Category Archives: propaganda

Ortega Calls Bullshit on Miscavige

Tony Ortega has done a comprehensive article critiquing David Miscavige’s latest Scientology Inc L Ron Hubbard Annual Birthday Celebration.  While I don’t particularly cotton to Tony’s anti-Scientology tone and joking and degrading digs, he has done a splendid job of chronicling the fraud and insanity that pass for Scientology Inc events.

Later today I intend to complete and post an article on why Tony’s work is so skilled and important. I am going to connect some dots on how it evidences that Miscavige is L Ron Hubbard’s worst enemy. In the interim, I highly recommend people read and watch and listen to Tony’s presentation.

Ortega Calls Bullshit on Miscavige

By the way, thanks Tony.  I have a copy of the full event too, but get nauseous watching more than two or thee minutes at a any given time, and finally just chucked the thing in the trash.

By By the way, someone just pointed out to me that Scientology Inc has been circulating the following statement about me this morning:

 Rathbun knows that his back-and-forth with a third rate hack, Tony Ortega, who profits from pimps engaged in sex trafficking, tries to make it appear that Ortega is an unbiased reporter when in fact Ortega has made vile statements about L. Ron Hubbard and the Scientology religion which shows him to be an anti-religious extremist.

I guess they didn’t want me linking to Tony’s article.  Too late, and had I seen this infantile OSA statement beforehand, I would have linked earlier.

Anybody Have a Viewpoint on Scientology Front Groups?

Ref:  Conscience – Scientology and Human Rights

Lisa Hamilton does, and allowed me to share our email conversation on the matter:

1:

Marty,
Hello.  I needed to write to you about your most recent posting.  And perhaps I am missing data, but it seems that what Mary Shuttleworth (who is not an SO member, but is public) is doing is a good thing by traveling around the world promoting the Declaration of Human Rights.  If this message is something that does get across it could change how people are being treated on the planet.
I knew Mary for many years in PAC and maybe this is why it struck me odd.  Mary has been traveling for many years.  I am guessing that she is at least partially funded by the IAS….I do remember her having trouble with funds.  I do know she is very passionate about her work and about Human Rights.  Having been on the road for so long and being so concentrated on Human Rights, it is very unlikely that she knows much about what is going on with DM.  Maybe she does.  If she doesn’t and she is doing good things for the planet, then she should be supported.
Yes, if DM gets credit for Mary’s hard work, that is disgusting.
It seems like a bit of a dilemma…if someone IS still associated with the CoS proper and they are doing good works and helping people I am not sure why we would speak out against what they are doing in order to harm DM.  If what Mary is doing is making a difference, she should be supported.  Unless she has changed drastically, she is a good and social personality.
In my mind, the right thing to do would be to expose the bad and support the good.
Maybe that is what you are saying to do.  The article seemed so full of hatred that I could not see it.
What you are doing for, in and with Independent Scientology is vital.
However, I do believe that there is good being done for the planet by people who are unfortunately still in the CoS.  I don’t think we should blanketly condemn them and their good works while we get rid of the real SP.  Yes, expose the suppressive, but don’t harm people of good will doing so.  Maybe this violates the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics, but in Mary’s case anyway, she creates good effects across many.
I did not send this to your blog as it is just a comm from me to you.  It is my observation and of course you can do what you want with it.  However, I would appreciate your viewpoint on what my thoughts here are.
Lisa
2:
Lisa,
   Hi. Yes, it is a dilemma. See the follow up post on Tony Ortega’s article.  The Human Rights campaign is being big-time funded by the church these days – using incredibly sophisticated a/v products, flying dignitaries around the world to attend events, hosting the same at lavish events at Scn celebrities’ homes.  All date coincident with Truth Rundown original series, summer 09.  Bless Mary for her work.  Pity her for being used as a tool to unwittingly be used to cover for the most heinous human trafficking operation in recent American history.  As a note, I am not trying to harm David Miscavige. I am working to prevent the continuing harm he visits upon others, and from my perspective, because of his position, all of humankind.  I’d love to post your email to me and my answer, if you believe that would be helpful.
Marty
3:
Marty,
Thanks a lot for your answer.  This indeed was a helpful perspective.  I did look at Tony Ortega’s posting and that made sense too.  I am so glad that any Independent Scientology individual can share and discuss their viewpoints and work together to make the world better.  It is so very different from being within the organization (and especially in the current Sea Organization) where you are afraid to say what you think or you expect to be put on the meter for an Ethics Interview to FIND YOUR CRIMES if you express an idea/opinion that may question what was said.
Feel free to share this with others. Thanks for being there.
Take care,
Lisa

