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UnMHT 8.3.2
by arai_a
UnMHT allows you to view MHT (MHTML) web archive format files, and save complete web pages, including text and graphics, into a single MHT file in Firefox/SeaMonkey.
About this Add-on
UnMHT provides following features:
- Save webpage as MHT file.
- Insert URL of the webpage and date you saved into saved MHT file.
- Save multiple tabs as MHT files at once.
- Save multiple tabs into a single MHT file.
- Save webpage by single click into prespecified directory with Quick Save feature.
- Convert HTML files and directory which contains files used by the HTML into MHT file.
- View the MHT file saved by UnMHT, IE, PowerPoint, etc.
In Thunderbird, only saving webpage as MHT is supported.
Please do not post bug report as review, you cannot get any support here.
UnMHT is not compatible with e10s.
Developer's Comments
If you installed IETab, UnMHT will failed to display the MHT file in your local machine. Please disable following from IETab's site filter.
Version Information
Version 8.3.2
- [FIXED] Duplicated links for original page inserted into saved MHT file.
- [FIXED] Support the change in DeferredTask.jsm in Firefox 55.
- Source code released under Custom License


text:
Sorry, there are no Merle Haggard dates.
The word "legend" usually makes an appearance at some point when discussing Merle Haggard. It's an acknowledgement of his artistry and his standing as "the poet of the common man." It's a tribute to his incredible commercial success and to the lasting mark he has made, not just on country music, but on American music as a whole. It's apt in every way but one.
The term imposes an aura of loftiness that's totally at odds with the grit and heart of Haggard's songs. "I'd be more comfortable with something like "professor," he once told a reporter, and the description suits him. Studying, analyzing and observing the details of life around him, Haggard relays what he sees, hears and feels through his songs. The lyrics are deceptively simple, the music exceptionally listenable. Others who have lived through those same situations recognize the truth in the stories he tells. But Haggard's real gift is that anyone who hears his songs recognizes the truth in them. When a Merle Haggard song plays, it can make an innocent-as-apple-pie grandma understand the stark loneliness and self-loathing of a prisoner on death row; a rich kid who never wanted for any material possession get a feel for the pain of wondering where the next meal will come from; a tee-totaling pillar of the community sympathize with the poor heartbroken guy downing shots at the local bar.
As a result, Haggard found his songs at the top of the charts on a regular basis. Immediately embraced by country fans, he also earned the respect of his peers. In addition to the 40 #1 hits included here, Haggard charted scores of Top Ten songs. He won just about every music award imaginable, both as a performer and as a songwriter, and in 1994 was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His body of work easily places him beside Hank Williams as one of the most influential artists in country music.
That's quite an accomplishment for the boy who was once officially branded "incorrigible."
Merle Ronald Haggard was born in 1937, outside Bakersfield, California. His parents, Jim and Flossie, moved the family there after their farm in Oklahoma burned down, with Jim finding work as a carpenter for the Santa Fe Railroad. The family lived in an old boxcar that they converted into a home. Though struggling to make a meager living, they had a sturdy shelter and food was always on the table.
Things changed dramatically after Jim died of a stroke when Merle was nine years old. It was a devastating event for the young boy, who was very close to his father. His mother went to work as a bookkeeper to make ends meet, often leaving Merle in the care of a great aunt and uncle. With his world turned upside down, Haggard turned rebellious. He hopped a freight train when he was just ten years old, making it to Fresno before being picked up by the authorities. It was the first step toward a youth of truancy from school and petty crime. For the next few years, Haggard would find himself in reform schools, sometimes making an escape, only to get thrown back in again.
The angel on his shoulder during these troubled times was Haggard's love and talent for music. Though he gave it up before Merle was born, his father used to play fiddle and guitar in Oklahoma for schoolhouse dances and social gatherings. Not having an automobile or formal instrument cases, the senior Haggard would ride his horse to these gatherings, carrying his fiddle on one side of the horse and the guitar on the other, in large pillowcases.
Still some of the musical gift had been passed on to Merle, and he easily took to playing guitar. Starting out as a fan of Bob Wills, Haggard eventually found his musical idol in Lefty Frizzell, and worked up a pretty impressive copy of the originals singing style. "For three or four years I didn't sing anything but Lefty Frizzell songs," Merle told Music City News. "And then, because Lefty was a fan of Jimmie Rodgers, I learned to imitate him too." Haggard got the chance to see Lefty perform in person when he was 14. "He was dressed in white - heroes usually are," Merle said.
The hero wasn't a savior though, at least not in an immediate sense. Haggard was already starting to make small amounts of money here and there by playing music, but it wasn't enough to keep him out of trouble. He left home at 15 with a friend, and the two were picked up as suspects in a robbery. Though innocent, he ended up in jail for two-and-a-half weeks. It was the first time he tasted prison life, but it wasn't the last. In and out of jail over the years for small crimes, he found himself doing serious time in San Quentin at the age of 20.
"Going to prison has one of a few effects," he told Salon in 2004. "It can make you worse, or it can make you understand and appreciate freedom. I learned to appreciate freedom when I didn't have any."
His musical ability offered hope for a future. A fellow inmate at San Quentin, nicknamed Rabbit, saw that clearly. When Rabbit came up with an escape plan, he told Haggard that he could come along, but probably shouldn't, since he had a good shot of making a career from his singing.
As Rabbit had predicted, Haggard's music was his way out of a dead-end life of small crimes and intermittent jail time. Released from San Quentin in 1960, he joined the then thriving Bakersfield country scene, which eschewed the smooth country-politan sound coming out of Nashville for a harder-hitting honky-tonk groove.
After making an impression working in local clubs, Haggard joined Las Vegas star Wynn Stewart's band in 1962 as a bassist. When he got a chance to record his own single, Haggard chose the Stewart composition, "Sing A Sad Song." It came out on the small Tally Records label in 1964, and made it into the Top Twenty. His follow up singles didn't do quite as well, until "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" went into the Top Ten and brought him to the attention of Capitol Records. He proved himself a hit maker with three Top Ten singles in 1967, including his first #1, "The Fugitive."
Songwriters Liz and Casey Anderson were inspired by a popular TV series, "The Fugitive." But Haggard knew firsthand what it was like to be on the run. In some ways, he may have felt that he was in that same situation again. Here he'd successfully turned his life around, and he realized that his criminal past might now come back to slap him down. He made those feelings clear less than a year later in his next #1. The self-penned "Branded Man" includes the lines, "When they let me out of prison, I held my head up high/Determined I would rise above the shame/But no matter where I'm living, the black mark follows me/I'm branded with a number on my name."
Haggard said Johnny Cash encouraged him to address his problems directly in verse. "I was bull-headed about my career. I didn't want to talk about being in prison," Haggard recalls, "but Cash said I should talk about it. That way the tabloids wouldn't be able to. I said I didn't want to do that and he said, 'It's just owning up to it.'" When Cash introduced him on his variety show, he said, "Here's a man who writes about his own life and has had a life to write about."
From that point on, Haggard stopped hiding the story of his past incarcerations, and his songs opened a window on the dark life of prisoners and ex-cons. "Sing Me Back Home," another #1 in 1967, was written for his old friend Rabbit, who was executed after his escape plan led to the death of a prison guard. "Mama Tried," which reached the top of the chart in 1968, offered an apology of sorts to Haggard's religious and hardworking mother, absolving her of blame for his bad behavior.
He laid out all the other aspects of his life in subsequent songs, proving himself an adept lyricist who specialized in sorrow and pain, with the occasional dash of hope or humor.
His 1969 hit "Hungry Eyes," a heartrending portrait of a family in poverty, includes a line about a "canvas-covered cabin," a reference to the home of the great aunt and uncle he stayed with as a boy.
By 1969, Haggard had also won over a good portion of musicians and critics in the rock world. Rolling Stone itself pointed its readers toward his music. Producer Don Was, who has worked with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt, told Newsweek in 1996, "He'll tell you he's a country singer, but to me the essence of rock and roll is a cry for freedom and rebellion. And I don't know anyone who embodies it better. Every aspect of his life is a refusal to submit."
Still, Was admits that when he went to see Haggard in concert in the late '60s he tucked his hippie-length hair into a cowboy hat. It was a politically divisive time, with the Vietnam War serving as a lightning rod for opposing political views. Young people protested against the war and openly burned their draft cards, enraging those who felt it was their patriotic duty to support the war and the men who fought it. "Working Man Blues," which came out in 1969, may have appealed to the rock crowd because of its hard-driving beat and its anti-elitism, but it delivered a clear message of solidarity to the blue collar country audience, with its uncomplimentary reference to welfare. That political stance was solidified with Haggard's most popular song, "Okie From Muskogee." He says the song started as a joke, and its tone definitely leans toward the humorous, but it also drew a clear line between "us" and "them." Haggard spoke for the Americans who didn't smoke marijuana, didn't burn their draft cards, didn't grow their hair long and shaggy and were "proud to wave Old Glory down at the courthouse." Followed by the belligerent "Fightin' Side of Me," which undeniably challenged the anti-war protesters, it made Haggard a political symbol. In the ensuing years, Richard Nixon invited him to sing at the White House. Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California, gave him an unconditional pardon for his past criminal offenses. George Wallace asked him for an endorsement - which Haggard turned down.
The furor caused by those two songs took Haggard by surprise, but he never shied away from writing songs with a strong point of view. In 1972, he released "I Wonder If They Ever Think Of Me," which revisits Vietnam via the thoughts of a P.O.W., while 1973's "If We Make It Through December" crystallized the worries of an unemployed father at a time when much of the U.S. was feeling the effects of a particularly difficult recession.
Of course, Haggard also wrote about more cheerful issues. "Daddy Frank (The Guitar Man)" in 1971, and "Grandma Harp" in 1972, both express his joy in music and how it saved him in low times.
