Volume 3, Issue 48 vom 14. 03. 1999

Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review
Volume 3, Issue 48
03/14/99
by Rod Keller
rkeller@voicenet.com
copyright 1999

Contents

  1. Protest Summary
  2. CCHR
  3. Clearwater
  4. Denmark
  5. Netherlands
  6. Germany
  7. Keith Henson
  8. Bob Minton

Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review summarizes the most significant postings from the Usenet group Alt.religion.scientology for the preceding week for the benefit of those who can't follow the group as closely as they'd like. Out of thousands of postings, I attempt to include news of significant events, new affidavits, court rulings, new contributors, whatever. I hope you find it useful. Like many readers of a.r.s, I have a kill file. So please take into consideration that I may not have seen some of the most significant postings.

The articles in A.r.s Week in Review are brief summaries of articles posted to the newsgroup. They include message IDs for the original articles, and many have a URL to get more information. You may be able to find the original article, depending on how long your site stores articles in the newsgroup before expiring them.

Free A.r.s Week in Review subscriptions are available, just email me at

rkeller@voicenet.com
It is archived at:

http://wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de/~krasel/CoS/ars-summary.html
http://www.religio.de/publik/arsfaq.html
http://www.xenu.net/archive/WIR/
http://www.ecis.com/~mallen/scn/arswr/ars-summary.html
http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~dif/ic/reviews.htm
#####

Protest Summary

Protests were held at Scientology orgs this week to commemorate L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. From John Ritson, on a protest at Saint Hill:

"About ten suppressives arrived at Saint Hill, the UK headquarters of Scientology, and the 'superior beings' of Scientology showed how little their expensive 'Communications Tech' was worth by going into hiding. Just before 1:00 the 'Saint Hill Manor Information Centre and Bookshop' in the centre of neighbouring East Grinstead was open for business. We went to Saint Hill, picketed from 1:00 to 2:00 with none of the usual opposition. Every so often a Scientologist would emerge to photograph us, and at one stage a woman went to the house next door in an unsuccessful attempt to get a neighbour to complain to the police, half-a-dozen of whom stood outside the gates and were treated to the Xenu Rap, and extracts from L. Ron Hubbard's rantings in honour of Dead Ron's birthday, as were the Scientologists including a minibus of youngsters, who went in and out of Saint Hill. On returning to East Grinstead, we found the bookshop had pulled down the shutters and stuck up a notice saying 'CLOSED ALL DAY FOR L. RON HUBBARD'S BIRTHDAY'."

>From Jens Tingleff, also at Saint Hill:

"What with the nice banner reading '$cientology says you're full of dead aliens' set up right across from the gate and the boom-box blaring away contentedly off on the right, I'm sure we got a lot of attention from the clams. There was certainly a lot of cars who had errands inside Saint Hill who slowed DOWN to read our sign as they turned into the gate. Two guys were out photographing. The second one had the biggest camera and thought that the tape playing LRH going 'VRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!' and 'The man on the cross, there was no Christ' was hilarious."

>From "AndroidCat" in Toronto:

"The org didn't pay for an off duty officer today. They claimed that they didn't know about the picket until a couple days ago, and didn't have time to hire an officer. Supervisor Thompson and partner kept a close eye on things. He took down information on each picketer and org member, and will be keeping a watch on things during the summer. He wasn't too happy to hear that this wasn't a snap picket. I suspect Co$ will have to pay for an officer next time.

"The org folks were reasonable and kissy-face nice. Zero bull-baiting. The only tactic left to them was to try and tie up picketers in conversation. Initially the morning was quiet, low traffic. In attendance was Wulfen, Gregg, Deep Wog, Alan, Kady, GypsyBlue, David Palter, and AndroidCat."

