2/23/24: Ukraine War 2 Year Anniversary, Inside Scientology With Former Member, Gateway To Statesmanship Book

Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.

Coverage that is possible.

If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Joining us now is Tim Mack, live from Kiev. He's the founder of The counter Offensive, which is a news organization specifically dedicated and focusing for what's going on inside of Ukraine. It's good to see you, Tim, Great to see you, absolutely so.

Tim.

You're joining us for the two year anniversary of the war in Ukraine of the Russian invasion. You've done some fantastic work at the counter Offensive. There's a link down in the description. We encourage everybody to go and to support it. Just to tell us a little bit about the actual operations that were happening to mark this occasion.

Yeah, So the battle is a battle called the Battle of Antonov Airfield, and what happened there was, in the first seventy two hours of the full scale invasion, the Russia's Russia's most elite airborne units landed at this airfield trying to secure it so that large cargo planes come in with armored vehicles and thousands of other Russian soldiers

So tim one of the things that you've been focusing on from drawing from the battle, then, is then the next two years or so of the war. Why was that battle so foundational to kind of like the lore of the Ukrainian military, its ability to push back those Russian forces, and how does it square with some of the things that you are seeing on the ground today.

Well, it's set the stage and the conditions for the whole war after that that Russia was not able to establish that quick lightning strike seventy two hour occupation of Kiev, and they were ultimately driven out of the Kiev region and later out of the Harki region in the east. So the battle lines that we see drawn now are very much the results of this first seventy two hours

Tim how do we relate this battled some of the major discussions happening here in Washington right now around aid to Ukraine. I'm curious to somebody who's actually there what you can tell us about some of the morale stories that have come forward, recruitment debates inside the Ukrainian government about mobilization the new commander, How does that fit with what we're seeing right now?

Yeah, I mean I have to say that the morale in Kiev and other parts in the country are really quite low. You know, from the American perspective, America has enjoyed a lot of support from Ukrainians and a lot of thankfulness from Ukrainians over the last two years.

But I think at this.

Point there is a concern in Kiev that the tide of war might be turning against them, and this is one of those moments where a major American strategic victory might turn into a major American strategic defeat, simply because it feels from the perspective a lot of Ukrainians that the United States hasn't kind of kept up there under the deal and supported them when they need them the most.

Interesting, Yeah, and you mentioned their hold their territory and victory. Just from your conversation with people in Ukraine, what does victory look like?

You ask one hundred people, you get one hundred different answers. I think to some it could mean the continuance of democracy and the ability for free people that choose who their political leaders are in Ukraine. For others, it could be a territorial issue, the re establishment of Ukrainian holdings

Well.

I appreciate your perspective. It's rare to actually get somebody who's on the ground there. I encourage everybody to go and read Tim The counter Offensive. There's a link down in the description. We encourage everyone to go subscribe. Appreciate you joining us, sir, Thank you.

Welcome to Breaking Points Beyond the Headlines. My name is James Lee. Over the years, you might have heard a little or a lot about the Church of Scientology. It's high profile association with Hollywood A listers like Tom Cruise and John Travolta have long lent the institution a veneer of glamour and legitimacy. However, the recent sexual assault conviction against Danny Masterson, an active member of the church, and a lawsuit filed by former member Leah Ramini against the church,

Seventy five million years ago, the galaxy was ruled by a tyrant named Zeno. One day, Zanu rounded up various wrong dudes and imprisoned them in volcanoes on Earth, which was then called Tigiak. This is the world according to church founder l.

Ron Hubbard.

Hydrogen bombs were dropped on them. Then their spirits, called thetans, were trapped in humans. That is the cause of all our sufferings. Only through scientology can our theatans be clear.

Wow, I think we're gonna need some expert help to unpack all of that. So joining us today on Breaking Points is a former scientologist and host of Growing Up in Scientology on YouTube, Aaron Smith Levin.

Welcome, thanks for having me.

Okay, so I just played for the audience a little clip of l.

Ron Hubbard.

