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Scientology Injunction Denied Against "Anonymous"
Anonymous writes "A circuit court judge has denied the Church of Scientology's second request for an injunction against protests by the internet group "Anonymous." The Church sought to prevent Anonymous from protesting on the birthday of the Church's leader, the late Ron L. Hubbard. The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing."
I win!
IRL raids are not anonymous' forte. I still don't see anything coming of them. Some of us perceive ourselves as having the power to make a difference. I doubt that, because our numbers are too few.
Get out there, show how fed up you are with these people. It's not hard to protest; just show up, wear a mask, and stand on the sidewalk.
~ C.
Give 'em enough of it and they will end up hanging themselves. I think they are their own worst enemy. They don't bother me.
Your pain. It amuses me.
The judge is teh Xenu! Evil thetans rule the Earth! Tom to the rescue!
Scientology is a cult, pure and simple. I always thought it would be a fascinating exercise to research the lobbying efforts that got them tax-free status in the US and Canada.
With nothing concrete for the CoS to attack, they will hopefully hang themselves and save us the trouble. I predict a swelling of Anonymous' ranks and copycat groups in the near future.
We're never going to give them up, never going to let them down.
sage goes in all fields
Scientology's button pushing doesn't work so well when they can't find the machine the button's on.
An "injunction against protests"? In the US? Wow! They must have really touched a nerve. Keep it up!
Of course CoS had any sense at all they'd just ignore the whole thing until it blows over... but I'm counting on CoS to blow it way out of proportion. Which is exactly what Anonymous wants.
This could be an interesting showdown, especially if the protests continue to be disciplined and, well... funny!
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
What are you, some kind of coward, afraid to link your identity to your words and deeds?
Here is what Wikipedia said:
This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
It needs sources or references that appear in third-party publications. Tagged since February 2008.
It may require general cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since February 2008.
It may contain improper references to self-published sources. Tagged since February 2008.
I would have a hunch, that the "Church" itself is causing the problems on the page. First The war starts. They impose there beliefs and pull web pages from Google. I have seen a few things that they have done to try and put "Anonymous" in a bad light. I wish I could find the link, and maybe someone out there knows it. It is of a group of protesters getting arrested. The "Church" said it was "Anonymous". This was quickly debunked they the comments around the article, and found that the pictures where taken from a real protest elsewhere, and not an "Anonymous" protest. All and all i think the "Church" is a bunch of bull and don't play fair with others.
I'm now prepared to get buried by the "Church" for my negative comments against them.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
In Germany, scientology is not called a church, but a company. I think the greed parameter built into scientology makes it a company. /AC
On a more serious note though one wonders how long before they flip completely and emulate Aum Shinrikyo or Jim Jones...
FBI etc keep a *close* eye on them.
Andy
What alot of 'anonymous' are forgetting is that they _must_ only be protesting the organization Scientology, not the religion. If they keep that up it will keep them out of harms way.
The Church of Scientology. Hmph! How a religion can be invented so easily by someone who wakes up in the morning one day and just feels like making one up.
I am hereby inventing a new religion. My religion shall be called rice_burners_suck, and its adherents shall be called rice_burners_suckers. One important parameter of a religion is how many deities its adherents believe in. This is a religion of a unique type, where instead of zero, one, or multiple deities, the number of deities is negative one. This concept is often difficult for newcomers to grasp, since when counting anything, one must begin at one and proceed through the positive numbers. However, we believe that a person must work towards achieving faith in God, and believing that there is negative one of Him is part of achieving that faith.
Besides, if God can do anything, then He can choose to be counted in negative numbers.
While I don't doubt that there certainly are some idiot anons, the general consensus is that the CoS has been making up the vast majority of the threats themselves. The video they like to quote listing the threats was flagged and removed due to the actions of legions of Anonymous (and others.)
This is exactly the kind of "fair game" tactic that Anonymous are protesting. Their method of dealing with criticism is "always attack, never defend" and thus their words should never be trusted.
