Author Archives: Mark C. Rathbun

When Distraction Becomes Catastrophic

Posted on December 17, 2016 | 72 comments

 

“Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at the rate of 6 billion tons a year. By the year 2000 there will be about 25 percent more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at present…

…The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”

  • From Special Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee, dated November 1965, entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” (Government Printing Office).

If one could manage to forego an hour of daily online distractions and spend that time instead on some directed google searches, one would find that the statistical predictions from the above report turned out to be pretty accurate.

If you would like to understand how these statistics affect our future as a species and how we are conditioned to ignore facts like these in favor of infotainment diversions, a meticulously researched book ably treats those subjects:  Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

At this moment, while a majority of the United States electorate is engaged in a game of who is punking who with ‘fake news’ and illegally obtained news, the climate-change denying president-elect is proposing the longtime head of Exxon Mobil (which acknowledged in writing internally as early as 1980 the truth of the above-referenced report, but buried it and continued to profiteer on oil for another 36 years and counting) to be our ambassador to the world at large, proposing a climate-change denier to uproot the Environmental Protection Agency (established by Richard Nixon largely based on the above cited report and its progeny), and proposing the most environment-antagonistic governor Texas ever had to establish our Energy policies (don’t forget, he vowed in 2011 to dismantle  the department he’s now been named to run). But Democrats and Republicans alike are cool with it because in the short term they think they might earn a few more coins in yet another fossil fuel bubble and a get a couple percentage points discount in taxes. Their kids and their grandkids be damned.

If you choose to look and think honestly with it, you may wind up asking yourself, “fifty years later, and I’ve been obsessing about what?”

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The Pity Play

Posted on December 9, 2016 | 122 comments

Apropos of current events, I offer for contemplation a passage from the book The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout. Ironically, after I introduced this book on my blog in 2010, some of its most fervent subsequent promoters turned out to be described to a tee within it. The answer to that paradox is in the book, even within the following passage.

—

From chapter 6 – how to recognize the remorseless

After listening for almost twenty-five years to the stories my patients tell me about sociopaths who have invaded and injured their lives, when I am asked, “How can I tell whom not to trust?” the answer I give usually surprises people. The natural expectation is that I will describe some sinister-sounding detail of behavior or snippet of body language or threatening use of language that is the subtle give-away. Instead, I take people aback by assuring them that the tip-off is none of these things, for none of these things are reliably present. Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.

I first learned this when I was still a graduate student in psychology and had the opportunity to   interview a court-referred patient the system had already identified as a “psychopath.” He was not violent, preferring instead to swindle people out of their money with elaborate investment scams. Intrigued by this individual and what could possibly motivate him – I was young enough to think he was a rare sort of person – I asked, “What is important to you in your life? What do you want more than anything else?” I thought he might say “getting money”, or “staying out of jail”, which were the activities to which he devoted most of his time. Instead, without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “Oh, that’s easy. What I like better than anything else is when people feel sorry for me. The thing I really want more than anything else out of life is people’s pity.”

I was astonished, and more than a little put off. I think I would have liked him better if he had said “staying out of jail”, or even “getting money.” Also, I was mystified. Why would this man – why would anyone – wish to be pitied, let alone wish to be pitied above all other ambitions? I could not imagine. But now, after twenty-five years of listening to victims, I realize there is an excellent reason for the sociopathic fondness for pity. As obvious as the nose on one’s face, and just as difficult to see without  the help of a mirror, the explanation is that good people will let pathetic individuals get by with murder, so to speak, and therefore any sociopath wishing to continue with his game, whatever it happens to be, should play repeatedly for none other than pity.

