<nettime> Stockholm, day 7

[Karin Spaink <kspaink@xs4all.nl>]

     [orig not To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

Carrying water from the desert to the sea

Stockholm, Friday January 26, 2001


WHEN WE ARRIVE AT COURT, two women approach us. Zenon shakes
hands with one of them; they speak for a short while, Zenon
introduces her - it is the bailiff who was responsible for
the raid in 1996 - and then she hands him an envelope. As it
turns out, it is a demand for outstanding tax bills.

While discussing this - I am sure that Scientology has
sicked the bailiff on him, while Zenon thinks that she came
of her own accord - we walk inside. After a few meters, a
man approaches Zenon and flashes a badge. I can't see the
badge and for a second I fear that this is a police officer
who is going to arrest Zenon for god-knows-what; perhaps
Scientology has filed some weird complaint against him of
the kind that are filed against US critics all the time. The
man seems angry and grabs Zenon's arm. Zenon calms him
somewhat, and they have a short discussion; then the man
hands Zenon an envelope too and a paper for him to sign. It
turns out to be *another* demand, this one for his study
loan. The idiotic part is that both bailiffs came from the
same office. (Which also means that they sent three people
in order to hand over two letters. Isn't that a tad
inefficient?)

This is no coincidence. I am sure that somebody has tipped
somebody or has pulled some strings. This must be
Scientology's revenge for Zenon's new witnesses, and for his
claim that McShane has come very close to perjury.


9:30

ZENON SUBMITS TO the court that McShane has not been telling
the truth and that he can prove as much. Magnusson, of
course, objects: isn't this the exact same evidence that was
at one point rejected by the court because Zenon didn't file
his briefs in time? Quite some discussion ensues. Zenon
argues that yes, indeed, that was the case, and he would not
have been able to bring up this evidence *nor* would he have
had a need to do so if it hadn't been for the fact that in
Tuesday's deposition of McShane, Magnusson *himself*
suddenly brought in this new claim that no money was charged
for the NOTs. But since Magnusson has brought up this claim,
it is Zenon's goddamn right to refute it - especially since
McShane lied in his testimony.

Magnusson acts all upset over this vicious suggestion that
his most honourable client hasn't been telling the truth,
and tells the court so, with this embarrassed and shy smile
of his that by now I have come to recognise as a
performance, meaning "I apologise to the court that I had to
bring this clown Panoussis into their respected presence, so
would you please disregard what he is saying right now, it
is simply *too* stupid," or something to that effect.

And then Zenon explodes with cold anger. Didn't Magnusson
bring in *four* witnesses that have to quite some degree
disqualified themselves? Didn't we have Small hiding the
fact that he was actively employed by RTC when he rushed to
their defence? Didn't we have Mikael Nyström who had said
that Usenet postings could not be falsified, and who now
admitted that they could - actually, that some people sit
with their hands right in the cookie jar? Didn't we have the
notary public vowing that she had made a random selection of
the Monkey NOTs, while now it transpired that she selected
only those Monkey NOTs that she "recognised" as infringing?
And on top of that, now we have Magnusson's *main* witness,
actually his client, evading the truth and perhaps downward
lying to us. For god's sake: doesn't Zenon then has a right
to prove *his* point, especially when it concerns something
that Magnusson has only recently brought in?

The Chair seems inclined to see things Zenon's way on this,
but is justifiably concerned about the court's schedule.
Hearing new witnesses will disrupt the proceedings, it would
mean that the case needs to be adjourned and would proceed
well into next week. Besides, there is a procedural problem:
our first and main witness is Italian, and according to
Italian law, witnesses cannot testify via telephone. Thus,
she would need to be flown over.