>From "Gypsyblue", also in Toronto:

"It seemed like every scieno had a camera or a video camera. As I walked by one of the vid-cams, I looked and yes, there was a tape spinning. There were more members of the church there than I, personally, have EVER seen at any given time. They were walking up and down Yonge Street, and standing in front of their building, handing out slips for 'a free personality test. it only takes two minutes'. I handed the slip receivees a Xenu leaflet, telling them to also read the other side of the story, 'it's fascinating'."

>From "wynot" in Atlanta:

"Mad_Cow and I did almost 2 hours of picketing at the new org building in Atlanta this afternoon. The large amount of Saturday traffic gave us a friendly welcome to Dunwoody with a solid stream of honks, waves, and thumbs up! We were handled by Linda and a new woman. We were visited by two DeKalb Co. Police officer, who told us that we had every right to picket, and that if they (the scienos) tried to follow us when we left, that was misdemeanor stalking, and that we could press charges. This they told us without being asked."

Keith Henson posted a series of phoned-in reports from Don Nots at the Los Angeles protest.

"I am with 20-25 protesters in front of the Celebrity Center. The clams have a film permit for one of the streets, and closed it, but the other streets around the CC are open, and being used by the picketers. The scientologists are highly enturbulated, yelling at the protesters that we are a threat to democracy! Kristi Alley just drove by, saw the signs and screamed out of the car, 'We're alive!' She was looking very upset."

"After the CC picket we went on down to Big Blue. The scienos had obtained filming permits for both ends of LRH Way, but since they neglected to plug in the mikes, it was rather obvious what they were trying to do. They would film for 5-10 minutes and then break and the picketers were allowed to walk the sidewalks down LRH way (to the considerable enturbulation of the clams). Place was crawling with OSA and Sea Org members. When they would start to film, all the scienos would come out on the street. I asked a cop and he said that for the purpose of the film, all the scienos were consider extras. So the scene alternated with scienos swarming the street and running back inside when the picketers would walk down LRH way.

"There was a major problem where leaflets were being giving out to pedestrians and OSA members were running up and grabbing the pieces of literature about the slow death of Lisa McPherson, other scientology deaths, or the space cooties story and tearing it out of their hands. The cops did not see this.

"This went on until about 5 o'clock and then we headed to the Dianetics testing center and within 10 minutes of our arrival we shut the place down--they shut the place down."

"We headed down to the Shrine. It was packed chock a block. Jacobsen and another dude took out the www.xenu.net banner, the huge one, and everyone, literally everyone who entered, bus loads of sea orgs or publics in cars, saw the sign. The OSA spy guys tried to block the sign, but they weren't tall enough to conceal the sign and the dudes holding it held it higher and higher and finally the OSA guys gave up. Meanwhile load after load of sea orgers were coming off the buses and they had to walk right through the picketers--there was no way to avoid them, so we got to tell them all about Xenu and the space cooties, and the volcanos, all that stuff. I parked myself out where the cars were coming into the lot. And I managed to enturbulate every car that came into the lot by greeting them with sentences such as 'Citizens of Teegeeack, heed my call, you have taken a ride to get here, now you are about to be taken for a ride--we accept AE, VISA MC or Blood.' and I would say 'Welcome to the flatulent fraud's birthday bash.'"

>From Jeff Jacobsen, also in Los Angeles:

"10 am we got to Celebrity Center and saw church members had blocked the north sidewalk in order to trim the trees and hedges on the west part. Down on the east part a guy was power washing the sidewalk. Since we basically ignored these guys and kept picketing on that sidewalk, eventually they gave up and left. There were maybe 16 of us at the CC, where we stayed until noon. After lunch we went to L. Ron Hubbard Way, where we discovered the street there was ALSO closed with a movie permit and bogus interviews being done. But here the cops let us use the sidewalks between 'shoots.' There were probably 20 of us here. The church had also put up 10 foot high tarps completely around their parking lot for some reason. A couple were watching me and pretending not to be Scientologists. I was walking past Bridge Publications and gave a lady who was going the opposite direction a flyer. Right after that I saw the spy lady run out of the store across the street, run across the street almost getting hit by a car, and snatching the flyer from this lady's hand. I was incensed and yelled that she was afraid of Truth. So, a little later, some other people were passing me and I gave them flyers. This time I watched closely, and sure enough, now the spy guy goes running over and demands the flyers from these people. I took pictures of this, then went over to the spy guy and gave him a piece of my mind.

"After a break we went to the Life Exhibit on Hollywood where we handed out maybe 50 flyers, where we watched probably 100 people being herded into vans, probably 13-15 per van.

"Later we went down to where all the security guys in suits were gathered near a side entrance. Lisa Marie Presley pulled in in a black Mercedes and I tried to get a photo of her. A black guy came by us as we were gabbing and said he had been bused into the event, but after it started some security guys came up to him and said 'you're taking notes, you'll have to leave' and they kicked him out. I saw the nervous UPS guy from Mad TV, Little Richard (he got a Lisa flyer)."

>From Joe Cisar in Washington DC:

"It was a beautiful day for a picket. I arrived about noon, and nobody was there yet, so I waited until Arnie Lerma arrived, then I started my rounds. The Washington, D.C. org is really going to pot. There was trash all over the sidewalks and you could see junk piled up through one of the formerly decorative windows in the formerly decorative wall. The wall itself is discolored and it looks like the mortar is starting to crack. There is a roof which hangs over the sidewalk in front which was dripping water directly into the middle of the sidewalk in two spots. It's too bad they're letting the place turn into an eyesore, because the rest of the neighborhood is quite nice.

"As I was getting oriented, a younger, nice-looking woman tapped me on the shoulder and introduced herself. She was Stacy Brooks. She asked me if I had met the others yet, and I hadn't, so she did the honors. There was Jesse Prince, Frank Oliver, and several other rather well-known people. It was nice meeting them and they were very pleasant, especially taken into view side-by-side with the Scientologists who occasionally came out and tried to look busy with their cameras.

"Horns honking with approval, thumbs up all around, people running out from their cars at the stop light to come get a flyer. It was really a festive atmosphere, like a party. About an hour later, several vehicles pulled up and people scurried into the Scientology building. After several minutes, two Scientologists came out with wanted-poster style placards depicting Stacy and Jesse."

>From Arnie Lerma, also in Washington:

"After Rod Keller explained xenu etc. to a young man, 'Isn't there a spray for that? An elderly black man declined a picket flyer and said 'no thank you, I know they are the work of the devil.' Many thumbs up signs, many folks when offered literature would say 'I know' and they would have to be prompted to take information with a gentle: 'Worse than you think' 600+ flyers were handed out, tons of traffic at DC org. Frank Oliver brought a life side picture of DM and cut out his head and we taped it to top of a stick. I've always wanted DM's head on a pike anyway

"At one point Sylvia Stanard came out with their anti picket signs one showed a very crude magic marker drawing of Stacy as a puppeteer holding strings for some dancing monkeys. They also has a sign said 'Arnie Who?' DW Pierce had one of the scienos dump ice cubes in the pocket of his jacket with his cell phone.

"When we left after picketing we started phoning home. Everyone at the table was leafleted or picketed while we had been picketing except Frank Oliver. So we decided to try to attend the birthday event, but of course heard the standard 'You are not welcome here.' The desk manager however was very glad to see us and chastised us for not coming here ever before. The cult had its registration tables right between the elevators and the hallway to the men's room, So the merry band of 7 enthetas, sat in the bar. And we staggered trips to the bathroom so that every few few minutes a Scientology kills T shirt would be forced to walk slowly by the reg table, in full view of public inside.

"We stayed until the end of the event. Many of them were informed as they left 'If there were any OT's we wouldn't be here.' I stood under one of lights on the awning, so Scientology Kills was very visible."

