Anonymous copycats are springing up. Copycatting Anonymous in practice means you join Anonymous…we are Legion!
Regardless of your position on Scientology (Manipulative cult thugs that ruin people lives to protect their tax exempt status? Just another group of semi-harmless wackos that deserves to express their views in peace?), watching this YouTube chess game develop is pretty interesting.
A little backstory on the precipitation of the conflict: this video of Tom Cruise going off on Scientology’s greatness was posted on YouTube, and it was quickly removed by the CoS’s usual litigation threat tactics. This pissed some people off, and Gawker.com refused to remove the link on the basis that it was newsworthy.
Anonymous were among the ones pissed off by the CoS’s actions - messing with the democratic nature of the internet and menacing YouTube, a voice of that democracy. They reacted with a holy war the goal of which is to purge Scientology from the medium that helps it spread, the internet. Try to silence others, and we will silence you.
Whether or not Anon is a joke, the meme is spreading and the backlash against the “religion” is growing.
I thought ‘expelling Scientology from the internet’ was a pretty lofty goal for Anonymous, and was going to make a snide remark in yesterday’s post about the practicality / credibility of executing such a tactic, but the war is on and Anonymous is, apparently, winning.
“Church of Scientology related websites, such as religiousfreedomwatch.org have been removed due to a suspected distributed denial-of-service-attack (DDoS) by a group calling themselves “Anonymous”. On Friday, the same group allegedly brought down Scientology’s main website, scientology.org, which was available sporadically throughout the weekend.
Several websites relating to the Church of Scientology have been slowed down, brought to a complete halt or seemingly removed from the Internet completely in an attack which seems to be continuous. The scientology.org site was back online briefly on Monday, and is currently loading slowly.”
I have used these pages for many years as good source for both critical and objective information about Scientology. You’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about Xenu and body thetans.
This one has A LOT of videos; personal encounters dealing with Scientology bullying tactics, pickets, interviews and more. They also have a youtube channel and blog. Definately watch some of the picket videos for some drama.
I hope this isn’t a joke…Anonymous throws down the glove to Scientology, informing them that their “organization should be destroyed”. For the good of their followers, for the good of Mankind, and for Anonymous’ own enjoyment, Anonymous intends to expel Scientology from the internet and dismantle it’s church (word!).
“You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic”, Tom Cruise…
“An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam.”
Though this is unlikely to ever occur in North America, we need to be vigilant to keep church and state separate. When religious tenants set public policy, reason and choice go out the window. As we saw for many years where homosexuals were discriminated against (and continue to be prevented from marrying in many U.S. states) and blacks were discriminated against, both partly justified by interpretation of religious texts, the use of forcing religious beliefs by the government on others continues to occur.
Though the examples in North American are not as heinous as this case where someone is being put to death “for distributing a paper that humiliated Islam”, there are cases where religious thought is used to punish people using government forces.
Islam kills. Just saying that puts me on the list.
Wanted: one PR department for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Ordered to compensate victims of pedophile priests to the tune of $660 million, the Church has opted to evict nuns of some 50 years service, selling the convents as a fundraising opportunity. The Santa Barbara bishop’s residence remains safe.
A gag order has been imposed on soon-to-be-homeless nuns.
A map of the population and locations of religious congregations in the U.S. Big ups to the Mormons, who rule more of Idaho than I ever thought possible. The Southern Baptists (”a deeper, truer sort of ignorance”, according to atheist comedian David Cross) infect a frightening 1302 counties out of 3141, or over 40%.
Pope Benedict was to open the academic year at Rome’s prestigious La Sapienza University this Thursday, but thanks to prostests from students and academics, the school will be delivered from that dubious honour.
Citing the Pope’s 1990 defense of the church’s conviction of Galileo as a heretic, the academics signed a letter indicating Benedict’s views “offend and humiliate us”. Four days of student-led protests included an anti-clerical meal of bread, pork and wine under a banner that read “Knowledge needs neither fathers nor priests”. The Pope will now send his speech instead of delivering it in person.
One longs for the days of John Paul, who in 1992conceded that the earth revolves around the sun. The more reasonable previous pope regarded the embarrassing issue as “the symbol of the church’s supposed rejection of scientific progress, or of ‘dogmatic’ obscurantism opposed to the free search for truth.”
These are by turns hilarious, enraging, and horribly sad. This link is actually to the Google cache of the page, because the site suffered the Digg effect immediately upon posting.
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