All of the particulars of his existence were source material, and Haggard is a man who has been married five times. When his second marriage, to Bonnie Owens, was unraveling, the hurt came through in songs like "Things Aren't Funny Anymore," with the line "Seems we've lost the way to find/All the good times we found before." Owens, who had previously been married to Buck Owens, was Haggard's first duet partner and a good friend as well as his wife. His romantic devotion is apparent in "Always Wanting You," a sigh of unrequited love that he wrote for Dolly Parton, who he pined for when his marriage to Bonnie was over.
His third wife, Leona Williams, was also a singer and songwriter. The sweetness of "It's All In The Movies," mirrored Haggard's renewed romantic happiness. Then, when that marriage began to crumble, fans heard the details in his recordings of "You Take Me For Granted,?? written by the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Haggard and "Someday When Things Are Good," written by both Merle and Leona.
Chances are good that Haggard also drew from personal experience when he sang such drinking songs as "Bar Room Buddies," a duet with Clint Eastwood, and "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" in 1980.
Though the hits slowed down a bit in the following decades, Haggard never stopped making music. He started producing his own cuts for the first time, and "My Favorite Memory" and "Big City," went to #1 in 1981. The next year he and George Jones made an album together, with their duet "Yesterday's Wine," reaching the top of the chart. Teaming up with another legend-in-the-making, Willie Nelson, Haggard scored again with the 1983 hit "Pancho and Lefty." In 1987, he scored his last #1, "Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Star."
In the mid-nineties, with the release of the box set Down Every Road coming at the same time Haggard was releasing an album of new music, the media turned its attention to the long-ignored singer once more. His status as a living legend took hold about then, with good reason. It was overdue.
It would be difficult to find an artist as creative, as successful, and as stubbornly true to himself as Haggard. In between his hits, he made albums that paid tribute to the musicians who influenced him, like Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzell and Bob Wills - done out of respect rather than commercial calculation. He blended elements of jazz, rock, blues and folk music into his arrangements, while staying true to the traditions of country. No matter what the current fashion of the moment was in music, Haggard always went his own way.
"I'll tell you what the public likes more than anything," he told the Boston Globe, "It's the most rare commodity in the world - honesty."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Is Scientology
By Stephen A. Kent
Department of Sociology
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
Abstract: Although some social scientists insist that Scientology is a religion, the more appropriate position to take is that the organization is a multi-faceted transnational that has religion as only one of its many components. Other components include political aspirations, business ventures, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practices, pseudo-psychiatric claims, and (among its most devoted members who have joined the Sea Organization), an alternative family structure. Sea Organization's job demands appear to allow little time for quality child rearing. Most disturbing, however, about Sea Organization life is that members can be subject to extremely severe and intrusive punishments through security checks, internal hearings called "Committees of Evidence," and a forced labour and re-indoctrination program known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) and its harshest companion, the RPF's RPF. Taken together, these harsh and intrusive punishments likely violate a number of human rights clauses as outlined by two United Nations statements.
This is a revised and corrected version of a shorter presentation given at the 27th Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, June 20, 1997, Leipzig, Germany.
June 30, 1997
Rarely, if ever, in the post-war period have diplomats from the superpowers troubled themselves over questions about the alleged religious nature of a transnational organization. Consequently, the current debate between Germany and the United States over the alleged religious nature of Scientology is remarkable, and probably unique in recent history. The fact that German officials, institutions, and citizens are seeking additional information about this organization is commendable, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share insights that may help to clarify the issues in this debate.
For the record, I did not have any contact with German parliamentary officials as I was preparing my talk. For about ten minutes I spoke by telephone with one German professor who is involved with the current discussion about the organization, but we only touched briefly on issues related to Scientology. The German Kirchentag paid my air fare and my hotel in Leipzig, and Berliner Dialog is covering some of my expenses, but they are not paying me a fee or honorarium. I prepared my talk while in Canada, and did not consult with anyone in Germany or elsewhere about its content. I had complete freedom to write whatever I wanted around the general topic of the debate about Scientology's religious claims.
As a person trained in religious studies, I find the debate about Scientology's alleged religious nature to be an interesting and important one. It should not be, however, the only issue over which we evaluate the German-American debate over Scientology's religious claims. Intimately related to the religious question are human rights questions. Some people assume that religious practice is a guaranteed human right, but even a superficial examination of world events shows that many atrocities occur in the name of God or religion. Universally, therefore, religious belief must receive absolute protection, but religious practice stemming from that belief must receive protection only until it begins to violate the rights of its members or nonmembers. Following from this last point, I argue that even if Scientology contains a theology and cosmology that some members interpret religiously, its organizational actions and behaviours raise serious human rights questions. Without wanting to review the pronouncements from all German officials about the organization, I conclude that the German government has good reason to investigate Scientology's activities in this country. It also has compelling reasons to inquire about the well-being of German citizens in Scientology facilities in the United States and elsewhere. I will share just a few of the documents that led me to these conclusions, and some of them are available in numerous world wide web sites on the "internet."
For a number of my social scientific colleagues around the world, the debate between Germany and the U.S. revolves around the question of Scientology's religious claims. Many of my social scientific colleagues have examined some Scientology documents and possibly participated in some Scientology events, and they have concluded that the organization is religious in nature. Bryan R. Wilson (b. 1926), for example, who is a respected British sociologist of religion, concluded "that Scientology must indeed be regarded as a religion" (Wilson, 1990: 288). He reached this conclusion after comparing Scientology's belief system with twenty characteristics usually found within what he called "known religions" (Wilson, 1990: 279). Significantly for the current debate in this country, he dismissed historical information from the early 1950s about Dianetics presenting itself as "a mental therapy and Scientology a science." Specifically with these early self-representations in mind, Wilson insisted that "even if it could be conclusively shown that Scientology took the title of 'church' specifically to secure at law as a religion, that would say nothing about the status of the belief-system, and it is with the belief system that we are specifically concerned" (Wilson, 1990: 282-283).[1]
Footnote: [1] Undoubtedly because of this interpretation, Wilson has become a champion of Scientology's religious claims (see also Wilson, n.d.: 35) and the organization alludes to him ("[t]he foremost sociologist in the world") as an academic who concluded "that Scientology was setting the trend for the 21st century for all religions -- as it offers practical solutions for people's problems in the real world" (International Association of Scientologists, 1995: [10]). Scientology also employs his opinion in arguing before an American court that the organization has the right to keep secret its upper level materials (Wilson, 1994: 11).
In fact, I have made precisely the argument that Wilson dismisses. In a study that Berliner Dialog (Heft 1-97) translated into German, and in another study that I hope to publish soon, I show that L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology's founder) claimed that Scientology was a religion because he saw the claim as a marketing device to make money and avoid taxes (Kent, 1997b: 25ff; Miller, 1987: 199-203, 220) as well as a way "to reduce the likelihood of governmental interventions against it for allegedly practising medicine without a license" (Kent, 1996: 30). Moreover, Scientology denies its reputedly religious nature if it is attempting to enter a country that might react adversely to religious proselytization (such as Japan or Greece [Kent, 1997a: 18-19]). Nevertheless, the historical reasons behind Scientology's religious claims, as well as the organization's selectivity in making the claims, do not diminish the probability that many Scientologists view their commitment as a religious one.
From a social scientific perspective, and probably from a legal one as well, the objective "truth" of an ideology is not the determinant of a group's "religious" designation. Mere belief in supernatural beings or forces may be enough to get an ideology designated as religious, even if the origins or doctrines of the belief system are highly suspect. Along these lines, the inspirational figure in the sociology of religion, Max Weber, refused to exclude charlatans from his identification of charismatic figures, since the devotion of followers was a far more salient fact than authenticity. After mentioning two types of charismatic figures, Weber added that "[a]nother type is represented by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonisn, who may have been a very sophisticated swindler (although this cannot be definitely established)" (Weber, 1968: 242). Similarly, from a social scientific perspective, a belief system is religious if it contains supposedly supernatural elements, regardless of the accuracy of those elements. Perhaps unlike Joseph Smith, Hubbard's sophisticated swindle has been definitely exposed by a number of critics (for example, Atack, 1990; Kent, 1996; Miller, 1987) who have shown that his religious alignment was purely expedient, but now many of his followers see their lives in the context of the doctrines that he developed.
Even if we grant the point that Scientology cosmology and soteriology have supernatural elements that classify the belief-system as religious (regardless of these elements' suspect history), neither government officials nor society at large should necessarily grant Scientology religious status for purposes of receiving societal benefits. Rather than struggling over whether or not to label Scientology as a religion, I find it far more helpful to view it as a multifaceted transnational, only one element of which is religious. Coinciding with supernatural claims are equally important secular dimensions relating to political aspirations, business operations, cultural productions, pseudo-medical practice, pseudo-psychiatric practice, social services (some of which are of dubious quality), and alternative family structures. A few examples of each dimension will suffice, but countless examples of each one exist throughout both Scientology's literature and the social behaviour of its members. The most salient aspect of Scientology, however, is the totalitarian, some would say fascistic, use of power that holds the organization together. I will speak about some of these totalitarian uses of power, and in doing so it will be very clear that the German government has taken the only appropriate avenue open to it.
Scientology's political aspirations have surfaced at various times throughout its nearly fifty year history, with the organization involving itself with politicians or political structures in Rhodesian (in 1966), Greece (in 1968 to 1969), Morocco (in 1972), and in the Russian city of Perm (where it was training city officials in Hubbard Management ideology). Observers wonder about the fate of Scientology training to Albanian government officials after the recent popular uprisings and social collapse (see Kent, 1997a: 17-18).
