The mighty STAND (STAAD) League pretends to be a group of “concerned scientologists” who “stand up for religious freedom.”
In fact, they are an Office of Special Affairs front group consisting of selected individuals (many of them are ex-SO/staff/GO like the example below) cleared by OSA who are given direction and authorization to participate in attempts to smear those exposing scientology.
The International Director of STAAD is Ed Parkin. He has been in PR OSA Int for more than 20 years.
He dishes out commendations to the chosen ones (lots of good these commendations will do them when they fall out of grace…)
Funny, the International Director of STAAD is NOT available to speak on behalf of scientology (neither are any of its members) even when invited to do so….
Scientology has NO spokespeople at all.
But Ed Parkin will appear to “handle” Phil and Willie Jones on the street outside ASI when they are there to see their daughter or a camera crew from The Aftermath that shows up to a ribbon yanking ceremony.
Why is scientology so afraid of having anyone appear on camera as an official representative to answer questions? Aren’t they the masters of communication? Haven’t they studied and drilled the tech of “handling suppression”?
And why do they block me from following their twitter feed? They talk about me and Leah and the show ALL THE TIME?? You would think they would WANT me to read their stuff? On the other side of the coin, I hope scientologists (including Ed and everyone else in OSA) read every one of my blog posts, Facebook comments, Tweets and posts on Instagram…
This is the image that shows up on a Google search for Ed Parkin:
Note the “pinned” tweet at the top…
Also note it has him located in New York. I suppose this is some sort of misdirector to throw people off the scent? Ed has been a fixture of the 12th floor of the HGB in Los Angeles for decades. Why lie about something stupid like that? Oh yeah, trying to pretend this is some sort of “independent” organization that is NOT just a cover for OSA. LA is just too much of a giveaway…
Maybe someone can look and see how many followers they have? A lot of them are no doubt people who have seen their tweets about the show and respond with derisive comments, but nevertheless, it is interesting to see how few people they can muster on social media that have any interest. For an organization that claims 12 million members, all of whom fight for religious freedom, this is a pretty poor show.
There is definitely a MU regarding the acronym. I guess whoever came up with the counter-group to invalidate Scientology ‘bigotry’, they haven’t taken the Student Hat course. If they did, they didn’t learn to apply it. Or maybe the Golden Era tech II b.s. made them confused after having to redo the course and spend hours sitting in a classroom only to be bombarded with registrars waiting for them outside the courseroom for more ‘prepay’ services to sign up for. “Only on SRD, well, let’s have you prepay through OT III.”
You can find statistics for Twitter, YouTube and Instagram on SocialBlade. Scientoligy has made private their subscriber numbers on YouTube, no doubt because of the appalling numbers they had. https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/standleague/monthly
Phil Jones – not sure where to reach you in regard to the little beacons. With your help, I would be willing to help with one. I live by an ideal org and could help plant one if there is need of one near me. Or I would help someone that couldn’t afford it, buy one for their loved one. Not sure how to find your comments on this process. Can’t remember if it was here or the Bunker. Thanks!
You can always contact me here. http://stopscientologydisconnection.com/contact-form/
Just as a reminder: 12 million is slightly more than the official membership of the Methodist Church in the United States. Most cities have several Methodist churches. Seeing one on the corner is not going to be a surprise. Most Americans will know at least one Methodist, or someone who used to be a Methodist. Having a few million members is enough to make your faith mainstream.
Scientology doesn’t even remotely have the same physical presence nor do most Americans personally know a current or ex Scientologist. I know Mike + most of the readership realizes all of this, but just wanted to point it out again as showing how absolutely absurd this claim is.
I was raised in the Episcopal Church, which claims to have a mere 1,917,182 active baptized members in the United States. There are two Episcopal Churches within ten miles of where I live, and at least a hundred in the state of Illinois.
By comparison, Scientology – with its supposed 3.5 million U.S. members – has one church and four missions in the entire state.
The church in Chicago could pretty easily be mistaken for a disused store front, although they’ve been in the process of renovating a much grander Idle Morgue on Printer’s Row and planning to move there Real Soon Now since at least 2009…
Well, taking into account that this New Ideal Morgue on Printer’s Row is going to be delivering ETERNITY to Windy City dwellers, what’s 9 years, Kurt, in the grand, cosmic, whole track scheme of things?
