Sunday, June 30, 2019

Criminal timeline of Scientology

I'm reposting a post from ARS dated 21st December 1999. You can read the original post here:

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.scientology/msg/3627a029734e5013?hl=en

I have edited it somewhat to remove extra comments (and sickly Hubbard praise that was making me puke) to try to reduce it enough to post it here. Unfortunately it is still a 78 page word document.

This was originally posted by a Hubbard sympathizer (it's all DM's fault) and who one bought into the IRS conspiracy story, so understand where he is coming from if you decide to read this VERY lengthy post. 

I'm posting it because I've never seen the history of Scientology put into a time line like this one. I found it fascinating to read and it gave me a greater understanding of HOW & WHY things happened from the 60s onwards in Scientology.

I don't believe everything that is written here, and I certainly don't agree with a lot of the author's opinions but he's done a good job in pulling apart the history into months, years & decades.

I think there might be some value in it for historians and someone might even want to re-write this document & remove the bias. It's a huge job but someone might be interested....Did someone say Veda???? :coolwink:

It's way too long to post in one go so I'm going to chop it up over probably a dozen or more posts.

Part 1

CRIMINAL TIME TRACK

1954

The Church of Scientology of California is founded. It acts as the mother church. It is initially granted tax exempt status.

1966 

LRH sells Saint Hill Manor to the Church of Scientology of California.

March 1966

LRH resigns as executive director. He establishes the Guardian's Office (G.O.). He appoints Mary Sue Hubbard as Controller over all Scientology organizations and the G.O. Between 1966 and 1981, LRH, MSH and the G.O. exercised total control over all Church assets, bank accounts, property, copyrights and trademarks.

One of the key policies applied by the G.O. is "Fair Game". It states that an enemy of Scientology may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed.

1967

The IRS removes the C of S of California from the roster of tax exempt organizations. The IRS says it is a for-profit business that enriches church officials.
Note: How do they know that? Obviously someone on the inside gave them financial data. Who was their plant/informant? The point is - this shows they infiltrated the church.
LRH obtains the yacht Apollo and starts the Sea Org. He manages Scientology from there.

1969

In Founding Church of Scientology v United States, the Court of Claims found that some of the Founding Church's money inured to the individual benefit of LRH and family. This included a house maintained by the Church, a percentage of the Church's income, and other royalties and commissions. The court based its finding of inurement on informal loans made to LRH that were never explained.

Decade of the 1970's

In the 1960's decade tech had fallen out to the degree that "quicky grades" were being delivered. That meant only one process was run per grade, so people were not getting the gains they should have obtained from auditing.

LRH applied KSW and handled this, so that all processes for each grade were done. The result was that in the decade of the 1970's, orgs were teaming with people. Each org had hundreds of people on staff and hundreds of preclears and students on lines daily. At that time - Scientology was fun.

The U.S. Intelligence community is engaged in a psychic arms race with Russia. They are conducting mind control experiments and researching all kinds of psychic phenomena. Thus they were interested in Scientology exteriorization tech and other OT phenomena.

Hal Puthoff works for the National Security Agency (NSA). He joins Scientology and goes up to OT 3. After that he goes straight into the CIA-spawned "Remote Viewing Program" at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Palo Alto, California.

"Remote Viewing" was just another way of saying exteriorization, they are the same thing.

The other two key participants in the SRI "Remote Viewing Program" were Ingo Swann and Pat Price. Price was an OT 4 and Swann was an OT 7 (who also had a Top Secret Clearance with the military).

These three OTs conducted experiments to scientifically document and prove the phenomena of exteriorization.

The scientific method used to document exteriorization was this:

Ingo Swann and Pat Price would have their bodies physically located at SRI in Palo Alto. A team of scientists would leave Palo Alto and go to some other physical location in the world. Swann and Price would exteriorize and go to the site of the remote scientists and take a look. Swann and Price would then return to their bodies in Palo Alto and accurately describe the location of the remote scientists in some other part of the world.

