Author Archives: Mark C. Rathbun

babes chillin' on the bay

JB - 50 years ago

Hey Marty,
 
JB here.  Anyway, I just completed the most successful blow from the Int Base without anyone having a clue that it was going to happen and, aside from my pc and ethics folders, I got out with all my stuff, bank account emptied and phones and blackberry wiped clean and left with the batteries out and SIM cards destroyed and my vehicle full of gas courtesy of motorpool.
 
Let me fill you in a bit more as I feel that some of the marbles have settled a bit in my head now as more time goes by.  Firstly, please realize that I am extremely paranoid right now.  I am out all alone here and freaked that they might magically find me.  I am pretty familiar with all the lines and tricks they use to locate people, hell, I used to do it myself!  But I am pretty confident that I did a good job of leaving no clues or leads or ways of tracking me down electronically or otherwise.  But my paranoia even extends to hoping I am not writing to an OSA bullshit email set up on a clone website that I got to in an effort to get to yours! Or that they are hacked in to your site or even hushmail or your pc and are monitoring every communication that goes in and out from you. I‘m a bit vulnerable right now and haven‘t contacted anyone yet and fear looking up old friends as they are probably  tracking down and calling every name of old buddies from my life history.  I was never anywhere near as high in  terms of power as you or Mike were, but I have been DM’s “personal engineer” as he used to brag to people ( I hated that leash he put on me) 
 
Anyway…  back when I was Internal Security Officer in RTC and you came back from the ship and became my senior, I remember one comm cycle we had where you told me very sincerely to “only listen to LRH and don’t buy what other people might give you as their interpretations or their examples“.  You said to study and understand LRH and I wouldn’t go wrong.  I really took that advice to heart at that moment in that comm cycle. 

I remember, not too long after that, being in the courseroom in Qual, I don’t remember what course I was on, but I was reading An Essay on Management.  It blew me away.  It made so much sense and while reading it and really seeing LRH’s description  of punishment drive I had my first thoughts of how DM operated.  Man what a withheld thought! 

I had a square peg suddenly and it seems that the nature of theta is to reason out how it actually fits the round hole.  But the seed was planted.  I read a bit of entheta crap on my lines here and there over the next year on that post and I ended up expressing my “THOUGHTS” and ended up at HV on the RPF for 3 years.  I was the MAA out there ultimately and I heeded your advice and studied LRH profusely.  After all my RDDs and whatnot I ended up reading all the LRH books and just about the entirety of the tech vols.  I was incredulous.  This was awesome.  I fell in love with the auditors code and the better virtues of man and had phenomenal wins by really caring about people and helping them.  It became simple. The comparison was what I had seen back at the base over the prior years and the horriby failed attempts to “handle” people by putting them in tents and forcing them to admit they were SPs and then retraining them on the Criminon program and George Washington’s rules on good behaviour.  80 percent of them just ended up not getting handled or blowing.  Some standard tech, 100% results, huh? 

Another realization I had out at HV was that all these people that were so “fucked up” were a phenomenal work force.  Much to the contrary of DMs continuous rantings at the time (and still to this day) that RPFer were constant overt product makers without exception, all the work they did was generally far superior to the construction work and sets and props work that the miserable lot of Gold crew were producing in their oppressive environment.  It might have been the RPF but it had a special factor of a lot of people that were actually validated for their creativity (albeit only internally in the group of RPFers and some of the Sets, Props and Estates guys that we were constantly bailing out). 

I remember starting to formulate back then my conviction that man really WAS basically good and it was actually easy to help him get better.  My wins along this line were staggering.  I had a blast and completely ended up differentiating myself from the bullshit way things were done at the base.  “SRA’s”, “ripped his face off”, scrubbing dumpsters and toilets with toothbrushes and all the myriad other forms of RSing ev purp dramatization were so obvious to me as a means of destroying people rather than any sort of therapeutic help or MEST work to get someone out of his head.  I gained more in my three years out at HV in this de-PTSing enlightenment than I had gleaned in my whole SO career since 1977 (I think I joined around the same time as you).  So I came back to the base, supposedly to go back to RTC but no one dared post me for some reason.  I was put on full time “training”  I said fuck that and went to motorpool and started working. 

I realized within a week that nearly everyone on the base was around the Fear band on the tone scale.  This was wierd to me.  I decided that few people could be trusted as when down at that band they will gladly use you as a shield for any imagined bullets they perceive coming their way.  To put it another way, they will „throw you under the bus“. 

I ended up later going in a training pool for RTC and found that the plan was for me to become Estates Manager RTC.  But again, no one would post me.  They were scared to take any initiative cuz “COB might get upset” or something. 

The square peg started to get splinters and stuff for me, but I still managed to rationalize it and figure out how it fit the round hole.  So I just took over gradually as Estates Manager by getting involved in that great empty mausoleum, Building 50.  I got the place pretty perfect and snagged myself a couple juniors, Maggie and Brenden, and strived to be a good senior and help them improve and be more competent.  I think I set a pretty good example for them and probably tainted them (good!) with my slightly different views and observations that it was easy to make things better and help people and that it made no sense that all the people on the base were „all just a bunch of SPs“ and that what actually made sense was that there was something else wrong that was as yet unidentified (although I was building my own secret arsenal of observations that this unidentified factor was good old Dave himself) 

The square peg started to get barbed wire wrapped around it, but I was careful to not cross any line in my voiced “dissension” and get anyone alerted to me.  I still managed to figure out how I was somehow wrong and that this bristling square peg still fit the round hole very smoothly.
 
