June 14, 2008 was, evidently, a protest day across the world for Anonymous against Scientology. (We have pics of an Orlando protest ~ of Epic Fail Guy, of course!) This video - apparently of London’s Scientology presence getting rick rolled - is one of the best things I have ever seen here on the internets. Enjoy.

Best video ever!

Lots of protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks (from V For Vendetta). Here’s Minneapolis:

And Orlando:

USA Today: 4 Questions That Need Answers:

Three weeks after Texas authorities removed more than 400 children from a polygamist compound, the facts remain distressingly murky.

1. Did Texas have any option short of taking the children from their families for weeks?
2. Did the state infringe on the group’s right to practice its religion?
3. Did anyone inside the compound violate statutory rape, child molestation or other laws?
4. What is in the best interest of each child?

facts:

* this is the largest child custody case in Texas and U.S. history - 437 children seized
* FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) mothers have appeared on TV wearing prairie dresses and old-fashioned hairdos.
* FLDS practices polygamy
* child welfare officials, tipped off by a phone call, said they saw several teenage girls who were pregnant or with young children. That prompted them to remove all the children.

Fox News Interview:

Those ladies are as close to Stepford Wives as we’ve ever seen. Listen to the one on the right when she says “I feel like the most free woman in the whole world!” The one on the left says “We are free!”. Somebody please check to make sure they aren’t robots. Also check under their dresses to make sure there isn’t some puppeteer’s hand under there.

Art of Bleeding has a nice remix of the interview:

Remember, it’s not a compound! But it does seem like a madhouse.

Texas tries to ease polygamist kids’ culture shock:

Many of the children have seen little or no television. They have been essentially home-schooled all their lives. Most were raised on garden-grown vegetables and twice-daily prayers with family. They frolic in long dresses and buttoned-up shirts from another century. They are unfailingly polite. The 437 children taken from the polygamist compound in West Texas are being scattered to group homes and boys’ and girls’ ranches across the state, plunged into a culture radically different from the community where they and their families shunned the outside world as a hostile, contaminating influence on their godly way of life.

Children raised on the FLDS compound wear pioneer-style dress and keep their hair pinned up in braids, reflecting their standards of modesty. For the same reason, they have little knowledge of pop culture. They pray twice a day. They tend vegetable gardens and raise dairy cows, and eat fresh food. And they are exceedingly polite, always saying “please” and “thank you.”

“Please” and “Thank you”. How quaint!

In contrast, many other children in foster care have a certain worldly swagger, and are there because they have used drugs or committed other crimes. Experts and lawyers say foster care will change the sect children. “These children who have lived in a very insular culture and are suddenly thrust into mainstream culture. There’s going to be problems,” said Susan Hays, who represents a toddler in the custody case. “They are a throwback to the 19th century in how they dress and how they behave.”

Ken Driggs, an Atlanta, Georgia, lawyer who has long studied and written about the FLDS, said if kept away from their parents’ culture long enough, the children may begin to emulate those around them. Pulliam said the temporary foster care facilities have been briefed on the children’s needs. “We’re not going to have them in tank tops and shorts,” she said. Authorities will try to obtain the youngsters’ traditional clothing from their parents, and also arrange for visits from some of the adults, state attorney Gary Banks said. In addition, CPS has sent instructions to the foster homes to feed the youngsters fresh fruits and vegetables, chicken, rice and other foods that may have been grown on the 1,700-acre ranch. “They don’t eat a lot of processed food and we’re not going to encourage that,” Pulliam said, but noted that if the children want to eat processed or junk food, no one is going to stop them.

The children have been educated in a schoolhouse on the compound using a home-school curriculum and may be ahead of public-school students their ages, lawyers said. Hays and Pulliam said the children will continue to be home-schooled by the temporary foster-care providers instead of being thrown into big schools, where they could be bullied because of their differences.

The way this article reads, it almost seems like they were better off in the compound. Good food, good education, tolerance. It would be awesome if it wasn’t for the forced marriage part.

“We recognize it’s critical that these children not be exposed to mainstream culture too quickly or other things that would hinder their success,” agency spokeswoman Shari Pulliam said. “We just want to protect them from abuse and neglect. We’re not trying to change them.”

What’s this “we” stuff? The world will change them. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Oprah, Fox News, crime, government bureaucrats, cheese doodles and Pepsi, hours and hours of mindless television, shitty public schools, and finally, the presidential election coverage. These kids are going to get changed, good and hard.

