Who's Who on alt.religion.scientology?

Recently updated entries: Robert Marcus, Dan Siegel, Tony Parker

This document is a cold-blooded factual look at your next three hundred hours. Yes, that's how much time you can spend reading alt.religion.scientology and related newsgroups if you're not careful!

Generally, people on the net want to read alt.religion.scientology for one or more of the following reasons:

• Information on the Net versus Scientology Wars. These people may have never heard of Scientology before this came up. Now they're hearing all too much of it, none of it good. What's the real scoop?

• Information on Scientology. Does the "Tech" work, or is the potential cure worse than the disease?

• Keeping up with the Church's line on things. Good Scientologists may want to read the group just to get a front-row seat as church policies are announced. (However, I understand Church management forbids this).

• Entertainment. These people want a good laugh.

All of these functions can be easily satisfied through the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup. The only problem is that reading everything on the group is now virtually a full-time job.

As a result, I developed this FAQ to tell you about the major players and what to expect from them. You can then check the newsgroup and see if my opinions conform to your own; the output of these posters can change dramatically from day to day, especially on the Scientology side. You can then put those you know you don't want to read into your killfile, and read messages based on knowledge of who wrote them.

Although I'm anti-Scientology, I've tried to be fair to the Scientologists who post. Some of them post information that's actually interesting and appears to be of reasonable quality; I have singled them out for praise. Most of them, however, will almost certainly not improve your opinion of the organization.

People interested in the ongoing Scientology and the Net controversies almost certainly want to read Ron Newman's Scientology WWW page, available at Ron Newman's Scientology home page

The Scientologists

Note: These people are listed in rough order of posting volume, highest first. Curiously enough, this list also appears to be in roughly inverse order of posting quality - that is, the best quality posters either post rarely or have been driven completely off the newsgroup by the Church.

milne@delphi.com, milne@crl.com
Coherence of Content: From very high to non-existent, depending on content
Level of interest: Anywhere from interesting to extremely boring
Relevance: From very high to non-existant!
Repetitiousness: Moderate to high
Courtesy: Low to Medium Humour: His sense of humour appears to have been surgically
removed at birth.

Andy Milne now appears to have been completely removed from the newsgroup. He will be missed, as one of the few posters attempting to put forth a reasonably coherent argument on behalf of the cult.

Since my initial draft of this was written, Milne's post count has gone way down. Apparently the Church realized the sense in keeping official arguments and posts separate from traffic-clogging spam. The spam, of course, is now Woody's job (see below).

As a result, Milne is now one of the few pro-CoS posters worth reading.

Milne claims to speak only as Andy Milne, and not for the CoS. The general tone of his messages suggests otherwise, and I know nobody other than Milne who believes that his presence is anything but official. The name "Andrew Milne" is listed as a staff writer for Freedom magazine and some other CoS publications, so it would appear that his job is CoS public relations.

For historic interest as much as anything else, the following is my original draft of this description, from when Milne's posts were a lot more bizarre then they are now.

Milne, the official Scientology spokes-account, is a very curious creation. It attempts to accomplish several goals at the same time, and as a result is unsuccessful at all of them.

The first goal is to be the official Scientology spokesperson on the net. As a result, Milne spits out voluminous press releases whenever it feels that the Church is being attacked. These messages are on-topic and vaguely interesting, depending on how curious you are about the official position of the Church.

The second goal is to try and flood Scientology's critics with information on completely different topics. The most common target in this instance is the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). This group is apparently a major thorn in the side of Scientology. However, discussion of it has little or nothing to do with their critics on ARS.

The third goal is to respond to posts from the anti-Scientologist brigade in a highly personal manner. Virtually every pro-Scientology poster does this.

Because of these different approaches, Milne comes out looking like a schizophrenic. He probably is more than one person. Still, since he is one of the few voices with a coherent pro-Scientology point of view, it's difficult for me to recommend killfiling him.

Tony Sidaway (who you will meet later in this FAQ) writes: "It is possible to killfile Milne because his posts are nearly always answered by Diane, Pope Charles, Tony or someone else."

Milne has recently moved from Delphi to CRL. Normally, I would suspect this is because Delphi charges very high rates, while CRL has a flat-rate account. However, I also know that people have tried to get him kicked off Delphi; perhaps they succeeded at last.

Can someone let me know?

