’m talking very angry!!! Verbally with an agressive face.

    After that display he went on to talk about the ability to walk through walls, he hasn’t reached that level but he plans on getting there etc… I’ve also heard of that course from an ex-Scientologist and neither of them know each other.

    A common brainwashing technique used by cults is that of malnutrition. By supplying a diet to their subjects that lacks the proper amount of proteins, vitamins, and minerals necessary for a healthy body and mind their subjects easily fall prey to suggestion whether it is direct through discussion or indirect through literature.

    Here’s a website that describes some of the unusual deaths of Scientology members

    http://www.whyaretheydead.net/

  20. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. Dai Kiwi
    Alien

    Bare-Faced Messiah

    The CoS tried and failed to stop publication of Russell Miller's well-researched biography of Hubbard - "Bare-Faced Messiah". Miller later had the decency to make a plain-text version of the book available for free download. See:

    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/miller/

    Look for the gzip link about 3/4 the way down.

    Also available at a bunch of other places on the net including bittorrent sites where it qualifies as one of the legitimate/legal shares.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    They look like normal people to me?

    Lots of photos at http://scientology-london.com/leaks/ - to be fair, the scientologists looks like normal people to me.

    I suppose their expensive libel lawyers (the likes of Carter-Ruck law firm) have no juristrisction over the internets? Is that right?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    A good enough reason to wipe it out...

    ......... Mr "Pint-sized" Hollywood himself , Mr T. Cruise and a few others ever noticed the more money they have the more they "rave" about this "religion"

    Me I'm a Christian, not a catholic, prodi, anglican, etc but Christian and well it's Kabala with Aliens.

    Me personally I think it's a load of horse ****, it's true what they say repeat something enough times to people and they believe it.

  24. Ian

    @ P. Lee

    "Which, having studied Nazi Germany at A-Level, I would have to agree with.

    You can have a go at refuting the logic at http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/1675/"

    It's a shame you didn't study philosophy or even formal logic in maths else you may have easily spotted the logical flaws, or at least the most important one.

    The most important logical flaw occurs in the very premise of the article, they infer that because Nazi's based their ideas on evolutionary theory that evolutionary theory must be wrong or in some way a bad thing. This is of course wrong as it is a blatant logical fallacy.

    Reading further there are countless other fallacies, I can only imagine that if you think the logic in the article you mention is free of flaws that you must be an ignorant religious nut who believes that crap.

    You do at least make a prime example of why Scientology is a threat, because you demonstrate that people can write an article that is from the very outset flawed and continues to make conclusions based on flawed logic throughout and people like you will still fall for it hook lie and sinker. The point is, if someone can get people to believe something that is so clearly wrong to those capable of following logical, reasoned argument to make a point by insisting truth where there isn't truth then it's fairly trivial to get these people who can't see the flaws in such texts to believe pretty much anything if the text is written in an equally forceful (but still false) manner.

  25. Xpositor
    Flame

    Not so different?

    Comparing just two religions...

    One believes in a fantastical all-encompassing being, that directly affects everybodies lives, which when examined logically is somewhat crazy and certainly cannot be proven, and stems from a book that was written. The other is Scientology.

    One religion attempts to extract as much money as possible from its followers, typically 10% of an individual's income. The other is Scientology.

    One religion does not believe in the scientific theory of evolution, and is so blinkered in its views that the 'most powerful' country on the planet prevents the theory from being taught in schools. The other is Scientology.

    One religion attempts to cover up the wrong-doings of its members, even when those actions are the exact opposite of what it preaches, and can cause permanent physical and mental damage to those affected. The other is Scientology.

    One religion tries to convert non-believers to its way of thinking through aggressive tactics, using one of many 'Armies' that it has in its name; some variants of the religion do not allow you to leave once you have joined, employing strong-arm tactics especially against the vulnerable. The other is Scientology.

    And I could go on. By the way, I support Scientology no more than any other religion, which is diddly squat, but it does get to me how many of the arguments become very blinkered and people are ignorant of the actions and perceptions of their 'own' religion.

    Flames, as no doubt I will burn in somebody's hell for this.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    It's the crimes

    It's not the beliefs of Scientology which are pretty strange unto themselves. It's the flagrent disregard for the law, the abuse of the legal system to intimidate and silence criticism, the underhanded tactics of isolation, stalking, and harassment that targets people who speak out or try to leave, the laundry list of crimes they've been charged with, the failure to obey child and minimum wage labor laws, the documented history in court documents of physical and sexual abuse, the tactics of suppressing free speech, and a tax exemption status in the United States that no other religion enjoys which violates the establishment clause.

    If they want to believe in aliens, fine. If people want to throw their money away in a pyramid scheme to get super powers and learn how to fly, that's their own mistake. When they try to censor me and use my tax money to fund their crazy abuse, then I have a problem.

  27. Kevin Gage
    Stop

    Read Between The Lines

    First of all ... "assaults" ? Pretty harsh considering this is a group that serves cake and plays music in the face of screaming, threatening, slapping, punching Scientologists. Watch the videos; these protesters are on the front-line against an organization of hate, ignorance, bigotry & harassment.

