When I was a kid, Christmas seemed like such a magical time of year.  Everyone seemed happy, people were buying me expensive toys (I think I got the entire Kenner Star Wars collection spread out over a few years between Christmas and birthdays) and I got a lot of time off from school.  Not bad, huh?  All because this guy named Jesus was apparently born that time of year.

As I got older, Christmas seemed to be becoming less and less about goodwill toward men, happiness, Jesus and all that I had been raised to believe it was about.  It started to be more about retail, money, buying things at discounts and showing people you cared about them by showering them with money and material things!  Family members that all but ignore each other year round were coming together, putting on a fake smile and pretending to actually care about each other for one day.

During the Holiday season you also see people being – drum roll – kind to strangers.  The homeless make out pretty well, as do the people we encounter on a professional basis.  Your doorman, your mailman, the guy who sells you your newspaper every morning all get tips above and beyond what they’d normally get year round.  We spend all year taking these people for granted but on the Holidays we pretend we care about them and their families just because it makes us feel better to do so.  Where’s all of that good will toward our fellow man the rest of the year?

Which brings me to the events of this year’s Black Friday.  Yes, the day after Thanksgiving when the greedy masses of Americans invade retail chains all across the country.   Heavily discounted merchandise inspires people to line up in front of stores as early as 2am, waiting for the gates to open and the race for cheap electronics and toys to commence.

This year, at a Long Island Wal-Mart a mass of people filled with the Holiday spirit broke down the doors and a stampede into the store killed a young employee by the name of Jdimytai Damour, who was just there to do his job.  He was instructed to let the crazed holiday shoppers in once the store opened, but they couldn’t wait for that.  They had to get IN.  They had to get their discounted Xbox and Playstation accessiories.  They had to break the doors down and trample this poor man to death.  In their efforts to give their family a Merry (and heavily discounted) Christmas, they deprived this man and his family of theirs.

The customers rushed into the store, trampling him not even giving any thought to the people around them, or the condition of this poor man who took his last breaths on the floor next to the pop machines.  They needed to get their discount TVs!  They needed the discount Malibu Barbie Dream House!  It didn’t matter that they had to kill a man in the process.

Is this what the Holidays are?  Christmas is now a holiday dedicated to greed and materialism.  It’s the season where we prove over and over again just what a shallow, materialistic culture we truly are.

I don’t know how you plan on spending this Holiday season, but I know where I’ll be.  On my couch, away from the insanity, watching bad horror films and knowing that what’s happening outside my front door is much worse than what I’m seeing on my TV screen.

I’m going to ask you a question. Before you answer it, I want you to read the rest of this blog while thinking about it.

The question is this: What is your ethnicity?

It might seem like a simple enough question. I bet an answer popped into your head as soon as you finsihed reading it. It may be the correct answer. However, I want you to think about it for a moment.

What defines ethnicity? Is it the color of your skin? Is it where you live? Is it what language you speak? Is it where your ancestors are from? Is it something else?

It could be any of those. I guess it is really up to the individual to define the term for his or herself. I’ve been thinking about this question since I was involved in a discussion yesterday evening about this very topic.

My great-grandparents came over to the United States from Poland. They continued to speak the language when they arrived, and had children who spoke Polish. But those children also learned English which became their primary language.

As time went on, and generations were born to my family, the use of Polish diminished as did the Polish customs that the family had brought with them from their homeland. Soon, my generation was born any trace of the “old country” was all but gone. I suppose you can say that the family was “Americanized.”

So, here’s my second question: Am I Polish? Am I Polish-American? Or am I just American?

At what point does “American” become an ethnicity?

Those who come from Italy are italian. Those from France are French. Germans come from Germany. But, who are the people that come from America? Why do we put our ancestors’ ethnicities in front of “American” when we say who we are?

If I were to move to Italy and become a citizen, would I be considered American-Italian? Or Polish-Italian?

Where do we draw the line?

If I were to go back to Poland I would realize just how Polish I’m not. The same for an African-American who’s never been to Africa (not to mention that Africa’s aa continent, not a country so I’ve never understood the term African-American as it seems to apply to all blacks. Not every black person in America has roots in Africa.) How about an Asian American who’s never left the continental United States? Are they of the American ethnicity? Keep in mind, I’m talking ethnicity and not race.