At times related to its political aspirations (as in Perm) are Scientology's programs designed to train business executives and professionals often in medically related areas. Through an organization named WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises), Scientology offers a business consultancy and management program. A recent publication claims that "WISE [m]embers form a network of highly trained consultants in Hubbard Management Technology who can provide you with tailor-made training programs to suit your company's needs" (WISE International, 1994b). WISE programs target various clients through numerous companies, and in Germany and other parts of Europe the best known WISE company is U-Man (see, for example, WISE International, 1994a). For all practical purposes, this dimension of Scientology is secular, regardless of how the organization portrays it.
Culturally, Scientology has an entire industry devoted to the production and dissemination of Hubbard's writings and ideological material to both members and outsiders. The Scientology owned and operated (and now tax exempt) Bridge Publications, for example, produced a volume solely dedicated to The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard (Widder, 1994), which discusses his writings of Westerns, adventure stories, mystery and detective stories, romance, fantasy, science fiction, plays, and screenplays (among others), and makes little if any mention of his supposedly "religious" writings. The actor and Scientology public relations officer, John Travolta (Anderson, 1980: 3; Church of Scientology International, 1994), is working on a movie version of Hubbard's science fiction work, Battlefield Earth, while a team of Hollywood producers is developing a film version of the Hubbard pulp novel, To the Stars (Reuters, 1997).
As these current film productions suggest, Scientology is eager to be involved with projects that disseminate its ideology to nonmembers through high profile cultural undertakings. One vital aspect of this dissemination effort involves cultivating the conversion and support of society's cultural celebrities. Beginning in 1955, Hubbard's "Project Celebrity" targeted what he called "prime communicators" with the hope that they would "mention" Scientology "now and again" ([Hubbard], 1955). By 1992, thirteen "celebrity centres" existed around the world (Church of Scientology International, 1992: 353), and their purpose was "[t]o fully utilize opinion leaders and Scientologists to permeate society and get all the different publics utilizing LRH's Technology in every aspect..." (Jentzsch and Foster, 1977: 1). This organizational push to get everyone using Hubbard's so-called technology has dramatic secular implications for such issues of how to organize an office, how to generate and handle money, and how to measure office growth. It presumably also may have implications for people's supernatural belief systems, but it is understandable that critics see Scientology celebrities as participating in the dissemination of secular Scientology goals.
In addition to free publicity for Scientology, celebrities also give large financial contributions back to the organization. Had Scientologist Chick Corea, for example, received money from the Baden-Wurttemberg state culture ministry for performing at state-sponsored events, then some of that income may have become part of his contributions to the International Association of Scientologists. The avowed purpose of this organization is "[t]o unite, advance, support and protect the Scientology religion and Scientologists in all parts of the world, so as to achieve the Aims of Scientology as originated by L. Ron Hubbard" (International Association of Scientologists, 1995: [back cover]). In one of the Association's 1995 magazines, both he and actress Kirstie Alley each appeared as having contributed US$100,000 (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International, 1995: 8; International Association of Scientologists Administration, 1995: 49, see 60). By comparison, the $2,000 contribution that John Travolta made seems small (Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International, 1996: 8; see International Association of Scientologists Administration, 1995: 60). What Germans will want to know, however, is that this organization provided grants to the Church of Scientology International in order to fund the series of anti-Germany ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post (both beginning, I believe, on September 15, 1994). Utilizing cultural productions and prominent cultural figures, therefore, to disseminate all aspects of Hubbard's so-called tech is an intimate aspect of the organization's overall public relations and (it would seem) financial strategies.
A glimpse into Scientology's pseudo-medical practices -- in this case one that also relates to a social service effort of dubious effectiveness -- is its Narconon program. This program purports to rid the body of drug and radiation residues, and a 1996 Scientology publication told a story about an American Gulf War veteran suffering from Gulf War Syndrome who "arrived to do the detoxification program... complain[ing] of disorientation, dizziness, memory loss and muscle and joint pain. He finished the program and has no more dizziness, memory loss OR muscle and joint pain -- ALL his symptoms have been handled TOTALLY" (Church of Scientology International, 1996: 68 [original emphasis). You may have read recently that Scientologists applied the Narconon program to children suffering from radiation-related illnesses in Chernobyl (Bev, 1997).
Regardless of how Scientology portrays these claims, they are medical ones that purport to offer a social service, but one about which experts remain highly critical. In the American state of Oklahoma, for example, a 1991 mental health board examined a Narconon program and concluded that "there is substantial credible evidence, as found by the Board, that the Narconon Program is unsafe and ineffective" (Mental Health Board, 1991; reproduced in Lobsinger, 1991: 58).
Another dimension of pseudo-medical claims are pseudo-psychiatric ones. Scientology's hatred of psychiatry is worthy of a study in itself, and some of its own documents very clearly indicate that Scientology's primary social purpose is the destruction of psychiatry and its replacement with Scientology techniques. In, for example, a confidential document written for Scientology's intelligence branch (then known as the Guardian Office), the unidentified author, who most certainly was Hubbard himself, had a section entitled "The War." The text in this section stated that "[o]ur war has been forced to become 'To take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.'" The next sentences have significant implications for the current religious debate. "That was not the original purpose. The original purpose was to clear Earth. The battles suffered developed the data that we had an enemy who would have to be gotten out of the way and this meant we were at war" ([Hubbard], 1969: [5]). The central target in Scientology's efforts to "take over the field of mental healing" is psychiatry. Indeed, several Scientology organizations, including the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, the International Association of Scientologists, and Freedom magazine are working diligently in attempting to achieve the goal of "Eradicating Psychiatry" (Weiland, 1990: 21).
One aspect of Scientology's efforts to eradicate psychiatry and replace it with its own techniques is that members can take a course (called a rundown) that claims to teach members how to cure psychosis. Called the "Introspection Rundown Auditor Course," this course supposedly "factually handles the last of the 'unsolvable' conditions which can trap a person -- the psychotic break. And end forever the 'reason' psychs were kept around with their icepicks and shock machines" (Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization, 1992: [2]). This course is based upon what Hubbard described as "a technical breakthrough which possibly ranks with the major discoveries of the Twentieth Century." The consequence of this alleged breakthrough was that "THIS MEANS THE LAST REASON TO HAVE PSYCHIATRY AROUND IS GONE" (Hubbard, 1974: 346). The self-proclaimed "breakthrough" involved isolating the person having the psychotic breakdown while not speaking to the person, giving the person particular vitamins and minerals, determining what incident triggered the illness, then putting the person through a long and complex series of Scientology "counselling" sessions (called auditing) that focus on the triggering incident Hubbard, 1974: 353).
Currently this course is at the centre of controversy involving the December 5, 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in Clearwater, Florida. After a minor car accident, McPherson exhibited bizarre behaviour -- publicly undressing, speaking in monotone with a fixed stare, exhibiting forgetfulness and confusion, and crying. Against medical advice, she signed herself out of a hospital and into the care of visiting Scientology "friends" who took her to the organization's Fort Harrison Hotel. Seventeen days later, Scientologists took her back to a somewhat distant hospital where a doctor was working who was a Scientologist, and he pronounced her dead. A police investigation continues over her death, but McPherson's estate launched a lawsuit that accused Scientology "of allowing McPherson to languish in a coma without nutrition and liquids while she was in isolation as part of an Introspection Rundown" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). In this context, a Scientology lawyer acknowledged "that the Introspection Rundown remains 'part of church services'" (Tobin, 1997: 12A). Undoubtedly, therefore, Scientology practices pseudo-psychiatry, and the lawsuit over McPherson's death may establish the extent to which at least one of these practices can have potentially fatal consequences.
Finally, Scientology is an alternative family structure, at least as it is lived by its most devoted followers who are members of a Scientology organization called Sea Org[anization]. Scientology portrays the Sea Org as "a fraternal organization existing within the formalized structure of the Churches of Scientology. It consists of highly dedicated members of the Church [who] take vows of service" (Church of Scientology of California, 1978: 205). (The organization downplays the fact that these people sign billion year contracts.) Many indicators point to the fact that Scientology structures the Sea Org in a manner that damages parent-child relations if not the well-being of children in general. In essence, Sea Org becomes one's new family, often at the expense of spouses and children.
Indication of organizationally influenced damage caused by Sea Org parents to their children formed the basis of a critical article that appeared in a major newspaper of the Florida city near to where the Scientology organization called Flag is based. In November, 1991, the St. Petersburg Times ran a long article entitled, "Scientology's Children," and it contained an excerpt about a German mother and her son:
I believe the Kleinbergs' account rather than the one by the Scientology spokesperson because I had heard the same scenario (about parents having little time to spend with children) during an interview with a former Sea Org member that I conducted in December, 1987. At Flag in Florida during the late 1970s and early 1980s, infants stayed in a Scientology-run nursery during the day when parents worked, and usually parents would return from work at about 6:00 in the evening and spend about an hour-and-a-half with their children before taking them back to the nursery at 7:30 for bed. Parents then caught a bus back to the Sea Org, and finally did not leave for the night until 10:30 or later. In the morning, they would pick up their children from the nursery, have them dressed and in the dining room by 7:30 AM, drop them back at the nursery, and be on the bus going to work by ten minutes past 8. This informant added, however, that "there'd be some people who had kids who didn't go home for two or three days in a row. They'd be working all night" (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 44, see 43).
The Kleinbergs' account about limited family time also rings true because of a series of internal memos (of which I have copies) from Scientology's Pacific Area Command (in Los Angeles, California) beginning in early November, 1989. These memos centre around an Executive Directive that the commanding officer issued which abolished the one hour nightly family time. He cited two reasons for doing so. First, he claimed, "[a] thorough research [sic] revealed that there is no LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] reference covering Sea Org members taking 1 hour family time per day. Also to have such break in schedules in the middle of production has been found to be detrimental to production...." Instead he wanted people to work the extra hour a day in order to build up their production output so that they would receive a "liberty day" (Gouessan, 1989) once every two weeks (Shapiro, 1989).