In addition to the exteriorization experiments, they conducted experiments that scientifically proved that an OT could influence a magnetic field with his thought.

Records of all of these experiments were kept and Puthoff then wrote a book about the experiments, entitled "Remote Viewing."

1972

Hal Puthoff is still the head of the CIA's Remote Viewing Program at (SRI). He remains the head of this program until 1985. Also involved is Louis Jolyn West, a psychiatrist who is a brainwashing specialist, and CIA ties going back to the early 1950's.

Ingo Swann uses his ability to exteriorize to spy on Russia, on behalf of the US Intelligence community. Pat Price was the best at remote viewing. He is said to have gone on from there to work directly for the CIA, with Ken Kress as his handler.

Later in time, Pat Price decided to leave his spy work for the CIA and return to SRI. He stopped over in Las Vegas and died of a purported heart attack in his hotel room. There was no autopsy performed, allegedly due to the persuasion of an unknown individual with a briefcase full of Price's medical records.

Ingo Swann then set up a training program to teach others how to do Remote Viewing.

This, of course, uses Scientology exteriorization techniques, such as anchor point processes and Route 1 processes out of the LRH book Creation Of Human Ability.

To test Swann's program, CIA officer, Major Ed Dames, and five others go to SRI as a training group. The results were more than anyone had anticipated. Major Dames says that within 6 months the team members were producing psychically derived data with more consistency and accuracy than the most renown natural (untrained) psychics in the world.

Major Dames then acts as the Training and Operations Officer at the SRI Remote Viewing Program for "a new psychic intelligence community". In other words, they were using the ability to exteriorize for spying purposes.
Note: In the 1990s, Major Dames offers a course in "remote viewing" (exteriorization) to the public for $4,500.00 a person. He also sells tapes about this to the public for $299 each. Although he is using Scientology technology to do this, RTC leaves him totally alone. Why is that, RTC?
1972 - 1982

From 1972 to 1982, LRH and MSH created a Liberian Corporation called the Religious Research Foundation with numbered bank accounts in Liechtenstein. The RRF and these bank accounts were dominated and controlled by LRH. In excess of 100 million dollars belonging to the Church of Scientology was illegally transferred into the RRF accounts, for the personal control and use of LRH. This constituted unlawful inurement.

After LRH died, these funds were then within the estate of LRH where they came to be in the possession, custody and control of Norman Starkey, executor of LRH's estate. It is alleged that these funds were then illegally seized and stolen by David Miscavige in a fraud perpetrated on LRH's heirs.

3 December 1972

The Apollo has been under repair in Lisbon, Portugal. LRH meets Jim Denkelsey and Paul Preston there and they fly to the U.S. He lives in Queens, New York for about 10 months before returning to the ship.

June 1973

Due to an off-hand remark by a US District Court judge that the government knew something incriminating about Hubbard, LRH writes the Snow White program. The Snow White program was for the G.O. Intelligence Bureau to obtain all government files on Scientology.

15 September 1974

Cindy Raymond is working for the United States Guardian's Office Intelligence Bureau located in Los Angeles. To comply with the Snow White program, Cindy recruits Gerald Wolfe to infiltrate the IRS offices in Washington D.C.

18 November 1974

Gerald Wolfe is hired as a clerk by the IRS in Washington, D.C. For the next two years, he and Michael Meisner steal and copy IRS and Department of Justice files on Scientology. Many illegal acts were committed. Electronic intercepting of oral IRS communications, forging government passes, infiltrating the government, stealing records belonging to the IRS, Justice Department, and the US Attorney's Office.
Note:They found the OT materials in government files - more evidence the church was infiltrated.
It should be understood that the Guardian's Office had an Intelligence Bureau. It was this Bureau that committed various crimes. This Bureau investigated enemies of the Church, including infiltrating enemy groups with spies. It was charged with obtaining enemy files on the Church. It was common for illegal methods to be used to obtain enemy files, such as using lock picks and even breaking and entering.

