The reason a lot of people oppose Scientology – the cult, the tech — whether they know it or not, is its generation in its adherents of a mental and behavioral condition of psychopathy. People identify a number of other nefarious things Scientologists do as reasons for opposing Scientology: the lying, the manipulation, the fraud, the extortion, the disconnection, the RPF, the barratry, the fair game, etc. These evils all depend, however, on Scientologists’ psychopathic condition, and are the dramatization of the condition. Because these acts are all directed at persons, and Scientologists are organized for the purpose of committing these acts against persons, indeed classes of citizens, Scientology constitutes a criminal conspiracy.
That psychopathy is generated in Scientologists by Scientology and is not necessarily a stable state, or permanent condition, is demonstrated by the fact that some at least of those who are reestablished as wogs lose the gained state or condition. Scientology also attracts pre-existing psychopaths, and cult founder L. Ron Hubbard was a psychopath; so not everyone who leaves the cult stops being one. The people operating or delivering Scientology, clearly, are not always or even much of the time successful in getting the state or condition generated in the people called in scripture “raw meat,” who are wogs in the Scientologists’ control at times but still wogs. A large percentage of wogs, in fact, that are lured into Scientology’s churches, or, as Hubbard also calls them in scripture, “shops,” never even become Scientologists, and reject the pursuit of the psychopathic state they see dramatized around them and are being pressured to purchase.
Scientologists accept that many other people reject the state the Scientologists dramatize, and it is doubtlessly desirable to not have everyone attain the psychopathic state because of Scientology and its operators need for victims. An organization of psychopaths will certainly victimize, each other, or cannibalize itself, as Scientology’s current head David Miscavige and his lieutenants like Marty Rathbun have shown the world. But an organization of psychopaths needs more social, unsuspecting victims outside its own group for its own survival. That is the reason why every Scientologist desires and works for Scientology’s expansion, and why its expansion should be properly reversed. One of the expected results of long term victimization by a psychopathic organization is the mental injury now being called Complex PTSD. Hubbard made very clear what place in the psychopath–victim relationship he wanted his real Scientologists to occupy, even defining “Scientologist” as “one who is not a victim.”
The generation of the psychopathic condition in people is also mentally injurious, of course, although once a person became a psychopath, with the psychopathic condition’s known advantages, he probably would not recognize himself as injured. Even with people who have left Scientology completely and accepted its results as worthless or deleterious, it is impossible to say when or if the injury of being conned, educated, audited, trained, drilled, pressured, threatened into a psychopathic state and kept there for years will be healed. Regardless of the common view that psychopathy is virtually irremediable, I believe that there’s hope for every Scientologist, and wog, to lose that terrible condition and stop doing the ugly things it underlies and fosters.
Because of my years inside the cult in several places and positions, my possession of Hubbard’s archive, researching his life, my post-Scientology studies, almost 30 years as Scientologists’ fair game target and victim, and observation of Scientologists’ attacks on similarly placed victims, I have acquired considerable experience and a working knowledge of psychopathy and its manifestations in Scientologists. I believe psychopathy, hopefully Scientology-generated, makes sense of the statements about me on Rathbun’s blog by Karen de la Carriere and “Barney Rubble,” two Scientologists and members of the Scientology entity known as the “Independents” or “Indies.” And it is these three Scientologists’ statements that have brought me to write this.
Since the psychopathic state that Scientologists gain is so Scientology-specific and Scientology-directed, and their victims are largely their religion’s victims, the state could be called Scientolopathy. Scientologists who attain the state or condition could accurately be called Scientolopaths. The professional literature acknowledges that psychopathy can be installed or generated situationally. Martin Kantor, MD, for example, wrote in The Psychopathy of Everyday Life, © 2006, pp. 142,143.
BEHAVIORAL CONSTRUCTS
Learning
Some learning theorists view psychopathy as an acquired skill—an adaptive if seminormal mechanism that provides the individual with a way to avoid danger or to get out of danger once in it. In this view, psychopathy is less a compulsive and automatic problem than a considered and purposeful mechanism, less like a true unplanned personality disorder and more like a “disorder” of convenience—a method there for all to use when they feel that their circumstances warrant a form of behavior, no matter how extreme, that allows them to survive and prosper even if to do so they must take advantage of another person, and of the world.
Machiavelli’s The Prince is, in effect, a teaching manual on how to become a psychopath. Today it might be titled So You Want to be a Psychopath: How to Use Psychopathic Methods to Triumph and Win Big. Machiavelli in essence advocates that those who want to make it big politically should develop a compendium of psychopathic traits, including evilness, disloyalty, shrewdness, aggressiveness, deceitful manipulativeness, single-minded goal direction, corruptness, the assumption of blamelessness, hyperalertness to danger, and self-reliance.
It is very well known that Hubbard is reported claiming he authored The Prince, and that in the 1970’s he was still fuming at Machiavelli for stealing it from him — Ronaldo de Medici? — and publishing it under Machiavelli’s name.
I am not the first person to observe Scientolopathy as a valuable final product of the Scientology system. Richard Behar’s monumental “Thriving Cult of Greed and Power” article in the May 6, 1991 Time quotes Dr. Edward Lottick, whose son Noah the Scientologists apparently drove to commit suicide.
His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own investigation of the church. We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie. I now believe it’s a school for psychopaths. 1
When the Time article appeared, I was oddly and deeply saddened by Noah’s story. I was already actively opposing Scientology and a target. Oral argument in Scientology’s appeal from the Breckenridge decision had been on February 20 that year. I had filed a letter brief 2 in response to Scientology on February 27. I had just been deposed for two days, April 24 and 25, 1991 in Corydon v. Scientology. I had given away my worldly possessions in August 1990, except what no one would want, and I knew that Scientology was still victimizing people and fair gaming good wogs. So I felt for Noah and his family, and having been a young man in Scientology, I knew what the Scientologists could do that could drive a young man to suicide.
A year or two later, I met Ed Lottick at a CAN Conference – it was probably Minneapolis – and talked with him a little about Noah and Scientology. It happened that I’d seen John Carmichael in the cult contingent at the conference, and I offered to introduce Dr. Lottick to him. I had known Carmichael since the Christofferson trial in 1985 in Portland, Oregon. He was the President of the Portland Scientology operation, and an OSA staffer. He had been on a radio program attacking me that I’d listened to around the time of the trial. He had transferred to New York, and had been the President of the New York operation, and, of course, OSA, since 1987. Noah had reportedly committed suicide on May 11, 1990.
Dr. Lottick said he’d like to meet Carmichael, so I accompanied him to where Carmichael was seated with some other Scientologists or collaborators, and I introduced them. Dr. Lottick had known of Carmichael, of course, because of investigations that were done into Noah’s death. What I remember of the conversation was Dr. Lottick maintaining his composure and dignity, while calmly and kindly communicating and observing Carmichael. And I remember Carmichael claiming more ignorance of the Lottick family than was believable, and emanating not even fake sympathy but contempt. As we walked away from the encounter, I got the feeling that Carmichael confirmed for Dr. Lottick his belief, which Time reported, that Scientology is a school for psychopaths.
I knew Karen de la Carriere, of course, on the “Apollo” in the 1970’s. I was legal, PR and intel, and she was an auditor. I would have seen her around a few times at the FLB during a couple of years in the later 1970’s. I don’t believe that our paths crossed again or that I ever had a memorable interaction or communication with her.
Heber Jentzsch had been my stepfather-in-law until his wife and my then mother-in-law Yvonne died, I think in January 1978. So he now is and will forever be my ex-stepfather-in-law. Yvonne’s daughter Terri is and will forever be my ex. Because of my relationship to Heber, at some point I had become aware that he had married Karen.
I don’t know who Barney Rubble is, but somewhere I think I saw some reference to him or her knowing Mike Rinder in Curaçao in the 1970’s. So maybe we know each other from the “Apollo.”
De la Carriere and Rubble went on, or off, about me in reaction to a recent comment on Rathbun’s blog by ex-Scientologist Allen Stanfield. I don’t believe I’ve ever met Allen, although I have read quite a few things he’s posted different places on the Internet, and I appreciate his depth of thought and good writing. Earlier this year, he wrote a kind and actually courageous article, “History of Scientology Criticism: Who is Gerry Armstrong?” 3 that meant and means a lot to me.
Allen’s point that triggered the reaction was that I was like Rathbun when he set up his blog and started writing in that we both knew what we were in for and did it anyway. Allen apparently felt that both Rathbun and I did whatever we did not to gain personally, and we knew we would be attacked if we did it, but went ahead regardless. It isn’t clear in Allen’s comment what I did that he is equating with Rathbun setting up his blog. This theme of me doing what I did despite knowing I’d be fair gamed, however, is also present in Allen’s article about me on his own blog, so what he had in mind about me in his comment on Rathbun’s blog can probably be ascertained from there: essentially that I had dared to tell Scientologists, and wogs I suppose, the truth I knew about Hubbard and Scientology. And part of what I told was the truth about their lying.
It’s fairly clear that Allen got the idea of communicating to the world about the similarities between Rathbun and me from seeing Rathbun’s e-mail to me that listed what he called “critical differences” between us. These claimed differences were “critical” to Rathbun because they were what he used to justify his refusal to help me correct ongoing injustices he had helped perpetrate. One of his critical differences between us was:
You sold out twenty-three years ago – and are apparently still mad at yourself for the indelible taint it left. I will never sell out.
De la Carriere repeated Rathbun’s claimed critical difference, although for her merely a huge difference, in her response to Allen:
There are huge differences between Gerry Armstrong and Marty Rathbun.
I will name one of them.
Gerry Armstrong took some $800,000 settlement /hush money to be quiet and go away.
Marty Rathbun under no circumstance would take hush money or be silenced for cash.
Barney Rubble gave de la Carriere his stamp of approval:
+1, Karen you nailed it on the head. Gerry Armstrong never really had his Strategic Plan and look at him now. Wonder what he did with his payoff $.
“Strategic Planning” is a Scientology religious rite, and a “Strategic Plan” is the Scientology religious canon that results from the Strategic Planning rite. Hubbard defined “Strategic Plan” in scripture in HCOPL 31 July 1983 “Basic Management Tools.”
A STRATEGIC PLAN is a statement of the intended plans for accomplishing a broad objective and inherent in its definition is the idea of clever use of resources or maneuvers for outwitting the enemy or overcoming existing obstacles to win the objective. It is the central strategy worked out at the top which, like an umbrella, covers the activities of the echelons below it.
It’s true I haven’t been a Scientologist in almost thirty years, and for all that time have not practiced that Scientology rite, or accepted, written or possessed the canon or fatwah that constitutes a Strategic Plan. So in that sense Rubble’s right. But it’s like saying I never really had my adult baptism, my black mass, or my brit milah, and look at me now. I do understand that because Scientologists have their strat plan rites and constant clever maneuvering against enemies as religious expression, they view wogs who don’t constantly plan strategically, or maneuver or scheme, as inferior and degraded – look at him now.
De la Carriere responded to Rubble expanding on the huge difference she postulated between Rathbun and me:
Barney ~~
To be fully accurate here, Gerry Armstrong took an $800,00 settlement from the Cult.
WHEREAS when DM sent a bunch of Lawyers to descend on Mike Rinder in Colorado after he fled offering him megabucks ~~ high six figures~~~
Mike Rinder could not be bought for cash.None of the Indies whom Gerry via Caroline regularly attack as filthy liars, indeed attacking us as the scum of the EARTH wretched, deluded souls for using LRH tech ~~ none of the Indies have taken hush money $$$$ $800,000 to shut up and be quiet.
Gerry reneged on his $800,000 settlement with CoS and thus began his long and protracted legal war with the Cult. Gerry has tried to universalize his legal problems by arguing that all people in the entire world are either “beneficiaries” or “victims” of Scientology v. Armstrong. Worse, the very Indies whom Gerry believes can extricate him from his self-created legal Hell will apparently not give him the help he needs –
He daily screams for Marty’s help while screaming on OCMB how vile Marty is ~~
It is almost a dementia ~~Having never taken a big payday from the Cult, Marty and Mike Rinder are free and say and do whatever they want.
