Forbes digs up a few YouTube money stats

Forbes has a story about YouTube with a few hard, if unsourced, financial numbers — the kind Google and YouTube keep very close to the vest.

The article, by Quentin Hardy and Evan Hessel, says YouTube is going to bring in $200 million this year, and possibly $350 million next year. From one perspective that's small taters (the fourth "Indiana Jones" made $126 million in four days), but it's a heck of a lot more than YouTube was making last year, and if there's one sure thing about YouTube, it's that the site isn't going to stop growing anytime soon. It now gets more than 50% of its traffic from overseas (cagey 'Tube executives won't say how much more, but some of us think it's a lot), and they're making partnership deals like rabbits — CBS, Scripps, Universal Music and now even their competitor Hulu.

A few of the other interesting stats from the article, headlined "GooTube":

• A branded channel (a YouTube page devoted to a product or manufacturer) costs $200,000. Bonus question: Is Scientology's YouTube page a branded channel?
• The big ad on the YouTube homepage costs $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to drop $50,000 more on YouTube or Google ads.
• Web video ad spending is expected to be $1.35 billion this year, up from $775 million in 2007.
• There's not much money in user-generated video: Rates for ads next to such content are down 45% since February, to 18 cents per 1,000 pageviews, according to digital analytics company PubMatic. Of course, that can add up after a few billion views ...

Wikileaks has posted a confidential document from the Church of Latter-day Saints called the Church Handbook of Instructions, which is a guide for the church's lay leadership and is not available either to parishioners or to the public. The LDS, following in the questionable steps of the Church of Scientology, has now issued multiple copyright infringement notices in an effort to get the information taken down. As we know, this strategy is unlikely to do anything but win the Mormons a share of the online community's unsympathetic attention, a quantity that until now Scientology has been enjoying alone.

It's well-known by now that Scientology's secret documents contain many indecipherable dictates and fantastical histories, like the following passage from the L. Ron Hubbard-authored document describing the "Gorilla Goals":

This same pattern, but given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, was used between about 319 trillion years ago to about 256 trillion trillion years ago, a long span.

Much of the Anonymous versus Scientology epic has played out on YouTube. As we know, it all started when the church yanked the infamous Tom Cruise video, then continued when Anonymous posted its own video, threatening and denouncing the church. Still later, videos of global anti-Scientology protests flooded YouTube, and then, to lash back at the backlash, the church created its own anti-Anonymous channel, which has since been suspended (Glosslip's take here).

So it's particularly odd to now see giant Scientology advertisements on high-profile YouTube pages, such as this right-rail mega-ad pictured on the Most Viewed of all time page:

The suspension of the earlier account brings up its own set of questions. The "AnonymousFacts" channel, besides posting questionably accurate videos that sought to portray the peaceable group as a network of cyber-terrorists, also posted clips unmasking particular Anonymous members by publicizing their private information, a move that YouTube apparently didn't like, hence the yank. Still, the church now has a second YouTube "Sponsor" channel. YouTube has no specific descriptive information about what constitutes a Sponsor account, but if "sponsor" still means what I think it means, along with its ad buys, the church is paying for a nice, flashy page of its own.

The inconsistency: As YouTube's account policy clearly states: "When a user has posting privileges temporarily disabled on one account, for the duration of the suspension that user is also prohibited from posting material to YouTube using any other account."

Terms of use are not legally binding, of course, and YouTube can do whatever it wants on its own site.  But even if there's the appearance that they're giving Scientology a pass on a violation, and if that pass has anything to do with a newly formed financial relationship between the church and the 'Tube, there are going to be a lot of masked geeks with a lot of things to say about it.

I contacted YouTube for a comment, and they promised to get back later today, so stay tuned for an update.

(Above, a plane circles overhead, towing a banner that reads: "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a Cult")

Along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood today, in front of the large, blue Church of Scientology building, hundreds of masked Anonymous protesters arrived for a second major picket of the embattled religion.  This time, however, the church had an answer.

Because of a permit secured by the church, multiple roads were closed, including L. Ron Hubbard Way, the street that runs alongside the main church building. Tarps had been hung on the perimeter of the church's parking lot, preventing outsiders from seeing in.

Most noticeable was a series of large metal frameworks that had been erected and decorated with large rainbows of balloons and banners bearing church messages: "Love and Help Children," "Don't be promiscuous" and perhaps most visibly, the name of a Scientology-related book for better living, "The Way to Happiness."  A giant viewing screen had been set up to face out toward the protest, playing an endless series of videos -- accompanied by ear-splittingly  loud audio from speakers that also pointed toward Sunset Boulevard.  The videos playing on the screen espoused better living through the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Down the closed road, the tops of tents could be made out, and a few people appeared to be walking on the street.  Besides that, the nature of the Scientology event was unclear.

The police presence today was notably larger than it was for the first mass protest staged by Anonymous on Feb. 10.  LAPD Sgt. Wayne Guillary said the protests had progressed uneventfully, but noted that Scientology representatives had tried to block off an area of public sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard that would have prevented people from crossing the street in front of the church building. 

"They wanted to block off the crosswalk," said Guillary. "I told them you can't do that."

