Tag: Marc Headley

Scientology Daily Digest: Tuesday, November 12, 2013

A day off turned out to be a great thing. It’s amazing how much difference two hours of sleep can make.  I’m back in the saddle now and rarin’ to go.

Today seems to be relatively quiet, perhaps because of the first snow of the season in many parts of the Northeast, including a few inches in the Canada region of upstate New York, an amount of snow that the locals, in their native tongue, call “flurries.”

Reaching back to yesterday, the latest video from Karen De La Carriere and J. Swift about the cult’s legal machinations is worth a watch. The funniest line was when Karen interviewed Jeff, wearing a silver wig that would make him the envy of any late-night televangelist, who said “We threatened Vanity Fair with a very serious threatening letter.”  “Yes but they published the article.” “Yes, but they almost didn’t publish it.”  Legally omnipotent, indeed.  Karen asks, “Why does the entire internet laugh at us?”  “Well, that’s not true.  It’s only part of the Internet that’s laughing at you, a large part to be sure, but only a part.”  I think the most important point in the video was the idea that the cult may start to turn up the “religious persecution” angle to try to rally the troops and to blunt opposition from outsiders.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI8d8pZQW04

Tony Ortega’s Blog

Tony’s weekly feature on actually “doing” Scientology with Claire Headley featured an interview of longtime auditor and Scientology exec Bruce Hines and some commentary about OT II.  More importantly, there’s a mention of what appears to be a looney-tunes filing in the Garcia case.  The cult is complaining that the Garcia’s reply to the description of arbitration that the Court limited to five pages is itself longer than five pages.  Also, Tony unveils the “sensurround” room with speakers throughout to help you perceive where sound is coming from.

My take: of course, the Garcia’s were not limited by the court to any specific length in their response, so this almost sounds like first graders arguing about the rules for tetherball.  The “diversity jurisdiction” trap that the cult sprung was way more clever than the usual maneuverings, because there’s little latitude for the judge to rule against it.  They follow this slick maneuver up with a couple of extremely odd filings that can only irritate the judge. So one wonders if they’re almost baiting the judge to try to find some way around the “diversity jurisdiction” issue and waste a lot of the Garcia’s money on a trial, only to have the jurisdiction reversed on appeal.

The “sound room” from the Super Power machinery revealed in today’s posts appears to be an acoustical engineering nightmare, but that is apparently in keeping with the grand tradition of recording engineering in the cult, leading straight back to Hubbard himself, as documented in the long but hilarious ESMB thread written by someone who was with Hubbard on the project.

Selected comments:

  • Marc Headley chips in with a couple comments.  He predicts that a lot of members will hit the streets when they realize that virtually all of the Biggest. Thing. Ever is warmed-over dreck that they’ve already seen before, but which they’re being bludgeoned into donating at great expense.  He also gives a great vignette of Scientology’s technological backwardness with its Incomm system.
  • Legal Eagle Scott Pilutik provides some details on why the Garcia case filing is bizarre, but also points out that the Court won’t wade through any of the nonsense until the petition over jurisdiction is decided.
  • Missionary Kid hypothesizes about the effects of the acoustical environment in the Wall-o-Sound chamber, as a way to bring about psychological effects from certain kinds of sound.
  • MaxSPaceman finds a quote attributed to David Mayo, who was Hubbard’s auditor and who was one of the first splinter groups to try to do independent Scientology, began to suspect that it was a con when he first read the OT III materials.

Mike Rinder’s Blog

  • Mike’s first post yesterday provides more perspective on what happened in South Africa. It is an interview with Wendy Bowman, one of the 18 people who were declared suppressive persons and cast out of the church a couple of weeks ago. http://www.mikerindersblog.org/wendy-bowman-of-the-joburg-18-tells-her-story/
  • Today’s post features comments from the cult’s Facebook page where the public are getting near delirious with anticipation.  I guess this goes to show that if you hype the event up far enough before it happens, that you’ll get people to believe anything is great.  Google “The Royal Nonesuch” from Huckleberry Finn and you’ll see what I mean.

ESMB, WWP, OCMB

Fairly quiet here, though eagle-eyed Aeger Primo was on patrol again today, for which we are grateful.

