Its finally here! On Wednesday, 2nd November Cult Information and Family Support (CIFS) held its 2011 conference in Parliament House, Canberra. The topic of the conference was Cults in Australia: Facing the Realities. Speakers at the conference came from a variety of backgrounds including politicians, lawyers, psychologists, cult councillors, journalists, government officials, and of course, cult victims. http://www.cifs.org.au/conference2011.php Without further ado, here are the videos! Opening Remarks:A welcoming from Peter Flinn from CIFS victoria, and an address by Sue Boyce, Liberal Senator. Dr Stephen Mutch (PhD, LLB (UNSW):Honorary Fellow, dept of modern history, politics and international relations, Macquarie University. His presentation is entitled 'Cults and public policy: protecting the victims of cultic abuse in Australia' Raphael Aron:Director, Cult counselling AUstralia and Author. His presentation is entitled 'The destructive illusion of the cult family: The challenges of Effective exit counselling' Michael Bachelard:Australian investigative journalist and author. His presentation is entitled 'Reporting on cults: Rewards and punishments' Morning Q&A Session:Our three morning speakers answer a few questions from the audience After this our morning session was finished. Due to strange scheduling arrangements we then needed to proceed from Old Parliament House to New Parliament House. Security at New Parliament House sure is tight, I had to surrender my electronics and take my shoes off to get into the House of Representatives! All this security ensured there was no OSA shenanigans though. Nick Xenophon and Patrick McGorry:Everyones favourite Senator provided some opening remarks for the afternoon session. This was then followed by an address by Professor Patrick McGorry, who as you will probably know was Australian of the Year 2010, is a a mental health expert, and is regarded by Scientology as one of the top SP's in Australia! Georges Fenech:One of the key speakers, Georges Fenech is president of MIVILUDES - The Interministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combatting Cultic Deviances. His presentation is entitled 'The French system for monitoring & struggling against sectarian deviations'. Georges speaks in French, and is translated by his interpreter, Valerie Midday Q&A:At this point there was another short Q&A session, in this Nick Xenophon and Georges Fenech answer some questions. We also have a surprise address from Stephen Pallaras, QC who is the DPP for South Australia! Afternoon Session 2 Tom Sackville:Tom Sackville from the UK is president of FECRIS - The European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Sects or Cults. His presentation was entitled 'The curious refusal of the british political establishment to do anything to counter the cult threat'. Unfortuantely we can't show the video of Tom for reasons unknown I believe a transcript is still available though, on the CIFS website. Paul Schofield:I am sure you all know Paul, aka Scooter on ESMB. His story is heartbreaking as usual. Unfortunately the audio is not very good for Pauls presentation, just turn the volume up and concentrate! Nathan Zamprogno:Nathan tells his personal story of how he lost his wife to a cult. His story is truly horrifying and a reminder that minor cults no-one has heard of can still do serious damage. John McAlpin:Originally this presentation on the Exclusive Brethren was to be done by Warren McAlpin, but due to complex and unnamed reasons he was not able to make it (take a guess why). John fills his place instead with his own history inside the Exclusive Brethren cult. Closing Remarks:After a long day we have some closing remarks from Senator Penny Wright (Greens), and Senator Sue Boyce (Liberal), as well as Peter Flinn from CIFS. And thats it! A massive over 4 hours of high quality cult-busting reference material! I would like to stress what an awesome win this is. These are excellent presentations and together form a well rounded explosive mix of cult-busting. As Steven Pallaras, QC, DPP SA said, 'We have now woken up, and we are coming after you [cults]'. Be afraid Scientology, be very afraid. Hope you enjoy. EDIT: And here is a youtube playlist - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0B76E2F52B62FD00
/APPLAUSE Wow... I can finally stop jonesing for the next installment of SPTimes to round out my week! Thank you OP & Well Done!
OMG Stolez mah thunder! Here is the official playlist - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0B76E2F52B62FD00 BTW your playlist is missing Pauls speech!
Zhent, Tony Ortega should be 'pooned about this epic conference program. This is "Runnin' Scared" material par excellence! If you don't do it, I will!
Please do! Harpoon it all over the place. BTW full transcripts of all the speeches will eventually be available on the CIFS website. If you would to help out with this effort please go ahead! And once again, for anyone serious about cult-busting this is MUST-SEE REFERENCE MATERIAL, there is very important information in the speeches on all sorts of topics, including lobbying politicians/government to take action.
A done deal for Tony! Thank you for news on the transcripts! This is an Epic Week! Childs and Tobin and now this!!! EPIC!!! EDIT: I convinced Tony that the videos are not "speeches" (he was reluctant) but rather "reports." I recommended Popcorn and kickbacks to get through all the program. Thanks again, Zhent. This is marvelous material!
