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Hell aboard the Apollo 1968

Veda

Sponsor
From the above video:

Q: "Tell us about Ron."

A: "He was an Operating Thetan...

"He used the correct amount of force to create a certain effect."


Below are excerpts from the Russell Miller interview of David Mayo from August 1986:

"He [L Ron Hubbard] could be capable of incredible cruelty. On the ship there was an old man on the Royal Scotman who he made push a peanut round the decks with his nose. He had to get down on his hands and knees, he had to go round the deck, quite a long distance in a race with one or two others also in trouble. The first one back got let off and the last one got a double penalty.

"It was really tough on this old guy, Charlie Reisdorf. The surface of the deck was very rough wood, prone to splinter, so after pushing peanuts with their noses, they all had raw, bleeding noses, leaving a trail of blood behind them. I not only saw it but the entire crew of the ship was mustered - a mandatory attendance - we were required to watch this punishment, to make an example of it for the rest of us. Reisdorf was in his late 50s probably. His two daughters were messengers, they were 11 or 12 at time and his wife was there also.

"It was hard to say which was worse to watch: this old guy with a bleeding nose or his wife and kids sobbing and crying at being forced to watch this. Hubbard was standing there calling the shots, yelling, "Faster, Faster!". It was indignity, degradation and breaking a person's will, and making people watch. It was disgusting."


And, from the same interview:

"They used to have people locked in the chain locker, including small children. It was very dangerous because if the anchor started to slip and started running out, it would probably turn a body into a pulp in no time at all...

"He [LRH] had a birthday party on March 13, 1968; there was a woman who he ordered locked in the chain locker. During the party he had brought her out. She was filthy, covered with dirt and rust, and had not been allowed to wash or change cloths - she had been in there for a week... it was flaunting her degradation...

"Why did people stand by?...

"From time to time, Hubbard would cancel such activities like the chain locker, and blame it on someone else... He would start such pronouncements with, 'It has just come to my attention...'

"The length of time for children would vary, but no one was less than a day...

"Reisdorf [peanut pushing] affair - if someone tried to do something, it would have made it worse. Hubbard said that maritime law prevailed... He said that under maritime law, he had total power over everyone on the vessel..."


And,

"What worried me was that I saw some things he did and statements he made that showed his intentions were different from what they appeared to be...

"He told me he was obsessed with an insatiable lust for power and money. He said it very emphatically. He thought it wasn't possible to get enough. He didn't say it as if it was a fault, just his frustration that he couldn't get enough."
 
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FinallyMe

Silver Meritorious Patron
" martyrathbun09 | September 4, 2010 at 12:22 am | --snip--

And your reference to Whitfield is very appropriate on that score. I don’t give a lot of credit to her more dramatic stories. Context: demeanor and drama in her delivery of them, and the fact she tried to make a cool billion dollars off the church. Among other things."

This was quoted in the OP. If I am reading this correctly, Marty is upset that "Whitfield" had some dispute with the church, trying to make money from it? Why would he be upset that someone has a dispute with the church? Why would he be upset that someone apparently sued the church for monetary damages? Have I misread this?
 

Sharone Stainforth

Silver Meritorious Patron
Sinking the Master Mariner.

These are the children. Well, actually, they are in their early 20s now. But they were only 11, 12, 13-year-olds when Hubbard, haunted by fear of enemies, was sailing the world's oceans aboard a 3280-tonne convened British ferryboat called the Apollo. Some 500 scientologists, many of them English, took their children with them aboard the boat. Hubbard was the Commodore. The kids were the elite "Commodore Messenger Org."

"They were mostly good-looking girls, smart, too," said Bent Corydon, a New Zealander who had been in the Church for over 20 years and had run his own scientology mission on a franchise basis. "They weren't much use to the ship particularly, to Hubbard used them as his eyes and ears, spies really, running around, asking questions, observing things. They were considered to be Hubbard himself and any discourtesy to them was regarded as a personal discourtesy to Hubbard. By the time they all got off the boat in 1975, some of the girls had been replaced by teenage boys. The worst part was when these kids started turning in their parents, getting them 'declared' [purged] as 'suppressives - that's evil people, to translate Church language."



http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/england/sundaytimes-magazine-scientology.htm
 

Sharone Stainforth

Silver Meritorious Patron
Barefaced Messiah

'He was revolting to be with - a sick, crotchety, pissed-off old man, extremely antagonistic to everything and everyone. His wife was often in tears and he'd scream at her at the top of his lungs, "Get out of here!" Nothing was right. He'd throw his food across the room with his good arm; I'd often see plates splat against the bulkhead. When things got really bad, I'd go and make him English scrambled eggs, well salted and peppered, and toast and butter and take it up to him. I even fed him once.