The court would like to know all names of the witnesses;
yesterday, Zenon only filed the name of the first one. I
scrutinise McShane's face when Zenon lists the people
willing to testify:
- Maria Pia Gardini from Italy; a Class IX Auditor who was
  invoiced immediately for the NOTs; no deferred payment.
  Besides, she knows the material rather well. She is adamant
  that most of the NOTs are included in OT6 and OT7.
- Michael Philip Pattinson, from Los Angeles, California. [I
  see McShane's face sagging. Then he notices that I saw it,
  and for the next ten minutes he averts his eyes.] Michael
  Pattinson can testify that huge part of the NOTs pack is
  included in OT6 and OT7.
- Karl Braunsteiner, from Austria. Karl has done OT6 and
  later on saw the NOTs on the Internet. He can testify that a
  huge part of them is included in OT6.

Magnusson claims that all of this is not relevant. The
parishioners do not pay for the material but for the course
as a *whole*. The Chair intervenes: Zenon has a solid point.
What if we put McShane in the witness stand again and ask
him these questions once more? Magnusson can't very well
oppose this. There we go….


9:50

MCSHANE TAKES THE witness chair. The atmosphere in the court
room is tense, very tense. We all know what is at stake.

Z: Let's first clarify definitions. For the purpose of this
deposition, "NOTs" is all the material included in
attachment 37 and *nothing* else. That is what I define as
NOTs.

McShane: That is not the church's definition.

Z: That is irrelevant. In this interrogation, *I* define
NOTs as exhibit 37.

Magnusson intervenes. How do we know that these are the
original NOTs? [Dork. He has been claiming that they are all
along.]

Z: I am talking about the NOTs such as they are in
attachment 37, from page 24 and on. Mr. McShane, have the
NOTs, either in their entirety or partly, *ever* been part
of any other course except for the Class IX Auditors Course?

McShane: [speaking slowly, and very aware of what he is
saying] There are parts of NOTs, the description of NOTs,
the principles of NOTs, that are contained in OT6. The
actual issues themselves, the bulletins, that we call works,
are not in OT6. But some of the principles are contained in
OT6. Because OT6 is on the same subject. But you have to
understand that NOTs, the NOTs, teaches a Class IX Auditor
how to deliver those services, those processes, to a member.

Z: I want to know about concrete text mass. Are *any* of
these NOTs texts part of another course than the Class IX
Auditor Course?

McShane: There are parts that are in OT6.

Z: And in OT7?

McShane: [pause; he hesitates] No.

Z: How do you know? I asked you on Monday or Tuesday what
level you yourself had attained; you answered that you were
OT6, and I asked you specifically if everything up to OT6
was your personal knowledge and nothing above, and you
confirmed that.

McShane: [pauses] I, ehm, I don't exactly know what that,
ehm, question was, what I said then. I know the texts of
OT7.

Z: Have you seen my latest brief?

McShane: Yes.

Z: [picks up that brief] Have you *read* this brief? I
expect that it was translated for you?

McShane: [nods twice]

Z: I would like you to comment upon the list of the re-use
of NOTs that is included in that brief. And please bear in
mind that I am not only asking you about current times but
also about the past.

  [From here on, Zenon uses what Scientology would most
  likely refer to as "Tone 40": he is precise, insistent,
  commanding, demanding, and his voice makes it clear that
  he won't be fooled with. For the first time during this
  whole court procedure, McShane suddenly answers in broken
  sentences. Again, my transcript is more or less verbatim.]

Z: Has *any* part of the NOTs in attachment 37, i.e. any
part of the material from page 24 and onward, *at any time*
been part of *any* course whatsoever other than the Class IX
Auditors Course?

McShane: Yes, some parts of that material are used in OT6
and OT7. But I have read your list in which you claim that
some, eh, 20 or 30 NOTs are part of OT6 or OT7. That is not
true.

Z: In that case, let's go through them one by one and assess
which ones *are* part of OT6 or OT7. To start with, are any
parts of NOTs series 1 such as it appears in exhibit 37 part
of any other course than the Class IX Auditors Course?

McShane: I would have to have the OT6 course to compare them
with and I don't have that with me.

Z: Can you say approximately how much text mass of
attachment 37 is included or has ever been included in other
courses than the Class IX Auditor Course?