This is a pattern of behavior consistent with the actions of the CoS that has been going on since the 1950s. Critics are harassed and threatened. Do yourself a favor and google "operation freakout" and read up on what they did to Paulette Cooper when she tried to write a book on the Church in the 1980s.
You are aware of Operation Freakout, are you not? Wherein, among other criminal activities, Scientologists basically sent bomb threats to themselves with circumstantial evidence incriminating an author, Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book which was critical of the Church of Scientology?
I'm not saying that any or all of the death threats that the Scientologists are receiving are bogus, but there is already an established history of them attempting to manipulate the courts against people critical of them.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
On the other hand it is hard to decide whether some of the deaths caused by the cult are murder or manslaughter. I would say both groups have barbarians in their ranks.
Now excuse me, I have a couple of, uh, "cocktails" to prepare for Tom Cruise.
"The petition filed by the Church listed twenty-six individuals allegedly affiliated with Anonymous, but "accidentally" included others who merely work near the location of the first protests held in February and did not participate in them, such as a Starbucks employee. Furthermore, the Church failed to show that any of those listed actually committed any wrongdoing.""
OMG! I think I get it now!
RIAA is run by the church of scientology!
That explains everything!
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Why did the Scientology cult get the status of a church there? If you are an american, you should ask your politicians, what can be done to undo this error.
Hey folks... if you bother to read the article it explains how Scientologists are getting death threats from this group.
Good. The CoS is known to be involved in murder, torture and sexual abuse. Forget "non-violent" protest, get stuck in there.
Photograph them. Follow them. Follow them home and photograph them entering and leaving their houses. Keep shouting "Murderer!" at them, if you can. Harass them. Make their lives hell.
Don't waste your time griefing in Sadville, do it In Real Life. Make the CoS thoroughly miserable.
I'm not normally a summary-nazi, but it's L. Ron Hubbard. Not Ron L. Hubbard.
The ides of March are afoot. Tomorrow is the day.
Er, I mean, go sage yourself.
Yes, that's actually one of the things they do -they video tape everything and then comb through the footage looking for anything (identifying clothes, distinctive features, license plate numbers) they can use to identify their Suppressive Persons (ie their critics).
:-/
Posting anonymously to prevent an IRL karma hit.
if the suitcase mentioned in the article had been planted by the CoS itself to direct a public backlash against Anonymous. You can say I might need to loosen my tinfoil hat, but these sorts of tactics are precisely what the CoS does. They are extremely good at social and psychological engineering. These people are not stupid. They are unbelievably dangerous. Attempts to discredit them by mocking their beliefs in space aliens coming to Earth on DC-10s is a double-edged sword, because it then becomes far too easy to dismiss them as idiots, and not take them seriously. Their vast financial resources speak to the contrary. Now, posting as AC, I'm *sure* to get comments about my tinfoil hat.
And they usually don't apply lie-detectors on you.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
It seems so loose nit that just about anyone could claim to be part of anonymous. It's hardly an organisation. More the name of a movement. A bit like Lolcat or rick-rolling or any of other countless memes.
Anonymous wouldn't really kill anyone. It's all a big gag on squares like you.
*ahem* I mean, ANONYMOUS DOES NOT FORGIVE. GET YOUR DOGS, AND CURTAINS, LEST YOU LIVE NO MORE!
In the interest of journalism, look here, especially the "random" board.
In before rules 1 and 2.
"Denied, sir! You are the Mayor of Deniedsville! You are also teh suk. Get yourself a law degree, and a clue."
Baliff: "You've just been served!"
The court throw out the case because they couldn't prove that the individuals identified were explicitly connected to any illegal activities, not because they thought the activities were "OK".
Sydney protest footage here.
I've been on the net since gopher was cool and I'll tell you that the Scientology virus is the *worst* infection it's ever gotten. The hell with RIAA or the MPAA, they've done nothing compared to the trampling of net ideals the Scientology jerks have done.