The Cumberland County Courthouse lawn in Crossville, Tennessee now features an enormous statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The statue is the work of Ariel Safdie and her brother David.

Statement at FSM Installation Ceremony

We are lucky enough to live in a country that allows us, its citizens, the freedom of speech. I have chosen to put up a statue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to represent the discourse between people of all different beliefs. The many faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds of Cumberland County’s residents make our community a stronger richer place. I respect and am proud that on the people’s lawn, the county courthouse, all of these diverse beliefs can come together in a positive dialogue. Here, we are all able to share the issues close to our hearts whether it is through a memorial to the soldiers killed fighting for our country, the Statue of Liberty honoring our nations welcoming promise to all, a group’s fight to stop homelessness, or powerful symbols of faith. I greatly treasure this open forum between everyone in the community.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a pile of noodles and meatballs, but it is meant to open up discussion and provoke thought. Being able to put up a statue is a celebration of our freedom as Americans; a freedom to be different, to express those differences, and to do it amongst neighbors -— even if it is in a noodley way.

The Seattle Times has a story about the sect called the True Russian Orthodox Church, which went underground a few weeks back to “save themselves during the time of the apocalypse”, which they state will come in May of 2008. The group of 29 people, including four children, has threatened to set fire to themselves if any attempt is made to force them to come to the surface.

The True Russian Orthodox Church

Source: rian.ru:

The Orthodox Church has spoken out against using force in the standoff with the True Russian Orthodox Church, which was formed by Father Pyotr Kuznetsov, a 43-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic currently in custody. He is believed to have ordered his followers underground last week. “Persuasion and negotiations should be used, as people there [in the cave] are brainwashed and difficult to reason with,” Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad said. “A violent solution should be avoided at all costs, it is very dangerous.”

Pyotr Kuznetsov. Look, just do what he tells you.

Orthodox priests have pitched a tent near the shelter and are praying for the sect members, and trying to engage them in “peaceful dialogue” a source in the Penza diocese said, adding that Archbishop Philaret of Penza had written to them. “We are constantly engaged in talks, trying to make them change their minds, but it is difficult,” the source said. “It took a long time to form their convictions, and reversing that process will not be quick.”

From ABC News:

The cave is located in the village of Nikolskoe (400 miles SE of Moscow). Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya has published what it said is a map of the cave. It shows a fairly sophisticated setup with an area for eating, another for sleeping and a ditch for water, as well as an area designated for human waste. According to the illustration, the cave is sealed with heavy sacks, and in some places is more than 30 feet below ground. The soil is made up of thick clay and rocks.

The Oprichnik Brotherhood of Ivan the Terrible

The Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper reported on a group calling itself the Oprichnik Brotherhood of Ivan the Terrible, in the village of Koscsheyevo, a few hours from Moscow.

The Oprichniki were a group of merciless killers Ivan the Terrible used to eliminate his enemies in 16th century Russia. The modern-day Oprichniki live in peasantlike conditions (using outside toilets, drawing water from wells) and have a mixed reputation in the surrounding area. Some accuse them of cruelty and religious fanaticism, while others say they are a strange, yet essentially harmless group of committed Christians.

The group is believed to consist of three families, all of whom moved to the area from Russia’s Far East a few years ago. A Russian expert on religions and sects, Alexander Dvorkin, told the paper the group shared many similarities with the sect in Penza - namely “mind control and deception.” The brotherhood, like many such fringe Russian Orthodox groups, is reported to possess icons of Ivan the Terrible and the “mad monk” Rasputin.

Some more info from a translated page:

In Kosheleva they appeared a few years ago, they all come from the Far East. Their spiritual leader Andrei Alekseevich Shchedrin bought many houses and Lyubime and in the surrounding area. They do not smoke, do not swear mate, drink wine only on their own manufacturing holidays.

Religion was tightly controlled in the Soviet Union, and after it collapsed, there was an explosion in sects and cults, as well as interest in New Age philosophies and beliefs. The back pages of many Russian tabloid newspapers are full of advertisements for “healers” and “magicians.”

The Vissarionites AKA The Church of the Last Testament

One of the most well-known sects in Russia has its base near the southern Siberian town of Abakan, where thousands of people, both Russian and foreign, worship a former Russian provincial traffic policeman, Sergei Torop, as the second coming of Christ. There now are believed to be several hundred such sects in Russia, containing some 600,000 to 800,000 people.

I am the Lord thy God. Don’t crowd me, asshole!

