National Post
From Project Chanology - Toronto Division
Contents |
April 3, 2001
Scientology leads backlash
by Brad Evenson
More Canadian children are taking Ritalin than ever before, even as critics of the drug grow more wary of its potential side effects. In an exclusive five-part series on the drug, the National Post examines how Ritalin works, its enduring mysteries, potential dangers, and alternative approaches to helping children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
In a lavish ceremony, Priscilla Presley -- Elvis's widow -- recently presented a human rights award to a "courageous" New York mother, Patricia Weathers. Mrs. Weathers had fought a long battle with her son's school to get her 11-year-old son Michael off Ritalin, which she said caused him mental harm.
"This sort of problem is quietly epidemic in our schools today," Ms. Presley said.
"Too many parents have been unknowingly disenfranchised by a schooling system which runs according to the drug-based dictates of psychiatrists and psychologists, rather than sound and workable education principles."
Mrs. Weathers' plight is well- known in the United States, where a backlash against such psychiatric drugs as Prozac and Ritalin is in full swing.
What is less well-known is that this backlash has been orchestrated by the controversial Church of Scientology. Indeed, some argue that the Church has triggered the uproar almost single-handedly.
Ms. Presley is a Scientologist. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) -- which awarded Mrs. Weathers its prize -- was formed by the Church in 1969. In fact, the Washington lawyer who launched a U.S. class- action suit against Ritalin's makers and the American Psychiatric Association is also a senior Scientology official.
Scientology, in its fight against Ritalin, is pursuing a broader agenda: to undermine the psychiatric profession.
"While alerting parents and teachers to the dangers of Ritalin, the real target of the campaign is the psychiatric profession itself," the Church stated over a decade ago in its newspaper, Scientology Today.
The Los Angeles-based Church, founded by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has been a long-time foe of psychiatry. Its teachings include Mr. Hubbard's belief that humans are made of clusters of spirits, called "thetans," who were banished to Earth about 75 million years ago by an evil galactic ruler named Xenu. The Church has assembled a celebrity cast of followers, including actors John Travolta, Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley.
Mr. Hubbard's breakthrough came in 1950, when he published the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. One of the Church's staples is a process called clearing, using a crude device -- essentially a lie detector -- called an E-meter, which measures electrical changes in the skin while subjects reveal intimate details of their lives. Clearing comes from Mr. Hubbard's claim that unhappiness springs from mental aberrations called "engrams." Counselling sessions with the E-meter clear these engrams from the mind.
Psychiatrists and psychologists called the idea worthless, which infuriated Mr. Hubbard. In his writings, which form the basis of Church doctrines, he said if psychiatrists "had the power to torture and kill everyone, they would do so. ... Recognize them for what they are; psychotic criminals -- and handle them accordingly."
Scientology has also won a reputation for taking its enemies to court.
Beginning in the late 1980s, it supported a series of lawsuits across the United States, attacking psychiatrists and schools with claims that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not a valid diagnosis, stimulant drugs are overprescribed, and the doctors who make such prescriptions are corrupt or unethical. Many of these cases were handled by John Coale, a Washington lawyer and senior Scientologist.
None of the cases has been successful in court.
However, "these efforts, which have been widely reported in the news media, have created a climate of fear among physicians, parents and educators and have sown anxiety and confusion among the general public," the Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 1998.
Church operatives also work at raising awareness of potential side effects of psychiatric drugs, often with great success.
In the wake of the massacre at Columbine, Col., CNN interviewed Dr. Mary Ann Block, author of the book No More Ritalin -- Treating ADHD Without Drugs. She quoted a study noting Ritalin's similarity to cocaine in its ability to cause psychotic episodes.
The network later discovered Dr. Block is a medical consultant to CCHR, and the study she quoted was a report written the day after the massacre by CCHR vice-president Marla Filidei, amid reports that one of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris, had been taking the antidepressant Luvox.
