Mike Rinder's Blog

Something Can Be Done About It

It’s Thursday…

By 40 Comments

This recent promotional item caught my attention as one of the more ridiculous pieces I have seen in a while. So it seemed perfect for a Thursday Funny.

They’re holding a “virtual” event (on 5 July) but you are supposed to “serve your favorite Independence Day food.” Is this a virtual leftovers event?

The poor fools have been working on “building” their “ideal org” to “create Man’s true freedom” for more than 15 YEARS and are no closer to having a building now than when they began. And of course, they will only start creating Man’s true (?) freedom once they have a building. Because Miscavige announced way back when that orgs could not make it unless they were “ideal” because they could not provide “all” of scientology. He analogized it to an auditing session. Unless you have an E-meter and a room and an auditor you can’t audit. And thus, unless you have a 50,000 sq ft fully renovated building with videos in Div 6 instead of people, you cannot deliver real scientology.

If Hubbard was around, he would have done an “evaluation” of the situation and found that Miscavige’s “Ideal Org” program had hastened a decline in stats and Miscavige would have been running around a pole for some years before being sent to the RPF.

Factually, “Ideal Independence” is probably a really good idea for Long Island and every other org — they need to become independent of the insane demands to buy and renovate an “ideal” building.

 

Breaking News:

Our old friend Bryan Seymour is at it again…

Teaser is here.

Looking forward to this. It’s a blockbuster….

 

Comments

  1. Mm, I can almost virtually smell the virtual food, that I virtually prepared earlier, baking in the virtual oven. Can’t wait for it to finish virtually cooking so I virtually taste it before virtually taking it to the virtual meeting. I will also remember to take my virtual wallet to give virtual money to the virtual regges.

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  2. These Zoom regging sessions may be a blessing for the under-the-radar crowd. Want to stay away? Just claim tech problems with your computer. “Oh, sorry, Zoom doesn’t work on my computer. And I’m having such big wins on my extension course that I don’t want to risk exposing myself to the virus!”

    Or, if a reg does call, tell THEM to “make it go right.” LOL

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  3. Ron Hubbard had made a long island to a big island owned by scientologists. He had made a long island to an empty island. Perfect for clams?

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  4. Question – a family member was trying to locate someone in SO and found on a document that they gave their permanent address as Big Blue in LA. Does anyone actually live there?

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  5. You can publicly criticize the Pope, Mother Teresa or Bishop Tutu, and the very worst response one could possibly get is a vehement disagreement. Not the Church of Scientology; expect them to send the gumshoe KGB after you. Even practicing Scientology auditing outside the purview of the church (It’s actually a Crime Syndicate, not a Church) can result in legal action. Imagine being sued by the Catholic church for conducting a private group Bible study.

    Hubbard once wrote that Scientology is a deadly serious activity/game. ‘Putting Ethics in on the planet’, or ‘Saving the planet’ is doublespeak for “Controlling the Planet”. Never allow the Church of Scientology to get into any position of power. It would make the Gestapo look like like ‘Sesame Street’ in comparison. One needs to look no further than what has been going on within the halls of the Church of Scientology to see what’s slated ahead if they ever even got a pinky finger on the reigns.

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    • Scientology is a bloody serious thing,
      depending on every members hard-working.

      The ones standing in the way
      removes, but first in clay.

      The time it takes to create enemies in clay is the time enemies get away.

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    • I saw a documentary on the Stasi — East Germany’s cold war secret police — the other day and they had NOTHING on the repression of the scientology organization; never call it a “church” nor capitalize the name. It doesn’t deserve any respect, particularly since the tiny fists of fury assumed “power” over it 3 decades ago.

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  6. (NOTE: Bryan has done well over 100 Australian TV shows exposing the cult)

    Bryan Seymour is such a Super Journalist.

    The Fair game he endured over the years was vicious and relentless.

    For years they tried to get him fired from his job as a journalist and TV host.

    The cult wrote vicious letters to his seniors in the network he was in.

