26 May 2000
Fredric L. Rice
dtodd@pacpress.southam.ca

Greetings, Douglas!

"The Church of Scientology has been frustrated by critics commenting on their bulletin boards and setting up rogue links offering alternatives to Scientology."

That's putting it mildly. Every forum that the Church of Scientology creates to try to reach otherwise unsuspecting customers is immediately invaded by ex-Scientologists and well-informed critics who, armed with thousands of court documents and thousands of once-secret Scientology documents seized in numerous Federal raids across the United States, completely negate the Church of Scientology's efforts to find fresh recruits.

Interesting phenomena, isn't it Douglas? The Internet's a two-edged tool that allows unsavory businesses like Scientology to reach millions of people with their sales pitches. Almost immediately, the other edge of the sword come chopping down, inoculating those millions with the information they need to refrain from falling for the sales pitches.

Check out http://www.AskMe.COM/ where there were a few spokesmen for the Church of Scientology, claiming to be exerts on Scientology who would answer questions about the organization, were operating for a time. When critics found out about the forum, they asked questions the Scientologists aren't _allowed_ to answer, and set themselves up as experts, too. The result? A well-informed critic of Scientology acquired the #1 ranking and, due to the Scientologists having no choice but to apply their mad messiah's "technology" (mad messiah: L. Ron Hubbard) they got ejected from the forum for, among other things, calling some of their critics pedophiles -- which is in keeping with Hubbard's policies known as "Dead Agenting" and "Black Public Relations" -- Scientology documents seized in Federal raids.

The final result is that there remains only one Internet forum that the Church of Scientology can continue unfettered by the mountain of evidence which debunks the organization's scams: A private mailing list that only other Scientologists may subscribe to. And even then the critics have the mailing list infiltrated to the point where there's a significant percentage of subscribers who are actually critics and ex-Scientologists.

Fredric L. Rice

--- "de omnibus dubitandum" All is to be doubted --- Descartes
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