David Tomkins appears on Drew and Mike Show in Detroit.

The Drew and Mike Show on WRIF in Detroit just interviewed me about Anonymous and our efforts to expose the abusive regime of David Miscavige's version of organized Scientology.

I have done several interviews, and Drew and Mike were great. They are savvy and more knowledgeable about Scientology than your average radio personalities. When a podcast goes up I will post the link here.

WRIF plays kick-ass rock music. Drew and Mike would make great anons - they understand the importance of hilarity in life, especially in human rights movements aimed at ending abuses in richest and most vicious cult around.

Can't be said to often: If you want to know more about Anonymous and our movement check out Why We Protest, and especially the forums.

Now Is The Time

We have established Now Is The Time as a source for information for mental health, and other professionals in the law, accounting, and other professions. Our mission is to educate and invite professionals to join in the effort to put and end to organized Scientology's suppression of free speech and human rights abuses.

- David Tomkins

- Lilly vonMarcab

- Damian DeWitt

This is our invitation to psychiatrists attending the American Psychiatric Association convention in San Francisco, May 16 - 21, 2009:

PSYCHIATRISTS, NOW IS THE TIME!

Help end Scientology's psychiatric malpractice, abuse of women, and destruction of families.

Organized Scientology under the the leadership of David Miscavige

• threatens the lives of psychologically vulnerable high school and college students through dissemination of potentially lethal psychiatric misinformation

• destroys hundreds of thousands of family relationships through its extreme shunning policy known as disconnection

• sytematically perpetrates human rights abuses in its mid- and executive level staff and management structure, the Sea Org, which is run in an abusive, authoritarian manner under David Miscavige

• coerces every pregnant women in the Sea Org to abort or be expelled if she cannot be persuaded to succomb to abortion by physical and verbal abuse

• maintains re-indoctrination and hard labor penal camps called the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) at Sea Org facilities at David Miscavige's international Gold Base headquarters near Hemet, CA; and Sea Org installations in Los Angeles, CA; Clearwater, FL; and Denmark.

Scientology's Global Obliteration of Psychiatry and its attendant human rights abuses damage individuals and society. "Scientology's War on Psychiatry is no joke"  writes Katharine Mieszkowski in Scientology's War on Psychiatry at Salon. Society needs your help to end the abuses. You can make a big difference to end them sooner rather than later. Now is the time for psychiatrists to speak up.  

How you can help:

 

1.  Educate yourself by reading the accounts of survivors of Sea Org abuse and their recent lawsuits for slave labor, human trafficking, coerced abortion, and fraud at Jonny Jacobsen's exquisitely-written Infinite Complacency at http://infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com/

2. Visit these websites:

• Scientology Critical Information Directory at http://xenu-directory.net/
• The Anonymous forums at http://whyweprotest.net/
• Ex-Scientologist Message Board at http://www.forum.exscn.net/
  
• Now is the time at http://shattersuppression.blogspot.com/

3. Contact us for further information at 

Now is the time. email: info.nowisthetime@gmail.com

David Tomkins, Now Is The time at http://shattersuppression.blogspot.com/

Lilly von Marcab, Glory Marcabia at http://meowmacao.blogspot.com/

Damian DeWitt, For GreatJustice at 

http://anonforgreatjustice.blogspot.com/

Now Is The Time, Glory Marcabia and For Great Justice are supporters of the Anonymous alliance of free speech and human rights activists and former Scientology and Sea Org staff members united to end Scientology's abuses.

APA President Nada Stotland, MD, on Scientology as an anti-psychiatry hate group

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John Gever, Senior Editor of MedPage Today, has published an video interview with American Psychiatric Association (APA) president, Nada Stotland, M.D. from the APA convention currently being held in San Francisco:

APA Learns to Deal with Scientology Campaign Against Psychiatry

In the view of Now Is The Time, Dr. Stotland's strong remarks provide welcome support for the Anonymous movement in its efforts to put an end to Scientology's psychiatric malpractice.

