Tom Cruise and Scientology: While Big Names Like Tom Cruise and John Travolta Prescribe to Scientology, It's Just One of the Modalities of Transformation Available ... And Certainly Note the Most Rapid!
by James Arthur Ray
July 6, 2005
Anytime a well-known name gets involved with a spiritual approach, whether it is Madonna and Kabbalah (Qabalah), John Travolta and Tom Cruise with Scientology, or any other "name," it creates buzz. But buzz alone doesn't guarantee that something is the most effective approach.
Scientology contends that there are unresolved issues in your unconscious mind termed "engrams." These engrams are created typically during times of high stress or even inherited from a past life. Unresolved emotional issues must be resolved according to Ron Hubbard's (the founder of Scientology) philosophy by releasing all charge from them. Sound familiar?
This is obviously not a new, and certainly not a unique, concept. All esoteric traditions as well as indigenous shamanism contend that these negative issues outside of your conscious awareness must be released for you to step into your full capability and power. In fact, many esoteric and mystery schools suggest that a minimum of 51% of these issues must be resolved for you to actualize your full potential.
The difficulty with Scientology (with which I've had experience) is that, in my opinion, it's too similar to traditional psychotherapy. Now don't get me wrong... traditional psychotherapy works (unless you're speaking of a medicated approach), but again, in my experience it is not the most efficient. In other words, it takes large amounts of time, personal agony and money.
The agonizing process I'm speaking of is the practice of reliving the issues over and over again until they are drained of their emotional charge. Again this works, but from personal experience, it's not fun, comfortable or exciting to say the least. And it takes an inordinate amount of time and money! I remember leaving my Scientology auditing sessions being totally exhausted! (As well as much lighter in my wallet with many more multiples of sessions to go.)
My studies and experiences have taken me through about every change modality that exists, and I can say with confidence that they all work. That being said, there are some that are more elegant and rapid than others.
Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
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Tom's Scientology Secrets Exposed!
by Greg Sinclair
Woman's Day
Mon 25 Apr 1994, p12-15
Exclusive
A former cult security guard blows apart the star's squeaky clean image with claims of shocking abuse
HOLLYWOOD megastar Tom Cruise has been sensationally named in a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the United States alleging receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of illicit perks from the controversial Scientology religious cult.
The 32-year-old Oscar winner is alleged to have turned a blind eye to the use of slave labour to build him a gym, an apartment and other gifts from the Scientologists.
Hollywood insiders say he is fuming at being named in the legal action because it totally exposes his close links to the bizarre organisation.
He is particularly angry about references to his "special relationship" with the charismatic leader of the Scientologists, David Miscavige, a mysterious godlike figure who is said to rule the Scientologists the way David Koresh ruled Waco and the Branch Davidians.
The Scientologists' desert base where Tom spends much of his time is, according to the sworn declaration, armed to the teeth with assault rifles, automatic weapons, shotguns and even explosives - all on standby to be used in case authorities one day attempt a similar operation to Waco.
And by all accounts, Tom Cruise could well be inside that compound at the time.
In a sworn declaration - filed in a law suit brought by the church in the United States against a former member and his psychiatrist - the Scientologists' former head of security, Andre Tabayoyon, 47, says that the cash used to supply Tom with all his luxuries was spent illicitly because it came from the Scientologists' charitable funds. He claims that:
• Tom ignored the dozens of inmates on the other side of the base who were living in appalling conditions, earning a maximum of $30 a week as slave labour.
• Tom was involved in supplying new movie releases for viewing in the group's $150,000-plus cinema.
• Tom was given a personal chef whenever he visited the Scientologists' armed camp at Gilman Hot Springs, near Hemet, California.
• He spent many hours with David Miscavige in a bizarre building shaped like a clipper ship that was built in the middle of the desert.
• Tom had a $150,000 gym specially built for him at the desert base and banned anyone outside of his small circle of friends from speaking to him.
• Tom was given a luxurious apartment on the base, plus two motorcycles, a brown 1992 Mercedes convertible worth almost $100,000 and a large motor home - all stored in a garage once exclusively used by the Scientologists' renowned and feared leader L. Ron Hubbard before his death in 1986.
• Tom was given a specially appointed Scientologist chef to do all the cooking at his 1990 marriage to gorgeous Nicole Kidman.
• Scientologists held many people against their will in the same complex. These people were used for slave labour - to renovate Tom's apartment when it was damaged in a mudslide.
• Tom has virtually exclusive use of a sauna, spa bath and Olympic-sized swimming pool on the "ship". A $200,000 tennis court was also built for the exclusive use of Tom and a handful of other celebrity members.
• Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted after Miscavige objected to the colour of an addition to Tom's luxurious apartment and it had to be torn down and rebuilt.
• Tom had a special concrete walkway built across the desert soil to his apartment because he did not want to get his feet dirty.
• Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted when Scientology boss Miscavige had an entire meadow planted with flowers so that Tom and Nicole could "romp there". However, when he saw it completed, he decided it was awful and had it ploughed up.
• Tom even agreed to put into writing his innermost sexual feelings, and made one confession that would stun his millions of fans, leaving himself open to blackmail.
• Tom took part in weird, screaming interrogation sessions of other Scientology members.
All former security chief Tabayoyon's claims are in a 60-page declaration which was filed in the US District Court in Los Angeles, on March 9.
Tabayoyon - who was a Scientologist until less than a year ago - has been retained by lawyers representing former Scientologist Steven Fishman and his psychiatrist, Uwe Geertz, who are being sued by the Scientologists in an action claiming Fishman and Geertz defamed them in an article published in Time magazine in 1991.
Tabayoyon claims his life has been threatened when he was followed near his home in Arizona soon after his decision to defy the Scientologists' notorious code of silence and speak openly about Miscavige and the cult's number one member Tom Cruise. Lawyers representing the defendants also claim they have been the subject of intimidation.
Tough ex-marine and Vietnam veteran Tabayoyon admits that the Scientologists' scare tactics have him worried. He was a member of the shadowy organisation for 21 years.
He witnessed dozens of abuses of charitable funds at the Gold base, near Hemet, California. And he claims that the base is surrounded by armed guards day and night to prevent people getting in and out of the compound.
Tabayoyon says he also witnessed a number of Scientologists go crazy and commit suicide following exposure to the cult's controversial brainwashing techniques.
The tough ex-Marine claims he was personally ordered to use Scientologists' techniques to force a man to attempt suicide. He also insists that Tom's "special friend" Miscavige - who walks around the base in a captain's uniform - personally beat up a man who tried to escape from the base.
"Miscavige and Tom have developed a special relationship. One is a world dominant celebrity. The other is a young domineering cult leader who seeks to 'clear' the world and to rule it according to Scientology beliefs and practices," adds Tabayoyon.
He claims that the mysterious Miscavige - a high school dropout - was responsible for many multi-million dollar illegal international currency transfers of Scientologist charitable funds.
"He rules Scientology like David Koresh ruled Waco and the Branch Davidians," says Tabayoyon.
He alleges that the Scientologists are so fearful of the same sort of raids that sparked the massacre at Waco that they installed razor barriers, electronic monitors, concealed microphones and ground sensors on the perimeter of the base. There are also hidden video cameras watching every movement inside and outside the base. Tabayoyon claims that Church funds were used to buy HK 91 assault rifles capable of firing 300-500 rounds of ammunition a minute, .45 calibre pistols, .380 automatic weapons and 12-gauge shotguns. He also alleges that church funds paid for the purchase of large quantities of gunpowder for the "construction of various types of explosive device to be used in the defence of the base".
Tabayoyon claims that Tom's fellow star John Travolta went into a deep depression after being put through a psychotic break by a weird Scientology "interrogation system" designed to help members understand the cult more clearly.
Tabayoyon - as head of security at the base - has even admitted "kidnapping" two members who tried to run away from the harsh regime inside the base.
The sworn declaration describes in vivid detail the two very different lifestyles inside the Gold base camp.
On one side were the celebrities such as Tom, John Travolta and Priscilla Presley, while just a few hundred metres away, a brutal regime of terror was being inflicted on dozens of ordinary Scientology members who were held in punishment camp because they had upset the cult's hierarchy.
Tabayoyon alleges that Tom's pal David Miscavige and other senior Scientologists, as well as the celebrity and other stars, used a specially constructed cinema on the base to view first-run movies which were passed to Miscavige through those celebrity members' close links with Hollywood.
Miscavige "befriended Tom", according to the sworn declaration, in the late 1980s and the two men spent a lot of time together on the base. "Often they would hang out alone in space designated for L. Ron Hubbard on the Clipper Ship," explained Tabayoyon.
Miscavige even had a $150,000 gym specially built for Tom at the desert base and banned anyone outside his small circle of friends from speaking to him or using the facilities. "One time one of the gardeners spoke to him and this caused a major flap because no-one was allowed to talk to Tom Cruise," claims Tabayoyon.
He says that Tom is known by his initials whenever he visits the base camp. The ex-security chief also says he personally helped construct a luxurious apartment on the same base for the "personal and exclusive use of Tom Cruise".
"This was done on the orders of David Miscavige," says Tabayoyon. "Other apartment cottages were built for John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Edgar Winters, Priscilla Presley and other Scientology celebrities."
The ordinary members kept virtually prisoners on the other side of the camp were referred to as the Rehabilitation Project Force, which Tabayoyon describes as "the Scientology gulag or concentration camp".
He claims in his sworn declaration that RPF members were used to help build Tom's apartment and repair it after a mudslide.
"Tom Cruise was benefiting from the use of what is essentially prison slave labour being worked almost around the clock," added Tabayoyon.
He also alleges that Tom was given a specially appointed Scientologist chef to do all his cooking at his 1990 marriage to Nicole Kidman.
"A staffer called Sinar Parman was taken along to do the personal cooking for Tom Cruise and Miscavige at the expense of Scientology, not for the profit of religious organisations," stated Tabayoyon.
He says in his sworn declaration that Tom also has virtually exclusive use of a sauna, spa bath and huge swimming pool on the "ship".
"I saw Tom Cruise use an exercise room which was off limits to at least 98 per cent of the staff. Tom Cruise had unrestricted access to the ship which has a sauna, spa bath and an Olympic sized swimming pool."
Other Scientologists on the camp even referred to the gym specially built by Miscavige for his friend Tom as the Miscavige/Cruise gym.
Built in 1989, it cost about $150,000 and much of the construction work was once again performed by the slave labour prisoners kept on the other side of the camp.
"It is one of the most incredible gyms imaginable and is for the exclusive use of Tom Cruise, David Miscavige and other specially and specifically approved by him. It also has an incredible shower area."
According to Tabayoyon's testimony, millions of dollars in Church funds were used illicitly so that Tom's stays at the base "were enjoyable". "Tom Cruise received special meal services, special room services, and a girl by the name of Jennie Matsamura was assigned to take care of him and his renovated cottage," said Tabayoyon.
He recalled how, on a number of occasions, construction work done for Tom had to be torn down because the colouring did not meet with his or Miscavige's approval.
"Once we had to pour a concrete walkway so that Tom Cruise would not have to walk on the desert soil. Before the concrete dried, it rained. The concrete was spoiled. Miscavige went into a fury over that."
On another occasion, recalled Tabayoyon, "tens of thousands of dollars" were spent on making a meadow look picturesque by planting thousands of flowers so that Tom and his new wife Nicole could romp there.
"However Miscavige inspected it and didn't like it. So the whole meadow was ploughed up, destroyed, reploughed and sown with plain grass," added Tabayoyon.
He claims that Tom Cruise took part in a bizarre "life orientation course" called "OT III" - based on the controversial beliefs of Hubbard, who claimed that aliens invaded Earth thousands of years ago and were responsible for the current state of man.
A specially appointed "auditor" interviewed Tom to see if he could pass the OT III test. It is a weird routine, as Tabayoyon explained.
The ultimate goal of auditing is to return the person to the state they were in 75 million years before the aliens invaded. Tabayoyon claims that for Tom to have passed the OT III test he would have had to act out "psychosis ... and general madness".
Tabayoyon also alleges that the Scientologist leaders have a special file on the megastar which is kept under tight security at the base.
"It contains supposedly confidential information derived during auditing sessions. However, the contents of such folders have been culled and used against people," says Tabayoyon, who believes the secret files are used to "exert control and influence over people such as Tom Cruise or John Travolta should they ever attempt to leave the Scientology organisation".
One former Scientology member said that the sort of information Tom revealed during his "audit" would blow apart his squeaky clean image.
The insider, who claims to have seen the star's file, said: "There are things in there that would shock his fans and they clearly imply he has some severe personality problems."
Tabayoyon's sworn declaration alleges that all the millions of dollars spent by Miscavige and his cronies on the luxuries provided for Tom and other celebrity members was used illegally because the cash all came from fundraising on behalf of the so-called church - and that is against US law.
Story: Greg Sinclair
[photos] From above left: Scientology celebrity headquarters in Hollywood; Tom Cruise; the "ship" in the desert.
by Greg Sinclair
Woman's Day
Mon 25 Apr 1994, p12-15
Exclusive
A former cult security guard blows apart the star's squeaky clean image with claims of shocking abuse
HOLLYWOOD megastar Tom Cruise has been sensationally named in a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the United States alleging receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of illicit perks from the controversial Scientology religious cult.
The 32-year-old Oscar winner is alleged to have turned a blind eye to the use of slave labour to build him a gym, an apartment and other gifts from the Scientologists.
Hollywood insiders say he is fuming at being named in the legal action because it totally exposes his close links to the bizarre organisation.
He is particularly angry about references to his "special relationship" with the charismatic leader of the Scientologists, David Miscavige, a mysterious godlike figure who is said to rule the Scientologists the way David Koresh ruled Waco and the Branch Davidians.
The Scientologists' desert base where Tom spends much of his time is, according to the sworn declaration, armed to the teeth with assault rifles, automatic weapons, shotguns and even explosives - all on standby to be used in case authorities one day attempt a similar operation to Waco.
And by all accounts, Tom Cruise could well be inside that compound at the time.
In a sworn declaration - filed in a law suit brought by the church in the United States against a former member and his psychiatrist - the Scientologists' former head of security, Andre Tabayoyon, 47, says that the cash used to supply Tom with all his luxuries was spent illicitly because it came from the Scientologists' charitable funds. He claims that:
• Tom ignored the dozens of inmates on the other side of the base who were living in appalling conditions, earning a maximum of $30 a week as slave labour.
• Tom was involved in supplying new movie releases for viewing in the group's $150,000-plus cinema.
• Tom was given a personal chef whenever he visited the Scientologists' armed camp at Gilman Hot Springs, near Hemet, California.
• He spent many hours with David Miscavige in a bizarre building shaped like a clipper ship that was built in the middle of the desert.
• Tom had a $150,000 gym specially built for him at the desert base and banned anyone outside of his small circle of friends from speaking to him.
• Tom was given a luxurious apartment on the base, plus two motorcycles, a brown 1992 Mercedes convertible worth almost $100,000 and a large motor home - all stored in a garage once exclusively used by the Scientologists' renowned and feared leader L. Ron Hubbard before his death in 1986.
• Tom was given a specially appointed Scientologist chef to do all the cooking at his 1990 marriage to gorgeous Nicole Kidman.
• Scientologists held many people against their will in the same complex. These people were used for slave labour - to renovate Tom's apartment when it was damaged in a mudslide.
• Tom has virtually exclusive use of a sauna, spa bath and Olympic-sized swimming pool on the "ship". A $200,000 tennis court was also built for the exclusive use of Tom and a handful of other celebrity members.
• Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted after Miscavige objected to the colour of an addition to Tom's luxurious apartment and it had to be torn down and rebuilt.
• Tom had a special concrete walkway built across the desert soil to his apartment because he did not want to get his feet dirty.
• Tens of thousands of dollars were wasted when Scientology boss Miscavige had an entire meadow planted with flowers so that Tom and Nicole could "romp there". However, when he saw it completed, he decided it was awful and had it ploughed up.
• Tom even agreed to put into writing his innermost sexual feelings, and made one confession that would stun his millions of fans, leaving himself open to blackmail.
• Tom took part in weird, screaming interrogation sessions of other Scientology members.
All former security chief Tabayoyon's claims are in a 60-page declaration which was filed in the US District Court in Los Angeles, on March 9.
Tabayoyon - who was a Scientologist until less than a year ago - has been retained by lawyers representing former Scientologist Steven Fishman and his psychiatrist, Uwe Geertz, who are being sued by the Scientologists in an action claiming Fishman and Geertz defamed them in an article published in Time magazine in 1991.
Tabayoyon claims his life has been threatened when he was followed near his home in Arizona soon after his decision to defy the Scientologists' notorious code of silence and speak openly about Miscavige and the cult's number one member Tom Cruise. Lawyers representing the defendants also claim they have been the subject of intimidation.
Tough ex-marine and Vietnam veteran Tabayoyon admits that the Scientologists' scare tactics have him worried. He was a member of the shadowy organisation for 21 years.
He witnessed dozens of abuses of charitable funds at the Gold base, near Hemet, California. And he claims that the base is surrounded by armed guards day and night to prevent people getting in and out of the compound.
Tabayoyon says he also witnessed a number of Scientologists go crazy and commit suicide following exposure to the cult's controversial brainwashing techniques.
The tough ex-Marine claims he was personally ordered to use Scientologists' techniques to force a man to attempt suicide. He also insists that Tom's "special friend" Miscavige - who walks around the base in a captain's uniform - personally beat up a man who tried to escape from the base.
"Miscavige and Tom have developed a special relationship. One is a world dominant celebrity. The other is a young domineering cult leader who seeks to 'clear' the world and to rule it according to Scientology beliefs and practices," adds Tabayoyon.
He claims that the mysterious Miscavige - a high school dropout - was responsible for many multi-million dollar illegal international currency transfers of Scientologist charitable funds.
"He rules Scientology like David Koresh ruled Waco and the Branch Davidians," says Tabayoyon.
He alleges that the Scientologists are so fearful of the same sort of raids that sparked the massacre at Waco that they installed razor barriers, electronic monitors, concealed microphones and ground sensors on the perimeter of the base. There are also hidden video cameras watching every movement inside and outside the base. Tabayoyon claims that Church funds were used to buy HK 91 assault rifles capable of firing 300-500 rounds of ammunition a minute, .45 calibre pistols, .380 automatic weapons and 12-gauge shotguns. He also alleges that church funds paid for the purchase of large quantities of gunpowder for the "construction of various types of explosive device to be used in the defence of the base".
Tabayoyon claims that Tom's fellow star John Travolta went into a deep depression after being put through a psychotic break by a weird Scientology "interrogation system" designed to help members understand the cult more clearly.
