Picket Report, event
Scientology Lies >
Pickets >
Vienna >Picket Report, event
From: German_Scn_News
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Scientology in the Viennese Stock Exchange
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 16:40:58 -0400
Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com
Lines: 142
Message-ID:
Reply-To: German_Scn_News
NNTP-Posting-Host: p-404.newsdawg.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
X-Sender: [email protected]
Path: news2.lightlink.com!news.lightlink.com!skynet.be!newsfeed.stanford.edu!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!darkstar.zippy!german_scn_news
Xref: news2.lightlink.com alt.religion.scientology:1112462
Report of a Critic
Scientology in the Viennese Stock Exchange
Vienna, Austria
May 2, 2000
www.awadalla.at
From May 1 to 7 Scientology is making a self-presentation
at an exhibit in the Viennese stock exchange. Actual stock
exchange business no longer takes place there; the building
serves only to house restaurants and conventions anymore.
Here is the report of a visit to the official opening ceremony
in the stock exchange:
I was there together with a friend. We had our "Scientology
Kills" T-shirts on. The opening was set to take place at 11
o'clock, we came about 10 minutes later, but the guests
were all still standing on the steps of the stock exchange.
Two big banners were stretched out between the columns,
and walking back and forth on the sidewalk were women in
Scientology t-shirts (including Sujata Wagner, who was
wearing a sari, of course) handing out leaflets with the
exhibition program and the cheap sort of yellow roses.
I greeted a sect commissioner and was chatting with him
for a little while when my cellular phone went off. My
conversation had nothing to do with the matter at hand, so I
walked a few steps away, followed by press spokesman
Andreas Boeck and another presumed OSA man (Otto
Kauf). Although I was clearly and visibly on the telephone,
the two of them placed themselves approximately 30 cm.
(12 inches) in front of me and glowered at me. As I was
putting my phone away, Boeck said to me that I was not
permitted inside and that I was explicitly being turned away.
Upon hearing that, my companion and I rearranged our
clothing so that the words "Scientology Kills" were visible.
I was standing back on the steps and speaking with the sect
commissioner. Beside him was standing Harald Janisch, the
Austrian speaker of the Moon sect, with him was Peter
Zoehrer, also a Moonie and operator of
www.religionsfreiheit.at.
He was not speaking to me (why I don't know), although
he had always been very friendly with me before. Janisch is
on very friendly speaking terms with Boeck and Angelika
Thonauer.
Boeck came back to me and said that I would have to get
off the steps, because they still belonged to the stock
exchange. So I stepped over to the sidewalk. Kauf asked
my companion where he got his t-shirt from, and he replied
truthfully that he had gotten it from me.
So we stood on the sidewalk right in front of the steps and
wondered why they were not letting us in. A photographer,
(presumably not a Scientologist) asked why we were
wearing these t-shirts. We spoke with him shortly and gave
him a leaflet (otherwise we were not handing them out
because only Scientologists and the sect commissioner
were there).
With a camera in hand, Eveline Aigner rushed at us and
threatened to call the police on us, whom she said she had
already notified because she had learned that we had
wanted to attend. I asked whether she had learned that
telepathically, because I had told nobody in advance (to be
sure I had talked about it on the telephone, but she had not
told them). We gave her to understand that we were not
afraid of the police, that we were not doing anything illegal,
nor did we have anything in mind. After about a quarter
hour, a uniformed policeman arrived who was very friendly
to me. He said that we should stand on the other side of the
narrow side street. We brought it to his attention that he
had no legal ground for sending us away. Nevertheless, we
actually stepped over there, which had the advantage that
we were now better visible for the people waiting for the
streetcar.
Naturally the police officer received a leaflet, too, and he
wandered with my passport and the leaflet in his hand over
to Aigner, spoke with him a while, used Kauf's cellular
telephone to make a call, and after quite a while came back
over to us.
We should have announced that we were having an event,
he said, then we could have put up a table here and passed
out info. He even told us how to apply for that, but we
knew it already. I also told him that we had planned to view
the exhibition. Then he took his leave and left on good
terms.
We kept on standing there until most of the visitors had left,
then we strolled comfortably down the sidewalk in front of
the stock exchange to the next ice cream parlor ...
Report from Inside (from a critic): Peter Fleischer from
the Vienna Org spoke, so did Janet Weiland (Kurt Weiland
was not to be seen). Then the ladies Weiland and
Goellner-Sweet most cordially entertained the audience.
Goellner-Sweet is a staff worker at the U.S. Embassy who
enthusiastically contributed her writing about state measures
to a study group in September of 1999 at an international
meeting about sects.
During this speech, the great enthusiasm could be heard in
the form of applause and shouts.
Probably the most interesting part of this event, which was
planned according to a well-known model, were the
following announced speakers and their presentations:
Johannes Prau, management advisor (formerly of "Business
Success," known as a Scientology operation, now
apparently self-employed) and WISE member, on
"Fundamentals of Organization," "How do I organize work"
and "Effective Planning"; Richard Amm, course supervisor
of "Business Success" for "Stress and Organization"; Eva
Roetzer, teacher from Berndorf, Lower Austria (named in
"Bruecke"/["Bridge"] nr. 144 as the one in charge of training
at the Vienna Org), who advertised for her Scientology
tutorial courses in the "Berndorfer Gemeindekurier" under
"Learn, but do it right!"; and Ulli Trimmel on "Human Rights
violations in Psychiatry."
Report of a Critic
First appeared: www.awadalla.at, 2.5.2000
Hopeless, but not serious
Last modified: Thu May 4 23:55:12 2000
---
Unofficial translations of German media, For non-commercial use only
Recent events - http://cisar.org/trnmenu.htm
Informational publications http://members.tripod.com/German_Scn_News
Over 1000 articles sorted by date http://cisar.org/sortdate.htm
This page was last updated on July 10, 2003.
|