It’s a good question to ask yourself, and I’m curious to hear opinions on this.

I read somewhere recently that a principal at some midwestern school has outlawed the game of tag. I believe she described it as a “game of intense aggression,” and is therefore unsuitable for the children of her school.

Along with this, dodgeball has been outlawed in many schools. Apparently it’s too violent as well.

In many parts of the country, little leagues have stopped keeping score.

I’m getting sick and tired of hearing this “every kid’s a winner” bullshit. Every kid is not a winner. Every kid should not be treated as a winner. If you want your kid to be a winner, teach him how to win.

You can’t expect children to grow up to be functioning adults if you coddle them until they’re 18. Can you imagine what a skewed sense of the world they’ll have? As soon as they leave their parents home, the world is going to crush them because they haven’t been properly taught how to succeed in it.

We’re being way too easy on children. We walk on eggshells with them because we’re afraid their feeling will get hurt and they’ll grow up with problems. It’s our generation of 30-somethings that’s doing this, too. For some reason we don’t want our children to have the same difficulties in school that we did. We want everything to be easy for them, everything handed to them on a silver platter.

I’m sorry, but the world doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to fail. You’ve got to lose. You’ve got to embarass yourself once in awhile in order to really know how to win. That’s life. You have to expose children to the harsh realities that await them someday so that they can actually handle it.

Let your kid lose once in awhile. It’s good for him.

No, I’m not bashing here.

Because I am a fag, and proud of it.

Don’t worry, guys, I still like the ladies, but I’m going to proudly call myself a fag.

Why, you ask? Because I am, and so is anyone else who opposes Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. According to the Phelps clan, that is. It has nothing to do with homosexuality any longer. In Phelps’ eyes, a ‘fag’ is anyone not a member of his congregation.

This past weekend Topeka, Kansas was the scene of the first annual Million Fag March, a peaceful protest against Phelps and his cronies. The motto of the protest is that freedom of speech works both ways. Fred Phelps may have the right to picket when and where he pleases, and so do the rest of us.

While I believe a peaceful protest against the WBC is a valiant and wonderful idea, I have to question whether or not it will serve the purpose intended. While Fred Phelps and his family are nothing but an array of vile creatures, this protest may give them attention that they do not deserve.

I’ve always been a proponent of ignoring the WBC and its idiocy. The more attention given to them, the more of the spotlight they monopolize. What they want is media attention, and anything done to attract that attention is welcomed by them. Even protests against them. Especially protests against them.

Fred Phelps is an old man who’s probably going to be dead sooner than later. Depending on whatever religion you follow, he’s either going to burn in Hell or come back as a retarded squirrel. Or just not exist, if you don’t believe in an afterlife.

Once he’s gone, that Church is not going to have the momentum to go on like it has been. I don’t think his daughter, Shirley, will be able to garner the same following as he has and the ‘movement’ will die.

Let nature take its course.

So, a transgender man is pregnant.  It’s all over the news like it’s some sort of an amazing feat.

This ‘man’ still has the reproductive system of a woman.  Now ‘he’s’ pregnant.

Why is this news?  Why are people fascinated by this?  This woman gets her breasts removed, grows some facial hair and starts living as a man.  But she still has a vagina, uterus and all that other stuff women have that are used to make babies.

Technically, she’s still a woman.

Women get pregnant.

It’s not some scientific breakthrough, not some freak of nature.  It happens all the time.  That’s why the world still has people. 

I don’t understand what the big deal is.

Anyway, here’s the link to an article about it.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4526582&page=1

So, is Patrick Swayze going to be dead in a month?

Some sources say yes, and quite a few people are getting up in arms about it.  Here’s one article on the subject, taken from TransWorldNews:

Patrick Swayze Diagnosed With Cancer, Five Weeks Left to Live

Patrick Swayze, best known for his role in Dirty Dancing, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told that he has just five weeks to live.

Swayze, 55, has been sick with the disease since he was diagnosed in late January with pancreatic cancer. The cancer has since spread to other organs and now the actor/dancer is dying.

For the past month, Swayze has been traveling to Stanford University’s prestigious cancer center in Palo Alto for radical chemotherapy, but his doctors are no longer optimistic that the treatments will be successful, according to the National Enquirer.

