27 | July | 2011 | Moving On Up a Little Higher

Whatever Mark Bunker’s views, and whatever I may think of them, Mark Bunker is a decent, honest guy. I thought so when I saw him in Clearwater in 2000 when he was the video guy for the Lisa McPherson trust. I thought so when I saw his famous video beseeching Anyonymous to tone it down a few years back (garnering him the handle Wise Beard Man – or Wisebeardman). I thought so when he volunteered to convert my original trashy one page webpage into a WordPress blog format. And I think so today. Bunker has kind of taken on the role of Little Switzerland, or Big Switzerland depending on your point of view, in the ecclectic community of ex-Radical Corporate Scientologists and never-Scientologists protesting corrupt cultic practices carried out in the name of Scientology.

Guest Editorial

by Mark Bunker, aka Wisebeardman

It may be surprising to some to see comments from me on Marty’s
blog but I feel kind of at home here as a visitor. I don’t agree
with everything Marty writes but I enjoy reading what he has to say
and I’ve learned a lot from following his posts. I’m also indebted
to him for exposing a lot of newsworthy stories since this blog
launched. It’s seems like virtually every day there’s some tidbit
that rumbles the ground at the Int Base. Enough tremors keep
happening and he might actually shatter the locks on the doors and
free people like Heber Jentzsch from captivity.

I’ve been speaking out about Scientology’s deceptive and abusive
side since 1999. In 2000 and 2001, I moved to Clearwater, Florida
to work with Bob Minton and Stacy Brooks at the Lisa McPherson
Trust. We may not have gone about it the best way possible (okay,
we didn’t) but we were there because we wanted to draw attention to
abusive practices like disconnection that are still hurting members
of Scientology today. Even then, we were open to working with
people like Greg and Debra Barnes who still believed in Hubbard and
the tech but wanted to get their message out that management was
squirreling the tech, forcing six-month sec checks on people doing
OT VII and declaring them Suppressive for daring to quote Hubbard’s
policy to back up their charges.

http://www.xenutv.com/blog/?cat=176

I bumped into Marty once during that time and encountered Mike
Rinder on several occasions, notably during the first picket the
LMT did after opening our doors. Bob’s message that night was
“Reform Scientology now. Dump David Miscavige.” Years later, Marty
would tell me that another message that stuck with him from that
time was “It’s Safe to Look, It’s Safe to Talk.”

Bob Minton faced a global assault from Scientology until he
couldn’t take it any more and caved. Bob made mistakes, as we all
do, and Scientology exploited those mistakes. I witnessed the
assault and the heavy toll it took on him. He was a good and
decent man and he was my hero. I recently sat down and interviewed
Mike Rinder who oversaw the campaign against Bob. Here’s a very
brief clip from that interview:

There are many critics of Scientology who can’t forgive Mike and
Marty for their actions while in Scientology. I’m sure there are
many Scientologists who will never forgive me for speaking out
against Scientology. I’d rather look past that black and white
attitude and find a way to communicate and curb the abuses that
brought Bob Minton into this fight to begin with and that are now
being hurled against people like Mike and Marty.

I said I felt at home here at this blog. Part of the reason is
that I set this blog up for Marty. I did it because I wanted to
hear what he had to say. He had a webpage up that was hard to read
and I’m sure was hard for him to update. I took a couple hours one
Sunday afternoon just taking the information he had published and
putting it into this blog format. I sent him the link and told him
I’d be happy to walk him through using the site if he wanted to do
so. We had never talked or met and I wasn’t sure he would welcome
my intrusion but he liked the idea so for a couple weeks I answered
his questions and cleaned up the formatting on posts he made, then
the training wheels were off and he was up and running on his own.
Since then he has dwarfed my site’s readership and changed
Scientology’s landscape, and I learn new things almost every day.

I’m currently making a feature film documentary about Scientology
called Knowledge Report. The basic point of the film is that people
can believe anything they want but Scientology doesn’t have the
right to behave anyway it chooses. I’ve interviewed several
Independent Scientologists and plan to interview more soon. You
may not agree with every aspect of the film but I think overall you
should be happy with the finished product. Here’s a little sample
of some of the people who have agreed to be part of the film: