Airbus Ditches onto New York River

The Hindu : Front Page : Airbus ditches onto New York river

Amazing...

Birds flying into reactors was a problem of the past I thought. I guess that if it happens as the plane is taking off, the reactors are not up to speed yet and so may be vulnerable.

Gaza

VOA News - Israel to Vote on Gaza Truce

I have not followed this question closely and have barely read anything about it but I have seen a lot of spam mentioning what about all the deaths in Gaza etc.

What I do remember reading early on, before all this started, was that Hamas declared they are not going to renew the truce agreement they had with Israel when it expired a few weeks ago.

At first sight, again without having all the details about it, this seems utterly stupid to me, because without truce Israel is basically free to get in and do whatever operation they want which they could not if there was a truce. And what do the Palestinians gain from it? They are in no position to fight the might of Tsahal.

Christian Pastors Embrace Scientology

Some Christian pastors embrace Scientology - CNN.com: "Two pastors who spoke recently with CNN explained that when it comes to religion, they still preach the core beliefs of Christianity. But when it comes to practicing what they preach in a modern world, borrowing from Scientology helps."

Tl;dr for now but potentially interesting.

Life in the Gray Field

From l.l.lipshitz:

"see, that's the problem. alot of people here see the world in black and white only. not me. i'm very grey."

That's the problem with people like me who see the good and the bad on both sides. It may be a bit boring. Possibly a bit very gray.

Make things very dramatic, very black and white, and it starts getting "alive".

That may be why we like Hollywood films. Easy to understand, and of course, the good guys always win. We know that! But still we get involved in the intricacies of the movie... Try to make the bad guy win and everybody would go back home depressed...

But, hey, you know what? Live is not a Hollywood film! And things simply are not that simple...

In real life, alas, sometimes the bad guy win. But then, are there really "bad" and "good" guys to start with? I don't think so...

See? I told you. Boring...

So if you get bored, stop for a while and look around you. That's where the colors really are. That's were life is. You may even want to switch off your computer and take a walk!

Jason Beghe Message to Anonymous - Grow Up!

New York - Jason Beghe to Anonymous: Grow Up - Runnin' Scared - Village Voice: "Since that game is over, they ought to create a new one."

I wrote earlier that I partly agree with Beghe when he advises Anonymous to drop their masks, but I also agree with him when he says: "Since that game is over, they ought to create a new one", and I think this new game is a deeper and more mature look into Scientology. I have been saying this for months already.

However, I still do not see that taking place. Quite on the contrary I continue to be aghast at the shallowness and cultishness of Anonymous. The last example, apart for the pubes, of course, is this one:

"Scientologists Targeting HIV-Positive Protesters" - Story spreading

And here we go!
Scientology Accused of Singling out HIV+ Protesters :: EDGE Boston
Scientologists Targeting HIV-Positive Protesters / Queerty
Scientology lobbying to restrict rights of HIV+ — Bearnaked Joe’s
$cientology’s unethical practices on its dissidents | inlandutopia.com

And some Scilon Spin-control
Another Look at Scientology: HIV+ Rumor Only a Rumor

In the blog entry referred to in this message above, I agreed that "If the CoS really obtained information from their private health records and were using this against them it would indeed be outrageous." but I questioned whether this has in effect been happening, and I cautioned against spreading a story based on rumors only.

What does Anonymous do? They call my blog entry "Scilon Spin-control" and then set out to spread the story without even having all the facts.

That's the kind of immature, childish, and cultish behavior I am talking about. They just don't care for the truth, as long as it makes Scientology look bad.

I thus fully concur with Beghe's message: Anonymous: Grow Up! If you can't switch to the higher gear, you will forever remain... anonymous.

R-pubes- related blog entries

Related web pages:

• http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/gays_and_scientologists.htm

Anonymous - Show Your Human Side

New York - Jason Beghe to Anonymous: Grow Up - Runnin' Scared - Village Voice: "I think Anonymous should be very proud of what they accomplished. And they should know that the Church of Scientology is nothing to be afraid of. Maybe their next game should be 'Naked Anonymous.' And I don't mean take your pants off. I mean take your masks off. Show them that you're not afraid."

Beghe is partly right. Anonymous should take off their mask when they speak to an individual Scientologist, but they cannot take off their mask when they protest, since the mask has now of sort become a trademark and symbol of Anonymous.

