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bostonnow: Boston protest organizer faces court date for alleged criminal acts PDF Print E-mail
Published on BostonNOW (http://www.bostonnow.com)
Scientology vs. Anonymous: Local battle heats up

Boston protest organizer faces court date for alleged criminal acts

In what the top Scientology representative in Boston calls an ideological war between the church and its newest vocal opponent, a scheduled Saturday protest by group Anonymous alleges the church "disconnects" church members from those who object to its teachings.

"They want to create chaos and we want to create order," said the Rev. Gerard Renna of the Boston Church of Scientology.

The April 12 demonstration is one in a series since January. Anonymous alleges its protests prompted Scientology's lawyers to wage a campaign of outing Anonymous members and threatening some with legal action.

In Boston, those threats materialized.

The Church is bringing Anonymous organizer Gregg (his last name withheld at his request, pending his April 16 hearing), to court on two charges: Trespassing and criminal harassment.

Church attorney Michael J. McCormack filed the complaint. McCormack did not immediately return a phone call for comment. 

Gregg received permits for Feb. 10 and March 15 Boston protests outside the 448 Beacon St. church.

During the March 15 protest - during which Gregg maintains he held a sign and later picked up trash - a man with a camera, "took my picture and said, 'How's probation going?' I said, 'Fine.' He said, 'It won't be next week.'"

Gregg said he is on probation for a guilty plea to a nonviolent crime, making him the perfect target for a vengeful church. Following the plea, the case was sealed.

"We just got [Gregg's] name and interestingly enough he's a convicted felon," Renna said. "Computer piracy. A convicted felon has a right to free speech. As long as people know he's a convicted felon, that's fine."

Gregg also received a letter from law firm Latham & Watkins, alleging participation in violent threats against Scientologists.

According to California attorney Graham E. Berry, who works pro bono for Anonymous, the Latham letter went to "many hundreds of people" associated with Anonymous protests.

"We haven't done anything illegal and we don't plan to," Gregg said.

Renna countered, "When someone has a mask and they come to your church, the fact of the matter is they're covering up something."

Suffolk County District Attorney spokesman Jake Wark said the April 16 hearing could determine probable cause and result in Gregg's arraignment on the church's charges.


Operation Reconnect

Anonymous announced its scheduled April 12 protest in Boston will also occur at locations throughout the United States, focusing on allegations the Church of Scientology isolates its members.

Anonymous: "The Disconnection Policy isolates Scientologists by requiring them to stop all communication with family members or friends who are critical of Scientology."

Scientology: "We know of 2 1/2 percent of these individuals [members and their families or friends] will have harmful intents to others," said the Rev. Gerard Renna. "They will be asked to leave ... excommunicated. They only seek to harm and impede the forward policy of Scientology."

 
Wikileaks picks major fight with Church of Scientology PDF Print E-mail
Ken Lewis   
Tuesday, 08 April 2008

Wikileaks, the international whistleblower website that successfully took on Swiss bank Julius Baer last month, has now picked a fight with an even more powerful and litigious opponent - the Church of Scientology.

Wikileaks describes itself as an uncensorable version of Wikipedia created to allow untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Looking much like Wikipedia, it uses cutting-edge cryptographic technology combined with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface to allow whistleblowers to post documents anonymously and untraceably. Readers can then comment on those documents.

On March 26, Wikileaks published a full unedited version of the Church of Scientology's Operating Thetan (OT) documents. It says that while some portions of the "bibles" of Scientology have been previously leaked, this is the first time the entire 612-page document had been made public. Normally, it says, the Scientology documents are restricted from all but top ranking cult members.

But just a day after publishing the document, Wikileaks received an email from Ava Paquette, a member of law firm Moxon & Kobrin that represents the Church of Scientology.

In the email she calls the texts "confidential Advanced Technology of the Scientology religion" and demands they be immediately pulled because of copyright.
[...]

Source: http://m-net.net.nz/...
From Gerry Armstrong's declaration of 26 January 1997 , filed in RTC v. Ward et al.:
57. In my opinion, the exposing or dissemination of

Scientology's "sacred scriptures," which is at issue in the Ward,

Henson and Erlich cases, as well as in the Lerma and Factnet

cases, is an analogous situation in which the same greater

principle of religious freedom applies. An entity which claims

to have secret writings, which people to see must pay and agree

to not discuss, cannot actually be a religion, because such a

policy on its face restricts or prohibits religious expression.

