Saint Hill picket report 15th October 2010

Mostly the UK OG tag on to Anonymous protests these days, but this one we set up ourselves being on a Friday:

Three Old Guard and three Anonymous went to rain on Davey's big speech day at the IAS weekend.

After a short stint in East Grinstead High Street we arrived outside Saint Hill about 14:30. Traffic into the grounds was better organised this year with no jams, otherwise things inside seemed much the same as previous years.

Photos

The 'shatter the SPs' plan this year was two big speakers balanced on the perimeter wall connected to bagpipe music. Well, first they had to connect them which took a while but when it got going it was a WIN. Like loud, really loud, right next to Mr Mid Sussex Policeman's car. I don't think he was amused. This was death metal concert head bangingly loud.

And then... a chap from Health and Safety Environmental Protection arrived. With a meter. We didn't call him, and I don't think our glum friends across the road did either. How odd. Perhaps he heard the bagpipes from his office in town. Anyway, he wanted the speakers off, and Tony on the megaphone to turn his volume down from 11. We complied - no one messes with the man from H&S.

After a much quieter second half, we departed around 17:30.

Spot the religion

Another contest folks! This is a graph of audience reaction to the latest adverts on American television from - let's say a certain well known bona fide religion that isn't a cult. You have guess at which moment in the advert the name of the religion was first given.

Spot the Scientologist (2)

Difficult this one isn't it? The photo was taken outside the Scientology shop in London during an Anonymous protest. It inspired one of my leafleting callouts: "Scientology - the unhappy religion!"

Infinite Complacency

...you'll have to read the Infinite Complacency blog to find out where Jonny Jacobsen found the title! He's a journalist who has been observing Scientology from the sidelines for quite a while, and is now blogging his notes for what may eventually become yet another book on the cult.
Here he concentrates on David Miscavige, the violent psychopath who has led Scientology since the 1980s.

A recent work I'm presently reading is John Duignan's "The Complex", subtitled "An insider exposes the covert world of the Church of Scientology". British booksellers have refused to stock it due to a threat from the cult, it is available from Ireland where it was published.

Google is watching you

I wrote a satirical comment to a Youtube video yesterday with a :-) at the end to indicate humor and got the usual humorless replies such as "let me guess not a real person just a part of the scientology PR machine". Guessing is not necessary however - Google is your friend! My name is almost unique on the Internet, and a Search on it produced this (snipped for brevity):

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,480 for "hartley patterson". (0.14 seconds)
Search Results

1. User:Hartley Patterson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. News From Bree A Tolkien interview, a medieval spreadsheet, a secondary universe and some enturbulating entheta.
3. Hartley Patterson Directory of critical information about Scientology.
4. Protest Activity in the UK
5. Picket Report, Hartley Patterson
6. User:Hartley Patterson - Wikinews, the free news source
7. User talk:Hartley Patterson - Wikinews, the free news source
8. 1972 - A Year in Diplomacy by Hartley Patterson
9. ZoomInfo Open People Directory > Patterson, Hartley
10.Patterson, Hartley | Patterson, Hazel | People Directory | Facebook

Only (9) appears to be spam, the others catch a selection of my Internet interests. but 2,480 of them? Oh no, I've just added the 2,481st! Must get out more...

Spot the Scientologist

On Saturday a couple of dozen protesters visited the CoS 'secret' headquarters in rural California. Lawyer Graham Berry's interview with the local Fox News station was interrupted by the Scientology PR Director who handed the reporter contact details but answered a request for a comment with "No".
Larger image, photo by cameraanonymous.
Sorry, no prizes for spotting the Scientologist - the look on Graham's face says it all...
The full story of pickets at 'Gold Base' can be found elsewhere, here's a link to a lot of videos. The current series has kept up the cult's reputation for bizarre and creepy behaviour in the face of Americans standing up for their First Amendment rights to say what they damn well want.

Anonymous terrorism

My Anonymous friends have just notched up their sixth monthly worldwide protest against the Church of Scientology, and the cult still hasn't a clue about how to stop them. In most locations the cult seems to have retreated inside its buildings, stuck its fingers in its ears and pretended nothing is happening, which would have been a sensible reaction from the start if the leader of Scientology David Miscavige had effective control over his staff.

However with his rational senior staff leaving or locked up in Scientology's prison camp in California Miscavige is increasingly at the mercy of the fanatics, who are telling members that the Nazi Communist terrorists that the multinational drug companies are paying to attack the Scientology religion will be exposed as sex criminals any day, any month, any year, any decade now. Fine - except that they are telling the press the same because they really believe it.

Personally I've been concentrating recently on getting protests going at Saint Hill, the cult headquarters in the UK. It's a big mansion out in the beautiful Sussex countryside, a pleasant day out with pints in the pub afterwards.

We live in interesting times

This is the title of an entry in another guy's weblog. Mr G Allen is he says just an ordinary American who heard about a local protest, went along to take photographs and find out what was all about.

Later he received a legal letter saying he was a member of the protesting group. The letter accused the group of illegal activity such as making bomb threats and demanded that 'his' organisation stop behaving illegally.

An employee of a nearby coffee shop who just happened to be walking past the protesters received an identical letter. He and she had been followed to their cars and had their number plates photographed by private detectives. This was, apparently, the sole 'evidence' the lawyers had.

OK, you've guessed. This is the Church of Scientology again, making new friends.

Ides of March

The second outing for the Anonymous worldwide pickets against the happy fun cult was just as successful as the first it seems, plus better organised and larger. I attended at London as previously, and whilst waiting for Anonymous to arrive I and a suppressive friend popped into a sandwich bar for sustenance. We were soon joined to our amusement by a spy from the Org a couple of doors away - so the DSA recognised me then! - but too late, my contact from Smith-Kline-Pharma had already handed over the thick wad of notes for me to pass on to the Anonymous Central Committee so we were talking about... I forget, was it the ARSCC elections? Nothing of interest to OSA anyway.

This time Anonymous were loaded with cake, chicken, and good humour. They chanted, cheered honking cars and sang Ron 'Happy Birthday' with three Hip-hip-hoorays; the old folk stood at the back and chatted, it was especially nice to meet a lady who had sailed on the Apollo with Ron. I left when the threatening rain finally started around 16:00, but they were good for hours more.

Joanna on webcam

Back in June I started blogging about a remarkable series of Internet pages and blogs concerning the alternate reality of Joanna. At the time I had assumed that she could not possibly be real, that 'Joanna' was a persona devised for purposes unknown that happened by chance to include Scientology, history, the occult, conspiracy theory and other interests of mine. Was this an extended joke, an alternate reality game? Why was I apparently the only person in the world reading this?

I was wrong.

Over the past two weeks the author has made 21 Youtube videos, presumably influenced by the explosion of such clips from Anonymous and others concerning Scientology. They appear to be a restatement of her reality along with some more mundane information, I haven't watched them all yet, too much at once and I'll vanish down that rabbit hole...

Judgement Day

So I'm sitting trying to wipe this grin off my face.

It's crunch day for Anonymous. Could they bring their merry band of virtual personas out of the Matrix, down the Internets and into the Real World? I say 'is' because since we don't live on Discworld results from California are not in yet, but first reports look good.

I arrived at the London Dianetics and Scientology Improvement Centre at around 11:00 for a quick chat with the bobbies setting up barricades. Barricades? Yes, police radio was reporting crowds assembling at the London Scientology Org a couple of miles away. Hundreds of them...

As planned they moved to Tottenham Court Rd a couple of hours later. It was a noisy but well behaved crowd, improving their chants by the minute - some football fans amongst them I'd say. Placards, masks, leaflets of all descriptions, and an anarcho-syndicalist flag.

My fellow critics had followed them, and it was good to see old friends who had come out of the shadows for the Big Day. There were several Youtube wannabes filming, including a livecam.

Cult reaction? Exactly what I'd hoped for in London. They came out to play, but could only watch in bemusement.

Hackers destroy Scientology

Well not as such, but it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

Jan 15th, Andrew Morton's much heralded unauthorised (by a long way) biography of Tom Cruise was published. It revealed two shocking facts - Tom was heterosexual and he was a Scientologist. Not many people knew that.
So Tom isn't suing. Being caught lying about having been cured of dyslexia by his religion is it seems a small price to pay for a 'Not Gay' certificate.

The famously litigious Church of Scientology however was distressed to find that the book was in its second half mostly about it and its hitherto publically unknown leader, Mr David Miscavige. As Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center and the most ethical being on the planet, Mr Miscavige has been the absolute dictator of the Church since the death of founder L Ron Hubbard in 1986.
The Church put out a 14 page non-denial of the lies in the book but that as I predicted at once was it - no libel writ has been served.

It was then that the bombs began to go off. Cue repeat of the Panorama disaster - a short clip of Cruise from a 2004 Church promotional video, long known about by its critics, popped up on YouTube. Since it appeared to show that Tom had gone raving mad four years ago but we somehow hadn't noticed, the Church tried to get it off the Internet but failed, as it always fails against sufficiently annoyed Freedom of Speech advocates. More clips from the video were posted, and other videos are (I happen to know) queued up ready to roll.

A niece of Mr Miscavige blew her top and wrote an incensed open letter to the Church, which had made its routine denial that it broke up families. "Oh yes it does", she refuted, claiming she had been cut off from her parents.

From out of nowhere an Internet prankster community known as Anonymous (because they are) suddenly got serious, announcing in a series of hilariously over the top video manifestos that they were going to drive the cult off the Internet starting with a DDos attack. That's where you get lots of people to access a website all at once, so it overloads and crashes.

