Skyhigh 20 The Kingfisher speaks again

The Kingfisher speaks again.



After the controversial, but in my eyes very great,
chapter from Kingfisher in the latest issue of this
magazine, I decided to contact him and let him have
another go. Not only did he send me a text,no he sent
me a text of 3 sides of printed text ON PAPER!!!
Arrrrggggghhh, now I have to start up the slave job
and tip all this into my editor!!! SHIT!! Now I know how
this party will work out for me - he he!! Well that is
ok with me, coz I really like text from him. So to you
Linus: Thanx a lot for this piece of cool text. I would
love to get more from you in he future, but I will con-
tact you concerning this. Ok, I better stop my talk
and start tipping away..




Some thoughts about the raid at XS4ALL

On tuesday, September 5th 1995, the Dutch Internet-
providers XS4ALL in Amsterdam were raided by a Dutch
bailiff and lawyers from the Church of Scientology.
The cause of this raid was that a user of XS4ALL
services, Fonns, published a controversial paper,
namely the Fishman affidavit, on his homepage at XS4
ALL. This affidavit contains some of the best kept
secrets of th Church. Furthermore, this was another
crackdown in a series of hostile activities directed
at various Internet operators by CoS, a chain of e-
vents that include an attack on the Penet anonymous
remailer in Finland (maintained by Julf Helsingius) and
several attempts to silence a Usenet conference
called "alt.religion.scientology".
One of the employees at XS4ALL happens to be
Mr. Ammo of Triad, the only remaining, but very active
Dutch Triad member. Late night th same day, I recie-
ved an e-mail from Mr. Ammo with some brief informa-
tion about his raid, asking me if I had ever heard of
some crazy guys called the Church of Scientology.
Indeed I have.
The Church of Scientology is no normal Church. It
is a combination of a cult and a transnational corpo-
ration. The Church claims to sell "religious technolo-
gy", a quais-science established by its' founder:
Lafayette Ron Hubbard. The "priests" are called
"presidents" and other terms originating from firm
management, and in every respect the Church of
Scientology IS a company, reaffirming the complete
lack of respect for humanity these huge business
giants often emanate. The main reason for still hold-
ing on to the "religion" concept is that it brings ad-
vantagous taxation rates in many countries. (As you
could expect from a smart company.) In some aspects
this company is even a mafia, since it makes regular
use of deliberate illegal methods.
L Ron Hubbard was a former pulp science fiction
writer, a mediocre one, working in the same genre as
his friends Robert Heinlein and A.E. Van Vogt. One of
his better novels is "Return to Tommorow" from the
early 1970's. At his best, Hubbard wrote a combination
of horror and science fiction with a deep human sense,
and just like so many other famous writers, he was
completely nuts. He abused his wife and children and
was obsessed with the idea of earning more and more
money. He had the psychopath-meets-artist pesonali
ty of Charles Manson. (In fact, Charles Manson was a
member of the Scientology cult: according to himself
he had passed all the courses and achieved the high-
est standing within the doctrine and could thus ope-
rate on his own). At several occasions he stated that
the best way to get rich and famous would probably
be to start your own religion.
Hubbard admired all great scientists and artists,
notably Albert Einstein, but above all he seems to
have admired the probably greatest and famous sci-
ence fiction writer this world has ever seen: Isaac
Asimov. He was definately disturbed by the fact that
some people live in other peoples' minds forever,
while others are almost instantly forgotten. You know
authors like L Ron Hubbard do grow on trees. How-
ever, if you start your own religion, your followers
will for eternity promote your writings, no matter the
the quality. Scientology was Hubbards' shortcut to
immortality. Judge for yourself whether this was in-
genious or just lame.
Now Hubbard is dead, but his monster religion cor-
poration still lives, destroying the lives of thousands
of enslaved souls. The Church of Scientology specia-
lise in cult management: tracking down people going
through life crisis, supplying them with intense atten
tion and care, having them end up as cult robots e-
motionally addicted to "clearing", a kind of ad hoc
cult psychotherapy. The followers then have to buy
education at ever increasing prices, learning a cult
mythology which is, in fact, complete nonsense.
In case you want to know, the cult learns you that
75 billion years ago, Earth (by then known as Tee-
geeack) was used as a dump by the Galactic Federa-
tion (which was founded 96 billion years ago), under
the command of a guy called Xenu. At that time, this
Milkyway was overpopulated by some creatures cal-