McShane: Ehm, in order to do that, I would need to make a
comparison and I can't do that here.
[hesitates] There are texts, there are parts of these texts,
in OT7. But there is more in NOTs than there is in exhibit
37.

Z: The rest of the NOTs are not interesting; they are not
part of this case. We are *only* talking about the NOTs
material in exhibit 37 here.

Z: How many people did partake in OT6 and in OT7,
approximately?

McShane: [pause] I would estimate probably some 5,000 to
7,000.

Z: These pro forma invoices, can you describe what is on
them?

McShane: They are meant for employees, and it says something
to the effect of, the persons name, what course the person
is taking, and the worth, the value of the course. And the
person promises that if he breaks the contract he will pay
that money. It is an internal church procedure, and its
purpose is to prevent somebody to join staff in order to get
the courses for free. So it tells the person: it is part of
your job that you get this for free, but if you leave
without fulfilling your contract, your have to pay.

Z:  For how long are these contracts?

McShane: Which ones?

Z: The Sea Org contracts for instance, of which Class IX
Auditors are members.

  [Comment: it is interesting to see how long it takes
  McShane to reply that Sea Org members sign a billion year
  contract. Yet, Zenon has already put this bit of
  information in his Wednesday January 25 brief. The court
  knows.]

M: The Sea Org is eternal within the church. More religions,
other religions also … like the Jesuits, or certain
religions have, and it's the staff who dedicate their entire
life to their religion and we sign a kind of a pledge, ehm,
for a billion years of service. It's a symbolic gesture of
your dedication.

Z: If a year or two after signing this fraternity
membership, and completing the course you break the
contract, will this pro forma invoice be brought up?

McShane: If the member leaves the church there is no bill.
If he wants to continue receiving services, he would be
responsible to not only pay that course, but all services.
But there are circumstances when somebody has left that that
somebody does not have to pay at all.

Z: Is it correct that these pro forma invoices are known as
the "Freeloader's Bill"?

McShane: Yes.

Z: Is it correct that the church claims these "Freeloader
Debts" as amounts receivable on its balance sheets as
submitted to the US Internal Revenue Service?

Magnusson interrupts, and wants to know where these
questions are going to. The Chair answers instead: the
obvious point of this line of questioning is whether these
invoices are symbolic or not.

Z: Is it true that these Freeloader Debts are reported to
the US tax offices?

McShane: [smiling] No.

Z: Does the church have an internal reporting system that
weekly reports these Freeloader Debts to Scientology
management, as part of the "Income Notes Collections
Summary"?

  [Comment: We received this information just that same
  morning. Thank you - you know who you are.]

McShane: It is possible … there could be … I am not familiar
with such a system. I don't know.

Zenon has gotten enough out of McShane. Yes, these bills are
real, and yes, parts of the NOTs Pack are included in OT6
and OT7, and McShane didn't say so before. That is all he
had to prove. Zenon ends his interrogation and retracts his
request to hear the new witnesses. The court looks relieved.


10:10

MAGNUSSON'S TURN: McShane gets his chance to repair some of
the damage done. While Zenon was questioning McShane, he was
ghastly nervous. Our supporter, who was sitting right behind
McShane, later told us that McShane was shaking and that his
legs couldn't stop trembling. Only when Magnusson
interrogates him does he calm down. Actually, McShane
relaxes so much that out of sheer relief , he starts
babbling and *again* confirms what Zenon just got out of
him, but this time of his own accord:

McShane gives us the same story about OT5 that we have heard
a few times before in this court, but this time with an
emphasis on "services" and "exchange".

McShane: "Solo NOTs are related to NOTs but are not NOTs. On
Solo NOTs the member needs to have some understanding of
what NOTs are and what he will be addressing at that level
so some of the principles are related to him, so that he
understands what he is doing."

McShane: "The pro forma invoices relate to training, the
costs of living et cetera. That is because the Class IX
Auditor Course is only for staff members - and there is only
one church that trains Class IX Auditors, that is our Flag
church, in Florida - and that church invests a lot in those
persons. Not only the supervision, room and board, but also
the medical expenses and dental expenses, and that is how
this pro forma invoice came about, because people were
coming in for these free services doing these courses for a
year or two and then leaving, without any exchange for the
church! That is why we came up with this."

