Category Archives: the Reformation

Ivan Garcia on the Bridge and Gnat Swatting 101

 

 

Hello,

My name is Ivan Garcia, I just turned 19 and this is my declaration of Independence.

I like fast cars, sports, good food and good friends. And girls too.

I started taking courses at an early age, led by the active example of my parents, Luis and Rocio. I had many wins on these, and having observed my parents’ behavior in life, I decided I wanted to follow their footsteps and eventually go OT. For this purpose I did the Purif and later attended the “Future OTs Convention” at the Freewinds. My experience at the Freewinds left me disgusted and not wanting any more services. And I didn’t do any for 5 years. I decided that it was too high a price to pay in terms of bullshit to go up the Bridge.

Ivan, age 10, at Flag graduation with Debbie Cook

 

I recently met Marty and I felt I had a new chance to go up the Bridge, so I visited with him and Mosey and received some great auditing. Among what the things we accomplished, I completed my Grade 0. I now feel I can talk to anyone about any subject.

 

I have become very interested in what is happening with the COS and the Independents. You can imagine I get to participate in a lot of meetings and conversations with my parents. I agree completely that by “standing up and being counted” brings any possible reform closer to reality, and thus the end of the suppression and suffering of many. This is something each of us can do… minimally.

 

I know many people are “under the radar.” If any of you are afraid to come out because of possible harassment, I would tell you that you should not be concerned. A good communication cycle is all that it takes.

 

So here I am. Count me in. And thank you Marty and Mosey! I am on my way to go OT now, just as I wanted.

 

Ivan kicking it at the 2011 Independents' party

 

Now, regarding this video below, the Three Stooges, Jim Lynch (Freedoom shill) (alleged former OC d/Sheriff thug) Jason (fresh from IOB) came by my house today. My parents were not home. I went out for a bite to eat and they followed me into a shopping center. As they were looking for me in the parking lot, they hit another car that was backing out. As they were exchanging information with the driver of the other car, I pulled up to check how they were doing.

Blogger note:  Don’t be alarmed – Miscavige’s thugs have not fanned out among Indepedents indiscriminately.   I arrived at Orange County airport the night before last greeted by Lubow, Lynch, and five other cars of Miscavige Private Eyes.  They’ve lost me twice and are leaning on anyone who might know my whereabouts.   My crimes?  I’ve given sessions to four people in SoCal so far.  As far as Miscavige is concerned it is a full blown crime spree.  Stay tuned for how Scientologists’ fees are being expended, damn the expense, to stop Public Enemy number one from attempting to assist others move on up a little higher.  You wanna stop the shinin’?  Thanks to the incredible Independents movement Underground Railroad, you can’t stop the shinin’. 

L’Indipendologo Chronicles

The good folks at L’Indipendologo have created two educational summations on some testimonies that remind us why Independence is necessary.  I think they are worth watching as the rudiments sometimes bear repetition.

Rinder summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5xDSCVV2EQ&feature=related

Rathbun summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGknikN9ORw

For more information on the Italian Freedom Fighters:   http://indipendologo.wordpress.com/

Heretics and the Scientology Inquisition

A heretic is a person who committed heresy.

Heresy (from Greek αίρεση, which originally meant “choice”) is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma.[1] It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one’s religion, principles or cause,[2] and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion.[3] The founder or leader of a heretical movement is called a heresiarch, while individuals who espouse heresy or commit heresy, are known as heretics. Heresiology is the study of heresy.

The word heresy is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies something slightly different in each. In certain historical Christian and Jewish cultures, heresy was punishable by law. In modern times, the word heresy is often used in jest and without religious context.

-Wikipedia

All the noise about “squirrels” and “squirrel busting” is a nifty distraction to mask corporate Scientology head David Miscavige’s operations in Texas of late.

What Miscavige is dramatizing is the centuries-old control device of burning heretics in an attempt to protect a dirty monopoly.  And as with everything Miscavige his dramatization is done with a criminal-mind twist.  The heresy he attacks is the original doctrine of the Founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard.

The following completely spontaneous video illustrates that what I state here is the truth:

Now, do you think that for one moment David Miscavige’s reaction to Erin Haskell’s heartfelt words will be anything other than “Squirrel!  Can you believe that?  Mixing Scientology with Christianity, the Tao. Squash the b____ along with Marty, goddamn it!”?