Dan Sigel
Coherence of Content: Excellent to moderate
Level of Interest: High to low
Courtesy: Decent, but has declined in recent weeks
Repetitiousness: Low
Humour: Low

Dan appears to be the main CoS spokesperson nowadays. He came on as one of the most reasonable posters to put forth the CoS view, often engaging in reasonably friendly debate.

Recently, however, he appears to have undergone the same metamorphisis most pro-Scientology posters go through; he is now pretty much mindlessly on the cult side. He no longer seems to be worth reading.

noodle@netcom.com (Rick Sherwood; also calls himself Woody).
Coherence of Content: Dreadful
Level of interest: Extremely boring unless he amuses you
Relevance: Low
Repetitiousness: Extreme
Courtesy: Oddly enough, not bad.
Humour: Unintentionally funny

One of the most prolific posters on ARS, Rick Sherwood is indeed an enigma. His posts usually consist of only three or four lines, consisting of stock phrases he picks out of a small pile arranged neatly on his desk.

Depending on the exact arrangement of stock phrases, he can be quite funny. However, due to his extremely frequent posting, you run through his entire set very quickly. At that point, he becomes very dull and predictable.

Here's a typical message from Rick, taken at random:

[Quoting Diane Richardson (which see)]

(Diane laborously typed in a long legal document, verbatim) : To Be Continued....

Yeh, continue, Diane. Waste the bandwidth.

Oh, Diane, Dave isn't helping you out very well. Distort on, Diane. All your friends distorting in your name, distortion will forever be your fame.

Woody - End quoted message -

Note the constant use of the word "Distort", which is odd considering that the content of Diane's message is a verbatim court transcript. Note also that he uses the alias Woody at the end of his post, despite having an account as "Rick Sherwood". Why this was done is not at all clear, but most of his messages look like this.

Because Rick's posts are so short, they are often quoted in full in posts written by Scientology critics. Because of this, your best course may be to killfile Rick and read his critics; you'll get both sides from that alone.

Tony Sidaway comments: "No enigma. His sole intent is to generate noise. He's a high volume troll."

Tony Parker <parkera@mh.dpi.qld.gov.au> Coherence of Content: None
Level of Interest: None
Relevence: Laughable
Humour: Unintentional

Tony Parker is a brand new Clambot (as of July 1995). He follows up Woody's posts with messages that, if anything, are even less comprehensible than Woody's.

The intent seems to be to get Woody's "message" (such as it is) out of the killfile and back to the world. I don't think it's going to work.

Parker's email address is listed as "parkera" in his headers; the address given above would probably serve to reach him. If, of course, he responds to his email.

vera@earthlink.net (Vera Wallace)
Status: Gone. Tony and others will miss her
Coherence of Content: Short messages/Long official messages
Level of Interest: Considered funny by many/Official spokesperson
Relevance: Low to High
Repetitiousness: High
Courtesy: None Humour: Unintentional

Vera is now gone from Earthlink. Sky Dayton, with what I daresay was considerable sadness, has quite properly removed her from his system. The catalyst was her repeat of the infamous "outing" of TarlaStar. See the historic message that was finally enough for Sky and Earthlink.

The following may still be of interest for those who are curious about ars history.

The latest on Vera is that she seems to have taken on legal training. She now sounds a great deal like Helena Kobrin, Church Lawyer, and very little like her former lusty, vivacious self. The sighs of many unrequited Scientology critics can be heard around the newsgroup, as the cute air-headed 20 year old suddenly becomes a tough as nails Scientology lawyer.

Before her lawyer phase, Vera became famous during the notorious "outing" of TarlaStar, a prominent, but not particulary threatening, anti-CoS poster. Vera wrote a public message giving that worthy user's real name, address and phone number in a public post, and including some nicely veiled theats that implied possible unpleasantness.

This message from Vera tells us her side of the settlement with Earthlink, where she agreed to not out people in public, while reserving the right to do so in e-mail. She believes that the practice is neither illegal nor unethical, and claims that Earthlink personnel could not find any specific rules or laws against it.

Vera has recently published long, careful attempts at reasoned criticism of anti-COS users. In other words, she has taken on the role and much of the style of Milne, who seems conspicuous by his absence. The summary of her postings shows this split personality very clearly.

Previously, Vera was loved by many anti-Scientology posters due to the sheer awfulness of her insults. She loves to call Scientology critics "fat", as though that has anything to do with their opinions. After the "outing", she became significantly less loved, with many people issuing stern complaints to her system administrator.