Tabayoyon - as head of security at the base - has even admitted "kidnapping" two members who tried to run away from the harsh regime inside the base.
The sworn declaration describes in vivid detail the two very different lifestyles inside the Gold base camp.
On one side were the celebrities such as Tom, John Travolta and Priscilla Presley, while just a few hundred metres away, a brutal regime of terror was being inflicted on dozens of ordinary Scientology members who were held in punishment camp because they had upset the cult's hierarchy.
Tabayoyon alleges that Tom's pal David Miscavige and other senior Scientologists, as well as the celebrity and other stars, used a specially constructed cinema on the base to view first-run movies which were passed to Miscavige through those celebrity members' close links with Hollywood.
Miscavige "befriended Tom", according to the sworn declaration, in the late 1980s and the two men spent a lot of time together on the base. "Often they would hang out alone in space designated for L. Ron Hubbard on the Clipper Ship," explained Tabayoyon.
Miscavige even had a $150,000 gym specially built for Tom at the desert base and banned anyone outside his small circle of friends from speaking to him or using the facilities. "One time one of the gardeners spoke to him and this caused a major flap because no-one was allowed to talk to Tom Cruise," claims Tabayoyon.
He says that Tom is known by his initials whenever he visits the base camp. The ex-security chief also says he personally helped construct a luxurious apartment on the same base for the "personal and exclusive use of Tom Cruise".
"This was done on the orders of David Miscavige," says Tabayoyon. "Other apartment cottages were built for John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Edgar Winters, Priscilla Presley and other Scientology celebrities."
The ordinary members kept virtually prisoners on the other side of the camp were referred to as the Rehabilitation Project Force, which Tabayoyon describes as "the Scientology gulag or concentration camp".
He claims in his sworn declaration that RPF members were used to help build Tom's apartment and repair it after a mudslide.
"Tom Cruise was benefiting from the use of what is essentially prison slave labour being worked almost around the clock," added Tabayoyon.
He also alleges that Tom was given a specially appointed Scientologist chef to do all his cooking at his 1990 marriage to Nicole Kidman.
"A staffer called Sinar Parman was taken along to do the personal cooking for Tom Cruise and Miscavige at the expense of Scientology, not for the profit of religious organisations," stated Tabayoyon.
He says in his sworn declaration that Tom also has virtually exclusive use of a sauna, spa bath and huge swimming pool on the "ship".
"I saw Tom Cruise use an exercise room which was off limits to at least 98 per cent of the staff. Tom Cruise had unrestricted access to the ship which has a sauna, spa bath and an Olympic sized swimming pool."
Other Scientologists on the camp even referred to the gym specially built by Miscavige for his friend Tom as the Miscavige/Cruise gym.
Built in 1989, it cost about $150,000 and much of the construction work was once again performed by the slave labour prisoners kept on the other side of the camp.
"It is one of the most incredible gyms imaginable and is for the exclusive use of Tom Cruise, David Miscavige and other specially and specifically approved by him. It also has an incredible shower area."
According to Tabayoyon's testimony, millions of dollars in Church funds were used illicitly so that Tom's stays at the base "were enjoyable". "Tom Cruise received special meal services, special room services, and a girl by the name of Jennie Matsamura was assigned to take care of him and his renovated cottage," said Tabayoyon.
He recalled how, on a number of occasions, construction work done for Tom had to be torn down because the colouring did not meet with his or Miscavige's approval.
"Once we had to pour a concrete walkway so that Tom Cruise would not have to walk on the desert soil. Before the concrete dried, it rained. The concrete was spoiled. Miscavige went into a fury over that."
On another occasion, recalled Tabayoyon, "tens of thousands of dollars" were spent on making a meadow look picturesque by planting thousands of flowers so that Tom and his new wife Nicole could romp there.
"However Miscavige inspected it and didn't like it. So the whole meadow was ploughed up, destroyed, reploughed and sown with plain grass," added Tabayoyon.
He claims that Tom Cruise took part in a bizarre "life orientation course" called "OT III" - based on the controversial beliefs of Hubbard, who claimed that aliens invaded Earth thousands of years ago and were responsible for the current state of man.
A specially appointed "auditor" interviewed Tom to see if he could pass the OT III test. It is a weird routine, as Tabayoyon explained.
The ultimate goal of auditing is to return the person to the state they were in 75 million years before the aliens invaded. Tabayoyon claims that for Tom to have passed the OT III test he would have had to act out "psychosis ... and general madness".
Tabayoyon also alleges that the Scientologist leaders have a special file on the megastar which is kept under tight security at the base.
"It contains supposedly confidential information derived during auditing sessions. However, the contents of such folders have been culled and used against people," says Tabayoyon, who believes the secret files are used to "exert control and influence over people such as Tom Cruise or John Travolta should they ever attempt to leave the Scientology organisation".
One former Scientology member said that the sort of information Tom revealed during his "audit" would blow apart his squeaky clean image.
The insider, who claims to have seen the star's file, said: "There are things in there that would shock his fans and they clearly imply he has some severe personality problems."
Tabayoyon's sworn declaration alleges that all the millions of dollars spent by Miscavige and his cronies on the luxuries provided for Tom and other celebrity members was used illegally because the cash all came from fundraising on behalf of the so-called church - and that is against US law.
Story: Greg Sinclair
[photos] From above left: Scientology celebrity headquarters in Hollywood; Tom Cruise; the "ship" in the desert.
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:27 am
Scientology Leader Can't Handle the Heat on Xenu, Storms Out on Martin Bashir
by Foster Kamer
October 25, 2009
ABC's Nightline ran a special on Scientology this weekend. It was typically strange and disconcerting, but nothing necessarily new. Except: What could provoke their spokesman to storm off the set of an interview? We get to learn. Paging Lord Xenu.
Martin Bashir was grilling Scientology spokesthing Tommy Davis regarding Xenu, the intergalactic god who did or did not come to Earth 75 million years ago to bury his people in volcanos. Bashir asks Davis a very simple question: Do you guys believe in this crazy shit? Is Xenu and his people-pod volcano plot part of your religion? Etc. Watch what Davis does, starting at about 2:45 for context, but 3:40 if you just want to see him freak out and stomp off.
Why would Davis stomp off? Bashir wasn't asking him to explain Xenu, or justify Xenu, or even to provide context around Xenu. All he was asking was: Do you guys believe in an intergalactic God named Xenu? Is this part of your religion?
How is that an unfair line of inquiry? That's like feigning indignation at a line of inquiry asking whether or not Jews have horns. How can you? Of course we don't, you moron! But if we do, well, it's not a silly question, is it? Is it?!?
by Foster Kamer
October 25, 2009
ABC's Nightline ran a special on Scientology this weekend. It was typically strange and disconcerting, but nothing necessarily new. Except: What could provoke their spokesman to storm off the set of an interview? We get to learn. Paging Lord Xenu.
Martin Bashir was grilling Scientology spokesthing Tommy Davis regarding Xenu, the intergalactic god who did or did not come to Earth 75 million years ago to bury his people in volcanos. Bashir asks Davis a very simple question: Do you guys believe in this crazy shit? Is Xenu and his people-pod volcano plot part of your religion? Etc. Watch what Davis does, starting at about 2:45 for context, but 3:40 if you just want to see him freak out and stomp off.
Why would Davis stomp off? Bashir wasn't asking him to explain Xenu, or justify Xenu, or even to provide context around Xenu. All he was asking was: Do you guys believe in an intergalactic God named Xenu? Is this part of your religion?
How is that an unfair line of inquiry? That's like feigning indignation at a line of inquiry asking whether or not Jews have horns. How can you? Of course we don't, you moron! But if we do, well, it's not a silly question, is it? Is it?!?
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:31 am
Tommy Davis: Scientology's New Angry, Unstable Pitchman
by John Cook
Gawker
October 27, 2009
Tommy Davis, the latest chief spokesman and outraged-interview-cutter-offer for the Church of Scientology, is a callow Hollywood brat, Tom Cruise hanger-on, and "drug revert" who thinks "L. Ron Hubbard is the coolest guy ever."
Scientology has a long history of spastic, sweaty spokespersons with creepy laughs who eventually crack under the pressure and leave the organization. There was Robert Vaughn Young, who publicly renounced the church in 1989 after decades in its leadership. He was followed by Mike Rinder, an unhinged Australian bulldog who decided to stop lying for church leader David Miscavige last year and spoke out publicly about the cult's bizarre and arbitrary cruelty in June.
The latest inheritor of Young and Rinder's mantle as the unsettling public face of scientology is Tommy Davis, the head of the cult's Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Davis lived up to the role last week by walking out on ABC News's Martin Bashir during a Nightline interview after Bashir asked him about Xenu, the intergalactic warlord that Hubbard believed is responsible for saddling us all with a bunch of crazy body thetans.
So who is this guy, and how long before he cracks up and turns against the church like all the rest?
He's a Hollywood scion.
Davis, 37, is the son of actress Anne Archer and Jeffrey Davis, a real estate investor. According to Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman, Davis "freely admits to being a Hollywood rich kid. He dresses in Italian suits, drives a BMW and is addicted to his Blackberry. 'I have enough money to never work a day in my life,' he says."
He's Tom Cruise's BFF.
According to the Daily Beast's Kim Masters, Davis spent nearly a decade as Cruise's "personal, full-time, assigned Scientology handler." Claire Headley, a former Scientologist who left the cult five years ago, tells Masters: "'He filtered everything, reported on what [Cruise] was doing to [Church of Scientology leader] David Miscavige.' Officially, Davis was assigned to the church's president's office in the Celebrity Centre, she continues, but he was essentially with Cruise full-time from the late 1990s until 2005." Davis worked intimately with Miscavige on the deeply strange Tom Cruise tribute video that was leaked to Gawker last year.
He goes for stunts.
When the BBC's John Sweeney decided to make a documentary about Scientology two years ago for Panorama, Davis and his then-colleague Rinder decided to make a "counter-documentary," and succeeded in goading Sweeney into an angry outburst that they caught on camera and distributed widely in order to discredit him. Davis harangued Sweeney mercilessly in the middle of Scientology's graphic "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" exhibit, and Sweeney later said of his enraged response: "I felt they were trying to control my mind." In the course of the same documentary, Davis walked out of an interview after Sweeney called Scientology a "sinister cult." After walking out on Bashir last week, Davis reportedly showed up unannounced at ABC News headquarters less than an hour before Nightline's airtime and demanded that the piece be spiked. He was rebuffed.
He probably doesn't know what he's talking about.
While Davis has said in the past that he is "familiar with" the "confidential scriptures" of Scientology that tell the story of Xenu --
he's also told CNN's John Roberts that talk of "space parasites" is "unrecognizable to me." Discussions of Xenu are strictly verboten among Scientologists who haven't yet reached, and paid for, the OT-III—or Operating Thetan, level three—step on the cult's "bridge to total freedom," during which Xenu's exploits are revealed. Members are told that if they hear about Xenu before their minds are properly prepared, it will make them retarded, insane, or even kill them. Masters speculates that Davis' dumbfounded reaction to Bashir's question may have been genuine:
Davis wouldn't tell her whether he'd reached OT-III, but according to a partial database of Scientology course completions gleaned from announcements in church publications, he hasn't.
He's a "drug revert" and all around troublemaker.
Masters says Davis has a reputation for mischief. He was a "happy-go-lucky" teen who was caught smoking pot, which makes him in church parlance a "drug revert" and should have barred him from serving in the cult's leadership. Davis denies being a revert. But he has, according to Masters, gotten into more recent trouble with his superiors. After the BBC flap, Masters says, he briefly "blew" from the Sea Org and went AWOL, an infraction that earned him a stint cleaning toilets in the church's Clearwater, Fla., international headquarters—though Masters doesn't use the term, it certainly sounds like Davis was shunted off to the "Rehabilitation Project Force," the church's punitive gulag for staff members who fall out of line. Davis' former friend, ex-Scientologist Jason Beghe, told the Village Voice last year that he could see from the look on Davis' face during a CNN interview that he'd been RFP'd.
He probably won't last long.
Davis hasn't been doing a great job. The Nightline interview was another in a string of embarrassments for the church, and Paul Haggis' high-profile defection over the weekend—announced in an open letter to Davis—is likely not sitting well with Miscavige. Davis' job is to "handle" anyone who would do harm to the church's reputation, and his tenure thus far has been marked by a string of pile-ups—angry confrontations; Haggis' defection; John Travolta's acknowledgment that, contrary to church dogma, autism is real; the St. Petersburg Times' devastating series detailing the revelations of high-profile defectors about Miscavige's violent and insane regime. He also has personal relationships with people who've left the church—he worked with Rinder, and was close friends with Beghe—and has left the reservation before. How much abuse and lying can he take before he follows them out the door?
by John Cook
Gawker
October 27, 2009
Tommy Davis, the latest chief spokesman and outraged-interview-cutter-offer for the Church of Scientology, is a callow Hollywood brat, Tom Cruise hanger-on, and "drug revert" who thinks "L. Ron Hubbard is the coolest guy ever."
Scientology has a long history of spastic, sweaty spokespersons with creepy laughs who eventually crack under the pressure and leave the organization. There was Robert Vaughn Young, who publicly renounced the church in 1989 after decades in its leadership. He was followed by Mike Rinder, an unhinged Australian bulldog who decided to stop lying for church leader David Miscavige last year and spoke out publicly about the cult's bizarre and arbitrary cruelty in June.
The latest inheritor of Young and Rinder's mantle as the unsettling public face of scientology is Tommy Davis, the head of the cult's Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Davis lived up to the role last week by walking out on ABC News's Martin Bashir during a Nightline interview after Bashir asked him about Xenu, the intergalactic warlord that Hubbard believed is responsible for saddling us all with a bunch of crazy body thetans.
So who is this guy, and how long before he cracks up and turns against the church like all the rest?
He's a Hollywood scion.
Davis, 37, is the son of actress Anne Archer and Jeffrey Davis, a real estate investor. According to Rolling Stone's Janet Reitman, Davis "freely admits to being a Hollywood rich kid. He dresses in Italian suits, drives a BMW and is addicted to his Blackberry. 'I have enough money to never work a day in my life,' he says."
He's Tom Cruise's BFF.
According to the Daily Beast's Kim Masters, Davis spent nearly a decade as Cruise's "personal, full-time, assigned Scientology handler." Claire Headley, a former Scientologist who left the cult five years ago, tells Masters: "'He filtered everything, reported on what [Cruise] was doing to [Church of Scientology leader] David Miscavige.' Officially, Davis was assigned to the church's president's office in the Celebrity Centre, she continues, but he was essentially with Cruise full-time from the late 1990s until 2005." Davis worked intimately with Miscavige on the deeply strange Tom Cruise tribute video that was leaked to Gawker last year.
He goes for stunts.
When the BBC's John Sweeney decided to make a documentary about Scientology two years ago for Panorama, Davis and his then-colleague Rinder decided to make a "counter-documentary," and succeeded in goading Sweeney into an angry outburst that they caught on camera and distributed widely in order to discredit him. Davis harangued Sweeney mercilessly in the middle of Scientology's graphic "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" exhibit, and Sweeney later said of his enraged response: "I felt they were trying to control my mind." In the course of the same documentary, Davis walked out of an interview after Sweeney called Scientology a "sinister cult." After walking out on Bashir last week, Davis reportedly showed up unannounced at ABC News headquarters less than an hour before Nightline's airtime and demanded that the piece be spiked. He was rebuffed.
He probably doesn't know what he's talking about.
While Davis has said in the past that he is "familiar with" the "confidential scriptures" of Scientology that tell the story of Xenu --
PART FIVE: Scientology Official Addresses Works of L. Ron Hubbard
by Nathan Baca
News Channel 3
March 12, 2009 01:56 PM MST
Church of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis: "I'm not interested in somebody else's version of my religion or somebody else's idea of what my religion is."
Our second half of our one-on-one interview with one of Scientology's leaders continues in Hollywood.
We confront spokesman Tommy Davis with the confidential works of L. Ron Hubbard and ask why there are threats of death by pneumonia for those who read it.
Nathan Baca: Somebody from the Village Voice apparently said the Church of Scientology is about "ridding the body of space alien parasites." And your reaction then and now is what exactly to that claim?
Tommy Davis: You know, here's the thing. There are outrageous claims out there on the internet about what Scientologists believe. These are claims that are forwarded by anti-Scientologists. The best and easiest and most transparent way in which people learn about it is through L. Ron Hubbard's books and lectures.
NB (pulling out 650 page book of "Technical Notes of Operating Thetans"): Looking at Mr. Hubbard's own works, what seems to be in a sense curious is at least, according to L. Ron Hubbard's own words, and I quote, "the head of the galactic confederation. Seventy-six planets around larger stars visible from here..."
TD: I can stop you. I know what you're talking about. I'm familiar with the material. I think what you're getting at is the confidential scriptures of the Church.
NB: But this is about the fundamentals of-- is this not about the fundamentals of your belief, though? This goes into the sense of the soul.
TD: Right. For you to talk to me, you as somebody who is not a Scientologist to talk to me about what my beliefs are or to ask me to explain any core religious belief, that's an offensive concept. Nobody should ever be asked to do that.
NB: And is that the reasoning for the cease and desist letter for just about everybody who has published these works, the esoteric works. From Sunshine Press to Google, I believe, has also been given a cease and desist letter from Moxon & Kobrin (law firm). That's the reasoning behind it, correct?
TD: Absolutely, I'm not interested in somebody else's version of my religion or somebody else's idea of what my religion is, or something that somebody stole from the Church that is legitimately Church materials and is trying to show it to me for the only intent of knowingly violating my religious beliefs and knowingly violating how it is I see fit to practice my religion.
NB: But arguably isn't the reason why they are potentially-- wouldn't want to read it is because the book itself says that if you read it out of order, in effect "free wheeling," according to one of the pages, physical harm will come of you. I believe it mentions pneumonia. There is an actual fear, a physical fear, arguably. There is a physical cause and effect, saying that if you read this, before you're ready for it, physical harm will come of you. I've read, though, arguably not understood much of OT's 3 through 6. According to this, as I read it, I should have had some kill switch and I should have died of pneumonia. Why am I not dead yet?