Several parents objected, and their objections were revealing. One person asked rhetorically, "[h]ow can one keep track of one's child without even an hour a day with the child? I HAVE seen staff distracted by NOT caring for their children and this time could be well utilized for this" (Swartz, 1989). Another person cited the text of a Hubbard tape where Scientology's founder complained about a condition that he had seen (and which he said had existed in the Pacific Area Command): "I wish somebody would tell me why we consistently had to ORDER parents to see their children when they hadn't seen them for weeks" (Hubbard, Transcript of LRH Taped Briefing to CS-& and Pers Comm 22 Sept 73; attached to Shapiro, 1989). This same person acknowledged in his letter of protest that "[i]n the 19 years I have been in the Sea Org in PAC this condition (parental neglect, etc.) has several times been the source of major upset and enturbulation [agitation] on Church lines" (Shapiro, 1989 [round brackets in original]). Taken together, the interview material, media accounts, internal policy directive, and responses point to the fact that parents' time with their children is severely constrained and sometimes eliminated because of the organizational pressure and job demands under which Sea Org members work. It seems that Scientology, in its Sea Org manifestation, becomes something akin to an alternative or "fictive" family structure to its members (see Cartwright and Kent, 1992: 348-349), receiving more time and commitment than their own children.
On a related point, the new Sea Org family to which adults devote their lives may at times place children in medically detrimental situations. This fictive family may not always be a medically responsible one. The informant whom I interviewed in 1978, for example, complained to me that "the nursery conditions were terrible." She complained that, in one nursery room, "there were, I think, sixteen babies in the room, all under a year old, and throughout the whole day, there were three nannies who did shifts in that room, looking after sixteen babies all under a year old" (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 48). Under these conditions, children developed medical problems (according to my informant, Fern), because the facility did not have an isolation nursery. Consequently, common childhood illnesses (such as ear infections) spread rapidly among the children and remained in the nursery population for a long time. To support her assertion, this informant showed me medical records that she kept of her child's visits to doctors while the child was under nursery care, and compared them with similar records from after the time that she and her child left Sea Org and the nursery arrangement. The child made seventeen visits to the doctor's office during an eight month period while in the nursery, then only four visits in the twenty-nine months following the family's departure from the organization (Kent interview with Fern, 1987: 49-50).
Researchers always must be cautious in accepting as fact the account of a single person, but I heard similar stories about the condition of children's facilities in Scientology's child care program on the other side of the American continent -- Los Angeles, California. The person who related the account had occasion to visit the children's facility (called the Cadet Org) in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and she saw an infant who was the child of a man she knew. This child, she stated:
was very, very ill and she was laying in a urine soaked crib and she was -- she just had her diaper on.... She had lots of like little fruit flies and gnats on her body and she had been so ill that she had tremendous amounts of mucous plugging her nose and her eyes were, like, welded shut with mucous and I, I just snapped in my head (Kent Interview with Pat, 1997: 34).
After this incident of allegedly witnessing severe child neglect, the person began plotting how she would leave the organization.
The final example of alleged child neglect is documented in a report filed by the commanding officer of the Cadet Estates Organization in late October, 1989, concerning the hygiene of three children -- ages 4, 8, and 10 or 11. Two of the children had lice, and for one of them it was a recurring problem. A guardian was in charge of them, but she "is herself on mission quite often." [That is to say, the organization frequently sent her away on assignments.] The report continued by stating that, "[w]hile the guardian was on a mission, the kids were picked up at night by another staff member that [sic: who] lives next door, and the little one would be brought in in the morning while the other two older once [sic: ones] would walk to the Cadet Org by themself [sic]. The children would dress themself [sic] and we have no data who does the laundry or room hygiene for the children" (Gabriele, 1989: 1). We must be careful when interpreting this data on possible child neglect or endangerment, since none of it is current. Sufficient indicators exist, however, that investigative officials in the United States and elsewhere should examine Scientology's treatment of Sea Org children.
Because the attitude among some Sea Org leadership appears to be that children hinder adults from performing their vital assignments, researchers should not be surprised to learn of pressures that Sea Org women felt to either abort pregnancies or give-up children for adoption. My 1987 informant told me that when Sea Org operated on ships during the mid 1970s, women knew that they were not allowed to raise children on the vessels. Consequently, they experienced pressure to have abortions. She told me that, "on the ship, I know of a lot of people that [sic: who] had abortions, because they didn't want to leave the ship. It wasn't like anybody said 'You have got to get an abortion.' It was more an implied thing. If you don't you're going to leave" (Kent interview with Fern, 1989: 41-42). Years later I saw the same pressures described in a 1994 legal declaration by Mary Tabayoyon, who became a Scientologist in 1967, joined Sea Org in 1971, and stayed in it until her departure in 1992. She stated that in 1986, while on the Scientology base in Hemet, California, "members of the Sea Org were forbidden to have any more children if they were to stay on post[,] and the Hubbard technology was applied to coercively persuade us to have abortions so that we could remain on post" (M. Tabayoyon, 1994: 2). The pressure came partly through what Scientology called "ethics handling," which involved the organization pressing people to conform to Hubbard's policies and the organization's directives. Tabayoyon herself "gave up my child due to my greatly misguided obligation and dedication to the Sea Org" (M. Tabayoyon, 1994: 4). She relinquished her child after being "indoctrinated to believe that I should never put my own personal desires ahead of the accomplishment of the purpose of the Sea Org" (M. Tabayoyon, 1994: 5).
Taken together, the interviews, legal declarations, media accounts, and internal documents present troubling glimpses into the lives of Scientology's most committed members. Sea Org obligations override many personal and family obligations and responsibilities, and devotion to the Scientology cause often appears to take priority over the needs of children. Equally disturbing, however, are accounts that some older children and teenagers have had to endure, along with Sea Org adults, the abuses of Scientology's forced labour and reindoctrination programs. Although several labour and intensive instruction programs have operated within the Scientology organization over the years, among the most intense ones is the Rehabilitation Project Force -- usually just called the RPF.
When Sea Org members commit what the organization considers to be serious deviations (such as dramatic e-meter readings, unsatisfactory job performance, or job disruption [including challenges to senior officials]), then they likely wind up in the RPF. Even discussing the policies and techniques that Hubbard wrote by using ideas other than his own was called "verbal tech" and apparently was a punishable act (see Hubbard, 1976: 546). Begun in early 1974 while Hubbard and his crew still were at sea, it now operates in several locations around the world. Currently RPFs are running at the Cedars of Lebanon building in Los Angeles; on the Scientology property near Hemet, California; in the facilities in Clearwater, Florida; and in the British headquarters at East Grinstead, Sussex. I cannot confirm the existence of RPFs in or near Copenhagen (Denmark), Johannesburg (South Africa), Sydney (Australia), and several other American locations.
In a phrase, the RPF program places Scientology's most committed members in forced labour and re-education camps. The operation of these camps raises serious human rights questions, and their continuation reflects badly on nations that allow them to operate unchecked. Particular blame must be placed on American state and federal authorities, since at least three RPF programs have operated for years on American soil. Moreover, the American Internal Revenue Service granted Scientology tax exemption despite what almost certainly are illegal conditions under which RPF inmates must work, study, and live. Extensive material about RPFs in the United States has existed for years in various court cases, and now most of this information is readily available on the World Wide Web. German government officials know about the RPF, and almost certainly this knowledge played a major role in the government's continued opposition to the Scientology organization.
Getting assigned to the RPF is a traumatic event for most people. Procedurally, what is supposed to happen is that leaders call a hearing, known as a "Committee of Evidence," to evaluate a person's performance or attitude. A former member described this body as "a Scientology trial, where the Committee [members] act as prosecutors, judges and jury rolled into one" (Atack, 1990: 306). Committees sometimes obtain evidence against the person from security checks (called sec checks [see Kent interview with Young, 1994: 49]), which the organization portrays as "Integrity Processing" or "Confessional Auditing," but which is really a form of interrogation (Atack, 1990: 147). In fact, in 1960, Hubbard wrote a policy called "Interrogation" about how to use the device known as an e-meter as an interrogation device rather than merely as a spiritual aide in counselling or auditing sessions as the organization represents it to the outside world (Hubbard, 1960).
Hubbard had used security checks on his followers since 1959, but the most notorious sec check probably was the "Johannesburg Security Check," published April 7, 1961. It consisted of over one hundred questions, almost all of which inquire about previous or current participation in a wide range of deviant and criminal acts including spying, kidnapping, murder, drugs, sex, and Communism. The most revealing ones, however, involved people's thoughts about Hubbard and his wife, Mary Sue Hubbard. The sec check specifically asked, "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about LRH?," and "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about Mary Sue?" Not only, therefore, were people forced to reveal personal information about serious transgressions, but also they were forced to reveal the existence of any negative thoughts about the leader or his wife. One former member-turned critic, Robert Vaughn Young, reported that he was sec-checked for several hours a day for about two weeks (Kent Interview with Young, 1994: 50).
An even more severe form of sec check was the "gang bang sec check," a process that presumably takes its name from group rape (a slang term for which is gang bang). Gang bang sec checks involve two or more interrogators rapidly firing questions and verbal abuse at a victim who is hooked up to or holding an e-meter. A brief description of this practice occurs in a legal declaration (sworn under oath) by former member Stacy Young. She declared that her repeated protests about the way that (the now-current head of Scientology) David Miscavige treated staff led Miscavige to send her to the RPF in September, 1982 (S. Young, 1994: 8, 65). The specific incident that triggered her assignment was that Miscavige learned that Young had reacted to his (alleged) screaming fits by telling someone that he was "a brutal, tyrannical bully" (S. Young, 1994: 65). In response, Miscavige:
When Committees of Evidence find Sea Org members guilty of serious crimes, then they send many of them to RPF programs. Inmates are not sentenced to the programs for specific lengths time. Instead, they remain in until they complete a rigorous program of hard physical labour, constant verbal abuse from immediate superiors, social isolation, intense co-auditing and sec checking, and study of Hubbard policies and techniques.