Her personality and likeability seem to have declined dramatically with her new image as an "official" COS poster.

My previous picture of her was as a slim anorexic who desperately needs a half-decent meal. Poor Vera. Now, however, she might have the even worse fate of being Andy Milne or Helena K, church attorney.

tlash@tcp.co.uk (Tom Lasher)

Another Clambot, Tom greatly resembles Woody in his early days. He may even BE Woody.

He tries to pretend to be British, but the messages he sends are transparently forged. If you wish to drop him a line, send it to tlash@mach3.directnet.net.

Strangely enough, directnet does not respond to telnet or finger requests, even though there is an entry for whois. It may be a site connected via UUCP.

Robert Marcus (102020.1551@compuserve.com)
Coherence of Content: Dreadful
Level of Interest: Threats; a real killer of a guy
Relevance: Low to moderate
Repetitiousness: Ultimate; see below.
Courtesy: None whatsoever; you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley
Humour: None

Robert Marcus is now best known for his death threat to Diane Richardson, where he said that she was coming closer and closer to "six feet under". Most posters to ARS were quite outraged by this. Here are various reactions to his threat, most of which contain the complete text of the original (or close enough thereto).

He later wrote a very strange apology, which included a quote of Rodney King's famous "Can't we just get along" speech. I must say that his way of getting along (by wishing them six feet under!) is rather unique and refreshing! We all deeply appreciate these brilliant insights, of course. :-)

Before he became famous, however, he was best known for a long message he wrote saying that he was leaving ars because they were on the side of death and not life. There were two notable things about this message: First, the tone was insultingly rude, and second, he must have had a hard time actually leaving the newsgroup, since we've now seen the identical post four times and counting.

When he first entered the newsgroup, he wrote odd messages like this one:

Lemme put it in simply terms you will never understand -- The criminal [you] only sees others as he himself is. Too bad you are in such protest over your own survival.

When I first wrote about Mr Marcus, I said, "This one's even duller than the average Clambot. A must-kill." Looks like he's advanced to being a must-read, at least due to his threats.

davisr@kaiwan.com (Rick Davis)

Same as Rick Sherwood/Woody (see above).

dwtripp@aol.com (Wolf Tripp)
Coherence of Content: Excellent
Level of Interest: High
Relevence: High
Courtesy: Very good
Repetitiousness: None
Humour: None

A very interesting poster, this person likes the "Tech" and defends the Scientology organization in many ways, while conceding that services are somewhat overpriced and management has some problems.

He claims that he got a great deal from Scientology when he was in it, and that he has effectively "graduated" from the Church, having learned all it had to teach him.

stus@3adata.com (Stu Sjouwerman)
Coherence of Content: Excellent
Level of Interest: High
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: None
Courtesy: Very Good Humour: None

This surprising late entry to the Scientology sweepstakes gave a highly intelligent and coherent explanation of the CoS position. Looks like another Milne, but less frequent postings make him sensible to read.

(I have been told that he left for a while and is now back).

dlt@covina.lightside.com (David Talbot)
Coherence of Content: Ok
Level of Interest: Dull
Relevance: Low
Courtesy: Low
Repetitiousness: Some
Humour: None

Boring insults of Scientology critics. Nothing at all interesting about him.

Tony: "Has recently been used for dull but coherent expressions of Scientologists' points of view."

chris@lightside.com (Chris Miller)
Coherence of Content: Ok
Level of Interest: Oh dear, you don't want to know
Relevence: High
Repetitiousness: Medium
Courtesy: Mean
Humour: None

Chris has now moved up in the Pro-Scientology world. Before, s/he [her/his sex is a great mystery and major topic of conversation on ars; see below] looked like a boring Talbot clone; here was my description of her in the pervious edition:

Same as David Talbot.

Chris posted a message to soc.women asking if they realized that MoFo, Dennis' law firm, was defending a well-known child support delinquent and wife beater Dennis. S/he said that s/he was concerned "as a working mother" with the fact that her daughter had a summer job at the firm. The intent was to 'dead agent' MoFo in the same way they have tried to involve Dennis in the past.

The effort was notably unsuccessful, with eloquent defenses of Dennis from just about everyone notable on the newsgroup. I don't think her effort convinced anyone, but it did raise an interesting question: Has the CoS infiltrated MoFo, with Chris' daughter acting as CoS spy? If so, this is indeed a fascinating chapter in the curious saga of Scientology versus the Net.

