Refund and Reparation

It was the third of June, another cheery, sunny Gastown day, so Caroline and I and Erika went down to picket by the bay. Our picket theme was the announcement and celebration of Caroline’s new web site www.carolineletkeman.org, which for now focuses on her effort to obtain a refund of the more than US $60,000 that the Scientologists fleeced from her with their standard false promises. Scientology boss David Miscavige has been refusing, even in violation of Scientology public refund “policy,” to give back Caroline’s money that his cult ripped off, and has refused to respond to her very on-policy, sincere and serious refund demands. The site will make it possible to present Caroline’s claims and case to law enforcement, government officials, attorneys and other professionals, consumer protection agencies, media, victims, activists, and really any other interested wogs, in an organized, documented, navigable form.

Miscavige, as is so well known it really goes without saying anymore, is not only a crook, but a dyed-in-the-down quack, so, of course, without having his criminal mind constrained by wogs’ superior ethics, he will never have the Scientology cult or his cultists deliver what they promise, or ever refund what they steal. Picketing, therefore, can be a highly ethical activity and an opportunity to shine some light on Miscavige’s and his Scientologists’ abysmal ethics, and to half nelson their criminal minds.

Besides this on-going major target of getting Miscavige’s financial ethics in, we had an operating target to bring back a photo of our sweet little xenu.net teddy bear Erika picketing with us, so that we could get one of those nifty wog-sized T-shirts being offered on Operation Clambake. Erika had actually already accompanied us on a picket of Scientology in Karlsruhe, Germany back in November 2003.

We’re hoping really that Andreas sends us two shirts for the two times now that Erika has picketed so that all three of us can wear these power shirts on a future power picket. Embarrassingly, as we already confessed, back in Karlsruhe we thought Erika was an Erik, but she was a great sport and never uttered a complaining or critical word.

We suited up into our picket gear and assembled our signs a couple of blocks from the org on Hastings Street, and then moved into position about 10:45 a.m. I’ve used the same sign for about the past five years on a number of pickets in a number of locations. One side says, “Thank God L. Ron Hubbard is Dead Wrong,” and the other says, “$cientology: Let Our People Go.” Caroline’s sign, which is designed and lettered similarly to mine, says, “$cientology: Give My Money Back” and “$cientology: Let My Daughter Go.” In 2001, after Caroline criticized Scientology, the Miscavige regime ordered her daughter Ann to disconnect, and Caroline protests against Scientology’s disconnection policy and the Suppressive Person doctrine that underlies it. She seeks to have Miscavige cancel his vindictive and flagitious disconnection order on her.

Caroline wore our Wog Hat® and I wore the Xenu Air® hat that Greg Hagglund had given me at the Clearwater 1998 Lisa McPherson Memorial picket. I’ve washed this treasured chapeau a couple of times and it’s a bit faded, and its brim is frayed beyond repair. But the “Xenu Air” lettering is still bright red, and still causes au courant OTs to go through all sorts of contortions to stop their pre-OT underlings from seeing and reading that scientologically-charged name. XENU!

For this very special picket I also wore a greatly prized T-shirt that had been given to me by the plaintiffs in the B & G Wards trial in which I’d testified in London, England in 1984. Beneath a big greed-green Hubbard is his famous financial directive: “Governing Policy – Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make money. HCOPL 9.4.72.” Erika, naturally, wore her sexy little OC number, which says, “I'm here demonstrating AGAINST THE CULT OF SCIENTOLOGY. Ask me for a brochure or go visit: www.xenu.net."

Our picket flyer sketched out Caroline’s twenty-four years in Scientology; Hubbard’s and the cult’s false promises; the ripoff of her years, money and daughter; Caroline’s request a refund; and Miscavige’s declaring her a “Suppressive Person.” By declaring Caroline an SP, Miscavige could get his bully’s degraded thrills fair gaming her, which would include not giving her money back. The Miscavige regimers use their Suppressive Person doctrine, in addition to its other evil purposes, to trump their own public refund policies. The SP doctrine, and its fair game implementation, Hubbard knew, and certainly Miscavige knows, is a huge criminal money-maker.