Such an entity can be a "secret-selling company," or some such,

in competition with other secret-selling companies, as long as it

does not try to claim that the secrets it sells are "religious"

secrets. Practically speaking, the only time this would become

an issue is if an entity claiming to be a religion attempted to

judicially prohibit the publication of its religious secrets or

judicially punish their publishers. Obviously people have the

normal secrets that normal people have, and people talk about

them and keep them or not, and so forth. A real religion would

have no reason to prevent the publication of its scriptures, and

it would possess no "secret scriptures." In my opinion, whoever

has published Scientology's "secret scriptures" has in reality

only been engaging in religious expression. In my opinion this

kind of expression is an expected, logical response to

Scientology's efforts to corrupt the meaning of religion to

"sanctify" its antisocial and dangerous mind set and criminal

activities. It is expression which cannot legally be prohibited

or punished by judicial process.

[...]

Read more...
 
EO: New front group pretends to be operating a charity in Kenya PDF Print E-mail
I need help disecting some information. This is long but worth the read.

Tonight I found this website:

http://www.helpfororphans.org/AboutUs.asp

I thought it was a Scientology front group so I posted it on xenu.net asking if anyone knew any of the names on the board of directors.

Sarah Ehrlich Founder / President
Lissa Hilsee Executive Director
David Ehrlich Treasurer

Jill Zarin
Helen Gifford
Larry Roseman
Peaches Pook
MarySue Connolly
Timothy Murphy

I continued to look around and found that Sarah Ehrlich list Scientology as her religion and the youtube account for helpfororphans.org list several Youth for Human rights videos in the favorites.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...endID=59423353

http://www.youtube.com/user/helpfororphans

Then things got more interesting. I found the following message in a yahoo groups/global villages:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/global...s/message/3002

"THE International donor community dealing with Aids Orphans in Africa
and beyond is hereby alerted by the Board of Trustees and Board of
Governors ,Project founder and Directors of Kisumu Children Centre
and School ,P.o. Box 19630-40123,kisumu City ,Kenya ,caring and
educating Aids Orphans that HELP FOR ORPHANS
INTERNATIONAL ,based in New York,USA ,www.helpfororphans.org
has no links with us.It is very important to note that Help for Orphans
International School kisumu does not exist on the ground and it is
totally unknown in kenya.The only real project known internationally
dealing with Aids orphans is KISUMU CHILDREN CENTRE AND
SCHOOL founded by Mr Charles Aboge, a veteran Journalist educated
through charity in his early childhood.The Government of Kenya is fully
behind the School operations as it is legally registered and Government
donated prime land for its expansion as it is run on charity.Be warned
that any continued donor assistance to Help for Orphans International
claiming in their web site is totally wrong and not real as the funds do
not reach the intended purposes which are orphans.
Our School photographs taken by them during a recent visit and posted
in their web site should be removed and totally ignored by donor
community .We shall not condone any further taking of children
photographs by foreigners posing as "donors with many fake schools
which are unregistered schools and trying to introduce a new education
syllabus in Kenya secretly without the Government knowledge and
approval in Parliament .We welcome genuine donors to contact us
directly by e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or kisumuchild
@yahoo.com. We also need fundraisers on 20 per cent commission
even a visit by those who have funded them to check the truth and see
and demand to see the alleged children being funded through HELP
FOR ORPHANS INTERNATIONAL.
We shall soon seek help from USA and Kenya Governments to expose
the suspected fraudsters or alleged famous "lords of abject poverty in
Africa'. Call +254-0735-195-156 -Director of the Project"

So I kept searching and found some very criptic messages hidden in some web pages. I'm hoping someone can make a copy of the pages and help to see if there's anything to the messages.

Here are a few of the pages I've found so far:

http://www.thefinemp3.com/thefinetrc_1143649/

http://www.mp3songsblog.com/mp3mp3-d...ya--get-music/

Scroll down to find messages mentioning helpfororphans and Ehrlich.
 This was added to my post on xenu.net :

Board of Directors

Sarah Ehrlich Founder / President
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...h-ehrlich.html

Lissa Hilsee Executive Director
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...sa-hilsee.html

David Ehrlich Treasurer
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...d-ehrlich.html

Jill Zarin

Helen Gifford

Larry Roseman

Peaches Pook
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...ches-pook.html

MarySue Connolly

Timothy Murphy
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...im-murphy.html
 
PC World: Scientology video channel's credibility in question PDF Print E-mail
Muddy waters of fact and fiction meet as mysterious “dignitaries” and out-of-context quoting bring video channel’s legitimacy into question.

Andrew Hendry 28/03/2008 11:52:02

The Church of Scientology has refuted claims by an independent French news Web site, the Anonymous Group and the Enturbulation that a video posted to the church's new Video Channel includes bogus or misleading footage of non-existent dignitaries singing the praises of the controversial religion's youth humanitarian efforts.

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