Dennis Erlich, incidentally, says that security on the case is tight, and he doesn't think Chris is telling the truth about this. I suppose if they don't use anyone hired in the last six months on his case, it would be pretty much impossible to break.

Let's hope so, anyway.

And is Chris really a working mother, or is she Gene Ingram or our old friend Vera back to haunt us? Time will tell, perhaps.

bstone@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Brian Stone)
Coherence of Content: Moderate
Level of interest: Extremely Boring
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Extreme
Courtesy: Ok other than extreme boredom
Humour: None whatsoever

Posts large number of "expertises" or testimonials on Scientology, all from unidentified sources. Most of them are very similar to each other; the posts get horribly boring very fast. There is also no evidence to support the contention that the people mentioned in his posts actually exist.

Recently, he seems to have started posting the sources of his information. Most of the people whose existance can be verified are charitable organizations to which Scientology has made substantial contributions; I suspect the money motivated the responses. These contributions, of course, have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the Church's main business, or its treatment of parishioners.

One brave critic tried calling some of the sources mentioned in a Brian Stone message, and found that the people mentioned do not exist. Whether this is true of all his messages is difficult to say, but it definitely hurts his credibility.

jamesm@earthlink.net

A combination of Brian Stone and David Talbot.

niner1@netcom.com (Robert Adams)
Coherence of Content: Ok
Level of Interest: Boring
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: High

Another Clambot.

aggy@netcom.com (James Parker)
Coherence of Content: Moderate
Level of Interest: Not yet determined
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Courtesy: Moderate
Humour: None

An above average Scientologist, James can occasionally put together a coherent sentence. He has not, however, learned how to give his messages much in the way of entertainment value.

"Woody" seems to now be controlling this poster's brain, making him far less interesting than he was in the past.

idiot@primenet.com (Jonathon)
Coherence of Content: Good
Level of Interest: Moderate
Repetitiousness: Moderate
Courtesy: Good
Humour: None, but high weirdness factor
A shadowy and mysterious figure, this person claims with incredible precision that, due to established Church policy, Milne and Vera could not possibly be OSA [Scientology's KGB] members.

Why? Because OSA members are not allowed to engage with the public in forums; they would almost certainly not even post: "CSI is *the* Church of Scientology. All other churches are further down on the Command Channels.

"CSI consists solely of Sea Org members.

"No poster on this newsgroup is an active, official, valid Sea Org member.

"Only Sea Org members could act as officieal representatives of the Church of Scientology."

How does he know all this stuff? Good question; he claims to have no affiliation whatsoever with the CoS or any of its various entities:

"I am not currently affiliated with the Church of Scientology, any organization connected with the Church of Scientology, RTC, any organization connected with RTC, ASI, any organization connected with ASI, etc."

I can't help but wonder how he found out about all those acronyms; I really don't think that anyone knows those who is not either active in the church or is a pretty heavy Church critic. And this guy doesn't read like a critic.

Bizarre.

Steve Marinick (stevem@primenet.com) reminds me to tell you that he's an ex-Sea Org member. Or is he ex? Time will tell.

wonderfulr@aol.com (WONDERFULR)
Coherence of Content: Good
Level of Interest: Moderate Relevance: High
Level of Interest: Good
Repetitiousness: Low
Courtesy: Medium Humour: None

One of the better CoS posters, this user actually does respond in a reasonably coherent way to anti-CoS posters. He doesn't reach the high plane Whippersnapper and Elizabeth McCoy do, but he's not too bad.

The main reason he doesn't get a higher rating is that he uses arguments that have already been largely debunked in the newsgroup.

Koos Nolst Trenite (ba170@fim.uni-erlangen.de)
Coherence of Content: Coherent to him, not to people trying to read it
Level of Interest: Content bewildering and incomprehensible
Relevance: High
Repetiousness: Moderate (most of the posts look and feel similar)
Courtesy: High. Surprisingly enough, a nice guy.
Humour: ?

Koos, who apparently worked closely with L Ron Hubbard at one time, posts the results of "security check" audits conducted by him for the Church of Scientology. The messages, alas, are formatted in a bizarre way that makes him nearly incomprehensible. He won Kook of the Month for March (or was it February?) for his messages, despite stiff competition.