 

Conscience – Scientology and Human Rights

Re: Last night’s post, Scientology and Human Rights.

Tony Ortega at the Village Voice has posted a follow up article to one we linked to a few weeks ago about the Corporate Scientology sponsored Writers of The Future contest.

The new story is about a contest winner named Carl Frederick.  Frederick has decided to cut ties with the contest.  Tony’s reporting created the effect I was suggesting be created on the “church’s” Human Rights propaganda campaign front.  The article gives an inside look at what goes through the mind of someone supporting a corporate Scientology public relations program when he is informed about the criminal activities such a program seeks to create a cover for.

Frederick speaks of the corporate Scientology love bombing:

“You’re never treated anywhere in your life as a writer better than you are there. Tuxedos, parties on rooftops — there were evenpapparazi. They give you the whole works,” he says.

Frederick speaks to the question of why continuing to engage in such an innocent sounding activity would be an unethical choice:

“I had blinders on. Self-fitted blinders. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my appreciation of the contest,” he says. “I still think the contest is a good thing. But once you’ve gone through it, you should probably leave. It’s the long-term association that I have a problem with,” he says. “It implies an acceptance of everything.”

Of course in this case, “everything” would include the atrocities of David Miscavige.  It would also indirectly support them by making his torture chamber matron, and Executive Director Author Services Barbara Ruiz – the sponsor of the contest, appear legitimate.

He also talks about the moral dilemma attached to such decision making:

“I feel good in my mind that I did turn this down, but I am conflicted about it,” he says. “They really do a lot for us. I’ve had nothing but niceness from these guys.”

Ortega’s article is your inside look at deconstruction of the propaganda front activity.  A great primer for anyone inclined to do something about the Human Rights propaganda activity of Miscavige discussed in last night’s post.


Scientology and Human Rights

David Miscavige has Corporate Scientology buying and defrauding politicians right, left and center in a systematic scheme to cover up his human trafficking operation with Human Rights.  Check out Senator Harry Reid’s latest endorsement.

Here is another Opinion Leader in the field unwittingly pimping for the biggest, most blatant human rights abuser in recent American history:

Mountain View Human Rights event.

The longer David Miscavige gets away with such fraudulent activity, the longer he is enabled to run his torture camp activities.  In order to put period to this blatant travesty I believe it is incumbant upon us to expose it.

Each time Miscavige puts out a “PR wire” press release or holds an event on Human Rights using prominent folk to front for him, I suggest that constituents, and industrious non-constituents, of such used personages expend a little time getting the truth to them about how they are being used.

You can inform them with the abundant available links about the only legitimate Human Rights work that is going on in the world of Scientology at this time; that of Independent Scientologists attempting to shut down Miscavige’s personal house of horrors at the international Scientology Inc headquarters.

It might seem oxymoronic at first  glance that this should be the important first step in correcting Scientology’s public identification with Human Rights violations.   But, if you read the Axioms of Dianetics and Scientology I think you’ll understand that to bury the truth and allow lies and crimes to continue  will result in persistence. Until the continued perpetration of the crimes and continued perpetuation of it by such false propaganda as we see above is exposed and ended, the rights violations will proliferate unabated.   Ultimately, unchecked Miscavige’s cult lunacy and cruelty will create destruction of such magnitude that he will forever destroy the name under which he is performing them, Scientology.

