Sorry for the late reply.

Mainly berthing and place of work of SO members. I know the
headquarters are at Flag and other high level organizations.

The point I am trying to make in this post is that life in the
SO is not fundamentally different than life in a "normal" Scn
staff environment, although of course there will be differences
between any environment, like the size of the organization or
its closeness to top level of management.

Now I understand that this is more of a side issue compared to
what your original statement was. If I understand correctly,
your proposition was that abuses as related by ex-members who
were in the SO were often used to depict the condition of the
COS as a whole, while the public or even non-SO staff member of
lower organizatins may not even be aware that such abuses exist
at all.

I take it that by "SO ex-members" you really have in mind the
long-time, deeply involved, high level scieno, sort of. In this
sense, I understand the spirit of what you mean, and agree with
it. So, nothing of what follows is meant to challenge this view.
I only address the side-issue of the difference between a SO
staff member and a non-SO staff member.

To start with, I am not sure that the SO member does not have,
in addition to his one billion year contract, an other contract
with the organization with which he is working. I think he does.

In addition, I never saw anybody, SO staff or not, going
anywhere else than where he wanted to go. Actually, he had to be
"recruited" to join whatever organization. He had to be
convinced to go there, with nice pictures of Flag, the Ship,
Saint Hill, etc, even though he signed a SO contract.

I also am not aware of any difference between a normal staff
member and a SO staff member. Both have free and unlimited
access to services in exchange of their work. Both have free
housing/meal, some pocket money etc.

As for the RPF, is there any policy or directive saying it is
reserved for SO members?

In other words, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the one
billion year contract is more of a moral engagement contract
than a real one.

Someone in a religious order would have a very different life
from a Roman Catholic leading a mundane life. Your comparison
hold true between a staff member and a paying public, not really
between a SO staff and a non-SO staff.

Living quarters and places of work.

That's also my understanding, and it would apply to both SO
staff and normal staff. I lived in both environment, SO and
non-SO, and I never saw any difference in conditions of living
or of work.

Most of the time SO missionaries would be housed by the local
org managers. Missionaries were respected, if not feared. To my
knowledge, they were given the best accommodation the org could
provide them with.

Isn't that strange? If SO quarters and conditions of
living/working are so dreadful, why did they dislike being sent
off to a lower org as a missionary? Surely, the accommodation
the lower org provided them as a guess of honor would be better
than their daily rice and beans and other chain lockers ;-)

I think that their problem with missions comes from an other
source. They had to "get the show on the road" and "make things
go right". Maybe that's not so pleasant.

I don't think so. My experience of this is that they were housed
and fed by the local org.

As for the accounting of any penny a missionaries has to do,
according to Joe, this seems only fair. I also have to present
to my current employer (and no, it isn't OSA ;-) every bill of
the expenses made abroad if I want to be re-imbursed.

Again, if they are concerned for the conditions in which they
can raise their child in a lower org compared to a SO
environment, this would indicate that the SO environment is
better than the one of the lower org, isn't it? It would run
against the argument that the living/working conditions of the
SO are worst than those of the lower org.

Or do you mean to say that the SO environment offers them an
easier way of living, where everything is provided for them, and
that it would be more difficult for a SO member to find ways to
sustain himself than it would be for a non-SO member?

Again, I don't see why. Many staff members (non-SO and SO
members alike) often do what is referred to as "Moonlighting",
i.e. have occasional jobs on the outside to complement their
need. I always did, both in the local org and in the GO WW. Many
of my peers did the same, including many SO members from the GO.
Some of them even owned companies in the East Grinstead area.

I don't know. You and Joe said this happened. It might be. Are
the conditions different in the US than they are in Europe? In
Danemark, where I lived and worked with SO personnel too, I saw
more than a few pregnant women and more than a few babies (I
mention it in my story). They even had a Kindergarten for them,
with special staff whose job it was to manage the Kindergarten
and look after the children.

Joe said so too, but based himself on the fact that 'Directives
and documents regarding the "RPF" are Sea Org only issues and
they are not generally available outside of the confines of a
Sea Org org.' This says nothing about the RPF being a Sea Org
member only "privilege", only that existing documents are SO
only issues.

Of courses, RPFs may only exit in larger orgs, and larger orgs
may be considered as SO orgs. But this doesn't prevent, IMO, a
non-SO member to be sent in the RPF just as well.

RPF is an extreme, almost last-hope measure. I think that very
few people are assigned to it.

The only sign of RPF I ever saw was in Danemark, when I had to
temporary stay at the same place in which they lived. There were
about 2 or 5 people in it. They weren't locked in basements
neither tortured, as some people would like us to believe. They
could "blow" any time they wanted - and so did they, actually.

Is there any ex-members posting to this newsgroup who actually
experienced the RPF? Maybe. I just don't remember ever having
read about it. If so, what is the percentage between those who
did and those who didn't?

