Impact 111 Oct 2005 The Magazine of the International Association of Scientologists THE IAS MAIDEN VOYAGE EVENT (SUMMER 2005) FOURTH DYNAMIC IMPACT ACROSS AN ENTIRE GEOGRAPHIC ZONE IAS Maiden Voyage Event introductory address from Chairman of the Board RTC, Mr. David Miscavige While there is a lot of tradition associated with this particular night on the cruise calendar, began Mr. Miscavige, let's get it in the perspective of this particular OT Summit and the Public Phase we're now in. Because what we are going to cover tonight directly parallels and follows from what we are doing world over to create ideal orgs. Which is to say, we don't blow SPs off the map just for sport and we don't handle the planetary decay because it's nice to have. No, we're working for nothing less than that new civilization envisioned in our Aims, and expressed on our org board. And that phrase, new civilization, precisely sums up where we are headed tonight. First, creating a safe environment for all our European orgs and activities by taking our continental mop-up operation to a full done. Second, applying fundamental Scientology tech to succor our fellow man wherever and whenever most needed. And when you combine it all together, the net result is securing entire lands for true freedom. Backed by the very real power of the IAS, that is what we are doing, and at OT orders of magnitude. CREATING A SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR ORGS IN EUROPE Mr. Miscavige introduced the President of the Church of Scientology International, Mr. Heber Jentzsch, who brought news of recent victories in Europe. That continent does not have a tradition of religious freedom, in fact its history is littered with demonstrations of man's inhumanity to man in the name of religion, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust. But Scientologists are working to create a new and better future for Europe. And all to the greater purpose of creating a safe environment for orgs to expand and make planetary clearing a reality. Italy Advances in religious freedom have often emerged out of a struggle against intolerance. Such was the case in Italy, where the Church waged a successful 20-year campaign all the way to the Italian Supreme Court which resulted in a major victory. In fact, the Court's ruling stands today as the most authoritative on religious freedom, not only for Italy but for all of Europe. But showing the real measure of our victories was the reach for LRH tech that resulted when suppression was removed. As in Milano, where city officials cut the ribbon to open the What Is Scientology? Exhibit-and then did the same when the CCHR Psychiatry Exposed Exhibit came to the city. This past year the government recognized Narconon Gabbiano as tax exempt and then, for the first time, placed Narconon on the list of officially sanctioned programs. This means that any addict can now apply for government funding to do the Narconon rehabilitation program. The government even called upon the Volunteer Ministers, recognized as an official Civil Defense Force, to help with crowd control for the Pope's funeral in Rome. All of which goes to show the complete 180-degree change that can occur in a country when ethics and tech go in. France Access to information is basic to the democratic way of life, however governments with things to hide withhold information from their citizens. That is why Freedom of Information legislation is so important. Only where such laws exist can open government be possible. In the name of upholding democracy and advancing human rights, Churches of Scientology have for many years advocated Freedom of Information and worked to bring about legislation guaranteeing it in many countries, including France. In fact, leading the campaign for French Freedom of Information laws was IAS Freedom Medal Winner Michel Raoust. But even though laws were finally passed, getting government bureaucrats to comply to them requires persistence. For example, when a French government agency refused to turn over files requested under the law, Scientologists took the case to the highest court in France and won. When the agency still refused, the Church stepped up the ethics gradient with a public information campaign, Freedom of Access to Government Dossiers which included an lAS-funded publication explaining the law in plain language. The result was not only an explosion of Freedom of Information requests from French citizens but a dramatic increase in the number being granted. It also recently resulted in the French agency complying with the law and providing Scientologists with the files they had requested-a major step forward in getting in ethics in France. Germany As elsewhere, officials in Germany who attack Scientology do not have clean hands and can uniformly be found to be suppressing everyone else too. The solution is to pull their withholds with Freedom of Information laws. To that end, Scientologists formed Action Transparent for the purpose of bringing about an open and transparent government in Germany. They launched a nationwide program with booklets, newsletters, conferences and coalitions. In 2002 when several German states passed Freedom of Information laws, hundreds of requests were filed. Where hard-core SPs refused to comply with the new laws, complaints were brought to the courts. Since Freedom of Information laws were new to Germany, these actions by the Church made a profound difference. In fact, one judge who ordered a German state to open its files made a point of congratulating the Church for what he called pioneer work in implementing the new law. But as there was still no national Freedom of Information legislation in Germany, the public information campaign continued with mailings, briefings and even a Freedom of Information Law Manual to hat people on its use. But in June 2005 there was a major breakthrough: the German National Parliament, responding to public demand, passed the country's first federal Freedom of Information law. It goes into effect in January 2006 and will begin a whole new era of open government for Germany! THE EPIC SAGA OF VOLUNTEER MININSTERS IN ASIA The historic, global and epic story of how Scientology Volunteer Ministers brought effective help to hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. If that's the IAS across the face of Europe, said Mr. Miscavige, what of the other side of the globe? In no small measure, the answer lies with the IAS sponsorship of our International Volunteer Minister crusade which has become both worldwide and world-renowned. For wherever disaster strikes, first in New York City in the wake of 9/11, then along the Danube River when flood waters threatened Budapest, then again in South Africa when riots erupted in Johannesburg and still again in Australia beside firefighters in the bush and so on and so on. As an emergency medical officer once remarked, 'Whenever confusion reigns and the world goes gray in a swirl of ash, you will see a flash of color, and it is yellow.' There is, however, an aspect of the Volunteer Minister story that's not so readily seen and it's what follows in their wake as regards Scientology expansion. There is also an aspect of their story that's never even really been told and it ties right into the very roots of the program as originally envisioned by LRH. That is, and I quote, 'The idea of Volunteer Ministers was actually borrowed from the basic pattern of the barefoot doctor of China who would administer help to alleviate the tortured troubles of man.' And when you _link_ those two together-laying the seeds of Scientology and the program as drawn from an ancient oriental pattern-you come to the latest chapter of the Volunteer Minister Crusade which has now elevated to something that can only be described as a saga of legendary proportions, namely, Volunteer Ministers at work in Asia. At which point we're talking something historical, global and truly epic. Now, I can't imagine anyone who hasn't already heard the first sentence of the story I'm about to tell you which begins in this way: On the 26th of December 2004, an earthquake off Sumatra sent three tsunami tidal waves radiating out across the Indian Ocean. They traveled upwards of 400 miles an hour and were driven by an energy thrust equivalent to a hydrogen bomb. Fifteen minutes later, the first of it hit the Sumatran coast as a fifty-foot wall of water and leveled Banda Aceh to a brick. Then it hit Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and I'm sure you know the rest. Yet what else was unleashed when two continental plates converged is this: On Monday, December 27, the first teams of Australians assembled for an emergency meeting while a main VM hot line took calls from Scientologists from all around the world. The whole of it-personnel, material, transportation and communications-was swiftly assembled and org boarded. At which point the initial wave of Volunteer Ministers fired to Indonesia from Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. Not far behind were teams from England, Scotland, the United States, France and South Africa. But the first to hit the tarmac in the deluged zone were the Aussies. INDONESIA Now, as I said, anyone donning the yellow shirt is part of something worldwide and world-renowned and as of December 31st it played out like this: Landing in the North Sumatra city of Medan, VM team leaders met with disaster site coordinators. There was no lengthy discussion, no 'let's see your credentials.' On the contrary, it was simply a question of numbers and time, meaning there were upwards of three thousand critically injured people in five local hospitals, and they were dying. Case in point: the intensive care patient with multiple fractures and rampant infection. He'd been hovering on the edge for five days straight when the touch assist began. Forty-five minutes later, he was joking with the nurses and hamming it up for the Indonesian camera crew. But as noted in VM debriefs from the first of January and I quote: 'Given the sheer number of casualties, it was clearly necessary to begin effective hatting.' It began bedside with surviving relatives, then moved to the headquarters of the Buddhist team known across Asia for hands-on emergency relief. The nerve assists and touch assists were right up their alley. Meanwhile, what regional commanders now described as a forward thrust of the International Scientology Assist Team moved on out to Banda Aceh. They arrived by military caravan on Wednesday January 5th, then split up and fanned out. The most obviously dazed were the children, but even seasoned emergency personnel were buckling under the strain or running on nothing but raw