Hey There, Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology (CoS), died January 24, 1986.

An odd way to commemorate this death anniversary is an all out attack on the organization by a group calling itself Anonymous.

And it all boils down to CoS using its legal muscle to remove the leaked videos of Tom Cruise on YouTube where he talks about being a Scientologist. Lots of people took offense, and war was declared. I guess the idea is to vigilantly "expose" CoS in response to CoS' vigilance to protect its name, reputation, and if you believe their detractors, protecting opportunities to make more money by requiring people to be paying members before they have the right to see the Tom Cruise video.

The clip is basically an interview with the latest winner of the CoS Medal of Valor (Tom Cruise, who else?). I could paste a link to the video here, but it would be a waste of effort since I'm pretty sure that link will be gone in 24 hours courtesy of the CoS patrol. If you want to watch Tom Cruise ramble, use a search engine like Google to find the latest upload of the video.

I'm not kidding ... Cruise just rambles in that clip. It's precious for the tiny bits about CoS that Cruise mentions, but generally yawn-inspiring. Ofcourse if you idolize Cruise, you're welcome to drink in every word. CoS will probably be glad to have more members in the Philippines.

Oh yeah, Scientology has already reached this Land of the Morning. We keep inviting David Pomeranz every year to hold Valentine's Day concerts here ... it was inevitable he would not only bring his music, but Scientology as well. Scientology registered as a religious organization in the Philippines in 2003. I think their local center is somewhere in Greenhills. The government has welcomed their assistance in helping out with illiteracy and drug problems. The group doesn't believe in psychology or psychiatry as we know it, and thinks itself a better solution to the psychs, but I guess the government takes what works especially if given for free - including a series of pamphlets based on the Scientology handbook.

Funny, huh? A controversial organization such as CoS who would sue the pants off of anyone who divulges its "scriptures" to the rest of the world is actively distributing a handbook in a third world country.

-----edit-----

Holy S**t! Pages on the official Scientology site were not available or disappeared one by one from the moment I started writing this post. And now the site is totally down ... again! Anon's work, definitely.

Developments on this would be fun to watch.