OFF:Scientology tentacles

[Paul Mather]

On Wed, 13 May 1998, Christian000Mumford wrote:

> > Not to worry.  I'm sure the enormous legal arm of the "Church" of
> > Scientology will manage to overcome the German government (and all other
> > SPs ["Suppressive Persons"] who stand in the way of Scientology). :-)
>
> There was a hilarious case in Sweden a few years back regarding some
> "secret scripture" of Hubbard's being made availible to read for the
> public, after a nightmare of legal battles against the Swedish government,
> at some official institution. The Scientologists had agents there around
> the clock, working in shift to continuously to "browse" (occupy) the
> documents - without reading them, just holding them, as the agents were
> told they would spontaneously combust or something reading them. This of
> course turned alot of "real" people (or SP's I guess) off from even
> attempting to stand in line for days, just to get a peek at Hubbard's
> unpublished SF drivel for free (otherwise it would cost years of toil and
> brainswashing and hundreds of thousands of dollars).

This reminds me of another incident we can thank the gigantic legal arm
of Scientology for.  If memory serves, they were responsible for the
anon.penet.fi anonymous e-mail gateway guy having to hand over the
subscriber list, because someone was posting "secret Scientological
doctrines" (and maybe anti-Church rants) anonymously through that
service.  It may have shut down the service for a while, I don't
remember.

BTW, does anyone remember the episode of _X-Files_ which was a
delicious, thinly-disguised parody on the Church of Scientology?  Great
stuff!

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Wayne Kramer, _Dangerous Madness_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time"
        --- James Marshall Hendrix