The incident would have been no more memorable than any other teenage break-up (the end of the world at the time, barely a memory by the time you’re thirty) if it weren’t for the bizarre, sinister strangeness of it all. I am grateful that it inoculated me to Hubbard’s con and other nonsense I would encounter. I’m also glad I found out why it had happened and hold no grudge against Jim, he didn’t have my family to fall back on, so add him to the long list of Hubbard’s victims.

Antactica? Or maybe the Falklands, given their disputed status, is a place that won’t try tp extradite someone because its unclear who has to approve the extradition.

I also wonder about this: Is there a fear that putting one of these “nervous, tongue-tied puppets” on camera might result in them having an on-camera meltdown and imploring the reporter, staff and audience to help them?

I liked Oppenheimer’s review also, and his The Nation review of just Urban’s and Reitman’s books I thought was one of the best of those two books.

I would like to go meet Oppenheimer and do a show and tell to him, of the Hubbard corpus, he seems like long range, like in 10-20 years, one who might have something interesting to say about Scientology in world religion history, if he keeps up his reading.

We really don’t have any world religion scholars, who even yet care to delve deeply into Scientology and put it in world history of religion context.

Like no Oxford Univ or Cambridge Univ world religion scholars.

There’s been a whole lot more interesting things in world religion history.

Hubbard’s “church” aspects, the wackiest of those church aspects, put in world religion context, is something all it’s own, a whole other level of discussion not even approached by any of the first 60 or so writings about Scientology and Hubbard.

Oppenheimer is young, we’ll see how he develops as an academic of religion, or not.

Careers in world religion, and the mystical group stuff, for academics, doesn’t necessarily even draw the interest of students today.

I think Wright’s book is so far overwwhelmingly the best book in Hubbard/Dianetics/Scientology’s 60 years history. It’s readable, and takes the reader through all the important points.

Back to Oppenheimer, Tony’s of course correct in his criticism of Oppenheimer, but when I as one who was totally taken in by the Hubbard bureaucracy system (the behind the scenes voluminously detailed rules and regulations and options to resiliently change directions that Hubbard gives the admin people/leaders/staff) I see how Scientology could even adapt to this whole 30 year Miscavige abusive era. And due to the fact that the green volumes and much of the Hubbard bureaucracy rules are there in the public domain, there’s always the option to do the long term changes, once Miscavige is gone.

There are so many layers of bureaucracy options they movement has, were there people in the top positions to even be allowed to read and think of those options, and those options are the ones that could lead Scientology to internally reform, and there’s only a few people even discussing what I’ve been bringing up for years.

It will take decades, to have this whole controversial decades long era of crazy crap to be washed out, for the major reform options to be taken.

The staff writings by Hubbard, once you have a small group that is operating on the staff writings narrative, they’ll have their own history of their own, particularly the fads of which Hubbard staff policies one does NOT emphasize, which is a whole history I witnessed firsthand even during the 27 years I was in the movement.

The totalitarian big rules that keep the big problems, like the excommunication/disconnection rule, in place, are the biggest movement guarantees to keeping the group within the nets of other rules.

It needs to be laid out, because the Oppenheimers, the people at least willing to delve into the staff rules that govern the staff that to Oppenheimer look so innocently like other normal citizens in other groups, to even the apologist scholars like Melton, Melton knows and thinks the draconian totalitarian rules are what keeps the movement contained in its ever repeating controversies.

There’s no theologians even discussing the reform of the key staff church policies that need to be reformed.

Hubbard did leave a “think tank” and he gave that think tank a tiny tiny window of freedom to tweak the Hubbard rules.

If Oppenheimer gets up to reading the Command Channels booklet, and gets the bug to actually learn the top two councils of the church of Scientology, and learn the history of the top management boeies that led up to Hubbard’s final administrative groupings, then good.

We actually don’t have anyone asking, us people like me, no one asks me about the Hubbard final bureaucratic setups. And Wright made a tiny error, in the first part of his book, about the top management councils of the movement.

Like Tony’s said, the details make his head creak.

Well, that’s for dull theologian types to write, and then have journalists and good writers read the theologian’s writings, and then simplify and put these points into context.

And then world religion history experts, the old 70 year old career world religion smarties at Oxford, might then, someday take note of this crazy Scientology crap, and put Scientology into some of the bigger history religion patterns.

The big questions, like will Scientology survive as a religion, and how, will play out over the next 50 years.

Career religion observers, I am sure, will appreciate Wright’s book.

And we’ll see what Oppenheimer does later on in his career, as he keeps watch on Scientology, over the decades. Glad he’s at Yale, since it’s those types of institutions that have the smart cookies to rake an Oppenheimer over the coals on his superficialness.

This is such a brilliant summation and interpretation of Hubbard, so far, and 3 or 4 major long thought general impressions and conclusions about Hubbard, which have been long the conclusion about hubbard, are even more better laid out, by Wright, compared to past authors. (The quoting of the best reviews by the best smartest cookie early 1950’s observers by Wright, reminds us what the early smart cookies in society thought of Hubbard and Dianetics, and why.)

I’m really impressed. This books is beyond what I expected. It’s based on a lot of other writers’ hard won accumulated reporting and research, but being such a great writer, Wright summarizes the most important points, and the narrative of the story is such an engrossing pleasure to read.

The deceased Martin Gardner would wholeheartedly approve of,this book. And I hope the New York Review of Books finds a reviewer who can do Wright’s book justice, and now with Urban’s and Janet’s books, my hope for 2013 is the NYRB reviewer who has at least read the whole long list of books now, the Carnegie Mellon Univ “Secret Library of Scientology” list, and the ones omitted, including Andrew Morton’s book on Cruise.

I wish Martin Gardner were alive, to review Wright’s, Janet’s and Hugh’s books in the New York Review of Books.

Oh well, I hope they find someone.

I wonder if Robert Jay Lifton could do a review!

Wright’s book is my all time favorite book on Hubbard, so far.

Neither Iran nor North Korea are good candidates. Sure, they don’t have an extradition treaty. But the Iranians would immediately arrest him as an American spy. Not sure what the North Koreans would do. But remember that in addition to being insane and a major homophobe, Miscavige is also a racist and a xenophobe as well. He wouldn’t move anywhere the locals didn’t have a reasonable command of English.