Swayze received three treatments of chemotherapy, causing the tumor to shrink, but less than his doctors had hoped for. He was then told that he should prepare for the end.

For more people news, please check out http://news.finditt.com/NewsList.aspx?cat=14&wcat=16

Note the source.  Yup, that’s right, The National Enquirer.  The same ‘newspaper’ that rose to fame by printing stories of celebrities getting raped by Sasquatch and giving birth to alien children.

The difference this time is that other news sources are picking this story up and giving it publicity.  They’re treating the Enquirer as a credible source.

Since when is the National Enquirer a trusted news source?  Is it becoming more credible on its own or are readers just getting dumber?  Is this now a reliable source of news?

I suspect that the reports of his limited lifespan are being greatly exaggerated.  It just pains me to see the National Enquirer taken seriously by other news sources that are supposed to be credible.

UPDATE:  Fox News is now reporting this story citing the same sources.  Apparently they’re using the Enquirer as a credible source as well.  Here’s the link:

Swayze-ness

UPDATE:  Celebrity gossip hound Perez Hilton is now reporting on his website that this story is in fact true.  He claims someone representing Swayze released a statement confirming his illness. 

I’m finding this so fascinating because it just shows the evolution of a headline story.  By tomorrow this will be all over the news, if in fact the confirmation is true.

UPDATE: People.com has revealed that the rumors regarding the actor’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer are true, but his imminent demise is not.  Here’s the statement from his doctor as reported by People:

“Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far,” Dr. George Fisher says in a statement. “All of the reports stating the time frame of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue. We are considerably more optimistic.”The actor’s rep adds: “Patrick is continuing his normal schedule during this time, which includes working on upcoming projects. The outpouring of support and concern he has already received from the public is deeply appreciated by Patrick and his family.”

And that, kids, is how the media works.  I hope you enjoyed today’s foray into its inner workings.  I guess the lesson here is this:  Tabloids aren’t credible.  They publish anything they can get in order for you to buy their publication.  Thanks to some pretty resourceful folks on the internet, tomorrow’s issue of the National Enquirer which features the story of the Swayze’s battle for his life will sell far fewer copies as the truth has come out.

But don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to make light of Patrick Swayze or his condition.  I actually like him as an actor, and have enjoyed many of his films.  I hope he makes a full recovery.  My purpose here was to use it as an example of how rumors spread because of the media.  I was lucky to catch this one in its infancy stage, so I ran with it.

I read a few news stories earlier today about a group of Buddhist monks in Thailand who were using the internet social networking site Hi5 to lure women back to the monastery for sex.  Some reports said they were raping these women, other reports say it was consensual so I’m not going to draw any conclusions about that.

I am going to predict, however, that these monks are going to be representative of the whole religion in the eyes of the unforgiving public.  It seems like a trend nowadays that if someone who holds religious office does something immoral, the entire religion is blamed for it.

Take the Catholics, for example.  The whole Catholic priest pedophilia scandal rocked the world when it was brought to light.  Ever since the first allegations of this came out, the entire Catholic faith was put under a microscope and every single Catholic priest was under suspicion.  I was raised Catholic, spent some time as an altar boy, went to a Catholic University and I can tell you first hand that I never witnessed any sort of misbehavior by a priest.  I was never molested, nor did I hear of any other child I knew being molested by a Catholic priest.

In college I spent a lot of time with the Franciscan order of Friars.  These were some of the most decent, moral men I had ever known and have known to this day.   Never did I see one act innapropriately toward anyone else.

This same type of stereotyping is going to happen with the Buddhists now that this incident has come to national attention.  Since the media likes to sensationalize everything, this is going to become a major scandal and the Buddhists are going to be treated as unfairly as the Catholics.

The reason it’s unfair is because members of any religious order who commit acts of immorality are singled out.  There are a lot of sexual predators on this planet, but they’re not stereotyped like Catholic priests are because they come from all walks of life.  There are literally thousands of registered sex offenders in the United States alone, and only a handful of those belong to any religious order.  It can be safe to say that there are more sex offenders that belong to a particular race (whether that be Irish, Black, Hispanic, Polish, or whatever ; I’m not singling out an entire ethnicity because I’m arguing against stereotyping here) than there are Catholic priests who commit these offenses.  There are probably more lay Catholic sex offenders than there are offenders in the clergy.  But that doesn’t make national headlines because it’s not sensational enough.