Guillary also noted that in addition to the road closure permit, it appeared that the church had applied for and received a permit to film on the premises.  Guillary pointed out off-duty LAPD officers who were assisting with the apparent movie shoot.  Again, it wasn't clear what kind of movie was being filmed, or why the church had picked a day in which a large protest had been planned for weeks.

When  I asked a Scientology official for information about the event on the premises, she declined to comment but said a written statement was forthcoming.  I asked if she  could arrange for a brief walk-through of the Scientology event and, after consulting with her supervisors, she said, "No.  The event is for parishioners only."

Members of Anonymous said the church had attempted to close off the entire block of sidewalk running along the front of the church on Sunset. At least one road closure sign had been placed in that area, though it was not covered by the permit, authorities said. (See photo below)   

Among the most peculiar sights of the day was when a small plane appeared overhead, (see photo at top) towing a banner that read, "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a cult."  The crowd cheered when the plane came into view and began an hour of circling.

A Scientology parishioner who identified himself as Jimmy and gave his age as 25 was stationed on Catalina Street, to prevent anyone from wandering into the closed area.

When asked if he believed the protesters seemed like terrorists, a term Scientology officials have repeatedly used to describe them, Jimmy replied, "I wouldn't say they're all terrorists.  A lot of them look like high school kids."

"But," he added, "Are you going to wait for them to blow up a church before you say, 'hey look, some terrorists?'"

 

Photos: David Sarno

UPDATE: A Church of Scientology spokeswoman has confirmed the video was produced and posted by the Church.

A flashy new  video appeared on YouTube on Tuesday that portrayed the anti-Scientology group Anonymous as hateful, violent and opposed to freedom of religion.  The video, called "Anonymous - Hate Crimes & Terrorism Directed at Scientology," was created under a YouTube profile named "AnonymousFacts," which describes itself as the "Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes." 

(Above, a screen grab from the video showing the number of alleged death threats.)

The video, which has the high production values and slick aesthetic reminiscent of other Scientology-produced footage, is a sort of timeline of alleged harassment and threat tactics against the church by Anonymous members.  It concentrates heavily on the first several weeks of the conflict between Anonymous and the church--a time when Anonymous was using more inflammatory rhetoric and employing illegal tactics like hacking and cyber-attacks. The largely peaceful protests of Feb. 10 are not mentioned in the video.

(Here, an excerpt of an alleged death threat is replayed.)

The video offers multiple digital-clock-type counters to add up the number of each type of alleged harassment the church has received:  "8,139 harrassing [sic] or threatening phone calls, 3.6 million malicious emails, 141 million hits against church web sites, 10 acts of vandalism, and 8 death threats."

"These are the facts," concludes the video.

Though the video unequivocally blames Anonymous for all the incidents, no supporting evidence or documentation of the incidents is made available or linked to.  The FBI has said that no suspects have been named in the investigation of some of the threats -- including the white powder mailings -- and Anonymous has repeatedly denied participation in the more severe instances.

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Another Scientology-like Web war? Mormon Church documents put online

Wikileaks has posted a confidential document from the Church of Latter-day Saints called the Church Handbook of Instructions, which is a guide for the church's lay leadership and is not available either to parishioners or to the public. The LDS, following in the questionable steps of the Church of Scientology, has now issued multiple copyright infringement notices in an effort to get the information taken down. As we know, this strategy is unlikely to do anything but win the Mormons a share of the online community's unsympathetic attention, a quantity that until now Scientology has been enjoying alone.

It's well-known by now that Scientology's secret documents contain many indecipherable dictates and fantastical histories, like the following passage from the L. Ron Hubbard-authored document describing the "Gorilla Goals":

This same pattern, but given in an amusement park with a single tunnel, a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel, was used between about 319 trillion years ago to about 256 trillion trillion years ago, a long span.

Much of the Anonymous versus Scientology epic has played out on YouTube. As we know, it all started when the church yanked the infamous Tom Cruise video, then continued when Anonymous posted its own video, threatening and denouncing the church. Still later, videos of global anti-Scientology protests flooded YouTube, and then, to lash back at the backlash, the church created its own anti-Anonymous channel, which has since been suspended (Glosslip's take here).

So it's particularly odd to now see giant Scientology advertisements on high-profile YouTube pages, such as this right-rail mega-ad pictured on the Most Viewed of all time page:

The suspension of the earlier account brings up its own set of questions. The "AnonymousFacts" channel, besides posting questionably accurate videos that sought to portray the peaceable group as a network of cyber-terrorists, also posted clips unmasking particular Anonymous members by publicizing their private information, a move that YouTube apparently didn't like, hence the yank. Still, the church now has a second YouTube "Sponsor" channel. YouTube has no specific descriptive information about what constitutes a Sponsor account, but if "sponsor" still means what I think it means, along with its ad buys, the church is paying for a nice, flashy page of its own.

The inconsistency: As YouTube's account policy clearly states: "When a user has posting privileges temporarily disabled on one account, for the duration of the suspension that user is also prohibited from posting material to YouTube using any other account."

Terms of use are not legally binding, of course, and YouTube can do whatever it wants on its own site.  But even if there's the appearance that they're giving Scientology a pass on a violation, and if that pass has anything to do with a newly formed financial relationship between the church and the 'Tube, there are going to be a lot of masked geeks with a lot of things to say about it.

I contacted YouTube for a comment, and they promised to get back later today, so stay tuned for an update.

(Above, a plane circles overhead, towing a banner that reads: "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a Cult")

Along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood today, in front of the large, blue Church of Scientology building, hundreds of masked Anonymous protesters arrived for a second major picket of the embattled religion.  This time, however, the church had an answer.

Because of a permit secured by the church, multiple roads were closed, including L. Ron Hubbard Way, the street that runs alongside the main church building. Tarps had been hung on the perimeter of the church's parking lot, preventing outsiders from seeing in.

Most noticeable was a series of large metal frameworks that had been erected and decorated with large rainbows of balloons and banners bearing church messages: "Love and Help Children," "Don't be promiscuous" and perhaps most visibly, the name of a Scientology-related book for better living, "The Way to Happiness."  A giant viewing screen had been set up to face out toward the protest, playing an endless series of videos -- accompanied by ear-splittingly  loud audio from speakers that also pointed toward Sunset Boulevard.  The videos playing on the screen espoused better living through the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Down the closed road, the tops of tents could be made out, and a few people appeared to be walking on the street.  Besides that, the nature of the Scientology event was unclear.

The police presence today was notably larger than it was for the first mass protest staged by Anonymous on Feb. 10.  LAPD Sgt. Wayne Guillary said the protests had progressed uneventfully, but noted that Scientology representatives had tried to block off an area of public sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard that would have prevented people from crossing the street in front of the church building. 

"They wanted to block off the crosswalk," said Guillary. "I told them you can't do that."

Guillary also noted that in addition to the road closure permit, it appeared that the church had applied for and received a permit to film on the premises.  Guillary pointed out off-duty LAPD officers who were assisting with the apparent movie shoot.  Again, it wasn't clear what kind of movie was being filmed, or why the church had picked a day in which a large protest had been planned for weeks.

When  I asked a Scientology official for information about the event on the premises, she declined to comment but said a written statement was forthcoming.  I asked if she  could arrange for a brief walk-through of the Scientology event and, after consulting with her supervisors, she said, "No.  The event is for parishioners only."

Members of Anonymous said the church had attempted to close off the entire block of sidewalk running along the front of the church on Sunset. At least one road closure sign had been placed in that area, though it was not covered by the permit, authorities said. (See photo below)   

Among the most peculiar sights of the day was when a small plane appeared overhead, (see photo at top) towing a banner that read, "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a cult."  The crowd cheered when the plane came into view and began an hour of circling.

A Scientology parishioner who identified himself as Jimmy and gave his age as 25 was stationed on Catalina Street, to prevent anyone from wandering into the closed area.

When asked if he believed the protesters seemed like terrorists, a term Scientology officials have repeatedly used to describe them, Jimmy replied, "I wouldn't say they're all terrorists.  A lot of them look like high school kids."

"But," he added, "Are you going to wait for them to blow up a church before you say, 'hey look, some terrorists?'"

 

Photos: David Sarno

UPDATE: A Church of Scientology spokeswoman has confirmed the video was produced and posted by the Church.

A flashy new  video appeared on YouTube on Tuesday that portrayed the anti-Scientology group Anonymous as hateful, violent and opposed to freedom of religion.  The video, called "Anonymous - Hate Crimes & Terrorism Directed at Scientology," was created under a YouTube profile named "AnonymousFacts," which describes itself as the "Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes." 

(Above, a screen grab from the video showing the number of alleged death threats.)

The video, which has the high production values and slick aesthetic reminiscent of other Scientology-produced footage, is a sort of timeline of alleged harassment and threat tactics against the church by Anonymous members.  It concentrates heavily on the first several weeks of the conflict between Anonymous and the church--a time when Anonymous was using more inflammatory rhetoric and employing illegal tactics like hacking and cyber-attacks. The largely peaceful protests of Feb. 10 are not mentioned in the video.

(Here, an excerpt of an alleged death threat is replayed.)

The video offers multiple digital-clock-type counters to add up the number of each type of alleged harassment the church has received:  "8,139 harrassing [sic] or threatening phone calls, 3.6 million malicious emails, 141 million hits against church web sites, 10 acts of vandalism, and 8 death threats."

"These are the facts," concludes the video.

Though the video unequivocally blames Anonymous for all the incidents, no supporting evidence or documentation of the incidents is made available or linked to.  The FBI has said that no suspects have been named in the investigation of some of the threats -- including the white powder mailings -- and Anonymous has repeatedly denied participation in the more severe instances.

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Scientology advertising on YouTube but still has a banned account

Much of the Anonymous versus Scientology epic has played out on YouTube. As we know, it all started when the church yanked the infamous Tom Cruise video, then continued when Anonymous posted its own video, threatening and denouncing the church. Still later, videos of global anti-Scientology protests flooded YouTube, and then, to lash back at the backlash, the church created its own anti-Anonymous channel, which has since been suspended (Glosslip's take here).

So it's particularly odd to now see giant Scientology advertisements on high-profile YouTube pages, such as this right-rail mega-ad pictured on the Most Viewed of all time page:

The suspension of the earlier account brings up its own set of questions. The "AnonymousFacts" channel, besides posting questionably accurate videos that sought to portray the peaceable group as a network of cyber-terrorists, also posted clips unmasking particular Anonymous members by publicizing their private information, a move that YouTube apparently didn't like, hence the yank. Still, the church now has a second YouTube "Sponsor" channel. YouTube has no specific descriptive information about what constitutes a Sponsor account, but if "sponsor" still means what I think it means, along with its ad buys, the church is paying for a nice, flashy page of its own.