He's talking about Xenu spirits and exercising thetans. Can you break down for us in a simple term as possible, what is the core teachings and practices of scientology.

I'll do my best.

The core teachings and practices do actually change as someone goes up the levels in scientology. There's levels that are non confidential, and at the higher end there's levels that are confidential. So the thing about Xenu and the body Thetans, most scientologists don't actually know about that.

Believe it or not.

So the most fair and charitable description that I can give you for what scientologists believe. All scientologists believe, even at the lowest level, is they believe that everyone here on Earth is an immortal spiritual being. Their word for that is the Ten. People say it sounds like Satan with a lisp, but it's just Thetan. Scientologists don't believe in a heaven or a hell. They just believe that Thetan's just continue.

To exist forever.

Uh, that this body is just sort of a temporary vessel when when your body dies, you just pick up another body and live lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

Now there's another aspect to this.

Which is that, uh, they believe Earth is actually a prison planet, and that the Thetans who are sort of sentenced to live lifetime after lifetime here on Earth are here because they've kind of been banished here as as.

A punishment sort of.

That this is quite literally a prison and that normally a Thetan in native state that wasn't in this prison planet would have full and total recall of all their previous lives, because you know, a Thetan just exists forever, and that the reason we only remember one lifetime at a time is that every time we die, we as Thetans, are sort of pre programmed as a part of our prison sentence to report into these these stations called the between lives implant stations that wipe our memories but from

I know it sounds a lot like a blend between science fiction and religion, a little bit of that coming together.

That's right now.

You might go, okay with that fundamental belief system, what is scientology actually doing with that belief system? Well, scientology has a one on one form of counseling therapy. They call it auditing, and scientologists believe that with enough auditing you can regain enough of your spiritual awareness and power to skip to bypass these between lives implant stations, and to regain your ability to.

Have a total recall of your previous lives.

And that the goal of scientology is to get enough people into scientology, and that one scientologists succeed in getting enough at least half of the population of Earth up through these levels and unplugging them from the matrix. Basically, that we will, instead of reincarnating to Earth, will reincarnate to the next planet and get the cycle started on the next planet.

They call it Target two.

Now, what's crazy is that like ninety percent of scientologists in the world don't know anything about the Xenu story. They've never heard the word body, the ten. They don't know anything about that part of it. They only know about your own reactive mind and trying to get rid of your your own reactive mind. So I don't know that that's the three minute elevator pitch for Scientology.

I know this this can also be a long answer too, but can you give the viewers a little bit of the skinny on your journey in and out of scientology, when you joined, when it is and why that you've left, and a little bit about the in between and also the post scientology experience.

Sure.

So I was four years old when my mom got involved in Scientology. She was introduced by a friend of hers, which is how most people get into Scientology. Some friend introduces them.

So I was four.

Some of my earliest memories in life is just being in the Scientology organization in downtown Philadelphia with you know, a whole bunch of other Scientology kids in the nursery there.

I lived a relatively My mom joined staff.

So instead of being what Scientology would call a public scientologist, that's someone who pays to do Scientology courses or who pays to receive Scientology auditing, which, by the way, auditing costs between two hundred to five hundred dollars per hour. It's not cheap. So she joined staff. That means you work for Scientology. It's like your day job, and the Scientology courses and auditing that you get you don't.

Have to pay for them. So that's why a lot of people joined staff.

So as a kid, I lived a relatively normal life until about twelve years old. I went to public school and everything like that. When I was twelve, my mom took me and my brother, my stepbrother, my step sister, two of her friends kids pulled us all out of school and we all started working full time for Scientology in Philadelphia, and then we moved down to Clearwater, Florida to do Scientology training down there. So you know, from the age of twelve to twenty six, I worked full

That's like their most dedicated core of staff members. You're in.

If you're in the Sea Org, it's not just your day job, it's your entire existence. It's twenty four seven, three sixty five. It's all you do. You don't own property, you don't you don't own. You can only have a relationship with other Sea Org members have children in the Sea Org. Such as their dedication to the cause. So after a certain amount of years, I met my wife and got married in the Sea Organization.