TD: I...I... (laughs then pauses) Here we're going to the basic fundamental point that I'm trying to make. OK. What you're doing right now and what it is you're saying to me is an intent to ridicule religious beliefs. That's really what we're talking about. And you're just forwarding an agenda of hate.
he's also told CNN's John Roberts that talk of "space parasites" is "unrecognizable to me." Discussions of Xenu are strictly verboten among Scientologists who haven't yet reached, and paid for, the OT-III—or Operating Thetan, level three—step on the cult's "bridge to total freedom," during which Xenu's exploits are revealed. Members are told that if they hear about Xenu before their minds are properly prepared, it will make them retarded, insane, or even kill them. Masters speculates that Davis' dumbfounded reaction to Bashir's question may have been genuine:
Headley suspects Tommy Davis has never participated in upper-level training in which the story of Xenu would have actually been revealed. She thinks that may be why he walked out of the Nightline interview when asked about it. "In Scientology, no one can talk about it, whether you've done it or not," she says. "If you talk about it when you're not up to that level, you can be banned from ever doing it."
Davis wouldn't tell her whether he'd reached OT-III, but according to a partial database of Scientology course completions gleaned from announcements in church publications, he hasn't.
He's a "drug revert" and all around troublemaker.
Masters says Davis has a reputation for mischief. He was a "happy-go-lucky" teen who was caught smoking pot, which makes him in church parlance a "drug revert" and should have barred him from serving in the cult's leadership. Davis denies being a revert. But he has, according to Masters, gotten into more recent trouble with his superiors. After the BBC flap, Masters says, he briefly "blew" from the Sea Org and went AWOL, an infraction that earned him a stint cleaning toilets in the church's Clearwater, Fla., international headquarters—though Masters doesn't use the term, it certainly sounds like Davis was shunted off to the "Rehabilitation Project Force," the church's punitive gulag for staff members who fall out of line. Davis' former friend, ex-Scientologist Jason Beghe, told the Village Voice last year that he could see from the look on Davis' face during a CNN interview that he'd been RFP'd.
He probably won't last long.
Davis hasn't been doing a great job. The Nightline interview was another in a string of embarrassments for the church, and Paul Haggis' high-profile defection over the weekend—announced in an open letter to Davis—is likely not sitting well with Miscavige. Davis' job is to "handle" anyone who would do harm to the church's reputation, and his tenure thus far has been marked by a string of pile-ups—angry confrontations; Haggis' defection; John Travolta's acknowledgment that, contrary to church dogma, autism is real; the St. Petersburg Times' devastating series detailing the revelations of high-profile defectors about Miscavige's violent and insane regime. He also has personal relationships with people who've left the church—he worked with Rinder, and was close friends with Beghe—and has left the reservation before. How much abuse and lying can he take before he follows them out the door?
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:34 am
The BBC man, the Scientologist - and the YouTube rant: Panorama reporter's outburst at Hollywood star's son is captured on video
by David Smith
The Observer
Sunday 13 May 2007
A Journalist at Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs series, has been reprimanded for losing his temper and screaming with rage during the making of an investigation into the Church of Scientology.
John Sweeney has apologised for the outburst against a scientologist which was filmed and then put on the video-sharing website YouTube, prompting criticism of the corporation. The BBC held an internal inquiry but said Sweeney had not breached any guidelines.
The incident is one of the first examples of 'video ambushing', where organisations being investigated turn the camera on the film makers. The Church of Scientology, whose members include the Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta, shadowed the Panorama team in America with its own camera crew. It has made a 'counter documentary', attacking Sweeney's methods, and distributed 100,000 DVDs to MPs, civil servants, religious groups, media organisations and business leaders.
Panorama has responded by posting a YouTube clip of its own in which leading scientologist Tom Davis, a friend of Cruise and son of the film actress Anne Archer, also a scientologist, is seen losing his temper at Sweeney's use of the words 'sinister cult' and storming away mid-interview with the reporter in hot pursuit. In a separate clash Archer, an Oscar nominee for her role as Michael Douglas's wife in Fatal Attraction, is understood to have snapped when Sweeney asked if she could have been brainwashed. The Church has withdrawn consent for the BBC to use the footage and Panorama is being hastily re-edited for broadcast tomorrow, but will still include the Sweeney outburst.
Journalists in all media are facing greater scrutiny than ever from bloggers and independent film makers armed for a video ambush. Michael Moore, an award winner for documentaries including Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, is himself the subject of a website, Moorewatch, a book, Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, and a forthcoming film, Manufacturing Dissent, which examines his methods. Dan Rather, the veteran US news anchorman, was forced to retire after blogs showed that a CBS report questioning President Bush's National Guard service had been based on forged documents, and Reuters sacked a photographer exposed by bloggers as having doctored a picture.
Sweeney lost his temper while visiting the Church of Scientology's exhibition, 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death', which uses graphic images to attack psychiatry. Sweeney said that, having dogged him for six days, Davis accused him of giving an easy ride to one of his interviewees, a critic of Scientology, even though he had not heard the full interview. It was then that Sweeney, his face contorted with anger and his finger jabbing, began yelling at the top of his voice: 'You were not there at the beginning of the interview! You were not there! You did not hear or record all the interview!'
The response of YouTube users has been damning. One said yesterday: 'I for one feel confident and glad that I am paying good money for this psycho to remain on television! Is this really what English TV has degraded itself to?' Another wrote: 'Surely this is a joke right? How can a mentally unbalanced man like this be a BBC reporter? This kinda makes you wonder if he is not dreaming up what he reports or if TV actually reports truth! Man I'm done with the BBC.'
Sweeney, a former Observer journalist, admits he went too far. 'I am hugely embarrassed,' he said. 'I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it it makes me cringe. The moment it happened I said sorry. I let the side down and the BBC down and I am ashamed. But I felt I was being brainwashed and if people see the full clip I think they will have more sympathy with me'
The journalist has been disciplined after an internal investigation. 'I've been arse-kicked but I haven't been fired,' he added. 'I feel mortified. There is no one on this planet more irritated then me. Fool, Sweeney, fool. It was like an animal reaction to a series of images and pressures. I felt they were trying to control my mind. I can't wait to get back to Zimbabwe: hiding in the backs of cars from Robert Mugabe's goons is a damn sight easier.'
It is not the first time the Church of Scientology has been accused of riling opponents by 'bull baiting', a technique in which members are taught to remain calm even under extreme provocation. Mike Rinder, a spokesman for the Church, said: 'I guess you could say we John Sweeneyed John Sweeney. The licence fee payers in Britain are entitled to see what goes on behind the scenes. It's about time documentary makers are held accountable.'
Sweeney has won awards for investigating miscarriages of justice against mothers of cot death victims and has reported on human rights abuses in Chechnya, Kosovo and Algeria. He has said that 'one recipe for investigative journalism is to find the largest crocodile in the pond and give it a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and see what happens next'. This time, the crocodile bit back.
A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology said: 'The BBC Broadcast Codes are a sensible set of guidelines that, if followed, would result in a fair and accurate report with every piece. We documented 154 violations of these guidelines by Sweeney and his team and have presented those, with evidence, to BBC executives.'
But Sandy Smith, editor of Panorama, responded: 'The head of current affairs, George Entwistle, has viewed all footage complained of and, with the exception of the point when Sweeney shouts, he found nothing that stood outside BBC guidelines.'
A BBC spokeswoman added: 'When viewers watch the programme on Monday they will see the full story and the background to this particular incident. While John Sweeney's behaviour at one point in the filming is clearly inappropriate, he has apologised. The BBC is, however, happy that taken as a whole the filming was carried out properly and fairly.'
by David Smith
The Observer
Sunday 13 May 2007
A Journalist at Panorama, the BBC's flagship current affairs series, has been reprimanded for losing his temper and screaming with rage during the making of an investigation into the Church of Scientology.
John Sweeney has apologised for the outburst against a scientologist which was filmed and then put on the video-sharing website YouTube, prompting criticism of the corporation. The BBC held an internal inquiry but said Sweeney had not breached any guidelines.
The incident is one of the first examples of 'video ambushing', where organisations being investigated turn the camera on the film makers. The Church of Scientology, whose members include the Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta, shadowed the Panorama team in America with its own camera crew. It has made a 'counter documentary', attacking Sweeney's methods, and distributed 100,000 DVDs to MPs, civil servants, religious groups, media organisations and business leaders.
Panorama has responded by posting a YouTube clip of its own in which leading scientologist Tom Davis, a friend of Cruise and son of the film actress Anne Archer, also a scientologist, is seen losing his temper at Sweeney's use of the words 'sinister cult' and storming away mid-interview with the reporter in hot pursuit. In a separate clash Archer, an Oscar nominee for her role as Michael Douglas's wife in Fatal Attraction, is understood to have snapped when Sweeney asked if she could have been brainwashed. The Church has withdrawn consent for the BBC to use the footage and Panorama is being hastily re-edited for broadcast tomorrow, but will still include the Sweeney outburst.
Journalists in all media are facing greater scrutiny than ever from bloggers and independent film makers armed for a video ambush. Michael Moore, an award winner for documentaries including Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, is himself the subject of a website, Moorewatch, a book, Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, and a forthcoming film, Manufacturing Dissent, which examines his methods. Dan Rather, the veteran US news anchorman, was forced to retire after blogs showed that a CBS report questioning President Bush's National Guard service had been based on forged documents, and Reuters sacked a photographer exposed by bloggers as having doctored a picture.
Sweeney lost his temper while visiting the Church of Scientology's exhibition, 'Psychiatry: Industry of Death', which uses graphic images to attack psychiatry. Sweeney said that, having dogged him for six days, Davis accused him of giving an easy ride to one of his interviewees, a critic of Scientology, even though he had not heard the full interview. It was then that Sweeney, his face contorted with anger and his finger jabbing, began yelling at the top of his voice: 'You were not there at the beginning of the interview! You were not there! You did not hear or record all the interview!'
The response of YouTube users has been damning. One said yesterday: 'I for one feel confident and glad that I am paying good money for this psycho to remain on television! Is this really what English TV has degraded itself to?' Another wrote: 'Surely this is a joke right? How can a mentally unbalanced man like this be a BBC reporter? This kinda makes you wonder if he is not dreaming up what he reports or if TV actually reports truth! Man I'm done with the BBC.'
Sweeney, a former Observer journalist, admits he went too far. 'I am hugely embarrassed,' he said. 'I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it it makes me cringe. The moment it happened I said sorry. I let the side down and the BBC down and I am ashamed. But I felt I was being brainwashed and if people see the full clip I think they will have more sympathy with me'
The journalist has been disciplined after an internal investigation. 'I've been arse-kicked but I haven't been fired,' he added. 'I feel mortified. There is no one on this planet more irritated then me. Fool, Sweeney, fool. It was like an animal reaction to a series of images and pressures. I felt they were trying to control my mind. I can't wait to get back to Zimbabwe: hiding in the backs of cars from Robert Mugabe's goons is a damn sight easier.'
It is not the first time the Church of Scientology has been accused of riling opponents by 'bull baiting', a technique in which members are taught to remain calm even under extreme provocation. Mike Rinder, a spokesman for the Church, said: 'I guess you could say we John Sweeneyed John Sweeney. The licence fee payers in Britain are entitled to see what goes on behind the scenes. It's about time documentary makers are held accountable.'
Sweeney has won awards for investigating miscarriages of justice against mothers of cot death victims and has reported on human rights abuses in Chechnya, Kosovo and Algeria. He has said that 'one recipe for investigative journalism is to find the largest crocodile in the pond and give it a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and see what happens next'. This time, the crocodile bit back.
A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology said: 'The BBC Broadcast Codes are a sensible set of guidelines that, if followed, would result in a fair and accurate report with every piece. We documented 154 violations of these guidelines by Sweeney and his team and have presented those, with evidence, to BBC executives.'
But Sandy Smith, editor of Panorama, responded: 'The head of current affairs, George Entwistle, has viewed all footage complained of and, with the exception of the point when Sweeney shouts, he found nothing that stood outside BBC guidelines.'
A BBC spokeswoman added: 'When viewers watch the programme on Monday they will see the full story and the background to this particular incident. While John Sweeney's behaviour at one point in the filming is clearly inappropriate, he has apologised. The BBC is, however, happy that taken as a whole the filming was carried out properly and fairly.'
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:40 am
What Happened in Vegas
by Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin
Tampa Bay Times
November 2, 2009
Scientology: What happened in Vegas, Part 2 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
One of the guys. David Lubow, top right, infiltrated a group of former Sea Org members living in Las Vegas. Partying at summer’s end are, from left, Terri and Fernando Gamboa, non-Scientologist Jack Trostle and Janis Grady.
They squeezed into a two bedroom apartment, all they could afford. Two couples and a single guy had left the Church of Scientology and joined up in Las Vegas, starting a mortgage business near the Palace Station Casino.
They were faces in the crowd.
Except that the two wives were important in Scientology history, sisters Terri and Janis Gillham. They were two of the original four "messengers'' for L. Ron Hubbard.
The founder ran his church from his ship, the Apollo, handwriting bulletins in red ink and policy orders in green. For eight years starting when Terri was 13 and Janis 11, they saw Hubbard most every day. As his messengers, they fetched people for private audiences and carried his handwritten notes to the Scientology world.
Their parents had opened one of Australia's first Scientology missions, in their home in Melbourne. By 1969, the girls were aboard ship with Hubbard, and their parents were needed to help grow Scientology in the United States.
Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, became legal guardian to Terri and Janis. Hubbard was a father figure. He looked after their studies and their well-being.
Twenty years later they had become disaffected. Still believers, the sisters and their husbands left the church. They disagreed with the direction Hubbard's successor, David Miscavige, was taking it, and they found him too controlling.
On their own now in Vegas, they processed mortgage applications and lounged around the pool at their apartment complex, the Polo Club.
They didn't know it, but they were being watched.
Terri and her husband, Fernando Gamboa, left the Sea Org first, in January 1990.
Eight months later, Janis and her husband, Paul Grady, took off from the church's 500-acre compound east of Los Angeles after a sudden, hard rain and a Miscavige tongue-lashing.
Mud washed down an arroyo and into villas the staff had spiffed up for a coming visit by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Miscavige blamed the staff for goofing up the grading of a hillside and said they would work around the clock to clean up the mess.
Not the Gradys. They bolted for a little town north of Los Angeles.
Mark Fisher left that night, too, and made it to his sister's couch in Hollywood. A church security guard was there when he woke; his sister had turned him in.
Fisher had been Miscavige's aide de camp for nearly seven years. He and his staff woke up Miscavige and his wife, and they walked their beagles, Chesley and Chelsea. They cleaned the leader's guns after target practice and, when he was in a good mood, piled in a car and went with him to the movies.
For leaving without permission, Fisher had to pull weeds and was questioned for hours daily for a month. On Sept. 15, 1990, Fisher said goodbye to his wife in a church security office. He wrote her a check for $8,000, half their savings, and gave her their furniture and art work. He took their Honda and drove off.
By year's end, opportunity knocked in Las Vegas.
A Scientology parishioner opening a mortgage office there told Janis, Terri and their husbands he would teach them the business. If they did well, they could take over. Janis contacted Fisher; he was in, too.
Janis was five months pregnant when they moved into the Polo Club. She and Paul got one bedroom. Terri and Fernando got the other. Fisher got the sofa.
After two months, their little startup, City Mortgage, needed another mortgage agent.
David Lubow answered their Help Wanted ad. He said the market was tough in the San Fernando Valley, where his wife worked and they lived with their two children. He would make the four-hour drive home on weekends. Terri hired him.
"Dave was a really friendly guy,'' Fisher said. "A really nice guy. Somebody you would want to have a beer with.''
The Gamboas and the Gradys declined to be interviewed for this report. But Fisher and other former Scientology staffers who were hired at City Mortgage described what they saw and heard.
Lubow got an apartment at the Polo Club and hung around with the five from the office.
He had never played racquetball, but he played often with Fernando. He saw the five at the pool and grilled out with them. He was as thrilled as they when Janis, with the help of a midwife, delivered her son in the living room.
Conversation would get around to Scientology. Terri and Janis told Lubow about their early days with Hubbard, how they watched him build the church from the ground up. They all said he should read Dianetics.
Lubow asked the obvious: So why did you leave?
Because of Miscavige, they said. If he were gone, they might go back.
Good talker, that Dave Lubow. His apartment was across the tiny parking lot. From his front door, he could see theirs.
RUNNING THE OPERATION
A short walk down Hollywood Boulevard from where tourists take pictures of sidewalk shrines to movie stars is the Hollywood Guaranty Building, 12 floors of Scientology offices. The top floor is "OSA-Intel,'' the Office of Special Affairs' intelligence unit.
That's where David Lubow sent his reports. Church staff routed them to Mike Rinder, the director of OSA, and Marty Rathbun, Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, the church's top ecclesiastical authority. Staff knew him as Miscavige's right hand man. Rathbun said he routinely forwarded Lubow's reports to the leader.
Rathbun worked with Rinder's OSA team, which handled legal matters, investigations and media relations. Rinder was the church's chief public spokesman for 20 years, nationally and internationally, defending the church in countless interviews.
Rathbun left Scientology in 2004, Rinder in 2007. This past June, both spoke out about the physical abuse they said they saw Miscavige administer, assertions the church vehemently denied. Now they say Miscavige ordered spying on those he considered potentially threatening to himself and the church.
"Miscavige was intensely obsessed with that Las Vegas crowd,'' Rathbun said.
Church attorneys and spokesman Tommy Davis said the church does not hire private investigators, its attorneys do. Miscavige has nothing to do with the investigators. "Any claim or inference that Mr. Miscavige was involved in any way with attorney use of private investigators is false,'' Davis wrote.
Before they left Scientology, the Gillham sisters transitioned from teenaged messengers to powerful roles. Terri was executive director of Author Services Inc., the corporation Hubbard set up distinct from Scientology to control rights to his books, lectures and other intellectual property. At ASI, she worked closely with Miscavige, who was its chairman of the board.
Janis led a team in 1988 that readied the church's new cruise ship, the Freewinds, for its maiden voyage. From 1987 through 1990, she oversaw the church's international management team.
They and Fisher told Lubow about how things soured. They joked about going back to the compound in the desert, maybe drive a van up to the front gate and yell out to staff: All aboard!
Rathbun and Rinder said Miscavige viewed the Las Vegas clique as potential agitators or even motivated to start an anti-Scientology crusade. Rathbun said Miscavige "ordered'' him to arrange for someone to infiltrate the five in Vegas and find out what they were up to.
Rathbun said he instructed OSA-Intel chief Linda Hamel to consult a private investigator who had worked for the church for years and find someone with a high social I.Q for the job. Lubow.
"He got deep in and became a close friend and was reporting back,'' Rathbun said. "Quite frankly, the more reporting he did, the more obsessed Miscavige became. Those people all pinned their gripes about their experiences in Scientology to their personal experiences with Miscavige.
"They were consistently communicating about how they were just waiting for this guy to burn out and maybe they even would go back some day.''
Instructions for Lubow: Keep the reports coming.
TOO MANY QUESTIONS
Terri Gamboa fired Fisher before City Mortgage was a year old. Badly needing a commission check, Fisher had chewed out a support staffer for not processing a loan application quickly enough.