The Intelligence Bureau was also charged with handling enemies and has its own tech for doing so. Part of its tech was to try and locate crimes that had been committed by the person attacking Scientology and have them arrested for those crimes. If no actual crimes could be found, then black operations were used to set the person up for crimes he actually did not commit. An example would be planting illegal drugs on him and calling the police, who would arrest him for possession of illegal drugs.

Other Intelligence Bureau handling tech was to use hate and protect buttons. The way this worked was to find out what the enemy's boss hated and then set up circumstances to make the enemy guilty of those things in the eyes of his boss. If his boss hates homosexuals, the black operation would be to have homosexuals call the boss at work and ask to talk to the enemy. The end result was to make the boss think the enemy was a homosexual; hate him for it, resulting in the boss firing the enemy.

Another example of a black operation, using the protect button. Find out what the enemy is trying to protect and threaten it. Let's say the enemy is trying to protect his marriage. Threaten to destroy his marriage. Have a prostitute call the wife and say she slept with the enemy. The end result is the enemy stops attacking Scientology to protect his marriage.

Following are a few of the actual black operations done by the Intelligence Bureau:

Paulette Cooper wrote an anti-Scientology book. Intelligence agents mailed out a bomb threat on her stationary, making it appear that Cooper had done it. This got the FBI after her.

Another intelligence operation was done to Cooper. An agent became her boyfriend. The boyfriend then reinforced and played upon Cooper's suicidal tendencies in the hopes that she would commit suicide.

In 1976 Clearwater Mayor Gabe Cazares was involved in litigation with the Church. One of the intelligence black operations run on him was an attempt to implicate him in a staged hit and run accident. Another intelligence operation done on him was that arrangements were made to have an attorney by the name of Merrit Vanniere, a Scientologist, represesent Mr. Cazares and sabotage his case.

The above gives you a clear picture of the daily work of Scientology's Intelligence Bureau.

The disbanding of the G.O. did not change any of this, it operates exactly the same way now. Scientology's criminal intelligence bureau is run by the Religious Technology Center (RTC). 

1975

Jacqueline Van Der Linde and others move in to Clearwater, Florida under the cover of a front group called "The United Churches of Florida". Their real purpose is to establish the Flag Land Base there, which they do. Attacks from the Clearwater community result when they learn that the United Churches of Florida is a front for the Church of Scientology.

During this time MSH has several flaps with Pat Broeker over financial matters and she busts him off of several posts. (Pat Broeker is a Sea Org member posted in CMO.)

During 1975 & 1976, while Wolfe and Meisner were stealing IRS documents, Meade Emory is the Assistant to the Commissioner of the IRS. This is important because in 1982 Meade Emory is a co-founder of the Church of Spiritual Technology, which comes to own all of the Scientology copyrights after LRH's death!

30 June 1976

Gerald Wolfe is arrested by the FBI for use and possession of a forged government pass. This eventually leads to a warrant on Michael Meisner, who eventually defected and told them about their criminal actions in the Snow White program. This results in the 1977 FBI raid.
Note: Who tipped the FBI off about Wolfe?
1977

At this time Scientology has two management arms. The Guardian Office for external affairs and the Commodore's Messenger Organization (CMO) for internal affairs. The Guardian's Office was run by Mary Sue Hubbard. CMO ran Scientology itself, under the direct command of LRH, contrary to public statements that he had resigned all management responsibilities in 1966.

7 July 1977

The FBI raids USGO. They obtain box loads of evidence that proves the crimes of Scientology's intelligence bureau. MSH and 10 others are later convicted and go to jail. Thus, the beginning of a group engram was laid in.

LRH and MSH are living together in La Quinta, California at the time. They spend the next week discussing how to handle their legal situation. Then, he leaves La Quinta with Pat Broeker and goes to Sparks, Nevada.