I myself launched the idea on Dec. 11 of "Operation Drop the Masks" but also qualified the idea on Dec 12. when I saw that what I wrote was partly misunderstood. I think indeed they should drop the mask, but I realize that this is not possible at this stage when they protest.

So, the above seems like a good compromise. Anonymous could keep their mask while protesting Scientology, the corporation, and could put down their mask when they need to show their human side.

I think there's a kind of poetic message in that, somewhere...


Blog entries in this series:

• Jan 15: Anonymous - Show Your Human Side
  
• Dec 12: Should Anonymous Unmask?
  
• Dec 11: Operation Drop the Masks

Ingo Swann - Father of Remote Viewing

Who Is Ingo Swann?: "Ingo Swann is the father of remote viewing. Swann developed the protocol for and conducted the first-ever remote viewing experiment, and coined the term for it in 1971 while working with researchers at the American Society of Psychical Research in New York."


Links:

• Ingo Swann: Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology
• International Remote Viewing Association
• Ingo Swann - Scientology Service Completions | Truth About Scientology Statistics Project
• Ingo Swann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Greasy Vandal in Hate Crime Arrested

Greasy vandal in hate crime vs. Scientology: "Mahoud Samed Almahadin - the name he gave cops - tossed a number of books around, then smeared the petroleum jelly on a TV set, shelves and himself during the incident at the W. 46th St. Scientology center last week."

This refers to the incident I reported on Jan. 10, and in which I wrote "Next time I hope they prevent the guy from exiting and charge him with vandalism and invasion of private property."

Well, they did not need to restrain him, as he was foolish enough to boast about it on the Internet and so could be traced.

I think there are two interesting aspects here:

1. The tendency of Anonymous to post their "peaceful protests" misdeeds on the Internet.
2. The tendency of Anonymous and Scientology critics to cheers and support such acts (at least a fair amount of them).
   

Here are three other examples, unrelated in their gravity but who all have the two elements above.

1. Angry Gay Pope posting his harassment of a young Scientology lad for two hours, something for which he ultimately earned a restraining order.
2. Pekka-Eric Auvinen, responsible for the Jokela school shooting that occurred on Nov. 7, 2007, posting on 4chan his intent to do it " in the name of anonymous" and encouraged in his act by his fellow anons who even cheered him as it happened in direct.
3. Tory Christman Magoo posting a video in the wake of the emotions generated by the Jett Travolta tragedy and in which she is blatantly lying, supported and cheered by critics.
   

R-pubes- related blog entries

Waterboarding Is Torture

The Associated Press: Obama's AG pick breaks from Bush on torture, GTMO: "With just three words, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder capped years of angry debate over U.S. counterterrorism policy and declared a major break from the Bush administration."

Certainly a very welcome change from coward hypocritical idiot incompetent Gonzales.

Still, somehow, it reeks of too little too late... Will the US ever be able to make up for all the wrong the Bush administration has done for eight looooong freaking years ? I wonder... It certainly is not going to be overnight...

Going to Work Naked

I don't know who wrote this and what the hell does it do in such a lurid newsgroup as ARS, but I like it:-) Thus repost... Maybe it will eventually lead to something on-topic later, but anyway the journey so far is not bad either...

Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (1) - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups


Update Jan 15: I received the following email from Carol:

You have an article of mine on your blog, "Going to Work Naked," which is copyright protected. Please take it down immediately.

Carol L. Skolnick, Clear Life

Solutions

Certified Facilitator of The Work of Byron Katie

ClearLifeSolutions.com

Blog: Soul Surgery

carol@clearlifesolutions.com

831-425-1870

"Open mind, clear life."

So I took down the article, even though it was only Part 1 which I think is a good enticement to the rest of THE WORK, and as such I think could be considered faire Use.

Anyway, in the meantime I changed my mind a bit about the whole thing. I did like Part 1, but the subsequent parts did not quite live up to my expectations. As Monica so wittingly said: " I think I'll pass, since it sounds like the food at her seminars is just horrible".

The link to ARS still to THE WORK (sic) because the posts seems to be still there. You'll have to take it up with Google, Carol. By all means, I am not going to bother linking to subsequent parts if ever they get posted.


Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (2) - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups
Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (3) - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups
Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (4) - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups
Going to Work Naked: My Journey to Byron Katie (5) - alt.religion.scientology | Google Groups

Anonymous Message to Scientology Taken Down!

"ANONYMOUS" IS A HATEGROUP CURRENTLY STALKING AND PERSECUTING RELIGIOUS MINORITIES: ANONYMOUS REELING FROM RECENT LOSS OF ICONIC "MESSAGE TO SCIENTOLOGY" VIDEO

"Anonymous' "Project Chanology" was launched as their initial "MESSAGE TO SCIENTOLOGY" video was uploaded. A couple days ago, the video mysteriously disappeared from the internet, along with the account hosting it"

Incredible... And this virtually on their one year celebration!

Apparently YT itself took it down, following some complain from some unknown entity for an unknown reason, which, IMO, is illegal. Everybody should have a right to know the reason they are being penalized so that they can contest it (which reminds me when Kady O'Malley and Rob Clark banned me from their pet IRC channel and they never responded to my request to know why even though the channel said to contact so and so... But then we are not dealing here with some supposedly open pet channels ran by "free speech" hypocrits, but with the almighty YT, for God sake).

Anyway... I did find an interesting comment:

"Anonymous said...

Gentlemen,

We are fucking sick of the continuous misuse of Anonymous.

Project Chanology will be used in reverse, yes you read that right, it will be used against every single moralfaggot, until they learn the lesson not to fuck with Anonymous. They are a bunch of fucktards wannabe heroes. The moralfaggots have been under the thumb of the old guard to this very day.

The wrath of Anonymous will be upon them.

Start finding your name. If your name is not listed its not because we don’t know it. We just want you to be glued to your computer screen chewing your nails every day to see if your name appears on our Internets. It won’t be just your name everything else about you and connected to you will be made public.

Anonymous took on scientology for the lulz. It wasn’t meant to be a fucking long prank. We had our lulz, we moved on.

We took down enturbulation.org.

WWP is getting inoculated with its very own anti-cancer cure.

We has WWP DB, and we have moar.

Do you think socal anon have a secret surprise that will be announced on 17 January? We know your doo dah plan and we will be there with you to fuck you up like you have never been fucked up before. That’s just a taste of what we are doing for the socal cocksuckers. Other wannabe anon will get a different type of medicine for their cancer on January 17th.

Anonymous delivers.
*long list of names"
January 14, 2009 4:22 PM "

Unification Church Lection Imprisoned

nurel : Message: Unification Church lection imprisoned in Kazakhstan: "A few days ago, a lecturer for the Unification Church in Kazakhstan, Elizaveta Drenicheva, was sentenced to two years in prison, essentially for teaching the UC's version of the doctrine of original sin. She is currently in jail awaiting her appeal. The basis for her conviction is that it is illegal in KZ to denigrate another person or group on the basis of their lineage, and the UC teaches that its members produce children free from original sin.

More at http://moon.foreignlands.org/rep/jan09/Drenicheva/drenicheva.html"

More Speculations About the HIV+ Claim

Riverside County ordinance curtailing Scientology protests suspended | L.A. Now | Los Angeles Times: "Officers also asked two of the men whether they were HIV-positive, protesters said."

Could that be the source of much speculations of late? Critics jumped the gun as usual and made accusations based on nothing but rumors we know little about. Some even advanced the possibility that the information could have come from their PC folders, when two out of the three protesters never were in the Church to start with and when the other has made his alleged HIV+ condition publicly known for more than twelve years.

Now...

Could it be that the officers, knowing the two were (very openly) gay, voiced their own prejudice about gays and HIV+?

Just wondering...

Update Jan 16: Scarff writes in a post to ARS: "The LA Times reporter present informed Graham Berry that Muriel blurted the information out."

So now we have a 5th hand account... Muriel --> Journalist --> Berry --> Scarff. And that is assuming that the Journalist heard it directly and not from the officer. Besides, it is unclear from Scarff's post whether this information was blurted out about the two of them or about Scarff only.

Besides, if the LA Times did have this information, why did it not report it in it article? It only said "Officers also asked two of the men whether they were HIV-positive, protesters said".

So far, I have not seen a shred of proof to sustain the initial allegation that: "Scientology had obtained and distributed personal medical information from the private health records of AGP and Happy Smurf".

