Damon Brink has a website dedicated to not being me –letsnotbefrank.com.
And since the website is about not being me or anything like me, it is fair to see what it is that is not like me.
In this case, it is Brink’s view of V-Week, the 10-day celebration of the Nativity of Keith Alan Raniere. It would be ongoing right now, with Raniere at its center. But alas, Raniere lives in USP Tucson and is not allowed to go out for celebrations.
V-Week is going on somewhere, but not at Silver Bay, where NXIVM held it for many years.
So, with fair use, I reprint Brink’s article about V-Week for educational purposes. Since Brink wants people not to be me, and since this is the Frank Report, I must publish it.
If you take his view, you will not be Frank. But if you disagree with him, you are in danger of being Frank or like Frank.
By Damon Brink
It’s that time of year. If you’re an ESPIAN of any experience, you can feel it. Can you feel it? Do you remember?
Keith Raniere teaching at V-Week
We’d be in the middle of meeting rights now, a real pain in the ass, but we loved it. No matter the bullshit, the bigger, deeper thing was always being connected to doing something, or taking action to grow something beautiful in the world. Everything is a hassle, everything all the time. It’s only a question of what you’re getting for the hassle.
With ESP and Vweek, we were getting a lot.
The man was so great that a week in the life of a Vanguard was 10 days not the normal seven.
Committees had been formed and were working to enroll people into different activities. The local Albany crew was pulling their hair out with last minute sign ups, cancellations, questions, changes. In some ways, V-week was a break in the regularly scheduled programming, and it came as a relief, in the form of sleepless nights and endless work.
But like I said above, it was work that was meaningful. At least for me.
Game show at V-Week
Silver Bay is a dream.
The attendees at Vanguard Week
And for families looking to spend time learning, playing, and meeting people who shared value, it was a dream come true. Where else could you practice at the ideal world? Where else could you actually say, we’re practicing at what it might be like in a world that was closer to the world we all wanted to see?
Don’t laugh.
Don’t make fun.
If you make fun, you’re cursed by the Devil.
Not really, but if you make fun of people who are serious enough about wanting to see a better world, that they spend most of their time and resources doing it and actually create something that is real and different, if you make fun of these people, what are you saying about yourself?
Yourself who is as potent as the ability to sit on your couch, read something and ridicule it. That is the extent of your potency.
So be careful making fun.
I loved V-week. I loved it even more when I had a family, because family means so much to me. I loved it even though I hated it at the same time. Hate might be too strong a word, but there was plenty of dislike. Vweek ran like ESP with plenty of hypocrisy and double speak, lies and manipulation.
But what doesn’t run like that? And like I said before, the cause was noble and honorable, and people, more likely than not, wanted to behave as if they were already their better self. This alone is such an accomplishment.
Vanguard Week was held at Silver Bay resort on Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains.
One of the best things about Vweek, besides all the beautiful women (and men) walking around and all the delightful children, was the way so many decided to be vulnerable just walking around in everyday life. People you hadn’t or had met, it didn’t matter.
It was most everyone making the commitment to learn about themselves, to stretch out of their comfort zones and discover more about their humanity, to connect with their humanity and ultimately connect with others in that human space.
Vanguard on stage at V-Week.
Make no mistake, there is a human space. It is only accessible when opened by at least two people. It’s a space where exploration is encouraged and shared, where I will take your hand as you walk into the dark, and I will not leave you. This was an experience you could have with a total stranger or a close friend. These were the types of experiences we all had.
This was my V-week.
How about yours? Please share, contribute, question – all with honor!
Lunch at V-Week
Note: Damon has asked you to comment with honor on the experience you had – or would like to have had at V-Week.
To enjoy the honor, you would have paid $2,000 to celebrate the marvelous man’s birthday. So great he was that God could not contain a week into only seven days. He needed to extend it to 10 to celebrate the great one’s nativity. Funny, God created the world in six days — but to make this ethicist genius, God would need an extra four, with no Sabbath.
Please comment kindly and with honor, and try not to joke or mock anyone out. Especially not the guest of honor at V-Week, the birthday boy gone missing. The brander of women and collector of collateral, the regal Raniere.
May have many more birthdays in warm and healthy Tucson.
From the modest cabin called the Bayview on the Silver Bay Campus, the royal born one would rest and entertain.
Raniere now lives in this gated community in Tucson.
.
I honestly don’t understand all the vitriol against Damon.
He hasn’t denounced NXIVM and straddled himself, butthole upended, before Mainstream Society.
He retains his own integrity to his own experience of his own life.
They hate that.