The lives of the people continuing to be adversely effected by David Miscavige’s insanity are worth the effort to educate.

Here are two suggested primer links to begin the educational process on the types of human rights abuses these opinion leaders are perpetuating and protecting in the name of Human Rights.

The Truth Rundown

Debbie Cook tells the Hole Truth 

Friends

Kudos to Aida Thomas and those who assisted her in discovering and exposing the Office of Special Affairs (OSA, church of Scientology dirty tricks and propaganda wing) operative who publicly slimed her friend Silvia Kusada:

Aida Thomas Opens Up A Can of Whup Ass

In my view Aida sets a wonderful example of what friendship really entails.

As for Neil Roger Woods – aka Tim Higgs, aka truthseeker, the OSA operative very active in attempting to disrupt and destroy the lives and reputations of Independent Scientologists – he had his fun on this blog for a spell in 2010.  That was until we noted that his creepy comments indicated he was an OSA troll.

This Woods message was a dead give-away:

4/24/2010

Mr. Rinder,

Have you ever been on the other end of one these “gang ups”? If so, was it just once or more than once? If a man spends years of his life shooting others, should others feel sorry for him when he gets shot?

Should we feel sympathy for someone who was once on the cause end of something like this but is now on the effect end?

Didn’t you and Marty Rathbun help to build the Frankenstein monster over the last 20-30 years we are now having to deal with?

Isn’t there a word for things that happen like this?

Isn’t that word “Karma”?

It is David Miscavige attempting to export the Hole right into our living room – the tell-tale “I am going to take your treasonous act of coming clean to make you guilty until you cave in and shut up”.

Woods ought to be exposed to the point where societal peer pressure forces him to confess and repent.   “Oh”, the OSA trolls will rant, “but you are proposing to do just what OSA does!”   No, I’m not.  I have published OSA programs straight from their greasy files that direct the spreading of black PR (not fact) to ensure that folk of our ilk lose their jobs and any possibility of a livelihood.   Examples, Tory Christman Program,  OSA War Against Independence. That is precisely what Woods has been involved in, going on for years now. Mr Woods does not deserve to earn a red penny from anyone until he makes good on what he has been doing to others at the behest of Miscavige’s OSA network.  To allow him to continue to harm people of good will is ethical bankruptcy.

Thanks again to Aida for not only demonstrating what  a friend is, but also for helping to put Ethics in where sorely needed.

Independents, now and then

Thanks for the responses to my post of 20 March, Council for Spiritual Integrity.   A lot of the initial information shared serves to confirm datums that I have already found to be true and have based my actions over the past three years upon.  Among them:

1. The eighties leaders were different than current leaders in that the former ultimately were bought.  I knew from the outset that David Miscavige was acutely aware of the fact that most everybody had a price.  So much so that his ENTIRE, blanket strategy for dealing with exposure of his crimes can be summed up in two parts: a) Leverage: created by intelligence, black PR, and legal to put the target into a more amenable frame of mind, followed by b) buy off, and that means literally – nobody settles with David Miscavige whom Miscavige does not own to one degree or another.

That is one reason why I have stayed true from the beginning to the vow never to accept money from anyone that carries with it any attempt to influence my direction or behavior.  I have turned down large sums of money that have been offered to get me to go in certain directions; and I will continue to refuse such in the future.  People donate when they see fit – presumably by their following the chronicle of where I am going as memorialized on this blog.  Monique can attest to the trend – and how no matter how lean things become on this end, I have not and will not pander or attempt to please to make a living – to me that is not living; that is the route to dying.

2.  Among today’s crew we have a number of folks with a far higher confront of evil and experiential track on how to deal with it.

While I am studying all this in far more depth and intend to share more of my findings, one  more recently recognized truth can be added.

3.  The pioneers of the past were far more invested in terms of active involvement.  They met,they rallied, they demonstrated, they worked hard (far more than is necessary now with the internet) to collect information and get it published and distributed.  Almost perhaps to a fault.  Many critical ones devoted so much time and effort to the cause that they were forced out of the game entirely by financial necessity.