led Thetans. Xenu solved this by shooting them, free
zing them, and sending them to Earth where he blew
them up using hydrogene-bombs. To be precise, he
blew them up on Hawaii and in Las Palmas. After six
years  Xenu was overturn by some rebellion and sealed
up in an electronic mountain trap, where he still is.
However, the blown-up Thetans still exists at some
subatomic level. Every humans' mind has at its' core a
Thetan: this is the being that "thinks", thus the
source of human intelligence. Our physical bodies can
not think. However we are constantly attacked by
other Thetans drifting around on the Globe. These
group in clusters, sharing some bad experience, and
when a huge such cluster attacks our poor mind we
can suffer metal ilness and other horrible stuff.
Thetans outside your own are called Body-Thetans...
I guess you are already fed up with this crap. Let us
get on with the story.
Even though they would hardly admit it in public,
many skilled company managements admire the in-
genious market idea of Scientology. This "religious
technology" has its' own niche, with other cults as
its only competitors. In fact, there is next to no com-
petition at all, as the market is overly big. Govern-
ments can do very little to limit the powers of Scien-
tology, as most countries have cleared freedom of
religion acts.
So what enemies could such a cult possible have?
Well, the answer sounds like some old cliche: indivi-
dualism, knowledge and information. Journalists and
free individuals seeking the truth revealing the
Church for what it is. Over the years, many such peo-
ple have attacked this cult; always from a weak pos-
sition, and whenever they succeeded, they have been
tracked down and harassed by "market maintainers"
from the Church.
But now, things have changed. An international
network of information sharing built on a firm core of
individualism threatens to seriously weaken this so-
called "religion".
Now, let me tell you what kind of people these
guys at XS4ALL in fact are, and why they dare work
against this Church.
XS4ALL is a middle-sized firm situated in Amster-
dam, Holland. Among the other European countries,
Holland is known as a very liberal country. Notably it
is perfectly legal to smoke pot in Holland if you like
to. This does not mean that the Dutch authorities in
any way encourage you to do that, but that they en-
courage you to make your own decisions about this
and a great deal of other things as well.
Throughout the Dutc constitution goes a strong
belief in individual responsibility. You are indeed VERY
free, as long as you take on responsibility for your
acts. This also means it was until April 1993 LEGAL to
hack into computers in Holland, as long as you didn't
cause any harm, steal or destroy anything. These re
strictions are also known as the golden rules of net
hacking, known widely throughout the digital under-
ground. So until early 1993, Holland had one of Eu-
ropes most liberal computer acts and was thus the
nerve for the entire European digital underground.
From a standard old-fashioned conservative view
this would mean that all Dutch people are pot smo-
king cyberpunks, hacking into computers worldwide,
trashing up the international economy completely.
However this prejudice fails. In fact, the Dutch are
one of Europes' more mature people, and the only
known drug-addicted information stealers from Eu-
rope came from Berlin, Germany. (Pengo and Hagbard,
described in books like "The Cuckoos' Egg" by Clifford
Stoll and "Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner & John Markoff)
Germany has had a constitution which is in many re-
spects the opposite of the Dutch; you will almost
have to ask permission for breathing. (German police
have also busted a lot of C64-freaks on every weak
foundations, but note:this is changing at the moment!)
Of course this Dutch view of individualism is also
different from the standard American liberalism,
which is instead based on ownership. In America it is
sometimes legal to shoot a person who intrudes your
property. Thus some American fundamentalists think
people hacking into computers ought to be shot,
since they see no difference in intruding on someones
land and intruding someones "virtual" or "intellctual"
property: mine is mine and yours is yours to put it
short. Almost all huge companies adhere American
management systems and also share this view. The
Church of Scientology is no exception.
A normal middlesized firm getting raided by a huge
cult corporation would instantly feel the cold draft
and try to solve the problem in the easiest way pos-
sible, They might even allow it to cost money. A cor-
poration lik CoS, having it's own security service with
a capacity equal to that of a small country, would
scare the shit out of any normal firm. XS4ALL, how-
ever, is NOT a normal middle-sized firm. It is an ex-
