Gerry to Graham Berry on Honey Tech

Graham Berry responding to Thomas Gandow and Aida Thomas on Facebook:

I was referring to all the “Fair Game” victims. However, to complicate such matters, Gerry has not welcomed, forgiven and befriended Marty and Mike but has mercilessly attacked and condemned them — even as they assisted and apologized to a few ex members and made the contributions to the truth and cause they are now making. I consider Marty and Mike to have also been victims and many of us know that the waking, recovery and healing process from Scientology is apparently the longest and toughest of all cults and takes many years. In my view, kindness, compassion, acceptance and generosity of spirit works better than the attacks some have fermented. Honey instead of vinegar works better here-at least IMHO.¹

Thank you for bringing this subject up publicly, Graham. A couple of kind souls sent your FB post to me. Also Marty Rathbun’s recent comment on Oz TV about having paid off his karma some time ago² makes a public clarification of this subject timely. The karma he’s talking about relates to his participation in, as you say, damaging or destroying people by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities.

Describing what I have communicated to or about Marty and Mike over the past five years as mercilessly attacking and condemning them has to be honey. You are applying honey tech. You and I had a phone call in 2012 in which we discussed honey and vinegar, and I’ve considered the concept and seen it in operation since then. The honey versus vinegar idiom means:

It is easier to get what you want by flattering people and being polite to them than by making demands. ³

If it really was easier, then courts, prosecutors and plaintiffs would flatter the accused, rather than demand the accused answer. To flatter means:

1. To compliment excessively and often insincerely, especially in order to win favor; or 2. To please or gratify the vanity of. ⁴

You are flattering me, and I am supposed to be flattered. Certainly honey tech lets me know you actually see me as doing something far worse than mercilessly attacking and condemning. If you were applying vinegar tech, you would not have honey-coated what you really considered I have been communicating as mere merciless attacking and condemning.

By harboring the heinous and hideous reality about me and only describing my communications to or about Marty and Mike as simple merciless attacking and condemning, you’re trying to cajole me into doing just that. You want me to merely mercilessly attack and condemn them, rather than keep doing the far more evil things you haven’t openly accused me of doing. Thanks Honey Tech!®

On the planetary victims scale, David Miscavige is an equally big one. And I would bet that the same many that know that the waking, recovery and healing process from Scientology might be the longest and toughest of all cults and takes many years would also know that it might take DM years too.

The waking and recovery and healing process cannot, however, be a relevant factor in the immediate Marty & Mike v. Gerry conflict. Or are you saying that you consider Marty and Mike to be my victims in M & M v. G, my victims in the victim-victimizer paradigm? It does appear that portraying the victimizers as victims and the victims as victimizers is a standard honey tech app.

Telling the truth is the sole factor in Marty and Mike’s conflict with me. It’s a one-step action. No matter where a person is on the years of waking, recovery and healing, he has the ability to tell the truth. If a person can be audited, he can tell the truth.

I am not asking Marty or Mike for a deep psycho-philosophical shift, when, for example, a person changes from lying as a pro-survival activity and way of life and starts to value and desire truth telling and that becomes a way of life. I am also not denying that such a shift could perhaps occur, or be related. I think testifying seventy-some days in Scientology litigations might have altered me psycho-philosophically, and certainly being M & M & every other Scientologist’s target for all these years has.

I believe, however, that the testimony or truth that Marty and Mike can provide me, which would assist in correcting injustices, can be provided in a couple of days. They know how to debrief, know how to tell the truth, and have always had the ability. The idea that Scientologists cannot tell the truth or do not know truth from lies is a ruse that some Scientologists use to escape responsibility and natural consequences for the bad acts they know they’ve committed against their victims, or are still committing.

Marty and Mike are at cause over their refusal to now assist the people they helped to damage or destroy by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities. Their condition or their place in their long or short path of waking, recovery and healing is not why they have not assisted their victims. They had the ability to assist people while inside Scientology and the Sea Org, and the idea that they have lost that ability since leaving is ridiculous. They also have the same reasons for refusing to assist their victims that they had while in the SO. They did not acquire a new set of reasons for doing what they had always done: something or anything other than assisting their victims, giving justice, telling the truth.

I am just requesting the narrow, relevant truth about a clear and active matter: Marty, Mike, Hubbard, Miscavige, et al. v. Armstrong & friends. Marty and Mike are two individuals with a great deal of information, who are now presenting as fighters for justice who have told the truth about their part in victimizing others. Since they have not told the truth, and do not seek justice, even in correcting injustices they perpetrated and can help correct, the logical conclusion is that they are “Loyalists” mispresenting themselves. My communications that you call mercilessly attacking and condemning Marty and Mike have been useful and valuable in establishing these facts.