After the raid, the USGO Intelligence bureau had nightly all hands to destroy evidence of crimes in their remaining intelligence files. It went on for months. At the same time, Vicki Aznaran participates in a massive document destruction program undertaken to destroy any evidence that LRH controlled Scientology. Vaughn Young also participated in all of this destruction of evidence.

July 1977

Shortly after LRH arrived in Sparks, cash was needed so Pat Broeker contacted his soon-wife-to-be, who was the Deputy Commanding Officer of the CMO in Clearwater. They arranged between them for Annie to bring one million dollars in cash from the church. Annie brought the cash to Pat in a briefcase, and turned it over to him at an airport.

This is the point where Broeker starts to cut the line between LRH and MSH by editing letters between them. Over time, Miscavige and Broeker systematically eliminate all of LRH's comm lines except their own.

Gradually, every single person with whom Ron has a comm line, including his wife and children, must communicate via the Broekers. Finally, the Broekers are the only ones in direct comm with Ron.

1977

The IRS issues a notice of deficiency (regarding tax exemption) to the Church of Scientology of California. CSC appeals the decision.

2 January 1978

LRH arrives back in La Quinta and MSH has to leave because she is under FBI scrutiny.

1978

In Founding Church of Scientology v Webster, the church sued FBI director William Webster, alleging that the FBI was harassing Scientologists for no permissible reason.

The church filed this complaint in 1978, the same year in which MSH and eight other high ranking Church officials admitted in a plea agreement that "the network of Scientology organizations had conducted a broad campaign against US government entities particularly the IRS." The court noted that the same government investigations the Church complained about were justified by, and a result of, the church's own illegal behavior.

1978

LRH is convicted in absentia in Lyon, France. Sentenced to 4 years in prison for fraudulent claims he could cure physical illness.

September 1978

LRH has another stroke. (He had his first stroke in June 1975.) Mayo arrived to give LRH assists and LRH was barely conscious. Dr. Denk told Mayo that LRH could die at any moment because his heart was not beating normally. The assists went on for 3 weeks and from those assists came the seeds that became NOTS.

Ron's illness was an additional excuse to further edit incoming communication to him to keep all this "bad news" off of his lines.

NOTS is released this year.

April 1979

Mayo goes to Hemet, California and gives LRH assists again because LRH had just had a cancer operation on the front of his head. They work together on refining NOTS.

Mid 1979

Annie Broeker is working for CMO in Clearwater. MSH is also there operating out of the G.O. Annie is meddling in G.O. affairs and MSH eventually has had it with her and forces her off post. Annie is then sent back to INT as useless on management lines.

1 September 1979

A major change in church management takes place. The Commodores Messenger Org International takes over all church management and the Watch Dog Committee is set up.

LRH orders that messengers who hold management posts are not to stand watches for him, leaving them free to hold their management position full time. He ordered to send two messengers to work with him on a permanent basis who are of no great value on management lines. The two people chosen are Pat and Annie Broeker.

David Miscavige is posted as Action Chief in CMO International.

15 December 1979

LRH executes a will. Ron's tax lawyer, Norton S. Karno is named as Executor.


