I don't mean to mess up your thread, but there are a few things I would like to clear up before I move to a new thread.

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Don Carlo: "I have never seen her on a.r.s. in the four years I have been reading it, and never on Operation Clambake message board. She's not a player any more, and I don't see her as an idol. Bernie needs to find a new central critic to use as an example."

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Well according to a google search, Paulette Cooper has been on a.r.s. several times over the past four years, most recently this month. (For some rerason, this search picked up her posts to other newsgroups)
http://tinyurl.com/qy9h

It appears that some times when Ms Cooper posted, she would be attacked by Diane Richardson. This has been Richardson's MO for almost ten years.
When one of her "targets" appears, she pounches on them.

I do see Paulette as someone to be honored and IMO, she is still an effective critic, even though COS and Richardson have tried to silence her.......What Paulette has written about COS will never die.


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Umike (Umike) Saturday, October 11, 2003 - 01:27 am

"To be honest I've never read all the Paulette-Diane dialogue. But I do not understand what all the fuss is about.

"Here's the deal: If you choose to get into a dialogue with Diane and you're a liar or a hypocrite you are toast, and will get knocked off your pedestal publicly. "

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Which means......if you dare to disagree with Richardson, she will hound you on several threads she starts and will keep calling you names until you "shudder into silence", you put a hole in her "conclusions" or she finds a new target.

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UMike: "If I look you in the eye, I will know if you are feeding me a self serving load of crap. We don't have that luxury on newsgroups and messageboards. Consequently most people will swallow any swill in wholesale fashion."

"In my world Diane performs a public service."

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And what world would that be.....Scientology? I would bet Richardson has driven more critics away from a.r.s. than COS has......simply because they made her mad.

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UMike: "Diane utiizes critical thinking skills superbly and that's a real problem for some people. Too bad. Usenet isn't for sissies."

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The real problem for everybody is that Diane Richardson spits, spins and twists what you say and then calls you a liar and/or an idiot.

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Don Carlo: "CoS must have broken Cooper's spirit in order to make her sign something that hurt other Scientology critics and left them vulnerable. Diane Richardson feels betrayed, and rightly so."

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Why, "rightly so"? Diane Richardson is not an ex scientologist nor does she have any relative in scientology. Richardson had not endured l/l,000,000 what Paulette Cooper has.

Cooper, after more than a decade of harassment, settled with COS. So did Dennis Erlich....so did Brian Haney and others. Then along comes Diane Richardson to continue the harassment. If anyone has a right to feel betrayed, it's Paulette Cooper.

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Don Carlo: "Cooper is in a post-traumatic daze and Richardson is on a revenge mission/research project."

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Yes, whenever anyone pisses Richardson off by doubting her intelligence, her abilities, her research, her conclusions, whatever.......he/she should be prepared for war. Hell hath no fury like a Diane Richardson scorned.

Google reveals that.

Will

Thanks, Will. I haven't read ALL of a.r.s. over the last four years, so I missed those posts.

Nobody knows the true Diane-Paulette story except those two, and they each lived the story as a battle, not watching it as an unbiased witness.

Will, were the two fighting BEFORE the Cooper settlement? If so, then the settlement wasn't the primary cause of the battle. Some earlier slugfest happened.

With such an emotional battle, I wonder if the hurt came from a broken friendship between two intelligent and deep-feeling women, and not just from different opinions.

I respect Paulette's bravery and her genuine martyrdom. But Bernie said she was the critics' "idol" and I think that's out of date and overstated.

Maybe Paulette could secretly write a new book, about her life during and after writing The Scandal of Scientology. She could live a nice full life without getting sued AGAIN by CoS. Ideally the book would explain ni a calm, factual way, who said and did what to whom. The intended reader would be a person new to the Diane-Paulette fight, so she could explain the situations and background. Once that was out of her system, she could get on with the rest of her life. Her family could publish it on the Internet after her death. Then at least we'd have THAT side of the story.