Significantly, the Anonymous protest against Scientology is the first time ever that Scientology has ever been counter-protested while demonstrating as an anti-psychiatry hate group. Anonymous bested CCHR. They distributed information to psychiatrists, and received much support, particularly from younger psychiatrists and residents.

Communication and liaison between the APA and Anonymous would go far to counter Scientology's harms, particularly as CCHR's (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) Psychiatry: Industry of Death exhibit travels from city to city and campus to campus.

Anonymous, as well as the APA, are profoundly concerned about Scientology's CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) disseminating potentially lethal psychiatric information to vulnerable student populations, as recently occured at Concordia University in Montreal.

See: A response to the Montreal Gazette: Concordia students have the right to hear about Scientology's human rights abuses

Here is a transcript of the interview with Dr. Stotland.

JG: John Gever: I'm John Gever from MedPage today at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in San Francisco.

JG: For more years than many APA members can remember, the psychiatric profession has been the focus of a hate campaign by Scientologists. As in past years this year's meeting was met by a noisy street protest as well as counter-protests by groups opposed to Scientology.

I spoke with Dr. Nada Stotland, the APA's current president about the impact on psychiatry and the Association.

NS: It's a matter of concern. While we do have data showing that people increasingly believe in the validity of psychiatric disorders and increasingly believe the're treatable, still, when a movie star jumps around on a couch and tells people that psychiatry is bad, we worry about the patients we're already treating who are watching. We worry about the people out there who are suffering from psychiatric illnesses and will be scared away from effective treatment because of those kinds of allegations.

JG: So what can the organization do? What has the organization done? And how effective has it been?

Dr. Stotland: It's hard to know.how effective it is, except that we know that people increasingly feel good about psychiatry, I am talking about the public, increasingly think that diseases are real. They don't think if your're depressed it's just because you are lazy or didn't pray enough or something. They understand it's a disease, and its treatable. That's really the tack we've taken. To put accurate information out there through the media and other venues, through our own website and so on, to counter allegations with facts.

JG: Has there been any disruption here so far here that has affected the meeting?

NS: Well, we have demonstraters marching up and down in front of our meeting. We're used to that, I'm afraid, all over the world as a matter of fact, as I've traveled all over the world this year. We can only hope that the public isn't particularly taken it by that.

I think to some degree we've noticed the media are getting less and less interested in listening to the allegations of Scientology, many of which are patently ridiculous, you know, that psychiatrists caused the Holocaust or things of that sort. And so it doesn't cause as much disruption as it had in years past when that was the first time we had people marching up and down.

There is no other medical specialty I know of that has its own particular, dedicated hate group. And there is no other medical specialty in which people are already stigmatized and afraid as much as they are of psychiatry, so it's a very unfortunate conjunction of those two things.

Lilly von Marcab: Psychiatrists Need to Join the Effort Against the Scientology Organization

We are republishing Lilly von Marcab's article from Glory Marcabia on Now Is The Time,

Lilly von Marcab is one of the founders of Now Is The Time. and writes at Glory Marcabia.

Psychiatrists Need to Join the Effort Against the Scientology Organization

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) will begin its annual meeting this weekend in San Francisco. The Scientology cult and its various front groups, along with their bizarre "Industry of Death" sideshow, have promised to make the scene, warning the world about the kill-crazy, lobotomy-happy "psychs," and recruiting new customers for the cult. But also in attendance on the City's streets and sidewalks will be plenty of members of the "Anonymous" anti-Scientology activist network. Anonymous will be there as truth-tellers, to counter Scientology's insane and dangerous ravings about the mental health profession, and to expose the cult for what it is: a multi-national criminal organization, set up with numerous do-gooder front groups, all working exclusively toward one openly-declared goal: the "global obliteration of psychiatry." 

When Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard published his book "Dianetics" in 1950, it did indeed become a best-seller of pop psychology for the layperson, as cult members ceaselessly claim. Although many psychiatrists, psychologists and other scientists wrote book reviews and op-ed pieces, pointing out the book's countless absurd and demonstrably false assertions, it maintained a certain popularity among a fair number of people who didn't know any better. Over the next few decades, as Scientology spread around the world, and fought it out with courts on issues ranging from practicing medicine without a license to burglary to kidnapping, it became easy for ordinary people to dismiss the cult as just a bunch of weirdos to whom various celebrities were inexplicably drawn. But Scientology is much more than that. It is a meticulously crafted web of seemingly-benign false fronts and confusing financial flows.

