Subject: Picket report, Birmingham, UK, April 17 1999 [ http://www.xenu.net ]
From: jensting@imaginet.fr (Jens Tingleff)
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 12:53:33 +0200

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Howdy!

What awful weather and what an up-stat org!

Well, the passage of time will take care of the first and the ARSCC-UK crack picketer corps will take care of the second!

I arrived at the picket site after my customary trip 'round Birmingham center. (Not having perfect memory[1] I usually have to bum around some before I find my way :-( ) I held up the "$cientolofy says you're full of dead space aliens" banner and took photographs.

Lots and lots of clams at the org (20-30 students). During their breaks they would come out and listen to us (huddling in the doorway as they grabbed a smoke[2] out of the rain). John did his usual unassisted shouting and Dave kept up a running commentary and sing-along on the sound system. We played the tape of Hubbard's rantings again and again (at a very respectable volume, too).

We were truly devastated when the clams came out and started distributing leaflets. In fact, the were so much at cause over us that we reacted robotically and doubled our own leafletting activity and promptly ran out of leaflets. Please, OSA, don't ever do that again! PLEASE! (.. or we shall just have to print some more leaflets...).

The students came over to banter (even when we were at full strength and not just when there was only two protesters, as had been the case during the lunch-break). They seemed frankly surprised at the "space alien" thing. "Why *dead* space Aliens??" they asked, sweetly. I said the banner wasn't completely correct, in that it was actually the *ghosts* of space aliens, but this still didn't sound reasonable to them. They asked where we had seen that, and we told them (tructhfuklly) that we had seen the OTIII texts in Hubbard's own handwriting. "You *yourself* saw this??" - "Yep!"

Clearly, the notion that the materiels were openly available was completely novel to them. One took great pains to "answer the question" (which presumably had something to do with our gloating that the courses cost 1500 pounds) with "well, we have to produce the books, don't we??" "what do you think this building costs" (not a lot, mate ;-) ), "the Church of England is one of the richest churches in the world" (whatever that had to do with the price of Co$ courses I shall never know). I tried to get the point across that the infrastructure didn't have to be expensive, saying "INTERNET" and "FREEZONE" again and again. The darling little clams had no idea that "people had Internet".

It sounds like we are going to be facing a lot fewer students when we visit the Birmingham org the next time.

The leaflet handed out by the clams was actually a counter-picket leaflet (YEES, REALLY!). This marks a first for us, I don't know about anybody else.

Anyway, the front page says

Luckily not everyone listens to the cautionary, carping criticism of those who fear competition

The images[3] are a series of a person sitting down, hunched up, over a sheet of music with only two notes on in (in dull grey/white), and one person in full colour standing up proudly in front of several lines of what looks like sheet music (not in any notational system that is known to me; 100% standard tech, no dount ;-) ).

The inside is mainly a plug for some book by the Fat Fraud titled "Scientology : The Fundamentals of Thought". It has what we hope is *not* a unique selling point:

.. It contains the basics of Scientology. Real answers that you can use right now. No mumbo jumbo, no human sacrifice, no initiation. Just pure truth about the basic laws of life

Well, I'm glad to hear it doesn't talk about human sacrifice! Here I was, being slightly uneasy (but never quite able to put my finger on the exact source of my uneasiness) as I browsed though row after row of "human sacrifice for beginners," "101 uses for a virgin (moral majority version)" etc etc etc in the bookshop. Finally, a book with no human sacrifice!!

Repeat

NO HUMAN SACRIFICE!!

I, for one, will sleep sounder, knowing that there is one group, $cientology, which is not about human sacrifice.

He he he ;-)

What overt could be speaking loudly here??

Later

Jens

[1] Well, who does have perfect memory?

[2] Exactly the kind of situation which contributed to me stopping smoking ;-)

[3] The Co$ struggling to keep up with cartoon-level reasoning, it's no surprise that they feel the need to print cartoons with a leaflet. Lovely proeduction values, truth be told.

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