I have noted a number of times over the past couple years that much of what I do I consider to be “ethics” actions; and that we as a movement are following the Scientology sequence of ethics, tech, admin.   I find it to be necessary in order to assure that tech and admin can go in.  That is why when engaged in ethics activities I continually promote that others not directly involved get real busy with tech and admin; because a) that is the only reason for the sacrifices in the ethics band – to make it possible to get tech in, and b) enough proliferation of tech will be the final ethics nail allowing a move into the admin band.

The past few months have been almost completely consumed with activities falling into the ethics band.  The amount of kicking and screaming from the ethics-challenged beast has been horrifying during this period.

I have likened the struggle with the Corporate Scientology organization to the American civil rights struggle and the South African civil rights movement.  On the latter, I have noted that the most effective measure in ending appartheid was making those who profited from it no longer profit from it. And that was accomplished by making those who supported the profiteers understand they ultimately empowered the slavoracy; and by persistent exposure of that empowerment made those ultimately supporting the slave-masters no longer support them.

I think on this score, we can learn from the pioneers; both of the civil rights movements and of the earlier Independent movement. I think we ought to learn from them a higher level of personal involvement.  I am asking people to step up to make it uncomfortable on those who are perpetuating Miscavige’s character assassination network.  I am not suggesting in the slightest that anyone engage in anything resembling harassment, Corporate Scientology style or otherwise.  I am suggesting that the likes of Joel Phillips, John Allender, Ed Bryan, Joanne Wheaton, Norman Bates (whatever his real last name is), Iz Chait, Dave Lublow, and other known agents of Corporate Scientology’s domestic terrorist network be called to account for their months and years of domestic terrorist work.

Miscavige, being the 1.1 coward that he is, has polluted the internet and American neighborhoods by having OSA volunteers and PIs serve as an “arm’s length” domestic terrorist network.  Please do what you can to help disinfect this sickness with sunshine.

Get hold of Steve and/or Karen with your website building skills, your ability to  investigate and inform those who ought to know about the domestic terror network and its actors.

A wise man once noted that if one knows of out ethics and doesn’t do anything about it, after a while of doing nothing about it he becomes an accomplice.

Who Is Joel Phillips?

An industrious individual decided that David Miscavige’s Office of Special Affairs black ops propaganda campaigns, and their Corporate Scientologist puppet executors, are overdue for a little of nature’s most effective disinfectant, sunshine.

First on the line up is the sponsor of the Corporate Scientology web rag with the Orwellian title Religious Freedom Watch.

Joel Phillips is welcomed out of the shadows.   Steve Hall has also put Phillips on notice.

I encourage anyone who has time on their hands to see to it that each and every one of Phillips’ business contacts are made aware of what Phillips has been up to.

UPDATE:

More reflections on Phillips from Just Me and Mark Bunker:

Joel Phillips is an effing brownshirt Nazi! Here’s the crap he writes at
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.scientology/browse_thread/thread/a9e3bb544f0bc824?tvc=2&pli=1 .

Joel Phillips: “So I am calling for the total elimination of Islam. Many other religious choices are available to those currently in Islam. Islam must go and no Muslim can be allowed to remain anywhere in the world.”

Joel Phillips: “All Mosques must either be destroyed or made into something else. The other day we did a title for one that was converted into a shopping center, now that s a good use for one!”

Joel Phillips: “All copies of the Koran must be rounded up and burned or otherwise destroyed. If libraries insist on keeping them for historical reasons they have to be under lock and key and they have to post a guard to make sure no one copies them.”

Left to his own devices, Phillips will be packing people into cattle cars headed for concentration camps and gas chambers. He is either completely unfamiliar with or completely opposed to the U.S. Bill of Rights — particularly the First Amendment.

Astonishingly, Joel Phillips funds a publication called (this next bit would be so funny, if it weren’t) Religious Freedom Watch.