"I blew my stack. Got really angry,'' Fisher said.
Lesson learned. "You deal with people a certain way in the Sea Org,'' he said, "but when you come out in the real world, you can't treat people like that.''
He moved to Houston, for a promotions job with an adult entertainment club owner he knew. Fisher was settling in when Lubow called. He was in town on a real estate deal, they should do lunch. Lubow picked Fisher up in a rented Cadillac.
"We're driving around, I'm showing him around Houston — I'd only been there about a week or so — and he started asking me questions,'' Fisher said.
What did he really think about Scientology?
What did he think about David Miscavige?
Did he really want to get rid of him?
Would the five really go back if Miscavige was gone?
Enough questions that Fisher noticed. "Why would he be working on some deal in a little town out in Texas, when we were based in Las Vegas? I mean, nothing added up.''
After lunch, Fisher called Vegas. "Janis, I think Dave Lubow is a plant.''
Janis said City Mortgage didn't send him there, it didn't have any business in Houston.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED
In Vegas, Fernando Gamboa took an intriguing phone call. A business contact at a bank in Los Angeles said two investors were headed their way, and Fernando and Terri should meet them.
They had dinner at Caesars Palace. The men said they were dealmakers from Hong Kong whose clients expected royal treatment. They wanted Terri and Fernando to go to Australia and find a scenic horse ranch. The dealmakers would buy the ranch and pay the Gamboas to run it and host their clients.
Terri could go home to Australia and do what she loved: Be with horses. With their living expenses covered, she and Fernando could bank most of their salaries.
They left for Melbourne. Who showed up in a matter of weeks? Lubow, on vacation with his wife. They all went to the beach.
"They (the Gamboas) thought it was bizarre he came all the way down there,'' Fisher said. "That's when we really started to suspect him.''
Back at City Mortgage, everybody wondered: Where does Lubow get his money? They didn't pay him salary, just commission. And he'd closed only one mortgage there.
THE AUSTRALIA MANEUVER
Rathbun and Rinder now say the church was the silent partner paying for the Gamboa's diversion to Australia.
"It definitely was a church maneuver,'' Rathbun said. "I was involved in that.''
Lubow had filed intelligence reports for seven months when the dealmakers took the Gamboas to dinner. Many of his reports, sometimes just a long paragraph, sometimes two or three pages, highlighted Terri as especially critical of Miscavige, Rathbun said.
"I know there were reports coming out that she was considering lending assistance to people who were going after DM (David Miscavige) on the outside,'' he said, referring to former church officials suing Scientology.
Rathbun said Miscavige also was concerned. Terri could undermine Scientology's settlement talks with the IRS, in 1992-93, over whether to restore the church's tax-exempt status.
Rathbun said Miscavige told him to get her far away. Rinder said the church strategy was: "Get them out of the U.S.''
"We had some guy who was super well-heeled. He was out of Hong Kong,'' Rathbun said. "I set the thing up with Linda (Hamel, church intelligence chief). He was some British guy. He invited them down … wined and dined (them) … we literally were going to buy a horse ranch.''
The Gamboas found a ranch in the high country north of Melbourne that the investors could rent. They stayed two years.
Rathbun and Rinder said they don't know how much the operation cost, only that the church underwrote it.
HOW THE CHURCH DOES IT
Seeking comment from the church, the St. Petersburg Times posed written questions about Lubow's involvement with the five former church staff in Las Vegas. Responding in writing, the church addressed its practices but made no mention of Lubow.
Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis said neither Miscavige nor church officials hired private investigators, church attorneys did. Davis said the church directs its attorneys and their agents to conform to all laws, regulations and the highest ethical standards.
Davis gave the Times declarations from longtime church attorneys Elliot Abelson and Kendrick Moxon that stated it's routine for lawyers to retain PIs to acquire useful information and to disprove false allegations by potential adversaries. They said they instructed the investigators to comply with state and local laws and the rules of their profession. The attorneys said they never communicated with Miscavige about PIs or investigations.
"He is simply not involved,'' Abelson said.
Rinder, who oversaw intelligence efforts as OSA's director for 25 years, said it's done that way to shield the church.
"It's a protection,'' he said. "You can always come back and say, 'This guy is retained by a lawyer.' ''
OSA's own intelligence staff vetted the investigators, Rinder said, then Abelson or Moxon hired them. The private attorneys worked as independent contractors and had offices on the 10th floor of the church building on Hollywood Boulevard.
Rinder said the attorneys worked out fee agreements with the PIs and sent them to OSA for assignment, and the church transferred funds to Abelson and Moxon to pay the PIs.
"We'd use the same people over and over,'' Rinder said, about 10 of them. "It was as big as it needed to be.
"If you need 10 PIs working on it, then you get 10 PIs working on it. If there was one needed, you'd have just one.''
Church intelligence mostly targeted those it feared might hurt Scientology, on the streets, in court or in the media, Rinder and Rathbun said.
In the early 1980s, Miscavige, joined by Rathbun, Rinder and others, reformed the church's previous intelligence division, the Guardian's Office. Its director, Mary Sue Hubbard, and 10 other Scientologists were convicted in October 1979 on federal charges of conspiring to steal government documents or obstruct justice.
But Rathbun said Miscavige still believed it was important to anticipate the moves of potential enemies.
Prediction — "that became our watchword,'' Rathbun said.
"That actually was our initial justification and our initial standard. In other words, it was okay to infiltrate somebody, provided it was done solely for prediction.''
If someone caused trouble, a plaintiff in a lawsuit or a reporter stirring controversy, that triggered ODC, Overt Data Collection, Rathbun said. The church's intelligence staff followed a form and culled information from public sources.
"Any character that pops up in the mix, ODC is almost automatic,'' Rathbun said. But if the church saw serious threat, it commissioned covert work. "Now that it's an attack, CDC.''
Covert Data Collection involved informants and private investigators.
"You're looking for two things,'' Rinder said. "One, connections. Two, dirt, crimes, whatever it is that may be able to be used to expose the source of attack as having their own dirty laundry so … they are not a credible source.''
The church has a term for it. To "dead agent'' someone is to destroy an adversary's credibility.
Lubow did not respond to an interview request.
Responding to questions about Rathbun and Rinder's accounts, the church provided the declaration of Rinder's top deputy for 20 years, Kurt Weiland. It states that Rathbun and Rinder are "omitting context'' about OSA and mischaracterizing the work of "experienced legal professionals.''
"The allegations are made to appear extraordinary to most readers who are not aware that it is a common factor in litigation — pending and anticipated.''
Of Rathbun and Rinder, Weiland's declaration concluded: "They are now employing the very tactic they decried in the past, complete with false claims and innuendo, and have created a web of lies and deceit about the church. Paradoxically, they are the very individuals who directed and controlled the very activities they are now saying 'the church' did wrong.
"If their claims about the 'the church' were true, which they are not, as I have made clear in this declaration, they would have to point the finger directly at each other and no one else.''
THE NEW GUY, FERRIS
By 1994, the original cast was back at City Mortgage. The Gradys, who had kept the business going, rehired Fisher. The Gamboas were back from Australia.
Lubow had cleaned out his desk and moved back to California. But he visited Vegas and palled around with his friends. The five ex-Scientology staffers didn't confront him about spying; they assumed the church would just send in somebody else.
"Then we'd have to figure it out all over again,'' Fisher said.
Four years old now, City Mortgage had new faces. On the team were former Sea Org members Kenny Lipton and Gene Decheff.
Lipton worked there until 1998, when he died of cancer. Decheff, who lives in Spokane now, said his colleagues warned him to be leery of Lubow. "It was suspected he might be there to watch us, or get information about us, for somebody.''
The office needed more support staff. Terri hired Pam Khan, who lived in Vegas with her husband.
Pam quickly made friends and told her bosses she knew someone who would make a good loan officer. Her husband, Ferris.
Pam was right. Ferris Khan wrote loans and was fun outside work.
On Sept. 7, 1996, Vegas was abuzz. Mike Tyson was fighting Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand. The Gamboas hosted a dinner party to watch the closed circuit telecast. Khan took over the kitchen and presented a multi-course salmon feast.
"It was fantastic,'' Fisher said.
In 1998, Pam Khan announced she was pregnant. Her friends at City Mortgage gave her a baby shower and, when she moved home to Phoenix, a going-away party.
Khan stayed on a few more months and left to join her. He and Fisher called each other nearly every day.
Fisher said Khan told him he was starting a cell phone company and said he would pay Fisher $7,500 to write the employee manual.
Khan asked about Scientology. By 1999, anti-Scientology sites were getting traffic on the Internet. What did Fisher know about those? And what did he know about the protest group in Clearwater inspired by the death of Lisa McPherson, the Scientologist who died in 1995 after 17 days in care of church staffers?
Fisher knew plenty about the protesters. Two of the ringleaders, Jesse Prince and Stacy Brooks, were friends, former Scientologists Fisher worked with in the '70s and '80s.
Let's go to Florida, Fisher told Khan, "It might be fun to poke my finger in DM's eye.''
THE FISHER DIVERSION
Miscavige was in Clearwater then, with Rathbun and Rinder, working to contain the fallout surrounding McPherson's death.
The judge in the McPherson family's wrongful death lawsuit was considering a motion that Miscavige be added as a defendant. The family's lawyer argued that he was involved in day-to-day operations of the church. Scientology lawyers said he was the ecclesiastical leader and not involved in day-to-day operations.
On Dec. 14, 1999, the judge granted the family's motion. Miscavige was a defendant.
Soon after came an intelligence report out of Las Vegas. Mark Fisher was planning to come to Clearwater.
"Miscavige was freaked,'' Rathbun said. "He was certain that Fisher, having worked directly for Miscavige for a number of years, was coming down to testify about Miscavige's control of the church.''
Rathbun said Miscavige summoned him and Rinder. "He said to Mike and me, 'You make sure Mark Fisher does not come to Florida.'"
Rathbun said he called Linda Hamel, the intelligence chief in California. Rathbun asked: "Hey, what happened to your guy Lubow? Can't he come up with a distraction for Mark Fisher?''
Lubow had been pulled out of Vegas for other work for the church. "But we got another guy who substituted for Lubow,'' Rathbun said Hamel told him.
"We worked out this whole plan, Linda and I,'' Rathbun said.
PUERTO VALLARTA
Forget Clearwater, Khan told Fisher.
"He goes, 'Look it, we got to meet this investor I know in Puerto Vallarta. It'll be a lot more fun.'''
The financier lived in Italy but was traveling to Puerto Vallarta the same week they were headed to Florida. Khan said they needed to meet and get his backing for the cell phone company Khan was starting.
Instead of protesting in Clearwater, Khan and Fisher spent five days at a luxury resort, parasailing, snorkeling and partying. They dined with the investor the third night, and Khan gave him the manual Fisher wrote. Then it was back to the clubs.
"We were on vacation,'' Fisher said.
Khan paid for everything, Fisher said, at least $7,000.
Back in Clearwater, Hamel sent Rathbun a video of Fisher partying at a bar in Puerto Vallarta. He played it for Miscavige.
"He got a great kick out of it,'' Rathbun said.
Rathbun and Rinder said they never knew the name Ferris Khan, but they knew an operative replaced Lubow and took Fisher to Mexico.
The church paid all expenses for diverting Fisher, Rathbun said. "Every penny of it.''
ONLY ONE PERSON KNEW
Only once did Fisher confront his friend Ferris about the possibility he lived a double life. About four years ago, in one of their many phone calls, he said:
"Hey, you know Janis thinks you are spying for Scientology,'' Fisher said, half joking.
What a laugh, Khan said. Why would I do that?
Fisher dropped it. He and Khan were pals.
"Any time I had a business decision or a financial decision or if I was going to buy or sell a stock, I would call him. He seemed to have a lot of expertise in those areas. … We were intimate in terms of my finances and anything else I was doing …
"He was the type of person that I would call up and say, Hey, how's it going? And we'd shoot the s--- for 20, 30 minutes. We'd talk politics … whatever.''
Khan did not return phone messages seeking comment.
This past July, 12 years since they met, Fisher realized he had been betrayed.
Late that month, Khan called from Dubai, where he was on business. Did Fisher know anything about a story the Times was preparing?
No, Fisher said. How did Khan know to ask? Fisher hadn't told anybody he had been interviewed. But he knew the Times had sent the church questions about the people in the story.
He had another piece of evidence, the church magazine Freedom, published days before the Times story. One paragraph jumped off the page at Fisher. It described one of the Times' sources as a bankrupt taxi driver.
Fisher drove a cab for about six weeks and had filed for bankruptcy. He had told just one person: Ferris Khan.
JANIS GRADY'S STATEMENT
Fisher still hasn't told Khan that he figured him out. "I considered him my best friend. I even told him a couple of times, 'Man, you are like a brother to me.' ''
Khan stopped calling every day, but did check in on Aug. 29, to wish Fisher happy birthday, his 51st.
In declining to be interviewed for this report, Janis Grady said she and her sister fear speaking out would damage relationships with family members who are Scientologists. She gave this written statement:
"We were aware that Scientology officials had sent private investigators to keep an eye on us. We had nothing to hide and just wanted to get on with building our new lives.
"If the Church of Scientology officials chose to spend their money that way, that is their poor judgment. To my knowledge the PIs caused no adverse effect on our lives so they were of no concern to us. My priority was/is raising my children."
Joe Childs is Managing editor/Tampa Bay. He has supervised the Times' coverage of Scientology since 1993. He can be reached at childs@sptimes.com.
Thomas C. Tobin is a Times staff writer who has covered the Church of Scientology off and on since 1996. He can be reached at tobin@sptimes.com.
by Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin
Tampa Bay Times
November 2, 2009
Scientology: What happened in Vegas, Part 2 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
One of the guys. David Lubow, top right, infiltrated a group of former Sea Org members living in Las Vegas. Partying at summer’s end are, from left, Terri and Fernando Gamboa, non-Scientologist Jack Trostle and Janis Grady.
They squeezed into a two bedroom apartment, all they could afford. Two couples and a single guy had left the Church of Scientology and joined up in Las Vegas, starting a mortgage business near the Palace Station Casino.
They were faces in the crowd.
Except that the two wives were important in Scientology history, sisters Terri and Janis Gillham. They were two of the original four "messengers'' for L. Ron Hubbard.
The founder ran his church from his ship, the Apollo, handwriting bulletins in red ink and policy orders in green. For eight years starting when Terri was 13 and Janis 11, they saw Hubbard most every day. As his messengers, they fetched people for private audiences and carried his handwritten notes to the Scientology world.
Their parents had opened one of Australia's first Scientology missions, in their home in Melbourne. By 1969, the girls were aboard ship with Hubbard, and their parents were needed to help grow Scientology in the United States.
Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, became legal guardian to Terri and Janis. Hubbard was a father figure. He looked after their studies and their well-being.
Twenty years later they had become disaffected. Still believers, the sisters and their husbands left the church. They disagreed with the direction Hubbard's successor, David Miscavige, was taking it, and they found him too controlling.
On their own now in Vegas, they processed mortgage applications and lounged around the pool at their apartment complex, the Polo Club.
They didn't know it, but they were being watched.
Terri and her husband, Fernando Gamboa, left the Sea Org first, in January 1990.
Eight months later, Janis and her husband, Paul Grady, took off from the church's 500-acre compound east of Los Angeles after a sudden, hard rain and a Miscavige tongue-lashing.
Mud washed down an arroyo and into villas the staff had spiffed up for a coming visit by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Miscavige blamed the staff for goofing up the grading of a hillside and said they would work around the clock to clean up the mess.
Not the Gradys. They bolted for a little town north of Los Angeles.
Mark Fisher left that night, too, and made it to his sister's couch in Hollywood. A church security guard was there when he woke; his sister had turned him in.
Fisher had been Miscavige's aide de camp for nearly seven years. He and his staff woke up Miscavige and his wife, and they walked their beagles, Chesley and Chelsea. They cleaned the leader's guns after target practice and, when he was in a good mood, piled in a car and went with him to the movies.
For leaving without permission, Fisher had to pull weeds and was questioned for hours daily for a month. On Sept. 15, 1990, Fisher said goodbye to his wife in a church security office. He wrote her a check for $8,000, half their savings, and gave her their furniture and art work. He took their Honda and drove off.
By year's end, opportunity knocked in Las Vegas.
A Scientology parishioner opening a mortgage office there told Janis, Terri and their husbands he would teach them the business. If they did well, they could take over. Janis contacted Fisher; he was in, too.
Janis was five months pregnant when they moved into the Polo Club. She and Paul got one bedroom. Terri and Fernando got the other. Fisher got the sofa.
After two months, their little startup, City Mortgage, needed another mortgage agent.
David Lubow answered their Help Wanted ad. He said the market was tough in the San Fernando Valley, where his wife worked and they lived with their two children. He would make the four-hour drive home on weekends. Terri hired him.
"Dave was a really friendly guy,'' Fisher said. "A really nice guy. Somebody you would want to have a beer with.''
The Gamboas and the Gradys declined to be interviewed for this report. But Fisher and other former Scientology staffers who were hired at City Mortgage described what they saw and heard.
Lubow got an apartment at the Polo Club and hung around with the five from the office.
He had never played racquetball, but he played often with Fernando. He saw the five at the pool and grilled out with them. He was as thrilled as they when Janis, with the help of a midwife, delivered her son in the living room.
Conversation would get around to Scientology. Terri and Janis told Lubow about their early days with Hubbard, how they watched him build the church from the ground up. They all said he should read Dianetics.
Lubow asked the obvious: So why did you leave?
Because of Miscavige, they said. If he were gone, they might go back.
Good talker, that Dave Lubow. His apartment was across the tiny parking lot. From his front door, he could see theirs.
RUNNING THE OPERATION
A short walk down Hollywood Boulevard from where tourists take pictures of sidewalk shrines to movie stars is the Hollywood Guaranty Building, 12 floors of Scientology offices. The top floor is "OSA-Intel,'' the Office of Special Affairs' intelligence unit.
That's where David Lubow sent his reports. Church staff routed them to Mike Rinder, the director of OSA, and Marty Rathbun, Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, the church's top ecclesiastical authority. Staff knew him as Miscavige's right hand man. Rathbun said he routinely forwarded Lubow's reports to the leader.
Rathbun worked with Rinder's OSA team, which handled legal matters, investigations and media relations. Rinder was the church's chief public spokesman for 20 years, nationally and internationally, defending the church in countless interviews.
Rathbun left Scientology in 2004, Rinder in 2007. This past June, both spoke out about the physical abuse they said they saw Miscavige administer, assertions the church vehemently denied. Now they say Miscavige ordered spying on those he considered potentially threatening to himself and the church.
"Miscavige was intensely obsessed with that Las Vegas crowd,'' Rathbun said.
Church attorneys and spokesman Tommy Davis said the church does not hire private investigators, its attorneys do. Miscavige has nothing to do with the investigators. "Any claim or inference that Mr. Miscavige was involved in any way with attorney use of private investigators is false,'' Davis wrote.
Before they left Scientology, the Gillham sisters transitioned from teenaged messengers to powerful roles. Terri was executive director of Author Services Inc., the corporation Hubbard set up distinct from Scientology to control rights to his books, lectures and other intellectual property. At ASI, she worked closely with Miscavige, who was its chairman of the board.
Janis led a team in 1988 that readied the church's new cruise ship, the Freewinds, for its maiden voyage. From 1987 through 1990, she oversaw the church's international management team.
They and Fisher told Lubow about how things soured. They joked about going back to the compound in the desert, maybe drive a van up to the front gate and yell out to staff: All aboard!
Rathbun and Rinder said Miscavige viewed the Las Vegas clique as potential agitators or even motivated to start an anti-Scientology crusade. Rathbun said Miscavige "ordered'' him to arrange for someone to infiltrate the five in Vegas and find out what they were up to.
Rathbun said he instructed OSA-Intel chief Linda Hamel to consult a private investigator who had worked for the church for years and find someone with a high social I.Q for the job. Lubow.
"He got deep in and became a close friend and was reporting back,'' Rathbun said. "Quite frankly, the more reporting he did, the more obsessed Miscavige became. Those people all pinned their gripes about their experiences in Scientology to their personal experiences with Miscavige.
"They were consistently communicating about how they were just waiting for this guy to burn out and maybe they even would go back some day.''
Instructions for Lubow: Keep the reports coming.
TOO MANY QUESTIONS
Terri Gamboa fired Fisher before City Mortgage was a year old. Badly needing a commission check, Fisher had chewed out a support staffer for not processing a loan application quickly enough.
"I blew my stack. Got really angry,'' Fisher said.
Lesson learned. "You deal with people a certain way in the Sea Org,'' he said, "but when you come out in the real world, you can't treat people like that.''
He moved to Houston, for a promotions job with an adult entertainment club owner he knew. Fisher was settling in when Lubow called. He was in town on a real estate deal, they should do lunch. Lubow picked Fisher up in a rented Cadillac.
"We're driving around, I'm showing him around Houston — I'd only been there about a week or so — and he started asking me questions,'' Fisher said.
What did he really think about Scientology?
What did he think about David Miscavige?
Did he really want to get rid of him?
Would the five really go back if Miscavige was gone?
Enough questions that Fisher noticed. "Why would he be working on some deal in a little town out in Texas, when we were based in Las Vegas? I mean, nothing added up.''
After lunch, Fisher called Vegas. "Janis, I think Dave Lubow is a plant.''
Janis said City Mortgage didn't send him there, it didn't have any business in Houston.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKED
In Vegas, Fernando Gamboa took an intriguing phone call. A business contact at a bank in Los Angeles said two investors were headed their way, and Fernando and Terri should meet them.
They had dinner at Caesars Palace. The men said they were dealmakers from Hong Kong whose clients expected royal treatment. They wanted Terri and Fernando to go to Australia and find a scenic horse ranch. The dealmakers would buy the ranch and pay the Gamboas to run it and host their clients.
Terri could go home to Australia and do what she loved: Be with horses. With their living expenses covered, she and Fernando could bank most of their salaries.
They left for Melbourne. Who showed up in a matter of weeks? Lubow, on vacation with his wife. They all went to the beach.
"They (the Gamboas) thought it was bizarre he came all the way down there,'' Fisher said. "That's when we really started to suspect him.''
Back at City Mortgage, everybody wondered: Where does Lubow get his money? They didn't pay him salary, just commission. And he'd closed only one mortgage there.
THE AUSTRALIA MANEUVER
Rathbun and Rinder now say the church was the silent partner paying for the Gamboa's diversion to Australia.
"It definitely was a church maneuver,'' Rathbun said. "I was involved in that.''
Lubow had filed intelligence reports for seven months when the dealmakers took the Gamboas to dinner. Many of his reports, sometimes just a long paragraph, sometimes two or three pages, highlighted Terri as especially critical of Miscavige, Rathbun said.
"I know there were reports coming out that she was considering lending assistance to people who were going after DM (David Miscavige) on the outside,'' he said, referring to former church officials suing Scientology.
Rathbun said Miscavige also was concerned. Terri could undermine Scientology's settlement talks with the IRS, in 1992-93, over whether to restore the church's tax-exempt status.
Rathbun said Miscavige told him to get her far away. Rinder said the church strategy was: "Get them out of the U.S.''
"We had some guy who was super well-heeled. He was out of Hong Kong,'' Rathbun said. "I set the thing up with Linda (Hamel, church intelligence chief). He was some British guy. He invited them down … wined and dined (them) … we literally were going to buy a horse ranch.''
The Gamboas found a ranch in the high country north of Melbourne that the investors could rent. They stayed two years.
Rathbun and Rinder said they don't know how much the operation cost, only that the church underwrote it.
HOW THE CHURCH DOES IT
Seeking comment from the church, the St. Petersburg Times posed written questions about Lubow's involvement with the five former church staff in Las Vegas. Responding in writing, the church addressed its practices but made no mention of Lubow.
Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis said neither Miscavige nor church officials hired private investigators, church attorneys did. Davis said the church directs its attorneys and their agents to conform to all laws, regulations and the highest ethical standards.
Davis gave the Times declarations from longtime church attorneys Elliot Abelson and Kendrick Moxon that stated it's routine for lawyers to retain PIs to acquire useful information and to disprove false allegations by potential adversaries. They said they instructed the investigators to comply with state and local laws and the rules of their profession. The attorneys said they never communicated with Miscavige about PIs or investigations.
"He is simply not involved,'' Abelson said.
Rinder, who oversaw intelligence efforts as OSA's director for 25 years, said it's done that way to shield the church.
"It's a protection,'' he said. "You can always come back and say, 'This guy is retained by a lawyer.' ''
OSA's own intelligence staff vetted the investigators, Rinder said, then Abelson or Moxon hired them. The private attorneys worked as independent contractors and had offices on the 10th floor of the church building on Hollywood Boulevard.
Rinder said the attorneys worked out fee agreements with the PIs and sent them to OSA for assignment, and the church transferred funds to Abelson and Moxon to pay the PIs.
"We'd use the same people over and over,'' Rinder said, about 10 of them. "It was as big as it needed to be.
"If you need 10 PIs working on it, then you get 10 PIs working on it. If there was one needed, you'd have just one.''
Church intelligence mostly targeted those it feared might hurt Scientology, on the streets, in court or in the media, Rinder and Rathbun said.
In the early 1980s, Miscavige, joined by Rathbun, Rinder and others, reformed the church's previous intelligence division, the Guardian's Office. Its director, Mary Sue Hubbard, and 10 other Scientologists were convicted in October 1979 on federal charges of conspiring to steal government documents or obstruct justice.
But Rathbun said Miscavige still believed it was important to anticipate the moves of potential enemies.
Prediction — "that became our watchword,'' Rathbun said.
"That actually was our initial justification and our initial standard. In other words, it was okay to infiltrate somebody, provided it was done solely for prediction.''
If someone caused trouble, a plaintiff in a lawsuit or a reporter stirring controversy, that triggered ODC, Overt Data Collection, Rathbun said. The church's intelligence staff followed a form and culled information from public sources.
"Any character that pops up in the mix, ODC is almost automatic,'' Rathbun said. But if the church saw serious threat, it commissioned covert work. "Now that it's an attack, CDC.''
Covert Data Collection involved informants and private investigators.
"You're looking for two things,'' Rinder said. "One, connections. Two, dirt, crimes, whatever it is that may be able to be used to expose the source of attack as having their own dirty laundry so … they are not a credible source.''
The church has a term for it. To "dead agent'' someone is to destroy an adversary's credibility.
Lubow did not respond to an interview request.
Responding to questions about Rathbun and Rinder's accounts, the church provided the declaration of Rinder's top deputy for 20 years, Kurt Weiland. It states that Rathbun and Rinder are "omitting context'' about OSA and mischaracterizing the work of "experienced legal professionals.''
"The allegations are made to appear extraordinary to most readers who are not aware that it is a common factor in litigation — pending and anticipated.''
Of Rathbun and Rinder, Weiland's declaration concluded: "They are now employing the very tactic they decried in the past, complete with false claims and innuendo, and have created a web of lies and deceit about the church. Paradoxically, they are the very individuals who directed and controlled the very activities they are now saying 'the church' did wrong.
"If their claims about the 'the church' were true, which they are not, as I have made clear in this declaration, they would have to point the finger directly at each other and no one else.''
THE NEW GUY, FERRIS
By 1994, the original cast was back at City Mortgage. The Gradys, who had kept the business going, rehired Fisher. The Gamboas were back from Australia.
Lubow had cleaned out his desk and moved back to California. But he visited Vegas and palled around with his friends. The five ex-Scientology staffers didn't confront him about spying; they assumed the church would just send in somebody else.
"Then we'd have to figure it out all over again,'' Fisher said.
Four years old now, City Mortgage had new faces. On the team were former Sea Org members Kenny Lipton and Gene Decheff.
Lipton worked there until 1998, when he died of cancer. Decheff, who lives in Spokane now, said his colleagues warned him to be leery of Lubow. "It was suspected he might be there to watch us, or get information about us, for somebody.''
The office needed more support staff. Terri hired Pam Khan, who lived in Vegas with her husband.
Pam quickly made friends and told her bosses she knew someone who would make a good loan officer. Her husband, Ferris.
Pam was right. Ferris Khan wrote loans and was fun outside work.
On Sept. 7, 1996, Vegas was abuzz. Mike Tyson was fighting Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand. The Gamboas hosted a dinner party to watch the closed circuit telecast. Khan took over the kitchen and presented a multi-course salmon feast.
"It was fantastic,'' Fisher said.
In 1998, Pam Khan announced she was pregnant. Her friends at City Mortgage gave her a baby shower and, when she moved home to Phoenix, a going-away party.
Khan stayed on a few more months and left to join her. He and Fisher called each other nearly every day.
Fisher said Khan told him he was starting a cell phone company and said he would pay Fisher $7,500 to write the employee manual.
Khan asked about Scientology. By 1999, anti-Scientology sites were getting traffic on the Internet. What did Fisher know about those? And what did he know about the protest group in Clearwater inspired by the death of Lisa McPherson, the Scientologist who died in 1995 after 17 days in care of church staffers?
Fisher knew plenty about the protesters. Two of the ringleaders, Jesse Prince and Stacy Brooks, were friends, former Scientologists Fisher worked with in the '70s and '80s.
Let's go to Florida, Fisher told Khan, "It might be fun to poke my finger in DM's eye.''
THE FISHER DIVERSION
Miscavige was in Clearwater then, with Rathbun and Rinder, working to contain the fallout surrounding McPherson's death.
The judge in the McPherson family's wrongful death lawsuit was considering a motion that Miscavige be added as a defendant. The family's lawyer argued that he was involved in day-to-day operations of the church. Scientology lawyers said he was the ecclesiastical leader and not involved in day-to-day operations.
On Dec. 14, 1999, the judge granted the family's motion. Miscavige was a defendant.
Soon after came an intelligence report out of Las Vegas. Mark Fisher was planning to come to Clearwater.
"Miscavige was freaked,'' Rathbun said. "He was certain that Fisher, having worked directly for Miscavige for a number of years, was coming down to testify about Miscavige's control of the church.''
Rathbun said Miscavige summoned him and Rinder. "He said to Mike and me, 'You make sure Mark Fisher does not come to Florida.'"
Rathbun said he called Linda Hamel, the intelligence chief in California. Rathbun asked: "Hey, what happened to your guy Lubow? Can't he come up with a distraction for Mark Fisher?''
Lubow had been pulled out of Vegas for other work for the church. "But we got another guy who substituted for Lubow,'' Rathbun said Hamel told him.
"We worked out this whole plan, Linda and I,'' Rathbun said.
PUERTO VALLARTA
Forget Clearwater, Khan told Fisher.
"He goes, 'Look it, we got to meet this investor I know in Puerto Vallarta. It'll be a lot more fun.'''
The financier lived in Italy but was traveling to Puerto Vallarta the same week they were headed to Florida. Khan said they needed to meet and get his backing for the cell phone company Khan was starting.
Instead of protesting in Clearwater, Khan and Fisher spent five days at a luxury resort, parasailing, snorkeling and partying. They dined with the investor the third night, and Khan gave him the manual Fisher wrote. Then it was back to the clubs.
"We were on vacation,'' Fisher said.
Khan paid for everything, Fisher said, at least $7,000.
Back in Clearwater, Hamel sent Rathbun a video of Fisher partying at a bar in Puerto Vallarta. He played it for Miscavige.
"He got a great kick out of it,'' Rathbun said.
Rathbun and Rinder said they never knew the name Ferris Khan, but they knew an operative replaced Lubow and took Fisher to Mexico.
The church paid all expenses for diverting Fisher, Rathbun said. "Every penny of it.''
ONLY ONE PERSON KNEW
Only once did Fisher confront his friend Ferris about the possibility he lived a double life. About four years ago, in one of their many phone calls, he said:
"Hey, you know Janis thinks you are spying for Scientology,'' Fisher said, half joking.
What a laugh, Khan said. Why would I do that?
Fisher dropped it. He and Khan were pals.
"Any time I had a business decision or a financial decision or if I was going to buy or sell a stock, I would call him. He seemed to have a lot of expertise in those areas. … We were intimate in terms of my finances and anything else I was doing …
"He was the type of person that I would call up and say, Hey, how's it going? And we'd shoot the s--- for 20, 30 minutes. We'd talk politics … whatever.''
Khan did not return phone messages seeking comment.
This past July, 12 years since they met, Fisher realized he had been betrayed.
Late that month, Khan called from Dubai, where he was on business. Did Fisher know anything about a story the Times was preparing?
No, Fisher said. How did Khan know to ask? Fisher hadn't told anybody he had been interviewed. But he knew the Times had sent the church questions about the people in the story.
He had another piece of evidence, the church magazine Freedom, published days before the Times story. One paragraph jumped off the page at Fisher. It described one of the Times' sources as a bankrupt taxi driver.
Fisher drove a cab for about six weeks and had filed for bankruptcy. He had told just one person: Ferris Khan.
JANIS GRADY'S STATEMENT
Fisher still hasn't told Khan that he figured him out. "I considered him my best friend. I even told him a couple of times, 'Man, you are like a brother to me.' ''
Khan stopped calling every day, but did check in on Aug. 29, to wish Fisher happy birthday, his 51st.
In declining to be interviewed for this report, Janis Grady said she and her sister fear speaking out would damage relationships with family members who are Scientologists. She gave this written statement:
"We were aware that Scientology officials had sent private investigators to keep an eye on us. We had nothing to hide and just wanted to get on with building our new lives.
"If the Church of Scientology officials chose to spend their money that way, that is their poor judgment. To my knowledge the PIs caused no adverse effect on our lives so they were of no concern to us. My priority was/is raising my children."
Joe Childs is Managing editor/Tampa Bay. He has supervised the Times' coverage of Scientology since 1993. He can be reached at childs@sptimes.com.
Thomas C. Tobin is a Times staff writer who has covered the Church of Scientology off and on since 1996. He can be reached at tobin@sptimes.com.
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:47 am
Wog
by Wikipedia
As a racial epithet in British English
Wog is in the UK usually regarded as an offensive slang word referring to dark skinned, non-white people from Africa or Asia. The origin of the term is uncertain. Many dictionaries say "wog" possibly derives from the Golliwogg, a blackface minstrel doll character from a children's book published in 1895. An alternative is that "wog" originates from Pollywog, a maritime term for someone who has not crossed the equator.
It was first spotted by a lexicographer, F.C. Bowen, who recorded it in 1929 in his Sea slang: a dictionary of the old-timers’ expressions and epithets, where he defines wogs as “lower class Babu shipping clerks on the Indian coast”. [1]
The use of the word is discouraged in Britain, and most dictionaries refer to the word with the caution that it is derogatory and offensive slang.
The saying "The wogs begin at Calais" was originated by George Wigg, Labour MP for Dudley, in 1949. In a parliamentary debate concerning the Burmese, Wigg shouted at the Tory benches, "The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all 'wogs'. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [i.e. Winston Churchill] thinks that the 'wogs' begin at Calais."[2] Wigg's coinage, sometimes paraphrased as "Wogs start at the Channel" or "Wogs start at Dover", is used to characterise a stodgy Europhobic viewpoint, and more generally the view that Britain (more so England) is inherently separate from (and superior to) the Continent. In this case, "wog" is used to compare any foreign, non-English person to those more traditionally labeled "wogs".
As a synonym for "illness" in Australian English
Wog was originally used in Australia as a slang term for illnesses such as colds, the flu or malaria. This usage has been in existence since at least the early 1940s. It is recorded in the 1941 Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang by S. J. Baker as meaning a germ or parasite.[3]
A once common expression in Australia when you had an illness (such as cold or flu) was "I am in bed with a wog." It was said jokingly and was a double entendre referring to the use of the word "wog" to describe illness and also persons of Mediterranean origin (as described below).
Another use of the term, which dates from 1909, was to describe insects and grubs, particularly if they were hunting insects or regarded as being unpleasant in some way.[3]
As an ethnic reference in Australian English
Wog is also an ethnic slur in Australian English to denote immigrants of predominately Middle Eastern and eastern or southern European origin.
The "ethnic" character of the term "wog" came into popular use in the 1950s when Australia accepted large numbers of immigrants from Mediterranean/Eastern European countries, in contrast to the then overwhelmingly dominant ethnic white Australian stock of the population. Although originally used pejoratively, the term is increasingly used more affectionately, especially by the individuals the term is used to describe.
The term "wogball" refers to soccer (association football), coming from its popularity among such people. Australians of non-Mediterranean ancestry traditionally favour the games of Rugby football and Australian Rules, although this is a generalisation.
The term was often used in popular Australian comedy Kingswood Country between 1979-84 and was used in a sense that was sometimes pejorative, sometimes affectionate and sometimes neutral.
The word was prominently used in the popular early 1990s stage show Wogs Out of Work, created by Greek-Australian Nick Giannopoulos and Spanish-Australian Simon Palomares. The production was followed on television with Acropolis Now, starring Giannopoulos, Palomares, George Kapiniaris and Mary Coustas, and in film with The Wog Boy.