A series of policies about the RPF began appearing in January, 1974 when Hubbard was aboard ship, and a few revised versions of them have leaked out of the organization. One of these early documents revealed the totalistic nature of the program when it said that "[a] member of the RPF is a member of the RPF and of nothing outside of it, till released" (Walker and Webb, 1977: 3). Part of the program consisted of hard physical labour -- building structures, cleaning, renovating, garbage disposal, and moving furniture. Typically work projects of this nature took about ten hours a day, since people were supposed to get "around 7 hours sleep, 5 hours study or auditing, 30 minutes for each meal, and 30 minutes personal hygiene, per day" (Walker and Webb, 1977: 4). They were dark worksuits and were prohibited from speaking (unless necessary) with persons outside the RPF, and they ate and slept separate from other Sea Org members (Walker and Webb, 1977: 10). They had to run everywhere they went, and often they had to run extra distances for punishment. On a ship, running punishments usually meant laps around the deck (Pignotti, 1997: 18-19). On land, running punishments sometimes meant running around a pole for hours at a time, often in hot sun (see Kent Interview with Pignotti, 1997: 22; S. Young, 1994: 66). Severe restrictions were placed upon visitation rights with spouses or children (Walker and Webb, 1977: 10).
Accounts from former inmates indicate that RPF life can be extremely harsh, degrading, and abusive. Certainly experiences varied somewhat according to year and location, but Hanna Whitfield's description of RPF at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida in 1978 captures many common elements from other accounts that I have heard and read:
Some of us slept on thin mattresses on the bare cement floor. Some had crude bunk beds. There was no place for clothes, so we lived out of suitcases and bags which were kept on bare floors. Some privacy was maintained by hanging sheets up between bunk beds and between floor mattresses. The women and men had separate bathrooms and toilets but they were small. We were not allowed to shower longer than 30 seconds. We had only to run through the shower and out the other end. There was no spare time for talk or relaxation. We awoke at 6:30 A.M. or earlier at times, did hard labor and heavy construction work and cleaning until late afternoon. After [a] quick shower and change of clothing, we had to audit each other and 'rehabilitate' ourselves until 10:30 P.M. or later each evening. There were no days off, four weeks a month. We ate our meals in the garage or at times in the dining rooms AFTER normal meals had ended. Our food consisted of leftovers from staff. On occasions which seemed like Christmas, we were able to prepare ourselves fresh meals if leftovers were insufficient (Whitfield, 1989: 7-8).
A similar, but more passionate, description exists of the Fort Harrison RPF in the account written by a woman using the pseudonym Nefertiti (1997), who in turn reproduces excerpts from ten other former Scientologists who related RPF experiences aboard two Scientology ships, FLAG at Clearwater, Florida, Pacific Area Command in Los Angeles, and Happy Valley near Hemet, California.
Certainly the amount of work that RPF members performed varied according to era and circumstances, but in some instances conditions became unbelievably bad. For example, In a California RPF, former inmate Pat reported that her RPF crew "worked shifts of thirty hours at a time" (Kent Interview with Pat, 1997: 25). Her RPF team would "start working in the morning and we would work all night into the next morning and then we worked through the next day until we got our thirty hours and then we'd go to sleep" (Kent Interview with Pat, 199: 25).
The most extensive description of the RPF at Scientology's facility near Hemet, California appears in a sworn declaration by former Sea Org member Andre Tabayoyon (1994). From comments that Bavaria's Minister of the Interior, Dr. Gunther Beckstein, made in a January 15, 1997 press release, it is clear that he is familiar with this declaration. Tabayoyon stated that he spent approximately six years in the RPF during his 21 years in the organization (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 7, 8). In the RPF program that he was on beneath Scientology's Cedars Sinai Hospital building in Los Angeles, he allegedly slept on "a slab inside the vault of the morgue." In the RPF in the property near Hemet, he stayed in "the chicken coop dormitory... which still smelled of chicken coup droppings [sic]" (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 18; see Kent Interview with Young, 1994: 20).
While nearly all RPF accounts speak of guards who were posted to prevent people from escaping the program, Tabayoyon reported that the guards at the Gilman Hot Springs facility (where Sea Org staff lived and an RPF operated) were armed (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 25). Indeed, he helped to construct the facility's security system, which included "the perimeter fence, the ultra razor barriers, the lighting of the perimeter fence, the electronic monitors, the concealed microphones, the ground sensors, the motion sensors and hidden cameras...." He also said that he trained guards in the use of force, including the use of weapons, many of which had been purchased with "Church" money and not registered (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 15, 16).
This facility (which sometimes is called "Gold" and other times "Hemet" in various documents) is less than a two hour drive from Los Angeles and Hollywood, and on its property apparently are a number of facilities that Scientology's celebrities use. Part of the labour used to build an apartment for Scientologist and actor Tom Cruise allegedly was from the RPF (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 53). As Tabayoyon himself stated, "[u]sing RPFers to renovate and reconstruct Tom Cruise's personal and exclusive apartment at the Scientology Gold base is equivalent to the use of slave labor for Tom Cruise's benefit" (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 53). In one instance, when Cruise's apartment was damaged by a mud slide, "prison [i.e., RPF] slave labor" were "worked almost around the clock" to repair it (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 53).
More extreme than the RPF is the RPF's RPF, an institution even described in one of Scientology's own dictionaries. According to the dictionary definition, the first inmate sent to the RPF's RPF was because the person "considered their [sic] RPF assignment amusing" (Hubbard, 1976: 451). Various accounts, however, also suggest that people who did not perform according to acceptable RPF standards ended up in this extreme program.
Hubbard succinctly outlined the ten restrictions under which inmates on the RPF's RPF operated. Six of the ten were:
Andre Tabayoyon, who spent 19 days on the RPF's RPF, summed up the program by saying that it "is designed to totally destroy any individual determinism to not want to do the RPF" (A. Tabayoyon, 1994: 9).
Accounts both about people who were on the program, and from inmates of the program itself, are chilling, and they reinforce Tabayoyon's summation. Monica Pignotti, for example, spoke to me about her five days in the RPF's RPF in 1975. She related that:
[A]t that point I was in a horrible depression and I was crying almost all the time all day long and I'm sure I was in a state where I probably would have been hospitalized if... any mental health profession had seen me then 'cuz I was severely depressed. But they sent me to the RPF's RPF and I was made to go down and clean muck from the bilges. That was my job all day long was to do that, getting up at four in the morning and -- it was all day long. And then I was allowed a short meal break to eat by myself and then I had to go right back down there and I had to clean all this sludge out and then paint, paint it.... [The person in charge of the RPF's RPF] would make the prisoners write these essays until they got it right, until they were saying what the group wanted them to say. So that was where I really snapped -- where I went into this state of complete -- where I didn't feel anything any more after that. I was completely numbed out and I'd do whatever they said and I didn't rebel any more after my experience on the RPF. I stopped rebelling for a while (Kent Interview with Pignotti, 1997: 26; see Pignotti, 1989: 28-29).
Nefertiti reported speaking with a woman in her 'thirties on the RPF's RPF whose ankles were chained together while she was performing a "nasty" job in the basement of the Fort Harrison Hotel in Florida (Nefertiti, 1997: 3). Finally, Dennis Erlich reported that, for the first day or two of his time on the program in the basement at the Fort Harrison, he was locked in a wire cage and had a guard outside the room (Kent Interview with Erlich, 1997: 8).
A final word must be said about the RPF, the RPF's RPF, and children. Some evidence exists that children may be subject to these programs. Monica Pignotti, for example, reported to me that she was an RPF inmate along with a twelve year old girl (Kent Interview with Pignotti, 1997: 30), and a posting in the <alt.religion.scientology> news group by Steve Jebson stated that "I have seen children on both the RPF and the RPF's RPF" (Jebson, 1997: 1). Finally, a poorly reproduced document from Scientology's Pacific Area Command (circa 1989) spoke about the "need to re-institute the Children's RPF" (Cohee, n.d.).
One hardly has to point out that the RPF and the RPF's RPF are brainwashing programs. Scientology operates them to break the wills of, and correct deviations of, its most committed members, and then to reformulate them into persons whose personalities directly mimic the organizational mould. That mould is itself a reflection of Hubbard's troubled personality. I am fully aware that many of my social scientific colleagues insist that researchers should restrict using the controversial brainwashing term only to situations where there is incarceration and physical maltreatment (Anthony, 1990 : 304). The RPF and the RPF's RPF meet these criteria. These two programs also used forced confessions, physical fatigue, intense indoctrination through extended study of the leader's policies and teachings, humiliation, and fear. Persons familiar, however, with the early history of Scientology are not surprised to see that Hubbard sanctioned a brainwashing program for his followers, since he almost certainly is the author of a brainwashing manual that Scientology printed and distributed for years beginning in 1955.
The manual that Scientology distributed was entitled, Brain-Washing[:] A Synthesis of the Russian Textbooks on Psychopolitics ([Hubbard?], 1955). Purported to be an address by the noted Soviet spy, Lavrenti Beria, it was exposed as a fake in 1970 by debunker Morris Kominsky (1970). As Kominsky noted, much of the book was "a vicious attack against the sciences and professions of psychology and psychiatry, as well as against the entire legitimate mental health movement" (Kominsky, 1970: 538). Attacks of this nature remain a central element in Scientology's secular activities, and one former member-turned-critic was almost certainly correct when he stated that the brainwashing book or manual "[w]as secretly authored by L. Ron Hubbard in 1955...." The former member also was absolutely correct about the importance of the brainwashing manual when he concluded that Hubbard "incorporated its methods into his organization in the mid 1960s and beyond" (Corydon, 1996: 107). One thinks automatically of the RPF, but we know for certain that Hubbard had the manual as required reading for members of the Guardian Office (Anonymous, 1974).
