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Judge Robert H. Wallerstein, an unknown number of prosecutors in the Riverside DA's office, the cult's lawyers and perhaps the Riverside Sheriff's Department were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to entrap. Seven years after it happened, it came to light that the judge had been in on an attempt to entrap me for "failure to appear" on an indictment they tried to keep secret by not sending a notice to appear to me or my lawyer. Wallerstein signed an arrest warrant for the "crime" of failure to appear prior to when I did in fact show up. The arrest warrant was never made part of the court record, but the Sheriff's office kept a copy of it which they filed in Arizona when I was arrested there.

Copy here: http://www.operatingthetan.com...

The cult's lawyers went to a huge effort in an unrelated case to have me in a deposition later the same day as the notice to appear. I believe I would have been arrested on camera at the deposition if the cult's lawyers had not screwed up by assumed something I put in a filing in the bankruptcy case to mean I knew about the notice to appear when I didn't.

If you wonder why I say something that could be considered to slander the judge (if it were not true), he is long dead, and there are a ton of legal precedents that you can't slander the dead. My lawyer and I would have tried to recuse Wallerstein had we known he had been engaged in a criminal conspiracy against me 7 months before the trial.

Speaking from personal accounts, those who take on the $ciclos must be greatly prepared. My good friend Keith Henson is still serving his sentence for "Interfering with a religion" in Riverside, CA. He's a good example of what the $ciclos can and *will* do to keep those who would oppose them in check.

I personally disagree with the fundamentals of scientology, I'm Wiccan.

See, for example, the 29 Apr 2007 entry on http://www.operatingthetan.com/, which links to an arrest warrant ordered by a retired judge with no connection (at that time) to Henson's case. There is a copy of the warrant at http://www.operatingthetan.com/extradition-from-ar izona-docs/first-warrant-enh.gif.

The warrant does not appear on the court docket, which can be viewed online (links at http://www.operatingthetan.com/).

The warrant, dated Sept 15 2000, claims Henson violated (among others), California Penal Code section 1320(A), failure to appear. The docket shows Henson appeared in Riverside County court before Judge Albert J. Wojcik on Sept 15 2000, and was released on his Own Recognizance.

Henson has claimed since several days PRIOR to the Sept 15 2000 hearing, that he was never properly noticed about it and only learned of it by accident. If he had not learned of the hearing, he would have been in another city attending a deposition ordered for another scientology-driven court matter, and he would indeed have failed to appear at the Riverside County hearing.

SEVEN MONTH LATER, the Riverside County prosecution maneuvered to bring Henson's case before the same retired judge that ordered the bogus warrant. The judge's conduct throughout this trial was unbelievable, but too long a story for a single post.

Henson only learned of this warrant a few weeks ago, when it was sent to Arizona authorities by the Riverside County authorities, who either didn't know its significance or never expected Henson to see it.

That's just one example. It's a particularly good one because the proof exists in corrupt Riverside County court's own records.

See, for example, the 29 Apr 2007 entry on http://www.operatingthetan.com/, which links to an arrest warrant ordered by a retired judge with no connection (at that time) to Henson's case. There is a copy of the warrant at http://www.operatingthetan.com/extradition-from-ar izona-docs/first-warrant-enh.gif.

The warrant does not appear on the court docket, which can be viewed online (links at http://www.operatingthetan.com/).

The warrant, dated Sept 15 2000, claims Henson violated (among others), California Penal Code section 1320(A), failure to appear. The docket shows Henson appeared in Riverside County court before Judge Albert J. Wojcik on Sept 15 2000, and was released on his Own Recognizance.

Henson has claimed since several days PRIOR to the Sept 15 2000 hearing, that he was never properly noticed about it and only learned of it by accident. If he had not learned of the hearing, he would have been in another city attending a deposition ordered for another scientology-driven court matter, and he would indeed have failed to appear at the Riverside County hearing.

SEVEN MONTH LATER, the Riverside County prosecution maneuvered to bring Henson's case before the same retired judge that ordered the bogus warrant. The judge's conduct throughout this trial was unbelievable, but too long a story for a single post.

Henson only learned of this warrant a few weeks ago, when it was sent to Arizona authorities by the Riverside County authorities, who either didn't know its significance or never expected Henson to see it.

That's just one example. It's a particularly good one because the proof exists in corrupt Riverside County court's own records.