They started by taking down anon.penet.fi, and they've been getting worse every year. The hell with all their supposed abuses, and cult like activity. It's messing with the geek stuff that pisses me off.
Get off my f*ckn net! On my f*ckn net we don't tolerate: censorship, copyright abuse, trademark abuse, bogus DMCA notices, intimidating lawyer letters, or stripping our anonaminity for no good reason.
People have been scared to fight back for nearly 20 years. No more!
* Posting anon not because it's cool, but because these jerks still scare me enough not to use my nick.
No. Non-violent, lawful protest is the best way to go about it. If you start harassing members of the CoS personally, you are no better than they are and, more importantly, you would lose an important defence in court: that you have the right to peaceful protest. If that's all you are doing, legally they can't touch you.
As soon as you start harassing them, you lose that important benefit. This is why the protests were strictly peaceful and calm. If anything, a peaceful protest hurts them more because there's nothing they can do about it, and it looks to the world like the Scientologists are unable to defend their "Church"'s system from a bunch of people from the internet.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are in Israel.
Because if you were a bit more "neutral" and at least had a look at the web sites of anonymous (enturbulation.org i think) you would have read that on their FAQ they EXPLICITLY require all protest to be peaceful and all remain on the legal side. If there is any death threat that can only be from idiot. Or maybe from the scientology itself , as they are known in the past to have sent THEMSELVES bomb threat, and PLANTED evidence at the home of an author (see paulette cooper WIKI operation freakout). Did I mention operation snowwhite (see wiki) ? I can only think of one things : you are a scientologist troll...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Photograph them. Follow them. Follow them home and photograph them entering and leaving their houses. Keep shouting "Murderer!" at them, if you can. Harass them. Make their lives hell.
For every one person you can find to do this, the CoS can find five who have many more years experience of behaving like this and getting away with it. And the people who the CoS find won't stop at following you home and photographing you.
Yes, since that removes him from the CoS "soldiers" who appear to have moderated down various posts in the thread...
The only reason the Scientologists aren't getting away with it is that they're small fry; they don't have enough members infiltrated into the media and government to really do any big damage, like. . , throw national elections and start wars, for instance. --Not that they shouldn't be called out for what they are, mind you. Better to nip these things in the bud before they take over the universe. Too bad Christianity, Judaism and Islam weren't invented when there was an internet around to help out in the pruning. --Of course, if they had been knocked out of the game early, the PTB would simply have distributed some fliers with Buddha or somebody on a cross and warped all of his followers until they became the army of gun-toting lunatic sheep you need in order to keep the world inflamed.
This whole planet is like one giant cartoon show with bad punch lines and dead batteries in the channel flipper.
-FL
It's actually L. Ron Hitler.
The scienos operate their own prison and slave labor camp system, where their elite Sea Org members who step out of line get sent to be rehabilitated by labor at the RPF camps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_Project_Force . And though not all of their labor "rehab" projects keep them prisoner by lock and key, they often coerce their prisoners into staying by blackmail, using the massive files of confessions they accumulate via auditing sessions, and "freeloader's debt," where they get retroactively charged for all the auditing they received for free, which often amounts to tens of thousands of dollars worth.
In the 70's, they infiltrated the US government using over 5,000 of their agents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_snow_white.
Although this effort was uncovered, leading to their secret take-over by elements within the IRS who operate the whole racket for profit behind the scenes (which many people don't know about) their infiltration of France was successful to this day.
Earthlink is a front company for the Church of Scientology. So is Helio, the cell phone company. Google "Scientology front companies" for a shocking list; they are constantly trying to spy on and infiltrate and subvert whatever they can with no regards for ethics but the advancement of their own power.
Make sure you be careful: they have cameramen staked out at public transit locations to try to photograph people with their masks off; they'll try to match you by your clothing, identify you, and harass you to no end. Some guys in London found out the hard way. Their practice is always to stay under the threshold of proof. If they can throw a brick through your window and if you can't prove they did it, they'll do that.