One chapter of the brainwashing book is especially pertinent to understanding Scientology's contemporary tactics against Germany and its officials. The organization's attacks on the national character of the country; its continual attempts to paint current events in the context of 1930s Nazism (for example, Freedom Magazine, [1996?]); its efforts to discredit current German government officials by linking them to Nazism through (so I was told) their older relatives; and charges that German churches campaign against Scientology for fear of losing members to it (Church of Scientology International, 1997: 101); all seem to have general parallels with tactics advocated in the brainwashing manual.
I will read the relevant passages, but I will do so making similar substitutions of words in the text that Kevin Anderson made in his 1965 report to the Australian Parliament (Anderson, 1965: 198-199). By doing so, Anderson dramatically illustrated his claim that "a great part of the manual is almost a blue print for the propagation of [S]cientology" (Anderson, 1965: 84). Whenever the manual says "psychopolitics" or "psychopolitical," I will say "Scientology." I replace "psychopolitician" with "Scientologist," and I replace "Communist Party Members" with "Sea Org members." With these substitutions in mind, I now quote excerpts form Chapter VIII entitled, "Degradation, Shock and Endurance:"
Defamation is the best and foremost weapon of [Scientologists] on the broad field. Continual and constant degradation of national leaders, national institutions, national practices, and national heros must be systematically carried out, but this is the chief function of [Sea Org Members] in general, not the Scientologist ([Hubbard?], 1955: 41).
The officials of government, students, readers, partakers of entertainment, must all be indoctrinated, by whatever means, into the complete belief that the restless, the ambitious, the natural leaders, are suffering from environmental maladjustments, which can only be healed by recourse to [Scientology] operatives in the guise of mental healers.
By thus degrading the general belief in the status of Man, it is relatively simple, with co-operation from economic salients being driven into the country, to drive citizens apart, one from another, to bring about a question of the wisdom of their own government, and to cause them to actively beg for enslavement.
As it seems in foreign nations that the church is the most ennobling influence, each and every branch and activity of each and every church must, one way or another, be discredited.... Thus, there must be no standing belief in the church, and the power of the church must be denied at every hand.
The [Scientology] operative, in his programme of degradation, should at all times bring into question any family which is deeply religious, and should any neurosis or insanity be occasioned in that family, to blame and hold responsible their religious connections for the neurotic or psychotic condition. Religious must be made synonymous with neurosis and psychosis. People who are deeply religious would be less and less held responsible for their own sanity, and should more and more be relegated to the ministrations of [Scientology] operatives.
By perverting the institutions of a nation and bringing about a general degradation, by interfering with the economics of a nation to the degree that privation and depression come about, only minor shocks will be necessary to produce, on the populace as a whole, an obedient reaction or an hysteria ([Hubbard?], 1955: 43-44).
With only a little imagination, one can see that the brainwashing manual seems to provide an outline for Scientology's battle plan against Germany.
Through, for example, innumerable publications such as Freedom magazine, Sea Org members and other Scientologists produce a barrage of material that denigrates the nation and its leaders. German Scientologists are now able to label its political leaders as violators of human rights, thanks in part to criticism that the United States Department of State levelled against the country's attempts to curb the organization and boycott films starring American Scientologists (Lippman, 1997). On the economic front, critics might see events in the Hamburg real estate market as evidence of Scientologists' attempt to cause what the brainwashing manual called "privation and depression" among apartment renters. Reportedly Scientologists bought rental properties and turned them overnight into cooperatives. The chairperson of the Hamburg branch of the German real estate agents association, Peter Landmann, told the New York Times that these Scientologists were "'using disreputable methods to frighten and coerce the renters into buying them back at high prices'" (Whitney, 1994: A12). Finally, of course, Scientology continues to blast psychiatry, attempting to link it with both Nazism and current German efforts against it. Hubbard, or whomever wrote the brainwashing manual's instructions about how to degrade a country, undoubtedly would be proud of his followers' public relations successes thus far.
Indeed, from a public relations perspective, Scientology may be winning the battle, at least back in North America. When, for example, the prestigious New York Review of Books published an article on "Germany vrs. Scientology," the German reporter (who writes for the Suddeutsche Zeitung) strongly implied that government officials were scapegoating Scientology. His argument seems to be that attacks against the group have become part of a moral panic, when in fact other social issues, such as double-digit unemployment, declining state generosity, tensions over European union, and problems with national identity, should be the real areas of concern (Joffe, 1997: 20). This argument, however, as well as the American State Department human rights criticisms, shows a profound and increasingly inexcusable ignorance of disturbing if not dangerous abuses that occur as routine Scientology policy against many of its members.
Even to concede that Scientology may be a religion to many of its adherents, the basis for German governmental opposition to it has nothing to do with what people believe. It has everything to do with what German government officials know that the organization does. Consequently, this presentation concentrated heavily on the organization's social-psychological assaults on many of its most committed members, and I barely mentioned Scientology's ideological system. The assaults that I described are ones that German government officials seem to know about, and with that knowledge they have no choice other than to see Scientology as a threat to the democratic state. Were officials to grant Scientology religious status, then even more citizens than already now do, would increase their involvement to the point of becoming Sea Org members, and then at least some of them would be subject to the brutal conditions and programs that I described. With Germany's unique experiences with both National Socialism and Communism, it is unthinkable that responsible officials would facilitate the operation of a totalitarian organization that throws its members into forced labour and reeducation camps.
One of the tragedies in this debate is that normal Scientologists will feel persecuted and threatened. These people likely know nothing about RPF conditions, and they genuinely feel that Scientology involvement has benefitted them. The organization to which they belong, however, appears to be committing serious human rights abuses. Consequently, I conclude my presentation by highlighting areas of concern raised by examining the United Nations' 1948 resolution entitled The International Bill of Human Rights (United Nations, 1996b), and the 1996 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1996a).
First, Scientology's procedures involving committees of evidence, sec checking, gang bang sec checking, and the two RPF programs almost certainly violate Articles 9 and 10 of the Bill. Article 9 protects people against "arbitrary arrest, detention or exile" while article 10 guarantees "a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his [sic] rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him" (United Nations, 1996: 23).
Second, Scientology's punishment of members for merely discussing the merits of Hubbard's teachings, as well as its invasive probing into people's thoughts though sec checking, almost certainly violate Articles 18 and 19 of the Bill that deal with both "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and "the right to freedom of opinion and expression" (United Nations, 1996: 25).
Third, the various Scientology practices and procedures that I discussed may violate Article 17 of the Bill, which states that "[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation" (United Nations, 1996: 49).
Fourth, the conditions of the RPF and the RPF's RPF almost certainly violate Article 7 of the Covenant, which discusses "the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work..." (United Nations, 1996a: 38). The article specifically identifies fair wages, "[a] decent living for themselves and their families..., [s]afe and healthy working conditions..., and [r]est, leisure, and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay...." (United Nations, 1996a: 38). Indeed, many Sea Org jobs themselves may not meet these reasonable standards of propriety, safety, and fairness.
Fifth and finally, the extreme social psychological assaults and forced confessions that RPF and RPF's RPF inmates suffer almost certainly violate Article 12 of the Covenant, which recognizes "the right of everyone to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" (United Nations, 1996a: 18).
These and probably other serious human rights issues swirl around Scientology programs that have tax exemption and operate within the boundaries of the United States. With these serious issues in mind, the American human rights criticism of Germany's opposition to Scientology is the height diplomatic arrogance. By granting Scientology tax exemption, the United States government is cooperating with an organization that appears to put citizens from around the world at significant mental health and perhaps medical risk. While in no way do I want my remarks today to be taken as a blanket endorsement of the German government's rhetoric or tactics, on the battle with Scientology the government has the high moral ground.
By Stephen A. Kent
Department of Sociology
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
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When I taught arts programs for at-risk teens, I'd have them start our 10-week course by writing what they wanted from life. When language was difficult for them, I'd have them collage or paint it. Later they would visualize then write about their lives in ten years. Where would they be living? Who would they share their lives with? What kind of work would they be doing? Then the specifics - describe the favorite room in their future home, the people who surround them, how it felt to do the work they did. For some of them this exercise was near impossible. Some of them simply said, "I hope to be alive". Some said they hoped to be off probation. Some said maybe they could imagine working at a store. And my question always was – How can you expect anything of life if you don't know what it is you want? You've got to search your heart for your deepest true desires, and then don't be afraid to ask for it. Otherwise you are just drifting through life, going wherever the wind blows you.
Hello self. Are you listening?
Obviously I often forget to do this. Here I am in this awful year, financially and emotionally stretched to the limit and all I'm doing is dog-paddling to keep my head above water….just going wherever the current takes me. I can't imagine my future. All I know is that I want to be out of this stress. That's not much of a dream.
So this week is all about reclaiming my stake in life. I'm excavating the treasures of my heart, sweeping the cobwebs out of the corners, dusting off my ambitions and starting again.
Amy Ferris and I had a long talk about it, and decided this is our power week. She'll be blogging about it as well. We're going to do an experiment- First we get clear on what it is we really want. Self doubt, fear, shame will be swept away with the broom of truth. Then, every day this week, we will claim our heart's desires with pure, clear intent. And watch what happens…
Yesterday was day one. I stated that I was manifesting money and miracles. I received a check in the mail for $166 dollars. Well, it's a start, but perhaps I need to be a bit more specific.
