Scilons Target British Blogger

A British blogger has apparently been targeted by e-Scilons. After running this post on the London Anonymous protester Epic Nose Guy’s Court Summons for displaying a sign which (accurately) called Scientology a dangerous cult, the blogger received this message from his web host 1 & 1:

Dear *******, (Customer ID: ******) Thank you for continuing to use 1&1 Internet. We sincerely apologize for contacting you regarding this matter, but multiple complaints have been directed to us regarding a recent entry on your site Right Where You Are Sitting Now! - Exploring the Underground and Counterculture…so you don\’t have to! Please call us re: at your earliest convieniance (lol they can’t spell) quoting your customer reference number ********. In the meantime, if you would consider temporarily removing the entry, we would appreciate it.

Upon contacting 1 & 1, the blogger learned that all of the complaints came within the span of one hour and only two of the complainers left a name. What were the names, you ask? The first was “Mark Bunker”. Heh. Cute. For those of you who do not know, Mark is only one of the world’s most well-known critics of the Cult of Scientology. The second name wasn’t nearly as chuckle-inducing. It was the name of the blogger’s mother. This is just plain creepy.

Once the blogger explained all of this to 1&1, they dropped it and chalked up the complaints as a prank. Not really a prank, though. To use new underground Internet slang, suppressing critical speech is the new black for Scientology. It’s the in thing. Anybody who’s anybody is doing it! They’ve been doing it for a while in Clearwater. Heck, they’re trying it again RIGHT NOW! They’ve also tried it in Philadelphia. As a Toronto Anon accurately declared on her sign this past Saturday at Operation: FairGameStop, CULTS HATE TRUTH.

But the blogger is nevertheless understandably a little freaked out by how one of the plaintants gave his mother’s name. He has had a bit of a history with the cult, having been harassed while researching them (e.g., their personality test) during his Master’s Degree research. As he has surely learned by now, and as the Cult of Scientology administration is learning more and more by the day, when CoS tries to silence one critic they have to deal with ALL OF THEM. What this means in this case is that their attempts to have his post taken down will have the same effect as their attempts to take down their hysterical Tom Cruise video: many times more people will see what CoS does not want them to see. Their gun just doesn’t seem to run out of bullets for their feet, does it?

For more on Scientology, click here.

Scientologists EXPOSED Trying to Stop Anon Protests in Clearwater (UPDATED)

A group of Clearwater merchants located near the local Cult of Scientology base have produced a petition asking Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard to prevent local Anonymous protesters of the cult from protesting. In reading this petition, it is very clear that Scientology is behind this. The contents of the letter are so completely Scientologized (i.e., full of lies that serve the interests of the Cult of Scientology - feel free to add this term to Urban Dictionary, by the way) as to remove any sense of mystery regarding the primary driving factor behind the petition and the signatures on it.

Madeline Neumann and Why Society Should Stop Insulating Religion From Rational Scrutiny

On Wednesday Marathon Country District Attorney Jill Falstad annouced that Dale and Leilani Neumann would each be charged with second-degree reckless homicide (maximum punishment: 25 years in prison) for their failure to seek medical attention for their ailing daughter - relying instead on prayer - who withered away and died of a treatable form of diabetes. This death and the suffering visited upon 11-year old Madeline was unnecessary and unjustified. Yet, at the same time, I do feel for her parents, as I’m quite confident that they meant well and felt that their years of relying on prayer to the exclusion of medical treatment as an exercise and demonstration of their faith was in their, their children’s and their believed-in God’s best interests. In terms of their reason and behaviour, I would not say that they were good parents (i.e., parents who could protect their children as could reasonably be expected of them). But in terms of their intentions, I have no reason to think that they didn’t mean very well. In this sense, it is quite saddening that apparently well-meaning people who have lived in a culture which generally shows a high level of respect for religious faith and regularly disparages those who do not are being sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence and being separated from their other children, family and friends.

This case is an illustration of the sorts of things that can happen as a result of a culture giving undue deference to religious beliefs and making some areas of honest and fair debate socially inappropriate.

Copyright Lawsuits Not a Wise Move for Scientology

We are well past the point where efforts to silence critics - whether it be by harassment, threats, social or physical aggression, or lawsuits - has ceased to be an effective tool for Scientology, generally speaking. Given the thousands of extremely well-connected web-savvy Anonymous protesters and the ultra-charged Old Guard critics (e.g., Mark “Wise Beard Man” Bunker, Tory Christman, Andreas Heldal-Lund), each act of attempted suppression by the cult is all but guaranteed to be heard about by thousands of eager protesters around the world in literally a matter of hours. This much is not news to the protesters.

What will be news to many people was reported recently on Sky News (video below). I’ll let the video do most of the talking, but here is the crux: When it comes to issues of copyright infringement - one of Scientology’s favourite grounds for lawsuits - the lawsuit, or even a threat thereof, essentially guarantees that the copyrighted material will be viewed by the largest audience possible. For once a story becomes newsworthy - which threat or actuality of legal action by Scientology would surely be - news agencies can report the story with impunity from legal action. As in the case of the leaked Tom Cruise video back in January, once the CoS begins threatening lawsuits they hand every news agency in the world a get-out-of-court-free card, enabling these countless agencies to put this story in the face of essentially every person on the planet with access to major media. In the words of the lawyer in the video, Scientology’s response to the Tom Cruise video leak turned a crisis into a disaster. A colossal foot-bullet.

