Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Incorporated a nonprofit computer bulletin board and electronic library July-August, 1994 In the United States alone an estimated 5,000 economic, political, and religious groups use tactics of coercive mind control...p.6 "Only you have the right to control your mind" FACTNet's MISSION FACTNet is an international, nonprofit, educational, social justice organization that opposes human rights abuse caused by coercive mind control. Tactics of Psychological Coercion. FACTNet seeks to promote dialog concerning this issue, much as Amnesty International promotes dialog on issues of human rights abuse caused by physical coercion. FACTNet provides a unique research, investigatory, and educational information clearinghouse on coercive mind control tactics. It informs the public how their lives are being negatively influenced by the growing number of groups using these dangerous tactics. FACTNet brings advanced technology to the struggle for social justice by delivering services through state of the art telecommunication and information management technologies. Our mission is to educate. We provide information on coercive mind control from many sources and perspectives. The individual decides the truth. HOW FACTNet ACCOMPLISHES ITS MISSION Information access is the proven solution to stop current abuse, help victims recover, and prevent future abuse. Technology makes information available faster, more easily, more broadly, and at less expense. This maximizes the "information solution." FACTNet provides high technology information services to victims and their families, professionals, governments, the media, and other organizations. FACTNet provides numerous information services including an electronic lending library, electronic mail and resource referral, electronic news transfer services, and expert research consulting. [More information is available upon request about FACTNet's seven main purposes, guiding principles and three-phase business plan.] FACTNet's HISTORY FACTNet began as a nonprofit organization in June of 1993. We have received our 501(c)(3) tax exempt status from the IRS and established our corporate structure. We have purchased all necessary insurances, filed appropriate trademarks, and run six months of limited user testing of the computer telecommunications capabilities. Our Board of Directors consists of Jon Atack, Lawrence Wollersheim, and Bob Penny — all victims of coercive mind control who, having successfully survived, are now dedicated to educating the public. Our Board of Advisors includes Dr. Margaret Singer, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychology at UC, Berkeley; Eugene H. Methvin, Senior Editor, Reader's Digest; Andrew A. Skolnick, M.S., Associate News Editor, Journal of the American Medical Association; Edward Lottick, M.D.; Kent Burtner, M.Div.; and Ford Greene, Esq. During the first year, approximately $190,000 in cash and labor was invested to bring FACTNet's services on-line. This time was spent in a testing phase, researching, developing, and debugging computer and software technologies; training staff; and developing administrative work flow and security policies. By the end of its first year, FACTNet had acquired computers and software sufficient to handle approximately 5,400 information service calls per month. Our on-line searchable database contained approximately 50,000 pages of text. Our archives of scanned pages contained approximately 1.8 gigabytes of image files. WHAT WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SO FAR While still in its non-public testing phase, FACTNet was able to provide information services to several hundred victims of coercive mind control, assist a foreign government in its investigation of a group using coercive mind control, and help, in significant part, to win four major litigation victories against one of the world's largest abusers of coercive mind control. For an organization that hasn't yet gone public, FACTNet already has had a powerful effect on human rights abusers. One destructive organization so fears FACTNet's growth that it is refusing to pay a multi-million dollar judgment to a former member in part, we believe, because it fears (correctly) that the former member will make a substantial donation to FACTNet, the organization that played a key role in its defeat. With no more than word of mouth about FACTNet's unique electronic information services, FACTNet has received numerous information requests from leading media around the world. From FACTNet's media connections, several major media exposŠs about destructive organizations using coercive mind control are in the works or already published. Recent examples include the Sussex Observer, the Australian Woman's Day, and the English Daily Mirror. [Ask for more complete references.] FACTNet's goals are supported by one of the world's leading and most credible resources for research on coercive mind control and the destructive organizations that use it, the American Family Foundation (AFF). The AFF is providing fourteen years of accumulated research and work to be scanned, computerized, and made available through FACTNet's telecommunication services. FACTNet's goals are also supported by Graham E. Berry, of the Los Angeles law firm Lewis, D'Amato, Brisbois and Brisgaard, and by David J. Bardin, of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arent Fox. FACTNet already has the largest computerized library in the world on Scientology and has acquired a substantial volume of materials on other destructive organizations using coercive mind control. These additional materials are in the process of being scanned and computerized. Our initial results only preview the tremendous social justice leveraging capabilities that will become available as FACTNet's information services become more widely known and used by the public. OUR