Scientology’s many front groups include the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), Criminon, Narconon, and Applied Scholastics, and lots of others. The cult claims to be the “world’s fastest growing religion,” with anywhere from 8-15 million members, but mainstream demographic surveys and censuses have shown that the number of active members is closer to 55,000 worldwide, and declining. Scientology is currently under investigation and being prosecuted in several countries for a variety of human rights abuses and financial crimes. The cult has already been kicked out of Greece; in Germany it has been declared a “threat to democracy”; in France it is openly described in the media as a criminal gang; it is on very thin ice as well in Belgium, Norway, and other European countries. 

In the United States, however, Scientology is mostly getting a free ride, due to the "religion" status it strong-armed from the Internal Revenue Service in 1993, and due to the efforts of a few celebrity and media shills. Also, especially in the past few years, Scientology has become quite adept in creating slick public relations materials that present the cult and its front groups as helpful members of civil society. They are most assuredly not helpful members of civil society. Scientology's frequent use of the term "human rights" is just their euphemism for "obliterating psychiatry." 

Since the beginning of 2008, much has changed in the way the world and the general public view the Scientology cult. The Anonymous peaceful protests and demonstrations have shone a spotlight on Scientology’s bizarre and illegal practices. People no longer see Scientology as merely a weird and harmless cult. People have begun to understand Scientology’s “disconnection” policy, through which families are destroyed; people now know about the cult's internal prison gulag called the “Rehabilitation Project Force”; people now know about Scientology’s "Fair Game" policy revenge policy against critics; people now know of the cult's tough coercion of female staff members to have abortions; people know about the cult’s abusive treatment of children; about its phony “religious worker visa” game to circumvent immigration laws; people now know that Scientology really is what Time Magazine declared it to be in 1991: "The Cult of Greed and Power." 

Now, why should all this be particularly relevant to the interests of psychiatrists? As the "object" of the Scientology cult's vicious and delusional animus, psychiatrists need to take a larger role in helping to expose the cult, and in taking legal and political measures to stop its lying and criminality. Perhaps, like many people who haven't looked deeply into the issue, psychiatrists may generally believe that Scientology is annoying and stupid but mostly harmless. The fact is, however, that Scientology is annoying and stupid and dangerous. It is dangerous and harmful not only to its members and to the humane basis of society, but to psychiatrists personally and as a profession. 

Scientology's war on psychiatry has taken an ominous turn in recent years, as major public Scientology events feature images of hand grenades and machine guns destroying representations of "Psychiatry," and Scientology front groups create online databases of libelous material about thousands of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. Although Anonymous and the "Old Guard" of critics are fighting Scientology for all the reasons it deserves to be fought, one thing they are also doing, in a sense, is fighting psychiatry's battle. Yet hardly a public word of encouragement comes from psychiatry, much less is an active role taken in their own defense. There is still plenty of work to do. It is time for psychiatrists and psychologists to speak up again in op-ed columns, to contact legislators, to file civil suits against the cult for libel and defamation, and generally to help with the efforts to hold Scientology and its leaders accountable for their actions. 

Why is Scientology so mad at psychiatry? 

According to the cult, psychiatrists are to blame for the African slave trade, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the September 11 attacks, and virtually every bad thing that has ever happened in human history. Scientologists believe that “psychiatric rape” occurs at epidemic levels in the USA, and that 25-30% of psychiatrists rape their patients. They believe that psychiatrists use electroshock therapy and drugs to keep their victims quiet. Scientologists believe that electroshock therapy and lobotomy are very common, always involuntary procedures, performed exactly as they were done in the 1950s, and with the same effects. Scientologists believe that psychiatrists intentionally "network" sex offenders, specifically so they can learn from each other and do crimes together. 