I highly doubt having lived through the endless
*Crap* that Paulette Cooper has had to live through just for writing one book, that she would ever consider writing another about this group.

Just my opinion.

I agree it would be nice, but for her sake, I totally understand if she doesn't take on this project.

My best

Tory/Magoo!

See the new thread, PAULETTE COOPER'S DIARY......

Will

P. S. Paulette has also moved on with her lile.....she has written several books about animals.

Will, some of us lived with the Cooper story for decades.
I never analyzed the Diane-Cooper dialogues. It's yesterdays news. I'm not interested having lived with the story for many years.

Personally, I think Don Carlo should be commended with his objective presentation. This was not about Cooper.
It's about Bernie's views on many topics.

Don Carlo tried successfully to present the facts and without bias, while remaining sensitive to PC. I'm sorry if his analysis was not santized to your liking.

Your sinister portrayal of Diane is based on your reverence for Cooper. Calm down.

Umike

I certainly did not mean to suggest that Don Carlo was not doing a great job.....but there were a few items about which he knew nothing which I thought should be cleared up.

Perhaps it is you, UMike, who can not abide any criticism of Diane Richardson, who should calm down and read Paulette's diary?

Will

Good suggestion, Will.

T

Will wrote: "Perhaps it is you, UMike, who can not abide any criticism of Diane Richardson, who should calm down and read Paulette's diary?"

I don't have any criticism of Diane that comes to mind.
Will, your comments about Diane suggest someone with long standing intimate knowledge of her posting history.
I have never seen your nic on ars before. Were you using another nic, or a longtime lurker?

I have exchanged a couple e mails with Paulette Cooper quite some time ago. I think she is a very nice person.
I'm just not interested in the minutae of the case, e.g. her diaries.

Umike

I'm interested. Please keep posting about Paulette on your new thread, Will. I'll go back to Bernie's next page (right now I'm chuckling because my old cat has JUST discovered that the cursor moves around the screen and is following it with his nose).

Bernie claims that it is a "Myth" that Critics link to alternative views. This is mostly about Rod Keller's a.r.s. Week in Review.

First, Rod Keller's Week in Review did not publicize Diane's research project-entrapment-revenge mission against Paulette. While Diane is brilliant, the project was a fishing expedition for ANYTHING against Cooper. Reminds me of Ken Starr and President Clinton. Who among us would want to reward that kind of zeal with free AND favorable coverage? Also, some of it is Diane's word against Paulette, who can't defend herself without reopening the lawsuit.

Regarding Rob Clark's false "bomb threat" accusation, Rod Keller is no longer publishing unprovable personal accusations on his site. He seems to now focus on verifiable, straightforward news. I already speculated that Rod Keller may have felt badgered and decided not to "cave in" to demands to publish this. It's his public service which he does for free. He gets some editorial slack.

I don't know about the Sten-Arne claim. It sounds like a personal cat-fight got out of control, with an anti-Diane person trying to block Diane-favorable posts. I disapprove, but if you can't prove who did it, it's a murky and cranky situation. Rod may have seen it as a no-real-news situation.

Even if Rod wrote something about it, he might have been criticized by the pro-Diane faction for not posting the supposedly guilty party's name. Or, if he DID post the name, then another group is angry at him. No matter how Rod reports the "news," this inserts Rod into the catfight itself.

I have already discussed Greg Bashaw's suicide. I agree the Minton group should have sent only a trained psychologist in to talk to Greg, but I believe Greg might have committed suicide whether or not the two OT's visited him that one time. The OT visit is not that newsworthy.

As I get deeper into Bernie's site, I keep running into the same arguments and case stories. Aside from the Sten-Arne claim, everything on this page was recycled from earlier Bernie pages.

Don Carlo wrote:"Regarding Rob Clark's false "bomb threat"

I believe Rob is one of the most valued critics in this movement. today. His analysis and translation of legal briefs made the
LMT/Minton affair accessable to many people.
That doesnt excuse what he did back then.

