Tag Archives: victim

What Are Mind Control Religions?

Is Tom Cruise the poster boy for alternative religion?
Is Tom Cruise the poster boy for alternative religion?

In most western-world countries, laws protect consumers from fraud and unethical business practices. But to date, there are no laws on the books that recognize destructive mind control, much less prohibit the use of it by cult-like groups of religion. However, if my colleague Steven Hassan,  the pioneer of exit counseling for cult members and a critically acclaimed author, and thousands of  other ex-cult members have any say about it, that may soon change.

The mind, despite all of its strengths, depends on a stream of coherent information for it to function properly. Put a person into an  environment where the senses are overloaded with incoherent information and the mind becomes numb. In this confused state, critical thinking skills don’t work and the mind becomes suggestible to those who would replace an individual’s self-interest with the group’s best interests.

Everyone, like it or not, is vulnerable to mind control. Everyone is looking for something better in life: more happiness, more meaning and more security. Recruiters prey upon these basic human needs. People don’t join; they are recruited, and more often than not, during a stressful time in their lives.

Mind-control religions use our fantasies of an ideal world to draw us in. The “love bombing” and the sincere, committed members that newcomers initially encounter prove far more attractive and convincing than the doctrines.

Recruitment doesn’t just happen.

“It’s a process,” Hassan says, “imposed on people by other people.”

During that orientation process—it could be a seemingly innocuous six-month Bible study—irrational phobias are placed in the potential member’s unconscious mind. The first is that no one can really be happy and successful if they’re not a member of that particular religion.

deprogram-definition

After they become members, life is about sacrifice and living in a fantasy world created by the group. The need to live in the present is continually reinforced with warnings like “Armageddon is just around the corner,” giving members a sense of urgency about the tasks at hand. Those who begin to doubt will find leaving painful, as one of the penalties will be extreme shunning.

Children raised in these groups typically receive an inferior education, are taught that the world is an evil place controlled by the devil, and must rely on church leaders’ interpretation of reality.

Mind-control clichés like “we alone have the truth” or “all non-members will die at Armageddon” are continually reinforced, which puts up an invisible wall between believers and outsiders. This makes members feel special, believing they are counted among God’s chosen few.

Behavior control, Information control, Thought control and Emotional control (the BITE model) has great power and influence on the human mind. Together, these four control mechanisms are used by destructive religious groups to form a totalistic web, which can manipulate even the strongest-minded people. (Hassan provides a thorough explanation of how BITE works in his three best-selling books.) And if that’s not enough, mind-control religious members are required to proselytize; research in social psychology shows that nothing confirms one’s beliefs better than trying to sell those beliefs to other people.

Given freedom of choice, people will choose what they believe is best for themselves. However, the criteria for determining what is “best” should be one’s own, not someone elses.

Freedom of choice is the first thing that one loses when one becomes a member of groups like Scientologists, Moonies and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Unchecked, these groups will continue to wreak untold psychological and physical damage on millions of people who have no idea of what constitutes unethical mind control. Unless action is taken to make destructive religious groups accountable to society for their violations of the basic civil rights of their members, in particular the children of members, they will continue to deceive the public into believing they are a harmless group of people, deserving the same constitutional guarantees as benevolent religions.

Grant money for research projects and treatment of mind-control victims is needed now. Reform within public education must be made to encourage people to think for themselves, to understand the psychological principles of mind control and to teach students to be suspicious of any environment that discourages them from asking critical questions. If you would like to help, go to www.aawa.com  and www.freedomofmind.com. For the Silo, Richard E. Kelly.

Violence Against Women Costs Lesotho South Africa $113 Million USD Annually

Lesotho–South Africa relations - Wikipedia
Lesotho, South Africa- Commonwealth member.
A recent Commonwealth report has revealed violence against women and girls costs Lesotho more than $113 million (about 1.9 billion Lesotho loti) a year. The report estimates the total cost, including loss of income and expenses associated with medical, legal and police support, equates to around 5.5 per cent of Lesotho’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The cost of $113 million means each Lesotho citizen loses at least $50 every year to violence against women and girls.The cost of $113 million means each Lesotho citizen loses at least $50 every year to violence against women and girls.

The bulk – $45usd million – is attributed to legal protection, healthcare, social services and learning loss.

This is more than twice the amount – $21 million – Lesotho spent on health, education and energy in the last fiscal year. The report sets out policy recommendations for the health, education, legal and private sectors to better meet the needs of victims, which include: Updating the forms used for collecting data on violence against women and girls; Using digital services to collect and share the data with stakeholders; Training staff responsible for recording, analyzing and sharing data; Developing a broad approach involving all sectors to prevent the abuse; and making strategic shifts to allocate resources to carry out these recommendations.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland said: “This report proves once again that ending violence against woman and girls is not only the right thing to do but it is also the smart thing to do and beneficial to us all. “Tackling this issue will prevent immense pain and suffering for individuals and communities and will also end the damage this violence does to our economies and prosperity. “As the first report of its kind to focus on Lesotho in this way, our intention is that it should provide the basis for designing more clearly focused national policies and programs, and help ensure that adequate resources are allocated for priorities such as training service providers.