The inconsistency: As YouTube's account policy clearly states: "When a user has posting privileges temporarily disabled on one account, for the duration of the suspension that user is also prohibited from posting material to YouTube using any other account."

Terms of use are not legally binding, of course, and YouTube can do whatever it wants on its own site.  But even if there's the appearance that they're giving Scientology a pass on a violation, and if that pass has anything to do with a newly formed financial relationship between the church and the 'Tube, there are going to be a lot of masked geeks with a lot of things to say about it.

I contacted YouTube for a comment, and they promised to get back later today, so stay tuned for an update.

(Above, a plane circles overhead, towing a banner that reads: "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a Cult")

Along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood today, in front of the large, blue Church of Scientology building, hundreds of masked Anonymous protesters arrived for a second major picket of the embattled religion.  This time, however, the church had an answer.

Because of a permit secured by the church, multiple roads were closed, including L. Ron Hubbard Way, the street that runs alongside the main church building. Tarps had been hung on the perimeter of the church's parking lot, preventing outsiders from seeing in.

Most noticeable was a series of large metal frameworks that had been erected and decorated with large rainbows of balloons and banners bearing church messages: "Love and Help Children," "Don't be promiscuous" and perhaps most visibly, the name of a Scientology-related book for better living, "The Way to Happiness."  A giant viewing screen had been set up to face out toward the protest, playing an endless series of videos -- accompanied by ear-splittingly  loud audio from speakers that also pointed toward Sunset Boulevard.  The videos playing on the screen espoused better living through the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Down the closed road, the tops of tents could be made out, and a few people appeared to be walking on the street.  Besides that, the nature of the Scientology event was unclear.

The police presence today was notably larger than it was for the first mass protest staged by Anonymous on Feb. 10.  LAPD Sgt. Wayne Guillary said the protests had progressed uneventfully, but noted that Scientology representatives had tried to block off an area of public sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard that would have prevented people from crossing the street in front of the church building. 

"They wanted to block off the crosswalk," said Guillary. "I told them you can't do that."

Guillary also noted that in addition to the road closure permit, it appeared that the church had applied for and received a permit to film on the premises.  Guillary pointed out off-duty LAPD officers who were assisting with the apparent movie shoot.  Again, it wasn't clear what kind of movie was being filmed, or why the church had picked a day in which a large protest had been planned for weeks.

When  I asked a Scientology official for information about the event on the premises, she declined to comment but said a written statement was forthcoming.  I asked if she  could arrange for a brief walk-through of the Scientology event and, after consulting with her supervisors, she said, "No.  The event is for parishioners only."

Members of Anonymous said the church had attempted to close off the entire block of sidewalk running along the front of the church on Sunset. At least one road closure sign had been placed in that area, though it was not covered by the permit, authorities said. (See photo below)   

Among the most peculiar sights of the day was when a small plane appeared overhead, (see photo at top) towing a banner that read, "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a cult."  The crowd cheered when the plane came into view and began an hour of circling.

A Scientology parishioner who identified himself as Jimmy and gave his age as 25 was stationed on Catalina Street, to prevent anyone from wandering into the closed area.

When asked if he believed the protesters seemed like terrorists, a term Scientology officials have repeatedly used to describe them, Jimmy replied, "I wouldn't say they're all terrorists.  A lot of them look like high school kids."

"But," he added, "Are you going to wait for them to blow up a church before you say, 'hey look, some terrorists?'"

 

Photos: David Sarno

UPDATE: A Church of Scientology spokeswoman has confirmed the video was produced and posted by the Church.

A flashy new  video appeared on YouTube on Tuesday that portrayed the anti-Scientology group Anonymous as hateful, violent and opposed to freedom of religion.  The video, called "Anonymous - Hate Crimes & Terrorism Directed at Scientology," was created under a YouTube profile named "AnonymousFacts," which describes itself as the "Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes." 

(Above, a screen grab from the video showing the number of alleged death threats.)

The video, which has the high production values and slick aesthetic reminiscent of other Scientology-produced footage, is a sort of timeline of alleged harassment and threat tactics against the church by Anonymous members.  It concentrates heavily on the first several weeks of the conflict between Anonymous and the church--a time when Anonymous was using more inflammatory rhetoric and employing illegal tactics like hacking and cyber-attacks. The largely peaceful protests of Feb. 10 are not mentioned in the video.

(Here, an excerpt of an alleged death threat is replayed.)

The video offers multiple digital-clock-type counters to add up the number of each type of alleged harassment the church has received:  "8,139 harrassing [sic] or threatening phone calls, 3.6 million malicious emails, 141 million hits against church web sites, 10 acts of vandalism, and 8 death threats."

"These are the facts," concludes the video.

Though the video unequivocally blames Anonymous for all the incidents, no supporting evidence or documentation of the incidents is made available or linked to.  The FBI has said that no suspects have been named in the investigation of some of the threats -- including the white powder mailings -- and Anonymous has repeatedly denied participation in the more severe instances.

