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Scientology cannot find anything to grab hold of to start swinging this their way. Like trying to grab wriggling slimy fish or something.
The initial black PR campaign, with press releases about Anon being a violent group have long been forgotten by the public. Now all the public are seeing are a bunch of persistent creative folk who have become rather like a welcomed monthly tradition - peacefully protesting and having fun. The Anon message is getting through – more people join Anon frequently.
The cease & desist letters (whatever those legal letters were called) sent to identified Anons have done nothing to help scientology “handle”. All these letters did was give oxygen to the already strongly burning fire. Absolutely ineffective. Waste of resources.
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Scientology can’t play the “waa waa these folk are discriminating against our religion” as this will open up a can of worms. Much of the Anon actions/messages are heavily attacking “is scientology really a religion?” Scientology can’t afford to play the religious discrimination card.
Scientology can’t run classic nasty fair game because Anon is cleverly documenting their every move and will just rise up and say “there you just proved exactly what we’ve been saying”.
There seems to be no pattern to how OSA is handling this. Initially there was but now there are random things going on which indicates there is no sound program running here. They don’t seem to have a clue how to make this “problem” go away.
So that leaves desperation and serious frustration. IMO this display of violence is from the rank & file staff members who have been badly let down by their office of special affairs (OSA). OSA is meant to effectively handle any and all black PR and remove threats from the environment. But the real problem is that OSA are so fucking far out of their depth here because all the tools that Hubbard left them to play with are useless in the 21st century. Furthermore the policies are steeped in Hubbard’s paranoia & cannot withstand too much truth being flung at them.
And that is the point. There is too much truth in Anonymous for scientology to cope.
I’m with sallydannce on this one. I don’t think these outbursts are planned in any way. The CoS is plainly losing the battle. Compare the response to recent protests to what happened at protests in the late ‘90s and early 00s (see XenuTV on YouTube). Then, a handful of protesters were mobbed by dozens of Scientologists and verbally abused and threatened.
For an example, see this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QGDxnrYqKg
(it's a long one, but skip to about 20 mins in)
Now, the Scientologists mostly just hide.
The rank and file staff members must be getting very frustrated. Every month, protestors are turning up out side most of the major orgs on the planet and OSA seem to be doing nothing to stop it. This must be hitting the orgs hard. In the past, whenever there was a PR problem, the normal story that we would hear is “OSA are handling it”. Occasionally, we would be asked to attend a public demonstration, but mostly legal and PR would be left to OSA.
But, it seems that Miscavige’s reign of terror has emasculated OSA to the point that they are no longer able to mount a coordinated response. DM was apparently so preoccupied with rooting out all the SPs in senior management, that he overlooked the need to have vital functions manned up. The CoS seems totally clueless as to what to do about Anonymous.
But, to be fair (I am British after all), I’m not sure what the CoS can do about this. How do you stop thousands of people protesting in a law-abiding manner? We know that the CoS has done many things that they wouldn’t want widely known (what are
your crimes Scientology?), and these are now getting wide publicity. The only way that I can see Anonymous failing, is if the CoS infiltrates and causes or provokes violence against CoS personnel or premises.
From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of Anonymous are far too sensible to do anything like this. But, I’m sure that if any Scientology staff got hurt, no matter who started it, then the CoS would gleefully use this to their utmost advantage.
So it is essential that if anyone is protesting, that they keep within the law at all times and do not respond to provocation with any violence. Obviously this does not preclude anyone from taking reasonable measures to protect themselves or others. In addition, always make sure that there are witnesses and multiple video cameras. Simply saying “Well the Scilons attacked us, but ran away before the Police came and we didn’t get any video of it.” won’t impress anyone. But, a video clip on YouTube of Scientologists threatening or assaulting protestors will count very heavily against the CoS.
Any outbursts against protestors is a sure sign that Anonymous are winning. Keep up the good work!
Axiom142