    They were unsuccessful.
    When Bryan appeared on the Aftermath he told an anecdote of how they tried to make him lose his cool by bringing up childhood trauma ~~
    They gave you drugs in the orphanage you were raised in ? No ?
    Why don’t you kill yourself ?

    See 3.14.
    4 minute clip worth watching
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1ZSNrucEFI

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  7. Long Island is one of the worst-off SFOs, having failed to even buy an “idle morgue” target building to sit and rot while they try to raise money to renovate it. Though I think I’ve seen a rendering of what one very nice old building would have looked like, if they had bought and finished it – that has apparently often been done as a lure, sometimes on such a speculative basis that reportedly in some cases it was done with buildings that Scientology didn’t really even have an option to purchase, just so that they could have a visual to use to entice donations.

    Hawaii is the only other US org I know of that hasn’t at least bought a building – though again I’ve seen an architectural rendering of some prospect. As revealed recently, they’re also such an SFO (Small and Failing Org) that they’re in a small upper-story office space in a building that doesn’t even give them outside signage, leaving them to put out realtor-style short sandwich boards during the hours they’re open.

    I’m starting to suspect that these shipwreck orgs that have never been able to buy a building, may be the ones on which the “ideal org” program founders. My guess is that there may be some revision in which they do something like buy (or are bought) more like 15,000 square foot buildings that have room for an imagined later addition – that would also solve the problem of the New Haven SFO, which bought a building (an old Masonic Temple) of about that size very early on before Miscavige’s grandiose requirements had been finalized, and also the infamous St. Louis SFO which is apparently now supposed to shift gears to renovating its existing building (another former Masonic Temple) and is trying to sell off the derelict large historic building bought long ago.

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    • Peace maker. Just to confirm what you say: in my nearest town the org purchased the building a decade ago. But they are still in the same old premises. By the way the C/S they had in training got ripped off, recruited into the SO and sent somewhere.
      But the point here is that they had to get whales from Milano and other areas to pay good part of the value of this building. The org hasn’t even 20 staff and a small public.
      I still ask to myself who is paying taxes and bills as the cult in Italy has no tax free status.

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      • And the sad thing about the ‘Ideal Org’ business is that after they have pushed parishioners into financial ruin to pay for an eyesore building…they then get to pay rent on the building they bought and send it uplines.

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        • Linear 13. Exactly. Seen from outside is a total joke. But from inside isn’t.
          One need to think and have feelings towards anything in unison with the others. Otherwise the crowd shut up and all turn their heads to you.
          The original lie was that the ideal orgs were a gradient to boom the orgs.
          Many gradient were still missing to reach the first one and the truth was just money.
          How can a small org with less than 20 staff all partime, small public, no div 6, mainly OSA pr activities support as well the costs related to this building?
          Hey DM and you OSA guys where is the on policy sanity about it?
          And please don’t say “we just execute orders or command intention”. This is what many nazi said in Norimberga.

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        • I find it particularly sad that members have even lost their own homes as part of fundraising pushes – sometimes for projects that have never even come to fruition, like St. Louis. And in cases like St. Louis, a lot of the money was then squandered paying expenses like property taxes on empty buildings purchased without a realistic plan for what to do with them.

          With remaining active memberships that often seem to be down below 50, each members’ share of the the massive new projects is over 1,000 square feet. Much of that space is under-used or sits completely unused, while some members are left with less space than that to live in on a daily basis.

          Some of those who were financially exploited have since left or been expelled, and will never enjoy any fruit of their donations. And some who are now out are even still paying down credit cards and loans taken out to give Scientology that money – that’s got to really be painful.

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    • Peacemaker,

      When I was in my org used this same dishonest ploy to get Ideal Org donations.

      A fundraiser was held and a fly thru video was shown of a huge building.

      Accompanying the fly thru video was the E/D’s narration of it which began with her grand announcement, “Are you ready? Are you SURE? Well, OK! THIS is our new building! Isn’t is GORGEOUS?”

      We all oohed and ahhed, for real. It was a beautiful building with a unique facade. And huge.

      “…and this will be Reception…Div 6 Courseroom …11 auditing rooms at least…on this floor will be the Academy…cafeteria…etc., etc…how do you like your new building?”