Beyond psychiatry’s evil deeds on this planet, L. Ron Hubbard explained some other things about the vicious shrinks. 

According to high-level Scientology doctrine, not available to Scientologists until they have paid as much as USD $300,000, it started with some trouble 75 million years ago, in another part of the galaxy. The place suffered from extreme overpopulation. A guy named Xenu got the help of psychiatrists in summoning the galaxy’s inhabitants for an income tax inspection. Then each person was injected in the neck with a mixture of alcohol and glycol, frozen, and put inside space-planes that looked very much like the DC-8 airliner that was popular in the 1960s. These space-planes flew to Earth (then known as “Teegeeack”), where the beings were stacked inside several volcanoes around the planet. Then Xenu dropped some massively large hydrogen bombs on top of them and blew them into smithereens — but smithereens that turned into parasitic ghosts. After a bunch of other crazy shenanigans involving movie theatres, implanted memories, a train, a circus, a gorilla, etc. etc. etc., these parasitic ghosts, or “body thetans,” now attach themselves in clusters to everyone on modern-day earth, and are responsible for all human mental, emotional and physical problems. 

Later in space history, psychiatrists of the Marcab Confederacy, planets around a star in the “handle” of the “Big Dipper” constellation, imposed income tax as a punishment, not as a tax. The Psychiatrists came to earth 8,200 years ago with the 5th Invader Force, and began their reign of terror. 

Quotes about psychiatry from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard:

A psychiatrist today has the power to (1) take a fancy to a woman (2) lead her to take wild treatment as a joke (3) drug and shock her to temporary insanity (4) incarnate [sic] her (5) use her sexually (6) sterilise her to prevent conception (7) kill her by a brain operation to prevent disclosure. And all with no fear of reprisal. Yet it is rape and murder. We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one. This is Project Psychiatry. We will remove them. - Hubbard, Sec ED, Office of LRH, Confidential, 22 February 1966, "Project Psychiatry"

Setting himself up as a terror symbol, the psychiatrist kidnaps, tortures and murders without any slightest police interference or action by western security forces. [...] A psychiatrist kills a young girl for sexual kicks, murders a dozen patients with an ice pick, castrates a hundred men. And they give him another million appropriation. [...] Crimes of extortion, mayhem and murder are done daily by these men in the name of "practice" and "treatment." There is not one institutional psychiatrist alive who, by ordinary criminal law, could not be arraigned and convicted of extortion, mayhem and murder. Our files are full of evidence on them. - L. Ron Hubbard in "Freedom" Scientology magazine, 1969.

Leipzig University's school of psychology and psychiatry opened the door to death camps in Hitler's Germany. Using drugs these men apparently gave Hitler to the world as their puppet. They tortured, maimed and slaughtered over 12,000,000 Germans in death camps. At the end of World War II these extremists formed the "World Federation of Mental Health," which enlisted the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association and established "National Associations for Mental Health" over the world, cowed news media, smashed any new technology and became the sole advisors to the US government on "mental health, education and welfare" and the appointers of all Health Ministers through [sic] the civilized world and through their graduate, Pavlov, dominated Russian Communist "mental health." This source is so wrong that it is destroying Man, having already destroyed scores of millions. - L. Ron Hubbard, HCO PL 26 Nov 1970

CCHR's Industry of Death exhibit at Concordia University in Montreal

I am reposting Damian De Witt's response to an editorial in the Montreal Gazette for psychiatrists and mental health professions interested in understanding how Scientology disseminates potentially lethal psychiatric misinformation to student-age populations.  

The exhibit was set up on campus in the atrium of McConnell Library at Montreal's Concordia University.

A response to the Montreal Gazette: Concordia students have the right to hear about Scientology's human rights abuses

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A response to the Montreal Gazette: Concordia students have the right to hear about Scientology's human rights abuse. This is slightly revised version of the original posted earlier to take into account unconfirmed reports of CCDH's return to Concordia in October.