Guardian UK has a story on him.

Already almost 10,000 have recognized the new Christ in him and even half of them have followed him to the mount Suhaja to the Siberia, some people even from countries like Germany and Denmark.

“It’s all very complicated, but to keep things simple, yes, I am Jesus Christ. That which was promised must come to pass. And it was promised in Israel 2,000 years ago that I would return, that I would come back to finish what was started. I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the Father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me.” - Vissarion

Ok, ok. Here’s another one: Mohammed and I walk into a bar…

“He radiates incredible love,” sighs Hermann, 57, a Bavarian engineer who is now selling his home in Germany to join the self-proclaimed messiah of the taiga. “I met Vissarion last August. He told me we had to follow two laws. It was like an electric shock, like bells ringing.”

To find Vissarion, you fly 3,700km east from Moscow to the southern Siberian town of Abakan, north of the Mongolian border, then drive for six hours along rutted roads through a string of villages. Where the road ends in a rollercoaster of craters, the bog begins, and you trudge knee-deep in mud and ice for three hours before the final ascent to the “saviour”, a steep hour’s climb up a mountain path.

Sergei Torop now leads one of the biggest and most remote religious communes on the planet.

Combining new age eclecticism with medieval monasticism, the “Vissarionites”, clustered in around 30 rural settlements in southern Siberia, now number around 4,000. They are unquestioningly dedicated to their guru. They utter his name in hushed tones. They decorate their homes, temples and workplaces with his image. They reverentially swap tales of the Teacher’s every act or word. They pore over his four fat volumes of musings. His aphorisms are learned by rote and regurgitated daily.

To be a Vissarionite is to follow certain rules:

• You must be vegan
• No animal husbandry
• No monetary exchange within the commune
• No smoking
• No drinking
• No swearing

Jesus holds an invisible box. It’s only invisible because your mind is so closed, non-believer.

Larissa, a mother of three who arrived here from Moscow with her mother 10 years ago as an 18-year-old says “Everything is banned here. We’re not allowed to do anything except fall in love.”

Devotees include Russian musicians, actresses, teachers, doctors, former Red Army colonels, an ex-deputy railways minister of Belarus, as well as a growing band of adherents from western Europe. Thousands of people, the majority of them educated professionals from cities in European Russia, abandoned wives, husbands and children to flock to the Church of the Last Testament, replicating the flight of the schismatics to Siberia from European Russia 350 years ago to escape persecution by the Orthodox church.

For more on weird Russian cults, check out Odd Culture’s story on the Russian Skoptsy.

Source: BreitBart and others.

A New Zealand woman drowned in a family exorcism ceremony and her younger cousin had her eyes gouged by relatives in an attempt to lift a curse, a newspaper reported on Monday. Janet Moses, 22, had her eyes scratched and water syringed into them before drowning in front of 40 relatives during the exorcism ceremony in October, the Dominion Post newspaper said. Her 14-year-old cousin also had her eyes gouged and water poured down her throat to get rid of a devil the relatives said they saw in her eyes. The girl nearly drowned and was taken to a hospital where she underwent surgery to restore her vision. The family believe that the curse started when a family member stole a stone-made lion statue from a local pub, the Dominion said.

Janet Moses and the stolen statue.

Up to 40 members of the extended indigenous Maori family attended the ceremony. The Polynesian Maori settled New Zealand around 1300. Following the settlement of the country by European settlers in the 19th century, they now make up about 15 percent of the population.

Info from wiki:

Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that several waves of migration came from Eastern Polynesia to New Zealand between AD 800 and 1300. Maori oral history describes the arrival of ancestors from Hawaiki (a mythical homeland in tropical Polynesia) in large ocean-going canoes. No credible evidence exists of human settlement in New Zealand prior to the Polynesian voyagers; on the other hand, compelling evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the first settlers came from East Polynesia and became the Maori.

Maori are poorer on average than the rest of the population. Over 50% of Maori live in areas classed in the three highest deprivation deciles. Although Maori make up only 14% of the population, they make up almost 50% of the total prison population. Maori have higher unemployment rates and higher numbers of suicides than other cultures resident in New Zealand. Just over 50% of Maori pass NCEA Level One, New Zealand’s main secondary school qualification usually attained after 11 years of schooling. Maori also suffer more health problems, including alcohol and drug-related problems, per head of population than any other culture living in New Zealand.

Here is a Maori dancer:

The power of tongue compels you!

I need an old priest, and a young priest…