On Rod Kellar: "It's his public service which he does for free. He gets some editorial slack."

Some folks believe Kellar was a schill for Bob Minton.
I am one of them. I cannot prove he was compensated,but I cancelled my "week in review" subscription 2 years ago anyway. Most people respected him 3 years ago. That is not the case today imo.

Umike

Bernie writes: "In September 2000, Sten-Arne exposed the fact that someone, most likely David Rice, have been covertly canceling posts from Scientologists or posts favorable to Scientology from the Lightlink server, a server used by a great number of ARS posters. Again, Rod Keller did not find this newsworthy for his weekly coverage"

I had forgotten about that. Sten-Arne's technical ability was legion. The Rice's bros are suspected of doing other covert things as well. I would bet good money they did that. Fred Rice anarchist ,religion hating agenda and activities are well known. Fred admits he was questioned by the FBI as to whether he was working for a foreign government at one time FYI.

On Greg Bashaw's suicide: "....but I believe Greg might have committed suicide whether or not the two OT's visited him that one time."

Right. Probably so Don. Well, One OT claims she only had a 4 minute conversation with Greg over the phone. I do not recall what Jesse Prince claim was. It was reported that Greg was visited at the hospital,then that was retracted with the story that phone calls were made
only. It still looks like someone lied. Only a handful of people know exactly what happened. Most parties involved don't want to talk about it. The fact is that the legal liability exposure is enormous. Beyond these comments, it would be irresponsible to "awaken the sleeping dog". Nothing good would come of it. No malice on anyone's part. To the contrary.

Umike

I don't know if Rod was getting paid by Minton. It's unlikely he's being paid now, since Minton has caved in to CoS. In any event, Minton threw money around and some people were tainted by it, but (IMHO) not everyone was tainted.

Apparently without a Minton paycheck, Rod's still posting regularly, two or three times a month. I respect that stamina. Also, while he may have avoided certain critics' embarassments, he is not using his column as his own pulpit. It's not all about Rod and his favorite enemies and favorite old battles.

There are a few other websites that try to keep up with media stories on CoS, but Rod's column is often more complete. I appreciate usefulness.
I don't know him personally, only through his column.

I wonder if there's ever a party to celebrate CoS's downfall, how you could keep some critics from turning it into an old-grudges slugfest!

Minton & Company & friends tried to ruin some people's reputations,or emotionally thru elaborate drawn out smear campaigns. Anything goes...you know? Any dirt they could get on you was used.
It was more than a grudge with many people Don.

Today, I pity Minton. He has his own private hell.

Umike

UMike: "I don't have any criticism of Diane that comes to mind."
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No one is going to dispute that....your support for her, no matter what she does/says or in what manner she does/says it, is legend.

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UMike: "Will, your comments about Diane suggest someone with long standing intimate knowledge of her posting history."

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Reading her posts/flames on google
could also suggest the same thing. So you do not disagree that "google" does not lie?
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UMike: "I have never seen your nic on ars before. Were you using another nic, or a longtime lurker?"

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So....what difference would either one make on what can be found by poster, lurker or newbie on google ars?

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UMike "I have exchanged a couple e mails with Paulette Cooper quite some time ago. I think she is a very nice person.

"I'm just not interested in the minutae of the case, e.g. her diaries."

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How do you know before you read them?

Paulette's Jewish....was born in a Nazi concentration camp and 17 of 22 members of her family died in concentration camps. Didn't I see where you were Jewish and "one" of your relatives died in a Nazi concentration camp?

She talks about Bob Kaufman and
L. Ron Hubbard, Jr......didn't I see where just a few weeks ago, you were asking Ms Cooper (who as far as I can tell from OC archives has never posted on OCMB) about Robert Kaufman?

If you would like to discuss this further, please start a new thread.

Will