Just in case there is anyone around from the late 1990's and a.r.s., here's a big hello!
Ex Class V-org in Sweden. I was active in the early 1980's, but a hangaround for much longer, I had more debts than money plus two young children. Still caught in the illusion, I paid towards the freeloader bill. Then the internet came along in 1995...
Important point: I was a total and utter nobody then. I am a total and utter nobody now. Really.
I think nothing cut through the knot of scientology as sharply for me as this point. The CoS had all these clears and ohteas, Class XII auditors and high ranking ethics staff and deadly seriuos people in uniform, all who had studied Source for not days or weeks, but for months and years and years. If the tech works, they should have been able to silence me as easily as swatting a fly.
In 1997, I believe, I started posting to a.r.s. Eventually, I created a website (mostly in Swedish and now it's a museum since I havent touched it in a decade, lots of dead links I'm sure). Then media, national radio, television, newspapers (I think my favourite is being quoted in the two major medical journals re. CoS and psychs). Some picketing, including Flag. Some interviews by university students. Met some bad-ass SPs. Oh, I'm not claiming to have done more than anyone else, far from it - but like I said, I'm a nobody, how do they let a nobody get away with speaking badly about them in public when it ought to have been so very simple for them to "handle" me?
In the early 2000's I simply got bored with Scn-related matters. I had spent so much of my life in that bubble, I wanted to turn my attention to other things.
But recently I ran across links to places like this. And I just couldn't stop reading. So many people, places and times, I want to catch up with everything, which is of course silly.
Probably, I will mostly be lurking here. But in case I can't shut up at some point, you know who I am.
(My story about my time in Scn can be found online, as I understand it I can't post links in my first post)
Catarina, it's great to see you here on ESMB. 
So good of you to come and visit here, I see you've already had contact with someone you have touched in the past, that, to me, is so very cool! 
The Kitteh thread from WWP~ CLICK FUR KITTEHS HERE
Thanks all for the amazing welcome!