18 year old Ashley Clark was home alone, recovering from recent brain surgery, when the unthinkable happened.  Two teenagers, a 16 year old male and 17 year old female, broke into the house intending to steal the car belonging to the homeowner.

When they were unable to accomplish the theft, they found the disabled girl and decided to take out their frustrations on her.  They bound her, shaved her head, and beat her in the head with a baseball bat despite her pleas for them to stop because she recently had brain surgery.

These two wastes of air were found later that evening after they had left the scene, but Ashley had to be taken to the hospital where she’s expected to recover.

And watch, these two ‘misguided’ youths will be labled as victims.  People will support them as they do every other scumbag in the world.  I read blogs and posts all the time written by people who say that whatever psycho is being discussed was just a ‘lonley, lost soul who just needed a little love.’

You know what I say to those people?  I tell them they need to be sentenced right along with the buttplugs they’re supporting.

These two kids weren’t just ‘misguided’ – they were sick.  Pure fucking evil.  No ‘human’ being would repeatedly beat on a disabled person who had just undergone brain surgery.  No ‘human’ would beat on a disabled person to begin with.  Any person who would do this is a lost cause and should be put away for life. 

 Here, read the article:

Teens Target Disabled Girl in Brutal Home Invasion 

Take the case of Tracy Hermann and James Sargent of Peoria, Illinois. Their 5-month old son, Benjamin, was dropped off a their home strapped in his car seat. 8 days later, he was still in said car seat, on the living room floor, dead of starvation and neglect.

What was the reason for the neglect? Apparently Mom and Dad were too busy eating and playing video games to take care of their child.

Seriously, for 8 days this baby was strapped in a car seat, in a crib.

Sargent even admitted that he probably never even moved the kid for those 8 days. They just left him in his car seat to starve to death.

I say bring back the firing squad.

Here’s the article:

http://www.sj-r.com/News/stories/25672.asp

Prosecutor: Baby dead after 8 days of neglect
Death penalty possible for parents charged with murder

By ANDY KRAVETZ
GATEHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Published Friday, February 22, 2008

PEORIA — Benjamin Sargent died with his eyes open, fists clenched and strapped into a car seat after eight days without food or water, authorities say.

The 5-month-old was dropped off at his parents’ house on Feb. 4, wearing a bright-blue snowsuit and strapped into his car seat. Eight days later, he was found in the filth-strewn home in the same position, Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons said Wednesday during a bond hearing for the parents, Tracy D. Hermann, 21, and James E. Sargent, 23, both of Peoria, who are charged with murder for their son’s death.“It’s the worst case of child neglect we have seen since the turn of this century,” Lyons said afterward. “(On Tuesday), I told (Peoria Police) Chief (Steven) Settingsgaard that this case even rattled me.”

The charges state the parents’ actions, or lack thereof, were “brutal and heinous … indicative of wanton cruelty,” factors that could mean they face up to 100 years in prison if convicted.

Lyons also said he might seek the death penalty for the two. State law allows a capital charge if the accused is older than 17 and the victim is younger than 12.

“He died from starvation due to neglect from these two defendants, his parents,” Lyons said, spitting out the last word with contempt.

Circuit Judge Glenn Collier ordered Sargent and Hermann held without bond, pending a hearing this afternoon, when it is expected that Lyons will present more evidence as to why the two should not be released pending trial.

Peoria County Coroner Johnna Ingersoll said Benjamin weighed 10 pounds when he was found by police. He was nearly eight pounds at birth, she said.

Reading from a prepared statement, Lyons said police found the infant sitting in his own waste, all the while strapped into the seat, which was in a crib.

A person who was staying at an unattached garage adjacent to the house had seen Benjamin at some point, thought it was “odd” that he was still on the living room floor after being dropped off and moved him, car seat and all, into the other room.

There Benjamin sat for eight days, most of which both Hermann and Sargent were home, “playing video games, watching TV, feeding and caring for themselves,” Lyons said afterward.

Police had interviewed Sargent, who at first told them he had moved the baby “once or twice,” but later conceded that he might not have moved Benjamin at all during the week, Lyons said.