Nevertheless, the term remains quite offensive to many people in Australia, particularly people of Southeastern European and Eastern European origin who grew up in Australia through the 1950s to 1980s as it was still very much an ethnic slur or insult.
The derogatory nature of the term when used as an ethnic slur largely succeeded in overtaking and driving out use of the term Wog to describe illness or undesirable insects.
Maritime usage
Wog is a shortened version of the word pollywog, frequently modified with the word slimy, used for sailors during the Line-crossing ceremony on the first time they cross the equator. Pollywog or polliwog is an increasingly obsolete synonym for tadpole which has been traced back to Middle English.
This use of pollywog goes back to at least the 19th century and thus may be the oldest source of wog, although Eric Partridge missed it in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937).
Maritime wog is a possible alternative ancestor of the racial wog, particularly since Partridge does record a usage for presumably annoying Bengali bureaucrats:
"A lower-class babu shipping-clerk: nautical: late C.19-20" - Concise Dictionary of Slang, Eric Partridge, 1989
As a term in Scientology
Amongst Scientologists, wog is used as a disparaging word for non-scientologists.[4] Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard defined wog as a "common, everyday garden-variety humanoid ... He 'is' a body. [He] doesn't know he's there, etc. He isn't there as a spirit at all. He is not operating as a thetan. The term comes from 'Worthy Oriental Gentleman', from the days of the British in Egypt. [sic]"[5]
L. Ron Hubbard employed the term frequently in his lectures and writings.[6]
Since wog is not in general use in American English, it is most likely that Hubbard picked it up during his period of service as a US naval officer during World War II (1941-1945). An alternative source would be England, where he resided 1953-1966.
In Scientology, wog lacks racist overtones, even in the UK where that meaning is prevalent. From a 2004 Church of Scientology magazine: "I arrived at Saint Hill shy, introverted and somewhat out of valence. I had been working at a wog job, and I knew my priorities had to change ..."[7]
As a piping component term
WOG appears on certain types/models of block or check valves, indicating they are suitable for "water-oil-gas" service, where gas normally means natural gas or propane. The letters "WOG" are always in capital letters and are usually raised, having been cast with the valve body. This abbreviation sometimes appears as "W.O.G."
Folk etymology
The term wog is often given a folk etymology as an acronym for various phrases:
• Western/Westernized/Wild Oriental Gentleman
• Worthy Oriental Gentleman
• Whole Of Government. Used to describe Australian Government-wide outsourcing contracts
No evidence has been found for any of these putative explanations. The Western/Westernized/Wild Oriental Gentleman acronym only appeared in the 1950s and 60s, although the term wog had been in use for considerably longer.
See also
Blackface
List of ethnic slurs
Nigger
The Wog Boy
Wop
Guido (slang)
Anti-Italianism
References
1. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ch ... _with_wog/
2. Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 467 col 2845.
3. Ramson, W. S. (Ed). The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-554736-5. p. 741.
4. Ex-scientologists speak — "Warrior"
5. Saint Hill Briefing Course-82 6611C29
6. "You'll find out most people, wog people have mock-ups which are two-dimensional" — "Creative Admiration Processing" lecture, 10 January 1953
"We're making a new [society]. So let's skip the approval button from a lot of wogs and settle down to work to make new people and better people." — HCOPL 26 May 1961
"We work in a jungle of noncompliance and false reports called the wog world." — HCOPL 5 Jan 1968
7. The Auditor UK #318 June 2004 p5
by Wikipedia
As a racial epithet in British English
Wog is in the UK usually regarded as an offensive slang word referring to dark skinned, non-white people from Africa or Asia. The origin of the term is uncertain. Many dictionaries say "wog" possibly derives from the Golliwogg, a blackface minstrel doll character from a children's book published in 1895. An alternative is that "wog" originates from Pollywog, a maritime term for someone who has not crossed the equator.
It was first spotted by a lexicographer, F.C. Bowen, who recorded it in 1929 in his Sea slang: a dictionary of the old-timers’ expressions and epithets, where he defines wogs as “lower class Babu shipping clerks on the Indian coast”. [1]
The use of the word is discouraged in Britain, and most dictionaries refer to the word with the caution that it is derogatory and offensive slang.
The saying "The wogs begin at Calais" was originated by George Wigg, Labour MP for Dudley, in 1949. In a parliamentary debate concerning the Burmese, Wigg shouted at the Tory benches, "The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all 'wogs'. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [i.e. Winston Churchill] thinks that the 'wogs' begin at Calais."[2] Wigg's coinage, sometimes paraphrased as "Wogs start at the Channel" or "Wogs start at Dover", is used to characterise a stodgy Europhobic viewpoint, and more generally the view that Britain (more so England) is inherently separate from (and superior to) the Continent. In this case, "wog" is used to compare any foreign, non-English person to those more traditionally labeled "wogs".
As a synonym for "illness" in Australian English
Wog was originally used in Australia as a slang term for illnesses such as colds, the flu or malaria. This usage has been in existence since at least the early 1940s. It is recorded in the 1941 Popular Dictionary of Australian Slang by S. J. Baker as meaning a germ or parasite.[3]
A once common expression in Australia when you had an illness (such as cold or flu) was "I am in bed with a wog." It was said jokingly and was a double entendre referring to the use of the word "wog" to describe illness and also persons of Mediterranean origin (as described below).
Another use of the term, which dates from 1909, was to describe insects and grubs, particularly if they were hunting insects or regarded as being unpleasant in some way.[3]
As an ethnic reference in Australian English
Wog is also an ethnic slur in Australian English to denote immigrants of predominately Middle Eastern and eastern or southern European origin.
The "ethnic" character of the term "wog" came into popular use in the 1950s when Australia accepted large numbers of immigrants from Mediterranean/Eastern European countries, in contrast to the then overwhelmingly dominant ethnic white Australian stock of the population. Although originally used pejoratively, the term is increasingly used more affectionately, especially by the individuals the term is used to describe.
The term "wogball" refers to soccer (association football), coming from its popularity among such people. Australians of non-Mediterranean ancestry traditionally favour the games of Rugby football and Australian Rules, although this is a generalisation.
The term was often used in popular Australian comedy Kingswood Country between 1979-84 and was used in a sense that was sometimes pejorative, sometimes affectionate and sometimes neutral.
The word was prominently used in the popular early 1990s stage show Wogs Out of Work, created by Greek-Australian Nick Giannopoulos and Spanish-Australian Simon Palomares. The production was followed on television with Acropolis Now, starring Giannopoulos, Palomares, George Kapiniaris and Mary Coustas, and in film with The Wog Boy.
Nevertheless, the term remains quite offensive to many people in Australia, particularly people of Southeastern European and Eastern European origin who grew up in Australia through the 1950s to 1980s as it was still very much an ethnic slur or insult.
The derogatory nature of the term when used as an ethnic slur largely succeeded in overtaking and driving out use of the term Wog to describe illness or undesirable insects.
Maritime usage
Wog is a shortened version of the word pollywog, frequently modified with the word slimy, used for sailors during the Line-crossing ceremony on the first time they cross the equator. Pollywog or polliwog is an increasingly obsolete synonym for tadpole which has been traced back to Middle English.
This use of pollywog goes back to at least the 19th century and thus may be the oldest source of wog, although Eric Partridge missed it in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937).
Maritime wog is a possible alternative ancestor of the racial wog, particularly since Partridge does record a usage for presumably annoying Bengali bureaucrats:
"A lower-class babu shipping-clerk: nautical: late C.19-20" - Concise Dictionary of Slang, Eric Partridge, 1989
As a term in Scientology
Amongst Scientologists, wog is used as a disparaging word for non-scientologists.[4] Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard defined wog as a "common, everyday garden-variety humanoid ... He 'is' a body. [He] doesn't know he's there, etc. He isn't there as a spirit at all. He is not operating as a thetan. The term comes from 'Worthy Oriental Gentleman', from the days of the British in Egypt. [sic]"[5]
L. Ron Hubbard employed the term frequently in his lectures and writings.[6]
Since wog is not in general use in American English, it is most likely that Hubbard picked it up during his period of service as a US naval officer during World War II (1941-1945). An alternative source would be England, where he resided 1953-1966.
In Scientology, wog lacks racist overtones, even in the UK where that meaning is prevalent. From a 2004 Church of Scientology magazine: "I arrived at Saint Hill shy, introverted and somewhat out of valence. I had been working at a wog job, and I knew my priorities had to change ..."[7]
As a piping component term
WOG appears on certain types/models of block or check valves, indicating they are suitable for "water-oil-gas" service, where gas normally means natural gas or propane. The letters "WOG" are always in capital letters and are usually raised, having been cast with the valve body. This abbreviation sometimes appears as "W.O.G."
Folk etymology
The term wog is often given a folk etymology as an acronym for various phrases:
• Western/Westernized/Wild Oriental Gentleman
• Worthy Oriental Gentleman
• Whole Of Government. Used to describe Australian Government-wide outsourcing contracts
No evidence has been found for any of these putative explanations. The Western/Westernized/Wild Oriental Gentleman acronym only appeared in the 1950s and 60s, although the term wog had been in use for considerably longer.
See also
Blackface
List of ethnic slurs
Nigger
The Wog Boy
Wop
Guido (slang)
Anti-Italianism
References
1. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ch ... _with_wog/
2. Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 467 col 2845.
3. Ramson, W. S. (Ed). The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-554736-5. p. 741.
4. Ex-scientologists speak — "Warrior"
5. Saint Hill Briefing Course-82 6611C29
6. "You'll find out most people, wog people have mock-ups which are two-dimensional" — "Creative Admiration Processing" lecture, 10 January 1953
"We're making a new [society]. So let's skip the approval button from a lot of wogs and settle down to work to make new people and better people." — HCOPL 26 May 1961
"We work in a jungle of noncompliance and false reports called the wog world." — HCOPL 5 Jan 1968
7. The Auditor UK #318 June 2004 p5
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- Site Admin
- Posts: 36183
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:50 am
Xenophobia
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/23/19
Xenophobia is a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself. It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself, usually in the context of visibly differentiated minorities.
General
A political poster of the far right National Democratic Party of Germany. The text reads, "We clean up."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word xenophobia consists of two parts: xeno (a combining form meaning "guest, stranger, person that looks different, foreigner") and phobia, ("fear, horror or aversion, especially if morbid").[1]
It is more broadly defined in the Dictionary of Psychology "a fear of strangers". [2] As defined by the OED, it can mean a fear of or aversion to, not only persons from other countries, but other cultures, subcultures and subsets of belief systems; in short, anyone who meets any list of criteria about their origin, religion, personal beliefs, habits, language, orientations, or any other criteria. While some will state that the "target" group is a set of persons not accepted by the society, in reality only the phobic person need hold the belief that the target group is not (or should not be) accepted by society. While the phobic person is aware of the aversion (even hatred) of the target group, they may not identify it or accept it as a fear.
As with all phobias, a xenophobic person has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner. This arguably separates xenophobia from racism and ordinary prejudice in that someone of a different race does not necessarily have to be of a different nationality. In various contexts, the terms "xenophobia" and "racism" seem to be used interchangeably, though they can have wholly different meanings (xenophobia can be based on various aspects, racism being based solely on race and ancestry).
Xenophobia has two main objects:
The first is a population group present within a society that is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries, or became part of this society through conquest and territorial expansion. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, pogroms or in the worst case, genocide.
The second form of xenophobia is primarily cultural, and the objects of the phobia are cultural elements which are considered alien. All cultures are subject to external influences, but cultural xenophobia is often narrowly directed, for instance, at foreign loan words in a national language. It rarely leads to aggression against individual persons, but can result in political campaigns for cultural or linguistic purification. Isolationism, a general aversion of foreign affairs, is not accurately described as xenophobia.
See also
Racism by country
Discrimination
Ethnic cleansing
Genocide
Intercultural competence
List of phobias
List of xenophobic terms
Nationalism
Nativism
Racism
Xenophily
Xenophobe
Race and crime
Tribalism
Xenocentrism
References
1. Oxford English Dictionary' (OED). Oxford Press, 1971, eighteenth printing 1979.
2. Dictionary of Psychology, Chapman, Dell Publishing, 1975 fifth printing 1979.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/23/19
Xenophobia is a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself. It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself, usually in the context of visibly differentiated minorities.
General
A political poster of the far right National Democratic Party of Germany. The text reads, "We clean up."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word xenophobia consists of two parts: xeno (a combining form meaning "guest, stranger, person that looks different, foreigner") and phobia, ("fear, horror or aversion, especially if morbid").[1]
It is more broadly defined in the Dictionary of Psychology "a fear of strangers". [2] As defined by the OED, it can mean a fear of or aversion to, not only persons from other countries, but other cultures, subcultures and subsets of belief systems; in short, anyone who meets any list of criteria about their origin, religion, personal beliefs, habits, language, orientations, or any other criteria. While some will state that the "target" group is a set of persons not accepted by the society, in reality only the phobic person need hold the belief that the target group is not (or should not be) accepted by society. While the phobic person is aware of the aversion (even hatred) of the target group, they may not identify it or accept it as a fear.
As with all phobias, a xenophobic person has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target is in fact a foreigner. This arguably separates xenophobia from racism and ordinary prejudice in that someone of a different race does not necessarily have to be of a different nationality. In various contexts, the terms "xenophobia" and "racism" seem to be used interchangeably, though they can have wholly different meanings (xenophobia can be based on various aspects, racism being based solely on race and ancestry).
Xenophobia has two main objects:
The first is a population group present within a society that is not considered part of that society. Often they are recent immigrants, but xenophobia may be directed against a group which has been present for centuries, or became part of this society through conquest and territorial expansion. This form of xenophobia can elicit or facilitate hostile and violent reactions, such as mass expulsion of immigrants, pogroms or in the worst case, genocide.
The second form of xenophobia is primarily cultural, and the objects of the phobia are cultural elements which are considered alien. All cultures are subject to external influences, but cultural xenophobia is often narrowly directed, for instance, at foreign loan words in a national language. It rarely leads to aggression against individual persons, but can result in political campaigns for cultural or linguistic purification. Isolationism, a general aversion of foreign affairs, is not accurately described as xenophobia.
See also
Racism by country
Discrimination
Ethnic cleansing
Genocide
Intercultural competence
List of phobias
List of xenophobic terms
Nationalism
Nativism
Racism
Xenophily
Xenophobe
Race and crime
Tribalism
Xenocentrism
References
1. Oxford English Dictionary' (OED). Oxford Press, 1971, eighteenth printing 1979.
2. Dictionary of Psychology, Chapman, Dell Publishing, 1975 fifth printing 1979.
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- Site Admin
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:54 am
Xenophon
by Wikipedia
Xenophon, Greek historian
Xenophon (Ancient Greek Ξενοφῶν, Xenophōn; Modern Greek "Ξενοφών", Xenophōn; "Ξενοφώντας", Xenophōntas; ca. 430 - 354 BC), son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary, and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates. He is known for his writings on the history of his own times, preserving the sayings of Socrates, and the life of ancient Greece.
Life and writings
Soldier of fortune
Xenophon's birth date is uncertain, but most scholars agree that he was born around 431 BC near the city of Athens[1]. Xenophon was born into the ranks of the upper classes, thus granting him access to certain privileges of the aristocracy of ancient Attica. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II of Persia, in 401 BC. Xenophon writes that he had asked the veteran Socrates for advice on whether to go with Cyrus, and that Socrates referred him to the divinely inspired Delphic oracle. Xenophon's query to the oracle, however, was not whether or not to accept Cyrus' invitation, but "to which of the gods he must pray and do sacrifice, so that he might best accomplish his intended journey and return in safety, with good fortune." The oracle answered his question and told him to which gods to pray and sacrifice. When Xenophon returned to Athens and told Socrates of the oracle's advice, Socrates chastised him.
Route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand
Under the pretext of fighting Tissaphernes, Cyrus assembled a massive army composed of native Persian soldiers, but also a large number of Greeks, whom he viewed as superior and stronger fighters. Prior to waging war against the emperor, Cyrus proposed that the enemy was the Pisidians, and so the Greeks were unaware that they were to battle against the larger army of King Artaxerxes II. At Tarsus the soldiers became aware of Cyrus' plans to dispose of the king, and as a result refused to continue. Clearchus, however, convinced the Greeks to continue with the expedition. The army of Cyrus met the army of Artaxerxes II in the Battle of Cunaxa. Despite effective fighting by the Greeks, Cyrus was killed in the battle. Shortly thereafter, the Greek general Clearchus of Sparta was invited to a peace conference, where, alongside four other generals and many captains, he was betrayed and executed. The mercenaries, known as the Ten Thousand, found themselves without leadership far from the sea, deep in hostile territory near the heart of Mesopotamia. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians, Armenians, and Kurds to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea. They then made their way westward back to Greece. Once there, they helped Seuthes II make himself king of Thrace, before being recruited into the army of the Spartan general Thibron.
Xenophon's book Anabasis ("The Expedition" or "The March Up Country") is his record of the entire expedition against the Persians and the journey home. It is worth noting that the Anabasis was used as a field guide by Alexander the Great during the early phases of his expedition into Persia.
Exile and death
Xenophon was later exiled from Athens, most likely because he fought under the Spartan king Agesilaus II against Athens at Coronea. (However, there may have been contributory causes, such as his support for Socrates, as well as the fact that he had taken service with the Persians.) The Spartans gave him property at Scillus, near Olympia in Elis, where he composed the Anabasis. However, because his son Gryllus fought and died for Athens at the Battle of Mantinea while Xenophon was still alive, Xenophon's banishment may have been revoked. Xenophon died in either Corinth or Athens. His date of death is uncertain; historians only know that he survived his patron Agesilaus II, for whom he wrote an encomium.
Legacy
Diogenes Laertius states that Xenophon was sometimes known as the "Attic Muse" for the sweetness of his diction; very few poets wrote in the Attic dialect. Xenophon is often cited as being the original "horse whisperer", having advocated sympathetic horsemanship in his "On Horsemanship".
Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by Shaftesbury, Winckelmann, and Machiavelli.
Ponting (1991) cites Xenophon as one of the first thinkers to argue that the ordered world must have been conceived by a God or gods.[2] Xenophon's Memorabilia poses the argument that all animals are "only produced and nourished for the sake of humans" (Ponting, 1991 p. 142[2]) and Ponting argues that this reasoning is not undermined until the emergence of scientific thought and Darwinian evolution in the nineteenth century.[2] Though he spent much of his life in Athens, Xenophon's involvement in Theban drama and politics has led to him being closely associated with the city.