Not everyone gets to tell the truth that matters to someone. My request has been appropriate and the truth I’m requesting is relevant in ongoing legally cognizable injustices. Sometimes a request for the truth can be by subpoena. In my case it is the earnest, free request of a knowledgeable and known victim in a long legal and extralegal campaign of victimization and injustice.

What you call mercilessly attacking and condemning Marty and Mike are my communications containing the level of truth I’m requesting of them and my best reason made understandable and unhumdrum. I am giving Marty and Mike what I am requesting of them; facts, reason and truth. I don’t want them to run their honey tech or fudge tech on me.

When I was getting out of the cult, I wanted the very best, most factual and truthful insights and information about L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology and Scientologists. Since then, in my own post-Scientology process, I wanted the same thing. I wanted information and insights from multiple sources. I wanted to know what I was up against as fast as I could learn it. There was a lot of truth available, but far less than now. I knew some myself. I didn’t want honey tech run on me, even though Marty and Mike successfully operated Dan Sherman to dupe me with professed kindness, compassion, acceptance and generosity of spirit.

Kindness, compassion, acceptance and generosity of spirit, I take it, would be absent from vinegar tech.

Neither honey nor vinegar works, I believe, and I would not endorse either. But then again, I’m not trying to catch flies. If honey worked, your honey tech, which I presume you apply at all times, would have brought about the result you sought: Marty and Mike doing what they could to assist those of us who were damaged or destroyed by the intimidation, litigation and defamation activities they were part of for many years. To me, their telling the truth is the essence of such assistance.

I know there are other fair game victims, and, presumably, like you, they have also been applying honey tech, and Marty and Mike would have assisted them if honey tech had worked. Although I do not use vinegar tech, it is also clear that, from what you say, and I agree, I do not use honey tech. I don’t want flies, I want justice. I suppose what I use could be called truth tech. But importantly, I think it’s safe to say that you believe that all other fair game victims are using honey tech like you, and I am the only one using truth tech, even if you miscall it vinegar tech.

More importantly, you are implying that with my truth tech I am complicating the matters of other fair game victims, the other people like you who are applying honey tech to get Marty and Mike to assist them. Perhaps Garry Scarff conjured this idea up, because I see a FB post by him that you respond to was deleted.

Logically, you should blame the failure to get Marty and Mike’s assistance on honey tech. But it appears you are blaming honey tech’s failure on the one person who hasn’t been applying honey tech.

In any case, think about it:

1. Marty and Mike, as you say, damaged or destroyed a number of people with the intimidation, litigation and defamation activities they were part of for many years.

2. Marty and Mike’s victims want them to assist them, at least that’s what you say. Why all such victims want this, I do not know. I want it for justice and to end injustices. Regardless, there are apparently other victims of Marty and Mike that want their assistance

3. One of the victims applies truth tech, tells Marty and Mike the truth and requests that they tell the truth.

4. The rest of the victims apply honey tech, flatter Marty and Mike and do not request that they tell the truth. These victims apparently hope that by applying honey tech Marty and Mike will assist them without being requested.

5. Honey tech didn’t work for its appliers. If it had worked, you wouldn’t still be hoping that Marty and Mike assist their victims.

6. Truth tech didn’t work for me, but only in the unimportant sense that Marty and Mike did not agree to my request. In all important senses, truth tech works miracles.

7. Marty’s Memoirs shows that he is still actively black PRing people in unison with the Miscavige Scientologists. Marty is not still black PRing his victims because I am pointing out that he is doing it, or because I’m complicating matters in his decompression or anywhere else.

8. Blame the one non-honey tech applying fair game victim for Marty and Mike not assisting the honey tech appliers. The corollary is that if everyone does not use honey tech, then Marty and Mike won’t tell the truth. Leverage, leverage, leverage.

For this belief to be even slightly sincerely held, the believer would have to have received a communication or signal from Marty or Mike or their communicants that I, or my truth tech, was complicating such matters for the honey tech users.

This is weirdly much like what happened with Marcus Thöss. He received a communication threatening that, if he was friendly with me, Marty, Mike and their communicants wouldn’t help him with his film about Scientologist Biggi Reichert’s death. Thöss went nuts on me, which apparently did get him some assistance from M, M & communicants.

Obviously, if Marty and Mike’s price for assisting their fair game victims is to have me blamed for their failure to assist their victims so far, a reason would be useful. So charge me with not using honey tech but applying vinegar tech; paint me bereft of kindness, compassion, acceptance or generosity of spirit; and label my communications as mercilessly attacking and condemning Marty and Mike. It makes that kind of sense.

