The definition of religion is very clear and it's not defined by John Sweeney and for you to repeatedly refer to my faith, in those terms is derogatory, so offensive and so bigoted and the reason you keep repeating it is because you wanted to get a reaction like you're getting right now. Well, buddy, you got it! Right here, right now! I'm angry, real angry! or perhaps you do smoke marijuana Do you have a card yet? or a you still a poser *inaudible* Answer that question Are you actually a reporter? I'm just trying, just trying to get comments Where have you ever reported anything? I'm just trying to get comments Where have you ever reported anything? Jim? You want to answer that question? Stop committing suppressive acts Full time suppressive acts Just end it. Go live a life get a life, man. You've had zero effect. None. And nobody gives a fck about you. That's the truth. Nobody's even noticed you're gone, man. Nobody.. You're nothing! That's the point, you're nothing Your TRs are brilliant. Why don't you just stop committing suppressive acts and live a real life What's he doing in LA, anyway? What are you doing in LA? Why are you here? Start living a decent life and do something to help mankind since you guys do nothing to help mankind Between you, Mike, it's pathetic! You guys are embarrassing and pathetic. I wasn't aggressive towards you So can you see when your parishoners You call it parishoners When you stand here and say "you are not welcome here!" No! - Can I just - Not you, him Not you, you guys are fine I don't even know you We gave a message for Marc, we delivered it But can you see how been extremely aggressive of treating people One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight We were just getting in our car and all these guys ambushed us here on the highway That's because we're working So are we! For anyone who pays attention to the church of Scientology on a fairly regular basis It has become obvious over the past couple of years That its public image has taken repeated, well deserved beatings It's so bad that I believe it has now passed the point of no return There is no road out for Scientology to gain a favorable public image and it's only going down from here. What's not so obvious is why this has happened Many of us critics of the church can only stand with our mouths open in shock at the more insane displays of hate and fear that high-level scientologists demonstrate when the cameras are rolling I can only imagine the horror that church members themselves must feel when they see how their organization represents itself to the world at large. Because believe me, despite the church's internal demands on its members to not watch or read anything bad about Scientology The widespread accessibility of mass media in this day and age makes it impossible to censor the truth. There are reasons the church of Scientology acts so blatantly against its own best interests and I'm going to break down some of those reasons for you. With exposés and full-blown documentaries about Scientology soon set to be released I want to also lay out what we can expect to see from the church in response to these and why their responses are only going to make matters worse for them. I think that most people who have any awareness of Scientology know about the Office of Special Affairs The church's legal division In fact, much of the church's bad PR is due to the hard work of OSA's investigation and legal departments. Including the non-Scientology lawyers and private investigators they hire to actually carry out much of their dirty work. When you see Scientology stalking and harassing its ex members for example, you are seeing these investigators and lawyers doing their daily work. What many may not realize is that OSA also has a public relations department which is responsible for the church's external public image and media representation Public relations is an important subject for any group, company or organization. Technically, it's the practice of managing the spread of information between that individual or group and the rest of the world. The public Billions of dollars are spent every year on PR Some do better than others But it's safe to say that almost anything you see in any mass-media outlet has been directly affected by professional PR work. By any yardstick you care to use OSA has been doing an absolutely horrendous job for many years. It's degenerated so badly that there hasn't even been a public media representative or international spokesman for Scientology since Tommy Davis disappeared in 2011 It took two years just to find out that Mr. Davis left the employment of the church along with his wife, and does his absolute best to stay out of the limelight now. No one is stepping up to take his place. When you look at the press releases, promotional materials and commercials put out by Scientology it seems difficult to understand just what public image they're trying to create or maintain. All they ever seem to talk about is fundraising for bigger buildings giving money to their international association of Scientologists membership fund or making their members redo services over and over again because supposedly they weren't doing them right the last time. And of course, their members have to pay for the privilege of these redos each time. It seems as if this organization does nothing but raise money for itself. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology wrote a series of policies in the early 1970s called The Public Relation series. These gave the operational directions for anyone in the church who is going to engage in public relations It's interesting to look at a few of these and see how Hubbard set the stage early on for the cataclysmic failures they're now experiencing Like every subject he wrote about Hubbard claimed that he was the only person to be able to figure out the real laws and workable procedures to execute successful public relations. Instead, what he actually offered was a contradictory set of rules that on the surface looked like they might make sense, but when you try to use them? you end up in a total mess. As for conflicting information One example is when Hubbard talks about the use of truth in PR In a policy letter from August 13th 1970 PR Series 2 The Missing Ingredient The more lies you use in PR the more likely it is that the PR will recoil Thus the law Never use lies in PR Scientologists read this and they think that it's church policy to never tell lies and therefore, everything that OSA ever says must be true. Right? Not so fast. Because just a little later in that same policy Hubbard then says Handling truth is a touchy business also You don't have to tell everything you know Tell an acceptable truth So PR becomes the technique of communicating an acceptable truth and which will attain the desirable result. If there's no chance of obtaining the desirable result and