Global Petition Against COS - Starts April 12

tl;dr: On April 12 Anonymous start a global petition against the Church of Scientology.

If you're a pressanon, grab this press release and fire it out to your contacts!

For those of you attending protests, sample petition forms are available at the end of the post, as well as more info.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Anonymous Activists Launch Global Petition Against the Church of Scientology

On April 12th 2008, the loose collective of grass-roots internet activists known as "Anonymous" will launch a global petition aimed at the removal of the tax exempt status enjoyed by the Church of Scientology. This global petition is timed to coincide with the next round of demonstrations and will run for several months.

Protesters all over the world will be inviting members of the public to sign petitions calling for an investigation into the Church of Scientology's tax status in their country. In the US the details of the agreement between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Scientology are secret and not open to the public. Uniquely, this arrangement allows US Scientologists to gain a tax free Scientology education, a privilege not available to the parishioners of any other religion.

In many countries, Scientology enjoys the tax benefits of a charity and yet Scientology seems to produce no charitable outcomes for the societies it operates in. Anonymous want to draw the public's attention to this paradox and to ask the Government to investigate whether it is appropriate for this privileged status to be given to the Church of Scientology.

Anonymous believes that members of the public would also like to see Scientology investigated. Therefore, Anonymous invites the public to sign in protest against the Church of Scientology tax privileges on April 12 and on future protest dates.

For additional information about the Church of Scientology and Anonymous' global protests, please see:

http://www.goanonymous.org
http://www.enturbulation.org
http://www.xenutv.com

If you're attending a protest it would be great if you could print out a petition form and take it with you. Two forms are complete right now. If your country isn't on the list I suggest you write some text, run it past your fellow anons and then edit up one of these dox into a petition form for your country. Let me know in this thread and I'll update the list.

Country petition dox
NZ Petition form: http://rs352.rapidshare.com/files/10...Commission.doc < FULLY EDITABLE!
UK Petition form: http://www.mediafire.com/?dpynt1ecstv (already in use!)
US Petition form: http://wearelegion.fileave.com/CoS_.doc

The goal of the global petition is to provide a venue for us to show our Governments (and COS) that they are not welcome in our societies so long as they continue to behave in their criminal and deceitful way. Anonymous believes the public stand with Anonymous on this issue, lets show everyone this is true!

When you create your country petition you might want to have some tag about your privacy laws and how names won't be released etc.

In countries where tax status isn't an issue, I'm sure you can come up with some text to address local causes.

Here's sample text we're using for New Zealand.

We the undersigned call upon the Charities Commission and Community and Voluntary Sector Minister Ruth Dyson to carefully examine any application by the Church of Scientology and its front organisations (Narconon Aotearoa, Crimonon, Drug Free Ambassadors, Applied Scholastics, WISE, Youth for Human Rights and Citizens Commission on Human Rights) for charitable status.

We believe the goals of Scientology and these affiliated organisations do not qualify for legal recognition as charities because of their incompatibilities with a free and fair New Zealand society.

How to gather signatures
Here are some tips on making the petition work for you at the next protest (or whenever!):

- Use a clipboard. They look so official.
- Talk to the public, know what you want them to sign, and why.
- Don't let all the anons at the protest sign first. Duh. Mix it up ;)
- Keep all your filled forms and report totals on your city thread, or pass to a central organiser for them to collate.
- Keep the appropriate post-protest threads up to date with your tallies.


Guidelines For Writing A Successful Petition:
1) Use a header to explain the reason for the petition
2) Be able explain the background of the situation in one or two concise sentences.
3) State precisely what you want to done and how the action is to be carried out
4) Indicate where and to whom you are going to send the petition
5) Collect the name, address and signature of people who agree with you.
6) Number the forms and number each line of the form so that you can easily tell how many signatures you have collected.
7) Recruit volunteers to get signatures for the petition
eight) Plan your strategy to ensure your petitions is seen by as many people as possible

Not only will Anon fight COS, we'll show DM that the entire world is behind us now! (Cue manic laughter)

About time, tax exemption should be May or June theme to be honest.
Spreading this out.

Should it be written "xenutv.com.org"?

Is there a version of the UK petition that doesn't require me to have access to MS Office or having to download the however huge OpenOffice?

Why does it say April 12 in the post, but May 12 in the topic?

Also, I heard that Texas is already considering passing something that would revoke their tax exemption status, but I can't find any articles to confirm it.

Cocks and Arse, I will fix those errors!