nerves and adrenalin. Consequently, in addition to locationals amidst the hodge-podge of debris, they were soon reorganizing emergency supply lines into the refugee camps. They were also directing and delivering from the trucks: bottled water, dry goods, rice and clothing. Second and third waves of Volunteer Ministers arrived and the tide began to turn. The first tents, patched together from surplus parachutes, kept the rain at bay for more than a thousand assists and were the site of another round of on-site hatting to civilians, police squads and religious leaders. In Meulaboh VMs spread LRH tech across twenty-three more villages - this time by Indonesian chopper. Then back to Medan where it was touch assists and nerve assists to everyone from United Nations relief team members to psychologists with the rehabilitation department. And that's how VMs, the inheritors of the barefoot doctor tradition, delivered no less than 7,000 LRH assists in the space of just sixteen days, said Mr. Miscavige, and how it came to be that the district commander of that single worst-hit zone on Earth personally presented this commendation: 'To the International Scientology Assist Team. In appreciation and deep gratitude from all Indonesian tsunami survivors!' BOOK ONE Now, of course, there's another body of LRH technology that's absolutely essential to incidents of this magnitude, especially in light of the fact that every second person asked said that whenever they closed their eyes they still saw the wave. And so it was, on the 19th of January 2005, VM team leaders organized a first Book One seminar and co-audit under those parachute tents. The bulk of those in attendance were from a women's society because they could be counted on to bring it into the homes. Also in attendance were physiotherapists and psychologists. But for a taste of it, one has to bear in mind that these were people who had lost as many as two dozen family members within fifteen minutes. Hence the weight behind the statements such as this one: 'Today, I learned how to help myself and others and I am able to smile again.' Hence, too, the immediate launch of what VM leaders termed Phase Two: training the trainers. Mr. Miscavige then described how the Volunteer Ministers trained teachers at a school where fully half the students had lost their families. They trained trauma counselors and five hundred of them then organized seminars across the Indonesian coast. And that's how 150 Volunteer Ministers ultimately trained more than 27,000 to deliver LRH assists and Book One sessions. And how, in turn, a full thirty percent of all those hit by waves on the 26th of December, more than a hundred thousand survivors in full, were given the LRH technology with which to rebuild their lives. THAILAND Emergency assists in shock zones, then Book One sessions to train the trainers, was also the pattern in Thailand. The first waves hit just ninety minutes after the quake and primarily along Thailand's Phuket coast, said Mr. Miscavige. The washout was complete: roads, airstrips, the whole infrastructure. But given especially resourceful staff and public from Thailand's Bangkok mission, the first VM counter-wave was on the ground in twenty hours. While some forty-eight hours thereafter, they were joined by the teams from Australia, Sweden and the United States. He described how they took charge, handling even the worst of it, the fatalities. With on-the-beach touch assists and nerve assists, while simultaneously overhauling emergency rationing lines, continued Mr. Miscavige, they soon carved out enough destimulated ground for Book One sessions. Whereupon local mission staff bussed in from Bangkok to a Buddhist temple on the edge of the Phuket refugee camp. There, eighty-five were trained to man mobile Dianetics units, soon moving out to outlying camps. Also trained to walk in the footsteps of those barefoot doctors were the Phuket monks themselves. And that's how Thai VMs launched another Book One group more than 500 strong and thereby earned this from the emergency military attache in their nation's worst-hit zone, 'Your help made us strong during that dreadful time and your assistance was a great inspiration!' And that was the VM wave in Thailand! INDIA Likewise hit hard within minutes of the quake was the south Indian city of Chennai, said Mr. Miscavige. Within twenty-four hours VM teams were in the air from Scotland, England, South Africa, France and the Czech Republic while immediately, on the ground, was a team from Madras. They already recruited, hatted and posted a first aid unit from the local Rotary Club. All 200 converged on the 4th of January to find five hundred villages laid to waste and 500,000 left homeless. Moreover, the landscape was described as a tangled mess of junk, with heavy trucks dumped in fields two kilometers from where they'd been parked. Also worsening the odds was a language barrier that even the team from Madras couldn't crack. Yet that's when team Mysore arrived with twenty-eight multi-lingual Tibetan monks. They learned fast and particularly respected the whole idea of Standard Tech. They additionally proved themselves tireless and were especially revered in the outlying villages south of Chennai. But, yet again, the hard-hit zones required Book One to blow the engram. Hence, the workshop in Nagapattinnam for