Here’s the twist and the heart of the matter. L Ron Hubbard would beg to differ with Miscavige’s view, and might even have defended Ms. Haskell:

Scientology is the science of knowing how to know answers.  It is wisdom in the tradition of ten thousand years of search in Asia and Western civilization.  It is the Science of Human Affairs which treats the livingness and beingess of Man and demonstrates to him a pathway to greater freedom

Subjects which were consulted in the organization and development of Scientology include the Veda; the Tao, by Lao-tzu; the Dharma and the Discourses of Gutama Buddha; the general knowingness about life extant in the lamasaries of the Western Hills of China; the technologies and beliefs of various barbaric cultures; the various materials of Christianity, including St Luke; the mathematical and technical methodologies of the early Greeks, Romans and Arabians; the physical sciences, including what is no known as nuclear physics; the various speculations of Western philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer and Dewey; and the various technologies extant in the civilizations of both the Orient and Occident in the first half to the twentieth century.

– L Ron Hubbard, A Summary of Scientology from The Creation of Human Ability

 

Why the Obsession?

Some have pondered lately why the Miscavige obsession with Casablanca.   I have some ideas to share on that score. 

First please review a portion of an essay I posted on 26 September 2009, Independent Scientologists community:

I am fairly certain that if a decent percentage of independent Scientologists stand up, identify themselves, and freely associate with like-minded friends in the light of day at least three things will happen:

a. Many individual lives will regain meaning. Many more lives still will reap the gains from each of us who independently and freely use Scientology with no other motivation than to help others reach higher states of beingness.

b. Scientology (the subject and community) will experience a renaissance within society at large.

c. Miscavige’s church will be forced to either radically reform by reversing its suppressive operating basis or face its inevitable demise (note the intransitive is used; it is not because of anything that you or I will do to it that will cause it other than being there comfortably – it will be a self-inflicted fate).

At this point, at this Ethics stage,  I am advocating  that independent thinking Scientologists think hard about being proud of exercising their independence. That they make themselves known and use the title “Scientologist” without shame or embarrassment. That they create community with other independent Scientologists and make it that much safer for those people to get their strength up and flourish. To the extent we tip toe around imaginary egg shells, we are PTS. We cripple our own ability to as-is. If we walk tall, we rehabilitate one another’s abilities to as-is. The Lord knows that this world could use some more of that.

People who have been following this blog for some time understand that this is a message I have often repeated: when enough real Scientologists stand up and be heard as Independents, Miscavige’s resources will be spread so thin trying to intimidate them that his actions will be so ineffectual that the world will see there is nothing to fear from Radical Corporate Scientology. 

It is my contention that such a tipping point has been achieved.  I think most overtly announced Independent Scientologists  recognize that, even if the society at large – certain press and law enforcement agencies included – is lagging a bit behind.

In the light of that, Miscavige’s current plan is quite rational for a psychotic motivated by intent to enslave and destroy everybody else in order to survive.  His think goes something like this:

“If we can’t scare them into compliance or shivering fear any more and we can’t control any more resources to keep trying, why, we concentrate all resources on ruining utterly the guy who told them to stand up the first place.  Then you’ll see them scattering like cockroaches.”

I personally believe Miscavige is rushing headlong toward the second option in point “c” of the essay excerpt above in frantically executing his current thinking.

There is one thing I am certain of.   That is, if more people stand up, step up and be counted it will make the thwarting of Miscavige’s current planning, and realization of the goals set forth in the essay, a heck of a lot easier.

Ground Zero For The Future of Scientology

According to the many insightful comments in response to this week’s posts it is clear not much was lost on you all.   Thanks for the dot connecting and succinct  sum ups and observations of the situation.

Allow me to engage in a little more dot connecting of my own.

The main purpose behind the manner in which the material rolled out – from the first Caller Times article on 3 July, to the follow up on 7 August, to the four segments of interview with Bert Leahy – was to provide the definitive Miscavige mafia repellent.   Take the links to the 3 July article, the 7 August article, and the four days of Mr. Leahy and you have a fully self-contained answer and antidote to any invasion of Miscavige’s mafia in your area.   Whether it is Lubow or any Radical Scientology private investigator, one or more OSA operatives or even a Radical Scientology lawyer – the combined links, in sequence, are the answer to them all.