See, for example, the 29 Apr 2007 entry on http://www.operatingthetan.com/, which links to an arrest warrant ordered by a retired judge with no connection (at that time) to Henson's case. There is a copy of the warrant at http://www.operatingthetan.com/extradition-from-ar izona-docs/first-warrant-enh.gif.

The warrant does not appear on the court docket, which can be viewed online (links at http://www.operatingthetan.com/).

The warrant, dated Sept 15 2000, claims Henson violated (among others), California Penal Code section 1320(A), failure to appear. The docket shows Henson appeared in Riverside County court before Judge Albert J. Wojcik on Sept 15 2000, and was released on his Own Recognizance.

Henson has claimed since several days PRIOR to the Sept 15 2000 hearing, that he was never properly noticed about it and only learned of it by accident. If he had not learned of the hearing, he would have been in another city attending a deposition ordered for another scientology-driven court matter, and he would indeed have failed to appear at the Riverside County hearing.

SEVEN MONTH LATER, the Riverside County prosecution maneuvered to bring Henson's case before the same retired judge that ordered the bogus warrant. The judge's conduct throughout this trial was unbelievable, but too long a story for a single post.

Henson only learned of this warrant a few weeks ago, when it was sent to Arizona authorities by the Riverside County authorities, who either didn't know its significance or never expected Henson to see it.

That's just one example. It's a particularly good one because the proof exists in corrupt Riverside County court's own records.

Henson never served the year he was sentenced to by the scientology-controlled kangaroo court in Riverside County, California. Scientology learned that Henson was now in Arizona, and it instructed the Riverside County county to seek extradition.

Extradition requires two extradition warrants, one signed by the governor of the extraditing state, and the other signed by the governor of the state where the fugitive is located. Both warrants have been signed, so Henson is being held without bail until he exhausts the very limited appeals available to him. Then, in all likelihood, he will be transfered to a jail in California, where scientology is eagerly waiting for the opportunity to spread false rumors that Henson is a child molester.

This law applies: http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?in Doc=/ars/13/03841.htm&Title=13&DocType=ARS

You can learn far more about Henson's case than you ever wanted to know at http://www.operatingthetan.com/ If you just want the executive summary, you might prefer http://www.lermanet.com/books/henson.htm

If you want to help Henson, please consider his request made earlier today.

Henson asks that people see if any of the reporters who have done stories on California prison overcrowding would be interested in doing a story about how -- despite the overcrowding and consequent release of felons -- the Governator has signed an extradition warrant to bring back a 64-year-old man whose meds the citizens of California will have to pay for.

http://www.operatingthetan.com/extradition-from-ar izona-docs/from-arel-2007-05-09.txt

How the hell, indeed, it is really sad that in 2007 a cult can put someone in prison. I personally cannot do much about it, but I can link to his site ( http://www.operatingthetan.com/ ), so I made a button:

http://commandline.org.uk/images/icons/freekeithhe nson.png

Pretty rubbish I know, is there anyone out there with photoshop/gimp skills that can do better?

Scientology is a business, and an unethical business at that. It is run by dishonorable men and women, and I will see it in ruins. Ahh, I love the smell of gun powder drifting on the morning breeze.

"the judge was a scientologist" Is that true? Cause that's kind of scary.

No basis given for claim, but the judge in question (Wallerstein) is apparently dead, so it can't be libel.

So, what's his defense for stalking?

Gee, when did you stop beating your wife?

Keith wasn't stalking anyone. He was picketing outside the Scientology compound in Hemet, California. The clams pulled out all the stops to shut him up, including lying in court. Keith wasn't allowed to even mention that the clams are trained in how to lie convincingly. Read and learn.

-jcr

Google can be gamed--in the short run. Look at Scientology's attempt to game Google by registering many hundreds of domains with cookie-cutter sites that linked to each other, mainly running off of a handful of servers. :^) They did well for a little while until Google adapted to their bombing. Then CoS tried a bogus DMCA attack which back-fired. They've even tried blogbombing with little results. Their only non-failure is to buy a lot of Adword placements.

Just don't take any photos/GPS of $cientology near Riverside California. That's an "interfering with a religion" crime according to the kangaroo court there. (And leave the Tom Cruise missles at home.)

I've mirrored some normal web content to Freenet . This freesite (only available if running Freenet) is a mirror of http://www.operatingthetan.com, my normal website on Keith Henson v. Scientology.

My major gripe with Freenet to this date is while it is marketed toward "weblike" applications, it often loses content more than a click or so in (note the front page of my freesite there works almost perfectly but if you click in the performance is significantly degraded).

I think its killer app might ultimately be the distribution of large 'splitfiles' with FEC encoding. I don't want to nuke Freenet right now by suggesting downloading huge pirate AVIs, but if you find one and try it, you'll see what I mean.

--
http://buttersquash.net Home of the Buttersquash Conspiracy

She's not as wired as she would be. She's in the Cult of Greed & Power (Time, 1991). Which means she'll never go to that website there. She'll probably never go here either. I hope she doesn't end up here.

How can a woman so tech savy get duped by them?

At my Scientology Lies site, I document my correspondence with Google about ads for that site. Google's policy is not to run ads for sites that are critical of a person or organization, so it's impossible to advertise consumer information sites warning people about unethical or illegal practices by any organization, be it Scientology or McDonald's.

When I pointed out that one of the sites Scientology advertised was bashing psychiatrists, though, they didn't feel that ran afoul of their policy.

As for shenanigans, there's an excellent analysis of just how successful Scientology's attempts to spam search engines have been.

Kristi

That's not funny. Neither is it funny that the cult had to misuse this tragedy by altering history later in a suit against a critic.

Mike Gormez

In recent news, Keith Henson had his home invaded just yesterday under pretext of bankruptcy asset investigation, because he has been bankrupted by Scientology litigation.

In recent news, Keith Henson had his home invaded just yesterday under pretext of bankruptcy asset investigation, because he has been bankrupted by Scientology litigation.

Of course it still happens. Just ask some opponents of the Church of Scientology.

Is called VisIT. It produces a graphical representation of how sites link together, based around any given query. It was used quite sucessfully to demonstrate how Scientology had spammed Google, by creating multiple domains all linking back to their main web page.

It's a freebie download and you can get it here.

Check the update on the site. After the ODP caught the Scientologist editor spamming the directory, they fired her and savagely edited down the directory, removing hundreds of spam links and mirrors.

While it appears clear that Google caved in to PR pressure (site author Andreas has stated he didn't counternotify the DMCA notification), the victory seems to only pertain to the home page and not to the dozens of other urls cult lawyer Ava Paquette cited in her original complaint - which of course leaves the material on those pages unsearchable. Google probably made an 'executive decision' to allow the home page, since there isn't a single thing that could deemed a copyright violation on that page.

However, Google is still allowing Paquette to exploit a contradictory flaw in the DMCA by honoring the rest of the complaint. (I tried searching about 15 other links directly on Google, and all came up dead - so I can't say unilaterally that Google is blocking all of the urls, but they're at least blocking all 15 of a random sampling.)

The key contradiction within the Act itself appears to be the vastly different indemnity offered to ISPs versus that provided for search engines, or as the Act refers to them, "information retrieval tools." Under the DMCA, once notified of links to infringing content, a search engine is required to disable access to the material in question pending a counternotification from the accused infringer - which was what was demanded of the xenu.net site author despite the fact that such a counternotification would have required a citizen of Norway to submit to the jurisdiction of a US federal court.

However, in a recent ruling dealing with the liability of AOL, a court found just the opposite: as an ISP, it was protected from liability for providing "transitory digital network connections" to allegedly infringing material, and not obliged to remove such links even if explicitly informed of their existence. Ironically, ISPs, who are arguably more directly in control, as it were, of third party material hosted on their servers, are granted more protection for "transitory" access to infringing material than search engines, whose very raison d'etre is to provide such links which are inherently ephemeral, and hence transitory, by nature, as they are the result of specific queries, and do not exist on a permanenty accessible single page.

This basic contradiction within the DMCA puts the onus on search engines to maintain by hand the results of their automated search process, and respond to any and all DMCA complaints, regardless of the location or even continued existence of the page to which the link directs the user.

It's clear that this loophole presents rapacious copyright owners with a new tool with which to combat any and all use of their material, but as seen in the case of xenu.net, it can also be used as an alternative to launching a suit by copyright owners whose goal is not the protection of their property, but the silencing of critics.

Google's DMCA disclaimer page says " Please note that you will be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights." Is Google prepared to sue the Church of Scientology? After all, misrepresention is most certainly what has occured, and only after Google suffered a major league PR asswhomping did they, upon further reflection, decide that the home page was not a copyright violation.

So while Scientology lost the major battle (their intention was and has been for some time the removal of all critical content from Google, and especially xenu.net from the top ten), they still managed to win lots of minor skirmishes - forcing the xenu.net site author to respond to dozens of specific complaints, nearly all of them barratrous (which I believe I can opine, being familar with the specific content on those pages, each of which adheres to the bounds of fair use). And because Scientology's newfound weapon found limited success, we can be sure we're going to see it again and again. This is far fom over and unless Google takes a stand, they will be abused badly.

Wow, that's the second /. story concerning scientology in a few weeks. They seem very present on the Internet going to some lengths being even more present. I don't have the impression that other 'religions' are as technologically orientated as this. Thoughts?

Not any more. Check http://dmoz.org/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/ Scientology/ now. Compare to the recent mirror from directory.google.com.

My Google page explains what happened. Apparently they fired the Scientologist editor and sent a crack team of attack editors to clear the directory of spam. It went from a high count of 943 spammy links to 387 in a few days. (Some of these were moved to other directories.)

This hack is a known thing. I've done considerable research on this, and Scientology has perhaps the best example of how to "hack" google.

Details here:
http://www.operatingthetan.com/google/

Whatever you think about the Scientology zealots, this is impressive - coordinating thousands of pages, sites, and links in order to single-mindedly achieve an objective... Dominance on the first page of a search for "Scientology" in order to quiet their many critics.

This falls down rather quickly, though. Go to google and search for "Scientology secrets", for example, and you'll find all kinds of anti-Scientology literature.

-Ben

Yes, the Scientology Google ranking is well covered here: Operating Thetan

Big thanks to the Beckamn Institute at the University of Illinois for creating the VisIT software for the graphic demonstrations.

The Church of $cientology well knows this...

The Best Article I've seen on this effect....

Post 2

Post 3

Actually Google's system can, and is, beeing abused..

Did you read the update on the page, or are you just parroting the previous +5 post on this?

Since this was first brought up a few days ago, the Scientology volunteer editor at the Open Directory Project, an upstream content provider for Google, was fired.

Interesting article here at http://www.operatingthetan.com/google/ about how the Church of Scientology exploits google's ranking system.

The basic gist is that google flags pages as more important (or higher relevance) if they have more links pointing to them...so the CoS makes thousands of spam pages that points at its main pages. Google sees the thousands of links, assigns the main CoS pages a high relevance, and thus they're the first to come up in any scientology-related search.

The moral being, for any new cool search technique devised to help fetch more relevant content, there'll be someone out there looking for a way to defeat it.

If you actually checked [google.com], you'd find that while that's mostly true, the #4 result returned is Operation Clambake [xenu.net] (Bearing the description: "The fight against Scientology on the Net"), which is probably the biggest and most comprehensive anti-scientology site around.

That's true. When I originally put together this page, though, it was at #11. People apparently reacted fairly quickly to this, hence the current higher ranking of xenu.net. The ranking of xenu.net has generally fluctuated between #4 and #11 for the past few months, usually only popping up to #4 for a few hours at a time and then dropping to #11. This time it appears to be stable, though.

I just checked again, and at least as of 8:39 AM this Friday, it is still at #4.

This search on Google Groups pulls up a lot of threads concerning the previous situation.

ptsc@nym.alias.net maintainer of operatingthetan.com

If you actually checked [google.com], you'd find that while that's mostly true, the #4 result returned is Operation Clambake [xenu.net] (Bearing the description: "The fight against Scientology on the Net"), which is probably the biggest and most comprehensive anti-scientology site around.

That's true. When I originally put together this page, though, it was at #11. People apparently reacted fairly quickly to this, hence the current higher ranking of xenu.net. The ranking of xenu.net has generally fluctuated between #4 and #11 for the past few months, usually only popping up to #4 for a few hours at a time and then dropping to #11. This time it appears to be stable, though.

I just checked again, and at least as of 8:39 AM this Friday, it is still at #4.

This search on Google Groups pulls up a lot of threads concerning the previous situation.

ptsc@nym.alias.net maintainer of operatingthetan.com

Google may not accept payment for placement, but at least one unscrupulous organization knows how to manipulate their way to the top of search results.

The cult of L. Ron Hubbard has managed to keep all critical sites off of the first page of search results for "scientology" using a vast web of cookie-cutter home pages and domain names all linking to one another.