I started making a name for myself.  I started handling some screwed up MEST type cycles that were on Dave’s lines in all manner or fields.  Stuff for TC was big on the list.  I started noticing how effusive DM was with people who would directly help his MEST and money empire.  These were his best “friends”.  Nobody got the prolonged handshake and piercing howitzer gleam right in the eye “THANK YOU, REALLY” like those who forked over hundred of thousands of dollars.  The square peg started getting slathered with napalm.

Then the thing that really nailed it for me.  The Freewinds.  Those previously in charge made a disgusting OP mess of the mega 30 million dollar full renovation of the ship in preparation for the MV 2008.  50 to 80 people from Int, PAC and Flag piled in to somehow get it “done” and presentable in the last 2 weeks.  I was one of them.  It was a total bandaid sets and props job and the place was such a seething overspend and OP that a large part of it had to be fully ripped apart and redone.  I stayed on board for a whole 14 months “fixing” it.  I became somewhat of a hero.  How and what I did and the final product that was way beyond what was originally envisioned is its own long story.  But I basically took over the whole ship and ran it “my way” (LRH’s way of common sense and actually helping people). 

I spotted Sue Price as the “DM clone” she was and decided to depower her by de-PTSing her whole CMO from her.  I started to realize that the source of this ranting disgusting demoralizing SP op basis was DM himself and that she had “learned” this when she was at Int and brought it with her to the ship, and so had many other staff.  I saw that this was a disease spreading throughout the SO.  I had never experienced first hand anything other than the Int base and all the bullshit that it was somehow a peculiar place full of all the SPs you could imagine.  But I was out on the clear blue seas away from all that crap and I took the opportunity to “try” doing what made sense to me and had huge wins pulling it off and changing the lives of hundreds of staff with my example. 

Marty, they think I’m a god or something.  Its really something.  I can’t imagine DM black PRing me to them with any measure of success after they got to work with me for 14 months.  I imagine he will keep my blow “quiet”.  I came back to Int from the ship last September and noticed that all the photos and products I got on the ship were used by him to “stuff up the ass” of some people in the hole and elsewhere by showing them how effective he was with his „personal engineer“ doing it right.  I could tell by how disgustingly propitiative they were to me in their „congratulations“ they were giving me.  Good news was only useful to him if he could use it to show people how fucked up they were.  Pretty sick.  The square peg with splinters, barbed wire and napalm was now lit afire and I started to see that it really did not fit the round hole at all. 

When I returned to the base from the Freewinds last September,  I got pulled aside by Carol B in COB’s office and “briefed” that I was not to reassume my post as Estates Manager and to stay aloof from my two juniors and any of the other “crap” going on at the base.  I was put onto full time study on “the basics” and told that I had a couple projects coming up.  I rebelled and moved back into my old office and told my juniors that it was not covered in any policy that I was aware of that I could just willy nilly be taken off post.  I was perm posted and fully hatted and not replaced so I just kept my post, though I did let my juniors get on with it as they had stepped up to more responsibility in my absence and I was not going to knock them back.

Over the months I got sicker and sicker of the obvious downtone lackeys in the hole and the dozen or so of  them that were now the “Int” people that got moved into Building 50.  They were so beaten down and useless that I couldn’t fathom it.  I saw them being completely useless and didn’t know how they could live.  Something was very, very wrong.  I decided that I needed to start preparing for something.  I could tell by various comm cycles and indicators that I was being kept with some idea that I end up with COB and possibly a handful of other “trusted and loyal” people somewhere.  This terrified me.   NO way! 
 
And then I got a brand new iPhone for Xmas!  Wow! internet access at my fingertips.  I ventured to “look and not listen”.  I watched the series of AC360 shows and then looked further and saw your Tampabay.com stuff and from there found your blog.  Holy crap!  I am NOT the only one who has seen this crap.  That settled it.  I had to get out.  I couldn’t do anything from inside that I could think of without getting incarcerated and hammered into submission.  I would have ended up taking off if that happened.  So I decided to take off without being “in trouble” while I had hundreds of people who saw me as a pretty sane cool dude who was in high ARC with all people he worked with and helped them.  I thought that would help get them thinking better than if I became just a “disaffected asshole like the rest of them”.  So poof…I blew.  They can‘t find me too easily.  I want to talk to you.  I am leery of getting tracked down until I can get some more firm ground and wherewithall under my feet.  There are some things I know that may be revealing and beneficial to you from my recent observations of his op against you and what has been happening in those circles.
 
A real painful part is the friends I left behind.  I got nobody out here!  I want to help them and see if I can pluck more of them out from this crap.  But mostly, I want to depower DM by getting his minions out from under him.
 
Enough for now. I will send this and await a reply.  I am very sincere about this.  I’m not shitting you.  Maybe DM has planted some false “leak” that I am his next secret infiltration attempt in order to keep you from contacting me or listening to me.  I wouldn’t put it past him. There is a lot of scheming going on.  Its a bit scary and lonely out here.  I want to do something.  I need to.  It is my duty.  Let me know, huh? 

Love you,  JB

JB at the shack. You can't take the kid out of the fisherman.

 Oh, yeah, he was influenced by listening to rebel music, which has now been adopted as the theme song of the underground railroad: