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Tagged John Sweeney, Leah Remini, Mark Bunker, mike rinder, scientology, tony Ortega
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Leah Remini, mike rinder, scientology, The Scientology Aftermath, Troublemaker
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Karen De La Carriere, Leah Remini, Michael Bennitt, mike rinder, Robert Almblad
Leah Remini, Part 6 – Aftermath Season 1, episode 1 – Manufactured Accusations
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
It begins with episode one, which is literally from beginning to end a manufactured story. Leah Remini starts off saying that she wrote a book and thought it would all be over; she wrote a book and just wanted to move on. Of course that is contradictory to the whole roll out campaign (see Leah Remini parts 1-5) that Mike Rinder briefed me on she confirmed later. But she presents herself as, “I will just write all the facts down from my experiences, and I’ll be done with…except, there was such an unbelievable demand for me to come protect these poor, innocent people who got harmed by Scientology.”
Phony, acted Amy Scobee Story
And so, episode one is supposed to be that story, Amy Scobee reached out to her. This is 2016. Amy Scobee told her story in 2009, seven years before this. Amy Scobee wasn’t in need of someone who had a platform. She wrote a book in 2009. But, according to episode one Amy came to Leah to resolve this problem of her being disconnected from her mother in 2016. Except, Amy has been connected with her mother since 2010. So, they literally manufactured and made up this story that people (former members) came out of the wood work – beginning with the person they put up front and center, Amy Scobee – so solve this problem that didn’t exist. In actual fact, it did not exist. So, this was planning, scripting, acting and dramatizing as much as her previous reality tv show.
Just look at what these people are saying in real time: Amy literally put on her Facebook page “It’s Showtime!” That was her promotion for the show coming up. It wasn’t, “hey, I’m going to tell my heartfelt story in this documentary search for the truth.” It was, “It’s Showtime!”
Amy Scobee Acting
It’s opportunist. Everybody is scratching everybody else’s back. Amy ends up getting a gig as a personal assistant in Hollywood at the same time. Her husband ends up getting another gig. So, she’s playing it for all she can get. Look, I consider myself friends with these people. I am not trying to put them down or anything. I am just telling you like it is. I got nothing on them. But, it is sort of par for the course for that personality. I mean they plan, script, create these ‘warrior princess’ personalities that do not exist in reality. You see, Amy now tells a new story after nine years after the fact of writing about how there were all these terrible things going on at the international headquarters of Scientology, and that she got in trouble, ethics trouble, because she had a problem because she told things as they were. What is wrong with this picture is, I was there at the time – and I was there for twenty years she was there – Amy Scobee was exactly the opposite of that. The only times she got in trouble was for exactly the opposite. It was for telling things how they weren’t. I mean, you’d have to go to great lengths to get her to knock off the public relations, to knock off the spin, to knock off the false positivity, and just tell it like it is. And yet, she is saying “I got disciplined and I went down in flames for telling it like it is. In other words, she was protesting these terrible things that were happening. Didn’t happen. Literally manufactured. Scripted, acted, played out.
The reason I bring this up is – because I don’t dislike Amy; she’s a very personable person – but what I am pointing out is the reality of it: The story is absolutely invented.
Remini and Rinder Compound the Fake News
Then, like I said earlier (parts 1-5) Rinder and Remini change the stories and change the complexion of it by commenting by introducing, then having the person make a quote, and then interpreting and altering and putting another spin on it so that they alter what the person said. What I am telling you is that in this series it goes a whole step further because the talent, the guest, Amy is literally telling a story that is 180 degrees from the truth. And then it is pumped up and altered and changed and conflated by the producer, director, talent: Rinder and Remini.
So, by the end of it, it bears no resemblance to reality.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Amy Scobee, Leah Remini, mike rinder, Scientology Aftermath, Troublemaker
Leah Remini, Part 5 – Propaganda Techniques
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
Leah took me to school on how unreal reality tv is. Watching the second reality series – the Aftermath series – I see it takes it to a whole different level. It is so obviously scripted, rehearsed, acted and dramatized every step of the way it is a whole new level of false impression. I spoke earlier about how Alex Gibney pirated from Roast Beef Productions in the UK – he pirated this format they used in his documentary. Which is to say they came up with this idea of ‘well get the witnesses to say things, but if they won’t go far enough, we’ll bring in Tony Ortega who will say anything for a handout, and he can make it sound like the previous person said something else.” And so they used him (Ortega) interspersed throughout, and Gibney did the exact same thing. Tony Ortega who didn’t participate in the book – it was supposed to be a documentary about the book – is throughout the documentary because he is going to create the premise. In the Aftermath they compound the felony because they use the exact same technique except that the producer, director, talent, actors Leah and Mike Rinder are doing it throughout. They introduce a concept with a bunch of generalities. Then, they have someone say something. Then Remini and Rinder jump back in and interpret and throw out more generalities. And (what was said by the interviewee) is completely and utterly altered, the reality of what the person’s experience was. In other words, the people who participate do not even have to have a story – and to date through Season One not one of them has a story worthy of news. How do I know? Because I knew these people nine years ago when the news was reporting some of the stuff that was going on during the previous ten to twenty years when the media was interested. They did not make the cut then. But, they make the cut now (on Leah’s show) because they’ll say what they are saying, but as introduced by Leah and Mike and interpreted afterwards, and then bridged to their next comment, it all the sudden becomes this nefarious, scary thing. And that is the technique that is used, episode after episode.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Leah Remini, mike rinder, Scientology Aftermath, tony Ortega, Troublemaker
Leah Remini, Part 4 – Remini and Tony Ortega, Blackmailers
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
Remini asks Rathbun to join the Anti Scientology Cult (ASC)
Talking about hypocrisy. After I rejected the producer role where I can write my own ticket with Leah Remini (see Leah Remini, Parts 1-3) several months later Leah gets a hold of me and literally wants me to make a commitment to be in the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult).
Rathbun tells Remini he doesn’t want to join a cult
And told her, “look, I am not a joiner. I’m not a sheep. I’m not a follower. If you haven’t figured that out in the two or three years you have observed me…” And Leah said, “no, no, no it’s if you are against them, we’re together.” And I said, “the problem is, you want me to join a group of people that have experience with who are demonstrably, obviously far more unethical, disloyal, criminal than any Scientologist I ever deal with in 27 years I was within it.”
Rathbun schools Remini projection
I told her, “And, yet as much as you rail about it, you want me to act in the very way you accuse Scientology of acting.” In other words, “forget about all that stuff, if you are against them, you are with us. It’s use vs them. And so if you are not with us, you are for them, basically.” I told her, “no.”
Remini does what she accuses the church of doing
Remember, the narrative that Remini and the troika has been capitalizing on for the past three years, central to the whole thing which they go on and on about, is ‘disconnection.’ In other words, because in Scientology, to the extent that someone acting anti-socially can’t be reformed or lived with people will disconnect from them. That that is such a ‘greivous crime’ to family and humanity that it justifies creating a cult to combat Scientology. So, when I won’t join her group, Leah Remini literally disconnects from me. And I mean in a way they don’t even accuse Scientology of doing. She told me “not only are not to be in communication with me again, you must destroy all my contact information, because I am destroying yours!”
It is not just a command that you are not to communicate with me, it’s “we’re going to make it impossible for us to communicate again.” So, it could not have been a more explicit disconnection. And that was the response to me for refusing to say I will give love, devotion and surrender to this ASC cult of yours.
Worse than Scientology
Now, after Leah Remini disconnects from me after I refuse to join the cult…Here is where the parallels come in with the narrative “Scientology disconnects from you, and then if you keep defying they ruthlessly attack you.” So, I do a couple essays on my blog that are sort of time to time neutral on the subject of Scientology. I always felt it was important that you attained some sort of objectivity about your experience in Scientology. Even if you felt it was negative to have it continually reinforced on you that it is negative, you are going to get sicker and worse. Like Scientology, or virtually any self-help philosophy or like any religion, it is far more healthful to recognize that you are responsible for your own condition and move along and take the positive from your experience. So, I do a few posts and the troika (Remini, Rinder, and Ortega) goes crazy.