So this week I'll be asking myself these questions:
What does my heart want?
Where do I want to be in ten years?
What does it look like, feel like, taste like, sound like?
What (in me) is stopping me from claiming my stake in life?
We are all here for a reason. Every one of us has a purpose. Are we living our purpose, or just surviving? Will you join Amy and I for a week of miracles? We'll start with a week, then who knows? Maybe we'll stretch it out to a year, or maybe a lifetime? But for today…baby steps.
What does your heart yearn for?
( * Follow Amy's journey: http://marryinggeorgeclooney.com/blog/)


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Democrats 'Shocked' By House GOP's Willingness to Forgo Budget Resolution
With House Republican leaders saying this week that a budget resolution may not be necessary, Democrats are taking aim and accusing the GOP of backpedaling.
On Monday, Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said that if conferees could not work out the difference between the two chambers' tax-cut numbers, Congress might not pass a budget.
Tuesday, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) echoed Blunt's assessment, albeit with a bit of hedging.
"It probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world … but the alternative of having a budget is preferable to not having one," DeLay said.
Seizing on DeLay's comments, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that less than a year ago Republicans chastised the Democratic-led Senate for failing to pass a budget blueprint.
"I hope you are duly shocked, chagrined and taken aback by my counterpart's quote," Hoyer told reporters, referring to Blunt's words.
"How often did you hear last year … that the reason we weren't able to function was because we didn't have a budget, because those Democrats in the Senate have not passed a budget and that, therefore, we couldn't put appropriation bills on the floor?" he asked. "How many Republicans do you know in the House who said that?"
While budget conferees still want to report out a resolution, negotiations appear to be stalled as conservative Republicans are pressuring House leaders to stick with the full $726 billion tax-cut and economic growth package proposed by President Bush and moderate Senators refuse to budge beyond $350 billion in tax cuts.
The Republican Study Group, led by Rep. Sue Myrick (N.C.), is circulating a letter saying it will not support a resolution with only $350 billion in tax cuts. Meanwhile, moderates in the Senate have said $350 billion is their upper limit.
"If we had the votes [to pass a bigger tax cut] I wouldn't be out here saying we are still working on it," Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (Pa.) conceded Tuesday afternoon.
DeLay criticized moderate Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), Lincoln Chafee (R.I.) and George Voinovich (Ohio) for refusing to support a bigger tax cut.
"They have every right to do what they're doing; it's just that I think they're misguided," DeLay said.
Despite the obstacles, the official line is still that a budget resolution will pass before Congress adjourns Friday.
"We will finish by Friday," Santorum said.
DeLay spokesman Stuart Roy agreed, adding that it is still early in the week and a lot can happen before Friday.
Hoyer was dubious of such claims, however.
"The budget, they say it is going to be on the floor … but, as you know, they are having real problems in their own party coming to a consensus on what they want the budget to do," he said.
More certain is the supplemental — leaders of both parties think that a compromise between the House's $77.9 billion emergency war spending plan and the Senate's $79.6 billion proposal will be reached by Friday.
The biggest negotiating hurdle there is likely to be the White House, as both bills go beyond the president's request and include provisions the administration does not want in the bill, such as aid for the struggling airline industry.
The House measure also includes an amendment that would prohibit certain countries, which do not support the war in Iraq, from winning reconstruction contracts.
"I think we got our message across," DeLay said about the amendment, adding that House leaders are willing to let it drop if that is what the White House wants.
But as for Bush's demands for greater control over how to spend the almost $80 billion, the House won't budge, DeLay said.
"In my opinion we gave them more than enough flexibility in spending money," DeLay said.
Ben Pershing contributed to this report.


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- A conceptual framework for classifying debuggers and execution recorders.
- Treating instruction execution and memory writes as two instances of a common concept --- "memory effects" --- and providing a single implementation and API for recording, indexing, compressing, storing and querying them.
- The "bunching" optimization for memory effects.
- The principle that repetitious program behaviour should produce repetitious input to the compressor in order to maximise the benefits of compression, and how to tweak the formatting of trace data to follow that principle.
The document also contains screenshots of the prototype XULRunner-based debugger based on Amber, to motivate Amber's design by illustrating what is possible when you go beyond just reverse execution. I assure you that those screenshots are not faked in any way; it really works :-).


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(visited by Craig Newman and Sandy Lovering)
14-Oct-2005 -- We were north of the Yanbu` area and had camped on the coast and were hoping to see the turtles come ashore and make their way up the beach and bury their eggs in the sand. The full moon was to be in a few days and high tide was about 3:00 a.m., which is when they are able to cross the reef and swim the shallow rocky waters for 50 meters to the sandy beach. At least 3 turtles had been very recently and left their tracks, which looked like a big tractor tire. We kept getting up during the night but had no success, and at daylight there were no fresh tracks at our beach. However, our compensation in the morning was brilliant snorkeling on the Red Sea reef with calm waters, corals of different bright colors and so many thousands of wonderful fish of all colors and sizes - fantastic.
On our return journey southwards we came to Yanbu`, which is the second main industrial city in Saudi Arabia (the other is Jubayl on the east coast). It is a major port for oil exports with many big petrochemical industries and oil refineries, desalination and power plants, oil and LPG storage tank fields, cement plants, etc. With little pollution controls, the city has a unique smell and an industrial haze shimmering in the hot and humid air.
It was noon on a Ramaḍān Friday, and as we filled up with gas the midday calls to prayers from the mosques were being called, so it was a good time to explore with very little traffic. We thought we would get close to the confluence point which is situated off the coast in the Red Sea, and is not generally accessible, as going out on boats is restricted by the authorities. We decided to leave the central part of the old city and travel away from the port so as to be less conspicuous as we took photos. This obviously is a sensitive city with major important facilities and there was a heavy presence of police, Saudi Aramco, and Coast Guard vehicles cruising around.
A few km southwestwards and the road came along the seashore. Small mangroves grew in the shallow warm waters, and just out of range for our camera, a white heron was wading through looking for lunch (the only one eating as it is Ramaḍān). Our GPS showed the confluence point lay 12.6 km further out into the calm blue waters, which was quite good for us as this was only 2 km from the shortest point. This uninhabited seashore continued for 5 km or so, and we were going to take some more photos at the exact 24N position, but this was near a marina and the Coast Guard were patrolling. This area had been well developed into huge new company housing subdivisions with nice villas, and on the shore were many picnic areas and parks with plenty of trees and grass, which is not that common in most Saudi cities.
After completing our attempt to get near the confluence point, it was back to the main road south and three boring hours' drive on the flat hot plains to Jidda.


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At the beginning of 2010 I was in Ukraine, and trying to understand what was going on there. Two contemporary historians, both dissidents, helped explain. Georgiy Kasianov writes in Ukrainian, Russian, and English; his history of post-independence Ukraine (in Russian) is a great and funny book that bravely resists the nationalist narrative pushed forward by the Ukraine-for-Ukrainians lobby. In English his edited volume, A Laboratory of Transnational History, is recommended. It includes an essay by John-Paul Himka, a Canadian historian of Ukrainian origin who has for a number of years kept up a lonely moral crusade against the nationalist elements of the Ukrainian diaspora in North America. You would think the margin for historical error in a territory and period as finite as Western Ukraine during the Second World War would be pretty thin; you'd be wrong.
I tend to read books in spurts. After Ukraine, I read a number of dystopian novels for an article I was writing. The best were Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island. I preferred the Houellebecq. In fact, though Elementary Particles is still his best book, this one is his funniest. "In order to pass the time I told him the story of the German who ate the other German whom he'd met on the internet." Very funny.
At this point, having settled again on American soil, I decided to figure out what was going on with our foreign wars. I read Rory Stewart's amazing and funny book about walking through Afghanistan in the wake of the American defeat of the Taliban in late 2001 (The Places In Between), and then Megan Stack's Every Man in This Village Is a Liar, which begins with her entering Afghanistan a bit earlier, right on the heels of the American invasion, tagging along with an Afghan warlord who will eventually try to sneak into bed with her. Stack's book was so good that I could hardly believe it, so I read Dexter Filkins' Forever War just to check. It was also very good. Forever War has more bombs exploding; Every Man has more of a comparative sweep.
At this point, almost without intending to (I was waiting for someone to give me their copy of Freedom), I read Ian Frazier's funny, epic, surprising Travels in Siberia. Then I read Freedom, which is as good as everyone says it is. Reading Frazier and Franzen back to back underscored, first, that they have quite similar names, and, second, the deeply Midwestern quality of Freedom. There's a great passage at the end of the Siberia book in which Frazier talks about how his father used to berate him, back in his Ohio childhood, for living such a sheltered existence and knowing nothing about the rest of the world. This is a uniquely American, perhaps American-suburban, prejudice–the idea that Ohio couldn't possibly be further away from, say, Siberia. What Frazier points out, in his quiet, uninsistent way, is that the center of the most economically powerful nation on earth can't pretend that it's far away from anywhere, much less one of the world's largest oil-producing regions, which is what Siberia is. It seems that a deep awareness of the truth of this–of the interconnection of the American suburbs and the rest of the world–is one of Franzen's important contributions to American fiction and American self-understanding over the past ten years.
In June, my book of interviews about the financial crisis with a hedge fund manager was coming out, and I realized I still knew nothing about the financial crisis. I read as fast as I could to avoid humiliation. Many of the books were bad. Their authors had the difficulty of writing from another country–like the Ukrainian historian Kasianov, who writes partly for Russians–but in a language that the people in that other country (that is to say, us) didn't know. So they could either pretend that we knew it already, or treat us like idiots. They did a bit of both. The Michael Lewis books–his newest, The Big Short, and his oldest, Liar's Poker–stood out among all these for their clarity and wit, although I should add that I haven't yet read John Lanchester's I.O.U. or Yves Smith's ECONned, both of which are supposed to be good.