If they were expecting moral support from the existing critics of the cult they didn't get it, indeed a chorus of condemnation resulted. DDosing and hacking were Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Internet vs Scientology war, held by both sides but not used. Alarmed, Anonymous switched tactics and surprisingly decided to try to get their previously virtual people out onto the real life streets for a worldwide protest February 10th, which we await with some trepidation.

Picket

This Orange Multi Media Message was sent wirefree from an Orange MMS phone.

Blogged from the pub! Back home, here's another - Gingernut modelling an XL Clambake shirt.




Reports elsewhere, but it was an uneventful event.

Another rabbit hole

A favorite website of the anti-Scientology crowd is Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), a 'Dead Agent' website which vilifies enemies of the Church of Scientology. It is so nasty and over the top that only crazy culties could imagine that anyone aside from themselves would believe it.

This month a blog appeared here called joelphillipsreligiousfreedomwatch. It purports to be written by Joel Philips, the owner of RFW, though the contents suggest it is a parody of Mr Phillips' rantings. I assume this is the material referred to on RFW's front page under the 'Harassment Notice' header, wherein Mr Philips denies being the author.
The first post on the blog, 'Why I Hate Russia', first appeared elsewhere, causing speculation as to whether it was genuine or just disinformation.

So is this another rabbit hole? We have a reference to Wiccans, Indonesians and Russians. The Wiccans, two people claiming to be British black witches who have posted to ARS for several years threatening to cast spells on cult leaders, would seem to predate RFW. Certainly Mr Phillips, happy to attack others, reacted immediately to their brief attack on him by offering a still valid reward of $5,000 for information about them.
The Indonesians and Russians look to be part of the blogger's alternate reality, not Mr Phillips'. But maybe the blogger is just throwing us clues...

How did I find out about this blog? I had an Email from Joel Phillips!
"Hartley you should update your FAQ about these people. Joel"

Another Joanna blog

Documentary video vlogger talent appears to be on a networking MySpace lookalike called Ning. It has three members who may not be real, but the fourth is Joanna. She has several posts which seem to lie chronologically between the original set and Deconstructing Judas, June 3-14th. They talk of making videos about her obsessions.

Correction: more veils

One early Joanna blog I missed is
http://markrowberryfreakout.blogspot.com

There are others listed at

http://www.blogger.com/profile/02914820102062616373
but they are presently inaccessible.

More from beyond the veil

Deconstructing Judas is a second blog from the author of Babble's evil twin, see earlier entry.

The supposed author now believes Judas to have been an earlier incarnation of L Ron Hubbard, whereas her ex or possibly fantasy lover was Adam, St John the Evangelist and Ludwig II of Bavaria.

I remain fascinated and puzzled. Who else could possibly be reading these blogs? What are their purpose? Is this one of those Alternate Reality games that I've stumbled into? The Game is a favorite movie of mine. And Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius a favorite story.

The first blog is presently invited access only.

XENU IS LOOSE!

The Edinburgh Fringe will include a show from Collapsible Theatre:

Xenu is Loose is a new satirical Sci-Fi Musical based on the beliefs of the Cult of Scientology.

Jennifer, a young, beautiful high-school student finds her life transformed when she discovers the purifying power of L Ron. Hubbard's Scientology. But when Xenu, Alien Overlord and timeless nemesis of all that is good, escapes his ancient galactic prison; she and handsome Scientologist Troy must summon every ounce of cunning and resourcefulness to save the world from, like, Total Atomic Destruction.

A combination of live rock music, spectacular laser combat, cutting-edge multimedia projection and stunning design will make this the most exciting new musical on the fringe!

Good Grief. Is nothing sacred?

Babbles has an evil twin

Barbara 'Babbles' Schwarz is alt.religion.scientology's mad baglady:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Schwarz

Yes, I know the Wikipedia article looks like fiction, but it's real.
Now we have a parody blog, written in an alternate universe by 'Joanna':
http://henleyonthames2001.blogspot.com/

This is wonderful stuff. 'Joanna' is fixated on 'Mark Rowberry', which is an amalgam of two well known names in Scientology. His photo website is
http://www.wayn.com/waynprofile.html?member_key=7240501

She met Mark in 2001, and believes that Hubbard is controlled by Jesus.
They are all out to get her of course.

Whoever is writing this knows all about Scientology and Babbles. She knows about England, lots of local references - I live a few miles away. It's recent, with references to Panorama. And I've *no* idea who did this.

1 second of fame

Yes, I was there on the Monday 14th edition of Panorama. Near the end, the guy in the red anorak and placard in Tottenham Court Road picketing the Scientologists. And I've spent the past two days trying to keep a webpage up to date with the storm that resulted which shows no signs of dying down.

It was worth it though. To be accused of being 'orchestrated' by the BBC was hilarious.