Tony Ortega Cult Hatchet Man Attempted Blackmail
Tony Ortega launches this smear campaign and he runs it for six months non-stop, about me and my family. They attempted to infiltrate my family. They attempted to drive wedges between my wife and me. When that failed, they took up a collection to hire a private investigator to spy on and harass us. And when that failed, they attempted to blackmail me. I literally received a blackmail threat. (and it was from the number one source of funding of Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker operation). “If you keep talking about the ASC, if you keep talking about our side of the story or about our laundry, we are going to expose all the crimes that you failed to disclose about your scientology experience.” And I laughed at that because unlike them, I am the one person whose life has been an open book and there is nothing I ever held back. So, I said “go ahead.” My response was “make my day.”
Ortega makes good on the blackmail threat
I didn’t hear anything for several months until the very day before Leah Remini’s January 2017 ABC 20/20 Special. I hear from ABC 20/20 asking me, “do you know a guy named Sergio?” I said, “no, I’ve never known a Sergio in my life.” Simultaneously, I receive an email from Tony Ortega, saying “Sergio Lame (or whatever his name is) says that he got raped by an old male when he was a teenager inside Scientology and that you found out about it and covered it up.” So, I got what was going down. This was the payback on the blackmail threat. They literally made it up. So, I looked up this Sergio guy. He’d been going on for 3 or 4 months in the ASC troll farm. The guy was so incredible, he would say some stuff one day that three days later he would absolutely contradict. I mean his lack of credibility was so apparent just on the face of what he was saying without any refutation. It was that bad.
The Tony Ortega Slander Laundry
So, Tony Ortega as he’s waiting for my response, blogs “watch 20/20 tomorrow; there’s going to be explosive, and I mean, explosive stuff.” Then, it was clear to me it was going to be the Segio Lan “cover up.” So, I wrote back to 20/20 and said “I never heard of this guy in my life. But, now that I’ve heard from Tony Ortega I understand what is going on. He’s running the same op he is running all the time. Mike Rinder has explained it to me.” It goes like this, Tony will run anything because he has nothing to lose because he’s a nobody with a blog. Scientology and nobody else is going to waste their time suing a guy who can never make good on whatever damage he does in the first place; and can blog from a shopping cart in an alley as well as he can from whatever apartment he is living in now. So, he’s got immunity in that respect from libel. He’ll put out the sleaziest, most criminal innuendo with little grains of truth mixed in and keep repeating enough, with the intention that a tabloid at some point will start to pick it up. The intention is to keep feeding the tabloid with the intention that ultimately – in this degraded age of infotainment, click-bait news we live in – “legitimate media” will pick up on it. And that is the only reason the blackmail didn’t run, because I called ABC out on it.
Summary
They blackmailed me, I told them bring it, they had nothing to bring so they literally manufactured something. They literally manufactured accusations of criminal conduct that never happened. Accusations that were so unfounded that no media would run with it. But, they came within an inch from broadcasting it nationally.
Now, take my experience and you get a better idea of how the ASC and troika (Remini, Rinder and Ortega) works vis a vis Scientology – they run the same gig as above day in and day out over a seven year period.
Leah Remini, Part 3 – Reality TV is Fake TV
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
So, once I gotten taken to school on the subject of reality TV by Leah Remini.
This was during her AWOL period, where I would call her out on something and then suddenly she couldn’t be found for several months. I texted her after I had watched her reality show. They had this therapist come in and they had this group therapy session with her family.
Family Therapy Session
I texted her that I was really impressed that you guys had the courage to do that and share that with people. She called and let her know, “I mean, that is pretty personal”, I told her “I got one problem with it, though. I think it was really terrible how you just dumped it on your mother and made it look like she was the villain of the piece; and somehow unintelligent and stupid and culpable for getting the whole family involved in Scientology.” I said, “I could literally see it on her, she looks terrible.”