Alanzo
When reading Damian’s article, it struck me that being an ex NXIUM member must be like taking a few delicious bites of an apple before realising it is rotten at the core.
…or finding half a worm.
Or, ending up with Vanguard’s rotten worm in your mouth.
This site seems to have a dysfunctional family of characters. It might be slightly amusing, if it were not so predictable with less backbiting and had something more constructive to point towards.
Car crashes attract attention and that’s what this site has become.
We do now and then try to catch drivers of hit and run accidents.
Reply to this comment:
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Frank Parlato
August 26, 2022 at 8:38 am
I notice that when it comes to attacking Alanzo, it is always the cheaper the commenter, the gaudier the patter. Alanzo is my friend, and as Bangkok knows, that makes him a man of elevated stature.
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Anonymous: You managed to make me laugh with this comment. What an achievement I give you credit for, even if it wasn’t intentional.
It was intentional. I wanted to make you laugh.
I laughed so hard, too.
Empty wine bottles strewn around my chaise lounge.
Lights and stars smeared across my drunken mind as I puked in Buzzard’s Bay.
Alanzo
Who doesn’t enjoy a nice little get-together? V Week sounds kinda like a church picnic. Except for the $2,000 fee, attendance being semi-mandatory, and the Exalted Leader squirreled away in some bungalow banging an underage girl. Other than that V Week was reminiscent of a Hitler Youth getaway, what with the practicing for the ideal future world and all.
One of the things I’ve noticed about high control groups or cults, is that the leaders are typically adept at taking credit for the work of others, from those who proceeded them (AKA plagiarism) to that of those around them. They are masters of setting up false attribution, in which causes are mistakenly seen as other than they really are; individuals, for instance, end up crediting almost anything that happens in their lives, to the guru and their (usually his) teachings.
Another observation that dovetails with it, is that what often really makes the group and individuals’ experience of it, is not actually the leadership or even the material, but just that it becomes a venue and catalyst for idealistic and well-intentioned individuals to come together as a supportive community with a sense of common purpose. I think former members often fail to give themselves due credit, for having been what really made it what it was.
As someone insightfully pointed out earlier, below, there’s really no reason people couldn’t get together again for a week and enjoy the sort of experience Brink refers to – except that, as the saying goes, they’ve given away their power, to “Vanguard” their cult leader.
Anonymous anticult expert “Anonymaker” provides more cult stereotypes for us to think with.
His observations are so scientific he even used a semicolon.
Alanzo
I used to like the semicolon, but now it seems too fancy most of the time. Except for headlines.
Semicolon has pretty much been usurped by the em dash
A sigmoidoscopy is a semicolonoscopy.
That’s essentially a fallacious ad hominem attack.
And if you don’t agree with my studied observations of many groups and leaders, and extensive reading on the subject, can you provide an example of one considered a cult, where the dynamics I cited are not at work?
Ad hominems are usually a distraction when someone doesn’t have any thoughtful or valid arguments or evidence to add to the discussion.
Here’s another observation for you: members of high control groups or cults, are typically conditioned through mechanisms such as thought-stopping, to project criticism and anger onto outsiders and others, ignoring what they and their organization are doing, and thus becoming blind to the often blatant hypocrisy of their and their leaders’ words and deeds. Thus someone like you can with one breath decry generalizations and derogatory comments about groups considered cults, and with another generalize derogatorily about the group you consider to be ‘pinhead anti-cultists’, as oblivious to the blatant contradiction as someone cluelessly walking around with their shoes on the wrong feet. You’re still dancing to Elron’s tune, Alan.
p.s. I remain anonymous in good part because i’ve done well enough to be semi retired at an early age, with children building successful careers, and thus have things at risk. I take it that is all foreign to you.
You are right on target, Anonymaker. But you know that!
Even in an abusive 2 person relationship often the abused does not recognize that all the love and joy in the pairing is only brought to life by them. And the abused person will make excuses for the abuser and blame others and (of course) themselves for the abusers bad behavior. While also giving the abused credit for the “good” coming from themselves alone.
High control abusers are pretty much the same in any relationship setting. 1 on 1. Or as a cult or religious leader etc.
One of Anonymaker’s ‘studied observations’:
Followers of Biden and Trump do the same thing. So do mothers with their children. Marines do this. Members of fraternities and sororities. Even fans of the Chicago Bears.
You are assigning ubiquitous human behavior and turning it into stereotypes that you say are specific only to members of high control groups or ‘cults’.
It’s clear that your ‘studied observations’ come from reading simplistic anticult ideology, and dwelling too long in anticult internet fora, and not from any real life experience informed by social science training.
