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An old video from The Onion revealing a hyperbolic martial law bill was recently rediscovered by conservatives, and began to pop up on right-wing Facebook walls.Congratulations tea-baggers, you fell for a 3-year-old joke.
A councillor faces suspension for dismissing Scientology as “stupid”; another is convicted of racial harassment for calling a colleague a coconut; a householder is made to feel like a racist for objecting to a gipsy site near his home. Every day, it seems, brings another tale of how comments that a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing worse than rudeness – or simply a difference of opinion – have either been criminalised or considered a justification for disciplinary action.
#stupidscientology “We’re playing for blood, the stake is EARTH.” – L. Ron Hubbard.
Saying Scientology is stupid is a gross redundancy. #stupidscientology
“Somebody some day will say ‘this is illegal.’ By then be sure the orgs say what is legal or not.” – L. Ron Hubbard, #stupidscientology
So, when you her the phrase #stupidscientology everybody scream!
“An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Zhejiang’s provincial capital Hangzhou late on Wednesday [July 7], the municipal government said on Thursday. Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some flights were rerouted …
A source with knowledge of the matter, however, told China Daily on Thursday that authorities had learned what the UFO was after an investigation. But it was not the proper time to publicly disclose the information because there was a military connection, he said, adding that an official explanation is expected to be given on Friday.” [source: People’s Daily, July 9, 2010]
And yet, no official explanation has come after more than a week. Though the Internet is still buzzing with speculation about why the Chinese government wouldn’t clarify the case, perhaps the most immediate question should be why should we trust that anonymous source. Did the source really had “knowledge of the matter”? Or was it simply an unreliable source, which may not even exist?
American atheists lined up to be “de-baptized” in a ritual using a hair dryer, according to a report Friday on U.S. late-night news program “Nightline.”
Leading atheist Edwin Kagin blasted his fellow non-believers with the hair dryer to symbolically dry up the holy water sprinkled on their heads in days past. The styling tool was emblazoned with a label reading “Reason and Truth.”
Kagin believes parents are wrong to baptize their children before they are able to make their own choices, even slamming some religious education as “child abuse.” He said the blast of hot air was a way for adults to undo what their parents had done.
“I was baptized Catholic. I don’t remember any of it at all,” said 24-year-old Cambridge Boxterman. “According to my mother, I screamed like a banshee … so you can see that even as a young child I didn’t want to be baptized. It’s not fair. I was born atheist, and they were forcing me to become Catholic.”
Kagin doned a monk’s robe and said a few mock-Latin phrases before inviting those wishing to be de-baptized to “come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water.”
Ironically, Kagin’s own son became a fundamentalist Christian minister after having “a personal revelation in Jesus Christ.”
“One wonders where they went wrong,” he chuckled to the TV show.
NYU professor Gabriella Coleman opened this profoundly profanity laced academic talk with a question: why have internet enthusiasts been drawn to denounce Scientology so vehemently for two decades? Scientology, she explained, has provided a perfect nemesis for geekery.
To the geeks, freaks and hackers of the net the Church of Scientology subverts the idea of technology to be about control instead of the freedom they cherish. Scientology has a long history of intimidation and litigation against its detractors and former members, which is abhorrent to the wilder ends of the internet. No end is quite as wild as 4chan, and it was out of 4chan’s endless quest for the lulz that online organized resistance to Scientology would emerge. After the infamous Tom Cruise video on his own experience of being a Scientologist and the church’s attempts to get it away of public scrutiny, Anonymous emerged from 4chan, a non-organization hellbent on the Church of Scientology’s absolute destruction. Anonymous started out harassing the Church online, but eventually translated to sometimes hilarious street protests, and disgusting pranking. “They decided to emerge form the internet bunkers and hit the streets,” says Coleman.
