: In article <sthomsonEH705G....@netcom.com>,
: shelley thomson <sthom...@netcom.com> wrote:
: >
: >**Biased Journalism**  Volume 3, issue 6    September 26, 1997    

snip

: >the cardboard and started spraying my sign with a can of red paint.  
: >To put it mildly I was startled.  Fortunately, the stick on that sign
:                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >is a short pool cue that was not about to break and I was able to get
: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >both hands on it while the attacker only had one.  The attacker was a

: This kids, is a no no.  Don't do this.  Why? Because in many states and
: cities, it is illegal to picket using a sign that could be used as a
: weapon.  And in many places it ain't, it is illegal to carry something
: like a pool cue that could be used as a weapon. Here in Texas, it could
: get you arrested for carrying a blunt instrument, a club.
: A cop that doesn't like being rousted out of a doughnut shop to check
: out your picket, could if he or she desires, cause you great hassles over
: such a thing as a stout stick, especially a cut down pool cue, an
: old biker's weapon.

Wasn't cut down Pope, just a short one.  An I can tell you for sure that
taped in between two thick chunks of cardboard with a mess of packing
tape, it wouldn't be worth squat as a weapon.  It would make a fair fan
though.  Most of what you said though is good advice.

snip

: This was assault pure and simple.

: Well, when the second clam approached, you should have pulled out the
: pepper spray and held it aloft so he could see what it was.
: You didn't bring pepper spray?  Well...

: Make sure you get the fogger kind...

It was an unexpected situation, the clams definately raised the anti.

: >I was more together this time and got photos 12 and 13 of the black
: >paint guy running away and inside.

: You should be filiing charges and giving the cops copies.

More trouble than it is worth.  Next time though, there are going to *be*
cops there.

snip

: Break aways.  Several signs on a placard done with tape.
: If one gets messed up, remove it and you have one beneath.
: You can change signs several times just for the hell of it.

Good thought.  

snip

: Be prepared part XVIII.  If you have lots of gear, cameras, water bottles,
: notepads and other gear, use a small back pack or belt pack.
: Leaves your hands free and allows you to carry more gear.
: A belt pack or fanny pack is preferable.

For xenu flyers, a bag on a strap would work just fine.

snip

: Wish Keith had had a Sony Pressman in his shirt pocket running.

Actually, I had one in the car, and I wished I had loaded it up and
carried it that day.  But it gets to the point you can be too loaded down
with camera, tape recorder, pepper spray, flyers, etc.

Doing Cedars as a one man show has a lot in common with white water
rafting.  Keith Henson

     **Biased Journalism** : a net magazine designed to compensate for
     the shortcomings of the professional news media.  We cover
     issues of interest to the citizens of cyberspace.  This is a
     community newspaper of the net.  

     Copyright 1997 Shelley Thomson; all rights reserved.  

     Mail, articles and comment may be directed to <sthom...@netcom.com>.  
     Netiquette will be observed with all communication, except for the
     following:  harassing or threatening mail will be posted to the
     net immediately.        

**Biased Journalism**  Volume 3, issue 6    September 26, 1997    

Contents:  ARSCC Field Report:  Henson Stealth Picket;  Narrow Squeak
           in DC (Saving the First Amendment--for now), by Declan
           McCullagh; Crime of the Week by Benjamin T. Moore Jr.

Read at your own risk.  This is **Biased Journalism**!

1.   UFOs, Spray Paint, and PIs:  Adventures at Cedars
     by H. Keith Henson

[Something new:  the photographs referenced in the text will be
 present at the following url: //www.cedar.net/users/dvanhorn/henson.
 If you are putting this issue on your web page, please make links.]

Either the fight with the Internet has *really* hurt scientology, or
the cult was a lot smaller than we thought when the fight started.

Six or seven months ago the TV show Sightings called me to see if I
would make and fly a UFO for them, something I was noted for in my
misspent youth.  Eventually we settled on a date and a place, north of
Los Angeles, but within day trip range for the camera crew.  I had
been looking for excuses to visit that part of the state for some
time.  By a lucky accident, Sightings picked Saturday, September 13,
auditor's day.

I didn't mention Sightings when I posted on the net after the last and
*impressive* Toronto picket reports that I was tired of my comatose
local clams and would go to LA that weekend to find some lively ones.