'He absolutely refused to see another doctor. He said they were all fools and would only make him worse. The truth was that he was terrified of doctors and that's why everyone had to be put through such hell.'[4]

She could not help but recall how he had changed in the months since she first joined the ship. 'My expectation of L. Ron Hubbard was that he would be a psychic person who could look at me and see every evil thing I had ever done in my whole life. I was still searching for something, although I didn't know what, and the thought of someone being able to look into my head both terrified and excited me. I'd been indoctrinated with all the things he could do. There were wild stories that if an atomic bomb was about to go off in Nevada, Ron could defuse it with the power of his mind. At that time everyone was talking about atomic warfare and I truly believed he had come to save the planet. As I walked up the gangway to the ship, he stepped out of his office wearing a white uniform and his Commodore's hat with two messengers close behind him. I was introduced to him and he shook my hand and was very charming. He seemed to be a jovial, happy, golden man. I felt I had arrived.'

Kima called on her unlovable patient every two days, but the burden of day-to-day care fell on the messengers. 'Before the motor-cycle accident he was a very nice, friendly person,' said Jill Goodman [who was thirteen years old when she became a messenger]. 'Afterwards, he was a complete pain in the ass. It was like having a sick, crotchety grandfather. You never knew what he was going to be like when you went in there.'[5]

'He didn't get out of that red velvet chair for three months,' said Doreen Smith. 'He'd sleep for about forty-five minutes at a time, then be awake for hours, screaming and shouting. It was impossible to get him comfortable. None of us got any sleep. I was better with a cushion, someone else was better with a footstool, someone else with cotton padding, so every time he woke up we all had to be in there, fussing around him while he was screaming at us that we were all "stupid fucking shitheads" . . . he was out of control and even the toughies were in tears at times. The red chair to us became a symbol of the worst a human being can be - all we wanted to do was chop it up in little pieces and throw it overboard.'[6]

While Hubbard was still fuming in his red velvet chair, still ascribing sinister motives to every mishap and imagined slight, he issued an edict that would introduce another Orwellian feature to life on board the Apollo. Convinced that his orders were not being carried out with sufficient diligence, he established a new disciplinary unit called the Rehabilitation Project Force. Anyone found to have a CI (a 'counter-intention' to his orders or wishes) was to be assigned to the RPF, along with all trouble-makers and back-sliders. 'I was shocked when I heard about it,' said Hana Eltringham. 'To me it was like setting up a penal colony within our midst.'

Since it was only necessary to incur the Commodore's disfavour to be assigned to the RPF, its numbers swelled rapidly. RPF inmates wore black boiler suits, were segregated from the rest of the crew and slept in an unventilated cargo hold on filthy mattresses that were due to be thrown out before the Commodore decided they would be suitable for his new unit. Seven hours' sleep were permitted, but there was no leisure time during the day and discipline was harsh. Meal breaks were brief and the RPF was obliged to eat whatever food was left from the crew meal.

'Things took a real downhill turn around that time,' said Gerry Armstrong, who was then the ship's port captain. 'He became much more paranoid and belligerent. He was convinced there were evil people on board with hidden evil intentions and he wanted to get them all in the RPF. The RPF was used as an incredible daily threat over everyone. If he could smell something cooking from the vents, whoever was the current vents engineer would be assigned to the RPF. If the cook burned his food - RPF. If a messenger complained about someone - RPF.

'His actions definitely became more bizarre after the motor-cycle accident. You could hear him throughout the ship screaming, shouting, ranting and raving day after day. He was always claiming that the cooks were trying to poison him and he began to smell odours everywhere. His clothes had to be washed in pure water thirteen times, using thirteen different buckets of clean water to rinse a shirt so he wouldn't smell detergent on it.

'At that time no one would have dared to think that the emperor had no clothes. He controlled our thoughts to such an extent that you couldn't think of leaving without thinking there was something wrong with you.'[7]

To the relief of the entire crew, the Commodore was more or less recovered from his accident by the time of his sixty-third birthday in March 1974 and the ship resumed its aimless wandering, this time on a triangular course between Portugal, Madeira and the Canaries. But a subtle and bizarre change had taken place in the pecking order on board: after the Commodore and his wife, the most powerful people on the ship were now little girls dressed in hot pants and halter tops - the new uniform of the Commodore's faithful band of messengers.

Both of these quotes are taken from Barefaced Messiah by Russel Miller. Amongst many of the people interviewed were Gerry Armstrong.

Atlantic Crossing. Chapter 19.

http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm19.htm
 

AnonKat

Crusader
EUREKA

Drinking and Drug use? :confused2:

I found something on the Freezone pages: http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/history.htm

1964

March: Hubbard gives his last interview with the press. In an interview with the "Saturday Evening Post," he claims that his wages from Scientology are just $70.00 a week and that Fidel Castro had contacted him about training an elite corps of Cuban Scientologists.

BIG NO NO in the cold war era

CIA must have gone ballistic on his ass
 

DartSmohen

Silver Meritorious Patron
I found something on the Freezone pages: http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/history.htm

1964

March: Hubbard gives his last interview with the press. In an interview with the "Saturday Evening Post," he claims that his wages from Scientology are just $70.00 a week and that Fidel Castro had contacted him about training an elite corps of Cuban Scientologists.

