((My comments in double parentheses - Homer)) AN OPEN LETTER TO INTERNET USERS FROM REVEREND ENID VIEN ACT - 36 Copyright (C) 1993 Reverend Enid Vien Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes. ((Enid died on or around 12/12/12. RIP)) Reverend Enid Vien 7507 Ohio Place La Mesa, CA 91941 (619) 462-5160 (619) 465-8848 Fax 1/13/94 As some of you know I have been sued for copyright violations by the Church of Scientology. They had 3 very impressive law firms against me and they won a judgement of $52,000.00 plus court costs of $9,600.00. Shortly after the case President Clinton signed a bill strengthening the first amendment. My case needs to be appealed very badly as it affects all of us. I need to raise $20,000.00 in order to do this. I owe my lawyer $10,000 and she is unable to continue without funds, and the court is requiring that I post a bond covering the $9600.00. This is basically an escrow account with a bonding company. In addition it will cost about $2,000.00 to cover brand new costs incurred to get the transcripts for the appeal. So far in the past, I have raised $16,000 for my legal defense to this time, but I am tired and I can not go on like this. Dealing with people who are amoral, and who have no scruples is very debilitating and injurious to the soul. I defended this case on the basis of the first amendment and it was not successful at the federal level. The chances are that it will be at the appellate level, although the law is capricious as far as it's judgement's are concerned. I feel very strongly that the excesses of the Church of Scientology need to be stopped. None of us are safe if religious persecution is allowed to have a field day. Count up the Reform Churches (of Scientology) that they have harassed and put out of business. I thought I was safe because I never sold or copied any of their materials. Yet they were awarded $25,000.00 because I loaned a Level 0 pack to a friend who copied it. $500.00 statutory award for each page. Can you believe it? I think it is criminal. I paid $15.00 for the entire pack when I bought it and I certainly did not think this trickery was in any way called for. The judge, Marilyn Huff, did not think I had any case for first amendment protection, even though we explained that these writings were our Scriptures and the Church of Scientology described them as such to the IRS in their recent law suit to gain tax exemption status. I will be obliged to give up the fight unless I get a great deal of financial assistance rapidly. If you wish to donate to this cause of freedom of religious practice please send donations to: Send donations to Toby Plevin Client Trust Account (Toby is my lawyer) C/O Reverend Enid Vien 7507 Ohio Place La Mesa, CA, 91941 Remember the sad tale of the Jews in Germany who did nothing until the Nazi's were on their OWN doorstep. YOU COULD BE NEXT. THESE PEOPLE ARE FANATIC ZEALOTS IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD, FOR ALL OUR SAKES LETS GET THIS UP ON APPEAL! I am OK, but I need your help. Thanks and all good thoughts to you. With Love, Rev. Enid Vien ((The preceding plea has a long story behind. Many people in the world detest LRH and the Church of Scientology, mostly because of the outrageous and egregious behavior of his followers during the 40 years of its history. Although many people blame LRH himself for ordering the very behavior that has brought such shame and disgrace on his Church, many of his followers have chosen instead to break off from the Church to practice their form of Clearing Technology in the Independent Field. When LRH died in the early 80's control of his Church was passed to one David Miscavige and the legal entity known as the RTC, or Religious Technology Center. Their basic purpose is to safeguard the uses of Dianetics and Scientology copyrights, trademarks, and the religious technology itself (confessional counseling), and to make sure that no one uses it who is not under the tithing purview and jurisdiction of the Church and the RTC. Those who chose to continue on their own way, were often sued by the Church for copyright violations, and use of trademarked secrets. The practice of Scientology confessional counseling does involve some rather arcane and secretive material called the Upper Levels, and they were guarded jealously for many years, until they become the subject of various court cases at which point much of them were read into the public record. It is no great secret any more that the Upper Levels are really a saner and more modern form of exorcism, this is a religion after all that believes in past lives, spirits both good and bad, and that people often suffer from what they can't confront, namely raw evil. Ever have monster nightmares as a kid? Well these 'secret' upper levels provide a modern way to approach these primal fears with out all the ignorance, superstition and religious mumbo jumbo surrounding old time practices. As an aside it is of interest to note that Scientology is one of the few religions that does NOT believe in Eternal Hell for anyone, but it does believe in a rather long protracted path of learning for those who insist upon living by harming others. For a long time the Church and its people were very unified, no one would think of leaving the Church for any reason. But then when LRH died and control passed to the RTC, things began to happen that some followers could not condone. After much struggle, many of them left, although MOST of them were PURGED, especially the most highly advanced and trained counselors. They knew too much. Since then prices in the Church have gone from 30 or 50 dollars an hour for professional counseling to over $300! That's a 10 times increase. Prices in