More than admiration – more even than fear – pity from good people is carte blanche. When we pity, we are, at least for the moment, defenseless, and like so many of the other essentially positive human characteristics that bind us together in groups – social and professional roles, sexual bonds, regard for the compassionate and the creative, respect for our leaders – our emotional vulnerability when we pity is used against us by those who have no conscience. Most of us would agree that giving special dispensation to someone who is incapable of feeling guilt is a bad idea, but often, when an individual presents himself as pathetic, we do so nonetheless…

…When deciding whom to trust, bear in mind that the combination of consistently bad or egregiously inadequate behavior with frequent plays for your pity is as close to a warning mark on a conscienceless person’s forehead as you will ever be given. A person whose behavior includes both of these features is not necessarily a mass murder, or even violent at all, but is still probably not someone you should closely befriend, take on as your business partner, ask to take care of your children, or marry.

—

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The Only Good Scientologist…

Posted on October 5, 2016 | 535 comments

 

Last year I told a member of ASC (Anti-Scientology Cult) royalty that had I foreseen the outcome of my efforts to encourage people to speak and write openly and publicly about scientology, I would not have undertaken them in the first place. I likened the majority of public Scientology discussion to a tabloid pile-on fest. Since then I have watched it degenerate from even that: from a blame-filled pity party into a hate-driven trolling fest. A relatively neutral review of the postings – and ‘discussions’ – on the go-to ASC forums reflects that.

ASC bloggers and moderators and their following regularly congratulate one another for poking sticks in the eyes of Scientologists. They don’t talk about how their blustering will reform anybody or any institution. Instead, they revel in how much ‘pain’ or destruction it will create. ASC’s media liaison Tony Ortega has taken the krew to new depths. For instance, he ‘reported’ on a woman who intentionally drove her vehicle through the front doors of the Austin Texas Scientology Church. The vehicle stopped after smashing through the door to the Scientologists’ nursery. Afterward the driver expressed regret that she had not struck someone with her vehicle. Not one ASC voice in disagreement was raised when Ortega characterized the crime as an act of “vandalism.” Ortega – and his ASC following by encouragement – demonstrated that he literally places more value on inanimate fixtures than the lives of Scientologists, including nursery-aged children.

Anyone who advocates a more objective, intelligent discussion on Scientology is quickly labelled and treated as an enemy by ASC members. Even outsiders simply reporting newsworthy facts. For example, Ortega ragged on TMZ chief Harvey Levin for months because his outlet reported the fact of the prosecution of a man who made death threats against Scientology’s leader. Ortega publically denounced Levin for “carrying water” for Scientology. Apparently in the head of the ASC’s daily anti-scientology meme creator, the only good Scientologist is a dead one. That was certainly the way he treated Cathriona White upon first news of her death; at least while he used his feigned concern to charge (with zero evidence) that Scientologists were somehow responsible for her death. All that changed when media reported facts that pointed suspicion away from Scientologists. Then, even a deceased Scientologist became fair game for an Ortega-led, ASC slime campaign.

The ASC fora are not only riddled with trolls, the bloggers themselves have become trolls. Their antics have little to do with education, imparting understanding, and least of all heroics. The latter was made clear by one ASC blogger pronouncing with an air of authority that scientology is “Fair Game” and one may “say or do anything against scientology” and get away with it scot-free.

Trolls are free to troll and no doubt will continue to do so with lots of derisive laughs, and with no sense of conscience about the cumulative effect such hate might have on others. Those who find themselves considering whether to join the ranks of troll followers who employ degradation and belittlement for entertainment might want to step back and evaluate before they get sucked into that vortex.

A couple of credible studies show that trolls are a special breed of ugly creature. Please see Internet Trolls Are Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Sadists.  The studies highlight an irony. ASC trolls wrap themselves in the ‘abolish disconnection’ flag to give their trolling some sort of noble justification. Yet, Dr. Golbeck notes that the solution to trolls is just that, disconnection. Just as modern psychology recommends be applied to any sociopath or psychopath who might cross one’s path (see e.g., The Sociopath Next Door – Martha Stout).

I imagine that is why most self-improvement, awareness-raising and religious groups teach the virtues of some form of disconnection. For more on that, see Barbara Ehrenreich’s Smile Or Die. She traces the non-denominational disconnection tradition to the Transcendentalists – Emerson, Thoreau, et. al.  – who found societal forced-connection to be oppressive. Her book is a strong indictment of that tradition which in a way makes her account that much more credible. In attacking it, she reveals that the idea that ‘disconnection’ can be considered cathartic is as American as apple pie.