David Miscavige does not investigate.

David Lubow does not investigate.

Scientology lawyers do not investigate.

OSA does not investigate.

David Miscvige only harasses in a vain effort to dominate and destroy and to wipe out the exercise of the First Amendment rights of Freedom of Speech, the Press, and of Religion.

David Lubow only harasses to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, the press, and religion.

Scientology laywers only harass – and get paid commensurate with their satisfaction of David Miscavige’s perverse intentions to dominate and destroy.

Office of Special Affairs only does a lower, more covert and illegal form of all the above at the insistance and direct orders of David Miscavige.

David Miscavige, David Lubow, Scientology PIs, Scientology lawyers, and Office of Special Affairs staff are not capable of telling the truth.  They are only capable of lying.   They have lied so often and brazenly for so long, nobody in his or her right mind believes a single bit of filth that issues from their sinister mouths. 

From here on out the links I noted above – with nothing else but that – is my answer to anyone swayed by these cretins in the slightest.  I highly recommend you use them for the same purpose. 

To lie to a major newspaper so persistently and consistently, and then continue to lie after getting busted and caught out  is a brand new straight-up-and-vertical level attained by David Miscavige.  It is the achievement of TOTAL lack of credibility.

Not only is the church’s credibility  dead, but now the credibility of its overpriced “professional” whores too is dead.

Finally, if anyone thinks the South Texas Siege (now in day 118) is merely some personal vendetta against me, think again.

This blog is coming at you from Ground Zero. 

GROUND ZERO:…2) the center or origin of rapid, intense, or violent activity or change; broadly : center.          – Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary

This is Ground Zero in the struggle to determine how Scientology will be practiced and how it will be perceived by the world at large in future generations.

The siege is only about preventing that change.

David Miscavige’s answer to the challenge is two-fold:

a)  Destroy the communication vehicle that is advocating such change and accurately informing the world about the state of Scientology, by destroying rights guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights and the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Creed of the Church of Scientology.

b) Destroy the sane and effective practice of Scientology, by destroying rights guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights and the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Creed of the Church of Scientology.

If you doubt my words, then let us hear it from Miscavige’s own agent’s (OT VII/OT Ambassador) mouth: (note, don’t get distracted with my words – listen carefully to Mosey’s which I talk trash over during a crucial segment):

 

Miscavige Mafia – Bert Leahy IV

 

David Miscavige the Coward

The liar is inevitably a coward and the coward inevitably a liar.

– L Ron Hubbard

A tremendous amount of International Association of Scientologists fees are being expended daily to run a black PR operation against me personally as well as a 110 day operation designed to impede me directly and make the lives of Mosey and I a living hell.  Miscavige is enforcing the OSA bible Public Relations Series 18 to the tee.  Except, as in all things Miscavige touches, he is doing so in the reverse.   Hubbard explains the intention of the Black Propagandist in PR Series 18 as follows:

The world is full of madmen. The basic characteristic of extreme madness is perpetual attack, attacks on anything, attacks on persons or things which contain no menace.  Extreme, not petty crime is at the root of such an impulse.

The attacker has an evil purpose in life.  He is a thing of death, not life.  And his harvest is a death harvest.  Such a person feels he cannot feel safe unless everything else is dead.  His evil purpose takes many forms and expressions. The end product is the same – death.

At bottom, David Miscavige is a coward.

If you’d go to the St Petersburg Times video interview of me, and watch the segment titled Reverse Dianetics at http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/rathbun.shtml, you will learn that Miscavige did not have the courage to  confront me man to man before I left (even with whatever security contingent he chose to bring with him, against me alone).  He promised he would meet on my demand to discuss his practice of Black Dianetics at International Headquarters – several appointments, several no shows on his part.  I patiently awaited the promised meeting for ten months.

Now, after I spend two years attempting to reverse the Black Dianetics he has laid in he spends twenty thousand dollars a day to send “security pros”, and Kool Aide drinkers (whom he pays handsomely)  to attempt to make our lives a living hell here – barking out Miscavige’s venomous lies on our driveway and throughout our neighborhood, filming into our home up to 21 times a day for 110 days.