the Independent Field have stayed low remaining in the 20 to 50 dollars an hour range. Continued spiritual research in the Church has stopped since LRH died because no one is allowed to add to his writings or work. Research in the field however has gone on unimpeded, greatly reducing the numbers of hours to reach Clear and some of the higher states of being attainable through Scientology counseling. Since the Church can not compete with the Field and in fact does not want to compete with the Field, it has spent millions of dollars trying to wipe out the field on the basis of copyright and trade secret violations. Now many people think that LRH turned Dianetics into a religion merely because he wanted the tax advantages and legal protections afforded religions in the US and around the world. But the facts are that all of its practitioners hold Scientology to be a religious practice of spiritual counseling, and hell, they are exorcizing 'demons' to boot, so of course it is a religion. Therefore the efforts on the part of the RTC to stop independent field practitioners from using Scientology Technology, is actually an effort to prevent them from practicing their religion. It would be like some group of Christians taking you to court for using their Bible when you weren't an approved sect of the controlling power. Imagine someone suing you for using the word Jesus or giving or receiving communion because you weren't an Orthodox Catholic? Can you imagine someone copyrighting or trademarking these spiritual practices? Now it is true that the writings of LRH are the private writings of one man, and as such they do fall under standard copyright protection in the United States. However he meant for them to be used as Sacred Scripture for purely religious purposes and spiritual advancement, and this is exactly how they are held by his followers, both in and out of the Church. A while back the Church had a decision to make concerning the nature of its organization. It had to choose between being a Church and a not for profit religion, which it wanted to be for tax purposes, or being a for profit Corporation which could legally copyright its work and mark some of them as Trade Secrets. The law protects legal Corporations when it comes to trade secrets, and copyright matters. Corporations are for profit and they pay taxes, and they are afforded various protections under the law WHICH RELIGIONS ARE NOT. Recently the Church of Scientology won its status as a religion with the IRS so it is now TAX FREE, which means YOUR TAX DOLLARS go to support it where normally its own tax dollars would. The net worth of the Church is in the hundreds of millions and its yearly income is in the millions. Yet still the Church wishes to treat its writings as licensed secrets that only those it approves of may use. Thus it is spending literally millions of dollars that it gets TAX FREE from its parishioners to sue those who wish to practice private Scientology in the field. If the Church had to pay taxes on its income it would not be so fast with the law suits. Now here is the story behind the story. The Church never sues in criminal court, but only in civil court. Under criminal law you are innocent until proven guilty. BUT UNDER CIVIL LAW YOU ARE GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT. That means they can sue you for ANYTHING ANY TIME THEY WISH AND YOU HAVE TO GO TO COURT AND PROVE THAT YOU ARE INNOCENT! Yet going to court costs the small guy lots of money which he doesn't have because he is not making millions of dollars a year, and he IS paying taxes on his income! Therefore the Church has allegedly taken the tactic of suing field practitioners EVEN WHEN THE CHURCH KNOWS THE SUIT IS INDEFENSIBLE or SHAKEY, because they know the field practitioner will back down and avoid the suit altogether by doing what ever the Church wishes. So what we have here is a multimillion dollar NON PROFIT corporation which does NOT pay taxes, USING the court system of the United States to harass out of existence small ma and pa groups so that they can't compete with the Church using Sacred Scriptures, delivering more and better service for less than 1/10 the price! Now here is the rest of the story. Almost every independent Scientology practitioner has not only been legally harassed, but they have also been criminally harassed by hoodlums, usually around the time of the legal proceedings brought to bear against them. THEY ALL HAVE SOME HORROR STORY TO TELL. Reverend Enid Vien is a case in point. During the time when the Church first sued her for copyright violations, her house was broken into. A phone card was stolen on which $1700 in long distance charges were then run up. Also stolen were some PARISHIONER CONFESSIONAL FORMULARY FOLDERS! Those are the records practitioners keep of what happens in session, including what the client says, and are like the therapists's notes, only they are very detailed. The only reason anyone could want someone's folder is to cull overts and withholds from them to later blackmail the person. The Church itself is allegedly notorious for this kind of behavior! Then one night Enid found one of her four cats dying from a LARGE CALIBER BULLET TO THE HEAD on her back steps. Other practitioners have similar stories to tell. Dead pets are a common occurance. Phoney calls to the police reporting non existent child abuse, computer porn or drug dealing, or calls to the IRS reporting non existent tax fraud are another. Also constant following by private investigators for no apparent reason, not to mention calls to employers and insurance companies giving false and alarming data from anonymous 'concerned' citizens. Enid wrote a letter to the FBI concerning the harassment, stating that she could not prove it was the Church, but if anything happened to her or her family they should know where to start looking. She sent a copy of the letter to the RTC, and they threw a fit, BUT THE CRIMINAL HARASSMENT STOPPED HAPPENING. Now here is the catch. Scientology is either a for profit corporation entitled to its copyrights and trade secrets or it is a tax exempt religious denomination with no copyright or trade secret protection on the use and dissemination of its Sacred Scriptures. If you allow the Church to have its cake and eat it too, it will use its tax free profits to destroy freedom of religion in America, freedom not only to practice sane and intelligent Scientology, unfettered by financial and control interests, but freedom to practice other religions and disciplines of mental healing as well, which it considers 'squirrel and off beat practices.' It is a well known fact that the Church considers itself the mortal enemy of Psychiatry, the AMA, the WHO, the FDA and a whole mess of others. Some of this is because they honestly believe that practices offered by these groups are really no good for you, but an awful lot of it is simply that the Church brooks no competition. To them "...competition is a tactic of the weak to fetter the strong." -LRH HCOPL 19 March 1968 New OEC Vol. 0, pg 193 To them, if you are trying to help people, and you are not practicing STANDARD Dianetics and Scientology, then you are doing something wrong, you are a 'Squirrel' or worse an SP or Suppressive Person. Although openly they have retracted the policy, inwardly in their hearts many of them still feel that Squirrels and SP's are FAIR GAME. That means the Church will not censure or condemn any attack by one of their members on the fair game target, whether legal or illegal, unless of course they get caught. If we can take this law suit to the higher courts and get a reversal of the lower court's opinion, it would force the Church to behave itself as any well mannered and cultured religion must, and it would be a gigantic step forward towards true freedom of religion in America. You know maybe I shouldn't say this, but I am going to say it anyhow. There are a lot of religious people in America WHO DON'T WANT THERE TO BE FREEDOM OF RELIGION, they want everyone to follow THEIR religion. Perhaps it might seem like a good thing if the Church of Scientology were to wipe out its own Independent Field or Free Zone as it is called, that would mean there were that many fewer Scientologists around practicing one of those OTHER religions we wished didn't exist namely Scientology. But this is very short sighted, because I personally know what many Scientology Church people think about other religions themselves. They would prefer a One World, One Religion, One Government, One Thought kind of World. LRH never said it, but I got sick of hearing it from my fellow Scientologists. The Church of Scientology, in my humble opinion, would wipe out every physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or religious practice except their own if they had a chance to do it. They have no written policy that says this that I know of, but I lived with them for long enough to know. It is part of their own doctrine NEVER to mix Scientology with other practices, which prevents Scientology from benefiting from wisdom already present on Earth, and also prevents other practices from benefiting from Scientology. This is all because they don't wish any competition, not because they really think it is best for mankind. My opinion. THEY DON'T WANT THERE TO BE ANY OTHER PRACTICES, and Buddy, if you aren't a Church Scientologist, THAT MEANS YOU! So I plead with you all to consider supporting this cause, no matter what you think about Scientology, LRH, the Free Zone or (God Help Us) ME! Enid is not asking for much, every $5.00 bill that comes to her aid will add up to the possibility that she can appeal the decision. Her lawyer has already promised to do the appeal for FREE if only Enid will pay costs up to this point. The lawyer is a crack professional who has spent years fighting the Church in earlier really massive lawsuits where they lost big time. The church is terrified of Enid and they are pressing her to drop the suit swiftly, because they know damn well that if it gets to the Supreme Court they will lose big time all over gain, and this time for good. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THIS QUESTION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS AND TAX EXEMPTION ETC. have started to make the way to the top court of the land. Please, help us get it there. If you are unsure, or you just don't have any money but you do have some expertise, or you just want to express your concern and love for the constitution please give her a call. This lady is a wonderful outgoing woman, all smiles and laughs even AFTER losing to the Church of Scientology. Homer)) ================ http://www.clearing.org ==================== Tue Nov 18 03:06:02 EST 2014 ftp://ftp.lightlink.com/pub/archive/homer/act36.memo Send mail to archive@lightlink.com saying help ================== http://www.lightlink.com/theproof =================== Learning implies Learning with Certainty or Learning without Certainty. Learning across a Distance implies Learning by Being an Effect. Learning by Being an Effect implies Learning without Certainty. Therefore, Learning with Certainty implies Learning, but not by Being an Effect, and not across a Distance. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFUav3qURT1lqxE3HERAqn5AJwOMJZ678QZwKQRTSZU4KGHo25qAQCeKB+V Bcl2QFW2LpoJkOCIXAXBHu4= =ANUj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Tue Nov 18 22:02:07 EST 2014