I was never sent to the RPF, even though I told straight in the
face of Jane kember's direct assistant: "I want to leave, please
route me out". I also don't know any of my friends who were sent
to the RPF, although many experienced difficult living and
working conditions - both as SO staff and non-SO staff.

Maybe. Joe says that Advanced organizations are SO only. I lived
and studied in the two main advanced SO organizations in Europe
(Danemark and Saint Hill). In addition, I lived and worked in
the two main administrative organizations in Europe (the Europe
and Africa Center in Copenhagen and the Guardian Office World
Wide), admittedly organizations akin to high level managements
entities such as RTC and CSI. I never saw anything in either of
these four high level organizations that would make a
significant difference between a SO staff and a normal staff. I
worked there without ever even considering the perspective of
signing a one billion year contract, and, although there were
admittedly many SO member in the GO, I wasn't the only one who
wasn't.

I missed the fact that you were referring to higher level
auditing (although I was not aware that sec checks was
considered as upper level as well ;-) My previous argument was
referring to normal auditing, so, I admit that my arguments did
not address adequately your point.

OK, that might be, but it seems that in this sentence you refer
to both staff or Sea Org staff. I would agree. If there is such
a scarcity, it would apply to both, and it would not be the
result of a disadvantage/advantage of SO staff versus normal
staff, nor the result of a willful calculation to exploit them.

I don't really know why you assume that promises of services are
seldom if ever fulfilled (apart from the scarcity of auditors).
There may be some real cases of abuses, and other cases of
imagined abuses. They also are thousands of satisfied (even if
deluded) customers. Customers may be pressured to take on the
next level, but I never saw that they didn't get the services
they paid for.

For the better or for worse? Most of the horror stories about
the COS are about that old as well. Nowadays, it seems that
critics have to moan and broad endlessly on a single dead women
who can't speak for herself anymore. Or on court cases that they
themselves provoked by posting copyrighted material and pushing
the COS buttons.

That's a good point, and I do hope it's the case. The purges
were amongst the worst thing the COS did, and the current COS
does not deserve the help of some of the bright individuals that
were expelled or who left as a result. The Freezone is probably
the best hope for whatever good there may be in the tech to
survive and spread around.

Maybe for the availability of auditors. But for training and
co-auditing, I don't see why the situation would be any
different.

And, other than the uniforms, how would that translate
concretely?

I think Sea Org members are staffer of a specific org too,
although I am not quite sure.

I don't know. Maybe someone who has the data could post them.

And don't forget that the RPF is always voluntary. Not in the
sense that someone would volunteer to go there, of course, but
in the sense that no one is physically coerced into it. It's all
part of the general agreement (kind of). In the army, if you do
something that the sergeant doesn't like, you are sent to the
gaol or made to carry heavy bags of stones for hours. This can
be arbitrary too. If you don't like it, you can always resign
from the army (not always, though).

He presented them as an elite. But was it really so? I don't
think so. What were the tests to be passed in order to become a
Sea Org member? Any pre-selection? Any conditions? I don't
remember any. All you had to do was to sign the one billion
years contract. Why would that make them an elite?

I question whether there is such a difference between a SO staff
and a normal staff. I don't think so. There is a difference, but
not that big. I think that those, SO ex-members and non-SO
ex-members alike, who present their experiences in such a
dreadful way are doing so because they hold a grudge against
their former group, or for whatever other reasons. The abuses
may be real, but grossly exaggerated and exploited to call on an
emotional reaction and create a distorted picture of the COS as
a whole.

Many Scn ex-members who were not in the SO also come up with
horror stories, Ex-Moonists come up with horror stories, ex-nuns
come up with horror stories, ex-husband and ex-wife come up with
horror stories. I guess that probably about ex-anything may come
up with horror stories.

OTOH, many who were in the SO don't make such a ram dam about
it. Take David Mayo, for example. He also was a SO member in a
SO environment, if it were. Some of the current stories being
told comes from him (running around a tree, etc). Yet, he
recounted them as objectively as he could, and does not engage
in endless moaning about these incidents. I have no problem with
his attitude whatsoever. He brings a balance in his criticism
and does not try to use the incidents he reports to paint an
overly black pictures of the COS at large. He does not try to
picture the COS as an organization locking people in the
basement or torturing them in the RPF, pushing people to suicide
or entrenching themselves in armed camps. The same goes for many
other SO ex-members and non-SO ex-members who have at heart to
be accurate in their description and who object to critic's
abuses with the same strength they do about abuses from the COS.

A few exceptions apart, most of these more moderate ex-members
do not post in this NG for good reasons. When they do, it's
often short lived. What's the use of trying to convince people
who are only interested of having villains they can righteously
fight?

Bernie
[p/m]