Refund and Reparation

Last week, John Roberts of CNN grilled Tommy Davis, a Scientology spokesman, who was predictably evasive about what L. Ron Hubbard’s wacky minions are up to. ‘Disconnection,’ the church policy of splitting up families in order to shun critics of the church? Never happens, Davis claimed. And as for that high-priced stuff about removing alien souls with lie detector machines? “It’s unrecognizable to me,” Davis told Roberts.

But it was Davis himself who was practically unrecognizable, Jason Beghe tells the Voice.

Beghe is Scientology’s most notorious recent defector, a veteran film and television actor who, after twelve years and approximately $1 million spent on the religion, defected in spectacular manner with a web video in which he denounced Scientology as “destructive and a rip-off.”

Davis, meanwhile, is the son of another Scientology celebrity, actress Anne Archer. He’s a longtime Hubbardite himself, and helped to run the Celebrity Centre in Los Angeles. Davis told Rolling Stone in 2006 that L. Ron Hubbard was “the coolest guy ever.” Davis is also well known for provoking BBC journalist John Sweeney into a temper tantrum that became a YouTube hit last year.

Beghe, however, has more personal memories of the man.

“On the day I was getting married, I was waiting in my house with David Duchovny, my best man, and everything was fine. Then about an hour before I had to go, I started to get nervous. I don’t drink much, so I don’t have much to drink in the house. So I called Tommy Davis and he brought me a cold six-pack.”

And there was also this: “I had a terrible car accident,” Beghe says.

“I was in a coma for three and a half weeks. Either Tommy or someone else from Celebrity Centre was with me for that entire time.”

“I know this guy,” Beghe says.

And that’s why Davis’s appearance on CNN was so troubling, Beghe explains.

“He was saying there’s no Disconnection. That’s a fucking lie. I’m not even a declared suppressive person, and they’ve all disconnected from me,” Beghe says about his former friends in the church. “They kicked my four-year-old son out of a fucking Scientology school. There’s your church.”
[...]
Full article: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/...

Commander Joseph Cheesman aka "Snake" Thompson was a navy psychologist and Hubbard's mentor since childhood. Hubbard claimed that Thompson taught him everything he knew about Freudian therapy.

See also OCMB thread.

WILLEMSTAD: During refurbishing and reparatory work, which involved removing the ceiling and panelling on cruise ship Freewinds , blue asbestos was released and ended up in the ventilation system. Freewinds' captain did not report this when it's own personnel were working on the ship on the Mathey warf in Otrobanda. The Curacao Drydock Company (CDM), where the ship was taken for reparatory work on the hull, heard from the surveyor that there may be asbestos on the ship. The captain acknowledged the incident and said that after the incident Freewinds had some investigation done. Keeping the incident quiet became more noticeable when it turned out that the 40-year-old ship contatined blue asbestos.

The question is whether or not the blue asbestos dust, which can cause cancer, can be removed from the ship. The CDM has stopped all work on the ship. The ship was sealed and isolated and experts will investigate and measure the presence of asbestos dust in the hull and surrounding areas. Commissioners Eugene Rhuggenaath (Economic Affairs) and Humphrey Davelaar (Public Health) said on Friday.

CDM interim director Frank Esser, deputy head of the Department of Labour Affairs Christiene van der Biezen were accompanied by two inspectors and head of the health Department Tico Ras. Samples taken from the panelling last week by inspectors that were sent to the Netherlands showed that they contained significant amounts of blue asbestos. After an extraordinary meeting, the Executive Council decided to inform the public in general about the incident to avoid remours and panic.

The CDM personnel were also informed via the media because it was impossible to gather all the workers Friday evening to personally give them the information.