Saturday, June 29, 2019

How to Debunk the "Liberal Media" Myth

Next time you hear a right-winger accuse the mainstream media of "liberal bias", please feel free to forward, cut and paste (keep in mind the links are abbreviated & will need to be re-typed), or edit the below response:
If the media are so liberal, where are all the Union-friendly news shows? I see lots of pro-big business & pro-investor shows. Where are the shows for worker interests? And, other than MSNBC, where are the pro-Union guests? I see lots of guests making the pro-corporate, anti-union arguments. Where are all the union defenders in the "liberal" media?
http://fair.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why do they keep focusing on debt/deficit/austerity and not the arguments against austerity that all the liberal economists are making?
If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore the 2011 Tar Sands protests in DC and the hundreds of arrested protesters, including a renowned NASA scientist?
If the media are so liberal, why have they completely ignored the controversy surrounding the drilling of the Alberta Tar Sands?
If the media are so liberal, why did they parrot Bush's link between Iraq & 9/11, and his claim that Iraq still had WMD's, while ignoring the many experts who could disprove these claims?
If the media are so liberal, why did they cheerlead us into the Iraq war, while censoring those who opposed it?
If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the largest anti-war protest in the history of mankind on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, but have since given plenty of mostly uncritical coverage of much smaller Tea Party protests?
Here’s a typical CNN segment on the Tea Party. It’s 3+ minutes of free promotion w/o any criticism:
http://www.youtube.com/...
If the media are so liberal, why did they give so much free publicity to Paul Ryan's "brave", "heroic" budget plan,
http://www.fair.org/...
...while they ignored the Progressive Caucus's People's Budget?
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/...
If the media are so liberal, why did even Bush's own press secretary think the media was too deferential to him?
http://www.salon.com/...
If the media are so liberal, why did they run the fake ACORN voter fraud stories & the faked ACORN video stings, then virtually ignore it when ACORN was vindicated and proven innocent of both?
http://www.factcheck.org/...
http://mediamatters.org/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.fair.org/...
http://mediamatters.org/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...
If the media are so liberal, then why do the "liberal" TV stations gladly air tons of liberal-bashing campaign ads by right-wing groups?
If the media are so liberal, why do they keep covering-up for Wall Street and hiding the rampant criminality there?
http://www.alternet.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why was their coverage of right-winger Margaret Thatcher's controversial legacy so fawning and one-sided?
http://www.fair.org/...
http://www.fair.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why did they ignore proven and admitted GOP election fraud?
http://www.alternet.org/...
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/...
http://www.salon.com/...
http://www.bradblog.com/...
If the media are so liberal, why is there a virtual news blackout of the Trans-Pacific Partnership controversy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why did they virtually ignore the biggest climate change rally in US history on Februray 17?
http://fair.org/...
Since then, I've seen plenty of right-wing guests on the news urging Obama to approve Keystone and criticizing him for delaying it (even just this morning on MSNBC, with zero argument from the host!), but nobody to explain why there's a huge movement against it.
If the media are so liberal, why did they constantly demonize leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, even promoting anti-Chavez disinfo?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
http://itsoureconomy.us/...
http://truth-out.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why do they treat far-right views as mainstream?
http://www.alternet.org/...
If the media are so liberal, why was coverage of Occupy Wall Street mostly hostile or dismissive?
(Find me ANY example where CNN treated the Tea Party this harshly:
http://www.youtube.com/... )
From Henry A. Giroux: "Missing from both the dominant media and state and national politics was any attempt to critically engage the issues the protesters were raising, not to mention any attempt to dialogue with them over their strategies, tactics, and political concerns."
I could go on and on...
And if you try to argue that all my sources above are themselves "liberally biased", you'd just be proving my point. If the truly liberal alternative media are the only ones pointing these things out, then obviously the mainstream corporate media isn't very liberal, is it?

Friday, June 28, 2019

The Solipsistic Reality of Donald Trump


Steve Hassan recently put a twenty one minute video on YouTube entitled The Solipsistic Reality of President Trump: A Discussion with Dr. Robert Jay Lifton.

I found this to be very informative regarding the opinion of Doctor Lifton regarding Trump, his followers, political and religious cults and several other subjects. I tried to write a tough transcript and not every word is perfect so take this as paraphrased. I started a little after the first few statements.



Robert Jay Lifton described solipsistic reality meaning Trump has as his only reality that which is required by the self.
To paraphrase Lifton said roughly:
The only crisis is his wildly destructive immigration program.