And Miscavige, necessarily, has them tell blatant lies as to their very identities and purposes that virtually nobody watching believes.

For example,  Ralph S Gomez, the “security pro” making big bucks for supervising the voyeurs has identified himself as the Assistant Producer for a documentary company, telling the media, law enforcement, and everyone in our community that line.

Well, the following is a verbatim conversation I had, which Monique witnessed and I duly recorded, with Mr Gomez on 23 June 2011, day 68 of his assignment. This is what the “assistant producer” had learned in more than two months on the job. The one time I caught the coward alone, outside his little pack, during these 110 days.

GOMEZ:  It ain’t worth it, man, what you are going through.  Fix whatever you did.

RATHBUN: Why don’t you find out before you go trailing someone all around town?  Why don’t you find out what it is all about?

GOMEZ: I don’t understand it.

RATHBUN:  Then why are you doing it?  If you don’t understand it, then why are you doing it?

GOMEZ: All this wouldn’t be happening for no reason.  I mean just fix it, man, fix it. IF THIS WAS HAPPENING TO ME, I’D FLIP OUT.

Well, five and one half weeks later, we’re still standing and Miscavige is still trying:  living, perpetuating, buying others to forward LIES.

Ralph S Gomez and the Cultettes

And Miscavige, by now you well know my answer to your offer for me to “fix it” with you and have you and your agents withdrawn.  I am fixing it.  But, apparently you are operating on another definition of “fix” than I am.

Ralph Gomez, other “professional” cult whores, Kool Aid Drinkers, and others feigning ignorance as to what this is all about, our friends at Indipendologo have summed it up real simple for you.  For a concise, accurate brief on Miscavige’s cowardice – note well the skirts he hides behind as he flees from the truth – please have a look at the video produced by  DRITTONEIDENTI (means straightinhisteeth) and posted by the founder of  the Italian independence movement Gary Baldi.  The video appears at the end of the post at this link, http://indipendologo.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/il-leader-dei-leader-parte-1/

The final irony is this.   Although it may not appear so to those not intimately involved, and though you all might find it hard to believe in light of events of the past quarter year,  I have got David Miscavige exactly where I want him.

Stay tuned.

David Miscavige the Cheater

One of the essences of Reverse Scientology as practiced in the Radical Corporate organization is to indoctrinate through the CULTure there that life is not a game.  No, they are taught that life is a deadly serious activity.  They are conditioned to believe that life is an arduous struggle against evil enemies intent on enslavement – and that any lapse in seriousness about this is a transgression requiring adjustment of attitude.  Adjustment toward a much more solid, black and white, us vs. them, seriousness.  The Radical Corporate Scientology view is that of its leader David Miscavige.  Win at any cost; defeat the designated enemy by any means necessary.  Become whatever it is that the leader has you resist.  And above all, NEVER question the enemy status of anyone Botox Dave fingers.  Thus, the cult has become a sorry example of that which Scientology once served as an alternative to: intolerant,  warring institutions.

Miscavige the Cheat

Those who know or knew Miscavige personally will tell you that he is incapable of the activity of games, by pure definition.  He is obsessed with using “games” to create “no-games” conditions (that is he must dominate and overwhelm into nothingness every opponent – real or imagined –  he perceives as confronting him).

Even on a personal level, there is no “game” Miscavige ever played that he did not cheat in order to “win.”    In basketball, he blatantly and violently fouled his opponents and required his “teammates” to do the same (he also always made sure I was on his team, who back in the day could drain ’em from just about anywhere:).  Of course, because of his position no one could argue – and by violent overwhelm, against all rules, Miscavige would invariably “win.”

Even in the card game Pinochle, which he required execs to play with him (nobody, and I mean nobody, ever played any game with the habitual cheat on his own determinism), Miscavige overtly grabbed the cards of his opponents to view them whenever he lagged behind on points.

The obsession with winning at whatever cost of course applied to the group too.  Our standard operating procedure when it came to handling a new flap, was to move in and hire the local rainmakers who, with enough palm greasing, could put the church on top at the end of the day, by any means fair or foul.  I’ll give an example to illustrate.