Check this out for a full description of how they did it.

You should check with Keith Henson. His run ins while protesting the civil rights abuses of the C.o. $cientology have shown that it doesn't matter where you live, you can be sued in California.

Had you said "Tom Cruise Missile", you would have been sued by the C.o' $cientology

This is as good an immediate outcome as could be hoped for. Some alternatives were that he could have been kept in jail longer, or booted back across the border to the US. For more info and updates, see here.

The hell they caved. They just obeyed the law. The DMCA basically forced their action and I suggest you read it to understand why they did what they did. Incidentally their action, and their full report in the thread caused more bad publicity for the cult of Scientology than leaving the article up would have, and was completely legally protected, so if Scientology sued, they'd lose and get slapped with costs and fees. Slashdot used effective tactics and won.

As for Tripod, what can I say. They're fucking morons. Apparently they either got a bandwidth spike and croaked the site, or a bogus complaint and yanked it without notice. That's fine. Now the site is sitting on top of two T3s at http://www.operatingthetan.com thanks to the nice people at http://www.dis.org. Thanks Don NOTS. http://freehenson.da.ru is the *permanent* URL for the site wherever it goes. That is what I have always used when referring it to people, so that if they linked, the links would not be broken when some dip-idiot temporary free host yanked it. However, people insisted on pointing to Tripod instead. http://freehenson.da.ru will *always* work even if the site gets croaked at one or another location.

Apologies for rant and thanks to the mirrors and dis.org

Freehenson website BACK UP after a savage slashdotting

FREE HENSON

I can't speak for Keith's situation or his personal feelings or financial situation, but, in general, he's done pretty much exactly what the Scientologists wanted him to do: Go away and shut up.

He hasn't shut up, and in the day of the Internet, he hasn't even gone "away" since there is no "away."

In fact, this one action has created more publicity for his case than the months of relatively quiet and local human rights activism which prompted the original charges.

While I can't say what I think of the likelihood of success in this action, and in fact it could end him up in an even worse situation than where he started, going away and shutting up are two things that Keith Henson are not about. He is not about sitting still and having a gag shoved in his mouth, or getting beaten up or killed in a prison with a strong presence of Scientologists in the form of recruitees into the front group Scientology operates in prisons, Criminon.

For months before this verdict, the Scientologists were boasting about how they had total control of the situation and how they were getting Keith "just where they wanted him."

Canada is not where they want him.

Whether or not it's worth the ultimate fallout that it will cause, Henson has managed to turn his local and limited publicity activism, and his prosecution by an obscure and corrupt District Attorney's office (Riverside DA Grover Trask is disreputable) into an international incident and involve more government bodies.

What has happened here will now receive at least some of the scrutiny it deserves. Henson has not fled in a cowardly fashion, otherwise he would not be so noisy about it. How many fugitives post their address and phone number to the Internet and invite press and government scrutiny of their actions? That's not the action of a guilty man fleeing.

What has happened here stinks on ice, and can not withstand broad scrutiny. Even if Henson later gets transported back to the United States and ends up being sentenced, the court which ends up with the case will be under tremendous scrutiny to handle the proceedings fairly, and further kangaroo court tactics will not be tolerated or ignored.

What has happened here was only allowed because it was a backwater court in a corrupt district, with a corrupt District Attorney, who was allowed to get away with murder. Let's see if Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz is so willing to be visibly the pawn of Scientology with the world watching.

What has happened here was only able to occur because the obscure Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz was backed up by Scientology lawyers Elliott Abelson and Samuel D. Rosen, who openly coached the DA's every action, standing behind him in court and whispering into his ear, and apparently pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars worth into free legal aid to the DA's office. What the hell kind of situation is it where a criminally convicted organization like Scientology can essentially act as its own private District Attorney's office and use a state actor like a DA's office as a proxy to make its own law?

What has happened here needs this continued publicity lest it continue to happen.

Henson has brought that scrutiny to bear, but it will be allowed to pass without action.

Free Keith Henson!

Freehenson website BACK UP after a savage slashdotting

FREE HENSON

I can't speak for Keith's situation or his personal feelings or financial situation, but, in general, he's done pretty much exactly what the Scientologists wanted him to do: Go away and shut up.

He hasn't shut up, and in the day of the Internet, he hasn't even gone "away" since there is no "away."