They're planning on disrupting the protests with staged violence by anons. Make sure you catch it all on camera if you attend.
Scientology is a lightweight compared to Synanon in its heyday in the early 70's. It went from a respectable drug program to a wacky cult. Everyone was compelled to shave their head and they were also compelled to change sex partners every night and then the next day report on what it was like.
These are the people who put rattlesnakes in the LA DA's mailbox. I think the Synanon founder was sent to prison for attempted murder on that one.
They also at one time had over 100 attorneys working for them and would sue anyone just like Scientology. They even won a lawsuit for defamation or libel against Hurst Publishing. It had never been achieved before. They had a tactic where in lawsuits they would depose people for hours asking them stupid questions like "what has the consistancy of your stool been lately?"
Just wait. Scientology will eventually get nutty enough to do something similar to the rattlesnake bit and then they are done for.
where is the "FairGame" tag ?
check out this firehose story, and click the + top left to give it your support so the /. editors write it up!
;o)
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=573326 "Church of Scientology violates Federal Law"
You'd never guess who might be voting THAT one down
You can find a very detailed explanation here. Basically, questions like what is scientology, what is the e-meter, and last minute news about scientology, can be found there.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
which makes them different from Hal Turner how?
Well, perhaps not that many. But if you look at their history of harassment of Paulette Cooper, the author, for whom Mary Sue Hubbard and her personnel got convicted for planting fake bomb threats to discredit Paulette, you get the idea of how far they will go. It's a bad game to play, because it lets them pretend that you really are evil for harassing them and plotting against them.
This troubles me about "Anonymous". Threatening a vindictive bully with vindictive bullying can just encourage them.
What are you calling the other group of "both groups"? Critics of Scientology? Or everyone else in the world?
for more info, check these out http://www.lisamcpherson.org/ - she was murdered by scientologists in 1995 http://www.scientology.org/ - they try to look so innocent http://www.churchofmyconology.com/ - hilarious parody or scientology.org (posted anonymously so they don't try to sue me)
Yes... and it's quite telling that (judging from recent events/pronouncements) many people, including extremely well-connected and -funded "religious" and "opinion" "leaders" can't seem to tell the difference between the two. Or between, say, cair.com or pcusa.org and goatse.
As has been pointed out countless times and proven countless more, whenever the State becomes involved in religion - or vice versa - both suffer tremendously. We're seeing that yet again now in the Middle East and in what once was the United States of America.
I've been following all the Scientology stories for a while now, and I've arrived at the conclusion that Scientology wants to be the new Bush, destroying civil liberties and scaring everyone into doing stuff (and not doing stuff, like expressing their First Amendment right to freedom to protest).
:)
They got control of E-bay for a day??? Wtf? Then they try to violate American's First Amendment rights just to prevent a group from expressing their opinion about Scientology? BS!
I guess CoS learned from Bush and his PATRIOT Act
Sheesh, I know they are one of the punching bags of /., and deservedly so, but can't you get the nutbag's name right?
It's L. Ron Hubbard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
Wisdom... not following a religion completely made up by this Nebraska guy who we hardly even know. I find it difficult to follow a "church" that remains nothing more than the result of a bet between L. Ron Hubbard and Issac Asimov. Did L. Ron win the bet by creating a religion? Or did he create a cult? Is there a difference?
Personally, I'd like to see ALL religions lose their tax write off. They have all become soo political that I don't understand why the religion of ? should enjoy tax benefits when others pay. If the donors don't get to write it off, I suspect funding for all religions might drop like a rock. I also think the churches should have to pay prop taxes etc. Most these "dream" churches have millions of bucks in property, buildings and in the case of the mega's, planes, schools, etc. Let them pay like for profit. I can't tell the difference between non-profit/for-profit anymore except a couple of "praise god's".