List of works
Xenophon's writings, especially the Anabasis, are often read by beginning students of the Greek language. His Hellenica is a major primary source for events in Greece from 411 to 362 BC, and is considered to be the continuation of The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, going so far as to begin with the phrase "Following these events...". The Hellenica recounts the last seven years of the Peloponnesian war, as well as its aftermath. His Socratic writings, preserved complete, along with the dialogues of Plato, are the only surviving representatives of the genre of Sokratikoi logoi.
Historical and biographical works
• Anabasis (also: The Persian Expedition or The March Up Country)
• Cyropaedia
• Hellenica
• Agesilaus
Socratic works and dialogues
• Memorabilia
• Oeconomicus
• Symposium
• Apology
• Hiero
Short treatises
• On Horsemanship
• The Cavalry General
• Hunting with Dogs
• Ways and Means
• Constitution of Sparta
In addition, a short treatise on the Constitution of Athens exists that was once thought to be by Xenophon, but which was probably written when Xenophon was about five years old. This is found in manuscripts among the short works of Xenophon, as though he had written it also. The author, often called in English the "Old Oligarch", detests the democracy of Athens and the poorer classes, but he argues that the Periclean institutions are well designed for their deplorable purposes. Leo Strauss has argued that this work is in fact by Xenophon, whose ironic posing he believes has been utterly missed by contemporary scholarship.
In Popular Culture
Anabasis was the (loosely-adapted) basis for Sol Yurick's novel The Warriors, which was later adapted into a 1979 cult movie of the same name, and finally a Rockstar Games video game in 2005. Each re-imagining relocates Xenophon's narrative to the gang scene of New York. After a gang meeting ends with a murder, the falsely accused Warriors gang have to get home to Coney Island by traveling through territory controlled by hostile gangs who include The Lizzies (Sirens), The Baseball (Furies), The Orphans and The Turnbull A.C.s.[3]
Notes
1. "Xenophon". Encyclopedia Brittanica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... 8/Xenophon. Retrieved 21 September 2009.
2. Ponting, C. A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilisations, Penguin: New York
3. Xenophon, Hellenica - A History of My Times: Books I-VII Complete, El Paso Norte Press, 2009 ISBN 1-93-4255-14-9.
References and further reading
Anderson, J.K. Xenophon. London: Duckworth, 2001 (paperback, ISBN 1-85399-619-X).
Bradley, Patrick J. "Irony and the Narrator in Xenophon's Anabasis", in Xenophon. Ed. Vivienne J. Gray. Oxford University Press, 2010 (ISBN13: 978-0-19-921618-5; ISBN10: 0-19-921618-5).
Dillery, John. Xenophon and the History of His Times. London; New York: Routledge, 1995 (hardcover, ISBN 0-415-09139-X).
Evans, R.L.S. "Xenophon" in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Greek Writers. Ed.Ward Briggs. Vol. 176, 1997.
Gray, V.J. "The Years 375 to 371 BC: A Case Study in the Reliability of Diodorus Siculus and Xenophon, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2. (1980), pp. 306–326.
Higgins, William Edward. Xenophon the Athenian: The Problem of the Individual and the Society of the “Polis”. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977 (hardcover, ISBN 0-87395-369-X).
Hirsch, Steven W. The Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Persian Empire. Hanover; London: University Press of New England, 1985 (hardcover, ISBN 0-87451-322-7).
Hutchinson, Godfrey. Xenophon and the Art of Command. London: Greenhill Books, 2000 (hardcover, ISBN 1-85367-417-6).
The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, edited by Robin Lane Fox. New Heaven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-300-10403-0).
Moles, J.L. "Xenophon and Callicratidas", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 114. (1994), pp. 70–84.
Nadon, Christopher. Xenophon's Prince: Republic and Empire in the “Cyropaedia”. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0-520-22404-3).
Nussbaum, G.B. The Ten Thousand: A Study in Social Organization and Action in Xenophon's “Anabasis.” (Social and Economic Commentaries on Classical Texts; 4). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Phillips, A.A & Willcock M.M. Xenophon & Arrian On Hunting With Hounds, contains Cynegeticus original texts, translations & commentary. Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1999 (paperback ISBN 0-85668-706-5).
Rahn, Peter J. "Xenophon's Developing Historiography", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 102. (1971), pp. 497–508.
Rood, Tim. The Sea! The Sea!: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination. London: Duckworth Publishing, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 0-7156-3308-2); Woodstock, NY; New York: The Overlook Press, (hardcover, ISBN 1-58567-664-0); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 1-58567-824-4).
Strauss, Leo. Xenophon's Socrates. Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 1972 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-0712-5); South Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 1-58731-966-7).
Stronk, J.P. The Ten Thousand in Thrace: An Archaeological and Historical Commenary on Xenophon's Anabasis, Books VI, iii–vi – VIII (Amsterdam Classical Monographs; 2). Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1995 (hardcover, ISBN 90-5063-396-X).
Usher, S. "Xenophon, Critias and Theramenes", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 88. (1968), pp. 128–135.
Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-674-02356-0); London: Faber and Faber, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 978-0571223831).
Xenophon, Cyropaedia, translated by Walter Miller. Harvard University Press, 1914, ISBN 978-0-674-99057-9, ISBN 0-674-99057-9 (books 1-5) and ISBN 978-0-674-99058-6, ISBN 0-674-99058-7 (books 5-8).
External links
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Xenophon
Graham Oliver's Xenophon Homepage
Xenophon's Education of Cyrus (Cyropaedia) Web directory
Xenophon's Works at The University of Adelaide
Famous Quotes by Xenophon
Sanders (1903) Ph D Thesis on The Cynegeticus
Xenophon on Lycurgus.orgall about Xenophon.
Project Gutenberg e-texts
Works by Xenophon at Project Gutenberg (U. Penn. mirror)
by Wikipedia
Xenophon, Greek historian
Xenophon (Ancient Greek Ξενοφῶν, Xenophōn; Modern Greek "Ξενοφών", Xenophōn; "Ξενοφώντας", Xenophōntas; ca. 430 - 354 BC), son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens and Xenophon of Thebes, was a soldier, mercenary, and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates. He is known for his writings on the history of his own times, preserving the sayings of Socrates, and the life of ancient Greece.
Life and writings
Soldier of fortune
Xenophon's birth date is uncertain, but most scholars agree that he was born around 431 BC near the city of Athens[1]. Xenophon was born into the ranks of the upper classes, thus granting him access to certain privileges of the aristocracy of ancient Attica. While a young man, Xenophon participated in the expedition led by Cyrus the Younger against his older brother, the emperor Artaxerxes II of Persia, in 401 BC. Xenophon writes that he had asked the veteran Socrates for advice on whether to go with Cyrus, and that Socrates referred him to the divinely inspired Delphic oracle. Xenophon's query to the oracle, however, was not whether or not to accept Cyrus' invitation, but "to which of the gods he must pray and do sacrifice, so that he might best accomplish his intended journey and return in safety, with good fortune." The oracle answered his question and told him to which gods to pray and sacrifice. When Xenophon returned to Athens and told Socrates of the oracle's advice, Socrates chastised him.
Route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand
Under the pretext of fighting Tissaphernes, Cyrus assembled a massive army composed of native Persian soldiers, but also a large number of Greeks, whom he viewed as superior and stronger fighters. Prior to waging war against the emperor, Cyrus proposed that the enemy was the Pisidians, and so the Greeks were unaware that they were to battle against the larger army of King Artaxerxes II. At Tarsus the soldiers became aware of Cyrus' plans to dispose of the king, and as a result refused to continue. Clearchus, however, convinced the Greeks to continue with the expedition. The army of Cyrus met the army of Artaxerxes II in the Battle of Cunaxa. Despite effective fighting by the Greeks, Cyrus was killed in the battle. Shortly thereafter, the Greek general Clearchus of Sparta was invited to a peace conference, where, alongside four other generals and many captains, he was betrayed and executed. The mercenaries, known as the Ten Thousand, found themselves without leadership far from the sea, deep in hostile territory near the heart of Mesopotamia. They elected new leaders, including Xenophon himself, and fought their way north through hostile Persians, Armenians, and Kurds to Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea. They then made their way westward back to Greece. Once there, they helped Seuthes II make himself king of Thrace, before being recruited into the army of the Spartan general Thibron.
Xenophon's book Anabasis ("The Expedition" or "The March Up Country") is his record of the entire expedition against the Persians and the journey home. It is worth noting that the Anabasis was used as a field guide by Alexander the Great during the early phases of his expedition into Persia.
Exile and death
Xenophon was later exiled from Athens, most likely because he fought under the Spartan king Agesilaus II against Athens at Coronea. (However, there may have been contributory causes, such as his support for Socrates, as well as the fact that he had taken service with the Persians.) The Spartans gave him property at Scillus, near Olympia in Elis, where he composed the Anabasis. However, because his son Gryllus fought and died for Athens at the Battle of Mantinea while Xenophon was still alive, Xenophon's banishment may have been revoked. Xenophon died in either Corinth or Athens. His date of death is uncertain; historians only know that he survived his patron Agesilaus II, for whom he wrote an encomium.
Legacy
Diogenes Laertius states that Xenophon was sometimes known as the "Attic Muse" for the sweetness of his diction; very few poets wrote in the Attic dialect. Xenophon is often cited as being the original "horse whisperer", having advocated sympathetic horsemanship in his "On Horsemanship".
Xenophon's standing as a political philosopher has been defended in recent times by Leo Strauss, who devoted a considerable part of his philosophic analysis to the works of Xenophon, returning to the high judgment of Xenophon as a thinker expressed by Shaftesbury, Winckelmann, and Machiavelli.
Ponting (1991) cites Xenophon as one of the first thinkers to argue that the ordered world must have been conceived by a God or gods.[2] Xenophon's Memorabilia poses the argument that all animals are "only produced and nourished for the sake of humans" (Ponting, 1991 p. 142[2]) and Ponting argues that this reasoning is not undermined until the emergence of scientific thought and Darwinian evolution in the nineteenth century.[2] Though he spent much of his life in Athens, Xenophon's involvement in Theban drama and politics has led to him being closely associated with the city.
List of works
Xenophon's writings, especially the Anabasis, are often read by beginning students of the Greek language. His Hellenica is a major primary source for events in Greece from 411 to 362 BC, and is considered to be the continuation of The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, going so far as to begin with the phrase "Following these events...". The Hellenica recounts the last seven years of the Peloponnesian war, as well as its aftermath. His Socratic writings, preserved complete, along with the dialogues of Plato, are the only surviving representatives of the genre of Sokratikoi logoi.
Historical and biographical works
• Anabasis (also: The Persian Expedition or The March Up Country)
• Cyropaedia
• Hellenica
• Agesilaus
Socratic works and dialogues
• Memorabilia
• Oeconomicus
• Symposium
• Apology
• Hiero
Short treatises
• On Horsemanship
• The Cavalry General
• Hunting with Dogs
• Ways and Means
• Constitution of Sparta
In addition, a short treatise on the Constitution of Athens exists that was once thought to be by Xenophon, but which was probably written when Xenophon was about five years old. This is found in manuscripts among the short works of Xenophon, as though he had written it also. The author, often called in English the "Old Oligarch", detests the democracy of Athens and the poorer classes, but he argues that the Periclean institutions are well designed for their deplorable purposes. Leo Strauss has argued that this work is in fact by Xenophon, whose ironic posing he believes has been utterly missed by contemporary scholarship.
In Popular Culture
Anabasis was the (loosely-adapted) basis for Sol Yurick's novel The Warriors, which was later adapted into a 1979 cult movie of the same name, and finally a Rockstar Games video game in 2005. Each re-imagining relocates Xenophon's narrative to the gang scene of New York. After a gang meeting ends with a murder, the falsely accused Warriors gang have to get home to Coney Island by traveling through territory controlled by hostile gangs who include The Lizzies (Sirens), The Baseball (Furies), The Orphans and The Turnbull A.C.s.[3]
Notes
1. "Xenophon". Encyclopedia Brittanica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... 8/Xenophon. Retrieved 21 September 2009.
2. Ponting, C. A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilisations, Penguin: New York
3. Xenophon, Hellenica - A History of My Times: Books I-VII Complete, El Paso Norte Press, 2009 ISBN 1-93-4255-14-9.
References and further reading
Anderson, J.K. Xenophon. London: Duckworth, 2001 (paperback, ISBN 1-85399-619-X).
Bradley, Patrick J. "Irony and the Narrator in Xenophon's Anabasis", in Xenophon. Ed. Vivienne J. Gray. Oxford University Press, 2010 (ISBN13: 978-0-19-921618-5; ISBN10: 0-19-921618-5).
Dillery, John. Xenophon and the History of His Times. London; New York: Routledge, 1995 (hardcover, ISBN 0-415-09139-X).
Evans, R.L.S. "Xenophon" in The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Greek Writers. Ed.Ward Briggs. Vol. 176, 1997.
Gray, V.J. "The Years 375 to 371 BC: A Case Study in the Reliability of Diodorus Siculus and Xenophon, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2. (1980), pp. 306–326.
Higgins, William Edward. Xenophon the Athenian: The Problem of the Individual and the Society of the “Polis”. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977 (hardcover, ISBN 0-87395-369-X).
Hirsch, Steven W. The Friendship of the Barbarians: Xenophon and the Persian Empire. Hanover; London: University Press of New England, 1985 (hardcover, ISBN 0-87451-322-7).
Hutchinson, Godfrey. Xenophon and the Art of Command. London: Greenhill Books, 2000 (hardcover, ISBN 1-85367-417-6).
The Long March: Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, edited by Robin Lane Fox. New Heaven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-300-10403-0).
Moles, J.L. "Xenophon and Callicratidas", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 114. (1994), pp. 70–84.
Nadon, Christopher. Xenophon's Prince: Republic and Empire in the “Cyropaedia”. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2001 (hardcover, ISBN 0-520-22404-3).
Nussbaum, G.B. The Ten Thousand: A Study in Social Organization and Action in Xenophon's “Anabasis.” (Social and Economic Commentaries on Classical Texts; 4). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967.
Phillips, A.A & Willcock M.M. Xenophon & Arrian On Hunting With Hounds, contains Cynegeticus original texts, translations & commentary. Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd., 1999 (paperback ISBN 0-85668-706-5).
Rahn, Peter J. "Xenophon's Developing Historiography", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 102. (1971), pp. 497–508.
Rood, Tim. The Sea! The Sea!: The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination. London: Duckworth Publishing, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 0-7156-3308-2); Woodstock, NY; New York: The Overlook Press, (hardcover, ISBN 1-58567-664-0); 2006 (paperback, ISBN 1-58567-824-4).
Strauss, Leo. Xenophon's Socrates. Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 1972 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8014-0712-5); South Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 1-58731-966-7).
Stronk, J.P. The Ten Thousand in Thrace: An Archaeological and Historical Commenary on Xenophon's Anabasis, Books VI, iii–vi – VIII (Amsterdam Classical Monographs; 2). Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1995 (hardcover, ISBN 90-5063-396-X).
Usher, S. "Xenophon, Critias and Theramenes", The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 88. (1968), pp. 128–135.
Waterfield, Robin. Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia and the End of the Golden Age. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-674-02356-0); London: Faber and Faber, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 978-0571223831).
Xenophon, Cyropaedia, translated by Walter Miller. Harvard University Press, 1914, ISBN 978-0-674-99057-9, ISBN 0-674-99057-9 (books 1-5) and ISBN 978-0-674-99058-6, ISBN 0-674-99058-7 (books 5-8).
External links
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Xenophon
Graham Oliver's Xenophon Homepage
Xenophon's Education of Cyrus (Cyropaedia) Web directory
Xenophon's Works at The University of Adelaide
Famous Quotes by Xenophon
Sanders (1903) Ph D Thesis on The Cynegeticus
Xenophon on Lycurgus.orgall about Xenophon.
Project Gutenberg e-texts
Works by Xenophon at Project Gutenberg (U. Penn. mirror)
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Re: Journalism: Scientology - L. Ron Hubbard's Brainchild
by admin » Tue Jul 23, 2019 2:57 am
Yes, There Was A Book Called "Excalibur" by L. Ron Hubbard
by Arthur J. Burks
Excalibur Revisited -- The Akashic Book of Truth, by Geoffrey C. Filbert
From "The Aberee", Dec 1961
I'M GOING to try to tell something of "Excalibur" - as much as I remember, without having the manuscript by me. If its author, L. Ron Hubbard, told me the truth, I am the first person to read "Excalibur". If it is true that the first half dozen who read it went crazy, then I've been crazy for a long time and I just haven't gotten caught at it. There is some question as to whether there was such a manuscript, but I assure you there was, and probably still is, somewhere. It was a source of considerable disappointment to Ron Hubbard that he didn't get it published.
I think the time was about mid-1938 - maybe a little earlier, May or June. I had known Ron off and on for six or seven years. We 'd gone thru part of the depression together; he came to New York from his home near Seattle, Wash. I had met his first wife, Polly, and both his parents.
I 'd read a lot of material by Ron, and didn't especially like it - and he'd read a lot of material by me and didn't particularly like it. I wouldn't say we were very close friends, but I knew him, I guess, as well as anybody. For instance, I knew Ron was a night owl - he'd sleep all day and work all night - and didn't pay any attention to your working hours at all He was apt to call you at 4 o'clock in the morning and hold you in conversation for an hour or more until you felt like you could break his neck. Then he'd pull down all the curtains and sleep all day.
Ron called me one day - the strange thing about this was that he called during the day - and said, "I want to see you right away. I have written THE book." I never saw anybody so worked up - and he was disturbed over a lot of angles. Apparently, he started to write the book, and had written it without sleeping, eating, or anything else - and had himself literally worked to a frazzle.
He was so sure he had something "away out and beyond" anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers, telling them that he had written "THE book" and that they were to meet him at Penn Station, and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever gave him the best offer.
Whether he actually did this or not, I don't know, but it is right in line with something he would do. For example, Ron would send stories to various magazines without a return address (and if you know anything about the publishing business you could know how this would irritate people), and then call up and ask for a report on it.
He used very heavy paper, which made it very expensive to mail stuff, and he'd mail his manuscripts, not in professional envelopes, but say in a light blue one so that it would stand out from the others.
Also, he was a little careless occasionally - and his stuff needed editing, but he didn't want anybody to edit it. He had a lot of odd ideas about writing. For example, he didn't feel he had to write a certain stint, so when he would do a manuscript, he wouldn't number the pages - just pile them up beside his typewriter. Thus he couldn't see how much he had done so might kid himself into doing 13 pages when he only intended to do 10.
He didn't number the pages until he finished, and then he'd number them in pencil.
Going back to "The Book", I don't remember how long it was. It probably was under 70,000, which is considered an average book.