In past generations, you would be passing yourself off as an expert on “The Negro”, or the “Genetics and Phrenology of the Sicilian Immigrant”.
This is why when you pretend to be such a studied expert on “cults”, you are clearly a blatant fraud.
Alanzo
Anonymaker has a point of view. You disagree.
How about saying it this way:
Some people assign ubiquitous human behavior, turn it into stereotypes that they say are specific only to members of high control groups or ‘cults’.
Some form opinions from reading simplistic anticult ideology, and dwelling too long in anticult internet fora, and not from any real life experience informed by social science training.
In past generations, they passed themselves off as experts on “The Negro”, or the “Genetics and Phrenology of the Sicilian Immigrant”.
This is why when you pretend to be such a studied expert on “cults”, you are clearly a blatant fraud.That is a great point, people like to spend time with people, It really is that simple. It is the reason people prefer going to night clubs then dancing alone in their house. The one difference I think there is with religions and cults is they play to people’s desire to submit to a perceived “greater good/God”.
“Sex” is a missing piece of your post.
Anonymaker
Thoughtful and astute observation.
I can understand how the sense of shared values and state of vulnerability could have been attractive. Plus, it seems like a really fun party/vacation type of thing.
I don’t think people who joined the party should be faulted entirely. Yes, they clapped hands to some pretty strange ideas but seems a bit judgemental to blame them for wanting to have a little fun. I’m sure not everyone could arrive at the perfect time, so? 10 days to accommodate arrivals? Why not?
I have a place on Lake George….perhaps this weekend I will take the boat up to Silver Bay (about a 32 mile trip on the water, up the lake) to see if I can spot any familiar faces roaming the grounds, holding hands.
Damon-
You’re a good individual. I have to say that Frank everyone else on the Frank report is unfair to you.
It’s absolutely disgusting how they attack you so much. It’s like what did you do ? I’m so happy you’re reading this. I wonder what type of man lets his wife die. I don’t have to look very far, you’re the man. So virtuous you are. Wanting a spouse to die of breast cancer. I wish you well. The same way I wish a rapist well. I can only hope you become a quadriplegic. Hopefully, you’re the next Christopher Reeves. It would the be fitting- the embodiment of evil, is you. I’m so happy you are still reading this because you’re a tool bag. Frank should not write this stuff, it’s a falsehood and misguided. It doesn’t give justice to what you truly are. Take care!
You can always tell “Nice-Guy” because he says the same cruel shit over and over.
You’ve never had anyone die on you, have you “Nice-Guy”?
It’s easy to see because your delusional hatred blames a husband for his wife’s cancer.
In a lot of ways, you’re like a little boy – Dennis the Menace or that kid from The Omen.
I hope your wife doesn’t die on you, “Nice Guy”, but it may be the only thing that cures your Big-O NXIVM Hate-Boner.
Alanzo
People don’t “die on you” they just die.
Did you ever clean up the dog shit you bragged about having in your backyard?
That’s gross.it must smell great in the summer heat. Poor neighbors. And it’s sad for the dog.
Or… Are you the dog?
Literally and figuratively: clean up your own mess.
A’loozer-
You’re right!
Tis Cruel:
“After raising more than $42,000 for her cancertreatment through a GoFundMe campaign, Sally said, a NXIVM member(allegedly *Damon) told her, “‘The ethical thing to do would be to die instead of taking the GoFundMe money.'”
https://m.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/maybe-im-brainwashed-how-the-nxivm-cult-followed-damon-brink-to-vermont/Content?oid=31946721
*Allegedly he was a simple messenger…….
That was a fantastic article, “Nice Guy”.
It showed all the cracks in black and white anticult thinking. And it showed how anticultists hound Exes long after they leave, even trying to destroy their livelihoods, all while demanding simplistic loyalty oaths to mainstream society, and full-on hari-kiri of their past selves.
Leave it to you to misrepresent, with absolutely no evidence supporting it, the justification for your cruelty.
Here’s the original paragraph you “quoted”:
Here’s the justification for your cruelty to Damon Brink:
Maybe it’s because you are an illiterate white trash alcoholic, but your use of quotes makes it appear that what’s in the parenthesis is in the original. It’s not though, is it, “Nice Guy”?
You just want us to think it is.
You have attempted to destroy my livelihood here on the Frank Report out of the feverish delusion caused by your Big-O NXIVM Hate-Boner®. This is even though I’d never heard of NXIVM until about 2 years ago.
Were you and “K.R. Claviger” behind getting Damon Brink fired from his job as he attempted to move on with his life in Vermont?
I’d put money on it.
