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Fascinating 26 page article in the New Yorker about the experiences of Paul Haggis, a 35 year member of the COS, who recently went apostate. The author and the New Yorker went to lengths to accurately discover and expose the short but true history of the church, That includes the original frauds by LRH that created the church in the first place.
To me this read as an extraordinary exercise in meme-ology, almost as if from a marketing class. Very American story, Hollywood is prominent in a way that created an ample niche made up of those seeking new age self help, just as mormonism sprang originally from the “burned over district” of NY state.
We always knew that CA had a taste for fruits and nuts and sadly this tale rings to true to that.
LRH created the original brand, which created wealth and power for those close to the center. When he died, it was exploited to the max for those closest to the power. That power went to their heads just as if they had sucked it into their nostrils with a $1000.00 dollar bill. Now they are completely unable to account for LRH’s original stories. Maybe, we will see this meme killed by our own anti bodies before it gets past it’s 2nd generation and 25,000 adherents.
I’m half way through the article now. It talks about the Sea Org. and how members do menial chores like maintaining property, etc. Well, this is related.
I’m half way through the article now. It talks about the Sea Org. and how members do menial chores like maintaining property, etc. Well, this is related.
I finished the article. Some highlights that surprised me, one who thought I’d heard everything about the cult:
Whitehill and Valerie Venegas, the lead agent on the case, also interviewed former Sea Org members in California. One of them was Gary Morehead, who had been the head of security at the Gold Base; he left the church in 1996. In February, 2010, he spoke to Whitehill and told her that he had developed a “blow drill” to track down Sea Org members who left Gold Base. “We got wickedly good at it,” he says. In thirteen years, he estimates, he and his security team brought more than a hundred Sea Org members back to the base. When emotional, spiritual, or psychological pressure failed to work, Morehead says, physical force was sometimes used to bring escapees back. (The church says that blow drills do not exist.)
The kidnap people who have blown and bring them back by force if necessary!
Miscavige’s official title is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, but he dominates the entire organization. His word is absolute, and he imposes his will even on some of the people closest to him. According to Rinder and Brousseau, in June, 2006, while Miscavige was away from the Gold Base, his wife, Shelly, filled several job vacancies without her husband’s permission. Soon afterward, she disappeared. Her current status is unknown. Tommy Davis told me, “I definitely know where she is,” but he won’t disclose where that is.
It’s astonishing how much power this little twerp has over his minions. Reminds me of Kim Jon Ill of N. Korea.
At the meeting, Davis and I also discussed Hubbard’s war record. His voice filling with emotion, he said that, if it was true that Hubbard had not been injured, then “the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures were never handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie.” He concluded, “The fact of the matter is that Mr. Hubbard was a war hero.”
I finished the article. Some highlights that surprised me, one who thought I’d heard everything about the cult:
Whitehill and Valerie Venegas, the lead agent on the case, also interviewed former Sea Org members in California. One of them was Gary Morehead, who had been the head of security at the Gold Base; he left the church in 1996. In February, 2010, he spoke to Whitehill and told her that he had developed a “blow drill” to track down Sea Org members who left Gold Base. “We got wickedly good at it,” he says. In thirteen years, he estimates, he and his security team brought more than a hundred Sea Org members back to the base. When emotional, spiritual, or psychological pressure failed to work, Morehead says, physical force was sometimes used to bring escapees back. (The church says that blow drills do not exist.)
The kidnap people who have blown and bring them back by force if necessary!
Miscavige’s official title is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center, but he dominates the entire organization. His word is absolute, and he imposes his will even on some of the people closest to him. According to Rinder and Brousseau, in June, 2006, while Miscavige was away from the Gold Base, his wife, Shelly, filled several job vacancies without her husband’s permission. Soon afterward, she disappeared. Her current status is unknown. Tommy Davis told me, “I definitely know where she is,” but he won’t disclose where that is.
It’s astonishing how much power this little twerp has over his minions. Reminds me of Kim Jon Ill of N. Korea.
At the meeting, Davis and I also discussed Hubbard’s war record. His voice filling with emotion, he said that, if it was true that Hubbard had not been injured, then “the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics procedures were never handled, because they were injuries that never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore, Scientology is based on a lie.” He concluded, “The fact of the matter is that Mr. Hubbard was a war hero.”
I expect Tommy Davis to blow in the near future.
Yes I picked up on that too. The statement of what it would take to falsify Scientolgy and LRH was made by Tommy Davis. BUT, he was simultaneously handing over forged documents verifying the LRH story. He must have known they were forged. He may have forged them himself. I think he’s going down with it. I saw in the BBC interviews that the movie stars like Anne Archer are pretending to never have heard of OT III xenu and all. I think that cognitive dissonance is strong enough to allow some pretty blatant contradictions…..obviously.
Again, Tom Cruise is a benchmark for exactly what kind of mental illness??? He’s got some strange brew of neurochemicals going.
