Podcast: Mark Bunker explains that David Miscavige is not 'missing,' he's HIDING
Podcast: Mark Bunker explains that David Miscavige is not 'missing,' he's HIDING
Appears in this episode
Over the last few days, you’ve probably noticed some breathless tabloid claims that Scientology’s leader David Miscavige has gone “missing.”
This is a mischaracterization of a story that we’ve been covering for more than three years now — that Miscavige has gone to extreme lengths to evade process servers in a few different lawsuits that are attempting to name him as a defendant.
In other words, as our podcast subject Clearwater City Councilman Mark Bunker explains, Miscavige isn’t missing, he’s hiding.
Bunker attended a key court hearing for us last week, and wrote an inspired report about the shenanigans coming from Miscavige’s attorneys, who are trying to justify the evasive behavior of Scientology’s diminutive leader.
We really enjoyed getting into it with Bunker, and also revisiting some other instances of Miscavige trying not to be seen, including a wild day in Portland that Mark Bunker reminded us of. What a great trip down memory lane.
We hope you enjoy it!
And hey, here’s a bonus. Mark mentioned shooting this video in the Tampa Ideal Org when it opened in 2011. What a great look at that time!
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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Podcast: Mark Bunker explains that David Miscavige is not 'missing,' he's HIDING
Miscavige is merely implementing Hubbard's "automatic registration" policy letter, an ancient one, but Hubbard in one of his 1980s final despatch/"advices" stated to dig that up and integrate it with the Cine dissemination, that that is the policy and Hubbard updated order, basis for the displays that took on this whole new life under Miscavige, replacing personal contact. (In some of the Int Base "Cine" traffic are Hubbard orders to do ads for Scientology, and there are two types of LRH tech films, one type less mentioned is the type of Scientology film that is educational on basic Scientology ideas. )
The drift in Hubbard's final orders, was the "unhattedness" of staff, who botched registration of newbies, and unhatted registrars who didn't know enough about Scientology, thus LRH even in the late 1950s early 1960s came up with having a wall mounted bulletin board with slots and forms so the newbie walking into an org facility could read the bulletin board, take the form relevant to the newbie, and the form tells them all about what it is they are interested in, and what to do next. "Automatic Registration" was the concept.
It ties into today's gaudy displays of their various types.
And yes, all the way into what the project I was on, the "routing forms" project, which integrates with the computer INCOMM system in Scientology, and even one or two of the hare brained and still to this day not implemented ideas, to have a sort of Ipad like device that has all the Scientology parishioners vital info on it, so that the complete history of the follower is available on the Ipad, so that then servicing the follower is done exactly per all the Hubbard policy steps. We in the "routing forms" project never came close to figuring out how to integrate and do that, LOL.
The big point I'm making is that Hubbard is the driving force for this impersonal handling of newbie potential followers, this problem of going impersonal is on Hubbard, his final years of orders push towards the impersonal handling of newbies, and end running the problem he thought was the problem which he thought unhatted staffers would botch and lose new interested followers walking into the org facilities.
Oh, the joy and glee when the poor lady at the Tampa Org has to wrestle the screen into submission before it will turn on, only to have it finally submit and cough up the Spanish version! But here comes the highly trained Volunteer Minister bustles to save the day. Oops, he can't even switch it back on.
Thanks for the chuckle, Mark :D