Re: Scientology Thread

[ericbarbour]

It's not Gerard's friend Tony Sidaway?

Gerard, Sidaway, Cirt, Chris Owen himself, take your pick. They all ran undeclared socks--and probably still do. Gerard's probable-sock Maxim was on Arbcom for about nine months in 2024--and resigned for "personal reasons". I wonder if this infuriated some of his fellow Kangaroo Kourtiers.

[Strelnikov]

Forgot to post this a week ago, but Mike Rinder, ex-Scientologist and former Office of Special Affairs* goon of David Miscavige (head of the "church") has passed away from undisclosed causes, but in 2023 it was announced that Mike had esophageal cancer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/us/m ... ritic.html

https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/like- ... e-tributes




John Sweeny talking to RInder and other escapee Scientologists 12 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/@mikerinder <--- Mike Rinder's YouTube channel.


*Replacement organization for the Guardian's Office, which had to be destroyed in the late 1970s after Hubbard's third wife and others were arrested by the FBI for stealing US government secrets at L. Ron's behest. Like a combination of the Gestapo and budget secret polices like Apartheid-era South Africa's BOSS. Endless dirty tricks.

[ericbarbour]

Forgot to post this a week ago, but Mike Rinder, ex-Scientologist and former Office of Special Affairs* goon of David Miscavige (head of the "church") has passed away from undisclosed causes, but in 2023 it was announced that Mike had esophageal cancer.

The guy is dead, and they're still attacking him.
https://www.whoismikerinder.com/

[Strelnikov]

Forgot to post this a week ago, but Mike Rinder, ex-Scientologist and former Office of Special Affairs* goon of David Miscavige (head of the "church") has passed away from undisclosed causes, but in 2023 it was announced that Mike had esophageal cancer.

The guy is dead, and they're still attacking him.
https://www.whoismikerinder.com/

That website was first put up in 2011, part of a string of "fuck you buddy" websites run by Official Scientology but utterly denied by them. If you go to the bottom of the site, it lists similar sites about "Leah Remini, Tony Ortega, Karen de la Carriere, Jeffrey Augustine, Marc & Claire Headley, Aaron Smith-Levin, Graham Berry, Tom DeVocht, Amy Scobee, Jeff Hawkins, Leah Remini • Aftermath: After Money".....all of these people are critics of Scientology (case-in-point: Graham Berry is a lawyer who ran lawsuits against the "church", represented Donald Myers aka "The Angry Gay Pope" and others), most of them have YouTube channels*, books on how Scientology is an abuse factory and a scam, and so on. The non-ex-Scientologists on the list besides G. Berry are Jeffery Augustine (husband of Karen de la Carriere, herself an ex-Scientologist and YouTuber; he runs a podcast interviewing ex-Scientologists) and Tony Ortega (journalist, did stories on Scientology for The Village Voice, runs a blog debunking Scientology and other culty scams.) The "church" sees any criticism as libel, and is designed by Hubbard to get members to distrust journalists (labeling them "low on the Tone Scale"** and possible "Suppresive Persons"), no matter how accurate that criticism is.

_______

* In the case of Leah Remini, an entire cable TV show about how David Miscavige is holding his wife hostage and how the "church" is a fraud. I think Rinder was a guest/information source.

** This is a Hubbard invention, running from a "positive 40" down to a "negative 40"; dues-paying Scientologists are high on it, death is at the bottom, being gay is way down there. It's full name is "The Emotional Tone Scale" and it was part of Dianetics which came out in May of 1950.

[ericbarbour]

That website was first put up in 2011, part of a string of "fuck you buddy" websites run by Official Scientology but utterly denied by them.

The "church" sees any criticism as libel, and is designed by Hubbard to get members to distrust journalists (labeling them "low on the Tone Scale"** and possible "Suppresive Persons"), no matter how accurate that criticism is.

