by Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:44 am
I wonder if the stress from the brainwashing program and any subsequent punishments, many of which was physically abusive, could induce miscarriages or abortions. There was certainly plenty of child abuse going on, too, according to Ron Jr.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.lermanet.com/cos/brainwashing.html">www.lermanet.com/cos/brainwashing.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>BRAINWASHING IN SCIENTOLOGY'S REHABILITATION PROJECT FORCE<br>by Dr Stephen Kent [University of Alberta, Canada]<br>....<br><br>Hubbard's Discussions of Brainwashing in the Late 1960s<br><br> During the late 1960s, Hubbard discussed brainwashing at<br>least four times in various talks and writings, and these<br>discussions always were consistent with the basic techniques of<br>personality destruction and goals-realignment discussed in the<br>"brainwashing" manual of 1955. The book, All About Radiation,<br>bridges the 1960s and the 1950s, since Hubbard took his comments<br>from a 1957 "Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health," published<br>them that same year, then reissued the book in 1967. This<br>publication included a section entitled "What Brainwashing Is":<br> Brainwashing is a very simple mechanism. One gets a person<br> to agree that something might be a certain way and then<br> drives him by introverting him and through self-criticism to<br> the possibility that it is that way. Only then does a man<br> believe that the erroneous fact was a truth. By gradient<br> scale of hammering, pounding and torture, brainwashers are<br> able to make people believe that that these people [i.e.,<br> the victims] saw and did things which they never did do<br> (Hubbard, 1957: 84; also quoted in Hubbard, 1976b: 55).<br>As he had indicated in 1955, people could be brainwashed (he<br>believed) by giving them an external goal or fact, then breaking<br>them down (through stress) until they believed it.<br> Two years after the reissue of All About Radiation (on<br>December 20, 1969), Hubbard discussed brainwashing again, but<br>added a twist. Now he defined it as the "subjection of a person<br>to systematic indoctrination or mental pressure with a view to<br>getting him to change his views or to confess to a crime" (quoted<br>in Hubbard, 1976b: 55). Not only, therefore, did Hubbard believe<br>that he knew how to force people to change their minds on vital<br>issues, but also he thought that he could force (presumably<br>false) confessions out of people by "brainwashing" them through<br>severe stress. Again these insights bore fruit in the RPF<br>environment. <br> Additional glimpses into Hubbard's knowledge about<br>brainwashing comes from a March, 1969 Scientology article in the<br>organization's Freedom newspaper. At the time of initial<br>publication, the article entitled "Brainwashing" did not reveal<br>its author, and only after 1992 were researchers able to verify<br>that it came from Hubbard himself (see Church of Scientology<br>International, 1992: 757). The article contained a long exerpt<br>from a politically conservative writer, Robert G. Ridgway<br>(followed at the end by Hubbard's comments), and one section of<br>Ridgway's commentary contained a section subtitled "Nervous<br>Breakdown." It described techniques designed to break down<br>individuals and then build them up into the externally defined<br>goals of the group:<br> 'The first part in the technique of brainwashing is an<br> artifically induced nervous breakdown, which breaks the line<br> with the individual's past experience and casts him adrift<br> in a sea of suggestibility. This is brought on by<br> exhaustion, confusion, continuous physical pain, and fear<br> and anxiety. This destroys human individuality and identity<br> by fracturing fixed habit patterns and employing the useful<br> fragments, cemented by suggestion, to rebuild an entirely<br> different personality. Memory is diffused. Logic is<br> confused, and judgement is distorted in the absence of<br> reference and discipline. The person has lost control of his<br> mind--it is then that suggestion is most effective. The<br> victim is grateful to be oriented again. He appreciates any<br> purpose or direction given to him. He feels he has been led<br> back to sanity, [but] in reality his soul has been stolen. <br> This was done to American fathers in Korea and their sons in<br> Vietnam' (Ridgway, quoted in [Hubbard], 1969: [4]).<br>Similar to Hubbard's writing in the previous decade, this article<br>identified the necessity of destroying individuality<br>(accomplished here through inducing nervous breakdowns) and then<br>aligning the shattered personality with officially provided<br>purpose and direction. <br> Hubbard (we presume) had made a similar argument about<br>breaking down people in the brainwashing manual of 1955. The<br>manual stated that:<br> There is a curve of degradation which leads downward to a<br> point where the endurance of an individual is almost at an<br> end, and any sudden action toward him will place him in a<br> state of shock. Similarly, a soldier held prisoner can be<br> abused, denied, defamed, and degraded until the slightest<br> motion on the part of his captors will cause him to flinch.<br> Similarly, the slightest word on the part of his captors<br> will cause him to obey, or vary his loyalties and beliefs.<br> Given sufficient degradation, a prisoner can be caused to<br> murder his fellow countrymen in the same stockade.<br> Experiments on German prisoners have lately demonstrated<br> that only after seventy days of filthy food, little sleep,<br> and nearly untenable quarters, that [sic] the least motion<br> toward the prisoner would bring about a state of shock<br> beyond his endurance threshold, and would cause him to<br> hypnotically receive anything said to him. Thus, it is<br> possible, in an entire stockade of prisoners, to the number<br> of thousands, to bring about a state of complete servile<br> obedience, and without the labour of personally addressing<br> each one, to pervert their loyalties, and implant in them<br> adequate commands to insure their future conduct, even when<br> released to their own people (Hubbard [probable author]:<br> 1955: 41-42).<br>Again, techniques involving attempted attitude changes through<br>severe stess became reality in the RPF, which Hubbard created<br>less than five years after publishing an article on brainwashing<br>that contained Ridgway's comments about nervous breakdowns.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br><br><br><br>A deep insider named Gerry Armstrong went whistleblower and got the full 'fair game treatment' of cointelpro-like harassments.<br><br>He says that Canada turned Scientology-friendly so he fled to Europe where the cult is treated more like a crime.<br><br>Another website points at what looks like a post-Hubbard CIA take over of the cult and I wonder whether that explains the different legal attitudes in Canada and Europe.