After a certain number of years, we.

Were just a little fed up with kind of how unfulfilling and abuse of the experience of working in the Sea York was so we got pregnant, knowing well that we would have.

To leave the Sea Organization.

So we left the Sea Org because we're having a baby, but we were still public scientologists for a while. That started to change in two thousand and nine when the Tampa Bay Times back then it was the Saint Pete Times published a series of interviews with very high ranking former Sea Org executives, people who had been famous personalities in scientology. These people had not only left the Sea Organization, but had left scientology altogether and were speaking out for

And.

It quickly became clear to me that it was pretty much all lies.

And part of the tail end of that path for me had to do with I mentioned earlier that there's non confidential levels and there's confidential levels.

Well there's levels even above the confidential levels.

They're so secret, they're so confidential they've never been released yet, they're.

Still in the vault.

It's like the magic right, and it's sort of the carrot that gets dangled in front of the faces of Scientology says guys, we need to work a little bit harder, we need to donate a little bit more money, because l Ron Hubbard said, these unreleased levels can't be released until Scientology reaches certain expansion benchmarks, so we just.

Need to try a little bit harder.

Well, once I found out from people who I knew would actually know that there ain't no such thing as these upper confidential levels. L Ron Hubbard did not leave behind anything. They looked everywhere, They looked through all of his papers and his files and his records and his cabinets, and there ain't nothing.

I was like, someone should have told me that twenty five years ago. I'm ready to get out of my life before I do.

Want to get into the controversy a little bit that you're alluding to this control type of thing, But I didn't want to ask you what do things people just in the world, What do we get wrong about scientology? Because I'm certain there has to be some positive aspects to scientology or else no one would join.

Let me answer two different ways.

I think one thing that people would get wrong about stology is just not truly understanding that most scientologists have never heard that.

Uh.

Most scientologists don't do not know anything about the Zen New story or the Body Thintan story. Scientologists know everything that I explained early on about the Between Lives, implant stations and the prison planet, and you know, the Galactic Federation and all sorts of stuff. They've just never heard the Xen New story. So if you've seen South Park, you know more about scientology than most scientologists do.

Uh.

And to answer the question the other way, at the lowest introductory levels, scientology is actually very practical, sort of helpful in like a self helpy, uh, personal coach, guru motivation Tony Robbins, Zish Grant cardone who just happens to be a scientologist. You know, uh, we we can, you can, you can fix all your problems just hustle a little harder, pull yourself up.

By your bootstraps. People, people who end u joining Scientologic, they don't think they're joining a cult.

And at the very lowest levels, scientology doesn't feel like a cult. It feels self empowering. It's giving you a positive message. You can you can overcome any obstacle, you can solve any problem. You are all powerful negatively. All you need is the right tools, and for nine ninety nine.

We can give you those tools. So but but.

Honestly, I wonder, I mean, the question was what most people get wrong about scientology?

I wonder how many people actually understand that.

On the flip side of that, what is so? If there's all these good things about scientology, it's practical, gives you these kind of self help tools. What's the worst part? Why do people like why you? You said you were driven to leave because of certain things that you saw? Is the Is it the secrecy? Is it the control they exert over people's lives seemingly? Is it the leadership? Is it? David Misscabbage corruption? What's your opinion on what? Why where does scientology go wrong?

In my personal opinion, the easiest answer to the question is where it just overtly goes out of its way to destroy families, the family unit, because scientology has this belief like we're all just basically sixty some trillion year old beings. They have this belief like if you have a child, that's not really your child, it's just your body gave birth to that body, but you're a Thetan and that body is animated by a Thetan, and Thetans

So this, this.

Belief completely minimizes the value of familial relationships, and scientology will demand that people sever all ties with anyone in their life who is negative about scientology, and it doesn't matter if that's your mom, dad, you know, spouse, brother, sisters, son, or daughter. To me, that is where scientology gets really

The only thing that.