The specter of someone mustering the intelligence and courage to disconnect from sociopathic toxicity is seen as a clear and present danger to ASC leadership. I have seen them resort to deceit, attempting to break up families, bribery, infiltration, propaganda campaigns, intelligence ops, extortion and blackmail to prevent people from disconnecting from their klub.

Those in ASC leadership applying such tactics are also the ones most loudly and persistently complaining about Scientology disconnection. Paradoxically, those people made conscious decisions to disconnect from the ones they spend years wailing about having disconnected from them. They campaign other well-meaning people to join them in a war that promises to mend their familial rifts. By objective result, it has proven to be an avenue that only exacerbates the problems they sought to resolve. When someone is perceived as a threat to their hypocritical racket, ASC leaders apply their own version of disconnection; one that is far more arbitrary than that practiced in Scientology. That they can make a living on such hypocrisy is an interesting study in the culture of complaint our society seems to have devolved into. By wailing loud enough and long enough any wolf in sheep’s clothing can apparently draw a flock.

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BLACKMAIL

Posted on September 25, 2016 | 424 comments

 

I felt like I was pretty much done with the ASC (Anti-Scientology Cult) awareness-education business after the post How Gullible Can One Get?  However, within a couple of days of publication I received a blackmail threat from ASC headquarters (from ASC royalty in fact).  The demand requires me to shut down the exposure of facts and thoughts I have been sharing of late on this blog. The threat was that if I continue on that subject line my most well-concealed, secret crimes will be exposed.

Those crimes were characterized as fitting the bill of what Jeff Hawkins authoritatively spoke of in My Scientology Movie. Hawkins appears there stating with an air of grave profundity, paraphrased, “Rathbun has definitely not told all; he knows where all the bodies are buried.”

While I consider whether to cave and muzzle myself as ordered or to stand and carry on with exposing hypocrisy, I thought it would help to have the ASC rank and file weigh in. I have attracted scores of ASC trolls in the past couple of months, and discussion of my posts have dominated ASC comment-message threads. Now the followers have the opportunity to contribute something meaningful to their cause.

All they have to do in order to participate is pass a pre-school level cognitive-coordination challenge. This poll is going to be a test of their attention span, self-discipline, and motor-skills faculties. That is, they can weigh in with one word, either “cave” which means stfu (and every other unkind thought they feel compelled to hurl my way) or they can say “stand” which means “go ahead and express yourself.”  You must go by your regular cyber cult handle. That way ASC leadership (the blackmailers) knows exactly where you stand. It also allows us to see which of those who regularly read here and comment on me elsewhere have the nerve to defy ASC leadership standing orders not to read and discuss my posts anymore.

I anxiously await ASC input so that I may complete this most nerve-racking decision-making process.

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Was It A Book Or Was It A Gun?

Posted on September 23, 2016 | 58 comments

 

Was it a book or was it a gun in the hand of Keith L. Scott in Charlotte North Carolina the other day when he was gunned down by police?

How does that question relate to topics covered here since 31 August?

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How Gullible Can One Get?

Posted on September 19, 2016 | 327 comments

 

It came to my attention that some fellow gave a youtube lecture about what he called a conflict between Tony Ortega and me. When I went to the video I saw a man calling himself Chris Shelton ‘critical thinker at large.’ It would be difficult to imagine more inflated airs of self-absorbed arrogance than this fellow manages to put on; nor a mind as infected with hive-mentality.

Mr. Shelton claims in the video not to know anything about what went down behind the scenes in the terminations of Monique Rathbun’s lawyers and lawsuit – delivered with a tongue-in-cheek smirk. But, he comes to the authoritative conclusion that I have somehow overreacted to Ortega’s four-month campaign smearing my wife and me over the issue. He concludes it is a function of the damaged former Scientologist mind – a syndrome he claims to be an expert in.

I learned that before these broadcasted profundities Shelton was making the ASC (Anti-Scientology Cult) rounds swearing people to secrecy before giving them the ‘real story’ behind the terminations. He swore the story was obtained straight from Monique’s former lawyer’s mouth. Shelton’s rumor-monger account – if believed – would mean that either Tony Ortega made up and published quotes attributed to Ray Jeffrey about his former client, or that Ray Jeffrey simply lied like a flatfish throughout his ‘exclusive’ Ortega interview. That would be the ‘Quiz Street’ interview where Jeffrey swore he did not have a clue as to which way was up.

Between Ortega’s plethora of claims as to ‘inside knowledge’ and then Shelton’s, it seems they would like the ASC krew to believe that Jeffrey is more like Perez Hilton than Perry Mason.

In either event, it demonstrates that Shelton at best is not playing with a full deck. He delivers psych analyses giving knowingly false premises to support his damning conclusions.

Looking further into Shelton’s gig I learned something remarkable. He has posted dozens of videos pontificating about the damaged minds of Scientologists (current and former). They are delivered with the self-sure authority of an Ivy League shrink.  Paradoxically, Shelton’s principle support for putting out his mass psychiatric diagnoses comes from someone who purports to deliver Scientology services at the highest level of proficiency. Shelton’s benefactor also pays Tony Ortega to, among other things, regularly post Shelton’s ramblings at The Underground Bunker.

More remarkable is that some former Scientologists actually pass around Shelton’s mental-deficiency diagnoses of themselves. Brain dead, and damn proud of it.

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Non-Peakers vs. Peakers

Posted on September 17, 2016 | 274 comments

Abraham Maslow was a 20th Century psychologist who did a lot of work in the field of the psychology of spirituality and religion. He carried on a tradition started by William James in the late 19th Century. James and Maslow observed that there was a great divide that made reconciliation of materialist thought and spiritualist experience daunting if not impossible. For a primer, see Maslow’s Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences and James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience. In summary, they understood that the spiritually-inclined could not be understood or taken seriously by a class of materialists. Maslow referred to the latter as ‘non-peakers.’ That is, people who seemed constitutionally incapable of peak experiences, a term he coined for personal transcendent spiritual events. These have variously been described as glimpses of or connections to non-duality, unity consciousness, or God.

Whatever the description, the peak experience by its nature defies words. The futility of relating such through language was noted 2,500 years ago by Lao Tzu in the opening verses of the Tao Te Ching: the unnamable is the eternally real. General Semanticist Alfred Korzybski put it this way in the 20th Century: the map is not the territory.

More recently physicists have applied science to validate Lao Tzu and other Eastern sages (and in a way the likes of Korzybski, Maslow and James too), see The Tao of Physics – Fritjof Capra, The Unobservable Universe – Scott Tyson, The God Theory – Bernard Haisch, Biocentrism – Robert Lanza; to name but a few of many. In various ways the authors argue that the evolution of science is beginning to reveal the accuracy of what spiritualists have attempted to describe since antiquity as the true nature of the universe.  It is a nature that transcends the limitations of language and two-value logic.

In his essay “The Will To Believe” William James addressed why the materialist/spiritualist debate is a dead end street. It is because while materialists write off any spiritualist argument as being predicated upon belief, the materialist’s ‘certainty’ of the dual nature of the universe is just as strongly founded upon faith. To quote U2, both sides are coming from “a place that has to be believed to be seen.” But, the materialist is dead certain he is not. A better appreciation for the truth of James’ conclusions can be found in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. In a simple, matter-of-fact manner Bryson demonstrates that all branches of science rely upon faith in theories.

