Note: This is perhaps the first of many posts that are going to be specially flagged by myself for the rest of the editorial staff. I will just rip on a particular topic and if the post turns out to be worthy of note, we might expand on and produce the text in an issue. Today's topic: Scientology V. The Internet

I have been working a lot lately. Recently, in a bout of frustration, I attempted to make a tertiary workstation from a broken thinkpad because I needed even more computing power in my office in Boston proper. Frustrated from personal life situations, I decided that there wasn't much harm in taking a no-prisoners approach to laptop repair, and I found that, to my surprise, the vivisection of the machine allowed me to unpinch the monitor cables inside the laptop casing. Pleased that the LCD screen backlight was now working again, having won a bet with the other staff at the office, I sat back down in my chair and watched the old clunker boot into the newest version of either FreeSBIE or a live Ubuntu distribution.

Regardless, while I work, I've been watching the internet in all it's glory from a distance. While meff, cappy and myself gather up the forces of good, I've been watching chaotic neutral and absolute evil fight it out in the world of information warfare. I feel that I should publically make a statement about the current "war on Scientology."

Yup, I dared to go there.

I thought a lot about whether or not I should post my opinions on the subject. A recent "attack" on the so-called Church involving packets of cornstarch perceived as "anthrax" shut down the "Church" for several hours. The LAPD forensics team and FBI anti-terrorism teams were called in. This comes in the middle of an all out war with "Anonymous", the Internet Hate Machine we know and love. While at first, I thought that perhaps some anons had gone too far, a far more likely explanation popped up in my head.

Since 1978, after what L. Ron Hubbard dubbed "Operation Snow White", during which the 11 highest ranking members of the group infiltrated the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Dept. of Justice, federal agents have looked on the "church" with increasing skepticism. After the Food and Drug Administration called them charlatans for practicing bogus medicine without a license, the "E-Meter" became the butt of many jokes and a permanent thorn in the side of Dianetics once FDA agents revealed it to be a simple galvanic skin response meter, essentially, a lie detector.

So how, after being banned in Germany and thrown out as dangerous by the UK, (despite it's continued practice in both countries), could the CoS court federal agents into bailing them out when they finally met an opponent that they could not stop. A nine day non-stop, mult server denial of service and xss vulnerability attack crippled and nearly dismantled the critical infrastructure of the CoS. Even a move to "prolexic", a security firm that specializes in DDoS management couldn't prevent the further embarassment and rapidly growing headlnes with blogs of outright support for the "hackers" involved.

Desperate, I find it likely that the CoS did what it historically does better than any group ever seen: tarnished the reputation of a group whose reputation didn't need tarnishing. I feel that the probability that either rogue or operating agents within the company, I mean church, ranks sent cornstarch to their own offices to play the "terrorism" card. Only now does the FBI seem to care.

This was not designed to be a conspiracy theory, but it only seems natural that one would come to this conclusion, so it was worth mentioning.

No, what drove this post was why I'm sitting here shaking my head, frustrated and angry. In an effort to understand what Sean K once explained in the funniest episode of the SKTFM radio show to date, I have started reading everything I can get my digital hands on from the actual "Church of Scientology." I wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth. So what did I find to upset me so much?

The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, whose goal is to obliterate the psychiatric profession under the guise of a watchdog group has opened a permanent gallery depicting the work of dedicated doctors as butchers. Or was it Narconon, which a search of the NIH PubMed literature server revealed has never been shown to work, and whose success rates are the lowest of ANY known drug rehabilitation program? Maybe it was the Sea Organization, where an extralegal entity of psychotic men and women pledge to work for the Org for one billion years. Maybe it's that this shit is tolerated.

I watched a video put together by the Church that claims there are "no screens for chemical imbalance." Last time I checked, ANY DOCTOR OR MEDICAL HEALTH PROVIDER TO PROVIDE SUCH FALSE DATA WOULD BE STRIPPED OF LICENSURE. Oh, but they can't face that sort of repurcussion. Why? Because they have absolutely no license to practice medicine whatsoever. They wouldn't even know medicine or psychology if it shoved a 33 mile inflatable sheep up their ass. What makes me fume, though, is that they would debase people with mental illness that cripples them to the point of calling them drug addicts and encouraging them to avoid treatment. If psychiatry is bullshit, then how the fuck do you explain autism or asperger's? How do you explain Tourette Syndrome's often publicized coprilalia, the uttering of obscenities? How do you explain the definitively QUANTIFIABLE positive change of deep brain stimulation? Oh, implanted electrical devices are evil? Stay the fuck away from pacemakers, hearing aids and prosthesis.

If psychiatrists manufactured mental illness, how come people recover from it? How come they self diagnose without knowing the name? If psychiatry is all about drug pushing, how come the biggest push in psychiatry today is towards a non pharmacotherapeutic approach called "Cognitive Behavior Therapy" in which the doctor works one on one with the patient to address the cause and course of the disease, learning skills to take back their lives and recarve neural pathways? How come some of them are even doing it for free?

And I do understand the legitimate concern over overmedication. This is a very real problem, and primarily it's the fault of primary care physicians who are unaware of the vast options available to patients. It's the fault of an overburdened and undereducated professional class. We must, as an educated community be careful of blanket statements. Everyone is different. There are many things, particularly in science, that we have yet to understand. If we want to ease suffering, we must support endeavors to explore how this suffering occurs.

I have a better idea. Just stay away from this poison. If people want to freezone and practice dianetics in their own miserable lives, god bless them. But one more flyer under the windshield from some shithead claiming that a free movie screening and a personality test will somehow end war and crime will send me over the fucking edge.

Love,

alienbinary