Miscavige is somewhere on the line between being so delusional that he really believes in his madness and being is a great actor who's evil to the core. If he really is just acting he surpasses his buddy TC in skills. I think at least part of him believes in what he's doing. The guy was immersed in this evil system from his early teens onwards. And he was indoctrinated by the master himself.



This is exactly how I feel about this question. I don't have an easy answer to this.

History shows that leaders of evil and authoritarian systems tend to get more delusional when the system gets under pressure. Hitler, Pol Pot, Ceausescu and Saddam Hussein would have destroyed their country and people just to keep their believe in the system intact. We are seeing the same reaction in Muammar Ghaddafi right now.
The rare exception to this rule was the Soviet Union, where the last leader chose for his people and not for the dying system of communism.
In cults we've seen Jim Jones and David Koresh, who also started loosing it when the system came under serious pressure.

Dorothy makes another point in relation to this:



I don't know if people who are immersed this long and this deep will ever be completely freed from the chains in their heads. Realizing you gave your life for an essentially evil system is not easily done. Specially if you have to admit that you personally ruined the lives of many good people.
Humanity has some powerful psychological defenses to cope with devastating trauma and guilt. Denial is just one of those, delusion is another. Putting the blame on the victim is number three. And of course there is always the trick of putting the blame on an executive like DM, rather than on the system and the own self.
All these reactions are seen in Marty's followers. Most of the vocal ones were high on the bridge, and have invested a lot in scientology as a system. They have a lot to lose by admitting the true cause of the problems.

Everybody is responsible for their own actions in the end. For some this responsibility is harder to take than for others. Still, it's the only way to become free in the true sense of the word. Unfortunately, for some the words of Janis Joplin are very close to home:

"Freedom 's just another word for nothing left to lose"

For those people freedom is not a desirable state, they think they need their shackles so they won't fall into the abyss of their own responsibility. Usually it takes a lot of time to get rid of this psychological bondage. And some scientologists never will. Forcing them to do so might indeed cause a psychotic break or even suicide.

But to make any choice at all the body has to be free from things like the SP-hole or the RPF. If those are not illegal, they should be, in my opinion.
Wether Marty is helping people or not is not for me to say. I certainly don't like what he's been doing lately, but he's not forcing people to do things, like the church is. Maybe his "zone" does have the function of a halfway-house for some. Many of those seeking refuge with Marty are leaving after some months to years to build a life without scientology.

I can only hope that the system of scientology will go extinct over time. The old guard is dying of old age and bad health-care, the second generation is leaving en masse and thanks to the internet there is not enough new raw meat to keep the infrastructure from collapsing. The few children born to scientologist parents are not capable of replacing those who are dying or leaving.
Nature will take its cause. It always does, in the end.

^^^ Thanks for that, Sekh. Very thought provoking as usual.

This is getting really off-topic. But I had a couple of thoughts.

(1) The thing I found illuminating about what Stacy Brooks said was it gave me a sense of what it's like to be/act in that environment. That it's a kind of play, giving oneself over to an 'as-if'. Also, I wondered if that could be something promoted by the auditing techniques, which as I understand it chip away at the distinction between memory and imagination -- you're encouraged to go along with 'memories' of past existences in an 'as-if' mode.

(2) I also keep wondering if the kind of view you indicate when you say ... ... is a bit America-/Eurocentric. There's a lot of scope for the use of (basically) bonded labour from South & South-east Asia, Africa, South America (Sea Org). And there's an vast and growing middle class in Asia, part of Africa, parts of South America (Public). If I was DM I'd be seeing a lot of scope for serious expansion. I think I remember seeing Aaron Saxton saying something along those lines (though he seems to be saying some disturbed stuff at the moment).

Rambling over.

(I don't know how to help Heber Jentzsch.)

Neither do I. But I hope the guy will get help somehow, just like all the other victims of illegal imprisonment and abuse by the hands of the "church". Even if the California courts say this form of religious service is legal, IMHO it shouldn't be. It's WRONG.