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Anonymous protests again, but Scientology is ready

(Above, a plane circles overhead, towing a banner that reads: "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a Cult")

Along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood today, in front of the large, blue Church of Scientology building, hundreds of masked Anonymous protesters arrived for a second major picket of the embattled religion.  This time, however, the church had an answer.

Because of a permit secured by the church, multiple roads were closed, including L. Ron Hubbard Way, the street that runs alongside the main church building. Tarps had been hung on the perimeter of the church's parking lot, preventing outsiders from seeing in.

Most noticeable was a series of large metal frameworks that had been erected and decorated with large rainbows of balloons and banners bearing church messages: "Love and Help Children," "Don't be promiscuous" and perhaps most visibly, the name of a Scientology-related book for better living, "The Way to Happiness."  A giant viewing screen had been set up to face out toward the protest, playing an endless series of videos -- accompanied by ear-splittingly  loud audio from speakers that also pointed toward Sunset Boulevard.  The videos playing on the screen espoused better living through the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Down the closed road, the tops of tents could be made out, and a few people appeared to be walking on the street.  Besides that, the nature of the Scientology event was unclear.

The police presence today was notably larger than it was for the first mass protest staged by Anonymous on Feb. 10.  LAPD Sgt. Wayne Guillary said the protests had progressed uneventfully, but noted that Scientology representatives had tried to block off an area of public sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard that would have prevented people from crossing the street in front of the church building. 

"They wanted to block off the crosswalk," said Guillary. "I told them you can't do that."

Guillary also noted that in addition to the road closure permit, it appeared that the church had applied for and received a permit to film on the premises.  Guillary pointed out off-duty LAPD officers who were assisting with the apparent movie shoot.  Again, it wasn't clear what kind of movie was being filmed, or why the church had picked a day in which a large protest had been planned for weeks.

When  I asked a Scientology official for information about the event on the premises, she declined to comment but said a written statement was forthcoming.  I asked if she  could arrange for a brief walk-through of the Scientology event and, after consulting with her supervisors, she said, "No.  The event is for parishioners only."

Members of Anonymous said the church had attempted to close off the entire block of sidewalk running along the front of the church on Sunset. At least one road closure sign had been placed in that area, though it was not covered by the permit, authorities said. (See photo below)   

Among the most peculiar sights of the day was when a small plane appeared overhead, (see photo at top) towing a banner that read, "Honk / Yell if you think Scientology is a cult."  The crowd cheered when the plane came into view and began an hour of circling.

A Scientology parishioner who identified himself as Jimmy and gave his age as 25 was stationed on Catalina Street, to prevent anyone from wandering into the closed area.

When asked if he believed the protesters seemed like terrorists, a term Scientology officials have repeatedly used to describe them, Jimmy replied, "I wouldn't say they're all terrorists.  A lot of them look like high school kids."

"But," he added, "Are you going to wait for them to blow up a church before you say, 'hey look, some terrorists?'"

 

Photos: David Sarno

UPDATE: A Church of Scientology spokeswoman has confirmed the video was produced and posted by the Church.

A flashy new  video appeared on YouTube on Tuesday that portrayed the anti-Scientology group Anonymous as hateful, violent and opposed to freedom of religion.  The video, called "Anonymous - Hate Crimes & Terrorism Directed at Scientology," was created under a YouTube profile named "AnonymousFacts," which describes itself as the "Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes." 

(Above, a screen grab from the video showing the number of alleged death threats.)

The video, which has the high production values and slick aesthetic reminiscent of other Scientology-produced footage, is a sort of timeline of alleged harassment and threat tactics against the church by Anonymous members.  It concentrates heavily on the first several weeks of the conflict between Anonymous and the church--a time when Anonymous was using more inflammatory rhetoric and employing illegal tactics like hacking and cyber-attacks. The largely peaceful protests of Feb. 10 are not mentioned in the video.

(Here, an excerpt of an alleged death threat is replayed.)

The video offers multiple digital-clock-type counters to add up the number of each type of alleged harassment the church has received:  "8,139 harrassing [sic] or threatening phone calls, 3.6 million malicious emails, 141 million hits against church web sites, 10 acts of vandalism, and 8 death threats."

"These are the facts," concludes the video.

Though the video unequivocally blames Anonymous for all the incidents, no supporting evidence or documentation of the incidents is made available or linked to.  The FBI has said that no suspects have been named in the investigation of some of the threats -- including the white powder mailings -- and Anonymous has repeatedly denied participation in the more severe instances.

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Scientology goes after Anonymous on YouTube

UPDATE: A Church of Scientology spokeswoman has confirmed the video was produced and posted by the Church.

A flashy new  video appeared on YouTube on Tuesday that portrayed the anti-Scientology group Anonymous as hateful, violent and opposed to freedom of religion.  The video, called "Anonymous - Hate Crimes & Terrorism Directed at Scientology," was created under a YouTube profile named "AnonymousFacts," which describes itself as the "Scientology Official Report on Anonymous Hate Crimes." 

(Above, a screen grab from the video showing the number of alleged death threats.)