Unlike recent departures from INT Base, being paid huge sums of money to shut up and not go to Law Enforcement, Mike and Marty will never be bribed.
I respect that.
That Caroline and I regularly attack Indies as filthy liars and scum of the earth wretched, deluded souls for using LRH tech, or whatever they call Scientolopathy training or the dramatization of the Scientolopathic state, is clearly untrue. I do say that Indies, in fact all Scientologists whether Indies or Innies, are liars; and I say that because it’s true, because their lying hurts a lot of people, and because they should stop lying for everyone’s sake. I realize that lying is a core Scientology sacrament, and essential for retaining the gains of the Scientolopathic state or condition. The state in reality, however, is not valuable, and certainly is not the state Scientolopaths will attest they’re in.
Scientologists call their group and personal psychopathic state different things at various points or in certain situations in their lives; for example, “Insouciance,” “On-Sourceness,” “In-Ethics,” “Ethics Presence,” “Using LRH Tech,” “Clear,” “Homo Novis,” “Operating Thetan” or “OT,” “Tone-40” “Effectiveness,” “At Cause,” “Responsibility of Leaders,” or just plain “Responsibility,” and “Greatness.” Hubbard invented all these neologisms for his Scientolopathic state, and presented them all as positive or pro-survival. He made them all not only highly desirable, but optimum or ideal, and he sold the path to that state and how to maintain it once gained, for gargantuan sums of money. The Scientolopathic state inarguably can appear desirable and positive for Scientolopaths, but it is undesirable and negative for everyone else. The therapeutic goal for the rest of us is to get the Scientolopaths to see that their state is not in their best interests either.
I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone the scum of the earth, and don’t consider Indies, Innies or anyone the scum of the earth. I’ve never seen or heard Caroline attack anyone as scum of the earth for any reason, and that she regularly attacks Indies as scum of the earth is a ludicrous lie. We consider Scientologists in every essential way equal, and no better and no worse, than wogs. This philosophic and real position, unfortunately, is anathema to Scientologists because it is also the position that Scientology doesn’t work. The whole effort in Scientology, and the reason that Scientologists call themselves Scientologists, is to be better than wogs. This is, of course, an impossibility. Scientolopaths work to make the impossible real by lying and getting agreement with their lies. I recently wrote about lies versus truth in Scientology from a psycho-philosophical perspective in an answer to a question John Peeler asked.4
A number of people on OCMB where Caroline posts have used the idiom “scum of the earth,” but Caroline has never written it that I can find. “J. Swift,” for example, called Scientology a “scum-of-the-earth Master Race Cult.” He also wrote that, “People who make meth are the scum of the earth.” Gary Weber is quoted as writing about how he felt when leaving the cult, “I believed I was the scum of the earth, and totally useless to mankind.” It was Scientology and Scientologists making him feel that way, not wogs. A poster “CJK” provided the Scientologists’ definition for RPF’s RPF members: “RPFs RPF=scum of the earth, not allowed to talk to anyone and not allowed to leave.” “Free for Real” wrote of being a Scientologist and doing “all the things a good little cult member is supposed to do but then out of nowhere, I was the scum of the earth because I ran out of money.” It was fellow Scientologists making the broke Scientologist feel that way.
John Peeler confirmed the same thing about how Scientologists treat Scientologists, “When you’re a broke $cientologist, you’re treated like the scum of the earth.” John also described the Scientology group viewpoint about Scientologists at Gilman who wanted to live off the base, “These people were considered to be the scum of the earth for the next couple of months.” And John observed about ecclesiastical head Miscavige’s treatment of Scientologists generally, “David Miscavige gets off on treating those beneath him like the scum of the earth. He thrives on it.” It makes perverse sense for de la Carriere to be falsely accusing Caroline and me of regularly attacking Scientologists as scum of the earth, because Rathbun and his Indie Scientologists’ black PR on us is that we’re just as evil as Miscavige. In fact Rathbun and the Indies refer to the Scientologists’ victims like us as Miscavige’s best friends.
I don’t think Caroline or I ever called Indie or Innie Scientologists “wretched,” although I might have said that RPF conditions were wretched, or that RPFers at times looked wretched. The assertion that Caroline and I regularly attack Scientologists as wretched souls for any reason is just not true. I could have said that I felt wretched at times in Scientology, and not just in the RPF, because I did. So I do understand that Scientologists could still have their moments of wretchedness. A recurring thought I have is about Scientologists’ willingness to exist in wretched conditions in order to continue to support the effort to reduce the enemy to wretched conditions. One way to do that is to falsely accuse the enemy of some wretchedness, for example that he sold out or regularly attacked Scientologists as scum of the earth or wretched souls.
I did a quick search of OCMB and found that several people had used the word “wretched,” but couldn’t find where Caroline had used it. Some people called the RPF wretched, some called Scientology wretched, what Scientologists do to detractors and defectors wretched, the tech wretched, courses wretched, the scam wretched, and the religion wretched. Poster “Prufrock” surmised that, we are witnessing Scientology’s “wretched descent into the dustbin of stupid ideas.” J. Swift titled a thread, “THOU WRETCHED AND MOST FOUL SCIENTOLOGY!” He also called poster “Suzanne Marie” wretched, which was, I think, the only instance I saw where the word described a specific Scientologist. Michael Pattinson, writing as Hubbard, called his staff and the Sea Org “the wretched zombie group.” Somebody quoted Crowley from The Book of the Law, which is interesting because of its similarity to Hubbard’s “men are my slaves” philosophy:
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of Kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.
But nothing “wretched” from Caroline or me.
I also searched our own sites, and found that Caroline had webbed the dramatic leaving Scientology story by “Nefertiti,” who characterized a woman on the RPF’s RPF in Clearwater as looking “so wretched,” and described the scene of RPF sections mustering in columns as “a wretched sight.” Caroline did use the word once in a June 2003 letter to Miscavige:
That is what you depend upon — that good people, as Hubbard said, cannot confront Scientology’s evil. What must be done to stop this wretched evil, however, is to get good people to confront it, and even to rise up against it. 5
She is, of course, writing about the whole wretched evil of Scientology, a small and uncertain percentage of which even Rathbun, de la Carriere and their fellow Indies say is destructive, or criminal, or evil, or similar. The task for people in my position is to lay out for the Indies the rest of the Scientology evil that they’re not confronting, and instead are, unconscionably, defending, promoting and selling. The task with the Innies for people like me is to lay out as much of the entire Scientology evil as possible, which includes the portion that the Indies say they’re confronting. I am obviously in multiple positions or classes in relation to Scientology and Scientologists, but I am considering here the position or class of unwilling victims of Scientologists’ application of their Suppressive Person doctrine. And the SP doctrine and the SP class are essential for the generation of the Scientolopathic state in Scientologists.
The SP doctrine is common to both Indies and Innies, and identical in every part of Scientology. Scientologists’ application or execution of the doctrine — the dramatization of Scientolopathy — is directed at people who lay out Scientology evil for confronting — real SPs. Yet real SPs have no other real and reasonable choice but to continue to present Scientology evil for confronting. It is obvious that for the care and safety of the SP class, and for the protection of everyone, it is wogs that must confront the Scientology evil. It’s nice when a Scientologist confronts the evil they’re involved in and gets out, and, of course, ex-Scientologists are the only people who can testify to certain facts about that evil; but it is vital that the evil be made available for wogs to confront. Scientologists like Rathbun, de la Carriere and Rubble, and in fact all Scientolopaths are dedicated to preventing this evil from being confronted, and one of their key Scientolopathic modi operandi is black PRing the real SPs who present the evil for confronting.
What Scientologists, virtually universally, have done and are doing to prevent me from telling the truth, and even persecute or fair game me for telling the truth, about what must be confronted – the times, places, forms and events comprising the Scientology v. Armstrong war – is a terrible iniquity. It manifests in a gargantuan public still pulsating public injustice that Caroline and I have made available for anyone with eyes to confront. It is a key case, the confronting of which can bring wogs everywhere to better confront the whole Scientology evil, and even set Scientologists free from Scientology and the Scientolopathic condition. This naturally makes Caroline and me targets of the Scientolopaths who don’t want their co-cultists or -conspirators to be free.
I do believe that delusion is a quasi-factor in Scientologists’ mental state or condition, and in its generation and maintenance. I do not believe, however, that de la Carriere is communicating how I actually consider delusion relates to “using LRH tech,” or otherwise acting Scientolopathically. I probably view Scientologists both generally, and very knowledgeable Scientologists like Rathbun, de la Carriere and Miscavige specifically, as less deluded than most of their critics and even their wog collaborators view them. Scientologists, of course, are trained in conning or deluding others, and have to appear deluded no matter what else they think. Miscavige himself, a supremely cynical psychopath, has to appear completely deluded at times, such as when speaking at his grandiose public events. Feigned delusion is expedient, quite clearly, to Scientolopaths to justify their Scientolopathic actions toward their victims, otherwise why feign it.
Feigned delusion is not actual delusion, just as pretended ignorance, a very common pose or “beingness” among Scientologists, is not actual ignorance. Rathbun, de la Carriere and Miscavige are aware when they lie. They are aware of originating black PR to harm someone, and aware when they’re forwarding black PR. They are aware when they attack real SPs. They know that real SPs are people who present the Scientology evil for confronting, and that real SPs are telling the truth. Rathbun, de la Carriere, Miscavige, et al. know that Hubbard and Scientology’s victimization tech is antisocial. They know what the evil is to be confronted. They deny telling lies and doing evil to SPs, and they justify their evil acts, as any psychopaths justify their acts, with more lies, pretended ignorance and feigned delusions, such as the feigned delusion that I deserve the psychopathic treatment or handling they give me.
Caroline recently wrote about Scientologists’ knowledge of what they were doing in response to a poster “Dorothy” on OCMB who was taking the pro-delusion position in which Scientologists don’t know right from wrong. 6
Dorothy: So, I disagree with what you are saying.
Caroline: What, that Scientologists doing bad things know they’re doing bad things? I think you’re really arguing that nobody –Scientologists or wogs — who do bad things know they’re doing bad things. I cannot accept this, nor can I accept that wogs doing bad things know they’re doing bad things, but Scientologists doing bad things, uniquely do not know they’re doing bad things.
I do accept that psychotics — both Scientologists and wogs — very well may not know that they’re doing bad things when they do bad things, for example when they murder someone. But psychotics are a small minority of people — Scientologists or wogs — who do bad things, and we are not discussing here psychotics’ unawareness of what they’re doing. Rex Fowler, I am certain, knew that he was doing something bad, wrong and illegal when he murdered Thomas Ciancio.
If nobody among all the world’s Scientologists or wogs know they’re doing bad things when they do bad things, it could mean that they/we are all psychotic. Or it perhaps renders meaningless the whole idea of self-knowledge. If that’s true, then the only way Scientologists or wogs can learn that they’re doing bad things is by being told by someone who at least is able to see that others are doing bad things when they’re doing them. So Tory could tell the Scientologist that he was laughing at her and there’s a chance he’d get that he was laughing at her. I believe, however, that self-knowledge of one’s actions is possible both for Scientologists and wogs.
Here’s another long term example. Marty Rathbun’s function and purpose for several years when he was over legal matters was to prevent Scientology victims, and even the US Federal Government, from serving Hubbard and obtaining his testimony. Marty knew that Hubbard was reachable, and Marty knew that Scientology, under his direction, filed sworn declarations in legal proceedings falsely claiming they had no way of contacting Hubbard. Marty knew he was lying when he lied, and knew that he was obstructing justice, and denying justice to Scientology’s victims. He knew it was bad to obstruct justice. He knew it was bad to lie, and worse to lie under oath. Certainly he justified his bad acts or crimes and called them the greatest good, but he knew they were bad and unlawful. If he honestly believed that lying and obstructing justice was good and right, why hide it from the world? Hubbard said to do good works and well publicize them. Marty didn’t publicize his lying and obstruction, and his fellow Scientologists didn’t publicize these works, because they all knew they were bad works.
