What's new

OSA capabilities

strativarius

Inveterate gnashnab & snoutband
It won't. I remember one year where it did threaten but they put all the OT VII's and VIII's in session and it changed course.

That did happen, that they put the 7's and 8's in session, and there was a hurricane on the west coast of Florida and it did change direction but I don't think sessions had anything to do with it.
Naah! It wasn't the OT's, it was Commander Birdsong and he did it all by himself.
 

Type4_PTS

Diamond Invictus SP
For those of us not in the US, can someone explain if Dorian is going to affect Scientology? Maybe destroy an Ideal Org or two?
No Ideal Orgs appear to be in danger and I'm sure thousands of a dozen Volunteer Ministers are getting ready to travel to the Bahamas as soon as it's safe, to rebuild any infrastructure that was destroyed give touch assists, pass out Way to Happiness booklets, and provide any other assistance as needed.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
Down to Cat 3. Winds at 120. Still in the same spot, Bahama's taking it all. Still winds of 75 around Miami and storm surges. They are waiting for an eastern high pressure area to descend and push it north.


 

freethinker

Sponsor
No Ideal Orgs appear to be in danger and I'm sure thousands of a dozen Volunteer Ministers are getting ready to travel to the Bahamas as soon as it's safe, to rebuild any infrastructure that was destroyed give touch assists, pass out Way to Happiness booklets, and provide any other assistance as needed.
Will they fly out on the Revolta Express?
 

dchoiceisalwaysrs

Gold Meritorious Patron
I'm quite sure that OSA has order that hurricane and all the OSA volunteers who distracted us all by posting weather reports have been at their programs again. :D :sorry: :hemademe:

Meanwhile this is going on...

https://tonyortega.org/2019/09/03/t...art-one-the-lesser-whales/#comment-4603287898

and this

https://tonyortega.org/2019/09/03/t...art-one-the-lesser-whales/#comment-4603212981

but nothing on David Miscavige plotting on the 11th floor of the HGB building to hack the scientologyabuselawsuit website and break into the plaintiffs attorneys offices. :lousyputer: :gossip: :bignono:
 

Wilbur

Patron Meritorious
You mean like what's done to me on every single thread and post here, lately? Including yours right here?

Hypocrisy is not an argument, BB. Good arguments need to be logically consistent. They must begin with known and provable premises.

Hypocrisy begins with premises that are unknown to the hypocrite and proceed from there to contradict themselves.

Critics criticizing critics for criticizing critics, for example.
Premises are never provable. You're confusing mathematics with the real world.
 

Wilbur

Patron Meritorious
That's funny, I've just been informed by the BBC that it's the second most powerful hurricane in history, the most powerful being back in 1980.
No, you've got your dates wrong, Stratty. Alex Hurricane Higgins was only the runner up in the World Snooker Championship in 1980. You're probably thinking of 1982.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
You mean like what's done to me on every single thread and post here, lately? Including yours right here?

Hypocrisy is not an argument, BB. Good arguments need to be logically consistent. They must begin with known and provable premises.

Hypocrisy begins with premises that are unknown to the hypocrite and proceed from there to contradict themselves.

Critics criticizing critics for criticizing critics, for example.
Oh yeah, we are just so mean to you. At least we tell you to your face.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
Good posts so far., especially about gaslighting. I wonder how often it is that people who do this to their partners / work colleagues actually know (as in the sense of consciously know) that they're doing it? One person is trying to take the relationship / company into a more alive and conscious space, the other person senses this and feels threatened by it and tries to keep things in the zone in which they're most comfortable. It probably happens more than you think.
Many interactions can look like gaslighting but it is the intention of the one employing it. A gaslighter wants to destroy you. Not everyone who makes a critical remark is out to destroy you. It's best to study the subject well so you can spot it when it happens or pass on it when it isn't.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
I'm quite sure that OSA has order that hurricane and all the OSA volunteers who distracted us all by posting weather reports have been at their programs again. :D :sorry: :hemademe:

Meanwhile this is going on...

https://tonyortega.org/2019/09/03/t...art-one-the-lesser-whales/#comment-4603287898

and this

https://tonyortega.org/2019/09/03/t...art-one-the-lesser-whales/#comment-4603212981

but nothing on David Miscavige plotting on the 11th floor of the HGB building to hack the scientologyabuselawsuit website and break into the plaintiffs attorneys offices. :lousyputer: :gossip: :bignono:
I remember that I used to think it was the nuts getting one of their shiny plaques and a 10,000 dollar T shirt but now I think I was just nuts.
 