Hermann’s last contact with her son was the night before police were notified. Then, she allegedly told police she “looked at the baby in the crib and presumed he was sleeping, so she said she stuck a bottle between the baby and the side of the car seat so that when he woke up, he could grab it and feed himself,” Lyons said in open court.

The house, Lyons said, was in complete disarray, with clothing everywhere and spoiled food left out. The temperature in the baby’s room was nearly 80 degrees, he said.

Hermann then left for Iowa to meet with a man she had met over the Internet, the prosecutor said, noting that she allegedly told police “ Benjamin was not her duty and that it was James’ responsibility.”

Prosecutors from Lyons’ juvenile division have already begun proceedings to permanently remove Hermann’s 3-year-old daughter from the home.

Now, I can’t wait for all the idiots to come out and defend these two scumbags. The morons of the universe are going to feel sorry for this couple, saying it was probably due to drug abuse or some other crap and that they need help and counseling.

To hell with that. Give them the chair. Let it be a lesson to all the other scumbag parents out there who would rather let their kid die than take care of it.

I was going to write a blog about this, but I found an excellent post regarding the death of Shawn Lonsdale on another site.  I’m posting the link and the contents.

 http://dreamsendweb.com/2008/02/19/suspicious-death-of-scientology-critic-shawn-lonsdale/

The following was taken from the blog “Dream’s End” which can be found by clicking on the above link.

For a brief time, Shawn Lonsdale, 39, was a fixture outside Scientology’s infamous Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida (the hotel in which Lisa McPherson died under the “care” of Scientologists). He was filming what he called a pseudo-documentary and stood for hours at a time gathering footage. He also posted frequently on various anti-Scientology discussion forums and was a well known activist.

He endured death threats and smear campaigns. He worked for a brief time in his younger days as a male prostitute, and flyers with this information were posted all over town. He was undeterred by these tactics. You can read more about him here. You can also see Lonsdale featured in a BBC documentary about Scientology, including a scene in which uberhandler Tommy Davis rushes onto the scene to make sure that reporter John Sweeney knows about Lonsdale’s minor criminal convictions. The link takes you to a compilation video of what Sweeney endured in filming his documentary. Lonsdale’s bit starts at around 2:45.)

And now, one week after the most widespread anti-Scientology action in history, he is dead from what police are calling an “apparent suicide.”

The circumstances of his death are strange by themselves. He was found dead in his home with a hose leading from his car’s exhaust pipe into his house. Why he didn’t simply stay in the car is the first question everyone asked. It seems to be a suicide plan with a high probability of failure. The entire house would have to fill with CO2 before the car ran out of gas or someone noticed the odd details.

According to the Times report, Lonsdale had backed off of his anti-Scientology activities, or at least the public ones. Perhaps he was editing his hours and hours of footage, or perhaps he simply pulled back from the stress of the battle with the “fair-gaming” Church. He’d found a job and was thinking about going back to school to get a private investigator’s license.

But the timing is quite strange. On Feb. 10 the single largest, worldwide Scientology protest action was held and the momentum shown by the “anonymous” movement against Scientology showed no signs of slowing. Why would he pick the days following the sort of victory he’d been working so hard for to take his own life?

Unfortunately, it’s likely that the Clearwater Police may not be the most objective in handling this investigation. Please see this excellent Mark Bunker documentary about the incredible amount of influence Scientology has gained over Clearwater and with the Clearwater Police Department.

(Correction. In a previous version of this article I pointed to some online evidence that the Clearwater police spokesperson, Elizabeth Daly-Watts was involved in Scientology and married to a high level Scientologist. This was an error. There was an Elizabeth Daly who did some Scientology courses in 1994. Ms. Daly-Watts is married to Sgt. Carl Watts of the Clearwater Police Department. There is also a Carl Watts who took some high level Scientology classes and was declared a “clear” back in 1978. This is not the same person to whom Elizabeth Daly-Watts is married. I regret the error and apologize to Ms. Daly-Watts for posting the assertion. If you see older versions of this article reprinted anywhere without this correction, please pass this information along. )

Are we being unfair? Would Scientology ever deliberately murder or at least attempt to drive someone to suicide? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a definitive yes. As part of their fair game policy, for example (which the Church now claims is no longer in effect), investigative reporter Paulette Cooper was harassed with the intention of inducing suicide.

