David Miscavige has ordered Flag Service Organization to sue Debbie Cook and Wayne Baumgarten in order hide his own crimes. The suit is summed up competently in a story just released by the Tampa Times, Flag Service Org Inc v Debbie Cook. Also see Village Voice coverage.
I predict the litigation will make clear that the sole intent of suing Debbie is to stifle the revelation of just how David Miscavige authored and dictated compliance to every off-policy action protested in Debbie’s 1 January email.
Miscavige had virtually all of the OSA (Office of Special Affairs, dirty tricks and propaganda arm of Corporate Scientology) Network working feverishly for the first 26 days of January to destroy Debbie’s and Wayne’s business and to deplete their finances so that he would have an easy, broke target.
There is an evidentiary hearing set for Thursday 9 February 2012 at 9 a.m. in the Bexar County 150th District Court in San Antonio Texas. At the hearing Scientology Inc will be attempting to make the restraining order, obtained with no notice to the defendants, valid until the end of trial on the merits.
I have it on good authority that Debbie and Wayne are not backing down to the Scientology Inc muzzling machine.
They have established a legal defense fund of their own at Debbie’s personal website – Debbie Cook Baumgarten, see top right column of home page.
All donations made at this blog will be transfered to Debbie’s defense fund. All future donations to the defense of Wayne and Debbie should be made directly to Debbie’s site.
Thank you to all who donated in advance here. I believe it is doubtful that this matter would have made it to a full, public airing absent the contributions that you all made in advance.
Plans for the 3rd Annual Indie 4th of July Party are well underway. This year we will gather in a State with more miles of waterfront than Hawaii, California and Florida combined, location of the largest Mall in the United States, state where waterskiing was invented – the land of 10,000 lakes: Minnesota!!
It will take place over the weekend following the 4th of July (July 7th & 8th). The weather in Minnesota in July is party perfect!
We have chosen a wonderful facility for our event this year. The specific details will be sent to you by private invitation. Here are just a few of the activities that will be available:
Swimming in a lake or a pool
Relaxing on the beach
Pontoons
Paddle boats
Ski boats
Fishing
Canoeing
Hiking
Bonfires with Smores
Karaoke
Basketball
Volleyball
Tennis
and much more…
If you plan on flying, book your flights to the Minneapolis St. Paul airport (MSP). Arrive and depart when you like, but most activities will take place on Saturday July 7th and Sunday July 8th.
Invitations with more details will be sent out soon. The event is being hosted by the irrepressible Natalie Hagemo, with the help of Christie Collbran.
All Independent Scientologists, and supporters are welcome. The only qualification to be invited is your public announcement of your independence or departure from corporate Scientology. OSA and company can hold their own party all by themselves.
If you would like to be invited and you have not received an invitation within the next two weeks, please send an email to Natalie and Christie at: Indieparty2012@gmail.com.
Remember the Religious Freedom Crusade in Portland Oregon in May 1985? When a 39 Million dollar hit for having the temerity to try to help a woman out with a Comm Course got Scientologists’ backs up and they did something about it? Back when Scientology men were men and not mice, and Scientology women weren’t walking down the street dragging their knuckles on the pavement? After a lot of good folks sacrificed valuable time, energy and resources over several decades, Scientology finally was recognized as a religion and has been provided relative immunity from attacks intended to destroy the right to peaceably practice it.
Well, compare those days to today. Some may recall that David Miscavige sent down teams of 4 to 6 people at a time to overtly harass my wife and me in our driveway, at restaurants, on the beach, virtually every where we went for 199 days, see His Town by Jason Sheeler. The publicly stated intent was to prevent me from practicing Scientology. It was doomed from the outset; sheer lunacy to attempt to strip me of a right I fought my entire adult life successfully to exercise, which not so incidentally allowed every Kool Aid drinking Corporate Scientologist the same right.
Well, let us take a look at how David Miscavige is spending that hard fought, religious freedom capital these days. The letter below, in the name of Norman James Moore III but clearly written by the late William C Drescher III (long time in-house counsel for Corporate Scientology), illustrates just how low the Corporate Scientology machine has come. Aside from taking on the patented Miscavige characteristic of playing the perpetual victim, take a look at the charges of religious discrimination. Does it get any sillier or more pathetic than this?
He opens with David Miscavige’s epic film on a guy he calls Kingpin Rathbone. It took millions of dollars in production costs to mock up this character that is so bad ass he apparently has David Miscavige shivering in fear in his high desert compound.
As Tony astutely points out Miscavige is so obsessed with fighting long-ago settled issues, he apparently has no cognizance of the tide lapping at the threshold of his bunker.
By the by, I don’t think the fact that Miscavige rushed to get his “production” out on the day that Texas Monthly exposed his sorry cult was lost on anyone.
The latest, and probably the last, chapter in the “Squirrel Buster” drama has been published in the February edition of Texas Monthly: the national magazine of Texas: His Town, by Jason Sheeler.
The link will take you to an excerpt of the beginning of the article. If you register below that (it is free), you can get access to the rest of the lengthy article.
