Here is the raw, unedited footage of Andreas' encounter with Joel Phillips from Religious Freedom Watch. Until the moment Joel stepped out of Big Blue to announce that he was the webmaster for the site, no name was ever connected to the previously anonymous slurs against critics of Scientology.

http://www.xenutv.com/andreas/index.html

Download the dsl files for best viewing. They are big but worth it. Part one was their encounter on L. Ron Hubbard Way. Later, when we moved to Hollywood Blvd, Joel reappeared and started up with Andreas again. Unfortunately, I was across the street and didn't catch the beginning of their conversation for part two.

From: Hal Jordan <hal_jordan@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: NEW FROM XENU TV: Andreas in Hollywood
Message-ID: <gqpfd1135o6cfpre7sh8oirbuujis8ui8o@4ax.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 17:36:27 GMT

Fascinating.

I thought of a couple of additional things while watching.

First, I'm not an attorney, but I'm fairly certain that, in America, religions per se do not have rights. They are granted certain priviliges by the government, but that's very different from having rights. Individuals, however, do have rights, and one of them is freedom from religious persecution (nothing I saw in the video, and nothing I see on xenu.net constitutes religious persecution).

Phillips seems to contend that the picketers' exercise of free speech is trumped by his church's rights. Again, this is not the case. However, recognizing that free speech can be abused, the government provides recourse to victims of this abuse. We have libel and slander laws. The system provides for those that are libeled or slandered. If Phillips feels that he or his organization have been libeled or slandered, or his rights have been violated, he can take it to the courts. Which Scientology often does with relatively little success. In other words, the courts disagree with the contention that the actions of most Scientology critics damage Scientology or hinder its actions in any meaningful way.

If you have read this far, and generally share my opinion here, you are probably wondering why I am stating the obvious. One more quick point.

Second - and this one really is obvious - it does not matter if there are 250 million Scientologists in America and one dissenter. The dissenter's opinion is still protected (within certain limits, the whole "Fire!" in a crowded theatre thing, etc.). So numbers really have no play here. The founders of the country were very concerned about this issue and wrote often about avoiding the "tyranny of the majority".

So, all of this seems obvious, but *to me* the answer to my next question is not. Given the above, which I think is a pretty moderate and fair description of the issues, what is the point of Phillips taking to the street with a camera and grilling critics? That was a long piece of video, over thirty minutes of him fumbling around trying to catch Andreas in a rhetorical trap. On camera. Why?

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