Anonymous Crashes CoS' Christmas Party

Anonymous made sure to be an uninvited guess at the CoS' Christmas party in Columbus, attended by Scientologists and their children. See how they brag about it here and here, with its usual cortege of approving and cheering anons and OGs.

I would say that, in addition to shrinking in numbers, Anonymous seems to have strayed very far away from its initial goal as well. When was the last time the CoS went to a Christmas party attended by critics and their children with signs branding them as criminals?

An Idea of Stats

It's hard to keep stats of the number in the monthly anti-Scientology protests those days, since they are not rounded up anymore, and they are not always reported for individual locations either. I guess it would be possible to draw a figure but it would take an awful lot of time. Not worth it.

To have an idea, though, I have taken a quick look at the Dec 13 entries for the London post game, as London was always by far the biggest player in the field.

If this post is true, and there are no other entries about numbers (really I did not wade in all details through the 9 full pages posted that far), then we are speaking of a maximum of 20!

This for a location that peaked at 725 in March and was still at 566 in July when all the rest of the world took the plunge, and was still at 120 back in September!

The LA Times Makes Amend

The other day I wrote that the LA Times ignored Anonymous in its yearly review. However, in its specific review on the impact of the Internet in 2008, it does acknowledge the movement:

Anonymous lives: In March, a video of Tom Cruise extolling the values of Scientology leaked onto YouTube. When Scientology officials tried to stamp it from the site, the church drew the ire of young Internet denizens around the world, spawning a wave of masked protest that put Scientology on the defensive.

PS - the LA Times is wrong, however, to claim that the video was leaked in March.