Guest View: Mike Rinder Has No Secrets to Bring Down Scientology & ‘Fair Game’

Originally, the term, “fair game” meant wild animals that are legal, ethical, appropriate, and sportsmanlike for hunters to chase in the field and kill. The modern, common usage is an acceptable target to criticize or attack, usually because of the way they behave.

According to the Church of Scientology, the term, if not the practice of, “fair game” was canceled in 1968 and all the term meant was that “those expelled from the Church could no longer take advantage of the internal ecclesiastical support and justice procedures Churches of Scientology provide to resolve disputes and upsets among parishioners. They would have to make their own way, unaided, with the justice procedures of the society as their only recourse.”

They were “fair game,” just like any other person in the world who is not a Scientologist. However, it is best to go to the founder of a religion.

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, was not shy about hunting fair game, or going after enemies, whom he categorized as “Suppressive Persons” (SPs), and defined these as “anti-social people who want to destroy anything that benefits humanity.”

Hubbard liked to employ lawsuits “to harass and discourage rather than to win.”

Hubbard said, “The law can be used easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway…  will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly”.

In dealing with enemies, Hubbard advised to “always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace. Don’t ever defend. Always attack.”

He advised to “destroy reputation or public belief in persons, companies or nations.”

In 1965, Hubbard formulated the “Fair Game Law,” saying, “The homes, property, places and abodes of persons who have been active in attempting to: suppress Scientology or Scientologists are all beyond any protection of Scientology Ethics.”

In 1967, Hubbard wrote that opponents who are “fair game” may be “deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

In 1968, Hubbard said an enemy “May be restrained or imprisoned.” That same year he decided the term “Fair Game” would no longer be used, because “it causes bad public relations.”

However, non-use of the name “does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.”

Does the present leader of Scientology, David Miscavige, permit the practice of ‘Fair Game’ as originally conceived by L. Ron Hubbard?

Fair Game at Frank Report

Frank Report began its publishing life by making Keith Raniere and Clare Bronfman “Fair Game” and it resulted in their arrest along with four others who were not targeted but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Frank Report’s Fair Game policy is, if one can dish it out, one should be able to take it.

Attacks are limited to words only, however.

The following fair game attack was written anonymously and submitted to Frank Report.  It provides some insights into some of the hardball players in the world of Scientology and anti-Scientology. It targets Allen Alanzo Stanfield, ironically, a critic of both.

By Anonymous 

I suppose in those 16 years,  the good Alanzo never saw a Scientology crime or abuse committed.

[Ed. note: Alanzo left Scientology around the turn of the century and unless he saw murder, any crimes he saw would likely be time-barred. Of course, that would not prevent him from telling about these crimes and perhaps he has.]

Or maybe he just doesn’t want to come clean? Lots of maybes, but just like his theories about Mike Rinder, Gerry Armstrong, and Leah Remini, it’s all bunk.

Rinder has no secrets to tell that would convict anyone – but Alanzo (and to some extent Armstrong) would love to believe Mike could bring the whole house of cards down with a word to law enforcement. Sorry, that’s not reality. The FBI acted on reports of human trafficking, but could not find a single person within the Scientology compound raided to complain.

Only those who have left – and left for some years – seem to be able to get past L. Ron Hubbard’s extensive years of programming to speak out about church abuses. Members are taught that they are not to cooperate with law enforcement in any way, and taught to lie as much as necessary “for the greater good”, meaning the good of Scientology, and today, the good of David Miscavige.

I have to laugh at Gerry Armstrong. He once received $800,000 as his part of a class action court settlement for wrongs done to him and others by the Church of Scientology. At that time, it was enough money to retire on in small comfort if invested even halfway wisely.

Gerry, for his own reasons, chose to not take advantage of his good fortune. Few people during that era were able to wrestle a dime from the Church no matter how badly they were treated, yet Gerry received a substantial sum. He continued to pick at the Church, even foolishly violating the terms of the settlement because his lawyer said those terms were unenforceable. Today, he still lives over the border in Canada, where he fled to when another court fined him tens of thousands and issued warrants for violating the exact terms his lawyer said were unenforceable. Whoops. Today, he still demands that certain individuals owe him apologies, despite the 800 grand the court had him paid by way of apology for the harm done to him. I used to be an Armstrong supporter, until I came to realize that he will never be satisfied by anything anyone does concerning his experiences in or out of Scientology.

I am not surprised the good Alanzo took a swipe at Debbie Cook. She did something he never had the courage to do, and that was communicating openly to the widest possible church membership about abuses within the church *while she was still a member in good standing.”

Needless to say, she was not “in good standing” with boss man Miscavige for long after that. She received some sort of settlement, but the good Alanzo is just guessing at an amount. That has not been released by the court nor revealed by any party. Debbie knew something Gerry Armstrong failed to recognize – that when an apology comes through a court case, the only amends is the coin of the realm, dollars in this case. In accepting such a monetary “apology”, the terms usually have a gag order of some sort. If the recipient of the monetary award complies with the terms agreed upon by all parties, life goes on, with only the restrictions specified in the terms.

If the recipient fails to comply, as Armstrong failed to comply, the recipient is liable for the consequences specified in the agreement. As for Debbie Cook, she received monetary amends from Scientology, and has complied with the (probable) gag order in the settlement agreement.

Cook should have given up that money so, what, so Alanzo and a few others could point to her as a shining example of a Don Quixote tilting at windmills? Don’t be silly. Don’t be stupid. The oddity is that Scientology sued her, then when it realized the dirt that would come out by the testimony under oath by the very believable Debbie Cook, the Church then paid her off to allow them to back out of the civil suit the Church itself had filed. It was one of the most backward retreats in civil suit history.

The silliest thing Alanzo contends is that Mike Rinder is somehow still working for, not against, David Miscavige. Apparently, Alanzo is so taken up with his own conspiracy theories that he can’t see evidence presented day in and day out that he, Alanzo, is wrong on so many counts. Maybe he’s upset because he wasted 16 years in a cult-like setting, a tool used and used up, unable to see it was all a money scam by Hubbard since before the day Alanzo was born. Apparently with his thinking about all the good he got out of Scientology he is yet to reach the point of acceptance that he was scammed by a guy smarter (about scams, at least) than him.

My good Alanzo, you were scammed out of a huge chunk of the only life you will ever have for sure. No amount of carping about what you may think others are doing wrong, or should have done in the distant past (Rinder left Scientology way back in 2007) will change that.

Accept it and get on with life, instead of being that strangest of animals, a guy who criticizes critics of Scientology, while himself wearing two or three faces – a critic of Scientology’s critics, a lukewarm critic of Scientology, and a guy who claims Scientology was good for him.

BTW, no matter what you think your blog efforts are accomplishing, at best you are a laughing stock within the genuine run of people fighting against the abuses of the Church of Scientology. Yep, there goes the good Alanzo again, spouting his warmed-over nonsense, ho-hum, how’s the weather today?

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