Between April 2002 and September 2003 Miscavige had me stationed at the Clearwater Florida Headquarters of the church (also known as Flag).  The primary program he ran me directly on with daily micromanagement orders was the Pinellas County Public Relations Area Control program.  In short, use Public Relations and money to influence local leaders and authorities to protect the church from the disasterous potential fallout from the Lisa McPherson civil cases that continued after the June 2000 dismissal of the criminal charges against the church.

First order of business was hiring – at a very handsome salary – the number one Republican political consultant (in an historically Republican region) in Pinellas county, one Mary Repper.   The program Mary and I developed under Miscavige’s direct supervision was simple.

First, Mary finds out the favorite Scientology celebrity of each influential person in Pinellas County politics and government (including law enforcement).

Second, I contact that celebrity and close him/her to come to Mary Repper’s home for a dinner with a collection of those local officials who happen to love that particular celebrity. The targets are won over by intimate face time with someone he or she is giddy over.

The Mayor of Clearwater, the Mayor of Tampa, County Supervisors, the Pinellas County Sheriff, the Pinellas County Public Defender, many prominent lawyers, and a number of other local public figures attended these special evenings with a star.

Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Greta Van Sustern, and soap star Michelle Stafford each had their own special audiences appear to be spellbound face to face at the home of Ms. Repper.

MIchelle Stafford with Mary Repper

We then used a number of the people so wowed at these events to get footholds in with judges in the Pinellas county courts – infiltrating the courts indirectly with the messages that “Scientology is good and being discriminated against”, “McPherson’s lawyers and family were bad, gold diggers exploiting Lisa’s death.” For those who haven’t read the complete St Petersburg Times Truth Revealed articles, Lisa McPherson was killed on church premises on David Miscaviges causation.

We also hired laywers who knew judges assigned to our cases in Pinellas County, and paid them so handsomely they were willing to make ex parte contact with and inculcate the judges directly with those same messages.  That occured with Judge Beach who was assigned to the civil case, Estate Of Lisa McPherson vs Church of Scientology, and Judge George Greer,  Church of Scientology vs. Executor of the Estate of Lisa McPherson in Pinellas county probate court.  The lawyer involved with Judge Beach was Lee Fugate of Zuckerman, Spaeder (Tampa Office), http://www.zuckerman.com/tampa/.  The lawyers involved with George Greer were F. Wallace Pope and Ed Armtrong of Johnson, Pope, Bokor, Ruppel & Burns, LLP.

So effective were Fugate’s many ex parte, casual meetings with Judge Beach that Beach effectively extorted the McPherson family into accepting a settlement on terms they felt degraded and disappointed with having to accept.  And that is the end product of Miscavige’s “game” – no game, no rules, just application of overwhelm by any means necessary to make the other side feel degraded and so that he can stand, chest out, boot on the necks of his prey.

Miscavige the "conquerer"

As I have noted before, David Miscvige once told Tom Cruise “I wouldn’t mind George Bush being our Constantine” (the first “Christian” Roman Emporer, who converted in a deal with the “churchies” at the time by negotating what is and isn’t Christianity and then enforcing the “faith”); because Miscavige admired Bush’s alleged lack of intelligence and willingness to enforce ideas no matter how thick headed.  In other words, his “perfect dissemination program”:  force Scientology (read, Miscavige’s Papacy) down the throats of the populace at gunpoint.

The ultimate “product” of the church of Scientology is someone firmly in Miscavige’s valence, with no conscience, programmed to do the dictator’s bidding regardless of the merits or ethics of the matter.  Devotion and surrender to the “winning” SP valence. And that product is one hundred and eighty degrees diametically opposed to what the churches promise and what the technology in good hands can deliver.

Remember that life is a game.   The references within Scientology are legion on this fact.  One I recommend in particular is Professional Auditor’s Bulletin 86 Causation and Knowledge, 29 May 1956.  It is a very concise and clear sum up of what Scientology is and what it seeks to achieve.  This has all been lost on Radical Corporate Scientologists. Yet, it is so central to what the subject is about, the fact that Miscavige has put his no-games-condition, overwhelm at all costs attitude in at all levels of Scientology, is the death knell of the subject (absent an outside agent picking up the pieces).

The end object of Scientology is not the making into nothing of all existence or the freeing the individual of any and all traps everywhere.  The goal of Scientology is making the individual capable of living a better life in his own estimation and with his fellows and the playing of a better game.