CURRENT NEED FACTNet needs additional funding to handle the huge volume of service requests anticipated as FACTNet expands its public outreach and connects to the Internet — the "information super highway" that you are hearing so much about in the news. The Internet now connects 20 million computers worldwide, is growing at 10% per month, and by the year 2000 is expected to connect one billion computers. Resources are needed for several immediate purposes: acquire additional computer and telecommunication equipment, software, phone lines, and an Internet connection, The additional equipment requirements are appropriate to what will quickly grow to 8,000-10,000 computer information and service request calls per month. This is anticipated when FACTNet links to and becomes known on the Internet, to millions of other computer owners, and to users of other computer networks. complete the computerization work on the 100,000-page American Family Foundation library acquisition, It will take resources to bring the full AFF library on-line. This is one of the the world's leading and most credible non-computerized resources for research on coercive mind control and the destructive organizations that use it. Over 100 respected interdisciplinary professionals have contributed to the AFF library over the past fourteen years. The American Family Foundation's scholarly journal, Cultic Studies Journal, has published more than 125 articles on cults and psychological manipulation. Their review of press reports, The Cult Observer, has reviewed more than 3,000 media reports during the past fourteen years. The AFF also has other scholarly articles about cults and general information about more than 300 different cultic groups that use coercive mind control. The AFF library commands immediate respect and credibility. FACTNet's linkage with it will help other organizations and individuals become familiar with FACTNet's services. This association benefits AFF because their researchers in psychiatry, psychology, sociology, the media, and law, will be able to do their own work in new and better ways (for example, on-line surveys and questionnaires), and more effectively communicate their research and findings to each other and to the public. From an outreach and credibility viewpoint, adding the AFF library to FACTNet's existing library will markedly increase FACTNet's appeal to a global public. hire more staff and pay the volunteer staff who will be staying on to meet the public service requests and to computerize the AFF library, Paid staff will be needed to service the library and escalating service/research requests. begin outreach promotion of FACTNet's services to those who need them but are unaware that such resources exist, Organizations that use coercive mind control operate by restricting information and creating phobias about professional help. We have to very deliberately reach past those barriers and make more people aware of our existence and capabilities. A more effective outreach will better position FACTNet to be of service on a larger scale to victims and their support professionals. and, set up a financially self-sustaining gift and revenue-creating program to help secure FACTNet's future while we develop service revenues. Our budget forecasts service revenues from user subscriptions, downloads, fax-on-demand, database research, and other sources, but this will not support us until we get all services on-line and widely known. We need to create an ongoing gift program to remain financially secure for the three years it is projected to take until our service revenues grow to a sufficient level. [Request a copy of our projected budget for full details on the projects listed above.] WHAT YOUR SUPPORT WILL ACCOMPLISH We will be able to deliver 24-hour/day, 7 days/week telecommunication information services to a global Internet and non-Internet public and make an even more powerful difference. Victims of destructive groups that use coercive mind control, or their families, can immediately access information to understand what has happened to them, information on resource connections they need to formulate a plan of action, and information for the challenging recovery process. Mental health professionals and clergy can immediately access updated information and resource connections they need to help victims and families, network among themselves, and obtain needed referrals. Attorneys and government agencies can immediately access information and resource connections they need to prosecute those individuals or groups who have broken the law or seriously damaged individuals. Civil and criminal investigations can be researched inexpensively. Journalists and educators can immediately access information and resource connections they need to expose abuses, forewarn the public, develop preventive educational programs and give accurate well rounded descriptions of this area of human rights abuse. Victim rights advocates and other anti-abuse organizations can immediately access information and resource connections they need to defend against the sometimes malicious legal and other harassments that destructive groups using coercive mind control often use in an attempt to silence those they perceive as opponents. THE URGENCY OF THE PROBLEM "Existing data now suffice to convince any reasonable person that the claims of harm done by cults are bona fide. There are a good many people already dead or dying, ill or malfunctioning, crippled or developing improperly as a result of their involvement in cults. They are exploited; they are used and misused; their health suffers; they are made to commit improprieties ranging from lying (`heavenly deception') to murder. Their lives are being gobbled up by days, months, and years."Cultic Studies Journal, volume 7, no. 2, 1990. In the United States alone an estimated 5,000 economic, political, and religious