TheOriginalBigBlue

Gold Meritorious Patron
Premises are never provable. You're confusing mathematics with the real world.
Marx, Lenin and Stalin all struggled with dialectics. They started out trying to understand logic that included mysticism as a variable but found that to be too abstract for class revolution doctrine and evolved into materialism but by the 1900s physics started breaking down the physical universe to the point where it was about as abstract as mysticism so what became important to them was what was observable but that is again dependent on perception and now they are pretty much back to mysticism again with everything being relative and subject to reinterpretation while still pushing materialism. I think they lost the plot because they were never really interested about logic - they were interested in forming revolutionary doctrine. Again the problem is motivation and self-interest. That is probably the biggest variable

I think if anyone is going to have a sensible debate they need to be willing to agree on the parameters of the specific issue without getting too abstract. Obviously if one's position is not logical or the ramifications are harmful or need to be obscured then they will be unwilling to agree on parameters to that degree. That is how I perceive much of the debate about Scientology. So much of what constitutes Scientology is not provable or even observable but the net harm it causes is, so one side must avoid anything that disproves Scientology or proves it's harm. That will be the side that is most dependent on deflective rhetoric, blame and division. I have noticed that much of Alanzo's premises depend upon logomachy or getting bogged down in arguments about words instead of things that can be agreed to be observable.

The whole agenda to stop calling Scientology a cult and to characterize critics as the cultists is basically logomachy. If Scientology funded a study to replace fair gaming or gaslighting as it applies to minority religions in the vernacular it would probably be something fancy and devoid of any derogatory meaning like "Perception Inversion" and ironically if you don't go along with the study and the new term you are still gaslighting and ignorant for not respecting the study. So the underlying motivation is really about deflecting and redirecting criticism and not reaching a logical premise or to make it impossible to conduct a sensible conversation about the subject in general.

Hubbard not only redefined words and created new words but he created a contextual bubble that made all words conform to Scientology's interests. That in itself is a special kind of indoctrination AND training. I would expect Scientologists to naturally gravitate to and depend upon logomachy as a basis for debate.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/logomachy

logomachy
noun
lo·gom·a·chy | \ lō-ˈgä-mə-kē
\
plural logomachies
Definition of logomachy

1 : a dispute over or about words
2 : a controversy marked by verbiage

Did You Know?
It doesn't take much to start people arguing about words, but there's no quarrel about the origin of "logomachy." It comes from the Greek roots logos, meaning "word" or "speech," and machesthai, meaning "to fight," and it entered English in the mid-1500s. If you're a word enthusiast, you probably know that "logos" is the root of many English words ("monologue," "neologism," "logic," and most words ending in "-logy," for example), but what about other derivatives of "machesthai"? Actually, this is a tough one even for word whizzes. Only a few very rare English words come from "machesthai." Here are two of them: "heresimach" ("an active opponent of heresy and heretics") and "naumachia" ("an ancient Roman spectacle representing a naval battle").
First Known Use of logomachy
1569, in the meaning defined at sense 1
History and Etymology for logomachy
Greek logomachia, from log- + machesthai to fight
 

Cat's Squirrel

Gold Meritorious Patron
Scientology's plan at the moment seems to be to departicularise the argument; to characterise any attacks on them, however well justified, as attacks on the right of Scientologists to believe what they want and then on the right of anyone to follow a religion outside the mainstream, i.e. to claim that their critics are religious bigots. As I've said before here, few people would give a scooby what they believed, Xenu and all the rest, if they didn't routinely abuse people and rip them off.
 

PirateAndBum

Gold Meritorious Patron
Sometimes, when I do not mean to, it is surprising to me how I can insult someone by something I write.

It's as if I've developed a kind of Internet Asperger's over the years and I just have no idea what effect will be created, or what someone else will see or feel from what I have written.

I am really sorry to have stirred up all this. I did not mean to. And I really did not want to.

So just rat-a-tat, I'm going to try to explain myself one last time.