– LRH, PAB 86

UPDATE 1:30 cst, Village Voice Investigates: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/08/scientology_use.php#more

IAS Atrocities (part two) – Barbara Ayash

 

Another IAS Medal Winner has bitten the dust thanks to David Miscavige’s diversion of IAS donations toward suppressing the truth. 

Barbara Ayash was one of the early IAS Medal Winners.   She was famous for her Set A Good Example campaign.  Apparently, her husband funded it for two decades.  When he passed away Barbara was left destitute by Miscavige, IAS, and the “church.”   Miscavige it seems is too busy bankrupting people with rolling thunder events, while wiping out the human resources goodwill that enables him to do so. Barbara has been reduced to begging on her own in a noble effort to make ends meet and keep the campaign going.

Here is a very recent email  from Barabara which serves as proof as to Miscavige’s and IAS’s true, hidden policies with respect to the overblown hype they feed followers in order to clean out their bank accounts.

 

Barbara Ayash

Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 
Subject: FW: PLEASE HELP

 
 
Dear ———–,       
 
February 2 this year my dear husband Bob passed away.
Now that he is gone to the heavens I am without his help.
 
I have a small social security income – $829.00 per month.
I have to pay the rent from that amount.
 
The cost is $799.00 Per month.
 
So I have only $30.00 per month for food. No money for phone, medicine which
I need now that I am 78 years old.
 
Our Set A Good Example Campaign for school children is going bankrupt due to the
fact that I have no personal funds to help pay promotion and delivery expense.
 
Thus I am asking you and all the rest of our usual Set A Good Example Campaign
Sponsors to assist with pulling the campaign out of this financial situation.
 
Please mail your check to the following address:
 
Much Love:
 
Barbara Ayash – President
Set A Good Example Foundation
2212 Royale Rd, #2
Sacramento California 95815,
916-993-5412 phone – no fax
 

Yet another Miscavige/IAS casualty for Independents to pick up and heal.

David Miscavige, you are setting an example all right.  However, it is anything but good.

also see: IAS Atrocities (part one) – Dennis Clark at https://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/ias-atrocities-part-one-dennis-clark/

 PS to Miscavige’s agents who have confronted me at LA International Airport and in front of my own home with the screeching “question”, “Hey Marty! Where’s your Way To Happiness campaign?”:   

HERE IS BUT ONE FACET OF IT.

From Ukraine With Love

One bright spot in the otherwise oppressive International Headquarters Base of Radical Scientology experience for me was encounters with people like Michael “Misha” Priv.   Despite long hours, sleepless nights, general suppression, and executing many times pointless work Misha always appeared to me to have a glass-half-full attitude.   Recently Misha sent me the forward to a book he is writing on his Scientology experience.  He granted me persmission to share it here on the blog.  You can find it below this introduction.   You gotta love the way this guy rolls.

Michael "Misha" Priv

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

By Michael Priv

 

FOREWORD

LOS ANGELES, JULY 2005

Spurred by adrenaline rush and pure desperation, I dashed to the back emergency door marked DO NOT OPEN, ALARM WILL SOUND and slammed into it. The sound of alarm tore through the hospital calm with insane intensity. I afforded a quick glance back as I bolted out of the bellowing door. Nothing but a couple of oblivious nurses and medical equipment along the hallway walls. There was no pursuit. Yet.

Momentarily blinded by the sunlight outside, I raced across the parking lot toward the concrete wall, grabbed the top, pulled myself up and over and ran across a busy street on the other side. As a lousy runner, I wanted to put as much distance as possible between me and the expected pursuers. I had to assume that the guards, alerted by my absence and the insane hospital door alarm, would chase after me. A terrifying thought. With my heart clucking somewhere in my throat, I ran into a shoe store across the street and looked back just in time to see one of the guards clearing the wall across the street. He looked around and sprinted to his right along the wall.

I hurriedly marched all the way through the store in long strides toward the back door, soliciting quizzical looks from a couple of Latino sales girls in attendance. I smiled at them, panting with exertion. A long time ago somebody once told me that I had a nice smile. The moment seemed right to try it now. The first door I encountered at the back of the sales area of the store stated DO NOT ENTER in large cheerful letters. I entered. The back door proclaimed once again that alarm will sound and it did—with now familiar ear-splitting intensity. Another parking lot, another wall. A glance back confirmed that I was not being pursued.