      We all liked it, of course. We were all impressed. We all donated.
      We needed 15 million dollars to “secure” it, which I took to mean that a down payment had been made and the org was regging to complete the funds.

      A day or so later, purely by accident, I learned that not only had this building NOT been purchased by the Church of Scientology but that it wasn’t even for sale.

      Oh, it was empty alright! But the family which owned the building together had been warring amongst themselves for a dozen years. One sale had NEARLY gone thru – get this – 10 years before! – but because of the owners’ legal infighting the title was clouded, and whatever their issue was would have to be resolved before the building could go back on the market!

      All this I found out as I said, quite by accident. It was sheer coincidence because I hadn’t been CHECKING or verifying what we’d been told at the fundraiser. I hadn’t been in the least suspicious! The E/D had told us “Here is your new building!” I didn’t doubt it.

      But now I was was shocked. The E/D had lied. LIED to us! She didn’t say, “Here is the kind of building we would LOVE to have…” or “Wouldn’t a building like this be terrific?”

      No, she said, unequivocally, “THIS is your new building…this is your new Academy…etc., etc.” Declarative sentences, beginning with “This is..” No mistake. All lies.

      And I had donated. We all had. My donation that night was not astronomical but not peanuts either. At least to me it wasn’t peanuts…$1500 as I recall.

      So, yes, I was shocked to learn that I had been lied to like that! But at the same time I figured there had to be some explanation, some reasonable, understandable explanation…

      Long story short, the next time I was in the org I shared what I’d learned with someone on the OT committee. A real old timer, an OT8. I asked him if he knew what was going on with supposed building sale. I shared with him how by sheer coincidence I’d found out the building was not only not for sale but could not be for sale to anyone, let alone the Church. I told him all of this.

      He didn’t blink an eyelash.

      He shrugged, and in a bored tone, said, “We HAVE to put a building up there. If we didn’t have a building to put up, if we didn’t have a building to show at one of these things, then no one would give us any money.”

      That’s pretty much a direct quote.

      No embarrassment, not a trace of shame.

      Quite an eye-opener for me. I stopped going to Ideal Org fundraisers after that. I lost trust. They got money out of me by lying! I can laugh now but it was shocking to me back then, and a major nail in the coffin of my departure.

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  8. I just had a little win: It’s Thursday at 3 PM and NO scientology minion called today. I guess they’re giving up and going away. I’ve been waiting for them to try to recover me — after they beached me; threw me away as useless for their purposes.

    DAMN, they’re good at making mistakes; and enemies.

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      • Right! We SPs are WINNING! scientology can’t fight the flood of truth being released through the manny sluice gates which have been thrown WIDE open.

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        • How much of this win is due to the Internet?

          I read an opinion from someone that it was the advent of the Internet that was one of the major causes of the death of this cult. Once people could tell their truths to the whole world instantly, this deceitful cult was pretty well doomed.

          Thank goodness!

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          • The internet proved that it couldn’t be sued to the point of shutting up, and so information which used to be difficult to get at (say, court records) or buried in libraries became available at the touch of a search engine. Not that the criminal organisation known as the “church” of $cientology didn’t try. What forms the early attempts at shutting down free speech on the Internet took is written about in, for example, https://www.wired.com/1995/12/alt-scientology-war/

            In the end, while information about the Co$ on the Internet was a new thing, and 1994 to 2008 was when I was active, I think that it’s the voices of the ex-victims who stood up and spoke in public which has brought more public awareness of just how awful the Co$ is. This greater awareness is what’s going to make a difference. At this point, the Internet goes back to being one of many pipes that carry information. For a while, though, the ability of the internet to withstand censorship attempts from this nasty organisation was itself the story.

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          • Right, Skyler! The Internet has closed the door firmly against scn ever experiencing a major resurgence, not that it had had one after the initial fad waned in 1950.

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            • Jere, I’d say Scientology “boomed” again because of the wave of post-war babies who turned into young seekers – and draft avoiders – in the 1960s and into the 1970s. But that was yet another limited phenomenon.