Does CoS acknowledge that it’s counting a whole lot of declared suppressive persons among its “members”? It would be fun to document better estimates of the actual numbers. I’ve seen <20,000 as the most common estimate of actual members, but I mean with related numbers for comparison — # of people who have taken a course, # of people who have gone clear by the original definition, # who have gone clear by new definition, # of people who have officially routed out of the church, # who have donated to IAS or been "lifetime" members of IAS, # of people who were once counted as CoS members who have since been declared SPs. I'm betting that last # could be as much as half of their peak actual membership (just guessing based on descriptions of how SP declaration works and the hemorrhaging of membership since these boneheaded campaigns went into effect — e.g., Golden Age of Tech, Ideal Orgs). The funniest thing is that percentage SPs would be higher among CoS "members" than among any other religion. They have a real knack for attracting and giving influence to SPs. I bet if someone did a statistical regression on it, the best predictor of being an SP would be toleration of Scientology's doctrines.
Ed Parkin – one happy Scientologist: http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/3718/4406/original.jpg
Creepy person!
Dirty Santa?
Definitely creepy looking! Looks JUST LIKE the albino bad guy in that `1977 Goldie Hawn movie. Name escapes me. She’s being stalked, she goes around wacking people with her umbrella. Chevy Chase in it too. Funny….Oh, wait! Wasn’t Ed Parkin one of the Squirrel Busters?
I was there. Can’t remember if I took this photo or not. He looked at me and said, “You’re an SP.” Ha!
I would have said, “Well, every dog knows his own, ED”
(Apologies to dogs everywhere.)
Ed Parkin would have quite a way up to equal the character and integrity of the average dog.
I wonder if Riggs Eckelberry is friends with Anita Lay and Dixie Normous…
🙂
Scientology and scientologists make me sick.
They are SO REPULSIVE, especially when they pretend to be ethical.
The truth is they want only one thing… to suck as much money as they can out of any disposable human being that they can reel in.
Religious discrimination, my ass.
I think sometimes they forget that you no them like no other, Mike.
Keep it up?
Knows them, even!
The verified account for Stand League has over 95,000 followers yet the vast majority of posts have less than 5 likes, many with 0. Mike’s twitter has over 60,000 followers and most posts have a couple of hundred likes.
They’re indefatigably phony. I have such contempt for them for lying about such things. And to think that so many times I DIDN’T think to question the cult, my reasoning being: “Who in their right mind would lie about something like this?” Reminds me somehow of the advice the character Sherlock Holmes gives his clients about hiding something; you “hide” it in plain sight. And of course, Conan Doyle got this from Edgar Alan Poe…point being, people tend not to question HUGE lies given matter of factly from trusted sources.
AND, their Petition recently flat lined around 7000. JSwifts petition is still increasing, and 2X the STAND petition. Real reality for the scibots is a b**ch
Yay!
Mike, you once again expose the emperors new cloth.
Amazing you post Riggs Eckelberry’s commendation. Riggs was in the SO and worked on the Apollo with Hubbard. He later left and now has his industrial water purification system he sells. You would think he would catch a clue after his wife died. Scientology did nothing that could save her.
It’s my contention that the foundation of all of Scientology is fear.
So no wonder members of the cult are all cowards. They are bred to be that way.
If you look at Eds eyes closely in that picture, they are a combination of hate and cruelty.
They eyes tell all.
@EPStandLeague
2,264 Tweets
Following 283
Followers 15.4K
Likes 687
Suspicious bump in followers there. I am not on Twitter and can’t see details about any of this. But 687 likes in total from the world’s fastest growing religion? Must be a lazy lot…
That big a bump in followers smacks of a click farm, esp relative to “likes”… Typical BS Scn stats.
“3,913 following” “95.9K Followers”
With, sort of, apologies to Sound of Music (I still can’t stand that film) –
“The Stand is alive with the sound of click bots.”
Yes, it’s bad but I haven’t had my morning coffee yet.
I take my coffee through an IV, Kronomex. How bout you?
Mike… If you log-out of your Twitter account, you will be able to see those who have you blocked. You just can’t interact with them, but see their tweets.
Much easier to just open a private browsing session in chrome ctrl-alt-n or from the menu at the right hand side. most browsers support something similar.
These $cilon idiots can’t even do acronyms right! Notice the bolded “N” in “Against” in Riggs Dingleberry’s commendation.
It’s STAAD, you semi-literate $cilon fools, NOT STAND!
” For an organization that claims 12 million members, all of whom fight for religious freedom, this is a pretty poor show.”
I guess Ed only wanted the most dedicated freedum fighters to sign the petition against The Aftermath. Seems like the dedicated membership is now around 6000 …….. and falling!
Dave,
Did you pack the Holy Shrine with starving student extras, funded by an I A asS grant?