He told me what he wanted to do with it - it was going to revolutionize everything: the world, people's attitudes toward one another. He thought it was somewhat more important, and would have a greater impact upon people, than the Bible.
After I'd read the manuscript, we got to arguing over different titles. I asked him what he wanted to accomplish. He wanted to make changes. He wanted to reach inside people and really work them over, and he had to have a title that would be attractive. I am the one who suggested "Excalibur", because Excalibur was King Arthur's sword. This had a certain mystical meaning that suited Ron, and so "The Book" became "Excalibur".
As I remember "Excalibur", it started - in the introduction only - with a king who got all his wise men together and told them to prepare and bring to him all the wisdom of the world contained in 500 books. In the course of time, they succeeded, and the king was very pleased and said so. Then he told them to go away and cut down these 500 books into 100 books. It took them a bit longer this time, but they did it and came back and insisted all the wisdom of the world was contained in these 100 books. He said, "Now, do it over again, and bring it to me in one book."
This was quite a trick, but they did it, and came back some years later and they had, indeed, reduced all the wisdom of the world into one book.
Then he really gave them an assignment. He said, "Now go away and bring to me all the wisdom of the world in one word."
What was the one word? I don 't know how many times we argued, Ron and I, to discover what this one word was. It may have been the creative fiat, it might have just been the word "Be", it might have been the word "Survive". I don't think we ever settled it. But the book "Excalibur" from there on had to do with survival.
I'll try to remember some of it, chapter by chapter, and to explain why it was so squirmy. For example, he started with the very first life - the very first cells - how they struggled for survival - how they tried to be and be "it" the whole time. I'm order to do it, gradually thru the ages they associated with other cells, one with another, and they reached the place where they could divide so they would become bigger. This is strictly science as far as it's gone.
After awhile, this conglomeration of cells that would reach down a stream of warm water, would bend its way back in order to catch more - it would extend across the stream, or across a little rill or something like that - and all the time it was gaining more sensitivity and ways of the world in which it finds itself. It finds out that by working together, it can accomplish a great deal more: it can find more to eat - it can eat more and grow faster. So the idea is to survive and reproduce - and this is what the early cell does.
He'd begin to picture the ocean and the seas and ponds as having the life cells growing on them like scum. These are ourselves, our beginnings, our own beginnings because in the womb we start in this very way.
Away back then, we began to develop motives for things. Now, it is seldom that what we tell somebody our motive is, is the real one - and this is where you start to squirm. Somebody will say, "Well, I'd like to do a certain thing," "I would like to do this with you," or something or other, and you look at this person and realize, "I wonder why he's doing that." And you look into yourself and think if you were doing that, what would your motive be and whether you would hide it. You think that perhaps he's hiding his real motive and trying to get you to do something because he's giving you to understand that his motive is thus and so because that appeals to your vanity - and of course this makes you look at yourself to see about this business of vanity - and why you 're likely to do that. All the time, looking at this other person, you can see squirmy things in him. You can see squirmy things in him that make him look like an entity peering at you thru gauze, or around a corner. You don 't see all of him. He's like the iceberg that's seven-eighths submerged - you can' t tell anything about him.
As these things are pointed out to you by Ron in the first chapter, or thereabouts, you begin to see that the cells in any body that you're looking at are all endowed with this ability to survive - a determination to survive - and with motives to survive that are sometimes extremely questionable. When you look at a person, the lips may say one thing, the eyes may say something else, or nothing, and the flesh may say something entirely different. Literally, your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing. You shake hands, and this is a friendly gesture, but behind your back you may be holding a knife to plunge into him and he may be holding one for you. You can't tell just by looking at people. One of the things Ron intended to do with "Excalibur" was to make it possible to see and look into this, Other things I remember is Ron's explanation as to why there is no such thing as a crowd - that a group of people actually still consisted of individuals - but a crowd could get out of hand and do things other people wouldn't. He showed how that could happen by explaining the relationship of people to each other in the same way that he explained the relation of cells to each other before they were people away back when life was developing into different shapes. He would take two persons, for example, and put them side by side, and show how the two of them were both less and more than one person, and yet each one was an individual. Each individual could think of himself as being individual, but being somewhat "crutched", as it were, or held up by the other person. These two people were very wary of each other, like a couple of bantam roosters running around waiting to get in a thrust, but they knew that they needed each other, and each one felt that he needed the other more and that he didn't wish to be taken advantage of, and so there was always this pulling and hauling between two people that kept them at razor's edge all the time.
Each one, to some extent, gradually - a little bit at a time - gave away some of his sovereignty to the other. In other words, he let the other fellow lean, provided the other fellow would let him lean, and the two people became somewhat less than they would have been if they had stayed apart. The relationship between the two people became something that would really get you.
Then he moved in with these two people a third person - could be of the same sex - and you still have all the difficulties, all the problems, and all the squirminess - the questioning as to motive and everything, and wondering why, for example, three males would get together, or three women. If you have a person of the other sex come in on two who were together, you begin to see where the problems are. Of course, he went into this business of sexual attraction to a considerable extent in a way that just made you wonder whether or not your attitude toward sex was reasonable or wrong, whether it was a horrible thing or a beautiful thing spiritual or whatever. I think perhaps it would make you think about it to the point where you'd be almost afraid to perpetrate the act of sex, even with someone you loved tremendously.
Probably the part of the book that has stuck with me the most thru this period of time was the story of the lynch mob going to the prison to take out somebody to be lynched. He puts you with the person who is waiting to be lynched. The warden comes and looks at the person and says, "Well, they're coming for you, Bud. I don't know whether I'm going to be able to stop them, but I'll tell you one thing, it's not going to cost me my life to do it. If they come in and get you, they'll get you." The warden just looked and sort of gloated over the person who couldn't get away. He enjoyed the sadistic feeling of seeing a person who was bound and hog-tied and couldn't get away. He goes on with this to the place where you were both the warden and the person in the cell, and you really get to feel pretty terrible for everybody connected with it.
Then you take a look at the stiff-legged march of the lynch mob.
This is something I'll never forget. I don't remember a single word Ron used, but he started back from there with showing how a lynch mob started - somebody got up and said something, and somebody pulled others together - and as soon as they were together, the person who had started it might or might not lead, but the chances were that he would vanish into the mob that he had started in order not to be responsible. Each person knew that very dreadful things were going to be done, but he scarcely would be responsible. He would be there but he wouldn't actually do much taking part in it.
Each one felt he was going along for the ride, so to speak, but he walks just as stiff-legged as the other fellow.
Ron has them marching down the street at night, blazing torches to show the way. And when the mutter, or the growl, of this crowd comes to you, it's something that just simply makes the shivers move up your back from your heels to the top of your head. It really ate into you. Not one of these persons was real if you looked at him from the outside as an observer, yet when he'd take you into the heart of each one, you'd find each person going along because the others were going to do it, and he had to go and see.
If you would go into each person's mind this way, you'd find each had exactly the same idea. Yet they were moved along by something and they went and, I suppose, got the guy out and lynched him. I don't remember whether they did or not - all I remember actually is the march.
I was so impressed with the book I wanted to publish it. I was interested in a small publishing company called Egmont Press. I took it to my associates. I took it to my managing editor, who sat down and started to glance thru it. When he realized he couldn't get any place by thumbing thru it, he went back and read a little of it. I could see a strange look come into his face as he read it. Then he passed it on to a reader, and after awhile, there were several people involved in it, and it was being passed, page by page, to others, and they were having all kinds of results. It was a squirmy thing - and I watched it. I watched, in fact, until that manuscript was scattered all over East 41st Street in New York.
The upshot of it was that they were afraid to publish it. Ron was angry, and threatened: "You will publish this book and I will have a half-interest in the company that publishes it or we'll know the reason why." But it never came to that. Ron did something that he's frequently done: he went sour on the idea and went back to Seattle I don't believe "Excalibur" ever would have sent anybody insane - altho you can't be sure. I have the feeling that, unquestionably, if "Excalibur" were in the hands of every person in the world, the world would be that many times different than it is right now. But whether it would make it worse or better, I have no way of knowing.
Some persons are so intent in looking "over the border", they can't see the boredom.
by Arthur J. Burks
Excalibur Revisited -- The Akashic Book of Truth, by Geoffrey C. Filbert
From "The Aberee", Dec 1961
I'M GOING to try to tell something of "Excalibur" - as much as I remember, without having the manuscript by me. If its author, L. Ron Hubbard, told me the truth, I am the first person to read "Excalibur". If it is true that the first half dozen who read it went crazy, then I've been crazy for a long time and I just haven't gotten caught at it. There is some question as to whether there was such a manuscript, but I assure you there was, and probably still is, somewhere. It was a source of considerable disappointment to Ron Hubbard that he didn't get it published.
I think the time was about mid-1938 - maybe a little earlier, May or June. I had known Ron off and on for six or seven years. We 'd gone thru part of the depression together; he came to New York from his home near Seattle, Wash. I had met his first wife, Polly, and both his parents.
I 'd read a lot of material by Ron, and didn't especially like it - and he'd read a lot of material by me and didn't particularly like it. I wouldn't say we were very close friends, but I knew him, I guess, as well as anybody. For instance, I knew Ron was a night owl - he'd sleep all day and work all night - and didn't pay any attention to your working hours at all He was apt to call you at 4 o'clock in the morning and hold you in conversation for an hour or more until you felt like you could break his neck. Then he'd pull down all the curtains and sleep all day.
Ron called me one day - the strange thing about this was that he called during the day - and said, "I want to see you right away. I have written THE book." I never saw anybody so worked up - and he was disturbed over a lot of angles. Apparently, he started to write the book, and had written it without sleeping, eating, or anything else - and had himself literally worked to a frazzle.
He was so sure he had something "away out and beyond" anything else that he had sent telegrams to several book publishers, telling them that he had written "THE book" and that they were to meet him at Penn Station, and he would discuss it with them and go with whomever gave him the best offer.
Whether he actually did this or not, I don't know, but it is right in line with something he would do. For example, Ron would send stories to various magazines without a return address (and if you know anything about the publishing business you could know how this would irritate people), and then call up and ask for a report on it.
He used very heavy paper, which made it very expensive to mail stuff, and he'd mail his manuscripts, not in professional envelopes, but say in a light blue one so that it would stand out from the others.
Also, he was a little careless occasionally - and his stuff needed editing, but he didn't want anybody to edit it. He had a lot of odd ideas about writing. For example, he didn't feel he had to write a certain stint, so when he would do a manuscript, he wouldn't number the pages - just pile them up beside his typewriter. Thus he couldn't see how much he had done so might kid himself into doing 13 pages when he only intended to do 10.
He didn't number the pages until he finished, and then he'd number them in pencil.
Going back to "The Book", I don't remember how long it was. It probably was under 70,000, which is considered an average book.
He told me what he wanted to do with it - it was going to revolutionize everything: the world, people's attitudes toward one another. He thought it was somewhat more important, and would have a greater impact upon people, than the Bible.
After I'd read the manuscript, we got to arguing over different titles. I asked him what he wanted to accomplish. He wanted to make changes. He wanted to reach inside people and really work them over, and he had to have a title that would be attractive. I am the one who suggested "Excalibur", because Excalibur was King Arthur's sword. This had a certain mystical meaning that suited Ron, and so "The Book" became "Excalibur".
As I remember "Excalibur", it started - in the introduction only - with a king who got all his wise men together and told them to prepare and bring to him all the wisdom of the world contained in 500 books. In the course of time, they succeeded, and the king was very pleased and said so. Then he told them to go away and cut down these 500 books into 100 books. It took them a bit longer this time, but they did it and came back and insisted all the wisdom of the world was contained in these 100 books. He said, "Now, do it over again, and bring it to me in one book."
This was quite a trick, but they did it, and came back some years later and they had, indeed, reduced all the wisdom of the world into one book.
Then he really gave them an assignment. He said, "Now go away and bring to me all the wisdom of the world in one word."
What was the one word? I don 't know how many times we argued, Ron and I, to discover what this one word was. It may have been the creative fiat, it might have just been the word "Be", it might have been the word "Survive". I don't think we ever settled it. But the book "Excalibur" from there on had to do with survival.
I'll try to remember some of it, chapter by chapter, and to explain why it was so squirmy. For example, he started with the very first life - the very first cells - how they struggled for survival - how they tried to be and be "it" the whole time. I'm order to do it, gradually thru the ages they associated with other cells, one with another, and they reached the place where they could divide so they would become bigger. This is strictly science as far as it's gone.
After awhile, this conglomeration of cells that would reach down a stream of warm water, would bend its way back in order to catch more - it would extend across the stream, or across a little rill or something like that - and all the time it was gaining more sensitivity and ways of the world in which it finds itself. It finds out that by working together, it can accomplish a great deal more: it can find more to eat - it can eat more and grow faster. So the idea is to survive and reproduce - and this is what the early cell does.
He'd begin to picture the ocean and the seas and ponds as having the life cells growing on them like scum. These are ourselves, our beginnings, our own beginnings because in the womb we start in this very way.
Away back then, we began to develop motives for things. Now, it is seldom that what we tell somebody our motive is, is the real one - and this is where you start to squirm. Somebody will say, "Well, I'd like to do a certain thing," "I would like to do this with you," or something or other, and you look at this person and realize, "I wonder why he's doing that." And you look into yourself and think if you were doing that, what would your motive be and whether you would hide it. You think that perhaps he's hiding his real motive and trying to get you to do something because he's giving you to understand that his motive is thus and so because that appeals to your vanity - and of course this makes you look at yourself to see about this business of vanity - and why you 're likely to do that. All the time, looking at this other person, you can see squirmy things in him. You can see squirmy things in him that make him look like an entity peering at you thru gauze, or around a corner. You don 't see all of him. He's like the iceberg that's seven-eighths submerged - you can' t tell anything about him.
As these things are pointed out to you by Ron in the first chapter, or thereabouts, you begin to see that the cells in any body that you're looking at are all endowed with this ability to survive - a determination to survive - and with motives to survive that are sometimes extremely questionable. When you look at a person, the lips may say one thing, the eyes may say something else, or nothing, and the flesh may say something entirely different. Literally, your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing. You shake hands, and this is a friendly gesture, but behind your back you may be holding a knife to plunge into him and he may be holding one for you. You can't tell just by looking at people. One of the things Ron intended to do with "Excalibur" was to make it possible to see and look into this, Other things I remember is Ron's explanation as to why there is no such thing as a crowd - that a group of people actually still consisted of individuals - but a crowd could get out of hand and do things other people wouldn't. He showed how that could happen by explaining the relationship of people to each other in the same way that he explained the relation of cells to each other before they were people away back when life was developing into different shapes. He would take two persons, for example, and put them side by side, and show how the two of them were both less and more than one person, and yet each one was an individual. Each individual could think of himself as being individual, but being somewhat "crutched", as it were, or held up by the other person. These two people were very wary of each other, like a couple of bantam roosters running around waiting to get in a thrust, but they knew that they needed each other, and each one felt that he needed the other more and that he didn't wish to be taken advantage of, and so there was always this pulling and hauling between two people that kept them at razor's edge all the time.
Each one, to some extent, gradually - a little bit at a time - gave away some of his sovereignty to the other. In other words, he let the other fellow lean, provided the other fellow would let him lean, and the two people became somewhat less than they would have been if they had stayed apart. The relationship between the two people became something that would really get you.
Then he moved in with these two people a third person - could be of the same sex - and you still have all the difficulties, all the problems, and all the squirminess - the questioning as to motive and everything, and wondering why, for example, three males would get together, or three women. If you have a person of the other sex come in on two who were together, you begin to see where the problems are. Of course, he went into this business of sexual attraction to a considerable extent in a way that just made you wonder whether or not your attitude toward sex was reasonable or wrong, whether it was a horrible thing or a beautiful thing spiritual or whatever. I think perhaps it would make you think about it to the point where you'd be almost afraid to perpetrate the act of sex, even with someone you loved tremendously.
Probably the part of the book that has stuck with me the most thru this period of time was the story of the lynch mob going to the prison to take out somebody to be lynched. He puts you with the person who is waiting to be lynched. The warden comes and looks at the person and says, "Well, they're coming for you, Bud. I don't know whether I'm going to be able to stop them, but I'll tell you one thing, it's not going to cost me my life to do it. If they come in and get you, they'll get you." The warden just looked and sort of gloated over the person who couldn't get away. He enjoyed the sadistic feeling of seeing a person who was bound and hog-tied and couldn't get away. He goes on with this to the place where you were both the warden and the person in the cell, and you really get to feel pretty terrible for everybody connected with it.
Then you take a look at the stiff-legged march of the lynch mob.
This is something I'll never forget. I don't remember a single word Ron used, but he started back from there with showing how a lynch mob started - somebody got up and said something, and somebody pulled others together - and as soon as they were together, the person who had started it might or might not lead, but the chances were that he would vanish into the mob that he had started in order not to be responsible. Each person knew that very dreadful things were going to be done, but he scarcely would be responsible. He would be there but he wouldn't actually do much taking part in it.
Each one felt he was going along for the ride, so to speak, but he walks just as stiff-legged as the other fellow.
Ron has them marching down the street at night, blazing torches to show the way. And when the mutter, or the growl, of this crowd comes to you, it's something that just simply makes the shivers move up your back from your heels to the top of your head. It really ate into you. Not one of these persons was real if you looked at him from the outside as an observer, yet when he'd take you into the heart of each one, you'd find each person going along because the others were going to do it, and he had to go and see.
If you would go into each person's mind this way, you'd find each had exactly the same idea. Yet they were moved along by something and they went and, I suppose, got the guy out and lynched him. I don't remember whether they did or not - all I remember actually is the march.
I was so impressed with the book I wanted to publish it. I was interested in a small publishing company called Egmont Press. I took it to my associates. I took it to my managing editor, who sat down and started to glance thru it. When he realized he couldn't get any place by thumbing thru it, he went back and read a little of it. I could see a strange look come into his face as he read it. Then he passed it on to a reader, and after awhile, there were several people involved in it, and it was being passed, page by page, to others, and they were having all kinds of results. It was a squirmy thing - and I watched it. I watched, in fact, until that manuscript was scattered all over East 41st Street in New York.
The upshot of it was that they were afraid to publish it. Ron was angry, and threatened: "You will publish this book and I will have a half-interest in the company that publishes it or we'll know the reason why." But it never came to that. Ron did something that he's frequently done: he went sour on the idea and went back to Seattle I don't believe "Excalibur" ever would have sent anybody insane - altho you can't be sure. I have the feeling that, unquestionably, if "Excalibur" were in the hands of every person in the world, the world would be that many times different than it is right now. But whether it would make it worse or better, I have no way of knowing.
Some persons are so intent in looking "over the border", they can't see the boredom.
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