Tony Sidaway clarifies Koos: "Koos is an excommunicated Scientologist. He is under the impression that he can channel LRH's thoughts. He posted a comminique late in December 1994 announcing that he had deposed David Miscavige as leader of the Church of Scientology."

"He is NOT part of the OSA effort to "handle" a.r.s.

I asked Martin Hunt about Koos: "He's married, I believe, and has a couple kids; he lives in Germany, he watches videos. I IRC'ed with him once about 4-5 months ago. Also, he is remarkably sane and rational in, er, virtual person. I implored him to make me Hitler in a past life, but so far, he hasn't gotten around to mentioning me as anything more than an institutional case. Very unsatisfactory. ;("

L Sobocinski (76523.2236@compuserve.com)
Coherence of content: Decent
Level of Interest: Moderate
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Humour: None

He used to post reasonably coherent stuff, but recently he has descended closer to the Rick level

Tony Sidaway says that he's actually a decent guy in private mail.

an271524@anon.penet.fi (z. q. bOSWORTH-fIELD) Coherence of Content: High, but odd quoting style make him hard to
read
Level of Interest: High
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: None except for quoted text
Courtesy: High
Humour: None

Note: Z Q's name has recently changed to from z. q. dANZIG to z. q. bOSWORTH-fIELD "Due to circumstances beyond my control"

This is one of the strangest posters on ars. He likes quoting large blocks of previous conversations using odd codes ("zq6", "st3", "ts2") instead of the usual ">" conventions. Other than that, he seems to be fairly decent at engaging people in constructive dialogue.

Z Q has some interesting ideas about humour and his pro-CoS stance. His feeling is that the religion of Scientology has been subject to unpleasant discrimination by people such as ... well, us.

Unlike most Scientology posters, Z Q clearly has a mind of his own, and that is to be applauded.

Elizabeth Mc Coy (emccoy@jade.mv.net)
Coherence of content: Excellent
Level of Interest: Very High
Relevance: Total
Repetitiousness: Non-existant
Courtesy: High
Humour: Excellent [change from previous version]

Everyone loves Elizabeth McCoy. She is perhaps the only pro-Scientology poster who is in nobody's killfile.

And, best of all, she's back with her bum modem at long last repaired, freely engaging in dialogue with ARS posters. <applause>

Her background is interesting: Her mother is somewhere high up in the Scientology operation, and Beth defends it on the basis that auditing has been successful for her; however, she has received much of it at no charge from her mother. As a result, the prices of Scientology services don't affect her as much as they do others. However, she has expressed a willingness to buy services from the Church that she finds of interest when her next book contract comes in.

She's likeable, at times hilarious and very intelligent. Scientology desperately needs more people like her.

(Previous description of her follows, for historical interest)

For once, a coherent and likeable Scientologist, well worth reading when she posts. Highly respected by Scientology critics.

Tony Sidaway: "Has not posted in some time. Ron Newman keeps in touch with her. One of her posts was sent to her local org and there's a suspicion she is no longer allowed to post on ars because of that. She was even better than WhipperSnapper as an advertisement for Scientology. A great tragedy that she no longer posts."

Martin Hunt adds: "She has had no contact with the cult in five years, she told me; her parents were Scientologists, but she is not. She doesn't even classify as a public, so small is her contact with the cult."

She came out of the woodwork in response to this section of my FAQ! Here's her statement in response to the Players FAQ. Note that the message actually reproduced was Martin Hunt's reply to Elizabeth's original message; this is because her message never made it to my site, while Martin's did.

u1c82@cc.keele.ac.uk (M Dunn)
Coherence of Content: Excellent
Level of Interest: High
Relevence: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Courtesy: Good
Humour: None

A first-rate advocate of Scientology, one of the few on the newsgroup. Fully engages in dialogue with anti-Scientology forces.

Tony has kindly supplied the following person, who I have apparently missed in my wanderings around the group:

Huheyniaman (anon.penit.fi account)
Coherence of Content: Poor
Level of Interest: Low
Relevance: Very Low
Repetitiousness: High
Humour: None. Pure vitriol

This guy's sole purpose for existing is to make Jeff Jacobsen's existence difficult. Apparently has a personal grudge. Launched thinly veiled attacks on the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) under the guise of tutorials in Scientology.

