Overpriced, of course, but I’m still impressed.

San Francisco Weekly provides two offerings: Anonymous 101 and Scientology’s Antagonists.

“They are really no different from the Ku Klux Klan in terms of their masks and hatred and their jollies of riding horses around and harassing Scientologists,” church leader Jeff Quiros says.

Police don’t see Anonymous as a threat: “I think they’re really cool,” Sergeant Carl Tennenbaum says. “They’re really cooperative. They have a right to be here.”

Keep postulatin’, Jeffy.

The Atlantic region version of Frank Magazine publishes an Anon in its collage of pictures from the Halifax Pride Parade.  Click for a biggie:

Someone on Enturbulation found these guys and I just had to share their Scientology commentary here.  This shit is GOLD!

After the EpicNoseGuy situation, wherein a 15-year-old London boy was threatened with a court summons if he didn’t remove a sign calling Scientology a cult, I posted on Enturbulation that if “cult” is unacceptible in the UK, simply spell it out as “cu*t”.  It got some laughs, and someone named “Scientology is a cult” on alt.religion.scientology even changed their name to “Scientology is a cu*t”.

Then I find out about this.

There’s been another development in what’s becoming a long-running dispute between anti-Scientology protesters and British police, as a 57-year-old man was charged with breach of the peace for displaying a sign that read “Stupid Cu*t” and “Greedy Cu*t” during a protest in Edinburgh at the weekend.

This has bad, good, and great written all over it.  The bad part is that someone was arrested without warning for a fucking sign, regardless of content.  Especially since this one happened to be factual.

The good part is that this arrest caused the news to spread that Scientology is indeed a stupid and greedy cult.  It was published and people across Scotland read the news, generating a sour taste towards the authoritarian cult and their attack poodles in the Edinburgh police.

The great part?  I trolled someone from across the ocean into getting arrested.  I’m kinda proud about that one.

The other night yours truly and a band of local anons did a fliering raid.  We try to do them once a week, where we don our masks and walk throughout downtown handing out fliers, and stopping to chat with those who are curious and ask for more information. If you don’t do these raids in your city try one out one evening, they’re surprisingly fun.

One member of the public we encountered was a librarian who works at a central library.  She recounted a story about how just the week prior a big box arrived from Bridge Publications filled with The Basics.

The Basics are an 18-book collection which combined costs $525 directly from Bridge Publications, Scientology’s publishing arm.  Scientologists are encouraged by the RTC to collect the addresses of their local libraries and pass them on to Bridge Publications, who will then send the libraries The Basics.  However, in addition to passing on these addresses, Scientologists are also required to pass along a payment at full price for The Basics collection to Bridge Publications.

Yes, you read that correctly: Scientologists pay full price for a book collection they’ll never see because David Miscavige tells them to.

No special discount.  No act of altruism from the very rich Church of Scientology itself to spread the word.  None of that.  Instead, the Joe Schmoe public Scientologist had to pay full price to cover not only printing and shipping costs but the markup that generates a profit.

These local Scientologists might be interested in knowing that the librarian we met has confirmed their payment has resulted in a collection of 18 brand-new books are filling up a garbage can outside of the library.

I told the librarian that her library should have done what others across the world are doing: sell them at a fraction of the cost on eBay where someone might find them useful.

This is the front page:

And here is the article.

Anonymous’s initial activities were silly - playing tricks or hijacking forums. Some were borderline legal. They would bring down websites by bombarding them with data (“distributed denial of service”). “Frankly, it wasn’t very noble. But it was fun,” explained one Anonymous, who called himself Halfdark. They have a word to describe such activities - lulz (see panel). Early this year, a video was posted online of Tom Cruise discussing Scientology. Unintentionally funny in its sincerity, it spread across the internet. Scientology called in the lawyers, and began forcing sites to remove it. Anonymous had a target.

“They had started screwing with the internet,” said Marc Abian, named afterthe Scientologists’ belief in an evil race of aliens called the Marcabians. “Initially we harassed them for lulz, but then we realised that they ruin lives. What we do is fun, but with a real cause.”

Moar here and digg here. This was three full pages in a big-time London newspaper.  The seal has been broken; time for other media to take note.

Here’s an editorial/short story that uses Tom Cruise as a standard issue buffoon.

“I am glad you called me,” begins Mr. Cruise. “As I’ve said before, when you see a car crash, only a Scientologist can help.”

“I’m don’t know what Ballmer believes,” replies Yang, “so that explains a lot…. Hold on, Yahoo is NOT a wreck. We’re very profitable.”

“Have you ever had an audit?” asks Cruise.

“Of course. Our numbers are great,” protests Yang.

“I mean an audit from the great firm of L, Ron and Hubbard,” says Cruise.

“Who?”

It deals with a tech business crisis the C|Net News.com types exist to report on so I don’t entirely get it, but it mocks the deservedly mockable so there you go.