The video, which has the high production values and slick aesthetic reminiscent of other Scientology-produced footage, is a sort of timeline of alleged harassment and threat tactics against the church by Anonymous members.  It concentrates heavily on the first several weeks of the conflict between Anonymous and the church--a time when Anonymous was using more inflammatory rhetoric and employing illegal tactics like hacking and cyber-attacks. The largely peaceful protests of Feb. 10 are not mentioned in the video.

(Here, an excerpt of an alleged death threat is replayed.)

The video offers multiple digital-clock-type counters to add up the number of each type of alleged harassment the church has received:  "8,139 harrassing [sic] or threatening phone calls, 3.6 million malicious emails, 141 million hits against church web sites, 10 acts of vandalism, and 8 death threats."

"These are the facts," concludes the video.

Though the video unequivocally blames Anonymous for all the incidents, no supporting evidence or documentation of the incidents is made available or linked to.  The FBI has said that no suspects have been named in the investigation of some of the threats -- including the white powder mailings -- and Anonymous has repeatedly denied participation in the more severe instances.

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Scientology taking hits online

 

"We were born. We grew up. We escaped."

So reads the motto of ExScientologyKids.com, a website launched Thursday by three young women raised in the Church of Scientology who are speaking out against the religion. Their website accuses the church of physical abuse, denying some children a proper education and alienating members from family.

One of the women behind the site, Jenna Miscavige Hill, is the niece of David Miscavige, the head of the church, and Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of Bruce Wiseman, president of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Scientology-sponsored organization opposed to the practice of psychiatry.

The day before ExScientologyKids.com launched, another inflammatory allegation about the church began to circulate virulently online. "L. Ron Hubbard Plagiarized Scientology," read a headline at the popular Internet culture blog BoingBoing. The post linked to images of a translated 1934 German book called "Scientologie," which critics say contains similar themes to Hubbard's Scientology, which he codified in 1952, according to a church website.

These were just the latest in a series of Scientology-related stories to burn across the Internet like grass fires in recent weeks, testing the church's well-established ability to tightly control its public image. The largest thorn in the church's side has been a group called Anonymous, a diffuse online coalition of skeptics, hackers and activists, many of them young and Web-savvy. The high-wattage movement has inspired former Scientologists to come forward and has repeatedly trained an Internet spotlight on any story or rumor that portrays Scientology in unflattering terms.

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Kids against Scientology

There's a new anti-Scientology website up called "ExScientologyKids.com," which looks to have been started by three young women who left the church, one of whom is Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church head David Miscavige.  Here's part of what they say in their intro:

Most of the people that write for this site have had extremely negative experiences in Scientology. Some of us have lost our families due to Scientology's Disconnection Policy, some of us have experienced physical abuse, and some of us were denied a proper education.

The admin page lists Miscavige Hill, Kendra Wiseman ("Kendra's parents and most of her family disconnected from her in 2005 when she refused to stop speaking to anti-Scientologists online") and Astra Woodcraft, whose bio says she "left Scientology for good when the church tried to pressure her to have an abortion."

"For what it's worth," says the welcome page,"we offer non-judgemental support for those who are still in Scientology, discussion and debate for those who've already left, and a plethora of easy-to-understand references for the curious."

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Anonymous to go after Scientology's tax status?

Last night I got an e-mail from a member of "Anonymous" -- it was an anonymous press release, with a dateline that read "LOCATION UNSPECIFIED":

Anonymous today announced a campaign to launch government inquiries into the Church of Scientology's status as a tax exempt organization. Beginning on February 26th and continuing on Tuesdays thereafter, Anonymous plans to coordinate phone calls and letter writing activities directed at their Federal legislators. Similar efforts are planned around the world.

The release identified an Anonymous spokesperson:

"Since 1993, the Church of Scientology has enjoyed favored religious status in violation of the First Amendment. Anonymous aims to draw attention to this violation of our Bill of Rights, and to initiate congressional hearings in to their validity," said David Mudkip, an American member of Anonymous.

There's a wiki page to go along with the announcement.  The group is asking interested parties to write and call their congressional representatives. 

Scientology's tax-exempt status is one of its most valuable assets.  It is unlikely, therefore, that the church will endorse this particular campaign.

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

P.M. Scouting Report: anti-Scientologist suicide, e-meters on EBay

Digg continues to rapidly elevate pretty much every story that's even slightly unflattering for Scientology.

-- A St. Pete Times piece reports on the apparent suicide of longtime anti-Scientology crusader Shawn Lonsdale, who was discovered on Saturday  dead in his home in Clearwater, Fla., Scientology's national nerve center.  Apparently, a hose had been connected to his car's tailpipe into a window of his home.

-- Another Digg link says that Scientology has been trying to keep used e-meters off EBay, but their legal basis for it might not hold water. The Digg title is misleading, though ("Scientology Given Direct Access To eBay Database"). No evidence of that in the piece. 

"In short, the Church of Scientology is at least constructively aware that the e-meters being listed on eBay are authentic, and so have no basis under trademark—or under any other intellectual property basis, for removing these listings."

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

'Anonymous' takes anti-Scientology to the streets

"Anonymous" now has a bunch of faces to go without its name. The loosely bound group of net activists who've got a beef with the Church of Scientology showed up Sunday at the church's largest Los Angeles' locations. The protests were part of a global day of demonstrations against Scientology. Hordes of masked, costumed (and mostly young) picketers showed up in Boston, New York, Toronto, the U.K., Australia and a dozen other locations (thanks wikinews).