----

Some legendary former posters, who seem to have been driven off the newsgroup:

Whippersnapper (whipsnap@cris.com)
Coherence of Content: Excellent
Level of Interest: High
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Humour: Unknown

Another competent Scientologist who engages in reasonably high quality discussions with his opponents. Unfortunately, he appears to have been chased off the group by his friends in Scientology, who apparently resent the fact that he's been known to use his brain on occasion. A halfway-intelligent organization would have encouraged him.

The fact that one of Scientology's best advocates is chased off the newsgroup by Scientology speaks volumes about the workings of the organization. Their favourite posters seem to be the people who do them the most harm.

He has been spotted on the newsgroup again, apparently none the worse for wear. Perhaps some Scientologists have acquired a clue?

Jack Farmer
jack.farmer@crusade1.uucp.netcom.com

I haven't seen enough posts from this fellow to rate him comprehensively, but he seems to be a reasonably intelligent COS member. Martin Hunt: "Jack and Sally [Hooper] had a wonderful Internet affair, after one of them left the other's address at the bottom of a post. Jack's an illegal PC, and is obsessed with fat cells, among other things. He is the *original* ars spammer; he used to put out up to a hundred posts a day in his efforts, most of which had a one-line reply at the end, something like "Ha ha ha ha ha; worng agian, as per usaul!", or "100% wroing, as usuall." He was wonderful with the spelling errors, and was capable of ten or more in a *single* sentence! ;) "Jack's an old-timer; he goes back about two years or so."

Jet (jet@aloha.com)
Coherence of Content: Decent
Level of Interest: Higher than average
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Humour: Some

(This is from memory and may not be accurate). Jet was one of the few Scientologists on a.r.s who was not part of an organized attack on the newsgroup by the Church. He engaged in genuine dialogue with the anti-Scientologists. Although he generally didn't do frightfully well in the engagements, he's remembered fondly as someone who made an effort.

"Part of this dialogue was "The Troll". Martin Hunt explains: "He came on as a critic last year, but I so successfully trolled him, that I made him post critical posts to ars ... he then posted the troll, a month after discovering how fooled he was. (I posted as Jason Kries, OSA INT ARS Project I/C). "He left in humiliation, after the expected praise for exposing me in the "Martin Hunt, Bare-Faced Liar" series of posts turned against him in grand style. "He made a few feeble critical posts, and then departed in shame, howls of laughter ushering him along." (Apparently he is a Scientologist, but Martin's troll caused him to look like something different. I'm still a little confused about this one).

"Bring Back Vera and Jet" has been a recent rallying cry on the newsgroup, due to their more enjoyable content.

Rem Walker (remwalk@directnet.com)
Coherence of content: Low
Level of interest: Abysmal
Relevance: Moderate
Repetitiousness: High
Humour: Unintentional

Another Woody clone.

People in the middle of the road

dwtripp@aol.com (DWTripp)
Coherence of Content: Excellent
Level of Interest: High
Relevance: High
Repetitiousness: Low
Humour: Some

An intelligent advocate of some Scientology principles.

homer@math.cornell.edu (Homer Wilson Smith)

A major member of the Free Zone. Again, for the Scientology "Tech", against the Church as an organization.

Homer maintains the Lazarus Early Warning Alert system for cancels in a.r.s.

-Anti-Scientologists

Nearly all anti-Scientologists make coherent, on-topic contributions to the newsgroup. As a result, a detailed analysis of their message style is not as necessary as with the pro-Scientologists.

Church of the SubGenius Members

William Barwell (wbarwell@starbase.neosoft.com), aka Pope Charles

The "ringleader" of the SubGeniuses, William is one of the best (and funniest) Scientology critics around.

Some interesting coments kindly contributed by M L Poulter: He was repeatedly accused of being the *moderator* of a.r.s. Jet@aloha.com made this accusation a number of times. A whole load of people suggested kindly that jet get a f*****g clue, and then one of the churchies (David Talbot?) followed up, agreeing with Jet! After being repeated ad nauseam and beyond, this allegation was dropped and never heard of again.

modemac@netcom.com Finger him for a free CoSG pamphlet, although it's just not the same without all the funny graphics. :-) M L Poulter comments: Subgenius, longtime a.r.s participant and maintainer of a cool ftp site. Victim, if that's the word, of another crap attempt at "outing". Vera posted his real name to a.r.s, but this completely failed to impress anyone: Modemac had been using his real name on other groups for months.