Leah discloses it is all scripted and acted
Leah let’s the first part go, and just addresses the second part, because she is a narcissist. If you say anything that is perceived as anything other than worship for her, Leah’s going to jump on that. “Oh, no, no, no”, she says, “you didn’t get it at all. This wasn’t an actual therapy session. This whole thing was planned and scripted.” I said, “you literally acted?” And she said, “Yeah, we literally acted.” She said, “listen, that’s how it works honey. Doll, that’s how you do it. It’s not reality, I plan out all these episodes and we figure them out all beforehand who is going to do what and who is going to say what. What do you think, I’m just going to put a camera on myself?” I mean, that’s uneducated I am about reality TV, I don’t watch reality TV. I just assumed they put a camera in there and captured how people live their lives. But, she instructed me that that is not what it is all about. It is not reality, it is unreality. It is fake reality.
Leah admits it is all to poke a stick in Scientologists eyes
In fact, in the course of telling me this she told that they had planned and scripted it for purposes of having maximum ‘poke in the eye’ on David Miscavige and Scientology.
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Tagged David Miscavige, Leah Remini, Reality TV, scientology, The Scientology Aftermath, Troublemaker, Unreality TV
Leah Remini, Part 2 – Three Card Monte
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
Rinder explained to me that they had literally had it worked out that – they, the three of them, the troika (Rinder, Remini and Ortega) – an operation, where Leah’s departure from Scientology would be orchestrated and be reported in a way that they would manipulate people into reporting it. It was an act. In other words, this is an active troll job. Leah would act as if she were being persecuted by Scientology for disagreeing with it and having all this “scandalous” information about it. All the while, she was having her agents create the story of her leaving. And it was done in such a way as to try to create a reaction on the part of Scientology. It was a string operation to try to get Scientology to reach out to try to salvage her, to get Scientology to have people disconnect from her. All it would be part of an ongoing story. It was all going to be a roll out to increase her profile and create this mystery and create this figure – this ‘warrior princess’, his innocent warrior princess. She’d be this innocent princess who was turned into a warrior because she was hunted down and persecuted by Scientology. That was the story.
As it rolled out Scientology never played its part. And they just acted like it did. She never did get persecuted, she never did get hunted down, she never did get people begging her to come back. None of that stuff happened. But, Rinder and Ortega just keep spinning the ball giving the impression that it did. The reason I refer to Rinder, Remini and Ortega as a ‘troika’ – this cluster at the top of this thing (the Anti Scientology Cult, ASC) – is they have this penchant for having one of them act like ‘Mickey the Dunce’ when something happens. That is how they rolled out Leah Remini in the first place. Tony Ortega literally reported as if he were onto a hot tip from a “tipster.” The ‘tipster’ was Leah Remini. Ortega made it look like someone else, like an insider who was leaking. And Ortega literally quoted Leah’s husband – he reported that he called Leah’s husband and said “hey, we heard your having a big break up with the church of Scientology,” and her husband was reported as saying, “oh, no, not at all, we get along just peachy keen. And if we ever did, we would resolve it with the church.” And Ortega goes as far as writing, “and we thanked him for being so candid.”
News is created
Well, the whole thing was scripted by Leah Remini, her husband, and Mike Rinder and Tony Ortega. So he literally made up this ‘news.’ That is how the whole thing rolled out and started. They continue that who op until today where one of them does something and the other one says “I don’t know anything about that.” Example. In the last episode of Remini’s first year of her series on Scientology, they spent the entire episode over Scientology accusing Leah of disaffecting and inspiring this kid Brandon Reisdorf to commit a hate crime by throwing a brick through a window of a Church of Scientology. She was like, “hah, can you believe they have accused me?” She is literally next to Mike Rinder as she says it. Rinder did in fact orchestrate the kid’s disaffection and inspired him into hating David Miscavige and Scientology so much that he was willing to maim somebody. And Remini spent the entire episode railing about how she was falsely accused and yet her partner Mike Rinder is sitting right next to her; the guy who executed the whole thing. And I know first-hand that he did.
So, I refer to them as a troika, cluster for a reason. If you do not consider them as an inseparable group, it is like a chimera, you don’t know where anything is coming from. Because it is planned and executed that way.