foundation, an ofshoot of the Dutch hacker-magazine
"HackTic". The staff at XS4ALL are ALL cyberpunks,
former long-haired anarchists happy to find them-
selves in charge of a company so fast growing, that
it is considered important for the Dutch national
economy. And as you can tell from its' name, this is a
company which wants to give everyone access to in-
formation, worldwide.
Felipe Rodriquez, Rop Gongrijp and the other sys-
tem maintainers at XS4ALL instantly realised there
was something very strong going on in their corner of
the Internet. Dutch media also realized there was
something not quite right about this event. Firms and
corporations raid each other every day for the
strangest reasons, but this case was indeed diffe-
rent. The point is not only that the raid XS4ALL was
very un-hackerlike, since hackers believe in a free
flow of information, but it was also EXTREMELy UN-
DUTCH, in that CoS attacked the Internet-providers
XS4ALL instead of the person that published the do-
cument on his homepage. As I have previously told
you, Dutch constitutions stress the individiuals' own
responsibility of hers/his actions.
Hell broke lose. The hackers at XS4ALL had lots
of among Dutch media representatives and had always
been eager to run an open media policy. After some
massive media noise, everyone brave enough started
to put the affidavit at their homepages. The informa-
tion was instantly available to anyone at a dozen
computers throughout Holland, and spread to other
European countries too. A Dutch liberal politician,
Oussama Cherribi, even put the text at his homepage.
Some people printed the affidavit on paper and put it
on public billboards in Amsterdam for everyone to
read.
This case was indeed interesting. The affidavit is
an official document. Such documents are not illegal
to redistribute. The hook is that the document in it-
self contains claimed copyrighted material. The bor-
der between "common" and "copyrighted" information
gets blurred. People who make a living from informa-
tion, like journalists and authors hold their breath
and dare not even speak on these matters. Liberta-
rian politicans who stress BOTH private ownership of
information AND the freedom of speech and press,
are extremely confused, as they have to chose be-
tween the two. If a Dutch court was to decide wheth-
er the document should be freee or not, that decision
would be a precedent for the whole European com-
munity, and thus the whole world, as you can not dis-
connect yourself from the free flow of information
through the Internet.
Since the Church sued XS4ALL and a number of
Dutch Internet providers plus Karin Spaink, a Dutch
journalist who also published the document on the
Net, a trial was scheduled in Holland on the 14th of
December which would be of major importance for the
whole Internet community. What happened?
Well, Steven Fishman, the man who wrote the affi-
davit in the first place, came over to Holland to give
his testimony before the Dutch court. CoS probably
asked their legal advisory board for help on how to
deal with this new situation and then withdrew their
claims a few days before the trial was to take place,
saying they "compared the documents in the affidavit
to their own a second time". The new CoS strategy is
to claim that these documents - papers the Church
already fought several legal cases to keep secret -
are forgeries. CoS have probably lost their "intel-
lectual property" included in the Fishman affidavit
for All Time!
Huge Software firms, soon to be the very engines
of our post-industrial society, already had to give up
the possibility of having their intellectual domains
protected by "patents" and instead had to copyright
renaming themselves "software publishers". They are
ofcurse scared of this turn in the development of
Internet. By cancelling the trial CoS and many other
"intellectual property" holders could postpone a de
cision which sooner or later has to be made - where
shall we draw the border between "owned" and "com-
mon" information?
But I, along with all other information-anarchists
worldwide, can damn well speak out, because we have
absolutely nothing to loose. I tell you what : The
freedom of speech, the right to express your own o-
pinion and learn about the world we live in from any
sources you like, was with mankind before "owner-
ship" was even invented. Before people invented
trade and economy, there was politics. If one of these
have to stand back, it must be the obsolete system
of ownership we invented for ourselves, because this
system reflects nothing but patterns of power
throughout society, inviting parasites like the Church
of Scientology to feed from the system.
The alternative is: "Shut it all down, and luck them
all up"

Sincerely:

King Fisher / Triad aka
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

(The star is, as always, to taken as the alpha-sign!)