While this group is still a bit amorphous to the liking of some, it is damn effective. In just about twenty-seven hours you all contributed what I predicted we would likely collect by Friday. And that figure is what I thought it would take to reverse the vector of attack from Debbie and Wayne and re-direct it back onto her tormentors.
You all acted nearly spontaneously from fourteen different States of the US and six countries.
I estimate that the amount we have to work with is about 1/20th of what Miscavige has already spent in legal fees alone in mounting his attempt to crush Debbie and Wayne. But that is one major difference between corporate scientology and Independent Scientology. The business of attempting to kill and bury truth is one heck of a lot more expensive than is the activity of purveying and nurturing truth.
Our first point of strategy is simple, taken from the Tao:
I have received credible inside information from corporate Scientology sources who have been right on the money in the past. Here is the word. Miscavige’s larger firms, with reputations to protect, flat out refused to go after Debbie Cook on David Miscavige’s direct orders to bury her for alleged gag order violations. Hence, Miscavige was reduced to using his safety valve in such circumstances; the perpetually Kool Aid drunk Kendrick (unindicted co-conspirator in US v Mary Sue Hubbard, et al) Moxon.
Moxon has enlisted his ‘arm’s length’ litigation attack dog Gary Soter of Woodland Hills, California. Soter has been representing a couple of process servers in a suit against Jason Beghe. Soter has shamelessly been defrauding the court by acting as if he is in there pitching for a couple of hapless, penniless victims who were devastated by some big shot celebrity. And he is in there pitching every single abusive, expensive legal maneuver known to shysters in an effort to destroy Jason financially. Of course, Soter does not let the court know that he is taking daily orders from Kendrick (unindicted co-conspirator) Moxon and being paid wheelbarrows of cash to make Jason’s life a living hell.
Now, Soter is being used to threaten Debbie Cook Baumgarten and her husband Wayne into shivering silence. David Miscavige, who pulls Moxon’s chain, figures he can shudder them into silence by the sheer financial strain of threat of litigation.
Well, ain’t gonna happen on our watch.
We are already organizing a fearsome legal defense team. A small group of us are shouldering the initial financial outlay. Whether Debbie and Wayne choose to utilize the formidable array of legal talent we are assembling or not is not completely under my control.
However, ‘constant alertness, constant willingness to fight back’ has served us well these past three years – and has served Scientology well since the dawn of its discovery. We know where Miscavige is going and we know what needs to be done to prevent his train from suppressing truths that when shared will save untold numbers of individuals and families from a lot of grief; and ultimately will even help guarantee the free, peaceful and sane future practice of the religion itself.
If anyone is interested and able to contribute it will be much appreciated by us and I am fairly certain by Debbie and Wayne, and ultimately by a lot of folks who will be saved a lot of grief by the truths Debbie has to share.
As I have done in the past, I will account for every single penny collected for the defense fund.
Something David Miscavige and his corporate Scientology crew just can’t seem to understand is the most fundamental truth upon which Scientology’s workability stems, “truth, though often fought, always in the end prevails”
In my view, what we are dealing with for the most part with corporate scientologists is denialism. I came across a very clear description of the phenomenon in a book by Michael Specter, Denialism, Penguin Books 2009:
We have all been in denial at some point in our lives; faced with truths too painful to accept, rejection often seems the only way to cope. Under those circumstances, facts, no matter how detailed or irrefutable, rarely make a difference. Denialism is denial writ large — when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie…
…Unless data fits neatly into an already formed theory, a denialist doesn’t really see it as data at all. That enables him to dismiss even the most compelling evidence as just another point of view.
It helps to understand the phenomena all of us have run up against – the shock of old friends and associates acting deaf, dumb and blind to hard, cold, documented facts. No need to fret about it when as you can see it is a phenomena so common that popular thinkers are writing about its prevalence in society at large.
Specter goes on to describe how in an ever increasingly complicated world with steadily declining educational standards, people are desperate for easy answers. The not-so-bright desire big labels that can easily ‘explain’ complexities that they don’t have the confront, or discipline or inclination to investigate and evaluate for themselves.
Denialism can lead to extremism, a subject well-treated with respect to current American politics in Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America, by John Avlon, Beast Books 2010. Avlon writes that:
Wingnuts [defined as extremists to the far right or left] offer their fellow travelers the false comfort of rigid certainty in a changing world — dividing our country into good versus evil, us against them. Fundamentalism has a powerful appeal for people who feel powerless, especially when it gets dressed up as ideology or attaches itself to a party label.
But when you pull the curtain back on Wingnut politics, behind the all-or-nothing demands, apocalyptic warnings and the addicition to self righteous anger, you’ll see that fear is the motivating factor: fear of the other; fear wrapped up in the American flag; fear calling itself freedom.