The adventure started on Friday.  Judge Whyte must have put RTC vs
Erlich early instead of his usual just before lunch.  So I missed the
hearing but met Darlene Bright (San Jose scn agent) coming out of the
courthouse.  She didn't look very happy and was kind of evasive about
what had happened when I asked her so either Judge Whyte ruled against
them, or the ruling was delayed.  I mentioned to her that I would try
to get in a short picket that morning since I was in San Jose.  She
was not amused. I had something else to do first, so I showed up at
the San Jose org about an hour later, I guess that would have put it
11 to 11:30 am.

Other than it being in a place where there is little foot traffic, the
San Jose org is nearly ideal to picket.  The walk is shaded with
trees, and it was a pleasant day, warm but with a nice breeze.  The
org building is about 90 feet on a side and two stories tall.  It has
parking on all four sides.  There is a plowed-over lot to the east of
the org and a drop-in place for the homeless on the west side.  The
back of the org is up against the 880 freeway close to First St.

Ted Mayett had asked for a count of parking spaces, so I walked back
through the plowed area to get a count of the ones in back. There are
between 95 and a hundred parking spaces, and 25 cars in the lot that
day--counting one which has not moved in months.

After about half an hour Darlene came out and wearily took two
pictures and wrote down what I had on the sign.  For variety I was
using an old sign which read on one side:

    Scientology vs the Net

    Scientology is a Scam

and on the other:

    What happened to Lisa McPherson?

To that I added:

    Xenu?  Xemu?

    Which was it Ron?

After a peevish remark or two about bigotry, Darlene tried to pump me
about how I was going to get to LA by expressing concern that my car
would not make it.  I told her tracking me was the private
investigator's problem, not hers.  She said that scientology's PIs
would not come clear up to the Bay area to start tracking me.  I
reminded her that according to an affidavit filed in Federal court
(Tom Hogan's false bomb threat in the airport) they did just that
before the Miscavige deposition back in May.

MikeSmith3 had left scientology wide open in the last post where he
quoted one of my memetics articles (where do they *get* these
people?).  Because it took a while to generate an appropriate reply, I
was later than I liked getting out of town.  If any PIs were tailing
me, I never saw them, in spite of considerable looking.

Interstate 5 is a dreadfully dull trip, and even worse at night.  The
high point was a hamburger and a coke at McDonald's. I was into LA
before midnight.  Won't say where I stayed (except the bed was
comfortable) because I might want to use it again.  Heh, my
scientology escort/counter marchers tried to weasel it out of me the
next day by making noises about me sleeping in my car.

My Heaven's Gate/Scientology/Both UFO Cults! sign had "What happened
to Odhran Fortune?  on the other side.  Figuring Lisa was better
known, I put new paper over the Fortune side and scrawled:

            Did "Standard Tech"  Kill Lisa McPherson?

And in smaller letters:

     Wogs at Cause   $360K for a bridge?  Knights of Xenu/Xemu.

None of this would have caused a stir in San Jose, but I was expecting
more action out of the headquarters clams.  I was not to be
disappointed.  With the sign and a 150 copies of Roland's Xemu flyers
I started off for Cedars.  Cedars is several blocks to the east of 101
on Sunset.

I would have been there earlier (breakfast was but a sweet roll) but
the directions I had were not clear and I wound up in Beverly Hills.  
Doubling back, I arrived about 9:30.  Leaving my sign in the car, I
made a one pass around the building with a disposable camera.  I might
as well put descriptions in this text about the photos.  [The photos
are temporarily at ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hk/henson/cedars.pics/
and more permanently at the url above.]

The first one is the street sign on Sunset, "LRH Way," one of the few
streets in the US named for a person who died as a fugitive from the
law (at least from the IRS).  

The area around the block-plus that scientology occupies is going
through a transition from seedy slums to high rises.  Kaiser (an old
and very large Health Maintenance Organization) has a number of large
buildings and parking structures to the west.  Cedars itself was a
hospital before scientology bought it.  Just about every door in the
building is the "main entrance" for some scientology front.  Next time
I will make a list.

I picked up an escort even without a sign.  A scientology "chaplain"
asked me who I was, and I told him I was scientology's worst nightmare
(slight exaggeration).  Photo 2 is the northern most door on the east
side of the main building.  The sign in Photo 3 is a little hard to
make out.  The escort wouldn't let me go on their property to
photograph it, but way back in a service area the sign says "Sea Org
Recruiting Office." Somehow it seemed appropriate.   No rats I could
see but I was too far back to check on the roaches.

Photo 4 of the main entrance to AOLA which is across LRH Way from
Cedars. LRH Way is nicely done with red brick--be interesting to see
how long it lasts. Brick streets break up quickly under heavy traffic
and porous brick is nearly impossible to clean.  

