A teenager could face prosecution for calling scientology a "dangerous cult" during a protest.

A teenage boy is facing a possible criminal prosecution for holding a sign describing the Church of Scientology as a "cult", police said on Tuesday. The boy, who is described only as a minor, was taking part in a demonstration outside the church's central London headquarters on May 10 when City of London Police officers ordered him to remove the placard. It read: "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult." When he refused, he was issued with a ...

Faces prosecution for branding Hubbardites a cu*t Anti-Scientology campaigners are up in arms after it emerged that City of London police issued a court summons to a teenager for displaying a sign that branded the Hollywood-bothering, UFO-fancying sect a "cult". The incident occurred on 10 May outside Scientology's controversial Square Mile headquarters, at a rally spearheaded by the online activist movement Anonymous. The unnamed GCSE student involved posted a request for advice the next day to the anti-Scientology messages boards at ...

Actor Will Smith is funding his own private school that will teach youngsters using an educational system devised in part by the Scientology cult. The curriculum at Smith's New Village Academy of Calabasas, on which he has spent nearly £500,000, uses different educational theories including "study technology" – a learning method developed by L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology. Websites dedicated to monitoring Scientologist activity are also claiming that at least six members of staff employed at ...

A group that many consider a religious cult infiltrates a community event. Event organizers figure out what's going on and tell the group to beat it. What most irked the organizers was that the alleged cult misrepresented itself in order to gain access to an unsuspecting audience. No, this is not about the dispute between the Falun Gong and the Canadian Tulip Festival. It's about an incident at Seattle's Fremont Market. As the U.S. journalist Dan Savage tells it, shoppers at ...

OREM, UTAH - Officer Terry Sparks says he feels like he was beaten with a sledgehammer. The pounding headache was bad enough, but the surging nausea made it almost unbearable. He gathered his energy and once again entered the nondescript clinic in this rural community south of Salt Lake City. The side effects of his treatment there are a price he is willing to pay to purge his body of toxins he believes have built up in his system after years ...

The black paint on the rock is indistinct, but Church of Scientology of New Mexico representative Sanford Block said it looks like someone tried to spray paint the letter "A." It was tossed in March through an office window at the group's Albuquerque headquarters, cracking a glass-framed portrait of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Block said. No one has claimed responsibility. Block said the "A" would stand for Anonymous, a shadowy Internet organization that in January began holding protests outside Scientology ...

If you watched Tommy Davis on CNN last week, you know that Scientology isn’t very adept at public relations. I was reminded of that now that I’ve been reminiscing about what it was like to write about Hubbardites back in the day, and writing numerous stories about Jason Beghe. Yesterday I heard from Los Angeles-based Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw, my old friend, who noticed that I’m back on the Scientology beat. Pouw and I go back a long way. When I ...

The Clearwater City Council took mere seconds Tuesday to deliver a powerful message: that people have the right to peacefully assemble and speak their minds, and the city won't even consider trying to tread on that right. Thirty-four downtown merchants and two residents signed a petition calling for the city government to take action against Anonymous, a loosely organized, Internet-based group that has been conducting worldwide protests against the Church of Scientology for months. Since the first of the year, the ...

CLEARWATER — About three dozen downtown business owners are upset with a group of anti-Scientology protesters and want the City Council to do something about them. But city leaders Tuesday said there's little they can do. "Suspending the First Amendment is something we shouldn't spend a whole lot of time on," Councilman Paul Gibson said. The loosely organized group Anonymous has held several recent demonstrations against the Church of Scientology. Many Cleveland Street businesses say the masked protesters and the constant ...

Exclusive Google has murdered the AdSense account run by one of the web's most influential anti-Scientology sites. Yesterday, the search giant cut off all ads served to Enturbulation, a fledgling site dedicated to promoting activism against the Church of Scientology and all its related organizations. This could have something do with the nature of the ads Google was serving. Many of the Google-driven ads funding the anti-Scientology site were paid for by the Church of Scientology. "While going through our records ...

Scientology defector Jason Beghe on Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis: "You see the eyes, the lying that he's doing. Anybody can see that this guy is not clean. It's clear as day." Last week, John Roberts of CNN grilled Tommy Davis, a Scientology spokesman, who was predictably evasive about what L. Ron Hubbard's wacky minions are up to. 'Disconnection,' the church policy of splitting up families in order to shun critics of the church? Never happens, Davis claimed. And as for that ...