Alanzo
Don’t wager against Nice Guy. He’s a man of nice judgment and many resources. An amazing character. But he had nothing to do with Damon Brink losing his gig in Vermont. I know who was gunning for him and it was not Nice Guy, and not myself. In fact, I endorsed Brink for the job.
Aloonozo-
It was her husband, Damon, who she understood to have carried the message of the higher-ups.”
Aloonzo STFUP!
Sally left her ex lunatic husband.
Why?
Go check the public divorce records!
Show us the divorce records, please
Balloonzo-
You have no idea what you’re talking about. STFU!
Go back to performing pantomime at bus stations or showing-off your genitalia to passing motorists.
Anonymous, you’ve little to boast about, but the world hasn’t come to an end just because Damon ran into a setback.
It’s your hard luck, it wasn’t what you wanted. So now, Anonymous, I’ll say goodbye to you, unless you care to undertake more intelligent putdowns.
Frankly, Anonymous, I’d like to have you along. You’re a commenter of nice judgment and many resources.
Well, Anonymous, the shortest farewells are the best.
Adieu.
Alonzo, There are too many swords in your thinking.
Re-evaluating past deeds and experiences and finding you didnt handle things as well as you could have (hindsight being 20/20) is not akin to Hari-Kiri – watch what you tell yourself, about yourself – please – because these violent metaphors and analogies intensify memories to the point you will feel a flood of fight or flight every time you invoke them. Its punitive and will only sharpen your tongue.
Find a more gentle and honourable way to answer to yourself. Its too much. No one is harder on or with themselves than you. Do yourself as many favours as have been witheld from you. You should cut yourself some slack, then try it with others.
Ten of Swords wrote:
Yes, Ten of Swords.
You are absolutely right.
Alanzo
Aloozer-
—Big-O NXIVM Hate-Boner
As opposed to your boner – when you said you wanted to see a federal Judge “hogtied and gag-balled.”
Or as opposed to your boner, during your vicious attack on the rape and molestation victims of Kieth Raniere.
You called them “whores”. You are a sick fuck Alonzo.
Even on my worst day I pale in comparison to the scumbag you are, Aloozer.!
By gad, sir, you are a character. That you are! There’s never any telling what insult you’ll say next.
Anonymous, I’m sorry to lose you, but I want you to know I couldn’t be fonder of you if you were my own son. Well, if you lose a son, it’s possible to get another. There’s only one Alanzo. When you’re young, you simply don’t understand these things.
LMAO!
Very funny my friend.
Dude – relax. This isn’t you. Don’t get off track. Be who you want to be.
NutJob-
Damon Brink is a sick bastard and probably dangerous. He’s more obsessed with NXiVM than Suneel and the DOS . So much so that they do not communicate with him.
You’re right, it’s not me. People like Damon conjure old memories and the fact is I hate men who victimize women and children.
***
Maybe you should look up some family law court records. Perhaps them you’d see things from my perspective.
Where is this year’s V-week. I want to attend but how do I reserve a spot?
I can’t find any info on line for this year. I called the old number but it is not working.
Can you help?
Was it joyful at the V week when so many people got really sick? And none of the doctor’s present reported it? Was it a viral outbreak? Food poisoning? Actual poisoning? Seems like if you really cared about people your community would investigate and find out what it made so many of them ill
It’s quite an event, V-Week. Honoring the birth of Keith Alan Raniere, sometimes known as Vanguard, or Master, or Grand Master, or sometimes Great Grand Master, or potentially Great Great Grand Master, or perhaps in some circles prisoner 57005-177, is so important to humanity that to attend his birth celebration requires payment of thousands of dollars and loss of your vacation time to commemorate it at the YMCA.
To put V-week’s importance into perspective, here are some other very important birthday holidays:
Vanguard: 10 days
Jesus: 1 day plus like the night before
Mohammed: 1 day
Martin Luther King: 1 day
Gandhi: 1 day
Every President in US history combined: 1 day
The United States of America: 1 day
Yourself: 1 day probably
Nancy Salzman: 0 days (sadly, Prefect birthdays are of no significant value)
If you celebrate the 10 day V-week annually, it means you dedicate roughly 3% of the rest of your life to the birth of one person who spent that time getting group blowjobs while you sat in a conference room waiting for them to end.
Prefect had a one day celebration called the Festival of Flowers.
It was pious and beautiful celebration. God Bless Nancy.
I miss Flowers, too. Flowers- do you think Jevin is telling the truth about who he is?
He sent proof to Frank, he said
He did. I believe Kevin.
Now, I’m sure Flowers would have her doubts if she was around these parts more often…
Nice, Ice.
