Barney Tells His Story

[Mark]

The editor of The Objective Standard, a magazine affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute, has finally responded to the revelations in ARI Watch’s exposé “Who is Carl Barney?" about ARI’s largest donor.

ARI Watch reviews that response in a new article Barney Tells His Story.  You can understand it by itself because it quotes the TOS article.

[Peter]

That is so bizarre it sounded like a comedic sketch. Scientology? Mental disorders? Yikes. I read the first couple of pages or enough to know, I would be leery of Barney. I imagine him sounding like a retarded, grifter. Is he still rich and powerful? I better be quiet or they may come to take me away.

Advertisement for the retreat called, "Cuckoo's Nest." If you still enjoy talking like Gomer Pyle, L. Ron Hubbard, Forrest Gump, or the Dustin Hoffman character in “Rain Man” is it a sign of a mental disorder? What would the disorder be called? I can’t remember the last time a female played a “slow” person. That may qualify as discrimination under the Americans without disabilities act, subsection, Screen Guild. Is *believing in* Scientology any crazier than believing in the major religions? Come to "The Nest" and we will certify your "level" of competence, for a small fee.    

[Jon Letendre]

Bravo, Mark!! Excellent piece.

Man, there is so much shit everywhere! Barney is trash in need incineration, I can't wait for reports of his arrest.

[Jon Letendre]

Nobody rises to the top echelons in these elite gangs, as he did, without first compromising themselves, acceding to blackmail by those at the top of the pyramid by committing heinous acts.

Nothing can stop the disclosures that are coming. The old guard, that is to say, the previously perpetually untouchable above the law ruling elite worldwide, lost the quiet war against their Trump-lead adversary and they're all utterly fucked now. It is now only a matter of dismantling it all strategically, sequentially, with the least impact to serenity and order. The public was not prepared to absorb the truth, and is still far from prepared to learn the whole truth. The People needed gradual conditioning to the idea that unspeakable evil rules at the top of everything, everywhere. So ... Weinstein and sex favors for leading roles and million$ and other (now seemingly mild!!) nastiness. Then NXIVM, and then, the day after the NXIVM convictions, this announcement below. This cult's takedown is after NXIVM in the sequence because the public is conditioned now, by the truth of a massive cult of previously untouchable elites that branded sex slaves like cattle and made millions trafficking them. People are ready now, or as ready as they will ever be, to learn about the next level of evil ...

 

“A team of eight victims' rights attorneys on Tuesday filed the first of what they promise will be a series of lawsuits against the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige, on behalf of defectors who say they suffered a range of exploitation from child abuse, human trafficking and forced labor to revenge tactics related to the church's Fair Game policy.

“This isn't going to be the last of the lawsuits being filed,” Philadelphia-based attorney Brian Kent told the Tampa Bay Times, declining to say how many more are forthcoming. “We've seen what can happen when there is truth exposed in terms of child abuse within organizations. You've seen it with the Catholic Church, you're seeing it with the Southern Baptist Convention now. We're hoping for meaningful change.”

“The Church of Scientology presents a façade to the outside world to disguise what in reality is nothing more than a cult built on mind control and destruction of the independence and self-control of those drawn into its sphere,” the lawsuit states. “Members are isolated from the outside world, their access to information is heavily monitored and controlled, and they are subject to physical, verbal, psychological, emotional and/or sexual abuse and/or assault."

https://www.tampabay.com/scientology/lawsuit-accuses-scientology-david-miscavage-of-child-abuse-human-trafficking-libel-20190619/

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Mark said:

The editor of The Objective Standard, a magazine affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute, has finally responded to the revelations in ARI Watch’s exposé “Who is Carl Barney?" about ARI’s largest donor.

ARI Watch reviews that response in a new article Barney Tells His Story.  You can understand it by itself because it quotes the TOS article.

Mark,

Very good article.

I have one disagreement, but I'm not so sure it can be called that because there is no way to verify it.

You said something to the effect that people at the top of Scientology (including Barney) are in on the scam. In my own research into cults and my own introspection, I don't believe this is true for all high-level people in cults, not even for the majority. Based on what I have seen so far, only a minority see it for the scam it is. The others truly believe they are doing the Good Work, even if they make money at it. (Their primary stakes are their "Immortal Souls.")

So I think it is entirely plausible that Barney was a con outside the cult, meaning he was aware of the student-loan-backed-by-government scam, but, as to the religion and mind-control on the inside, he sounds to me like he was a true believer, even during the years he had Scientology franchises. Those TR's (Training Routines) are brutal, not to mention the audits. He was not immune from going through them, nor from doing penance and suffering punishments for screwing up or sporadically falling out of favor.

In the history of Scientology, most all franchises (or missions or whatever one wants to call them) were simply confiscated in 1982--and confiscated is the correct word after all the verbiage is boiled down to the essentials. Hubbard at that time had only four years left to live, so I think he was already starting to go ga-ga from drugs (according to different bios, he took quite a few as he grew older and ended in a terrible mental state right before he died). I don't know what his fight with Barney was over before he threw Barney out of Scientology, you probably know more about that than I do, but it's easy to infer that Hubbard saw how easy it was to simply confiscate franchises after he put Barney's in receivership in 1979. (Notice that just a little while later, in 1982, after perfecting his own scheme and process, which is a hallmark of Hubbard's way of doing things, he confiscated everyone's.)

I think only a true believer--meaning Barney--would have allowed that 1979 confiscation to happen. (Was Barney ever in the Sea Org?) It didn't do him any good, either, because he still got declared a Supressive Person (damned and kicked out). If he had not been a true believer, I think he would have fought it a lot harder, or at least fought for a large settlement, created a scandal or something.

Other than that difference in perspective, I repeat, you wrote a very good article.

Now I'm just musing, but it's hard for me to speculate about Barney's later motivation with Objectivism without including the true believer type of mind. I lean toward thinking he has just as much true believer in him as insider con (essentially using government handouts at a distance--the student loan racket--as his business model). In other words, I bet he venerates Rand in a general, but still true believer way, while understanding Objectivism about as thoroughly as a Sunday-only Protestant understands Christianity. I might be wrong, but that's my impression so far.

Michael

[Jon Letendre]

Biddle: "From ARI’s inception [1985] until recently, Carl was its top contributor and a key board member."

Mark: "In 1995 ARI places him on its board of directors."

So Mark, are you mistaken about '95, or is the bought-and-paid-for lying little twat mistaken?

[Mark]

Jon,

Biddle is mistaken.  It’s true Barney was ARI’s largest donor from it’s very first year.  Biddle is mistaken about when he was put on the board of directors.

During OCON 2015 Brook said that Barney “has been a board member for 20 years now.”  Assuming Brook spoke precisely and didn’t mean about 20 years, you get 1995 for the starting year.

I tried the Internet Wayback Machine – archive.org – for aynrand.org.  It goes back to 1996.  ARI’s website for that year doesn’t have a staff or board of directors page, ditto for 1998.  The archive for the year 1999 doesn’t work.  The one for 2000 has such a page and Barney is listed on the board with this blurb: “Carl Barney is a businessman who, among other business activities, owns and manages several private business colleges.”

I only have access to ARI’s 990 tax form back to 2002 so that’s no help either.

For now I changed “In 1995” to “In 1995 or thereabouts” in case Brook was imprecise.

[Mark]

MSK,

About Barney going quietly when Hubbard put his missions in receivership (meaning taken from him by court order and at least temporarily put in the custody of someone else), there is another – and I think more likely – explanation than that he was an obedient drone in thrall to the cult.

According to Cheryl Sola, a clerk in the central management office of SCS at the time – see “Who Is Carl Barney?” for details – she was told that Barney’s missions had been put into receivership because:

“...Carl Barney had been ... doing unlawful things such as having the non-profit corporation pay for his Lincoln Town Car, a cabin at Big Bear, and his pension, using NAC as a money pool for loans, and such.”

If Hubbard “had the goods” on Barney he would have been in no position to fight.

About the possibility that Barney truly believed in Co$ from the age of 19 to 40:  Biddle is probably correct about Barney starting off being sincere but after he saw the leaders and began working with them and getting money for it, no, it’s not believable that he was a naive innocent.  We’re in the realm of psychopathology now.  Hubbard may well have sincerely believed that the souls of dead space aliens are the cause of people’s problems, and that he could cure them if only they gave him all their money.  What of it?  There’s not much distinction between willful self-deception and a lie.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Mark,

Do you know of anyone at ARI who expressed negativity about Barney before your "Who Is Carl Barney?" was published?  The organization sounds like no one dare speak - or even see - out of line.  Worse in that regard than NBI was.

Ellen

PS:  Miswrite in the paragraph about Salsman's comment.  Biddle's article, not Barney's.

[Mark]

1 hour ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Do you know of anyone at ARI who expressed negativity about Barney before your "Who Is Carl Barney?" was published?  The organization sounds like no one dare speak - or even see - out of line.  Worse in that regard than NBI was.

Ellen,

No, not one – in public anyway -- and I keep an eye on them, and not even after it was published. The whole affair is quite amazing.  And telling.

Thanks for catching the Biddle/Barney error, fixed now. (You might need to press your browser's refresh key, typically F5 or Ctrl-R, to see the change.)