Having spent three decades exploring scientology and another decade examining its nemesis, the Anti-Scientology Cult (ASC), I believe the answer to the ASC-Scientology perpetual conflict may lie in the observations of James and Maslow. As much as ASC’s Scientology debunking is embraced by the infotainment, scandal-obsessed media –  which ASC’s leaders have chortled effectively makes Scientology fair game – the ASC is more of a belief-based culture than Scientology is (a self-acknowledged religion).  ASC’s means of attempted conversion to its materialist world views can be  more zealous and coercive than anything it accuses Scientology of.  Attempts to ameliorate ASC’s extremism have been met with the most vicious, surreptitious back stabbing; carried out with crusade-like fervor.

But, put all that hypocrisy aside for the moment – it leaves a lot of room for debate. Let’s focus on one  fact that cannot be disputed. It is published for the world to see. That is, all ASC fora (Underground Bunker, Mike Rinder’s blog, Ex Scnsts Message Board included) default to making ruthless fun of that which Scientologists swear Scientology does for them spiritually. While wrapping their periodic scandal-mongering around a noble reform flag, ASC sites most consistently revel in denigrating professed results of Scientology applications as nothing but the bunk. It is a critical component of ASC membership. It justifies all of its ass clown hijinks against Scientology. It operates like a bedrock article of faith. The highest attainment in ASC is the firmly expressed certainty that peak experiences are delusions of the weak minded.

Those who got something useful from their Scientology experience but ever felt afraid or embarrassed to share it might agree with some of this. They might also reinstate the power of their peak experiences by perusing some of the references cited above.

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Ruthless: Rape and Hypocrisy

Posted on September 13, 2016 | 386 comments

 

My attention was directed to the latest on Karen De La Carriere’s Surviving Scientology youtube channel.  There, kept-man first-class Jeffrey Augustine interviews Ron Miscavige’s ghostwriter Dan Koon, in no small part in response to my review of Miscavige’s book Ruthless. The effort is understandable if one reviews Karen’s eager promotion across several fora of Ron Miscavige’s expose’ of his own flesh and blood. At the same time it highlights the hypocrisy that is the trademark of the Anti-Scientology Cult (ASC).

It is apparent in the book Ruthless that there is only one thing in his life that Ron Miscavige considers more intolerable than the thought of bearing any responsibility for his own son. Beyond piling on his living son while pile-driving his deceased wife Loretta, Ron’s book obsesses most with asserting his innocence to rape charges brought against him in the eighties. A great deal of Ruthless is devoted to complaining about the alleged injustice of being arrested, booked and forced to defend against the charge.

Here’s where the hypocrisy enters. A few years ago Karen offered me thousands of dollars to indict and convict Ron Miscavige of that very rape charge on my blog.  She said that Ron had confessed the crime to her in Clearwater Florida in the eighties and she wanted to publish it.  She said it was fair game for publication because even though Karen was a Scientology counsellor at the Clearwater facility at the time of the confession, Ron had admitted the crime outside the four walls of a counselling session.  She said that Ron told her, “Karen, I don’t know what got into me. I lost my mind. I got rough with that girl. I raped her”, referring to the woman outside Philadelphia who had so accused him.  She referred to Ron Miscavige as a predator who needed to be put away for the protection of society.

I told Karen that rape is a serious charge for a he-said/she-said accusation and I would not be taking the subject up.  Karen pressed me with a plea that it would do all manner of harm to David Miscavige and Scientology.  I informed Karen as I had on numerous occasions that that was not my purpose nor the purpose of my forum and that until she and others evolved from such hateful motivations they would continue to live the miserable existences they did. I also reiterated what I told her several times: that I never allowed editorial influence no matter how generous one was with donations to the blog.

Fast forward five years. Augustine on behalf of De La Carriere is using her forum to attack me for pointing out the hypocrisy of Ron Miscavige’s book.  Kept-man second-class Tony Ortega does accept money for publishing salacious content. That is how he makes his living. Only now Karen doesn’t want to protect the public from a rapist, she wants the guy pointing out the rapist’s hypocrisy to be discredited. As per usual, on-demand Tony dutifully complies.