At this point, with Hubbard well dead, of course, along with the relevant statutes of limitation, Marty brags about obstructing justice much as Hubbard says about his SP victims: “Many antisocial persons will freely confess […] but will have no faintest sense of responsibility for them. […] They […] particularly cannot feel any sense of remorse or shame therefore.” Marty’s followers still admire his obstruction of justice, or denial of justice to Scientology’s victims, and his loyalty to a sociopath.
Look at Marty’s 1991 declaration filed in Scientology v. Armstrong. 7It contains a slew of lies that Marty knew were lies then and knows are lies now. Marty didn’t write his lies believing they were the truth.
Furthermore, I believe that viewing Scientologists like Marty as so brainwashed or mind controlled that they don’t know what they are doing is demonstrably erroneous, and actually denigrates the Scientologists. It might feel nice to believe that Scientologists don’t know what they’re doing, whereas we wogs do know because we aren’t brainwashed, but it simply isn’t true.
Another example over a long period is the poster Roadrunner. 8 Some people insist that Roadrunner, who very easily could be an OSA principal like Gloria Idda, is a Hubbard bot, totally brainwashed and utterly unaware of her bad acts, her years of lying, bullying, black propaganda, etc. targeting Scientology’s victims. I don’t buy this, and the fact is that the evidence demonstrates that the Roadrunner entity knew what evil she was doing.
The key example is L. Ron Hubbard. I believe it is wrong, and serves Scientology’s antisocial purposes, to assert that he didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t know when he was lying, didn’t know when he was controlling and using Scientology money, didn’t know that Scientology didn’t work, didn’t know what the GO was doing for him, didn’t know DM has a personality disorder, didn’t know what was happening in his orgs, didn’t know that Marty was obstructing justice and lying under oath to keep him from having to meet his accusers, etc., etc.
Mental health professionals have for many years observed that psychopaths do know right and wrong and do know what they’re doing. I concur with that observation and do not believe that Scientolpaths are deluded because they use Hubbard Scientolopathy tech. They’re deluded enough to feign delusion to motivate and justify acting psychopathically, but not so deluded that they’re unaware of the evil they’re doing. Robert D. Hare, Ph.D., for example, wrote about psychopaths’ awareness of what they do in Without Conscience: the Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, © 1998:
Most clinicians and researchers don’t use the term in this way; they know that psychopathy cannot be understood in terms of traditional views of mental illness. Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders. Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised. (p. 22)
Psychopaths are not deterred by the possibility that their actions may cause hardship or risk for others. (p. 64)
• Some criminals learn to do crime—they are raised in families or social environments in which criminal behavior, to one degree or another, is the accepted norm. One of our subjects, for example, had a father who was a “professional” thief and a mother who was a prostitute. From an early age he “went to work” with his father. More dramatic examples of these “subcultural criminals” include the mafia families and the bands of Gypsies common in some parts of Europe. (p. 84)
Following a lecture I gave on psychopathy and language at a psychiatric conference in Florida, a forensic psychiatrist approached me and said, “Your research implies that psychopaths may be mentally disordered, perhaps not as responsible for their behavior as we once thought. Until now, a diagnosis of psychopathy has been ‘the kiss of death’ for many murderers. Will it now become the ‘kiss of life’ for them?”
An interesting question. As I mentioned earlier, psychopaths do meet current legal and psychiatric standards for sanity. They understand the rules of society and the conventional meanings of right and wrong. They are capable of controlling their behavior, and they are aware of the potential consequences of their acts. Their problem is that this knowledge frequently fails to deter them from antisocial behavior. (p. 143)
After falsely accusing Caroline and me of attacking Scientologists as deluded souls for using LRH tech, de la Carriere has now stated on ESMB about Scientologists, in justifying her and their actions in Scientology, “We were all deluded.” 9 Dr. Hare wrote about this phenomenon, which is quite common among publicly-communicating Scientologists and their collaborators, in the chapter in Without Conscience he titled, “Words from an Overcoat Pocket.”
Of course, pathological lying and manipulation are not restricted to psychopaths. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.
But there is something else about the speech of psychopaths that is equally puzzling: their frequent use of contradictory and logically inconsistent statements that usually escape detection. Recent research on the language of psychopaths provides us with some important clues to this puzzle, as well as to the uncanny ability psychopaths have to move words—and people— around so easily. (p. 125)Hollow Words
Most people who have had extensive experience with psychopaths have an intuitive sense of what that difference [between the bilateral language characteristics of psychopaths and others with bilateral language] might be.
[…]
This would come as no surprise to clinicians, long aware that psychopaths seem to know the dictionary meanings of words but fail to comprehend or appreciate their emotional value or significance.
[…]
These clinical observations get right to the heart of the mystery of psychopathy: language that is two-dimensional, lacking in emotional depth. (p. 128,129)[John Wayne] Gacy’s “loose associations” and his contradictory statements and lies may reflect little more than mental carelessness, lack of interest in keeping things straight for the listener, or part of a strategy intended to confuse the listener. However, in the context of the material presented in this chapter, they also may stem from a condition in which continuity among mental events and the self-monitoring of speech are defective, perhaps even disordered: mental Scrabble without an overall script.
This raises an important issue: If their speech is sometimes peculiar, why are psychopaths so believable, so capable of deceiving and manipulating us? Why do we fail to pick up the inconsistencies in what they say? The short answer is, it is difficult to penetrate their mask of normalcy: The oddities in their speech are often too subtle for the casual observer to detect, and they put on a good show. We are sucked in not by what they say but by how they say it and by the emotional buttons they push while saying it. (p. 142)
Hubbard taught that the elimination of human emotion and reaction was a virtue, indeed an ideal. At a philosophical level he installed or founded the Scientolopathic state on “axioms” and other scriptural laws that removed any validity to emotional considerations or responses. Axiom 31 is learned very early in any Scientologist’s indoctrination: “Goodness and badness, beautifulness and ugliness are alike considerations and have no other basis than opinion.” Scientology provides Hubbard’s definition for “human emotion and reaction” in its Admin Dictionary:
the counter emotions and reactions which aberrated human beings express when they are guided toward survival objectives. They are usually below 2.0 on the Tone Scale. (LRH Def. Notes) Abbr. HE & R.
Flattening human emotion and reaction is a purpose of TR’s and auditing, and the suppression and removal of HE & R is the purpose of Scientology ethics and the whole Scientology system. Dr. Hare, expanding on his title, Without Conscience, answered :
We don’t know why the conscience of the psychopath—if it exists at all—is so weak. However, we can make some reasonable guesses:
• Psychopaths have little aptitude for experiencing the emotional responses—fear and anxiety—that are the mainsprings of conscience.
Fear is 1.0 and anxiety is 1.02 on the Tone Scale. Hubbard’s statements in scripture about the conscience are deliberately confusing, but unquestionably negative. He called it, for example, a liability, a mechanism in the reactive mind to be erased as quickly as Scientologists could buy auditing, something to be checked at the door, and even called it a delusion. In 1962, he conveyed the knowledge of the human conscience he wanted top Scientologists to have, after what he had already informed everyone was decades of research, in a lecture sermon on the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course:
I don’t know where people keep their consciences—lunch boxes or something like that. Obviously, it’s very dangerous to squash a conscience because things shouldn’t be kept on the conscience, and so forth. It’s all a very interesting mechanical problem to me, this whole problem of consciousness. Because you see, everything that is on a conscience is unconscious. It’s all confusing. And you can just figure yourself into a grave with this, if you don’t know this mechanism. 10
Scientology says that the SHSBC is the only way that a full understanding of Scientology and, therefore, of life could be arrived at. Scientology claims the SHSBC gives one “a total understanding of life, its mysteries and the technology for solving them,” and “contains the largest, broadest body of information on the subject of human behavior, the mind and life that has ever been available.”
The vast panorama of understanding the human mind and the secrets of life is only attained by an in-sequence study of all the developments one by one as they occurred, a consecutive chain of breakthroughs, each one a milestone in man’s understanding of man. Such is available on the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course.
What Hubbard was teaching with his milestones was a psychopath’s understanding of man. A psychopath has the ability to claim a vast understanding of the human mind and the secrets of life, because he isn’t bothered by a conscience that would prevent him from making such insouciantly false claims.
Hubbard’s system of right and wrong, also called “ethics,” which all Scientologists embrace, is a special relativism that always serves the group’s Scientolopathic purposes. In Scientology’s ethics system, Scientology is the most ethical organization in the world. The dramatization of Scientolopathy is the action of “getting in ethics on the planet.” Hubbard wrote about his ethics system throughout Scientology scripture, for example, in his 1952 book Scientology 8-8008:
Right – Wrong
Rightness is conceived to be survival. Any action which assists survival along the maximal number of dynamics is considered to be a right action. Any action which is destructive along the maximal number of dynamics is considered to be wrong. Theoretically, how right can one be? Immortal! How wrong can one be? Dead!
After a certain point on the tone-scale is reached by the preclear, he will tend instinctively to seek out and do right actions, but ordinarily Homo sapiens is thoroughly engrossed in being wrong. Social politeness, with its violation of the Code of Honor, is quite non-survival. It might also be said, How wrong can one be? Human!
[…]
Rightness and wrongness are alike relative states. (p. 91,92)
Rathbun accusing me of selling out, calling this claimed sell-out a critical difference between us, and, because of this claimed critical difference, refusing to help me correct ongoing injustices he helped perpetrate, is a psychopath’s logic. De la Carriere and other Scientologists dramatize their own Scientolopathic state by parroting Rathbun’s logic, by flaunting feigned ignorance of the known and easily available facts, by willfully black PRing me, and by granting me not a crumb of credence.
What Rathbun and other Scientologists call selling out, or taking hush money to shut up and be quiet, is the December 1986 settlement of my lawsuit against the cult for many years of fraud and fair game. The settlement was not what I wanted, but what Rathbun, Miscavige, et al. – the Scientologists – wanted. It was a so-called “global settlement” that involved some twenty people with legal claims against Hubbard or Scientology corporations. Boston attorney Michael J. Flynn or his associates represented the settling claimants including me, and I also worked in Flynn’s office as his paralegal. I’ve written or spoken about the settlement many times, and filed declarations or affidavits that described circumstances at the time of the settlement in a number of related legal proceedings. I have fought for many years for the opportunity to have a trial, which I have been improperly denied, on the legality and enforceability of the contract, and I am looking forward to the time when there is a trial and I get to say what happened to a jury.
The earliest sworn statement in which I described the circumstances of the settlement is my declaration of December 25, 1990, which I filed in Scientology’s appeal from the 1984 judgment in Scientology v. Armstrong, LA Superior Court, Case No. C 420153. 11 I won that appeal, and the judgment was affirmed. I had filed an earlier declaration in the same appeal that describes circumstances following the settlement that brought me to respond and stand up to the Scientologists’ post-settlement actions. 12
The Scientologists wrote and insisted on the contractual conditions that they now use as their “proof” that I sold out. “Sell out,” as the Scientologists are applying it to me, means “to betray one’s cause or associates especially for personal gain.” What cause, and what associates then? I objected with everything I had, beyond the point of tears, to signing the Scientologists’ contract. Rathbun at that time ran all legal actions for Scientology, which, he has acknowledged, included Scientology v. Armstrong. 13 In his position, he was responsible for the settlement, the settlement contract, and all the contractual conditions that he claims are a sell-out. They were exactly what he and his fellow Scientologists insisted on.