I know that I get stuck together with Zinj in peoples' minds but I am not stuck together with him.

What I meant when *I* said "ESMB is done" was this:

Message boards are the easiest and cheapest way for any OSA type entity (Church and Indy and all other forms) to launch projects against critics of Scientology. Often times they do not even have to pay for the computers or internet connections that their people use. At that time, I realized that message boards of all kinds - not just ESMB - were extremely vulnerable to this type of OSA based project.

Just as Tory wrote last week, all they have to do is to slime someone and just keep sliming. Just keep up the sliming and get others in on the sliming, and pretty soon a food fight erupts and keeps going and keeps going and it becomes so unpleasant for anyone to post there that people just quit, or become so angry they do something that gets them banned, or whatever.

It's like a Chimpanzee bar fight. If you've ever seen Animal Planet's "Escape to Chimp Eden" then you know what I'm talking about. Everyone is fighting everyone. It is pandemonium.

And people get damaged and hurt and friendships and alliances and loyalties are destroyed. And yes, the whole reason these types of OSA projects work is because people are frail and hurting already from being in the cult and it is easy to "push their buttons".

What I saw earlier this week was that this type of sliming CONTINUED for over a year here on ESMB. When I read the Zinj/OSA posts that were taken out of Panda's Guide to OSA thread, my whole understanding of ESMB completely changed. I got very angry that this kept going with NO RESOLUTION AT ALL. No one ever stepped up. No one ever said "I'm sorry. I've been doing this on purpose"

And no one ever will because there is very strict policy on never allowing covert ops to be exposed, and anyone doing this believes that it is the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics, and there is a huge cost to the person personally for standing up and doing the humane thing. And anyone who would work for OSA for any length of time is going to be having a "humanity problem" already.

And because SCIENTOLOGY IS CRUEL AND IT FUCKING SUCKS.

I saw that this continued fighting with no resolution was extremely damaging to so many people who are just trying to make sense of what happened to them in that fucking cult. And I saw ESMB as the victim (yes I used that word because victims exist and I AM NOT USING IT the way that Scientology uses it to "blame the victim".) I saw ESMB as the victim and I saw that it was NOT RIGHT for me to do anything other than come in here and be supportive.

I saw very clearly that my own past was TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.

And I said that.

So my view of ESMB has completely changed in the last week.

Completely.

And I saw that the primary vehicle used to damage ESMB is to slime other posters by writing posts that contain no other content than an insult or a direct attack on another poster.

That is the primary mechanism which has been, and still can be used, to damage ESMB.

Tory is right. This is how it is done.

So I decided that I would no longer engage in any cruelty of any kind ever again on ESMB. And I already HAVE been reporting every post I see that is nothing but an insult to another poster.

I will continue to do that, while also not engaging in anything like that myself.

I understand that what I have written above is seen by many different viewpoints in many different ways. I've tried to be clear in what I have written. If I have not been clear, please understand that if you have become insulted by anything I've written, I did not mean to insult you.

Really. I swear to God.

Alanzo
:questions:
 

scooter

Gold Meritorious Patron
Scientology's plan at the moment seems to be to departicularise the argument; to characterise any attacks on them, however well justified, as attacks on the right of Scientologists to believe what they want and then on the right of anyone to follow a religion outside the mainstream, i.e. to claim that their critics are religious bigots. As I've said before here, few people would give a scooby what they believed, Xenu and all the rest, if they didn't routinely abuse people and rip them off.
I think that this has been the plan all along. Kult has been trying to create “interfaith” relationships since before I joined in 1979. It’s been moderately successful in that it’s become the fallback position of “mainstream” cults like Catholicism etc.. I guess somewhere there are Hubbard Advices on this subject telling the Faithful how to gain “religious acceptance”
 

Glenda

Crusader
I think that this has been the plan all along. Kult has been trying to create “interfaith” relationships since before I joined in 1979. It’s been moderately successful in that it’s become the fallback position of “mainstream” cults like Catholicism etc.. I guess somewhere there are Hubbard Advices on this subject telling the Faithful how to gain “religious acceptance”
Nice to see you here Scooter. It has been a long time since our paths crossed. Hope all well with you and your family.

It's all part of the safe-pointing thing. "Allies made" (or similar wording) is a weekly stat that is counted in the OSA stats.
 
Top