There is another layer of hypocrisy. Ruthless ghostwriter Dan Koon’s first response to my review of Ruthless justified his efforts by promoting his next ghostwriting assignment, Jesse Prince’s book. Dan wrote of it as if it were the continuation of carrying out a noble endeavor. Meanwhile, Jesse is making the rounds swearing that he has evidence backing De La Carriere’s rape accusations against Ron Miscavige. The problem with a culture of complaint is that the blaming never seems to end. Ultimately, it has no other ends.

This business with trying to get me to publish Ron’s confession occurred while Ron was still with Scientology’s priesthood (the Sea Organization). So, here is the lesson in ASC ethics. A confessed rapist who is a Scientologist deserves life in the penitentiary. A confessed rapist who is an anti-scientologist deserves sainthood and the best defense money can buy. If you are with ASC against Scientology, you can get away with murder (or at least violent rape). If you don’t toe the party line, you are “bought off” or worse and are fair game for attack by those who themselves have long-since sold themselves. Kettle, meet pot.

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Tony Ortega’s Cowardly Invention of News

Posted on September 9, 2016 | 154 comments

 

Tony Ortega was questioned by one of his followers on my exposure of Tony’s sleazy, dishonest reporting the other day on My Scientology Movie.  The inquirer purports to be a full-fledged bunkeroo, and law school graduate. She also regularly trolls my blog, slavishly pandering to Ortega. Here is the thread:

 

 

Chee Chalker • 3 days ago

Tony, Marty claims that you misquoted him. Or maybe it’s that you didn’t quote him enough. You only printed 1/20th of his response.

Your post says you asked him about his recent posts.
His post said his response to you “cognitive dissonance and paranoia”) was in response to another question of yours.

Maybe I am a glutton for punishment, but is his entire response worth posting?

Tony Ortega Mod  Chee Chalker • 3 days ago

Sorry. Not going to be baited into publishing material I can’t make public.

I made public what I can at this point.

Tony Ortega Mod  Tony Ortega • 3 days ago

And no, he was not misquoted.

—

I never said Ortega “misquoted me”.  I actually wrote the following in response to a commenter on my blog who suggested that I am responsible for Ortega’s sickness by not answering his questions: “Ortega never asked me about my review. He published 1/20 of a response to an entirely different question. Clearly, he owns you.”  Ortega was in fact challenging me on my use of the term “ASC”, while hurling abusive accusations at me.

In either event, Tony goes on owning Chee Chalker and the rest of his sheep with claims of insider knowledge that justifies/validates his ongoing innuendo campaign: “Sorry. Not going to be baited into publishing material I can’t make public. I made public what I can at this point.”

That is how he kept his faithful drinking his Kool Aid during his four-month campaign against my family.  He claims insider knowledge that he is afraid of the consequences of sharing. Another part of my answer referred to above that he only published 1/20th (as you’ll see, it might have been more like 1/100th) of out of context, confronted Ortega with that very sleaze tactic he is so fond of. To wit,

“If inventions of this kind are required for you to understand my posts and the use of the term ASC, your mind is far more infected with cognitive dissonance and paranoia than any scientologist I have ever encountered. You are also a coward and liar. You represented to your readers on several occasions in writing that you know what actually went on [with Monique’s lawsuit], but couldn’t disclose it at that time. That was stated in response to several people speculating as to milder motives on our part than you projected. You used definitive statements as to your insider, undisclosed knowledge to forward your hate against us. I knew you were lying then. You have now confirmed that fact in writing below.”

The “inventions of this kind” referred to had nothing to do with My Scientology Movie or anything Ortega claimed it was in response to.

Some of the published comments by Ortega during his anti-Rathbun campaign that I was referring to here were:

“I know more than I can say.”

and

“I know what happened. What you propose isn’t it.”

and

“I have some details that I can’t talk about yet. I will when I can.”

It has been nearly five months since he implied that he would put up or shut up – and as per usual, he instead lied and has done neither.  He continues perpetuating the fraud with more of the same dissembling conduct.

There is no difference whatsoever in the tactics Tony Ortega regularly uses to warp his followers’ minds than what he accuses the object of his obsession with.  Kettle, meet pot.

