The attached summary is substantially incorrect. I know some of the "flamers" you mentioned, and their intentions are *not* to stop the Scientologists from discussing their religion. On the contrary, the Scientologists are trying to make it very difficult for anyone to *criticize* the Church of Scientology or reveal some of its more wacky teachings. For more info -- Ron Newman's web page on the Church of Scientology: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/ Dave Touretzky's web page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/ -Declan Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 8-Jun-96 RFD: Time to kick some anti.. by Dr.Dimitri V. KOTM@bwalk
1. There's a gang of flamers (David Gerard, Jon Noring, Ron Newman, Rob J. Nauta, and the like) who try to stop $cientologists from discussing their religion on the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology. Most of them are disgruntled former cult members and/or members of other similar cults.
2. The anti-scientologists have caused many cypherpunks anonymous remailers to shut down via their egotistical misuse of them, viz. criminally posting copyrighted Co$ writings to Usenet. They did it knowing that the Co$ is likely to harrass the remailer operators, causing them to shut down and depriving everyone of their services.
3. These harrassers are Usenet Cabal supporters, and they are sometimes joined by initerant cabal enforcers such as Peter Vorobieff, who visit a.r.s to lend a helping hand and to flame Co$.
4. Recently the anti-scientologists have asked me for a copy of my cancelbot, and have been using it to forge cancels for scientologist posts on a.r.s.