But that won't prevent Anonymous moralfags at WhyWeBWAAAAAAA to spread the story and call those with legitimate questions as to whether we have evidence that the story is true to engage in "Scilon Spin-control" - another notorious example of Anonymous' motto "dox or STFU", which they brag about but do not apply.


Relevant links:

• Apr. 25, 1997 letter from Garry Scarff where he reveals his alleged HIV+ condition
• Oct 22, 1997 Garry Scarff post where claims that he has been HIV+ for two years

Blog entries in this series:

• Jan 16: dox or STFU
  
• Jan15: Jason Beghe Message to Anonymous - Grow Up!
• Jan 14: More Speculations About the HIV+ Claim
• Jan 13: HIV+ Rumor Only a Rumor

Related web pages:

• http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/gays_and_scientologists.htm

The Riverside County Ordinance Farce Continues

Riverside County ordinance curtailing Scientology protests suspended | L.A. Now | Los Angeles Times: "Supervisor Roy Wilson moved to have the ordinance suspended for a month while county counsel and the Sheriff's Department determined exactly where protesters could assemble and what form their protests could take."

Back in Jan. 6 I wrote how this ordinance looked ridiculous, unenforceable without clear rules. This is exactly what happened.

The information I quoted yesterday from unreliable source IndyBay, that "the revision preserved Anonymous' right to protest in its usual position across from the main gate" appears indeed not that simple, and conflicting information about that bit now arise.

It now appears that Church lawyer Sam Alhadeff said last week that under the ordinance, protesters could stand next to the compound gates — not 50 feet away — as long as the demonstration doesn't take place adjacent to a church-owned residence.

Well, that's a hell of an ambiguous statement, not resolving anything.

In my opinion, the person to blame in this story is County Counsel Pamela Walls. She should not have let such an ambiguity go unchallenged, and should have pinpointed in advance where exactly the protesters could picked and see to it that the sheriff's office gets properly briefed.


Related blog entries:

• Jan 17: Is Close-in Pictures of Passer-By Legal?
  
• Jan 14: The Riverside County Ordinance Farce Continues
  
• Jan 13: Riverside Ordinance - New Information
  
• Jan 06: Riverside Ordinance Prevents Picketing
  
• Dec 18: Barbz Gets a Letter
  
• Dec 09: Anonymous 2.0

OT - Whale Sharks

I was thinking while posting about my elephant story on how after a while you just walk among them like if they were just horses. You are not afraid at all, even though they could kill you in no time. Then I remembered about the same experience I had swimming with whale sharks in the Philippines. Now those animals are huge. I mean, huge... They can reach 30 meters. And they are sharks, for God sake, not whales. They are just called whale because they are big. They are in fact the biggest fish on earth (a whale is bigger but not a fish as everybody knows).

However, they only eat plankton and are totally pacific. At the beginning you are terrified (at least I was) at the thought of swimming with such a huge shark. The most impressive in the beginning is when you get face to face with them, and then they just dive to avoid you. But after a while you get so used to it, it's just like with the elephants. You get so used to it that in a way you don't realize the danger even. A bit like for the fear of flying when you fly a lot.

By the way, the Philippines is a good country to see dolphins in the wild too. A fabulous experience. You get to see them better than in Bali. I crossed the whole Bali island in the night so I could be early morning dolphin watching, but I barely saw their nose only, at best. In the Philippines they were really swimming along the boat and jumping. Wonderful...

Snorkeling is a bit sad in the Philippines because although they do have a few sanctuaries of dubious protections, most of the spots get fished with dynamite and cyanide, when they don't just harpoon the fishes. I saw a guy one day having a lot of beautiful color fishes on his harpoon. I tried to tell him that we was damaging tourism but he didn't care. I tried to speak to the resort owner who said they can't do much because these people living and if the resort owners tries to do anything they'll start making trouble for the resort.

It's illegal of course and they do have all kinds of laws but they simply don't have the means to enforce them. Once I saw a speed boat donated by some Western country to the maritime police so they could catch people involved in illegal fishing, but they had no gasoline to run the boat and no one who could drive it!

Sad...

But anyway, they did used to hunt whale sharks in the past too but not anymore. At least for this they understood that revenue from tourism is much more profitable. Highly advised... If you dare...