volunteers camped out in the villages at Cuddalore. They'd already mastered touch assists, locationals and nerve assists. But the Cuddalore fishermen were still too paralyzed to leave the shore. So, under supervision from French VMs, English VMs and members of the Mysore team, the drilling and co-auditing began. Now, you have to understand that while these Book One students had missed the deluge, they'd seen a lot of grief through the clean-up. They'd also buried a lot of bodies, and watched a lot of people die in the aftershock. All of which went down in the session reports-and drove them back to Cuddalore twenty-four hours later. They moved out along a sea front where twenty-two children had been swept away in a heartbeat. While the thatched roofs had been replaced and fresh water re-supplied, the fishing crews still lingered on the beaches. So that's where the sessions began, literally on the upturned boats, literally where it happened: that fifty-foot wall of water, surging in a thousand feet, then rip-tiding back out to sea. But when it was over there was this from a VM report on the beach: 'We learned today that the fishermen of this village cleaned their boats and returned to the reefs.' Coupled with all else VM teams from seven nations organized and delivered through sixteen weeks in the south of India, that's how 18,000 more people returned to life with ERH technology! SRI LANKA Sri Lanka was struck two hours after the quake and on 29 December 2004, the Sri Lanka Prime Minister's office issued this, Your Volunteer Ministers are a remarkable group of individuals whose purpose is truly to help improve conditions. Their focus is one of organization and coordination. Their self-sufficiency and ability to direct all relief efforts would be an indispensable asset to our country at this time. For those reasons, said Mr. Miscavige, the VMs were invited from twelve nations, including the United States, Canada, Italy, Hungary, Denmark, Taiwan and France. They landed in groups of fifteen and twenty to eventually total well over a hundred. They were given charge of volunteers from some fifty community centers and upwards of 2,000 people - and free access to the 120 refugee camps in the washed out Galle District. That's where they began, coordinating clean-up crews and road work. Then they brought in the tents, a key donation from the Italian government and erected by civil engineers. Although primarily allocated  for  housing, the 300-plus refugees sensed something else would take place in those tents and they were right. For that's where the first Book One seminars launched with the Group Auditing as a prelude. Attendees ranged in age from seven to seventy, and the families were somewhat make-shift, meaning orphaned kids latched onto mothers who had lost their own children and vice versa. But when it was over, they were all united in a Book One movement soon spreading across all fifty-six camps and some 10,000 more. Yet given those camps were only created for want of reconstruction-housing, roads, bridges - the next logical site for a seminar was in the city of Kandy and specifically Sri Lanka's chief engineers. There were about eighty in all and they were Buddhists and pragmatists, which is to say, as one of them remarked, 'We can't all be monks, but Dianetics gives us the shortcut.' A third seminar was held in Kandy with a seemingly unlikely gathering of soldiers and monks from a temple outside of the city which led to the Book One crusade spreading across the Sri Lankan Buddhist community. This was followed by the training of 2,000 trauma counselors in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo and a Book One workshop for medical professionals, attorneys and government officials. Then it was into the schools for lectures to educators and the students themselves, now with VM booklets literally in hand. And out again to the shoreline with locationals for kids who swore they would never set foot on a beach again. And in just that way, across every key sector of Sri Lankan society, those 120 Volunteer Ministers launched a movement for LRH technology embracing yet another 17,000 people. And that's only the beginning, because they also trained ten thousand to deliver assists and Book One! HELP ON A MASSIVE SCALE And there you have it, the latest chapter in a continuing saga of a worldwide Volunteer Minister crusade. But lest the point be missed, the story of the VMs in Asia is no longer merely our story. When you hear that the yellow shirts are now universally known, believe it. In the wake of their trek across Asia through the first weeks of 2005 came the news from Australia's Southern News and The Age and then The Taichung Times, Jakarta Post, Toronto Star, Economist, The Washington Post, The Boston Sunday Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Business Week and even The Wall Street Journal. And that's just the short list in a whole barrage of media which brought those words 'Scientology Volunteer Minister' to 201 million viewers, readers and listeners. And if that's impressive -well, we don't live for PR. Rather, in terms of effective help, successive waves of VMs across Asia trained 51,376 men, women and children to deliver LRH tech. And for the final tally as to what that help meant to the people who needed it most, they in turn, brought that tech to one another