For more on Scientology, click here.

Have you been expelled from pro-Expelled media (e.g., blogs)?

I was recently prevented from expressing dissent on a pro-Expelled blog. I know that I am not the first person to have been expelled for disagreeing with IDists, and will surely not the be last. PZ Myers of Pharyngula has been banned from commenting on a number of pro-ID blogs (e.g., Uncommon Dissent) and was prevented from attending a public pre-screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (even though he went through all the right channels to gain admission and was also, y’know, IN THE MOVIE!). Larry Moran of Sandwalk has also been banned by pro-ID blogs like UD. Moreover, Blake Stacey recently chronicled a long list of evolutionists who have been fired, demoted, harassed, threatened, assaulted, and in one case killed for defending evolution and/or publicly dismissing Creationism or Christianity.

Given all of the discussion that is taking place around the Net right now over Expelled, evolution and Intelligent Design Creationism, the purpose of this post is to see who else has been expelled from commenting on pro-Expelled or pro-ID media, such as blogs. A post specifying such censorship (including links to blogs and the blogs of the expelled) will be produced.

So, I was Expelled from a Pro-Expelled Blog…

Initially, I wasn’t going to post on this out of consideration for the blogger that took my posts down - or didn’t let them go through in the first place. But given the importance of the issue, the fact that I know that I am not the only one who has been silenced in this way by people claiming to be for the free exchange of ideas and wanting to hear “both sides”, and given the incredible amounts of dishonesty, ignorance and information-filtering that surrounds this crocumentary, I’ve decided otherwise. Read on to hear about how I, like surely many others, was expelled from commenting on Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

TFP Readables

Here are a few readables from around the blogosphere:

Today, I stumbled across a fairly indepth review of the Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed Leaders Guide - a guide for those who want to take the propaganda out of the theatre and into the community. Thus far, I’ve only read about 60% of it, but what I saw was quite well done.

The second recommended item is recommended because of how unimpressed I am. It’s a thread on a thoroughly Christian discussion forum. I discovered it as a result of one of the posters linking one of my posts. Take a read if you want to step into a rapid succession of ignorant comments. I was placated somewhat by the level-headedness of Grant (i.e., the poster that linked my post…).

Upcoming:

I paid a visit to the local “Church” of Scientology in Toronto today. I’ll be posting on the visit soon.

Second, I recently had my posts on a pro-Expelled blog pulled from the site. I’m considering whether I’d like to expose how I - a dissenter of expelled - was expelled. The blogger says that it is simply his policy to not allow debates to occur in his blog’s comment sections, and that it is not personal nor does he want me to feel like I’m being censored. In addition to finding this to be a peculiar policy (as I told him) - what? you want to state your opinion but no one else can challenge you on it? - I also said that, in my opinion, this particular post is one that should qualify for being excepted from your rule given that in it you are endorsing a movie that is claiming that the opinions it endorses are being expelled from consideration.

Jason Beghe FULL INTERVIEW RELEASED!

Watch Mark Bunker’s full interview with Jason Beghe here.

Spread the word!

For more on Scientology, click here.

XENU Contacts Stephen Colbert! And he digs Anonymous!

For more on Scientology, click here.

Scientology critic and Jason Beghe filmer’s YouTube account suspended

For the second time in well under a week a prominent critic of Scientology has had their YouTube account suspended. Suspended without explanation, moreover. A few days ago, it was ex-Scientologist Tory Christman who had her account, ToryMagoo44, unexplicably pulled, despite her never engaging in any terms of service violations (e.g., presenting copyrighted content). Her account, fortunately, was quickly restored. Yesterday, the victim was Mark “Wise Beard Man” Bunker of XenuTV.Com, the XenuTV WordPress blog, and YouTube account XenuTV1. Bunker’s name has been gaining some water-cooler mention of late as he is the man who produced the Jason Beghe interview on Scientology - the 3-minute teaser for which was released earlier this week. Bunker’s YouTube account was pulled on the very day that he was scheduled to release the full Beghe interview.
The most reasonable explanation for the removal of Bunker as well as Christman’s accounts is that YouTube received a barrage of emails from Scientologists, many of which were probably working for Scientology in sending these emails, and each of which probably sent multiple emails from a collection of fake email accounts. I base these speculations on the past behaviour of the cult in similar situations (e.g., the cult’s attempts to suppress the alt.religion.scientology forum where ex-members discussed their hardships in Scientology).
Contact YouTube and help defend freedom of speech and fight the suppressive Cult of Scientology’s anti-free speech agenda:
http://www.youtube.com/t/contact_us
editor@youtube.com
suggestions@youtube.com
estreich@youtube.com
For more on the Cult of Scientology, click here.