Smurf wrote:
Well said, Daisy. The fundamental problem with some of the critics here who have never been in Scientology is superficial.. they respond to what they've read & heard. One of them told me that she friended Mike Rinder on Facebook and that he helped her with an issue. She had no problem with him. She had absolutely no clue to the brevity & extent Mike Rinder enthusiastically & aggressively sought to harm & ruin people's reputations - male or female - didn't matter when he was running OSA.
It's like someone being a member of a gang involved in all kinds of criminality & leaving a multitide of victims in their wake, the member leaves the gang, so we should just throw up our hands, welcome the guy in & pretend his past crimes mean nothing. That, in essence, is what's happening here and it is sickening, if not sociopathic. And now the gang member has learned the benefits of social networking and these critics all want to line up & be his Facebook friend. I doubt that the victims that were personally hurt & harmed at M & M's hand would find this enlightening. What kind of message is this sending to them & future victims of the cult?
M & M left the corporate cult. They have not abandoned Scientology, and they learned that handling & manipulating people is just as easy in the cult, as it is outside it, and that it happening now. And some critics are clueless to it.
Ok, Smurf, you called me out. So here I am. First, I want to request that you stop speaking for other people as if you are the authority on their lives, feelings, and opinions. You are not. You are only the authority of your own life, feelings, and opinions. I have yet to see you get it right when attempting to portray the lives, feelings, or opinions of others. A perfect example is the nonsense you just wrote about me.
I never said I had no problem with Mike Rinder. Conversely, I have said repeatedly and have written at least twice on this board that I am a bit terrified of Mike Rinder. I am terrified of anyone capable of doing the things Mike Rinder was willing to do in his position within the Scientology organization. I can guarantee you that if Mike Rinder was still the head of OSA today, I would not be as vocal or as public an activist as I now am. I friended Mike Rinder on Facebook to open a line of communication with him at a time when I had some questions that he is the planets’ leading authority at answering. He was very cordial and generous with his response. I appreciated that. I saw no reason to unfriend him afterward.
I absolutely positively LOVE that Mike Rinder, the former head of one of the most mean-spirited and life-destroying entities on earth, now posts silly stuff about the weather on an internet social network. It appears to me that he has made some progress in breaking the mental enslavement the church had over him that made him willing to do the terrible things he did to people before leaving. And as I have said a hundred times on this board, I am all about the people. It makes me sick, truly, truly sick, what the “tech” does to people – it is mental programming, period. Exposure to the tech alters ones mental hardwiring to the point where they will eventually believe and do pretty much anything that is fed to them. I think Mike Rinder has broken out of the grid and he is making progress toward marching to his own tune. And that’s fantastic. I wish that for every human being on this planet who has been subjected to dangerous cult-driven mental programming.
Yes, I believe Scientology is a cult. But then, so is the Girl Scouts. Scientology is a
dangerous cult. The Girl Scouts is not.
Am I a Marty-lover? Oh. Hell. No. Marty Rathbun has an agenda, and I don’t think it is necessarily to help people. I think it is to control people. I think Marty is eyes-wide-open to the mental power over persons the tech induces -- just like his mentors Hubbard and Miscavige knew. I don’t know if Marty wants to “take over the church” or not, but it is more than apparent to me that he wants to be the guy in control of the tech – because that’s what gives him power over people. And I think what Scout77 has been trying to warn us about lately is the subtlety in which that power can take effect. It is frightening and real.
Now, Smurf, about this:
“It's like someone being a member of a gang involved in all kinds of criminality & leaving a multitide of victims in their wake, the member leaves the gang, so we should just throw up our hands, welcome the guy in & pretend his past crimes mean nothing. That, in essence, is what's happening here and it is sickening, if not sociopathic.” I’ve been wanting to say this to you for a very long time. You are this gang member - except that when you first showed up on the protest scene, no one wanted to have anything to do with you. No one trusted you. You had flip flopped sides so many times that most people assumed you were too risky to go near.
And here’s what's interesting about you calling me a sociopath. I was the main reason why you were eventually accepted into the critic circles. I vouched for you to those people who were afraid to go near you. I said, so what if he’s OSA. He’s a nice guy at heart and he is trying to recover from a mountain of mental and emotional abuse. Let’s give him a chance. And to a person, you were received. In some cases with a great deal of kindness and support. And now it is so interesting to me that you come on this board and insult and make up stupid shit about the very people who threw up their hands and welcomed you in despite all the awful things you’ve done in your life.
Of course you are welcome to your opinions (as you are so want to remind us), and you are welcome to call me clueless. But Garry, in my opinion you are the clueless one. You are the one still stuck in the dangerous cult programming that has you churning out this kind of stuff.