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Feb 10, 2008

'Anonymous' Vs Scientology: Strange Goings On In London

By Richard | Tags:

Anonymous Scientology Protest, London

Guess it’s not a great idea to annoy a bunch of hackers then.
Edit: Note I use the term ‘hacker’ in this sense, not the Hollywood sense.

It all started with this. If you’re wondering what the masks are all about, they are from V For Vendetta

Photos by me, Sunday, outisde the Chruch Of Scientology, Tottenham Court Road, London.

Header Image, a snippet of the excellent V for Vendetta, Written by Alan Moore, and illustrated by David Lloyd. Published in the UK by Titan Books Limited. It may look like a comic book, but it’s actually about politics – fascism, anarchy, concentration camps and liberty. Written in 1981, but even more relevant today. (Don’t waste your time with the film adaptation)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Normally when I come in on a Monday I may find 2 or 3 comments waiting to be approved (yes, we use comment moderation); this morning there were nearly 40, all on this post. Because this is not a political blog, and because it is not the right place for supporters of either side in this debate to make allegations of the validity or otherwise of their cause, I decided not to publish many of them.

This is not a case of censorship; it’s just that in an effort to disprove Godwin’s Law (although at least commenter used the word fascist, so I guess I was too late for that) and an attempt to keep the discussion here ‘on-topic’ you can probably assume that the comments on this post are closed.

joe

i can see myself…yes!

1st picture, guy in the hat, shades and bandana

thank you!!!
anonymous

nice blog and nice pictures
http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog Tom

I love this whole anonymous vs scientology thing – it reminds me of the movies I watched growing up thinking being a hacker would be cool. They’re making all my dreams come true!

It’ll be interesting to see quite how much effect this ends up having on scientology

Comment edited by Editor
http://xenutv.com 4nonmice

they probaly watched the same movies as you….
Bob

Hmmm… ten pm on Sunday… worldwide protests which began in Australia this morning… and still nothing on the BBC news channel. Not a peep.

Why..?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/akanekal Amit

I was there! I’ve got a bunch of photos on my Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akanekal
Observer

Gah! Anonymous IS NOT a group of hackers! Get your facts straight.
anon

It is not a group of hackers. It is a group of people, and a few of them are probably hackers.
/b/ anon

Hackers? lol
supervisor

I had a great day!
I saw some of this event from the 2nd floor of the Dianetics/Scientology centre on TCR. I’ve been supervising there since November. My number of students attending Dianetics courses has been steadily growing, but I’ve never had more than this weekend of 9/10th Feb.
Normally we just get the regular 5 protesters turning up every few months or so with their loudspeakers. At last you’ve got off your arses and organized a proper protest, because when you do, we grow.
As far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as bad publicity for Scientology – people have never been more interested, and more willing to find out for themselves!
You were a bit noisy, but I’ve been running the co-audits on Saturdays anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
Also, my students found it eyebrow-raising when I read out parts of Anonymous’ statement, the bits about laughing at plane crashes and school shootings, and having no sense of morality etc.
One of my students has been in Africa, and his comment was: “I don’t feel anything from them. [the protesters] This is nothing. I’ve been in a war-torn country where they’re shooting each other!”
So keep going – it helps Scientology grow!
Xenu

There will be another wave of protest on the 15th of march, a birthday present for Scientology’s founder, L Ron Hubbard

You are all welcome to join!
http://www.webwhitenoise.com/ JAB_au

The masks in question are Guy Fawkes masks. Theres a nice article on Wikipedia about Guy Fawkes and the Gun Powder Plot. In “V For Vendetta” the character V was said to be inspired by Guy Fawkes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
Pingback: Consolenauts » And it begins.
LithiumFlowr

Wow. Everyone might think of them as barbarians but they are keeping their protests very civilized. They even sent out out a code of conduct on Youtube for this protest. These guys know how to work.
anonymoose

It’s not a V for vendeta mask actually. It is a Guy Fawkes mask. It has a lot more symbolism then just looking cool.
Anoymous

Also, you do not put an apostrophe in plurals.

“photo’s” should be “photos”.
A for Awesome

I can’t stop giggling at the throng of masks. ilu, Anon.
Michela

LOL at Joe…wouldn’t you wear shades hat and bandana to cover your identy so why going to publicly identify yourself?
Interesting to see there was something else going on apart from Chinese new year.
Bevalls

“By Bob | February 10th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

Hmmm… ten pm on Sunday… worldwide protests which began in Australia this morning… and still nothing on the BBC news channel. Not a peep.

Why..?”

That is EXACTLY what I’m wondering. Almost every other country has covered it in their national press, but it’s like it didn’t happen in UK – and we had one of the biggest turnouts, along with LA. What gives ? 500 people, or as near as dammit, gather to make a peaceful protest and it’s not considered newsworthy. I worry about people, really I do.
Anonymous

Me on the left.
http://n/a Xenu2

Very suspicious there was no news on the BBC about this.
http://www.altogetherdigital.com Richard

@ Xenu2 – They covered it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7237862.stm
T.E Lawrence

Someone commented that the word “photo’s” shouldn’t have an apostrophe because it’s just a plural. I’d like to point out that it is also an abbreviation of “photograph”, so technically an apostrophe could be considered correct.

I’m sorry, I’m not very ‘cool’.
Bill Vincent

There are so many errors in this post, both factual and grammatical, so as to call into question the validity of any of it.

Anonymous are a bunch of hackers???…..pfft. May I ask where THAT bit of dreck came from?

Fer f*cks sakes.
http://www.altogetherdigital.com Richard

As I’ve already said, I was using the term hacker in the original ‘Jargon File’ sense of the term hacker. (See link in article if you are unacquainted with the Jargon File) Definition 5. and 1. seem appropriate to me, your mileage may vary.

However, the wider media calling ‘Anonymous’ hackers might have something to do with the 220Mbps DDOS attacks against The Church Of Scientology’s web sites.

As for the rest of the ‘errors’ – well I know the masks are V For Vendetta masks – I read V when I was a teenager in 1984 in the original Warrior Magazine, right up to the point when Warrior folded. I then followed V to its conclusion when DC picked it up in 1988. I think I still have my original V for Vendetta T Shirt somewhere as it goes.

I asked one of the participants at the event where they got the masks. They answered The Forbidden Planet

Also pretty sure I know when and where the photos were taken as I took them, so I’m not too sure what other factual errors you are referring to. V is published in the UK by Titan.

As for grammatical errors, well you may have me there. No one is perfect eh?

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