Have a lot around and give a big cheer to Rick Ross's IT team.

Here are citations for Hitch's posts.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Data lost through a backup failure some months ago has now been restored to this message board.

This board is also now open for indexing by search engines such as Google.

Information posted on the board should soon be appearing in searches as this is a public resource.

The data recovered and restored included many individual posts and some threads.

Lost membership registratio was not restored. Old members not currently listed must register as new members again in order to become active members of the message board.

Oh. My. Gosh. Congratulations and a huge thank-you to everyone who must've worked so hard to get everything restored!

Hopefully, we'll start hearing from some of the people who've been missing for a while. Hitch? Hitch?

Hello all! Did somebody call my name? Been a-while, but am really glad to see all posts back. I had saved every single thing that I had ever posted and was going to join back up to slowly repost much of it. No longer necessary!

Ex-(mis)fortune-baby is my history with the $GI (formerly NSA) cult organization.

West Coast, hardcore Los Angeles area, old Santa Monica WCC HQ (even before the Ikeda Auditorium was added and that area was a barren parking lot) as the nucleus with which everything orbited - was where & how I grew up being manipulated & brainwashed by the (now) so-called "Value Creation Society." I even remember a time before the WCC existed and some LA area beachfront property (two or three story?) building was serving as the national HQ.

"Pioneer" members are departing their mortal coils by ever increasing numbers with each passing year. GMW (Williams-Sadanaga) recently among them: not only completely forgotten, but cast aside, vilified, and ignored in the end by Cult Master Ikeda (with much of the membership following suit). Shed no tears, however, for he was just a mini-cult-master and in the end merely reaped what he sowed.

Therein lies the true nature of the Gakkai Cult and the fate of those who strive to serve it. The message is there for all to see, if and/or when they are able to.

I've done YMD, gajokai (24 hour shift era), $oka-han (old term TCD, "Traffic Control Division," aka: blue-coats), brass band, GMW security detail, countless cult meetings/events big & small, been to the motherland as part of cult pilgrimages (tozan), and have even seen the man behind the curtain, the Ikeda-(pudge)-Meister multiple times.

I still know many $GI cult "members" and can read the "organisation" and its Borg-mental downloads like the back of my hand. It's a typical cult in every way in its playbook & tactics. A fascinating study in "CULT 101." Somebody should write a book.

- Hitch

The only down side is that the old IDs are still gone. For us to reach Hitch, he's going to have to come back on his own and set up a new ID :(

Look up, STAP, look up! Hitch at 12 o'clock!!

Hitch - so good to see you! We've missed you around here . . . you're one of my favorite "voices."

I think postings here have been lean because of a perceived instability; we were all burned when all of that data was lost. Hopefully, now that it's been restored (I can't even imagine how much work that was, and thanks to those who took care of that), more of the old crew will come back.

Some of us have kept busy on other sites (there's an sgiwhistleblowers sub on reddit, and I mentioned earlier that I'd started a taitenwisdom blog on weebly). The reddit venue has been the stronger of the two, so if there's any interest, just take a quick hop over there.

I suspect that there is a book or two out there . . . even though sgi has been our specific experience, it operates like every other cult out there.

(Hugs to Hitch)

If anyone ever wants to write a book, here are some tips:

Keep it quiet. Dont let anyone know.

Your editor and the publisher should keep things quiet.

Get legal advice.

Why?

Because if anyone lets slip on a blog that they're in the process of writing,
cruel and bullying comments will come their way and this can disrupt the
creative process.

One man who endured hard time under the thumb of a notoriously cruel guru, wrote

[forum.culteducation.com]

(quote)"You are so right about "Otherwise, if you make the mistake of running a personal blog and announcing your intention of someday writing a memoir about an oppressive guru, you may find your comments section swamped by guru loyalists who know how to press shame buttons installed in you during your time with the guru. They may not only 'astroturf' the comments section but their use of shame triggers may cripple the momentum needed to create and complete your much needed book."

"Well, I finished my book American Guru before the Andrew Cohen defenders got wind of it, but subsequently they have unleashed their "shame buttons" attack with a site devoted to astro-turfing and to shaming any critics, guru-talk.com, and also by ad hominem attacks posted as "reviews" on Amazon.