And that was just the republicans in a party meeting in Texas. That's all.

As for a UK petition, you'll need to hop on the UK thread and ask for one. I'll try and find it for you and post a link

I'm not trying to be a little bitch, but wouldn't a (US) petition be subject to open records laws? I'd hate for us to hand-deliver a roster of new people for the Co$ to harass.

Originally Posted by xnameblogger

I'm not trying to be a little bitch, but wouldn't a (US) petition be subject to open records laws? I'd hate for us to hand-deliver a roster of new people for the Co$ to harass.

But think of all the negative press that would ensue if a whole new group of normal citizens who thought this was a good idea suddenly found themselves victims of Fair Game attempts? Suddenly you'd have a shitload more people saying "Holy crap, all those bad things people say about Scientology are really true!"

Originally Posted by Rufus X Sarsaparilla

But think of all the negative press that would ensue if a whole new group of normal citizens who thought this was a good idea suddenly found themselves victims of Fair Game attempts? Suddenly you'd have a shitload more people saying "Holy crap, all those bad things people say about Scientology are really true!"

It seems hypocritical asking people to give out their personal information, when we're all standing around in masks trying to conceal ours.

I do support this, but I think if people are going to take us seriously, we may have to reconsider how we do things.

I am Fully against this!

DON'T DO IT GAIZ!

This is just asking for something bad to happen!

^ wow, highly detailed and well reasoned argument.

Ok, so lets run through some scenarios:
- You print out the petition and get a couple of hundred people to sign at the next protest
- You take those home.
- People around the world gather thousands of signatures.
- Somehow through magic powas, COS gets hold of your petition forms (since they don't know who you are, how will they serve them? And wouldn't they be easy to accidentally drop in a fire even if someone did try and serve you with papers for them?)
- They fair game the people on the list (assuming the could fair game 1,000 people)
- Press goes ballistic, ACLU goes ballistic.
- COS implodes in a massive ball of fail.

Unless you're the kind of person who hands petitions over to COS I don't see how this could possibly fail.

I think the public will understand that COS loves to target protests and their "leaders" and is extremely unlikely to target hundreds of people who sign a petition. What are they going to threaten them with, and for what? With us they think they can get us to stop going to protests, what are they going to ask petition signers? "Please don't sign any more petitions"?

Anyway, the UK is having no trouble getting sigs, and previous threads have viewed this idea positively. Give it a go! Can you imagine DM's face when he now sees TWO downstats to follow: the number of anon protesting and the number of sigs we're collecting from the public! Imagine the look on the Scilon faces when they see the public lining up to sign in support of Anon and against COS lies and deceit!

What's the point of gaining signatures if we don't send those to The Powers That Be who will investigate the whole "IRS hearts SCIFAGS" situation?

And once said signatures are forwarded to whatever government-fags are applicable, they are fair game (sorry) to be turned over to the Co$.

I support the impetus behind the idea, but I think putting it into practice would be a nasty footbullet for the Good Guise.

Originally Posted by AnonKiwi

^ wow, highly detailed and well reasoned argument.

*rebutal and Clarification* I'm sorry, but I just feel uncomfortable about namefagging people. Yes I say Namefagging because this is pretty much what this petition will do. And I get pissed off EVERY TIME someone on this board or otherwise gets namefagged. ONe list gets leaked, and even the jedi's would feel that one.

not only that, but I've NEVER seen a petition work in my entire life! I mean I've been around the block a few times, but In my experience I've seen petitions do nothing but waste paper.

I don't see why government would pass a petition over to COS. In New Zealand that would be entirely illegal and I'm not so paranoid as to believe COS have their fingers in those pies. And if they did and started fair-gaming random citizens, it would be a major, major scandal.

Ok, if all the anons sign one form at the protest, and that form gets handed to COS with "namefagged protesters HERE" then there will be problems. But really, say, 500 names are collected at each protest globally, what are COS going to do if they get them? They can barely hire enough PIs to hassle, what, maybe 20 of us all up out of nine THOUSAND protesters on March 15?

As for whether petitions work or not, bear in mind that in many jurisdictions petitions can be legally binding and make the government do stuff.

The COS can't even properly Fair Game 9,000 of us. What are they going to do with, say, 100,000 signatures?

The problem is mainly perception. They won't fair game a bunch of people who sign a petition even if they could get a hold of it. But, we talk about how bad they are while hiding behind masks and telling people the masks are necessary to protect ourselves. No one in their right mind would willingly sign a petition in those circumstances.