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Louis Theroux’s Scientology Movie

Posted on September 5, 2016 | 325 comments

 

synopsis at:  yahoo news

I found the film “My Scientology Movie” to be saddening.  It evidences the degeneration of a once considerable talent, award-winning producer Simon Chinn. During my involvement in the movie’s creation I witnessed Chinn being sucked into the staged-news, infotainment vortex that seems to have consumed the erstwhile Fourth Estate.  I will share a back story to the project to illustrate the concern.

In 2012 Chinn flew from the UK to my home in remote, South Texas. He and an associate producer spent an afternoon pitching my involvement in a proposed documentary. He said his film would break the cookie-cutter mold of Scientology projects to that date. That was, the lazy method of highlighting and rehashing what has been alleged before and doing some gratuitous baiting and button pushing of Scientologists to provoke aggressive responses. Chinn assured me the project would be closely supervised by him from beginning to end so that it would primarily serve as a vehicle to portray my insights into the philosophical basis of Scientology learned from practicing it for nearly thirty years within the organization and another several years outside of Church of Scientology control. He sold me on the idea of chronicling my evolution from fighting for the church, then against it and finally advocating that people transcend from fights about Scientology altogether.

Chinn effectively stalked me for the next two years while he secured funding for the project, repeatedly reiterating the purpose and nature of the planned work. That included sending Louis Theroux and the assistant producer to Texas the next year to spend two days beseeching me to stay committed to the project. Because of Chinn’s continual promotion of his previous serious documentary work and our original agreements, I wound up spending nearly one hundred hours on film explaining and demonstrating what Scientology is, its origins, its historical and philosophical context and its battles from both sides of the divide.

That extended filming was interrupted repeatedly by Theroux’s recurring attempts to use me as bait to incite the wrath of the Church of Scientology. When Theroux persisted with those efforts, his and director John Dower’s promises that none of that horseplay would make it into the film began to ring hollow. At that point I expressed my intention to cease work on the project.

Simon Chinn flew from London to Los Angeles to assuage my concerns and reassure me that his original representations would be fully honored, and that Theroux’s vanity theatrics would not make the cut in the movie. I informed Chinn, Dower and Theroux that the latter’s antics were not only unprofessional but they had already been performed twice by a BBC personality in the past couple of years. We discussed John Sweeny’s BBC Panorama ‘documentaries’ as consisting almost entirely of Sweeny attempting to poke sticks in Scientologists’ eyes to get them to react on camera. All three acted offended that I would compare their work to that of Mr. Sweeny whom they characterized as being more of a publicity hound than journalist. Chinn again warranted that that was not the purpose of his project and no hint of it would find its way into the film.

When nearly two years later I saw the product, “My Scientology Movie”, which clearly referred to being Louis Theroux’s personal movie, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Chinn had regressed into a tabloid hack, Mr. Theroux remained the ass clown Chinn had represented he would not be, and Mr. Dower was a rimless zero – a lackey assigned to pretend to ‘direct’ while he did nothing more than provide plausible deniability that ‘My Scientology Movie’ was something other than the latest unoriginal Theroux-shtick vehicle aimed at clowning with scientology.

More troubling was the promotional roll out and press junket behaviors of Chinn, Theroux and Dower.  The three repeatedly flat out lied to the press on two scores. First, they represented that they genuinely undertook the mission of understanding the core of Scientology practice and its appeal and portraying it. The film does not even begin to attempt to do such. None of the dozens of hours I spent attempting to impart that understanding appeared. Significantly, my views on Scientology were as antagonistic to the subject as they had ever been during the filming.  So, the mass editing cannot be written off as avoiding Scientology public relations or promotional pitches; clarity – no matter how non-partisan – could play no part in a movie purporting to bring clarity to the widely misunderstood subject. Second, they represented that they were stalked and harassed by scientology agents for doing nothing but attempting to carry out the mission they never even attempted to carry out.