JM

Mark Bunker clarification:

This is an old post from someone looking to defame Joel Phillips by pretending to write extremist stuff as him. Not that I’m defending Phillips because RFW is filled with the over-the-top lies that corporate Scientology has spread about little old SP’s like me and my friends for years. Someone in the past also created a website supposedly from me and opened a twitter account in my name and spread similar anti-Islam messages in my name. I got the twitter account and website taken down. Tony Ortega wrote a piece about it way back when:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/10/google_and_twit.php

RFW is crap and the folks behind it are crappy. I think Phillips is likely just a front for RFW since in the video I shot of him talking with Andreas he seemed not to even know what he had on the site. But the anti-Islam material was written by someone else simply to cause trouble for Phillips and as a parody of Phillips own RFW site.

—————-

Now this is a test.  Phillips refused to answer my communication to him two years ago about correcting a litany of false, black ops PR he has posted on me.  He knows how to get hold of me.  If he refutes the comments about Islam, and wants them removed – notwithstanding it being posted with the opinion of Mark Bunker – all he has to do is communicate.  My bet is he won’t – because he is hiding like the little rat OSA operative he is and doesn’t want to open himself to return communication about his obligation to take down his OSA propaganda designed to destroy a number of people.

I also suggest people write to the “religious experts” who have been paid to legitimize Phillips OSA op page – and tell them a thing or two about who they are whoring out to.

 

Council for Spiritual Integrity

In the mid 1980’s a Class VIII Auditor named Ian Waxler headed a group called The Council for Spiritual Integrity.   He recently sent me an April 1985 newsletter The Free Spirit that the council published.  A copy of it can be accessed at the end of this post.

I highly recommend people giving it a thorough read.   After having done so myself I recognized a couple of important things.

The parallels between what was happening in the field in the mid eighties and now are remarkable. The newsletter reads much like this blog in terms of issues the field was contending with.  Though many doubt it, I had very little exposure to the “Independent” movement of the eighties.   As will be made very clear in my book between 81 and 85 I was thoroughly consumed in dealing with dozens of lawsuits and a number of criminal investigations targeting L Ron Hubbard.   It was not till November of 1984 that I was thrust into the Mayo/Advanced Ability Center lawsuit, in my position as Legal Executive Author Services Inc, as it was perceived that then-RTC honchos had thoroughly screwed it up.  Even then, it was only one of dozens of disrelated lawsuits I remained involved in.  By the time I got into RTC, March 1987, there was little to nothing going on overtly in the Independent field, at least nothing that effected the church very greatly.   I give this brief history to make the point how remarkable I find it that Moving on Up A Little Higher so parallels The Free Spirit.  Uncanny in some respects, like choosing July 4th for an annual Independents’ get-together.

Having been accused of all manner of skullduggery  – there was plenty I was involved in, just not so much in this sector – by folks on the receiving end from the eighties, I batted back a lot of nasty comm I’ve received from that sector for three reasons. First, it was full of false accusations and arguing facts seemed to go nowhere.  Second, and more importantly, it didn’t open the door to any handlings – their presumptive why for the past Independent movement having nothing whatsoever to with anything they did or didn’t do (the why is God).   The comm only reinforced the conclusion I had already drawn about the ebbing of the “squirrels” (from my church perspective) that they had suffered the fate LRH had suggested they would if they did two things : a)  squirreled, and b) denigrated Hubbard and his technology.  Third, I found both “a” and “b” to be rampant within the current Freezone.

However, reading the Waxler CSI newsletter caused me to re-think this historical era.  It has prompted me to conduct a thorough investigation and evaluation of the 1980’s Independent movement for purposes of learning from its strengths and weaknesses.

I am interested in receiving hard facts from the perspective of pioneer Independents on what went right and what went wrong from their points of view.   I do understand the impact of the Mayo/AAC going down.  I was most definitely involved in that.  But, there are certainly other factors.  There must be more useful facts for pure evaluation, that is, what did the Independents do or not do to lose their momentum, cohesion, and effectiveness.