When the HFM book came out, I did mostly manage to aovid humiliation–for example, by sleeping through a scheduled radio interview. But non-humiliation was not enough. I decided to get to the bottom of things by reading Capital. But I couldn't understand it. I began to read around Capital—David Harvey's Limits to Capital; Peter Singer's Marx; Immanuel Wallerstein's Historical Capitalism; Michael Harrington's The Twilight of Capitalism; Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station. The only one I really got through (aside from the Wallerstein book, which is like 100 pages long because he uses no examples) is To the Finland Station. I'd inherited the notion somewhere or other that Wilson's book wasn't first-rate as intellectual or political history. This is untrue. Of all the secondary sources on Marx, it has been the most valuable to me. It will certainly always be the most entertaining. It gives a different kind of genealogy of Marx, through the French historians rather than the German idealists, and also it has a beautiful and sympathetic account of the relationship between Marx and Engels. Just a lovely book, almost as good as Parallel Lives.
At around this time, about a month ago–and still stuck about a third of the way through the first volume of Capital–I concluded that I would never understand Marx's obsession with the concept of "price" until I went back to Adam Smith and the original formulation of the theory of price that Marx is taking issue with. So that is where you find me today, about a fifth of the way through the first volume of The Wealth of Nations. Maybe a quarter of the way.
Other great books I happened to read that came out in 2010 were Elif Batuman's The Possessed; Sam Lipsyte's The Ask; and Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey. I recommend all three without reservation; they are instant classics. Another book I think everyone ought to read is Thomas Chatterton Williams's Losing My Cool. It's a complex, very honest, very entertaining memoir about a young man's education that has not received anything like the serious consideration and discussion it deserves. And a final book I recommend from 2010 is And the Heart Says Whatever, by my very witty girlfriend, Emily Gould.
More from a Year in Reading 2010
Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions' Notable articles
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text: In June, the world watched as tweets from the streets of Tehran flooded Twitter. Frequent Twitter users--and people who hadn't even heard of the microblogging service--were suddenly and simultaneously witnessing its potential.At the same time, antivirus vendors were warning of new phishing attacks that spread via Twitter. Using Twitter accounts, phishers would follow users and then infect them via a link to a fake profile page laden with malware. Like instant messaging, MySpace, and Facebook before it, Twitter had come of age.After three years of relatively quiet development and growth, the service's meteoric rise in 2009 has been rough. Aside from scaling issues due to the influx of new users, in January a Twitter hack compromised the accounts of 33 high-profile users, including President Barack Obama, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, and entertainer Britney Spears.In April, a Twitter worm known as "Mikeyy" or "StalkDaily" reared its head. Similar to the 2005 Samy worm on MySpace, the Mikeyy worm was authored by a 17-year-old who took advantage of a code quirk to gain notoriety for his Web site, StalkDaily.com. Twitter shut it down--plus a few follow-up viruses ("How TO remove new Mikeyy worm!")--fairly quickly. Following the worm attacks, cofounder Biz Stone wrote on the company blog, "Twitter takes security very seriously and we will be following up on all fronts."Shortened-URL DangersParallel to the growth of Twitter is the expansion of URL-shortening services. Fitting your thoughts into 140 characters takes practice; including full URLs is almost impossible. Usually URLs have to be truncated through services such as Bit.ly and TinyURL.com, which also mask the true destination URL and can present their own security problems as a result.The first signs of shortened-URL trouble came with a pair of Twitter worms that promised to help users remove the Mikeyy worm. In June, a wave of hidden poisoned URLs swept Twitter, using Bit.ly links to low.cc and myworlds.mp domains where users were asked to download a file called free-stream-player-v_125.exe to view a video. The file held malware. Bit.ly and TinyURL have been responsive to reports of abuse; Bit.ly, for one, now blocks those low.cc and myworlds.mp domains.At least one security product, ZoneAlarm, blocks access to TinyURL.com by default, listing it as a potentially malicious site (you can unblock it). You have other ways to protect yourself, too. TinyURL has a preview feature, and Firefox has a Bit.ly preview add-on. Some Twitter apps, such as TweetDeck and Tweetie, also preview the URL before you click.Aviv Raff of RSA designated July 2009 as "A Month of Twitter Bugs," during which researchers are to disclose a new Twitter vulnerability each day. Citing previous efforts focused on browsers and on Apple Mac OS vulnerabilities, Raff says his goal is not to break Twitter but to improve it and to address all social networking flaws: "I hope that Twitter and other Web 2.0 API providers will work closely with their API consumers to develop more secure products." The first disclosed Twitter bug concerned cross-site scripting flaws in Bit.ly. Within hours of the disclosure, Bit.ly corrected them.Follow Me, PleaseTwitterCut advertised that it would dramatically increase your base of followers--if you gave it your user name and password. Most security vendors deemed it a pay-per-click scam.A frequent goal of Twitterers is to build an audience; some people rate their profile a success if it has hundreds or even thousands of followers. A site called People who fell for the scam saw their Twitter accounts later used in the "Best Video" phishing attack, in which anyone who visited a link in the tweet wound up downloading a malicious PDF that then attempted to install a fake security product if the PC lacked the latest Adobe security update.Gone PhishingTwitter phishing attempts, however, are more straightforward. Twitter routinely notifies users of recent followers by e-mail, often with a link to the follower's profile. Recent phishing attacks spoofed that e-mail and held a link to a faux Twitter log-on page.Most Another variation of the phishing scam sent out a tweet reading, "Hey, check out this funny blog about you." Clicking the URL took the victim to a fake page (at twitter.access-logins.com\/login\/). No matter how good the site looks, examine the URL, and think twice about entering your info--especially if you are already logged in to Twitter.Bad guys have tried more-subtle tactics, too, such as the porn-name game. According to the game, to create the name you'll use during your adult-film career, you take the name of your first pet and combine it with the street you grew up on, your mother's maiden name, or the model of your car. Recognize those things? They're common security questions. By tweeting your answers, you could give away access to your Twitter account--or to your bank account.Some of the emerging security rules for using Twitter are simply common sense. Just as you wouldn't leave a phone message saying you'll be out of town, don't tweet your vacation plans. And please don't share your location if you're a U.S. congressperson going on a confidential overseas trip. Just ask Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who tweeted earlier this year: "Just landed in Baghdad. I believe it may be [the] first time I've had [BlackBerry] service in Iraq."


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- CNC Machining or Not:Cnc Machining
- Type:Broaching, DRILLING, Etching / Chemical Machining, Laser Machining, Milling, Other Machining Services, Turning, Wire EDM, Rapid Prototyping
- Material Capabilities:Aluminum, Brass, Bronze, Copper, Hardened Metals, Precious Metals, Stainless Steel, Steel Alloys
- Micro Machining or Not:Not Micro Machining
- Place of Origin:Guangdong, China
- Model Number:aluminum bushing
- Brand Name:Jeasnn
- Name:aluminum bushing
- Material:Aluminum, copper, brass, stainless steel, steel, etc.
- Finish:Polishing; Anodize;etc.It also can be environmentally friendly
- Tolerance:±0.01mm to ±0.005mm
- Color:black,blue,yellow,gold,silver,purple,ect.
- Our service:OEM & ODM & Design Service
- Surface treatment:Anodizing
- Certificate:ISO9001-2015/SGS
- Terms of delivery:EXW,FCA,FOB,CIF or as your requirement
- Jeasnn's experience:11 years of experience in providing machining solutions.
Factory Manufacturer Bronze Bushing Aluminum Shaft Bushing Spacers
Factory Manufacturer Bronze Bushing Aluminum Shaft Bushing Spacers
Available materials :
|Stainless Steel
|SS201,SS301, SS303, SS304, SS316, SS416 etc.
|mild steel, Carbon steel,12L14, 12L15,4140, 4340, Q235, Q345B, 20#, 45# etc.
|HPb63, HPb62, HPb61, HPb59, H59, H68, H80, H90 etc.
|C11000,C12000,C12000 C36000 etc.
|AL6061, AL6063, AL6082, AL7075, AL5052, A380 etc.
Surface treatment:
|Aluminum parts
|Stainless Steel parts
|Steel parts
|Brass parts
|Clear Anodized
|Zinc Plating
|Nickel Plating
|Color Anodized
|Oxide black
|chrome plating
|Sandblast Anodized
|Nickel Plating
|Electrophoresis black
|Chemical Film
|Laser engraving
|Chrome Plating
|Oxide black
|Electrophoresis black
|Powder coated
|Oxide black
|Heat treatment
|Powder Coated
Q1: How can I get aluminum bushing sample?
1. Sample fee will be free if we have in stock, you just need to pay the shipping cost is OK.
2. The sample of your own design needs to pay for the mold set up charge. Samples production takes 5-7 working days after set up charge received & size drawing approval.
Q2: How to pay for the order?
There are 5 options to pay the order: Bank Transfer; Western Union; Paypal; Payoneer, Alibaba Trade Assurance. Kindly choose the most suitable way for you to arrange it.
Q3: What is the shipping method?
Most of the goods were sent out by international airway express company like DHL, UPS, FedEx, TNT. Usually takes around 3-5 working days (door to door service). We also can arrange shipment via seaway.
Q4: Can you give me help if my products are very urgent?
Yes, We can work overtime and add a few machines to produce these products if you need it urgently.
Q5: I want to keep our design in secret, can we sign NDA?
Sure, we will not display any customers' design or show to other people, we can sign NDA.
Add:No.39 Jingfu West Road ,Yangkengtang Village,DalangTown,Dongguan,Guangdong,China