Volume 0, Issue vom 13. 08. 1995

Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review
Volume 0, Issue 17
08/13/95
by Rod Keller [rkeller@netaxs.com]
copyright 1995

Contents

  1. Fishman Documents
  2. Fishman Archives
  3. Review of Dianetics
  4. Dirty Phone Tricks
  5. Hard Sell Pack
  6. Kobrin Correspondence
  7. Rmgroup Fallout
  8. Snow White Conspirators
  9. Las Vegas
Alt.religion.scientology Week in Review summarizes the most significant
postings from the Usenet group Alt.religion.scientology for the preceding
week for the benefit of those who can't follow the group as closely as
they'd like. Out of thousands of postings, I attempt to include news of
significant events, new affidavits, court rulings, new contributors,
whatever. I hope you find it useful. Like many readers of a.r.s, I have a
kill file. So please take into consideration that I may not have seen some
of the most significant postings. 

The articles in A.r.s Week in Review are brief summaries of the articles. 
Many include an excerpt, and all include message IDs for the articles I
cover. This may or may not be useful to you, depending on how long your
site stores articles in the newsgroup before expiring them. 

A.r.s Week in Review is available free, by e-mail and is archived at:
          http://amazing.cinenet.net/scientology.html
          http://users.aimnet.com/~jdiver
          http://www.thur.de/religio/publik/arsfaq.html
#####

Fishman Documents

Much news about the Fishman docum
ents posted last week by Arnie Lerma. 
These are publicly available affidavits, plus the complete text of the OT
level materials, allegedly. Arnie received a letter this week threatening
legal action.  Melvin Jager wrote: 

"No court has ever found that use of stolen unpublished works is fair. 
There is also no fair use defense to trade secret misappropraition. The OT
materials have been found to be trade secrets by the United States
District Court of the Souther District of California in Bridge
Publications, Inc , vs Vien, 827 F. Supp, 629, 633 (S.D. Cal 1993). No
court has ever ruled to the contrary." 

Arnie wrote in his reposnse: 

"The affidavit posted was an court document, Court case 91-6426 HLH (Tx),
Central District of California, and a matter of public record. As of today
I am advised these records remain unsealed. 

"Your characterization of these as 'stolen documents' is ludicrous, they
are court records, open to the public. 

He then posted this Petition to the Court. I'm assuming he sent it to the
judge in the Fishman case. 
 
"If you were to grant permission for these documents to be placed on the
internet, it would ensure that the intention of the court, that the
records remain unsealed and freely available to the public at large, is
fulfilled, in spite of the church's efforts to interfere with the public's
access to same." 

The cos' response to the situation was to raid Arnie, similar to the
Dennis Erlich raid. They took his computer and hundreds of diskettes.
Legal and media help has been mobilized, as seen in this post by Post
reporter Richard Leiby. 

"This is Richard Leiby of the The Washington Post, asking readers of ARS
to help me find Shari Steele or other representatives of the EFF, in
reference to raid this morning (SAT.) at home of Arnaldo Lerma of
Arlington, VA, involving copyright infringement. I can be reached through
the Post at 1-800-627-1150 x 6187. Please leave a voicemail message or Ms.
Steele's number if you have it. This will be used for newsgathering
purposes only. Thank you. Richard Leiby" 

Message-ID: 400f4v$c11@news.dgsys.com>
            403tma$lql@news.dgsys.com>
            40aekv$cc4@news.dgsys.com>
            40idv1$g91@newsbf02.news.aol.com>