the truth would injure then talk about something else. In PR Series 16, PR texts Hubbard even faults a PR textbook because The problem here is that an acceptable truth is defined in Scientology as anything they want it to mean to attain a desirable result. Help us to understand something about the church and this is what the group Anonymous is protesting they claim that the church separates family members there is this practice of disconnection Where if you're a member of the church of Scientology to the best of my understanding, here on this issue because I'm not a member and I don't fully understand it but if you're a member of Scientology and somebody in your family, or a friend or your spouse is skeptical or critical of the church of Scientology you are supposed to disconnect yourself from that person. And Jenna Miscavige Hill who is a nurse, a niece rather of the church's leader, David Miscavige says that happened to her. Which is the reason she left the church a couple of years ago and she now has a website bringing together former members of the church of Scientology to talk about issues like this. Well, first of all, this is a perfect example of how the internet turns things and twists things There is no such this as, as, as, as disconnection as you're characterizing it and certainly... but you have to understand what is disconnection then? Scientology is a new religion. You have the majority of Scientologists in the world they're first generation, so Their family members aren't going to be Scientologists and this kind of thing and Scientology absolutely mandates... it's really part of the code of being a Scientologist to respect the religious beliefs of others So certainly, someone who's a Scientologist is going to respect their family members' beliefs *crosstalking* the family to be a building block of any society Anything that's characterized as disconnection or this kind of thing it's just not true. There isn't any such policy in the church that's dictating who people should or should not be in communication with, you know, it just doesn't happen. George Orwell was the pen name of author Erik Arthur Blair Famous for such works as Animal Farm and 1984 He was a brilliant essayist and a lifelong opponent of totalitarianism Amongst many other things Orwell wrote about the clever use of language in politics and media and how language can be altered for PR purposes to fool the masses into agreeing with taking away their own right and freedoms To demonstrate what he was talking about Orwell is the one who invented terms like Cold War Big Brother, Thought Police and Doublethink. If you have never read any of Orwell's essays or books I can not recommend them enough. Hubbard knew of Orwell's work Taking a page out of Orwell's book, so to speak Hubbard wrote a whole Issue about the redefinition of words for propaganda purposes on October 5th 1971 in the PR Series But instead of agreeing with what Orwell had to say about this dangerous practice in thought-control Hubbard actually encouraged its use in Scientology PR In what has to be considered a truly orwellian twist Hubbard wrote, many instances of this exist Right there, Hubbard advises scientologists to do the very thing Orwell spent his entire life fighting against Trying to prevent totalitarian dictatorships from destroying the rights of men. These are the kind of curves Hubbard threw into almost every subject he wrote about. So, how does this get done in Scientology? Well, here's one recent example Scientology was founded on the idea that its counselling procedures called Auditing would free a person from past trauma and stress and that eventually, one would reach a state of personal spiritual immortality. Hubbard was crystal clear that such a state was only achieved through lots and lots of auditing. The full amount of spiritual trauma any person carries around is called "their case" in Scientology. So personal improvement is called: "case gain" Now if you look at recent promotional mailers and flyers from building fundraisers and the IAS They are promoting that "case gain" is gotten just by the act of donating money. There is certainly nothing wrong with feeling good by giving money to what someone thinks is a worthy cause People do that every day with thousands of different charities. Now Scientology is not a charity. In giving money to the IAS is the equivalent of burning it in a fireplace. But, that's not my point. The real point here, is that case gain has now been redefined by the IAS to mean the feeling that you get when you give money to them. This is a purposeful, calculated promotional action to redefine the very basics of what Scientology is all about. And by the way, L. Ron Hubbard never authorized or approved the IAS And I'm quite sure that despite his shortcomings He would be turning in his grave right now to hear that people are equating money donations with case gain and auditing. Hubbard was very clear in his policies that he did want people to donate to the church but they were supposed to get materials and services for their money There was supposed to be an exchange. So if you wanted to turn Scientology into a purely money-making enterprise It would be necessary to first redefine the terms used to describe the gains you get from Scientology It would be necessary to make it seem like giving money for nothing was just as good if not better as if giving money for something. They have succeeded in this and Scientologists are now so deluded that they think giving money to criminals is something that gives them personal spiritual immortality. When the chips are down and things aren't going their way many people can get desperate. And start to do desperate things. When you cannot compete inn the arena of ideas and tell the truth about what you're actually doing, all that's left is to attack and resort to violence And so we come to where Scientology is at now and their responses to their critics. Since Anonymous started exposing the church of Scientology's criminal activities on an international scale in2008 using the power of the internet Scientology has been reeling from blow after blow. The truth is a powerful weapon and the internet is a platform which Scientology cannot control. Despite claiming to have recall of advanced galactic civilizations dating back trillions of years, somehow Hubbard never conceived of the internet. Nor was he able to write any operating policies for the church to deal with mass-media dissemination of anti-Scientology information. Up until he died, Hubbard's policies all concern censorship and intimidating his enemies into silence through threats and force. That's not possible with the internet. So the truth remains out there about the church despite its best efforts to stop it. Realizing that they were not going to have much success using their old tactics, Scientology attempted a series of attacks using disinformation. Trying