Could possibly have any value in this lifetime is helping scientology expand and get more people into Scientology and up Scientology bridge to total freedom those that whole construct leads to just financial decimation of Scientologists. Now, when I mentioned before that the experience working in the sea or just got to the point where it was not fulfilling and it was abusive. El Ron Hubbard created this management system where he says there is no natural, explainable reason why

Out who is it that's sabotage in the organization.

Now, the problem is you can never point the finger up. You can only ever point the finger down. So it's the lower level staff members that are constantly just being harassed and interrogated and punished for the fact that more new people aren't coming into Scientology.

When the reality is the people.

At the lower levels of the organization have absolutely no control over the reason why Scientology is shrinking. You know, they have absolutely no control over it, and so the experience of working for Scientology everyone is just always pointing fingers at each other and witch hunts all the time, and it's just exhausting.

Yeah, I want to pivot to talking a little bit about the work that I think this ties in the work that you do today. So you live stream almost every day, I think every day or almost every day, you have conversations with other people about Scientology. So I'm wondering, what is your goal. Is it to get people out of Scientology? Is it bringing attention? Is it pressuring the government or the irs to remove its taxes?

M status?

What's your motivation?

It's definitely all of those things.

Sometimes on my channel I will say fundamentally, I'm simply motivated by pure revenge and if I can do as much good in the process. But success is the best revenge. And so I define success as making sure that former scientologists, who have their their own stories that highlight how abusive and destructive scientologists policies and practices are, that all of those voices can and can get as big of a reach, as far as a reach, and be heard as loudly

You mentioned earlier that scientology is on the decline. So what I'm wondering is what do you think is the outlook for scientology over the next few years to a decade. Is this something that we need to actively pay attention to or is it going to die out on its own?

Just let things play out.

Where do you see things going?

Yeah, interestingly enough, at a little bit of the both of what you said there, it.

Is dying out on its own.

I do think it still deserves to have attention paid to it, and it deserves to have its the speed of its demise accelerated. I certainly enjoy contributing to the acceleration of that demise. Now, practically speaking, I don't think Scientology ever ceases to exist unless you succeed in getting its tax exemption taken away. It already has its tax exemption taken away once before the IRS determined that Elvern Hubbard was personally in rich himself from Scientology, and it

In bringing the IRS to its needs.

It is my hope that sort of what we're doing here with SPTV and a whole bunch of other activists who are doing similar things who've never had anything to do with Scientology, that we will eventually succeed in getting enough grassroots support for revoking Scientology's tax exempt status that members of Congress will take it up as a popular cause, and that eventually, I hope, within the next ten years, we will succeed in getting Scientology's tax.

Exem status revoked.

Even if Scientology keeps its tax exempt status, its membership will continue to decline. But the problem with having this this tax exemption is because it has a special type of religious tax exemption that protects it in the courts. Like if you sue Scientology and you try to get the judge to look at a particular policy letter in Scientology, the judge will go, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's religious scripture. I'm not even allowed to pass to give an opinion

Not have a payroll.

All of their staff members are considered volunteers. They don't have to pay any of them, and even the ones they do have make like, you know, fifty bucks a week or less. So Scientology probably makes more interest on its cash reserves than it costs to keep all the organizations in the world open. Electric and water is the only expenses Scientology has. So they will continue to exist as an entity as long as they have tax exemption.

And that's why I think getting that tax exemption revoked.

Is a worthy cause, even if their membership will continue to dwindle on its own. There's less than thirty thousand members in the entire world. I mean, it's probably closer to twenty thousand at this point.

All right, I think we have there's actually probably a lot more than we have time for today, So Erin, I want to give you an opportunity to tell people where they can find you find more of what you do, what you're talking about, whether it's on YouTube or other platforms.

Growing up in scientology on YouTube is where I focus all of my efforts. I've got socials and stuff, but you know, growing up in scientology on YouTube is my central thing.

Everyone can just find me there, all.

Right, awesome, We'll link down below and everybody go follow. Erin really appreciate your time today, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

If you'd like to learn more about the growing grassroots protest movement against scientology, I recently joined some of the protesters on Hollywood Boulevard to do some on the ground and behind the scenes reporting. The video is live over on my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with James Lee. Hit on over. Check that out, give me a follow. The link will be in the description below. As always, thank you so much for watching Breaking Points, and I appreciate your time today.