Zenon *loves* this. In almost every other line, McShane is
confirming that *in exchange for work* people are allowed to
study the NOTs. Under Swedish law, that means that the NOTs
are not for free. *Any* exchange whereby you give something
away but expect something in return, may simply *not* be
labelled "free".


IT IS ONLY AFTERWARDS that we discover that Zenon's job
could have been easier. Jeta points out in a message that we
only find after the court sessions have finished, that the
Freeloader's Bill is actually *part* of the NOTs:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 15 NOVEMBER 1978R-1
ADDITION OF 15 OCTOBER 1981
 

C O N F I D E N T I A L
NED FOR OTs
ADVANCED COURSES SPECIALIST COURSE
CHECKSHEET
PART TWO


[...]
                  STUDENT COURSE COMPLETION
[...]

B.   STUDENT ATTEST AT C & A:
-----------------------------

     I attest (a) I have enrolled on the course,


===> (b) I have been properly invoiced for the course as
===>     a contracted staff member,

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 


10:20

THE CHAIR ANNOUNCES that we will have short break, after
which final pleas will be held. The Chair wishes to know how
long both parties will approximately speak. Magnusson claims
and hour, and Zenon says, oops!-ishly, "The court said that
brief is better, so I went home and wrote fifty pages of
notes…" Some judges can't help but smile.

The pleas will be taped. [Yes, we will get hold of these
tapes and then translate Zenon's plea to English.]


10:35

MAGNUSSON GOES FIRST. He focuses very much on first
publication, quotes a lot of foreign rulings, and seems to
come up with more rhetoric than legal arguments. He also
claims that the Court in my case made a severe error,
because they believed that 25,000 copies of OT3 were made
while that number only pertained to the amount of people who
had studied them. This is a blatant lie: the court in my
case never said anything to this account. They *knew* that
people just studied the same copies; one of my lawyers had
even made a joke about it: if in a porn video shop fifty
people see a flick one after the other, all of them seeing
it on their own, it is still fifty people who have seen it
and the flick is still *publicly* shown, not privately.


11:20 - Magnusson is done! That was remarkably short. Last
time he was excruciatingly lengthy.


11:30 - Zenon's turn. [These are just short notes. A full
transcript will be made available later on.]


ZENON EXPLAINS TO the court Scientology's principle of
"acceptable truths" and illustrates it with the testimonies
that we have heard. Vorm, Small, Alexandersson, and McShane
himself - all of them have been proven to have been
withholding parts of the truth, or sometimes reverted to
claiming that "they didn't know" when an answer would be too
damaging. The court must also take into account that Vorm,
Small and McShane have big economic, social and religious
stakes in what they say. They are not objective witnesses,
they have their position and their religion to defend.

Zenon at one point openly slights Magnusson: while going
through the Dutch case and CST being part of it, he says
that "RTC had a better lawyer in that country than the one
that they employed here…" I only manage to keep a straight
face because I knew that the joke was coming. Not even a
hint of a smile crosses my lips. Magnusson contains himself.
But fifteen seconds later I hear a deep sigh escaping him.

Discussing the identity of the texts, Zenon stresses that
modifications abound, different versions have been used
through time, and that texts are often revised. We simply
have no means of knowing what *exactly* is registered with
the US Copyright Office; it is masked, after all. Zenon
explains that there is no contradiction between his claim
that this material is Scientology's material on the one
hand, and his claim that there is no equality between the
Scientology's material and what he published on the other.
*Only* the text that is registered with the US Copyright
Office counts, and RTC has not proven that the materials
that Zenon published are identical to those that are
registered.

