Friday, July 4, 2008

Beck New Albums is Out

Beck new album is out.

Hollywood.tv Not to Pass Judgement

Hollywood.tv "is not there to pass judgment on celebrities, so we don’t care if they are Hindu, Christian or into Scientology."

David Feherty Regrets Savaging Tom Cruise

David Feherty, the former professional golfer who now works as a writer and broadcaster and who savaged Tom Cruise because he said depression was best cured by physical exercise, now says that part of his reaction was due to the fact that
"if I kicked the hell out of Tom Cruise, I'd feel a lot better about myself"
That may also be partly why celebrities are so easy targets for so many.

Increase of Neutral Sites on Google Top 10 on Scientology

Google top 10 on Scientology used to be replete with critical web sites. Now only xenu.net and scientology-lies.com remain. A good trend is that relatively neutral web sites now figure prominently on the top ten: Wikipedia (which is even on 2nd place now ahead of xenu.net), religioustolerance.org (4th), and beliefnet.com (5th). The rest are official Scientology web sites (four in total).

Head OSA Netherlands wild screaming running into nearby police department

After mooning old ladies and chasing Scientologists with loudspeakers on the street, here is another example of what Anonymous find "lulz" in their "peaceful protests":

"Today anonymous Holland set up an Epic event. For a new TV program "cuffed" the Head of OSA was set up to be handcuffed out on the street.

However Julia Rijnvis by accident found out that she was going to be handcuffed in a second and ran away (while loud and wild screaming) into the nearby police departement.

Of course the whole team of the National TV station ran after her to film the whole thing, even within the police department.

Still 10 minutes of wonderful material. :) There.

The name of the TV show is called in dutch "boeiend" which translated would mean "chained" of "something which attracks a lot of attention". The whole show is about chaining someone and then someone runs away with the keys of the handcufs. The person will not be freed untill certain questions have been answered by the person chained. This all is recorded on the camera of the dutch national TV station KRO.

Wonder when the first youtube video's of this event will appear.
"
In fact the youtube video's may never appear. After OG started to object to such tactic in ARS, Anonymous started to back pedal on their bicycle and claim they had nothing to do with it, even though the initial message clearly indicated it was something they themselves setup. Here again we see the Anonymous policy at work: "Good is us bad is not us". How very convenient.

Will Smith Gives Gift Card for Personality Test

Will Smith claims he is not a Scientologist and that his upcoming school, though using Scientology Study Tech method, is not a Scientology school. Nevertheless, after shooting finished on Hancock, he reportedly gave crew members a gift card for one personality test at any Scientology centre. This may still not mean that he is a Scientologist himself, but it is pushing it a bit.

Anons Increasingly Ignored by Scientologists

Anons are increasingly getting quietly ignored by Scientologists.

Anonymous didn't manage, in months of widely published protests, to change a single thing within the CoS or make a single Scientologist blow.

The protests were meant to decrease the number of Scientologists, but what is occurring in fact is that it is the number of anons that are quickly decreasing.

This post reports how Scientologists are just quietly sitting outside, in the midst of protests, maybe just getting their lunch break.

Observe the answers in the thread that claim Scientologists are "ordered" to this or that, as if they had no volition of their own and could only be ordered to do things like a robot. The photo on its own already belies such assertions.

In spite of the prodigious patience they display, however, Scientologists sometimes react not in an appropriate manner, as in this example when a Scientologist slaps the mask of an anon who was mocking him as he was cleaning up insulting inscriptions anon had been writing on the sidewalk in front of the Org.

Anons of course repeatedly try to provoke such incidents so they can claim clams are evil and they are the good "guises" who do nothing more than peacefully protest.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Faceless 'aliens' spotted in crowd at Wimbledon

Faceless 'aliens' spotted in crowd at Wimbledon - speculation is that they are celebrities seeking anonymity, some sort of campaign for some product, or the anonymous pranksters who have been protesting Scientology.

Verfassungsschutzbericht 2007

Highlights (from a critical perspective) of the "Verfassungsschutzbericht 2007" annual report issued by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution on May 15, 2008.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Jason Lee

Jason Lee - another celebrity Scientologist. Glosslip is not happy about it.

Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry for Critics

Encyclopedia Dramatica as a rather accurate description of critics in its anti-Scientology page. Worth quoting - it's almost as if it was written by me :-)

"If one wishes, one may also troll on the "other side of the fence". That is, troll the critics of Scientology. This is often the source of many epic lulz, since critics get so caught up in their "activism" in railing against Scientology, that they often don't see that they are, themselves, becoming the very model of what a Scientologist should be.