The truth you get with honey tech will logically be the truth that validates honey tech: how wonderful and sweet the person is who was flattered into doling out such truth. The truth you get with truth tech will logically be truth that validates truth tech. I think it’s kind to Marty and Mike to let them know what I am asking for, why I am asking for it, and what they can expect by interacting with me, including that they won’t get honey or fudge tech.

I do not celebrate much when Marty or Mike dole out a new revelation, a new fact, a new vague confession, because the doling has all been antisocial, willfully cruel. People say that Marty and Mike are doling out the truth a bit at a time for strategic reasons, and, of course, they are. But it is also cruel. Indeed, cruelty is one of the strategies. This is not news, because cruelty is a common trait and aspiration in the Scientology milieu. Hubbard was stupendously cruel. Marty and Mike, of course, while inside Scientology, had the responsibility and were given organization power and resources to be cruel in many ways to the same people that they’re cruel to now with their dole tech or denial tech.

I am not claiming that when I left Scientology I immediately divulged all my experiences or knowledge. I don’t think that happens for anyone, although certainly is possible. Basically, I told the truth when requested and when it was relevant. This resulted in a lot of declarations or affidavits and oral testimony in a lot of legal proceedings, and I contributed to books and other media. All I am requesting of Marty and Mike is that they tell the truth in this very relevant, ongoing legal and extralegal fair game campaign against me.

In the March 23 Australia 60 Minutes segment “The Defector” this exchange took place between interviewer Liz Hayes and Marty:

LH: It’s a tough one now, knowing what you’re going through, when you reflect, knowing you did participate in activities similar to, to others.

MR: Yeah, and I feel that some of it is karma, and it is, I’m getting back what I, what I dished out. Quite frankly though, that balance was paid off some time ago.²

In an article “Tip of the Spear” in the January 2013 Los Angeles Magazine, Joel Sappell wrote about an October 2012 meeting he had with Marty:

I tell him that readers of this story will probably think he’s getting what he deserves. After all, this is the same treatment he once dished out. For the first time during my visit I see a flash of the aggressive Marty I remember. He stops pacing in the kitchen, where I’m seated, and stares at me. “That’s what they’ll think if that’s what you write!” he says, his voice rising as he points a finger at me. It’s not a matter of opinion, I say. Those are the facts. “I’ve taken a lot of hits in the last three years,” he says, softening his tone. “I’ve been working off a lot of karma for what I’ve done.” Now, he says, “the scales are even. I’ve built up a reservoir of good karma that I can draw on.”⁶

So at least by October 2012, Marty was saying publicly that he had fully worked off his bad karma – his damaging or destroying people by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities – and by that time had even built up a reservoir of good karma. Drawing on this store would mean that Marty could now safely do the things — damaging or destroying people by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities, etc. – that earlier had pulled in the bad karma. Marty is running what’s known as the karma con.

The Marty & Mike v. Gerry conflict is not about karma. It’s about justice. Nevertheless, because of Marty’s karma con, it is worth saying something about karma here. First good old Wikipedia:

Karma means action, work or deed; it also refers to the principle of causality where intent and actions of an individual influence the future of that individual. Good intent and good deed contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deed contribute to bad karma and future suffering. Karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in some schools of Asian religions. In these schools, karma in the present affects one’s future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives – or, one’s saṃsāra. ⁷

Now from Hubbard’s sermons:

People create their fates. Somebody who believes that one has accumulated an enormous amount of karma up and down the track, and so on, is believing that nobody creates his fates.

Now all you have to do with somebody who’s worried about karma is get him to create a few fates, and his karma has a tendency to go poof! The way to solve karma is just to have somebody create some fates and consequences. ⁸

And one of the ways of phrasing it is that everything done by you will be revisited [visited] upon you. That’s karma.

“You will pay for everything you have ever done”: that’s karma. And a lot of people get the overt-motivator sequence mixed up with karma. They are not the same thing.

The overt-motivator sequence means that you have to lay yourself open to feeling bad about something – to a motivator – with an overt. That’s true, too. But do you know how it’s true? It says there’s an area you mustn’t attack. And that becomes the keynote and the whole swan song of a people: There are things you mustn’t attack. ⁹

Karma. Karma isn’t true.¹⁰

In the karma con, which integrates Hubbard’s fate-creation tech, first you make the evil you did to people almost heroic. As is clear in Rathbun’s Memoirs, he considered damaging or destroying people by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities was necessary, and he accomplished it almost single-handedly against a veritable juggernaut. So according to that calculus, there’s not much bad karma to pay off.

