scientology & celebrities

I know those photos are real, but somehow, they still look like those weird Photoshopped creations designers make for ppt presentations to solicit funding for the new stadium.

http://blog.kierantimberlake.com/wp-content/uploads/interior-view-at-concourse-looking-south_existing.jpg

Ah, my favorite photo of the man himself:

http://i52.tinypic.com/2q0ojmt.jpg

Larger version and explanation here

tomatoes totally feel pain

Murderer.

lol

those pics are wiiiiiild

so wait, those superpower pics above *aren't* just photoshoppy computer generated representations? they do not look real to me.

the hallway one looked like a real photo but yeah the others are definitely computer generated

My mistake. Thanks for suppressing my progress.

glad we could "clear" that up

KSW guys

dunno if this has been covered already midthread, but the Haggis/Wright/St. Petersburg Times exposés (devastating though they are) are not quite as o_O as 'Operation Freakout' & what happened to Paulette Cooper in the 70s:

http://www.lermanet.com/paulette-cooper/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout

i think this NYer story is important because it puts a mainstream-elite stamp of approval on public distrust and disapproval of scientology. generally this has been confined to south park style parody plus committed internet-based activism and documentation. plus there has been a serious climate of fear around them, right? like atul gawande on healthcare or jane mayer on cheney, now "everyone" can say, boy, kind of problem here, even though all the details were in plain sight.

yeah it does feel especially weighty because of that. i also like that it doesn't hesitate to criticize some of the more OTT anti-Scieno sentiment too.

Waiiit this is what Mormons say about their church! How many religions used alleged exponential functions as a sales point?

Temple of Underrated Aerosmith has 3x more chill vibes & good times than all other religions iirc

Brought back by Catholic bones, I see. Welcome.

no I came back to find out how Tuomas feels about suggest ban but now they've locked the thread so I'm feeling kind of adrift, can't live like this tbqf

lol hope you find harbor

I had to stop reading this mid-article to do some other reading up, after that throwaway sentence about Miscavige's wife not having been seen in two years.

Temple of Underrated Aerosmith

would join this church

not sure how reliable this is, but interesting nonetheless:

http://leavingscientology.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/david-miscavige-“the-adulterer”/

I link on that page leads to this:

She lamented how he would sometimes walk around mumbling, then periodically shouting, “Shelly, where is the gold buried?” She swore she had no idea what gold DM was referring to.

I had to stop reading this mid-article to do some other reading up, after that throwaway sentence about Miscavige's wife not having been seen in two years.

Yeah that's the bit I really wonder about.

If you really want to dig around, you'll find conspiracy theories that she's the natural mother of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's adopted daughter.

missed ya underrated aerosmith

Of all of the media on this page:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/multimedia.html

This was always my favorite:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/media_vault/Helatrob.mp3

Or this one, where LRH predicts the coming of Mad Men:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/media_vault/Nochrist.mp3

This is full of interesting stuff, including an apparent quote from Hubbard: "When buildings get important to us, for God’s sake, some of you born revolutionists, will you please blow up central headquarters.”

so what will the church do now? maybe i overestimate the importance of the new yorker as opposed to the st. pete times, but this seems like kind of a big deal?

i guess standard procedure is to sue the shit out of conde nast, but between the new yorker's fact checkers and conde's lawyers no doubt having already picked it apart, that seems only slightly more feasible than dan snyder's lawsuit . . .

Well the FBI is already investigating so...

It doesn't say the FBI is actively investigating, does it? Just that the investigation is still open. Maybe that's splitting hairs. But I imagine there are hundreds of "open" investigations the FBI hasn't bothered with in years. Can't imagine this particular pile of crazy-pants is a priority.

Skimmed this thread (and I forgot I gave that St. Petersburgh Times piece upthread -- good reading, but did anyone link to the RollingStone article that came out about five years ago? One of my favorite RS articles ever (I'm sure it's old news to most, but maybe not to all):

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/inside-scientology-20110208

And again, it's worth reposting that St. Pete Times series of articles for those who haven't read them:

http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/

Woah 26 page article.

Normally I wouldn't feel like printing out an article to read on the way home was an abuse of office equipment, but this one took 48 sheets of paper. I punched holes in it and put it in a binder.

It's been said on this thread much before, but this is a fantastic article, and everyone should read it.

can someone link to it again? i'm too lazy to go into the 400+ other messages

Suck it up.

Or friend me on Facebook. It's on my profile recently.

what a sassmaster.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright

Well, I'd have had to look it up, too! Or reload the whole thread. I'm not going to do it just because he doesn't want to. That's free labor.

Or this one, where LRH predicts the coming of Mad Men:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/media_vault/Nochrist.mp3

― polyphonic, woensdag 9 februari 2011 21:39 (Yesterday) Bookmark

And because of that he put Elisabeth 'Peggy Olson' Moss in there? ;_;

(yes, only just now found out, rip etc.)

sorry kenan, didn't mean to make you cry

I read the whole thing and enjoyed it but sorta amazed I could read so much and not feel like I'd learned anything new. Maybe just read too many of these by now.

yeah, I feel that its main function is to lend further credence & exposure to what was already unearthed by the St. Petersburg Times piece(s). Absolutely nothing wrong w/ that though - very well written & assembled. The Tommy Davis quotes vs. contrary evidence/fact-checking is priceless stuff.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/10/scientology_friends_dc

greta van susteren? say it ain't so

she hid it and someone revealed it when she left cnn

The Tommy Davis quotes vs. contrary evidence/fact-checking is priceless stuff.

Definitely. The piece was well-edited with a nice big climax at the end. I think CoS's meeting with the New Yorker people was an uncharacteristically bad move for them, but the whole thing seems like a chess match where they're down to their last few moves and are hoping for stalemate at best.

i know! it would help their defense if it wasn't a bunch of creepy controlling thieving bullshit, but, there they are.

i bet if you talked to someone like your parents about these people, the answer would probably be "eh kinda creepy, really expensive, some pseudo psychological self-help crap, dumb celebrities are into it." but now all the wilder stories are being legitimized (maybe overselling the NYer's importance here, but their stuff resonates throughout the rest of the media). like, no really, tom cruise has custom motorcycles built by slave labor in the california desert. the dude's wife got disappeared.

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133561256/the-church-of-scientology-fact-checked