Concordia administration opens the Scientology can of worms

Controversary has hit Concordia University in Montreal over the appearance of the Scientology exhibit "La psychiatrie: la vérité sur ses abus" (Psychiatry: The truth about its abuses ) at its McConnell Library. The editors of the Montreal Gazette in Scientologists have a right to free speech too have weighed in the on the situation. Concordia's independent paper The Link focused on student protest against the exhibit.

The administration rented space in McConnell Library for the exhibition to the Montreal Scientology group, Commission des Citoyens pour les Droits de l’Homme (CCDH). The equivalent group in anglophone North America is known as the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) who tour a similar "Psychiatry: Industry of Death " exhibit.

Both are Scientology front groups engaged in carrying out Scientology's Global Obliteration of Psychiatry. It's goal is not critique or reform but total destruction of the mental health professions for which Concordia's Department of Psychology is training its students. Scientology considers them to be enemies of the human race. These professions are to be replaced with L. Ron Hubbard's practices of psychiatry and medicine known as "Hubbard Technology" or Hubbard Tech.

"Scientology's War on Psychiatry", Salon tech and business editor Katharine Mieszkowski writes, "is no joke.

"Vociferous criticism has come from the international student-led Scientology protest movement Anonymous joined by Concordia students who have had no connection with them. There has been good coverage from The Gazette , CTV, and Radio Canada . Anonymous Montréal has issued a press release in French ( La scientologie à l'université concordia: inacceptable! ) Steve Faguy, at his indispensable Montreal blogFagstein, has provided a particularly valuable perspective as a Concordia alumnus.

"Sure, go ahead. Rent McConnell Library to the Global Obliteration of Psychiatry guys. No problem."

The administration has defended its decision to rent space in the library as an appropriate exercise of academic freedom of speech, and the Gazette has commended them. Concordia College president Dr. Judith Woodswood has responded to an inquiry from a member of Anonymous Project Chanology named Charlie on its forum Why We Protest . She points him to the Gazette editorial which she notes with approval "accurately represents Concordia's position."

The issue, however, is not Scientology's right to free speech. The issue is quality of the administration's decision, what it indicates about concern for its students, and what conversations occurred between Scientology and the administration in negotiating the rental of space on campus.

The University is free to rent to whomever they want. The decision to rent space to Scientology, however, is nearly inexplicable except as an exercise in poor judgment and ignorance by those responsible in the decision process.

The theories of L. Ron Hubbard upon which CCDH's war on the mental health professions are based were debunked as dangerous pseudo-medicine and pseudo-psychotherapy within months of the publication of Dianetics in 1950. Numerous suicides and deaths have been implicated in Scientology's practice of pseudo-psychiatric treatment.

In place of argument supported by scientific research and reasoning, CCDH gives students propaganda of the most deranged sort: Nazi psychiatrists caused the Holocaust and 9/11 . There is an epidemic of psychotherapists raping their clients , and psychiatry creates racism . A ten-minute google search would have revealedthat there is nothing of interest in this smorgasbord of intellectual junk-food.

What is even more puzzling is that the University has apparently booked CCDH for an eleven-day return visit in October. The original booking was an exercise in poor judgment. What contacts between Scientologists and the administration took place to arrange a return engagement?

CCDH and the Sea Org Coerced Abortions

Lack of due diligence now confronts the Board of Governors with the fact they are also dealing with an organization that is systematically committing human rights abuses that are becoming known through mainstream media reports in the US like the extraordinary 12-part series by Nathan Baca at ABC-affiliate KESQ in Palm Springs.

Nathan Baca, KESQ:Former Scientologists Claim Coerced Abortions, Child Labor Inside Church.

Since the beginning of the year three lawsuits have been launched with more in the pipeline alleging slave labor working conditions, human trafficking, child abuse, interrogation by lie detectors, and coerced abortions. Information and background can be found at Jonny Jacobsen'sInfinite Complacency.

Here is how CCDH is linked to these abuses. All of Scientology is run by the Sea Org. It is a religious order operated on totalitarian military lines and lead by David Miscavige who holds all power in Scientology. It forms the mid- and executive level management of Scientology everywhere on earth.