[ Embedded Youtube video entitled, "Scientology Exposed PSA: Hypocrisy" ] This is an amazing piece of work, and I encourage EVERYONE who cares about exposing the abuses of the Church of Scientology and the enforced slavery it imposes on its Sea Org member and those who've been off-loaded into the Rehabilitation Project Force (aka RPF, or Scientology prison camps) to spread the word of this video. Scientology has mastered the art of bait and switch over the years, by presenting ...

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) has tied up with the Asian Ministers of the Church of Scientology in launching a program that aims to help Cebuanos on how to handle poverty and disasters. The Yellow Tent, a project of the Scientology Volunteer Minister Corps (SVMC), launched its Cebu tour on Tuesday at the Camp Sergio Osmeña in Osmeña Boulevard, Cebu City. The launching was spearheaded by Chief Superintendent Ronald Roderos, PRO-7 director, and was ...

"Valkyrie," the Tom Cruise movie about the 1944 plot by German officers to kill Hitler, was beset by problems right from the start of filming in Berlin last year. Now reports say the release of the film has been put back until February 2009 to re-shoot scenes after test audiences were unimpressed. The release of "Valkyrie," the Hollywood movie in which Tom Cruise plays Adolf Hitler's would-be assassin Claus von Stauffenberg, has been delayed for the second time and is now ...

At Saturday’s “Operation: Fair Game: Stop,” Anonymous’ latest installment in a series of monthly global protests, one local member abandoned his ridiculous three-pronged disguise of glasses, a fake nose and a mustache. Instead Mike Vitale wore his name in white letters emblazoned across a black cotton T-shirt. For Vitale, it’s no longer necessary to obscure his face with the cheap gag getup. The Church of Scientology already knows who he is and where he lives. Days before the protest focusing on ...

Here is a video of “Reverend” Yvette Shank, President of the “Church” of Scientology Canada, speaking to a protester on an April 20 mini-raid protest in Toronto. Shank asks the protester why she is not wearing a mask. The protester says she is not wearing a mask on account of the warm weather and because she is not afraid of CoS and does not think that the CoS could find her anyway. Shank says that CoS would not even bother trying ...

The fortunes of Hollywood actor Tom Cruise have suffered a blow with the news that his next big film has been postponed until 2009. The release of Valkyrie, which tells the story of the 1944 assassination plot against Hitler, was first postponed from this summer to the autumn and is now not expected to appear until next year. “We were originally expecting the film to be released in June,” said a senior executive at one of Britain’s leading cinema chains. “I ...

TOM Cruise and other Hollywood stars are being urged to have urgent medical checks after an asbestos scare on board a Church of Scientology cruise ship. The $2million Freewinds was said to be “under seal” on the Caribbean island of Curacao after cancer-causing particles were found on the 40-year-old vessel. According to local reports, deadly blue asbestos dust was released during refurbishment of the ship – used by the church as a floating “education centre” and for VIP parties. As well ...

Meet at the Umbrella Man. 11:00, Saturday. The crowd, wearing British folk-hero Guy Fawkes masks in the style of the book and film V for Vendetta, surrounded the bronze man with a parasol and were heading towards a clash with the disciples of Hubbard and Cruise. “We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forget,” they proclaim. The Anonymous, or anons as they’re called in the wiki-shpere and chat rooms, have taken part in sabotage and cyber-disruption and have called ...

THE Church of Scientology has lost its grip on James Packer. The billionaire's closest friends have revealed that he has quietly distanced himself from Scientology, labelled a cult by some former members, as it faces international controversy about its anti-psychiatry stance. Members of Mr Packer's inner circle have confirmed that the billionaire, who had ranked as Scientology's wealthiest member in the world, was no longer undertaking Scientology courses and had slowly moved away from the religion, telling his closest friends he ...

They've become the sworn enemies of a controversial religion, famous for unsettling online video attacks and protesting en masse in creepy masks. But the elusive internet group known as Anonymous didn't start out with a concrete plan to bring down Scientology. Before they got serious, Anonymous members say, they were only in it for laughs. In the years before "declaring war", the group's stock-in-trade was the creation of internet jokes revolving around, for instance, kitsch 1980s singer Rick Astley. Anonymous's transformation ...

When Anonymous members huddle in front of Scientology centers at monthly protests across the globe, their identities remain hidden behind plastic Guy Fawkes masks or dark sunglasses or brightly colored wigs. Their names remain withheld from each other and media outlets covering their events in order to shield themselves from the harsh backlash that the Church of Scientology is said to reserve for its critics: “fair game.” On Saturday, Anonymous plans its fourth round of international protests, “Operation: Fair Game: Stop,” ...