Well, it makes THEM look petty and juvenile ultimately. Have to wonder how long a "religion" like this will last after the mainsprings have died off. Take your bets on the COS's fate after Miscavige kicks it. Basing your belief system partly on Hubbard's 50-60 year old rants about his enemies and critics isn't a recipe for something that will last a long time. Most other maniac cults of the 20th century have fallen apart.

Again, this list is helpful. Usually founded by a "Messiah" or something. Messiah proves to be fallible, dies, the rudder breaks and infighting starts.

[Strelnikov]

That website was first put up in 2011, part of a string of "fuck you buddy" websites run by Official Scientology but utterly denied by them.

The "church" sees any criticism as libel, and is designed by Hubbard to get members to distrust journalists (labeling them "low on the Tone Scale"** and possible "Suppresive Persons"), no matter how accurate that criticism is.

Well, it makes THEM look petty and juvenile ultimately. Have to wonder how long a "religion" like this will last after the mainsprings have died off. Take your bets on the COS's fate after Miscavige kicks it. Basing your belief system partly on Hubbard's 50-60 year old rants about his enemies and critics isn't a recipe for something that will last a long time. Most other maniac cults of the 20th century have fallen apart.

Again, this list is helpful. Usually founded by a "Messiah" or something. Messiah proves to be fallible, dies, the rudder breaks and infighting starts.

A lot of Scientology critics remarked about how petty it all was 12 years ago, but these sites are now the first hits on Google when you search for these names, which seems to be the point. Just like RationalWiki keeping their Rome Viharo near-libel BLP up.

Have to wonder how long a "religion" like this will last after the mainsprings have died off. Take your bets on the COS's fate after Miscavige kicks it.

He does not seem to have a hand-picked successor, so when Mr. Beats His Staff croaks, they may resort to the "leadership committee" structure that was supposed to follow Hubbard's death that Miscavige short-circuited and then seized control from before the committee was rolled out to be seen by the dues-paying members of Scientology. Instead David Miscavige himself made the Hubbard death announcement in 1986, instead of the committee. Hubbard did not want Miscavige as boss; the committee was his idea and made up of people he lived with while on the run from the IRS and British Inland Revenue inside the US in the 1970s. If Miscavige lacks a plan, it's either the committee or implosion as a "religious" organization.

Basing your belief system partly on Hubbard's 50-60 year old rants about his enemies and critics isn't a recipe for something that will last a long time.

The theology ("tech") of Scientology is based on a college dropout's view of physics, psychology, biology, nuclear science, and history. It is full of bunk, pseudoscience, and kayfabe. All the rants I have discussed, including Hubbard's late-'60s shitlist of organizations that were "squirrling" his "tech" based entirely on whatever rumors that blew into the Mediterranean (he thought Anton LaVey's Church of Satan was a Scientology rip-off, which it wasn't; he lists the Process Church of the Final Judgement as two organizations and utterly forgot he had sent a nastygram to that group when it was Compulsions Analysis in 1964, proof that the creator of Clear was not Clear* himself), are entirely "office" stuff from the back rooms of the "church." Luckily for the ghost of Hubbard, if Scientology dies, it farts on as the FreeZone or Independent Scientology, and the knockoffs of Eckankar, the Church of the Divine Man, Landmark (the est successor), and others (the mystery religion form predates Christianity, and Scientology is one of them.)




Miscavige starts speaking at 3:18. The jargon is so thick that most the audience does not catch on that Miscavige is telling them that Ronbo is dead six minutes in. Some women, possible auditors or instructors, do catch on early and gasp loudly.



*Clears have perfect memories, according to Scientology. They are also supposed to not need glasses, and Hubbard used reading glasses. The Process Church of the Final Judgement was also just known as "the Process" or "the Processians" because the "FINAL JUDGEMENT" bit in the name was pretty scary sounding to normal people, and it must have confused Hubbard, who was zapped to the gills on uppers and downers on top of being a functional paranoid schizophrenic.