groups use tactics of coercive mind control to deceptively influence millions of victims.studied approximately 3,500 victims of coercive mind control programs during her 40 years of research and writing. Almost everyone today knows someone who has been the victim of one of these destructive groups. They ruin tens of thousands of lives and take hundreds of millions of dollars from their victims. They have bought or extorted dangerous influence over our courts, mass media, and other institutions. The cause of this growing human rights problem today is twofold. First, information about advances in the technologies of coercive mind control is generally not known in our society, and second, those who exploit these technologies gain an invisible control advantage which is too profitable not to be exploited by the unscrupulous. The growing use of coercive mind control poses a very real danger first, to its immediate victims, and also to our families, lives, and civil liberties. Our most basic freedoms are invisibly threatened by the growing use of practices which restrict information and bypass the victim's awareness to obtain compliance through deceptive technological processes of influence (as opposed to dialog, debate, or any other appeals to reason which are otherwise open, rational, and participatory). History has taught us what can happen when coercive mind control prepares the ground for physical coercion. Tactics of coercive mind control were used in the authoritarian environment of Nazi Germany. Ruthless individuals like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung were able to sway whole populations into believing ideas and committing acts that ultimately led to the creation of concentration camps, Gulags, and to the needless deaths of tens of millions of people. With the advantage gained over their members with the technologies of coercive mind control, these groups were able to exercise a vastly disproportionate influence over the political, economic, and religious systems of their times. Today we have even more advanced and subtle technologies, with symptoms such as Jonestown, Waco, and Scientology. Looking ahead to the future, already we see that groups using coercive mind control with political and economic ambitions apparently forming well funded coalitions that create disinformation campaigns to deny the existence of coercive mind control, and to harass and silence researchers and victim advocate groups. Many human rights advocacy groups are handicapped in dealing with this problem because they are technology-poor and lack funding for qualified data processing and telecommunications staff. Victim advocate groups, their lawyers, social science researchers, and others urgently need the technology advantage to "level the playing field." Otherwise, they will be silenced. Their voices are needed if we are to avoid continuing social and individual catastrophe. WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU Even if you don't know a victim personally, all of us, and our families, have minds and freedoms that can be lost if this subtle and covert technology continues unchecked in the hands of the greedy and ruthless. We all have a personal stake in solving this challenge to our basic human rights because, like it or not, we all have minds and we are all vulnerable. Please recognize a clear and present danger and somehow overcome the denial that Dr. Singer describes: " . . . most citizens like to think that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. `Other people can be manipulated but not me,' they declare. People like to think that their opinions, values, and ideas are inviolate and totally self regulated. They may admit grudgingly that they are influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to preserve the myth in which other persons are weak minded and easily influenced, but they are strong minded. People cherish a fantasy that manipulators confront, browbeat, and argue people into doing their bidding. They envision Big Brother coming in storm trooper boots, holding guns to their heads, and forcing persons to change their beliefs, alter their personalities, and accept new ideologies. Orwell drew on the wisdom of the ages; most manipulation is subtle and covert. . . . This myth of invulnerability needs to be examined over and over to prevent Orwell's 1984 world from ever happening." A fundamental principle of democratic society is the Jeffersonian concept that man is a rational animal, and that if he or she is allowed to be rational then our system will work. John Dewey said it this way: "The human power to respond to reason and truth protects democracy." Coercive mind control works by bypassing or undercutting rationality and informed free choice. The growing use of coercive mind control poses an ultimate theft of our most important freedoms. It is an invisible theft of one's ability to think rationally, one's free will, informed consent, and individual conscience. Eventually if left unchecked, it will destroy or adversely affect all of our cherished freedoms. Applied politically, coercive mind control is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy today. It is totalitarian in approach and antithetical to democracy. It may become our road to involuntary servitude and high-tech slavery in the information age if we don't do something now that is effective to inform the public and empower victim advocate groups. FACTNet is the largest scale, most effective, and most promising "information solution" to these problems. It exists to help level the playing field. Its information technology leverages the efforts of others and immediatly benefits information distribution and resource networking for all victims and victim advocate organizations. Your help is needed now in the form of a gift or pledge, and in networking us to others who will support our cause. Please give generously.