Ms. Filidei stands by her report, which she says was drawn from medical literature.
Despite its bizarre origins, much of Scientology's stand on ADHD and the overprescription of Ritalin comes across as common sense.
"If [doctors] were to be honest with a parent, they'd say, 'We think your kid has this thing called ADHD, we can't scientifically prove it -- it's a list of behaviours that was voted into existence -- but your kid displays these symptoms ... and we'd like to put him on what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says is a Schedule 2 drug that is highly addictive and has side effect,' " Ms. Filidei says.
"But when you say to a parent, it's a neurobiologic disorder, it's proven, your kid has it, it's a benign, safe drug, it's just a lie."
As for the accusations that Scientology is only attacking psychiatry so it can sell its own mental health approach, Ms. Filidei says:
"Our purpose is just simply not to get people to become members of the Church, it's to get them to abolish [psychiatric] abuses, particularly in the area of children," she says.
January 26, 2008 article
Online group declares war on Scientology
David George-Cosh, National Post
Published: Saturday, January 26, 2008
An online group of hackers has declared war on Scientology, vowing to attack the controversial religion's Web sites and turn its adherents against it.
Already the group, which describes itself simply as "Anonymous," has released hundreds of pages of Scientology material for which practitioners would normally have to pay and claims to have slowed down or even temporarily closed Scientology Web sites.
The group says it was prompted to act after Scientology leaders recently tried to "censor" a widely distributed and mocked video of Tom Cruise. The video shows the actor -- one of the most high-profile and outspoken adherents of Scientology -- professing his love for the religion, laughing hysterically and claiming that Scientologists are the only people able to help save lives following a car accident.
"The so-called Church of Scientology actively misused copyright and trademark law in pursuit of its own agenda," one Anonymous member commented in a press release this week.
"They attempted not only to subvert free speech, but to recklessly pervert justice to silence those who spoke out against them."
The Anonymous group later released a video in which a computer-generated voice outlines the group's concerns with the Church. Only two minutes long and broadcast against a bleak, grey sky, the video quickly became among the most-watched on the Internet.
"Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and everywhere. You will find no recourse in attack, because for each of us that falls, ten more will take his/her place," the voice said.
More than 463,000 people have watched the Anonymous video on YouTube since it was posted. It was the second-most commented-upon video on the Web site and the most-watched science-technology clip.
Andreas Heldal-Lund, webmaster of Operation Clambake, a Web site critical of Scientology, issued a statement saying: "People should be able to have easy access to both sides and make up their own opinions. Freedom of speech means we need to allow all to speak -- including those we strongly disagree with."
Although members of Anonymous have not revealed their identity to protect themselves against litigation from the Church of Scientology's lawyers, it has been widely reported that they are associated with underground hacking Web sites such as 4chan and 711chan as well as a number of Internet Relay Chat channels.
dgeorgecosh@nationalpost.com
May 26, 2008 Editorial Blog
The Post editorial board on Britain's censorship of a Scientology protest sign: A defeat for free expression
Posted: May 26, 2008, 10:17 AM by Marni Soupcoff
article here
Editorial
It may be one thing for freedom of expression to be an object of controversy in Canada — which is, after all, a somewhat tenuous experiment in democracy and federalism, one whose final shape and outcome may yet remain to be determined — but it is quite another to see it tormented in Great Britain, the historical anchor of most of the liberties we take for granted. When Britain injures what the rest of regard as British principles, it is a source of particular sorrow. On May 10, a teenager protesting peaceably outside the London headquarters of the Church of Scientology had a placard confiscated by London Police, who deemed it criminally "insulting." Crown prosecutors refused to follow up, which was hailed as a "victory" for free speech.
Some victory. The sign was being wielded by an unidentified minor, who was taking part in the latest of a series of Internetorganized "anonymous" protests.
