Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 23:32:21 +0100 From: Zenon Panoussis Cc: dm@dma.se, hkk@netcom.com, Zenon Panoussis Subject: The parliament and the press Last time I posted was about Saturday's article in Aftonbladet. After that came Sonday and yet another article in Dagens Nyheter, about somebody trying to read the NOTs at the parliament and getting bullied by the scienos. After that came Monday and a radio interview with some parliament scienos and with me. A couple of hours later local Stockholm TV had a report from the parliament and a live interview with the CoS PR-woman for Scandinavia, Magnusson the lawyer and me. The parliament report was a beauty. It was a journalistic pearl. It was so good that I should put it on the net. If I get TV-Stockholm's permission, is there anyone that could convert it to AVI or MPEG for me (from PAL video)? The reporter was not very nice to the scienos. Something like this was said: Reporter: What are you doing here, blocking access to a public document? Is this right, do you really think you can do this? Scieno: These are secret writs, we have freedom of reli- R: So? Does that give you the right to break the law? Give me this, give it to me! S: These are our secrets, you are not allowed to read them- R: Give me that, you have no right to block access to a public document, what do you think you're doing, putting yourselves over the constitution (gets the dossier, puts it in front of the camera). S: OK, you can look at it, *you* look at it, but you have no right to show it to others (puts his hand between NOTs and camera). Thierry Du-something, scieno: (completely hysterical, in English) These documents are stolen, get it, stolen, got it? get it? get it? got it? ... Follows interview with the head of the secretariat of the chamber, Tom Thyblad. R: What are you doing about the scientologists blocking access to this public document? TT: (with supreme calmness) We have made more copies available. R: The scientologists are threatening to bring here every single scientologist from all over the world if necessary to block access to this document. What are you planning to do about that? TT: Get a bigger local. The parliament has a lot of locals. Needless to say, the Fishman tactics in the parliament is PR-wise *the* worst thing the scienos could have done in the given situation. And having done the worst possible thing, they also handle it in the worst possible way. Besides that, I spent a couple of hours "queing" for the NOTs at the parliament. The scieno "reading" the NOTs was stuck at the same page of non-NOTs cover letter for the whole two hours. I had a very interesting discussion with Thierry D., interesting mainly because it once again confirmed that these people can only "discuss" in one way: as instructed. His argumentational tricks being too obvious for me, he got stuck. We had more changes of subject than 3 minute periods. Example: TD: Why do you hate us so? You must hate everybody, you must hate yourself. Z: I don't hate you at all, where did you get such an idea? When you kill a mosquito you don't hate it, you just kill it (illustrative slap on the wall). That's how I'm doing away with you, without emotional involvement. TD: Who pays you for this, how much are you paid to do this? Z: It goes to show your own frame of references if you think that people will only do something if they're paid for it; this speaks clearly about you. TD: If not, then you must be in drugs. We save people from drugs, so if you hate us so, then you must be in drugs. And so on, and so forth. On TV I pointed out that the parliament is not the only authority that has the NOTs as public documents, but that they also can be obtained from among others the Chancellor of Justice and the Ministry of Justice. We'll see if that creates a queue of scienos there too. In my little chat with Monsieur Thierry D. (anyone has his full name?) I promised him that if they keep up this (anyway meaningless) blockade at the parliament, I might flood the Swedish autorities with NOTs. I pointed out that every school board and every social welfare board and every building and planning board and every electricity and water works in every one of Sweden's 284 communities is a separate authority, in addition to the hundreds of state authorities throughout the country. He smiled, but if the scienos don't soon come to their senses and leave the parliament that smile might be wiped off his face. Finally, as I'm CC:ing to Kobrin and Magnusson, let me congratulate once again for a job well done. May I put back my (full) Fishman pages on the web, or will you be sending me more threatening e-mail if I do? Z --- oracle@everywhere: The ephemeral source of the eternal truth...