#####

Fishman Archives

Inspired by Arnie's postings, posters to a.r.s reported archives of the materials on web pages, Gophers and ftp sites. The first was Dave Touretzky's site at . In addition to the actual documents, this site provided answers to question such as: Who is Steven Fishman? Where did these documents come from? How can I order orginals of the documents? This information is apparently so sensitive, the CancelPoodle cancelled postings containing only the URL. Dave descibes the reaction of the cos. "Helena Kobrin printed out both my 'Church of Scientology v. Fishman and Geertz' web page and my personal home page, and faxed both of them to Carnegie Mellon University's legal counsel, Mr. Walter DeForest. This was documentation for her claim that I had committed copyright and trade secret violations. Ms. Kobrin also sent me an email message, a copy of which has been added to the web site "The following materials have been voluntarily removed pending an assessment by Carnegie Mellon's legal counsel of the Church's claims of copyright and trade secret protection. DELETED: OT I Description DELETED: OT II Course DELETED: OT III Course DELETED: OT IV Rundown DELETED: OT V DELETED: OT VI DELETED: OT VII Rundown DELETED: OT VIII Part 1: Why Thetans Mock Up DELETED: OT VIII Part 2: OT VIII Series I Confidential Student Briefing" Following the removal of the materials from Carnegie Mellon, other posters began placing the materials on other sites. Excerpts from several postings: "Though the OT stuff has been deleted from the /Fishman site, it still exists if you ftp to info.bta.net.cn and look in the incoming directory. I've got a link directly to the file on my Anti-Scientology page as well." "You might try ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/ja/janda/fishman.zip though. It will be interesting to see what sort of e-mail hkk@netcom.com (Helena Kobrin) sends to Netcom about this file, considering that Helena Kobrin is currently sueing Netcom over the Dennis Erlich affair." "BTW, some interesting URL's: (since longer time not available)
  • ftp://ftp.gmd.de/incoming/fishman.zip
  • ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/incoming/fishman.zip
  • ftp://ftp.uni-kl.de/incoming/fishman.zip
  • ftp://coli.uni-sb.de/incoming/fishman.zip
  • ftp://info.bta.net.cn/incoming/fishman
  • ftp://info.bta.net.cn/incoming/SCAMIZDAT_10
  • http://www.helsinki.fi/~huuskone/fishman.asc
It's possible that none of these sites will contain the materials by now. Dave Touretzky posted a form for ordering the documents from the Federal Courthouse in LA. "The handy order form below has been added to the Fishman web page at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/ "Our webmaster says this page has gotten over 1000 hits in the past week. Message-ID: modemacDCsy1E.2w9@netcom.com> 3vuia6$390@casaba.srv.cs.cmu.edu> 403a0b$lg7@alpha.sky.net> jandaDCt9I8.6zG@netcom.com> 031319Z08081995@anon.penet.fi> 408vmm$s2d@casaba.srv.cs.cmu.edu> 3vt4qg$3l@sundog.tiac.net> #####

Review of Dianetics

Discord (tina@tezcat.com) posted an analysis of Book One of Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health. The file is available at It's a detailed look at the claims made in the book. Here's an excerpt from the analysis. "Claims made: the finite universe is composed of time, space, energy and life; these have one commonality, and that is the impetus to survive; it is a 'new thought' that man is motivated only by survival; life is cyclic; the urge of survival is away from pain and towards pleasure; death is the ultimate pain and immortality the ultimate pleasure; the attainment of pleasure is at least as much of a factor in survival as the avoidance of pain; one can measure the health of a being and plot it, across its life, into zones of status (of a sort); a number of factors affect each type of being's survival dynamic; the more complex an organism, the less likely it is to act in a stimulus-response style of behavior; certain types of 'pleasures' should actually be considered 'pains'. "Observations: I don't see alot in this chapter that consists of theories new to me. That survival is the main goal of any organism seems to be a basic truth. That avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure are both part of this survival does not seem a great revelation; painful things generally negatively affect survival while pleasurable ones enhance it. I don't know what to think about all this 'zone' and 'tone scale' stuff; perhaps it will be explained further in other sections of the book? It again seems obvious to me that our survival is interconnected with the survival of other beings/organisms in our sphere of existence. Basically, this chapter seems to teach nothing astounding and offer nothing new except perhaps for the 'zones' and 'tone scales'." Message-ID: 4042a7$men@huitzilo.tezcat.com> #####

