More information on that incident is unfolding now.
"ANONYMOUS" IS A GANG OF CYBER-BULLIES AND ANTI-RELIGION EXTREMISTS: "ANON-ORANGE" PROVOKED AN ATTACK ON HIMSELF AS A PUBLICITY STUNT
"Several months ago, fifty-five year old Anonymous member 'Anon-Orange' (see below) screamed out '..FUCK YOU!' into the face of a security guard patrolling the perimeter of the Church of Scientology's Gold Base. The guards had repeatedly warned 'Anon-Orange' that he was indeed trespassing, and clearly didn't expect such a heated response.
As per their standard operating procedure, the security guard necessarily detained 'Anon-Orange' for trespassing and for acting aggressively.
Strangely, the videos which surfaced onto Youtube.com at the time of the incident neglected to show the provocative "...FUCK YOU!" which precipitated the arrest:
The videos which surfaced made it appear as though the arrest was in violation of his rights. Evidentally, this is the spin which Anonymous seeks to perpetuate. They want you to see "Scientology Bad Guys" attacking "Anonymous Good Guys".
So today, Anon-Orange just released his own footage, which sheds more light on the issue. Namely, that Anon-Orange provoked the attack."
You can watch the video on the page above or on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8FFCNZifvU
More related information, that appeared in ARS today, although the background and time of this incidents reported are unclear at this stage:
Agent Orange Goes Back to Jail - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups:
"After this morning's arraignment, AO is back in jail.An offer was made to drop the charges down to a 3rd degree misdemeanor with a $100 fine if AO would admit to screaming and yelling at Danny Dunigan. Graham advised AO to take the offer, which also would have allowed AO to protest Gold at his leisure, but AO refused it.
Following this, Scilon attorney Eliott Abelson informed the judge that AO had violated the court order given at the last arraignment on three occasions:
-AO had been ordered to stay away from Danny Dunigan, yet within 20 minutes he was filmed on the steps of the courthouse cursing at Dunigan and shoving a camera in his face.
-AO had been ordered to stay away from Gold Base, yet he has been filmed driving around Gold on two separate occasions.
Abelson said they may also be charging AO for his harassing behavior toward Catherine Fraser following one of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors meetings.
AO was escorted out of the courtroom by the deputies and bail was set at $2,500."
4 comments:
It didn't look like much of a "beating" to me -- XenuBarb probably has a case against them, though, for minor assault. It appears all she was trying to do was to recover Anon's property and the security guards wouldn't have had any right to that.
Why do you think Scientology provokes such extreme opposition? I don't think it's because they're "extremely bad" -- though, I do think Scientology is extremely stupid. Stupidity alone isn't enough to provoke such responses.
I think maybe Scientology -- or SCIENTOLOGISTS -- really "push" a certain kind of person's "buttons". At this point, figuring out what those buttons are is probably the most interesting thing about the whole Anon v Scientology thing.
"Why do you think Scientology provokes such extreme opposition?"
That's of course a very interesting question, Rebecca. Of course, I can only offer my opinion about it, which is what it is, and I would actually have to think about it as I write, since I don't have a ready-made answer for it.
There must be something in Scientology that generates this kind of passion, either for or against. One of those things, I think, is the fact that it is unlike other religions. We had centuries to deal with "normal" religions, so it is not that big an issue anymore (even though it can of course generate passion as well, but it does not seem to reach the same kind of people).
Scientology's reach goes farther than normal religion, because it seems to invade our own space in other fields. It attacks psychiatry, and we may have an issue with that. It pretends, of sort, to regulate the Internet, and we may resent this as well.
And most of all, it does not want to go away. We think that with the advent of the Internet, free communication, information widely available, it will mean the end of such groups as Scientology. And yet, 12+ years after ARS, it is still there. It buys expensive historical buildings, celebrities still swear by it and very few comparatively recant, not a single org closed doors, and even though the overall numbers of Scientologists are really small, new ones open, etc.
So, it's invasive to issues we may feel concerned about, and it's a formidable opponent, one that resists and one that would not hesitate to strike back with money, lawyers, detectives, of which it seems to have plenty.
Reading classical criticism, we think it is "obvious" that it really is a scam. It asks loads of money for results and rationale that appears to us as rubbish, it indoctrinates its members, it ruthlessly attacks its enemies, and it pretends to be a religion when in fact it doesn't even preaches about God and it even deems Christianity as a mere implant.
So, I think, these would be three of the reasons why it would provoke such an extreme opposition: invasion of private issues, resilience,and apparent obvious scam.
Obviously, opponents to Scientology, such as "old guard" critics and Anonymous (I don't think there is a basic difference between the two), find "meaning" in fighting that "evil". In their mind they of course are the "good" ones in this scenario. And thus, they get into a sort of messianic zeal about it.
Plus, it has a group dynamic aspect. Critics and Anonymous are part of their own community, and people who are in the front lines are sort of "heroes" who get cheered by their own crowds for their actions, which of course reinforces the gratification that supports their "noble fight".
Now with Anonymous we get of course an additional dimension. In 1996, the advent of the Internet brought in a new wave of critics. There of course were always critics before, but the new wave were people who got involved because Scientology attacked what they held as something holy and revolutionary, and they thought it was evil and that very instrument, the Internet, reflection of freedom, will destroy that evil. It didn't succeed. With Anonymous, it is similar, albeit in a different aspect. Anonymous existed before and it viewed itself also as a new wave of sort.It felt powerful because it could gather numbers to hack web sites and engage in all kinds of pranks, not only thanks to the new tools the Internet would provide, but also because of their anonymity. They developed a new philosophy based on that anonymity, one that has "no leader" and where the group would act out of spontaneous consensus. They thought that revolutionary aspect was revolutionary enough to deal with something as powerful as Scientology.
While it initially got a formidable response, much like the critical movement of 1996, it also realized that, in spite of all their revolutionary aspects, Scientology just isn't going to go away. This sort of "invalidates" their new philosophy. Many people have just turned away from this "fight", and those who remain are the hardcore ones. They get increasingly desperate in face of lack of results, as even the press has lost interest in them. This explains, IMO, the type of actions taken by people like anon-orange or the pubes guys.
I hope I did not make this too long and remained on-topic somewhat :-)
"Plus, it has a group dynamic aspect."
You make a good point. There does seem to be a LOT of reinforcing behavior among the really active critics. It really does seem to me that, as often as not, the public protests are done for the benefit of other critics (in terms of providing video they can all watch online and antics they can congratulate one another for) -- and hardly every with a realistic aim of informing the public or changing the minds of Scientologists.
Nothing but scientologists here!
Post a Comment