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