I’m just sharing some food for thought. I think the parallels to the Scientology world are apparent. I think we can learn some lessons by understanding denialism and extremism or fundamentalism. They are isms that are systematically inculcated in corporate Scientology. I think it behooves us to recognize remnants of them in ourselves so that they are not perpetuated. I think it also helps to understand that when you are aggressively confronted with this mind set by corporate scientologists, you recognize that you are looking square in the eyes of fear. Something worth remembering given the tactics of aggression and threat corporate scientologists have become adept at covering their fear with.
As brilliant as Debbie Cook was as a corporate Scientology executive, she was and is just as naïve about the workings of the outside world and particularly how David Miscavige’s Office of Special Affairs (OSA, corporate Scientology’s propaganda and dirty tricks branch) works within it.
Unfortunately, there has for decades been a “Peter Principle” at work within corporate Scientology. It goes something like this. To the degree that one is willing to set aside logic, compassion, and understanding to drive home “command intention” to compliance is the degree to which one rises. Thought-stopping supreme is the greatest asset for rising in the corporate Scientology ranks.
This is not a criticism of Debbie Cook. It is fact that I fully acknowledge applied to me too. However, I had the fortune, or misfortune, of dealing with the outside world throughout my corporate Scientology career, and specifically with the apparatus used by corporate Scientology to deal with the outside world. I learned well that one does not and cannot approach David Miscavige in a gray-area fashion. He only sees black and white, positive and negative, good and evil. It is purely a God vs. the Devil world to David Miscavige and corporate Scientology. Gray areas and nuances do not exist to them. That is why after many months of soul searching before deciding to make myself known on the outside I decided to choose the only entrance to the road to truth, honesty. It is the only antidote to the poison that is sure to rain upon anyone stepping out of line of the corporations. And, it has served us well.
Despite warnings, Debbie has tried to approach dealing with David Miscavige in a half-pregnant fashion. In this case, it was by the perpetuation of half-truths. Those are quite evident in the only public action she took, nearly three weeks ago, and which I noted in my January 1st 2012 post analyzing her mass email. As accurately predicted, Miscavige had OSA drop virtually everything and scramble to put Debbie in a box. Every person that contacted her since her email has been identified and contacted and handled by the corporate church – one way or the other. Because Debbie has attempted to perpetuate the fiction that she is not in communication with anyone not in good standing, and that all that is amiss is a euphemistic reality that there are some “policy violations” afoot, and she has been careful not to communicate anything beyond the generic “just follow policy” plea, those who stuck their necks out are left sitting in the middle of the battle field being slaughtered by corporate Scientology canons.
Though only a few with sufficient experience with OSA will fully appreciate this – such as Mike, Haydn, Steve Hall – probably the biggest reason we have David Miscavige exactly where we want him is because of his inability to successfully infiltrate me and my close friends with intel agents.
Debbie has no background or hatting on how to distinguish between friend and foe. In fact, I have personal knowledge that she has befriended the most treacherous foes (that is, card-carrying agents of OSA). OSA has access to every communication to and from Debbie since her 1 January email. She is stuck in a tar pit where more “helping hands” than not are illusions created by OSA. OSA has access to, and is reporting directly to David Miscavige, every thought she harbors about the entire matter, right on down to her vacillating on where to go, what to do, and her innermost fears. She is even being influenced by advice that does not appear to be, but most certainly is, coming from the twisted, manipulating mind of David Miscavige.
If you are under the radar or otherwise quietly sitting on the fence, and you have good reason to be, the most dangerous thing you can possibly do is to contact Debbie Cook or to express any hint of agreement with her email. You will be left high and dry, intimidated back into the pen (at great expense to yourself) or monitored closely for the rest of your corporate Scientology connection. If you were inspired to take a stand by Debbie’s 1 January email, the only place to take a stand with some level of security is with Independent Scientologists.
What I have written here is consistent with what I have previously written about Debbie since 1 January. The power of her email was that it would make people think who might otherwise never have had seeds planted inspiring thought. It has planted seeds. For that we thank Debbie. But, make no mistake, those seeds and subsequent sprouts will be protected from the varmints by one sector and one sector alone – the Independent Scientologists. Dozens of people who did start thinking, looking and inquiring have connected up with Independent Scientologists and have continued their educations and awakenings. Thanks to those Independents who remailed Debbie’s email to those in “good standing” and followed up with them. The way they needed to be followed up with, more truth.
At the moment, the odds are in favor of Debbie being bought off or quietly slinking into oblivion continuing to protect David Miscavige from exposure of the truth she witnessed, the truth that corroborates and expands and brings closer to present time everything a lot of brave folks have brought to light from The Truth Rundown forward. Truth is the only route to follow up with on those who have contacted her – all Scientology policy arguments having been trumped by the corporate church’s hold on its flock.
I still hold out hope that Debbie will buck the odds and make a clean breast of it. Her only hope for survival is choosing truth over compromise, something quite confrontable and doable thanks to the sacrifices of Independent Scientologists over the past three years.
Until she does, those who fly under the radar or sit quietly on the fence are advised to keep their distance. If you are inclined to take a stand, then contact those who will unequivocally, and competently, have your back – Independent Scientologists.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 