>From Ted Mayett in Las Vegas:

"Big org, 12 minutes, 1:37pm, vehicles 8. They took several pictures of me, and a few of them came out to look at my picket sign and laugh at it. What happened was that when I made up that sign for picketing the computer store, I did not buy a skinny stick to hold the sign, and so I had to take apart the scientology sign and use the stick. I've been so busy lately that I did not have the time to take apart the computer store sign and re-build the scientology sign - and so my picket sign read: PC Club Warranty Is A Joke."

>From Deana Holmes in Salt Lake City:

"I got out there just before two and Phil pulled up as I was getting my sign and flyer out of the car. I noticed a guy on the roof fooling with their satellite dish, in preparation for the big occasion. I started picketing. A minute or so later, Phil came bounding out with a stack of these 8.5x11 glossy CCHR mags on psychiatry and we started the picket walk together. I caught Phil up on the latest news, which included how the cult was wrapping tarp around parts of Elrong Way to keep people from seeing the picketers, about Heber's impending trial. The guy who I think is the DSA or at least under the DSA came out with his camera and kit to get my pic with my signs. At one point he asked if I could 'look more sinister.' I was giggling at all this attention and he was actually smiling himself."

>From Martin Hunt in Vancouver:

"Vancouver org picketed Friday and Saturday March 12 & 13 by Gerry Armstong and myself. A Scientology executive ordered another cult member to 'shoot Gerry' should he dare step over their property line. Next day, another Scientologist invites us in the org to talk; a group waited inside. I demanded that they put the offer in writing, as it smelled of a set-up of some kind - call us in, then charge us with trespassing. Passersby took many leaflets; close to 100 were handed out in total. One guy talked with Gerry, went into the org, took the personality test, had the evaluation, and came out, said that being told that we were into 'bestiality' was enough to turn him off. Apparently, the staff had told him, as a means of dead agenting us, that Gerry was charged with 'bestiality' (sex with animals) in the US!"

>From "Meklar" in Sacramento, California:

"I picketed the Sacramento Org from 12:30pm to about 1:30pm. It was during the lunch hour so plenty of Org members and the general public saw my large picket sign. Within 5 minutes I had a person taking photos of me using a digital camera and my very own counter picketer! My counter picketer had a small hand lettered sign with a blown up photograph of me, my real name and the caption: 'The Face of a Religious Bigot'. The lettering and the photo were so small that I doubt if passing cars could read my counter picketer's sign.

"With in a few moments I had attracted two young women with a video camera. They wanted video of me and my picket sign and a few words why I was out picketing Scientology, which I obliged. The entire scene took on the petina of a farce when the Org photographer been taking photos of my interviewers and myself and the interviews began taking video of the Org photographer taking photos of them. For a few minutes I had a 5-man picket on the corner of 15th and G Street, the two female interviewers, my counter picketer, the Org receptionist, and myself."

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CCHR

ABC reported on March 12th that Scientology's Citizen's Commission on Human Rights protested a verdict in Sydney, Australia.

"A 23-year-old Sydney man will be locked-up in a psychiatric institution for killing a Czech tourist with a tomahawk in 1997. The New South Wales Supreme Court has found Rafael Gavranovic not guilty of the murder of 25-year-old Jiri Zoufal at Kings Cross because he was mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia.

"The case today attracted a small number of protesters from the Church of Scientology's Citizens Commission on Human Rights. The commission's Lyn Dunnachie says the mental illness defence should be repealed and there is no place for psychiatrists in the legal system."

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Clearwater

The Tampa Tribune published an article on March 8th, describing the relationship between Scientology and the city of Clearwater, Florida, and the new Super Power building.

"A 10,000-pound hammer drove another 40-foot-long sheet of metal into the ground across the street - the site of a planned 324,000-square-foot Scientology training and counseling center in downtown. The six-story complex will be one of the largest buildings in Pinellas County. Work on the foundation, which began in early February, confirms what some Clearwater residents and downtown merchants consider anathema and others accept without emotion: The church is growing.

"From a large video screen in the hotel mezzanine, parishioners are guided on a computer-generated tour of the new complex. The center will mirror the hotel's Mediterranean style, with a 150-foot decorative tower on its west side. Sculptures depicting the fundamentals of Scientology will greet guests as they enter a three-story atrium.