  • The most interesting discussion was one started yesterday, about how “independent Scientologists” delivering auditing can be accountable to their customers, instead of hiding the lack of customer success under a veil of secrecy as the cult does.  My take is that this is indeed necessary to build a growing business, since word of mouth is a powerful customer recruitment tool.  But I still think this is a potentially fatal challenge for the Indies, since I continue to think they’re not enthusiastic about building a real umbrella organization.  And the last part of the original post speaks volumes: they need to have a way that OSA spies don’t get auditing and then denounce their auditors as frauds.  Yes, there are all sorts of obvious comments to make about the idea that OSA would denounce auditing as a sham, but I’ll skip them to stay focused on the corporate strategy issue: it will be hard to build an effective organization when there is always some residual paranoia about the intentions of some of your customers, and that may even extend to suspicion about some of the partners you need in order to grow the organization.  
  • On WWP, some members of Anonymous plan to launch “Anontube,” a hosting site for anti-cult videos that would be beyond the reach of the bogus takedown notices that are part of the DMCA landscape in the US.

A couple discussions from yesterday were also interesting, including:

  • Some members of ESMB predict a mass exodus of Scientologists when GAT 2, Superpower, and all the Scientology celebrations planned in ClearwaterFL. More Scientologists may say WTF and leave. Then there is the recent wave of apostates in South Africa. Will some of them wish to practice Scientology outside the Church and join the Indie movement? A new thread discusses the challenges in doing this.
  • There’s a rumor that the cult will give a $500 bonus to staff members to celebrate the GAT 2 launch.  This sounds a bit far-fetched but it’s worth thinking about. A bonus of that magnitude without offsetting “mandatory donations” back to the cult, say, for copies of the new and improved (yet again) “Basics” would be uncommon, and would point to the possibility that staff retention is becoming a near panic-level problem.  That, in turn, is one of the issues that would bring about the end of the cult, and which all the reserves in the world wouldn’t be able to solve.

General News

  • Kevin Trudeau, Scientologist and serial fraudster, whose latest effort is an apparent pyramid scheme called “Global Information Network,” was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for failing to disclose assets that could be used to pay a $37 million fine levied for his scams.  The saddest part of the Chicago Trib article about the verdict was that there were dozens of “supporters” who were in tears when the verdict was read.  The penalties for criminal contempt in Federal court are fairly open-ended, potentially up to and including life in prison.  It seems likely that the Court is not going to be lenient when it sentences him in February.  Apparently, Trudeau is almost enough to make Grant Cardone seem like a class act.

 

 

 

Scientology Daily Digest: Sunday, November 10, 2013

I think data hounds should pay close attention to the story on Mike Rinder’s blog about the Haifa org, which broke away from the cult en masse last year.  There are abundant stats on how well the org is doing.  I show below how these credible stats can be used to bracket estimates for the size of the cult worldwide, so this is a pretty significant discovery.

Tony’s blog post today featured a story about a relatively bizarre filing in the Luis Garcia case. Apparently, the cult is trying to get one of the plaintiff’s declarations thrown out because it is alleging facts that are inconsistent with the complaint. What makes this absolutely surreal is that the facts mentioned in the declaration are the ones that Scientology has alleged. So in other words, essentially, the cult of saying that Luis Garcia’s declaration is invalid because it repeats the church’s statements, which are true when the church says them but lies when Garcia repeats them.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

One of the most personally relevant comments on Tony’s blog came from Bury_The_Nuts, who remembered something I wrote a long time ago and applied it in a confrontation with cult goons at Flag one night…  Her story about using “Capitalist Tech” to mess with the heads of the guards and get them to understand that “the tech” doesn’t work made my day.

Tony Ortega’s Blog

The cult filed a rather odd motion in the Luis Garcia case, attempting to strike a declaration by Luis Garcia himself, claiming that the facts in the declaration did not match the facts in the original complaint. Of course, the cult is rather conveniently forgetting that the declaration is repeating what the cult alleged were the facts. In other words, it is getting a little surreal in here. I would have to believe that Ted Babbitt, the Garcia’s attorney, could not believe his eyes when he read the motion.

