This week, Leah and I had a wonderful time talking with my old and very dear friend Marc Headley —The BFG — on our Fair Game Podcast. Marc not only has a phenomenal memory, he possesses a great sense of humor. Anyone who has read his book knows both of these things to be true. We covered plenty of ground -- talking about the Int base and David Miscavige, the infamous musical chairs incident depicted in Going Clear and even how the Rinder bobblehead came to be. Throughout I mentioned including links, you will find them below. This is definitely an episode you don't want to … [Read more...]
Ron: The Epic Saga of BS
The smoke and mirrors game that scientology plays concerning L. Ron Hubbard is pretty remarkable. This "monumental hardback collection" is hardly a recounting of a "life like no other." It is a carefully selected collection of anecdotal stories about things L. Ron Hubbard said or claimed about his life. Many of them are unverified, unable to be documented because they didn't happen. Charitably, Hubbard told "tall tales" about his life and exploits. Realistically, he simply lied about himself. The author of these "books" (they were originally "magazines") is Dan Sherman. The "LRH … [Read more...]
At Least We Know They Are Listening
STAND is obviously paying close attention to the Fair Game podcast, No sooner had the episode where we talked to Alex Gibney aired than they trotted out a new smear on him. From none other than the renowned expert, Will Seabrook. It would be interesting to ask Mr. Seabrook in person whether he has watched Going Clear. I would bet he has not. If, by chance, he has, then I would love to ask him two simple questions: What specific can you cite to classify his film as a "bigoted propaganda video"? Tell me a single fact that is wrong? It's funny, scientology has NEVER refuted the … [Read more...]
Episode 3: Scientology’s War on the Media with Richard Behar
We were very fortunate to speak with Richard Behar on this week's episode of the Fair Game podcast. Rich, along with Pauletter Cooper (who will feature in an upcoming episode) is a poster child for scientology Fair Game against journalists. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who first wrote about scientology in 1986 for Forbes magazine in an article entitled The Prophet and Profits of Scientology. His most famous scientology piece was the 1991 Time magazine cover story, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power. The subhead on his article pretty much sums up … [Read more...]
Even More on Ventura
Someone sent me a link to this Facebook group I grew up in Ventura California and a posting there about scientology coming to town. This group has 22,000 members. It was a pretty innocuous thing about the brightness of the sign on the building. As of now it has over 450 comments. Though I have not carefully read every comment, I can say with a high degree of certainty that there are virtually no positive comments about scientology. And yet, their PR line is that the demand for scientology is so great, and they are expanding so rapidly, that to meet the demand, they have … [Read more...]
Mark Bunker’s New Scientology Hit Squad
Clearly scientology is worried that Mark Bunker is proving to be a viable candidate for the Clearwater City Council. They are now resorting to one of their tried and true tactics against those who worry them the most (see below in this blogpost for earlier examples of the same playbook). Following is a series of short videos of a recent candidates forum. Scientology sent along a gaggle of hecklers to disrupt Mark's statements -- pursuant to the policies of L. Ron Hubbard. Unfortunately, there is no video showing their faces -- perhaps next time when both Aaron Smith-Levin and I … [Read more...]
Scientology and Christmas
It seems the media is becoming more aware of the truth about scientology. This recent article in the Kansas City Star is not the sort of "goodwill" and "PR area control" scientology was hoping to garner from opening their new "ideal org" and launching into a PR offensive for the holiday season. The title of the article alone is enough to send shivers down COB's spine: Kansas City’s Church of Scientology opens a Winter Wonderland: Is this some ploy? Ploy you ask? Ploy? You can read the full article at the link above. I have a few thoughts about it. Following the evocative … [Read more...]
The Hole: A List of Prisoners
There has been plenty of commentary about "The Hole" since it was first disclosed by Joe Childs and Tom Tobin in the St Petersburg Times in 2009, and again famously featured in Lawrence Wright's Going Clear book and Alex Gibney's HBO film based on the book. Scientology has asserted the Hole "does not exist and never has." But the numerous people who have witnessed it first hand and spoken about it have, to any objective observer, put scientology's denials to the sword. Miscavige even had a sign made and hung on the outside of the building to identify it clearly as "The Hole." (Where he got … [Read more...]
SuMP Mystery Solved!
They are making fundraising videos.... This is the ONLY thing that has emanated from the Sump since the grand ribbon yanking ceremony. The irony is amazing. Even for scientology. Miscavige decides he wants to be a Hollywood mogul and purchases and old studio lot. Let's not forget he already HAS a "state-of-the-art" studio at Golden Era Production with "the largest free standing sound stage in California" and a purpose built "Film Lab" to process film (of course that is like his specially built CD line -- horse and buggies in the digital age). Nevertheless, the … [Read more...]
Mariette Lindstein’s Prize Winning Crime Novel Based on David Miscavige
Some great news from our long term friend, Dan Koon about his wife (Mariette Lindstein)'s prize-winning, best-selling book. For those unfamiliar with Mariette, I asked Dan to provide us with a short biographical sketch. I have known Mariette for many, many years, in fact it was me that brought her to "Int" to become Watchdog Committee Scientology in 1983. Mariette grew up on Sweden's southwest coast in Halmstad. She became involved in Scientology after graduating the Swedish equivalent of high school around 1978. Soon, she was working at the Malmö Org where she and a couple other Div 6 … [Read more...]