TarlaStar (bmyers@ionet.net). Intelligent, witty, profane, funny. "Outed" by the Scientologists. (See my Tactics FAQ for details)

Sister Clara (clara@holsoft.demon.co.uk), acolyte of Tarla

fetters@enuxsa.eas.asu.edu (Jim A Fetters) writes great SubGenius-inspired parodies of Scientologist postings.

Ivan Stang, head of the Church of the SubGenius. Rarely posts on ars.
Rabbi Ben Meshugina (rabbiben@alpha.c2.org). Some excellent stories

Serious Critics

Ex-Scientologists

Dennis.L.Erlich@support.com "That Person"; currently being sued by Church His recent posts have been excellent.

Martin Hunt (uo880@freenet.victoria.bc.ca) May be next in line for lawsuit

Kim Baker (kim@uctlib.uct.ac.za) Perhaps the most eloquent and moving anti-COS poster; see my archived posts on the first page for details

Patrick Jost (jost@itd.itd.nrl.navy.mil)

alerma@dgsys.com (Alerma). Former Scientologist; posts affidavits from FactNet.

Steve Whitlatch, an interesting former Scientologist

M L Poulter tells us of Joe Harrington: "FACTnet member who has posted lots of useful FACTnet material. Joe is the author of 'Imagine the new scientology world order' which gets reposted from time to time."

Freezoners

Rod Keller
Deirdre <deirdre@deeny.mv.com>. Prominent Freezoner. According to M L Poulter, "Deirdre [the freezoner]: subjected to extensive dead-agenting from Vera. Vera repeatedly accused her of being fat (her point being...???) and claimed (without evidence) that Deirdre had stolen a large sum of money from her org."

Homer
Enid
Jacobus
Doc Morgan
an126911@anon.penet.fi (Vega)

Skeptics

Tony@sidaway.demon.co.uk (Tony Sidaway)
M L Poulter comments on Tony: "He got involved immediately after the raid on Dennis Erlich and since then has been the most prolific critical poster. His postings can fairly be divided into "sensible" and "silly" categories. An example of a sensible post is his summary of the OT3 document. This drew a barrage of abuse from the clambots who went eerily silent when asked to point out what, if anything, Tony had got wrong. Tony has also built up a large list of factual questions that Andrew Milne is unable to answer. On the silly side, he derives a (literally) perverse pleasure from taunting Vera about the size and/or smell of her panties. His increasing fascination with this subject has led to his adopting the title "The Panty Inspector"."

an105662@anon.penet.fi (The Squirrelle). M L Poulter comments: The Squirrelle: An australian skeptic. His posts are well worth reading, combining the right proportions of fact, taunt and humour. Of particular interest was a series of posts explaining how Dianetics can rightly be considered a pseudo-science. The clambots' attempts to dead-agent this character (several repetitions of "Squirrelly, you lying gits!") have been amazingly inept.

Ashraf Ghebranious. Some very funny posts. M L Poulter says that he deserves a special mention for mounting a one-man protest outside his local org on March 13th. He intended to repeat the protest but agreed to stop when the scienos made repeated harassing calls to his employer. He is obviously the kind of critic that OSA don't want to see: he has received considerable bile from Vera et al., including Vera's classic "Ashraf can't be your real name, can it?" Quote from Ashraf: "Remember, if you turn five people away from Scientology, you have cost the Co$ a million dollars."

Brett Achorn (). Dedicated researcher, searches for defunct Scientology corporations all over.

Diane Richardson (ao579@yfn.yfn.edu). Posts court transcripts of cases involving Scientology; good sense of humour, too.

Tony McClelland: A member of CultAware, the Australian equivalent of CAN, Tony posts very infrequently to a.r.s but when he does, he is well worth reading. The net is grateful to him for exposing the Co$ claim to have taught 2 million South African children to read as a lie. He posted in full the correspondance with SA government officals which showed this. Tony has been extensively and viciously dead-agented. He has been accused by an OSA representative of wire-tapping and harassment, although once again they have failed to produce any evidence.