If protest materials can be confiscated, then not much is left of the right to protest against Scientology. It read "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult." The lad was, by his account, warned "within five minutes of arriving" by police on the scene that his sign was unlikely to be permitted because it contained the word "cult." Shortly thereafter, a policewoman read him a section (introduced in 1994) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act:
"A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress."
The youth pointed out that Scientology was described in 1984 as a "cult" (and called "corrupt, sinister and dangerous") by none other than a family judge of London's High Court, but the unmoved officer took away the sign and handed him a summons. A swift spasm of indignation swept the English press, which pointed out that senior members of the London Police have a recent history of appearing in Scientology promotional videos and accepting gifts from the church. On Friday, crown prosecutors announced that no further action would be taken against the boy.
It was quickly pointed out by civil libertarians that the eventual happy outcome did nothing to reverse the consequences of the initial error. If expressive materials at a public protest can be confiscated pending two weeks of review by prosecutors, then not much is left of the right to protest, practically speaking. What few in Britain have pointed out is how vague and pathetic the text of the Public Order Act is. Objectively, one cannot say that the police officers acting as a praetorian guard for Scientology were overstepping their bounds under the act. No one ever calls a religion a "cult" without intending to insult it, and any "alarm or distress" thereby resulting must entirely be in the eye and mind of the beholder. The boy was, under the act, arguably quite guilty.
It constitutes no "victory" for freedom of expression that he was let off arbitrarily just because the public took his side against a secretive and widely ridiculed religious group. On the contrary: the police succeeded in communicating their real message to those who might wish to imitate him. Watch what you say. We have enough power to give you a hard time, whether the crown backs us up in the end or not. And make damned sure your targets are relatively unpopular, or you might not find so many columnists and activists leaping to your defence.
This is what comes of attempting to legislate offensiveness of speech and thought out of existence: all of us are left at the mercy of those who do the actual policing. In this case, it was a couple of ignorant coppers who decided they didn't like the look of the "c" word." In Canada, it might be some dowdy, politically connected empire-builder working in the office of a human rights tribunal. (Would it be actionable to say or write that "Islam is a cult" here? Who but someone with money, free time and a law degree would dare try?)
This is why the principles of free expression have to be guarded stringently in a liberal democracy, and why they cannot safely be subjected to nudging by those who think enforced politeness comes ahead of fundamental liberty. Any law allowing for the suppression of content because it might exasperate someone is bound to be tested more and more ambitiously until its actual political limits are found. And it will go on being tested, and go on growing in scope, as political sentiments change. And any such law will always end up being a more effective suppressant through the fear of inviting expense and trouble than it is by its actual application.
December 30, 2008
The Orwellian power of anonymity
Year in ideas
James Cowan
Since its publication nearly 60 years ago, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been stripped bare by cultural commentators looking for an easy literary touchstone. The book gave us "Thought Police" to describe enforcers of political correctness and "Newspeak" for unnecessary jargon. Most of all, Orwell gave us "Big Brother," a phrase invoked whenever a government oversteps its authority and now synonymous with unwanted surveillance. But it is a different aspect of Big Brother that resonates in 2008 - his anonymity, not his authority. Orwell leaves it a mystery in the novel whether the mustached face "on the hoardings, the voice on the telescreen" is an actual person, or an image conjured to allow faceless party officials to impose their will on the masses. Similarly, the past year was filled with individuals who cloaked themselves in anonymity while influencing events. Be it anonymous Liberals who sniped at the leadership of Stéphane Dion, the artist known only as "Banksy" who is arguably now the art world's biggest celebrity, or the group known as Anonymous who organized protests against the Church of Scientology, 2008 was filled with individuals who achieved notoriety while maintaining secrecy. It is easier to be anonymous, regardless of the frequent talk of technology making it simpler to track people.
We now all have the power of Big Brother, to reach out and impose our will on others without accountability. It is not a totalitarian regime wielding the power, but rather a throng of Little Brothers: backbenchers, suburban moms, strippers and everyone in between.
