Hi everybody.
The Spring edition of Maisonneuve, containing a 10-page feature article entitled “Scientology’s Defier,” is now available across Canada. Chapters, Indigo, Coles bookstores for sure have it, and a few good bookstores in the US too I imagine.
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/?ptick…SOxlAWLCWDM%3d
Maisonneuve doesn’t have the article or even an announcement on its web site yet.
maisonneuve :: eclectic curiosity
It’s timely for the May 10 protest, because the theme for both the article and the protest, as well as my status with Scientology for going on 27 years, is FAIR GAME. I hope to see many of you by the way the 10th of May
There have been instances where Scientology has had its agents buy up certain publications, or steal them, or deface or destroy them, to minimize a story’s potential effects. Maisonneuve, although Canada-wide and pretty prestigious and smart, is a relatively low circulation magazine published only quarterly. The cult could easily buy up the bulk of the copies in any city or market with OSA chump change.
So if you’re near a Chapters, Indigo or Coles, or other bookstores elsewhere I suppose, get a copy. Stop Scientology from stopping this story.
There are some small errors that I’m addressing (it’s a 27-year Vendetta, not really a 30-year one), and the writer Bruce Livesey and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything (mine are limpid green, not as he writes limpid blue). But the article is historic in Canadian media and in the Scientology problem at this time. It gets into the cult’s gargantuan FAIR GAME campaign against one guy who’s alarmingly short of ordinary, and it cannot but accelerate the resolution of that nasty campaign. The article is a good read, and should give any good person a good reason to reject and oppose Scientology.
Here’s a couple of paragraphs where even the term FAIR GAME appears:
In 1965, Hubbard created the idea of the “Suppressive Person,” or SP. SPs are portrayed as resentful social outcasts and former church members, but in essence an SP is anyone who poses a threat to the church. In 1967, Hubbard wrote: “SP Order [is] fair game.” Anyone the church considered its enemy, he continued, “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” The church even has a quasi-secret police force, known as the Guardian’s Office, which enforces its harsh tactics. In 1968, Hubbard limited the definition of who was “fair game” to exclude outsiders, but since any serious critic is branded as a Suppressive Person, in practice “fair game” remains church policy to this day. A clear demonstration of this fact is an internal Scientology videotape made four years ago, in which Tom Cruise describes the manner in which the church deals with critics or SPs: “confront, shatter, suppression.”
[…]
In a stinging decision, Judge Paul Breckenridge ruled against Scientology. “In addition to violating and abusing its own members’ civil rights,” wrote Breckenridge, “the organization over the years with its ‘Fair Game’ doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder [Hubbard]. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile.”
[…]
When he read the proposed agreement, he was appalled—it was so stringent it would even have prevented him from telling a psychiatrist he’d been a member of the church. Nevertheless, Armstrong claims his lawyer—who was also being harassed by the church—urged him to take the deal anyway. “You have to sign,” Armstrong recalls his attorney saying. “All of these people [the other litigants and former Scientologists] are depending on you to have fair game end for them.