In fact, this one action has created more publicity for his case than the months of relatively quiet and local human rights activism which prompted the original charges.

While I can't say what I think of the likelihood of success in this action, and in fact it could end him up in an even worse situation than where he started, going away and shutting up are two things that Keith Henson are not about. He is not about sitting still and having a gag shoved in his mouth, or getting beaten up or killed in a prison with a strong presence of Scientologists in the form of recruitees into the front group Scientology operates in prisons, Criminon.

For months before this verdict, the Scientologists were boasting about how they had total control of the situation and how they were getting Keith "just where they wanted him."

Canada is not where they want him.

Whether or not it's worth the ultimate fallout that it will cause, Henson has managed to turn his local and limited publicity activism, and his prosecution by an obscure and corrupt District Attorney's office (Riverside DA Grover Trask is disreputable) into an international incident and involve more government bodies.

What has happened here will now receive at least some of the scrutiny it deserves. Henson has not fled in a cowardly fashion, otherwise he would not be so noisy about it. How many fugitives post their address and phone number to the Internet and invite press and government scrutiny of their actions? That's not the action of a guilty man fleeing.

What has happened here stinks on ice, and can not withstand broad scrutiny. Even if Henson later gets transported back to the United States and ends up being sentenced, the court which ends up with the case will be under tremendous scrutiny to handle the proceedings fairly, and further kangaroo court tactics will not be tolerated or ignored.

What has happened here was only allowed because it was a backwater court in a corrupt district, with a corrupt District Attorney, who was allowed to get away with murder. Let's see if Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz is so willing to be visibly the pawn of Scientology with the world watching.

What has happened here was only able to occur because the obscure Deputy District Attorney Robert K. Schwarz was backed up by Scientology lawyers Elliott Abelson and Samuel D. Rosen, who openly coached the DA's every action, standing behind him in court and whispering into his ear, and apparently pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars worth into free legal aid to the DA's office. What the hell kind of situation is it where a criminally convicted organization like Scientology can essentially act as its own private District Attorney's office and use a state actor like a DA's office as a proxy to make its own law?

What has happened here needs this continued publicity lest it continue to happen.

Henson has brought that scrutiny to bear, but it will be allowed to pass without action.

Free Keith Henson!

Original Keith Henson site back up at http://freehenson.da.ru or http://www.operatingthetan.com thanks to the nice people at http://www.dis.org

So far as I can tell, he is not a political prisoner by any stretch of the imagination.

That's true. To be a political prisoner, he'd have to be a prisoner first. For the moment, at least, he has avoided that.

He was accused of a crime, and after a full trial, a jury unanimously found him guilty. If his problem is with the form of the trial, he has remedies in the United States, far more powerful than would any convict in any other nation in the World. He instead decided to abuse the freedoms he had and left the nation.

Time will tell. Frankly I'm somewhat pessimistic. However, the problem is not just with the "form" of the trial, although that itself was highly questionable. The problem is that there is no way he could effectively have appealed it. He was not only denied effective and experienced counsel versus Scientology, but the best person to serve as his witness, Gerry Armstrong had himself been gagged and driven out of the country by similar means years ago. Not to mention that his preferred counsel, Graham Berry, was also driven out of practice and nearly out of his mind by years of harassment as detailed in this motion to withdraw.

Further, he would have had to appeal from jail, in all likelihood. He has essentially been bankrupted, and while he still has a house, it's too encumbered to borrow from, and there's no way to get a line of credit. He'd have needed $25,000 bottom line just to get it into court and file need appeal briefs, and that is if Scientology didn't somehow snatch the money in bankruptcy proceedings related to other litigation, which they've done before.

In the bankruptcy case, for example, they've spent over a million bucks in a case where they stand to collect at most $75,000. Even his ex-counsel Berry had his car seized in similar bankruptcy proceedings, despite the car being a rustbucket not worth a thousand dollars at most.

While you are correct about the legalities here, and in fact Keith has basically given them short shrift, you also highly underestimate the effects a compromised legal system can give to those who are willing to spend literally any quantity of money in order to achieve their goals.

While it's nice to pretend that there's justice in the United States, it's basically a money-operated machine. If you have fifty million to throw at it every year, you get whatever you want, and can grind anyone to dirt with it, deny them effective counsel, deny them witnesses, deny them a trial, and in this case, even keep them in a jail filled with your own people.

Frankly I don't think Henson would have even gotten out of jail alive had he been there, much less to a successful appeal.

