Keith Henson, criminally convicted hate monger
27 Apr 2001
Cheradenine Zakalwe <zakalwe@nym.alias.net>

"Orion(Co30)" <asimov_orion@videotron.ca wrote in message news:nIcG6.4927$5X5.387347@weber.videotron.net... Maybe I would have an opinion to express if I knew who the Hell Keith Henson is.

Keith Henson is a semi-retired electrical engineer in Palo Alto California who, along with a number of other "netizens", took offense when the "Church" of Scientology tried to censor usenet by cancelling the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup. He dug up "sacred scriptures" of the Scientology cult that demonstrated that Scientology was engaged in illegal practice of medicine. For bringing this to the attention of the authorities, the "Church" slapped Henson with a copyright infringement suit, out of which they extracted the largest judgement (on the order of $70,000) ever granted against an individual for copyright infringement, despite the fact that Henson had no commercial intent and never made a dime off of the infringement. Henson was driven into bankruptcy, but the cult was not willing to stop there, since their dead ex-hack-science-fiction writer guru, L. Ron Hubbard, had instructed the faithful to "ruin utterly" anyone who criticises Scientology.

As a consequence, Keith Henson has been picketing Scientology facilities in Northern and Southern California. In the course of his picketing of "Gold Base", a desert stronghold of the cult in the desert near Hemet, California, Henson was arrested on bogus charges of "terrorism" and "interfering with the practice of a religion". The Riverside county DA's office, which has refused to investigate multiple suspicious deaths in and around the cult's Hemet compound, saw fit to prosecute Henson on these charges, and succeeded in persuading the judge to disallow the defense the right to present the "Church"'s policies and history of judicial harassment and outright framing of critics. There is ample evidence of misconduct by the DA's office in the case, and the conviction will very likely be overturned on appeal. But for the moment, the "Church" gets to crow that their critics are criminals - just as L. Ron Hubbard tought them to do.

Why has this nonsense spilled over into alt.true-crime and sci.cryonics? As for alt.true-crime, I haven't the faintest idea. But the cult's PR lackeys, posting from fictitious accounts as usual, have presumably targeted sci.cryonics because Keith Henson has in the past been involved in some experiments in cryogenic suspension of human beings, and someone in the "Church" thinks that being tagged with a misdemeanor civil rights charge in a rigged trial will somehow discredit him there.

Anyone wanting to know more about the "Church" of Scientology, their crackpot beliefs (did you know that most of your problems are due to your being infested with the disembodied spirits of dead space aliens?), their criminal activities (including the largest domestic espionage case ever successfully prosecuted, for which L. Ron Hubbard's wife went to federal prison), the lives that they have ruined, and their abuse of legal process to silence their critics, please check out http://www.xenu.net/

/Z