Its mission is to Clear the Planet, that is to clear the planet of psychiatry and psychology by destroying them and forcing everyone to become a Scientologist by "becoming clear", a state of purported freedom from all psychological problems and cure of depression, bi-polar disease, and psychosis without medications.

Sea Org staff Scientology's Office of Special Affairs (OSA), which is responsible for legal, financial, and external relations. Most importantly, OSA is the Church's intelligence and secret service agency that carries out the character assassination and financial destruction of Scientology's critics known as fair game.

Sea Org management direct the war on psychiatry and the activities of CCDH and enforce the coerced abortion policy among other things. When the Board of Governors deals with CCDH or any Scientology organization it is dealing with the Sea Org and through it with David Miscavige. CCDH is just another department of Scientology, Inc.

The Brutality of Coerced Abortion

Miscavige implemented a staff member policy within months of Hubbard's death in 1986 that there would no longer be children in the Sea Org. The reason is that Sea Org management did not want the additional capital and operating costs to accommodate a growing population of Sea Org children.

To understand how an organization would come to the point of demanding that every woman in its employ who gets pregnant abort and how a woman would comply, I refer you to two indispensable writers: Bob Penny in his Social Control in Scientology and Just Bill's articles onWhy Do Scientologists Believe? and Scientology Thought Control.

Basically, there is only one ethical principle in Scientology, the good of organized Scientology as determined by David Miscavige in strict accordance with the doctrines of L. Ron Hubbard. many of which are viciously inhumane and anti-democratic. Pregnant women run counter to the demands of its mission, so pregnancy is an unethical and subversive act.

Coerced Abortion and Concordia's Catholics and Evangelicals 

There are human rights abuses that cause more widespread damage like the barbaric shunning practice known as disconnection, but I am going to focus on coerced abortion. It is the most heinous to the Catholic and Evangelical sensibilities of Concordia's founding institutions and the students, parents, faculty, staff, governors, and alumni who adhere to churches of those traditions. Concordia is the merger of Loyola College, founded by Jesuits; and Sir George Williams University named after the founder of the Montreal Young Men's Christian Association.

Pregnant Sea Org women are forced to chose between abortion and being fired from Sea Org. If they resist they are harassed, verbally and physically abused, humiliated, and interrogated with lie detectors to get them to comply. The Sea Org recruits many teenagers from Scientology families proud to have their children in an elite core committed to doing good by whole-hearted dedication to the goal of Clearing the Planet.

A young woman who refuses to abort and leaves Sea Org has no money, no education, no driver's license, and loses all her friends who are forced to disconnect from her. She is given a bill for services unpaid for that may be as much as $120,000. If she speaks critically of Scientology, her Scientologist family members will also be forced to disconnect from her.

The whole process is coercive and abusive of women from start to finish. When feminists learn of what is going on I hope they will rise up in arms.

Even Planned Parenthood was alarmed:

Janet Honn-Alex of Planned Parenthood Riverside: I just felt that it was strange that they would all make the same decision. Independent of their individual circumstances, they had all made the decision to have an abortion, no matter how old they were or how many children they already had.

Coerced abortions are of interest to Catholics connected to Concordia, including Sr. Françoise Boisvert of the Congrégation de Notre Dame. She is the Director General of Montreal's Marionopolis College and sits on the Concordia Board of Governors. Coerced abortion is also of interest to the Catholic Primate of Canada, Cardinal Marc Ouellet who recently spoke critically of Scientology on two occaisions recently and defended Anonymous' right to free speech.

Does CCDH know about the coerced abortions?

The abortion policy applies only to Sea Org women and not the women among the 95% of "public Scientologists" who form the rank and file. The Sea Org policy and the experiences of the women under it are only known to Sea Org members. Of course, it is well known to former Sea Org women who have spoken out and are filing lawsuits, Anonymous, and now the rest of the world. Tom Cruise and Greta van Susteren do not know about the policy.

Thus, Sea Org members of CCDH know about the abortion policy and are subject to it. Non-Sea Org staffers of CCDH do not know. The Board of Governors might want to have a chat with CCDH officials and query them on this point.