Scott Pilutik cleverly and vividly explains the absurdity of this filing in his comment.

Marc Headley wrote an eloquent letter to Mayor of Clearwater giving a great summary of how David Miscavage treats everyone, including the city. He is advising the mayor to toughen up and deal with this hemorrhoid on the body politic. I am not sure if this will have much effect, but it is certainly a great read.

In the interest of brevity, click here to see my detailed comment taking apart the craziness in the Sunday Funnies.

My take:  as I frequently point out, I am not a lawyer, so I do not see this legal battle through a lens that looks anything like the way a lawyer would see. I tend to see these things, surprisingly enough, as plays that explore good versus evil. Some of my thinking is informed by literary criticism and literary theory, and some by my skills in handicapping political campaigns and strategies.

That said, it sure feels to me like the tenor of this case has changed, and the momentum is back  The motion to dismiss filed by the cult on grounds of “diversity jurisdiction” certainly had the feel of an elegantly laid trap that, if successful, would make it significantly harder for the Garcia’s to prevail (even if it did not make it any more difficult, it certainly would make it more expensive). While Ted Babbitt prepared what felt like a competent enough response, it was a bit less confident in tone and some of the prior paperwork filed in the case.

But now, it appears that the cult is back to its usual program of bizarre legal machinations that swing for the fences but they come nowhere near actually hitting the ball. This latest tactic sounds even more ill-advised than the motion to disqualify counsel, which the cult soundly lost. It seems to me that if David Miscavage had a little more restraint, he would probably have a better chance on prevailing with the diversity jurisdiction motion. But the fact that he is driving his attorneys to file these obviously dilatory motions has a great chance of waving a big red flag in front of the judge. The judge will smell bogus legal tactics, and it would seem reasonable to guess that he will be very sympathetic to the Garcia’s attempts to conduct extensive discovery on the reality of the trusts that are at the heart of the motion to dismiss on diversity jurisdiction grounds.

In other words, by trying to win every battle, and by trying to start other battles in relevant locations, it is entirely possible that Miscavage will turn a potential victory into a far more likely defeat.

Key comments:

  • Anonymous points out that the whole Sunday Service thing, which Artie Maren’s trip to “preach” in Georgia, may be a renewed emphasis on “religious cloaking” to try and deflect some heat.  I would ask that people be aware of this possibility, and look for any notices of similar events at other orgs to try and determine whether this is a trend. That enables us to try to figure out what “flap” caused Miscavige to stir this pot, which has been relatively quiet for a long time.
  • Miss Tia tweeted director Ron Howard and other relevant players to make them aware of the copyright violation for the movie “Rush” with all the footage incorporated in the Silicon Valley org promo video.  Apparently, though they were pretty good about copyright violations for a month or two, they’re back to stealing stuff left and right. It appears they just can’t help themselves.
  • “Jo” discovered a cartoon that implies that the use of free stress tests to recruit new members may be alive and well outside of Scientology.
  • Beloved witty commenter “The Next Mrs. Tom Cruise” resurfaced after some months under the name “Sciloonfairy” after fixing long-time Disqus security problems.
  • TheCommodeDoor makes a nice catch of a 1980 paper published in the journal “Sociological Analysis” on the “superhuman” aspects of Clear.  It makes the point that Clear is a social status marker in the cult rather than something people believe gives them actual super powers.
  • Observer discovers a picture that hasn’t been shooped, and is disgusted by what she sees in the background behind Hubbard.  This is why.
  • Michael Leonard Tilse points out that vacillation on the part of the City of Clearwater may be a function of covert Scientologists still on the City payroll, long after many of us may have thought that the cult would have lost interest in such things.
  • Cat Daddy goes off-topic with a major find, a gloating video from a Volunteer Minister who took a bunch of water bottles stacked against the wall outside a makeshift X-ray clinic and handed them out. Too bad the bottles were there as improvised radiation shielding to protect personnel and people waiting to get treated.  Oh, wait, who was it that said radiation was an engram or something ludicrous?