Rathbun here is blaming his own victim for what Rathbun did to him or got him to do. This is a phenomenon called “displacement,” the blame displaced elsewhere, here onto the victim. Rathbun is in the position of a con man who suckers someone and blames him for being suckered. He’s like a rapist who leaves twenty dollars so he can later call his victim a whore. He’s like Scientologists everywhere who’ve ripped off people and then blamed them for their dynamics suffering. I think Scientology and Scientologists killing Lisa McPherson in a most nightmarish way, and then suing her estate – her living relatives — and turning the estate into defendants, is a classic case of organized displacement. Another litigation example in front of the world right now is Scientology v. Armstrong, where the Scientologists insisted I sign their degrading and unlawful document and now attack me for selling out when I signed it..
Many years after the Scientologists had me sign their unconscionable contract, Rathbun has added a twist to simple displacement by claiming he’s left the organization that had him do the bad things he did and implying that he’s now got a conscience. He is, however, still blaming his victim and still getting others to blame his victim, which are standard psychopathic actions. Hubbard institutionalized the displacement of blame onto Scientologists’ victims with his victim-victimizer paradigm where Scientologists may not be victims and others are to be victimized. In his e-mail to me, Rathbun provides another brazen example of completely generalized and perfected displacement:
b) You decided to become a victim, and relish it so much you’ve continued to be one to this day. Everything you utter is through the prism of a victim and to the degree that it is refracted as such, it is false. I am devoted to helping people from entering the dark, dank dungeon of victim-hood.
The victimizer blames his victim for being his victim, or just being a victim, and in so doing further victimizes his victim. Dr. Kantor calls what Rathbun and his fellow Scientologists are doing here “blame shifting.”
Blame shifting. We are all familiar with the quack practitioner the FDA is trying to put out of business. He defends his advocacy of a worthless nostrum by blaming the FDA for unfairly prosecuting him and contends that the agency is in cahoots with drug companies that fear his natural cures will put them out of business.
[…]
In short, everything psychopaths do is second strike (provoked), not first strike (initiated), explainable not by who they are but by what they experienced in the past (e.g., in the form of child abuse) or by what they experience in the present (e.g., in the form of physical or mental illness, or social unfairness).
Psychopaths typically facilitate their blame shifting by using ambiguity. For example, psychopaths use simple gestures or words that can have different meanings depending on inflection (e.g., “Really!” can mean “Is it true?” while “Really?” can mean “I don’t believe it.”). In doing so, they deliberately set others up and steer them wrong so that they can go on to win big by attacking their victims for misreading them.
The Psychopathy of Everyday Life, pp 90,91
Dr. Hare wrote in Without Conscience:
In a classic case of “displacement,” one of our subjects had an argument with a very large bouncer at a local pub, lost his temper, and punched a bystander. The victim fell backward, struck his head on the edge of a table, and died two days later. “I saw red and this guy was laughing at me.” He blamed the victim for making him mad and accused the hospital of negligence for letting the victim die. (p. 60)
Millions of men, women, and children daily suffer terror, anxiety, pain, and humiliation at the hands of the psychopaths in their lives.
Tragically, these victims often cannot get other people to understand what they are going through. Psychopaths are very good at putting on a good impression when it suits them, and they often paint their victims as the real culprits. (p. 115)
Hare also advises psychopaths’ victims to not accept blame for the psychopaths’ actions.
Don’t blame yourself. Whatever the reasons for your involvement with a psychopath, it is important that you not accept blame for his or her attitudes and behavior. Psychopaths play by the same rules—their rules—with everyone. Of course, your own personality and behavior will have something to do with the specific nature of the interactions that occur. For example, a woman who stands up for her rights may be physically abused, whereas a more submissive woman may spend her life wondering about the whereabouts of her philandering husband. (p. 215)
• Be aware of who the victim is. Psychopaths often give the impression that it is they who are suffering and that it is the victims who are to blame for their misery. But they are suffering a lot less than you are, and for different reasons. Don’t waste your sympathy on them; their problems are not in the same league as yours. Theirs stem primarily from not getting what they want, whereas yours result from a physical, emotional, or financial pounding. (p. 215, 216)
From 1982 onward, Rathbun, under Hubbard and Miscavige, in addition to being in charge of legal matters, was also responsible for extralegal threats and fair game against me, and against my family members and friends, attorney Michael Flynn, his family and associates, and the other settling claimants in the global settlement. Rathbun was a key executive in the Sea Org cadre that took over the fair gaming of Scientology’s wog victims from the Guardian’s Office. Rathbun has acknowledged that he was in charge of the private investigators who physically assaulted me and terrorized my wife and me. He ran the PI who called me and threatened to put a bullet between my eyes. He was personally involved in the operation to frame Flynn with a $2 million check forgery and in paying known criminals to frame him. Rathbun was responsible for the multiple baseless lawsuits and bar complaints the Scientologists filed against Flynn and his associates. 14
Rathbun was involved with paying a corrupt LAPD officer to provide unlawful “authorizations” to the Scientologists to eavesdrop on and covertly record my attorneys, me and anyone else they wanted. Rathbun was involved in the covert operation that used these false police authorizations to unlawfully videotape me in conversations with Scientology operatives he was running on an unlawful entrapment operation. Rathbun had his operatives lure me into their scheme by claiming they knew that Flynn was being framed and wanted me to help them clear his name. Rathbun was involved in using the unlawful videos, which were also edited to distort their meaning, to black PR me and cause me trouble around the world. As mentioned above, he was involved in the break-in of my car and the theft of my manuscript, artwork and other documents. Rathbun was involved in unlawfully culling my pc folders and using the contents against me. He was responsible for false reports on me to law enforcement, and efforts to have me prosecuted on manufactured evidence, with the LAPD, the LADA and the FBI. He was involved in the massive organized black PR campaign run on me, and for numerous and continuing evals, programs, projects and ops to pressure and destroy me. 15
Rathbun has, of course, also been involved in much of the fair game and black PR that followed the settlement. He has acknowledged personal responsibility for preparing and filing material with the IRS that includes several pages of black PR on me that he knew contained lies. These submissions are the basis on which Scientology’s 1993 tax exemption was granted. 16
I won’t go into post-settlement matters here, however, but just want to deal with the December 1986 settlement and the Scientologists’ continuing charge that I sold out.
The multi-channeled pressure and threat Rathbun and his fellow Scientologists and their hired agents, spending many millions of dollars, had applied to Flynn and me and all the settling claimants throughout Rathbun’s years over legal and extralegal fair game became concentrated at the time of the settlement to get me to do something – “sell out” — that the Scientologists could then use to further fair game me. The Scientologists would fair game me for responding to their post-settlement fair game, which they would claim their contract permitted. And the Scientologists would fair game me for selling out and signing the document they would use to fair game me. That I was not under duress when I signed the Scientologists’ contract that they call selling out is a clear or OT-level Scientolopathic lie. The duress was terrible and precipitated in me severe psychic shock, the residual effects of which continue in my psyche and life, as should be obvious by what I’ve said, written and am writing here.
The Scientologists’ contract is itself a psychopath’s dream. Relevant conditions – the ones the Scientologists want to destroy me for violating – are completely one-sided and unfair, and the essence of what legally constitutes “unconscionability.” 17 The Scientologists’ interpretation of their contract, which they got a California judge very wrongly to agree to, allows the Scientologists to continue to attack me, while prohibiting me from responding, and punishing me with poverty and imprisonment if I do respond to defend myself. The contract even unlawfully prevents me from reporting what the Scientologists were doing to me or others, to governmental agencies. The contract, however, doesn’t prohibit the Scientologists from saying anything they wanted to every governmental agency in the world. The contract contains a liquidated damages condition that penalizes me $50,000 each time I mention even one word about my experiences in or knowledge of Scientology and myriad other Scientology related “beneficiaries.” There is no such liquidated damages provision that applies to these Scientology beneficiaries. They could black PR me with impunity to eternity. The unfair and one-sided contractual conditions, and the Scientologists’ cruelty these conditions communicated, were triggers in the psychic trauma I experienced at the time of the settlement.
When the Scientologists first attempted to judicially enforce their contract, an LA Superior Court Judge refused, and stated:
So my belief is Judge Breckenridge, being a very careful judge… if ,he had been presented with that whole agreement and if he had been asked to order its performance, he would have dug his feet in because that is one … I’ll say one of the most ambiguous, one-sided agreements that I have ever read. And I would have not ordered the enforcement of hardly any of the terms if I had been asked to, even on the threat that okay, the case is not settled. [¶] I know we like to settle cases. But we don’t like to settle cases and, in effect, prostrate the court system into making an order which is not fair or in the public interest. 18
The Scientologists, however, found a judge in Marin County, California extremely willing to prostrate the court system and more than happy to sign their unfair, not in the public interest, and, as time has shown, unlawful, indeed criminal, orders.
As I mentioned, I’ve written a lot about the settlement, beginning in 1990, and have published many of those writings including sworn statements that were filed in legal proceedings. 19 I will just relive parts of the settlement circumstances and incident that help to understand what the Scientologists call “selling out.”20
I was a competent paralegal, working in a Boston law firm and for a smart attorney with a complex litigation practice. I had my own complex litigation involving Scientology, and I had written by this time dozens of declarations or affidavits that had been filed in multiple legal cases; for example, Van Schaick, Cooper, McLean, Burden, Christofferson, the B & G Wards case in the UK, Mayo, Wollersheim, US Justice Department and IRS cases, the Canadian criminal case. I had by then testified approximately 45 days either in trial or deposition, and much of that oral testimony was examination by the Scientologists’ commonly nasty lawyers. So I understood quite well what Scientology’s contract said when I first read it.
I understand the contract’s conditions and their unlawfulness and unconscionability more deeply and completely now, and there has been almost 25 years that the contract has been “in effect” to show what the Scientologists actually intended. But I was aware on first reading that it violated my rights; that it was cleverly worded to give the appearance of reciprocality of the key conditions, while also being one-sided; that the liquidated damages penalty of $50,000 per utterance to anyone was insane with no basis in reality; that the core condition of strict confidentiality and silence was impossible to perform; and that the whole document was insulting, cruel and one more act of fair game that humiliated and harmed me and allowed and encouraged the Scientologists to fair game me forever.
I wasn’t shown the contract until I was flown from Boston to LA, where Flynn had arranged the settlement with the Scientologists. Flynn easily could have sent me the contract in Boston to study before flying out, because his settlement talks with Scientology had been going on for many days, I was his employee in his office, and we used FedEx constantly. Other claimants in the global settlement had already signed their settlement agreements and gone, and it was obvious by the timing and Flynn’s other actions and communications that I was positioned and being handled as the “deal breaker.” In fact, Flynn told me directly that all the other people in the settlement were depending on me. The betrayal and manipulation I felt from Flynn, who had been a major force and real hero in the Scientology war, and my employer and friend, was devastating and contributed greatly to the psychic trauma I experienced.
I can see where both Flynn and the Scientologists understood that, because of my psychological profile, and what Judge Breckenridge perceived as my “dedication to the truth,” I would be a problem in their global settlement plan. They knew that I had survived years of abuse and fair game and not been corrupted, and I’d absorbed terrible betrayals such as by Dan Sherman in the Armstrong operation, by Mike Rinder, and the culling of my pc files. Flynn and the Scientologists knew that I was vulnerable to requests for my help, because the Scientologists had used this vulnerability ever since I’d left Scientology to try to get close to me and attack me; for example, when Sherman and the Loyalists sought my help to reform the cult, and to clear Flynn of their false charges. Having Flynn suddenly viewing and treating me as a problem and using the help button against me in this situation was painful. I was made to feel, and did feel, very alone.
