Thursday, January 15, 2009

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
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
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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 "
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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"
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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.


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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.


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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...
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Catherine Bell


Celebrity Scientologists: Catherine Bell Gearing Up for 3rd Season of Army Wives!

I didn't know she was a Scientologist, but I do know her from JAG, Bruce Almighty, and Evan Almighty.

Do I like her so much better when she is not in army uniform? YES!
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Andrea Gerak Music


Andrea Gerak Music

Apparently a Hungarian Scientologist singer living in Sweden.
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Magoo Admits to Censorship

From Magoo's channel:
"I delete, because you don't care about me, you're here to spread what you THINK is "Black PR", and it's a distraction off of any message."
Check my previous post for example of what she deletes.

"I delete, because you don't care about me.

Magoo claims that legitimate discussion about the inconsistencies between what she says to the press and her affidavit is a sign that the poster don't "care about her". And this is why she deletes, of course, no because it contains uncomfortable truth...

you're here to spread what you THINK is "Black PR".

Magoo calls legitimate discussion about the inconsistencies between what she says to the press and her affidavit "Black PR". And this is why she deletes, of course, no because it contains uncomfortable truth...

and it's a distraction off of any message.

Magoo calls legitimate discussion about the inconsistencies between what she says to the press and her affidavit a "distraction". And this is why she deletes, of course, no because it contains uncomfortable truth...

Not only does Magoo engage in blatant lies, she also engage in censorship, and justify with blatant lies as well.

The plain and simple reason she has been deleting messages that clearly point to the inconsistencies between what she says to the press today and her affidavit from 2003 is because it clearly shows she is lying to the press today. She also has been banning their authors to prevent any sensible discussion on the subject.

The last message, from one Gymoxoq, was not deleted yet - probably because she realize that her censorship has let her opponents now to email people individually and she needs to have some sort of silly justification up to fool people into thinking she is actually addressing the issue, even though she is not, as we showed previously.
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More Proof of Magoo Censorship

It happened again. One "gaxeviw" posted four messages in the comments section of Magoo's channel. These were not spam, not offensive, just three direct addresses to comments posted by other posters, and pointing to the discrepancy between what she says and her affidavit. Here is a screen shot after the first three messages (click on the picture for a bigger rendition):


Try to find these messages now. She just deleted them!

The fourth message, that was only dealing with some question about religion and not pointing to the discrepancy between Magoo's current claim and her affidavit, is still there. This is how it looks now:
The order is slightly different because, apparently, Youtube reorganizes the comments after a while, putting replies under the posts that were replied to, rather than concentrating on top. Or maybe this is not done automatically, I don't know. You can see on this picture that the comment of gaxeviw, the fourth one that did not point to magoo's inconsistencies, is still there, now as a reply to the message that was addressed. However, the three other messages are not there anymore. They have been deleted by "free speech" Magoo.

See below an example of Youtube (automatic) reorganization. The Magoo comment you see in the first picture, which was the last message in replies she made to herself, is now indeed below the message she replied to, on the last position:

You may think that they are now under the messages that were replied to rather than at the top, but it is not the case. You can make a search on the string from the original message replied to, and you will find the message without gaxeviw reply underneath. Check it out.
Messages by one "FreedomDignity", who also questioned her on that subject, were not deleted, but those from gaxeviw were, as where those by two previous accounts, which she also blocked from posting again, just like she banned gaxeviw too.

Remember this the next time you'll see Magoo carrying her "CoS is against free speech" sign!
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Hong : Elephant Artist


Yepee - I now have my very own elephant painting!

Ever since I saw that video, I vowed that if ever I go to Chang Mai, Thailand, I will go and see that amazing feat. An elephant painting a self portrait!

One of the reasons I wanted to see it was to check if it was really true. Well, it is! It really is the elephant himself who paints it! Of course, you can see that the Mahout is holding her ear and speaks to him, so almost for sure the mahout is the one who directs the brush, via the elephant, but nevertheless!

It also has to be said that this particular elephant is a very nice being. It actually is a she, a young girl elephant born in 2001 and named "Hong". She even kissed me! OK, I gave her some banana for it, but nevertheless. I still remember to this day her soft breath on my cheek...