I ran across an overpass bridge, then along some street lined up with warehouses and auto repair shops and turned into a grungy alley. Keeping at a brisk clip, I labored to get a full breath into my burning lungs. No resting on the laurels just yet. Freedom was too close to take any chances. Several turned corners later, completely out of breath, I ran into a liquor store with an ironic name “AA Liquors.”

“Can I use your phone, please?” I wheezed, fighting for a breath, to the middle-age, hefty blue-eyed sales lady.

“No,” curt but to the point. “Customers no phone,” she added sternly with a heavy Russian accent.

“That’s okay then,” I replied in Russian with an attempt on a smile which probably came out tortured, “I am not a customer because I don’t want to buy anything from you. So I am okay.”

“That completely changes things! I thought you were a customer!” The lady replied in Russian, laughing, “My name is Anna. Sure, use the phone in the back,” she waved her hand vaguely. “Why are you so huffed up? Hey, you want some?” She handed me her bottle of Gatorade which she was drinking from and I downed the remaining half-forgotten chemical sweetness hungrily.

“Thanks, Anna. I am Misha.”

“You are welcome, Misha. Russians must stick together and help each other, right?”

I nodded despite being a Ukrainian. Who wanted to split hairs? Good being a Russian if you wanted a favor from a chubby, blue-eyed Russian lady by the name Anna. Otherwise, not especially.

I discovered a tiny office in the back with a phone on a table cluttered with papers, a bunch of loose change, torn up bags of potato chips and mangled soda cans. With shaking hands and trembling voice I placed a collect call to my parents in San Francisco.

“Hi mom, it’s me.”

Silence.

“Me who?”

“Your son, Misha.”

“Do I have a son?” mom started crying.

“You do! I just ran away.”

“What?!”

“I am out, mom!”

“How? Where…? Are you okay?”

“I am okay, I am fine… How are you and dad?”

“Never mind that, you scoundrel! Are you in any danger? Are these Scientology bastards chasing after you?”

“Bastards? Mom, listen, there is Scientology which is good and then there is a Church of Scientology which is… Never mind. I am alright. I am in a liquor store in LA, they won’t find me here.”

“What happened?!”

“Well, as you know, I refused to continue working at the International Management Base where I’ve worked all these years and they sent me to LA for a special rehabilitation program…”

“They put you in jail!”

“Well, it is not exactly…”

“Shut up, Misha! They threw you in jail and you escaped!”

“Well, pretty much, I suppose.”

“I hate Scientologists!”

“Mom, that’s unfair. The corrupt Church of Scientology is one thing but tens of thousands of Scientologists who…”

“Shut up! Just shut up! Stop this nonsense! Get on a bus and come home!” mother yelled, “Or are you too brainwashed to do at least that?”

“I have no money, not a penny.”

Silence.

“Okay, hang on, honey!”

Then I heard my mom yelling to my father, “He escaped from that damn prison!” then it sounded as if she dropped the receiver and moved further away from the phone. In a minute my father picked up the phone, “Hey, idiot! How are you?”

“Pretty good, dad, how are you doing?”

“Better than you for damn sure! Eighteen frigging years you gave them! Eighteen best years! You were twenty-seven when you started! And for what?!”

“Not now, dad, please.”

“Okay, okay. Stay where you are, we are getting somebody to pick you up. Call me back collect in a few minutes and give me the exact address.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The line went dead.

“Who are you?” a quiet voice behind me. I turned around and found myself staring into Anna’s blue eyes. How long has she been standing in that door?

“Who are you?” she asked again, wide-eyed.

Who am I? An interesting question. Who am I? A Ukrainian man? A Jew? A US citizen? A human being? An animal? A fool? A brainwashed victim of a hateful cult? A holly man? A soldier? A traitor? A hero? A loser? A former member of the Sea Org, the elite paramilitary management corps of the Church of Scientology? A former translations executive, a member of the International Management of the Church? A convict? A coward? A fugitive?

I looked deep into Anna’s pretty eyes and replied, “I am a Scientologist.”

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For more of Mr. Priv’s fine writing go to www.ThetaWrite.com