Dirty Phone Tricks

Grady Ward reported two violations of his privacy by cos investigators this week. Mr. Waterman [with Pacific Bell] said that although the person did not have the code that I put on my phone bill (after warning from Jeff), he had other details of my life such as social security number, mother's maiden name, previous phone bills, etc. etc. and said that he had recently suffered a stroke and couldn't remember the code. After he started getting extremely abusive, Mr Waterman gave him the details of the bill. "After hearing the news from Pacific Bell of a person lying to get access to my account information, I contacted my long distance carrier, AT&T and found, not to my surprise, that someone called 'Grady Ward' who had just undergone 'eye surgery' had required the operators to read off the last three months of my AT&T long distance bills for 707 826 7715 and 707 826 7712. "According to Pat with Team 5 at the Mesa, AZ AT&T account services, the impersonator called earlier this PM. Pat said that I had no code on my accounts (I did and had earlier verified it as I did with Pacific Bell). AT&T suggested I put an "L" code on my local carrier bill that supposedly would require *written* authorization before releasing my records." Message-ID: gradyDCyJ44.KH9@netcom.com> gradyDCyzvH.Ms6@netcom.com> #####

Hard Sell Pack

Excerpts from a publication known as a Scientology hard-Seel Pack were posted this week. "It is necessary in writing an ad or a flier to assume that the person is going to sign up right now. You tell him that he is going to sign up right now and he is going to take it right now. That is the inference. One does not describe something, one commands something. You will find that a lot of people are in a more or less hypnotic daze in their aberrated state, and they respond to direct commands in literature and ads. (From HCO PL Sept. 26, 1979 III, Copywriting)" Message-ID: 204324Z03081995@anon.penet.fi> #####

Kobrin Correspondence

Here are this week's additions to the list of people who received threatening email from Helena Kobrin. Pekka Aakko, Rev. Leo Damascus, Victor Eijkhout, and Marcus Pennell. Message-ID: EIJKHOUT.95Aug5020127@jacobi.math.ucla.edu> 401iae$dae@ionews.ionet.net> 3vuhss$iq9@fitzherbert.pavilion.co.uk> 405ger$g84@kruuna.helsinki.fi> #####

Rmgroup Fallout

A reposting of mail from a sysadmin was made this week. Apparently, the bogus rmgroup command last week is being taken seriously by a select few. "> Please resubscribe to alt.religion.scientology Ok. But eventually it's gone--even if we carry it no one else will... > Also: does this disappear at the request of the CO$ (Church of > $ientology) itself? I recall it went and I requested it back some months > ago and you put it back very speedily >:) No, it disappears at the request of the person who created the group. I.e., the owner of the group. They will continue to send out rmgroup messages, so since it's automated and they want it to go away this will keep happening." Needless to say, Scott Goehring didn't put out the rmgroup request. And Usenet doesn't work the way listservs do. Message-ID: 409d5g$7f9@odo.PEAK.ORG> #####

Snow White Conspirators

Jeff Jacobsen reported on the status of the Snow White criminals in the cos. Contrary to claims that they have all left the church: "Then how come Duke Snider is listed in Source issue 91 as completing the Flag Executive Briefing Course? Why is Henning Heldt listed in Source issue 60 as completing level B of the St. Hill Briefing Course and in Source issue 67 as completing New OTV?" Message-ID: 40733g$3mt@nnrp3.primenet.com> #####

Las Vegas

Ted Mayett provided the conclusion to his quest for a refund from the Las Vegas org this week. "So Fri I call the man at 3:30p and say that I'm on the way. Is there a check? He said yes. Something was off on his voice so I grabbed that weapon they fear so much, my picket sign, and took off to the Celebrity Centre. "The man was not there when I arrived. His car was gone. So I looked in the storefront and someone came out and said ____ was not here. I said I would just picket till he came back, no problem. The kid said wait a minute and very quickly an older man in the black and white sea org style came out. "He had the check for $500.00 and receipt book. "Sat. and Sun. they close early, 6pm. My plan was to make the obligatory afternoon call and not show up at all for the check. To keep them waiting till they got bored. But I get a call from them asking would I show up early for the check. When I got there at about 3:00 pm I was handed a check for $2,209.00. The total balance due. The check for $2,209.00 cleared today. Last post on the Vegas Picket. Message-ID: 4045r6$fji@bighorn.accessnv.com> 40922t$9e3@bighorn.accessnv.com>