“The findings put a price tag on the endemic scourge of gender-based violence, and demonstrate that the consequences of ignoring the problem are far higher than the cost of taking preventative and remedial action. “By providing the baseline for a series of periodic costing studies and practical intervention, we hope the report will help pave the way towards significant progress on eliminating violence against women and girls, thereby saving many lives.”

The loss of income for women who experience violence due to missed days of work and lost productivity comes to $22usd million annually. Income losses result in less spending which triggers a negative impact on commodity demand and supply of goods and services. Lesotho’s Minister of Gender and Youth, Sport and Recreation Mahali Phamotse said: “Violence against women and girls is a problem in Lesotho which affects national development.“

The report will help Lesotho come up with appropriate strategies that will help eradicate violence against women and girls as we are now aware of its causes and economic implications. “The report calls for immediate action through which my ministry will embark on a project to ensure the protection of women and girls.”

In Lesotho, about one in three women experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime, similar to the global prevalence rate. The Commonwealth worked with Lesotho’s Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sport and Recreation to conduct the study and produce this report.

This is the second country report completed by the Commonwealth. The first was produced for Seychelles in 2018. Read: The Economic Cost of Violence Against Women and Girls: A Study of Lesotho 

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 54 independent and equal sovereign states and includes Canada. Our combined population is 2.4 billion, of which more than 60 per cent is aged 29 or under. The Commonwealth spans the globe and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. Thirty-two of our members are small states, many of which are island nations.

The Commonwealth Secretariat supports member countries to build democratic and inclusive institutions, strengthen governance and promote justice and human rights. Our work helps to grow economies and boost trade, deliver national resilience, empower young people, and address threats such as climate change, debt and inequality. Member countries are supported by a network of more than 80 intergovernmental, civil society, cultural and professional organisations.
 
For the Silo, Snober Abbasi.

Dance Healing Immigrant Victims Of War Prejudice And Sexual Exploitation

Study after study has shown that arts education nurtures students’ creativity and problem-solving skills, competencies that are critical for success in a 21st Century world, but how does dance and movement facilitate healing and transform at-risk youth?

14 year old DTC dancing participants Richard Rutherford Danny Guerrero
14 year old DTC dancing participants Richard Rutherford Danny Guerrero

New York’s Battery Dance launched its Dancing to Connect programs in 2006. Since that time, the program has spread to 6 continents, 50 countries, 100 cities, and 1,000 schools. A powerful new documentary by Wilderness Films follows six dancers from the dance company from India to Eastern Europe to the Korean Peninsula to the Middle East as they support vulnerable youth helping them to express themselves through movement. The film focuses on the struggles, frustrations, resilience and ultimate transformation of the students and their dance teachers.

Producer Cornelia Ravenal says that as a trauma survivor she understood the power of art to “heal and transform.” Ravenal along with husband partner Mikael Södersten collaborated with Battery Dance Founder Jonathan Hollander to create the documentary because she believed this was a story that had to be told. As global populations continue to grow, migration and increasing social and cultural diversity are reshaping classrooms worldwide. Solutions for integrating and uniting peoples from diverse cultural backgrounds are now sought by schools and communities all over the globe. Hollander believes that “no divide has been too great for the art of dance, the primacy of movement, the common humanity, and expression, to span.”

Read the Full Article

Battery Dance performs on the world’s stages, teaches, presents, and advocates for the field of dance. The Company is dedicated to the pursuit of artistic excellence and the availability of the Arts to everyone. Battery Dance has produced over 100 original dance works choreographed by its founder and artistic director Jonathan Hollander, in collaboration with a diverse array of composers and designers, and its cast of outstanding dancers.

CMRubinWorld launched in 2010 to explore what kind of education would prepare students to succeed in a rapidly changing globalized world. Its award-winning series, The Global Search for Education, is a celebrated trailblazer in the renaissance of the 21st century, and occupies a special place in the pulse of key issues facing every nation and the collective future of all children. It connects today’s top thought leaders with a diverse global audience of parents, students and educators. Its highly readable platform allows for discourse concerning our highest ideals and the sustainable solutions we must engineer to achieve them. C. M. Rubin has produced over 700 interviews and articles discussing an expansive array of topics under a singular vision: when it comes to the world of children, there is always more work to be done. For the Silo, David Wine.