Zenon harps upon McShane's definition of "infringement":
paraphrasing is infringement; the use of certain words is a
infringement, quoting is an infringement, actually, any use
of any part of any text outside the church is an
infringement. When Zenon quoted mere captions of a part of
OT2 in the Fishman Affidavit, without ever including the
actual sections underneath each caption, that was labelled
as an infringement too. And what is more: RTC's method of
comparison never allowed the court to assess how much he
quoted of a passage, and thus doesn't allow the court to
consider whether quoting such a passage is within the limits
of the law.

Publication. Zenon lists the reasons why the OTs and NOTs
should be considered to have been legally published (an
assessment from which the right to quote and the right to
make private copies follow, *and* from which it will follow
that the primary court, the administrative court and
parliament will again be able to give copies of the OTs and
NOTs to the public as per offentlighetsprincipen). The
amount of people who accessed the NOTs (5,000 to 7,000) and
the OTs (25,000); the translation of the OTs into four
languages; the commercial offering of the OTs and NOTs to
all eight million Scientologists via the Scientology
magazine "Source"; the accessibility (all you need to do is
to qualify) of OTs and NOTs for all Scientologists; and the
paying for these courses - each and every one of these
elements is in itself sufficient to constitute publication.

Jurisprudence has it that the "closed circle", the "limited
circulation" that a text can enjoy without constituting
legal publication, is very small. Now let's look at the
church's own figures: 25,000 (members who have done OT2 and
OT3) times 6,000 dollars (the price for each of these
courses) times 2 (OT2 and OT3) times 9 (crowns in the
dollar) amounts to 2,7 billion SEK. Would *any* circle that
generates such an amount ever be considered closed?

The pro forma invoices are not pro forma. They build upon
the principle of *exchange*. In order to partake these
courses, students are supposed to *produce* for the church.
These Class IX Auditors who study the NOTs do pay in work:
only this morning, McShane literally said: "We don't want
them to have these courses for free." They work for years on
end, and produce the huge revenues that Scientology gets
from the courses that they administer.


12:10 - 13: 15 - Lunch break. 

ZENON POINTS OUT to the court that if they accept
Magnusson's stance on copyrights, that would have severe
repercussions on copyright law. Actually, the law would need
to be completely re-written. After all, Magnusson claims
that private circles can be really big, and that
distributing material within such a circle gives you all
rights but no obligations whatsoever. If that point of view
is accepted by the court, Zenon's own Free Church of
Scientology will have a ball. All Zenon needs to do is set
up membership, invent some requirements that members have to
meet, and treat the material with the same confidentiality
that Scientology does. Once he has done that, he can
circulate this same material to up to 25.000 members without
committing infringement. After all, it is only within a
closed circle, isn't it? What is more, this same principle
will be applicable to *other* material by other people.
People can set up closed circles for the distribution of
DVDs, of computer programs, of videos. Nobody would be
obliged to pay anything to any copyright holder as long as
they apply some membership conditions and confidentiality.

As for the material: RTC's argument obscures that Zenon did
not simply post parts of OT2 and OT3. What he actually did
was to publish a court file, to instruct the general public.
The OT-fragments were just a very small part of the Fishman
file. Article 26 of the Swedish copyright law, explicitly
permits the publication of copyrighted texts that are part
of a court case, if this is done within the frame of
reporting about the case itself.

Regarding the right to quote: Zenon quoted only 3 pages of
the 300 page OT2 and the 25 pages from the 200 page OT3:
that is less than 6%. Compare this fact to how McShane
portrayed the severity of Zenon's infringement: "From OT2
[Panoussis] infringed upon 10 individual works and 4 of
those works are infringed upon 100%, one is infringed upon
for 94%, one for 84%, one for 75%, one for 62%, one for 20%,
and the last one for 7%. I did the same calculations for
OT3. 15 works were infringed upon. 13 of those for 100%, one
for 66%, and the last one for 29 %." That sounds serious,
Zenon says, but in all actuality we are only talking about
less then 6% of OT2 and OT3.

European Convention of Human Rights. Scientology has always
blocked discussion: sometimes via their demand for secrecy,
sometimes by (threatening to) sue, most often by either
denying their own teachings or claiming that quotes are
"taken out of context".