In fact, I witnessed Theroux and Dower stalk and harass Scientologists repeatedly with no sign that the Scientologists were interested in the bait. Theroux went so far as to relocate to Los Angeles from London for an entire year, residing near to Scientology premises and regularly and loudly cavorting with Anti-Scientologists. When I pointed out to him his failure to provoke the Church of Scientology notwithstanding such extraordinary efforts, he acknowledged that that was his intent and that the effort had been made in vain.

The jiggery-pokery Theroux and Dower attempted in provoking Scientologists – and were called out for in real time as I witnessed it – was legion. For example, on my first of several visits to Los Angeles, they put me up in a motel that was less than a block from the office and apartment of Scientology leader David Miscavige. I chastised them for obviously attempting to use my unnaturally close proximity to bait scientology. Theroux’s response was his trademark impish smirk. Dower profusely apologized for Theroux’s obvious childish shenanigans. Over the next several months of filming sessions, Theroux repeatedly attempted to convince me to do drive bys and walk ups to scientology facilities. On each occasion I noted that such pranks violated Chinn’s original agreements – the provocation route had been done several times before by tabloid types posing as journalists and he expressly guaranteed this project was not going there. After I refused on a number of occasions, Theroux and Dower found other ‘talent’ who was willing to partner with Theroux during his spates of juvenile delinquency.

The Scientology encounters that Theroux himself initiated were so weak in terms of peculiar scientology behavior that he and Dower resorted to creating and acting out a scene where they discussed the possibility that scientology agents were following them. The basis for the suspicion they discussed in the film had already been admitted by them to me as no basis at all for suspicion. That admission of course was edited out of the film.

Late in the project I learned that Theroux and Dower had made gratuitous representations to Church of Scientology lawyers detailing my involvement in the film. There could be no other purpose to the correspondence I reviewed than to incite the Church of Scientology to look into what I was up to. Several years into the project Theroux and Dower finally got their wish. They were able to capture Scientologists filming and confronting me during my trips to Los Angeles. Theroux and Dower reacted with a mix of relief and glee. Chinn even referred to the confrontations and their fallout as the saving grace of an otherwise potentially failed project. He effectively stated to the press that every representation that he made to me over a four-year period about the purpose and substance of the film was false and fraudulent. He stated the film was salvaged by the Church of Scientology finally taking me as bait and my venting on Theroux on film for his having used me as bait. The latter was carefully edited to ensure that the truth of Theroux’s duplicity was not included, and instead paint me as somehow duplicitous.

In the light of these facts, I find it pathetic that media positions Theroux and Dower as exhibiting some level of bravery for having incurred the wrath of scientology.  They never did incur such wrath despite years of attempting to through sophomoric capers.

All of the infotainment play-acting by Theroux diverts attention from perhaps the greatest fraud perpetrated by Theroux and company. The film centers on a purported re-creation of a scene where Scientology leader David Miscavige blows his top in a conference room. The ‘re-creation’ was in fact a creation. Even though they worked with me for a year on that scene, I was not able to submit a script for an actual past occurrence to ‘re-create’ that could pass Theroux’s standards for lurid and shocking theater. The ‘re-creation’ portrayed is an ad lib by actors who had been conditioned for months by Theroux to disdain and fear Scientology.

I did have input on the final scene. Upon reflection however, perhaps I had too much input. Viewing it as objectively as possible I see the final edit containing quite a bit of me projecting my own behavior on Miscavige. That my own personality would rub off on the principle actor is not surprising given the extraordinary amount of hours Theroux and Dower had him spend with me over a year-long period.

At the end of the day, My Scientology Movie brings nothing intelligent to public discussion on Scientology. If you have shallow, preconceived and perhaps bigoted notions about Scientology and are the type who loves laughing out loud at the misfortunes or perceived imperfections of others, then you may get a kick out of ‘My Scientology Movie.’ If you wish to learn anything about the subject the movie will be an utter waste of your time, as much as I consider that my participation in the project was a waste of my time.

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