THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
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To: alt.religion.wicca,alt.religion.raellian,sci.skeptic
From: Goddess of Groundhogs 
Subject: Re: Rael cloning story was a hoax
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 03:20:27 GMT

Maxie P. Diddly poked his/her head out of his hole and screamed 
news:5dk9ovo1q4bakqog3fg5hqs14va1h7cc1f@4ax.com: at the world. 

Ha! 
Hello, my Raelian Friends!
How are you today?
I know... I don't like religion, either. 
It's pretty embarrassing. 
Don't take it personally, tho. Everyone wants to believe in 
something.

Peace!

****

Bonjour, mes amis de Raelian! 
Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui? 
Je sais... Je n'aime pas la religion, non plus. 
Elle est assez embarrassante. 
Ne la prenez pas personnellement, tho. Chacun veut croire à la 
quelque chose. 

Paix! 

> http://www.canoe.ca/CalgaryNews/cs.cs-10-08-0032.html
> 
> Wednesday, October 8, 2003 
> 
> RAEL'S CLONES A HOAX?
> By BRIGITTE MCCANN, SUN MEDIA
>   
>  Sun Media reporter Brigitte McCann and photographer Chantal
>  Poirier 
> infiltrated the Raelians over a nine-month period and have put to
> paper the inside story of this bizarre sect 
> 
> - - - 
> 
> Almost a year following the stunning announcement that they had
> engineered the birth of the world's first cloned humans, Rael and
> Clonaid president Dr. Brigitte Boisselier have yet to prove the
> existence of these babies, even to their own members. 
> 
> In fact, Raelians have made fun of the media that gave such
> extensive coverage to their cloning story. 
> 
> "Come my beloved friends and journalists, and ask me if we did 
all
> that just to benefit from free publicity ... YESSSS!" Rael cries
> and bursts out laughing during a Raelian gathering staged in
> Montreal. 
> 
> Boisselier is also much amused as she recalls the press 
conference
> last Dec. 27. 
> 
> PROMOTIONAL GENIUSES 
> 
> "When I played games with the journalists ... everything turned
> into a circus!" she says. 
> 
> In December and January, the announcement garnered worldwide 
media
> attention and mobilized the scientific community as well as the
> American justice system. 
> 
> Today, Claude Vorilhon, known to his followers as Rael, 
laughingly
> contends that the cloning controversy was perhaps a simple stroke
> of genius to make his movement known. 
> 
> "Even if you want to think that we did all that only for
> publicity, it is wonderful. If that is the case, we are
> promotional geniuses!" he says. 
> 
> "But if what we say we did is true, we are also scientific
> geniuses. In any case, we are geniuses! Wonderful! In any case, 
we
> win!" 
> 
> In an interview earlier this year, he said media analysts
> estimated the media attention was worth nearly $500 million in
> free publicity. 
> 
> During a Raelian gathering in February in Montreal, Rael himself
> declared he didn't know whether or not the Clonaid babies were
> true clones. 
> 
> "Brigitte (Boisselier) says it's true and I have no reason to
> doubt her word," he declared at the time. 
> 
> Alain Bouchard, a sociologist specializing in religions, is not
> surprised to see Vorilhon distance himself from Clonaid. 
> 
> "The more time passes, the more we are sure that cloning is just
> hogwash," he says, adding: "A publicity stunt." 
> 
> "They really blew it with their cloning story, they looked like a
> weird bunch!" contends Dianne Casoni, a psychologist-
criminologist
> specializing in cults. 
> 
> As for Boisselier, she continues to perpetuate the word of Rael,
> her intellectual guide, and no longer disassociates science and
> religion. 
> 
> "In a convention, they could say anything they wanted to; I was
> with my beloved prophet," she stated during the annual awakening
> seminar in Maricourt. 
> 
> "(Last December 27) was maybe the most important day of my life
> when (Rael) told me: You did what you had to do," she says. 
> 
> "Imagine had I failed ... failed that for which I was created!" 
> 
> Not one Raelian at the movement's headquarters in Quebec's 
Eastern
> Townships can certify the babies who made front-page news last
> December are true clones. 
> 
> And none of the Raelian women from Quebec who volunteered to bear
> a clone have apparently fulfilled that mission. 
> 
> Jocelyne, 37, was one of the surrogate mothers presented to the
> media with great pomp in 2001. 
> 
> She knows all the volunteers in the group well and is adamant. 
> 
> "There has been at least three babies, but we don't know who the
> surrogate mothers are. "Anyway, they aren't from here. And we
> don't know where they are," she confided to me in my guise as a
> Raelian. 
> 
> In fact, the issue is taboo within the movement. I quickly
> understood how easily any questions on Clonaid can prompt instant
> suspicion. 
> 
> "With everything that's going on, I'm not going into any detail,"
> a Raelian man answers curtly. 
> 
> "Most Raelians are not informed," admits Benoit, 24, adding: "But
> those who have to know are informed." 
> 
> He believes they should avoid the subject to protect the babies
> from the American scientists who wish to take them away to study
> them. 
> 
> "Proof can only be established in a few years time! All they have
> to do is to bring one of their cells in a laboratory and that's
> it!" he says with conviction. 
> 
> "The silence of the members is the prophet's loophole," offers
> Alain Bouchard, a sociologist specializing in religions. 
> 
> "In December, the movement was not ready to deal with so much
> attention," says Dave, a Raelian "guide" from B.C. 
> 
> "The cloning scared many Raelians, given the considerable
> proportions of the media coverage." 
> 
> "In January, no one was ready," says Ricky Roehr, national guide
> for the U.S. 
> 
> "I answered a few hundred e-mails myself. When Brigitte
> (Boisselier) decides to make her next move, we must be ready." 
> 
> - - - 
> 
> Tomorrow: Sex and the Sect
> --
> "Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all
> the forces by which nature is animated and the respective
> positions of the things which compose it...nothing would be
> uncertain, and the future as the past would be laid out before 
its
> eyes." 
>                                             - Pierre Simon de
>                               Laplace