Thanks! Awesomeness is off the scale! And released on the day of the 33rd anniversary of the Jonestown massacre by the Jim Jones People's Temple cult.
We're still waiting on him to do his promised Hugh Urban book review, and he's been doing lots of regular coverage pieces as of late on the bishops council new "religious liberty" politics wrangling shenanigans.
I like this, from Dr.Stephen Mutch (centre of pic): “... we suffer under the restraint of being aprehensive about being attacked through the legal system and we've got to fight against these sorts of laws that relate to diversity but they are just mistaking the whole idea of relgious freedom. The religious vilification is a very dangerous ...[inaudible]... we don't have it in New South Wales thankfully. There have been a few problems with it in Victoria. But it all goes back to.... unfortunately.. the Americans have some very simplistic views derived from their first amendment that has given rise to all sorts of ridiculous court cases, but it's going back and reinfecting Europe. That's why I'm so grateful to have the French here, trying to do something about it, to define religious freedom in a sophisticated manner rather than this simplistic notion of equating a sort of individual right to freedom with a group right. And so we have all these simplistic responses, and that's political correctness gone mad. ”
If it was translated correctly France's law about psychological fraud that Belgium also now has will be favourably adopted by the European courts?
The mic was off for Paul so the audio just for him is an awful room mic :/ Also left to use the room mic were two ex-scientologist women Peggy and Helen, and because of the bad audio I didn't catch their last names. If someone knows their full names we'd love you to reply here please so they can be added to the Big List who have spoken out.
Most of the audio came from my handheld audio recorder (which was occasionally bumped and produced noise). The battery died for Paul's speech. The rooms microphone/sound system was not recorded (possibly it would of been very expensive to tap into it?), all other audio including room questions came from the 2 inbuilt camera microphones. I know Peggy's last name, not sure she wants her last name public record, I note she is not on the big-list.
Sounds about right. But is she an ex-scientologist? I don't remember hearing that at the conference. Anonymous beats me to it by 30 seconds Peggy, on the other hand, is most definitely an ex-scientologist with a story to tell. I have asked her if she will go on the Big-Ex-list.
Well a certain Wise Beard Man is coming to Australia soon, maybe she could make use of that opportunity for better audio
A search of the CIFS website reveals these transcripts: Mr Peter Flinn: http://www.cifs.org.au/welcome.php Georges Fenech: http://www.cifs.org.au/freedoms.php Mr Raphael Aron: http://www.cifs.org.au/illusion.php Dr Stephen Mutch: http://www.cifs.org.au/protecting.php Mr Michael Bachelard: http://www.cifs.org.au/fateful.php Mr Paul Schofield: http://www.cifs.org.au/scistory.php Mr John McAlpin: http://www.cifs.org.au/suddenly.php A Conference Summary: http://www.cifs.org.au/conference2011.php One Post-Conference news article: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/create-special-laws-for-cults-dpp/story-e6frea6u-1226184076536 win after win after win
That is still a work in progress. Tom Sackville, of FECRIS said that FECRIS will need to lobby in Europe to make it happen. This is the beginning of a long struggle to initiate laws which distinguish religious freedom from the right to abuse others psychologically. A lot of what needs to change according to most people at the conference was a general attitude to religious freedom as being freedom from criticism. The difficulty is is distinguishing the freedom of belief from the use of those beliefs to harm others. I don't know what the answer is, but I think there are certain beliefs, like PTS-SP, whose propagation not only leads to harm like disconnection, but itself constitutes harm. A person with a mindset of a hardcore Scientologist suffers from holding these beliefs themselves. What quality of life is there for a person who holds the belief that there are groups of evil psychs controlling the universe? A carrier of these ideas can cause suffering to their disconnected family, but doesn't believing such a horrid fantasy itself constitute harm?
BUMP Who here is/was tough enough to watch 4 hours of cult busting? BTW, to ensure this bump has some useful content, Tom Sackville's speech transcript has been uploaded since the last post. Tom's video is not available and this transcript is the only way to see the content of his speech, which is most excellent. Tom is an ex-politician UK and President of FECRIS. http://www.cifs.org.au/opportunity.php
Tom's speech was a highlight for me at the Conference - his tips on handling politicians and public servants were incredibly insightfull. My only complaint is that some of his delightful humour fails to make it onto the written page. Damn shame we don't have a video of him, as he was fantastic.
'Cults in Australia' - CIFS 2011 Conference - FULL VIDEOS From my perspectives, one of the greatest threads of the year! Thank you, Zhent! I <3 it!