Mike Rinder’s Blog

Mike’s blog post for today does a nice follow-up of the Haifa mission in Israel, which broke off as a group (staff and customers) a year ago, in a move that is unprecedented in the recent decades of Scientology.  There are some interesting data points that come out: Haifa, a metro area of 700,000, and the educational capital of Israel, has about 50 active Scientologists.  That’s probably due to extraordinary hustle on the part of the Lembergers, the mission holder couple.  That gives us a likely number of church adherent Scientologists in the country as a whole of perhaps 200, given likely lack of hustle from the Tel Aviv org.

It also gives a lower bound of staff per member, since the article shows the 5 staffers serving the 50 customers or a ratio of 1:10.  I have estimated previously that there are about 5,000 staff worldwide out of 25,000 members, a very inefficient organization indeed.  A software company typically does about $1.5 billion in revenue with 5,000 employees, almost an order of magnitude more than the cult…  Thus, this article suggests I’m reasonably correct on the relative ratio of staff to public in the cult.  That means we can focus on trying to model overall cult membership, and estimate the staff top-down from the overall member total, then we can cross-check that with built-up estimates of the staff of various key headquarters organizations.

Marty Rathbun’s Blog

Marty’s back after a long-ish absence, with a post about his plans to publish more books next year. He plans to help people move beyond Scientology, with the first part focusing on how to get some critical thinking skills back so one is no longer a blind adherent to the cult.  He’ll then think about what’s wrong with the OT levels from the standpoint of someone who’s done them. He decries the “shallow debunking of Hubbard and his theories.” While that may well be a nod to never-in’s trying to point out the absurdity of the OT process, the insult doesn’t matter.  What is interesting here is that he may be trying to use Scientology to cause Scientology to implode.  We shall see what happens as these books come to fruition.

WWP, ESMB, OCMB

Thanks again to Aeger Primo for keeping an eagle eye on the forums today!  Vistaril also made a great catch revealing a particularly pernicious trick for dealing with protesters.

  • Here’s a link to ESMB’s thread discussing the South Africa situation after the recent “massacre” of 50-year members that were at the top of the heap in that country.
  • Here’s an important discussion on both WWP and ESMB of security for people posting videos to YouTube and posting content to other Google properties.  The fact that Google is trying to get you to use Google+ (their sort-of Facebook clone) can result in some security leakage potentially including revealing one’s name used in sending e-mails.  When some of us created the “Rodeo” on Google Groups as a temporary home for the commenter community when Tony left the Village Voice but before he launched his own site, we discovered this.  I emphasize that I don’t think one needs to panic, but just to be aware of the situation and take steps if you post content to the properties referenced.  This does not create security risk on non-Google sites, such as Tony’s blog, mine, or anything else that uses Disqus, for example.
  • From the “Maggots gotta mag” department: the Philippines were devastated recently by the strongest typhoon ever recorded, and desperately needs help. ESMB anticipates that the American Red Cross may soon be joined by the “Cockroach Brigade” as Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers fly in to get in the way for a major fundraising photo op, and to waste time with fingers ready to do touch assists and hand out “International Disaster Response” booklets. I continue to find it amazing that they are handing out booklets to people languishing in the rubble of their former homes that contain the precept “Live a prosperous life.”   See the video Cat Daddy uncovered to amp up your outrage quotient over Volunteer Ministers if you just think they’re hapless dupes.  Their stupidity kills.
  • WWP discusses the project to flag Co$ ads on Craigslist as spam.  They’re working to coordinate efforts even more effectively.
  • Vistaril caught an interesting story about how a cultie got arrested for throwing water on two protesters.  The discussion on WWP raised the interesting point that this may have been done so the cult could get the identity of the Anons that would have to be revealed as part of making a police complaint, implying that the stunt was essentially arranged entirely for the purpose.  Apparently, one of the Anons was comfortable doing this, and that was sufficient to make the arrest.  The good news: they’re desperate enough to unmask Anons that someone would risk an arrest that will show up on a background check if they ever leave the cult.  The bad news: this may actually work.  The worse news, if you’re in the cult: David Miscavige treats your future employment prospects with about the same care and concern as the average Al Qaeda lieutenant recruiting suicide bombers.