I was certainly in favor of settling my legal cases, and indeed all my conflict with the Scientologists. I was fully in favor of Flynn, every person he represented, and everyone who wanted to settle, settling their claims and conflicts with the Scientologists. I had already prevailed at trial in Scientologists’ case against me in 1984. The Scientologists had continued to fair game me, and my case against Scientology, et al. for all the fraud and fair game was set to go to trial in early 1987. I was ready for trial and thinking ahead to the process of testifying about my experiences and knowledge before a jury. Trials are really not pleasant experiences for ordinary citizens, however, and testifying for me has also had times of psychic trauma. I’ve felt that in the process my soul was sliced and spread open by people who hated me, and my thinking and speaking altered. I knew Scientology had hired increasingly aggressive attorneys against me. I knew that in the trial of my cross complaint, those attorneys, with the help of OSA, unscrupulous PIs, and willing Scientolopath witnesses, would do their very best to bamboozle, embarrass, harass and demolish me and anyone who testified for me or supported me. So, I was not looking forward to another long LA Superior Court trial as a happy or healthy experience.
Because I had already gone through a thirty-day trial in 1984 in which I had told much of my Scientology story, although as a defendant, there wasn’t a great need, for historical purposes or to make a point, to retell it as the plaintiff in 1987, if the Scientologists wanted to settle my cross-complaint. It would have added three more years of fair game to my testimony, but I was even fine about not telling a jury about all those evils, if the Scientologists would settle with me, and with their other victims. Virtually every year I was Flynn’s client, from 1982 through 1986, there was some discussion between Flynn or one of his associates and some attorneys for the Scientologists of a possible settlement, and I always looked forward to the Scientology v. Armstrong war ending peacefully.
Before his final round of talks with the Scientologists in the fall of 1986, Flynn had reached agreements with all his clients, including me, on what monetary amounts we would accept to settle our cases or claims. He then got the Scientologists to agree to pay him a block sum, which he would distribute to the participants in the global settlement. 21 I really was looking forward to having the litigation and fair game over, and having the peace and time in my life to pursue my many other interests.
I was not, however, looking forward to being debased by the Scientologists’ contract and left defenseless against future fair game. I was very aware that silencing their victims was the Scientologists’ standard litigation goal. I’d had to sign such onerous, one-sided, and judicially unenforceable silence or gag documents while inside Scientology. And I considered the Scientologists’ practice of silencing people about their experiences and knowledge disgusting and criminal. Consequently I had spoken and written to Flynn as his client prior to his settlement meetings with the Scientologists and told him I would not sign such a document. When I saw he had ignored my requirement and my sincere feelings, and presented to me the most unconscionable and impossible gag contract conceivable, I was crushed. To add to the crushing, he said emphatically that the Scientologists would not change anything.
During this meeting with Flynn and as I read the contract, he told me that he had to get out of the Scientology litigation. He told me the Scientologists had ruined his life and his marriage, and, of course, I was already aware of years of fair game on him. He told me everyone had to have the war end, and let me know everyone depended on me signing to have it end. I was aware that a couple of the claimants had money problems that they were counting on the settlement to solve. Flynn told me that it would be just more misery for everyone if I didn’t sign. And he told me in various ways that the Scientologists had promised to end fair game forever if the settlement happened. He knew the Scientologists were horrendous liars, of course, and knew that I knew they were dreadful liars, so he really tried to sound like he was sure that this time they weren’t lying.
Beginning when I was reading and digesting the contract, I also began to consider the future in relation to what was happening, and I even spoke up from my distressed state to posit some scenarios to Flynn. I remember asking him what if I found a woman to talk to, or to go on a date with, and she says, what have you been doing the last 17 years of my life? I have to pay the Scientologists $50,000? Or what if I see a doctor or psychologist and he says it looks like I’ve been under some stress, and I tell him what stress I’ve been under, $50,000. Flynn assured me in various ways that the conditions I objected to were judicially unenforceable. He said they “aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.” He also stated, as a legal truth and to be reassuring, “You can’t sign away your constitutional rights.”
Flynn pointed out specific clauses in the contract covering my dismissal of my cross complaint and my release of my claims to date against the Scientologists and said that’s what they were paying me for. They weren’t paying me to be silenced by their unenforceable silence conditions. At one point he also assured me that if anything happened, meaning if the Scientologists continued to fair game me or attempted to judicially enforce these conditions, he would “be there for” me.
I understood what Flynn was saying and the legal terms he was using, and I took them to heart. I agree with Flynn completely, and have always agreed with him that the subject conditions were and are lawfully judicially unenforceable, and concern constitutional rights that cannot be lawfully contracted away. It was, however, crucial to me that Flynn said it. Somewhat naturally therefore, I asked him why not then leave these judicially unenforceable conditions out of the contract. He said the Scientologists insisted on the conditions to give them the space they said they needed to end fair game, to “turn over a new leaf.” That, of course, makes no sense, but I had no success objecting or fighting back, and I was being beaten down.
At one point during my effort to resist, Flynn included in our meeting one of his other settling clients Eddie Walters, who proceeded to yell at me that I was “killing” the settlement that “everyone wanted.” He unloaded on me, giving me no time to respond or defend myself, just screaming over and over that I was killing it for everyone and how terrible I was. I looked to Flynn for understanding and some defense because Walters was being so abusive and his yelling at me so uncalled for and unfair. Flynn didn’t do anything to stop Walters or to indicate there was anything wrong with what he was doing, and I knew that Flynn had enlisted Walters, essentially as a co-agent of Scientology, to break me. And at that moment I was finally broken.
I think throughout the whole meeting after reading the contract, I was in a state of despair, and trapped, but there was a moment I’ve written or spoken about before as a vision, which I think ultimately stunned me into signing. In psychology, it could have been a pseudohallucination, because it wasn’t under my control. But I really have not attempted to determine in psychological literature how such an experience is classified. That’s a bit odd because I’ve recalled and considered the experience many times over these years, and studied psychology materials on all sorts of other topics. I don’t think I’ve ever asked a psychologist, but as I said I haven’t really pursued what to call it.
I met with Dr. Margaret Singer fairly frequently in the years following the settlement, and told her all about the experience. I was not only in willful violation of the Scientologists’ contract, but fulfilling the prediction I’d made to Flynn that I soon could be talking to a psychologist about the stress in my life. I don’t think Dr. Singer ever identified to me in psychological terms, however, what she thought had happened. I wrote about our meetings, including in the immediate post-settlement, when she died in November 2003. 22
I didn’t lose any sense of who I was, because the vision concerned my own future, and I was fully aware of that. I see where Wikipedia says spiritual visions are “generally of a future state.”23 And I’m probably spiritual enough to have a spiritual vision, if that’s what they are. It seemed I was seeing through many years into the future, in a qualitatively different way from how I would see the future if I looked for it now. I can’t ever recall even attempting to see the future in that way, and I think that during the incident I had no choice but to look at what I was seeing. I was alone, cold at times, terribly sad, and year after year the Scientologists and their agents and lawyers hunted and hounded me, and drove me from place to place and from friend to friend. People that I’d think would understand hated, scorned and avoided me everywhere because I’d signed Scientology’s evil document. In the seconds the whole vision probably lasted, I didn’t absorb identifiable events, but rather the extreme length of this compassionless future. Emotionally, it was a very tragic vision, and just as tragically it has been shown to have been very true.
So really, I was about the only person in the world who didn’t want me to sign. The Scientologists concocted the contract and fair gamed Flynn, me and his other clients for years to ultimately get me to sign. Flynn had an outrageous conflict of interest, and wanted me to sign so much he committed malpractice, conspired with the Scientologists, betrayed his friend and client, and got Walters to bludgeon me with all the claimants’ desperation for me to sign. I could not have betrayed either Flynn and his clients, nor the Scientologists. I signed for everybody’s sake but mine, to give everyone the freedom they claimed I could give them by signing, with the foreknowledge that by doing what they all wanted me to I would be persecuted for almost ever.
Even though it came with a monetary settlement of my legal claims, this incident is actually more consciously, albeit more strangely, selfless than the actions Allen Stanfield described, of my reporting up lines to the Miscavige regime’s “Young Turks” about lies Hubbard had told and we Scientologists were telling. 24In reporting Hubbard’s lies, I knew that there was a good chance I was going to be targeted, rather than commended. In the settlement, I’d already been fair gamed for five years, and was right then being fair gamed by the Scientologists with their contract and by my own attorney. I had been given the knowledge in this psychically shocking way that if I signed I was going to be alone and fair gamed far into the future. The selflessness in the settlement was in signing the document that on its face prohibited me from doing a thousand thousand things that it would be impossible for me not to do, and on its face was a license to the Scientologists to fair game me. When I told the truth in the Sea Org in 1981, and even when I told the truth outside, or went to Omar Garrison mid-1982 and got documents to send to Flynn to defend myself, and although each step was scary and I knew what I was doing, I did not have the same precognition that I experienced when confronted with signing Scientology’s contract.
De la Carriere’s assertion that I have “tried to universalize [my] legal problems by arguing that all people in the entire world are either “beneficiaries” or “victims” of Scientology v. Armstrong,” is both wrong, and another example of psychopathic displacement or blame shifting. I have never argued, said or implied that everyone in the world is either a “beneficiary” or “victim” in the Scientology v. Armstrong war or legal proceedings. A “beneficiary” is a person who gains or benefits from something. The beneficiaries in Scientology v. Armstrong obtain the benefits of, inter alia, unlawfully silencing me about my Scientology-related experiences and knowledge; punishing me with liquidated damages penalties, fines and imprisonment for communicating such experiences or knowledge; and then using the unlawful contract and court orders to further fair game me around the world, for example, by accusing me of selling out.
The Scientologists included and identified the beneficiaries in their own contract. I had nothing to do with preparing the incredibly expansive beneficiaries list, or considering that there were going to be beneficiaries to such cruelties in their contract at all. That the beneficiaries the Scientologists included number in the thousands, while I was one person, is another contractual element that is one-sided squared, and consequently transcends unconscionability. The thousands of beneficiaries — around a core of Scientology orgs, corporations, directors, officers, employees, volunteers, agents, representatives and even lawyers – can all, and every one, according to their contract, say whatever they want about me, and I cannot say one word about any of them. Miscavige, Marty, et al. made themselves, including de la Carriere, beneficiaries in 1986. Because of that original overreaching, and because of the beneficiaries’ subsequent years of efforts to have their contract, with its horde of beneficiaries, accepted as lawful and enforced, they remain beneficiaries today.
The Scientologists further identified the beneficiaries in their 1995 injunction that unlawfully judicially enforces the unlawful clauses of their contract:
The Church of Scientology International, its officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
The Church of Scientology of California, its officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
Religious Technology Center, its officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
The Church of Spiritual Technology, its officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
All Scientology and Scientology affiliated Churches, organizations and entities, and their officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
Author Services, Inc., its officers, directors, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, successors, assigns and legal counsel;
The Estate of L. Ron Hubbard, its executor, beneficiaries, heirs, representatives, and legal counsel; and/or Mary Sue Hubbard. 25
The identified people the Scientologists’ unlawful injunction specifically enjoins are:
Gerry Armstrong, his agents, employees, and persons acting in concert or conspiracy with him who directly or indirectly do any of the following activities:
1. Assist people with claims against any of the benficaries; beneficiaries, heirs, representatives, and legal counsel; and/or Mary Sue Hubbard; (the “beneficiaries”);
2. Assist people defending against any of the beneficiaries;
3. Assist anyone litigating adversely to the beneficiaries;
4. Facilitate the creation of any work of any kind that discusses, refers to or mentions Scientology or any of the beneficiaries;
5. Discuss Scientology or any of the beneficiaries with anyone not a member of Gerry Armstrong’s immediate family or his attorney.
I have no agents or employees, and I don’t conspire with anyone. There are people around the world who do act in concert with me in knowing violation of the Scientologists’ injunction, and these people do form a class of victims of the Scientology beneficiaries. I do not, however, argue that the in-concert class plus the beneficiaries adds up to all the people in the world. Potentially, all people in the entire world, as de la Carriere says, could act in concert with me by doing any of the unlawfully prohibited activities, but that is a long way from happening, and probably will never happen. I think that the Scientologists’ war on me can be peacefully and easily ended well before that happens.
