My Close Encounters of the Scilon Kind

I didn't know - and neither did most of us before the Internet made it possible - how nasty this group is.

My uncle briefly dallied with Scientology about 1955-60, hoping for the secrets to wealth and success. But he was a cheap SOB and never paid them much for anything, just went on trying to get rich quick. I read his copy of Dianetics ... and thought it was wierd, but I was a kid and didn't know any better. I read every book I saw. When you read L Ron Hubbard and Aldous Huxley and Carolyn Keene mysteries in the same week, you are warped for life.

A friend's dad briefly became a Scientologist in the early 60s - after all, we lived in Phoenix, and it was just down the street. Not as though you had to go to an ashram in India like the Beatles, and he was one of the constant seeker types. I went to a couple of the local lectures with my friend, but it wasn't very interesting and unlike in the Episcopal or Catholic church youth groups, there were no cute boys. So I left, adolescent hormones and all.

I did the usual hippy protesting, made it onto the national news during the 1968 Democratic convention (I was a cute hippy chick). Did some work organizing tenants rights groups after a landlord seriously pissed me off.

In the 1970s Scientology popped up where I was working on the east coast - this was apparently a serious recruiting drive, newspaper ads and open houses. I was still vaguely interested, but the hard sell, go for the throat interview style was a total turnoff. I walked out of the first "stress relief" session. I was working in a lab and recognize an e-meter for what it really is ... just a fancy ohm meter. And I could smell the greed.

Fast forward to the 1990s and I needed to check the links on a website ... ended up at Tilman Hausherr's website at snafu.de . My initial reaction was "he writes great software, but he's a nutcase with an axe to grind". And then the newsgroup wars leaked into my newsgroups, and ... and ... next thing I know, Cruise is jumping on couches and YouTube is yanking accounts and it gets wierd.

I'm in awe at the power of "enturbulation" as practiced by Anonymous. It's like dealing with a hundred of Saul Alinsky ( Saul Alinsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) offspring. I don't think they can overcome the power of chaos.