Briefing not meant for the public: LA fires are ‘historic opportunity’ for Scientology
We’ve written a couple of stories about Scientology’s yellow-clad Volunteer Ministers seizing on the catastrophic Los Angeles fires for their usual photo-opp activities.
For years, we’ve reported on the way that Scientology calls out its VMs to disaster sites in order to obtain footage of themselves for public relations reasons.
LA’s fires are located right where Scientology has its biggest concentration of members in the world, and so it’s not surprising that the VMs have been called out to take advantage of the situation.
But rarely have we had such blatant evidence of Scientology’s real agenda in an operation like this.
One of our readers shared with us a video that was only supposed to be seen by Scientologists. It features a young Volunteer Minister describing a briefing that was held one week ago (January 14) at AOLA, the Advanced Organization of Los Angeles, part of the PAC Base (Pacific Area Command) that is known as “Big Blue” by the public.
(The fires had started a week earlier, on January 7.)
Reporting on what was said at the briefing, he seems to pause as he’s about to say what an “opportunity” the fires are for Scientology. He then backs up to say how “terrible” the situation is, but then he goes ahead and says it…
“…it’s a historic opportunity for us as Scientologists to get on the comm lines of the world…”
Translation: This is a great chance for us to get some positive publicity with the world’s press.
Um, wow.
Watch it for yourself.
Hey, everybody. There's a briefing earlier tonight about the Volunteer Minister activities going on in LA right now. It was held at AOLA, and I just wanted to share a few key takeaways from it. Because from my viewpoint, this is information that every Scientologist on the planet should really know so we can align our efforts to make this thing go right and bring some sanity back into Los Angeles. So, here we go. First, and I think most urgent, is that the need for VMs is super, super high. We need — we were given the target tonight that we need 10,000 VMs in the Los Angeles field, like yesterday. We need 10,000 VMs right now in LA to handle the scale of the catastrophe that we're dealing with here. We really, really need to make that happen. So, anyone who can be in LA really needs to get here and put some yellow on and get in action. A lot of comm tonight was just about how historic this whole thing is. Obviously it's terrible, this whole thing is, obviously it's terrible. But at the same time, it's a historic opportunity for us as Scientologists to get on the comm lines of the world and really show people that we can make it go right and bring some sanity back into an environment that's literally burning to the ground right now. So, if you can get to LA please do so, and if you're in LA, please get yourself to LA Org and put a yellow T-shirt on and get up there in the field. Aside from VMing, we were basically told at the briefing that we just need to support the IAS. The IAS is funding this huge relief effort right now, and we just need to, we just need to support the IAS like never before. We need to support the IAS. There were some really profound anecdotes tonight about people asking who we are, people just automatically realizing that we're in control, and an environment thinking that we're in charge, just from our presence and beingness, which is just amazing. Stories about being right beside the National Guard and the people at the very top of the firefighting world, and just a million other things. Long story short: We've been doing a great job so far, but we have a ton of work to do. We need a lot of manpower. So, we need everyone to come together and do this thing so we can pull it off, OK? Hope to see you around LA wearing some yellow real soon.
Well, there you have it. People are dying and losing their homes. and Scientology sees a historic opportunity for publicity.
For our newer readers, the “IAS” he refers to is the International Association of Scientologists, the church’s membership organization, which has operated as a slush fund for leader David Miscavige and provides him nearly limitless funds for his building projects, ongoing litigation, and retaliation operations against former church members and journalists. "Supporting the IAS” is simply code for giving donations to this slush fund.
After this, we can’t imagine why legitimate relief organizations would let Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers anywhere near their operations.
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As someone with thousands of hours volunteering for the Red Cross including helping run a shelter during some SoCal wildfires this continues to make me more and more angry.
I spent a lot of time going through classes to get properly trained in various areas before I was even sent out to help with house fires or small HazMat situations let alone a wildfire shelter. I helped with comms too, but that was things like updating the website with the latest information on how to get or give help, which shelters were taking on pets, etc.
Did we have people doing interviews with the press? Yes. Was it to talk about how wonderful we were? No. It was to help the press get out the most current information possible. [As these fires demonstrate, sometimes paths changed so we would have to sometimes evacuate one shelter and set it up somewhere safer.]
They have no business being out there and could be causing imminent harm to the residents, first responders, and real disaster relief orgs.
This latest evidence just... grr.
I am so angry right now. I have a friend who lost his house as did his mother next door. These people should be barred from any place that offers help. They are stealing supplies and just getting in the way.