Religious freedom: other Scientologists, not part of the
official church, are not allowed to practice their religion.
McShane has even testified here that one of the reasons for
RTC registering the advanced material was so that they could
sue people who used the material outside the church. These
people, the free Scientologists, have a constitutional right
to be able to practice their religion without having to pay
any particular organisation.

The damages claimed should go down in proportion to the
claims that RTC loses in this appeal. Apart from that, RTC
claims that their "market value" has gone down and that they
have suffered "commercial damage", which is a rather
remarkable claim for an organisation that purports not to be
charging for the material it is suing over. As for
immaterial damages: RTC does not represent and is not
entitled to damages on behalf of those members of the public
that suffer "irreparable damage" by reading this material
"without being prepared", nor is RTC entitled to damages on
behalf of individual Scientologists that might have to
retake their courses. Finally, when it comes to "hurt
feelings", only the author himself can be hurt, and the
right to such damages does not follow the copyrights; in
other words, RTC cannot *legally* have hurt feelings.

[Meanwhile, Magnusson's aide is looking at Zenon and me with
piercing eyes. If looks could kill…The effect is however
quite ruined by his nervousness. The guy has developed a
nervous tic in the past half hour and is continuously
bobbing his head.]

How can *RTC* claim to have suffered damages, by the way?
They only license the material to the Advanced
Organisations, it is *them* who lose clients, not RTC. If
anybody should have sued Zenon, it should have been those
Advanced Orgs.

[By this time I am sure that McShane wishes that he had had
*Zenon* as his lawyer (and Magnusson as his opponent). Even
I, with my shaky Swedish, can hear that while Magnusson was
merely making statements, Zenon is developing arguments, and
that some of them are rather ingenious. He is not reading
from his paper, he uses them as mental reminders and builds
his arguments from these stepping stones.]

Zenon goes through the various copies made / infringements
that RTC claims, and the evidence for it.
Nyström's testimony proved that anybody could have made the
disputed May 2 posting. But RTC never bothered to look for
evidence and didn't ask for any logs: perhaps they did not
*really* want to assess who the culprit was? As for the
bailiff: when RTC asked her to go through his computer
files, she was ordered to search for more than
infringements. Neither the word "Vorlon" nor "Ward" are part
of RTC's texts, these are the names of people. That clearly
demonstrates that RTC was after Zenon's correspondence, not
(only) after the material. As for the copy of the OTs and
NOTs that Zenon handed in to the administrative court:
Scientology *itself* had stolen that copy (the thief has
been identified and Zenon names him in court: Thierry
Duchaunac) and Zenon only returned a copy that the primary
court itself had produced.

Legal costs: McShane counts the lobbying with US congress
and the Swedish government to seal the OTs and NOTs and to
change the law regarding offentlighetsprincipen and the
guarding of the OTs and NOTs in court and in parliament, as
*legal costs* and wants Zenon to foot that bill, but none of
these costs have anything to do with the court case itself.
RTC *could* have claimed these costs as damages, but
probably feared that it wouldn't get them; and thus, they
made them part of the legal bill.

RTC *insists* on having their material masked. That in
itself makes establishing of identity and other evidence so
much more difficult: suddenly we need notaries and
complicated comparisons. Those costs are the consequence of
RTC's *own* desires and demands, and they can hardly expect
Zenon to pay for that.

Meanwhile, Magnusson has produced an enormous amount of
copies, many of them unnecessary; and all these are put on
Zenon's bill. Besides, the amount of payment that Magnusson
demands for his own work is enormous as compared to what
lawyers usually get.


14:05 - Zenon is done. 90 minutes all in all.

In this case, too, bills for legal costs need to be handed
in. Zenon asks for 25,000 SEK, that is: 2525 USD - for lost
hours of work, copies, stamps and so on. Magnusson's turn.
He hands in a bill for 1,665,000 SEK (168,000 USD):

   lawyer's fees:            1,400,000 SEK
   translations              1,600,000 SEK
   work McShane                 75,000 SEK
   travel costs                 20,000 SEK

Zenon comments upon the amount demanded for McShane's work:
it is McShane's *job* to travel from court to court. To put
that here as expenses, is slightly ridiculous. And as for
Magnusson's fee, he won't even comment upon it.

