by Dreams End » Tue Mar 21, 2006 8:51 pm
It's so hard to follow, but there's definitely much of significance in the fact that SRI folks were all wrapped up in Scientology. <br><br>The site Hugh linked to is interesting. It's not, as far as I can tell (and no, I have nothing to do with it) an anti-Scientology site. It delves into who the actual current controllers and owners of Scientology copyrights are and is very suspicious of a little cabal that seems to have taken over after L.Ron's death. However, he goes on and on about how they aren't true to L. Ron's original writings...but I think the bigger story is..who the hell are these people who took over. We get their names, but no idea who they are.<br><br>Here's a much longer article about this. I think it's important...though I'm not sure calling this a "takeover" is right...as the new leader, Miscavige, "worked" (oh, so THAT'S what they call it now) with LRH when Miscavige was just a teen. Some excerpts...and it's creepy:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br>Yet the great helmsman of this bizarre cult was not on board. No one knows for sure whether L. Ron Hubbard, the 74-year-old founder, is even alive. His round, smiling face gazes down from the walls of more than 100 Scientology offices around the world, orders are given in his name, but he hasn't been seen in nearly five years. He may be in seclusion, as Church leaders claim, or he may be, as recent defectors believe, either dead or in failing health and under the control of half a dozen young followers who are manipulating big fortune.<br><br>These are the children. Well, actually, they are in their early 20s now. But they were only 11, 12, 13-year-olds when Hubbard, haunted by fear of enemies, was sailing the world's oceans aboard a 3280-tonne convened British ferryboat called the Apollo. Some 500 scientologists, many of them English, took their children with them aboard the boat. Hubbard was the Commodore. The kids were the elite "Commodore Messenger Org."<br><br>"They were mostly good-looking girls, smart, too," said Bent Corydon, a New Zealander who had been in the Church for over 20 years and had run his own scientology mission on a franchise basis. "They weren't much use to the ship particularly, to Hubbard used them as his eyes and ears, spies really, running around, asking questions, observing things. They were considered to be Hubbard himself and any discourtesy to them was regarded as a personal discourtesy to Hubbard. By the time they all got off the boat in 1975, some of the girls had been replaced by teenage boys. The worst part was when these kids started turning in their parents, getting them 'declared' [purged] as 'suppressives - that's evil people, to translate Church language." <br><br>-------------------snip------------------------<br><br>By the summer of 1976 about 1500 Scientologists, including some 800 full time staff members, had moved into their new headquarters, which they described in colour brochures as a "religious retreat" and the "friendliest place in the a whole world". Ron Hubbard, in green tam-o'shanter, was seen directing training films in the grounds. Always at his side was a slim, intense-looking teenager named David Miscavige, smartly dressed in the naval uniform of the Commodore's Messenger.<br><br>-------------snip----------------<br><br>Armstrong said that his boss talked to no one but the young Messengers who had been with him since their childhood days aboard the Apollo. "He was childlike and bullying." He had also become a hypochondriac, said Armstrong, terrified of germs, taking injections of drugs and vitamins.<br><br>About a dozen senior Scientologists lived in the apartment complex with Hubbard. One of them was David Mayo, who was Hubbard's personal auditor (confessor) and the Church's leading authority on its philosophy. A 22-year Scientology veteran, Mayo earned his place at the top of the hierarchy through his close friendship with Hubbard. But in February, 1980, Mayo left for a two-week visit to his native New Zealand. When be returned, Hubbard had vanished.<br><br>The young naval-uniformed Commodore Messenger Org had pulled a preemptive coup for control of the Church.<br><br><br><br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Whole article is worth reading. Or would be if I provided the link..sorry:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/england/sundaytimes-magazine-scientology.htm">www.lermanet.com/scientol...tology.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dreamsend@rigorousintuition>Dreams End</A> at: 3/21/06 6:20 pm<br></i>