Joining me is My good friend is Johnny Burka.

He's the president and CEO of ISI, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

But for our purposes.

He is the author of a brand new book that we have here in front of us. Gateway to Statesmanship is the selections from Xenophon to Churchhill has been edited with an intro by you, Johnny.

So it's great to see you, my friend. Thank you jn Thanks for having me.

Saga.

All right, So why did you decide to assemble this book? What is the purpose behind a book about statesman? As if there hasn't been a million already?

Why this is It's pretty simple, but you say there's been a million. But in America we have this genre of self help books for entrepreneurs. There's a million of them, Peter Chiel zero to one, Jim Collins good to great, but nothing really comparable exists for statesmen. We have a

So who are some of the people that are included in here?

You have Xenophon to Churchill, So there's a lot of people in between that, so give us a taste of some of the people we're pulling from.

Absolutely, so in the ancient world, I have Han Fei, who's any Chinese legalist in India. I have Catilia who wrote a book the Arthur Shastra, which I've included selections from. And then in the Middle Ages, I have Goppitis's letters to Justinian the Great. I have some Thomas Aquinas in there, and of course as we get to the Renaissance, we have Machiavelli, Thomas Moore, and Erasmus. And then I brought the tradition up to date and included some Churchill and de gaul and Theodore Roosevelt.

I'm a big Degall fan.

May maybe controversial, but I think he was a very very interesting leader. So if we're going to look through the book and where can consider this, were great statesmen made by the moment?

Did they rely on a lot of previous of Churchill?

For example, it's very well read, probably could be quote by many accounts. I could quote Roman poetry off the top of his head. I don't think Degall was as educated as him per se. Roosevelt certainly, you know he was of a patrician class, but he was more of an instinctual type of leader.

So what is it do you have to read self help advice?

Like?

Do you need a book like this?

Do?

Some do? Some don't?

And why do we not seem to have statesmans as many statesmen today as we did back in the past.

Yeah, So, really, a great statesman arises when two things intersect. Virtue on one hand, that's you know, the moral, the intellectual qualities, but on the other hand, fortune has to align with their particular moment. If George Washington was born ten years earlier or ten years later, we might not know his name. America might not exist as it does today. But take someone like Charles Degall, who you mentioned that

Why do you think we don't have that many good statesmen?

You had an interesting question I remember on Twitter, You're like, who is the last goods? Who's the last living statesman? I can't come up with a single answer. I think Kissinger was the last great one that we had. You can hate him, you can love him. But he had a coherent ideology. He was very well rooted. He had accomplished a lot in his life. Again, whether it was good and or bad. Everybody else just seemed to kind

So what is it? Why is in the last thirty years we have no gray station?

Sure? I think there's really two reasons. One at the beginning of the progressive era. This is going back one hundred years ago. There was a shift away from statesmanship classically understood to management, expertise, bureaucracy. So the art of the statesman has been lost. And then secondly, I think it really comes to our educational system. If you go back to the education of Cyrus describing Xenophon's education, right,

That's a good point. That's a good point.

So you write, leadership requires painting a beautiful portrait of the world that you'd like to inhabit and installing confidence that you are the best person to make it a reality. In an age where truth and goodness have lost their potency beauty and and wiser minds have noted could save the world. So how do you bring that back in an error where look, institutional education is not coming back in any sense. Is it just read books like this at scale? How do you recreate it?

Yeah?

Well, I think that quote on beauty is really important. That's something that gets lost. I think a lot of conservatives in particular, tend to over intellectualize politics. They think if you get the ideas right, if you get the policies right, then you'll be a great leader, right, And that's not really how it works. Great leaders throughout history have been builders of beautiful things. I go back to

All right, Well, it's a treat to actually have something like this on, so it's gateway to statesmanship selections from Xenophonda Churchill. We'll have a link down on the description. Everybody going by it. It's good to see my friend. Thanks again, thanks for watching.