The next regular London protest against Scientology is planned for this coming Saturday the 15th of Ma and is expected to follow the usual plan.

See also the planning thread on WhyWeProtest.

The next regular monthly protest for London is scheduled for Saturday the 10th of April.

Here’s the WWP thread.

Independent Australian Senator Nick Xenophon (for reals, no fooling) has made great use of parliamentary privilege to raise concerns about issues Scientology that various ex-members relayed to him, and call for a full inquiry into Scientology’s behaviour (they have a tax excemption in Australia).

To quote Gawker’s article, “An Australian senator has called for a criminal investigation into Scientology, alleging that the cult is “an abusive, manipulative, violent and criminal organization.” The senator’s name is Nick Xenophon. This is going to be good.”

The Australian reports, “Independent senator Nick Xenophon tabled explosive letters from former Scientology officials and staff alleging a litany of abuses, including coerced abortions, assault, imprisonment, covering up sexual abuse, embezzlement of church funds and blackmail.”

There’s a whole Situation Room over on the WhyWeProtest forum, which includes a thread with full youtube videos and a transcript.

This situation has interesting implications for the UK too – because of UK Scientology’s “interesting” corporate structure (i.e. it’s mostly owned by COSRECI, an Australian corporation), they have an excemption from UK VAT because of a reciprocal agreement between the UK and Australia governments. If the .AU govt revokes their tax excemption over there, with any luck this will mean UK Scientology will stop being able to dodge VAT over here.

The next Big Monthly London Protest is tomorrow (as of this posting), Saturday the 16th of May. The weather looks a bit poor so plan accordingly – and there’s a bunch of tube line closures too. See Protest In London for general info.

Apologies for the short notice – I could’ve sworn I updated earlier, back when the date was initially picked for May, but I guess not.

WhyAreTheyDead.net was, for a very long time, a major resource about deaths believed to be related to Scientology. Recently it dropped offline and nobody’s been able to get hold of the site’s creator.

So, on a strictly temporary basis, there’s a mirror of a large amount of the WhyAreTheyDead content now up at http://badcult.info/watd/

March 14th is the next London Monthly. We’re reprising Operation Party Hard.

(No more Blackfriars tube until 2011, AND St Pauls will be closed that weekend as well. I’d suggest Mansion House tube on district/circle line – it’s one stop to the East of Blackfriars.)

Hopefully, I’ll be able to attend this one in person and do live-blogging and possibly even stream some live video too.

Looks like the next major London protest against the criminal cult of Scientology will be on Saturday 7th of February 2009.

This will mark the one-year anniversary of the current wave of worldwide protesting against Scientology’s fraud and abuse. It is currently expected that this will again follow the standard London format – and, as always, please check TheTube.com for travel information closer to the time.

We know in advance that Blackfriars Tube will be unavailable on this date, so you’ll need to go to St Pauls tube and then walk. Here’s a map of one possible walk-route. Tottenham Court Road is unaffected.

Planning for these events happens in many different places, but you could start at this forum thread.

The general consensus seems to be that London will be doing their main Monthly protest on Saturday the 17th of January, 2009.

At the moment, it looks like it’ll be following the standard pattern. At the time of writing, it looks like Blackfriars, Tottenham Court Road and Goodge Street tube stations will all be open and available.

Next major protesting opportunity for London will be this coming Saturday, the 13th.

See the London Howto for details, plus don’t forget to check TfL for any last-minute Tube news that might affect your journey.

Swedish TV channel STV has produced a really interesting documentary about Scientology, including some research into some of their front-groups such as Narconon. Protesters have provided a version with English subtitles, although some of the interview segments (such as with ex-Scientologist Michael Pattinson) are in English already.

You can either watch it here, or go watch it directly at Vimeo. It’s about an hour long – but if you have the time to spare, it’s a good introduction to many of the issues. Embedded video is “after the jump”.

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