Note: text slightly reformatted for readability.
From: Fier@burning.org (Fier)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Picket, Canberra, Aust, 17/9/99
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 05:15:42 GMT
Message-ID: <37e1c379.19515291@news2.lightlink.com>
A Leafletting day, noon-2pm as it was too windy for signs. 3 of us, Fier,
Sparrow, and the uh.. Mr Smith. The clam count fluctuated from 1 to 5, we
quite often outnumbered them.
The clams gave out [double plus UN-]Freedom and more dianetics, purif and other
promo. We gave out Xenu (70) Lisa (20) Why we picket (40) space alien $cam
(um..30) and some 'Hubbard in his own words" flyers, which were all well
recieved. Anyone who accepted clammy propaganda went away with our side of the
story as well. Half a dozen, when offerred ours, and realising they already
had scientology flyers, either swapped outright or gave them all back to us,
and left much happier picketters behind them.
A new clam was not only handing out more of the irrelevant but
informative child sexual abuse warning flyers, but also had a petition
going, along that same theme.
OSA photographed us all yet again (I think she has done that every
single picket so far) but we didn't pose in a group, as they do not do us
any favours, like a promo swap or answer rational questions. They simply
attack our sources, discredit our collections of personal stories slander
us with implication of child molesting (I have it on tape) and shoot
themselves in the foot in other often amusing ways. Like for example OSA's
argument that the court cases on the net are irrelevant "because they are
old" hahaha.
Some interesting conversations with people today. One man had just
yesterday sent out a press release to the Victorian Government arguing against
the governments agreement to sell an EX-psychiatric hospital to the Narconon
front group, and that may be printed in the Herald-Sun, he said. Good on him.
Another fella, who was cautious not to give out his ID, showed us a
quite old flyer *he just happened to be carrying with him* for Cyril
Vosper's The Mind Benders, plus a Readers Digest 1980 article against $cn.
He also has "a wheelbarrow load full" of cos in the media, and is very
eager we get copies of it all. It became clear he doesn't like them and
was most pleased to see others with the same viewpoint. He doesn't have
net access, but some friend does, so this could be a good source of more
material for hmm hmm hmm, David Gerard, and his excellent web site
http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/scn woohoo
A student clam, who they had been protecting from us "evil, nasty SP's"
[sic, should be helpful friendly freedom fighters] came down and leafletted. I
told him about Xenu and the body aliens, trying to save him 250,000 dollars,
but he followed instructions and didn't respond, Ack or read the flyers. The
other clams rapidly converged on me, saying "don't try to stop other people
from believing" or some such rubbish, apparently disputing my right to free
speech within earshot of him. He rather quickly left us and went back into org
to study more raisins and stare TR's.
The major culprit of slander screamed at me "GO AWAY!!" when I
continued to enturbulate [sic, should be enlighten] her with the space
cadets of OT III, so I can only assume she doesn't like hearing it. Maybe
a megaphone next time :-)
OSA [sic, should be secret service] and Ethics Officer [sic, should be
slave master] again followed us when we called it a day, but they also ran in
terror from the magnificent powers that brandishing a camera gives us, so we
were able to vanish into the crowd without trouble.
All in all, a fun filled day for the 3 of us...not sure about the clams
though.
Fier.
Fier@burning.org
eclipse@dynamite.com.au
---
"Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its practice a serious threat to the
community; medically,morally and
socially." -Report of the Board of Inquiry into Scientology for the state of
Victoria,Australia, 1965.