{"id":88,"date":"2008-02-13T13:10:08","date_gmt":"2008-02-13T13:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/2008\/02\/13\/dave-bird-rip\/"},"modified":"2008-02-13T13:52:08","modified_gmt":"2008-02-13T13:52:08","slug":"dave-bird-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/2008\/02\/13\/dave-bird-rip\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Bird, R.I.P."},"content":{"rendered":"

(Obituary text by Arkady Rose<\/a>.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

It is with great sadness that I have to report the passing away of a long-time staunch critic of $cientology, Dave Bird.<\/p>\n

Dave was often referred to by other members of a.r.s.c.c.uk (alt.religion.scientology.central commitee, UK division – see Brief history of ARSCC<\/a>) as “Our Glorious Leader”, a title well-earned. He made me feel very welcome on my first demo against the cult in front of the TCR org in London, and I often looked forward to his emails, phone calls and letters. He was a cheerful, active, scarily-intelligent and amusingly-inventive campaigner against the cult of $cientology and had been an active member of the National Council for Civic Liberties\/Liberty<\/a> before taking on the cult.<\/p>\n

Dave had suffered from some time from health issues arising from his diabetes and so it had been a couple of years since he was last able to join us on a demo, but he kept up a keen interest from afar via the phone and internet, including actively posting to a.r.s. He had an amusing array of sigs; one included the quote “Woof woof (glug glug) .. who drowned the judge’s dog ?” Another good sig was this one:
FUCK THE SKULL OF HUBBARD, AND BUGGER THE DWARF HE RODE IN ON!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8====3 (O 0) GROETEN --- PRINTZ XEMU EXTRAWL no real OT has
|n| (COMMANDER, FIFTH INVADER FORCE) ever existed
........................................<\/wbr>.........................
A society without a religion is like a maniac without a chainsaw. <\/wbr><\/tt><\/p>\n

The following is the obituary posted today on alt.religion.scientology by Jens Tingleff, a fellow a.r.s.c.c.uk member:<\/p>\n

\n

“Dave Bird died the morning of Sunday Feb 10th from complications arising from diabetes. He had been in hospital for six days.<\/p>\n


http:\/\/www.xemu.demon.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave had been active in the NCCL and in the fight against miscarriages of justice before he came to activism against the criminal organisation known as the “church” <spit> of $cientology.<\/p>\n

While Dave was a great debater – and a lot of fun – on a.r.s. he also had many effective moments in Real Life, notably initiating getting proper legal representation for Bonnie and Richard Woods (and the rest is history – I don’t think the clams have sued anyone in the UK since then).<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.skeptictank.org\/hs\/wood3.htm<\/a>
http:\/\/www.solitarytrees.net\/pickets\/sp861.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave brought a welcome street theatre side to our pickets, including many props, some of which worked, some of which didn’t and the largest one of which was Carrie the Giant Clamshell.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.tingleff.org\/jensting\/duke_tour\/muslinger\/poole980314_a.html#mar28th<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave worked hard at his activism, organising, doing practical things, designing props (the balloons were always a favourite of mine) and writing songs. He was a firm believer in the will of good people to show up at a demo that someone else had to do the hard work organising and he was happy to put in the work. He did ask a lot, but he gave more.<\/p>\n

The criminal organisation known as the “church” <spit>>of $cientology didn’t like him one little bit, as evinced by the multi-page entry on their hate site RFW<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.religiousfreedomwatch.org\/anti-religious-extremists\/david-bird\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Dave would have gotten a kick out of the day he passed away being the day of the largest worldwide protest against the criminal organisation known as the “church” <spit> of $cientology.<\/p>\n

I’ll miss him<\/p>\n

Best Regards<\/p>\n

Jens<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Over 500 people turned out for the demo against the Co$ on Sunday 10th<\/a>, and I’m sure Dave was there in spirit. He would have been delighted and highly amused at the whole Anonymous situation.<\/p>\n

Rest in peace, Dave. You will be sadly missed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Obituary text by Arkady Rose.) It is with great sadness that I have to report the passing away of a long-time staunch critic of $cientology, Dave Bird. Dave was often referred to by other members of a.r.s.c.c.uk (alt.religion.scientology.central commitee, UK division – see Brief history of ARSCC) as “Our Glorious Leader”, a title well-earned. He … Continue reading “Dave Bird, R.I.P.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4FmVR-1q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}