While this process can certainly lead to important connections being made by various sectors of the Independent field, I am quite certain a bunch of comm attempting to “enlighten” me on the virtues of “a” and “b” above is going to be counter-productive. Because of the volume of traffic on my lines on a lot of productive fronts, this is a word of warning that I am not going to devote any time to such origins.  If that is the bulk of what I receive, I’ll understand my initial conclusions – though omitting pluspoints like Waxler produced – were probably right in the first place.

If you have such facts and are willing to share them, please forward me reports at rathbunmark@yahoo.com.

The Free Spirit newsletter

 

The FBI and Scientology Inc

Tony Ortega at the Village Voice published an interesting story on the spiking of the FBI investigation into David Miscavige, supreme leader of Scientology Inc’s human trafficking operation.

If someone wants to really understand how Scientology Inc is able to manipulate the highest levels of America’s most powerful law enforcement agency they should read the two references I suggested Tony read.

First, read Matt Taibbi’s epic story in Rolling Stone magazine, Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?    Taibbi’s expose of corporate corruption at the top of the US federal government is very accurate.  It has been going on for decades, and over three decades under the direction of David Miscavige I helped Scientology Inc perfect how to capitalize on that filth bucket.

Second, if you want a post-graduate level understanding read Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower.   Wright was deservedly awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for this work.  His description of the political and money motivated systemic corruption of the FBI tracks on all four corners with what I observed in interfacing with them (and out-maneuvering them) over three decades.

Don’t get too worked up.  I’ve been saying it for three years and I’ll say it again. The solution to Scientology Inc is not ‘over there’; it is in the hands of Scientologists.   Independent Scientologists who take responsibility for the subject by proliferating its practice in a safe and sane manner.

WTF?

 

WTF? sort of sums up my initial thought upon completing Tony Ortega’s mini opus on Writers of the Future (WTF) at the Village Voice.  

Uncharacteristically, Tony uses an awful lot of ink to get to the heart of a matter.  I think it was out of respect to those he interviewed who had a lot of good things to say about L Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest and publications.  I respect and appreciate that.  WTF has served to open doors for a lot of talented writers and artists.

Fact of the matter is WTF was originated by L Ron Hubbard as a Public Relations action. It was created during a time in his life where a tremendous amount of blowback was occurring; so much so that number one priority for church resources at that time (early 80’s) was attaining an All Clear (a legal and PR climate that would allow for Hubbard to return to the Int Headquarters base near Hemet California unmolested to complete production of the technical training films).  The promotion of and resurrection of LRH’s SciFi career was orchestrated during that time ultimately, by LRH’s copious directions, to forward his legacy so as to drive more people toward Scientology books and organizations.

I am sure that WTF continues to give breaks to those in the ScFi arena who deserve them.  It probably also continues to create positive impressions of Hubbard.

However, it serves another purpose not so overtly emphasized in Tony’s article.  That is, it serves to create a patina of respectability to the criminal who ultimately runs its operator Author Services Inc.  Meanwhile, that criminal spends hundreds of thousands  of dollars of those who ultimately do get into Scientology organizations to suppress the exposure of his crimes.

If this were the 1930’s and the German Nazi party were operating such a shift, it would behoove the public to know of its provenance.  If this were the 1940’s and an organized crime syndicate was the beneficiary of such a worthy endeavor, the public would be entitled to know it.  If this were the 1970’s and this was a front operation of People’s Temple head Jim Jones’ (of Jonestown Massacre infamy) the public would deserve to know.  If this were the 1980’s and a South African company effectively profiting from slave labor were behind it, the public would be entitled to know.

Well, it is the 2010’s and one of the main beneficiaries of this salutary activity has been using it to immunize himself in his running one of the more horrid Human Trafficking operations in recent American history.  Perhaps more importantly, in terms of the public’s right to know – at least for friends of L Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige is using Writer’s of the Future to prolong and protect his carrying out of the precise opposite purpose of WTF.  He is in effect using  something designed to enhance Hubbard’s legacy to enable his attempted destruction of that very legacy.

In my view, the public ought to know that.