Upon our arrival in front of the Vancouver org, an OSA babe, whom we’ve encountered there before, and who might be the DSA, came out of the org’s open glass front door and snapped our photos. She said just a few words and immediately retreated back inside closing the door behind her, and except for one other quick sortie she remained inside the org throughout our picket. I didn’t have our camera out of its case, so we were prevented from reciprocating the honor and taking her photo and webbing it with our picket report. I think it would be good picketing tech to be added to the picketing tech pages to have your camera out and the lens cap off immediately upon arrival at the org, because with the cult’s scuttle tech, you might not get another chance to photograph their camera person, or OSA babe. They will scuttle out, snap a pic, and then scuttle back into the org and into hiding.

Our OSA babe said my name in recognition, and asked what we were doing here. I said that we were picketing her cult. She asked how we would like it if the Scientologists picketed us. She actually said, “How would you like it if we picketed your cult?” Caroline and I, of course, don’t have a cult, so the OSA babe must have been mocking up her cult’s picketing of our apartment in Chilliwack. Wogism is hardly a cult, no matter how hard the cultists try to paint us wogs with the same brush they use to paint themselves. I didn’t get to welcome the cultists to picket Chilliwack’s wogs, however, because, as I mentioned, the OSA babe scuttled away back inside, pulling the door closed behind her.

As soon as she was inside she grabbed the hat of flow stopper, stopping staff members and customers from exiting the org by the front door. She directed them to leave instead by the rear entrance and to take the alley behind the building, to stop these suppressed Scientologists, of course, from having any contact with us SPs. We were reminded of what Hubbard said was to happen to the Scientologists who did what this OSA babe was doing: With all her passage and people stopping, the OSA babe, before our eyes, was driving herself even more insane than she already had been driven from all the other stopping that as a Scientologist and OSA staffer she was compelled to do. Stopping blows, stopping press, stopping people from finding out, stopping psychs, stopping SPs, stopping Caroline from getting her refund, stopping everyone else from getting their refunds -- a life of endless stopping, and tragically insane.

From inside behind the glass, while stopping all but very limited authorized body traffic out through the org’s front door, the OSA babe leered at us almost continually and a couple of times flipped us the bird. I flashed her back a grin and a good look at Ron the Fagin® on my chest. Several times throughout our picket she made this money-grubbing extortionist’s gesture toward us, rubbing her thumb and the index and middle fingers of one hand together that gloats of financial trickery or injury of some kind. Coupled with our message and her leer, it seemed clear that she was gloating about her cult’s theft of Caroline’s money, and she was getting off on her cult’s esurience and criminal out-exchange at the “SPs’” expense and pain. It couldn’t be that she was jubilating over her cult’s $500,000 “big win” against me in April in Marin County. I will take a big win like that every time I go to California. It is not every day that the cult’s actions in its use of the law to destroy a longtime wog are declared judicially to be unconscionable.

Vancouver’s OSA babe dramatized the very Scientology-wide callousness, avariciousness, fair game and refusal of fair dealing that we were protesting, so she validated perfectly our being there and communicating. I would guess that there were thirty people who were substantially connected to the org that I observed through the glass door, one or two or a few at a time, during the periods I faced that direction. None of those thirty people apparently objected to the way the OSA babe was reacting to our protest, or their objections were utterly ineffective; because she didn’t change what wasn’t working a bit, didn’t change her reactive communication pattern, or her covert hostility tone level, which truly wasn’t working to the point of embarrassment, and only further puts Scientology and Scientologists at risk.

You’d really think that there would be someone in Scientology who would communicate at something other than a covert or overt hostility level, who would simply do what’s right and sane and pay Caroline’s refund request. But they’re not permitted at any time to be reasonable, and under that overwhelming suppression they can’t do what’s decent or sane. Nobody is permitted to initiate or participate in a plan of action or communication effort that could actually work, a better plan than the pathetically uncreative Miscavige/RTC plan of simply abusing further Scientology’s already thoroughly abused victims. You’d think org staffers would simply find out how much their cult had taken from Caroline, and pursuant to her request and Scientology’s own policies get the money refunded. Instead they allow themselves to be bullied into antisocial and criminal behavior by their antisocial and criminal masters in the Miscavige regime who pocket a ton of dirty money by enforcing such behavior.