The Scientologists do victimize wogs generally and in different ways with their contract and injunction, but I don’t think de la Carriere was referring to that kind of victimization. Virtually everything the Scientologists have done in their organized actions to obstruct or subvert justice anywhere victimizes everyone. Scientologists victimize all the people in the entire world every time they lie about Scientology or founder Hubbard, and every time they even consider wogs wogs or try to make them Scientologists. I also believe that everyone in the world would benefit from having the Scientologists terminate their unlawful injunction and rip up their unlawful contract. But I don’t believe de la Carriere was thinking about people Scientologists victimize generally and in so many ways around the world, when she claimed that I’ve tried to universalize my legal problems by arguing that all people are either “beneficiaries” or “victims” of Scientology v. Armstrong.
The Scientologists made my legal situation with them as universal as it is. I have necessarily and sensibly used the universalness they manufactured to show they manufactured it, to show how unconscionable it is, and to get others to act in concert with me against this evil. The Scientologists made literally thousands of people and entities around the world beneficiaries in their contract and injunction. The Scientologists manufactured spatial universalness by making their contract and injunction applicable anywhere and everywhere in the world. There was not and is not one spot in all space where I could communicate or help people freely. The Scientologists also established no minimum as to what constituted a violation of their contract and injunction. So if I, or someone acting in concert with me somewhere in the universe, said, for example, “Scientology is a monstrous, psychopathic conspiracy against basic human rights,” which is, let’s say, my experience and knowledge, or simply, “Scientology is monstrous,” that’s $50,000, a fine and jail.
There’s another element of universalness that is so bizarre it rarely has been discussed; and Scientology hasn’t attempted to enforce it judicially because I was providing them with all the direct contract violations with my own words that they needed to prosecute and destroy me, if they could find, as they did, a willing judge. In addition to binding me to strict confidentiality and silence with respect to my experiences with Scientology and the beneficiaries, the Scientologists’ contract prohibits me from “discuss[ing] with others, concerning their experiences with the Church of Scientology, or concerning their personal or indirectly acquired knowledge or information concerning the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard or any of the organizations, individuals and entities” that comprise the beneficiaries. (Para. 7D) In other words, people could not communicate to me their own experiences with Scientology, or their own knowledge. I would have to flee from any conversation where such experiences or knowledge start being discussed.
The Scientologists also established the conditions’ temporal universalness, or eternity. They last forever. The contractual conditions the Scientologists conjured up will have been “in effect” twenty-five years on December 6, and their injunctive conditions will have been “in effect” sixteen years on October 17. As the Scientologists’ documents and their efforts to enforce them and get them accepted as lawfully enforceable proceed through time, they generate ever more beneficiaries. The beneficiaries’ growth is in direct proportion to Scientology’s growth. Since the Scientologists aver that Scientology has been the world’s fastest growing religion each of the past twenty-five years, and beyond, it’s reasonable to project that the Scientology v. Armstrong beneficiaries comprise the world’s fastest growing class of beneficiaries to any such unconscionable contract. Through time as well, as could have been prophesied, I have had ever more experiences and acquired ever more knowledge to discuss that the conditions prohibit me from discussing. Similarly, the experiences and knowledge of people whose experiences and knowledge I am prohibited from discussing have been increasing. The universalness is expanding, and the Scientologists blame me for it.
The Scientologists created a universal class of victims by making the unlawful conditions apply to persons acting in concert with me, and making the prohibited activities things that every person with a conscience should and can easily do. This class already includes many persons in several countries, and has the potential, as I said, to include everyone in the world. See, for example this brief gathering of people acting in concert with me at that time in Vancouver, BC, which is just one beautiful city with a couple of million people in its metropolitan area. Countries all over the world have cities like that.
As can be easily be computed, the persons acting in concert with me also increase through time, and by an increasing number of means or processes. Once a person has acted in concert with me, I’m not sure there’s any going back. Through time, naturally, the expanding number of persons acting in concert with me also acquire ever more experiences and knowledge to discuss in violation of the growing beneficiaries’ unlawful and obscene conditions.
The Scientologists intended that in addition to human beings as “persons” being prohibited from acting in concert with me, groups, businesses, corporations or other entities that might act as persons would also be prohibited. The Scientologists demonstrated their intent in, for example, their 2002 lawsuit where they sued the Lisa McPherson Trust, as well its founder Bob Minton, for acting in concert with me.26
There are groups of different forms that act in concert with me, and, of course, potentially all groups or entities of virtually any form can do so. The Russian Orthodox Church, which represents and embodies about one hundred fifty million people, has acted in concert with me, by inviting and flying me to Russia to share my experiences and knowledge at various conferences or gatherings, by publishing my words, and even by encouraging me with its leaders and members’ understanding and kindness. It’s truly miraculous. Blaming the victim for the universalness of the beneficiaries who benefit from his persecution, and for the universalness of the contract’s applicability, when these are factors or conditions the Scientologists postulated and imposed, is totally standard Scientolopathic tech.
Another example of Scientolopathy is de la Carriere’s charge that my “long and protracted legal war with the Cult” began when I “reneged” on my settlement with the CoS. My “settlement,” which wasn’t a settlement, was with the myriad Scientology beneficiaries, including de la Carriere. The Scientologists made all the beneficiaries “parties” to the settlement contract. “Renege,” of course, means “To fail to carry out a promise or commitment.” In reality, it is untrue that I failed to carry out my commitments called for by the contract. I dismissed my lawsuit against the Scientologists and released them from all claims to date. I did not renege. It is true that I did not carry out certain contractual conditions, but these are both impossible and unlawful conditions.
It is also true that psychopaths love to torment and shatter their victims with impossible and unlawful conditions. If the psychopaths have enough money to even get an actual judge to rule that the conditions were possible, lawful and had to be obeyed, and join them in the torment and the shattering, that’s a big win. Impossible and unlawful conditions are not rendered possible and lawful by any judge’s order, however, and the subject conditions in the Scientology v. Armstrong contract remain impossible and unlawful. The orders enforcing the impossible and unlawful conditions are also impossible and unlawful. Unlawful orders are not lawful orders and therefore do not need to be obeyed. Impossible orders cannot be obeyed. Paragraph 16 of the Scientologists’ contract states: “In the event any provision hereof be unenforceable, such provision shall not affect the enforceability of any other provision hereof.” The subject conditions are lawfully unenforceable because they are impossible and unlawful. No matter what the Scientologists insisted I sign, I never promised to do the impossible, so I didn’t renege on it. I also didn’t commit to carrying out the Scientologists’ unlawful and psychopathic conditions, intentions or orders.
Whenever my legal war with Scientology and the Scientologists began, it was not when I did whatever de la Carriere is calling reneging on the settlement. As I’ve stated, the subject prohibitions were impossible to comply with at all times, and I doubtlessly violated them a number of times within the first twenty-four hours after the settlement. It is as impossible for me to not discuss my Scientology-related experiences and knowledge in my world as it would be for a prisoner to not discuss his prison-related experiences in his world. And this is being demanded of the prisoner while a gang of prison psychopaths in league with the guards can say and do whatever they want about him. It is as impossible for me to not discuss my Scientology- and beneficiary-related experiences or knowledge, as for the Scientologists to not discuss their Scientology- or beneficiary-related experiences or knowledge.
The Scientologists came up with and insisted on their impossible conditions, and thus began these conditions’ necessary and completely foreseeable violations, and the long legal and social effort to have these conditions and all such conditions recognized as impossible and ruled unlawful. And thus began too the post-settlement phase of the Scientologists’ long and protracted legal war with me. To the always blame-shifting Scientolopaths, however, their own invention of and insistence on their own impossible and unlawful contractual conditions is not the first strike. By calling my necessary response – the “reneging” – the first strike, the Scientologists are able to justify and launch their second strike – more litigation fair game and black PR – plus blame me for them having to do it to me. The Scientolopaths have decades of my history from which to select incidents for blaming me for their need to fair game me, including for blaming me for beginning their long and protracted legal war with me.
In thinking just now about when this war actually began, I think it comes down to when I accepted that the Scientologists were at war with me. From a theological perspective, and even a societal perspective, Hubbard started his War on Wogs decades before, and all the battles with wogs like me were but skirmishes in that war. A reasonable starting point would be when he declared in his 1946 Admissions that “Men are my slaves.” Hubbard carried his war to me with his first lie that reached me in his volleys of lies. His lies, psychopathy, false promises and his operating Scientolopaths in 1969 would turn me into a Scientologist, and turn me against my own people or race — Homo sapiens or wogs. I did not know at that time, however, that Hubbard and his Scientologists were waging a war on us, and certainly didn’t oppose them in any significant way. Although the Scientologists first sued me in August 1982, evidence adduced at trial of that suit in 1984 included my being lured into the cult in 1969.
Evidence adduced at trial concerning Hubbard’s pathological lying and his “egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile” stretched back to his childhood. Hubbard’s dramatization of these characteristics, and getting others to dramatize them, would, of course, manufacture thousands of victims, and launch thousands of legal claims against him and his cult. Because both he and his Scientolopaths use wog law to harass and ruin their perceived opponents, they launched thousands more offensive lawsuits and made thousands of legal charges throughout their War on Wogs. During my years as a Scientologist I contributed my time, mind, body and abilities to the war.
If incidents are helpful, I think it began to dawn on me that I might be going to the wogs, when in November 1981 Norman Starkey came into my Hubbard Archive area and we had a very alarming conversation about Ron-the-Nuclear-Physicist. I’ve spoken or written about this encounter many times, for example, in a June 2004 picket report when Vancouver Scientologist Mel Hanlan reminded me of it. 27
We got onto Ron the Nuclear Physicist 28 and Mel said that it was other people calling Hubbard a nuclear physicist, not himself. This is funny because it is the universal Scientology response to the challenge to Hubbard’s lie. It was what Norman Starkey said to me back in November 1981 when I mentioned then that Hubbard’s claim of being a nuclear physicist is false. I grabbed a very beautiful volume of Hubbard’s handwritten Scientology 88 and showed Norman where Hubbard wrote, clearly about himself: “At first none thought a nuclear physicist had any business in the field of the mind.” Norman’s face BTs went niacinic, he blew up, blew my office, and ordered me sec checked, and the rest of that history is history. Again Mel demanded that I show him this document right there, and I said that obviously I couldn’t but that I would web the documentation for him to see. 29
From his position then on “Special Project,” Starkey wrote to HCO at CMO Int to have me sec checked. I got called to Gilman and met with Cirrus Slevin, the then “CMO Int HCO Cope Officer.” On November 25, 1981, I wrote Slevin a report 30 which was entered into evidence at my 1984 trial, and Judge Breckenridge quoted in his judgment:
Less than three weeks before Defendant Armstrong left Scientology, he wrote a letter to Cirrus Slevin on November 25, 1981, in which it is clear that his intentions in airing the inaccuracies, falsehoods, and frauds regarding Hubbard were done in good faith. In his letter he stated as follows:
“If we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact or truth, it doesn’t matter what slant we give them, if disproved the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan. This is what I’m trying to prevent and what I’ve been working on the past year and a half.
. . .
“and that is why I said to Norman that it is up to us to insure that everything which goes out about LRH is one hundred percent accurate. That is not to say that opinions can’t be voiced, they can. And they can contain all the hype you want. But they should not be construed as facts. And anything stated as a fact should be documentable.“we are in a period when ‘investigative reporting’ is popular, and when there is relatively easy access to documentation on a person. We can’t delude ourselves I believe, if we want to gain public acceptance and cause some betterment in society, that we can get away with statements, the validity of which we don’t know.
“The real disservice to LRH, and the ultimate make-wrong is to go on assuming that everything he’s ever written or said is one hundred percent accurate and publish it as such without verifying it. I’m talking here about biographical or non-technical writings. This only leads, should any of his statements turn out to be inaccurate, to a make-wrong of him, and consequently his technology.
“That’s what I’m trying to remedy and prevent. . . .