Chris Schafmeister (schaf@cgl.uscf.edu). Biochemistry specialist.
Jim Lippard (lippard@primenet.com). Prominent skeptic, has matched contributions to Erlich fund.
an190820@anon.penet.fi (Prignillius)
pim@nepac.ucsd.edu (P van Meurs>.

peter@petermc.demon.co.uk (Peter McDermott)
lazyboy@ix.netcom.com (Stephen Jones)
tommyc@kaiwan.com (Tom Collins)

Andrew Testa (testa@hou.moc.com): another prominent skeptic ("Contributing to the downfall of Scientology since 1995"). Andrew's .sig mentions Xenu, and there have been a few incidents of apologists following up his posts and *deleting the Xenu reference from the quoted .sig*! It is unclear what this is supposed to achieve.

UNIXer@unix.xite.com (UNIXer) Often very funny posts. Note that all of this person's posts are forgeries; he has no valid email address to share with us.

plmlp@mail.bris.ac.uk (ML. Poulter) Runs a Scientology Web site, http://mail.bris.ac.uk/~plmlp

Grady Ward (grady@netcom.com). From M L Poulter: The scieno's seem very frightened of this man, and with good reason. He says that freedom of speech is his own religion. He is inviting people to send to him, by post or by secure email, extracts from the cult's secret scriptures. He fully expects to be raided by the cult, but says he is prepared for such an event. He has received extensive harassment from Eugene Ingram, a PI working for the cult- details are on Ron Newman's Web page. In response to this he has somehow obtained Ingram's personal details and used them to file charges.

Grady's posts to a.r.s are usually bitter taunts against the cult, which aren't that much fun to read if you're a critic, but which must make Helena Kobrin's blood boil!

grizzly@ionet.net [A certified "ars bigot" per Woody, which see].
stevea@castlsys.demon.co.uk (Steve)
Deana Holmes (mirele@xmission.com)
stevem@primenet.com (Steven Marinick)
imxenu@ibm.net (Steve Winslow) [Also noname@ibm.net,
wendel@wendel.se]
Dan Mckinnon (dan.mckinnon@canrem.com)
hkhenson@shell.portal.com (H Keith Henson)
Lenny Gray (lenngray@netcom.com)
smokesig@ix.netcom.com (Neal Hamel) cuthulu@unicomp.net (Kevan Smith)
a-johnc@ac.tandem.com (clark_john_w)
Gr0nD (gr0nd@alpha.c2.org)
visnet@onramp.net (Sri Changiana Saar).

ML Poulter comments: Vera made a cock-up trying to "out" this guy. She posted a name (and address?- unsure of this) which she said was SCS's real name. It turned out that SCS was an identity used by a *group* of people. The one who was posting criticism of Scientology was *not* the owner of the account, whom Vera had named.

marcus@pavilion.co.uk (Marcus Pennell)

Jeff Jacobsen (cultxpt@primenet.com): CAN Member. M L Poulter comments: Very articulate, to-the-point posting style. He maintains an ftp site with the all-important affidavits from the Fishman case and is the author of several essays on cults and on Dianetics. JJ knows about cults through personal experience (don't remember which cult, though). JJ is a CAN member and, perhaps because of this, has drawn particular venom from the apologists. Russell Shaw has threatened to picket the JJ's dances in return for his picketing of a Scientology org.

sgoehrin@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (scott goehring) Original creator of alt.religion.scientology; done originally "as a joke".

an179159@anon.penet.fi (John Gaunt)
m. council (council@luna.cas.usf.edu)
watchernet@aol.com (Watchernet)
an230931@anon.penet.fi (Xenu Marcarbian II)
M L Poulter wants to add sliver, "another sharp critic. Recently returned to a.r.s after a long break. The scienos seem particularly interested in this person. They have posted an allegation that sliver is ex-scieno Robert Vaughn Young, seemingly in order to get someone to let slip his real identity. "

Serious Critic, interesting special case

The "Clambot Brigade"

The R R M Tweek (tweek@ccnet.com)
Wayn McGilligray (wmcgillivray@oavax.csuchico.edu)
anon2c9e@nyx10.cs.du.edu (henry). Unpleasant to read due to extreme rudeness, but often puts in some very funny jabs. Viciously attacked by COS
ladyada@spiff.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Just say No to CO$)

The Defenders of The Net

Ron Newman (rnewman@mit.edu)

For continuous updates on this subject, check out his outstanding home page: http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/home.html

Rachel Kadel (rkadel@fas.harvard.edu). Both funny and intelligent; worth a look.

David H Dennis (david@amazing.cinenet.net). Me. Ahem. You can judge for yourself. :-)