The next karma con step is to interpret the bad being visited on you as paying off or balancing whatever bad karma you’d ever accumulated. Marty was even able to parlay the Squirrel-busters and the black PR pages into a reservoir of good karma. So David Miscavige, by sending the Squirrel Busters and ordering the web pages, provides Marty the justification he needs to not assist their joint fair game victims. DM and Marty have a nice symbiotic thing going.

Ultimately, with karma con, since it is actually an antisocial use of karma and generates more bad karma, you can award yourself a karma balancing cert. With karma con, a person can almost achieve what Hubbard promised: total freedom from conscience. Who would want to though?

The Marty & Mike v. Gerry conflict is about injustice and justice. This is possibly true with their treatment of others among their fair game victims. It could be said that it is my karma to seek justice and the truth, and it is Marty and Mike’s karma to seek injustice and to have lies triumph. It is not necessary, however, to divine the force or source that brought us to this relationship to know that I seek justice, that Marty and Mike participated in damaging or destroying me by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities, which have resulted in ongoing injustices, indeed crimes, and that by simply telling the truth they could assist in obtaining justice.

You mention, Graham, a “cause” that apparently you have, and which you say Marty and Mike are contributing to. I think I’ve seen where this cause has been stated something like, “ending the cult in its current form,” which is not my cause at all. I see the SPs ‘r’ Us FB group states this quasi-universal cause as, “the destruction of the “Church” of Scientology in its present form,” which is also not my cause, and might even be unlawful.

It is easy to see that Scientology can change its current or present form, or leader, or leaders, without correcting injustices or giving justice. It is also easy to see that correcting injustices or giving justice is possible without Scientology’s form changing at all. Therefore, the legitimate cause is justice. By not assisting the people you say Marty and Mike helped damage or destroy by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities, Marty and Mike are not contributing to that legitimate cause.

Accepting for sake of argument that taking down the cult is a legitimate cause, the most effective thing that people with Marty and Mike’s experiences and knowledge could do to take it down would be to tell the truth about antisocial and criminal acts against wogs and wog institutions, e.g., the IRS. (Or, please identify what other actions Marty and Mike could take that would contribute more to achieving that goal.) Marty and Mike do not do this, despite it costing no money and incurring no legal liability. Therefore they do not share the goal of taking down the cult, let alone correcting injustices. In fact, by not doing this simple and obvious thing, they demonstrate they oppose the goal of taking down the cult, and their “contributions” are as suspect as David Miscavige’s.

I assume you have read Memoirs, Graham. Marty doesn’t mention you, but he mentions me by name over a hundred times, lies about me, black PRs me, and justifies his fair game against me while inside the cult. So in reality his fair gaming me did not stop when he left and became an “independent.”

I would like to know how as an attorney you would justify advising your client, whom an individual or a criminal conspiracy had damaged or destroyed by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities, to welcome, forgive and befriend his victimizer or victimizers.

I’m not implying that I’m your client. But presumably if I was your client you would advise me exactly the same way. Presumably too, you would advise all of your clients to welcome, forgive and befriend their victimizers. I am not suggesting that Marty, Mike or anyone else should not be welcomed, forgiven and befriended. Those actions, however, are not necessarily related to the demand for justice, or the request for the truth.

A person can demand justice and be unwelcoming, unforgiving and unfriendly toward the perpetrator of the injustice. A person can demand justice and be welcoming, forgiving and friendly toward the perpetrator of the injustice. Given the magnitude of what Marty and Mike have done to try to damage or destroy me by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities, given the fact that their fair game activities have continued in their new independent roles, and given their refusal to assist me to correct injustices, I believe that you will find my communications to them have been remarkably welcoming, forgiving and friendly. My communications have also been thoughtful, factual, sincere, caring, encouraging and real.

In my opinion, the application of honey tech, and the parallel attack on whoever does not apply honey, by the people Marty and Mike victimized and by others, has not worked, except by encouraging Marty and Mike to maintain their lies and injustices, and to keep right on victimizing their victims. Marty can get away with declaring his karma balanced because his honey tech-applying victims and others, such as his communicants, are telling him he’s balanced it, and tell him what wonderful contributions he’s making to the cause, and because he knows they attack anyone who says otherwise. Then, with his karma supposedly balanced and his good karma reservoir filled, thanks to his handled, but not assisted, victims, he never has to consider doing anything about all that damage or destruction by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities that the truth tech guy keeps communicating about; or, as you say, mercilessly attacking and condemning him about.

How about a debate, Graham? You can defend and promote honey tech being applied to Marty and Mike. I will argue against it, and propose truth tech as a better alternative.

Notes