“To say that LRH is not capable of hype, errors or lies is certanly [sic] not granting him much of a beingness. To continue on with the line that he has never erred nor lied is counterproductive. It is an unreal attitude and too far removed from both the reality and people in general that it would widen public unacceptance. . . .
“. . . That is why I feel the falsities must be corrected, and why we must verify our facts and present them in a favorable light.”The remainder of the letter contains examples of facts about Hubbard which Defendant Armstrong found to be wholly untrue or inaccurate and which were represented as true by the Hubbards and the Scientology Organization.
By the time I returned from Gilman to LA, to my wife, to the Garrisons, and to the Hubbard Archive, I knew that the Special Project executives – the newly forming Miscavige regime –were not going to change course for me and were not going to tolerate me on my course. I also knew that I could not tolerate the lying and hypocrisy and the omnipresent threat any longer. I had also by then had to confront the truth that Scientology did not work other than to produce liars and victims. Jocelyn and I talked it over and decided to leave and on December 12 walked out the door. As I’ve said before, by the time I left, I was sufficiently opposed to Scientolopathy and its practicing Scientolopaths that should they have tried to prevent me from leaving I would have fought them to the death. I say this because, given my clear opposition and my experiences and knowledge, if they had detained me and locked me up, they would have killed me as consciencelessly as they would kill Lisa McPherson.
Although I knew that at the moment they learned I’d left, the people running Scientology would consider me a traitor and an enemy, I still retained at least a hope that they would leave me alone and not declare war on me. They did declare war, of course, by sending spies against me covertly and issuing their SP declares overtly. I believe, however, that the die was cast in the Scientologists’ “game” that is the long protracted Scientology v. Armstrong legal war when Norman Starkey stormed into the Hubbard Archive area and accosted me about what I’d been writing about Hubbard and saying and giving to Omar Garrison. Standing up to Starkey and not being bullied about Hubbard being source of his own lies, such as being a nuclear physicist, was my first effort to stand up on behalf of the people we Scientologists had been warring on for so many years. Starkey’s threatening attack was something immediate to stand up to, and the standing up has manifested in, among other things, the Scientologists’ long legal war on me. This legal war did not end with the 1986 settlement, so I could not have begun, or even rebegun, the war by “reneging,” which didn’t happen, or any by other post-settlement actions.
De la Carriere’s assertion that Rathbun and Rinder, “having never taken a big payday” from the Scientologists “are free and say and do whatever they want,” whereas I am unfree and blameworthy for being bound by the Scientologists’ contract, is more psychopath’s logic. Rathbun and Rinder were active participants in years of pre-settlement fair game against me and against my attorney and his other clients. Rathbun and Rinder made themselves beneficiaries in the Scientologists’ contract that unlawfully suppresses my basic human rights, and they are still beneficiaries. They have said not a word to correct, invalidate, criticize or even acknowledge their contract and their efforts to enforce their contract, nor a word to correct, acknowledge, etc., any of the other fair game and black PR they perpetrated over many years against me.
At considerable cost, I have fought for and attained the very freedoms that the Scientologists sought with their contract and enforcement efforts to unlawfully strip from me. It is true that there exist grim and ongoing judicial injustices in the Scientology v. Armstrong war, and these injustices must be remedied. But I have kept communicating despite the many and continuing judicial injustices. Since the settlement, I have testified another twenty-five or more days, in Scientology related legal proceedings. Caroline and I bridged an Internet gap during Scientology’s copyright litigation years, and did our part to expand and maintain the fair use envelope during that effort. I have publicly and privately communicated my experiences with and knowledge of Hubbard, Scientology and the beneficiaries to anyone in any circumstance anywhere who wanted to hear. Our web sites have been valuable resources, used and credited by many people including academics, writers and mental health professionals, looking for well documented facts and truth about Hubbard and Scientology.
I do not disagree that Rathbun and Rinder are indeed free to tell the truth about Hubbard and Scientology, and the Scientology v. Armstrong war. That they do not tell the truth about these very important subjects is pretty willful and cruel, and I do disagree with their choice and actions to not tell the truth. Their refusal to tell the truth is not exceptional, of course, because no Scientologists tell the truth about these subjects. I do understand the Damascus Road kind of shock faced by Scientologists when considering telling that truth. I don’t make it that way.
De la Carriere has stated on OCMB that she will not engage in debates about her personal and religious beliefs and her personal experiences with Hubbard. I will and do discuss beliefs, experiences and knowledge, including personal or religious beliefs and personal experiences with Hubbard. I do this despite the unlawful and threatening efforts by the Scientologists to prevent me from doing this. She calls the long Scientology v. Armstrong war my “self-created legal Hell” because it excuses Rathbun and Rinder’s refusal to help correct the ongoing injustices. If she acknowledged that the Scientologists created my legal hell, Rathbun and Rinder’s refusal to help correct it would not sound so laudable. In fact, the Scientologists’ refusal — Indies and even Innies — to help correct the injustices they manufactured and in which they are beneficiaries, is clear evidence of the pervasiveness and domination of Scientolopathy among them.
The idea de la Carriere communicates, that I was “bribed,” which other Rathbun supporters repeat, is a different action or crime from “reneging” on the settlement. The bribe in this scenario cannot be the money Scientology paid me to dismiss my lawsuit and settle my claims. Otherwise, all settlements of all claims would be bribes, which they aren’t. Therefore the “bribe” must be money that Scientology paid me for some corrupt purpose. There, of course, was no such bribe, and these Scientologists are libeling me. The Scientologists extorted my signature, they didn’t bribe me. But even if the Scientologists had bribed me, it was they who did the bribing, and de la Carriere was a beneficiary of that crime.
The truth is that if the Scientologists had simply and honorably settled my lawsuit and claims for the amount I had agreed to with Flynn, and not tried to grab what it was unlawful grab, or turn the settlement into a license to hunt me, and others, the Scientologists would have gotten a great deal. As I said, trial of my lawsuit was set just ahead. Judge Breckenridge, who had survived Scientology’s disqualification efforts, would preside. Hubbard’s documents in the Court Clerk’s office would be used at trial. Just a few months earlier, also in LA Superior Court, a jury had awarded Lawrence Wollersheim thirty million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages against the same Scientology defendants. The fair game against me was no less egregious than what the Scientologists did to Lawrence.
Whatever the Scientologists paid me through Flynn, or paid him to settle all his clients’ claims, it was nothing for the Scientologists. Among themselves they probably even called these sums chump change. They had very likely already paid six times that amount in fees and costs to pursue and attack me. They got a good deal. I didn’t sell out by giving away my extremely valuable claims for nothing, but I did give the Scientologists a generous good deal.
The following are a few more comments that are instructive in the thread on Rathbun’s blog that got into the sell-out issue. At the end I will address one more point.
“The Count” wrote on August 11, 2011 at 6:00 am:
That’s right Karen. There is a huge difference. Gerry Armstrong (and Caroline Letkeman) shoot at the wrong target. They attack LRH, the tech and Scientology as a generality. From what I’ve seen, I think they are both truly SP’s. Marty and Mike on the other hand are shooting at the CORRECT target, which is David Miscavige. They both know that the tech works, whereas Gerry and Caroline don’t.
“RJ” wrote on August 11, 2011 at 8:58 am:
+1
Karen.
Comparing Marty or Mike to Gerry and his sock puppet Caroline who spend most of their time trying to invalidate the subject and character assassinate the Ol’man is an invidious connection in my opinion even though Allan may think otherwise.
“Fellow Traveller” wrote on August 11, 2011 at 12:47 pm, quoting Karen about her respect for Rathbun and Mike Rinder for not being “bribed” like me.
I respect that.
So do I. Immensely.
Bruce Pratt
“Barney Rubble” wrote on August 11, 2011 at 3:07 pm:
Karen,
So true. And in final thought, in a youtube video of Gerry Armstrong I saw (shot in Vancouver with Anon’s) a few years ago, Mr. Armstrong looked like he was a meth victim. When one takes bribe $ from the DM cult one will get very bad kharma.
I might have actually seen methamphetamine once in my long ago youth. I might even have seen someone mainline it, but didn’t know what he was shooting up. I’ve never touched it or had any desire to do anything about it. I don’t know anyone that I know to be a meth victim, although a Google Images search for “meth victim” made it clear what Rubble had in mind. 31 The way ironies work, I now see I’d stumbled onto “J. Swift” in 2009 declaring meth makers, of all the planet’s humanoids, “the scum of the earth.” Rubble has his item.
It is true that I’m lean, and I suppose that leanness is a possible condition for some meth victims. Really good runners, except for the shortest distance sprinters, are frankly all lean. I’m a runner, and black PRing good lean runners about looking like meth victims sounds like the thought and work of either the absolute paragon of physical health and perfection, or a psychopath who might not really be in the best of health at all. Rubble throws his crap from in hiding, of course, so his physical form can’t be examined for its flawlessness. Rathbun knows it’s crap and lets it stick. It helps fulfill his postulate that because I sold out – to him and his fellow Scientologists – I’m indelibly tainted on a dwindling spiral in a dark, dank dungeon and mad at myself. One would expect that an indelibly tainted guy on a dwindling spiral in a dark, dank dungeon and mad at himself could look like a meth victim.
People have written me about my health, and I don’t talk about it much, so this will be an opportunity to tell those concerned people something, in addition to responding to the black PR that I look like a meth victim. The truth is that, given my God-given physical form, and given the social and psychological damage the Scientologists have inflicted and tried to inflict over four decades, I have had a truly blessed physical existence throughout that period.
I’ll be sixty-five next month. I’m aware that bodies are fragile, and are always one virus, one bacterium, a nerve agent, accident or assault away from collapse or death. But I’m also aware that bodies are paradoxically tougher than they often appear, and they can be made tougher yet. According to my mom, I was born with rickets, and nothing was done to correct the condition in my childhood. I have always been relatively slight, and of relatively average height, although I never thought of myself as diminutive until the LA Times said I was, and didn’t think I was tiny until American Lawyer said it. During my life, average heights in Canada and the US have increased measurably, while my height has not, so I’m relatively less tall. In any case, I was spared short man syndrome growing up, and didn’t catch it even as average heights grew up around me.
In a sense I always had a gift for running, even though the rickets and other genetic anomalies didn’t give me a great running structure. I didn’t take up running, however, as a somewhat serious or disciplined activity until sometime in 1987, after the “settlement,” when I was living in the Berkeley-Oakland hills. Before that, living in Boston, I’d run around down town on office errands and stuff, but had been too freaked out and wary to think about running for its own sake. And I’d never connected with runners in that great running city.
So I started to run a few miles now and then in the East Bay hills, then ran more consistently, got some encouragement from some athlete friends, and did a few road races. I went through the basic injuries and pains that people go through when they begin to consciously transform their bodies to get better performance out of them. My feet actually spread out a shoe size and a half. But I did attain that better performance, and picked up some training, racing and physiology lore in the process. I also started to do other things to increase fitness, which developed into a short routine of asanas that I could do almost anywhere, and easily in front of the TV.
I’ve never attended a yoga class or instruction, and never looked at whatever yogic stretching I did as a belief or religion any more than I look at running, or for that matter picking up trash, as a belief or religion. All three are physical activities and disciplines with physical results. While performing all three, God is equally present and knowable. There is no denying that it is easier to be motionless and silent while in a pose, than while running or picking up trash. And if a person believes that motionlessness or silence is necessary to knowing God’s presence, they very well could use an asana for that purpose. They could also use the sofa or recliner pose. God’s presence, happily, is knowable everywhere no matter what we’re doing. And He’s happy because disciplined running makes you fast and strong; disciplined stretching makes you flexible and strong; and picking up trash makes you lucky and strong.
I found I had a particular aptitude for trail running, which I probably picked up with all the extreme broken field running I did in cork boots on BC west coast high lead logging operations before I got into Scientology. Working on the rigging, as they call it, was hard physically and at times dangerous work, and I was even at moments foolhardy, but it was good for my latter day footwork. Running around in the slash instilled in me the “certainty” that if I leapt I would land on something. Trails, of course, take a runner out into nature and even wilderness, my hair grew long, and I became a sort of diminutive mountain man, while still a bit rickety.