Trolling critics is generally a longer set up that your garden variety troll, but depending on the set up can last anywhere from a couple of months to over a year. The troller should find a Scientology critic message board (Operation Clambake being the largest example thereof), create an account and once situated within the community, incite chaos by doing one (or all) of the following:

  • Declare your love/admiration/respect for L.Ron Hubbard. Add that he was brilliant.
  • Start every topic and answer every question with a Hubbard quote.
  • Say that Scientology means "Study of truth" and ask the critics why they are against truth.
  • Claim that there is actual "value" in Scientology "tech"
  • Claim that Scientology is a "bona fide" religion.
  • Say that Fair Game doesn't exist. And Xenu is an invention of ex-members.
  • Claim that Scientology "helps people become more able"
  • Say that all critics are oppressors, bigots, intolerant, Nazis etc.
  • Bad mouth psychiatry
  • Suggest to bomb the Church and say it will be a kewl terrorist attack.
  • Threaten to drop docs on someone's Powerword: IRL Name on the boards.

(Note: Threatening to drop docs, or "outing" a critic is a troll ending move, but the resultant panic generates much lulz)

Any or all of the above will brand you immediately as a "Scieno", "Clam" or the entity most dreaded by the critic "community", O.S.A. which is short for Office of Special Affairs, the "dirty tricks/litigation" arm of the Scientology "Church". Many lulz ensue as the critics bad mouth you, tell you you're stupid, that Hubbard was a mad man, sling epithets and generally attempt to butthurt you with tired, cliche arguments over and over. These critics have developed a kind of "visual stealth technology" wherein if you point out that they're acting exactly like the big, bad entity they're fighting against, blinders will come down, your observation will be either categorically denied (despite the obviousness) or ignored.

Remember: these "critics" are the ones who claim to want to "help" people exit the cult of Scientology, but seem to be the first ones to drive Scientologists running screaming right back to their E-Meters for "Life Repair Handling" or courses in shattering "Suppressive Persons" (more like Smart Persons amirite?). "

Nearly Blind and Constantly Confused

Magoo not only means "nearly blind", it also means "nearly blind and constantly confused". Watch her in a thread where a poster, "Roadrunner", only asks for proof that the Admissions revealed by Armstrong are authentic. Her "answer": "OSA, OSA, OSA" and an incredibly deluded rant, while totally failing to address the simple question.

The Affirmations

Critics are totally unable to prove that the Admissions (also called the Affirmations), supposedly written by LRH, are authentic.

Indeed, the sole source for them is Gerry Armstrong, who supposedly received them from an unnamed source, supposedly re-typed them, then supposedly destroyed the original copy he received!

As to why he destroyed the handwritten copy that would have proven it coming from LRH is puzzling, except of course if it just is a cover-up to "explain" why he can't substantiate their origin and possibly just made it all up.

He claims he destroyed it for copyright reason, but this does not make much sense. At the time, Armstrong was already a fugitive from American justice because he walked away with the $800,000 he received from the CoS as part of a settlement that he repeatedly violated. Publishing the source of these Admissions or at least preserving it would not have made a difference for his case, whereas publishing them as proof such a damaging document indeed comes from LRH would have made a huge difference regarding the Scientology issue.

In this respect, the possibility that Armstrong actually wrote these Admissions himself is not that remote.

Here is a good post from this thread that summarizes the situation.


Related blog entries: R-Affirmations-

Monday, June 30, 2008

Circle Jerks

The "Circle Jerks, Noisemakers and Trolls" in ARS page is supposed to save you the trouble of reading "noise". However some of the names on the list are nothing more than dissenters to the ARS anti-Scientology consensus. These include some fine posters such Jonathon Barbera and Nec_V20, This once again speaks load about the so-called stance of "free speech" critics award themselves.

Interview with L. Ron Hubbard

A video on YouTube contains one of the rare interviews with L. Ron Hubbard. Unfortunately, it has been very heavily edited and distorted.

For example, zoom to 2:55 where Hubbard is asked to answer the question "what is Scientology". He starts to explain the origin of the word, then the commentator at 3:38 ask him to be more concrete. He let Hubbard state one single sentence then cuts abruptly and on 3:47 jumps to another out of context sentence that for the layman would be difficult to understand. Then the commentator claims "even after three hours of talking, we never got an explanation from him that we could understand" and goes on to provide his own (irrelevant and biased) interpretation. They didn't even allow the viewer to decide this for himself by letting Hubbard speak more than two sentences, mounted in such a way to make it look absurd!

This gives the tone of the whole footage. Out of three hours the team made a 26 minutes footage containing very little of the actual interview and loads of their own derogatory comments. They just selected out the few minutes in the interview that fit their obviously biased point of view.

The full uncut version of that interview is unfortunately not available.