Trump is getting more and more entrapped by his own solipsism and he is trying to enforce it more and more on the society. Even those who support him are resisting this privately and there is lots of evidence for this. People see him as a little mad perhaps not crazy. It is paranoid with an attacking quality.

Trump may be in his endgame and can be deposed. Certainly he has gotten more grandiose.

Steve Hassan responded roughly: I colonel but notice that you described that as a king; deposed.

Lifton: one scenario as various forces turn against him as he won't sustain authority, he might not be impeached as that is very difficult. He might resign and declare victory. He might say he has done a lot for the country. His enemies are pervasive and this is a good time to resign and to do what good He can through his business. We might not be at that point now and we might not be close. We are at a point where his solipsistic and self created reality is less supportable. Gerry Bruener the great psychologist talked about how lies and problematic statements are required because narrative requires them. His followers may stick with him based on that.

Perhaps I can say something about the cultic qualities of the Trump followers and the Trump movement.


Hassan: I want to listen to you. I don't want to talk. I have a million questions pop into my head.

Lifton: I thought as I am sure you have that there is something cultic about the Trump movement. It's not an actual cult as the Moonies were when you studied it and Aum Shinrikyo was when I studied it. It's not actual community controlled by a totalizing guru that creates reality that the cult lives in. But it is cult-like and you get a sense of that even in the chanting, even at the meetings "build the wall", "lock her up" , "who is going to build it" it is a back and forth from guru to followers.

And there is some evidence that many of those followers have a sense of Trump as an all powerful omnipotent guru and many of his followers have staked their lives on his guruism. It is not all of his followers but there is a group of them of some size of which that is probably true. As he is failing in his authority he is failing them as a guru. They can no longer in a sense get from him what they need, his absolute truth, absolute virtue. And their sense of his being all powerful.

As as he loses this from many sides there them is a political and psychological element of his decline. We are seeing a certain amount of the political decline as various republicans are contesting him though not enough and the cultic decline is not recognized as much. People say with only partial truth that that  is all covered by cognitive dissonance. Now Festinger did very good work in cognitive dissonance. And as you know it is about a cult with the moment in which the world is supposed to end they are supposed to be picked up by a UFO and taken to some kind of safety didn't happen and many of those followers when it didn't happen and many of those followers when Festinger and his team looked at what happened they reasserted their belief in the guru's vision and they said well we picked the wrong time. Reasserting that belief in order to sustain their cognitive beliefs.

Hassan: Because they had faith Then the world was granted an extension of survival.

Lifton: And that is an interesting and very important finding but it doesn't cover everything. And that was a single expectation and image of being carried off to safety. With Trump it is a gradual loss of psychic power and power for disciples. And there I turn to my experience in studying Aum Shinrikyo,  the fanatical Japanese cult that released sarin gas in Japanese subways in Tokyo 1995.

When you follow them especially in the trials and court proceedings a number of the leading disciples were outraged at him, denounced him, said he was a false guru, had misled them, denounced him as a criminal. These were people who had staked their whole existence in him. When they turn they really turn. So, I don't know it is quite possible we are even beginning to see that even now. The situation is very confused because we have people who say they speak for him or for his base who are denouncing any compromise he makes. Compromises will upset some of his base. And in a sense not remaining strong and worthy of worship will affect some of his base.

Now we seem to see more agitation around him and some of that is in people that were fiercely loyal. And it is not too much to expect that some of that fierce emotion which was directed at him that he as a guru took them, and remember that is an immortalizing path. That same kind of emotion can be transformed into angry resentment for failing them.

If even a - and this won't happen to a majority of his base - but if even a small portion we are used to describing as his loyal followers were to turn on him it would be fatal to his presidency. Or it would fit in with many other things that undermine his presidency. In that way the cultic dimension of Trump works both ways. It has been his source of power and influence.