The first group of any kind I ran with were the “Assassins,” who seemed to materialize at some spot and some time of day at Lake Merritt in Oakland. There’s a five K path around the lake I loved to run as a change of pace, because it was flat and fast and different from the hills, and covered with beautiful runners. Sometimes I’d meet up with the Assassins and hang out with them a bit, do a lap or two of the lake, and occasionally run with them out onto the city streets. I’ll write more about running with the Assassins some day. I moved from the East Bay to Marin County in early 1990, kept running in a new set of hills, got a bit closer to the running scene, and hooked up with the Tamalpa Runners. I did weekend runs with the Tamalpans, learned some of their trails, scored points for the team at a race or two, and drank beer with them afterward. 32
From 1991 through 1995, and a bit in 1996, I worked for attorney Ford Greene in San Anselmo, which had its stressful times. The Scientologists sued me three more times during that period, forced me into bankruptcy, and then sued me in the Bankruptcy Court to prevent me from discharging the unlawful liquidated damages judgment they obtained. The Scientologists concocted ways to sue my friends, and to threaten others, to drive wedges between us and prevent them from helping or supporting me. The running got me away from it all at least physically, and trail running made me think only of my next couple of foot plants, or the next environmental danger or my physiological condition or needs. The resulting high level of physical fitness, I think, has been very important to my survival against the Scientologists in their long war on me in the legal, public relations, social, intellectual and spiritual realms.
I’ve never trained long or painfully enough to make it into the elite class in any age group I’ve passed through, and it seems unlikely that this will ever happen. I’ve been locally competitive, and had some memorable results. But all the running has been memorable to me. I’ve run road races including a bunch of marathons in wonderful cities, and I’ve run trail races in some of the most beautiful mountains and hills. I’ve run alone and with packs, picked up tons of trash on training runs, and made it into Runner’s World. 33
My final few months in San Anselmo, and in the US, were particularly nerve-racking, and my running fell off radically. In January 1997, as I’ve described before, I discovered several pages of the Scientologists’ black PR on me filed with the IRS to get their 1993 IRS tax exemption. To anyone with a clue, that grant of tax exemption and “religious status” signaled that the US Federal Government had sold out. The US had ended whatever concern it had for the Scientologists’ victims, and by 1997 I was beginning to see indicators and evidence of the US colluding with the victimizers. The Scientologists had obtained their injunction against me in 1995, and, although it was on appeal, they were threatening me with enforcement. In late January 1997, Grady Ward served me with a subpoena for production of documents in his US District Court copyright infringement case. One of the Scientologists’ most conscienceless attorneys then threatened me with the injunction if I complied with the subpoena. 34
When I arrived in BC, I didn’t run formally or with any group, but still stayed in reasonable shape running by myself occasionally around town or wherever I was. I returned to the US later that year, intending to live in Nevada, and actually ran with the Silver State Striders in Reno. But the Nevada plan was a fiasco I’ll write about some day, and I ended up back in BC. I met Caroline in October 2001, and we developed a running/walking and stretching program that worked for us. The Scientologists issued an SP declare on Caroline, sent a surveillance team to BC in early 2002, and impelled us to leave Canada and to go to Germany.
We ran and walked as possible during our German period, and did our stretches once in a while, but generally we hid out, building the Scientology v. Armstrong and Suppressive Person Defense League web sites. The Scientologists tracked us down , black PRed us across the country, freaked us out, and freaked out the people who cared for us. We had our good and bad times and kept on. The Scientologists filed Armstrong VII, which I defended in Germany as well as possible. I traveled and spoke as called upon in different places in Germany and even made a winter trip to Russia. Caroline started posting to OCMB, and I’d been posting for years to alt.religion.scientology, and we acted in wonderful concert together.
When we got back to Canada in early 2004, we didn’t have wheels so did a lot of running and walking. It’s clear that I’m the runner in the family, but I know how to walk too, and Caroline and I shared our ante-television asanas. We had a pretty good idea there were ops close to us during that couple of years. The Scientologists got something diabolical happening again in the California Court of Appeal. We were living on less than a shoestring, and sometimes as sad as fado. But we were also as happy as fado, and carrying on.
We brought carolineletkeman.org online in June 2004, and, thanks to Thomas Gandow, Dialog Center Berlin and the Germans, we’ve kept all our sites accessible and expanding. We’ve produced a lot of research and reasoned, well-documented writing, and made a legally usable record. We have not been completely abandoned. We have wonderful friends who act in concert with us and know what they’re doing. Although what we were experiencing was the future I’d seen where the Scientologists still hunted me relentlessly, with their contract and court orders still sticking out of their overcoat pockets, I was not alone, we were not alone, it was not totally cold, and not compassionless.
In 2006, a Chilliwack friend talked me back onto the trails, after a nine-year absence. There’s a bunch of runners, mostly Vedder Running Club 35 members who meet Saturday mornings to run the mountain trails that ring Cultus Lake, and that would become my standard weekend routine as well for the next few years. They get together for other trail runs and races all around the BC lower mainland, and also run the roads around the Wack. They put on a race every fall they call “Around the Lake Give ‘r Take 30,” which I won in the sixty+ division. These superb souls made me an even better trail runner than I had been back in California.
I bring up all this running stuff because of Barney Rubble’s claim that in a video of me shot a few years ago in Vancouver with Vanonymous, I looked like a meth addict. I’ve never looked like a meth addict in any video I’ve seen, so I don’t know what video, if any, Rubble is referring to. 36 Because of the monthly protests in Vancouver, however, I have definitely appeared in some videos.
Also because of the Anonymous protests I met this Vancouver gentleman who became the best of friends, and who does the Grouse Grind. 37 I am a fast climber for my age, and had wanted to do the Grind ever since I’d returned to Canada, so I stayed in the city after a Saturday protest, and then we did the Grind Sunday morning. Through the summer months, I think we did it three times the Sunday following the protests. I learned the ropes a bit, then ran the Grouse Grind Race in the early fall, and won the sixty+ division. Meth victims don’t do that. Thanks Anonymous, and thanks friend.
In September 2009 I included a more or less full body photo of me from that same time period in a letter I wrote to Rathbun 38 about seeking understand for wogs. For the Scientologists, no matter what they tell you, I’m wearing running shorts under my feet. I would have been a couple of months away from sixty-three in that photo.
Just one more physical fact of note. Although I am a good uphill runner, I’m actually a relatively better downhill runner. I was probably meant to be a middle distance rather than a long distance runner, so I have a naturally quick leg turnover. Sometimes it’s been possible on downhills to achieve another level of speed and sensation for different lengths of time that approximates flying. I have white man’s disease, so I can’t jump or fly high or long without landing. But at times on certain downhill trails I could land so fast I couldn’t become aware of any landing. It was possibly the immediate life-or-death need to land fast that made the fast landings possible. I think physics would show that the quicker the landing was the lighter it was, so that a landing of no time would have no weight. For a short or long period of time, I could experience dropping or flying in a semi-controlled experiment. I’m sure that I was actually a faster runner in my youth, but I didn’t have the understanding I have now to love or even pursue the experience. Despite how it sounds, extreme downhilling really does use a lot of energy, and is not safe. I might never do it again, but I can. And meth victims can’t.
As I said, I’ve been blessed in my physical health, and I’ve been blessed too in what I’ve experienced physiologically, in the runners and walkers I’ve run into, and wherever I’ve run or been. I get up early and do physical work as an exercise. I’ve stayed lean but have more or less maintained my muscle mass. I have faulty eye-hand coordination, but my eye-foot coordination is functional. I’ve had a few broken bones, sprains, and despite being clear have had colds, flus, somatics, emotions below 2.0, plus all the symptoms of uncontrolled stress. Over the past couple of years, I’ve had increasing incidents of war-triggered cardiac arrhythmias, of increasing duration and severity, which have also been troubling. My doctor said my runner’s heart saved me so far. I have a fairly low resting heart rate, and because of running uphills, and downhills, also have a fairly high maximum rate. So my heart, so far, has been able to take the pounding the war can accelerate it to. Both ironically and as expected, communicating about the threat, the war and its source — the very thing that I’m prohibited from doing — eliminates or reduces the arrhythmias. I’m daily surprised that I’ve lived this long or made it this far, and daily grateful as well. How could I possibly be mad at myself as Rathbun postulates?
I don’t live in no stinking dark, dank dungeon. And I’m not on the dwindling spiral he postulates me on. I’m indelibly tainted with humanity. That I have not been destroyed physically, or mentally, and that I do not succumb to the Scientologists’ postulates and efforts to spiral, taint or imprison me, does not mean that I am not the victim of terrible ongoing injustices and persecution perpetrated by psychopaths. What the Scientologists are doing is unconscionable and unlawful whether I look like a meth victim or look just like I do.
Notes
- See http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/time-behar.html ↩
- http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/a1/appeal/ltr-clerk-1991-02-27.html ↩
- “History of Scientology Criticism: Who is Gerry Armstrong?”: http://alanzosblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/history-of-scientology-criticism-who-is.html ↩
- Why Mike and Marty won’t tell the truth: http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/266 ↩
- See Caroline’s letter to DM of June 6, 2003. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/letkeman-ltr-miscavige-2003-06-06.html ↩
- From OCMB: http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=36389 ↩
- Declaration of Mark Rathbun: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/a1/appeal/decl-rathbun-1991-08-13.html ↩
- OCMB post about Roadrunner: http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18972&p=397222&hilit=Roadrunner#p397222 ↩
- ESMB thread http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?24472-Question-for-Veda/page9 ↩
- Saint Hill Special Briefing Course Lecture of 1 November 1962: The Missed Missed Withhold. ↩
- LA Superior Court, Case No. C 420153: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/2173.php ↩
- Declaration of 15 March 1990: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/2149.php ↩
- See, e.g., http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/4790 ↩
- See the few documents I’ve webbed on Flynn’s fair gaming. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/scientology-fair-games-flynn.html ↩
- See, e.g., http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/ ↩
- 1023 Submissions: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/irs/index.html ↩
- Black’s Definition of Unconscionability: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/3641 ↩
- Excerpt of Proceedings: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/763.php ↩
- See, e.g., my online legal archive: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/category/legal ↩
- For a more detailed analysis of the relevant contractual clauses and their judicial enforceability, see my 2004 report to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a8/3376.php ↩
- See, the Scientology v. Armstrong contract, para. 3. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/625.php ↩
- Thanks Dr. Singer: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/margaret.html ↩
- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_%28spirituality%29 ↩
- Alanzo’s blog entry: http://alanzosblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/history-of-scientology-criticism-who-is.html ↩
- Injunction: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/a4/injunction-csi-v-armstrong.html ↩
- Armstrong 7 Complaint: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a7/3388.php ↩
- June 2004 picket report: http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=917&Itemid=92 ↩
- Ron the Nuclear Physicist: http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=152&Itemid=9 ↩
- Scientology 88 (excerpt): http://www.carolineletkeman.org/sp/images/stories/claims/book-scn-88.pdf ↩
- Report to Cirrus Sleven:
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/historical/armstrong-ltr-cirrus-1981-11-25.html ↩ - Google image search>meth victim: http://tiny.cc/2wp3l ↩
- Tamalparunners: http://www.tamalparunners.org/ ↩
- Runner’s World: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/media/rat/runners-world-1995-02.html ↩
- See, e.g., my declaration of December 27, 1997 in opposition to the Scientologists’ motion to dismiss my appeal from the Marin Superior Court injunction, particularly paras. 8-11, 29-33. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a4/3197.php ↩
- Vedder Running Club: http://www.vedderrunningclub.ca/ ↩
- Maybe this one from August 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7MAuqW3edg ↩
- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grouse_Mountain#Grouse_Grind ↩
- Letter to Rathbun: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/4499 ↩