Ethics of the Anti Scientology Cult
Another example. They rail about ethics. “Scientology has this utilitarian ethics system, us v. them, good v. evil.” The funny thing is that literally is the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) system of ethics. It literally consists of ‘if it harms scientology, it is good. If it helps scientology, it is evil.” Period! Mike Rinder literally said on a podcast that Scientology is ‘fair game’ and you can literally can say and do anything you want against Scientology and get away with it. Literally promoting that idea.
Rank Propaganda
Ortega puts it in many ways, day after day, on his blog. One incident really encapsulates what happens here. A woman took her car and rammed it through the front door of the Austin, Texas Church of Scientology, sped through the lobby and crashed into the Church’s nursery where there were toddlers. When the police arrived the woman said she was disappointed when she was told she hadn’t hit anybody; that she had failed to kill anybody. And that was her only regret, that she didn’t. It subsequently came out that she was primarily inspired to do this by Leah Remini. She had been reading her book or watching her show or listening to her ramblings or her productions. And of course, Leah Remini just never says anything about it. Instead, Tony Ortega comes in and Tony Ortega flanks for her by trying to euphemize the whole thing. He literally characterized the admitted attempted murder as delinquency. Ortega’s got about a couple hundred people in his sheep farm (troll farm) and they generate thousands of comments a day because that is all they do all day, sit there and comment. Just as an exercise went through the comment section that day. Out of two thousand comments, not a single person objected to his characterization or called him out on it. And they are all just frothing these attempted memes of hatred against Scientology, based on a woman attempting to kill somebody with her car.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Leah Remini, mike rinder, scientology, The Aftermath, The Underground Bunker, tony Ortega, Troublemaker
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
Denialism
Denialism is part and parcel with the whole ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) narrative. They have to any possible benefit and 55 million written and spoken words in lectures that constitute Scientology philosophy. They have to deny that it exists in its entirety. So their narrative can be summed real simply as, “Scientology is a group of people who have no substance; there is no substance that they are trying to protect. And yet they do two things. If somebody breaks ranks and vociferously disagrees with the group they are ostracized and are disconnected from. And if the person then escalates that disagreement and turns it into an attack, then Scientology ruthlessly dispenses with the attacker.” And that in essence is the narrative gone over and over. It is the basis of Going Clear (book and movie); it is the basis of their blogs (the troll farms). What I learned through 5 years of interacting with ASC – these people who are the authors of the bible of the ASC, and the center of the hierarchy (the Troika cluster, literally is that that narrative that they tell is precisely a description of themselves.
There is literally no philosophy, it is literally an anarchy of ideas. There is no solution. There is no interconnecting philosophy or way of looking at things. There is only ostracizing, marginalizing and attacking Scientologists. It is ‘use vs them’ and that is the only basis upon which the group exists.
The TROIKA of ASC
The Troika (Remini, Rinder and Ortega) of ASC considered that they had a well defined, hardbound hierarchy. The only problem with it is that all three members think that they are in charge. The three members, Tony Ortega who runs a daily blog serving as their PR meme guy, Mike Rinder who runs a daily blog and Leah Remini who runs reality TV and spin offs on Scientology. Every meme, every idea that emanates from the ASC emanates from those three. It may be that someone has an idea and brings it in, but clears one of those three before it gets put out there. And they continue to churn this stuff out and they only do it because it is profitable.
When I said they consider they have a hierarchy, I have had discussions with these people. Tony Ortega snickers about what fools Mike Rinder and Leah Remini are and how easy it is to sucker them into making Ortega the only “scoop guy” so he gets all the “scoops.” Mike Rinder says that Leah Remini is just a ditzy, hair brained, privileged person, who has a greatly bloated image of herself and that he has to guide her every step of the way and hold her hand. Leah Remini says Mike Rinder and Tony Ortega are hallucinating if they don’t realize that they are her bitches. And she is just using them. That’s why I say it is like a cluster; they think they have a hierarchy but each part of thinks their in charge.