And the strange phenomenon we witness of thirty, thirty five percent of Americans going along with him including his lies and falsehoods but the other side of the coin is the potential source of great danger to him. Should more of them actively and publicly turn against him which is quite possible it will also have this effect on him it will also have this effect on him. I make the point that Shoko Asahara the guru of Aum Shinrikyo quickly moved into psychosis when this happened to him,  a couple of his leading disciples denounced him. He had moved in and out of psychosis anyhow, as some gurus do. And I don't necessarily expect Trump to do that but certainly his capacity to feel powerful which he is constantly struggling to sustain could be strongly interrupted and undermined.

Hassan: Right, I would just like to insert for people listening that your book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism which came out in 1961 about Chinese Communist Brainwashing was just one of many studies you have done including the one you are referencing Destroying the World in Order to Save It about apocalyptic cults and Shoko Asahara was hanged in jail after twenty years and he claimed to Jesus and Buddha and he claimed according to former members I interviewed was trying to bring about the apocalypse. And prove that  his prophecies were accurate and that was the rational behind the gassing of five thousand Japanese in 1995.

Lifton: Yes, uh, he in that sense was an activist in his apocalyptisism. As you know many cults are very responsive to nuclear weapons and that in a sense confirms and intensifies their apocalyptic feelings. But with Asahara he embraced what the ancient Jews called forcing the end. Forcing the end which would be taking an active part in the violence which is known to necessarily proceed the end. Or in the case of the ancient Jews the messiah.

The ancient Rabbis were wise enough to reject forcing the end or so I read in gorsht and cholem. But some of the present cult leaders may not have that restraint or wisdom and Asahara certainty didn't.

Hassan: There is a difference between religious cults like Aum Shinrikyo or the Moonies. What about political cults like Lyndon LaRouche who just died do you want to say anything about him and his conspiracy theories.

Lifton: I never studied him particularly but I started this as you said with my study of Chinese thought reform that is a group of political extremism and really that chapter twenty two that people who have been in cults have used to recognize what they have been put through came from a claim to spiritual perfection and what I have found is these seemingly separate tendencies political and religious can be psychologically virtually the same.

There was a guru in Mao himself and a great majority of the Chinese population looked up to him. And in that sense the vast Chinese population became cult like. Now I call it cultish or I speak of cultism to combine these in an all embracing idea. The subtitle of the book I am working on now it has the subtitle of it has the title of Losing Reality, subtitle On Cults, Cultism and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry.

Well here is the sequence in my work, thought reform was a kind of political purification apocalyptic, and I bring out the apocalyptic side of Mao, Aum Shinrikyo was ostensibly a religious purification or apocalyptic movement, the Nazis were a biological purification.

Hassan: You wrote The Nazi Doctors for anyone unfamiliar with that work.

Lifton: I did and as I look back on it I didn't call it cult like but even as I write it I called it milleniarial, and I spoke of a mystical bio medical vision and a biological mysticism. So there was a cult like aspect to the Nazis as well. All of this has to do with claims of absolute purification both the political and the  ostensibly religious groups embrace they as you yourself discovered personally they are psychologically so close as to be virtually inseparable the political and spiritual apocalyptisism and extremism.


Hassan: And in your book Death in Life about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the victims of a nuclear bomb you also talked about this the nuclear weapons changed the fundamental structure of how humans relate to reality because it created for the first time a tangible scene of the utter annihilation of everything.

Lifton: Absolutely, In that sense, the nuclear weapons were immediately technologically apocalyptic. They could do what in the past only God could do - destroy the world. And for many they became something close to an object of worship themselves. We call that nuclearism. And in nuclear weapons can also take on a cult like quality and we recognize that when we speak of the nuclear priesthood. Or the arcane aspects of nuclear weapons there are just a relatively few people...(interview trails off)














Friday, May 3, 2019

The Overboard Ceremony

The Overboard Ceremony - https://www.exscn.net/conte...
(for the record again and for the Hubbard apologists and the Miscavige-bad/Hubbard-good fraction)
I suppose there has already been some stuff written about this, but I thought I would fill in some of the early details.

We were in Corfu, autumn of 1968.

Sitting in Diana's office with Hana, Hubbard came by. He was quite chatty and looking forward to the forthcoming Class 8 course. During the conversation he said " Well, whenever they flunk a session, we will throw them overboard". We all laughed, but Hubbard never laughed with his eyes. It leftm us with a question mark over the statement. Was he kidding? Or was he serious?.

Funnily enough, in the same conversation, I remarked about some members of the public simply joining staff to get free processing and training and then leaving. I caller them Freeloaders. Hubbard said that was a good way of describing them and he would use it.

Sorry, folks!

Anyway, the Class 8 course had 3 MAA's, Craig DeFan, Ollie Budlong and Rod Taunton. They were photographed and features in an Auditor edition at that time.

The students, having been summoned to the ship were in a range of emotion from indifference to outright terror. They were made to wear bright green overalls, brown open toed sandals and had to wear a running noose around their neck.

As an indication of how cowed down they were, an old friend from St Hill, Fred Fairchild - he had come from Dertoit Org, had a beard. I happened to remark that I thought he looked much better without the beard. The next morning he came down clean shaven. I asked what had happened to the
beard. He thought that my friendly and innocent enquiry was an 
instruction, so he had shaved it off.

The MAA's went right into the Nazi identity. The next morning all the students were mustered on the aft well deck. A name was called and the person stepped forward and told he/or she had flunked a session. They were bodily picked up and thrown over the side. It was about 30ft drop into the harbour.

A mantra was shouted " We commit your errors to the deep and trust you will arise a better person."

Whilst the overboard ceremony was going on, Hubbard was two decks up redording the incident on his cine camera.

The same ceremony was applied to the staff as well, usually for some (henious) transgression soch as ordering some equipment without FP approval.

Along the side of the ship was a rubbing strake. The person had to be thrown out sufficiently far as to avoid it, or it could easily result in death.

There was a rule, If the overboardee touched the side of the ship on the way down, the Officer in charge of the ceremony immediately got thrown overboard too. Therefore you tried to hit out with your hand or foot so you could get that bastard thrown over as well.

There were degrees of overboard. Firstly there was simple overboard. Then we had overboard blindfolded, there was overboard with either feet or hands tied. The most extreme was being tied and blindfolded going overboard.

It didn't matter if you could swim or not. You were screamed at to "make things go right". You made your way along the side of the ship and clambered in through the cattle door at the side.

I have seen people in absolute terror, panicking in the water. On a couple of occasions we defied the MAA's and dived in to rescue the person. The punishment was a double overboard, one after the other.

The most disorienting one I had was being thrown over blindfolded. You could not accurately anticipate the moment of impact.

And of course, Hubbard was up there, every morning watching and more often than not cine recording it.

When the class 8 course finished, the students returned to their various orgs. They adapted the overboard ceremony according to local conditions. This could be immersing them in a cold bath to putting their head down the toilet and flushing it. Students had to wear green vests and a rope noose.

Once the students had departed, Hubbard got really vicious with the overboards. John MacMaster, the first clear and a real international celebrity was on the ship. Hubbard clearly saw him as a threat to his own self-importance. John was a charasmatic speaker. He could talk about affinity to a whole theatre of people and there would not be a dry eye in the house. John was a superb auditor and was responsible for the development of Power Processing.

The problem was that John was gay. Hubbard had an absolute loathing for any homosexual man or woman (or coloured person in fact) and set out to destroy John. He assigned John as a galley hand, clearing up the aftermess etc. He has John thrown overboard blindfolded and his feet tied together, on more than one occasion.

More than one of us have heard Hubbard say "I hope the damn faggot drowns" as John went over the side. I spoke with John years later, before he passed away. He bore Hubbard no grudge for the inhumane way he was treated.

I trust that this fills in some gaps for you on what you might have heard about these events.
(bold is mine)