              As I’ve expressed elsewhere, I think Scientology’s doctrines and practices are now hopelessl dated and anachronistic, and that there’s nothing that could improve their prospects. Like other groups of their ilk they were already on the decline when the internet came along, though it’s certainly been the nail in the coffin.

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  10. Fifteen years of collecting donations, with little or no money spent? Hubbard would have looked at the total of the IAS slush fund money donated worldwide, vs the expenditures on Ideal Morg buildings, then given Miscavige a fancy medal, and sent him to Albania for life.
    All Hubbard cared about was his own narcissism, squashing any criticism, and Keeping Cash Coming. I seriously doubt he would interfere with cash flow to enforce a policy. It’s much more likely he would change policies to enhance cash flow.

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    • Hubbard was definitely money hungry. There are even old accounts of him accepting what were essentially donations – if I recall correctly, Saint Hill or some of its accountrements were paid for by one or more followers, and that may have included the “loan” from Ray Kemp that Hubbard reportedly never repaid.

      I notice that old-timers sometimes still have idealistic notions that Hubbard never would have been “out exchange” and accepted money without delivering services in return, but I think that the historical records shows otherwise. Miscavige and the current regime are doing things like that on a scale that Hubbard might not have imagined – or, arguably, just didn’t need to do in Scientology’s heyday when money and the supply of “fresh meat” recruits flowed freely, thanks to a surge of boom-generation “seekers” – but I keep finding that there are still old precedents for all of it, and I suspect that is how Miscavige justifies it.

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    • Albania? Bulgravia, to get him out of the way! Tubby would be upset that Dwarfenführer® took so many liberties with his sacred writings AND that Hubbard’s name hasn’t been blasted into universal recognition and acclaim. A nobel prize would have been a nice touch, appropriate too in Tubby’s self-image. Davey-Boy ain’t done NOTHING that Hubbard would have wanted; particularly since the IAS is controlled by DM’s minions, not Ron’s.

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  11. I can’t wait to watch the 7newsAustralia 10 part series. $ci continues to get hammered for it’s criminal activities.

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    • Me too, Gordon. Trouble is that I don’t have that channel on my lineup.

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  12. Mike,

    I’ve always wondered if Miscavige believes Hubbard is coming back, like my Kool-Aid drinking auditor was convinced Hubbard was already back in 1988. And if Miscavige believes that, do you think he worries about running the pole?

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    • Doug, I believe Davey-Boy would only worry if his supply of Scotch ran out. He never worried much about doing scientology; he just didn’t bother with it except as absolutely necessary to get others to kowtow to him.

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    • Doug,
      Miscavige doesn’t believe in that stuff, and wouldn’t care if the Tubby one returned surrounded by a heavenly host of angels singing his praises. He’d smash him like an insubstantial insect.

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    • I’m going to credit this to Mike because I saw it here in one of his blog posts and that is : “The biggest secret in Scientology is that Miscavige is NOT a Scientologist”.

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      • Linear 13, ANYONE at the top that knows what DM and us know about the OT levels is NOT a scientologist. This includes people like the last Snr C/S Int and the oone before him, Walker (although he is now dead). They just have nowhere to go and no way to earn a living.

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  14. “If Hubbard was around, he would have done an “evaluation” of the situation and found that Miscavige’s “Ideal Org” program had hastened a decline in stats and Miscavige would have been running around a pole for some years before being sent to the RPF.”

    Just laughing.

    I am pretty much sure that while plotting the outpoints doing the evaluation it would come up certainly all the IAS cross policy activities perpetrated to the orgs.

    I’m sure the pole would become his best friend as long as he lives.
    The RPF would be for the next life.

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    • Loosing, if LRH really came back, he’d be declared by the tiny fists of fury, AFTER spending some years in “ethics”. Ron couldn’t restrain his narcissism sufficiently to not complain that everything he had built has been fouled up beyond redemption, not that there is anything to redeem; nothing ever worked as advertised.

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      • Jere. He wouldn’t come back. First because of DM as you say. Second because of the current mess the cult is in, well beyond the no return point. Third because anything it was as he said.

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