    Secondly, the posts here using "other religions" ... Anonymous doesn't attack people's beliefs - Anonymous is after Scientology for their (worldwide) criminal activities, civil & human rights abuses and the list of deaths the COS is responsible for; The Anonymous statement is simple, "Scientology is not a religion." It's why several religious groups have joined the cause and why Scientology is so desperate to make real churches think "they're next".

    We expect the largest uprising to happen in the UK. People will only take oppression for so long before their fear turns into rage. The blockading of free speech, the burning of books and challenging human rights ... Has the UK learned nothing from the past 100 years ? Expect Us.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Xpositor

    >One believes in a fantastical all-encompassing being, that directly affects everybodies lives, >which when examined logically is somewhat crazy and certainly cannot be proven, and stems >from a book that was written. The other is Scientology.

    Which has an even stranger and less plausible theory?

    >One religion attempts to extract as much money as possible from its followers, typically 10% >of an individual's income. The other is Scientology.

    Which attempts to extract *all* of its followers money?

    >One religion does not believe in the scientific theory of evolution, and is so blinkered in its >views that the 'most powerful' country on the planet prevents the theory from being taught in >schools. The other is Scientology.

    Which teaches its own brand of crazy instead?

    >One religion attempts to cover up the wrong-doings of its members, even when those actions >are the exact opposite of what it preaches, and can cause permanent physical and mental >damage to those affected. The other is Scientology.

    Sounds just like Scientology to me. Lisa McPherson?

    >One religion tries to convert non-believers to its way of thinking through aggressive tactics, >using one of many 'Armies' that it has in its name; some variants of the religion do not allow >you to leave once you have joined, employing strong-arm tactics especially against the >vulnerable. The other is Scientology.

    Lisa McPherson?

    >And I could go on. By the way, I support Scientology no more than any other religion, which is >diddly squat, but it does get to me how many of the arguments become very blinkered and >people are ignorant of the actions and perceptions of their 'own' religion.

    You *really* need to research scientology if you think it's a group of harmless wackos. Plenty of information out there.

    However you I believe are a scientologist AICMFP.

    Why not do some reading of your own, as you say above the Scientologists won't be cross if you read something 'Enturbulating' will they? They'll certainly not make you go through more auditing, consider you a PTS and RPF you will they? No risk of being declared Supressive?

    >Flames, as no doubt I will burn in somebody's hell for this.

    Or just be alternately people will just feel sorry for you until you finally get sick of it and blow. Life is so much more fun when you're not a hubbardtard.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    RE: Why? Libel Tourism

    Carter Ruck being the most infamous

  30. Robert Lindblad

    Scientology: All you really need to know

    Here’s part of The June 1983 Penthouse Magazine interview with L.Ron Hubbard Jr.

    Hubbard: Scientology is a power-and-money-and-intelligence-gathering game. To use common, everyday English, Scientology says that you and I and everybody else willed ourselves into being hundreds of trillions of years ago -just by deciding to be. We willed ourselves into being ourselves. Through wild space games, interaction, fights, and wars in the grand science-fiction tradition, we created this universe -all the matter, energy, space, and time of this universe. And so through these trillions of years, we have become the effect of our own cause and we now find ourselves trapped in bodies. So the idea of Scientology “auditing” or “counseling” or “processing” is to free yourself from your body and to return you to the original godlike state or, in Scientology jargon, an operating Thetan -O.T. We are all fallen gods, according to Scientology, and the goal is to be returned to that state.

    Penthouse: And what is the Church of Scientology?

    Hubbard: It’s one of my father’s many organizations. It was formed in 1953, basically to avoid the harassment of my father by the medical profession and the IRS. The idea of Scientology didn’t really exist before that point as a religion, but my father hit upon turning it into a church after he started feeling pressured.

    Penthouse: Didn’t your father have any interest in helping people?

    Hubbard: No.

    Penthouse: Never?

    Hubbard: My father started out as a broke science-fiction writer. He was always broke in the late 1940s. He told me and a lot of other people that the way to make a million was to start a religion. Then he wrote the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health while he was in Bayhead, New Jersey. When we later visited Bayhead, in about 1953, we were walking around and reminiscing -he told me that he had written the book in one month.

    Penthouse: There was no church when he wrote the book?

    Hubbard: Oh, no, no. You see, his goal was basically to write the book, take the money and run. But in 1950, this was the first major book of do-it-yourself psychotherapy, and it became a runaway best-seller. He kept getting, literally, mail trucks full of mail. And so he and some other people, including J. W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction , started the Dianetics Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the post office kept backing up and just dumping mail sacks into the building. The foundation had a staff that just ran through the envelopes and threw away anything that didn’t have any money in it.

    Penthouse: People sent money?

    Hubbard: Yeah, they wanted training and further Dianetic auditing, Dianetic processing. It was just an incredible avalanche.

    Penthouse: Did he write the book off the top of his head? Did he do any real research?

    Hubbard: No research at all. When he has answered that question over the years, his answer has changed according to which biography he was writing. Sometimes he used to write a new biography every week. He usually said that he had put thirty years of research into the book. But no, he did not. What he did, reaily, was take bits and pieces from other people and put them together in a blender and stir them all up -and out came Dianetics! All the examples in the book -some 200 “real-life experiences” -were just the result of his obsessions with abortions and unconscious states… In fact, the vast majority of those incidents were invented off the top of his head

    for the rest of the interview go to

    http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien240.html

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