From elrond1@home.com Sun May 13 17:16:53 2001
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From: elrond1@home.com (Gregg)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Picket report--Toronto by Keith Henson
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 21:16:53 GMT
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I came to Toronto partly because the scientologists in my neck of the
woods are nearly comatose, the south bay orgs won't do any thing more
than photograph me or Arel.  The SF org will come out and counter
picket with anti psych signs and talk but it is still lame.

So when Gregg invited me, I cashed some Marcab transport coupons and
flew up to Toronto.  Gregg picked me up at the airport and we went
right off to downtown Toronto to picket the Colony Hotel where a
dianetics meeting was being held.

Gregg and I scouted the site early partly to warn the hotel staff.
Jacky Matz, who ran the spy ring and was convicted to two counts of
breach of the public trust, was waiting outside.  Gregg said hi to her
and introduced me.  Her face fell and she split inside no doubt to
make a panic call to Hemet.

The picket went off very well.  We had 6 people, so we put a group on
both the front and back door.  We had a spy from the hotel inside who
reported on the numbers they drew.  The meeting was set up for 400,
but consistent with recent attendance at these meetings, they filled
it only half way--and a lot of them were very subdued children.  I
don't see how they got that many into the hotel because only about
50-75 came in the front door and under a dozen through the back.

Consistent with the last SF picket, they had people walking with me.
Here they put Andy Y. Hill on me.  He seemed a bit awed by me, asked a
few questions and I gave him the concentrated lecture ranging over how
I was brought into the battle, the long list of criminal activities by
scientology that keeps us in the fight and a range of other topics,
particularly the evolved psychological mechanisms scientology and
other cults use to get people hooked and keep them.  He was polite and
attentive.  Then they assigned Brian McPherson to me.  Brian has blown
a time or two, and is a man of more education and experience than they
usually put up against me.  He too was attentive as I went over much
the same subjects I had with Andy.  When we got to discussing the
numbers of how many scientologists get caught running fraud scams, he
not only agreed with me but said he had seen scientologists being
scammed a number of times, not only by other scientologists, but by
outsiders.

They were polite to me and except for Andy talking to Zeratul after
Brian replaced him on me,  they more or less ignored the other
picketers except for Gregg.  Gregg was subject to a full scale bull
bate session.  I kept slowing down and even walking backwards to keep
Gregg and his "handlers" in view.  Gregg said they were not as intense
as they get sometimes and that the hotel's security camera (which was
following Gregg & company) was the reason.  It was still pretty damned
intense, beyond anything which has ever been tried on me.

At one point they were triple teaming against Gregg with Gwen Jones
(Velcro Kitty), Bob Hill, and Dan Bryenton.  Dan was highly agitated,
near to violence, yelling, bumping into Gregg, threatening to have
Gregg arrested if he ever went near Dan's house (Gregg says and I
agree that Dan's house is not very impressive, but the black cars are
typical of Dan's wise guy/wannabe attitude.  I wonder how much of his
bad attitude is due to lack of sleep from the nearby railroad tracks?)

Gregg has some great video.  Since they were foolish enough to mention
Scott Duncan, much of this video will show up on
www.kookawarenessnetwork.com in the near future.

We decided to call it a picket about 7:45 and walked around back to
collect the rest of the crew.  When we got around there, there were
more of the OSA Goon Squad mixed in with our people.  So Gregg and I
brought all of them up on the latest news about Reed Slatkin.  (To
their obvious pain and dismay.)   A little after 8 pm the rest of the
handlers came hunting for their missing people (who could not leave
when there were SP's about).  There were all together 6 SPs and 10
handlers involved in this picket, which meant we had taken 5 % of the
audience out of the meeting and about 20% of the active scientologists
and staff.  At 8:15 we decided to walk around to the other side of the
hotel as we left.  Gregg, to demonstrate who was "at cause" told them
to meet us there--and they did.

After the picket we went off to dinner in a nearby Sub sandwich shop
for dinner.

A most successful picket.

Keith Henson