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Operation Clambake
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operation Clambake is a website launched in 1996 that publishes mostly critical information about the Church of Scientology. It is owned and maintained by Andreas Heldal-Lund, who views the Church of Scientology and their leadership as an abusive and dangerous cult. Heldal-Lund has stated that he supports the rights of all people to practice Scientology or any religion[1].
On Google Web searches in English, Operation Clambake is the highest-ranking result for "Scientology" that is not run by the Church. On , Yahoo! and Windows Live it places right behind the Wikipedia Scientology article. It includes an information page about OT III, a formerly secret Scientology text intended only for upper-level members of the organization, as well as other information that the Church has tried to suppress, such as personal stories from former church insiders including Gerry Armstrong and Tory Christman.
The site is one of the focal points of what some have termed "the war between Scientology and the Internet". The Church of Scientology had threatened legal action to various Internet service providers that host the site, demanding it be removed from the Internet for hosting information copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. In various incidents documented in such publications as The New York Times, Slashdot and Wired,[2] Scientology has also used the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force notable Web sites (including the Google search engine) to remove the Operation Clambake homepage, and several leaflets containing copyrighted information, from their indexes.[3] This did not affect all pages on the site.
While Google quickly returned the Operation Clambake home page to its index, many of its pages containing quotations from Scientology materials are still not listed in the search engine. Some anti-DMCA webmasters still link the word Scientology to http://www.xenu.net/ in order to improve Operation Clambake's ranking in a Google search. The publicity stemming from this incident was the impetus for Google contributing to the Chilling Effects archive, which archives legal threats of all sorts made against Internet users and Internet sites. [1].
Heldal-Lund says he has been investigated and harassed both online and at his place of employment by the Church of Scientology, but he has never been sued. In a recent interview by Scientologist Joel Philips, Heldal-Lund stated that he suspects Operation Clambake has never been sued because the lawyers for the Church of Scientology are smart enough to realize that they would lose any such case. [4] [5]
The term clambake comes from a meal made by heating clams over hot stones or open furnaces. The term "clam", a pejorative slang term for Scientologists, is derived from a passage in L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology: A History of Man. In this passage, Hubbard asserts humans evolved from clams, and certain human psychological problems descend from difficulties these clams experienced.
- ^ Andreas Heldal-Lund. "Operation Clambake FAQ: Why do you hate Scientology?". Last accessed 19 September 2006.
- ^ Wendy M. Grossman. "alt.scientology.war", Wired magazine 3.12, Wired, December 1995. Retrieved on 2006-12-14.
- ^ Declan McCullagh. "Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites", Wired News, 2002-03-21. Retrieved on 2006-06-19.
- ^ Bunker, Mark Scientology: Andreas in Hollywood - Part 1 Google Video showing interview by Scientologist Joel Philips of Andreas Heldal-Lund (accessed 26 April 2006)
- ^ Bunker, Mark Scientology: Andreas in Hollywood - Part 2 Google Video showing interview by Scientologist Joel Philips of Andreas Heldal-Lund (accessed 26 April 2006)
- Operation Clambake
- Operation Clambake (mirror site)
- Google Asked to Delist Scientology Critics Clambake, Chilling Effects.
- Proposed legal action forces Operation Clambake's Web hosting provider to move.
- Scientologists shut ISP's Net connection, Matt Loney, ZDNet News, March 22, 2002.
- How Ava Paquette Hoodwinked Google, critical article about Scientology's attempt to force Google to remove Operation Clambake from its index. (Archived March 5, 2005)
- The cult is trying to get me fired, statement by Andreas Heldal-Lund, 31 August 2005, on Operation Clambake's message board.