It was probably less joyful for say Camila. A woman who had been raped and photographed in explicit pornography as a child at Keith’s hands. Camilla was struggling with suicidal thoughts and had it in fact attempted to kill herself. That doesn’t sound very joyful. Her eating disorder and HPV were severely impacting her health and fertility.
Making the abortion Keith instructed her to get all the more painful to remember. And text from the week show Keith’s instructing Camilla how to avoid her older sister Mariana who did not know that Keith was simultaneously carrying out ongoing sexual relationships with the two sisters. And of course the third sister Daniela as well. Daniela who was probably not at that V week because she was being kept in a room completely alone and slowly losing her mind. Keith was upset that she dared to want to date someone besides him.
Or maybe she had been dropped off at the Mexico border with no money and no papers? And Daniela was struggling to put back together some kind of life for herself. Who knows. But I doubt she was feeling joyful at Vanguard week either. I guess as long as Damon was having fun with his family then it really doesn’t matter what anyone else was going through at the time though right?
Dani quit and left by 2012. She did not stay any longer than she wanted. She were not scared of Keith. That’s silly. She always did what she wanted since she was a kid.
Yeah… Kids can’t really do whatever they want. Unless their parents give them 100% freedom to make all decisions. Then they are still limited by age, geograohy, money, the law, not being able to drive, etc.
In Dani’s case she was limited as an adult too. When her legal papers were witheld. That’s really fucked up. Keeping a person’s immigration papers. A crime.
So glad my mom and dad didn’t move my family to a cult in Albany. Where my 2 sisters and I would become sexually exploited by the same old gross cult leader. We would be impregnated. Made to abort. Used in child pornography. At least one branded near the vagina with the cult leaders intials. Starved. Given HPV. Asked to participate in a 3 way with our own sister on New Year’s Eve…
Thank God I had decent parents.
Damon Brink is not Keith Raniere.
I know it’s hard, but you really do have to separate out the specific criminals and their specific crimes, from everything, and everyone, else.
But that would quash your venge-quest, wouldn’t it?
Harsh your self-righteous buzz.
Throw cold water on your NXIVM hate-boner.
Sorry.
It had to be done.
Now go have a sandwich, with a nice side-salad.
Alanzo
—Now go have a sandwich, with a nice side-salad.
Follow your own advice fatso!
And do you think fatso eats salad ? He goes with a side of another sandwich + dessert + soda. 🏀
I notice that when it comes to attacking Alanzo, it is always the cheaper the commenter, the gaudier the patter. Alanzo is my friend, and as Bangkok knows, that makes him a man of elevated stature.
It is time to discuss the future of NXIVM.
What is left of this pathetic cult is led by the very capable Nicki Clyne, aka Mrs. Allison Mack.
Clyne has done a decent job in rallying her troops to the cause.
She has done so against considerable odds.
Odds like people knowing what NXIVM and DOS are all about.
If one goes on the Youtube home page for the Dossier Project, one sees that there are a considerable number of people still interested in her group.
Interested enough to watch her Zoom videos.
Well done, Nicki!
Let me show you what I mean.
Videos listed from newest to oldest.
Masters and slaves and cults, oh my! The Dossier women discuss cults!
324 views
8 days ago
Dossier Discusses Will Smith’s Oscar Performance
589 views Mar 30, 2022
The Good and the Bad of Commitment: Dossier Women Discuss
608 views Mar 22, 2022
The trials and tribulations of standing up
847 views Feb 4, 2022
DOS Women Discuss the Victimhood Narrative
1,126 views Nov 1, 2021
Believe Which Women? Women of DOS Discuss the Importance of Investigating All Sides
1,277 views Oct 1, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU9x_qKthVhvRZ8A513belw/videos
I believe NXIVM can survive in a more truncated form with a different name, and less focus on Keith Raniere and his insane kinkiness.
They could all still go to Silver Bay. This is the same as that b******* about losing their community. Okay so a couple of them are in jail. But they’re always bragging about how many thousands and thousands of people were involved in ESP. No one is stopping them from getting together and putting on little skits for each other and playing games and dancing around at Silver Bay. The remaining loyalists belief that they cannot function as they would like without Keith is exactly why people see them as a cult.
Agreed! The remaining proud dead-enders should rent a week at Silver Bay and celebrate Kieth and His teachings. They don’t need to rent the whole island, in fact they should welcome strangers gawking at them. Soon, those strangers will see the joy ex-Nxers have and will be intrigued and be eager to listen to His teachings then want to join the New Nxivm.
Great point – several points, actually..