"City officials and Scientology representatives held meetings last summer and fall after Roberto unveiled a long-term redevelopment strategy for key areas of the city, including downtown. Observers say the church and city are trying to be better neighbors. About a year ago, the church replaced its staff's blue uniforms with more casual clothing. It also sponsors a variety of community events. Scientology officials also agreed to a city suggestion to move their staff dining facility from a building on downtown's main drag to the new training complex. Church staffers and parishioners will be able to access the new facility from the hotel and the future auditorium via overhead pedestrian walkways.

"Glenn Warren, chairman of the Clearwater Downtown Development Board, says merchants hold mixed views about the new church facility despite additional tourists and more property taxes. 'Many of my friends are dead-set against them,' says Warren, whose father started the family business downtown in 1930. 'But damn if I can tell the difference between a Scientologist's dollar and a Baptist dollar or a Presbyterian's dollar. And that's the point. My personal feeling is that anything that large is going to have a positive impact within the community.'"

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Denmark

Kristeligt Dagblad reported on March 13th on the religious status of Scientology in Denmark.

"Scientology is satisfied with the new guidelines for official recognition of religious congregations. Danish CoS PR Anette Refstrup says: 'There is nothing secret about our teachings. There are only a few techniques that are only known to the initiated. But all of our goals and visions are publicly known.' One of the requirements by the committee, is that business activities should be separate from religious. Refstrup does not think this is a problem. She says it is hard to run a religious congregation without a certain measure of 'mercantilism'.

"But religious historian Mikael Rothstein, University of Copenhagen, thinks Scientology will have difficulties being recognized according to the new guidelines, but that this also goes for some other religions. He adds that Scientology at least have offered the advisors to the Ecclesiastical Minister to have a look at the techniques, that are otherwise reserved for the initiated."

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Netherlands

Karin Spaink reported on a court hearing held on March 8th, in a case where Scientology hopes to remove all upper level materials from Dutch web sites.

"In December 1995 Scientology started a court case against XS4all, DDS, Cistron, Dataweb and me. Scientology demand that we took down all OT-parts that were included in the Fishman Affidavit. Two days before the hearing was due, CoS dropped the case. In February 1996, Scientology started new summary proceedings. This time, they sued some sixteen ISPs plus me, and the copyright infringement claim was narrowed down to Ability, OT2 and OT3. Upon receiving the notary comparison of their and my text, I immediately adjusted my homepage and replaced Ability, OT2 and OT3 with summaries, comments and quotes. Scientology started a full fledged case against the same defenders.

"Three judges: two men, one woman. One of the judges is a renowned copyright expert. Hermans, RTC/CST's lawyer, is the first to speak. His plea takes some forty-five minutes. RTC was met with distrust, did all they could to please us, we were stubborn, RTC is an underdog and deserves the court's sympathy, and all ISPs have been acting in concert with me. There are two remarkable points in his speech, one of them absolutely sig-worthy: 'The possibly criminal nature of plaintiffs does not imply that they have no rights'. The other point is where Hermans starts quoting from Zenon's postings to a.r.s. Hermans took some of Zenon's more angry postings in which Zenon talks about bleeding CoS's money while ridiculing them. Hermans then went on to ascribe Zenon's allegedly vile motives to me, adding that Zenon and I 'are good friends'.

"Bakker Schut is next. He speaks twenty to thirty minutes. He ridicules Hermans. Of course all ISPs have been acting in concert with me: they needed some kind of evidence for RTC's claims before they could consider acting on RTC's claims. Yes, the ISPs backed me. Not because they cared about what I did but because they have legal obligations. You can't very well pull pages just because somebody doesn't like them, can you? The discrepancy between the various summons; Kane's Memorandum in RTC vs FactNet regarding questionable copyright notices; Jesse Prince's affidavit concerning copyright fraud; etc etc. The German Oberverwaltungsgericht in Nordrhein-Westfalen concluded in May 1996 that Scientology was a fraudulent and oppressive cartel. They based their statement upon their study of Scientology material -- which goes to show that you need such documents in order to study and criticize this organization. And it shows why CoS doesn't want others to see these documents: they are too damning.