On a couple of brief times outside the org James Wood passed by us on his way in or out. I’ve recognized James at almost every Vancouver org picket since Martin Hunt introduced him to me on the first picket Martin and I did, a Hubbard birthday picket in March 1998. There’s a nice religious mockup photo of James and a bit of his story in a March 31, 2003 Vancouver Courier article. The Courier writer Michael Kissinger contacted me for the article while Caroline and I were staying in Germany in 2003. When James walked by us during the picket, Caroline and I both greeted him warmly, but he was apparently completely muzzled. He did duplicate his OSA babe senior, however, and flip us the bird, but a bit more covertly, behind his own back, just as he was entering the org.

We were kept very busy during the picket, handing out flyers, working the four lanes of traffic, keeping our picket signs rotating, taking photos, entertaining Erika, and talking to whoever appeared to be talked to from the ceaseless stream of humanity that flowed, miraculously in both directions, past the org. Throughout the picket, people in cars, and even bus drivers, waved, shouted and honked in obvious concert with our stand and message. I think that there’s a good chance that the UK pickets are so extraordinarily effective because of John Ritson’s barker tech; or at least I think of it as being John’s tech. So I barked too as appropriate, and as I remember John’s barking: “It’s a fraud, it’s a scam. You pay your money and what do you get? A receipt.”

Lots of passers-by recognized those words “scam” or “fraud” or “ripoff” and let us know in one way or another that we’d got that right. As pretty well always, some people related personal stories of fraud and mistreatment by the cult. One man said that his father had deserted the family, leaving them in poverty when he was young, that his father had died, and when they went through his belongings they found over $20,000 in invoices for payments to Scientology. A woman came by brieflyVancouver Picket 06-03-2004 and said she knew John and Peggy Eastment, about their being in the Sea Org, on the ship with Hubbard, etc. The woman understood the brainwash and the fraud, and expressed her concern and a prayer for them. Probably one or two agents came by to chat up Caroline and me, and a number of Vancouver’s great unwashed and downtrodden stomped by, because the org is in their stomping ground. And there were some very engaging folks, like Anatoly here with Caroline, and three writers, with whom we chatted briefly and then scheduled future meetings.

A bit after 1:00 p.m., two men came out of the org and actually communicated to us, although they were obviously hostile, which was terribly out of place because Caroline and I, and even Erika, were very uptone and at cause. The men each had a handful of Scientology tracts that they gave out to pedestrians as a response to our having been doing the same thing for more than two hours with our picket handout. The cult’s tract contains a squirreled version of a 1954 Hubbard article “Man’s Search for His Soul.” I will detail the squirreling in a future report.

One of the men Mel Hanlan, it turned out, had been one of the first people Caroline encountered in Scientology in 1975 in Vancouver. He has a cookie-cutter site, and his favorite Hubbard quote is: The IAS proclaims, however: Mel’s site has the milquetoast acceptable truth tech, but Mel, as he demonstrated, lived by the real deal. Willingness to fight back is a much higher price to pay than just constant alertness. Paying the price over and over one would want to get his money’s worth, to actually experience the eternity-threatening chill of body-to-body and thetan-to-thetan fighting back and to have a win against an unquestioned RTC-approved suppressive.

Mel says about how Dianetics and Scientology has changed his life: His approach to Caroline and me began with a repeated demand for specifically what was our beef. Caroline told him she wanted her money refunded that she had paid for “services” that were unsatisfactory, and she wanted the cult to let her daughter go free so that they could communicate. Mel asked if Caroline had requested a refund within three months of her last service, and she said that the “three-month rule” is part of the fraud and does not govern refundability, but that she nevertheless had requested her refund within three months of her last service just because of that judicially ridiculous and unenforceable “rule.” Mel insisted that Caroline’s daughter is an adult and that she can decide for herself. We countered that it is Miscavige’s enforcement of the Suppressive Person doctrine by ordered disconnection, of course, that prevents Ann from communicating to Caroline, not any “decision” she made on her own determinism.

Mel also TR-3ed his same listing question several times on me: “What’s your beef?” I wanted to say the bum steer Scientology gave me, but I hadn’t thought of it yet, so I offered as my specific beef the Suppressive Person doctrine. He asked if that was because it applied to me. I said that it applied to everyone, but that I had a particular interest because I represent SPs. I said that the doctrine is evil, and has resulted in antisocial and criminal actions being taken by Scientologists against good people. Mel demanded to know who, and I suggested Paulette Cooper and Gabe Cazares .