Mark

 

[Brant Gaede]

I don't yet have time to read the whole article, but Scientology sounds like a combination of cult and multi level marketing.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 hours ago, Mark said:

Biddle is probably correct about Barney starting off being sincere but after he saw the leaders and began working with them and getting money for it, no, it’s not believable that he was a naive innocent.  We’re in the realm of psychopathology now.

Mark,

You would do well to learn more about how Scientology works on the mind. Read the books by people who worked their way out of it. There are quite a few now. (Online, watch some videos by Tory MaGoo. Dig into Arnie Lerma's stuff--it's all online, his comments on the TR's are exceptionally enlightening. Jon Atack's book A Piece of the Blue Sky is one of the better descriptions of how Scientology systems and procedures work. Maybe look into Scientology and psychotic breaks. Just this alone will provide you with a solid background about how Scientology warps the minds of intelligent people. After that, then look into the more modern exposés by Janet Reitman, Lawrence Wright, the Tony Ortega stuff, books by some Miscavige family members, Leah Remini's stuff, and a whole host of others (I happen to like Jesse Prince for a rather colorful and thuggish insider view  ). 

Your characterization of Barney is as if he could become immune to the programming while he was right in the middle of it and turn into a normal conman. (Oddly enough, that would make him some kind of superman and superman he is not.) Going by what most people who have been there write and say, that's just not the way it works.

I'm not bringing this up because I want to disprove anything you are writing. I think you are doing excellent work, but misidentifying something fundamental. And when one misidentifies something, one cannot judge it correctly. I'm on board with condemning Barney. But, to be effective and long term, it must be against something real, not a caricature. (And, believe me, I don't think Barney--or anyone else in the cult--was "a naive innocent," to use your dismissive term.)

You are very good at the legal and business side and following rabbit holes to uncover things others prefer to keep hidden. On the human nature side, I think your contempt for ARI and Barney are making you dismiss large parts of human nature and attribute motives to them--generally greed only--that are vastly oversimplified.

In case you think I'm making excuses for Barney, I'm not. The issue is darker and deeper than simple greed, although greed is part of it, too. 

Anyway, I've given you a glimpse. You decide whether to pursue it or not. I don't want to get in an argument over this nor write a lot of explanations about it since others have written about Scientology's impact on the human mind better than I can, that is, from an insider perspective I will never have. So make of my observations what you will.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

... multi level marketing.

Brant,

It worked that way for a while, but those days are long gone.

Now it's just true believer stuff with all money flowing to the top and emphasis on rich and celebrity members, or partnering with well-controlled groups and their leaders like The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.

Michael

[Mark]

Since last I wrote “Dr.” Hurd – the psychotherapist who a few years back was favorably mentioned by ARI – has commented on the Biddle article.  It’s more of the usual with an added twist:  the fact that Barney left ARI is further evidence of Barney’s integrity.  His last paragraph in full:

“I respect Carl’s support for the ideas he agrees with, even if the organizations charged with advancing those ideas are not doing their job. Case in point is his recent withdrawal of support from the Ayn Rand Institute. I view that as even further evidence of integrity and character. As I said, Carl’s the real deal, and he truly wants Ayn Rand’s ideas – unfettered by petty politics or irrelevant agendas – to become part of the world.”

Hurd insinuates that ARI is not doing its job and is fettered by petty politics and/or irrelevant agendas.  It’s surprising Biddle allowed that remark given the renewed cooperation between ARI and TOS.  It could be that the renewed cooperation has become renewed dissociation.

On the other hand he might have been willing to allow it as a trade for agreeing with his "youthful transgression" argument in the previous paragraph.

 

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

15 hours ago, Mark said:

Since last I wrote “Dr.” Hurd – the psychotherapist who a few years back was favorably mentioned by ARI

Do you have something on ARI Watch about Hurd?  Are the scare quotes because he doesn't have either an MD (I wouldn't think he'd have been up to getting that) or a Ph.D.?

Years back Karen Reedstrom did an interview with Hurd in Full Context.  I wasn't favorably impressed.  He seemed slick and "premises are it, kids." The interview must have been circa '99, since I was corresponding with Nathaniel then and I recall exchanging some comments with him about Hurd.

Hurd sounds like he knows Carl Barney personally.

What about the conning - outright - re educational loans and the schools Barney ran?  Were those innocent error too according to Barney's supporters?

Ellen

[Jon Letendre]

From Hurd’s website just now:

Educational Background

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction.
• Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988.
• Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude.

[Jon Letendre]

16 hours ago, Mark said:

Since last I wrote “Dr.” Hurd – the psychotherapist who a few years back was favorably mentioned by ARI – has commented on the Biddle article.