Incidentally the charges against him were not federal. They were California criminal statute--422.6.

Original Keith Henson site back up at http://freehenson.da.ru or http://www.operatingthetan.com thanks to the nice people at http://www.dis.org

So far as I can tell, he is not a political prisoner by any stretch of the imagination.

That's true. To be a political prisoner, he'd have to be a prisoner first. For the moment, at least, he has avoided that.

He was accused of a crime, and after a full trial, a jury unanimously found him guilty. If his problem is with the form of the trial, he has remedies in the United States, far more powerful than would any convict in any other nation in the World. He instead decided to abuse the freedoms he had and left the nation.

Time will tell. Frankly I'm somewhat pessimistic. However, the problem is not just with the "form" of the trial, although that itself was highly questionable. The problem is that there is no way he could effectively have appealed it. He was not only denied effective and experienced counsel versus Scientology, but the best person to serve as his witness, Gerry Armstrong had himself been gagged and driven out of the country by similar means years ago. Not to mention that his preferred counsel, Graham Berry, was also driven out of practice and nearly out of his mind by years of harassment as detailed in this motion to withdraw.

Further, he would have had to appeal from jail, in all likelihood. He has essentially been bankrupted, and while he still has a house, it's too encumbered to borrow from, and there's no way to get a line of credit. He'd have needed $25,000 bottom line just to get it into court and file need appeal briefs, and that is if Scientology didn't somehow snatch the money in bankruptcy proceedings related to other litigation, which they've done before.

In the bankruptcy case, for example, they've spent over a million bucks in a case where they stand to collect at most $75,000. Even his ex-counsel Berry had his car seized in similar bankruptcy proceedings, despite the car being a rustbucket not worth a thousand dollars at most.

While you are correct about the legalities here, and in fact Keith has basically given them short shrift, you also highly underestimate the effects a compromised legal system can give to those who are willing to spend literally any quantity of money in order to achieve their goals.

While it's nice to pretend that there's justice in the United States, it's basically a money-operated machine. If you have fifty million to throw at it every year, you get whatever you want, and can grind anyone to dirt with it, deny them effective counsel, deny them witnesses, deny them a trial, and in this case, even keep them in a jail filled with your own people.

Frankly I don't think Henson would have even gotten out of jail alive had he been there, much less to a successful appeal.

Incidentally the charges against him were not federal. They were California criminal statute--422.6.

All I see is Henson's site (which we can't see anymore) and a couple references to california law.

It's back up thanks to the folks at dis.org. See here: http://www.operatingthetan.com
The original redirector also now points to the operational site, updated as of this morning, http://freehenson.da.ru

This site references all currently available court docs, but note that many (including the full transcript of the trial) and sentencing report (one exhibit alone is 252 pages), are not yet OCR'ed and scanned. This happened just yesterday, and these take time.

However, all the important motions and rulings are there. If you go through the site, whenever I reference a motion, the link is to the motion itself or to a draft version if the original was not available.

The site will continue to be updated as events unfold, including Henson's latest actions, which apparently will be in Canada, to almost everyone's surprise.

If you say so. By fleeing the country as a fugitive, being never able to return absent a grant of amnesty for both the underlying crime AND the crime of running, he simply becomes the poster child that the CoS can muscle you out of anywhere -- even the United States.

Yes, that's true. However, Keith isn't the first. There's also Gerry Armstrong. They've been doing this for years. It should be publicized. I think that fact, itself, that Scientology can even drive a critic out of the United States, is worthy of note.

I think your other points about the possible wisdom of this move are valid, and that this maneuver of Henson's has the potential to be spectacularly disastrous. However, in Henson's view he essentially had no other choice but spending the year in jail--any appeal would be hopelessly delayed, with him serving the full time regardless of the outcome.

I can honestly see his view of saying "Fuck that" and at least making sure that any penalty he suffers will be widely publicized.

Thank you to the kind folks at dis.org, Don NOTS, and others.

The site is accessible from its original location at http://freehenson.da.ru as well as its new location at http://www.operatingthetan.com.

This site will withstand all traffic.

The whole site should be mirrored there soon, and currently redirects to http://www.operatingthetan.com.

Thanks to jcr, Don NOTS and others. As of 1742 EST the current best mirror is at the google cache in the Topic, but within 20-30 minutes it should be the original URL, http://freehenson.da.ru.