Then she was also the one elephant among the pack who was allowed to swim freely on to the other side, ran a bit there like a dog let free, and then came back on its own volition. Clearly a superior intellect and character, for an elephant, that is.

What surprised me was that those people there in Thailand do not seem aware that this elephant is world-famous. It was impossible for me to know while in Chang Mai where she was working. In desperation I just went to Maesa, the most known elephant camp, something like 30 km from town, even it was clear that Hong was not working there. Luckily, when I arrived there and asked for Nong, finally someone told me that she was working in another elephant camp, called Maetamann. They don't have their own web site, and they are selling her master pieces at the same prices as other paintings! As I said, they just seem unaware that they have among them a precious jewel that is worth much more!
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Scott Pilutik Not a Free Speech Activist

Breaking: Scientology international headquarters seeks ban on HIV+ protesters : Indybay: "Constitutional free speech and church-state religious issues have caught the attention of the respected UCLA professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy and Scientology critic and attorney Scott Pilutik."

This may look like constitutional free speech religious issues have only recently caught the attention of some sort of independent established attorney, Scott Pilutik, that in addition is associated in the same paragraph as a "respected UCLA professor".

In fact, Pilutk is a veteran anti-Scientologist who was still a student at law not long time ago and. to my knowledge, was a biased Scientology critic long before he even started studying law.

Since he supported the Kady O'Malley and Rob Clark driven ban against me on their pet IRC channel, whatever he would write about "free speech" does not have much credibility in my eyes.
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HIV+ Rumor Only a Rumor

Breaking: Scientology international headquarters seeks ban on HIV+ protesters : Indybay: "Outrageously, Scientology had obtained and distributed personal medical information from the private health records of AGP and Happy Smurf."

It is common knowledge that Happy Smurf is Gary Scarff, and Scarff himself has made public his alleged HIV+ status. It is thus deceptive to give the impression that this was some secret that Scientology obtained from his private health record.

I do not know about AGP, though the article notes that "Happy Smurf and AGP have confirmed they are both HIV+", whatever that means.

Besides, how does Graham Berry knows any of this, since by his own account he was not allowed inside the gate?

Now, this being said, IF true (and that, as you would notice, is a big IF), it is of course totally irrelevant that the protesters are gay or HIV+. If the CoS really obtained information from their private health records and were using this against them it would indeed be outrageous. But how do we know this is true? Critics are already jumping all around on what is only a rumor, with as the only source it seems Graham Berry, a notorious biased and unreliable anti-Scientologist. This rumor is already considered as a fact by critics who are already jumping the gun and blindly shooting everything that moves.


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Riverside Ordinance - New Information

Breaking: Scientology international headquarters seeks ban on HIV+ protesters : Indybay

I have been blogging last January 6, about what appeared to be a ridiculous ordinance preventing critics from picketing Gold base.

However, what the article did NOT say, and what apparently was also concealed by critics, is the following information to be found in that article:

"However, the revision preserved Anonymous' right to protest in its usual position across from the main gate"

So, during all this time, critics were protesting about a supposedly anti free speech ordinance when in fact it preserved their right to protest in the position where they protested before?

Furthermore, we also learn of new developments as well:

"At one point, the Sheriff's Deputies emerged and their Sergeant informed us that Scientology and the Riverside County's Legal Counsel had worked out an interpretation of Ordinances 884 and 888. Provided we did not use the name of any living Scientologist specifically, and only protested Scientology generally, we could protest up and down both sides of Highway 79."

For the rest, I am highly skeptical of the article, considering the source. IndyBay has indeed been so biased against Scientology in the past it could virtually be considered as a critic mouthpiece, with all the cultic thinking that goes with it. I would need to wait for more reliable source before considering what they claim as a worthy news item.

I already note, however, a couple of fallacies, which I blog about separately here and here.


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Dentist Settles Sexual and Scientology Harassment

Chicago dentist to settle forced Scientology, harassment case -- chicagotribune.com: "A Chicago dentist has agreed to pay $462,500 to settle federal allegations that he violated U.S. discrimination laws by sexually harassing workers and by forcing employees who wanted to keep their jobs to submit to indoctrination in the tenets of Scientology. [...] A consent decree resolves a lawsuit, but doesn't include an admission of guilt by the defendant."
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