Maybe you're right about my Euro-Americo-centricity (or however one should call it.) But I think the philosophy of scientology won't be as successful in the rest of the world as it has been in the secular West.

In countries like India, China and the Muslim countries the individual is nothing. The family, the community, the religion and tradition of the community are much more important than they've been in our lands at least since the Second World War, probably since urbanization around 1800-1850 in Europe and the mass immigrations into America in the late 19th and early 20th century.
.
Probably secularization in India and China will start within the coming decennia, thanks to a growing middle class, better education for more people, drift from small villages to anonymous multi-million cities, the internet etcetera.
But the generation growing up now, though westernized on the outside, still clings very much to family, tradition and traditional religion on the inside. The whole idea of personal growth, which is the basic tenet of scientology, is not very interesting in those cultures. Not yet, anyway.

In Muslem (and I don't mean NOI) societies the clear prohibition of, and severe penalties on converting and apostasy form another obstacle, added to the ones mentioned above. In these countries the sense of community is much more developed than the sense of individual growth or even existence.

They probably will find plenty of people to do menial labour in exchange of a Green Card, food and housing and some pocket money, but that's not he kind of members that finance the network. It's also hard to get your hooks into those people as a cult. They won't disconnect from their community, their tradition, and they can't justify for themselves to spend thousands of dollars on courses for self-improvement while the kids of their relatives at home can't go to school for lack of tuition money. Not gonna happen. Not often, anyway.

Not to mention the pure and uncut racism LRH shows over and over again. Hard to sell that stuff to "niggers" and "chinks".
Maybe there is some expansion possibility in South-America, the middle- and upper class is rather Westernized there already.
But in the Orient, the Islamic world and Africa? Not in the upcoming decennia. At least, not in my opinion.

Songbird got the LA Fire Dept to do a surprise fire safety inspection in LA, with many violations found. The Riverside County Fire Marshall has this role in Riverside County. Ideally, a person who is willing to give name, address and phone can complain about overcrowding and people behind locked doors, and fences impossible to climb out of (a peril if there is a wild-fire) at Golden Era compound, 19625 Gilman Springs Road, Gilman Hot Springs, California, 92583 . They should search the entire complex, including tunnels, ideally with video cameras, a medically-trained person, and a dog trained to find hidden people.

The Riverside Fire Marshall should call Jimmy Hill, the LA Fire Marshall and Captain Michael White, who did the LA Inspection. Songbird wrote several years ago:

from http://www.webquake.net/ocmb/viewtopic. ... 145dd4cb0a

Riverside Fire Marshall at http://www.rvcfire.org/opencms/function ... rshal.html

Actually I didn't get the most relevant bit. The most relevant bit (unless there's a still more relevant bit) goes as follows.



I don't buy it -- even leaving aside the contradictory testimony of Jesse Prince a decade earlier, and the contradictory testimony of Indies which Smurf referred to.

It happened twice, and both times Miscavige attacked in the same way?
And both times Marty beat him off with his stomach?
And Miscavige didn't hit him anywhere else, or with anything except his fist?
And Shelly was there ?? both times ??
And Marty was the only one who responded in this stomach-fighting way?
And the only one Miscavige chose not to beat up publicly? -- 'always did that in private with me', as he puts it, referring to two occasions?

Marty.
At cause even when he's being beaten up?
Or a liar?
Hmmm.

Thank-you thank-you, Operating Wog!

I was pretty sure there was a stomach muscle flexing story, and I was going to try to find it. Thanks for poring through the tapes.

It's such a great story.



This is exactly what I'm talking about.

His abs tried to kill DM when DM punched him.

Marty is no victim, because he isn't on the side of victims. He's against DM, though. It's tricky.

Yes I remember the time I finally got one over on the school bully when I smashed into his hand with my jaw and rushed at him, arse first, into his foot. That certainly taught him a lesson.

LOL.

Man that Marty has got some pretty powerful abs! Maybe he should put out an exercise video.

Marty no victim. Marty big macho man.