To me, the ongoing protests between the internet community and the Church of Scientology is not getting nearly enough media attention. I suspect this might be due to the fact that anonymous web sites lack media coordinators and have difficulty putting out press releases.

At any rate, this coverage in the Baltimore City Paper is the best coverage I have seen anywhere. It is truly excellent journalism and is just another example of the great feature writing work that so called “alternative” weeklies are doing.

Instead of excerpting it, I’ll just quote the anonymous manifesto announcement:

Hello, Leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; your suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as their leaders, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. 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 in its present form. We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to be completed in a short time. However, you will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your choice of methods, your hypocrisy, and the general artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.

We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.