It is all about money
It always comes back to money. And Leah Remini explained it to me one day. She asked me if I had been paid for participating in Going Clear. I told her, “no, I never got paid for participating in any media or documentary. And that I never would out of principle.” Remini said, “I don’t get that. I don’t understand your thinking. I didn’t participate because they wouldn’t pay me. I don’t do anything unless I’m paid. Nothing.”
Remini Scores Unlimited Funding to Attack Scientology
So at one point Leah Remini told me that after two years of careful work through her publicist, and Rinder and Ortega, had successfully come up unlimited financial backing to go after Scientology. And that she was going to create a production to do so. Leah told me that she was so well back that I could “write my own ticket” on this to participate as a producer. So, I asked her “what are you looking at producing?” And she told me essentially it was going to be a regurgitation of everything publicized about Scientology over the past seven years, about things that have happened over the past 40 years allegedly. And that she would resurrect the players who were saying things about Scientology for the past seven years as somehow new and current. My reaction was, “I have no interest whatsoever.” I’d had this conversation over two years, “if you want to do something that is educational, that is somewhat objective, that could lead to people getting on in life better, that gave some new perspective”, that was the only basis I told her I ever would participate in her stuff. And I said, “and still stands. But, what you are proposing is essentially a cheap, tabloidesque pile on that I’m not interested in.”
And I thought that would be the last I ever hear of her. Because, I mean that was the end of the conversation. I mean, she was like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It was like Ralph Kramden, “humada, humada, humada.” At the end of the conversation, she had nothing to say. So, I did think that would be the end of it after I told her what my position was. But, it wasn’t. But I’ll get back to that and for now stick to the subject of financial motivation.
Mike Rinder in it for the money
Remini’s partner, Mike Rinder, since he has left the church of Scientology (2007) never had a job, was never employed, never lifted a finger to do anything that wasn’t related to Scientology work that was paid for by people who were interested in seeing Scientology’s ox get gored. I know that because for his first three or four engagements he had specifically asked me to help him get into a position where he could have such backers and I put him in that position. So, since 2009 it has been a series of sugar daddies, one right after the others. A venture capitalist, former trader, actually there are a number of these people in that type of business. An old woman with a ton of money who is just obsessed on the subject. It has just been one after the other, and now Leah Remini. In essence, he has followed the same philosophy as Leah Remini who – when I rejected her offer – went straight to Mike Rinder who took her up happily.
Tony Ortega profits on misery of others
And then there is Tony Ortega, who is the third part of the troika. Tony Ortega at one point was really sucking up to me because I was getting a lot of media attention and he wanted to get his media cred. And he flew all the way down to South Texas to my home. He had just got fired from the Village Voice which he had converted into this anti-Scientology platform for two years. In rare moment when he had a moment to be somewhat candid, he told me circumstances under which he left the Village Voice. And the circumstances he said – “you know, this can’t go anywhere,” but what happened was that the Village Voice had been accused, and in fact had been investigated by law enforcement, of human trafficking, and supporting the child sex slave industry, by way of its Back Pages ads. And Ortega told me that Scientology had been exposing that and the problem is that Scientology was more accurate than anybody thought; and that, in fact, the Village Voice was almost exclusively by that human trafficking operation and that there were profits beyond that. And so the owners, now that Scientology was exposing it and now that law enforcement was investigating it, decided they had to get rid of Tony Ortega because he was just obsessed with Scientology and that was keeping them focused on him and their operation. So, they needed to get rid of him. So, in order to do that, and to extract his cooperation in keeping quiet about what he knew…which is interesting because Ortega is the first guy to accuse anyone who does go after Scientology of being bought off…Ortega literally agree to cover it up and obstruct justice for a payout of essentially a two-year buy-out deal. They paid him enough to where he could literally do nothing for two years but go out and write a book about Scientology so he could begin with some foundation of credibility upon which to continue his career which had had turned into trashing Scientology.
Sum up
So with all three of the troika I have had personal experience with which tells me the primary motivation is money.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Leah Remini, mike rinder, scientology, The Aftermath, tony Ortega, Troublemaker
Moving On Up a Little Higher 