Anonymous Concordia and Marc Headley, Braveheart of the Scientology Oppressed

In the five months to CCDH's return in October the global situation is going to get worse due to Anonymous, Marc Headley, the Catholic Church, and the governments of France and Belgium.

The single most active protester against the University's decision was a Concordia student who had no affiliation with Anonymous. He does now and other Concordia students will join him. Anonymous will continue to raid, as they say, or demonstrate wherever CCDH and CCHR are touring. Anons are coming to San Francisco from all over the West Coast to counter-protest a CCHR demonstration and Industry of Death Exhibit for the Annual American Psychiatric Association May 16 - 21.

Marc Headley is an ex-Sea Org staffer who literally escaped from Gold Base international headquarters on a motorcycle in the rain pursued by OSA security agents. He is in his mid-thirties and the father of two children. His wife Claire was forced to abort twice. He has become the Braveheart of the Scientology oppressed and is rallying the 25,000 ex-Sea Org members to speak up. He defies David Miscavige and isn't afraid of anything.

Marc has filed a complaint for slave labor treatment. His wife Claire Headley has filed for her two coerced abortions. Laura DeCrescenzo was inducted into the Sea Org at 12, married at 16, and forced into abortion as a minor at 17. She faked a suicide attempt by drinking bleach to escape the Sea Org. She has filed. There are more lawsuits in the pipeline and more and more victims of Sea Org religious abuse are speaking up.

The Holy See, France, Belgium, and Sarah Palin

The Holy See has quietly moved into public opposition to Scientology. Cardinal Marc Ouellet in February spoke critically of Scientology to a reporter at Le Soleil. Anonymous Québec hand-delivered a letter commending him, recounting human rights abuses including coerced abortion, and proposing a 12-point program of education and action for the Church. Three days later at his annual press lunch he again criticized Scientology and defended Anonymous' right to free speech. Catholic primates do not speak off the cuff about controversial matters without consultation with the Holy See. Once maybe. Not twice.

This is a green light for North American Catholics and other churches to move in active support of ending the coerced abortions and other human rights abuses in the Sea Org. There are movements going on building to presentation of complaints of human rights violations to the UN. The Holy See, France, and Germany will be important as this unfolds. I can't imagine the Vatican not supporting a complaint for human trafficking and coerced abortions in Scientology. Can you?

The significance of Anonymous is not even appreciated by Anonymous itself. In one year its relentless raiding across North America has been seen all over Europe which has been further conscientized by incessant raiding and appearances in major media by local European Anon cells.

Anonymous Germany was given recognition by the government of Germany which invited them formally and officially to an important Scientology-critical conference in Hamburg last September. Miscavige sent his top-flight lawyers and OSA agents. They tried their standard dirty tricks and got pwned by German security agents, Marc Headley, and anons "for lulz, epic win, and great justice."

In the space that Anonymous has opened up, the usual pressure from the US State Department on France and Germany has abated and those countries have revived legal cases that could mean the dismantling of Scientology there. These cases are against the organization and not individual Scientologists. The charges? Corporate fraud for standard Scientology services and illegal practice of medicine. That is to say, exactly the same things it does uniformly everywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, OSA continues to defame Anonymous and anons, who are letting the world know about Scientology's abuses, as cyber-terrorist anti-religious hate criminals.

Mrs. Palin's most vociferous critic in the affair, Geoffrey Dunn at the Huffington Post has missed this crucial dimension of the Palin scandal best expressed in the Ex-Scientologist Message Board thread ANZO Sea Org abortions:

Kookabura - I knew from the moment I heard of the first coerced abortion that Scientology was doomed. Forced abortions will be its undoing. A group that has sunk that far into depravity will not survive. The decency of mankind will rise up and crush it. And the sooner the better.

Do the Concordia Board of Governors, President Judith Woodswood, Vice-President Services Michael Di Grappa, and Sarah Palin really want to jump aboard the sinking ship of David Miscavige's coerced abortions?

Will the Board of Governors snatch defeat from the jaws of Scientology?

The Board of Governors need to ensure that Concordia students have access to information critical of CCDH and Scientology when it returns to propagandize them again in October. The continuing Concordia Scientology affair increases the risk that the students will not come to Concordia and alumni will not donate. There is already one report of a family who decided not to send their son to Concordia after investigating Scientology because of the exhibit.

This is good for the cause of ending Scientology's human rights abuses. It is bad for Concordia, particularly when Concordia's independent student paper reports Governor Vineburg saying of the University $4MM operating deficit, “We have serious financial problems”.

This is always a risk with controversial issues in academia. However, does the Board really want to say, "The Board of Governors of Concordia University is proud that we lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, donations, and grants to defend Scientology's right to propagandize our students with pseudo-science debunked in 1950 and anti-psychiatry hate exhibits and hatchet jobs against our psychology department and its students" ? I am wondering what St. Ignatius of Loyola and Sir George Williams would think.

I think it would be a mistake for the Governors to do nothing or cancel the October appearance of CCDH. The students and governors are better served by using an eleven-day CCDH return in October to sponsor a whole range of teaching, discussion, and debate about CCDH, Scientology, and human rights abuses. Since anonymous are mostly poor college students, the psychology department, alumni, corporate donors and sponsors, and the administration would need to fund these events.

There are splendid resources available. Professor Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta is a leading academic expert and critic of Scientology. Jean-Paul Dubreuil is one of the most knowledgeable and articulate ex-Sea Org members in Québec. Students need to hear his experiences.

Dr. Ridha Joober of McGill University is the only psychiatrist in living memory who has publicly criticized Scientology. He movingly expressed his profound concern for the potential for depression and suicide among students affected by CCDH's ideas in his interview at the exhibit with CTV. His perspective would be invaluable.

Louise Arbour, the former Supreme Court Justice and High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Commission lives in Montreal. If the students of Concordia can engage her interest her perspective on human rights abuses and the French and Belgian cases would be invaluable. There are challenging legal issues of religious cloaking that need expert analysis and commentary as Anonymous Québec. recommended intheir letter to Cardinal Ouellet. Another valuable perspective is to be had from Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon. She was ambassador to the Holy See in the Bush administration, a heroine of the pro-life movement and now teaches church-state constitutional and comparative law at Harvard.

From the US, students need to hear the direct experience of Marc Headley and other survivors of Scientology abuse, and especially the stories of women close in age to Concordia students like Astra Woodcraft and David Miscavige's niece, Jenna Miscavige Hill. They are former Sea Org children who have founded the wonderful Ex-Scientology Kids. They left because they were being coerced into abortion. Jenna recounts that she was called "a degraded being" for being pregnant.

These are some of the resources available. The University, unwittingly, has catalyzed a public discussion about Scientology's relationship to society among university students that is long, long overdue.

This is serious business. Now is the time time to serve Concordia students' true interests.

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A Note on Due Diligence:

It will no longer do for the Board of Governors, the Montreal Gazette, and the rest of the media to fail to do due diligence on Scientology. Statements like these from the Gazette are a journalistic embarrassment in the year 2009:

Tiresomely, many of Scientology's foes choose to remain anonymous, claiming that critics have been harassed in the past. This is, we suggest, unwise marketing, if nothing else. Never mind the merits of an idea; when it is denounced anonymously, it's the critics who seem sinister.

No one who has read Jeff Jacobsen's sociological study We Are Legion: Anonymous and the War on Scientology would ever write these sentences.

The Anonymous forums on Why We Protest are available to journalists and others looking for information.

Here is some essential reading:

Jonny Jacobsen: Infinite Complacency

Bob Penny: Social Control in Scientology

Just Bill at ask the Scientologist:
Why Do Scientologists Believe? Scientology Thought Control

Scientology Critical Information Directory:

What is wrong with Scientology?

Stephen Kent:

Brainwashing in Scientology's RPF
Scientology: Is this a Religion?
Malignant Narcissism, L. Ron Hubbard, and Scientology's Policies of Narcissistic Rage

Why We Protest: Media Forum

Shoop credit: Dr. Lilly von Marcab - Scientology cult's "Sea Org": Tax-exempt child abuse, coerced abortions, internal prisons

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