Many of the Los Angeles picketers wore the Guy Fawkes masks made popular in the movie "V for Vendetta," and it seemed like every other person was recording the event with a digital camera, camcorder or cellphone.

The protests were peaceful and colorful, with music and chanting (often: "Religion is free -- No Pay Per View" -- a reference to an alleged tiered system whereby the religion's adherents must pay money to gain spiritual clarity).  A near constant stream of horn honks provided the background noise as cars passed the Scientology center on Sunset Boulevard and continued as the mob moved to the so-called Celebrity Center on Hollywood Boulevard.  At least one ambulance and several fire department vehicles honked as they passed.

Security personnel, some wielding video cameras, were stationed at every entrance to the Sunset Boulevard center.  Most wore impassive expressions and, when spoken to (or in some cases, danced with) by rollicking protesters, would betray no more than the wryest of grins.

Protesters were quick to hand leaflets to any cars that slowed or stopped for red lights -- and many drivers freely accepted them.

"Ask a Christian about the Bible; you will be answered," read one leaflet.  "Ask a Scientologist about their text: You will be answered -- after your check clears."

A Fawkes-masked spokesman for Anonymous, who wouldn't give his name but whom several protesters identified as the organizer of the L.A. event, explained one of the group's concrete goals.

"We want set off a government investigation into how they got tax-exempt status," said the man, who said he was in his early 20s.

Scientology was granted the tax-exempt status in 1993 after a protracted battle with the IRS, which for 25 years had maintained that Scientology was a business and not a religion.

When contacted for a comment on the protests, a Scientology spokesperson issued a statement that read, in part: "'Anonymous' is a group of cyber-terrorists who hide their identities behind masks and computer anonymity" and it "is perpetrating religious hate crimes against Churches of Scientology and individual Scientologists for no reason other than religious bigotry." The statement did not mention the Sunday protests.

The protesters Sunday looked mostly young, white and computer-oriented -- few had anything like a serious tan -- but among the group were other more established anti-Scientogy elements, such as investigative journalist Mark Ebner, Mark Bunker from Xenu TV, and several people who identified themselves as former Scientologists.

Asked to explain the sudden groundswell of opposition to Scientology, Lynn Fountain Campbell, who said she'd been part of the church for 40 years, said, "It's just reached a critical mass. People just aren't scared anymore." 

"They try to make people shut up," Campbell added, "and I'm not the shutting up type."

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Corporations named in Scientology video respond

Web Scout was intrigued by the idea that major corporations around the world might be part of a vast network of dissemination for Scientology-related literature and booklets. So I made a couple of calls to the communications departments of companies named in the latest leaked video.  Here's what they're saying:

Dell Inc. spokesman:  "This came to our attention yesterday. We did research it with our colleagues in our Europe, Middle East and Africa business segment and with our colleagues in South Africa.  We found no evidence that this is accurate, and it's not our practice to disseminate religious materials of any kind. We've got no affiliation with the Church of Scientology."

7/11 spokeswoman:  "My international department  believes that it's unfounded and inaccurate.  But we've got to follow up with our licensee and get to the bottom of it."

Philips Electronics spokesman:  "We were as stunned as anybody this morning.  It's not something we were aware of. As an equal opportunity employer, religion is not something we comment on."

Several of the spokespeople noted that in the video, Miscavige uses slippery language to avoid directly saying the corporations took part in any distribution efforts. 

Take another look at the text of the speech--and you''ll notice the lack of actual verbs.

Then there's our corporate tie ins. The multinationals tend to have Third World image problems, so this is what they're doing about it--Coca Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind, nationally televised no less. Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa.

Other entities named in the video are investigating the matter before commenting.

See original post here, transcript here, video here.

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

New Scientology video surfaces

In a subtitled video that popped up in a few places on the Internet early this morning -- Glosslip.com found it, and it was later picked up by Gawker.com and other sites -- Scientology leader David Miscavige is shown speaking to an audience about both the religion's multipronged campaign for the "global obliteration of psychiatry" and its international effort to disseminate a booklet, authored by Church founder L. Ron Hubbard, that the organization uses for outreach. The video appears to have been made in 2006. Miscavige mentions the value of "corporate tie-ins" and implies that multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, 7-Eleven and Dell Computer have been involved in distribution of Church literature.

In describing the workings of what he called "the 2006 campaign for the global elimination of psychiatry," Miscavige boasts of a coordinated international public relations attack meant to damage and discredit the psychiatric profession, its revenues and the drugs it employs.

"That campaign was expressly, maybe even diabolically, engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard," says Miscavige from a lectern. "Our Mental Health Adjustment Kit essentially works like a 'smart' bomb in that it sniffs out 'psych' fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism."

"To put it bluntly," he continues, a moment before receiving rousing cheers from a large audience, "we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem."

Miscavige also goes into detail about a program he refers to as Operation Planetary Calm, whose goal is the worldwide distribution of Hubbard's "The Way to Happiness," a text the Church of Scientology refers to as a nonreligious "common-sense guide to happier living," according to a website registered under the address of the church.  Part of the strategy, he says, is "corporate tie-ins."