Where is this?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Were those innocent error too according to Barney's supporters?

Ellen,

I hope you are not including me among Barney's supporters. I only ask because there are no Barney supporters posting on this thread so far.

Michael

[Mark]

I shouldn’t have put the “Dr” title in quotes or even mentioned the title.  Hurd didn’t use any title in his comment on Biddle’s article, just “Michael Hurd.”  What I was thinking is that psychotherapists shouldn't be called doctors.  For one thing the course of study takes a fraction of the time and effort it takes to get an M.D.  For another, "doctor" suggests physician and that type of doctor deals with the physical aspect of people not the mental.  Anyway, scratch that part of my post.

Hurd's comment on Biddle's article isn’t the first time he’s sung the praises of Carl Barney.  In 2015 he wrote
The Massively Underappreciated Virtue of Egoism in Business
which quotes Barney then comments on what he says.  I discovered it soon after “Who Is Carl Barney?”  went online in 2017.  At the time, I wrote Hurd about my article using his website’s “Contact Me” page but he never replied.

2 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

What about the conning - outright - re educational loans and the schools Barney ran?  Were those innocent error too according to Barney's supporters?

The Objective Standard denies that his colleges are doing anything wrong and they’re quite self-righteous about it.  (They're self-righteous about everything.)  
The Times Smiles and Sneers at Carl Barney, Ayn Rand, and Private Colleges
defends Barney against the accusations reported at the end of Patricia Cohen’s first New York Times article on Barney.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if Biddle collaborated on writing this, which gives no author:
The Colorado Attorney General’s Assault on CollegeAmerica
The URL seems to indicate it was uploaded in 2015 but it looks like it was 2017 because David Halperin’s review (search for “unhinged” in “Who Is Carl Barney?”), which came out in 2017, calls it “a new document that has surfaced online... .”

 

 

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I hope you are not including me among Barney's supporters. I only ask because there are no Barney supporters posting on this thread so far.

Michael

Michael,

No, I'm not including you among Barney's supporters.  I'm talking about the ARI people Mark's talking about in his opening post and in subsequent posts on the thread.

Ellen

[Ellen Stuttle]

Mark,

Thanks.  I'll look into the references you cite when I get a chance.

(I'm in Vienna, just arrived today.  There's a super nifty math/physics conference at the University of Vienna later this week themed on Kurt Gödel's work and getting into Gödel's relationship to Einstein.)

I'm much in favor of the development of educational paths (including cyber routes) as alternates to the current educational structure.  However, the indicators I get re Barney are that he was conning.

I'm curious, but I'm so far out of touch with ARI doings these days, I don't have contacts I can ask for their impressions.

(Thanks, too, for the clarification re "Dr.")

Ellen

 

[9thdoctor]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Ellen,

I hope you are not including me among Barney's supporters. I only ask because there are no Barney supporters posting on this thread so far.

Michael

In earlier discussions I came out as a Barney defender, since I felt Mark's attacks had a lot of unfairness in them.  But I don't have the time or energy for a rehash.  It's out there on older threads, and it looks like Biddle is covering the rebuttals well enough.  A sample:

First, to criticize a private college for accepting students’ funds that come from government loans and grants is almost as absurd as criticizing a private supermarket for accepting customers’ funds that come from government welfare programs.

https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2016/05/the-times-smiles-and-sneers-at-carl-barney-ayn-rand-and-private-colleges/

Note to any ARIan readers: think of this as payback for James Valliant.   Think you've got the high ground?  Review The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics.

1 hour ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

I'm in Vienna, just arrived today. 

If you've never been to Figlmuller, and you're up for the best Wiener Schnitzel, seek it out.

https://figlmueller.at/en/

[Mark]

2 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

... to criticize a private college for accepting students’ funds that come from government loans and grants ...

9thdoctor would know better than that if he read some of the many allegations of fraud against Barney and his CEHE.  The allegations have the ring of truth, especially since Barney's manner reeks of phoniness.  The fact that the taxpayer would be paying for the fraud makes it worse but it would be bad even without government involvement.

9thdoctor is “Respondent A” in
Response to Barney Revelations

[Mark]

[withdrawn]

[Jon Letendre]

43 minutes ago, Mark said:

9thdoctor would know better than that if he read some of the many allegations of fraud against Barney and his CEHE.  The allegations have the ring of truth, especially since Barney's manner reeks of phoniness.  The fact that the taxpayer would be paying for the fraud makes it worse but it would be bad even without government involvement.

9thdoctor is “Respondent A” in
Response to Barney Revelations

9th in the kind of thinker who will become more confident there are no mice in the cupboards after you show him the dead ones in the traps you set.