Hey! Newcomer! Kiristi Ally says there are 20 million cult members. And everyone how ethical she is…
Edward Parkin blocked my Twitter account as well (for some reason….I’ve never interacted with him personally). However, I made a bot account to see his twitter feed and he shows 15.4K “followers” (just for shits and giggles, I checked out the most recent 6 “followers”, including someone named “21 |-/ Piløts”, and 4 of these accounts just joined Twitter in November/December 2017).
All of his Tweets have just a very few likes/retweets. I will say though, he did have a tweet that performed well on December 10th when he said this:
“Happy International Human Rights Day! It is very well worth remembering and supporting. The world needs #HumanRights”
Pretty generic, but it seems to be one of his most liked tweets, with a grand total of……7 Likes. Most of those probably had no idea the connection to Scientology, but just wanted to support Human Rights. And who doesn’t?
Most other tweets have 1 or 2….or 0. Stand League account itself boasts 95.9K followers…..out of 20 million (according to Kirstie Alley), for a whopping 0.479% of worldwide members following their main account to “confront and shatter suppression”. Perhaps they may need to retake the basic communication courses to learn how to actually…..you know…..”communicate”.
Speaking of Likes, I bet Mike Rinder could Tweet the following basic message:
“Hi”
And he’d have a few hundred Likes/Retweets/Replies within the hour. Just sayin’…..
Totally agree!!
We need to do this… my Twitter Universe is in Mike’s hands
Hi Mick. I miss chatting with you on FB. I find it too hard to chat on Twitter with the character limitations. Great post, excellent research. Happy Holidays to all. Peace ?
Thanks Andrea. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season as well.
By the way, Mike, I like the new email notification feature that informs you that someone replied directly to one of your comments.
Like in the Wizard Of Oz, lots of noise, smoke and mirrors but hidden behind the curtain is a confused fake. Their claim to fame is a large real estate portfolio bought with the blood and sweat sucked out of those it conned, most of whom soon leave in an effort to rebuild their lives.
Edward has the Twitter page locked down. Nothing tweeted to it or in response to his tweets shows up.
Well, but never mind, Wynski, Ed’s ethics are just so darned IN.
For example, he NEVER commits “the 2 basic crimes” i.e. “Being There” and “Communicating”.
And you could say that this is because he’s NOT there and NOT communicating, but please stop nattering about an upstat..
His walls are COVERED with Ethics Commendations, at his org, his files are bulging with them.
Well DONE, Ed. Keep hiding from ANYONE who isn’t a Scientologist. Keep those Ethics In. You go, guy!
LOL! He probably actually thinks like that Aqua. Scary stuff indeed.
For sure Aqua
I bet Ed sits in his throne room chanting:
I’m a Thetan
This I know.
Cause Ron Hubbard
Said it’s so!
Facebook “Like” distribution for STAND League (rank / country / likes):
1 United States 4487
2 Mexico 1613
3 Colombia 552
4 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of) 283
5 Italy 118
6 United Kingdom 114
7 Canada 93
8 Hungary 85
9 Philippines 75
10 Australia 66
11 India 56
12 South Africa 54
13 Taiwan 51
14 Russia 39
15 Germany 36
16 Spain 35
17 Switzerland 30
18 France 29
19 Denmark 27
20 Costa Rica 24
21 Pakistan 23
22 Netherlands 19
23 Guatemala 19
24 Belgium 19
25 New Zealand 18
26 Israel 18
27 Sweden 16
28 Bangladesh 14
29 Brazil 14
30 Bolivia (Plurinational State of) 10
31 Austria 10
32 Chile 9
33 Japan 9
34 El Salvador 8
35 Macedonia (FYROM) 8
36 Greece 8
37 Slovakia 7
38 Thailand 7
39 Portugal 7
40 Malaysia 7
41 Nigeria 6
42 Ireland 6
43 Indonesia 6
44 Puerto Rico 6
45 Egypt 6
That’s pretty impressive, actually. They got every scientologist on the entire planet to like their tweets.
The amazing thing to me is that these folks actually believe the nonsense they spout. And lies/lying, of course, are essence per policy. Tony’s Sunday blog really covers that well.
Miscavige, of course, is the weasel in the works, constantly building his financial empire and escape routes. What a relief it’s been to be OUT of the evil empire for so many years.
As for discrimination, Hubbard was a chamption at that! LOL
They have 95,924 followers (stand league). Probably mostly bots…..
I call them “electronic thetans”.
Funniest comment of all time
Afternoon Mike , please explain
STAND = Scientology Taking Against Discrimination. should be STAAD
Doesn’t make sense
STAND: Scientologists Standing Against Decency
Scientology is a hate group, and a scam.