The National Post in Canada published an oped on the situation with Epic Nose Guy in Lolndon.

On May 10, a teenager protesting peaceably outside the London headquarters of the Church of Scientology had a placard confiscated by London Police, who deemed it criminally “insulting.” Crown prosecutors refused to follow up, which was hailed as a “victory” for free speech.

Some victory. The sign was being wielded by an unidentified minor, who was taking part in the latest of a series of Internetorganized “anonymous” protests.

If protest materials can be confiscated, then not much is left of the right to protest against Scientology.

“Internetorganized” is now a word.

Scientology has had a push to up their stats since the Anonymous uprising began. It seems the “fastest growing religion” on Earth today, with all their “8 million” members, could only muster selling 2,257 copies of Dianetics worldwide. The breakdown:

24-May-2008 11:12 PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
INTERNATIONAL TOTAL: 2,257
BRIDGE PUBLICATIONS TOTAL: 748
NEW ERA PUBLICATIONS TOTAL: 1,509

Leading the sales was the European Union with 672 sales; the UK had 235; the Western US had 170; the Eastern US had 104. Rock bottom was Canada at 18 sales nationwide, in a country of 33 million people.

The following orgs sold ZERO copies, with the ones that sting the most in bold: (more…)

The Guardian and TMZ are now reporting on his cult school. Will seems to have backed the wrong horse in this race.  Whassa madda wid you, Will Smith?  You’re causing Hancock to bomb before it even comes out.

What a horrible way to end a career.

Karin Pouw, check your voicemail.

Bad COB Davey Miscavige.  BAD BAD MIDGET.

Send this note to COB David Miscavige, “The Mad Midget of Hemet” - it’s about time he reeled Karin Pouw in.  She slipped up in a recent sitdown with the Village Voice, accidentally spilling a bit of R6 to the wog reporter:

But Pouw said something even more amazing at that lunch. Some Scientologists, like John Travolta, make the claim that you can be a Christian and still be a Scientologist as well. But didn’t Hubbard, I pointed out, write in his Xenu story that Jesus was, in fact, just a bit of programming that had been inserted in our psyches? How was it possible for a Scientologist also to be a Christian if Hubbard claimed that Jesus was just a figment of the imagination?

Well, you can imagine that the lunch got pretty heated at that moment, and Pouw was clearly angry that I’d put her on the spot on her own turf. But eventually, she blurted out, “So we think Jesus is a figment of the imagination! So what!”

What a moment. That’s not something I expect to see on Scientology brochures any time soon.

This one has been getting a lot of attention.

Google has murdered the AdSense account run by one of the web’s most influential anti-Scientology sites.

Yesterday, the search giant cut off all ads served to Enturbulation, a fledgling site dedicated to promoting activism against the Church of Scientology and all its related organizations. This could have something do with the nature of the ads Google was serving. Many of the Google-driven ads funding the anti-Scientology site were paid for by the Church of Scientology.

“While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers,” read Google’s letter to Enturbulation, a kind of home base for the now famous Anonymous movement. “Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.”

This isn’t going over well.  Uninvolved websites are taking issue with Google’s decision, and a lot of previously uninterested people are as well.  If Scientology did indeed pressure Google then a lot of Googlewatchers are now watching Scientology; and they’re not impressed at what’s being done to their favourite company.

After months of putting “NO ANONYMOUS ALLOWED” signs in their windows, Clearwater Scientologists noticed that on or around protests, when there were hundreds of people outside their doors, business was down.  Huh, funny. It escaped their clear analytical minds that lowered profits is something you pull in as an effect of refusing customers. So, like any rational human who’s realized they’ve made a mistake, they petitioned city hall to refuse protesters their legal rights.  An SP Times OpEd picks up from here.

The Clearwater City Council took mere seconds Tuesday to deliver a powerful message: that people have the right to peacefully assemble and speak their minds, and the city won’t even consider trying to tread on that right….

Anonymous organizers say they have not blocked customers from entering downtown businesses and that no one has any reason to fear the protesters, who generally have numbered from 50 to about 200 — nowhere near the estimated 3,000 Scientologists who, in 1997, marched around downtown in a surprise mass demonstration against the Clearwater Police Department and the St. Petersburg Times. At least Anonymous provides plenty of advance notice of its demonstrations.

Scientologists had the right to speak their minds on the streets of Clearwater in 1997. And Anonymous has the right to do so in 2008. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech and peaceably assemble, and it declares that government may make no laws abridging those rights.

Anonymous comes out on top on CNN:

Not only does Tommy Davis fail at answering everything thrown at him, but he spins through his fucking teeth after being told that the FBI sees no merit to the cult’s claims of Anonymous being a hate group.

EDIT: Main news story prefacing the interview is now up on CNN’s site.

The Village Voice had an article about the Fair Gaming of Anonymii earlier this week.  I just wanted to repost a comment on that article that was just brought to my attention:

Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman just admitted that they have no factual basis to send these letters to the individuals addressed therein. They also admitted that they have sent out multiple letters of this nature. I hope they get paid enough so that they don’t care that they are going to be sanctioned.

It may be just my 15 years in law talking, but you the New York Bar simply will not allow attorneys operating in this state to send out spam mail alleging series crimes with no factual support, with the obvious intention to stop people from excessing [sic] their right to free speech. I note that counsel is on notice of the COS’s past conduct in terms of its felonious fabrication of threats against itself. Counsel, I’m about to help some friends and eat your lunch.

Excellent stuff.

From the Philadelphia Weekly:

Hey, remember how the Philly Church of Scientology — let’s call it the farm system for Clearwater — scheduled a protest all day on the day of the latest Anonymous protest against Scientology so Anonymous couldn’t protest with masks on?

Well, a dude from Anonymous (I guess) contacted me the other day and passed along some hilarious photos of the “protest” that wasn’t really a protest at all.