"Multinationals tend to have Third World image problems," he notes as snippets of video play.  "So this is what they're doing about it -- Coca-Cola Pakistan with a braille edition for the blind ... Philips Electronics, likewise all over Pakistan, and Dell Computers all over Africa."

Miscavige also implies that 4,000 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan carry the book, and adds that "the numbers grow even larger when you follow the campaign trail into Taiwanese schools -- to date, it's 250,000 by order of Taiwan's Ministry of Education."

At one point, a computer animation depicts a giant grenade, labeled "Psych Buster," exploding near a building labeled "government" and another building, perhaps a bank, with a large dollar sign on its side.  Miscavige repeatedly invokes end-times biblical tropes such as "plagues," "parting seas" and "apocalyspe," and cites the goal of breaking "the dark spell cast across Earth by psychiatry."

After a message was left with the church seeking comment on the apparently leaked videos, links to which were initially sent to The Times by investigative journalist Mark Ebner, a spokesman identifying himself as Kendrick Moxon returned a call to say he was aware of the video.  He described it as "an edited copy of a pirated video."

"Some sort of an excerpt is what it appears to be," he said, and did not deny that the video represented a real event.

Late calls to Coca-Cola seeking comment were not immediately returned.

As of this writing, at least three copies of the video had been posted on YouTube, the most-watched of which had fewer than 10,000 views. 

Read the entire transcript here.

Note: The comments are getting to be a bit redundant and off-topic at this point, so I'm closing them for this post. 

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

The War Against Scientology 101

As a service to those who have not had time to fully educate themselves on one of the most important ideological battles of the last 1,000 hours, here's a roundup of some useful information, videos and links you can use to get acquainted with the basic facts in the run-up to the global Scientology protests the hacker group Anonymous has called for this Sunday.

The Timeline

Jan. 15 - Cruise video leaks (Telegraph)

Jan. 15 - Scientology tries to control leaks, fails (Web Scout)

Jan.26 - Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack (PC World)

Jan. 29 - Some guy gets accidentally hacked by anti-Scientology hackers, plus pro-Scientology hackers disrupt anti-Scientology hackers' plans to disrupt Scientology (Wired)

Jan. 31 - Someone mails benign white powder to Scientology sites (LAT)

Jan. 31 - Feb 10th is set by shady hacker forces as anti-Scientology D-Day (FOXNews.com)

The Videos

Tom Cruise discusses scientology (Gawker)
    -- Jerry O'Connell's spoof (FunnyOrDie.com)

Anonymous to Scientology (YouTube)
    "We have decided your organization should be destroyed.")

Anonymous clarifies itself (YouTube)
    "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not simply a group of superhackers,   Anonymous is a collection of  individuals united by an awareness that someone . . . must bring light to the darkness. Among our numbers you will find individuals from all walks of life.")

Anonymous's long and ridiculous code of conduct for public protests (YouTube)
    "Rule #17: Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles."  "Rule #18: Bring water.  A dehydrated, thirsty Anonymous is not a useful Anonymous." "Rule #19: Wear good shoes.")

Scientology leader David Miscavige's niece speaks out (Inside Edition)

Scientology critic Mark Bunker of XenuTV warns hackers against dirty tricks (YouTube)

The Web Sites

Project Chanology
    "A large scale plan to bring down the Church of Scientology in its present form"
    --Chanology on Wikipedia

Church of Scientology News Page
    No mention of controversy, protests or leaked videos
    --Scientology on Wikipedia

Allegedly stolen high-level Scientology documents (Via Digg.com, origin unconfirmed, use salt-grain)   
    "This series may have been given the pc on entrance to the Marcab Confederacy plus or minus 20,000 years ago, and then again much later just before the first Between Lives Implant as a preliminary step before the actual Between Lives Implant."

Hollywoodinterrupted.com - Investigative journo Mark Ebner was the source of the original leak.

Surely we're missing a whole bunch of material -- feel free to fill in the blanks in the comment section.  Thanks.

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.

Scientology vs. Anonymous -- The mystery sort of deepens, kind of

The Times' Jim Puzzanghera has a synopsis today about the Great Web War between Scientology and the vast, highly-networked hacker underground known only as // the loosely allied group of online ne'erdowells known as // the three 15-year-old script kiddies known as // some dude called Anonymous.

Today's piece is not alone in having had trouble moving the ball forward in adumbrating just who the heck Anonymous might be.  For one thing, almost all of the anti-Scientology behavior in the last few weeks could've been perpetrated by one person with elementary video editing knowledge, intermediate hacking skills and a roll of postage stamps. 

The childish YouTube diatribe against the church's practices, while diverting enough (thanks largely to its use of old-fashioned computer-generated voicing software), failed to achieve the profundity of, say, a Martin Luther's 95 theses.  The DDOS attack against Scientology's homepage is nothing particularly sophisticated in the world of hacking, and mailing envelopes of corn starch to church outlets -- that's just lame. 

Were all these tactics perpetrated by the same group/person?  Or is it a bunch of independent actors?  How many hard-core anti-Scientologists are there -- and why?  The identity and constitution of Anonymous is the most important part of the story. 

Stay tuned, BatFans -- as soon as Web Scout makes his current deadline, he'll put on the Scouting cap and see if he can't find out s'more.