"...Never discuss Scientology with the critic. Just discuss his or her crimes, known and unknown. And act completely confident that those crimes exist...."
L. Ron Hubbard, "Critics of Scientology", November 5, 1967The die has been cast. It was cast the moment we voiced our opposition to the practices of the Church of Scientology (CoS), the moment we declared that “knowledge is free”. But we have done more than voice an opposition, we have waged war for your hearts and minds, and we have made progress. Our gains have drawn us significant attention, both positive in the form of the media, and sinister in the form of the “church”.
The attention the “church” gives its own adherents will give you cause for concern, the attention it gives its critics, is frightening. To protect its stream of income, the “church” indoctrinates and exploits its members, deliberately conceals its origins from them, requires donations and costly purchases to continue, it even has an “auditing” process that involves the use of a Colt-45; “bridge to enlightenment” indeed. These cultish behaviours and well known brainwashing techniques (along with many others) are employed on the newer members, those that are yet to reach even a single level as an “OT”.
For the attention it gives its critics, the “church” maintains a special policy beyond its regular “always attack, never defend” motto, “Fair game”. Anyone who is “fair game”, to put it in L. Ron Hubbard’s own words, “May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” These actions, include but are by no means limited to, large smear campaigns, accusations of paedophilia, houses picketed and of course, lawsuits. Persecution of its critics, or indeed anyone, in such a manner is a practice that the “church” claims to have revoked in 1968, but has tried to get constitutionally protected as late as 1985, and has been seen practice even in recent years.
This is why the new movement opposing them has decided to be Anonymous, in name and action. Albeit, this is not the only reason to remain Anonymous, we are also Anonymous because this is the only type of action that the CoS cannot fight on their standard terms, a faceless, loosely organized, leaderless entity. Therefore, the idea of the faceless being is what the CoS will target, we can be targeted with any faceless act, any form of crime that will never be linked to a specific individual. The credibility of Anonymous will, as has been attacked. We will be and have been called “persecutors” despite our intentions, declarations and actions.
For the Office of Special Affairs (OSA) , the intelligence agency of the CoS, to label a critic as a “persecutor” is a common tactic. The effect is that they may act as if they, or the “Church of Scientology”, are the victim. Often, this is far from the case and such bizarre claims on part of the Church of Scientology can be quickly dismissed as filled with fallacious rhetoric and logic. A marvellous example would be the following post in the comments sections of The Huffington Post by a Scientologist who goes by the internet name "Terryeo".
"News reporting and reporters depend on our rights to free speech. Anonymous has suppressed free speech with its DDoS attack against a charitable organization. Once established, with organization and dedicated resources, what next? Anonymous could "rent out" services (from another country of course) to target any organization or business. Freedom has but one cost. Public support of those who suppress freedom of speech is a denial of responsibility." (Terryeo)He begins the argument with obviously loaded term, such as when he (falsely) paints the Church of Scientology as a "charitable organization". The argument continues, to where he states, "Once established, with organization and dedicated resources, what next? Anonymous could 'rent out' services (from another country of course) to target any organization or business." an argument, which is easily dismissed with simple logic.
It is known that Anonymous is not "established", it is a decentralized entity that works by accepting and formulating ideas that are used to further their goals. There is no "establishment". Hence, it is already evident that this Scientologist has formulated an imaginary situation, assigned it to Anonymous, and then attacked the imaginary situation.
Given the history of the CoS, unsurprisingly, in the last few days stories have arisen about Anonymous attacking Dutch schools, innocent everyday people, and sending letters with white powder to Scientology "churches" in the southern California area. As it is our goal to bring the truth to the people, we feel it necessary to show you how we operate, as well as, what is true within these stories, and what to expect from the poison going into the well in the future.
- Members of Anonymous are human; the attack on the Dutch school was a typo. The actual target was Prolexic, a company that provides protection for the CoS from a Distributed Denial of Service attack. An IP for the Prolexic server network was gathered by a member of Anonymous, having gained useful information from a friend, and was posted with a typo on the standard contact channels. This lead to a very brief attack on a Dutch school before the typo was discovered and corrected. All the communication channels used by Anonymous are based on any of the three US based time zones, so any DDoS that will occur happens in the middle of the night for most Europeans. Therefore, it is likely to suspect that the school would not even have noticed the glitch, were it not for the Wired article discussing the mistake.
- Unfortunately this is not the only innocents that have taken hits in the wake of the internet tsunami that is hitting the CoS. Once again reported by Wired, an elderly couple from Stockton, California was hit by another mistake made by individuals within the movement known as Anonymous. The Lawsons had their personal information, put up for all to see on the internet (has now been removed), and have been harassed by those connected with Anonymous, an official apology can be read below. However, this does not end the story. Quoted from Wired;
“According to an e-mail from the hacker to THREAT LEVEL, the Regime's "main objective was to obtain logs and various data including user names and passwords" and "to take down our targets in the best way possible to bring as much embarrassment/shame as we could to the offending organization." The hacker said his group turned over the purloined data to the Church of Scientology.”
Above quote is an indication that The Regime, a hacker group that has been doing much to harass Anonymous and this fight in the last week, is working on orders from the Church of Scientology. In fact ex-Scientologists that have spoken to and shaped what Anonymous now is, say this is a perfectly plausible tactic to be used by the OSA. Based on the “fair game” policy of removing any and all opposition; hiring a team of expert hackers to take down a bunch of inexperienced script kiddies, shooting sparrows with cannons as it were, is the exact measure to take for obtaining a name to run through the dirt. Actions like these have already taken place according to the same Wired article. In this The Regime used a takeover of one of Anonymous’ main communications channels as leverage towards the owner of the website, forcing him to give all the information he could give them about individual members of Anonymous. One idea is that The Regime is directly linked with the CoS, in other words being members of OSA, but a more plausible explanation is that they are paid by OSA to do their dirty work. There is very little doubt that they are not at all connected with the Church of Scientology based on the ultimate goal of their actions. - The latest news in the exploits of Anonymous is an article about anthrax based terrorist threats towards the CoS. Operations that could be understood like an attack of this sort has not been discussed in the timeframe that would be needed for the powder to arrive and the FBI to be called in. However, it will be admitted that the idea of sending packets of Kool-Aid, as a reference to Jonestown, was discussed and left abandoned in the early days of Project Chanology. Should, the case be that the article is in fact discussing such a letter, it is either a downright falsification of facts from the CoS or a poor job from the reporter. The items sent would be unopened Kool-Aid packets, and not the powder itself. It should be understood that this would not be the first time that the CoS has made false completely claims of terrorist threats towards themselves.
Most well known of these self proclaimed threats is during “Operation Freakout”, in which Paulette Cooper was deemed a Suppressive Person, and hit by the Fair Game policy. This lead to all manner of attacks upon her person, one of which was a piece of amazingly devious planning from the CoS; disguised as a public official doing a survey on housing taxes in the area, and had her sign a document. Underneath this a piece of paper, assumed to be yet another survey, was used to get Paulette Coopers fingerprints on a bomb threat written by the CoS, and to be delivered to the FBI the next day.
When the “church” knows only attack, it cannot defend against the truth that we, and other critics, bring against them. Instead they act through fear, and attempt to discredit us. Knowing their past practices, their “fair game” policy, that they have people dedicated to nothing more than making people’s lives miserable, it is worth wondering what they might do against a faceless entity. A Smear campaign maybe?
In the end we encourage you to learn, to search, we cannot make up your minds for you, after all “Knowledge is free” and “what’s true for you, is true”.
UPDATE: Yeah, they began the smear.