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/introduction.html">www.gerryarmstrong.org/50...ction.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I was inside Scientology for over twelve years, from 1969, to when I escaped in 1981. For eleven years I was in the organization's inner pseudo-military core, the Sea Organization (SO). There I held a number of key positions, including the Legal Officer, Public Relations Officer and Intelligence Officer on board the organization's "Flagship Apollo," from which Scientology was managed and controlled internationally. I worked with Scientology founder and director and SO Commodore L. Ron Hubbard on board the ship, and later in Florida and California.<br><br> <br><br>Hubbard's Biography Researcher<br><br> In my final two years in the SO, I had the task of collecting and assembling an archive of Hubbard's personal documents, and doing research for his biography. During the course of my research, I discovered and documented that Hubbard had lied about virtually every part of his life, including his education, degrees, family, explorations, military service, war wounds, scientific research, the efficacy of his " sciences" - Dianetics and Scientology - along with the actions and intentions of the organizations he created to sell and advance these "sciences."<br><br> When I attempted to get Scientology executives to correct the lies that the organization was promoting about Hubbard, and which Hubbard promoted about himself, I was attacked and ordered to be security checked. A "sec check" is an invasive, incriminatory Scientology interrogation technique using its E-meter lie detector. During my years in the SO, I had been subjected to hundreds of hours of sec checks, and had twice been ordered by Hubbard to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) [1], the organization's punishment and reprogramming camps, for a total of twenty-five months. Rather than being again locked up and forced to submit to further abuse and degradation, I fled.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>The different legal climates for Scientology-<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Because of the way Canadian officials are acting in another case, there are indications that the Canadian Government has reversed its previous opposition to Scientology and now supports the organization's persecution of its victims and targets, as the U.S. Government has done and is doing. Consequently, and as a precaution, I recently left Canada with my fiancée Caroline Letkeman and am in Germany. I believe that in Europe, where Scientology is generally not considered a religion but a totalitarian psychocult, I will be free to continue to communicate about its persecution and to address the support it gets from the North American governments.<br><br> Even while here, however, I am still a target of Scientology's persecution as the organization's latest lawsuit shows. According to the U.S. "judgment," every European Scientology organization and every European Scientologist or their lawyers or agents may say whatever they want about me, no matter how defamatory, and I may not say one word in response or in my defense. Just for saying the word "Scientology," or the name of any European Scientologist, or mentioning one word about my now more than 33-year relationship with the organization, I am subject to a $50,000 "damage" assessment, imprisonment and a fine.<br><br> As Scientology's latest suit also shows, anyone facilitating my defense against the organization's attacks is also subject to the U.S. "judgment," and is also at risk of being sued, bankrupted and jailed. Potentially, anyone giving me money, a job, an Internet connection, a telephone, a bed or even a meal or a drink of water, knowing that I will survive another day to communicate about Scientology and its persecutions, becomes Fair Game, subject to its "judgment," and target of its U.S.-supported litigation machine. [5]<br><br> <br><br>My Position<br><br> Judicially prohibiting people from responding to Scientology's attacks, and punishing them with imprisonment and fines if they do respond, creates a new type of slavery, which Scientology, with U.S. Government support, is attempting to export around the world. Since the U.S. Government considers the organization a religion, and confers upon it all the privileges and benefits conferred on traditional religions, including tax exemption, Scientology's attacks on critics and its extreme measures to silence them amount to a new form of State-sanctioned religious persecution.<br><br> There is no freedom of religion where there is no freedom to criticize, oppose or reform religion. Ironically, it is only in the U.S., which claims to be a bastion of religious liberty, where a person can be jailed just for mentioning a " religion" or his "religious experiences" in it. If the U.S. and its courts apply this concept equally to all religions, a person could be jailed just for saying the word "Christianity," or "Buddhism," or "Hinduism," or "Islam," or mentioning any "religious experience" in any of those religions. If the U.S. is applying this concept only to Scientology, then that organization has by this favoritism become the American State Religion.<br><br> Salman Rushdie was sentenced by a totalitarian theocratic government's legal edict, and is being threatened world wide, for writing a book that the theocrats don't like. I am attacked and hounded around the world by Scientology's totalitarian religious poseurs, using the U.S. legal system, for writing and speaking what the poseurs dislike. The Islamic fatwah is directed not only against Rushdie but also against all persons associated in the publication of his book. Scientology's fatwah targets all persons acting in concert with me or in any way facilitating my speaking and writing. Iran is offering a $2,500,000 reward to the murderer who silences Rushdie. Scientology has already paid that to U.S. lawyers to silence me. Going the theocrats one better, however, Scientology's commercial cultists want their investment back, quadrupled.<br><br> I am being persecuted by Scientology, with its official U.S. support, not for speaking lies or defaming the organization, but for speaking the truth. I am speaking the truth in response to Scientology's lies about me, lies which are demonstrated even by the organization's latest lawsuit, which is riddled with lies. I am speaking out to prevent Scientology from rewriting its history of lying and of persecuting people who speak the truth. Because I am persecuted for speaking is precisely why I should speak. Because other people are persecuted for helping me to speak is precisely why they should help.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Lot's of awful first-hand info at Gerry Armstrong's website.<br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=hughmanateewins>Hugh Manatee Wins</A> at: 4/13/06 1:45 am<br></i>