to paint Anonymous as a terrorist organization. The church literally made up a story that Anonymous had threatened to blow up bombs on church property. This was later disproven and recoiled on the church badly In addition, on February 4th, 2008 a video was posted by Ruthie Heyerdahl on YouTube. She appears to be spontaneously speaking out as a non-Scientologist against Anonymous protests of the church that year However, as with everything associated with Scientology Looks can be deceiving. Let's see what she had to say in this short 3 minute video. I just saw something that totally freaks me out. Wow! I was looking at the most subscribed channels and I came across a channel called Church of Scientology The video that particularly bothers me It's called "Call to action" More or less, it's a person or a channel Telling 5,706 people to go and protest the church of Scientology on the 10th of February Which is in 6 days I don't know what exactly they plan on protesting Religious freedom? Constitutional rights? *laughs* C'mon guys, really? I just think it's really weird OK A little bit of background information I have a ton of friend that are Scientologists And I think Scientologists are possibly some of the most involved people I have ever met. Like, They're some of the most ethical people they are so friendly and so happy and they have such a purpose in life It's very rare for me to come across people who actually try to make a difference in their local communities, and you know, in their cities, in their government You know, to be honest I have a hard time finding people who actually vote And, Scientologists are some of the most intelligent And the most involved people that I have ever met. They are people who care They are people who make a difference. I know so many Scientologists, and they're great people and so the fact that their right to practice their religion is being protested is very, very strange To protesters, all you can *inaudible* I don't really understand what you expect to accomplish Like the US government is going to be like "Oh right, Scientology, no it's not actually a religion. We were just kidding" I don't think that's going to happen And if you just want to ruffle their feathers I can tell you right now I have friends that work for the church, and if you devoted your life to making a difference and stomping out the evil in the world A whole bunch of evil showing up in your face would just kind of make you feel like, "you know what?" "That's why I'm here" So basically by going there you encourage them in what they do Because they're there to get rid of the negative things in this world. and I stand for that, I mean I'm not a Scientologist but I'm not the type of person that's just going to sit by and let a religious group be bashed what time do we live in where it's normal to bash someone's religion Are you joking me? Wow That is really interesting that you find it ok to contend with religious freedom I feel like a lot of this is just jumping on the bandwagon Just kind of like, "oh yeah, that Tom Cruise guy he's so weird. These Scientologists are weird" Stupid Scientologists Have you ever even talked to a Scientologist? Have you gone into a church and actually asked questions about what the church of Scientology is? Because... honestly... On the 10th of February You should go down to the church and you know what you should do? you should cross your own picket line and you should go in and you should ask questions People fear what they don't understand And I think you're afraid Because they make such an important difference in the world and because they do so much good they're attacked by people that are fake and if you just want to listen to everything that they say be my guest but I would like to think that there are people out there that can actually think for themselves If you want to know about something Go to the source So you don't like Tom Cruise? Big deal! What does that have to do with the church? Since when did Tom Cruise become the Jesus of Scientology? Now it turns out that Ruthie was in fact a Scientologist actress Or at least as someone who had done Scientology services As far back as 2002 How far she got, or whether she is still doing services is not clear She removed her entire YouTube channel and almost all online traces of herself after the massively negative responses she received to her pro-Scientology stance back in 2008. The negative feedback was well deserved but why am I bringing it up now nearly 6 years after the fact? Because this video was, in fact a carefully scripted and orchestrated work by the Office of Special Affairs to counter not only that one Anonymous protest but every attack brought against the church since This video represents the best OSA has to offer in terms of a seemingly reasoned response against people critical of the church. The lines used in this video are still in use by the church today and are the ones they are going to continue to use to try to shut down critics. That being the case let's deconstruct the key statements she makes and analyze what we find She starts by purposefully setting the tone for what's coming using these phrases to describe the call to action video from Anonymous Using words this way is a technique called guilt-by-association The listener is supposed to get the idea that Anonymous is now "creepy" and "weird" Later in the video, she also describes Scientology protesters as "strange", "fake" and even uses the word "evil". Now this part is crucial, in fact most of the video hangs on this statement This is called a straw-man argument and all that means is she is inventing completely different reasons for why Anonymous is protesting Scientology And she will then use these invented reasons to ridicule Anonymous throughout the rest of her rant. This is a very common technique in PR and is used all the time by people who can't argue the facts and instead want to distract from the real issue by putting words in their opponents' mouths. She is specifically avoiding the real issue which is that Scientology brutalizes its members Especially those in the Sea ORG and engages in outright criminal activity on an almost daily basis. Those are the issues that OSA PRs can not and will not address directly. Instead, they throw out misdirectors every single time This also conforms with the Hubbard PR policy I mentioned earlier. Of avoiding the truth by simply not talking about it. Right after this misdirection Ruthie reveals her actual loyalties by showering unwarranted praise on the "ton" of Scientology friends she has. She describes all of them as: involved, ethical, friendly, so happy, and says they have such a purpose in life. They… try to make a difference She implies that they vote without saying that they do and then says they are the most involved people she's ever met. That they care and are great She even reiterates that they make a difference