BIG NO NO in the cold war era

CIA must have gone ballistic on his ass

Interesting to read how the FZ have expressed their version of Hubbard time line. Most of it is factual, but some glaring omissions, ie Hubbard's visit to Australia in 1958/9 and his time in S. Africa in 1956.

Dart
 

Veda

Sponsor
I found something on the Freezone pages: http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/history.htm

1964

March: Hubbard gives his last interview with the press. In an interview with the "Saturday Evening Post," he claims that his wages from Scientology are just $70.00 a week and that Fidel Castro had contacted him about training an elite corps of Cuban Scientologists.

BIG NO NO in the cold war era

CIA must have gone ballistic on his ass

Why?

His many letters to the FBI from the 1950s had claimed that he had been contacted multiple times by the Russians.

This, from a letter of 29 July 1955: "...it seems that I can go to Russia as an advisor or consultant and have my own laboratories and receive very high fees. And it would all be so easy because it has already been ascertained that I could get my passport extended for Russia, and all I had to do was go to Paris and there a Russian plane would pick me up and that would be that.

"Indeed that would be that.

"This is my third invitation to go to Russia..."

These letters eventually earned Hubbard the words "appears mental" on his ever growing stack of bizarre letters.

The FBI doesn't appear to have taken Hubbard seriously in the 1950s, so why should the CIA care if Hubbard, in 1964, made yet another importance-exaggerating wind-baggy claim?
 

AnonKat

Crusader
"The Sovjet Atomic bombtest, Mcarthyïsm AND the Cuba Crisis happened "Learn to History"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project It predates but it triggered the following events of paranoïa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubacrisis

Why?

His many letters to the FBI from the 1950s had claimed that he had been contacted multiple times by the Russians.

This, from a letter of 29 July 1955: "...it seems that I can go to Russia as an advisor or consultant and have my own laboratories and receive very high fees. And it would all be so easy because it has already been ascertained that I could get my passport extended for Russia, and all I had to do was go to Paris and there a Russian plane would pick me up and that would be that.

"Indeed that would be that.

"This is my third invitation to go to Russia..."

These letters eventually earned Hubbard the words "appears mental" on his ever growing stack of bizarre letters.

The FBI doesn't appear to have taken Hubbard seriously in the 1950s, so why should the CIA care if Hubbard, in 1964, made yet another importance-exaggerating wind-baggy claim?
 

AnonKat

Crusader
You're the one who needs to do his homework, not me. :)

-pfew- anything Commi related or even Socialism related is icky for americans.

Most americans are slaves to their jobs because of that.

Did you forget the fair gaming of Errol Flyn? Nice one America
 

shadow

Patron with Honors
Just adding a little more info and some corrections based on recollections by my spouse who has never real talkative about these experiences:
My spouse was 13 when his family was aboard the Royal Scotman/Apollo starting in 1968. He was coerced into signing the billion year contract [STRIKE]or[/STRIKE] under threat of being [STRIKE]be[/STRIKE] kicked off ship and sent to live with relatives in the US that he did not know [STRIKE]alone in a foreign land[/STRIKE]. He NEVER told his parents of this event, and has no idea how they would have reacted (and is not sure he wants to know). He spent time in the chain locker for some offense that he does not remember. He does not recall over-boardings. He liked to work in the engine room because that was the only way he could see his dad, who was chief engineer. He loved Corfu, and to this day eats his bread with butter and sugar sprinkled on it. These days, he cannot imagine adults be so irresponsible to allow a 13 year old the kind unsupervised life he had at that time.

His younger brother would have been 10 at that time and was a messenger so likely signed the contract as well. He was punished with time in the chain locker because he "borrowed" part of someone else's uniform. He later worked in the engine room with his father, who had been in the merchant marines, was a ship engineer.

Their mom took care of kids (including their youngest sibling) in the nursery. The family left the ship when all the families were kicked off. There had been an incident where the only working engine needed to be repaired and was not functional when the command came suddenly to move the ship. The chief engineer (my husband's dad) was punished for this by being replaced with a 15 year old who claimed to be the chief engineer from a past life. Darth Smolen has written just a bit about the 15 year old and may remember the chief engineer, as well. There has never been much discussion about those times, just bits and pieces. Maybe I should see if they will write down the memories.
 

Auditor's Toad

Clear as Mud
The funny part of this thread is that those in this "free zone" - WTF ever that is supposed to be - who have left the C o $ still claim they they remain " scientologists" although they left scientology. :duh:

Bat shit crazy culties apparently have no way to get out of it? :confused2:

They have no idea what moronic zombies they look like. :happydance:

Oh... is the "free zone" really free in that they don't charge? Doubt it.
In that way maybe they are somewhat akin to scn.... they blatantly lie & think no one will notice. :omg:



:hysterical:
 
... Oh... is the "free zone" really free in that they don't charge? Doubt it. ...

To borrow a phrase from the Free Software Community ...

When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Although I have to admit I am not in the least surprised at your failure to grasp the importance of the distinction. Still, here's to wishing you all the Free Beer you can find for yourself. :cheers2:


Mark A. Baker
 
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