Mel said he didn’t know who Paulette was, didn’t know about ops against her, and didn’t believe any of it unless he could see the documents. Moreover, applying what pretended stupidity offers the practitioner, he didn’t want to see the documents some time in the future, but demanded that I show him the documents right then as we spoke. He said he believed that Gabe is now supporting Scientology, which I said seems so impossible, given Gabe’s very recent statements and activism against the cult, that I believed that whoever gave Mel this information was completely wrong.

We got onto Ron the Nuclear Physicist , and Mel said that it was other people calling Hubbard a nuclear physicist, not himself. This is funny because it is the universal Scientology response to the challenge to Hubbard’s lie. It was what Norman Starkey said to me back in November 1981 when I mentioned then that Hubbard’s claim of being a nuclear physicist is false. I grabbed a very beautiful volume of Hubbard’s handwritten Scientology 88 and showed Norman where Hubbard wrote, clearly about himself: “At first none thought a nuclear physicist had any business in the field of the mind.” Norman’s face BTs went niacinic, he blew up, blew my office, and ordered me sec checked, and the rest of that history is history. Again Mel demanded that I show him this document right there, and I said that obviously I couldn’t but that I would web the documentation for him to see.

Among our herd of beefs, both Caroline and I beefed about Scientology not delivering on its IQ promise . I was expecting a raise of a good point per hour, and the vast majority of my more than a thousand hours of auditing was Flag Auditing! The cult claims that Hubbard stated that "Probably an hour of Flag Auditing counts for five or ten hours elsewhere." Mel was at a bit of a loss to handle me, because he could not validate my superhuman IQ, since, arithmetically, that would make me smarter than him. And this would mean, according to Scientology, I am would be more right than he is. The Suppressive Person doctrine, obviously, dictates that the airtight proof that I am an SP, and that Caroline is an SP, is the very fact that our IQs did not go up a thousand points, let alone five thousand points or ten thousand points. Mel said, in defense of Scientology's IQ raising claim, that he knew his IQ at least had gone up.

It was obvious that Mel was using his PTS/SP Course “tech” on Caroline and me, “confronting” us as SPs to shatter us, within what the public venue and the Canadian and provincial criminal codes permitted. I am always happy to engage Scientologists who want to handle me with their SP-shattering tech, on a non-violent basis, so my interaction with Mel became very lively, and a group of about ten wogs and Scientologists gathered around us to listen. That’s when the OSA babe rocketed out of the org the second time, pulled Mel aside and out of the conversation, and instructed him and the other gentleman to stop communicating, to stay away from me, and only give out the tracts.

With the OSA babe back inside, Mel blew, as fast as he could pretend to wander, up Hastings Street away from the org’s front door and out of her view, and I tried a number of times to get back in communication with him. He initially ordered that I not take his photo, and grabbed the camera, and was quite sullen, probably because he just been invalidated in front of us SPs and a crowd of people by his OSA senior. But I kept trying to cheer him up with jokes, and Hubbard impersonations, and general positiveness. He smiled, actually laughed a couple of times, and even let me take his photo. After a while, we did talk about Caroline’s case, and I asked him if he remembered her. He said that he did but that it was a long time ago. We talked about the decision of Judge Breckenridge in the Scientology v. Armstrong case in Los Angeles Superior Court in 1984. I said that I believed that Scientology had a duty to their members such as Mel to disclose that in that case the creator of the “technology” had been declared a pathological liar. Mel demanded that I show him the decision, which, of course, I didn’t have, but I’ll link to here: Breckenridge Decision.

Caroline and I reminded Mel and his fellow body router every few minutes that it was Thursday, that 2:00 p.m. was fast approaching, and that it was time to get their stats up. Even before 2:00 we were already celebrating highest evers, and we shared our enthusiasm and our wins with all the Scientologists inside and outside the org.  Having an outstanding refund claim again confronting the org, having a protest on their doorstep, having a brand new website exposing their quackery, having two SPs show up at their org utterly unhandled, and having to acknowledge the complete failure of ignore tech, had to be impacting the stats and dashing prospects for libs. Caroline and I stayed on purpose and in action right until 2:00, then we packed up our picket and moved out and deep into Vancouver’s wonderful wog world to enjoy the rest of a perfect day.