Not the wacky California fake Zen, the real thing (which can be hard work). Greed is contrary to Zen. Lies are contrary to Zen. Superstition is contrary to Zen. Personal truth and integrity, and the search for direct perception of the core of things - that's Zen.
I would also add the Episcopalians, the Reform Jews, the Sufis, the Quakers and the Unitarians, all of which have a history of attracting very intelligent people, but Zen was the first.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know, if you were to actually post something funny relating to first post and the summary, you might get modded up.
The reason I ask is, 'cause you kinda make a similar argument.
C'mon, this one's a no-brainer. Take the seven deadly sins for example.
Every single one of them, you're probably better off not doing.
So there's an "evolutionary advantage" to behaving a certain way. Those individuals who behave "ethically" generally have an advantage over those who don't. Now some of those situations are debatable, like, for example, in the short term, if we're in the middle of a famine, there's an (at least in the short-term) advantage to me if I steal your dinner.
However, a community/population/tribe that behaves "ethically" has an ENORMOUS advantage over a tribe of sociopathic anarchists (for example). So those tribes that behave in a way that we'd call ethically, when they go to war with that hypothetical tribe of sociopathic anarchists they kick ass and take wallets.
Nothing mysterious here, just natural selection/evolution. There's no reason to assume that religion is necessary for a society to develop an ethical code.
Hold the train there, we might be "morally superior" to our ancestors from 3,000 years ago when armies would invade and slaughter entire populations (although I suspect that the residents of Dresden or Hiroshima or Fallujah might argue with you on that claim), how 'bout comparing ourselves to our pre-agriculture ancestors?
Pre-agriculture societies generally tend to have values more similar to what we'd call today "democratic values" like equality and freedom and all that good stuff. Plus, they generally won't do things like let someone die for lack of medical care if somebody lacks funds the way we will today.
I guess what I'm saying is, given the history of the 20th century, when 100 million humans were killed by other humans, (about 60% of them civilians to boot) you're on very shaky ground to assume that humans in our current form are "morally superior" to anything.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
My first introduction to their practices was a Time magazine article my friend dug up from 1991, when I was trying to figure out what they were all about. It won an award, and is worth a look for those folks to don't understand the vitriol. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html
It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.
An acquaintance of mine told me three or four days ago that he was approach by someone through the broker sedo.com about selling his domain name...anonymous.net. The initial offer was in the tens of thousands. Turns out other anonymous domains are up for sale as well. http://www.sedo.com/search/searchresult.php4?start_search=1&linkurl=&language=us&keyword=anonymous&cc=net&kws=2&cat=%25&price=%25&listing_type=all&age=%25&len=%25&no_idn=1&checkeddomains=1&checkedprojects=1&visitors=%25&rel=1&pagesize=25&search_language=e&search_type=advanced I wonder who might have offered that much money for a domain like that?
The Church of Scientology's tallest building... an old skyscraper in Philadelphia, is the site being protested right now.
A good representation of every type of hipster art student in Philadelphia has shown up.
I live in the 13 story apartment tower next door in the pictures (where it says Deena's Shoes), so I get to hear shouting while I'm trying to eat my lunch and play XBOX.
* Largest hospital system in the country, accounting for over 20% of visits in 20 states. 5.4 million patients, 100 million visits (15 million of them emergency room). Includes some amusing trivia like "treats more AIDS patients in NYC than anyone else"
* Largest non-governmental primary/secondary education provider in country. Educates about 2.5 million students (including about 320k non-Catholic kids), many of them poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Routinely outperforms local public schools, but subsidized almost entirely from those donors, not from the public purse.
* 9th largest charity in country is closely affiliated
* Second largest donor to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, after government.
* Various other accomplishments which you could fill a book with. Universities, museums, immigrant rights lawyering, food banks, conservation programs, urban renewal, subsidized housing, child care, adoption, foster homes, yadda yadda yadda.