"Finally, it's Van Manen's turn. He is a copyright expert. He speaks for thirty, maybe forty minutes. We have no idea who actually wrote these texts (many of the OT fragments do not carry Hubbard's name); the texts are probably in the public domain anyway; how can RTC claim that OT2 and OT3 are 'unpublished and spread only to a limited circle' when McShane himself has testified under oath that 25.000 people have read them; OT4-OT7 are not even included in the transfer of the Author's Family Trust's rights to RTC so we don't even know who can legally claim the rights to these texts and who can license them; the same goes for Ability; Spaink is only quoting from the texts, and that is legal, since under Dutch law they _are_ to be considered to have been legally published; the alleged secrecy was badly kept, and besides, even if only one person at a time is allowed to study them, that is still _spreading_ them to a large circle.

"RTC doesn't request damages. Of course they request legal costs. 'Ruling due on April 28,' the president of the court says. That's far sooner than we had expected. This probably means that the court has indeed already studied the case, and that they expect to not need much discussion amongst themselves."

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Germany

KNA reported on March 9th that Bavarian Social Minister Barbara Stamm praised the development of a phone counseling center for helping families involved in Scientology.

"The position, which was established by the Bavarian State Office of Youth, offers victims of the Scientology organization and their relatives assistance with detailed individual and technical counseling. An important component, according to Stamm, is a close cooperation with functioning psycho-social counseling centers, therapists and attorneys. Counseling by telephone enables uncomplicated access for callers and lowers the threshold for those who want to remain anonymous. The Minister stated that the concept would be carried on and further developed. Parents, brothers and sisters make up the greatest portion of callers, with 45 cases in that category. A case worker with technical knowledge of Scientology and a psychologist are available for crisis center counseling."

German news wire dpa reported on March 10th that a German consumer group is publicizing the dangers of Scientology.

"In the judgment of the ABI consumer organization, the Scientology organization continues to pose a danger. The ABI Chairman, Eberhard Kleinmann, mentioned on Wednesday in Stuttgart that the Scientology membership in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and Austria was about 10,000. While this number is said to have stagnated, the number of financial supporters and course participants is said to be on the rise, at 20,000. It has been shown that Scientology is in possession of 620 companies in the countries named, said Kleinmann. Many of them divert a portion of their earnings to the 'war chest' in the USA. Another goal is said to be the inside infiltration of companies; almost all large German companies already have contact to Scientology in the area of management through its cover companies. At present the concern is that Scientology is 'making money with criminal methods.'

"Helga Lerchenmueller, Director of the legal department at ABI, cautioned against the deceptive impression that the situation with Scientology has 'calmed down.' Recruitment of members has been extensively put on hold for tactical reasons. The primary push is to now use pressure from overseas on the federal administration and individual companies under the pretext of religious freedom and human rights violations. Lerchenmueller believes that children are increasingly targeted by the organization. For one thing the children themselves are being influenced; for another the children are being used as a means to make contact with the parents."

>From Stuttgarter Zeitung on March 11th:

"In the southwest [of Germany] the controversial organization allegedly has 5,000 members, 30 to 40 percent of those are children. 'A generation is growing up here which has hardly been influenced from the outside,' said Helga Lerchenmueller from the ABI legal department yesterday. The lawyer says that Scientology 'does not tolerate childhood,' they have more of tendency to raise 'extremist power-people who are not afraid of anything.'

"ABI published 25 case studies which they said show how families, consumers, investors, real estate buyers and businesses can be caught in the 'vice grip' of Scientology. Among other things, the [Scientology] opponent refers to an investigation by the state attorney's office which dealt with 70 fraudulent real estate cases in the Stuttgart region which involved Scientologists. Boeblingen county suffered a loss of several million marks in those deals. The Wuerttemberg Handelsbank suffered damages in the tens of millions.

