Fuck Scientology - Phoenix Anonymous

I’ve been a public critic of Scientology since 1987 when a guy in Canada asked me to help him write a flyer about Scientology.  Back then critics didn’t even know each other mostly. I started meeting people like Ida Camburn, and then some FAIR people (ex-Scientologists suing Scientology). The Cult Awareness Network annual conferences, their newsletters, and other contacts gradually got so we knew each other at least. In 1991 I wrote “The Hubbard is Bare” and passed that around for feedback before sending out copies.  I figured maybe 100 people would read it.

   In 1994 I got on the internet.  Almost immediately I found alt.religion.scientology and hooked in to a new network of critics.  This was great; people with the same passion as me! 

   In 1995 Scientology attacked a.r.s., trying to shut it down completely through several different methods.  This caused great concern amongst internet users in general as it was seen as an attack on free speech on the internet.  Many more people joined the cause from this.  We started protests in front of Scientology orgs, mostly with signs like “hands off a.r.s.!” and “Scientology hates free speech” since that was what pissed people off the most. 

   The protests grew into annual protests in Clearwater, but they never got very big. The most people we had was 45. These lasted until 2000.  That year, the Lisa McPherson Trust opened.

   Between then and 2008 the media gradually lost their fear of Scientology to at least a degree, and more and more programs came out exposing Scientology, like South Park.

   Then in January 2008 Anonymous decided to take on Scientology.  This was a shock to everybody, I think including Anonymous.  Thousands of people around the world came out to protest Scientology. This changed things in many ways. For one, protesters were no longer outnumbered.  They were somewhat safe from retaliation by remaining anonymous.  They brought a fresh approach and incredible new skills, such as videos.  And they’ve been consistent.

   Scientology, meanwhile, has been essentially stagnant.  They offer nothing new either in their responses nor in their offers to the public.  They have absolutely no idea how to handle Anonymous.

   So, what is the state of the struggle?  Critics 1, Scientology 0.  The protests are fun, and Scientology makes them exciting by tailing people, sending out TROs, and all kinds of strangeness.  Anonymous has little cost other than to show up once a month, while Scientology sends out PI’s, lawyer letters, and hides its staff, essentially shutting down in fear of free speech.  It’s obvious that Scientology is still stuck in the 1950’s while Anonymous is the emergence of a new type of activism where cost is negligible, fun is part of the goal, and mad skillz are legendary.

http://www.xenu-directory.net/news/images/thecompiler-newspaper_1982-74-83.pdf#page=4

“…between 1975 and 1977, during the FBI’s investigation of the cult, meetings of Scientology executives were held in which there were discussions relative to “auditing” high-level FBI members with auditing process R2-45.”  ["Inside Scientology: is it a religion, a science-fiction fantasy, or just another cult?" The News-Herald, Santa Rosa, California, June 9-15, 1982]

I’m going to try to find the evidence for these meetings.  I’ve never seen that Scientology was actually planning to kill FBI agents, but there it is.  This should be investigated further.

Ok, I altered this slightly.

Actually, 6 cds, but whatever.

http://www.lisamcpherson.org/scans/krohnke_jeff_depo.pdf

I was deposed in Arnie Lerma’s case concerning copyright violations. I
had nothing to do with this case, yet I was deposed anyway. After the
deposition Lynn Farney, head of Scientology legal, yelled at me “we
will raid you and sue you! You are on notice!”  This was no idle
threat since Dennis, Arnie, and Factnet had indeed been raided and
sued.  They were mad ’cause I came with copies of the OT levels, which
was actually in fulfillment of the document requests so sheesh, picky,
picky.  You can read a bit more about this here…

http://www.lisamcpherson.org/cos/cds.htm

   First is an affidavit from Arnie’s attorney.  The depo was pretty
much 2 hours[?] of hell.  Toward the end I noticed that Moxon and
Farney were running out of questions so Moxon started somewhat
repeating himself just to keep the thing going. Hopefully you can see
from these sample pages that a Scientology deposition is not one of
discovering information as much as it is one of intimidation and
harassment.