The easy anonymity available to us is largely thanks to the Internet, a fact amply documented in sitcom plots about characters misrepresenting themselves on dating sites and in New Yorker cartoons ("On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"). What is remarkable is not that the Internet makes it possible to obscure your identity, but that online anonymity is now seeping into the off-line world. A woman in Missouri last month went on trial on accusations of using a fake online persona to bully one of her daughter's classmates until the 13-year-old committed suicide. Meanwhile, online message boards known for their puerile humour and anarchist tendencies served as the incubator for a new movement aimed at dismantling the Church of Scientology.
In January, denizens of Web sites such as 4chan's infamous "random" forum -- which features pornography, images of graphic violence and discussions of everything from cheating girlfriends to the merits of Will Smith -- decided to launch a war against Scientology for a perceived act of censorship.
Despite the lack of a leadership structure, membership list or other organizational accoutrements, Anonymous -- which draws its name from the pseudonym used by most 4chan members -- quickly established a Web site and plan of attack. On Jan. 21, a message was posted on several Web sites announcing Anonymous' intentions. "Anonymous has decided that your organization should be destroyed," a robotic voice intoned over images of clouds. "For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind and for our own enjoyment, we shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology."
"The initial impression is Anonymous must be a lot of kids," said Mark Bunker, an Emmy-winning journalist and Scientology critic who has been adopted as a self-described "Obi-wan Kenobi" to Anonymous. "But I've met hundreds and hundreds of these people at protests and, yeah, there are a lot of students, but there are doctors and police officers and military and teachers and strippers -- a wide range of people."
The Anonymous campaign against Scientology amounted to guerrilla warfare, with protestors sniping at the Church while protected behind a wall of secrecy. Similar battles waged in Ottawa this year, as a mounting number of anonymous sources fed journalists tips about Liberal dissatisfaction with the leadership of Stéphane Dion, the plans for a coalition government and myriad other tidbits large and small. While anonymous sources are not new to journalism, the way they are used has changed, says Elly Alboim, a political consultant and journalism professor at Carleton University.
"It used to have to be verifiable facts. It seems to me as I read things now that anonymous sourcing is a way to disguise gossip," Mr. Alboim said, adding later, "People seem free in the age of all-news television to go on the air and report whatever it is they heard in the last 15 minutes."
Politicians' willingness to provide information as long as their name is not attached to the story also indicates a changing standard, Mr. Alboim said. He noted internal polling on Mr. Dion's controversial carbon tax plan was leaked to the media, along with detailed accounts of caucus meetings. "You've reached the point now where people are so fundamentally breaching their moral obligations that you wonder what universe we're living in," he said.
One implication of the frequent use of anonymous sources is to rob people of the ability to weigh the validity of the information presented, whether it's from a senior cabinet minister or a first-time MP. It also transforms "campaign insiders," "senior strategists," "informed sources" and so on into an entity similar to Anonymous -- an unnamed mass without leadership or accountability, yet possessing profound influence to shape public opinion.
Others manage to achieve fame -- and even super-stardom -- through their anonymity. Work by Banksy, the British street artist, sold for the equivalent of $355,000 in an online auction this January, even as the elusive painter himself continued to lead fans on a merry game of "identify-if-you-can." Britain's The Mail on Sunday this year claimed Banksy was a 34-year-old Bristol man named Robin Gunningham, something his agent refused to confirm or deny. The artist himself continued to tweak the nose of authority, painting murals in New Orleans' lower ninth ward that depicted soldiers stealing television sets and a young girl getting soaked from the inside of her protective umbrella. Banksy is, in many respects, the epitome of Little Brother - anonymous yet notorious, using secrecy to challenge authority rather than enforce it. His ability to remain anonymous belies the notion we live in an age of surveillance (among his murals this year read "One Nation Under CCTV," or closed-circuit television, which he painted without detection). Big Brother may be watching, but Banksy and Anonymous prove he cannot see everything.
jcowan@nationalpost.com