"The situation is difficult for people who have a relationship with Scientologists as renters or employees. The ABI has allegedly registered 10,000 cases. In individual cases, Scientology adherents have lost their entire savings to the organization. One former Scientologist is said to have paid 600,000 marks to the organization."

ADN reported on March 9th that the Saxon State Media Office is warning the public of a new Scientology advertising campaign.

"According to information from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, the organization plans to use about $40 million for an 'information campaign.' All private radio broadcasters in Germany can be considered to be potential partners of Scientology, the SLM warned on Tuesday in Dresden. An attempt has already been made in Bavaria to obtain a 30 second advertising spot. The commercial was said to advertise a point of contact for Scientology and a book of the organization. The SLM reminded all radio broadcasters licensed in Sachsen of the ban on religious-psychological advertisement."

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Keith Henson

An appeal hearing was held this week in Keith Henson's copyright infringement case.

"Peter Toren handled the judicial questioning well I felt. Both attorneys were subjected to some pointed questioning by the judges about the finer aspects of their cases. Each was given 20 minutes to state his case. Toren made a good analogy of an employee at a nuclear power plant who is privy to (copyrighted) plant operating instructions which were inadequate and posed a public safety hazard. Surely, he said, the employee wouldn't be charged with copyright violation even if he disclosed a whole book. "Co$ lawyer Leiberman claimed that Keith had done his posting for revenge, personal status and fun. He tried to shock the judges by Keith's motivation that the scientologist had 'pissed in his sandbox' and quoted the famous 'fold your demand till it's all corners and stick it where the sun don't shine.' Leiberman also side stepped the question from one of the appellate judges asking for evidence of direct economic loss due to the postings." Message-ID: <hkhensonF8J1KE.F9C@netcom.com>

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Bob Minton

Two drafts of a proposed agreement between Bob Minton and Scientology were posted anonymously this week. One version was drafted by Scientology, the other by Bob Minton's attorneys. The agreement discussions appear to have ended without a settlement. From the Scientology draft:

"You will cease to and refrain from providing any financial Support, directly or indirectly, whether in the form of money or other tangible thing of value, whether as a gift, loan, payment for goods services, or otherwise person or entity who is now or may hereafter be adverse to Scientology Related Entities in any actual or threatened judicial, quasi-judicial, administrative, or legislative action or proceeding, including but not limited to: FACTNet, Lawrence Wollersheim, Keith Henson, Grady Ward, Dennis Erlich, Arnaldo Lerma, Gerald Armstrong, Graham Berry, nor shall You aid or encourage any third party to do so. The one exception hereto is that, without prejudice to our position and objection, You may continue to pay or advance to counsel of record for the plaintiff in the pending Civil Action entitled Liebreich v. Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization."

>From the Minton-drafted version:

"Under this Agreement you will cease to pay any person or entity who is an adverse party to any Scientology Related Entity in any actual judicial proceeding or to pay any counsel for such person or entity that person or entity's costs, expenses, or attorney's fees in connection with that judicial proceeding. The parties agree that this Agreement becomes effective only upon Minton receiving the full amount necessary to satisfy and discharge Minton's lien in Lawrence Wollersheim v. Church of Scientology of California.

"The parties further agree that nothing in this Agreement precludes Minton from financing the defense of litigation brought against himself, Therese Minton, Minton's children or Minton's current or future family members or financing litigation brought on behalf of himself, Therese Minton, Minton's children or Minton's current or future family members. BPI, on behalf of itself and the Scientology Related Entities, hereby releases and forever discharges Robert Minton, Therese Minton, Minton's children, Minton's current and future family members and Minton's representatives, agents, attorneys and employees from 'any and all claims' which they may have against them, from the beginning of time to and including the Effective Date of this Agreement."

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