Photo 5 is the other LRH Way sign.  I caught one of the security
cameras in photo 6.  This one is on the southeast corner of the main
building.

After a single pass around the building, I got my sign out of my car.
The content prompted an immediate complaint from the chaplain that I
was causing chaos although he would not say what on the sign offended
him.  An enturbulated chaplain and I walked clockwise from the north
side of the building around to the east side.  There I picked up two
more escorts.  The two dudes in the photo 7 stayed with me most of the
morning.  Photo 8 is of their guy taking photos of me.  This time they
stayed well back and did not shove the camera in my face like the
security guards did out at Hemet.  The guy in the foreground is the
"chaplain."  9 and 10 are closeups of the guys in 7.  11 is the
"Auditor's Day" banner on the wall next to the main entrance. For
being a major scientology holiday, they sure did not have much traffic
of publics in or out--which is why I think the Internet has hurt them
a lot more than we thought.  I don't think I saw more than a hundred
and fifty clams the entire time I was there.

After a walk around the whole block and two or three passes back and
forth along the west side of the building (which seemed to have the
most activity) a scientologist maybe in his 20s in a dark suit calmly
walked straight up in front to me, grabbed my sign stick right under
the cardboard and started spraying my sign with a can of red paint.  
To put it mildly I was startled.  Fortunately, the stick on that sign
is a short pool cue that was not about to break and I was able to get
both hands on it while the attacker only had one.  The attacker was a
little taller than I am but lighter.  I dragged him still spraying out
onto the brick roadway (not wishing to get onto Cedars property during
the incident) and kind of scraped him off on a parked car.

Once I broke his grip on the sign, he immediately ran away, going
inside Cedars while I fumbled for my camera but failed to get a photo.
The chaplain and my escorts did not seem surprised, and were clearly
disappointed that the red paint did not do much of a job obscuring the
words.

About 15 minutes later a guy in a red shirt tried it again with black
paint.  I ended that try the same way but even faster.  It is
interesting to see which words they went after.  Xenu I expected, but
they seemed just as upset at Lisa's name and the dollar figure for the
"bridge" Hubbard sold them.

I ...

read more »

That's ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hk/hkhenson/cedars.pics/ (or use
the more permanent http://www.cedar.net/users/dvanhorn/henson ).

What is that sign's blue background in Pantone-talk? Maybe in the 270s or
280s? Copies might make nice gifts. I guess I can ask the LA city
signage folks.

I prefer the "L. Ron Hubbard Wy" over the "L. Ron Hubbard Way" -- sounds
more like a good probative question. (But, the second does anagram to
"Rub hard, Lawn Boy.")
--
Hud Nordin <h...@netcom.com> Silicon Valley / The City of Sunnyvale / California

: In <sthomsonEH705G....@netcom.com>, sthom...@netcom.com (shelley

: >[Something new:  the photographs referenced in the text will be
: > present at the following url: //www.cedar.net/users/dvanhorn/henson.
: > If you are putting this issue on your web page, please make links.]

: Downloading 30 different pictures means making 30 combinations of
: keystrokes. For those who want to spare THAT pain, here a HTML page that
: will download all at one (launch it only if you have lotsof memory on
: your PC)

My old version of Netscape just requires a click on the highlighted
file name to display it.  Keith Henson

If you're ever out my way, let me know.. Comm gear and taping
devices-r-us. Microwave video too.

Your note on the picket sign handle made me think about something
I've used for antennas.. Aluminum extensible brush handles.
The one I have will go to 10 or 12' high. Held aloft, your sign
can (on a calm day) be 2 stories up!  It's not very strong, certainly
a reach to claim it as a weapon, although I'd say anything that
can hold up a picket sign can be an effective weapon. Remember
Friar Tuck?

The fact that it makes a poor club and a giraffe jealous may
be an advantage!

--

According to Ron, calculus is bunk.
http://pharos.uwc.edu/~dcleek/cos/calculus.txt
"I think it was one of Newton's practical jokes."
Price does not include taxes.

In article <sthomsonEH705G....@netcom.com>,

Degrado the Survivalist Clown's survival tips.

                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This kids, is a no no.  Don't do this.  Why? Because in many states and
cities, it is illegal to picket using a sign that could be used as a
weapon.  And in many places it ain't, it is illegal to carry something
like a pool cue that could be used as a weapon. Here in Texas, it could
get you arrested for carrying a blunt instrument, a club.
A cop that doesn't like being rousted out of a doughnut shop to check
out your picket, could if he or she desires, cause you great hassles over
such a thing as a stout stick, especially a cut down pool cue, an
old biker's weapon.
If you want to be legal and stuff, use a cardboard tube.
Art supply stores usually have a good selection, some rather stout but
passing legal muster. Or try stores specializing in boxes, shelving and
packaging materials.