"I have written and posted a commentary on the sad phenomenon of former students who cannot leave the teacher in spite of years of evidence of serious and dangerous abuses. It is posted on Integral World.

"(unquote)

"Pioneer" members are departing their mortal coils by ever increasing numbers with each passing year. GMW (Williams-Sadanaga) recently among them: not only completely forgotten, but cast aside, vilified, and ignored in the end by Cult Master Ikeda (with much of the membership following suit). Shed no tears, however, for he was just a mini-cult-master and in the end merely reaped what he sowed.


(Glum)

A partial quote from Macauley's A Jacobite's Epitaph

"For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
"And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.

"For him I languished in a foreign clime,
"Grey-haired with sorrow in my manhood’s prime.."

I can't remember if I mentioned it here, but there were a lot of pioneer members in the Las Cruces/El Paso/Alamogordo area; all of them were Japanese women, of course. I realized that many of them were rapidly aging, and I thought it would be a wonderful thing for them to be able to tell their stories. Some of them had married kind and loving men, and they had had good lives. Others, not so much. At any rate, I thought it would be a relatively easy thing to pull together someone with audio/visual experience (lots of students in the area), film them and transcribe their stories into an accompanying book. Most of them were very modest and unassuming, but I thought I'd be able to get them to open up a bit if I had a friendly Japanese face with me, and if I could convince them that this would be a very special and encouraging legacy for them to leave for the younger people in the organization. It seemed that the younger folks never really knew about how many sacrifices these ladies made, and how they had pretty much given up everything they'd ever known to come to a new country all for the cause of spreading cousin rufus.

I talked with a couple of other members I thought would be able to help out and even spoke to a couple of local leaders. They all thought it was a great idea, especially once I mentioned that the target audience would be the YD; I hoped of course, that everyone would be interested, but the YD especially. Someone suggested that I should speak to someone at the Weird Tribune and, as luck would have it, I had a connection to the editor there. I contacted her and SHE thought it would be a great idea, but needed to talk it over with her boss. She emailed me back shortly after that, told me that while the org appreciated the suggestion, they already had such a series planned for WT. I was disappointed (and a little pissed) . . . that was in 2008 and, up until the time I left in 2013, I had never seen anything similar in any of their pubs.

I may despise sgi, but I really admired all of those ladies . . . I thought they deserved to be recognized for their efforts and sacrifices. Apparently not.

A key qualification for being a cult leader is ingratitude.

My private rule of thumb in IDing a rotten group:

Do all you can to examine and scrutinize the long term members --
not just the perky energetic welcoming community/recruiters -
they are in that group because they look good and have not been
too drained of their juices just yet.

Some groups may have an HQ with a modest pleasant guest dining room
while the facilities used by the leader and mucky mucks are luxuriously
appointed and no low rankers or perspective recruits are ever allowed
to see those.

Too many matching reports of unreciprocated loyalty

Too many matching reports of not being told up front and
candidly, exactly what commitment to the group and leader entails

Too many matching reports describing initial encounters with a
warm, fun, seemingly egalitarian community (all for one and one for all)
and ending up discovering it is a hierarchy rife with intrigue
and bitter, tired senior types too invested to cut losses and get
out.

Gakkai cult automaton borg-implants on display* for all to see and learn from:

David Witkowski has the GOLD version.
Arlen Vidal has the SILVER version.
And Alex Marcos has the BRONZE version.

[www.sgi-usa.org]

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place versions vary only by the degree of personality implant uptake. You can see it immediately at the very start of the clip when all three are shown. For specific details as to subtle differences, you may have to peruse the entire (for those that are able to stomach it) clip or (for those that aren't) key select portions.

I will also add, it doesn't matter what country ("x") the $GI-"x" is in. All implant algorithms have the same basic foundation/operating system, only slightly superficially tweaked to run in different countries. The above is the classic American version.

*Pay particular attention to the facial patterns/smiles (feigned "model" affection/happiness=expected, mandatory "high life condition"), tense body language (a reflection of ichinen=determination), number of highly specific/accurate Gakkai "gosho" (Ikeda "Sensei" published works page # references) uttered (a representation of one of the three pillars at the core of "faith, practice, & STUDY!), and the unique (odd) manner of speech pattern used (upper level in-house cult "leader" emulation/adoption/adaptation behaviour).

- Hitch

(Thanks for the welcome back, all!)