Operation Clambake

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(Redirected from Xenu.net)

Template:ScientologySeries Operation Clambake (xenu.net) is a prominent website with critical information about Scientology. It is run by Andreas Heldal-Lund, a critic who views the organization as a cult. According to Google, it is the most prominent English language site of its kind.

Openly anti-Scientology, the site claims to provide considerable insight into the workings of Scientology, and includes links to Scientology's formerly secret documents such as OT III that was intended to be taught only to members that have already contributed large amounts of money to the organization, as well as other information on Scientology the organization has tried to suppress, such as personal stories from former church insiders including Gerry Armstrong and Tory Christman. Image:ClamBake.gif The site is one of the focal points of what some have termed "the war between Scientology and the Internet". 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 Online, 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. 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.

Heldal-Lund has been investigated by Scientology, as have many of its critics, but he has not been sued.

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 A History of Man. In this passage, Hubbard asserts humans evolved from clams, and certain human psychological problems descend from difficulties these clams experienced. Some Scientologists criticize the use of this word, seeing it as hate speech.

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