That's just the Catholic Church. Yeah, some of the property the Church owns is worth gazillions because it was cheap to buy stuff in downtown Chicago over a hundred years ago. And the Church certainly isn't immune to mismanaging money. But would you really want to spite them just to win a few points against Scientology? And, non-trivial question, if you successfully caused the donations to the Catholic Church to drop like a rock, are you willing to pay to educate those kids, patch up those patients, and feed those hungry? Because all of them are going to end up backstopped by public assistance, and the bill for that goes to you, not to me.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
>Churches, God, and Sin are ways of imposing codes of behavior that have
>been show to be successful over several millennia. The concepts of
>'God' and 'Sin' are necessary to impose these codes of behavior
The truth is that religion and morality have nothing to do with one another and never have. If they did, this would be a very different world considering how common religion is, and how uncommon morality is. Religions give lip service to morality, but the truth is it never goes any further than that.
If you consider most of the violence that's going on in the world right now, it is led by religious men preaching that murder and mayhem are good things. You can say that they don't represent the "true meaning" of their religion, or that their religion is different than your religion, but they are representative of how religion is practiced in the real world.
It's easy to be a saint in a rich country with police that *enforce* the law, when you don't really have a choice, and in those places you often see holy men positioning themselves as defending public morality (although what they consider public morality is often ridiculous). In regions of the world that are chaotic on the other hand, holy men are always the first to rally a mob and start some violence.
This is true of Islam, and of Christianity. No one who has studied any European history could claim that Christianity has promoted morality, or that it has ever been about anything more than power.
The true source of morality is reason, and the true source of public order is the law and the police force to enforce it. Without those two things, everything goes lord of the flies pretty quickly, whatever your religion is.
Looking at the earlier post or the article summary would indicate that the other group calls themself "anonymous".
Dontcha think that maybe its a problem that alot of health care is done on the basis of a donation? Personally, I'd like to see health care as a citizen's right, like most other westernized countries.
Fuck L. Ron Hubbard and fuck all his clones
So, apply for tax status as a nonprofit and/or charitable organization.
Reserving a special tax category for churches places the government in the position of having to determine what is and what is not a legitimate church. A violation of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, IMHO. If a church cannot operate its charities as a nonprofit, then the tax code needs to be modified for all such organizations regardless of whether they profess beliefs in rocks, trees, space aliens, or imaginary old men with white beards.
Have gnu, will travel.
I met Paulette Cooper in the mid-'80s after she wrote an article about COS for Reader's Digest. The Scientologists made her life miserable, and even my tangential association with her led to problems for me that, I suspect, were caused by the COS. The harassment and persecution of her would be called terrorism today.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But they have occasionally been used to harass Muslim women; I think the case I saw in the press a few years ago was in or near Detroit (not surprising, since that's a heavily Muslim-immigrant area.) Of course, police don't hassle people for wearing ski masks there in the winter time...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't know about the other westernized countries you're talking about, but in the United States, rights are special things, not granted by the government. We see rights as given to us by our Creator... oops, sorry, I forgot I shouldn't say that... we see rights as natural things, like sunlight. Now, a government can come along and block out our sunlight, a la Mr. Burns, but that is an infringement on our sunlight; the government does not actually provide sunlight.
So, if the government were to disappear, Americans would still have their natural rights. We would have our right to free speech, to bear arms, to freely associate, etc. But if the government provided health care, and said government disappeared, so would the health care.
(I know, not all Americans see rights as I have described. I have used this as a rhetorical device.)
Dark Reflection
Yep!
I know there are a million of these, but this one is actually is pretty funny... (maybe not highest prodcution quality but it's pretty well cut the further you get along)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJWj4i5HVU
Happened to be in London yesterday and grabbed a few shots of the protest. http://gallery.amphetamine.org.uk/v/Scientology+Protest_+London+2008-03-15/
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
I didn't mean to quote someone else, by the way.
Please stop stalking me, bro.