The court announces that the ruling will be available from
the secretariat of the court in six weeks from now: on
March 9, 2001, at 11:00.



* * *


SATURDAY AFTERNOON we take the plane back home. We have a
nice flight and even get served (fake) caviar. We read Dutch
newspapers and work on this report. After landing, we stack
an enormous amount of luggage on a trolley: apart from our
bags, we have a 25 kg Samsonite with legal papers and a 10
kg carton with more of the same.

We show our passports at customs. The guy is not interested
and waves us to pass on. The moment Zenon moves, a guy in
civilian clothes comes up to him and flashes him a bag.
"Customs. Opium law. We want to search your baggage. Would
you please follow me into this room?" I am whisked off as
well. Four other people, all plainclothes customs officers,
are waiting for us there. All our bags are put in line and
are searched thoroughly. The man searching the Samsonite
dutifully sifts through the binders and is amazed at the
number of them. "The both of us are being sued by
Scientology, you know, this cult," we explain. "Actually, we
are just returning from court." Zenon picks up a newspaper
that was on top of the binder and shows them a one-page
article with a picture of us: "Zenon's lonely war against
Scientology". (A stupid headline, by the way. We are not
lonely. We have all of a.r.s. to back us up and help us -
and it *did*.)

Slowly, something dawns upon the faces of the police. We are
cleared within five minutes and allowed to leave. They
apologise profusely.

When we get home we make a couple of calls and pull a few
strings. Soon we discover that the Dutch Customs did not
receive *one* but *two* tips, "independent" of one another,
both describing Zenon and me at great length, and giving a
rather detailed account of how we would be smuggling cocaine
from Sweden into the Netherlands. And of course, Customs
have to investigate every tip they receive. We had to be
stopped and searched, even though Customs themselves found
the tips a bit weird. (So would I. Smuggling coke from
Sweden into Holland? That's like carrying water to the sea -
from the desert, at that).

Zenon and I learn one important lesson from this.
Scientology's harassment of us has stepped up remarkably:
the tails that were put on us in Stockholm, the bailiff that
was sicked upon Zenon, and now accusations of coke
smuggling. This is how we reply:


= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 
Zenon's posting to a.r.s.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

From: Zenon Panoussis <oracle@xs4all.nl>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology, nl.scientology
Subject: First and last warning.
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 00:08:16 +0100
Message-ID: <3A7354E0.D9226C7A@xs4all.nl>

Something happened. You will read about it in Karin's next (and 
last) Stockholm report, due tomorrow. However, I have a point to 
make in the direction of the CoS, now at once. 

The following is part of a mail from me to someone. I just post it 
as is so I don't have to repeat myself.

  Forget it. Anonymous phone calls. Even thinking of investigations 
  is a waste of time. The same goes for most of what they do. 

  What they should think of is that, so far, we have been harassing 
  them openly, while they are now harassing us anonymously. What 
  they forget to take into account is that we are much better at 
  anonymous harassment than they will ever be. Thus, if this 
  continues, we might sooner or later take their example and pay 
  them back in their own currency. 

  Actually I will post these last three paragraphs on ars/nls and 
  give them one single chance to think it over. If they don't get 
  it, if they choose to change the war from "clean" to "dirty", so 
  much the worse for them. They'll get a taste of their own medicine 
  that no toothpaste will ever take away. 

Scieno drones, please pay attention to the subject line. This is 
your first *and last* warning. Any more of this kind of shit, any 
at all, and you will not know what the fuck is hitting you. Beware. 
You have been advised. 

Z

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 


Karin Spaink
Amsterdam, January 28 2001





- K -

-- 

The First Amendment presupposes that right conclusions are 
more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, 
than through any kind of authoritative selection. - Judge 
Learned Hand as cited in New York Times v. Sullivan

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