Too, you don't want a stick an out of control clam can use against you if
you do lose control of the stick in a tussle. Unless you have the martial
arts skills to deal with it. Being beaten with a cut off pool cue would
not be a good experience unless you are looking for martydom.

If the clam gains control of the stick back off immediately.
If he chases you and hits you, it's a worse legal problem for him.
Make him have to catch you if it comes to that.

No ethics here.

This was assault pure and simple.

Well, when the second clam approached, you should have pulled out the
pepper spray and held it aloft so he could see what it was.
You didn't bring pepper spray?  Well...

Make sure you get the fogger kind...

You should be filiing charges and giving the cops copies.

Another good thing about cardboard tubes, you can make telescoping
sections.  So it you have a sign with a 3 foot tube, and they have a sign,
you could add another three foot section and have instantly, a six foot
tall sign.

The order goes out, "They are bringing banners! Break out 3 foot
sign extenstions! Fix three foot sign extensions! Charge!"

Break aways.  Several signs on a placard done with tape.
If one gets messed up, remove it and you have one beneath.
You can change signs several times just for the hell of it.

******************  Deleted  ******************

lot.  > >It was getting close to 11:30 by the time I got back from the
Xemu flyer, and sprinted for the main Cedars >entrance. I chased him a
short distance, but running with a sign isn't >very efficient. > >Elliot
was embarrassed about his client's behavior and felt obliged to

Another illegal act.  Shouldhave come back and filed charges.
Abelson should be a good witness.

should have asked.) I wonder what the obligations are of a lawyer >who
observes misdemeanor or possibly felony acts in public by someone >working
for his client? > >I made it known to Elliot that they had raised the ante
in the whole >world wide battle, and that people would now feel much less
restrained >in what they did to CoS, especially if it involved flyers and
spray >paint.  Elliot looked very unhappy, but he did not saying anything.

Be prepared part XVIII.  If you have lots of gear, cameras, water bottles,
notepads and other gear, use a small back pack or belt pack.
Leaves your hands free and allows you to carry more gear.
A belt pack or fanny pack is preferable.

Notepads, as found out by the people here who picket clan rallies and such
over the years, *always* carry pads and pens.  Good for taking witnesses
names and address, annoting photograph info, taking license plate and
badge numbers ect.  Carry them where you can get to them. Carry extra
pens. It can be a life saver in case of legal hassles. Get used to taking
notes visibly.  This makes people who might want to start something
nervous.
It means you are ready and keenly observing what is going on around you.
If it looks like trouble is brewing, start taking obvious notes.
If some fool gets agitated, and several people note that, and he does some
stunt, it will be easier to sort it out when the cops get there if notes
have been taken. It cools agitated cops out too.

Wish Keith had had a Sony Pressman in his shirt pocket running.

Degrado the Survivalist Clown.

In article <342EA911.A141B...@cedar.net>,
Dave VanHorn  <dvanh...@cedar.net> wrote:

Degrado teh Survivalist Clown's Survial Tips:

This would be something you definitely WOULD NOT want to do anywhere
around electric lines. A 12' foot aluminum tube can get you in trouble
in this fashion.

I once was involved in building a model for Houston Lighting and Power.
Pull the knobs and various little men with, long handled pool cleaning
nets, ladders, painter's roller extensions and the like, would
accidentally touch a model electric line and light up as 5000 volts
zapped through a neon bulb imbedded in each model figure.  Made a nice
ZAP! too.
It seems that touching lines with aluminum poles is a very popular way for
offing oneself around low hanging high voltage lines.
A 1400 volt high amp shock can ruin a picketting seesion.
This model made a very graphic presentation of how many people managed
to kill themselves with long aluminum poles and electric lines.
I heard a lot of graphic descriptions I did not want to hear from HL&P
engineers on the subject of electrocuting one's self with long aluminum
poles and high voltage lines.

I'd say, stick to cardboard tubes.
And ixnay on 12' aluminum poles.

Degrado the Survivalist Clown.

In <sthomsonEH705G....@netcom.com>, sthom...@netcom.com (shelley

Downloading 30 different pictures means making 30 combinations of
keystrokes. For those who want to spare THAT pain, here a HTML page that
will download all at one (launch it only if you have lotsof memory on
your PC)

begin 644 HENSON.HTM
<encoded_portion_removed>
end