The most bizarre documents (recovered in FBI raids on Scientology offices) referred to “Operation Freakout.” Its goal, they wrote, was to “get P.C., [me] incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks.” It appeared that after the first frameup had failed to silence me or land me in prison, they plotted again to make it look like I was making bomb threats against Scientology and others. Sounding eerily like the ‘72 letters, these new missives were going to go out to Scientology, to Henry Kissinger, to Arab embassies (because I’m Jewish) and also to a Laundromat! Go figure.

Other pages in the documents also brought back unhappy memories. There was a strange diary of what I did each day during the “frame-up” period, and how close I was to suicide. “Wouldn’t that be great for Scientology?” the person wrote. And then I realized the writer could only have been Jerry Levin. He had to have been a Scientologist, someone who infiltrated my life specifically to spy on me and help Scientology set me up.

And it’s worth at least mentioning the L. Ron Hubbard’s own son, thought to be gay (Scientologists don’t like gays much) and otherwise embarrassing his father, allegedly committed suicide in 1976 in a similar manner. Quentin Hubbard was found dead in a car in the desert with a hose leading from the tailpipe to nearby the car. The police assumed it had fallen out of the window after Hubbard died from carbon monoxide poisoning. But I hope the medical examiner does a thorough job on Lonsdale’s body because it turned out that there was NO carbon monoxide in Hubbard’s body, though there were needle marks on both arms. You can read the coroner’s report here as well as an account of the story fro someone who was inside Scientology at the time.

The story gets even stranger. That is to say, the way the story first surfaced on the internet is very strange. Reminiscent of the Theresa Duncan death, the story first emerged on an internet discussion forum. The oddity about this that no one knows who made the original post nor how this person came to know of Lonsdale’s death before the police announced it or the media covered it. The poster claimed to be part of “anonymous” though made several gaffe’s which suggested to longterm anons that he or she had simply adopted the lingo. Here’s the original post:

The orginal post 36 hours ago:
anonny…@yahoo.com
View profile
Just received word from a reliable source that he heard from a reliable source that Shawn Lonsdale is dead of apparent suicide. Anyone can confirm?
More options Feb 17, 12:28 am
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: anonny…@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:28:37 -0800 (PST)
Local: Sun, Feb 17 2008 12:28 am
Subject: Shawn Lonsdale suicide?
Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show original | Report this message | Find messages by this author
Just received word from a reliable source that he heard from a
reliable source that Shawn Lonsdale is dead of apparent suicide.
Anyone can confirm?

This post was about 12 hours after the police found the body. So while it is not proof that the poster had anything to do with the crime, no one can figure out how this person, if not someone associated with the police or Scientology, could have known this before anyone else.

One more odd point which is probably just a coincidence but worth keeping an eye on. It’s another post on alt.religion.scientology, but the poster had a bit more of a history of posting the sort of things you’d expect.

It’s 8:24 AM in my part of the world (the posting time is listed as 3:24 pm on Feb. 15).
Within 12 hours there will be felt a huge disturbance in the Force.

After more than 50 years, we’re now on the homestretch.

Rejoice.

Anonymous

The next day Lonsdale was found dead, though he could have been dead for some time.

Suicides happen. And they happen around Scientology a lot, though often it’s just folks who realized they spent their life savings for a scam. But what is known in this case is enough to convict the Church in the court of public opinion if nothing else. Lonsdale…a single guy with a video camera and no operating budget to speak of, was harassed, threatened and defamed in a coordinated campaign to destroy a critic of the Church. They say they don’t “fair game” anyone anymore. All that tells me is that they changed the terminology.

Follow the latest developments at the Enturbulation forum. They’ve done all the research here and I’ve simply compiled some of it here to help keep the pressure going for a real investigation.Also, due to the nature of this topic and the litigious nature of the Church, I print this article with no copyright protection of any kind. You can reprint it all or in part, with or without attribution and with or without linking back to this page. So, feel free to make copies and if this site bites the dust for some reason, just slap it back up somewhere. This right is strictly reserved, however, for individuals, entities and organizations which are not affiliated with the Church of Scientology.